Chapter 17

Our days are numbered: let us spare Our anxious hearts a needless care: 'T is Thine to number out our days; 'T is ours to give them to Thy praise.

MADAME GUYON.

Every day let us renew the consecration to God's service; every day let us, in His strength, pledge ourselves afresh to do His will, even in the veriest trifle, and to turn aside from anything that may displease Him. He does not bid us bear the burdens of tomorrow, next week, or next year. Every day we are to come to Him in simple obedience and faith, asking help to keep us, and aid us through that day's work; and to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, through years of long to-morrows, it will be but the same thing to do; leaving the future always in God's hands, sure that He can care for it better than we. Blessed trust! that can thus confidingly say, "This hour is mine with its present duty; the next is God's, and when it comes, His presence will come with it."

W. R. HUNTINCTON.

December 14

_And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God_.--GAL. vi. 16.

Lord, I have given my life to Thee, And every day and hour is Thine,-- What Thou appointest let them be; Thy will is better, Lord, than mine.

A. WARNER.

Begin at once; before you venture away from this quiet moment, ask your King to take you wholly into His service, and place all the hours of this day quite simply at His disposal, and ask Him to make and keep you _ready_ to do just exactly what He appoints. Never mind about to-morrow; one day at a time is enough. Try it to-day, and see if it is not a day of strange, almost curious peace, so sweet that you will be only too thankful, when to-morrow comes, to ask Him to take it also,--till it will become a blessed habit to hold yourself simply and "wholly at Thy commandment for _any_ manner of service." The "whatsoever" is not necessarily active work. It may be waiting (whether half an hour or half a life-time), learning, suffering, sitting still. But shall we be less ready for these, if any of them are His appointments for to-day? Let us ask Him to prepare us for all that He is preparing for us.

F. R. HAVERGAL.

December 15

_Return unto thy rest, O my soul; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee_.--PS. cxvi. 7.

_We which have believed do enter into rest_.--HEB. iv. 3.

Rest is not quitting The busy career; Rest is the fitting Of self to its sphere.

'T is loving and serving The highest and best! 'T is onwards, unswerving,-- And that is true rest.

J. S. DWIGHT.

As a result of this strong faith, the inner life of Catherine of Genoa was characterized, in a remarkable degree, by what may be termed rest, or quietude; which is only another form of expression for true interior peace. It was not, however, the quietude of a lazy inaction, but the quietude of an inward acquiescence; not a quietude which feels nothing and does nothing, but that higher and divine quietude which exists by feeling and acting in the time and degree of God's appointment and God's will. It was a principle in her conduct, to give herself to God in the discharge of duty; and to leave all results without solicitude in His hands.

T. C. UPHAM.

December 16

_Thou understandest my thought afar off_.--PS. cxxxix. 2.

_Who can understand his errors? cleanse Thou me from secret faults_.--PS. xix. 12.

My newest griefs to Thee are old; My last transgression of Thy law, Though wrapped in thought's most secret fold, Thine eyes with pitying sadness saw.

H. M. KIMBALL.

Lord our God, great, eternal, wonderful in glory, who keepest covenant and promises for those that love Thee with their whole heart, who art the Life of all, the Help of those that flee unto Thee, the Hope of those who cry unto Thee, cleanse us from our sins, secret and open, and from every thought displeasing to Thy goodness,--cleanse our bodies and souls, our hearts and consciences, that with a pure heart, and a clear soul, with perfect love and calm hope, we may venture confidently and fearlessly to pray unto Thee. Amen.

COPTIC LITURGY OF ST. BASIL.

The dominion of any sinful habit will fearfully estrange us from His presence. A single consenting act of inward disobedience in thought or will is enough to let fall a cloud between Him and us, and to leave our hearts cheerless and dark.

H. E. MANNING.

December 17

_The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance_.--GAL. v. 22, 23.

_Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples_.--JOHN xv. 8.

O Breath from out the Eternal Silence! blow Softly upon our spirits' barren ground; The precious fulness of our God bestow, That fruits of faith, love, reverence may abound.

G. TERSTEEGEN.

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

HESTER ANN ROGERS.

December 18

_We trust in the living God_.--I TIM. iv. 10.

