ose who have
no inheritance of steady purpose to rise into new habits of thought and
feeling, and away from the heredity of superstitions which were
unrelated with morality, into a faith which really purifies the heart
and the life, is not the work of a year, nor of fifty years. It means
patient continuance in well doing. It means consecration, responsibility
and self-sacrifice on the part of those who take upon themselves and
into themselves, the sins and the sorrows, and the struggles and
failures of those who are to be saved.
Nothing but a consecration that becomes a passion of the soul in
Christ's love and for Christ's sake, and an abiding faith in the triumph
of his kingdom of love and righteousness, will explain the earnestness
and labor of the devoted souls in our mission work, who are God's kings
and priests ministering to the lowly, and crowding their days with
service for those who have been the victims of the strong, and who, now
weak and poor, are despised in their poverty and weakness.
* * * * *
All honor to those who are giving themselves to break down the
injustices of a cruel and unchristian caste, all honor to the noble men
and women who are working to rescue millions from the woeful inheritance
of centuries, as well as to save them from the dominion of the sin which
is common to man.
Others may honor Kings and Queens and Princes who have had their
greatness thrust upon them, but we will stand with those who accentuate
their reverence for lives consecrated to the good of humanity, who are
afflicted with the sorrows of God's poor, and oppressed with their
burdens, and whose prayers and songs are _God save the people_, Their
lives may not be chronicled in the pages which tell of those who lived
to make others serve them, but they are shining names upon God's Book of
Life, and in the day of the coronation of the nobility which God sees
and records, their names will stand out like radiant stars in the
heavens. One of such was JAMES POWELL, whose life was a grand sacrifice
of undeviating love for those whose necessities made him feel that he
was debtor to them, until he gave them the price of his life which
Christ had redeemed.
Subordinating himself to this consecration with incessant desire, he has
left his example which may well be inspiration and strength to all who
are working and praying for those who have been trodden under the feet
of the strong, and he has le
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