March 28

Let this mind be in you. — PHIL. ii. 5.

Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business? — LUKE ii. 49.

OUT of all the gracious words which hallowed the childhood of Jesus, these alone have been preserved. The link of golden speech seems to bind the incarnate Christ-life to that mystery of eternity, when the "Only Begotten of the Father" assumed the right to become a ransom for fallen man. "Lo! I come. I delight to do thy will, O my God."

Whether as a key to all the obedience and sacrifice of the mediatorial work, or the motto of every consecrated life, the sublime sentence is lovingly cherished.

Happy are we when we apprehend as Jesus did the fatherhood of God.

In that supreme hour when filial love, born of the "spirit of adoption," cries "Abba, Father," we will realize, as did the holy Child in the temple, that the all-absorbing business of life is our "Father's business." We should have no business which may not with its best results be offered upon the divine altar; while all that work which is peculiar to his kingdom we should make our own.

As of such a service, one says, I must, compulsion ceases, and the word glows with the enthusiasm of a voluntary sacrifice.

"'T is love, not duty," shall we sing? Nay, rather, "Love is duty." When love commissions a child of God, the sweetest companionship and highest earthly joys fail to call him from the delighted service.

Cornelius Brett

Such was thy truth and such thy zeal,

Such deference to thy Father's will,

Such love and meekness so divine,

I would transcribe and make them mine.

WAITS.