Psalm 101:2 I will behave myself wisely in a perfect way. O when will you come to me? I will walk within my house with a perfect heart. Some people in public act the philanthropist, but at home act the Nero with respect to their slippers and their gown. Audubon, the great ornithologist, with gun and pencil went through the forests of America to bring down and to sketch the beautiful birds, and after years of toil and exposure completed his manuscript and put it in a trunk in Philadelphia, and went off for a few days of recreation and rest, and came back and found that the rats had utterly destroyed the manuscript; but without any discomposure, and without any fret or bad temper, he again picked up his gun and pencil, and visited again all the great forests of America and reproduced his immortal work. And yet there are people with the ten thousandth part of that loss who are utterly irreconcilable; who, at the loss of a pencil or an article of raiment, will blow as long and loud and sharp as a north-east storm. Let us learn to show piety at home. If we have it not there, we have it not anywhere. If we have not genuine grace in the family circle, all our outward and public plausibility merely springs from the fear of the world, or from the slimy, putrid pool of our own selfishness. Home is a mighty test of character. (T. De Witt Talmage.) Parallel Verses KJV: I will behave myself wisely in a perfect way. O when wilt thou come unto me? I will walk within my house with a perfect heart. |
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