There is precious instruction to be got by finding we were wrong. 
    Let a man try faithfully, manfully to be right.  He will grow daily
    more and more right.

    —­Thomas Carlyle.

    The hero is the man who is immovably centered.

    —­Ralph Waldo Emerson.

    Let us draw near with a true heart in fulness of faith, having our
    hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience:  and having our body washed
    with pure water.

    —­Hebrews 10. 22.

Gracious Father, grant that I may not be content to follow through ignorance and indolence and be led to the lowly paths of life.  Make my Hie positive; and from my surroundings may I look out and struggle to mount to the highest ideals, that I may be qualified to select the best in life.  Amen.

DECEMBER FOURTH

Cardinal Richelieu died 1642.

William Drummond died 1649.

Madame Recamier born 1777.

Thomas Carlyle born 1795.

John Kitto born 1804.

It is with a man’s soul as it is with nature:  the beginning of Creation is—­Light.  Till the eye have visions the whole members are in bonds.  Divine moment, when over the tempest-tost Soul, as once over the wild-weltering Chaos, it is spoken:  Let there be Light!

    —­Thomas Carlyle.

      What in me is dark
    Illumine, what is low raise and support;
    That to the light of this great argument
    I may assert eternal Providence
    And justify the ways of God to men.

    —­John Milton.

    For thou art my lamp, O Jehovah; And Jehovah will lighten my
    darkness.

    —­2 Samuel 22. 29.

My Lord, forgive me if I have allowed bitterness and misery to darken my life, for my soul yearns continually for the light.  In thy compassion lead me to the “sunny side of the road where the beautiful flowers grow,” that my path may be made bright and cheerful all the rest of the way.  Amen.

DECEMBER FIFTH

Martin Van Buren, New York, eighth President
United States, born 1782.

Christina G. Rossetti born 1830.

Alice Brown born 1857.

    A cold wind stirs the blackthorn
      To burgeon and to blow,
    Besprinkling half-green hedges
      With flakes and sprays of snow.

    Through coldness and through keenness,
      Dear hearts take comfort so: 
    Somewhere or other doubtless
      These make the blackthorn blow.

    —­Christina G. Rossetti.

    There are some men and women in whose company we are always at our
    best.  All the best stops in our nature are drawn out by their
    intercourse, and we find a music in our souls never there before.

    —­Henry Drummond.