Daily Thoughts Part 33

Love Many-sided. October 19.

There are many sides to love--admiration, reverence, grat.i.tude, pity, affection; they are all different shapes of that one great spirit of love--the only feeling which will bind a man to do good, not once in a way but habitually.

_National Sermons_. 1851.

The only Path to Light. October 20.

The path by which some come to see the Light, to find the Rock of Ages, is the simple path of honest self-knowledge, self-renunciation, self-restraint, in which every upward step towards right exposes some fresh depth of inward sinfulness, till the once proud man, crushed down by the sense of his own infinite meanness, becomes a little child once more, and casts himself simply on the generosity of Him who made him. And then there may come to him the vision, dim, perhaps, and fitting ill into clumsy words, but clearer, surer, nearer to him than the ground on which he treads, or than the foot which treads it--the vision of an Everlasting Spiritual Substance, most Human and yet most Divine, who can endure; and who, standing beneath all things, can make their spiritual substance endure likewise, though all worlds and eons, birth and growth and death, matter and s.p.a.ce and time, should melt indeed--

And like the baseless fabric of a vision, Leave not a rack behind.

_Preface to Tauler's Sermons_. 1854.

Proverbs False and True. October 21.

There is no falser proverb than that devil's beat.i.tude, "Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall never be disappointed." Say rather, "Blessed is he who expecteth everything, for he enjoys everything once at least, and if it falls out true, twice also."

_Prose Idylls_. 1857.

True Sisters of Mercy. October 22.

Ah! true Sisters of Mercy! whom the world sneers at as "old maids," if you pour out on cats and dogs and parrots a little of the love that is yearning to spend itself on children of your own. As long as such as you walk this lower world one needs no Butler's _a.n.a.logy_ to prove to us that there is another world, where such as you will have a fuller and a fairer (I dare not say a juster) portion.

_Two Years Ago_, chap. xxv. 1856.

The Divine Fire. October 23.

Well spoke the old monks, peaceful, watching life's turmoil, "Eyes which look heavenward, weeping still we see: G.o.d's love with keen flame purges, like the lightning flash, Gold which is purest, purer still must be."

_Saint's Tragedy_, Act iii. Scene i.

1847.

The Cross a Token. October 24.

Have patience, have faith, have hope, as thou standest at the foot of Christ's Cross, and holdest fast to it, the anchor of the _soul_ and _reason_, as well as of the _heart_. For, however ill the world may go, or seem to go, the Cross is the everlasting token that G.o.d so loved the world that He spared not His only-begotten Son, but freely gave Him for it. Whatsoever else is doubtful, that at least is sure--that good must conquer, because G.o.d is good, that evil must perish, because G.o.d hates evil, even to the death.

_Westminster Sermons_. 1870.

The True Self-Sacrifice. October 25.

What can a man do more than _die_ for his countrymen?

_Live_ for them. It is a longer work, and therefore a more difficult and a n.o.bler one.

_Two Years Ago_, chap. xix. 1856.

Now as Then. October 26.

Men can be as original now as ever, if they had but the courage, even the insight. Heroic souls in old times had no more opportunities than we have; but they used them. There were daring deeds to be done then--are there none now? Sacrifices to be made--are there none now? Wrongs to be redrest--are there none now? Let any one set his heart in these days to do what is right, and nothing else; and it will not be long ere his brow is stamped with all that goes to make up the heroical expression--with n.o.ble indignation, n.o.ble self-restraint, great hopes, great sorrows; perhaps even with the print of the martyr's crown of thorns.

_Two Years Ago_, chap. vii. 1856.

One Anchor. October 27.

In such a world as this, with such ugly possibilities hanging over us all, there is but one anchor which will hold, and that is utter trust in G.o.d; let us keep that, and we may yet get to our graves without _misery_ though not without _sorrow_.

_Letters and Memories_. 1871.

Self-Control. October 28.

Settle it in your minds, young people, that the first and the last of all virtues and graces which G.o.d can give is Self-Control, as necessary for the saint and the sage lest they become fanatics and pedants, as for the young in the hey-day of youth and health.

_Sermons on David_. 1866.

Nature's Permanence. October 29.

We abolish many things, good and evil, wisely and foolishly, in these fast-going times; but, happily for us, we cannot abolish the blue sky, and the green sea, and the white foam, and the everlasting hills, and the rivers which flow out of their bosoms. They will abolish themselves when their work is done, but not before. And we, who, with all our boasted scientific mastery over Nature, are, from a merely mechanical and carnal point of view, no more than a race of minute parasitic animals burrowing in the fair Earth's skin, had better, instead of boasting of our empire over Nature, take care lest we become too troublesome to Nature, by creating, in our haste and greed, too many great black countries, and too many great dirty warrens of houses, miscalled cities, peopled with savages and imps of our own mis-creation; in which case Nature, so far from allowing us to abolish her, will by her inexorable laws abolish us.