There is little hope that we shall learn the lessons God is for ever teaching us in the events of life till we get rid of our secret Atheism, till we give up the notion that God only visits now and then to disorder and destroy His own handiwork, and take back the old scriptural notion that God is visiting all day long for ever, to give order and life to His own work, to set it right where it goes wrong, and re-create it whenever it decays.
Water of Life Sermons. 1866.Tolerance. March 16If we really love God and long to do good and work for God, if we really love our neighbours and wish to help them, we shall have no heart to quarrel about how the good is to be done, provided it is done. Master, said St. John, we saw one casting out devils in Thy name, and he followeth not us; wilt Thou that we forbid him? And Jesus said, Forbid him not.
Sermons.The Hopes of Old Age. March 17Christianity alone deprives old age of its bitterness, making it the gate of heaven. Our bodies will fade and grow weak and shapeless, just when we shall not want them, being ready and in close expectation of that resurrection of the flesh which is the great promise of Christianity (no miserable fancies about pure souls escaped from matter, but)of bodies, our bodies, beloved, beautiful, ministers to us in all our joys, sufferers with us in all our sorrowsyea, our very own selves raised up again to live and love in a manner inconceivable from its perfection.
MS. 1842.. . . No! I can wait:
Another body!Ah, new limbs are ready,
Free, pure, instinct with soul through every nerve,
Kept for us in the treasuries of God!
Man is not, as the poet said, the noblest study of mankind. God is the noblest study of man, and Him we can study in three ways. 1st. From His image as developed in Christ the Ideal, and in all good mengreat good men. 2dly. From His works. 3dly. From His dealings in history; this is the real philosophy of history.
Letters and Memories. 1842.Eclecticism. March 19An eclectic, if it mean anything, means thisone who in any branch of art or science refuses to acknowledge Bacons great law, that Nature is only conquered by obeying her; who will not take a full and reverent view of the whole mass of facts with which he has to deal, and from them deducing the fundamental laws of his subject, obey them whithersoever they may lead; but who picks and chooses out of them just so many as may be pleasant to his private taste, and then constructs a partial system which differs from the essential ideas of Nature in proportion to the number of facts which he has determined to discard.
Miscellanies. 1849.Duty. March 20Duty, be it in a small matter or a great, is duty still; the command of Heaven; the eldest voice of God. And it is only they who are faithful in a few things who will be faithful over many things; only they who do their duty in everyday and trivial matters who will fulfil them on great occasions.
Sermons for the Times. 1855.The Great Unknown. March 21Brother, said the abbot, make ready for me the divine elements, that I may consecrate them. And he asking the reason therefor, the saint replied, That I may partake thereof with all my brethren before I depart hence. For know assuredly that within the seventh day I shall migrate to the celestial mansions. For this night stood by me in a dream those two women whom I love, and for whom I pray, the one clothed in a white, the other in a ruby-coloured garment, and holding each other by the hand, who said to me, That life after death is not such a one as you fancy: come, therefore, and behold what it is like.
Hypatia, chap. xxx. 1852.Loss nor Gain, March 22Nothing is more expensive than penuriousness; nothing more anxious than carelessness; and every duty which is bidden to wait returns with seven fresh duties at its back.
Sermons for the Times. 1855.Ancient Greek Education, March 23We talk of education now. Are we more educated than were the ancient Greeks? Do we know anything about education, physical, intellectual, æsthetic (religious education in our sense of the word of course they had none), of which they have not taught us at least the rudiments? Are there not some branches of education which they perfected once and for ever, leaving us northern barbarians to follow or not to follow their example? To produce health, that is, harmony and sympathy, proportion and grace, in every faculty of mind and bodythat was their notion of education.
Ah! the waste of health and strength in the young! The waste, too, of anxiety and misery in those who love and tend them! How much of it might be saved by a little rational education in those laws of nature which are the will of God about the welfare of our bodies, and which, therefore, we are as much bound to know and to obey as we are bound to know and to obey the spiritual laws whereon depend the welfare of our souls.
Lecture on Thrift. 1869.Body and Soul. March 24Exalt me with Thee, O Lord, to know the mystery of life, that I may use the earthly as the appointed expression and type of the heavenly, and, by using to Thy glory the natural body, may be fit to be exalted to the use of the spiritual body. Amen.
MS. 1842.Moderation. March 25Let us pray for that greatI had almost said that crowning grace and virtue of Moderation, what St. Paul calls sobriety and a sound mind. Let us pray for moderate appetites, moderate passions, moderate honours, moderate gains, moderate joys; and if sorrows be needed to chasten us, moderate sorrows. Let us not long violently after, or wish too eagerly to rise in life.
Water of Life Sermons. 1869.Poetry in the Slums. March 26True poetry, like true charity, my laddie, begins at home. . . . Hech! is there no the heaven above them there, and the hell beneath them? and God frowning, and the devil grinning? No poetry there! Is no the verra idea of the classic tragedy defined to be man conquered by circumstance? canna ye see it there? And the verra idea of the modern tragedy, man conquering circumstance? and Ill show ye that tooin many a garret where no eye but the good Gods enters to see the patience, and the fortitude, and the self-sacrifice, and the love stronger than death, thats shining in those dark places of the earth.
Ah, poetrys grandbut fact is grander; God and Satan are grander. All around ye, in every gin-shop and costermongers cellar, are God and Satan at death-grips; every garret is a haill Paradise Lost or Paradise Regained.
Alton Locke, chap. viii. 1849.Time and Eternity. March 27. . . Our lifes floor
Is laid upon Eternity; no crack in it
But shows the underlying heaven.
Yes. Life is meant for work, and not for ease; to labour in danger and in dread, to do a little good ere the night comes when no man can work, instead of trying to realise for oneself a paradise; not even Bunyans shepherd-paradise, much less Fouriers casino-paradise, and perhaps, least of all, because most selfish and isolated of all, our own art-paradise, the apotheosis of loafing, as Claude calls it.