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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mind of Jesus, by John R. Macduff
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Mind of Jesus
+
+Author: John R. Macduff
+
+Release Date: April 5, 2009 [EBook #28507]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MIND OF JESUS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Heiko Evermann, Nigel Blower and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+book was produced from scanned images of public domain
+material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note
+
+Minor punctuation inconsistencies have been silently corrected.
+
+Title page: "MEMORIES OF OF GENNESARET" changed to "MEMORIES OF GENNESARET"
+p9: Verse number "2." added to "Mark, viii." for consistency
+p23: "brethern" changed to "brethren"
+p106: "vail" changed to "veil"
+p124: duplicate word "one" removed
+p126: "the its great fountain" changed to "its great fountain"
+p128: "frowed" changed to "frowned"
+
+
+
+
+                 THE
+            MIND OF JESUS.
+
+
+                  BY
+        JOHN R. MACDUFF, D.D.
+
+
+AUTHOR OF "MORNING AND NIGHT WATCHES,"
+"THE WORDS OF JESUS," "FAMILY PRAYER,"
+"FOOTSTEPS OF ST. PAUL," "MEMORIES OF
+GENNESARET," "BOW IN THE CLOUD," "STORY
+OF BETHLEHEM," ETC.
+
+
+               NEW YORK
+       ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS,
+           No. 530 BROADWAY.
+                 1860.
+
+
+
+
+The Mind of Jesus.
+
+
+THE MIND OF JESUS! What a study is this! To attain a dim reflection of
+it, is the ambition of angels--higher they can not soar. "To be
+conformed to the image of His Son!"--it is the end of God in the
+predestination of His Church from all eternity. "We shall be like
+Him!"--it is the Bible picture of _heaven_!
+
+In a former little volume, we pondered some of the gracious _Words_
+which proceeded out of the mouth of Jesus. In the present, we have a few
+faint lineaments of that holy _Character_ which constituted the living
+exposition and embodiment of His precepts.
+
+But how lofty such a standard! How all creature-perfection shrinks
+abashed and confounded before a Divine portraiture like this! He is the
+true "Angel standing in the sun," who alone projects no shadow; so
+bathed in the glories of Deity that likeness to Him becomes like the
+light in which He is shrouded--"no man can approach unto it." May we
+not, however, seek at least to approximate, though we can not adequately
+resemble? It is impossible on earth to associate with a fellow-being
+without getting, in some degree, assimilated to him. So, the more we
+study "the Mind of Christ," the more we are in His company--holding
+converse with Him as our best and dearest friend--catching up his holy
+looks and holy deeds--the more shall we be "transformed into the same
+image."
+
+"Consider," says the Great Apostle (literally '_gaze_ on') "Christ
+Jesus" (Heb. iii. 1). Study feature by feature, lineament by lineament,
+of that Peerless Exemplar. "_Gaze_" on the Sun of Righteousness, till,
+like gazing long on the natural sun, you carry away with you, on your
+spiritual vision, dazzling images of His brightness and glory. Though He
+be the Archetype of all goodness, remember He is no shadowy
+model--though the Infinite Jehovah, He was "the _Man_ Christ Jesus."
+
+We must never, indeed, forget that it is not the _mind_, but the _work_
+of Immanuel, which lies at the foundation of a sinner's hope. He must be
+known as a _Saviour_, before He is studied as an _Example_. His doing
+and dying is the center jewel, of which all the virtues of His holy life
+are merely the setting. But neither must we overlook the Scripture
+obligation to walk in His footsteps and imbibe His Spirit, for "if any
+man have not the _Spirit of Christ_, he is _none of His_!"
+
+Oh, that each individual Christian were more Saviour-like! that, in the
+manifestation of a holy character and heavenly demeanor, it might be
+said in some feeble measure of the faint and imperfect reflection--"Such
+was _Jesus_!"
+
+How far short we are of such a criterion, mournful experience can
+testify. But it is at least comforting to know that there is a day
+coming, when, in the full vision and fruition of the Glorious Original,
+the exhortation of our motto-verse will be needed no more; when we shall
+be able to say, in the words of an inspired apostle,
+
+    "We _have_ the MIND OF CHRIST!"
+
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+
+                             PAGE
+The Mind of Jesus               3
+Compassion                      9
+Resignation in Trial           13
+Devotedness to God             17
+Forgiveness of Injuries        21
+Meekness                       25
+Thankfulness                   29
+Unselfishness                  33
+Submission to God's Word       37
+Prayerfulness                  41
+Love to the Brethren           45
+Sympathy                       49
+Fidelity in Rebuke             53
+Gentleness in Rebuke           57
+Endurance of Contradiction     61
+Pleasing God                   65
+Grief at Sin                   69
+Humility                       73
+Patience                       77
+Subjection                     81
+Not Retaliating                85
+Bearing the Cross              89
+Holy Zeal                      93
+Benevolence                    97
+Firmness in Temptation        101
+Receiving Sinners             105
+Guilelessness                 109
+Activity in Duty              113
+Committing our Way to God     117
+Love of Unity                 121
+Not of the World              125
+Calmness in Death             129
+
+
+
+
+               Let
+
+            THIS MIND
+
+            Be in you,
+
+         Which was also in
+
+           Christ Jesus.
+
+
+
+
+First Day.
+
+COMPASSION.
+
+    "I have compassion on the multitude."--Mark, viii. 2.
+
+
+What a pattern to His people, the tender _compassion_ of Jesus! He found
+the world He came to save a moral Bethesda. The wail of suffering
+humanity was every where borne to His ear. It was His delight to walk
+its porches, to pity, relieve, comfort, save! The faintest cry of misery
+arrested His footsteps--stirred a ripple in this fountain of Infinite
+Love. Was it a _leper_,--that dreaded name which entailed a life-long
+exile from friendly looks and kindly words? There was _One_, at least,
+who had tones and deeds of tenderness for the outcast. "_Jesus_, being
+moved with compassion, put forth His hand, and _touched_ him." Was it
+some blind beggars on the Jericho highway, groping in darkness, pleading
+for help? "_Jesus_ stood still, and had compassion on them, and touched
+their eyes!" Was it the speechless pleadings of a widow's tears at the
+gate of Nain, when she followed her earthly pride and prop to the grave?
+"When the _Lord_ saw her, He had compassion on her, and said, Weep not!"
+Even when He rebukes, the bow of compassion is seen in the cloud, or
+rather, that cloud, as it passes, dissolves in a rain-shower of mercy.
+He pronounces Jerusalem "_desolate_," but the doom is uttered amid a
+flood of anguished sorrow!
+
+Reader! do the compassionate words and deeds of a tender Saviour find
+any feeble echo and transcript in yours? As you traverse in thought the
+wastes of human wretchedness, does the spectacle give rise, not to the
+mere emotional feeling which weeps itself away in sentimental tears, but
+to an earnest desire to _do something_ to mitigate the sufferings of
+woe-worn humanity? How vast and world-wide the claims on your
+compassion!--now near, now at a distance--the unmet and unanswered cry
+of perishing millions abroad--the heathendom which lies unsuccored at
+your own door--the public charity languishing--the mission staff dwarfed
+and crippled from lack of needful funds--a suffering district--a
+starving family--a poor neighbor--a helpless orphan--it may be, some
+crowded hovel, where misery and vice run riot--or some lonely sick
+chamber, where the dim lamp has been wasting for dreary nights--or some
+desolate home which death has entered, where "Joseph is not, and Simeon
+is not," and where some sobbing heart, under the tattered garb of
+poverty, mourns, unsolaced and unpitied, its "loved and lost." Are there
+none such within your reach, to whom a trifling pittance would be as an
+angel of mercy? How it would hallow and enhance all you possess, were
+you to seek to live as almoner of Jehovah's bounties! If He has given
+you of this world's substance, remember it is bestowed, not to be
+greedily hoarded or lavishly squandered. Property and wealth are
+talents to be traded on and laid out for the good of others--sacred
+trusts, not selfishly to be _enjoyed_, but generously to be _employed_.
+
+"The poor are the representatives of Jesus, their wants He considers as
+His own," and He will recompense accordingly. The feeblest expression of
+Christian pity and love, though it be but the widow's mite, or the cup
+of cold water, or the kindly look and word when there is neither mite
+nor cup to give, yet, if done in _His_ name, it is entered in the "book
+of life" as a "loan to the Lord;" and in that day when "the books are
+opened," the loan will be paid back with usury.
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Second Day.
+
+RESIGNATION IN TRIAL.
+
+    "Not my will, but Thine be done!"--Luke, xxii. 42.
+
+
+Where was there ever resignation like this! The life of Jesus was one
+long martyrdom. From Bethlehem's manger to Calvary's cross, there was
+scarce one break in the clouds; these gathered more darkly and ominously
+around Him till they burst over His devoted head as He uttered His
+expiring cry. Yet throughout this pilgrimage of sorrow no murmuring
+accent escaped His lips. The most suffering of all suffering lives was
+one of uncomplaining submission.
+
+"Not _my_ will, but _Thy_ will," was the motto of this wondrous Being!
+When He came into the world He thus announced His advent, "Lo, I come, I
+delight to do _Thy will_, O my God!" When He left it, we listen to the
+same prayer of blended agony and acquiescence, "O my Father, if it be
+possible let this cup pass from me! _Nevertheless_ not as _I will_, but
+as _Thou wilt_."
+
+Reader! is this mind also in _you_? Ah, what are your trials compared to
+His! What the ripples in your tide of woe, compared to the waves and
+billows which swept over him! If He, the spotless Lamb of God, "murmured
+not," how can _you_ murmur? _His_ were the sufferings of a bosom never
+once darkened with the passing shadow of guilt or sin. _Your_ severest
+sufferings are deserved, yea, infinitely less _than_ deserved! Are you
+tempted to indulge in hard suspicions, as to God's faithfulness and
+love, in appointing some peculiar trial? Ask yourself, Would Jesus have
+done _this_? Should _I_ seek to pry into "the deep things of God," when
+_He_, in the spirit of a weaned child, was satisfied with the solution,
+"_Even so, Father, for so it seems good in Thy sight_"?
+
+"Even so, _Father_!" Afflicted one! "tossed with tempest, and not
+comforted," take that _word_ on which thy Lord pillowed His suffering
+head, and make it, as He did, the secret of thy resignation.
+
+The sick child will take the bitterest draught from a _father's_ hand.
+"This cup which Thou, O God, givest me to drink, shall I not drink it?"
+Be it mine to lie passive in the arms of Thy chastening love, exulting
+in the assurance that all Thy appointments, though sovereign, are never
+arbitrary, but that there is a gracious "need be" in them all. "My
+Father!" my Covenant God! the God who _spared not Jesus_! It may well
+hush every repining word.
+
+Drinking deep of his sweet spirit of submission, you will be able thus
+to meet, yea, even to welcome, your sorest cross, saying, "Yes, Lord,
+all _is_ well, just because it is Thy blessed will. Take me, use me,
+chasten me, as seemeth good in Thy sight. My will is resolved into
+Thine. This trial is dark; I can not see the 'why and the wherefore' of
+it--but 'not my will, but Thy will!' The gourd is withered; I can not
+see the reason of so speedy a dissolution of the loved earthly shelter;
+sense and sight ask in vain why these leaves of earthly refreshment have
+been doomed so soon to droop in sadness and sorrow. But it is enough.
+'The Lord prepared the worm;' 'not _my_ will, but _Thy_ will!'"
+
+Oh, how does the stricken soul honor God by thus being _dumb_ in the
+midst of dark and perplexing dealings, recognizing in these, part of the
+needed discipline and training for a sorrowless, sinless, deathless
+world; regarding every trial as a link in the chain which draws it to
+heaven, where the whitest robes will be found to be those here baptized
+with suffering, and bathed in tears!
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Third Day.
+
+DEVOTEDNESS TO GOD.
+
+    "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?"--
+     Luke, ii. 49.
+
+
+"My meat and my drink are to do the will of Him that sent me, and to
+finish His work." That _one_ object brought Jesus from heaven--that
+_one_ object he pursued with unflinching, undeviating constancy, until
+He could say, "It is finished."
+
+However short man comes of _his_ "chief end," "Glory to God in the
+highest" was the motive, the rule, and exponent of every act of that
+wondrous life. With us, the magnet of the soul, even when truest, is
+ever subject to partial oscillations and depressions, trembling at times
+away from its great attraction-point. _His_ never knew one tremulous
+wavering from its all-glorious center. With Him there were no ebbs and
+flows, no fits and starts. He could say, in the words of that prophetic
+psalm which speaks so preeminently of Himself, "I have set the Lord
+_always_ before me!"
