Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To Him he the glory both now and for ever. Amen. 2 Peter iii. 18 (R. v.).

Did not our heart burn within us, while He talked with us by the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures? Luke xxiv. 32.

NOTHING could make the period of Lent so much of a reality as to employ it in a systematic effort to fix the mind on Jesus. The history in the Gospels is so well worn that it often slips through the head without affecting the heart. But if, retiring into solitude for a portion of each day, we should select some one scene or trait or incident in the life of Jesus, and with all the helps we can get seek to understand it fully, tracing it in the other evangelists, comparing it with other passages of Scripture, etc., we should find ourselves insensibly interested, and might hope that, in this effort of our souls to understand Him, Jesus Himself would draw near, as He did of old to the disciples on the way to Emmaus. This looking unto Jesus and thinking about Him is a better way to meet and overcome sin than any physical austerities or spiritual self-reproaches. It is by looking at Him, the Apostle says, “as in a glass,” that we are ” changed into the same image, as from glory to glory.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe.