Days Of Heaven Upon Earth. Part II

DECEMBER 1. |As He is, so are we in this world| (I. John iv. 17).
DECEMBER 2. |Looking diligently lest any man fail| (Heb. xii. 15).
DECEMBER 3. Thy thoughts are very deep (Ps. xcii. 5).
DECEMBER 4. |From me is thy fruit found| (Hos. xiv. 8).
DECEMBER 5. |With a perfect heart to make David King| (I. Chron. xii. 38).
DECEMBER 6. |Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you| (I. Peter v. 6).
DECEMBER 7. |Abide with us; for it is toward evening| (Luke xxiv. 29).
DECEMBER 8. |Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there?| (Jer. viii. 22).
DECEMBER 9. |Launch out into the deep| (Luke v. 4).
DECEMBER 10. |According to the measure of the rule which God hath distributed| (II. Cor. x. 13).
DECEMBER 11. |I pray not for the world, but for them| (John xvii. 9).
DECEMBER 12. |To abide in the flesh is more needful for you, and having this confidence, I know that I shall abide| (Phil. i. 24, 25).
DECEMBER 13. |He that abideth in Me and I in him the same bringeth forth much fruit for apart from Me ye can do nothing| (John xv. 5).
DECEMBER 14. |Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree| (Isa. lv. 13).
DECEMBER 15. |When my heart is overwhelmed lead me to the Rock that is higher than I| (Ps. lxi. 2).
DECEMBER 16. |I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the canker worm and the caterpillar and the palmer worm, my great army, which I sent among you| (Joel ii. 25).
DECEMBER 17. |Be careful for nothing| (Phil. iv. 6).
DECEMBER 18. |The faith of the Son of God| (Gal. ii. 20).
DECEMBER 19. |God giveth grace unto the humble| (James iv. 6).
DECEMBER 20. |That I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the Gospel of God| (Rom. xv. 16).
DECEMBER 21. |Give us day by day our daily bread| (Luke xi. 3).
DECEMBER 22. |My tongue also shall talk of Thy righteousness all the day long| (Ps. lxxi. 24).
DECEMBER 23. |Out of the spoils won in battles, did they dedicate to maintain the house of the Lord| (I. Chron. xxvi. 27).
DECEMBER 24. |And seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not; for behold I will bring evil upon all flesh, saith the Lord; but thy life will I give unto thee for a prey in all places whither thou goest| (Jer. xlv. 5).
DECEMBER 25. |I bring you glad tidings| (Luke ii. 10).
DECEMBER 26. |The Spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy| (James iv. 5).
DECEMBER 27. |He sent forth the dove which returned not again unto him| (Gen. viii. 12).
DECEMBER 28. |The Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey Him| (Acts v. 32).
DECEMBER 29. |I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God| (Acts xx. 27).
DECEMBER 30. |That God would fulfil in you all the good pleasure of His goodness, and the work of faith with power| (II. Thess. i. 11).
DECEMBER 31. |I pray not that Thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep them from the evil| (John xvii. 15).

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Title Page

Days of Heaven Upon Earth

A Year Book of Scripture Texts

And Living Truths

Rev. A. B. Simpson

Christian Alliance Pub. Co.

3611 Fourteenth Avenue,

Brooklyn, N. Y.

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AUGUST 1. |For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done| (II Cor. v. 10).

|For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done| (II Cor. v.10).

It will not always be the day of toil and trial. Some day, we shall hear our names announced before the universe, and the record read of things that we had long forgotten. How our hearts will thrill, and our heads will bow, as we shall hear our own names called, and then the Master shall recount the triumph and the services which we had ourselves forgotten! And, perhaps, from the ranks of the saved He shall call forward the souls that we have won for Christ and the souls that they in turn had won, and as we see the issue of things that have, perhaps, seemed but trifling at the time, we shall fall before the throne, and say, |Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give glory!|

Beloved, the pages are going up every day, for the record of our life. We are setting the type ourselves, by every moment’s action. Hands unseen are stereotyping the plates, and soon the record will be registered, and read before the audience of the universe. and amid the issues of eternity.

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AUGUST 2. |Thy gentleness hath made me great| (Ps. xviii. 35).

|Thy gentleness hath made me great| (Ps. xviii.35).

The blessed Comforter is gentle, tender, and full of patience and love. How gentle are God’s dealings even with sinners! How patient His forbearance! How tender His discipline, with His own erring children! How He led Jacob, Joseph, Israel, David, Elijah, and all His ancient servants, until they could truly say, |Thy gentleness hath made me great.|

The heart in which the Holy Spirit dwells will always be characterized by gentleness, lowliness, quietness, meekness, and forbearance. The rude, sarcastic spirit, the brusque manner, the sharp retort, the unkind cut — all these belong to the flesh, but they have nothing in common with the gentle teaching of the Comforter.

The Holy Dove shrinks from the noisy, tumultuous, excited, and vindictive spirit, and finds His home in the lowly breast of the peaceful soul. |The fruit of the Spirit is gentleness, meekness.|

Lord, make me gentle. Hush my spirit. Refine my manner. Let me have Christ in my bearing and my very tones as well as in my heart.

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AUGUST 3. |Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God| (I. Peter v. 6).

|Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God| (I. Peter v.6).

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 us, but life 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 the force that moves the piston, drives the engine, and propels that great vessel across the sea, in the face of the winds and waves.

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AUGUST 4. |Ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His| (Rom. viii. 9).

|Ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His| (Rom. viii.9).

A spiritual man is not so much a man possessing a strong spiritual character as a man filled with the Holy Spirit. So the apostle said: |Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you.|

The glory of the new creation, then, is not only that it recreates the human spirit, but that it fits it for the abode of God Himself, and makes it dependent upon the sun, as the child upon the mother. The highest spirituality, therefore, is the most utter helplessness, the most entire dependence and the most complete possession of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the beautiful act of Christ in breathing upon His disciples, and imparting to them from His own lips the very Spirit that was already in Him, expressed in the most vivid manner the crowning glory of the new creation. And when the Holy Spirit thus possesses us, He fills every part of our being.

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AUGUST 5. |If any man hear My voice and open the door I will come into him and will sup with him and he with Me| (Rev. iii. 20).

|If any man hear My voice and open the door I will come into him and will sup with him and he with Me| (Rev. iii.20).

Some of us are starving, and wondering why the Holy Spirit does not fill us. We have plenty coming in, but we do not give it out. Give out the blessing you have, start larger plans for service and blessing, and you will soon find that the Holy Ghost is before you, and He will |prevent you with the blessings of goodness,| and give you all that He can trust you to give away to others.

There is a beautiful fact in nature which has its spiritual parallels. There is no music so heavenly as an Aeolian harp, and the Aeolian harp is nothing but a set of musical cords arranged in harmony, and then left to be touched by the unseen fingers of the wandering winds. And as the breath of heaven floats over the chords, it is said that notes almost divine float out upon the air, as if a choir of angels were wandering around and touching the strings.

And so it is possible to keep our hearts so open to the touch of the Holy Spirit that He can play upon them at will, as we quietly wait in the pathway of His service.

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AUGUST 6. |As many as are led by the Spirit of God they are the sons of God| (Rom. viii. 14).

|As many as are led by the Spirit of God they are the sons of God| (Rom. viii.14).

The blessed Holy Spirit is our Guide, our Leader, and our Resting-place. There are times when He presses us forward into prayer, into service, into suffering, into new experiences, new duties, new claims of faith, and hope, and love, but there are times when He arrests us in our activity, and rests us under His overshadowing wing, and quiets us in the secret place of the Most High, teaching us some new lessons, breathing into us some deeper strength or fulness, and then leading us on again, at His bidding alone. He is the true Guide of the saint, and the true Leader of the Church, our wonderful Counsellor, our unerring Friend; and he who would deny the personal guidance of the Holy Ghost in order that he might honor the Word of God as our only guide, must dishonor that other word of promise, that His sheep shall know His voice, and that His hearkening and obedient children shall hear a voice behind them saying, |This is the way, walk ye in it.|

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AUGUST 7. |Knowing this that our old man is crucified| (Rom. vi. 6).

|Knowing this that our old man is crucified| (Rom. vi.6).

It is purely a matter of faith, and faith and sight always differ, so that to your senses it does not seem to be so, but your faith must still reckon it so. This is a very difficult attitude to hold, and only as we thoroughly believe God can we thus reckon upon His Word and His working, but as we do so, faith will convert it into fact, and it will be even so.

This act of surrender and this reckoning of faith are recognized in the New Testament as marking a very definite crisis in the spiritual life. It does not mean that we are expected to be going through a continual dying, but that there should be one very definite act of dying, and then a constant habit of reckoning ourselves as dead, and meeting everything from this standpoint.

|Reckon yourselves dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ.|

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AUGUST 8. |Be like the dove| (Jer. xlviii. 28).

|Be like the dove| (Jer. xlviii.28).

Harmless as a dove, is Christ’s interpretation of the beautiful emblem. And so the Spirit of God is purity itself. He cannot dwell in an unclean heart. He cannot abide in the natural mind. It was said of the anointing of old, |On man’s flesh it shall not be poured.|

The purity which the Holy Spirit brings is like the white and spotless little plant which grows up out of the heap of manure, or the black soil, without one grain of impurity adhering to its crystalline surface, spotless as an angel’s wing.

So the Holy Spirit gives a purity of heart which gives its own protection, for it is essentially unlike the evil things which grow around it. It may be surrounded on every side with evil, but it is uncontaminated and pure because its very nature is essentially holy and divine. Like the plumage of the dove, it cannot be soiled, but comes forth from the miry pool unstained and unsullied by the dark waters, because it is protected by the oily covering which sheds off every defilement and makes it proof against the touch of every stain.

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AUGUST 9. |He shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel; transgressions and sins| (Lev. xvi. 21).

|He shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel; transgressions and sins| (Lev. xvi.21).

As any evil comes up, and the consciousness of any unholy thing touches our inner senses, it is our privilege at once to hand it over to the Holy Ghost and to lay it upon Jesus, as something already crucified with Him, and as of old, in the case of the sin offering, it will be carried without the camp and burned to ashes.

There may be deep suffering, there may be protracted pain, it may be intensely real; but throughout all there will be a very sweet and sacred sense of God’s presence, and intense purity in our whole spirit, and our separation from the evil which is being consumed. Truly, it will be borne without the camp, and even without the smell of the flames upon our garments.

It is so blessed to have the Holy Spirit slay things. No swords but His can pass so perfectly between us and the evil, so that it consumes the sin without touching the spirit.

Lord Jesus, my Sin Offering, I lay my sin, my self, my whole nature, upon Thy Cross. Consume me by Thy holy fire, and let me die to all but Thee!

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AUGUST 10. |There is no spot in thee| (Song of Solomon iv. 7).

|There is no spot in thee| (Song of Solomon iv.7).

The blessed Holy Spirit who possesses the consecrated heart is intensely concerned for our highest life, and watches us with a sensitive, and even a jealous love. Very beautiful is the true translation of that ordinary passage in the Epistle of James, |The Spirit that dwelleth in us loveth us to jealousy.|

The heart of the Holy Ghost is intensely concerned in preserving us from every stain and blemish, and bringing us into the very highest possibilities of the will of God.

The Heavenly Bridegroom would have His Church not only free from every spot, but also from |every wrinkle, or any such thing.| The spot is the mark of sin, but the wrinkle is the sign of weakness, age, and decay, and He wants no such defacing touch upon the holy features of His Beloved; and so the Holy Ghost, who is the Executor of His will, and the Divine Messenger whom He sends to call, separate, and bring home His Bride, is jealously concerned in fulfilling in us all the Master’s will.

Lord, take from me every blemish and mark of weakness and decay, and make me Thy spotless Bride.

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AUGUST 11. |All the land which thou seest| (Gen. xiii. 15).

|All the land which thou seest| (Gen. xiii.15).

The actual provisions of His grace come from the inner vision.

He who puts the instinct in the bosom of yonder bird to cross the continent in search of summer sunshine in yonder Southern clime is too good to deceive it, and just as surely as He has put the instinct in its breast, so has He also put the balmy breezes and the vernal sunshine yonder to meet it when it arrives.

He who gave to Abraham the vision of the Land of Promise, also said in infinite truth and love: |All the land that thou seest will I give thee.| He who breathes into our hearts the heavenly hope, will not deceive or fail us when we press forward to its realization. There is nothing unfaithful in Him who has said: |If it were not so, I would have told you,| and we may know that He never will deceive us nor fail us, but all that He reveals by His Holy Spirit He will make our own, as we press forward and enter into its realization.

Lord, give me first the vision and then the victory. Show me all my inheritance, and then give it all to me in Christ Jesus.

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AUGUST 12. |Not ourselves, but Christ Jesus| (II. Cor. iv. 5).

|Not ourselves, but Christ Jesus| (II. Cor. iv.5).

Your Christian influence, your reputation as a worker for God, and your standing among your brethren, may be an idol to which you must die, before you can be free to live for Him alone.

If you have ever noticed the type on a printed page, you must have seen that the little |i| has always a dot over it, and it is that dot that elevates it above the other letters in the line.

Now, each us us is a little i, and over every one of us there is a little dot of self-importance, self-will, self-interest, self-confidence, self-complacency, or something to which we cling and for which we contend, which just as surely reveals self-life as if it were a mountain of real importance.

This i is a rival of Jesus Christ, and the enemy of the Holy Ghost, and of our peace and life, and therefore God has decreed its death, and the Holy Spirit, with His flaming sword is waiting to destroy it, that we may be able to enter through the gates and come to the Tree of Life. Lord, crowd me out by Thy fulness even as the glory of the Lord left no room for Moses in the Tabernacle.

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AUGUST 13. |Clouds and darkness are round about Him| (Ps. xcvii. 2).

|Clouds and darkness are round about Him| (Ps. xcvii.2).

The presence of clouds upon your sky, and trials in your path, is the very best evidence that you are following the pillar of cloud, and walking in the presence of God. They had to enter the cloud before they could behold the glory of the transfiguration, and a little later that same cloud became the chariot to receive the ascending Lord, and it is still waiting as the chariot that will bring His glorious appearing.

Still it is true that white |clouds and darkness are round about His throne, mercy and truth| are ever in their midst, and |shall go before His face.|

Perhaps the most beautiful and gracious use of the cloud was to shelter them from the fiery sun. Like a great umbrella, that majestic pillar spread its canopy above the camp, and became a shielding shadow from the burning heat in the treeless desert. No one who has never felt an Oriental sun can fully appreciate how much this means — a shadow from the heat.

So the Holy Spirit comes between us and the fiery, scorching rays of sorrow and temptation.

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AUGUST 14. |Touch not Mine anointed, and do My prophets no harm| (Ps. cv. 15).

|Touch not Mine anointed, and do My prophets no harm| (Ps. cv.15).

I would rather play with the forked lightning, or take in my hands living wires, with their fiery current, than speak a reckless word against any servant of Christ, or idly repeat the slanderous darts which thousands of Christians are hurling on others, to the hurt of their own souls and bodies.

You may often wonder, perhaps, why your sickness is not healed, your spirit filled with the joy of the Holy Ghost, or your life blessed and prosperous. It may be that some dart which you have flung with angry voice, or in an idle hour of thoughtless gossip, is pursuing you on its way, as it describes the circle which always bring back to the source from which it came every shaft of bitterness, and every idle and evil word.

Let us remember that when we persecute or hurt the children of God, we are but persecuting Him, and hurting ourselves far more.

Lord, make me as sensitive to the feelings and rights of others as I have often been to my own, and let me live and love like Thee.

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AUGUST 15. |He will guide you into all truth| (John xvi. 13).

|He will guide you into all truth| (John xvi.13).

The Holy Ghost does not come to give us extraordinary manifestations, but to give its life and light, and the nearer we come to Him, the more simple will His illumination and leading be. He comes to |guide us into all truth.| He comes to shed light upon our own hearts, and to show us ourselves. He comes to reveal Christ, to give, and then to illumine, the Holy Scriptures, and to make Divine realities vivid and clear to our spiritual apprehension. He comes as a Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ, to |enlighten the eyes of our understanding, that we may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power.|

Spirit of Power! with heavenly fire,
Our souls endue, our tongues inspire;
Stretch forth Thy mighty Hand,
Thy Pentecostal gifts restore,
The wonders of Thy power once more
Display in every land.

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AUGUST 16. |I am with you alway| (Matt. xxviii. 20).

|I am with you alway| (Matt. xxviii.20).

Oh, how it helps and comforts us in the plod of life to know that we have with us the Christ who spent the first thirty years of His life in the carpenter shop at Nazareth, swinging the hammer, covered with sweat and grimy dust, physically weary as we often are, and able to understand all our experiences of drudgery and labor! and One who still loves to share our common tasks and equip us for our difficult undertakings of hand and brain!

Yes, humble sister, He will help you at the washboard and the kitchen-sink as gladly as at the hour of prayer. Yes, busy mechanic, He will go with you and help you to swing the hammer, or handle the saw, or hold the plow in the toil of life, and you shall be a better mechanic, a more skilled workman, and a more successful man, because you take His wisdom for the common affairs of life. There is no place or time where He is not able and willing to walk by our side, to work through our hands and brains, and to unite Himself in loving and all-sufficient partnership with all our needs and tasks and trials, and prove our all-sufficiency for all things.

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AUGUST 17. |Speak ye unto the Rock| (Num. xx. 8).

|Speak ye unto the Rock| (Num. xx.8).

The Holy Ghost is very sensitive, as love always is. You can conquer a wild beast by blows and chains, but you cannot conquer a woman’s heart that way, or win the love of a sensitive nature; that must be wooed by the delicate touches of trust and affection. So the Holy Ghost has to be taken by a faith as delicate and sensitive as the gentle heart with whom it is coming in touch. One thought of unbelief, one expression of impatient distrust or fear, will instantly check the perfect freedom of His operations as much as a breath of frost would wither the petals of the most sensitive rose or lily.

Speak to the Rock, do not strike it. Believe in the Holy Ghost and treat Him with the tenderest confidence and the most unwavering trust, and He will meet you with instant response and confidence.