+
+Reader! do you feel that in some feeble measure this lofty life-motto of
+the sinless Son of God is written on your home and heart, regulating
+your actions, chastening your joys, quickening your hopes, giving energy
+and direction to your whole being, subordinating all the affections of
+your nature to their high destiny? With pure and unalloyed motives, with
+a single eye, and a single aim, can you say, somewhat in the spirit of
+His brightest follower, "This _one_ thing I do"? Are you ready to regard
+all you have--rank, name, talents, riches, influence,
+distinctions--valuable, only so far as they contribute to promote the
+glory of Him who is "first and last, and all in all"? Seek to feel that
+your heavenly Father's is not only _a_ business; but _the_ business of
+life. "Whose I am, and whom I serve,"--let this be the superscription
+written on your thoughts and deeds, your employments and enjoyments,
+your sleeping and waking. Be not, as the fixed stars, cold and distant;
+but be ever bathing in the sunshine of conscious nearness to Him who is
+the sun and center of all happiness and joy.
+
+Each has some appointed work to perform, some little niche in the
+spiritual temple to occupy. Yours may be no splendid services, no
+flaming or brilliant actions to blaze and dazzle in the eye of man. It
+may be the quiet, unobtrusive inner work, the secret prayer, the
+mortified sin, the forgiven injury, the trifling act of self-sacrifice
+for God's glory and the good of others, of which no eye but the Eye
+which seeth in secret is cognizant. It matters not how _small_.
+Remember, with Him, motive dignifies action. It is not _what_ we do, but
+_how_ we do it. He can be glorified in _little_ things as well as
+_great_ things, and by nothing more than the daily walk, the daily
+life.
+
+Beware of any thing that would interfere with a surrender of heart and
+soul to His service--worldly entanglements, indulged sin, an uneven
+walk, a divided heart, nestling in creature comforts, shrinking from the
+cross. How many hazard, if they do not make shipwreck, of their eternal
+hopes by becoming _idlers_ in the vineyard; lingerers, like Lot;
+world-lovers, like Demas; "do-nothing Christians," like the inhabitants
+of Meroz! The command is, "Go, work!" _Words_ tell what you _should_ be;
+_deeds_ tell what you _are_. Let those around you see there is a reality
+in walking _with_ God, and working _for_ God!
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Fourth Day.
+
+FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES.
+
+    "Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they
+     do."--Luke, xxiii. 34.
+
+
+Many a death-struggle has been made to save a friend. A dying Saviour
+gathers up His expiring breath to plead for His foes! At the climax of
+His own woe, and of human ingratitude--man-forsaken, and
+God-deserted--His faltering voice mingles with the shout of His
+murderers,--"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do!" Had
+the faithless Peter been there, could he have wondered at the reply to a
+former question,--"Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and
+I forgive him,--till seven times?" Jesus said unto him, "I say not unto
+thee, Until seven times; but, Until seventy times seven." (Matt. xviii.
+21.)
+
+Superiority to insult and ignominy, with some, proceeds from a callous
+and indifferent temperament,--a cold, phlegmatic, stoical insensibility,
+alike to kindness or unkindness. It was not so with Jesus. The tender
+sensibilities of His holy nature rendered Him keenly sensible to
+ingratitude and injury, whether this was manifested in the malice of
+undisguised enmity, or the treachery of trusted friendship. Perhaps to a
+noble nature the latter of these is the more deeply wounding. Many are
+inclined to forgive an open and unmasked antagonist, who are not so
+willing to forget or forgive heartless faithfulness, or unrequited love.
+But see, too, in this respect, the conduct of the blessed Redeemer! Mark
+how He deals with His own disciples who had basely forsaken him and
+fled, and that, too, in the hour He most needed their sympathy. No
+sooner does He rise from the dead than He hastens to disarm their fears
+and to assure them of an unaltered and unalterable affection. "Go tell
+_my brethren_," is the first message He sends; "_Peace be unto you_," is
+the salutation at the first meeting; "_Children!_" is the word with
+which He first greets them on the shores of Tiberias. Even Joseph, (the
+Old Testament type and pattern of generous forgiveness,) when he makes
+himself known to his brethren, recalls the bitter thought, "Whom ye sold
+into Egypt." The true Joseph, when _He_ reveals Himself to His
+disciples, buries in oblivion the memory of by-gone faithlessness. He
+_meets_ them with a benediction. He _leaves_ them at His ascension with
+the same--"He lifted up His hands and blessed them!"
+
+Reader! follow in all this the spirit of your Lord and Master. In rising
+from the study of His holy example, seek to feel that with you there
+shall be no such name, no such word, as _enemy_! Harbor no resentful
+thought, indulge in no bitter recrimination. Surrender yourself to no
+sullen fretfulness. Let "the law of kindness" be in your heart. Put the
+best construction on the failings of others Make no injurious comments
+on their frailties; no uncharitable insinuations. "Consider thyself,
+lest thou also be tempted." When disposed at any time to cherish an
+unforgiving spirit towards a brother, think, if thy God had retained His
+anger for ever, where wouldst thou have been? If _He_, the Infinite One,
+who might have spurned thee for ever from His presence, hath had
+patience with thee, and forgiven thee _all_, wilt _thou_, on account of
+some petty grievance which thy calmer moments would pronounce unworthy
+of a thought, indulge in the look of cold estrangement, the unrelenting
+word, or unforgiving deed? "If any man have a quarrel against any, even
+as Christ forgave you, so also do ye."
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Fifth Day.
+
+MEEKNESS.
+
+    "I am meek and lowly in heart."--Matt. xi. 29.
+
+
+There is often a beautiful blending of majesty and humility, magnanimity
+and lowliness, in great minds. The mightiest and holiest of all Beings
+that ever trod our world was the meekest of all. The Ancient of Days was
+as the "infant of days." He who had listened to nothing but
+angel-melodies from all eternity, found, while on earth, melody in the
+lispings of an infant's voice, or in an outcast's tears! No wonder an
+innocent _lamb_ was His emblem, or that the annointing Spirit came down
+upon Him in the form of the gentle _dove_. He had the wealth of worlds
+at His feet. The hosts of heaven had only to be summoned as His
+retinue. But all the pageantry of the world, all its dreams of carnal
+glory, had, for Him, no fascination. The Tempter, from a
+mountain-summit, showed Him a wide scene of "splendid misery;" but He
+spurned alike the thought and the adversary away! John and James would
+call down fire from heaven on a Samaritan village; He rebukes the
+vengeful suggestion! Peter, on the night of the betrayal, cuts off the
+ear of an assassin; the intended Victim, again, only challenges His
+disciple, and heals His enemy!
+
+Arraigned before Pilate's judgment-seat, how meekly He bears nameless
+wrongs and indignities! Suspended on the cross--the execrations of the
+multitude are rising around, but He hears as though He heard them not;
+they extract no angry look, no bitter word--"Behold the _Lamb_ of God!"
+Need we wonder that "meekness" and "poverty of spirit" should stand
+foremost in His own cluster of beatitudes; that He should select _this_
+among all His other qualities for the peculiar study and imitation of
+His disciples, "Learn of Me, _for_ I am _meek_;" or that an apostle
+should exhort "by the _meekness_ and _gentleness_ of Christ!"
+
+How different the world's maxims, and His! The _world's_--"Resent the
+affront, vindicate honor!" _His_--"Overcome evil with good!" _The
+world's_--"Only let it be when for your _faults_ ye are buffeted that ye
+take it patiently." _His_--"When ye do _well_ and suffer for it, ye take
+it patiently, _this_ is acceptable with God." (1 Pet. ii. 20.)
+
+Reader! strive to obtain, like your adorable Lord, this "ornament of a
+meek and quiet spirit, which, in the sight of God, is of great price."
+Be "clothed" with gentleness and humility. Follow not the world's
+fleeting shadows that mock you as you grasp them. If always
+aspiring--ever soaring on the wing--you are likely to become
+discontented, proud, selfish, time-serving. In whatever position of life
+God has placed you, be satisfied. What! ambitious to be on a pinnacle of
+the temple--a higher place in the Church, or in the world?--Satan might
+hurl you down! "Be not high-minded, but fear." And with respect to
+others, honor their gifts, contemplate their excellences only to imitate
+them. Speak kindly, act gently, "condescend to men of low estate."
+
+Be assured, no happiness is equal to that enjoyed by the "_meek
+Christian_." He has within him a perpetual inner sunshine, a perennial
+well-spring of peace. Never ruffled and fretted by real or imagined
+injuries, he puts the best construction on motives and actions, and by a
+gentle answer to unmerited reproach often disarms wrath.
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Sixth Day.
+
+THANKFULNESS.
+
+    "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth."--Matt. xi. 25.
+
+A thankful spirit pervaded the entire life of Jesus, and surrounded with
+a heavenly halo His otherwise darkened path. In moments we least expect
+to find it, this beauteous ray breaks through the gloom. In instituting
+the memorial of His _death_, He "_gave thanks_!" Even in crossing the
+Kedron to Gethsemane, "He sang an hymn!"
+
+We know in seasons of deep sorrow and trial that every thing wears a
+gloomy aspect. Dumb Nature herself to the burdened spirit seems as if
+she partook in the hues of sadness. The life of Jesus was one
+continuous experience of privation and woe--a "Valley of Baca," from
+first to last; yet, amid accents of plaintive sorrow, there are ever
+heard subdued undertones of _thankfulness_ and joy!
+
+Ah, if He, the suffering "Man of sorrows," could, during a life of
+unparalleled woe, lift up His heart in grateful acknowledgment to His
+Father in heaven, how ought the lives of those to be one perpetual "hymn
+of thankfulness," who are from day to day and hour to hour (for all they
+have, both temporally and spiritually) pensioners on God's bounty and
+love!
+
+Reader! cultivate this thankful spirit; it will be to thee a perpetual
+feast. There is, or ought to be, with us no such thing as _small_
+mercies; all are _great_, because the least are undeserved. Indeed, a
+really thankful heart will extract motive for gratitude from every
+thing, making the most even of scanty blessings. St. Paul, when in his
+dungeon at Rome, a prisoner in chains, is heard to say, "I have _all_,
+and abound!"
+
+Guard, on the other hand, against that spirit of continual fretting and
+moping over fancied ills; that temptation to exaggerate the real or
+supposed disadvantages of our condition, magnifying the trifling
+inconveniences of every-day life into enormous evils. Think, rather, how
+much we have to be thankful for. The world in which we live, in spite of
+all the scars of sin and suffering upon it, is a happy world. It is not,
+as many would morbidly paint it, flooded with tears and strewn with
+wrecks, plaintive with a perpetual dirge of sorrow. True, the
+"Everlasting Hills" are in glory, but there are numberless eminences of
+grace, and love, and mercy below; many green spots in the lower valley,
+_many more than we deserve_!
+
+God will reward a thankful spirit. Just as on earth, when a man receives
+with gratitude what is given, we are more disposed to give again, so
+also, "the _Lord_ loveth" a cheerful "receiver," as well as a cheerful
+"giver."
+
+Let ours, moreover, be a _Gospel_ thankfulness. Let the incense of a
+grateful spirit rise not only to the Great Giver of all good, but to our
+Covenant God in Christ. Let it be the spirit of the child exulting in
+the bounty and beneficence of his _Father's_ house and home! "Giving
+_thanks_ always for all things unto God and _the Father_, in the name of
+our Lord Jesus Christ!"
+
+While the sweet melody of gratitude vibrates through every successive
+moment of our daily being, let love to our adorable Redeemer show for
+_whom_ and for _what_ it is we reserve our notes of loftiest and most
+fervent praise. Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift!
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Seventh Day.
+
+UNSELFISHNESS.
+
+    "For even Christ pleased not Himself."--Rom. xv. 8.
+
+
+Too legibly are the characters written on the fallen heart and a fallen
+world--"All seek their own!" Selfishness is the great law of our
+degenerated nature. When the love of God was dethroned from the soul,
+self vaulted into the vacant seat, and there, in some one of its Proteus
+shapes, continues to reign.
+
+Jesus stands out for our imitation a grand solitary exception in the
+midst of a world of selfishness. His entire life was one abnegation of
+self; a beautiful living embodiment of that charity which "seeketh not
+her own." He who for others turned water into wine, and provided a
+miraculous supply for the fainting thousands in the wilderness, exerted
+no such miraculous power for His own necessities. During His forty days'
+temptation, no table did He spread for Himself, no booth did He rear for
+his unpillowed head. Twice do we read of Him shedding tears--on neither
+occasion were they for Himself. The approach of His cross and passion,
+instead of absorbing Him in His own approaching suffering, seemed only
+to elicit new and more gracious promises to His people. When His enemies
+came to apprehend Him, His only stipulation was for His disciples'
+release--"Let these go their way." In the very act of departure, with
+all the boundless glories of eternity in sight, _they_ were still all
+His care.
