, as if man was made for the Church, and not the Church for man."

_Two Years Ago_, chap. ii. 1856.

What does God ask? July 11.

What is this strange thing, without which even the true knowledge of
doctrine is of no use? without which either a man or a nation is poor,
and blind, and wretched, and naked in soul, notwithstanding all his
religion? Isaiah will tell, "Wash you, make you clean, saith the Lord.
Do justice to the fatherless, relieve the widow." Church-building and
church-going are well, but they are not repentance. Churches are not
souls. I ask for your hearts, and you give me fine stones and fine
words. I want souls, I want _your_ souls.

_National Sermons_. 1851.

Work or Want. July 12.

Remember that we are in a world where it is not safe to sit under the
tree and let the ripe fruit drop into your mouth; where the "competition
of species" works with ruthless energy among all ranks of being, from
kings upon their thrones to the weed upon the waste; where "he that is
not hammer is sure to be anvil;" and "he who will not work neither shall
he eat."

_Ancien Regime_. 1867.

True Insight. July 13.

It is easy to see the spiritual beauty of Raffaelle's Madonnas, but it
requires a deeper and more practised, all-embracing, loving, simple
spirituality, to see the same beauty in the face of a worn-out, painful,
peasant woman haggling about the price of cottons.

Form and colour are but the vehicle for the spirit-meaning. In the
"spiritual body" I fancy they will both be united _with_ the meaning--all
and every part and property of man and woman instinct with spirit!

_MS._ 1843.

Retribution inevitable. July 14.

Know this--that as surely as God sometimes punishes wholesale, so surely
is He always punishing in detail. By that infinite concatenation of
moral causes and effects, which makes the whole world one mass of special
Providences, every sin of ours will punish itself, and probably punish
itself in kind. Are we selfish? We shall call out selfishness in
others. Do we neglect our duty? Then others will neglect their duty to
us. Do we indulge our passions? Then others who depend on us will
indulge theirs, to our detriment and misery.

_All Saints' Day Sermons_.

Antinomies. July 15.

Spiritual truths present themselves to us in "antinomies," apparently
contradictory pairs, pairs of poles, which, however, do not really
contradict, or even limit