-drop crystallized into the diamond, the
blood-drop transfigured into the ruby of heaven's eternal crown. It is the
joy of suffering with Jesus, and then forgetting all the sorrow in the
overflowing joy, until with the heavenly Pascal we know not which to say
first, and so we say them both together, "Tears upon tears, joy upon joy".

AUGUST 31.

"Lead me in the way everlasting" (Ps. cxxxix. 24).

There is often apparently but little difference in two distinct lives
between constant victory and frequent victory. But that one little
difference constitutes a world of success or failure. The one is the
Divine, the other is the human; the one is the everlasting way, the other
the transient and the imperfect. God wants to lead us to the way
everlasting, and to establish us and make us immovable as He. We little
know the seriousness of the slightest surrender. It is but the first step
in a downward progression, and God only knows where it shall end.

Let us be "not of them that draw back unto perdition, but of them that
believe unto the saving our the soul."

Your victory to-day is but preparing the way for a greater victory
to-morrow, and your surrender to-day is opening the door for a more
terrible defeat in the days to come. Let us, therefore, whatever we have
claimed from our blessed Master, commit it to His keeping, and take Him to
establish us and hold us fast in the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the
end.

SEPTEMBER 1.

"Afterward that which is spiritual" (I. Cor. xv. 46).

God has often to bring us not only into the place of suffering, and the
bed of sickness and pain, but also into the place where our righteousness
breaks down and our character falls to pieces, in order to humble us in
the dust and show us the need of entire crucifixion to all our natural
life. Then, at the feet of Jesus we are ready to receive Him, to abide in
Him and depend upon Him alone, and draw all our life and strength each
moment from Him, our Living Head.

It was thus that Peter was saved by his very fall, and had to die to Peter
that he might live more perfectly to Christ.

Have we thus died, and have we thus renounced the strength of our own
self-confidence?

We begin life with the natural, next we come into the spiritual; but then,
when we have truly received the kingdom of God and His righteousness, the
natural is added to the spiritual, and we are able to receive the gifts of
His providence and the bless