+
+Ah, how different is the spirit of the world! With how many is day after
+day only a new oblation to that idol which never darkened with its
+shadow His Holy heart; pampering their own wishes; "envying and grieving
+at the good of a neighbor;" unable to brook the praise of a rival;
+establishing their own reputation on the ruins of another; thus
+engendering jealousy, discontent, peevishness, and every kindred unholy
+passion.
+
+"But ye have not so learned Christ!" Reader! have you been sitting at
+the feet of Him who "pleased not Himself"? Are you "dying daily;"--dying
+to self as well as to sin? Are you animated with _this_ as the high end
+and aim of existence--to lay out your time, and talents, and
+opportunities, for God's glory, and the good of your fellow-men; not
+seeking your own interests, but rather ceding these, if, by doing so,
+another will be made happier, and your Saviour honored? You may not have
+it in your power to manifest this "mind of Jesus" on a great scale, by
+enduring great sacrifices; nor is this required. His denial of self had
+about it no repulsive austerity; but you can evince its holy influence
+and sway by innumerable little offices of kindness and good-will; taking
+a generous interest in the welfare and pursuits of others, or engaging
+and cooperating in schemes for the mitigation of human misery.
+
+Avoid _ostentation_--another repulsive form of self. Be willing to be in
+the shade; sound no trumpet before you. The evangelist Matthew made a
+great feast, which was graced by the presence of Jesus; in his Gospel he
+says not one word about it!
+
+Seek to live more constantly and habitually under the constraining
+influence of the love of Jesus. Selfishness withers and dies beneath
+Calvary.
+
+Ah, believer! if Christ had "pleased Himself," where wouldst _thou_ have
+_been_ this day?
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Eighth Day.
+
+SUBMISSION TO GOD'S WORD.
+
+    "Jesus said unto him, It is written."--Matt. iv. 7.
+
+
+We can not fail to be struck, in the course of the Saviour's public
+teaching, with His constant appeal to the word of God. While, at times,
+He utters, in His own name, the authoritative behest, "Verily, verily, I
+say unto you," He as often thus introduces some mighty work, or gives
+intimation of some impending event in His own momentous life, "These
+things must come to pass, that _the Scriptures be fulfilled, which
+saith_." He commands His people to "search the Scriptures;" but He sets
+the example by searching and submitting to them Himself. Whether he
+drives the money-changers from their sacrilegious traffic in the
+temple, or foils his great adversary on the mount of temptation, he does
+so with the same weapon, "_It is written._" When He rises from the
+grave, the theme of His first discourse is one impressive tribute to the
+value and authority of the same sacred oracles. The disciples on the
+road to Emmaus listen to nothing but a _Bible lesson_. "He expounded
+unto them in all _the Scriptures_ the things concerning Himself."
+
+How momentous the instruction herein conveyed! The necessity of the
+absolute subjection of the mind to God's written Word--making churches,
+creeds, ministers, books, religious opinion, all subordinate and
+subservient to this--"How readest thou?" rebuking the philosophy,
+falsely so called, that would distort the plain statements of
+Revelation, and bring them to the bar of proud Reason.
+
+If an infallible Redeemer, "a law to Himself," was submissive in all
+respects to the "_written_ law," shall fallible man refuse to sit with
+the teachableness of a little child, and listen to the Divine message?
+There may be, there _is_, in the Bible, what reason staggers at: "we
+have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep." But, "_Thus saith the
+Lord_," is enough. Faith does not first ask what the bread is made of,
+but _eats_ it. It does not analyse the components of the living stream,
+but with joy draws the water from "the wells of salvation."
+
+Reader! take that Word as "the lamp to thy feet, and the light to thy
+path." In days when false lights are hung out, there is the more need of
+keeping the eye steadily fixed on the unerring beacon. Make the Bible
+the arbiter in all difficulties--the ultimate court of appeal. Like
+Mary, "sit at the feet of Jesus," willing only to learn of Him. How many
+perplexities it would save you! how many fatal steps in life it would
+prevent--how many tears! "It is a great matter," says the noblest of
+modern Christian philosophers, "when the mind dwells on any passage of
+Scripture, just to think _how true it is_." (_Chalmers' Life_).
+
+In every dubious question, when the foot is trembling on debatable
+ground, knowing not whether to advance or recede, make this the final
+criterion, "What saith the Scripture?" The world may remonstrate--erring
+friends may disapprove--Satan may tempt--ingenious arguments may explain
+away; but, with our finger on the revealed page, let the words of our
+Great Example be ever a Divine formula for our guidance:--"_This_
+commandment have I received of my Father!"
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Ninth Day.
+
+PRAYERFULNESS.
+
+    "He continued all night in prayer to God."--Luke, vi. 12.
+
+
+We speak of _this_ Christian and _that_ Christian as "a man of prayer."
+Jesus was emphatically so. The Spirit was "poured upon Him without
+measure," yet--_He prayed_! He was incarnate wisdom, "needing not that
+any should teach Him." He was infinite in His power, and boundless in
+His resources, yet--_He prayed_! How deeply sacred the prayerful
+memories that hover around the solitudes of Olivet and the shores of
+Tiberias! He seemed often to turn night into day to redeem moments for
+prayer, rather than lose the blessed privilege.
+
+We are rarely, indeed, admitted into the solemnities of His inner life.
+The veil of night is generally between us and the Great High Priest,
+when He entered "the holiest of all;" but we have enough to reveal the
+depth and fervor, the tenderness and confidingness of this blissful
+intercommunion with His heavenly Father. No morning dawns without His
+fetching fresh manna from the mercy-seat. "He wakeneth morning by
+morning; He wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned." (Isa. l. 4).
+Beautiful description!--a praying Redeemer, wakening, as if at early
+dawn, the ear of His Father, to get fresh supplies for the duties and
+the trials of the day! All His public acts were consecrated by
+prayer,--His baptism, His transfiguration, His miracles, His agony, His
+death. He breathed away His spirit in prayer. "His last breath," says
+Philip Henry, "was praying breath."
+
+How sweet to think, in holding communion with God--_Jesus_ drank of this
+very brook! He consecrated the bended knee and the silent chamber. He
+refreshed His fainting spirit at the same great Fountain-head from which
+it is life for us to draw and death to forsake.
+
+Reader! do you complain of your languid spirit, your drooping faith,
+your fitful affections, your lukewarm love? May you not trace much of
+what you deplore to an unfrequented chamber? The treasures are locked up
+from you, because you have suffered the key to rust; the hands hang down
+because they have ceased to be uplifted in prayer. Without prayer!--It
+is the pilgrim without a staff--the seaman without a compass--the
+soldier going unarmed and unharnessed to battle.
+
+Beware of encouraging what indisposes to prayer--going to the audience
+chamber with soiled garments, the din of the world following you, its
+distracting thoughts hovering unforbidden over your spirit. Can you
+wonder that the living water refuses to flow through obstructed
+channels, or the heavenly light to pierce murky vapors!
+
+On earth, fellowship with a lofty order of minds imparts a certain
+nobility to the character; so, in a far higher sense, by communion with
+God you will be transformed into His image, and get assimilated to His
+likeness. Make every event in life a reason for fresh going to Him. If
+difficulted in duty, bring it to the test of prayer. If bowed down with
+anticipated trial,--"fearing to enter the cloud,"--remember Christ's
+preparation, "Sit ye here while I go and _pray_ yonder."
+
+Let prayer consecrate every thing--your time, talents, pursuits,
+engagements, joys, sorrows, crosses, losses. By it, rough paths will be
+made smooth, trials disarmed of their bitterness, enjoyments hallowed
+and refined, the bread of the world turned into angels' food. "It is in
+the closet," says Payson, "the battle is lost or won!"
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Tenth Day.
+
+LOVE TO THE BRETHREN.
+
+    "And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us."--Eph. v. 2.
+
+
+"Jesus," says a writer, "came from heaven on the wings of love." It was
+the element in which he moved and walked. He sought to baptize the world
+afresh with it. When we find Him teaching us by love to vanquish an
+_enemy_, we need not wonder at the tenderness of His appeals to the
+_brethren_ to "love one another." Like a fond father impressing his
+children, how the Divine Teacher lingers over the lesson, "This is _My_
+commandment!"
+
+If selfishness had guided His actions, we might have expected him to
+demand all His people's love for himself. But He claims no such
+monopoly. He not only encourages mutual affection, but He makes it the
+badge of discipleship! He gives them at once its measure and motive.
+"Love one another, as I have loved you!" What a love was that!--it
+reached to the lowliest and humblest,--"Inasmuch as ye did it to the
+_least_ of these, ye did it unto _Me_."
+
+Ah! if such was the Elder Brother's love to His younger brethren, what
+should the love of these younger brothers be for one another! How
+humbling that there should be so much that is sadly and strangely unlike
+the spirit which our blessed Master sought to inculcate alike by precept
+and example! Individual Christians, why these bitter estrangements,
+these censorious words, these harsh judgments, this want of kind
+consideration of the feelings and failings of those who may differ from
+you? Why are your friendships so often like the summer brook, soon
+dried? You hope, ere long, to meet in glory. Doubtless when you enter on
+that "sabbath of love," many a greeting will be this, "Alas! my
+brother, that on earth I did not love thee more!"
+
+Do you see the image of God in a professing believer? It is your duty to
+love him for the sake of that image. No church, no outward livery, no
+denominational creed, should prevent your owning and claiming him as a
+fellow-pilgrim and fellow-heir. It has been said of a portrait, however
+poor the painting, however unfinished the style, however faulty the
+touches, however coarse and unseemly the frame, yet if the _likeness_ be
+faithful, we overlook many subordinate defects. So it is with the
+Christian: however plain the exterior, however rough the setting, or
+even manifold the blemishes still found cleaving to a
+partially-sanctified nature, yet if the Redeemer's _likeness_ be feebly
+and faintly traced there, we should love the copy for the sake of the
+Divine Original. There may be other bonds of association and intercourse
+linking spirit with spirit; family ties, mental congenialities,
+intellectual tastes, philanthropic pursuits; but that which ought to
+take the precedence of all, is the love of God's image in the brethren.
+What will heaven be but this love perfected--loving Christ, and beloved
+by those who love Him?
+
+Reader! seek to love _Him_ more, and you will love His people more. John
+had more love than the other disciples. Why? He drank deepest of the
+love within that Bosom on which he delighted to lean, every beat of
+which was love. "Walk," then, "in love!" Let it be the very foot-road
+you tread; let your way to heaven be paved with it. Soon shall we come
+to look within the portal. Then shall every jarring and dissonant note
+be merged into the sublime harmonies of "the new heavens and the new
+earth," and we shall all "see eye to eye!"
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Eleventh Day.
+
+SYMPATHY.
+
+    "Jesus wept."--John, xi. 35.
+
+
+It is an affecting thing to see a Great man in tears! "_Jesus wept!_" It
+was ever His delight to tread in the footsteps of sorrow--to heal the
+broken-hearted--turning aside from His own path of suffering to "weep
+with those that weep."
+
+_Bethany!_ That scene, that _word_, is a condensed volume of consolation
+for yearning and desolate hearts. What a majesty in those tears! He had
+just been discoursing on Himself as the Resurrection and the Life--the
+next moment He is a Weeping Man by a human grave, melted in anguished
+sorrow at a bereaved one's side! Think of the funeral at the gate of
+Nain, reading its lesson to dejected myriads--"Let thy widows trust in
+me!" Think of the farewell discourse to His disciples, when, muffling
+all His own foreseen and anticipated sorrows, He thought only of
+soothing and mitigating theirs! Think of the affecting pause in that
+silent procession to Calvary, when He turns round and stills the sobs of
+those who are tracking His steps with their weeping! Think of that
+wondrous epitome of human tenderness, just ere His eyes closed in their
+sleep of agony--in the mightiest crisis of all time--when filial love
+looked down on an anguished mother, and provided her a son and a home!
+
+Ah, was there ever sympathy like this! Son! Brother! Kinsman! Saviour!
+all in one! The majesty of Godhead almost lost in the tenderness of a
+Friend. But so it _was_, and so it is. The heart of the now enthroned
+King beats responsive to the humblest of His sorrow-stricken people. "I
+am poor and needy, yet the Lord _carries me on His heart_!" (margin.)
+
+Let us "go and do likewise." Let us be ready, like our Lord, to follow
+the beck of misery,--"to deliver the needy when he crieth, the poor
+also, and him that hath no helper." Sympathy costs but little. Its
+recompense and return are great, in the priceless consolation it
+imparts. Few there are who undervalue it. Look at Paul--the weary, jaded
+prisoner,--chained to a soldier--recently wrecked, about to stand before
+Caesar. He reaches Appii Forum and the Three Taverns, dejected and
+depressed. Brethren come from Rome, a distance of sixty miles, to offer
+their _sympathy_. The aged man is cheered! His spirit, like Jacob's,
+"revived!" "He thanked God, and took courage!"
