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_ SAINTS' DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALS. JULY 25. St. James, Apostle and Martyr. And they will know his worth _Santa Maura_.
"I cannot tell what ye say, rosy rocks, "I cannot tell what ye say, brown streams, "Oh! rose is the colour of love and youth, _Dartside_, _August_ 1849.
Sight and Insight. August 1. _The Invitation_. 1857.
I have no respect for genius (I do not even acknowledge its existence) where there is no strength and steadiness of character. If any one pretends to be more than a man he must begin by proving himself a man at all. _Two Years Ago_, chap. xv.
The perfect naturalist must be of a reverent turn of mind--giving Nature credit for an inexhaustible fertility and variety, which will keep him his life long, always reverent, yet never superstitious; wondering at the commonest, but not surprised by the most strange; free from the idols of sense and sensuous loveliness; able to see grandeur in the minutest objects, beauty in the most ungainly: estimating each thing not carnally, as the vulgar do, by its size, . . . but spiritually, by the amount of Divine thought revealed to him therein. . . . _Glaucus_. 1855.
Though permitted evils should not avenge themselves by any political retribution, yet avenge themselves, if unredressed, they surely will. They affect masses too large, interests too serious, not to make themselves bitterly felt some day. . . . We may choose to look on the masses in the gross as objects for statistics--and of course, where possible, for profits. There is One above who knows every thirst, and ache, and sorrow, and temptation of each slattern, and gin-drinker, and street-boy. The day will come when He will require an account of these neglects of ours--not in the gross. _Miscellanies_. 1851.
We sit in a cloud, and sing like pictured angels, _Saint's Tragedy_, Act ii. Scene v.
He who has never loved, what does he know? _MS._
How shall I get true knowledge? Knowledge which will be really useful, really worth knowing. Knowledge which I shall know accurately and practically too, so that I can use it in daily life, for myself and others? Knowledge too, which shall be clear knowledge, not warped or coloured by my own fancies, passions, prejudices, but pure and calm and sound; Siccum Lumen, "Dry Light," as the greatest of philosophers called it of old. To all such who long for light, that by the light they may live, God answers through His only begotten Son: "Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find." _Westminster Sermons_. 1873.
What should the external world be to those who truly love, but the garden in which they are placed, not so much for sustenance or enjoyment of themselves and each other, as to dress it and to keep it--_it_ to be their subject-matter, not they its tools! In this spirit let us pray "Thy kingdom come." _MS._ 1842.
The old fairy superstition, the old legends and ballads, the old chronicles of feudal war and chivalry, the earlier moralities and mysteries--these fed Shakespeare's youth. Why should they not feed our children's? That inborn delight of the young in all that is marvellous and fantastic--has that a merely evil root? No, surely! it is a most pure part of their spiritual nature; a part of "the heaven which lies about us in our infancy;" angel-wings with which the free child leaps the prison-walls of sense and custom, and the drudgery of earthly life. It is a God-appointed means for keeping alive what noble Wordsworth calls those _Introductory Lecture_, _Queen's College_.
The deepest affections are those of which we are least conscious--that is, which produce least _startling_ emotion, and most easy and involuntary practice. _MS._ 1843.
Every time we perform an act of kindness to any human being, ay, even to a dumb animal; every time we conquer our worldliness, love of pleasure, ease, praise, ambition, money, for the sake of doing what our conscience tells us to be our duty,--we are indeed worshipping God the Father in spirit and in truth, and offering Him a sacrifice which He will surely accept for the sake of His beloved Son, by whose Spirit all good deeds and thoughts are inspired. _All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1871.
Chivalry. August 11. Chivalry; an idea which, perfect or imperfect, God forbid that mankind should ever forget till it has become the possession--as it is the God- given right--of the poorest slave that ever trudged on foot; and every collier lad shall have become "A very gentle, perfect knight." _Lectures on Ancien Regime_. 1867.
God waits for Man. August 12. Patiently, nobly, magnanimously, God waits; waits for the man who is a fool, to find out his own folly; waits for the heart that has tried to find pleasure in everything else, to find out that everything else disappoints, and to come back to Him, the fountain of all wholesome pleasure, the well-spring of all life, fit for a man to live. God condescends to wait for His creature; because what He wants is not His creature's fear, but His creature's love; not only his obedience, but his heart; because He wants him not to come back as a trembling slave to his master, but as a son who has found out at last what a father he has still left him, when all beside has played him false. Let him come back thus. _Discipline and other Sermons_.
