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March 16 —-“Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord” (Ex. 14: 13). Often God seems to place His children in positions of profound difficulty—lead ing them into a wedge from which there is no escape; contriving a situation which no human judgment would have permit ted, had it been previously consulted. The very cloud conducts them thither. You may be thus involved at this very hour. It does seem perplexing and very serious to the last degree; but it is perfectly right. The issue will more than justify Him who has brought you hither. It is a platform for the display of His almighty grace and power. He will not only deliver you, but in doing so He will give you a lesson ■that you will never forget; and to which, in many a psalm and song in after days, you will revert. You will never be able to thank God enough for having done just as He has.— F. B. Meyer. —o— March 17—“ Who maketh the clouds His ■ chariot” (Psa. 104:3). God’s way is often in the deep. Dark ■clouds are His chariot. He disappoints and whelms the soul in billows that seem for the time to have quenched every ray of light. Then we need the steady grasp ■of faith upon the unseen paternal Hand. Then we need a bright page of memory and of experience within, upon which we can read, “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee.” This will bring a gleam of comfort into the soul, and it will know how to glory in tribula tions for Christ’s sake, and to endure “as seeing Him who is invisible .”—Owen Streef. —o— March 18 —‘‘Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy presence” (Psa. 31:20). Is, it possible to move through life with the heart far away in the untroubled peace of God’s presence, while all around the actual person the air is 'filled with clamor, wrath, backbiting, and envy? Yes, it is gloriously possible to be imper vious to such subtle attacks of the enemy! Around one there may be every variety of bad temper and irritability, yet one passes through it all with-unruffled calm, meekly bowing before the storm, and with tbe precious peace and patience of Christ, be cause the heart is far away, resting in the innermost pavilion of the Lord’s own house, hidden so deeply in Him that tbe angry babel without cannot be heard.— Homera Homer-Dixon. —o— March 19 —“The matter of the day in his day” (Ezra 3:4, Margin). The matter often is that we take or try to take the “matter” of tomorrow in to day. The world’s people who live in time, must look out and plan ahead, but those 1 who are Christ’s live in eternity; that is God’s business. He gives us an eternal “now” to live in, and He lives also in the same period of eternity. Therefore mo ment by moment only, are we to live, trusting in Him to live it in us. Classed with surfeiting and drunkenness are the “cares of this life.” “Take heed to your selves lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunk
enness and cares of this life” (Luke 21: 34). How are we to be restful and with out the anxious care for the morrow? 1. By recognizing Him as the head, that He has the responsibility of the morrow. 2. By realizing that these are but passing days and no great stress is to be laid on permanent outcomes here. 3. By rolling all your care on Him, for He cares, and you only care to please Him. Thou blessed burden-Bearer, just for today do Thou take the care, and as the moments come and go, do Thou fill them with Thy self .—Louise Shepard. “I do not know what God has planned to come to me today; I only know that He has promised me to be my stay, And that His hand has mapped out all the way That I must go. I do not know the road o’er which my feet must run the race, But I do know tho’ rough it be, tho’ • steep in many a place, That He has said, ‘Sufficient is my grace,’ As on I go.” —o— March 20 —“He openeth, and no man shutteth” (Rev. 3:7). God hath a thousand keys to open a thousand doors for the deliverance of His own when it has come to the greatest ex tremity. When our faith goeth to med dle with events, and beginneth to say “How wilt Thou do this or that?” we lose ground. We have nothing to do there; it is our part to let the Almighty exer cise His own office and steer His own helm .”—Samuel Rutherford. I recommend this to you in your prayer-life. Make great use of the Four Gospels. Think that you are living in Jerusalem. Think that you are one of the Twelve. Think that you are one of those amazing people who had Jesus in tbeir streets, and in their homes every day. And fall down before Him as they did. Speak to Him as they did. Show Him your palsies and your leprosies as they did. Fol low Him about, telling Him about your sons and daughters as they did. Tell Him that you have a child nigh unto death as they did. Wash His feet with your tears, and wipe them with the hair of your head, as they did. Work your way through the Four Gospels, from end to end; and all the time, with a great exercise of faith, believe that He is as much with you as He was with Simon the leper, and with the Syro-Phoenician woman, and with Mary Magdalene, and with Lazarus who had been four days dead, and with the thief on the cross. Read and believe, and pray. Fall at His feet. Look up in His face. Put your finger on the very place, and ask Him if that is really true . . . . And the more pure, and naked, and abso lute faith you put in Him, and into your prayer,—-the more will He take pleasure in you, till He will say to you: “O woman! woman! I have not found so great faith, no, not in all Israel. Be it unto tbee and unto thy daughter, even as thou wilt.” “I came to this at last,” says a great Scot tish saint—“that I would not rise and go March 21 —“She came and worshiped Him, saying, Lord, help me” (Matt. IS: 25).
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