+
+Reader! let "this mind," this holy, Christ-like _habit_ be in you, which
+was also in your adorable Master. Delight, when opportunity occurs, to
+frequent the house of mourning--to bind up the widow's heart, and to dry
+the orphan's tears. If you can do nothing else, you can whisper into the
+ear of disconsolate sorrow those majestic solaces, which, rising first
+in the graveyard of Bethany, have sent their undying echoes through the
+world, and stirred the depths of ten thousand hearts. "Exercise your
+souls," says Butler, "in a loving sympathy with sorrow in every form.
+Soothe it, minister to it, succor it, revere it. It is the relic of
+Christ in the world, an image of the Great Sufferer, a shadow of the
+cross. It is a holy and venerable thing."
+
+Jesus Himself "_looked_ for some to take _pity_, but there was _none_;
+and for comforters, but He found _none_!" It shows how even _He_ valued
+sympathy, and that, too, in its commonest form of "_pity_," though an
+ungrateful World denied it.
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Twelfth Day.
+
+FIDELITY IN REBUKE.
+
+    "The Lord turned and looked upon Peter."--Luke, xxii. 61.
+
+
+Jesus never spake one unnecessarily harsh or severe word. He had a
+Divine sympathy for the frailties and infirmities of a tried, and
+suffering, and tempted nature in others. He was forbearing to the
+ignorant, encouraging to the weak, tender to the penitent, loving to
+all,--yet how faithful was He as "the Reprover of sin!" Silent under His
+own wrongs, with what burning invectives did He lay bare the Pharisees'
+masked corruption and hypocrisy! When His Father's name and temple were
+profaned, how did He sweep, with an avenging hand, the mammon-crowd
+away, replacing the superscription, "Holiness to the Lord," over the
+defiled altars!
+
+Nor was it different with His own disciples. With what fidelity, when
+rebuke was needed, did He administer it: the withering reprimand
+conveyed sometimes by an impressive _word_ (Matt. xvi. 23); sometimes by
+a silent _look_ (Luke, xxii. 61). "Faithful always were the wounds of
+_this_ Friend."
+
+Reader! art thou equally faithful with thy Lord in rebuking evil; not
+with "the wrath of man, which worketh not the righteousness of God," but
+with a holy jealousy of His glory, feeling, with the sensitive honor of
+"the good soldier of Jesus Christ," that an affront offered to Him is
+offered to thyself? The giving of a wise reproof requires much Christian
+prudence and delicate discretion. It is not by a rash and inconsiderate
+exposure of failings that we must attempt to reclaim an erring brother.
+But neither, for the sake of a false peace, must we compromise fidelity;
+even friendship is too dearly purchased by winking at sin. Perhaps, when
+Peter was led to call the Apostle who honestly reproved him, "Our
+beloved brother Paul," in nothing did he love his rebuker more, than for
+the honest boldness of his Christian reproof. If Paul had, in that
+crisis of the Church, with a timidity unworthy of him, evaded the
+ungracious task, what, humanly speaking, might have been the result?
+
+How often does a seasonable reprimand, a faithful caution, save a
+lifetime of sin and sorrow! How many a death-bed has made the
+disclosure, "That kind warning of my friend put an arrest on my career
+of guilt; it altered my whole being; it brought me to the cross, touched
+my heart, and, by God's grace, saved my soul!" On the other hand, how
+many have felt, when death has put his impressive seal on some close
+earthly intimacy, "This friend, or that friend,--I might have spoken a
+solemn word to him; but now he is no more; the opportunity is lost,
+never to be recalled!"
+
+Reader! see that you act not the spiritual coward. When tempted to sit
+silent when the name of God is slighted or dishonored, think, _would
+Jesus have done so_?--would _He_ have allowed the oath to go
+unrebuked--the lie to be uttered unchallenged--the Sabbath with impunity
+to be profaned? Where there is a natural diffidence which makes you
+shrink from a more bold and open reproof, remember much may be done to
+discountenance sin, by the silent holiness of demeanor which refuses to
+smile at the unholy allusion or ribald jest. "A word spoken in due
+season, how good is it!" "Speak gently," yet speak faithfully: "be
+pitiful--be courteous:" yet "quit you like men; be strong!"
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Thirteenth Day.
+
+GENTLENESS IN REBUKE.
+
+    "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?"--John, xxi. 15.
+
+
+No word here of the erring disciple's past faithlessness;--his guilty
+cowardice--_unmentioned_;--his base denial--his oaths--and curses, and
+treacherous desertion--all _unmentioned_! The memory of a threefold
+denial is _suggested_, and no more, by the threefold question of
+unutterable tenderness, "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?" When
+Jesus finds His disciples sleeping at the gate of Gethsemane, He rebukes
+them; but how is the rebuke disarmed of its poignancy by the merciful
+apology which is added--"The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is
+weak!" How different from _their_ unkind insinuation regarding _Him_,
+when, in the vessel on Tiberias, "He was asleep"--"Master carest thou
+not that we perish!" The woman of Samaria is full of earthliness,
+carnality, sectarianism, guilt. Yet how gently the Saviour speaks to
+her--how forbearingly, yet faithfully. He directs the arrow of
+conviction to that seared and hardened conscience, till He lays it
+bleeding at His feet! Truly, "He will not break the bruised reed--He
+will not quench the smoking flax." By "the _goodness_ of God," He would
+lead to repentance. When others are speaking of merciless violence, He
+can dismiss the most guilty of profligates with the words, "Neither do I
+condemn thee; go, and sin no more."
+
+How many have an unholy pleasure in finding a brother in the
+wrong--blazing abroad his failings; administering rebuke, not in gentle
+forbearance and kindly expostulation, but with harsh and impatient
+severity! How beautifully did Jesus unite intense sensibility to sin,
+along with tenderest compassion for the sinner, showing in this that
+"He knoweth our frame!" Many a scholar needs gentleness in
+chastisement. The reverse would crush a sensitive spirit, or drive it to
+despair. Jesus tenderly "considers" the case of those He disciplines,
+"tempering the wind to the shorn lamb." In the picture of the good
+shepherd bearing home the wandering sheep, He illustrated by parable
+what He had often and again taught by His own example. No word of
+needless harshness or upbraiding uttered to the erring wanderer!
+Ingratitude is too deeply felt to need rebuke! In silent love, "He lays
+it on His shoulders rejoicing."
+
+Reader! seek to mingle gentleness in all your rebukes; bear with the
+infirmities of others; make allowance for constitutional frailties;
+never say harsh things, if kind things will do as well; do not
+unnecessarily lacerate with recalling former delinquencies. In reproving
+another, let us rather feel how much we need reproof ourselves.
+"Consider thyself," is a searching Scripture motto for dealing with an
+erring brother. Remember thy Lord's method of silencing fierce
+accusation--"Let him that is without sin cast the first stone."
+Moreover, anger and severity are not the successful means of reclaiming
+the backslider, or of melting the obdurate. Like the _smooth_ stones
+with which David smote Goliath, _gentle_ rebukes are generally the most
+powerful. The old fable of the traveller and his cloak has a moral here
+as in other things. The genial sunshine will effect its removal sooner
+than the rough tempest. It was said of Leighton, that "he rebuked faults
+so mildly, that they were never repeated, not because the admonished
+were afraid, but ashamed to do so."
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Fourteenth Day.
+
+ENDURANCE IN CONTRADICTION.
+
+    "Who endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself."--
+     Heb. xii. 3.
+
+
+What endurance was this! Perfect truth in the midst of error; perfect
+love in the midst of ingratitude and coldness; perfect rectitude in the
+midst of perjury, violence, fraud; perfect constancy in the midst of
+contumely and desertion; perfect innocence, confronting every debased
+form of depravity and guilt; perfect patience, encountering every
+species of gross provocation--"oppressed and afflicted, He opened not
+His mouth!" "For my love" (in return for my love), "they are mine
+adversaries; _but_" (see His endurance!--the only species of revenge of
+which His sinless nature was capable) "_I give myself unto prayer!_"
+(Ps. cix. 4.)
+
+Reader! "let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus!" The
+greatest test of an earthly soldier's courage is _patient endurance_!
+The noblest trait of the spiritual soldier is the same. "Having done all
+_to stand_," "He _endured_, as seeing Him who is invisible!" Beware of
+the angry recrimination, the hasty ebullition of temper. Amid unkind
+insinuations--when motives are misrepresented, and reputation assailed;
+when good deeds are ridiculed, kind intentions coldly thwarted and
+repulsed, chilling reserve manifested where you expected nothing but
+friendship--what a triumph over natural impulse to manifest a spirit of
+meek endurance!--like a rainbow, radiant with the hues of heaven,
+resting peacefully amid the storms of derision and "the floods of
+ungodly men." What an opportunity of magnifying the "sustaining grace of
+God!" "It is a small thing for me to be judged of you, or of man's
+judgment; He that judgeth me is the Lord." "The Lord is on my side; I
+will not fear what man can do unto me." "Blessed is the man that
+_endureth_." "He that _endureth_ to the end, the same shall be saved."
+
+If faithful to our God, we must expect to encounter contradiction in the
+same form which Jesus did--"the contradiction of _sinners_." It has been
+well said, "There is no cross of nails and wood erected now for the
+Christian, but there is one of words and looks which is never taken
+down." If believers are set as lights in the earth, lamps in the "city
+of destruction," we know that "he that doeth evil _hateth_ the light."
+"Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you!"
+
+Weary and faint ones, exposed to the shafts of calumny and scorn because
+of your fidelity to your God; encountering, it may be, the coldness and
+estrangement of those dear to you, who can not, perhaps, sympathize in
+the holiness of your walk and the loftiness of your aims, "consider
+_Him_ that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, _lest_
+ye be weary and faint in your minds!" What is _your_ "contradiction" to
+_His_? Soon your cross, whatever it be, will have an end. "The seat of
+the scorner" has no place in yonder glorious heaven, where all will be
+peace--no jarring note to disturb its blissful harmonies! Look forward
+to the great coronation-day of the Church triumphant,--the day of your
+divine Lord's appearing, when motives and aims, now misunderstood, will
+be vindicated, wrongs redressed, calumnies and aspersions wiped away.
+Meanwhile, "rejoice that you are counted worthy to suffer shame for His
+name."
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Fifteenth Day.
+
+PLEASING GOD.
+
+    "I do always those things that please Him."--John, viii. 29.
+
+
+What a glorious motto for a man--"_I live for God!_" It is religion's
+truest definition. It is the essence of angelic bliss--the
+motive-principle of angelic action; "Ye ministers of His, that do His
+pleasure." The Lord of angels knew no higher, no _other_ motive. It was,
+during His incarnation, the regulator and directory of His daily being.
+It supported Him amid the depressing sorrows of His woe-worn path. It
+upheld him in their awful termination in the garden and on the cross.
+For a moment, sinking human nature faltered under the load His Godhead
+sustained; but the thought of "pleasing God" nerved and revived Him.
+"Not my will, but _Thine_ be done."
+
+It is only when the love of God is shed abroad in the heart, that this
+animating desire to "please Him" can exist. In the holy bosom of Jesus,
+that love reigned paramount, admitting no rival--no competing affection.
+Though infinitely inferior in degree, it is the same impelling principle
+which leads His people still to link enjoyment with His service, and
+which makes consecration to Him of heart and life its own best
+recompense and reward. "There is a gravitation," says one whose life was
+the holy echo of his words, "in the moral as in the physical world. When
+love to God is habitually in the ascendant, or occupying the place of
+will, it gathers round it all the other desires of the soul as
+satellites, and whirls them along with it in its orbit round the center
+of attraction." (_Hewitson's Life._) Till the heart, then, be changed,
+the believer can not have "this testimony that he _pleases God_." The
+world, self, sin--these be the gods of the unregenerate soul. And even
+_when_ changed, alas that there should be so many ebbings and flowings
+in our tide of devotedness! Jesus could say, "I do _always_ those things
+that please the Father." Glory to God burned within His bosom like a
+living fire. "Many waters could not quench it." His were no fitful and
+inconsistent frames and feelings, but the persistent habit of a holy
+life, which had the one end in view, from which it never diverged or
+deviated.
