UCSB
 
 GOOD CHEER 
 
 FOR A YEAR 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF THE 
 
 RT. REV. PHILLIPS BROOKS, D.D. 
 
 BY 
 
 W. M. L. JAY 
 
 All life which would not prow stale and monoto ious must feed itself upon 
 God. . . . All life which would make To-day the transmutation place 
 where Yesterday shall give its power to Forever, must be full of the felt 
 presence of Him in whom yesterday, to-day and forever are all one.- vi. 344. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY 
 
 3 1 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 
 
 1896
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY 
 E. P. DUTTON & CO. 
 
 Press of J. J. Little & Co. 
 Astor Place, New York
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 IT is too soon to let the ministry of Bishop 
 Brooks pass into the shadow of forgetfulness. 
 He "yet speaketh " in a multitude of works 
 which, in a remarkable degree, combine lofty 
 spirituality and plain practicalness with rare 
 human sympathy, and are therefore particu- 
 larly well adapted to the sustenance and guid- 
 ance of the daily Christian life. There are 
 those who are so fortunate as to be able to 
 study these works as a whole, but there are 
 also many busy people who are glad to have 
 one thought, suitable and sufficient unto the 
 day, ready to their hands in a convenient 
 form. To such a second year-book is offered, 
 not by the same hand as the first, but com- 
 piled on the same plan, for the excellent 
 reason that it cannot be bettered. 
 
 The labor of making the book has been 
 increased by the abundance of the material. 
 Many year-books might be quarried out of it 
 without exhausting its richness and variety, 
 or its wealth of helpful suggestion for those 
 who are trying to live the life of faith in uni-
 
 iv PREFACE. 
 
 son with the life of action, to "round every 
 truth with its duty, and deepen every duty 
 into its truth." Inevitably the thought comes 
 that such a daily ministry to hearts thrilled and 
 elated with life's duties and joys, or sore and 
 weary with its burdens, must be deeply grat- 
 ifying to him with whose rich and abundant 
 life of faith and works it is impossible to asso- 
 ciate any thought of death. The monks of 
 Antioch were wont to say of a brother, not 
 " He is dead," but '" He is perfected." 
 
 For those who like to follow the Christian 
 Year, and who may wish to use the book 
 more than once, selections for the greater 
 movable fasts and feasts are appended to the 
 volume. 
 
 W. M. L. JAY.
 
 SERMONS, IST SERIES, . ... . . I 
 
 SERMONS, 20 SERIES, II 
 
 SERMONS, 30 SERIES, Ill 
 
 SERMONS, 4 SERIES, IV 
 
 SERMONS, $TH SERIES, V 
 
 SERMONS, 6TH SERIES, VI 
 
 SERMONS FOR THE PRINCIPAL FESTIVALS AND 
 
 FASTS, VII 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF JESUS, .... VIII 
 
 YALE LECTURES ON PREACHING, . . . IX 
 
 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES, X 
 
 THE LIFE HERE AND THE LIFE HEREAFTER, . XI 
 
 THE GOOD WINE AT THE FEAST'S END, . . XII 
 
 [The Roman numerals at the end of the selections refer 
 to the above list of books ; the Arabic numerals to the 
 pages where the selections may be found.]
 
 JANUARY i. i 
 
 Be strong and of a good courage, . . . for the 
 Lord thy God is ivith thee wherever thou goest. 
 
 JOSH. i. 9. 
 
 THE poetry of all growing life consists in 
 carrying an oldness into a newness, a past 
 into a future, always. So only can our days 
 possibly be " bound each to each by natural 
 piety." I would not for the world think that 
 twenty years hence I should have ceased to see 
 the things which I see now, and love them still. 
 It would make life wearisome beyond expres- 
 sion if I thought that twenty years hence I 
 should see them just as I see them now, and 
 love them with no deeper love because of other 
 visions of their lovableness. And so there 
 comes this deep and simple rule for any man 
 as he crosses the line dividing one period of 
 his life from another: Make it a time in which 
 you shall realize your faith, and also in which 
 you shall expect of your faith new and greater 
 things. Take what you believe and are and 
 hold it in your hand with new firmness as you 
 go forward; but as you go, holding it, look on 
 it with continual and confident expectation to 
 see it open into something greater and truer. 
 
 V. 296. 
 
 Go with the sun and the stars, and yet ever- 
 more in thy spirit 
 
 Say to thyself: It is good, yet there is better 
 than it: 
 
 This that I see is not all, and this that I do is 
 but little; 
 
 Nevertheless it is good, though there is better 
 than it. ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. '
 
 2 JANUARY 2. 
 
 I think that nothing made is lost, 
 That not a moon has ever shone, 
 
 That not a cloud my eyes hath crossed, 
 But to my soul is gone; 
 
 That all the lost years garnered lie 
 In this Thy casket, my dim soul; 
 
 And Thou wilt, once, the key supply, 
 And show the shining whole. 
 
 GEORGE MACDONALD. 
 
 WHILE we leave everything behind in time, 
 it is no less true that nothing is wholly 
 left behind. All that we ever have been or 
 done is with us in some power and consequence 
 of it until the end. . . . The unity of life is 
 never lost. There must not be any waste. 
 How great and gracious is the economy of 
 life which it involves! Neither to dwell in 
 any experience always, nor to count any ex- 
 perience as if it had not been, but to leave 
 the forms of our experiences behind, and to 
 go forth from them clothed in their spiritual 
 power, which is infinitely free and capable of 
 new activities, this is what God is always 
 teaching us is possible, and tempting us to do. 
 To him who does it come the two great bless- 
 ings of a growing life, faithfulness and lib- 
 erty: faithfulness in each moment's task, and 
 liberty to enter through the gates beyond 
 which lies the larger future. " Well done, 
 good servant: thou hast been faithful over a 
 few things. Enter thou into the joy of thy 
 Lord." 
 
 VI. 57, 58.
 
 JANUARY 3. 
 
 And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the 
 Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, 
 Father. GAL. iv. 6. 
 
 WERE there ever verses that had a sub- 
 limer occupancy ? God is there, and 
 Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. And in the 
 midst of them all, as the being for whom they 
 all are working, there is man. As the win- 
 dows of these verses open, this is what we see: 
 all the prevalent influence of heaven gathered 
 around man, and by its united power bringing 
 him into the perfect sympathy of God. The 
 Father sees him and loves him; the Son comes 
 and seeks him; the Spirit spreads through his 
 heart the sense of all this love; and then he, 
 loved, redeemed, and quickened, reconciled to 
 God, is seen, at the last, lifting up his hands 
 and claiming God, crying, " Abba, Father." 
 What a vast chorus of sublimest life! How 
 the soul stands amazed and awed! Here are 
 all heaven and all that is capable of heavenli- 
 ness upon earth met together, and the end 
 of their meeting is complete accord. God is 
 pouring His life into man. Man is sending 
 back his tribute rendering his life to God. 
 It is the chorus of reconciled Divinity and 
 humanity. VII. 99. 
 
 O wonderful, oh, passing thought, 
 The love that God hath had for thee, 
 
 Spending on thee no less a sum 
 Than the undivided Trinity! 
 
 FABER.
 
 4 JANUARY 4. 
 
 From glory to glory. 2 COR. iii. 18. 
 
 WHEN Saint Paul wants to depict the vast 
 variety of which the world is full, it 
 was distinctly as a variety of glory that he 
 conceived of it. Enough he knew of the vari- 
 ety of woe. Easily enough he might have de- 
 picted how man, the same man still, was tossed 
 from suffering to suffering and remained the 
 same identical miserable sufferer in all. It 
 would have been the same truth taught upon 
 its darker side. But Paul knew that the- true 
 side on which to teach it was its side of light. 
 The real variety of life is a variety of glories. 
 Such a choice of the side from which to draw 
 his illustration is a noble characteristic of 
 Saint Paul. It is a sign of how healthy he is. 
 Change from glory into glory, that was what 
 life seemed to him. Remember, it is no rap- 
 turous and untired boy who is talking; it is a 
 man all sore with sorrow, beaten and broken 
 with disappointment and distress. Is it not a 
 sign of what a true Christian he was that life 
 seemed to him still to be only a variety and 
 constant interchange of glories ? v. 62. 
 
 " From glory unto glory ! " What great 
 things He hath done! . . . 
 
 But sweeter than the Christmas chimes rings 
 out His promise clear 
 
 That " greater things," far greater, our long- 
 ing eyes shall see! 
 
 We can but wait and wonder what " greater 
 things" shall be. 
 
 FRANCES R. HAVERGAL.
 
 JANUARY 5. 5 
 
 " Comest thou as friend ? 
 Comest thou as foe ? " 
 
 " Nay, 'tis thou wilt bend 
 
 Me to weal or woe. 
 As thou usest me, 
 Shall I be to thee 
 Friend or foe." 
 
 J. L. M. W. 
 
 THINGS are what they are used for. . . . 
 The artist uses a stone, and it is a statue; 
 the mason uses a stone, and it is a doorstep. 
 And beyond mere nature. See how we use 
 men. We are each other's raw material. I 
 make you up in some shape into my life, and 
 you in some way make me up into yours. But 
 what man is of so fixed a character that he 
 can be made up only into one invariable thing ? 
 Each man makes of his neighbor that for which 
 he uses him. . . . 
 
 So of all influences and motives. The same 
 educations wall and press upon two lives. One 
 rises on them into greatness, the other drags 
 them down upon it and is crushed beneath 
 them into ruin. . . . How is it that the Phari- 
 see and the Publican came down the same 
 temple steps, one cold, and proud, and bitter, 
 and the other with his heart full of tenderness, 
 and gratitude, and humblest charity ? 
 
 VI. 25, 26.
 
 6 JANUARY 6. 
 
 Shine as lights in the ivorld ; Holding forth the 
 word of life. PHIL. ii. 15, 16. 
 
 A MAN'S place is made ready for him in 
 the mind of God; the man's life is set 
 here as a positive, clear fact; and what comes 
 next ? There is no doubt what ought to come. 
 That life must tell. It must go out beyond 
 itself. It must have influence. It must tes- 
 tify and supplement the mere fact of its exist- 
 ence by making other existences be something 
 which they would not be without it. This 
 seems so plain. This is so clearly set forth in 
 the great typical life of Jesus. . . . Can you 
 picture to yourself God coming into this world 
 and then living a perfectly self-contained life 
 one that recognized no relations with and 
 exercised no power over other lives about 
 Him ? No! The epiphany followed immedi- 
 ately on the advent and the nativity. . . . 
 He let His life go forth on other lives. He 
 let His great light shine before men. But how 
 many there are who realize their advent and 
 their nativity who have never conceived for 
 themselves of an epiphany! . . . never have 
 dreamed that they were put here where they 
 are, and made to be what they are, in order 
 that other men might be something else through 
 them. 
 
 VII. 8, 9. 
 
 All are needed by each one: 
 Nothing is fair or good alone. 
 
 EMERSON.
 
 JANUARY 7. 7 
 
 The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, 
 but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for 
 many. MARK x. 45. 
 
 THERE are theories of self-culture which 
 are printed in books, given as very gos- 
 pels to our children as they grow up, which 
 would be just exactly the same that they now 
 are if no such dream as a possible duty of use- 
 fulness and influence from that child to other 
 people had ever entered into the thought of God 
 or man. ... "Be strong, be rich, be wise, 
 be good." What for? "Why, so that you 
 may be wise and rich and strong and good." 
 The endless circle, with its bright monotonous 
 round! No wonder that so many young men 
 are asking in the bottom of their hearts ques- 
 tions of most terrible skepticism: "What is 
 the use ? Is it worth while to be wise and 
 strong and rich and good ? " Ah, you must 
 find the use outside yourself. You must let 
 your light shine before men, that they may 
 see your good works, and glorify your Father 
 which is in heaven. You must complete your 
 advent and nativity with an epiphany of your- 
 self. Then it will seem well worth while to 
 light your human light most brilliantly and 
 keep it trimmed most vigilantly. 
 
 Only shine toward your brethren's lives, 
 only be your best in their direction. 
 
 VII. 9 , 10. 
 
 What others claim from us is not our thirst and our 
 hunger, but our bread and our gourd. 
 
 AMIEL.
 
 JANUARY 8. 
 
 He hath made everything beautiful in His time. 
 
 ECCLES. iii. ii. 
 
 FOR sin and holiness are not in things, but 
 in souls; and all things are beautiful in 
 the time when a soul uses them for holy uses 
 with a loving, humble, and obedient life. . . . 
 The human soul sits at the centre of every- 
 thing, and Christ sits at the centre of the hu- 
 man soul. If HE changes us, then everything 
 will be changed to us. " He that sitteth upon 
 the throne saith, Behold I make all things 
 new! " If the world is ugly and bitter and 
 cruel to you: if circumstances taunt and per- 
 secute you: if everything you touch is a strain 
 and a temptation, do not stand idly wishing 
 that the world were changed. The change 
 must be in you. To the new heart all things 
 shall be new. The new man shall see already 
 the new heaven and the new earth. If any 
 man be in Christ, he is a new creature; and 
 the new creature is immediately in the new 
 creation. Some of you know already by daily 
 experience what that means. And for all of 
 you, it waits to be revealed, if you will let 
 Christ do His work in you. iv. 261. 
 
 There is a rest that deeper grows 
 
 In midst of pain and strife; 
 A mighty, conscious, willed repose, 
 
 The heart of deepest life. 
 To have and hold the precious prize, 
 
 No need of jealous bars, 
 But windows open to the skies, 
 
 And skill to read the stars. 
 
 GEORGE MACDOXALD.
 
 JANUARY 9. 9 
 
 ^~ ^ e notnm g> nothing! " cries the 
 mystic singer in his revival hymn, 
 desiring to lose himself in God. " Nay, not 
 that; O, to be something, something," remon- 
 strates the unmystical man, longing for work, 
 ardent for personal life and character. Where 
 is the meeting of the two ? How shall self- 
 surrender meet that high self-value without 
 which no man can justify his living and honor 
 himself in his humanity ? Where can they meet 
 but in this truth ? Man must be something 
 that he may be nothing. The something which 
 he must be must consist in simple fitness to 
 utter the divine life which is the only original 
 power in the universe. And then man must 
 be nothing that he may be something. He 
 must submit himself in obedience to God, that 
 so God may use him, in some way in which 
 his special nature only could be used, to illu- 
 minate and help the world. Tell me, do not 
 the two cries meet in that one aspiration of 
 the Christian man to find his life by losing it 
 in God, to be himself by being not his own 
 but Christ's ? II. 18. 
 
 I could not choose a larger bliss 
 
 Than to be wholly Thine; and mine 
 
 A will whose highest joy is this, 
 To ceaselessly unclasp in Thine. 
 
 We are not losers thus; we share 
 The perfect gladness of the Son, 
 
 Not conquered, for, behold, we reign, 
 Conquered and Conqueror are one. 
 
 JEAN SOPHIA PIGOTT,
 
 io JANUARY 10. 
 
 Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us ? 
 
 LUKE ii. 48. 
 
 WHO is there of us that is not aware that 
 his soul has had two educations ? . . . 
 Our own government of ourselves is most evi- 
 dent, is the one which we are most aware of, 
 so that sometimes for a few moments we for- 
 get that there is any other; but very soon our 
 plans for ourselves are so turned and altered 
 and hindered that we cannot ignore the other 
 greater, deeper force. We meant to do that, 
 and look! we have been led on to this. We 
 meant to be this, and lo! we are that. We 
 never meant to believe this, and lo! we hold it 
 with all our hearts. What does it mean ? It 
 is the everlasting discovery, the discovery 
 which each thoughtful man makes for himself 
 with almost as much surprise as if no other 
 man had ever made it for himself before, that 
 this soul, for which he is responsible, is not his 
 soul only, but is God's soul too. The revela- 
 tion which came of old to the Virgin Mother 
 about her child Not your child only, but 
 God's child too; yours, genuinely, really 
 yours, but behind yours, and over yours, 
 God's. 
 
 IV. 36. 
 
 Why ever make man's good distinct from 
 
 God's ? 
 
 Or, finding they are one, why dare mistrust ? 
 
 BROWNING.
 
 JANUARY ii. ii 
 
 I AM often struck by seeing how the loftiness 
 of the life of Jesus altogether escaped the 
 perplexity of many of the questions with which 
 our lives are troubled, as the eagle flying 
 through the sky is not worried how to cross 
 the rivers. We debate whether self culture 
 or our brethren's service is the true purpose of 
 our life. We vacillate aimlessly. . . . We are 
 so apt to live two lives. But Jesus knows but 
 one. All culture of His soul is a part of our 
 salvation. All doing of His work is ripening 
 His nature. . . . And not until our brawling 
 ceases and the champion of each side of the 
 question rounds his truth with his adversary's 
 truth which he has been denouncing, not until 
 the apostle of self-culture knows that no man 
 can come to his best by selfishness, and the 
 apostle of usefulness knows that no man can 
 do much for other men who is not much him- 
 self, not until then shall men have fairly 
 started on the broad road to the completeness 
 of God their Father in the footsteps of the 
 Son of Man. 
 
 VIII. 109. 
 
 Let Christ be thy Life; 
 
 Let Him be thy Meditation and thy Discourse; 
 
 Let Him be thy Desire, thy Gain, thy whole 
 
 Hope, and thy Reward. 
 If thou seekest anything but God purely, thou 
 
 wilt suffer loss; 
 Thou shalt labor and shalt find no rest. 
 
 THOMAS A KEMPIS.
 
 12 JANUARY 12. 
 
 Words divine, and prayers, and blessings, 
 Sorrows, sacraments, and alms, 
 Humble souls, with care o'erwearied, 
 Bended knees and folded palms, 
 These are working wondrous changes, 
 Unperceived, except by faith. 
 
 CAROLINE M. NOEL. 
 
 THINK how with the successive generations 
 of mankind, each leaving countless new 
 monuments of divine love and human possi- 
 bility upon the earth, the earth itself is grow- 
 ing richer every year. Every year some new 
 valley gets its consecration from some new 
 soul's struggle with sin. Every year some 
 new mountain-top burns with another soul's 
 rapture of salvation. We read of the prom- 
 ise of the new heavens and the new earth 
 wherein righteousness shall dwell. Are not 
 the heavens and the earth ever growing new, 
 newer, and more full of righteousness every 
 day ? When the time shall come that every 
 star in heaven and every stone on earth shall 
 be vocal with some word of God which it 
 has heard, and in their midst shall live the 
 race of men, no longer deaf and obstinate, 
 but quick-eared to hear and loving-hearted to 
 obey those words as they come crowding in, 
 making the air sacred on every side when 
 that shall come, shall not the promise then 
 have been fulfilled, and the " New Heavens 
 and the New Earth wherein dwelleth right- 
 eousness " be a sublime reality ? 
 
 VI. 275-
 
 JANUARY 13. 13 
 
 Faith is the sun of life; and her countenance 
 
 shines like the Hebrew's, 
 For she has looked upon God. 
 
 LONGFELLOW. 
 
 GOD forbid that in trying to make faith 
 seem glorious, I should make it seem 
 impossible! But it is true of God's gifts al- 
 ways that the most complete of them are the 
 most possibly universal. . . . To be loved is 
 better than to be admired; and admiration is 
 the privilege of a few brilliant natures, while 
 love is within the reach of any pure and loving 
 heart. Art is the privilege of the few, but 
 nature opens her treasures wide. ... If this 
 be so, then how must it be with that blessing 
 which outgoes all others the blessing of faith, 
 the blessing of living under the perpetually 
 recognized lordship of Christ? The finest of 
 all gifts of God may we not look for it to be 
 the freest also ? Free as the air, which is the 
 most precious thing that the world contains, 
 and yet struggles as nothing else in all the 
 world struggles to give itself away. 
 
 VI. 104, 105. 
 
 At the devil's mart are all things sold, 
 Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold; 
 For a cap and bells our lives we pay: 
 
 Bubbles we earn with our whole soul's task- 
 ing; 
 'Tis only God that is given away, 
 
 'Tis only heaven may be had for the asking. 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
 
 i 4 JANUARY 14. 
 
 That ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, 
 the Son of God ; and that believing ye might have 
 life through His name. JOHN xx. 31. 
 
 OUPPOSE that this divinity of Jesus be- 
 O comes part of a man's faith . . . suppose 
 that a man really believes that, entering into 
 our human life, God has been here upon earth. 
 What will that belief be to him that holds 
 it ? . . . The question answers itself. If to 
 believe in God is a glory and delight, the 
 nearer the God whom I believe in comes to me, 
 the more glorious and delightful grows my life. 
 To tread an earth which He has trodden, to 
 think thoughts and to feel emotions which, just 
 as I think and feel them, in their human shapes, 
 He the eternal God has thought and felt this 
 is assuredly a marvellous enrichment of my 
 living. I have gone out and up into a new 
 world with this new faith a new world, yet 
 the old world still; the old world teeming and 
 bursting with new meanings, radiant with new 
 light, sacred and beautiful all through with 
 the remembered presence of the Son of God. 
 Surely no man who has once known what it is 
 to live in that world can ever turn his back 
 upon its richness. 
 
 VII. 329, 330. 
 
 No longer is our life 
 
 A thing unused or vain; 
 To us, even here, to live is Christ, 
 
 To us to die is gain. 
 
 HORATIUS BONAR.
 
 JANUARY 15. 15 
 
 The sun shall be no more thy light by day ; 
 neither for brightness shall the moon give light 
 unto thee ; but the Lord shall be to thee an ever- 
 lasting light. Is. Ix. 19. 
 
 'T'HE lives of men who have been always 
 1 growing are strewed along their whole 
 course with the things which they have learned 
 to do without. As the track of an army 
 marching deep into an enemy's country is 
 scattered all along with the equipage which 
 the men seemed to find necessary when they 
 started, but which they have learned to do 
 without as the exigencies of their march grew 
 greater, and they found that these provisions 
 and equipments were partly such as they did 
 not need at all, and partly such as they could 
 gather out of the land through which they 
 marched; so from the time when the child 
 casts his leading strings aside because his legs 
 are strong enough to carry him alone, the 
 growing man goes on forever leaving each help 
 for a higher, until at last, in that great change 
 to which Isaiah's words seem to apply, he can 
 do without sun and moon as he enters into the 
 immediate presence and essential life of God. 
 
 I. 283. 
 
 I say that man was made to grow, not stop; 
 That help, he needed once and needs no more, 
 Having grown but an inch by, is withdrawn; 
 For he hath new needs, and new helps to these. 
 This imports solely man should mount on each 
 New height in view : the help whereby he mounts, 
 The ladder-rung his foot hath left, may fall, 
 Since all things suffer change save God, the 
 Truth. BROWNING.
 
 16 JANUARY 16. 
 
 HOLINESS does not make men monotonous. 
 The dimmer the light the more things 
 look alike. Increase the light and then you 
 see how different they are. Childhood with its 
 bright hopefulness, and manhood with its en- 
 terprise, and womanhood with its tenderness 
 each grows more specially itself at the touch 
 of grace. The old man and the young man, 
 the thinker, the artist, the worker, the mer- 
 chant, the doctor, and the lawyer out of each 
 comes up to the surface a profounder individu- 
 ality when they all begin to live to God. And 
 the subtler differences which distinguish man 
 from man and woman from woman, making 
 each being a separate thought of God, unlike 
 any other these become clearer as the idea of 
 God in the creation of each becomes more 
 fully realized. The pebbles lie dull and dead 
 and all gray alike in the dry bed of the brook 
 till with the spring freshet the water comes 
 pouring down and wets them all alike and 
 brings out their beautiful variety of color and 
 makes them all different. 
 
 VII. 40. 
 
 The sunlight takes the hue 
 Of whatsoever shade it shineth through, 
 Crimson or blue; 
 And thus we find 
 The One great Light, that lighteth all man- 
 
 kind, 
 Taketh a varied coloring from each mind. 
 
 ANNA E. HAMILTON.
 
 JANUARY 17. 17 
 
 Whatever He saith unto you, do it. 
 
 JOHN ii. 5. 
 
 YOU make a friend, you read a book, you 
 take a journey, you buy a house, you 
 write a letter, and so full is the great world of 
 God, so is He waiting everywhere to make 
 Himself known and to give Himself away, 
 that through this act of yours, to men who are 
 looking and listening, there comes some reve- 
 lation of His nature and some working of His 
 power. . . . For acts have their true meanings 
 in the points of manifestation and operation 
 which they give to God. It was not because 
 she knew that somehow they would have wine 
 or something better, it was because her Son 
 would surely show Himself through their obe- 
 dience, if they obeyed Him, that Mary cared 
 what these servants did. It is strange to 
 think what a dignity and interest our own 
 actions might have for us if we constantly 
 recognize this capacity in them which they 
 have not now. We play with bits of glass, 
 finding great pleasure in their pleasant shapes, 
 but never knowing what glorious things they 
 would be if we held them up and let the sun 
 shine through them. 
 
 V. 346. 
 
 O Everlasting Light, 
 
 Shine graciously within! 
 Brightest of all on earth that's bright, 
 
 Come, shine away my sin! 
 
 HORATIUS BONAR.
 
 i8 JANUARY 18. 
 
 Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, 
 . . . because they came not to the help of the Lord 
 against the mighty. JUDG. v. 23. 
 
 THE sin for which Meroz is cursed is pure 
 inaction. There is no sign that its peo- 
 ple gave any aid or comfort to the enemy. 
 They merely did nothing. We hear so much 
 about the danger of wrong thinking and the 
 danger of wrong doing. There is the other 
 danger, of not doing right and not thinking 
 right, of not doing and not thinking at all. . . . 
 Whenever men hide behind their conscious 
 feebleness; whenever, because they can do so 
 little, they content themselves with doing 
 nothing; whenever the one-talented men stand 
 with their napkins in their hands along the 
 roadside of life, there is Meroz over again. 
 . . . Grant that you are as small as you think 
 you are, you are the average size of moral and 
 intellectual humanity. Let all the Merozes in 
 the land be humble like you, and where shall 
 be the army ? Only when men like you wake 
 up and shake the paralysis of their humility 
 away, shall we begin to see the dawn of that 
 glorious millennium for which we sigh; which 
 will consist not in the transformation of men 
 into angels, nor in the coming forth of a few 
 colossal men to be the patterns and the cham- 
 pions of life, but simply in each man, through 
 the length and breadth of the great world, 
 doing his best. II. 291, 298, 299. 
 
 When obstacles and trials seem 
 
 Like prison walls to be, 
 I do the little I can do, 
 
 And leave the rest to Thee. FABER.
 
 JANUARY 19. 19 
 
 And they said . . . Let not God speak with us, 
 lest we die. Ex. xx. 19. 
 
 IS it not almost as if the fish cried, " Cast me 
 not into the water, lest I drown," or as if 
 the eagle said, " Let not the sun shine on me, 
 lest I be blind " ? It is man fearing his native 
 element. He was made to talk with God. . . . 
 We find a revelation of this in all the deepest 
 and highest moments of our lives. Have you 
 not often been surprised by seeing how men 
 who seemed to have no capacity for such ex- 
 periences passed into a sense of divine com- 
 panionship when anything disturbed their lives 
 with supreme joy or sorrow ? Once or twice, 
 at least, in his own life, almost every one of 
 us has found himself face to face with God, 
 and felt how natural it was to be there. Then 
 all interpreters and agencies of Him have 
 passed away. He has looked in on us di- 
 rectly; we have looked immediately upon 
 Him; and we have not died, we have su- 
 premely lived. We have known that we never 
 had so lived as then. We have been aware 
 how natural was that direct sympathy and 
 union and communication with God. 
 
 V. 82. 
 
 And blest are they 
 
 Who, in this fleshly world, the elect of Heaven, 
 Their strong eye darting through the deeds 
 
 of men, 
 
 Adore with steadfast, unpresuming gaze 
 Him, Nature's essence, mind, and energy. 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE.
 
 20 JANUARY 20. 
 
 Acquaint now thyself with Him, and be at 
 peace ; thereby good shall come unto thee. 
 
 JOB xxii. 21. 
 
 "T"HE more you come into communion with 
 ^ God, catch His spirit, understand His 
 life; the more quick your eye becomes to de- 
 tect the spiritual life of other men though it 
 be hidden under the strangest forms, the more 
 broad your heart grows to embrace it. Com- 
 ing to love God is like climbing a high moun- 
 tain. It takes you out of the low valley of 
 formal life. It sets you upon the open sum- 
 mit of spiritual sympathy, close to the sun. 
 Thence you look out into unguessed regions 
 of noble thought and living, with which you 
 never dreamed that you had anything to do. 
 . . . There never was a man who really tried 
 to serve God who did not have his sympathy 
 with his fellow men widened thereby. 
 
 VII. 314. 
 
 ON THE MOUNTAIN TOP. 
 
 Dear world, I behold but your largeness; I 
 
 forget that aught evil or mean 
 Ever marred the vast sphere of your beauty, 
 
 over which as a lover I lean. 
 And n'ot by our flaws will God judge us; His 
 
 love keeps our noblest in sight: 
 Dear world, our low life sinks behind us; we 
 
 look up to His infinite height. 
 
 LUCY LARCOM.
 
 JANUARY 21. 21 
 
 MEN talk as if because Christ is the same 
 loving, willing Christ for all of us, and 
 all of us are nothing and can have nothing but 
 Him, therefore the meagre, mercenary saint 
 ought to shine with the same lustre as the pure 
 spirit passionate for holiness, and ready for 
 all the completed will of God. As if one said 
 that because the sun is the same sun always, 
 and because there is no light except from him, 
 therefore the rose and the daisy ought to look 
 alike. No! He in His love outgoes our 
 prayers. He gives us more of what we ask 
 than we know how to ask for; more beauty to 
 the seeker after beauty, more wisdom to the 
 student, more safety to the poor culprit asking 
 forgiveness. And He is always trying to make 
 the self which asks a larger self, that He may 
 give it other things of higher kinds. But yet 
 the truth remains, that at each moment He 
 can give Himself to us only as at that mo- 
 ment we give ourselves to Him. 
 
 III. 285. 
 
 Higher, purer, deeper, surer, 
 Be my thought, O Christ, of Thee! 
 Stretch the narrow bounds that limit 
 All my earth-born, sin-bound spirit 
 
 To the breadth of Thy divine. 
 
 Be the image purely Thine, 
 Not my thought, but Thy creation; 
 
 Deep within my spirit's shrine 
 Make the secret revelation; 
 
 Reproduce Thy life in mine! 
 
 MRS. MERRILL E. GATES.
 
 22 JANUARY 22. 
 
 ONE man approaches the divine Redeemer 
 asking no divine redemption, but touched 
 and fascinated by the beauty of that perfect 
 life. He would feed his wonder, he would 
 cultivate his taste, upon it. ... Another man 
 comes to Jesus with a self that is all alive with 
 curiosity. He takes Christ's revelations for 
 Christ does not refuse him either and goes 
 away content to know much of God and man, 
 and what there is beyond this world. . . . Each 
 gets from Jesus that which the nature he 
 brings can take. . . . Only when at last there 
 comes a man with his self all open, with door 
 behind door all unclosed, ready to give him- 
 self entirely, wanting everything that Jesus 
 has to give, wanting and ready to take the 
 whole of Jesus into himself only then are the 
 last gates withdrawn, and as when the ocean 
 gathers itself up and enters with its tide the 
 open mouth of the river, ... so does the 
 Lord in all His richness, with His perfect 
 standards, His mighty motives, His infinite 
 hopes, give Himself to the soul which has 
 been utterly given to Him. in. 284, 285. 
 
 Lord, we are rivers running to Thy sea, 
 Our waves and ripples all derived from Thee; 
 A nothing we should have, a nothing be, 
 Except for Thee. 
 
 Sweet are the waters of Thy shoreless sea, 
 Make sweet our waters that make haste to 
 
 Thee; 
 
 Pour in Thy sweetness, that ourselves may be 
 Sweetness to Thee! 
 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
 
 JANUARY 23. 23 
 
 And the king said, Is there not yet any . . . 
 that I may show the kindness of God unto him ? 
 
 2 SAM. ix. 3. 
 
 HOW shall you make man know that God 
 loves him ? In every way, there is no 
 speech nor language in which that voice may 
 not be heard, but most of all by loving the 
 man with a great love yourself, by a lofty and 
 generous affection of which he shall know that, 
 coming through you, it comes from beyond 
 you, and say, "It is my Father that my 
 brother utters," and so be led up to the 
 Father's heart. We talk about men's reaching 
 through Nature up to Nature's God. It is 
 nothing to the way in which they may reach 
 through manhood up to manhood's God, and 
 learn the divine love by the human. God 
 make us all such revelations of His love to 
 some of His children! 
 
 V. 50. 
 
 For by human lovings climb we 
 (As to cause from consequence) 
 
 To some dim, imperfect vision, 
 To some awed but precious sense 
 
 Of the Love of love whose loving 
 We have surnamed " Providence." 
 
 Ah, what gladness in the glory 
 
 Of the better land to know 
 That to some poor, doubting, fearing, 
 
 Hungering, thirsting soul below, 
 All unknowing, in our loving, 
 
 We the love of God did show. 
 
 J. L. M. W.
 
 24 JANUARY 24. 
 
 For our light affliction, which is but for a 
 moment, worketh out for us a far more exceeding 
 and eternal weight of glory j while we look not at 
 the things which are seen, but at the things which 
 are not seen : for the things which are seen are 
 temporal ; but the things which are not seen are 
 eternal. 2 COR. iv. 17, 18. 
 
 OH, the next life seems all so vague to us! 
 We reach out after it. We believe in it, 
 but how hard it is for us to take hold of it! 
 How can we ? Only by living here with Him 
 who is to bring us there. Only by growing so 
 familiar with Christ that when He outruns us 
 and enters in behind the veil, when the strings 
 of His influence outgo our mortal state and 
 run into the darkness, we may still feel the 
 tug upon them from beyond the darkness and 
 know the reality of heaven because our Christ 
 is there. By constant living with the Eternal, 
 so only can you realize Eternity. . . . 
 
 To welcome all His leadings now so cor- 
 dially that we shall know our Leader when He 
 opens the last great door; to be always fol- 
 lowing Him so obediently that we shall have 
 faith to follow Him when He leads us into the 
 river and into darkness, this, and only this, 
 is readiness for death. vi. 185, 186. 
 
 O Lord of Light, steep Thou our souls in Thee, 
 
 That when the daylight trembles into shade, 
 And falls the silence of mortality, 
 
 And all is done, we shall not be afraid, 
 But pass from light to light; from earth's dull 
 
 gleam 
 
 Into the very heart and heaven of our dream. 
 RICHARD WATSON GILDER.
 
 JANUARY 25. 25 
 
 And suddenly there shined round about him a 
 light from heaven : . . . And he trembling and 
 astonished said, Lord, what wilt Thou have me to 
 do ? ACTS ix. 3, 6. 
 
 WE talk so much about confession and 
 forgiveness; we elaborate their theory 
 so much; we see such intricate relations of 
 the divine and human natures involved in the 
 transaction, that we almost unconsciously 
 transfer the long train of thought into a long 
 period of time. We feel as if that result 
 which implies so much spiritual action must 
 be reached only by a process of correspond- 
 ingly prolonged duration. " To confess and 
 be forgiven that is the work of months and 
 years, of a whole lifetime," we declare. . . . 
 But the volcano that the chemistry of years 
 has been preparing breaks into eruption in an 
 hour. Tire blossom that the patient plant 
 has been designing for a century bursts into 
 flower in a single night. And so the reconcili- 
 ation of a soul to God, which it has been the 
 labor of the ages to make possible, which 
 dates for its conception back to the dateless 
 time when the Lamb was slain from the foun- 
 dation of the world, comes to its completion 
 in the sudden meeting of a soul filled with 
 penitence and a God filled with mercy. 
 
 VII. 184. 
 
 As to Thy last Apostle's heart 
 Thy lightning glance did then impart 
 
 Zeal's never-dying fire, 
 So teach us on Thy shrine to lay 
 Our hearts, and let them day by day 
 Intenser blaze and higher. KEBLE.
 
 26 JANUARY 26. 
 
 Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every 
 word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. 
 
 MATT. iv. 4. 
 
 MAN is represented as feeding on the words 
 of God, and every word of God must 
 come for nurture to the life that is made up 
 of many parts. How splendid the figure is! 
 God . . . speaks once: "Let the earth bring 
 forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the 
 fruit-tree yielding fruit." And as He spoke, 
 those words, " proceeding out of the mouth 
 of the Lord," were caught by the quick, obe- 
 dient ground of Genesis, and became the power 
 by which the physical life of man in all his 
 generations has been nourished. . . . Again, 
 He speaks out of some Sinai mountain, or 
 out of that Sinai of the inner lifie, our con- 
 science. "Do this," He says, "and live," 
 laying down duty after duty, which the moral 
 nature takes to itself and feeds upon, and 
 grows by them into rectitude and strength. 
 And then, last of all, to the highest life of 
 all, He utters His sublimest voice. What shall 
 we say that last word is by which He utters 
 Himself to, on which He feeds, man's deep 
 religious nature ? What can it be but that 
 eternal " Word" which was in the beginning 
 with God, which was God, which was made 
 flesh, and dwelt among us; that bread of life 
 which came down from heaven, of which a man 
 may eat and never die; the fulness of divine 
 utterance in the world's Saviour, Jesus Christ ? 
 
 VII. 155, 156.
 
 JANUARY 27. 27 
 
 '"THE real life, what is it ? Is it the wretched, 
 * sordid details of earthly living, unin- 
 spired by a single-suggestion that in their mud 
 and mire there are the seeds of any spiritual, 
 transcendent fruit or flower ? On the other 
 hand, is the real life a vision of some expe- 
 rience beyond the stars which has no connec- 
 tion with the dreariness and degradation of 
 many of the mortal conditions which it has 
 passed through and left behind ? Not so. 
 The real life of a man is his highest attainment 
 kept in perpetual association with the meanest 
 and commonest experience out of which it has 
 been fed. When men shall so write and paint 
 the lives of one another, then we shall have 
 the true realism, a realism in which, to use 
 the Psalmist's words, " Truth shall flourish 
 out of the earth and Righteousness look down 
 from Heaven." 
 
 VI. 226. 
 
 Natural things 
 
 And spiritual; who separates these two 
 In art, in morals, or the social drift, 
 Tears up the bond of nature, and brings 
 
 death . . . 
 
 Leads vulgar days, deals ignorantly with men, 
 Is wrong, in short, at all points. 
 
 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING,
 
 28 JANUARY 28. 
 
 For we can do nothing against the truth, but for 
 the truth. 2 COR. xiii. 8. 
 
 THERE is an absolute truth about every- 
 thing, something which is certainly the 
 fact about that thing, entirely independent of 
 what you or I or any man may think about it. 
 No man on earth may know that fact correctly 
 but the fact exists. It lies behind all blunders 
 and all partial knowledges, a calm, sure, un- 
 found certainty, like the great sea beneath its 
 waves, like the great sky behind its clouds. 
 God knows it. It and the possession of it 
 makes the eternal difference between God's 
 knowledge and man's. 
 
 It is a beautiful and noble faith when a man 
 thus believes in the absolute truth, unfound, 
 unfindable perhaps by man, and yet surely ex- 
 istent behind and at the heart of everything. 
 It is a terrible thing when a man ceases to be- 
 lieve in it, and ceases to seek for it. 
 
 VI. 210. 
 
 Seek, then, now, O my soul, so singular and 
 
 so supereminent a Good. 
 As long as thou art in the flesh, cease not to 
 
 seek ; 
 
 Since that can never be sought enough, which 
 can never be grasped to the full. 
 
 THOMAS A KEMPIS. 
 
 Jesus saith unto him, I am . . . the Truth. 
 
 JOHN xiv. 6.
 
 JANUARY 29. 29 
 
 CONSIDER what would be the idea of 
 Christ and His relation to the world 
 which we should get if this were all we knew 
 of Him, if He as yet had told us nothing of 
 Himself but what is wrapped up in these rich 
 and simple words, " I am the Light of the 
 World," "I am the Light of Life." They 
 send us instantly abroad into the world of 
 Nature. They set us on the hill-top watching 
 the sunrise as it fills the east with glory. They 
 show us the great plain flooded and beaten 
 and quivering with the noon-day sun. They 
 hush and elevate us with the mystery and 
 sweetness and suggestiveness of the evening's 
 glow. There could be no image so abundant 
 in its meaning; no fact plucked from the world 
 of Nature could have such vast variety of truth 
 to tell; and yet one meaning shines out from 
 the depth of the figure and irradiates all its 
 messages. They all are true by its truth. 
 What is that meaning ? It is the essential 
 richness and possibility of the world and its 
 essential belonging to the sun. 
 
 V. 2. 
 
 O only Lord God, Father of lights and Maker of dark- 
 ness, send forth Thy light and Thy truth that they may 
 lead us through dimness of things seen to clarity of things 
 unseen : For our Lord Jesus Christ's sake, the Light of 
 the world. Amen. 
 
 CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.
 
 30 JANUARY 30. 
 
 / am the Light of the world. JOHN viii. 12. 
 
 A THOUSAND subtle, mystic miracles of 
 deep and intricate relationship between 
 Christ and humanity must be enfolded in those 
 words; but over and behind and within all 
 other meanings, it means this, the essential 
 richness and possibility of humanity and its es- 
 sential belonging to Divinity. . . . The truth 
 is that every higher life to which man comes, 
 and especially the highest life in Christ, is in 
 the true line of man's humanity; there is no 
 transportation to a foreign region. There is 
 the quickening and fulfilling of what man by 
 the very essence of his nature is. The more 
 man becomes irradiated with Divinity, the 
 more, not the less, truly he is man. The fullest 
 Christian experience is simply the fullest life. 
 To enter into it therefore is nowise strange. 
 The wonder and the unnaturalness is that any 
 child of God should live outside of it, and so 
 in all his life should never be himself. 
 
 V. 4, 6. 
 
 'Tis He, as none other can, 
 
 Makes free the spirit of man, 
 
 And speaks, in darkest night, 
 
 One word of awful light 
 
 That strikes through the dreadful pain 
 
 Of life a reason sane 
 
 That word divine which brought 
 
 The universe from nought. 
 
 RICHARD WATSON (III.DKR
 
 JANUARY 31. 31 
 
 There is no power but of God. ROM. xiii. i. 
 
 " "II 7HERE does the power come from?" 
 VV is the natural question always when 
 we are watching any strong effect. "Where 
 did it begin?" we curiously ask as we stand 
 by the side of any process and watch its steady 
 flow. . . . Such search for the seats of origi- 
 nal power is among the first instincts and the 
 keenest pleasures of the human mind. And 
 when such a source of power is found, then 
 the human soul bows down before it and pours 
 out its reverence. All idolatry is merely the 
 giving to some secondary cause that virtue 
 and regard which can belong only to the High- 
 est and First Cause: to worship the sun in- 
 stead of the God who makes him shine; to 
 deify a hero or sage into the place of the God 
 who makes him brave or wise; to glorify an 
 abstract virtue until it sits cloudily in the 
 place of the distinct personal God in whose 
 nature all virtue has its being these are the 
 great types in which idolatry has prevailed 
 among mankind. And to-day the man who is 
 looking to his money or his education or his 
 good repute or his family for the satisfaction 
 and the culture which God gives us through 
 them all, but which neither of them gives us 
 of and by itself, he is the modern idolater. 
 He, like all the idolaters of old, has cut the 
 channels of life off from the source of life, 
 and sits with his thirsty lips pressed to their 
 dry mouths, getting no real refreshment, how- 
 ever he may delude himself. VII. 35, 36. 
 
 These are wells without water. 2 PET. ii. 17.
 
 32 FEBRUARY i. 
 
 To be spiritually minded is life and peace. 
 
 ROM. viii. 6. 
 
 " T HAVE no spiritual capacity," says one. 
 I " It is not in me to be a saint," another 
 cries. " I have a covetous soul. I cannot 
 live except in winning money." " I can make 
 many sacrifices, but I cannot give up my 
 drink." " I can do many things, but I cannot 
 be reverent." So the man talks about him- 
 self. Poor creature, does he think that he 
 knows, down to its centre, this wonderful 
 humanity of his ? It all sounds so plausible and 
 is so untrue! . . . How can he know what 
 lurking power lies packed away within the 
 never-opened folds of this inactive life ? Has 
 he ever dared to call himself the child of God, 
 and for one moment felt what that involves ? 
 Has he ever attacked the task which demands 
 those powers whose existence he denies, or 
 tried to press on into the region where those 
 evil things cannot breathe which he compla- 
 cently declares are an inseparable portion of 
 his life ? VI. 69. 
 
 Oh, there are heavenly heights to reach 
 
 In many a fearful place 
 Where the poor timid heir of God 
 
 Lies blindly on his face, 
 
 Lies languishing for light divine, 
 
 That he shall never see 
 Till he go forward at Thy sign, 
 
 And trust himself to Thee. 
 
 WHITTIER.
 
 FEBRUARY 2. 33 
 
 And the Child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, 
 filled with wisdom ; and the grace of God was 
 upon him. LUKE ii. 40. 
 
 '"THE evident design of God's creation, the 
 * comprehensive form of the incarnation, 
 the clear presence in children of the power of 
 and the need of religion, these are the forces 
 which, in spite of every tendency of the 
 grown people to make children wait till they 
 grow up, has always kept alive a hope, a 
 trust, however blind, that a child's religion 
 was a possible reality; that a child might serve 
 and love and live for God. . . . His are the 
 years when one can really believe in ideals. 
 God can stand out before him, awful, yet 
 dear. . . . No doubt of God's faithfulness, no 
 questioning of His ways comes in to cloud the 
 perfectly unspotted adoration. How good it 
 is that there are years at the beginning of every 
 life when it is the most easy thing to believe 
 in absolute right and goodness! 
 
 IV. 136, 137. 
 
 How good a thing is feeling admiration ! It is the 
 bread of angels, the eternal food of cherubim and sera- 
 phim. 
 
 AMIEL.
 
 34 FEBRUARY 3. 
 
 MAN never is sent into the world, and bid- 
 den to evolve out of his own being the 
 conditions in which he is to live. Always 
 there is something before him. . . . The food 
 is before the hunger, and says, "I have waited 
 for you to come." The river is before the 
 thirst. Beauty was in the sky and on the hills 
 before the eye was fashioned. Music was 
 breathing on the winds before the ear was 
 framed. Fragrance was in the violet and the 
 forest before the nostrils came to catch its 
 odor. The picture was before the imagi- 
 nation which discerned it; the sea before the 
 ship that sailed it. Man finds the rocks 
 waiting with their problems, frost and heat 
 holding their inspiration and their comfort in 
 expectation of his coming. And he never 
 says, " Here I am," that the servants do not 
 stand in ranks at the door of his great home- 
 stead to welcome the heir into his own, and 
 to pledge him their obedient service. The 
 material is background for the spiritual, the 
 earth, which is body, for man, who is soul. 
 
 V. 41. 
 
 For us the winds do blow; 
 The earth doth rest, heaven move, and foun- 
 tains flow. 
 Nothing we see but means our good, 
 
 As our delight, or as our treasure: 
 The whole is either our cupboard of food, 
 
 Or cabinet of pleasure. 
 
 GEORGE HERBERT.
 
 FEBRUARY 4. 35 
 
 To whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words 
 of eternal life. JOHN vi. 68. 
 
 IF a soul has many doubts and bewilderments 
 about Christ, and yet knows that there is 
 a Saviour, and that that Saviour's home is in 
 the land of righteousness and truth, then to 
 that land of righteousness and truth that soul 
 will go by any road that it can find, eager to 
 get there, seeking a road, pressing through 
 difficulties, that it may be in the same country 
 with, and somewhere near, its unfound Lord. 
 It may be that the clouds that for us mortals 
 haunt that land of righteousness and truth 
 may long hang so thick and low that living 
 close to Him the soul may still fail to see Him, 
 but some day certainly the fog shall rise, the 
 cloud shall scatter, and in the perfect enlight- 
 enment of the other life the soul shall see its 
 Lord, and be thankful for every darkest step 
 that it took towards Him here. 
 
 VI. 150. 
 
 I felt like one upon his journey brought 
 
 By ways he knows not of; these pathways 
 
 dim 
 Had ever seemed their promised end to cheat, 
 
 Yet had they led to Him 
 
 In whom life's tangled, broken threads com- 
 plete 
 
 Are gathered up, its wasted things made meet 
 For holier use, its roughness smoothed, its bit- 
 ter turned to sweet. 
 
 DORA GREENWELL,
 
 36 FEBRUARY 5. 
 
 Come and see. JOHN i. 46. 
 
 EVERYWHERE this invitation rings 
 through the world. True, the sight which 
 we send out in answer to the invitation must 
 be the large use of all our faculties. Not 
 merely the outward eye must see, the mind 
 must see as well. It is not answering the 
 whole invitation unless the whole man goes 
 and sees with all his powers of vision. The 
 eye sees phenomena; the soul sees causes un- 
 derlying and connecting the phenomena. We 
 must not stop merely with what the eye sees, 
 and, having written down the facts we have 
 discovered, call that the all of science, and 
 brand all beyond as superstition. It is not 
 superstition, not prejudice, but science still, 
 spiritual science, when the mind sees a causal 
 will, out of which all phenomena proceed, and 
 the heart feels a mighty love beating through 
 all the ordered system. It is not well to live 
 and see only from the eyes and brain outward. 
 
 VI. 138. 
 
 Look down in pity, Lord, we pray, 
 On eyes oppressed by moral night, 
 
 And touch the darkened lids, and say 
 
 The gracious words, " Receive thy sight! ' 
 
 Then in clear daylight, shall we see 
 Where walks the sinless Son of God; 
 
 And, aided by new strength from Thee, 
 Press onward in the path He trod. 
 
 BRYANT.
 
 FEBRUARY 6. 37 
 
 We love Him because He first loiied us. 
 
 i JOHN iv. 19. 
 
 TO' know that long before I cared for Him, 
 He cared for me; that while I wandered 
 up and down in carelessness, perhaps while I 
 was plunging deep in flagrant sin, God's eye 
 was never off me for a moment, He was always 
 watching for the instant when His hand might 
 touch me and His voice might speak to me, 
 there is nothing which can appeal to a man 
 like that. The man is stone whom that does 
 not appeal to. When, touched by the knowl- 
 edge of that untiring love, a man gives himself 
 at last to God, every act of loving service 
 which he does afterwards is fired and colored 
 by the power of gratitude, surprised gratitude, 
 out of which it springs. How shall he over- 
 take this love which has so much the start of 
 him ? This is what makes his service eager 
 and enthusiastic. It is a " reasonable service, ' ' 
 justified by the sublime reason of the soul 
 which loves its God because He first loved it. 
 
 V. 54- 
 
 Because Thy love hath sought me, % 
 All mine is Thine, and Thine is mine; 
 
 Because Thy love hath bought me, 
 I will not be mine own, but Thine. 
 
 I lift my heart for Thy heart, 
 
 Thy heart sole resting-place for mine: 
 
 Shall Thy heart crave for my heart, 
 
 And shall not mine crave back for Thine ? 
 CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.
 
 38 FEBRUARY 7. 
 
 Let the peace of God ride in your hearts. 
 
 COL. iii. 15. 
 
 """THAT peace cannot come in this life, you 
 * say. But I do not know. There have 
 been men and women with lives so calm and 
 high that they seemed to have reached it, even 
 on this tumultuous earth. Hardly a flake of 
 spray from the storm below them ever seemed 
 to dash up and wet their steadfast and placid 
 feet. But whether it can come in this life or 
 not, the struggle for it makes the two lives 
 one. Already to him who is working towards 
 it, part of its peace is given. The rock runs 
 out under the sea, and your feet may be firm 
 upon it even while the waves are still breast 
 high. 
 
 Such be the peace in Christ which shall 
 make all of our lives strong through all their 
 struggle, until at last we enter into that rest 
 which remaineth for the people of God. 
 
 VI. 127. 
 
 No clouds of care that gather, 
 
 No waves of sin that toss, 
 No blasts of desolation, 
 
 No blight, no strife, no loss, 
 Shall break the mystic circle 
 
 Of that enshrining peace 
 Which round the steadfast spirit 
 
 Doth grow, and doth not cease. 
 
 J. L. M. W.
 
 FEBRUARY 8. 39 
 
 WHAT is it in the highest sense to do what 
 all men try to do in some sense, to get 
 a living ? Those words are very lightly used, 
 and narrowed down to very insignificant 
 dimensions. . . . 
 
 Breathing is not life, thought is not life, 
 duty is not life. The perfect life includes 
 them all. No man is thoroughly, that is, 
 through and through, alive unless from end 
 to end of his capacity that capacity is full. 
 Complete life involves the conception of a 
 body with every power perfect, a mind with 
 every ability active, a conscience that never 
 swerves from purity, a spirit that reaches to 
 and fastens itself on God. Everything short 
 of that is stagnated, impeded, partial life. 
 To complete that high result is what a man 
 ought to mean when he talks about " getting 
 a living." Is it not one of the mortifying 
 things, dear friends, to take now and then 
 these words that we are using every day so 
 lightly and see how much they really mean; 
 to wipe through the dust and rust that are on 
 these coin-words, which constant friction has 
 worn so smooth and unimpressive, and look 
 upon the royal image and superscription that 
 is on them ? VII. 152, 154. 
 
 There is no end to the sky, 
 
 And the stars are everywhere, 
 And time is eternity, 
 
 And the here is over there; 
 For the common deeds of the common day 
 Are ringing bells in the far-away. 
 
 HENRY BURTON.
 
 40 FEBRUARY 9. 
 
 ALL history of man bears witness that man, 
 though himself finite, demands infinity 
 to deal with and to rest upon. What truly 
 enthusiastically human man will tolerate the 
 drawing of any line, however far away, out- 
 side of which he shall be bound to believe 
 that human enterprise shall never go ? Who 
 will let any limit mark for him the certain 
 boundary beyond which no yet more wonder- 
 ful invention shall be devised, and no yet more 
 beautiful miracle of art flower out of the rich 
 ground of man's exhaustless fancy ? What 
 man ever truly loves and sets a limit, con- 
 sciously and absolutely, to the loveliness of 
 that which he is loving ? The love that de- 
 fines the limits of its idol's loveliness is not 
 entire love; pure love lives in its power of 
 idealizing, and loves the infinite in the finite 
 type to which it gives its homage. So every- 
 where there comes the testimony of this end- 
 less reach of man after the infinite, and of 
 his inability to rest upon anything less. 
 
 III. 120. 
 
 The saints' good days 
 Are good, because the good Lord lays 
 No bound of shore along the sea 
 Of beautiful Eternity. 
 
 HELEN HUNT JACKSON.
 
 FEBRUARY 10. 41 
 
 A peasant may believe as much 
 
 As a great clerk, and reach the highest stat- 
 ure: 
 Thus dost Thou make proud knowledge bend 
 
 and crouch, 
 While grace fills up uneven nature. 
 
 GEORGE HERBERT. 
 
 NO man grows good by mere increase of in- 
 tellectual development. Look at the 
 melancholy record of the private lives of 
 many of the most brilliant thinkers and schol- 
 ars. Look at the dissoluteness of the bad, 
 bright times of Greek or Roman culture. . . . 
 As powerless as is the mere training of the 
 body to educate the mind, or the culture of 
 the mind to reform the morals, so utterly hope- 
 less is it that any man living under God's in- 
 evitable laws should grow by the mere strug- 
 gle of moral rectitude into that condition of 
 resemblance and spiritual nearness to God 
 which we mean when we speak of a man's 
 being holy. That high estate, the abiding of 
 the divine life in the human soul you must 
 set it down as the first truth of your religion 
 can be ever reached only by the personal 
 acceptance of that means by which it was first 
 and forever typified the indwelling of the 
 Divine in the human in the great representa- 
 tive miracle of spiritual history, the Incarna- 
 tion of Jesus Christ. VII. 157. 
 
 I say, the acknowledgement of God in Christ, 
 Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
 All questions in the earth and out of it, 
 And has so far advanced thee to be wise. 
 
 BROWNING.
 
 42 FEBRUARY u. 
 
 S0 speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be 
 judged by the law of liberty. JAMES ii. 12. 
 
 THE freeing of souls is the judging of souls. 
 A liberated nature dictates its own des- 
 tiny. . . . Look at Christ, and see [this truth] 
 in perfection. His was the freest life man ever 
 lived. Nothing could bind Him. He walked 
 across old Jewish traditions and they snapped 
 like cobwebs. He acted upon the divinity that 
 was in Him up to the noblest ideal of liberty. 
 But was there no compulsion in His working ? 
 Hear Him: " I must be about my Father's busi- 
 ness." Was it no compulsion that drove Him 
 those endless journeys, footsore and heartsore, 
 through His ungrateful land ? "I must work 
 to-day." What slave of sin was ever driven to 
 his wickedness as Christ was to holiness ? What 
 force ever drove a selfish man into his voluptu- 
 ous indulgence with half the irresistibility that 
 forced the Saviour to the cross ? O my dear 
 friends, who does not dream for himself of a 
 freedom as complete and as inspiring as the 
 Lord's ? Who does not pray that he too may 
 be ruled by such a sweet despotic law of 
 liberty ? II. i 97 , 198. 
 
 O voice of Duty, still 
 
 Speak forth: I hear with awe; 
 
 In thee I own the sovereign Will, 
 Obey the sovereign law. 
 
 Thou higher voice of Love! 
 
 Yet speak thy word in me; 
 Through Duty let me upward move 
 
 To thy pure liberty! 
 
 SAMUEL LONGFELLOW.
 
 FEBRUARY 12. 43 
 
 Abraham Lincoln born, 1809. 
 
 GREAT men are in the world what the most 
 enlightened and exalted experiences are 
 in the life of any man. They are the mountain- 
 tops on which the influences which are after- 
 ward to fertilize our whole humanity have 
 birth. There stands out some great pattern of 
 unselfishness; some martyr-life which totally 
 forgets itself and lives in suffering self-sacrifice 
 for fellow-men. About that man's life gathers 
 an utterance, an exhibition, of the glory of self- 
 sacrifice of how it is the true life of mankind, 
 of how in it alone man becomes truly man. 
 Does all that abide in him, live and die in his 
 single personality ? Does it disappear forever 
 in the withering flames which consume him at 
 the stake ? Does not that fire set it free, cast 
 it forth into the atmosphere of the universal 
 human nature, and make it the possession of 
 all mankind ? Have not you and I the power 
 to live more unselfishly to-day because of the 
 unselfishness of the great monumental lives 
 of devotion ? 
 
 VII. 344- 
 
 As thrills of long-hushed tone 
 Live in the viol, so our souls grow fine 
 With keen vibrations from the touch divine 
 
 Of noble natures gone. 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
 
 44 FEBRUARY 13. 
 
 Heroes are the mortal pipes 
 
 Thorough which God's breath doth blow; 
 Little care they how they strain 
 
 If aright the tune doth go. j. L. M. W. 
 
 IDEALITY, magnanimity, and bravery, 
 1 these are what make the heroes. These 
 are what glorify certain lives that stand 
 through history as the lights and beacons of 
 mankind. The materialist, the sceptic, and 
 the coward, he cannot be a hero. We talk 
 sometimes about the unheroic character of 
 modern life. We point to our luxurious living 
 for the reason. But, oh, my friends, it is not in 
 your costly houses and your sumptuous tables 
 that your unheroic lives consist. It is in the 
 absence of great inspiring ideas, of generous 
 enthusiasms, and of the courage of self-forget- 
 fulness. . . . Do not blame a mere accident 
 for that which lies so much deeper. There are 
 moments, when you bear your sorrows, when 
 you resist a great temptation, when your faith 
 or your country is in danger, there are such 
 moments with you all when you seize the idea 
 of human living and are made generous and 
 brave because of it. Then, for all your modern 
 dress, for all your modern parlor where you 
 stand, you are heroic like David, like Paul, 
 like any of God's knights in any of the ages 
 which are most remote and picturesque. Then 
 you catch some glimpse of a region into which 
 you might enter, and where, with no blast of 
 trumpets or waving of banners, you might 
 be heroic all the time. 
 
 II. 173-
 
 FEBRUARY 14. 45 
 
 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst 
 after righteousness, for they shall be filled. 
 
 MATT. v. 6. 
 
 THE essence of every beatitude is in the 
 human heart, and yet the human heart 
 loves to hear the utterance of the beatitudes 
 from the mouth of God as if they were His 
 arbitrary enactments. I know by that of the 
 nature of God wh'ich is in me as His child, 
 that they which hunger and thirst after right- 
 eousness shall certainly be filled. I am sure, 
 by that subtle knowledge of Him which the 
 child must have of the Father, that He could 
 not leave a really longing soul unsatisfied in 
 all His world. That importunate happiness, 
 ready to give itself away, must pour itself into 
 every ready life. 
 