Beloved, have you come to the rock in Kadesh? Have you opened all your being to the fulness of the Spirit, and then, with the confidence of the child to the mother, the bride to the husband, the flower to the sunshine, have you received by faith, and are you drinking of His blessed life?

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AUGUST 18. |The three hundred blew the trumpets| (Judges vii. 22).

|The three hundred blew the trumpets| (Judges vii.22).

We little dream, sometimes, what a hasty word, a thoughtless speech, an imprudent act, or a confession of unbelief and fear may do to hinder our highest usefulness, or turn it aside from some great opportunity which God has been preparing for us.

Although the Holy Ghost uses weak men, He does not want them to be weak after He chooses and calls them. Although He uses the foolish things to confound the wise, He does not want us to be foolish after He comes to give us His wisdom and grace. He uses the foolishness of preaching, but, not necessarily, the foolishness of preachers. Like the electric current, which can supply the strength of a thousand men, it is necessary that it should have a proper conductor, and a very small wire is better than a very big rope.

God wants fit instruments for His power — wills surrendered, hearts trusting, lives consistent, and lips obedient to His will; and then He can use the weakest weapons, and make them mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.

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AUGUST 19. |Have faith in God| (Mark xi. 22).

|Have faith in God| (Mark xi.22).

He requires of us a perfect faith, and He tells us that if we believe and doubt not, we shall have whatsoever we ask. The faintest touch of unbelief will neutralize our trust.

But how shall we have such perfect faith? Is it possible for human nature? Nay, but it is possible to the Divine nature, it is possible to the Christ within us. It is possible for God to give it; and God does give it. But Christ is the Author and Finisher of our faith, and He bids us have the faith of God, and as we have it through the imparting of the Spirit of Christ, we believe even as He.

We pray in His name, and in His very nature, and we live by the faith of the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us. The love that He requires of us is not mere human love, nor even the standard of love required in the Old Testament, but something far higher. The new commandment is, Love one another, not as yourselves, but as I have loved you.

How shall such love be made possible? Herein is our love made perfect, because as He is so are we also in this world. Our love is simply His love wrought in us, and imparted to us through the Spirit.

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AUGUST 20. |Herein is My Father glorified| (John xv. 8).

|Herein is My Father glorified| (John xv.8).

The true way to glorify God is, for God to show His glory through us, to shine through us as empty vessels reflecting His fulness of grace and power.

The sun is glorified when he has a chance to show his light through the crystal window, or reflect it from the spotless mirror or the glassy sea.

There is nothing that glorifies God so much as for a weak and helpless man or woman to be able to triumph, through His strength, in places where the highest human qualities will fail us, and carry in Divine power through every form of toil and suffering, a spirit naturally weak, irresolute, selfish, and sinful, transformed into sweetness, purity, power and standing victorious amid circumstances from which its natural qualities must utterly unfit it. A mind not naturally wise or strong, directed by a Divine wisdom, and carried along the line of a great and mighty plan, and used to accomplish stupendous results for God and man — this is what glorifies God.

So let me glorify my Lord this day and adorn the doctrine of God in all things.

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AUGUST 21. |The battle is not yours| (II. Chron. xx. 15).

|The battle is not yours| (II. Chron. xx.15).

The thing is to count the battle God’s. |The battle is not yours, but God’s.| Ye shall not need to fight in this battle. As long as we count the dangers and responsibilities ours, we shall be distracted with fear, but when we realize He is bound to take care of us, as His property and His representatives, we shall feel infinite relief and security.

If I send my servant on a long journey I am responsible for his expenses and protection, and if God sends me anywhere, He is responsible. If we belong to God, and put our life, our family, and our all in His hands, we may know He will take care of us.

If our body belongs to Him, it is His interest to keep us well, just as much as it is for the interest of the shepherd to have his sheep well fed and well cared for, and a credit to him.

|Thanks be unto God who always causeth us to triumph.|

Stand up, stand up for Jesus,
Stand in His strength alone;
The arm of flesh will fail you,
Ye dare not trust your own.

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AUGUST 22. |I the Lord, the first and with the last| (Isa. xli. 4).

|I the Lord, the first and with the last| (Isa. xli.4).

Thousands of people get stranded after they have embarked on the great voyage of holiness, because they have depended upon the experience rather than on the Author of it. They had supposed that they were thoroughly and permanently delivered from all sin, and in the ecstacy of their first experience they imagine that they shall never again be tried and tempted as before, and when they step out into the actual facts of Christian life and find themselves failing and falling, they are astonished and perplexed, and they conclude that they must have been mistaken in their experience, and so they make a new attempt at the same thing, and again fall, until at last, worn out, with the experiment, they conclude that the experience is a delusion, or, at least, that it was never intended for them, and so they fall back into the old way, and their last state is worse than the first.

What men and women need to-day is to know, not sanctification as a state, but Christ as a living Person.

Lord Jesus, give me Thy heart, Thy faith, Thy life, Thyself.

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AUGUST 23. |Even as He is pure| (I. John iii. 3).

|Even as He is pure| (I. John iii.3).

God is now aiming to reproduce in us the pattern which has already appeared in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The Christian life is not an imitation of Christ, but a direct new creation in Christ, and the union with Christ is so complete that He imparts His own nature to us and lives His own life in us and then it is not an imitation, but simply the outgrowth of the nature implanted within.

We live Christ-like because we have the Christ-life. God is not satisfied with anything less than perfection. He required that from His Son. He requires it from us, and He does not, in the process of grace, reduce the standard, but He brings us up to it. He does not let down the righteousness of the law, but He requires of us a righteousness that far exceeds the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, and then He imparts it to us. He counts us righteous in sanctification, and He says of the new creation, |He that doeth righteousness is righteous even as He is righteous.|

Lord, live out thy very life in me.

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AUGUST 24. |Let your moderation be known unto all men| (Phil. iv. 5).

|Let your moderation be known unto all men| (Phil. iv.5).

The very test of consecration is our willingness not only to surrender the things that are wrong, but to surrender our rights, to be willing to be subject. When God begins to subdue a soul, He often requires us to yield the things that are of little importance in themselves, and thus break our neck and subdue our spirit.

No Christian worker can ever be used of God until the proud self-will is broken, and the heart is ready to yield to God’s every touch, no matter through whom it may come.

Many people want God to lead them in their way and they will brook no authority or restraint. They will give their money, but they want to dictate how it shall be spent. They will work as long as you let them please themselves, but let any pressure come and you immediately run up against, not the grace of resignation, but a letter of resignation, withdrawing from some important trust, and arousing a whole community of criticising friends, equally disposed to have their own opinions and their own will about it. It is destructive of all real power.

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AUGUST 25. |And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments and do them| (Ezek. xxxvi. 27).

|And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments and do them| (Ezek. xxxvi.27).

This is a great deal more than a new heart. This a heart filled with the Holy Ghost, the Divine Spirit, the power that causes us to walk in God’s commandments.

This is the greatest crisis that comes to a Christian’s life, when into the spirit that was renewed in conversion, God Himself comes to dwell and make it His abiding place, and hold it by His mighty power in holiness and righteousness.

Now, after this occurs, one would suppose that we would be lifted into a much more hopeful and exuberant spirit, but the prophet gives a very different picture. He says when this comes to pass we shall loathe ourselves in our own eyes.

The revelation of God gives a profound sense of our own nothingness and worthlessness, and lays us on our face in the dust in self-abnegation.

The incoming of the Holy Ghost displaces self and disgraces self forever, and the highest holiness is to walk in self-renunciation.

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AUGUST 26. |Thine handmaid hath not anything in the house save a pot of oil| (II. Kings iv. 2).

|Thine handmaid hath not anything in the house save a pot of oil| (II. Kings iv.2).

He asked her, |What hast thou in the house?| And she said, |Nothing but a pot of oil.| But that pot of oil was adequate for all her wants, if she had only known how to use it.

In truth it represented the Holy Spirit, and the great lesson of the parable is that the Holy Ghost is adequate for all our wants, if we only know how to use Him.

All that she needed was to get sufficient vessels to hold the overflow, and then to pour out until all were filled.

And so the Holy Spirit is limited only by our capacity to receive Him, and when God wants us to have a larger fulness, He has to make room for it by creating greater needs.

God sends us new vessels to be filled with His Holy Spirit in the needs that come to us, and the trials that meet us. These are God’s opportunities for God to give us more of Himself, and as we meet them He comes to us in larger fulness for each new necessity.

Lord, help me to see Thee in all my trying situations and to make them vessels to hold more of Thy grace.

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AUGUST 27. |Take no thought for your life| (Matt. vi. 25).

|Take no thought for your life| (Matt. vi.25).

Still the Lord is using the things that are despised. The very names of Nazarene and Christian were once epithets of contempt. No man can have God’s highest thought and be popular with his immediate generation. The most abused men are often most used.

There are far greater calamities than to be unpopular and misunderstood. There are far worse things than to be found in the minority. Many of God’s greatest blessings are lying behind the devil’s scarecrows of prejudice and misrepresentation. The Holy Ghost is not ashamed to use unpopular people. And if He uses them, what need they care for men?

Oh, let us but have His recognition and man’s notice will count for little, and He will give us all we need of human help and praise. Let us only seek His will, His glory, His approval. Let us go for Him on the hardest errands and do the most menial tasks. Honor enough that He uses us and sends us. Let us not fear in this day to follow Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach, and by-and-by He will own our worthless name before the myriads of earth and sky.

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AUGUST 28. |According to the power that worketh in us| (Eph. iii. 20).

|According to the power that worketh in us| (Eph. iii.20).

When we reach the place of union with God, through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, we come into the inheritance of external blessing and enter upon the land of our possession. Then our physical health and strength come to us through the power of our interior life; then the prayer is fulfilled, that we shall be in health and prosper, as our soul prospereth. Then, with the kingdom of God and His righteousness within us, all things are added unto us.

God’s external working always keeps pace with the power that worketh in us. When God is enthroned in a human soul, then the devil and the world soon find it out. We do not need to advertise our power. Jesus could not be hid, and a soul filled with Divine power and purity should become the center of attraction to hungry hearts and suffering lives.

Let us receive Him and recognize Him in His indwelling glory, and then will we appropriate all that it means for our life in all its fulness. Lord, give me the |hiding of Thy power,| and let Christ be glorified in me.

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AUGUST 29. |To obey is better than sacrifice| (I. Sam. xv. 22).

|To obey is better than sacrifice| (I. Sam. xv.22).

Our healing is thus represented as a special recompense for obedience. If, therefore, we would please the Lord and have the reward of those who please Him, there is no service so acceptable to Him as our praise.

Let us ever meet Him with a glad and thankful heart and He will reflect it back in the health of our countenance and the buoyant life and springing health, which is but the echo of a joyful heart.

Further, thankfulness is the best preparation for faith. Trust grows spontaneously in the praiseful heart. Thankfulness takes the sunny side of the street and looks at the bright side of God, and it is only thus that we can ever trust Him. Unbelief looks at our troubles and, of course, they seem like mountains, and faith is discouraged by the prospect. A thankful disposition will always find some cause for cheer, and gloomy one will find a cloud in the brightest sky and a fly in the sweetest ointment. Let us cultivate a spirit of cheerfulness, and we shall find so much in God and in our lives to encourage us that we shall have no room for doubt or fear.

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AUGUST 30. |Happy are ye if ye do them| (John xiii. 17).

|Happy are ye if ye do them| (John xiii.17).

You little know the rest that comes from the yielded will, the surrendered choice, the abandoned world, the meek and lowly heart that lets the world go by, and knows that it shall inherit the earth which it has refused! You little know the relish that it gives to the blessing to hunger and thirst after righteousness, and to be filled with a satisfaction that worldly delight cannot afford, and then to rise to the higher blessedness of the merciful, the forgiving, the hearts that have learned that it is |more blessed to give than to receive,| and the lives that find that |letting go is twice possessing,| and blessing others is to be doubly blessed!

Nay, there is yet one jewel brighter than all the rest in this crown of beatitudes. It is the tear-drop crystallized into the diamond, the blood-drop transfigured into the ruby of heaven’s eternal crown. It is the joy of suffering with Jesus, and then forgetting all the sorrow in the overflowing joy, until with the heavenly Pascal we know not which to say first, and so we say them both together, |Tears upon tears, joy upon joy|.

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AUGUST 31. |Lead me in the way everlasting| (Ps. cxxxix. 24).

|Lead me in the way everlasting| (Ps. cxxxix.24).

There is often apparently but little difference in two distinct lives between constant victory and frequent victory. But that one little difference constitutes a world of success or failure. The one is the Divine, the other is the human; the one is the everlasting way, the other the transient and the imperfect. God wants to lead us to the way everlasting, and to establish us and make us immovable as He. We little know the seriousness of the slightest surrender. It is but the first step in a downward progression, and God only knows where it shall end.

Let us be |not of them that draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe unto the saving our the soul.|

Your victory to-day is but preparing the way for a greater victory to-morrow, and your surrender to-day is opening the door for a more terrible defeat in the days to come. Let us, therefore, whatever we have claimed from our blessed Master, commit it to His keeping, and take Him to establish us and hold us fast in the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.

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SEPTEMBER 1. |Afterward that which is spiritual| (I. Cor. xv. 46).

|Afterward that which is spiritual| (I. Cor. xv.46).

God has often to bring us not only into the place of suffering, and the bed of sickness and pain, but also into the place where our righteousness breaks down and our character falls to pieces, in order to humble us in the dust and show us the need of entire crucifixion to all our natural life. Then, at the feet of Jesus we are ready to receive Him, to abide in Him and depend upon Him alone, and draw all our life and strength each moment from Him, our Living Head.

It was thus that Peter was saved by his very fall, and had to die to Peter that he might live more perfectly to Christ.

Have we thus died, and have we thus renounced the strength of our own self-confidence?

We begin life with the natural, next we come into the spiritual; but then, when we have truly received the kingdom of God and His righteousness, the natural is added to the spiritual, and we are able to receive the gifts of His providence and the blessings of life without becoming centered in them or allowing them to separate us from Him.

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SEPTEMBER 2. |Who hath despised the day of small things| (Zech. iv. 10).

|Who hath despised the day of small things| (Zech. iv.10).

The oak comes out of the acorn, the eagle out of that little egg in the nest, the harvest comes out of the seed; and so the glory of the coming age is all coming out of the Christ life now, even as the majesty of His kingdom was all wrapped up that night in the babe of Bethlehem.

Oh, let us take Him for all our life. Let us be united to His person and His risen body. Let us know what it is to say, |The Lord is for the body and the body is for the Lord|! We are members of His body and His flesh and His bones.

He that gave that little infant, His own blessed babe and His only begotten Son, on that dark winter night to the arms of a cruel and ungrateful world, will not refuse to give Him in all His fulness to your heart if you will but open your heart and give Him right of way and full ownership and possession. Then shall you know in your measure His quickening life, even in this earthly life, and by-and-by your hope shall reach its full fruition when you shall sit with Him on His throne with every fiber of your immortal being even as He.

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SEPTEMBER 3. |The God of Israel hath separated you| (Num. xvi. 9).

|The God of Israel hath separated you| (Num. xvi.9).

The little plant may grow out of a manure heap, and be surrounded by filth, and covered very often with the floating dust that is borne upon the breeze, but its white roots are separated from the unclean soil, and its leaves and flowers have no affinity with the dust that settles upon them; and after a shower of summer rain they throw off every particle of defilement, and look up, as fresh and spotless as before, for their intrinsic nature cannot have any part with these defiling things.

This is the separation which Christ requires and which He gives. There is no merit in my staying from the theater if I want to go. There is no value in my abstaining from the foolish novel or the intoxicating cup, if I am all the time wishing I could have them. My heart is there, and my soul is defiled by the desire for evil things. It is not the world that stains us, but the love of the world. The true Levite is separated from the desire for earthly things, and even if he could, he would not have the forbidden pleasures which others prize.

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SEPTEMBER 4. |Come ye yourselves apart| (Mark vi. 31).

|Come ye yourselves apart| (Mark vi.31).

One of the greatest hindrances to spirituality is the lack of waiting upon God. You cannot go through twenty-four hours with two or three breaths of air, in the morning, as you sip your coffee. But you must live in the atmosphere, and you must breathe it all day long. Christians do not wait upon God enough. It needs hours and hours daily of spiritual communion with the Holy Spirit to keep your vitality healthful and full. Every moment should find you breathing out yourself into Christ, and breathing afresh His life, and love and power.

God is waiting to send us the Holy Spirit. He is longing to bless us. His one business is to quicken and sustain our spiritual life. He has nothing else to do with His infinite and great resources. Let us receive Him. Let us live in Him. Let us give to Him the joy of knowing that His infinite grace has not been bestowed in vain, but that we appreciate and improve the blessings which He oft has so freely bestowed.

Lord, help me this day to dwell in Thee as the flower in the sunshine, as the fish in the sea, living in Thy love as the atmosphere and element of my being.

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SEPTEMBER 5. |He breathed on them| (John xx. 22).

|He breathed on them| (John xx.22).

The beautiful figure suggested by this passage is full of simple instruction. It is as easy to receive the Holy Ghost as it is to breathe. It almost seems as if the Lord had given them the very impression of breathing, and had said, |Now, this is the way to receive the Holy Ghost.|

It is not necessary for you to go to a smallpox hospital to have your lungs contaminated with impure air. It is enough for you to keep in your lungs the air you inhaled a minute ago and it will kill you. All the pure elements have been absorbed from it, and there is nothing left but carbon and other deadly gases and fluids.

Therefore, if you are to be filled with the Holy Spirit, you must first get emptied not only of your old sinful life, but of your old spiritual life. You must get a new breath every moment, or you will die. God wants you to empty out all your being into Him, and then you will take Him in, without needing to try too hard. A vacuum always gets filled, an empty pair of lungs unavoidably breathes in the pure air. If you are only in the true attitude, there will be no trouble about receiving the Holy Ghost.

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SEPTEMBER 6. |Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord| (Phil. iii. 1).

|Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord| (Phil. iii.1).

