have passed away I shall live for ever, for I am the immortal child of an
immortal Father, the child of the everlasting God."

_Sermons for the Times_. 1855.

Love and Time. September 4.

Love proves its spiritual origin by rising above time and space and
circumstance, 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, God'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 passionately; 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 g