DEVOTIONAL COLUMN

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 28, 2 January 1926, Page 10

DEVOTIONAL COLUMN

PRAYER. Our Fattier, in Whoso .great love we are called to sec another year, grant us Thy leading through all the changing days. With our life in Thy safe keeping wo shall not fear as we step into the strange future. Redeem us from all vain regrets and repining. Confirm and keep us in the way of Christ’s footsteps, so that at last we may come to Thine eternal joy, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. READING. Have not I commanded Thee ? Be strong and of a good courage; be not, afraid. I neither he thou dismayed: for the Lord . Thy God is with thee whithersoever thou | goest.—Joshua 1, 9. THE OLD YEAR AND THE NEW. The night wind whispers a requiem, I A sigli for the old dead year, I feel tlie grief of its mourning, | And join with tho worth of a tear; ' For while as with it I’ve trnvelled, ! I’ve known that time sped its end. j Yet, knowing, cun never compensate ! The loss that we feel for a friend; But, grief yields to gladder emotions I As the wind again whispers low, And tells me how out of its sorrows, Life’s purest and best joys grow. ’Tis that voice of hope everlasting That speaks from the pall of night To the soul that’s wearily watching For the glorious dawn of the light. So I turn from the bier of the old. Where I’ve lain by wreath of rue. I turn with the smile of peace, And wekpme the birth of the new. LOVE FOR THE NEW YEAR. A happy New Year must find its beginning in settling old accounts. Do not carry old quarrels and old feuds into the new year. No one can begin the year well it in his heart lie harbour aught of bitterness or ill-will. There is one thing alone which can make life worth living, one thing which if lost, all is lost; one thing which is the music, the strength, the sunshine of the soul —it is Love. Life comes to us in all its fulness of health and wealth only through the golden door of love. The door which shuts out any, shuts out much or all.—Murk Guy i’carse. THINGS TO FORGET. If you would increase your happiness and prolong your lfie, forget your neighbours' faults. Forget the slander you have ever heard. Forget the temptations. Forget the fault-finding, and give a little thought to the cause which provoked it. Forget the peculiarities of your friends, and only remember the good points which make you fond of them. , Forget all personal quarrels or histories you may have heard by accident, and which, if repeated, would seem a thosuand times worse than they are. Blot out, as far as possible all the disagreeables of life; they will come, but they will grow larger when you remember them, and tho constant thought of the acts of meanness, or, worse still, malice, will only tend to make you more familiar with them. Obliterate everything disagreeable from yesterday, start out with a clean sheet for to-day, and write upon it, for sweet memory’s sake, only those things which are lovely and loveable.

LOOKING BACKWARD. Duct, vii., 2-20. (By Rev. T. H. Darlow, M.A.). 1. History was born, suid isunacn, on (hut night when Israel went up out ot Egypt. At any rate, the F.xouus is the beginning of ecclesiastical his.ury. And the record of the march through the desert has become for Christians like an epitome of their spiritual pilgrimage. That wilderness with its dangers anil deliverances, its providences ana disappointments, those years ot hope deferred, that promised land beyond the river, have been woven into our own deepest inward experience. They are the materials out of which the imagination of Christendom has constructed its idea of the journey of life And so wo cun apply these verses easily and naturally to our own condition. The message sent to Israel of old speaks its warning and its consolation to all hearts which belong to the Israel of God. 2. As we remember the way along which wc have been led wo see that it has fared with us as it fared with Israel of old. Life has really been a pilgrimage, where the stretches of hot sand were many and the palm-trees and the wells were few. It bus been a chequered journey, full of surprises and partings and unliooked for enemies and sudden trials and hitter waters where the spring seemed clear, and costly sacrifice and weary- delay. Yet wc remember not only the journey but the Guide who lias led us with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, who has never left us nor forsaken us even when we fancied we had chosen our own path. Day by day He has ordered our gioings and checked our wanderings and retrieved oiir failures. Day by day His presence has shone before us, and not one chance or change or toil or tear in all tho journey but has rome at His bidding, according tio His good and acceptable and perfect will. It is our strong consolation to know that the steps of a good man arc verily ordered by the Lord. Everything which befalls us, whether it be outward circumstance or inward experience, is prepared and ordained by His all-pitying wisdom. Looking backward, we begin to realise dimly that there is a Divine purpose in each step of the road which we are called to tread.

3. God’s purpose- lor us is unlike our plans for ourselves. Ho desires that we should attain not our own ideal, but His ideal concerning us. He cares not for our “success in file,” but that we may win those things which He has prepared tor ilicm that love Him. And so tho secret of all His dealings with us is to humble us, and to prove us, and to know what is in our heart. God saves us by His own estimate of what is best. He reckons that loss and labour and pain and weariness are not worthy to be compared witii that blessedness to which they are the appointed road. And so tho meaning of all the way He leads us is that He may do us this perfect good in our latter end, and bring us to tins only heaven which deserves the name —the heaven where the poor iii spirit and the pure in heart inherit the kingdom prepared lor them from before tho foundation of the world—where wo shall behold His face in righteousness, where we shall be satisfied when we awake in His likeness.

4. This God is our God for ever and ever; Ho will be our Guide even unto death. The Love which has led us thus far will not desert us now. The Lord shall perfect that which concerncth us. He will go on to humble us and prove us and search our hearts all the days of our life. Happy are wo if in the end wo obtain this crowning mercy that His work iu us is finished and complete. A NEW YEAR THOUGHT. ’’Could wo this dawning year' But live to Him — Lives simple and sincere, Faith never dim— New green should overspread The meadows brown; New depths of blue o’verhoad Look smiling down: Our dull life kindled to a strange new worth, Each should behold new heavens and new earth.”