e
complement of all my lack.

Thou, O Christ, art all I want;
More than all in thee I find.

--_Charles Wesley_

=_Religion Is a Personal Thing_=

"The +LORD+ is my shepherd." _My_ Shepherd. Religion is a _personal_
thing. Really speaking, your religion consists in your personal
relationship to God in Jesus Christ. Not mere profession, but actual
possession is what counts. Christianity emphasizes the worth of the
individual and his personal relation to God. Sin degrades men into mere
numbers.

A photograph was placed on my desk. It had inscribed on it a number, but
no name. It was the likeness of a convict. It was a number I went to
jail to see; a number I spoke with by the cell door; a number I stood by
and saw handcuffed; a number with whom I walked down the steps of the
jail; a number with whom I walked up the stairs to the scaffold; a
number around whose neck I saw the rope placed; a number I saw drop to
his death. Sin degrades personality, but the religion of Christ exalts
its adherents to a place in that innumerable company which cannot be
numbered, but every one of whom bears upon his forehead the name of his
Redeemer and King. Jesus calleth HIS sheep by name, not by number.

At the close of a sermon in a church in the Highlands of Scotland the
preacher, who was supplying the pulpit for a few Sundays, was asked to
call upon a shepherd boy who was very sick. Arm in arm with one of the
elders of the church the minister crossed the moor, climbed the
hillside, and came to the cottage where the boy and his widowed mother
lived. After knocking at the door the visitors were admitted by the
mother. Her face showed the marks of long vigil. The boy was her only
child. The minister and elder went into the room where the sick boy lay
on his cot. The minister, looking upon the pale, haggard face of the
sick shepherd boy, asked him tenderly, "Laddie, do you know the
Twenty-third Psalm?"

Every Scotch boy knows the Twenty-third Psalm, and so the little fellow
replied, "Yes, sir, I ken (know) the Psalm well."

"Will you repeat it to me?" said the minister to the boy.

Slowly and tenderly the lad quoted the words, "The +LORD+ is my
shepherd, I shall not want," unto the end of the Psalm.

"Do you see," said the minister to the boy, "that in the first clause of
the first verse there is just one word for each finger. Hold up your
hand, laddie; take the second finger of your right hand, put it