+
+Let it be so, in some lowly measure with us. Let God's service not be
+the mere livery of high days,--of set times and seasons; but, like the
+alabaster box of ointment, let us ever be giving forth the fragrant
+perfume of holiness. Even when the shadows of trial are falling around
+us, let us "pass through the cloud" with the sustaining motive--"All my
+wish, O God, is to please and glorify Thee! By giving or taking--by
+smiting or healing--by the sweet cup or the bitter--'Father, glorify thy
+name!'" "I don't want to be weary of God's dealing with me," said
+Bickersteth, on his death-bed; "I want to glorify Jesus in them, and to
+find Him more precious." Do I shrink from
+trials--duties--crosses--because involving hardships and self-denial, or
+because frowned on by the world? Let the thought of God's approving
+countenance be enough. Let me dread no censure, if conscious of acting
+in accordance with _His_ will. Let the Apostle's monitory word determine
+many a perplexing path--"If I please men, I am not the servant of
+Christ."
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Sixteenth Day.
+
+GRIEF AT SIN.
+
+    "Being grieved for the hardness of their hearts."--Mark, iii. 5.
+
+
+On this one occasion only is the expression used with reference to
+Jesus--(what intensity of emotion does it denote, spoken of a sinless
+nature!)--"He looked round on them _with anger_!" Never did He grieve
+for Himself. His intensest sorrows were reserved for those who were
+tampering with their own souls, and dishonoring His God. The continual
+spectacle of moral evil, thrust on the gaze of spotless purity, made His
+earthly history one consecutive history of grief, one perpetual "cross
+and passion."
+
+In the tears shed at the grave of Bethany, sympathy, doubtless, for the
+world's myriad mourners, had its own share (the bereaved could not part
+with so precious a tribute in their hours of sadness), but a far more
+impressive cause was one undiscerned by the weeping sisters and
+sorrowing crowd; His knowledge of the deep and obdurate impenitence of
+those who were about to gaze on the mightiest of miracles, only to
+"despise, and wonder, and perish." "_Jesus wept!_"--but His profoundest
+anguish was over resisted grace, abused privileges, scorned mercy. It
+was the Divine Artificer mourning over His shattered handiwork; the
+Almighty Creator weeping over His ruined world; God, the God-man,
+"grieving" over the Temple of the soul, a humiliating wreck of what once
+was made "after His own image!"
+
+Can we sympathize in any respect with such exalted tears? Do we mourn
+for sin, our _own_ sin--the deep insult which it inflicts on God--the
+ruinous consequences it entails on ourselves? Do we grieve at sin in
+_others_? Do we know any thing of "vexing our souls," like righteous
+Lot, "from day to day," with the world's "unlawful deeds," the stupid
+hardness and obduracy of the depraved heart, which resists alike the
+appliances of wrath and love, judgment and mercy? Ah! it is easy, in
+general terms, to condemn vice, and to utter harsh, severe, and cutting
+denunciations on the guilty: it is easy to pass uncharitable comments on
+the inconsistencies or follies of others: but to "_grieve_" as our Lord
+did, is a different thing; to mourn over the hardness of heart, and yet
+to have the burning desire to teach it better things; to hate, as He
+did, the sin, but, like Him also, to love the _sinner_!
+
+Reader! look specially to your own spirit. In one respect, the example
+of Jesus falls short of your case. He had no sin of His own to mourn
+over. He could only commiserate others. _Your_ intensest grief must
+begin with _yourself_. Like the watchful Levite of old, be a guardian at
+the temple-gates of your own soul. Whatever be your besetting iniquity,
+your constitutional bias to sin, seek to guard it with wakeful
+vigilance. Grieve at the thought of incurring one passing shadow of
+displeasure from so kind and compassionate a Saviour. Let this be a holy
+preservative in your every hour of temptation, "How can I do this great
+wickedness, and sin against God?"
+
+Grieve for a perishing world--a groaning creation fettered and chained
+in unwilling "subjection to vanity." Do what you can, by effort, by
+prayer, to hasten on the hour of jubilee, when its ashy robes of sin and
+sorrow shall be laid aside, and, attired in the "beauties of holiness,"
+it shall exult in "the glorious liberty of the sons of God!"
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Seventeenth Day.
+
+HUMILITY.
+
+    "He riseth from supper, and laid aside His garments; and took a
+     towel and girded Himself. After that He poureth water into a basin,
+     and began to wash the disciples' feet."--John, xiii. 4, 5.
+
+
+What a matchless picture of humility! At the very moment when His throne
+was in view; angel-anthems floating in His ear; the hour come "when He
+was to depart out of this world;" possessing a lofty consciousness of
+His peerless dignity, that "He came _from_ God and went _to_ God;" THEN
+"Jesus took a towel, and girded Himself, and began to wash the
+disciples' feet!" All heaven was ready at that moment to cast their
+combined crowns at His feet. But the High and the Lofty One, inhabiting
+eternity, is on earth "as one that serveth!" "That _infinite stoop_! it
+sinks all creature humiliation to nothing, and renders it impossible for
+a creature to _humble_ himself."--(_Evans_).
+
+Humility follows Him, from His unhonored birthplace to His borrowed
+grave. It throws a subdued splendor over all He did. "The poor in
+spirit,"--the "mourner,"--the "meek,"--claim His first beatitudes. He
+was severe only to one class--those who looked down upon others. However
+He is employed; whether performing His works of miraculous power, or
+receiving angel-visitants, or taking little children in His arms, He
+stands forth "clothed with humility." Nay, this humility becomes more
+conspicuous as He draws nearer glory. Before His death, He calls His
+disciples "_Friends_;" subsequently, it is "_Brethren_," "_Children_."
+How sad the contrast between the Master and His disciples! Two hours had
+not elapsed after He washed their feet, when "there was a strife among
+them which should be the greatest!"
+
+Let the mental image of that lowly Redeemer be ever bending over us.
+His example may well speak in silent impressiveness, bringing us down
+from our pedestal of pride. There surely can be no labor of love too
+humiliating when _He_ stooped so low. Let us be content to take the
+humblest place; not envious of the success or exaltation of another;
+not, "like Diotrephes, loving preeminence;" "but willing to be thought
+little of;" saying with the Baptist, with our eye on our Lord, "He must
+increase, but I must decrease!"
+
+How much we have cause to be humble for! the constant cleaving of
+defilement to our souls; and even what is partially good in us, how
+mixed with imperfection, self-seeking, arrogance, vain-glory! A proud
+Christian is a contradiction in terms. The Seraphim of old (type of the
+Christian Church, and of believers) had six wings--_two_ were for
+errands of love, but "with _four_ he _covered_ himself!" It has been
+beautifully said, "You lie nearest the River of Life when you _bend_ to
+it; you can not drink, but as you _stoop_." The corn of the field, as
+it ripens, bows its head; so the Christian, as he ripens in the Divine
+life, bends in this lowly grace. Christ speaks of His people as
+"lilies"--they are "lilies of _the valley_," they can only grow in the
+shade!
+
+"Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God." "Go" with what
+Rutherford calls "a low sail." It is the livery of your blessed Master;
+the family badge--the family likeness. "With this man will I dwell, even
+with him that is _humble_." Yes! the humble, sanctified heart is God's
+_second Heaven_!
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Eighteenth Day.
+
+PATIENCE.
+
+    "He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter."--Isa. liii, 7.
+
+
+How great was the _patience_ of Jesus! Even among His own disciples, how
+forbearingly He endured their blindness, their misconceptions and
+hardness of heart! Philip had been for three years with Him, yet he had
+"not known Him!"--all that time he had remained in strange and culpable
+ignorance of his Lord's dignity and glory. See how tenderly Jesus bears
+with him; giving him nothing in reply for his confession of ignorance
+but unparalleled promises of grace! Peter, the honored and trusted,
+becomes a renegade and a coward. Justly might his dishonored Lord, stung
+with such unrequited love, have cut the unworthy cumberer down. But He
+spares him, bears with him, gently rebukes him, and loves him more than
+ever! See the Divine Sufferer in the terminating scenes of His own
+ignominy and woe. How patient!--"As a sheep before her shearers is dumb,
+so He opened not His mouth." In these awful moments, outraged
+Omnipotence might have summoned twelve legions of angels and put into
+the hand of each a vial of wrath. But He submits in meek, majestic
+silence. Verily, in _Him_ "patience had her _perfect_ work!"
+
+Think of this same patience with His Church and people since He ascended
+to glory. The years upon years He has borne with their perverse
+resistance of His grace, their treacherous ingratitude, their wayward
+wanderings, their hardness of heart and contempt of His holy word. Yet,
+behold the forbearing love of this Saviour of God! His hand of mercy is
+"stretched out still!"
+
+Child of God! art thou now undergoing some bitter trial? The way of thy
+God, it may be, all mystery; no footprints of love traceable in the
+checkered path; no light, in the clouds above; no ray in the dark
+future. _Be patient!_ "The Lord is good to them that _wait_ for Him."
+"They that _wait_ on the Lord shall renew their strength!" Or hast thou
+been long tossed on some bed of sickness--days of pain and nights of
+weariness appointed thee? _Be patient!_ "I trust this groaning," said a
+suffering saint, "is not murmuring." God, by this very affliction, is
+nurturing within thee this beauteous grace which shone so conspicuously
+in the character of thy dear Lord. With Him it was a lovely _habit_ of
+the soul. With thee, the "tribulation" which worketh "patience" is
+needful discipline. It is _good_ for a man that he should both hope and
+quietly _wait_ for the salvation of God. Art thou suffering some
+unmerited wrong or unkindness, exposed to harsh and wounding
+accusations, hard for flesh and blood to bear? _Be patient!_ Beware of
+hastiness of speech or temper; remember how much evil may be done by a
+few inconsiderate words "spoken unadvisedly with the lip." Think of
+Jesus standing before a human tribunal, in the silent submissiveness of
+conscious innocence and integrity. Leave thy cause with God. Let this be
+the only form of thy complaint, "O God, I am oppressed; undertake Thou
+for me!"
+
+"In patience," then, "possess ye your souls." Let it not be a grace for
+peculiar seasons, called forth on peculiar exigences; but an habitual
+frame manifested in the calm serenity of a daily walk;--placidity amid
+the little fretting annoyances of every-day life--a fixed purpose of the
+heart to wait upon God, and cast its every burden upon Him.
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Nineteenth Day.
+
+SUBJECTION.
+
+    "As the Father gave me commandment, even so I do."--John, xiv. 31.
+
+
+Jesus as God-man had omnipotence slumbering in His arm. He had the
+hoarded treasures of eternity in His grasp. He had only to "speak, and
+it was done." But, as an example to His people, His whole life on earth
+was one impressive act of subordination and dependence. At Nazareth He
+was "subject to His parents." There He remained in studied obscurity,
+occupying for thirty years a lowly hut, willing to continue in a state
+of seclusion, till the Father's summons called Him to His appointed
+work.
+
+At His baptism, sinless Himself, He gives this reason for receiving a
+sinner's rite at a sinner's hands--"Suffer it to be so now, for thus it
+becometh Me to fulfill all righteousness." The same beautiful spirit of
+filial _subjection_ shines conspicuous amid His acts of stupendous
+power. "Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, Father, I thank Thee that
+Thou hast heard Me; and I know that Thou hearest Me always; but because
+of the people which stand by, I said it, that they may believe that Thou
+has sent Me." Even among His own disciples His language is, "I am among
+you as He that serveth." With an act of submission He closed His
+pilgrimage and work of love. "Father, into Thy hands I commend My
+spirit."
+
+What an example to us, in all this, is our beloved Lord! Surely, if
+_He_, "God only wise"--the Self-existent One, to whom "all power was
+committed;"--the Sinless One, never liable to err, on whom "the Spirit
+was poured without measure"--if _He_ manifested such habitual dependence
+on His heavenly Father, how earnestly ought _we_, weak, erring,
+fallible creatures, to seek to live every hour--every moment--as
+pensioners on God's grace and love, following in all things His
+directing hand! As the servant has his eyes on his master, or the child
+on its parent, "so should our eyes be on the Lord our God." Howsoever He
+speaks, be it ours with all docility to follow the voice, indorsing
+every utterance of providence, and every precept of Scripture, with our
+Lord's own words, "_This is the Father's will!_"
+
+Beware of self-dependence. The first step in spiritual declension is
+this: "Let him that _thinketh he standeth_!" The secret of real strength
+is this: "_Kept_ by the _power of God_!"
