n transfigure the leper with
the glow and purity of perfect health.

"Thou of life the Fountain art,
Freely let me take of Thee."

DECEMBER The Twenty-ninth

_THE LOVE OF GOD_

1 JOHN iv. 7-14.

Let me more assiduously think of God's love. Let me sit down to it. In the
National Gallery can be seen two sorts of people. There are the mere
vagrants, who are always "on the move," passing from picture to picture,
without seeing any. And there are the students, who sit down, and
contemplate, and meditate, and appropriate, and saturate. And there are
vagrants in respect to the love of the Lord. They have a passing glimpse,
but the impression is not vital and vitalizing, and there are the
students, who are always gazing, and who are continually crying, "O the
depth of the riches of the love of God in Christ!" "His riches are
unsearchable!"

And God's love is the creator of my love. "While I muse the fire burns." I
am kindled into the same holy passion. That is to say, contemplation
determines character. We acquire the hues of the things to which we cling.
To hold fellowship with love is to become loveful and lovely. "We love
because He first loved us."

And then, in the third place, it is through my love that I know my Lord.
"_Everyone that loveth knoweth God._" Love is the lens through which I
discern the secret things of God.

DECEMBER The Thirtieth

_THE BLESSEDNESS OF FORGIVENESS_

"_Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven._"
--PSALM xxxii.

It is the blessedness of emancipation. The boat which has been tethered to
the weird, baleful shore is set free, and sails toward the glories of the
morning. The man, long cramped in the dark, imprisoning pit, is brought
out, and stretches his limbs in the sweet light and air of God's free
world. Black servitude is ended; glorious liberty begins.

It is the blessedness of education. For when we are freed we are by no
means perfected. We are liberated babes; and our Emancipator does not
desert us in our spiritual infancy. The foundling is not abandoned.
"Having loved His own He loved them unto the end." He begins with us in
the spiritual nursery, and He will train and lead and feed us until we are
"perfect in Christ Jesus."

Therefore is it the blessedness of exultation. The babe is resting on the
bosom of the Lord, and "the joy of the Lord is his strength." It is not my
emancipation that ensures my joy; it is the abiding Presence of the