

About the Book

Thoughts for every day of the year, by J. R. Miller, that are both challenging and helpful. Some readers may prefer to ignore the days, and read several days at a time, or perhaps select a thought to form the basis of a talk or magazine article. There is something here for everyone who wants to grow in the Christian life, and know the inner peace that only God can bring to their soul. Miller is aware of just how we often struggle to live out our faith and find God's calling in our lives, and he shares his insight and long experience in the ministry. Readers can start at any time of the year, as the thought for each day is a separate unit.

Help For The Day

JR Miller

(1840-1912)

First published in the United States of America 1904

This eBook is taken from the 1904 British edition

This White Tree Publishing edition

©White Tree Publishing 2019

eBook ISBN: eBook ISBN: 978-1-912529-29-2

Published by

White Tree Publishing

Bristol

UNITED KINGDOM

More books on www.whitetreepublishing.com

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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this abridged edition.

Scripture quotations from The Authorized (King James) Version. Rights in the Authorized Version are vested in the Crown. Reproduced by permission of the Crown's patentee, Cambridge University Press.

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Book

Author Biography

Publisher's Introduction

1. January

2. February

3. March

4. April

5. May

6. June

7. July

8. August

9. September

10. October

11. November

12. December

More Books from White Tree Publishing

About White Tree Publishing

Christian non-fiction

Christian Fiction

Younger Readers

Author Biography

James Russell Miller was an amazingly prolific Christian author. In addition to having the post of Editorial Superintendent of the Presbyterian Board of Publication, he was the pastor of several Presbyterian churches in Pennsylvania and Illinois during his working life. He was born on March 20, 1840 near Frankfort Springs, Pennsylvania. His parents had a total of ten children, but his older sister died before he was born. When James was about fourteen years old, his father moved to a farm near Calcutta, Ohio. In the new home James was as popular among his schoolmates as he had been in his Pennsylvania home.

We can see when reading about James Miller's early family life, how it is that he was able to write with great understanding and sympathy about the needs of individual Christians. His biographer, John T. Faris, (The Life of Dr. J. R. Miller: Jesus and I Are Friends 1912) tells us that, "The young people of the neighbourhood delighted to gather at the Miller [James's parents] fireside to enjoy one of the evenings of good fellowship for which the household was noted."

Faris also tells us that family prayers in Miller's family home, when he was young, were given absolute priority over everything else. There was to be no reading of a single Bible verse and a brief prayer!

Miller married Louise King in 1870. They had three children. He died in the Philadelphia at the age of seventy-two in July 1912, having been used by God to bring a great blessing to many thousands through his various pastorates, and to countless readers through more than thirty Christian periodicals, and through the sale of more than two million books in his lifetime.

White Tree Publishing has plans to publish eBooks editions of more of Miller's books in 2019. Please see our website for updates.

White Tree Publishing Introduction

This book of helpful and challenging thoughts for living a fulfilled Christian life was assembled from a range of Miller's books, and the sections were not originally written to be read in isolation. We have sometimes tracked down the original quotations, and included more of them in order to make some points clearer.

Some words have been updated where they have either fallen out of use today, or changed their meaning. In all his books, Russell uses the name Christ far more often than he uses that of Jesus. Readers nowadays generally prefer to think of God's Son as Jesus rather than by the more formal title of Christ, which means the Messiah or Anointed One. While sometimes keeping the name Christ in this book, we have frequently made changes to that of Jesus, helping to make God's Son more personal and immediate to us today. Russell's teaching and doctrine are unchanged.

This eBook is taken from the original British printing of 1904. At the end are brief details of our other Christian books, both non-fiction, fiction and books for younger readers. Fuller details of these books are on our website:

www.whitetreepublishing.com

As always with our Christian non-fiction books, we have inserted references to Bible quotes in brackets where these are missing in the original. It may be that many older authors believed they were writing to readers who were so familiar with the Bible that references were unnecessary, but we believe it is important for all readers to be able to check the words and context in their own Bibles.

January

January 1

God-Given Strength

We have no power in ourselves to do the will of Jesus Christ, but, as we begin to obey, the needed grace is given. Young people often say that they are afraid to enter upon a Christian life because they cannot do what will be required. It would be as easy for them to climb to the stars as, unaided, to live a fine and beautiful Christian life.

Human strength in itself is inadequate to life's sore needs. But the young Christian who sets out in obedience to Jesus, depending upon Him to open the path of duty, will never fail to receive needed help at the moment of need.

Older Christians also often shrink from duties because they have not the ability to perform them. But for them, and for all who attempt any work or service in obedience to Jesus, it is true that the effort to obey will always bring with it the strength to obey.

January 2

Realised Longings

Continued longing after God's blessings lifts us up into the blessings. The heavenly ideal ever kept before the mind, and longed after with intensity of desire, carves itself in the soul. Every true Christian longing should at once become an impulse in the soul. The hand should instantly be reached out to paint or carve the beauty of which the heart dreams, and for which it longs.

Our longings should lead us into all paths of Christian service and all fearless duty. Mere gazing heavenward after the ascending Jesus, and waiting and watching for His return, is not the way to realise the blessed glory. There is work to do to prepare for His coming, and He will come with greatest joy to those who do most to advance His kingdom.

January 3

Jesus in the Home

Did you ever think what a wondrous blessing it is to a home when the salvation of Jesus comes to it? Think what a dark and sad place a godless home is, with no prayer, no recognition of God's love and mercy, no shelter, no comfort in sorrow, no hope in death. Then think what Jesus brings when He is admitted.

Peace comes with Him, for sin is pardoned. God's love builds a shelter over the home, for they are His children who dwell there now. There is communication direct from heaven, a ladder running up, with angels upon it and God above it. There is comfort in sorrow, help in trial, strength in weakness, and hope in dying.

January 4

Our First Duty

The great lighthouse pours beams far out to sea, but it does not lighten the space round its base. Some people send brightness far away, working overseas and doing deeds which benefit the world, while they fail to brighten their own homes and the lives close beside them.

We ought not to be such lights as these. While we send our influence abroad as much as possible, we should live so that we are blessings to those who are nearest to us.

January 5

Our True Place

God makes no mistakes in planting people in this world. He does not put any of us in a spiritual climate in which we cannot grow into beauty and strength. Wherever He plants us, He sends the streams of grace to refresh us. So, whatever our circumstances may be, it is possible for us to live a godly life.

The darker the night of sin about us, the clearer and steadier should be the light that streams from our life and conduct. Anyone should be able to live well in the midst of friendly influences and favouring circumstances, but it is doubly important that we be loyal and true to Jesus when surrounded by those who care not for Him.

January 6

Christ-likeness

Every true Christian life is beautiful, so far as it fairly and truly represents Jesus. Anything in our faith that is not beautiful is not a just or adequate expression of the Divine thought. Holiness of character is simply the reproduction in human life of the likeness of Jesus, and any feature that is not lovely and winning is not truly Christ-like, and hence misrepresents Jesus. It is not the Christian faith itself that is unlovely in such cases, but the human interpretation of it in disposition and conduct.

January 7

Daily Ministries

When Jesus was on the earth as a man, some women left their homes and went with Him, ministering to Him. It is probable that they made garments for Him, prepared food for His meals, and did every little personal kindness they could. That was a very sweet privilege.

No doubt, if He were here now, many young girls and women would do the same. He is not here in human form, but He has told us that if we do these same kindnesses even to the least and lowliest of His friends who are in need, it is the same as if we did them to Himself. So it is not hard to be a handmaid of Jesus.

January 8

Songs of Faith

We should seek to have our life so trained, so disciplined, that no sudden change of circumstances shall ever stop its music, so that if we are carried out of our summer of joy today into a winter of grief tomorrow, the song shall still go on ― the song of faith, love, peace.

St. Paul had learned this when he could say, "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therein to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know also how to abound" (Philippians 4:11). Circumstances did not affect him, for the source of his peace and joy was in Jesus.

January 9

The Use of Sickness

The furnace fires of sickness burn off many a bond of sin and worldliness. Many now in heaven will thank God for ever for the ill health in this life which kept them from sin. We may be sure that God never calls any of His children into the sickroom without a purpose of blessing.

There is some lesson He wants to teach us, some new glimpse of His love He wants to show us, some beauty in us He wants to bring out. Sickrooms should always be to us sacred places, as we remember that God has summoned us there for some special work upon our souls.

January 10

God's Messengers

The things which we call trials and adversities are really God's messengers, though they seem terrible to us. If we will only quieten our hearts and wait, we shall find that they are messengers from heaven, and that they have brought blessings to us from God.

They have come to tell us of some new joy that is to be granted, some spiritual joy, perhaps to be born of earthly sorrow, some strange and sweet surprise of love that is waiting for us. We want to learn to trust God so perfectly that no messenger He ever sends shall alarm us.

January 11

Heart Purity

It is an evil world in which we live; but if we faithfully follow Jesus, doing His will, keeping our hearts open to every influence of the Holy Spirit, we shall be kept by His power from the corruption that flows about us. As the lily remains pure and unstained amid the soiled waters of the marsh in which it grows, so does the lowly, loving, patient heart of the Christian disciple remain pure in the midst of all this world's corruption.

Over such a heart God's face beams in perpetual blessing. The vision on earth, of course, is never full and clear, but it grows brighter and brighter as the believer walks ever toward the morning, and at last it will be unclouded and full in the perfect day of heaven.

January 12

True Repentance

Repentance is not merely a little twinge of remorse over some wrong thing. It is not simply a gush of tears at the recollection of some wickedness. It is not mere shame at being found out in some meanness, or uncleanness, or dishonesty. It is the revolution of the whole life.

Sins wept over must be forsaken for ever. Repentance is a change of heart, a turning of the face just the other way. It is well for us to make diligent quest, to be sure that we always abandon the wrongdoing which we deplore, that we quit the evil course which we regret, that we turn away from the sin which we confess.

January 13

Self-Help

It is God's gift to us, this burden of ours, and to lay it down would be to lay down a blessing. Surely it is a wiser love that puts new strength into your heart and arm, so that you can go on with your hard duty, your heavy responsibility, your weight of care, without fainting, than would be the love which should take all the load away and leave you free from any burden.

God's purpose always is to make something of us, to bring out the best that is in us. Hence He does not clear the forest for us, but puts the axe into our own hands, and bids us to cut it down for ourselves. And while we prepare the ground for cultivation, we grow healthy and strong ourselves through the toil. He does not drive out the enemies for us. He puts the sword into our own hands, and sends us to drive them out. The struggle does us good. The wrestling makes us strong.

January 14

Uses of Adversity

Tears are lenses through which our dim eyes see more deeply into heaven, and look more fully upon God's face than in any other way. Sorrows cleanse our hearts of earthliness, and feed our lives. The days of pain really do far more for us than the days of rejoicing. We grow best when clouds hang over us, because clouds bear rain, and rain refreshes.

Then God's comfort is such a rich experience that it is well worthwhile to endure trial, just to enjoy the sweet and precious comfort which God gives in it. But to receive from our sorrows their possibilities of blessing, we must accept the affliction as a messenger from God, and pray for true comfort ― not the mere drying of our tears, but grace to profit by our affliction, and get from it the peaceable fruit of righteousness.

January 15

Seeing Truly

We do not begin to realise the blessedness and glory of being a Christian. There is a picture which, seen in one light, shows a poor weary pilgrim lying on a miserable pallet in a dreary garret; but, seen in another light, the same picture shows a saint of God, an heir of glory, arrayed in white robes, surrounded and carried up by angels to heavenly glory. The first view is that which human eyes see in the Christian; the other is the reality ― that which Heaven sees.

January 16

Heart Religion

The music of splendid choirs, and the repetition of creeds and prayers, do not make worship. Worship is heart adoration, and the only true homage that rises from an assembly, or from a private room where one bows alone, is just the love and praise and prayer and devotion of hearts ascending in the words of human lips.

No mere forms of worship are acceptable. The form must be breathed full of love and life. No offerings or gifts are effective in worship unless they are the expression of holy affections. The teaching is not that we are not to use forms of worship, for some cannot well worship without forms. The plainest ritual and the tamest ceremonial will be pleasing to God, if heart's love fill them. But the most magnificent ritual will be empty of real worship, and will be an abomination to God if there be no true worship of the spirit there. All depends upon what we put into it.

January 17

Jesus Christ's Delays

Jesus never comes too late, never waits too long. It certainly seemed that He had tarried too long in the case of Jairus' daughter, but when we see how it all came out we are sure that He made no mistake. True, the child died while He lingered, but this only gave Him an opportunity for a greater miracle. He waited that He might do a more glorious work.

There is always some good reason for it when Jesus delays to answer our prayers or come to our help. He waits that He may do far more for us in the end. So we have one more lesson on allowing our Lord to have His own way with us, even in answering our prayers. He knows best when to answer, and what answer to give.

January 18

Angels Unawares

Jesus began His ministry of blessing to a woman by asking a simple favour of her. "Give Me to drink" (John 4:6-29). Thus He continually stands before us in some disguise, asking some service. He Himself has told us that in the least of His little ones who appeal to us for bread in their hunger, or relief in their distress, He Himself comes, and that what we do for these we do for Him.

So we never know when it is Jesus who stands before us in some pleading or needy one, with a timid request for help. We should be careful how we treat the lowliest, lest some day we deny a cup of water to the blessed, glorious Lord.

January 19

Communion

The service of Communion may be compared to telephone wires through which words are all the while passing. You may climb up and put your ear to the wire, or hold it in your hand, but you will not hear a word of all the important communications that are flashing through it. But let an operator come with his instrument and attach it, and he hears every word. So in the Communion we touch the invisible wires that bind heaven and earth together.

Along these wires messages are flying ― up from earth to heaven ― prayers, praises, heart-cries, faith-filled desires. Down from heaven to earth come answers of comfort, cheer, joy, help, blessings of pardon, healing, life, peace. But many know nothing of all this ― no flash of healing, new life, joy, or help comes to them. They are close, but have no faith attachment.

January 20

God's Finished Work

It would not be hard to take an angel and train him into a glorious messenger; but to take such a man as Simon Peter, or as Saul, or as John Newton, or as John Bunyan, and make out of him a holy saint or a mighty apostle ― that is the test of power. Yet that is what Jesus did, and has been doing ever since.

He takes the poorest stuff ― despised, and worthless, outcast of men ofttimes ― and when He has finished His gracious work we behold a saint whiter than snow. The sculptor beheld an angel in the rough, blackened stone, rejected and thrown away; and when men saw the stone again, lo, there was the angel cut from the block. Jesus can take us, rough and unpolished as we are, and in His hands our lives shall grow into purity and loveliness, until He presents us at last before the throne, faultless and perfect.

January 21

Dangerous Gifts

This life is so full of peril that even its best things may become stumbling blocks. Our very qualities of strength may become fatal forces, driving us to ruin. Human beauty is a memento of unfallen life, and yet beauty has proved a snare to many a woman, drawing her away from God.

Power to make money is a perilous gift, which has led many a man to spiritual ruin. The appetites, desires, and affections are part of the glory of humanity, and yet, unbridled, they have whirled many a life to destruction. These are illustrations of our Lord's meaning when He speaks of cutting off the hand or the foot which causes us to stumble. (Matthew 18:8.)

January 22

Short-Sighted Judging

A great deal of our judging of others is misjudging, or unjust judging, because we do not know all the facts in their personal lives. It would ofttimes grieve us and make us sorely ashamed of ourselves, if, when we have judged another severely, we should be shown a glimpse of their inner life, revealing hidden sorrows and struggles which are the cause of the things in them we have blamed so much.

January 23

The Healing Touch

The picture of the people thronging about Jesus, pressing upon Him, each one eagerly struggling to touch Him, is very graphic and vivid. A touch was enough ― all that touched Him were made whole. Life and health flowed into the diseased bodies when the trembling fingers came in contact with the Healer, even with His garments.

So a touch is enough always. Anyone who really touches Jesus is healed in some way, but we must be sure to touch Him. It is not enough to be in the crowd that gathers about Him. Only those are healed whose faith truly brings them in contact with Him. Someone sitting or bowing next to us may receive a great blessing, while we receive none at all. It is because that person reaches out their hand of faith and touches Jesus, while we, as close to Jesus as they are, do not put out our hand to touch Him, and therefore receive no blessing.

January 24

Daily Grace

Many people dread death, and fear that they can never meet it with triumph. But God does not give grace for victorious dying when one's duty is to live. He gives them grace for living, grace for honesty, grace for faithfulness, grace for heroism in life's battle; then, when death comes, when life's work is finished, and the hour comes for the departure, He will give dying grace.

January 25

Strong Through Trial

Sometimes God wants us to be tried, because we can grow strong only through victory. We have a word of Scripture which says, "Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life" (James 1:12). Yet we ought never ourselves to seek any way of life in which we shall have to be exposed to the peril of conflict with sin.

Temptation is too terrible an experience, fraught with too much danger to be sought by us, or ever encountered, save when God leads us in the path on which it lies. We must never rush unbidden or unsent into any spiritual danger. There are no promises for presumption. "It is written," said the Master, "thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God" (Luke 4:12). When God sends us into danger, we are under His protection. When we go where He does not send us, we go unsheltered.

January 26

The Loss of Friendship

It is a sacred thing to take a new friend into our life. We accept a solemn responsibility when we do so. We do not know what burdens we may be engaging to carry, what sacrifices we may unconsciously be pledging ourselves to make, what sorrows may come to us through the one to whom we are giving our heart's love. We should choose our friends, therefore, thoughtfully, wisely, prayerfully; but when we have pledged our love we should be faithful, whatever the cost may be.

January 27

Tactful Help

Nagging is not a means of grace. There is a "more excellent way" ― the way of love. It is better, when we wish to correct faults in others, to be careful to let them see in us, in strong relief, the virtue, the excellence, opposite to the defect we see in them. It is the habit of a certain good man, if one of his family or friends mispronounces a word in his hearing, never pedantically to correct the error, but at some early opportunity to find occasion to use the same word, giving it the correct pronunciation. Something like this is wise in helping others out of their faults of character or conduct.

January 28

The Receptive Heart

There is never any lack of power in Jesus to bless us, and yet we may be near Him and still receive no blessing from Him. He may have come to us eager to impart the rich gifts of strength, comfort, joy, help, wisdom, and yet He may be unable to grant them. We ourselves must be in the condition to receive what He has to give, or the blessing cannot be bestowed.

We can shut up our hearts so close as to keep the mighty Jesus outside. Weak as we are, even His mighty power cannot force any blessing into our lives. There must be willingness on our part to receive. It is because of our unbelief that the power of God is not always present to heal and to bless. Then, whenever we have faith and are willing to receive what Jesus will give, His power will be present to heal, and to pour all manner of rich blessings into our hearts and lives.

January 29

Kindly Judging

If we are quick to perceive blemishes and faults in others, the probability is that we have far greater blemishes and faults in ourselves. This truth ought to make us exceedingly careful in our judgments, and exceedingly modest in our expressions of censure, for we are really telling the world our own faults. It is wiser, as well as more in accordance with the spirit of Jesus, for us to find lovely things in others, and to be silent regarding their faults.

January 30

Unsatisfied Lives

There is said to be a strange plant in South America which finds a moist place, and sends its roots down and becomes green for a little while, until the place becomes dry. Then it draws itself out and rolls itself up and is blown along by the wind until it comes to another moist place, where it repeats the same process.

On and on the plant goes, stopping wherever it finds a little water, until the spot is dry. Then in the end, after all its wanderings, it is nothing but a bundle of dry roots and leaves. It is the same with those who drink only of this world's springs. They drink and thirst again, and go from spring to spring, blown by the winds of passion and desire, and at last their souls are nothing but bundles of unsatisfied desires and burning thirsts. We must find something better than this, or perish for ever.

January 31

Influence on Others

There is a blessed influence in this thought: that we are working by the side of God in what He is doing on immortal lives. Are we worthy to do it? A sculptor, speaking of a block of marble and the possibilities of beauty that lay in it waiting to be brought out, said that the stone assumed a sacred character, and that no man should dare touch it unless he felt within himself a consecration and priesthood.

If this be true when it is only a block of marble that is to be wrought upon, how much more is it true of a human soul ― a child's life, for example, laid in a mother's arms; any life laid in your hands or mine ― that we may free the child of God that waits within it! It is a most sacred moment when a life is put before us to be touched by us.

February

February 1

Expectant Prayer

"Knock, and it shall be opened unto you" (Matthew 7:7). It is not to all knocking that God opens the door. There are timid knocks that indicate neither desire nor faith, as when mischievous children ring a doorbell and then run away, not wanting to enter. It is when we knock at the right door, and knock with expectancy and faith and pleading, that the door is graciously opened. Thus, in interpreting this wonderful prayer-promise, we must read into the words their true meaning. The asking, seeking, and knocking must be true prayer.

February 2

Jesus Shares in Our Happiness

Christ's ministry opened at the wedding in Cana in Galilee amid scenes of human happiness. We need to learn that Jesus is not merely a friend for our sorrow hours, but also for our times of joy. We do not think enough of this. We regard the Christian faith too much "as a lamp burning dimly in a sepulchre," and not as a sun shining amid the brightness and the radiance of the fairest day.

No doubt it is when trouble comes that Jesus seems most precious to us, but He is a Friend for our gladness as well. We should not lose the lesson from the Cana wedding. Our Lord does not frown upon pure, innocent pleasures. Mirth is a duty in its place as truly as prayer. We need not be afraid to invite Jesus to our social enjoyments. Indeed, if we cannot invite Him, something must be wrong with the pleasures themselves.

February 3

Home First

The old proverb has it, "The shoemaker's wife is always the worst shod." Often it is the preacher's or the teacher's own home that gets the least benefit and blessing from their messages of love, or from their Christian life and influence. Surely the dearest in the world to you are home's precious ones. Go first to them, therefore, if any of them are unsaved, and try to bring them to your Saviour, that they may find what you have found.

Of course you will not stop with home. Let the circle widen until your influence reaches as widely as possible. But do not overlook home and those nearest and dearest to you while you stretch out your hands toward those who do not know Jesus in distant lands, or even reach over the fence to save a neighbour next door. That is a mistake some Christians make.

February 4

Our Will and God's

There are few entirely unbroken lives in this world. There are few people who fulfil their own hopes and plans without thwarting or interruption at some point. Now and then there is someone who in early youth marks out a course for themselves, and then moves straight on in it to its goal. But most people live very differently from their own early dreaming.

Many find at the close of their life that in scarcely one particular have they realised their own life-dreams. At every point God has simply set aside their plans and substituted His own. There are some lives whose plans are so completely thwarted that their story is most dismal as we read it; yet we have but to follow it through to the end to see that the broken life was better and more effective than if its own plans had been carried out.

February 5

Hindering Jesus

The Lord is always coming to us, or is always ready to come to us if the way is open for Him. Yet, no doubt we are continually losing heavenly visitations because the road is blocked up. If we would receive the visitations, we must keep the way always open. Sins clung to, unconfessed, unrepented of, unforsaken, block up the path, and Jesus cannot come to us until we get them out of the way.

February 6

Mirrors of Jesus

Each one of us who knows the love of Jesus is ordained to be Jesus to others; that is, to show to them the spirit of Jesus, the patience, gentleness, thoughtfulness, love, and yearning of Jesus. We are taught to say, "Christ liveth in me" (Galatians 2:20). If this be true, Jesus loves others through us, and our touch must be to others as the very touch of Jesus Himself.

Every Christian ought to be, in their human measure, a new incarnation of the Jesus, so that people say, "He or she interprets Jesus to me. They comfort me in my sorrow as Jesus Himself would do if He were to come and sit down beside me, and is helpful and patient as Jesus would be if He were to return and take me as His disciple."

February 7

Healing Sympathy

It is a great comfort to know that even if we do not experience healing of our bodily illnesses, we are sure at least that our Lord is not indifferent to these distresses, that He designs to use them for our spiritual benefit. That He is ready to give us the grace we need to endure them patiently and submissively, and that He is ready to heal us when His wise purpose in these afflictions has been accomplished.

So we may be sure always of the sympathy, love and help of Jesus in all our sickness. He sits constantly in every Christian sickroom, and where faith is strong and clear He gives great comfort and peace. When He was on earth He did not go very often to the places of festivity, but whenever there was anyone sick in their home He was sure to go there. Sickness and pain draw Him to us, and whenever He comes He brings blessings.

February 8

Blessed Humility

Humility is the key that opens the gate of prayer, while to the loud knocking of pride there comes no answer. The proud Pharisee in his prayer found no blessing, but the lowly publican went away with heart and hand full of heaven's divinest gifts. (Luke 18:9-14.)

Pride is the cold mountain peak, sterile and bleak. Humility is the quiet vale, fertile and abounding in life, where peace dwells. The kingdom of heaven belongs to those who are lowly. They may wear no earthly crown, but a crown of glory, unseen by others, rests even here upon their heads.

February 9

Make Haste Slowly

All life lessons are learned slowly. It is the work of years to train our wayward wills into uncomplaining submissiveness; our hard, proud, selfish hearts into soft, gentle thoughts; and our harsh, chattering tongues into sweet, quiet speech.

The natural process of spiritual growth is first the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear. These developments require time. We cannot have blade, ear, and full corn ― bud, blossom, and ripened fruit ― all in one day. We must be content to learn slowly the great lessons of life.

February 10

Music or Discord

God wants all our lives to be songs. He gives us the words in the duties and the experiences of our lives which come to us day by day, and it is our part to set them to music in our obedience and submission. It makes a great deal of difference in music how the notes are arranged on the staff.

To sow the notes along the lines and spaces without order would make only bars of sad discord. They must be put upon the staff according to the rules and principles of harmony, and then they make sweet music. It is easy to set the notes of life on the staff so that they yield only jarring discord. Many people do this, and the result is discontent, unhappiness, distrust, worry, for themselves; and, in their relation to others, bitterness, strife, wrangling.

February11

Quiet Hearts

There is a wonderful secret of endurance in submission, in simply accepting things which we cannot change and not fretting over them ― in taking cheerfully what must be taken, and in making the best of unpleasant conditions in which we must stay for the time. This submission takes out of circumstances the bitterness, the hardness, the power to hurt us, and makes them serve us and do us good.

February 12

Sweet Out of Bitter

St. Paul had "a thorn in the flesh." (2 Corinthians 12:7-9.) Our "thorn" may either be a blessing to us, or it may do us irreparable harm ― which, depends upon ourselves. If we allow it to fret us; if we chafe, resist, and complain; if we lose faith and lose heart, it will spoil our life. But if we accept it in the faith that, in its ugly burden, it has a blessing for us; if we endure it patiently, submissively, without complaining; if we seek grace to keep our heart gentle and true amid all the trial, temptation, and suffering it causes, it will work good, and out of its bitterness will come sweet fruit.

