can't imagine what was wrong to-day," he said to his neighbor on the
platform. "I had all ready what I felt sure would be a telling address,
but somehow I couldn't say what I wanted." A sympathetic answer was
given by the man to whom he had spoken, but if he had said all that was
in his heart this would have been his message: "I know you had a telling
argument to present, for I read your manuscript. But you spent the first
three minutes in talking about yourself. It was there you lost the
attention of the people; they did not come to hear about you, but to
learn of your Master. And when you had put yourself in the foreground,
it was impossible for you to present Him with power."

The speaker's mistake is repeated every day, not merely by men on the
platform, but by everyday people in the home, in the school, and at
work. It is fatal to usefulness to put ourselves in the foreground; but
those who forget self and remember others are welcome wherever they go.

IV

GETTING CLOSE TO THE BIBLE

One of the blessings that came to the world out of the anguish of the
Great War was a new appreciation of God's Word on the part of many who
had never paid much attention to the inspired Book, and the formation of
the habit of Bible reading by tens of thousands of those who were once
heedless of God's Word.

Absence from home in hours of danger, privation and suffering, opened
the way for testing Him who reveals his power to give infinite blessing
by saying tenderly, "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I
comfort you." The sense of absolute powerlessness in the face of
barbarism led to dependence upon God who holds the worlds in His hands.
Realization of the uncertainty of life and familiarity with death made
easy and natural the approach to the Lord of life and death.

Probably there were soldiers who laughed at the words of Field Marshal
Lord Roberts, spoken when the first British troops were crossing the
Channel:

"You will find in this little Book (the Bible) guidance when you are in
health, comfort when you are in sickness, and strength when you are in
adversity," but the day came when one of the soldiers themselves, Arthur
Guy Empey, wrote:

"How about the poor boy lying wounded, perhaps dying, in a shell hole,
his mother far away? Perhaps to him even God seems to have forgotten; he
feels for his first-aid packet, binds up his wounds, and then
waits--years, it seems to him--for the stretcher-bearers. Then he get