THOUGHTS ON LIFE 
 
 MODERN WRITERS. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 S. S. COPEMAN. 
 
 "Great thoughts are the precious life-blood of master spirits embalmed for a life 
 beyond life." MILTON. 
 
 " Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own." SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 SWAN SONNENSCHEIN, LE BAS & LOWREY, 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 
 
 1886.
 
 Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld. London and Aylesbury
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 IN placing this volume in the hands of the public, the 
 compiler would take the opportunity of thanking the 
 Authors and Publishers for the kind and courteous way 
 in which they have given her permission to make extracts 
 from books, the copyrights of which are their property. 
 She trusts that in the choice of selections she has made they 
 will not have cause to regret the confidence thus placed in 
 her.
 
 THE following Authors desire that it should be stated from which 
 of their works the " Thoughts " have been selected : 
 
 Those by Dean Church, pp. 205, 244, from "Sermons at Oxford." 
 By the Rev. J. Pulsford, pp. 8, 23, 32, 35, 44, 51, 55, 57, 59, 106, 154, 
 156, 159, 174, 191, 193,202, 206,219, 220,229, 231, 233, 234, 241, 243, 
 from "Quiet Hours." By the Rev. A. Maclaren, pp. 81, 103, 128, 
 151, from " Sermons in Union Church," Manchester. Pp. 114, 212, 
 from "Week Day Evening Addresses." Special permission has 
 been granted by Messrs. Cassell & Co. for the "Thoughts" from 
 Archdeacon Farrar's "Life of St. Paul," pp. 14, 22 ; also from the 
 Rev. P. B. Powers' " Heart Chords." By Messrs. Macmillan & Co., 
 from Archdeacon Farrar's "Life of Christ," p. 77; "The Temple 
 of God," p. 211 ; "In the Days of thy Youth," pp. 216, 222, 224. 
 By Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton, for those from Professor Drum- 
 mond's "Natural Law in the Spiritual World." By Messrs. 
 Strahan & Co. for those from Dr. George Macdonald's "Annals 
 of a Quiet Neighbourhood," pp. n, 97, 174, 194, 240. By Messrs. 
 Smith, Elder, & Co., that from " Sir Gibbie," p. 75.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " How all Nature and Life are but one Garment, a ' Living 
 Garment,' woven and ever a-weaving in the ' Loom of Time.' " 
 
 " Our life is compassed round with Necessity ; yet is the 
 meaning of Life itself no other than Freedom, than Voluntary 
 Force : thus have we a warfare ; in the beginning, especially, 
 a hard-fought battle. For the God-given mandate, Work thou 
 in Well-doing, lies mysteriously written, in Promethean Prophetic 
 Characters, in our hearts ; and leaves us no rest, night or day, 
 till it be deciphered and obeyed; till it burn forth, in our conduct, 
 a visible, acted Gospel of Freedom. And as the clay-given 
 mandate, Eat thou, and be filled, at the same time persuasively 
 proclaims itself through every nerve, must not there be a 
 confusion, a contest, before the better Influence can become the 
 upper ? " 
 
 " By benignant fever-paroxysms is Life rooting out the deep- 
 seated chronic Disease, and triumphs over Death. On the 
 roaring billows of Time, thou art not engulfed, but borne aloft 
 into the azure of Eternity. Love not pleasure ; love God. 
 This is the Everlasting Yea, wherein all contradiction is solved : 
 wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him." 
 
 " What is Man himself, and his whole terrestrial Life, but an 
 Emblem ; a clothing or visible Garment for that divine Me of 
 his, cast hither, like a light-particle, down from Heaven ? " 
 
 TJiomas Carlyle.
 
 2 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Of the Divine Spirit holiness is the rule, and of all spirit love 
 is the power, without which there can be no movement forth 
 upon objects and beings around, nothing to stir the self-centred 
 repose, or in any way to turn pure being into the definite and 
 successive action of a true life." 
 
 James Martineau, D.D. 
 
 " Life is a battle, a struggle, the cultivation of a stubborn soil, 
 a service in an enemy's country in time of war, where carelessness 
 is danger, and sleep is death." 
 
 Archdeacon F. W. Farrar, D.D. 
 
 11 Whether it may seem paradoxical or not, it is a fact in 
 our nature that, without endurance, life ceases to be enjoyable ; 
 without pains accepted, pleasure will not be permanent." 
 
 " Man's life, his true and proper life, his health, is of such 
 grandeur, of such intensity and scope, that it would absorb, and 
 turn into the servitors of its joy, all that we now find intolerable 
 pain, all agony and loss." 
 
 " Man's perfect life is a life in which love can be perfect, and 
 find no limitation ; it is a life so truly lived in others, so partici- 
 pant with them, that utter and unbounded sacrifice is possible ; 
 the limitations of this mortal state bounding us no more." 
 
 " A beautiful external life is the fruit of life within, especially 
 of that life which dwells in joy." Barnes Hinton. 
 
 " Every man has a plan in life marked for him by God, and 
 it is his duty to discover it, and his safety to fulfil it ; and if you 
 talk to me about the tyranny of circumstances, and ask how you 
 can escape them, I answer : ' If circumstances crush feeble men, 
 strong men use circumstances, and fortune is at the feet of the 
 strong.'" Bishop Thorold. 
 
 " Let us do our work as well, 
 
 Both the unseen and the seen ; 
 Make the house, where Gods may dwell, 
 Beautiful, entire, and clean. 
 
 Else our lives are incomplete, 
 
 Standing in these walls of Time, 
 Broken stairways, where the feet 
 Stumble as they seek to climb.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 3 
 
 Build to-day, then, strong and sure, 
 
 With a firm and ample base ; 
 And ascending and secure 
 
 Shall to-morrow find its place." 
 
 Henry W. Longfellow. 
 
 1 To live in the Spirit is the right condition of man, his 
 normal condition, out of which he is out of order ; and to live 
 in the Spirit is to live with God hearing Him, and knowing 
 Him, and loving Him, and delighting to do His will." 
 
 Thomas Erskine. 
 
 " Life is only bright when it proceedeth 
 Towards a truer, deeper life above ; 
 Human love is sweetest when it leadeth 
 To a more Divine and perfect Love." 
 
 Adelaide Procter. 
 
 " Life consists in first being stirred to do, and then learning 
 how to do." Charlotte M. Yonge. 
 
 " What is our life ? It is a mission to go into every corner 
 we can reach, and reconquer for God's beatitude His unhappy 
 world back to Him. It is a devotion of ourselves to the bliss 
 of the Divine Life, by the beautiful apostolate of kindness." 
 
 F. W. Faber, D.D. 
 
 " All life is a mere progression, a pressing on and on ; and 
 death itself, we Christians believe, but a higher development into 
 more perfect life." Dinah M. Muloch. 
 
 " Life itself passes by many births 
 To happier heights and purging off of sins." 
 
 " Life, which all can take but none can give, 
 Life, which all creatures love and strive to keep, 
 Wonderful, dear, and pleasant unto each, 
 Even to the meanest ; yea, a boon to all 
 Where pity is, for pity makes the world 
 Soft to the weak and noble for the strong." 
 
 Edwin Arnold.
 
 4 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be 
 understood." 
 
 " Life brings to each his task, and, whatever art you select, 
 algebra, planting, architecture, poems, commerce, politics, all 
 are attainable, even to the miraculous triumphs, on the same terms, 
 of selecting that for which you are apt; begin at the beginning, 
 proceed in order, step by step. Tis as easy to hoist iron anchors, 
 and braid cannons, as to braid straw, to boil granite as to boil 
 water, if you take all the steps in order. Wherever there is 
 failure, there is some giddiness, some superstition about luck, 
 some step omitted, which Nature never pardons. The happy 
 conditions of life may be had on the same terms. Their attrac- 
 tion for you is the pledge that they are within your reach. Our 
 prayers are prophets. There must be fidelity, and there must be 
 adherence." 
 
 " Life would be twice or ten times life, if spent with wise and 
 fruitful companions." 
 
 "Life is hardly respectable is it? if it has no generous, 
 guaranteeing task, no duties, or affections, that constitute a 
 necessity of existing. Every man's task is his life-preserver. 
 The conviction that his work is dear to God, and cannot be 
 spared, defends him." 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 " Is life a groping and a guess, 
 A vain cry in a wilderness, 
 
 No light of home at distance seen ? 
 And do our hearts, like fallen trees, 
 Drift down the rivers to the seas, 
 
 Though hope hath once exalted been? 
 We are not driftwood on the wave ; 
 But like the ships, that tempests brave, 
 Our hearts upon their voyage stand : 
 We utter no unheeded cry, 
 ' Where is my God ? ' Lo, He is nigh, 
 And says, < Take, child, thy Father's hand.' " 
 
 Rev. T. T. Lynch.
 
 THOUGHTS Otf LIFE. 5 
 
 " Life must be regarded in the light of all that is to grow out 
 of it. Seeds of things are planted here, foundations are laid, 
 perhaps only ground is cleared. There is eternity to work out 
 the results." Rev. J. Baldwin Brown. 
 
 " The life of Christ looks indeed a broken life, when we think 
 how brief it was, cut off like the foam upon the waters while He 
 was yet in the bloom and vigour of His manhood. It looks a 
 broken life, yet it was the only whole life ever lived on earth ; 
 the only one whose task was perfectly finished ere its days were 
 ended." Walter C. Smith, D.D. 
 
 " Christian education should strive that the soul, from the 
 beginning, should grow up a plant of grace, budding and shooting 
 higher, each year, till, in mature life, it comes to a strong and 
 natural flowering." J. Cunningham Geikie, D.D. 
 
 " Every life should begin in Eden, should have its blest 
 traditions to return to, its holy places on which an eternal 
 consecration rests. The dew of the birth of each most hallowed, 
 most human thought and impulse within us is of the womb of 
 the morning, and there is surely a literal meaning in our Saviour's 
 words, ' Unless ye become like little children, ye cannot enter 
 the kingdom of heaven.' " Dora Greenwell. 
 
 " Nothing can live in a state in which God did not intend it 
 to live." Canon Kingsley. 
 
 " There is no worship comparable with a right life ; a life lived 
 as in the sight of God, and in constant dependence on His aid. 
 No higher aim can man place before him no grander ambition 
 can stir his zeal than to be A Man ; a man as God made him 
 for he was made in the image of his Creator." 
 
 " The most sacred thing in life is work, of whatever kind it be, 
 done as to the Lord, in which we serve not men, nor self, but the 
 Lord Jesus ; and for which we shall receive the reward of the 
 inheritance ; the inheritance of a true moral manhood, of greater 
 self-respect, of a deepening Christliness, and, at the last, of a 
 Paradise regained." James McCann, D.D.
 
 6 THOUGHTS ON LIPE. 
 
 " We need the beautiful varieties of the seasons in our lives, if 
 we are to become worthy servants of the eternal Master." 
 
 Hubert Bower. 
 
 " In all other kind of energies except that of man's mind, there 
 is no question as to what is life, and what is not. Vital sensibility, 
 whether vegetable or animal, may, indeed, be reduced to so great 
 feebleness, as to render its existence a matter of question, but 
 when it is evident at all, it is evident as such : there is no 
 mistaking any imitation or pretence of it for the life itself; no 
 mechanism nor galvanism can take its place ; nor is any resem- 
 blance of it so striking as to involve even hesitation in the 
 judgment ; although many occur which the human imagination 
 takes pleasure in exalting, without for an instant losing sight 
 of the real nature of the dead things it animates ; but rejoicing 
 rather in its own excessive life, which puts gesture into clouds, 
 and joy into waves, and voices into rocks. But when we begin 
 to be concerned with the energies of man, we find ourselves 
 instantly dealing with a double creature. Most part of his being 
 seems to have a fictitious counterpart, which it is at his peril if 
 he do not cast off and deny. Thus he has a true and false 
 (otherwise called a living and dead, or a feigned or unfeigned) 
 faith. He has a true and a false hope, a true and a false charity, 
 and, finally, a true and a false life. His true life is like that of 
 lower organic beings, the independent force by which he moulds 
 and governs external things ; it is a force of assimilation which 
 converts everything around him into food, or into instruments ; 
 and which, however humbly or obediently it may listen to or 
 follow the guidance of superior intelligence, never forfeits its own 
 authority as a judging principle, as a will capable either of obeying 
 or rebelling. His false life is, indeed, but one of the conditions 
 of death or stupor, but it acts, even when it cannot be said to 
 animate, and is not always easily known from the true. It is that 
 life of custom and accident in which many of us pass much of 
 our time in the world ; that life in which we do what we have not 
 purposed, and speak what we do not mean, and assent to what 
 we do not understand ; that life which is overlaid by the weight 
 of things external to it, and is moulded by them, instead of
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIPE. 7 
 
 assimilating them ; that, which instead of growing and blossoming 
 under any wholesome dew, is crystallised over with it, as with 
 hoarfrost, and becomes to the true life what an arborescence is 
 to a tree, a candied agglomeration of thoughts and habits foreign 
 to it, brittle, obstinate, and icy, which can neither bend nor grow, 
 but must be crushed and broken to bits, if it stand in our way. 
 All men are liable to be in some degree frost-bitten in this sort ; 
 all are partly encumbered and crusted over with idle matter; 
 only, if they have real life in them, they are always breaking this 
 bark away in noble rents, until it becomes, like the black strips 
 upon the birch-tree, only a witness of their own inward strength." 
 
 John Ruskin. 
 
 " Long fed on boundless hopes, O race of man, 
 How angrily thou spurn'st all simpler fare ! 
 ' Christ,' some one says, ' was human as we are ; 
 No judge eyes us from Heaven, our sin to scan ; 
 
 ' We live no more, when we have done our Span.' 
 
 ' Well, then, for Christ,' thou answerest, ' who can care ? 
 
 From sin, which Heaven records not, why forbear ? 
 Live we like brutes our life without a plan ! ' 
 
 So answerest thou ; but why not rather say : 
 
 ' Hath man no second life ? Pitch this one high ! 
 
 Sits there no judge in Heaven, our sin to see ? 
 
 More strictly, then, the inward judge obey ! 
 Was Christ a man like us ? Ah ! let us try 
 If we then, too, can be such men as He ! ' ' 
 
 Matthew Arnold, 
 
 " The self-life feeds on ashes, for it is the law of every life, 
 that it shall taste its own quality. The self-life is self-love, 
 but within the inmost soul of self-love lurks the fear of evil. For 
 if a man is the subject of his own individual will, instead of being 
 the subject of the universal law, then all highest powers and 
 operations are against him ; and though his senses move in a 
 ' fool's paradise,' his spirit moves in a ' horror of great darkness,' 
 foreboding miserable things. Because the self-life is cold, 
 straitened, and incapable of blessedness, God seeks to vanquish
 
 8 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 it, in order that His Love may take its place, and that man, being 
 delivered from his selfishness, may sit down to the feast of 
 Eternity." Rev. John Pulsford. 
 
 " It is one of the features of religious life that as men grow in 
 holiness they grow in humility." 
 
 Bishop W. Boyd Carpenter. 
 
 " No life is a failure which is lived for God, and all lives are 
 failures which are lived for any other end." 
 
 F. W.Faber.D.D. 
 
 " Is it not true that everything has to help something else to 
 live, whether it knows it or not ? That not a plant or an animal can 
 turn again to its dust without giving food and existence to other 
 plants, other animals ? That the very tiger, seemingly the most 
 useless tyrant of all tyrants, is still of use, when, after sending out 
 of the world suddenly, and all but painlessly, many an animal 
 which would without him have starved in misery through a diseased 
 old age, he himself dies, and in dying gives, by his own carcase, 
 the means of life and of enjoyment to a thousandfold more living 
 creatures than ever his paws destroyed ? " 
 
 " Ah ! could you kill that ever-craving lust 
 For bliss, which kills all bliss, and lose your life, 
 Your barren, unit life, to find again 
 A thousand lives in those for whom you die 
 So were you men and women, and should hold 
 Your rightful rank in God's great universe, 
 Wherein, in heaven and earth, by will or nature, 
 Nought lives for self. All, all from crown to base 
 The Lamb, before the world's foundation slain 
 The angels, ministers to God's elect 
 The sun, who only shines to light the worlds 
 The clouds, whose glory is to die in showers 
 The fleeting streams, who in their ocean-graves 
 Flee the decay of stagnant self-content 
 The oak, ennobled by the shipwright's axe 
 The soil, which yields its marrow to the flower 
 The flower, which feeds a thousand velvet worms,
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 9 
 
 Born, only to be prey to every bird 
 
 All spend themselves for others. And shall man, 
 
 Earth's rosy blossom image of his God 
 
 Whose two-fold being is the mystic knot 
 
 Which couples earth and heaven doubly bound 
 
 As being both worm and angel, to that service 
 
 By which both worms and angels hold their life, 
 
 Shall he, whose every breath is debt on debt, 
 
 Refuse, without some hope of further wage, 
 
 Which he calls Heaven, to be what God has made him ? 
 
 No ! let him show himself the creatures' lord 
 
 By free-will gift of that self-sacrifice 
 
 Which they, perforce, by Nature's laws endure." 
 
 Canon Kingsley. 
 
 " Longing moulds in clay what Life 
 
 Carves in the marble Real ; 
 To let the new life in, we know, 
 
 Desire must ope the portal ; 
 Perhaps the longing to be so 
 
 Helps make the soul immortal. 
 Longing is God's fresh heavenward will 
 
 With our poor earthward striving ; 
 We quench it that we may be still 
 
 Content with merely living ; 
 But, would we learn that heart's full scope 
 
 Which we are hourly wronging, 
 Our lives must climb from hope to hope 
 
 And realize our longing." 
 
 y. Russell Lowell. 
 
 "The spiritual life of man is something like his natural life 
 reversed. He has to live himself back into a little child, to be 
 educated down into an infant. Instead of being sophisticated 
 into all the arts and schemes of man-life, he has to be simplified 
 into the artlessness and purity of child-life. Instead of being 
 conformed to the world and fitted for its plans, the world has to 
 be disenchanted of its charm for him, and he has to be untwined 
 from it. And this process of teaching the heart is just the reverse
 
 io THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 order of the teaching of the head, through which we pass in 
 worldly life. Our earth-schooling consists in training the child 
 into a man ; the spiritual schooling of the Divine life trains the 
 man into a child. Hence, then, the order is reversed. The three 
 tabernacles are taken backwards. In the education of the natural 
 man for natural life we have home, school, business ; love, 
 discipline, duty ; Christ, Elias, Moses. But in the education of 
 the spiritual man for spiritual life, we begin where we left off 
 before, and leave off where we began. Now, it is business, school, 
 home ; law, discipline, love ; Moses, Elias, Christ." 
 
 Rev. Arthur Mursell. 
 
 "The greatest results in life are usually attained by simple 
 means, and the exercise of ordinary qualities. The common life 
 of every day, with its cares, necessities, and duties, affords ample 
 opportunity for acquiring experience of the best kind ; and its 
 most beaten paths provide the true worker with abundant scope 
 for effort, and room for self-improvement. The road of human 
 welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast well-doing ; and 
 they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, 
 will usually be the most successful. Fortune has often been 
 blamed for her blindness ; but fortune is not so blind as men are. 
 Those who look into practical life will find that fortune is usually 
 on the side of the industrious, as the winds and waves are on the 
 side of the best navigators. In the pursuit of even the highest 
 branches of human inquiry, the commoner qualities are found the 
 most useful such as common sense, attention, application, and 
 perseverance. Genius may not be necessary, though even genius 
 of the highest sort does not disdain the use of these ordinary 
 qualities." 
 
 Samuel Smiles. 
 
 " Our life is no poor cisterned store 
 
 The lavish years are draining low ; 
 But living streams that, welling o'er, 
 Fresh from the living Fountain flow 
 For ever." 
 
 Elizabeth Chanes.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. r 
 
 " It is just as true for us, as for the crystal, that the nobleness 
 of life depends on its consistency, clearness of purpose, quiet 
 and ceaseless energy. All doubt, and repenting, and botching, 
 and retouching, and wondering what it will be best to do next, 
 are vice, as well as misery. 
 
 " If, on looking back, your whole life should seem rugged as a 
 palm-tree stem ; still, never mind, so long as it has been growing ; 
 and has its grand green shade of leaves, and weight of honeyed fruit 
 at top. . . . Nothing is ever done beautifully which is done in 
 rivalship ; nor nobly, which is done in pride." 
 
 John Ruskin. 
 
 11 It is a most earnest thing to be alive in this world ; to die is 
 not sport for a man. Man's life never was a sport to him ; it was 
 stern reality, altogether a serious matter to be alive ! " 
 
 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 " Life is a constant sunrise, which death cannot interrupt, any 
 more than the night can swallow up the sun." 
 
 "To live carelessly-divine, duty-doing, fearless, loving, self- 
 forgetting lives is not that more than to know both good and 
 evil lives in which the good, like Aaron's rod, has swallowed up 
 the evil, and turned it into good ? " 
 
 George MacDonald^ LL.D. 
 
 " The presence of the spirit which culminates in your own life, 
 shows itself in dawning, wherever the dust of the earth begins to 
 assume any orderly and lovely state. You will find it impossible 
 to separate this idea of gradated manifestation from that of the 
 vital power. Things are not either wholly alive, or wholly dead. 
 They are less or more alive. Take the nearest, most easily 
 examined instance the life of a flower. Notice what a different 
 degree and kind of life there is in the calyx and the corolla. The 
 calyx is nothing but the swaddling clothes of the flower ; the 
 child-blossom is bound up in it, hand and foot; guarded in it, 
 restrained by it, till the time of birth. The shell is hardly more 
 subordinate to the germ in the egg, than the calyx to the blossom. 
 It bursts at last ; but it never lives as the corolla does. It may 
 fall at the moment its task is fulfilled, as in the poppy ; or 
 wither gradually, as in the buttercup ; or persist in a ligneous
 
 12 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 apathy, after the flower is dead, as in the rose; or harmonise 
 itself so as to share in the aspect of the real flower, as in the lily ; 
 but it never shares in the corolla's bright passion of life. And 
 the gradations which thus exist between the different members 
 of organic creatures, exist no less between the different ranges of 
 organism. We know no higher or more energetic life than our 
 own ; but there seems to me this great good in the idea of 
 gradation of life it admits the idea of a life above us, in other 
 creatures, as much nobler than ours, as ours is nobler than that 
 of the dust." John Ruskin. 
 
 " Our life is consentaneous and far-related. This knot of 
 nature is so well tied, that nobody was ever cunning enough to 
 find the two ends." Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 " Life became inexpressibly precious to men who believed, and 
 who knew that they had a right to believe, that out of the pain and 
 travail of the present, a future of glorious liberty, power, and joy 
 was being born." Rev. J. Baldwin Brown. 
 
 " One of the most painful experiences of life is to meet with a 
 true man of the world, who sees no evil, save in what shocks the 
 foundation of society, and who measures sin not by moral 
 pollution, but by political results. This lowered sense is the 
 result of a view narrowed to this earth by the amputation of the 
 spiritual world. A wider view would lead to a sterner repugnance 
 to sin, as a thing charged with destructive force. The higher the 
 ascent we can climb, the more clearly shall we see which is the 
 right way to choose. From the vantage-ground of the loftier 
 eminence many a path which promised fair is perceived to lead 
 to dangerous declivities and profitless wastes. The waters which 
 appeared to glimmer refreshingly, in front are found to be 
 illusions, the corn-fields are discovered to be mere prodigality of 
 gorse, and the beaten track to lose itself in dreary marshland. 
 The circumscribed view is ever deceptive." 
 
 Bishop W. Boyd Carpenter. 
 
 " In the very spirit of Promethean ambition, man has practised 
 something on the lifeless corpse, and has imitated the fitful 
 workings of apparent existence the distorted writhings of
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 15 
 
 galvanic life ; but the spirit that has fled would not listen to his 
 invitations to return, and the blood would not resume its pulse 
 at his bidding. Life, the unattainable object of his far-reaching 
 ambition, has returned to heights beyond him ; and whether he 
 chisel, or paint, or galvanise, the result of all experience only 
 proclaims more forcibly the impressive truth that life is the gift 
 of God." W. Morley Puns/ion, D.D. 
 
 " The abiding spirit of a man's life, more than his special 
 actions and peculiar theories, is that by which other men are 
 moved and admonished." Frances A. Kemble. 
 
 " To be devout means to live always with the consciousness of 
 God's presence ; to walk with Him, as the old Scriptures put it, so 
 that all thoughts and acts are thought and done before Him, and 
 ordered so as to be in tune with His character. It means to live 
 in worship of Him, so that honour is paid in everything to that 
 which is God, to truth and mercy, justice and purity. And this, 
 smitten into reality in a life, is a life of prayer." 
 
 Rev. Stopford A. Brooke. 
 
 " The sexton, tolling his bell at noon, 
 Deems not that great Napoleon 
 Stops his horse, and lists with delight, 
 Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height ; 
 Nor knowest thou what argument 
 Thy life to thy neighbour's creed has lent. 
 All are needed by each one ; 
 Nothing is fair or good alone." 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 " Human life is like the wheel which Ezekiel saw in vision. 
 Its aspects and relations, external and internal, are continually 
 changing ; one spoke of the wheel is always ascending while 
 another is descending ; one part is grating on the ground while 
 another is aloft in the air. 
 
 " Action and reaction is the law of man's life." 
 
 Rev. Hugh Macmillan. 
 
 " Dying, we do but pass to the very source and home of life." 
 
 James Martineau, D.D.
 
 *4 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Whether we will or no, the greater part of life is passed 
 alone ; and if we know any truth about ourselves at all, we know 
 how much depends on the upward guidance of solitary thought." 
 
 Canon H. P. Liddon, D.D. 
 
 " Would it be ' far better ' either to leave this actual tangible 
 life, throbbing with hopes and passions, to leave its busy, Christ- 
 like working, its quiet joys, its very sorrows which are near and 
 human, for a nap of several ages, or even for a vague, lazy, 
 half-alive, disembodied existence ? " Elizabeth S. Phelps. 
 
 " Man's lifetime is a mere moment ; nay, the past history of 
 our race, with all its great and varied events, is but a handbreadth 
 compared with the orbit of our solar system. 
 
 " Step by step the ideal exemplar, the divine archetype, first 
 embodied in the fishes of the earliest seas, was modified into 
 higher and yet higher forms of life, until at last it was arrayed 
 in that costly vesture of humanity that has been found worthy to 
 clothe the incarnate Redeemer." Rev. Hugh Macmillan. 
 
 " Without real trial, how soon we find rust upon our arms, 
 and sloth upon our souls, and the paltry difficulties of common 
 life weigh like chains upon us, instead of being brushed away 
 like cobwebs." Rev. F. W. Robertson. 
 
 " Why is it that people do perpetually live below their own 
 pitch ? " Frances A. Kemble. 
 
 " Is there a climbing element in life 
 Which is at war with rest, alternates strife with strife, 
 Whereby we reach eternal seas upon whose shores unstirr'd 
 Ev'n Joy can sleep, because no moan like this 
 Within those waves is heard ? " 
 
 Robert Buchanan. 
 
 " The life of a Christian is a life in Christ, and rises trans- 
 cendently above the minutiae of ritual, or the self-torments of 
 asceticism. 'The kingdom of God' such is the axiom which 
 He lays down for the decision of all such questions 'is not 
 meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the 
 Holy Ghost.' " Archdeacon F. W. Farrar, D.D.
 
 THOUGHTS ON L1PE. 15 
 
 "Every man's life has its apocrypha." 
 
 Philip James Bailey. 
 
 "Him 
 
 In whom Life's tangled, broken threads complete 
 Are gathered up, its wasted things made meet 
 For holier use, its roughness smoothed, its bitter 
 
 turned to sweet ! " Dora Greenwell. 
 
 " Knowledge of God, likeness to God, appropriation of God 
 through spiritual communion with God and He is presented to 
 the heart in Christ this is the essence of life eternal. It may be 
 experienced in a prison here, or in a Paradise yonder. It matters 
 little, it is a state, not a place in the Divine presence ; a loving 
 trust suffuses the whole being, silences doubt, and casts out fear, 
 and the heart is at rest." Rev. H. R. Haweis. 
 
 " What is this spiritual life, or its great development, as Christ 
 has taught it to us ? It is ... in the living recognition of the 
 Fatherhood of God, of the Leadership of Christ, of the Brother- 
 hood of Men. He in whom these are living root apprehensions 
 is spiritually alive, is born again, has entered upon the fulness of 
 his manhood, and must, sooner or later, bear the fruits thereof." 
 
 E. Campbell Tainsh. 
 
 " There is a subtle law of assimilation whereby man, in his 
 deepest life, receives an impress from the object on which his 
 gaze is habitually fixed. Those who gaze heavenward are, as the 
 Apostle tells us, changed by the Image of Perfect Beauty from 
 one to another degree of glory. Those who look downwards 
 and earthwards receive as certainly the stamp and likeness of 
 the things beneath them ; they lose their hold by a progressive 
 declension on all that sublimates and ennobles human life." 
 
 Canon H. P. Liddon, D.D. 
 
 " That which is to teach us to live, is itself life not precepts, 
 not rules, alone, but these clothing themselves in the flesh and 
 blood of action and of suffering. .... Life stretches out on every 
 side, and on every side loses itself in the infinite." 
 
 Archbishop R. C. Trench.
 
 16 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Better to share the Spirit's bitterest aches 
 Better to be the weakest wave that breaks 
 On a wild Ocean of tempestuous Life." 
 
 Robert Buchanan. 
 
 " It is not ignoble to feel that the fuller life which a sad experi- 
 ence has brought us is worth our own personal share of pain ; 
 surely it is not possible to feel otherwise, any more than it 
 would be possible for a man with cataract to regret the painful 
 process by which his dim, blurred sight of men as trees walking 
 had been exchanged for clear outline and effulgent day. The 
 growth of higher feeling within us is like the growth of faculty, 
 bringing with it a sense of added strength ; we can no more wish 
 to return to a narrower sympathy, than a painter or a musician 
 can wish to return to his cruder manner, or a philosopher to 
 his less complete formula." George Eliot. 
 
 " To live in any amusement is to be the slave of it. And the 
 Christian should spurn any such dependence." 
 
 Dean Goulburn, D.D. 
 
 " It is the peculiarity of the Christ-life that it may be lived in 
 its utmost grandeur in the humblest worldly circumstances." 
 
 yames Culross, D.D. 
 
 " Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we 
 pass through them, they prove to be many-coloured lenses which 
 paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in 
 its focus." Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 " Amid the tragedies of life, in the haste of sudden grief or the 
 crises of appalling suspense, the quick and vehement waves of 
 passion that sweep within us break angrily against the steadfast 
 sternness of nature ; we resent its silence, we deprecate its 
 periodicity, we are in despair at its calmness, and say, ' It is the 
 face of the blind ' : we forget the long years quickened by the felt 
 life and love of God, and the high moments kindled by his 
 freshest inspiration ; for it is strange and sad how small and 
 brief a darkness may quench for us an everlasting Sun. The 
 healthy mind has no deeper assurance, none closer to the very 
 springs of its energy, than that it is entrusted with itself, able to
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 17 
 
 rise with wing that strengthens in the flight, or to drop in un- 
 fathomable fall. But when the moral nerve relaxes, and life is 
 looked at more than lived, sickly subtleties invade us, and, fitting 
 us into the universal mechanism, oppress us with the ancient 
 nightmare of fate." James Martineau, D.D, 
 
 " We are hasty builders incomplete ; 
 Our Master follows after, far more slow 
 
 And far more sure than we, for frost and heat, 
 And winds that breathe, and waters in their flow 
 
 Work with Him silently ; we stand too near 
 The part as yet to look upon the whole ; 
 
 That thing which shall be doth not yet appear ; 
 It is not with the eye but with the soul 
 That we must view God's work." 
 
 Dora Greenwell. 
 
 " Now, in this life, is the time of growth in the capacity for 
 receiving that boundless love of God. God makes every common 
 thing serve, if thou wilt, to enlarge that capacity of bliss in His 
 love. Not a prayer, not an act of faithfulness in your calling, not 
 a self-denying or kind word or deed, done out of love for Him- 
 self; not an act of study done purely for His love; not a weariness 
 or painfulness endured patiently ; not a duty performed ; not a 
 temptation resisted, but it enlarges the whole soul for the endless 
 capacity of the love of God, and of God." 
 
 Edward B. Pusey, D.D. 
 
 "The faint outlines of ideas that have at any time visited my 
 brain about this tremendous mystery of human life have all been 
 sad and dreary, and most bitterly and oppressively unsatisfactory ; 
 and, therefore, I rejoice that no mental fascination rivets my 
 thoughts to the brink of this dark and unfathomable abyss, but 
 that it is, on the contrary, the tendency of my nature to rest in 
 hope, or rather in faith in God's mercy and power ; and moreover 
 to think that the perception we have (or as you would say, imagine 
 we have) of DUTY, of right to be done and wrong to be avoided, 
 gives significance enough to our existence to make it worth both 
 love and humour, though it should consist of but one conscious
 
 18 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 day in which that noble perception might be sincerely followed, 
 and though absolute annihilation were its termination. The 
 whole value and meaning of life, to me, lies in the single sense of 
 conscience duty ; and that is here, present, now, enough for the 
 best of us God knows how much too much for me." 
 
 Frances A. Kemble. 
 
 " All men are endued with an immortal, conscious, self-deter- 
 mining principle of life. Or rather, that principle is each man's 
 true self, around which all else that belongs to him is clustered, 
 and to which it stands in the relation of a property, or it may be 
 of an accident.' 1 Canon H. P. Liddon, JD.JD. 
 
 " It matters not 
 
 To him who holds the mastery o'er his spirit, 
 And can suppress its workings, till endurance 
 Becomes as nature. We can tame ourselves 
 To all extremes, and there is that in life 
 To which we cling with most tenacious grasp, 
 Even when its lofty climes are all reduced 
 To the poor common privilege of breathing." 
 
 Felicia Hemans. 
 
 " A true life in this world is indeed the best preparation for 
 the world to come, but it must not be forgotten that the chief 
 duties in this world are spiritual, and that spiritual heavens over- 
 arch this world as well as the next." 
 
 Rev. Theodore T. Munger. 
 
 "Life is movement, but motion upward or downward is the 
 alternative. If, as we go on in years, we go forward towards 
 maturity, then we are saving treasure as well as training faculty ; 
 winning reward as well as waiting till our school-term has expired." 
 
 Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 "That man is very strong and powerful who has no more 
 hopes for himself, who looks not to be loved any more, to be 
 admired any more, to have any more honour or dignity, and who 
 cares not for gratitude ; but whose sole thought is for others, and 
 who only lives on for them." Sir Arthur Helps.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 19 
 
 " I do not believe that any human creature, called by God into 
 this life, is without some notion of a Divinity, no matter how 
 mean, how unworthy, how seldom thought of, how habitually 
 forgotten. Superstition, terror, hope, misery, joy every one of 
 these sentiments brings paroxysms in every man's life when some 
 idea of God is seized upon, no matter of what value, no matter 
 how soon relinquished, how evanescent. Eternity is long enough 
 for the progress of those that we see lowest in our moral scale." 
 
