The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1913, Page 84

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84 The Lutheran Pioneer.

Unto the Hills.

Unto the hills I lift my eye,

Seeking the help which God doth give;
Whether I die or whether I live,
Ne’er shall I fear—my God is nigh.

In Thy almighty, merciful hand

I have commended my ravished soul;
There shall it rest while toward the goal
Onward I strive to the beckoning land.

Hard is the path, and rugged the road,

Thou wilt not suffer my foot to be moved;
Great was the love which my Savior has loved
When He to Calvary carried my load.

My going out and my last coming in

Thou wilt preserve with Thy guardian care, ,
And when thé struggle will gather near,
Thou wilt not chide me for error and sin.

But in that wonderful mansion shall I
See Thee whom I so long have known;
Whom I believed as the trials rolled on,
Lifting my eyes to the hills on high.
J. T. MUELLER.

The Cracked Bell.

For years the bell in the tower of the Lutheran
Mount Zion Church at New Orleans has in its way
served the Lord and the congregation with its
metallic tone. On days of divine services it called
loud and long to sinners, one and all, to come to
the sanctuary and worship the Lord in the beauty
of holiness. It greeted the bridal couples that de-
sired to enter married life with God and His Word
at the altar of the Lord with a joyful sound. In
muffied tones and drearily it tolled a parting song
to the saintly dead of the fold and reminded the
living ‘that “in the midst of life we are in death.”
It rang out the old year and rang in the new.
Mr. Frank Rosseau, who had rung it with punc-
tuality for fifteen years, loved the old bell and was
proud of it. In that entire section back of Franklin
Street there -was no bell like his—at least Frank
thought so. :

One Sunday night, in the Lenten season of
1912, while the writer was supplying Mounf Zion,
Frank rushed into the vestry and exclaimed ex-
citedly, “‘Pastor,.the bell is cracked! How do you
reckon it happened? No one has touched it since
Wednesday night, and it was perfectly sound then.
Shall I continue to ring it?” “Yes,” said I, “keep
on ringing it; for if this cracked sound is as hor-
rible in the ears of the people as in mine, they will

put their dollars together and soon buy you a
new one.

“But do you know, Frank, of what your bell
reminds me? No? T’ll tell you. You know that
the bell, from the time it came out of the maker’s
hand and was placed in the tower, has given forth
a clear metallic sound delightful to the ear. Now
that it is cracked it does not pretend to give any-
thing but a cracked sound that jars so horribly
upon our ears. It does not try to imitate the me-
tallic tone of the sound bells or to be what it is
not. ‘This reminds me of those Christians who
for a time worship the Lord with gladness. ‘They
are knit together with Christ by faith. ‘They love
to read and to hear the Word of God and to render
Him and their fellow-men services of love. ‘They
sing and pray at home and in church, making sweet
melodies in their hearts unto the Lord. In word
and in deed the confession of His name rings out
clearly, and God and His holy angels rejoice at the
joyful sound. But this blessed state does not last.
Gradually, or perhaps suddenly, sometimes without
any apparent cause, their voices are cracked. Tow
so? They permit the world with its riches and
pleasures to creep into the heart and to choke, the
life of faith or, if you please, to crack the vocal
vital chord that produced such delightful music in
the ears of the Lord. Or, having neglected to
watch and pray, they yield to the temptations of
the devil, and fall into’ some secret sin which they
refuse to give up, and they cease to sing with grace
in their hearts to the Lord. It is a deplorable,
wretched state. Beware of it! Yet, unlike your
cracked bell, they pretend to be genuine metal,
sincere Christians, and to produce a genuine metal-
lic sound, and you cannot judge from their external
appearance or conduct ‘that they are not what they
would seem to be. But God sees and knows them.
They cannot deceive Him. Their names are still
upon our church-books; they are still sitting under
the Gospel sound; they still sing and pray with
their lips, and externally they appear to be spirit-
ually sound, but without faith active by love they
are cracked, Frank, cracked as your dear old bell.
To the Lord they are like sounding brass and
tinkling cymbal, and the sound they produce —
their good works —is a thousand times more hor-
rible in the ears of God than the sound of your
cracked bell is in ours. If they “do not heartily
repent and embrace Christ again in living faith,
they will be unmercifully thrown away, cast out
among the rubbish of the world into outer dark- ~