 VIII. 32. 
 
 There's not a craving in the mind 
 Thou dost not meet and still; 
 
 There's not a wish the heart can have 
 Which Thou dost not fulfil. 
 
 All things that have been, all that are, 
 All things that can be dreamed, 
 
 All possible creations, made, 
 Kept faithful, or redeemed, 
 
 All these may draw upon Thy power, 
 
 Thy mercy may command; 
 And still outflows Thy silent sea, 
 
 Immutable and grand. 
 
 FABER.
 
 46 FEBRUARY 15. 
 
 Behold, what manner of love the Father hath 
 bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons 
 of God. i JOHN iii. i. 
 
 'T'HERE is a deeper nature which belongs to 
 * every one of us as a child of God. . . . 
 The man who lives in that deeper nature, the 
 man who believes himself the son of God, 
 is not surprised at his best moments and his 
 noblest inspirations. He is not amazed when 
 he does a brave or an unselfish thing. He 
 is amazed at himself when he is a coward 
 or a liar. He accepts self-restraint only as 
 a temporary condition, an immediate neces- 
 sity of life. Not self-restraint, but self-indul- 
 gence, the free, unhindered utterance of the 
 deepest nature, which is good that is the only 
 final picture of man's duty which he tolerates. 
 And all the life is one; the specially and spe- 
 cifically religious part being but the point at 
 which the diamond for the moment shines, 
 with all the diamond nature waiting in reserve 
 through the whole substance of the precious 
 
 stone. 
 
 V. 20. 
 
 Take all in a word: the trust in God's breast 
 Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed; 
 Though He be so bright and we so dim, 
 We are made in His image to witness Him. 
 
 BROWNING.
 
 FEBRUARY 16. 47 
 
 A STRONG, unalterable persuasion that 
 *"* God is merciful and kind has been poured 
 onto your life, into your mind. That fact it- 
 self, once known, absorbs your contemplation. 
 You would sit lonely in the empty world and fill 
 your soul with gazing on the brightness of that 
 truth. So you do sit to-day when there conies 
 some sort of appeal from fellow-men. . . . 
 Somehow the cry awakens you, and you go 
 down and put your truth into your brother's 
 hands. At first it seems almost a profanation. 
 The truth is so sacred and seems so thoroughly 
 your own. But as you give it to your brother, 
 new lights come out in it. For God to be good 
 means something more when the goodness 
 turns to new forms of blessing in the new need 
 of this new life. O you who think you know 
 that God is merciful because of the mercy 
 which He has shewed to you, be sure there is a 
 richness in your truth which you have not 
 reached yet, which you will never reach until 
 you let Him make your life the interpreter of 
 His goodness to some other soul! 
 
 IV. 15. 
 
 A toil that gains with what it yields, 
 And scatters to its own increase, 
 
 And hears, while sowing outward fields, 
 The harvest-song of inward peace. 
 
 WHITTIER.
 
 48 FEBRUARY 17. 
 
 The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich. 
 
 PROV. x. 22. 
 
 V/'OU say, How can I believe in God ? Only 
 1 by coming close to God, and learning by 
 deep and sweet experience that He has better 
 things to give to His beloved than what men 
 call prosperity, the peace that passeth un- 
 derstanding, the calm rest of forgiven sin, and 
 of a soul trusted away from itself into its 
 Saviour's hands. To one who knows what 
 those high blessings mean, how little does it 
 seem that other hands should fill themselves 
 with the shining trifles which its hands are too 
 full to hold. Think how it will seem in heaven! 
 Standing before the throne, filled with the un- 
 speakable vision, conscious through all the 
 glory of the culture that suffering has brought, 
 hurrying with joy on the high missions of the 
 Lord, who will look back then and be troubled 
 an instant at the recollection of how a wicked 
 man sat at a little richer table, or had a little 
 higher seat in the market-place when we were 
 
 here on earth ? 
 
 VI. 126. 
 
 Lose the less joy that doth but blind; 
 Reach forth a larger bliss to find. 
 To-day is brief; the inclusive spheres 
 Rain raptures of a thousand years. 
 
 ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY.
 
 FEBRUARY 18. 49 
 
 CONSECRATIONS of our lives to others 
 V-^ are often not less real and powerful 
 because they are unconscious. . . . We have 
 gone on with our work in life, thinking that 
 the purpose of our work was centred in our- 
 selves. . . . But some day a friend died one 
 who was very near to us, one in whom our life 
 was bound up in many ways. Who has not 
 known the dreadful going out of all the in- 
 terest of living at the time of such a death ? 
 It seemed as if there were nothing left to live 
 for. ... It was terrible. But it was blessed 
 if you did not stop there, but, with persistent 
 love that would not be satisfied until it found 
 the object it had lost, you traced the precious 
 life on as it left you, till you followed it into 
 the very bosom of the God who took it, and 
 poured out there the treasures of devotion 
 which had no longer any one dear enough to 
 tempt them on the earth. 
 
 VI. 48, 49. 
 
 And, dearer than -the living ones that dwell 
 
 Beyond the throbbing sea, 
 And dearer than the Dead, whose voices swell 
 
 The heavenly melody, 
 ONE visiteth His people in the night, 
 Who giveth songs, and makes the darkness 
 bright. 
 
 B. M.
 
 50 FEBRUARY 19. 
 
 NOTHING is more sad than the way in 
 which we comfort ourselves and one an- 
 other for our sorrows, by vague, unrealized 
 promises that sorrow cannot last forever. 
 
 We conceive of life as a great swinging 
 sphere which must forever run a vast orbit, 
 doomed to perpetual change, and so sure by 
 and by to sweep into the sunlight, if we can 
 only keep alive and wait. It is a forlorn and 
 miserable comfort. It loses all the certain- 
 ty and personal graciousness of Christianity. 
 There is no piety about it. ... David's pil- 
 grims going through the vale of misery " use 
 it " for a well. . . . It was not simply a sorrow 
 that was succeeded by joy, not merely a peace 
 promised and looked for and waited for, it 
 was a peace found. When they grew thirsty 
 they looked, not merely farther on into the 
 heart of the future, but deeper down into the 
 bosom of the present. 
 
 VI. 23, 24. 
 
 Some narrow hearts there are 
 That suffer blight when that they fed upon 
 As something to complete their being fails; 
 And they retire into their holds and pine, 
 And, long restrained, grow stern. But some 
 
 there are 
 
 That in a sacred want and hunger rise. 
 And draw the misery home and live with it, 
 And excellent in honor wait, and will 
 That something good should yet be found in it, 
 Or wherefore were they born ? 
 
 JEAN INGELOW.
 
 FEBRUARY 20. 51 
 
 HOW to secure humility is one of the hard 
 problems of all systems of duty. ... It 
 is the oneness of the soul's life with God's 
 life that at once makes us try to be like Him 
 and brings forth our unlikeness to Him. It is 
 the source at once of aspiration and humility. 
 The more aspiration, the more humility. Hu- 
 mility comes by aspiration. If, in all Christian 
 history, it has been the souls which most looked 
 up that were the humblest souls; if the Chris- 
 tian man keeps his soul full of the sense of 
 littleness, even in all his hardest work for 
 Christ, not by denying his own stature, but 
 by standing up at his whole height, and then 
 looking up in love and awe and seeing God 
 tower in infinitude above him, certainly all 
 this stamps the morality which is wrought out 
 with the idea of Jesus with this singular es- 
 sence, that it has solved the problem of faith- 
 fulness and pride, and made possible humility 
 by aspiration. 
 
 VIII. 66. 
 
 All service should be done for Thee 
 In meek humility 
 
 And awe most sweet, 
 That Thou shouldst take, 
 E'en for Thy Son Christ Jesus' sake, 
 
 Service from servants so unmeet. 
 
 ANNA E. HAMILTON.
 
 52 FEBRUARY 21. 
 
 Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also 
 reap. GAL. vi. 7. 
 
 He which soweth sparingly shall reap also spar- 
 ingly ; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap 
 also bountifully. 2 COR. ix. 6. 
 
 '"FHE world seems to be a great field in which 
 * every man drops his seed, and which 
 gives back to every man, not just the same 
 thing which he dropped there, any more than 
 the brown earth holds up to you in the autumn 
 the same blackberry which you hid under its 
 bosom in the spring, but something which has 
 its true correspondence and proportion to the 
 seed to which it is the legitimate and natural 
 reply. Every gift has its return, every act 
 has its consequence, every call has its answer 
 in this great live, alert world, where man stands 
 central, and all things have their eyes on Him 
 and their ears open to His voice. III. 265. 
 
 Sow truth if thou the truth wouldst reap; 
 
 Who sows the false shall reap the vain; 
 Erect and sound thy conscience keep; 
 
 From hollow deeds and words refrain. 
 
 Sow love, and taste its fruitage pure; 
 
 Sow peace, and reap its harvest bright; 
 Sow sunbeams on the rock and moor, 
 
 And find a harvest-home of light. 
 
 HORATIUS BONAR.
 
 FEBRUARY 22. 53 
 
 Great Truths are portions of the soul of man; 
 
 Great souls are portions of eternity; 
 Each drop of blood that e'er through true 
 heart ran 
 
 With lofty message, ran for thee and me. 
 
 IT is the great patriots that interpret the 
 value of their country to the common cit- 
 izen. The man absorbed in his own small 
 affairs, or so restricted in his power of thought 
 that he would never have taken in the national 
 idea for himself abstractly, sees how Wash- 
 ington and Webster and Lincoln loved the 
 land; and through their love for it, its worthi- 
 ness of his own love becomes made known to 
 him. Still his love for his country, when it is 
 awakened, is his own, and may impel him to 
 serve her in most peculiar personal ways, very 
 different from theirs, but none the less it is 
 true that but for the interpretation of these 
 great men's honor for her, he would have hon- 
 ored his country less or not at all. They in- 
 terpret to their fellow-men what God has first 
 interpreted to them, till ultimately the fire 
 which starts from the central heart of all 
 runs through the world, and the blindest are 
 enlightened to discern, and the most timid be- 
 come bold enough to praise, the movement 
 which at first had no friend but God. 
 
 V. 328, 338. 
 
 And shall we praise ? God's praise was his 
 
 before ; 
 
 And on our futile laurels he looks down, 
 Himself our bravest crown! 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
 
 54 FEBRUARY 23. 
 
 Great peace have they which love Thy law. 
 
 Ps. cxix. 165. 
 
 A RE you at peace with yourself ? If your 
 ** will is taking your powers, which were 
 made to do noble and gentle and generous 
 things, and forcing them to do sordid and 
 brutal and mean things; if you are living a 
 life of miserable drudgery, treating yourself 
 like a machine; or if you are living a life of 
 dissipation, treating yourself like a brute, then 
 you are not at peace with yourself surely. 
 Yourself is misusing, is abusing yourself. . . . 
 A man is both harp and harper. The harp 
 may not complain, but all the time the music 
 it was meant to make sleeps in its strings; and 
 it cannot be at peace with the cruel fingers 
 that make it unmusical. And in your powers 
 sleeps the nobleness that they were made to 
 do, in everlasting protest against the wicked- 
 ness to which you compel them. O my dear 
 friends, to be at peace with ourselves is not to 
 loosely approve ourselves in what we are. It 
 is to work with ourselves, that we may be all 
 
 that God made us for. 
 
 VI. 194. 
 
 " Couldst thou in vision see 
 
 Thyself the man God meant, 
 Thou never more wouldst be 
 The man thou art content."
 
 FEBRUARY 24. 55 
 
 Of these men which have companied with us, . . . 
 must one be ordained to be a witness with us of 
 His resurrection. . . . And the lot fell upon 
 Matthias. ACTS i. 22, 26. 
 
 TTOWEVER the Gospel may be capable of 
 * * statement in dogmatic form, its truest 
 statement we know is not in dogma but in per- 
 sonal life. ... So I think a man's best ser- 
 mon is the best utterance of his life. ... If 
 it is really God's message through him, it 
 brings him out in a way that no other expe- 
 rience of his life has power to do, as the 
 quality of the trumpet declares itself more 
 clearly when the strong man blows a blast 
 for battle through it than when a child whis- 
 pers into it in play. Remember this: . . . 
 then, when you hear your brother preach, 
 honor the work that he is doing and listen as 
 reverently as you can to hear through him 
 some voice of God. . . . He is the mes- 
 senger of Christ to the soul of man always. 
 
 XI. 27, 135, 140. 
 
 O Almighty God, who didst choose Thy faithful servant 
 Matthias to take part in the ministry and apostleship from 
 which Judas by transgression fell ; Grant that Thy Church, 
 preserved from false Apostles, may ever be blessed with 
 faithful Ministers of Thy word and sacraments ; through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 
 
 MEXICAN PROVISIONAL OFFICES.
 
 56 FEBRUARY 25. 
 
 As Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, 
 that they also may be one in us. JOHN xvii. 21. 
 
 WHO can read words like these and not 
 catch sight of what it was that was to 
 fill these disciples' lives with energy, and to 
 be the atmosphere wherein their new goodness 
 should get all its growth? God's fatherhood 
 made visible to them in Christ, His Son; their 
 sonship to God made visible in Christ, their 
 brother. It was as if at the beginning of all 
 ages down which their Christian life has run, 
 they lay, like Jacob on the night when he went 
 out to his new life from his father's home, and 
 to them, as to him, a ladder seems to stretch 
 up into heaven, and the angels of God ascend- 
 ed and descended on it, the angels of duty 
 bringing God's strength to men, and carrying 
 men's obedience to God, on the ladder of the 
 fatherhood and sonship that bound the heav- 
 ens to the earth, set up in the new Beth-el, 
 the new House of God, which was the life of 
 Jesus. 
 
 VIII. 60. 
 
 By eyes that are pure and hearts that are clean, 
 At morn and at eve is a Ladder still seen: 
 And the angels still come, and the angels still 
 
 go 
 To the hands lifted up, from the heads bended 
 
 low, 
 With the blessings He gives and the thanks 
 
 that we say, 
 With the grace that we need and the worship 
 
 we pay. 
 
 J. L. M. W.
 
 FEBRUARY 26. 57 
 
 O YOUNG disciples, whatever other kind 
 of falseness to your faith you may fall 
 into, may you be saved at least from ever 
 being ashamed of it. It is the noblest, the 
 divinest, thing on earth. You may have only 
 got hold of the very borders of it, but if in any 
 true sense you can say, " Jesus is the Lord," 
 you have set foot into the region wherein man 
 lives his completest life. Go on, without one 
 thought or dream of turning back, and with 
 no shamefaced hiding of the new mastery under 
 which you are trying to live. If your Chris- 
 tian service is too small in its degree for you 
 to boast of, it is too precious in its kind for 
 you to be ashamed of. Go on forever craving 
 and forever winning more faith and obedience, 
 and so learning more and more forever that 
 faith and obedience are the glory and crown 
 
 of human life. 
 
 VI. 100. 
 
 Life may be given in many ways, 
 And loyalty to Truth be sealed 
 
 As bravely in the closet as the field, 
 
 So bountiful is fate; 
 But then to stand beside her, 
 When craven churls deride her, 
 
 To front a lie in arms and not to yield, 
 This shows, methinks, God's plan 
 And measure of a stalwart man. 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
 
 58 FEBRUARY 27. 
 
 HOW in a time like this can a man live and 
 get the best out of it, and at the same 
 time shun its worst? Here in this time of un- 
 certainties, here in this wandering transition 
 age, we are to live, whether we will or no. . . . 
 And what can one do with his own personal 
 life to keep it from complete confusion, and, if 
 it be possible, to make it grow strong and 
 rich and true, out of these very circumstances 
 which, perhaps, we hopelessly deplore ? . . . 
 Above all things, there is the strength and per- 
 manence of religion. Never was there such a 
 time for a man to cling to that. " Ah, but," 
 you say, "that is the most uncertain of all 
 things ! What is more unsettled than relig- 
 ion ?" But no, my friends. . . . The knowl- 
 edge that love is at the root of everything; the 
 answer of the human soul to the appealing 
 nature and life of Jesus Christ; the value of 
 the soul above the body, of the character 
 above the circumstances; and the eternal 
 life, these are what men may cling to. If 
 any man does cling to these, he is really upon 
 a rock, and whatever else which he thought 
 was rock may prove to be ice and melt away, 
 here he is safe. Here is the great, last cer- 
 tainty. Be sure of God. With simple, loving 
 worship, by continual obedience, by purifying 
 yourself even as He is pure, creep close, keep 
 close to Him. I. 172, 173. 
 
 With Thee our souls in peace abide; 
 In Thee heaven's childhood we begin; 
 Thy kingdom we shall enter in, 
 Not pure, but purified. 
 
 LUCY LARCOM.
 
 FEBRUARY 28. 59 
 
 Then Jesus took unto Him the twelve, and said 
 unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all 
 things that are written concerning the Son of man 
 shall be accomplished. LUKE xviii. 30. 
 
 A XI) so every true life has its Jerusalem to 
 which it is always going up. At first 
 far off and dimly seen, laying but light hold 
 upon our purpose and our will, then gradually 
 taking us more and more into its power, com- 
 pelling our study, directing the current of our 
 thoughts, arranging our friendships for us, de- 
 ciding for us what powers we shall bring out 
 into use, deciding for us what we shall be. . . . 
 You stop the student at his books, the philan- 
 thropist at his committee, the saint at his 
 prayers. You say to each of them, "What 
 does it all mean ? What are you doing ? What 
 is it all for ? " And the answer is everywhere 
 the same : " Behold, we go up to Jerusalem." 
 We draw back the vail of history, and every- 
 where it is the same picture that we see. 
 Companies, great and small, climbing moun- 
 tains to where sacred cities stand awaiting 
 them with open gates upon the top. The man 
 who is going up to no Jerusalem is but the 
 ghost and relic of a man. He has in him no 
 genuine and healthy human life. 
 
 IV. 317. 
 
 Yea, very vain 
 
 The greatest speed of all these souls of men, 
 Unless they travel upward to Thy throne ! 
 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
 
 60 MARCH i. 
 
 Whose high endeavors are an inward light 
 That makes the path before him always 
 
 bright; . . . 
 
 Who, doomed to go in company with pain, 
 Turns his necessity to glorious gain. 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 IF the life which you have chosen to be your 
 life is really worthy of you, it involves 
 self-sacrifice and pain. If your Jerusalem 
 really is your sacred city, there is certainly 
 a cross in it. What then ? Shall you flinch 
 and draw back ? Shall you ask for yourself 
 another life ? O no, not another life, but 
 another self. Ask to be born again. Ask 
 God to fill you with Himself, and then calmly 
 look up and go on. Go up to Jerusalem ex- 
 pecting all things that are written concerning 
 you to be fulfilled. Disappointment, mortifi- 
 cation, misconception, enmity, pain, death, 
 these may come to you, but if they come to 
 you in doing your duty it is all right. "It 
 cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jeru- 
 salem," said Jesus. "It is dreadful to suffer 
 except in doing duty. To surfer there is glori- 
 ous." That is our translation of his words 
 into our own life. 
 
 IV. 331. 
 
 One endless living story! 
 
 One poem spread abroad! 
 And the sum of all our glory 
 
 Is the countenance of God. 
 
 GEORGE MACDONALD.
 
 MARCH 2. 61 
 
 The time is short. i COR. vii. 29. 
 
 THE shortness of life is closely associated, 
 not merely with the great hopes of the 
 future, but with the real vitality of the pres- 
 ent. What then ? If you and I complain how 
 short life is, how quickly it flies through the 
 grasp with which we try to hold it, we are 
 complaining of that which is the necessary 
 consequence of our vitality. You can make 
 life long only by making it slow; and if you 
 want to make it slow, I should think there 
 were men enough in town who could tell 
 you how, men with idle hands and brains, 
 who seem to have so much trouble to get 
 through life as it is that we cannot imagine 
 that they really wish that there were more of 
 it. ... The shortness of life is bound up 
 with its fulness. It is to him who is most ac- 
 tive, always thinking, feeling, working, caring 
 for people and for things, that life seems 
 short. Strip a life empty and it will seem 
 long enough. 
 
 I. 318, 319. 
 
 He liveth long who liveth well, 
 All other life is short and vain; 
 
 He liveth longest who can tell 
 Of living most for heavenly gain. 
 
 Waste not thy being; back to Him 
 Who freely gave it, freely give; 
 
 Else is that being but a dream 
 "Pis but to be, and not to live. 
 
 HORATIUS BONAR.
 
 62 MARCH 3. 
 
 '"THE more we watch the lives of men, the 
 I more we see that one of the reasons why 
 men are not occupied with great thoughts and 
 interests is the way in which their lives are 
 overfilled with little things. It is not that 
 you deliberately dislike thought and study 
 and benevolence. It is mainly that you are 
 so busy with amusement and society and idle- 
 ness that you are living such an unprofitable 
 life. It is not that you despise the highest 
 hopes and interests of your immortal nature 
 that you neglect them so. It is that your 
 passions crowd so thick about you that you 
 are entirely occupied with them. . . . You 
 have got to say to these crowding passions of 
 yours: " Stand aside. Leave my soul open, 
 that it and God, it and duty, may come to- 
 gether; " making an emptiness about the soul 
 that the higher fulness may fill it. It may be 
 temporary. Once more the lower needs may 
 fasten on us, the lower pleasures try to satisfy 
 us; but they never can be quite so arbitrary 
 and arrogant as they were, after they have 
 once had to yield to their superiors. . . . 
 Perhaps some day they may themselves be- 
 come, and dignify themselves by becoming, 
 the meek interpreters and ministers of those 
 very powers which they once shut out from 
 the soul. II. 206, 209, 212. 
 
 For when thou seekest not altogether visible things to 
 
 enjoy them, 
 
 But beholdest them to bless the name of thy Creator 
 Fashioning to thyself out of the highest and lowest of His 
 
 works a sort of ladder, 
 
 On which thou mayest lean to get upwards 
 Thou shall be delivered from the baneful snares of this 
 
 world. THOMAS A KEMPIS.
 
 MARCH 4. 63 
 
 THE purpose of God's government, the one 
 design on which it all proceeds, is that 
 the whole world, through obedience to Him, 
 should be wrought into His likeness, and made 
 the utterance of His character. . . . With 
 wills harmonized with His will; with souls that 
 love and hate in truest unison of sympathy with 
 His; with no purposes left in us but His pur- 
 poses, then we have come to what He wants 
 the world to come to. We have taken our 
 places in the slowly rising temple of His will. 
 To whatever worlds Fie carries our souls when 
 they shall pass out of these imprisoning 
 bodies, in those worlds these souls of ours 
 shall find themselves part of the same great 
 temple; for it belongs not to this earth alone. 
 There can be no end of the universe where 
 God is to which that growing temple does 
 not reach, the temple of a creation to be 
 wrought at last into a perfect utterance of 
 God by a perfect obedience to God. n. 69, 71. 
 
 Thy wonderful grand will, my God; 
 
 Triumphantly I make it mine; 
 And faith shall breathe her glad " Amen " 
 
 To every dear command of Thine. 
 
 Beneath the splendor of Thy choice, 
 Thy perfect choice for me, I rest; 
 
 Outside it now I dare not live, 
 Within it I must needs be blest. 
 
 Then may Thy perfect, glorious Will 
 
 Be evermore fulfilled in me, 
 And make my life an answering chord 
 
 Of glad, responsive harmony. 
 
 JEAN SOPHIA PIGOTT.
 
 64 MARCH 5. 
 
 HE who has lived in the form of an experi- 
 ence looks back, while he who has en- 
 tered into the substance and soul of an expe- 
 rience looks forward. " The outward man 
 perishes," as Paul says, " but the inward man 
 is renewed day by day." The perishing of a 
 form and method in which we have lived may 
 naturally bring a pensive sadness like that 
 which always comes to us as we watch a set- 
 ting of the sun, but he who is in the true spirit 
 of the sunset turns instantly from the west- 
 ward to the eastern look. The things the 
 day has given him, its knowledge, and its 
 inspirations, and its friendship, and its faith, 
 these the departing sun is powerless to carry 
 with it. They claim the new clay in which to 
 show their power and to do their work. Live 
 deeply and you must live hopefully. That is 
 the law of life. 
 
 VI. 329. 
 
 Though this very day 
 Casts but a dull stone on Time's heaped-up 
 
 cairn, 
 A morning light will break once more and 
 
 draw 
 
 The hidden glories of a thousand hues 
 Out from its crystal depths and ruby-spots 
 And sapphire-veins, unseen, unknown before. 
 
 Time 
 
 Is God's, and all his miracles are His; 
 And in the Future he overtakes the Past, 
 Which was a prophecy of times to come. 
 
 GEORGE MACDONALD.
 
 MARCH 6. 65 
 
 Men see not the bright light which is in the 
 clouds. JOB xxxvii. 21. 
 
 THE sense of human pain grows stronger all 
 the time. And it sometimes seems as 
 if the sense of purpose and education grew 
 weaker in a multitude of souls. It is the 
 heart of man taken, Balaam-like, to a place 
 whence it can see the part and not the whole; 
 and who that listens does not hear the mut- 
 tering of the curse ? Where is the help, first 
 for your soul, then for the whole great world ? 
 Not in saying that pain is not pain, not in 
 shutting the eyes to the part which is so aw- 
 fully manifest, but in seeing, in insisting upon 
 seeing, the whole. 
 
 " To feel, although no tongue can prove, 
 That every cloud that spreads above, 
 And veileth love, itself is love." 
 
 That is the only help. He who lets his 
 heart bear witness, he who lets the experience 
 of countless sufferers bear witness, he who 
 lets Christ bear witness, that no suffering ever 
 yet came to any human creature by which it 
 was not possible that that human creature 
 should be made better and purer and great- 
 er, he has caught sight of the whole; and 
 though he walks in silence and perplexity and 
 suspense, he does not curse. 
 
 VI. 222. 
 
 Knowing that here we live but in a tent, 
 And that our house is yonder, without fail. 
 GEORGE MACDONALD.
 
 66 MARCH 7. 
 
 Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the 
 wilderness to be tempted of the devil, 
 
 MATT. iv. i. 
 
 THE temptation of Jesus is certainly a very 
 wonderful event. There is no incident 
 in all His history on which the imagination 
 may expend itself with a more lavish spec- 
 ulation; and, on the other hand, there is 
 none that comes nearer to practical life with 
 stimulus and comfort. . . . The man who has 
 seen Christ tempted will not deny temptation 
 thenceforth. He will not be found explaining 
 it away. He will not delude himself with 
 vain hopes of escaping it and living a smooth, 
 untempted life. He will read in the tempta- 
 tion of the perfect Life that that is impossible 
 forever for any man. When he is depressed 
 and hungry and exhausted, he will look for the 
 devil as his Lord did, and when he sees him 
 corning, when lie hears his words and feels 
 the desire of sin stirring in his heart, he will not 
 say, " Oh, this is nothing but one stage of my 
 growth." He will recognize the old enemy 
 of his Master coming for the old battle, and 
 gather up his strength and pray for his Mas- 
 ter's strength in the hour of terrible, inevita- 
 ble struggle. VII. 130, 133. 
 
 Distrust thyself, but trust His grace, 
 
 It is enough for thee : 
 In every trial thou shalt trace 
 
 Its all-sufficiency. 
 
 Distrust thyself, but trust His strength : 
 
 In Him thou shalt be strong : 
 His weakest ones may learn at length 
 
 A daily triumph-song. 
 
 FRANCES R. HAYKKGAL.
 
 MARCH 8. 67 
 
 SURELY it always must be full of meaning, 
 that Christ Himself, before He began His 
 struggles with the Pharisees and Scribes, went 
 out into the desert and struggled with Him- 
 self. . . . Many a time the wilfulness, and 
 narrowness, and selfishness which He saw in 
 the faces which surrounded Him in some 
 crowd in the temple must have been clearer to 
 Him and easier to understand, because they 
 were just the passions which had tried to take 
 possession of His own heart, and failed, dur- 
 ing those long terrible days in the dark wilder- 
 ness. And oh! my friends, there is no way in 
 which whatever personal struggles with faith- 
 lessness and sin we may have gone through 
 can be made to keep their freshness and power, 
 and at the same time be kept from becoming 
 a source of morbid wretchedness, no way that 
 is half so efficient as that they should con- 
 stantly be called on to light up for us the 
 same sort of struggles in other men, and give 
 us the power to help them with intelligence 
 and sympathy. Demand that lofty service 
 of every deep experience through which you 
 pass. Demand that it shall help you under- 
 stand and aid the battles of your brethren. 
 
 VI. 84, 85. 
 
 So thou wilt be sterner foe, 
 So thou wilt be dearer friend; 
 
 So the saints thy name shall know, 
 And Christ own thee at the end. 
 
 CANTICA SPIRITUALIS.
 
 68 MARCH 9. 
 
 Command that these stones be made bread. 
 
 MATT. iv. 3. 
 
 IF we had stood there and heard the Satanic 
 demand made we should have waited, stop- 
 ping our breath to hear some supreme asser- 
 tion of the Godhead that repelled so low an 
 insult. "Go to men," we should have lis- 
 tened for the Lord to say " go to men with 
 arguments like those. Their natures are built 
 to answer such appeals. All that a man hath 
 will he give for that life which bread must 
 feed." . . . 
 
 I love Christ all the more when I see how 
 different His answer was from that. I love 
 Him when I see Him declare Himself a man, 
 and from the human standpoint fling aside 
 the tempter's plea v I reverence and cling to 
 the true human nature that there was in Him 
 when I hear Him go back and take up the 
 words that had been on human lips, that de- 
 clared the resources of human nature, that 
 asserted the higher life in Man: " It is writ- 
 ten, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by 
 every word that proceedeth out of the mouth 
 of God." The danger is to us who hold so 
 much to the divinity of Christ that His human- 
 ity will mean too little. Let us remember 
 that in times such as this of the temptation 
 there is a strength for us in the thought that 
 it was a Man who fought and conquered, 
 which no simple assurance of His being God 
 could give. VII. 151, 152. 
 
 For in that He himself hath suffered, being 
 tempted, He is able to succor them that are tempted. 
 
 HEB. ii. 18.
 
 MARCH 10. 69 
 
 YOU cannot be man and live a man's life 
 without coming into this world where 
 sin is and where you must be tried. That 
 great temptation that comes swaggering up 
 and frightening you so has got the best part 
 of your character held under his brawny arm. 
 You cannot get it without wrestling with him 
 and forcing it away from him. That moun- 
 tain that towers up and defies you has got 
 your spiritual health away up on its snowy 
 summit. That is what shines there in the sun. 
 You cannot reach it except by the terrible 
 climb. Ask yourself what you would have 
 been if you had never been tempted, and own 
 what a blessed thing the educating power of 
 temptation is. And then ... as Christ's 
 temptation was vicarious, and when He con- 
 quered He conquered for others besides Him- 
 self, so it was with us. There are men and 
 women all around us who have got to meet 
 the same temptations that we are meeting. 
 Will it help them or not to know that we have 
 met them and conquered them ? Will it help 
 us or not to know that if we conquer the 
 temptation we conquer not for ourselves only, 
 but for them ? The vicariousness of all life! 
 There is not one of us who has not some one 
 more or less remotely fastened to his acts, 
 concerning whom he may say, as Christ said, 
 " For their sakes I sanctify myself." 
 
 VII. 140, 141. 
 
 Nor knowest thou what argument 
 Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. 
 
 EMERSON.
 
 70 MARCH n. 
 
 Count it all joy that ye fall into divers tempta- 
 tions. JAMES i. 2. 
 
 HOW strange it seems to us that there 
 should be such a thing as temptation in 
 the world at all! God sends us into the world 
 and hangs in the great distance before us cer- 
 tain lofty prizes goodness, truth, purity 
 which He has made our hearts capable of de- 
 siring. . . . But we have not really started 
 towards them before the presence of another 
 power begins to show itself. Hands pluck at 
 us to draw us out of the straight way. Voices 
 call to us with enticements or with threats to 
 make us turn aside. . . . No adoption of 
 any strict rule of life, no separation of our- 
 selves from a certain region of dangerous 
 occupations, sets us free from the persecution 
 of temptation. We are tempted to sin every- 
 where. It is pathetic, almost terrible, to think 
 how long this has been going on. Through 
 all those weary years which it tires us to think 
 of, they have been so many; through all those 
 monotonous generations that we hear flowing 
 on endlessly through the cavernous depths of 
 history, as one listens to a stream dropping 
 down monotonously forever underground; 
 through all the years and generations of 
 human life men have been tempted not one 
 that ever lived that did not meet this persist- 
 ent, intrusive enticement to sin. VII. 130. 
 
 Now, the training, strange and lowly, 
 
 Unexplained and trying now : 
 Afterward, the service holy, 
 
 And the Master's " Enter thou ! " 
 
 FRANCES R. HAVERGAL.
 
 MARCH 12. 71 
 
 Will He plead against me with His great power? 
 No ; but He would put strength into me. 
 
 JOB xxiii. 6. 
 
 FOR years you have lived, it may be, a se- 
 cluded and protected life. " Lead me 
 not into temptation," so you have prayed 
 every morning, and every day has brought 
 the answer to your prayer. But some day all 
 that breaks and goes to pieces. A great 
 temptation comes and is not hindered. Then 
 you cry out for the old mercy and it is not 
 given. . . . And then, behold what comes! A 
 new mercy! You go into the temptation. Your 
 old security perishes, but by and by out of its 
 death comes a new strength. Not to be saved 
 from dying but to die and then to live again 
 in a new security, a strong and trusty charac- 
 ter, educated by trial, purified by fire, that 
 is what comes as the issue of the whole. Not 
 a victory for you, preserving you from danger, 
 but a victory in you, strengthening you by 
 danger, that is the experience from which 
 you go forth, strong with a strength which 
 nothing can subdue. 
 
 V. 35- 
 
 Oh, may we follow undismayed 
 Where'er our God shall call! 
 
 And may His spirit's present aid 
 Uphold us lest we fall! 
 
 Till in the end of days we stand 
 
 As victors in a deathless land. 
 
 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN.
 
 72 MARCH 13. 
 
 The mind shall banquet, though the body pine. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 HEALTH, companionship, life itself, these 
 are no longer indispensable when Christ 
 has shown us God. A resignation that is not 
 despair, but aspiration; a looser grasp on 
 time, that means how strongly we are holding 
 to eternity; this must come to us when, after 
 all our doing of little temporary things, we 
 have at last begun in Christ the life and work 
 that is to go on forever and forever. Then 
 even the most essential things of this world 
 we can do without, if need be. We have 
 passed from the lower to the higher necessi- 
 ties. We walk by faith, and not by sight. 
 Already, even while we are yet in the flesh, 
 before we cross the river, the promise finds 
 its fulfilment. We live in the world, but we 
 do not live by the world. Already the sun is 
 no more our light by day; neither for bright- 
 ness does the moon give light unto us; but the 
 Lord is unto us an everlasting light, and our 
 God our glory. I. 298. 
 
 Light of the world! for ever, ever shining; 
 
 There is no change in Thee; 
 True Light of life, all joy and health enshrin- 
 ing, 
 
 Thou canst not fade nor flee. 
 
 Thou hast arisen, but Thou descendest never; 
 
 To-day shines as the past; 
 All that Thou wast Thou art, and shalt be 
 ever, 
 
 Brightness from first to last! 
 
 HORATIUS IjUNAR,
 
 MARCH 14. 73 
 
 Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O wo- 
 man, great is thy faith : be it unto thee even as thou 
 wilt. MATT. xv. 25. 
 
 FAITH is the necessary power that the 
 weaker has over the stronger, the lower 
 over the higher. . . . This power comes to 
 perfection in Jesus. Could there be a more 
 complete picture of it than shines out in His 
 own story of the shepherd and the sheep ? 
 The shepherd has folded his ninety-and-nine; 
 everything is safe and strong and prosperous; 
 he stands with his hand upon the sheepfold 
 gate; and then, just as he seems all wrapped 
 up in the satisfaction and completeness of the 
 sight, there comes, so light that no ear except 
 his can hear it, the cry of one poor lost sheep 
 off in the mountains, and it summons him with 
 an irresistible challenge, and his staff is in his 
 hand instantly, and he turns his back on 
 everything else to be the slave of that one 
 lost sheep till it is found. What a wonderful 
 and everlasting and universal story that par- 
 able is! III. i 74 , i 75 . 
 
 He bendeth low from His holy hill 
 Searching the shadows gray and chill, 
 And clear through the angel-singing 
 
 What time the sons of God 
 Shout loud, for joy upspringing, 
 
 Till all the heavens are bowed 
 He hears the faintest sighing 
 
 Of some poor, far-off soul, 
 Who turns to look to the holy place 
 
 While the billows round him roll. 
 
 B. M.
 
 74 MARCH 15. 
 
 / seek not mine own will, but the will of the 
 father who hath sent me. JOHN v. 30. 
 
 IT was in His sonship to God that the secret 
 of the holiness of Jesus lay. His Father's 
 business was the sum of all His life. . . . 
 The model and the impulse of all duty He car- 
 ried in His own filial heart, which was forever 
 bearing witness to Him of His Father's per- 
 fectness. His incarnate days, with all their 
 common duties held and illuminated in that 
 high consciousness of sonship, must have been 
 one with the eternity of the past and the eter- 
 nity that was to be. Duty must have been its 
 own revealer and its own reward. Liberty 
 must have been sublimely consistent with the 
 most scrupulous obedience. The doing right 
 and the being right must have been like the 
 sunshine and the sun. And what duty was to 
 our Master it shall be to us just as soon as we 
 are filled with His idea, just as soon as His 
 spirit bears witness with our spirits that we are 
 
 the sons of God. 
 
 VIII. 70. 
 
 For what is freedom but the unfettered use 
 Of all the powers that God for use had given ? 
 But chiefly this, Him first, Him last to view 
 Through meaner powers and secondary things 
 Effulgent, as through clouds that veil His 
 blaze. S. T. COLERIDGE.
 
 MARCH 16. 75 
 
 No man cometh unto the Father but by Me. 
 
 JOHN xv. 6. 
 
 BY the power of Christ we may all come 
 near to God too, and have from out the 
 open door of His sanctuary, to which we have 
 fled, His view of mortal life and all its inter- 
 ests. For us, too, this world's existence may 
 subside into its clearly marked circles, and we 
 may see as God sees where each circle ends; 
 see how the selfishnesses soon die out; see 
 how the affections sweep out into wider lines; 
 see how nothing but the highest loves reach 
 out into infinity and send life forward into 
 eternity. These times, when we are nearest 
 to God, are the times when this world's things 
 show their true values to us. Do you not 
 know that ? Do you remember how it all 
 looked to you when you came home from the 
 funeral, not morbid with hopeless sorrow, but 
 seeming to be above the world, and to be 
 standing with the friend who had gone, in the 
 presence of the throne of God ? Do you 
 remember how things changed their relative 
 importance to you then, how the last were 
 first and the first were last, as they shall be 
 on the judgment day ? . . . You were above 
 complaints and small trials. You had entered 
 into the sanctuary of God, and you saw the 
 end of these things. 
 
 VI. 121. 
 
 The Almighty's shadow is a starlit night; 
 His cloud is ever full of hidden light. 
 
 SAMUEL LONGFELLOW.
 
 76 MARCH 17. 
 
 '"THE great truth of Christianity, the great 
 truth of Christ, is that sin is unnatu- 
 ral. . . . And that which is unnatural is not 
 by any necessity permanent. The struggle of 
 all nature is against the unnatural to dislodge 
 it and cast it out. That beautiful struggle 
 pervades the world. It is going on in every 
 clod of earth, in every tree, in every star, and 
 in the soul of man. First to declare and then 
 to strengthen that struggle in the soul of man 
 was the work of Christ. That work still lin- 
 gers and fails of full completion, but its power 
 is present in the world. When He takes pos- 
 session of a nature He quickens that struggle 
 into life. No longer can that nature think 
 itself doomed to evil. . . . The wonder is 
 not that it should some day be cast out; the 
 wonder is that it should ever have come in. 
 The victory promised in a sinless Son of man 
 is already potentially attained in the intense 
 
 conception of its naturalness. 
 
 VI. 65. 
 
 Courage! we travel through a darksome cave; 
 But still, as nearer to the light we draw, 
 Fresh gales will reach us from the upper air, 
 And wholesome dews of heaven our forehead 
 
 lave, 
 
 The darkness lighten more, till full of awe, 
 We stand in the open sunshine unaware. 
 
 R. G. TRENCH.
 
 MARCH 18. 77 
 
 YOU never did a sin that did not give its 
 warning to you before you did it. ... 
 Perhaps you did not hear, but it was not that 
 the warning bell did not ring. Perhaps you 
 called that first sign of weakness a mere acci- 
 dent, and tried to believe that it meant noth- 
 ing, but if you gave your thought to it you 
 knew ... it was the house's feeble timbers 
 creaking before their fall. There are such 
 warnings of coming sins that every one of us 
 has received sins yet undone; sins which, it 
 may be, are to make our whole life dark some 
 day, whose threatening we can read, if we are 
 wise enough, in something that has come to us 
 already. . . . 
 
 Life is full of such warnings. No man 
 grows to be more than a mere boy without 
 learning on what side of his moral nature he 
 will fall if he falls at all. Every one of us 
 knows, who is in the least thoughtful, what 
 sort of villain he would be if he grew villain- 
 ous. Thank God, these warnings may save 
 us from the things they warn us of. These 
 blessed bells that ring out in the darkness may 
 turn us resolutely off from the cruel surf that 
 roars behind them. 
 
 VII. 121, 122. 
 
 Man is no star, but a quick coal 
 
 Of mortal fire: 
 Who blows it not, nor doth control 
 
 A faint desire, 
 Lets his. own ashes choke his soul. 
 
 GEORGE HERBERT.
 
 78 MARCH 19. 
 
 The mystery of iniquity. 2 THESS. ii. 7. 
 
 HPHERE is something oppressive, something 
 * terrible, in this great mysterious pres- 
 ence of sin right in our midst, so that nothing 
 goes on save in its shadow, no state is 
 formed, no family grows up, no social com- 
 pact is organized, no character matures with- 
 out its blighting mixture. Right in our midst, 
 and yet no voice of man or God is opened to 
 tell us how it came here. . . . [Yet] there was 
 a time when it was not, there was a moment 
 when it began to be. . . . There is no other 
 way of explaining the strange fact that amid 
 all the personal badness, and social corruption 
 that is in the world, the human mind has been 
 able to preserve the ideal of a pure society and 
 a perfect life, to dream of it, sometimes to 
 strive after it, except by acknowledging the 
 reality of an entrance of iniquity into the 
 world, and looking back to a time before that 
 invasion when the world was sinless. 
 
 VI. 9, 4- 
 
 My own hope is, a sun will pierce 
 
 The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; 
 
 That after Last returns the First, 
 
 Though a wide compass round be fetched ; 
 
 That what began best can't end worst, 
 Nor what God blest once, prove accurst. 
 
 BROWNING.
 
 MARCH 20. 79 
 
 That whosoever believeth in Him should not 
 perish, but have everlasting life. JOHN iii. 16. 
 
 WE have spoken of the mysteriousness of 
 sin in its origin and operations. It 
 would be cruel, false, and unchristian if I 
 closed without telling you of the diviner mys- 
 tery in which human iniquity finds its cure. 
 The first thought round which the grand won- 
 der of the atonement grows into shape is this 
 thought of sin as a real live thing standing 
 forth to be fought with, to be conquered, to 
 be killed. . . . To meet that enmity, to slay 
 that giant, Christ comes forth with his won- 
 derful nature. He undertakes a distinct and 
 dreadful struggle. We see its outward mani- 
 festation in the agony of the cross. All the 
 deeper battle goes on out of our sight. We 
 know not how it fares till the word of God 
 comes to tell us that the victory is won by our 
 Redeemer, and that Satan is trodden into death 
 by the dying Christ. Of all the Mystery of 
 Iniquity, where is the Mystery like this ? You 
 see how true a mystery it is. Nothing but the 
 fact we know. . . . That shining, splendid 
 fact, that gracious, glorious fact the fact of 
 the Lord's victory and of Satan's fall stands 
 forth so clear that none can doubt it. It takes 
 its place as the one certain, central fact of 
 hope. By it the living live, by it the dying 
 die; in it the glorified rejoice forever. 
 
 VI. 14, 15-
 
 8o MARCH 21. 
 
 Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, 
 Why could not we cast him out ? 
 
 MATT. xvii. 9. 
 
 HE tells them that the reason of their failure 
 is that they have been trying to do by 
 themselves what they can only do when He is 
 behind them, when their natures are so open 
 that His strength can freely flow out through 
 them. . . . Look at the artist's chisel. 
 " Why cannot I carve ?" it cries. And then 
 the artist comes and seizes it. The chisel lays 
 itself into his hand, and is obedient to him. 
 That obedience is faith. It opens the chan- 
 nels between the sculptor's brain and the hard 
 steel. Thought, feeling, imagination, skill 
 flow down from the deep chambers of the 
 artist's soul to the chisel's edge. The sculp- 
 tor and the chisel are not two, but one. It is 
 the unit which they make that carves the 
 statue. 
 
 This is our principle, then. The unit of 
 power for moral victory in other words, for 
 goodness on the earth is not man and is not 
 God. It is God and man, not two, but one, 
 not meeting accidentally, not running together 
 in emergencies only to separate again when 
 the emergency is over; it is God and man 
 belonging essentially together, God rilling 
 man, man opening his life by faith to be a part 
 of God's, as the gulf opens itself and is part 
 of the great ocean. 
 
 III. 181, 185.
 
 MARCH 22. 81 
 
 When I am weak, then I am strong. 
 
 2 COR. xii. 10. 
 
 IF the condition for which man was made was 
 a related, a bound up, a dependent condi- 
 tion, then the highest human happiness must 
 always come with the most complete conform- 
 ity to that first idea of human life. If depend- 
 ence, then, be happiness, . . . independence 
 of God, self-sufficiency, must be unhappiness. 
 And since suffering, in all its various depart- 
 ments, is the breaking up of self-sufficiency, of 
 self-confidence, is it not evident that, rightly 
 used, it may be the setting free of the human 
 soul from an unnatural and forced condition, 
 into its natural, intended, and so happiest 
 life ? . . . Anything in body, brain, or heart 
 that gets that idea of insufficiency home to us, 
 may set us to digging beneath the self-surface 
 of our vale of misery to find the God below 
 for which the thirsty soul was made. . . . 
 Prosperity is unconscious of God. Suffering, 
 whether we will or no, has to be conscious of 
 him. 
 
 VI. 29, 30. 
 
 Submit thy sorrow and thy soul to God, 
 And learn what peace it is to kiss His rod, 
 Who answers wishes ere they turn to prayers, 
 And with His blessings takes us unawares. 
 ABRAHAM PERCY MILLER.
 
 MARCH 23. 
 
 No man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by 
 the Holy Ghost. i COR. xii. 3. 
 
 NO soul is too low to be brought by the Holy 
 Spirit to the place where, answering 
 back by the divine within it to the divine 
 above it, it may say that " Jesus is the Lord." 
 No soul is too high to find in that announce- 
 ment of its faith the consummation of its life. 
 Here, then, is where the highest and the low- 
 est meet. Here is where they have met 
 through all the ages. Glorious thinkers, great 
 strong workers, sufferers whose lives were 
 miracles of patience, all of these singing as 
 they went their ways, " Jesus is Lord, Jesus is 
 Lord." And all around them, and in among 
 them, dull, plodding souls, and minds whose 
 thought was all confused and bewildered with 
 emotion, and little children, with their crude 
 clear pictures in their simple brains, all these 
 too singing, in their several tones and with 
 their several clearness, "Jesus is Lord, Jesus 
 is Lord." . . . 
 
 And oh, my friends, remember that the own- 
 ing of Christ's mastery here is but the begin- 
 ning of the participation in Christ's glory in 
 heaven. VI. 106, 107. 
 
 Oh, let Christ and sunshine in, 
 Let His Love its sweet way win ! 
 Nothing human is too mean 
 To receive the King unseen; 
 Not a pleasure or a care 
 But celestial robes may wear: 
 Impulse, thought, and action may 
 Live immortally to-day. LUCY LARCOM.
 
 MARCH 24. 83 
 
 If ye have faith) and doubt not. 
 
 MATT. xxi. 21. 
 
 ("^ ET rid of the awful assumption that it 
 ^-^ [si 11 ] is bound up in your constitution; 
 cease to be a weak fatalist about it. ... There 
 are few things more constantly marvellous 
 about our human nature than its power of ac- 
 climating itself in moral and spiritual regions 
 where it once seemed impossible that it should 
 live at all. The tree upon the hillside says: 
 " Here and here alone can I live. Here my 
 fathers lived in all their generations. . . . 
 Take me down to the plain and ! shall die." 
 The gardener knows better. He takes the 
 doubting and despairing plant and carries it, 
 even against its will, to the broad valley, and 
 sets it where the cold winds shall not smite it, 
 and where the rich ground feeds it with luxu- 
 riance. And almost as they touch each other 
 the ground and the root claim one another, 
 and rich revelations of its own possibility 
 flood the poor plant and fill it full of marvel 
 
 with itself. 
 
 VI. 68. 
 
 For all grows sweet in Thee 
 Since Thou didst gather us in One, and bring 
 This fading flower of our humanity 
 To perfect blossoming. 
 
 DORA GREENWELL.
 
 84 MARCH 25. 
 
 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see 
 God. MATT. v. 8. 
 
 THROUGH the mists of long and devout 
 tradition which have obscured her char- 
 acter and made her very person almost myth- 
 ical, we are surprised sometimes in reading the 
 Gospels at the clearness and simplicity with 
 which Mary the mother of our Lord stands 
 out before us there. She speaks only on three 
 occasions, but . . . those three utterances of 
 hers are like three clear notes of a bell, that 
 show how sound and rich its metal is. Think 
 what they were. In the presence of the mes- 
 senger who comes to tell her of her great 
 privilege she bows her head and says, " Behold 
 the handmaid* of the Lord. Be it unto me 
 according to thy word." When she finds her 
 Son in the temple she cries out to Him, " Son, 
 why hast Thou thus dealt with us ? Thy father 
 and I have sought Thee sorrowing." When 
 she stands with Him before the puzzled guests 
 at Cana she turns to the servants and says, 
 "Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it." 
 The young soul's consecration! The mother's 
 overrunning love! The disciple's perfect loy- 
 alty! What can be clearer than the simple, 
 true, brave, loving woman that those words 
 reveal? 
 
 V. 340. 
 
 Still to the lowly soul 
 
 He doth himself impart, 
 And for His cradle and His throne 
 
 Chooseth the pure in heart. 
 
 KEBLE.
 
 MARCH 26. 85 
 
 In Thy light shall we see light. 
 
 Ps. xxxvi. 9. 
 
 STAND where you cannot see man's great- 
 ness, and the Incarnation seems a wild, 
 inexplicable dream. Stand where no music 
 reaches you from the deep harmonies of man's 
 present spiritual life, and it is out of your 
 power to believe in heaven. Lose sight of 
 sin, and the darker possibilities of eternity are 
 hideous impossibilities. The religious truth 
 which you see by itself, out of its position in 
 the great whole which ought to hold it, fails 
 to bear witness of its truth. Strive then for 
 wholes, and let the parts reveal themselves 
 within them. Strive for God, who is the 
 
 whole By obedience, by communion, 
 
 climb to the height where you shall be with 
 God, and then the truths about God shall open 
 their reasonableness, their richness, and their 
 harmony. 
 
 VI. 22O. 
 
 For no man by himself is able to investi- 
 gate this mystery; 
 
 Nor is it grasped by human wisdom; 
 But rather by the strength of faith, 
 And the intuition of a pure mind, 
 Enlightened from above. 
 
 THOMAS A KEMPIS.
 
 86 MARCH 27. 
 
 T^HE age of real faith does not covet again 
 * the chains of superstition. The world at 
 peace does not ask to be shaken once more by 
 the earthquakes of war. But faith does feel the 
 beauty of complete surrender which supersti- 
 tion kept for its sole spiritual virtue; and 
 peace, with its diffused responsibility, is 
 kindled at thought of heroic and unquestion- 
 ing obedience which the education of war pro- 
 duced. Still let superstition and war lie dead. 
 We will not call them back to life; but we will 
 borrow their jewels of silver and jewels of gold 
 as we go forth into the wilderness to worship 
 our God with larger worship. Do you not feel 
 this is in all the best progress ? Do you not see 
 it in the eyes of mankind, in the depths of the 
 eyes of mankind always, as it turns away from 
 the dead forms of its old masters and goes 
 forth into the years to be; the hoarded power 
 of the past glowing beneath the satisfaction 
 of the present and the fiery hope of the un- 
 known future ? VI. 62. 
 
 Out of the years bloom the eternities! 
 
 And nothing dies that ever was alive; 
 
 All that endears 
 
 And sanctifies the human must survive; 
 Of God they are, and in His smile they thrive 
 
 The immortal years! 
 
 LUCY LARCOM.
 
 MARCH 28. 87 
 
 They say imto Him, We have here but five 
 loaves, and two fishes. He said, Bring them 
 hither to me. MATT. xiv. 17, 18. 
 
 SURELY, the act is a very striking one. . . . 
 Our first notions of a Deity are of One 
 who is above all law and order and economy. 
 Let the poor be niggardly, a slave to rules, 
 counting over his little stock, squeezing every 
 penny that he pays; but let the Ail-Powerful 
 be open-handed, counting as nothing what 
 other beings must save, originating life when- 
 ever life is needed, full of an easy spontaneity, 
 flinging the miracles of creation everywhere. 
 But it is striking to see how, as men go on and 
 learn more of God, these ideas which were at 
 first cast almost indignantly out of their con- 
 ception of Him, gradually come back and are 
 set in the place of highest honor. It is God's 
 highest glory that He is a God of Law. Con- 
 tinuousness is the crown of His government. 
 That He brings every future out of some past 
 is the charm of all His government. That 
 He lets nothing go to waste is the highest per- 
 fection of His boundless resource. Continuity 
 and economy are His solemn foot-prints by 
 which we trace His presence in our world. 
 The need of evolution, the necessity that 
 everything which is to be should come out of 
 something which has been before, and the 
 abhorrence of waste, continuity and econ- 
 omy, these are the proof-marks of Divinity. 
 
 II. 129, 130. 
 
 Earth holds heaven in the bud . our perfection there has 
 to be developed out cf our imperfection here. 
 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
 
 88 MARCH 29. 
 
 ""THERE is the surface sight of life, which is 
 1 bright and enthusiastic. There is the 
 sight of life which is deeper than this, which 
 is sad and puzzled. There is the deepest 
 sight of all, which is bright again with a truer 
 light, and enthusiastic again with a soberer 
 but a more genuine happiness. . . . There 
 come forth adaptations for the higher work in 
 things which have seemed wholly unfitted to 
 produce the lower. Things which never could 
 have made a man happy, develop a power to 
 make him strong. Strength and not happi- 
 ness, or rather only that happiness which 
 comes by strength, is recognized as the end of 
 human living. II. 151, 153. 
 
 " Give me the wine of happiness," I cried, 
 ' The bread of life! Oh ye benign, unknown, 
 Immortal powers ! I crave them for mine own ; 
 I am athirst, I will not be denied 
 Though hell were up in arms!" No sound 
 
 replied; 
 
 But turning back to my rude board and lone, 
 My soul, confounded, there beheld a stone, 
 Pale water in a shallow cup beside! 
 With gushing tears, in utter hopelessness, 
 I stood and gazed. Then rose a voice that 
 
 spoke: 
 " God gave thee this, and what He gives will 
 
 bless." 
 And 'neath the hands that trembling took and 
 
 broke, 
 
 Lo, truly, a sweet miracle divine 
 The stone turned bread, the water ruby wine! 
 
 STUART STERNE.
 
 MARCH 30. 89 
 
 If He should make my web a blight 
 Of life's fair picture of delight, 
 My heart's content would find it right. 
 
 EMERSON. 
 
 AMONG the tests of men there stands very 
 high this power to do without. . . . 
 But then this power of doing without some 
 things is, at its bottom, a power of not doing 
 without some other things. We are rescued 
 from the abject slavery of the lower by enter- 
 ing into the absolute servantship of the higher. 
 He to whom honor is necessary can do with- 
 out money. He who must have goodness can 
 get along without praise. He who must have 
 God's communion can do without the sweet 
 companionships of fellow-men. He who can- 
 not lose his eternity can easily cast aside time 
 and the body which belongs to it, and by the 
 martyr's slow or sudden death exchange 
 the visible for the invisible, the symbol for 
 the reality. Nay, he who values most intensely 
 his friend's or his child's eternal life can, not 
 easily but still not grudgingly, let go the joy 
 and daily comfort of his friend's or his child's 
 hourly presence, and see him die that he may 
 enter into life. On these two ladders, as it 
 were, by these two scales, the order of human 
 character mounts up, the power to do with- 
 out and the power not to do without. 
 
 I. 292. 
 
 Not for ourselves alone we strive, 
 Since thy perfection manifest 
 Bids self resign what self desired, 
 Postponing good for best. 
 
 BLISS CARMAN.
 
 90 MARCH 31. 
 
 We wrestle . . . against powers. 
 
 EPHES. vi. 12. 
 
 OT. PAUL believed in spirits good and bad. 
 ^ The beauty of his belief in them was 
 that, different as they might be from us in the 
 conditions of their life, they still belonged to 
 the same great moral system to which he be- 
 longed. The good spirits were not to be pro- 
 pitiated, and the evil spirits were not to be 
 disarmed by magic and incantations. He who 
 did righteousness called to himself the most 
 mysterious strength of the unseen worlds. . . . 
 For him all good beings fought; against his 
 simple righteousness all evil beings would beat 
 themselves in vain, and ultimately must go 
 down and fail, here or beyond the stars. That 
 is a noble faith. In the simplicity and gran- 
 deur of a faith like that, man will some day 
 come once more to the now almost lost belief 
 in the connection of his life with unseen spirit- 
 ual powers. 
 
 VI. 75- 
 
 While we discern it not, and least believe, 
 On stairs invisible betwixt His heaven 
 And our unholy, sinful, toilsome earth 
 Celestial messengers of loftiest good 
 Upward and downward pass continually. 
 ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
 
 APRIL i. 91 
 
 MEN talk very religious men as if God 
 were a sort of reserve force, to be called 
 in when He was needed, a sort of last resort 
 when man's strength failed. . . . The thought 
 of God which Christ came to reveal, the 
 thought of God of which all Christ's own life 
 was full, is something totally different from 
 that. To Christ's thought God and man are 
 part of one system one structure, one work- 
 ing-force. To separate them is not simply to 
 deny man a power that he needs : it is to break 
 a unity, and to set a part of the power to the 
 attempt to do what the whole power ought to 
 do as one. ... It is engine and steam that 
 are to make the running power. It is artist 
 and chisel that are to carve the statue. It is 
 God and you that live your life. For you to 
 try to live it alone is to try to do all the work 
 with one part of the power. God is not a 
 crutch coming in to help your lameness, un- 
 necessary to you if you had all your strength. 
 He is the breath in your lungs. The stronger 
 you are, the more thoroughly you are your- 
 self, the more you need of it, the more you 
 need of Him. 
 
 VI. 102, 103. 
 
 He breathed forth His spirit 
 Into the slumbering dust, and upright stand- 
 ing, it laid its 
 Hand on its heart, and felt it was warm with 
 
 a flame out of heaven. 
 
 Quench, oh, quench not that flame! It is the 
 breath of your being. 
 
 LONGFELLOW.
 
 92 APRIL 2. 
 
 TN a picture by Domenichino at Bologna, an 
 * angel stands at the foot of the empty cross, 
 and tries with his finger one of the sharp points 
 in the crown of thorns which the Saviour had 
 worn during His passion. It is all a sad in- 
 explicable wonder to him. It appeals to no 
 experience of wickedness and woe in his pure 
 and angelic nature. But when you or I take 
 the crown of thorns into our hands we know in 
 our own hearts the meanness, the jealousy, the 
 hatred which it represents. . . . With simple 
 wonder an angel might walk through our 
 State Prison halls; but a man must walk there 
 full of humbleness and charity; for, as the 
 best man that ever lived finds something of 
 common humanity in us which makes his good- 
 ness seem not impossible to us, so the worst of 
 men stirs by the sight of his human sin some 
 sense of what human power of sinfulness we 
 
 too possess. 
 
 I. 251. 
 
 How much, preventing God, how much I owe 
 To the defences Thou hast round me set, 
 
 Example, custom, fear, occasion slow, 
 These scorned bondsmen were my parapet. 
 I dare not peep over this parapet 
 
 To gauge with glance the roaring gulf below, 
 The depths of sin to which I had descended, 
 Had not these me against myself defended. 
 
 EMERSON.
 
