e Holy Spirit takes possession of our breast. It is indeed
"Peace, Peace." But it is just then that the devil begins to turn us away,
and he does it through our thoughts, diverting or distracting them as
occasion requires. This is the time to prove the sincerity of our
consecration and the singleness of our heart. If we truly desire His
Presence more than all else, we will turn away from every conflicting
thought and look steadily up to Jesus. But if we desire the gratification
of our impulse more than His Presence, we will yield to the passionate
word or the frivolous thought or the sinful diversion, and when we come
back our Shepherd has gone, and we wonder why our peace has departed.
Failure occurs often in some trifling thing, and the soul failure has
occurred in some trifling thing, usually a thought or word, and the soul
which would not have feared to climb a mountain has really stumbled over a
straw.

The real secret of perfect rest is to be jealously, habitually occupied
with Jesus.

MAY 4.

"Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world" (I. John iv.
4).

Satan loves to trip us over little things. The reason of this is because
it is generally a greater victory for him, and shows that he can upset us
by a shaving and knock us down with a straw. It is the old boast of the
Jebusite, when they told David they could defend Jerusalem by a garrison
of the blind and lame. Most of us get on better in our great struggles
than we do in our little ones. It was over a little apple that Adam fell,
but all the world was wrecked. Look out, beloved, for the little stumbling
blocks, and do not let Satan laugh at you, and tell his myrmidons how he
tripped you over an orange peel. And, too, when the devil wants to stop
some great blessing in our lives, he generally throws some ugly shadow
over it and makes it look distasteful to us. How many of us have been
keeping back from truths, places and persons in which God has reappeared,
the greatest blessing of our lives, and the devil has succeeded in keeping
us away from them by some false or foolish prejudice!

MAY 5.

"If ye then be risen" (Col. iii. 1).

God is waiting this morning to mark the opening hours for every ready and
willing heart with a touch of life and power that will lift our lives to
higher pleasures and offer to our vision grander horizons of hope and holy
service.

We shall not need to seek far to discover our risen Lord. He