heartedness is fatal. The coward voice must be stifled, the lower self which craves for ease and comfort be denied, if we would be true to God and to ourselves. c. There is redeeming power in human love, but it is slight compared with that immeasurable redemption which is ours in the Immortal Love of Christ. He comes "hoping all things, believing all things, enduring all things." He never despairs. Life is worth what His love esteems it. The measure of human value is not in the self which is apparent, but in that deeper self which abides in His faith. "I went to Newgate prison," notes John Wesley in his "Journals," and preached the gospel to the condemned felons." He had a right to do so, for he represented the only love in the Universe which never loses hope. The Church, like Solvejg, should keep the light burning in the home until the wanderer return; and must continually replenish her dependent flame at the Redeemer's faith and love. JOHN RUSKIN: "THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE " A PROCLAMATION OF THE LAWS OF LIFE "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, And light unto my path." PSALM CXIX. 105. "For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?" LUKE XIV. 28. UR LORD would have us sit down and OUR count the cost before we commit ourselves to the building of character. Evil beclouds the issues, and practises endless sophistry and subterfuge to enlist an espousal of its cause. The long view of life is one of the tempter's most dreaded enemies. Christ stands in the open, concealing nothing, distorting nothing. He places a cross at the heart of His appeal for discipleship. We are called to build, from the deep foundations laid in silence within the soul, upward through thought and purpose and deed, gathering |