 APRIL 3. 93 
 
 MEN cry to-day, " Christianity is the re- 
 ligion of the rich and comfortable, "and 
 while they speak their cry is drowned in the 
 rush of the poor, the hungry, and the wretched 
 to some common men's revival. They cry 
 again, " The Christian belief belongs to the 
 ignorant," and lo, the wisest thought of the 
 world comes back again, as it is ever coming, 
 to the mystery of Christ and of His treatment 
 of the soul of man. It is not that they have 
 mistaken the class to which they should assign 
 the Christian faith. Their mistake is in giving 
 it to any class. It belongs to the individual. 
 It always has its eyes fastened on him. One 
 of the noblest functions of Christianity in the 
 world is to lie behind the class crystallizations 
 of mankind, like a solvent into which they 
 shall return and blend with one another, to 
 crystallize, no doubt, again, but always to be 
 reminded that the classes into which they crys- 
 tallize are lesser facts than the manhood into 
 which they are repeatedly dissolved. 
 
 VIII. 114. 
 
 For the love of God is broader 
 
 Than the measures of man's mind; 
 
 And the heart of the Eternal 
 Is most wonderfully kind. 
 
 But we make His love too narrow 
 
 By false limits of our own; 
 And we magnify His strictness 
 
 With a zeal He will not own. 
 
 There is plentiful redemption 
 In the blood that has been shed; 
 
 There is joy for all the members 
 
 In the sorrows of the Head. FABER.
 
 94 APRIL 4. 
 
 Through Jesus Christ. ROM. vi. 23. 
 
 IN Jesus of Nazareth appeared the Mediator 
 by whom was to be the Atonement. His 
 was the life and nature which, standing be- 
 tween the Godhood and the manhood, was to 
 bridge the gulf and make the firm, bright road 
 over which blessing and prayer might pass and 
 repass with confident, golden feet for ever. . . . 
 But from which side did the bridge spring ? 
 Who moved toward the reconciliation ? It is 
 the most precious part of our belief that it was 
 with God that the activity began. It is the 
 very soul of the Gospel, as I read it, that the 
 Father's heart, sitting above us in His holi- 
 ness, yearned for us as we lay down here in 
 our sin. And when there was no man to make 
 an intercession, He sent His Son to tell us of 
 His love, to live with us, to die for us, to lay His 
 life like a strong bridge out from the divine 
 side of existence, over which we might walk, 
 fearfully but safely, back into the divinity 
 where we belonged. Through Him we have 
 access to the Father. As the end was divine 
 so the method is divine. As it is to God that 
 we come, so it is God who brings us there. I 
 can think nothing else without dishonoring 
 the tireless, quenchless love of God. i. 237. 
 
 The exhibition of so great a love and mercy is 
 
 a very deep abyss, 
 And as it were a divine sea which can not be 
 
 swum over, 
 
 Yet in which the spiritual fishes, small and great, 
 Whom Thou hast inclosed in the net of faith, 
 Swim to and fro. THOMAS A KEMPIS.
 
 APRIL 5. 95 
 
 T^HERE comes no real content to the seeker 
 after goodness until, behind all the pat- 
 terns which hold themselves up to him with 
 pride and boasting in their practicalness, at 
 last he hears the voice of the sublime imprac- 
 ticable standard, far out beyond them all, call- 
 ing to him, " Be ye perfect as your Father in 
 heaven is perfect." Then the finite has heard 
 the voice of the infinite to which it belongs, to 
 which it always will respond, and straightway 
 it settles down to its endless journey and goes 
 on content. 
 
 III. 121. 
 
 I toil, but I must also climb; 
 What soul was ever quite at ease 
 Shut in by earthly boundaries ? 
 
 I am not glad till I have known 
 Life that can lift me from my own: 
 A loftier level must be won, 
 A mightier strength to lean upon. 
 
 And heaven draws near as I ascend; 
 The breeze invites, the stars befriend: 
 All things are beckoning towards the Best: 
 I climb to Thee, my God, for rest. 
 
 LUCY LARCOM.
 
 96 APRIL 6. 
 
 TS it not wonderful to see how few sins in this 
 world are done flatly, fairly, blankly, as 
 sins ? We carry our consciences by side at- 
 tacks, by elaborate strategies and artifices. 
 We almost never charge up in the face of our 
 sense of right and take it by assault. It is a 
 very rare thing, I think much rarer than we 
 are often ready to suppose, for a man to say 
 to himself, this thing is bad, bad and not 
 good, certainly and necessarily nothing but 
 bad, and yet I will do it. . . . Covetousness 
 dresses itself in the decent robes of prudence, 
 idleness calls itself innocence, prodigality goes 
 garbed as generosity, they all masquerade 
 through society and trap the souls of men. . . . 
 We have our sins here all decently labelled, all 
 decently clad. What if He came, the Spirit 
 of all truth, and wiped out every false name 
 and wrote up every true one! We tremble to 
 think of what ' these walls must see. We 
 should not dare look upon one another's 
 shame, bowed down each with the supreme 
 shamefulness of his own. 
 
 VI. ii, 13. 
 
 Into the truth of things, 
 
 Out of their falseness rise, and reach thou, and 
 remain. 
 
 BROWNING.
 
 APRIL 7. 97 
 
 If any man will do His will, he shall know of 
 the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I 
 speak of myself > JOHN vii. 17. 
 
 I HAVE been struck by seeing how favorite 
 a text that has become in our day. . . . 
 Many and many a soul has found that that was 
 indeed the message that it needed. Turning 
 away from vain disputes of words, leaving 
 theological subtleties alone, just trying to 
 turn what it knew of Christ into a life, it has 
 found that it has become assured of His divin- 
 ity, sure that His doctrine was of God. Such 
 souls have not found that the thousand curious 
 questions of theology were answered, and all 
 the mystery rolled away out of the sky of 
 truth. Christ did not promise that. But they 
 have found what He did promise: that com- 
 ing near to Him in obedience, they have been 
 made sure of the true divinity that was in Him 
 and in the teachings that he gave. . . . 
 
 It is like all Christ's teachings, one utter- 
 ance of an essential universal truth. Every- 
 where the flower of obedience is intelligence. 
 . . . Obey Jesus with cordial loyalty and you 
 will understand Jesus. Not by studying Him, 
 but by doing His will, shall you learn how 
 divine He is. Obedience completes itself in 
 understanding. 
 
 I. 32. 
 
 For meek Obedience, too, is Light, 
 And following that is following Him. 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 7
 
 9 8 
 
 In the wilderness shall waters break out, and 
 streams in the desert. Is. xxxv. 6. 
 
 A MAN loses his friend and he is sorry; he 
 loses his property and he is crushed; he 
 loses his health and he almost gives up; but 
 there is a yet untasted woe of which that man 
 knows nothing. . . . Let him find himself 
 a sinner, let him stand guilty, guilty, without a 
 plea, without a hope, just with his frightened 
 and naked soul before the eye of God, and 
 then in the conviction of sin, then he has found 
 what suffering is. ... He walks the valley 
 of his misery and all is dark. And can this 
 valley break forth into wells ? Can these dry 
 pools be filled with water ? . . . Tell me, 
 all ye who, bowed down in the dust in the 
 humiliation of your worthlessness, have heard 
 there, with your face close to the ground, 
 what you could never hear while you stood 
 upright, the streams of pardon running sweet 
 music down below, tell me, is not the well of 
 richest joy right here in the midst of the val- 
 ley of completest sorrow ? where sin abounded 
 does not grace much more abound ? 
 
 VI. 31. 
 
 Yea, though I sin, my sin is not to death; 
 In my repentance I have joy, such joy 
 That I could almost sin to seek for it 
 Yes, if I did not hate it and abhor, 
 And know that Thou abhorr'st and hatest it, 
 And will'st, for an example to the rest, 
 That Thine elect should keep themselves from 
 it. 
 
 ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
 
 APRIL 9. 99 
 
 THE truth which God gives us is like the 
 wheat that a bounteous country sends 
 into the city. It is all the same wheat; but 
 men go and buy it and eat it, and this same 
 identical wheat is turned into different sorts 
 of force in different men. It is turned into 
 bartering force in one, and thinking force in 
 another, and singing force in another, and 
 governing force in another. It is made mani- 
 fold as soon as it passes into men. So I think 
 every minister finds that, as his disciples grow 
 older, if he has really succeeded in getting the 
 truth to be their truth, they grow into more 
 various forms of Christian charity and useful- 
 ness. Each grows more evidently to be not 
 merely a Christian, but the Christian that God 
 intended him to be. They think more. They 
 think differently. The pure white light breaks 
 itself to each in different colors. 
 
 Let us rejoice in the clear individuality of 
 maturing Christian life. Its one principle is 
 still identical; and so it already prophesies 
 heaven, where we are sure we shall be all 
 different illustrations of the one same grace, 
 showing different characters, set to different 
 works, but all moved by one spirit all illustra- 
 tions of the one same grace still. n. 44, 45. 
 
 Lord, make me one withThine own faithful ones, 
 Thy Saints who love Thee, and are loved by 
 
 Thee, 
 
 Till the day break and till the shadows flee, 
 At one with them in alms and orisons; 
 At one with him who toils and him who runs, 
 And him who yearns for union yet to be. 
 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
 
 ioo APRIL 10. 
 
 One star differ eth from another star in glory. 
 
 i Cor. xv. 41. 
 
 m an who is a Christian must live a 
 * ' Christian life that is peculiarly his own. 
 Every candle of the Lord must utter its pecul- 
 iar light; only the true individuality of faith 
 is marked by these characteristics which res- 
 cue it from bigotry: first, that it does not add 
 something to the universal light, but only 
 brings out most strongly some aspect of it 
 which is specially its own; second, that it 
 always cares more about the essential light 
 than about the peculiar way in which it utters 
 it; and third, that it easily blends with other 
 special utterances of the universal light, in 
 cordial sympathy and recognition of the value 
 which it finds in them. Let these character- 
 istics be in every man's religion, and then the 
 individuality of faith is an inestimable gain. 
 Then the different candles of the Lord burn in 
 long rows down His great palace-halls of the 
 world; and all together, each complementing 
 all the rest, they light the whole vast space 
 
 with Him. 
 
 II. 14. 
 
 " Slender the streams of good 
 That flow from the lives of men, 
 
 But united they swell to a gracious flood 
 That blesseth again and again."
 
 APRIL IT. 101 
 
 And the multitudes that went before, and that 
 followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of 
 David ; Blessed is He that cometh in the name of 
 the Lord. . . . And when He was come into Jeru- 
 salem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this ? 
 
 MATT. ix. 10. 
 
 SO Jesus came into Jerusalem. He came at 
 once as an Intruder and a King. There 
 were men . . . who made the old streets ring 
 with shouts of welcome. There were other 
 men who . . . with muttered curses saw 
 Him go by in His triumph. But through it 
 all Jesus held on His way, claiming the town 
 for His town because it was His Father's. 
 
 And so he claims our hearts. An Intruder 
 and a King at once He seems to those hearts 
 as He stands there on the threshold. There 
 is something in every one of them that says to 
 Him, "Come in, come in!" There is some- 
 thing, too, in every one of them that rises up 
 at His coming and says, " Begone, begone! 
 We will not have this Man to rule over us." 
 But through their tumult, their struggle, 
 Christ, whether He be King or Intruder, 
 whether He be welcomed or rejected, goes on 
 His way, pressing on into each heart's most 
 secret places, claiming always that He and He 
 alone is the heart's King. VII. 220. 
 
 Lord, we would fain some little palm-branch lay 
 
 Upon Thy way . . . 
 If but the foldings of Thy garment's hem 
 
 Shall shadow them, 
 These worthless leaves which we have brought and strewed 
 
 Along Thy road 
 Shall be raised up and made divinely sweet, 
 
 And fit to lie beneath Thy feet. 
 
 SUSAN COOLIDGE.
 
 102 APRIL 12. 
 
 He goeth before you into Galilee. 
 
 MATT, xxviii. 7. 
 
 "THIS is Christ's way. Wherever He would 
 1 have His disciples go, He goes first Him- 
 self, and through the door which He has 
 opened He draws them by His love. That is 
 the whole philosophy of Christian culture. 
 And that is the meaning of the Incarnation. 
 God entered into human life; made Himself 
 one with it as He only could have done with 
 a nature that was originally one with His own. 
 He became man as He could not have become 
 brute or stone. Then in that human nature 
 He outwent humanity. He opened yet un- 
 opened gates of human possibility. He 
 showed what man might be, how great, how 
 god-like ! And by the love and oneness He has 
 always been claiming man for the greatness 
 whose possibility He showed. As we think 
 of the Incarnation deeply, these three stages 
 come in one thought. First, the God in Christ 
 seems very near to us as we think of His love. 
 Then He seems very far above us as we think 
 of His holiness, and then again He seems to 
 bring us very near to Himself as we feel His 
 power. He is one with us. He goes beyond 
 us, and He comes again and receives us unto 
 Himself. VI. 179. 
 
 Ah, the dear message that He gave her then, 
 
 Said for the sake of all bruised hearts of men ! 
 
 " Go, tell those friends who have believed on Me, 
 
 I go before them into Galilee : 
 
 " Into the life so poor, and hard, and plain, 
 That for a while they must take up again, 
 My presence passes. Where their feet toil slow, 
 Mine, shining-swift with love, still foremost go." 
 ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY.
 
 APRIL 13. 103 
 
 Who is among you that feareth the Lord, . . . 
 that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? let 
 him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon 
 his God. Is. i. 10. 
 
 "\I7HAT shall I do with this sorrow that 
 ** God has sent me ?" " Take it up and 
 bear it, and get a strength and blessing out of 
 it." "Ah, if I only knew what blessing there 
 was in it, if I saw how it would help me, then I 
 could bear it like a plume ! " " What shall I 
 do with this hard, hateful duty which Christ 
 has laid right in my way?" "Do it, and 
 grow by doing it." "Ah, yes; if I could only 
 see that it would make me grow!" In both 
 these cases do you not see that what you are 
 begging for is not more faith, although you 
 think it is, but sight ? You want to see for your- 
 self the blessing in the sorrow, the strength in 
 the hard and hateful task. Faith says not, 
 " I see that it is good for me, and so God must 
 have sent it," but " God sent it, and so it 
 must be good for me." 
 
 V. 351. 
 
 Hast thou forgotten that we v/alk by faith ? 
 For keenest sight but multiplies the shows. 
 Lift up thine eyelids; take a valiant breath; 
 Fearful, dare yet the terror in God's name; 
 Step wider, trust the Invisible. 
 
 GEORGE MACDONALD.
 
 104 APRIL 14. 
 
 Father, save me from this hour : But for this 
 hour came I into the world. Father, glorify Thy 
 name. JOHN xii. 27, 28. 
 
 NO duty of doing frightens and dismays the 
 human soul like the duty of mere suffer- 
 ing. I know nothing that will so cow and 
 crush a strong, well man, with the red blood 
 riotous in his full veins, as a certain convic- 
 tion coming suddenly upon him that he is to 
 be a poor, miserable, dependent invalid all 
 the rest of his days until he dies. Nothing 
 makes a man cry out to die like that. It is the 
 most terrible sight one ever sees. . . . And 
 then it is the most beautiful sight one ever 
 sees. As the man lies there in his misery, out 
 of the darkness comes his past and reads itself 
 to him. Each bright old year of health comes 
 with its message of God's unforgetting 
 love. . . . He slowly sees that all the past 
 of active duty was stocking his life with the 
 graces that should fit him for these slow years 
 of suffering duty. This bed of wretchedness 
 was the result to which every path of educa- 
 tion led. Slowly his soul accepts the lesson. 
 " Father, save me from this hour. Nay, for 
 this purpose came I unto this hour. Father, 
 glorify Thy name." Then the hands drop 
 patiently from their resistance. The meek 
 lips are put up to taste the bitter cup. The 
 life grows happy in its new enlightenment of 
 pain. 
 
 "' ' Glory to God, to God ! ' he saith ; 
 
 ' Knowledge by suffering entereth, 
 
 And life is perfected by death.' " 
 
 VII. 228.
 
 APRIL 15. 105 
 
 / am the bread of life. 
 He that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me. 
 
 JOHN vi. 35, 57. 
 
 TO feed on Christ is to get His strength into 
 us to be our strength. You feed on the 
 cornfield and then go and build your house, 
 and it is the cornfield in your strong arm that 
 builds the house, that cuts down the trees and 
 piles the stone and lifts the roof into its place. 
 You feed on Christ and then go and live your 
 life, and it is Christ in you that lives your life, 
 that helps the poor, that tells the truth, that 
 fights the battle, and that wins the crown. 
 
 But what is this strength of Christ that 
 comes to us ? It is His character, His 
 strength, His purity, His truth, His merciful- 
 ness, in one word, His holiness, the perfect- 
 ness of His moral life. That is the inner 
 strength. That is the strength of food. 
 
 And notice how this last alone is vital. It 
 alone makes life. It lives. The buttress keeps 
 the dead wall standing, but the sap makes the 
 live tree still more alive with growth. So com- 
 pulsion and fear keep us true to duty, but love 
 makes us larger and fit for greater duty every 
 day. Every vital strength must be the strength 
 which incorporates itself with the very being of 
 the thing that it supports. Except we eat we 
 can have no life in us. II. 246, 242. 
 
 Lord, evermore give us this bread. JOHN vi. 34. 
 
 Lord, leave us not athirst, unfed, . . . 
 Until, these mortal needs all past, 
 We sit at Thy full feast at last, 
 The bread of angels broken by Thee, 
 The wine of joy poured constantly. 
 
 SUSAN COOLIDGE.
 
 106 APRIL 16. 
 
 
 
 Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man. 
 
 JOHN xix. 5. 
 
 THINK of Christ's life and death, not with 
 reference to the mysterious redemptive 
 efficac)' that was in it, but as the great human 
 life, the representative life that set forth the 
 ideal experience and culture of a human soul. 
 And surely it does not fail us here. Whatever 
 else comes to a life, there is a final grace and 
 greatness which it cannot have until it has 
 been touched by pain. I do not speak it 
 sentimentally. I do not mean the mere pa- 
 thetic romance which gives a charm to the 
 story of the unfortunate. I mean the very 
 stuff and qualities of our manhood those 
 things which make us really and completely 
 men. . . . Maturity of character is as sure a 
 sign of some healthy experience of pain, how- 
 ever secret, as the brilliancy and clearness of 
 a bit of glass is of the fire through which it 
 has passed. 
 
 We do not dishonor the humanity of Jesus 
 when we thus make it the type of what ours 
 may be. He wanted and He loves to have us 
 use it so. " As I am, so are ye in this world," 
 He declared. Only remember He is not only 
 pattern, but power. We must be like Him, 
 but we cannot be, save as He makes us. We 
 must come to Him, but we can only come to 
 Him by His grace and help. VII. n, 12. 
 
 Thou art our Pattern to the end of time, 
 Oh Crucified! and perfect is Thy will: 
 
 The workers follow Thee in doing good; 
 The helpless think of Calvary, and are still. 
 
 CAROLINE M. NOEL.
 
 APRIL 17. 107 
 
 THE broken edges everywhere! The half- 
 finished tasks that men have to leave and 
 go into the darkness! The young careers so 
 full of promise that suddenly stop! The great 
 ideas and wishes, growing legitimately out of 
 earthly life, yet evidently too large for it, find- 
 ing no satisfaction here! And most of all the 
 unfinished characters! I can think that it is 
 no great thing for a man to die with his for- 
 tune half made, or his barn half built; but 
 that he should die just as his character is 
 rounding into shape, and from a crude study 
 becoming a picture of beauty and an engine of 
 power, this is what most bewilders us. This 
 is what most of all, I think, has made men 
 guess that this earthly life we see is a part and 
 not a whole, and set their eyes pathetically 
 searching for that other world they thought 
 must be beyond the waters. 
 
 XI. 15. 
 
 Still must we hope what we believe, 
 And what is given us receive; 
 Must still believe, for still we hope 
 That in a world of larger scope 
 What here is faithfully begun 
 Will be completed, not undone. 
 
 ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
 
 io8 APRIL 18. 
 
 If after the manner of men I have fought with 
 beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the 
 dead rise not 1 i COR. xv. 32. 
 
 YOU can test the work that you are en- 
 gaged in in the world by seeing whether 
 it needs, whether it is restless and cramped 
 without the truth of, an immortality. If it is 
 not, if you can do your little fight just as well 
 without any hope of an eternity, be sure the 
 fight that you are at is a poor one, is not 
 worthy of your highest powers is too small a 
 fight for a man, a child of God, to spend his 
 life in fighting. 
 
 The world's poor heart knows very well 
 what it wants. For years and years it longed 
 to see one-man rise from the dead. If it could 
 only have that! It could let many other ques- 
 tions go unanswered, but, oh, for some light 
 on that darkness oh, for some sound out of 
 that silence! If it could have that, then its 
 bonds would be broken, its whole pale life 
 flooded with color, its best truths verified com- 
 pletely, and a hope lighted upon every grave. 
 No longer should spiritual philosophy labor 
 under the burden of materialism; no longer 
 should the dying die in terrible doubt, and the 
 mourners go hopelessly about the streets. My 
 friends, the world's prayer is answered. A 
 true man has risen from the grave. Life and 
 immortality are brought to light. 
 
 XII. 29. 
 
 Most human and yet most divine, 
 The flower of man and God! 
 
 WHITTIEK.
 
 APRIL 19. 109 
 
 TTOW this "power of the resurrection" 
 ^ transfigures and changes not merely all 
 internal, but all external things! . . . The 
 world itself, even material nature trees and 
 fields and skies, noontimes and mornings, sun- 
 sets and midnights cannot be the same when 
 they are found to be the education-place of a 
 being with a destiny such as the resurrection 
 of Jesus Christ makes known for man. They 
 must bring moral meanings to that soul which 
 this new truth of immortality exalts to be the 
 monarch of the world. You say that this is 
 poetry. There is no poetry on the earth like 
 the Christian's faith, that most noble of all 
 creative powers, "the substance of things 
 hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." 
 And so it is the commonest Christian conscious- 
 ness, belonging to all Christian minds in their 
 several degrees, that to them, with their new 
 life, the whole world of nature became new 
 too, had new words to speak to them of God 
 and of eternity, and that all through their 
 lives there are times when the enlightened uni- 
 verse becomes vocal, and its visible realities 
 impart to them 
 
 " Authentic tidings of invisible things, 
 Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power, 
 And central peace subsisting at the heart 
 Of endless agitation." 
 
 VII. 283.
 
 no APRIL 20. 
 
 Handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh 
 and bones as ye see me have. LUKE xxiv. 39. 
 
 IN these words Christ after His resurrection 
 appeals to His disciples to bear witness 
 that He is a true living man, and not a dis- 
 embodied spirit. He bids them use their 
 human senses to discover that He is truly 
 human like themselves. The words therefore 
 may represent to us the perpetual appeal which 
 Christ makes to our human consciousness and 
 to the perceptions of mankind to recognize 
 His true humanity. As He then offered His 
 human body for the inspection of His disci- 
 ples, and bade them own that it was truly a 
 man's body, so He is always offering His 
 whole human nature and calling on men to 
 witness that He is truly human in thought and 
 feeling and character, the pattern and fulfil- 
 ment of humanity. 
 
 There are two knowledges of Christ, one 
 lower and one higher. The first knowledge 
 brings us to obedience. The second knowl- 
 edge is the power of spiritual growth. 
 
 Into that higher knowledge may we all ad- 
 vance; making Christ ours first, that in the 
 end He may make us His. With reverent 
 hands may we handle Him and see that He is 
 truly manly, that He really wears our human- 
 ity, that so we may through His humanity 
 come to the Father God whom He reveals. 
 
 II. 253, 269.
 
 APRIL 21. in 
 
 In your patience possess ye your souls. . . . Your 
 redemption draweth nigh. LUKE xxi. 19, 28. 
 
 THE world is growing better I know it. A 
 great unceasing movement toward truth 
 and goodness is carrying slowly forward ever 
 the character of this great, mighty, mysterious 
 humanity. How slow it is, but oh, how real 
 it is, the study of the ages tells. And yet 
 behold how the good causes fail. Behold how 
 selfishness comes in to paralyze each great 
 endeavor for the good of man. Alas for him 
 who only sees this surface fact; who does not 
 feel beneath it all the heave and movement of 
 the whole race forward toward goodness, 
 toward God! To him who hears at once the 
 tumult of moral failures all around him and 
 the steady progress of the great moral success 
 beneath him to him the world becomes 
 solemn and beautiful, pathetic and full of 
 hope. For him despairing pessimism and silly 
 optimism both become impossible. A divine 
 optimism, which, while it dares not say, 
 " Whatever is is best," devoutly says, "The 
 best is strongest and shall ultimately conquer 
 and use even the worst," becomes the habit 
 of his life. Such was the optimism of Jesus. 
 Such is the optimism of His disciples if they 
 catch His spirit. VII. 206. 
 
 Then life is to wake, not sleep; 
 
 Rise, and not rest; but press 
 From earth's level, where blindly creep 
 
 Things perfected more or less, 
 To the heaven's height, far and steep. 
 
 BROWNING.
 
 APRIL 22. 
 
 '""PHERE is a religion which finds the world 
 1 unsatisfying, and so turns longingly, 
 wistfully, pathetically, wearily to God. There 
 is another religion which finds the world won- 
 drously beautiful and good, yet always sug- 
 gesting something more beautiful and better 
 than itself, and this religion too turns to God, 
 but glowingly, springingly, hopefully. The 
 first religion starts from a sense of sin and 
 comes to God for forgiveness. The second 
 religion starts in a thankful joy, a sense of 
 promise, and comes to God for fulfilment. 
 The first starts with disgust at self, and so 
 comes to love for God. The second starts in 
 admiration of God, and so comes to forgetful- 
 ness of self. 
 
 IV. 136. 
 
 Happy ! Yes; and wherefore 
 
 Should I not be so ? 
 Love Divine o'erhangeth 
 
 All the way I go. 
 
 Darkest shadow showeth 
 
 Smiling sun behind; 
 Where the sickle goeth, 
 
 There the reapers bind. 
 
 Happy ! Yes; and wherefore 
 
 Should I not be so, 
 Since by ways appointed 
 
 Unto heaven I go ? 
 
 J. L. M. W.
 
 APRIL 23. 113 
 
 '"THERE are many great and exultant mo- 
 * ments in our lives; moments in which 
 some new, heretofore unfelt motive takes us 
 into its power, when some new work for us 
 and some new power in us starts forth and 
 makes life seem fresh and green, like a spring 
 morning that forgets all the stains and storms 
 that have gone before it. But among all such 
 moments there is none that can compare with 
 that in which duty passes into love when 
 morality, reaching itself out into eternity, as- 
 serts its sameness of nature with the service 
 that the glorified nature is to render to God in 
 the heavenly city, so that the obligation of 
 honesty in our bargains is seen to rest on the 
 same sanctions and to be lustrous with the 
 same beauty now that will belong to the sing- 
 ing of the everlasting songs and the casting of 
 the crowns before the Saviour's feet the 
 moment when our life thus knows Christ and 
 the power of His resurrection. 
 
 VII. 285. 
 
 Something that leaps life's narrow bars, 
 
 To claim its birthright with the hosts of 
 heaven; 
 
 A seed of sunshine that doth leaven 
 Our earthly dulness with the beams of stars, 
 
 And glorify our clay 
 
 With light from fountains elder than the Day. 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
 
 H4 APRIL 24. 
 
 Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast 
 given me, be with me where I am j that they may 
 behold my glory. JOHN xvii. 24. 
 
 BEFORE the words can soar into the high, 
 pure meaning which belongs to them, 
 we must remember what Christ's glory is which 
 He wants us to see. Its essence, the heart 
 and soul of it, must be His goodness. . . . 
 And here the truth comes in, that in moral 
 things only the like can see its like; only the 
 good can really discern, appreciate, and under- 
 stand goodness. That needs no proof. We 
 see it every day. Men live alongside of the 
 best saints the world possesses, do business 
 with them, pass their whole lives with them, 
 and never know that they are good. If we 
 have ever made any advance in purity and 
 unselfishness, has not the best of all its satis- 
 faction been in this, that it has let us see some- 
 thing new of the self-sacrifice and purity in 
 other men which have been hidden from us? 
 The higher we climb, the more the peaks open 
 around us. Now apply all this to the Sav- 
 iour's prayer that we may see His glory. 
 His glory is His goodness. Only by growth 
 in goodness can His goodness open itself to 
 us. What is He praying for then ? Is it not 
 that we might be like Him? So only can we 
 see Him. It is His glory that He wants us 
 to see, but, back of that, He wants us to be 
 such men and women that we can see His 
 g!ory. I. 308, 309. 
 
 Walk with Him now ; so shall thy way be bright, 
 And all thy soul be filled with His most glorious light. 
 
 IIORATIUS BONAK.
 
 APRIL 25. 115 
 
 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed 
 to and fro, but . . . may grow up into Him in all 
 things. EPHES. iv. 14, 15. 
 
 THE true faith which a man has kept up to 
 the end of his life must be one that has 
 opened with his growth and constantly won 
 new reality and color from his changing ex- 
 perience. ... It is the field that once held 
 the seed, now waving and rustling under the 
 autumn wind with the harvest that it holds, 
 yet all the time it has kept the corn. The joy 
 of his life has richened his belief. His sorrow 
 has deepened it. His doubts have sobered 
 it. His enthusiasms have fired it. His labor 
 has purified it. His doctrines are like the 
 house that he has lived in, rich with associa- 
 tions which make it certain that he will never 
 move out of it. His doctrines have been illus- 
 trated and strengthened and endeared by the 
 good help they have given to his life. And 
 no doctrine that has not done this can be 
 really held up to the end with any such vital 
 grasp as will enable us to carry it with us 
 through the river and enter with it into the new 
 life beyond. 
 
 I. 62. 
 
 O Almighty God, who hast instructed Thy holy Church 
 with the heavenly doctrine of Thy Evangelist Saint Mark ; 
 Give us grace that, being not like children carried away 
 with every blast of strange doctrine, we may be established 
 in the truth of Thy holy Gospel ; through Jesus Christ 
 our Lord. Amen. 
 
 BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER.
 
 6. 
 
 r\ESPERATION and bitterness come with 
 l_x_ the sight of pain without the sight of the 
 higher consequences and results of pain. . . . 
 "Curse God and die," seems sometimes to be 
 the only outcome of it all. ... It is the only 
 outcome of it all, if the pain you see or feel is 
 all. But if the whole of a man's life from its 
 beginning to its endless end, from its surface 
 to its inmost heart, is capable of being taken 
 into account, then the desperate outcome is 
 not the only one. There is a blessing and a 
 thankfulness which may overcome and drown 
 the curse. . . . Suppose that, looking at 
 pain, and with the curse just growing into 
 shape upon your lips, a great hand takes you 
 up and lifts you. And as you rise your vision 
 widens. And slowly education grows into 
 your view, surrounding pain, and drawing out 
 its sense of cruelty, and crowding in upon it its 
 own sense of love and purpose. Then, in the 
 larger vision, must not the curse perish ? And 
 if the lips are not strong enough to open into 
 thankfulness, at least the eyes, still full of 
 pity, may wait in peace. 
 
 VI. 221. 
 
 The Way of the Just is made strait, and 
 the journey of the Saints is prepared. 
 
 After what manner ? 
 
 By sorrow and labor; for this is the way to 
 the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 Is there no other way to the Life Eternal ? 
 
 None. The only straight way is that of the 
 Cross. 
 
 It is so. Christ hath taught this in His Word. 
 
 THOMAS A KKMIMS.
 
 APRIL 27. 117 
 
 We live by admiration, hope and love: 
 And even as these are well and wisely fixed, 
 In dignity of being we ascend. 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 \I7HAT does it mean when men as they 
 * * grow older become narrow, sordid, and 
 machine-like, when a vulgar self-content 
 comes over them, and all the limitations of a 
 finished life that hopes for and expects no 
 more than what it is makes the sad picture 
 which we see in hosts of men's middle life ? 
 Is it not certainly that those men have 
 ceased to admire and trust ? . . . The blight 
 that falls upon their natures is the token of 
 what a lofty and life-giving faculty it is which 
 they have put out of use. It was this faculty 
 which made them at every moment greater 
 than themselves, which kept them in com- 
 munion with the riches of a higher life, which 
 preserved all the enthusiasm of active energy, 
 and yet preserved humility which held all the 
 other faculties to do their best work. This is 
 the faculty whose disuse makes the mature 
 life of so many men barren and dreary, and 
 whose regeneration, when the man is lifted up 
 into the new admiration and the new trust, the 
 admiration for and trust in God, makes a large 
 part of the glory of the full-grown life of 
 faith. VI. 95, 96.
 
 n8 APRIL 28. 
 
 EVERY now and then there are flashes of 
 light upon the Gospel page which let 
 us see what a bright, sunny, and sympathetic 
 life the Saviour lived, how perfectly free from 
 harshness and asceticism was that character 
 which, at the same time, carries a sweet and 
 gentle seriousness and a robust earnestness 
 with it wherever it went. " The Son of man 
 came eating and drinking, and they say, Be- 
 hold, a man gluttonous and a wine-bibber, a 
 friend of publicans and sinners," so Jesus 
 himself described one day the current impres- 
 sion that His life made on the people of Jerusa- 
 lem. The words are like an instantaneous pho- 
 tograph of that far distant time. . . . In those 
 words we can see friends and enemies alike 
 busied with the strange life of Jesus, and only 
 gradually finding out that it was they who 
 were strange, and not He, gradually coming 
 first to feel and then to understand that this life 
 of His, so bright and yet so serious, so individ- 
 ual and yet so social, had reached completely 
 what their lives were only crudely struggling 
 after. VIII. 86. 
 
 We would see Jesus! not alone in sorrow, 
 But we would have Him with us in our 
 
 mirth; 
 
 He at whose right hand there are joys for ever, 
 Doth not disdain to bless the joys of earth. 
 ANNA E. HAMILTON. 
 
 Let us never be afraid of innocent joy. God is good, 
 and what He does is well done. We must dare to be 
 happy . . . regarding ourselves always as the depositaries, 
 and not as the authors of our joy. AMI EL.
 
 APRIL 29. 119 
 
 He giveth power to the faint, and to them that 
 have no might He increaseth strength. Is. xl. 29. 
 
 DO you know what it is to be failing every 
 day, and yet to be sure humbly but 
 deeply sure that your life is, as a whole, in 
 its great movement and meaning, not failing, 
 but succeeding ? You want to do that best 
 work that a man can do to make life brighter 
 and nobler for your fellow-men. Not a day 
 passes in which you do not somehow try to 
 do that blessed work; but every time you turn 
 away after one of those attempts to give sym- 
 pathy or inspiration to your brethren, how your 
 heart sinks, so cold and so ignoble are the 
 words which you meant to be so generous and 
 warm ! And yet all the while you know that 
 the whole life does not fail. Still there is the 
 purpose ! It does not die. It is not given 
 up. It presses forward, wounded and bleed- 
 ing, but more and more determined every day. 
 Every day it grows clearer and clearer to you 
 that without that wish and hope and resolu- 
 tion life would not be worth living. 
 
 VII. 40. 
 
 That Thy full glory may abound, increase, 
 And so Thy glory shall be formed in me, 
 I pray: the answer is not rest or peace, 
 But charges, wants, anxieties; . . . 
 But all my life is blossoming inwardly, 
 And every breath is like a litany, 
 While through each labor, like a thread of gold, 
 Is woven the sweet consciousness of Thee. 
 
 SUSAN COOLIDGE.
 
 120 APRIL 30. 
 
 Some falls are means the happier to rise. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 THERE is a verse of one of the subtlest and 
 truest of the English poets of our time 
 which expresses so perfectly this idea of the 
 relation between final success and the failures 
 which precede it that I quote it to you: . . . 
 
 " For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, 
 
 Seem here no painful inch to gain, 
 Far back, through creeks and inlets making, 
 Comes silent, flooding in, the main." 
 
 The noisy waves are failures, but the great 
 silent tide is a success. The waves are borne 
 upon the bosom of the tide; they share its 
 motion; nay, the failure of each of them in 
 some degree is a reaction of the tide's motion 
 as it is cast back from the beach. But all the 
 time the tide is succeeding while the waves are 
 failing. The failures are carried on the bosom 
 of a success which is present underneath them 
 all the time. A life might be succeeding in 
 the struggle after goodness even while every 
 effort of the man who lived that life to be good 
 fell so far short of what he wanted it to be that 
 he could call it nothing but a failure. The 
 purpose, the consecration, of the life to God 
 and goodness is its tide. The special strug- 
 gles to do good things are the waves. The 
 deep, persistent, and unchanging hate of the 
 peculiar sin, which is determined never to be 
 reconciled to it and to fight against it till it 
 dies that is the soul's success, which does not 
 falter or stop, and which carries along upon it 
 all the partial failures of which the life is full. 
 
 VII. 197, 198, 201.
 
 MAY i. 
 
 Philip saith unto him, Come and see. 
 
 JOHN i. 46. 
 
 THIS was the admirable wisdom of Philip. 
 What had converted him was the personal 
 sight of Jesus. He has no other religion but 
 that. . . . Jesus was His own evidence. To 
 get his friend face to face with Jesus this was 
 his object. . . . 
 
 Christianity offers to the world her historic 
 Christ. . . . Back in the centuries, yet set so 
 clearly in the light of authentic history that 
 all attempts to melt His life into a cloudy myth 
 have always failed, there stands this figure. 
 She claims that this Being to whom she points 
 is the power and wisdom of God present upon 
 the earth. You hesitate and doubt. Then 
 " Come and see," she says. Put yourself in 
 the presence of this Being. . . . Ennoble hu- 
 manity as completely as you will, and it will 
 not explain this phenomenal character and 
 life. . . . She says it is God manifest in the 
 flesh. Come, and find another explanation, 
 if you can. Come, and if there is no other to 
 be found, take this and own the divine 
 Christ. VI. 139, 144. 
 
 Behold Him now where He comes ! 
 
 Not the Christ of our subtile creeds, 
 But the Lord of our hearts, our homes, 
 
 Of our hopes, our prayers, our needs; 
 The Brother of want and blame, 
 
 The Lover of women and men, 
 With a love that puts to shame 
 
 All passions of mortal ken. 
 
 RICHARD WATSON GILDER.
 
 122 MAY 2. 
 
 As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the 
 Father. JOHN x. 15. 
 
 THE words are full of that idea of mutual- 
 ness which gives so much of warmth and 
 richness to all life. Any relation which is all 
 one-sided is unsatisfactory and dull. It is not 
 vividly interesting. We love to think of any 
 two objects, any two beings which have to do 
 with one another as ministering each to each, 
 each sending to the other something in answer 
 to that which it receives. That fills the rela- 
 tionship with motion, and with motion come 
 light and heat. The sun and the earth, the 
 insect and the plant, the nation and the citi- 
 zen, the teacher and the pupil, the parent and 
 the child, the air which, filled with light, gives 
 to the light its substance and its swiftness, in 
 every relationship there is this principle of re- 
 ciprocity. Nothing alone is thoroughly alive; 
 all complete life subsists in the reaction of mu- 
 tuality. To give is never perfect life; it needs 
 the complement, the fulfilment of taking. To 
 take is never perfect life; it needs the comple- 
 ment, the fulfilment of giving. 
 
 IV. 283. 
 
 O Jesus, who lovest us all, stoop low from 
 Thy glory above: 
 
 Where sin hath abounded make grace to abound 
 and to superabound, 
 
 Till we gaze on Thee face unto Face, and re- 
 spond to Thee love unto Love. 
 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
 
 MAY 3. 123 
 
 Shall we serve Heaven 
 
 With less respect than we do minister 
 
 To our gross selves ? 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 YOUR Christian duties, the prayers you pray, 
 the self-denials that you practise, the 
 charities you give, what is the matter with 
 them? . . . You serve yourself, and how clear 
 you are to yourself, and so, what life there is in 
 every act of your own service; but you serve 
 Christ and how dim He has grown ! and so, 
 how listlessly the hands move at His labor ! 
 Now if the Holy Spirit can indeed bring Him 
 clearly to you, is not the Holy Spirit what you 
 need ? And this is just exactly what He does. 
 I find a Christian who has really " received the 
 Holy Ghost," and what is it that strikes and 
 delights me in him ? It is the intense and in- 
 timate reality of Christ. . . . His whole life 
 is light and elastic with this buoyant desire of 
 doing everything for Jesus, just as Jesus would 
 wish it done. So simple, but so powerful! So 
 childlike, but so heroic! Duty has been trans- 
 figured. The weariness, the drudgery, the 
 whole task-nature, has been taken away. Love 
 has poured like a new life-blood along the dry 
 veins, and the soul that used to toil and groan 
 and struggle goes now singing along its way, 
 The life that I now live in the flesh, I live by 
 the faith of the Son of God who loved me and 
 gave Himself for me." 
 
 II. 228.
 
 i2 4 MAY 4. 
 
 CHRIST saw all life in God. That means 
 ^-* that He saw life in its completeness. No 
 being ever saw the evil and misery as He be- 
 held it. He saw sin with all the intensity of 
 holiness. But nobody ever has dared call 
 Jesus Christ a pessimist. He saw the end from 
 the beginning. He saw the depth from the 
 surface. He saw the light from the darkness. 
 He saw the whole from the parts. Therefore 
 He could not despair. There was no curse of 
 life upon His lips, but infinite pity ! A pity 
 that has folded itself around the world's torn 
 and bleeding heart ever since but no curse ! 
 And who are we, with our little feeble rage 
 and petulance, flinging our testy curses where 
 the Lord's blessing descended like the love of 
 God? 
 
 VI. 214. 
 
 There is one Mind, one omnipresent Mind 
 Omnific. His most holy name is Love. 
 Truth of subliming import ! with the which 
 Who feeds and saturates his constant soul, 
 He from His small particular orbit flies 
 With blest outstarting. From himself he flies, 
 Stands in the sun, and with no partial gaze 
 Views all creation, and He loves it all, 
 And blesses it, and calls it very good ! 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE.
 
 MAY 5. 125 
 
 / came not to send peace ', but a sword. 
 
 MATT. x. 34. 
 
 WE must think of Jesus as a soul undergo- 
 ing experiences, living a life all through 
 those years, or else the Gospels are a very 
 dead and barren book. And if we have known 
 what it is to look forward and see, with a ter- 
 ror which yet is glorified by hope, that the 
 great purpose on which our heart is set is to 
 be won only by first casting it, with seeming 
 recklessness, away, . . . then we can under- 
 stand how the Rebuilder of human life about 
 the fatherhood of God dwelt with pathetic cer- 
 tainty upon the destruction that must come 
 before that construction could begin. The 
 more intensely He knew the preciousness of 
 the end, the more necessary and the more ter- 
 rible became the seeming sacrifice of that end 
 before He must go to reach it. The more He 
 gloried, with His heart full of the memories 
 of heaven, in the prospect of the re-estab- 
 lished family of God where each child should 
 find his own distinctive childhood in the com- 
 mon filial life of all, so much the more He 
 saw with sadness, but with certainty, that the 
 merely human groupings of men, in which 
 each man lost his true self among his brethren, 
 must be broken up. VIII. 102. 
 
 Old things shall pass away ; 
 
 The new shall come in abundance, 
 
 The holy desires shall overflow, 
 
 And rise up on every side where the cherishing spirit 
 
 bloweth : 
 
 There shall be no more fear, but love shall fill all ; 
 For this change is from the right hand of God. 
 
 THOMAS A KEMPIS.
 
 i 2 6 MAY 6. 
 
 T^HERE are those who seem to be doomed 
 1 to most earthly toil; just to be conscien- 
 tious, and upright, and thorough, and true. It 
 seems as if that were everything for them. 
 There are other men whose souls leap to tri- 
 umphant thoughts, and whose eyes are open 
 to ecstatic visions. . . . These two sorts of 
 men belong together, make one world, are 
 serving the purposes of one God, and making 
 ready one celestial kingdom, and deserve 
 each the other's whole-souled respect. It is not 
 that the lesser man is making his life success- 
 ful by making possible a higher life which 
 some other man may live, though that is 
 much. It is that in this universe, where natu- 
 ral and spiritual succeed and minister to one 
 another, he who at any spot is doing good 
 work of any kind is serving the Universal 
 Master and contributing to the universal suc- 
 cess. 
 
 VI. 257- 
 
 Morning, evening, noon, and night, 
 " Praise God ! " sang Theodite. 
 Then to his poor trade he turned, 
 Whereby the daily bread was earned. 
 
 But ever at each period, 
 
 He stopped and sang, " Praise God ! " 
 
 Said Blaise, the listening monk, " Well done; 
 I doubt not thou art heard, my son, 
 As well as if thy voice to-day 
 Were praising God the Pope's great way." 
 
 BROWNING.
 
 MAY 7. 127 
 
 There is one glory of the moon, and another glory 
 of the sun, and another glory of the stars. 
 
 i COR. xv. 41. 
 
 SAINT PAUL builds his argument for im- 
 mortality upon the richness and the splen- 
 dor of this mortal life. Often enough have 
 men made heaven a compensation for the woes 
 of earth. . . . Paul makes heaven not a com- 
 pensation, but a development. Because this 
 world is so glorious, therefore the glory of 
 heaven must be surpassing and unspeakable. 
 How much nobler is Paul's way ! How much 
 fuller of inspiration and of genuine faith! . . . 
 For he who finds in the manifold glories of 
 this mortal life a symbol and witness of the 
 glories which belong to immortality will al- 
 ways be led to live this life as intensely and 
 profoundly as he can, in order that the higher 
 life may become real and attractive to him. 
 Men have thought that they must separate 
 themselves from earth in order that they 
 might believe in heaven. Paul's doctrine 
 says emphatically, "No! ' He says, "The 
 deeper that you go in life, the more life must 
 spread itself out around you and become 
 eternity. He who gets to the centre feels the 
 sphere." 
 
 V. 59- 
 
 Deep love lieth under 
 These pictures of time; 
 
 They fade in the light of 
 Their meaning sublime. 
 
 EMERSON.
 
 J2 8 MAY 8. 
 
 Your joy no man taketh from you. JOHN xvi. 22. 
 
 IN these words Christ declared that there was 
 a joy which no man could disturb. There 
 is a limit to our power over one another; 
 there is a chamber of our inner selves where 
 we may turn the key and no one can come 
 in. . . . The very fact that there is such a 
 limit interests us. We can see how good it is 
 for a man's life that, while there should be 
 great regions of his happiness which are in- 
 volved with what other men are and do, there 
 should be also other regions which no man but 
 himself can touch. 
 
 As I watch the growing life of the disciples, 
 I see them coming to the best picture of what 
 a human life ought to be, open and sensitive 
 and sympathetic, and yet all the while self- 
 respectful and independent; feeling other men 
 and yet living their own life; as responsive as 
 the ocean's surface to the winds of the living 
 humanity which blew across them; and yet 
 keeping, like the ocean, a calm and hidden 
 depth which no storm upon the surface could 
 disturb. III. 290, 293. 
 
 O weary ways of earth and men ! 
 
 O self more weary still ! 
 How vainly do you vex the heart 
 
 That none but God can fill ! 
 
 These surface-troubles come and go 
 
 Like rufflings of the sea; 
 The deeper depth is out of reach 
 
 To all, my God, but Thee. 
 
 FAIJKR.
 
 MAY 9. 129 
 
 Your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man 
 taketh from you. JOHN xvi. 22. 
 
 IT was a special joy, the inmost, the most 
 secret and sacred of all joys which their 
 Master promised. . . . And Jesus tells His 
 disciples just what the power of this secret joy 
 is to be. It is to be His presence with them: 
 "I will see you again, and your heart shall 
 rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from 
 you." Everything is based upon the associa- 
 tion which they are to have with Christ their 
 Master. There is nothing at all of self-suffi- 
 ciency in what is promised. It is not that 
 these men are to develop some interior 
 strength, or to drift into some region of calm 
 indifference where the influences of their fel- 
 low-men shall not touch them any longer. It 
 is that they are to come to a new life with 
 Him. The new joy which is to enter into 
 them, which they are to enter into, is to be 
 distinctly a joy of relationship and not of self- 
 containment, a joy which is to escape the in- 
 vasion of the men who disturb all other joys 
 by being held in the hand of a stronger being, 
 out of which no earthly power shall be able to 
 pluck it. 
 
 III. 292, 294. 
 
 He who has a relish for Thee, will he not 
 find sweetness in everything ? 
 
 And he that has no relish for Thee, what 
 can be sweet to him ? 
 
 THOMAS A KEMPIS.
 
 130 MAY 10. 
 
 Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the 
 blind, have caused that even this man should not 
 have died? JOHN xi. 37. 
 
 not Christ have saved Lazarus 
 \^t from dying ? Could not Christ have 
 saved you or me from perplexity or tempta- 
 tion or doubt ? He could, because the power 
 of life and death was in Him. . . . But if it 
 were best for Lazarus to die, then Christ could 
 not have caused that he should not have died. 
 That is a sublime incapacity; to stand with 
 the gift of life in the all-powerful hands, to 
 see the cry for life in the eager eyes, to hear it 
 in the dumb appeal of the terrified lips, and 
 yet to say, " No, not life but death is best," 
 and so to be unable to give life, that is a 
 sublime, a divine incapacity. Could not Christ 
 have answered your prayer? No, He could 
 not; not because the thing you asked for was 
 not in His treasury, but because behind the 
 question of His giving or refusing it there lay 
 the fundamental necessity of His nature and 
 His love, that He should do for you only the 
 absolutely best. The thing you asked for was 
 not absolutely best, therefore He could not 
 give it. Back of how many unanswered prayers 
 lies that divine impossibility ! 
 
 V. 38. 
 
 If He turn His face away, 
 
 Never answering a word, 
 When for some ill boon we pray, . . . 
 Blessed be His name for aye 
 
 For the prayers He hath not heard. 
 
 KATHERINE TYNAN HINKSON.
 
 MAY ii. 131 
 
 Ye shall be sorrouiful, but your sorrow shall be 
 turned into joy. JOHN xvi. 20. 
 
 IT must be somewhere in the grief that the 
 help of the grief is hidden. It must be in 
 some discovery of the divine side of the sor- 
 row that the consolation of the sorrow will be 
 found. It is a wondrous change when a man 
 stops asking of his distress, " How can I throw 
 this off?" and asks instead, " What did God 
 mean by sending this?" Then, he may well 
 believe that time and work will help him. 
 Time, with its necessary calming of the first 
 wild surface-tumult, will let him look deeper 
 and ever deeper into the divine purpose of the 
 sorrow, will let its deepest and most precious 
 meanings gradually come forth so that he may 
 see them. Work, done in the sorrow, will 
 bring him into ever new relations to the God in 
 whom alone the full interpretation and relief 
 of the sorrow lies. Time and work, not as 
 means of escape from distress, but as the hands 
 in which distress shall be turned hither and 
 thither that the light of God may freely play 
 upon it; time and work, so acting as servants 
 of God, not as substitutes for God, are full of 
 unspeakably precious ministries to the suffer- 
 ing soul. But the real relief, the only final 
 comfort, is God; and He relieves the soul al- 
 ways in its suffering, not from its suffering; 
 nay, he relieves the soul by its suffering, by 
 the new knowledge and possession of Himself 
 which could come only through that atmos- 
 phere of pain. 
 
 II. 279.
 
 132 MAY 12. 
 
 '"THERE is something very beautiful to me 
 1 in the truth that suffering, rightly used, 
 is not a cramping, binding, restricting of the 
 human soul, but a setting of it free. It is not 
 a violation of the natural order, it is only a 
 more or less violent breaking open of some 
 abnormal state that the natural order may be 
 resumed. It is the opening of a cage door. 
 It is the breaking in of a prison wall. This is 
 the thought of those fine old lines of an early 
 English poet: 
 
 " The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed. 
 
 Lets in new light through chinks that time has made. 
 Stronger by weakness, wiser men become 
 As they draw near to their eternal home." 
 
 Oh, how many battered cottages have thus 
 let in the light ! How many broken bodies 
 have set their souls free, and how many shat- 
 tered homes have let the men and women who 
 sat in darkness in them see the great light of 
 a present God! "Stronger by weakness!" 
 " Who passing through the vale of misery use 
 it for a well." 
 
 VI. 30. 
 
 Cast into the pit 
 Of lonely sorrow, 
 The suffering soul, 
 Looking aloft, 
 Sees with amaze 
 In the daytime sky 
 The light of stars. 
 
 RICHARD WATSON GILDER.
 
 MAY 13. 133 
 
 WE paint our heroes fighting their battles 
 in the clouds or in the depths. Types 
 of power which can only be developed in 
 supreme joy or supreme sorrow enthrall our 
 imagination; and then some plain man comes 
 who knows not either rapture or despair, who 
 simply has his daily work to do, his friends to 
 help, . . . his trials to bear, his temptations to 
 conquer, his soul to save; and what a healthi- 
 ness he brings into our standards, with what a 
 genuine refreshment he fills our hearts. Be- 
 hold how great are these primary eternal quali- 
 ties patience, hope, kindness, intelligence, 
 trust, self-sacrifice. 
 
 The arctic frost ! The torrid heat ! Behold 
 the true strength, the real life of the planet is 
 not in these. It is in the temperate lands that 
 the grape ripens and the wheat turns calmly 
 yellow in the constant sun. Blessed is the life 
 which grows itself into the consciousness of 
 how strong a man is who with the average 
 powers of a man keeps his integrity and pur- 
 ity, becomes ever more upright and pure, and 
 also encourages the lives of other men. 
 
 IV. 204. 
 
 All service ranks the same with God: 
 
 If now, as formerly He trod 
 
 Paradise, His presence fills 
 
 Our earth, each only as God wills 
 
 Can work. God's puppets, best and worst, 
 
 Are we; there is no last or first. 
 
 BROWNING.
 
 134 MAY 14. 
 
 To another he gave two talents. 
 
 MATT. xxv. 15. 
 
 '""THIS quiet, common-place, unnoticed man, 
 * going his faithful way in his dull dress 
 which makes no mark and draws no eye, doing 
 his duty insignificantly and thoroughly, win- 
 ning so unobtrusively at last his master's 
 praise, ought to be interesting to us all. 
 
 He ought to be interesting because he rep- 
 resents so much the largest element in uni- 
 versal human life. The average man is by far 
 the most numerous man. The man who goes 
 beyond the average, the man who falls short 
 of the average, both of them, by their very 
 definition, are exceptions. They are the out- 
 skirts and fringes, the capes and promontories 
 of humanity. The great continent of human 
 life is made up of the average existences, the 
 mass of two-talented capacity and action. 
 
 IV. 194. 
 
 God sows June fields with clover, and the 
 
 world 
 
 Broadcasts with common kindnesses, 
 With plain, good souls that cheerfully fulfil 
 Their homely duties in the common field 
 Of daily life, ambitious of no more 
 Than to supply the needs of friend or kin, 
 Yet serve God's higher will to human hearts. 
 
 SAMUEL LONGFELLOW.
 
 MAY 15. 135 
 
 Ignorance is the curse of God, 
 Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to 
 heaven. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 THOUGHT and the struggle after truth are 
 the best joys of the best men. To follow 
 out the lines of speculation and of revelation 
 until they lead us near the heart of things, 
 which yet we know that we can never perfectly 
 reach; to make some few steps forward on the 
 journey which stretches out before us, end- 
 lessly tempting and interesting, into eternity; 
 to add each day some new stone to the struc- 
 ture whose lines already as they leave the earth 
 prophesy an infinite height for the far top- 
 stone, he has not lived who has not felt this 
 pleasure. He is not really living, however 
 full he may be of warmth of feeling and of 
 energy in action, who does not in some degree 
 know what it is to crave ideas and knowledge, 
 to seek for truth, and to delight in finding it. 
 
 III. 302. 
 
 The sequences of law 
 
 We learn through mind alone; 
 'Tis only through the soul 
 
 That aught we know is known : 
 With equal voice she tells 
 
 Of what we touch and see 
 Within these bounds of life, 
 
 And of a life to be : 
 
 Proclaiming One who brought us hither, 
 And holds the keys of Whence and Whither. 
 FRANCIS TURNER PALGRAVE.
 
 136 MAY 16. 
 
 When the Spirit of truth shall come He shall 
 guide you into all truth. JOHN xvi. 13. 
 
 \A/E live in a redeemed world, a world full 
 * " of the Holy Ghost forever doing His 
 work, forever taking of the things of Christ 
 and showing them to us. That Christ so shown 
 is the most real, most present power in this new 
 Christian world. Men see Him, men talk with 
 Him continually. They do not recognize 
 Him ; they do not know what lofty converse 
 they are holding ; but some day when, in some 
 way, a man has become really earnest and 
 wants to believe in the Son of God, and is 
 asking, "Who is He that I may believe on 
 Him ?" then that Son of God comes to him, 
 not as a new guest from the lofty heaven, 
 but as the familiar and slighted friend who 
 has waited and watched at the doorstep, who 
 has already from the very first filled the soul's 
 house with such measure of His influence as 
 the soul's obstinacy of indifference would 
 allow, and who now, as He steps in at the 
 soul's eager call to take complete and final 
 possession of its life, does not proclaim His 
 coming in awful, new, unfamiliar words, but 
 says in tones which the soul recognizes and 
 wonders that it has not known long before, 
 ' Thou hast seen me. I have talked with 
 thee." V. 211.
 
 MAY 17. 137 
 
 Thrice Holy Faith ! whatever thorns I meet, 
 As on I totter with unpractised feet, 
 Still let me stretch my arms and cling to Thee, 
 Meek nurse of souls through their long infancy. 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 THERE is a large healthy hunger after be- 
 lief which is as different from the morbid 
 appetite of superstition, as health always is 
 different from disease. There are men who 
 want to believe, who would rather believe 
 than not, when some great spiritual theory 
 of the universe is offered them to account for 
 its bewilderments and to help its troubles. 
 The secret of their life seems to be this, that 
 they are men deeply impressed with the infi- 
 niteness of life. Does that seem vague and 
 transcendental ? They are men who are al- 
 ways conscious of the spiritual and unseen 
 underneath the visible and material, men 
 who are always sure that there is a great re- 
 gion of unknown truth which they ought to 
 know, and who are restless after it. To such 
 men all that they see presupposes things 
 which they do not see. 
 
 V. 207. 
 
 Every natural flower which grows on earth 
 Implies a flower upon the spiritual side, 
 Substantial, archetypal, all aglow 
 With blossoming causes, not so far away 
 But we whose spirit-sense is somewhat cleared 
 May catch at something of the bloom and 
 
 breath, 
 Too vaguely apprehended. 
 
 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
 
 138 MAY 18. 
 
 Again, the devil taketh Him up into an exceed- 
 ing high mountain and showeth Him all the king- 
 doms of this world, and the glory of them. 
 
 MATT. iv. 8. 
 
 SO does the young man in some moment or 
 some period of his life come in sight of 
 the great world. ... It is all very vague 
 it must be. The traveler upon the road to 
 London, all aglow with its vision, does not 
 trace how every street and alley runs in the 
 great city, nor see how the bricks are laid 
 in every man's back yard. It is the " light 
 of London," not the lamp in this or that 
 shop-window, that he sees. And so it is 
 the world, all vague, mysterious, and wonder- 
 ful, which the spirit of the young man sees 
 from his mountain, not this or that which is 
 happening in the world. It is the world all 
 together, the world of tumultuous, roaring, 
 awful, fascinating human life, the kingdoms 
 of the world, and the glory of them this is 
 what he sees. There is a special value, a 
 special contribution to the total experience 
 and character of a man, in the years which 
 hold that vision the years when the narrow- 
 ness of childhood is broken, but the absorption 
 in the details of life has not yet begun; these 
 years wherein the young man is catching sight 
 of the world. Blessed is he who keeps those 
 years pure and lofty. 
 
 VII. 168, 169.
 
 MAY 19. 139 
 
 Watch and pray that ye enter not into tempta- 
 tion, MATT. xxvi. 14. 
 
 OUR Lord's temptation makes us see that 
 temptation is not sin, nor does it neces- 
 sarily involve sin. Christ was sinless and yet 
 tempted; therefore it is possible for man to be 
 tempted and yet sinless. Now so many of us, 
 the moment we are strongly tempted, seem to 
 fall into a sort of demoralized condition, as if 
 our innocence were over, as if the charm were 
 broken and we were already sinners; and so 
 we too often give ourselves up easily to the 
 sin. . . . To any soul in such a state what 
 could we say but this : " Look up and see the 
 truth in Jesus ; do you not see it there ? To 
 be tempted is not wicked, is not shameful, is 
 not unworthy even of Him. It is the lot, in 
 one view it is even the glory, of humanity. 
 Sin does not begin and shame does not begin 
 until the will gives way, until you yield to 
 temptation. Stand guard over that will, resist 
 temptation, and then to have been tempted 
 shall be to you what it was to your Saviour 
 a glory and a crown, a part of your history 
 worthy to be written with thanksgiving in the 
 Book of Life, as His is written in His book of 
 life." Is not this the strength and courage 
 that many a soul needs ? VII. 133, 134. 
 
