Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 3.pdf/71

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hearts, and imitate His uprightness and integrity in all our actions. To enable us to do this, He has given us clear perceptions of the principles of faith, of hope, of charity or benevolence, of veneration, of conscientiousness; and by these we are enabled to raise our thoughts and affections upward, and regard and love our God above all things; by our ideas of beauty we can conceive of Him, as of all that is lovely and transcendant, the "fairest among ten thousand." In the contemplation of His glorious works. His own glorious beauty is indexed, and man, His own image and likeness, presents in his person a faint idea of the divine original.

Our second duty is towards our neighbour; to enable us to perform which, we are gifted with various powers of intellect, and brought into constant and close contact with our fellow-creatures, ministering to their necessities, as they on their parts minister to ours, and thus proving the truth of an apostolic precept, "that none of us liveth to himself." There is not a duty we perform, if we perform it faithfully and with a single eye, that is not a work of charity. Whether we construct implements of mechanical use, by which labour is diminished, and life rendered more agreeable; whether we engage in works of art, as drawing, painting, sculpture; whether we touch the chords of harmony, and, by the variety of sweet sounds, praise and magnify our Creator, while, at the same time, we smooth the rugged asperity to which man is prone; whether we engage in the tuition of others or ourselves; whether we guide the helm of the ship or the locomotive carriage, or direct the course of the noble and bounding steed; whether we toil in the fields, or on the seas