+
+How it sweetens all our blessings, and alleviates all our sorrows, to
+regard both as emanations from a loving Father's hand. Even if we should
+be, like the disciples of old, "_constrained_" to go into the ship; if
+all should be darkness and tempest, frowning providences--"the wind
+contrary;" how blessed to feel that in embarking on the unquiet
+element, "the Lord has bidden us!" Paul could not speak even of taking
+an earthly journey, without the parenthesis ("if the Lord will"). How
+many trials, and sorrows, and _sins_, would it save us, if the same were
+the habitual regulator of our daily life! It would lead to calm
+contentment with our lot, hushing every disquieting suggestion with the
+thought that that lot, with all that is apparently adverse in it, was
+_ordained_ for us. It would teach us not to be aspiring after _great_
+things, but humbly to wait the will and purposes of a wise Provider; not
+to go _before_ our Heavenly Guide, but to _follow_ Him, saying, in meek
+subjection, "Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty, neither
+do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for for me
+... my soul is even as a weaned child!"
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Twentieth Day.
+
+NOT RETALIATING.
+
+    "Who, when He was reviled, reviled not again."--1 Peter, ii. 23.
+
+
+What a common dictate of the fallen and regenerate heart to resent and
+recriminate! How alien to natural feeling to answer cutting taunts, and
+meet unmerited wrong with the Divine method the Gospel
+prescribes--"Overcome evil with good!" It was in the closing scenes of
+the Saviour's humiliation, when, silent and unresenting, He stood "dumb
+before His shearers," that this beautiful feature in His character was
+most wondrously manifested; but it beams forth, also, for our imitation
+in the ordinary and less prominent incidents of His pilgrimage.
+
+When He met Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, He found him clinging to an
+unreasonable prejudice--"Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" The
+severe remark is allowed to pass unnoticed. Overlooking the unkind
+insinuation, the Saviour fixes on the favorable feature of his
+character, "Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!" After His
+resurrection, He appears to His disciples. They were cowering in shame,
+half afraid to confront the glance of injured goodness. He breathes on
+them, and says, "Peace be unto you!" Peter was the one of all the rest
+who had most reason to dread estranged looks and upbraiding words; but a
+special message is sent to reassure that trembling spirit that there was
+no alienation in the unresentful Heart he had so deeply wounded; "Go and
+tell the disciples ... and _Peter_!" Even when Judas first revealed
+himself to his Lord as the betrayer, we believe it was not in bitter
+irony or rebuke, but in the fullness of pitying tenderness, that Jesus
+addressed him, "Friend, wherefore art thou come?" Tears and prayers
+were His only revenge on the city and scene of His murder. "Beginning at
+Jerusalem," was the closing illustration of a spirit "not of this
+world"--a significant parting testimony that in the bosom that uttered
+it retaliation had no place.
+
+More than one of the disciples seem to have imbibed much of this "mind"
+of their Lord. "We owe St. Paul," says Augustine, "to the death of
+Stephen;" "they stoned Stephen ... and he kneeled down and cried with a
+loud voice, Lord! lay not this sin to their charge."
+
+Take another example: The great Apostle of the Gentiles felt himself
+under a painful necessity faithfully to rebuke Peter in presence of the
+whole Church. He had _recorded_ that rebuke, too, in one of his
+epistles. It was thus to be handed down to every age as a permanent and
+humiliating evidence of the wavering inconstancy of his fellow-laborer.
+Peter, doubtless, must have felt acutely the severity of the
+chastisement. Does he resent it? He, too, puts on record, long after, in
+one of his own epistles a sentence regarding his Rebuker, but it is
+this--"Our _beloved brother_ Paul!"
+
+Reader! when tempted to utter the harsh word, or give the cutting or
+hasty answer, seek to check yourself with the question, "Is this the
+reply my Saviour would have given?" If your fellow-men should prove
+unkind, inconsiderate, ungrateful, be it yours to refer the cause to
+God. Speak of the faults of others only in prayer; manifesting more
+sorrow for the sin of the censorious and unkind, than for the evil
+inflicted on yourselves. _Retaliate!_ No such word should have a place
+in the Christian's vocabulary. _Retaliate!_ If I cherish such a spirit
+towards my brother, how can I meet that brother in heaven?--"But ye have
+not so learned in Christ."
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Twenty-first Day.
+
+BEARING THE CROSS.
+
+    "And He bearing His cross."--John, xix. 17.
+
+
+When did Jesus bear the cross? Not that moment alone, surely, when the
+bitter tree was placed on His shoulders, on the way to Golgotha. Its
+vision may be said to have risen before Him in His infant dreams in
+Bethlehem's cradle; there, rather, its reality began; and He ceased not
+to carry it, till His work was finished, and the victory won! A _cloud_,
+of old, hovered over the mercy-seat in the tabernacle and temple. So it
+was with the Great Antitype--the living Mercy-Seat--He had ever a cloud
+of woe hanging over him. "He _carried_ our sorrows."
+
+Reader! dwell much and often under the shadow of your Lord's cross, and
+it will lead you to think lightly of your own! If _He_ gave utterance to
+not one murmuring word, canst _thou_ complain? "If we were deeper
+students of his bitter anguish, we should think less of the ripplings of
+our waves, amidst His horrible tempest."--(_Evans._) The saint's cross
+assumes many and diverse shapes. Sometimes it is the bitter trial, the
+crushing pang of bereavement--desolate households, and aching hearts.
+Sometimes it is the crucifixion of sin, the determined battle with
+"lusts which war against the soul." Sometimes it is the resistance of
+evil maxims and practices of a lying world; vindicating the honor of
+Christ, in the midst, it may be, of taunt, and obloquy, and shame. And
+as there are different crosses, so there are different ways of bearing
+them. To some, God says, "put your shoulder to the burden; lift it up,
+and bear it on; work, and toil, and labor!" To others, He says, "Be
+still, bear it, and _suffer_!"
+
+Believer! thy cross may be hard to endure; it may involve deep
+struggles--tears by day, watchings by night; bear it meekly, patiently,
+justifying God's wisdom in laying it on. Rejoice in the assurance that
+He gives not one atom more of earthly trial than He sees to be really
+needful; not one redundant thorn pierces your feet. In the very bearing
+of the cross for _His_ sake, there are mighty compensations. What new
+views of your Saviour's love! His truth, His promises, His sustaining
+grace, His sufferings, His glory! What new filial nearness; increased
+delight in prayer; an inner sunshine when it is darkest without! The
+waves cover you, but underneath them all, are "the everlasting arms!"
+
+Do not look out for a situation _without_ crosses. Be not over anxious
+about "smooth paths;"--leaving your God, as Orpah did Naomi, just when
+the cross requires to be carried. Immoderate earthly
+enjoyments--unbroken earthly prosperity--write upon these, "_Beware!_"
+You may live to see them become your greatest trials!
+
+Remember the old saying, "No cross, no crown." The sun of the saint's
+life generally struggles through "weeping clouds." One of the loveliest
+passages of Scripture is that in which, the portals of heaven being
+opened, we overhear this dialogue between two ransomed ones--"And one of
+the elders answered saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in
+white robes, and whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou
+knowest. And he said to me, _These are they which came out of great
+tribulation!_"
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Twenty-second Day.
+
+HOLY ZEAL.
+
+    "The zeal of Thine house hath eaten me up."--John, ii. 17.
+
+
+"Zeal, is a principle; enthusiasm is a feeling. The one is a spark of a
+sanguine temperament and overheated imagination. The other, a sacred
+flame kindled at God's altar, and burning in God's
+shrine."--(_Vaughan._) Such was the holy, heavenly zeal of our Great
+Exemplar! His were no transient outbursts of ardor, which time cooled
+and difficulties impeded. His life was one indignant protest against
+sin;--one ceaseless current of undying love for souls, which all the
+malignity of foes, and unkindness of friends, could not for one moment
+divert from its course. Even when He rises from the dead, and we
+imagine His work at an end, His zeal only meditates fresh deeds of love.
+"Still His heart and His care," says Godwin, "is upon doing more. Having
+now dispatched that great work on earth, He sends His disciples word
+that He is hastening to heaven as fast as He can, to do another." (John,
+xx. 17).
+
+Reader! do you know any thing of this zeal, which "many waters could not
+quench"? See that, like your Lord's, it be steady, sober, consistent,
+undeviating. How many are, like the children of Ephraim, "carrying
+bows"--all zealous when zeal demands no sacrifice, but "turning their
+backs in the day of battle!" Others "running well" for a time, but
+gradually "hindered," through the benumbing influences of worldliness,
+selfishness, and sin. Two disciples, apparently equally devoted and
+zealous, send through Paul, in one of his epistles, a conjoint Christian
+salutation--"Luke and Demas greet you." A few years afterward, thus he
+writes from his Roman dungeon--"Only _Luke_ is with me," "_Demas_ hath
+_forsaken_ me, having loved this present world!"
+
+While zeal is commendable, remember the Apostle's qualification, "It is
+good to be zealously affected always in a _good_ thing." There is in
+these days much base coin current, _called_ "zeal," which bears not the
+image and superscription of Jesus. There is zeal for church-membership
+and party; zeal for creeds and dogmas; zeal for figments and
+non-essentials. "From such turn aside." Your Lord stamped with His
+example and approval no such counterfeits. _His_ zeal was ever brought
+to bear on two objects, and two objects alone--_the glory of God_ and
+_the good of man_. Be it so with _you_. Enter, first of all (as He did
+the earthly temple), the sanctuary of _your own heart_, with "the
+scourge of small cords." Drive out every unhallowed intruder there. Do
+not suffer yourself to be deceived. Others may call such jealous
+searchings of spirit "sanctimoniousness" and "enthusiasm." But remember,
+to be _almost saved_, is to be _altogether lost_!--to be zealous about
+every thing but "the one thing needful," is an insult to God and your
+everlasting interests!
+
+Have a zeal for _others_. Dying myriads are around you. As a member of
+the Christian priesthood, it becomes you to rush in with your censer and
+incense between the living and the dead, "that the plague may be
+stayed!"
+
+Be it yours to say, "Blessed Jesus! I am _Thine_!--Thine only!--Thine
+wholly!--Thine for ever! I am willing to follow Thee, and (if need be)
+to _suffer_ for Thee. I am ready at Thy bidding to leave the homestead
+in the valley, and to face the cutting blasts of the mountain. Take
+me--use me for Thy glory. 'Lord! what wilt Thou have me to do?'"
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Twenty-third Day.
+
+BENEVOLENCE.
+
+    "Who went about doing good."--Acts, x. 38.
+
+
+"Christ's great end," says Richard Baxter, "was to save men from their
+_sins_; but He delighted to save them from their _sorrows_." His heart
+bled for human misery. Benevolence brought Him from heaven; benevolence
+followed His steps wherever He went on earth. The journeys of the Divine
+Philanthropist were marked by tears of thankfulness, and breathings of
+grateful love. The helpless, the blind, the lame, the desolate, rejoiced
+at the sound of His footfall. Truly might it be said of Him, "When the
+ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it gave
+witness to me." (Job, xxix. 11.) All suffering hearts were a magnet to
+Jesus. It was not more His prerogative than His happiness to turn tears
+into smiles. One of the few pleasures which on earth gladdened the
+spirit of the "Man of sorrows" was the pleasure of _doing
+good_--soothing grief, and alleviating misery. Next to the joy of the
+widow of Nain when her son was restored, was the joy in the bosom of the
+Divine Restorer! He often went out of His way to be kind. A journey was
+not grudged, even if _one_ aching spirit were to be soothed. (Mark, v.
+1; John, iv. 4, 5.) Nor were his kindnesses dispensed through the
+intervention of others. They were all personal acts. His own hand
+healed. His own voice spake. His own footsteps lingered on the threshold
+of bereavement, or at the precincts of the tomb. Ah! had the princes of
+this world known the loving-tenderness and unselfishness of _that_
+heart, "they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory"!
+
+Reader! do you know any thing of such active benevolence? Have you never
+felt the _luxury_ of doing good? Have you never felt, that in making
+_others_ happy, you make _your self_ so? that, by a great law of your
+being, enunciated by the Divine Patron and Pattern of Benevolence, "it
+is more blessed to give than to receive"? Has God enriched you with this
+world's goods? Seek to view yourself as a consecrated medium for
+dispensing them to others. Beware alike of penurious hoarding and
+selfish extravagance. How sad the case of those whose lot God has made
+thus to abound with temporal mercies, who have gone to the grave
+unconscious of diminishing one drop of human misery, or making one of
+the world's myriad aching hearts happier! How the example of _Jesus_
+rebukes the cold and calculating kindnesses--the mite-like offerings of
+many even of His own people! "whose libation is not like His, from the
+brim of an overflowing cup, but from the bottom--from the _dregs_!"
+
+You may have little to give. Your sphere and means may be alike limited.
+But remember God can be as much glorified by the trifle saved from the
+earnings of poverty, as by the splendid benefaction from the lap of
+plenty "The Lord loveth a _cheerful_ giver."