 Frances A. Kemble. 
 
 " We set out in life upon our pilgrimage with ideals we are 
 not destined apparently to realise ; we throw all our energy into 
 some work which shall be accomplished, and which shall place 
 upon our career at length its crown. The fields seem to us ripe 
 for the harvest, and we have only to go into them and reap ; 
 we have all had our ideals, but by-and-bye we find that the highest 
 joy and bliss of life is in setting our disappointments themselves 
 to music, and that this is what all the greatest singers have done. 
 It is not the success of life, often, so much as its unsuccess, 
 which is grandest and most hopeful, and proves its greatness. 
 Each of us has his own heaven, tent, endowment, and force. 
 See that one 'grinding in the mill of industry'; see that one 
 climbing the giddy Alpine heights of science ; see that one toiling 
 in the dark and crooked ways of trade ; see that one dashed 
 frequently, it seems almost to pieces, in strife and war with his 
 fellows, but starting up and pursuing his work again. The glory 
 of life is in the purpose that rules it, and finds at last, by faith, 
 that a Divine purpose rules all life." Rev. E. Paxton Hood. 
 
 " All through life I see a Cross, 
 
 Where sons of God yield up their breath : 
 There is no gain except by loss, 
 
 There is no life except by death, 
 
 There is no vision but by Faith, 
 Nor glory but by bearing shame, 
 Nor justice but by taking blame ; 
 
 And that Eternal Passion saith, 
 'Be emptied of glory, and right, and name.'" 
 
 Walter C. Smith, D.D.
 
 20 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " In the depths of our mortal nature lies a dark unsunned well, 
 too deep sunk for the events of common life to stir and touch it, 
 the waters of which, when troubled, reflect the Cross, and prepare 
 man's heart for the cardinal doctrine of Christianity i.e., deliver- 
 ance through a work not his own. Life's deepest moments rouse 
 man from lethargy which its ordinary course weaves round him, 
 and bid him listen for the footstep of Reuben coming to release 
 him, where he lies tied and bound, and incapable of effort, at 
 the bottom of the pit, 'wherein is no water.' " 
 
 Dora Greenwell. 
 
 " By thought alone can no man find God : he may find the 
 solitude in which God dwells, and feel how awful and immeasur- 
 able it is ; but he must ' live ' to know the living God ; and we 
 do not fully live unless we act. . . . We must take in ' stuff ' 
 from the crude dark world, and work with it ; then meditation 
 is manufacture ; else we may have the ' steam up ' and the 
 wheels whirling, but there being no cotton, there will be no 
 clothes; and though busy in speculations, we go about naked 
 and ashamed, and among the naked whom we might have 
 clothed, and therefore the more ashamed. We are only ' godly ' 
 as we are ' partakers of the Divine nature,' and that, in its 
 pure, simple, and sweet, though intense, essence, is revealed 
 and given in Christ, whose life was as busy as it was holy." 
 
 Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 "There is only one plain rule of life eternally binding, and 
 independent of all variations in creeds, and in the interpretations 
 of creeds, embracing equally the greatest moralities and the 
 smallest ; it is this try thyself unweariedly till thou findest the 
 highest thing thou art capable of doing, faculties and outward 
 circumstances being both duly considered, and then DO IT." 
 
 John Stuart Mill. 
 
 " Our daily familiar life is but a hiding of ourselves from each 
 other behind a screen of trivial words and deeds, and those who 
 sit with us at the same hearth are often the farthest off from the 
 deep human soul within us, full of unspoken evil and unacted 
 good." George Eliot.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 21 
 
 " A dark and boundless deep, 
 And a blind height above, 
 Untrodden fields of sleep, 
 Wherein no force may move, 
 Where every sound is still, 
 Nor breathes a living breath ; 
 These are the heights, these are the depths, these 
 
 are the voids of Death. 
 But slowly on the lifeless plain 
 There wakes a far-sent ray, a little star, 
 A tiny spark of Being from afar, 
 A throb of precious pain. 
 It is done, it has been, it has risen, the glimmer 
 
 of Life, 
 
 The dark void withdrawing around, 
 It breaks with a whisper of sound, 
 Through the wastes of silence and sleep, 
 There is no more stillness nor death, 
 The great Universe wakes with a deep-drawn 
 
 singultient breath. 
 The great orbs cohere and spin on their measureless 
 
 ways 
 The great suns awaken and shine, ringed with 
 
 girdles of fire every one 
 All the worlds are on fire and ablaze 
 The flaming globes circle and whirl each one round 
 
 its sun, 
 
 The hot seas seethe and bellow, the fixed hills glow, 
 And the fire of Creation burns fierce while the 
 
 centuries grow ; 
 And Life and Time have begun ! " 
 
 Lewis Morris. 
 
 " This earthly life, when seen hereafter from heaven, will seem 
 like ioi hour passed long ago, and dimly remembered ; that long, 
 laborious, full of joys and sorrows as it is, it will then have 
 dwindled down to a mere point, hardly visible to the far-reaching 
 ken of the disembodied spirit." Henry W. Longfellow.
 
 22 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 "There is much heroism in life, however humble, in every 
 well-conducted struggle, though it be but a struggle for bread ; 
 and in the effort to obtain knowledge, however limited our 
 powers and gloomy our prospects, there is always something 
 noble ; and those higher conflicts of the moral and spiritual life 
 conflicts in which every man may be successful are dignified 
 and great by whomsoever enterprised." 
 
 Rev. H. Stowell Brown. 
 
 " Beware, that thou dost not hasten thy seedling life-tree into 
 bloom. Hasty development is fatal to mature fruit." 
 
 Rev. John Pulsford. 
 
 " This little islet of our life with deep calling to deep round 
 it, for ever, and the tide covering it, moment by moment is too 
 small for any neglect. Eternity comes up like the night, hiding 
 all things, and blotting out the sun. There is no time for trifling. 
 The true Pactolus, with every sand golden, is life." 
 
 y. Cunningham Geikie, D.D. 
 
 "We, here in England, like the old Greeks and Romans, 
 dwellers in the busy mart of civilized life, have got to regard 
 mere bustle as so integral an element of human life, that we 
 consider a love of solitude a mark of eccentricity, and, if we 
 meet any one who loves to be alone, are afraid that he must 
 needs be going mad. That with too great solitude comes the 
 danger of too great self-consciousness, and even at last of 
 insanity, none can doubt ; but still we must remember, on the 
 other hand, that without solitude, without contemplation, without 
 habitual collection and recollection of our own selves from time 
 to time, no great purpose is carried out, and no great work can 
 be done, and that it is the bustle and hurry of our modern life 
 which causes shallow thought, unstable purpose, and wasted 
 energy, in too many who would be better and wiser, stronger 
 and happier, if they would devote more time to silence and 
 meditation ; if they would commune with their own heart in 
 their chamber, and be still." Canon Kingsley. 
 
 " Practise in life whatever thou prayest for, and God will give 
 it thee more abundantly." Edward B. Pusey^ D.D.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 23 
 
 "Whatever you win in life you must conquer by your own 
 efforts, and then it is yours a part of yourself." 
 
 James A. Garfield. 
 
 "All storing up of force is a nutrition; all liberation of it 
 is the effecting of a function. To see the world as it is, we must 
 carry this picture in our eye ; to feel it rightly, our hearts must 
 cast all things into this mould. For it is not in the material 
 alone that this law has its place. It extends as widely, and soars 
 as high as life ; it is the key above all to our o\vn. All strife and 
 failure, all subjection, baffling, wrong; these are nutrition, they are 
 the instruments of life, the prophecies of its perfect ends. They 
 store up the power, they make the organization ; and where these 
 are, the function shall not fail. Life is in that which we call 
 failure, which we feel as loss, which throws us back upon ourselves 
 in anguish, which crushes us with despair : it is in aspirations 
 baffled, hopes destroyed, efforts that win no goal. It is in the 
 cross taken up. The silent flowers, the lilies of the field, teach 
 us this lesson too. Nature takes up her cross ; loses her life to 
 gain it." James Hinton. 
 
 " From idealised presentments of the lives of our fellow- 
 servants, there would be but little for us to learn ; but we do 
 learn the greatest and most important of all lessons when we 
 mark in a struggling soul the triumph of the grace of God 
 when we see a man, weak like ourselves, tempted like ourselves, 
 erring like ourselves, enabled by the force of a sacred purpose 
 to conquer temptation, to trample on selfishness, to rear even 
 upon sins and failures the superstructure of a great and holy 
 life, to build, as it were, ' the cities of Judah out of the ruined 
 fortresses of Samaria.'" Archdeacon F. W. Farrar, D.D. 
 
 "The sun, as he dips beneath the ocean in a cloudless sky, 
 displays a splendour with which nothing else in nature can 
 compare : and yet in our eyes his glory is fairer and more 
 persuasive when he sinks amid clouds which he bathes through 
 and through with rays of fire, clouds, which linger over his 
 resting-place, like the tragic memories of a human life, in pathetic 
 and fading beauty, to tell us what he was and is, whom we no 
 longer see." Canon If. P. Liddon, D.D.
 
 24 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Having life in its abundance, there is no break in its current 
 at death ; there is no waste of even endless ages. If joined to 
 the Divine Life, every change must be to more life." 
 
 Rev. Theodore T. Hunger. 
 
 " Life in its finest effluences comes to those whose susceptibility 
 is keen to affection." Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 " We, like the leaf, the summit, or the wave, 
 Reflect the light our common nature gave ; 
 But every sunbeam, falling from her throne, 
 Wears on our hearts some colouring of our own ; 
 Chilled in the slave, and burning in the free, 
 Like the sealed cavern by the sparkling sea ; 
 Lost, like the lightning, in the sullen clod, 
 Or shedding radiance, like the smiles of God, 
 Pure, pale in virtue, as the star above, 
 Or quivering roseate on the leaves of Love ; 
 Glaring like noontide, where it glows upon 
 Ambition's sands, the desert in the sun ; 
 Or soft suffusing o'er the varied scene 
 Life's common colouring, intellectual green." 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
 " Life is ceaselessly repeating itself, yet anything but monotony 
 is the result." Caroline Fox. 
 
 " Life does not wait for our higher moments." 
 
 J. Tulloch, D.D. 
 
 " Life is for action, not for questioning. 
 
 Edward B. Pusey, D.D. 
 
 " We live in deeds, not years, in thoughts, not breaths ; 
 In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 
 He should count time by heart-throbs. He lives most 
 Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best." 
 
 Philip J. Bailey. 
 
 11 It is the instinctive acquaintance with God which constitutes 
 the very essence of eternal life." Rev. Henry Simon.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 25 
 
 " All life, it has been truly said, is thatched with illusions ; but 
 few illusions are more common and delusive than the idea that 
 the glory and the happiness of the deed in life depends rather 
 upon the conspicuousness of the sphere in which the work is 
 wrought than the moral elevation of the spirit in which it is 
 achieved. The grandeur and power of life is in ' being a whole 
 man, to be one thing at one time ' ; we cannot guess or gauge the 
 value of what we say or do. ' Set me,' the young man says, 
 ' some great task, ye gods, and I will show my spirit.' Not so ; 
 we must plod and plough, vamp up old shoes, and mend old 
 coats, weave our small threads, and trust that great affairs will 
 come by-and-by. ' Everything,' it is said, ' comes to him who 
 waits ' ; and if we weave the slightest work in all humility, perhaps, 
 in the long hereafter, we may find that the thing had within it the 
 seminal glory of diadem and stars." Rev. E. Paxton Hood. 
 
 " There are some days in our higher life when the winds of the 
 Spirit seem to blow and waft us leagues towards the heavenly 
 country : these are the strong moments of our existence." 
 
 W. C. Smith, D.D. 
 
 " Men's proper business in this world falls mainly into three 
 divisions : First, to know themselves, and the existing state of the 
 things they have to do with. 
 
 " Secondly, to be happy in themselves, and in the existing state 
 of things. 
 
 " Thirdly, to mend themselves, and the existing state of things, 
 as far as either are marred and mendable." John Ruskin. 
 
 " As in each man the man's breath or spirit is the life of the 
 body, so in each man there is a certain holy breath or spirit which 
 is the life of his soul ; whence also cometh every good thought 
 and deed into the man." E. A. Abbott, D.D. 
 
 " In our lives we are always weaving novels, and we manage to 
 keep the different tales distinct. A man does, in truth, remember 
 that which it interests him to remember ; and when we hear that 
 memory has gone as age has come on, we should understand that 
 the capacity for interest in the matter concerned has perished." 
 
 Anthony Trollope.
 
 26 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 "Life is cumulative in all ways. A steady purpose is like a 
 river, that gathers volume and momentum by flowing on. The 
 successful man is not one who can do many things indifferently, 
 but one thing in a superior manner. Versatility is overpraised- 
 There is a certain value in having many strings to one's bow, 
 but there is more value in having a bow and a string, a hand and 
 an eye, that will every time send the arrow into the bull's eye of 
 the target." Rev. Theodore T. Hunger. 
 
 " There is a period in our lives, of several years, in which we 
 are, or should be, slowly exchanging the qualities of one state for 
 those of the other. During this intermediate state, then, we . 
 should expect to find persons become less teachable, less ignorant, 
 less selfish, less thoughtless." Thomas Arnold, D.D. 
 
 " Life seems to me so strange, that the chain of events which 
 forms even the most commonplace existence has, in its unexpect- 
 edness, something of the marvellous." Frances A. Kemble. 
 
 11 The gleam of noble actions, generosity, and heroism, may for 
 a moment gild the current of a life while its native hues are dark, 
 cold, and polluted. It is the direction of the great heart-tide 
 within which must be regarded. Splendid deeds are the orna- 
 ments of a life, but they cannot be taken as substitutes for its 
 general tone and tenor. They may illuminate the surface for an 
 instant, but the tide moves on unchanged." 
 
 Bishop W. Boyd Carpenter. 
 
 " How solemn is the life that now is ! There is greatness even 
 in its trifles ; for they are agencies, all of them, for good or evil. 
 The cairn is heaped high by each one flinging a pebble; and the 
 living well is worn by the diligent flow of the brook ; and the 
 shoal that has wrecked a navy is only the work of a colony of 
 worms. And in the moral world surely there can be no trifles at 
 all. Nourish the unrecorded thought of ill, and it shall ripen into 
 the full deed by-and-bye. Hug the sin to the bosom, and cry, 'Is 
 it not a little one ? ' and the one demon will go out only to bring 
 a brotherhood of seven home. Trifles ! They have fixed a destiny, 
 and have sealed a doom many a time." 
 
 IV. Morley Punshon, D.D.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 27 
 
 "What is a Christian life but a lingering death, of which 
 physical death is but the last consummating act ; and if it be not 
 all for Christ, how is it a Christian life ? " 
 
 F. W. Faber, D.D. 
 
 " What mortal, when he saw, 
 Life's voyage done, his heavenly Friend, 
 Could ever yet dare tell Him fearlessly : 
 ' I have kept unfringed my nature's law ; 
 The inly-written chart Thou gavest me 
 To guide me, I have steer'd by to the end ' ? 
 
 Ah ! let us make no claim, 
 
 On life's incognisable sea, 
 
 To too exact a steering of our way ; 
 
 Let us not fret and fear to miss our aim, 
 
 If some fair coast has lured us to make stay, 
 
 Or some friend hail'd us to keep company. 
 
 Ay ! we would each fain drive 
 
 At random, and not steer by rule. 
 
 Weakness ! and worse, weakness bestow'd in vain I 
 
 Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive, 
 
 We rush by coasts where we had lief remain ; 
 
 Man cannot, though he would, live chance's fool. 
 
 No ! as the foaming swath 
 
 Of torn-up water, on the main, 
 
 Falls heavily away with long-drawn roar 
 
 On either side the black deep-furrow'd path, 
 
 Cut by an onward-labouring vessel's prore, 
 
 And never touches the ship-side again ; 
 
 Even so we leave behind, 
 
 As, charter'd by some unknown Powers, 
 
 We stem across the sea of life by night, 
 
 The joys which were not for our use design'd, 
 
 The friends to whom we had no natural right, 
 
 The homes that were not destined to be ours." 
 
 Matthew Arnold*
 
 2% THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Is the life, that bears its fruitage best, 
 One neither of supremacy nor rest ? " 
 
 John Ruskin. 
 
 " To the Christian life, as Christ taught it, a certain thorough- 
 ness, which can alone spring from enthusiasm, is absolutely 
 indispensable." Rev. H. R. Haweis. 
 
 " It's plain enough you get into the wrong road i' this life if you 
 run after this and that only for the sake o' making things easy 
 and pleasant to yourself." George Eliot. 
 
 " There is, in the lives of thousands, a period when a change 
 takes place more or less outwardly visible and sudden, but attain- 
 ing in either case the same result a change wonderful as that 
 which our modern geologists, of the school of Darwin, would have 
 us think may have taken place when the unprogressive animals 
 gave birth to the unknown ' primates ' of our race, endowed with 
 the first faint twilight of reason and possibility of progress. There 
 is a change from a lower to a higher stage of progress ; from 
 stable equilibrium to an unstable equilibrium. To suppose (as 
 pedants have done) that this change consists in a passage to a 
 condition of perfection, is to mistake its nature altogether. Rather 
 does the introduction of the new element into life involve apparent 
 fresh imperfection and disorder. The infinite aspirations awakened 
 in the heart throw out of proportion all the former conditions of 
 existence, and time must intervene before harmony can be re- 
 established between the inner life and the outer; while even at the 
 end of all and at his highest achievement of virtue, the regenerated 
 man must feel his own imperfection, feel (as while unregenerate 
 he could never do) that there is infinity between him and the 
 perfection of God." Frances P. Cobbe. 
 
 " The poor copies of Christ's life which are presented to us even 
 in the lives of the most sincere Christians, resemble the copies 
 of good pictures made by little children. The proportions are 
 all faulty, and the colours do not blend together. There is a 
 likeness, but so imperfect a one, that we must not take pattern 
 by the copy, but ascend up to the original, and study its every 
 feature there, where alone it is perfect." Maria Hare.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 29 
 
 11 The strength of this spiritual life within us may be increased 
 or lessened by our own conduct ; it varies from time to time, as 
 physical strength varies ; it is summoned on different occasions 
 by our will, and dejected by our distress, or our sin ; but it is 
 always equally human, and equally Divine. We are men, and 
 not mere animals, because a special form of it is with us always ; 
 we are nobler and baser men, as it is with us more or less ; but 
 it is never given to us in any degree which can make us more 
 than men." John Ruskin. 
 
 11 The lost days of my life until to-day, 
 What were they, could I see them on the street 
 Lie as they fell ? Would they be ears of wheat 
 Sown once for food but trodden into clay ? 
 Or golden coins squandered and still to pay ? 
 Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet ? 
 Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat 
 The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway ? 
 
 I do not see them here ; but after death 
 God knows I know the faces I shall see, 
 Each one a murdered self, with low last breath. 
 ' I am thyself, what hast thou done to me ? ' 
 ' And I and I thyself (lo ! each one saith), 
 ' And thou thyself to all eternity ! ' " 
 
 Dante G. Rossetti. 
 
 " God looks more at the ' why ' of life, than at the ' what ' of 
 life." James McCann, D.D, 
 
 " What is life worth without a heart to feel 
 The great and lovely, and the poetry 
 And sacredness of things ? For all things are 
 Sacred, the eye of God is on them all, 
 And hallows all unto it. It is fine 
 To stand upon some lofty mountain-thought 
 And feel the spirit stretch into a view ; 
 To joy in what might be if will and power 
 For good would work together but one hour." 
 
 Philip James Bailey.
 
 30 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Love excites the profoundest life of man ; and each lower 
 degree of love prepares the way for one which is higher. The 
 love of God is the end of all, and I suppose that all must drop 
 off, leaf by leaf, till that fruit is matured. The withering^ no 
 doubt, is often exquisitely painful ; still we find that the heart 
 cannot grow here of itself, and that it retains to the last its 
 strong necessity of loving. In the ordinary appointment this goes 
 on gradually through the successive stages of filial tenderness, 
 fraternal affection, intense love, wedded purity and confidence, 
 friendship, patriotism. In other cases it is done by wrenches, as 
 there are some flowers that blossom with a loud crack, when the 
 old covering, once green and tender, falls off; and the great 
 thing, then, seems to be to go on to the next stage humbly, if 
 one has been missed, instead of sinking to the same level again." 
 
 Rev. F. W. Robertson. 
 
 " The pleasure of life is according to the man that lives it, and 
 not according to the work or the place." 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 " It is most true that when the spirit is completely right, all 
 life is a harmony of pleasurable activity ; but it is also most true 
 that, till the spirit is right, its action will generate sorrows. . . . 
 In spiritual life, distresses are a sign of evil that exists, but of 
 good that has come into a new and high activity to put it away." 
 
 Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 " Still hope ! still act ! Be sure that life, 
 
 The source and strength of every good, 
 Wastes down in feeling's empty strife, 
 And dies in dreaming's sickly mood. 
 
 To toil in tasks, however mean, 
 
 For all we know of right and true 
 In this alone our worth is seen ; 
 
 'Tis this we were ordained to do. 
 
 So shalt thou find in work and thought 
 
 The peace that sorrow cannot give ; 
 Though griefs worst pangs to thee be taught, 
 
 By thee let others nobler live." John Sterling.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 31 
 
 " Life is indeed probation, but the judgment that decides is 
 in perpetual session ; not for one moment is it adjourned ; every 
 hour it renders the awards that angels fulfil ; daily and for ever 
 does the Christ of humanity judge according to the deeds done 
 in this present life of humanity, and send to right or left hand 
 destinies. There is no day of eternity auguster than that which 
 now is. There is nothing in the way of consequence to be 
 awaited that is not now enacting, no sweetness that may not 
 now be tasted, no bitterness that is not now felt. What comes 
 after will be but the increment of what now is, for even now 
 we are in the eternal world. The kingdom of heaven has come, 
 and is ever coming ; its powers and processes, its rewards and 
 punishments are to-day in full activity, mounting into ever higher 
 expression, but never more real in one moment of time than in 
 another. Thus seen, life begins to get meaning and dignity, and 
 this world becomes a full theatre of God's action ; for here and 
 now is His throne of judgment set in the heart of every man 
 and in every nation. And so life is the single theme of the 
 Christ life and its fulness. God gives His children one perfect, 
 all-comprehending gift life. It is His own image, His very 
 substance shared with His creatures. Life carries everything 
 with it ; if true, it may be trusted to the uttermost ; all things 
 belong to it. By its own law it is endless ; why should life ever 
 cease to be life? It has but one enemy, sin. So long as life 
 is true to its own laws and relations, it knows no diminution of 
 its forces." Rev. Theodore T. Munger. 
 
 " He only is advancing in life whose heart is getting softer, 
 whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering 
 into living peace." John Ruskin. 
 
 " Amid all life's quests 
 
 There seems but worthy one to do men good. 
 It matters not how long we live, but how." 
 
 Philip y. Bailey. 
 
 "Your life is part of the great human life whose movement 
 onwards in God you retard when you cease to move." 
 
 Rev. Stopford A. Brooke.
 
 32 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " When the Burning Bush of Holy Scripture, and the burning 
 bush of a man's life meet together, thenceforward he is a seer 
 of the invisible, and his life transcends the world. He becomes 
 a Mount Horeb man, he makes excursions into eternity, he talks 
 with God. The fiery Bush is for man, yet he stands in awe 
 before it. It is his own high, august life, that he stands in awe 
 of. It may open upon him suddenly, but he cannot suddenly 
 get used to it. The day will come, when even in heaven, which 
 is God's Bush full of glory in the highest, he will feel like a 
 child at home. For the Lord of Glory will change him from 
 glory to glory, until complete congeniality is brought about 
 between him and the Eternal Glory." Rev.JohnPulsford. 
 
 " We do but guess 
 At one another darkly, 'mid the stir 
 That thickens round us ; in this life of ours 
 We are like players, knowing not the powers 
 Nor compass of the instruments we vex, 
 And by our rash, unskilful touch perplex 
 To straining discord, needing still the key 
 To seek, and all our being heedfully 
 To tune to one another's." Dora Greenwell. 
 
 " This wonderfully woven life of ours shall not be broken by 
 death in a single strand of it ; it shall run on and on, an unbroken 
 life, upheld by the will of the Eternal. Death cannot break it, 
 but it shall change it. It shall draw from it -all perishable dross. 
 While the life remains the same, some elements of which its strands 
 are woven shall be changed ; instead of the silver cord shall be 
 the thread of gold ; for the corruptible shall be the incorruptible ; 
 and there shall be no more entanglement and imperfection, no 
 more strain upon any strand of it ; the flesh shall not chafe against 
 the spirit, nor the spirit against the flesh, but there shall be at 
 last the one perfectly accorded, incorruptible, and beautiful life." 
 
 Rev. Nevvman Smyth. 
 
 " The spontaneous life of emotion and imagination ends in 
 powerlessness and emptiness, and mere slavery to outward im- 
 pressions, unless its free movements be not indeed suppressed, 
 but regulated towards distinct ends. John Sterling.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 33 
 
 " We shape ourselves the joy or fear 
 
 Of which the coming life is made, 
 And fill our Future's atmosphere 
 With sunshine or with shade. 
 
 The tissue of the life to be 
 We weave with colours all our own, 
 
 And in the field of Destiny 
 
 We reap as we have sown." J. G. Whittier. 
 
 "Life has its point of view as well as Art; God, the great 
 Painter, contemplates His pictures from His own standing-point, 
 not from ours ; but He does not require from us more than that 
 we should work on and ' wait,' and ' Rest ' in Him." 
 
 Rev. George Dawson. 
 
 11 The main feature of life is not its sorrow or its joy, nor even 
 its right or wrong doing. 'Its main feature is that, starting at the 
 bare point of existence, it grows with such stride and rapidity that 
 it yields first a person, and then reaches up to God, into whose 
 affinities and likeness it enters as a partaker." 
 
 Rev. Theodore T. Munger. 
 
 " We are placed, as it were, in the presence of an Isis a veiled 
 glory. The heavenly tabernacle is about us, but we know it not. 
 We live, and move, and have our being in the midst of its eternal 
 realities, but they are covered with the badger's skin of familiar 
 uses and commonplace enjoyments, veiled with the blue wrappings 
 of sky and sea, and the purple and scarlet veils of mountain and 
 flower. Our whole life is spent in the effort to see more of heaven 
 in nature and in revelation. Now and then, while we work and 
 pray, the covering is partially lifted, and we obtain a glimpse of 
 the hidden effulgence." Rev. Hugh Macmillan. 
 
 " The universal life bears man's destiny within it ; and not the 
 meanest labour, the most trivial accident, fails in contributing its 
 part. If, ... to understand our life, we must look beyond the 
 seeming, we see here the guide by which we may interpret it. 
 The carrying out of a change in man, this is the meaning of it ; 
 this the unseen fact." James Hinton. 
 
 3
 
 34 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 "Future life does not depend upon the preservation of the 
 physical body, but rather upon its loss. 
 
 The butterfly emerges from the chrysalis a perfect creature 
 not by working up the substance of the worm into itself, but 
 by a growth within it. At a certain stage, the chrysalis may be 
 opened, and the members of the winged insect may be seen, two 
 bodies in one ; one fed through the agency of the other, but not 
 identical with it. The butterfly gains its perfect form, not by 
 assimilating the worm, but by getting rid of it. It is the most 
 beautiful analogy in nature, its very gospel upon the resurrection, 
 at first a creeping thing, dull and earth-bound, a slight period 
 of dormancy, and then a winged creature floating upon the air 
 and feeding upon flowers ; one life, yet possessing from the first 
 the potency of two forms." Rev, Theodore T. Munger. 
 
 " This life's a mystery. 
 The value of a thought cannot be told ; 
 But it is clearly worth a thousand lives, 
 Like many men's. And yet men love to live 
 As if mere life were worth their living for. 
 What but perdition will it be to most ? 
 Life's more than breath and the quick round of blood : 
 It is a great spirit and a busy heart. 
 The coward and the small in soul scarce do live. 
 One generous feeling one great thought one deed 
 Of good, ere night, would make life longer seem 
 Than if each year might number a thousand days, 
 Spent as is this by nations of mankind." 
 
 Philip James Bailey. 
 
 " What is married life ? An occasional meeting, a kiss here 
 and a caress there ? or is it the sacred union of the twain who 
 walk together side by side, knowing each other's joys and sorrows, 
 and going heavenward hand in hand ? " 
 
 Elizabeth Prentiss. 
 
 " Love and its reciprocations develop the full form of life. A 
 man's life is rich just in the measure in which he loves and is 
 loved. Rev. ^. Baldwin Brown.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 35 
 
 " If we would but look upon every improvement in our lives 
 and hearts, as on the seal and mark of God's presence within us, 
 how little room would there be for that lonely feeling with which 
 some measure, as it were, the distance from earth to Heaven, and 
 think that since Jesus ascended up on high, they are left here as 
 if to weep over the grave where He is to be found no longer." 
 
 Thomas Arnold, D.D. 
 
 " There are moments in the life both of men and of nations, 
 both of the world and of the Church, when vast blessings are 
 gained, vast dangers averted, through our own exertions by the 
 sword of the conqueror, by the genius of the statesman, by the 
 holiness of the saint." Dean Stanley, D.D. 
 
 " A mistake in youth creeps after us through life with the gloomy 
 shadow of a crime. Caesar crossed but one Rubicon : but for us 
 there often are countless Rubicons in daily life of rash words, 
 hasty impulses, unwise plans, which are but the work of a moment, 
 yet cut our lives in two, and make a wide gulf between a happy 
 past and a clouded future." Bishop Thorold. 
 
 " Life is greater than intelligence ; sympathy is profounder than 
 obedience." Joseph Parker, D.D. 
 
 " Peculiar glory and peculiar peril go together. Human nature 
 is an unspeakable entrustment ; but for that very reason it is 
 exposed to awful abuse. Man may sacrifice his princely heirship 
 to his lowest craving. The simple beast, having no organ for the 
 life of the Divine understanding, is quite innocent in its perfect 
 abandonment to animal life. It is no reproach to the horse and 
 the mule to live exclusively the horse and the mule-life. But 
 the wondrous creature man, whose animal nature is the tabernacle 
 of his celestial nature, cannot give himself over to intensify and 
 aggrandize the life of his senses, and be innocent." 
 
 Rev. John Pulsford. 
 
 " Life is in fruitfulness which brings content to others, and 
 which brings that content to us which makes us happy in our 
 work, and, therefore, fit to do it well." 
 
 Rev. Stopford A. Brooke.
 
 36 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Always the memory 
 Of overwhelming perils or great joys, 
 Avoided or enjoyed, writes its own trace 
 With such deep characters upon our lives, 
 That all the rest are blotted." 
 
 Lewis Morris. 
 
 " Life without love does but fade." 
 
 Mattliew Arnold. 
 
 " The heart strikes its own hours, and has its own great risings 
 and settings, often measuring out a lifetime of feeling in a single 
 hour by the clock." Ellice Hopkins. 
 
 " Who can foretell what shall be said of us, when this, our busy 
 day, is over? We are always affecting other men with a power 
 which, could we fully know it, would make us tremble. Our 
 thoughtless actions, random words, unguarded hints, our very 
 tones, even our gestures, in our most relaxed hours, leave im- 
 pressions on other men such as we neither design nor imagine. 
 We may learn it in ourselves. Who is there but can trace back 
 thoughts, wishes, imaginations, habits, or even the bias of a whole 
 life to some act or word of another ? " 
 
 Cardinal Manning, D.D, 
 
 " O stream ! 
 
 Whose source is inaccessibly profound, 
 Whither do thy mysterious waters tend ? 
 Thou imagest my life. Thy darksome stillness, 
 Thy dazzling waves, thy loud and hollow gulphs, 
 Thy searchless fountain, and invisible course, 
 Have each their type in me : and the wide sky 
 And measureless ocean may declare as soon 
 What oozy cavern or what wandering cloud 
 Contains thy waters, as the universe 
 Tell where these living thoughts reside, when stretched 
 Upon thy flowers my bloodless limbs shall waste 
 I' the passing wind ! " P. B. Shelley. 
 
 "The beginning of life comes from the partaking of God." 
 
 Edward B. Pusey, D.D.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 37 
 
 " Life would not be worth having if a man had no sort of 
 credit from the society in which he moved, if he stood low in 
 the esteem of every soul which formed his little circle. To be 
 respected by others who know us, to have some influence with 
 them, to carry some weight this is in itself a form of life. Says 
 St. Francis of Sales, ' We live three lives : a corporal life, which 
 stands in the union of soul and body; a spiritual life, which 
 stands in the grace of God ; and a civil life, which stands in our 
 reputation. The corporal life is stifled by murder ; the spiritual 
 life is stifled by sin ; and the civil life is stifled by slander, which 
 is a species of murder, inasmuch as it destroys a species of life." 
 Dean Goulburn, D.D. 
 
 " Life is its own discipline. 
 
 " Every sorrow of life is the consequence of sin. It is the 
 reminder of what we are and what we need. And when we have 
 learned to recognise it thus, it ceases to be a hardship, and 
 becomes an act of mercy. And as the Christian spirit grows 
 within our subdued and softened hearts, we thank God that He 
 hath not left us without chastisement, but that, by the visitation 
 of a Father's rod, He reminds us that, despite our stubbornness, 
 He regards us as children still, and would fain break us till the 
 child-spirit blossoms over all our life. Life's discipline, about 
 which we often talk, means just this : that we are in God's school, 
 not simply under law, as a revelation of duty, but likewise under 
 government, a system involving consequences and results of 
 moral deportment ; an economy under which obedience is happi- 
 ness, ' and every transgression and disobedience receives its just 
 recompense of reward.' " Rev. Arthur Mursell. 
 
 " Some people's lives did seem to become like shells, incapable 
 of expanding as of perishing ; fixed in a fair mould, not without 
 colour or beauty, but unvarying, the same from year to year ; 
 specimens classified in the great museum of humanity, not human 
 individualities tossed hither and thither on the common sea of 
 life." Elizabeth Charles. 
 
 " So soon as there is a suspicion that there is not an eternal 
 goodness behind and under life, it changes colour, and grows 
 cheap and poor." Rev. Theodore T. Hunger.
 
 38 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Each man is sent into the world to work out, by his acts 
 or words, some particular truth which he alone possesses ; and 
 the inimitable speciality of each man's experience must present 
 things to him in an aspect which can be exactly the same for no 
 other." Rei<. Hugh Macmillan. 
 
