Every duty we omit obscures some truth we should have known.

JOHN RUSKIN.



January 26


_O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how
unsearchable are His judgments, and His--ways past finding out_!--ROM. xi.
33.

_It doth not yet appear what we shall be_.--I JOHN iii. 2.

No star is ever lost we once have seen,
We always may be what we might have been.
Since Good, though only thought, has life and breath,
God's life--can always be redeemed from death;
And evil, in its nature, is decay,
And any hour can blot it all away;
The hopes that lost in some far distance seem,
May be the truer life, and this the dream.

A. A. PROCTER.

St. Bernard has said: "Man, if thou desirest a noble and holy life, and
unceasingly prayest to God for it, if thou continue constant in this thy
desire, it will be granted unto thee without fail, even if only in the day
or hour of thy death; and if God should not give it to thee then, thou