winter barrenness revealed it! And so it is in
life. In the season of fulness we are prone to be blind to "the house of
many mansions," and we forget the Master of the house, the Lord our God.
Our material wealth hides our eternal treasure.

What, then, shall we do in the days of our prosperity, when all our trees
are in full leaf? We must pray that material things may never become
opaque, that they may be always transparent, so that through the seen we
may behold the unseen. This is a gift of the Spirit, and it may be ours.
He will anoint our eyes with the eye-salve of grace, and everything will
become to us a symbol of something better, so that even in the midst of
material plenty our hearts will be with our treasure in heaven. Everything
will be to us "as it were transparent glass."

JANUARY The Fifteenth

_THE MINISTRY OF PRAISE_

PSALM cxv.

"The Lord hath been mindful of us: He will bless us." In that joyful
assurance there is both retrospect and prospect. There is the trodden
pathway of Providence, and there is the star of hope! The eyes are
steadied and refreshed in sacred memories, and then they gaze into the
future with serene and happy confidence. And so the Ebenezer of the soul
becomes both a thanksgiving and a reconsecration.

Now perhaps our hopes are thin because our praises are scanty. Perhaps our
expectations are clouded because our memories are dim. There is nothing so
quickens hope as a journey among the mercies of our yesterdays. The heart
lays aside its fears amid the accumulated blessings of our God. Worries
pass away like cloudlets in the warmth of a summer's morning. And the
recollections of God's goodness always make summer even in the wintriest
day.

Now I see why the New Testament is so urgent in the matter of praise.
Without praise many other virtues and graces cannot be born. Without
praise they have no breath of life. Praise quickens a radiant company
of heavenly presences, and among them is the shining spirit of hope.

JANUARY The Sixteenth

_THE DISTINCTION OF BEING RECOGNIZED_

JOHN x. 1-18.

The Good Shepherd knows His sheep, and knows them by name. And that is
what I am tempted to forget. I think of myself as one of an innumerable
multitude, no one of whom receives personal attention. "My way is
overlooked by my God." But here is the evangel--the Saviour would
miss me, even me!

At a great orchestral rehearsal, which Sir Michael Costa was conducting,
th