There is no spiritual value in depression. One bright and thankful look at the cross is worth a thousand morbid, self-condemning reflections. The longer you look at evil the more it mesmerizes and defiles you into its own likeness. Lay it down at the cross, accept the cleansing blood, reckon yourself dead to the thing that was wrong, and then rise up and count yourself as if you were another man and no longer the same person; and then, identifying yourself with the Lord Jesus, accept your standing in Him and look in your Father’s face as blameless as Jesus. Then out of your every fault will come some lesson of watchfulness or some secret of victory which will enable you some day to thank Him, even for your painful experience.

But praise is a sacrifice, for |it is acceptable to God.| It goes up to heaven sweeter than the songs of angels, |a sweet smelling savor to your Lord and King.| It should be unintermittent — |the sacrifice of praise continually.| One drop of poison will neutralize a whole cup of wine, and make it a cup of death, and one moment of gloom will defile a whole day of sunshine and gladness. Let us |rejoice evermore.|

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SEPTEMBER 7. |I will joy in the God of my salvation| (Hab. iii. 18).

|I will joy in the God of my salvation| (Hab. iii.18).

The secret of joy is not to wait until you feel happy, but to rise, by an act of faith, out of the depression which is dragging you down, and begin to praise God as an act of choice. This is the meaning of such passages as these: |Rejoice in the Lord alway, and again I say, rejoice|; |I do rejoice; yes, and I will rejoice.| |Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations.| In all these cases there is an evident struggle with sadness and then the triumphs of faith and praise.

Now, this is what is meant — in part, at least — by the sacrifice of praise. A sacrifice is that which costs us something. And when a man or woman has some cherished grudge or wrong and is harboring it, nursing it, dwelling on it, rolling it as a sweet morsel under the tongue, and quite determined to enjoy a miserable time in selfish morbidness and grumbling, it costs us no little sacrifice to throw off the morbid spell, to refuse the suggestions of injury, neglect and the remembrance of unkindness, to rise out of the mood of self-commiseration in wholesome and holy determination, and say, |I will rejoice in the Lord|; I will |count it all joy.|

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SEPTEMBER 8. |He that eateth Me, even He shall live by Me| (John vi. 57).

|He that eateth Me, even He shall live by Me| (John vi.57).

What the children of God need is not merely a lot of teaching, but the Living Bread. The best wheat is not good food. It needs to be ground and baked before it can be digested and assimilated so as to nourish the system. The purest and the highest truth cannot sanctify or satisfy a living soul.

He breathes the New Testament message from His mouth with a kiss of love and a breath of quickening power. It is as we abide in Him, lying upon His bosom and drinking in His very life that we are nourished, quickened, comforted and healed.

This is the secret of Divine healing. It is not believing a doctrine, it is not performing a ceremony, it is not wringing a petition from the heavens by the logic of faith and the force of your will; but it is the inbreathing of the life of God; it is the living touch which none can understand except those whose senses are exercised to know the realities of the world unseen. Often, therefore, a very little truth will bring us much more help and blessing than a great amount of instruction.

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SEPTEMBER 9. |All things are lawful for Me| (I. Cor. x. 23).

|All things are lawful for Me| (I. Cor. x.23).

I may be perfectly free myself to do many things, the doing of which might hurt my brother and wound his conscience, and love will gladly surrender the little indulgence, that she may save her brother from temptation. There are many questions which are easily settled by this principle.

So there are many forms of recreation which, in themselves might be harmless, and, under certain circumstances, unobjectionable, but they have become associated with worldliness and godlessness, and have proved snares and temptations to many a young heart and life; and, therefore, the law of love would lead you to avoid them, discountenance them, and in no way give encouragement to others to participate in them.

It is just in these things that are not required of us by absolute rules, but are the impulses of a thoughtful love, that the highest qualities of Christian character show themselves, and the most delicate shades of Christian love are manifested.

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SEPTEMBER 10. |Wherefore, receive ye one another as Christ also received us, to the glory of God| (Rom. xv. 7).

|Wherefore, receive ye one another as Christ also received us, to the glory of God| (Rom. xv.7).

This is a sublime principle, and it will give sublimity to life. It is stated elsewhere in similar language, |Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus.|

This is our high calling, to represent Christ, and act in His behalf, and in His character and spirit, under all circumstances and toward all men. |What would Jesus do?| is a simple question which will settle every difficulty, and always settle it on the side of love.

But we cannot answer this question rightly without having Jesus Himself in our hearts. We cannot act Christ. This is too grave a matter for acting. We must have Christ, and simply be natural and true to the life within us, and that life will act itself out.

Oh, how easy it is to love every one, and see nothing but loveliness when our heart is filled with Christ, and how every difficulty melts away and every one we meet seems clothed with the Spirit within us when we are filled with the Holy Ghost!

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SEPTEMBER 11. |Lo, I am with you all the days, even unto the end of the age| (Matt. xxviii. 20).

|Lo, I am with you all the days, even unto the end of the age| (Matt. xxviii.20).

It is |all the days,| not |always.| He comes to you each day with a new blessing. Every morning, day by day, He walks with us, with a love that never tires and a blessing that never grows old. And He is with us |all the days|; it is a ceaseless abiding. There is no day so dark, so commonplace, so uninteresting, but you find Him there. Often, no doubt, He is unrecognized, as He was on the way to Emmaus, until you realize how your heart has been warmed, your love stirred, your Bible so strangely vivified, and every promise seems to speak to you with heavenly reality and power. It is the Lord! God grant that His living presence may be made more real to us all henceforth, and whether we have the consciousness and evidence, as they had a few glorious times in those forty days, or whether we go forth into the coming days, as they did most of their days, to walk by simple faith and in simple duty, let us know at least that the fact is true forevermore, THAT HE IS WITH US, a Presence all unseen, but real, and ready if we needed Him any moment to manifest Himself for our relief.

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SEPTEMBER 12. |The furnace for gold; but the Lord trieth the hearts| (Prov. xvii. 3.)

|The furnace for gold; but the Lord trieth the hearts| (Prov. xvii.3.)

Remember that temptation is not sin unless it be accompanied with the consent of your will. There may seem to be even the inclination, and yet the real choice of your spirit is fixed immovably against it, and God regards it simply as a solicitation and credits you with an obedience all the more pleasing to Him, because the temptation was so strong.

We little know how evil can find access to a pure nature and seem to incorporate itself with our thoughts and feelings, while at the same time we resist and overcome it, and remain as pure as the sea-fowl that emerges from the water without a single drop remaining upon its burnished wing, or as the harp string, which may be struck by a rude or clumsy hand and gives forth a discordant sound, not from any defect of the harp, but because of the hand that touches it. But let the Master hand play upon it, and it is a chord of melody and a note of exquisite delight.

|In nothing terrified by your adversaries which is to you an evident token of salvation and that of God.|

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SEPTEMBER 13. |Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you| (I. Peter xii. 16).

|Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you| (I. Peter xii.16).

Most persons after a step of faith are looking for sunny skies and unruffled seas, and when they meet a storm and tempest they are filled with astonishment and perplexity. But this is just what we must expect to meet if we have received anything of the Lord. The best token of His presence is the adversary’s defiance, and the more real our blessing, the more certainly it will be challenged. It is a good thing to go out looking for the worst, and if it comes we are not surprised; while if our path be smooth and our way be unopposed, it is all the more delightful, because it comes as a glad surprise.

But let us quite understand what we mean by temptation. You, especially, who have stepped out with the assurance that you have died to self and sin, may be greatly amazed to find yourself assailed with a tempest of thoughts and feelings that seem to come wholly from within and you will be impelled to say, |Why, I thought I was dead, but I seem to be alive.| This, beloved, is the time to remember that temptation, the instigation, is not sin, but only of the evil one.

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SEPTEMBER 14. |For the Lord God will help me, therefore shall I not be confounded; therefore, have I set my face like a flint, and I know I shall not be ashamed| (Isa. l. 7).

|For the Lord God will help me, therefore shall I not be confounded; therefore, have I set my face like a flint, and I know I shall not be ashamed| (Isa. l.7).

This is the language of trust and victory, and it was through this faith, as we are told in a passage in Hebrews, that in His last agony, |Jesus, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame.| His life was a life of faith, His death was a victory of faith, His resurrection was a triumph of faith, His mediatorial reign is all one long victory of faith, |From henceforth expecting till all His enemies be made His footstool.|

And so, for us He has become the pattern of faith, and in every situation of difficulty, temptation and distress has gone before us waving the banner of trust and triumph, and bidding us to follow in His victorious footsteps.

He is the great Pattern Believer. While we must claim our salvation by faith, the Great Forerunner also claimed the world’s salvation by the same faith.

Let us therefore consider this glorious Leader our perfect example, and as we follow close behind Him, let us remember where He has triumphed we may triumph, too.

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SEPTEMBER 15. |Though it tarry, wait for it, for it will surely come, and will not tarry| (Hab. ii. 3).

|Though it tarry, wait for it, for it will surely come, and will not tarry| (Hab. ii.3).

Some things have their cycle in an hour and some in a century; but His plans shall complete their cycle whether long or short. The tender annual which blossoms for a season and dies, and the Columbian aloe, which develops in a century, each is true to its normal principle. Many of us desire to pluck our fruit in June rather than wait until October, and so, of course, it is sour and immature; but God’s purposes ripen slowly and fully, and faith waits while it tarries, knowing it will surely come and will not tarry too long.

It is perfect rest to fully learn and wholly trust this glorious promise. We may know without a question that His purposes shall be accomplished when we have fully committed our ways to Him, and are walking in watchful obedience to His every prompting. This faith will give a calm and tranquil poise to the spirit and save us from the restless fret and trying to do too much ourselves.

Wait, and every wrong will righten,
Wait, and every cloud will brighten,
If you only wait.

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SEPTEMBER 16. |I will never leave Thee nor forsake Thee| (Heb. xiii. 5).

|I will never leave Thee nor forsake Thee| (Heb. xiii.5).

It is most cheering thus to know that although we err and bring upon ourselves many troubles that might have been easily averted, yet God does not forsake even His mistaken child, but on his humble repentance and supplication is ever really both to pardon and deliver. Let us not give up our faith because we have perhaps stepped out of the path in which He would have led us. The Israelites did not follow when He called them into the Land of Promise, yet God did not desert them; but during the forty years of their wandering He walked by their side bearing their backsliding with patient compassion, and waiting to be gracious unto them when another generation should have come. |In all their afflictions He was afflicted, but the Angel of His presence saved them; He bare them and carried them all the days of old.| And so yet, while our wanderings bring us many sorrows and lose us many blessings, to the heart which truly chooses His, He has graciously said: |I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.|

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SEPTEMBER 17. |Thy people shall be a freewill offering in the day of Thy power| (Ps. cx. 3).

|Thy people shall be a freewill offering in the day of Thy power| (Ps. cx.3).

This is what the term consecration properly means. It is the voluntary surrender or self-offering of the heart, by the constraint of love to be the Lord’s. Its glad expression is, |I am my Beloved’s.| It must spring, of course, from faith. There must be the full confidence that we are safe in this abandonment, that we are not falling over a precipice, or surrendering ourselves to the hands of a judge, but that we are sinking into a Father’s arms and stepping into an infinite inheritance. Oh, it is an infinite inheritance. Oh, it is an infinite privilege to be permitted thus to give ourselves up to One who pledges Himself to make us all that we would love to be, nay, all that His infinite wisdom, power and love will delight to accomplish in us. It is the clay yielding itself to the potter’s hands that it may be shaped into a vessel of honor, and meet for the Master’s use. It is the poor street waif consenting to become the child of a prince that he may be educated and provided for, that he may be prepared to inherit all the wealth of his guardian.

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SEPTEMBER 18. |We walk by faith, not by sight| (II. Cor. v. 7).

|We walk by faith, not by sight| (II. Cor. v.7).

There are heavenly notes which have power to break down walls of adamant and dissolve mountains of difficulty. The song of Paul and Silas burst the fetters of the Philippian gaol; the choir of Jehoshaphat put to flight the armies of the Ammonites, and the song of faith will disperse our adversaries and lift our sinking hearts into strength and victory. Beloved, is it the dark hour with us? the winter of barrenness and gloom? Oh, let us remember that it is God’s chosen time for the education of faith and that He conceals beneath the surface, precious and untold harvests of unthought-of fruit! It will not be always winter, it will not be always night, and when the morning comes and spring spreads its verdant mantle over the barren fields then we shall be glad that we did not disappoint our Father in the hour of testing, but that faith had already claimed and seen in the distance the glad fruition which sight now beholds, with a rapture even less than the vision of naked faith.

Lord, help me to believe when I cannot see, and learn from my trials to trust Thee more.

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SEPTEMBER 19. |In due season we shall reap if we faint not| (Gal. vi. 9).

|In due season we shall reap if we faint not| (Gal. vi.9).

If the least of us could only anticipate the eternal issues that will probably spring from the humblest services of faith, we should only count our sacrifices and labors unspeakable heritages of honor and opportunity, and would cease to speak of trials and sacrifices for God.

The smallest grain of faith is a deathless and incorruptible germ, which will yet plant the heavens and cover the earth with harvests of imperishable glory. Lift up your head, beloved, the horizon is wider than the little circle that you can see. We are living, we are suffering, we are laboring, we are trusting, for the ages yet to come. |Let us not be weary in well doing for in due season we shall reap if we faint not,| and with tears of transport we shall cry some day, |Oh, how great is thy goodness which Thou hast laid up for them that fear Thee, which Thou hast wrought for them that trust in Thee before the sons of men.|

Help me to-day to live under the powers of the world to come, and to live as a man in heaven walking upon the earth.

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SEPTEMBER 20. |They shall not be ashamed that wait| (Isa. xlix. 23).

|They shall not be ashamed that wait| (Isa. xlix.23).

Often He calls us aside from our work for a season and bids us be still and learn ere we go forth again to minister. Especially is this so when there has been some serious break, some sudden failure and some radical defect in our work. There is no time lost in such waiting hours. Fleeing from his enemies the ancient knight found that his horse needed to be reshod. Prudence seemed to urge him 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 great stage of the journey and work.

Lord, teach me to be still and know that Thou art God and all this day to walk with God.

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SEPTEMBER 21. |Faint, yet pursuing| (Judges viii. 4).

|Faint, yet pursuing| (Judges viii.4).

It is a great thing thus to learn to depend upon God to work through our feeble resources, and yet, while so depending, to be absolutely faithful and diligent, and not allow our trust to deteriorate into supineness and indolence. We find no sloth or negligence in Gideon, or his three hundred; though they were weak and few, they were wholly true, and everything in them ready for God to use to the very last. |Faint yet pursuing| was their watchword as they followed and finished their glorious victory, and they rested not until the last of their enemies were destroyed, and even their false friends were punished for their treachery and unfaithfulness.

So God still calls the weakest instruments, but when He chooses and enables them they are no longer weak, but |mighty through God,| and faithful through His grace to every trust and opportunity; |trusting,| as Dr. Chalmers used to say, |as though all depended upon God, and working as though all depended upon themselves.|

Teach me, my blessed Master, to trust and obey.

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SEPTEMBER 22. |We see not yet all things put under Him, but we see Jesus| (Heb. ii. 8, 9).

|We see not yet all things put under Him, but we see Jesus| (Heb. ii.8, 9).

How true this is to us all! How many things there are that seem to be stronger than we are, but blessed be His name! they are all in subjection under Him, and we see Jesus crowned above them all; and Jesus is our Head, our representative, our other self, and where He is we shall surely be. Therefore when we fail to see anything that God has promised, and that we have claimed in our experience, let us look up and see it realized in Him, and claim it in Him for ourselves. Our side is only half the circle, the heaven side is already complete, and the rainbow of which we see not the upper half, shall one day be all around the throne and take in the other hemisphere of all our now unfinished life. By faith, then, let us enter into all our inheritance. Let us lift up our eyes to the north and to the south, to the east and to the west, and hear Him say, |All the land that thou seest will I give thee.| Let us remember that the circle, is complete, that the inheritance is unlimited, and that all things are put under His feet.

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SEPTEMBER 23. |I am the Lord that healeth thee| (Ex. xv. 26).

|I am the Lord that healeth thee| (Ex. xv.26).

It is very reasonable that God should expect us to trust Him for our bodies as well as our souls, for if our faith is not practical enough to bring us temporal relief, how can we be educated for real dependence upon God for anything that involves serious risk? It is all very well to talk about trusting God for the distant and future prospect of salvation after death! There is scarcely a sinner in a Christian land that does not trust to be saved some day, but there is no grasp in faith like this. It is only when we come face to face with positive issues and overwhelming forces that we can prove the reality of Divine power in a supernatural life. Hence as an education to our very spirits as well as a gracious provision for our temporal life, God has trained His people from the beginning to recognize Him as the supply of all their needs, and to look to Him as the Physician of their bodies and Father of their spirits. Beloved, have you learned the meaning of Jehovah-rophi, and has it changed your Marah of trial into an Elim of blessing and praise?

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SEPTEMBER 24. |He calleth things that are not as though they were| (Rom. iv. 17).

|He calleth things that are not as though they were| (Rom. iv.17).

The Word of God creates what it commands. When Christ says to any of us |Now are ye clean through the word which I have spoken unto you,| We are clean. When He says |no condemnation| there is none, though there has been a lifetime of sin before. And when He says, |mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds,| then the weak are strong. This is the part of faith, to take God at His Word, and then expect Him to make it real. A French commander thanked a common soldier who had saved his life and called him captain, although he was but a private, but the man took the commander at his word, accepted the new name and was thereby constituted indeed a captain.

Shall we thus take God’s creating word of justification, sanctification, power and deliverance and thus make real the mighty promise, |He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might He increaseth strength; for they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.|

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SEPTEMBER 25. |The faith of the Son of God| (Gal. ii. 20).

|The faith of the Son of God| (Gal. ii.20).

Let us learn the secret even of our faith. It is the faith of Christ, springing in our heart and trusting in our trials. So shall we always sing, |The life that I now live I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.| Thus looking off unto Jesus, |the Author and Finisher of our faith,| we shall find that instead of struggling to reach the promises of God, we shall lie down upon them in blessed repose and be borne up by them with the faith which is no more our own than the promises upon which it rests. Each new need will find us leaning afresh on Him for the grace to trust and to overcome.

