Drinking deep of his sweet spirit of submission, you will be able thus to meet, yea, even to welcome, your sorest cross, saying, "Yes, Lord, all _is_ well, just because it is Thy blessed will. Take me, use me, chasten me, as seemeth good in Thy sight. My will is resolved into Thine. This trial is dark; I can not see the 'why and the wherefore' of it--but 'not my will, but Thy will!' The gourd is withered; I can not see the reason of so speedy a dissolution of the loved earthly shelter; sense and sight ask in vain why these leaves of earthly refreshment have been doomed so soon to droop in sadness and sorrow. But it is enough. 'The Lord prepared the worm;' 'not _my_ will, but _Thy_ will!'" Oh, how does the stricken soul honor God by thus being _dumb_ in the midst of dark and perplexing dealings, recognizing in these, part of the needed discipline and training for a sorrowless, sinless, deathless world; regarding every trial as a link in the chain which draws it to heaven, where the whitest robes will be found to be those here baptized with suffering, and bathed in tears! "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND." Third Day. DEVOTEDNESS TO GOD. "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?"-- Luke, ii. 49. "My meat and my drink are to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work." That _one_ object brought Jesus from heaven--that _one_ object he pursued with unflinching, undeviating constancy, until He could say, "It is finished." However short man comes of _his_ "chief end," "Glory to God in the highest" was the motive, the rule, and exponent of every act of that wondrous life. With us, the magnet of the soul, even when truest, is ever subject to partial oscillations and depressions, trembling at times away from its great attraction-point. _His_ never knew one tremulous wavering from its all-glorious center. With Him there were no ebbs and flows, no fits and starts. He could say, in the words of that prophetic psalm which speaks so preeminently of Himself, "I have set the Lord _always_ before me!"