Beautiful Thoughts | Page 9

is having its work in making
you patient, and humble, and generous, and unselfish, and kind, and
courteous. The Greatest Thing in the World.
May 7th. It is a peculiarity of the sinful state, that as a general rule men
are linked to evil mainly by a single correspondence. Few men break
the whole law. Our natures, fortunately, are not large enough to make
us guilty of all, and the restraints of circumstances are usually such as
to leave a loophole in the life of each individual for only a single
habitual sin. But it is very easy to see how this reduction of our
intercourse with evil to a single correspondence blinds us to our true
position. Natural Law, Mortification, p. 186.
May 8th. One little weakness, we are apt to fancy, all men must be
allowed, and we even claim a certain indulgence for that apparent
necessity of nature which we call our besetting sin. Yet to break with
the lower environment at all, to many, is to break at this single point.
Natural Law, p. 186.
May 9th. There may be only one avenue between the new life and the
old, it may be but a small and SUBTERRANEAN PASSAGE, but this
is sufficient to keep the old life in. So long as that remains the victim is
not "dead unto sin," and therefore he cannot "live unto God." Natural
Law, p. 187.
May 10th. Do not grudge the hand that is moulding the still too
shapeless image within you. It is growing more beautiful, though you
see it not, and every touch of temptation may add to its perfection.

Therefore keep in the midst of life. Do not isolate yourself. Be among
men, and among things, and among troubles, and difficulties, and
obstacles. The Greatest Thing in the World.
May 11th. Contemplate the love of Christ, and you will love. Stand
before that mirror, reflect Christ's character, and you will be changed
into the same image from tenderness to tenderness. There is no other
way. You cannot love to order. You can only look at the lovely object,
and fall in love with it, and grow into likeness to it. The Greatest Thing
in the World.
May 12th. In the natural world it only requires a single vital
correspondence of the body to be out of order to ensure Death. It is not
necessary to have consumption, diabetes, and an aneurism to bring the
body to the grave, if it have heart disease. He who is fatally diseased in
one organ necessarily pays the penalty with his life, though all the
others be in perfect health. And such, likewise, are the mysterious unity
and correlation of functions in the spiritual organism that the disease of
one member may involve the ruin of the whole. Natural Law,
Mortification, p. 187.
May 13th. To break altogether, and at every point, with the old
environment, is a simple impossibility. So long as the regenerate man is
kept in this world he must find the old environment at many points a
severe temptation. Natural Law, Mortification, p. 190.
May 14th. Power over very many of the commonest temptations is only
to be won by degrees, and however anxious one might be to apply the
summary method to every case, he soon finds it impossible in practice.
Natural Law, Mortification, p. 190.
May 15th. The ill-tempered person . . . can make very little of his
environment. However he may attempt to circumscribe it in certain
directions, there will always remain a wide and ever-changing area to
stimulate his irascibility. His environment, in short, is an inconstant
quantity, and his most elaborate calculations and precautions must
often and suddenly fail him. Natural Law, Mortification, p. 191.
May 16th. What the ill-tempered person has to deal with, . . . mainly, is
the correspondence, the temper itself. And that, he well knows,
involves a long and humiliating discipline. The case is not at all a
surgical but a medical one, and the knife is here of no more use than in
a fever. A specific irritant has poisoned his veins. And the acrid

humours that are breaking out all over the surface of his life are only to
be subdued by a gradual sweetening of the inward spirit. Natural Law,
Mortification, p. 191.
May 17th. The man whose blood is pure has nothing to fear. So he
whose spirit is purified and sweetened becomes proof against these
germs of sin. "Anger, wrath, malice and railing" in such a soil can find
no root. Natural Law, Mortification, p. 192.
May 18th. The Mortification of a member . . .is based on the Law of
Degeneration. The useless member here is not cut off, but simply
relieved as much as possible of all exercise. This encourages