Making the Most of Life

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ht behind them. There are some old people who have learned well life's lessons of patience, peace, contentment, love, trust, and hope, and whose faces really glow as they near the sunset gates. Sometim

t for death to transform us; the work should begin at once. We have a responsibility, too, in this work. The sculptor takes the blackened marble block and hews it into a form of beauty. The marble is passive in his hands, and does n

we have to do with our own sanctification. Ho

is the pouring out of the heart's deepest cravings. It is the highest act of which the soul is capable. When you pray truly, all that is best, noblest, most exalted, purest, heavenliest in you, presses up towar

ow jealousies, envies, ugly tempers, pride, and other evil things to stay in our heart, our life will grow into the likeness o

ittle locket within which no one was allowed to look. Once, however, she was very ill, and one of her companions was permitted then to open this sacred ornament, and she saw there the words, "Whom having not seen I love." This was

like sheets of paper, and every one who comes writes a word, or a line, or leaves a little picture painted there. Our intimate companio

is spiritual, but it is real. The devout Christian has no other friend who enters so fully into his life as does the Lord Christ Jesus. The effect of this companionship is the transfiguring of the character. It is not without reason that t

, the lines of his beauty indeed print themselves on our hearts. This is the meaning of St. Paul's word: "We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image." The Gospel is the mirror. There we see the image of Christ. If we earnestly, continually, and lovingly behold it, the effect will

in clay, when one night there came suddenly a great frost over the city. The sculptor lay on his bed, with his statue before him in the centre of the fireless room. As the chill air came down upon him, he knew that in the intense cold there was danger that the water in the interstices of the clay would freeze and destroy h

r present attainment as this vision may shine, yet we are ever striving to reach it. This is the ideal which we carry in our heart amid all our toiling and struggling. This ideal we must keep free from all marring or stain. We must save it though, like the old sculptor,

dust of shame and dishonor! Rather let us seek continually the glory for which we were made and redeemed. "Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we sha

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d made crystalline. Its sigh was heard, and it was quickly lifted up by the sun's gentle fingers-up, out of the foul gutter, into the sweet air, then higher an

ce of God does for every sinful life tha