out
my Father's business?" said Jesus. Many men make trouble at home an
excuse for going to the bad. It is not an excuse. The design of home
trouble may be to send a man to Jesus; to make the tendrils of love
twine about the heavenly rather than the earthly. It surely is not to
induce a man to twine his affections about the devilish and earthly.
It is not manly thus to do.

_Man moves in three circles_. The first is that of Self; the second
that of Family; the third that of Country. A man who properly performs
duties that pertain to himself, we shall not call noble. By neglecting
family he becomes less than a man. By performing them never so well
he comes not to merit applause. Distinctive nobleness begins with the
third class. It is when he rises above self and family, when he looks
abroad on the family of mankind, that he takes the altitude which in
a man is distinctively great; when he feels no longer the little
necessities which compel, or the little pleasures which allure, and
yet is able to contemplate men as a great brotherhood of immortals,
with a gaze analogous to Him in whose image he is made; when he can
look on the world through the light of eternity, and is willing to
suffer all things, and to endure all things, that by him and through
him blessings may reach others,--then it is he does that which it is
the high privilege of man on this earth to do, and becomes a power to
which under God humanity owes all it has achieved in time. "I serve"
is the law of the living forces of mankind. Each man and woman has
a place. If they fill it, they furnish a channel along which God's
beneficent purposes find their way to a lost world. If they do not
fill it, they are set aside, and the verdict of the world is, Served
them right.

It if surprising that, after Mary had been rebuked at Cana of Galilee,
that she should have presumed to have interrupted Jesus in the
presence of the multitude. It is instructive that Christ taught us
that the tie binding us to God and to humanity, is the most sacred
of all; for while it made the God-man a brother to us, it makes us
co-workers with God in carrying forward the enterprises with which men
are identified on the earth. When a man is true to self, to humanity,
and to God, and so girds himself with the strength arising from
confidence, he deserves the support, if not the admiration, of those
with whom he is associated. It was unworthy of Mary to ignore the
Divine origin of Jesus, a