The responsibility is ours, and we should so relate ourselves to our "thorn" and to Jesus that growth and good, not harm and injury, come to us from it. Such weakness is blessed only if we get the victory over it through faith in Jesus.

February 13

Reflecting Jesus

If we have the true Spirit of Christ in our hearts, it will work out in Christ-like ministry; it will lead to the brightening of one little spot at least on this big earth. There are a few people whom God calls to do great things for Him; but the best thing most of us can do in this world is just to live out a real, simple, consecrated, Christian life in our allotted place.

Thus, in our little measure, we shall repeat the life of Jesus Himself, showing others some feeble reflection of His sweet and loving face, and doing in our poor way a few of the beautiful things He would do if He were here Himself.

February 14

The Trustful Habit

The noblest life possible in this world is simple consecration to Jesus and to duty, with no anxiety about anything else. We may not always be fed luxuriously, or be clothed in scarlet and fine linen; yet food convenient for us will always be provided, and raiment sufficient to keep us warm.

But suppose we are near starving! Well, we must just go on doing our part, and not worrying. In due time, somehow, God will provide. We have our Lord's own promise of this. The truth is, too many of us take a great deal more thought about our support than about our duty. Then, of course, we forfeit the promise, and may suffer. How much better the other way ― ours the doing, God's the providing.

February 15

Love's Ministry

There is need everywhere for love's ministry. The world today needs nothing more than the true likeness of Jesus in those who bear His name and represent Him. Jesus went about doing good. He sought to put hope and cheer into all He met. If Jesus be in us, we should strive to perpetuate this Jesus-ministry of love in this world.

Hearts are breaking with sorrow, people are bowing under burdens too heavy for them. Duty is too large, the battles are too hard. It is our mission, if Jesus be in us, to do for these weary, overwrought, defeated, and despairing ones what Jesus Himself would do if He were standing where we stand.

He wants us to represent Him, and He fills us with His Spirit so that we may be able to scatter the blessings of helpfulness and gladness all about us. Yet one of the saddest things about life is that with so much power to help others by kindliness of word and kindliness of act, many of us pass through the world in silence or with folded hands.

February 16

Each Worker Needed

We are always the only one Jesus has at the particular place at which we stand. There may be thousands of other lives about us. We may be only one of a great company, of a large congregation, of a populous community. Yet each one of us has a life that is alone in its responsibility, in its danger, in its mission and duty.

There may be a hundred others close beside me, but not one of them can take my place, or do my duty, or fulfil my mission, or bear my responsibility. Though every one of the other hundred do His work, and do it perfectly, my work waits for me, and if I do it not, it will never be done.

February 17

In Jesus Christ's Strength

When we are strong, or deem ourselves strong, we are really weak, since then we trust in ourselves and do not seek God's help. But when we are consciously weak, knowing ourselves unequal to our duties and struggles, we are strong, because then we turn to God and get His strength.

Too many people think their weakness a barrier to their usefulness, or make it an excuse for doing little with their life. Instead of this, however, if we give it to Jesus He will transform it into strength. He says His strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9); that is, what is wanting in human strength, He fills and makes up with Divine. St. Paul had learned this when he said he gloried now in his weaknesses, because on account of them the strength of Jesus rested upon him, so that when he was weak then he was strong.

February 18

The Final Verdict

Life is measured by its final and permanent results. A person's true effectiveness must be rated not by the place they occupy before the public, and the frequency and loudness of their utterances, but by the benefits and blessings they leave behind in other lives. It will be seen, when Jesus returns, that those who have wrought silently, and without clamour or fame, have in many cases achieved the most glorious, permanent results.

February 19

Daily Duty

There is only one way of having all our day's work done when the day closes: we must do promptly and faithfully each hour's duty in its own hour. God does not give us our work in one great heap, but in little portions, just large enough to be taken up and wrought with the strength we have. While duty covers every moment of all our years, each moment has its own little section of duty, and we have only to do that.

February 20

Hidden Glories

If we had eyes to see the glory of the Lord in the day by day of God's Providence, we should find light and comfort a thousand times where now we walk in darkness with sorrow, uncomforted. The glory of the Lord is everywhere. It shines in the lowliest flower, in the commonest blade of grass, in every drop of dew, in every snowflake. It burns in every bush and tree. It lives in every sunbeam, in every passing cloud. It flows around us in the goodness of each bright day, in the shelter and protection of every dark night. Yet how few of us see this glory. We walk amid the Lord's splendours, and see ofttimes nothing of the brightness.

We cry out for visions of God, when, if our eyes were opened, we should see God's face mirrored in all about us. There is a legend of a woman who travelled many years and over many lands, seeking God but seeking in vain. Then, returning home, and taking up her daily duties, God appeared to her in these, showing her that He was ever close to her.

February 21

Self-Surrender

If we cannot do the beautiful things we see others doing for Jesus, and which we long to do, we can at least do some lowly work for Him. We shall learn, too, that self-surrender to God, though our heart's fondest hope is laid down, is in God's sight really the most beautiful thing we can do with our life.

We shall also learn that the hands that can do no great thing for God may yet become hands of blessing in the world. If we are truly fellow workers with God, He can use whatever we have that we really surrender to Him. And ofttimes He can do more with our failures than with our successes.

February 22

Lest We Offend

We should keep watch over our words and deeds, not only in their intent and purpose, but also in their possible influence over others. There may be liberties which in us lead to no danger, but which to others with less stable character and less helpful environments would be full of peril. It is part of our duty to think of these weaker ones and of the influence of our example upon them.

We may not do anything in our strength and security which might possibly harm others. We must be willing to sacrifice our liberty if by its exercise we endanger another's soul. This is the teaching of St. Paul in the words, "It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor to do anything whereby thy brother stumbleth"; and "If meat maketh my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend" (Romans 14).

February 23

Our True Calling

The highest place to which anyone can attain in life is that for which they were designed and made. The greatest thing anyone can do in this world is what God created them to do, whether it be to rule a kingdom, to write a nation's songs, or to keep a little home clean and tidy. The true problem of life is not to "get on," or to "get up" as people phrase it, not to be great or to do great things, but to be just what God meant us to be. If we fail in this, though we win a place far more conspicuous, our life is a failure.

February 24

Words!

Quietness is carried too far when it makes us disloyal to the hearts that crave our words of love and sympathy. But there is a quietness toward others which all should cultivate. There are many words spoken which ought never to pass the door of the lips. There are people who seem to exercise no restraint whatever on their speech. They allow every passing thought to take form in words. They never think what the effect of their words will be ― how they will fly like arrows shot by some careless marksman, and pierce hearts they were never meant to hurt.

Thus friendships are broken and injuries are inflicted which can never be repaired. Careless words are forever making grief and sorrow in tender spirits. We pity those without the ability of speech whom we sometimes meet. That is more blessed by far than speech, if all we can do with our marvellous gift is to utter bitter, angry, abusive, or sharp, cutting words.

February 25

The Riches of God

God never gives all He has to give. The time never comes when He has nothing more to bestow. We never reach the best in His blessings: there is always something better yet to come. Every door that opens into a treasury of love shows another door into another treasury beyond. The unrevealed is ever better than the revealed. We need not fear that we shall ever come to the end of God's goodness, or to any experience for which He will have no blessing ready.

February 26

A Great Musician

It is only the Lord who can take our lives, with all their faults and sins, their broken strings and jangled chords, and bring from them the music of love, joy, and peace. It is related that once Mendelssohn came to see the great Freiburg organ in Saxony. The old custodian, not knowing who his visitor was, refused him permission to play upon the instrument. At length, however, after much persuasion, he granted him leave to play a few notes.

Mendelssohn took his seat, and soon the most wonderful music was breaking forth from the organ. The old man was spellbound. At length he came up beside the great master and asked his name. Learning it, he stood humiliated, self-condemned, saying, "And I refused you permission to play upon this organ!"

The Lord comes to us, and desires to take our life and play upon it. But we withhold ourselves from Him and refuse Him permission, when, if we would but yield ourselves to Him, He would bring from our souls heavenly music.

February 27

Useless Grieving

There are troubles or misfortunes which have already passed. Why should we vex ourselves over these? We cannot help sorrowing when a loved one has been taken from us, but why should we refuse to acquiesce in the will of God? When some misfortune has taken money from us, or when some turn in affairs has hurt our worldly interests, why should we sit down and grieve over the loss?

Worry will not retrieve it, nor give us back the old favourable conditions. It is a great deal more sensible for us to face the fact of our diminished resources, or to accept the new and changed conditions, adjusting ourselves to them, and go right on with our life. He was a wise traveller who, when his horse died, said, "Well, I must walk now," and trudged on with cheerful energy.

February 28

Faith in Action

God can see faith. He can see it in the heart where it is exercised, even before there has been any expression of it in word or act. But here the emphasis lies on the fact that He sees it in act. He is pleased when we show our faith by our works. There are many prayers without words, and God sees them when He does not hear them.

There is in the Bible at least one instance of God forbidding spoken prayer and commanding action instead. At the edge of the Red Sea, He said to Moses, "Wherefore criest thou unto Me? Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward" (Exodus 14:15). So we should learn to put our faith into instant action. There are times when we should stop praying, get up from our knees, and hasten out to duty.

February 29

Transformed Souls

There is no other way in which one's life will so surely and so quickly become transfigured as in the faithful, happy, cheerful doing of everyday tasks. We need to remember that this world is not so much a place for doing things, as for making character.

Household life is not primarily a sphere for good cooking, keeping things tidy, thorough sweeping and dusting, careful nursing and training of children, hospitable entertainment of friends ― and the thousand things that must be done each day. It is a sphere for transforming our souls into radiant beauty. But we must take heed always that we do our tasks, whatever they are, with love. Doing any kind of work unwillingly, fretfully, with complaint and murmuring, hurts the life.

March

March 1

Ready Hearts

The first condition of consecration must always be entire readiness to accept God's will for our life. It is not enough to be willing to do Christian work. There are many people who are quite willing to do certain things in the service of Jesus, but who are not prepared to do anything He might want them to do. God does not send us two classes of providences ― one good and one evil. All are good. Affliction is God's goodness in the seed.

March 2

Surprises of Sorrow

It takes time for a seed to grow and develop into fruitfulness. Many of the best things of our lives come to us first as pain, suffering, earthly loss or disappointment ― black seeds without beauty ― but afterward they grow into the rich fruits of righteousness.

March 3

Secret of Beauty

There is no cherished sin which does not work up from the heart, however deeply it is hidden there, and reveal itself in some way in the face. In like manner, good in the heart works its way up into the face, and prints its own beauty there. Love, in our life, softens the features, and gives them a warmth like the gentle beauty of spring flowers.

Peace in our heart soon gives a quiet calm to the countenance. Many a perturbed, restless face grows placid and reposeful under the influence of inner peace. Purity in the soul shows itself in the upward look and the thoughtful reverence which tells of communion with God. Compassion writes its autograph on brow and cheek. Thus, in a sense, even the physical features share in the transfiguration of the life of faith and holiness.

March 4

Jesus Within

Bodily health is beautiful, mental vigour is beautiful, but heart purity is the charm of all. All spiritual loveliness begins within. So that the beauty of the Lord our God may be on us, that the winning charm of God's loveliness may shine in the features of our life which others can see, we must first have the Divine beauty in us. A holy heart will, in time, transfigure all the life. And the only way to have a holy heart is to have Jesus within.

March 5

One Step at a Time

The law of the Lord's guidance is, "Step by step." One who carries a lantern on a country road at night sees only one step before him. If he takes that step, he carries his lantern forward, and thus makes another step clear. At length he reaches his destination in safety, without once stepping into darkness. The whole way has been made light for him, though only a single step of it at a time.

This illustrates the usual method of God's guidance. His Word is represented as a lamp unto the feet. It is a lamp ― not a blazing sun, nor even a lighthouse, but a plain, common lamp or lantern which one can carry about in the hand. It is a lamp "unto the feet" (Psalm 119:105), not throwing its beams afar, but shining only on the one little bit of road on which the pilgrim's feet are walking.

March 6

Unrevealed Souls

We are both better and worse than others think us to be. The best things in good lives do not flash their beauty before human eyes. None of us can ever show to others all that is worthy in us. There are countless stars in the depths of the sky which no human eye ever sees; so in the depths even of the most commonplace soul there are splendours unrevealed to human gaze.

March 7

Inward Peace

Christian peace is the calm of the heart which is not dependent on any circumstances, and which no circumstances, however full of danger or alarm, can break. Its secret is perfect trust in God. The lesson of peace is one that has to be learned in the school of life. It is not achieved by the changing of life's conditions, so as to hide us away beyond the reach of storm.

Nor is it gained through the deadening of the feelings and sensibilities, so that life's pains and trials will no longer hurt the heart. This would be paying too great a price even for peace. It is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. It comes through the encircling of the life with God's own peace. "The peace of God shall guard your heart and mind in Jesus Christ" (Philippians 4:7).

March 8

The Bright Side

We see always what we are looking for, and if our mind has become trained to look for trouble, difficulty, faults, and all dark and dreary things, we shall find just what we seek. On the other hand it is quite as easy to form the habit of looking always for beauty, for good, for happiness, for gladness, and here too we shall find precisely what we seek.

It has been said that the habit of seeing always the bright side in life is worth a large income. It makes life a great deal brighter. None of us are naturally drawn to a gloomy person who finds everywhere something to complain about, but we are all attracted to one who sees some beauty in everything. Joy is a transfiguring quality. Its secret is a glad heart, for the person who has the songbird in his heart will see a songbird on every bush.

March 9

Sheltering Mercy

Not one of us can ever find a refuge at any door save the door of God's mercy. But here the vilest sinner can find eternal shelter; and not mere cold shelter only, for God's mercy is "tender." We flee for refuge, and find it. Strong walls shut out all pursuing enemies and cover us from all storms. Then, as we begin to rejoice in our security, we learn that we are inside a sweet home, and not merely a secure shelter. Our refuge is in the very heart of God, and no mother's bosom was ever so warm a nest for her own child as is the Lord's mercy for all who find refuge in it.

March 10

Shining Lives

God wants our lives to be bright. He wants them to shine like lamps in the darkness. The world needs nothing so much as light ― not light blazing in the far-off sky, but light pouring out softly, low down, close by, from human lives which have been kindled at the heart of God.

The aim of the gospel of Jesus is to make human lives bright with the brightness of God's own holiness. There is a word in one of St. Paul's letters which puts this truth in the form of an exhortation: "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:2).

A German tale describes a fisherman's log hut which was transformed into an exquisite temple of silver by a lamp which burned within. This is an illustration of what takes place in a human life when the lamp of the Holy Spirit burns within it.

March 11

Essential Greatness

True greatness is in the character, never in the circumstances. Do not be concerned about wearing a crown: make sure that you have a head worthy of wearing a crown. Do not be concerned about the purple: make sure that you have a heart worthy of the purple. Do not be concerned about a throne to sit on: make sure that your life is regal in its own fundamental character ― that others will recognise the King in you, though you toil in the field or the mine, or serve in the lowliest place.

March 12

Daily Grace

One of the first results of grace in the heart is sweeter, kindlier, truer, more helpful living in all of life's ordinary situations. It makes a man a kinder neighbour, a more thoughtful husband, a gentler father. A Christian girl whose faith does not make her a better daughter and a more loving, patient sister, has not rightly learned Jesus.

A wife and mother shows the beauty of holiness not only in her earnestness in prayer and church work, but in her devotion to the interests of her home. Mrs. Prentiss said, "A mother can pray with a sick child on her lap more acceptably than if she left it in order to go and pray by herself."

March 13

Solitude

There are some people who claim that they can pray and commune with God just as well in one place as in another. They do their praying while they walk about and while they do their work. They see no use in going apart to pray. Yet if anyone could pray well in a crowd, or while engaged in work, Jesus could. No doubt He held communion with His Father even in His busiest hours, but this did not meet all the needs and longings of His soul.

Jesus left the crowd, left even His own disciples, and retired into places where no eye but His Father's could see Him, where no human footfall or voice could interrupt the quiet of His soul. Surely, if Jesus required such conditions in praying, we do too. "Enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray" (Matthew 6:6).

March 14

Sanctifying Common Things

The servants at the wedding carried only common water from the spring at Cana in Galilee, but with Jesus' blessing the water became good wine. So it always is when we do what Jesus bids us to do ― our most mundane work leaves heavenly results. No labour is in vain which is wrought in the Lord.

Our commonest work among life's trivialities, in business, in the household, which seems only like the carrying of water to be emptied out again, is transformed into radiant service, and leaves glorious results behind. The simplest things we do at Christ's bidding, may become immortal blessings to other souls or to our own.

March 15

The Consoling Angel

There is a picture of a woman seated on rocks, looking out upon a wild sea, down into which the treasures of her heart have gone. Her face is stony with hopeless, despairing grief. Almost touching the black robe of the mourner, hovering over her shoulder, is the shadowy form of an angel softly touching the strings of a harp. But she is unaware of the angel's nearness.

She bows in dumb unconsciousness, with breaking heart and unsoothed sorrow, while the heavenly consolation is so close. Thus many of God's children sit in darkness, crushed by their sorrows, yearning for comfort and for an assurance of the Lord's love and sympathy ― hearing no soft music, no whisper of consolation, while close beside them the Master Himself stands unperceived, and heaven's sweetest songs float unheard in the very air they breathe.

March 16

Broken Bonds

The aged Simeon's "lettest" means "set free" (Luke 2:29). "Set Thy servant free to depart," implying that what we call life is like the imprisoning of the eagle; and what we call death, after someone has seen Jesus, is blessed and glorious release. What a beautiful thought of dying!

On the gravestone of a little child are the words, "Out of the darkness into the marvellous light!" All we need, then, is truly to see Jesus before we die. When He has lifted away the curse of sin, and put His own holy life into our souls, we are already in the portal of heaven while in this world. Dying will be but entering in, to behold Jesus face to face for ever.

March 17

Fruits of Pain

Many of God's noblest servants have carried "thorns" in their flesh all their days, but meanwhile they had spiritual blessings and enrichment which they never would have had if their cries for relief had been granted. We do not know what we owe to the suffering of those who have gone before us. Prosperity has not enriched the world as adversity has done.

The best thoughts, the richest life lessons, the sweetest songs that have come down to us from the past, have not come from lives that have known no hardship, no difficulty ― but are the fruit of pain, of weakness, of trial.

People have cried out for release from the bondage of hardship, of sickness, of infirmity, of self-denying necessity, not knowing that the thing which seemed to be hindering them in their life was the very making of whatever was noble, beautiful, and blessed in their life.

March 18

Don't Worry

When you are inclined to worry ― don't do it! That is the first thing. No matter how much reason there seems to be for worrying, still, there is your rule. Do not break it; don't worry. Matters may be greatly tangled, so tangled that you cannot see how they ever can be straightened out. Still, don't worry. Troubles may be very real and very sore, and there may not seem a rift in the clouds; nevertheless, don't worry. Instead, bring it to the Lord, and then trust Him.

March 19

The Reward of Service

Jesus takes into His confidence those who serve Him. Those who do Christ's will know of His teaching and see His ways of working. If we would see Christ's power and glory, we must enter heartily into His service. Ofttimes it is in the lowliest ways, and in the paths of humble, self-denying service, that the most of His glory appears.

The ruler in Cana did not know from where the wine came. People do not know from where the blessings come which glide so softly into their hearts. Many a troubled Christian kneels in prayer in great fear, and rises with new, rich joy in their heart, yet knowing not where the strange sweet blessing came from.

We drink the cups which God fills for us with heavenly sweetness. We receive the gifts which are brought down to us from the very throne, and yet often we do not know from where these things come, nor recognise the Lord's presence that works so close beside us.

March 20

The Comforter

There are two classes always of the broken-hearted. There are those whose hearts are broken because of sin, and there are those who are crushed by affliction. Both these classes came to Jesus. Sinners came, and found in Him not a stern, censorious Judge, but a tender, compassionate Saviour. The afflicted came, and found true comfort.

He loved all people and sympathised with them, and was able to help them. Then He also brought deliverance to sin's captives, breaking their chains. He opened blind eyes ― not only the natural eyes, to see the beautiful things of this world, but also the eyes of the spirit, to behold the things of heaven and everlasting life.

Then He lifted the yoke of the crushed or oppressed, inviting all the weary to Himself to find rest to their souls. Thus His whole life was simply the filling up of this outline plan.

March 21

Gleams in Darkness

Even in those who fail and fall in defeat, and whose lives are little but shame and sin, there are yet gleams of beauty, like shattered fragments of a once noble ideal. We do not know what strivings, what penitences, what efforts to do better, what tears of sorrow, what hungerings after God and home there are in the heart even of the wicked, in whom the world, even nearest friends, see nothing beautiful. No doubt, in every life there is good which human eyes cannot see.

March 22

Peaceful Ways

A great many people think the Christian life is hard and unpleasant, that it is a rough and steep road; but truly it is a way of pleasantness and peace. The only really happy people in the world are those who are following Jesus along the way of redemption. They have their share of troubles, disappointments, sorrows, but all the time in the midst of these they have a secret peace of which the world knows nothing.

There are paths in the low valleys, among the great mountains, which are sweet pictures of the Christian's way of peace. High up among the peaks and crags the storms sweep in wild fury, but on these valley paths no breath of tempest ever blows. Flowers bloom and springs of water splash along the wayside, and trees cast their grateful shadow, and bird songs fill the air. Such is Jesus Christ's "way of peace" in this world.

March 23

Present Duty

When we get to heaven we shall find heavenly work to do, but for the present our duty is here, and the believer is the best Christian who does it best. We want a faith, not that will lift us up into a seventh heaven of rapture, making us forget our duties to those about us, but a faith that will bring God down to walk with us on all the hard paths of toil and struggle, and that will lead us out into all sweet ministry of love.

It is the fashion to praise Mary and censure Martha, the sisters of Lazarus. Jesus blamed Martha's worry, but not her service. It is good to sit at the Master's feet. The faith which best pleases Jesus is that which waits most lovingly at His feet to receive blessing and strength, and then goes about, hard-working in all love's duties and obedience.

March 24

The Gathering Time

All earthly life is a time in which to gather. Not a day should pass when we do not lay up something for the future ― some new bit of knowledge; some new lesson of experience; some new word of God to rest upon; some new joy of pure friendship to warm the heart; some new strength gotten by overcoming; some new meaning of love or beauty. That is the way to grow wise and strong and rich and good and helpful. Old age is the harvest of all the years. A life of summer gathering gives a beautiful, wise, noble, happy, and useful old age.

March 25

Gospel Bearers

Jesus wants to get the gospel of salvation into every home in the world; and the way He wants to do this is through the hearts and hands of those whom He has already saved. If we do not carry the good news, the lost will not receive it at all. It is told of a boy who was converted, and at once he started to walk ― for he was poor and could not buy a ticket on the railroad ― away to a place in the West, more than a thousand miles from his home, to tell his brother about Jesus.

History relates that many of the early Christians were so eager to carry Jesus Christ's gospel everywhere that they even hired themselves out as servants, or sold themselves as slaves, that they might be admitted into the homes of the rich and great among those who did not know Jesus, to live there, and thus have opportunity to tell in those homes of the love of Jesus and of His salvation.

March 26

No Life Too Short

The day is long enough for God's plan. The sun never sets too soon for His purpose. Each little life is long enough for the little part of the world's work allotted to it. This is true even of the infant that lives but an hour, merely coming into this world, smiling its blessing, and flying away. It is true of the child, of the young man or young woman, of the person who dies in the maturity of their powers, with their hands yet full of unfinished tasks.

No one can ever offer as an excuse for an unfulfilled life-work that the time given to them was too short. It is always long enough, if only every moment of it be filled with simple faithfulness.

March 27

True Consecration

We are not put into this world for idle ease, but for earnest work. The people misunderstood the meaning of Christian life who, in olden days, fled away to the deserts and dwelt in huts and caves and lonely cells, far from the noise and strife of the world. And today they misread the Word of God who think to serve Jesus only in prayer and devotion, while they go not out to toil for Him.

There is no such thing as a consecrated life which is not consecrated to service. The way to spiritual health lies in the paths of toil. The reason of so much doubt and discontent in the hearts of Christian people is that so many sit with folded hands, with no occupation but brooding over their own cares. If they would but go out and begin to toil for others, they would forget themselves, and the joy of the Lord would flow into their souls. There is no way to fulfil life's grand meaning, and to enter at last into fullest joy, but by living lives of devotion to duty.

March 28

Hampered Lives

Secret discipleship is not satisfactory. It does not get the hearty approval of one's own conscience. It does not bring full, rich peace to the heart. It yields but a crippled and hampered Christian life at best. If we love Jesus, we should come out boldly and confess Him at a time when our confession will honour Him and bring blessing to ourselves. We have a glorious promise that those who confess Him here, He will confess at the Day of Judgment before angels and men.

March 29

Good Influences

Good and true character always has its influence. Good companionship has blessing, and blessing for a life. There have been mere chance meetings, just for a moment, as when ships speak at sea, and pass each on its course, which yet have left blessings whose influence shall never perish. There was an old legend about the origin of the pearl. It was said that a star dropped out of the sky into the sea, and being folded in a shell became a pearl.

So it is with the influence of good lives. Words, thoughts, songs, kindly deeds, the power of example, the inspiration of noble things, drop out of the heaven of pure friendship into the depth of the heart, and, falling, are folded there and become beautiful gems and holy adornments in the life.

March 30

The True Measure of Living

Usefulness is the true measure of living. Our Lord made fruit the test of discipleship. What is fruit? Is it not something which the tree bears to feed men's hunger? In discipleship, then, fruit is something that grows upon our lives which others may take and feed upon. It is anything in us, or that we do, which does good to others. A fruitful Christian life is one, therefore, that is a blessing to others ― that is useful and helpful.

March 31

Forging Chains

It is said that one of the great prisons of a country was built by the prisoners themselves. They dressed the stones and built the walls which afterwards shut them in. The legend is familiar, too, of the man to whom the devil came, ordering a chain of a certain length. Returning at the appointed time, the devil ordered the chain made longer, and then went away. When at last it was finished he came again, and with it bound the poor man who had fastened its links at his command.

So sinners are everywhere building their own prison walls, and with their own hands fashioning the chains to bind them for ever. We need to be on our guard perpetually against little sins of thought, of habit ― mere gossamer threads at first, which will become cables at last if we allow them to be wrapped about our souls.

