l tinged brown or gray with
some foreign matter held in solution--the brown of selfish sensuality or
the gray of morbid melancholy. But when they are free again! when they
hurry over rock and weed and sparkling pebble-shallow, then they are
clear! Then all the foreign matter, the defilement which earth pours
into them, falls to the ground, and into them the trout work up for life
and health and food; and through their swift yet yielding
eddies--_moulding themselves to every accident_, _yet separate and
undefiled_--shine up the delicate beauties of the subaqueous world, the
Spirit-glories which we can only see in this life through the medium of
another human soul, but which we can never see unless that soul is
stirred by circumstance into passion and motion and action strong and
swift. Only the streams which have undergone long and _severe struggles_
from their very fountain-head have clear pools.

_MS._ 1843.

Goodness. September 1.

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