November 8
Daily Gleanings of the Saintly LifeSirteenth Friday after Trinity
That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all Saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. Ephesians 3:17-19.
THE ever-constant leaning on forgiving love is perpetuated, and "as we seek, we find; as we ask, we receive; as we knock, it is opened to us." Love sealed by the Blood of Sacrifice, love breathing its unceasing intercession before the throne, ever flows on, as waves of light in the luminous atmosphere surrounding us radiate unceasingly from the unchanging impulses of the central light, and we see only as these waves, in the infinite succession of their ceaseless pulsations, strike our organs of sight. So only as the continual forgiving of God for the love of Christ reaches and passes into us in its continuous, endless energies of forgiving and cleansing grace, which knows no pause in its fulness of compassion, do we live on in peace as His children, members of Himself. This tenderness, as it pervades the soul, becomes in itself a character of beauty, enters into every feature of life; giving it a sweetness and winningness, a new power of thoughtfulness and repose, a depth of pathos most lovable, most religious. That most beautiful feature in the character of Christ, which arises from His intense perception of the misery of sin and His own loving sorrow over it, can be at all imitated by us only as we learn to live in the consciousness of our own sin, and of the power of His love and His pity in healing us.
To all He showed that gentle Face; On good and bad alike it shone; Its perfect loveliness and grace The Lord of all concealed from none.