PACIFIC UNION RECORDER 3
social schemes,  agitations, revolutions,
rin
hey may begin small and get bigger,
ar begin big and get smaller. Some
start with a whisper and end with a roar
Others start with a
as of fifteen German bands and end like
of artillery, blare
the song of a sickly mosquito. Some
snatl and finish hike an ex-
Others
like a tired mule.
start hike a
press train, start like a races
horse and end up
“Now the latter class is peculiarly
We like to start big in Amer-
len. When we set out for Klondike we
American,
like to anncunce it in the papers in big
headlines, and have a brass band escort
us to the station. When we start a club,
we like to begin with a $50,000 building,
with double-baek-action  pulley-weights
and enameled bath-tubs, If we don’t
start it big we are sure it will not be
a Success.
“But we have also a strong tendency
to peter. In fuet, Peter ought to have
heen special apostle to the Americans,
for I am sure he would have understood
us. He proclaimed his courage and en-
thusiasm with the intrepidity of a Na-
poleon, and in a day or two was chased
servant girl. He
from the field by a
petered. THe petered so everlastingly that
that
has come to be known hy iis name wher-
particular kind of a performance
ever it occurs, And it as oof quite fre-
quent occurrence,
When
they start on a race they feel a strong
“CAlost men peter more or less,
temptation to spurt on the first lap.
Then when the excitement really begins
When
a man starts mn public speaking he usu-
ally wants to tell all he
they have to Ire down and gasp.
knows in his
first speech, and quite often he succeeds,
Then when the crowd hear his next eftu-
ston they all agree that he has petered.
We day plans for the bigoest cathedral
on earth, and after a few months” build:
mx, we root over the foundation and
hold a prayer-meeting for the help of
us out of debt, We start
for the moon, but when we get up about
heaven to get
one hundred feet we st down on a
chimney top and think. We soar up toe-
ward the sun and get no farther than
up wo tree, We start to turn the world
upside down, and end hy thinking our-
selves fueklv if we get our dinner cooked
i. RY ICTR BE
fhe wav we wadit it, We ditt up oud
two-hundred-pound burden like a feather,
bur we set it down on the first milestone,
We start with three cheers and end with
an apology. We do our best work be-
tore noon. In short, we peter.
““ Now, this is the discouraging thing
life,
is based upon those things that do Tot
peter. If
growing smaller it would certainly make a
about And our only hope in life
babies began big and kept
hopeless job of it for us all. If our
knowledge was large to start with, and
grew less and less every day we went
to school, we could sceareely blame our
teachers for being discouraged. If our
love for our friends petered out more
and more every time we saw them, our
social intercourse certainly would not be
a Joy forever.
“Peter until he
stopved petering,
HeVeY was a Success
Nor
lKkewise,
will vou and I
succeed until we do The man
who tries to distance competitors in the
first ten minutes, and leaves his exhausted
body in the road for them to carry the
rest of the journey, Is in no sense a suc-
cess. In taking up oa burden it is oa
mistake to take up one so heavy that
after the first day you have to drop it
When a
suceess if
that he
has to be a little worse on each suceced-
upon another's shoulder. man
joins the church he is not a
rood the
o month
he 1s so first
And when a young man falls
fall in
love so desperately that there is nothing
left for him to do but to peter all the
of his life,
irritations his
img inonth,
im love he makes a mistake to
rest when in oats trials and
love has need to he at
Its strongest.
CCN ever
evervthing vou undertake. It
peter. Grows inerease  1n
does not
matter how small vou start, hut 1t does
Rather than
weight the
matter how small vou grow,
ltt a
first dav, and then have to come down
three-hundred-pound
to two hundred and fifty the next, and
better to
begin by hifting one potato the first day,
two the next, and three the
and so on. Dy the end of ten
vou would he able to Tift 5.650 potatoes,
two hundred the next, it ois
anid RENT,
years
which mioht be more than one thousand
pounds, Tn evervthing that you do. be-
gin as small as vou please, but see that
to-day ’'s record is hetter—-a tiny hit bet-
tor, anvwav-—than vesterday s, Je a
little stronger, a little more courageous,
Pan)
a hittle more farthtal, a hittle nearer
God, this week than vou were last, If
vou find vou are beginning to peter,
vou would hetter either pray to heaven for
a change of heart, or else get vour friend
to shoot vou hetore you spoil your record.
The world has no use for peterers, it
wants Peters.
world, WW
might have supposed that in revealing
“It is God's way to begin small. Ie
once started to save the §
the terror of His Majesty and the beauty
of His Tove, He would rend the heavens.
and so astonish the world that they would
only he beginning to forget about it now
But He
with a baby in a
nimeteen hundred
did not. Ile
cow stable.
after years,
started
He could scarcely have made
Look
A tlickering toreh
a smaller beginning, Look back.
into that dark cave.
casts huge shadows of long-horned oxen
on the rough-hewn walls. There is no
sound but the low crunching of the eattle
as they munch their hav, There in the
midst of them is the voung mother,
forgetting for the moment her discour-
agement and discomfort and sickness;
for there in her arms lies the Babe, her
baby hoy, and about His face still plays
the Tight of heaven, trom which Ie came,
and the unclouded purity of its skies
still igers in His eves,
0 hittle Babe of the stable, who would
dream that Thou art a King! Who
would image that from that throne of
hy sweet mother’s arms, Thy
would reach down along the ages, overs
power
turning Kingdoms, establishing empires,
changing the world, and that even to-
day so many proud nations should own
Thee as their supreme Lord and King —
that Thou, O gracious Babe, shouldst be
faithful hearts,
their lite
mest dear for Thy
enthroned In so nanny
who would adly
hold
Truly well did he speak,
ol liv down
and all they
namie 8 sake,
that prophet of old, when he said: “Unto
Child is
given; and the government shall be upon
His shoulder: and His shall be
walled Wonderful, Mighty
Cod, Everlasting ifather, Prince of Pence,
us uo born, unto us a Son Is
name
Counselor,
OF the mmervease of Tis government and
of peace there shall be no end.’
“Clooall that He does, God begins very
smd, But the last is always the best.
Nothing mn which God has a hand peters
build
that ot the
structure that our hands rear it may also
list 1s the best,”
12. RR. Palmer,
(Conf. Pil. Dept,
out. let us, as God's true sons,
according to His plans,
be sand, the
Seer. Aico.