THE FAMILY ALTAR

June 30.

"For I say unto you that none of those men which were bidden

shall taste of my supper." Luke 14:24.

The first-bidden guests to the supper refused the king's gra-

cious invitation and offered excuses. But their empty excuses

only served to anger him and to exclude them from the feast.

Rightly so. Supper time is no time to go and look at real estate

or to examine cattle. The men making such excuses had all day

to look at the ground or the oxen they had bought. As for the

man who had taken a wife, it was his plain duty to bring her

along to the supper. There was yet room, and the gracious king

would have been glad to welcome her at his banquet. Oh, these

empty excuses, these miserable evasions, by which people try to

justify their staying away from the saving Gospel-feast! They

say they cannot go to church because they have no clothes to wear,

or the weather doesn't suit them, or they don't like the preacher

or the people in the church, or they have a pressing social or

business engagement, and the like. The true reason is, that their

carnal hearts do not care for Christ and His saving means of grace.

They are only treasuring up unto themselves wrath against the

day of wrath by their hypocritical excuses, and will learn to their

everlasting sorrow that while they could excuse themselves into

hell they can never excuse themselves out of it. "He that loveth

father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me ; and he that

loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me," says

our Savior. (Matt. 10, 37.) Even they have no excuse who have

married a husband or wife of no faith or of a different faith. Let

them earnestly and persistently, but lovingly strive to bring them

to Christ's saving Church, and if they refuse, still come themselves.

— Is our place at the supper of grace still empty ? God grant

that we all have come to Jesus and daily take of His fulness grace

for grace. Let us pray for all our straying, erring fellow-men :