 " A new day is as a new life. Every day is a little life by 
 itself. This little life is like our greater one in many ways. We 
 little think at its commencement what shall happen before its 
 close, we little think of what we shall become ready to do. and 
 what we shall be compelled to bear. We think not of sorrows, 
 changes, and unfaithfulness. Our great life and our little one are 
 also alike in this, that the character of their advance and ending 
 depends very much upon that of their commencement. The way 
 in which we spend our morning will influence greatly the way in 
 which we spend our day, as the character of our youth will affect 
 that of our after-life. Waste early hours or early years, and who 
 shall ensure the security of later ones ? Sin away early strength, 
 and cast away early opportunities, and who can tell whether 
 strength shall be repaired or opportunities renewed ? " 
 
 Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 " A life of beauty lends to all it sees 
 
 The beauty of its thought ; 
 And fairest forms and sweetest harmonies 
 Make glad its way, unsought. 
 
 In sweet accordancy of praise and love, 
 
 The singing waters run ; 
 And sunset mountains wear in light above 
 
 The smile of duty done ; 
 
 Sure stands the promise ever to the meek 
 
 A heritage is given ; 
 Nor lose they earth who, single-hearted, seek 
 
 The righteousness of Heaven ! " 
 
 / G. Whittier. 
 
 "Human life should indeed be sacred, on account of the 
 Divine Spirit enshrined in it." Archdeacon Julius C. Hare.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 39 
 
 " There's a deal in a man's inward life as you can't measure 
 by the square, and say, ' Do this, and that'll follow,' and ' Do 
 that, and this'll follow.' There's things go on in the soul, and 
 times when feelings come into you like a rushing mighty wind, 
 as the Scripture says, and part your life in two a' most, so as you 
 look back on yourself as if you was somebody else." 
 
 George Eliot. 
 
 " There is a sphere in the life of every one, except the child, 
 in which he is appointed to rule, and to exercise some functions 
 by the methods of his own will." James Martineau, D.D. 
 
 " For ah ! the weariness and weight of tears, 
 The crying out to God, the wish for slumber, 
 They lay so deep, so deep ! God heard them all ; 
 He set them into music of His own ; 
 But easier far the task to sing of kings, 
 Or weave weird ballads where the moon-dew glistens, 
 Than body forth this life in beauteous sound." 
 
 Robert Btuhanan. 
 
 " The web of life is complex to an unparalleled degree. Well 
 is the living frame called a microcosm; it contains in itself a 
 representation of all the powers of nature. It cannot be paralleled 
 by any single order of forces ; it exhibits the interworking of them 
 all. And these processes of decomposition which generate func- 
 tional activity are so mixed up with other vital processes, that no 
 experiment can disentangle them." James Hinton. 
 
 "Nothing done by independent human effort can have the 
 nature of spiritual life ; it is out of the spiritual order ; therefore 
 it is that the Scriptures sometimes seem to speak more of what 
 God has done for grafting man again into the vine, than of what 
 is required from man as duty." Thomas Erskine. 
 
 " A sacred burden is this life ye bear, 
 Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly, 
 Stand up, and walk beneath it steadfastly. 
 Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin, 
 But onward, upward, till the goal ye win." 
 
 Frances A. Kemble.
 
 40 THOUGHTS ON LIFE.\ 
 
 " The decline of life can never know again the freshness of the 
 spring, but it may have its Indian summer, even more delicious 
 in its deep calm, its magical colouring, and its mysterious loveli- 
 ness." Bishop Connop Thirlwall. 
 
 " Death ! There is not any Death ; only infinite change, 
 Only a place of life which is novel and strange. 
 Change ! There is nought but change and renewal of strife, 
 Which make up the infinite changes we sum up in life. 
 Life ! What is life, that it ceases with ceasing of breath ? 
 Death ! What were Life without change, but an infinite 
 Death ? " Lewis Morris. 
 
 " Growth in Christian life involves changes ; it is growth through 
 change." Rev. R. Tuck. 
 
 " The law of life is renewal, not repetition ; development, not 
 invariableness." Rev. Alexander Mackennal. 
 
 " Spiritual life is great and clear, 
 And self-continuous as the changeless sea, 
 Rolling the same in every age as now; 
 Whether o'er mountain-tops, where only snow 
 Dwells, and the sunbeam hurries coldly by ; 
 Or o'er the vales, as now, of some old world, 
 Older than ancient man's. As is the sea's, 
 So is the life of spirit, and the kind. 
 And then with natures raised, refined, and freed 
 From these poor forms, our days shall pass in peace 
 And love ; no thought of human littleness 
 Shall cross our high calm souls, shining and pure 
 As the gold gates of Heaven. Like some deep lake 
 Upon a mountain Summit they shall rest, 
 High above cloud and storm of life like this, 
 All peace and power, and passionless purity ; 
 Or if a thought of other troubled times 
 Ruffle it for a moment, it shall pass 
 Like a chance raindrop on its heavenward face.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 41 
 
 This life, this world is not enough for us ; 
 
 They are nothing to the measure of our mind. 
 
 For place we must have space ; for time we must have 
 
 Eternity ; and for a spirit, godhood. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 True bliss is to be found in holy life ; 
 
 In charity to man in love to God. 
 
 Why should such duties cease, such powers decay ? 
 
 Are they not worthy of a deathless state 
 
 A boundless scope a high uplifted life ? 
 
 Man, like the air-born eagle, who remains 
 
 On earth only to feed, and sleep, and die, 
 
 But whose delight is on his lonely wing, 
 
 Wide sweeping as a mind, to force the skies 
 
 High as the lightfall, ere, begirt with clouds, 
 
 It dash this nether world immortal man 
 
 Rushes aloft, right upwards, into Heaven, 
 
 O faith of Christ, sole honour of the world ! " 
 
 Philip James Bailey 
 
 "There is no state in life hath all the 'ands,' 
 Nor any all the ' buts.' " S. W. Partridge. 
 
 " A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some spot of 
 a native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for 
 the face of earth, for the labours men go forth to, for the sounds 
 and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home 
 a familiar unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of 
 knowledge ; a spot where the definiteness of early memories may 
 be inwrought with affection, and kindly acquaintance with all neigh- 
 bours, even to the dogs and donkeys, may spread not by senti- 
 mental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit of the blood. 
 At five years old mortals are not prepared to be citizens of the 
 world, to be stimulated by abstract nouns, to soar above prefer- 
 ence into impartiality ; and that prejudice in favour of milk with 
 which we blindly begin, is a type of the way body and soul must 
 get nourished, at least for a time. The best introduction to 
 astronomy is to think of the mighty heavens as a little lot of stars 
 belonging to one's own homestead." George Eliot.
 
 42 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Sorrow is life with an honest face. It is life looking what it 
 is. Nevertheless there is the truest, the heavenliest of all joys in 
 sorrow, because it detaches us from the world, and draws us with 
 such quiet, persuasive, irresistible authority to God." 
 
 F. IV. Faber, D.D. 
 
 "It is a wonderful thing Life, ever growing old, yet ever 
 young ; ever dying, ever being born ; cut down and destroyed by 
 accident, by violence, by pestilence, by famine ; preying remorse- 
 lessly and insatiably upon itself, yet multiplying and extending 
 still, and filling every spot of earth on which it once obtains a 
 footing; so delicate, so feeble, so dependent upon fostering 
 circumstances and the kindly care of nature, yet so invincible ; 
 endowed as if with supernatural powers, like spirits of the air, 
 which yield to every touch, and seem to elude our force ; sub- 
 sisting by means impalpable to our grosser sense, yet wielding 
 powers which the mightiest agencies obey. Weakest, and strong- 
 est, of the things that God has made, Life is the heir of Death, 
 and yet his conqueror. Victim at once and victor. All living 
 things succumb to Death's assault ; Life smiles at his impotence, 
 and makes the grave her cradle." James Hinton. 
 
 " Life is a fire, yet not to blast and reduce to ashes, but to 
 fuse. It takes a vast assemblage of qualities and faculties most 
 unlike and often discordant, and reduces them first to harmony 
 and then to oneness." Rev. Theodore T. Munger. 
 
 " Life in every shape should be precious to us, for the same 
 reason that the Turks carefully collect every scrap of paper that 
 comes in their way, because the name of God may be written 
 upon it." Jean Paul Richter. 
 
 " He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the 
 passing life in remembering the past." 
 
 H. D. Thoreau. 
 
 " With many life is but a continuous endeavour to forget and 
 keep out of sight of their true selves a vain eluding and out- 
 stripping of a reality which is still ever with them, and to the 
 consciousness of which they must one day awake." 
 
 John Caird, D.D.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 43 
 
 " Our whole happiness and power of energetic action depend 
 upon our being able to breathe and live in the cloud ; content to 
 see it opening here, and closing there ; rejoicing to catch through 
 the thinnest films of it, glimpses of stable and substantial things ; 
 but yet perceiving a nobleness even in the concealment, and 
 rejoicing that the kindly veil is spread where the untempered 
 light might have scorched us, or the infinite clearness wearied." 
 
 John Ruskin. 
 
 "The true way to begin life is not to look off upon it to see 
 what it offers, but to take a good look at self. Find out what you 
 are, how you are made up, your capacities and lacks, and then 
 determine to get the most out of yourself possible. Your faculties 
 are avenues between the good of the world and yourself; the 
 larger and more open they are, the more of it you will get. Your 
 object should be to get all the riches and sweetness of life into 
 yourself; the method is through trained faculties." 
 
 Rev. Theodore T. Munger. 
 
 11 Life goes best with those who take it best." 
 
 Jean Ingelow. 
 
 " To dignify the day with deeds of good, 
 And constellate the eve with holy thoughts : 
 This is to live, and let our lives narrate, 
 In a new version, solemn and sublime, 
 The grand old legend of Humanity." 
 
 Philip James Bailey. 
 
 " Life would be no better than candle-light tinsel and day- 
 light rubbish if our spirits were not touched by what has been, 
 to issues of longing and constancy." George Eliot. 
 
 " We are all born to fill a certain sphere, to play a part in 
 life, and, if that part be carelessly done, slurred over, or spoiled, 
 we at once do an injury which no one else can repair." 
 
 /. H. Friswell. 
 
 " Though we cannot create life, we can starve it ; though the 
 new man can be born only of God, he can be hurt, and dwarfed, 
 and ruined by man." Rev. John S. B. Monsell, LL.D.
 
 44 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " The man who delights in regarding this life as a stage cannot 
 attach an overwhelming importance to any incident ; he observes 
 life as a spectator, and does not engage in it as an actor." 
 
 John Inglesant. 
 
 " Life does not suspend the chemical or any other laws ; they 
 are operative still, and evidence of their action is everywhere 
 to be met with ; but in living structures force is employed in 
 opposing chemical affinity, so that the chemical changes which 
 go on in them take place under peculiar conditions, and manifest, 
 accordingly, peculiar characteristics." James Hinton. 
 
 " He who habituates himself in his daily life to seek for the 
 stern facts in whatever he hears or sees, will have these facts 
 again brought before him by the involuntary imaginative power 
 in their noblest associations ; and he who seeks for frivolities and 
 fallacies, will have frivolities and fallacies again presented to him 
 in his dreams." John Ruskin. 
 
 " Daily, customary life is a dark and mean abode for man. 
 Unless he often opens the door and windows, and looks out into 
 a freer world beyond, the dust and cobwebs soon thicken over 
 every entrance of light ; and in the perfect gloom he forgets that 
 beyond and above there is an open air." John Sterling. 
 
 " Our life from a two-fold root 
 Springs upwards to the sky, 
 One, surface only, shared with tree and brute, 
 And one, as deep and strong as heaven is high. 
 Spirit and sense, 
 
 Each bears its part and dwells in innocence, 
 Yet only grown together can they bear 
 The one consummate fruit." 
 
 Lewis Morris. 
 
 11 The blessedness of life depends far more on its interests than 
 upon its comfort." George MacDonald, LL.D. 
 
 " The life of the flesh is only possible, on the condition that 
 the glory of the Eternal Kingdom is strongly shut out." 
 
 Rev. John Pulsford.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 45 
 
 " A man's life is not worth much if it ceases to be capable 
 of enlargement." Alexander Raleigh, D.D. 
 
 "If life can start at the point of mere existence, and thence 
 grow up into likeness to God, it is worth living. And if life 
 reaches so far, we may be sure it will go on. If it gets to the 
 point of laying hold of God, and begins to feel and act like God, 
 it will never relax its hold, it will never cease from action so 
 essentially and eternally valuable. There is the same reason for 
 the continued existence of such a being as of God Himself ; that 
 which is like the Best must, for that very reason, live on with 
 the Best. . . . Life of itself may not reach its proper fulness, 
 but One is in humanity who is redeeming it from its failures, and 
 filling its cup even to overflow." Rev. Theodore T. Munger. 
 
 " Luxurious and polished life, without a true sense for the 
 beautiful, the good, and the great, is far more barren and sad 
 to see, than that of the ignorant and brutalized. Even as a mere 
 wilderness would be less dreary to traverse, than a succession 
 of farms and gardens diligently and expensively cultivated to 
 produce no crops but weeds." John Sterling. 
 
 " In whatever is an object of life, in whatever may be infinitely 
 and for itself desired, we may be sure there is something of divine, 
 for God will not make anything an object of life to His creatures 
 which does not point to, or partake of, Himself." 
 
 John Ruskin. 
 
 " A life framed after the Divine idea participates in the Divine 
 reality. If we live in harmony with the will that made and rules 
 the world, the issue of our life must be good. Our part is, to 
 be and do our best in the present ; God's part is, to make our 
 future correspond to the present out of which it grows." 
 
 A. M. Fairbairn, D.D. 
 
 " He who lives for heaven, lives for the Divine union of right 
 heart and right conditions." Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 " Our spiritual lift begins with distant glimpses, erroneous con- 
 ceptions, broken and imperfect lights of God." 
 
 Henry Allan, D.D.
 
 46 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " By fair dealing, justice, kindness, self-control, and the great 
 work of helping others while you help yourself, let your life prove 
 a worship. Criticise the world not by censure only, but by the 
 example of a great life." Rev. Theodore Parker. 
 
 " We know not what Thou art, and yet we love ; 
 We know not where Thou dwell'st, yet still above 
 We turn our eyes to Thee, knowing Thou wilt take 
 Our yearnings and wilt treasure them, and make 
 Our little lives fulfil themselves and Thee : 
 And in this trust we bear to be. 
 
 Oh, Light, so white and pure, 
 
 Oft clouded, and yet sure ! 
 
 Oh, inner Radiance of the heart, 
 
 That drawest all men, whatsoe'er Thou art ! 
 
 Spring of the soul, that dost remove 
 
 Winter with rays of love, 
 
 And dost dispel of Thy far-working might 
 
 The clouds of 111 and Night, 
 
 For every soul which cometh to the earth ; 
 
 That beamest on us at our birth, 
 
 And paling somewhat in life's grosser day, 
 
 Lightest, a pillar of fire, our evening way ; 
 
 What matter by what Name 
 
 We call Thee ? Still art Thou the same, 
 
 God call we Thee, or Good, still through the strife 
 
 Unchangeable alone, of all our changeful life, 
 
 With awe-struck souls we seek Thee, we adore 
 
 Thy greatness ever more and more, 
 
 We turn to Thee with worship, till at last, 
 
 Our journey well-nigh past, 
 
 When now our day of Life draws to its end, 
 
 Looking, with less of awe and more of love, 
 
 To Thy high throne above, 
 
 We see no dazzling brightness as of old, 
 
 No kingly splendours cold, 
 
 But the sweet Presence of a heavenly Friend." 
 
 Lewis Morris.
 
 .THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 47 
 
 " True life begins when the purpose of life begins. All things 
 are made for purposes higher than themselves. Thus vegetable 
 life is for animal life, and animal life for human life, and human 
 life for the Divine life. Everything looks up for its end to a kind 
 of life superior to itself." Rev. Benjamin Kent. 
 
 11 Every man is bound to develop his individuality, to endea- 
 vour to find the right way of life, and to walk in it. He has the 
 will to do so ; he has the power to be himself, and not the echo 
 of somebody else, nor the reflection of lower conditions, nor the 
 spirit of current conventions." Samuel Smiles. 
 
 11 Every moment carries the threads to and fro in the loom 
 of life, and fills in our destiny. The mark of God or of Cain 
 is slowly coming out on our forehead day by day. Life is the 
 building yard, Eternity the ocean ; and as the ribs, and plates, 
 and girders determine, so will the voyage be." 
 
 J. Cunningham Geikie, D.D. 
 
 "Life a continual building up, a ceaseless fortifying, and 
 enlargement, and multiplication of the treasures pf the spirit." 
 
 John Morley. 
 
 " What is life but a continual growing, or a continual decay- 
 ing ? " Canon Kings ley. 
 
 " It's well we should feel as life's a reckoning we can't make 
 
 twice over ; there's no real making amends in this world, any 
 
 more nor you can mend a wrong subtraction by doing your 
 addition right." George Eliot. 
 
 " A particular appointment, ordering the life of individual men, 
 appears to be inseparable from the idea of God's providential 
 government over the world. As that government is carried on 
 upon a perfect general scheme, so it must necessarily involve an 
 ordering and disposal of particular agents." 
 
 Cardinal Manning, D.D. 
 
 " Salvation is the healing of spiritual disease, and eternal life 
 is the communication of the life of God to the Soul. Eternal life 
 is not given as a premium for knowing God ; the knowledge of 
 God, as revealed in Christ, is eternal life" Thomas Erskine.
 
 48 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Our life begins in the senses. Men walk upon the ground ; 
 but above it God has sprung the blue arch of heaven, and they 
 live by breathing the air. So it is with our interior life. The 
 material of the world is the foundation, the grand workshop for 
 our faculties ; but if this be all, if there hangs not above it God's 
 invisible realm of truth, in which we breathe, there can be no 
 healthy living. That a plant may grow, we put manure into the 
 soil ; but when the roots have taken hold upon it, and it has shot 
 up into stem, and leaves, and flowers, we do not pour manure 
 into the white blossom. It holds up its cup, and says, ' O 
 Heaven ! send Thy light, and drop down Thy dew.' And the 
 light glows, and the dew falls, and the flower expands by feeding 
 upon the air. So man's life must begin in the material. He 
 must first learn how to live as an animal, and must employ all 
 those forces which will contribute to his development ; but when 
 he comes to the blossoms of faith, and hope, and courage, he 
 needs other aliment. They must unfold, and be nourished in 
 God's upper air." Henry Ward Beecher, D.D. 
 
 " All true lift and success are from within. God so made the 
 world and all things in it, 'seed within itself is the eternal 
 law. No one can row against the stream all his life and make 
 a success of it. Rev. Theodore T. Munger. 
 
 " Whatever is lofty and noble in. life and history, whatever lifts 
 us by some celestial attraction above the downward gravitation 
 of self, it has been the function of suffering to create. All that is 
 vast and majestic, even in our material and mechanical life, the 
 successes of engineering on land and water, is the result of 
 labouring thought coming down upon the theatre of creation, 
 grappling with its mightiest energies, and chaining the captive 
 Titans of the rock, the storm, the ocean, to the triumphal car of 
 human improvement. And whenever anything morally great 
 arrests our eye, it is always that conscience or love has been 
 summoned to the field, and has not declined the war; that 
 obstructions, of condition or of opinion, have beset some felt 
 obligation, and the mind has yet burst through the entanglement, 
 and determined to be free ; that, for example, the arts of tyrants, 
 or the ignoble sleep of a people's better mind, have threatened
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 49 
 
 the higher franchise of a nation's thought, or speech, or action, 
 and some one has been content to stand alone and perish with 
 expostulating death ; or that in private the inquisition of some 
 dreadful torture has vainly tried to crush forth a querulous con- 
 fession, or some deep grief been hid beneath the silent and 
 cheerful toil of duty. All the pure brilliants of history stand forth 
 from the night of darkest necessity, and make a heaven of what 
 else were the dreariest abyss. Whatever is higher than happiness 
 is revealed to us only in the loss of happiness ; and that which 
 is highest of all, the life of religion, the sense of sanctity, the 
 allegiance to God, find no place within us, till we are cast down 
 in true affliction." James Martineau, D.D. 
 
 . " Selfs dark shadow is that which saddens all life, sours all 
 sweets, darkens all joy." Rev. J. S. B. Monsell, LL.D. 
 
 " Every -state of life is ordered by the same Divine Governor. 
 Even our unmarked and homely life may be the scene of as 
 direct a variance of our will with the will of God, as the life of 
 Pharaoh or of Saul." Cardinal Manning. 
 
 "We sleep, but the loom of life never stops ; and the pattern 
 which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it 
 comes up to-morrow." Henry Ward Beecher, D.D. 
 
 " Life of any kind is a confounding mystery ; nay, that which 
 we commonly do not call life, the principle of existence in a stone 
 or a drop of water, is an inscrutable wonder. That in the infinity 
 of Time and Space anything should be, should have a distinct 
 existence, should be more than nothing ! The thought of an 
 immense abysmal Nothing is awful, only less so than that of All 
 and God ; and thus a grain of sand, being a fact, a reality, rises 
 before us into something prodigious, immeasurable, a fact that 
 opposes and counterbalances the immensity of non-existence. 
 And if this be so, what a thing is the life of man, which not 
 only is, but knows that it is; and not only is wondrous, but 
 wonders ! " John Sterling, 
 
 " There is no possibility of getting the Omega and omitting the 
 Alpha in life." Rev. George Dawson. 
 
 4
 
 5 o THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 11 Truth gives to life interpretation and hope ; life gives to truth 
 new reality and impress! veness." Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 11 A life spent amidst holy things may be intensely secular ; a 
 life the most of which is passed in the thick and throng of the 
 world, may be holy and divine." John Caird, D.D. 
 
 " My children, ere it be too late, be warn'd ! 
 The pathway of obedience and of life 
 Is one and narrow and of steep ascent, 
 But leads to limitless felicity. 
 Not so the tracks of disobedience stretch 
 On all sides, open, downward, to the Deep 
 Which underlies the kingdom of My love. 
 Good, evil ; life and death : here is your choice. 
 From this great trial of your fealty, 
 This shadow of all limited free will, 
 It is not Mine, albeit Omnipotent, 
 To save you. Ye yourselves must choose to live. 
 But only supplicate My ready aid, 
 And My Good Spirit within you will repel 
 Temptation from the threshold of your heart 
 Unscathed, or if conversed with heretofore 
 Will soon disperse the transitory film, 
 And fortify your soul with new resolve." 
 
 Bishop E. Jf: Bickersteth* 
 
 " It is not love received 
 That maketh man to know the inner life 
 Of them that love him ; his own love bestowed 
 Shall do it. Love thy Father, and no more 
 His doings shall be strange. Thou shalt not fret 
 At any counsel, then, that He will send, 
 No, nor rebel, albeit He have with thee 
 Great reservations. Know, to Be is more 
 Than to have acted." Jean Ingelow. 
 
 " We paint our lives in fresco. The soft and fusile plaster of 
 the moment hardens under every stroke of the brush into eternal 
 rock." John Sterling.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 51 
 
 " Mere matter is the only thing which is permanent here. 
 Forms of matter, which have life in them, are not permanent. 
 All living forms, whether in the vegetable, animal, or human 
 world, wax old, dissolve, and are no more. Living forms owe 
 their continuance in the material universe to ceaseless reproduction. 
 All the forms of beautiful and of active life, which are now 
 flourishing in the light of the sun, are very recent. The forms 
 which were, are not ; the forms which now are, cannot continue. 
 An inevitable doom bears everything to destruction. If the 
 generation of ever new forms were interrupted, there would soon 
 be [no such thing as a single living plant or creature in the 
 whole world. The dead matter of the globe would still be here, 
 but without one solitary instance of life. Again and again the 
 whole living world has fallen into the jaws of death ; the matter 
 of the globe still remaining, as the material and platform of future 
 organizations. All we know of life, at present, is from its works 
 and manifestations in death's dominions. We have innumerable 
 forms in which life resides ; but no living forms. Life's own forms 
 would be eternal. Life lodges like a foreigner in a material 
 vessel. Life to the vessel is a foreigner, and the vessel is a foreigner 
 to life. Life will be ever and ever touching, and working, and 
 playing on these shores, but no organization belonging to the 
 material universe can retain the mysterious presence. Life is 
 the phoenix of the world, always leaving us in order to be always 
 here. Life is destructive of the material vessel, and yet it will 
 tabernacle in the vessel." Rev. John Pulsford. 
 
 " Life will have its load for each one of us, whether in God's 
 vineyard or out of it. The cares of life, the toils of life, the 
 sorrows of life, are not lightened by living to ourselves. The 
 scorching sirocco will beat upon us equally the sudden access 
 of calamity, inward or outward ; the cruel blast of calumny, or 
 the withering breath of disappointment whether we be keeping 
 close to Christ, or living without God in the world. The only 
 difference will be, shall we have a Friend with us in all, a Friend 
 constant in love and changeless as eternity? or shall we live 
 alone in spirit, and die to ourselves ? " 
 
 Dean Vaughan, D.D.
 
 52 THOUGHTS ON LIFE 
 
 " Toil is the law of life, and its best fruit ; 
 This from the uncaring brute 
 Divides ; this and the prescient mind whose store 
 Grows daily more and more. 
 Toil is the mother of wealth, 
 The nurse of health ; 
 Toil 'tis that gives the zest 
 To well-earned rest ; 
 The law of life laid broad and deep 
 As are the fixed foundations of the sea, 
 The medicine of grief, the remedy, 
 Wherefrom Life giveth his beloved sleep." 
 
 Leivis Morris. 
 
 " Life cannot be made up of recreations, they must be garden 
 spots in well-farmed land." Ann Gilbert. 
 
 " A false choice often costs a man half his life. No greatness 
 of intellectual powers, no scholastic attainments, no worldly 
 advantages, will compensate for a rash step at the outset. Even 
 those that best recover themselves are not what they would have 
 been. Many never recover themselves at all ; one false choice 
 leads to another; when they attempt to begin over again, they 
 cannot find the place from which they set out ; they have lost the 
 point of sight. They pass from one wrong path to another, and 
 a succession of changes is generally a succession of mistakes." 
 
 Cardinal Manning. 
 
 " So live that when thy summons comes to join 
 The innumerable caravan which moves 
 To that mysterious realm where each shall take 
 His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
 Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, 
 Scourged to his dungeon ; but, sustained and soothed 
 By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, 
 Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch 
 About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." 
 
 William Cullen Ervant.
 
 THOUGHTS ON L1PE. 53 
 
 " Preparations are good in life, prologues ruinous." 
 
 Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 
 
 " We struggle with all natural laws, and make 
 Our life a strange disorder.'' Letitia E. Landon. 
 
 " This circulating principle of life, 
 That vivifies the outside of the earth 
 And permeates the sea ; that here and there, 
 Awakening up a particle of matter, 
 Informs it, organizes, gives it power 
 To gather and associate to itself, 
 Transmute, incorporate other, for a term 
 Sustains the congruous fabric, and then quits it ; 
 This vagrant principle so multiform, 
 Ebullient here and undetected there, 
 Is not unauthorized, nor increate, 
 Though indestructible ? life never dies ; 
 Matter dies off it, and it lives elsewhere, 
 XDr else how circumstanced and shaped ? it goes ; 
 At every instant we may say 'tis gone, 
 But never it hath ceased ; the type is changed, 
 Is ever in transition, for life's law 
 To its eternal essence doth prescribe 
 Eternal mutability and thus 
 To say I live says I partake of that 
 Which never dies. But how far I may hold 
 An interest indivisible from life 
 Through change (and whether it be mortal change, 
 Change of senescence, or of gradual growth, 
 Or other whatsoever 'tis alike), 
 Is question, not of argument, but fact. 
 In all men some such interest inheres ; 
 In most 'tis posthumous ; the more expand 
 Our thoughts and feelings past the very present, 
 The more that interest overtakes of change, 
 And comprehends, till what it comprehends 
 Is comprehended in eternity, 
 And in no less a span." Sir Henry Taylor.
 
 54 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " We are part of an Infinite Scheme, 
 
 All we that are ; 
 
 Man the high crest and crown of things that be, 
 
 The fiery-hearted earth, the cold, unfathomed sea, 
 
 The central sun, the intermittent star, 
 
 Things great and small, 
 
 We are but parts of the Eternal All 
 
 We live not in a barren, baseless dream 
 
 No endless, ineffectual chain 
 
 Of chance successions launched in vain ; 
 
 But every beat of Time, 
 
 Each sun that shines or fails to shine, 
 
 Each animate life that comes to throb or cease, 
 
 Each life of herb or tree 
 
 Which springs aloft and then has ceased to be, 
 
 Each change of strife and peace, 
 
 Each soaring thought sublime, 
 
 Each deed of wrong and blood, 
 
 Each impulse towards an unattained good, 
 
 All with a sure, unfaltering working tend 
 
 To one Ineffable, Beatific End. 
 
 Oh, hidden Scheme, perfect Thyself, and take 
 
 Our petty lives, and mould them as Thou wilt ! 
 
 All things that are, are only for Thy sake, 
 
 And not to obey Thee is our only guilt ! 
 Perfect Thyself, and be fulfilled, O great 
 
 Unfathomable Will, who art our Life and Fate ! " 
 
 Lewis Morris. 
 
 " Sleeping or waking, we hear not the airy footsteps of the 
 strange things that almost happen. Does it not argue a superin- 
 tending Providence, that, while viewless and unexpected events 
 thrust themselves continually athwart our path, there should still 
 be regularity enough in mortal life, to render foresight even 
 partially available ? " Nathaniel Hawthorne. 
 
 " He who has never wondered has never lived. Life has lost 
 its heart when it ceases to present the grand and the marvellous." 
 
 Rev. Benjamin Kent.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 55 
 
 " In the life of every man there are sudden transitions of feel 
 ing, which seem almost miraculous. At once, as if some magician 
 had touched the heavens and the earth, the dark clouds melt into 
 the air, the wind falls, and serenity succeeds the storm. The 
 causes which produce these sudden changes may have been long 
 -at work within us ; but the changes themselves are instantaneous 
 and apparently without sufficient cause." 
 
 Henry W. Longfellow. 
 
 " Life is full of voices of God, only we lack the spiritual faculty 
 which discerns them." Henry Alton, D.D. 
 
 " The highest and first law of the universe and the other 
 name of life, is, . . . ' help/ " John Ruskin. 
 
 " I long for other life more full, more keen, 
 And yearn to change with such as well have run 
 
 Yet reason mocks me nay, the soul, I ween, 
 Granted her choice, would dare to change with none." 
 
 Jean Ingelow. 
 
 " No one, of or by himself, can enter into the springs of his 
 own being. . . . No one ever yet entered into, or found out 
 the resources, either of his thoughts or feelings, until that 
 particular person appeared, who had the particular keys by which 
 to unlock his resources. The bell cannot reveal to itself the 
 sound of its metal, the friendly hammer must do that. My friend, 
 wherever he is, must put me in possession of myself. Many are 
 quite conscious that the person has never yet appeared who 
 can unlock for them their own nature, and lead their way into 
 its depths and hiding-places. Others are quite conscious that 
 the presence of certain individuals gives them a totally new and 
 different possession of their being. With most persons, they live 
 only on the ground-floor of their nature, and, for the time being, 
 are neither conscious of the higher floors, nor of the inner 
 apartments. With other persons they ascend a story, and look 
 out at other windows, and see another class of objects. With a 
 very few, they ascend to higher stories, where the windows open 
 .inwards and upwards \ whence the look-out is to high heavens 
 and deep eternities." Rev. John Pulsford.
 
 56 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 "A meek heart, in which the altar-fire of love to God is- 
 burning, will lay hold of the commonest, rudest things in life, 
 and transmute them, like coarse fuel at the touch of fire, into a 
 pure and holy flame. Religion in the soul will make all the 
 work and toil of life its gains and losses, friendships, rivalries, 
 competitions its manifold incidents and events the means of 
 religious advancement. Marble or coarse clay, it matters not 
 much with which of these the artist works, the touch of genius 
 transforms the coarser material into beauty, and lends to the 
 finer a value it never had before. Lofty or lowly, rude or refined 
 as our earthly work may be, it will become to a holy mind only 
 the material for an infinitely nobler than all the creations of 
 genius a pure and God-like life." 
 
 John Caird, D.D. 
 
 " Life's troubles stir life's waters all too much, 
 Passions chase fancies, and though still we dream, 
 The colouring is from reality." Letitia . Landon. 
 
 " At last, life will be a broken series of unfinished enterprises."" 
 
 Rev. f. W. Robertson. 
 
 " In real life, which of us has made a divine sacrifice, without 
 undoing it twenty times in the thoughts of our hearts ? Which 
 of us has left our costly gift on the altar, without at dead 
 of night returning in the secret desires of our hearts to fetch it 
 away ? Well for us that we are in the hands of a strong Father, 
 who takes us at our word, and keeps the precious gift we gave, 
 laying it up for us in His treasure, where our wild cries, and sobs,, 
 and recalcitrant desires can never come at it again." 
 
 Ellice Hopkins. 
 
 "The green of the spring-tide is the emerald of God's life,, 
 the gold of the autumn is the sheen of God's smile." 
 
 Rev. Arthur Mursell. 
 
 " Marvel not at thy life ! patience shall see 
 
 The perfect work of wisdom to her given ; 
 Hold fast thy soul through this high mystery, 
 And it shall lead thee to the gates of heaven." 
 
 Frances A. Kemble..
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 57 
 
 " The life of action is nobler than the life of thought." 
 
 DinaJi M. Muloch. 
 
 " Man is no better than a leaf driven by the wind until he has 
 completely mastered his great, lonely duties. If he has no habit 
 of retiring from all that is world, and of conversing face to face 
 with his inner man ; if he does not, alone, invite the gaze of God ;. 
 if he does not draw down upon his soul ' the powers of the world 
 to come,' then he is no man yet; he has not found the life 
 of man, nor the strength of man ; he is a poor, unhappy man,, 
 sporting only with shadows, and affrighted before the real and 
 the eternal. He owns a great house, a wonderful house, but it is- 
 shut up, and he lives outside with his fellow cattle ; the inside 
 is wholly unknown to him, and he has lived outside so long, that 
 he is afraid of the inside." Rev. John Pulsford. 
 
 " Alas ! it is not till time, with reckless hand, has torn out 
 half the leaves from the Book of Human Life to light the fires of 
 passion with, from day to day, that man begins to see that the 
 leaves which remain are few in number, and to remember, faintly 
 at first, and then more clearly, that upon the earlier pages of that 
 book was written a story of happy innocence, which he would fain 
 read over again. Then come listless irresolution, and the inevit- 
 able inaction of despair ; or else the firm resolve to record upon 
 the leaves that still remain a more noble history than the child's 
 story with which the book began." Henry W. Longfellow. 
 
 " Every moment of a working life may be a decisive victory." 
 
 Samuel Smiles. 
 
