May 1
The Prayer
of Faith
"God that cannot lie promised" (Titus 1:2).
Faith is not working up by will power a sort of certainty that
something is coming to pass, but it is seeing as an actual fact
that God has said that this thing shall come to pass, and that
it is true, and then rejoicing to know that it is true, and just
resting because God has said it.
Faith turns the promise into a prophecy. While it is merely a
promise it is contingent upon our cooperation. But when faith
claims it, it becomes a prophecy, and we go forth feeling that
it is something that must be done because God cannot lie.
--Days of Heaven upon Earth
I hear men praying everywhere for more faith, but when I listen
to them carefully, and get at the real heart of their prayer,
very often it is not more faith at all that they are wanting,
but a change from faith to sight.
Faith says not, "I see that it is good for me, so God must have
sent it," but, "God sent it, and so it must be good for me."
Faith, walking in the dark with God, only prays Him to clasp its
hand more closely.
--Phillips Brooks
"The Shepherd does not ask of thee
Faith in thy faith, but only faith in Him;
And this He meant in saying, 'Come to me.'
In light or darkness seek to do His will,
And leave the. work of faith to Jesus still."
May 2
The Key to the Wind
"The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens; and his
kingdom ruleth over all" (Ps. 103:19).
Some time since, in the early spring, I was going out at my door
when round the corner came a blast of east wind--defiant and
pitiless, fierce and withering--sending a cloud of dust before
it.
I was just taking the latchkey from the door as I said, half
impatiently, "I wish the wind would"--I was going to say change;
but the word was checked, and the sentence was never finished.
As I went on my way, the incident became a parable to me. There
came an angel holding out a key; and he said:
"My Master sends thee His love, and bids me give you this."
"What is it?" I asked, wondering. "The key of the winds," said
the angel, and disappeared.
Now indeed should I be happy. I hurried away up into the heights
whence the winds came, and stood amongst the caves. "I will have
done with the east wind at any rate--and that shall plague us no
more," I cried; and calling in that friendless wind, I closed
the door, and heard the echoes ringing in the hollow places. I
turned the key triumphantly. "There," I said, now we have done
with that."
"What shall I choose in its place?" I asked myself, looking
about me. "The south wind is pleasant"; and I thought of the
lambs, and the young life on every hand, and the flowers that
had begun to deck the hedgerows. But as I set the key within the
door, it began to burn my hand.
"What am I doing?" I cried; "who knows what mischief I may bring
about? How do I know what the fields want! Ten thousand things
of ill may come of this foolish wish of mine."
Bewildered and ashamed, I looked up and prayed that the Lord
would send His angel yet again to take the key; and for my part
I promised that I would never want to have it any more.
But lo, the Lord Himself stood by me. He reached His hand to
take the key; and as I laid it down, I saw that it rested
against the sacred wound-print.
It hurt me indeed that I could ever have murmured against
anything wrought by Him who bare such sacred tokens of His love.
Then He took the key and hung it on His girdle.
"Dost THOU keep the key of the winds?" I asked.
"I do, my child," He answered graciously.
And lo, I looked again and there hung all the keys of all my
life. He saw my look of amazement, and asked, "Didst thou not
know, my child, that my kingdom ruleth over all?"
"Over all, my Lord!" I answered; "then it is not safe for me to
murmur at anything?" Then did He lay His hand upon me tenderly.
"My child," He said, "thy only safety is, in everything, to love
and trust and praise."
--Mark Guy Pearse
May 3
Call Upon the Lord
"And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name
of the Lord shall be delivered"
--(Joel 2:32).
Why do not I call on His name? Why do I run to this neighbor and
that when God is so near and will hear my faintest call? Why do
I sit down and devise schemes and invent plans? Why not at once
roll myself and my burden upon the Lord?
Straightforward is the best runner--why do not I run at once to
the living God? In vain shall I look for "deliverance anywhere
else; but with God I shall find it; for here I have His royal
shall to make it sure.
I need not ask whether I may call on Him or not, for that word
"Whosoever" is a very wide and comprehensive one. Whosoever
means me, for it means anybody and everybody who calls upon God.
I will therefore follow the leading of the text, and at once
call upon the glorious Lord who has made so large a promise.
My case is urgent, and I do not see how I am to be delivered;
but this is no business of mine. He who makes the promise will
find ways and means of keeping it. It is mine to obey His
commands; it is not mine to direct His counsels. I am His
servant, not His solicitor. I call upon Him, and He will
deliver.
--C. H. Spurgeon
May 4
The Mountain After the Quake
"He maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth and his hands
make whole" (Job 5:18).
The ministry of a great sorrow.
As we pass beneath the hills which have been shaken by the
earthquake and torn by convulsion, we find that periods of
perfect repose succeed those of destruction. The pools of calm
water lie clear beneath their fallen rocks, the water lilies
gleam, and the reeds whisper among the shadows; the village
rises again over the forgotten graves, and its church tower,
white through the storm twilight, proclaims a renewed appeal to
His protection "in whose hand are all the corners of the earth,
and the strength of the hills is his also." --Ruskin
God ploughed one day with an earthquake,
And drove His furrows deep!
The huddling plains upstarted,
The hills were all aleap!
But that is the mountains' secret,
Age-hidden in their breast;
"God's peace is everlasting,"
Are the dream-words of their rest.
He made them the haunts of beauty,
The home elect of His grace;
He spreadeth His mornings upon them,
His sunsets light their face.
His winds bring messages to them
Wild storm-news from the main;
They sing it down the valleys
In the love-song of the rain.
They are nurseries for young rivers,
Nests for His flying cloud,
Homesteads for new-born races,
Masterful, free, and proud.
The people of tired cities
Come up to their shrines and pray;
God freshens again within them,
As He passes by all day.
And lo, I have caught their secret!
The beauty deeper than all!
This faith--that life's hard moments,
When the jarring sorrows befall,
Are but God ploughing His mountains;
And those mountains yet shall be
The source of His grace and freshness,
And His peace everlasting to me.
--William C. Gannett
May 5
Sing Praise to the Lord!
"When they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushments...and
they were smitten" (2 Chron. 20:22).
Oh, that we could reason less about our troubles, and sing and
praise more! There are thousands of things that we wear as
shackles which we might use as instruments with music in them,
if we only knew how.
Those men that ponder, and meditate, and weigh the affairs of
life, and study the mysterious developments of God's providence,
and wonder why they should be burdened and thwarted and
hampered--how different and how much more joyful would be their
lives, if, instead of forever indulging in self-revolving and
inward thinking, they would take their experiences, day by day,
and lift them up, and praise God for them.
