Part 34

H. E. MANNING.

May 6

Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love.--ROM. xii. 10.

In her tongue is the law of kindness.--PROV. xxxi. 26.

Since trifles make the sum of human things, And half our misery from our foibles springs; Since life's best joys consist in peace and ease, And though but few can serve, yet all can please; Oh, let the ungentle spirit learn from hence, A small unkindness is a great offence.

HANNAH MORE.

All usefulness and all comfort may be prevented by an unkind, a sour, crabbed temper of mind,--a mind that can bear with no difference of opinion or temperament. A spirit of fault-finding; an unsatisfied temper; a constant irritability; little inequalities in the look, the temper, or the manner; a brow cloudy and dissatisfied--your husband or your wife cannot tell why--will more than neutralize all the good you can do, and render life anything but a blessing.

ALBERT BARNES.

You have not fulfilled every duty, unless you have fulfilled that of being pleasant.

CHARLES BUXTON.

May 7

He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds. He telleth the number of the stars; He calleth them all by their names.--PS. cxlvii. 3, 4.

Teach me your mood, O patient stars! Who climb each night the ancient sky, Leaving on space no shade, no scars, No trace of age, no fear to die.

R. W. EMERSON.

I looked up to the heavens once more, and the quietness of the stars seemed to reproach me. "We are safe up here," they seemed to say; "we shine, fearless and confident, for the God who gave the primrose its rough leaves to hide it from the blast of uneven spring, hangs us in the awful hollows of space. We cannot fall out of His safety. Lift up your eyes on high, and behold! Who hath created these things--that bringeth out their host by number? He calleth them all by names. By the greatness of His might, for that He is strong in power, not one faileth. Why sayest thou, O Jacob! and speakest, O Israel! my way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God?"

G. MACDONALD.

May 8

This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.--PS. cxviii. 24.

Why stand ye here all the day idle?--MATT. xx. 6.

So here hath been dawning another blue day; Think, wilt thou let it slip useless away? Out of eternity this new day is born; Into eternity at night will return.

T. CARLYLE.

Small cares, some deficiencies in the mere arrangement and ordering of our lives, daily fret our hearts, and cross the clearness of our faculties; and these entanglements hang around us, and leave us no free soul able to give itself up, in power and gladness, to the true work of life. The severest training and self-denial,--a superiority to the servitude of indulgence,--are the indispensable conditions even of genial spirits, of unclouded energies, of tempers free from morbidness,--much more of the practised and vigorous mind, ready at every call, and thoroughly furnished unto all good works.

J. H. THOM.

True, we can never be at peace till we have performed the highest duty of all,--till we have arisen, and gone to our Father; but the performance of smaller duties, yes, even of the smallest, will do more to give us temporary repose, will act more as healthful anodynes, than the greatest joys that can come to us from any other quarter.

G. MACDONALD.

May 9

The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.--JOB i. 21.

What Thou hast given, Thou canst take, And when Thou wilt new gifts can make. All flows from Thee alone; When Thou didst give it, it was Thine; When Thou retook'st it, 't was not mine. Thy will in all be done.