1 Thessalonians 3:12-13 And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you:… One day when I was with Mr. Hicks, the painter, I saw on his table some high-coloured stones, and I asked him what they were for. He said they were to keep his eye up to tone. When he was working in pigments, insensibly his sense of colour was weakened, and by having a pure colour near him he brought it up again, just as the musician, by his test fork, brings himself up to the right pitch. Now, every day men need to have a sense of the invisible God. A clear conception of the perfect One produces a moral impression; and it does not make any difference how you get it. If you are poetical you get it through the imagination. If you have large veneration you get it through that quality. If you are most easily affected through your emotions, you get it through these elements. If by the intellect, by the imagination, by the affections, or by the moral sentiments you are exalted into the conscious presence of God, then you have obtained that which renders prayer of transcendent value, and which gives tone to your whole nature. But no nature is of such magnitude that it does not need, every day, to be tuned, chorded, borne up to the ideal of a pure and lofty life. (H. W. Beecher.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you: |
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