We can sing our cares away easier than we can reason them away.
Sing in the morning. The birds are the earliest to sing, and
birds are more without care than anything else that I know of.
Sing at evening. Singing is the last thing that robins do. When
they have done their daily work; when they have flown their last
flight, and picked up their last morsel of food, then on a
topmost twig, they sing one song of praise.
Oh, that we might sing morning and evening, and let song touch
song all the way through. --Selected
"Don't let the song go out of your life
Though it chance sometimes to flow
In a minor strain; it will blend again
With the major tone you know.
"What though shadows rise to obscure life's skies,
And hide for a time the sun,
The sooner they'll lift and reveal the rift,
If you let the melody run.
"Don't let the song go out of your life;
Though the voice may have lost its trill,
Though the tremulous note may die in your throat,
Let it sing in your spirit still.
"Don't let the song go out of your life;
Let it ring in the soul while here;
And when you go hence, 'twill follow you thence,
And live on in another sphere."
May 6
The Secrets of Providence
"The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him" (Ps. 25:14).
There are secrets of Providence which God's dear children may
learn. His dealings with them often seem, to the outward eye,
dark and terrible. Faith looks deeper and says, "This is God's
secret. You look only on the outside; I can look deeper and see
the hidden meaning."
Sometimes diamonds are done up in rough packages, so that their
value cannot be seen. When the Tabernacle was built in the
wilderness there was nothing rich in its outside appearance. The
costly things were all within, and its outward covering of rough
badger skin gave no hint of the valuable things which it
contained.
God may send you, dear friends, some costly packages. Do not
worry if they are done up in rough wrappings. You may be sure
there are treasures of love, and kindness, and wisdom hidden
within. If we take what He sends, and trust Him for the goodness
in it, even in the dark, we shall learn the meaning of the
secrets of Providence.
--A. B. Simpson
"Not until each loom is silent,
And the shuttles cease to fly,
Will God unroll the pattern
And explain the reason why
The dark threads are as needful
In the Weaver's skillful hand,
As the threads of gold and silver
For the pattern which He planned."
He that is mastered by Christ is the master of every
circumstance. Does the circumstance press hard against you? Do
not push it away. It is the Potter's hand. Your mastery will
come, not by arresting its progress, but by enduring its
discipline, for it is not only shaping you into a vessel of
beauty and honor, but it is making your resources available.
May 7
Beginning Without Finishing
"He spoke a parable unto them?that men ought always to
pray, and not to faint" (Luke 18:1).
No temptation in the life of intercession is more common than
this of failure to persevere. We begin to pray for a certain
thing; we put up our petitions for a day, a week, a month; and
then, receiving as yet no definite answer, straightway we faint,
and cease altogether from prayer concerning it.
This is a deadly fault. It is simply the snare of many
beginnings with no completions. It is ruinous in all spheres of
life.
The man who forms the habit of beginning without finishing has
simply formed the habit of failure. The man who begins to pray
about a thing and does not pray it through to a successful issue
of answer has formed the same habit in prayer.
To faint is to fail; then defeat begets disheartenment, and
unfaith in the reality of prayer, which is fatal to all success.
But someone says, "How long shall we pray? Do we not come to a
place where we may cease from our petitions and rest the matter
in God's hands?"
There is but one answer. Pray until the thing you pray for has
actually been granted, or until you have the assurance in your
heart that it will be.
Only at one of these two places dare we stay our importunity,
for prayer is not only a calling upon God, but also a conflict
with Satan. And inasmuch as God is using our intercession as a
mighty factor of victory in that conflict, He alone, and not we,
must decide when we dare cease from our petitioning. So we dare
not stay our prayer until the answer itself has come, or until
we receive the assurance that it will come.
In the first case we stop because we see. In the other, we stop
because we believe, and the faith of our heart is just as sure
as the sight of our eyes; for it is faith from, yes, the faith
of God, within us.
More and more, as we live the prayer life, shall we come to
experience and recognize this God-given assurance, and know when
to rest quietly in it, or when to continue our petitioning until
we receive it. --The Practice of Prayer
Tarry at the promise till God meets you there. He always returns
by way of His promises. --Selected
May 8
The Road Uphill
"Walking in the midst of the fire" (Daniel 3:25).
The fire did not arrest their motion; they walked in the midst
of it. It was one of the streets through which they moved to
their destiny. The comfort of Christ's revelation is not that it
teaches emancipation from sorrow, but emancipation through
sorrow.
O my God, teach me, when the shadows have gathered, that I am
only in a tunnel. It is enough for me to know that it will be
all right some day.
They tell me that I shall stand upon the peaks of Olivet, the
heights of resurrection glory. But I want more, O my Father; I
want Calvary to lead up to it. I want to know that the shadows
of this world are the shades of an avenue the avenue to the
house of my Father. Tell me I am only forced to climb because
Thy house is on the hill! I shall receive no hurt from sorrow if
I shall walk in the midst of the fire. --George Matheson
"'The road is too rough,' I said;
'It is uphill all the way;
No flowers, but thorns instead;
And the skies over head are grey.'
But One took my hand at the entrance dim,
And sweet is the road that I walk with Him.
"The cross is too great,' I cried--
'More than the back can bear,
So rough and heavy and wide,
And nobody by to care.'
And One stooped softly and touched my hand:
'I know. I care. And I understand.'
"Then why do we fret and sigh;
Cross-bearers all we go:
But the road ends by-and-by
In the dearest place we know,
And every step in the journey we
May take in the Lord's own company."
May 9
The Friend of God
"Abraham stood yet before the Lord" (Gen. 18:22).
The friend of God can plead with Him for others. Perhaps
Abraham's height of faith and friendship seems beyond our little
possibilities. Do not be discouraged, Abraham grew; so may we.
He went step by step, not by great leaps.
The man whose faith has been deeply tested and who has come off
victorious, is the man to whom supreme tests must come.
The finest jewels are most carefully cut and polished; the
hottest fires try the most precious metal. Abraham would never
have been called the Father of the Faithful if he had not been
proved to the uttermost. Read Genesis, twenty-second chapter:
"Take thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest." See him going
with a chastened, wistful, yet humbly obedient heart up Moriah's
height, with the idol of his heart beside him about to be
sacrificed at the command of God whom he had faithfully loved
and served!
What a rebuke to our questionings of God's dealings with us!