April

April 1

Divine Beauty

The highest reaches we can attain here are but broken fragments of the full Divine beauty. At the best we can only become dimly transfigured; only faintly does the beauty of the Lord appear in us. The last design made by the great painter, Albert Dürer, was a drawing showing Jesus on His cross. It was all completed, except the face of our Saviour, when the artist was summoned away by death.

At the end of the longest and holiest life we shall have but a part of the picture of Jesus wrought upon our soul. Our best striving shall leave but a fragment of the matchless beauty. The glory of that blessed Face we cannot reproduce. But when we go away from our little fragment of transfiguration, we shall look a moment afterward upon the Divine features, and, seeing Jesus as He is, shall be like Him.

April 2

Jesus' Dark Robe

It seems strange to us that the disciples should ever have been afraid of their own Master. They had been in great distress all through the storm in the lake, because He was not with them. Yet, when He came, they were in terror at sight of Him. It was because they did not know it was Jesus, that His presence so affrighted them. It is often just so with us. We are in some need or danger, and Jesus does not come to us.

We call upon Him, and most earnestly desire His coming. At length He comes; but it is not as we expected, in lovely visage and gentle expression, but in form of terror. It is in some great trial that He comes. We cry out in fear. We do not know it is the Jesus, veiled in the dark robe. We are affrighted at the form that moves over the waters in the dark night, though it is the very love and help from Jesus for which we have been longing and pleading.

April 3

Beautiful Hands

We may go through life and keep our hands white, smooth, unmarked, yet at the end we may find that they have wrought nothing, won nothing. When an army comes home from victorious war, it is not the regiment with the full ranks of unscarred men that the people cheer most loudly, but the regiment with only a remnant of soldiers, and these bearing the marks of many a battle. Hands scarred from conflict with life's enemies are more beautiful when held up before God, than hands white and unwounded and covered with flashing jewels ― because the scars tell of toil and battle.

April 4

Sin's Defilement

There may even be evil in our heart which does not corrupt, unless it is allowed to shape itself in thoughts, words, or deeds. The suggestion of wrongdoing is not a sin until the suggestion is accepted and entertained. Temptation to sin is not itself sin. Jesus was tempted. Suggestions of evil were made to Him by Satan; yet He never sinned, because these suggestions never found any place in His heart, and therefore never found any expression in word or act, or even in thought.

So temptations come to us from without. These things we cannot help. We are not responsible for them. There is no sin in merely having these suggestions. But the sin begins the moment we open the door to one of these sinful ideas. That which cometh out defileth. (Matthew 15:11.)

April 5

The Comfort of Sympathy

When our feet are tired after the day's tasks and journeys, it ought to be a precious comfort to remember that our blessed Master had like experience, and therefore He is able to sympathise with us.

It is one of the chief sadnesses of many lives that other people do not understand them, do not sympathise with them. They move about us, our neighbours and companions ― even our closest friends ― and laugh and jest and are happy and light-hearted, while we, close beside them, are suffering. They are not aware of our pain, and if they were, they could not give us real sympathy, because they have never had any experience of their own that would interpret to them our experience.

Only those who have suffered in some way can truly sympathise with those who suffer. One who is physically strong, and has never felt the pain of weariness, cannot understand the weakness of another whom the least exertion tires. The person of athletic frame who can walk all day without fatigue has small sympathy with someone of feeble health who is exhausted in a mile.

April 6

Compelling Kindness

The trouble that touches us is the merciful hand of God, laid on us to lead us back to our place of safety and blessedness at His side.

A man was travelling and was hungry, but did not know where to go to find food. There came up a sudden and violent storm, compelling him to seek shelter. Fleeing under a tree for refuge, he found not shelter only, but food, for the storm brought down fruit from the tree's branches for his hunger. Those whom trouble drives to Jesus, also find both shelter from the storm and His food to meet their needs.

April 7

Keeping Pure

We must be cleansed ourselves if we would seek the cleansing of others. What if our own hands, with which we would wash the feet of other disciples, are not clean, but are themselves covered with sin? Instead of cleansing the lives we touch, we shall then leave stains upon them.

So we must see that our own hands have been washed in the blood of Jesus, before we undertake to wash the feet of others. Then we must be willing to yield our own feet to the water. The washing is to go all around. We are to wash one another's feet. The secret of all must be genuine love for others.

April 8

Unwise Haste

We should always wait for God. Too many of us run before we are sent. In our zeal for God's cause and kingdom, we do not wait for the Lord's direction. We speak words out of season which, despite their earnestness and sincerity, do harm rather than good. We address people before they are prepared to hear, and ofttimes in words that drive them beyond our reach. We hurry out to preach when we ought ourselves to be sitting quietly at our Master's feet as learners.

The most common fault among Christians is that they are too slow in doing Christ's work and in heeding His calls; but it is a fault also to go too soon for God, to go before He sends us. He must prepare us for the work before we are ready to do it, and then He must prepare the work for our hand. In the Lord's work we need patience and self-restraint, as well as zeal and earnestness.

April 9

Creed and Christianity

That which makes someone a Christian is not the acceptance of Jesus Christ's teaching, the uniting with His Church, the adoption of His morals, the taking up of His cause ― but the receiving of Him as a personal Saviour, the entering into a covenant of eternal friendship with Him.

We are not saved by a creed which gathers up in a few golden sentences the essence of the truth about Jesus Christ's person and work. We must have Jesus Himself, whom the creed holds forth, in His radiant beauty and grace.

April 10

Daily Religion

A good many people think that being a Christian is to pray a few moments morning and evening, to read a daily chapter or two in the Bible, and to attend church on Sunday. These duties are important as a means of grace, but they are not the Christian faith. True faith is knowing the Saviour, and living out His teaching in our ordinary weekday life. It is getting the Bible and the prayers and the services into thought and act and character.

We must not cut our lives in two and call one part secular, governing it by one set of principles, and regarding the other part as sacred, to be controlled by another set of rules. All life is to be lived in such a way as to please God, under the direction of His counsel. We have only as much Christian faith as we show in our weekday life, and not a whit more.

April 11

The Heart's Cry

Spiritual longing is the heart's cry which God always hears, and answers with more and more of His fullness. It is the ascending soul that climbs the starry ladder, to return on the same radiant stairway with ever new blessings from God. It is nothing less than the very life of God in the human soul, struggling to grow up into the fullness of the stature of Christ Jesus. It is the transfiguring Spirit in us, which cleanses these dull earthly lives of ours, and changes them little by little into the Divine image.

April 12

Enforced Rest

There are lives which to our eyes seem only to have been begun and then abandoned, which to God's eyes are still rising into more and more graceful beauty. Here is someone who began their life work with all the passion of youth and all the enthusiasm of a consecrated spirit. For a time their hand never tired, their energy never slackened, friends expected great things from them. Then their hands gave way.

They sit with their diligent hands folded now. Their enthusiasm no longer drives them afield. Their work lies unfinished. "What a pity!" people say. But wait. They have not left an unfinished life-work as God sees it. They are resting in submission at the Master's feet, and are growing meanwhile as a Christian. The spiritual temple in their soul is rising slowly in the silence.

Every day is adding something to the beauty of their character as they learn the lesson of patience, confidence, peace, joy, love. Their building at the last will be more beautiful than if they had been permitted to toil on through many busy years, carrying out their own plans. They are fulfilling God's plan for their life.

April 13

Devotion and Activity

We must listen at heaven's gates before we can go out to sing the heavenly songs in the ears of human weariness and sorrow. Our lips must be touched with a coal from God's altar before we can become God's messengers to others. We must lie much upon Christ's bosom, before our poor earthly lives can be struck through with the Spirit of Jesus and made to shine in the transfigured beauty of His blessed life. Devotion is never to displace duty ― it often brings new duties to our hands ― but it fits us for activity.

April 14

Reflected Pictures

The old monks had a superstitious notion that if they would gaze continuously and intensely on the figure of the Jesus on His cross which hung upon their cell wall, the marks of the wounds would appear on their own bodies ― the print of the nails in the hands and feet, the scar of the spear gash in the side.

This is but a gross representation of the spiritual truth which lies under it ― that beholding Jesus produces the real "marks of the Lord Jesus" in our souls. Looking upon Him with steady, loving gaze, the glorious vision that our eyes behold prints itself deep in our hearts, and the "beauty of the Lord" shines out in our dull faces.

April 15

Comfort in Failure

We are alone in our responsibility, and need give no thought for anything but our own duty, our own little fragment of the Lord's work. The things we cannot do, some other one is waiting and preparing now to do after the work has passed from our hand. There is comfort in this for any who fail in their efforts and must leave tasks unfinished which they hoped to complete. The finishing is another's mission.

April 16

Wise Foolishness

People will say you are foolish to waste your golden life, to sacrifice yourself for the sake of others ― or in Christ's cause. But was Jesus Christ Himself foolish when He went to His cross? Let the redeemed Church be the answer.

Were the martyrs foolish when they threw their lives away for Christ's sake? Ignatius said, when facing the fierce lions in the arena, "I am the wheat of God. Let me be ground between the teeth of lions if I may thus become bread to feed God's people."

Were such martyred lives wasted, thrown away? Is any life wasted that becomes seed corn to produce bread by and by for the world? The way to make nothing of our lives is to be very careful of them. The way to make our lives eternal successes is to do with them just what Jesus did with His.

April 17

Human Love's Weakness

When people are in sore trouble of any kind, no human aid can reach them. Human friends eagerly want to help, and they come to offer sympathy and consolation. But in such hours the most helpful of us are only like people standing on the shore of a dark and stormy sea, while our friends are far out on the wild waves. Our little boats cannot ride in the mad surges. All we can do is to stand on the shore, as it were, and look with compassionate eye and heart at the struggling ones in the angry sea.

That is the very best that the richest human love can do. It is thus in all life's deep needs. It is in such hours that we realise the blessedness of Jesus Christ's power to help. He can go out on any wave, into the wildest sea, to reach those who are driven and tossed. He can carry help to all who are troubled. He can comfort in any sorrow, and give victory in any strife.

April 18

The Place for Growth

We grow best as Christians in our true places in associated life. Isolation is not good. In the broader as well as in the narrower sense, it is not good for man to be alone. But every life needs solitude at times. We should all get into each of our busy days an hour of silence, when human presence is shut away by the veil that shuts us in alone with God.

We need such hours for quiet thought, for communion with Jesus, for introspection, for spiritual feeding, for the drawing of blessing and holy influences down from heaven to replenish the waste produced by earth's toil, struggle, and sorrow. There is a time for being alone, but we should not seek to live always nor usually in this way. Life lived in isolation grows selfish. The weeds of evil desire and unhealthy emotion flourish in seclusion.

April 19

Faithful in Little

It is not great things that God requires of us, unless our mission is to do great things. He asks only that we be faithful in the duties that come to our hand in our commonplace days. That means that we do all our work as well as we can; that we serve well in the varied relationships of life in which from time to time we find ourselves; that we stand heroically in our lot, resisting temptation and continuing true and loyal to God; and that we fulfil our mission in all ways according to the grace given unto us, using every gift and talent for the glory of God and the good of the world. The world crowns "success"; God crowns "faithfulness."

April 20

In God's Hand

We are not saving ourselves. A strong Saviour, the mighty God, holds us in His clasp. We are not tossed like a leaf on life's wild sea, driven at the mercy of wind and wave.

We are in the Lord's keeping. Our security does not depend upon our own feeble, wavering faith, but upon the power, the love, and the faithfulness of the unchanging, the eternal God.

While we trust in Him, we never can sink away in any floods. No power in the universe can snatch us out of His hands. Neither death, nor life, nor things present, nor things to come, can separate us from His love. (Romans 8:38-39.)

April 21

The Transforming Presence

Jesus never can be hidden. He can be in no place in this world very long and His presence not be recognised. You may hide sweet flowers so that they cannot be seen, but soon the fragrance will disclose their hiding place. So the sweetness of the Saviour's life and love will always tell when He is near.

When Jesus enters a human heart He cannot be hidden, for soon His Spirit begins to breathe out in all the words, actions, and life of the new follower. When Jesus enters a home He cannot long be hidden, for the home is changed ― worldliness, bitterness, and sin giving place to prayer and praise, to the spirit of love and gentleness, and to purity and holiness. When Jesus enters a community He cannot remain concealed. Jesus will always reveal His presence in this world.

April 22

Beautiful Homes

Some people like to gather beautiful things into their homes ― paintings, sculptures, rare items from foreign lands, objects of interest and attractiveness. Some pride themselves on the elegance of their furniture and the fineness of the decorations in their houses. But in no other way can the Christian bring into his home so much beauty, so much joy and comfort, so much true peace, as by making Jesus his abiding guest.

No matter how quietly Jesus enters, the neighbours will soon know it, and they will also get the benefit and blessing of it; for from a home where Jesus abides there always go out a fragrant influence, and a loving, helpful ministry.

April 23

Eyes of Love

We should train ourselves to see the good, not the evil, in others. We should speak approving words of what is beautiful in them, not bitter, condemning words of what may be imperfect or unlovely. We should look at others through eyes of love, not eyes of envy or selfishness, and should seek to heal with true affection's gentleness the things that are not as they should be.

April 24

Jesus Christ's Need

Jesus Christ may sometimes have special use of even the humblest of our possessions. Jesus, "The Lord" in the parable had need of the Good Samaritan's beast to carry the wounded man to the inn. He had need of the lad's five loaves to feed the multitude. A lady was trying to teach her child that she ought to give everything to Jesus, to be used in any way He might choose.

"Why, mamma," she replied, "Jesus can never use my doll." Yet in an hour the child was letting a poor waif that came to the door play with her doll. Was not the Lord using it then? The Lord may need our transport to carry burdens for others, or to carry those who cannot walk. He often has need of our money, our hands, our feet, our lips, our influence; and we do well when we hold all our possessions ready at any call of His, to be used as He desires.

April 25

Heavenly Vision

God gives us our spiritual raptures, our glimpses of His face and His glory, our foretastes of celestial joy, our fragments of heavenly vision, for the very purpose of making us stronger and braver for duty. It will be sad indeed, then, if they make us less fit for life here with its burdens and cares.

We should seek to bring the heavenly visions down and give them practical reality in our lives, so others may see the beauty too, and be cheered by it. Our hours of communion with Jesus should leave some gleams of brightness on our faces as we come to walk again in life's dusty ways.

April 26

New Beginnings

There are some people who in the discouragement of defeat and failure feel that it is now too late for them to make their character beautiful. They have lost their opportunity. But this is never true in this world in which Jesus died. A poet tells of walking in his garden and seeing a bird's nest lying on the ground. The storm had swept through the tree and ruined the nest. While he mused sadly over the wreck of the birds' home, he looked up and there he saw them building a new one amid the branches.

The birds teach Christians a lesson. Though all seems lost, let us not sit down and weep in despair, but let us rise and begin to build again. No one can undo a wrong past. No one can repair the ruin of years that are gone. We cannot live our lives over again. But at our Father's feet we can begin anew and make all our life new.

April 27

The Need for Rest

There never is a moment without its duty, and if we are living near to Jesus and following Him closely we shall never be left in ignorance of what He wants us to do. If there is nothing ― absolutely nothing ― for us to do at any time, then we may be sure that the Master wants us to sit down a moment at His feet and rest. For He is not a hard Master, and, besides, rest is as needful in its time as work. We need to rest in order to work, so we must not worry when there come moments which seem to have no task for our hands. The next thing, then, is to sit down and rest awhile.

April 28

Wells of Gladness

Troubles come to Christians, but they do not rob us of our joy. We may be in deep sorrow, but all the while there is a fountain of joy welling up in our hearts. Sometimes there is a freshwater spring by the seashore. Twice every day the salt tides roll over it, but the spring never ceases to flow; and, when the brackish waves have rolled back, the waters of the spring are still sweet as ever.

That is the way with the Christian's joy. It is a living well in our hearts. Even in our sorrow we have a deep peace in our soul. Then, when the sorrow is past, the joy springs fresh as ever. The permanence of all joy depends upon the source from which it comes. If it is in God that we rejoice, then earth has no power to take from us the gladness.

April 29

Possibilities of Daily Life

The days are well enough. It lies with ourselves whether we make them radiant and beautiful, whether we fill them with life. A mere dreary treadmill round ― waking, eating, drinking, walking, working, sleeping ― is not enough to make any life worthy.

We must put the glory of love, of best effort, of sacrifice, of prayer, of upward looking and heavenward reaching, into the dull routine of our life's every day, and then the most burdensome and uneventful life will be made splendid with the glory of God.

April 30

Jesus Our Light

When visitors to the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky [in 1904] are preparing to enter that wonderful cavern, the guide puts into the hand of each tourist a lighted lamp. It is noonday perhaps, and it seems very foolish to walk down the green bank carrying the lamps in the bright sunshine. But when the party enter the mouth of the cave and go a little distance, they understand the use of their lamps. In the darkness they would perish but for their pale light.

Some people do not think, when they are moving along in joy and gladness, that they need Jesus; but by and by it grows dark in some path of sorrow, and then they learn the blessing of having Jesus beforehand. If they have Him in their hearts, they find it light all about them. If they have Him not, the gloom is turned to despair.

May

May 1

Blameworthy Silence

Many of us fail in our neglect of love's duty, quite as much as in the hurts we give to others. We walk in cold silence beside one whose heart is aching or breaking, not saying the warm, rich word of love we might say, and which would give so much comfort. All about us are hungry ones, and the Master is saying to us, "Give ye them to eat" (Luke 9:13); but we are withholding from them what we might give, and they are starving when they might be filled.

May 2

Jesus Christ's Daily Coming

Jesus comes to us. He is continually coming. His hands are full of blessings. He has eternal life to bestow. Do we receive Him? Is it not true of us that He comes unto His own, and His own receive Him not? Do we really take from the hand of Jesus all that He offers us? Do we not daily grieve Him and rob ourselves of blessings by declining what He brings?

Especially do we reject Jesus often when He comes to us in the clothing of pain or sorrow. Many times the blessings He brings to us then are the very richest and the most precious in all His store. But how many of us receive Jesus as gladly, and take the gifts from His hand as cheerfully and gratefully when He comes in grief or suffering, as when He comes in the clothing of joy or worldly prosperity?

May 3

Keep Jesus Within

Those who shut their doors on Jesus shut out all blessedness, and when the lamps of earthly joy go out they are left in utter darkness. A wise forethought will make sure of the hopes and comforts of a personal interest in Jesus, and of having Him as guest in the sunny days, so that when the shadow of night falls, the stars of bright hope may shine out in days of darkness.

May 4

Faint Hearts

No doubt, thousands of prayers are never answered because we lose hope at God's delay. Perhaps you have lost many a joy and blessing because you lost heart and faith before the answer came. A little more patient perseverance would have brought you a great reward.

After spending thousands of dollars in drilling for oil, the operator of an American well became discouraged and sold out for a trifle. The purchaser started the drill, and in six hours found a flowing well. We see what losing hope cost the first owner. Many Christians lose heart just when the answer is about to be granted.

May 5

Stinting Love

We are too cautious of our heart's gifts. God has given us love, that with it we may make life sweeter, better, easier, truer, more victorious, for others. We do sore wrong to those about us when we stint the measure of love we give them, when we withhold the words of cheer, appreciation, encouragement, affection and comfort which are in our hearts to speak, or when we fail to do the gentle, kindly things we could so easily do to make life happier and sweeter for them.

May 6

Quiet Work

The old waterwheel turns slowly round and round outside the mill. It seems to be idle work that it is doing. You see nothing accomplished. But its shaft runs through the mill wall and turns a great system of machinery there, and makes bread to feed many a hungry mouth. So we toil away, many of us, and ofttimes see no rewards or fruits. But, if we are true to God, we are making results somewhere for His glory and the good of others.

The shaft runs through into the unseen, and turns wheels there, preparing blessings and food for hungry lives. No true work for Jesus can ever fail. Somewhere, sometime, somehow, there will be results. We need not be discouraged or disheartened, for in due time we shall reap if we faint not. But what if we faint?

May 7

The Value of Prayer

God has put it in our power to help each other in many ways. Sometimes it is by deeds that lift away burdens, sometimes by words that inspire courage and strength, sometimes by sympathy that halves sorrow. Yet there is no other way in which we can serve others so wisely, so effectively, so divinely, as by intercession for them. Our hands are clumsy and awkward, and ofttimes hurt the life we would heal with our touch, or strengthen or uphold with our strength. But in prayer we can reach our friend through God, and His hand is infinitely gentle, and never hurts a life.

May 8

A Great Prayer

There is a little prayer in the Psalms which says, "Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us!" (90:17). It is not too high a prayer for any one of us to use every day. Jesus came into this world, and lived and died to make it possible for us to wear His beauty. And we may wear it always, not merely as a holiday dress or a high priest's garment.

The beauty of the Lord shines just as bright in homespun attire, in the midst of the dust and clatter of the shop or the mill, or in the lowly duties of the kitchen, as it does in the special dress of the Sabbath, in the sacredness and quietness of the sanctuary. The transfigured life is not a matter of place or time, or occupation ― it is a matter of character. Many of the world's most radiant saints walk the earth in lowliest disguises.

May 9

The Value of Pain

It is doubtful whether, in the realm of spiritual influence, any blessing of real value ever comes to us from another who has not received its baptism of pains and tears. That which has cost nothing in the heart of someone who gives it, is not likely to be of great use to the one who receives it. The true poets must always learn in suffering what they teach in song.

May 10

Jesus Christ's Individual Love

"The sheep listen to His voice. He calls His own sheep by name and leads them out" (John 10:3). There is a great difference between the care which the owner gives ― and that which a servant or hireling gives. There is a difference between the way a true mother looks after her child ― and the way a hired care-giver does it. This is seen especially when the child is sick or in danger. The care-giver serves for pay; the mother serves for love. Christ the Good Shepherd is the owner of His sheep.

May 11

Duty of Prayer

The parent who does not pray for a child, whatever else they may do for him, sins against the child. Whosoever fails to pray for one they love, fails in the most sacred duty of love, because they withhold love's best help. A prayerless love may be very tender, and may speak murmuring words of sweetest sound, but it lacks the deepest expression and the noblest music of speech. We never help our dear ones so well as when we pray for them.

May 12

The One Way

A ladder is a way for feet to climb. Jesus is the way, therefore, by which sinners can go out of their sins to the purity and blessedness of heaven. One thing to mark specially is that there is but one way. Jesus is the only Mediator. We can enter the Father's family only through Him. Grace can come to us only through Him.

There is, then, no choice of ways. If we do not go by this one way, we can never reach home. Nor must we forget that a way is meant to be travelled. We must put our feet on this ladder and go up rung by rung until we reach the topmost step, which will be heaven.

May 13

Character Is Immortal

There are things, qualities, fruits of character, gains, treasures, spoils of moral conquests that people carry with them out of this world. Someone says, "The only thing that walks back from the tomb with the mourners and refuses to be buried, is character." This is true. What a person is, survives them. It never can be buried. It stays about their home when their footsteps come there no more. It lives in the community where they were known.

And that same thing ― what a person is ― they carry with them into the other life. Money and rank and circumstances and earthly gains they leave behind, but their character they take with them into eternity.

May 14

The Helping Hand

There is no danger of receiving defilement even from touching the worst outcasts if we go to them with the love of God in our hearts, yearning to do them good. Do not stand far off and toss the bread of life to them, as people throw gifts into leper hospitals. Do not slip your tract under the door and hurry away, as if you were ashamed of what you had done.

Go to the homes of the worst people, give them your hand. It will not soil it to clasp theirs, and you never can know what a thrill of new life it may start in hearts long unused to tenderness, yet yearning for sympathy. Put heart and inspiration into all you do. We never can know what a thrill of inspiration and life we may give to weary and disheartened ones.

May 15

Inspiring Comfort

If we find others in sorrow, it is our duty not to tell them merely how sorry we are for them, how we pity them, but coming close to them in love to whisper in their ears the strong comforts of Divine grace, to make them stronger to endure their sorrow.

If we find others in the midst of difficulties and sore struggles, faint and ready almost to yield, it is our duty not merely to lament with them the severity and hardness of their battles, and then to leave them to go on to sure defeat, but to stimulate and inspire them to bravery and to victory.

May 16

God's Leading

God leads every one of His children by the right way. He knows where and under what influences each particular life will ripen best. One tree grows best in the sheltered valley, another by the water's edge, another on the bleak mountaintop swept by storms. There is always adaptation in nature.

Every tree or plant is found in the locality where the conditions of its growth exist. Does God give more thought to trees and plants than to His own children? He places us amid the circumstances and experiences in which our life will grow and ripen the best. The special discipline to which we are each subjected is the discipline we individually need, to bring out in us the beauties and graces of true spiritual character. God knows what is best; He makes no mistakes.

May 17

His Work in His Children

How may we grow into the likeness of Jesus? It is not merely by our own strugglings and strivings. We know what we want to be, but when we try to lift our own lives up to the beauty we see and admire, we find ourselves weighted down. We cannot make ourselves like Jesus by any efforts of our own. Nothing less than the Lord's mighty power is sufficient to produce this transformation in our human nature.

May 18

The Sin of Wrangling

Life is too short to spend even one day of it in bickering and strife. Love is too sacred to be for ever lacerated and torn by the ugly briers of sharp temper. Surely we ought to learn to be patient with others, since God has to show every day such infinite patience toward us. Is not the very essence of true love the spirit that is not easily provoked, that beareth all things?

Can we not, then, train our life to sweeter gentleness? Can we not learn to be touched even a little roughly without resenting it? Can we not bear little injuries and apparent injustices without flying into an unseemly rage? Can we not have in us something of the mind of Jesus which will enable us, like Him, to endure all wrong and injury, and give back no word or look of bitterness? The way over which we and our friends walk together is too short to be spent in wrangling.

May 19

Strength in Weakness

Even life's most dreaded experiences, when we meet them, often carry in themselves the light which takes away the peril and the terror. The night of sorrow comes with its own lamp of comfort. The hour of weakness brings its secret of strength.

By the brink of the bitter fountain grows the tree whose branch will heal the waters. The wilderness with its hunger and no harvest has daily manna. In dark Gethsemane, where the load is more than mortal heart can bear, an angel appears to Jesus, ministering strength. When we come to the hard, rough, steep path, we find iron for shoes.

May 20

The Real Jesus

It is possible to be with Jesus a long time, and to know very much about Him, without knowing Him in the true sense of the word. Philip knew Jesus as a man, as a worker of miracles, as having a very beautiful character; but he seems never to have gone below the surface in understanding Him, until after the Resurrection.