 Pray 
 
 " Lead us into no such temptations, Lord." 
 Yea, but, O Thou whose servants are the bold, 
 Lead such temptations by the head and hair, 
 Reluctant dragons, up to who dares fight, 
 That so he may do battle and have praise. 
 
 BROWNING.
 
 140 MAY 20. 
 
 I T is good to multiply experiences. It is good 
 * to do many things and to have manifold 
 relations with the world. It is good to touch 
 many people and to see many sights; but it 
 is good, it is necessary, to be content with no 
 experience which remains simply as experience 
 and does not pass on and into character. 
 Events are great if they make dispositions. 
 The Natural is precious if " afterward," out of 
 it, comes the Spiritual. The experienced man 
 is happy, if he has really drunk the rain and 
 sunshine of the experiences which have come 
 to him into his heart and is the ripened man, 
 otherwise he is only like the rock on which 
 every passer-by has scrawled his name. 
 
 VI. 254. 
 
 And so shall bright patience 
 
 And trustfulness teach 
 Some wonderful alchemy, 
 
 Turning to gold 
 All things whatsoever 
 
 That come in its reach 
 The dull and the narrow, 
 
 The new and the old, 
 Till each shall be bright 
 
 With the grace and the glow 
 Of the goodness of God, 
 
 Who loveth us so ! 
 
 J. I,. M. w.
 
 MAY 21. 141 
 
 Be strong, . . . and work ; for I am with you, 
 saith the Lord of hosts. HAG. ii. 4. 
 
 T THINK we want to urge most strenuously 
 upon young men the need, the absolute 
 necessity, that in the appointed and demanded 
 work of their life they should look for and 
 should find the joy of their life. To do your 
 work because you must ; to do your work as 
 a slavery ; and then, having got it done as 
 speedily and easily as possible, to look some- 
 where else for enjoyment, that makes a very 
 dreary life. No man who works so does the 
 best work. No man who works so lingers 
 lovingly over his work and asks himself if there 
 is not something he can do to make it more 
 perfect. " My meat is to do the will of Him 
 that sent me, and to finish His work," said 
 Jesus. 
 
 II. 32. 
 
 Go from the east to the west, as the sun and 
 
 the stars direct thee, 
 Go with the girdle of man, go and encompass 
 
 the earth; 
 Not for the gain of the gold, the getting, the 
 
 hoarding, the having, 
 But for the joy of the deed, but for the duty 
 
 to do. 
 
 ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
 
 142 MAY 22. 
 
 Man, if he do but live within the light 
 Of high endeavors, daily spreads abroad 
 His being armed with strength that cannot fail. 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 '"FHERE are many among us who feel the 
 ^ need to have the labor of our life re- 
 deemed, merchants, clerks, lawyers, labor- 
 ers, teachers, housekeepers, one thing or an- 
 other, the chosen or fated task of our life so 
 often seems to be mere drudgery, crowding us 
 down, pressing the life out of us. . . . What 
 you need is some purpose beyond. What 
 shall it be ? ... If you can do your work 
 for a friend or for a family as well as for your- 
 self, you have already redeemed much of its 
 sordidness. If you can do it for a cause, for 
 the progress of society and the improvement 
 of business, for your country, for your church, 
 then you have lifted it still more. If you can 
 do it for God, in perfect, childlike, loving de- 
 sire for His glory, then your work, be it as 
 heavy in its nature as it may, leaps of itself 
 from the low ground, and, instead of crush- 
 ing you with it to the earth, carries you up 
 every day into the presence of the God for 
 whom you did it. 
 
 VI. 52, 53- 
 
 Ye know that your labor is not in vain in the 
 Lord. i COR. xv. 58.
 
 MAY 23. 143 
 
 / shall shew you plainly of tJie Father. 
 
 JOHN xvi. 25. 
 
 WHEN we want to gather into one great 
 comprehensive statement the purpose 
 for which Jesus lived, and the power which 
 His life has had over the lives of men, we 
 must seize His great idea and find His power 
 there. . . . His power is not in the miracles 
 that He did, not even in the marvellous 
 nature that He bore, but in the great truth, 
 the primal and final fact of the universe, 
 so far as man has any part in it, which the 
 whole nature of the Saviour uttered. . . . 
 That idea is the relation of childhood and 
 fatherhood between man and God. Man is 
 the child of God by nature. He is ignorant 
 and rebellious, the prodigal child of God; 
 but his ignorance and rebellion never break 
 that first relationship. It is always a child 
 ignorant of his Father; always a child rebel- 
 lious against his Father. That is what makes 
 the tragedy of human history, and always pre- 
 vents sin from becoming an insignificant and 
 squalid thing. To reassert the fatherhood and 
 childhood as an unlost truth, and to reestablish 
 its power as the central fact of life; to tell men 
 that they were, and to make them actually be, 
 the sons of God, that was the purpose of the 
 coming of Jesus, and the shaping power of 
 His life. vill. 12, 13, 14. 
 
 Who knows God's fatherhood 
 Knows he rides safe, however tempest-tossed: 
 There is no darkness ; in love's light 'tis lost. 
 
 S. W. WEITZEL.
 
 144 MAY 24. 
 
 Ask, and ye shall receive. JOHN xvi. 24. 
 
 We kneel how weak, we rise how full of power ! 
 Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, 
 Or others, that we are not always strong, 
 That we are ever overborne with care, 
 That we should ever weak and heartless be, 
 Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, 
 And joy, and strength, and courage are with thee? 
 
 R. G. TRENCH. 
 
 PURE humanitarian ism and pure fatalism 
 can neither of them pray. But let us 
 have a world where the Creator's glory and the 
 creature's good are like sound and echo, like 
 sunlight and reflection to each other ; where 
 every advance in one chronicles and repeats it- 
 self in the other ; let man by sovereign mercy 
 be admitted into such an intimacy with his 
 God, and then prayer what is it ? What 
 but the answer of the echo to the sound, the 
 uttered sympathy of the one common life, 
 man responding to God's " Be happy, O my 
 child ! " with an ever grateful and reverent 
 " Be glorious, O my Father ! " As we go up 
 higher in the new life prayer becomes less ser- 
 vile and so becomes more true. When the 
 new life is finished, the sympathy complete in 
 heaven, who can say what prayer will be ? It 
 will be what Christ's was, in His perfect human- 
 ity talking with the perfect Divinity to which 
 it stood so near. There will be no wandering 
 eyes, no listless thoughts, no formal words, no 
 hearts that pray because they must; but souls 
 alight with a new likeness shall leap into a new 
 nearness to their God, and prayer be heaven 
 to the perfected human life. God's glory and 
 man's good who will divide them there ? 
 
 VII. 233.
 
 MAY 25. 145 
 
 Remember how short my time is. 
 
 Ps. Ixxxix. 47. 
 
 IF a man is able to conceive of immortal- 
 ity; if he can picture to himself a being 
 who can live forever; if he recognizes in him- 
 self any powers which can outlast and laugh 
 at death, then any limit of life must seem 
 narrow; against the broad background of the 
 whole, any part must seem small. On the 
 blue sky the almost million miles of the sun's 
 breadth seem narrow. It is here that the 
 truth about the matter lies. It is only by the 
 dim sense of his immortality, only by the di- 
 vine sight of himself as a being capable of 
 long, long life, that man thinks his life on 
 earth is short. Only by losing that divine 
 sight of himself, and looking at himself as the 
 beasts look at themselves, can he come to 
 think his life long. The beast's life never 
 seems short to him. Think of yourself as a 
 beast and your life will never seem short to 
 you. It is the divine consciousness in man, 
 the consciousness that he is a child of God, 
 that makes him know he is short-lived. Feel 
 this, and is not the shortness of life the crown 
 and glory of the race ? 
 
 I. 318, 319. 
 
 Courage! for life is hasting 
 
 To endless life away : 
 The inner life unwasting 
 
 Transfigures thy dull clay! 
 
 GEORGE MACDONALD.
 
 146 MAY 26. 
 
 A MEMORY which is not also a prophecy 
 is terrible. . . . You recall the happy 
 days of an old friendship. Unless it is a per- 
 petual revelation to you of the perfect friend- 
 ship of the perfect life it comes to be a tor- 
 ture. 
 
 ' ' Tis better to have loved and lost 
 Than never to have loved at all ; " 
 
 but the true blessedness is reached only when 
 you know that that which you have seen 
 plunged into the fiery furnace is to come out 
 again, the same, but finer, purer, holier, more 
 worthy of the child of God ! 
 
 When we have really grasped this truth, 
 then how interesting and impressive becomes 
 the sight of the life of our fellow-men! Many 
 and many of these men whom we see plodding 
 on in their dusty ways are travelling with 
 visions in their souls. Nobody knows it but 
 themselves and God. Once, years ago, they 
 saw a light. They knew, if only for a moment, 
 what companionships, what attainments, they 
 were made for. That light has never faded. 
 It is the soul of good things which they are 
 doing in the world to-day. It makes them 
 sure when other men think their faith is gone. 
 It will be with them till the end, until they 
 come to all it prophesies. 
 
 VII. 341, 342. 
 
 The vision is yet for an appointed time, but at 
 the end it shall speak, and not lie ; though it tarry, 
 wait for it. HAB. ii. 3.
 
 MAY 27. 147 
 
 A CLOUD received Him out of their 
 sight. ' ' Into mystery and a darkness to 
 which His going there alone gives any true light 
 our Saviour goes. But oh, my friends, when by 
 and by our way leads also into mystery and 
 darkness, when truth, becomes covered with 
 doubt, and joy with sadness, and life begins 
 to feel the waiting death, what can help us 
 like the faith of the ascended Jesus ? The 
 way into the cloud may be a way up and not a 
 way down, a way toward Him and not a way 
 from Him. Doubt, sorrow, death these may 
 be, these to the true soul must be, like the 
 clouds over the Mount of Olives through which 
 the Son of God went up to the right hand of 
 His Father. "We which remain shall be 
 caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in 
 the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. 
 Wherefore comfort one another" comfort 
 yourselves too, comfort and strengthen your- 
 selves and one another "with these words." 
 
 VII. 301. 
 
 Out to the earthward brink 
 Of that great tideless sea 
 
 Light from Christ's garments streams. 
 
 Cowards that fear to tread such beams 
 
 The angels can but pity when they sink. 
 
 Believing thus, I joy although I lie in dust. . . 
 
 Long as God ceases not, I cannot cease: 
 I must arise. - 
 
 HELEN HUNT JACKSON.
 
 148 MAY 28. 
 
 I go to prepare a place for you, . . . that where 
 I am, there ye may be also. JOHN xiv. 2, 3. 
 
 IF on some hitherto unexplored and unin- 
 habited island far away in the seas a man 
 goes to live, ... he clothes the island with 
 intelligibleness. I can understand and realize 
 its existence when I know that a human foot 
 has been pressed upon its sandy beach. If he 
 is a great, strong, notably manly man who 
 goes there, carrying with him a large share of 
 our humanity, then he gives the island more 
 than intelligibleness. He gives it dignity. It 
 is full of interest. . . . But if the man who 
 goes there is my friend, and if he tells me that 
 he is going to make it ready for my coming, 
 that he will come back again and take me to 
 it by and by, then how that island burns for 
 me the one live, real, shining spot in all the 
 world ! It is the goal of all my thoughts, the 
 lodestone of my hopes. I think of it until the 
 familiar house in which I was born, and where 
 I am living still, seems strange to me com- 
 pared with that one shining spot that has be- 
 come so real. My friend's love makes it all 
 glow and burn before me as if I myself already 
 saw the sun shining on its mountain-tops and 
 flashing on the surface of its rippling streams. 
 
 VII. 300. 
 
 So, when the times of restitution come 
 The sweet times of refreshing come at last 
 My God shall fill my longings to the brim ; 
 Therefore I look and wait and long for Him : 
 Not wearied, though the work be wearisome, 
 Nor fainting, though the time be almost past. 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSKTTI.
 
 MAY 29. 149 
 
 LET us try, if we are really Christians who 
 believe that Christ our Lord has "as- 
 cended into heaven," to enter into His heav- 
 enly life by the largeness and loftiness of the 
 prayers that we bring to Him. God forbid 
 that we should so misread His exaltation that 
 we should hesitate to ask Him for the very 
 smallest things; but the things that belong to 
 our peace are what He wants to give us. The 
 things that make this world and its interests 
 seem small when we think of them : the for- 
 giveness of sin, the perfect purification of our 
 souls, the driving out of selfishness, the disre- 
 gard of comfort in pursuit of duty, the care 
 for brethren more than for ourselves; not 
 comfort, not spiritual rest, not freedom from 
 pain here or hereafter not these, but the 
 chance, the power, the will to glorify God our 
 Father in our lives as He, the perfect Son, did 
 in His this we may ask if we believe in the 
 Ascension and have understood the heavenly 
 life of Him who is still our Brother and 
 Saviour. 
 
 VII. 294. 
 
 Beyond this shadow and this turbulent sea, 
 
 Shadow of death and turbulent sea of death, 
 Lies all we long to have or long to be. 
 
 Take heart, tired man, toil on with lessen- 
 ing breath, 
 
 Lay violent hands on heaven's high treasury, 
 Be what you long to be through life's long 
 scathe. 
 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
 
 150 MAY 30. 
 
 When, the burnt offering began, the song of the 
 Lord also began with the trumpets. 
 
 2 CHRON. xxix. 27. 
 
 THE act of sacrifice was done with a chorus 
 of delight. . . . Self-sacrifice, which is 
 what these burnt offerings picturesquely rep- 
 resented, is universally and perpetually neces- 
 sary. . . . Can the life, too, be offered as 
 the beast was of old, with song and trum- 
 pet ? . . . There are always glimpses of 
 man's highest life which show us, like the first 
 streaks of light before the dawn, what it would 
 be if all the sky were filled with glory; and so 
 there are always exalted lives, and exalted mo- 
 ments in the lives, I hope, of all of us, in 
 which we do catch sight of the joy and glory 
 of self-sacrifice. Not many years ago, when 
 the young men went to the war, was it not 
 true that the fact of sacrifice intensified the 
 joy ? It was a joy to save their country, to 
 feel sure, as it is not often given to men viv- 
 idly to feel, that they were doing a real and 
 valuable part of her salvation. No safe and 
 easy task could ever have filled the heart with 
 such a sober and deep delight. 
 
 II. 23, 25. 
 
 'Tis no Man we celebrate, 
 By his country's victories great ? . . . 
 But the pith and marrow of a Nation 
 Drawing force from all her men, 
 Highest, humblest, weakest, all, 
 For her time of need, and then 
 Pulsing it through them again. 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
 
 MAY 31. 151 
 
 / saw the dead, small and great, stand before 
 God. REV. xx. 12. 
 
 TOT. JOHN] saw what souls go to. We are 
 L O so apt to see only what souls go from. 
 When our friend dies we think of all the 
 warm delights of life, all the sweet friend- 
 ships, all the interesting occupations, all the 
 splendor of the sunlight which he leaves be- 
 hind. If we could only know, somewhat as 
 John must have known after his vision, the 
 presence of God into which our friend enters 
 on the other side, the higher standards, the 
 larger fellowship with all his race, and the new 
 assurance of personal immortality in God; if 
 we could know all this, how our poor com- 
 fortless efforts of comfort when our friends 
 depart, our feeble raking-over of the ashes of 
 memory, our desperate struggles to think that 
 the inevitable must be all right; how this 
 would all give way to something almost like a 
 burst of triumph, as the soul which we loved 
 went forth to such vast enlargement, to such 
 glorious consummation of its life ! 
 
 IV. 72. 
 
 Where chill or change can never rise, 
 Deep in the depth of Paradise 
 They rest world-wearied heart and eyes 
 
 Jubilate. 
 
 Safe as a hidden brooding dove, 
 With perfect peace within, above, 
 They love, and look for perfect love 
 
 Hallelujah. 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
 
 152 JUNE i. 
 
 Only the anointed eye 
 
 Sees in common things 
 Gleam of wave and tint of sky 
 
 Heavenly blossomings. 
 To the hearts where light was birth 
 
 Nothing can be drear; 
 Budding through the gloom of earth, 
 
 Heaven is always near. 
 
 LUCY LARCOM. 
 
 I BELIEVE our lives are too prosaic. I 
 think we might all live up in a purer 
 air. ... I think the strange beauty of the 
 nature all around us might be more fully 
 grasped. I think that, made pure and strong 
 by thoughts like these, we might all make our 
 lives to poems: 
 
 " Be good, be true, and let who will be clever ; 
 
 Do noble things, not dream them, all day long ; 
 And so make life, death, and that vast forever, 
 One grand, sweet song." 
 
 If it be poetry, as I think it is, to go out 
 to-morrow morning with all our closets open 
 and all our moral enginery in play, ready to 
 see the miracle that the sun will bring up over 
 the river and the hills once more, ready to 
 learn the lesson of the earth a work to do 
 and manly strength to do it, ready to sym- 
 pathize with and worship all that is worthy of 
 our sympathy and homage, ready to grow 
 more godlike in our reverence for God if this 
 be poetry, then fifty poems may begin to-mor- 
 row, with earth's grand music for them all to 
 sing to, and heaven at last to crown the vic- 
 tor with a sweet " Well done." 
 
 X. 245, 246.
 
 JUNE 2. 153 
 
 Still are we saying, " Teach us how to pray " ? 
 Oh, teach us how to love! and then our 
 
 prayer 
 Through other lives will find its upward way. 
 
 T T E best finds God and is God's who finds 
 * * Him and becomes His, not in separation 
 from his brethren but in the certainty of God's 
 love to all and of the belonging of all souls to 
 God. ... If I prayed all alone, my prayer 
 the only prayer which pierced the darkness be- 
 cause mine was the only soul which stood in 
 need, then I can possibly imagine that as I 
 stood and looked I should behold the answer 
 come like a white dove out of the distance 
 until it laid itself upon my soul and gave it 
 peace. But now I cannot help seeing what a 
 far greater richness there will be if my peti- 
 tion blends with a million others, and the an- 
 swer comes in some great outpouring of the 
 divine light and love which addresses itself to 
 all the world. 
 
 V. 128. 
 
 Nor nursing each our own distress, 
 
 To Thee we press; 
 Prayer's overflow drowns selfishness; 
 
 Soul within soul, 
 
 One voice to Thee our linked petitions roll; 
 Healer of the world's hurt, oh, make us whole! 
 
 LUCY LARCOM.
 
 iS4 JUNE 3. 
 
 But He answered her not a word. 
 
 MATT. xv. 23. 
 
 SOME prayers Christ does not answer, we 
 may say, because they ask Him to do our 
 work for us. ... Tell me, is there a kinder 
 thing that you can do for your pupil who 
 comes up to you with his slate, asking you to 
 work out for him his problem, than to bid him 
 go back to his seat and do his task himself, 
 and get that discipline and learning which is 
 really the object of his having his task set to 
 him at all ? You ask Christ to show you with 
 a flash of lightning what your sorrow means. 
 You ask him to reveal to you by some super- 
 natural illumination which path of life you 
 ought to take, which friendship you shall cul- 
 tivate, what profession you can most success- 
 fully pursue. There comes no answer to those 
 prayers. . . . And why ? Those are your 
 problems. It is by hard work of yours, by 
 watchful vigilance, by careful weighing of 
 consideration against consideration, that you 
 must settle those things for yourself. 
 
 V. 133- 
 
 Not for thy neighbor nor for thee, 
 
 Be sure, was life designed to be 
 
 A draught of dull complacency. 
 
 One Power too is it who doth give 
 
 The food without us, and within 
 
 The strength that makes it nutritive. . . . 
 
 So thou but strive, thou soon shalt see 
 
 Defeat itself is victory. 
 
 ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
 
 JUNE 4. 155 
 
 If Thou be the Son of God, command that these 
 stones be made bread. MATT. iv. 3. 
 
 DO you not see what the temptation was 
 and what it is forever ? O my dear 
 friend, God made these things, and made you 
 to live by them, but not by them alone. Go 
 on; gather the joy out of the earth and sky, 
 out of the bread He gives you power to win, 
 out of the water that He makes to gush at 
 your feet; only, when the time comes as it 
 is sure to come some time, as perhaps it is to 
 come now when, in order to speak some word 
 out of His mouth to you, some word of duty 
 or charity or holiness, He takes these things 
 away, and you are tempted to shut your ear to 
 His word in order that you may keep these 
 pleasant things, then you are just where Jesus 
 was the devil is at your ear. May God help 
 you to see what Jesus saw what He said after- 
 ward, perhaps remembering His own tempta- 
 tion: " The life is more than meat." May he 
 help you to say, " No! Nothing not even 
 His gifts shall blind or deafen me to Him. 
 Man shall not live by bread alone, but by 
 every word out of the mouth of God " the 
 blessed sacrifice of sense to spirit. 
 
 VII. 143. 
 
 To sacrifice, to share ; 
 
 To give even as He gave ; 
 
 For others' wants to care ; 
 Not our own lives to save 
 
 The hidden manna this, 
 
 Whereof who eateth, he 
 Grows up in perfectness 
 
 Of Christ-like symmetry. 
 
 LUCY LARCOM.
 
 156 JUNE 5. 
 
 If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink. 
 
 JOHN vii. 37. 
 
 DEMEMBER, it is not just compensation, 
 f\ but transformation that you are to seek. 
 Not Heaven yet. That looms before us al- 
 ways, tempting us on; but now the earth, with 
 all its duties, sorrows, difficulties, doubts, and 
 dangers. We want a faith, a truth, a grace to 
 help us now, right here, where we are stum- 
 bling about, dizzied and fainting with our 
 thirst. And we can have it. One who was 
 man, yet mightier than man, has walked the 
 vale before us. When He walked it, he turned 
 it all into a well of living water. To them 
 who are willing to walk in His footsteps, to 
 keep in His light, the well He opened shall be 
 forever flowing. Nay, it shall pass into them 
 and fulfil there Christ's own words: "Who- 
 soever drinketh of the water that I shall give 
 him shall never thirst, but the water that I 
 shall give him shall be in him a well of water 
 springing up into everlasting life." 
 
 VI. 34- 
 
 I am the Fountain of Life, that cannot be 
 exhausted. 
 
 Whosoever is sorrowful, let him come to me 
 that he may be comforted; 
 
 Whosoever is dry, let him come th'at he may 
 be filled with the richness and fulness of the 
 Spirit; 
 
 Whosoever is wearied, let him come that he 
 may be refreshed with joy. 
 
 THOMAS A KEMPIS.
 
 JUNE 6. 157 
 
 The communion of the Holy Ghost be with you 
 all. 2 COR. xiii. 14. 
 
 THE doctrine of the Holy Ghost is a contin- 
 ual protest against every constantly re- 
 curring tendency to separate God from the cur- 
 rent world. A God who made the world and 
 then left it to run its course under the tyranny of 
 force and law; a God who redeemed the world 
 eighteen centuries ago and left it to be blessed 
 by or to miss the blessing of the redemption 
 which He had provided neither of these 
 ideas of Deity can comprehend the truth of 
 God the Holy Ghost. A present God, an 
 ever-living God, an ever-pleading, ever-help- 
 ing, ever-saving God this is the God whom 
 Christ told of and promised, the God who 
 came in the miracle of Pentecost and is for- 
 ever here. . . . Wherever men's dealings with 
 each other, or men's value of each other, is 
 colored with the influence of the truth that we 
 live in a world full of God; wherever our 
 communion with each other takes place through 
 Him, the sacredness and usefulness of what 
 we are to each other resulting from what He 
 is to all of us, then our communion is a com- 
 munion of the Holy Ghost. VII. 307. 
 
 We faintly hear, we dimly see, 
 
 In differing phrase we pray; 
 But, dim or clear, we own in Thee 
 
 The Light, the Truth, the Way. 
 
 Thy litanies, sweet offices 
 
 Of love and gratitude; 
 Thy sacramental liturgies 
 
 The joy of doing good. WHITTIER.
 
 158 JUNE 7. 
 
 A friend, it is another name for God, 
 Whose love inspires all love, is all in all; 
 Profane it not, lest lowest shame befall! 
 
 Worship no idol, whether star or clod; 
 Nor think that any friend is truly thine, 
 
 Save as life's closest link with Love Divine. 
 
 LUCY LARCOM. 
 
 ONE of the most valuable changes which 
 comes to a human friendship when it is 
 deepened into a communion of the Holy Ghost 
 is the assurance of permanence which it ac- 
 quires. There is always a lurking distrust and 
 suspicion of instability in friendship which has 
 not the deepest basis. No present certainty 
 answers for the future. Present kindness only 
 bears witness of present regard, and each new 
 moment needs its new proof. How we have 
 all felt this! 
 
 " Alas that neither bonds nor vows 
 
 Can certify possession ! 
 Torments me still the fear that love 
 Died in its last expression." 
 
 This must be so to some degree with an affec- 
 tion where each is held to each only by the 
 continuance of personal liking. But when 
 friendship enters into God, and men are bound 
 together through their common union with 
 Him, all the strength of that higher union au- 
 thenticates and assures the faithfulness and 
 perseverance of the love that is bound up with 
 it. The souls that meet in God may well be- 
 lieve that they shall hold each other as eter- 
 nally as He holds each and each holds Him. 
 
 VII. 312.
 
 JUNE 8. 159 
 
 My peace I give unto you. JOHN xiv. 27. 
 
 T KNOW that there is such a thing as peace 
 * to seek and find. But here is my work to 
 do, to worry over whether I am doing it right, 
 to keep myself restless over how it will turn 
 out. ' ' My work, ' ' I say ; but if I can know that 
 it is not my work, but God's, should I not cast 
 away my restlessness, even while I worked on 
 more faithfully and untiringly than ever ? . . . 
 If I could pour through all the good plan 
 over which I am laboring the certainty that all 
 that is good in it is God's and must succeed, 
 how that certainty would drive the darkness 
 out of it! and while I worked harder than 
 ever, my work would have something of the 
 calmness with which He labors always. . . . 
 
 To every poor sufferer, to every discouraged 
 worker, to every man who cannot think much 
 of himself and yet is too brave to despair, this 
 is the courage that the gospel gives. Not 
 what you can do, but what He can do in you; 
 not what you are, but what you can help men 
 to see that He is that is the power by which 
 you are to work. 
 
 VII. 49, 53- 
 
 Lord, Thoii wilt ordain peace for us ; for Thou 
 also hast wrought all our works in us. 
 
 Is. xxvi. 12.
 
 160 JUNE 9. 
 
 We see but half the causes of our deeds, 
 Seeking them wholly in the outer life, 
 And heedless of the encircling spirit-world, 
 Which, though unseen, is felt, and sows in us 
 All germs of pure and world-wide purposes. 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 OH, there are households among you where 
 some son or daughter who is dead is 
 stronger in the shaping of the daily life than 
 any of the men and women who are still alive. 
 His character is at once a standard and an in- 
 spiration. . . . To say that he is not with you 
 is to make companionship altogether a phys- 
 ical, not at all a spiritual thing. To say that 
 he is absent from you, and that the neighbor 
 of whom you know nothing, for whom you 
 care nothing and who cares nothing for you, 
 is present with you, is to confuse all thoughts 
 of neighborhood, to put the false for the true, 
 the superficial for the deep. 
 
 This is the difference of men those whose 
 power stops with their death, and those whose 
 power really opens into its true richness when 
 they die. The first sort of men have mechan- 
 ical power. The second sort of men have 
 spiritual power. And the final test and witness 
 of spiritual force is seen in the ability to cast the 
 bodily life away and yet continue to give help 
 and courage and wisdom to those who see us 
 no longer; to be, like Christ, the helper of 
 men's souls even from beyond the grave. 
 
 VII. 14, 15.
 
 JUNE 10. 161 
 
 Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy pres- 
 ence from the strife of tongues. Ps. xxi. 20. 
 
 WE believe in Jesus and try to live with 
 Him. How is it that a flippant toss of 
 skeptical smartness about Him, or a sneer at 
 our folly in making Him our Master, lays hold 
 of and stings us so, sends us home anxious, 
 puzzled, and worried ? We are not wholly 
 hidden from the strife of tongues. It must 
 be that we are not completely in the secret of 
 His presence. We are not there constantly 
 enough. There are moments, times when we 
 are praying, times when in sorrow His sympa- 
 thy is like life to us, when there is not the 
 tongue so rude and bitter that it could ruffle 
 the rest of our souls in Him; times when 
 nothing that man could say would frighten or 
 depress us. At such times we learn what it 
 is to be thoroughly with Him, and understand 
 what a guarded and safe life it must be to be 
 hidden there always. 
 
 I. 88. 
 
 Wisest of spirits that spirit which dwelleth 
 
 apart 
 Hid in the presence of God for a chapel and 
 
 nest, 
 Sending a wish and a will and a passionate 
 
 heart 
 Over the eddy of life to that Presence in 
 
 rest: 
 
 Seated alone and in peace till God bids it 
 arise. 
 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
 
 162 JUNE ii. 
 
 And they sent forth Barnabas, . . . Who, 
 when he came, . . . exhorted them all, that with 
 purpose of heart they should cleave unto the Lord. 
 
 ACTS xi. 22, 23. 
 
 WHEN a man gathers up his life and goes 
 out simply to spend it all in telling the 
 children of God who never heard it from any 
 other lips than his that their Father is their 
 Father; when all that he has known of Christ 
 is simply turned into so much force by which 
 the tidings of their sonship is to be driven 
 home to hearts that do not easily receive so 
 vast a truth; to that man certainly the idea 
 has become a master and a king, as it has not 
 to us. Belief is power. By the quantity of 
 power I may know the quantity of belief. He 
 is the true idealist, not who possesses ideas, 
 but whom ideas possess; not the man whose 
 life wears its ideas as ornamental jewels, but 
 the man whose ideas shape his life like plastic 
 clay. And so the true Christian idealist is he 
 whose conception of man as the redeemed 
 child of God has taken all his life and moulded 
 it in new shapes, planted it in new places, so 
 filled and inspired it that, like the Spirit of 
 God in Elijah, it has taken it up and carried it 
 where it never would have chosen to go of its 
 own lower will. II. 176. 
 
 Should He need a goodly tree 
 For the healing of the nations, 
 
 He will make it grow; if not, 
 
 Never yet His love forgot 
 
 Human love and faith and patience. 
 DINAH MULOCH CRAIK.
 
 JUNE 12. 163 
 
 Serving the Lord with all humility. 
 
 ACTS xx. 19. 
 
 T T OW very rare it is to find an exceedingly 
 * * useful and hard-working man whose en- 
 ergy and devotion are not tainted by self-sat- 
 isfaction! But here, if all we do is but to 
 make ourselves channels through which the 
 power of God shall flow; if when a man stands 
 up and calls a whole city out of corruptness, 
 or a whole race out of slavery, he is deeply 
 and genuinely conscious that it is not he that 
 speaks, but God (as Jesus, you remember, told 
 His disciples it should be with them), then 
 that is won which is so rare in the great work- 
 ers (or in little ones either): all self-satisfac- 
 tion disappears. The man is lost in the cause; 
 nay, the cause itself is lost in joy that God, 
 whom to know is life, has made Himself 
 hereby a little more known to men. 
 
 VII. 49. 
 
 Lord, give me light to do Thy work; 
 
 For only, Lord, from Thee 
 Can come the light by which these eyes 
 
 The way of work can see 
 
 The work is Thine, not mine, O Lord, 
 
 It is Thy race we run ; 
 Give light! and then shall all I do 
 
 Be well and truly done. 
 
 HORATIUS BONAR.
 
 164 JUNE 13. 
 
 Awful in unity, 
 O God, we worship Thee, 
 More simply One, because supremely Three! 
 
 WHEN we preach the Fatherhood of God 
 we preach His divinity; when we point 
 to Christ the perfect Saviour, it is a Divine 
 Redeemer that we declare; and when we plead 
 with men to hear the voice and yield to the 
 persuasions of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter 
 into whose comfort we invite them is Divine. 
 The divinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 
 this is our Gospel. By this Gospel we look 
 for salvation. It is a Gospel to be used, to be 
 believed in, and to be lived by; not merely to 
 be kept and admired and discussed and ex- 
 plained. 
 
 I. 228. 
 
 If a man does believe the doctrine of the 
 Trinity, he ought to rejoice and glory in his 
 faith as the enrichment of his life. Not as 
 a burden on his back, but as wings on his 
 shoulders, he ought to carry his belief. To 
 cease to believe it would be, not welcome lib- 
 erty, but incalculable loss. For a new soul to 
 come to believe it is not, as men have often 
 foolishly talked, the putting out into a sea all 
 dark with mists and fogs. It is the entrance 
 into a luxuriant land where all life lives at 
 its fullest, where nature opens her most lavish 
 bounty, and where man has the consummate 
 opportunity to be and do his best. 
 
 VII. 334-
 
 JUNE 14. 165 
 
 NOTHING could be more misleading than 
 ... to talk about the doctrine of the 
 Trinity as if it claimed to be the solution, the 
 dissipatioff, of the mystery of God. I say 
 "God" to the heathen who has gone so far 
 as to believe that there is one God and not 
 many gods in the universe; and he gazes into 
 the darkness of the great idea and says: " I 
 do not know what God is. A million questions 
 come buffeting me like bats out of the darkness 
 the moment that I dare even to turn my face 
 that way. Let me hear .His commandments 
 and go and do them. For Himself I dare not 
 even ask what He is." That is the mystery of 
 darkness. . . . Then I say "God" to the 
 Christian and he looks up and says: " Yes, I 
 know; Father, Son, and Spirit; my Father, 
 my Brother, my inspiring Friend. I know 
 Him, what He is, for He has shown Himself 
 to me." But with each word, Father, Brother, 
 Friend, there come flocking new questions, not 
 like bats out of the darkness, but like sun- 
 beams out of the light, bewildering the be- 
 lieving soul with guesses and insoluble sugges- 
 tions and intangible visions of the love, the 
 truth, the glory of God, which were impossi- 
 ble until this clothing by God of Himself with 
 radiance in Christ had come. That is the 
 mystery of light. 
 
 II. 312. 
 
 O Blessed Trinity! 
 
 In the deep darkness of prayer's stillest night 
 We worship Thee blinded with light! 
 
 FABER.
 
 i66 JUNE 15. 
 
 Who coverest Thyself with light as with a gar- 
 ment. Ps. civ. 2. 
 
 WITH all deep things the deeper light 
 brings new mysteriousness. The mys- 
 tery of light is the privilege and prerogative 
 of the profoundest things. The shallow things 
 are capable only of the mystery of darkness. 
 Of that all things are capable. Nothing is so 
 thin, so light, so small, that if you cover it 
 with clouds and hide it in half-lights it will not 
 seem mysterious. But the most genuine and 
 profound things you may bring forth into the 
 fullest light, and let the sunshine bathe them 
 through and through, and in them there will 
 open ever new wonders of mysteriousness. The 
 mystery of light belongs to them. And how 
 then must it be with God, the Being of all 
 beings, the Being who is Himself essential 
 Being, out of whom all other beings spring and 
 from whom they are continually fed ? Surely 
 in Him the law which we have been tracing 
 must find its consummation. Surely of Him 
 it must be supremely true that the more we 
 know of Him, the more He shows Himself to 
 us, the more mysterious He must forever be. 
 The mystery of light must be complete in Him. 
 
 II. 309. 
 
 The subtlest and profoundest of men can- 
 not explain mysteries; the simplest person 
 can appropriate and exult in them. 
 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
 
 JUNE 16. 167 
 
 And the four and twenty elders fall down before 
 him that sat on the throne, and worship Him that 
 liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns be- 
 fore the throne. REV. iv. 10. 
 
 ONLY those who have crowns to cast can 
 do true homage before His throne. . . . 
 Only those who are kingly themselves can 
 properly honor the kingliest. . . . Men are 
 measured by their reverences. All human life 
 is like the annual procession of the Jews, 
 marching up to Jerusalem, to the Holy City. 
 The nearer we are to that place of supreme 
 adoration, the nearer the purpose of our life 
 is fulfilled. What do you adore, what do you 
 really reverence and respect ? is the real test 
 question of your life. In an age which makes 
 too little of reverence, let us not dare to let 
 drop the truth that only that which is high can 
 worship the highest, and so covet as the best 
 crown of our existence the power so to know 
 and feel that we can genuinely worship God. 
 
 VI. 38, 44, 45. 
 
 It is life 
 
 From self-enfranchised, opening every vein 
 To let in glory from above, and give 
 What we receive in fragrance, color, fruit, 
 Life, which is Heaven's: ourselves dead mat- 
 ter, else. 
 
 LUCY LARCOM.
 
 168 JUNE 17. 
 
 SO long as a man is living for himself and 
 honoring himself, there is an association, 
 however remote it may be, with all the lowest 
 forms of selfishness in which men have lived; 
 but the moment a man begins to live in genu- 
 ine adoration of the absolute good, and wor- 
 ship God, he parts company from all these 
 lower orders of human life. . . . When you 
 say to God, " O God, take me, for the high- 
 est thing that I can do with myself is to give 
 myself to Thee, ". . . you sweep into the cur- 
 rent of the best, the holiest, and the most 
 richly human of our humanity, which in every 
 age has dedicated itself to God. The worship- 
 pers of all the world the Jew, the Greek, the 
 Hindu, the Christian in all his various cultures, 
 take you for their brother. . . . You are never 
 in such company as when you are before God's 
 throne offering Him your brightest and most 
 precious. VI. 44, 45. 
 
 Be of good cheer, brave spirit; steadfastly 
 Serve that low whisper thou hast served; for 
 
 know 
 
 God hath a select family of sons 
 Now scattered wide through earth, . . . 
 Who are thy spiritual kindred. 
 And Time, who keeps God's word, brings on 
 
 the day 
 To seal the marriage of these minds with 
 
 thine. 
 
 ... Ye shall be 
 The salt of all the elements, world of the 
 
 world. 
 
 EMERSON.
 
 JUNE 18. 169 
 
 F\I 7HEN] ground is trodden hard, it is the 
 L VV very substance of the ground that lies 
 impenetrable and catches the seed, and will 
 not let it in and claim the soil and do its fruit- 
 ful work. . . . This is the notion of the Crust. 
 It is not a foreign material; but the thing 
 itself, grown hard and rigid, shuts the soft and 
 tender and receptive portions of the thing 
 away. . . . Thus out of the very substance 
 of a man's life, out of the very stuff of what 
 he is and does, comes the hindrance which 
 binds itself about his being, and will not let 
 the better influences out. . . . That self-made 
 barrier must be broken up, must be restored 
 to its first condition and become again part of 
 the substance out of which it was evolved, be- 
 fore the life can be fed with the dew of first 
 principles and the rain of the immediate de- 
 scent of God. 
 
 What is the crust upon your life that keeps 
 out holy influences ? 
 
 VI. 155, 156. 
 
 This crust of selfishness and sin 
 That shuts my better self within, 
 If Thou canst make it soft and fine, 
 So bloom and fruitage there may shine 
 In answer to Thy dew and sun, 
 I can but say: Thy will be done! 
 For where the deepest cuts Thy plough, 
 And all is bare and broken now, 
 Faith sees the tender grain-rows spring, 
 The teeming valleys laugh and sing! 
 
 J. L. M. W.
 
 170 JUNE 19. 
 
 IF, as we profess to believe, all right is for- 
 ever antagonistic to all wrong, then what 
 a lesson there is to us in the steadfast law and 
 faithfulness of all the universe around us. 
 How each day coming to its task of crowding 
 labors, each night bringing in its blessed peace 
 of sleep in obedience to the old command of 
 Genesis, brings with it a remonstrance against 
 our faint-heartedness and constant wavering 
 of loyalty and truth. The stars in their courses 
 fight against us as they fought against Sisera. 
 The duty that they are doing cries shame on 
 the duty that we are leaving undone every 
 day. . . . While this morning's sunrise is rosy 
 with the memory of last night's sunset, while 
 noon looks longingly down the eastern sky 
 that it has travelled, and fondly onward to the 
 night toward which it hurries, while month 
 links in with month, and season works with 
 season, and year joins hand with year in the 
 long labor of the world's hard life, there is a 
 lesson for us all to learn of the unity and the 
 harmony of our existence. Let us take the 
 lesson, and with it in our hearts go out to be 
 more tolerant, more kindly, and more true in 
 our dealings with our fellow-men. ... It is 
 sympathy, it is love, it is healthy interest in 
 one another, that all these great teachers make 
 their lesson. 
 
 X. 243. 
 
 So links more subtle and more fine 
 Bind every other soul to thine 
 In one great Brotherhood divine. 
 
 ADELAIDE A. PROCTER.
 
 JUNE 20. 171 
 
 The Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of 
 the world. i JOHN iv. 14. 
 
 AND when an earnest soul accepts this ever- 
 lasting Christ, is there not a new glory 
 in his salvation when he thinks that it has been 
 from everlasting? He looks back, and lo, the 
 Saviour was his Saviour before the worlds 
 were made! The covenant to which he clings 
 had its sublime conditions written in the very 
 constitution of the Godhead. It was not 
 spoken first on Calvary; nay, it did not begin 
 when it was told to David, or to Moses, or to 
 poor Adam crushed into the dust with his new 
 sinfulness outside the garden-gate. Before 
 them all, in the very nature of the Deity, was 
 written the prophecy that if ever in the un- 
 folding of the ages one poor human soul like 
 mine should need salvation, the eternal Christ, 
 bringing His credential of Eternal Human 
 Brotherhood, should come to save it. The ages 
 rolled along; my soul was born, and sinned; 
 it cried out to be saved, and lo, Christ came! 
 What is there left for me to do but cling to 
 Him with a love strong as His precious prom- 
 ises and a faith firm as His Everlasting Sav- 
 iourship ? 
 
 VI. 319- 
 
 Except the Cross, and Him who died 
 Upon it, now in earth or heaven 
 What own I, claim I ? Now below 
 I seek no farther; here is woe 
 Assuaged forever: now above 
 I look no longer; here is love! 
 
 DORA GREENWELL.
 
 172 JUNE 21. 
 
 He that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit 
 reap everlasting life. GAL. vi. 8. 
 
 had His word of encouragement 
 and strength to say to every soldier in 
 His army and to every worker at His work. 
 . . . Not merely scholars in their studies, not 
 merely missionaries in their martyrdoms, not 
 merely saints in their closed closets, but every 
 working man and woman everywhere, they 
 are all His. The spirit which proceeds from 
 Him may pour through the whole mass and 
 find out every particle, and give to each an 
 impetus towards its own next higher stage of 
 life, and so bear the whole along together to- 
 wards the completion of each man and the 
 completion of the whole social and business 
 life, and politics and education, and then, as 
 the crown of them all, Religion. ' That is 
 not first which is Spiritual, but that which is 
 Natural; and afterward that which is Spirit- 
 ual! " But they are all God's; and to make 
 each instinct with what measure of His life it 
 is capable of containing that is to build them 
 all into a flight of shining stairs, sweeping 
 upward into even clearer and intenser light, 
 until he who mounts to the full summit stands 
 by the altar of God's unclouded presence and 
 realizes the blessedness of perfect Communion 
 with Him. 
 
 VI. 258. 
 
 For ive are laborers together with God. 
 
 i COR. iii. 9.
 
 JUNE 22. 173 
 
 Life is too short to waste 
 In critic peep or cynic bark, 
 
 Quarrel or reprimand, 
 'Twill soon be dark: 
 
 Up! mind thine own aim, and 
 
 God speed the mark! EMERSON. 
 
 MEN complain that God does not do this 
 and that and the other thing for them, 
 which He never undertook to do. They say, 
 " He does not make me rich. He does not 
 fill my life with friendships." So they flutter 
 about with their complainings as a bird will 
 sweep this way and that, doubtful and wan- 
 dering and tempted on every side. But as at 
 last the bird catches sight of the home where 
 it belongs, though very far away, and all its 
 flutterings cease, and setting itself straight 
 towards that, it steadies itself and seeks it 
 without a single turn aside; so by and by one 
 of these wanderers among many hopes discov- 
 ers far away the hope, the one only hope, for 
 which God made him, and forgetting every- 
 thing else thenceforth gives himself to that, 
 to serve God and by serving Him to grow into 
 His goodness. I. 312. 
 
 I go to prove my soul! 
 I see my way as birds their trackless way; I 
 
 shall arrive! What time, what circuit, 
 I ask not; but . . . 
 In some good time His good time I shall 
 
 arrive: 
 He guides me and the bird. In His good 
 
 time! BROWNING.
 
 174 JUNE 23. 
 
 A central peace subsisting at the heart 
 Of endless agitation. WORDSWORTH. 
 
 BUT motion without fatigue, or waste, or 
 need of refreshment or repair, that is 
 the finished idea of Peace. We talk about the 
 " Peace of God." Is not this really the con- 
 ception which, carried to its highest, reaches 
 that sublime idea ? " My father worketh hith- 
 erto and I work," said Jesus. It is no Orien- 
 tal apathy. The Christian thought of God is 
 full of interest, zeal, emotion, action, only it 
 is always perfectly balanced with its surround- 
 ings, since its surroundings are the utterance 
 and creation of itself. God and the universe 
 in their unbroken harmony. The universe 
 never asking anything of God which God can- 
 not do. God having no power or affection 
 which the universe cannot utter. That is the 
 Perfect Peace. To match that consummate 
 Peace in our lower little sphere, to be to our 
 world as God is to His, to work as perpetually 
 and yet as calmly and so effectively as He 
 works; that is the real thing that we pray for 
 when we ask for one another the Peace of 
 God. VI. 189. 
 
 Roll round, strange years; swift seasons, come 
 
 and go; 
 
 Ye leave upon us but an outward sign; 
 Ye cannot touch the inward and divine, 
 Which God alone does know; 
 There, sealed till summers, winters, all shall 
 
 cease, 
 In His deep peace. DINAH MULOCH CRAIK.
 
 JUNE 24. 175 
 
 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear wit- 
 ness of that Light. JOHN i. 8. 
 
 TO look different from other people, to wear 
 other clothes, to be somehow eccentric, 
 . . . this is the most superficial form of the 
 desire for originality. . . . To start some new 
 idea, to send forth something that shall show 
 our fellows that this machinery within us does 
 not work just the same with all the mental 
 machinery in all the world this is the higher 
 ambition of a higher man. Different from 
 both of them is that religious consciousness 
 which the devout man has that God made him 
 for a special purpose, for a special exhibition 
 of himself; and so the desire to be himself 
 completely, in order that no purpose which 
 God had in his creation may fail through his 
 being distorted or obscured. This is a desire 
 for the divine originality of character which God 
 intended. . . . Many men try to be John 
 the Baptists by wearing the skins and eating 
 the locusts and wild honey. Others would be 
 John the Baptists by preaching strange doc- 
 trines. Very few seek to live the life that he 
 lived by recognizing that they are sent into the 
 world, not to shine themselves, but merely by 
 some way of their own to bear witness of the 
 Light of God. VII. 41. 
 
 O Lord Jesus Christ, Who didst make Thy forerunner, 
 Saint John Baptist, to be as a bright light in Thy temple ; 
 Grant that we may ever shine in Thy Church, with the 
 ardor of faith, in works of charity, and in true humility ; 
 through Thy mercy, O Christ our God, Who, with the 
 Father and the Holy Ghost, livest and reignest, ever one 
 God, world without end. Amen. ANCIENT COLLECTS.
 
 176 JUNE 25. 
 
 THERE are two persons to whom life is 
 pretty clear, the man who does not think 
 or feel at all, and the man who thinks and feels 
 very deeply. . . . The sluggish creature who 
 just runs his little fragment of the universe 
 and asks no questions further is troubled by 
 no doubts. The finished soul who sees with 
 God's eyes the great moral laws which govern 
 all God's worlds, he, too, may rest in peace. 
 Between the two the great mass of men, see- 
 ing the difficulties, but not seeing their solu- 
 tions, live in disquietude and questionings. 
 And when one has once outgrown the first 
 repose of ignorance and thoughtlessness, he 
 never can go back to it there is no hope for 
 him except to go on to the higher repose of 
 faith and knowledge and sympathy with God. 
 
 VI. 112. 
 
 Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, the 
 
 ineffable Name ? 
 Builder and maker, Thou, of houses not 
 
 made with hands! 
 What, have fear of Thee who art ever the 
 
 same ? 
 Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that 
 
 Thy power expands ? 
 There shall never be one lost good! What 
 
 was, shall live as before, 
 The evil is null, is nought, is silence imply- 
 ing sound: 
 What was good shall be good, with, for evil, 
 
 so much good more; 
 
 On the earth, the broken arcs; in the heaven, 
 the perfect round. 
 
 BROWNING.
 
 JUNE 26. 177 
 
 A man should rejoice in his own works, for that 
 is his portion. ECCLES. iii. 22. 
 
 IT is the mere smatterer in any profession 
 who thinks it is slight and is contemptuous 
 about it. It is a universal rule that he is a 
 poor workman who does not honor and respect 
 his work. A man has no right to be doing 
 any work which, as he grows greater within it, 
 does not offer him new views of itself to call 
 out an ever-increasing reverence and honor. 
 And in all the good occupations of life (one 
 would like to impress it upon every young 
 merchant, young mechanic, and young student 
 whom he can speak to) a man's best proof of 
 growing greatness in himself is a growing per- 
 ception of the greatness and beauty of his 
 
 work. 
 
 VI. 40. 
 
 And everywhere, here and always, 
 
 If we would but open our eyes, 
 We should find, through these beaten foot- 
 paths, 
 
 Our way into Paradise. 
 
 Dull earth would be dull no longer, 
 
 The clod would sparkle a gem; 
 And our hands, at their commonest labor, 
 
 Would be building Jerusalem. 
 
 LUCY LARCOM.
 
 i 7 8 JUNE 27. 
 
 Hereby we knmv that He abideth in us, by the 
 "Spirit which He hath given us. i JOHN iii. 24. 
 
 The branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it 
 abide in the Vine. JOHN xv. 4. 
 
 IN this truth of the believer's abiding in 
 Christ, there are two notions involved of 
 Permanence and of Repose. . . . There is a 
 new tranquillity which is not stagnation, but 
 assurance, when a life thus enters into Christ. 
 It is like the hushing of a million babbling, 
 chattering mountain streams as they approach 
 the sea and fill themselves with its deep pur- 
 poses. It is like the steadying of a lost bird's 
 quivering wings when it at last sees the nest 
 and quiets itself with the certainty of reaching 
 it, and settles smoothly down on level pinions 
 to sweep unswervingly towards it. It is like 
 these to see the calm of a restless soul that 
 discovers Christ and rests its tired wings upon 
 the atmosphere of His truth, and so abides in 
 Him as it goes on towards Him. 
 
 VI. 299, 300. 
 
 O my soul, how noble thou art, 
 
 What a wonderful power lies hid in thee! 
 
 For thou canst not rest until thou attain the 
 
 highest good, 
 
 And find out the ultimate end; 
 Which being recognized and found, 
 Thy restlessness shall cease. 
 
 THOMAS A KKMPIS.
 
 JUNE 28. 179 
 
 I Ve know that we have passed from death unto 
 life because we love the brethren. i JOHN iii. 14. 
 
 THAT man ought to distrust his Christianity 
 very deeply who finds that when he has 
 become a Christian he takes no more large 
 and hopeful and charitable view of his fellow- 
 men and their lives than he did before. The 
 glory of a revealed immortality is that it ex- 
 alts into struggle for a purpose that which 
 seemed to be only the restless tossing and 
 heaving of mere discontent . . . poor fitful 
 efforts after goodness, broken and distracted; 
 a mere unrest and moral turmoil everywhere. 
 What can interpret it except the great opening 
 of an eternity, and the sight of the power of 
 that eternity working even here ? With that 
 in view, we come to a large and tolerant sus- 
 pense of judgment that is good for us. Who 
 can say how much of this which seems pur- 
 poseless restlessness is really purposeful strug- 
 gle ? The wild, confused waves are going 
 somewhere. We grow to a sure conviction 
 that very much of what seems bad is only good 
 unformed and struggling under the power of 
 the resurrection to its full development and 
 exhibition. 
 
 VII. 281, 282. 
 
 Only add 
 
 Deeds to thy knowledge answerable; add faith, 
 Add virtue, patience, temperance; add love, 
 By name to come called charity, the soul 
 Of all the rest: then wilt thou . . . possess 
 A Paradise within thee. 
 
 MILTON.
 
 iSo JUNE 29. 
 
 SIMON called Peter left his net and followed 
 Jesus. He went out of the old life into 
 the untried new life, following this Master. He 
 went out to a friendship and a work that were 
 to fill his days with delight and inspiration. 
 He went to new thoughts, new hopes, new 
 duties. But did he go to nothing else ? As 
 he turns and follows Jesus does he not go bur- 
 dened with new dangers which he did not have 
 before ? . . . If from that moment of his 
 choice it is possible for him to acknowledge 
 Christ, is it not possible also to deny Him ? 
 
 Does not such a truth as this, when it is un- 
 derstood and deeply felt, make men reject the 
 privileges which bring such dangers with 
 them ? Happily it is not so ... commonly 
 the scale of men's construction is loftier than 
 that. Commonly the man who is man enough 
 to see this truth is man enough to meet it. It 
 fills him with a soberness which is energy and 
 not despair. And besides, men see that it is 
 a danger which they cannot shirk. To avoid 
 privilege in order to escape the chance of sin 
 which it brings with it is essentially to commit 
 the very sin of which we are afraid. For 
 Peter to refuse to follow Jesus because he sees 
 the denial looming in the distance is really 
 only to anticipate his sin and to deny his Mas- 
 ter now. 
 
 VII. 114, 115. 
 
 Fear ballasts hope, hope buoys up fear, 
 And both befit us here. 
 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
 
 JUNE 30. 181 
 
 Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee. 
 
 JOHN xxi. 15. 
 
 THE true sign of forgiveness is not some 
 mysterious signal waved from the sky; 
 not some obscure emotion hunted out in your 
 heart; not some stray text culled out of your 
 Bible; certainly not some word of mortal 
 priest telling you that your satisfaction is com- 
 plete. The soul full of responsive love to 
 Christ, and ready, longing, hungry to serve 
 Him, is its own sign of forgiveness. ... I 
 think that with all we know of the divine heart 
 of Jesus He would far rather see a soul trust 
 Him too much, if that is possible, than trust 
 Him too little, which we know is possible 
 enough. When a man who has sinned, and 
 who, like Simon Peter, has not a shadow or a 
 ghost of an excuse to offer for his sin, has so 
 known Christ that he never thinks of Him as 
 one to be propitiated, never doubts for an 
 instant that if he is forgivable he is forgiven, 
 and so lets his hatred of his old sin break out 
 in an utterance of his love for the Holy One, 
 and lets his sorrow for his treason only show 
 itself in his desire for loyal work, then that 
 poor sinner's sin is dead and gone. 
 
 VII. 127. 
 
 Turn all to love, poor soul; 
 
 Be love thy watch and ward; 
 Be love thy starting-point, thy goal, 
 
 And thy reward. 
 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
 
 182 JULY i. 
 
 Behold, this stone shall be a witness unto us ; for 
 it hath heard all the words of the Lord. 
 
 JOSH. xxiv. 27. 
 
 THERE are always people who are to the 
 world they live in what that stone in 
 Shechem was to the nation in the midst of which 
 it stood. Not voluble people, not people with 
 their glib and ready judgment upon every- 
 thing which goes on about them, perhaps 
 people who have seemed to the world at large 
 mere stones; but people who some time in 
 their lives had had the primary truth of God, 
 the Divinity of Righteousness, spoken so into 
 their ears that it has filled their being. Thence- 
 forward they spoke that word in all its simpli- 
 city to everybody. All earnest struggle after 
 righteousness feels their approval and sympa- 
 thy, and counts it really God's. All shuffling, 
 cowardly and wanton sin hides or hurries 
 away from their rebuking presence. They 
 declare no subtleties and no refinements. They 
 simply, broadly utter right and wrong. Such 
 people have a noble place and function in the 
 world. Men who would not own God's judg- 
 ments directly, own God's judgments as they 
 come through them. They purify and bless 
 the circle, the community in which they live, 
 as that stone under the oak at Shechem must 
 have seemed to purify and bless the whole 
 land of Israel. VI. 263. 
 
 Through such souls . . . 
 God, stooping, shows sufficient of His light 
 For us i' the dark to rise by. 
 
 BROWNING.
 
 JULY 2. 183 
 
 Unto one he gave five talents, to another two, 
 and to another one ; to every man according to his 
 several ability. MATT. xxv. 15. 
 
 IN the life which that parable describes, the 
 different talents of different servants are 
 fully taken into the account. Duty is measured 
 by chance, and yet the essential idea of duty 
 is never weakened. I am bound to do less 
 than you, but I am just as severely bound to 
 do my little as you are to do your much. 
 Where else could those ideas be kept in perfect 
 harmony and peace, neither of them hurting 
 the other, but within the larger idea of father- 
 hood ? In what group could the child take his 
 little task, fitted to his little hands, and do it, 
 with the entire conviction that he must do it, 
 and, nevertheless, not vexed nor bewildered by 
 the sight of tasks a thousand times greater 
 than his own being done close by his side; and 
 at the same time, the great man, the hero, dedi- 
 cate himself to his vast work with no sense of 
 oppression nor injustice, nor with any feeling 
 of superiority or pride, in what group could 
 these two faithful souls work on, in such differ- 
 ence and yet in such identity, but in a family, 
 where every child has his own special duty, 
 great or small, clothed with the absoluteness 
 of the Fatherhood which is over all ? 
 
 VIII. 63. 
 
 For what is infinite must be a home, 
 
 A shelter for the meanest life, 
 Where it is free to reach its greatest growth, 
 
 Far from the touch of strife. 
 
 FABER.
 
 i8 4 JULY 3. 
 
 T^HE more we read the Psalms, and indeed 
 * all the Bible, we are impressed with the 
 remarkable value which belongs to the Holy 
 Land as representing not merely the localities 
 of certain historical events, but also by a higher 
 association the geography of the spiritual life 
 of man. . . . Though the historic land which 
 lies between the Mediterranean sea and the Asi- 
 atic deserts should be blotted from the surface 
 of the earth to-morrow, there would be eter- 
 nally a Holy Land. Still all over the world, 
 the Jordan would roll clown its rocky bed to 
 the Dead sea; still the hills would stand about 
 Jerusalem; still the desert would open between 
 Judea and Galilee; still Egypt must mean 
 captivity, and the Red sea deliverance, and 
 the Gilgal providence, and Bethany domestic 
 piety, and Calvary redeeming love, although 
 the visible places to which those names belong 
 should cease to be forever. We little know 
 how much we owe to this eternal picture 
 drawn in the hearts of men, this mapped-out 
 
 Palestine of the inner life. 
 
 VI. 18. 
 
 For all of good the past hath had 
 Remains to make our own time glad 
 Our common daily life divine, 
 And every land a Palestine. 
 
 WHITTIER.
 
 JULY 4. 185 
 
 Flag of Freedom and Union, wave! 
 Peace and order and beauty draw 
 Round thy symbol of Light and Law! 
 
 WHITTIER. 
 
 JESUS was a patriot. That sentiment which 
 ^ makes so much of the poetry of the earth 
 the love of men for their native land was 
 very strong in His bosom. . . . But why is 
 it that His patriotism is a part of His life to 
 which we least often turn ? It is not only that 
 He lived a larger life and did a larger work, 
 which has far outreached the Jewish people 
 and touched us with its influence. It is the 
 constant predominance of the sonship to God 
 over the sonship to David in His conscious- 
 ness, making Him always eager for the land 
 of David because of the interests of God 
 which it enshrined. This is a distinct and 
 definite quality when it appears in a man's 
 patriotism. It makes his patriotism fine and 
 lofty above the measure of the common patri- 
 otic feeling of mankind. 
 
 VIII. 131, 132. 
 
 Our country hath a gospel of her own 
 To preach and practise before all the world, 
 The freedom and divinity of man, 
 The glorious claims of human brother- 
 hood, . . . 
 And the soul's fealty to none but God. 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
 
 i86 JULY 5. 
 
 And be clothed with humility. i PET. v. 5. 
 
 IT is striking that almost without exception 
 the word humility, used before the time of 
 Christ, is used contemptuously and rebuk- 
 ingly. It always meant meanness of spirit. 
 To be humble was to be a coward. It 
 described a cringing soul. It was a word of 
 slaves. Such is its almost constant classic use. 
 Where could we find a more striking instance 
 of the change that the Christian religion 
 brought into the world, than in the way in 
 which it took this disgraceful word and made 
 it honorable ? To be humble is to have a low 
 estimation of one's self. That was considered 
 shameful in the olden time. Nobody claimed 
 it for himself. Nobody enjoined it upon 
 another. You insulted a man if you called 
 him humble. It seemed to be inconsistent 
 with that self-respect which is necessary to 
 any good activity. Christ came and made the 
 despised quality the crowning grace of the 
 culture that He inaugurated. Lo! the dis- 
 graceful word became the key-word of His 
 fullest gospel. He redeemed the quality, and 
 straightway the name became honorable. It 
 became the ambition of all men to wear it. 
 To call a man humble was to praise him now. 
 Men affected it if they did not have it. Pride 
 began to ape humility when humility was 
 made the crowning grace of human life. 
 
