HELPFULNESS
A man went to a convention where George Washington Carver was also attending. In the hotel lobby the man had four pieces of luggage. He said to a black man, “Here, boy, help me carry my bags.”
On the elevator the man bragged about the accomplishments of science, while Carver listened to the man’s words. In the room the man handed Carver some money as a tip.
“I don’t want it,” Carver said.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t need it.”
“By the way, what is your name?”
“I’m George Washington Carver.”
The man was terribly embarrassed. “I didn’t realize who you were. One of the reasons I came to this conference was to meet you. Why did you help me?”
“Well, Sir,” Carver replied, “you did need help.”
When Sir Bartle Frere returned from India, the carriage was sent to the village station to bring him to his home. When the new footman, but newly engaged, asked how he should recognize Sir Bartle, his aged mother said, “Look out for somebody helping someone else.” Sure enough, when the London train had drawn in, the manservant observed a gentleman assisting an old woman to the platform and then jumping back into the carriage to fetch out her luggage. Going straight up to him, the footman inquired, “Sir Bartle?” Yes, it was he.
Help your brother’s boat across and lo! your own has reached the shore.
—Hindu proverb
If you would be interesting, be interested; if you would be pleased, be pleasing; if you would be loved, be lovable; if you would be helped, be helpful.
—William Arthur Ward
Sir Edmund Hillary and his Nepalese guide, Tenzing Norgay, were the first people to make the historic climb of Mount Everest in 1953. Coming down from the mountain peak, Sir Edmund suddenly lost his footing. Tenzing held the line taut and kept them both from falling by digging his ax into the ice.
Later Tenzing refused any special credit for saving Sir Edmund Hillary’s life; he considered it a routine part of the job. As he put it, “Mountain climbers always help each other.”
For years my wife has followed a set of six daily rules which she adopted from an anonymous source. She resolves every day to do something for herself, to do something she doesn’t want to do but needs doing, to do a physical exercise, to do a mental exercise, and to offer an original prayer that includes thanks for blessings. The sixth item (though first on her list) is to do something for someone else. Since she does this without telling anyone, including me, I cannot give many examples, though I have discovered her taking food to a shut-in.
—Leslie B. Flynn
It is a pleasant thought that when you help a fellow up a steep hill, you get nearer to the top yourself.
—Reynolds Price
HIRING
When asked what the toughest problem was in directing construction of the world’s first atomic submarine, Admiral Hyman George Rickover tersely replied, “Picking good men.”
—Bits & Pieces
HISTORY
If we imagine the whole of earth’s history compressed into a single year, then, on this scale, the first eight months would be completely without life. The following two months would be devoted to the most primitive of creatures, ranging from viruses and single-celled bacteria to jellyfish, while mammals would not have appeared until the second week in December. Man, as we know him, would have strutted onto the stage at about 11:45 P.M. on December 31. The age of written history would have occupied little more than the last 60 seconds on the clock.
—Richard Carrington
How patient of history to keep repeating itself when practically nobody listens.
History is “the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.”
—Edward Gibbon
History is but the visible effects of invisible changes in human thought.
Charles A. Beard, the historian, was once asked if he could summarize the lessons of history. Beard replied that he could do it with four simple observations: (1) Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad with power; (2) the mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine; (3) the bee fertilizes the flower it robs; (4) when it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to remain a child forever.
—Cicero
HOBBY
A hobby is something you go wild about to keep you from going crazy.
HOLINESS
In the forest of Northern Europe and Asia lives a little animal called the ermine. He is best known for his snow-white fur. Instinctively this small creature takes a peculiar pride in his glossy coat. He protects it at all cost against anything that would soil it. Fur hunters take cruel advantage of the ermine in this respect. They do not set a snare to catch him, but instead they find his home, which is usually a cleft in a rock or a hollow in an old tree, and they daub the entrance and the interior with filth. Then their dogs start the chase. Frightened, the ermine flees toward his home. He finds it covered within and without with uncleanness, and so rather than soil his white fur he faces the yelping dogs and meets his death while preserving his purity. To the ermine purity is dearer than life.
—Our Daily Bread
A holy man is a mighty weapon in the hands of God.
—Robert Murray McCheyne
Hugh Gough, the bishop of Barking, told a charming story at Keswick about his dog. Some years ago he owned a Highland terrier that was “pure white.” The dog was wonderfully cared for, bathed and clipped, and was a clean, white joy around the house. One morning the bishop awoke and looked out the window, to find that snow had fallen during the night. Then, across his lawn, there scurried a dog, gray and dirty against the white snow. When the bishop inquired to find out how such a stray could have wandered into their garden, he discovered that it was none other than their own beloved “white” terrier.
Holiness vanishes when you talk about it, but becomes gloriously conspicuous when you live it.
O Lord, make me as holy as a forgiven sinner can be.
—Robert Murray McCheyne
HOLOCAUST
Yad Vashem is the memorial in Jerusalem where a large building is dedicated to the memory of the children of the holocaust. It is constructed so that one candle is reflected by many mirrors, to represent the 1.5 million children who died. The children’s names are read aloud continuously day and night.