Thrift. August 13. The secret of thriving is thrift; saving of force; to get as much work as possible done with the least expenditure of power, the least jar and obstruction, the least wear and tear. And the secret of thrift is knowledge. In proportion as you know the laws and nature of a subject, you will be able to work at it easily, surely, rapidly, successfully, instead of wasting your money or your energies in mistaken schemes, irregular efforts, which end in disappointment and exhaustion. _Lecture on Thrift_. 1869.
Revelations. August 14. Only second-rate hearts and minds are melancholy. When we become like little children, our very playfulness tells that we are _seeing deep_, when we see that God is love in His _works_ as well as in Himself, and we look at Nature as a baby does, as a beautiful mystery which we scarcely wish to solve. And therefore deep things, which the intellect in vain struggles after, will reveal themselves to us. _MS._ 1842.
Christ comes in many ways. August 15. Often Christ comes to us in ways in which the world would never recognise Him--in which perhaps neither you nor I shall recognise _Him_; but it will be enough, I hope, if we but hear His message, and obey His gracious inspiration, let Him speak through whatever means He will. He may come to us by some crisis in our life, either for sorrow or for bliss. He may come to us by a great failure; by a great disappointment--to teach the wilful and ambitious soul that not in _that_ direction lies the path of peace; or He may come in some unexpected happiness to teach that same soul that He is able and willing to give abundantly beyond all that we can ask or think. _MS. Sermon_. 1874.
Lesson of the Cross. August 16. On the Cross God has sanctified suffering, pain, and sorrow, and made them holy; as holy as health and strength and happiness are. _National Sermons_. 1851.
The Ideal Unity. August 17. "Oh, make us one." All the world-generations have but one voice! "How can we become One? at harmony with God and God's universe! Tell us this, and the dreary, dark mystery of life, the bright, sparkling mystery of life, the cloud-chequered, sun-and-shower mystery of life, is solved! for we shall have found one home and one brotherhood, and happy faces will greet us wherever we move, and we shall see God! see Him everywhere, and be ready to wait for the Renewal, for the Kingdom of Christ perfected! We came from Eden, all of us: show us how we may return, hand in hand, husband and wife, parent and child, gathered together from the past and the future, from one creed and another, and take our journey into a far country, which is yet this earth--a world-migration to the heavenly Canaan, through the Red Sea of Death, back again to the land which was given to our forefathers, and is ours even now, could we but find it!" _Letters and Memories_. 1843.
Body and Soul. August 18. The mystics considered the soul, _i.e._ the intellect, as the "_moi_" and the body as the "_non moi_;" and this idea that the body is not _self_, is the fundamental principle of mysticism and asceticism, and diametrically opposed to the whole doctrines and practice of Scripture. Else why is there a resurrection of the body? and why does the Eucharist "preserve our body and soul to everlasting life?" _MS._ 1843.
If you wish to be "a little child," study what a little child could understand--Nature; and do what a little child could do--love. Feed on Nature. It will digest itself. It did so when you were a little child the first time. Keep a common-place book, and put into it not only facts and thoughts, but observations on form, and colour, and nature, and little sketches, even to the form of beautiful _leaves_. They will all have their charm . . . all do their work in consolidating your ideas. Put everything into it. . . . _Letters and Memories_. 1842.
Inspiration. August 20. Every good deed comes from God. His is the idea, His the inspiration, and His its fulfilment in time; and therefore no good deed but lives and grows with the everlasting life of God Himself. _MS._
Lifting of the Veil. August 21. I seldom pass those hapless loungers who haunt every watering-place without thinking sadly how much more earnest, happier, and better men and women they might be if the veil were but lifted from their eyes, and they could learn to behold that glory of God which is all around them like an atmosphere, while they, unconscious of what and where they are, wrapt up each in his little selfish world of vanity and interest, gaze lazily around them at earth, sea, and sky-- And have no speculation in those eyes _Glaucus_. 1855.
The Cross--its meaning. August 22. To take up the cross means, in the minds of most persons, to suffer patiently under affliction. It is a true and sound meaning, but it means more. Why did Christ take up the cross? Not for affliction's sake, or for the cross's sake, as if suffering were a good thing in itself. No. But that He might thereby _do good_. That the world through Him might be saved. That He might do good at whatever cost or pain to Himself. _Sermons_.
The Crucifix. August 23. If I had an image in my room it should be one of Christ _glorified_, sitting at the right hand of God. The crucifix has been THE image, because the idea of torture and misery has been THE idea in the melancholy and the ferocious (for the two ultimately go together),. . . and thus ascetics became inquisitors. . . . _MS._ 1843.
