Ninth Day.

"GIVE not sleep to thine eyes, nor slumber to thine eyelids.

"Work while the day lasts, for the night cometh in the which no man can work."

Life is but a short day; but it is a working day. Activity may lead to evil, but inactivity cannot be led to good. Can any man be faithful in much who is faithless in a little?

"T is God the Spirit leads,
In paths before unknown;
The work to be performed is ours;
The strength is all his own.

Tenth Day.

"FOR he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption: but he that soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting."

The law of retribution is the law of God's goodness. It addresses not only the fear of sin, but the love of improvement. Its grand requisition is that of progress. It urges us at every step to press foward. And however many steps we may have taken, it urges us still to take another and another, by the same pressing reason with which it urged us to take the first step.

The tissue of the life to be

We weave with colors all our own,

And in the field of Destiny

We reap as we have sown.

Eleventh Day.

"He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away."

They that are filled with the pleasures of the world are not capable of the delights of the spirit. If you have been capable to preserve the fruits of the consolations which you have received, you shall receive new ones; for to him that hath, more shall be given; but he that hath not kept, but lost what was given him, through his own fault, shall never receive those graces which had been prepared for him.

Up! and take thy shield and sword;
Up! it is the call of Heaven;
Shrink not faithless from the Lord,
Nobly strive as he has striven.

Twelfth Bay.

"IF any man will come after me, let him deny himself.”

There can be no religion which has moral worth, or is acceptable to God, but that which grows from and is nourished by our own spiritual, self-denying energy. The religious character which has true virtue, and which is built upon a rock, is that which has been deliberately and resolutely adopted and cherished as our highest duty, and as the strengthener of all other duties. It involves much self-denial; its great characteristic is not feeling, but the subjection of wills, desires, habits, lives, to the will of God, from a conviction that what he wills is the perfection of virtue and the true happiness of our nature.

Leaning on Him, make with reverent meekness
His own thy will,

And with strength from him shall thy utter weakness
Life's task fulfil.

Thirteenth Day.

"FEAR thou not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee, yea, I will help thee, yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness."

The best way to maintain inward peace is to settle and fix our thought upon that which will make us better, till we find our heart warmed and wrought upon thereby, and then, as the prophet speaks, God will keep us in peace.

What then remains? To seek

Those helps for his occasions ever near