 " There are some days, even moments, in our lives, upon which 
 the burden of the whole seems laid, which, as in a parable, condense 
 within them the mystery, the contradiction of our existence, and 
 perhaps hint at its solution. After such times, life grows clearer 
 before and after. These seasons are set apart from the rest by 
 a solemn consecration. We feel that we are anointed above our 
 fello-vs.; it may be for the joy of the bridal, for the wrestler's 
 struggle, or against the day of our burial, we know not which." 
 
 Dora Greenwell.
 
 ^8 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Oh, Life, without thy chequered scene, 
 Of right and wrong, of weal and woe, 
 Success and failure, could a ground 
 For magnanimity be found ? " 
 
 William Wordsworth. 
 
 " Suspended life cannot flow again without great pain." 
 
 Edward B. Pusey, D.D. 
 
 " The object of human existence is not to be as comfortable 
 -as possible in every stage of its progress, but to make every 
 .advantage possible of the circumstances, whether pleasing or 
 unpleasing, into which the path of life may successively bring 
 you. ... A School is the image of life ; schoolboys do but show 
 what the natural man is, before he has been worn smooth in some 
 degree by the world's rough billows ; or, what is not only higher 
 and better, but alone efficient, before the discipline of the cross 
 of Christ, received by a free and willing spirit, has subdued the 
 native powers of hatred and selfishness, which lead the natural 
 man to delight in giving pain rather than pleasure, because he 
 looks upon everything desirable which another enjoys, as stolen 
 from himself. The advantage, however, and an inestimable one, 
 of the foretaste of the world which is experienced in a school, 
 is the being habituated to a steady course of conduct, with 
 responsibility to your own conscience alone." 
 
 Frances Baroness Bunsen. 
 
 "There is an intermediate moment between life and death 
 when, as it seems to me, the sweetness and sacredness of both 
 is distilled into one exquisite drop of suffering triumph a crystal 
 tear, as we may call it when it is leaving its fount, and has not 
 yet fallen on the page of being to blot the writing there. Death 
 and life we cannot separate them even in thought, any more 
 than we can divide between the shadow and the light when a 
 body comes between, and the one melts into the other. 
 
 The two are to each other as the Dawn and the Day in ancient 
 fable. Dawn flees from Day, Daphne from the pursuit of 
 Phoebus, and dies at last under his hot embrace." 
 
 Rev.J. B. Heard.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 59 
 
 " No life is waste in the great worker's hand. 
 The gem too poor to polish in itself 
 Is ground to brighten others." 
 
 Philip James Bailey. 
 
 " The city of life can only be entered through the gates of 
 death. There is first the sharp education of earth, and then the 
 full freedom of the Father's house." 
 
 Hubert Bower. 
 
 " Humble life, that is to say, proposing to itself no future 
 exaltation, but only a sweet continuance ; not excluding the idea 
 of foresight, but wholly of fore-sorrow, and taking no troublous 
 thought for coming days ; so also not excluding the idea of 
 providence or provision, but wholly of accumulation : the life of 
 domestic affection and domestic peace, full of sensitiveness to 
 all elements of costless and kind pleasure ; therefore chiefly to 
 
 the loveliness of the natural world." 
 
 John Ruskin. 
 
 " Is it not certain that a life of high earnest purpose will die 
 outright, if it is permitted to sink into the placid reverie of 
 perpetual retrospect, if the man of action becomes the mere 
 ' laudator temporis acti ' ? " Canon Liddon, D.D. 
 
 " If we are organs of our own life, that is, of our own measure 
 of truth and love, our experience will be subject to the limits and 
 qualities of our own life. If we become the organs of God's life 
 we shall be greatly emancipated from ourselves." 
 
 Rev. John Pulsford. 
 
 " The soul is faithless which, when it is stung by severities and 
 bowed by afflictions, tries to choke its sympathies and bring a 
 frost upon its mellow seasons. It is not by reducing life to less, 
 but by expanding it to more, not by muffling its stern tones, but 
 by ringing its sweetness clearly out, that a serene harmony can 
 be obtained. When duty is severe, we must be more reverently 
 dutiful ; if love brings sorrow, we must love more and better ; 
 when thought chills us with doubt and fear, we must think again 
 with fuller soul and deeper trust." 
 
 fa/ties Martineau, D.D.
 
 60 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Like coral insects multitudinous 
 The minutes are whereof our life is made. 
 They build it up as in the deep's blue shade 
 It grows, it comes to light, and then, and thus 
 For both there is an end." 
 
 Jean Ingelow. 
 
 "There are moments in life, when the heart is full of emotion, 
 That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble 
 Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret, 
 Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together.'*- 
 
 Henry W. Longfellow. 
 
 "A man's life is where the kingdom of heaven is within him." 
 
 George MacDonald, LL.D. 
 
 " The highest or inmost degree of man's life lies next to the Lord, 
 or to the purest vital forces which perpetually flow from Him, and 
 fill, and give life to all beings, and perpetual creation to all things. 
 This inmost degree of his spiritual organization is brooded over 
 and pressed upon by Divine influences, as the outer surface of the 
 material body, which lies next to the material world, is pressed on 
 all sides by the atmosphere, the ether, and the various material 
 forces." Chauncey Giles. 
 
 " That which you shall discern and enjoy to-day in the sphere 
 of Divine realities is determined for you by the life you have 
 been living. You cannot at any moment separate yourself from 
 its influence, or understand and appreciate in defiance of it. It 
 infallibly pursues you to affect your vision. You cannot make 
 yourself wings and fly to the height of the Delectable Mountains 
 when you choose. To stand upon their summits, you must need 
 have been living on high. A low life shuts you up to a low view, 
 and the heart is betrayed by what the eye sees." 
 
 Rev. S. A. Tipple. 
 
 " The clouds are dark, but the raindrops which fall from 
 them are bright and glistering like diamonds. So are life's, 
 troubles and pains very dark when you view them in the mass ; 
 but look at them singly, and you will find some light of heavea 
 sparkling in every one." Bishop W. Boyd Carpenter.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 61 
 
 " Where should the scholar live ? In solitude, or in society ? 
 In the green stillness of the country, where he can hear the heart 
 of Nature beat ; or in the dark, grey town ? Oh ! they do greatly 
 err who think that the stars are all the poetry which cities have ; 
 and, therefore, that the poet's only dwelling should be in sylvan 
 solitudes, under the green roof of trees. Beautiful, no doubt, 
 are all the forms of Nature, when transfigured by the miraculous 
 power of poetry ; hamlets, and harvest-fields, and nut-brown 
 waters, flowing ever under the forest, vast and shadowy, with all 
 the sights and sounds of rural life. But, after all, what are these 
 but the decorations and painted scenery in the great theatre of 
 human life ? What are they but the coarse materials of the poet's 
 song ? Glorious indeed is the world of God around us, but more 
 glorious the world of God within us. There lies the Land of 
 Song ; there lies the poet's native land. The river of life, that 
 flows through streets tumultuous, bearing along so many gallant 
 hearts, so many wrecks of humanity ; the many homes and 
 households, each a little world in itself, revolving round its fire- 
 side, as a central sun ; all forms of human joy and suffering, 
 brought into that narrow compass ; and to be in this, and be a 
 part of this ; acting, thinking, rejoicing, sorrowing with his fellov,-- 
 men ; such, such should be the poet's life." 
 
 Henry W. Longfellow. 
 
 " ' The thing that might have been 
 Is called, and questioned why it hath not been ; 
 And can it give good reason, it is set 
 Beside the actual, and reckoned in 
 To fill the empty gaps of life.' Ah ! so 
 The possible stands by us ever fresh, 
 Fairer than aught which any life hath owned, 
 
 And makes divine amends. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Oh, yet to taste the whole, to understand 
 The grandeur of the story, not to feel 
 Satiate with good possessed, but evermore 
 A healthful hunger for the great idea, 
 The beauty and the blessedness of life ! " 
 
 Jean Ingelow.
 
 62 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " I cannot choose but marvel at the way 
 In which our lives pass on from day to day, 
 Learning strange lessons in the human heart, 
 And yet, like shadows, letting them depart. 
 Is misery so familiar that we bring 
 Ourselves to view it as a usual thing ? 
 Thus is it ; how regardless pass we by 
 The cheek to paleness worn, the heavy eye ! 
 We do too little feel each other's pain ; 
 We do relax too much the social chain 
 That binds us to each other ; slight the care 
 There is for grief in which we have no share." 
 
 Letitia E. Landon. 
 
 " The steps to greatness take a life to climb, 
 And he who dreams its morning at the base, 
 How shall he hope to gain the pinnacle ? 
 Alas ! how many vainly strive to weave 
 Great patterns on the self-edge of a life, 
 And crowd a world of enterprise and work 
 In the brief space of its scant afternoon ! 
 The leaf in autumn scarce becomes the tree, 
 When men are seeking fruit. The bud, the flower, 
 Pleasant in spring, are then poor substitutes 
 For the ripe growth of full maturity. 
 Not the seed-basket, but the sickle, then, 
 Becomes the autumn-field. Alas, alas ! 
 There is too much to be, too much t' achieve, 
 In this short life, for any to delay, 
 Or waste its hours in meaningless resolves. 
 ' There will be time to-morrow,' saith the fool : 
 There may be time, and opportunity ; 
 But he who hath no willingness to-day, 
 Will he have more to-morrow ? 
 
 Life fast wanes ; 
 And all its glorious possibilities 
 Grow daily less and less." 
 
 S. W. Partridge.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 63 
 
 " There is not a moment of a man's active life in which he 
 may not be indirectly preaching ; and throughout a great part of 
 his life he ought to be directly preaching, and teaching both 
 strangers and friends." John Ruskin. 
 
 " Life is one and universal ; its forms many and individual. 
 Throughout this beautiful and wonderful creation there is never- 
 ceasing motion, without rest by night or day, ever weaving to 
 and fro. Swifter than a weaver's shuttle it flies from Birth to 
 Death, from Death to Birth ; from the beginning seeks the end,. 
 and finds it not, for the seeming end is only a dim beginning 
 of a new out-going and endeavour after the end. As the ice upon 
 the mountain, when the warm breath of the summer sun breathes 
 upon it, melts, and divides into drops, each of which reflects an 
 image of the sun ; so life, in the smile of God's love, divides- 
 itself into separate forms, each bearing in it and reflecting an 
 image of God's love. Of all these forms the highest and most 
 perfect in its God-likeness is the human soul. The vast cathedral 
 of Nature is full of holy scriptures, and shapes of deep, mysterious 
 meaning ; but all is solitary and silent there ; no bending knee, 
 no uplifted eye, no lip adoring, praying. Into this vast cathedral- 
 comes the human soul, seeking its Creator ; and the universal 
 silence is changed to sound, and the sound is harmonious, and 
 has a meaning, and is comprehended and felt. It was an ancient 
 saying of the Persians, that the waters rush from the mountains 
 and hurry forth into all the lands to find the Lord of the Earth ; 
 and the flame of the fire, when it awakes, gazes no more upon 
 the ground, but mounts heavenward to seek the Lord of Heaven ; 
 and here and there the Earth has built the great watch towers 
 of the mountains, and they lift their heads far up into the sky, 
 and gaze ever upward and around, to see if the Judge of the 
 World comes not ! Thus in Nature herself, without man, there 
 lies a waiting and hoping, a looking and yearning, after an un- 
 known somewhat. Yes ; when, above there, where the mountaiif 
 lifts its head over all others, that it may be alone with the clouds 
 and storms of heaven, the lonely eagle looks forth into the grey 
 dawn, to see if the day comes not ; when, by the mountain 
 torrent, the brooding raven listens to hear if the chamois is
 
 64 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 returning from his nightly pasture in the valley ; and when the 
 soon uprising sun calls out the spicy odours of the thousand 
 flowers, the Alpine flowers, with heaven's deep blue and the blush 
 of sunset on their leaves then there awake in Nature, and the 
 soul of man can see and comprehend them, an expectation and 
 a longing for a future revelation of God's majesty. They awake, 
 also, when, in the fulness of life, field and forest rest at noon, 
 and through the stillness are heard only the song of the grass- 
 hopper and the hum of the bee ; and when at evening the singing 
 lark up from the sweet-smelling vineyards rises, or in the later 
 hours of night Orion puts on his shining armour, to walk forth 
 into the fields of heaven. But in the soul of man alone is this 
 longing changed to certainty, and fulfilled. For, lo ! the light of 
 the sun and the stars shines through the air, and is nowhere 
 visible and seen ; the planets hasten with more than the speed 
 of the storm through infinite space, and their footsteps are not 
 heard ; but where the sunlight strikes the firm surface of the 
 planets, where the storm-wind smites the wall of the mountain 
 cliff, there is the one seen and the other heard. Thus is the 
 glory of God made visible, and may be seen, where, in the soul 
 of man, it meets its likeness changeless and firm-standing. Thus, 
 then, stands Man, a mountain on the boundary between two 
 worlds, its foot in one, its summit far-rising into the other. 
 From this summit the manifold landscape of life is visible, the 
 way of the Past and Perishable, which we have left behind us ; 
 and as we evermore ascend, bright glimpses of the daybreak of 
 Eternity beyond us ! " Henry W, Longfellow. 
 
 " The cloud is cold, 
 
 Although ablaze with lightning though it shine 
 At all points like a. constellation ; so 
 We live not to ourselves, our work is life ; 
 In bright and ceaseless labour as a star 
 Which shineth unto all worlds but itself." 
 
 Philip James Bailey. 
 
 41 The world is full of Woodmen who expel 
 Love's gentle Dryads from the haunts of life, 
 And vex the nightingales in every dell." 
 
 P. B. Shelley.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 65 
 
 " A life of great excitement will, after the effervescence has 
 passed off, leave a sad residuum." y. Hain Friswell. 
 
 " The ' Life hid with Christ in God ' ... a life which in the 
 midst of outward change can remain immovable, ever strengthen- 
 ing, enlarging, and deepening a life which may not be affected 
 by the things of the body, but which may gradually mould and 
 fashion all things to itself. It is, in fact, the beginning of that 
 transformation by which the mortal is to be clothed with immor- 
 tality." Maria Hare. 
 
 " In everything we do there may be a whole world of inward 
 life." Edward B. Pusey, D.D. 
 
 " Though each human life is, in a sense, complete to itself, 
 and must work itself out independently, clinging to no other, still 
 there is a great and beautiful mystery in the way one life seems 
 to 'influence another ; sometimes for ill, but far, far oftener for 
 good." Dinah M. Muloch. 
 
 "From every life nay, from every event in every life there 
 is distilled an essence a medicine or a poison, to be the blessing 
 or the bane of the lives or the events which follow. And while 
 some leave the precious legacy of their life's wine poured out in 
 loving service, and others the strange bequest of their life's wine 
 turned to vinegar by its reservation for themselves, there are yet 
 others who drop a strange and subtle poison, which, falling often 
 into the most generous wine poured out by their contemporaries, 
 chills and impoverishes it, and even gives it a taint which may 
 prove deadly to some." Edward Garrett. 
 
 " The true nobility of life is to be ever helping and serving." 
 
 Rev. W. G. Blaikie, LL.D. 
 
 "Life is the brief disunion of that nature 
 Which hath been one and same in heaven ere now, 
 And shall be yet again, renewed by death." 
 
 Philip James Bailey. 
 
 "Waste and supply are the necessary conditions of life." 
 
 Rev. George Dawson. 
 5
 
 66 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " We must go in contemplation out of life, ere we can see how 
 its troubles subside and are lost, like evanescent waves, in the 
 deeps of eternity and the immensity of God. A mind that can 
 make this migration from the scene by which it is surrounded 
 is removed from all vain strife of will, and gains its tranquillity 
 without an effort ; feels no difficulty in being gentle and serene, 
 but rather wonders that it could ever be tempted from its 
 pure repose. How welcome would it often be to many a child 
 of anxiety and toil to be suddenly transferred from the heat and 
 din of the city, the restlessness and worry of the mart, to the 
 midnight garden or the mountain top ! And like refreshment 
 does a high faith, with its infinite prospects, ever open to the 
 heart, afford to the worn and weary : no laborious travels are 
 needed for the devout mind ; for it carries within it Alpine 
 heights and starlit skies, which it may reach with a moment's 
 thought, and feel at once the loneliness of nature, and the mag- 
 nificence of God." James Martineau, D.D. 
 
 " Love is Youth, 
 
 And still the world is young. Still shall I reign 
 Within the hearts of men, while Time shall last 
 And Life renews itself. All Life that is, 
 From the weak things of earth, or sea, or air, 
 Which creep or float for an hour ; to godlike man 
 All know me and are mine. I am the source 
 And mother of all, both gods and men ; the spring 
 Of Force and Joy, which, penetrating all 
 Within the hidden depths of the Unknown, 
 Sets the blind seed of Being, and from the bond 
 Of incomplete and dual Essences 
 Evolves the harmony which is Life. The world 
 Were dead without my rays, who am the Light 
 Which vivifies the world. Nay, but for me, 
 The universal order which attracts 
 Sphere unto sphere, and keeps them in their paths 
 For ever, were no more. All things are bound 
 Within my golden chain, whose name is Love." 
 
 Lewis Morris.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 67 
 
 " If you desire to see the dead heart put forth the energies of 
 spiritual life, and the dark heart illumined by the fair colours of 
 spiritual grace, throw wide open the passage of communication 
 between Christ and it, and allow the Life which is in Him, and 
 the Light which is in Him, to circulate freely through it." 
 
 Dean Goulburn, D.D. 
 
 " A life which stimulates the imagination, and introduces the 
 mind to the knowledge of things which can be safely read only 
 with pure eyes, and understood by clean hearts, has dangers 
 peculiar to itself." Cardinal Manning. 
 
 " The religious life is thoughtful, but thought is not alone its 
 nature. It is full of affection, but it has more than mere feeling ; 
 it abounds in grand moral impulses. Effervescent experiences 
 are not its characteristic. It is the soul of a man made won- 
 drously rich, moving to the touch of Divine influence, in every 
 way to which so facile and elaborate a creature as man can move. 
 There is no end to its combinations. It shapes itself beyond all 
 enumeration of shapes. It thinks in vast and fathomless streams. 
 It wills with all attitudes of authority and decision. It feels with 
 all moods and variations of social affection. It rises by the wings 
 of faith into the invisible, and fashions for itself a life there, 
 glowing with every imaginable ecstasy. And neither one of these 
 is religion more than another. It is the whole soul's life that is 
 religion. When the sun rose on Memnon, it was fabled to have 
 uttered melodious noises ; but what were the rude twangings of 
 that huge, grotesque statue, compared with the soul's response 
 when God rises upon it, and every part, like a vibrating chord, 
 sounds forth to His touch, its joy and worship ? " 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher, D.D. 
 
 " From the Lord all good expect, 
 Who many mercies strews below, 
 Who in life's narrow garden-strip 
 Has bid delights unnumbered blow." 
 
 Archbishop Trench. 
 
 "Every deepening of life creates a chasm which needs a 
 deepening of faith to fill it." Elizabeth Charles.
 
 68 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 "The time will come when the soul of man shall return again 
 childlike and trustful, to its faith in God, and look God in the 
 face and die ; for it is an old saying, full of deep mysterious 
 meaning, that he must die who hath looked upon a God. And 
 this is the fate of the soul, that it should die continually. No 
 sooner here on earth does it awake to its peculiar being, than it 
 struggles to behold and comprehend the Spirit of Life. In the 
 first dim twilight of its existence it beholds this spirit, is pervaded 
 by its energies, is quick and creative like the spirit itself, and yet 
 slumbers away into death after having seen it. But the image it 
 has seen remains; in the eternal procreation, as a homcgeneal 
 existence, is again renewed ; and the seeming death, from 
 moment to moment, becomes the source of kind after kind of 
 existences in ever-ascending series. The soul aspires ever onward 
 to love and to behold. It sees the image more perfect in the 
 brightening twilight of the dawn, in the ever higher-rising sun. 
 It sleeps again, dying in the clearer vision ; but the image seen 
 remains as a permanent kind; and the slumberer awakes anew 
 and ever higher after its own image, till at length, in the full blaze 
 of noonday, a being comes forth, which, like the eagle, can 
 behold the sun and die not. Then both live on, even when this 
 bodily element, the mist and vapour through which the young 
 eagle gazed, dissolves and falls to earth." 
 
 Henry W. Longfellow. 
 
 " The higher a man rises in spiritual as in intellectual life, the 
 more lonely he becomes. There is always, as it has been often 
 said, a degree of solitude about a great man ; and this is especially 
 true of the Christian, whose greatness is reflected upon him by 
 the contemplation of the things unseen and eternal." 
 
 Rev. Hugh Macmillan. 
 
 " Life is no pastoral ; the earnest live, 
 And they alone. It is a solemn game ; 
 Heaven, hell, are struggling for the precious pooh 
 'Tis no parade, but a stern battle-field ; 
 No playground, but a schoolroom ; no calm port, 
 
 But a fierce open sea." 
 
 S. W. Partridge.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 69 
 
 " Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of 
 life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body that is to say, of a 
 state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, 
 rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. The fox- 
 glove blossom a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in 
 full bloom is a type of the life of this world. And in all things 
 that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies which are 
 not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. . . . All things are 
 literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections 
 which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life 
 may be Effort, and the law of human judgment Mercy." 
 
 John Ruskin. 
 
 " The spirit out-acts the life, 
 
 But MUCH is seldom theirs who can perceive THE WHOLE." 
 
 Jean Ingelow. 
 
 " All our life, as it reaches its higher stages, as it speaks a 
 more refined language and exchanges richer thought, necessarily 
 becomes more reflective, communes more with itself, and takes 
 the eternal Universe more into the colours of the Atmosphere 
 within." James Martineau, D.D. J 
 
 " Sanctity is not the work of a day, but of a life." 
 
 Dean Goulburn, D.D. 
 
 " Knowledge is a steep which few may climb, 
 While Duty is a path which all may tread. 
 And if the Soul of Life and Thought be this, 
 How best to speed the mighty scheme, which still 
 Fares onward day by day the Life of the World, 
 Which is the sum of petty lives, that live 
 And die so this may live how then shall each 
 Of that great multitude of faithful souls 
 Who walk not on the heights, fulfil himself, 
 But by the duteous Life which looks not forth 
 Beyond its narrow sphere, and finds its work, 
 And works it out ; content, this done, to fall 
 And perish, if Fate will, so the great Scheme 
 Goes onward ? " Lewis Morris.
 
 70 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Half the misery of human life consists in our making a wrong 
 estimate of it, and in being disappointed when we find out our 
 fault. We do not often begin it at the right end. We put a much 
 higher figure in the sum than it will bear, and we cry like a 
 schoolboy when the addition is wrong." 
 
 J. Hain Friswell. 
 
 "However wise and analytical we may be, we want some 
 power to take us as a whole, to inspire the instinctive movements 
 of desire and affection ; and so to mould directly the grand 
 evolution of increasing purpose by which a Life is built up." 
 
 J. Allanson Picton. 
 
 " The various forms of life do not differ in their inherent 
 capacity for spiritual progress, but in the opportunities for its 
 manifestation." Canon B. F. Westcott, D.D. 
 
 " Exalt the motive of daily life, and you refine the manner of 
 daily duty." Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 " The great object of a great man's life, is to make the 
 uncommon into the commonplace ; until angels' visits shall no 
 longer be accounted visits, because they shall be continuous." 
 
 Rev. George Dawson. 
 
 "How much of old material goes to make up the freshest 
 novelty of human life. Hence, . . . might be drawn a weighty 
 lesson from the little-regarded truth, that the act of the passing 
 generation is the germ which may and must produce good or 
 evil fruit, in a far distant time ; that, together with the seed of 
 the merely temporary crop, which mortals term expediency, they 
 inevitably sow the acorns of a more enduring growth, which may 
 darkly overshadow their posterity." 
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne. 
 
 " Life is not marked off in so many inches and done with ; it 
 is full of reference, allusion, collateral and incidental bearing, so 
 that an act done is not self-complete, but may be the beginning 
 of endless other acts nobler than itself." 
 
 Joseph Parker, D.D.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. ^i 
 
 " Life is nothing but one vast series of dependencies. So 
 subtle and so persuasive is this law of association, that it is 
 influential, even when we are hardly conscious of its existence. 
 The chance word from the lips of a friend, falling upon some 
 nascent desire like a spark upon tinder ; the vision of some grave 
 or wise one, held up to the glance of fancy so often, that it has 
 become the ideal model of the heart's aspiring; the music of 
 some old word greeting the ear with a strange melody, have fixed 
 the tone of a spirit, and have fashioned the direction of a life 
 The world is just one unbroken chain of these actions and 
 reactions. We are bound by them ; we are compassed by them ; 
 and we can no more escape from them than we can fling ourselves 
 beyond the influence of the law of gravitation, or refuse to be 
 trammelled by the all-embracing air." 
 
 W. Morky Puns/ion, D.D. 
 
 "True life converges upon Christ, revolves round Christ, draws 
 power from Christ, goes out from Christ, flows back to Christ. 
 We can't help living, but we can help that which gives its tone to 
 life." Rev. Arthur Mursell. 
 
 " What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to 
 each other ? " George Eliot. 
 
 " There is a Life which taketh not its hues 
 From Earth or earthly things ; and so grows pure, 
 And higher than the petty cares of men, 
 And is a blessed Life and glorified." 
 
 Lewis Morris. 
 
 " The life of Christ upon earth is the revelation of the beauty 
 of God that can be upon us." Rev. George Dawson. 
 
 " Men call the shadow, thrown upon the universe where their 
 own dusky souls come between it and the eternal sun, life, and 
 then mourn that it should be less bright than the hopes of their 
 childhood. Keep thou thy soul translucent, that thou mayest 
 never see its shadow ; at least, never abuse thyself with the 
 philosophy which calls that shadow life. Or, rather would I say, 
 become thou pure in heart, and thou shalt see God. whose vision 
 alone is life." George MacDonald, LL.D.
 
 72 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 "The grain cannot mature without a sky. There can be no 
 perfect morality without some chemistry of the heavens in it. 
 Every life needs some sky. Every man . . . has a larger life to 
 live than that part of it which is turned towards this world or 
 one's fellow-men." Rev. Newman Smyth. 
 
 " Life 'tis the plastic stuff the wise man moulds 
 To great and good results ; the priceless wine 
 The sleeping fool allows to flow away. 
 'Tis the rough pregnant ore, from which with sweat 
 The earnest smelts the gold of endless life ; 
 The sparkling stone the gaping trifler hugs, 
 Proud of the bauble. 'Tis the smooth descent 
 Down which the wicked to their ruin slide ; 
 'Tis the ringed ladder good men climb to heaven. 
 'Tis the sky-kissing pyramid, all built 
 Out of minutest thoughts and actions all 
 Ranged by thyself, and piled by thine own hand. 
 Thou standest just where thou hast climbed or fall'n ; 
 And if the credit be not all thine own, 
 Thine own assuredly is all the blame." 
 
 S. W. Partridge. 
 
 "There is no romance like that of real life, and nothing can 
 be fancied so extraordinary as what happens." 
 
 Frances Baroness Bunsen. 
 
 " The life of this world is one of probation, but not necessarily 
 of gloom or melancholy." J. Hain FriswelL 
 
 " Our life should feed the springs of fame 
 
 With a perennial wave, 
 As ocean feeds the babbling founts 
 Which find in it their grave." 
 
 , Henry D. Thoreau. 
 
 "The happy day will be when mind, heart, and hands shall be 
 alive together, and shall work in concert ; when there shall be a 
 harmony between God's munificence and man's delight in it." 
 
 Madame Sand.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 73 
 
 " In proportion as the different stages of life have sprung 
 naturally and spontaneously out of each other, without any 
 abrupt revulsion, each serves as a foundation on which the other 
 may stand ; each makes the foundation of the whole more sure 
 and stable. In proportion as our own foundation is thus stable, 
 and as our own minds and hearts have grown up gradually and 
 firmly, without any violent disturbance or wrench to one side or 
 to the other, in that proportion is it the more possible to view 
 with calmness and moderation the difficulties and differences of 
 others to avail ourselves of the new methods and new characters 
 that the advance of time throws in our way to return from 
 present perplexities to the pure and untroubled well of our early 
 years to preserve and to communicate the childlike faith, 
 changed, doubtless, in form, but the same in spirit, in which we 
 first knelt in humble prayer for ourselves and others, and drank 
 in the first impressions of God and of Heaven." 
 
 Dean Stanley, D.D. 
 
 " Life is a search after power ; and this is an element with 
 which the world is so saturated, there is no chink or crevice in 
 which it is not lodged, that no honest seeking goes unrewarded.' 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 " That which is deemed the happiest period of life must pass 
 away, before we can sink into the deep secrets of faith and hope. 
 The primitive gladness of childhood is that of a bounded and 
 limited existence, which earnestly wishes for nothing that exceeds 
 the dimensions of possibility ; of a human Paradise, about whose 
 enclosure-line no inquiry is made ; and through sorrow and the 
 sense of sin we must issue from those peaceful gates, and make 
 pilgrimage amid the thistle and the thorn instead of the blossom 
 and the rose, and lie panting on the dust, instead of sleeping on 
 the greensward of life, before we learn through mortal weakness 
 our immortal strength, and feel in the exile of the earth the 
 shelter of the skies." James Martineau, D.D. 
 
 "A man may do wrong, and his will may rise clear out of it, 
 though he can't get his life clear." 
 
 George Eliot.
 
 74 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " The battle of life is generally fought under difficulties, with 
 the sun in our faces, uphill, without aid, and with a strong foe 
 pressing us just as we are spent. Troubles, opposition, crosses, 
 and disappointments are the ladders by which the true man rises." 
 
 y. Hain Friswdl. 
 
 " Man's life is a ruin despoiled and defaced by sin. We cannot 
 build upon the old foundation and with the old materials, for the 
 structure to be erected is a " Palace Beautiful," a habitation of 
 God through the Spirit. The rubbish must be cleared away; 
 the dark, opaque, worthless stones of our own good works 
 encumbering the ground must be removed ; and the Stone which 
 the builders rejected disallowed, indeed, of men, but chosen of 
 God and precious, the sapphire-stone of Christ's finished work 
 must become the head-stone of the corner. And the foundation 
 being thus laid, we must remember that we have not materials 
 for the construction of a palace of our own and for a spiritual 
 building. We cannot, like Solomon, build the temple of the 
 Lord and the house of the forest of Lebanon. If we build the 
 earthly house, it will be at the expense of the heavenly ; and if 
 we build the heavenly, we must sacrifice the earthly. Let us not 
 build on this foundation, therefore, wood, hay, stubble, lest our 
 work be burnt, and we suffer loss, and we ourselves ' be saved as 
 by fire.' But let us build a glorious structure of gold, silver 
 precious stones, faith, hope, and charity, the three things that 
 abide. Let us learn, too, in our spiritual architecture, a lesson 
 from the pearly nautilus. As it grows older, it forms a series of 
 new and larger chambers in its spiral shell, until at last it lives 
 only in the uppermost and largest compartment. So let us go 
 on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance 
 from dead works and of faith toward God, but building, in the 
 advancing work of sanctification, nobler and heavenlier mansions 
 for our spirits, until at last the narrow earthly house of this 
 tabernacle is exchanged for the city which hath foundations, 
 garnished with all manner of precious stones, whose Builder and 
 Maker is God." Rev. Hugh Macmillan* 
 
 " Religion is a life ; and if it be not found a life, it cannot be 
 successfully pursued as a study." Rev. T. T. Lynch.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 75 
 
 " When the veil is lifted, and we see things as they really are, 
 nothing will so much amaze us as the blindness and perversity 
 that marked our life among our fellow-men. Surely the lofty life 
 is hard, . . . but the very effort itself is gain." 
 
 John Inglesant. 
 
 " If there be no sense of duty in us, governing our whole lives 
 and actions, we shall never perceive the true beauty and glory 
 of Christ's character, who sacrificed Himself for His duty, which 
 was to do His Father's will." Canon Kingsley. 
 
 "No man can order his life, for it comes flowing over him 
 from behind. But if it lay before us, and we could watch its 
 current approaching from a long distance, what could we do with 
 it before it had reached the now ? In like wise a man thinks 
 foolishly who imagines he could have done this and that with his 
 own character and development, if he had but known this and 
 that in time. Were he as good as he thinks himself wise, he 
 could but at best have produced a fine cameo in very low relief ; 
 with a work in the round, which he is meant to be, he could have 
 done nothing. The one secret of life and development is not 
 to devise and plan, but to fall in with the forces at work to do 
 every moment's duty aright that being the part in the process 
 allotted to us ; and let come not what will, for there is no such 
 thing, but what the eternal Thought wills for each of us, has 
 intended in each of us from the first. If men would but believe 
 that they are in process of creation, and consent to be made, 
 let the Maker handle them as the potter his clay, yielding them- 
 selves in respondent motion and submissive, hopeful action with 
 the turning of his wheel, they would ere long find themselves able 
 to welcome every pressure of that hand upon them, even when it 
 was felt in pain, and sometimes not only to believe, but to recog- 
 nize, the Divine end in view, the bringing of a son into glory ; 
 whereas, behaving like children who struggle and scream while 
 their mother washes and dresses them, they find they have to be 
 washed and dressed, notwithstanding, and with the more discom- 
 fort : they may even have to find themselves set half-naked, and 
 but half-dried, in a corner, to come to their right minds, and ask 
 to be finished." George Macdonald^ LL.D.
 
 76 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 11 Heaven methinks 
 So awful is eternal life, so vast 
 Its lights and shadows heaven itself would seem 
 Too solemn and severe without its choirs 
 Of infants revelling in innocence, 
 Who never knew a touch of sinful grief, 
 But live in joy, and joy because they live." 
 
 Bishop E. H. Bickerstelh. 
 
 " There is no constituent of our human life that the experience 
 of God's great love does not transfigure." 
 
 Henry Allan, D.D. 
 
 " The great object of life should be to make our immediate 
 aims and our highest interests coincident." 
 
 W. B. Clulow. 
 
 " Life should be active. In order to be kept pure and whole- 
 some, it ought, like the waters of the lake, to be always flowing. 
 Each one of us should have our inlets and outlets." 
 
 / R. Macduff, D.D. 
 
 " Life is not a dazzling romance ; life is not one continual 
 funeral ; nor is it one continual wedding-feast. Life is made up of 
 ordinary duties, average occupation, faithful, diligent continuance 
 in the vocation wherewith we are called, and we have to establish 
 our life in patience and in well-doing, rather than to glorify it by 
 ecstasies which perish because of their very violence." 
 
 Joseph Parker, D.D. 
 
 " When we consider the incidents of former days, and perceive, 
 while reviewing the long line of causes, how the most important 
 events of our lives originated in the most trifling circumstances, 
 how the beginning of our greatest happiness or greatest misery 
 is to be attributed to a delay, to an accident, to a mistake ; we 
 learn a lesson of profound humility. This is the irony of life." 
 
 Sir Arthur Helps. 
 
