Excerpt
MARY WILDER TILESTON.
January 1
They go from strength to strength.—PS. lxxxiv. 7.
First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.—MARK. iv. 28.
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
O. W. HOLMES.High hearts are never long without hearing some new call, some distant clarion of God, even in their dreams; and soon they are observed to break up the camp of ease, and start on some fresh march of faithful service. And, looking higher still, we find those who never wait till their moral work accumulates, and who reward resolution with no rest; with whom, therefore, the alternation is instantaneous and constant; who do the good only to see the better, and see the better only to achieve it; who are too meek for transport, too faithful for remorse, too earnest for repose; whose worship is action, and whose action ceaseless aspiration.
J. MARTINEAU.January 2
The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.—PS. cxxi. 8.
Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations.—PS. xc. 1.
With grateful hearts the past we own; The future, all to us unknown, We to Thy guardian care commit, And peaceful leave before Thy feet.
P. DODDRIDGE.We are like to Him with whom there is no past or future, with whom a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day, when we do our work in the great present, leaving both past and future to Him to whom they are ever present, and fearing nothing, because He is in our future as much as He is in our past, as much as, and far more than we can feel Him to be, in our present. Partakers thus of the divine nature, resting in that perfect All-in-all in whom our nature is eternal too, we walk without fear, full of hope and courage and strength to do His will, waiting for the endless good which He is always giving as fast as He can get us able to take it in.
G. MACDONALD.January 3
As thy days, so shall thy strength be.—DEUT. xxxiii. 25.
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.—MATT. vi. 34.
Oh, ask not thou, How shall I bear The burden of to-morrow? Sufficient for to-day, its care, Its evil and its sorrow; God imparteth by the way Strength sufficient for the day.
J. E. SAXBY.He that hath so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness, who loses all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down upon his little handful of thorns. Enjoy the blessings of this day, if God sends them; and the evils of it bear patiently and sweetly: for this day only is ours, we are dead to yesterday, and we are not yet born to the morrow. But if we look abroad, and bring into one day's thoughts the evil of many, certain and uncertain, what will be and what will never be, our load will be as intolerable as it is unreasonable....