April 6
Companions of the Way (Morning)To them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life.
TRUE religion is a conviction of the character of God, and a resting upon that alone for salvation. We need nothing more to begin with; and everything else, in our experience and fortune, helps us only in so far as it makes that primary conviction more clear and certain. Darkness may be over us, and we lonely and starved beneath it. We may be destitute of experience to support our faith; we may be able to discover nothing in life about us making in the direction of our hopes. Still, let us wait on the Lord. It is by bare trust in Him that we renew our strength, put forth wings like eagles, run and not weary, walk and not faint.
Put forth wings—run—walk! Is the order correct? Hope swerves from the edge of so descending a promise, which seems only to repeat the falling course of nature—that droop, we all know, from short ambitions, through temporary impulsiveness, to the old common-place and routine. Soaring, running, walking—and is not the next stage, a cynic might ask, standing still?
On the contrary, it is a natural and true climax, rising from the easier to the more difficult, from the ideal to the real, from dream to duty, from what can only be the rare occasions of life to what must be life's usual and abiding experience.
GEORGE ADAM SMITH