You are never to complain of your birth, your training, your employments, your hardships; never to fancy that you could be something if only you had a different lot and sphere assigned you. God understands His own plan, and He knows what you want a great deal better than you do. The very things that you most deprecate, as fatal limitations or obstructions, are probably what you most want. What you call hindrances, obstacles, discouragements, are probably God's opportunities. Bring down your soul, or, rather, bring it up to receive God's will and do His work, in your lot, in your sphere, under your cloud of obscurity, against your temptations, and then you shall find that your condition is never opposed to your good, but really consistent with it. H. BUSHNELL. October 29 _Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction_--ISA. xlviii. 10. Be patient, suffering soul! I hear thy cry. The trial fires may glow, but I am nigh. I see the silver, and I will refine Until My image shall upon it shine. Fear not, for I am near, thy help to be; Greater than all thy pain, My love for thee. H. W. C. God takes a thousand times more pains with us than the artist with his picture, by many touches of sorrow, and by many colors of circumstance, to bring man into the form which is the highest and noblest in His sight, if only we received His gifts and myrrh in the right spirit. But when the cup is put away, and these feelings are stifled or unheeded, a greater injury is done to the soul than can ever be amended. For no heart can conceive in what surpassing love God giveth us this myrrh; yet this which we ought to receive to our soul's good, we suffer to pass by us in our sleepy indifference, and nothing comes, of it. Then we come and complain: "Alas, Lord! I am so dry, and it is so dark within me!" I tell thee, dear child, open thy heart to the pain, and it will do thee more good than if thou wert full of feeling and devoutness. J. TAULER. October 30 _That good thing which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us_.--2 TIM. i. 14. Oh that the Comforter would come! Nor visit as a transient guest, But fix in me His constant home, And keep possession of my breast: And make my soul His loved abode, The temple of indwelling God! C. WESLEY. Thy spirit should become, while yet on earth, the peaceful throne of the Divine Being; think, then, how quiet, how gentle and pure, how reverent, thou shouldst be. GERHARD TERSTEEGEN.