"You did not come into this world by chance, you were not born by accident. You all came charged with a mission to use your best efforts to extend the frontier of your Master's Kingdom by purifying your own hearts and leavening for good the hearts of all who come within the sphere of your influence. Your business here is not to enjoy yourselves in those fleeting pleasures which perish in the using; not to sip as many dainties as you can from the moments as they fly; not to gather as many flowers as you can pluck from the garden of this perishing earth; not even to rest in the enjoyment of those nobler delights which come from the exercise of the intellect in the investigation of the works of God and man; but rather to do your best to fit yourselves and others for the new heavens and new earth, which God has prepared for those who love Him." _Life Here and Hereafter_, CANON MACCOLL. "Do not despise your situation; in it you must act, suffer, and conquer. From every point on earth we are equally near to heaven and to the infinite." _Amiel's Journal._ A Noble Life JANUARY 3 "A man's greatness lies not in wealth and station, as the vulgar believe, nor yet in his intellectual capacity, which is often associated with the meanest moral character, the most abject servility to those in high places, and arrogance to the poor and lowly; but a man's true greatness lies in the consciousness of an honest purpose in life, founded on a just estimate of himself and everything else, on frequent self-examination, and a steady obedience to the rule which he knows to be right, without troubling himself about what others may think or say, or whether they do or do not do that which he thinks and says and does." GEORGE LONG. "Whether a life is noble or ignoble depends not on the calling which is adopted, but on the spirit in which it is followed." _The Pleasures of Life_, LORD AVEBURY. "Every noble life leaves the fibre of itself interwoven for ever in the work of the world." TRENCH. Holiness JANUARY 4 "Jesus and His Apostles teach that the supreme success of life is not to escape pain but to lay hold on righteousness, not to possess but to be holy, not to get things from God but to be like God. They were ever bidding Christians beware of ease, ever rousing them to surrender and sacrifice." _The Potter's Wheel_, DR. JOHN WATSON. "The end of life is not to deny self, nor to be true, nor to keep the Ten Commandments--it is simply to do God's will. It is not to get good nor be good, nor even to do good--it is just what God wills, whether that be working or waiting, or winning or losing, or suffering or recovering, or living or dying."