"Quiet from God! how beautiful to keep

This treasure the All-Merciful hath given,
To feel, when we awake and when we sleep,
Its incense round us, like a breath from heaven!

"To sojourn in the world, and yet apart,

To dwell with God and still with man to feel; To bear about forever in the heart

The gladness which his spirit doth reveal!"

From the constitution of the human mind we see how it is that all great moral natures instinctively turn inwards; and that by their native thirst for divine knowledge are carried to the fountains of self-knowledge. There it is in the secret glades of thought and motive that the springs of life arise, and the distinctive lights and shadows of good and ill are seen to play; and thither is the soul invariably led by the genius of duty. * * Meditative selfknowledge is the true school of reverence, of sympathy, of hope, and of immovable humility, for there we see, side by side, what we are and what we ought to be; for there, too, we meet spirit to spirit the Almighty Holiness that lifts us to himself.―[Martineau.]

He stands strong who keeps a pure conscience. He who has cast out the last bosom sin, and said with truth, "I will strive to give an unreserved obedience to God," has little to fear in life, and nothing in death. Peace attends him alike in palaces and in dungeons. The only two powers that could greatly mar his peace are his friends, his conscience and his God.-[E. Peabody.]

Lord, with what courage and delight
I do each thing,

When thy least breath sustains my wings!

I shine and move,

Like those above,

And, with much gladness,

Quitting sadness,

Make me fair days of every night.

[Vaughan.]

O God, it is not to know thee, to regard thee only as an all-powerful being, who gives laws to all nature and who has created everything which we see; it is only to know a part of thy being; it is not to know that which is most wonderful and most affecting to thy rational offspring. That which transports and melts my soul is to know that thou art the God of my heart. Thou doest there thy good pleasure. Thou art ever with me,-when I do wrong, reproaching me with the evil which I commit, inspiring me with regret for the good which I have forsaken, and with outstretched arms offering me pardon. I call to my mind all the wonders of nature that I may form some image of thy glory. I ask for knowledge of thee from thy creatures, and I forget to seek for thee in the depths of my own soul where thou ever art. We need not ascend to heaven to find thee; thou art nearer to us than we are to ourselves. [Parker.]

God, the great, the holy, is everywhere. It is impossible not to find him. We have him here, out under the broad arch of heaven, and we have him in our own hearts.

[Auerbach.]

We e are free to walk hither and thither on the field of existence; yet there is on us a divine constraint that is invisible and unfelt, but which guides us in the direction of its own ends. Are there not some positions in which we feel sure that we have been divinely brought? Sternly we may have been guided into them; but if divinely, too, then cannot we wait in them, patiently, expectantly, our hands clasped and our eyes on God?-[Mountford.]

We need the doctrine of a present forgiveness of sin, to create in the soul a sense of the immediate love of God. We need to feel that God gives us forgiveness now,-not that he will give it to us hereafter. We need to be reconciled and made at one with him before we can have the strength necessary to enable us to work out our salvation. The New Testament motive is not "Do good that you may be forgiven," but Do good because you have been forgiven.-[J. F. Clarke.]

"To carry with us the thought of God in every employment and entertainment of the day,-this is to walk with God. In reading, in study, in working with the hands, in walks and drives, to keep fresh the thought and presence of God, is to bring the divine into our lives."

"And though we turn us from thy face,

And wander wide and long,

Thou hold'st us still in thy embrace,

O love of God most strong."

As calls the deep to deep in nature's realm,
The ocean's wave to ocean's wave afar-

The feeblest light that shines, to full-orbed star-
So calls my soul far down in depths unseen,
To Thee, who sit'st above the flood serene-
To Thee, the source eternal pure and bright,
Who givest songs amid the gloom of night—
To Thee, who call'st thine own to heights above,
To infinite, unfathomed, joyous love.

[N. A. Prince.]

To whom shall a man, whom the blessed God has made, look for what he likes best, but to that blessed God? If we have been indeed enabled to see that God is our Father, as the Lord taught us, let us advance from that truth to understand that he is far more than father, that his nearness to us is beyond the embodiment of the highest idea of father; that the fatherhood of God is but a step towards the Godhood for those that can receive it. * * Our God, we will trust thee. Shall we not find thee equal to our faith? One day we shall laugh ourselves to scorn that we looked for so little from thee; for thy giving will not be limited by our hoping.

Ah, Lord! be thou in all our being; as not in the Sundays of our time alone, so not in the chamber of our hearts alone. We dare not think that thou canst not, carest not; that some things are not for thy beholding, some questions not to be asked of thee. For are we not all thine, utterly thine? That which a man speaks not to his fellow, we speak to thee. Our very passions we hold up to thee, and say, "Behold, Lord! think about us, for thou hast made us.”—[McDonald.]

There is a living faith by which a man realizes God as the king of his innermost heart, as the presence and spirit who moves in all his action and all his suffering, as the Father, loving, good and just, who is educating him hour by hour, day by day, into perfection. This is the ennobling faith of life. It is the origin of the highest aspiration, self-devotion and strength. Out of it have arisen the noblest human lives. It is the power of appropriating God.-[Brooke.]

We never keep so true a watch over our ways as when we walk as in God's presence. * The realization of God's presence is the one sovereign remedy against temptation. It is that which sustains us, consoles us, and calms us. * * * It is not by constraint or by painful effort that we make real progress. On the contrary, it is simply a question of yielding up our will, of going from day to day whithersoever God may lead us, discouraged by nothing, satisfied with the present moment, thankful to let him do all who has made all, and to leave our own will immovable within his will. How happy is it to abide in this condition! How satisfied is the heart, even though it may lack all else!--[Fenelon.]

God's thoughts are not as our thoughts. Dear as our happiness is to him, there is nothing within us which is more precious in his sight. It is of far less consequence, in any divine estimate of things, how much a man suffers, than what the man is.-[Rev. Austin Phelps.]

To attain God, the heart must be lowly.-[Hindu.]