children in the furnace of Babylon. Bring me, too, out safe, when it shall be thy will, that, with all thy creatures, I may bless thee for ever, saying: O all ye works of the Lord, bless the Lord, &c.
ASPIRATIONS
AND REFLECTIONS FOR A PIOUS SOUL,
Useful in Sickness and Adversity.
1. O Eternal Wisdom, who reachest from end to end mightily, and orderest all things sweetly! thiou strikest me mightily with this bodily disease and affliction; but order it sweetly to thy glory and my salvation, who orderest all things in weight, number, and measure.
2. O Father I from whom is every good gift and every perfect gift, is not this my infirmity or affliction thy gift also? Shall I attribute it to chance or accident, not acknowledging thy providence? God forbid, For I know that thou rulest all things, and that it is thou too, O Lord, who keepest all our bones; without thee shall not one of them be broken; with thee the very hairs of our head are all numbered. My lots are in thy hands. Thou woundest and healest, thou killest and niakest alive. Whether we live, O Lord, or whether we die, we are thine. Thy will be done in all things. If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, why should we not endure evil? which yet will not be evil, if we accept them according to the intention of the Lord, who chastises us for discipline as sons, since these very evils work together for good to them that love God.
3. O Lord! I am thy servant, and the son of thy Handmaid; do with me what is pleasing in thy sight: for who am I that I should withstand thee? For who ever resisted thee and had peace? Behold I am the clay, and thou the potter. Fashion me and purify me, if so it seem good to thee, in the furnace of tribulation, that I may become a vessel to honour.
4. O Physician! who, when thou knowest it to be for the sours benefit, curest with a word all diseases no less of the body than of the soul; heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed in my soul: save me, and I shall be saved also in my body. In thee do I trust, not in physicians, nor in any remedies of theirs. True, I do not reject them; but unless thou restore the crumbling house of my body, they all labour in vain that build it.
