In one of my recent Meetings a dear sister, who has been serving the Lord and walking in the Light for many years, confessed with tears that her joy was not what it used to be. In her youth joys were rapturous, leaping up like springing fountains and singing birds. A verse of Scripture would suddenly stand out with its assuring message and fill her with gladness, and songs in the night welled up from her glad heart, but now she says she often has heaviness of spirit, and the way seems to get harder. And while she feels sure that she is accepted of God, yet she is not enjoying what she once enjoyed.

he other day I received a letter from a young Officer asking for a few suggestions as to how to read and study the Bible. Here they are:

I. Read and study it as two young lovers read and study each other's letters. As soon as the mail brings a letter from his sweetheart, the young man grabs it and without waiting to see if there is not another letter for him, runs off to a corner and reads and laughs and rejoices over it and almost devours it. If he is a particularly desperate and demonstrative lover -- (the Lord make us desperate and demonstrative lovers of our Lord Jesus Christ!) -- he will probably kiss it and carry it next to his heart till the next one comes.

Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?’ asked the Lord of Adam in the Garden of Eden. And Adam replied, ‘The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.’ Thus they confessed the sins of others and ignored their own, and the curse fell upon them instead of blessing.

Peter the Great, Czar of all Russia, and in some respects the mightiest monarch of his day, used to make shoes like a common cobbler, that he might enter into sympathy with his people and help them to realize that labour is not menial, but honorable and full of dignity. It was a great stoop from the throne of Russia to a cobbler’s bench, but I will tell you of a greater.