How often do we confess the same sins and pray against them, and yet still commit them as much as ever, and lie as deeply under the power of them! We raise a great deal of dust with our feet, but we do not move from off the ground on which we stood. We do not go forward at all. We do, and undo. We weave sometimes a web of holiness, but we let evil and thoughtless purposes in, and unravel all again. Thou tread'st upon enchanted ground; Twenty-eighth Day. "How great is the loving kindness of the Lord our God, and his compassion unto such as turn unto him in holiness." Let us give ourselves up to God without apprehension of danger. He will love us, and make us love him; and that love, increasing daily, shall produce in us all other virtues. He alone shall replenish our hearts, which the world has agitated but never could fill. He will take nothing from us but what makes us unhappy. We shall only be made to alter a little in our actions, and correct the motives of them, by making all referable to him. Then the most ordinary and seemingly indifferent actions shall become exercises of virtue and sources of consolation. Father of light and life! thou good supreme! From every low pursuit; and feed my soul With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure ; Sacred, substantial, never-fading bliss. Twenty-ninth Day. "TAKE a psalm, and bring hither the timbrel; the pleasant harp with the psaltery. For this was a statute for Israel, and a law of the God of Jacob." The living law of the Gospel within us is as if the soul of music should incorporate itself with the instrument, and live in the strings, and move them of their own accord, without any touch or impulse from without. Let us express this sweet, harmonious affection in these jarring times, that so, if it be possible, the world may be tuned into better music. The soul alone, like a neglected harp, Grows out of tune, and needs thy hand divine; Dwell thou within it, touch and tune each chord Till every note and string shall answer thine. Thirtieth Bay. "THAT they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one." He would not have been "Son of God” and "Son of Man" had not his words, like his works, with all their adaptation to the circumstances of the times, contained some things that were inexplicable; had they not borne concealed within them the germ of an infinite development, reserved for future ages to unfold. Advance as we may, we can never reach him; our only task need be by taking him more and more into our life and thought, to learn better how to bring forth the treasures that lie concealed in him. All our progress must consist in more correctly understanding and more completely appropriating to ourselves that which is in Christ. Religion tells of amity sublime Which no condition can preclude; of One 16* |