Away with all doubting explanations of this stupendous scene! It
was an object lesson for the ages. Angels were looking.
Shall this man's faith stand forever for the strength and help
of all God's people? Shall it be known through him that
unfaltering faith will always prove the faithfulness of God?
Yes; and when faith has borne victoriously its uttermost test,
the angel of the Lord--who? The Lord Jesus, Jehovah, He in whom
"all the promises of God are yea and amen"--spoke to him,
saying, "Now I know that thou fearest God." Thou hast trusted me
to the uttermost. I will also trust thee; thou shalt ever be My
friend, and I will bless thee, and make thee a blessing.
It is always so, and always will be. "They that are of faith are
blessed with faithful Abraham." --Selected
It is no small thing to be on terms of friendship with God.
May 10
Lie Still and Trust
"I had fainted unless?!(Ps. 27:13).
"FAINT NOT!"
How great is the temptation at this point! How the soul sinks,
the heart grows sick, and the faith staggers under the keen
trials and testings which come into our lives in times of
special bereavement and suffering.
"I cannot bear up any longer, I am fainting under this
providence. What shall I do? God tells me not to faint. But what
can one do when he is fainting?"
What do you do when you are about to faint physically? You
cannot do anything. You cease from your own doings. In your
faintness, you fall upon the shoulder of some strong loved one.
You lean hard. You rest. You lie still and trust.
It is so when we are tempted to faint under affliction. God's
message to us is not, "Be strong and of good courage," for He
knows our strength and courage have fled away. But it is that
sweet word, "Be still, and know that I am God."
Hudson Taylor was so feeble in the closing months of his life
that he wrote a dear friend: "I am so weak I cannot write; I
cannot read my Bible; I cannot even pray. I can only lie still
in God's arms like a little child, and trust."
This wondrous man of God with all his spiritual power came to a
place of physical suffering and weakness where he could only lie
still and trust.
And that is all God asks of you, His dear child, when you grow
faint in the fierce fires of affliction. Do not try to be
strong. Just be still and know that He is God, and will sustain
you, and bring you through.
"God keeps His choicest cordials for our deepest faintings."
"Stay firm and let thine heart take courage" (Psa. 27:14,
--After Osterwald).
Stay firm, He has not failed thee
In all the past,
And will He go and leave thee
To sink at last?
Nay, He said He will hide thee
Beneath His wing;
And sweetly there in safety
Thou mayest sing.
?Selected
May 11
Sailing Through the Tempest
"We went through fire and through water: but thou broughtest
us out into a wealthy place" (Ps. 66:12).
Paradoxical though it be, only that man is at rest who attains
it through conflict. This peace, born of conflict, is not like
the deadly hush preceding the tempest, but the serene and
pure-aired quiet that follows it.
It is not generally the prosperous one, who has never sorrowed,
who is strong and at rest. His quality has never been tried, and
he knows not how he can stand even a gentle shock. He is not the
safest sailor who never saw a tempest; he will do for
fair-weather service, but when the storm is rising, place at the
important post the man who has fought out a gale, who has tested
the ship, who knows her hulk sound, her rigging strong, and her
anchor-flukes able to grasp and hold by the ribs of the world.
When first affliction comes upon us, how everything gives way!
Our clinging, tendril hopes are snapped, and our heart lies
prostrate like a vine that the storm has torn from its trellis;
but when the first shock is past, and we are able to look up,
and say, "It is the Lord," faith lifts the shattered hopes once
more, and binds them fast to the feet of God. Thus the end is
confidence, safety, and peace. --Selected
The adverse winds blew against my life;
My little ship with grief was tossed;
My plans were gone--heart full of strife,
And all my hope seemed to be lost--
"Then He arose"--one word of peace.
"There was a calm"--a sweet release.
A tempest great of doubt and fear
Possessed my mind; no light was there
To guide, or make my vision clear.
Dark night! 'twas more than I could bear--
"Then He arose," I saw His face--
"There was a calm" filled with His grace.
My heart was sinking 'neath the wave
Of deepening test and raging grief;
All seemed as lost, and none could save,
And nothing could bring me relief--
"Then He arose"--and spoke one word,
"There was a calm!" IT IS THE LORD..
--L. S. P.
May 12
The Discipline of Faith
"All things are possible to him that believeth" (Mark 9:23).
The "all things" do not always come simply for the asking, for
the reason that God is ever seeking to teach us the way of
faith, and in our training in the faith life there must be room
for the trial of faith, the discipline of faith, the patience of
faith, the courage of faith, and often many stages are passed
before we really realize what is the end of faith, namely, the
victory of faith.
Real moral fibre is developed through discipline of faith. You
have made your request of God, but the answer does not come.
What are you to do?
Keep on believing God's Word; never be moved away from it by
what you see or feel, and thus as you stand steady, enlarged
power and experience is being developed. The fact of looking at
the apparent contradiction as to God's Word and being unmoved
from your position of faith make you stronger on every other
line.
Often God delays purposely, and the delay is just as much an
answer to your prayer as is the fulfillment when it comes.
In the lives of all the great Bible characters, God worked thus.
Abraham, Moses and Elijah were not great in the beginning, but
were made great through the discipline of their faith, and only
thus were they fitted for the positions to which God had called
them.
For example, in the case of Joseph whom the Lord was training
for the throne of Egypt, we read in the Psalms:
"The word of the Lord tried him." It was not the prison life
with its hard beds or poor food that tried him, but it was the
word God had spoken into his heart in the early years concerning
elevation and honor which were greater than his brethren were to
receive; it was this which was ever before him, when every step
in his career made it seem more and more impossible of
fulfillment, until he was there imprisoned, and all in innocency,
while others who were perhaps justly incarcerated, were
released, and he was left to languish alone.
These were hours that tried his soul, but hours of spiritual
growth and development, that, "when his word came" the word of
release., found him fitted for the delicate task of dealing with
his wayward brethren, with a love and patience only surpassed by
God Himself.
No amount of persecution tries like such experiences as these.
When God has spoken of His purpose to do, and yet the days go on
and He does not do it, that is truly hard; but it is a
discipline of faith that will bring us into a knowledge of God
which would otherwise be impossible.
May 13
Can Thine Heart Endure
"We know not what we should pray for as we ought" (Rom. 8:26).
Much that perplexes us in our Christian experience is but the
answer to our prayers. We pray for patience, and our Father
sends those who tax us to the utmost; for "tribulation worketh
patience."
We pray for submission, and God sends sufferings; for "we learn
obedience by the things we suffer."
We pray for unselfishness, and God gives us opportunities to
sacrifice ourselves by thinking on the things of others, and by
laying down our lives for the brethren.
We pray for strength and humility, and some messenger of Satan
torments us until we lie in the dust crying for its removal.
We pray, "Lord, increase our faith," and money takes wings; or
the children are alarmingly ill; or a servant comes who is
careless, extravagant, untidy or slow, or some hitherto unknown
trial calls for an increase of faith along a line where we have
not needed to exercise much faith before.
We pray for the Lamb-life, and are given a portion of lowly
service, or we are injured and must seek no redress; for "he was
led as a lamb to the slaughter and?opened not his mouth."
We pray for gentleness, and there comes a perfect storm of
temptation to harshness and irritability. We pray for quietness,
and every nerve is strung to the utmost tension, so that looking
to Him we may learn that when He giveth quietness, no one can
make trouble.
We pray for love, and God sends peculiar suffering and puts us
with apparently unlovely people, and lets them say things which
rasp the nerves and lacerate the heart; for love suffereth long
and is kind, love is not impolite, love is not provoked. LOVE
BEARETH ALL THINGS, believeth, hopeth and endureth, love never
faileth. We pray for likeness to Jesus, and the answer is, "I
have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction." "Can thine heart
endure, or can thine hands be strong?" "Are ye able?"
The way to peace and victory is to accept every circumstance,
every trial, straight from the hand of a loving Father; and to
live up in the heavenly places, above the clouds, in the very
presence of the Throne, and to look down from the Glory upon our
environment as lovingly and divinely appointed. --Selected
I prayed for strength, and then I lost awhile
All sense of nearness, human and divine;
The love I leaned on failed and pierced my heart,
The hands I clung to loosed themselves from mine;
But while I swayed, weak, trembling, and alone,
The everlasting arms upheld my own.
I prayed for light; the sun went down in clouds,
The moon was darkened by a misty doubt,
The stars of heaven were dimmed by earthly fears,
And all my little candle flames burned out;
But while I sat in shadow, wrapped in night,
The face of Christ made all the darkness bright.
I prayed for peace, and dreamed of restful ease,
A slumber drugged from pain, a hushed repose;
Above my head the skies were black with storm,
And fiercer grew the onslaught of my foes;
But while the battle raged, and wild winds blew,
I heard His voice and Perfect peace I knew.
I thank Thee, Lord, Thou wert too wise to heed
My feeble prayers, and answer as I sought,
Since these rich gifts Thy bounty has bestowed
Have brought me more than all I asked or thought;
Giver of good, so answer each request
With Thine own giving, better than my best.
--Annie Johnson Flint
May 14
Instant Obedience
"In the selfsame day, as God had said unto him" (Gen. 17:23).
Instant obedience is the only kind of obedience there is;
delayed obedience is disobedience. Every time God calls us to
any duty, He is offering to make a covenant with us; doing the
duty is our part, and He will do His part in special blessing.
The only way we can obey is to obey "in the selfsame day," as
Abraham did. To be sure, we often postpone a duty and then later
on do it as fully as we can. It is better to do this than not to
do it at all. But it is then, at the best, only a crippled,
disfigured, half-way sort of duty-doing; and a postponed duty
never can bring the full blessing that God intended, and that it
would have brought if done at the earliest possible moment.
It is a pity to rob ourselves, along with robbing God and
others, by procrastination. "In the selfsame day" is the Genesis
way of saying, "Do it now." --Messages for the Morning Watch
Luther says that "a true believer will crucify the question,
'Why?' He will obey without questioning." I will not be one of
those who, except they see signs and wonders, will in no wise
believe. I will obey without questioning.
"Ours not to make reply,
Ours not to reason why,
Ours but to do and die."
Obedience is the fruit of faith; patience, the bloom on the
fruit. --Christina Rossetti
May 15
Above the Clouds
"Men see not the bright light which is in the clouds" (Job
37:21).
The world owes much of its beauty to cloudland. The unchanging
blue of the Italian sky hardly compensates for the changefulness
and glory of the clouds. Earth would become a wilderness apart
from their ministry. There are clouds in human life, shadowing,
refreshing, and sometimes draping it in blackness of night; but
there is never a cloud without its bright light. "I do set my
bow in the cloud!"
If we could see the clouds from the other side where they lie in
billowy glory, bathed in the light they intercept, like heaped
ranges of Alps, we should be amazed at their splendid
magnificence.
We look at their under side; but who shall describe the bright
light that bathes their summits and searches their valleys and
is reflected from every pinnacle of their expanse? Is not every
drop drinking in health-giving qualities, which it will carry to
the earth?
O child of God! If you could see your sorrows and troubles from
the other side; if instead of looking up at them from earth, you
would look down on them from the heavenly places where you sit
with Christ; if you knew how they are reflecting in prismatic
beauty before the gaze of Heaven, the bright light of Christ's
face, you would be content that they should cast their deep
shadows over the mountain slopes of existence. Only remember
that clouds are always moving and passing before God's cleansing
wind. --Selected
"I cannot know why suddenly the storm
Should rage so fiercely round me in its wrath;
But this I know--God watches all my path,
And I can trust.
"I may not draw aside the mystic veil
That hides the unknown future from my sight,
Nor know if for me waits the dark or light;
But I can trust.
"I have no power to look across the tide,
To see while here the land beyond the river;
But this I , know--I shall be Gods forever;
So I can trust."
May 16
We Wrestle Not Against Flesh
and Blood
"Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set
thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy
God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words. But the
prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty
days" (Dan. 10:12, 13).
We have wonderful teaching here on prayer, and we are shown the
direct hindrance from Satan.
Daniel had fasted and prayed twenty-one days, and had a very
hard time in prayer. As far as we read the narrative, it was not
because Daniel was not a good man, nor because his prayer was
not right; but it was because of a special attack of Satan.
The Lord started a messenger to tell Daniel that his prayer was
answered the moment Daniel began to pray; but an evil angel met
the good angel and wrestled with him, hindering him. There was a
conflict in the heavens; and Daniel seemed to go through an
agony on earth the same as that which was going on in the
heavens.
"We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against
principalities, against powers? against wicked spirits in high
places" (Eph. 6:12), margin..
Satan delayed the answer three full weeks. Daniel nearly
succumbed, and Satan would have been glad to kill him; but God
will not suffer anything to come above that we "are able to
bear."