Further we see here the true spirit of prayer. It is the Spirit of Christ in us. |In the midst of the church will I sing praises unto thee.| Christ still sings these praises in the trusting heart and lifts our prayers into songs of victory! This is the true spirit of prayer, like Paul and Silas in the prison at Philippi, turning prayer into praise, night into day, the night of sorrow into the morning of joy, and when He is in us, the spirit of faith, He will also become the spirit of praise.

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SEPTEMBER 26. |I will be with Him in trouble| (Ps. xci. 15).

|I will be with Him in trouble| (Ps. xci.15).

The question often comes, |Why didn’t He help me sooner!| It is not His order. He must first adjust you to the situation and cause you to learn your lesson from it. His promise is, |I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him.| He must be with you in the trouble first until you grow quiet. Then He will take you out of it. This will not come till you have stopped being restless and fretful about it and become calm and trustful. Then He will say, |It is enough.|

God uses trouble to teach His children precious lessons. They are intended to educate us. When their good work is done a glorious recompense will come to us through them. There is a sweet joy and opportunity in them. He does not regard them as difficulties but as opportunities. They have come to give God a greater interest in you, and to show how He can deliver you from them. We cannot have a mercy worth praising God for without difficulty. God is as deep, and long, and high, as our little world of circumstances.

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SEPTEMBER 27. |The glorious liberty of the children of God| (Rom. viii. 21).

|The glorious liberty of the children of God| (Rom. viii.21).

Are you above self and self-pleasing in every way? Have you got above circumstances so that you are not influenced by them? Are you above sickness and the evil forces around that would drag down your physical life into the quicksands? These forces are all around, and if yielded to would quickly swamp us. God does not destroy sickness, or its power to hurt, but He lifts us above it. Are you above your feelings, moods, emotions and states? Can you sail immovable as the stars through all sorts of weather? A harp will give out sweet music or discordant sounds as different fingers touch the strings. If the devil’s hand is on your harp strings what hideous sounds it will give. Let the fingers of the Lord sweep it, and it will breathe out celestial music. Are you lifted above people, so that you are not bound by or to any one except in the dear Lord, and are you standing free in His glorious life?

|I am risen with Christ, I am dwelling above;
I am walking with Jesus below,
I am shedding the light of His glory and love
Around me wherever I go.|

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SEPTEMBER 28. |The trial of your faith being much more precious than gold| (I. Peter i. 7).

|The trial of your faith being much more precious than gold| (I. Peter i.7).

Our trials are great opportunities. Too often we look on them as great obstacles. It would be a heaven of rest and an inspiration of unspeakable power if each of us would henceforth recognize every difficult situation as one of God’s chosen ways of proving to us His love and power, and if instead of calculating upon defeat we should begin to look around for the messages of His glorious manifestations. Then indeed would every cloud become a rainbow, and every mountain a path of ascension and a scene of transfiguration. If we will look upon the past, many of us will find that the very time our heavenly Father has chosen to do the kindest things for us and give us the richest blessings has been the time when we were strained and shut in on every side. God’s jewels are often sent us in rough packages and by dark liveried servants, but within we find the very treasures of the King’s palace and the Bridegroom’s Love.

Fire of God, thy work begin,
Burn up the dross of self and sin;
Burn off my fetters, set me free,
And through the furnace walk with me.

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SEPTEMBER 29. |Call not thou common| (Acts x. 15).

|Call not thou common| (Acts x.15).

|There is nothing common of itself| (Rom. xiv.14).

We can bring Christ into common things as fully as into what we call religious services. Indeed, it is the highest and hardest application of Divine grace, to bring it down to the ordinary matters of life, and therefore God is far more honored in this than even in things that are more specially sacred.

Therefore, in the twelfth chapter of Romans, which is the manual of practical consecration, just after the passage that speaks of ministering in sacred things, the apostle comes at once to the common, social and secular affairs into which we are to bring our consecration principles. We read: |Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honor preferring one another; not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord.|

God wants the Levites scattered all over the cities of Israel. He wants your workshop, factory, kitchen, nursery, editor’s room and printing-office, as much as your pulpit and closet. He wants you to be just as holy at high noon on Monday or Wednesday, as in the sanctuary on Sabbath morning.

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SEPTEMBER 30. |In the secret places of the stairs| (Song of Solomon ii. 14).

|In the secret places of the stairs| (Song of Solomon ii.14).

The dove is in the cleft of the rock — the riven side of our Lord. There is comfort and security there. It is also in the secret places of the stairs. It loves to build its nest in the high towers to which men mount the winding stairs for hundreds of feet above the ground. What a glorious vision is there obtained of the surrounding scenery. It is a picture of ascending life. To reach its highest altitudes we must find the secret places of the stairs. That is the only way to rise above the natural plane. Our life should be one of quiet mounting with occasional resting places; but we should be mounting higher step by step. Everybody does not find this way of secret ascent. It is for God’s chosen ones. The world may think you are going down. You may not have as much public work to do as formerly. |Blessed are the poor in spirit.| It is a secret, hidden life. We may be hardly aware that we are growing, till some day a test comes and we find we are established. Have you got above the power of sin so that Christ is keeping you from wilful disobedience? Does it give you a shudder to know the consciousness of sin? Are you lifted above the world?

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OCTOBER 1. |That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace| (Eph. ii. 7).

|That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace| (Eph. ii.7).

Christ’s great purpose for His people is to train them up to know the hope of their calling, and the riches of the glory of their inheritance and what the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe.

Let us prove, in all our varied walks of life, and scenes of conflict, the fulness of His power and grace and thus shall we know |In the ages to come the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness to us in Jesus Christ.|

Beloved, are you thus following your Teacher in the school of faith, and finishing the education which is by and by to fit you for |a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory|? This is only the School of Faith.

Little can we now dream what these lessons will mean for us some day, when sitting with Him on His throne and sharing with Him the power of God and the government of the universe. Let us be faithful scholars now and soon with Him, we too, will have |endured the cross despising the shame,| and shall |sit down at the right hand of the throne of God.|

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OCTOBER 2. |Moses gave not any inheritance; the Lord God of Israel was their inheritance, as He said unto them| (Josh. xiii. 33).

|Moses gave not any inheritance; the Lord God of Israel was their inheritance, as He said unto them| (Josh. xiii.33).

This is very significant. God gave the land to the other tribes but He gave Himself to the Levites. There is such a thing in Christian life as an inheritance from the Lord, and there is such a thing as having the Lord Himself for our inheritance.

Some people get a sanctification from the Lord which is of much value, but which is variable, and often impermanent. Others have learned the higher lesson of taking the Lord Himself to be their keeper and their sanctity, and abiding in Him they are kept above the vicissitudes of their own states and feelings.

Some get from the Lord large measures of joy and blessing, and times of refreshing.

Others, again, learn to take the Lord Himself as their joy.

Some people are content to have peace with God, but others have taken |the peace of God that passeth all understanding.|

Some have faith in God, while others have the faith of God. Some have many touches of healing from God, others, again, have learned to live in the very health of God Himself.

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OCTOBER 3. |The little foxes that spoil the vines| (Song of Solomon, ii. 15).

|The little foxes that spoil the vines| (Song of Solomon, ii.15).

There are some things good, without being perfect. You don’t need to have a whole regiment cannonading outside your room to keep you awake. It is quite enough that your little alarm clock rings its little bell. It is not necessary to fret about everything; it is quite enough if the devil gets your mind rasped with one little worry, one little thought which destroys your perfect peace. It is like the polish on a mirror, or an exquisite toilet table, one scratch will destroy it; and the finer it is the smaller the scratch that will deface it. And so your rest can be destroyed by a very little thing. Perhaps you have trusted in God about your future salvation; but have you about your present business or earthly cares, your money and your family?

What is meant by the peace that passeth all understanding? It does not mean a peace no one can comprehend. It means a peace that no amount of reasoning will bring. You cannot get it by thinking. There may be perfect bewilderment and perplexity all round the horizon, but yet your heart can rest in perfect security because He knows, He loves, He leads.

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OCTOBER 4. |Instead of the brier, the myrtle tree| (Isa. lv. 13).

|Instead of the brier, the myrtle tree| (Isa. lv.13).

God’s sweetest memorial is the transformed thorn and the thistle blooming with flowers of peace and sweetness, where once grew recriminations.

Beloved, God is waiting to make just such memorials in your life, out of the things that are hurting you most to-day. Take the grievances, the separations, the strained friendships and the broken ties which have been the sorrow and heartbreak of your life, and let God heal them, and give you grace to make you right with all with whom you may be wrong, and you will wonder at the joy and blessing that will come out of the things that have caused you nothing but regret and pain.

|Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.| The everlasting employment of our blessed Redeemer is to reconcile the guilty and the estranged from God, and the highest and most Christ-like work that we can do is, to be like Him.

Shall we go forth to dry the tears of a sorrowing world, to heal the broken-hearted, to bind up the wounds of human lives, and to unite heart to heart, and earth to heaven?

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OCTOBER 5. |He hath triumphed gloriously| (Ex. xv. 1).

|He hath triumphed gloriously| (Ex. xv.1).

Beloved, God calls us to victory. Have any of you given up the conflict, have you surrendered? Have you said, |This thing is too much|? Have you said, |I can give up anything else but this|? If you have, you are not in the land of promise. God means you should accept every difficult thing that comes in your life. He has started with you, knowing every difficulty. And if you dare to let Him, He will carry you through not only to be conquerors, but |more than conquerors.| Are you looking for all the victory?

God gives His children strength for the battle and watches over them with a fond enthusiasm. He longs to fold you to His arms and say to you, |I have seen thy conflict, I have watched thy trials, I have rejoiced in thy victory; thou hast honored Me.| You know He told Joshua at the beginning, |There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life; as I was with Moses, so shall I be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.| And again, He says to us, |Fear thou not, for I am with thee.|

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OCTOBER 6. |Ephraim, he hath mixed himself| (Hos. vii. 8).

|Ephraim, he hath mixed himself| (Hos. vii.8).

It is a great thing to learn to take God first, and then He can afford to give us everything else, without the fear of its hurting us.

As long as you want anything very much, especially more than you want God, it is an idol. But when you become satisfied with God, everything else so loses its charm that He can give it to you without harm, and then you can take just as much as you choose, and use it for His glory.

There is no harm whatever in having money, houses, lands, friends and dearest children, if you do not value these things for themselves.

If you have been separated from them in spirit, and become satisfied with God Himself, then they will become to you channels to be filled with God to bring Him nearer to you. Then every little lamb around your household will be a tender cord to bind you to the Shepherd’s heart. Then every affection will be a little golden cup filled with the wine of His love. Then every bank, stock and investment will be but a channel through which you can pour out His benevolence and extend His gifts.

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OCTOBER 7. |He opened not His mouth| (Isa. liii. 7).

|He opened not His mouth| (Isa. liii.7).

How much grace it requires to bear a misunderstanding rightly, and to receive an unkind judgment in holy sweetness! Nothing tests a Christian character more than to have some evil thing said about him. This is the file that soon proves whether we are electro-plate or solid gold. If we could only know the blessings that lie hidden in our lives, we would say, like David, when Shimei cursed him, |Let him curse; it may be the Lord will requite me good for his cursing this day.|

Some people get easily turned aside from the grandeur of their life-work by pursuing their own grievances and enemies, until their life gets turned into one little petty whirl of warfare. It is like a nest of hornets. You may disperse the hornets, but you will probably get terribly stung, and get nothing for your pains, for even their honey is not worth a search.

God give us more of His Spirit, who, when reviled, reviled not again; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously.

Consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself.

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OCTOBER 8. |There failed not aught of any good thing which the Lord had spoken| (Josh. xxi. 45).

|There failed not aught of any good thing which the Lord had spoken| (Josh. xxi.45).

Some day, even you, trembling, faltering one, shall stand upon those heights and look back upon all you have passed through, all you have narrowly escaped, all the perils through which He guided you, the stumblings through which He guarded you, and the sins from which He saved you; and you shall shout, with a meaning you cannot understand now, |Salvation unto Him who sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.|

Some day He will sit down with us in that glorious home, and we shall have all the ages in which to understand the story of our lives. And He will read over again this old marked Bible with us, He will show us how He kept all these promises, He will explain to us the mysteries that we could not understand, He will recall to our memory the things we have long forgotten, He will go over again with us the book of life, He will recall all the finished story, and I am sure we will often cry: |Blessed Christ! you have been so true, you have been so good! Was there ever love like this?| And then the great chorus will be repeated once more — |There failed not aught of any good thing that He hath spoken; all came to pass.|

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OCTOBER 9. |Peace be unto you| (John xx. 19, 21).

|Peace be unto you| (John xx.19, 21).

This is the type of His first appearing to our hearts when He comes to bring us His peace and to teach us to trust Him and love Him.

While we are burdened with our own cares, He cannot give us His. While we are occupied with ourselves, we cannot be at leisure to serve Him. Our minds will be so filled with our own anxieties that we would not be equal to the trust which He requires of us, and so, before He can entrust us with His work, He wants to deliver us from every burden and anxiety.

|Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of sin,
The blood of Jesus whispers peace within.
Peace, perfect peace, by thronging duties pressed,
To do the will of Jesus, this is rest.|

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OCTOBER 10. |If ye, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live| (Rom. viii. 13).

|If ye, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live| (Rom. viii.13).

The Holy Spirit is the only one who can kill us and keep us dead. Many Christians try to do this disagreeable work themselves, and they are going through a continual crucifixion, but they can never accomplish the work permanently. This is the work of the Holy Spirit, and when you really yield yourself to the death, it is delightful to find how sweetly He can slay you.

By the touch of the electric spark they tell us life is extinguished almost without a quiver of pain. But, however this may be in natural things, we know the Holy Spirit can touch with celestial fire the surrendered thing, and slay it in a moment, after it is really yielded up to the sentence of death. That is our business, and it is God’s business to execute that sentence, and to keep it constantly operative.

Don’t let us live in the pain of perpetual and ineffectual suicide, but reckoning ourselves dead indeed, let us leave ourselves in the hands of the blessed Holy Spirit, and He will slay whatever rises in opposition to His will, and keep us true to our heavenly reckoning, and filled with His resurrection life.

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OCTOBER 11. |And He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God| (Rom. viii. 27).

|And He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God| (Rom. viii.27).

The Holy Spirit becomes to the consecrated heart the Spirit of intercession. We have two Advocates. We have an Advocate with the Father, who prays for us at God’s right hand; but the Holy Spirit is the Advocate within, who prays in us, inspiring our petitions and presenting them, through Christ, to God.

We need this Advocate. We know not what to pray for, and we know not how to pray as we ought, but He breathes in the holy heart the desires that we may not always understand, the groanings which we could not utter.

But God understands, and He, with a loving Father’s heart, is always searching our hearts to find the Spirit’s prayer, and to answer it. He finds many a prayer there that we have not discovered, and answers many a cry that we never understood. And when we reach our home and read the records of life, we shall better know and appreciate the infinite love of that Divine Friend, who has watched within as the Spirit of prayer, and breathed out our every need to the heart of God.

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OCTOBER 12. |The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free| (Rom. viii. 2).

|The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free| (Rom. viii.2).

The life of Jesus Christ brought into our heart by the Holy Spirit, operates there as a new law of divine strength and vitality, and counteracts, overcomes and lifts us above the old law of sin and death.

Let us illustrate these two laws by a simple comparison. Look at my hand. By the law of gravitation it naturally falls upon the desk and lies there, attracted downward by that natural law which makes heavy bodies fall to the earth.

But there is a stronger law than the law of gravitation — my own life and will. And so through the operation of this higher law — the law of vitality — I defy the law of gravitation, and lift my hand and hold it above its former resting-place, and move it at my will. The law of vitality has made me free from the law of gravitation.

Precisely so the indwelling life of Christ Jesus, operating with the power of a law, lifts me above, and counteracts the power of sin in my fallen nature.

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OCTOBER 13. |The carnal mind is enmity against God| (Rom. viii. 7).

|The carnal mind is enmity against God| (Rom. viii.7).

The flesh is incurably bad. |It is not subject to the law of God, neither, indeed, can be.| It never can be any better. It is no use trying to improve the flesh. You may educate it all you please. You may train it by the most approved methods, you may set before it the brightest examples, you may pipe to it or mourn to it, treat it with encouragement or severity; its nature will always be incorrigibly the same.

Like the wild hawk which the little child captures in its infancy and tries to train in the habits of the dove, before you are aware it will fasten its cruel beak upon the gentle fingers that would caress it, and show the old wild spirit of fear and ferocity. It is a hawk by nature, and it can never be made a dove. |For the carnal mind is enmity against God. It is not subject to the law of God, neither, indeed, can be.|

The only remedy for human nature is to destroy it, and receive instead the divine nature. God does not improve man. He crucifies the natural life with Christ, and creates the new man in Christ Jesus.

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OCTOBER 14. |Get thee, behind me, Satan| (Matt. xvi. 23).

|Get thee, behind me, Satan| (Matt. xvi.23).

When your old self comes back, if you listen to it, fear it, believe it, it will have the same influence upon you as if it were not dead; it will control you and destroy you. But if you will ignore it and say: |You are not I, but Satan trying to make me believe that the old self is not dead; I refuse you, I treat you as a demon power outside of me, I detach myself from you|; if you treat it as a wife would her divorced husband, saying: |You are nothing to me, you have no power over me, I have renounced you, in the name of Jesus I bid you hence,| — lo! the evil thing will disappear, the shadow will vanish, the wand of faith will lay the troubled spirit, and send it back to the abyss, and you will find that Christ is there instead, with His risen life, to back up your confidence and seal your victory.

Satan can stand anything better than neglect. If you ignore him he gets disgusted and disappears. Jesus used to turn His back upon him and say, |Get thee behind Me, Satan.| So let us refuse him, and we shall find that he will be compelled to act according to our faith.

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OCTOBER 15. |Faith is the evidence of things not seen| (Heb. xi. 1).

|Faith is the evidence of things not seen| (Heb. xi.1).

True faith drops its letter in the post-office box, and lets it go. Distrust holds on to a corner of it, and wonders that the answer never comes.