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

I. WILLIAMS. _Tr. from Latin_.

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

J. G. FICHTE.

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

T. CARLYLE.

December 19

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

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

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

B. T.

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

A. D. T. WHITNEY.

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

A. D. T. WHITNEY.

December 20

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

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

F. R. HAVERGAL.

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

G. MACDONALD.

December 21

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

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

F. W. FABER.

For the rest, let that vain struggle to read the mystery of the Infinite cease to harass us. It is a mystery which, through all ages, we shall only read here a line of, there another line of. Do we not already know that the name of the Infinite is GOOD, is GOD? Here on earth we are as soldiers, fighting in a foreign land, that understand not the plan of the campaign, and have no need to understand it; seeing well what is at our hand to be done. Let us do it like soldiers, with submission, with courage, with a heroic joy. Behind us, behind each one of us, lie six thousand years of human, effort, human conquest: before us is the boundless Time, with its as yet uncreated and unconquered continents and Eldorados, which we, even we, have to conquer, to create; and from the bosom of Eternity there shine for us celestial guiding stars.

T. CARLYLE.

December 22

_I will wait upon the Lord, that hideth His face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for Him_.--ISA. viii. 17.

What heart can comprehend Thy name, Or, searching, find Thee out? Who art within, a quickening flame, A presence round about.

Yet though I know Thee but in part, I ask not, Lord, for more: Enough for me to know Thou art, To love Thee and adore.

F. L. HOSMER.

Stand up, O heart! and yield not one inch of thy rightful territory to the usurping intellect. Hold fast to God in spite of logic, and yet not quite blindly. Be not torn from thy grasp upon the skirts of His garments by any wrench of atheistic hypothesis that seeks only to hurl thee into utter darkness; but refuse not to let thy hands be gently unclasped by that loving and pious philosophy that seeks to draw thee from the feet of God only to place thee in His bosom. Trustfully, though tremblingly, let go the robe, and thou shalt rest upon the heart and clasp the very living soul of God.

JAMES HINTON.

December 23

_Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ_.--2 TIM. ii. 3.

Where our Captain bids us go, 'T is not ours to murmur, "No," He that gives the sword and shield, Chooses too the battle-field On which we are to fight the foe.

ANON.

Of nothing may we be more sure than this; that, if we cannot sanctify our present lot, we could sanctify no other. Our heaven and our Almighty Father are there or nowhere. The obstructions of that lot are given for us to heave away by the concurrent touch of a holy spirit, and labor of strenuous will; its gloom, for us to tint with some celestial light; its mysteries are for our worship; its sorrows for our trust; its perils for our courage; its temptations for our faith. Soldiers of the cross, it is not for us, but for our Leader and our Lord, to choose the field; it is ours, taking the station which He assigns, to make it the field of truth and honor, though it be the field of death.

J. MARTINEAU.

December 24

_Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light_.--COL. i. 12.

The souls most precious to us here May from this home have fled; But still we make one household dear; One Lord is still our head. Midst cherubim and seraphim They mind their Lord's affairs; Oh! if we bring our work to Him Our work is one with theirs.

T. H. GILL.

We are apt to feel as if nothing we could do on earth bears a relation to what the good are doing in a higher world; but it is not so. Heaven and earth are not so far apart. Every disinterested act, every sacrifice to duty, every exertion for the good of "one of the least of Christ's brethren," every new insight into God's works, every new impulse given to the love of truth and goodness, associates us with the departed, brings us nearer to them, and is as truly heavenly as if we were acting, not on earth, but in heaven. The spiritual tie between us and the departed is not felt as it should be. Our union with them daily grows stronger, if we daily make progress in what they are growing in.

WM. E. CHANNING.

December 25

_That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God_.--EPH. iii. 17-19.

O love that passeth knowledge, thee I need; Pour in the heavenly sunshine; fill my heart; Scatter the cloud, the doubting, and the dread,-- The joy unspeakable to me impart.

H. BONAR.

To examine its evidence is not to try Christianity; to admire its martyrs is not to try Christianity; to compare and estimate its teachers is not to try Christianity; to attend its rites and services with more than Mahometan punctuality is not to try or know Christianity. But for one week, for one day, to have lived in the pure atmosphere of faith and love to God, of tenderness to man; to have beheld earth annihilated, and heaven opened to the prophetic gaze of hope; to have seen evermore revealed behind the complicated troubles of this strange, mysterious life, the unchanged smile of an eternal Friend, and everything that is difficult to reason solved by that reposing trust which is higher and better than reason,--to have known and felt this, I will not say for a _life_, but for a single blessed hour, _that_, indeed, is to have made experiment of Christianity.

WM. ARCHER BUTLER.

December 26

_The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus_.--PHIL. iv. 7.

_Let the peace of God rule in your hearts_.--COL. iii. 15.

Drop Thy still dews of quietness, Till all our strivings cease; Take from our souls the strain and stress, And let our ordered lives confess The beauty of Thy peace.

J. G. WHITTIER.

"These things write we unto you, that your joy may be full." What is fulness of joy but _peace_? Joy is tumultuous only when it is not full; but peace is the privilege of those who are "filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee." It is peace, springing from trust and innocence, and then overflowing in love towards all around him.

J. H. NEWMAN.

THROUGH the spirit of Divine Love let the violent, obstinate powers of thy nature be quieted, the hardness of thy affections softened, and thine intractable self-will subdued; and as often as anything contrary stirs within thee, immediately sink into the blessed Ocean of meekness and love.

G. TERSTEEGEN.

December 27

_Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ_.--GAL. iv. 7.

Not by the terrors of a slave God's sons perform His will, But with the noblest powers they have His sweet commands fulfil.

ISAAC WATTS.

Our thoughts, good or bad, are not in our command, but every one of us has at all hours duties to _do_, and these he can do negligently, like a slave, or faithfully, like a true servant. "_Do_ the duty that is nearest thee"--that first, and that well; all the rest will disclose themselves with increasing clearness, and make their successive demand. Were your duties never so small, I advise you, set yourself with double and treble energy and punctuality, to do them, hour after hour, day after day.

T. CARLYLE.

Whatever we are, high or lowly, learned or unlearned, married or single, in a full house or alone, charged with many affairs or dwelling in quietness, we have our daily round of work, our duties of affection, obedience, love, mercy, industry, and the like; and that which makes one man to differ from another is not so much what things he does, as his manner of doing them.

H. E. MANNING.

December 28

_Now the God of peace make you perfect in every good work, to do His will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ_.--HEB. xiii. 20, 21.

_Be ready to every good work_.--TITUS iii. I.

So, firm in steadfast hope, in thought secure, In full accord to all Thy world of joy, May I be nerved to labors high and pure, And Thou Thy child to do Thy work employ.

J. STERLING.

Be with God in thy outward works, refer them to Him, offer them to Him, seek to do them in Him and for Him, and He will be with thee in them, and they shall not hinder, but rather invite His presence in thy soul. Seek to see Him in all things, and in all things He will come nigh to thee.

E. B. PUSEY.

Nothing less than the majesty of God, and the powers of the world to come, can maintain the peace and sanctity of our homes, the order and serenity of our minds, the spirit of patience and tender mercy in our hearts. Then will even the merest drudgery of duty cease to humble us, when we transfigure it by the glory of our own spirit.

J. MARTINEAU.

December 29

_Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report,--think on these things_.--PHIL. iv. 8.

_As he thinketh in his heart, so is he_.--PROV. xxiii. 7.

Still may Thy sweet mercy spread A shady arm above my head, About my paths; so shall I find The fair centre of my mind Thy temple, and those lovely walls Bright ever with a beam that falls Fresh from the pure glance of Thine eye, Lighting to eternity.

R. CRASHAW.

Make yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts. None of us yet know, for none of us have been taught in early youth, what fairy palaces we may build of beautiful thought--proof against all adversity. Bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble histories, faithful sayings, treasure--houses of precious and restful thoughts, which care cannot disturb, nor pain make gloomy, nor poverty take away from us,--houses built without hands, for our souls to live in.

J. RUSKIN.

December 30

_O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps_.--JER. x. 23.

_I will direct all his ways_.--ISA. xlv. 13.

Come, Light serene and still! Our darkened spirits fill With thy clear day: Guide of the feeble sight, Star of grief's darkest night, Reveal the path of right, Show us Thy way.

ROBERT II. OF FRANCE.

There had been solemn appointed seasons in Anna's life, when she was accustomed to enter upon a full and deliberate survey of her business in this world. The claims of each relationship, and the results of each occupation, were then examined in the light of eternity. It was then, too, her fervent prayer to be enabled to discern the will of God far more perfectly, not only in the indications given of it for her guidance through each day's occupations, but as it might concern duties not yet brought home to her conscience, and therefore unprovided for in her life.

SARAH W. STEPHEN.

December 31

_Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus_.--PHIL. iii. 13, 14.

Yet I argue not Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer Right onward.

J. MILTON.

It is not by regretting what is irreparable that true work is to be done, but by making the best of what we are. It is not by complaining that we have not the right tools, but by using well the tools we have. What we are, and where we are, is God's providential arrangement,--God's doing, though it may be man's misdoing; and the manly and the wise way is to look your disadvantages in the face, and see what can be made out of them. Life, like war, is a series of mistakes, and he is not the best Christian nor the best general who makes the fewest false steps. He is the best who wins the most splendid victories by the retrieval of mistakes. Forget mistakes; organize victory out of mistakes.

F. W. ROBERTSON.

End of Project Gutenberg's Daily Strength for Daily Needs, by Mary W. Tileston