 " Think nought a trifle, though it small appear, 
 Small sands the mountain, moments make the year, 
 
 And trifles life." Edward Young.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 77 
 
 " There lies the ' fine gold ' beneath all the dimness and the 
 rust of the humblest and rudest life ; and all the powers, passions, 
 possibilities of a soul may be found in each." 
 
 Alexander Raleigh, D.D. 
 
 "The refuge you are needing from personal trouble is the 
 higher, the religious life, which holds an enthusiasm for something 
 more than our own appetites and vanities. The few may find 
 themselves in it simply by an elevation of feeling ; but for us who 
 have to struggle for our wisdom, the higher life must be a region 
 in which the affections are clad with knowledge." 
 
 George Eliot. 
 
 " Grudge not the living sacrifice 
 
 Of a life fashion'd to His will ; 
 Its own reward within it lies ; 
 
 But, should He ask for greater still, 
 
 Break at His feet, if He require, 
 
 Life's alabaster casket fair ; 
 And every thought and fond desire 
 
 Pour out in adoration there. 
 
 Nothing too costly to lay down 
 
 For Him, whose smile pays every loss ; 
 
 Could we but see it, there's a crown 
 Hangs halo-like round every cross." 
 
 Rev.J. S. B. Monsell, LL.D. 
 
 " Jesus' human life was ' an ephod on which was inscribed the 
 one word God.' Written on His inmost spirit, written in His 
 most trivial experiences, written in sunbeams, written in the light 
 of stars, He read everywhere His Father's name." 
 
 Archdeacon farrar, D.D. 
 
 " True Worship and True Life are blent together. Life with- 
 out Worship is hard of outline, colourless, cold of temperature. 
 Worship without life is a gaudy idolatry. One is of marble, the 
 other of wax." Archbishop Benson, D.D. 
 
 " Life is gladness ; it is the death in it that makes the misery." 
 
 George MacDonald, LL.D.
 
 78 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 "The weaknesses, the littlenesses, the incoherences of daily 
 life, so long as they are felt and struggled with, are evidences of 
 victory yet to come. They bear witness to us that we cannot 
 rest till we rise to the level of Him in whom we live." 
 
 Canon B. F. Westcott, D.D. 
 
 " A life without love, even if it be a life of strictest morality, 
 or of ascetic struggles after Divine communion, will never bring 
 us really into His inner temple. Each step we gain thitherward, 
 we shall lose again by the jar of hard or unkind feelings, and 
 at the end of years be further away than at first. To cast out 
 of our hearts all bitterness once and for ever ; to cultivate, by 
 gentle thoughts and self-sacrificing deeds, the power of sympathy; 
 to ask God to pour the spirit of love into our souls ; these are 
 the means He has appointed whereby we may come nearer to 
 Him with unerring certainty. ' He that dwelleth in love dwelleth 
 in God, and God in him.' Our virtue, and rectitude, and sacrifices 
 will avail nothing. We may give our bodies to be burned, and 
 if we have not charity it profiteth nothing. We may hold the 
 purest theologic creed, and dwell in the loftiest regions of thought, 
 and yet find God never the nearer. It is not the marble-palace 
 mind of the philosopher which He will visit, but the humble heart 
 which lies sheltered from the storms of passion, and all trailed 
 over by the fragrant blossoms of sweet human affections." 
 
 Frances P. Cobbe. 
 
 11 Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides 
 Into the silent hollow of the past ; 
 
 What is there that abides 
 To make the next age better for the last ? 
 
 Is earth too poor to give us 
 Something to live for here that shall outlive us ? 
 
 Some more substantial boon 
 
 Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon ? 
 The little that we see 
 From doubt is never free ; 
 The little that we do 
 Is but half-nobly true ; 
 With our laborious hiving
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 79 
 
 What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, 
 Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, 
 Only secure in every one's conniving, 
 A long account of nothings paid with loss, 
 Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires, 
 
 After our little hour of strut and rave, 
 With all our pasteboard passions and desires, 
 Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires, 
 Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave. 
 But stay ! no age was e'er degenerate, 
 Unless men held it at too cheap a rate, 
 For in our likeness still we shape our fate. 
 
 Ah ! there is something here 
 Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer, 
 Something that gives our feeble light 
 A high immunity from Night, 
 Something that leaps life's narrow bars 
 To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven ; 
 
 A seed of sunshine that doth leaven 
 Our earthly dulness with the beams of Stars, 
 
 And glorify our clay 
 
 With light from fountains elder than the Day ; 
 A conscience more divine than we, 
 A gladness fed with secret tears, 
 A vexing, forward-reaching sense 
 Of some more noble permanence ; 
 
 A light across the sea, 
 
 Which haunts the soul, and will not let it be, 
 Still glimmering from the heights of undegenerate years." 
 
 J. Russell Lowell. 
 
 " To believe and know that everything shall have a higher end 
 and issue than we can see, this is to see life, to feel it in and 
 around us." James Hinton. 
 
 "Nothing in life has any meaning, except as it draws us 
 farther into God, and presses us more closely to Him." 
 
 R W. Faber, D.D.
 
 8o THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " To live consists not in enjoying the day and forgetting in 
 the night ; but in a waking conscience, a self-forgetful heart, an 
 ungrudging hand, a thought ever earnest for the truth ; in a per- 
 petual outlook of hope from our lower point upon an upper and 
 infinite glory." James Martineau, D.D. 
 
 " As, in a narrow isle, whatever path we follow it soon ends in 
 the pathless sea, and all movements have one destiny ; so in our 
 narrow life thought never travels far before it looks out on that 
 which it cannot measure or define ; which was, and is", and is to 
 come. This, the Everlasting, is the only Substance, of which all 
 things are phenomena. This is the abiding Power of which the 
 recurrent sequences of natural law are fragmentary manifestations. 
 This is the all-pervading life which makes the heavens to smile, 
 and the twinkling leaves to dance, and the clouds to frown, and 
 the winds and the waves to sing their ' song which is wild and 
 slow.' " y. Allanson Picton. 
 
 " 'Tis the good acting, rather than great part, 
 Ennobles life's poor play. The tawdry robe, 
 The tinsel crown, distinguish for the hour 
 Its wearer from his fellows. But the power, 
 The thorough, the whole-hearted energy, 
 With which the player plays his special part, 
 However mean it be 'tis this alone 
 That constitutes true greatness." 
 
 S. W. Partridge. 
 
 " Everywhere the birth of the spiritual requires the death of the 
 carnal. Everywhere the husk must drop away, in order that the 
 germ may spring out of it. Everywhere, according to our Lord's 
 declaration, that which would save its life loses it, and that which 
 loses its life preserves it. And the highest glory of the highest 
 life is to be offered up a living sacrifice to God for the sake of our 
 brethren. This is the principle .of life which circulates through 
 the universe, and whereby all things minister to each other, the 
 lowest to the highest, the highest to the lowest. This is the 
 golden chain of love, whereby the whole creation is bound to the 
 throne of the Creator." Archdeacon Julius C. Hare.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 81 
 
 " Lord, when in silent hours I muse 
 
 Upon myself and Thee, 
 I seem to hear the stream of life 
 
 That runs invisibly. 
 ***** 
 
 And I would live in such a course, 
 
 That men to me may say, 
 ' Oh, whence hast thou thy joy and force, 
 
 What is thy secret stay ? ' 
 
 My joy, when truest joy I have, 
 
 It comes to me from heaven ; 
 My strength, when I from weakness rise, 
 
 Is by Thy Spirit given. 
 
 And while He shines as He has shone, 
 
 Whom Thou hast made my stay, 
 Life can but gently float me on, 
 
 Not hurry me away." 
 
 Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 "It is one great advantage of a gregarious mode of life, that 
 each person rectifies his mind by other minds, and squares his 
 conduct to that of his neighbours, so as seldom to be lost in 
 eccentricity." Nathaniel Hawthorne. 
 
 " Life is composed of few things indefinitely diversified, and 
 is like the ringing of a great many changes on a small number 
 of bells ; or as the ever new appearances from the shifting of the 
 same materials in a kaleidoscope." 
 
 W. B. Chdow. 
 
 " Many parts of our lives that seemed unmarked by any con- 
 spicuous Divine help while passing, flash up into clearness when 
 seen through the revealing light of memory, and gleam in purple 
 in the sunset, though they seemed but grey bare rock while we 
 
 stumbled among them." 
 
 Alexander Madaren, D.D. 
 
 "No man does much with life who does not plant his foot 
 firmly down on some one ' to-day,' and strive with his whole 
 energy to impress himself upon it." R<.v. W. Darling. 
 
 6
 
 82 THOUGHTS ON L1PE. 
 
 " The events of our life become clear in their significance and 
 meaning in proportion as we travel away from them. We 
 discover, too, that not only do the events of our life become 
 clearer in their significance, but more influential in our lives, 
 the further we travel from them." Rev. H. Simon. 
 
 " Happy the man whose life is one long Te Deum ! He will 
 save his soul, but he will not save it alone, but many others also. 
 Joy is not a solitary thing, and he will come at last to His Master's 
 feet, bringing many others rejoicing with him, the resplendent 
 trophies of his grateful love." F. W. Faber, D.D. 
 
 " There is no hour that has not its births of gladness and 
 despair, no morning brightness that does not bring new sickness 
 to desolation as well as new forces to genius and love. There are 
 so many of us, and our lots are so different : what wonder that 
 Nature's mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis 
 of our lives ? We are children of a large family, and must learn, 
 as such children do, not to expect that our hurts will be made 
 much of to be content with little nurture and caressing, and help 
 each other the more." George Eliot. 
 
 " There is a public life, there is a life that the neighbours can 
 see, and read, and comment upon ; but there is a within life, an 
 interstitial life, that fills up all the open lines and broken places, 
 and only God sees that interior and solemn existence." 
 
 Joseph Parker, D.D. 
 
 " Christian life must be individual, as the natural character is." 
 
 Elizabeth Prentiss. 
 
 " In the autumn season of life character comes out, like the 
 leaves, in its true colours, beautiful or repulsive. There is an 
 accent in a true life that all men can recognise." 
 
 y. W. Blore. 
 
 11 The hardest parts of life the most bitter things in it are 
 written by our own hands, the upbraidings of conscience, the 
 stings of memory, the reproach of wasted opportunities, and the 
 falsity and folly which make our life often seem so mean to 
 ourselves.' Rev. John Ker.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 83 
 
 " What joy to live beneath the eyes 
 
 Which look'd the spirit ' through and through,' 
 Which penetrated each disguise, 
 And would not let us be untrue ; 
 
 Yet through the thickest veil descried 
 
 The little spring of good below, 
 And pierced the icy crust of pride, 
 
 That happy, humble tears might flow ; 
 
 Rending each soft disguise, which spares 
 
 The evil thing by gentle name, 
 For sinners, founts of melting tears, 
 
 But for the sin unquenched flame ; 
 
 That saw the very spot within 
 
 On which to lay the healing touch ; 
 That had no pity for the sin, 
 
 Because for those who sinn'd so much ; 
 
 ***** 
 
 Those eyes still watch us, not from far, 
 
 Still pitying, ' look us through and through,' 
 
 And through the broken sketch we are, 
 Foresee the heavenly likeness true ; 
 
 Through all its soft and silken dress 
 
 The creature of the dust descry, 
 Yet 'neath the shapeless chrysalis 
 
 The Psyche moulding for the sky." 
 
 Elizabeth Charles. 
 
 " Would'st truly live ? 
 Regret not yesterday, scorn not to-day, 
 Nor trust too much to-morrow. But live so 
 That earth shall be to thee heaven's corridor, 
 The ante-room of bliss. Ah ! trifle not 
 With life's young hours, but while thou livest, live. 
 The palette, colour-filled, is on thine hand, 
 The virgin canvas wooeth thy design ; 
 What picture wilt thou paint ? " 
 
 W. Partridge.
 
 84 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 "Of each individual among us it may be said with truth, at 
 any given moment, that he is either rising to, or declining from, 
 the prime of life and the maturity of his physical powers. And 
 the mind, no less than the body, is in a continual flux. It, too, 
 has its moral element, the society in which it lives ; it, too, has 
 its nourishment, which it is constantly imbibing, the influences 
 of the world and the lower nature, or those of the Spirit of God." 
 
 Dean Goulburn. 
 
 " In the fields of thought, feeling, speculation, faith wherever 
 there are any outputtings of life, there will the living soul be 
 found more or less in conflict. It is impossible to have an inner 
 life without its asserting itself." Rev. P. B. Power. 
 
 " Life is made up of marble and mud. And without all the 
 deeper trust in a comprehensive sympathy above us, we might 
 hence be led to suspect the insult of a sneer, as well as an 
 immitigable frown, on the iron countenance of fate. What is 
 called poetic insight is the gift of discerning, in this sphere of 
 strangely-mingled elements, the beauty and the majesty which 
 are compelled to assume a garb so sordid." 
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne. 
 
 " Temptation is the condition of human life, and to try to flee 
 from it in one shape, is often only to provoke it in another. 
 Every period of life, every class in society, every occupation and 
 calling, duties as well as pleasures, work as well as rest, contain 
 within them the elements of an incessant temptation, which it 
 is at once our folly to ignore, our discipline to encounter, and our 
 glory to overcome." Bishop Thorold. 
 
 " It is a line of death that marks the track of life." 
 
 Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 " Remember that some of the brightest drops in the chalice of 
 life may still remain for us in old age. The last draught which a 
 kind Providence gives us to drink, though near the bottom of the 
 cup, may, as is said of the draught of the Roman of old, have at 
 that very bottom, instead of dregs, most costly pearls." 
 
 W. Abiah Newman.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 85 
 
 "The conception is at least in close kindred with a noble 
 truth ; that a soul occupied with great ideas best performs small 
 duties ; that the divinest views of life penetrate most clearly into 
 the meanest emergencies ; that so far from petty principles being 
 best proportioned to petty trials, a heavenly spirit taking up its 
 abode with us can alone sustain well the daily toils, and tranquilly 
 pass the humiliations, of our condition ; and that, to keep the 
 house of the soul in order due and pure, a god must come down 
 and dwell within, as its servant of all work." 
 
 James Martineau, D.D. 
 
 " The life of a holy Christian should be one perpetual Sacra- 
 ment. Every moment of his daily life may unite him by faith 
 with Christ, so that his clothing, food, home, friends, work, and 
 leisure may all nourish and feed the life within, and bring into 
 his storehouse things new and old to enrich the mind of the 
 spirit from without. By thus receiving Christ in His providences 
 and His creation, by His outward no less than His inward 
 teachings, we shall be fashioned after His likeness, and grow to 
 manhood in His kingdom." Maria Hare. 
 
 "You have been speaking, ... of very high and wonderful 
 things, into which, it would seem, even the angels dare not look ; 
 for we are, as would appear, taught in Scripture that it is in 
 man's history that they see the workings of Divine Glory. And 
 indeed, . . . when you have lived to the limit of my many years, 
 you will not stumble at this ; nor think this life a low and poor 
 place in which to seek the Divine Master, walking to and fro. 
 These high matters of which you speak, and this heavenly life, 
 is not to be disbelieved, only it seems to me more and more 
 that the soul or spirit of every man in passing through life among 
 familiar things is among supernatural things always, and many 
 things seem to me miraculous, which men think nothing of, such 
 as memory, by which we live again in place and time . . . and 
 the love of one another, by which we are led out of ourselves, 
 and made to act against our own nature by that of another, or, 
 rathei, by a higher nature than that of any of us ; and a thousand 
 fancies and feelings which have no adequate cause among outward 
 things." John Inglesant.
 
 86 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 11 Upon the banks of Life's deep streams 
 Full many a flower groweth, 
 Which with a wondrous fragrance teems,. 
 And in the silent water gleams, 
 And trembles as the water floweth. 
 Many a one the wave upteareth, 
 Washing ever the roots away, 
 And far upon its bosom beareth, 
 To bloom no more in Youth's glad May ; 
 As farther on the river runs, 
 Flowing more deep and strong, 
 Only a few pale scattered ones 
 Are seen the dreary banks along ; 
 And, where those flowers do not grow, 
 The river floweth dark and chill, 
 Its voice is sad, and with its flow 
 Mingles ever a sense of ill ; 
 Then, Poet, thou who gather dost 
 Of Life's blest flowers the brightest, 
 Oh, take good heed they be not lost 
 While with the angry flood thou fightest? 
 In the cool grottoes of the soul, 
 Whence flows thought's crystal river, 
 Whence songs of joy for ever roll 
 To Him who is the Giver, 
 There store thou them, where fresh and greert 
 Their leaves and blossoms may be seen, 
 A spring of joy that faileth never ; 
 There store thou them, and they shall be 
 A blessing and a peace to thee, 
 And in their youth and purity 
 Thou shalt be young for ever ; 
 Then, with their fragrance rich and rare, 
 Thy living shall be rife, 
 Strength shall be thine thy cross to bear, 
 And they shall be a chaplet fair, 
 Breathing a pure and holy air, 
 To crown thy holy life." J. Russell LowelL
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 87 
 
 " If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, 
 and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will 
 meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put 
 some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary ; the old laws 
 will be expanded, and interpreted in his favour in a more liberal 
 sense. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the 
 universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, 
 nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built 
 castles in the air, your work need not be lost ; that is where they 
 should be. Now put the foundations under them." 
 
 Henry D. Thoreau. 
 
 11 The boundless blue sky of Christ's love bends over us, com- 
 prehends our little life within it, as the horizon embraces the 
 landscape ; wherever we move, we are within that blue circular 
 tent, but can never touch its edges; it folds about with equal 
 serenity and adaptability the lofty mountain and the lowly vale, 
 the foaming torrent and the placid lake ; the bold, rugged, aspiring 
 nature, and the quiet, retiring disposition, the man of action and 
 the man of thought, the impetuous Peter and the loving John ; 
 it softens the sharp extremes of things, and connects the highest 
 and lowest by its subtle, invisible bond, and yet stretches far aloft 
 beyond the reach of sight or sense into the fathomless abyss of 
 infinity. Or, to take the sea as the comparison, the sea touches 
 the shore along one narrow line, and all the beauty and fertility 
 of that shore are owing to its life-giving dews and rains ; but it 
 stretches away from the shore, beyond the horizon, into regions 
 which man's eye has never seen, and the further it recedes, the 
 deeper and the bluer its waters become. And so the love of 
 Christ touches us along the whole line of our life, imparts all the 
 beauty and fruitfulness to that life, but it stretches away from the 
 point of contact into the unsearchable riches of Christ, the 
 measureless fulness of the Godhead, that ocean of inconceivable, 
 incommunicable love which no plummet can sound, or eye of 
 angel or saint ever scan ; and the love that we cannot comprehend, 
 that is beyond our reach, is as much love as that whose blessed 
 influences and effects we feel." 
 
 Rev. Hugh Macmillan.
 
 88 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " There comes a time to us all, when the sense of responsibility 
 starts up and rebukes our anxiety for ease ; tells us that we are 
 living fast, and once for all, a life that enlarges to the scale of 
 eternity, and is embosomed everywhere in God ; bids us spring 
 from our collapse of selfishness and sleep, take up the full dimen- 
 sions of our strength, and go forth to do much, if it be possible, 
 and at least to do worthily and well." 
 
 James Martineau, D.D. 
 
 " The Increate alone is self-sustain'd, 
 Life in Himself possessing, and all other 
 His creatures, from the burning seraphim 
 That sing around His everlasting throne, 
 Even to the moth which, floating in the light, 
 Wings in an hour its little life away, 
 Feed on the bounty of a Father's love, 
 Who opens wide His hand and satisfies 
 All living things with life-sustaining food." 
 
 Bishop E. H. Bickersteth. 
 
 " In every man there is a loneliness, an inner chamber of 
 peculiar life into which God only can enter." 
 
 George MacDonald, LL.D. 
 
 " Does your life tell what God's intention is with it ? " 
 
 Thomas Jones. 
 
 " The Christian life is conflict all the way, 
 An onward pressing through a deadly fray ; 
 No Reverend status, rest, or respite claims, 
 Dangers but thicken round distinguished names ; 
 And while enamoured audiences conclude 
 All ghostly strife in such a soul subdued, 
 It may be, faith and prayer sustain a brunt 
 In the heart's field, as in the battle's front. 
 How hard, how hopeless, save as helped of heaven, 
 To keep all motive pure from earthly leaven." 
 
 Ann Gilbert. 
 
 " To make popularity a guide is to come into middle life weak, 
 and into age crippled." Rev. Theodore T. Munger.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 89 
 
 " Life is deeper than it seems ; and it may well check our petty 
 cavils and censorious judgments to remember, that he who sees 
 and loves according to the truth of things may have his -place 
 and dear abode in the inner mind of the very neighbour we 
 criticise and the heretic we shun ; may think nothing at all of 
 the small matters we derisively apprehend, and gently love the 
 greater ones we blindly overlook ; and find not only many a 
 precious thing concealed from us, but gracious affection and pure 
 thought that do not even see themselves. Nay ; have you never 
 known among your own friends, one whom you would completely 
 misjudge, if you looked no farther than the outward ways and 
 words through which he intentionally speaks; who lightly plays 
 with the surface of experience, and elastically throws off its 
 severer incidents : who is reticent of his own troubles and calm 
 towards those of others, as if both were matters of course, to be 
 quickly dismissed into the past and cleared out of the way ; but 
 who, 'within this smooth and hard activity, hides quite another 
 nature unsuspected by the common eye ; a pathetic thought 
 betrayed only in the flash of humour that tries to suppress it ; 
 a fire of enthusiasm which never reports itself as heat, but simply 
 in the steadfast tension of a noble life ; a religious depth, un- 
 revealed unless in the books he loves, and in the simple dignity 
 of his presence ? Were you blind to these things, how different 
 and how mistaken would your affection for him be ! What folly, 
 then, there is in our cynic mood, which either heeds not these 
 inner secrets of the soul, or replaces them by mean conjectures 
 of our own ! There is no human life so poor and small as not 
 to hold many a divine possibility, its ' angel that always beholds 
 the face of the Father who is in Heaven.' " 
 
 James Martineau, D.D. 
 
 11 There is no organic life without growth in nature, and there 
 is no spiritual life without growth in grace. I say, no spiritual 
 life, no continuous state of life. Spiritual impulses there may be 
 many. Impulses, however, are not life, though they may originate 
 or restore life." Dean Goulburn. 
 
 " Life is strong, because it is dependent ; immortal, because it 
 draws its being from a perennial source." jfames Hinton.
 
 90 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Life may change, but it may fly not ; 
 Hope may vanish, but can die not ; 
 Truth be veiled, but still it burneth ; 
 Love repulsed, but it returneth ! 
 Yet were Life a charnel where 
 Hope lay coffined with Despair ; 
 Yet were truth a sacred lie, 
 Love were lust if Liberty 
 Sent not life its soul of light, 
 Hope its iris of delight, 
 Truth its prophet's robe to wear, 
 Love its power to give and bear." 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 " Religion is not just one of the many duties of life ; it is 
 itself the life, through which alone all duty can be done." 
 
 Thomas Erskine. 
 
 " I can judge 
 
 Of others but by outward show, and that 
 Is falser than the actor's studied part. 
 We dress our words and looks in borrow'd robes ; 
 The mind is as the face, for who goes forth 
 In public walks without a veil at least ? 
 'Tis this constraint makes half life's misery. 
 'Tis a false rule : we do too much regard 
 Others' opinions, but neglect their feelings ; 
 Thrice happy if such order were revers'd. 
 Oh, why do we make sorrow for ourselves, 
 And, not content with the great wretchedness 
 Which is our native heritage, those ills 
 We have no mastery over, sickness, toil, 
 Death, and the natural grief which comrades death, 
 Are not all these enough, that we must add 
 Mutual and moral torment, and inflict 
 Ingenious tortures we must first contrive ? " 
 
 Letitia E. Landon. 
 
 "Let your daily life be an unuttered yet perpetual pleading 
 with man for God." John Caird, D.D.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 91 
 
 " Only in the sacredness of inward silence does the soul truly 
 meet the secret, hiding God. The strength of resolve which 
 afterwards shapes life and mixes itself with action, is the fruit 
 of those sacred, solitary moments. There is a Divine depth in 
 silence." Rev. F. W. Robertson. 
 
 " The secret . . . of a cheerful life is involved in a true doctrine 
 as to the end of life. According to the end will be the way ; 
 and so far as we make exertions answering to the dignity of the 
 end, and choose and cultivate pleasures like those we expect at 
 the end, we are secure from the canker of ignoble unhappiness." 
 
 Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 " Life is to Act, and not to Do is Death." 
 
 Lewis Morris. 
 
 " Oh, may I join the choir invisible 
 Of those immortal dead who live again 
 In lives made better by their presence : live 
 In pulses stirred to generosity, 
 In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
 For miserable aims that end with self, 
 In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, 
 And with their mild persistence urge man's search 
 To vaster issues. 
 
 So to live is heaven : 
 To make undying music in the world, 
 Breathing a beauteous order that controls 
 With growing sway the growing life of man. 
 ***** 
 
 May I reach 
 
 That purest heaven, and be to other souls 
 That cup of strength in some great agony, 
 Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love, 
 Beget the smiles that have no cruelty 
 Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, 
 And in diffusion ever more intense. 
 So shall I join that choir invisible 
 Whose music is the gladness of the world." 
 
 George Eliot.
 
 92 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " We sit beside the Sphinx of Life, 
 We gaze into its void, unanswering eyes, 
 
 And spend ourselves in idle strife 
 To read the riddle of their mysteries. 
 * * * * * 
 
 The meaning of all things in us, 
 Yea, in the lives we give our souls, doth lie ; 
 
 Make, then, their meaning glorious 
 
 By such a life as need not fear to die ! 
 
 There is no heart-beat in the day, 
 Which bears a record of the smallest deed, 
 
 But holds within its faith alway 
 That which in doubt we vainly strive to read. 
 
 One seed contains another seed, 
 And that a third, and so for evermore ; 
 
 And promise of as great a deed 
 Lies folded in the deed that went before. 
 
 So ask not fitting space or time ; 
 Ye could not dream of things which could not be; 
 
 Each day shall make the next sublime, 
 And Time be swallowed in Eternity. 
 
 God bless the Present ! it is All ; > 
 It has been Future, and it shall be Past ! 
 
 Awake and live ! thy strength recall, 
 And in one trinity unite them fast. 
 
 Action and Life, lo ! here the key 
 Of all on earth that seemeth dark and wrong ! 
 
 Win this, and, with it, freely ye 
 May enter that bright realm for which ye long." 
 
 J. Russell Lowell. 
 
 " Nothing but the infinite pity is sufficient for the infinite 
 pathos of human life." John Inglesant. 
 
 " There is nothing more real, more important to us in daily 
 life than ' not ' ; we must bring our intellect into accordance 
 with it." James Hinton.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 93 
 
 " Oftentimes in life we may seem as those who struggle in a 
 wide storm-sea, knowing their strength only by the greatness of 
 their ineffectual efforts. Yet are we safe. For though we may 
 feel as if rather drifting in a slight skiff over boisterous waters, than 
 making way over them in a strong vessel yet if, after many days, 
 Columbus found the land which reason taught him to hope for, 
 much more shall we reach the country promised to the faithful." 
 
 Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 " ' The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him.' Surely 
 in words of inspiration like these there is an endless germinative 
 power to fill with spiritual life the widest horizon of knowledge. 
 For what is the secret of the Lord but this that all life is a com- 
 munion with the heavenly Father, all beauty a glimpse of His 
 light, all joy a share in His bliss, all struggle and sorrow but a 
 hint of the ineffable burden that He bears 'in bringing many sons 
 into glory ' ? He, then, who has this blessed secret, knows why 
 he lives, and why creation enspheres his life, and why the whole 
 world groans and travails in pain until now. Such an experience, 
 when bright and clear, is heaven begun on earth ; it is a draught 
 from that 'river of God's pleasures,' which some day we shall 
 follow up to its source behind the veil. And he with whom is 
 this secret of the Lord can look, if with painful longing, yet 
 without despair, on all the darkness of the world's mystery of sin. 
 For his own experience tells him that God is not very far from 
 every one of us. His own communion with God he values, not 
 as a personal or sectarian peculiarity, but as a token of the 
 Divine kinship of all mankind. Indeed, herein often lies the 
 distinction between genuine religious experience and mere secta- 
 rian fanaticism. For the one makes us more human than before, 
 brings us down from our personal isolation into the deeper 
 region of life, which, though beneath the surface of consciousness 
 in many, is nevertheless, we feel, a generic attribute of man. The 
 other shuts us up in self or sect, and makes us feel as the detest- 
 able Calvinistic sentiment has it, 
 
 ' A garden walled around, 
 Chosen and made peculiar ground.' " 
 
 . Allanson Picton.
 
 94 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 11 If life were but a brief reality, that fleetly passed into a 
 shadow and nothingness, the point of vanishing would not be 
 without its solemn grandeur. But with how profound a reverence 
 must we look on its last stage, as entering the margin of God's 
 eternity ; as the landmark of earth's boundary ocean, fanned 
 already by the winds, and feeling the spray, of the infinite ! " 
 
 James Martineau, D.D. 
 
 " When the love of God has taken possession of the soul, and 
 the whole man is consecrated to His service, life loses its frag- 
 mentary character, and one guiding stream seems to run through 
 it. ... Many a little rock or eddy that early in its course would 
 turn it aside, is, as it becomes more powerful, swept away or 
 passed over." Maria Hare. 
 
 " Who can know how much of his most inward life is made up 
 of the thoughts he believes other men to have about him, until 
 that fabric of opinion is threatened with ruin ? " 
 
 George Eliot. 
 
 " 'Twas a lovely thought to mark the hours, 
 
 As they floated in light away, 
 By the opening and the folding flowers, 
 That laugh to the summer's day. 
 
 Thus had each moment its own rich hue, 
 
 And its graceful cup and bell, 
 In whose colour'd vase might sleep the dew, 
 
 Like a pearl in an ocean-shell. 
 
 * * * * - 
 
 Yet is not life, in its real flight, 
 
 Mark'd thus even thus on earth, 
 
 By the closing of one hope's delight, 
 And another's gentle birth ? 
 
 Oh ! let us live so that flower by flower, 
 
 Shutting in turn, may leave 
 A lingerer still for the sunset hour, 
 
 A charm for the shaded eve." 
 
 Felicia Hemans.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 95 
 
 " We must live in the eternity of God if yve would be quiet 
 amid all the storm and stress of life." 
 
 Joseph Parker, D.D. 
 
 " The secrets of life are not shown except to sympathy and 
 likeness." Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 " How graphically the varied aspects of the leaf picture the 
 various seasons of man's life ! The tenderness of its budding 
 and blooming in spring, when that rich golden-green glints on it, 
 that comes only once a year, represents the bright beauty and 
 innocence of youth, when every sunrise brings its fresh glad hopes, 
 and every night its holy, trustful calm. The dark greenness and 
 lush vigour of the summer leaf portray the strength and self- 
 reliance of manhood ; while its fading hues on the tree, and its 
 rustling heaps on. the ground, typify the decay and feebleness of 
 old age, and that strange, mysterious passing away which is the 
 doom of every mortal. The autumn leaf is gorgeous in colour, 
 but it lacks the balmy scent and the dewy freshness of hopeful 
 spring ; and life is rich and bright in its meridian splendour ; 
 deep are the hues of maturity, and noble is the beauty of success, 
 but who would not give it all for the tender sweetness and 
 promise of life's morning hours ? Happy they who keep the 
 child's heart warm and soft over the sad experiences of old age, 
 whose life declines as these last September days go out, with the 
 rich tints of autumn and the blue sunny skies of June ! " 
 
 Rev. Hugh Macmillan. 
 
 "The fragment of a life, however typical, is not the sample 
 of an even web ; promises may not be kept, and an ardent outset 
 may be followed by declension; latent powers may find their 
 long-waited opportunity ; a past error may urge a grand retrieval." 
 
 George Eliot. 
 
 " The noblest things in life are mixed with the most ignoble, 
 great pretence with infinite substance, vain-glory with solidness. 
 ... A man has mistaken the secret of human life who does 
 not look for greatness in the midst of folly, for sparks of nobility 
 in the midst of meanness ; and the well-poised mind distributes 
 with impartiality the praise and the blame." 
 
 John Inghsant.
 
 96 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 "Life is never Barren or impotent; words, theories, contro- 
 versies may be, but not life whatever its character or quality. 
 The meanest, vilest, most erring life does something, and not 
 merely in an evil and harmful way ; it goes also to serve for 
 something in connection with the great Divine purpose of human 
 education and development. It is used up without observation, 
 and secretly, in aid thereof. But an honest and dutiful life, 
 though ever so dumb, and ever so lowly that is sure to be 
 beautifully productive; and the grace of it will be surviving 
 among us, and contributing to the growing health and soundness 
 of the world, long after it has passed away. " 
 
 Rev. S. A. Tipple. 
 
 "We must rise from our ideals, however beautiful, and by 
 effort that will not be conquered, by effort that lifts its hand to 
 heaven for a blessing on the struggle before it grasps the sword 
 for conflict, make the ideals real in our lives." 
 
 J^ames McCann, D.D. 
 
 " Who doubts, that as in every breathing the life of the body 
 is retained within us through the secret operation of Almighty 
 God, so for every healthful function of our soul's life we need 
 the continual, forecoming, accompanying, sealing grace of God, 
 in Whom it lives and breathes ? " 
 
 Edward B. Pusey, D.D. 
 
 "All draw their life from one deep fountain, all take their 
 goodness and their beauty from Him whose joy is co-eternal 
 with His holiness." Rev. Stopford A. Brooke. 
 
 " Oh ! there are times whose pressure doth efface 
 Earth's vain distinctions ! when the storm beats loud, 
 When the strong towers are tottering to their base, 
 And the streets rock. Who mingle in the crowd ? 
 Peasant and chief, the lowly and the proud, 
 Are in that throng ! Yes, life hath many an hour 
 Which makes us kindred, by one chast'ning bow'd, 
 And feeling but, as from the storm we cower, 
 What shrinking weakness feels before unbounded power ! " 
 
 Felicia Hemans.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 97 
 
 " Ah ! sweet and strange, 
 The cycle of a life which turns and turns 
 Round to the self-same spot, changed yet the same ; 
 The same but for the mystic beat of Time ; 
 The same but for the ineffable change of Being, 
 Which in the same life, grown another, works 
 Infinite depths of change." Lewis Morris. 
 
 " When life begins to be true, it announces itself as an eternal 
 thing to the mind ; as a caged bird when let loose into the sky 
 might say : Now I know that my wings are made to beat the air 
 in flight; and no logic could ever persuade the bird that it was not 
 designed to fly ; but when caged, it might have doubted, at times, 
 as it beat the bars of its prison with unavailing stroke, if its wings 
 were made for flight. So it is not until a man begins to use his 
 soul aright that he knows for what it is made. When he puts his 
 life into harmony with God's laws ; when he begins to pray ; when 
 he clothes himself with the graces of Christian faith and conduct 
 love, humility, self-denial, service ; when he begins to live out of, 
 and unto, his spiritual nature, he. begins to realize what life is, 
 a reality that death and time cannot touch." 
 
