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It has seemed to me sometimes that those whom we call fortunate are the least happy, and that the hard lot is often lifted into the sphere of blessedness. Consider Mr. and Mrs. Moxon; they appear to have nothing to be thankful for, and yet in their devotion to one another what perfect peace and consolation!" "Oh, Bessie, but it is a dreadful fate!" said Harry.
The sevenfold utterance of His words to the Asiatic churches-the last recorded words of Jesus Christ-begins with 'I know thy works. It was no joy to the lukewarm professors at Laodicea, nor to the church at Ephesus which had lost the freshness of its early love, that the Master knew them; but to the faithful souls in Philadelphia, and to the few in Sardis, who 'had not defiled their garments, it was blessedness and life to feel that they walked in the sunshine of His face.
Take what you will. Only, of course, we must remember that there are limitations in the very nature of the case, imposed not arbitrarily, but because the very nature of the truest gifts creates them, and these limitations to some of us sound as if they took all the blessedness out of the act of prayer.
"A few days," said she, "after your departure for the Flushing expedition, I read in the public prints, that 'if the nearest relation of my mother would call at , in London, they would hear of something to their advantage. I wrote to the agent, from whom I learned, after proving my identity, that the two sisters of my mother, who, you may remember, had like sums left them by the will of their relative, had continued to live in a state of single blessedness; that, about four years previous, one of them had died, leaving every thing to the other, and that the other had died only two months before, bequeathing all her property to my mother, or her next heir; or, in default of that, to some distant relation.
There are lakes which discharge their waters at both ends, sending one stream east to the Atlantic and one west to the Pacific; but the heart cannot direct its issues of life in that fashion. They must be banked up if they are to run deep and strong. 'All the current of my being' must 'set to thee' if my tiny trickle is to reach the great ocean, to be lost in which is blessedness.
I have no doubt that there are men and women here who could say, 'I never knew the power of God, and the blessedness of Christ as a Saviour, until I was in deep affliction, and when everything else went dark, then in His light I saw light. Do not some of you know the experience? and might we not all know it? and why do we not know it?
"I know I do," I returned, replying to her last question. "Better than I do myself?" she asked with an arch smile. "Considerably, if I mistake not," I answered. "How delightful! To think that I am understood even when I don't understand myself!" "But even if I am wrong, you are yet understood. The blessedness of life is that we can hide nothing from God.
The struggle we are engaged in is for the principles of justice and righteousness, which our Lord Has taught us is the broad road to heaven and blessedness. It is our sacred duty to keep on that path, if we desire a happy ending. Our dear dead brother has gone on that road to his eternal life. What can I say of his personality?
The reasons why that is so, point, at the same time, to the ways by which we may attain to this blessed self-oblivion. So let me put just in a word or two some simple, practical thoughts. Let us, then, try to lose ourselves in Jesus Christ. That way of self-oblivion is emancipation and blessedness and power.
No deed, no thought, no hope is too insignificant to fail to influence your nature. As through work we become better men and women, so through work do we become better musicians. Carlyle has beautifully expressed this thought in "Past and Present" thus: "The latest Gospel in this world is, 'Know thy work and do it. Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.
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