Daily Strength for Daily Needs | Page 5

16, 17.
When sorrow all our heart would ask, We need not shun our daily task, And hide ourselves for calm; The herbs we seek to heal our woe Familiar by our pathway grow, Our common air is balm.
J. KEBLE.
Oh, when we turn away from some duty or some fellow-creature, saying that our hearts are too sick and sore with some great yearning of our own, we may often sever the line on which a divine message was coming to us. We shut out the man, and we shut out the angel who had sent him on to open the door. There is a plan working in our lives; and if we keep our hearts quiet and our eyes open, it all works together; and, if we don't, it all rights together, and goes on fighting till it comes right, somehow, somewhere.
ANNIE KEARY.

January 17
_Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: but rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings_.--I PETER iv. 12, 13.
We take with solemn thankfulness Our burden up, nor ask it less, And count it joy that even we May suffer, serve, or wait for Thee, Whose will be done!
J. G. WHITTIER.
Receive every inward and outward trouble, every disappointment, pain, uneasiness, temptation, darkness, and desolation, with both thy hands, as a true opportunity and blessed occasion of dying to self, and entering into a fuller fellowship with thy self-denying, suffering Saviour. Look at no inward or outward trouble in any other view; reject every other thought about it; and then every kind of trial and distress will become the blessed day of thy prosperity. That state is best, which exerciseth the highest faith in, and fullest resignation to God.
WM. LAW.

January 18
_Thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which the Lord thy God hath given unto thee_.--DEUT. XXVI. 11.
Rejoice evermore. In everything give thanks.--I THESS. v. 16, 18.
Grave on thy heart each past "red-letter day"! Forget not all the sunshine of the way By which the Lord hath led thee; answered prayers, And joys unasked, strange blessings, lifted cares, Grand promise-echoes! Thus thy life shall be One record of His love and faithfulness to thee.
F. R. HAVERGAL.
Gratitude consists in a watchful, minute attention to the particulars of our state, and to the multitude of God's gifts, taken one by one. It fills us with a consciousness that God loves and cares for us, even to the least event and smallest need of life. It is a blessed thought, that from our childhood God has been laying His fatherly hands upon us, and always in benediction; that even the strokes of His hands are blessings, and among the chiefest we have ever received. When this feeling is awakened, the heart beats with a pulse of thankfulness. Every gift has its return of praise. It awakens an unceasing daily converse with our Father,--He speaking to us by the descent of blessings, we to Him by the ascent of thanksgiving. And all our whole life is thereby drawn under the light of His countenance, and is filled with a gladness, serenity, and peace which only thankful hearts can know.
H. E. MANNING.

January 19
Let the heart of them rejoice that seek the Lord.--PS. cv. 3.
The joy of the Lord is your strength.--NEH. viii. 10.
Be Thou my Sun, my selfishness destroy, Thy atmosphere of Love be all my joy; Thy Presence be my sunshine ever bright, My soul the little mote that lives but in Thy light.
GERHARD TERSTEEGEN.
I do not know when I have had happier times in my soul, than when I have been sitting at work, with nothing before me but a candle and a white cloth, and hearing no sound but that of my own breath, with God in my soul and heaven in my eye... I rejoice in being exactly what I am,--a creature capable of loving God, and who, as long as God lives, must be happy. I get up and look for a while out of the window, and gaze at the moon and stars, the work of an Almighty hand. I think of the grandeur of the universe, and then sit down, and think myself one of the happiest beings in it.
A POOR METHODIST WOMAN, 18TH CENTURY.

January 20
_The Lord taketh pleasure In His people: He will beautify the meek with salvation_.--PS. cxlix. 4.
Long listening to Thy words, My voice shall catch Thy tone, And, locked in Thine, my hand shall grow All loving like Thy own.
B. T.
It is not in words explicable, with what divine lines and lights the exercise of godliness and charity will mould and gild the hardest and coldest countenance, neither to what darkness their departure will consign the loveliest. For there is not any virtue the exercise of which,