Life's Highest Joy - Fellowship with God

BUT if distractions manifold prevail,
And if in this we must confess we fail,
Grant us to keep at least a prompt desire,
Continual readiness for prayer and praise,
An altar heaped and waiting to take fire
With the least spark, and leap into a blaze.
RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH

WHEN the set time comes round for prayer, it may be, and often is, the case that the mind is de-pressed, and finds it a hard struggle to raise itself up to communion with God. Your purpose is to hold communion with the Infinite Wisdom and Infinite Love; can you do this, or even attempt this, without coming away from the exercise brighter, calmer, hap-pier, stronger against evil? Make a vigorous effort to throw your whole soul into some very short petition, and the spirit of inertness and heaviness shall be exorcised. But if not, and thy mind be dry to the end, do not disquiet thyself. If only thou makest a sincere effort to draw near to God, all shall be well. He sees that thou hast a will to pray, and accounts the will for the deed.
EDWARD MEYRICK GOULBURN

Pray hardest when it is hardest to pray.
CHARLES H. BRENT

SON of the living God! Oh, call us
Once and again to follow Thee,
And give us strength, whate'er befall us,
Thy true disciples still to be.

And if our coward hearts deny Thee,
In inmost thought, or deed, or word,
Let not our hardness still defy Thee,
But with a look subdue us, Lord.
HENRY A. MARTIN

HALF our difficulty in doing anything worthy of our high calling, is the shrinking anticipation of its possible after-consequences. But if Peter had tarried, and cast up all that was to come, the poverty, and wandering, and solitude, and lonely old age, the out-cast life, and chance of a fearful death, it may be he would have been neither an Apostle nor a Christian.
HENRY EDWARD MANNING

Some men will follow Christ on certain conditions--if He will not lead them through rough roads--if He will not enjoin them any painful tasks--if the sun and wind do not annoy them--if He will remit a part of His plan and order. But the true Christian, who has the spirit of Jesus, will say, as Ruth said to Naomi, "Whither thou goest I will go," whatever difficulties and dangers may be in the way.
RICHARD CECIL

LORD, it is not life to live,
If Thy presence Thou deny;
Lord, if Thou Thy presence give,
'T is no longer death to die.
Source and giver of repose,
Singly from Thy smile it flows;
Peace and happiness are Thine;
Mine they are, if Thou art mine.
A. M. TOPLADY

WE live from day to day, as it were, by chance; and forget that human life itself is as much an Art, governed by its own rules and precepts of perfection, as the most complicated profession by which that life is maintained or adorned.
WM. ARCHER BUTLER

The art of life consists in taking each event which befalls us with a contented mind, confident of good. This makes us grow younger as we grow older, for youth and joy come from the soul to the body more than from the body to the soul. With this method and art and temper of life, we live, though we may be dying. We rejoice always, though in the midst of sor-rows; and possess all things, though destitute of everything.
JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE

IF thou but suffer God to guide thee,
And hope in Him through all thy ways,
He'll give thee strength, whate'er betide thee,
And bear thee through the evil days;
Who trusts in God's unchanging love,
Builds on the rock that nought can move.
GEORG NEUMARK

IF we seek, indeed, that all our ways may be His ways, if we resolve and pray that we will keep to the path of obedience, of trust, of duty; then we know that His angels are in charge of us, and that they can bear us nowhere beyond our Father's eye, His hand, His care. Then we know that all worlds are His, all souls are His; we can trust to Him those He has taken from us, and know that when He has called them to pass out of our sight, He is with them still, to keep them in all their ways, even in that hidden path over which the dark shadow lies, until the day break and the shadows flee away.
JOHN ELLERTON

This day the Lord thy God hath commanded thee to do these statutes and judgments: thou shalt therefore keep and do them with all thine heart, and with all thy soul.
DEUTERONOMY 26:16

NEVER pass by or palter with the clear voice of conscience, with the plain command of duty; never let it be doubtful to your own soul whether you be-long to the right side or wrong, whether you are a true soldier or a false traitor. Never deliberate about what is clearly wrong, and try to persuade yourself that it is not.
FREDERICK TEMPLE

The first resolve of one who gives himself wholly to God must be never to give way deliberately to any fault whatever; never to act in defiance of conscience, never to refuse anything God requires, never to say of anything. It is too small for God to heed. Such a resolution as this is an essential foundation in the spiritual life. I do not mean but that in spite of it we shall fall into inadvertencies, infirmities, errors; but we shall rise up and go on anew from such faults--because they are involuntary, the will has not consented to them.
JEAN NICOLAS GROU