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The Ministry of Healing
and experience of the old. Above all, they need to learn the lesson
of unselfish ministry. The presence of one in need of sympathy and
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forbearance and self-sacrificing love would be to many a household
a priceless blessing. It would sweeten and refine the home life, and
call forth in old and young those Christlike graces that would make
them beautiful with a divine beauty and rich in heaven’s imperishable
treasure.
A Test of Character
“Ye have the poor with you always,” Christ said, “and whenso-
ever ye will ye may do them good.” “Pure religion and undefiled
before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows
in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”
Mark 14:7
;
James 1:27
.
In placing among them the helpless and the poor, to be dependent
upon their care, Christ tests His professed followers. By our love
and service for His needy children we prove the genuineness of our
love for Him. To neglect them is to declare ourselves false disciples,
strangers to Christ and His love.
If all were done that could be done in providing homes in families
for orphan children, there would still remain very many requiring
care. Many of them have received an inheritance of evil. They are
unpromising, unattractive, perverse, but they are the purchase of
the blood of Christ, and in His sight are just as precious as are our
own little ones. Unless a helping hand is held out to them, they will
grow up in ignorance and drift into vice and crime. Many of these
children could be rescued through the work of orphan asylums.
Such institutions, to be most effective, should be modeled as
closely as possible after the plan of a Christian home. Instead of
large establishments, bringing great numbers together, let there be
small institutions in different places. Instead of being in or near
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some town or large city, they should be in the country where land
can be secured for cultivation and the children can be brought into
contact with nature and can have the benefits of industrial training.
Those in charge of such a home should be men and women who
are largehearted, cultured, and self-sacrificing; men and women who
undertake the work from love to Christ and who train the children