What a magic difference love makes in service! The hireling goes about his work with heavy and reluctant feet: the lover sings and dances at his toil. The hireling scamps his work: the lover is always adding another touch, and is never satisfied. Just one more touch! And just another! And so on until the good God shall say that loving “patience has had her perfect work.”
Love lights up everything, for she is the light of life. Let her dwell in the soul, and every room in the life shall be filled with the glory of the Lord.
APRIL The Twenty-second
SPEECH AS A SYMPTOM OF HEALTH
“The tongue of the wise is health.”
—Proverbs xii. 13-22.
UR doctors often test our physical condition by the state of our tongue. With another and deeper significance the tongue is also the register of our condition. Our words are a perfect index of our moral and spiritual health. If our words are unclean and untrue, our souls are assuredly sickly and diseased. A perverse tongue is never allied with a sanctified heart. And, therefore, everyone may apply a clinical test to his own life: “What is the character of my speech? What do my words indicate? What do they suggest as to the depths and background of the soul?” “By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.”
God delighteth in truthful lips. Right words are fruit from the tree of life. The Lord turns away from falsehood as we turn away from material corruption, only with an infinitely intenser loathing and disgust.