Daily Thoughts | Page 8

help trusting that union with Christ must be something real and substantial, and not merely a metaphor and a flower of rhetoric.
MS. 1854.

A Present Hell. February 23.
"Ay," he muttered, "sing awa', . . . wi' pretty fancies and gran' words, and gang to hell for it."
"To hell, Mr. Mackaye?"
"Ay, to a verra real hell, Alton Locke, laddie--a warse ane than any fiend's kitchen or subterranean Smithfield that ye'll hear o' in the pulpits--the hell on earth o' being a flunkey, and a humbug, and a useless peacock, wasting God's gifts on your ain lusts and pleasures--and kenning it--and not being able to get oot o' it for the chains of vanity and self-indulgence."
Alton Locke, chap. viii. 1849.

Time and Eternity. February 24.
Eternity does not mean merely some future endless duration, but that ever- present moral world, governed by ever-living and absolutely necessary laws, in which we and all spirits are now; and in which we should be equally, whether time and space, extension and duration, and the whole material universe to which they belong, became nothing this moment, or lasted endlessly.
Theologica Germanica. 1854.

Christ's Life. February 25.
What was Christ's life? Not one of deep speculations, quiet thoughts, and bright visions, but a life of fighting against evil; earnest, awful prayers and struggles within, continued labour of body and mind without; insult, and danger, and confusion, and violent exertion, and bitter sorrow. This was Christ's life. This was St. Peter's, and St. James's, and St. John's life afterwards.
Village Sermons. 1849.

The Higher Education. February 26.
In teaching women we must try to make our deepest lessons bear on the great purpose of unfolding Woman's own calling in all ages--her especial calling in this one. We must incite them to realise the chivalrous belief of our old forefathers among their Saxon forests, that something Divine dwelt in the counsels of woman: but, on the other hand, we must continually remind them that they will attain that divine instinct, not by renouncing their sex, but by fulfilling it; by becoming true women, and not bad imitations of men; by educating their heads for the sake of their hearts, not their hearts for the sake of their heads; by claiming woman's divine vocation as the priestess of purity, of beauty, and of love.
Introductory Lecture, Queen's College. 1848.

God's Kingdom. February 27.
Philamon had gone forth to see the world, and he had seen it; and he had learnt that God's kingdom was not a kingdom of fanatics yelling for a doctrine, but of willing, loving, obedient hearts.
Hypatia, chap. xxiii. 1852.

Sowing and Reaping. February 28.
So it is, that by every crime, folly, even neglect of theirs, men drive a thorn into their own flesh, which will trouble them for years to come, it may be to their dying day--
Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all--
as those who neglect their fellow-creatures will discover, by the most patent, undeniable proofs, in that last great day, when the rich and poor shall meet together, and then, at last, discover too that the Lord is the Maker of them all.
All Saints' Day Sermons. 1871.

The Church Catechism. February 29.
Did it ever strike you that the simple, noble, old Church Catechism, without one word about rewards and punishments, heaven or hell, begins to talk to the child, like a true English Catechism as it is, about that glorious old English key-word Duty? It calls on the child to confess its own duty, and teaches it that its duty is something most human, simple, everyday--commonplace, if you will call it so. And I rejoice in the thought that the Church Catechism teaches that the child's duty is commonplace. I rejoice that in what it says about our duty to God and our neighbour, it says not one word about counsels of perfection, or those frames and feelings which depend, believe me, principally on the state of people's bodily health, on the constitution of their nerves, and the temper of their brain; but that it requires nothing except what a little child can do as well as a grown person, a labouring man as well as a divine, a plain farmer as well as the most refined, devout, imaginative lady.
Sermons for the Times. 1855.

SAINTS' DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALS.
FEBRUARY 2. The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, COMMONLY CALLED The Purification of the Virgin Mary.
Little children may think of Christ as a child now and always. For to them He is always the Babe of Bethlehem. Let them not say to themselves, "Christ is grown up long ago." He is, and yet He is not. His life is eternal in the heavens, above all change of time and space. . . . Such is the sacred heart of Jesus--all things to all. To the