your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." 7. If men are in darkness it is their own fault. They go into the cellar, and insist that the sun has set; they close the blinds, and claim that there is no sun. What they should do is to come up into the light; open the shutters and let the sun in. None need walk in darkness, roll sightless eyeballs, and grope their way along. To men blinded by sin Christ comes, and says, as He said to Bartimeus, "What wilt thou that I shall do?" If they would respond with Bartimeus, "Lord, that I may receive my sight," they, too, would see. Alas, that any should live in darkness, and dying go where opportunities cease, and no ray of hope ever shines! It is said of the poet Goethe, after a long life of worldliness and unbelief, that his last words were, "It is growing dark; open the shutters, and let the light in." It is too late to call for light, when life and strength fail, and the windows of the soul are darkened by the shadows of a near dissolution. 8. Let men guard against mistaking a false for the True Light. The sea is dangerous, and the night is dark. Along these coasts are fiendish wreckers, and it is possible to fall into their snare. Not every beacon is lighted by a friendly hand. The light that glows most brightly may be a decoy to lead one into the wrong way. Let us be sure that the beams that reach us come from the Father's lighthouse and are the true light; and steering by this, wreckers, rocks, and storms shall bring us no harm. Happy the man, who, having escaped the dangers, can say: "Once on the raging seas I rode; The storm was loud, the night was dark, The wind, that tossed my foundering bark. "Deep horror then my vitals froze; Death-struck, I ceased the tide to stem; It was the Star of Bethlehem. "It was my guide, my light, my all; And, through the storm, and danger's thrall, A T "BEHOLD the rose of Sharon here, "By cool Siloam's shady rill, How sweet the lily grows ! How sweet the breath, beneath the hill, Of Sharon's dewy rose !” XII. THE RUND LILY. "I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys.". SONG OF SOLOMON ii. I. T is natural to love flowers. Some people know IT them by name and pet them as living creatures. Flowers certainly are beautiful, and there are many lessons to be learned from them. We can hardly imagine what this world would be without flowers. Mary Howitt writes: "God might have bade the earth bring forth Enough for great and small, The oak-tree and the cedar-tree, "He might have made enough, enough For every want of ours, For luxury, medicine, and toil, "Our outward life requires them not, Then wherefore have they birth ? To minister delight to man, To beautify the earth. |