to be very tricky and to snare us into
strange forgetfulness. Unless we count what we have given away, we are
very apt to exaggerate our bounty. We often think we have given when we
have only listened to appeals; the mere audience has been mistaken for
active beneficence. The remedy for all this is occasionally to count our
benevolences and see how we stand in a balance-sheet which we could
present to the Lord Himself.

And we must count our blessings. It is when our arithmetic fails in the
task, and when counting God's blessings is like telling the number of the
stars, that our souls bow low before the eternal goodness, and all
murmuring dies away "like cloud-spots in the dawn."

And we must also "number our days." We are wasteful with them, and we
throw them away as though they are ours in endless procession. And yet
there are only seven days in a week! A day is of immeasurable
preciousness, for what high accomplishment may it not witness? A day in
health or in sickness, spent unto God, and applied unto wisdom, will
gather treasures more precious than rubies and gold.

JUNE The Twentieth

_THE REVEALING PRESENCE OF THE LORD_

EPHESIANS vi. 1-10.

A starling never reveals the richness of its hues until we see it in the
sunlight. A duty never discloses its beauties until we set it in the light
of the Lord. It is amazing how a dull road is transfigured when the
sunshine falls upon it! God's grace reveals the graces in all healthy
things. Hidden lovelinesses troop out when we set them in the presence of
the Lord.

And so the Apostle counsels an obedience which is "in the Lord." He wants
us to know how beautiful common things can be when they are linked to
Christ. And what he says about obedience he says about everything. One of
the great secrets in the teaching of Paul is expressed in just this
phrase, "in the Lord," "in Christ." It meant connection with a power-house
whose energy would light up all the common lamps of life--the lamps of
hope, of faith, of love, of daily labour, and of human service.

And this is the secret of the Christian life. We need no other; at least,
all other secrets are involved in this. If we attend to this little
preposition "in," we have entry into the infinite. If we are "in Christ,"
we are in the kingdom of everything that endures, and we are outside
nothing but sin.

JUNE The Twenty-first

_ROOM FOR THE SAPLINGS_

"_Children crying in the temple, saying Hosanna!_