May 23
Daily Gleanings of the Saintly LifeThursday in Easter Week
Mortify therefore your members. Colossians 3:5.
SELF-DENYING duty, love, and contemplation together advance this hidden life (which we are still contemplating). Alone, self-denying duty were austere and hard; love were weak and faint; contemplation but imaginative or sensual. Together, self-denial deadens the flesh; deeds of love soften the spirit; contemplation fixes the soul upon God. Without self-denial and love, contemplation could not be; without it, even they would abide on earth. Deeds of self-denying active love may still leave the soul very imperfect in love, unless it habitually and consciously refer them to God as their Beginning and their End; and out of, or amidst, or at intervals from, active service, withdraw from all created things to commune with its God. Even prayer will become lukewarm unless it be fed by meditation upon God, and the soul be borne, beyond the words of its prayer, to dwell on Him Whom it would love. In our very excellences we need continual checks, lest over-activity make us forget to sit at Jesus' Feet, or we think that we are sitting there, while we are seeking only the shade, and shrinking from "the burthen and heat of the day," from thankless toil and dying strife. "The Redeemer of mankind in the daytime," says S. Gregory, "exhibits His miracles in cities, and spends the night in devotion to prayer upon the mountain." What a lesson for us all! May we all lay it to heart now, and remember that
Faith doth hallow all things, nursed with love.