If You Desire a Noble and a Holy Life
January 26.
O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom
and knowledge of God! how unsearchable
are His judgments,
and His ways past finding out!
ROMANS 11, verse 33.
It doth not yet appear what we shall be.
1 JOHN 3, verse 2.
No star is ever lost we once have seen,
We always may be what we might have been.
Since Good, though only thought, has life and breath,
God's life--can always be redeemed from death;
And evil, in its nature, is decay,
And any hour can blot it all away;
The hopes that lost in some far distance seem,
May be the truer life, and this the dream.
A. A. PROCTER.
St. Bernard has said: "Man, if thou desirest
a noble and holy life, and unceasingly prayest
to God for it, if thou continue constant in this
thy desire, it will be granted unto thee without
fail, even if only in the day or hour of thy death;
and if God should not give it to thee then, thou
shalt find it in Him in eternity: of this be assured."
Therefore do not relinquish your desire, though
it be not fulfilled immediately, or though ye may
swerve from your aspirations, or even forget
them for a time.... The love and aspiration which
once really existed live forever before God, and in
Him ye shall find the fruit thereof; that is, to all
eternity it shall be better for you than if you
had never felt them.
J. TAULER.
O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom
and knowledge of God! how unsearchable
are His judgments,
and His ways past finding out!
ROMANS 11, verse 33.
It doth not yet appear what we shall be.
1 JOHN 3, verse 2.
No star is ever lost we once have seen,
We always may be what we might have been.
Since Good, though only thought, has life and breath,
God's life--can always be redeemed from death;
And evil, in its nature, is decay,
And any hour can blot it all away;
The hopes that lost in some far distance seem,
May be the truer life, and this the dream.
A. A. PROCTER.
St. Bernard has said: "Man, if thou desirest
a noble and holy life, and unceasingly prayest
to God for it, if thou continue constant in this
thy desire, it will be granted unto thee without
fail, even if only in the day or hour of thy death;
and if God should not give it to thee then, thou
shalt find it in Him in eternity: of this be assured."
Therefore do not relinquish your desire, though
it be not fulfilled immediately, or though ye may
swerve from your aspirations, or even forget
them for a time.... The love and aspiration which
once really existed live forever before God, and in
Him ye shall find the fruit thereof; that is, to all
eternity it shall be better for you than if you
had never felt them.
J. TAULER.