I have some letters in my desk that have been written for weeks, but there was some slight uncertainty about the address or the contents, so they are yet unmailed. They have not done either me or anybody else any good yet. They will never accomplish anything until I let them go out of my hands and trust them to the postman and the mail.

This is the case with true faith. It hands its case over to God, and then He works.

That is a fine verse in the thirty-seventh Psalm: |Commit thy way unto the Lord, trust also in Him, and He worketh.| But He never worketh until we commit.

Faith is a receiving, or still better, a taking of God’s proffered gifts. We may believe, and come, and commit, and rest, but we will not fully realize all our blessing until we begin to receive and come into the attitude of abiding and taking.

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OCTOBER 16. |Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, I will make thee a joy| (Isa. lx. 15).

|Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, I will make thee a joy| (Isa. lx.15).

God loves to take the most lost of men, and make them the most magnificent memorials of His redeeming love and power. He loves to take the victims of Satan’s hate, and the lives that have been the most fearful examples of his power to destroy, and to use them to illustrate and illuminate the possibilities of Divine mercy and the new creations of the Holy Spirit.

He loves to take the things in our own lives that have been the worst, the hardest and the most hostile to God, and to transform them so that we shall be the opposites of our former selves.

The sweetest spirits are made out of the most stormy and self-willed, the mightiest faith is created out of a wilderness of doubts and fears, and the Divinest love is transformed out of stony hearts of hate and selfishness.

The grace of God is equal to the most uncongenial temperaments, to the most unfavorable circumstances; and its glory is to transform a curse into blessing, and show to men and angels of ages yet to come, that |where sin abounded, there grace did much more abound.|

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OCTOBER 17. |Abraham believed God| (Rom. iv. 3).

|Abraham believed God| (Rom. iv.3).

Abraham’s faith reposed on God Himself. He knew the God he was dealing with. It was a personal confidence in one whom he could utterly trust.

The real secret of Abraham’s whole life was that he was the friend of God, and knew God to be his great, good and faithful Friend, and, taking Him at His word, he had stepped out from all that he knew and loved, and gone forth upon an unknown pathway with none but God.

Beloved, are we trusting not only in the word of God, but have we learned to lean our whole weight upon Himself, the God of infinite love and power, our covenant God and everlasting Friend?

We are told that Abraham glorified God by this life of faith. The true way to glorify God is to let the world see what He is, and what He can do. God does not want us so much to do things, as to let people see what He can do. God is not looking for extraordinary characters as His instruments, but He is looking for humble instruments through whom He can be honored throughout the ages.

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OCTOBER 18. |All things are naked and open unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do| (Heb. iv. 13).

|All things are naked and open unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do| (Heb. iv.13).

The literal translation of this phrase is, all things are stripped and stunned. This is the force of the Greek words. The figure is that of an athlete in the Coliseum who has fought his best in the arena, and has at length fallen at the feet of his adversary, disarmed and broken down in helplessness. There he lies, unable to strike a blow, or lift his arm. He is stripped and stunned, disarmed and disabled, and there is nothing left for him but to lie at the feet of his adversary and throw up his arms for mercy.

Now this is the position that God wants to bring us to, where we shall cease our struggles and our attempts at self-defence or self-improvement, and throw ourselves helplessly upon the mercy of God. This is the sinner’s only hope, and when he thus lies at the feet of mercy, Jesus is ready to lift him up and give him that free salvation which is waiting for all.

This, too, is the greatest need of the Christian seeking a deeper and higher life, to come to a full realization of his nothingness and helplessness, and to lie down, stripped and stunned at the feet of Jesus.

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OCTOBER 19. |Denying ungodliness| (Titus ii. 12).

|Denying ungodliness| (Titus ii.12).

Let us say, |No,| to the flesh, the world and the love of self, and learn that holy self-denial in which consists so much of the life of obedience. Make no provision for the flesh; give no recognition to your lower life. Say |No| to everything earthly and selfish. How very much of the life of faith consists in simply denying ourselves.

We begin with one great |Yes,| to God, and then we conclude with an eternal |No,| to ourselves, the world, the flesh and the devil.

If you look at the ten commandments of the Decalogue, you will find that nearly every one of them is a |Thou shalt not.| If you read the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, with its beautiful picture of love, you will find that most of the characteristics of love are in the negative, what love |does not, thinks not, says not, is not.| And so you will find that the largest part of the life of consecration is really saying, |No.|

I am not my own,
I belong to Him.
I am His alone,
I belong to Him.

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OCTOBER 20. |Let us not be weary in well-doing| (Gal. vi. 9).

|Let us not be weary in well-doing| (Gal. vi.9).

If Paul could only know the consolation and hope that he has ministered to the countless generations who have marched along the pathway from the cross to the Kingdom above, he would be willing to go through a thousand lives and a thousand deaths such as he endured for the blessing that has followed since his noble head rolled in the dust by the Ostian gate of Rome.

And if the least of us could only anticipate the eternal issues that will probably spring from the humblest services of faith, we should only count our sacrifices and labors unspeakable heritages of honor and opportunity, and would cease to speak of trials and sacrifices made for God.

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OCTOBER 21. |Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?| (Rom. viii. 35).

|Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?| (Rom. viii.35).

And then comes the triumphant answer, after all the possible obstacles and enemies have been mentioned one by one, |Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through Him that loved us.| Our trials will be turned to helps; our enemies will be taken prisoners and made to fight our battles. Like the weights on yonder clock, which keep it going, our very difficulties will prove incentives to faith and prayer, and occasions for God becoming more real to us.

We shall get out of our troubles not only deliverance but triumph, and in all these things be even more than conquerors through Him that loved us.

Our security depends not upon our unchanging love, but on the love of God in Christ Jesus toward us. It is not the clinging arms of the babe on the mother’s breast that keep it from falling, but the strong arms of the mother about it which will never let it go. He has loved us with an everlasting love, and although all else may change, yet He will never leave us nor forsake us.

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OCTOBER 22. |Touched with the feeling of our infirmities| (Heb. iv. 15).

|Touched with the feeling of our infirmities| (Heb. iv.15).

Some of us know a little what it is to be thrilled with a sense of the sufferings of others, and sometimes, the sins of others, and sins that seem to saturate us as they come in contact with us, and throw over us an awful sense of sin and need.

This is, perhaps, intended to give us some faint conception of the sympathy that Jesus felt when He had taken our sins, our sicknesses and our sorrows. Let us not hesitate to lay them on Him! It is far easier for Him to bear them off us than to bear them with us. He has already borne them for us, both in His life and in His death. Let us roll the burden upon Him, and let it roll away, and then, strong in His strength, and rested in His life and love, let us go forth to minister to others the sympathy and help which He has so richly given us.

The world is full of sorrow, and they that have known its bitterness and healing are God’s ministers of consolation to a weeping world.

O, the tears that flow around us,
Let us wipe them while we may;
Bring the broken hearts to Jesus,
He will wipe their tears away.

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OCTOBER 23. |How long halt ye between two opinions?| (I. Kings xviii. 21).

|How long halt ye between two opinions?| (I. Kings xviii.21).

It is strange that people will not get over the idea that a consecrated life is a difficult one. A simple illustration will answer this foolish impression. Suppose a street car driver were to say, |It is much easier to run with one wheel on the track and the other off,| his line would soon be dropped by the public, and they would prefer to walk. Of course, it is ever so much easier to run with both wheels on the track, and always on the track, and it is much easier to follow Christ fully than to follow with a half heart and halting step. The prophet was right in his pungent question, |How long halt ye between two opinions?| The undecided man is a halting man. The halting man is a lame man and a miserable man, and the out-and-out Christian is the admiration of men and angels, and a continual joy to himself.

Say, is it all for Jesus,
As you so often sing;
Is He your Royal Master,
Is He your heart’s true King?

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OCTOBER 24. |First gave their ownselves to the Lord, and unto us by the will of God| (II. Cor. viii. 5).

|First gave their ownselves to the Lord, and unto us by the will of God| (II. Cor. viii.5).

It is essential, in order to be successful in Christian work, that you shall be loyal not only to God, but to the work with which you are associated. The more deeply one knows the Lord the easier it is to get along with Him.

Superficial Christians are apt to be crotchetty. Mature Christians are so near the Lord that they are not afraid of missing His guidance, and not always trying to assert their loyalty to Him and independence of others.

The Corinthians, who had given themselves first to the Lord, had no difficulty in giving themselves to His Apostle by the will of God. It is delightful to work with true hearts on whom we can utterly depend.

God give us the spirit of a sound mind and the heart to |help along.|

You can help by holy prayer,
Helpful love and joyful song;
O, the burdens you may bear;
O, the sorrows you may share;
O, the crowns you may yet may wear,
If you help along.

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OCTOBER 25. |Now it is high time to awake out of sleep. Let us cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light| (Rom. xiii. 11, 12).

|Now it is high time to awake out of sleep. Let us cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light| (Rom. xiii.11, 12).

Let us wake out of sleep; let us be alert; let us be alive to the great necessities that really concern us.

Let us put off the garments of the night and the indulgences of the night; the loose robes of pleasure and flowing garments of repose; the festal pleasures of the hours of darkness are not for the children of the day. Let us cast off the works of darkness.

Let us arm ourselves for the day. Before we put on our clothes, let us put on our weapons, for we are stepping out into a land of enemies and a world of dangers; let us put on the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of faith and love, and the shield of faith, and stand armed and vigilant as the dangers of the last days gather around us.

Let us put on the Lord Jesus Christ. This is our robe of day. Not our own works or righteousness, but the person and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave us His very life, and becomes to us our All-Sufficiency.

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OCTOBER 26. |Go out into the highways and compel them to come in| (Luke xiv. 23).

|Go out into the highways and compel them to come in| (Luke xiv.23).

In the great parable in the fourteenth chapter of Luke, giving an account of the great supper an ancient lord prepared for his friends and neighbors, and to which, when they asked to be excused, he invited the halt and the lame from the city slums and the lepers from outside the gate, there is a significant picture and object lesson of the program of Christianity in this age.

In the first place, it is obvious to every thoughtful mind that the Master is beginning to excuse the Gospel-hardened people of Christian countries. It is getting constantly more difficult to interest the unsaved of our own land, especially those that have been accustomed to hear the Gospel and the things of Christ. They have asked to be excused from the Gospel feast, and the Lord is excusing them.

At the same time, two remarkable movements indicated in the parable are becoming more and more manifest in our time. One is the Gospel for the slums and the neglected classes at home; the other is the Gospel for the heathen or the neglected classes abroad.

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OCTOBER 27. |Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh; is there anything too hard for Me?| (Jer. xxxii. 27.)

|Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh; is there anything too hard for Me?| (Jer. xxxii.27.)

Cyrus, the King, was compelled to fulfil the vision of Jeremiah, by making a decree, the instant the prophecy had foretold, declaring that Jehovah had bidden him rebuild Jerusalem and invite her captives to return to their native home. So Jeremiah’s faith was vindicated and Jehovah’s prophecy gloriously fulfilled, as faith ever will be honored. Oh, for the faith, that in the dark present and the darker future, shall dare to subscribe the evidences and seal up the documents if need be, for the time of waiting, and then begin to testify to the certainty of its hope like the prophet of Anathoth!

The word Anathoth has a beautiful meaning, |echoes.| So faith is the |echo| of God and God always gives the |echo| to faith, as He answers it back in glorious fulfilment. Oh, let our faith echo also the brave claim of the ancient prophet and take our full inheritance, with his glorious shout, |Oh, Lord, Thou art the God of all flesh, is there anything too hard for the Lord?| and back like an echo will come the heavenly answer to our heart, |I am the God of all flesh, is there anything too hard for Me?|

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OCTOBER 28. |Thou good servant, because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities| (Luke xix. 17).

|Thou good servant, because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities| (Luke xix.17).

It is not our success in service that counts, but our fidelity. Caleb and Joshua were faithful and God remembered it when the day of visitation came. It was a very difficult and unpopular position, and all of us are called in the crisis of our lives to stand alone and in this very matter of trusting God for victory over sin and our full inheritance in Christ we have all to be tested as they.

Our brethren even in the church of God, while admitting in the abstract the loveliness and advantages of such an ideal life, tell us as they told Israel that it is impracticable and impossible, and many of us have to stand alone for years witnessing to the power of Christ to save His people to the uttermost and like Caleb following Him wholly, if alone. But this is the real victory of faith and the proof of our uncompromising fidelity.

Let us not therefore complain when we suffer reproach for our testimony or stand alone for God, but thank Him that He so honors us, and so stand the test that He can afterwards use us when the multitudes are glad to follow.

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OCTOBER 29. |Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it you| (John xvi. 23).

|Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it you| (John xvi.23).

Two men go to the bank cashier, both holding in their hands a piece of paper. One is dressed in expensive style, and presents a gloved and jeweled hand; the other is a rough, unwashed workman. The first is rejected with a polite sentence, and the second receives a thousand dollars over the counter. What is the difference? The one presented a worthless name; the other handed in a note endorsed by the president of the bank. And so the most virtuous moralist will be turned away from the gates of mercy, and the vilest sinner welcomed in if he presents the name of Jesus.

What shall we give to infinite purity and righteousness? Jesus! No other gift is worthy for God to receive. And He has given Him to us for this very end, to give back as our substitute and satisfaction. And He has |testified| of this gift what He has of no other, namely, that in Him He is well pleased and all who receive Him |are accepted in the Beloved.| Shall we accept the testimony that God is satisfied with His Son? Shall we be satisfied with Him?

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OCTOBER 30. |Dwell deep| (Jer. xlix. 8).

|Dwell deep| (Jer. xlix.8).

God’s presence blends with every other thought and consciousness, flowing sweetly and evenly through our business plans, our social converse our heart’s affections, our manual toil, our entire life, blending with all, consecrating all, and conscious through all, like the fragrance of a flower, or the presence of a friend consciously near, and yet not hindering in the least the most intense and constant preoccupation of the hands and brain. How beautiful the established habit of this unceasing communion and dependence, amid and above all thoughts and occupations! How lovely to see a dear old saint folding away his books at night and humbly saying, |Lord Jesus, things are still just the same between us,| and the falling asleep in His keeping.

So let us be stayed upon Him. Let us grow into Him with all the root and fibers of our being. He will not get tired of our friendship. He will not want to put us off sometimes. Beautiful the words of the suffering saint: |He never says good-bye.| He stays. So let us be stayed on Him.

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OCTOBER 31. |My grace is sufficient for thee; for My strength is made perfect in weakness| (II. Cor. xii. 9).

|My grace is sufficient for thee; for My strength is made perfect in weakness| (II. Cor. xii.9).

God allowed the crisis to close around Jacob on the night when he bowed at Peniel in supplication to bring him to the place where he could take hold of God as he never would have done; and from that narrow pass of peril Jacob came enlarged in his faith and knowledge of God, and in the power of a new and victorious life. He had to compel David, by a long and painful discipline of years, to learn the almighty power and faithfulness of his God, and to grow up into the established principles of faith and godliness, which were indispensable for his subsequent and glorious career as the king of Israel.

Nothing but the extremities in which Paul was constantly placed could ever have taught him, and taught the church through him, the full meaning of the great promise he so learned to claim, |My grace is sufficient for thee.| And nothing but our trials and perils would ever have led some of us to know Him as we do, to trust Him as we have, and to draw from Him the measures of grace which our very extremities made indispensable.

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NOVEMBER 1. |We will come unto him and make our abode with him| (John xiv. 23).

|We will come unto him and make our abode with him| (John xiv.23).

This idea of trying to get a holiness of your own, and then have Christ reward you for it, is not His teaching. Oh, no; Christ is the holiness; He will bring the holiness, and come and dwell in the heart forever.

When one of our millionaires purchases a lot, with an old shanty on it, he does not fix up the old shanty, but he gets a second-hand man, if he will have it, to tear it down, and he puts a mansion in its place. It is not fixing up the house that you need, but to give Christ the vacant lot, and He will excavate below our old life and build a house where He will live forever.

Now that is what we mean when we say that Christ will be the preparation for the blessing, and make way for His own approach. It is as when a great Assyrian king used to set out on a march. He did not command the people to make a road, but he sent on his own men, and they cut down the trees and filled the broken places, and levelled the mountains. So He will, if we will let Him, be the Coming King, the Author and Finisher of our faith.

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NOVEMBER 2. |Bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ| (II. Cor. x. 5).

|Bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ| (II. Cor. x.5).

If we would abide in Christ we must have no confidence in self. Self-repression must be ever the prime necessity of divine fulness and efficiency. Now you know how quickly you spring to the front when any emergency arises. When something in which you are interested comes up, you say what you think under some sudden impulse, and then perhaps you have weeks of taking back your thought and taking the Lord’s instead. It is only when we get out of the way of the Lord that He can use us. So, be out of self, always suspending your will about everything until you have looked at it and said: |Lord, what is your will? What is your thought about it?|

Those who thus abide in Christ have the habit of reserve and quiet; they are not rattling and reckless talkers, they will not always have an opinion about everything, and they will not always know what they are going to do. There will be a deferential holding back of judgment, and walking softly with God. It is our headlong, impulsive spirit that keeps us so constantly from hearing and following the Lord.

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NOVEMBER 3. |This is my Beloved, and this is my Friend| (Song of Solomon v. 16).

|This is my Beloved, and this is my Friend| (Song of Solomon v.16).

He is our Friend. |Which of you shall have a friend at night?| This has deep significance through the experience of each one of us. Who has not had a friend, and more of a friend in some respects than even a father?

There are some intimacies not born of human blood that are the most intense and lasting bonds of earthly love. One by one let us count them over and recall each act and bond of love, and think of all that we may trust them for and all in which they stood by us, and then as we concentrate the whole weight of recollection and affection, let us put God in that place of confidence and think He is all that and infinitely more.

Our Friend! The one who is personally interested in us; who has set His heart upon us; who has come near to us in the tender and delicate intimacy of unspeakable fellowship; who gave us such invaluable pledges and promises; who has done so much for us, and who is ever ready to take any trouble or go to any expense to aid us — to Him we are coming in prayer, our Heavenly Friend.

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NOVEMBER 4. |Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings as in obeying the voice of the Lord?| (I. Sam. xv. 22).

|Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings as in obeying the voice of the Lord?| (I. Sam. xv.22).

