Articles by FB Meyer

( Frederick Brotherton Meyer 1847-1929)

A Good Start

A NEW YEAR is opening before us, and there is some satisfaction in feeling that an opportunity will be afforded of making a really new start. Each true heart in which there is a spark of the Divine life turns eagerly towards the unblemished page, the untrodden ways, of the New Year, not with wonder simply, or with hope, but with fervent resolve that the dead past shall bury its dead, and that a nobler, fuller,' sweeter spirit shall glisten in the chalice of existence,

A Good Start - Tempers, and What to do With Them

WHAT a shadow is cast over lives and homes by bad tempers! It is Sunday morning,God's day of rest and peace, when the worry and rush of the world should be quiet, and the voices of newspaper boys and hawkers of small wares should be still. A family of little children is waiting to be sweetened and blessed by God, mother, and father.

A Good Start - Exaggeration

BENEATH all exaggeration there is a basis of truth. When an American said that the whey which flowed from the making of a large cheese in his country was sufficient to run three sawmills; and when another affirmed that the soil of his farm was so prolific that the tendrils of the vine which he had just sown caught him up and entwined around his legs before he could get over the fence, there was no doubt some truth at the basis of their statements, though only as a drop of homeopathic medicine in a tumblerful of water.

A Good Start - On Falling in Love

No flirting, young people, please! You cannot flit around the flame without the risk of burning your wings; and remember, if these are lost, you cannot get another pair; you may be able to crawl or limp, but you will never again bask in the sunbeams or dance with merry-hearted glee in the shadows. In other words, you may play at love-making till you lose the power of loving truly, or forfeit for evermore the right of entrance into love's most holy place.

A Good Start - On Being Straight

To be straight is to be true. There is no more important exhortation on the page of scripture, than where the Apostle says, "Whatsoever things are true . . . think on these things." A friend of mine, educated in one of our great English schools, says that the most formative words of his life were addressed to him by his head master, as he said good-by: "Be true," he said, "always be true."

A Good Start - On Doing a Good Day's Work

LONGFELLOW'S village blacksmith felt that "something accomplished, something done," had earned a night's repose; and f suppose that he did little else than shoe the farmers' horses, or put new shares to their ploughs; yet he had the perpetual consciousness that he was doing something in the world, contributing to its well-being,performing a necessary part in the machinery of the village-life.

A Good Start - Savorless Salt

No wonder that the common people hung on Christ's words. He was a Master of the Art of Illustration, because he sought his emblems, not from remote corners of creation, or its recondite processes, but from the common incidents of ordinary human experience.Salt and light, birds and lilies, gates and roads, trees and their fruit, houses and their foundations. But there was more than art.

A GOOD START - Our Holidays

WE need to have a pause in the rush of our life, whether by the seaside, on the moor, or in the green nook of the country. As nature needs the repose of winter after the exhaustion of her autumn produce to recuperate herself for the coming spring, so do we need seasons in which our intellectual and physical vigour, to say nothing of the spiritual,may be reinvigorated and renewed. Hence the need for summer holidays.

A GOOD START - How to Spend Sunday

"A Sabbath well spent brings a week of content."So the old couplet runs, but the difficulty lies in how to spend Sunday well. Too many seem only proficient in the art of how not to do it. Now I feel able to give some advice on this matter, as the Sundays of my early life were the red-letter days of the whole week;and as I look back on them, the recollection sends blessed thrills of joy through my heart.

A GOOD START - Amusements

THIS difficulty with amusements, where to go and where not to go, is not a new one. It agitated the Christians at Corinth centuries ago as it agitates us; and led up to one of those questions which the Apostle answered in his first epistle.

A GOOD START - Use of the Senses

Our senses give warning signals when danger is near. This is perhaps their secondary use, but it is the most vital. The eye, ear, nose, the senses of taste and touch, are the channels through which the most exquisite pleasures are wafted to us--rapturous glimpse of natural beauty, sweet sounds, fragrant scents, delicious viands, and soft contacts; but they are also the avenues along which ride post-haste the couriers,warning of the approach of assassins that menace and imperil life.

A GOOD START - Christmas

HERE again, I Welcome, thrice welcome! The darkest, shortest days of the year are an appropriate season to select for the Yule-log, the good cheer, the home-gatherings, the presents and gifts of young and old, which Christmas brings!

Burdens, and What to Do with Them

Do You keep the Sabbath? Not indeed the literal seventh-day rest, but the inner rest which that day was the blessed type. The pause in the outward business of life was but a parable of that inner hush, which is not for one day but for all days; not for one race but for all men; not for the hereafter only but for now.

Fact! Faith! Feeling!

These three words stand for three most important factors in character and life. We all have to do with them in one form or another, but it is above all things necessary that we should place them in the right order.

The Blessed Life

And the blessedness of this blessed life lies in this: that we trust the Lord to do in us and for us what we could not do. And we find that He does not belie His Word, but that, according to our faith, so it is done to us. The weary spirit, which has vainly sought to realize its ideal by its own strivings and efforts, now gives itself over to the strong and tender hands of the Lord Jesus, and He accepts the task, and at once begins to work in it to will and to do of His own good pleasure, delivering it from the tyranny of besetting sin, and fulfilling in it His own perfect ideal.

The Exalted Christ

"The great drift of the Old Testament prophecy is ' the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.'(1 Peter 1:11.) Of course, the prophets foretold a great many other things, but the two great outstanding topics of the Old Testament Scripture undoubtedly are these. In the mind of the living God, the Father of our lord Jesus Christ, these were the great themes--the only great themes, as it were, to occupy the minds and hearts of those inspired."

The Fullness of the Spirit

"Be Filled with the Spirit. "-Ephesians 5 :18 NOTHING CAN COMPENSATE the Church, or the individual Christian, for the lack of theHoly Spirit. What the full stream is to the mill wheel, that the Holy Spirit is to the Church. What the principle of life is to the body, that the Holy Spirit is to the individual. We shall stand powerless and abashed in the presence of our difficulties and our foes until we learn what He can be, as a mighty tide of love and power in the hearts of His saints.

The Prayer of Intercession

"I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, Always in every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy."-Phil. 1:3,4. The epistles of Paul are full of allusions to his prayers. We might almost call them his prayerbook. Let us verify that assertion by turning to the epistles as they come on the pages of the Bible.

The Secret of Guidance

MANY CHILDREN of GOD are so deeply exercised on the matter of guidance that it may be helpful to give a few suggestions as to know the way in which our Father would have us walk, and the work He would have us do. The importance of the subject cannot be exaggerated; so much of our power and peace consists in knowing where God would have us be, and in being just there.

Where Am I Wrong?

THIS IS THY EAGER QUESTION, O Christian soul, and thy bitter complaint. On the faces and in the lives of others who are known to thee, thou hast discerned a light, a joy, a power, which thou enviest with a desire which oppresses thee, but for which you should thank God devoutly. Itis well when we are dissatisfied with the low levels on which we have been wont to live and begin to ask the secret of a sweeter, nobler, more victorious life.