Our Father. May 4.

Look at those thousand birds, and without our Father not one of them
shall fall to the ground; and art thou not of more value than many
sparrows--thou for whom God sent His Son to die? . . . Ah! my friend, we
must look out and around to see what God is like. It is when we persist
in turning our eyes inward, and prying curiously over our own
imperfections, that we learn to make a god after our own image, and fancy
that our own hardness and darkness are the patterns of His light and
love.

_Hypatia_, chap. xi.

Want of Sympathy. May 5.

If we do not understand our fellow-creatures we shall never love them.
And it is equally true, that if we do not love them we shall never
understand them. Want of charity, want of sympathy, want of good feeling
and fellow-feeling--what does it, what can it breed but endless mistakes
and ignorances, both of men's characters and men's circumstances?

_Westminster Sermons_. 1873.

A Religion. May 6.

If all that a man wants is "a _religion_," he ought to be able to make a
very pretty one for himself, and a fresh one as often as he is tired of
the old. But the heart and soul of man wants more than that; as it is
written, "My soul is athirst for GOD, even for the living God." I want a
living God, who cares for men, forgives men, saves men from their sins:
and Him I have found in the Bible, and nowhere else, save in the facts of
life which the Bible alone interprets.

_Sermons on the Pentateuch_. 1863.

True Civilisation. May 7.

Do the duty which lies nearest to you; your duty to the man who lives
next door, and to the man who lives in the next street. Do your duty to
your parish, that you may do your duty by your country and to all
mankind, and prove yourselves thereby civilised men.

_Water of Life Sermons_. 1866.

Nature and Grace. May 8.

Why speak of the God of Nature and the God of grace as two antithetical
terms? The Bible never in a single instance makes the distinction, and
surely if God be the eternal and unchangeable One, and if all the
universe bears the impress of His signet, we have no right, in the
present infantile state of science, to put arbitrary limits of our own to
the revelation which He may have thought good to make of Himself in
Nature. Nay, rather, let us believe that if our eyes were opened we
should fulfil the requirement of genius and see the universal in the
particular by seeing God'