This morning the voice of the Beloved of our soul is heard giving us His invitation. "Children," He asks, "have ye any meat?" We answer, "No; of ourselves we have nothing but hunger and starvation. O God, we cannot feed ourselves!" Then it is that His own sweet voice replies, "Come and dine!"--_W. Hay Aitken._ =October 10th.= _O Lord God, Thou knowest! Ezek. xxxvii. 3._ Here is the response of faith. "Thou knowest!"--what a pillow for the heart to repose upon! "Thou knowest!"--what few but comprehensive words to sum up and express the heart's difficulties and perplexities and trials. "Thou knowest!"--what an inexpressibly sweet resting-place in the midst of life's tumultuous heavings; in the midst of a sea that knows no calm; in the midst of a scene in which tossings to and fro are the hourly history! What an answer they contain for every heart that can find no words to express its big emotions; for a heart whose sorrows are too deep for language to find its way to God! Oh, that they were ever uppermost in the soul, as the response to every difficulty in our path! They are God's answer to everything we cannot fathom; God's answer for our hearts to rest upon, and our lips to utter, when every way is hedged up so that we cannot pass. "O Lord God, thou knowest!" Rest here, believer. Lean thy soul on these words. Repose calmly on the bosom of thy God, and carry them with thee into every scene of life. "O Lord God, thou knowest."--_F. Whitfield._ =October 11th.= _Behold, a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. Gen. xxviii. 12._ Think of that mystic ladder, which descends from the throne of God to the spot, however lowly, where you may be. It may be a moorland waste; a humble cottage; a ship's cabin; a settler's hut; a bed of pain; but Jesus Christ finds you out, and comes just where you are. The one pole of this ladder is the gold of His deity; the other is the silver of His manhood; the rungs are the series of events from the cradle of Bethlehem to the right hand of power, where He sits. That ladder sways beneath a weight of blessing for you. Oh, that you would send away your burdens of sin, and care, and fear, by the hands of the ascending angels of prayer and faith!--so as to be able to receive into your heart the trooping angels of peace, and joy, and love, and glory.--_F. B. Meyer._ =October 12th.= _Surely God is in this place, and I knew it not. Gen. xxviii. 16._