_Be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises_.–HEB. vi. 12.

Where now with pain thou treadest, trod The whitest of the saints of God! To show thee where their feet were set, The light which led them shineth yet.
J. G. WHITTIER.
LET us learn from this communion of saints to live in hope. Those who are now at rest were once like ourselves. They were once weak, faulty, sinful; they had their burdens and hindrances, their slumbering and weariness, their failures and their falls. But now they have overcome. Their life was once homely and common-place. Their day ran out as ours. Morning and noon and night came and went to them as to us. Their life, too, was as lonely and sad as yours. Little fretful circumstances and frequent disturbing changes wasted away their hours as yours. There is nothing in your life that was not in theirs; there was nothing in theirs but may be also in your own. They have overcome, each one, and one by one; each in his turn, when the day came, and God called him to the trial. And so shall you likewise.
H. E. MANNING.