 I. 325- 
 
 Christ was pleased Himself to be 
 
 Our Pattern of humility : 
 
 To show no path of duty lies 
 
 Too low for highest dignities. J. L. M. W.
 
 JULY 6. 187 
 
 JESUS was never guarding himself, but 
 ^ always invading the lives of others with 
 His holiness. . . . His life was like an open 
 stream that keeps the sea from flowing up into 
 it by the eager force with which it flows down 
 into the sea. He was so anxious that the 
 world should be saved, that therein was His 
 salvation from the world. He labored so to 
 make the world pure that He never even had 
 to try to be pure Himself. Health issued 
 from Him so to the sick who touched His 
 garments that He was in no danger of their 
 infection coming in to Him. This was the 
 positiveness of His sinlessness. He did not 
 spend His life in trying not to do wrong. He 
 was too full of the earnest love and longing to 
 do right, to do His Father's will. 
 
 So we are sure at once, and we learn it cer- 
 tainly from Christ, that the true spotlessness 
 from the world must come, not negatively, by 
 the garments being drawn back from every 
 worldly contact, but positively, by the gar- 
 ments being so essentially, divinely pure that 
 they fling pollution off, as sunshine, hurrying 
 on its mission to the world, flings back the 
 
 darkness that tries to stop its way. 
 
 I. 182, 184. 
 
 Have Jesus in thy heart, 
 
 And thou wilt be preserved from all defilement. 
 
 THOMAS A KEMPIS.
 
 i88 JULY 7. 
 
 Be ye glad and rejoice forever in that which I 
 create. Is. Ixv. 18. 
 
 IT means something that, in the disorder of 
 thought and feeling, so many men are flee- 
 ing to the study of orderly nature. And it is 
 rest and comfort. Whatever men are feeling, 
 the seasons come and go. Whatever men are 
 doubting, the rock is firm under their feet, and 
 the steadfast stars pass in their certain courses 
 overhead. Men who dare count on nothing 
 else may still count on the tree's blossoming 
 and the grape coloring. It is good for a man 
 perplexed and lost among many thoughts to 
 come into closer intercourse with Nature, and 
 to learn her ways and to catch her spirit. It is 
 no fancy to believe that if the children of this 
 generation are taught a great deal more than 
 we used to be taught of nature, and the ways 
 of God in nature, they will be provided with 
 the material for far healthier, happier, and less 
 perplexed and anxious lives than most of us 
 are living. 
 
 I. 171. 
 
 Nature . . . can so inform 
 The mind that is within us, so impress 
 With quietness and beauty, and so feed 
 With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, 
 Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, 
 Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 
 The dreary intercourse of daily life, 
 Shall e'er prevail against us or disturb 
 Our cheerful faith that all which we behold 
 Is full of blessings. 
 
 WORDSWORTH.
 
 JULY 8. 189 
 
 T SEEM to hear a certain sort of apologetic 
 1 tone among men of faith, which is not 
 good. . . . The man who trusts God some- 
 times seems almost to say to his unbelieving 
 brother, " Forgive me. I am not as strong as 
 you are. I cannot do without this help. You 
 are more strong and do not need it. But let 
 me keep it still." No open foe of faith can 
 do faith so much harm as that kind of be- 
 liever. ... It is a sick man apologizing to 
 death because he is not quite ready yet to die. 
 It is the meagreness of health in him that 
 prompts his poor apology. Let him grow 
 healthier and he begins to look not down to 
 death with apologies, but up to life with hopes 
 and aspirations. So let the weak disciple grow 
 more strong in faith, and he will have no longer 
 feeble words of shame and self-excuse to say 
 about his trust in Christ; only his whole life 
 will grow one earnest prayer for an increase of 
 faith, as the child's life is one continued hope 
 
 and prayer for manhood. 
 
 VI. zoo. 
 
 Belief's fire, once in us, 
 Makes of all else mere stuff to show itself: 
 We penetrate our life with such a glow 
 As fire lends to wood and iron. 
 
 BROWNING.
 
 1 9 o JULY 9. 
 
 If any man thinketh he is wise, . . . let him 
 become a fool, that he may be wise. 
 
 r Cor. iii. 18. 
 
 BEHOLD, wisdom is the end of all! No 
 less in th'e Bible and in the Church than 
 in the schools. ... If the Gospel discredits 
 any of man's achievements, declaring them to 
 be incompetent to satisfy the soul and educate 
 the nature, it is always only that it may insist 
 upon a higher knowledge. Christ was a 
 teacher. Christ is a teacher forever. If He 
 declares that no scholastic culture, and no skill 
 in the arts of life, and no acquaintance with 
 the ways of men can save a soul, it is only 
 that He may insist that man must know his 
 own soul, and the deep difference of right and 
 wrong, and the infinite holiness of God. These 
 are true knowledges. ' That they might know 
 Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ 
 whom Thou hast sent." It is of all impor- 
 tance that we should know that the Christian 
 life is a life of knowledge, not of ignorance. 
 It is a separate, a higher region of knowledge 
 than that to which we generally give the 
 name; but it is knowledge still. It is the 
 apprehension of truths, of those vast truths 
 which the senses cannot discover, nor the 
 intellect evolve, but which through the open 
 avenues of the spirit enter in and occupy the 
 life. vi. 167. 
 
 Have I knowledge ? confounded it shrinks at 
 
 wisdom laid bare! 
 Have I forethought ? how purblind, how blank 
 
 to the Infinite Care! BROWM.NC.
 
 JULY 10. 191 
 
 IT is the law of God, that wherever there is 
 duty there is also possible joy. Just as 
 the man who sees foliage knows that some- 
 where there must be water, although his eyes 
 or ears cannot discern it, and the trees seem 
 to grow out of the sand; so the man who is 
 sure that in any spot there is duty for him to 
 do knows that there is a happiness for him 
 somewhere in the doing of that duty, even 
 though for the present it seems to be a dread- 
 ful drudgery. In the expectation of that joy 
 he works. The expectation of joy is joy; and 
 so the man who in his voluntariness surrenders 
 some delight or privilege, finds that there is a 
 subtler mastery of happiness which is to be 
 gained only by giving it up and seeking some- 
 thing higher, though for the time it seems to 
 separate us from the happiness we love. Many 
 and many an experience there is in this world 
 which gives us the right to believe that happi- 
 ness is something very coy and wilful, which, 
 when we chase it, runs away from us; but, 
 when we turn away from it and seek for some- 
 thing better, and forget to seek it, changes its 
 mind and chases us. 
 
 III. 238. 
 
 He was not all unhappy. His resolve 
 Upbore him, and firm faith, and evermore 
 Prayer from a living source within the will, 
 And beating up through all the bitter world, 
 Like fountains of sweet water in the sea, 
 Kept him a living soul. 
 
 TENNYSON.
 
 i 9 2 JULY n. 
 
 With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured 
 to you again. MATT. vii. 2. 
 
 IT is a law of vast extent and wonderful 
 exactness. The world is far more orderly 
 than we believe; a deeper and a truer justice 
 runs through it than we imagine. We all go 
 about calling ourselves victims, discoursing on 
 the cruel world, and wondering that it should 
 treat us so, when really we are only meeting 
 the rebound of our own lives. What we have 
 been to things about us has made it necessary 
 that they should be this to us. As we have 
 given ourselves to them, so they have given 
 themselves to us. . . . Only, keep your minds 
 clear of any materialism which would think 
 that in mere earth itself resides this power of 
 just and discriminating reply. It is as we and 
 all things exist together in the great embrac- 
 ing and pervading element of God that all 
 things give themselves to us as we give our- 
 selves to them. So all the phenomena of life 
 are at the same time divine judgments if we 
 are only wise enough to read them. 
 
 III. 268. 
 
 Vainly the lonely tarn its cup 
 
 Holds to the feeding skies; 
 Unless the source be lifted up, 
 
 The streamlet cannot rise: 
 By law inexorably blent, 
 Each is the other's measurement. 
 
 SUSAN COOI.IDGE.
 
 JULY 12. 193 
 
 IN some strange shrine of Romish or Pagan 
 religion, all glorious with art, all blazing 
 with the light of precious stones, there bend 
 around the altar the true devotees who believe 
 with all their souls; while at the door. . . . 
 lingers a group of travellers full of joy at the 
 wondrous beauty of the place; and as when 
 the music ceases and the lights go out they go 
 away, each carrying what it was in him to 
 receive, the devotee his spiritual peace, the 
 artistic tourist his aesthetic joy: so men bestow 
 themselves on Christ, and by the selves that 
 they bestow on Him the giving of Himself to 
 them must of necessity be measured. . . . 
 Not merely with outstretched hands but with 
 open hearts we must stand before Him. . . . 
 Then to each of us even here upon the earth 
 shall begin that which is to be the everlasting 
 wonder and delight of heaven, the perfect giv- 
 ing of the Lord to souls that are perfectly 
 given to Him, the everlasting action and reac- 
 tion, the unhindered beating back and forth of 
 need and grace between the Saviour on His 
 throne and His servants at their tireless work 
 for Him. 
 
 III. 286. 
 
 What Thou hast given, do Thou receive the 
 
 same; 
 And whence the rivers rise, thither let them 
 
 return. 
 
 THOMAS A KEMPIS.
 
 194 JULY 13. 
 
 Lord, is it I ? MATT. xxvi. 22. 
 
 NO sin is sudden. The warning may be only 
 half recognized, but when the sin of our 
 life comes, who of us has not felt, strangely 
 mingled with its strangeness, a certain dread- 
 ful familiarity, such as one might feel when a 
 man whom he had never seen, but of whom he 
 dreamed last night, and whose face he remem- 
 bered from the dream, stepped in the living 
 flesh across his threshold ? . . . The man in 
 business, spurning the very thought of cheat- 
 ing, as ready as he ever was to strike down 
 any man who dared approach him with temp- 
 tation, finds himself some day questioning duty 
 and trying to make it say that it is not duty, 
 or seeing how close he can run under the lee 
 of a doubtful transaction and yet sail out safe. 
 He has not sinned, but if he is a sensitive and 
 thoughtful man he sees, as he opens his eyes 
 to what he is doing, how he might sin. He 
 shudders as a man might who, walking in his 
 sleep, woke up and found that what he thought 
 was music is the roaring in his ears of the 
 chasm on whose brink he stands. His coming 
 sin has given him its warning. 
 
 VII. 119, 120. 
 
 Out of my soul's depths to Thee my cries have 
 
 sounded; 
 Lord, shouldst Thou weigh our faults, who's 
 
 not confounded ? 
 
 CAMPION.
 
 JULY 14. 195 
 
 OUR best moments are the utterance of our 
 highest, truest possibility. . . . They 
 are the type of what we always might and 
 ought to be. For the exceptionalness of an 
 event is not properly measured by its rarity. 
 The exception is the departure from the law 
 of life, whether it comes rarely or comes often. 
 If the law of a man's life, the standard, the 
 ideal of it, is that he shall be true, and ninety- 
 nine times to-day he lies and only once he tells 
 the truth, those ninety-nine times are really 
 ninety-nine exceptions. Once, only once, he 
 has been his true self, conformed to his law. 
 
 If all the world could know that, what a 
 great change would come! If we could all be 
 sure that our best is our most natural that it 
 is the evil which is most unnatural; if I knew 
 man simply in his intrinsic nature, nothing at 
 all of this long dark history of his, I think 
 that nothing he could do would be so good as 
 to surprise me. It would be his wickedness 
 that would seem strange. To keep that feel- 
 ing about him, in spite of this long history of 
 his that is the triumph of the truest faith. 
 
 VII. 348, 349. 
 
 All is well, I know, without; 
 I alone the beauty mar, 
 I alone the music jar. 
 Yet, with hands by evil stained, 
 And an ear by discord pained, 
 I am groping for the keys 
 Of the heavenly harmonies; 
 Still within my heart I bear 
 Love for all things good and fair. 
 
 WHITTIER.
 
 196 JULY 15. 
 
 HAVE you been in the habit of thinking of 
 Christ as of one so far away, so different 
 from us, that what he is and does seems to 
 throw no light on what we may be and do ? 
 But such a thought as that denies the very 
 power of the Incarnation. Here stand our 
 human lives, all dark and lustreless. Here 
 stands one human life in which has been 
 lighted the fire of an evident divinity. Shall 
 we look on and see the fine lines and the fair 
 colors of human nature brought out by the 
 fire which burns within, and not make any 
 glowing inference with regard to our own 
 humanity, with regard to its unfulfilled pos- 
 sibilities and the attainments for which it may 
 confidently hope ? Surely not so! . . . 
 
 Let us believe indeed that in the experience 
 of Christ there is such revelation of the pos- 
 sibility, such confirmation of the hopes of our 
 humanity! So only does this life become that 
 beacon on the mountain-top, that bugle-cry at 
 the army's head, which He evidently counted 
 it to be, which it has so often been through all 
 the Christian centuries! 
 
 IV. 282, 283. 
 
 Jesus, Saviour, Friend most dear! 
 Dwell Thou with us daily here; 
 By Thine own life teach us this 
 How divine the human is! 
 
 One with God, as heart with heart, 
 Saviour, lift us where Thou art; 
 Join us to His life, through Thine, 
 Human still, though all divine! 
 
 LUCY LARCOM.
 
 JULY 16. 197 
 
 And He answered to him never a word ; inso- 
 much that the governor marvelled greatly. 
 
 MATT, xxvii. 14. 
 
 OO the prisoner revealed Himself to His 
 ^ amazed and frightened judge. By silence 
 often of necessity and not by speech He must 
 make Himself known, because the revelation 
 is too great for words to contain; because the 
 hearer cannot hold the truth and yet, by his 
 strange human capacity, can hold Him who 
 speaks the truth, Him who is the truth; be- 
 cause words sometimes hide instead of reveal- 
 ing what they try to tell, for all these rea- 
 sons the Lord often when we pray to Him 
 answers us not a word. 
 
 Oh, my friends, if our answered prayers are 
 precious to us, I sometimes think our un- 
 answered prayers are more precious still. 
 Those give us God's blessings; these, if we 
 will, may lead us to God. Do not let any 
 moment of your life fail of God's light. Be 
 sure that whether He speaks or is silent, He 
 is always loving you, and always trying to 
 make your life more rich and good and happy. 
 
 V. 139. 
 
 All as God wills, who wisely heeds 
 
 To give or to withhold, 
 And knoweth more of all my needs 
 
 Than all my prayers have told. 
 
 WHITTIER.
 
 198 JULY 17. 
 
 And a vision appeared to Paul in the night : 
 There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him 
 . . . Come over, and kelp us. ACTS xvi. 9. 
 
 SO far as we know there was no one man in 
 Macedonia who wanted Paul. . . . But 
 what, then, means the man from Mace- 
 donia ? . . . He is the utterance not of a 
 conscious want, but of the unconscious need 
 of those poor people. It is the unsatisfied soul, 
 the deep need, all the more needy because the 
 outside life, perfectly satisfied with itself, does 
 not know that it is needy all the time, it is 
 this that God hears pleading. This soul is the 
 true Macedonia. And so this, as the repre- 
 sentative Macedonian, the man of Macedonia, 
 brings the appeal. How noble and touching 
 is the picture which this gives us of God. The 
 unconscious needs of the world are all appeals 
 and cries to Him. He does not wait to hear the 
 voice of conscious want. The mere vacancy 
 is a begging after fulness; the mere poverty is 
 a supplication for wealth; the mere darkness 
 cries for light. . . . The "man of Mace- 
 donia" was the very heart and essence of 
 Macedonia, the profoundest capacities of truth 
 and goodness and faith and salvation which 
 Macedonia itself knew nothing of, but which 
 were its real self. These were what took form 
 and pleaded for satisfaction. n. 94, 95. 
 
 O Lord God, hear the silence of each soul, 
 Its cry unutterable of ruth and shame, 
 Its voicelessness of self-contempt and blame : 
 Nor suffer harp and palm and aureole 
 Of multitudes who praise Thee at the goal, 
 To set aside Thy poor and blind and lame ! 
 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
 
 JULY 18. 199 
 
 Knowing that ye are thereto called, that ye 
 should inherit a Messing. i PET. iii. 9. 
 
 "T^HE-RE are always great unifying truths 
 1 waiting to close around and bind into a 
 surprising unity the fragmentary lives we live. 
 For we certainly do live very much in frag- 
 ments. Our special blessings stand isolated, 
 and are not grasped and gathered into one 
 great pervading consciousness of a blessed 
 life, of a life brooded over and cared for and 
 trained by God the Blesser. ... If you 
 could believe in one great utterance of God, 
 one incarnate word, the manifested pity of 
 God and the illustrated possibility of man at 
 once, then, with such a central point, there 
 could be no more fragmentariness any- 
 where. . . . Blessings of every sort are 
 reflections of that great blessing. . . . The 
 manifestation of the Son of God, of Christ, 
 gives all other blessings a place and meaning, 
 just as the sun in heaven accounts for and 
 rescues from fragmentariness every little light 
 of the innumerable host which, in every hue 
 and brilliancy, sparkle and flash and glow from 
 every point of our sun-lit world, v. 199, 202. 
 
 My being, Lord, will nevermore be whole 
 
 Until Thou come behind my ears and eyes, 
 Enter and fill the temple of my soul 
 
 With perfect contact such a sweet sur- 
 prise 
 Such presence as, before it met the view, 
 
 The prophet-fancy could not once foresee, 
 Though every corner of the temple knew 
 
 By very emptiness its need of Thee. 
 
 GEORGE MACDONALD.
 
 200 JULY 19. 
 
 eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, . . . 
 and if ye suffer for righteousness 1 sake, happy are 
 ye. i PET. xii. 14. 
 
 IT is so hard to do right, you say. Yes, of 
 course it is; and the soul that tries to do 
 right does wrong so constantly! But then it 
 is so glorious glorious to do right through 
 struggle; glorious to mount from the lower to 
 the higher life, and seeing how God has 
 bound our perfection to His own, have but one 
 confident prayer for both: not, " Father, save 
 me from this hour" from any hour, however 
 hard it be but " Father, glorify Thy name." 
 And as to Christ when He prayed, so often 
 to us, sharers not only of His struggle, but of 
 His triumph, there shall come a voice from 
 heaven, saying, " I have both glorified it, and 
 will glorify it now again in thee." Who cannot 
 dare all things and bear all things in the 
 celestial courage of that promise 1 
 
 VII. 237. 
 
 God's trumpet wakes the slumbering world; 
 
 Now, each man to his post! 
 The red-cross banner is unfurled; 
 
 Who joins the glorious host t 
 
 He who, with calm, undaunted will, 
 
 Ne'er counts the battle lost, 
 But, though defeated, battles still, 
 
 He joins the faithful host! 
 
 He who is ready for the cross, 
 The cause despised loves most, 
 
 And shuns not pain or shame or loss, 
 He joins the martyr host! 
 
 SAMUEL LONGFELLOW,
 
 JULY 20. 201 
 
 And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled 
 with fire ; and them that had gotten the victory 
 . . . having the harps of God. REV. xv. 2. 
 
 DISAPPOINTMENTS of every sort, sor- 
 rows, sufferings, trials, struggles, rest- 
 lessness and dissatisfaction, false friends, poor 
 health, low tastes and standards all about us 
 who shall catalogue the troubles of human 
 life ? Who shall tell the difference between 
 two men who live in different aspects of all 
 these things ? Are they intrusions, accidents, 
 thwartings and disappointments of the will of 
 God ? Or are they (this is what our doctrine 
 says they are) Messiahs, things sent, having, 
 like the ships that sail to our ports from far-off 
 lands of barbarian richness, rare spices and 
 fragrant oils and choice foods that we cannot 
 find at home, whose foreign luxuriance forces 
 its odorous way through the coarse and uncouth 
 coverings in which their wealth was packed 
 away in the savage lands from which they 
 came ? Are they prolific sources of spiritual 
 culture, contributing what our best happiness 
 could not have except from them, the energy 
 and vitality which there is no way of stirring 
 up in human nature but by some sense of 
 danger, the fire to mingle with the glass ? 
 
 IV. 117. 
 
 Happy is he whose heart 
 Hath found the art 
 
 To turn his double pains to double praise! 
 
 GEORGE HERBERT.
 
 202 JULY 21. 
 
 WHEN we open our eyes morning after 
 morning and find the old struggle, on 
 which we closed our eyes last night, awaiting 
 us; . . . when all our habits and thoughts 
 have become entwined and colored with some 
 tyrannical necessity, which, however it may 
 change the form of its tyranny, will never let 
 us go, it grows so hard as almost to appear 
 impossible for us to anticipate that that domin- 
 ion ever is to disappear, and that we shall ever 
 shake free our wings, and leave behind the 
 earth to which we have been chained so long. 
 But the day comes, nevertheless. Some 
 morning we go out to meet the old struggle, 
 and it is not there. . . . Things do get done, 
 and when anything is really finished, then 
 come thoughtful moments in which we ask 
 ourselves whether we have let that which we 
 shall know no longer do for us all that it had 
 in its power to do, whether we are carrying 
 out of the finished experience that which it has 
 all along been trying to give to our characters 
 and souls. VI. 56, 57. 
 
 I search, but cannot see 
 
 What purpose serves the soul that strives, . . . 
 . . . unless the fruit of victories 
 Stay, one and all, stored up and guaranteed 
 
 its own 
 Forever, by some mode whereby shall be made 
 
 known 
 The gain of every life. BROWNING. 
 
 Afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of 
 righteousness. HEB. xii. u.
 
 JULY 22. 203 
 
 He led them forth by the right way, that they 
 might go to a city of habitation. Ps. cvii. 7. 
 
 A TRAVELLER is going to a great city 
 which is his final goal. At the very be- 
 ginning of the journey the road leads over a 
 high hill. Upon the summit the traveller can 
 clearly see the spires of the far-away city flash- 
 ing in the sunlight. He feasts his eyes on it. 
 And then he follows the road down into the 
 valley. It plunges into forests. It sounds 
 the depths in which flow the dark waters which 
 the sun never touches. But yet it never for- 
 gets the city which it saw from the hilltop. 
 It feels that distant unforgotten glory drawing 
 it toward it in a tight straight line. And when 
 at last the traveller enters in that city, it is not 
 strange to him, because of the prophecy of it 
 which has been in his heart ever since he saw 
 it from the hill. 
 
 If we read rightly, thus, the method by 
 which God brings His children to their best 
 attainment, it is certainly a method full of 
 wisdom and beauty. First He lets shine upon 
 them for a moment the thing He wants them 
 to become, the greatness or the goodness which 
 He wishes them to reach. And then, with 
 that shining vision fastened in their hearts, He 
 sets them forth on the long road to reach it. 
 The vision does not make it theirs. The jour- 
 ney is still to be made, the task is still to be 
 done. But all the time, that sight which the 
 man saw from the mountain-top is still before 
 the eyes, and no darkness can be perfectly dis- 
 couraging to him who keeps that memory and 
 prophecy of light. VII. 340.
 
 204 JULY 23. 
 
 Ye are My witnesses, saith the Lord, that I am 
 God. Is. xliii. 12. 
 
 NO man is a separate, rounded character, 
 independent of any other, carrying his 
 own qualities included within himself; every 
 man is a medium through which God expresses 
 Himself with more or less of clearness and 
 effectiveness, according to the dimness or the 
 transparency of the character on which His 
 light falls. We are like windows through 
 which a higher light is always falling; but 
 the window is blurred and mottled because at 
 some places it is stained deep and will not let 
 the light through; and where it does receive 
 it, it is always conscious of receiving. The 
 radiance with which it shines comes to it from 
 without not // shines, but the light shines 
 through it. 
 
 We learn to count men, thus, not by the 
 witness that they bear of themselves, but by 
 the witness that they bear of God. . . . 
 Many of the most subtle and perplexing 
 phenomena of human life become clearer to 
 us when we have once reached this conception 
 of the unity of the universe, of the way in 
 which man exists and manifests himself only 
 in relation toward God. " Christ is all, and 
 in all;" or, in Paul's phrase, "None of us 
 liveth to himself, and no man dieth to him- 
 self. Whether we live, therefore, or die, we 
 are the Lord's." 
 
 VII. 38, 39.
 
 JULY 24. 205 
 
 No reflection so imperfect 
 
 But it something clear doth speak 
 
 Of a fuller revelation 
 
 Waiting for the eyes that seek; 
 
 Love is made in heavenly likeness 
 Though the image be but weak. 
 
 J. L. M. w. 
 
 AS the sun shines upon a bank of snow no 
 two of all the myriad particles catch his 
 light alike or give the same interpretation of 
 his glory. Have you ever imagined such a 
 purpose for your commonplace existence ? If 
 you have you must have asked yourself what 
 the quality is in a man's life which can make 
 it reflective of God capable of bearing witness 
 of Him. There is some quality in the polished 
 brass or in the calm lake that makes it able to 
 send forth again the sunlight that descends 
 upon it. What is it in a soul that makes it 
 able to do the same to the God who sheds 
 Himself upon its life ? The Bible has its one 
 great name for such a great transforming qual- 
 ity, and that is " love." Love in the Bible is 
 not so much an action of the soul as it is a 
 quality in the soul permitting God to do His 
 divine actions through it. The love of God 
 is a new nature, a new fiber, a new fineness 
 and responsiveness in the soul itself, by which 
 God is able to express Himself upon and 
 through it as He cannot when He finds only 
 the medium of the coarse material of an un- 
 loving heart. VII. 46. 
 
 If any man love God, the same is known of Him. 
 
 i COR. viii. 3.
 
 206 JULY 25. 
 
 Here is the patience and faith of the saints. 
 
 REV. xiii. 10. 
 
 F)ETTER that the whole calendar were 
 D swept away and every saint forgotten, 
 than that one of them should take anything 
 from that perfect prerogative of saviourship 
 which is the Saviour's own. But this need not 
 be. . . . Christ is more utterly my sole re- 
 source in strong temptation, the only Being I 
 can flee to, when I see strong men of the 
 saintly histories turned into weakness before 
 the power of evil, and fleeing in desperation to 
 that same Christ, to be restrengthened with a 
 higher power than the old. There is a use of 
 the saints that can make Christ nearer, clearer, 
 dearer to our souls. They may be like a mere 
 atmosphere between our souls and Him, whose 
 every particle, filled with Him, has passed on 
 His life to the next particle, and so at last sent 
 Him down to us pure, as He is, uncolored with 
 its own blueness, the " light that lighteth every 
 man," lighting us all the more brightly be- 
 cause it has lighted them. 
 
 I. 128, 129. 
 
 What is the flame of their fire, if so I may 
 
 catch the flame; 
 What the strength of their strength, if also 
 
 I may wax strong ? 
 The flaming fire of their strength is the love 
 
 of Jesu's Name, 
 
 In whom their death is life, their silence 
 utters a song. 
 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
 
 JULY 26. 207 
 
 I am He that liveth, and was dead ; and, behold, 
 I am alive forevermore j . . . and have the keys 
 of . . . death. REV. i. 18. 
 
 IT is because He died that He holds the keys 
 of death. . . . They who have under- 
 gone and overcome stand with their keys to 
 open the portals of life's great emergencies to 
 their brethren. The wondrous power of ex- 
 perience! And see how beautiful and enno- 
 bling this makes our sorrows and temptations. 
 Every stroke of sorrow that issues into light 
 and joy is God putting into your hand the key 
 of that sorrow to unlock it for all the poor 
 souls whom you may see approaching it, 
 through all your future life. It is a noble thing 
 to take that key and use it. There are no nobler 
 lives on earth than those of men and women 
 who have passed through many experiences of 
 many sorts, and who now go about with calm 
 and happy and sober faces, holding the keys, 
 some golden and some iron, and finding their 
 joy in opening the gates of these experiences 
 to younger souls, and sending them into them 
 full of intelligence and hope and trust. Such 
 lives, I think, we may all pray to grow into as 
 we grow older, and pass through more and 
 more of the experiences of life. 
 
 I. 217, 219. 
 
 Blessed be God, . . . Who comforteth us in all 
 our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort 
 them which are in any trouble, by the comfort 
 wherewith we are comforted of God. 
 
 2 COR. i. 3, 4.
 
 208 JULY 27. 
 
 And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and 
 sang praises unto God. ACTS xiv. 25. 
 
 \\ 7HEN it enters like a flood of light into 
 * ' the soul of some wretched invalid or 
 some victim of relentless misfortune, that by 
 a faithful patience under his suffering he can 
 glorify God and show forth the power of 
 Christ, then what a change comes to him! 
 How all is transfigured! How full of beauty 
 the hated sick-room grows! There is some- 
 thing behind the suffering for the suffering to 
 rest and steady itself upon. The light has 
 been kindled behind the dark window, and all 
 its fair lines and bright colors shine out. In 
 the purpose of the suffering the escape from 
 the suffering is found; as when Paul and Silas, 
 in the book of Acts, sang praises to God by 
 night in prison, when they turned their im- 
 prisonment into a tribute to their Master, then 
 "the foundations of the prison were shaken, 
 and . . . the doors were opened, and every 
 
 one's bands were loosed." 
 
 VI. 51. 
 
 We take with solemn thankfulness 
 Our burden up, nor ask it less, 
 And count it joy that even we 
 May suffer, serve, or wait for Thee, 
 Whose will is done. 
 
 WHITTIER.
 
 JULY 28. 209 
 
 Mark how the fire in flints doth quiet lie, 
 Content and warm t' itself alone; 
 
 But when it would appear to others' eye, 
 Without a knock it never shone. 
 
 GEORGE HERBERT. 
 
 SUPPOSE that years ago there came some 
 crisis in your life which taught you the 
 necessity and the glory of being brave. It 
 was some mighty day of God with you. . . . 
 You dared to fight because you dared not feebly 
 run away. It was a revelation of you to your- 
 self. What then ? The crisis past, the light- 
 nings faded and the thunders hushed, you 
 came down from the mountain. Ever since 
 that you have walked on in quiet, level ways. 
 But many a time, in simple tasks which had 
 not power of themselves to bring you such 
 self-revelations, you have found yourself able 
 to be brave with a bravery whose possibility 
 you learned in that tremendous hour. . . . 
 Men are meeting the petty enemies of the 
 household and the street to-day with a fortitude 
 and a fearlessness which they learned thirty 
 years ago on the battle-fields of the Rebellion. 
 Men are bearing little disappointments with a 
 patience which was born in them while they 
 stood by the death-bed of their best beloved. 
 ... It is good that the power which is first 
 born under exacting and peculiar circumstances 
 should then be set free from those circum- 
 stances altogether and become the general 
 possession of the life, available for all its 
 needs. The cloud forms about the mountain- 
 peak; but once formed there, it floats away and 
 drops its blessing upon many fields. VII. 343.
 
 210 JULY 29. 
 
 And the day was dark over them. 
 
 MIC. iii. 6. 
 
 f~\ MY dear friends, it is a terrible thing 
 ^-^ when one's religion is too small for the 
 world, and is always leaving great parts of the 
 world's life unaccounted for, unilluminated, 
 and is always dreading to have the world made 
 any larger, lest this religion shall seem even 
 more meagre and insufficient. But it is a 
 great thing when the world is too small for 
 one's religion, and the soul's sense of the glory 
 and dearness of God is always craving larger 
 and larger regions in which to range. Then 
 welcome all discoveries, all illuminations, all 
 visions of the greatness of the world of God. 
 
 VII. 177. 
 
 Then the ever-lifted cry: 
 
 Give us light, or we shall die! 
 
 Cometh to the Father's ears, 
 
 And He hearkens, and He hears. . . . 
 
 They, hardly trusting happy eyes, 
 
 Discern a dawning in the skies: 
 
 'Tis Truth awaking in the soul; 
 
 Thy Righteousness to make them whole. 
 
 What shall men, this Truth adoring, 
 
 Gladness-giving, youth-restoring, 
 
 Call it but eternal Light ? 
 
 'Tis the morning, 'twas the night. 
 
 GEORGE MACDONALD.
 
 JULY 30. 211 
 
 CVERYWHERE the lower furnishes oppor- 
 ' tunities for the higher, and is a failure 
 unless the higher blooms out of the ground 
 which the lower has made ready. It is Paul's 
 groaning and travailing creation. It is the 
 unity of the universe in which, from end to 
 end, there is no hardest, commonest, and 
 cheapest thing which, living in simple healthi- 
 ness and self-respect, may not become the 
 gathering point and manifestation point of the 
 most infinite celestial light, no stone that 
 may not make an altar. Reverence the simple, 
 the prosaic, the natural, the real; but demand 
 of every common thing of life, whether it be 
 your body or your money or your daily experi- 
 ence, that it shall bloom to fine results in your 
 own soul and in your influence upon the 
 world. 
 
 VI. 254. 
 
 One small life in God's great plan, 
 
 How futile it seems as the ages roll, 
 Do what it may, or strive how it can, 
 
 To alter the sweep of the infinite whole! . . . 
 But the pattern is rent where the stitch is lost, 
 Or marred where the tangled threads have 
 
 crossed; 
 
 And each life that fails of its true intent 
 Mars the perfect plan that its Master meant. 
 
 SUSAN COOLIDGE.
 
 2i2 JULY 31. 
 
 Love mocks thee, whose mounting desire 
 Doth not to the Perfect aspire. 
 
 TWO men who have known each other for 
 years become together the servants of 
 Christ. His spirit comes to them. They 
 begin the new life of which He is the centre 
 and the soul. How their old friendship 
 changes! How it is all the same, and yet how 
 different it is! It opens depths and heights 
 they never dreamed of. Where they used to 
 do so little for each other, now they can do so 
 much. Where they used to touch only on the 
 outside, now their whole natures blend. They 
 have taken friendship and planted it where it 
 belongs, in the soil and air of the divine love; 
 and it opens its essential richness as the trop- 
 ical flower which has been living a half-life in 
 the northern soil tells its whole sweet and 
 gorgeous story of itself when it is carried to 
 the bright skies and warm ground for which 
 God made it. 
 
 VII. 312. 
 
 A friend! Deep is calling to deep! 
 A friend! The heart wakes from its sleep, 
 To behold the world lit by one face, 
 With one heavenward step to keep pace. 
 
 O Heart wherein all hearts are known, 
 Whose infinite throb stirs our own, 
 O Friend beyond friends, what are we, 
 Who ask so much less, yet have Thee! 
 
 LUCY LARCOM.
 
 AUGUST i. 213 
 
 Jesus saith unto them, How many loaves have 
 ye? MATT. xv. 34. 
 
 WHEN you stand face to face with a 
 hungry-eyed creature whom you want 
 to feed with better life, be sure that you imi- 
 tate your Lord. Be sure that you begin by 
 asking him " How many loaves have you, my 
 poor friend ? What can you give me to begin 
 with ? What has God done for you already ? 
 Show me your best, and we will pray to God 
 together that as you put it into His hands He 
 will bless it and multiply it, till your whole life 
 is fed with the grace which is all His but which 
 He has made yours by bidding it work upon 
 the substance of what He had given you 
 already." 
 
 " How many loaves have you ? " It is the 
 Lord's first question; and the hands of those 
 who really want His help, search their robes 
 to see what they have hidden there. One 
 brings his joy; another brings his pain; 
 another brings his helpless desire; another 
 brings his poor resolution; another has noth- 
 ing to bring except just his sorrow that he has 
 nothing. It is a poor collection; only seven 
 loaves, and a few little fishes; but it is enough. 
 His blessing falls upon them, and they come 
 back to the souls which gave them up to Him, 
 multiplied into the means of healthy, holy, 
 happy life. 
 
 May God help us all, every day of our lives, 
 to come to Christ just as we are, that He may 
 make us more and more just what we ought 
 to be. 
 
 II. 142, 146.
 
 214 AUGUST 2. 
 
 THE home, school, and shop must be here 
 on the fairest hillsides and plains of the 
 world for something. If we will not claim 
 them for their best use, and by our use of 
 them exalt them to their best explanations, we 
 need not wonder at the low and godless ex- 
 planations which men give of them. When we 
 are willing to see in them the ministrations of 
 God; when men, asking for the means of 
 grace, are pointed, first of all, to the duties 
 and relations of their lives as the places where 
 they will meet God, where they will find the 
 deepest experiences, conviction of sin, utter 
 humility, the need of Christ, and the ideal of 
 holiness, then how the dead earth and all 
 that is upon it will glow with a fire that no 
 materialism will quench. Till then, so long 
 as we fail to use the world for spiritual culture, 
 no wonder if it be dead; and who cares 
 whether the dead thing sprang from the hand 
 of a creator or took shape of chaos by a force 
 as dead as itself ? X. 31. 
 
 Not he who spins with subtle art 
 
 The webs of fine philosophy, 
 Not he who dwells alone, apart, 
 
 In scorn of poor humanity, 
 Nor he who cries, Lo, here! Lo, there! 
 
 The hidden Christ is sure to be! 
 But he who treads the narrow path 
 
 Of homely duty day by day, 
 And lends whatever strength he hath 
 
 To help his brother on the way, 
 Will surest hear at set of sun, 
 The Master's loving word, " Well done! " 
 
 J. L. M. W.
 
 AUGUST 3. 215 
 
 THE best and noblest natures are marked 
 by hardly anything so much as this, the 
 simultaneousness and reasonableness of the 
 lives they live. . . . The spontaneousness 
 does not obscure the reason, and the reason 
 does not hamper and clog the spontaneousness. 
 So it always seems to me that it is with Jesus. 
 He presses His brother's hands with brotherly 
 affection. His brother's sneer wounds as no 
 stranger's can. His mother's sorrow enters into 
 its own secret chamber of sympathy in Him 
 where no other sorrow can intrude. And yet 
 all the while, with all the instinctive value 
 which He gave to them for their own sake, 
 these home affections all are ties to bind Him 
 to humanity, windows through which He looks 
 into the depths of human life, interpretations 
 to His soul of the wider brotherhood in the 
 vaster family. 
 
 Surely here is a noble indication of what the 
 family affections may be to all men. 
 
 VIII. 184. 
 
 To Thee our full humanity 
 Its joys and pains belong; 
 
 The wrong of man on man to Thee 
 Inflicts a deeper wrong. 
 
 Who hates, hates Thee; who loves becomes 
 
 Therein to Thee allied; 
 All sweet accords of hearts and homes 
 
 In Thee are multiplied. 
 
 WHITTIER.
 
 216 AUGUST 4. 
 
 IF human sin needs a humanity to judge it, 
 do not these weak and struggling efforts 
 of our life after goodness crave some sympathy 
 to which they can appeal as they go up to 
 judgment? What! shall I send these poor 
 pretences of holiness up to heaven, this ineffec- 
 tive virtue which is not a being good, but only 
 a trying to be so, shall I send them up to lay 
 themselves against the fiery purity of God and 
 be burnt off like spots of blemish from the 
 white light of His perfectness ? Oh, no, give 
 me a man! Though He be perfect, He will 
 know what human imperfection is. ... He 
 will comprehend what my poor struggles 
 mean. ... If we look deep enough, we 
 ought to feel, every time when we see a little 
 child at night trustfully laying his day's life, 
 made up of faint desires, feeble effort and con- 
 tinual failures, into the hands of God, what a 
 blessed thing it is that there is in that everlast- 
 ing God an everlasting Christ, an undying 
 humanity, which will take that day's life into 
 a brother's hands and count it precious with all 
 the intelligence of sympathy. VI. 322. 
 
 Thou, O Elder Brother, who 
 
 In Thy flesh our trial knew, 
 
 Thou who hast been touched by these, 
 
 Our most sad infirmities, 
 
 Thou alone the gulf can span 
 
 In the dual heart of man, 
 
 And between the soul and sense 
 
 Reconcile all difference, 
 
 Change the dream of me and mine 
 
 For the truth of Thee and Thine. 
 
 WHITTIER.
 
 AUGUST 5. 217 
 
 TN this mixture of good and evil which we 
 * call Man, this motley and medley which we 
 call human character, it is the good and not 
 the evil which is the foundation color of the 
 whole. Man is a son of God on whom the 
 Devil has laid His hand, not a child of the 
 Devil whom God is trying to steal. . . . The 
 great truth of Redemption, the great idea of 
 Salvation, is that the realm belongs to Truth, 
 that the Lie is everywhere and always an 
 intruder and a foe. He came in, therefore he 
 may be driven out. When he is driven out, 
 and man is purely man, then man is saved. 
 It is the glory and the preciousness of the first 
 mysterious, poetic chapters of Genesis that 
 they are radiant all through their sadness with 
 that truth. 
 
 V. 9, 10. 
 
 'T were glorious, no doubt, to be 
 One of the strong-winged hierarchy, 
 
 Yet I, perhaps, poor earthly clod, 
 Could I forget myself in God, 
 Could I but find my nature's clue 
 Simply as birds and blossoms do, 
 And but for one rapt moment know 
 'Tis Heaven must come, not we must go, 
 Should win my place as near the throne 
 As the pearl-angel of its zone. 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
 
 218 AUGUST 6. 
 
 And He went up into a mountain to pray. And 
 as He prayed, the fashion of His countenance was 
 altered, and His raiment was white and glistering. 
 
 LUKE ix. 28, 29. 
 
 IN Jesus our humanity went up into the 
 mountain and was transfigured. It shone 
 with light there on the cross. Thenceforth, 
 into whatever depths of selfishness it might 
 descend, it carried the power of that transfig- 
 uration with it. In its certainty that He who 
 suffered there was one with it and really bore 
 its nature, it knew that not to be selfish, but 
 to be unselfish, was its true life. That is the 
 reason why so wonderfully, through all the 
 years of miserable self-seeking which have 
 come since, souls everywhere have come out 
 under the power of that cross and let them- 
 selves be crucified for fellow-men, and why 
 the dream of a world glorious with mutual 
 devotion has never been lost out of men's 
 hearts. 
 
 Those lives of self-devotion, however humble 
 and obscure they seem, have always themselves 
 the same power which belongs to the sac- 
 rifice of Jesus. They too throw light on 
 darker lives. They are lesser hill-tops grouped 
 around the great mountain. Such lives may 
 we live in any little world where God has set 
 us! VII. 345. 
 
 But we would be of those who do Thy will, 
 And unto whom Thou dost in love disclose 
 
 The brightness of Thy face, to overfill 
 
 Their heart with sweetness, we would be of 
 those. CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
 
 AUGUST 7. 219 
 
 And Peter answered and said unto Jesus, 
 Master, it is good for us to be here. 
 
 MATT. ix. 5. 
 
 TO many, if not to all, men's lives come 
 such splendid moments as came to Peter 
 on the mountain of the Transfiguration. . . . 
 Once on a certain morning you felt the glory 
 of living, and the misery of life has never 
 since that been able quite to take possession of 
 your soul. Once you knew for a few days 
 what was the delight of a perfect friendship. 
 Once you saw for an inspired instant the idea 
 of your profession blaze out of the midst of 
 its dull drudgery. Once, just for a glorious 
 moment, you saw the very truth and believed 
 in it without the shadow of a cloud. . . . 
 And often the question must have come, 
 "What do they mean? What value may I 
 give to these transfiguration times ? " 
 
 The first instinct is to feel that they are not 
 complete and final; that they point to some- 
 thing which is yet to come; that they are the 
 premonitions, the anticipations, of a fuller 
 condition, in which that which they manifested 
 fitfully and transiently shall become the con- 
 stant and habitual possession of the life. 
 
 VII. 338, 339- 
 
 Nothing resting in its own completeness 
 Can have worth or beauty, but alone 
 
 As it leads and tends to further sweetness, 
 Fuller, higher, deeper than its own. 
 
 Life is only bright when it proceedeth 
 Toward a truer, deeper life above ; 
 
 Human love is sweetest when it leadeth 
 To a more divine and perfect Love. 
 
 ADELAIDE A. PROCTER.
 
 AUGUST 8. 
 
 Ye shall know them by their fruits. 
 
 MATT. vii. 16. 
 
 CONDUCT is the mouth-piece of character. 
 What a man is declares itself through 
 what he does. . . . Character without con- 
 duct is like the lips without the trumpet, whose 
 whispers die upon themselves and do not stir 
 the world. Conduct without character is like 
 the trumpet hung up in the wind which whistles 
 through it, and means nothing. The world 
 has a right to demand that all which claims to 
 be character should utter itself through con- 
 duct which can be seen and heard. The 
 world has a right to disallow all claims of 
 character which do not utter themselves in 
 conduct. ' ' It may be real, it may be good, ' ' 
 the world has a right to say, "but I cannot 
 know it or test it; and I am sure that how- 
 ever good and real it is, it is deprived of the 
 condition of the best life and growth, which is 
 activity." 
 
 V. 308, 309. 
 
 Therefore love and believe; for the works will 
 
 follow spontaneous, 
 Even as day does the sun: the Right from the 
 
 Good is an offspring, 
 Love in a bodily shape; and Christian works 
 
 are no more than 
 Animate Love and Faith, as flowers are the 
 
 animate spring-tide. 
 
 LONGFELLOW.
 
 AUGUST 9. 221 
 
 We are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the 
 flesh. ROM. viii. 12. 
 
 SELF-MORTIFICATION, self-sacrifice, is 
 not the first or final law of life. You are 
 right when you think that these appetites and 
 passions were not put into you merely to be 
 killed, and that the virtue which only comes by 
 their restraint is a poor, colorless, and feeble 
 thing. You are right in thinking that not to 
 restrain yourself and to refrain from doing, but 
 to utter yourself, to act, to do, is the purpose 
 of your being in the world. Only, this is not 
 the self you are to utter, these are not the acts 
 you are to do. There is a part in you made to 
 think deeply, made to feel nobly, made to be 
 charitable and chivalric, made to worship, to 
 pity, and to love. You are not uttering your- 
 self while you keep that better self in chains 
 and only let these lower passions free. Let me 
 renew those nobler powers, and then believe 
 with all your heart and might that to send out 
 those powers into the intensest exercise is the 
 one worthy purpose of your life. You will 
 not so much have crushed the carnal as em- 
 braced the spiritual. Christ will have made 
 you free. You will be walking in the Spirit, 
 and so will not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. 
 
 I. 364, 365- 
 
 To this life things of sense 
 
 Make their pretence: 
 In the other angels have their right by birth: 
 
 Man ties them both alone, 
 
 And makes them one, 
 
 With the one hand touching heaven, with the 
 other earth. GEORGE HERBERT.
 
 AUGUST 10. 
 
 Are the consolations of God small with tJiee ? 
 
 JOHN xv. ii. 
 
 THEY do not take your sorrow off; and 
 oh, . . . whatever be your suffering, I 
 beg you to learn first of all that not that, not 
 to take your sorrow off, is what God means, 
 but to put strength into you that you may 
 carry it as the tired man, who has drunk the 
 strength-giving river, lifts up his burden by 
 the river-bank and goes singing on his way. 
 Be sure your sorrow is not giving you its 
 best . . . unless it opens to you ideas that 
 have before been unfamiliar; mostly these 
 three ideas, education, spirituality, immortal- 
 ity. Those ideas are the keys of all the mys- 
 teries of life, and so the gateways to consola- 
 tion. And it is wonderful to see how, just as 
 soon as a man is really crushed and sorrowful, 
 God seems by every avenue to be offering 
 those great ideas for that man's acceptance. 
 He seems to write them on the sky, to whisper 
 them from every movement of the commonest 
 machinery of life, to fill books with them that 
 never seemed to know anything of them be- 
 fore, to make the vacant house and the full 
 grave declare them. You are a child of God 
 whom He is training. You have a soul which 
 is your true value. You are to live forever. 
 Know these truths. By them triumph over 
 the sorrow that He cannot take away, and be 
 consoled. I. m. 
 
 Trusting that sorrow is but love's disguise, 
 And all withholding but another way - 
 
 Of making richer by what love denies 
 So grows the soul a little, day by day. 
 
 MARY C. SEWARD.
 
 AUGUST ii. 223 
 
 Blessed be God, . . . the Father of mercies, and 
 the God of all comfort ; who comforteth us in all 
 our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort 
 them which are in any trouble, by the comfort 
 wherewith we are comforted of God. 
 
 2 COR. i. 3, 4. 
 
 THE power of Paul or of any man to grasp 
 and realize this high idea of the pur- 
 pose of the help which God sends, shows a 
 very clear understanding that it is really God 
 who sends the help. Indeed, I think no man 
 can really mount up to the idea that God truly 
 and personally cares for him enough to reach 
 down and turn the bitterness of his cup to 
 sweetness, without being, as it were, com- 
 pelled to look beyond himself. All strong 
 emotions, all really great ideas, outgo our 
 individual life, and make us feel our human 
 nature. If you are not sure that any mercy 
 comes to you from God; if, whatever pious 
 words you use about it, the recovery of your 
 health, or the saving of your fortune, seems 
 to you a piece of luck, some good thing which 
 has dropped down upon you from the clouds, 
 then you may be meanly and miserably selfish 
 about it. You shut it up within the jealous 
 walls of your own life. It is a light which you 
 have struck out for yourself, and may burn in 
 your own lantern. But if the light came 
 down from God, if He gave you this blessing, 
 it is too big for you to keep for yourself. He 
 must have meant it for a wider circle than your 
 little life can cover, and it breaks through 
 your selfishness to find for itself the mission 
 that it claims. I. 3.
 
 224 AUGUST 12. 
 
 Lord, show us the father. JOHN xiv. 8. 
 
 |\]OW we are very apt to take it for granted, 
 * ^ that however we may differ in our defini- 
 tions and our belief of the deity of the Son and 
 of the Holy Spirit, we are all at one, there 
 can be and there is no hesitation, about the 
 deity of the Father. God is divine. God is 
 God. And no doubt we do all assent in words 
 to such a belief; but when we think what we 
 mean by that word God; when we remember 
 what we mean by " Father," namely, the first 
 source and the final satisfaction of a depend- 
 ent nature . . . think how many of us look 
 for neither of them any farther back or any 
 farther on than this routine in which we live. 
 We devote ourselves to it; we deck it with all 
 the graces we can bestow upon it, because 
 there is no higher fatherhood present to our. 
 thoughts, because we know no loftier God. 
 Now to such a man what is the first revelation 
 that you want to make ? Is it not the divinity 
 of the Father ? 
 
 I. 234, 235. 
 
 With gentle swiftness lead me on, 
 
 Dear God, to see Thy face; 
 And meanwhile in my narrow heart 
 
 Oh, make Thyself more space! 
 
 FABER.
 
 AUGUST 13. 225 
 
 Through Him we both have access by one Spirit 
 unto the Father. EPHES. ii. 18. 
 
 CVERY act is made up of a purpose, a 
 *' method, and a power. And so the pur- 
 pose and the method and the power are here. 
 What is the purpose or the end? "To the 
 Father we all have access." What is the 
 method? " Through Christ Jesus." What is 
 the power? "By the Spirit." . . . In this 
 one total act, the end, the method, and the 
 power are distinguishable, . . . and what is 
 more, each is distinctly personal. . . . This 
 salvation, which is all the work of God, first, 
 last, and midmost, has its divine personalities 
 distinct for its end and its method and its 
 power. It is salvation to the Father, through 
 the Son, and by the Spirit. The salvation is 
 all one; yet in it method, end, and power are 
 recognizable. It is a three in one. 
 
 The end of the human salvation is " access 
 to the Father." That is the first truth of our 
 religion that the source of all is meant to be 
 the end of all, that as we all came forth from 
 a divine Creator, so it is into divinity that we 
 are to return and find our final rest and satis- 
 faction, not in ourselves, nor in one another, 
 but in the omnipotence, the omniscience, the 
 perfectness, and the love of God. 
 
 I. 231, 234. 
 
 Enough for me to feel and know 
 
 That He in whom the cause and end, 
 
 The past and future, meet and blend, . . . 
 
 Guards not archangel feet alone, 
 
 But deigns to guard and keep my own. 
 
 WHITTIER.
 
 226 AUGUST 14. 
 
 " IV\ ^^ shall not live by bread alone, but 
 iVl by every word that proceedeth out of 
 the mouth of God," by every word, from 
 the gentlest to the severest, that the eternal 
 lips know how to speak. . . . And remember 
 this is not a doctrine for the world's heroes 
 and martyrs only; it is for every living soul 
 when it is called on to give up the lower that 
 it may attain the higher life. It is for the man 
 who has to give up his dollar that he may keep 
 his honesty, to give up a doubt that he may 
 win a truth. It is for the young man who has 
 to give up a fascinating acquaintance that he 
 may keep his purity, to let go a tempting 
 chance of business because there is something 
 about its associations that is going to degrade 
 his life . . . for the woman who abandons 
 worldliness to serve her God, who turns her 
 back on fashion and its wretched littleness that 
 she may go up into eternal life. . . . Wher- 
 ever truth and interest conflict, wherever the 
 desire to be popular, to be rich, to be wise, to 
 be anything else, has to be cut away and cast 
 behind a man that he may go on unhindered to 
 be good and true and holy, there the law of 
 the martyrs and the heroes, there the law of the 
 Christ, whose meat was to finish His Father's 
 work, and who for the eating that eternal meat 
 fasteth from the bread that perisheth, comes 
 down and proves itself the law of all true life. 
 
 VII. 162. 
 
 With love for all around 
 Our days and hours to fill: 
 
 Thus be it ever found 
 Our meat to do Thy will! 
 
 LUCY LARCOM.
 
 AUGUST 15. 227 
 
 Go d is faithful, who will not suffer you to be 
 tempted above that ye are able : but will with the 
 temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may 
 be able to bear it. i COR. x. 13. 
 
 ONLY those temptations which we encounter 
 on the way of duty, in the path of con- 
 secration, only those has our Lord promised 
 us that we shall conquer. He sends us out to 
 live and work for Him. The chances of sin 
 which we meet while that divine design of life, 
 the life and work for Him, is clear before us, 
 shall not hurt us. When we forget that de- 
 sign, our arm withers, our immunity is gone. 
 This is what we really mean, what we often 
 put blindly enough, when we ask whether such 
 a man is a religious man or not. We mean, or 
 we ought to mean, whether religion or the ser- 
 vice of God is present with him as a continual 
 purpose; not whether he is ever tempted; not 
 whether he ever sins; we know the answers to 
 those questions well enough; but whether be- 
 hind all the temptation, under all the sin, his 
 soul is still set toward God with genuine and 
 strong devotion. If it is, we know that he 
 must come out safe. 
 
 IV. 340. 
 
 The lightning and thunder, 
 
 They go and they come; 
 But the stars and the stillness 
 
 Are always at home. 
 
 GEORGE MACDONALD.
 
 228 AUGUST 16. 
 
 IN all artificial religiousness, all that is not 
 bound to life, educated through life, and 
 uttering itself in life, there are gaps and 
 breaks. It is the sadness of every Christian 
 experience, the loveless time between the 
 moments of ecstatic apprehension; the total 
 secularness between the points of religious per- 
 formance. . . . The Spirit of God, expected 
 only at certain seasons and by certain doors, 
 finds sometimes those doors closed, and no 
 welcome waiting Him at any other. It is only 
 when we know that any door capable of admit- 
 ting any influence may admit the blessed influ- 
 ence of God, only then can we be hopeful of 
 keeping the breadth and variety of life, and 
 at the same time of always receiving the cul- 
 ture and the grace of God. Let only the 
 western shutters be open, and we shall see only 
 the western sun. Let all the windows be open 
 and expectant, and from sunrise round to sun- 
 set there shall be no interval in the unbroken 
 light. The sun, in the course of the day, will 
 look into them all. 
 
 X. 27. 
 
 Light of the world! undimming and unsetting, 
 
 Oh, shine each mist away! 
 Banish the fear, the falsehood, and the fretting, 
 
 Be our unchanging day! 
 
 HORATIUS BONAR.
 
 AUGUST 17. 229 
 
 All of you are the children of the Most High. 
 
 Ps. Ixxxii. 6. 
 
 TT seems to me absolutely certain that if 
 1 there is in man a real essential belonging 
 with God, if in a true and indestructible sense 
 he is God's child, then the reaching out of the 
 child's soul after the Father's soul, of the 
 human soul after the divine soul, must be a 
 perpetual fact, it can never be stopped. . . . 
 Agnosticism, Nescience, Pessimism, Secularism 
 must be all temporary phenomena; none of 
 them can be the settled and permanent condi- 
 tion of the human soul if man is the child of 
 God. If he is not, then one is ready to accept 
 whatever comes; for who cares whether a beast 
 that is but a beast dreams that he is an angel, 
 or with a bitter wisdom knows his beasthood ? 
 
 III. 122. 
 
 If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness, 
 And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor: 
 There towers the mountain of the Voice no 
 
 less, 
 Which whoso seeks shall find; but he who 
 
 bends 
 
 Intent on manna still and mortal ends, 
 Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore. 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
 
 23 o AUGUST 1 8. 
 
 WHEN we see the man in great trouble or 
 great joy grown suddenly religious the 
 glad " Thank God!" or the agonized "God 
 help me! " bursting out of unaccustomed lips, 
 it does not mean desperation, and it does not 
 mean hypocrisy. It means that for once in 
 that man's life the true soil of his nature has 
 been laid bare, and it has claimed the divine 
 relations for which it was made; just as you 
 strip the layer of rock off from a bed of earth 
 that lay below it, and in a day the newly ex- 
 posed earth is sprouting all over with grass 
 that you never planted. It has caught the 
 grass seeds out of the air. The wandering 
 birds have brought them to it. It has found 
 them treasured in itself. It puts forth upon 
 them its own simple nature, and grows green 
 from side to side. The man's hard surface 
 may close over when the great agony or the 
 great joy is past, and all may seem just as be- 
 fore, but he who once has known the move- 
 ments of this new capacity never can think of 
 himself as he was used to think. . . . He 
 may go on living a most earthly life, but he 
 knows forever that there is a spiritual heaven 
 and a spiritual hell. He never can say of 
 himself again, " I have no spiritual capac- 
 ity." . . . He has looked upon God, and his 
 soul can never forget how it answered when it 
 met the gaze of the love and power which made 
 it, and for which it was made. I. 152. 
 
 For God, who commanded the light to shine out 
 of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the 
 light of the knowledge of the gtory of God. 
 
 2 COR. iv. 6.
 
 AUGUST 19. 231 
 
 Go into the city, and it shall be told thee what 
 thou must do, ACTS ix. 6. 
 
 'Tis here, O pitying Christ, where Thee I seek, 
 Here where the strife is fiercest, where the sun 
 Beats down upon the highway thronged with 
 
 men, 
 
 And in the raging mart. Oh, deeper lead 
 My soul into the living world of souls 
 Where Thou dost move! 
 
 RICHARD WATSON GILDER. 
 
 THE final spiritual state of man is pictured 
 as a heavenly city, a place of a thousand 
 relationships springing out of his human na- 
 ture. The training-place of his spiritual life 
 must be a city, a place of many relationships 
 as well. . . . Continuity, variety, influence, 
 reality these are the things after which our 
 spiritual life is hungering and thirsting. To 
 grow spasmodic, monotonous, uninfluential, 
 unreal, is not this the familiar death of the 
 spiritual life that saddens many a closet and 
 many a church ? 
 
 I have not said superficially that to labor is 
 to pray. Prayer lies behind all ; but I am sure 
 that by the finite act of labor the infinite act 
 of prayer is helped to its completeness, as the 
 soul grows by the body's ministries to its per- 
 fect life. Labor which is conscious of minis- 
 tering to prayer that is, of giving the soul 
 deeper perceptions of God and of itself grows 
 proud of and rich in its mission. It catches 
 much of the loftiness of prayer itself. It 
 goes enthusiastically and buoyantly upon its 
 way, sowing the spiritual life. X. 32.
 
 232 AUGUST 20. 
 
 HAVE you grown weary of looking for any 
 signs of promise in this dull mass of fel- 
 low-men and withdrawn yourself into some 
 luxury of self-culture, feeling as if what you 
 had and were was too good to be wasted upon 
 such creatures as these sick and poor and igno- 
 rant ? You must be rescued from this proud 
 conceit, not simply by counting yourself 
 lower, but by valuing more highly the spiritual 
 natures of these fellow-men. You must value 
 them as He valued them, who gave His life 
 for them, before you can be as humble in their 
 presence as He was; and that can come only 
 by making yourself their servant. Only he 
 who puts on the garment of humility finds how 
 worthily it clothes his life. Only he who 
 dedicates himself to the spiritual service of 
 his brethren, simply because his Master tells 
 him they are worth it, comes to know how rich 
 those natures of his brethren are, how richly 
 they are worth the total giving of himself to 
 them. I. 348. 
 
