Only Kindly Feelings Find Expression

February 4.

If any man offend not in word,
the same is a perfect man,
and able also to bridle the whole body.

JAMES 2, verse 2.


Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth;
keep the door of my lips.

PSALM 141, verse 3.


What! never speak one evil word,
Or rash, or idle, or unkind!
Oh, how shall I, most gracious Lord,
This mark of true perfection find?

C. WESLEY.


When we remember our temptations to give
quick indulgence to disappointment or irritation
or unsympathizing weariness, and how hard a thing
it is from day to day to meet our fellow men, our
neighbors, or even our own households, in all
moods, in all discordances between the world
without us and the frames within, in all states of
health, of solicitude, of preoccupation, and show
no signs of impatience, ungentleness, or
unobservant self-absorption, with only kindly
feeling finding expression, and ungenial feeling at
least inwardly imprisoned; we shall be ready to
acknowledge that the man who has thus attained
is master of himself, and in the graciousness of
his power is fashioned upon the
style of a Perfect Man.

J. H. THOM.