potency in a creed which brings these intermediate intelligences within your spiritual ken. New sympathies are awakened, enlarging and enforcing the duties that you knew. Angels may do for you what the thought of the home fireside does for a youngster who is roaming the world, and who knows that there is no grief or gladness at home to be compared to that which comes from news of him. REV. H. LATHAM. AND such a light was in the angel's face, To see by. GERALD MASSEY. LORD, with what care hast Thou begirt us round! Parents first season us: then schoolmasters Holy messengers; February 17. And these all, having had witness borne to them through their faith, received not the promises, God having provided some better thing concerning us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.-HEB. xi. 40. THE HE ancient Liturgies preserve the token of this doctrine; the very highest of the saints used to be named in them. Christ interceding both for them and for us, in heaven. See, then, how great and holy we all are! You think no one cares for you, while apostles, patriarchs, prophets, martyrs care for you; they are leaning down, as it were, to watch you; they are a 'cloud of witnesses' beholding you; they long for your company. How can you choose such company as you do, and care for such sympathy as you do, in preference to the company and sympathy of the saints? You think you are left alone and helpless, while the air is full of angels, and heaven is full of prayers. How can you fret and grumble here, while you have such a home, and such friends there? How can you say you want encouragement in goodness, when you know what we are taught by S. Paul, that 'the Heavens and all the Powers therein' wait for you, do not count themselves perfect without you. GUARDIAN ANGEL. I WILL prepare my loved one's destiny; KEBLE. And with my kindred angels smoothen his ways So among men, that he o'er all may cope, Throneworthy through all ages; hallowed, blessed; Born of the lofty lineage of the light. Peace to the soul-world, and the grand belief February 18. P. J. BAILEY. For He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.-Ps. xci. 11. 'HE thought that we, each one of us-small as THE our capacity may be—in all that we do, and in all our inward changes of feeling and thought, are objects of the keenest interest to hosts of Spiritual Personalities,... while it awakens in us a new sense of responsibility and awe, gives us, at the same time, a higher kind of care for ourselves. Tennyson makes his hero say that if he were beloved, 'then he would be to himself more dear,' and that all the common routine of his daily life would be endued with an interest which it had not hitherto known. In like manner, if we believe that the angels of God love us, and take a lively and affectionate interest in our doings, as we do in those of our children-now delighting and now grieving, but saved from desponding, where we might despond, by being able 'to see the end and know the good,' less imperfectly than the wisest men ; and if while living here on earth, we are all the while able to add to the joy in heaven, or cause sorrow there, then we must become more precious in our own eyes, knowing that we can bring about more imperishable effects than we had dreamt of before. THE REV. H. LATHAM. HE other world is not cut off from this: They touch you with the waving of their wing, February 19. GERALD MASSEY. Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which He hath promised to them that love Him?-JAMES ii. 5. Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation ?— HEB. i. 14. THIS, now, is an excellent comfort, that the angels and all the heavenly host esteem him so much whom the world contemneth; by which we may learn that, although we be outcasts in the world, there be notwithstanding that have regard and care of us. Believe thou this undoubtedly, if it had not so pleased God He would not have suffered His beloved Son to be laid in a manger; He would not have permitted Him to be born in so great poverty, misery, and contempt. But the poorer and more despised He is before the world, so much greater care and regard God and all the heavenly soldiers have of Him: so that we may receive comfort thereby, and believe assuredly that the more we are rejected of the world, the more we are esteemed before God. MILTON. LUTHER. I AM weak, yet strong; I murmur not that I no longer see; Poor, old, and helpless, I the more belong, Father Supreme, to Thee! O merciful One! When men are farthest, then Thou art most near; When friends pass by, my weaknesses to shun, Thy chariot I hear. Oh! I seem to stand, Trembling where foot of mortal ne'er hath been, Wrapped in the radiance of Thy sinless land, Which eye hath never seen. Visions come and go Shapes of resplendent beauty round me throng; It is nothing now When heaven is opening on my sightless eyes, In a purer clime My being fills with rapture-waves of thought Give me now my lyre, I feel the stirrings of a gift divine, February 20 E. LLOYD. Two are better than one: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.- ECCLES. iv. 9, 10. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.- Ps. xci. 12. ΟΝ NE kind of action which is of wide operation is, I think, the sense of company which the belief in angels' presence brings. This frees us from loneliness of soul; it takes the selfishness out of our joys, and the corrosive poison out of our griefs. A trouble that is nursed in secret embitters a man's disposition and deadens his energy; but as soon as the fresh air gets at it, and it is shared among sympathising friends, its ill qualities are done away. REV. H. LATHAM. VET through each murky bosom-cave YET One rosy beam rests ever suave Wherein these guardian angels lie, Else must their holy wrath and pain Have stricken them with eternal bane. Those friends God claimed at death as His, Or any denizens of bliss, How else might such come near us still But now their holy look of woe Seems tempered with an underglow And why! They climbed themselves the hill |