 And know that pride 
 Howe'er disguised in its own majesty, 
 Is littleness; that he who feels contempt 
 For any thing, hath faculties 
 Which he hath never used ; that thought with him 
 Is in its infancy. The man whose eye 
 Is ever on himself doth look on one, 
 The least of Nature's works, one who might 
 
 move 
 
 The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds 
 Unlawful, ever. Oh, be wiser, thou! 
 Instructed that true knowledge leads to love. 
 
 WORDSWORTH,
 
 AUGUST 21. 233 
 
 ALL life tends to encrust itself, to imprison 
 itself within itself, and its crust needs to 
 be constantly broken and returned into the 
 general mass out of which it was formed, in 
 order that the best influences may be received. 
 Ever there must be a return to a primitive sim- 
 plicity, to a condition of first principles, in 
 which the power to receive may be freshened 
 and renewed. Do you not recognize that ? It 
 is part of the old craving to begin the game of 
 life again. It is not that life has been miser- 
 able, or has wholly failed, but it has lost sim- 
 plicity. ... Is not that craving for a return 
 to simplicity just what St. Paul has in his mind 
 when he says of the man whom he wants to 
 see made wise, " Let him become a fool " ? Is 
 it not just this getting rid of the crust of life, 
 in order that life itself may be open to the sun- 
 shine ? This is what he means by his strange 
 word " fool," I think. It may have some ref- 
 erence to what the world will think of him 
 who accepts the Gospel in its simpleness; but 
 more than that, I think it also must refer to 
 that condition of simplicity to which the na- 
 ture must return before Christ with all His 
 great enlightenment can take possession of it. 
 
 VI. 160, 161. 
 
 Wisdom ofttimes is nearer when we stoop 
 Than when we soar. 
 
 WORDSWORTH.
 
 234 AUGUST 22. 
 
 And when He was come near He beheld the city^ 
 and wept over it. LUKE xix. 41. 
 
 WE may picture the approach of Jesus to 
 our souls under the figure of His en- 
 trance into Jerusalem. He comes to one of 
 us as He came to that city of His and of His 
 Father's. Think how sacred it was to Him. 
 Think how He loved it. Think what vast 
 precious possibilities he could see sleeping be- 
 hind its brilliant walls. There was His Father's 
 temple. There was the whole machinery for 
 making the complete manhood. And yet there 
 was defiance, selfishness, unspirituality, and 
 cruelty the house of prayer turned into the 
 den of thieves. O my dear friends, if Christ, 
 as He comes to any one of us to offer us His 
 salvation, never forgets for a moment what we 
 might be in the sight of what we are, and 
 never forgets for a moment what we are in the 
 vision of what we might be; if He always sees 
 our sins in the light of our chances, and our 
 chances against the shadow of our sins, then 
 what Jerusalems we must be to Him! He 
 loves us as He loved that city, with a love full 
 of reproach and accusation. He stops as He 
 comes in sight of us, and "beholds the city, 
 and weeps over it." I can think of no picture 
 which so lets me into the very depths of the 
 soul of Christ, as He approaches a soul of 
 man which He longs to save, as that which 
 depicts Him stopping on the Mount of Olives, 
 where Jerusalem first comes into sight, and 
 beholding the city, and weeping over it. 
 
 VII. 212.
 
 AUGUST 23. 235 
 
 "WE must be born again," said Jesus. Pon- 
 I der these divine words of His, and ever 
 more and more they seem immeasurably deep. 
 To think of them is like gazing into endless 
 space. But one great truth which they assur- 
 edly contain is this: that life for any man is 
 not complete until a deeper and a higher life 
 is put beneath and over the mere life of ac- 
 tion, into which the soul can perpetually re- 
 treat, and on whose breast the life of action 
 can be buoyantly upborne. There are men 
 who the world thinks are always failing who 
 are themselves conscious of a success which is 
 a truer truth to them than all their failures. 
 They are the men who have been born again, 
 and who carry the new life underneath the old 
 life all the while. The Master of that new 
 life is Christ. The soul worried and torn with 
 disappointments, haunted by the taunts of fel- 
 low-souls which tell it it has failed, suspicious 
 of itself, yet keeping still its faithfulness and 
 consecration, goes to Him, to Christ, and lo! 
 it finds a new fact there. Below its failures 
 He has for it success. Through all its deaths 
 He brings out for it, as He brought out for 
 Himself, life! " I too, " He says, " seemed to 
 fail, but in my Father I succeeded." "You 
 shall share with me. Ye are they which have 
 continued with Me in My temptations. And I 
 appoint unto you a kingdom, as My Father 
 hath appointed unto Me." 
 
 Whatever failures He may have for us to 
 pass through first, may He bring us all at last 
 to that success in Him. 
 
 VII. 207.
 
 236 AUGUST 24. 
 
 Beloved of God, called to be saints. i COR. i. 2. 
 
 IT is out of the very heart of the discipleship 
 that the apostleship proceeds. . . . Jesus 
 calls all His disciples together, and out of 
 them He chooses twelve. It is no inattentive 
 idlers hanging on the outskirts of the group 
 who listen to Him, that he thinks good enough 
 to go and carry His message. It is they who 
 have listened to Him longest, and most intel- 
 ligently, and most lovingly. It is Simon and 
 Andrew his brother, James and John, Philip 
 and Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas; it is 
 men like these, the very heart and soul of the 
 discipleship, whom he selects and calls apostles. 
 And so it always is. Always it is the best of 
 the inward life of anything, that which lies the 
 closest to its heart and is the fullest of its 
 spirit, which flowers into the outward impulse 
 which comes to complete its life. The heart of 
 any good thing is catholic and expansive. It 
 claims for itself the world. It longs to give 
 itself away, and believes in the capacity of all 
 men to receive it. This noble and beautiful 
 truth, whose illustrations are everywhere, was 
 it not declared by Jesus when out of the 
 choicest heart of the group of His disciples, 
 He chose His apostles ? 
 
 IV. 154, 155, 156. 
 
 The footprints of the Life divine 
 Which marked their path remain in thine; 
 And the great Life transfused in theirs 
 Awaits thy faith, thy love, thy prayers. 
 
 WHITTIER.
 
 AUGUST 25. 237 
 
 WHEN I see the noble life of a man whose 
 faith I believe is all wrong, or is wofully 
 imperfect, let me not dare to say that his is 
 not true nobleness. That confuses my moral 
 standards and throws me into the worst hope- 
 lessness. Let the sight of him give me a new 
 faith in the power of human nature to be gen- 
 erous and good, which can break through the 
 most oppressive circumstances, and open into 
 flower out of the most barren soils. Let it 
 make me ashamed of the small show of gen- 
 erosity and goodness which I with my better 
 faith am able to display; but let it not delude 
 me into saying that what I know is my better 
 and fuller faith is a thing of no consequence ; let 
 it not hide from me the fact that my infidel 
 friend, with all his excellence, would be a finer 
 and nobler man than his own present self if 
 he believed in the truth and lived in the power 
 of that which I know to be the faith of God; 
 let it not lead me to forget that the real power 
 of a faith is to be estimated not by the influ- 
 ence of its presence or its absence in individ- 
 uals who may be exceptional, but by its effect 
 upon broad stretches of human history over 
 wide areas of time and space. 
 
 III. 215. 
 
 Noble, gentle, self-forgetting, 
 In earth's best affections rife, 
 
 There is yet one thing thou lackest 
 'Tis the Spirit's breath of life. 
 
 CAROLINE M. NOEL.
 
 238 AUGUST 26. 
 
 Judge righteous judgment. JOHN vii. 24. 
 
 THE great question after all is this: Shall 
 we judge man by God or God by man ? 
 Does light and understanding flow upward or 
 downward ? If we judge man by God, at once 
 we have true and discriminating thoughts of 
 human life. We have absolute standards. 
 We have a test of the worth of all we do or 
 see. But if we judge God by man, we only 
 have over again what the world has been so 
 full of, the persuasions of self-interest, the 
 disbelief in absolute righteousness, the chang- 
 ing standards of the changing times. Men 
 have gone into the sanctuary of their own 
 selfishness, the sanctuary of themselves, and 
 straightway they have seemed to see an end 
 of God. All sense of a supreme and awful 
 Fatherhood on which all men depended, to 
 which all action must go back for judgment, 
 has been lost. No higher power than the 
 human has seemed to be moving under and 
 giving meaning to the events of ordinary life. 
 
 VI. 124. 
 
 If He could doubt on His triumphant cross, 
 How much more I, in the defeat and loss 
 Of seeing all my selfish dreams fulfilled, 
 Of having lived the very life I willed, 
 Of being all that I desired to be ? 
 My God, my God! why hast Thou forsaken 
 me! 
 
 W. D. H DWELLS.
 
 AUGUST 27. 239 
 
 Blessed is the man that endureth temptation. 
 
 JAMES i. 12. 
 
 ANY temptation through which a man may 
 go without yielding is a glory and a 
 strength. But shall men go on courting temp- 
 tations, finding them out, and running into 
 them, so that they may come out glorious and 
 strong ? Look at Christ's temptation. There 
 is one phrase which lights up the whole story. 
 Christ was " led up of the Spirit to be tempted 
 of the devil." He had a certain work to do. 
 That work was not His own, but was His 
 Father's. His Father's Spirit guided Him, 
 and told Him how to do it. ... We too 
 have a work, a duty. ... In doing our duty 
 the Spirit of our Father may lead us into 
 temptation, but if He really leads us there He 
 will protect us there. If He does not lead us, 
 if we go of our own self will, we have no 
 pledge of His protection. ... If your duty 
 lies right by the gates of hell, walk there 
 boldly, and the gates of hell shall not prevail 
 against you. If your duty does not carry you 
 there, you cannot be too fastidiously careful 
 for your purity, to keep it out of the way of 
 every lightest zephyr of temptation. Such is 
 the manifest difference of the temptations into 
 which God leads us and those into which we 
 run ourselves. VII. 135, 136. 
 
 Evil knowledge acquired in one wilful mo- 
 ment of curiosity may harass and haunt us to 
 the end of our time. 
 
 And how after the end of our time ? 
 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTJ
 
 240 AUGUST 28. 
 
 In all points tempted like as we are, yet without 
 sin. HEB. iv. 15. 
 
 THERE will come a world where there will 
 be no temptation a garden with no ser- 
 pent, a city with no sin. The harvest day will 
 come and the wheat be gathered safe into the 
 Master's barn. It will be very sweet and glo- 
 rious. Our tired hearts rest on the promises 
 with peaceful delight. But that time is not 
 yet. Here are our tempted lives, and here, 
 right in the midst of us, stands our tempted 
 Saviour. If we are men we shall meet temp- 
 tation as He met it, in the strength of the 
 God who is the Father of whom all men are 
 children. Every temptation that attacks us 
 attacked Him and was conquered. We are 
 fighting with a defeated enemy. We are strug- 
 gling for a victory which is already won. That 
 may be our strength and assurance as we re- 
 call, whenever our struggle becomes hottest 
 and most trying, the wonderful and blessed 
 day when Jesus was " led up of the Spirit into* 
 the wilderness to be tempted of the devil." 
 
 VII. 148. 
 
 ' Tempted and tried! " 
 
 Yet the Lord shall abide 
 Thy faithful Redeemer, thy Keeper and Guide, 
 
 Thy Shield and thy Sword, 
 
 Thy exceeding Reward. 
 Then enough for the servant to be as his Lord! 
 
 FRANCES R. HAVERGAL.
 
 AUGUST 29. 241 
 
 / was glad when they said unto me, Let us go 
 up to the house of the Lord. Ps. cxxii. i . 
 
 OOMETHING very beautiful and grand, 
 <J almost awful ... is the yearly gathering 
 from every corner of the land to the sacred 
 festival meeting at Jerusalem. The land 
 swarms and hums with movement. The men of 
 the seashore and the hills, they are all stirring. 
 Every pass is full, every hillside is alive. . . . 
 Every man brought his own burden, his own 
 sorrow, his own sin. The problems of the 
 year, the things that had perplexed them as 
 they worked in the fields alone, or debated with 
 their brethren, or met the troubles of the 
 household all these they brought to offer to 
 the Lord, to seek solution for them in the 
 higher, calmer atmosphere of the temple. 
 There was the place where their darkened and 
 frightened understandings would find light 
 and peace. 
 
 It is an old-time picture. We do not go to 
 church so now. . . . But woe to us if our 
 more rational belief, instead of lifting all the 
 earth up to heaven, only crowds down the hill- 
 tops and leaves no heaven, and makes our 
 whole earth earthly. 
 
 VI. no, in. 
 
 The Lord answer thee in the day of trouble ; 
 The name of the God of Jacob defend thee ; 
 Send thee help from the sanctuary, 
 And strengthen thee out of Zion ; . . . 
 Grant thee thy heart's desire, 
 And fulfil all thy mind. 
 
 PS. XX. I, 2, 4.
 
 AUGUST 36. 
 
 // was too painful for me, until I went into the 
 Sanctuary of God ; then understood I the end of 
 these men. Ps. Ixxiii. 15, 17. 
 
 HOW old the bewilderments of the world 
 are! . . . Here, almost three thousand 
 years ago, is a poor man who . . . has been 
 puzzled because the ungodly were rich, as if 
 riches were the appropriate premium of good- 
 ness; but when he comes to stand with God all 
 that is altered. He comes in sight of larger 
 circles of bliss. He sees that God has other 
 rewards to give His chosen besides these little 
 trinkets. ... So long as he knows no higher 
 happiness than prosperity, it puzzles him that 
 the bad should have it. So soon as he comes 
 to know the infinitely higher joy of company 
 with God, and sees that that can be given only 
 to the good, " without holiness no man can 
 see the Lord," it no more troubles him that 
 bad men should have the poor counterfeit of 
 happiness, than it troubles the solid merchant, 
 sitting in his houseful of plain and solid com- 
 fort, to see a miserable fop strut by in cheap 
 and gaudy finery making believe and perhaps 
 thinking that he is rich. 
 
 VI. 109. 
 
 Happier he whose inward sight, 
 Stayed on his subtile thought, 
 Shuts his sense on toys of time, 
 To vacant bosoms brought. 
 
 EMERSON.
 
 AUGUST 3 i. 
 
 And Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the 
 seashore. Ex. xiv. 30. 
 
 DO we believe in the death of our Egyptian ? 
 What is your Egyptian ? Some passion 
 of the flesh or of the mind ? 
 
 It was on the farther shore of the Red Sea 
 that the Egyptian pursuers of the Israelites lay 
 dead. It was when the people of God had 
 genuinely undertaken the journey to the land 
 that God had given them, that the grasp of 
 their enemy gave way and the dead hands let 
 them go. You must go forth into a new land, 
 into the ambition of a higher life, then, 
 when he tries to follow you there, he per- 
 ishes. . . . Not merely by trying not to be 
 selfish, but by entering into the new joy of 
 unselfish consecration, so only shall you kill 
 your selfishness. When you are vigorously 
 trying to serve your fellow-men, the last chance 
 that you will be unjust or cruel to them will 
 disappear. When you are full of enthusiasm 
 for truth, the cold hands of falsehood will let 
 you go. . . . Seek not the same low things by 
 higher means; seek higher things, and the low 
 means will know that they cannot hold you 
 their slave. 
 
 VI. 65, 66, 67. 
 
 Nor can I count him happiest who has never 
 Been forced with his own hand his chains to 
 
 sever, 
 And for himself find out the way divine. 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
 
 244 SEPTEMBER i. 
 
 OVER a broad open plain there blows a 
 strong steady wind. It never stops, it 
 never changes. All over the plain there are 
 men and women on their journeys. Hear them 
 cry out. "This wind, this dreadful wind!" 
 cries one, all out of breath and gasping. 
 " How bitter it is, how cruel, how it hates 
 me!" ' This wind, this blessed wind! " cries 
 another, within hail of him. " How kind it is, 
 how helpful, how it loves me! " Are there 
 two winds, or has the one fickle wind its favor- 
 ites ? No, the one constant wind is blowing 
 steadily and is no respecter of persons; but 
 one man has set his face against it and the 
 other man is walking with it. 
 
 Through this great open world moves God 
 like a strong wind or spirit, finding out all the 
 public and the secret places of the life of 
 man. . . . But while your brother at your side 
 is full of the sense of God's love, to you God 
 seems the hindrance of your life; His right- 
 eousness defeats your plans, His purity rebukes 
 your lust, His nature and being smite you in 
 the face like a blast that blows bitter and cold 
 from a far-off judgment day. Does God hate 
 you and love your brother ? No, He loves 
 you both: but you with your disobedience 
 are setting yourself against His love. You 
 must turn round. IV. 312, 313. 
 
 The blast that smites thee, face and breast, 
 
 Is God's clear voice to thee: 
 ' This way is neither joy nor rest, 
 Turn, turn, and go with me! " 
 
 JUUA WOOD.
 
 SEPTEMBER 2. 245 
 
 Lead me in Thy truth and teach me ; for Thou 
 art the God of my salvation. Ps. xxv. 5. 
 
 NO familiarity of religion, no presentation 
 of it as a regulative force, no offer by 
 Christ of Himself as the friend of daily life, 
 must seem to us to depreciate the power of 
 our salvation or make it appear to us other 
 than the touch of God. There will come to 
 you hours of great exaltation; you will go up 
 to mountain-tops of vision. The Divine Voice 
 will speak to you out of the sun and out of 
 the cloud. Those will come in their time as it 
 is best. But let no experience and no expec- 
 tation of them make you careless or distrustful 
 when out of commonest things, out of daily 
 tasks, and daily difficulties, and daily joys, 
 and the simplest needs of your nature, and the 
 most domestic familiarities of life, God speaks 
 to you and offers you His Son. Know His 
 voice so truly that you cannot mistake it from 
 whatever unexpected quarter it may speak. 
 Watch for the Divine Light so anxiously that 
 you may never say that it is not divine from 
 whatever humblest quarter it may shine. 
 
 VI. 294. 
 
 All common things, each day's events, 
 That with the hour begin and end, 
 
 Our pleasures and our discontents, 
 Are rounds by which we may ascend. 
 
 LONGFELLOW.
 
 246 SEPTEMBER 3. 
 
 If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, 
 ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto 
 you. JOHN xv. 7. 
 
 CAN he in whom the words of Christ abide 
 pray an unanswered prayer ? . . . Can 
 he in whom this word of Christ's abides 
 " Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His 
 righteousness" go on clamoring with miser- 
 able mercenary prayers for food and drink, 
 houses and lands, as if they were the first 
 things to seek ? Or he in whom this everlast- 
 ing word of Christ abides " In this world ye 
 shall have tribulations," can you conceive 
 of him as vexing God with querulous supplica- 
 tions to be released from suffering, and not 
 delighting God with holy petitions that he may 
 be brave and patient under it, that he may be 
 purified and made perfect by it ? . . . How 
 many times we have complained that our 
 prayer brought no answer, when it was a prayer 
 that we never could have prayed unless we first 
 drove out every word of Christ from its abid- 
 ing-place within us! Is there a Christian 
 here who can declare before God that he ever 
 prayed to God in perfect submission to Christ's 
 will, in perfect conformity to Christ's words, 
 and got no answer ? Not here; not in all the 
 world; not in all the ages! VI. 305. 
 
 No voice of prayer to Thee can rise, 
 
 But swift as light Thy love replies ; 
 
 Not always what we ask, indeed, 
 
 But, O Most Kind ! what most we need. . . . 
 
 For bread may nourish less than stone 
 
 If eaten thankless or alone ; 
 
 And many a pure, desired thing 
 
 Might prove a snare or hide a sting. 
 
 HARRIET MCWEN KIMBALL.
 
 SEPTEMBER 4. 247 
 
 Thy will be done. LUKE xi. 2. 
 
 \17HAT is it that you ask for when you 
 * * kneel and pray ? Directly, no doubt, it 
 is some special mercy. It is the coming in of 
 your ship; it is the recovery of your friend; 
 it is the opportunity of usefulness which you 
 desire for yourself. But do you want any of 
 those things if God does not see that it is best 
 that you should have them ? . . . Is it not 
 His will which is your real, your fundamental, 
 your essential prayer ? You must keep that 
 essential prayer very clear, or the special 
 prayer becomes wilful and trivial. You must 
 pray with the great prayer in sight. You 
 must feel the mountains above you while you 
 work upon your little garden. Little by little 
 your special wishes and the eternal will of 
 God will grow in harmony with one another, 
 all conflict will die away, and the great spir- 
 itual landscape from horizon to horizon be but 
 one. That is the prayer of eternity, the 
 prayer of heaven, to which we may come no 
 
 one can say how near on earth: 
 
 V. 121. 
 
 Which brings to God's all-perfect will 
 That trust of His undoubting child, 
 
 Whereby all seeming good and ill 
 Are reconciled. 
 
 WHITTIER.
 
 248 SEPTEMBER 5. 
 
 For if the ministration of condemnation be 
 glory, much more doth the ministration of right- 
 eousness exceed in glory. 2 COR. iii. 9. 
 
 r ~PHINK of the minister's necessary relation 
 1 to God. God is the granary from which 
 he must be immediately fed, the armory from 
 which his weapons must be immediately drawn. 
 .... He must sanctify himself that the peo- 
 ple may be sanctified through him. . . . Then 
 think of the minister's relation to mankind. 
 Whatever tells upon his people's characters 
 he shares with them. Their temptations and 
 their victories are his. He goes with them up 
 into the heavens and down into the depths. 
 His personal life is multiplied by theirs. What 
 is it to live ? To crawl on in the dust, leaving 
 a trail which the next shower hastens to wash 
 away ? Is it to breathe the breath of heaven 
 as the tortoise does, and to bask in the sun- 
 shine like the lizard ? Or is it to touch the 
 eternal forces which are behind everything 
 with one hand, and to lay the other on the 
 quivering needles and the beating hammers of 
 this common life ? Is it to deal with God and 
 deal with man ? Is it to use their powers to 
 the utmost, and to find ever new power coming 
 into them constantly with their use? If this is 
 life, then there is no man who lives more than 
 the minister; and the generous youth whose 
 cry is, " Let me live while I live," must some 
 day feel the vitality of great service of God 
 and man, and press in through the sacred 
 doors, saying, " Let me, too, be a minister! " 
 
 VI. 339-
 
 SEPTEMBER 6. 249 
 
 The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord. 
 
 PROV. xx. 27. 
 
 rnPHERE is a] perpetual revelation of God by 
 L 1 human life. . . . See how at the very 
 bottom of His existence, as you conceive of it, 
 lie these two thoughts purpose and righteous- 
 ness; how absolutely impossible it is to give 
 God any personality except as the fulfilment 
 of the intelligence that plans in love, and the 
 righteousness that lives in duty. Then ask 
 yourself how any knowledge of these qualities 
 of what they are, of what kind of being they 
 will make in their perfect combination could 
 exist upon the earth if there were not a human 
 nature here in which they could be uttered, 
 from which they could shine. Only a person 
 can truly utter a person. Only from a charac- 
 ter can a character be echoed. You might 
 write it all over the skies that God was just, 
 but it would not burn there. It would be, at 
 best, only a bit of knowledge; never a Gospel; 
 never something which it would gladden the 
 hearts of men to know. That comes only 
 when a human life, capable of a justice like 
 God's, made just by God, glows with His 
 justice in the eyes of men, a candle of the 
 Lord. 
 
 II. 6. 
 
 As the planets to the sun, 
 
 We would moor our souls to Thee; 
 Kindle us, All-Heavenly One, 
 
 Torches of Thy truth to be! 
 
 LUCY LARCOM,
 
 250 SEPTEMBER 7. 
 
 Methinks we do as fretful children do, 
 
 Leaning their faces on the window-pane 
 
 To sigh the glass dim with their own breath's 
 
 stain, 
 
 And shut the sky and landscape from their view ; 
 And thus, alas! since God the Maker drew 
 A mystic separation 'twixt those twain, 
 The life beyond us and our souls in pain 
 We miss the prospect which we're called unto. 
 
 Be still and strong, 
 
 O man, my brother, hold thy sobbing breath, 
 And keep thy soul's large window pure from 
 
 wrong, 
 
 That so, as life's appointment issueth, 
 Thy vision may be clear to watch, along 
 The sunset, consummation-lights of death. 
 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 
 
 PAUL tells of Christians who " through fear 
 of death are all their lifetime subject to 
 bondage." There are some men and women 
 who haunt their lives and make them cheerless, 
 for fear they will not be able to meet the king 
 of terrors when he comes. Dear friends, learn 
 from your Saviour that no duty reveals itself 
 till we approach it. The duty of death, when 
 you approach it, will light itself up, you may 
 be sure, and seem very easy to your soul. Till 
 then do not trouble yourself about it. To 
 live, and not to die, is your work now. When 
 your time comes the Christ who conquered 
 death will prove Himself its Lord, and pave 
 the narrow river to a sea of glass for you to 
 cross. The work of life is living, and not, as 
 we are so often told, preparing to die, except 
 by living well. VII. 235.
 
 SEPTEMBER 8. 251 
 
 Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord. 
 
 COL. iii. 23. 
 
 AN act of yours is not simply the thing you 
 do: it is the reason why you do it. Why 
 are you selling your goods ? If without false- 
 hood you can say, " Because it is my duty, in 
 order that I may maintain my family and serve 
 my generation and honor God by useful- 
 ness," then certainly the act opens itself and 
 becomes a church. It is the house of God. It 
 is the gate of heaven. ... In every act con- 
 sciously and devoutly done for God's sake, 
 God gives Himself to the soul and feeds it, in 
 the act; not after it and in reward of it, but 
 in it. 
 
 Seek your life's nourishment in your life's 
 work. Do not think that after you have 
 bought or sold or studied or taught, you will 
 go into your closet and open your Bible, and 
 repair the damage and the loss that your day's 
 life has left you. Do those things certainly, but 
 also insist that your buying or selling or study- 
 ing or teaching shall itself make you brave, 
 patient, pure and holy! Do not let your oc- 
 cupation pass you by, and leave you only the 
 basest and poorest of its benefits the money 
 with which it fills your purse. Compel it to 
 give up to you the charity and faith and char- 
 acter and godliness which it has as its heart, 
 which it hides charily, but which it must give 
 to you if you insist upon it and are able to 
 receive it. 
 
 IV. 238, 242.
 
 252 SEPTEMBER 9. 
 
 / will lift mine eyes unto the hills, from whence 
 cometh my help. Ps. cxxi. i. 
 
 I TURN to Jesus, and in all His human life 
 there seems to me nothing more divine 
 than the instinctive and unerring way in which 
 He always reached up to the highest, and re- 
 fused to be satisfied with any lower help. In 
 the desert the Devil offered Him bread, good 
 wholesome bread. Apparently He could have 
 had it if He would; but he replied, " Man shall 
 not live by bread alone, but by the word of 
 God." . . . On the cross they held up to Him 
 the sponge full of vinegar; but the thirst that 
 was in Him demanded a deeper satisfaction, 
 and He gave His soul to His Father and finished 
 His obedient work. So it was everywhere with 
 him. The souls beside Him found their helps 
 and satisfactions in the superficial things of 
 earth. . . . He could not rest anywhere till 
 He had found God His Father, and laid the 
 burden which was crushing Him into the bosom 
 of the eternal strength and the exhaustless love. 
 It is your privilege and mine, as children of 
 God, to be satisfied with no help but the help 
 of the highest. When we are content to seek 
 strength or comfort or truth or salvation from 
 any hand short of God's, we are disowning 
 our childhood and dishonoring our Father. 
 
 II. 285. 
 
 Oh! there is never sorrow of heart 
 That shall lack a timely end, 
 
 If but to God we turn, and ask 
 Of Him to be our friend. 
 
 WORDSWORTH.
 
 SEPTEMBER 10. 253 
 
 What is the chaff to the wheat ? saith the Lord. 
 
 JER. xxiii. 24. 
 
 NEVER be afraid to bring the transcendent 
 mysteries of our faith, Christ's life and 
 death and resurrection, to the help of the 
 humblest and commonest of human wants. 
 There is a sort of preaching which keeps them 
 for the great emergencies, and soothes the 
 common sorrows and rebukes the common 
 sins with lower considerations of economy. 
 Such preaching fails. It neither appeals to 
 the lower nor to the higher perceptions of 
 mankind. It is useful neither as law nor gos- 
 pel. It is like a river that is frozen too hard 
 to be navigable but not hard enough to bear. 
 Never fear to bring the sublimest motives to 
 the smallest duty, and the most infinite com- 
 fort to the smallest trouble. They will prove 
 that they belong there if only the duty and 
 the trouble are real. 
 
 IX. 27. 
 
 For He who bore all sorrow weighed, 
 Nailed to His own, each lesser cross; 
 
 He knows the burden on us laid, 
 The secret pain, the hidden loss. 
 
 Touched with our woes, He lifteth up 
 The humblest follower in His train; 
 
 He maketh sweet the bitter cup, 
 And death itself is blessed gain. 
 
 HARRIET McEwEN KIMBALL.
 
 254 SEPTEMBER u. 
 
 HOW many of us have said, "I will love 
 God; I ought to, and I will," and so 
 have wrestled and struggled to do what they 
 could not do, what in their hearts they knew 
 no real reason for doing, and have miserably 
 failed, and now are satisfying themselves with 
 loveless obedience, or else have left God alto- 
 gether and tell their hearts that they must 
 forego all such beautiful, hopeless ambitions. 
 Ah, my friend, what you need is to get away 
 round upon the other side of the whole matter. 
 It is not whether you love God but whether 
 God loves you. If He does, and if you can 
 know that He does, then give yourself up to- 
 tally and unquestioningly to the assurance of 
 that love. Rejoice in it by day and night. Go 
 singing for the joy of it about your work and 
 your play. And as you go singing for joy 
 that God loves you, behold the response is 
 born before you know it, and you are loving 
 God as countless souls, have always loved 
 Him, "because He first loved us." 
 
 V. 51. 
 
 If I Him but have, 
 
 If He be but mine, 
 If my heart, hence to the grave, 
 
 Ne'er forgets His love divine 
 Know I naught of sadness, 
 Feel I naught but worship, love, and gladness. 
 
 GEORGE MACUONALD.
 
 SEPTEMBER 12. 255 
 
 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord 
 thy God . . . with all thy mind. 
 
 MATT. xvii. 37. 
 
 EVERYWHERE, to think that divine truth 
 lies beyond or away from the intelligence 
 of man, is at once to make divine truth unreal 
 and unpractical, and to condemn the human 
 intelligence to dealing not with the highest, 
 but only with the lowest themes. . . . Love 
 God with all your mind, because your mind, 
 like all the rest of you, belongs to Him, and 
 it is not right that you should give Him only a 
 part to whom belongs the whole. When the 
 procession of your powers goes up joyfully 
 singing to worship in the temple, do not leave 
 the noblest of them all behind to cook the 
 dinner and to tend the house. Give your in- 
 telligence to God. Know all that you can 
 know about Him. In spite of all disappoint- 
 ment and weakness, insist on seeing all that 
 you can see now through the glass darkly, so 
 that hereafter you may be ready when the time 
 for seeing face to face shall come! 
 
 III. 41, 42. 
 
 No religion that does not think is strong. 
 . . . Mysticism, disowning doctrine and depre- 
 ciating law, asserts that religion belongs to 
 feeling, and that there is no truth but love. . . . 
 The hard theology is bad. The soft theology 
 is worse. . . . Value no feeling which is not 
 the child of truth and the father of duty. 
 
 IX. 243, 244.
 
 256 SEPTEMBER 13. 
 
 OH, how we separate our knowing and our 
 obeying powers, our mental and our 
 moral natures, as if either of them could live 
 without the other! No, the promise that we 
 shall know includes the promise that we shall 
 obey. So it attains its fullest richness. 
 
 When we say that, eternity springs into life 
 and lives. No longer a bare doctrine, no 
 longer a great, arid fact, that we shall live 
 forever, but a great, actual reality! Hark, 
 through the atmosphere of that belief can you 
 not hear the music of the activity which fills 
 the streets of the New Jerusalem ? I hear the 
 feet hurrying over the glassy pavements, the 
 voices calling to each other in the joy of ser- 
 vice, the ringing of the hammers on the anvils 
 where in the fire of the love of God, the per- 
 fect obedience of His redeemed is forging His 
 perfect will into the instruments of perfect 
 deeds. . . . You need not live alone, for you 
 may, if you will, know and obey God. You 
 and God, you and God, one system of power 
 knit together in mutual knowledge, and in 
 common standards. That is what Christ 
 claimed you for. . . . Come by Him to the 
 Father, and then live! O Christ, draw us, 
 thy Father's children, to our Father now! 
 
 IV. 295. 
 
 I need drawing, yea, much drawing. 
 For unless Thou drawest, 
 No one comes, no one follows, 
 Because every one turneth to himself. 
 
 THOMAS A KEMI-IS.
 
 SEPTEMBER 14. 257 
 
 Now I know in part ; but then I shall know 
 even as I am known. i COR. xiii. 12. 
 
 '"THE more one thinks and studies, the more 
 1 he becomes aware how infinite is truth. 
 . . . Upon the subject which we know best we 
 are still out at sea. Every time a fellow-man's 
 finger touches our faith, it makes it rock, and 
 compels us to feel that, however well anchored 
 it is, so that it will not drift, it is very far 
 from being bolted and mortised into the solid 
 ground. . . . We know this is not good: 
 yet we very often do not see how it is to be 
 escaped. The real escape, I think, lies here. 
 The Christian faith is not primarily a belief in 
 Christian truth, but a belief in Christ. All 
 truth which we believe, we believe in and be- 
 cause of Him. We know that though we have 
 truly taken Him for our Master, He is very 
 far yet from having told us all that He has to 
 tell. That knowledge binds us to Him not 
 merely by what He has already taught us, but 
 by the far greater truth which He is keeping 
 for us, which He will give us in His good time. 
 
 III. 304, 305. 
 
 For veils of hope before Thee drawn, 
 For mists that hint the immortal coast 
 
 Hid in Thy farthest, faintest dawn, 
 My God, for these I thank Thee most. 
 
 Joy, joy! to see, from every shore 
 
 Whereon my step makes pressure fond, 
 
 Thy sunrise reddening still before! 
 
 More light, more love, more life beyond! 
 
 LUCY LARCOM.
 
 258 SEPTEMBER 15. 
 
 Now we see through a glass darkly, but then 
 face to face. 2 COR. xiii. 12. 
 
 // doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we 
 know that when He shall appear, we shall be like 
 Him. i JOHN iii. 2. 
 
 ALL these words reach forward. They all 
 own a present incompleteness. The soul 
 which uses them is discontented, and lives 
 upon its hope. And when their great fulfil- 
 ment comes, he who has entered into the joy 
 they promise will look back as from a moun- 
 tain top, and see all experience till then only 
 as the climbing, shining stairway, so built that 
 along it this complete destiny, this entire life, 
 might be attained. XII. 21. 
 
 Enough that blessings undeserved 
 Have marked my erring track; 
 
 That wheresoe'er my feet have swerved 
 His chastenings turned me back, 
 
 That more and more a Providence 
 
 Of love is understood, 
 Making the springs of time and sense 
 
 Sweet with eternal good, 
 
 That care and trial seem at last, 
 
 Through memory's sunset air, 
 Like mountain ranges overpast 
 
 In purple distance fair, 
 
 That all the jarring notes of life 
 
 Seem blending in a psalm, 
 And all the angles of its strife 
 
 Slow rounding into calm. WHITTIER.
 
 SEPTEMBER 16. 259 
 
 The Beatitiful Gate of the temple. ACTS iii. 10. 
 
 EVERY human life starts in the beautiful 
 mystery of childhood. Through that 
 Beautiful Gate every man comes into the tem- 
 ple. . . . And that sets us to asking whether 
 to the beautiful temple of a mature religious 
 life there is also a beautiful gate. . . . Here 
 are children all among us, and yet we often 
 talk to one another as if nobody under twenty 
 had anything to do with the great things which 
 are of such unspeakable importance after we 
 have come of age. . . . The current idea of 
 the churches, which has only just begun to be 
 dislodged, that adult conversion is the type 
 and intended rule of Christianity, comes largely 
 from the fact that the first preachers had of 
 necessity to be occupied with men who had 
 known nothing of Christianity in their youth. 
 Peter and Paul had to go to grown-up men, 
 and ask them to begin the Christian life. But 
 surely that was not to be the perpetual picture 
 of Christian culture. Christ was too human for 
 that. . . . Christ had been too evidently a 
 child; the Incarnation had too evidently taken 
 all of life into its benediction for the children 
 ever to be wholly counted out. 
 
 IV. 128, 129, 130. 
 
 The innocence that is so wise, 
 The trust that dreams of no disguise, 
 The simple faith in mysteries, 
 These still shall in the world survive 
 So long as God doth children give, 
 To keep the child in us alive. 
 
 SAMUEL LONGFELLOW.
 
 260 SEPTEMBER 17. 
 
 WE hear much in these days of the preco- 
 city of childhood. . . . Josephus tells 
 us that once in the siege of Jerusalem this 
 golden gate which we have made the image of 
 childhood, " was seen to be opened of its own 
 accord about the sixth hour of the night." 
 Some thought it was a good omen, "as if God 
 did open to them the gate of happiness." 
 Others thought it was very bad, "as if the gate 
 were open to the advantage of their enemies." 
 So in this critical time of ours, not the least 
 critical sign is this: that the golden gate stands 
 open wide, that childhood is exposed and sensi- 
 tive to new impressions and ideas. Is it for 
 good or evil ? . . . The wider open the gate 
 the better, if only the truth can be poured in. 
 The more receptive the children's life the 
 better, if only they who train the children can 
 thoroughly believe that there is a manly and 
 beautiful religion of which the child is capa- 
 ble, and work with God to bring their children 
 to it. When that conviction takes possession 
 of the Church, then the Church shall indeed 
 have her children in her arms. Then Isaiah's 
 vision of the complete New Jerusalem shall be 
 fulfilled: "Thou shalt call thy walls salva- 
 tion, and thy gates praise." 
 
 IV. 150. 
 
 " Beautiful gates are for beautiful things, 
 Beautiful thought on beautiful wings, 
 Beautiful love that heavenward springs."
 
 SEPTEMBER 18. 261 
 
 IN almost every Christian's experience come 
 times of despondency and gloom, when 
 there seems to be a depletion of the spiritual 
 life, when the fountains that used to burst and 
 sing with water are grown dry, when love is 
 loveless, and hope hopeless, and enthusiasm so 
 utterly dead and buried that it is hard to be- 
 lieve that it ever lived. At such times there is 
 nothing for us to do but hold with eager hands 
 to the bare, rocky truths of our religion, as 
 a shipwrecked man hangs to a strong, rugged 
 cliff when the great retiring wave and all the 
 little eddies all together are trying to sweep 
 him back into the deep. . . . Then, when the 
 tide turns, and we can hold ourselves lightly 
 where we once had to hang heavily, when faith 
 grows easy, and God and Christ and responsi- 
 bility and eternity are once more the glory and 
 delight of happy days and peaceful nights, 
 then certainly there is something new in them, 
 a new color, a new warmth. The soul has 
 caught a new idea of God's love when it has 
 not only been fed but rescued by Him. 
 
 IV. 120. 
 
 I know not what the future hath 
 
 Of marvel or surprise, 
 Assured alone that life and death 
 
 His mercy underlies. 
 
 I know not where His islands lift 
 Their fronded palms in air; 
 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 Beyond His love and care. 
 
 WHITTIER.
 
 262 SEPTEMBER 19. 
 
 And one of them, when he saw that he was 
 healed, turned back, and fell down on his face at 
 His feet, giving Him thanks. 
 
 LUKE xvii. 15, 16. 
 
 THERE is such a difference between coming 
 out of sorrow thankful for relief, and 
 coming out of sorrow full of sympathy with 
 and trust in Him who has released us. Nine 
 lepers hurry off to show themselves with their 
 white skins to the priest. One leper only 
 waits to cast himself at the feet of Jesus and 
 worship Him. Tell me, will not those nine 
 be different from that one if ever a new dis- 
 ease should fall upon them all ? 
 
 Let that one leper be the type of the soul 
 to whom the whole blessedness of a blessing 
 from Christ has come. Not only the health 
 but the Healer he delights in. Not only the 
 salvation but the Saviour is his glory and his 
 joy. Such souls there are; souls to which all 
 the deliverances and the educations that have 
 filled their past lives are precious, not merely 
 for the safety and the instruction which they 
 have brought, but far more for the personal 
 knowledge of the Deliverer and the Teacher 
 which has been won in them, and in whose 
 strength the soul looks on and faces all that 
 the future has to bring without a fear. 
 
 II- 333- 
 
 Faith sees the future in the past: 
 Its Saviour is its First and Last.
 
 SEPTEMBER 20. 263 
 
 \I 7E cannot believe in our Christ for our- 
 ' ' selves, unless we believe in Him for all 
 the world. The more deeply we believe in 
 Him for ourselves, the more certain we shall 
 be that he is the Saviour of the world. A deeper 
 personal faith, a more complete discipleship, 
 that is what you want. Have that, and the 
 apostleship must come. If there is any part of 
 your life not wholly consecrated to Him, if 
 there is any of His love which you have not 
 appropriated, if there is any undone duty 
 which, as you do it, will open a new door into 
 His heart, if there is any word by speaking 
 which you may the more utterly commit your- 
 self to Him; just as surely as in any of these 
 ways you deepen your own spiritual life and 
 make Jesus more your Saviour, just so surely 
 you will believe in Foreign Missions, and long 
 to tell all men that He is their Saviour too. 
 
 IV. 172. 
 
 Oh, if our brother's blood cry out at us, 
 How shall we meet Thee who hast loved us 
 all, 
 
 Thee whom we never loved, not loving him ? 
 
 The unloving cannot chant with seraphim, 
 
 Bear harp of gold or palm victorious, 
 Or face the vision beatifical. 
 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
 
 264 SEPTEMBER 21. 
 
 Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and 
 said, Why could not we cast him out ? 
 
 MATT. xvii. 9. 
 
 IN our story Christ, when He came and found 
 the Disciples helpless before their task, put 
 forth His hand and healed the sick boy with 
 no help of theirs. But that was an excep- 
 tional event. . . . The great method of His 
 operation when it was thoroughly established 
 was to work through obedient men. It was 
 Matthew's obedience in the hand of Christ's 
 commandment that saved Matthew. ... If 
 any of you are struggling with your sins, I 
 beg you to learn the truth and see it wholly. 
 You cannot cast them out, but if you will give 
 yourself to Him, He can cast them out with 
 you. Hate your sins for His sake; let His 
 love fill you with love, and then the conquer- 
 ing of your sins by His help shall be in its 
 course one long enthusiasm, and at the end a 
 glorious success. III. i 9 g, 199. 
 
 I could not do without Thee, 
 
 Saviour of the lost! 
 
 Whose precious blood redeemed me, 
 
 At such tremendous cost. 
 I could not do without Thee; 
 
 1 cannot stand alone; 
 
 I have no strength or goodness, 
 
 No wisdom of my own. 
 But Thou, beloved Saviour, 
 
 Art all in all to me; 
 And weakness will be power, 
 
 If leaning hard on Thee. 
 
 FRANCES R. HAVERGAL.
 
 SEPTEMBER 22. 265 
 
 The good will of Him that dwelt in the bush. 
 
 DEUT. xxxiii. 16. 
 
 THE identity of God's eternal being stretches 
 under, and gives consistence to, our frag- 
 mentary lives. God's eternity makes our time 
 coherent. And so it was God in the old bush 
 that made it still visible to Moses across the 
 eventful interval. He saw that bush when all 
 the other bushes of Egypt had faded out of 
 sight, because that bush was on fire with God. 
 And as Christianity is the most vivid of all re- 
 ligions, with its personally manifested God, 
 there is a more perfect unity in a Christian life 
 than in any other. It keeps all its parts, and 
 from its consummations looks back with grati- 
 tude and love to its beginnings. The crown 
 that it casts before the throne at last is the 
 same that it felt trembling on its brow in the 
 first ecstatic sense of Christ's forgiveness, 
 and that has been steadily glowing into greater 
 clearness as perfecting love has more and more 
 completely cast out fear. The feet that go 
 up to God into the mountain, at the end, are 
 the same that first put off their shoes beside the 
 burning bush. This is why the Christian, 
 more than other men, not merely dares but 
 loves to look back and remember. 
 
 II. 40. 
 
 Help me to look behind, before, 
 
 To make my past and future form 
 A bow of promise, meeting o'er 
 ' The darkness of my day of storm. 
 
 PHEBE GARY.
 
 266 SEPTEMBER 23. 
 
 good will of Him that dwelt in the 
 1 bush." ... In some church-pew, in 
 some closet's privacy, in some stillness or 
 some crowd, years ago the fire came; the com- 
 mon life about you burned with the sudden 
 presence of Divinity; God called you, and you 
 gave yourself to God. I bid you look back 
 and see the mercy that has led you ever since, 
 and strengthen your hope and courage and 
 charity and faith as you remember the long, 
 long good-will of Him that dwelt in the bush. 
 And some of you are standing just by the bush- 
 side still, the shoes off your feet, the voice of 
 God in your ears, lifted up with the desire for 
 the new life of Christ. You are determined 
 to be His, for He has called you. Well, till 
 the end, life here and hereafter will be only 
 the unfolding of this personal love which seems 
 to you so dear and so mysterious now. . . . 
 The mercy which takes you into its bosom at 
 last in heaven, will be still the old familiar 
 good-will of Him that dwelt in the bush. 
 
 II. 58. 
 
 My soul is melted by that love, 
 
 So tender and so true; 
 I can but cry: My God and Lord, 
 
 What wilt Thou have me do ? 
 
 My blessings all come back to me, 
 
 And round about me stand; 
 Help me to climb their dizzy stairs, 
 
 Until I touch Thy hand! 
 
 ALICE GARY.
 
 SEPTEMBER 24. 267 
 
 There is some soul of goodness in things evil, 
 Would men observingly distil it out. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 THE sins Christ has forgiven are dead, but 
 they are not gone. If none of the dead 
 go from us, if when death comes a new and 
 finer life begins, and he whom we call dead is 
 with us in sweetest, subtlest portion of his 
 life, with everything of harshness, every dis- 
 agreement, every power of harm taken out, 
 why may it not be so with our dead sins ? It 
 is so, surely! There is a soul in them which 
 lives on still while their body of wickedness 
 has perished a soul of patience, of watchful- 
 ness, of gratitude, and of never-dying love. 
 O my dear friends, we have not done with a 
 sin of ours, we have not finished its history, 
 until, long, long after it has died in the kind 
 forgiveness of the Saviour, we have traced the 
 eternal career of the spirit which its death 
 has liberated into life, giving steadfastness to 
 duty, and charity to friendship, and unutter- 
 able tenderness to the love of the Saviour till 
 eternity shall end. 
 
 That is what our sins shall be to us forever. 
 They die as sins in forgiveness that they may 
 live forever as the impulses of holiness and 
 the exhaustless fountains of love. 
 
 VII. 128. 
 
 From rank decay the fairest flowers grow; 
 From buried springs the sweetest waters flow. 
 
 JULIA WOOD.
 
 268 SEPTEMBER 25. 
 
 JUST as a delightful study, into which some 
 ^ dear friend first initiated you, has always 
 over and above its own delightfulness a beauty 
 that comes from your love to him; so the soul 
 that Jesus has made holy lives always in the 
 beauty of holiness, made more exquisite and 
 dear by the loveliness of Christ. Of every 
 earthly grace as well as of the heavenly glory 
 it is true that ' ' the Lamb is the light thereof. ' ' 
 Every new attainment which the Christian 
 makes is but an entrance into another man- 
 sion which his Saviour has made ready for 
 him. He grows brave, but Christ was brave 
 before him. He enters into self-sacrifice, but 
 Christ leads him with His cross. He finds the 
 home of his soul at last in perfect union with 
 God; but the Godhood is familiar and doubly 
 dear to him because of the Christhood through 
 which he enters it. All virtue, holiness, and 
 truth, throughout the universe, loses the chill 
 of abstractness and glows with the warmth of 
 
 personal love. 
 
 VI. 184. 
 
 Love greatens and glorifies 
 Till God's a glow to the loving eyes 
 In what was mere earth before. 
 
 BROWNING. 
 
 Do not I fill heaven and earth ? saith the Lord. 
 
 JER. xxiii. 28.
 
 SEPTEMBER 26. 269 
 
 From henceforth let no man trouble me, for I 
 bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. 
 
 GAL. vi. 17. 
 
 IN its clumsy, halting way the outer is the 
 record of the inner life. The body is the 
 story of the soul. We bear in our flesh the 
 marks of our masters. . . . "Who is your 
 master?" is the question that includes all 
 questions. If a man tries to push that ques- 
 tion aside, he declares that he is his own mas- 
 ter. And then he bears in his body the marks 
 of himself; the faded colors and the scars mean 
 only wilfulness and selfishness. But now sup- 
 pose that life has meant for that man, from 
 the beginning, the claiming of his soul by a 
 higher soul; . . . that the life is Christ's life, 
 uttering His wishes, seeking His purposes, 
 filled and inspired by His love, reckoning its 
 vitality by the degree of conscious and realized 
 sympathy with Him, and then it will be true 
 that every outward sign in which those inward 
 experiences are recorded will become a mark 
 of the Lord Jesus, a sign of the occupation of 
 the nature by His nature which is what it has 
 meant for this man to live. 
 
 II. 357, 358, 359- 
 
 Yea, let the fragrant scars abide, 
 
 Love-tokens in Thy stead, 
 Faint shadows of the spear-pierced side 
 
 And thorn-encompassed head. 
 
 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN.
 
 270 SEPTEMBER 27. 
 
 No man can serve two masters. MATT. vi. 24. 
 
 SHALL you be God's or the world's ? Be 
 both! Not in any low miserable compro- 
 mise. Not by the effort to serve God and 
 mammon. But by a brave and filial question- 
 ing of God that He may tell you just how He 
 wants a child of His to live in this peculiar 
 time and under these peculiar circumstances of 
 yours. There is a type of universal human life 
 in harmony with the best life of all the ages, in 
 tune with the sublimest and finest spiritual 
 music of the universe, in harmony also with 
 the profoundest dictates of your own personal 
 conscience, which you can live in your parlor 
 and your shop; and that life you can reach if 
 you are consecrated to God in your own place 
 and time. If you live that life, the world of 
 the present owns you and claims you and re- 
 joices in you. The most distant life of man 
 looks in on you and recognizes you as a part 
 of itself, and says, "Well done!" Up from 
 your own conscience speaks your self-approval. 
 And God your Father bends His love around 
 you, and out of His blessing feeds you with 
 His strength. VI. 240. 
 
 Take my life, and let it be 
 Consecrated, Lord, to Thee. 
 
 Take my will, and make it Thine; 
 It shall be no longer mine. 
 
 Take myself, and I will be 
 Ever, only, all for Thee. 
 
 FRANCES R. HAVERGAL.
 
 SEPTEMBER 28. 271 
 
 TO be religious, to be a Christian, means 
 something accurate and specific. It is 
 not to be a little stronger than the strongest, a 
 little wiser than the wisest, a little truer than 
 the truest. It is something more. It is some- 
 thing different from all. It is to have taken 
 up a new quality of being, which God only 
 gives through Jesus Christ, ... to have be- 
 come the subject of forces deeper, dealing with 
 profounder regions of the nature, than were 
 ever stirred before. . . . 
 
 Let a plant try to be a bird forever and it 
 will forever fail. It may grow to be a very 
 superior plant, unfold a lordly beauty to the 
 wondering sun, but between it and the song 
 and the flight and the nest lies forever the gulf 
 that separates flower-life from bird-life and 
 never can be crossed. Let a man try to be a 
 Christian forever. The struggle may make 
 him, I believe it will make him, a better man; 
 but between him and the strength and the 
 peace and the love yawns forever the gulf that 
 separates man-life from God-life, and which no 
 man ever yet crossed save as he stretched out 
 both his helpless hands to God and felt a hand 
 too powerful not to trust clasp them and lift 
 him, whither he knew not, till lo! the gulf was 
 crossed, and he had entered on the new life 
 that they live who live in God. 
 
 VII. 160. 
 
 In Thy presence is fulness of joy. Ps. xvi. n.
 
 272 SEPTEMBER 29. 
 
 NOTICE the mysterious personalness with 
 which sin presents itself as a tempter to 
 the hearts of men, what we usually hear 
 stated as the doctrine of "besetting sins." 
 . . . Why is it that he who is most liable to 
 pride, has such continual incitements to over- 
 weening vanity ? Why is it that the poor ine- 
 briate, trying to give up his drink, finds the 
 whole world full of beckoning fingers and 
 tempting voices that keep calling back again 
 his dying passions into life ? To the light and 
 over-frivolous character all nature shapes itself 
 into a chorus and sings siren songs to scare 
 incipient thoughtfulness away. . . . Does it 
 not seem that we are living in the midst of 
 mysterious forces leagued against our souls, 
 that our enemy is mysterious, is superhuman ? 
 Mysterious and superhuman, then, must be our 
 safety and defence. ... " We wrestle not 
 against flesh and blood, but against . . . 
 powers, against the rulers of the darkness of 
 this world." 
 
 VI. 9, 10, 27. 
 
 Michael, the leader of the hosts of God, 
 Who warred with Satan for the body of him 
 Whom, living, God had loved! If cherubim 
 With cherubim contended for one clod 
 Of human dust, for forty years that trod 
 The gloomy desert of man's chastisement, 
 Are there not ministering angels sent 
 To battle with the devils that roam abroad, 
 Clutching at living souls ? The living, still, 
 The living, they shall praise Thee! 
 
 DINAH MULOCH CRAIK.
 
 SEPTEMBER 30. 273 
 
 When Jacob slept in Bethel, and there dreamed 
 
 Of angels ever climbing and descending 
 A ladder, whose last height of splendor seemed 
 With glory of the Ineffable Presence blend- 
 ing, . . . 
 
 Foretold they His descent, the Son of God, 
 Who humbly clothed Himself in vestments 
 
 mortal, 
 
 And so, encumbered with our weakness, trod 
 With us the stairway to His Father's portal 
 To life whose inner secret none can win 
 Save by surmounting earthliness and sin ? 
 
 LUCY LARCOM. 
 
 BE sure that you mount up to Christ by 
 gaining His view of yourself, and that 
 you do not drag Him down to yourself by 
 your selfishness, and then you may freely claim 
 Him in your commonest life, and bid Him do, 
 and honor Him for doing, the work which He 
 craves and delights in when He says: " I am 
 among you as He that serveth." ... I will 
 be studiously on my guard not to mistake the 
 cravings of my nature for the voice of the 
 coming Christ, but I will not silence those 
 cravings of my nature when they welcome the 
 coming Christ, I will bid them speak, I will 
 listen for God's answer to them, and when 
 Christ does come it shall make the witness of 
 His coming perfectly conclusive and complete 
 that it is not merely in the clouds of heaven, 
 but through the worn and torn avenues of my 
 conscious human necessities, that He comes. 
 
 VI. 293.
 
 274 OCTOBER i. 
 
 If I lay waste and wither up with doubt 
 
 The blessed fields of heaven where once my 
 
 faith 
 
 Possessed itself serenely safe from death; 
 If I deny the things past finding out; 
 Or if I orphan my own soul of One 
 That seemed a Father, and make void the place 
 Within me where He dwelt in power and grace, 
 What do I gain by that I have undone ? 
 
 W. D. Ho WELLS. 
 
 THERE is a great deal of danger of our 
 forgetting that to believe much, and not 
 to believe little, is the privilege and glory of 
 a full-grown man. There will come times 
 and upon such a time our lot has fallen when 
 men are led to sing the praise and glorify the 
 influence of doubt. Assuredly it has its bless- 
 ings, but while we magnify them we ought 
 never to forget that they are always of the 
 nature of compensation. . . . There do come 
 times when you must cut a tree down to its 
 very roots in order that it may grow up the 
 richer by-and-by; but a whole field of stumps 
 is not the ideal landscape. The forest, with 
 its wealth of glorious foliage, is the true cor- 
 onation of the earth. . . . Seek faith as full 
 and rich a faith as you can find. Try to know 
 all you can about God and your own soul. 
 Count every new conviction which is really 
 won a treasure and enrichment of your life. 
 
 VII. 319.
 
 OCTOBER 2. 275 
 
 Help Thou mine unbelief. MATT. ix. 24. 
 
 YOU say: " Why is it so easy for others to 
 believe, so hard for me?" There is a 
 willing and an unwilling unbelief. Man must 
 not complain that the sun does not shine on 
 him, because he shuts his eyes. If it is un- 
 willing unbelief; if you really want the truth; 
 if you are not afraid to submit to it as soon 
 as you shall see it; . . . then you are not 
 to be pitied. To climb the mountain on its 
 hardest side, where its granite ribs press out 
 most ruggedly, where you must skirt round 
 chasms and clamber down and up ravines, 
 all this has its compensations. You know the 
 mountain better when you reach its top. It 
 is a realler, a nobler, and so a dearer thing. 
 ... If you can only keep on bravely, perse- 
 veringly, seeking the truth, saying, " I must 
 have it or die; " saying that till you do die; 
 dying at last, if needs be, in the search; then 
 I declare not only that somewhere here or in 
 a better world the truth shall come to you, 
 but that, when it comes, the peace and the 
 serenity of it shall be made vital with the en- 
 ergy of your long search. . . . For perfect 
 truthfulness must find the truth at last, or 
 where is God ? 
 
 IV. 122. 
 
 If thou seek for truth, and do it, 
 Not in vain shalt thou pursue it. 
 
 If thou seek for truth, and live it, 
 He who is the Truth will give it. 
 
 L. M.
 
 276 OCTOBER 3. 
 
 That ye may be filled with all the fulness of 
 God. EPHES. iii. 19. 
 
 THE Incarnation, the beginning of the 
 earthly life of Christ, was the fulfilment, 
 the filling full, of a human nature by Divinity. 
 It made the man in whom the miracle occurred 
 absolutely perfect man. It did not make Him 
 something else than man. . . . Whenever He 
 says to men " Follow Me," He is declaring 
 that He is man as they are men, that the pe- 
 culiar Divinity which filled Him, while it car- 
 ried humanity to its complete development, 
 had not changed that humanity into something 
 which was no longer human. Can we picture 
 that to ourselves ? Is it not just as when the 
 sunlight fills a jewel ? The jewel throbs and 
 glows with radiance. All its mysterious nature 
 palpitates and burns with clearness. It opens 
 depths of color which we did not see before. 
 But still it is the jewel's self that we are see- 
 ing. The sunlight has made us see what it 
 is, not turned it into something different from 
 what it was. . . . One thing evidently ap- 
 pears; which is that the developing power, 
 which brings the being into which it enters to 
 its best, has essential and natural relations to 
 the being which it develops. The jewel be- 
 longs to the light. And this must always be 
 the truth which must underlie all understand- 
 ing of the Incarnation. Man belongs to God. 
 The human nature belongs to the Divine. 
 
 II. 255, 256, 257. 
 
 / am come that they might have life, and that 
 they might fyive it more abundantly. JOHN x. 10.
 
 OCTOBER 4. 277 
 
 That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may 
 be able , . . to know the love of Christ, which 
 passeth knowledge. EPHES. iii. 17, 19. 
 
 HEAVEN is not only real because His hu- 
 manity is there, not merely glorious 
 because His greatness is there. It is dear 
 because His love is there the love which 
 filled His earthly life, the love of the miracle 
 and of the wayside teaching and of the cross. 
 The nearness and the glory might be there and 
 yet Heaven not lay hold of our hearts. We 
 might be well content to stand far off and 
 gaze. We might not want to go there. We 
 might not listen for messages, nor send our 
 feeble voices forth in prayer. But now our 
 Christ is there, our Saviour, what wonder if 
 the earth a thousand times seems dull and 
 wearisome, and always gets its best brightness 
 from that other world in which He is, of which 
 this is the vestibule! . . . What wonder if the 
 hope that He will some day take us to Himself 
 abides calm and constant behind all the tran- 
 sitory hopes of life, which are lighted and go 
 out again and again, while that hope remains 
 always as the deep sky remains behind the 
 coming and the going of the stars! 
 
 VII. 301. 
 
 Some are resigned to go, might we such grace 
 attain 
 
 That we should need our resignation to re- 
 main. 
 
 RICHARD G. TRENCH.
 
 278 OCTOBER 5. 
 
 Lo, I come. HEB. x. 7. 
 
