Life is a building. It rises slowly, day by day throughout the years. Every new lesson we learn lays a block on the edifice, which is rising silently within us. Every experience, every touch of another life on ours, every influence that impresses us, every book we read, every conversation we hear, every act of our commonest days, adds something to the invisible building.

This world is not a place merely to live in, nor a place in which to do certain kinds of business; it is a great workshop in which to make godly men.

Nothing else in all life is such a maker of joy and cheer as the privilege of doing good.

A devotional book, which takes a Scripture text, and so opens it for us in the morning - that all day long it helps us to live, becoming a true lamp to our feet, and a staff to lean upon when the way is rough - is the very best devotional help we can possibly have. What we need in a devotional book which will bless our lives - is the application of the great teachings of Scripture - to common, daily, practical life.

The truly happiest, sweetest, tenderest homes are not those where there has been no sorrow, but those which have been overshadowed with grief, and where Christ's comfort was accepted. The very memory of the sorrow is a gentle benediction that broods ever over the household, like the afterglow of sunset, like the silence that comes after prayer.

Men with fine gifts think it worth while to live to paint a few great pictures which shall be looked at and admired for generations; or to write a few songs which shall sing themselves into the ears and hearts of men. But the woman who makes a sweet, beautiful home, filling it with love and prayer and purity, is doing something better than anything else her hands could find to do beneath the skies.

Every moment brings us some benediction. Even the rough hand of trial holds in its clasp for us some treasure of love.