of God rises more grandly to our thoughts when His praise goes up like the voice of many waters. GEIKIE. APRIL 12. And be renewed in the spirit of your mind.-EPHESIANS iv. 23. If some people fancy that they must be grave and solemn at church, but may be silly and frantic at home; that they must live by some rule on the Sunday, but may spend other days by chance; that they must have some times of prayer, but may waste the rest of their time as they please; that they must give some of their money in charity, but may squander away the rest as they have a mind; such people have not enough considered the nature of religion, or the true reasons of piety. For he that upon principles of reason can tell why it is good to be wise and heavenly minded at church, can tell that it is always desirable to have the same tempers in all other places. He that truly knows why he should spend any time well, knows that it is never allowable to throw any time away. He that rightly understands the reasonableness and excellency of charity, will know that it can never be excusable to waste any of our money in pride and folly, and in any needless expenses.-LAW. APRIL 13. Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation ?-HEBREWS i. 14. That angels form part of our unseen world appears from the vision seen by the patriarch Jacob. We are told that when he fled from his brother Esau "he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night." How little did he think that there was anything very wonderful in this spot! It was a lone uncomfortable place: there was no house there, night was coming on, and he was to sleep upon the bare rock. Yet how different was the truth! He was but the world that is seen; yet the world that is not seen was there. It was there, though it did not at once make known its presence, but needed to be supernaturally displayed to him. He saw it in his sleep. "He dreamed, and behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, and the top of it reached up to heaven, and behold, the angels of God ascending and descending on it, and behold, the Lord stood above it." This was the other world. Persons commonly speak as if the other world did not exist. now, but would after death. No; it exists now, though we see it not. It is among us and around us. Jacob was shown this in his dream. Angels were all about him, though he knew it not. And again, what Jacob saw in his sleep Elisha's servant saw as with his eyes; and the shepherds at the time of the nativity not only saw, but heard.-J. H. NEWMAN. APRIL 14. In God's word will I rejoice, in the Lord's word will I comfort me.-PSALM lvi. 10. He only who knows the number of the waves of the ocean, and the abundance of tears in the human eye; He who sees the sighs of the heart before they are uttered, and who hears them still when they are hushed into silence,-He alone can tell how many holy emotions, how many heavenly vibrations have been produced and will ever be produced in the souls of men by the reverberation of these mysterious strains of these predestinated hymns, read, meditated, sung, in every hour of day and night, in every winding of the vale of tears. The Psalter of David is like a mystic harp, hung on the walls of the true Zion. Under the breath of the Spirit of God, it sends forth its infinite varieties of devotion, which, rolling on from echo to echo, from soul to soul, awakes in each a separate note, mingling in that one prolonged voice of thankfulness and prayer, penitence and praise.-GEIKIE. APRIL 15. And where I am, there shall also My servant be.-JOHN xii. 26. Let me be with Thee where Thou art, My Saviour, my eternal rest; Then only will this longing heart Be fully and completely blest. Let me be with Thee where Thou art, Cease to be treacherous, faithless, cold. Let me be with Thee where Thou art, Be sinful and defiled no more. Let me be with Thee where Thou art, Where none can die, where none remove: APRIL 16. Lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh. Meteors have their course, and burst into darkness; it is only the sun which shines the same over all ages. The conservatism natural to religious belief may give other faiths a lingering hold in the area they gained while in vigour, but they stand like the stagnant and shrinking waters of some passing flood, not the bright flow of a steady stream. Other faiths stand like girdled trees-monuments of decay, drooping and sickly. Christianity, like the tree of life, spreads its shadow with each passing century, and bears all kinds of fruits, and its leaves are healing. Its seeds, scattered in land after land, spring fresh and fair in every clime, with banyan groves for each single shoot. Most certainly Christianity is the religion of the future. Even now it forms the public opinion of the ruling H nations; its spirit is, insensibly, pervading the world. Jesus Christ is extending His invisible kingdom in the hearts of all races, with each generation winning millions of subjects from every speech and country and colour, and indirectly affecting even communities most opposed to a rule so pure and lofty; and this can come from nothing but the living power in His words and story.— GEIKIE. APRIL 17. Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.-PROVERBS xxvii. 17. Company is one of the greatest pleasures of the nature of man, for the beams of joy are made hotter by reflection when related to another; and likewise gladness itself must grieve for want of one to express itself to. It is unnatural to a man to court and hug solitariness. Why, then, should any man affect to environ himself with so deep and great reservedness as not to communicate with the society of others? The company he keeps is the comment by help whereof man expounds the most close and mystical man. To affect always to be the best of the company argues a base disposition. Gold always worn in the same purse with silver loses both of the colour and weight, and so to converse always with his inferior degrades a man of his worth. Such there are who love to be the lords of the company, whilst the rest must be their tenants, as if bound by that lease to approve what they say. |