"I 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 gets out his Testament; the feel of it gives him comfort and hope. He reads. That boy gets religion, even though when he enlisted he was an atheist."

A Young Men's Christian Association secretary told of an incident when the soldiers were just leaving for the trenches. "He saw a young lad nervously making his way up to the counter. He knew the boy wanted something, and was afraid to ask or was timid about it. He said, 'Want something, lad?' 'Yes, sir, I have got a Bible and I don't know much about it. I'd like you to mark some passages in it. I am going out to the trenches to-night.' 'Sure!' said the secretary. 'Mark some good ones, now,' said the lad.

"While he was marking the first lad's book half a dozen other boys came up and said, 'Mark mine, too, sir!' And for half an hour this secretary was busy marking verses in the Bibles of those boys. An interested observer asked him what he marked, and he said, 'Matthew 10:23; 11:28; 6:19, 20; John 3:16; Romans 8:35-39.'"