Many a Christian's prayer is hindered by Satan; but you need not
fear when your prayers and faith pile up; for after a while they
will be like a flood, and will not only sweep the answer
through, but will also bring some new accompanying blessing.
--Sermon
Hell does its worst with the saints. The rarest souls have been
tested with high pressures and temperatures, but Heaven will not
desert them. --W. L. Watkinson
May 17
Season of Waiting
"And when forty years were expired, there appeared to him in the
wilderness?an angel of the Lord...saying....now come, I will
send thee into Egypt" (Acts 7:30-34).
Often the Lord calls us aside from our work for a season, and
bids us be still and learn ere we go forth again to minister.
There is no time lost in such waiting hours.
Fleeing from his enemies, the ancient knight found that his
horse needed to be re-shod. Prudence seemed to urge him on
without delay, but higher wisdom taught him to halt a few
minutes at the blacksmith's forge by the way, to have the shoe
replaced; and although he heard the feet of his pursuers
galloping hard behind, yet he waited those minutes until his
charger was refitted for his flight. And then, leaping into his
saddle just as they appeared a hundred yards away, he dashed
away from them with the fleetness of the wind, and knew that his
halting had hastened his escape.
So often God bids us tarry ere we go, and fully recover
ourselves for the next stage of the journey and work. --Days of
Heaven upon Earth
Waiting! Yes, patiently waiting!
Till next steps made plain shall be;
To hear, with the inner hearing,
The Voice that will call for me.
Waiting! Yes, hopefully waiting!
With hope that need not grow dim;
The Master is pledged to guide me,
And my eyes are unto Him.
Waiting! Expectantly waiting!
Perhaps it may be today
The Master will quickly open
The gate to my future way.
Waiting! Yes, waiting! still waiting!
I know, though I've waited long,
That, while He withholds His purpose,
His waiting cannot be wrong.
Waiting! Yes, waiting! still waiting!
The Master will not be late:
He knoweth that I am waiting
For Him to unlatch the gate.
--J. D. Smith
May 18
Pressing Forward
"I was crushed...so much so that I despaired even of life, but
that was to make me rely not on myself, but on the God who
raises the dead" (2 Cor. 1:8, 9).
"Pressed out of measure and pressed to all length;
Pressed so intensely it seems, beyond strength;
Pressed in the body and pressed in the soul,
Pressed in the mind till the dark surges roll.
Pressure by foes, and a pressure from friends.
Pressure on pressure, till life nearly ends.
"Pressed into knowing no helper but God;
Pressed into loving the staff and the rod.
Pressed into liberty where nothing clings;
Pressed into faith for impossible things.
Pressed into living a life in the Lord,
Pressed into living a Christ-life outpoured."
The pressure of hard places makes us value life. Every time our
life is given back to us from such a trial, it is like a new
beginning, and we learn better how much it is worth, and make
more of it for God and man. The pressure helps us to understand
the trials of others, and fits us to help and sympathize with
them.
There is a shallow, superficial nature, that gets hold of a
theory or a promise lightly, and talks very glibly about the
distrust of those who shrink from every trial; but the man or
woman who has suffered much never does this, but is very tender
and gentle, and knows what suffering really means. This is what
Paul meant when he said, "Death worketh in you."
Trials and hard places are needed to press us forward, even as
the furnace fires in the hold of that mighty ship give force
that moves the piston, drives the engine, and propels that great
vessel across the sea in the face of the winds and waves. --A.
B. Simpson
"Out of the presses of pain,
Cometh the soul's best wine;
And the eyes that have shed no rain,
Can shed but little shine."
May 19
Attitude of Trust
"And it came to pass, before he had done speaking...and he said,
Blessed be Jehovah?who hath not forsaken his lovingkindness and
his truth" (Gen. 24:15, 27).
Every right prayer is answered before the prayer itself is
finished--before we have "done speaking." This is because God
has pledged His Word to us that whatsoever we ask in Christ's
name that is, in oneness with Christ and His will. and in
faith, shall be done.
As God's Word cannot fail, whenever we meet those simple
conditions in prayer, the answer to our prayer has been granted
and completed in Heaven as we pray, even though its showing
forth on earth may not occur until long afterward.
So it is well to close every prayer with praise to God for the
answer that He has already granted; He who never forsakes His
loving-kindness and His truth. (See Daniel 9:20-27 and 10:12).
--Messages for the Morning Watch
When we believe for a blessing, we must take the attitude of
faith, and begin to act and pray as if we had the blessing. We
must treat God as if He had given us our request. We must lean
our weight over upon Him for the thing that we have claimed, and
just take it for granted that He gives it, and is going to
continue to give it. This is the attitude of trust.
When the wife is married, she at once falls into a new attitude,
and acts in accordance with the fact; and so when we take Christ
as our Savior, as our Sanctifier, as our Healer, or as our
Deliverer, He expects us to fall into the attitude of
recognizing Him in the capacity that we have claimed, and expect
Him to be to us all that we have trusted Him for. --Selected
"The thing I ask when God doth bid me pray,
Begins in that same act to come my way."
May 20
Receive the Cup of Sorrow
"Shall I refuse to drink the cup of sorrow which the Father has
given me to drink?" (John 18:11, Weymouth).
God takes a thousand times more pains with us than the artist
with his picture, by many touches of sorrow, and by many colors
of circumstance, to bring us into the form which is the highest
and noblest in His sight, if only we receive His gifts of myrrh
in the right spirit.
But when the cup is put away, and these feelings are stifled or
unheeded, a greater injury is done to the soul that can ever be
amended. For no heart can conceive in what surpassing love God
giveth us this myrrh; yet this which we ought to receive to our
souls' good we suffer to pass by us in our sleepy indifference,
and nothing comes of it.
Then we come and complain: "Alas, Lord! I am so dry, and it is
so dark within me!" I tell thee, dear child, open thy heart to
the pain, and it will do thee more good than if thou wert full
of feeling and devoutness. --Tauler
"The cry of man's anguish went up to God,
'Lord take away pain:
The shadow that darkens the world Thou hast made,
The close-coiling chain
That strangles the heart, the burden that weighs
On the wings that would soar,
Lord, take away pain from the world Thou hast made,
That it love Thee the more.'
"Then answered the Lord to the cry of His world:
'Shall I take away pain,
And with it the power of the soul to endure,
Made strong by the strain?
Shall I take away pity, that knits heart to heart
And sacrifice high?
Will ye lose all your heroes that lift from the fire
White brows to the sky?
Shall I take away love that redeems with a price
And smiles at its loss?
