Be strong and of good courage. fear not, nor be dismayed; for the Lord God, even my God, will be with thee; He will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. I CHRON. Xxviii. 20. That we should serve in newness of spirit. ROM. vii. 6. T HELP us, O Lord! behold we enter In Thee our hopes and thoughts now centre, New life, new strength, new happiness, JOHANN RIST. HE year begins; and all its pages are as blank as the silent years of the life of Jesus Christ. Let us begin it with high resolution; then let us take all its limitations, all its hindrances, its disappointments, its narrow and common-place conditions, and meet them as the Master did in Nazareth, with patience, with obedience, putting ourselves in cheerful subjection, serving our apprenticeship. Who knows what opportunity may come to us this year? Let us live in a great spirit, then we shall be ready for a great occasion. GEORGE HODGES. Walk cheerfully and freely in God's service. As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people from henceforth even forever. Ps. cxxv. 2. - HOPE it may be the happiest year of your life, as I think each succeeding year of everybody's life should be, if only everybody were wise enough to see things as they are; for it is certain that there really exists, laid up and ready to hand, for those who will just lay hands upon it, enough for every one and enough forever. I am quite sure that the central mistake of all lives that are mistaken is the not taking this simple unchangeable fact for granted, not seeing that it is so, and cannot but be so, and will remain SO though we believe not." I think I can trace every scrap of sorrow in my own life to this simple unbelief. How could I be anything but quite happy if I believed always that all the past is forgiven, and all the present furnished with power, and all the future bright with hope, because of the same abiding facts, which don't change with my mood, do not crumble, because I totter and stagger at the promise through unbelief, but stand firm and clear with their peaks of pearl cleaving the air of Eternity, and the bases of their hills rooted unfathomably in the Rock of God? JAMES SMETHAM. Let all those that seek Thee rejoice and be glad in Thee; let such as love Thy salvation say continually, The Lord be magnified.— Ps. xl. 16. Then will I go unto the altar of God; unto God, my exceeding joy.· . Ps. xliii. 4. TEL WE doubt the word that tells us : Ask, And ye shall have your prayer; We turn our thoughts as to a task, With will constrained and rare. And yet we have; these scanty prayers O God, but he who trusts and dares Must have a boundless joy! GEORGE MACDONALD. ELL them that, until religion cease to be a burden, it is nothing, until prayer cease to be a weariness, it is nothing. However difficult and however imperfect, the spirit must still rejoice in it. EDWARD IRVING. From a weary laborer, worn with slavish and ineffectual toil, I had become as a little child receiving from God the free gift of eternal life and of daily sustenance; and prayer, from a weary spiritual exercise, had become the simple asking from the Heavenly Father of daily bread, and thanking Him. ELIZABETH RUNDLE CHARLES. |