Until then, he did not know Him as the revealer of the Father. Until then he didn't understand Divine glory in the radiance that streamed from that blessed life. And not to know Jesus in this aspect, to know Him only as a man, is not to know Him at all. To leave out the Divine in our thought of Jesus is not to have any Jesus at all.

May 21

True Courage

True victory is not found in escaping or evading trials, but in rightly meeting and enduring them. The questions should not be, "How can I get out of these worries? How can I get into a place where there shall be no irritations, nothing to try my temper, or put my patience to the test? How can I avoid the distractions that continually harass me?" There is nothing noble in such living.

The soldier who flies to the rear when he smells the battle is no hero; he is a coward. The questions should rather be, "How can I pass through these trying experiences and not fail as a Christian? How can I endure these struggles and not suffer defeat? How can I live amid these provocations, these reproaches and testings of my temper, and yet live sweetly, not speaking unadvisedly, bearing injuries meekly, returning gentle answers to insulting words?"

May 22

Workers with Jesus

We are the chisel with which God carves His statues. Unquestionably, we must do the work. Our hands must touch people's lives and beautify them. The mother, the teacher, the Christian friend must carve and mould the life of the child into the beauty of the Lord. But the human worker is only the chisel. The sculptor needs his chisel; but the chisel can do nothing, produce no beauty of itself. We must put ourselves into the hand of Jesus so that He may use us.

May 23

Receiving Jesus

The taking of the bread by the communicant is significant of the act of faith by which Jesus Himself is received. He offers; we receive. It is not enough that Jesus gave Himself on the cross for sinners, and now holds out in pierced hands the blessings of redemption. These stupendous acts of love and grace alone will not save us.

There is a needed link which we must supply. We must reach out our hands and accept and take what Jesus so graciously and lovingly offers to us. Then, since bread to nourish us must be eaten, we must receive Jesus into our life as our soul's sustenance, feeding upon Him.

May 24

Hope Deferred

Often we are like the disciples who had toiled all the night and caught nothing. (Luke 5:5.) At many a setting sun we come, weary and sad, with empty hands. Then sometimes we are tempted to stay away from the Master and make no report. What have we to report? Nothing but a fruitless day. But we should not therefore stay away from Him who sent us forth.

Jesus had days in His own life that seemed fruitless, and He can understand our sadness when we come with no sheaves. So let us tell Him all. That is the kind of evening secret prayer that will bless us.

It will make us very watchful all day if we remember that we must report to Jesus all we say, or do, or fail to do. It will keep us in more intimate relations with Him. Then His sympathy will strengthen us for better service each day.

May 25

Sharing the Blessing

When we have really found Jesus ourselves, the best way to bring others is just to tell them what Jesus is to us. One word of genuine and hearty confession of Jesus, by a person whose soul is full of the new-found joy, is worth more than the most eloquent sermons to lead others to believe in Jesus.

Let us be sure that people know from us that we have really found Jesus. Then they cannot but be impressed. It will surely be a sad pity if we should so live that they will not suspect that we are Christians.

May 26

Be Kind Now

So uncertain is life, and so many are the changes of human experience, that any leave-taking may be for ever. We are never sure of an opportunity to unsay the angry word or draw out the thorn we left rankling in another's heart. The kindness which we felt prompted to do today, but neglected or deferred, we may never be able to perform. The only way, therefore, to save ourselves from unavailing sorrow and regret is to let love always rule in our hearts and control our speech.

If we should in a thoughtless moment speak unadvisedly, giving pain to another heart, let reparation be made upon the spot. The sun should never go down upon our wrath. We should never leave anything overnight that we would not be willing to leave finally and for ever just in that shape, and which we would blush to meet again in the great disclosure.

May 27

Jesus Calls the Lowly

If we want Jesus to call us to important places, we must be busy and active, so that when He comes seeking for people to do His work He will see that we are competent and worthy. We should notice also that Jesus often calls those who are engaged in lowly places.

If we think our work is unworthy of us, the way to rise to a better one is to be faithful and diligent where we are, until we are called to a nobler and worthier pursuit. It is to him who is faithful in little things that the charge of greater things is promised. He who does not fill well the lower place, is wanted neither by God nor by men for the higher place.

May 28

The Life of Faith

The root is not a very beautiful part of a tree ― it is hidden away out of sight, and nobody praises it. Yet it is essential to the tree's life. In like manner, there is a hidden part in every Christian's life. It does not seem to bless the world in any way. It is the heart-life, faith, love, communion with God in His Word and in prayer. No one praises a Christian's inner, private life. It is secret, and no one sees it, yet it is the root of the whole strong, beautiful life which others see and praise, and whose ripe fruits feed their hunger.

May 29

Impressive Godliness

To those whose hearts are full of the spirit of grace, there are large opportunities for quiet and unintended usefulness opened in the formalities of social life. What is wanted is a deep and sincere faith that breathes out unconsciously in face and word and act and manner, like the fragrance of a flower, like the shining of a star. Indeed, its unconsciousness is its greatest power.

The person who goes intending to say certain things, or carry certain blessings, or leave certain influences, may fail. But, going from house to house with a soul full of goodness, purity, and love, with a heart sincerely longing to leave blessings everywhere, with a speech seasoned with grace and breathing kindness and peace, it is impossible not to leave heavenly influences in every home.

May 30

The Value of Silence

The person who has learned to be silent, spares themselves ofttimes from confusion. Many people have owed their reputation for great wisdom as much to their silence as to their speech. They have not spoken the many foolish things of the glib talker, and have uttered only few and well-considered words. Says Carlyle, denouncing the bland speeches of the shallow talkers, "Even triviality and imbecility that can sit silent ― how respectable are they in comparison!"

May 31

The Way of Peace

The best thing possible for us is always what God wills for us. Sometimes it may be pain, or worldly loss, or sore bereavement. Yet His will is always love, and in simple consent to this will, we shall always find our highest good. "Nevertheless not My will, but Thine, be done" (Luke 22:42.) No prayer, therefore, is pleasing to God which does not end with this refrain of Gethsemane. This is the way also to peace. As we yield with love and joy, and merge our own will in our Father's, the peace of God flows like a river into our souls.

June

June 1

Life's Compensations

Every shadow has its light; every night has its morning; every pang of pain has its moment of joy; every salt tear has its crystal beauty; every weakness has its element of strength; every loss has its gain. So all through life these balancings run. It is not a thoughtful or reverent observer who has not been struck by this wonderful system of compensations found in all God's Providence. Wherever we turn we can see it, if only we have eyes to see.

June 2

Leading to Jesus

Some Greeks came to a disciple and asked him to introduce them to Jesus. What nobler service can we render in this world than that of introducing people to Jesus? To do this we must know Him well ourselves. But let no one think they really need someone to introduce them to Jesus.

A little child was dying, and she said she was not afraid to die; but she wished her mamma could go with her to introduce her to Jesus. "For you know, mamma," said the little one, "I was always afraid of strangers." But no one will find Jesus a stranger. He loves to be sought, and to have people want to see Him, and He is always glad to reveal Himself to every seeker. He is not hard to find. He is near all the while, and we really need no one to take us to Him.

June 3

Consecration

Consecration is a transfer of one's plans and ambitions into the hands of Jesus. It is a solemn pledge, too, to accept the plans of the Master for the occupation of the day, no matter how much they may interfere with arrangements we have already made, or how many pleasant things they may cut out of the day's programme.

We will answer every call. We will patiently submit to every interruption. We will accept every duty. We will go on with the work which seems best to us, if the Master has nothing else for us to do. But if He has, we will cheerfully drop our own and take up that which He clearly gives instead.

June 4

Practical Religion

A little girl, when asked what it was to be a Christian, replied, "For me to be a Christian is to live and behave as Jesus would live and behave ― if He were a little girl and lived at our house."

Each one of us is to bear ourselves just as Jesus would if He were living out our little life in the midst of its actual environment, standing all day just where we stand, mingling with the same people with whom we must mingle, and exposed to the very annoyances, trials, and provocations to which we are exposed. We want to live a life that will please God, and that will bear witness on its face to the genuineness of our faith.

June 5

Applied Christ Faith

The Christian faith is intensely practical. Only so far as it dominates one's life is it real. We must get the commandments down from the glory of Sinai amid which they were first graven on stone tablets by the finger of God, and give them a place in the hard, dusty paths of earthly toil and struggle. We must get them off the tablets of stone, and have them written on the walls of our own hearts. "As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise" (Luke 6:31). We must bring this, the Golden Rule, down from its bright setting in the teaching of our Lord, and get it wrought into our daily actual life.

June 6

Stimulating Difficulties

Every obstacle to true living should only serve us with fresh determination to succeed. We should use each difficulty and hardship as a leverage to gain some new advantage. We should compel our temptations to minister to us instead of hindering us. We should regard all our provocations, annoyances, and trials, of whatever sort, as practice lessons in the application of the theories of Christian life.

It will be seen in the end that the hardships and difficulties are by no means the smallest blessings in our lives. Someone compares them to the weights of a clock, without which there could be no steady, orderly life.

June 7

Following Jesus

To follow Jesus is to go where He leads, without questioning or demurring. It may be to a life of trial, suffering, or sacrifice ― but no matter. We have nothing whatever to do with the kind of life to which our Lord calls us. Our only simple duty is to obey and follow. We know that Jesus will lead us only in right paths, and that the way He takes slopes upward, and ends at the feet of God.

Each new day on which we are about to enter is unopened, and we do not know what shall befall us; but if we follow Jesus we need have no fear. So let us leave the old day with gratitude to God for its mercies, with penitence for its failures and sins, and let us enter the new with earnest resolve in Jesus Christ's name to make it the best and most beautiful we have ever lived.

June 8

Our Own Burdens Lightest

If we could change places with anyone ― the person we know who seems to have the most favoured lot ― if we could take this person's place, with all its conditions, its circumstances, its cares, its responsibilities, there is little doubt that we should quickly cry out to God to give us back our own old place and our own old burdens. It is because we do not know all, that we think our neighbour's load lighter and more easily carried than our own.

June 9

Overcoming

Everyone's battle must be a personal one. We may decline the struggle, but it will be declining also the joy of victory. No one can reach the summit without climbing the steep mountain path. We cannot be borne up on any strong shoulder. No one, not even God, can carry us up. Heaven does not put features of beauty into our lives as the jeweller sets gems in clusters in a coronet.

The unlovely elements are not removed and replaced by lovely ones, like slides in the magic lantern, which has two lenses to dissolve between images. Each must win his way through struggles and efforts to all noble attainments. The help of God is given only in co-operation with human aspiration and energy. While God works in us, he that overcometh shall be a pillar in the temple of God." (Revelation 3:12.)

June 10

Perseverance

Many a night we shall retire to weep at the feet of Jesus over the day's defeat. In our efforts to follow the copy set for us by our Lord, we shall write many a crooked line and leave many a blotted page blistered with tears of regret. Yet we must keep through all a brave heart, an unfaltering purpose, and a calm, joyful confidence in God.

Temporary defeat should only cause us to lean on Jesus more fully. Heaven is on the side of everyone who is loyally struggling to do the Lord's will, to grow into the likeness of Jesus. And that means assured victory to everyone whose heart fails not.

June 11

Little Faithfulnesses

It is in the everyday of life that nearly all the world's best work is done. The tall mountain peaks lift their glittering crests into the clouds, and win attention and admiration. But it is in the great valleys and broad plains that the harvests grow and the fruits ripen, on which the millions on earth feed their hunger.

So it is not from the few conspicuous deeds of life that the blessings chiefly come which make the world better, sweeter, happier, but from the countless lowly ministries of the every-days, the little acts of faith that fill long years.

June 12

Ideals

In the presence of a great painting, a young artist said to John Ruskin, "Ah, if I could put such a dream on canvas."

"Dream on canvas?" growled the man. "It will take ten thousand touches of the brush on the canvas to put your dream there."

The dream could only become a reality through hard work. Yet it is easier far to put the artist's dreams on canvas than to put upon our human lives the beautiful visions of Christ-likeness which we find on the Gospel pages. And that is the real problem of Christian living. But though hard, it is not impossible.

If we but toiled and tried and wrought in our efforts to get our visions of character translated into reality, we should all be very noble. Never yet, indeed, was ideal too fair to be realised at last, through the help of Jesus. The heavenly visions God gives us are prophecies of what we may become, what we are born to become.

June 13

Wise Love

Great wisdom is required in those who would point out faults to others. They need deep love in their hearts, that they may truly seek the good of those in whom they detect flaws or errors, and not criticise in a spirit of exultation. Too many take delight in discovering faults in other people, and in pointing them out. Others do it only when they are in anger, blurting out their keen criticisms in fits of bad temper. We should all seek to possess the spirit of Jesus, who was most patient and gentle in telling His friends wherein they failed.

June 14

God the Healer

The God of the Bible is the God also of the broken-hearted. There are Divine words which tell us that "the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart" (Psalm 34:18), that "He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds" (Psalm 147:3).

The world cares little for broken hearts. Indeed, men ofttimes break hearts by their cruelty, their falseness, their injustice, their coldness, and then move on as heedlessly as if they had trodden only on a worm. But God cares. The broken-heartedness attracts Him. The lamentation of grief on earth draws Him down from heaven.

June 15

Falling Away

Sin in some form draws many a builder away from his work to leave it unfinished. It may be the world's fascinations that lure him from Christ's side. It may be sinful human companions that lure him from loyal friendship to his Saviour. It may be riches that enter his heart, and blind his eyes to the attractions of heaven. It may be some secret debasing lust that gains power over him and paralyses his spiritual life.

Many are there now amid the world's throngs who once sat at the Lord's Table and were among God's people. Their lives are unfinished buildings, towers begun with great enthusiasm, and then left to tell their sad story of failure to all who pass by. They began to build, and were not able to finish. (Luke 14:30.)

June 16

Perils of Holiness

So long as we move on quietly in our ordinary life, the devil does not trouble himself to harm us. But when we rouse up to new consecration and new activity in God's service, he pounces upon us and tries to destroy us. It is therefore in our times of greatest spiritual exaltation that we need to be most watchful.

We learn here also that we may expect to endure temptation in this world. New power came to Jesus through His conflicts. His life was developed and made perfect through sufferings. He was fitted for sympathy with us in our temptations, by Himself being tempted in all points, as we are. Temptations resisted always bring new strength. Victorious struggle prepares us for helping others in their temptations.

June 17

God Supports the Weak

The God of the Bible is the God of those who have not succeeded. Wherever there is a weak, stumbling one, unable to walk alone, to that person God's heart goes out in tender thought and sympathy, and His hand is extended to support them and keep them from falling. Wherever someone has fallen, and lies in defeat or failure, over that person bends the Heavenly Father in kindly pity, to raise them up and to help them to begin again.

June 18

Unpleasant Truths

Perhaps few of us hear the honest truth about ourselves, until someone grows angry with us and blurts it out in bitter words. It may be an enemy who says the ugly thing about us, or it may be someone whom we consider unworthy of respect. But whoever it may be, we would better ask whether there may not is some truth in the criticism, and if there is, then set ourselves to get clear of it.

In whatever way we are made aware of a fault, we ought to be grateful for the fact, for the discovery gives us an opportunity to rise to a better, nobler life, or to a higher and finer achievement.

June 19

Unspotted Ideals

Jesus never lowered, by so much as a hair's breadth, the perfect standard of holiness by which He measured all men and all life. Nor must we. We are ever to keep living in our souls the pure and unspotted ideal. We are not to look upon any sin leniently or apologetically, and yet we are to love the sinner, to pity them and have compassion upon them. Instead of turning away from them in horror and self-righteous pride, we are to seek by every means to lift them up and save them. Under all the ruin of their sin is the shattered beauty of the image of God, which the gentle fingers of love may repair and restore.

June 20

Conflict And Conquest

Life is conflict. Every good thing lies beyond a battlefield, and we must fight our way to it. There must be a struggle to get it. This is true in physical life. From infancy to old age, existence is a fight with infirmity and disease. In mental life the same is true. Education is a long conflict. The powers of the mind have to fight their way to strength and development. So it is in spiritual life. Enemies throng the path, and contest every step of progress. No one ever attains to beauty and nobleness of character, save through long and sore struggle.

June 21

Go Forward

We can learn the path of duty only by walking in it. There is no promise of anything more than this. The Word of God is a lamp unto our feet ― not a sun to light half the world, but a lamp to carry in our hand, to give light unto our feet, to show us just one little step at a time.

If we move on, taking the step that lies full in the light, we carry the light forward too, and it then shows us another step. That is, we learn to know the road by walking in it. If we will not take the one step that is made clear, we cannot know the part of the way beyond that is hidden in the shadow.

June 22

Narrow Borderlines

Good and evil in certain qualities do not lie very far apart. It is quite easy for devotion to principle to change into obstinacy. It is easy for self-respect, consciousness of ability, to pass over into miserable self-conceit. It is easy for someone to make themselves believe that they are cherishing justifiable anger, when in truth they are only giving way to very bad temper. It is easy to let gentleness become weakness, and tolerance toward sinners grow into tolerance toward sin. It is easy for us to become selfish in many phases of our conduct, while in general we are really quite unselfish.

June 23

One in God

Hearts that are drawn together at God's feet every day cannot get very far apart. The frictions of the day are forgotten when all voices mingle in the same heavenly song. As the tender words of inspiration fall with their gentle counsels, all feeling of unkindness melts away. The place of prayer in the home, wondrously hallows and sweetens the fellowship. Besides, it puts new strength into every heart. It comforts sorrow. It is a shield against temptation. It smoothes out the wrinkles of care. It inspires strength for burden bearing. It quickens every spiritual sentiment, and keeps the fires burning in every heart.

June 24

Completed Lives

There will be time enough in heaven's long summer for every life to put out all its loveliness and glory. No hopes are blighted that are only carried forward into the immortal years. No life is incomplete because it is cut off too soon to ripen ― in an earthly home ― into the majesty of form and glory of fruitage.

For death does not come to the Christian as a destroyer. It dims no splendour. It blots out no beauty. It paralyses no power. It blights no bud or germ. It only takes out of life whatever is dull, earthly, and opaque; whatever is corrupt and mortal ― and leaves it pure, brilliant, and glorious.

June 25

The Future Reward

Somewhere in the long years to come we shall find that not the smallest deed done for Jesus, or the feeblest word spoken, or the faintest touch given, has been in vain. In the highest sense ― higher than one old artist dreamed of ― do we work for eternity. In a truer and deeper way than we know, and in remoter ages than we can count, we shall find our songs from beginning to end in the hearts of our friends.

In a painting executed in fresco, when the artist put his colours on the damp plaster, they seemed to sink away and leave no trace, but they reappeared by and by in beauty. So we touch lives today, and there is no impression that we can observe. The very memory seems to fade out. But in eternity it will be manifest. The brightest clouds in the glowing west lose their splendour even while you gaze, but work done in human souls will appear in unfading hues, brightening for ever.

June 26

Resurrection

Nature rises from the grave of winter in new beauty and luxuriance. In place of the dry leaves and faded loveliness and exhausted vigour of the autumn, there is now all the splendour of new creation. Every leaf is green, every pore is flowing full of vital sap, and every flower pours sweetest fragrance on the air.

The grave is but life's winter, from whose darkness and chill we shall come with undiminished beauty. Then, away beyond this strange experience, we look out at the window again, we see life going on, expanding, deepening, enriching.

June 27

Serving and Giving

We are not here to receive and to gather, but to give and to scatter. Not to be served and treated generously, but to serve, regardless of the character of others or their treatment of us. This invests every human life with a wondrous blessedness. It brings down our pride, and keeps it under our feet. It changes scorn to compassion. It softens our tones, and takes from us our haughty, dictatorial spirit.

Instead of being repelled by the moral repulsiveness of others, our pity is stirred, and our hearts go out in deep, loving longing to heal and to bless them. Instead of being offended by the rudeness and unkindness of others, we bear patiently with their faults, hoping to do them good. Nothing that they may do to us turns our love to hate. We continue to seek their interest, despite their slights, insults, and cruelties.

June 28

The Unseen Tomorrow

We should be thankful that life comes to us in such little bits. We can live one day well enough. We can carry one day's burdens. We can do one day's duties. We can endure one day's sorrows. It is a blessing that this is all God ever gives us at a time. We should be thankful for the nights that cut off from our view our tomorrows, so that we cannot even see them till they dawn. The little days, nestling between the nights like quiet vales between the hills, seem so safe and peaceful.

June 29

Lamps of Consolation

The railway officials passed through our train at midday and lighted the lamps. The passengers could not understand why it was done. How pale the lights seemed in the blaze of noon! But soon we plunged into a long tunnel, into pitch darkness. How brightly then the beams shone down upon us, and how grateful we all were for the lamps.

So the lamps of comfort which God hangs about our hearts in our sunny youth, and which seem to us so dim and so without a purpose while there is no break in our joy, will burst into heavenly brightness when the darkness thickens about us. What shall we then do if none of these lamps of consolation are already lighted in our hearts?

June 30

Stored Blessings

The principle of reserved goodness runs through all God's economy. Blessings are laid up, and are given to us as we need them. Every experience brings to us its own store. Sorrow comes. but veiled in the sorrow the angel of comfort comes too. It grows dark, and then the lamps of promise shine out. Losses are met, but there is a Divine secret that changes loss into gain. A bitter cup is given, but it proves to be medicine for our soul. Death comes, and seems the end of all. But look, it is only the beginning of life, for it leads us away from empty shadows to eternal realities.

July

July 1

Means of Grace

Anything that helps to interpret Jesus to us and to bring us into closer relations with Him; anything that becomes to us a disciplinary experience, drawing out and strengthening our life in any of its elements; anything that makes us better, holier, sweeter in spirit ― is to us a means of grace. Under this heading, therefore, we may put work, which develops our powers; the struggle with trial and temptation, through which our natures are disciplined; the enduring of sorrow and pain, by which we are made more pure; and all experiences of life which result, or are designed to result, in the growth of our spiritual life.

July 2

The Witness of the Spirit

To every one of us God gives something that He wants us to say to others. We cannot all write poems or hymns, or compose books which will bless others, but if we live near the heart of Jesus there is not one of us into whose ear He will not whisper some fragment of truth, some revealing of grace or love, or to whom He will not give some experience of comfort in sorrow, some new glimpse of glory.

Each friend of Jesus, living close to Him, learns something from Him and of Him, which He is to tell out to the world.

July 3

Sentiment and Service

It is not enough for us to sing our songs of praise to Jesus, to look up adoringly into His face, to bow before Him in reverent worship, and to speak our heart's homage in words. We should bring our gifts too, to lay at His feet. There is a great deal of mere sentiment in the consecration of many people, but when there is a call for gifts of sacrifice, or for real service, it instantly vanishes.

People sing missionary hymns with great warmth, and when the collection box comes to them they have no gifts to offer. The Wise Men not only brought presents, but they brought those that were costly. We should bring our best, our gold, our frankincense and myrrh, the alabaster box of our heart's deepest love, and the best of all ― our life and service.

July 4

Filling a Little Space

The most useful people in any community are the committed who make choice of one category of work and devote themselves to it year after year. It is better for most of us that we devote ourselves to the helping and uplifting of a few people than that we scatter our influence over hundreds. Then we can make impressions on their lives that will last for ever. Jesus gave His whole public life to his disciples, but He so stamped His impress on their lives that they went out and moved the world.

July 5

Songs in the Night

All true music is sweet, but no songs have such sweetness in the ear of Jesus as those which rise out of sickrooms where patient sufferers sing in their pain, through all the long night watches, or from the darkened chambers of grief where heartbroken mourners look up through their tears and praise God with quivering lips.

One of the happiest Christians I ever saw was a woman who for many years had not drawn a breath without agony. Every joint of her body was drawn, and her life was a continual torture. But her face was radiant with the outshining of an inner joy, and her heart never ceased to sing. Such endurance in Jesus Christ's name is the bringing of sweetest spices for Him.

July 6

The Life More than Meat

It is never right for us to starve our spiritual nature to get bread for our bodies. It is our first duty to keep God's commandments, and in obedience is the highest good that we can attain in this world. Jesus said, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matthew 6:33).

Getting bread should not be our first object in living, and is really not our business at all. Life's true object is to obey every word of God, and seek His righteousness. So let us settle it once for all that we are never to do any wrong thing to get bread; that we are to be true to God always and everywhere, and then leave to Him the caring for our bodies.

July 7

True Charity

Christian tact is wise and loving thoughtfulness. It is that love which is wisely gentle to all, which beareth all things, which seeketh not her own, which thinketh no evil. It has an instinctive desire to avoid giving pain. It seeks to please all people for their good. It knows very well that the surest way not to do others good is to antagonise them and excite their opposition and enmity. Therefore, as far as possible, it avoids all direct attack upon the life and opinions of others. It shows respect for the views of those who differ in sentiment or belief.

July 8

Passing Touches

Companionship always leaves its impress. Eye cannot even look into eye in one deep, earnest gaze, but a touch has been left on the soul.

July 9

Evil Influence

We do not know what we are letting into our life when we take into companionship, even for one hour, one who is not good, not pure, not true. Then, who can estimate the corrupting influence of such companionship when continued until it becomes close friendship; when confidences are exchanged, when soul touches soul, when life flows into and blends with life?

When one awakens to the consciousness of the fact that they have formed or are forming a companionship with one whose influence cannot but hurt them, and perhaps destroy them, there is only one true thing to do ― it must instantly be given up.

July 10

Step By Step

God's will is a lamp to light you step by step on your heavenward way, at last bringing you to the door of home. If there are perplexities before you, simply begin to do your duty ― the little of it that is clear ― and the perplexities will vanish. If the task set for you seems impossible, still begin the doing of it. It would not be a duty and be really impossible. God never requires anything He does not intend to help us to do. The giving of a duty always implies strength to do it.

July 11

Seeking and Finding

How easy Jesus makes it for those that set out to find Him. When we start to seek Him, ever so timidly and tremblingly, He does not leave us to seek without encouragement, but quickly turns to meet us and to cheer and help us. Then He does not stand apart on some lofty mountaintop far away, or hide Himself out of sight, compelling us to seek alone and struggle through sore difficulties to get to His feet.

He sees us when we take our first steps toward Him, and notes the very beginnings of our heart's longings for Him. In the parable, the father was watching and saw the prodigal son as he came painfully and wearily homeward ― and when he saw him he ran to meet him. It is just in this way that Jesus does when He sees a repenting sinner turn his face toward Him.

July 12

Love, an Interpreter

A young lady purchased a book and read a few pages, but was not interested in it. Some months afterwards she met the author, and a tender friendship sprang up, ripening into love and engagement. Then the book was dull no longer. Every sentence had a charm for her heart. Love was the interpreter.

So, to those who do not know Jesus personally, the Bible seems dry and uninteresting. But when they learn to know Him, and to love Him, all is changed; and the deeper their love for Him becomes, the more do the sacred pages glow with beauty and light.

July 13

Death's Loneliness

The loneliest of all human experiences is that of dying. Human love cannot go beyond the edge of the valley. But we need not be alone even in that deepest of all loneliness, for if we belong to Jesus, we can say, "Yet I am not alone, because my Saviour is with me."

When the human hands unclasp, His will clasp ours the more firmly. When human loved faces fade out, His will shine above us in all its glorious brightness. When we must creep out of the arms of human affection, it will be only into the clasp of the everlasting arms, into the arms of Jesus. Death's loneliness will thus be filled with Divine companionship.

July 14

Looking Through the Eyes of Jesus

We shall be prepared to seek the good of others in the largest, truest way only when we have learned to look upon human lives as our Lord did. There was not a poor ruined creature that came into His presence in whom He did not see, under all the wasting of sin, something that He esteemed worthy of His love. There was not one whom He thought it an embarrassment to serve. When the disciples were quarrelling as to which one should take the servant's place and wash the feet of the others, He quietly arose and performed the humble service.

July 15

Cheer by the Way

There is a great host of weary men and women toiling through life toward the grave, who sorely need just now the cheering words and helpful ministries which we can give. The flowers are ready to scatter about their coffins, but why should they not be scattered in their paths today?

The kind words are lying in men's hearts unexpressed, and hovering on their tongues unvoiced, which will be spoken by and by when these weary ones are sleeping. But why should they not be spoken now, when they are needed so much, and when their accents would be so pleasing and grateful?

July 16

One Duty at a Time

Duty never is a haphazard thing. It does not come to us in bundles from which we may choose what we like best. There are never a half dozen things, any one of which we may reasonably do at any particular time. There is one definite and particular thing in the Lord's purpose for each moment. The art of true Christian living, therefore, consists largely in doing always the thing that belongs to the moment.

But how to know what is the duty of each moment is a question which to many is full of perplexity. Yet it would be easy if our obedience were but more simple. We have but to take the duty that comes next to our hand ― that which the moment brings. "Doe ye nexte thynge," says the quaint old Saxon legend. Our duty is never some faraway thing. We do not have to search for it ― it is always close at hand, and easily found.

July 17

The Beauty of Love

"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and every one who loves is born of God, and knows God" (1 John 4:7). Love is the fulfilling of the law ― not selfish love, but the love that goes out in self-denial, in sympathy, in kindness, in continual thought and effort and sacrifice for others. Such love builds beauty for its home, just as the innocent and delicate flower by its own nature fashions for itself a form of exquisite shape and hue.

"The angels are beautiful because they are good, and God is beauty because He is love." Men and women grow lovely, even in outward feature, just in the degree in which they become filled with the love of God.

July 18

Something Higher Than Happiness

The aim of the Lord's helpfulness is not to make things easy for us, but to make something of us. We need to keep this Divine principle in mind in our helping of others. It is usually easier to give relief than it is to help another to grow strong. Yet in many cases relief is the poorest help we can give. The very best is inner help ― that which makes someone stronger, purer, truer, braver; that which makes someone able to overcome.

Someone has said, "To help another is the divinest privilege one can have. There are many who help us in mechanical things; there are a few who help us in our outside duties; there are perhaps only two or three who can help us in our most sacred sphere of inner life."

July 19

Victorious Christian Faith

This is the mission of Christianity in the world ― to help men to be victorious, to whisper hope wherever there is despair, to give cheer wherever there is discouragement. It goes forth to open prisons, to unbind chains, and to bring out captives. Its symbol is not only a cross ― that is one of its symbols, telling of the price of our redemption, telling of love that died ― but its final symbol is an open grave, open and empty. We know what that means. It tells of life, not of death; of life victorious over death. We must not suppose that its promise is only for the final resurrection. It is for resurrection every day, every hour, over all death. It means unconquerable, unquenchable, indestructible, immortal life at every point where death seems to have won a victory.

July 20

The Retrieving Time

If the outlook did not reach beyond the bare and cold room in which those who have lost life's battle breathe their last, we might drop a tear of pity over their sad story of defeat. But when the curtain is lifted and we see millions of years of existence for them on the other side, we dry our tears. There will be time enough for them to retrieve the failure of earth.

Through the love and grace of Jesus, the defeated Christian life that goes out in the darkness here may be restored to beauty and power, and, in the long ages beyond, death may achieve all the hopes that seemed utterly wrecked in this world.

July 21

A Costly Gift

We cannot live a Christian life that will please Jesus — without some cost to ourselves. It can never be an easy thing to be such a disciple as Jesus wants us to be. An easy, self-indulgent life never can be a deeply Christ-like life. It was not easy for Jesus Christ to redeem the world. Virtue went out of Him continually to supply the wants in other lives.

At last, He literally opened His heart and poured out the last drop of its rich blood to become life for dead souls. His sufferings were finished when He bowed His head on the cross, but now it is ours to suffer for Him. We need never think that we can do anything to redeem this world other than as Jesus wrought. Nothing but the giving of life will ever save the world. Nothing but love will uplift men and transform them. Nothing but heart's blood will heal hearts.

July 22

The Unloved

It is God's will that we should love. It may not always be God's will that we should be loved. Some seem called to serve, to minister, to wear out their life in giving sweetness, comfort, and help to others, while none come to minister to them, to pour love's sweetness into their hearts, and to give them daily bread of affection, cheer, and help.

In many homes we find such lives ― a patient wife and mother, or a gentle, unselfish sister ― blessing, caring for, serving, giving perpetually love's richest gifts, themselves meanwhile unloved, unserved, unrecognised, and unhelped. We are apt to pity such persons. But may it not be that they are nearer the heavenly ideal of doing God's will than are some of those who sit in sunshine of love, receiving, ministered unto, but not giving or serving?

July 23

Definite Needs

It is good for us to get our desires into definite form. Many people are unhappy, and know that they need something, but do not know what it is. They are unsatisfied with themselves. They are conscious of imperfection, of sin, of unrest. They bend their faces toward Jesus and begin to pray to Him, but their prayers are vague and indefinite. Then Jesus turns and asks, "What seek ye?" (John 1:38).

If we will settle definitely what we want, He will be ready to answer. The form of this question also enfolds a promise: "Tell Me what you seek, and I will give it to you." The question is nothing less than a key to Jesus Christ's treasure house. We need only be sure that we seek truly, but we must remember that seeking is a very strong word.

July 24

Wrecks

Life everywhere is full of beginnings never carried on to completion. There is not a soul-wreck on the streets, not a prisoner serving out a sentence behind prison bars, not a debased, fallen one anywhere, in whose soul there were not once visions of beauty, high hopes, holy thoughts and purposes, and high resolves ― an ideal of something lovely and noble. But, alas, the visions, the hopes, the purposes, the resolves, never grew into more than beginnings. God's angels bend down and see a great wilderness of unfinished fabrics, bright possibilities unfulfilled, noble might-have-beens abandoned ― ghastly ruins now, and memorials only of failure.

July 25

Loving and Giving

Do we understand what love is? Do not many of us think only of its earthly side? We like to be loved, that is, to have other people love us, and live for us, and do things for us. We like the gratifications of love. But that is only miserable selfishness if it goes no further. It is a desecration of the sacred name, to think that love, at its heart, means getting, receiving. Nay, love gives.

Getting is earthly ― "As it is in heaven" is giving. That is what God's love does. It finds its blessedness in giving. "God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son" (John 3:16). That is what Jesus Christ's love does ― it pours out its very lifeblood, to the last drop. The essential meaning of loving must always be giving, not receiving.

July 26

When Comforts Flee

The best wine of life and of love will fail. If there were nothing better in this world, how sad it would be! But it is here that we see the glory of Jesus Christ's gospel. Jesus comes when earth's wine fails, and gives heaven's wine to supply the lack. How beautiful and how true is the picture ― the failing wine ― and then Jesus coming with power and supplying the want!

That is what He is doing continually. He takes lives which have drained their last drop of earthly gladness, and He satisfies them with spiritual good and blessing, so that they want nothing more.

When human joy fails, if we have Jesus with us He gives new joy, better than the world's, and in unfailing abundance. How sad it is for those who have not taken Jesus into their lives, and who have nothing but the empty cup when earth's wine gives out!

July 27

Heralds of Hope

If we are true and loyal messengers of Jesus, we can never be prophets of gloom, disheartenment, and despair. We must ever be heralds of hope. We must always have good news to tell. There is a gospel which we have a right to proclaim to everyone, whatever be their sorrow.

In Jesus there is always hope, a secret of conquest, a power to transform loss into gain, to change defeat to victory, to bring life from death. We are living worthily only when we are living victoriously ourselves at every point, when we are inspiring and helping others to live victoriously, and when our life is a song of hope and gladness, even though we sing out of tears and pain.

July 28

What Confession Implies

It is always a solemn hour when anyone stands before God and people to make a public confession of Jesus and to enter His service. The act is nothing less than the consecration of a human soul to a service for life or for death. On the seal of an old missionary society an ox stands between an altar and a plough, and below is the motto, "Ready for either" ― ready for sacrifice or for service.

This should be the heart-legend in every public confession. It should be a solemn commitment to Jesus ― an entire surrender to Him for obedience, duty, sacrifice; a consecration of the whole life to Jesus and His service. Such consecration all have made who have publicly given themselves to Jesus.

July 29

Our Responsibilities

Not a day passes in the commonest experiences of life, in which other people do not stand before us with their needs, appealing to us for some service which we may render. It may be only ordinary courtesy, the gentle kindness of the home circle, the patient treatment of neighbours, or customers in business relations, the thoughtful showing of interest in old people or in children.

On all sides the lives of other people touch ours, and we cannot do just as we please, thinking only of ourselves and our own comfort and good, unless we choose to be false to all the instincts of humanity and all the requirements of the law of Christian love. We must think continually of other people. We may not seek our own pleasure in any way, without asking whether it will harm or mar the comfort of some other.

July 30

The Joyfulness of Jesus

Amid all His sorrows, under all the deep shadows that hung over His life, Jesus carried ever a heart of joy. Outwardly His life was hard and full of grief, but the hardness did not crush His spirit. His heart was like one of those freshwater springs that burst up in the sea, ever sweet under all the salt bitterness.

Not one unfriendly word ever fell from His lips. He did not frown upon the children's play, upon the marriage festivities, or upon the sweet pleasures of home. A gentle joyfulness plays over nearly every chapter of His blessed life. The true conception of Jesus Christ's character is of a deeply serious man, earnest, thoughtful, living an intense life, but never sombre, gloomy, or cynical ― the deep earnestness of His character struck through with a quiet joy, and a calm, steady light of a holy peace.

July 31

Not Unto Us

Let us beware lest we take that which belongs to Jesus, and also beware lest our friends see only us and see not Jesus. Let us keep ourselves out of the way, that they may behold Him. Let us remember always that there is One coming after us ― yea, standing unseen beside us, while we do our work ― that is far mightier than we, and that we should strive only and always to put the honour upon Him, utterly forgetting ourselves.

He will look after us and honour us, if we will only seek always His honour and never our own. But if we rob Him here of the praise that is His, to wreathe garlands for our own brow, we shall find ourselves stripped of honour and crown in the day of Jesus Christ's manifesting.

August

August 1

Character Building

It is strange how many of earth's most beautiful lives have grown up out of what seemed defeat and failure. Indeed, God seems to love to build spiritual loveliness out of the castaway fragments of lives, even of sin's debris. In Lincoln Cathedral in England there is a window made by an apprentice out of the bits of stained glass that were thrown away as refuse and worthless when the other windows were made ― and this is the most beautiful window of all.

In the strength of Jesus, you can build a righteous character for yourself, in spite of all the hurts and injuries done to you wittingly or unwittingly by others, with the fragments of the broken hopes and joys, and the lost opportunities that lie strewn about your feet. No others by their worst work of hurt or marring can prevent you building a beautiful character for yourself.

August 2

God's in His Heaven

Some people laugh at the simple faith of childlike believers in God, and say that it is all fancy ― that there is no one in heaven taking care of us. But we need not be worried by such sceptical ones. There is a God in heaven, and He is our Father. He never sleeps. He has charge of all the affairs of this universe, and is always at the helm.

This should give us all confidence. Our whole duty is to be ready always to obey. Whenever the voice comes bidding us "Arise and go," there is some reason for it, and we should not hesitate to obey. Wherever we are sent, we should quietly stay there till again God sends to call us away. The place of duty is always the place of safety, and we should never move until God brings us word.

August 3

Unfinished Work

We must not measure spiritual building by earthly standards. Where the heart remains loyal and true to Jesus; where the cross of suffering is taken up cheerfully and borne sweetly; where the spirit is obedient though the hands must lie resting and the feet must keep still, the temple rises continually toward finished beauty.

But there are abandoned life buildings whose story tells only of shame and failure. Many people begin to follow Jesus, and after a little time turn away from their profession of faith, and leave only a pretentious beginning to stand as a ruin, to be laughed at by the world, and to dishonour the Master's name.

August 4

Dangers of the Ceremonial

It is the peril of all forms of church ritual, that people trust in them and do not realise their need of Jesus. A few drops of water on the brow make no impression on the life, and it is only when the baptism symbolised by the water is received by faith that real blessing comes upon the one who is baptized.

When Jesus was being baptized He prayed, and the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended and rested upon Him. This blessing descends from heaven upon everyone receiving the symbol, who also by prayer seek the heavenly baptism. The same is true of the Lord's Supper, and other Divine ordinances. When the ordinance is received in faith and with prayer, God gives the grace of which the emblem is but the image.

August 5

Things Undone

Love always gives. If it will not give, it is not love. Love is measured always by what it will give. The needs of other people are therefore God's commands to us which we dare not disregard or disobey. To refuse to bless a brother who stands before us in any kind of want, is as great a sin as to break one of the Ten Commandments.

We like to think there is no sin in simply not doing. But Jesus, in His picture of the Last Judgment, makes men's condemnation turn on not doing the things they ought to have done. They have simply not fed the hungry, nor clothed the naked, nor visited the sick, nor blessed the prisoner.

August 6

Believe the Best

Does Jesus look upon us sharply, critically, suspiciously? He sees every infirmity in us, but it is as though He did not see it. His love overlooks it. He throws a veil over our faults. He continues to pour His own love upon us, in spite of all our blemishes and our ill-treatment of Him.

The law of Christian forbearance requires the same in us. We must not keep our selfish suspicions ever on the watchtower or at the windows, looking out for neglects, discourtesies, wrongs, or grievances of any kind. We must not be hasty to think evil of others. We had better be blind, not perceiving at all the seeming rudeness or insult. It is well not to hear all that is said, or, if hear we must, to be as though we heard not.

August 7

Discipline

God has two axes. One He uses in pruning His trees, removing the fruitless branches, and cleansing the fruitful branches, that they may bring forth more fruit. The work of this axe is not judgment or destruction, but mercy and blessing. It is the good, the fruitful tree that feels its keen edge.

Then God has another axe, which He uses only in judgment in cutting down those trees which after all His culture of them bring forth no fruit. Life is all very important. Only supremest folly can be blind to duty in such a case.

August 8

Complete In Jesus

We must remember, lest we be discouraged, that only in a relative human sense can any life building be made altogether complete. Our best work is marred and imperfect. It is only when we are in Jesus and are co-workers with Him, that anything we do can ever be made perfect and beautiful. But the weakest and the humblest, who are simply faithful, will stand at last complete in Him.

Even the merest fragment of life, as it appears in men's eyes, if it be truly in Jesus and filled with His love and with His spirit, will appear finished when presented before the Divine presence. To do God's will, whatever that may be, to fill out His plan, is to be complete in Jesus, even if the stay on earth be but for a day, and though the work done fills no great human plan and leave no brilliant record among men.

August 9

Proper Self-Esteem

We can only fulfil life's grand meaning when we accept every responsibility with glad welcome, and reverent self-confidence. There is a wide difference between self-conceit and that proper estimate of one's own powers that rates them justly and fairly and is not afraid to put them to the test. That self-confidence is not wrong which leads us to accept without distrust the responsibilities which God lays at our feet.

A person of great gifts, in order to be humble, is not required to esteem themselves a poor ungifted good-for-nothing. We need to revise our ideas of humility. If we must give account to God for every gift of usefulness, and for its fullest possible exercise, we must honour our redeemed powers, appreciate their true value, and then devote them to the service of Jesus Christ and of our fellow men.

August 10

Flowers of Love

It is not only our elaborately wrought deeds that leave results behind. Much of the best work we do in this world is done unconsciously. There are many people who are so busied in what is called secular toil, that they can find few moments to give to works of compassion. But they come out every morning from the presence of God and go to their daily business or toil; and all day, as they move about, they drop gentle words from their lips, and scatter seeds of kindness along their path. Tomorrow flowers of the garden of God spring up in the hard, dusty streets of earth, and along the paths of toil in which their feet have trodden.

August 11

Faith and Life

The Christian life and daily life are not two different and distinct things. We may not cut our existence in two parts, and say, "Over this Jesus shall rule, but over that He shall have no control." True faith knows no difference between Sunday and Monday, so far as the ethics of life are concerned.

Each day brings its own specific duties; but there are not moral precepts for the one which are suspended when its sun sets, that for six days a mitigated or less holy law may prevail. Holiness is to be the Christian's clothing all the week through, in every hour's conduct. All pleasures and amusements must be tested by the unvarying rule of right. The standard of perfect purity cannot be lowered.

August 12

Humour

Not the least highly gifted men are those to whom God has imparted the talent of humour, that they may make others laugh. Sanctified wit has a blessed mission. Life is so hard, so stern, with so many burdens and struggles, that there is need for all the bright words we can speak. The most wretched people in the world are those who go about in sackcloth, carrying all their griefs in their faces and casting shadows everywhere.

Every Christian should be a happiness maker. We need a thousand times more joy in our lives than most of us get. We should be better men and women if we were happier. As Shakespeare says, "The man who hath no music in his soul," he who has no sense of gladness and gives forth no pleasure is "fit for treason, stratagems, and spoils," and is not worthy to be trusted.

August 13

Counting the Cost

We sometimes forget, while we pillow our heads on the promises of God and rest secure in the atonement, and enjoy all the blessings of redemption and the hopes of glory, what these cost our Redeemer. In those long years of poverty, those sharp days of temptation, those keen hours of agony, He was laying up treasures of blessing and glory for us. There is not a hope or a joy of our Christian faith that does not come to us out of the treasures stored away by our Redeemer during the years of His humiliation and the hours of His agony.

August 14

Forbearance

There are at least two motives which should be sufficient to lead us to cultivate the grace of forbearance. One is that no insult can do us harm unless we allow it to irritate us. If we endure even the sorest words, as Jesus endured His wrongs and revilings, they will not leave one trace of injury upon us. They can harm us only when we allow ourselves to become impatient or angry. We can get the victory over them and utterly disarm them of the power to do us injury, by holding ourselves superior to them.

The feeling of resentment will change to pity when we remember that not the one who is wronged, but the one who does the wrong is the one who suffers. And to help in bearing with disagreeable people, or those with unpleasant qualities, there is nothing better than a sincere wish to do them good. There is a better side to every flawed or distorted character. Hidden away under the blemishes are the seeds and possibilities of a noble and beautiful life.

Jesus sees under the most faulty exterior, that which by His grace He can exalt into heavenly sainthood. We should look even upon the worst people in the same way, and hold it to be our task to them, to help to bring out in them the possible beauty. There is a key somewhere to unlock any and every heart, and a hand that can bring improvement to every life.

August 15

Value of Encouragement

What men need most in this world's struggle and strife is not usually direct help, but cheer. A child was seen in a high window in a burning building. A brave fireman started up a ladder to try to rescue it. He had almost gained the window, when the terrible heat appeared too much for him.

He seemed to stagger, and was about to turn back, when someone in the throng below cried, "Cheer him!" A loud cheer went up, and in a moment more the fireman had the imperilled child in his arm, snatched from an awful death. Many people have fainted and succumbed in great struggles, when one word of cheer would have made them strong to overcome.

August 16

God with Us

If we were truly to desire Jesus to abide always with us, He would never go away. What a life of blessing and joy we should live if He were indeed always with us! Unbroken communion with Him would hold heaven close about us all the while, and thus these sordid earthly lives of ours would be permeated and struck through with the sweetness and fragrance of holiness, and transformed into the likeness of Jesus Himself. Then all life's experiences would be transfigured. Joy would be purer, and even sorrow would be illumined. All through life this should be our continual prayer; then in death our earthly communion shall brighten into heavenly glory.

August 17

Personal Responsibility

We read that Pilate took water in the presence of the Jews and washed his hands ― thus by symbol declaring that he was not responsible for the sentencing of Jesus to die. But the water did not wash away even one particle of the stain of the guilt of that terrible sin.

Pilate had the misfortune to be the only man in all the province who could send Jesus to the cross. Upon him, therefore, the final responsibility rested, no matter what the pressure that was brought to bear upon him by the enemies of Jesus. The fact that others urge us to sin does not take away our guilt for that sin. Nothing in the universe can compel us to do wrong. If, then, we do wrong, the sin is our own.

August 18

The Silences of Jesus

Our Lord sometimes seems to be silent to His people when they cry to Him. To all their earnest prayer He answers not a word. Is His silence a refusal? By no means. Ofttimes, at least, it is meant only to make the pleadings more earnest, and to prepare our hearts to receive richer and greater blessings. So, when Jesus is silent to our prayers, it is that we may be brought down in deeper humility at His feet, and that our hearts may be made more fit to receive heaven's gifts and blessings.

August 19

No More Death

It is beneficial for us to contrast the death of Jesus with that of His disciples in all ages since. He shrank from the "cup" ― they are eager to drink it. He seemed forsaken of God ― they look with ecstasy and unclouded vision into the Father's face. Death has no bitterness for the Christian ― because it was so bitter to the Redeemer. He drew the curse from it, and now it has in it only the sweetness of blessing. Indeed, there is no death any more for the Christian. Jesus abolished death.

What we now call death is death no longer, since He passed through it. It is now only the shadow of death, and even the shadow is lighted up with the beams of Divine glory bursting from heaven. Let us never forget that we have light in our dying — because Jesus had darkness.

August 20

Death a Beginning

Jesus appeared to Mary after He had risen from death, yet death had not extinguished one beam of His brightness. The resurrection was a picture and prophecy of the future resurrection of all who believe in Him and sleep in Him. It shows us, therefore, that death does not mean destruction, is not the end of life. It is but an incident, an experience, and life goes on afterward without loss or injury. We ought to try to learn this blessed truth. Life is not worth living which is bounded by earth's little horizon and does not reach out into immortality. Indeed, we do not really begin to live until we are living for immortality.

August 21

The Secret of Harmony

The days are like the lines and spaces in the musical staff, and duties are the notes. Each life is meant to be a perfect harmony, and in order to achieve this, each single duty has its own proper place. One thing done out of its time and place makes discord in the music of life, just as one note misplaced on the staff mars the harmony.

The art of true living, therefore, consists largely in always doing the thing that belongs to the moment. But, how to know what is the duty of each moment, is a question which to many is full of perplexity. Yet it would be easy if our obedience were but more simple.

We have but to take the duty that comes next to our hand ― that which the moment brings. Our duty is never some far away thing. The trouble is that we complicate the question of duty for ourselves by our way of looking at life, and then get our feet entangled in the meshes which our own hands have woven.

August 22

God Going Before

God always opens the way of duty for us if we quietly move on. This applies to those beginning a Christian life. They say, "I never can be faithful. I never can do the duties. I never can bear the burdens." But as they enter and go on, they find that an unseen and mighty Helper, the Holy Spirit, goes on before and prepares the way.

Walls of stone seem built across the path we are required to walk along. But as we go on, the commandment is easy, and a gateway is opened in the wall. Love and faith always have an advance guard of angels to roll away stones. The practical lesson is that we are never to hesitate nor shrink back because obstacles seem to lie before us. We are to go right on, and God will take them away for us. When He wants us to go anywhere, He will open the path for our feet. Knowing this, we may go on, feeling confident of our own safety.

August 23

Welcoming God's Messengers

Let us at least beware that we do not send away from our door someone whom God has sent either with a message or a blessing for us, which must be carried on to some other, since we reject it. For even in these times, Heaven sends angels, though they may come unawares, not wearing their celestial robes, but disguised in unattractive attire.

August 24

God's Grace Sufficient

God adapts His grace to the peculiarities of each one's necessity. For rough, flinty paths He provides shoes of iron. He never sends anyone to climb sharp, rugged mountainsides wearing silken slippers. He always gives grace sufficient. As the burdens grow heavier, the strength increases. As the difficulties thicken, the Lord draws closer. As the trials become sorer, the trusting heart grows calmer.

Jesus always watches His disciples when they are toiling in the waves, and at the right moment comes to deliver them. The sharper the temptations, the more of Divine grace is granted. There is, therefore, no trial or difficulty or hardship in which we cannot live beautiful lives of true Christian faith and approved conduct.

August 25

Trustful Prayer

It is not enough to kneel down and make a prayer, nor is it enough to pray about the particular matter that worries us, asking for help or deliverance. Only the most simple-hearted confidence in prayer will meet the need. We must bring the very perplexity itself, and put it out of our hands into God's, that He may work it out for us.

We are to bring the matter as literally to Him as we would carry a broken watch to the watchmaker's, leaving it for him to repair and readjust. A little child playing with a handful of threads, when they begin to get into a tangle, goes at once to her mother, that her patient fingers may unravel the snarl. How much better this than to pull and tug at the threads till the tangle becomes inextricable! May we not learn a lesson from the little child?

August 26

Seeming Failures

Life may seem a failure here, crushed like a lily under the heel of wrong or sin, broken, trampled, torn. But it may yet become a glorious success. Many of the truest and best of God's children experience only defeat in this world. They are evermore beaten back and thrust down. The burdens are too heavy for them. They are overmastered by sorrows. The world's enmity treads them in the dust. They are not worldly wise, and while others march by to great earthly success, they live obscurely, oppressed, cheated, wronged, and to the world's eyes they lie buried away in the darkness of failure.

If the vista did not reach beyond the bare and cold room in which these unsuccessful ones breathe their last, we might drop a tear of pity over their sad story of defeat. But when the curtain is lifted, and we see millions of years of existence for them on the other side, we dry our tears. There will be time enough for them to retrieve the failure of earth. Through the love and grace of Christ, the defeated Christian life that goes out in the darkness here, may be restored to beauty and power, and in the long ages beyond death may realize all the hopes that seemed utterly wrecked in this world.

