man, "Give Me to drink."
And perhaps it is within the scope of our holy privilege to refresh the
heart of our Lord. Perhaps we can give Him to drink of the well of our
affections, and He will see of "the travail of His soul and be
satisfied."

OCTOBER The Eighth

_GOD'S GLORIOUS PURPOSE_

"_I have created him for My glory, I have formed him;
yea, I have made him._"
--ISAIAH xliii. 1-7.

That is surely a superlative honour! "I have created him for My glory." I
stood before one of Turner's paintings, and a man of fine judgment said to
me, "That is Turner's glory!" He meant that in that picture the genius and
the power and the grace of Turner were most abundantly expressed. And it
is the will of God that man should express His glory, and by his
righteousness and goodness witness to the great Creator's power and love.
Amid all the wonders and sublimities of earth, and sky, and sea, man is to
be the Almighty's "glory."

The contrast is pathetic when we turn from the Creator's purpose to our
immediate life. There is so much that is shameful, crooked, and perverse.
There is little or nothing of "glory." But, blessed be God! the purpose
abides, and the Creator's work goes on. In His redemptive grace He has
made provision for marred work, for spoilt and perverted life. "The
crooked shall be made straight." "I will bring again that which is out of
the way." "Where sin abounds grace doth much more abound."

OCTOBER The Ninth

_THE LARGER WATERS_

1 THESSALONIANS iv. 13-18.

Death is not an end; it is only a new beginning. Death is not the master
of the house; he is only the porter at the King's lodge, appointed to open
the gate, and let in the King's guests into the realms of eternal day.
"And so shall we be ever with the Lord."

And so the range of three score years and ten is not the limit of our
life. Our life is not a land-locked lake enclosed within the shore-lines
of seventy years. It is an arm of the sea, and where the shore-lines seem
to meet in old age they open out into the infinite. And so we must build
for those larger waters. We must lay our life plans on the scale of the
infinite, not as though we were only pilgrims of time, but as children of
eternity! We are immortal! How, then, shall we live to-day in prospect of
the eternal morrow?

OCTOBER The Tenth

_OUR REFUGE AND STRENGTH_

PSALM xlvi.

"God is our refuge and strength." And in the varied conflicts and perils
of lif