The Sunday-Night Evangel; A Series of Sunday Evening Discourses Delivered in Independence Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, Kansas City, Missouri (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1911 Excerpt: ... THE SWEETENING OF THE HEART "Lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you."--Hebrews 12: 15. OUR text comes to us in the midst of the aftermath following the author's wonderful roll-call of the heroes of faith. Turning from those landmarks that stand like mountain summits along the path of history to tell where the men of faith, the friends of God, have lived and labored, he exhorts the people to whom he is writing to thank God and take courage. He calls on them to be heartened by the testimony of these splendid lives. And then he urges them to be watchful against certain things which poison the spirit and embitter the soul of man. We could have no greater theme for study than this, for it is the inner life which is of supreme importance. Samuel Johnson used to say that the fountain off content must spring up in a man's own mind; and he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the griefs which he proposes to remove. The center and burning core of our life is the heart, with its hopes and fears, its ambitions and its purposes, its struggles heavenward and its slow drifting toward sin, its infinite possibilities of purity and happiness and its endless craving after peace. God judges us by the heart and we, too, must judge ourselves by our hearts. The core of our theme is in this, that there are certain things which embitter the heart, and if we are to keep the heart sweet and wholesome, the source of every good and pure word and deed, we must take them into account. Let us examine some of the things which are likely to make the heart bitter. The writer of our text teaches us that if we would shun the danger of bitterness, we must ...