He knows, He loves, He leads.

OCTOBER 4.

"Instead of the brier, the myrtle tree" (Isa. lv. 13).

God's sweetest memorial is the transformed thorn and the thistle blooming
with flowers of peace and sweetness, where once grew recriminations.

Beloved, God is waiting to make just such memorials in your life, out of
the things that are hurting you most to-day. Take the grievances, the
separations, the strained friendships and the broken ties which have been
the sorrow and heartbreak of your life, and let God heal them, and give
you grace to make you right with all with whom you may be wrong, and you
will wonder at the joy and blessing that will come out of the things that
have caused you nothing but regret and pain.

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of
God." The everlasting employment of our blessed Redeemer is to reconcile
the guilty and the estranged from God, and the highest and most
Christ-like work that we can do is, to be like Him.

Shall we go forth to dry the tears of a sorrowing world, to heal the
broken-hearted, to bind up the wounds of human lives, and to unite heart
to heart, and earth to heaven?

OCTOBER 5.

"He hath triumphed gloriously" (Ex. xv. 1).

Beloved, God calls us to victory. Have any of you given up the conflict,
have you surrendered? Have you said, "This thing is too much"? Have you
said, "I can give up anything else but this"? If you have, you are not in
the land of promise. God means you should accept every difficult thing
that comes in your life. He has started with you, knowing every
difficulty. And if you dare to let Him, He will carry you through not only
to be conquerors, but "more than conquerors." Are you looking for all the
victory?

God gives His children strength for the battle and watches over them with
a fond enthusiasm. He longs to fold you to His arms and say to you, "I
have seen thy conflict, I have watched thy trials, I have rejoiced in thy
victory; thou hast honored Me." You know He told Joshua at the beginning,
"There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy
life; as I was with Moses, so shall I be with thee: I will not fail thee,
nor forsake thee." And again, He says to us, "Fear thou not, for I am with
thee."

OCTOBER 6.

"Ephraim, he hath mixed himself" (Hos. vii. 8).

It is a great thing to learn to take God first, and then He can afford to
give us everything else, wit