August 27

Jesus in Us

Before we can be in the place of Jesus to sorrowing, suffering, and struggling ones, we must have the mind in us that was in Him. When St. Paul said, "The love of Christ constraineth us" (2 Corinthians 5:14), he meant that we have the very love of Jesus Christ in us ― the love that loves even the most unlovely, that helps even the most unworthy, that is gentle and affectionate even to the most loathsome. We are never ready to do good in the world, in the truest sense, or in any large measure, until we have become thus filled with the very Spirit of Jesus.

August 28

Unconscious Ministries

There is a ministry in our handshaking, in our greeting, in the most casual conversation, in the very expression we wear on our faces as we move along the street, in the gentle sympathy that adds such a thrill of strength to fainting weariness

To meet some people and have their cheery "Good morning!" makes one happier all day, but to encounter others is as dispiriting as meeting a funeral procession. A joyful person scatters gladness like song notes. A consecrated Christian life sheds a tender warmth wherever it moves. What a wondrous sphere of usefulness is thus opened to every one of us!

August 29

Death's Function

Death only sweeps away the limitations, breaks down the walls, shatters the crust of mortality, washes out the stains ― and then life expands into perfect freedom, fullness, joy, and power. The translation of a Christian life from earth to heaven is but like the removal of a tender plant from a cold northern garden, where it is stunted and dying, into a tropical field where it puts out most luxurious growths and becomes covered with splendour.

August 30

Be Kind in Time

Do not keep the alabaster boxes of your love and tenderness sealed up until your friends are dead. Fill their lives with sweetness. Speak approving, cheering words while their ears can hear them. The things you mean to say when they are gone, say before they go.

If a sermon helps you, it will do the preacher good to tell him of it. If the editor writes an article that you like, he can write a still better one next week if you send him a note of thanks. If a book you read is helpful, do you not owe it to the author to write them a word of acknowledgment?

If you know someone weary or neglected, or overwrought, would it not be such work as God's angels love to do, to seek to put a little brightness and cheer into their life, to manifest true sympathy with them, and to put into their trembling hand the cup filled with the wine of human love?

August 31

A Cheerful Faith

There is no inconsistency between holiness and laughter. It is no sin to smile. Indeed, a sombre faith is unnatural. Gloom is cheerless. Our lives should be sunny and full of song. The Christian faith portrayed in the New Testament is joyous even amid sorrows. There is not a tinge of unfriendly hardness.

We hear songs in the night. There is a flower that is most fragrant when the sun has set, and in the darkness pours its richest aroma on the air. So true faith grows in sweetness as shadows deepen. The person whose devoutness is cold, rigid, colourless, joyless, or who frowns upon innocent gladness and pure pleasure, misrepresents the Christian faith and the likeness of the Master.

September

September 1

The Image of Jesus

A few rays of sunlight came into a prisoner's cell each day for half an hour. He found a nail and a stone on the floor, and with these simple implements cut and chiselled day after day during the few moments when the light lay upon the wall, until in the stone he had cut the image of Jesus upon His cross.

In the dark days of sorrow that come to us we may serve Jesus by seeking to sculpture His sweet beauty, not in cold stone, but on the warm, living walls of our own hearts.

September 2

The Heart's Refuge

Often we do not learn the depth and riches of God's love and the sweetness of His presence till other joys vanish out of our hands, and other loved presences fade away out of sight. The loss of temporal things seems ofttimes to be necessary to empty our hearts, that they may receive the things that are unseen and eternal. The door is never opened to Jesus until the soul's dead joys are borne out; then, while it stands open, He enters bearing into it joys immortal.

How often is it true that the sweeping away of our earthly hopes reveals the glory of our heart's refuge in God! Someone has beautifully said, "Our refuges are like the nests of birds. In summer they are hidden among the green leaves, but in winter they are seen among the naked branches." Worldly losses strip off the foliage and disclose to us our heart's warm nest in the bosom of God.

September 3

Useless Sacrifices

The old monks used to hide away in deserts and mountains and in monastery cells, as far as possible from human sin and need, and thought that the kind of service Jesus wanted. But they were only wasting, in idle dreams, useless sacrifice, unavailing suffering, and hideous self-torture, the glorious gifts which God had bestowed upon them to be used in serving others. Only the living sacrifice is pleasing.

We bring our natural endowments, our acquired powers or gains, our gifts and blessings to the feet of Jesus. And touching them with His blessing, He gives them back to us, and says, "Take these again and use them for Me in bearing joy, help, comfort, cheer, or inspiration to those about you, and in life's paths, who need your ministries."

September 4

Using Our Talents

Our humility serves us falsely when it leads us to shrink from any duty. The plea of unfitness or inability is utterly insufficient to excuse us. It is too startlingly like that offered by the man in the parable who only had one talent, whose gift was so small that there seemed no use in trying to employ it. (Matthew 25:14-30.)

The shocking light that the sequel to his story flashes upon us should arouse us to read the meaning of personal responsibility, and to hasten to employ every shred of a gift that God has bestowed upon us.

September 5

Used Talents

God does not like to bestow His blessings where they will be hoarded or absorbed. He loves to put His very best gifts into the hands of those who will not store them away in barns, or fold them up in napkins and hide them away. He puts songs into the hearts of those who will sing them out again. This is the secret of that promise that to him that hath shall be given, and of that other little understood, little believed word of Jesus, "It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35).

Heaven's blessing comes, not upon the receiving, but upon the dispensing. We are good and great before God, not as we gather into our hands and hearts the abundant gifts of God, whether temporal or spiritual, but as our gathering increases their usefulness and makes them greater blessings to others.

September 6

Remembering the End

We all want to have beautiful endings to our lives. We want to leave sweet memories behind in the hearts of those who know and love us. We want our names to be fragrant in the homes on whose thresholds our footsteps are accustomed to be heard. We want the memory of our last parting with our friends to live as a tender joy with them as the days pass away.

We want, if we should stand by a friend's coffin tomorrow, to have the consciousness that we have done nothing to embitter their life. We can make sure of this only by so living always that any day would make a tender and beautiful last day; that any hand grasp would be a fitting farewell; that any hour's contact with a friend or neighbour would leave a fragrant memory; and that no treatment of another would leave a regret or cause a pang if death or space should divide us for ever.

September 7

Modest Goodness

Not one life lived for God is useless or lost. The lowliest writes its history and leaves its impression somewhere, and God will open His books at the last, and men and angels will read the record. In this world these quiet lives are like those modest lowly flowers which make no show, but which, hidden away under the tall plants and grasses, pour out sweet fragrance and fill the air with their scent. And in heaven they will receive their reward ― not praise of men, but open confession by the Lord Himself ― in the presence of the angels and of the Father.

September 8

Making or Marring

We ourselves are always the real builders. Others may lift the blocks into place, but we must lay them on the wall. Our own hands give the touches of beauty or of marring. If the building is marred or unsightly when it is finished, we cannot say it was some other's fault. Others may have sinned, but the inheritance of the sin is yours. Others may have sorely wronged you, but the hurt yet stays in your life.

You never can be the same in this world, as you might have been but for this wounding. You are not responsible for these injuries of your character which were wrought by others' hands. But now you are the builder ― you and God. You can take even the broken fragments of what seems a ruin, and with them, through God's grace you can make a noble fabric.

September 9

Realised Ideals

It costs always unsparing toil to carve the beauty God shows us as an ideal for our life. It costs self-discipline, anguish at times, as we must deny ourselves and cut off the things we love. Self must be crucified if we are ever to be set free to shine in true beauty. Michael Angelo used to say, as the chippings fell thick and fast from the marble onto the floor of his studio, "While the marble wastes, the image grows."

There must be a wasting of self, a chipping away continually of the things that are dear to our human nature, if the things that are true and pure and just and lovely are to be allowed to come out in us. It is not easy to become a good person, a Christ-like individual. Yet we must never forget that it is possible. God never yet put into a soul a dream of a godly life which He is not able and ready to help make real.

September 10

Value of Silence

There are times when silence is golden, when words mean defeat, and when victory can be gained only by answering not a word. Many of the painful quarrels and much of the bitterness of what we call so often "incompatibility of temper" would never be known if we would learn to keep silence when others wrong us. We must choke back the angry word that flies to our lips. The insult unanswered will recoil upon itself and be its own destruction.

September 11

Words of Life

The words of Jesus still have the same power. They are yet calming tempests, opening blind eyes, expelling evil spirits, and raising the dead. They are yet giving comfort to sorrowing ones, and hope to despairing ones, and forgiveness to penitents. They are still changing hearts, sweetening bitter fountains, and making flowers bloom where thorns grew before.

If you lean upon a word of Jesus, you will find in your hand an all-conquering word before which all foes will fly. If you are weary, or in sorrow, and pillow your head on one of these precious words, you will find that you are lying on your Father's bosom, close to His warm, beating heart. The world's richest treasures today are the words of Jesus. "Never man spake like this man" (John 7:46).

September 12

Looking Ahead

This is a wonderful secret, which all of us ought to learn ― not to think so much about the toil and hardness of the way, but to look beyond to the brightness of the end. No matter how rough the road, if it brings us home at last. Many of us go worrying all through this life, keeping our eyes always downcast on the path we are treading.

We see all the troubles, the difficulties, and discouragements, but we never raise our eyes to see the joys and the blessings that are waiting for us. We ought to learn this secret, which made Jesus forget the shame and sorrow of His cross and see only the glory beyond. Learn to look up toward heaven. Think of its joys, its blessedness, until earth's trials shall melt away in the brightness, and its griefs and losses be forgotten in the hopes of glory.

September 13

Beauty of Spirit

It is not half so much the outward in life that we need to have changed, as the spirit of the inner life. The cause of discontent is not in our circumstances, but in our own spirit and temperament. Get the song into your heart, and you will hear songs all about you. Even the wailing storm will make music for you. Get the beauty and the good into your own soul, and you will see only beauty and good in all things. Get the peace of God deep into your own life, and you will find peace in every lot.

September 14

Hope in Failure

When teachers have in their Sunday school scholars on whom they can make no impression, their discouragement and failure should lead them to bring them to Jesus, for He is yet able to take them and change them into God's beauty. When troubled souls have sought in vain for comfort and help from the Church and from Christian ministers, they should go to Jesus, for He can comfort.

No matter in what we have been defeated, Jesus stands ready to take our humiliation and turn it into victory. The disciples toiled all night in vain, but, when they dropped their net at the Lord's bidding, great was their success. So always, in the shadows of our human failure, He stands to give blessing.

September 15

Cross-Bearing

It is our cross, and not that of some other, that each of us is to take up. It is the particular cross that God lays at our own feet that we are to bear. We are never to make crosses for ourselves, but we are always to accept those which are allotted to us. Each one's own cross is the best for that person.

Sometimes we think our lot is abnormally hard, and we compare it with the lot of this or that other person, and wish we had their cross instead of our own. But we do not know what other people's crosses really are. If we did, we might not want to exchange.

The cross that seems woven of flowers, if we put it on our own shoulders, we might find filled with sharp thorns under the flowers. The cross of gold that seems so bright, we should find so heavy that it would crush us. The easiest cross for each of us to bear is our own.

September 16

Too Late

We never see the beauty of our friends till they are vanishing out of our sight. While they were with us we were impatient of their faults. Their habits fretted us. But when death touched them it clothed them in an attire of brilliant beauty. They appeared transfigured. Out of the dull, faulty character sprang a radiant form, and hovered just beyond our reach for ever. What joy and blessing it would have brought to our lives to have seen the beauty and the worth before the vanishing!

September 17

Mistaken Love

Our best friends may become our tempters too. In their love for us they may seek to keep us from entering paths of duty which will lead to sacrifice. Mothers may seek to restrain their children from going to foreign fields. Any of us, in the warmth of our affection for our friends, may seek to dissuade them from perilous or costly service which it may be their duty to undertake for Jesus. We need to guard ourselves at this point.

The path of true success does not always lie along the sunny hillside. Sometimes it goes down into the dark valley of self-sacrifice. And if we try to hinder any from entering upon hard duties, urging them to choose easier ways, we may be doing Satan's work. We may be plucking the crown from the brow of our friend, by holding back their feet from the way of the cross.

September 18

Saving Help

Human sympathy in suffering is a wonderful help, but the assurance of our Lord's sympathy is infinitely more uplifting. Jesus gives real help. He was moved with compassion when He saw the widow of Nain in her lonely sorrow, and He restored her dead son to her. He wept with Mary and Martha, and then He raised their brother Lazarus. He sighed as He looked on the misfortune of the deaf man, and then He opened his ears.

He is "touched with the feeling of our infirmities," and then gives "grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:15-16). Not only does He pity us when He finds us deaf to all the sweet voices of love and grace, but He is ready to open our ears. We have only to bring to Jesus our infirmities, and He will take them and give us back in place souls with all their lost powers restored.

September 19

God Sufficient

What is the loss of money, stores, houses, costly furniture, musical instruments, and works of art, while love remains? Of what are temporal and worldly losses of the sorest kind, while God remains? There is surely enough in Him to compensate a thousand times for every earthly deprivation.

Our lives may be stripped bare ― home, friends, riches, comforts gone, every sweet voice of love, every note of joy silenced ― and we may be driven out from brightness, music, tenderness, and shelter into the cold ways of sorrow. Yet, if we have God Himself left, ought it not to suffice?

September 20

Blessed Burdens

When God sends you someone to love who becomes a burden upon your heart, who calls for sacrifice, service, patient care, and thought and cost, lift up your eyes and reverently thank Him, for there is a Divine blessing for yourself in this ministering in the name of Jesus.

Such loving, helps in saving our souls. This is a losing of life which is in reality the finding of it. The blessing comes through the serving, through the giving out of life. An invalid or a suffering one in the house is often the means of softening, refining, and enriching all the household lives.

September 21

A Parable

A writer says, "A cold firebrand and a burning lamp started out one day to see what they could find. The firebrand came back and wrote in its journal that the whole world was very dark. It did not find a place wherever it went in which there was light. Everywhere was darkness.

"The lamp, when it came back, wrote in its journal, 'Wherever I went it was light. I did not find any darkness in all my journey.' The whole world was light. The lamp carried light with it, and when it went abroad it illuminated everything. The dead firebrand carried no light, and everywhere it went it was dark."

Living men and women go through the world, and, returning, write records of observation just as diverse as these. Some find only gloom in the fairest paths, and amid the loveliest scenes nothing beautiful. Others find nothing but beauty and brightness even in the deepest vales of earth. Each one of us finds just what we take out ourselves. The colours we see are the tints of our own inner life.

September 22

The Truth in Love

We should never criticise or correct, save in love. If we find ourselves in anger, or cherishing any bitter, unkind, or resentful feeling, as we are about to point out an error or a mistake in another person or in the other's work, we would better be silent and not speak until we can speak in love. Only when our heart is full of love are we fit to judge another or to speak of their faults.

September 23

Might-Have-Beens

In a quarry at Baalbek, Lebanon, lies the largest fashioned stone in the world, almost detached and ready for transportation. In the ruined Temple of the Sun nearby is a place still empty and waiting for this 1200 ton stone after forty centuries. So large, so grand, it was a failure because it never filled the place for which it was designed: and who can tell how many human lives lie among the wastes and ruins of life that God intended to fill grand places?

When they were called, they declined to accept the responsibility. They folded their talents away and buried them, and forever they will lie in the quarries, pale ghosts of glorious might-have-beens, while the niches in God's temple which they were meant to fill and adorn remain for ever empty ― memorials of their hopeless and irreparable failure. It never can be known until the final disclosure how many glorious gifts have thus been lost to the world, nor how many lives with grand possibilities have shrivelled and died under the blighting curse of non-use.

September 24

Casting Care on God

During the brief pauses of a great battle, the soldiers heard a sparrow sing snatches of song from among the branches of a tree. Then, when the awful roar burst out again, its song was hushed. Is that the full meaning of the peace that Jesus promises? Is it only a sweet bird-note now and then amid the long days and years of discontent and struggle? They sadly misread the blessed words of Divine comfort who find nothing better in this promise.

We are permitted to roll our care entirely over to God and to let it stay there. We are to put the broken plan, the shattered hope, the tangled work, the complicated situation into the hands of our loving God, leaving the ordering and outcome of it to His wisdom. The provocation, the friction, the burden that presses sorely, the annoyance, the hindrance ― instead of permitting ourselves to be vexed, exasperated, or disturbed by them, we are quietly to turn the matter over to God, and then go on calmly to the next duty that comes to our hand.

September 25

Sanctified Lives

It is life itself, sanctified life, that is God's holiest and most effective ministry in this world ― pure, sweet, patient, earnest, unselfish, loving life. It is not so much what we do in this world, as what we are, that tells in spiritual results and impressions. A good life is like a flower, which, though it neither toils nor spins, yet ever pours out a rich fragrance, and thus performs a holy ministry.

September 26

The Hereafter

If we see life only as a narrow stage bounded by the curtain that falls at death, ending there for ever, how poor and little and limited does existence appear! We can have no plans that require more than earth's brief day for their completion. We can start no work that cannot be finished before the end comes. We may cherish no joys that will reach over into the life hereafter. We may sow no seeds that will not come to harvest this side of the grave. Our souls will not be thrilled by aspirations and hopes that have their goal beyond the shadows.

But how different if we see life with the veil torn away! The future is as much in our vision and as real as the present. We may begin work here which shall require ten thousand years to complete. There is no hurry, for we shall have all eternity in which to work. We may scatter seeds which we know shall not come to harvest for long ages. We may cherish hopes and aspirations whose goals lie far away in the life to come.

September 27

Distorted Vision

Our own imperfections unfit us for judging fairly. With beams in our own eyes, we cannot see clearly to remove the specks out of our brother's eye. One of the qualities which make us incapable of impartial judgment of others is envy. There are few of us who can see our neighbour's life, work, and disposition without some warping and distortion of the picture.

Envy has a strange effect on our moral vision. It shows the beautiful things in others with the beauty dimmed. It shows the blemishes and faults in them exaggerated. Then the lack of experience in struggle makes many people incapable of sympathy with sorely tempted ones. Those who have never known a care, nor felt the pinching of need, cannot understand the experiences of the poor. Thus in very many ways we are unfitted in ourselves to be judges of others.

September 28

Christian Quietness

All true culture is toward the control and the restraining of speech. A true Christian faith gives a quietness which in itself is one of life's holiest blessings. It gives the quietness of peace ― a quietness which the wildest storms cannot disturb ― which is a richer possession than all the world's wealth or power.

"Study to be quiet." The lesson may be hard to many of us, but it is well worth all the cost of learning. It brings strength and peace to the heart. Speech is good, but ofttimes silence is better. The person who has learned to hold their tongue is a greater conqueror than the warrior who subdues an empire. The power to be silent under provocation and wrongs, and in the midst of danger and alarms, is the power of the noblest conqueror.

September 29

Harmful Help

Our best friends are not those who make life easy for us. Our best friends are those who put courage, energy and resolution into our hearts. There are thousands of lives dwarfed and hurt irreparably by pampering. Parents often, in the very warmth and eagerness of their love, do sad harm to their children's lives by over-helping them; by doing things for them which it were better to teach them to do for themselves; by sparing them struggles, self-denials, and hardships, which it were far better for the children to meet.

Friendship is in constant danger of over-helping. When one we love comes to us with a difficulty, it is love's first impulse to solve it for them, whereas it would be a thousand times better kindness if we put them lovingly in the way of solving it for themselves.

September 30

The Transforming Touch

Someone tells of going into a jeweller's store to look at certain gems. Among other stones he was shown an opal. As it lay there, however, it appeared dull and altogether lustreless. Then the jeweller took it in his hand and held it for some moments, and again showed it to his customer. Now it gleamed and flashed with all the glories of the rainbow. It needed the touch and the warmth of a human hand to bring out its iridescence.

There are human lives everywhere about us that are rich in their possibilities of beauty and glory. But, as we see them, they are dull and lustreless. Perhaps they are even covered with stain and defiled with sin. Yet they need only the touch of the hand of Jesus to bring out the radiance, the loveliness, the beauty of the Divine image in them. And you and I must be the hand of Jesus to these lustreless or stained lives

October

October 1

Where Duty Lies

When we are resolving to live more grandly in the future than in the past, it will help us if we bring our eyes down from the far-off mountain peaks, and from the stars where there is nothing whatever for us to do, and to look closely about our feet where lie many neglected duties, many opportunities, and many possibilities of higher attainment in spirit, in disposition, in speech, in heart.

October 2

The Common Task

The ordinary accomplishment of the common days is a truer index of the life, a truer measure of its character and value, than are the most striking and brilliant things of its exalted moments. It requires more strength to be faithful in the ninety and nine commonplace duties, when no one is looking on, when there is no special motive to stir the soul to its best effort, than it does in the one duty which by its unusual importance, or by its prominence, arouses enthusiasm for its own doing.

October 3

A Master Hand

Only the Master's hand can bring out of our souls the music that slumbers in them. A violin lies on the table silent and without beauty. Someone picks it up and draws the bow across the strings, but it yields only wailing discords. Then a master comes and takes it up, and he brings from the little instrument the most marvellous music.

Other people touch our lives and draw from them only jangled notes. Jesus takes them, and when He has put the strings in tune, He brings from them the music of love and joy and peace.

October 4

Chances for Service

Consecration must first be a spirit in us ― a spirit of love, a life in our hearts which shall flow out to everyone, in desire to bless and help and make better. Thackeray tells of a man who kept his pocket full of acorns, and whenever he saw a vacant place in his estate he took one out and planted it. In like manner he exhorts his readers to deal with kind words as they go through life, never losing a chance of saying one. "An acorn costs nothing, but it may sprout into a prodigious bit of timber." To such a life, true consecration prompts and inspires. It takes lowliness of mind in many of us to accept such service.

October 5

Self-Indulgence

We do many things which to our own eyes appear innocent and harmless, but which have in them a hidden evil we cannot see. We indulge ourselves in many things which to us do not appear sinful, but which leave on our soul a touch of blight, a soiling of purity, of which we do not dream. We permit ourselves many little habits in which we see no danger, but which are silently twining their invisible threads into a cable which some day shall bind us hand and foot. We spare ourselves making self-denials and sacrifices, thinking there is no reason why we should make them, unaware that we are lowering our standard of living and permitting the subtle beginnings of self-indulgence to creep into our hearts.

October 6

Self-Deception

We are very forgiving towards our own shortcomings. We make all manner of allowance for our own faults, and are wonderfully patient with our own weaknesses. We see our good things magnified, and our blemishes in a light that makes them seem almost virtues. So true is this, that if we met ourselves some day on the street, the self God sees, even the self our neighbour sees, we probably would not recognise it as really ourselves. Our own judgment of our life is not conclusive. There is a self we do not see.

October 7

Transfiguring Touches

A piece of canvas is a trifling thing. You can buy it for a few pennies. You would scarcely think it worth picking up if you saw it lying in the street. But an artist takes it and draws a few lines and figures on it, and then with his brush touches in certain colours, and the canvas is sold for hundreds of pounds.

So Jesus takes up a ruined, worthless human life which has no beauty, no attractiveness, but is repulsive, blotched, and stained by sin. Then the fingers of His love add touches of beauty, painting the Divine image upon it, and it becomes precious, glorious, immortal.

October 8

Unconscious Influence

It is not what someone does or says purposely, and with direct intention, that leaves the deepest mark in the world and in other lives, but it is the unconscious unintended influences which go out from them like the fragrance from a garden, whether they wake or sleep, whether they are present or absent.

God seems to blight the things we are proud of, and make them come to nought. Then, when we are not intending to do anything grand, He uses us and our work for good purposes, to make lasting impressions on the world and its life.

October 9

Silent Workers

There are great multitudes of lowly lives lived on the earth which have no name among men, whose work no pen records, no marble immortalises, but which are well known and unspeakably dear to God, and whose influence will be seen in the end to reach to farthest shores. They make no noise in the world, but it needs not noise to make a life beautiful and noble.

Many of God's most powerful ministries are noiseless. How silently all day long the sunbeams fall upon the fields and gardens, and yet what cheer, what inspiration, what life and beauty they diffuse. How silently the flowers bloom, and yet what rich blessings of fragrance do they emit. How silently the stars move on in their majestic marches around God's throne, and yet the telescope shows us they are mighty worlds or great central suns representing utterly incalculable power.

October 10

Christian Influence

The lamp that burns in a Christian's heart is the flame of the Holy Spirit, and the personal influence of a Christian becomes spiritual power. It is like the shadow of Peter. (Acts 5:15-16.) It has a healing, life-giving effect wherever it falls. Such a person goes about his daily duty as others do, but while they are engaged in common things they are continually dropping seeds of blessing which spring up behind them in heavenly beauty and fragrance.

October 11

Incidental Influences

In all true living, while people carry out their greater plans, they are ever unintentionally performing a series of secondary acts which often yield the most beneficial and far-reaching results. There is a wayside ministry, for instance, made up of countless little courtesies, gentle words, mere passing touches on the lives of those we meet casually, impulses given by our salutations, influences flowing indirectly from the things we do and the words we speak ― a ministry undesigned, unplanned, unnoted, merely incidental ― and yet it is impossible to measure the results of these accidents of usefulness.

October 12

True Values

When we learn to measure others not by their rank and station, but by the worth of their spiritual nature, by their immortality, by the possibilities that lie in the most ruined life, it will be no longer humiliating for us to do even the humblest service for the least of God's creatures. Then there will be nothing in us that will seem too rich or too sacred to be poured out for the sake even of the most despised. We may honour ourselves, and may be conscious of all the power and dignity of our lives as God's children, and yet think ourselves too good to minister to the smallest and the least.

October 13

True Devotions

The heart of consecration is not devotion to this or that kind of service for Jesus ― it is devotion to His will. It is readiness to do, not what we want to do in Jesus Christ's service, but what He gives us to do. When we reach this state of spirit, we shall not need to wait long to find our work.

October 14

Keeping Still

"Does it hurt you severely?" someone asked a friend who lay with a broken arm.

"Not when I keep still," was the answer.

This is the secret of much of the victory we see in rejoicing Christians. They conquer the pain and the bitterness by keeping still. They do not ask questions, nor demand to know why they have trials. They believe in God, and are so sure of His love and wisdom that they are pained by no doubt, no fear, no uncertainty.

Peace is their pillow, because they have learned just to be still. Their quietness robs trial of its sharpness, sorrow of its bitterness, death of its sting, and the grave of its victory.