Many a soul prays for sanctification, but fails to enter into the blessing because he does not intelligently understand and believingly accept God’s appointed means by Jesus Christ and the indwelling of the Spirit. Many a prayer for the salvation of others is hindered because the very friend takes the wrong course to bring about the answer, and resorts to means which are wholly fitted to defeat his worthy object.

We know many a wife who is pleading for her husband’s soul, and hoping to win him by avoiding anything that may offend him, and yielding to all his worldly tastes in the vain hope of attracting him to Christ. Far more effective would be an attitude of fidelity to God and fearless testimony to Him, such as God could bless.

Many a congregation wonders why it is so poor and struggling. It may be found that its financial methods are wholly unscriptural and often unworthy of ordinary self-respect.

When we ask God for any blessing, we must allow Him to direct the steps which are to bring the answer.

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NOVEMBER 5. |I in them, and Thou in Me| (John xvii. 23).

|I in them, and Thou in Me| (John xvii.23).

If we would be enlarged to the full measure of God’s purpose, let us endeavor to realize something of our own capacities for His filling.

We little know the size of a human soul and spirit. Never, until He renews, cleanses and enters the heart can we have any adequate conception of the possibilities of the being whom God made in His very image, and whom He now renews after the pattern of the Lord Jesus Himself.

We know, however, that God has made the human soul to be His temple and abode, and that He knows how to make the house that can hold His infinite fulness. We know something of this as all our nature quickens into spring tide life at the coming of the Holy Spirit, and as from time to time new baptisms awaken the dormant powers and susceptibilities that we did not know we possessed.

Oh, let us give Him the right to make the best of us, and, with wonder filled, we shall some day behold the glorious temple which He has reared, and shall say, |Lord, what is man that Thou hast set Thine heart upon Him?|

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NOVEMBER 6. |Bless the Lord, O, my soul| (Ps. ciii. 1).

|Bless the Lord, O, my soul| (Ps. ciii.1).

Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me be stirred up to magnify His holy name. |Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits; who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies; who satisfieth thy mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.| Who so well can sing this thanksgiving song as we, rejoicing as most of us do, we trust, in this full salvation, and praising God for the glorious health of a risen Lord and a continual youth?

This psalm and its opening verses is in the very center of the Scriptures by an exact count of letters and verses. So let it stand in our lives, as we look backward and forward and upward in grateful thanksgiving as we sing in its closing strains, |Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name.| Lord, center my heart in Thee and in the spirit of love and praise.

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NOVEMBER 7. |I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee| (Isa. xli. 10).

|I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee| (Isa. xli.10).

God has three ways of helping us: First, He says, |I will strengthen thee|; that is, I will make you a little stronger yourself. And secondly, |I will help thee|; that is, I will add My strength to your strength, but you shall lead and I will help you. But thirdly, when you are ready, |I will uphold thee with the right hand of My righteousness|; that is, I will lift you up bodily and carry you altogether, and it will neither be your strength or My help, but My complete upholding. Hence it must be quite true, that when we come to the end of our strength, we come to the beginning of His, and that in Him the weakest are the strongest, and the most helpless the most helped. |He giveth power to the faint,| but to |them that have no might| at all |He gives more strength,| and His word forever is, |My grace is sufficient for thee.| The answer is a paradox of contradictions, and yet the most practical truths, |Most gladly, therefore, will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me; for when I am weak, then am I strong.|

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NOVEMBER 8. |For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free| (Rom. viii. 2).

|For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free| (Rom. viii.2).

There is a natural law of sin and sickness, and if we just let ourselves go and sink into the trend of circumstances we shall go down and sink under the power of the tempter. But there is another law of spiritual life and of physical life in Christ Jesus to which we can rise and through which we can counterpoise and overcome the other law that bears us down. But to do this requires real spiritual energy and fixed purpose and a settled posture and habit of faith. It is just the same when we bind the power in our factory. We must turn the belt on and keep it on. The power is there, but we must keep the connection and while we do so the law of this higher power will work and all the machinery will be in operation. There is a spiritual law of choosing, believing, abiding and holding steady in our walk with God which is essential to the working of the Holy Ghost either in our sanctification or healing.

There is a word that saves the soul,
|I will trust|;
It makes the sick and suffering whole.
|I will trust.|

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NOVEMBER 9. |Because I live ye shall live also| (John xiv. 19).

|Because I live ye shall live also| (John xiv.19).

After having become adjusted to our Living Head and the source of our life, now our business is to abide, absorb and grow, leaning on His strength, drinking in His life, feeding on Him as the Living Bread, and drawing all of our resources from Him in continual dependence and communion. The Holy Spirit will be the great Teacher and Minister in this blessed process. He will take of the things of Christ and show them unto us, and He will impart them through all the channels and functions of our spiritual organism. As we yield ourselves to Him He will breathe His own prayer of communion, drawing out our hearts in longings and hungerings, which are the pledge of their own fulfilment, calling us apart in silent and wordless prayer and opening every pore, organ, sense and sensibility of our spiritual being to take in His life. As the lungs absorb the oxygen of the atmosphere, as the senses breathe in the sweet odors of the garden, so the heart instinctively receives and rejoices in the affection and fellowship of the beloved One by our side. Thus we become like a tree planted by the rivers of waters.

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NOVEMBER 10. |But prayer was made without ceasing, of the church unto God for him| (Acts xii. 5).

|But prayer was made without ceasing, of the church unto God for him| (Acts xii.5).

But prayer is the link that connects us with God. This is the bridge that spans every gulf and bears us over every abyss of danger or of need. How significant the picture of the apostolic church: Peter in prison, the Jews triumphant, Herod supreme, the arena of martyrdom awaiting the dawning of the morning to drink up the apostle’s blood, — everything else against it. |But prayer was made unto God without ceasing.| And what the sequel? The prison open, — the apostle free, — the Jews baffled, — the wicked king eaten of worms, a spectacle of hideous retribution, and the Word of God rolling on in greater victory.

Do we know the power of our supernatural weapon? Do we dare to use it with the authority of a faith that commands as well as asks? God baptize us with holy audacity and Divine confidence. He is not wanting great men, but He is wanting men that will dare to prove the greatness of their God.

But God! But prayer!

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NOVEMBER 11. |Reckon yourselves dead, indeed| (Rom. vi. 11).

|Reckon yourselves dead, indeed| (Rom. vi.11).

Our life from the dead is to be followed up by the habit and attitude henceforth which is the logical outcome of all this. |Reckon yourselves dead indeed, unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ, and yield yourselves unto God,| not to die over again every day, |but, as those who are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.|

Further His resurrection life is given to fit us for |the fellowship of His sufferings and to be made conformable unto His death.|

It is intended to enable us to toil and suffer with rejoicing and victory. We |mount up with wings as eagles,| that we may come back to |run and not be weary, to walk and not faint.|

But let us not mistake the sufferings. They do not mean our sufferings, but His. They are not our struggles after holiness, our sicknesses and pains, but those higher sufferings which, with Him, we bear for others, and for a suffering church and a dying world. May God help us, henceforth, never to have another sorrow for ourselves, and put us at leisure, in the power of His resurrection, to bear His burdens and drink His cup.

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NOVEMBER 12. |The earnest of the Spirit in our hearts| (II. Cor. i. 22).

|The earnest of the Spirit in our hearts| (II. Cor. i.22).

Life in earnest. What a rare, what a glorious spectacle! We see it in the Son of God, we see it in His apostle, we see it in every noble, consecrated and truly successful life. Without it there may be a thousand good things, but they lack the golden thread that binds them all into a chain of power and permanence. They are like a lot of costly and beautiful beads on a broken string, that fall into confusion, and are lost in the end for want of the bond that alone could bind them into a life of consistent and lasting power. O for the baptism of fire! O for |THE EARNEST, THE SPIRIT!| O for lives that have but one thing to do or care for! O for the depth and everlasting strength of the heart of Christ within our breast, to love, to sacrifice, to realize, to persevere, to live and die like Him!

We are going forth with a trust so sacred,
And a truth so divine and deep,
With a message clear and a work so glorious,
And a charge — such a charge — to keep.
Let it be your greatest joy, my brother,
That the Lord can count on you;
And if all besides should fail and falter,
To your trust be always true.

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NOVEMBER 13. |Delight thyself in the Lord| (Ps. xxxvii. 4).

|Delight thyself in the Lord| (Ps. xxxvii.4).

Daniel’s heart was filled with God’s love for His work and kingdom and his prayers were the mightiest forces of his time, through which God gave to him the restoration of Israel to their own land, and the acknowledgment by the rulers of the world of the God of whom he testified and for whom he lived.

There is a beautiful promise in the thirty-seventh Psalm, |Delight thyself in the Lord, and He will give thee the desires of thine heart,| which it is, perhaps, legitimate to translate, that not only does it mean the fulfilment of our desires, but even the inspiration of our desires, the inbreathing of His thoughts into us, so that our prayers shall be in accord with His will and so shall bring back to us the unfailing answer of His mighty providence.

Teach me Thy thoughts, O God!
Think Thou, Thyself, in me,
Then shall I only always think
Thine own thoughts after Thee.

Teach me Thy thoughts, O God!
Show me Thy plan divine:
Save me from all my plans and works,
And lead me into Thine.

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NOVEMBER 14. |The things which are seen are temporal| (II. Cor. iv. 18).

|The things which are seen are temporal| (II. Cor. iv.18).

How strong is the snare of the things that are seen, and how necessary for God to keep us in the things that are unseen! If Peter is to walk on the water, he must walk; if he is going to swim, he must swim, but he cannot do both. If the bird is going to fly it must keep away from the fences and the trees, and trust to its buoyant wings. But if it tries to keep within easy reach of the ground, it will make poor work of flying.

God had to bring Abraham to the end of his own strength, and to let him see that in his own body he could do nothing. He had to consider his own body as good as dead, and then take God for the whole work, and when he looked away from himself, and trusted God alone, then He became fully persuaded that what He had promised, He was able also to perform.

This is what God is teaching us, and He has to keep away encouraging results until we learn to trust without them, and then He loves to make His word real in fact as well as faith.

Let us look only to Him to-day to do all things as He shall choose and in the way He shall choose.

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NOVEMBER 15. |Oh, man of desires| (margin) (Dan. x. 11).

|Oh, man of desires| (margin) (Dan. x.11).

This was the divine character given to Daniel of old. It is translated in our version, |O man, greatly beloved.| But it literally means |O man of desires!| This is a necessary element in all spiritual forces. It is one of the secrets of effectual prayer, |What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them.| The element of strong desire gives momentum to our purposes and prayers. Indifference is an unwholesome condition; indolence and apathy are offensive both to God and nature.

And so in our spiritual life, God often has to wake us up by the presence of trying circumstances, and push us into new places of trust by forces that we must subdue, or sink beneath their power. There is no factor in prayer more effectual than love. If we are intensely interested in an object, or an individual, our petitions become like living forces, and not only convey their wants to God, but in some sense convey God’s help back to them.

May God fill us to-day with the heart of Christ that we may glow with the Divine fire of holy desire.

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NOVEMBER 16. |Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day| (Matt. xxv. 13).

|Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day| (Matt. xxv.13).

Jesus illustrates the unexpectedness of His coming by the figure of a thief entering a house when the master was not there. Life, like the old Jewish night, may be divided into three watches, youth, maturity, old age. The summons to meet God may come to us in either of these watches. A writer tells us of his experience with a camping party, of which he was a member, and which, he tells us, always arranged to have watches at night. |We became especially careful after what I am about to narrate happened. During the first night, from sunset to sunrise, we had in turn carefully guarded our camp. But when the next night came, so impressed were we with the orderly character of the neighborhood, that we concluded that no guard was needed until bedtime. Within our main tent the evening was spent in story-telling, singing and general amusement. When the hour to retire arrived, it was discovered that our other tents had been robbed and everything of value stolen. The work was done before we thought a guard necessary.| It is never too soon to begin watching against sin.

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NOVEMBER 17. |The ark of the covenant of the Lord went before them| (Num. x. 33).

|The ark of the covenant of the Lord went before them| (Num. x.33).

God does give us impressions but not that we should act on them as impressions. If the impression be from God, He will Himself give sufficient evidence to establish it beyond the possibility of a doubt.

How beautifully we read, in the story of Jeremiah, of the impression that came to him respecting the purchase of the field of Anathoth, but Jeremiah did not act upon this impression until after the following day, when his uncle’s son came to him and brought him external evidence by making a proposal for the purchase. Then Jeremiah said: |I knew this was the word of the Lord.|

He waited until God seconded the impression by a providence, and then he acted in full view of the open facts, which could bring conviction unto others as well as himself.

God wants us to act according to His mind.

We are not to ignore the Shepherd’s personal voice, but like Paul and his companions at Troas, we are to listen to all the voices that speak, and |gather| from all the circumstances, as they did, the full mind of the Lord.

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NOVEMBER 18. |And He that sat upon the throne said, It is done| (Rev. xxi. 5, 6).

|And He that sat upon the throne said, It is done| (Rev. xxi.5, 6).

Great is the difference between action and transaction. We may be constantly acting without accomplishing anything, but a transaction is action that passes beyond the point of return, and becomes a permanent committal. Salvation is a transaction between the soul and Christ in which the matter passes beyond recall. Sanctification is a great transaction in which we are utterly surrendered, irrevocably consecrated and wholly committed to the Holy Ghost, and then He comes and seals the transaction and undertakes the work. Our covenant for our Lord’s healing should be just as explicit, definite and irrevocable. And so of the covenants to which God is leading His children from time to time in regard to other matters of obedience and service. God grant that during this hallowed day many a consecrated life may be able to say with new significance and permanence, |’Tis done, the great transaction’s done.|

For the living Vine is Jesus,
In whose fulness we may hide;
And find our life and fruitfulness
As we in Him abide.

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NOVEMBER 19. |We would see Jesus| (John xii. 21).

|We would see Jesus| (John xii.21).

When any great blessing is awaiting us, the devil is sure to try and make it so disagreeable to us that we shall miss it. It is a good thing to know him as a liar, and remember, when he is trying to prejudice us strongly against any cause, that very likely the greatest blessing of our life lies there. Spurgeon once said that the best evidence that God was on our side is the devil’s growl, and we are generally pretty safe in following a thing according to Satan’s dislike for it. Beloved, take care, lest in the very line where your prejudices are setting you off from God’s people and God’s truth, you are missing the treasures of your life. Take the treasures of heaven no matter how they come to you, even if it be as earthly treasures generally are, like the kernel inside the rough shell, or the gem in the bosom of the hard rock.

I have seen Jesus and my heart is dead to all beside, I have seen Jesus, and my wants are all, in Him, supplied. I have seen Jesus, and my heart, at last, is satisfied, Since I’ve seen Jesus.

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NOVEMBER 20. |The disciple whom Jesus loved leaned on His breast| (John xxi. 20).

|The disciple whom Jesus loved leaned on His breast| (John xxi.20).

An American gentleman once visited the saintly Albert Bengel. He was very desirous to hear him pray. So one night he lingered at his door, hoping to overhear his closing devotions. The rooms were adjoining and the doors ajar. The good man finished his studies, closed his books, knelt down for a moment and simply said: |Dear Lord Jesus, things are still the same between us,| and then sweetly fell asleep. So close was his communion with his Lord that labor did not interrupt it, and prayer was not necessary to renew it. It was a ceaseless, almost unconscious presence, like the fragrance of the summer garden, or the presence of some dear one by our side whose presence we somehow feel, even though the busy hours pass by and not a word is exchanged.

|O blessed fellowship, divine,
O joy, supremely sweet,
Companionship with Jesus here,
Makes life with joy replete;
O wondrous grace, O joy sublime,
I’ve Jesus with me all the time.|

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NOVEMBER 21. |Consider the lilies how they grow| (Matt. vi. 28).

|Consider the lilies how they grow| (Matt. vi.28).

It is said that a little fellow was found one day by his mother, standing by a tall sunflower, with his feet stuck in the ground. When asked by her, |What in the world are you doing there?| he naively answered, |Why, I am trying to grow to be a man.|

His mother laughed heartily at the idea of his getting planted in the ground in order to grow, like the sunflower, and then, patting him gently on the head, |Why, Harry, that is not the way to grow. You can never grow bigger by trying. Just come right in, and eat lots of good food, and have plenty of play, and you will soon grow to be a man without trying so hard.|

Well, Harry’s mother was right. Mrs. H. W. Smith never said a sweeter thing than when she answered the question — |How do the lilies grow?| by simply adding, |They grow without trying.|

Our sweetest spiritual life is the life of self-unconsciousness through which we become so united to Christ, and live continually on His life, nourished, fed and constantly filled with His Spirit and presence and all the fulness of His imparted life.

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NOVEMBER 22. |Cast the beam out of thine own eye| (Matt. vii. 5).

|Cast the beam out of thine own eye| (Matt. vii.5).

Greater than the fault you condemn and criticise is the sin of criticism and condemnation. There is no place we need such grace as in dealing with an erring one. A lady once called on us on her way to give an erring sister a piece of her mind. We advised her to wait until she could love her a little more. Only He who loved sinners well enough to die for them can deal with the erring. We never see all the heart. He does, and He can convict without condemning, and reprove without discouraging. Oh, for more of the heart of Christ! Take care, brother, how you speak of another’s fault. Ere you know, you may be in the same or deeper condemnation. Very significantly does the Master say that the man that sees a mote in his brother’s eye, usually has a rafter in his own eye! One of the two unpardonable sins of the Bible is unforgiving lovelessness.

|Give me a heart like Thine,
Give me a heart like Thine,
By Thy wonderful power,
By Thy grace every hour,
Give me a heart like Thine.|

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NOVEMBER 23. |It is high time to awake out of sleep| (Rom. xiii. 11).

|It is high time to awake out of sleep| (Rom. xiii.11).

One of the greatest enemies to faith is indolence. It is much easier to lie and suffer than to rise and overcome; much easier to go to sleep on a snowbank and never wake again, than to rouse one’s self and shake off the lethargy and overcome the stupor. Faith is an energetic art; prayer is intense labor; the effectual working prayer of the righteous man availeth much.

