ave done with the moments freighted with self or loaded
with emptiness, which we have carelessly let drift by! Oh, what might
have been if they had all been kept for Jesus! How He might have filled
them with His light and life, enriching our own lives that have been
impoverished by the waste, and using them in far-spreading blessing and
power!

While we have been undervaluing these fractions of eternity, what has our
gracious God been doing in them? How strangely touching are the words,
'What is man, that Thou shouldest set Thine heart upon him, and that Thou
shouldest visit him every morning, and _try him every moment?_' Terribly
solemn and awful would be the thought that He has been trying us every
moment, were it not for the yearning gentleness and love of the Father
revealed in that wonderful expression of wonder, 'What is man, that Thou
shouldest set Thine heart upon him?' Think of that ceaseless setting of
His heart upon us, careless and forgetful children as we have been! And
then think of those other words, none the less literally true because
given under a figure: 'I, the Lord, do keep it; _I will water it every
moment._'

We see something of God's infinite greatness and wisdom when we try to
fix our dazzled gaze on infinite space. But when we turn to the marvels
of the microscope, we gain a clearer view and more definite grasp of
these attributes by gazing on the perfection of His infinitesimal
handiworks. Just so, while we cannot realize the infinite love which
fills eternity, and the infinite vistas of the great future are 'dark
with excess of light' even to the strongest telescopes of faith, we see
that love magnified in the microscope of the moments, brought very close
to us, and revealing its unspeakable perfection of detail to our
wondering sight.

But we do not see this as long as the moments are kept in our own hands.
We are like little children closing our fingers over diamonds. How can
they receive and reflect the rays of light, analyzing them into all the
splendour of their prismatic beauty, while they are kept shut up tight in
the dirty little hands? Give them up; let our Father hold them for us,
and throw His own great light upon them, and then we shall see them full
of fair colours of His manifold loving-kindnesses; and let Him always
keep them for us, and then we shall always see His light and His love
reflected in them.

And then, surely, they shall be filled with praise. Not that we are