Luke 1:75

All the days of our life

The holy and their heavenly prospects

True, all our lives long we shall be bound to refrain our soul and keep it low; but what then?

For the books we now forbear to read, we shall one day be endued with wisdom and knowledge. For the music we will not listen to, we shall join in the song of the redeemed. For the pictures from which we turn, we shall gaze unabashed on the beatific vision. For the companionship we shun, we shall be welcomed into angelic society and the communion of triumphant saints. For the pleasures we miss, we shall abide, and evermore abide, in the rapture of heaven. It cannot be much of a hardship to dress modestly, and at small cost, rather than richly and fashionably, if, with a vivid conviction, we are awaiting the “white robes of the redeemed.” And, indeed, this anticipation of pure and simple white robes for eternal wear may fairly shake belief in the genuine beauty of elaborate showiness, even for such clothes as befitted in the present distress. (Christina G. Rossetti.)

Holiness

What is the base line of the Bible? It is sin. And it is not one of the chief reasons why the Bible is made so little of that men do not realize what sin is--how dreadful and how fatal it is? What is the horizontal line of the Bible? It is holiness. That is where earth and heaven meet. But on that horizon line there is only one point of sight, it is where God and man meet in Christ, in whom alone holiness can be found. (John Munro Gibson.)

Ambition to excel in holiness

“There is nothing,” it might have seemed when the first settlers of Massachusetts established the English race on the cheerless shores, the barren rocks, the trackless forests of this continent. Yet there was everything; there was the hope of a new world; there were the elements of a mighty nation, if only those who followed after sustained the high spirit and great resolves of those who had gone before. It was but two days ago that I read in the close of a volume written by the founder of the venerable village of Concord, a sentence which ought to bring at once the noblest encouragement and the sternest rebuke to every citizen of this Commonwealth. “There is no people,” says Peter Bulkley, in his Gospel Covenant, in the year 1646, to his little flock of exiles, “There is no people but will strive to excel in something. What can we excel in if not in holiness? If we look to numbers, we are the fewest; if to strength, we are the weakest; if to wealth and riches, we are the poorest of all, the people of God throughout the whole world. We cannot excel, nor so much as equal, other people in these things; and, if we come short in grace and holiness, we are also the most despicable people under heaven. Strive we therefore to excel, and suffer not this crown to be taken away from us, (Dean Stanley.)