SELECTED BY CHANCELLOR J. H. VINCENT, D. D.

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[February 1.]

I find David making a syllogism, in mood and figure, two propositions he perfected.

Now I expected that David should have concluded thus:

But far otherwise he concludes:

Thus David hath deceived, but not wronged me. I looked that he should have clapped the crown on his own, and he puts it on God’s head. I will learn this excellent logic, for I like David’s better than Aristotle’s syllogisms, that, whatsoever the premises be, I make God’s glory the conclusion.

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Young King Jehoash had only a lease of piety, and not for his own, but his uncle’s life (2 Kings xii:2): He did that which was right in the sight of the Lord all his days, wherein Jehoiada the priest instructed him.

Jehu was good in the midst of his life, and a zealous reformer to the utter abolishing of Baal out of Israel, but in his old age (2 Kings x:31) he returned to the politic sins of Jeroboam, worshiping the calves in Dan and Bethel.

Manasseh was bad in the beginning and middle of his life, filling Jerusalem with idolatry; only toward the end thereof, when carried into a strange land, he came home to himself and destroyed the profane altars he had erected.

These three put together make one perfect servant of God. Take the morning and rise with Jehoash, the noon and shine with Jehu, the night and set with Manasseh. Begin with youth-Jehoash, continue with man-Jehu, conclude with old-man-Manasseh, and all put together will spell one good Christian, yea, one good, perfect performer.

Constantly pray to God, that in his due time he would speak peace to thee.… Prayers negligently performed draw a curse, but not prayers weakly performed. The former is when one can do better, and will not; the latter is when one would do better, but, alas! he can not.…

Be diligent in reading the word of God, wherein all comfort is contained.… Thou hast a great journey to go, a wounded conscience has far to travel to find comfort (and though weary shall be welcome at his journey’s end), and therefore must feed on God’s word, even against his own dull disposition, and shall afterward reap benefit thereby.…

Be industrious in thy calling; I press this the more because some erroneously conceive that a wounded conscience cancels all indentures of service, and gives them (during their affliction) a dispensation to be idle.

Let none in like manner pretend that (during the agony of a wounded conscience) they are to have no other employment than to sit moping, to brood over their melancholy, or else only to attend their devotion; whereas a good way to divert or assuage their pain within is to take pains without in their vocation. I am confident, that happy minute which shall put a period to thy misery shall not find thee idle, but employed, as some ever secret good is accruing to such who are diligent in their calling.—Fuller.[1]

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[February 8.]

The Deity is intended to be the everlasting field of the human intellect, as well as the everlasting object of the human heart, the everlasting portion of all holy and happy minds, who are destined to spend a blissful but ever active eternity in the contemplation of his glory.… He will forever remain “the unknown God.” We shall ever be conscious that we know little compared with what remains to be known of him; that our most rapturous and lofty songs fall infinitely short of his excellence. If we stretch our powers to the uttermost, we shall never exhaust his praise, never render him adequate honor, never discharge the full amount of claim which he possesses upon our veneration, obedience, and gratitude. When we have loved him with the greatest favor, our love will still be cold compared with his title to our devoted attachment. This will render him the continual source of fresh delight to all eternity. His perfection will be an abyss never to be fathomed; there will be depths in his excellence which we shall never be able to penetrate. We shall delight in losing ourselves in his infinity. An unbounded prospect will be extended before us; looking forward through the vista of interminable ages we shall find a blissful occupation for our faculties, which can never end; while those faculties will retain their vigor unimpaired, flourish in the bloom of perpetual youth, … and the full consciousness remain that the Being whom we contemplate can never be found out to perfection … that he may always add to the impression of what we know, by throwing a veil of indefinite obscurity over his character. The shades in which he will forever conceal himself will have the same tendency to excite our adoring wonder as the effulgence of his glory; the depths in which he will retire from our view, the recesses of his wisdom and power as the open paths of his manifestation. Were we capable of comprehending the Deity, devotion would not be the sublimest employment to which we can attain. In the contemplation of such a Being we are in no danger of going beyond our subject; we are conversing with an infinite object, … in the depths of whose essence and purposes we are forever lost. This will probably give all the emotions of freshness and astonishment to the raptures of beatific vision, and add a delightful zest to the devotions of eternity. This will enable the Divine Being to pour in continually fresh accessions of light; to unfold new views of his character, disclose new parts of his perfection, open new mansions of himself, in which the mind will have ample room to expatiate. Thus shall we learn, to eternity, that, so far from exhausting his infinite fullness, there still remain infinite recesses in his nature unexplored—scenes in his counsels never brought before the view of his creatures; that we know but “parts of his ways;” and that instead of exhausting our theme, we are not even approaching nearer to the comprehension of the Eternal All. It is the mysteriousness of God, the inscrutability of his essence, the shade in which he is invested, that will excite those peculiar emotions which nothing but transcendent perfection and unspeakable grandeur can inspire.—Robert Hall.[2]

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[February 15.]

We need not go far to seek the materials for an acceptable offering; they lie all around us in the work of our callings, in the little calls which divine Providence daily makes to us, in the little crosses which God requires us to take up, nay, in our very recreations. The great point is to have the mind set upon seeing and seeking in all things the service of Christ and the glory of God, and, lo! every trifling incident which that mind touches, every piece of work which it handles, every dispensation to which it submits becomes a sacrifice.