 Rev. Theodore T. Munger. 
 
 " Many a man the foliage of whose character had been turning 
 brown and seared and dry, rattling rather than rustling in the 
 faint hot wind of even fortunes, has come out of the winter of a 
 weary illness with the fresh delicate buds of a new life bursting 
 from the sun-dried bark." George Macdonald, LL.D. 
 
 " Pentecost after Pentecost comes in our life ; successive 
 revelations of new and creative thoughts, deeper and clearer 
 views of truth, uplift and strengthen us ; brighter and truer is our 
 sight of God, more earnest and more stern, yet more divinely 
 beautiful, the face of duty ; more loving and more inspiring the 
 call of Christ to follow Him through life and death to higher life ; 
 till at last, in the passion of death, we hear the rushing wind of 
 eternity, and the final earthly Pentecost takes place in the release 
 of the spirit to find itself at one, in nearer blessedness, with the 
 Spirit of Eternal Love." Rev. Stopford A. Brooke. 
 
 7
 
 98 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 "There is no 'death' worthy to be so called, that does not 
 stretch out its hand and grasp the skirts of a higher life ; save 
 indeed that utter death wherein he lives who lives in pleasure." 
 
 James Hinton. 
 
 " The severest trials, the happiest privileges of our lives, come 
 to us through our being members one of another." 
 
 Rev. J. Llewelyn Davies. 
 
 " The higher life begins for us, ... when we renounce our 
 
 own will to bow before a Divine law." 
 
 George Eliot. 
 
 " The lowliest life that faith has freed 
 Bears witness still that Christ is life, 
 And that the Life is risen indeed." 
 
 Elizabeth Charles. 
 
 " Eternal life is holy life, the exercise of love to God and all 
 beings." W. E. Channing, D.D. 
 
 " How often, in the stifling heat and press of life, when trivial 
 cares rise with dry and dusty cloud to shut us in, do we wholly 
 lose our place in the great calm of God, and fret as if there were 
 no infinite Reason embracing the vortex of the world." 
 
 James Martineau, D.D. 
 
 " Why should we ever weary of this life ? 
 Our souls should widen ever, not contract, 
 Grow stronger, and not harden, in the strife, 
 Filling each moment with a noble act." 
 
 James Russell Lowell. 
 
 " Our senses are avenues to the inner man ; they ought never 
 to be made independent centres of life. They were given us at 
 once to invite and facilitate the development of the inward nature. 
 When they are confined to this mission, their gratification never 
 palls upon us, nor degenerates into the fierceness of passion. For 
 as they feed the whole man, the glow of healthful life reacts upon 
 them gratefully, with a never-failing sense of pleasure. . . . 
 Social pleasures have a happy place in the by-play of our lives." 
 
 /. A Hanson Picton.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 99 
 
 " The shadows of the mind are like those of the body. In the 
 morning of life they all lie behind us ; at noon we trample them 
 under foot ; and in the evening they stretch long, broad, and 
 deepening before us. Are not, then, the sorrows of childhood as 
 dark as those of age ? Are not the morning shadows of life as 
 deep and broad as those of its evening? Yes; but morning 
 shadows soon fade away, while those of evening reach forward 
 into the night, and mingle with the coming darkness. Man is 
 begotten in delight and born in pain ; and in these are the 
 rapture and labour of his life foreshadowed from the beginning. 
 But the life of man upon this fair earth is made up, for the most 
 part, of little pains and little pleasures. The great wonder-flowers 
 bloom but once in a lifetime." Henry W. Longfellow. 
 
 " Thoughts are life's great human links, 
 And mingle with our feelings." 
 
 Letitia E. Landon. 
 
 " To create anything in reality is to put life into it." 
 
 John Ruskin. 
 
 " The real is but the half of life ; it needs 
 
 The ideal to make a perfect whole ; 
 The sphere of sense is incomplete, and pleads 
 For closer union with the sphere of soul." 
 
 Rev. Hugh Macmillan. 
 
 " Between earth and man arose the leaf. Between the heaven 
 and man came the cloud. His life being partly as the falling 
 leaf, and partly as the flying vapour." John Ruskin. 
 
 " Unity with duality ; . . . this in every region is the condition 
 of all the higher developments of life." 
 
 Rev. J. Baldwin Brown. 
 
 " We live each of us two lives, an outward and an inward life 
 And it is only our outward lives which come into frequent 
 contact." Montagu Butler, D.D. 
 
 "Life is a book which lasts one's lifetime, but it requires 
 wisdom to understand its difficult pages." Samuel Smiles.
 
 ioo THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 "Spiritual life, ... is the sum total of the functions which 
 resist sin. The soul's atmosphere is the daily trial, circumstance, 
 and temptation of the world. And as it is life alone which gives 
 the plant power to utilize the elements, and as, without it, they 
 utilize it, so it is the spiritual life alone which gives the soul power 
 to utilize temptation and trial ; and without it they destroy the 
 soul." Professor Henry Drummond. 
 
 " The Stelvio is more wonderful, and more grand, too. It is 
 a narrow cleft in the mountain, through which the river Inn 
 gushes on its way to Innsbruck. The cliffs on each side rise 
 steep and precipitous, leaving only room for the stream and the 
 road by its side. The descent to it from Nauders is very rapid, 
 which adds to the grandeur. The Inn roars and thunders 
 through it, and I took pleasure in watching the fir-tree stumps, 
 which are cut by the woodmen above in certain lengths, and 
 then committed to the stream to be carried down to the valleys. 
 Some pieces stemmed all falls and projecting points gallantly; 
 others sunk for a time, and then you saw them emerging below, 
 conquerors out of trial. Some were stranded, and left high and 
 dry upon the bank, or on rocks in the centre of the stream : 
 others had got out of the current, and were carried round a 
 projecting point into still water, either stationary, or floating 
 slowly back instead of on, as if there had been a destiny before 
 them, and that destiny unfulfilled ; while others beside them, not 
 their superiors in activity or strength, were steadily buffeting their 
 way forwards and home. What an image of life ! " 
 
 Rev. F. W. Robertson. 
 
 " 'Tis this which makes 
 The best assurance of our promised heaven : 
 This triumph intellect has over death, 
 Our words yet live on others' lips ; our thoughts 
 Actuate others. Can that man be dead 
 Whose spiritual influence is upon his kind ? 
 He. lives in glory ; and such speaking dust 
 Has more of life than half its breathing moulds." 
 
 Letitia E. Landcn.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 101 
 
 " Life is the state in which Christ makes Himself known to us, 
 and through which we must make ourselves known to Him." 
 
 Dean Stanley. 
 
 "We walk here, as it were, in the crypts of life; at times, from 
 the great cathedral above us, we can hear the organ and the 
 chanting of the choir : we see the light stream through the open 
 door, when some friend goes up before us ; and shall we fear to 
 mount the narrow staircase of the grave, that leads us out of this 
 uncertain twilight into the serene mansions of the life eternal ? " 
 
 Henry W. Longfellow. 
 
 "The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for he 
 lives out of an eternity which includes all time." 
 
 H. D. Thoreau. 
 
 " Too long have I, methought, with tearful eye 
 
 Pored o'er this tangled work of mine, and mused 
 Above each stitch awry, and thread confused ; 
 Now will I think on what in years gone by 
 I heard of them that weave rare tapestry 
 At Royal loom, and how they constant use 
 To work on the rough side, and still peruse 
 The pictured pattern set above them high : 
 So will I set MY COPY high above, 
 
 And gaze and gaze till on my spirit grows 
 It gracious impress ; till some line of love, 
 
 Transferred upon my canvas, faintly glows ; 
 Nor look too much on warp or woof, provide 
 He whom I work for sees their fairer side ! " 
 
 Dora Greenwell. 
 
 " Life, like the fountain of Ammon, overflows only at dawn and 
 early morning." J. Cunningham Geikie, D.D. 
 
 " A religious life is not a thing which spends itself like a bright 
 bubble on the river's surface. It is rather like the river itself, 
 which widens continually, and is never so broad or so deep as at 
 .its mouth, where it rolls into the ocean of eternity." 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher, D.D.
 
 102 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 "Through wood, and stream, and field, and hill, and Ocean, 
 A quickening life from the Earth's heart has burst, 
 As it has ever done, with change and motion, 
 From the great morning of the world when first 
 God dawned on Chaos ; in its stream immersed 
 The lamps of Heaven flashed with a softer light ; 
 All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst ; 
 Diffuse themselves; and spend in love's delight 
 The beauty and the joy of their renewed might. 
 The leprous corpse touched by this spirit tender 
 Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath ; 
 Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour 
 Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death, 
 And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath ; 
 Nought, we know, dies." P. B. Shelley. 
 
 11 Our moments are, so to speak, the gold-dust of life each a 
 very small particle by itself, but all golden, and when put together 
 making a great total, and mounting up to a very high value." 
 
 James Culross, D.D. 
 
 " The secret of true life is to live according to Nature. But 
 what Nature of body, mind, or spirit ? Of all three ! No one 
 side of Nature can be exclusively cultivated without harm to the 
 other. This might be illustrated at length, and the cultivation 
 of each in proper subordination, the lower to the higher, might 
 then be duly urged. But how, and in what proportion ? The 
 family, the social, the political pressure without, provides the 
 solution. We do not live for ourselves. The world needs our 
 bodies, our minds, our affections, our spiritual nature. We must 
 cultivate each, not according to whim, but according to individual 
 endowment, and the social demand ; unselfishly remembering 
 that because we belong to the Head of Humanity Christ we 
 are members one of another." 
 
 Rev. H. R. Haweis. 
 
 " The whole course of the life of God in the soul, from first to 
 last, shows a co-operation of the Divine and the human." 
 
 y. Cunningham Geikie, D.D.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 103 
 
 " Tis a vile life that, like a garden pool, 
 Lies stagnant in the round of personal loves ; 
 That has no ear save for the tickling lute 
 Set to small measures deaf to all the beats 
 Of that large music rolling o'er the world : 
 A miserable, petty, low-roofed life, 
 That knows the mighty orbits of the skies , 
 Through nought save light or dark in its own cabin. 
 The very brutes will feel the force of kind 
 And move together, gathering a new soul 
 The soul of multitudes. . . . 
 The crane with outspread wing that heads the file 
 Pauses not, feels no backward impulses : 
 Behind it summer was, and is no more ; 
 Before it lies the summer it will reach 
 Or perish in mid-ocean. You no less 
 Must feel the force sublime of growing life. 
 New thoughts are urgent as the growth of wings ; 
 The widening vision is imperious 
 As higher members bursting the worm's sheath. 
 You cannot grovel in the worm's delights : 
 You must take winged pleasures, winged pains." 
 
 George Eliot. 
 
 " The Christian life is the only life that will ever be completed. 
 Apart from Christ the life of man is a broken pillar, the race of 
 men an unfinished pyramid. One by one in sight of Eternity all 
 human Ideals fall short, one by one before the open grave all 
 human hopes dissolve." Professor Henry Drummond. 
 
 " Life is based upon caution, unless it be founded in God, and 
 then it is lifted up above all danger, or the dangers that affect it 
 themselves fall away before its supreme strength and immovable 
 confidence." Joseph Parker, D.D. 
 
 "Is there any other greater, more satisfying, more majestic 
 thought of life than this the scaffolding by which souls are built 
 up into the Temple of God? " 
 
 Alexander Maclaren, D.D.
 
 104 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Nothing that altogether dies 
 Suffices man's just destinies. 
 
 So should we live, that every Hour 
 May die as dies the natural flower, 
 A self-reviving thing of power ; 
 
 That every Thought and every Deed 
 May hold within itself the seed 
 Of future good and future need ; 
 
 Esteeming Sorrow, whose employ 
 Is to develop, not destroy, 
 Far better than a barren Joy." 
 
 Lord Houghton. 
 
 " Each man's orbit in the world is in reality so circumscribed 
 that we are sure to encounter our own doings, and beings, and 
 havings again and again, and 'ring the changes upon our 
 individuality.' Life is a maelstrom, in which things converge 
 strongly and swiftly to one centre, and meeting once must meet 
 repeatedly." Rev. Hugh Macmillan. 
 
 " Wouldst thou the life of souls discern ? 
 
 Nor human wisdom nor divine 
 Helps thee by aught beside to learn ; 
 
 Love is life's only sign. 
 The spring of the regenerate heart, 
 The pulse, the glow of every part, 
 Is the true love of Christ our Lord, 
 As man embrac'd, as God ador'd. 
 
 But he whose heart will bound to mark 
 The full bright burst of summer morn, 
 
 Loves, too, each little dewy spark 
 By leaf or flow'ret worn : 
 
 Cheap forms, and common hues, 'tis true, 
 
 Through the bright shower-drop meet his view ; 
 
 The colouring may be of this earth ; 
 
 The lustre comes of heavenly birth." 
 
 John Keble.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 10 
 
 " The life that lives for another, in so doing bursts into flower, 
 and shows its brightest hues, and yields its sweetest fragrance. 
 As the common coarse green leaf changes into the delicately 
 formed and brilliantly coloured petal in the conversion of leaf 
 buds into flower buds ; so in the conversion of lovers of pleasure 
 into lovers of God the common things of life, the gifts and 
 attainments of the natural man, are taken up into a higher experi- 
 ence, and beautified and ennobled. Nothing is lost in the trans- 
 ference, but all is changed and enriched. All is given to Christ, 
 and all is received back an hundredfold." 
 
 Rev. Hugh Macmillan. 
 
 " The epochs of our life are not in the visible facts of our 
 choice of a calling, our marriage, our acquisition of an office, and 
 the like, but in a silent thought by the wayside as we walk ; in a 
 thought which revises our entire manner of life, and says : ' Thus 
 hast thou done, but it were better thus.' And all our after years, 
 like menials, serve and wait on this, and, according to their ability, 
 execute its will. This revisal or correction is a constant force, 
 which, as a tendency, reaches through our lifetime. The object 
 of the man, the aim of these moments, is to make daylight shine 
 through him, to suffer the law to traverse his whole being without 
 obstruction, so that, on what poinf soever of his doing your eye 
 falls, it shall report truly of his character, whether it be his diet, 
 his house, his religious forms, his society, his mirth, his vote, his 
 opposition. Now he is not homogeneous, but heterogeneous, and 
 the ray doe; rot traverse : there are no thorough lights : but the 
 eye of the beholder is puzzled, detecting many unlike tendencies, 
 and a life not yet at one." 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 " Two streams circulate through the universe, the stream of 
 Life, and the stream of Death. Each feeds, and feeds upon the 
 other. For they are perpetually crossing, like the serpents round 
 Mercury's Caduceus, wherewith animas ille evocat Oreo Pallentes^ 
 alias sub Tarlara tristia mittit. They began almost together ; and 
 they will terminate together, in the same unfathomable ocean ; 
 after which they will separate, and take contrary directions, and 
 never meet again." Archdeacon Julius C. Hare.
 
 106 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Such is the nobility of man's spirit, that no influence, no 
 occupation, no fascination, nor any reward, can induce him to 
 live, exclusively, in the world to which he seems to be restricted.' 
 
 Rev. John Pulsford. 
 
 " The world's life may be compared to a coat of chain armour ,. 
 and every one of us is a mesh or link in it." 
 
 Archbishop Benson. 
 
 " Life is passion controlled. 
 
 " We are parts of Nature, and share her perfection. To a man 
 who thus acts with Nature, failure is not nor can be. He does 
 not succeed in life ; his life is success. 
 
 " This is success, to find, in all events, my Life. 
 
 " Life is no mystery; it is an axiom ; it all lies in a definition. 
 The mystery is, not life, but death not that Nature lives, but that 
 man refuses to live." James Hinton. 
 
 " Life glides away in many a bend, 
 In chapters which begin and end ; 
 Each has its trial, each its grace, 
 Each in life's whole its proper place. 
 Life has its joinings and its breaks, 
 But each transition swiftly takes 
 Us nearer to or further from 
 The Threshold of our heavenly home." 
 
 F. W. Faber, D.D. 
 
 " Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends ... to become 
 an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his 
 life." George Eliot. 
 
 " The life of heaven, illumined and quickened continually by 
 the immediate presence and power of the infinite Jehovah, shall 
 flow on an unebbing tide, higher, stronger, farther on with every 
 heave of the restless wave, never pausing to recover strength, 
 never turning back to gain increased momentum, but with resist- 
 less, uninterrupted, undiminished volume, filling all eternity with 
 the beauty and the gladness of its perfection." 
 
 Rei>. Hugh Macmillan.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 107 
 
 " Life exists, to our experience, in an almost endless variety of 
 forms ; but there is one note which is common to them all, and 
 that is the impression which they make of spontaneous energy. 
 
 " Life is never so much life to us as when it most intensely 
 realizes that it is spontaneous or free. This does not imply 
 arbitrariness, or caprice, or self-will-; rather the reverse. For 
 never do we feel our energy so spontaneous, and never do we 
 so keenly realize life, as when we are possessed by some noble 
 passion, which bears us, as we say, beyond ourselves ; which 
 makes us, in fact, the centre of a power that is far grander than 
 self-will, and that radiates from us with as little effort as heat from 
 burning flames. When we love with self-forgetful devotion, or 
 hate with righteous indignation, we have no feeling of labour, and 
 just as little suspicion of compulsion. Rife flows like an impetuous 
 river, with no thought of the heights from which it falls, nor of 
 the broad levels that it seeks. Our moral ideas also modify the 
 sense in which we speak of life. For selfishness seems self-con- 
 sumed by introverted energies, like a decaying corpse; and so 
 we liken it to death. While generosity and loyalty seem to live 
 the more intensely through their self-expenditure, just as exercise 
 imparts a glow of health." J. Allanson Picton. 
 
 "Dear to us are those who love us; the swift moments we 
 spend with them are a compensation for a great deal of misery ; 
 they enlarge our life ; but dearer are those who reject us as 
 unworthy, for they add another life ; they build a heaven before 
 us whereof we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new 
 powers out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us to new and 
 unattempted performances." 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 11 The crystal river of eternal life 
 Flows ever deeper on." 
 
 Bishop E. H. Bickersteth. 
 
 " All through life there are wayside inns, where man may refresh 
 
 his soul with love ; 
 
 Even the lowest may quench his thirst at rivulets fed by springs 
 from above." Henry W. Longfellow.
 
 io8 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 11 There are swift hours in life strong, rushing hours, 
 That do the work of tempests in their might ! 
 They shake down things that stood as rocks and towers 
 Unto th' undoubting mind ; they pour in light 
 Where it but startles like a burst of day 
 For which the uprooting of an oak makes way ; 
 They sweep the colouring mists from off our sight, 
 They touch with fire thought's graven page, the roll 
 Stamp'd with past years and lo ! it shrivels as a scroll ! " 
 
 Felicia Hemans. 
 
 " In proportion as our desire to enter into a life altogether 
 worthy, and so altogether happy, is sincere and earnest, the 
 entrance into such a life ^ ministered to us ' will be abundant. 
 Christ came that we might have this life, and that we might have 
 it abundantly. And though we can attain to the sweetness of 
 life only by overcoming the sharpness of death ; though, only by 
 a tension of endeavour that seems to tighten ' the strings of life ' 
 till they must snap, can we tune the heavenly harp for its music, 
 yet all we need do, be assured we can do, through Christ who 
 strengtheneth us." Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 " So long as life is young, a perpetual stream of wonder pours 
 on the mind and bathes it with exhaustless admirations : even 
 were no lines of unexpected order, no new regions of knowledge 
 opened, the rapid ripening of the faculties themselves would alter 
 the apparent lights on every scene, and dissolve the outlines of 
 each prior experience. And in this training of constant change 
 there is a marvellous tendency to drive us upon faith in the 
 Unchangeable. Finite things can be discerned only against the 
 background of the Infinite. The visible body that glides before 
 the eye is an island in the Space that has no bounding shore. 
 The passing event that marks the moment is but a point of 
 contact where the curve of our being meets the tangent of 
 Eternity. No appearance emerges and arrests our thought, 
 without raising questions of Causation, and speaking to us as 
 from a hidden Mind that meditates in beauty and speaks in 
 law. To the pure and unspoiled heart, all phenomena that
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 109 
 
 present no deformity, and all experience clear of sin, open a 
 way for the consciousness of God ; gleams of Him will frequently 
 break through ; and a certain tacit sense of His reality and 
 nearness will linger around even common hours and daily tasks. 
 Where the first lessons of life, the first stirrings of the soul, are 
 hindered by no hardening and ungenial culture, its features of 
 earthly gladsomeness will have a certain modest setting of heavenly 
 reverence. But the cycle of young experience soon completes 
 itself. At each return its repetitions become more and more 
 familiar. Change itself becomes customary, and visits the mind 
 with monotony rather than variety. The spring seems to burst 
 with a fainter verdure, and the winter hearth to burn with a less 
 vivid glow. The morning breeze of young enthusiasm, so fragrant 
 of the night, so fresh from heaven, grows drowsy with the steady 
 heat, and sinks to rest ; and the mental and moral life which had 
 been nursed in vicissitude threatens to perish under the opiate 
 of usage. Not that Providence abandons us in our maturity, or 
 omits to ply us with awakening appeals. No sooner has life 
 ceased to be a constant flow of novelty, than it enters on a series 
 of grand crises, which intersect its even course : its current orbit 
 has become as a beaten track; but there are nodes it cannot 
 pass without a spark and thrill. When life-long ties are contracted, 
 and the green path is entered at one end at whose other the 
 death-shadow waits in ambush ; when first the home of marriage 
 is set in order ; when the child is born ; when the parent dies ; 
 when the friend deserts, or the business fails, or the sickness 
 prostrates, the Angel of Change looks in again, through her veil 
 of light, or her curtain of shadows, and reminds us of Him who 
 abideth in the midst for ever. All these are epochs of natural 
 devotion ; and only the most insensible heart can pass them with 
 the neutral heedlessness of instinct, and without any enriching 
 hue of awful thought. The incidents of the great mortal drama 
 are so prepared as never to permit the interest to flag ; and even 
 in its quietest development, where the plot seems most evenly 
 to act itself out, we cannot be long without some scene whose 
 pathos touches us, or whose misery appals. These times, more- 
 over, are irregularly scattered on our way, that they may the 
 better surprise our insensibility, and that we may not kill them
 
 no THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 by anticipation ere they come. They are not like the steadily- 
 recurring hours that announce the stated duty and find us 
 mechanically prepared. With whatever wonder we watch the 
 dial-plate of life, we cannot find them there. The deeper crises 
 are marked in invisible characters there, legible only to the 
 Omiscient eye ; and as the index traverses, we know not what 
 birth, what death, what sudden hope, what blighted joy, lies just 
 upon its touch. When these hours strike, neither matin nor 
 vesper has such a holy sound : it is God Himself that tolls us 
 in to prayer, and calls us to listen to His great Sermon on the 
 Mount ; and whether we are in the field or on the sea, we must 
 throw down the common implements of our work, and go and 
 stand before His face. As one crisis after another is brought 
 upon our lot, it gives us the means of moral admeasurement and 
 deeper self-knowledge ; it reads off the reckoning of our spirits, 
 and tells us whether we more deeply live, or more begin to die. 
 Each newest sorrow revives the thought of those before, and 
 spreads out the past in tender colours before the eye ; the pictures 
 of other years, the scenes once pressed by our more elastic feet, 
 the dear forms that were with us there, and held us by the hand, 
 stand out in the clear and silent light : and their very looks may 
 tell us whether any grosser film has gathered on our soul ; 
 whether we can meet their calm and holy face ; whether, as we 
 are further from them in one direction, we are nearer to them 
 in another ; and whether the same atmosphere of God seems to 
 enfold us both and make us one with them and Him. The 
 emergencies that reveal things to our sight are a discipline which, 
 however grievous, we can ill spare ; and, to those that give them 
 worthy welcome, they have a trust nobler than security, and a 
 wisdom better than any joy. The men who most escape them, 
 who most completely realize the false elysium of an easy life ; 
 whose heritage saves them the rough battle with difficulty, to win 
 an honourable footing in the world ; whose health is never 
 shaken by disease, and whose home is invaded by no anxiety, 
 are rarely those who most penetrate to the moral significance of 
 life, and are alive with the quickest affection and the promptest 
 .alacrity of conscience." 
 
 Barnes Martineau, D.D.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. in 
 
 " How life goes on, its great outline 
 How noble and ennobling ! but within 
 How mean, how poor, how pitiful, how mix'd 
 With base alloy ; how Disappointment tracks 
 The steps of Hope ; how Envy dogs success ; 
 How every victor's crown is lined with thorns, 
 And worn 'mid scoffs ! Trace the young poet's fate : 
 Fresh from his solitude, the child of dreams, 
 His heart upon his lips, he seeks the world, 
 To find him fame and fortune, as if life 
 Were like a fairy tale. His song has led 
 The way before him ; flatteries fill his ear, 
 His presence courted, and his words are caught ; 
 And he seems happy in so many friends. 
 What marvel if he somewhat overrate 
 His talents and his state ? These scenes soon change. 
 The vain, who sought to mix their name with his ; 
 The curious, who but live for some new sight ; 
 The idle, all these have been gratified, 
 And now neglect stings even more than scorn. 
 Envy has spoken, felt more bitterly, 
 For that it was not dreamed of; worldliness 
 Has crept upon his spirit unaware ; 
 Vanity craves for its accustom'd food ; 
 He has turn'd sceptic to the truth which made 
 His feelings poetry, and discontent 
 Hangs heavily on the lute, which wakes no more 
 Its early music : social life is fill'd 
 With doubts and vain aspirings ; solitude, 
 When the imagination is dethroned, 
 Is turn'd to weariness." Letitia E. Landon. 
 
 " What despair must he feel who, after a whole life passed 
 in trying to build up himself, resolves that it would have been 
 far better if he had kept still as the clod of the valley, or yielded 
 easily as the leaf to every breeze." Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 
 
 "Life is a continual miracle. The bread we eat is always 
 broken by Divine hands." Joseph Parker, D.D.
 
 112 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " It is a wonderful drama this life of ours, and it is infinitely 
 strange to separate ourselves at times from ourselves and look 
 on as a spectator only at our own little kingdom. It has its 
 beginnings, its rightful kings, its hours of mob-rule, its battles 
 for existence, its revolutions, its reorganizations, its usurpers, 
 its triumphs, and we tremble for its safety as we gaze. Will it 
 get out of all its trouble and change into order and peace at 
 last? At first we cannot tell. We rush back and unite our 
 thought to ourselves again, and it seems that nothing can be done 
 in the darkness and the anarchy of life. It is our hour of 
 depression. The chamber of the soul is ' hung with pain and 
 dreams,' and we ourselves feel like wafts of seaweed swept out 
 to sea on the strong tide of fate into the midnight. But stay ; 
 are we so alone, so unhelped, so forgotten, so feeble, such victims 
 of blind fate ? Not so, if a triumphant humanity has lived for 
 us not so, if Christ has been in our nature bringing into it the 
 order and perfection of Divinity not so if these words have any 
 value : ' Lo ! I am with you always ' ; for then we are in Him, 
 and to be in Him is to be fated to progress passing into perfection, 
 for we are Christ's and Christ is God's." 
 
 Rev. Stopford A. Brooke. 
 
 " Bits of gladness and of sorrow, 
 
 Strangely crossed and interlaid ; 
 Bits of cloud-belt and of rainbow, 
 
 In deep alternate braid ; 
 Bits of storm, when winds are warring, 
 
 Bits of calm, when blasts are stayed ; 
 Bits of silence and of uproar, 
 
 Bits of sunlight and of shade ; 
 Bits of forest-smothered hollow, 
 
 And of open sunny glade ; 
 Strips of garden and of moorland, 
 
 Heath and rose together laid ; 
 Serest leaf of brown October, 
 
 April's youngest, greenest blade. 
 Bits of day-spring and of sunset, 
 
 Of the midnight, of the noon ;
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE 113 
 
 Snow and ice of pale December, 
 
 Living flush of crimson June, 
 Sands of Egypt, fields of Sharon, 
 
 Rush of Jordan, sweep of Nile ; 
 Wells of Marah, shades of Elim, 
 
 Sinai's frown, and Carmel's smile. 
 Depths of valley, peaks of mountain, 
 
 Stretch of verdure-loving plain ; 
 Barren miles of ocean-shingle, 
 
 Fertile straths of smiling grain. 
 Broken shafts of Tyrian columns, 
 
 Rolled and worn by wave and time ; 
 Miles of colonnade and grandeur, 
 
 Luxor's still majestic prime. 
 Truest music, jarring discord, 
 
 Voice of trumpet and of lute ; 
 The thunder-shower's loud lashing, 
 
 And the dew-fall soft and mute. 
 Now the garland, now the coffin, 
 
 Now the wedding, now the tomb ; 
 Now the festal shout of thousands, 
 
 Now the churchyard's lonely gloom. 
 Now the song above the living, 
 
 Now the chaunt above the dead ; 
 The smooth smile of infant beauty, 
 
 Age's wan and furrowed head. 
 These are the mingled seeds, 
 Some flowers, some idle weeds, 
 Some crowded, some alone, 
 With which man's field is sown, 
 And from which springs the one 
 Great harvest of a life that can 
 Be lived but once by man ! " 
 
 H. JBonar, D.D. 
 
 " How strangely the comic and the serious are mixed up 
 together in life, and even in one's own nature." 
 
 Dinah M. Muloch.
 
 114 THOUGHTS ON LIPE. 
 
 " Our life is hinted, but it is hidden. It gleams out at times ; 
 it flashes in sparks upon us. None has seen the full orb, or 
 known the full measure of it. We stand before each other as 
 volumes of books. The binding and lettering are plain enough ; 
 the contents are unknown, or but dimly suspected. We are like 
 books in which some things are to be hidden from the common 
 reader as unsafe, and at every few paragraphs the critical things 
 are expressed in a dead language. So in human life, the simplest 
 things are read; the interior things are not legible." 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher, D.D. 
 
 " God means that there should be no parenthesis of famine in 
 our Christian life. It is not His doing if times of torpor alternate 
 with seasons of quick energy and joyful fulness of life. So far as 
 He is concerned the flow is uninterrupted, and if it come to us in 
 jets and spurts like some intermittent will, it is because our own 
 evil has put some obstacle to choke the channel and dam out His 
 Spirit from our spirits. . . . An unbroken continuity of supplies of 
 His grace unbroken and bright as a sunbeam reaching in one 
 golden shaft all the way from the sun to the earth is His purpose 
 concerning us." Alexander Maclaren, D.D. 
 
 " We might have been ! these are but common words, 
 
 And yet they make the sum of life's bewailing ; 
 They are the echo of those finer chords, 
 Whose music life deplores when unavailing. 
 
 We might have been ! 
 ****** 
 
 Life is made up of miserable hours, 
 
 And all of which we craved a brief possessing, 
 
 For which we wasted wishes, hopes, and powers, 
 Comes with some fatal drawback on the blessing. 
 We might have been ! 
 
 The future never renders to the past 
 
 The young beliefs entrusted to its keeping ; 
 Inscribe one sentence life's first truth and last 
 On the pale marble where our dust is sleeping 
 We might have been." 
 
 Letitia E. Landon.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 115 
 
 " Life is a running shade, with fettered hands, 
 That chases phantoms over shifting sands ; 
 Death is a still spectre on a marble seat, 
 With ever clutching palms and shackled feet ; 
 The airy shapes that mock life's slender chain, 
 The flying joys he strives to clasp in vain, 
 Death only grasps; to live is to pursue." 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
 " It is precisely when we drink in the greatness of the universe, 
 that we least miss the diviner life within ourselves ; precisely at 
 the solemn moment when the stellar circles glide over our head, 
 and the worlds sweep on profuse as spray from the hidden ocean 
 of creative power ; when the stillness of Nature dissolves us away, 
 and we watch the lights and listen to the leaves, scarce knowing 
 that we have eye or ear ; when in space measurement we are not 
 only dwarfed but absolutely quenched, and become a mere point 
 to mark the zero of physical existence ; then is it that, in the 
 profound repose of sense, we wake up to the grandeur of our 
 moral being, and feel, as if from the transparent air, the infinite 
 purity we are bound to seek ; that the deforming stains of passion, 
 like the village smoke when the fires of day are dying in the 
 hearth, seem wiped away ; that we own ourselves to belong to 
 One who is deeper than the universe; and opening our heart 
 to Him, become so conscious of a kindred nature, as to be no 
 longer overpowered by the stars. Standing on the threshold of 
 physical extinction, we are in the very position for looking out 
 through the gate into heavenly glory." 
 
 James Martineaii, D.D. 
 
 " Life will be poor and selfish, and unheroic and mean, unless 
 we live in the presence of Him who loved us even unto the 
 death." Barnes Cu/ross, D.D, 
 
 " From within we must fetch our strength ; for dependence 
 upon aught external to our own souls leaves us strengthless. when 
 its presence is removed or delayed. . . . Our best blessedness can 
 only be shaken to the centre by ourselves. Life is what we make it." 
 
 Rev. F. W. Robertson.
 
 Ii6 THOUGHTS ON LIPE. 
 
 " It is on feeling and on realizing a growth of holiness in pro- 
 portion to the growth of responsible labour and duty, that all the 
 nobility of your inner life depends. For life is then harmonious. 
 The more you become a prince with man, the more you become 
 a son of God. The outward life with man and the inward life 
 with God go hand in hand ; the latter adds the element of eternity 
 to the former." Rev. Stopford A. Brooke. 
 
 "Look on other lives besides your own. See what their 
 troubles are, and how they are borne. Try to care about some- 
 thing in this vast world besides the gratification of small, selfish 
 desires. Try to care for what is best in thought and action 
 something that is good apart from the accidents of your own lot.'* 
 
 George Eliot. 
 
 " Is our Christian life to be always lived within barriers which 
 at its best it cannot surmount ? Am I never to get into a higher 
 region of experience, a purer air, a brighter light, and a more 
 expansive freedom ? We all know how to reply to these questions : 
 we can all say, Ye are not straitened in God, ye are straitened 
 only in yourselves ; straitened in your own expectations almost as 
 much as in your own endeavours." 
 
 Dean Vaughan, D.D. 
 
 11 There is nothing so sweet as duty, and all the best pleasures 
 of life come in the wake of duties done." 
 
 Jean Ingelow. 
 
 " The real poetry of life is found where He found it, in 
 multiplying loaves and fishes ; in descending to things so mean 
 as wine required for a feast ; in collecting a few rude, simple people 
 around Him ; in working the earlier part of His existence humbly 
 at the carpenter's trade ; in a very homely existence." 
 
 Rev. F. W. Robertson. 
 
 "We cannot leave society while one clod remains unpervaded 
 by Divine life. We cannot live and grow in consecrated earth 
 alone. Let us rather learn to stand up like the Holy Father, and 
 with extended arms bless the whole world." 
 
