hand of virtue or vice. But her lawful mistress, the only one which can
use her aright, the only one under whom she can truly grow and prosper
and prove her divine descent, is Virtue, the likeness of Almighty God.

_Roman and Teuton_. 1860.

A Child's Heart. May 23.

"I saw at last! I found out that I had been trying for years which was
stronger, God or I; I found out I had been trying whether I could not do
well enough without Him; and there I found that I could not--could not! I
felt like a child who had marched off from home, fancying it can find its
way, and is lost at once. I did not know that I had a Father in heaven
who had been looking after me, when I fancied I was looking after myself.
I don't half believe it now." . . . And so the old heart passed away
from Thomas Thurnall, and instead of it grew up the heart of a little
child.

_Two Years Ago_, chap. xxviii. 1857.

Self-Security. May 24.

Strange it is how mortal man, "who cometh up and is cut down like the
flower," can harden himself into a stoical security, and count on the
morrow which may never come. Yet so it is, and perhaps if it were not so
no work would get done on earth--at least by the many who know not that
God is guiding them, while they fancy they are guiding themselves.

_Two Years Ago_, chap. i.

There is a Providence which rules this earth, whose name is neither
Political Economy nor Expediency, but the Living God, who makes every
right action reward, and every wrong action punish, _itself_.

_History Lecture_, _Cambridge_. 1866.

Loss and Gain. May 25.

"He has yet to learn what losing his life to save it means, Amyas. Bad
men have taught him (and I fear these Anabaptists and Puritans at home
teach little else) that it is the one great business of every man to save
his own soul after he dies; every one for himself; and that that, and not
divine self-sacrifice, is the one thing needful, and the better part
which Mary chose."

"I think," said Amyas, "men are enough inclined to be selfish without
being taught that."

_Westward Ho_! chap. vii. 1854.

The Law of Righteousness. May 26.

What if I had discovered that one law of the spiritual world, in which
all others were contained, was Righteousness? and that disharmony with
that law, which we call unspirituality, was not being vulgar, or clumsy,
or ill-taught, or unimaginative, or dull; but simply being unrighteous?
that righteousness, a