+
+The nobler part of Christian benevolence is not vast largesses,
+munificent pecuniary sacrifices. "_He went about_ doing good." The
+merciful visit--the friendly word--the look of sympathy--the cup of cold
+water, the little unostentatious service--the giving without thought or
+hope of recompense--the kindly "considering of the poor"--anticipating
+their wants--studying their comforts; these are what God values and
+loves. They are "loans" to Himself--tributary streams to "the river of
+_His_ pleasure;" they will be acknowledged at last as such--"Ye did it
+unto _Me_."
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Twenty-fourth Day.
+
+FIRMNESS IN TEMPTATION.
+
+    "Jesus saith unto him, Get thee hence, Satan."--Matt. iv. 10.
+
+
+There is an awful intensity of meaning in the words, as applied to
+Jesus, "He _suffered_, being tempted!" Though incapable of sin, there
+was, in the refined sensibilities of His holy nature, that which made
+temptation unspeakably fearful. What must it have been to confront the
+Arch-traitor?--to stand face to face with the foe of His throne, and His
+universe? But the "prince of this world" came, and found "nothing in
+Him." Billow after billow of Satanic violence spent their fury, in vain,
+on the Living Rock!
+
+Reader! you have still the same malignant enemy to contend with;
+assailing you in a thousand insidious forms; marvelously adapting his
+assaults to your circumstances, your temperament, your mental bias, your
+master-passion! There is no place where "Satan's seat" is not; "the
+whole world lieth in the Wicked one." (1 John, v. 19.) He has his
+whispers for the ear of childhood; hoary age is not inaccessible to his
+wiles. "_All this will I give thee_"--is still his bribe to deny Jesus
+and to "mind earthly things." He will meet you in the crowd; he will
+follow you to the solitude; his is a sleepless vigilance!
+
+Are you bold in repelling him as your Master was? Are you ready with the
+retort to every foul suggestion, "Get thee hence, Satan"? Cultivate a
+tender sensitiveness about sin. The finest barometers are the most
+sensitive. Whatever be your besetting frailty--whatever bitter or
+baleful passion you are conscious aspires to the mastery--watch it,
+crucify it, "nail it to your Lord's cross." _You_ may despise "the day
+of small things"--the Great Adversary does _not_. He knows the power of
+_littles_; that little by little consumes and eats out the vigor of the
+soul. And once the retrograde movement in the spiritual life begins, who
+can predict where it may end? the going on "from weakness to weakness,"
+instead of "from strength to strength." Make no compromises; never join
+in the ungodly amusement, or venture on the questionable path, with the
+plea, "It does me no harm." The Israelites, on entering Canaan, instead
+of obeying the Divine injunction of extirpating their enemies, made a
+hollow truce with them. What was the result? Years upon years of tedious
+warfare. "They were scourges in their sides, and thorns in their eyes!"
+It is quaintly but truthfully said by an old writer, "The candle will
+never burn clear, while there is a _thief_ in it. Sin indulged, in the
+conscience, is like Jonah in the ship, which causeth such a tempest,
+that the conscience is like a troubled sea, whose waters cannot
+rest."--(_Thomas Brooks_.)
+
+"Keep," then, "thy heart with all diligence," or, (as it is in the
+forcible original Hebrew,) "keep thy heart _above all keeping_," "for
+out of it are the issues of life." (Prov. iv. 23.) Let this ever be your
+preservative against temptation, "How would _Jesus_ have acted here?
+would _He_ not have recoiled, like the sensitive plant, from the
+remotest contact with sin? Can _I_ think of dishonoring Him by tampering
+with His enemy; incurring from His own lips the bitter reflection of
+injured love, 'I am wounded in the house of my friends'?"
+
+He tells us the secret of our preservation and safety, "Simon! Simon!
+Satan hath desired to have thee, that he might sift thee as wheat; _but
+I_ have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not!"
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Twenty-fifth Day.
+
+RECEIVING SINNERS.
+
+    "This man receiveth sinners."--Luke, xv. 2.
+
+
+The ironical taunt of proud and censorious Pharisees formed the glory of
+Him who came, "not to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance."
+Publicans and outcasts; those covered with a deeper than any bodily
+leprosy--laid bare their wounds to the "Great Physician;" and as
+conscious guilt and timid penitence crept abashed and imploring to His
+feet, they found nothing but a forgiving and a gracious welcome!
+
+"His ways" were not as "man's ways!" The "watchmen," in the Canticles,
+"smote" the disconsolate one seeking her lost Lord; they tore off her
+veil, mocking with chilling unkindness her anguished tears. Not so "the
+Chief Shepherd and Bishop of souls." "_This_ man _receiveth_ sinners"!
+See Nicodemus, stealing under the shadows of night to elude
+observation--type of the thousand thousand who in every age have gone
+trembling in their night of sin and sorrow to this Heavenly Friend! Does
+Jesus punish his timidity by shutting His door against him, spurning him
+from His presence? "He will not break the bruised reed, He will not
+quench the smoking flax!"
+
+And He is still the same! He who arrested a persecutor in his
+blasphemies, and tuned the lips of an expiring felon with faith and
+love, is at this hour standing, with all the garnered treasures of
+Redemption in His hand, proclaiming, "Him that cometh unto Me, I will in
+no wise cast out"!
+
+Are we from this to think lightly of sin? or, by example and conduct, to
+palliate and overlook its enormity? Not so; sin, _as_ sin, can never be
+sufficiently stamped with the brand of reprobation. But we must seek
+carefully to distinguish between the offence and the offender. Nothing
+should be done on our part, by word or deed, to mock the penitential
+sighings of a guilty spirit, or send the trembling outcast away, with
+the despairing feeling of "_No hope_." "This man receiveth sinners," and
+shall not _we_? Does _He_ suffer the veriest dregs of human depravity to
+crouch unbidden at His feet, and to gaze on His forgiving countenance
+with the uplifted eye of hope, and shall _we_ dare to deal out harsh,
+and severe, and crushing verdicts on an offending (it may be a _deeply_
+offending) brother? Shall we pronounce "crimson" and "scarlet" sins and
+sinners beyond the pale of mercy, when _Jesus_ does not? Nay, rather,
+when wretchedness, and depravity, and backsliding cross our path, let it
+not be with the bitter taunt or the ironical retort that we bid them
+away. Let us bear, endure, remonstrate, deal tenderly. Jesus _did_ so,
+Jesus _does_ so! Ah! If we had within us His unconquerable love of
+souls; His yearning desire for the everlasting happiness of sinners, we
+should be more frequently in earnest expostulation and affectionate
+appeal with those who have hitherto got no other than harsh thoughts and
+repulsive words. If this "mind" really were in us, "which was also in
+Him," we should more frequently ask ourselves, "Have I done all I
+_might_ have done to pluck this brand from the burning! Have I
+remembered what grace _has_ wrought, what grace _can_ do?"
+
+"Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him, let
+him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way
+shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins!"
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Twenty-sixth Day.
+
+GUILELESSNESS.
+
+    "Neither was guile found in His mouth."--1 Pet. ii. 22.
+
+
+How rare, and all the more beautiful because of its rarity, is a purely
+_guileless_ spirit! A crystalline medium through which the transparent
+light of Heaven comes and goes; open, candid, just, honorable, sincere;
+scorning every unfair dealing, every hollow pretension, every narrow
+prejudice. Wherever such characters exist, they are like "apples of gold
+in pictures of silver."
+
+Such, in all the loveliness of sinless perfection, was the Son of God!
+His guilelessness shining the more conspicuously amid the artful and
+malignant subtlety alike of men and devils. Passing by manifold
+instances in the course of His ministry, look at its manifestation as
+the hour of His death approached. When, on the night of his
+apprehension, He confronts the assassin band, in meek majesty He puts
+the question, "Whom seek ye?" They say to Him, "Jesus of Nazareth." In
+guileless innocence, He replies, "I am He!" "Art thou the King of the
+Jews?" asks Pilate, a few hours after. An evasive answer might again
+have purchased immunity from suffering and indignity, but once more the
+lips which scorned the semblance of evasion reply, "Thou sayest!"
+
+How He loved the same spirit in His people! "Behold," said He, of
+Nathanael, "an Israelite indeed, in whom is _no guile_!" That upright
+man had, we may suppose, been day after day kneeling in prayer under his
+fig-tree, with an open and candid spirit--
+
+    "Musing on the law he taught,
+     And waiting for the Lord he loved."
+
+See how the Saviour honored him; setting His own Divine seal on the
+loveliness of this same spirit! Take one other example, when the
+startling, saddening announcement is made to the disciples, "One of you
+shall betray me;" they do not accuse one another; they attempt to throw
+no suspicion on Judas; each in trembling apprehension suspects only his
+own treacherous heart, "Lord, is it I?"
+
+How much of a different "mind" is there abroad! In the school of the
+world (this "_painted_ world"), how much is there of what is called
+"policy," double-dealing!--accomplishing its ends by tortuous means;
+outward, artificial polish, often only a cloak for baseness and
+selfishness!--in the daily interchange of business, one seeking to
+over-reach the other by wily arts; sacrificing principle for temporal
+advantage. There is nothing so derogatory to religion as aught allied to
+such a spirit among Christ's people--any such blot on the "living
+epistles." "Ye are the light of the world." That world is a quick
+observer. It is sharp to detect inconsistencies--slow to forget them.
+The true Christian has been likened to an _anagram_--you ought to be
+able to read him up and down, every way!
+
+Be all reality, no counterfeit. Do not pass for current coin what is
+base alloy. Let transparent honor and sincerity regulate all your
+dealings; despise all meanness; avoid the sinister motive, the underhand
+dealing; aim at that unswerving love of truth that would scorn to stoop
+to base compliances and unworthy equivocations; live more under the
+power of the purifying and ennobling influences of the gospel. Take its
+golden rule as the matchless directory for the daily transactions of
+life--"Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to
+them."
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Twenty-seventh Day.
+
+ACTIVITY IN DUTY.
+
+    "I must work the works of Him that sent me, while it is day; the
+     night cometh, when no man can work."--John, ix. 4.
+
+
+How constant and unremitting was Jesus in the service of His Heavenly
+Father! "He rose a great while before day;" and, when His secret
+communion was over, His public work began. It mattered not to Him where
+He was: whether on the bosom of the deep, or a mountain slope--in the
+desert, or at a well-side--the "gracious words" ever "proceeded out of
+His mouth." We find, on one touching occasion, exhausted nature sinking,
+after a day of unremitting duty; in crossing, in a vessel, the Lake of
+Tiberias--"_He fell asleep_"! (Matt. viii.) He redeemed every precious
+moment. His words to the Pharisee seem a _formula_ for all, "Simon, I
+have somewhat to say unto _thee_"!
+
+Oh, how our most unceasing activities pale into nothing before such an
+example as this! Would that we could remember that each of us has some
+great mission to perform for God, that religion is not a thing of dreamy
+sentimentalism, but of energetic practical action; moreover, that no
+trade, no profession, no position, however high or however humble in the
+scale of society, can disqualify for this life of Christian activity and
+usefulness! Who were the writers in the Bible? We have among them a
+King--a Lawgiver--a Herdsman--a Publican--a Physician! Nor is it to high
+spheres, or to great services only, that God looks. The widow's mite and
+Mary's "alabaster box of ointment" are recorded as examples for
+imitation by the Holy Ghost, while many more munificent deeds are passed
+by unrecorded. We believe that God says, regarding the attempt of many a
+humble Christian to serve Him by active duty, "I saw that effort, that
+_feeble_ effort to serve and glorify Me; it was the very _feebleness_
+of it I loved!"
+
+Did it never strike you, notwithstanding the _dignity_ of Christ, and
+the _activity_ of Christ, how little success comparatively He met with
+in His public work? We read of no _numerous_ conversions; no Pentecostal
+revivals in the course of His ministry. May not this well encourage in
+the absence of great outward results? He sets up no higher standard than
+this--"She hath done what she could." An artist may be _great_ in
+painting a peasant as well as a king--_it is the way he does it_. Yes,
+and if laid aside from the _activities_ of the Christian life, we can
+equally glorify God by _passive endurance_. "Who am I," said Luther,
+when he witnessed the patience of a great sufferer; "who am I? a wordy
+preacher in comparison with this great doer."
+
+Reader! forget not the motive of our motto verse, "_The night cometh!_"
+Soon our tale shall be told; our little day is flitting fast, the
+shadows of night are falling. "Our span length of time," as Rutherford
+says, "will come to an inch." What if the eleventh hour should strike
+after having been "all the day _idle_"? A long lifetime of opportunities
+suffered to pass unemployed and unimproved, and absolutely _nothing_
+done for God! A judgment-day come--our golden moments squandered--our
+talents untraded on--our work undone--met at the bar of Heaven with the
+withering repulse, "Inasmuch as ye did it _not_." "The time we have
+lost," says Richard Baxter, "can not be recalled; should we not then
+redeem and improve the little that remains? If a traveler sleep or
+trifle most of the day, he must travel so much the faster in the
+evening, or fall short of his journey's end."
