hrough the toughest soil. "I will make thee," saith the Lord,
"and shall He not do it?"

FEBRUARY The Eighth

_REVISITING OLD ALTARS_

"_I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me
in the day of my distress._"
--GENESIS xxxv. 1-7.

It is a blessed thing to revisit our early altars. It is good to return
to the haunts of early vision. Places and things have their sanctifying
influences, and can recall us to lost experiences. I know a man to whom
the scent of a white, wild rose is always a call to prayer. I know another
to whom Grasmere is always the window of holy vision. Sometimes a
particular pew in a particular church can throw the heavens open, and we
see the Son of God. The old Sunday-school has sometimes taken an old man
back to his childhood and back to his God. So I do not wonder that God led
Jacob back to Bethel, and that in the old place of blessing he
reconsecrated himself to the Lord.

It is a revelation of the loving-kindness of God that we have all these
helps to the recovery of past experiences. Let us use them with reverence.
And in our early days let us make them. Let us build altars of communion
which in later life we shall love to revisit. Let us make our early home
"the house of God and the gate of heaven." Let us multiply deeds of
service which will make countless places fragrant for all our after
years.

FEBRUARY The Ninth

_THE ROCK AND THE BOWING WALL_

PSALM lxii.

Here are two symbols by which the psalmist describes the confidence of the
righteous. "_He only is my rock._" Only yesterday I had the shelter of a
great rock on a storm-swept mountain side. The wind tore along the
heights, driving the rain like hail, but in the opening of the rock our
shelter was complete.

And the second symbol is this: "_He is my high place._" The high place is
the home of the chamois, out of reach of the arrow. "Flee as a bird to
your mountain!" Get beyond the hunter's range! Our security is found in
loftiness. It is our unutterable privilege to live in the heavenly places
in Christ Jesus. Such is the confidence of the righteous.

In this psalm there is also another pair of symbols describing the
futility of the wicked. The wicked is "_as a bowing wall._" The wall is
out of perpendicular, out of conformity with the truth of the plumb-line,
and it will assuredly topple into ruin. So is it with the wicked: he is
building awry, and he will fall into moral disaster. He is also "_a