SERIOUS THOUGHTS.

Waikato Argus, Volume VII, Issue 458, 8 July 1899, Page 2 (Supplement)

SERIOUS THOUGHTS.

THE SPENDING OF A DAY.

The secret of a well-spent day lies very much in the way we begin it. We need scarcely say the only right beginning is intercourse with God. Thus by ' slipping our hand into God's' we shall get a firm hold of the day by the right end of it and be able to rule it well. A good waking question is ' What tan I do for God to-day ?' The Roman Emperor Titus was accustomed to say at evening of any day ho had suffered to pass uselessly away. * I have lost a day.' Some time ago a society was formed of which the condition of membership was that each one should allow no day to pass without having spoken one kind word or done one worthy deed. Think how theso ' nameless, unremembered icts of kindness and love would accumulate at the year's end !

But whether the clay will afford us an opportunity for duty or service distinctively Christian or not it will surly bring us ' the common round, the daily task.' How to sublimate these, to prevent them from degenerating into a barren drudgery or mechanical routine, is a daily recurring problem. It will go far to solve that problem if we carrying into our work divine ideas and a divine purpose. The motive and principle for which our actioDsare done is everything and if in our lowly tasks, prosecuted as th»y often are in loneliness and obscurity, we manifest fidelity aiid patience, magnanimity and se'f-denial, we are doing what elevates us to the same moral platform as Moses and Paul and Luther and puts us in line with God's heroes, martyrs and all the saintly throng who have walked with Him in white through the ages. Nothing comes to us b>/ chance but all our work is given us to do by God and therefore must be capable of ministering to the soul's culture and the ennobling of the whole nature. That is the simple philosophy which takes all the irksomeness out of our earthly task-work and gives saoredne?B to secularity. If we can only support George Herbert's clause ' For Thy Sake ' into all the trivialities of every day life it will sweeten and sanctify them all. It will make every day a ' Lord's day ' and every act an act of worship ; it will make the world itself a sanctuary and round the most commonplace and meuia occupation it will throw an aureole o delight. Another practical hint we would like to give—viz. that we contrive to live strictly within the limits of the day. Let us take short views of life ; let there be no anticipation, no prophetic peeps into to-morrow. It is time enongh to cross bridges when we come to them. 'The matter of the day in the day ' is a good old Scriptural proverb. It is by one step at a time that the journey of life is best accomplished. ' Let me be strong in word aDd deed Just for a day ; Lord for to-morrow and its needs I must not pray.'

We began the day with God and now in the evening hour we would ' hem it well with prayer to keep the ends from ravelling.' 'He who at night closes his eye without prayer ' says an old divine ' lies down before his bed is made.' Thus let us live that each round of the clock will leave us twelve hours nearer Heaven. Each well-spent day is another milestone passed on the way to the New Jerusalem, another brick added to th« rising masonry of character, another polished etone built into the Temple of Life. —S. Law Wilson MA. (F) MOTHERS' UNION. Although no mestings are at present held in Hamilton in connection with the Mothers' Union wc must not consider that the branch in the Waikato has come to an end. No branch can ever be dead. The external working of it may be in abeyance for a time but the principles of the society should noc fail to influence the home-life of its members. It is earnestly hoped that all who have agreed to belong to this Union will not iorget its objects and try, as well as they can to carry out the rules. It is essentially a Union for prayer, for our homes and for the Society and, thus praying for each other, we are bound together, with the thousands of other members, with a golden chain before the throne of God. —(F).