May 7

Oh that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me; when his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness; as I was in the days of my youth, when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle; when the Almighty was yet with me. - Job 29:2-5.

THE remembrance of our early views and feelings may tend to check present felt or feared declension, and become a principle of recall and revival, inducing us to say, “I will go and return to my first husband, for then it was better with me than now.” We read of the “first ways of David.” Alas! how often are the first ways of Christians better than their last ways. Still what was said to the church at Ephesus will apply to churches and Christians now-“I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.” “Go,” says God to Jeremiah, “and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown; Israel was holiness unto the Lord, and the first fruits of his increase.”

And we do well to call to remembrance the former days-the days of first love. Oh, how little dominion had the world over us then. How did we find his word, and eat it; and it was the joy and rejoicing of our souls. Then we not only called the Sabbath of the Lord a delight, but felt it so; and we numbered the intervening days. What pleasure we found in waiting upon God; the trifling things that detain us now had no power with us then. We said, “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.”

“What peaceful hours I then enjoyed,

How sweet their memory still,

But they have left an aching void,

The world can never fill.”