 THE great Christian doctrine of the Atone- 
 ment tells us that when man fell from 
 holiness to sin, there appeared in the whole 
 universe only one nature which had in itself a 
 fitness to undertake the work of reconciliation 
 and restoral. . . . Then comes the question, 
 When did that fitness of the Christ begin ? 
 . . . What if He had borne forever the human 
 element in His Divinity, anointed Christ from 
 all eternity ? What if there had been forever 
 a Saviourhood in the Deity, an everlasting 
 readiness which made it always certain that, if 
 ever such a catastrophe as Eden came, such a 
 remedy as Calvary must follow ? Does not this 
 deepen all our thought of salvation ? Does it 
 not teach us what is meant by " the Lamb slain 
 from the foundation of the world " ? 
 
 And see how such a truth tallies with all 
 God's ways. This natural body of ours has 
 in itself the fitness for two sets of processes, 
 the processes of growth and the processes 
 of repair. You keep your arm unbroken, 
 and nature feeds it with continual health; 
 you break that same arm and the same nature 
 beautifully testifies her completeness, which 
 includes the power of the Healer as well as 
 the Supplier. So it is to me a noble thought, 
 that in an everlasting Christhood in the Deity 
 we have from all eternity a provision for the 
 exigency which came at last, a provision, not 
 temporary and spasmodic, but existing forever, 
 and only called out into operation by the 
 occurrence of the need. 
 
 VI. 316, 317.
 
 OCTOBER 6. 279 
 
 am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 
 
 MATT. v. 17. 
 
 IT is redemption and fulfilment that Christ 
 comes to bring to man. There is a true 
 humanity which is to be restored, and all whose 
 unattained possibilities are to be filled out. 
 . . . Man is a child of God, for whom his 
 Father's house is waiting. The whole crea- 
 tion is groaning and travailing until man shall 
 be complete. 
 
 As soon as we understand all this, then 
 what a great, clear thing salvation becomes. 
 Its one idea is health. Not rescue from suffer- 
 ing, not plucking out of fire, not deportation 
 to some strange, beautiful region where the 
 winds blow with other influences and the skies 
 drop with other dews, not the enchaining of 
 the spirit with some unreal celestial spell, but 
 health, the cool, calm vigor of the normal 
 human life; the making of the man to be 
 himself; the calling up out of the depths of 
 his being and the filling with vitality of that 
 self which is truly he, this is salvation! 
 
 V. 7, 9- 
 
 In Christ I touch the hand of God, 
 From His pure height reached down, 
 
 By blessed ways before untrod 
 To lift us to our crown; 
 
 Victory that only perfect is 
 
 Through loving sacrifice, like His. 
 
 LUCY LARCOM.
 
 28o OCTOBER 7. 
 
 He answered and said, Who is He, Lord, that 
 I might believe on Him ? And Jesus saith unto 
 him, Thou hast both seen Him, and it is He that 
 talketh with thee. JOHN ix. 36, 37. 
 
 HOW touching in this special story is the 
 allusion to the light which the Lord had 
 given only that day! 
 
 Jesus reminds him of the lower mercy that 
 He may assure him of the higher. ... It is 
 as the Saviour of the past life that He offers 
 Himself for the future. 
 
 There have been great creative moments in 
 the history of the world, as all history and 
 science seem to show, moments when after 
 long, silent preparations, suddenly the old 
 order broke and a new, as if by magic, came 
 into its place. So it has been in physical and 
 social and political history. But in neither 
 was there any magic. The same force which 
 was in the last changing conviction had been 
 in all the preparation. The flower is but the 
 ripening of the same juices that built the 
 stem. So it is with conversion to the very 
 last. The Christ who in eternity opens the 
 last concealment, and lays His comfort and 
 life close to the deepest needs of the poor, 
 needy, human heart, is the same Christ that 
 first laid hands upon the blind eyes, and made 
 them see the sky and flowers. 
 
 V. 213, 214. 
 
 No stranger, but the Friend unseen, 
 Who from the first thy Friend hath been.
 
 OCTOBER 8. 281 
 
 WHAT will heaven be ? ... I find manifold 
 fitness in the answer that tells us it shall 
 be " a sea of glass mingled with fire." Heaven 
 will not be pure stagnation, not idleness, not 
 any mere luxurious dreaming over the spirit- 
 ual repose that has been safely and forever 
 won; but active, tireless, earnest work; fresh, 
 live enthusiasm for the high labors which 
 eternity will offer. These vivid inspirations 
 will play through our deep repose and make it 
 more mighty in the service of God than any 
 feverish and unsatisfied toil of earth has ever 
 been. The sea of glass will be mingled with 
 fire. 
 
 Here too we have the type and standard of 
 that heavenliness of character which ought to 
 be ripening in all of us now, as we are getting 
 ready for that spiritual life. . . . Surely, 
 there is a very high and happy life conceiv- 
 able, which very few of us attain, yet which 
 our religion evidently intends for all of us. 
 Calm and active; peaceful and yet thoroughly 
 alive; resting always upon truth, but never 
 sleeping on it for a moment; working always 
 intensely, but serene and certain of results, 
 never driven crazy by our work; grounded and 
 settled, yet always moving forward in still but 
 sure progress; always secure, yet always alert, 
 glass mingled with fire. IV. 125, 126. 
 
 I dare not pray to Thee to give 
 The heaven which shall appear; 
 
 My cry is: Help me Thou to live 
 Within the heaven that's here! 
 
 ALICE GARY.
 
 282 OCTOBER 9. 
 
 man ^ at ^ seen ^ oc ^ at 
 
 Jesus, but [beyond death] the power 
 of the new life is to be that "we shall see 
 Him as He is." It is our privilege to dwell 
 upon the untold, unguessed glory of the world 
 that is to come. It is a poor economy of 
 spiritual motive which tries to make heaven 
 real by taking out of it all thought of inex- 
 pressible and new delight, and bringing it 
 down to the tame repetition of the scenes and 
 ways of earth. But no one listens to the ta^k 
 or reads the books which are written about 
 heaven, without feeling that the glory and de- 
 light which they speak of are far too com- 
 pletely separated in kind from any which this 
 world's experience has taught us how to 
 value. It ought not to be so. The highest, 
 truest thought of heaven which man can have 
 is of the full completion of those processes 
 whose beginning he has witnessed here, their 
 completion into degrees of perfectness as yet 
 inconceivable, but still one in kind with what 
 he is aware of now. 
 
 V. 303. 
 
 Our Past had held our Future, like a rose 
 That may not yet its perfect self disclose, 
 
 Lest angry winds should scatter and molest; 
 So, shut within this narrow bud, its woes 
 
 Were but the crumpled leaves too closely 
 
 pressed, 
 And all its loveliness did but enclose 
 
 The germ of after beauty now a Guest, 
 But soon to be a Dweller. 
 
 DORA GREE.NWELL.
 
 OCTOBER 10. 283 
 
 Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased j 
 and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. 
 
 LUKE xiv. n. 
 
 SET a man to work, and if he were great 
 enough to be humble at all, his work 
 would bring him to humility. He would be 
 brought face to face with facts. He would 
 measure himself against the eternal pillars of 
 the universe. He would learn the blessed 
 lesson of his own littleness in the way in which 
 it is always learnt most blessedly, by learning 
 the largeness of larger things. And all this, 
 which the ordinary occupations of life do for 
 our ordinary powers, Christianity, with the 
 work that it furnishes for our affections and 
 our hopes, does for the higher parts of us. 
 
 It seems to come to this, that Christianity 
 is the religion of the broadest truthfulness. It 
 does not set men at any work of mere resolu- 
 tion, saying, " Come, now, let us be hum- 
 ble." That would but multiply the endless 
 specimens of useless self-mortification. But 
 true Christianity puts men face to face with 
 the humbling facts, the great realities, and 
 then humility comes upon the soul, as dark- 
 ness comes on the face of the earth, not be- 
 cause the earth has made up its mind to be 
 dark, but because it has rolled into the great 
 shadow. I. 350, 351.
 
 284 OCTOBER ii. 
 
 " His state 
 
 Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed 
 And post o'er land and ocean without rest." 
 
 TO live in such a universe of obedient activ- 
 ity, to feel its movement, to be sensible 
 of its gloriousness, and yet to make no active 
 part of it would be dreadful. Milton felt this, 
 and in his last great line was compelled to 
 pierce down to the deepest truth about the 
 matter, and assert that he, too, even in his 
 blindness, had share in the obedience of the 
 untiring worlds: 
 
 " They also serve who only stand and wait." 
 
 .\y 
 
 Here is the deepest reason, here is the rea- 
 sonable glory of that which is perpetually ex- 
 alted and belauded in cheap and superficial 
 ways the excellence of work, the glory of 
 activity. Many of our familiar human in- 
 stincts live and act by deeper powers than 
 they know. That which is really the noble, 
 the divine element in the perpetual activity of 
 man is the sympathy of the obedient universe. 
 The circling stars, the flowing rivers, the grow- 
 ing trees, the whirling atoms, the rushing 
 winds, all things are in obedient action, 
 doing the will of God. It is the healthy im- 
 pulse of any true man who finds himself in 
 this active world to share in its activity. It is 
 the healthy shame of any true man to find 
 himself left out, having no part in that obe- 
 dience which keeps all life alive.
 
 OCTOBER 12. 285 
 
 A MERICA was discovered in the fulness of 
 r\ time. First there had to come the long 
 education of the world which made possible 
 the energy and patience and skill that achieved 
 the task. And then we can see how it had to 
 be kept until the pressure of the crowded life 
 of the old world called for another continent 
 to work out to greater issues the problem of 
 human history. Then the great curtain was 
 withdrawn then, in the fulness of time. 
 
 So let men work away with their statistics 
 and their averages and prove how beautifully 
 under all our life there run the great necessi- 
 ties of God. . . . The curse or blessing cause- 
 less cannot come. And into the clear light of 
 all such speculations we may look to get a 
 clearer and more loving understanding of our 
 God. I see Him now as He stands holding 
 back the inventions and discoveries and insti- 
 tutions that are to make the next generation 
 glorious more glorious than ours, holding 
 them back until their time is full. The home 
 of the future, the republic of the future, the 
 Church of the future they must be built upon 
 the present, and they must wait until their 
 foundations shall be laid. 
 
 VII. 57, 60. 
 
 God's gracious purpose comes to fulfilment 
 Never too soon and never too late; 
 
 Bright o'er the clouded arch of His future 
 Shineth the legend: Trust thou and wait. 
 
 J. L. M. W.
 
 286 OCTOBER 13. 
 
 WHO are the men who have succeeded in 
 the best way, who have done good 
 work while they lived, and have left their lives 
 like monuments for the inspiration of man- 
 kind ? They are the men who have . . . ques- 
 tioned the circumstances in which they found 
 themselves, and asked what was the best thing 
 which any man in just those circumstances 
 might set himself to do ? These are the men 
 before whom there rises by-and-by a dream, 
 which later gathers itself into a hope, and at 
 last solidifies into an achievement. Colum- 
 bus discovers America because he is Colum- 
 bus, and because the study of geography and 
 the enterprise of men have reached just this 
 point. Luther kindles the Reformation be- 
 cause he is Luther, and because the dry wood 
 of the papacy has come to just the right in- 
 flammability. You and I, who are not Luthers 
 nor Columbuses, but simply, by the grace of 
 God, earnest, true-hearted men, conceive some 
 purpose for our lives and "keep it clear before 
 us, praying that we may not die before we 
 do it; and at last doing it before we die, be- 
 cause we are we, and because the world in 
 which we live is just the world it is. 
 
 IV. 322. 
 
 Such faith, O God, our souls sustain, 
 Free, true, and calm, in joy and pain. 
 That even by our fidelity 
 Thy Kingdom may the nearer be! 
 
 SAMUEL LONGFELLOW.
 
 OCTOBER 14. 287 
 
 'Tis sorrow builds the shining ladder up, 
 Whose golden rounds are our calamities, 
 Whereon our firm feet planting, nearer God 
 The spirit climbs, and hath its eyes unsealed. 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 THE final purpose of all consolation and 
 help is revelation. The reason why we 
 are led into trouble and out again is not merely 
 that we may value happiness the more from 
 having lost it once and found it again, but 
 that we may know something which we could 
 not know except by that teaching, that we 
 may bear upon our nature some impress which 
 could not have been stamped except on na- 
 tures just so softened to receive it. u. 272. 
 
 Great truths are greatly won. Not found by 
 
 chance, 
 
 Nor wafted on the breath of summer dream, 
 But grasped in the great struggle of the soul, 
 Hard buffeting with adverse wind and 
 stream; 
 
 And in the day of conflict, fear and grief, 
 When the strong hand of God, put forth in 
 
 might, 
 
 Ploughs up the subsoil of the stagnant heart, 
 And brings the imprisoned truth-seed to the 
 light. 
 
 Wrung from the troubled spirit, in hard hours 
 Of weakness, solitude, perchance of pain, 
 
 Truth springs, like harvest from the well- 
 ploughed field, 
 And the soul feels it has not wept in vain. 
 
 HORATIUS BONAR.
 
 288 OCTOBER 15. 
 
 Because thou hast kept the word of My patience ; 
 I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation. 
 
 REV. iii. 10. 
 
 TAKE the man whose life has known be- 
 reavement, who has passed sometime 
 through those days and nights which I may 
 not try to describe to you, but which come 
 up to so many of you as I say the old word, 
 death. Days and nights when he watched 
 the slow untwisting of some silver cord on 
 which his very life was hung, or suddenly felt 
 the golden bowl dashed down and broken of 
 which his very life had drank. The first shock 
 became dulled. The first agony grew calm. 
 The lips subsided into serenity. But was 
 there not something in him that made him 
 greater and purer and richer than of old; 
 something that let any one see who watched 
 the change, that it was " better to have loved 
 and lost than never to have loved at all " ? A 
 whole new quality, that rich quality which the 
 Bible calls by its large word "patience," the 
 power of his trial, was in his new serenity, 
 until he died. 
 
 IV. 114. 
 
 Grant us, O Lord, that patience and that faith : 
 Faith's patience imperturbable in Thee, 
 Hope's patience till the long-drawn shad- 
 ows flee, 
 
 Love's patience unresentful of all scathe. 
 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
 
 OCTOBER 16. 289 
 
 THE soul which God is training in solitude 
 thinks its life wasted because it is cut off 
 from society, and the soul that God keeps in 
 the very midst of its fellows sighs for the joy 
 and culture of being alone. 
 
 If we could only know that in its time only 
 is any Christian mood or condition beautiful, 
 and that God only knows its time! When 
 the day is over the stars will come, and then 
 it is good to see them; but to see them before 
 that, in the sunlight, you must go, men say, 
 down to the bottom of a well, where you do 
 not belong, which is unnatural and unhealthy. 
 When we have done with earth the heaven 
 will come; and, till that, only such heaven 
 and it is not a little as is possible upon the 
 dear old earth. 
 
 IV. 257. 
 
 What Thou wilt, O Father, give! 
 All is gain that I receive. . . . 
 Let the lowliest task be mine, 
 Grateful, so the work be Thine; 
 Let me find the humblest place 
 In the shadow of Thy grace. . . . 
 Clothe with life the weak intent, 
 Let me be the thing I meant; 
 Let me find in Thy employ 
 Peace that dearer is than joy; 
 Out of self to love be led 
 And to heaven acclimated, 
 Until all things sweet and good 
 Seem my natural habitude. 
 
 WHITTIER.
 
 290 OCTOBER 17. 
 
 In everything ye are enriched by Him. 
 
 i COR. i. 4. 
 
 From Thee is all that soothes the life of man, 
 His high endeavors and his glad success, 
 His strength to suffer and his will to serve. 
 But O Thou sovereign Giver of all good, 
 Thou art, of all Thy gifts, Thyself the 
 
 crown ; 
 Give what Thou canst, without Thee we are 
 
 poor, 
 And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt 
 
 away. COWPER. 
 
 THE knowledge of God lies behind every- 
 thing, behind all knowledge, all skill, all 
 life. That is the sum of the whole matter. 
 And then comes the great truth . . . that it is 
 only by the experiences of the soul, only by 
 penitence for sin, only by patient struggle 
 after holiness, only by trust, by hope, by love, 
 does God make Himself known to man. . . . 
 As the man becomes more pure, more peni- 
 tent, more sensitive to the least touch of sin, 
 more passionately eager to be good, so does 
 he grow for ever more and more sure of God. 
 And to him, thus growing ever surer of God, 
 the world he lives in becomes clothed with an 
 ever diviner light. . . . 
 
 Of heaven it is written that " the Lord God 
 Almighty and the Lamb are the light thereof." 
 This part of heaven at least may be begun be- 
 low. Not merely the earth we live in, but our 
 own especial life our work, our study, our 
 daily toil may live already in the light of 
 God. in. no.
 
 OCTOBER 18. 291 
 
 Luke, the beloved physician. COL. iv. 14. 
 
 OF Luke alone it would appear as if he con- 
 tinued to do as a Christian the same 
 thing which he had done before. In him alone 
 we see what since his time has been the natu- 
 ral and normal type of Christian life, the 
 inspiration of a definite old occupation by a 
 new spiritual power, so that it continued to 
 be exercised, and showed its genuine capacity, 
 and fulfilled its true ideal. 
 
 Luke must have gone among his patients 
 saying, " I do this by the faith of the Son of 
 God." Tell me, when he could say that, was 
 there no holier sacredness in the finger which 
 he laid on the sick man's pulse ? Was there 
 no truer sense of sympathy with the men whom 
 he saw on every side of him engaged in other 
 works than his ? 
 
 Not by deserting your profession but by 
 deepening it, by seeking a new life under it, 
 by praying for and never resting satisfied until 
 you find regeneration, the new life lived by 
 the faith of the Son of God; so only can your 
 life of trade or art or profession be redeemed; 
 so only can it become both for you and for 
 the world a blessed thing. The necessary 
 labors which the nature of man and his rela- 
 tions to this earth demand, all done by men 
 full of the love of God, and each using to its 
 best the special faculty that is in him, the 
 world needs no other millennium than that. 
 
 V. 219, 224, 227.
 
 292 OCTOBER 19. 
 
 And Balak said unto him, Come, I pray thee, 
 unto another place. . . . Thou shalt see but the 
 utmost part of them, and shalt not see them all: 
 and curse me them from thence, 
 
 NUMB, xxiii. 13. 
 
 THERE are parts of it [life] and aspects of it 
 which, if they were all, would make exist- 
 ence an accursed thing. "Come," says the 
 pessimist, " you shall not see the whole. I will 
 set you where you shall only see a part, and 
 curse me it from thence." There is where 
 pessimism is made. The man who sees the 
 whole of life must be an optimist. I know 
 dark points of view, grim gloomy crags of 
 moral vision, hideous observatories on which 
 if a man stands he can see nothing but the 
 dreadful side of life, its wretchedness, its dis- 
 appointment, its distress, its reckless, wanton, 
 defiant sin. I can see gathered on those hor- 
 rible observation points the despisers, the re- 
 vilers, the cursers of our human life. I know 
 that if I went up there and stood by their side, 
 my tongue would curse like theirs. But there 
 I will not go. If there be any point whence 
 I can see it all, however dimly, through what- 
 ever clouds, there I will go. So will I keep 
 my faith that life is good, and work with what 
 strength I can against its evils, knowing that 
 I work in hope. VI. 212. 
 
 " With patient step thy path of duty run: 
 God nothing does or suffers to be done, 
 But thou thyself would'st do it, didst thou see 
 The end of all events as well as He."
 
 OCTOBER 20. 293 
 
 Pray without ceasing. 2 THESS. v. 17. 
 
 DRAYER involves far more than we ordina- 
 * rily think, a certain necessary relation 
 between the soul and God. The condition of 
 prayer is personal ; it looks to character. How 
 this rebukes our ordinary slipshod notions of 
 what it is to pray! God's mercy-seat is no 
 mere stall set by the vulgar roadside, where 
 every careless passer-by may put an easy hand 
 out to snatch any glittering blessing that 
 catches his eye. It stands in the holiest of 
 holies. We can come to it only through veils 
 and by altars of purification. To enter into 
 
 it, we must enter into God. 
 
 VI. 308. 
 
 O Infinite of joy and light, 
 Wherewith we are surrounded, 
 
 We lift our spirits to Thy height 
 Unfathomed and unbounded: 
 
 Thy greatness drowns our petty cares, 
 
 Thy heaven is in us, unawares. 
 
 O Infinite of Righteousness, 
 Breath of our inmost being! 
 
 Thy purity will cleanse and bless 
 The soul from evil fleeing: 
 
 We hide our sin-stained hearts in Thee, 
 
 And pray, " As Thou art, let us be! " 
 
 LUCY LARCOM.
 
 294 OCTOBER 21. 
 
 YOU cry, " O Lord, solve me this problem! " 
 and the solution does not come. " What! 
 must I walk in darkness?" your poor soul 
 cries out; and then He comes and takes your 
 hand and says, " He that followeth Me shall 
 not walk in darkness, but shall have the Light 
 of Life." In place of the answer to your 
 prayer comes He to whom you prayed. You 
 have not got the solution of your problem; it 
 still floats in doubt. You have not got the 
 sure prophecy of the future; it is hid behind 
 the wavering and trembling veil. You have 
 not got the brother's dear presence for whose 
 life you cried and wrestled; he is walking be- 
 side the river of Life in the new Light of 
 Heaven. You have not got what you prayed 
 for, but you have got God! You have the 
 source, the fountain, the sun! You have 
 taken hold of the essential meaning and es- 
 sence of all these things for which you prayed, 
 in taking hold of Him to whom you prayed. 
 In His silence you have pressed back to Him. 
 . . . Not in the word He speaks but in the 
 word He is, you have found your reply. 
 
 V. 132. 
 
 Reach downward to the sunless days, 
 Wherein our guides are blind as we, 
 And faith is small and hope delays, 
 Take Thou the hands of prayer we raise, 
 And let us feel the light of Thee! 
 
 WHITTJER.
 
 OCTOBER 22. 295 
 
 ^ 11 7 HAT man goes bravely and faithfully 
 *^ through doubt and does not bring out 
 a soul to which truth seems to be infinitely 
 precious, and the human soul the most myste- 
 rious, sacred thing in the world ? Out of the 
 union of these two persuasions has come the 
 prophetship of this life which now you cannot 
 look at without seeing the infinite behind it 
 made clear by it. 
 
 Surely, if we believe this, then the way in 
 which God lets His children encounter great, 
 and sometimes terrible, experiences is not en- 
 tirely inexplicable. Surely if these souls which 
 are now deep in sorrow, or are being cast up 
 and down and back and forth in doubt, are 
 being thus annealed and purified that they 
 may come to be revealers, mediators between 
 God and their fellow-men, then into our won- 
 der at the existence of doubt and sorrow in 
 God's world there comes a little ray of light. 
 Who would not bear anything that could refine 
 his life into fitness for such a privilege as that ? 
 
 IV. 15. 
 
 Happy they who learn from crosses, 
 
 Changeful clouds and fears, 
 Life may richer be for losses, 
 
 Joyfuller for tears, 
 Faith by doubts be clearer made- 
 Stronger doubting souls to aid. 
 
 JULIA WOOD.
 
 296 OCTOBER 23. 
 
 Though our outward man perish, yet the inward 
 man is renewed day by day. 2 COR. iv. 16. 
 
 IT is hard for us to imagine how flat and 
 shallow human life would be if there were 
 taken out of it this constant element the 
 coming up of the spiritual life where the phys- 
 ical life has failed. A man who never knew an 
 ache or a pain comes to a break in health, from 
 which he can look out on nothing but years of 
 sickness ; and then the soul within him . . . 
 claims its independence and supremacy, and 
 stands strong in the midst of weakness, calm 
 in the very centre of the turmoil and panic of 
 the aching body. The temper of the fickle 
 people changes, and the favorite of yesterday 
 becomes the victim of to-day; but in his mar- 
 tyrdom he sees for the first time the full value 
 of the truth he dies for, and thanks the flames 
 that have lighted up its preciousness. ... By 
 this revelation of the spiritual through the 
 broken physical life other men may learn its 
 value. This is what makes the sick-rooms and 
 the martyr-fires reasonable. In them has been 
 made manifest by suffering that the soul is 
 really more than the body, that the soul can 
 triumph when the body has nothing left but 
 disease and misery. 
 
 I. ii. 
 
 Most gladly, therefore, will I rest in my in- 
 firmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon, 
 me. 2 COR. xii. 9.
 
 OCTOBER 24. 297 
 
 Arise, take up thy bed, and go into thine house. 
 
 MATT. ix. 6. 
 
 And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled 
 with fire. REV. xv. 2. 
 
 HOW does the fire get into the sea of glass ? 
 ... It is repose mingled with struggle 
 . . . calmness still pervaded by the discipline 
 through which it has been reached. . . . You 
 may go through the crowded streets of heaven, 
 asking each saint how he came there, and you 
 will look in vain everywhere for a man morally 
 and spiritually strong, whose strength did not 
 come to him in struggle. . . . There is no ex- 
 ception anywhere. Every poor soul that the 
 Lord heals goes up the street like the man at 
 Capernaum, carrying its bed upon its back, 
 the trophy of its conquered palsy. There 
 are no glassy seas which will really bear the 
 weight of strong men but those that have the 
 fiery mingling. All others are counterfeits, 
 and crack or break. IV. 112, 119, 120. 
 
 Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows 
 Like harmony in music: there is a dark, 
 Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles 
 Discordant elements, makes them cling to- 
 gether 
 
 In one society. How strange that all 
 The terrors, pains, and early miseries, 
 Regrets, vexations, lassitudes interfused 
 Within my mind, should e'er have borne a part, 
 And that a needful part, in making up 
 The calm existence that is mine when I 
 Am worthy of myself. Praise to the end! 
 Thanks to the means! WORDSWORTH.
 
 298 OCTOBER 25. 
 
 'T'HIS time of ours, these men of ours, are 
 ^ marked by a singular depth of personal 
 experience. The personal emotions, the anxi- 
 eties with regard to personal conditions, are 
 very intense. It is a time of much morbid- 
 ness, and so I think that the danger under 
 which men always labor, of letting the universe 
 take the color of the windows of their own 
 life through which they look at it, was never 
 so dangerous as to-day. More men to-day 
 think the world is wretched because they are 
 sad and bewildered, than would have trans- 
 ferred their own conditions to the outside uni- 
 verse in less introspective and self-conscious 
 times. The simplest men in the simplest ages, 
 when they were in sorrow, opened their win- 
 dows inward to let the world's sunlight in. 
 The elaborate and subtle men in the elaborate 
 and subtle ages, in their sorrow, open their 
 windows outward and darken the bright world 
 with their darkness. And among such men, 
 in such an age, we live. 
 
 II. 157, 158. 
 
 We make the light through which we see 
 The light, and make the dark: 
 
 To hear the lark sing, we must be 
 At heaven's gate with the lark. 
 
 ALICE GARY.
 
 OCTOBER 26. 299 
 
 Our destiny, our being's heart and home, 
 Is with eternity, and only there. 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 TTHE history of man bears witness, that 
 man, though himself finite, demands in- 
 finity to deal with and to rest upon; he claims 
 to have relations with the infinite. That fact is 
 borne testimony to by all the ages; that fact 
 is the perpetual witness of the consciousness 
 in man's heart that he is the child of God. 
 The child may be reminded every moment 
 of his limitations and his youth, and yet he 
 always mounts up to claim the largeness of 
 his father's life for himself. And so man, the 
 more you make him feel his finiteness, so much 
 the more obstinately will he insist on his right 
 to a potential possession of the infinite. The 
 power of adoring love of which he is distinctly 
 conscious, brings him assurance that there is 
 a being worthy of such love. 
 
 III. I2O, 121. 
 
 Into the heaven of Thy heart, O God, 
 I lift up my life like a flower; 
 
 Thy light is deep, and Thy love is broad, 
 And I am not the child of an hour. 
 
 LUCY LARCOM.
 
 300 OCTOBER 27. 
 
 Behold, as thou passest through things mortal, 
 
 And amidst creatures visible, 
 
 Seeking to be contented with them, 
 
 Thou losest better things. 
 
 Thou separatest thyself from the Sovereign 
 
 Good when thou doest this, 
 And turnest away from the true and blessed 
 
 life which is eternal. 
 
 THOMAS A KEMPIS. 
 
 TTAVE you ever stood in the midst of the 
 * * world of fashion and marvelled how it 
 was possible that men and women should care, 
 as those around you seemed to care, about the 
 little conventionalities which made the scenery 
 and the problems of its life ? . . . There is a 
 noble economy of the deepest life. . . . The 
 people of Nazareth wanted to stone Christ, 
 and He quietly passed away and left them with 
 their stones in their hands; but the cross de- 
 manded Him, and He went up to the terri- 
 ble experience with a soul consecrated to 
 endure it all, and spared Himself not one blow 
 of the scourge upon the shoulders, and not 
 one piercing of the nails into the hands and 
 feet. He knew what was worth while; and 
 He knew that because He was one with God, 
 the Son of God could not count the great 
 little nor the little great. That was the secret 
 of Hirs perfect life. 
 
 V. 247, 248, 251.
 
 OCTOBER 28. 301 
 
 And when it was day, He called unto Him His 
 disciples, and of them He chose twelve, whom He 
 also named Apostles. LUKE vi. 13. 
 
 '""THINK what they must have been before 
 1 they knew their master. The open life of 
 free and thoughtless young men they must have 
 lived, easily making friends, easily entering 
 into everybody's superficial interests because 
 they had only superficial feelings of their own, 
 liking to be liked, and full of ready sympathies. 
 Then they met Jesus. They were drawn away 
 to Him. By Him they were drawn in upon 
 themselves. To know Him and their own 
 deeper lives in Him, became their longing. 
 . . . Their lives were folded in upon them- 
 selves, and upon Him who was at the centre of 
 each. But by-and-by a new power began to 
 work at the unfolded heart. He who had 
 drawn them in upon Himself began to send 
 them abroad. Another kind of love for their 
 old friends, and all the world whom those 
 friends represented, came to them. They be- 
 gan to be seen again upon the streets. Only 
 now they are telling every one of the new life. 
 They have been drawn in from the world upon 
 Christ, that He might send them out, full of 
 Himself, into the world. IV. 159. 
 
 And that Thou sayest " Go! " 
 Our hearts are glad, for he is still Thy friend 
 And best beloved of all, whom Thou dost send 
 
 The farthest from Thee; this Thy servants 
 
 know: 
 
 Oh, send by whom Thou wilt, for they are blest 
 Who go Thy errands. DORA GREENWELL.
 
 302 OCTOBER 29. 
 
 If they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt 
 them ; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they 
 shall recover. MARK xvi. 19. 
 
 IS that a prize ? Is it wages which is offered 
 for a certain meritorious act which is 
 called faith ? Not so, surely! It is a conse- 
 quence. It is a necessity. Safety and help- 
 fulness. These come out of the full life of 
 Christ in the soul of man as the inevitable 
 fruits. Safety, so that what hurts other men 
 shall not hurt him. Helpfulness, so that his 
 brethren about him shall live by his life. . . . 
 It is by life, by full, vigorous, emphatic exist- 
 ence that men are safe in this world, and that 
 they save other men from death. I glory in 
 such a statement as that. It makes my Bible 
 shine. Men everywhere are trying to be safe 
 by stifling life; by living just as low as possi- 
 ble. Men everywhere are trying not to do 
 one another harm, trying to spare each 
 other's souls by tender petting, by guarding 
 them against any vigorous contact with life and 
 thought. The Bible comes glowing with pro- 
 test. " Not so," it says. " Only by the ful- 
 ness of life does safety come. Only by the 
 power of contact with life are sick and help- 
 less souls made whole. None but the live man 
 saves himself or quickens the dead to life; 
 saves himself or saves his neighbor." 
 
 IV. 337- 
 
 Light is light which radiates, 
 Blood is blood which circulates, 
 Life is life which generates. 
 
 EMERSON.
 
 OCTOBER 30. 303 
 
 Hold hard, hope hard, in the subtle thing 
 That's spirit; though cloistered fast, soar free. 
 
 BROWNING. 
 
 1 THINK there never was a materialist so 
 complete that he did not realize that the 
 great mass of men were not materialists, but 
 believed in spiritual forces and longed for 
 spiritual companies. He might think the spir- 
 itual tendency the wildest of delusions, but 
 he could not doubt its prevalence. How 
 could he ? Here is the whole earth full of it. 
 Language is all shaped upon it. Thought is 
 all saturated with it. In the most imposing 
 and the most vulgar methods, by solemn ora- 
 cles and rocking tables, men have been always 
 trying to put themselves into communication 
 with the spiritual world and to get counsel 
 and help from within the veil. And if we 
 hear the cry from one another, how much more 
 God hears it, ... and has prepared a way of 
 aid. The power of the Holy Ghost! an ever- 
 lasting spiritual presence among men. What 
 but that is the thing we want ? That is what the 
 old oracles were dreaming of, what the modern 
 spiritualists are fumbling after. The power 
 of the Holy Ghost . . . that is God's one 
 great response to the unconscious need of 
 spiritual guidance which He hears crying out 
 of the deep heart of every man. n. 105. 
 
 Heavenly things my soul hath seen, 
 Things the Holy Spirit shows, 
 
 Things on which the heart can lean 
 When the flesh has no repose. 
 
 ANNA L. WARING.
 
 304 OCTOBER 31. 
 
 In everything by prayer and supplication . 
 let your requests be made known unto God, 
 
 PHIL. iv. 6. 
 
 TRUE, the most earnest Christian may err 
 about the will of God. He may pray 
 for sunshine when it is the will of God that it 
 should rain. He may ask for comfort when 
 it is God's will that he should suffer. But 
 this can only come in superficial things. In 
 the one central thing of all his own spiritual 
 life he cannot err. He knows that " this is 
 the will of God, even his sanctification." He 
 may cry out for that with perfect certainty; 
 and for all other things, if he prays as every 
 Christian ought, submitting his prayer to 
 God's revision, " Nevertheless, not my will, 
 but Thine be done;" then, whether the spe- 
 cial blessing that he asked is sent or not, the 
 larger petition with which he covered in and 
 included his lesser one is surely answered. 
 The thing he really "willed" is "done unto 
 him." 
 
 VI. 305. 
 
 " Not as I will ": the sound grows sweet 
 Each time my lips the words repeat. . . 
 " Not as I will," because the One 
 Who loved us first and best has gone 
 Before us on the road, and still 
 For us must all His love fulfil 
 " Not as we will." 
 
 HELEN HUNT JACKSON.
 
 NOVEMBER i. 305 
 
 The riches of the glory of His inheritance in 
 the saints. EPHES. i. 18. 
 
 T AM sure that the world is a better place for 
 you and me to live in to-day, not merely 
 for the hundred great pattern lives which have 
 passed into the heavens and which we call still 
 by their names, but far more for the countless, 
 nameless multitude of men and women who 
 have wrought into the very substance of the 
 earth, where at last they lay their bodies in 
 unnoticed graves, the great, first, simplest 
 words of God that man was sacred, that 
 duty was possible, that self-sacrifice was 
 sweet, and that love for one's brother was the 
 crown of life. And you ought not to be sat- 
 isfied until you find yourself able to feel that 
 the hope of doing something by your living 
 to make the world in a real, although an un- 
 appreciable, degree more full of these words 
 for the men who are to follow us, is the noblest 
 and most inspiring promise which can be set 
 
 before your soul. 
 
 VI. 268. 
 
 For he who blesses most is blest, 
 
 And God and man shall own his worth 
 
 Who toils to leave as his bequest 
 An added beauty to the earth. 
 
 WHITTIER.
 
 3 o6 NOVEMBER 2. 
 
 WE have all stood upon the margin which 
 was the farthest which feet untransfig- 
 ured by death might reach, and sent some 
 beloved soul into the unknown world. Where 
 have we sent it ? To God, we say, bowing our 
 heads with resignation. But is there no bleak- 
 ness, no forlornness in our answer ? God is 
 so far off! However loving, kind, or wise, 
 He is all God; the child we sent Him was all 
 man in his fresh, genuine humanity. But what 
 if there be a humanity in God to which they 
 go ? What if, since it went out from us, that 
 human nature, made first in the image of 
 Christ the human, has touched again that per- 
 fect nature out of which it sprang and finds 
 itself at home ? Yes, let me set this Christ 
 eternally in the midst of the other world, and 
 then the human soul that goes there goes to 
 its own. It meets no strangeness on the other 
 shore. . . . The child is gathered into the 
 arms of a fatherhood and knows no strange- 
 ness or surprise. The brother clasps hands 
 with a newer and more trusty brotherhood. 
 . . . They go to Jesus and rest in Him, and 
 wait for us till our humanity, made perfect too 
 by death, shall find its place beside them. 
 
 VI. 325. 
 
 Praise God the Shepherd is so sweet ! 
 
 Praise God the Country is so fair! 
 We could not hold them from His feet; 
 
 We can but haste to meet them there. 
 
 B. M.
 
 NOVEMBER 3. 307 
 
 Who, passing through the valley of Baca, make 
 it a well. Ps. Ixxxiv. 6. 
 
 IN man, the user, rests the real nature of the 
 things he uses. They have no invariable, 
 fixed nature apart from him. 
 
 Now, let this great user, man, this one 
 moral force, be called upon to go down into 
 the vale of misery. He finds there all the 
 circumstances of suffering poverty, sickness, 
 bereavement, sin itself; what then ? these are 
 things, and he is man. Let him rule them, 
 not be ruled by them. Let him take down 
 there a religious, trustful nature, a pious, 
 cheerful heart, and there is more promised 
 him than just that his cheerful piety shall sup- 
 port him through; he shall exercise his human 
 right of ruling and using these, and shall come 
 out with a more perfect joy and certain faith 
 than he carried in. He shall not come out 
 half-dead with thirst, just able to drag himself 
 up to the fountain at the end, but it shall be 
 as David so beautifully says: " He shall drink 
 of the brook in the way, therefore shall he 
 lift up his head." 
 
 VI. 28. 
 
 O Lord, of good the fountain free, 
 Close by our hard day's journeying, 
 Be Thou the all-sufficing spring, 
 
 And hourly let us drink of Thee! 
 
 SUSAN COOLIDGE.
 
 3 o8 NOVEMBER 4. 
 
 When no low thoughts of self intrude, 
 
 Angels adjust our rights; 
 But love that seeks its selfish good 
 
 Dies in its own delights. 
 
 How much we take, how little give! 
 
 Yet every life is meant 
 To help all lives; each man should live 
 
 For all men's betterment. 
 
 ALICE GARY. 
 
 MEN think that they can be safe without 
 being helpful, and thence come all the 
 selfish notions of salvation. Merely to crawl 
 through life with face and mouth so bandaged 
 up with caution that the foul air of life cannot 
 affect us; merely to strike out from the wreck 
 of a fallen world and swim ashore, shaking off 
 all the drowning men who clutch at us in the 
 wild water, and leaving the screaming wretches 
 to their fate, the man who seeks salvation 
 so, finds at last to his disappointment and dis- 
 may that he is not saved. It is not the hands 
 that catch us and hold on to us, it is the 
 hands of helpless men which we shake off in 
 our selfishness that drag us down. iv. 347. 
 
 Wherever upward even the lowest round 
 Man by a hand's help lifts his feebler 
 
 brother, 
 
 There is the house of God, and holy ground: 
 The gate of heaven is Love; there is none 
 
 other. 
 When generous act blooms from unselfish 
 
 thought, 
 
 The Lord is with us, though we know it not. 
 
 LUCY LARCOM.
 
 NOVEMBER 5. 309 
 
 IT is not only the suffering in life that needs 
 to be spoken to and helped. There is 
 something else, I think, that is almost more 
 exhausting than suffering in its constant wear- 
 ing pressure upon the hearts of men. It is 
 that feeling of the insignificance of life that 
 often grows so hard to bear, . . . the wonder 
 whether it means anything, the utter loss of 
 any insight into what it means this work of 
 living. . . . Who can speak to and dispel this 
 spectre ? Who can tell us with authority that 
 life has a meaning, and make us see it and 
 rejoice to live for it ? Who but the gospel of 
 reconciliation ? If that is true, if all these 
 heavenly forces are at work upon our life, if 
 all this watchful interest hovers over what we 
 are doing, if we may really go on and be the 
 children of God, where is there any insignifi- 
 cant detail ? Who can help feeling purpose run 
 like life-blood through the half-dried veins of 
 his discouragement ? How life lifts itself up 
 with interest and dignity when it really be- 
 comes the culture of God's redeemed children 
 for their Father's house! 
 
 VII. 107. 
 
 I hear from all-wards, allwise understand, 
 The great bird Purpose bears me 'twixt her 
 
 wings, 
 
 And I am one of all the kinsmen things 
 That e'er my Father fathered. Oh, to me 
 All questions solve in this tranquillity! 
 
 SIDNEY LANIER.
 
 3io NOVEMBER 6. 
 
 REAT is the power of a life which knows 
 that its highest experiences are its truest 
 experiences, that it is most itself when it is at 
 its best. For it each high achievement, each 
 splendid vision, is a sign and token of the 
 whole nature's possibility. What a piece of 
 the man was for that shining instant, it is the 
 duty of the whole man to be always. . . . 
 Strive for your best, that there you may find 
 your most distinctive life. We cannot dream 
 of what interest the world will have when 
 every being in its human multitude shall shine 
 with his own light and color, and be the child 
 of God which it is possible for him to be, 
 which he has ever been in the true home-land 
 of his Father's thought. 
 
 The hope of the world is in the ever richer 
 
 naturalness of the highest life. 
 
 V. 21, 22, 23. 
 
 Upward the soul forever turns her eyes; 
 The next hour always shames the hour before; 
 One beauty, at its highest, prophesies 
 That by whose side it shall seem mean and 
 
 poor. 
 
 No Godlike thing knows aught of less and less, 
 But widens to the boundless perfectness. 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
 
 NOVEMBER 7. 311 
 
 For we wrestle not agaimt flesh and blood, but 
 against principalities, against powers, against the 
 rulers of the darkness of this world. 
 
 EPHES. vi. 12. 
 
 T IFE is a battle. . . . The merchant is 
 I f fighting with the competition of his 
 brethren. The legislator is fighting with the 
 barbarous tendencies which still haunt the 
 most civilized societies. The philanthropists 
 are fighting with abuses and ignorance and 
 cruelty. And everywhere man, hopefully or 
 hopelessly, is fighting with what he calls his 
 fate, the general aggregate of things about 
 him which seems set to keep him down and to 
 impede his way. The world is full of all these 
 ideas of battle. And then right into the midst 
 of them steps Paul, with his clear, ringing 
 Christian word, " What are you fighting 
 with ? Do you ask that ? " he says. " Lo, I 
 can tell you. You are fighting with great 
 evil principles and powers. . . . The rivalry 
 of men, imperfect institutions, cruel habits, 
 all those are ugly enemies, but the real enemy 
 is Badness itself . The real fight is with that." 
 
 VI. 71, 72, 73. 
 
 But shall I shun the sacred fight 
 
 Which good maintains with ill ? 
 No: strong in my Redeemer's might, 
 
 Be mine to wrestle still. 
 Here only, in this strife, 
 
 Can I His soldier be; 
 Here only spend or lose a life 
 
 For Him who died for me. 
 
 J. CONDER.
 
 3 i2 NOVEMBER 8. 
 
 And to keep himself unspotted from the world. 
 
 JAMES i. 27. 
 
 WE set out for the battle in the morning 
 strong and clean. By and by we catch a 
 moment in the lull of the struggle to look down 
 upon ourselves, and how tired and how cov- 
 ered with dust and blood we are. How long 
 back our first purity seems how long the day 
 seems sometimes how long since we began to 
 live. You know what stains are on your lives. 
 Each of us knows, every man and woman. 
 They burn to our eyes, even if no neighbor 
 sees them. They burn in the still air of the 
 Sabbath even if we do not see them in the 
 week. You would not think for the world 
 that your children should grow up to the same 
 stains that have fastened upon you. You 
 dream for them of a " life unspotted from the 
 world," and the very anxiety of that dream 
 proves how you know that your own life is 
 spotted and stained. 
 
 I. 176. 
 
 Whiteness most white. Ah, to be clean again 
 In mine own sight and God's most holy 
 
 sight! 
 
 To reach through any flood and fire of pain 
 Whiteness most white; 
 
 To learn to hate the wrong and love the right, 
 Even while I walk through shadows that are 
 
 vain, 
 
 Descending through vain shadows into night. 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
 
 NOVEMBER 9. 313 
 
 IT is wonderful how mere power, or mere 
 brightness, will win the confidence and 
 admiration of men from whom we might have 
 expected better things. A bright book or a 
 bright play will draw the crowd, although its 
 meaning be detestable. A clever man will 
 make a host of boys and men stand like 
 charmed birds while he draws their principles 
 quietly out of them, and leaves them moral 
 idiots. A whole great majority of a commu- 
 nity will rush like foolish sheep to the polls 
 and vote for a man whom they know is false 
 and brutal, because they have learned to say 
 that he is strong. All this is true enough; 
 and yet while men do these wild and foolish 
 things, they know the difference between the 
 illumination of a human life that is kindled 
 from above and that which is kindled from 
 below. They know the pure flames of one 
 and the lurid glare of the other; and however 
 they may praise and follow wit and power, as 
 if to be witty or powerful were an end suffi- 
 cient in itself, they will always keep their 
 sacredest respect and confidence for that 
 power or wit which is inspired by God, and 
 works for righteousness. 
 
 II. 12. 
 
 Oh, we are sunk enough, God knows! but not 
 
 quite so sunk that moments, 
 Sure, though seldom, are denied us, when the 
 
 spirit's true endowments 
 Stand out plainly from its false ones. 
 
 BROWNING.
 
 314 NOVEMBER 10. 
 
 With twain he covered his face. Is. vi. 2. 
 
 YOU can know nothing which you do not 
 reverence. You can see nothing before 
 which you do not veil your eyes! 
 
 All of the mystery which surrounds and 
 pervades life is really one mystery. It is God. 
 Called by His name, taken up into His being, 
 it is filled with graciousness. It is no longer 
 cold and hard; it is all warm and soft and 
 palpitating. It is love. And of this personal 
 mystery of love of God it is supremely true 
 that only by reverence, only by the hiding of 
 the eyes, can He be seen. He who thinks 
 to look God full in the face and question 
 Him about His existence, blinds himself there- 
 by, and cannot see God. He sees something, 
 but what he sees is not God, but himself. 
 There is in Christ the continual awe of a 
 nature from the perfect knowledge of which 
 the conditions of His human life excluded 
 Him. And if He could not know the Father 
 perfectly while He lived here in the flesh, shall 
 we complain that we cannot ? Shall we not 
 rather rejoice at it ? Shall it not be a joy to 
 us to feel, around and through the familiar 
 things which we seem perfectly to understand, 
 the wealth and depth of Divinity, outgoing all 
 our comprehension ? v. 256, 257. 
 
 For greatness which is infinite makes room 
 
 For all things in its lap to lie;. 
 We should be crushed by a magnificence 
 
 Short of infinity. 
 
 FABER.
 
 NOVEMBER n. 315 
 
 And with twain did he fly. Is. vi. 2. 
 
 THERE are two extremes of error. In the 
 one, action is disparaged. The result is 
 that character itself fades away out of the 
 inactive life. In the other, action is made 
 everything. The glory of mere work is sung 
 in every sort of tune. . . . The result is that 
 work loses its dignity, and the industrious man 
 becomes a clattering machine. Is it not just 
 here that the vision of the wings comes in ? 
 Activity in obedience to God. Work done for 
 Him and His eternal purposes. Duty conscious 
 of Him and forgetful of the doer's self, and so 
 enthusiastic, spontaneous, there is the field 
 where character is grown, there is at once 
 the cultivation of the worker's soul and the 
 building of some corner of the Kingdom of 
 God. 
 
 Oh, my young friends, listen to the great 
 modern Gospel of Work which comes to you 
 on every breeze, but do not let it be to you 
 the shallow, superficial story that it is to many 
 modern ears. Work is everything or work is 
 nothing according to the lord we work for. 
 Work for God. . . . Then you are standing 
 with your flying wings which will assuredly 
 bear you into fuller light as they carry some 
 work of God towards its fulfilment. 
 
 V. 267. 
 
 As the servants of Christ, doing the will of God 
 from the heart. EPHES. vi. 6.
 
 316 NOVEMBER 12. 
 
 I ask not that for me the plan 
 Of good or ill be set aside, 
 
 But that the common lot of man 
 Be nobly borne and glorified. 
 
 PHEBE GARY. 
 
 IS it not true that any man makes his trade 
 or occupation ready to be filled with the 
 high motive of the love of God when he trains 
 himself to look at it in its ideal, and, at the 
 same time, is thoroughly conscientious in its 
 duties ? The shoemaker who, having opened 
 his heart to God's love, comes soonest and 
 fullest to find the work of his lapstone and 
 his bench touched and inspired by that mo- 
 tive, will be the shoemaker who most con- 
 ceives of his daily work as one connected with 
 human comfort and strength, and who, at the 
 same time, is most conscientiously faithful to 
 its details. These things a man can do: he 
 can resolutely abandon the sins which cannot 
 be spiritualized; he can open all the channels 
 of his life to spirituality by the study of the 
 ideal, and by faithful work in every part of 
 his living. One is the turning out of stran- 
 gers; the other is the preparing of the chambers 
 for the entering guest. The one is negative, 
 the other positive. When both are done, then 
 the man who has learned in one little spot 
 the conversion spot of his nature that God 
 loves him, and who has there begun to love 
 God, may look to see that new motive run into 
 all these newly opened chambers of his life, 
 making the half-ready places completely ready 
 by its touch. X. 23.
 
 NOVEMBER 13. 317 
 
 WHAT is it that perpetuates the blighting 
 influence of fashion ? What are the 
 channels through which are spread abroad the 
 false standard of wealth, the base idea of 
 manliness which poisons countless hearts ? 
 Are they not the same God-created channels 
 through which the holiest influences were 
 meant to flow? "Simon, called Peter, and 
 Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebe- 
 dee, and John his brother " ? Many and many 
 a time their brotherhood is the power of a 
 common curse, instead of a common bless- 
 ing. . . . What shall we do then ? . . . It is 
 a very wide law and a very beautiful one, that 
 the best way to make a thing fit for the use for 
 which it was first made is to put it to that use. 
 The best way to make the dusty trumpet clear 
 is to blow music through it. The best way to 
 make the sluggish mind capable of thinking is 
 to think with it. And so the best way to make 
 the natural relationships capable of carrying 
 religious influence is to give them religious 
 influences to carry, so strong and ardent 
 that they shall force and burn their own way 
 through whatever artificial obstructions may 
 have stopped up the channel through which 
 they were meant to go. 
 
 V. 86, 89. 
 
 Pour Thy Holy Spirit in! 
 
 Sweep away the bars of sin; 
 
 For the grace that comes from Thee 
 
 Make us channels pure and free 
 
 Unto those that nearest be! 
 
 JOHN WORDEN.
 
 318 NOVEMBER 14. 
 
 THE Holy Ghost is the constructive princi- 
 ple and power in human life. By Him 
 every society of good men is bound together. 
 By Him the Christian Church rises into the 
 sky of God's grace like a majestic tree full of 
 all precious fruit. By Him the family wins 
 new sacredness, and every friendship of men 
 who are trying to serve God is bound into in- 
 dissoluble union with an unseen but strong 
 compulsion. If you are afraid of yourself as 
 you find how you are drawing away from your 
 fellow-men and growing into a more and more 
 selfish life, you must come to God; you must 
 enter into the communion of the Holy Ghost. 
 If you have a quarrel which you hate and 
 know is miserable, but which holds you fast, 
 your only freedom from it is in the commun- 
 ion of the Holy Ghost. Come there and 
 your quarrel will break and scatter as the ice 
 melts when you bring it into the sun. ... It 
 is the communion of a common forgiveness 
 and a common inspiration. 
 
 VII. 316. 
 
 If thou be dead, forgive and thou shalt live; 
 
 If thou hast sinned, forgive and be for- 
 given; 
 God waiteth to be gracious, and forgive, 
 
 And open heaven. 
 
 Set not thy will to die and not to live; 
 Set not thy face as flint refusing heaven; 
 Thou fool, set not thy heart on hell: forgive 
 And be forgiven. 
 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
 
 NOVEMBER 15. 319 
 
 The Lord make you to increase and abound in 
 love, one toward another. i THESS. iii. 12. 
 
 WHAT is there that can keep the purity and 
 loftiness of domestic life ? What is there 
 that can preserve the color and glory of the 
 family like the perpetual consciousness, run- 
 ning through all the open channels of its life, 
 that they are being used to convey the truth 
 and the power of God ? 
 
 IV. 83. 
 
 What does it mean when religion enters 
 into a family, when over all the home life is 
 stretched out the hand of God, and all a 
 household is converted ? I do not know how 
 to tell the story of what happens then of the 
 deep, sweet, solemn change that comes over all 
 the family experience except by just this 
 phrase: that the communion of natural affec- 
 tion has passed into the communion of the 
 Holy Ghost. All these loves which were there 
 before move on still, but they are all sur- 
 rounded by and taken up into one great com- 
 prehending love; and he who enters in at the 
 door of that converted house hears them all in 
 deepened, richened music, the same strains 
 still, only full of the power of the new atmos- 
 phere in which they are played. 
 
 VII. 312. 
 
 Sweetest things in Thee are sweeter, 
 Holiest things in Thee completer; 
 Therefore, Lord, our home-life enter, 
 Be its light, its joy, its centre! 
 
 LOUISE MATHILDE.
 
 320 NOVEMBER 16. 
 
 / am not come to destroy but to fulfil. 
 
 MATT. v. 17. 
 
 INFLUENCES come from man to man as 
 1 the dew and sunshine come from the boun- 
 teous heavens to the ready ground. . . . Your 
 child, your scholar, your servant you may 
 fulfil him or you may destroy him. You de- 
 stroy him if you fasten on everything that is 
 bad and crude and ridiculous about him, and 
 pour out upon it rebuke and contempt. You 
 destroy him if you make him feel himself 
 weak and insignificant, and drive him to de- 
 spair. You destroy him if you make his great 
 feeling about his own life to be shame. On 
 the other hand you fulfil him, you fill him out 
 to his full, to his fullest, if you catch every- 
 thing that is good about him and water it with 
 judicious encouragement and praise. You 
 fulfil him if you recognize every feeblest and 
 clumsiest effort to do right, if you inspire him 
 with hope, if you make him seem to himself 
 worth cultivating and watching and developing. 
 Therefore, with all the strength which God 
 has given us, let us be fulfillers. Let us ... 
 with sympathy and intelligence, patience and 
 hope, bring up the lagging side in all the vital- 
 ity around us, and assert for man the worth, 
 the meaning and the possibility of this his 
 human life. IV. 213. 
 
 O Sun of our souls first arisen, 
 
 Give us light for the spirits that grope; 
 
 Make us loving and steadfast and loyal 
 To bear up humanity's hope! 
 
 LUCY LARCOM.
 
 NOVEMBER 17. 321 
 
 AS the sun that lightens us makes all the ob- 
 jects round us the reflectors and distribu- 
 ters of his radiance, and so brings his light to 
 us clothed with the clearness that belongs to 
 them, so to the Christian the Spirit of his 
 Saviour seems to have subsidized everything 
 to make some new and more perfect revela- 
 tion of Him. The home relations and the 
 things in nature, our books, our friends, our 
 thoughts, have all been made interpreters 
 of Christ. Oh, there are times when, as one 
 sits in meditation or moves quietly about in 
 work for Jesus when all this seems so rich 
 and plain. A beautiful, serene simplicity 
 seems to come forth out of this complicated 
 snarl. We catch the music of one great per- 
 vading purpose in all this tumult and clatter. 
 It is all redemption working out its plans. 
 God made that hillside so perfect in order 
 that He might show me His fatherly love. 
 Christ gave me this task to do that I might 
 understand His self-sacrifice for me. The 
 Spirit brought me into my friend's friendship 
 that it might so interpret to me the friendship 
 of my God. At such times all seems plain. 
 The world is for the sons of God. 
 
 VII. 105. 
 
 O Centre of all forms! O concord's home! 
 O world alive in one condensed world! 
 O Face of Him in whose heart lay concealed 
 The fountain-thought of all this kingdom of 
 heaven ! 
 
 GEORGE MACDONALD.
 
 322 NOVEMBER 18. 
 
 WE can well believe while the rose is but a 
 bud, shut in between hard, glossy green 
 leaves, gathering only the first dream of color 
 into its pale petals, that its own color should 
 seem to it the purpose of its life, just to be 
 the perfect rose for the pure beauty of its per- 
 fectness. But when the bud bursts and the 
 rose is born what then? A world is waiting 
 for its fragrance and its loveliness. To serve 
 that world, to send the colorless light inter- 
 preted through its soft hues, and the odorless 
 atmosphere translated by its fragrance, to be 
 all that it may be for the sake of all that it 
 may do this is the larger purpose of its being, 
 and, learning this, it ripens to the perfect 
 flower. So may the scholar dream of pure 
 self-culture for its own sake. It is a noble 
 dream. . . . But if he grows he must outgrow 
 it. He must grow in the direction of human- 
 ity. All the vast needs of life lay hold on 
 him. . . . All that he knows and loves must 
 go out with him into all his life, and his schol- 
 arship must be part of the father who sits in 
 the family, of the citizen who votes at the 
 polls, if need be, of the soldier who fights in 
 the ranks. . . . 
 
 X. 272. 
 
 Yea, plant the tree that bears best apples, 
 
 plant, 
 
 And water it with wine, nor watch askance 
 Whether thy sons or strangers eat the fruit: 
 Enough that mankind eat and are refreshed. 
 
 EMERSON.
 
 NOVEMBER 19. 323 
 
 I CANNOT conceive of God standing and 
 deliberately withholding from His world, 
 or from any least and humblest of His ser- 
 vants, till to-morrow any blessing which it is 
 possible for Him to give to-day. But, on the 
 other hand, I cannot conceive of God's giving 
 to-day any blessing which to-day His world or 
 His servant is unready to receive. Why is it 
 that ages have lived on without the blessings 
 of popular liberty and free government and 
 well-guarded rights ? Is it that God has said, 
 " The world shall not have them until my fa- 
 vorite century and race appear"? Is it not 
 rather that God has said, " The world cannot 
 have them until it has won by hard experience 
 the heart and hand to which these blessings 
 can be given, in which they can be held"? 
 Why is it that God did not give you long ago 
 the peace, the moral strength, which He will 
 certainly give you some day if you persevere ? 
 Has He been keeping them from you wan- 
 tonly and wilfully ? Has He not rather been, 
 nay, is He not, standing over you, eager to 
 give them at the first moment when the gift is 
 possible ? 
 
 XII. 28. 
 
 No more in heaven than earth will he find 
 God, 
 
 Who does not know His loving mercy swift 
 But waits the moment consummate and ripe, 
 
 Each burden from each weary heart to lift. 
 
 HELEN HUNT JACKSON.
 
 324 NOVEMBER 20. 
 
 And shall I behold Thee face to face, 
 O God, and in Thy light retrace 
 How in all I loved here, still wast Thou ? 
 
 BROWNING. 
 
 I LOVE to think of this, that where men to- 
 day are most unconscious of His pres- 
 ence, Christ is laying foundations for His 
 future work. Here is a perfectly worldly man 
 who cares nothing for Christ or Christianity, 
 but yet Christ's touches are on him. He is 
 surrounded with blessings; he is pressed upon 
 with sorrows; he is led through apparently 
 meaningless experiences; and all that some 
 day, when he is really moved to cry out for a 
 Son of God, Christ may be able to come to 
 him, not new and strange, but with the strong 
 claim of years of care and thought and un- 
 thanked mercy. It makes the world very 
 solemn to think how much of this work Christ 
 must be doing everywhere. It makes our own 
 lives very sacred to think how much of it He 
 may be doing in us. 
 
 V. 213. 
 
 Our want and weakness, shame and sin, 
 
 His pitying kindness prove, 
 And all our lives are folded in 
 
 The mystery of His love. 
 
 His sun is shining pure and vast 
 
 O'er all our nights of dread; 
 Our darkness by His light at last 
 
 Shall be interpreted. 
 
 ALICE GARY.
 
 NOVEMBER 21. 325 
 
 And He took the seven fishes and the loaves, and 
 gave thanks, and brake them, . . . and they did all 
 eat and were filled. MATT. xv. 36, 37. 
 
 ALL the history of the progress of men's 
 thought bears witness that when God 
 wants to give men knowledge which they have 
 not had before, He always opens it to them 
 out of something which they have already 
 known. Paul stands upon Mars' Hill at Ath- 
 ens, and wants to show those people Christ. 
 How does he begin ? He takes what he finds 
 there. He points to their altar to the un- 
 known god, and says, " Him whom ye igno- 
 rantly worship I declare to you." He opens 
 the books of their own writers and finds there 
 his text, " As certain of your own poets have 
 said." Out of their bit of truth he opens the 
 rich completeness of the truth he has to tell. 
 Is it not just exactly the miracle of Christ ? 
 . . . Continuity and economy; these are the 
 laws of Him who is leading us, the Captain 
 of our salvation. He always>binds the future 
 to the past, and He wastes nothing. 
 