Satan tries to put us to sleep, as he did the disciples in the garden; but let us not sleep as do others, but let us wake and be sober, continuing in prayer and watching therein with all perseverance, stirring up ourselves to take hold of His strength, |not slothful, but followers of them, who, through patience, inherit the promise.| It is the wind that carries the ship across the waves; but the wind is powerless unless the hand of the boatman is held firmly upon the rudder, and that rudder is set hard against the wind. In like manner we hold the rudder, God fills the sails. It is not the rudder that carries the ship; but it is the rudder which catches the wind that carries the ship, so God keeps us in perfect peace while we are stayed upon Him.

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NOVEMBER 24. |I can do all things through Christ| (Phil. iv. 13).

|I can do all things through Christ| (Phil. iv.13).

A dear sister said one day: |I have so much work to do that I have not time to get strength to do it by waiting on the Lord.| Surely that was making bricks without straw, and even if it was the name of the Lord and the church, it was the devil’s bondage. God sends not His servants on their own charges; but |He is able to make all grace abound towards us, that we, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound unto every good work.| The old story of the chieftain, fleeing from his foes and almost overtaken, but stopping in the midst of his flight to get a shoe upon his horse that he might fly more successfully is a true type and lesson for Christian workers.

The old Latin motto festina lente, |make haste slowly,| has a great lesson for us. The more work we have to do, the more frequently we have to drop our head upon our desk and wait a little for heavenly aid and love, and then press on with new strength. One hour baptized in the love of the Holy Ghost is worth ten battling against wind and tide without the heavenly life.

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NOVEMBER 25. |Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come| (I. Cor. iv. 5).

|Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come| (I. Cor. iv.5).

Nothing will more effectually arrest the working of the Spirit in the heart than the spirit of criticism. At the end of a meeting a young minister came forward and told us of the great blessing he had received that afternoon, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit that had come into his heart and being, setting him free from the bondage of years. And then he added, |It all came through your answer to that question, ‘Will a criticizing spirit hinder the Holy Ghost from filling the heart?’ |

As the question was asked and answered, he said, |I was sitting in the church criticizing a good deal that was going on, objecting to this thing and to that thing, finding fault with the expressions, and praises and testimonies, and feeling thoroughly unhappy. The Lord brought the answer home to my heart and convicted me of my sin, and there and then I laid it down and began to see the good instead of the evil. Blessing fell upon me and my soul was filled with joy and praise, and I saw where my error lay, that for years I had been trying to see the truth with my head instead of my heart.|

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NOVEMBER 26. |He purgeth it that it may bring forth more fruit| (John xv. 2).

|He purgeth it that it may bring forth more fruit| (John xv.2).

One day we passed a garden. The gardener had finished his pruning, and the wounds of the knife and saw were beginning to heal, while the warm April sun was gently nourishing the stricken plant into fresh life and energy. We thought as we looked at that plant how cruel it would be to begin next week and cut it down again. It would bleed to death. Now, the gardener’s business is to revive and nourish into life. Its business is not to die, but to live. So, we thought, it is with the discipline of the soul. It, too, has its dying hour; but it must not be always dying. Rather reckon ourselves to be dead indeed unto sin and alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord Everlasting.

Breathe Thine own breath through all my mortal frame, Help me Thy resurrection life to claim,
Which, ‘mid all changes, still abides the same,
And lead me in the way Everlasting.

Give me the heavenly foretaste here, I pray;
Let faith foredate the everlasting day,
And walking in its glory all the way,
O, lead me in the way Everlasting!

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NOVEMBER 27. |And the remnant of the oil ... shall pour upon the head| (Lev. xiv. 18).

|And the remnant of the oil … shall pour upon the head| (Lev. xiv.18).

In the account of the healing of the Hebrew leper there is a beautiful picture of the touching of his ears, hands and feet, with the redeeming blood and the consecrating oil, as a sign that his powers of understanding, service, and conduct were set apart to God, and divinely endued for the Master’s work and will.

But after all this, we are significantly told that |the rest of the oil| was to be poured upon his head.

The former anointing was from the oil in the hand of the priest, but the latter was to be from the log, or vessel of oil itself. It was to be literally emptied over him, until he was bathed with all its contents.

It is a figure of the large and boundless baptism of the Holy Ghost. It speaks of something more even than the ordinary experiences of the consecrated Christian. It tells of the abundant and redundant supply which God has for us out of His illimitable fulness.

Have we received |the rest oil|? Are we filled with the Spirit, and letting the overflow bless others?

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NOVEMBER 28. |Without Me ye can do nothing| (John xv. 5).

|Without Me ye can do nothing| (John xv.5).

How much can I do for Christ? We are accustomed to say. — As much as I can. Have we ever thought we can do more than we can?

This thought was lately suggested by the remarks of a Christian friend, who told how God had laid it upon her heart to do something for His cause which was beyond her power, and when she dared to obey Him, He gave her the assurance of His power and resources, and so marvelously met her faith that she was enabled to do more than she could otherwise, and accomplish her heart’s desire, and see a work fulfilled to which her resources were unequal.

The apostle says, |I can do all things through Christ, who is my strength,| and yet He says we are not able to think anything, as of ourselves.

Oh, blessed insufficiency! Oh, blessed All-Sufficiency! Oh, blessed nothingness, which brings us all things! Oh, blessed faith, whose rich dowry is, |All things are possible to him that believeth|!

O to be found of Him in peace,
Spotless and free from blame.

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NOVEMBER 29. |Could ye not watch with Me one hour?| (Matt. xxvi. 40.)

|Could ye not watch with Me one hour?| (Matt. xxvi.40.)

A young lady whose parents had died while she was an infant, had been kindly cared for by a dear friend of the family. Before she was old enough to know him, he went to Europe. Regularly he wrote to her through all his years of absence, and never failed to send her money for all her wants. Finally word came that during a certain week he would return and visit her. He did not fix the day or the hour. She received several invitations to take pleasant trips with her friends during that week. One of these was of so pleasant a nature that she could not resist accepting it. During her trip, he came, inquired as to her absence, and left. Returning she found this note: |My life has been a struggle for you, might you not have waited one week for me?| More she never heard, and her life of plenty became one of want. Jesus has not fixed the day or hour of His return, but He has said, |Watch,| and should He come to-day, would He find us absorbed in thoughtless dissipation? May we be found each day, in the expectant attitude of those watching for a loved one.

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NOVEMBER 30. |In lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves| (Phil. ii. 3).

|In lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves| (Phil. ii.3).

When the apostle speaks of |the deep things of God,| he means more than deep spiritual truth. There must be something before this. There must be a deep soil and a thorough foundation.

Very much of our spiritual teaching fails, because the people to whom we give it are so shallow. Their deeper nature has never been stirred.

The beatitudes begin at the bottom of things, the poor in spirit, the mourners, and the hungry hearts. Suffering is essential to profound spiritual life. We need not go to a monastery or a leper hospital to find it. The first real opportunity for unselfishness will bring into your life the anguish of crucifixion, unless you are born of some different race from Adam’s.

It is because men and women have not faced this that they know so little of suffering and death. We must have deep convictions. Truth must be to us a necessity, and principle a part of our very being. Lord, make me poor in spirit. Lord help me to be even as Thou wert when on earth, always the lowest, and therefore |highly exalted.|

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DECEMBER 1. |As He is, so are we in this world| (I. John iv. 17).

|As He is, so are we in this world| (I. John iv.17).

Jesus will come into the surrendered heart and unite Himself with it, impart to it His own life and being and become anew from day to day, the supply of its spiritual needs and the substitute for its helplessness.

Our part is simply to yield ourselves fully recognizing our own worthlessness and then take Jesus Himself to live in us and be, moment by moment, our strength, purity and victory.

One in His death on the tree,
One as He rose from the dead;
I from the curse am as free
E’en as my glorious Head.

One in His merits I stand,
One as I Pray in His name,
All that His worth can demand
I may with confidence claim.

One on the Throne by His side,
One in His Sonship divine,
One as the Bridegroom and Bride,
One as the Branch and the Vine.

All that He has shall be mine,
All that He is I shall be;
Robed in His glory divine,
I shall be even as He.

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DECEMBER 2. |Looking diligently lest any man fail| (Heb. xii. 15).

|Looking diligently lest any man fail| (Heb. xii.15).

It is not losing all, but coming short we are to fear. We may not lose our souls, but we may lose something more precious than life — His full approval, His highest choice, and our incorruptible and star-gemmed crown. It is the one degree more that counts, and makes all the difference between hot water — powerless in the boiler — and steam — all alive with power, and bearing its precious freight across the continent.

I want, in this short life of mine,
As much as can be pressed
Of service true for God and man,
Help me to be my best.

I want to stand when Christ appears
And hear my name confessed
Numbered among the hidden ones,
His holiest and best.

I want, among the victor throng,
To have my name confessed;
And hear my Master say at last,
Well done, you did your best.

Give me, O Lord, Thy highest choice;
Let others take the rest:
Their good things have no charm for me,
For I have got Thy best.

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DECEMBER 3. Thy thoughts are very deep (Ps. xcii. 5).

Thy thoughts are very deep (Ps. xcii.5).

When a Roman soldier was told by his guide that if he insisted on taking a certain journey it would probably be fatal he answered, |It is necessary for me to go, it is not necessary for me to live.| That was depth. When we are convicted like that we shall come to something.

The shallow nature lives in its impulses, its impressions, its intuitions, its instincts, and very largely in its surroundings. The profound character looks beyond all these and moves steadily on, sailing past all the storms and clouds into the clear sunshine which is always on the other side, and waiting for the afterwards which always brings the reversion of sorrow and seeming defeat and failure.

When God has deepened us, then He can give us His deeper truths, His profoundest secrets, and His mightier trusts.

Lord, lead me into the depths of Thy life and save me from a shallow experience.

On to broader fields of holy vision;
On to loftier heights of faith and love;
Onward, upward, apprehending wholly,
All for which He calls thee from above.

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DECEMBER 4. |From me is thy fruit found| (Hos. xiv. 8).

|From me is thy fruit found| (Hos. xiv.8).

Nothing keeps us from advancement more than ruts and drifts, and wheel-tracks into which our chariots roll and then move on in the narrow line with unchanging monotony, currents in life’s stream on which we are borne in the old direction until the law of habit almost makes advance impossible. The true remedy for this is to commence at nothing; taking Christ afresh to be the Alpha and Omega for a deeper, higher, Divine experience, waiting even for His conception of thought, desire, prayer, and afraid lest our highest thought should be below His great plan of wisdom and love.

O Comforter gentle and tender,
O holy and heavenly Dove,
We’re yielding our heart in surrender,
We’re waiting Thy fulness to prove.

O come as the heart-searching fire,
O come as the sin-cleansing flood;
Consume us with holy desire,
And fill with the fulness of God.

Anoint us with gladness and healing;
Baptize us with power from on high;
O come with filling and sealing
While low at the Thy footstool we lie.

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DECEMBER 5. |With a perfect heart to make David King| (I. Chron. xii. 38).

|With a perfect heart to make David King| (I. Chron. xii.38).

|What is the supreme purpose of our life? They were all of one heart to make David king.| Is this our purpose, to prepare the Bride, to prepare the world, to prepare His way? Does it dwarf and dim all other ambitions, all other cares? Does it fill and satisfy every capacity, every power, every desire? Does it absorb every moment, every energy, every resource? Does it give direction and tone to every plan and work of life? Does it decide for us the education of our children, the investment of our means, the friendships and associations of life, the whole activity, interest and outlook of our being? Are we in it, spirit, soul and body, all we are, all we do, all we hope for — OF ONE HEART TO MAKE JESUS KING?

We’re going forth united
With loyal heart and hand,
To bear His royal banner
Aboard o’er every land.

From every tribe and nation
We’ll haste His Bride to bring.
And Oh, with what glad welcome
We’ll make our Jesus King.

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DECEMBER 6. |Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you| (I. Peter v. 6).

|Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you| (I. Peter v.6).

Opposition is essential to a true equilibrium of forces. The centripetal and centrifugal forces acting in opposition to each other keep our planet in her orbit. The one propelling, and the other repelling, so act and react, that instead of sweeping off into space in a pathway of desolation and destruction, she pursues her even orbit around her solar center.

So God guides our lives. It is not enough to have an impelling force — we need just as much a repelling force, and so He holds us back by the testing ordeals of life, by the pressure of temptation and trial, by the things that seem to be against us, but really are furthering our way and stablishing our goings. Let us thank Him for both, let us take the weights as well as the wings, and thus divinely impelled, let us press on with faith and patience in our high and heavenly calling.

Lord, help me to learn from all that comes to me this day Thy highest will.

Lord, help me to-day to sink under Thy blessed hand, that Thou mayest have Thy way and will with me.

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DECEMBER 7. |Abide with us; for it is toward evening| (Luke xxiv. 29).

|Abide with us; for it is toward evening| (Luke xxiv.29).

In His last messages to the disciples in the 14th and 15th chapters of John, the Lord Jesus clearly teaches us that the very essence of the highest holiness is, |Abide in Me, and I in you, for without Me ye can do nothing.|

The very purpose of the Holy Ghost whom He promised was to reveal Him, that at |that day, ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in Me, and I in you,| and the closing echo of His intercessory prayer was embraced in these three small but infinite words, |I in them.|

Is it for me to be cleansed by His power
From the pollution of sin?
Is it for me to be kept every hour
By His abiding within?

Is it for me to be perfectly whole
Thro’ His anointing divine;
Claiming in body, and spirit, and soul,
All of His fulness as mine?

Wonderful promise so full and so free,
Wonderful Saviour, Oh, how can it be,
Cleansing and pardon and mercy for me?
Yes, it’s for me, for me.

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DECEMBER 8. |Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there?| (Jer. viii. 22).

|Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there?| (Jer. viii.22).

Divine healing is just divine life. It is the headship of Christ over the body. It is the life of Christ in the frame. It is the union of our members with the very body of Christ and the inflowing life of Christ in our living members. It is as real as His risen and glorified body. It is as reasonable as the fact that He was raised from the dead and is a living man with a true body and a rational soul to-day, at God’s right hand. That living Christ belongs to us in all His attributes and powers. We are members of His body, His flesh and His bones, and if we can only believe and receive it, we may live upon the very life of the Son of God.

Lord, help me to know the |Lord for the body and the body for the Lord.|

There is healing in the promise,
There is healing in the blood,
There is strength for all our weakness
In the risen Son of God.

And the feeblest of His children,
All His glorious life may share;
He has healing balm in Gilead,
He’s the Great Physician there.

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DECEMBER 9. |Launch out into the deep| (Luke v. 4).

|Launch out into the deep| (Luke v.4).

One of the special marks of the Holy Ghost in the Apostolic Church was the spirit Of boldness. One of the most essential qualities of the faith that is to attempt great things for God and expect great things from God, is holy audacity. Where we are dealing with a supernatural Being, and taking from Him things that are humanly impossible, it is easier to take much than little; it is easier to stand in a place of audacious trust than in a place of cautious, timid clinging to the shore. Like wise seamen in the life of faith, let us launch out into the deep, and find that all things are possible with God, and all things are possible unto him that believeth.

Let us to-day attempt great things for God, take His faith and believe for them and His strength to accomplish them.

The mercy of God is an ocean divine,
A boundless and fathomless flood;
Launch out in the deep, cut away the shore-line,
And be lost in the fulness of God.

Oh, let us launch out in this ocean so broad,
Where the floods of salvation o’erflow,
Oh, let us be lost in the mercy of God,
Till the depth of His fulness we know.

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DECEMBER 10. |According to the measure of the rule which God hath distributed| (II. Cor. x. 13).

|According to the measure of the rule which God hath distributed| (II. Cor. x.13).

According to thy faith be it unto thee was Christ’s great law of healing and blessing in His earthly ministry. This was what He meant when He said, |With what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again.| These mighty measures are limited by the the measures that we bring. God deals out His heavenly treasures to us in these glorious vessels, but each of us must bring our drinking cup, and according to its measure we shall be filled.

But even the measure of our faith may be a Divine one. Thank God, the little cup has become enlarged through the grace of Jesus, until from its bottom there flows a pipe into the great ocean, and if that connection is kept open we shall find that our cup is as large as the ocean and never can be drained to the bottom. For He has said to us, |Have the faith of God,| and surely this is an illimitable measure.

Let us claim the mighty promise,
Let us light the torches dim;
Let us join the glorious chorus,
Nothing is too hard for Him.

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DECEMBER 11. |I pray not for the world, but for them| (John xvii. 9).

|I pray not for the world, but for them| (John xvii.9).

How often we say we would like to get some strong spirit to pray for us, and feel so helped when we think they are carrying us in their faith. But there is One whose prayers never fail to be fulfilled and who is more willing to give them to us than any human friend. His one business at God’s right hand is to make intercession for His people, and we are simply coming in the line of His own appointment and His own definite promise and provision, when we lay our burdens upon Him and claim His advocacy without doubt or fear. |Seeing then that we have a great High Priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us come boldly to the throne of grace that we may find help in time of need.|

Like a golden censer glowing,
Filled with burning odors rare,
All my heart is upward flowing,
In a cloud of ceaseless prayer.

O’er the heavenly altar bending,
Jesus interceding stands,
All our prayers to heaven ascending,
Reach the Father through His hands.

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DECEMBER 12. |To abide in the flesh is more needful for you, and having this confidence, I know that I shall abide| (Phil. i. 24, 25).

|To abide in the flesh is more needful for you, and having this confidence, I know that I shall abide| (Phil. i.24, 25).

One of the most blessed things about divine healing is that the strength it brings is holy strength, and finds its natural and congenial outflow in holy acts and exercises.

Mere natural strength seeks its gratification in natural pleasures and activities, but the strength of Christ leads us to do as Christ would do, and to seek our congenial employment in His holy service.

The life of Christ in a human body saves it from a thousand temptations to self-indulgence and sin, and not only gives us strength for higher service, but also a desire for it, and puts into it a zest and spring which gives it double power.

Lord, help us to-day to claim Thy life and then give it for the help of others.

Have you found the branch of healing?
Pass it on.
Have you felt the Spirit’s sealing,
Pass it on.
‘Twas for this His mercy sought you,
And to all His fulness brought you,
By the precious blood that bought you,
Pass it on.

