the bird is going to fly it must keep away from the fences and
the trees, and trust to its buoyant wings. But if it tries to keep within
easy reach of the ground, it will make poor work of flying.

God had to bring Abraham to the end of his own strength, and to let him
see that in his own body he could do nothing. He had to consider his own
body as good as dead, and then take God for the whole work, and when he
looked away from himself, and trusted God alone, then He became fully
persuaded that what He had promised, He was able also to perform.

This is what God is teaching us, and He has to keep away encouraging
results until we learn to trust without them, and then He loves to make
His word real in fact as well as faith.

Let us look only to Him to-day to do all things as He shall choose and in
the way He shall choose.

NOVEMBER 15.

"Oh, man of desires" (margin) (Dan. x. 11).

This was the divine character given to Daniel of old. It is translated in
our version, "O man, greatly beloved." But it literally means "O man of
desires!" This is a necessary element in all spiritual forces. It is one
of the secrets of effectual prayer, "What things soever ye desire, when ye
pray, believe that ye receive them." The element of strong desire gives
momentum to our purposes and prayers. Indifference is an unwholesome
condition; indolence and apathy are offensive both to God and nature.

And so in our spiritual life, God often has to wake us up by the presence
of trying circumstances, and push us into new places of trust by forces
that we must subdue, or sink beneath their power. There is no factor in
prayer more effectual than love. If we are intensely interested in an
object, or an individual, our petitions become like living forces, and not
only convey their wants to God, but in some sense convey God's help back
to them.

May God fill us to-day with the heart of Christ that we may glow with the
Divine fire of holy desire.

NOVEMBER 16.

"Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day" (Matt. xxv. 13).

Jesus illustrates the unexpectedness of His coming by the figure of a
thief entering a house when the master was not there. Life, like the old
Jewish night, may be divided into three watches, youth, maturity, old age.
The summons to meet God may come to us in either of these watches. A
writer tells us of his experience with a camping party, of which he was a
member, and which, he tells us, always arr