How it sweetens all our blessings, and alleviates all our sorrows, to regard both as emanations from a loving Father's hand. Even if we should be, like the disciples of old, "_constrained_" to go into the ship; if all should be darkness and tempest, frowning providences--"the wind contrary;" how blessed to feel that in embarking on the unquiet element, "the Lord has bidden us!" Paul could not speak even of taking an earthly journey, without the parenthesis ("if the Lord will"). How many trials, and sorrows, and _sins_, would it save us, if the same were the habitual regulator of our daily life! It would lead to calm contentment with our lot, hushing every disquieting suggestion with the thought that that lot, with all that is apparently adverse in it, was _ordained_ for us. It would teach us not to be aspiring after _great_ things, but humbly to wait the will and purposes of a wise Provider; not to go _before_ our Heavenly Guide, but to _follow_ Him, saying, in meek subjection, "Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty, neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for for me ... my soul is even as a weaned child!" "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND." Twentieth Day. NOT RETALIATING. "Who, when He was reviled, reviled not again."--1 Peter, ii. 23. What a common dictate of the fallen and regenerate heart to resent and recriminate! How alien to natural feeling to answer cutting taunts, and meet unmerited wrong with the Divine method the Gospel prescribes--"Overcome evil with good!" It was in the closing scenes of the Saviour's humiliation, when, silent and unresenting, He stood "dumb before His shearers," that this beautiful feature in His character was most wondrously manifested; but it beams forth, also, for our imitation in the ordinary and less prominent incidents of His pilgrimage.