Chapter C: F. Richter

In my attempts to promote the comfort of my family, the quiet of my spirit has been disturbed. Some of this is doubtless owing to physical weakness; but, with every temptation, there is a way of escape; there is _never_ any _need_ to sin. Another thing I have suffered loss from,--entering into the business of the day without seeking to have my spirit quieted and directed. So many things press upon me, this is sometimes neglected; shame to me that it should be so.

This is of great importance, to watch carefully,--now I am so weak--not to over-fatigue myself, because then I cannot contribute to the pleasure of others; and a placid face and a gentle tone will make my family more happy than anything else I can do for them. Our own will gets sadly into the performance of our duties sometimes.

ELIZABETH T. KING.

July 22

_Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall understand the loving-kindness of the Lord_.--PS. cvii. 43.

What channel needs our faith, except the eyes?
God leaves no spot of earth unglorified;
Profuse and wasteful, lovelinesses rise;
New beauties dawn before the old have died.

Trust thou thy joys in keeping of the Power
Who holds these changing shadows in His hand;
Believe and live, and know that hour by hour
Will ripple newer beauty to thy strand.

T. W. HIGGINSON.

I wondered over again for the hundredth time what could be the principle which, in the wildest, most lawless, fantastically chaotic, apparently capricious work of nature, always kept it beautiful. The beauty of holiness must be at the heart of it somehow, I thought. Because our God is so free from stain, so loving, so unselfish, so good, so altogether what He wants us to be, so holy, therefore all His works declare Him in beauty; His fingers can touch nothing but to mould it into loveliness; and even the play of His elements is in grace and tenderness of form.

G. MACDONALD.

July 23

_Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind_.--LUKE x. 27.

O God, what offering shall I give
To Thee, the Lord of earth and skies?
My spirit, soul, and flesh receive,
A holy, living sacrifice.

J. LANGE.

To love God "with all our heart," is to know the spiritual passion of measureless gratitude for loving-kindness, and self-devotedness to goodness; to love Him "with all our mind," is to know the passion for Truth that is the enthusiasm of Science, the passion for Beauty that inspires the poet and the artist, when all truth and beauty are regarded as the self-revealings of God; to love Him "with all our soul," is to know the saint's rapture of devotion and gaze of penitential awe into the face of the All-holy, the saint's abhorrence of sin, and agony of desire to save a sinner's soul; and to love Him "with all our strength," is the supreme spiritual passion that tests the rest; the passion for reality, for worship in spirit and in truth, for being what we adore, for doing what we know to be God's word; the loyalty that exacts the living sacrifice, the whole burnt-offering that is our reasonable service, and in our coldest hours keeps steadfast to what seemed good when we were aglow.

J. H. THOM.

July 24

_Walk worthy of God, who hath called you unto His kingdom and glory_.--I THESS. ii. 12.

_Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not_.--GEN. xxviii. 16.

Thou earnest not to thy place by accident,
It is the very place God meant for thee;
And shouldst thou there small scope for action see,
Do not for this give room to discontent.

R. C. TRENCH.

Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.

R. W. EMERSON.

Adapt thyself to the things with which thy lot has been cast; and love the men with whom it is thy portion to live, and that with a sincere affection. No longer be either dissatisfied with thy present lot, or shrink from the future.

MARCUS ANTONINUS.

I love best to have each thing in its season, doing without it at all other times. I have never got over my surprise that I should have been born into the most estimable place in all the world, and in the very nick of time too.

H. D. THOREAU.

July 25

_He knoweth the way that I take_.--JOB xxiii. 10.

_Man's goings are of the Lord; how can a man then understand his own way_?--PROV. xx. 24.

Be quiet, why this anxious heed
About thy tangled ways?
God knows them all, He giveth speed,
And He allows delays.

E. W.

We complain of the slow, dull life we are forced to lead, of our humble sphere of action, of our low position in the scale of society, of our having no room to make ourselves known, of our wasted energies, of our years of patience. So do we say that we have no Father who is directing our life; so do we say that God has forgotten us; so do we boldly judge what life is best for us, and so by our complaining do we lose the use and profit of the quiet years. O men of little faith! Because you are not sent out yet into your labor, do you think God has ceased to remember you? Because you are forced to be outwardly inactive, do you think you, also, may not be, in your years of quiet, "about your Father's business"? It is a period given to us in which to mature ourselves for the work which God will give us to do.

STOPFORD A. BROOKE.

July 26

_They that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever. As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people from henceforth even for ever_.--PS. cxxv. I, 2.

How on a rock they stand,
Who watch His eye, and hold His guiding hand!
Not half so fixed amid her vassal hills,
Rises the holy pile that Kedron's valley fills.

J. KEBLE.

That is the way to be immovable in the midst of troubles, as a rock amidst the waves. When God is in the midst of a kingdom or city, He makes it firm as Mount Sion, that cannot be removed. When He is in the midst of a soul, though calamities throng about it on all hands, and roar like the billows of the sea, yet there is a constant calm within, such a peace as the world can neither give nor take away. What is it but want of lodging God in the soul, and that in His stead the world is in men's hearts, that makes them shake like leaves at every blast of danger?

R. LEIGHTON.

July 27

_He that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty_.--MATT. xiii. 23.

Then bless thy secret growth, nor catch
At noise, but thrive unseen and dumb;
Keep clean, bear fruit, earn life, and watch
Till the white-winged reapers come.

H. VAUGHAN.

He does not need to transplant us into a different field, but right where we are, with just the circumstances that surround us, He makes His sun to shine and His dew to fall upon us, and transforms the very things that were before our greatest hindrances, into the chiefest and most blessed means of our growth. No difficulties in your case can baffle Him. No dwarfing of your growth in years that are past, no apparent dryness of your inward springs of life, no crookedness or deformity in any of your past development, can in the least mar the perfect work that He will accomplish, if you will only put yourselves absolutely into His hands, and let Him have His own way with you.

H. W. SMITH.

July 28

_But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope_.--I THESS. iv. 13.

Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust
(Since He who knows our need is just),
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.
Alas for him who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress trees;
Who hath not learned in hours of faith,
The truth to flesh and sense unknown,
That life is ever Lord of Death,
And Love can never lose its own.

J. G. WHITTIER.

While we poor wayfarers still toil, with hot and bleeding feet, along the highway and the dust of life, our companions have but mounted the divergent path, to explore the more sacred streams, and visit the diviner vales, and wander amid the everlasting Alps, of God's upper province of creation. And so we keep up the courage of our hearts, and refresh ourselves with the memories of love, and travel forward in the ways of duty, with less weary step, feeling ever for the hand of God, and listening for the domestic voices of the immortals whose happy welcome waits us. Death, in short, under the Christian aspect, is but God's method of colonization; the transition from this mother-country of our race to the fairer and newer world of our emigration.

J. MARTINEAU.

July 29

_But this I say, brethren, the time is short_.--I COR. vii. 29.

I sometimes feel the thread of life is slender,
And soon with me the labor will be wrought;
Then grows my heart to other hearts more tender.
The time is short.