ft his calling card on
David's center table. It is remembered because the visit was so
blessedly beautiful.

It is a great privilege that God has given us in allowing us to visit
each other. We can help so much by it if we will. Wasn't that a
lovely visit that the old school master made to Marget that time in
"Beside the Bonny Briar Bush" when he came to tell her that she had a
"laddie of parts"? And wasn't it still more beautiful when he came
later, rugged old Scotchman that he was, to burst into tears of wild
joy over the good news he brought her that her son had won first prize
in the great university?

Wasn't that a lovely series of visits that a kindly old man made to the
room of the little laddie who had swept the street crossing before he
had been crippled in the discharge of his duty? A city missionary went
in to see him and asked him if he had had anybody to visit him. "Oh,
yes," was the answer. "A good man comes every day and talks to me, and
sometimes he reads the Bible to me and prays." "What is his name?"
asked the missionary. And the little fellow studied a moment and said,
"I think he said his name was Gladstone." England's grand old man
appears to us in many a charming role, but in none is he more manly and
commanding than in this of visiting a little crippled waif in a London
attic.

Florence Nightingale was a lovely visitor. Do you recall that
exquisite bit of poetry in conduct on the field of Crimea? A soldier
was to go through a painful operation. An anaesthetic could not be
administered and the doctor said the patient could not endure the
operation. "Yes, I can," said the patient, "under one condition: if
you will get the 'Angel of the Crimea' to hold my hand." And she came
out to the little hospital at the front and held his hand. Glorious
visit. No wonder the man went through the operation without a tremor.

But the visit of our text,--to me it is more wonderful still. The
truth of the matter is, I know of but one other visit that ever took
place that is finer and more beautiful. You know what visit that was.
It was the visit that One made to a manger in Bethlehem nineteen
centuries ago. That was a visit that remade the world. It was so
wonderful that a star pointed it out with finger of silver, and our
discordant old earth was serenaded with the music of that land of
eternal melody. But aside from that one visit, I think this the most
beautiful one ever recorded.

Wha