Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 2.pdf/20

 and love! In every upward change, we experience a new blessing, and the mercies of the Lord to us are new every moment. Time is improved when the truth that is known is reduced to the practical purposes of a holy life. Wisdom is the principal, and not knowledge; for knowledge is the knowing of a thing, but wisdom is the using of the thing known. Be diligent, reader, in acquiring wisdom; for when it is once acquired and loved, it will shew itself without any labour of thine.

Now, as time is the effect of changes of state in the mutable mind of man, so Eternity is a word denoting the Being who IS, and the immutable state of the infinite mind! whose love being changeless, is alike to all and in all. Eternal, and eternity, are words denoting the Being who is in Himself without beginning, progression, or end; in whom there is neither past nor future, but all is present. He is the One Life, whose love created all, whose wisdom guides all, and whose operative life preserves all. As nothing can be conceived of in Him as having either beginning or end, and as His underived life fills and blesses all the states of angelic and human life, things past and future in the finite being all present to Him, so the word of truth reveals Him as the, a word signifying the One everlasting and eternal God—the Being who IS, who WAS, and who IS TO COME, the Almighty. (Rev. i. 8.) To His children both in heaven and earth, His love is eternal, His wisdom eternal, and His operative life eternal—Good to all, and His tender mercies over all His works." (Psalm cxlv. 9.) As all the happiness of the angels in heaven is derived from this merciful Father of all, so all angelic bliss is eternal,