October 15

Strength In Quietness

In all departments of life it is the quiet forces that achieve most. The sunbeams fall all day long, silently, unheard by human ear; yet there is in them a wondrous energy and a great power for blessing and good. Gravity is a silent force, with no rattle of machinery, no noise of engines, no clanking of chains, and yet it holds all the stars and worlds in their orbits, and swings them through space with unvarying precision.

The dew falls silently at night when we sleep, and yet it touches every plant and leaf and flower with new life and beauty. It is in the lightning, not in the sound of thunder, that the electric energy resides. Thus, even in nature, strength lies in quietness, and the mightiest energies work noiselessly.

October 16

Quietness of Heart

Restlessness is not spiritually beautiful. Peace is a high attainment. Thus quietness indicates a rich Christian way of life. It is not easily reached. Soldiers say that in war it is much harder to stand still under fire than it is to rush into the battle. It is easier to be in the midst of the active duties and struggles of spiritual life, than it is to be compelled to wait and be still. Waiting is harder than working. For many people it requires more strength to work quietly than it does to bluster. It is only the great engine that runs noiselessly; the little machine fusses and splutters. Quietness in a man or a woman is a mark of strength.

October 17

The Soul of Prayer

Longing is the very soul of all true prayer. If we desire nothing more, we will ask nothing more. Longing is the empty hand reached out to receive new gifts from heaven. It is the heart's cry which God hears with acceptance, and answers with more and more. It is the ascending angel that climbs the starry ladder to return on the same radiant stairway with blessings from God's very throne. It is the key that unlocks new storehouses of God's goodness and enrichment. It is the bold navigator that ventures out on unknown seas and discovers new continents. It is, indeed, nothing less than the very life of God in the human soul, struggling to grow up in us into the fullness of the stature of Jesus.

October 18

Opportunities

We have a duty to each one with whom we are permitted to hold even the briefest and most casual conversation. What the duty is, we may not know; but, if the desire be in our hearts, God will use us to minister blessing in some way. Opportunities for such ministry are occurring continually.

In a morning's greeting we may put so much heart and so much of Jesus into phrase and tone as to make our neighbour happier all the day. In a few moments' conversation by the wayside, or during the formal call, or in the midst of the day's heat and strife, we may drop the word that will lift a burden, or strengthen a fainting heart, or inspire a new hope, or give warning of danger.

October 19

Short Views

We have nothing to do with life in the whole ― that great bulk of duties, responsibilities, struggles and trials that belong to a course of years. We really have nothing to do even with the nearest of the days before us ― tomorrow. Our sole business is with the one little day now passing. And its burdens will not crush us. We can easily carry them till the sun goes down. We can get along for one short day. It is the projection of life into the long future that dismays and appals us. So the lesson makes life easy and simple.

October 20

Wishing and Praying

The good wishes of friends do not, by their mere utterance, become realities in our lives. If they did, how rich most of us would be, and how happy! Good wishes, however, may be made to come true. They may be turned into prayers by those who make them, and passing through the hands of Jesus may be changed from mere empty breath into blessings that shall enrich our lives, or feed our souls, or shine like sparkling gems upon our brows. The best way for our friends to get good things to us is to pass them through the hands of Jesus.

October 21

One Day at a Time

Each day is, in a certain sense, a complete life by itself. It has its own duties, its own trials, its own burdens, and its own needs. It has enough to fill heart and hands for the one full day. We cannot live its life well, and use any of its strength outside of itself. The very best we can do for any day, for the perfecting of our life as a whole, is to live the one day well.

We should put all our thought and energy and skill into the duty of each day, wasting no strength, either in grieving over yesterday's failures, or in anxiety about tomorrow's responsibilities.

October 22

Preparation

The times of preparation come silently and unawares, and many neglect them, not knowing what depends upon them. But neglected, and allowed to slip away, they can never be regained. The man who finds himself in the presence of a great duty or opportunity which he cannot take up or accept because he is not prepared for it, cannot then go back to make the needful preparation. The soldier cannot learn the art of war in the face of the battle. The Christian cannot, in an unexpected emergency of temptation, gather in a moment all needed spiritual power. Not to be ready in advance for great duties or great needs is to fail.

October 23

How to Live Well

To live well in one's place in the world, adorning one's calling, however lowly, doing one's most commonplace work diligently and honestly, and dwelling in love and unselfishness with all men, is to live grandly. To fight well the battle with one's own lusts and tempers, and to be victorious in the midst of the countless temptations and provocations of everyday experience, is to be a Christian hero.

October 24

Vocations

One's vocation is never a far-off possibility. It is always for the present the simple round of duties that the passing hour brings. Someone has pictured the days as coming to us with their faces veiled, but when they have passed beyond our recall the draped figures become radiant, and the gifts we rejected are seen to be treasures fit for king's houses.

No day is commonplace, if only we had eyes to see the veiled splendours that lie in its opportunities, and in its plain and dull routine. There is no duty that comes to our hand that does not bring to us the possibility of kingly service with Divine reward.

October 25

Our Own Riches

One of the most inspiring of truths is that God has a distinct plan for each one of us in sending us into this world. Not only does He create us all to be useful, to take some part in the world's affairs, to honour and glorify Him in some way, but He designs each person for some definite place and specific work. He does not send us into life merely to fill any niche into which we may chance to be lifted by the circumstances of life, or to do whatever bits of work may drift to our hands in the vast and complicated mesh of human affairs.

October 26

Strength Out of Weakness

You think your weakness unfits you for noble, strong, beautiful living, or for sweet, gentle, helpful serving. You wish you could get clear of that weakness. It seems a burden to you, an ugly deformity. But really it is something which, if you give it to Jesus, He can transform into a blessing, a source of power. The friend by your side whom you envy because they seem so much stronger than you are, does not get so much of Jesus Christ's strength as you do. You alone are weaker than they are; but your weakness draws to you God's power, and makes you strong.

October 27

Joy Out of Sorrow

Much of the most beautiful life in this world comes out of sorrow. As "fair flowers bloom upon rough stalks," so many of the fairest flowers of human life grow upon the rough stalk of suffering. We take our place with John, the beloved disciple, on the other side, and we see that those who in heaven, who wear the whitest robes and sing the loudest songs of victory, are they who have come out of great tribulation.

Heaven's highest places are filling, not from earth's homes of glad festivity and tearless joy, but from its chambers of pain, its valleys of struggle where the battle is hard, and its scenes of sorrow where pale cheeks are wet with tears, and where hearts are broken.

October 28

Trust in God's Wisdom

When some great hope of our heart is about to be taken from us, we should not dare settle the question whether we shall lose it or keep it. We do not know that it would be best. At least we know that God has a perfect plan for our life, marked out by His infinite wisdom; and surely we should not say that what we, with our limited wisdom, might prefer would be better than what He wants us to be.

October 29

Human Ignorance

We cannot expect to know all God's thoughts. We cannot expect to know God's design in the providences that touch human affairs and affect our own lives. We cannot trace the results of His acts through the days to come, to know what the final outcome will be. We cannot tell what beautiful trees, with full rich fruitage, will grow from the rough dark seeds which today the Master plants in our life-garden. We cannot tell what blessing will come in the long future from the sorrow that now lays its heavy hand upon us.

October 30

The Unknown Future

Only as we go on, step by step, does God disclose to us His will and plan for our life. Thus the joys of life do not dazzle us, for our hearts have been prepared to receive them. The sorrows do not overwhelm us, because each one brings its own special comfort with it. But, if we had known in advance of the coming joys and prosperities, the exultation might have made us heedless of duty and of danger. We might have let go of God's hand and grown self-confident, thus missing the blessing that comes only to simple, trusting faith. Similarly, if we had known of the struggles and trials before us, we might have become disheartened, thus failing of courage to endure. In either case we could not have borne the revealing, and it was in tenderness that the Master withheld it.

October 31

Darkness and Starlight

God cannot show us the stars while the sun shines in the heavens; and He cannot make known to us the precious things of love that He has prepared for our nights while it is yet day about us. Jesus says to us then, "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now" (John 16:12). We could not understand them. But by and by, when we come into places of need, of sorrow, of weakness, of human failure, of loneliness, of sickness, of old age, then He will tell us these other things, and they will be full of joy for our hearts. When night comes, He will show us the stars.

November

November 1

Help in Need

There is a very large part of the Bible which can be received by us only when we come into the places for which the words were given. There are promises for weakness which we can never get while we are strong. There are words for times of danger which we can never know while we need no protection. There are consolations for sickness whose comfort we can never get while we are in robust health.

There are promises for times of loneliness, when others walk in solitary ways, which never can come with real meaning to us while loving companions are by our side. There are words for old age which we never can claim for ourselves along the years of youth, when the arm is strong, the blood warm, and the heart brave.

November 2

Our Mission

We fulfil our mission in the world when we live a life of true love towards all men. To every life that touches ours we have some message. Everyone who meets us even casually should be the better for it. Every life within the range of our influence should receive some good from us.

Whenever God brings a human need into our presence so that we can see it, He thus makes it our duty to consider it and do what is best or what we can for its relief. The world is full of sorrow, and we are set in it to be comforters. There is no other art in which we should seek more earnestly to be well trained than in the art of giving consolation.

November 3

Jesus Helping

The promise from Jesus is not that He will remove the load we cast upon Him, nor that He will carry it for us, but that He will sustain us so that we may carry it. He does not free us from duty, but He strengthens us for it. He does not deliver us from conflict, but He enables us to overcome. He does not withhold or withdraw a trial from us, but He helps us in a trial to be submissive and victorious, and makes it a blessing to us. He does not lessen the hardness or severity of our circumstances, taking away the disagreeable elements, removing the thorns, making life easy for us; but He puts into our hearts His grace, so that we can live securely in all the hard, adverse circumstances.

November 4

A Forgiving Spirit

None of us can live long in the thick of life and not sometimes be hurt, perhaps even cruelly, by others. How shall we endure the things that hurt and wound us? We know what Jesus would do, know what He did: "When He was reviled, He reviled not again" (1 Peter 2:23).

They drove the nails into His gentle hands, and as the iron went crashing through His tender flesh, He prayed, "Father, forgive them" (Luke 23:34). They hung Him on the cross, but in answer to that cruelty, instead of a withering curse upon the world, He wrought salvation there for us.

November 5

Growth of Character

Character grows as the child passes into adulthood. Every day something is written here, some mark made. The mother writes something. The teacher writes something. Every day's experiences write some words. Every touch or influence of other lives leaves some mark. Temptation and struggle do their part in filling the page.

Books, education, sorrow, joy, companions, friends ― all life touches and paints some line of beauty, or scratches some mark of harm. Final character is the result of all these influences that work and co-work upon the Christian's life. In the end we are to be altogether like Him. Hence all life's aiming and striving should be towards Jesus Christ's blessed beauty.

November 6

Mellowed By Trial

Many a Christian enters a sore trial ― cold, worldly, unspiritual ― with all their better and more tender qualities of their nature locked up in their heart, like the beauty and fragrance in the bare and jagged tree in January. But they come out of it with gentle spirit, mellowed, enriched, and sweetened, and with all the fragrant graces pouring their perfume about them.

The photographer carries his film back into a darkened room, that he may bring out its features. The light would mar his delicate work. God brings out in many a soul its loveliest beauties while the curtain is drawn and the light of day shut out. The darkness does not tell of anger; it is only the shadow of the wing of Divine love folded close over us for a little time, while the Master adds some new touch of loveliness to the picture He is bringing out in our souls.

November 7

Growing In Grace

A seed is the start of life. When, therefore, we say that God has sown the light for us, we mean that He gives us our blessings in seed form, not in full form ― that our blessings come to us, not developed into completeness of beauty, but as seeds which we must plant, waiting, sometimes waiting long, for them to grow into loveliness.

A seed does not disclose all the beauty of the life that is folded up within it. We see only a little brown and unsightly thing, which gives no sign of anything beautiful as springs from it when it has been planted. Those facts in nature have their analogies in the seeds of spiritual blessing which God sows for us. The blessing does not appear immediately. What does appear is often unlovely in its form, giving in itself no promise of good. Yet it is a seed carrying in it the power of life, and the possibilities of great blessing.

November 8

High Work Have We to Do

There is no doubt that God creates every human soul for a high destiny. He has a plan for every life, and that plan in every case is good and beautiful. There is no blind fate which predestines any soul to failure and damnation. No one is born in this world who may not make their life a true success, and attain at last to receiving the crown in heaven.

Every soul is endowed at creation for a noble calling. It may not be for a brilliant calling, with honour and fame and great power; but there is no one born who is not so gifted that they may fill their own place and do their allotted work. There can be no nobleness higher than this.

November 9

Looking Before

It is a good thing always to face forward. Even nature shows that our eyes are designed to look always "to the fore," for no one has eyes in the back of their head, as everyone certainly would have if it had been intended that they should spend much time in looking backward.

We like to have Bible authority for our rules in life, and there is a very plain word of Scripture which says, "Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee" (Proverbs 4:25).

November 10

Helpfulness of Defeat

Defeats in life should never detain us long, since only faith and courage are needed to change them into real victories. For, after all, it is character we are building in this world. If we use every experience to promote our growth, to make us better, if we emerge from it stronger, braver, truer, nobler, we have lost nothing, but have been the gainer. In reverses and misfortunes, then, we have but to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, caring only that no harm comes to our soul from the loss or the trial, and thus we shall be victorious.

November 11

Difficult Work Endures

Work for others that costs nothing is scarcely worth doing. At least, it takes heart's blood to heal hearts. Too many of us are ready to work for Jesus and to do good to others, only so long as it is easy and requires no sacrifice or self-denial. But if we stop there, we stop just where our service is likely to become of use. This saving of life proves, in the end, the losing of it.

It is they who sow in tears who shall reap in joy. It is he that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, that shall come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. (Psalm 126:6.) We may take easy work if we will ― work that costs us nothing, that involves no pain or self-denial ― but we must not then be surprised if our hands are empty in the great harvest time.

November 12

The Blood of Jesus

There is a story of a simple-minded boy whose idea of forgiveness was beautiful. He said that Jesus came and with His red hand rubbed out all his sins. A man used to carry a little book which he often took from his pocket, and which he called his "biography." It had only three leaves, and there was not a word written on any of them. Yet he said the book told the whole story of his life.

The first leaf was black: that was his sin; that was his condition by nature. He would shudder when he looked at it. The second was red: that was the blood of Jesus, and his face glowed when he gazed upon it. The third was white: that was himself washed in the blood of Jesus, made whiter than snow. His book told the whole story of every redeemed life. Between the black of our sins, and the white of redemption, must always come the red of Christ's blood.

November 13

Emotional and Real Faith

Emotional religion is not always permanent. It bursts up into great extravagance today, but we are not sure that it will be found tomorrow in healthy life. Too often the enthusiasm is but temporary. In the heat of trials, temptations, toil, or sorrow, the rootless graces will droop down and die.

The strong Christian faith has good soil, and the roots go down deep into the earth, and are unaffected by the frequent changes in temperature, by heat or cold, by rain or drought.

If anyone finds that their spiritual graces are rootless, and that there is a hard rock in their heart underneath the surface, they should seek at once to have the rock broken by repentance and prayer, so the plants of righteousness in them may have opportunity to grow.

November 14

Proofs of Jesus' Divinity

Look at the footprints of Jesus, and see whether they are a man's or God's. Whose prints are those by the gate of Nain, or by the grave of Bethany, or coming away from the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea? Whose prints are those by the doors of sorrow, along the path where the leper, the blind, the lame, the demon possessed waited for Him?

Or look around at what you see now ― churches, missions, hospitals, sweetened homes, cleansed sinners, renewed lives, comforted mourners. Whose prints are these? These works, wrought by Christians, are the best evidences of true faith. Jesus wants to be judged, not by His claims, but by His works. The world is full today of the proofs of Jesus Christ's divinity.

November 15

The Whole Life For Jesus

Jesus takes care of His servants when they are faithfully doing His will. He asks for absolute surrender to Him. He wants us to trust Him while we obey Him unquestioningly. The faith in Jesus which the gospel requires is the utter unreserved dedication of the whole life to Him, and the unreasoning committal to Him for time and for eternity of every interest and hope.

The question of what He will do with us or for us, how He will provide for us, should not for an instant be raised. There must be no conditions in the following and the consecration. We must not bargain with Him for an easy time, for "ways of pleasantness," but should simply give ourselves to Him absolutely and for ever, to follow where and to whatsoever He may lead us.

November 16

Jesus' Patience with Frailties

We are half the time perplexed about something ― full of worries. And these doubts, fears and anxieties get into our prayers. They take the joy out of our worship, and the faith out of our supplications, and give a sad tone to our devotions.

Does Jesus never get tired of such prayers? No, no, He listens, and hears all the discords made by the murmurings. His heart must be pained by them too, but He answers us nevertheless. He is very patient with us. He never chides. He remembers how frail we are, and sends the most gracious answers that His love can give.

November 17

To Everyone His Work

We cannot become "fishers of men" in the way that we can become carpenters or merchants or physicians. It is not one of the trades or professions to be taken up, and learned as trades and professions are. Colleges and theological seminaries cannot make us "fishers of men." They may teach us how to think, how to write, how to speak. They can furnish us with knowledge of many kinds, and can teach us systems of theology. They can make us interpreters of Scripture, logicians, rhetoricians, orators. But these things do not make us "fishers of men." These requirements may be helpful to us in our spiritual work ― if we are consecrated to Jesus Christ. But the point to be remembered is that only Jesus can make anyone truly a "fisher of men."

November 18

Dying, the "Gate of Life"

If we are true believers in Jesus, dying is but leaving darkness and sin and danger to pass into light and holiness and safety. A poet represents someone coming up to a gate on a mountainside, over which are written the words, "The Gate of Death"; but when he touches the gate it opens, and he finds himself amid great brightness and beauty; then, turning about, he sees above the gate he has entered the words, "The Gate of Life."

If we are in Jesus, death is abolished, and the point which earth calls the point of death is really the point of life. We need then to make sure of only one thing ― that we are truly Jesus Christ's, by living faith and loving obedience.

November 19

Good Seed Indestructible

No true work for Jesus has been in vain. On earth many a seed is dropped which dies in the soil; but no seed of heavenly truth which is sown in faith and watered with tears ever fails to spring up somewhere and some time into a plant of righteousness. It may not always grow as the sower hoped, nor always just where he hoped, nor when. Yet no living word of God can ever die. We should notice the kind of wages God gives His reapers. He does not pay them in gold and silver, but in life ― life eternal. Those who work in God's harvest fields may not grow rich in men's eyes, but they themselves grow into richer, riper, holier spiritual blessedness.

November 20

Broken Cisterns

The human soul cannot be satisfied with any of earth's good things. This is not the fault of the things of earth ― they are good and beautiful in their way and in their place. But the soul is spiritual and immortal. Money and fame and power can never be food for a soul made in the Divine image. Nothing less than God Himself can answer its cravings.

We could not make the angels happy by giving them gold and diamonds, and building them fine marble palaces to live in, and putting crowns and fine clothes on them. No more can we satisfy our own souls with such things. Men try to do so, but their thirst is only momentarily quenched, and soon they must drink again. Gratification only intensifies desire.

November 21

Sacrifice and Blessing

The sowing is often in tears, but the reaping is always in joy. Jesus Himself found the sowing hard and sorrowful, but He has never been sorry in heaven for what it cost Him here. The old prophet having spoken of the sorrows and sufferings of Jesus Christ's life, said, "He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied" (Isaiah 53:11).

He sits now on His throne and sees the millions of the redeemed coming home to glory, all saved through His sufferings. He never regrets that He gave such a price for their redemption, but rejoices and is satisfied with the wages that He receives. So it will be with all His followers who are permitted to suffer in any way in bringing lost ones home. The wages will a thousand times compensate for all the sacrifice and cost.

November 22

Where Jesus Is Found

The way of duty is always the surest place to come upon Jesus. No one ever yet found Him in the path of disobedience. The Samaritan woman was unaware of the glory of the presence beside her. Jesus met her in the form of a weary and way-worn man, and won His way to her conscience and heart before He revealed to her the glory of His personality. (John 4:6-29.)

Jesus continually comes in unrecognised ways, getting near to us and drawing out our love and trust before we know that it is Jesus we are loving and trusting. Then He drops the veil and shows us His blessed face.

November 23

He Knoweth Our Frame

Do we get all the blessings we might get from the truth of our Lord's actual human experiences? When we have been working hard all day and are weary and faint, let us remember this picture ― Jesus, footsore and dust-covered, sinking down in sheer exhaustion on the stone curb of Jacob's well. (John 4:6.)

He has not forgotten even in His glory how He felt that day, and as He sees us in our weariness His heart feels tenderly for us. He looks upon us in compassion, and gives us a blessing of strength and cheer. Let all the people whose work is hard, and who are often very tired, frame this picture in their memory, and keep it always hanging up on the wall of their heart.

November 24

Homely Opportunities

It was in a simple act of thoughtful kindness to a perplexed household at the wedding in Cana that Jesus Christ's glory was first manifested. (John 2:1-11.) He did not wait for some great occasion, but threw the earliest gleams of His Divine manifestation upon this homely scene. It should be further noticed that it was in the midst of gladness and festivity that these beams first shone forth. Thus we see that the glory of Jesus was the radiance of love.

We follow on, and we find the same glory burning out more and more brightly, until at last He goes to His cross, showing forth in one great act the amazing splendour of the love of God for the world. No wonder His disciples believed on Him when they saw this miracle at Cana. It was a gleam of Divinity which flashed forth from His lowly form and wrought the marvellous sign.

November 25

Weeping For a Night

Jesus Himself had humiliation, darkness, and the shame of the cross ― then exaltation, power, glory. In Christian life the same law holds. First there comes bitterness, but out of the bitterness sweetness flows. There is the deep sorrow of penitence, but this gives way to the blessed joy of forgiveness.

First there are self-denial and cross-bearing, but out of these experiences comes a holy peace that fills all the heart. Sorrows are to be endured, but the good wine of comfort is poured into the empty cup. There is also a constant progression in the blessings of the Christian life. We never get to the end of them. Indeed, we never get to the best. There is always something better yet to come.

November 26

Helping Jesus

Our Lord calls His people always to be His helpers in blessing the world. We cannot do much. The best we can bring is a little of the ordinary water of earth. But if we bring that to Him, He can change it into the rich wine of heaven, which will bless weary and fainting ones.

If we take simply what we have and use it as He commands, it will do good. Moses only had a rod in his hand, but with this he wrought great wonders. The disciples only had five barley loaves, but these, touched by the hand of Jesus, made a feast for thousands. So the ordinary water, carried by the servants in Cana, under the Master's blessing became wine for the wedding. (John 2:1-12.)

November 27

Doing and Knowing

How can we know what Jesus says? We cannot hear His voice as the servants at the wedding in Cana heard it. He speaks now in His Word, and the reverent heart may always hear what He says as the sacred pages are prayerfully pondered. He speaks in the conscience that is kept tender by loyal obedience. He speaks in the Divine intervention that brings duty to our hand.

There never is any real uncertainty as to what He says ― if we are truly intent on knowing His will. "Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it" (John 2:5). It is the doing that is important. We should never ask questions or make suggestions when Jesus has spoken. The one thing for us is obedience. We should never ask what the consequences may be, what it may cost us. We are simply to obey. Jesus knows why He wants us to do the thing, and that should be reason enough for us.

November 28

Unseen Work

We cannot measure spiritual results as we can those that are physical. The artist sees the picture growing upon the canvas as he works day by day. The builder sees see the wall rising as he lays stone upon stone. But the spiritual builder is working with invisible blocks, is rearing a fabric whose walls they cannot see. The spiritual artist is painting away in the unseen. His eyes cannot behold the impressions, the touches of beauty he makes.

Sometimes the results of work on human lives may be seen in the conversion of the ungodly, in the comforting of sorrow, in the uplifting and ennobling of the degraded; and yet much of our work must be done in simple faith, and perhaps in heaven it will be seen that the best results of our lives have been from their unconscious influences, and our most fruitful efforts have been those we considered to be in vain.

November 29

Reflecting Jesus

A little child was thinking about the unseen Jesus to whom she prayed, and came to her mother with the question, "Is Jesus like anybody I know?" The question was not an unreasonable one. It was one to which the child should have received the answer, "Yes."

Every true disciple of Jesus ought to be an answer ― in some sense, at least ― to the child's inquiry. Every little one ought to see Jesus' beauty mirrored in its mother's face. Every Sunday school teacher's character should reflect some tracings of the Eternal Love on which the scholars may gaze. Whoever looks upon the life of any Christian should see in it the reflection of the beauty of Jesus.

November 30

True Living

Every step of the heavenly way is uphill, and steep at that. Heaven always keeps above us, no matter how far we climb toward it. We never in this world get to a point where we may regard ourselves as having reached life's goal, as having attained the loftiest height within our reach. There are always more rungs of the ladder to climb.

Mozart, just before his death, said, "Now I begin to see what might be done in music." That is all the saintliest man ever learns in this world about living ― he just begins to see what might be done in living. It is a comfort to know that that really is the whole of our earthly mission ― just to learn how to live, and that the true living is to be beyond this world.

December

December 1

Oases

God's storehouses of spiritual truth never are opened to us until we really need their blessing. They are placed, so to speak, along our life-path, the right supply at the right point. By the plan of God, in every desert there are oases. At the foot of each sharp, steep hill there are steps for climbing. In every dark gorge there are lighted lamps. At every stream there is a bridge.

But we find none of these until we come to the place where we need them. And why should we? Will it not be soon enough to see the bridge when we stand by the stream? Will it not be soon enough, when it grows dark, for the lamps to shine out? Will it not be soon enough, when the cupboard is empty, for God to send bread? The storehouse, in which God's goodness is laid up, is found always at the point of need.

December 2

Careful For Nothing

Is not God wise enough to manage the complications of our lives, and to bring order and beauty out of them? Has He not skill enough? Is He not our Father? And will He not always do the very best and wisest thing for us? Should we not trust Him, and cease to be anxious about anything that we have committed to Him? Is not anxiety doubt? And is not doubt sin?

We are to commit our way to the Lord, trust Him, and be at peace. The only thing that concerns us is our duty. God will weave the web into patterns of beauty, unless by our follies and sins we mar it. But we must not hurry Him. His plans are sometimes very long, and our impatience may mar them, as well as our sins. The buds of His purposes must not be torn open. We must wait till His fingers unfold them.

December 3

The Heart's Sanctuary

Even with sympathetic companionships all about us, there is an inner life in which it seems each one of us lives altogether alone. It seems we must make our own choices and decisions, must meet our own questions and answer them ourselves, must fight our own battles, endure our own sorrows, carry our own burdens.