If we allow the beauties of nature to raise our heart to God, we turn that into a sacrifice. If cross incidents, which could not be avoided or averted, are taken sweetly and lovingly, out of homage to the living will of God, this, too, is a sacrifice. If work be done in the full view of God’s assignment of our several tasks and spheres of labor, and under the consciousness of his presence, however secular in its character, it immediately becomes fit for presentation on the altar. If refreshment and amusement are so moderated as to help the spirit instead of dissipating it, if they are to be seasoned with the wholesome salt of self-denial (for every sacrifice must be seasoned with salt) they, too, become a holy oblation. If we study even perverse characters, with a loving hope and belief that we shall find something of God and Christ in them, which may be made the nucleus of better things, and instead of shutting ourselves up in a narrow sphere of sympathies, seek out and try to develop the good points of a generally uncongenial spirit; if we treat men as Christ treated them, counting that somewhere in every one there is a better mind, and the trace of God’s finger in creation, we may thus possibly sanctify an hour which would else be one of irksome constraint, and after which we might have been oppressed with a heavy feeling that it had been a wasted one. If a small trifle, destined to purchase some personal luxury or comfort, be diverted to a charitable and religious end, this is the regular and standing sacrifice of alms, recognized by the Scripture and the Liturgy. And finally, if we regard our time as, next to Christ, and the Holy Spirit, the most precious gift of God; if we gather up the fragments and interstices of it in a thrifty and religious manner, and employ them in some exercise of devotion or some good and useful work, this, too, becomes a tribute which God will surely accept with complacency, if laid upon his altar and united by faith and a devout intention with the one Sacrifice of our dear Lord.

Yes; if laid upon his altar; let us never forget or drop out of sight that proviso. It is the altar, and the altar alone, which sanctifieth the gift. Apart from Christ and his perfect sacrifice, an acceptable gift is an impossibility for man. For at best our gifts have in them the sinfulness of our nature; they are miserably flawed by defectiveness of motive, duplicity of aim, infirmity of will. “The prayers of all saints,” what force of interpretation must they have with God, if, as we are sure, “the effectual, fervent prayer of a” (single) “righteous man availeth much!” Yet when St. John saw in a vision “the prayers of all saints” offered “upon the golden altar which was before the throne,” it was in union with that which alone can perfume the tainted offsprings of even the regenerate man. “There was given unto him much increase, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which is before the throne.”

The increase is the intercession of Jesus. Place your offering, be it prayer or alms, deed or work, or submission—in his hands for presentation; pray him, as your only priest, to transact for you with God, and he will do so. And the sense of God’s favor shall shine out upon thy offering; and the dew of his blessing shall descend upon it, and ye shall be gladdened with your Father’s smile.—Goulburn.[3]

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[February 22.]

Heaven, as a place of residence and state of enjoyment, should always be viewed in contrast with earth. This is a state of pupilage and probation, that of dignity and promotion. Here is conflict, there victory. This is the race, that the goal. Here we suffer, there we reign. Here we are in exile, there at home. On earth we are strangers and pilgrims, in heaven fellow citizens with the saints; and, released from the strife and turmoil, the bitterness and regrets of earth, are incorporated forever with the household of God.

This is triumph! How striking the contrast! How must earth and its trials be lost sight of in such a vision! How must this contrast strengthen the ties of confidence, and kindle the ardor of devotion!

What did Moses care for the perils of the wilderness, when, from the storm-defying steep of Pisgah, he viewed the land of promise, imaging forth the green fields of heaven’s eternal spring! Look at Elijah, the immortal Tishbite, exchanging the sighs and solitude of his juniper shade, for wheels of fire and steeds of wind that bore him home to God! Look at Paul—poor, periled and weary, amid the journeyings and conflicts of his mission: the hand that once stretched the strong eastern tent, or wore the dungeon’s chain, now sweeps in boldest strain the harps of heaven.… Look at the Christian of apostolic and early times, exchanging the clanking of his chains and the curses of his jailor—the dungeon’s den and martyr’s stake—for the notes of gladness and lofty anthem pealing from lute and harp, bedecked with eternal amaranth! The load of chain with which he went out to meet the descending car of his triumph, with its angel escort, was a richer dowry than the jewels of empire! The taper that flickered in the dungeon of the sainted hero shot a ray more glorious than ever spoke the splendor of the full-orbed moon! What are the crowns or the diadems of all this world’s masters or CÆsars, compared with the prospects of such an expectant!

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Christians! what need we care, although on earth we were so poor and low we had nor purse nor pillow; so few and trodden down we had no power; and hamlets, huts and grottoes were the places where we wept and prayed; if these are to be exchanged for a residence amid the jaspers and chrysolites, the emeralds and sapphires of the heavenly Jerusalem!

What though soiled by the dust of toil or damp with the dungeon’s dew—struggling amid tattered want along our lone and periled path—when even here we find ourselves invested with glory in the night of our being, and sustained by hopes guiding and pointing us to the temple hymn and the heavenly harp above! …—Bascom.[4]

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