Page:Meditations For Every Day In The Year.djvu/268

 the use  of  any  one  of  your  limbs  it  you  had  lost  it! How much  more  grateful,  then,  ought  you  to  be  to  God for having  given  them  to  you  whole  and  entire! Take care that  you  do  not  abuse  any  of  them  to  the  displeasure and  dishonor  of  their  Creator,  "by  yielding  them  to serve  uncleanness  and  iniquity  unto  iniquity,  but  yield them  to  serve  justice  unto  sanctification." (Rom. vi.  19.)

III. How just  it  is  that  he  who  created  you  entirely should likewise  entirely  possess  you. For "Who,"  asks the Apostle,  "planteth  a  vineyard  and  eateth  not  of  the fruit  thereof?" (1 Cor.  ix.  7.)  God  has  planted  you  as a  choice  vine  in  his  vineyard;  yield  Him,  therefore,  the fruits of  piety,  charity,  patience,  and  every  Christian virtue. "All that  you  possess,"  writes  St.  Bernard,  "you owe  to  Him  from  whom  you  have  received  it."

I. By  creation  God  gave  you  yourself  but  once;  but by preservation  He  does  the  same  every  moment  of  your life. Unless He  preserved  you,  you  would  immediately fall into  your  original  non-existence. The noon-beam has not  so  strict  a  dependence  on  the  sun  as  you  have on God. The man  who  is  held  by  another  from  a  high tower over  a  deep  precipice,  every  moment  in  danger  of falling,  would  not  be  so  daringly  mad  as  to  revile  and insult the  man  who  held  him. So ought  you  not  to  dare to insult  God,  who  holds  your  thread  of  mortal  existence in His  hand.

II. As you  cannot  live  without  God,  so  you  cannot exercise any  action  of  life  without  His  immediate  concurrence. Without this  you  cannot  even  move  your hand, open  your  eyes,  or  utter  a  word;  "for  in  him,"  ex-