hatever beauty He has
shown us in man or woman, in cave or mountain-peak, in tree or flower,
even in bird or butterfly. But Himself? Who can see Him except the
humble and the contrite heart, to whom He reveals Himself as a Spirit to
be worshipped in spirit and in truth, and not in bread nor wood, nor
stone nor gold, nor quintessential diamond?

_Lecture on Grots and Groves_. 1871.

Love and Book-Learning. July 2.

I see more and more that the knowledge of one human being, such as love
alone can give, and the apprehension of our own private duties and
relations, is worth more than all the book-learning in the world.

_MS._

The Ancient Creeds. July 3.

Blessed and delightful it is when we find that even in these new ages the
Creeds, which so many fancy to be at their last gasp, are still the
finest and highest succour, not merely of the peasant and the outcast,
but of the subtle artist and the daring speculator. Blessed it is to
find the most cunning poet of our day able to combine the rhythm and
melody of modern times with the old truths which gave heart to the
martyrs at the stake, to see in the science and the history of the
nineteenth century new and living fulfilments of the words which we
learnt at our mother's knee!

_Miscellanies_. 1850.

A Master-Truth. July 4.

Every creature of God is good, if it be sanctified with prayer and
thanksgiving! This to me is the master-truth of Christianity, the
forgetfulness of which is at the root of almost all error. It seems to
me that it was to redeem man and the earth that Christ was made man and
used the earth!--that Christianity has never yet been pure, because it
never yet, since St. Paul's time, has stood on _this_ as the fundamental
truth, and that it has been pure or impure, just in proportion as it has
_practically_ and _really_ acknowledged this truth.

_Letters and Memories_. 1842.

English Women. July 5.

Let those who will sneer at the women of England. We who have to do the
work and fight the battle of life know the inspiration which we derive
from their virtue, their counsel, their tenderness--and, but too often,
from their compassion and their forgiveness. There is, I doubt not,
still left in England many a man with chivalry and patriotism enough to
challenge the world to show so perfect a specimen of humanity as a
cultivated British woman.

_Lecture on Thrift_. 1869.

Life retouched again. July 6.