Can ye spare from your lives that would climb unto Me
The Christ on His cross?"
May 21
Remember My Song in the Night
"I call to remembrance my song in the night" (Psalm 77:6).
I have read somewhere of a little bird that will never sing the
melody his master wishes while his cage is full of light. He
learns a snatch of this, a bar of that, but never an entire song
of its own until the cage is covered and the morning beams shut
out.
A good many people never learn to sing until the darkling
shadows fall. The fabled nightingale carols with his breast
against a thorn. It was in the night that the song of the angels
was heard. It was at midnight that the cry came, "Behold, the
bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him."
Indeed it is extremely doubtful if a soul can really know the
love of God in its richness and in its comforting, satisfying
completeness until the skies are black and lowering.
Light comes out of darkness, morning out of the womb of the
night.
James Creelman, in one of his letters, describes his trip
through the Balkan States in search of Natalie, the exiled Queen
of Serbia.
"In that memorable journey," he says, "I learned for the first
time that the world's supply of attar of roses comes from the
Balkan Mountains. And the thing that interested me most," he
goes on, "is that the roses must be gathered in the darkest
hours. The pickers start out at one o'clock and finish picking
them at two.
"At first it seemed to me a relic of superstition; but I
investigated the picturesque mystery, and learned that actual
scientific tests had proven that fully forty per cent of the
fragrance of roses disappeared in the light of day."
And in human life and human culture that is not a playful,
fanciful conceit; it is a real veritable fact. -Malcolm J.
McLeod
May 22
He Worketh
"He worketh" (Ps. 37:5).
The translation that we find in Young of "Commit thy way unto
the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass,"
reads: "Roll upon Jehovah thy way; trust upon him: and he
worketh."
It calls our attention to the immediate action of God when we
truly commit, or roll out of our hands into His, the burden of
whatever kind it may be; a way of sorrow, of difficulty, of
physical need, or of anxiety for the conversion of some dear
one.
"He worketh." When? Now. We are so in danger of postponing our
expectation of His acceptance of the trust, and His undertaking
to accomplish what we ask Him to do, instead of saying as we
commit, "He worketh." "He worketh" even now; and praise Him that
it is so.
The very expectancy enables the Holy Spirit to do the very thing
we have rolled upon Him. It is out of our reach. We are not
trying to do it any more. "He worketh!"
Let us take the comfort out of it and not put our hands on it
again. Oh, what a relief it brings! He is really working on the
difficulty.
But someone may say, "I see no results." Never mind. "He worketh,"
if you have rolled it over and are looking to Jesus to do it.
Faith may be tested, but "He worketh"; the Word is sure! --V. H.
F.
"I will cry unto God most high; unto God that performeth
all things for me" (Ps. 57:2).
The beautiful old translation says, "He shall perform the cause
which I have in hand." Does not that make it very real to us
today? Just the very thing that "I have in hand"--my own
particular bit of work today, this cause that I cannot manage,
this thing that I undertook in miscalculation of my own
powers--this is what I may ask Him to do "for me," and rest
assured that He will perform it. "The wise and their works are
in the hands of God." --Havergal
The Lord will go through with His covenant engagements. Whatever
He takes in hand He will accomplish; hence past mercies are
guarantees for the future and admirable reasons for continuing
to cry unto Him. --C. H. Spurgeon
May 23
At Wit's End
"At their wit's end, they cry unto the Lord in their trouble,
and he bringeth them out" (Ps. 107:27, 28).
Are you standing at "Wit's End Corner,"
Christian, with troubled brow?
Are you thinking of what is before you,
And all you are bearing now?
Does all the world seem against you,
And you in the battle alone?
Remember--at "Wit's End Corner"
Is just where God's power is shown.
Are you standing at "Wit's End Corner,"
Blinded with wearying pain,
Feeling you cannot endure it,
You cannot bear the strain,
Bruised through the constant suffering,
Dizzy, and dazed, and numb?
Remember--at "Wit's End Corner"
Is where Jesus loves to come.
Are you standing at "Wit's End Corner"?
Your work before you spread,
All lying begun, unfinished,
And pressing on heart and head,
Longing for strength to do it,
Stretching out trembling hands?
Remember--at. "Wit's End Corner"
The Burden-bearer stands.
Are you standing at "Wit's End Corner"?
Then you're just in the very spot
To learn the wondrous resources
Of Him who faileth not:
No doubt to a brighter pathway
Your footsteps will soon be moved,
But only at "Wit's End Corner"
Is the "God who is able" proved.
--Antoinette Wilson
Do not get discouraged; it may be the last key in the bunch that
opens the door. Stansifer
May 24
Wait on God's Time
"Sarah bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of
which God had spoken to him" (Gen. 21:2).
The counsel of the Lord standeth forever, the thoughts of His
heart to all generations" (Psalm 33:11). But we must be prepared
to wait God's time. God has His set times. It is not for us to
know them; indeed, we cannot know them; we must wait for them.
If God had told Abraham in Haran that he must wait for thirty
years until he pressed the promised child to his bosom, his
heart would have failed him. So, in gracious love, the length of
the weary years was hidden, and only as they were nearly spent,
and there were only a few more months to wait, God told him that
"according to the time of life, Sarah shall have a son." (Gen.
18:14).
The set time came at last; and then the laughter that filled the
patriarch's home made the aged pair forget the long and weary
vigil.
Take heart, waiting one, thou waitest for One who cannot
disappoint thee; and who will not be five minutes behind the
appointed moment: ere long "your sorrow shall be turned into
joy."
Ah, happy soul, when God makes thee laugh! Then sorrow and
crying shall flee away forever, as darkness before the dawn.
--Selected
It is not for us who are passengers, to meddle with the chart
and with the compass. Let that all-skilled Pilot alone with His
own work. --Hall
"Some things cannot be done in a day. God does not make a sunset
glory in a moment, but for days may be massing the mist out of
which He builds His palaces beautiful in the west."
"Some glorious morn--but when? Ah, who shall say?
The steepest mountain will become a plain,
And the parched land be satisfied with rain.
The gates of brass all broken; iron bars,
Transfigured, form a ladder to the stars.
Rough places plain, and crooked ways all straight,
For him who with a patient heart can wait.
These things shall be on God's appointed day:
It may not be tomorrow--yet it may."
May 25
Eternal Glory Struggles
"I endure all things for the sake of God's own people; so that
they also may obtain salvation...and with it eternal glory" (2
Tim. 2:10, Weymouth).
