HAVING loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.

xiii. I.

LIKE a cradle rocking, rocking,

Silent, peaceful, to and fro,

Like a mother's sweet looks dropping
On the little face below, -

- JOHN

Hangs the green earth, swinging, turning
Jarless, noiseless, safe, and slow;
Falls the light of God's face bending
Down and watching us below.

And as feeble babes that suffer,
Toss and cry, and will not rest,
Are the ones the tender mother

Holds the closest, loves the best;
So, when we are weak and wretched,
By our sins weighed down, distressed,
Then it is that God's great patience

Holds us closest, loves us best.

SAXE HOLM.

THE practice of pausing momentarily in business and recreation to realize God's presence is one of the rudimentary lessons in the Primer of Religion, which teaches us to walk by faith and not by sight.

EDWARD MEYRICK GOULdburn.

FOR in Him we live, and move, and have our

So in a season of calm weather,

Though inland far we be,

Our souls have sight of the Immortal Sea

That brought us hither.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

IF others cannot perceive the Holy Spirit that looks on us through the veils of life and Nature,

- if in low moods of thought I lose the blessed Presence myself, and begin to ask whether it was a vision, why should I trust the blind heart instead of the seeing, and believe the Night rather than the Day? Is it more likely that the pure soul from its own sunbeams should weave imaginary sanctities than that the impure by its turbid clouds should hide the real ones?

JAMES MARTINEAU.

IF you dare trust to God when the case to human reason seems impossible, and trust to God then also out of choice, not because you have nothing else to trust to, but because He is the only support of a just confidence, then you give a good testimony of your faith.

JEREMY TAYLOR

THE mystery of the seven stars.

-Rev. i. 20.

THE stars are in the sky all day;
Each linked coil of Milky Way,
And every planet that we know,
Behind the sun are circling slow.

They sweep, they climb with stately tread, —
Venus the fair and Mars the red,
Saturn engirdled with clear light,
And Jupiter with moons of white.

Each knows his path and keeps due tryst;
Not even the smallest star is missed
From those wide fields of deeper sky
Which gleam and flash mysteriously,
As if God's outstretched fingers must
Have sown them thick with diamond dust.
There are they all day long; but we,
Sun-blinded, have no eyes to see.

I wonder if the world is full
Of other secrets beautiful,
As little guessed, as hard to see,
As this sweet starry mystery?
Do angels veil themselves in space,
And make the sun their hiding-place?
Do white wings flash as spirits go
On heavenly errands to and fro,
While we, down-looking, never guess

How near our lives they crowd and press?
If so, at life's set we may see

Into the dusk steal noiselessly

Sweet faces that we used to know,

Dear eyes like stars that softly glow,

Dear hands stretched out to point the way,
And deem the night more fair than day.

CHRISTIANS are called to be like stars, lumi nous, steadfast, majestic, attractive.

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

FOR whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's. - ROм. xiv. 8.

THOU to life, and I to death;
Thou to bide, and I to run,
Like a ray that hasteneth

On the hill-tops, when the sun
Through the evening gate has gone.
Every sunset's faced with dawn

To the men that dwell far west;
Dusk or daybreak, God knows best;
But we do not know.

EDITH THOMAS.

IT would be a great deal better, I thought, to live in the millennium than even to die and go to heaven, though so many people around me talked as if that were the most desirable thing of all. But I could never understand why, if God sent us here, we should be in haste to get away, even to go to a pleasanter place.

LUCY LARCOM.

THAT, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him. I THESS. V. IO.

LET the world pass by unknown,
Care is dead and sorrow flown;
O'er His garment's outer fold
I have all my burdens rolled :
I will sleep, for God shall be
Even in slumber blessing me.

As a callow bird may rest
Swinging softly in its nest,
As a baby kept from harm
In its mother's folding arm,
So I rest secure with Thee;

Even in sleep Thou blessest me.

ROSE TERRY COOKE.

IF to know that God approves of you, that all day long God is with you, and you with God, that His loving and mighty arms are under you, that He has promised to keep you in all your ways, to prosper all you do, and reward you forever, if this be not happiness, my friends, what is?

CHARLES KINGSLEY.