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8-28

LABORERS WITH GOD-SILENCE

241

Come ye yourself apart into a desert place, and rest awhile. Mark 6: 31.

IN

I will walk down the valley of silence,
Down the dim voiceless valley alone,
And I hear not the fall of a footstep
Around me save God's and my own.

Do you ask me the place of the valley,
Ye hearts that are harrowed with care?
It lieth afar between mountains,
And God and his angels are there,
And one is the dark mount of sorrow,
And one the bright mountain of prayer.
-Rev. Abram Joseph Ryan.

'N desert places God has often spoker his sweetest and sublimest truths to his servants. Our hurried lives give us too few opportunities for quiet thoughts and divine fellowship. "A lodge in a vast wilderness may be a school for acquiring divine knowledge and sanctified wisdom. It seems to be one of God's methods of training his servants that they should have a period of retirement to study themselves and to study God. The Apostle Paul had to spend three years in Arabia before he was ready for his great work. Elijah found his retirement at Chereth and later at Horeb. John the Baptist came forth from the wilderness to preach the baptism of repentance, and Moses in the rocky desert of Midian learned wonderful lessons during those silent years. He communed with God face to face. The barren desolation was to him an invaluable school.

My soul, wait thou in silence for God only; for my expectation is from Him. He only is my rock and my salvation: He is my high tower; I shall not be moved. Amen. Ps. 62: 5, 6.

Ile shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satished. Is. 53: 11.

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With the mighty God in prayer.

Now their strife hath found its close,

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-Rev. Heinrich Theobold Schenk.

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dspannendo There in itspend the afores MYST every Christian heart in this divine relationship. All who are to be saved are given to Christ in the sternak purpleq 152 of God. No one but God knows who these are, but it is certain that they will be a vast numbers The number of the 42781 unspeakably great. It will consist of all nations, kindred and people. Perhaps of the lost will be to the saved

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as the number now confined in prisons is to

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God for true and righteous are His judgments. Amen.

Rev. 19: 1, 2.

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"FRIE

HUGH BLACK

RIENDSHIP, like wisdom, must be sought for as for hid treasures, and to keep it demands care and thought. It is never given to a man to be wise in the true and noble sense, until he is carried out of himself in the purifying passion of love, or the generosity of friendship. The self-centered being cannot keep friends, even when he makes them, his selfish sensitiveness is always in the way, like a diseased nerve ready to be irritated."-From Friendship.

8-30 THE MULTITUDE-SEEKING THE KINGDOM 243

Seek ye first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Matt. 6: 33.

Could we but crush that ever craving lust

For bliss, which kills all bliss, and live our life,
Our barren unit life, to find again

A thousand lives, in those for whom we die,
So were we men and women, and should hold
Our rightful rank in God's great universe,
Wherein, in heaven and earth, by will or nature
Naught lives for self.

-Rev. Charles Kingsley.

CHR

YHRIST prohibited in various ways the undue seeking after the things of this world. He earnestly rebukes all undue solicitude about the things of this life. The best way to get rid of the unnecessary care of things is to have due care for necessary things. The best way to drive out darkness is to let in the light, the best way to keep evil out of the heart is to fill it with good. Christ was a wise teacher. If we subordinate the affairs of this life to the concerns of the other life, both lives will be brought into their proper relations, and both will then be taken at their true value. Such subordination is true wisdom, its absence brings chaos and ends in eternal loss. It is a constant subjection of our wills to God's will, to observe what he esteems right, a performance of right things in the right spirit.

Now, therefore, O our God, hearken unto the prayer of Thy servant, and to His supplications, and cause Thy face to shine upon Thy sanctuary. Amen. Dan. 9: 17.

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