The Cloud of Witness Wednesday

A little late - I just plain forgot!

[354]

Wednesday Tenth after Trinity

Sympathy

By love serve one another.--Gal. v. 13.
None of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.--Rom. xiv. 7.

Wouldst thou the Life of Souls discern?
Nor human wisdom nor divine
Helps thee by aught beside to learn:--
Love is Life's only sign.
The spring of the regenerate heart--
The pulse, the glow of every part,
Is the true love of Christ our Lord,
As man embrac'd, as God ador'd.
Keble.

She never found fault with you, never implied
Your Wrong by her Right; and yet men at her side
Grew nobler, girls purer.
None knelt at her feet, confessed lovers in thrall,--
They knelt more to God than they used--that was all!
E.B. Browning.

"For this true nobleness I seek in Vain
In woman, and in man I find it not;
I almost weary of my earthly lot,
My life-springs are dried up with burning pain."
Thou find'st it not? I pray thee look again;--
Look inward through the depths of thine own soul!
How is it with thee? Art thou sound and whole?
Doth narrow search show thee no earthly stain?
*Be noble!* And the Nobleness that lies
In other men, sleeping, but never dead,--
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own!
Then wilt though see it gleam in many eye,
Then will pure light around thy path be shed,
And thou wilt never-more be sad and lone!
Lowell.

Let us no more contend, nor blame
Each other, blam'd enough elsewhere!--but strive
In offices of love how we may lighten
Each other's burden in our share of woe!
Milton.