19. And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. 20. And they straightway left their nets, and followed him. A.D. 28. April and May. CALLING THE EARLY DISCIPLES. GREAT GALILEAN MINISTRY. him. It expressed the possibilities within him. It became his true name after much instruction, hard experiences, some falls, much prayer, and abiding with Jesus. "Thine early dreams, which came in shapes of light, Commissioned sweetly to unfold A Possible to thee. And God shall make divinely real The highest forms of thy ideal."-Margaret Preston. FOR THEY WERE FISHERS.-"Do not repress a boy because his home is plain and unpretending. Abraham Lincoln's early home was a log cabin. Nor because of the ignorance of his parents. Shakespeare, the world's poet was the son of a man who was unable to write his own name. Nor because he chooses a humble trade. The author of the Pilgrim's Progress' was a tinker. Nor because of physical disability. Milton was blind. Nor because of dullness in his lessons. Hogarth, the celebrated painter and engraver, was a stupid boy at his books. Nor because he stutters. Demosthenes, the greatest orator of Greece, overcame a harsh and stammering voice."-Christian Advocate. 19. I WILL MAKE YOU FISHERS OF MEN.- "Hence the favorite early Christian symbol of the 'Fish.' 'We little fishes,' says Tertullian, 'after our Fish (IXOYE) are born in the water (of baptism).' The first letters of the title of Christ in Greek, Ιησοῦς Χριστὸς Θεοῦ Υἱός Σωτήρ, Jesus Christ God's Son the Saviour Ichthus. -make the Greek word for fish, IXOYE, Ichthus. It was quite common fifty years ago for weather vanes or church spires to be in the form of a fish-a reproduction, probably, of this early Christian symbol." -George M. Adams, D.D. 21. And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he called them. 1. The sea is the evil world. In the oldest Christian hymn extant (by Clement of Alexandria) Christ is addressed as "Fishers of men the blest, Out of the world's unrest, Out of sin's troubled sea, Taking us, Lord, to thee.”—Rev. Com. Out of this restless sea we are to bring men to the rest and peace and holiness of Christ. 2. The line and the net are the gospel, with all its attractions and means of gaining souls. 3. The net is of no use without the fishermen. Fishers of It is personal work by those who are anxious to save men that brings them to Jesus. A leading Baptist clergyman said not long since that the experience of their missions had taught them that little success was gained by the printed word, without the living presence of the missionary. The personal element is a very important factor in all gospel work. 4. The object is to bring men to the shore of eternal life. The very word catch implies, as we have seen above, to take alive, to bring men into the kingdom of God. "There is, indeed, an aspect in which the death of the fish, which follows on its being drawn out of the waters, has its analogy in the higher spiritual world. The man, drawn forth by these Gospel nets from the worldly sinful element in which before he lived and moved, does die to sin, die to the world, but only that out of this death he may rise to a higher life in Christ. This is brought out with much beauty by Origen (Hom. 16 in Jerem.)."-Trench. 5. "Again, the work of the fisher is rather a work of art and skill than of force and violence."- Trench. The fisherman attracts rather than drives. Great skill, patient toil, watchfulness, and care are necessary. The use of the right bait, and especially in much fishing, the keeping one's self out of sight. 6. "I watched an old man trout fishing the other day. He was very successful. I asked him the secret of his success. 'Well, you see, sir, there be three rules for trout fishing, and it is no good trying if you don't mind them. The first Keep Self out of Sight. is, Keep yourself out of sight; and the second is, Keep yourself farther out of sight; and the third is, Keep yourself farther still out of sight.' Good for catching men, too, I thought." -Mark Guy Pearse. A.D. 28. April and May. GREAT GALILEAN MINISTRY. SKILL IN FISHING FOR MEN.-" IT seems to me that this matter of Christian work carries with it the responsibility of skillful attainment. Now I suppose it is because I am so often fishing that I have thought a great deal about that statement of the Master, ‘I will make you fishers of men.' Monday, when the day is pleasant, I go fishing and make sermons in the boat. The fish we like to catch in New York Bay are striped bass. They are wonderful fish, beautiful fellows; and, I tell you, when you have a slender pole and a good, strong reel and a float, and you are looking at it, and one of these seven-pound striped bass snaps at the hook and takes that float under, and then whiz-z-z-z-z!