Our Father, this world is Thy world, and this day is Thy renewed gift of opportunity to learn life's lesson more perfectly. We need clearer insight into Thy designs, that we may loathe every form of selfishness, and love devotion. Give us to know the Christ more intimately, and in the strength of His apprehended presence help us to employ this day in practising the holy principles He taught. Assist us this morning to have, and throughout this day to keep, such an attitude of glad co-operation with Him, that work shall be shot through and through with joy in anticipation of its glorious result. So may this day be to us a time of real soul expansion; a wooing and a winning of that which is highest, even a purer, noble character. Amen. J. EDWIN LACOUNT. December 14 _'Tis the mind that makes the body rich, And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, So honor peereth in the meanest habit. What, is the jay more precious than the lark, Because his feathers are more beautiful? Or is the adder better than the eel, Because his painted skin contents the eye?_ SHAKESPEARE. In this world of mingled good and evil, amid the ceaseless struggle of the better with the worse, grant unto us our Father, the cheerful assurance that we are enlisted in the service of the good, bound for the better, and destined for the best. Reveal to us each day some task that we can do for Thee, some chance to bear with Christ the burden of another, some call to take the side of the right against the wrong. Help us to conquer hardship by patience, despair by hope, fear by courage, and hate by love; and may we find the peace, the power, the glory of Thy perfect will and Thy great kingdom reflected and reproduced in our hearts and lives. Amen. WILLIAM DEWITT HYDE. December 15 _Call him not old, whose visionary brain Holds o'er the past its undivided reign, For him in vain the envious seasons roll Who bears eternal summer in his soul. If yet the minstrel's song, the poet's lay, Spring with her birds, or children at their play, Or maiden's smile, or heavenly dream of art, Stir the few life-drops creeping round his heart, Turn to the record where his years are told,-- Count his gray hairs,--they cannot make him old!_ OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.