a long and a painful process.

But there is our comfort, there is our hope--Christ the great Healer, the
great Physician, can deliver us, and will deliver us, from the remains of
our old sins, the consequences of our own follies. Not, indeed, at once,
or by miracle, but by slow education in new and nobler motives, in purer
and more unselfish habits.

_All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1861.

Eternal Law. July 30.

The eternal laws of God's providence are still at work, though we may
choose to forget them, and the Judge who administers them is the same
yesterday, to-day, and for ever, even Jesus Christ the Lord, the
Everlasting Rock, on which all morality and all society is founded.
Whosoever shall fall on that Rock, in repentance and humility, shall
indeed be broken, but of him it is written, "A broken and a contrite
heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise."

_Discipline and other Sermons_. 1866.

God's Mercy or Man's? July 31.

"He fought till he could fight no more, and then died like a hero, with
all his wounds in front; and may God have mercy on his soul."

"That last was a Popish prayer, Master Frank," said old Mr. Carey.

"Most worshipful sir, you surely would not wish God _not_ to have mercy
on his soul?"

"No--Eh? Of course not, for that's all settled by now, for he is dead,
poor fellow!"

"And you can't help being a little fond of him still?"

"Eh? Why, I should be a brute if I were not. Fond of him? why, I would
sooner have given my forefinger than that he should have gone to the
dogs."

"Then, my dear sir, if _you_ feel for him still, in spite of all his
faults, how do you know that God may not feel for him in spite of all his
faults? For my part," said Frank, in his fanciful way, "without
believing in that Popish purgatory, I cannot help holding with Plato that
such heroical souls, who have wanted but little of true greatness here,
are hereafter, by strait discipline, brought to a better mind."

_Westward Ho_! chap. v. 1854.

The Chrysalis State.

You ask, "What is the Good?" I suppose God Himself is the Good; and it
is this, in addition to a thousand things, which makes me feel the
absolute certainty of a resurrection, and a hope that this, our present
life, instead of being an ultimate one, which is to decide our fate for
ever, is merely some sort of chrysalis state in which man's faculties are
so narrow and cramped, his chances (I speak of the millions, not of
units)