HOLY SPIRIT
You might as well try to hear without ears, or breathe without lungs, as try to live a Christian life without the Spirit of God in your heart.
—D. L. Moody
A group of pastors were discussing the possibility of having D. L. Moody serve as an evangelist at a city-wide evangelistic campaign. One minister was reluctant to have Moody speak. “Why Moody?” he asked. “Does he have a monopoly on the Holy Spirit?”
The question was followed by a hushed silence. Finally another man spoke up and said, “No, Moody does not have a monopoly on the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit does have a monopoly on D. L. Moody.”
In view of the fact that Christian service is effective solely as it is wrought in the power of the Holy Spirit and that power is realized only through the scriptural provisions for personal adjustment to the Spirit, the theological curriculum is fundamentally lacking which does not provide the student with the training, power, and personal victory in Jesus Christ.
—Lewis Sperry Chafer
It is said that a certain guide lived in the deserts of Arabia who never lost his way. He carried with him a homing pigeon with a very fine cord attached to one of its legs. When in doubt as to which path to take, he threw the bird into the air. The pigeon quickly strained at the cord to fly in the direction of home, and thus led the guide accurately to his goal. Because of this unique practice he was known as “the dove man.”
So, too, the Holy Spirit, the heavenly Dove, is willing and able to direct us in the narrow way that leads to the more abundant life if in humble self-denial we submit to His unerring supervision.
“I have come a hundred miles,” said a minister, “to get some of Mr. Moody’s spirit.” “You don’t want my spirit,” was the reply. “What you want is the Spirit of God.”
HOME
Home is where one starts from.
—T. S. Eliot
Where family prayer is daily said,
God’s Word is regularly read,
And faith in Christ is never dead,
That is a Christian home.
Where family quarrels are pushed aside
To let the love of God abide
Ere darkness falls on eventide,
That is a Christian home.
Where joy and happiness prevail
In every heart without a fail
And thoughts to God on high set sail,
That is a Christian home.
Where Jesus Christ is Host and Guest,
Through whom we have eternal rest
And in Him are forever blest,
That is a Christian home.
There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society are created, strengthened, and maintained.
—Winston Churchill
A child was given a complex jigsaw puzzle to work. In a short time, the pieces were all put together. A visiting friend was amazed and asked, “How did you do that so fast?” “Oh, you see, there is a picture of Jesus on the other side and I just put that one together.” When the Lord Jesus is given His rightful place in the home, the complexities are adjusted.
A newspaper in London had a contest for the best definition of home. The winning definition was “home is where you are treated the best and complain the most.”
Home is the place where, when you come there they have to let you in.
—Robert Frost
A young doctor, his wife, and three children couldn’t find a house to live in so they had to stay in a hotel.
A friend said to the six-year-old girl, “Too bad you have no home.”
“Oh, yes we have a home,” she replied promptly, “but no house to put it in.”
If there is righteousness in the heart, there will be beauty in the character. If there is beauty in the character, there will be harmony in the home. If there is harmony in the home, there will be order in the nation. When there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.
Ironically, John Howard Payne, composer of “Home, Sweet Home,” virtually never had a home of his own.
Though he was born in New York City in June 1791, and passed much of his childhood in East Hampton, Long Island, Payne spent most of his years wandering about the world, homeless, and more often than not, penniless. From the bankruptcy of his father while he was a student at Union College until Payne’s death in Tunis, North Africa, where he served as American Consul, his fabulous career casts fiction in the shade.
As an actor, Payne made his debut in 1809 and for months was the rage of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and then Drury Lane in London. Later he became a playwright, with hits in Paris and London. But because he lacked business ability, many of his varying successes ended in failure.
In 1821 Payne was sent to debtor’s prison in England, and was released only after he managed to slip through the guards and sell one of his plays. It was with the profits from this play that he went gaily off to Paris to finish an opera little remembered today—but the music of which is still sung all over the civilized world. That opera was Clari, and the hit tune was the ever-remembered “Home, Sweet Home.”
Today, the old gray-shingled homestead at East Hampton where Payne spent his boyhood is maintained by the village as a shrine, for it was probably this lowly thatched cottage about which the composer wrote so wistfully while homesick in Paris. To Americans everywhere—as it once was to John Howard Payne—this humble cottage is now cherished as “Home, Sweet Home.”
HONESTY – INTEGRITY
In 1945, just months after World War II had ended, American newspapers reported that occupation forces in Japan had arbitrarily destroyed five atomic cyclotrons. Enraged scientists and public officials called the action “a crime against mankind.” They likened the destruction of this valuable research equipment to the burning of a library.
An investigation revealed that the cyclotrons had been destroyed by mistake. What is most interesting, however, is the way the error was handled by the military. According to author M. Hirsh Goldberg, some officials called for a coverup. But General Leslie R. Groves, the officer in charge, issued a statement admitting that the War Department had made an error.
The press was surprised by such honesty and soon lost interest in the story. Later, after the dust had cleared, General Groves concluded, “Honest errors, openly admitted, are sooner forgiven.”
When Grover Cleveland was a boy, he insisted on returning the egg that a neighbor’s hen daily laid on the Cleveland side of the fence. Honesty and respectability are learned early in life, fitting one for positions of trust later.