If Job could have known as he sat there in the ashes, bruising
his heart on this problem of Providence--that in the trouble
that had come upon him he was doing what one man may do to work
out the problem for the world, he might again have taken
courage. No man lives to himself. Job's life is but your life
and mine written in larger text....So, then, though we may not
know what trials wait on any of us, we can believe that, as the
days in which Job wrestled with his dark maladies are the only
days that make him worth remembrance, and but for which his name
had never been written in the book of life, so the days through
which we struggle, finding no way, but never losing the light,
will be the most significant we are called to live. --Robert
Collyer
Who does not know that our most sorrowful days have been amongst
our best? When the face is wreathed in smiles and we trip
lightly over meadows bespangled with spring flowers, the heart
is often running to waste.
The soul which is always blithe and gay misses the deepest life.
It has its reward, and it is satisfied to its measure, though
that measure is a very scanty one. But the heart is dwarfed; and
the nature, which is capable of the highest heights, the deepest
depths, is undeveloped; and life presently burns down to its
socket without having known the resonance of the deepest chords
of joy.
"Blessed are they that mourn." Stars shine brightest in the long
dark night of winter. The gentians show their fairest bloom amid
almost inaccessible heights of snow and ice.
God's promises seem to wait for the pressure of pain to trample
out their richest juice as in a wine-press. Only those who have
sorrowed know how tender is the "Man of Sorrows." --Selected
Thou hast but little sunshine, but thy long glooms are wisely
appointed thee; for perhaps a stretch of summer weather would
have made thee as a parched land and barren wilderness. Thy Lord
knows best, and He has the clouds and the sun at His disposal.
--Selected
"It is a gray day." "Yes, but dinna ye see the patch of blue?"
--Scotch Shoemaker
May 26
Praise in Advance
"Spring up, O well; sing ye unto it" (Num. 21:17).
This was a strange song and a strange well. They had been
traveling over the desert's barren sands, no water was in sight
and they were famishing with thirst. Then God spake to Moses and
said:
"Gather the people together, and I will give them water," and
this is how it came.
They gathered in circles on the sands. They took their staves
and dug deep down into the burning earth and as they dug, they
sang,
"Spring up, O well, sing ye unto it," and lo, there came a
gurgling sound, a rush of water and a flowing stream which
filled the well and ran along the ground.
When they dug this well in the desert, they touched the stream
that was running beneath, and reached the flowing tides that had
long been out of sight.
How beautiful the picture given, telling us of the river of
blessing that flows all through our lives, and we have only to
reach by faith and praise to find our wants supplied in the most
barren desert.
How did they reach the waters of this well? It was by praise.
They sang upon the sand their song of faith, while with their
staff of promise they dug the well.
Our praise will still open fountains in the desert, when
murmuring will only bring us judgment, and even prayer may fail
to reach the fountains of blessing.
There is nothing that pleases the Lord so much as praise. There
is no test of faith so true as the grace of thanksgiving. Are
you praising God enough? Are you thanking Him for your actual
blessings that are more than can be numbered, and are you daring
to praise Him even for those trials which are but blessings in
disguise? Have you learned to praise Him in advance for the
things that have not yet come? --Selected
"Thou waitest for deliverance!
O soul, thou waitest long!
Believe that now deliverance
Doth wait for thee in song!
"Sigh not until deliverance
Thy fettered feet doth free:
With songs of glad deliverance
God now doth compass thee."
May 27
He Satisfies Our Soul
"Bring them hither to me" (Matt. 14:18)..
Are you encompassed with needs at this very moment, and almost
overwhelmed with difficulties, trials, and emergencies? These
are all divinely provided vessels for the Holy Spirit to fill,
and if you but rightly understood their meaning, they would
become opportunities for receiving new blessings and
deliverances which you can get in no other way.
Bring these vessels to God. Hold them steadily before Him in
faith and prayer. Keep still, and stop your own restless working
until He begins to work. Do nothing that He does not Himself
command you to do. Give Him a chance to work, and He will surely
do so; and the very trials that threatened to overcome you with
discouragement and disaster, will become God's opportunity for
the revelation of His grace and glory in your life, as you have
never known Him before. "Bring them all needs. to me." --A. B.
Simpson
"My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in
glory by Christ Jesus" (Phil. 4:19).
What a source--"God!" What a supply--"His riches in glory!" What
a channel--"Christ Jesus!" It is your sweet privilege to place
all your need over against His riches, and lose sight of the
former in the presence of the latter. His exhaustless treasury
is thrown open to you, in all the love of His heart; go and draw
upon it, in the artless simplicity of faith, and you will never
have occasion to look to a creature-stream, or lean on a
creature-prop. --C. H. M.
"MY CUP RUNNETH OVER"
There is always something over,
When we trust our gracious Lord;
Every cup He fills o'erfloweth,
His great rivers all are broad.
Nothing narrow, nothing stinted,
Ever issues from His store;
To His own He gives full measure,
Running over, evermore.
There is always something over,
When we, from the Father's hand,
Take our portion with thanksgiving,
Praising for the path He planned.
Satisfaction, full and deepening,
Fills the soul, and lights the eye,
When the heart has trusted Jesus
All its need to satisfy.
There is always something over,
When we tell of all His love;
Unplumbed depths still lie beneath us,
Unsealed heights rise far above:
Human lips can never utter
All His wondrous tenderness,
We can only praise and wonder,
And His name forever bless.
--Margaret E. Barber
"How can He but, in giving Him, lavish on us all things" (Rom.
8:32).
May 28
Cling to God in Faith
"I will not let thee go, except thou bless me ... and he blessed
him there." (Gen. 32:26, 29).
Jacob got the victory and the blessing not by wrestling, but by
clinging. His limb was out of joint and he could struggle no
longer, but he would not let go. Unable to wrestle, he wound his
arms around the neck of his mysterious antagonist and hung all
his helpless weight upon him, until at last he conquered.
We will not get victory in prayer until we too cease our
struggling, giving up our own will and throw our arms about our
Father's neck in clinging faith.
What can puny human strength take by force out of the hand of
Omnipotence? Can we wrest blessing by force from God? It is
never the violence of wilfulness that prevails with God. It is
the might of clinging faith, that gets the blessing and the
victories. It is not when we press and urge our own will, but
when humility and trust unite in saying, "Not my will, but Thine."
