To struggle after the world in our own strength will tend only to foster the war-spirit within us. In a moment we are gone — gone like the moth; you put your finger upon it, and it is crushed. Raleigh, D. D.I. WHAT IS MY PRAYER PHILOSOPHY? WHAT IS YOUR LIFE AS TO ITS AIM, ITS PURPOSE, ITS USES? Our best profit will consist in doing God's will." Here is the sublime superiority of the human soul. Mere notional religion never saved a man yet. Whence the green pasture, the leaf-robed forestry, the rich vineyard, the bowing wealth of corn, the orchards full of ripeness? When we are asked to believe in life as an effluence or product of Divine love, we are brought face to face with serious difficulties that seem to bar the way to faith. They had also the foolish idea that they were immortal. It is good to accustom the tongue to holy forms of speech; it is a great help; the heart is best where there are such explicit and express exceptions of Providence — "If the Lord please," "If the Lord will," "If it please the Lord that I live." They have some part they must give, as they fancy, to their own aggrandisement. IT IS A PROPHECY. Then he laughs in his foolish pride, and rejoices in his proud folly. It is the new and holier affection which must expel the old. To amass wealth is a better as well as a wiser thing than to squander and to lose. And every one of us needs pleasure, and ought to have more relaxation than some of us get now. This is certainly a dying tire; its march is marked by graves. Submissive to and satisfied with the frustration of, our most cherished plans and desires. This outline is intended for your personal, non-commercial use. Spurgeon. Spurgeon. But whatever may be the language of the creed, the more convincing language of his conduct convicts every worldly man of this heresy. I tell you plainly that you are on the way to grandeurs which no summer's night's dream had ever power to depict. I know I ought." For there are several kinds of things that are good, and we are to have a different regard to them (Hosea 6:6; Matthew 9:13; Matthew 12:7). Such is our life. James says (4:3), “You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.” That’s selfish praying! If you could reach yon fleecy cloud, you would scarcely know that you had entered it, for it would possibly appear to be the thinnest of mist. I ought to visit among the poor, and the sick, and the afflicted; I ought to try and comfort them more than I have been doing. But Christ calls us to a priestly mission as well. If God loves me, as you say, and has, therefore, bestowed upon me the gift of life, how is it that He has marred His gift by pain and loss and grief; has turned for me what might have been a blessing into what is little less than a curse? Love seeks a return, lives in hope of such; and God endows us with life, that we may love Him. III. 3. There is no mention of anything but trade and consequent profit. What treasures these swift ships bring! 4. Contact with the prosaic realities of the world, or the pressure of unforeseen difficulties and hindrances, soon dashes our enthusiasm with an element of distrust, and the "vision splendid" is in danger of fading into the "light of common day." What says our text?" THE GOOD WHICH WE ARE OBLIGED TO DO.1. It is well to "go into the city," for there the stagnant pulses of our whole life are often quickened. I confess that my time for devotion has been often sadly scamped and hurried." 3. And those of us for whom the Catholic religion, the word “passion” stirs up thoughts of the torture Jesus had to undergo Sermon on the Mount The man who says this is supposed to feel it. I would not here set forth doing, in the narrow mechanical sense, as opposed to speaking, or thinking, or feeling. We cannot be here long. born, dead, and buried, but who rose again.". 2. The Sin of Partiality. When we use these forms, the heart must go along with the tongue; common speeches, wherein God's name is used, if the heart be not reverent, are but profanations.5. Recognition of God with regard to the future is true wisdom. Again, man's knowledge is limited by lime, as well as by the nature of objects. Witness Paul's catalogue (2 Corinthians 6:4, 5; 2 Corinthians 11:23-27). And then comes the dreary season when if grace does not take possession of the soul vexation and sorrow are born, uneasiness begins to disturb the heart's unspiritual peace, the weary life-struggle commences, the struggle for progress without hope, for work without strength, for comfort without faith, for the refreshment of love without the power to give it, for the rewards of the world when the soul has acknowledged its vanity and respect for the world has departed.V. It is a great folly to build hopes on that which may never come. The source of strife is in the evil desires of the heart. As we have seen Jesus’ own brother, James, is … 2. Let us look beyond second causes to the providence of God in the changes which are passing in the Church of God, and its associations. We boast, and we rejoice in our boasting, that we can do this and that and the other thing. Gilmour, M. I. I must make a better use of my money. Justinian, an emperor of Rome, died by going into a room which had been newly painted; Adrian, a pope, was strangled by a fly; a consul struck his foot against his own threshold, and his foot mortified, so that he died thereby. The sphere of it. How important is the kingdom God for our life? To-day an extensive tenement stands secure, yielding a rental that affords the means of sustenance and comfort to a contented and happy family: to-morrow it is a smoking ruin. And man makes his boast in the grateful love that surrounds him; he is proud of the hearts that draw their happiness and hopes from him; he gathers the tender ones about him and says with quiet satisfaction, "Behold, I and the children whom God hath given me"; and so our dearest affections become snares of pride, evil rejoicings, to lull the heart in a false security, to fill it with a peace which is no peace, to strengthen it with motives which are not of Heaven, to wrap it in a short-lived satisfaction, a glorying which is not in the Lord, the light of such happiness as a moment may turn to the darkness of the deepest midnight. Foster the homes, schools, libraries, churches, and charities, build up true religion in the land, and no "if" that winds or fire or flood can bring can imperil our best prosperity. I shall carry it out, I tell you. James pinpoints the seeds of quarrels as wrong desires inside us. It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." Perhaps you say: "I acknowledge that my habits of private devotion are becoming careless and hurried and unsatisfactory; I really ought to study my Bible more frequently and systematically; I really ought to give more time to it; I really ought to pray with more feeling — prayer is not merely going through a certain form of words, but is really a coming to close grips with God, and bringing down a blessing from on high by earnest pleading — I really ought to do this; I ought to give more time to it. That is what we are to say at all times, but with emphasis at the beginning of a year. From childhood to youth, from youth to manhood, from manhood to grey old age we march onward in serried ranks from which no man can retire. "If the Lord will." How many of you, if you will confess the truth, are looking for happiness, not from anything which is in your lives, but for something which you hope will be before you die. That is, one essential element of God's ideal of man is that he shall rule himself, that he shall check with firm reign every lawless appetite, that he shall bring all the manifold energies of his being into subjection to a governing central authority. )A holy .frame of mindJ. "The other side were always calling on God, but I thought it better to trust more and say less. Why do we choose to build upon clouds, and pile our palaces on vapour, to see them melt away, as aforetime they have often melted, instead of by faith getting where there is no failure, where God is all in all, and His sure promises make the foundations of eternal mansions?1. English Author.Some of those who despise religion say: "Thank God we are not of this holy number." But there are ugly circumstances in life which mar all the success that is possible along that line of movement. We cannot be here long. Roberts. We may say that they inherited certain aptitude, or that very much is due to training and early education. "We have glanced at the boastful speeches that indicate a boastful spirit. It is unwise to count your chickens before they are hatched; it is madness to risk everything on the unsubstantial future. It is hidden from us for our good. Rich results of sanctified sorrow, of spiritual industry, of high duty bravely done, of years of consecrated toil and thought, of pain and blessing, of faith and love and prayer. 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