Our Father, with thankful hearts for all Thy goodness to us in the past,--we seek Thy Holy Spirit's guidance for the day before us. Help us to live not for self alone, but for the good of all with whom we mingle. May the needy, suffering, and struggling ones all about us gather strength because of our devotion to Thee. So inspire us to forget ourselves, that we may the better remember our Master, and the privileges and duties of a life's service to Thy children. Wilt Thou not, Infinite One, thus help us, this day, and in all the days to come, to live to Thy glory! Amen. LEWIS P. BATES. August 12 _To do something for someone else; to love the unlovely; to give a hand to the unattractive; to speak to the uncongenial; to make friends with the poor and folks of lowly degree; to find a niche in the church of the Lord, and to do something out of sheer love for Him; to determine in His house to have His mind; to plan to win at least one for the Master; to aim to redeem past time that is lost; to will to let one's light shine; to cut off practices that are sinful and costly; to add the beauty of holiness--this is to make one's life a thing of beauty and this is to grow in grace, for growing in grace is simply copying the beautiful life of the altogether lovely One._ EDWARD F. REIMER. Infinite Father, we rejoice that it is possible for us to be workers together with Thee by giving our sympathy, love and help to Thy needy children. As Thou hast honored us by appointing us to such a gracious ministry, may we seek to honor Thee in return by trying to do Thy blessed will. In all lowly and gentle ways, may we do what we can to bind up the broken-hearted, to relieve the distressed, to strengthen the weak. Let none who suffer look to us in vain for some manifestation of the Christ-like Spirit. May we so meet and treat the sad, the lonely, the tempted, that they shall take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus. So may His heavenly teaching bear sweet fruit in our conduct and characters, and so may the Kingdom which He came to establish grow apace in the world. In His name. Amen. WILLARD C. SELLECK. August 13 _Let me feel that I am to be a lover. I am to see to it that the world is better for me, and to find my reward in the act. Love would put a new face on this weary old world in which we dwell as pagans and enemies too long; and it would warm the heart to see how fast the vain diplomacy of statesmen, the impotence of armies and navies and lines of defence, would be superseded by this unarmed child. This great, overgrown, dead Christendom of ours still keeps alive at least the name of a lover of mankind. But one day all men will be lovers: and every calamity will be dissolved in the universal sunshine._ RALPH WALDO EMERSON.