My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year | Page 8

when our hearts cease to beat. "The evil that men
do lives after them," and so does the good. But deeper than our deeds,

our dominant dispositions persist and mingle as friends or enemies in
the lives of others. By them we, being dead, still speak, and we speak in
subtle forces which aid or hinder other pilgrims who are fighting their
way to God and heaven.

JANUARY The Twenty-fifth
FIRST, MY BROTHER!
MATTHEW v. 17-24.
"First be reconciled to thy brother." We are to put first things first.
When we bring a gift unto the Lord He looks at the hand that brings it.
If the hand is defiled the gift is rejected. "Wash you, make you clean."
"First be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift."
All this tells us why some resplendent gifts are rejected, and why some
commonplace gifts are received amid heavenly song. This is why the
widow's mite goes shining through the years. The hand that offered it
was hallowed and purified with sacrifice. Shall we say that in that palm
there was something akin to the pierced hands of the Lord? The mite
had intimate associations with the Cross.
And it also tells me why so much of our public worship is offensive to
our Lord. We come to the church from a broken friendship. Some holy
thing has been broken on the way. Someone's estate has been invaded,
and his treasure spoiled. Someone has been wronged, and God will not
touch our gift. "Leave there thy gift; first be reconciled to thy brother."

JANUARY The Twenty-sixth
THE FIRE OF ENVY
"Where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work!"
--JAMES iii. 13-18.

In Milton's "Comus" we read of a certain potion which has the power to
pervert all the senses of everyone who drinks it. Nothing is
apprehended truly. Sight and hearing and taste are all disordered, and
the victim is all unconscious of the confusion. The deadly draught is
the minister of deceptive chaos.
And envy is like that potion when it is drunk by the spirit. It perverts
every moral and spiritual sense. The envious is more fatally stricken
than the blind. He gazes upon untruth and thinks it true. He looks upon
confusion and thinks it order. Envy is colour-blind. It is like jealousy,
of which it is a blood-relation. It never sees anything in its natural hues.
It misinterprets everything.
No one can quench the unholy fire of envy but the mighty God Himself.
It is like a prairie fire: once kindled it is beyond our power to stamp it
out. But God's coolness is more than a match for all our feverish heat.
His quenchings are transformations. He converts the perverted and
changes envy into goodwill. The bitter pool is made sweet. For
confusion He gives order, for ashes He gives beauty, and in the face of
an old enemy we see the countenance of a friend.

JANUARY The Twenty-seventh
THE CONFESSION OF SIN
"I acknowledge my transgressions; and my sin is ever before me."
--PSALM li. 1-12.
Sin that is unconfessed shuts out the energies of grace. Confession
makes the soul receptive of the bountiful waters of life. We open the
door to God as soon as we name our sin. Guilt that is penitently
confessed is already in the "consuming fire" of God's love. When I
"acknowledge my sin" I begin to enter into the knowledge of "pardon,
joy, and peace." But if I hide my sin I also hide myself from "the
unsearchable riches of Christ." "If we confess our sins He is faithful
and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all

unrighteousness."
I must then make confession of sin in my daily exercises in the
presence of the Lord. I am taking the way to recovered victory when I
tell the Lord the story of my defeat. Satan strengthens his awful chains
when he can induce me to keep silence concerning my sin. All his plans
are thrown into confusion as soon as I "pour out my soul before the
Lord." When I fall let me not add to my guilt the further sin of secrecy.
Unconfessed sin breeds in its lurking-place and multiplies its hateful
offspring. The soul that makes confession is washed through and
through, and the seeds of iniquity are driven out of my soul.

JANUARY The Twenty-eighth
CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANGER
EPHESIANS iv. 25-32.
"Let all anger be put away from you." And yet only a moment ago the
Apostle had written the words, "Be ye angry and sin not." My power of
anger is not to be destroyed, it is to be transformed and purified. Anger
can be like an unclean bonfire; it can also