Ask Him to increase your powers of sympathy: to give you more quickness and depth of sympathy, in little things as well as great. Opportunities of doing a kindness are often lost from mere want of thought. Half a dozen lines of kindness may bring sunshine into the whole day of some sick person. Think of the pleasure you might give to some one who is much shut up, and who has fewer pleasures than you have, by sharing with her some little comfort or enjoyment that you have learnt to look upon as a necessary of life,—the pleasant drive, the new book, flowers from the country, etc. Try to put yourself in another's place. Ask "What should I like myself, if I were hard-worked, or sick, or lonely?" Cultivate the habit of sympathy.
G. H. WILKINSON.
August 22
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.—ROM. xii. 1.
Thou hast my flesh, Thy hallowed shrine,
Devoted solely to Thy will;
Here let Thy light forever shine,
This house still let Thy presence fill;
O Source of Life, live, dwell, and move
In me, till all my life be love!
JOACHIM LANCE.
May it not be a comfort to those of us who feel we have not the mental or spiritual power that others have, to notice that the living sacrifice mentioned in Rom. xii. 1, is our "bodies"? Of course, that includes the mental power, but does it not also include the loving, sympathizing glance, the kind, encouraging word, the ready errand for another, the work of our hands, opportunities for all of which come oftener in the day than for the mental power we are often tempted to envy? May we be enabled to offer willingly that which we have.
ANON.
August 23
Seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not.—JER. xlv. 5.