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DECEMBER 13. |He that abideth in Me and I in him the same bringeth forth much fruit for apart from Me ye can do nothing| (John xv. 5).

|He that abideth in Me and I in him the same bringeth forth much fruit for apart from Me ye can do nothing| (John xv.5).

So familiar are the vine and the branches, it is not necessary to explain; only the branches and the vine are one. The vine does not say, I am the central trunk running up and you are the little branches; but I am the whole thing, and you are the whole thing. He counts us partakers of His nature. |Apart from Me ye can do nothing.| The husband and the wife, and many more figures contribute to this marvelous Christ teaching, which has no parallel, no precedent in any other teaching under the sun; that Christ is the life of His people, and that we are absolutely linked with and dependent upon Him. All other systems teach how much man is and may become. Christianity shows how a man must lose all he is if he would come into full unity with Christ in His life.

Lord, help me this day to abide in Thee.

Oh! what a wonderful place
Jesus has given to me!
Saved by His glorious grace,
I may be even as He.

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DECEMBER 14. |Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree| (Isa. lv. 13).

|Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree| (Isa. lv.13).

Difficulties and obstacles are God’s challenges to faith. When hindrances confront us in the path of duty we are to recognize them as vessels for faith to fill with the fulness and all-sufficiency of Jesus, and as we go forward, simply and fully trusting Him, we may be tested, we may have to wait and let patience have her perfect work, but we shall surely find at last the stone rolled away, and the Lord waiting to render unto us double for our time of testing, and fulfil the promise, |Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, instead of the brier the myrtle tree, and it shall be to the Lord for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.|

Oft there comes a wondrous message
When my hopes are growing dim;
I can hear it through the darkness,
Like some sweet and far-off hymn.
Nothing is too hard for Jesus,
No man can work like Him.

When my way is closed in darkness
And my foes are fierce and grim,
Still it sings above the conflict
Like some glad, victorious hymn:
Nothing is too hard for Jesus,
No man can work like Him.

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DECEMBER 15. |When my heart is overwhelmed lead me to the Rock that is higher than I| (Ps. lxi. 2).

|When my heart is overwhelmed lead me to the Rock that is higher than I| (Ps. lxi.2).

The end of self is the beginning of God. |When the tale of bricks is doubled then comes Moses.| That is the old Hebrew way of putting it. |Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.| That is the proverbial expression of it. |When my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the rock that is higher than I.| That is David’s way of expressing it. |We have no might against this company, neither know we what to do.| No might, no light — |but our eyes are upon Thee,| that was Jehoshaphat’s experience of it. |Mine eyes fail with looking upward. I am oppressed, Lord, undertake for me.|

|When I had great trouble I always went to God and was wondrously carried through; but in my little trials I used to try to manage them myself, and often most signally failed.| So Miss Havergal has expressed the experience of many a Christian. God wants us |at our wit’s end,| and then He will show His wisdom, love and power. How often we ask God to help, and then begin to count up the human probabilities! God’s very blessings become a hindrance to us if we look from Him to them.

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DECEMBER 16. |I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the canker worm and the caterpillar and the palmer worm, my great army, which I sent among you| (Joel ii. 25).

|I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the canker worm and the caterpillar and the palmer worm, my great army, which I sent among you| (Joel ii.25).

A friend said to me once: |I have got to reap what I sowed, for God has said: ‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’ Then why don’t you apply this in the spiritual world, and compel the sinner to pay the penalty of his sins?|

Christ has borne this penalty, and the same Christ has borne the natural penalties, too, and delivered us out of condemnation in every sense. Physical sufferings come to us, but not under the law of retribution, but only as a Divine discipline. Every penalty has been fulfilled by Christ and every law satisfied, and so far as we can have risen with Him into the plane of spiritual and eternal life, we are lifted above the mere realm of law, and we enter into the full effects of His complete satisfaction of every claim against us. So it is true that even the wreck that sin has brought upon our physical and temporal life is removed by His great atonement, and the promise is made real to us, |I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten.|

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DECEMBER 17. |Be careful for nothing| (Phil. iv. 6).

|Be careful for nothing| (Phil. iv.6).

What is the way to lay your burden down? |Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.|

|For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.| That is the way to take His burden up. You will find that His burden is always light. Yours is a very heavy one. Happy day if you have exchanged burdens and laid down your loads at His blessed feet to take up His own instead. God wants to rest His workers, and He is too kind to put His burden on hearts that are already bowed down with their own weight of cares.

Are you fearing, fretting or repining?
You can never know God’s perfect peace.
On His bosom all your weight reclining.
All your anxious doubts and cares must cease.
Would you know the peace that God has given?
Would you find the very joy of heaven?
Be careful for nothing,
Be prayerful for everything,
Be thankful for anything,
And the peace of God that passeth understanding
Shall keep your mind and heart.

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DECEMBER 18. |The faith of the Son of God| (Gal. ii. 20).

|The faith of the Son of God| (Gal. ii.20).

Faith is hindered most of all by what we call |our faith,| and fruitless struggles to work out a faith which is but a make-believe and a desperate trying to trust God, which must ever come short of His vast and glorious promises. The truth is that the only faith that is equal to the stupendous promises of God and the measureless needs of our life, is |the faith of God| Himself, the very trust which He will breathe into the heart which intelligently expects Him as its power to believe, as well as its power to love, obey, or perform any other exercise of the new life.

Blessed be His name! He has not given us a chain which reaches within a single link of our poor helpless heart, but that one last link is fatal to all the chain. Nay, the last link, the one that fastens on the human side is as Divine as the link that binds the chain of promise in the heavens. |Have the faith of God,| is His great command. |I live by the faith of the Son of God| is the victorious testimony of one who had proved it true.

Lord, teach me to have the faith of the Son of God.

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DECEMBER 19. |God giveth grace unto the humble| (James iv. 6).

|God giveth grace unto the humble| (James iv.6).

One of the marks of highest worth is deep lowliness. The shallow nature, conscious of its weakness and insufficiency, is always trying to advertise itself and make sure of its being appreciated. The strong nature, conscious of its strength, is willing to wait and let its work be made manifest in due time. Indeed, the truest natures are so free from all self-consciousness and self-consideration that their object is not to be appreciated, understood or recompensed, but to accomplish their true mission and fulfil the real work of life.

One of the most suggestive expressions used respecting the Lord Jesus is given by the evangelist John in the thirteenth chapter of His Gospel, where we read, |Jesus, knowing that He came from God, and went to God, riseth from supper and began to wash the disciples’ feet.| It was because He knew His high dignity and His high destiny that He could stoop to the lowest place and that place could not degrade Him.

God give to us the Divine insignia of heavenly rank, a bowed head, a meek and lowly spirit.

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DECEMBER 20. |That I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the Gospel of God| (Rom. xv. 16).

|That I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the Gospel of God| (Rom. xv.16).

This is a very beautiful and practical conception of missionary work. There is a great difference in being consecrated to our God. We may be consecrated to our work and consecrated to our God. We may be consecrated and fitted to do missionary work, and utterly fail, if He should call us to do something different. But when we are consecrated to Him, we shall be ready for anything He may require of us, and be as well qualified to serve Him by the sick bed of a brother, or even in the secular duties of home, as in standing in the pulpit or leading a soul to Christ.

Paul’s conception is holy work, or a special sacrifice, and directly unto Christ, and Christ alone; and he stood as one should stand at the altar of incense, lifting up with holy hands the Gentile nations unto God, and laying all his work like fragrant incense before the throne, pleased only with what would please his Master, and stand the test of His inspection, and the seal of His approval in that glorious day.

This is the spirit of true service.

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DECEMBER 21. |Give us day by day our daily bread| (Luke xi. 3).

|Give us day by day our daily bread| (Luke xi.3).

It is very hard to live a lifetime at once, or even a year, but it is delightfully easy to live a day at a time. Day by day the manna fell, so day by day we may live upon the heavenly bread, and live out our life for Him. Let us, breath by breath, moment by moment, step by step, abide in Him, and, just as we take care of the days, He will take care of the years.

God has given two precious promises for the days. |As thy days so shall thy strength be,| is His ancient covenant, and the literal translation of our Master’s parting words to His disciples is, |Lo, I am with you all the days, even unto the end of the age.|

Like the little water spider that goes down beneath the waters of the pool enclosed in a bubble of air, and there builds its nest and rears its young, and lives its little life in that bright sphere down beneath the slimy pool, so let us in this dark world shut ourselves in with Christ in the little circle of each returning day, and so abide in Him, breathing the air of heaven and living in His love.

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DECEMBER 22. |My tongue also shall talk of Thy righteousness all the day long| (Ps. lxxi. 24).

|My tongue also shall talk of Thy righteousness all the day long| (Ps. lxxi.24).

It is a simple law of nature, that air always comes in to fill a vacuum. You can produce a draught at any time, by heating the air until it ascends, and then the cold air rushes in to supply its place. And so we can always be filled with the Holy Spirit by providing a vacuum. This breath is dependent upon exhausting the previous breath before you can inhale a fresh one. And so we must empty our hearts of the last breath of the Holy Spirit that we have received, for it becomes exhausted the moment we have received it, and we need a new supply, to prevent spiritual asphyxia.

We must learn the secret of breathing out, as well as breathing in. Now, the breathing in will continue if the other part is rightly done. One of the best ways to make room for the Holy Spirit is to recognize the needs that come into the life as vacuums for Him to fill, and we shall find plenty of needs all around us to be filled, and as we pour out our lives in holy service, He will pour His in — in full measure.

Jesus, empty me and fill me
With Thy fulness to the brim.

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DECEMBER 23. |Out of the spoils won in battles, did they dedicate to maintain the house of the Lord| (I. Chron. xxvi. 27).

|Out of the spoils won in battles, did they dedicate to maintain the house of the Lord| (I. Chron. xxvi.27).

Physical force is stored in the bowels of the earth, in the coal mines, which came from the fiery heat that burned up great forests in ancient ages. And so spiritual force is stored in the depths of our being, through the very sufferings which we cannot understand. Some day we shall find that the deliverance we have won from these trials were preparing us to become true |Great Hearts| in life’s Pilgrim’s Progress, and to lead our fellow pilgrims triumphantly through trial to the city of the King.

But let us never forget that the source of helping other people must be victorious suffering. The whining, murmuring pang never does anybody any good. Paul did not carry a cemetery with him, but a chorus choir of victorious praise, and the harder the trial, the more he trusted and rejoiced, shouting from the very altar of sacrifice, |Yea, and if I be offered upon the service and sacrifice of your faith, I joy and rejoice with you all.|

Lord, help me this day to draw strength from all that comes to me.

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DECEMBER 24. |And seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not; for behold I will bring evil upon all flesh, saith the Lord; but thy life will I give unto thee for a prey in all places whither thou goest| (Jer. xlv. 5).

|And seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not; for behold I will bring evil upon all flesh, saith the Lord; but thy life will I give unto thee for a prey in all places whither thou goest| (Jer. xlv.5).

A promise given for hard places, and a promise of safety and life in the midst of tremendous pressure, a life for a prey.

It may well adjust itself to our own times, which are growing harder as we near the end of the age, and the tribulation times.

What is the meaning of |a life for a prey|? It means a life snatched out of the jaws of the destroyer, as David snatched the lamb from the lion. It means not a place of security, or of removal from the noise of the battle, and the presence of our foes, but it means a table in the midst of our enemies, a shelter from the storm, a fortress amid the foe, a life preserved in the face of continual pressure, Paul’s healing when pressed out of measure so that he despaired even of life, Paul’s Divine help when the thorn remained, but the power of Christ rested upon him and the grace of Christ was sufficient.

Lord, give me my life for a prey, and in the hardest places help me to-day to be victorious.

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DECEMBER 25. |I bring you glad tidings| (Luke ii. 10).

|I bring you glad tidings| (Luke ii.10).

A Christmas spirit should be a spirit of humanity. Beside that beautiful object lesson on the Manger, the Cradle, and the lowly little child, what Christian heart can ever wish to be proud? It is a spirit of joy. It is right that these should be glad tidings, for, |Behold, I bring you glad tidings of great joy which shall be to all people.|

It is a spirit of love. It should be the joy that comes from giving joy to others. The central fact of Christmas is the Christ who loved us, and came to live among us and die for us, and he or she has no right to share its joys who is living for himself or herself alone.

Love is always sacrificial, and so the Christmas spirit will call us to a glad and full surrender, first to God, and then the joyful sacrifice of what we call our own for His glory and the good of others.

The Christmas spirit is a spirit of worship. It finds the Magi at His feet with their gold and frankincense and myrrh. Let it find us there, too.

The Christmas spirit is a spirit of missions. Its glad tidings are for all people.

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DECEMBER 26. |The Spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy| (James iv. 5).

|The Spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy| (James iv.5).

This beautiful passage has been unhappily translated in our Revised Version: |The Spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy.| It ought to be, |The Spirit that dwelleth in us loveth us to jealousy.| It is the figure of a love that suffers because of its intense regard for the loved object.

The Holy Ghost is so anxious to accomplish in us and for us the highest will of God, and to receive from us the truest love for Christ, our Divine Husband, that He becomes jealous when in any way we disappoint Him, or divide His love with others.

Therefore, it is said in the preceding passage, |Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?|

Oh, shall we grieve so kind a Friend? Shall we disappoint so loving a Husband? Shall we not meet the blessed Holy Spirit with the love He brings us, and give in return our undivided and unbounded affection?

Was there ever a Bridegroom so loving seeking our heart to gain?

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DECEMBER 27. |He sent forth the dove which returned not again unto him| (Gen. viii. 12).

|He sent forth the dove which returned not again unto him| (Gen. viii.12).

First, we have the dove going forth from the ark, and finding no rest upon the wild and drifting waste of sin and judgment. This represents the Old Testament period, perhaps, when the Holy Ghost visited this sinful world, but could find no resting-place, and went back to the bosom of God.

Next, we have the dove going forth and returning with the olive leaf in her mouth, the symbol and the pledge of peace and reconciliation, the sign that judgment was passed and peace was returning. Surely this may beautifully represent the next stage of the Holy Spirit’s manifestation, as going forth in the ministry and death of Jesus Christ, to proclaim reconciliation to a sinful world.

There is a third stage, when, at length, the dove goes forth from the ark and returns no more; but it makes the world its home, and builds its nest amid the habitations of men. This is the third and present stage of the Holy Spirit’s blessed work. Let us welcome the Dove to a nest in our hearts.

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DECEMBER 28. |The Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey Him| (Acts v. 32).

|The Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey Him| (Acts v.32).

We can only know and prove the fulness of the Spirit as we step out into the larger purposes and plans of Christ for the world.

Perhaps the chief reason why the Holy Spirit has been so limited in His work in the hearts of Christians, is the shameful neglect of the unsaved and unevangelized world by the great majority of the professed followers of Christ. There are millions of professing Christians — and, perhaps, real Christians — in the world, who have never given one real, earnest thought to the evangelization of the heathen world.

God will not give the Holy Spirit in His fulness for the selfish enjoyment of any Christian. His power is a great trust, which we must use for the benefit of others and for the evangelization of the lost and sinful world. Not until the people of God awake to understand His real purpose for the salvation of men, will the Church ever know the fulness of her Pentecost. God’s promised power must lie along the line of duty, and as we obey the command, we shall receive His promise in his fulness.

Lord, help me to understand Thy plan.

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DECEMBER 29. |I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God| (Acts xx. 27).

|I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God| (Acts xx.27).

It is probable that God lets every human being, that crosses our path, meet us, in order that we may have the opportunity of leaving some blessing in his path, and dropping into his heart and life some influence that will draw him nearer to God. It would be blessed, indeed, if we could meet every immortal soul, at last, that we have ever touched in the path of life, and truly say, |I am pure from the blood of all men.|

Beloved, is it so? The servant that works in your household; the man that sat beside you in the train; the laborer that wrought for you, and, above all, the members of your household and family, your fellow-laborer in the shop or factory, have you done your best to lead them to Christ?

The early Christians regarded every situation as an opportunity to witness for Christ. Even when brought before kings and governors, it never occurred to them that they were to try to get free, but the Master’s message to them was, |It shall turn to you for a testimony.| It was simply an occasion to preach to kings and rulers, whom otherwise they could not reach.

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DECEMBER 30. |That God would fulfil in you all the good pleasure of His goodness, and the work of faith with power| (II. Thess. i. 11).

|That God would fulfil in you all the good pleasure of His goodness, and the work of faith with power| (II. Thess. i.11).

Our God is looking to-day for pattern men, and when He gets a true sample, it is very easy to reproduce it in a thousand editions, and multiply it in other lives without limitation.

All the experiences of life come to us as tests, and as we meet them, our loving Father is watching with intense and jealous love, to see us overcome, and if we fail He is deeply disappointed, and our adversary is filled with joy.

We are a gazing-stock continually for angels and principalities, and every step we take is critical and decisive for something in our eternal future.

When Abraham went forth that morning to Mount Moriah, it was an hour of solemn probation, and when he came back he was one of God’s tested men, with the stamp of His eternal approbation. God could say, |I know him, that he will do judgment and justice, that the Lord may bring upon Abraham all that He hath spoken.|

God is looking for such men to-day. Lord, help me to be such an one.

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DECEMBER 31. |I pray not that Thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep them from the evil| (John xvii. 15).

|I pray not that Thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep them from the evil| (John xvii.15).

He wants us here for some higher purpose than mere existence. That purpose is nothing else than to represent Him to the world, to be the messengers of His Gospel and His will to men, and by our lives to exhibit to them the true life, and teach them how to live it themselves.

He is representing us yonder, and our one business is to represent Him here. We are just as truly sent into this world to represent Him as if we had gone to China as the ambassador of the American Government.

While engaged in the secular affairs of life, it is simply that we may represent Him there, carry on His business, and have means to use for His affairs. He came here from another realm, and with a special message, and when His work was done He was called to go home to His Father’s dwelling-place and His own.

Lord, help me to worthily represent Thee.

And carry music in our heart
Through busy street and wrangling mart;
Plying our daily task with busier feet,
Because our souls a heavenly strain repeat.

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