, while our wanderings bring us many
sorrows and lose us many blessings, to the heart which truly chooses His,
He has graciously said: "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee."

SEPTEMBER 17.

"Thy people shall be a freewill offering in the day of Thy power" (Ps. cx.
3).

This is what the term consecration properly means. It is the voluntary
surrender or self-offering of the heart, by the constraint of love to be
the Lord's. Its glad expression is, "I am my Beloved's." It must spring,
of course, from faith. There must be the full confidence that we are safe
in this abandonment, that we are not falling over a precipice, or
surrendering ourselves to the hands of a judge, but that we are sinking
into a Father's arms and stepping into an infinite inheritance. Oh, it is
an infinite inheritance. Oh, it is an infinite privilege to be permitted
thus to give ourselves up to One who pledges Himself to make us all that
we would love to be, nay, all that His infinite wisdom, power and love
will delight to accomplish in us. It is the clay yielding itself to the
potter's hands that it may be shaped into a vessel of honor, and meet for
the Master's use. It is the poor street waif consenting to become the
child of a prince that he may be educated and provided for, that he may be
prepared to inherit all the wealth of his guardian.

SEPTEMBER 18.

"We walk by faith, not by sight" (II. Cor. v. 7).

There are heavenly notes which have power to break down walls of adamant
and dissolve mountains of difficulty. The song of Paul and Silas burst the
fetters of the Philippian gaol; the choir of Jehoshaphat put to flight the
armies of the Ammonites, and the song of faith will disperse our
adversaries and lift our sinking hearts into strength and victory.
Beloved, is it the dark hour with us? the winter of barrenness and gloom?
Oh, let us remember that it is God's chosen time for the education of
faith and that He conceals beneath the surface, precious and untold
harvests of unthought-of fruit! It will not be always winter, it will not
be always night, and when the morning comes and spring spreads its verdant
mantle over the barren fields then we shall be glad that we did not
disappoint our Father in the hour of testing, but that faith had already
claimed and seen in the distance the glad fruition which sight now
beholds, with a rapture even less than the vision of naked faith.

Lord, help me to believe when I cannot s