Part 17 (1/2)

W. D. HOWELLS.

What an amazing, what a blessed disproportion between the evil we do, and the evil we are capable of doing, and seem sometimes on the very verge of doing! If my soul has grown tares, when it was full of the seeds of nightshade, how happy ought I to be! And that the tares have not wholly strangled the wheat, what a wonder it is! We ought to thank G.o.d daily for the sins we have not committed.

F. W. FABER.

We give thanks often with a tearful, doubtful voice, for our spiritual mercies _positive_; but what an almost infinite field there is for mercies negative! We cannot even imagine all that G.o.d has suffered us _not_ to do, _not_ to be.

F. R. HAVERGAL.

You are surprised at your imperfections--why? I should infer from that, that your self-knowledge is small. Surely, you might rather be astonished that you do not fall into more frequent and more grievous faults, and thank G.o.d for His upholding grace.

JEAN NICOLAS GROU.

April 4

_Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord_.--MATT. xxv. 23.

O father! help us to resign Our hearts, our strength, our wills to Thee; Then even lowliest work of Thine Most n.o.ble, blest, and sweet will be.

H. M. KIMBALL.

Nothing is too little to be ordered by our Father; nothing too little in which to see His hand; nothing, which touches our souls, too little to accept from Him; nothing too little to be done to Him.

E. B. PUSEY.

A soul occupied with great ideas best performs small duties; the divinest views of life penetrate most clearly into the meanest emergencies; so far from petty principles being best proportioned to petty trials, a heavenly spirit taking up its abode with us can alone sustain well the daily toils, and tranquilly pa.s.s the humiliations of our condition.

J. MARTINEAU.

Whoso neglects a thing which he suspects he ought to do, because it seems to him too small a thing, is deceiving himself; it is not too little, but too great for him, that he doeth it not.

E. B. PUSEY.

April 5

_Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him_.--I KINGS xix.

18.

He went down to the great school with a glimmering of another lesson in his heart,--the lesson that he who has conquered his own coward spirit has conquered the whole outward world; and that other one which the old prophet learnt in the cave in Mount h.o.r.eb, when he hid his face, and the still small voice asked, ”What doest thou here, Elijah?” that however we may fancy ourselves alone on the side of good, the King and Lord of men is nowhere without His witnesses; for in every society, however seemingly corrupt and G.o.dless, there are those who have not bowed the knee to Baal.

THOMAS HUGHES.

So, then, Elijah's life had been no failure, after all. Seven thousand at least in Israel had been braced and encouraged by his example, and silently blessed him, perhaps, for the courage which they felt. In G.o.d's world, for those who are in earnest there is no failure. No work truly done, no word earnestly spoken, no sacrifice freely made, was ever made in vain.