Let it be so, in some lowly measure with us. Let God's service not be the mere livery of high days,--of set times and seasons; but, like the alabaster box of ointment, let us ever be giving forth the fragrant perfume of holiness. Even when the shadows of trial are falling around us, let us "pass through the cloud" with the sustaining motive--"All my wish, O God, is to please and glorify Thee! By giving or taking--by smiting or healing--by the sweet cup or the bitter--'Father, glorify thy name!'" "I don't want to be weary of God's dealing with me," said Bickersteth, on his death-bed; "I want to glorify Jesus in them, and to find Him more precious." Do I shrink from trials--duties--crosses--because involving hardships and self-denial, or because frowned on by the world? Let the thought of God's approving countenance be enough. Let me dread no censure, if conscious of acting in accordance with _His_ will. Let the Apostle's monitory word determine many a perplexing path--"If I please men, I am not the servant of Christ." "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND." Sixteenth Day. GRIEF AT SIN. "Being grieved for the hardness of their hearts."--Mark, iii. 5. On this one occasion only is the expression used with reference to Jesus--(what intensity of emotion does it denote, spoken of a sinless nature!)--"He looked round on them _with anger_!" Never did He grieve for Himself. His intensest sorrows were reserved for those who were tampering with their own souls, and dishonoring His God. The continual spectacle of moral evil, thrust on the gaze of spotless purity, made His earthly history one consecutive history of grief, one perpetual "cross and passion." In the tears shed at the grave of Bethany, sympathy, doubtless, for the world's myriad mourners, had its own share (the bereaved could not part with so precious a tribute in their hours of sadness), but a far more impressive cause was one undiscerned by the weeping sisters and sorrowing crowd; His knowledge of the deep and obdurate impenitence of those who were about to gaze on the mightiest of miracles, only to "despise, and wonder, and perish." "_Jesus wept!_"--but His profoundest anguish was over resisted grace, abused privileges, scorned mercy. It was the Divine Artificer mourning over His shattered handiwork; the Almighty Creator weeping over His ruined world; God, the God-man, "grieving" over the Temple of the soul, a humiliating wreck of what once was made "after His own image!"