We are strong with God only in the degree that self is conquered
and is dead. Not by wrestling, but by clinging can we get the
blessing. --J. R. Miller
An incident from the prayer life of Charles H. Usher
illustrating "soul-cling" as a hindrance to prevailing prayer.:
"My little boy was very ill. The doctors held out little hope of
his recovery. I had used all the knowledge of prayer which I
possessed on his behalf, but he got worse and worse. This went
on for several weeks.
"One day I stood watching him as he lay in his cot, and I saw
that he could not live long unless he had a turn for the better.
I said to God, 'O God, I have given much time in prayer for my
boy and he gets no better; I must now leave him to Thee, and I
will give myself to prayer for others. If it is Thy will to take
him, I choose Thy will--I surrender him entirely to Thee.'
"I called in my dear wife, and told her what I had done. She
shed some tears, but handed him over to God. Two days afterwards
a man of God came to see us. He had been very interested in our
boy Frank, and had been much in prayer for him.
"He said, 'God has given me faith to believe that he will
recover--have you faith?'
"I said, 'I have surrendered him to God, but I will go again to
God regarding him.' I did; and in prayer I discovered that I had
faith for his recovery. From that time he began to get better.
It was the 'soul-cling' in my prayers which had hindered God
answering; and if I had continued to cling and had been
unwilling to surrender him, I doubt if my boy would be with me
today.
"Child of God! If you want God to answer your prayers, you must
be prepared to follow the footsteps of 'our father Abraham,'
even to the Mount of Sacrifice." See (Rom. 4:12).
May 29
Secret Prayer
"I have called you friends" (John 15:15).
Years ago there was an old German professor whose beautiful life
was a marvel to his students. Some of them resolved to know the
secret of it; so one of their number hid in the study where the
old professor spent his evenings.
It was late when the teacher came in. He was very tired, but he
sat down and spent an hour with his Bible. Then he bowed his
head in secret prayer; and finally closing the Book of books, he
said,
"Well, Lord Jesus, we're on the same old terms."
To know Him is life's highest attainment; and at all costs,
every Christian should strive to be "on the same old terms with
Him."
The reality of Jesus comes as a result of secret prayer, and a
personal study of the Bible that is devotional and sympathetic.
Christ becomes more real to the one who persists in the
cultivation of His presence.
Speak thou to Him for He heareth,
And spirit with spirit will meet!
Nearer is He than breathing,
Nearer than hands and feet.
--Maltbie D. Babcock
May 30
School of Sorrow
"And no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and
four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth" (Rev. 14:3).
There are songs which can only be learned in the valley. No art
can teach them; no rules of voice can make them perfectly sung.
Their music is in the heart. They are songs of memory, of
personal experience. They bring out their burden from the shadow
of the past; they mount on the wings of yesterday.
St. John says that even in Heaven there will be a song that can
only be fully sung by the sons of earth--the strain of
redemption. Doubtless it is a song of triumph, a hymn of victory
to the Christ who made us free. But the sense of triumph must
come from the memory of the chain.
No angel, no archangel can sing it so sweetly as I can. To sing
it as I sing it, they must pass through my exile, and this they
cannot do. None can learn it but the children of the Cross.
And so, my soul, thou art receiving a music lesson from thy
Father. Thou art being educated for the choir invisible. There
are parts of the symphony that none can take but thee.
There are chords too minor for the angels. There may be heights
in the symphony which are beyond the scale--heights which angels
alone can reach; but there are depths which belong to thee, and
can only be touched by thee.
Thy Father is training thee for the part the angels cannot sing;
and the school is sorrow. I have heard many say that He sends
sorrow to prove thee; nay, He sends sorrow to educate thee, to
train thee for the choir invisible.
In the night He is preparing thy song. In the valley He is
tuning thy voice. In the cloud He is deepening thy chords. In
the rain He is sweetening thy melody. In the cold He is moulding
thy expression. In the transition from hope to fear He is
perfecting thy lights.
Despise not thy school of sorrow, O my soul; it will give thee a
unique part in the universal song. --George Matheson
"Is the midnight closing round you?
Are the shadows dark and long?
Ask Him to come close beside you,
And He'll give you a new, sweet song.
He'll give it and sing it with you;
And when weakness lets it down,
He'll take up the broken cadence,
And blend it with His own.
"And many a rapturous minstrel
Among those sons of light,
Will say of His sweetest music
'I learned it in the night.'
And many a rolling anthem,
That fills the Father's home,
Sobbed out its first rehearsal,
In the shade of a darkened room."
May 31
Character with Age
"Like a shock of corn fully ripe" (Job 5:26).
A gentleman, writing about the breaking up of old ships,
recently said that it is not the age alone which improves the
quality of the fiber in the wood of an old vessel, but the
straining and wrenching of the vessel by the sea, the chemical
action of the bilge water, and of many kinds of cargoes.
Some planks and veneers made from an oak beam which had been
part of a ship eighty years old were exhibited a few years ago
at a fashionable furniture store on Broadway, New York, and
attracted general notice for the exquisite coloring and
beautiful grain.
Equally striking were some beams of mahogany taken from a bark
which sailed the seas sixty years ago. The years and the traffic
had contracted the pores and deepened the color, until it looked
as superb in its chromatic intensity as an antique Chinese vase.
It was made into a cabinet, and has today a place of honor in
the drawing-room of a wealthy New York family.
So there is a vast difference between the quality of old people
who have lived flabby, self-indulgent, useless lives, and the
fiber of those who have sailed all seas and carried all cargoes
as the servants of God and the helpers of their fellow men.
Not only the wrenching and straining of life, but also something
of the sweetness of the cargoes carried get into the very pores
and fiber of character. --Louis Albert Banks
When the sun goes below the horizon he is not set; the heavens
glow for a full hour after his departure. And when a great and
good man sets, the sky of this world is luminous long after he
is out of sight. Such a man cannot die out of this world. When
he goes he leaves behind him much of himself. Being dead, he
speaks. --Beecher
When Victor Hugo was past eighty years of age he gave expression
to his religious faith in these sublime sentences: "I feel in
myself the future life. I am like a forest which has been more
than once cut down. The new shoots are livelier than ever. I am
rising toward the sky. The sunshine is on my head. The earth
gives me its generous sap, but Heaven lights me with its unknown
worlds.
"You say the soul is nothing but the resultant of the bodily
powers. Why, then, is my soul more luminous when my bodily
powers begin to fail? Winter is on my head, but eternal spring
is in my heart. I breathe at this hour the fragrance of the
lilacs, the violets, and the roses as at twenty years. The
nearer I approach the end the plainer I hear around me the
immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. It is
marvelous, yet simple."
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