Part 95

Is it possible we should be ignorant whether we feel tempers contrary to love or no?--whether we rejoice always, or are burdened and bowed down with sorrow?--whether we have a praying, or a dead, lifeless spirit?--whether we can praise God, and be resigned in all trials, or feel murmurings, fretfulness, and impatience under them?--is it not easy to know if we feel anger at provocations, or whether we feel our tempers mild, gentle, peaceable, and easy to be entreated, or feel stubbornness, self-will, and pride? whether we have slavish fears, or are possessed of that perfect love which casteth out all fear that hath torment?

HESTER ANN ROGERS.

December 18

We trust in the living God.--I TIM. iv. 10.

Thy secret judgment's depths profound Still sings the silent night; The day, upon his golden round, Thy pity infinite.

I. WILLIAMS. Tr. from Latin.

Now that I have no longer any sense for the transitory and perishable, the universe appears before my eyes under a transformed aspect. The dead, heavy mass which did but stop up space has vanished, and in its place there flows onward, with the rushing music of mighty waves, an eternal stream of life, and power, and action, which issues from the original source of all life,--from Thy life, O Infinite One! for all life is Thy life, and only the religious eye penetrates to the realm of true Beauty.

J. G. FICHTE.

What is Nature? Art thou not the "Living Garment" of God? O Heavens, is it, in very deed, He then that ever speaks through thee; that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me? Sweeter than dayspring to the shipwrecked in Nova Zembla; ah! like the mother's voice to her little child that strays bewildered, weeping, in unknown tumults; like soft streamings of celestial music to my too exasperated heart, came that Evangel. The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel-house with spectres; but godlike, and my Father's.

T. CARLYLE.

December 19

And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in Thee.--PS. xxxix. 7.

O Lord, be gracious unto us; we have waited for Thee.--ISA. xxxiii. 2.

He never comes too late; He knoweth what is best; Vex not thyself in vain; Until He cometh, rest.

B. T.

We make mistakes, or what we call such. The nature that could fall into such mistake exactly needs, and in the goodness of the dear God is given, the living of it out, And beyond this, I believe more. That in the pure and patient living of it out we come to find that we have fallen, not into hopeless confusion of our own wild, ignorant making; but that the finger of God has been at work among our lines, and that the emerging is into His blessed order; that He is forever making up for us our own undoings; that He makes them up beforehand; that He evermore restoreth our souls.

A. D. T. WHITNEY.

THE Lord knows how to make stepping-stones for us of our defects, even; it is what He lets them be for. He remembereth--He remembered in the making--that we are but dust; the dust of earth, that He chose to make something little lower than the angels out of.

A. D. T. WHITNEY.

December 20

Take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak.--MATT. x. 19.

Just to follow hour by hour As He leadeth; Just to draw the moment's power As it needeth.

F. R. HAVERGAL.

You have a disagreeable duty to do at twelve o'clock. Do not blacken nine, and ten, and eleven, and all between, with the color of twelve. Do the work of each, and reap your reward in peace. So when the dreaded moment in the future becomes the present, you shall meet it walking in the light, and that light will overcome its darkness. The best preparation is the present well seen to, the last duty done. For this will keep the eye so clear and the body so full of light that the right action will be perceived at once, the right words will rush from the heart to the lips, and the man, full of the Spirit of God because he cares for nothing but the will of God, will trample on the evil thing in love, and be sent, it may be, in a chariot of fire to the presence of his Father, or stand unmoved amid the cruel mockings of the men he loves.

G. MACDONALD.

December 21

Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.--ISA. xl. 28, 29.

Workman of God! oh, lose not heart, But learn what God is like; And in the darkest battle-field Thou shall know where to strike.