;
Be what thou prayest to be made;
Let the great Master's steps be thine.

Fill up each hour with what will last;
Buy up the moments as they go;
The life above, when this is past,
Is the ripe fruit of life below.

Sow truth if thou the true wouldst reap;
Who sows the false shall reap the vain;
Erect and sound thy conscience keep;
From hollow words and deeds refrain.

Sow love, and taste its fruitage pure;
Sow peace and reap its harvest bright;
Sow sunbeams on the rock and moor,
And find a harvest-home of light.

--Horatius Bonar.

REDEEMING THE TIME

We would fill the hours with the sweetest things
If we had but a day;
We should drink alone at the purest springs
In our upward way;
We should love with a lifetime's love in an hour
If the hours were few;
We should rest not for dreams, but for fresher power
To be and to do.

We should guide our wayward or wearied wills
By the clearest light;
We should keep our eyes on the heavenly hills
If they lay in sight;
We should trample the pride and the discontent
Beneath our feet;
We should take whatever a good God sent,
With a trust complete.

We should waste no moments in weak regret
If the day were but one;
If what we remember and what we forget
Went out with the sun;
We should be from our clamorous selves set free
To work and to pray,
And to be what the Father would have us to be,
If we had but a day.

--Mary Lowe Dickinson.

MORAL COSMETICS

Ye who would have your features florid,
Lithe limbs, bright eyes, unwrinkled forehead,
From age's devastation horrid,
Adopt this plan--
'Twill make, in climate cold or torrid,
A hale old man:

Avoid in youth luxurious diet;
Restrain the passion's lawless riot;
Devoted to domestic quiet,
Be wisely gay;
So shall ye, spite of age's fiat,
Resist decay.

Seek not in Mammon's worship pleasure,
But find your richest, dearest treasure
In God, his word, his work; not leisure.
The mind, not sense,
Is the sole scale by which to measure
Your opulence.

This is the solace, this the science,
Life's purest, sweetest, best appliance,
That disappoints not man's reliance,
Whate'