Reading: “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.”—Psalm 43:5

O God, in Your infinite mercy You have again spared me to approach Your blessed presence. May each morning find me better prepared for the glorious waking-time of immortality, when “the day shall break,” and earth’s shadows shall forever “flee away.” May I seek to rise this day in newness of life, breathing more of the atmosphere of holiness, and partaking more of the character of heaven.

You are always, by the salutary dispensations of Your providence, reminding me that this earth is not my rest. It is well, Lord, that it should be so; that, by Your own gracious and needed discipline, the world be disarmed of its insinuating power, and I be weaned from what is precarious at the best, and which ultimately must perish.

O my God, I feel heavily burdened by reason of sin. I mourn my guilty proneness to temptation. How anything and everything seems often enough to drive me from you, and to lead me to seek my happiness in created good, rather than in Yourself, the infinite fountain of all excellence! How sad have been my backslidings! How have solemn vows been broken! How have abandoned and forsworn sins threatened again to have dominion over me! How little tenderness of conscience has there been! How little dread of an uneven walk! How often, on the heart which I have consecrated to You has there been burning incense to strange gods! Lord, discouraged with myself, I hope in you through Christ.