Friendship may be very close and tender, but there is a sanctuary of each life into which even the holiest friendship may not enter. Blessed are they who in this aloneness can say, "Yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me" (John 16:32). God's is the only friendship that can really meet all our soul's deep needs and cravings.

December 4

Christ-Like Giving

There is a difference in the way people give, though the gift or favour or act be precisely the same. One gives the help only; the other gives part of himself in the help. There are some very beautiful flowers that have no fragrance, but how much more a flower means that has in it scent as well as loveliness.

We should give ourselves with our gifts. We should let part of our own life flow out with every deed of kindness we do. Love is the fragrance of the flowers of the heart, and what we do in love ― love for Jesus and love for man ― shall never be lost. The world will be richer and better for even the smallest deeds carried out with the love of Jesus.

December 5

The Righting Time

There are wrongs not righted here. There are good men misunderstood, maligned, misrepresented, bearing the loathing of false accusation all their days, suffering for the sins of others, waiting all their years for vindication which does not come, and at last dying with the shadow upon their name.

If there were no life beyond death, we could not always say that God's ways are equal. But life goes on, on the other side of the grave. There will be time enough there for the fullest outworking of all earth's unfinished providences. All wrongs will there be righted, and all perplexities solved. The shadows of injustice that have hung over good men in this world will vanish, and the names bearing reproach here without cause will shine forth like the stars.

December 6

Jesus in Us

Only as we get Jesus into our hearts, and let Him dwell in us by His Spirit, shall we reach the true ideal of Christian life and experience. Then shall we do right, not by direction of written rule, but by the promptings of our regenerated nature, the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Then shall our dull lives be transfigured by the light that shines in our hearts, and slowly changes all the earthliness to heavenliness. Then shall the features of the Divine image come out, little by little, as the new life within forces itself through the dull crust of the old nature, until at length the full beauty of Jesus shines where once only sin's marred features were seen.

December 7

Rays of Light

The light of human joy fades; health gives way; disappointment comes; sorrow breaks in upon us; some human trust fails; the sunlight that flowed about us yesterday has gone out, and our path lies in darkness. Then the words of God that have lain so long in memory, without apparent brightness, flash out like heavenly lamps, and pour their welcome radiance all about us.

Did those words have no light in them before? Yes, the lamps were shining all the while, but our eyes did not discern the brightness until this world's lamps went out and it grew dark about us. The goodness was laid up, reserved until we needed it.

December 8

For Jesus' Sake

The moralist does right things, but without any reference to Jesus ― not confessing Him or loving Him. The Christian does the same things, but does them because the Master wants him to do them. As one has beautifully said, "What we can do for God is little or nothing, but we must do our little nothings for His glory."

This is the motive that, filling our hearts, makes even drudgery Divine, because it is done for Jesus. It may be but to sweep a room, or rock an infant to sleep, or teach a ragged child, or mend a rent, or fix a board; but if it is done as unto the Lord, it will be owned and accepted.

December 9

Keeping Out Care

Someone may say that it is impossible to avoid worrying. Disturbing experiences will come into our lives, and we cannot shut them out. It is true they will come, but it is not true that we must admit them and surrender ourselves to their power. It was a saying of Luther that we cannot prevent the birds flying about our heads, but we can prevent them building their nests in our hair.

In like manner, it is impossible to keep cares and temptations from flocking in great swarms about us, but it is our own fault if they are allowed to make nests in our hearts. We are to hold our hearts' doors and windows shut against the temptations that constantly assail us, craving admission into our lives.

December 10

Benefits of Trouble

Unbroken worldly prosperity is the blight of spiritual good. For one thing it hinders growth in knowledge and experience. There are truths that can be learned better in darkness than in light. We would never see the stars if there were no darkness to blot out for the time the glare of the day. And there are truths in the Bible which are perhaps never learned in the brightness of human joy.

There are promises from God which by their very nature are invisible in the noonday of gladness, hiding away like stars in the light, and revealing themselves only when it grows dark around us. The deeper, richer meaning of many a word of Scripture is learned only amid life's painful changes.

December 11

Believing and Doing

We never get to understand the Bible merely by studying it. It will not reveal itself to us until we begin to do what it teaches. The person who seeks to obey it shall know it. Many people have the impression that there is something hidden and mysterious about the words of the Scriptures, but this impression vanishes if they accept the Divine teachings and begin to fashion their lives according to them.

Many Christians will readily recall how dim and obscure faith in Jesus seemed to them before they believed, when they were trying to find the way ― and then how simple and clear it appeared after they had begun to follow the Saviour.

December 12

Starving Hearts

We often keep sad silences with those who are dearest to us, even when their hearts are crying out for words. In many homes that lack rich and deep happiness, it is not more love that is needed, but the flowing out of the love in little words, acts, and expressions. A husband loves his wife, and would give his life for her; but there are days and days when he never tells her so, nor reveals the sweet truth to her by any sign or token.

The wife loves her husband with warm, faithful affection, but she has fallen into the habit of making no demonstration, saying nothing about her love, going through the duties of the home life almost as if there were no love in her heart. No wonder husbands and wives drift apart in such homes. Hearts need their daily bread, and starve and die if it is withheld from them.

December 13

Devotion to God's Will

The heart of consecration is not devotion to this or that kind of service for Jesus, but devotion to His will. It may not be any form of activity. Sometimes it is quiet waiting. It is not bringing a great many souls to Jesus, visiting a great many sick or suffering ones, attending a great many meetings, talking a great deal.

Some weary one, shut away in the darkness in the sickroom of pain, may be illustrating true consecration far more beautifully than those whose hands are fullest of Christian activities in the bustling world. Consecration is devotion to the will of Jesus. It is readiness to do, not what we want to do in His service, but what He gives us to do. When we reach this state, we shall not need to wait long to find our work.

December 14

A Test

Many of us have our little pet projects in Christian work, our pleasant pastimes of service for our Master, things we like to do. Into these we enter with enthusiasm. They are to our taste. We give ourselves to them eagerly and with passion. We suppose that we are thoroughly consecrated to Jesus Christ's work because we are so willing to do these things. Possibly we are, but there is a more severe test. It is not whether we are ready to do things for Jesus which we like to do, but whether we are ready to do just as heartily anything He may give us to do.

December 15

God's Care of Children

"When they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth" Matthew 2:13). We have a glimpse here of the closeness of Heaven's watch over this imperilled Babe. A wicked king was plotting for the life of the child, and His earthly friends could not protect Him. But in the hour of human weakness Heaven came quickly to shelter and save Him. The destinies of the human race were in that Child's life, and all God's power would have been used to deliver Him.

Fathers and mothers should never forget that their children are very dear to God, and are under His unsleeping protection. This should give them great comfort and confidence as their little ones go out into the midst of the world's dangers. No human eye can be always upon them.

December 16

Applied Knowledge

It is necessary to read the Bible, not only to know the will of God, but that we may do it. If it is not the guide of our life, it is nothing to us. Its truths are to be applied. If we read the Beatitudes, we are to compare ourselves with their Divine requirements, and seek to be conformed to them. If we come upon a word that rebukes any habit or spirit of ours, we are straightway to make the needed amendment.

We are to accept its promises, believe them, and act as believing them. We are to allow its comforts to enter our hearts and support us in sorrow. There is nothing written in the Bible merely for ornament or beauty. Every word is practical. There is no truth in it that has not some bearing upon actual living. When we come to it, eager to know how to live, and ready to obey its precepts, we shall find it opening to us its inmost meaning.

December 17

Thwarted Efforts

God is continually blessing us by allowing us not to do certain things which we greatly desire to do. He thwarts our worldly ambitions, because to permit us to achieve them would be to allow our souls to be lost or seriously harmed. One person desires worldly prosperity, but in their every effort in that direction they are defeated.

Some Christians speak of their failures as misfortunes, and wonder why it is that others, less industrious and less conscientious, succeed so much better than they do. They even suggest that God's ways are not equal. But, no doubt the very disappointments over which they grieve are in reality the richest blessings. God knows that the success of their plans would be fatal to the higher interests of their spiritual life.

December 18

Life's True Worth

The glamour of the eye-catching is apt to deceive us. There is so much glorifying of the unusual and the phenomenal in life, that we come to think the common as of but small importance. People whose days are all alike in their dull routine, feel that their life is scarcely worth living. If only they could do something startling or sublime, or even sensational, to lift them out of the dreary commonplace of their every-days, they would feel that they were living nobly and worthily.

But if they could realise that it is by its moral value that life's worth is measured, they would know that ordinarily there is ten times more true glory in long unbroken years of simple faithfulness, without distinction or conspicuousness at any point, than there is in any unusual brilliancy in an occasional day or hour.

December 19

True Guidance

While finding the duties of our consecration, we cannot expect the guidance that little children get, but we shall never lack true guidance if only we will follow. One day's work leads to another. One duty opens the way to another. We are never shown maps of continents with all the course of our life projected on them, but we shall be shown always the next duty, and then the next.

If only we are obedient, there shall never come a time when we cannot know what our next duty is. One disobedience, however, breaks the continuity of the guidance, and the thread may be hard to find again. Those who follow Jesus never walk in darkness.

December 20

Continuing Joy

The joy the Holy Spirit gives, lives on in the heart when all earthly sources of gladness have failed. It hides like a rainbow in the bosom of the darkest cloud, and shines out in the gloom.

There is a legend of a wondrous golden organ that was in some ancient monastery, which once, when in danger of being stolen, was cast by the monks into a deep river to be hidden from the robbers. In the water, buried out of sight in the floods, it still played on, pouring out its sweet music. This legend illustrates the heart which has in it the secret of Christian joy. Floods of sorrow may roll over that heart, but in the depths its song is not silenced.

December 21

Legends Beautiful

"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me" (Matthew 25:40).

There is something inexpressibly beautiful in the revelation which these words of our Lord bring to our hearts. Jesus Himself is ever standing before us, appealing to us for love, for sympathy, for ministry. All human lives about us are transfigured by this word, which tells us that in the lowliest, Jesus Himself waits!

No wonder this sweet truth has wrought itself into numberless beautiful accounts, telling how apparently worthless forms, when served in the Master's name in time of need, suddenly changed into radiant loveliness, revealing themselves as Jesus, the glorious One.

December 22

Like Unto Jesus

No sooner do we begin to behold the fair face that looks out at us from the Gospel chapters, than a great hope springs up in our hearts. We can become like Jesus. Indeed, if we are God's children, we shall become like Him. We are foreordained to be conformed to His image. It matters not how faintly the Divine beauty glimmers now in our soiled and imperfect lives: some day we shall be like Him. As we struggle here with imperfections and infirmities, with scarcely one trace of the likeness of Jesus yet apparent in our life, we still may say, when we catch glimpses of His glorious loveliness, "Some day I shall be like that."

December 23

Hardness a Discipline

Even the faults and the infirmities of those with whom we come in contact may become to us a means of grace. It is harder to live with disagreeable people than with those who are pleasant, but the very hardness may become discipline to us and help to develop in us the grace of patience. Association with quarrelsome, quick-tempered people may train us to self-control in speech, teaching us either to be silent under provocation or to give only the soft answer which turns away wrath.

December 24

Our Ladder Rungs

All bad desires, all bad habits, all longings for dishonourable things that we vanquish and trample down, become ladder rungs on which we climb upward out of earthliness and sinfulness into purer and more Christ-like being. There really is no other way by which we can rise upward.

If we are not living victoriously in these little ordinary days, we surely are not making any progress. Only those who climb are mounting toward the stars. Heaven itself at last, and the heavenly life here on earth, are only for those who overcome.

December 25

Following the Light

We do not always know when Jesus comes to us. "He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not" (John 1:11).

Yet why should we complain so of the Jews? Are we any better? Our King is in our midst: do we recognise Him? Do we worship and honour Him? The wise men had only a star to guide them, yet they followed it with loving trust and unfaltering step, and it led them to the feet of the King of Glory. Even the faintest glimmerings of light should be welcomed and their guidance accepted.

We should not wait to know all about Jesus, and to see Him in all His glory, before we set out to seek Him. We should follow the first faint gleams, and, as we go on, the light will brighten until we see Him in all His blessed beauty, face to face.

December 26

Growing Like Jesus

If we train our heart's eyes to look at Jesus, we shall be transformed into His image. And even though only a little seems to come from our yearnings and struggles after His likeness, God honours the yearning and striving.

There is a pleasant legend of Michael Angelo. He was engaged on a painting, but grew weary and discouraged while his work was yet incomplete, and at length fell asleep. Then while he slept an angel came, and, seizing the brush that had dropped from the tired artist's fingers, finished the picture, and it had been painted more lovely than any of his other pictures.

So it is with all who truly long and strive after the heavenly likeness. Faint and discouraged, we think we are making no progress, no growth toward the divine image ― but in the very time of our faintness and disheartenment, God's Spirit comes and silently fashions the beauty in our souls.

December 27

Strength and Sweetness

The active virtues must be cultivated as well as the passive. Meekness must not be weakness. The soft speech must not be the timid utterance of moral feebleness. Like the mighty machine which can polish a tiny needle or cut a heavy bar of iron, a Christian must have a touch as gentle as an infant's, and yet possess the courage of a hero to smite evil and to do the Lord's work.

With the love that beareth all things and endureth all things, the Christian must have the force of character which will make our influence a mighty positive power for good. Truth must be wrought into the very grain and fibre of our being.

December 28

The One Between

If we would pray acceptably, it must be in dependence on Jesus Christ, our High Priest in heaven, who shall take the petitions from our stained and unholy lips, cleanse them of their sin and fault and defilement, and then add to them the pure incense of His own holy offering and intercession, and present them to the Father.

This is what praying in the name of Jesus means. Praying thus, our prayers are sweet fragrance to God. The thoughts and words that leave our hearts and lips spotted and unholy, without any beauty or sweetness, when they come up before God have become precious perfumes.

December 29

A Higher Life

George Macdonald says, "If I can put one touch of a rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God." Surely it is better to live to do such beautiful things than it is to pass one's days in the rounds of fashion, living an empty, selfish life, and leaving no blessing in the world.

December 30

Indelible Writings

Jesus keeps a remembrance of any beautiful thing wrought for love of Him. He will forget nothing. People go about with hammers, breaking the rocks, and find embedded in the heart of them the imprint of ferns, leaves, flowers that fell on the soft clay long ages since. Every line and vein and fold is preserved in perfect feature.

Your smallest deeds of love for Jesus, which seem to be forgotten, are writing their records in God's book of life, and in the ages to come their story will be read by angels and men.

December 31

After Our Winter

The resurrection body will be for ever free from disease and pain. There will be no infirmity, no bent forms, no pale cheeks, no wasting or decay. How pleasant it is to the old to know that they will get back their bodies with all the marks of age removed, and will begin life again with all the glow of immortal youth.

Not only does age leave no marks or traces of wasting, but the immortal life is a growth ever toward youth and freshness of existence, rather than toward senility and decay.

THE END

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White Tree Publishing publishes mainstream evangelical Christian literature for people of all ages. We aim to make our eBooks available free for all eBook devices, but some distributors will only list our books free at their discretion, and may make a small charge for some titles -- but they are still great value! All our books are fully typeset. No "photocopies" or bad OCR! Long sentences and paragraphs are broken into shorter lengths, and modern punctuation is used for easier reading. Older books are lightly abridged.

More Christian books from White Tree Publishing are on the next pages, some of which are available as both eBooks and paperbacks. More books than those shown here are available in non-fiction and fiction, for adults and younger readers. The full list of published and forthcoming books is on our website www.whitetreepublishing.com. Please visit there regularly for updates.

We rely on our readers to tell their families, friends and churches about our books. Social media is a great way of doing this. Take a look at our range of fiction and non-fiction books and pass the word on. You can even contact your Christian TV or radio station to let them know about these books. Also, please write a positive review if you are able.

Christian non-fiction

Christian Fiction

Younger Readers

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More Books

White Tree Publishing publishes mainstream evangelical Christian literature for people of all ages. We aim to make our eBooks available free for all eBook devices, but some distributors will only list our books free at their discretion, and may make a small charge for some titles ― but they are still great value! All our books are fully typeset. No "photocopies" or bad OCR. So check for our name, White Tree Publishing, before downloading! Long sentences and paragraphs are broken into shorter lengths, and modern punctuation is used for easier reading. Many books are sensitively abridged, but in all our books no doctrine or teaching is changed. The full list of published and forthcoming books is on our website www.whitetreepublishing.com. Please visit there regularly for updates.

More Christian books from White Tree Publishing are on the next pages, some of which are available as both eBooks and paperbacks. More books than those shown here are available in non-fiction and fiction, for adults and younger readers. For more details of each title and cover photo, and the full list of published and forthcoming books is on our website www.whitetreepublishing.com. Please visit there regularly for updates.

We rely on our readers to tell their families, friends and churches about our books. Social media is a great way of doing this. Take a look at our range of fiction and non-fiction books and pass the word on. You can even contact your Christian TV or radio station to let them know about these books. Also, please write a positive review if you are able.

Christian non-fiction

Christian Fiction

Younger Readers

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Christian Non-Fiction

All our books are in eBook format only, unless otherwise stated

Secrets of Happy Home Life

JR Miller

eBook ISBN: 978-1-912529-16-2

Be Still

Bible Words of Peace and Comfort

Chris Wright

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9933941-4-0

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9932760-7-1

Four short books of help in the Christian life:

Chris Wright

Leaves from

My Notebook

William Haslam

White Tree Publishing Abridged Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9935005-2-7

Haslam's Journey

Chris Wright

White Tree Publishing Edition

Previously published 2005 by Highland Books

eBook ISBN: 978-1-9997899-8-5

Building From the Top

William Haslam

eBook ISBN: 978-1-912529-12-4

So, What Is a Christian?

An introduction to a personal faith.

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Starting Out

Help for new Christians of all ages.

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Help!

Explores some problems we can encounter with our faith.

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Paperback ISBN 978-0-9927642-2-7

Running Through the Bible

A simple understanding of what's in the Bible.

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The Gospels and Acts

In Simple Paraphrase

with Helpful Explanations

together with

Running Through the Bible

Chris Wright

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English Hexapla

The Gospel of John

(Paperback only)

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9525956-1-8

A Previously Unpublished Book

The Simplicity of the Incarnation

J Stafford Wright

Foreword by J I Packer

eBook ISBN 13: 978-0-9932760-5-7

Paperback ISBN: 9-780-9525-9563-2

Bible People Real People

An Unforgettable A-Z of Who is Who in the Bible

J Stafford Wright

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9932760-7-1

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9525956-5-6

Christians and the Supernatural

J Stafford Wright

eBook ISBN 13: 978-0-9932760-4-0

Paperback ISBN 13: 9-780-9525-9564-9

The Authority and

Interpretation

of the Bible

J Stafford Wright

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9954549-9-6

Psalms,

A Guide Psalm By Psalm

J Stafford Wright

eBook ISBN 978-0-9957594-2-8

Howell Harris

His Own Story

Foreword by J. Stafford Wright

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Roddy Goes to Church

Church Life and Church People

Derek Osborne

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9935005-0-3

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Heaven Our Home

William Branks

White Tree Publishing Abridged Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9933941-8-8

I Can't Help Praising the Lord

The Life of Billy Bray

Chris Wright

White Tree Publishing Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-1-912529-01-8

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Blunt's Scriptural Coincidences

Gospels and Acts

J. J. Blunt

White Tree Publishing New Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9935005-5-8

From the Streets of London

to the Streets of Gold

The Life Story of

Brother Clifford Edwards

A True Story of Love

by Brother Clifford Edwards

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9933941-8-8

Seven Steps to

Walking in Victory

Lin Wills

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9957594-3-5

Also available from the author as a printed booklet

Seven Keys to

Unlock Your Calling

Lin Wills

eBook ISBN: 978-1-9997899-2-3

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Seven Ways to

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Lin Wills

e-Book ISBN: 978-1-912529-21-6

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I See Men as Trees, Walking

Roger and Janet Niblett

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Fullness of Power

in Christian Life and Service

Home and Group Questions for Today Edition

R. A. Torrey

Questions by Chuck Antone, Jr.

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9935005-8-9

Faith that Prevails

The Early Pentecostal Movement

Home and Group Questions for Today Edition

Smith Wigglesworth

Study Questions by Chuck Antone, Jr.

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Ebenezer and Ninety-Eight Friends

Musings on Life, Scripture

and the Hymns

Marty Magee

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Twenty-five Days Around the Manger

A Light Family Advent Devotional

Marty Magee

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9954549-1-0

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ISBN: 978-1-4923248-0-5

The Christian's Secret

of a Happy Life

Hannah Whitall Smith

White Tree Publishing Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9957594-6-6

Every-Day Religion

Hannah Whitall Smith

White Tree Publishing Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-1-9997899-0-9

Living in the Sunshine:

The God of All Comfort

Hannah Whitall Smith

White Tree Publishing Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-1-9997899-3-0

Evangelistic Talks

Gipsy Smith

White Tree Publishing Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-1-9997899-7-8

My Life and Work

Gipsy Smith

White Tree Publishing Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-1-9997899-4-7

Real Religion

Gipsy Smith

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As Jesus Passed By

Gipsy Smith

White Tree Publishing Edition

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The Lost Christ

Gipsy Smith

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Rifted Clouds

Bella Cooke

All Three Parts

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Deeper Experiences

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James Gilchrist Lawson

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Christian Fiction

The majority of these books are Victorian classic romances that have been sensitively edited and abridged for today's readers

Gildas Haven

Margaret S. Haycraft

White Tree Publishing Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9935005-7-2

Amaranth's Garden

Margaret S. Haycraft

White Tree Publishing Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9935005-6-5

Rose Capel's Sacrifice

Margaret Haycraft

White Tree Publishing Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9954549-3-4

Una's Marriage

Margaret Haycraft

White Tree Publishing Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9957594-5-9

Miss Elizabeth's Niece

Margaret Haycraft

White Tree Publishing Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9957594-7-3

Silverbeach Manor

Margaret S. Haycraft

White Tree Publishing edition

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9935005-4-1

The Clever Miss Jancy

Margaret S. Haycraft

White Tree Publishing Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9957594-9-7

Freda's Folly

Margaret S Haycraft

White Tree Publishing Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-1-912529-02-5

Sybil's Repentance

Margaret S Haycraft

White Tree Publishing Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-1-912529-04-9

Sister Royal

Margaret S Haycraft

White Tree Publishing Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-1-912529-03-2

Iona

Margaret S. Haycraft

White Tree Publishing Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-1-912529-14-8

The Lady of the Chine

Margaret S Haycraft

White Tree Publishing Edition

eBook ISBN: ISBN: 978-1-912529-19-3

Keena Karmody

Eliza Kerr

White Tree Publishing Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-1-9997899-5-4

Hazel Haldene

Eliza Kerr

White Tree Publishing Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-1-9997899-8-5

Rollica Reed

Eliza Kerr

White Tree Publishing Edition

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The Secret of Ashton Manor House

Eliza Kerr

White Tree Publishing Edition

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The Mystery of

Grange Drayton

Eliza Kerr

White Tree Publishing Edition

e-Book ISBN: 978-1-912529-22-3

A Previously Unpublished Book

Locked Door Shuttered Windows

A Novel by J Stafford Wright

eBook ISBN 13: 978-0-9932760-3-3

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9927642-4-1

When it Was Dark

Guy Thorne

Abridged Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9954549-0-3

The Lost Clue

Mrs. O. F. Walton

White Tree Publishing Edition

A Romantic Mystery

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Doctor Forester

Mrs. O. F. Walton

White Tree Publishing Edition

A Romantic Mystery

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9932760-0-2

Was I Right?

Mrs. O. F. Walton

Abridged Edition

A Victorian Romance

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In His Steps

Charles M. Sheldon

Abridged Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9927642-9-6

Paperback ISBN 13: 978-19350791-8-7

A Daughter of the King

Mrs Philip Barnes

White Tree Publishing Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9957594-8-0

Stepping Heavenward

Elizabeth Prentiss

White Tree Publishing Edition

eBook ISBN: 978-1-912529-23-0

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Books for Younger Readers

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The Merlin Adventure

Chris Wright

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9954549-2-7

Paperback ISBN: 9785-203447-7-5

The Hijack Adventure

Chris Wright

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9954549-6-5

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-5203448-0-5

The Seventeen Steps Adventure

Chris Wright

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9954549-7-2

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-5203448-6-7

The Two Jays Adventure

The First Two Jays Story

Chris Wright

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9954549-8-9

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-5203448-8-1

The Dark Tunnel Adventure

The Second Two Jays Story

Chris Wright

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9957594-0-4

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-5206386-3-8

The Cliff Edge Adventure

The Third Two Jays Story

Chris Wright

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9957594-4-2

Paperback ISBN: 9781-5-211370-3-1

The Midnight Farm Adventure

The Fourth Two Jays Story

Chris Wright

eBook ISBN: 978-1-9997899-1-6

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-5497148-3-2

The Old House Adventure

The Fifth Two Jays Story

Chris Wright

eBook ISBN: 978-1-912529-07-0

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-912529-06-3

The Lost Island Adventure

The Sixth Two Jays Story

Chris Wright

eBook ISBN: 978-1-912529-17-9

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-912529-18-6

The Black Lake Adventure

The Seventh Two Jays Story

Chris Wright

eBook ISBN: 978-1-912529-28-5

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-912529-27-8

The Hidden Room Adventure

The Eighth Two Jays Story

Chris Wright

eBook ISBN: 978-1-912529-39-1

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-912529-40-7

Available from major internet stores

The Holy Land Adventure

An Adventure Puzzle Book

Chris Wright

A time travel adventure

eBook ISBN: 978-1-912529-36-0

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-912529-34-6

Available from major internet stores

Mary Jones and Her Bible

An Adventure Book

Chris Wright

The true story of Mary Jones's and her Bible

with a clear Christian message and optional puzzles

(Some are easy, some tricky, and some amusing)

eBook ISBN: ISBN: 978-0-9933941-5-7

Paperback ISBN 978-0-9525956-2-5

Pilgrim's Progress

An Adventure Book

Chris Wright

A similar format to Mary Jones

eBook ISBN 13: 978-0-9933941-6-4

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9525956-6-3

Pilgrim's Progress

Special Edition

The original story retold

Chris Wright

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9932760-8-8

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9525956-7-0

Zephan and the Vision

Chris Wright

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9932760-6-4

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9525956-9-4

Agathos, The Rocky Island,

And Other Stories

Chris Wright

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9927642-7-2

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9525956-8-7

Please visit our website www.whitetreepublishing.com for full details on all these books, and their availability.

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