MEDITATION XVIII.

"The earth is mine and the fulness thereof."

I NEED not your vain oblations, exclaims the Lord of Sabbaoth, when reproving the formal services of Israel, while their hearts were far from him.

Let no consideration of advantage lead you to do an evil thing, and in all your good actions have one desire only, the glory of God. This alone sanctifies our will, and the springs whereby it moves; and God measures our actions by the dispositions of the heart, not by the worth or quality of the gift. "If ye give but a cup of cold water in my name, verily ye shall have your reward." 66 Charity seeks not her own." Charity looks upon God as the source of all good, and longs to be embraced in that immense ocean of blessedness.

To the Christian thus influenced all things are God's; he takes no merit to himself for the most noble acts of self-denial, for the will to do, and the gifts themselves, come

from God, who is the only, the universal good, which should kindle within us the love of heaven and spiritual joys, and convince us that nothing earthly is worthy of our affections.

"Behold the happy earth rejoice;
Around the world a Saviour's voice
Proclaims the word of love;
The reign of vice and pain is o'er,
Warfare and strife can rage no more,
Nor sin our virtue move."

MEDITATION XIX.

"Bear ye one another's burdens."

WHEN any trial or infirmity becomes a trouble and provocation to us, we should beware of being betrayed into impatience or sinful resistance; for it may possibly be wiser and better for us, that they should not be amended. They may be intended for our spiritual improvement, and for the trial of our temper and humility; and our duty is to pray that they may be no hindrance in our Christian course, and to implore the divine aid to direct us. Let us not comment on the deeds of our neighbor, but properly consider our own; let us forget the faults of others and remember our own. Let us love our neighbor as ourselves, in compassion veiling his frailties, and forgiving all cause of anger and resentment toward him, for Christ's sake.

God, who gave us the law, points out hourly calls for us to practise it, and furnishes us with constant occasions for bearing each other's burdens.

No man is so happy as never to give offence; no man without his load of trouble; no man so sufficient as never to need assistance, or so wise as never to need advice. Let us, therefore, comfort, relieve, instruct bear with, and love each other. Nothing that happens to us from without is a sure criterion of our having done well or ill. Adversity does not make virtue or vice, but draws them into action; it does not change the

man from what he was, but only discovers what he really is.

MEDITATION XX.

"Confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims."

HE, who retires from the world to improve himself in the knowledge and love of God, must learn how to subdue and deny himself. How few understand, and how much fewer practise, this important feature of the Christian life. The cultivation and gratification of the senses; the honor and esteem of men are the trifles which engross too much of our attention till death opens to us an eternity.

Christ had no will but that of his heavenly Father, no desire but the salvation of

mankind. His life was all goodness and self-denial; and while the foxes had holes and the birds of the air had nests, the Son of Man had not where to lay his head.

If then we would aspire to a perfect union with God, we must feel that we are only strangers and pilgrims on the earth. We must renounce for God and for heaven the esteem and the enjoyments of the world.