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Twenty-eighth Day.
+
+COMMITTING OUR WAY TO GOD.
+
+    "But committed himself to Him that judgeth righteously."--
+     1 Peter, ii. 23.
+
+
+With what perfect and entire confidingness did Jesus commit Himself to
+his Heavenly Father's guidance! He loved to call Him, "My Father!" There
+was music in that name, which enabled Him to face the most trying hour,
+and to drink the most bitter cup. The scoffing taunt arose at the scene
+of crucifixion: "He trusted in God that He would deliver Him, let Him
+deliver Him!" It failed to shake, for one moment, His unswerving
+confidence, even when the sensible tokens of the Divine presence were
+withdrawn; the realized consciousness of God's abiding love sustained
+Him still: "My God! my God!"
+
+How many a perplexity should we save ourselves by thus implicitly
+"committing ourselves," as He did, to God! In seasons of darkness and
+trouble--when our way is shut up with thorns, to lift the confiding eye
+of faith to Him, and say, "I am oppressed, undertake for me!" How
+blessed to feel that He directs all that befalls us; that no
+contingencies can frustrate His plans; that the way he leads us is not
+only _a_ "right way," but, with all its briers and thorns--_its_ tears
+and trials--it is _the_ right way!
+
+The result of such an habitual staying ourselves on the Lord will be a
+deep, abiding _peace_; any ripple will only be on the surface--no more.
+It is the _bosom_ of the ocean alone which the storm ruffles; all
+beneath is a serene, settled calm. So "Thou wilt keep him, oh God, in
+perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on _Thee_!"
+
+"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." I shall be content alike
+with what He appoints or withholds. I _can not_ wrong that love with
+one shadow of suspicion! I have His own plighted promise of unchanging
+faithfulness, that "all things work together for good to them that love
+Him!" Often there are earthly sorrows hard to bear;--the unkind
+accusation, when it was least merited or expected; the estrangement of
+tried and trusted friends, the failure of cherished hopes, favorite
+schemes broken up, plans of usefulness demolished, the gourd breeding
+its own worm and withering. "Commit thy cause and thy way to God!" We
+little know what tenderness there is in the blast of the rough wind;
+what "needs be" are folded under the wings of the storm! "All is well,"
+because _all_ is from _Him_. "Events are God's," says Rutherford; "let
+Him sit at His own helm, that moderateth all."
+
+Christian! look back on your checkered path. How wondrously has He
+threaded you through the mazy way--disappointing your fears, realizing
+your hopes! Are evils looming through the mists of the future? Do not
+anticipate the trials of to-morrow, to aggravate those of to-day. Leave
+the morrow with Him, who has promised, by "casting all your care on Him,
+to care for you." No affliction will be sent greater than you can bear.
+His voice will be heard stealing from the bosom of the threatening
+cloud, "Be still, and know that I am God!"
+
+"_My Father!_" With such a word, you can stretch out your neck for any
+yoke; as with Israel of old, He will make those very waves that may now
+be so threatening, a fenced wall on every side! "Rest in the Lord, and
+wait patiently for Him." "In _all_ thy ways acknowledge Him, and He
+shall direct thy paths!"
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Twenty-ninth Day.
+
+LOVE OF UNITY.
+
+    "That they all may be one."--John, xvii. 21.
+
+
+Surely there is nothing for which Christian churches have such cause to
+hang their harps on the willows, as the extent to which the Shibboleth
+of party is heard in the camp of the faithful--sectarianism rearing its
+"untempered walls" within the Temple gates!
+
+How different "the mind of Jesus!" Sent "to the lost sheep of the house
+of Israel," He was never found disowning "_other_ sheep not of that
+fold." "Them also will I bring," was an assertion continually
+illustrated by His deeds. Take one example: The woman of Samaria
+revealed what, alas! is too common in the world--a total absence of all
+real religion, along with an ardent zeal for her sect. She was living
+in open sin; yet she was all alive to the nice distinction between a Jew
+and a Samaritan--between Mount Gerizim and Mount Zion: "How is it that
+thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, who am a woman of Samaria?" Did
+Jesus sanction or reciprocate her sectarianism?--did He leave her
+bigotry unrebuked? Hear His reply--"If thou knewest the gift of God, and
+who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldst have asked
+of _Him_, and _He_ would have given thee!" _He_ would have allowed no
+such narrow-minded exclusiveness to have interfered with the interchange
+of kindly civilities with a stranger. Nay, He would have given thee,
+better than all, the "living water" which "springeth up to everlasting
+life!"
+
+How sad, that when the enemy is "coming in like a flood"--the ranks of
+Popery and infidelity linked in fatal and formidable confederacy--that
+the soldiers of Christ are forced to meet the assault with standards
+soiled and mutilated by internal feuds! "Uniformity" there _may_ not
+be, but "unity," in the true sense of the word, there _ought_ to be. We
+may be clad in different livery, but let us stand side by side, and rank
+by rank, fighting the battles of our Lord. We may be different branches
+of the seven golden candlesticks, varying and diversified in outward
+form and workmanship; but let us combine in "showing forth the praises
+of Him" who recognizes, as the one true "churchmanship," fidelity in
+shining for His glory "as lights in the world." How can we read the 13th
+chapter of 1st Corinthians, and then think of our divisions? "How
+miserable," says Edward Bickersteth, "would an hospital be, if each
+patient were to be so offended with his neighbor's disease, as to differ
+with him on account of it, instead of trying to alleviate it!"
+
+Ah! if we had more real communion with our Saviour, should we not have
+more real communion with one another? If Christians would dip their
+arrows more in "the balm of Gilead," would there not be fewer wounds in
+the body of Christ? "How that word '_toleration_' is used amongst us,"
+said one who drank deeper than most, of his Master's spirit--"how we
+_tolerate_ one another--Dissenters _tolerate_ Churchmen, and Churchmen
+_tolerate_ Dissenters! Oh! hateful word! TOLERATE one for whom _Jesus_
+died! _Tolerate_ one whom He bears upon His heart! _Tolerate_ a temple
+of the living God! Oh! there ought to be _that_ in the word which should
+make us feel _ashamed_ before God!"
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Thirtieth Day.
+
+NOT OF THE WORLD.
+
+    "I am not of the world."--John, xvii. 14.
+
+
+In one sense it was _not_ so. Jesus did not seek to maintain His
+holiness intact and unspotted by avoiding contact with the world. He
+mingled familiarly in its busy crowds. He frowned on none of its
+innocent enjoyments; He fostered, by His example, no love of seclusion;
+He gave no warrant or encouragement to mortified pride, or disappointed
+hopes, to rush from its duties; yet, with all this, what a halo of
+heavenliness encircled His pathway through it! "I am from above," was
+breathed in His every look, and word, and action, from the time when He
+lay in the slumbers of guileless infancy in His Bethlehem cradle, until
+He said, "I leave the world, and go to my Father!" He had moved
+uncontaminated through its varied scenes, like the sunbeam, which,
+whatever it touches, remains as unsullied, as when it issues from its
+great fountain.
+
+But though Himself in His sinless nature "unconquerable" by
+temptation--immutably secure from the world's malignant influences, it
+is all worthy of note, as an example to us, that He never unnecessarily
+braved these. He knew the seducing spell that same world would exercise
+on His people, of whom, with touching sympathy, He says, "_These_ are in
+the world!" He knew the _many_ who would be involved and ensnared in its
+subtle worship, who, "minding earthly things, would seek to slake their
+thirst at polluted streams!"
+
+Reader! the great problem you have to solve, Jesus has solved for
+you--to be "_in_ the world, and yet not _of_ it." To abandon it, would
+be a dereliction of duty. It would be servants deserting their work;
+soldiers flying from the battle-field. _Live_ in it, that while you
+live, the world, may feel the better for you. _Die_, that _when_ you
+die, the world, the _Church_, may feel your loss, and cherish your
+example! On its cares and duties, its trusts and responsibilities, its
+employments and enjoyments, inscribe the motto, "The world passeth
+away!" Beware of every thing in it that would tend to deaden
+spirituality of heart; unfitting the mind for serious thought, lowering
+the standard of Christian duty, and inducing a perilous conformity to
+its false manners, habits, tastes, and principles. As the best antidote
+to the love of the world, let the inner _vacuum_ of the heart be filled
+with the love of God. Seek to feel the nobility of your regenerated
+nature; that you have a nobler heritage to care for than the transitory
+glories which encircle "an indivisible point, a fugitive atom." How can
+I mix with the potsherds of the earth? Once, "I lay among the pots;"
+now, I am "like a dove, whose wings are covered with silver, and her
+feathers with yellow gold!" "Stranger--pilgrim--sojourner" "my
+_citizenship_ is in heaven!" Why covet tinsel honors and glories? Why be
+solicitous about the smiles of that which knew not (nay, which frowned
+on) its Lord? "Paul calls it," says an old writer, "_schema_ (a
+mathematical figure), which is a mere _notion_, and nothing in
+substance."--(_Thomas Brooks._)
+
+Live above its corroding cares and anxieties; remembering the
+description Jesus gives of His own true people; "They are not of the
+world, even as I am not of the world!"
+
+    "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
+
+
+
+
+Thirty-first Day.
+
+CALMNESS IN DEATH.
+
+    "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit."--Luke, xxiii. 46.
+
+
+In the death of Jesus, there were elements of fearfulness, which the
+believer can know nothing of. It was with Him the execution of a penal
+sentence. The sins of an elect world were bearing him down! The very
+voice of His God was giving the tremendous summons, "Awake, O sword,
+against my shepherd!" Yet His was a death of _peace_, nay, of _triumph_!
+Ere He closed His eyes, light broke through the curtains of thick
+darkness. In the calm composure of filial confidence He breathed away
+His soul--"Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit!" What was the
+secret of such tranquillity? This is His own key to it--"I have
+glorified Thee on the earth; I have finished the work which Thou gavest
+me to do."
+
+Reader! will it be so with _you_ at a dying hour? will _your_ "work" be
+done? Have you already fled to Jesus? Are you reposing in Him as your
+only Saviour, and following Him as your only pattern? Then--let death
+overtake you when it may--you will have nothing to do _but to die_! The
+grave will be irradiated with His presence and smile. He will be
+standing there as He did by His own tomb of old, pointing to yours,
+tenanted with angel forms, nay, Himself as the "Precursor," showing you
+"_the path of life!_" There can be no true peace till the fear of death
+be conquered by the sense of sin forgiven, through "the blood of the
+Cross." "Not till then," as one has it, "will you be able to be a quiet
+spectator of the open grave at the bottom of the hill which you are soon
+to descend." "The sting of death is _sin_, but thanks be to God who
+giveth us the victory through the Lord Jesus Christ!"
+
+Seek now to live in the enjoyment of greater filial nearness to your
+covenant God; and thus, when the hour of departure _does_ come, you will
+be able, without irreverence, to take the very words of your dying Lord,
+and make them your own--"FATHER! into Thy hands I commend my spirit."
+FATHER! It is going HOME! the heart of the child leaping at the thought
+of the paternal roof, and the paternal welcome! "Son, thou art ever with
+me, and all that I have is thine!"
+
+It is said of Archbishop Leighton, that he "was always happiest when,
+from the shaking of the prison-doors, he was led to hope that some of
+those brisk blasts would throw them open, and give him the release he
+coveted." Christian! can you dread _that_ which your Saviour has already
+vanquished? _Death!_ It is as the angel to Peter, breaking the
+dungeon-doors, and leading to open day; it is going to the world of your
+birthright, and leaving the one of your exile; "it is the soldier at
+night-fall, lying down in his tent in peace, waiting the morning to
+receive his laurels." Oh! to be ever living in a state of holy
+preparation! the mental eye gazing on the vista-view of an opening
+Heaven! feeling that _every moment_ is bringing us nearer and nearer
+that happy _Home_! soon to be within reach of the Heavenly threshold, in
+sight of the Throne! soon to be bending in adoring rapture with the
+Church triumphant--bathing in floods of infinite glory--"LIKE
+HIM,"--"seeing HIM _as He is_," and that _for Ever and Ever_!
+
+    "AND EVERY MAN THAT HATH THIS HOPE IN HIM PURIFIETH HIMSELF,
+                        EVEN AS HE IS PURE!"
+
+
+
+
+            Leaving us
+
+            AN EXAMPLE
+
+       that we should follow
+
+            HIS STEPS.
+
+
+         1 Peter, ii. 21.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mind of Jesus, by John R. Macduff
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