The World’s Sunday-school Convention in Rome was a great occasion and a notable success. Poetically significant was the gathering amid the memorable ruins of the Colosseum. Here on the very sands that have been soaked with the blood of early Christian martyrs, where thousands have met the fierce Numidian lion and been torn to pieces for Christ’s sake, over a thousand delegates peacefully assembled to bear witness to the very Nazarene in whose cause those martyrs suffered. The pagan Roman persecutors sought to wipe out the remembrance of His name from the earth; and here this great company of Christian delegates meet to celebrate His name, never before so widely worshiped and adored as to-day.
(3296)
TRIVIAL CAUSES
The clock of the Potsdam Garrison Church, which Frederick the Great in his day had placed in the tower of that cathedral, and which hourly chimed familiar strains, suddenly stopt. The cause of this sudden cessation of both its works and its music was the intrusion of a brown butterfly, which alighted in its wheelworks.
Is it not often thus with the heart of man, out of which well songs of joy and praise—songs suddenly and unexpectedly reduced to silence? The cause of it often is so insignificant a thing as a transient thought, a carking care, which becomes entangled in the delicate spiritual works and brings the heavenly music to a standstill.
(3297)
TROUBLE
Blest is that person who can make the following lines part of his philosophy:
’Tis easy enough to be pleasant
When life flows by like a song,