_Ye servants of the Lord, which by night stand in the house of the Lord. . . . The Lord that made heaven and earth bless thee out of Zion. Psa. cxxxiv. 1, 3._
If I would know the love of my friend, I must see what it can do in the winter. So with the divine love. It is very easy for me to worship in the summer sunshine, when the melodies of life are in the air and the fruits of life are on the tree. But let the song of the bird cease, and the fruit of the tree fall; and will my heart still go on to sing? Will I stand in God's house by night? Will I love Him in His own night? Will I watch with Him even one hour in His Gethsemane? Will I help to bear His cross up the Via Dolorosa? My love has come to Him in His humiliation. My faith has found Him in His lowliness. My heart has recognized His majesty through His mean disguise, and I know at last that I desire not the gift, but the Giver. When I can stand in His house by night, I have accepted Him for Himself alone.--_George Matheson._
_He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk even as He walked. 1 John ii. 6._
The preaching that this world needs most is the _sermons in shoes_ that are walking with Jesus Christ.--_Selected._
_Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord. Hosea vi. 3._
The Lord has brought us into the pathway of the knowledge of Him, and bids us pursue that path through all its strange meanderings until it opens out upon the plain where God's throne is. Our life is a following on to know the Lord. We marvel at some of the experiences through which we are called to pass, but afterwards we see that they afforded us some new knowledge of our Lord. . . . We have not to wait for some brighter opportunity; but by improvement of the present are to build for ourselves a bridge to that future.--_G Bowen._
_Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house. Gen. xii. 1._
_Abraham . . . was gathered to his people. Gen. xxv. 8._
After all communion we dwell as upon islands, dotted over a great archipelago, each upon his little rock with the sea dashing between us; but the time comes when, if our hearts are set upon that great Lord whose presence makes us one, there shall be no more sea and all the isolated rocks shall be parts of a great continent . . . If we cultivate that sense of detachment from the present and of having our true affinities in the unseen, if we dwell here as strangers because our citizenship is in heaven, then death will not drag us away from our associates nor hunt us into a lonely land, but will bring us where closer bonds shall knit the "sweet societies" together, and the sheep shall couch close by one another because all gathered round the one Shepherd. Then many a tie shall be re-woven, and the solitary wanderer meet again the dear ones whom he had "loved long since and lost awhile."--_Alex. McLaren._