just romance and superstition enough
about them to keep from that prurient hysterical wonder and enthusiasm
which is simply, one often fears, a product of our scepticism! We do not
trust enough in God, we do not really believe His power enough, to be
ready, as they were, as every one ought to be on a God-made earth, for
anything and everything being possible; and then when a wonder is
discovered we go into ecstasies and shrieks over it, and take to
ourselves credit for being susceptible of so lofty a feeling--true index,
forsooth, of a refined and cultivated mind!!

Smile if you will: but those were days (and there never were less
superstitious ones) in which Englishmen believed in the living God, and
were not ashamed to acknowledge, as a matter of course, His help, and
providence, and calling, in the matters of daily life, which we now, in
our covert atheism, term "secular and carnal."

_Westward Ho_! chap. xxiii.

SAINTS' DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALS.

OCTOBER 18.
St. Luke, Physician and Evangelist.

It is good to follow Christ in one thing and to follow Him utterly in
that. And the physician has set his mind to do one thing--to hate
calmly, but with an internecine hatred, disease and death, and to fight
against them to the end. In his exclusive care for the body the
physician witnesses unconsciously yet mightily for the soul, for God, for
the Bible, for immortality. Is he not witnessing for God when he shows
by his acts that he believes God to be a God of life, not of death; of
health, not of disease; of order, not of disorder; of joy and strength,
not of misery and weakness? Is he not witnessing for Christ when, like
Christ, he heals all manner of sickness and disease among the people, and
attacks physical evil as the natural foe of man and of the Creator of
man?

"_Water of Life_," _and other Sermons_.

OCTOBER 28.
St. Simon and St. Jude, Apostles and Martyrs.

He that loseth his life shall save it. The end and aim of our life is
not happiness but goodness. If goodness comes first, then happiness may
come after; but if not, something better than happiness may come, even
blessedness.

Oh! sad hearts and suffering! look to the Cross. There hung your King!
The King of sorrowing souls; and more, the King of Sorrows. Ay, pain and
grief, tyranny and desertion, death and hell,--He has faced them one and
all, and tried their strength and taught them His, and conquered them
right royally. And