Our love to God does not depend upon the emotions of the moment. If you fancy you do not love Him enough, above all when Satan tempts you to look inward, go immediately and minister to others; visit the sick, perform some act of self-sacrifice or thanksgiving. Never mind how _dull_ you may feel while doing it; the fact of your feeling excited proves nothing; the fact of your _doing_ it proves that your will, your spiritual part, is on God's side, however tired or careless the poor flesh may be. The "flesh" must be brought into harmony with the spirit, not only by physical but by intellectual mortification. _MS. Letter_. 1843.
Training of Beauty. August 25. There is many a road into our hearts besides our ears and brains; many a sight and sound and scent even, of which we have never _thought_ at all, sinks into our memory and helps to shape our characters; and thus children brought up among beautiful sights and sweet sounds will most likely show the fruits of their nursing by thoughtfulness and affection and nobleness of mind, even by the expression of the countenance. _True Words to Brave Men_. 1848.
Ignorance of the Cynic. August 26. Be sure that no one knows so little of his fellow-men as the cynical, misanthropic man, who walks in darkness because he hates his brother. Be sure that the truly wise and understanding man is he who by sympathy puts himself in his neighbours' place; feels with them and for them; sees with their eyes, hears with their ears; and therefore understands them, makes allowances for them, and is merciful to them, even as his Father in heaven is merciful. _Westminster Sermons_. 1872.
Penitential Prayer. August 27. Faith in God it is which has made the fifty-first Psalm the model of all true penitence for evermore. Penitential prayers in all ages have too often wanted faith in God, and therefore have been too often prayers to avert punishment. This, this--the model of all true penitent prayers--is that of a man who is to be punished, and is content to take his punishment, knowing that he deserves it, and far more besides. _Sermons on David_. 1866.
A Real Presence. August 28. Believe the Holy Communion is the sign of Christ's perpetual presence; that when you kneel to receive the bread and wine, Christ is as near you--spiritually, indeed, and invisibly, but really and truly as near you as those who are kneeling by your side. And if it be so with Christ, then is it so with those who are Christ's, with those whom we love. . . . Surely, like Christ, they may come and go even now, though unseen. Like Christ they may breathe upon our restless hearts and say, "Peace be unto you," and not in vain. For what they did for us when they were on earth they can more fully do now that they are in heaven. _All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1862.
A Living God. August 29. Man would never have even dreamed of a Living God had not that Living God been a reality, who did not leave the creature to find his Creator, but stooped from heaven, at the very beginning of our race, to find His creature. _Sermons on David_. 1866.
Thine, not mine. August 30. Whensoever you do a thing which you know to be right and good, instead of priding yourself upon it as if the good in it came from you, offer it up to your Heavenly Father, from whom all good things come, and say, "Oh, Lord! the good in this is Thine and not mine; the bad in it is mine and not Thine. I thank Thee for having made me do right, for without Thy help I should have done nothing but wrong. For mine is the laziness, and the weakness, and the selfishness, and the self-conceit; and Thine is the kingdom, for Thou rulest all things; and the power, for Thou doest all things; and the glory, for Thou doest all things well, for ever and ever. Amen." _Sermons_.
A fire which cannot be quenched, a worm which cannot die, I see existing, and consider them among the most blessed revelations of the gospel. I fancy I see them burning and devouring everywhere in the spiritual world, as their analogues do in the physical. I know that they have done so on me, and that their operation, though exquisitely painful, is most healthful. I see the world trying to quench and kill them; I know too well that I often do the same ineffectually. But, in the comfort that the worm cannot die and the fire cannot be quenched, I look calmly forward through endless ages to my own future, and the future of that world whereof it is written, "He shall reign until He hath put all enemies under His feet, and death and hell shall be cast into the lake of fire." * * * * * The Day of the Lord will be revealed in flaming fire, not merely to give new light and a day-spring from on high to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, but to burn up out of sight, and off the universe, the chaff, hay, and stubble which men have built on the One Living Foundation, Christ, in that unquenchable fire, of which it is written that _Death_ and _Hell_ shall one day be cast into it also, to share the fate of all other unnatural and abominable things, and God's universe be--what it must be some day--_very good_. * * * * * Because I believe in a God of absolute and unbounded love, therefore I believe in a loving anger of His, which will and must devour and destroy all which is decayed, monstrous, abortive, in His universe, till all enemies shall be put under His feet, to be pardoned surely, if they confess themselves in the wrong and open their eyes to the truth. And God shall be All in All. Those last are wide words. _Letters and Sermons_. 1856.
SAINTS' DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALS. AUGUST 24. Blessed are they who once were persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Great indeed is their reward, for it is no less than the very beatific vision to contemplate and adore that supreme moral beauty, of which all earthly beauty, all nature, all art, all poetry, all music, are but phantoms and parables, hints and hopes, dim reflected rays of the clear light of everlasting day. _All Saints' Day Sermons_.
September. That poet knew but little of either streams or hearts who wrote-- The lonely fisher, the lover of streams and living fountains, knows that when the stream stops it is turbid. The deep pools and still flats are always brown--always dark--the mud lies in them, the trout _sleep_ in them. When they are clearest they are still tinged brown or gray with some foreign matter held in solution--the brown of selfish sensuality or the gray of morbid melancholy. But when they are free again! when they hurry over rock and weed and sparkling pebble-shallow, then they are clear! Then all the foreign matter, the defilement which earth pours into them, falls to the ground, and into them the trout work up for life and health and food; and through their swift yet yielding eddies--_moulding themselves to every accident_, _yet separate and undefiled_--shine up the delicate beauties of the subaqueous world, the Spirit-glories which we can only see in this life through the medium of another human soul, but which we can never see unless that soul is stirred by circumstance into passion and motion and action strong and swift. Only the streams which have undergone long and _severe struggles_ from their very fountain-head have clear pools. _MS._ 1843.
Goodness. September 1. Always say to yourself this one thing, "Good I will become, whatever it cost me; and in God's goodness I trust to make me good, for I am sure He wishes to see me good more than I do myself." And you will find that, because you have confessed in that best and most honest of ways that God is good, and have so given Him real glory, and real honour, and real praise, He will save you from the sins which torment you, and you shall never come, either in this world or the world to come, to that worst misery, the being ashamed of yourself. _Sermons for the Times_. 1855.
Be good to do Good. September 2. What we wish to do for our fellow-creatures we must do first for ourselves. We can give them nothing save what God has already given us. We must become good before we can make them good, and wise before we can make them wise. _All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1867.
The Undying I. September 3. The youngest child, by faith in God his Father, may look upon all heaven and earth and say, "Great and wonderful and awful as this earth and those skies may be, I am more precious in the sight of God than sun and moon and stars; for they are things, but I am a person, a spirit, an immortal soul, made in the likeness of God, redeemed into the likeness of God. This great earth was here thousands and thousands of years before I was born, and it will be here perhaps millions of years after I am dead. But it cannot harm _Me_, it cannot kill _Me_. When earth, and sun, and stars have passed away I shall live for ever, for I am the immortal child of an immortal Father, the child of the everlasting God." _Sermons for the Times_. 1855.
Love and Time. September 4. Love proves its spiritual origin by rising above time and space and circumstance, wealth and age, and even temporary beauty, at the same time that it alone can perfectly _use_ all those material adjuncts. Being spiritual, it is Lord of matter, and can give and receive from it glory and beauty when it will, and yet live without it. _MS._ 1843.
Common Duties. September 5. The only way to regenerate the world is to do the duty which lies nearest us, and not to hunt after grand, far-fetched ones for ourselves. If each drop of rain _chose_ where it should fall, God's showers would not fall as they do now, on the evil and the good alike. I know from the experience of my own heart how galling this doctrine is--how, like Naaman, one goes away in a rage, because the prophet has not bid us do some great thing, but only to go wash in the nearest brook and be clean. _Letters and Memories_. 1854.
Despair--Hope. September 6. Does the age seem to you dark? Do you feel, as I do at times, the awful sadness of that text, "The time shall come when you shall desire to see one of the days of the Lord, and shall not see it"? Then remember that The night is never so long . . . Even now the dawn is gilding the highest souls, and _we_ are in the night only because we crawl below. _Prose Idylls_. 1850.
The Critical Spirit. September 7. "Judge nothing before the time." This is a hard saying. Who can hear it? There never was a time in which the critical spirit was more thoroughly in the ascendant. Every man now is an independent critic. To accept fully, or as it is now called, to follow blindly; to admire heartily, or as it is now called, fanatically--these are considered signs of weakness or credulity. To believe intensely; to act unhesitatingly; to admire passionately; all this, as the latest slang phrases it, is "bad form"; a proof that a man is not likely to win in the race of this world the prize whereof is, the greatest possible enjoyment with the least possible work. _The Critical Spirit_. 1871.
Toil and Rest. September 8. Remember always, toil is the condition of our being. Our sentence is to labour from the cradle to the grave. But there are Sabbaths allowed for the mind as well as the body, when the intellect is stilled, and the emotions alone perform their gentle and involuntary functions. _Letters and Memories_. 1842.
Storm and Calm. September 9. Then Amyas told the last scene; how, when they were off the Azores, the storms came on heavier than ever, with terrible seas breaking short and pyramid-wise, till, on the 9th of September, the tiny _Squirrel_ nearly foundered, and yet recovered, and the General (Sir Humphrey Gilbert), sitting abaft with a book in his hand, cried out to us in the _Hind_, "We are as near heaven by sea as by land," reiterating the same speech well be-seeming a soldier resolute in Jesus Christ, as I can testify he was. _Westward Ho_! chap. xiii.
On the Heights. September 10. It is good for a man to have holy and quiet thoughts, and at moments to see into the very deepest meaning of God's word and God's earth, and to have, as it were, heaven opened before his eyes; and it is good for a man sometimes actually to _feel_ his heart overpowered with the glorious majesty of God--to _feel_ it gushing out with love to his blessed Saviour; but it is not good for him to stop there any more than for the Apostles in the Mount of Transfiguration. _Village Sermons_. 1849.
In the Valley. September 11. The disciples had to come down from the Mount and do Christ's work, and so have we. Believe me, one word of warning spoken to keep a little child out of sin,--one crust of bread given to a beggar-man because he is your brother, for whom Christ died,--one angry word checked on your lips for the sake of Him who was meek and lowly of heart; any the smallest endeavour to lessen the amount of evil which is in yourselves and those around you,--is worth all the speculations, and raptures, and visions, and frames, and feelings in the world; for these are the good fruits of faith, whereby alone the tree shall be known whether it be good or evil. _Village Sermons_. 1849.
Self-Conceit. September 12. Self-conceit is the very daughter of self-will, and of that loud crying out about _I_, and me, and mine, which is the very bird-call for all devils, and the broad road which leads to death. _Westward Ho_! chap. i.
Facing Fact. September 13. It is good for a man to be brought once, at least, in his life, face to face with _fact_, ultimate fact, however horrible it may be, and to have to confess to himself shuddering, what things are possible on God's earth, when man has forgotten that his only welfare is in living after the likeness of God. _Miscellanies_. 1858.
The Heroical Rest. September 14. Right, lad; the best reward for having wrought well already is to have more to do; and he that has been faithful over a few things must find his account in being made ruler over many things. That is the true and heroical rest which only is worthy of gentlemen and sons of God. As for those who either in this world or in the world to come look for idleness, and hope that God will feed them with pleasant things, as it were with a spoon, Amyas, I count them cowards and base, even though they call themselves saints and elect. _Westward Ho_! chap. vii. 1855.
Body and Soul. September 15. Remember that St. Paul always couples with the resurrection and ascension of our bodies in the next life the resurrection and ascension of our souls in this life, for without that, the resurrection of our bodies would be but a resurrection to fresh sin, and therefore to fresh misery and ruin. _All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1870. Love in Absence. September 16.
Absence quickens love into consciousness. _MS._ The baby sings not on its mother's breast; _Sonnet_. 1851.
Special Providence. September 17. If I did not believe in a special Providence, in a perpetual education of men by evil as well as good, by small things as well as great, I could believe nothing. _Letters and Memories_.
Love of Work. September 18. "Can you tell me, my pastor, what part of God's likeness clings to a man longest and closest and best? No? Then I will tell you. It is the love of employment. God in heaven must create Himself a universe to work on and love. And now we sons of Adam, the sons of God, cannot rest without our _mundus peculiaris_ of some sort--our world subjective, as Doctor Musophilus has it. But we can create too, and make our little sphere look as large as a universe." _MS. Novel_. 1844.
Fret not. September 19. Fret not, neither be anxious. What God intends to do He will do. And what we ask believing we shall receive. Never let us get into the common trick of calling unbelief resignation, of asking and then, because we have not faith to believe, putting in a "Thy will be done" at the end. Let us make God's will our will, and _so_ say Thy will be done. _MS._ 1843.
Peace! Why these fears? _Saint's Tragedy_, Act ii. Scene x.
Battle before Victory. September 20. Whenever you think of our Lord's resurrection and ascension, remember always that the background of His triumph is a tomb. Remember that it is the triumph over suffering; a triumph of One who still bears the prints of the nails in His sacred hands and feet, and the wound of the spear in His side; like many a poor soul who has followed Him, triumphant at last, and yet scarred, and only not maimed in the hard battle of life. _All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1870.
Night and Growth. September 21. As in the world of Nature, so it is in the world of men. The night is peopled not merely with phantoms and superstitions and spirits of evil, but under its shadow all sciences, methods, social energies, are taking rest, and growing, and feeding, unknown to themselves. _Prose Idylls_. 1850.
Passion. September 22. Self-sacrifice! What is love worth that does not show itself in action? and more, which does not show itself in _passion_ in the true sense of that word: namely, in suffering? in daring, in struggling, in grieving, in agonising, and, if need be, in dying for the object of its love? Every mother will give but one answer to that question. _Westminster Sermons_. 1870.
Worth of Beauty. September 23. It is a righteous instinct which bids us welcome and honour beauty, whether in man or woman, as something of real worth--divine, heavenly, ay, though we know not how, in a most deep sense Eternal; which makes our reason give the lie to all merely logical and sentimental maunderings of moralists about "the fleeting hues of this our painted clay;" and tell men, as the old Hebrew Scriptures told them, that physical beauty is the deepest of all spiritual symbols; and that though beauty without discretion be the jewel of gold in the swine's snout, yet the jewel of gold it is still, the sacrament of an inward beauty, which ought to be, perhaps hereafter may be, fulfilled in spirit and in truth. _Hypatia_, chap. xxvi. 1852.
Empty Profession. September 24. What is the sin which most destroys all men and nations? High religious profession, with an ungodly, selfish life. It is the worst and most dangerous of all sins; for it is like a disease which eats out the heart and life without giving pain, so that the sick man never suspects that anything is the matter with him till he finds himself, to his astonishment, at the point of death.
_National Sermons_. 1851. True Poetry. September 25. Let us make life one poem--not of dreams or sentiments--but of actions, not done Byronically as proofs of genius, but for our own self-education, alone, in secret, awaiting the crisis which shall call us forth to the battle to do just what other people do, only, perhaps, by an utterly different self-education. That is the life of great spirits, after, perhaps, many many years of seclusion, of silent training in the lower paths of God's vineyard, till their hearts have settled into a still, deep, yet swift current, and those who have been faithful over a few things are made rulers over many things. _MS. Letter_. 1842.
Office of the Clergy. September 26. There is a Christian as well as political liberty quite consistent with High Church principles, which makes the clergy our teachers--not the keepers of our _consciences_ but of our _creeds_. _Letters and Memories_. 1842.
Opinions are not Knowledge. September 27. . . . As to self-improvement, the true Catholic mode of learning is to "prove all things," as far as we can, without sin or the danger of it, to "hold fast that which is good." Let us never be afraid of trying anything new, learnt from people of different opinions to our own. And let us never be afraid of changing our opinions. The unwillingness to go back from once declared opinion is a form of pride which haunts some powerful minds: but it is not found in great childlike geniuses. Fools may hold fast to their scanty stock through life, and we must be very cautious in drawing them from it--for where can they supply its place? _Letters and Memories_. 1843.
The Worst Punishment. September 28. God reserves many a sinner for that most awful of all punishments (here)--impunity. _Sermons_.
The Divine Order. September 29. Ah, that God's will were but done on earth as it is in the material heaven overhead, in perfect order and obedience, as the stars roll in their courses, without rest, yet without haste--as all created things, even the most awful, fire and hail, snow and vapour, wind and storm, fulfil God's word, who hath made them sure for ever and ever, and given them a law which shall not be broken. But above them; above the divine and wonderful order of the material universe, and the winds which are God's angels, and the flames of fire which are His messengers; above all, the prophets and apostles have caught sight of another divine and wonderful order of _rational_ beings, of races loftier and purer than man--angels and archangels, thrones and dominions, principalities and powers, fulfilling God's will in heaven as it is not, alas! fulfilled on earth. _All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1867.
True Resignation. September 30. . . . Christianity heightens as well as deepens the human as well as the divine affections. I am happy, for the less hope, the more faith. . . . God knows what is best for us; we do not. Continual resignation, at last I begin to find, is the secret of continual strength. "Daily _dying_," as Boehmen interprets it, is the path of daily _living_. . . . _Letters and Memories_. 1843. _ |
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