-oh, I tell you, it is indescribable. But you never catch bass haphazard-never; you always have to go into the special place where they run, and they are always particular about bait. Sometimes they will take shrimp, and sometimes they will not touch shrimp, nor take anything but clam, and sometimes they will take neither clam nor shrimp, they will only take shred or crab. Well, you have to try. You fling out to them shrimp, and nothing comes of it; clam, nothing comes of it; shred or crab, and you wait. It takes patience; but there is a strike, and there he is, a magnificent fellow. 'I will make you fishers of men.' You never get a Sunday-school scholar haphazard-never; you are under the responsibility of skillful attainment. If you cannot reach them one way, try another, and then wait and pray, but be bound to take them before the sun goes down."- Wayland Hoyt, D.D. THE BLOODLESS SPORTSMAN. I go a-gunning, but take no gun; I fish without a pole; And I bag good game and catch such fish For the choicest game that the forest holds, Are never brought down by a rifle-shot 22. And they immediately left the ship and their father, and followed him. I bob for fish by the forest brook, A bloodless sportsman, I— I hunt for the thoughts that throng the woods, The dreams that haunt the sky. The woods were made for the hunters of dreams, To the hunters who hunt for the gunless game The streams and the woods belong. There are thoughts that moan from the soul of the pine, And the thoughts that are blown with the scent of the fern So away! for the hunt in the fern-scented wood Till the going down of the sun; There is plenty of game still left in the woods For the hunter who has no gun. So away! for the fish by the moss-bordered brook There are plenty of fish still left in the streams For the angler who has no rod. LIBRARY." Fishin' Jimmy." -S. W. Foss, in New York Sun. 22. THEY LEFT THEIR FATHER AND FOLLOWED HIM. LIBRARY.-The choice of Pizarro and his followers related in Prescott's "Conquest of Peru,” vol. i., 263–65. PICTURES.-Jesus Preaching to the Multitude, Doré; Christ the Consoler, Plockhorst; Christus Consolator, Ary Scheffer; Doré's Vale 23. And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. 24. And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them. A.D. 28. April and May. GREAT GALILEAN MINISTRY. of Tears is very touching; Christ Healing the Sick, Schönherr, Zimmermann, Hoffmann; Raising of Jairus' Daughter, Richter and Hoffmann; Healing the Leper, Bida. 23, 24. SICKNESS, DISEASE, TORMENTS, TAKEN, LUNATIC.-"The description of the ailments to which our Lord's power was applied, gains vividness by study of the words in detail. In verse 23, the Rev. rightly transposes sickness and disease; for vóσ05 (A. V., sickness) carries the notion of something severe, dangerous, and even violent (compare the Latin noceo, to hurt, to which the root is akin). Homer always represents voσ05 as the visitation of an angry deity. Hence used of the plague which Apollo sent upon the Greeks (Iliad, i. 10). So Sophocles (Antigone, 421) calls a whirlwind vɛíav vócov (a divine visitation). Disease is, therefore, the more correct rendering as expressing something stronger than sickness or debility. Sickness, however, suits the other word μahakiav. The kindred adjective, μañaкós, means soft, as a couch or a newly ploughed furrow, and thus easily runs into our invidious moral sense of softness, namely, effeminacy or cowardice, and into the physical sense of weakness, sickness. Hence the word emphasizes the idea of debility rather than a violent suffering or danger. The idea of suffering is emphasized in the word taken (ovvexoμévovs), which means literally held-together or compressed. Note the word torments, Basávos. Báoavos originally meant the "Lydian stone," or touchstone, on which pure gold when rubbed leaves a peculiar mark. Hence naturally a test, then a test or trial by torture. idea of test gradually passes entirely out of Baoavos, leaving merely the idea of suffering or torture."-M. R. Vincent, in Word Studies. Thus the Lunatic, oeλnviatouévovs, literally moonstruck. The word lunatic is derived from luna, the Latin word for moon, from the ancient belief that the changes of the moon affected mad persons. Hence, |