July 20
Daily Gleanings of the Saintly LifeSaturday after Trinity Sunday:
If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Galatians 5:25.
MEN would take a shorter course, they would excite their own faith, their own love. It seems to them a strange way to fast, give alms, deny themselves, be less absorbed in outward things, less careful as to comforts, rise betimes for prayer, that they may grow in faith and love. Yet it is the way of God. Ye yourselves, who had once a stronger, loving faith, know too well how ye lost it as your love of the world grew. Your faith was buried in the things of time; the love of man's praise, and self-indulgence blunted it; things of sense became more solid, things unseen more distant; life, which is a dream, became real; God, the only reality, a dream. Would ye have again implicit faith, simple love, step by step return. Step by step ye have lost your way amid the vanities of the world, step by step ye must retrace it. Take the first step in the Name of God and in His strength, in real, earnest longing for the sight of His blissful Countenance in love. Faint, slight wavering though it be, yet do it for the love of God. Break off some one evil, cut off some one self-indulgence, deny yourself some one vanity; give, for the love of God, larger alms; do it as an offering to God, for the love of God, and some gleam of faith, life, and love will stream down upon thy soul from the everlasting Fount of love. Follow on and thou shalt never lose that track of light. For it is a ray from His undying love; light from the unvarying, unchanging Father of lights; an earnest of His beatific vision in eternal light, when faith and sight and hope shall be absorbed in
Love, and unveiled truth doth feed for aye, And ye drink full of joy's o'erflowing wells.