Daily Thoughts | Page 7

above-- Below let work be
death, if work be love!
Saint's Tragedy, Act ii. Scene viii. 1847.

The Eternal Good. February 12.
"God hath showed thee what is good," . . . what is good in itself, and of
itself--the one very eternal and absolute good, which was with God and
in God and from God, before all worlds, and will be for ever, without
changing, or growing less or greater, eternally the same good--the good
which would be just as good and just and right and lovely and glorious
if there were no world, no men, no angels, no heaven, no hell, and God

were alone in His own abyss.
Sermons for the Times. 1855.

Awfulness of Words. February 13.
A difference in words is a very awful and important difference; a
difference in words is a difference in things. Words are very awful and
wonderful things, for they come from the most awful and wonderful of
all beings, Jesus Christ, THE WORD. He puts words into men's minds.
He made all things, and He made words to express those things. And
woe to those who use the wrong words about anything.
Village Sermons. 1848.

A Wise Woman. February 14.
What wisdom she had she did not pick off the hedge, like blackberries.
God is too kind to give away wisdom after that useless fashion. So she
had to earn her wisdom, and to work hard, and suffer much ere she
attained it. And in attaining she endured strange adventures and great
sorrows; and yet they would not have given her the wisdom had she not
had something in herself which gave her wit to understand her lessons,
and skill and courage to do what they taught her. There had been many
names for that something before she was born, there have been many
names for it since, but her father and mother called it the Grace of God.
Unfinished Novel. 1869.

Charity the one Influence. February 15.
The older we grow, the more we understand our own lives and histories,
the more we shall see that the spirit of wisdom is the spirit of love; that
the true way to gain influence over our fellow-men is to have charity

towards them. That is a hard lesson to learn; and all those who learn it
generally learn it late; almost--God forgive us--too late.
Westminster Sermons.

The Ascetic Painters. February 16.
We owe much (notwithstanding their partial and Manichean idea of
beauty) to the early ascetic painters. Their works are a possession for
ever. No future school of religious art will be able to rise to eminence
without learning from them their secret. They taught artists, and priests,
and laymen, too, that beauty is only worthy of admiration when it is the
outward sacrament of the beauty of the soul within; they helped to
deliver men from that idolatry to merely animal strength and loveliness
into which they were in danger of falling in ferocious ages, and among
the relics of Roman luxury.
Miscellanies. 1849.

Reveries. February 17.
Beware of giving way to reveries. Have always some employment in
your hands. Look forward to the future with hope. Build castles if you
will, but only bright ones, and not too many.
Letters and Memories. 1842.

Woman's Mission. February 18.
It is the glory of woman that she was sent into the world to live for
others rather than for herself; and therefore, I should say, let her
smallest rights be respected, her smallest wrongs redressed; but let her
never be persuaded to forget that she is sent into the world to teach
man--what I believe she has been teaching him all along, even in the

savage state, namely, that there is something more necessary than the
claiming of rights, and that is, the performing of duties; to teach him
specially, in these so-called intellectual days, that there is something
more than intellect, and that is--purity and virtue.
Lecture on Thrift. 1869.

The Heroic Life. February 19.
Provided we attain at last to the truly heroic and divine life, which is
the life of virtue, it will matter little to us by what wild and weary ways,
or through what painful and humiliating processes, we have arrived
thither. If God has loved us, if God will receive us, then let us submit
loyally and humbly to His law--"whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,
and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth."
All Saints' Day Sermons.

The Wages of Sin. February 20.
It is sometimes said, "The greater the sinner the greater the saint." I do
not believe it. I do not see it. It stands to reason--if a man loses his way
and finds it again, he is so much the less forward on his way,