"A few years ago an American commissioner occupying a house in the West Indies hired a man to wash the windows and another to scrub the floors. The bills submitted were for $12 and $7, respectively. 'What does this mean?' was the astonished query. '$12 for a day's work? Man, you are crazy!' 'Oh,' came the soft reply, 'of course, I only expect a dollar and a half for myself, but that was the way we always made out bills for the Spanish officers.' 'Take back your bills,' was the American's emphatic reply, 'and make them out honestly.'" The wisdom of the warning in Proverbs 27:2, "Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth," has seldom been more strikingly illustrated than at a large convention when several thousand people listened attentively as a speaker of reputation was introduced to them. He talked fluently for several minutes, then began to ramble. He made several attempts to regain his lost hold on his hearers, then took his seat. "I can't imagine what was wrong to-day," he said to his neighbor on the platform. "I had all ready what I felt sure would be a telling address, but somehow I couldn't say what I wanted." A sympathetic answer was given by the man to whom he had spoken, but if he had said all that was in his heart this would have been his message: "I know you had a telling argument to present, for I read your manuscript. But you spent the first three minutes in talking about yourself. It was there you lost the attention of the people; they did not come to hear about you, but to learn of your Master. And when you had put yourself in the foreground, it was impossible for you to present Him with power." The speaker's mistake is repeated every day, not merely by men on the platform, but by everyday people in the home, in the school, and at work. It is fatal to usefulness to put ourselves in the foreground; but those who forget self and remember others are welcome wherever they go. IV GETTING CLOSE TO THE BIBLE One of the blessings that came to the world out of the anguish of the Great War was a new appreciation of God's Word on the part of many who had never paid much attention to the inspired Book, and the formation of the habit of Bible reading by tens of thousands of those who were once heedless of God's Word. Absence from home in hours of danger, privation and suffering, opened the way for testing Him who reveals his power to give infinite blessing by saying tenderly, "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you." The sense of absolute powerlessness in the face of barbarism led to dependence upon God who holds the worlds in His hands. Realization of the uncertainty of life and familiarity with death made easy and natural the approach to the Lord of life and death. Probably there were soldiers who laughed at the words of Field Marshal Lord Roberts, spoken when the first British troops were crossing the Channel: