Daily Thoughts Part 28

_MS._ 1843.

Goodness. September 1.

Always say to yourself this one thing, "Good I will become, whatever it cost me; and in G.o.d'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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, redeemed into the likeness of G.o.d.

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 pa.s.sed away I shall live for ever, for I am the immortal child of an immortal Father, the child of the everlasting G.o.d."

_Sermons for the Times_. 1855.

Love and Time. September 4.

Love proves its spiritual origin by rising above time and s.p.a.ce and circ.u.mstance, 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, G.o.d'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 But at last it ringeth for matin song.

. . . 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 pa.s.sionately; 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 G.o.d's word and G.o.d'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 G.o.d--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.