Daily Thoughts | Page 9

strong He can be strongest, to the weak weakest of all. With the aged and dying He goes down for ever to the grave; and yet with you children Christ lies for ever on His mother's bosom, and looks up for ever into His mother's face, full of young life and happiness and innocence, the Everlasting Christ- child, in whom you must believe, whom you must love, to whom you must offer up your childish prayers.
The Christ-child, Sermons, (Good News of God).
FEBRUARY 24. St. Matthias, Apostle and Martyr.
Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. They rest from their labours--all their struggles, failures, past and over for ever. But their works follow them. The good which they did on earth--that is not past and over. It cannot die. It lives and grows for ever, following on in their path long after they are dead, and bearing fruit unto everlasting life, not only in them, but in men whom they never saw, and in generations yet unborn.
Sermons (Good News of God).
Ash Wednesday.
There is a repentance too deep for words--too deep for all confessionals, penances, and emotions or acts of contrition; the repentance, not of the excitable, theatric Southern, unstable as water even in his most violent remorse, but of the still, deep-hearted Northern, whose pride breaks slowly and silently, but breaks once for all; who tells to God what he will never tell to man, and having told it, is a new creature from that day forth for ever.
Two Years Ago, chap. xviii.
The True Fast.
The rationale of Fasting is to give up habitual indulgences for a time, lest they become our masters--artificial necessities.
MS.

March.
Early in the Springtime, on raw and windy mornings, Beneath the freezing house-eaves, I heard the starlings sing-- Ah! dreary March month, is this then a time for building wearily? Sad, sad, to think that the year is but begun!
Late in the Autumn, on still and cloudless evenings, Among the golden reed-beds I heard the starlings sing-- Ah! that sweet March month, when we and our mates were courting merrily; Sad, sad, to think that the year is all but done.
The Starlings.

Knowledge and Love. March 1.
Knowledge and Love are reciprocal. He who loves knows. He who knows loves. Saint John is the example of the first; Saint Paul of the second.
Letters and Memories. 1842.

A Charm of Birds. March 2.
Little do most people know how much there is to learn--what variety of character, as well as variety of motion, may be distinguished by the practised ear in a "charm of birds"--from the wild cry of the missel-thrush, ringing from afar in the first bright days of March a passage of one or two bars repeated three or four times, and then another and another, clear and sweet and yet defiant--for the great "storm-cock" loves to sing when rain and wind is coming on, and faces the elements as boldly as he faces hawk and crow--down to the delicate warble of the wren, who slips out of his hole in the brown bank where he has huddled through the frost with wife and children, all folded in each other's arms like human beings. Yet even he, sitting at his house-door in the low sunlight, says grace for all mercies in a song so rapid, so shrill, so loud, and yet so delicately modulated, that you wonder at the amount of soul within that tiny body; and then stops suddenly, like a child that has said its lesson or got to the end of a sermon, gives a self-satisfied flirt of his tail, and goes in again to sleep.
Prose Idylls. 1866.

Tact of the Heart. March 3.
Random shots are dangerous and cruel, likely to hit the wrong person and hurt his feelings unnecessarily. It is very easy to say a hard thing, but not so easy to say it to the right person at the right time.
MS.

Special Providences. March 4.
I believe not only in "special providences," but in the whole universe as one infinite complexity of special providences.
Letters and Memories.
The grain of dust is a thought of God; God's power made it; God's wisdom gave it whatsoever properties or qualities it may possess. God's providence has put it in the place where it is now, and has ordained that it should be in that place at that moment, by a train of causes and effects which reaches back to the very creation of the universe. The grain of dust can no more go from God's presence or flee from God's Spirit than you or I can.
Town Geology. 1871.

Be Calm. March 5.
Strive daily and hourly to be calm; to stop yourself forcibly and recall your mind to a sense of what you are, where you are going, and whither you ought to be tending. This is most painful discipline, but most wholesome.
MS. Letter.