Making the Most of Life

ear Lord, in

st by the t

and pity i

of thy he

o meekly be

r their own subsistence. Thus fishing was the duty that lay nearest. Yet it must have been dreary work for them after the exalted privileges they had enjoyed so long. Think what the last three years had been to these men. Jesus had taken them into the most intimate fellowship with himself-i

and fishing-nets, after their years of exalted life with their Master! But it is a precious thought to us that just at this time, when they were in the midst of the dull and wearisome w

whatever we have to do, and is ready to help us in all our dull, common life. He will come to his people, not in the church service, the prayer-m

glory may abo

eness shall be

nswer is not

duties, wan

s room for ever

me for anyth

fear, but lo!

hum and pres

ents sweep, thy

side my work

racious form,

, O Lord, to

gers fly; the

cing needle w

fe is blossom

reath is li

ch labor, like a

weet conscious

ing that what we have to do day after day is not worthy of us. We have had glimpses, or brief experiences, of life in its higher revealings. It may have been a companionship for a season with one above us in experience or attainment, that has lifted us up for a little time into exalted thoughts and feelings, after which it

uxury and ease and the material refinements and elegances of wealth have to be exchanged for toil and plain circumstances and a humbler home. There are few sorer tests of character than such changes as these bring wi

s Jesus waiting to greet them and bless them. Accept your hard tasks, and do them cheerfully, no matter how irksome they appear, and Christ will reveal himself to you in them. Be sure that he will never come to you when you are avoid

ty is clear, and if you would have a vision of Christ, you must take up the duty with gladness. Suppose that your home-life is narrow, humdrum, unpoetic, uncongenial, even cold and unkindly; yet there fo

est doing of duty ever wrought beneath the skies. Whatever, then, may be our shrinking from dull tasks, our distaste for dreary duty, our discontent with a narrow place and with limiting circumstances, we should go promptly to the work that God assigns, and accept the conditions that lie

turned their failure to success. We think of Christ as helping us to endure temptation, to bear trial, to overcome sin, to do spiritual duties, but we sometimes forget that he

ntial to a happy day. They try to be gentle, kindly, and patient, but, try as they will, their minds become ruffled and fretted with cares. They come to the close of the long, unhappy hours disturbed, defeated, discouraged. They have done their best, but they feel that they have only failed. They fall upon their knees, but they have only tears for a prayer.

ions sometimes grind men's very souls well nigh to death. It is hard to live sweetly amid the irritations that touch continually at most tender points. It is hard to live lovingly and charitably when they see so much inequity and wrong, and sometimes must themselves endure men's uncharit

nothing. But let us not forget the vision that awaited these disciples with the coming of the dawn-the risen Jesus standing on the shore with his salutation of love and his strong help that in

or only one thing-that we may be faithful always to duty, and loyal to our Master. Then, the duller the round and the sorer the stru

seen. There have been more blessed revealings of Christ in prisons than in palaces, in homes of poverty than in homes of abundance, in ways of hardship than in w