A commentary on the times is that the word “honesty” is now preceded by “old-fashioned.”
—Larry Walters
Two opposing political candidates argued on a busy street while a crowd of interested spectators listened.
“There are hundreds of ways of making money,” one of the campaigners declared, “but only one honest one.”
“And what’s that?” jeered the other candidate.
“Ah, ha!” rejoined the first. “I thought you wouldn’t know.”
—Wall Street Journal
It is better to be more than you seem, than to seem more than you are.
A fictitious story is told about a racing event staged by the United States and the Soviet Union. Both governments commissioned their best engineers to produce the fastest automobile possible.
After much experimenting and preparation, the important day arrived for the high-speed contest. It finished with the American car winning by inches. This was rather hard for the Russians to swallow, and Pravda, their leading newspaper, carried the following report:
“Russia and the U.S. competed in a long-awaited race yesterday afternoon. Both cars broke all former speed records. The Soviets came in second, and the Americans finished next to last.”
Make yourself an honest man and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world.
—Thomas Carlyle
Roger Young was a janitor in Charleston, West Virginia. One day he found a billfold on the shelf in a phone booth. He returned it to its owner at once, not realizing that it contained a thousand dollars. When he learned this, he said, “I don’t care if it was one dollar or one million. I wouldn’t keep it.” A similar incident took place in Washington, D.C. when William Taylor found a suede purse on the floor of his taxicab. Looking inside, he saw a lot of money, so he immediately turned it over to the police. They found nearly $42,000 in cash, traveler’s checks, and jewelry. The purse belonged to the wife of Edward Cole, retired president of General Motors.
While both Young and Taylor received substantial rewards, that did not motivate their actions. They were simply being honest.
I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles: the character of an honest man.
—George Washington
Do the right thing. It will please some people and astonish others.
—Mark Twain
Diogenes, the Greek philosopher, was reported to have been seen recently in Paris. Two French gendarmes approached the lamp-bearing, toga-garbed wise man.
“Diogenes, what are you doing in Paris?”
“Messieurs, I am looking for an honest man.”
A few months later he was reported to have appeared in London. Some bobbies there asked him his business in London. The answer was the same: he was still searching for an honest man. Some time later he was reported to have turned up in New York City. Two of the city’s finest stopped him in Central Park. “I suppose you are in New York looking for an honest man?” one of the cops asked him.
“I was,” replied Diogenes, “but now I’m looking for my lamp.”
—Bits & Pieces
In the Civil War a farmer boy heard General Robert E. Lee order his troops to attack Gettysburg rather than Harrisburg. The boy hurried with the news to Governor Curtin who said to his officers, “I’d give my right hand to know if that boy is telling the truth.” A corporal stepped forward and said, “Sir, I know that lad. It is impossible for him to lie. There is not a drop of false blood in his veins.” In fifteen minutes the Union troops were marching into Gettysburg to win their final victory.
Henry Clay was one of America’s great statesmen. He had the unfortunate epithet “Compromiser” attached to his name, a label that tended to detract from the genuine integrity of the man. But in the course of events which led to this infamous title, an incident occurred which turned a shaft of brilliant light on his true moral character. Five times he unsuccessfully sought to be president. Bitterly disappointed though he was, he rose above personal ambitions and bent his efforts toward averting the Civil War. Within two years after reelection to the Senate in 1848, he was introducing his famous compromise. During the course of a speech on the compromise, someone taunted him about his unsuccessful quest for the presidency and warned him that if he pursued his trend of thinking, she would never be president. Clay replied in crisp and penetrating words, “I would rather be right than president.”
Honesty is still the best policy, but strange to say, some people feel they cannot afford the best.
A man once testified as follows: “For years, when I have bowed in private prayer, a certain incident in my life has slapped me in the face. When I was a young man I bought some hay from a neighbor. It was weighed, and I gave the man an I.O.U. Before the account was settled, however, the farmer, from whom I had made the purchase, died. I went to the administrator and asked if there was anything charged against me. He looked, but found nothing, and so I never paid the debt. The matter has put a cloud on my life for years and hindered my spiritual progress. I am now eighty years of age, and the Lord has spoken to me about this dishonesty. Therefore, the first thing tomorrow morning I am going to the widow and settle that account in full.” The man kept his word, and once again his testimony rang clear, and a great load was lifted from his soul.
“One of the striking traits in the character of General Ulysses S. Grant,” writes an unknown author, “was his absolute truthfulness. He seemed to have an actual dread of deception. One day while sitting in his bedroom in the White House where he had retired to write a message to Congress, word of an unscheduled visitor was brought in by a servant. An officer, seeing that the Chief of State did not want to be disturbed, said to the attendant, ‘Just tell him the President is not in.’ Overhearing the remark, General Grant swung around in his chair and cried out, ‘Tell him no such thing. I don’t lie myself, and I don’t want anyone else to do so for me.’ ”
An honest man is the noblest work of God.
—Alexander Pope
HONOR
As the man who was tarred and feathered said as he ran out of town, “If it weren’t for the honor of the thing, I’d just as soon forget it.”