s one curse that will drop away the moment we kneel at
Jesus' feet and surrender ourselves to His meekness. Then we will not
care what people think of us so long as God is pleased. Then _what we
are_ will be everything; what we appear will take its place far down
the scale of interest for us. Apart from sin we have nothing of which to
be ashamed. Only an evil desire to shine makes us want to appear other
than we are.

The heart of the world is breaking under this load of pride and
pretense. There is no release from our burden apart from the meekness of
Christ. Good keen reasoning may help slightly, but so strong is this
vice that if we push it down one place it will come up somewhere else.
To men and women everywhere Jesus says, "Come unto me, and I will give
you rest." The rest He offers is the rest of meekness, the blessed
relief which comes when we accept ourselves for what we are and cease to
pretend. It will take some courage at first, but the needed grace will
come as we learn that we are sharing this new and easy yoke with the
strong Son of God Himself. He calls it "my yoke," and He walks at one
end while we walk at the other.

_Lord, make me childlike. Deliver me from the urge to compete with
another for place or prestige or position. I would be simple and artless
as a little child. Deliver me from pose and pretense. Forgive me for
thinking of myself. Help me to forget myself and find my true peace in
beholding Thee. That Thou mayest answer this prayer I humble myself
before Thee. Lay upon me Thy easy yoke of self-forgetfulness that
through it I may find rest. Amen._

X

_The Sacrament of Living_

Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to
the glory of God.--I Cor. 10:31

One of the greatest hindrances to internal peace which the Christian
encounters is the common habit of dividing our lives into two areas, the
sacred and the secular. As these areas are conceived to exist apart from
each other and to be morally and spiritually incompatible, and as we are
compelled by the necessities of living to be always crossing back and
forth from the one to the other, our inner lives tend to break up so
that we live a divided instead of a unified life.

Our trouble springs from the fact that we who follow Christ inhabit at
once two worlds, the spiritual and the natural. As children of Adam we
live our lives on earth subject to the limitations of the flesh and the
weaknesses