ust
be ever _added_, never _first_.

Then shall we be able to believe for them without doubt, when we claim
them for Him and not for ourselves. It is only when "we are Christ's" that
"all things are ours."

Lord, help me this day to seek Thee first, and be more desirous to please
Thee and have Thy will than to possess any other blessing.

FEBRUARY 13.

"Thy prayers are come up for a memorial before God" (Acts x. 4).

What a beautiful expression the angel used to Cornelius, "Thy prayers are
come up for a memorial." It would almost seem as if supplications of years
had accumulated before the Throne, and at last the answer broke in
blessings on the head of Cornelius, even as the accumulated evaporation of
months at last bursts in floods of rain upon the parched ground. So God is
represented as treasuring the prayers of His saints in vials; they are
described as sweet odors. They are placed like fragrant flowers in the
chambers of the King. And kept in sweet remembrance before Him. And later
they are represented as poured out upon the earth; and lo, there are
voices and thunderings and great providential movements fulfilling God's
purposes for His kingdom. We are called "the Lord's remembrancers," and
are commanded to give Him no rest, day nor night, but crowd the heavens
with our petitions and in due time the answer will come with its
accumulated blessings.

No breath of true prayer is lost. The longer it waits, the larger it
becomes.

FEBRUARY 14.

"He shall baptize you with fire" (Matt. iii. 11).

Fire is strangely intense and intrinsic. It goes into the very substance
of things. It somehow blends with every particle of the thing it touches.

There are the severe trials that come to minds more sensitive, to the
minds that have more points of contact with what hurts; so that the higher
the nature the higher the joy, and the greater the avenues of pain that
come.

And then there are deeper trials that come as we pass into the hands of
God, as we pass from the physical and intellectual into the spiritual
nature.

When they first come, we shrink back from their unnatural and fearful
breath, and we say: "Oh, this cannot be from the hand of a loving Father!
This cannot be necessary to me."

And then come the pains and sufferings from God's own hand, when He sits
as a refiner and purifier of silver, when He lets it burn, until it seems
that we must be burned to ashes, and we are, indeed, at