Part 6

The joy of the Lord is your strength.--NEH. viii. 10.

Be Thou my Sun, my selfishness destroy, Thy atmosphere of Love be all my joy; Thy Presence be my sunshine ever bright, My soul the little mote that lives but in Thy light.

GERHARD TERSTEEGEN.

I do not know when I have had happier times in my soul, than when I have been sitting at work, with nothing before me but a candle and a white cloth, and hearing no sound but that of my own breath, with God in my soul and heaven in my eye... I rejoice in being exactly what I am,--a creature capable of loving God, and who, as long as God lives, must be happy. I get up and look for a while out of the window, and gaze at the moon and stars, the work of an Almighty hand. I think of the grandeur of the universe, and then sit down, and think myself one of the happiest beings in it.

A POOR METHODIST WOMAN, 18TH CENTURY.

January 20

The Lord taketh pleasure In His people: He will beautify the meek with salvation.--PS. cxlix. 4.

Long listening to Thy words, My voice shall catch Thy tone, And, locked in Thine, my hand shall grow All loving like Thy own.

B. T.

It is not in words explicable, with what divine lines and lights the exercise of godliness and charity will mould and gild the hardest and coldest countenance, neither to what darkness their departure will consign the loveliest. For there is not any virtue the exercise of which, even momentarily, will not impress a new fairness upon the features; neither on them only, but on the whole body the moral and intellectual faculties have operation, for all the movements and gestures, however slight, are different in their modes according to the mind that governs them--and on the gentleness and decision of right feeling follows grace of actions, and, through continuance of this, grace of form.

J. RUSKIN.

There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.

R. W. EMERSON.

January 21

Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint.--ISA. xl. 30, 31.

Lord, with what courage and delight I do each thing, When Thy least breath sustains my wing! I shine and move Like those above, And, with much gladness Quitting sadness, Make me fair days of every night.

H. VAUGHAN.

Man, by living wholly in submission to the Divine Influence, becomes surrounded with, and creates for himself, internal pleasures infinitely greater than any he can otherwise attain to--a state of heavenly Beatitude.

J. P. GREAVES.

By persisting in a habit of self-denial, we shall, beyond what I can express, increase the inward powers of the mind, and shall produce that cheerfulness and greatness of spirit as will fit us for all good purposes; and shall not have lost pleasure, but changed it; the soul being then filled with its own intrinsic pleasures.

HENRY MORE.

January 22

Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord.--HOSEA vi. 3.

And, as the path of duty is made plain, May grace be given that I may walk therein, Not like the hireling, for his selfish gain, With backward glances and reluctant tread, Making a merit of his coward dread,-- But, cheerful, in the light around me thrown, Walking as one to pleasant service led; Doing God's will as if it were my own, Yet trusting not in mine, but in His strength alone!

J. G. WHITTIER.

It is by doing our duty that we learn to do it. So long as men dispute whether or no a thing is their duty, they get never the nearer. Let them set ever so weakly about doing it, and the face of things alters. They find in themselves strength which they knew not of. Difficulties which it seemed to them they could not get over, disappear. For He accompanies it with the influences of His blessed Spirit, and each performance opens our minds for larger influxes of His grace, and places them in communion with Him.

E. B. PUSEY.

That which is called considering what is our duty in a particular case, is very often nothing but endeavoring to explain it away.