Page:The Book of Family Worship.pdf/298

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assistance, have fought the good fight, have been brought through great tribulation, and now enjoying the great inheritance, stand in Thy Kingdom, possessed of every happiness which Divine beneficence can bestow and the prepared spirit enjoy. They serve Thee day and night in Thy temple; neither hunger nor thirst, sickness nor disease assails them; but in the plenitude of bliss and in spiritual usefulness their joys decome multiplied, and will continue to multiply eternally. They have heen brought out of great tribulation, and perfected by suffering; and by suffering alone can we be perfected also. Amen.

Our Father, etc.


MONDAY EVENING.

ALMIGHTY Lord God of our salvation, who hast taught that "men ought always to pray and not to faint," and hast in the most solemn manner exhorted us to "watch and pray, that we enter not into temptation," help us to be obedient to this Thy divine counsel, and to strive against the corruptions of our evil nature. We feel more and more the assaults of the powers of darkness; they excite our evil passions, and prompt to the delights of sensual pleasure; and while we acknowledge this, we are led to see that all temptations are by God's permission, who can strengthen us at any time, and keep us from falling. Thus are we instructed that a blessing attends upon us, as we look unto Thee; or a curse as we separate ourselves from Thee. Thou hast indeed placed life and death, blessing and cursing, before us. Thou hast endowed us with freedom of choice, but Thou hast, as a tender Parent, exhorted us to "choose life, that we and our seed may live." If we allow ourselves to be drawn aside of our own lusts and enticed, the end must be death, but if through the Spirit we mortify the deeds of the body, we shall live. O Lord, help us in every time of temptation to learn the humbling lessons mercifully taught us; while we acknowledge, may we at the same time abhor, the corruptions exposed to our view. Assist us to draw nearer to Thee in every trial, and deliver uu out of all our distresses. Amen.

Our Father, etc.


TUESDAY MORNING.

ALMIGHTY and most merciful redeeming Lord and Saviour, we come before Thee this morning deeply conscious that, without Thy divine aid, all our efforts to accomplish the great work of regeneration are futile.

So multiplied are the conflicts in which we have to engage; so difficult and apparently hopeless of overcoming in the dark valley through which wo have to pass, that we are often ready to faint by the way, and to imagine thet we cannot advance farther, and that our most strenuous efforts are unavailing. We look within, and are troubled; for so many are the evils which require patient labour to eradicate, that we are tempted in despondency to inquire. Who is sufficient for these things? until at last, doing what we ought never to have neglected, sinking down in self-abasement, and entirely surrendering ourselves to Thy mercy, our very weakness becomes our strength.