God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. O God within, so close to me Be Judge, be Friend, be Father still, Thy heaven is mine,- my very soul! They fill my inward silences With music and with song. WILLIAM C. GANNETT IF F ever anything has been made certain, through human experience, through the labor of men's thought, and through revelations from on high, it is certain that a spiritual and holy life, of conscious communion with our heavenly Father, is, beyond all comparison, the happiest and most blessed life. Nothing which the senses can give of pleasure, none of the higher enjoyments of literature and art, neither the happiness of discovering truth nor the joys of friendship, not even the sacred glow of love, can equal the blessedness of that man who has a perfect trust in God, and who walks constantly conscious of his presence and his love. THOMAS HILL The Lord of hosts is with us. As silent as the sun-gleam in the forest, PSALM xlvi. 7. And subtler than the sun-lift in the leaf-bud, And stronger than the strength that plants the mountains, WILLIAM C. GANNETT HERE are wonders of God upon the earth TH in yet unbroken loneliness; things which the eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, lavished in the very profusion of unbounded power, in the exhaustless abundance and wealth of omnipotence. There are floods of sunshine flung over the broad sweep of untrodden deserts; gorgeous foliage and eternal bloom, clothing the wilderness of virgin woods. There are rivers that wander over voiceless regions; there are beautiful but unnoted shores, washed only by the ocean wave, cheered only by the music of the storm. There are spots of Paradise lovely in their solitude, which the day-beams and the moon-light alone look upon. There are unprofaned cataracts by which Nature, in her deep retreats, hymns the anthems of lonely praise. And so it is with the good man's soul; it has glory in its secret places; it has joy in its hidden depths; it has light where no man intrudes; it has peace which passeth understanding and passeth utterance; it has majesty and bliss where only its own thoughts with the spirit of its God reposes. ANONYMOUS It is he that made both small and great, WISDOM OF SOLOMON vi. 7. Oh, import deep as life is, deep as time! Take heart, O soul of sorrow, and be strong: O men that forge the fetter, it is vain: EDWIN MARKHAM THE persistence of faith, despite the lack of outward proof, is a divine demonstration of Something that throws on the human mind a reflection which, like an image on a screen, cannot be accounted for unless it be itself the substance of things hoped for and evidence of things not seen. Until we reach the reality, let us rest in the sign. BARTOL One truth must grow ever clearer the truth that there is an Inscrutable Existence everywhere manifested, to which he (the man of science) can neither find nor conceive beginning or end. Amid the mysteries which become the more mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain the one absolute certainty, that he is ever in presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed. HERBERT SPENCER I am ready to give, as often before, the first simple foundation of my belief, that the Author of Nature has not left himself without a witness in any sane mind: that the moral sentiment speaks to every man the law after which the Universe was made; that we find parity, identity of design, through Nature, and benefit to be the uniform aim that there is a force always at work to make the best better and the worst good. : EMERSON Man, forever feeding on the unknown, is the mysterious guest of God in the universe. We cannot believe that, the hospitality of the infinite Housekeeper becoming exhausted, he will ever blow out the lights and quench the guests. WILLIAM R. ALGER Week Second SEEKING AFTER GOD Prelude THE INDWELLING GOD "O that I knew where I might find him!" For not in far-off realms of space Thought answereth alone to thought, Who finds not God within. |