Daily Thoughts | Page 9

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 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