O God, Thou knowest the hours in which we desire Thee. Thou knowest that Thou hast made us to love truth and to walk in the light and when we are unjust, unkind, unloving, then we are not true to ourselves,--then we forget that we are living souls and that Thou art our Father. Let us not draw nigh to Thee with our lips while our hearts are far from Thee, but, knowing how dependent and frail we are, may we feel that it is a good and helpful thing to draw nigh unto Thee by faith and prayer,--and to take thought of that Infinite Love which holds us all in its arms of strength and mercy. Lift up our minds today, warm our affections, and deepen within us the feeling of reverence, of gratitude, and guide all the longings of our hearts aright. Amen. JOSHUA YOUNG. August 27 _Life may be given in many ways, And loyalty to truth be sealed As bravely in the closet as the field, So bountiful is fate; But then to stand beside her, When craven churls deride her, To front a lie in arms and not to yield, This shows, methinks, God's plan And measure of a stalwart man, Limbed like the old heroic breeds, Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth, Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, Fed from within with all the strength he needs._ JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. Heavenly Father, in this new day may we recognize a new opportunity for seeking Thy purpose in us; to become stronger children of Thine, and worthier followers of Thy Son. Whatever be our trial give us courage to stand without compromise, for that which we believe to be true; give us grace to rise superior to praise or blame, timidity or self-interest; to be loyal to the best in us, and be ever ready to protest against wrong and injustice. Help us to know ourselves as temples of Thine; to know that the essential principal in us is not dust, but God; to rise to that dignity of sonship that compels one to choose the right and say: "Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise." In His name. Amen. HERBERT H. GRAVES. August 28 _All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist; Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist, When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by and by._ ROBERT BROWNING.