tead. God wants to rest
His workers, and He is too kind to put His burden on hearts that are
already bowed down with their own weight of cares.

Are you fearing, fretting or repining?
You can never know God's perfect peace.
On His bosom all your weight reclining.
All your anxious doubts and cares must cease.
Would you know the peace that God has given?
Would you find the very joy of heaven?
Be careful for nothing,
Be prayerful for everything,
Be thankful for anything,
And the peace of God that passeth understanding
Shall keep your mind and heart.

DECEMBER 18.

"The faith of the Son of God" (Gal. ii. 20).

Faith is hindered most of all by what we call "our faith," and fruitless
struggles to work out a faith which is but a make-believe and a desperate
trying to trust God, which must ever come short of His vast and glorious
promises. The truth is that the only faith that is equal to the stupendous
promises of God and the measureless needs of our life, is "the faith of
God" Himself, the very trust which He will breathe into the heart which
intelligently expects Him as its power to believe, as well as its power to
love, obey, or perform any other exercise of the new life.

Blessed be His name! He has not given us a chain which reaches within a
single link of our poor helpless heart, but that one last link is fatal to
all the chain. Nay, the last link, the one that fastens on the human side
is as Divine as the link that binds the chain of promise in the heavens.
"Have the faith of God," is His great command. "I live by the faith of the
Son of God" is the victorious testimony of one who had proved it true.

Lord, teach me to have the faith of the Son of God.

DECEMBER 19.

"God giveth grace unto the humble" (James iv. 6).

One of the marks of highest worth is deep lowliness. The shallow nature,
conscious of its weakness and insufficiency, is always trying to advertise
itself and make sure of its being appreciated. The strong nature,
conscious of its strength, is willing to wait and let its work be made
manifest in due time. Indeed, the truest natures are so free from all
self-consciousness and self-consideration that their object is not to be
appreciated, understood or recompensed, but to accomplish their true
mission and fulfil the real work of life.

One of the most suggestive expressions used respecting the Lord Jesus is
given by the evangelist John in the thirteenth chapter of His