Part 66 (1/2)

December 19

_And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in Thee_.--PS. x.x.xix. 7.

_O Lord, be gracious unto us; we have waited for Thee_.--ISA. x.x.xiii. 2.

He never comes too late; He knoweth what is best; Vex not thyself in vain; Until He cometh, rest.

B. T.

We make mistakes, or what we call such. The nature that could fall into such mistake exactly needs, and in the goodness of the dear G.o.d is given, the living of it out, And beyond this, I believe more. That in the pure and patient living of it out we come to find that we have fallen, not into hopeless confusion of our own wild, ignorant making; but that the finger of G.o.d has been at work among our lines, and that the emerging is into His blessed order; that He is forever making up for us our own undoings; that He makes them up beforehand; that He evermore restoreth our souls.

A. D. T. WHITNEY.

THE Lord knows how to make stepping-stones for us of our defects, even; it is what He lets them be for. He remembereth--He remembered in the making--that we are but dust; the dust of earth, that He _chose_ to make something little lower than the angels out of.

A. D. T. WHITNEY.

December 20

_Take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak_.--MATT. x. 19.

Just to follow hour by hour As He leadeth; Just to draw the moment's power As it needeth.

F. R. HAVERGAL.

You have a disagreeable duty to do at twelve o'clock. Do not blacken nine, and ten, and eleven, and all between, with the color of twelve. Do the work of each, and reap your reward in peace. So when the dreaded moment in the future becomes the present, you shall meet it walking in the light, and that light will overcome its darkness. The best preparation is the present well seen to, the last duty done. For this will keep the eye so clear and the body so full of light that the right action will be perceived at once, the right words will rush from the heart to the lips, and the man, full of the Spirit of G.o.d because he cares for nothing but the will of G.o.d, will trample on the evil thing in love, and be sent, it may be, in a chariot of fire to the presence of his Father, or stand unmoved amid the cruel mockings of the men he loves.

G. MACDONALD.

December 21

_Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting G.o.d, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?

He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength_.--ISA. xl. 28, 29.

Workman of G.o.d! oh, lose not heart, But learn what G.o.d is like; And in the darkest battle-field Thou shall know where to strike.

F. W. FABER.

For the rest, let that vain struggle to read the mystery of the Infinite cease to hara.s.s us. It is a mystery which, through all ages, we shall only read here a line of, there another line of. Do we not already know that the name of the Infinite is GOOD, is G.o.d? Here on earth we are as soldiers, fighting in a foreign land, that understand not the plan of the campaign, and have no need to understand it; seeing well what is at our hand to be done. Let us do it like soldiers, with submission, with courage, with a heroic joy. Behind us, behind each one of us, lie six thousand years of human, effort, human conquest: before us is the boundless Time, with its as yet uncreated and unconquered continents and Eldorados, which we, even we, have to conquer, to create; and from the bosom of Eternity there s.h.i.+ne for us celestial guiding stars.

T. CARLYLE.

December 22