XLIV.

DAILY FAULTS.

The cheapest sins most dearly punished are,
Because to shun them also is so cheap;
For we have wit to mark them, and to spare.
O crumble not away thy soul's fair heap!

HERBERT.

Small offences become great in our eyes, as the light of God increases within us.

Fénelon.

We must condemn our faults, lament them, repent of them, without seeking any palliation or excuse, viewing ourselves as in the presence of God. - Fénelon.

Cleanse thou me from secret faults. Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins.

Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed.

Now, therefore, thus saith the Lord of hosts, Consider your ways.

For I know your manifold transgressions and your sins. Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live.

Have mercy upon me, O Lord; for I am weak: O Lord, heal me.

It is at its source that evil must be stopped; even though it may not arrive immediately at its height, it must not on that account be neglected. It will grow during your sleep; it is only a germ, but if you do not extirpate it, it will bring forth the fruits of death. St. John Chrysostom.

Beware how you regard as trifling, faults which appear An accumulation of small faults

of but little consequence.

makes a very large one; grains of sand, gathered together one upon another, form the banks on which the vessel strikes. St. Augustine.

Little sins do greatly deface the image of God in the soul. -Hopkins.

MORNING.

E would acknowledge, O God, with gratitude, thine unmeasured and immeasurable love, which daily renews our life, and daily gives us the means to gain wisdom and virtue. Help us to show our gratitude by consecrating ourselves to thy service, to thy service, which alone is perfect freedom, in which alone is real life. Help us, O Father, this day, to make the word of Jesus our guide and standard; help us so to live that his word may not condemn us in the hour of judgment. We confess that his yoke is easy and his burden light; and that we are most unreasonable in our disobedience, doing wrong on slight temptation; whilst thou hast given us, in his precious promises, and equally precious warnings, the strongest motives to resist the tempter. But he bade us ask for the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and we therefore pray thee for its gracious influences. We know that it will add to our guilt if we sin against thy good Spirit. But may the very thought that thou art with us and

helping us be our strength in duty and our defence against temptation. Let us not deceive ourselves with the vain hope that our sins can be deemed small because done upon small temptation, or pardonable because we constantly repeat them. Bring to our remembrance, according to our Lord's promise, his words in all their awful strictness, binding us to govern every word and every thought; and also in all their glorious riches of mercy, promising forgiveness always to the penitent and obedient spirit; and may his word become in us the fountain of everlasting life. We thank thee that thou hast through him offered us eternal life and blessedness; suffer us not, O gracious God, to waste our daily opportunities for gaining the crown of life; suffer us not, by what we may deem little sins, to exchange our heavenly inheritance for a heritage of everlasting shame.

And these blessings of thy grace we would ask not only for ourselves, but for all who are dear to us; for our neighbors also, and for all mankind. Give thy word, O God, this day success in every land. Establish righteousness upon the earth, and cast wickedness out of her high places. Confound the counsels of the ungodly, and bring them to naught, but let thy church be sanctified, and be extended until the world is filled with thy glory. Amen.

EVENING.

GOD, thou Searcher of hearts, we mourn

that our faults are so stubborn and abiding, and that, often as we discover and lament them and strive against them, they do still so mightily return upon us. Let us make honest confession of this our frailty, and be willing to appear at thy mercyseat just as we are, without pretence or reserve. Thou canst know us, and yet pity, forgive, and

save.

Help us, O Father, to study more deeply and humbly the springs of our perversity, that we may know our own frailties so wisely as to trace them to their source, and find their cure. Save us, AllMerciful, from despairing over our own sins, and graciously give us comforting views of our own gifts and thy graces, that we may be encouraged to overcome the evil that is within us with thine abounding good. Save us from all such desponding views of ourselves as tend to quench the spirit of hope, and enable us in the hour of darkness and temptation to cling to thy mercy-seat, and to claim the comforts of thy love.

Help us, O God, to watch and pray that we may not enter into temptation. Help us to resist the least beginning of evil, and so to set a guard upon our eyes and lips and walk, as to keep us from every occasion of sin and open every pathway of rectitude.

And O, blessed God, Giver of all good, Comforter in all trouble, Renewer of souls, in thy loving-kindness open unto us the fountains of heavenly wisdom and power, that we may repel all evil spirits and tempers by the angels of grace, and the life that is born of thy Holy Spirit may overcome the life of sin and death.

All glory be to thee for thy long-suffering mercy, thy forbearance with our miserable frailties, and make us strong and holy by a righteousness better than our own, even through thy beloved Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

If any man seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain.

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

Religion was not intended to minister to fame and reputa