CALL OF JESUS

[VOX DILECTI]

_I heard the voice of Jesus say
Come unto Me and rest;
Lay down, thou weary one, lay down
Thy head upon My breast.
I came to Jesus as I was,
Weary and worn and sad;
I found in Him a resting-place,
And He has made me glad._

_I heard the voice of Jesus say
Behold I freely give
The living water; thirsty one,
Stoop down and drink, and live.
I came to Jesus, and I drank
Of that life-giving stream;
My thirst was quenched, my soul revived,
And now I live in Him._

_I heard the voice of Jesus say
I am this dark world's light;
Look unto Me, thy morn shall rise,
And all thy day be bright.
I looked to Jesus, and I found
In Him my star, my sun;
And in that light of life I'll walk,
Till travelling days are done._

HORATIUS BONAR

It is a world of voices in which we live. We are daily visited by
appeals which are ministering to our growth and progress, or which are
tending to our spiritual downfall. There are the voices of nature, in
sky, and sea, and storm; the voices of childhood and of early youth; the
voices of playfellows and companions,--voices long stilled, it may be,
in death; the voices of lover and beloved; the voices of ambition, of
sorrow, of aspiration, and of joy.

But among all these many voices, there is one which is most inspiring
and supreme. When the _Vorspiel_ to _Parsifal_ breaks upon the ear it is
as if all other music were inadequate and incomplete--as if a voice
called from the confines of eternity, in the infinite spaces where no
time is, and rolled onward to the far-off ages when time shall be no
more. Even so, high and clear above the voices of the world, deeper and
tenderer than any other word or tone, comes the voice of Jesus to the
soul of man.

Look, if you will, upon the World of Souls, many-tiered and vast,
stretching from day's end to day's end,--a world of hunger and of anger,
of toiling and of striving, of clamor and of triumph,--a dim, upheaving
mass, which from century to century wakes, and breathes, and sleeps
again! Years roll on, tides flow, but there is no cessation of the march
of years, and no whisper of a natural change. Is it not a strange thing
that one voice, and only one, should have really won the hearing of the
race? What is this voice of Jesus, so enduring, matchless, and supreme?