GRAINS OF GOLD

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 6, 11 February 1909, Page 203

GRAINS OF GOLD

MORNING PRAYER.

Let me to-day do something that shall' take A little sadness from, the world's vast store, And may I be so favored as to makeOf joy's too scanty sum a little more. Lot me not hurt, by any selfish deed ' Or thoughtless word, the heart of foe or friend ; Nor wo\ald I pass, unseeing, worthy need,. Or sin by silence when I should defend. However meagre be nay worldly wealth, Let me give something that shall aid my kind — A word of courage, or a thought of health, Dropped as I pass for troubled hearts to find. Let me to-night look back across the span 'Twixt dawn and dark, and to my conscience say, Because of some good act to beast or man, ' The world is bettei that I lived to-day.'

Let us practise decent and pure speech until we have convinced even the most habitual swearers that there is something better fitted to tie expression of feeling or emotion; something far more weighty when we would be impressive than the use of profanity. — Leigh Mitchell Hodges.

' Whatever you do, v hether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all for the glory of God.' St. John tells us that God is charrty. Thus in the whole 'of the almost infinite and complicated system in which we live, God has contrived all things, quite wonderfully, for these two ends, if they might net more properly be called one end than two; He has arranged everything first, so that He may be loved; and, secondly, so as to enable us to love Him. If we may dare thus to speak of the Almighty, He seems to have no other end in view at all ; and He manages things by artifices of almighty power in order to bring this about. This is His rule by which He has done everything. The hearts cf His creatures are the only treasures He will condescend to accept from His own creation. — Father Faber.

Let us reanimate our Faith. Do we -sufficiently re- ' fleet that it is at the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that .we daily assist? Now it is no longer a Bloody Sacrifice, though nevertheless real and true, for Jesus by a refinement of -' love wished to spare us a too painful representation of His " sufferings and death. And if His Heart pushes generously to such an excess, if He be so prodigal of miracles, " that the Holy Mysteries may be every moment renewed, should we be cold and indifferent, and yield to tepidity, and by accustoming ourselves to His benefits, become insensible to them ? As Moses on the mountain, so do we too ' make haste, and bow our heads to the earth, and worship ' ; fo we, each in his own place , with his own heart, with his own wants, his own thoughts, with his own intention, with his own prayers, separate, yet concordant, watching what is going on, watching its progress, uniting in its consummation. But out of these many minds rises one Eucharistic

hymn. — Cardinal Newman.