 II. 134, 143. 
 
 Not by strange, sudden change and spell, 
 
 Baffling and darkening Nature's face; 
 Thou takest the things we know so well, 
 And buildest on them Thy miracle, 
 The heavenly on the commonplace. 
 
 SUSAN COOLIDGE.
 
 326 NOVEMBER 22. 
 
 And Jesus said: Make the men sit down. 
 
 JOHN vi. 10. 
 
 QUIET has come in place of the noise; re- 
 pose instead of action. It [the crowd] 
 has become receptive. It is waiting to be 
 fed. . . . Some day the headlong current of 
 your life was stopped. The river ceased to 
 flow. The waves stood still, and then the ocean 
 which the flowing of the river had kept out 
 poured up and in, and there were sacreder 
 emotions in the old channels, and deeper 
 hopes and fears were beating upon the well- 
 worn banks. The day when your great be- 
 reavement came, . . . the day when joy, with 
 that subtle possibility of deep pain which is 
 always in her eyes, came to your door and 
 knocked, . . . the day when, being weak and 
 ill, you did not go to your business, . . . those 
 were the days when God was feeding you. . . . 
 No life is complete which does not sometimes 
 sit trustfully waiting to be fed of God. 
 
 IV. 227, 232, 234. 
 
 For not by bread alone 
 
 Can we, Thy children, live: 
 Some heavenly food unknown 
 
 Thou unto us must give. 
 
 Thy life, O God! Thy Word, 
 Outspoken through Thy Son 
 
 In Him our prayer is heard, 
 Our heart's desire is won. 
 
 The hidden manna this, 
 
 Whereof who eateth, he 
 Grows up in perfectness 
 
 Of Christlike symmetry. LUCY LARCOM.
 
 NOVEMBER 23. 327 
 
 '""THERE is danger for many men, if not for 
 1 all, in the perpetual outgo of energy 
 which so much of our life involves. ..." All 
 is going out, nothing is coming in;" is not 
 that the dismay and the despair which settles 
 down upon many an experience as it attains to 
 middle life ? Existence comes to feel to many 
 of us like a great river, which is always flow- 
 ing with unbroken force downward to the sea. 
 It never stops. It is always pushing its life 
 outward. It gives the sea no chance to flow 
 up into it. So is the ever energetic life of one 
 whose sole idea is to exert influence, to make 
 himself felt in some result. How often the 
 river must long to pause. How often it must 
 become aware that its impetuous rush is losing 
 for it the richness of the great deep salt sea. 
 How often the busy life of man becomes aware 
 that somewhere round it there is richness 
 which it does not get because it opens outward 
 only, and not inward. . . . There is need of 
 rest and receptivity. IV. 229, 230, 231. 
 
 Many are coming and going with busy and 
 restless feet, 
 
 And the soul is hungering now, with " no lei- 
 sure so much as to eat," . . . 
 
 Oh, for a Sabbath of life, a time for renewing 
 of youth, 
 
 For a full-orbed leisure to shine on the foun- 
 tains of holy truth, 
 
 And to fill my chalice anew with its waters 
 fresh and sweet, 
 
 While resting in silent love at the Master's 
 glorious feet. FRANCES R. HAVERGAL.
 
 328 NOVEMBER 24. 
 
 T ABOR and patience, activity and the 
 *-* growth which comes by passive suffering, 
 ought always to make one single total life. . . . 
 Make your most restful contemplation and 
 your most receptive listening at the lips of 
 God, not to be mere spiritual luxuries, but to 
 be forms and modes of action. Make them 
 acts. Let them call your powers into play. 
 Let them be not listless, but full of vigor. Let 
 them anticipate work for God and service of 
 His children so earnestly and eagerly, that 
 they themselves shall be work and service. 
 
 He who learns these lessons lives a life as 
 deep as the ocean and as powerful. There is 
 no tedium or fretfulness for him. His life 
 catches the quality of the life of God. He 
 works while it is called to-day, and yet he has 
 already reached the rest which remaineth for 
 God's people. Such lives may God help us to 
 
 live. 
 
 IV. 241, 243. 
 
 Toil is sweet, for Thou hast toiled; 
 
 Rest is sweet, for Thou didst rest; 
 Be our works from sin assoiled! 
 
 Be our rest upon Thy breast! 
 
 Be our work for Thee our rest! 
 
 Be our strife for Thee our peace! 
 Till our sun sink in the west, 
 
 And we reap Thy joy's increase. 
 
 J. L. M. W.
 
 NOVEMBER 25. 329 
 
 He said unto me : Son of man, stand upon thy 
 feet. EZEK. ii. i. 
 
 Giving thanks always for all things unto God 
 and the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. EPHES. v. 20. 
 
 SHALL we, can we, thank God for His mer- 
 cies, standing upon our feet and rejoic- 
 ing that we are men, thoroughly grateful for 
 the real joy of life ? Back of all the special 
 causes for thanksgiving which our hearts rec- 
 ognize, is there a thankfulness for that on 
 which they all rest and in which they are sewn 
 like jewels in a cloth of gold; for the mere 
 fact of human life, for the mere privilege and 
 honor of being men and women ? . . . 
 
 If you have been dwelling solely on the evil 
 that is in man, or on the special evil which you 
 think is in your church, your nation, or your 
 age . . . stand up! Stand up upon your feet! 
 Believe in man! Soberly and with clear eyes 
 believe in your own time and place. There is 
 not, there never has been, a better time or a 
 better place to live in. Only with this belief 
 can you believe in hope. 
 
 II. 149, 161, 162. 
 
 How good is man's life, the mere living! how 
 fit to employ 
 
 All the heart and the soul and the senses for- 
 ever in joy! 
 
 BROWNING.
 
 330 NOVEMBER 26. 
 
 Thou hast kept the good wine until now. 
 
 JOHN ii. 10. 
 
 MAN says, " I choose to let the best come 
 first; and then, if need be, things must 
 degenerate. I would make sure of what good 
 there is. I am so sure of nothing, that anything 
 I can catch shall be caught instantly." But 
 God says, " No! The world grows better and 
 better. The best must be kept waiting till its 
 time shall have arrived. The best cannot 
 come until its time is ready. The best must 
 not come first but last." It is a difference 
 which one immediately feels when he comes 
 into the region of the religion of Christ. The 
 essence of Christianity is to believe that the 
 world is growing better, that the life of man 
 is growing better, under the discipline of 
 Christ. It is calm and hopeful with great as- 
 surances. It sets the old man, at the end of 
 his career, in the midst of fulfilled promises 
 and finished educations, splendidly saying, as 
 he looks back over his life: " It has all been 
 good, but this is the best of all. Thou, O 
 Christ, O Master, hast kept the best wine until 
 now! " XII. 7. 
 
 As Thou hast made the world without, 
 Make Thou more fair the world within; 
 
 Shine through its lingering clouds of doubt; 
 Rebuke its haunting shapes of sin; 
 
 Fill, brief or long, my granted span 
 
 Of life with love to Thee and man; 
 
 Strike when Thou wilt the hour of rest, 
 
 But let my last days be my best! 
 
 WHITTIER.
 
 NOVEMBER 27. 331 
 
 When I would do good, evil is present with me. 
 
 ROM. vii. 21. 
 
 PAUL'S story has been your story. You 
 never sprang most bravely from the low 
 order of your living, that a hand did not 
 seem to catch you and draw you back. You 
 never felt a new power start up within you that 
 a new weakness did not start up by its side. 
 . . . Awful has grown this certainty that no 
 good impulse ever could go straight and unin- 
 terrupted to its victorious result, and yet is it 
 not wonderful how you have kept the assur- 
 ance that good and not evil is the master- 
 power of your life ? The resolution has been 
 broken. It has limped and halted. It has 
 stood for months, and made no progress, but 
 it has never died. 
 
 VI. 13. 
 
 Lord, I have laid my heart upon Thy altar, 
 
 But cannot get the wood to burn; 
 It hardly flares ere it begins to falter, 
 
 And to the dark return. 
 
 Old sap, or night-fallen dew, has damped the 
 fuel; 
 
 In vain my breath would flame provoke; 
 Yet see at every poor attempt's renewal 
 
 To Thee ascends the smoke! 
 'Tis all I have smoke, failure, foiled en- 
 deavor, 
 
 Coldness and doubt, and palsied lack: 
 Such as I have I send Thee; perfect Giver, 
 
 Send Thou Thy lightning back! 
 
 GEORGE MACDONALD.
 
 332 NOVEMBER 28. 
 
 When the fulness of time had come, God sent 
 forth His Son. GAL. iv. 4. 
 
 IT was the emptiest age that the whole moral 
 and spiritual history of man had seen; 
 and just that emptiness it was which made it 
 the fulness of time for Christ. ... It was 
 out of the deadness of millions and millions 
 of souls that the cry for life came, uncon- 
 scious, unmeant, but no less recognized by 
 Him who watches and answers not only the 
 desires but the needs of men. 
 
 And so with all of us is it not the fulness of 
 time indeed ? Is there one of us who can say, 
 "It is not my time yet?" Now while the 
 morning is at hand, the night far spent; now 
 while we have, it may be, but a little while 
 left us to come to Christ or to come closer to 
 Christ, to be a Christian or to be a better 
 Christian; now while the Bridegroom's feet 
 are close upon us, are sounding already in the 
 distance, oh, let our loins be girded about, 
 and our lights burning, and we ourselves like 
 unto men that wait for their Lord. 
 
 VII. 67, 71. 
 
 Said Mark to Martin, "Wherefore spend 
 Such constant care thy vines to tend ? 
 It may be months, it may be years, 
 Before the vineyard's lord appears." 
 
 Said Martin, " Though it may be long 
 Before I hear his harvest-song, 
 If of that hour can no man say, 
 It may be that he comes to-day." 
 
 JULIA WOOD.
 
 NOVEMBER 29. 333 
 
 ONLY when all was ready, only in the ful- 
 ness of time, did Jesus come . . . and 
 the men of whom He was the representative 
 and the chief have they their advents too ? 
 It is easy to believe it about the greatest of 
 them. . . . But it is hard to think the same 
 of common people such as you and I. [Yet] 
 hard as it is, great as is the strain which it 
 puts on all our low habits of thinking about 
 ourselves, the Bible is a strong and glorious 
 call to men to gird up the loins of their minds 
 and believe that God had a place for them and 
 put them in their own place. . . . The begin- 
 ning of a life goes back before the man is 
 here, a visible fact upon the earth. It lays 
 hold of the thought of God, which runs back 
 to eternity. God knew your nature. He 
 had a plan and pattern of your being in His 
 mind. As David says, His eyes did see your 
 substance, yet being imperfect, and in His 
 book were all your members written. Know- 
 ing you, He made ready a place for you; He 
 shaped a cradle for you in the ages, and when 
 it was all done He laid your new life in it the 
 advent before the nativity. VII. 4, 5. 
 
 So take and use Thy work, 
 Amend what flaws may lurk, 
 What strains o' the stuff, what warpings past 
 Thy aim! 
 
 My times be in Thy hand, 
 Perfect the cup as planned! 
 Let age approve of youth, and death com- 
 plete the same! 
 
 BROWNING.
 
 334 NOVEMBER 30. 
 
 In my Father's house are many mansions. I go 
 to prepare a place for you. JOHN xiv. 2. 
 
 AH! there is no friendship worthy of the 
 sacred name where each of the two 
 friends is not always thus making ready places 
 for the other in higher and higher mansions of 
 the Father's house, where each is not always 
 opening to the other some higher life. Do 
 not dare to think that friendship is a mere 
 pleasant amusement. Do not dare to take out 
 of it the moral responsibility that makes its 
 depth and sacredness. . . . Husband and 
 wife live together in perfect domestic sympa- 
 thy. Not a thought of either that the other 
 does not share. But when one of them enters 
 into Christ and knows His peace and joy, it 
 seems as if for the first time they had sepa- 
 rated. But the soul that has found the Saviour 
 comes back with its love, and tells the story of 
 the Saviour it has found, and, Andrew-like, 
 brings the other soul to the Christ in whose 
 love it has found a place. Everywhere this 
 ministry of life to life is finding its illustra- 
 tions. 
 
 VI. 175, 176. 
 
 Come home with me, beloved, 
 
 Home to God's waiting heart! 
 In gladness met together 
 
 From paths too long apart; 
 Strangers no more, but brethren, 
 
 One life with Him to live; 
 Eternally receiving, 
 
 Eternally to give! 
 
 LUCY LARCOM.
 
 DECEMBER i. 335 
 
 To every man according to his ability. 
 
 MATT. xxv. 15. 
 
 IT is a young man's right almost his duty 
 to hope, almost to believe, that he has 
 singular capacity, and is not merely another 
 repetition of the constantly repeated average 
 of men. Before he unfolds the bundle which 
 his Lord has given him, he may well see in 
 his imagination the ten bright talents shining 
 through its folds. To see those dreams and 
 visions gradually fade away; little by little 
 to discover that one has no such exceptional 
 capacity; to try one and another of the adven- 
 turous ways that lead to the high heights and 
 the great prizes, and find the feet unequal to 
 them; to come back at last to the great trod- 
 den highway, and plod on among the undis- 
 tinguished millions that is often very hard. 
 . . . Yet the man of two talents has a great 
 chance in the world. Alas for the world if he 
 had not! For it is of him that the world is 
 mainly composed. . . . And Christ must come 
 with special welcome and appreciation and de- 
 light to any man who feels his insignificance, 
 and is in danger of losing himself in the vague 
 mass of his fellows. 
 
 IV. 198, 204. 
 
 Be sure no earnest work 
 Of any honest creature, howbeit weak, 
 Imperfect, ill-adapted, fails so much, 
 It is not gathered as a grain of sand 
 To enlarge the sum of human action used 
 For carrying out God's end. 
 
 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
 
 336 DECEMBER 2. 
 
 MEN get tired, one after another, of the fan- 
 tastic and one-sided types of character 
 which the world admires, and which seem to us 
 very attractive at first. Expectant without 
 impatience; patient without stagnation; wait- 
 ing, but always ready to advance; loving to 
 advance, but always ready to wait; full of 
 confidence, but never proud; full of certainty, 
 but never arrogant; serene, but enthusiastic; 
 rich as a great land is rich in the peace that 
 comes to it from the government of a great, 
 wise, trusty governor, this is the life whose 
 whole power is summed up in one word 
 Faith. " Here is the patience and faith of 
 the saints." This is the life to which" men 
 come who, through long years, "follow the 
 Lamb whithersoever He goeth." 
 
 II. 58. 
 
 The bravely dumb that did their deed, 
 
 And scorned to blot it with a name, 
 Men of the plain heroic breed, 
 
 That loved Heaven's silence more than fame: 
 Such lived not in the past alone, 
 
 But thread to-day the unheeding street, 
 And stairs to Sin and Famine known 
 
 Sing with the welcome of their feet. 
 
 LOWELL.
 
 DECEMBER 3. 337 
 
 With good will doing service, as to the Lord, 
 and not to men. EPHES. vi. 17. 
 
 SUPPOSE for it is at least supposable 
 that behind every other motive, shining 
 through every other motive which made a man 
 work, there had been this the love of Christ. 
 Whoever he worked for secondarily, he worked 
 for Jesus first of all. Would that have made 
 no difference ? Like an electric atmosphere 
 poured around the shrine in which a jewel 
 rests, so that no hand can be thrust through 
 to steal the jewel; so round the work, full of 
 its joy, is poured the love of Christ, out of 
 which no man can snatch it. Suppose that 
 some strong opponent keeps him from doing 
 what he wants to do, there is still the assur- 
 ance that his doing that is but a part of a 
 vaster accomplishment, the will of his great 
 Master, which he knows must come in its 
 completeness whether this special act of his 
 
 attain success or not. 
 
 III. 300. 
 
 I seem to halt, and yet I know 
 The breath of God is in the sails: 
 Whether by zephyrs or by gales, 
 
 The ships of God must onward go. 
 E'en when to rest He singeth them, 
 He to the haven bringeth them. 
 
 C. G. HAZARD.
 
 33 8 DECEMBER 4. 
 
 As unknown, and yet well known. 
 
 2 COR. vi. 9. 
 
 ARE there not moments in your life when it 
 seems to you as if you understood and 
 knew yourself through and through ? You 
 have listened to this clank of your machinery 
 so long, that you know every sound that it 
 makes. ..." Know myself! " you say; " in- 
 deed I do," grasping your own warm, hard 
 flesh. "Am I not this, which lives thus? 
 Why should I think myself mysterious?" 
 And then instantly, " Know myself! God 
 forbid! Who am I that I should enter into 
 the bosom of His eternal purpose, and study 
 there what has only there real and final being ? 
 Let me stand before my unknown self, and 
 wonder." Poor and mangled is the life which 
 has not thus seemed both to understand and 
 be ignorant about itself. It must be either 
 useless or visionless. 
 
 VI. 284. 
 
 But O my soul, as I thy good 
 
 And evil ways explore, 
 I seem to see the Christ in thee 
 
 His earthly life live o'er. . . . 
 Thou art that Temple where the Lord 
 
 Out-teacheth scribes of law, 
 Whence afterward with cords He makes 
 
 Coarse mammon priests withdraw; 
 Thine inmost court, a holy place, 
 
 The Lord's own glory-home, 
 Thine outer, sentencing Him oft 
 
 To shame and martyrdom. 
 
 DENIS WORTMAN.
 
 DECEMBER 5. 339 
 
 Whatsoever things were written aforetime, were 
 written . . . that we, through patience, and com- 
 fort of the Scriptures, might have hope. 
 
 ROM. xv. 4. 
 
 Welcome, dear Book! soul's joy and food! the 
 
 feast 
 
 Of spirits! heaven extracted lies in thee: 
 Thou art life's charter, the Dove's spotless 
 
 nest, 
 Where souls are hatched unto eternity. 
 
 VAUGHAN. 
 
 WE circulate the Bible by the million. 
 Some parts of it we read as a religious 
 duty. But there are whole books of it teem- 
 ing with interest which few of us ever touch. 
 One sometimes feels that some day or other a 
 great increase of the spiritual power of the 
 Bible will come with what will be almost a re- 
 discovery of its literary attractiveness. When 
 people break through the strange feeling which 
 has gathered around it that it is dull and un- 
 real, and find that it is the most interesting 
 book in all the world, then they will be open 
 for its deeper power to lay hold upon their 
 consciences and hearts. IV. 298. 
 
 Above all, get the great spirit of the Bible 
 . . . the idea without which it would all drop 
 to pieces, that there is not one life which the 
 great Life-Giver ever loses out of His sight; 
 not one which ever sins so that He casts it 
 away; not one which is not so near to Him 
 that whatever touches it touches Him with 
 sorrow or with joy. I. i I0 .
 
 340 DECEMBER 6. 
 
 THE New Testament is a biography. Make 
 it a mere book of dogmas, and its vital- 
 ity is gone. . . . Make it the history of Jesus 
 of Nazareth, and the world holds it in its heart 
 forever. Not simply His coming or His 
 going, not simply His birth or His death, but 
 the living the total life of Jesus in the 
 world's salvation. And the Book in which 
 His life shines orbed and distinct is the 
 world's treasure. There, as in all best bio- 
 graphies, two values of a marked and well- 
 depicted life appear. It is of value, first, be- 
 cause it is exceptional, and also because it is 
 representative. Every life is at once like and 
 unlike every other. Every good story of a life, 
 therefore, sets before those who read it some- 
 thing which is imitable and something which 
 is incapable of imitation; and thereby, come 
 two different sorts of stimulus and inspiration. 
 It gives us help like that of the stars which 
 guide the ship from without, and also like that 
 of the fire which burns beneath the engines of 
 the ship itself. 
 
 X. 428. 
 
 Why must He lay His infant head 
 
 In the manger where the beasts were fed ? 
 
 So that the poorest here might cry, 
 
 " My Lord was as lowly born as /." 
 
 Is there no way to Him at last 
 
 But that where His bleeding feet have passed ? 
 
 Did He not to His followers say, 
 
 11 1 am the Life, the Light, the Way " ? 
 
 PHEBE GARY.
 
 DECEMBER 7. 341 
 
 THERE are few features in the life of Jesus 
 which impress me more than the way in 
 which His work and His growth, His effective 
 and receptive life went on together. . . . True, 
 there were times when He withdrew Himself, 
 and, leaving all activity behind, lay on the 
 mountain days and nights passive before His 
 Father, waiting to be more completely filled 
 with Him. But those were rare, exceptional 
 occasions. The ordinary dependence upon 
 God was perfectly expressed by those words 
 to His disciples, " My meat is to do the will 
 of Him that sent me! " When He gave the 
 sermon on the mount, when He calmed the 
 tempest on the lake, when He raised Lazarus 
 from the dead, we do not doubt that both pro- 
 cesses were going on, enfolded in the com- 
 pleteness of each of those actions. He was 
 saving the world, and He was becoming more 
 perfectly His Father's Son at once. . . . 
 
 Rest and action in the experience of the 
 completest soul are not antagonistic; they are 
 hardly distinct from one another. Action is 
 the most refreshing rest, and rest is in some 
 sense the most effective action to the soul that 
 lives on complete dependence and obedience 
 to God. 
 
 IV. 240. 
 
 But if I face with courage stout 
 
 The labor and the din, 
 Thou, Lord, wilt let my mind go out, 
 
 My heart with Thee stay in. 
 
 GEORGE MACDONALD.
 
 342 DECEMBER 8. 
 
 Strengthened with all might, according to His 
 glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffer- 
 ing, with joy fulness. COL. i. n. 
 
 ONE sufferer cries, " Lord, make me 
 strong; " another sufferer cries, " Lord, 
 let me rest upon Thy strength." Do you say 
 they come to the same thing ? Yes, if the 
 doing of the task, the bearing of the pain, 
 is everything. Yes, if the only object is that 
 the ship may not founder and the back may 
 not break; but if, beyond this, there is hope 
 and purpose that the man who does the task 
 or bears the load shall himself become God- 
 like in his doing and suffering, then no mere 
 deposit of the strength of God can do the 
 work only the ever-open union of his life 
 with God's, which makes the two lives really 
 one, so that the power that is in God is not 
 made the man's by being transferred from 
 God's to him, but is his because it is God's. 
 
 III. 126. 
 
 God, whom my roads" all reach, howe'er they 
 
 run, 
 
 My Father, Friend, Beloved, dear All-One, 
 Thee in my soul, my soul in Thee, I feel, 
 Self of myself. 
 
 SIDNEY LAMER.
 
 DECEMBER 9. 343 
 
 If this counsel or this work be of men, it will 
 come to naught ; but if it be of God, ye cannot over- 
 throw it. ACTS v. 38, 39. 
 
 T^HAT which is rooted in God must live. 
 1 There is no hope or peace anywhere in 
 the world if this is not true. Who cares 
 which way the fickle wind is blowing at this 
 minute if there be no purpose which stands 
 behind and governs it, no One who holds the 
 winds in His hands ? But if there be, who will 
 not labour bravely, trying to put himself into 
 the current of the great purpose of the world; 
 begging to be defeated if he mistakes the 
 great purpose and is helping evil when he 
 thinks that he is helping good; ready to wait 
 and work through all delays; sure of one 
 thing and only one, that in the end, through 
 every hindrance and delay, God must do 
 right ? 
 
 III. 262. 
 
 I do not dare to pray 
 For winds to waft me on my way, 
 But leave it to a higher Will 
 To stay or speed me, trusting still 
 That all is well, and sure that He . . . 
 Will land me every peril past 
 Within the sheltered haven at last. 
 
 Then whatsoever wind doth blow, 
 My heart is glad to have it so; 
 And blow it east, or blow it west, 
 The wind that blows, that wind is best. 
 
 CAROLINE A. MASON.
 
 344 DECEMBER 10. 
 
 LIFE grows healthily from less to more. It 
 does not begin with its best and fade 
 away towards nothingness. It opens with 
 promises which involve incompleteness, and 
 goes forward with a climbing sun toward a 
 rich and radiant noon. ... If I am travel- 
 ling through a country which is sure to grow 
 less and less rich as I get farther on, it is inev- 
 itable that I shall strive at every step to gather 
 all of its fleeting riches that I can. ... I 
 shall leave no well untasted and no tree un- 
 plucked. I shall burden my shoulders with 
 the load of what I cannot eat. But if I know 
 that, as I pass on from field to field upon my 
 journey, each is to be richer than the last, I 
 shall be calm and patient and serene, seeing 
 to-day in the broader light of to-morrow; 
 asking to-day to give me its appropriate gift, 
 not demanding of it that which it is not ready 
 to bestow nor I to take; and going on with 
 faith, which is the deepest and most precious 
 result of every blessing. 
 
 XII. 17. 
 
 I will not wrong Thee, O To-day, 
 With idle longing for To-morrow; 
 
 But patient plow my field and sow 
 The seed of faith in every furrow. 
 
 Enough for me the loving light 
 
 That melts the cloud's repellent edges, 
 The still unfolding, bud by bud, 
 
 Of God's most sweet and holy pledges. 
 
 HARRIET McEwEN KIMBALL.
 
 DECEMBER n. 345 
 
 THE evening of your abundant prosperity 
 arrived. The darkness gathered in 
 about the radiant luxurious life which you 
 had lived. No longer did it seem as if the 
 sun shone and the flowers bloomed and the 
 seasons came and went for you. You said, 
 "It is all over. I have had my day." To 
 some of you since you said that, there has 
 come a great surprise. What seemed all over 
 has proved to be but just begun. The day 
 which you thought you had had, you can see 
 now that you had hardly touched. Prosperity 
 has come to mean to you another thing. The 
 hours in which it meant plenty of money, 
 plenty of friends, seem now so thin and super- 
 ficial. To work, to help and to be helped, to 
 learn sympathy by suffering, to learn faith by 
 perplexity, to reach truth through wonder, 
 behold! this is what it is to prosper, this is 
 what it is to live. You did not really begin 
 to live till the darkening of your happiness 
 brought you into the knowledge of a happi- 
 ness which can never darken. The evening 
 and the morning have been your first day. 
 
 VI. 331. 
 
 Life's self, the immortal, immutable smile 
 
 Of God on the soul, in the deep heart of 
 Heaven, 
 
 Lives changeless, unchanged; and our morn- 
 ing and even 
 
 Are earth's alternations, not Heaven's. 
 
 OWEN MEREDITH.
 
 346 DECEMBER 12. 
 
 He came unto His own. . . . To them He gave 
 power to become the sons of God. 
 
 JOHN i. n, 12. 
 
 THE man to whom it seems incredible that 
 God should have been made man is not 
 so likely to have been misled by a peculiar 
 reverence for God as by an unworthy esti- 
 mate of man. . . . He has taken things as he 
 sees them and lost sight of their ideals. He 
 has seen the mercenariness of friendship, the 
 squalor of home, the animalness of love 
 everything sunk down out of its nobleness; 
 and he has said, " There is no place for God 
 here. It would degrade Him to become man, 
 man being thus." Ah, brethren, if we could 
 only begin at the other end! God did become 
 man, and therefore manhood must be essen- 
 tially capacious of Divinity. He lived in a 
 human home, and so our homes must be capa- 
 ble of a Divinity they do not have. He en- 
 tered into friendships, and so friendship must 
 be sacred. He worked, and so work must be 
 honorable. He cared for the body that He 
 lived in, and so the body cannot be so vile as 
 men have called it and as we make it. If this 
 could be the way the Incarnation came to us, 
 then surely it must be a constant inspiration 
 to us that it was " His own " to whom Christ 
 came. VII. 27. 
 
 O soul of mine! I tell thee true, 
 
 If Christ indeed be thine, 
 Not more makes He himself thy kin 
 
 Than makes He thee divine. 
 
 DENIS WORTMAX.
 
 DECEMBER 13. 347 
 
 TESUS " came unto His own." To men for- 
 ^ getful of their godlike nature He came 
 to tell them that they were the sons of God; 
 and to men who could not do without Him 
 He came because they needed Him. Oh, my 
 dear friends, by what high warrants does the 
 Saviour claim us for His own! Because we 
 are His Father's children, and because we are 
 so needy, therefore our divine Brother comes. 
 He comes to you and says, " You called Me." 
 And you look up out of your worldliness and 
 say, " Oh no! I did not call. I do not know 
 You!" But He says, calmly, "You did, 
 although you do not know it. That power of 
 being godlike which is in you, crushed and un- 
 satisfied that summoned me; and that need 
 of being forgiven and renewed which you will 
 not own that summoned Me. And here I 
 am! Now wilt thou be made whole? If 
 thou canst believe, all things are possible to 
 him that believeth." 
 
 VII. 30. 
 
 I did not know that I had called Thee, Lord: 
 I knew not half my dearth, my sin, my 
 
 grief; 
 
 Yet gladly now I take Thee at Thy word, 
 Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief. 
 
 JOHN WORDEN.
 
 348 DECEMBER 14. 
 
 /""^ HRIST came in answer to a most urgent 
 v_> and pressing call of need. That is what 
 it signifies when it is said that " He came unto 
 His own." For in a true sense everything is 
 a man's own which needs that man ; not every- 
 thing which he needs, but everything which 
 needs him. Do you not know what that is ? 
 Your child is yours not merely by the claim of 
 birth and nature, but by the tie of continual 
 dependence. He is most yours when he needs 
 you most. . . . He came to those who needed 
 Him; most of all to those who from the stricken 
 earth held up to Him the deepest of all needs, 
 the need of sin that craved forgiveness; and 
 that was what made them His. Certainly no 
 level-eyed intercourse of sinless man with sin- 
 less Christ could have wrought in us such a 
 profound and precious sense that we belong 
 to Him as this simple knowledge that we need 
 Him. Need has its sacred rights. Because 
 we want forgiveness and help, and He only 
 can forgive and help us, therefore we are His. 
 
 VII. 28, 29. 
 
 My faith burns low, my hope burns low, 
 Only my heart's desire cries out in me 
 
 By the deep thunder of its want and woe, 
 Cries out to Thee. 
 
 Lord, Thou art Life though I be dead, 
 Love's Fire Thou art however cold I be: 
 
 Nor heaven have I, nor place to lay my head, 
 Nor home, but Thee. 
 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
 
 DECEMBER 15. 349 
 
 He planteth an ash, and the rain doth nourish 
 it. Is. xliv. 14. 
 
 LET it not be a group of ash-trees, but a 
 group of men, ... a thought of God 
 entrusted to the earth for its embodiment and 
 execution. What are these dreams and visions, 
 these upward Teachings, these certainties of 
 infinite belongings, what are they, O thought 
 of God, but the unbroken tension of the chain 
 which binds the thinker to His thought for- 
 ever ? And what are all these earthlinesses, 
 these tender clingings to the things our senses 
 understand, . . . these calls of present duties, 
 this fear of dying, this love of the present, 
 warm, domestic earth, what are they all but 
 the pressure of the warm ground upon the seed 
 entrusted to it ? The man who does not some- 
 how hold the complete truth about his life 
 both of these truths combined in one does 
 not live worthily. The man who has and 
 holds them both, look, what a life he lives! 
 Look how substantially his roots are fastened 
 in the earth. Look how aspiringly he lifts his 
 branches to the sky. 
 
 V. 282, 283. 
 
 Here in Thy great world-garden, Lord, we 
 
 stand: 
 
 Keep us, for here the blossoms blight so fast! 
 The fruit is flawed in turning from Thy beams 
 To the biting east to folly and to sin. 
 And let all trees, the wildings of the wood 
 And grafts of rarest culture, waft Thee praise! 
 
 LUCY LARCOM.
 
 350 DECEMBER 16. 
 
 THE growth of the tree is a mysterious and 
 spiritual power. It cannot be detected at 
 its labor when with a sudden stroke of the axe 
 you tear the tree's trunk open. Your sight is 
 not keen enough to catch it. And yet how 
 closely, how inextricably it is bound up with 
 the grosser elements, in connection with which 
 alone it does its work. There must be the 
 black earth and the brown seed, or nothing 
 comes. What growth-power ever made mani- 
 festation of itself, creating out of nothing, 
 in the air, a tree that had no history and no 
 progenitor ? The material is first, and then 
 the spiritual. 
 
 And need I even suggest to you how every 
 man has in his bodily constitution the physical 
 basis of the most subtle and transcendent parts 
 of his profoundest life ? Out of the very mar- 
 row of his bones comes something which his 
 finest affections never outgo, and which gives 
 a color to his soul's loftiest visions. . . . 
 There is a physical correspondent to every- 
 thing he thinks or fancies. There is a physical 
 basis to his most spiritual life. 
 
 Do honor to your bodies. Reverence your 
 physical natures, not simply for themselves. 
 Only as ends they are not worthy of it, but be- 
 cause in health and strength lies the true 
 basis of noble thought and glorious devotion. 
 A man thinks well and loves well and prays 
 well because of the rich running of his blood. 
 
 VI. 245, 246, 249. 
 
 Health of body with health of soul 
 This is the only worthy goal.
 
 DECEMBER 17. 351 
 
 The Lord God formed man of the dust of the 
 ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of 
 life; and man became a living soul. GEN. ii. 7. 
 
 I DO not know, I cannot guess, what was 
 the nature of the historical event to which 
 that verse refers. But I do know that it is 
 absolutely true to that great order which per- 
 vades the universe. Everywhere the earthly 
 conditions offer their opportunities to the 
 celestial miracle. The fuel is cut in the woods 
 of earth; it is piled, hard and lifeless, on the 
 unheeding stone; and then from it the flame 
 arises, a live aspiring column, and lays its 
 fiery tribute at the feet of God. " That is 
 not first which is spiritual, but that which is 
 natural; and afterward that which is spiritual." 
 Would it not be good ... if these words 
 should be written in golden letters on the 
 walls of every gymnasium and also on the 
 walls of every school of learning and cell of 
 meditation in the world ? . . . As they stood 
 on the walls of the gymnasium, what they 
 declared would be the need of a strong body 
 for all best spiritual life. As they stood writ- 
 ten on the study wall, they would mean the 
 utter failure of the strongest body unless a 
 spiritual life came down from above and occu- 
 pied it, came out from within and clothed it 
 with a worthy purpose. VI. 246, 248. 
 
 Let us not always say, 
 
 " 'Spite of this flesh to-day 
 I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole ! " 
 
 As the bird wings and sings, 
 
 Let us cry, " All good things 
 
 Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps 
 soul." BROWNING.
 
 352 DECEMBER 18. 
 
 "THERE are men deeply impressed with the 
 * infiniteness of life. . . . There comes 
 great happiness to them. That happiness is 
 perfectly hollow unless there is a meaning be- 
 hind it, unless it tells of intentions some- 
 where, unless it means love. They know 
 that "Eat, drink, and be merry," is not the 
 end of it all. To love some one who is loving 
 them, that is what they want to do. "Oh, 
 that I could find Him ! Oh, that I could find 
 Him! " is their cry. Great sorrow comes. 
 But to them sorrow cannpt rest in broken 
 limbs or lost fortunes. Those again are only 
 symbols. The essential thing lies deeper. 
 . . . Then if any glimpse is offered of a 
 Son of God, a manifestation of the Invisible 
 Deity who sends happiness and sorrow and 
 who can forgive sin, there is no tendency to 
 disbelieve; there is the hunger of the heart 
 leaping with hope, there is the stretching out 
 of the arms as when they told Bartimeus, 
 
 " Jesus of Nazareth passeth by." 
 
 V. 207, 208. 
 
 'Neath some shadow oft I wait, 
 Like blind Bartimeus at the gate, 
 Assured that when my Lord draws nigh, 
 Sin, doubt, and darkness all shall fly; 
 Hence to His cross I cling the more, 
 Whene'er these shadows touch my door. 
 
 JOHN ORDRONAUX.
 
 DECEMBER 19. 353 
 
 The Lord is at hand. PHIL. iv. 5. 
 
 , my dear friends, if you knew that in 
 the most evident of all ways, which is 
 by death, the Lord were coming to you to- 
 morrow, and if you could be perfectly free 
 from all base feeling, from fear and flurry, 
 from defiance and from dread ? . . . what 
 would be the condition which it would make 
 in you ? Would it be any elevation, refine- 
 ment, solemnity, and broadening of life ? 
 Would it be the calming of frivolity, the re- 
 lease of charity, the kindling of hope ? Would 
 it not be all of these ? 
 
 Not yet for us does that great, solemn foot- 
 fall sound outside the door. But none the less 
 is the Lord at hand. He is always at hand. 
 All expectation may be expectation of Him. 
 
 IV. 368. 
 
 Who shall know the Master's coming ? 
 Whether it be at dawn or sunset, 
 When night dews weigh down the wheat-ears, 
 Or while noon rides high in heaven, 
 
 Sleeping lies the yellow field ? 
 Only, may Thy voice, Good Master, 
 Peal above the reapers' chorus, 
 And the sound of sheaves slow falling, 
 " Gather all into My garner, 
 
 For it is My harvest time! " 
 
 DINAH MULOCH CRAIK.
 
 354 DECEMBER 20. 
 
 THAT life which we dream of in ourselves 
 we see in Jesus. Where was there ever 
 gentleness so full of energy ? What life as 
 still as His was ever so pervaded with untiring 
 and restless power ? Who ever knew the pur- 
 poses for which he worked to be so sure, and 
 yet so labored for them as if they were uncer- 
 tain ? Who ever believed his truths so en- 
 tirely, and yet believed them so vividly as 
 Jesus ? Such perfect peace that never grew 
 listless for a moment; such perfect activity 
 that never grew restless or excited; these are 
 the wonders of the life of Him who going up 
 and down the rugged ways of Palestine, was 
 spiritually walking on "the sea of glass 
 mingled with fire." 
 
 As more and more we get the victory over 
 the beast, we too are lifted up to walk where 
 he walked. For this all trial, all suffering, 
 and all struggle are sent. 
 
 IV. 126. 
 
 Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of 
 
 sin ? 
 The blood of Jesus whispers peace within. 
 
 Peace, perfect peace, by thronging duties 
 
 pressed ? 
 To do the will of Jesus, this is rest. 
 
 Peace, perfect peace, our future all unknown ? 
 Jesus we know, and He is on the throne. 
 
 E. H. BlCKERSTETH.
 
 DECEMBER 21. 355 
 
 \ I 7 HEN Jesus had risen from the dead, you 
 * * remember, His disciple refused to be- 
 lieve till with his own hand he had felt the 
 wounds in the hands and feet and side. And 
 Jesus gently rebuking him, compares, as it 
 were, the methods of authority and experi- 
 ence, of faith and science, so to speak, to the 
 advantage of the former when He says, 
 ' Thomas, because thou hast seen thou hast 
 believed. Blessed are they that have not seen 
 and yet have believed." And yet when we 
 come to think of it, is not His rebuke really 
 that Thomas had not used the method of ex- 
 perience enough, not that he demands it too 
 much ? He rebukes him that in all the years 
 that they had been together he had not ob- 
 served Him deeply enough to learn His char- 
 acter and understand His words. Is He not 
 pleading, not against science, but for a higher 
 science ? . . . " If I do not the works of my 
 Father believe me not," a direct appeal to 
 
 experience. 
 
 VI. 133. 
 
 Oh, for a faith more strong and true 
 Than that which doubting Thomas knew 
 
 A faith assured and clear, 
 To know that He who for us died 
 Rejected, scorned, and crucified 
 
 Lives and is with us here! 
 
 PHEBE GARY.
 
 356 DECEMBER 22. 
 
 And a little child shall lead them. Is. xi. 6. 
 
 HE who helps a child helps humanity with 
 a distinctness, with an immediateness, 
 which no other help given to human creatures 
 in any other stage of their human life can pos- 
 sibly give again. He who puts his blessed 
 influence into a river blesses the land through 
 which that river is to flow; but he who puts 
 his influence into the fountain where the river 
 comes out puts his influence everywhere. No 
 land it may not reach. No ocean it may not 
 make sweeter. No bark it may not bear. No 
 wheel it may not turn. Sometimes we get at 
 things best by their contraries. Learn the 
 rich beauty of helping a child by the awful- 
 ness of hurting a child, hurting a child even 
 in his physical frame, hurting him still more 
 in soul and mind. The thing that made the 
 Divine Master indignant as He stood there in 
 Jerusalem was that He dreamed of seeing be- 
 fore Him a man who had harmed some of these 
 little ones, and He said of any such ruffian, 
 "It were better for him that he had never 
 been born." If it is such an awful thing 
 to hurt a child's life, to aid a child's life is 
 beautiful. X. 506. 
 
 Great hearts have largest room to bless the 
 
 small; 
 
 Strong natures give the weaker home and rest; 
 So Christ took little children to His breast, 
 
 And with a reverence more profound we fall 
 In the majestic presence, that can give 
 Truth's simplest message: " 'Tis by love ye 
 live." LUCY LARCOM.
 
 DECEMBER 23. 357 
 
 '"FHE first truth is the essential unity of 
 * man's life and God's, and so the es- 
 sential glory of humanity. Christ came not 
 merely to man, but into man; and that was 
 possible because the manhood into which He 
 entered was "His own," had original and 
 fundamental unity with His Godhood, was 
 made in the image of God. Here was man, 
 made in God's image, separated from God, 
 trying spasmodically to struggle back, failing 
 and falling so continually that the conscious- 
 ness that he belonged with God was well-nigh 
 lost. That it might not be lost, that it might 
 be a real and living thing, it must be asserted 
 from the other side. Man and God had the 
 capacity of entrance into each other. Since 
 man would not, and, as it almost seemed now, 
 could not enter into God, God would enter 
 into man. Man had failed of being Godlike; 
 God, then, would be manlike, and so the first 
 truth that God and man belonged together 
 should not be lost for want of assertion. Is 
 not this a noble and inspiring value of the In- 
 carnation ? VII. 26. 
 
 Lord, if Thou grant me grace to hear and see 
 Thy very Self who stoopest thus to me, 
 
 I make but slight account 
 Of aught beside wherein to sink or mount. 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
 
 358 DECEMBER 24. 
 
 Because there was no room for them in the inn. 
 
 LUKE ii. 7. 
 
 RELIGION makes us feel the littleness to 
 which we have reduced our lives, and 
 then proclaims, in contrast with that littleness, 
 the great capacity God meant them to have. 
 "You have cramped your life," it seems to 
 say. " You have made it small and narrow. 
 By long unspirituality you have made its 
 doors so low that none but short or stooping 
 thoughts can enter. You have made its 
 rooms so mean that great truths can not live 
 in them. But never dare to think that this 
 was God's plan for your life. He drew its 
 architecture on a lordly scale. He designed 
 for you great, generous, capacious lives. He 
 built you to be ' temples of the Holy Ghost.' 
 . . . You may make your lives foul and taw- 
 dry and meagre; you may diminish and over- 
 crowd them till there is no room for a noble 
 thought or a pure desire; but you do it at 
 your peril. God made them roomy; and there 
 is room for His holy Son to find a nativity 
 within them if you will only set and keep 
 their chambers open." 
 
 VII. 80, 81. 
 
 Christ, He requires still, whensoe'er He comes 
 To feed or lodge, to have the best of rooms: 
 Give Him the choice; grant Him the nobler 
 
 part 
 
 Of all the house: the best of all's the heart. 
 
 HERRICK.
 
 DECEMBER 25. 359 
 
 The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. 
 
 JOHN i. 14. 
 
 WHO is it that lies once more to-day be- 
 fore the world, the Son of God and Son 
 of man, at Bethlehem ? Mary bows down and 
 learns the Incarnation, and feels the solem- 
 nity and sublimity of the human life into 
 which the Divinity has entered. The wise 
 men come and find their King in this weak 
 babe. The shepherds see the hope of Israel 
 fulfilled, the Saviour come. Oh, on this Christ- 
 mas Day let us be with them all! Let us feel 
 thrilling through this humanity which we so 
 often scorn the glorifying fire of the Incarna- 
 tion. Let us give up our lives to Him and beg 
 that He will rule them. But, more than all, 
 let us give our souls, hungry and sinful, a 
 Christmas leave to go to Him who is their 
 Saviour, whom they will know for their Saviour 
 if we let them go to Him. 
 
 It is a day of joy and charity. May God 
 make you very rich in both by giving you 
 abundantly the glory of the Incarnation, the 
 peace of Christ's kingship, and the grace of 
 Christ's salvation. 
 
 VII. 96. 
 
 The heart must ring Thy Christmas bells, 
 
 Thy inward altars raise; 
 Its faith and hope Thy canticles, 
 
 And its obedience praise! 
 
 WHITTIER.
 
 360 DECEMBER 26. 
 
 Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and 
 peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope by 
 the power of the Holy Ghost. ROM. xv. 13. 
 
 SUCH peace in believing is to be distinctly 
 a peace by Gospel faith. . . . Let me be 
 a thorough believer in Jesus Christ, let me, 
 that is, have taken Him with all the revela- 
 tion of humanity that there is in Him, and 
 where is the fellow-man with whom I shall not 
 be at peace ? Is it the man who domineers 
 over me and bullies me ? The supreme mastery 
 of my Lord adjusts all these lower masteries, 
 and compels them to keep their proper places. 
 When I have learned really to " fear Him who 
 can cast both soul and body into hell," I am 
 able indeed not to "fear them that can kill 
 the body." The martyr seeing Christ stand- 
 ing at the right hand of God is at full peace 
 with his murderers. 
 
 VI. 203, 204. 
 
 And he [St. Stephen] kneeled down, and cried 
 with a loud voice : Lord, lay not this sin to their 
 charge. And when he had said this, he fell 
 asleep. ACTS vii. 60. 
 
 Oh, for the vision that sufficed 
 That first blest martyr after Christ, 
 
 And gave a peace so deep 
 That while he saw with raptured eyes 
 Jesus with God in Paradise, 
 
 He, praying, fell asleep! 
 
 PHEBE GARY,
 
 DECEMBER 27. 361 
 
 Thou wilt hide them in the secret of Thy pres- 
 ence . . . from the strife of tongues. 
 
 Ps. xxxi. 20. 
 
 THE very words are full of peace before we 
 hardly touch them to open their meaning. 
 But their meaning is deeper the more we study 
 it. ... Suppose that St. John should come 
 and talk with you, or be at your side without 
 a word in the midst of the wildest of our 
 social Babels. Would he not bring his peace 
 with him ? Would you not let every one else 
 go, and be alone with him, even in all the 
 crowd ? And now if it is possible, instead of 
 the great disciple, for God Himself to be with 
 you, so that His presence is real, so that He 
 lets you understand His thoughts and lets you 
 know that He understands yours; and as close 
 to you nay, infinitely closer than the men 
 who crowd you round, and whose voices are 
 in your ears, the unseen God is truly with 
 you, what then ? . . . He has blinded you to 
 all but Himself. He has hid you in the secret 
 of His presence. 
 
 I. 83, 84, 85. 
 
 Yet shall I envy blessed John ? 
 
 Nay, not so verily, 
 Now that Thou, Lord, both Man and God, 
 
 Dost dwell in me: 
 Upbuilding with Thy Manhood's might 
 
 My frail humanity; 
 Yea, Thy Divinehood pouring forth, 
 
 In fulness filling me. 
 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
 
 362 DECEMBER 28. 
 
 It is no little thing when a fresh soul, 
 
 And a fresh heart, with their unmeasured 
 
 scope 
 
 For good, not gravitating earthward yet, . . . 
 Are sent into the world, no little thing 
 When this unbounded possibility 
 Into the outer silence is withdrawn. 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 WHAT is it when a child dies ? It is the 
 great Head-master calling that child up 
 into His own room, away from all the under- 
 teachers, to finish his education under His own 
 eye. The whole thought of a child's growth 
 and development in heaven is one of the most 
 exalting and bewildering on which the mind 
 can rest. Always the child must be there. 
 Always there must be something in those who 
 died as children to make them different to all 
 eternity from those who grew up to be men 
 here among all the temptations and hindrances 
 of earth. There must forever be something 
 in their perfect trust in the Father, something 
 in the peculiar nearness and innocent famili- 
 arity of their life with Jesus, . . . something 
 pure even among all the perfect purity which 
 we shall all have reached, something wiser 
 than the wisest, showing that even there there 
 is a revelation that can be given only to the 
 babes; something more perfectly triumphant 
 and serene to mark forever the perfected life 
 of those who never sinned. 
 
 IV. 149. 
 
 These are they which follow the Lamb whither- 
 soever He goeth. REV. xiv. 4.
 
 DECEMBER 29. 363 
 
 It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we 
 know that when He shall appear we shall be like 
 Him. i JOHN iii. 2. 
 
 IS life decreasing or increasing ? Is it grow- 
 ing richer or poorer ? The ordinary cheap 
 philosophies assume that life is like a fire 
 which speedily reaches the fulness of its heat, 
 and then fades and fades till it goes out. The 
 high philosophy which gets its light from God 
 believes that life, as it moves deeper and 
 deeper into God, must move from richness 
 into richness always. . . . All that we believe 
 is but the promise of the perfect faith. All 
 that we do is great with its anticipation of the 
 complete obedience. All that we are but 
 gives us suggestions of the richness which our 
 being will attain. Those moments make our 
 real, effective, enthusiastic life. They create 
 the fulfilment of their own hopes and dreams. 
 Oh, cherish them! Oh, believe that no man 
 lives at his best to whom life is not becoming 
 better and better, always aware of greater and 
 greater forces, capable of diviner and diviner 
 deeds and joys! XII. 21, 22. 
 
 Oh, sweet to live, to love, and to aspire! 
 
 To know that whatsoever we attain, 
 Beyond the utmost summit of desire 
 
 Heights upon heights eternally remain, 
 To humble us, to lift us up, to show 
 Into what luminous deeps we onward go. 
 
 LUCY LARCOM.
 
 364 DECEMBER 30. 
 
 // is toward evening, and the day is far spent. 
 
 LUKE xxiv. 29. 
 
 THE year which came to us twelve months 
 ago, all fresh and young, is old and 
 weary. A new year will come to crowd him 
 from his place. On such a day it is not mere 
 habit, it is a natural and healthy instinct, 
 which makes us stand between the new year 
 and the old, between the living and the dead, 
 and listen to them as they speak to one another. 
 The old year says to the new year, " Take 
 this man and show him greater things than I 
 have been able to show him. You must be for 
 him a fuller, richer day of the Lord than I 
 could be." The new year says to the old, " I 
 will take him and do for him the best that 
 I can do. But all that I can do for him will 
 be possible only in virtue of the preparation 
 which you have made, only because of what 
 you have done for him already." 
 
 IV. 357- 
 
 I am fading from you, 
 
 But one draweth near, 
 Called the Angel-guardian 
 
 Of the coming Year. 
 
 I brought good desires, 
 
 Though as yet but seeds, 
 Let the New Year make them 
 
 Blossom into deeds. 
 
 ADELAIDE A. PROCTER.
 
 DECEMBER 31. 365 
 
 Then cometh the end. i COR. xv. 24. 
 
 / will remember the years of the right hand of 
 the most High. Ps. Ixxvii. 10. 
 
 TF around this instability of human life is 
 * wrapped the great permanence of the life 
 of God ... if the whole element of time 
 is so lost in His eternity that not the begin- 
 ning and the ending of experiences but their 
 spiritual relations to our growing characters 
 is everything, then is there not light upon it 
 all ? To value everything which comes to 
 me, and yet to know that not its form but its 
 spiritual essence is really valuable, therefore 
 to hasten while I have it to get out of it what 
 it has to give me, and to even rejoice that 
 some day in the loss of its formal presence I 
 shall be able to make myself completely sure 
 of the possession of its spirit, that is the true 
 attitude of the soul toward every good thing 
 that God gives, health, friends, wealth, 
 learning, time. 
 
 V. 369. 
 
 Why cry so many voices, choked with tears, 
 " The year is dead! " It rather seems to me 
 Full of such rich and boundless life to be, 
 It is a presage of the eternal years. 
 ... So let us rather cry: 
 This year of grace still lives; it cannot die! 
 
 MARY G. SLOCUM.
 
 ASH-WEDNESDAY. 367 
 
 Turn ye even unto Me with all your heart, and 
 with fasting. JOEL ii. 12. 
 
 TOASTING is both a symbol and a means. 
 Every kind of abstinence is at once an 
 expression of humility and an opening of the 
 life. What then is Lent ? Ah, if our souls 
 are sinful and are shut too close by many 
 worldlinesses against that Lord who is their 
 life and Saviour, what do we need ? Let us 
 have the symbols which belong to sin and to 
 repentance. . Let us at least for a few weeks, 
 among the many weeks of life, proclaim by 
 soberness and quietude of life that we know 
 our responsibility and how often we have been 
 false to it. Let us not sweep through the 
 whole year in buoyant exultation, as if there 
 were no shame upon us, nothing for us to re- 
 pent of, nothing for us to fear. By some 
 small symbols let us bear witness that we know 
 something of the solemnity of living, the 
 dreadfulness of sin, the struggle of repent- 
 ance. . . . Perhaps the symbol may strike in 
 and deepen the solemnity which it expresses. 
 Perhaps as we tell God of what little sorrow 
 for our sins we have, our sorrow for our sins 
 may be increased, and while we stand there 
 in His presence the fasting may gather a truer 
 reality of penitence behind it. 
 
 II. 214. 
 
 Who goeth in the way that Christ hath gone 
 Is much more sure to meet with Him than one 
 That travelleth byways. 
 
 GEORGE HERBERT.
 
 368 GOOD FRIDAY. 
 
 // is finished. JOHN xix. 30. 
 
 OH, what a finishing that was! It is as if 
 eternity were crowded into the heart of 
 Him who spoke. All He had been forever had 
 consummated itself at last. The long yearn- 
 ing to let men know what a love waited for 
 them in the heart of God was satisfied. The 
 light was kindled on the mountain-top, and 
 already the quick ear of Divinity heard the 
 stirring in thousands of valleys, where men, 
 hopeless before, were gathering 'up their bur- 
 dens and with the inspiration of an unfamiliar 
 hope were starting to struggle up with them, 
 determined not to rest until they cast them 
 down into the shadow of that unseen cross. 
 What cry like this has the world ever heard ? 
 Not even that first utterance of calm creative 
 power, "Let there be light," had greater 
 meaning or sublimity than this last agony of 
 love that burst from the lips of the satisfied 
 Redeemer: " I have been lifted up. I shall 
 draw all men unto Me. Now it is finished." 
 
 VII. 265. 
 
 Done is the work that saves! 
 
 Once and forever done, 
 Finished the righteousness 
 
 That clothes the unrighteous one. 
 The love that blesses us below 
 Is flowing freely to us now. 
 
 HORATIUS BONAR.
 
 EASTER DAY. 369 
 
 That I may know Him, and the power of His 
 resurrection. PHIL. iii. 10. 
 
 THE life of a true Christian seems to me to 
 be full of Easters; to be one perpetual 
 renewal of things from their lower to their 
 higher, from their temporal to their spiritual 
 shape and power. You are called upon to give 
 up a luxury, and you do it. The little piece 
 of comfortable living is quietly buried away 
 underground, . . . undergoes some strange 
 alteration in its burial, and comes out a spir- 
 itual quality that blesses and enriches your 
 soul forever. ... So the partial and imper- 
 fect and temporary are always being taken 
 away from us and buried, that the perfect and 
 eternal may arise out of their tombs to bless 
 us. . . . They are not simply taken away to 
 be kept the child that you saw die, the dream 
 that you saw fade to be kept in some future 
 state till you shall be fit to come and get 
 them; . . . they are here all the time; not to 
 be had by-and-by, but to be had now. They 
 can be had in their spiritual return to you by- 
 and-by only as you first have them and keep 
 them spiritually now. . . . The power of the 
 future resurrection is all along a power of 
 present regeneration. 
 
 What can I do, then, but invite you all to 
 know that power by earnest self-surrender, by 
 patient prayer, and by a childlike faith that 
 willingly takes into its loving life the willing, 
 living, loving Christ of Easter Day ? 
 
 VII. 277, 278, 285. 
 
 He that hath the Son, hath life. JOHN v. 12.
 
 370 ASCENSION-DAY. 
 
 A cloud received Him out of tJieir sight. 
 
 ACTS ii. 9. 
 
 FOR a human being to go out from this 
 earth is a dreadful thing if it is only with 
 this earth that humanity has any known rela- 
 tion. . . . But now let us believe in the Ascen- 
 sion. Once a human being the best and 
 completest of all human beings that have ever 
 lived, the human being whose humanity was 
 perfect by its very union with Divinity has 
 gone, still human, out of the sight of men, 
 gone, evidently all alive. We can not trace 
 His course. The cloud received Him. But 
 yet we know that somewhere out beyond the 
 limits of our little earth that true humanity 
 of His has found a home. Humanity can live 
 beyond the earth, can keep broad live rela- 
 tions with the universe. The man who goes 
 to-day, then, goes still into the dark, but the 
 darkness into which he goes is pierced by a 
 path of light, and at its heart there is a home 
 of light to which he goes. The humanity of 
 Jesus has gone before and makes the vast un- 
 known not unfamiliar. Around our thought 
 of it our thoughts of the men we have seen 
 die, our thoughts of our own coming deaths, 
 can gather with confidence and calmness. 
 
 VII. 298. 
 
 Thou Who wast Centre of all heights on the 
 
 Mount of Beatitudes, 
 
 Grant us to sit with Thee in heavenly places. 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
 
 WHITSUNDAY. 
 
 He saith iinto them, Have ye received the Holy 
 Ghost since ye believed? ACTS xix. 2. 
 
 AND what that first Whitsunday was to all 
 the world, one certain day becomes to 
 any man, the day when the Holy Spirit comes 
 to him. God enters into Him and he sees all 
 things with God's vision. Truths which were 
 dead spring into life and are as real to him as 
 they are to God. He is filled with the Spirit 
 and straightway he believes; not as he used 
 to, coldly holding the outsides of things. He 
 has looked right into their hearts. His belief 
 in Jesus is all afire with love. His belief in 
 immortality is eager with anticipation. Can 
 any day in all his life compare with that day ? 
 If it were to break forth into flames of fire and 
 tremble with sudden and mysterious wind, 
 would it seem strange to him the day when 
 he first knew how near God was, and how true 
 truth was, and how deep Christ was ? O, have 
 we known that day ? O, careless, easy, cold 
 believers! if one should come and ask you, 
 " Have you received the Holy Ghost since you 
 believed ? " dare you, could you, answer him, 
 "Yes"? 11.227. 
 
 I bow my forehead to the dust, 
 I veil mine eyes for shame, 
 
 And urge, in trembling self-distrust, 
 A prayer without a claim. 
 
 No offering of mine own I have, 
 Nor works my faith to prove; 
 
 I can but give the gifts He gave, 
 And plead His love for love. 
 
 WHITTIER.
 
 372 TRINITY SUNDAY. 
 
 Through Him we both have access by one Spirit 
 unto the Father. EPHES. ii. 18. 
 
 SEE what Godhood the soul has come to 
 recognize in the world. First, there is 
 the Creative Deity from which it sprang, and 
 to which it is struggling to return the divine 
 End, God the Father. Then there is the 
 Incarnate Deity, which makes that return pos- 
 sible by the exhibition of God's love, the 
 divine method, God the Son; and then there 
 is this Infused Deity, this divine energy in the 
 soul itself, taking its capacities and setting 
 them homeward to the Father the divine 
 Power of Salvation, God the Holy Spirit. 
 To the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit. 
 Let us keep the faith of the Trinity. . . . 
 Let us seek to come to the highest, through 
 the highest, by the highest. Let the end and 
 the method and the power of our life be all 
 divine. If our hearts are set on that, Jesus 
 will accept us for His disciples; all that He 
 promised to do for those who trusted Him, He 
 will do for us. He will show us the Father; 
 He will send us the Comforter; nay, what can 
 He do, or what can we ask that will outgo the 
 strong and sweet assurance of the promise: 
 Through Him we shall have access by one 
 Spirit unto the Father. 
 
 I. 243, 246. 
 
 We from Thy oneness come, 
 
 Beyond it cannot roam, 
 
 And in Thy oneness find our one eternal home. 
 
 FABKR.
 
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 CONTENTS. 
 
 First Journey Abroad. 1865-1866. 
 In the Tyrol and Switzerland. 1870. 
 Summer in Northern Europe. 1872. 
 From London to Venice. 1874. 
 England and the Continent. 1877. 
 In Paris, England, Scotland, and Ireland. 1880. 
 A Year in Europe and India. 1882-1883. 
 England and Europe. 1885. 
 Across the Continent to San Francisco. 1886. 
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 Summer of 1890. Last Journey Abroad. 
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 PHILLIPS BROOKS'S WRITINGS. 
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS YEAR BOOK. 
 
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