Come Unto Him!

1. I wander through the still of night,


When solitude is ev’rywhere—

Alone, beneath the starry light,

And yet I know that God is there.

I kneel upon the grass and pray;

An answer comes without a voice.

It takes my burden all away

And makes my aching heart rejoice.



2. When I am filled with strong desire

And ask a boon of him, I see

No miracle of living fire,

But what I ask flows into me.

And when the tempest rages high

I feel no arm around me thrust,

But ev’ry storm goes rolling by

When I repose in him my trust.



3. It matters not what may befall,

What threat’ning hand hangs over me;

He is my rampart through it all,

My refuge from mine enemy.

Come unto him all ye depressed,

Ye erring souls whose eyes are dim,

Ye weary ones who long for rest.

Come unto him! Come unto him!

Great Expectations

This is exactly how I feel when I sit down on New Year's Day to make a list of goals, and my problem is the same as Pip's. I love the feeling I get when I take stock of my life. The rub is actually doing something about it!


At certain times — meaning at uncertain times, for they depended on our humour — I would say to Herbert, as if it were a remarkable discovery:
"My dear Herbert, we are getting on badly."
"My dear Handel," Herbert would say to me, in all sincerity, if you will believe me, those very words were on my lips, by a strange coincidence."
"Then, Herbert," I would respond, "let us look into out affairs."
We always derived profound satisfaction from making an appointment for this purpose. I always thought this was business, this was the way to confront the thing, this was the way to take the foe by the throat. And I know Herbert thought so too.
 We produced a bundle of pens, a copious supply of ink, and a goodly show of writing and blotting paper. For, there was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.
I would then take a sheet of paper, and write across the top of it, in a neat hand, the heading, "Memorandum of Pip's debts;" with Barnard's Inn and the date very carefully added. Herbert would also take a sheet of paper, and write across it with similar formalities, "Memorandum of Herbert's debts."
 The sound of our pens going, refreshed us exceedingly, insomuch that I sometimes found it difficult to distinguish between this edifying business proceeding and actually paying the money. In point of meritorious character, the two things seemed about equal.
When we had written a little while, I would ask Herbert how he got on? Herbert probably would have been scratching his head in a most rueful manner at the sight of his accumulating figures.
"They are mounting up, Handel," Herbert would say; "upon my life, they are mounting up."
"Be firm, Herbert," I would retort, plying my own pen with great assiduity. "Look the thing in the face. Look into your affairs. Stare them out of countenance."
"So I would, Handel, only they are staring me out of countenance."
But there was a calm, a rest, a virtuous hush, consequent on these examinations of our affairs that gave me, for the time, an admirable opinion of myself. Soothed by my exertions, my method, and Herbert's compliments, I would sit with his symmetrical bundle and my own on the table before me among the stationary, and feel like a Bank of some sort, rather than a private individual