Are you timid and shamefaced in your service to God? Are you a victim to human respect? Are you a Christian who is ashamed of Christ, and do you draw back from a bold, consistent profession of your holy faith when the wicked scoff and sneer? Or, are you one who dares do great things for the God who has done so much for you? {115} Does your heart burn to offer Him a glorious and complete sacrifice, and yet you can not summon up the courage to accomplish it? Put up your supplication, and say--__Veni, Sancte Spiritus! Veni, dator munerum!__--and the Comforter, the Divine Strengthener, will come with His grace, and cover your weak soul with the armor of His gift of fortitude. Are you proud? Does the demon of intemperance, of anger, or of lust creep stealthily into your breast, and leave foul traces of his presence there? Is the majesty, the power, the holiness of that God to whom you belong forgotten? Do you tremble no more when you hear of justice, of chastity, and of the judgment to come? Pray, for your danger is great. Put up a strong and earnest cry, and say--__Veni, Sancte Spiritus! Veni, dator munerum!__--and the Comforter will be with you, bringing the help you need in your peril, with the grace of His gift of the fear of God. These seven good and perfect gifts it is the office of the Holy Ghost to impart to those who ask for them. We prize the simple gifts of friendship and affection which serve us in our daily life for our comfort or protection. Oh! that we but knew the gifts of God, the Holy Ghost, the Comforter. Friends bestow their gifts and depart, but the Almighty Friend abideth with His gifts for ever in the faithful soul. {116} The gifts of men wear out and tarnish, and the rust and moth corrupt them; but the gifts of God are as incorruptible and as unchangeable and as eternally bright and beautiful as His own divine, unchangeable life. The sequence now invokes the Holy Ghost as "the Light of every heart." The soul of the innocent child, of the pure-minded youth and maiden, of the upright man and pious matron, of the aged Christian, whose locks are whitened in the service of God, is bright with this heavenly Light; but even these know their hours of heaviness of spirit. "Though one may have rejoiced in many years," as says the Scripture, "he must remember the darksome time, and the many days, in which the passed things shall be accused of vanity." [Footnote 35] [Footnote 35: Eccles. xi. 8.]