 Margaret Fuller Ossoli.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 117 
 
 "Methinks life is what the actor is, 
 Outside there is the quaint and gibing mask ; 
 Beneath, the pale and careworn countenance." 
 
 Letitia E. Landon. 
 
 " He liveth long who liveth well ! 
 
 All other life is short and vain ; 
 He liveth longest who can tell 
 Of living most for heavenly gain. 
 
 He liveth long who liveth well ! 
 
 All else is being flung away ; 
 He liveth longest who can tell 
 
 Of true things truly done each day. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Be what thou seemest ; live thy creed ; 
 
 Hold up to earth the torch divine ; 
 Be what thou prayest to be made ; 
 
 Let the great Master's steps be thine. 
 
 Fill up each hour with what will last ; 
 
 Buy up the moments as they go ; 
 The life above, when this is past, 
 
 Is the ripe fruit of life below." 
 
 H. Bonar, D.D. 
 
 " In the life of every one there has been one trial, one crisis, 
 to which great issues are attached." 
 
 Rev. F. W. Robertson. 
 
 " This life is a great schoolhouse. The wise Teacher trains 
 in us such gifts as, if we graduate honourably, will be of most 
 service in the perfect manhood and womanhood that come after. 
 He sees, as we do not, that a power is sometimes best trained by 
 repression. ' We do not always lose an advantage when we 
 dispense with it,' Goethe says. But the suffocated lives . . . 
 make my heart ache sometimes. I take comfort in thinking how 
 they will bud and blossom up in the air by-and-bye- . . . We tread 
 them underfoot in our careless stepping now and then, and do 
 not see that they have not the elasticity to rise from our touch." 
 
 Elizabeth S. Phelps.
 
 n8 .THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Only in heaven shall each human life be freely suspended in 
 the midst of its circumstances, and take, as it were, the form of 
 a perfect sphere." Rev. Hugh Macmillan. 
 
 11 Life's a vast sea 
 
 That does its mighty errand without fail, 
 Panting in unchanged strength though waves are changing." 
 
 George Eliot. 
 
 " A man's life should be his vindication." 
 
 Joseph Parker, D.D. 
 
 " Life is not one of the homeless forces which promiscuously 
 inhabit space, or which can be gathered like electricity from 
 the clouds and dissipated back again into space. Life is definite 
 and resident ; and Spiritual Life is not a visit from a force, but 
 a resident tenant in the soul." 
 
 Professor Henry Drummond. 
 
 " In Christian life, every moment and every act is an oppor- 
 tunity for doing the one thing of becoming Christ-like. Every 
 day is full of a most impressive experience. Every temptation 
 to evil temper which can assail us to-day will be an opportunity 
 to decide the question whether we shall gain the calmness and 
 the rest of Christ, or whether we shall be tossed by the restless- 
 ness and agitation of the world. Nay, the very vicissitudes of 
 the seasons, day and night, heat and cold, affecting us variably, 
 and producing exhilaration or depression, are so contrived as- 
 to conduce towards the being which we become, and decide 
 whether we shall be master of ourselves, or whether we shall 
 be swept at the mercy of accident and circumstance, miserably 
 susceptible of merely outward influences. Infinite as are the 
 varieties of life, so manifold are the paths to saintly character ; 
 and he who has not found out how directly or indirectly to make 
 everything converge towards his soul's sanctification has as yet 
 missed the meaning of this life." Rev. F. W. Robertson. 
 
 " The temptations of to-day are always more or less the result 
 of the life of yesterday, the character and actions of the past 
 reappearing, not only in the good, but in the evil of the present."" 
 
 G. S. Barrett.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 119 
 
 " The little courtesies which form the small change of life, 
 may separately appear of little intrinsic value, but they acquire 
 their importance from repetition and accumulation. They are 
 like the spare minutes, or the groat a day, which proverbially 
 produce such momentous results in the course of a twelvemonth 
 or in a lifetime." Samuel Smiles. 
 
 " To live thoughtfully is to advance in life, and feel ourselves 
 being laid hold of by the powers of the world to come." 
 
 W. Mountford. 
 
 " Live for to-day ! to-morrow's light 
 To-morrow's cares shall bring to sight, 
 .So sleep like closing flowers at night, 
 And Heaven thy morn will bless." 
 
 John Keble. 
 
 " All of life is one great warfare. Every thought, word, and 
 deed is a portion of it. Edward B. Pusey, D.D. 
 
 " Oh, righteous doom, that they who make 
 
 Pleasure their only end, 
 Ordering the whole life for its sake, 
 Miss that whereto they tend." 
 
 Archbishop Trench. 
 
 " It is the characteristic of man that he plans and remembers ; 
 he plans to gain an object, he remembers his plan and looks 
 for its fulfilment Life is based on this idea of a return or 
 reward to be gained : that is, it is not its own reward. It is 
 not enough for man simply to live." 
 
 Rev. Theodore T. Munger. 
 
 "A man's life is a tower, with a staircase of many steps, 
 That, as he toileth upward, crumble successively behind him : 
 No going back; the past is an abyss; no stopping, for the 
 
 present perisheth : 
 
 But ever hasting on, precarious on the foothold of To-day ; 
 Our cares are all To-day ; our joys are all To-day ; 
 And in one little word, our life, what is it but To-day ? " 
 
 Martin F. Tupper, D.C.L.
 
 120 THOUGHTS OA LIFE. 
 
 " In the heat and struggle of mid-life, it is a severe but often 
 a purifying retreat to be lifted into the lonely observatory of 
 memory, above the fretful illusions of the moment, and in 
 presence once more of the beauty and the sanctity of life. The 
 voiceless counsels that look through the visionary eyes of our 
 departed, steal into us behind our will, and sweep the clouds 
 away, and direct us on a wiser path than we should know to 
 choose. If age ever gains any higher wisdom, it is chiefly 
 that it sits in a longer gallery of the dead, and sees the noble 
 and saintly faces in further perspective and more various throng. 
 The dim, abstracted look that often settles on the features 
 of the old, what means it ? Is it a mere fading of the life ? an 
 absence, begun already, from the drama of humanity? a deafness 
 to the cry of its woes and the music of its affections ? Not 
 always so : the seeming forgetfulness may be but brightened 
 memory ; and if the mists lie on the outward present, and make 
 it as a gathering Night, the more brilliant is the lamp within 
 that illuminates the figures of the Past, and shows again, by 
 their flitting shadows, the plot in which they moved and fell. 
 It is through such natural experiences the treasured Sanctities 
 of every true life that God ' discovereth to us deep things 
 out of darkness, and turneth into light the shadow of Death.' " 
 
 panics Martineau, D.D. 
 
 "Lifeisa perpetual Advent. The marriage supper is always 
 laid, in some guise or other. There is no day that has not its 
 approaching glory, its light that beckons, its table that groans." 
 
 Rev. S. A. Tipple. 
 
 " Our life's floor 
 
 Is laid upon Eternity ; no crack in it 
 But shows the underlying heaven." 
 
 Canon Kingsley. 
 
 "We often live to see the reason of affliction; how all the 
 events of life hang so wonderfully together, that afterwards we 
 can frequently trace the chain of events, and see in humble 
 faith and awe that out of each one has been evolved the 
 other, and that everything, bad and good, must necessarily have 
 happened exactly as it did." Dinah M. Muloch.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 121 
 
 " Human life, as a matter of fact, is made up of graver and 
 lighter passages. There is no true portraiture of it which does 
 not present its reliefs and recreations alongside of its burdensome 
 pressure and cares. There is no single waking moment of our 
 life which we can afford to lose." Dean Goulburn, D.D. 
 
 " Life is in league with universal forces, and subsists by 
 universal law." James Hinton. 
 
 " Life has two ecstatic moments one when the spirit catches 
 sight of Truth, the other when it recognizes a kindred spirit. 
 People are for ever groping and prying around Truth ; but the 
 vision is seldom vouchsafed to them. We are daily handling and 
 talking to our fellow-creatures ; but rarely do we behold the reve- 
 lation of a soul in its naked sincerity and fervid might. Perhaps, 
 also, these two moments generally coincide. In some churches 
 of old, on Christmas Eve, two small lights, typifying the Divine 
 and the Human nature, were seen to approach one another 
 gradually, until they met and blended, and a bright flame was 
 kindled. So likewise it is when the two portions of our spiritual 
 nature meet and blend that the brightest flame is kindled within 
 us. When our feelings are the most vivid, our perceptions are 
 the most piercing; and when we see the furthest, we also feel 
 the most. Perhaps it is only in the land of Truth that Spirits can 
 discern each other ; as it is when they are helping each other on 
 that they may best hope to arrive there." 
 
 Archdeacon Julius C. Hare, 
 
 " The growth of Christian life is to be measured by the growth 
 of love ; and love itself is to . be measured in its progressive states 
 by its restfulness, its undisturbed trust, its victory over every form 
 of fear. The state of perfect loving is incompatible with distrust. 
 When the heart is first awakened to affection, it is disturbed and 
 agitated. It fluctuates with every shade of hope and fear 
 alternately. It rushes from one extreme of confidence to the 
 opposite of doubt. But this is only while it is filling. The 
 heart beginning to love is like a bay into which the star-drawn 
 tides are rushing. The waters come with violence. They stir 
 up the sand and sediment. They dash and murmur on the edges
 
 122 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 of the shore. They whirl and chafe about the rocks, and the 
 whole bay is agitated with strife and counterstrife of swirling 
 waters, until they have nearly reached their height. Then, when 
 great depth is gained, when the shores are full, when no more 
 room is found for the floods, the bay begins to tranquillize itself, 
 to clear its surface ; and, effacing every wrinkle, and blowing out 
 every bubble, and hushing every ripple along the shore, it looks 
 up with an open and tranquil face into the sky, and reflects clearly 
 the sun and moon that have drawn it thither. And so does the 
 soul, while filling, whirl with disquiet, and fret its edges with 
 wrinkles and eddies, but when it is filled with love, it rests and 
 looks calmly up, and reflects the image of its God." 
 
 Henry Ward eecher, D.D. 
 
 " What is your life ? It is even as a vapour that appeareth for 
 a little time, and then vanisheth away. I suppose few people 
 reach the middle or latter period of their age without having at 
 some moment of change or disappointment felt the truth of these 
 bitter words, and been startled by the fading of the sunshine 
 from the cloud of their life into the sudden agony of the know- 
 ledge that the fabric of it was as fragile as a dream, and the 
 endurance of it as transient as the dew. But it is not always that 
 even at such times of melancholy surprise we can enter into any 
 true perception that the human life shares, in the nature of it, 
 not only the evanescence, but the mystery of the cloud ; that its 
 avenues are wreathed in darkness, and its forms and courses no 
 less fantastic, than spectral and obscure ; so that not only in the 
 vanity which we cannot grasp, but in the shadow which we 
 cannot pierce, it is true of this cloudy life of ours, that 'man 
 walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain.' And 
 least of all, whatever may have been the eagerness of our 
 passions, or the height of our pride, we are able to understand in 
 its depth the third and most solemn character in which our life 
 is like those clouds of heaven ; that to it belongs not only their 
 transience, not only their mystery, but also their power ; that in 
 the cloud of the human soul there is a fire stronger than the 
 lightning, and a grace more precious than the rain ; and that, 
 though of the good and evil it shall one day be said alike, that
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 123 
 
 the place that knew them knows them no more, there is an infinite 
 separation between those whose brief presence had there been a 
 blessing, like the mist of Eden that went up from the earth to water 
 the garden, and those whose place knew them only as a drifting 
 and changeful shade, of whom the heavenly sentence is, that they 
 are ' wells without water ; clouds that are carried with a tempest 
 to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever.' 
 
 " Let us, for our lives, do the work of men, while we bear the 
 form of them, since those lives are Not as a vapour, and do Not 
 vanish away." John Ruskin. 
 
 " When our Saviour told us to live by the day, He meant, I 
 think, a day encompassed by Eternity a day whose yesterday had 
 gone up to God, to add its little record to the long unforgotten 
 history of the past, whose to-morrow may take us up to God 
 ourselves. We are to live by the day, not as butterflies, which 
 are creatures of a day, but as mortal yet immortal beings belong 
 ing to eternity, whose immortal life may end to-night, whose 
 longest life is but an ephemeral fragment of our immortality." 
 
 Elizabeth Charles. 
 
 " ' Life is before ye ' oh ! if ye could look 
 Into the secrets of that sealed book, 
 Strong as ye are in youth, and hope, and faith, 
 Ye should sink down, and falter, ' Give us death ! 
 Could the dread Sphinx's lips but once unclose, 
 And utter but a whisper of the woes 
 Which must o'ertake ye, in your lifelong doom, 
 Well might ye cry, ' Our cradle be our tomb ! ' 
 Could ye foresee your spirit's broken wings, 
 Earth's brightest triumphs what despised things. 
 Friendship how feeble, love how fierce a flame, 
 Your joy half sorrow, half your glory shame, 
 Hollo wness, weariness, and, worst of all, 
 Self-scorn that pities not its own deep fall, 
 Fast gathering darkness, and fast waning light, 
 Oh ! could ye see it all, ye might, ye might 
 Cower in the dust, unequal to the strife, 
 And die but in beholding what is life !
 
 124 .THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 1 Life is before ye ' from the fated road 
 
 Ye cannot turn : then take ye up your load, 
 
 Not yours to tread, or leave the unknown way, 
 
 Ye must go o'er it, meet ye what ye may. 
 
 Gird up your souls within ye to the deed, 
 
 Angels and fellow-spirits bid ye speed ! 
 
 What though the brightness dim, the pleasure fade, 
 
 The glory wane, oh ! not of these is made 
 
 The awful life that to your trust is given. 
 
 Children of God ! inheritors of heaven ! 
 
 Mourn not the perishing of each fair toy, 
 
 Ye were ordained to do, not to enjoy, 
 
 To suffer, which is nobler than to dare ; 
 
 A sacred burthen is this life ye bear, 
 
 Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly, 
 
 Stand up and walk beneath it steadfastly : 
 
 Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin, 
 
 But onward, upward, till the goal ye win ; 
 
 God guard ye, and God guide ye on your way, 
 
 Young pilgrim warriors who set forth to-day." 
 
 Frances A. Kemble. 
 
 " A Christian man's life is laid in the loom of time to a pattern 
 which he does not see, but God does ; and his heart is a shuttle. 
 On one side of the loom is sorrow, and on the other is joy ; and 
 the shuttle, struck alternately by each, flies back and forth, carry- 
 ing the thread, which is white or black, as the pattern needs ; and 
 in the end, when God shall lift up the finished garment, and all 
 its changing hues shall glance out, it will then appear that the 
 deep and dark colours were as needful to beauty as the bright 
 and high colours." Henry Ward Beecher, D.D. 
 
 "Life, which else were a series of disconnected fragments, 
 is exhibited to us by memory as an organic whole ; and as we 
 plunge into the past, and reconstruct the picture of our acts and 
 sufferings in bygone years, we gain a clear, sharp insight into the 
 fact of our personality, which has created that history from which 
 we are now so far removed." Canon Liddon, D.D.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 125 
 
 " Man is free just in so far as he has life." James Hinton. 
 
 " Henceforth let no man, peering down 
 Through the dim glittering mine of future years, 
 Say to himself, ' Too much ! this cannot be ! ' 
 To-day and custom wall up our horizon : 
 Before the homely miracle of life 
 Blindfold we stand, and sigh, as though God were not." 
 
 Canon Kingsley. 
 
 "Alas, Experience ! No other mentor has so wasted and frozen 
 a face as yours : none wears a robe so black, none bears a rod 
 so heavy, none with hand so inexorable draws the novice so 
 sternly to his task, and forces him with authority so resistless 
 to its acquirement. It is by your instructions alone that man 
 or woman can ever find a safe track through life's wilds ; without 
 it, how they stumble, how they stray ! On what forbidden grounds 
 do they intrude ; down what dread declivities are they hurled ! " 
 
 Charlotte Bronte. 
 
 " Man liveth only in himself, but the Lord liveth in all things ; 
 And His pervading unity quickeneth the whole creation." 
 
 Martin F. Tupper, D.C.L. 
 
 "Life is God's great Drama. It was thought out and composed 
 in the Eternal mind before the mountains were brought forth, or 
 ever the earth and the world were made. In time God made a 
 theatre for it, called the Earth ; and now the great Drama is being 
 acted thereon. It is on a gigantic scale, this Drama. The scenes 
 are shifting every hour. One set of characters drops off the stage, 
 and new ones come on, to play much the same part as the first, 
 only in new dresses. There seem to be entanglements, per- 
 plexities, interruptions, confusions, contradictions without end ; 
 but you may be sure there is one ruling thought, one master- 
 design, to which all these are subordinate. Every incident, every 
 character, however apparently adverse, contributes to work out 
 that ruling thought. Think you that the Divine Dramatist will 
 leave anything out of the scope of His plot ? Nay, the circum- 
 ference of that plot embraces within its vast sweep every incident 
 which Time ever brought to birth." Dean Goulburn, D.D.
 
 126 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " The secret of true living is to have many interests. 
 
 " If you are animated by right principles, and have awakened 
 to the dignity of life, the subject of amusements may be left 
 to settle itself." Rev. Theodore T. Munger. 
 
 " It is hard for us to live up to our own eloquence, and keep 
 pace with our winged words, while we are treading the solid earth 
 and are liable to heavy dining." George Eliot. 
 
 " Bright with unnumbered laughters, and swollen by a thousand 
 
 tears, 
 
 Rushes along, through upland and lowland, the river of life ; 
 Sometimes foaming and broken, and sometimes silent and 
 
 slumbrous, 
 Sometimes through rocky glens, and sometimes through 
 
 flowery plains. 
 Sometimes the mountains draw near, and the black depths 
 
 swirl at their bases, 
 
 Sometimes the limitless meads fade on the verge of the sky, 
 Sometimes the forests stand round, and the great trees cast 
 
 terrible shadows, 
 Sometimes the golden wheat waves, and girls fill their pitchers 
 
 and sing. 
 
 Always the same strange flow, through changes and changes 
 
 unchanging, 
 Always in youth and in age, in calm and in tempest the 
 
 same 
 Whether it sparkle transparent and give back the blue like a 
 
 mirror, 
 Or sweep on turbid with flood, and black with the garbage of 
 
 towns 
 
 Whether the silvery scale of the minnow flash on the pebbles, 
 Or whether the poisonous ooze cling for a shroud round the 
 
 dead 
 Whether it struggle through shoals of white blooms and 
 
 feathery grasses, 
 
 Or bear on its bosom the hulls of ocean-tost navies the same. 
 **#*#**
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 127 
 
 What is the secret of life, or the painful riddle of death ? 
 
 Why is it better to be than to cease, to flow on than to 
 
 stagnate ? 
 Why is the river- stream sweet, while the sea is as bitter as 
 
 gall? 
 
 Surely we know not at all, but the cycle of Being is eternal, 
 
 Life is eternal as death, tears are eternal as joy. 
 
 As the stream flowed, it will flow ; though 'tis sweet, yet the sea 
 
 will be bitter : 
 Foul it with filth, yet the deltas grow green and the ocean is 
 
 clear, 
 Always the sun and the winds will strike its broad surface and 
 
 gather 
 Some purer drops from its depths, to float in the clouds of the 
 
 sky; 
 Soon these shall fall once again, and replenish the full-flowing 
 
 river. 
 Roll round then, O mystical cycle ! flow onward, ineffable 
 
 stream ! " 
 
 Lewis Morris. 
 
 " All noble lives all lives worth living are expanded from the 
 small circles of every-day domestic circumstance into portions of 
 the grand orbits of the worlds. Yet, doubtless, thereby in them- 
 selves such lives must often become fragments instead of wholes, 
 must seem in themselves unfinished, must be in themselves 
 inexplicable." Elizabeth Charles. 
 
 " Our physical nature is a ' saying ' or ' representation' of nature ; 
 all life indeed is so : i.e., of physical nature. And the human 
 body, as the ultimate development of the physical life, is a complete 
 representation of nature. When our mental life attains to be a 
 perfect representation of nature, then will it not have attained to 
 the stage of manhood ; a perfect ' saying ' or ' representation ' of 
 nature ? " Barnes Hinton. 
 
 " Life without love would not be worth the having; and without 
 ir, though we had a house and that house a palace, we could not 
 have a home. ' Thomas Guthrie, D.D.
 
 128 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " True Christian life is like the march of a conquering army 
 into a fortress which has been breached : men fall by hundreds 
 in the ditch. Was their fall a failure? Nay, for their bodies 
 bridge over the hollow, and over them the rest pass on to victory." 
 
 " We must live to God first-hand." 
 
 Rev. F. W. Robertson. 
 
 " I say to myself, ' My life is like a wind : it blows and will 
 cease.' But something says in reply, ' Wouldst thou not be one 
 of God's winds, content to blow, and scatter the rain and the 
 dew, and shake the plants into fresh life, and then pass away, and 
 know nothing of what thou hast done ? ' And I answer, ' Yes, 
 Lord.' " George Macdonald, LL.D. 
 
 " Time is life's freightage, wherewith some men trade and make 
 a fortune ; and others suffer it to moulder all away, or waste it in 
 extravagance. Time is life's book, out of which some extract 
 wondrous wisdom ; while others let it lie unconned, and then die 
 as fools. Time is life's tree, from which some gather precious 
 fruit ; while others lie down under its shadow, and perish with 
 hunger. Time is life's ladder, whereby some raise themselves up 
 to honour, and renown, and glory; and some let themselves down 
 into the deeps of shame, degradation, and ignominy." 
 
 Stoughton, D.D. 
 
 11 As I watched the ploughman ploughing, 
 Or the sower sowing in the fields, or the harvester harvesting, 
 I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies ; 
 (Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according)." 
 
 Walt Whitman. 
 
 "A Christless life under the dominion of tyrannous desires." 
 
 Alexander Madaren, D.D. 
 
 " The truest life of man is when he lives on every word that 
 comes forth from God, which God has put it into his power to 
 learn ; and never will he attain to any fulness of stature until he 
 can live in unreluctant recognition of everything around him that 
 he believes to be a Fact." Rev. F. Myers.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 129 
 
 "All duty is eloquent of Deity; and all the occurrences of 
 daily life by which we are environed, cannot but be ... within 
 the Providence of God. Therefore, if we would think nothing 
 little, we might perhaps often recognize Christ's presence with us, 
 as in Nathanael's case, when, as it were, merely like him, sitting 
 under our fig-tree." Rev. Frederick Myers. 
 
 " Occasional wavelets or ripples may be seen at times on the 
 surface of our life, which do not all lie in the same direction, and 
 still less in the direction of the main current; but they are nothing 
 more than the ripples you can see on a gusty day upon the surface 
 of a river, which not only do not go very deep, but do not inter- 
 fere with the settled, constant, irresistible movement of the river 
 towards the sea. Our lives have a general tendency and direction 
 which no mere superficial disturbances will ever avail to arrest, 
 and that general tendency or direction indicates what is the sake 
 by which our life is controlled." 
 
 Enoch Me/lor, D.D. 
 
 " Living, thou dost not live, 
 If mercy's spring run dry." 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
 " Religion is not the matter of life, that you can spread it out 
 and show it, but the spirit of life that makes it different from 
 mechanism and death : it is not the poem's rhyme and stanzas 
 that you may count and scan, but the soul of beauty that makes 
 it music, and the pulse of thought that makes it throb. It can 
 be understood only by sympathy from the heart outwards, not 
 by induction from the appearances inwards. Though the most 
 powerful commander of action, and the most productive agency 
 in history, it is not defined by what it does : it is a mood, an 
 attitude of soul towards God, that alters the whole aspect of the 
 universe, and affixes quite different and deeper meanings to all 
 its symbols. It is a presence at the very springs of thought, 
 sending them down limpid and sparkling with a vital air, that 
 nurtures the roots of things wherever the current flows, and 
 enriches life with deeper forests and with greener fields." 
 
 James Martineau, D.D. 
 9
 
 130 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the 
 air they breathe ; evil spreads as necessarily as disease. There is 
 no sort of wrong deed of which a man can bear the punishment 
 alone ; you can't isolate yourself, and say that the evil which is in 
 you shall not spread." George Eliot. 
 
 " The visible material life is but the scaffolding under which the 
 unseen and eternal life is rearing. With respect to each of us, 
 there has been from the dawn of our existence a mental as well 
 as a material history a life of the soul, a course of inward progress 
 or retrogression, a series of changes for good or evil in the charac- 
 ter of that mysterious dweller beneath every breast, more worthy 
 to be chronicled, fraught, would we believe it. with interest deeper, 
 more momentous far, than the fortunes and vicissitudes of our 
 outward career. We spend our years, it is written, as a tale that 
 is told ; but there is, may we not say, an underplot in the story of 
 every human life ; and however stirring be the narrative of our 
 outward experience, there is ever a deeper pathos, a more awful 
 and absorbing interest, gathered around the history of the soul." 
 
 John Catrd, D.D. 
 
 " An uneventful life is apt to be poor and barren, unless one has 
 the rare gift, like Wordsworth, of turning every sunrise and sunset, 
 every storm, every changing phase of the old landscape, every 
 fresh day of uneventful household life into newness. It is the 
 events of life marriage, births, sickness, travel, new scenes and 
 relations, the changes that drop from fortune's wheel, the thunder- 
 bolts out of clear skies, the sudden lift of dark clouds that bring 
 new visions of truth." Rev. Theodore T. Munger. 
 
 " Life, I repeat, is energy of love, 
 Divine or human ; exercised in pain, 
 In strife, and tribulation, and ordained, 
 If so approved and sanctified, to pass, 
 Through shades and silent rest, to endless joy." 
 
 Henry W. Wordsworth. 
 
 " The sting of our ignorance is the spur of life, and the conscious- 
 ness of a secret to discover is the flavour of happiness." 
 
 Rev. Stopford A. Brooke
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 131 
 
 " Our life must be a holocaust, offered with all its activities and 
 with all its powers upon the altar of the Lord. 
 
 " We are to ennoble the ordinary things of life ; we are to 
 make trade a beautiful thing, and business a beautiful thing, and 
 commerce a beautiful thing, because it is touched, and hued, and 
 toned, and fringed with the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus 
 our Lord." IV. Morley Punshon, D.D. 
 
 " In order to any great attainment in spiritual life, there must 
 be an indomitable resolve to try and try again, and still to begin 
 anew, amidst much failure and discouragement. On warm dewy 
 mornings in the spring vegetation makes a shoot ; and when we 
 rise, and throw open the window, we mark that the may is 
 blossoming in the hedgerows. And those periods when a man 
 can say, ' I lost myself sadly yesterday in temper or in talk ; but 
 I know that my crucified Lord took upon Him those sins and 
 answered for them, and to-day I will earnestly strive against them 
 in the Strength of His Spirit, invoked into my soul by earnest 
 prayer,' these are the warm dewy mornings of the soul, when the 
 spiritual life within us sprouts and blossoms apace. He who would 
 form a sound judgment of his spiritual progress must throw his eye 
 over long, not short, intervals of time. He must compare the self 
 of this year with the self of last ; not the self of to-day with the 
 self of yesterday. Enough if amid the divers and shifting expe- 
 riences of the world, and the manifold internal self-communings 
 arising thereupon, that delicate plant, spiritual life, has grappled 
 its fibre a little deeper into the soil than it seemed to have done 
 in an earlier stage of our pilgrimage, now fairly past." 
 
 Dean Goulburn> D.D. 
 
 " There lies no desert in the land of life, 
 For e'en that tract that barrenest doth seem, 
 Laboured of thee in faith and hope, shall teem 
 With heavenly harvests and rich gatherings rife." 
 
 Frances A. Kemble. 
 
 "Prayer and kindly intercourse with the poor are the two 
 great safeguards of spiritual life; its more than food and raiment." 
 
 Thomas Arnold, D.D.
 
 132 THOUGHTS ON LIPE. 
 
 " Life is lovely every way. Even if we look upon it as an 
 isolated thing, existing apart from the rest of nature, and using the 
 inorganic world merely as a dead pedestal on which to sustain 
 itself, it is still beautiful. Not even a narrow thought like this can 
 strip it of its charm. How lovely life were if it were but a reveal- 
 ing ; the bright blossom wherein nature's hidden force comes forth 
 to display itself; the necessary outpouring of the universal life 
 that circulates within her veins, unseen ! How lovely, if life were 
 rooted in nature's inmost being, and expressed to us in the most 
 perfect form the meaning of the mighty laws and impulses which 
 sway her, and which, as written on the seas, and rocks, and stars, 
 is too vast for us to grasp ; the bright and merry life, with its ten 
 thousand voices, bursting forth from the dim and silent Law which 
 rules the world, as, in the babbling spring, the stream that has run 
 darkling underground bursts forth and sparkles to the sun." 
 
 James Hinton. 
 
 " Life is like the summer's day ; and in the first fresh morning 
 we do not realize the noonday heat, and at noon we do not think 
 of the shadows lengthening across the plain, and of the setting 
 sun, and of the advancing night. Yet, to each and all, the sunset 
 comes at last ; and those who have made most of the day are 
 not unlikely to reflect most bitterly how little they have made 
 of it." Canon Liddon, D.D. 
 
 " Life is a leaf of paper white, 
 Whereon each one of us may write 
 His word or two, and then comes night. 
 
 ' Lo, time and space enough,' we cry, 
 ' To write an epic i ' so we try 
 Our nibs upon the edge, and die. 
 
 Muse not which way the pen to hold, 
 Luck hates the slow and loves the bold, 
 Soon come the darkness and the cold. 
 
 Greatly begin ! though thou have time 
 But for a line, be that sublime, 
 Not failure, but low aim, is crime." 
 
 . Russell LowelL
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 133 
 
 " Every Christ-like life, that is, is made subject to difficulty, 
 and, like salt difficulty, trial, hardness, do penetrate, purify, 
 freshen, and preserve the new life from stagnation. It is no 
 solitary law which says that trial penetrates our life with strength. 
 The same law rules nature, and men in their daily work. The 
 school of the veteran soldier, of the great artist, of the skilled 
 mechanic, is hardship, not ease ; severe thought, not lazy fancy ; 
 strong labour, not drifting idleness. The school of high morality 
 is fierce repression of passionate desire. Nor is it otherwise in 
 Nature. A cold wind slays the protected flowers ; but the pine, 
 cradled in the mountains, moored by its anchored roots in the 
 rents of granite ; nursed by rough cold and burning suns, strikes 
 its spurs deeper at every blast, and weaves into its trunk and 
 arms the powers of the frost and storm, until it stands for 
 centuries. It is so with our life, when we have sacrificed it to 
 God. We are salted with difficulty, that we may be the veterans 
 of Heaven ; we learn in sorrow, that we may teach in song ; we 
 bear the storm, that we may be wrought into mighty trees, under 
 whose branches many may find shelter." 
 
 Rev. Stopford A. Brooke. 
 
 " Beware of losing self-respect through living dramatically 
 with a daily appearance put on, which is not true to the reality, 
 with the frequent assumption, before spectators, of that which 
 does not belong to you. Beware of losing it through leading an 
 idle, aimless, useless life, a life without any high or worthy 
 purpose. Beware of losing it, especially, through for ever failing 
 to obey your higher promptings, and for ever regretting and 
 bemoaning the failure, while never seriously endeavouring to 
 improve." Rev. S. A. Tipple. 
 
 " Our lives make a moral tradition for our individual selves, 
 as the life of mankind at large makes a moral tradition for the 
 race; and to have once acted nobly seems a reason why we 
 should always be noble." George Eliot. 
 
 " To know that we have authority, and a sufficient one, is more 
 than half the inspiration of our life." 
 
 Enoch Mellor D.D.
 
 134 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Man's life is not lived in the general : it is made up of a 
 vast multitude of little details ; the sum of which is the life \ 
 the putting together of all which, and the tracing up of all which 
 to their secret spring in the principle and in the motive, in the 
 mind and in the soul, is the judgment ; is that great reading of 
 hearts, and that great explaining of mysteries, and that great 
 assignment of destinies, for which the world is daily sowing, and 
 in which shall be the grand reaping." 
 
 Dean Vaughan, D.D. 
 
 "Life, in its full development, is not the earthly heritage of 
 any human being. We all have some powers that are either 
 wholly or partially dormant. The most earnest and energetic 
 have some talents buried in the napkin, which they have not 
 put out to usury, but have left lying useless in their lives. Many 
 have buried nearly all, and only care to use those which are 
 necessary for their pleasure, or worldly profit. But, in so far 
 exactly as our knowledge of God and Christ is defective, in so 
 far as we hide away from daily work these gifts, does death, and 
 not life, rule over us. And in the same proportion as we progress 
 in consciousness of the growth of God within us, does an increasing 
 activity replace the stagnation that before slumbered in the soul, 
 and do we advance by sure degrees into fuller, deeper, truer life." 
 
 James McCann, D.D. 
 
 " We know by the truth of Pentecost, that though there is in 
 us baseness, sin, feebleness of will, yet that there is also a God 
 within us, whose inspiration kindles into life the nobler side 
 of our being, and sets it in educating battle against the lower. 
 Religious life is not a succession of constantly recurring shocks, 
 nor ought it to render the man incapable of life in the world. 
 It is not a series of incessant spiritual depressions and excite- 
 ments, nor is it always being invaded by God with special 
 revelations. It is a slow, though broken growth through trial 
 and failure, through success and joy, through struggle which is 
 commonplace enough but every now and then it reaches some 
 hilltop, when God appears to bring all the results of our past to 
 a point, and to start us afresh upon a new path." 
 
 Rev. Stopford A. Brooke.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 135 
 
 " Life is but too dear to us, even with all its precarious joys 
 and heavy calamities ; and constituted even as it is, we can hardly 
 keep our minds fixed upon a brighter state with any degree of 
 steadiness." Felicia Hemans. 
 
 " We are all, in some measure, children to the end of life, 
 without firmness where we ought to be most deliberate, and 
 governed by passion where we ought to follow most resolutely the 
 dictates of reflection." W. E. Channing, D.D. 
 
 " Life is like a journey during night. 
 We toil through gloomy paths of the unknown ; 
 Heavy the footsteps are with pitfalls round ; 
 And few and faint the stars that guide our way : 
 But, at the last, comes morning glorious 
 Shines forth the light of day, and so will shine 
 The heaven which is our future and our home." 
 
 Letitia E. Landon. 
 
 " Men go an undulating course, sometimes on the hill, some- 
 times in the valley. But he only is in the right who in the 
 valley forgets not the hill-prospect, and knows in darkness that 
 the sun will rise again. That is the real life which is subordinated 
 to, not merged in, the ideal ; he is only wise who can bring the 
 lowest act of his life into sympathy with its highest thought." 
 
 Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 
 
 " The summit of Goatfell, the highest peak in the island of 
 Arran, is composed of the same granite which forms its base, and 
 which has been erupted through intermediate rocks of a different 
 kind. So we are crowned with the deepest and most essential 
 part of our own life. Our highest summit is our deepest founda- 
 tion. Our crown of life is that which we ourselves have formed, 
 and which passes through our whole being." 
 
 Rev. Hugh Macmillan. 
 
 " Perfect life is not merely the possessing of perfect functions, 
 but of perfect functions perfectly adjusted to each other, and all 
 conspiring to a single result, the perfect working of the whole 
 organism." Professor Henry Dtummond.
 
 1 36 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " The spiritual life is not knowing, nor hearing, but doing. 
 We only know so far as we can do ; we learn to do by doing, 
 and we learn to know by doing : what we do, truly, rightly, in the 
 way of duty, that, and only that, we are." 
 
 Rev. F. W. Robertson. 
 
 " The proof of all life is vital motion ; death is stagnant 
 passivity." J. Cunningham Geikie, D.D. 
 
 " Denial has to come into your life somewhere. You deny the 
 body or you deny the soul. Deny the body, and the soul comes 
 to the front, and floods your life with sacred light, with heaven's 
 pure splendour. Gratify the body, and the soul retires, and its 
 hot tears fall in the hearing of God. Self-slaughter takes place 
 somewhere : it is for us to say where it shall take place. It can 
 take place in the cutting off of a hand, or in the thrusting of a 
 dagger into the very fountain of life, and it lies within the power 
 of the human will to say where the wound shall be inflicted." 
 
 Joseph Parker, D.D. 
 
 11 Every human soul has a complete and perfect plan cherished 
 for it in the heart of God a Divine biography marked out, which 
 it enters into life to live. This life, rightly unfolded, will be a 
 complete and beautiful whole, an experience led on by God and 
 unfolded by his secret nurture, as the trees and the flowers by 
 the secret nurture of the world ; a drama cast in the mould of 
 a perfect art, with no part wanting ; a Divine study for the man 
 himself, and for others ; a study that shall for ever unfold, in 
 wondrous beauty, the love and faithfulness of God ; great in its 
 conception, great in the Divine skill by which it is shaped ; above 
 all, great in the momentous and glorious issues it prepares." 
 
 H. Bushnell, D.D. 
 
 " Life is ordained to bear, like land, 
 Some fruit, be fallow as it will : 
 Evil has force itself to sow, 
 Where we deny the healthy seed, 
 And all our choice is this, to grow 
 Pasture and grain or noisome weed." 
 
 Lord Houghton.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 137 
 
 "It is a great event in a man's life, when he has discovered 
 that inner ' I ' which is always giving its character to the percep- 
 tions we form of everything about us, and ever pronouncing its 
 judgment on self and on all things ; which rests not when the 
 body rests, which even then busily strings together pictures, and 
 successions of events, and gives to them all the reality of life ; 
 which stretches back into the past, bridges over the chasm that 
 divides that past from the present, bringing together the dead and 
 the living, and often stirring up the dread exclamation 
 
 ' To sleep ! Perchance to dream ! Ay, there's the rub ; 
 For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come 
 When we have shuffled off this mortal coil ? ' " 
 
 H. R. Reynolds, D.D. 
 
 " Few know of life's beginnings men behold 
 The goal achieved ; the warrior, when his sword 
 Flashes red triumph in the noonday sun ; 
 The poet, when his lyre hangs on the palm ; 
 The statesman, when the crowd proclaim his voice, 
 And mould opinion on his gifted tongue : 
 They count not life's first steps, and never think 
 Upon the many miserable hours 
 When hope deferred was sickness to the heart 
 They reckon not the battle and the march, 
 The long privations of a wasted youth ; 
 They never see the banner till unfurled. 
 
 # * * -: * 
 
 Hard are life's early steps ; and, but that youth 
 Is buoyant, confident, and strong in hope, 
 Men would behold its threshold, and despair." 
 
 Letitia E. Landon. 
 
 " As, in the intellectual life, it is better to be possessed by one 
 idea than by none, so in the practical it is better certainly to 
 pursue one right end than none ; but as the former is only the 
 beginning of Reason, so the latter goes no further than the rudi- 
 ments of Conscience. He is not a musician who can play but 
 one tune ; nor is he a pattern of life who is always on one duty." 
 
 James Martineau, D.D.
 
 138 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 "There is ... this consolation to the most way-worn 
 traveller, upon the dustiest road, that the path his feet describe 
 is so perfectly symbolical of human life, now climbing the hills, 
 now descending into the vales. From the summits he beholds 
 the heavens and the horizon, from the vales he looks up to the 
 heights again. He is treading his old lessons still, and though 
 he may be very weary and travel-worn, it is yet sincere experi- 
 ence." H. D. Thoreau. 
 
 " Life cannot remain quiescent ; it has appropriative and dis- 
 tributive functions, and must operate accordingly." 
 
 Joseph Parker, D.D. 
 
 " The sculptor, with his Psyche's wings half-hewn, 
 May close his eyes in weariness, and wake 
 To meet the white cold clay of his ideal 
 Flushed into beating life, and singing down 
 The ways of Paradise. The husbandman 
 May leave the golden fruitage of his groves 
 Ungarnered, and upon the Tree of Life 
 Will find a richer harvest waiting him. 
 The soldier dying thinks upon his bride, 
 And knows his arms shall never clasp her more, 
 Until he first the face of his unborn child 
 Behold in heaven : for each and all of life, 
 In every phase of action, love, and joy, 
 There is fulfilment only otherwhere." 
 
 H. E. Hamilton King, 
 
 "The plant stretches down to the dead world beneath it, 
 touches its minerals and gases with its mystery of Life, and 
 brings them up ennobled and transformed to the living sphere. 
 The breath of God, blowing where it listeth, touches with its 
 mystery of life the dead souls of men. *bears them across the 
 bridgeless gulf between the natural and the spiritual, between the 
 spiritually inorganic and the spiritually organic, endows them 
 with its own high qualities, and develops within them those new 
 and secret faculties by which those who are born again are said 
 to see tlie kingdom of God" 
 
 Professor Henry Drummond.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 139 
 
 "The life is in the blood, and the will is in the life; the 
 rebellious, independent will of man must be shed out, for in it the 
 fall consists, and in the shedding out of it redemption consists." 
 
 Thomas Erskine. 
 
 " As the great sky is mirrored in the road-side pool as well as 
 in the ocean, and imparts to that shallow pool something of its 
 own depth and extent, so the infinite life of Christ is represented 
 in the finite life of every one who bears His name, and dignifies 
 and ennobles it." Rev. Hugh Macmillan. 
 
 " It is how much of the invisible we can bring into this life that 
 
 makes this life rich and valuable." 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher, D.D. 
 
 " Life eternal does not consist in knowing that there is a God 
 and that there is a Saviour ; but in acquaintance with God and 
 with the Saviour. In knowing Him, as a child knows his father, 
 as a friend knows his friend. When man discovers that his 
 Creator, the fountain of eternity, the fountain of his being and of 
 all being in whom and by whom he lives, and thinks, and feels, 
 who pervades and sustains his soul and his body in all their 
 parts, who ever is, and ever must be essentially present in every 
 faculty and capacity of his nature, without whom nothing lives, 
 nothing happens, nothing is done through all worlds, in whom, 
 as in their one root, all the varieties of things are united, and 
 from whom, as from their one root, they all grow when he dis- 
 covers that this great One, this Mystery which contains and binds 
 in and animates the universe, has a love for him passing thought 
 as well as utterance, a love which led Him to take on Himself 
 the human nature, that in it He might reveal Himself to man 
 when he discovers that this revelation was made that we might 
 live for ever in the knowledge and fellowship of His holy love, 
 dwelt in by Him, and animated by His Spirit, and filled with 
 His fulness, oh ! then the darkness is past, and the true light is 
 come. We have found the pearl of eternity, the pearl of great 
 price, and know the meaning of that word, ' He that hath the 
 Son hath life ' ; we have found the pearl, and for joy thereof we 
 go and sell all that we have, and buy it." 
 
 Thomas Erskine.
 
 140 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 "They are poor 
 
 That have lost nothing ; they are poorer far 
 Who, losing, have forgotten ; they most poor 
 Of all, who lose and wish they MIGHT forget. 
 For life is one, and in its warp and woof 
 There runs a thread of gold that glitters fair, 
 And sometimes in the pattern shows most sweet 
 Where there are sombre colours." 
 
 y^ean Ingelow. 
 
 " Have we not all, amid life's petty strife, 
 Some pure ideal of a noble life 
 That once seemed possible ? Did we not hear 
 The flutter of its wings, and feel it near, 
 And just within our reach ? It was. And yet 
 We lost it in this daily jar and fret, 
 And now live idle in a vague regret. 
 But still our place is kept, and it will wait, 
 Ready for us to fill it, soon or late : 
 No star is ever lost we once have seen, 
 We always may be what we might have been. 
 Since Good, though only thought, has life and breath, 
 God's life can always be redeemed from death ; 
 And evil, in its nature, is decay, 
 And any hour can blot it all away ; 
 The hopes that lost in some far distance seem, 
 May be the truer life, and this the dream." 
 
 Adelaide A. Procter. 
 
 " A man's purpose of life should be like a river, which was 
 born of a thousand rills in the mountains ; and when at last it 
 has reached its manhood in the plain, though, if you watch it, you 
 shall see little eddies that seem as if they had changed their minds, 
 and were going back again to the mountains, yet all its mighty 
 current flows, changeless, to the sea. If you build a dam across 
 it, in a few hours it will go over it with a voice of victory. If 
 tides check it at its mouth, it is only that when they ebb it can 
 
 sweep on again to the ocean." 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher, D.D.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 141 
 
 " Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animo- 
 sity, or registering wrongs." Charlotte Bronte. 
 
 " Inspiration is the breathing in of God's life into ours. He 
 has made our hungry and thirsty life to be preparative for the 
 breathing in of His own satisfying life." 
 
 Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 "Woe to the men who see no place for resistance in this 
 generation ! I believe in a growth, a passage, and a new unfold- 
 ing of life whereof the seed is more perfect, more charged with the 
 elements that are pregnant with diviner form. The life of a 
 people grows, it is knit together and yet expanded, in joy and 
 sorrow, in thought and action ; it absorbs the thought of other 
 nations into its own form, and gives back the thought as new 
 wealth to the world ; it is power, and an organ in the great body 
 of the nations. But there may come a check, an arrest ; 
 memories may be stifled, and love may be faint for the lack of 
 them ; or memories may shrink into withered relics the soul of 
 a people, whereby they know themselves to be one, may seem 
 to be dying for want of common action. But who shall say, 
 ' The fountain of their life is dried up, they shall for ever cease 
 to be a nation ' ? Not he who feels the life of his people stirring 
 within his own. Shall he say, ' That way events are wending, I 
 will not resist ' ? His very soul is resistance, and is a seed of fire 
 that may enkindle the souls of multitudes, and make a new path- 
 way for events." George Eliot. 
 
 "This is life broken chapters, exhausted affections, buried 
 interests, ghosts that drift and die, things that are uneternal. And 
 our conscious personality would be in much danger were it not 
 for one thing that binds the whole together, ... it is the uninter- 
 rupted growth of the spiritual life in us." 
 
 Rev. Stopford A. Brooke. 
 
 " Life, all kinds of life, tend to companionship, and rejoice 
 in it, from the fecund larvae and the buzzing insect cloud, up to 
 the kingly lion and the kinglier man." 
 
 W. Morley Pimshon, D.D.
 
 142 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " I may not hope from outward forms to win 
 The passion and the life, whose fountains are within. 
 
 ****** 
 
 We receive but what we give, 
 And in our life alone does nature live : 
 Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud ! 
 And would we aught behold, of higher worth, 
 Than that inanimate cold world allowed 
 To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd, 
 
 Ah ! from the soul itself must issue forth, 
 A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud 
 
 Enveloping the Earth 
 And from the soul itself must there be sent 
 
 A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth, 
 Of all sweet sounds the life and element ! " 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 " Art thou stricken in life's battle ? Many wounded round thee 
 
 moan, 
 
 Lavish on their wounds thy balsams, and that balm shall heal 
 thine own. 
 
 * # * * * * 
 
 Is the heart a living power? Self-entwined, its strength sinks 
 
 low; 
 It can only live in loving, and by serving love will grow." 
 
 Elizabeth Charles. 
 
 "There is a sense in which our faith i.e., our religious life 
 never can be ' finished.' It will remain a perennial growth, with 
 and in ourselves for ever." 
 
 Alexander Raleigh, D.D. 
 
 " The most exulting moments of life are those when, after a 
 conflict of strong passion with the sense of duty, we come off 
 conquerors, and are conscious that we have risen in spiritual 
 existence." W. E. Channing, D.D. 
 
 " Life can be reared only by life." 
 
 Joseph Parker, D.D.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 143 
 
 "It is an awful hour let him who has passed through it say 
 how awful when this life has lost its meaning, and seems 
 shrivelled into a span; when the grave appears to be the end 
 of all, human goodness nothing but a name, and the sky above 
 this universe a dead expanse, black with the void from which God 
 Himself has disappeared. In that fearful loneliness of spirit, 
 when those who should have been his friends and counsellors 
 only frown upon his misgivings, and profanely bid him stifle 
 doubts, which for aught he knows may arise from the fountain of 
 truth itself; to extinguish, as a glare from hell, that which for 
 aught he knows may be light from heaven, and everything seemed 
 wrapped in hideous uncertainty, I know but one way in which 
 a man may come forth from his agony scathless ; it is by holding 
 fast to those things which are certain still the grand, simple 
 landmarks of morality. In the darkest hour through which a 
 human soul can pass, whatever else is doubtful, this at least is 
 certain. If there be no God, and no future state, yet, even then, 
 it is better to be generous than selfish, better to be chaste than 
 licentious, better to be true than false, better to be brave than to 
 be a coward. Blessed beyond all earthly blessedness is the man, 
 who, in the tempestuous darkness of the soul, has dared to hold 
 fast to these venerable landmarks. Thrice blessed is he who 
 when all is drear and cheerless within and without, when his 
 teachers terrify him, and his friends shrink from him has obsti- 
 nately clung to moral good. Thrice blessed, because his night 
 shall pass into clear, bright day." 
 
 Rev. F. W. Robertson. 
 
 " The influences which co-operate to maintain the spiritual life 
 of the world and to accomplish its progression are all indefinite. 
 Most of the great works done on earth have not been done by 
 any definite Mechanism, or by any Order of men who have had 
 visible ordination thereto. They have been the effects of indi- 
 vidual, invisible Inspiration." Rev. Frederick Myers. 
 
 " We can conceive of no future life which is not a continuation 
 of this : to anticipate in that future life another life, a different life ; 
 what is it but to call in doubt our individual identity ? " 
 
 Anna Jameson.
 
 144 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Life is no merry march, or holiday pastime for any of us ; but 
 the true agony of life must be with those who are without God 
 and without hope in the world." 
 
 Rev. J. Baldwin Brown. 
 
 " Death takes us by surprise, 
 
 And stays our hurrying feet ; 
 The great design unfinish'd lies, 
 Our lives are incomplete. 
 
 " But in the dark unknown, 
 
 Perfect their circles seem, 
 Even as a bridge's arch of stone 
 Is rounded in the stream. 
 
 i 
 
 " Alike are life and death 
 
 When life in death survives, 
 And the interrupted breath 
 Inspires a thousand lives." 
 
 Henry W. Longfellow. 
 
 " Life should be the same as love. There is no life worth 
 having which does not give as much as it can give that is, as 
 much as it receives, or rather, as much as it can receive." 
 
 Rev. Stopford A. Brooke. 
 
 '' Life should be a web of piety, custom makes it a web of im- 
 piety." Rev. Edward Irving. 
 
 " We must have an inward life of heavenly thought, and pur- 
 pose, and hope, in order guiltlessly and relishingly to partake of 
 diversified natural joys." Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 " Every man has two lives the life of motive, and the life of 
 behaviour, into the first of which none can enter but the Spirit of 
 spirits." Joseph Parker, D.D. 
 
 " The life that is strongest and most secure is that which is a 
 law unto itself, which has the franchise of the creatures of God, 
 and which, guided only by its own holiness and love, ' proves all 
 things, and holds fast that which is good.' " 
 
 Henry Allan, D.D.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 145 
 
 " Life has always action ; it is our own fault if it ever be dull : 
 youth has its enterprise, manhood its schemes ; and even if 
 infirmity creep upon age, the mind still triumphs over the mortal 
 clay, and in the quiet hermitage, among books, and from thoughts, 
 keeps the great wheel within everlastingly in motion." 
 
 Bulwer Lytton. 
 
 "We are so bound up together in society the human race 
 constitutes such a compact and sensitive brotherhood that the 
 power which men insensibly exert over one another must spread 
 and widen, like the ripples from a stone thrown into a pool, until 
 all feel it. The ownership of sins is a very solemn question, 
 which in this view of the matter comes home to every human 
 bosom. ' I ask the mountain,' says the author of ' Thorndale/ 
 'Why art thou suddenly so dark? and the mountain answers, 
 Ask the passing cloud that overshadows me. I ask the ocean, Why 
 art thou so changeable ? and the sea answers, Ask the sky above, 
 that showers down now sunshine and now gloom ; sends now calm 
 and now stormy winds. I ask again, Why, O sky, dost thou wrap 
 thyself in gloomy clouds ? and the sky answers, Ask the valleys of 
 the earth ; they send these vapours up to me they are not 
 mine.' Every particle of dust comes from a mine long wrought : 
 storms, earthquakes, many geological revolutions, have been 
 concerned in its origin. And thus is it in human life. No 
 man stands isolated and circumscribed within himself full- 
 orbed and self-contained. None of us liveth to himself. The 
 career of every single soul is wrought out, and its moral 
 elements are mingled by its immersion in the social atmosphere, 
 and its giving and taking with other persons. And thus, in 
 judging every single soul, it is the whole world we judge ; for 
 every individuality is but the power of the whole manifesting itself 
 in this particular form." Rev. Hugh Macmillan. 
 
 "The fault that saps the life 
 Is doubt half-crushed, half-veiled ; the lip-assent 
 Which finds no echo in the heart of hearts ; 
 The secret lie, which, conscious of its guilt, 
 Atones for falsehood by intenser zeal." 
 
 Dean E. H. Plumptre, D.D. 
 10
 
 146 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " What a thing is life and being, when a soul has become but 
 the room in which ghosts hold their revel ; when the man is no 
 longer master of himself, can no more say to this or that thought, 
 thou shalt come, and thou shalt go, but is a slave to his own 
 existence, can neither cease to be, nor order his being able only 
 in fruitless rebellion to entangle himself yet more in the net he 
 has knotted around him ! Such is every one parted from the 
 essential life, who has not the power by which he lives one with 
 him, holding pure, and free, and true the soul he sent forth from 
 the depths of his being." George MacDonald, LL.D. 
 
 " To live with God is to be perpetually rising above the world ; 
 to live without Him is to be perpetually sinking into it, and with 
 it, and below it." Bishop Temple, D.D. 
 
 " Love and creativeness are dynamic forces, out of which we, 
 individually, as creatures, go forth bearing His image, that is, 
 having within our being the same dynamic forces, by which we 
 also add constantly to the total sum of existence, and shaking off 
 ignorance, and its effects, and by becoming more ourselves, i.e., 
 more Divine, destroying sin in its principle, we attain to absolute 
 freedom, we return to God, conscious like Himself, and, as His 
 friends, giving, as well as receiving, felicity for evermore. In short, 
 we become gods, and able to give the life which we now feel 
 ourselves able only to receive." 
 
 Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 
 
 " There are times, even on the stormy sea, when a gentle 
 whisper breathes softly as of heaven, and sends into the soul a 
 dream of ecstasy which can never again wholly die, even amidst 
 the jar and whirl of waking life. How such whispers make the 
 blood stop and the very flesh creep with a sense of mysterious 
 communion ! How singularly such moments are the epochs of 
 life the few points that stand out prominently in the recollection 
 after the flood of years has buried all the rest, as all the low 
 shore disappears, having only a few rock-points visible at high- 
 tide ! " Rev. F. W. Robertson. 
 
 " Principles do not give life, they only bind up life into a con- 
 sistent whole." Anna Jameson.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 147 
 
 " Only by the will is another life produced. It is the opener 
 of all evil or good in the creature. As we love, we live." 
 
 Rev. Andrew Jukes. 
 
 " Life is to be reckoned not only extensively, but also inten- 
 sively ; not merely by the number of its days, but also by the 
 amount of thought and energy which we infuse into them." 
 
 John Caird, D.D. 
 i 
 
 " We grow like those with whom we daily blend ; 
 To yield is to resemble." 
 
 Letitia E. Landon. 
 
 " The food of hope 
 Is meditated action ; robbed of this, 
 Her sole support, she languishes and dies. 
 We perish also ; for we live by hope 
 And by desire ; we see by the glad light, 
 And breathe the sweet air of futurity ; 
 And so we live, or else we have no life." 
 
 William Wordsworth. 
 
 " We exist here only in the small, that God may have us in a 
 state of flexibility, and bend or fashion us, at the best advantage, 
 to the model of His own great life and character." 
 
 " In God's sight we are all under obligation continually to 
 undertake and do what is above our power, and to have this as 
 the acknowledged rule of our life. He requires of us to be doing 
 what we shall feel, to be carrying loads of duty, and responsibility, 
 and sacrifice, under which, as men, we must tremble and faint ; 
 and so to be proving always that, ' to them that have no might, 
 He increaseth strength.' " H. Bushnell, D.D. 
 
 " There is no such thing as a level in the spiritual life. All is 
 ascent or descent, advance or retreat." 
 
 F. W. Faber, D.D. 
 
 " Life is only bright when it proceedeth 
 Towards a truer, deeper Life above." 
 
 Adelaide A. Procter.
 
 148 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Eternal life is a hope, a divine, abounding, purifying hope, 
 which holds all heaven in its arms." 
 
 H. R. Reynolds, D.D. 
 
 " Human Spirit, bravely hold thy course, 
 Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue 
 The gradual paths of an aspiring change : 
 For birth, and life, and death, and that strange state 
 Before the naked soul has found its home, 
 All tend to perfect happiness, and urge 
 The restless wheels of being on their way, 
 Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life, 
 Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal : 
 For birth but wakes the spirit to the sense 
 Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape 
 New modes of passion to its frame may lend ; 
 Life is its stage of action, and the store 
 Of all events is aggregated there 
 That variegate the eternal universe ; 
 Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom, 
 That leads to azure isles and beaming skies, 
 
 And happy regions of eternal hope." 
 
 P. B. Shelley. 
 
 "All the world reposes in beauty to him who preserves 
 equipoise in his life, and moves serenely on his path without 
 secret violence ; as he who sails down a stream, he has only to 
 steer, keeping his bark in the middle, and carry it round the falls." 
 
 H. D. Thoreau. 
 
 " The reality of life is manifested by nothing so much as by 
 the endless variety of its outward developments. Every herb of 
 the field has its own individuality of form ; every acorn enfolds 
 a different oak. Attempt to construct some outward framework 
 of uniformity for nature, and the latitudinarian oaks and elms, 
 the informal lilies of the field and fowls of the air, will breathe 
 forth their protest in beauty, and sound it out in song. And 
 how shall the nobler life of the soul be constrained into uni- 
 formity ? " John Caird, D.D.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 149 
 
 " As life advances, impressions of all kinds become less 
 rapturous owing to their repetition." John Ruskin. 
 
 " The tenor 
 
 Which my life holds, he readily may conceive 
 Whoe'er hath stood to watch a mountain brook 
 In some still passage of its course, and seen 
 Within the depths of its capacious breast 
 Inverted trees, and rocks, and azure sky ; 
 And, on its glassy surface, specks of foam 
 And conglobated bubbles undissolved, 
 Numerous as stars ; that, by their onward lapse, 
 Betray to sight the motion of the stream, 
 Else imperceptible ; meanwhile, is heard 
 Perchance a roar or murmur ; and the sound, 
 Though soothing, and the little floating isles, 
 Though beautiful, are both by Nature charged 
 With the same pensive office ; and make known 
 Through what perplexing labyrinths, abrupt 
 Precipitations, and untoward straits, 
 The earth-born wanderer hath pass'd, and quickly, 
 That respite o'er, like traverses and toils 
 Must be again encounter'd. Such a stream 
 Is human life ; and so the spirit fares 
 In the best quiet to its course allow'd." 
 
 William Wordsworth. 
 
 " Every man's life, practically speaking, is shaped by his love. 
 If it is a downward, earthly love, then his actions will be tinged 
 by it, all his life will be as his reigning love. This love ... is 
 not a mere sentiment, or casual emotion, but is the man's settled 
 affinity ; it is that which is to his character, what the magnetic 
 force is to the needle, the power that adjusts all his aims and 
 works, and practically determines the man. It only must be 
 either a downward love or an upward love ; for, being the last 
 love and deepest of the man, there cannot be two last and 
 deepest, it must be one or the other. And then, as this love 
 changes, it works a general revolution of the man." 
 
 H. Bushnell, D.D.
 
 150 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 11 Why should not spiritual life be the counterpart of natural ? 
 Both are of God, and there is nothing to hinder both from being 
 equally steadfast in their development." 
 
 y. Cunningham Geikie, D.D. 
 
 " The old leaf will fall, and the leaf-sheath, 
 
 The young spread glad and green, 
 And gaze on the sun in his beauty 
 Without a veil between. 
 
 For the Lord of Life is working, 
 
 And His strongest force is life ; 
 Ever with death it wageth 
 
 Silent, victorious strife. 
 
 Ever with death it weaveth 
 
 The warp and woof of the world, 
 The nights when the forces are gathered, 
 
 The dawns with their banners unfurled." 
 
 Elizabeth Charles. 
 
 " Every vital process in the world is subject to pause, and 
 blight, and hindrance. Buds are nipped with frost ; green leaves 
 are shrivelled with the east wind ; young creatures pine and 
 sicken, and for a while cease to grow. And the highest vital 
 process is subject to the same vicissitudes. The Divine life in a 
 man has times of pause and uncertainty, even of apparent retro-' 
 gression, when all that is past seems quite in vain, and the so- 
 called progress has circled round, almost to the very beginning,, 
 once more." Alexander Raleigh, D.D. 
 
 " There is a hope in God that is merely despair of the world 
 but there is a hope that comes of having lived wisely ; and that 
 is the experience of a man who has seen on the tree of his 
 life, as one after another its blossoms opened, how there was 
 on them the dew of God's grace ; and so when the tree begins 
 to be bared in autumn, early or late, he does not fear but that 
 it will live and be beautiful again, in that great spring-time that 
 will be followed by no winter." 
 
 William Mountford, M.A.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 151 
 
 A life that waits on man, sinks itself to the level of a brute's. " 
 
 Rev. y. Baldwin Brown. 
 
 " Live truly, and thy life shall be 
 A great and noble creed." 
 
 H. Bonar, D. D. 
 
 " With Him that is the Life man's life shall blend ; 
 E'en now the sacred heavens do help his strife, 
 There do they knead his bread and mix his cup, 
 And all the stars have leave to bear him up. 
 
 Yet must he sink and fall away to a sleep, 
 
 As did his Lord, His Life, his worshipped 
 Religion, Life. The silence may be deep, 
 
 Life listening, watching, waiting by His dead, 
 Till at the end of days they wake full fain 
 Because their King, the Life, doth love and reign." 
 
 yean Ingelow. 
 " Life is for service true, 
 Life is for battle too, 
 Life is for song." 
 
 H. Bonar, DID. 
 
 " The life of contemplation and the life of practice, so hard to 
 harmonise in our experience, perfectly meet in Christ" 
 
 Alexander Maclaren, D.D. 
 
 11 Life is not divided into religions and secular parts ; all should 
 be religious, because it is a spirit and not a mere letter which God 
 has bestowed on us in Christ. The world is a temple, or ought 
 to be, and the business of life ought to be the services of a 
 temple." Thomas Erskine. 
 
 " Life always creates its form ... it cannot remain without 
 shaping itself into an outer image of itself. ... All life has the 
 passion of the artist in it, and all art is life passing into form." 
 
 Rev. Stopford A. Brooke. 
 
 ""Life . . . depends upon contact with life." 
 
 Professor Henry Drummond.
 
 152 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " The light is ever silent ; 
 Its sparkles on morn's million gems of dew, 
 It flings itself into the shower of noon, 
 It weaves its gold into the cloud of sunset, 
 Yet not a sound is heard ; it dashes full 
 On yon broad rock, yet not an echo answers : 
 It lights in myriad drops upon the flower, 
 Yet not a blossom stirs ; it does not move 
 The slightest film of floating gossamer, 
 Which the faint touch of insect's wing would shiver. 
 
 The light is ever silent ; 
 Most silent of all heavenly silences ; 
 Not even the darkness stiller, nor so still ; 
 Too swift for sound or speech, it rushes on 
 Right through the yielding skies, a massive flood 
 Of multitudinous beams ; an endless sea, 
 That flows but ebbs not, breaking on the shore 
 Of this dark earth, with never-ceasing wave, 
 Yet in its swiftest flow, or fullest spring-tide, 
 Giving less sound than does one falling blossom, 
 Which the May breeze lays lightly on the sward. 
 
 Such let my life be here ; 
 
 Not marked by noise, but by success alone ; 
 
 Not known by bustle, but by useful deeds, 
 
 Quiet and gentle, clear and fair as light ; 
 
 Yet full of its all-penetrating power, 
 
 Its silent but resistless influence ; 
 
 Making no needless sound, yet ever working, 
 
 Hour after hour, upon a needy world !" 
 
 H. Bonar, D.D. 
 
 " We need to have some one Life, which shall sum up the 
 influence of love, past, present, and to come, and which shall be 
 to lesser lives what the sun is to the myriad reflections of its 
 rays." E. A. Abbot, D.D. 
 
 11 Our best light must be made life, and our best thought action." 
 
 Samuel Smiles.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 153 
 
 " That which is our real life can be seen only by its effects ; 
 never in itself. The reality of our life, the fulness of our being, 
 the richness of God's gift to us, divine, immortal, glorious, is 
 invisible. No one has ever seen the man that is in man." 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher, D.D. 
 
 " In the Christian life there must be concentration of effort, 
 conservation of force. . . . The great fault of the Christian life 
 Of the present day is diffusion." 
 
 Rev. Hugh Macmillan. 
 
 " Life lies in embryo, never free 
 Till Nature yields her breath ; 
 Till Time becomes Eternity, 
 And Man is born in Death." 
 
 James Montgomery. 
 
 " The ' soul ' is man's higher life ; the life not of the body, nor 
 even of the intellect, but of the feelings, the affections, the aspi- 
 rations. A man may ignore this higher life, and do his best 
 to drown and stifle it ; but he cannot divest himself of it. It is 
 part of himself. Willingly or unwillingly, worthily or unworthily, 
 he must carry it about with him till death and through death. 
 There is a. for ever stamped visibly upon it. He can ennoble, or 
 he can degrade, but he cannot destroy. To ' lose the soul ' in 
 scriptural language is to spoil this higher life ; to quench the 
 Divine Spirit by whose fire alone it burns ; to lose the capacity of 
 caring for God and for all those lofty things which we believe to 
 be dear to God and the natural heritage of man." 
 
 Montagu Sutler, D.D. 
 
 11 We are ourselves 
 
 Our heaven and hell, the joy, the penalty, 
 The yearning, the fruition. Earth is hell 
 Or heaven, and yet not only earth ; but still, 
 After the swift soul leaves the gates of death, 
 The pain grows deeper and less mixed, the joy 
 Purer and less alloyed, and we are damned 
 Or blest, as we have lived." 
 
 Lewis Morris.
 
 i$4 THOUGHTS ON LIFE, 
 
 " The hidden wealth of man's spirit by far exceeds the whole 
 appearance and work of his life. 
 
 " Every man is another unknown world. He is not what you 
 think he is. He is not where you see him. You may shut him 
 up, but after all he is not shut up. He is living in the world of 
 his own imagination. You cannot hinder him from living in that 
 world. Nor can you set any limits to that world, wherein his 
 spirit roams and rests. You think that he is walking in the street, 
 by your side, but you are mistaken ; he is in the midst of a group 
 of angels, looking upon the face of God. You may live in your 
 own spirit-world, but you cannot live in his, nor can you imagine 
 it." Rev. John Pulsford. 
 
 "If it is true, that the reason we see not God is the grossness 
 of this tabernacle wherein the Soul is encased, then the more and 
 the oftener we recognise the supernatural in our ordinary life, and 
 not only expect but find it in those rare and short moments of 
 devotion and prayer, the more, surely, the rays of the Divine 
 Light will shine through the dark glass of this outward form of 
 life, and the more our own spirit will be enlightened and purified 
 by it, until we come to that likeness to the Divine Nature, and 
 that purity of heart to which a share of the Beatific Vision is 
 promised." John Inglesant. 
 
 " Our life is determined for us ; and it makes the mind very 
 free when we give up wishing, and only think of bearing what is 
 laid upon us, and doing what is given us to do." 
 
 George Eliot. 
 
 " Dissipation in any form is the great drain of life. Life is the 
 most precious thing which God has given or can give us. What 
 shall a man give in exchange for his life? You have only a 
 certain amount in you of life. You may spend it quickly or 
 slowly. You may expend or husband it ; but when it is gone, 
 there is an end. No agony of effort or prayer can bring you a 
 new store. ' A short life and a merry one ' is the cry of dissipa- 
 tion. ' A noble life and an eternal one 'is the creed of the man 
 who has learned the secret of life from God." 
 
 Rev. . Baldwin Brown.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIPE. 155. 
 
 " Where'er a human Spirit strives 
 After a life more true and fair, 
 There is the true man's birthplace grand, 
 His is a world-wide fatherland ! " 
 
 J. Russell Lowell. 
 
 11 Our life on earth is formative, combines, for its own purpose, 
 things dissimilar, enters into relations false and true according to 
 its will, has the power to assume the appearance without possess- 
 ing the reality, to hide what is true and exhibit what is false. 
 The outward history of all this passes away, but nothing is lost, 
 or forgotten, or unproductive. The inner life treasures up the 
 results of the outward history. The spirit makes faithful record 
 in its nature of all that takes place, and is the living witness of 
 whatever has happened. Just as the deposits which compose the 
 crust of the earth, the water-marks on the rock that was once 
 yielding sand, the footprints of creatures which no longer exist, 
 reveal to us a world that has passed away, and also a world 
 brought into existence, so in our souls will be found the history 
 and results of the life we have lived. The most fleeting and 
 trivial things, the very shadows of our passing days, leave their 
 records behind them. In our hidden life, time and eternity meet, 
 the infinite awakens and characterizes the infinite, and every 
 experience has its influence in the formation of the character of 
 our souls." William Pulsford, D.D. 
 
 " Great art is nothing else than the type of strong and noble 
 life ; for as the ignoble person, in his dealings with all that occurs 
 in the world about him, first sees nothing clearly, looks nothing 
 fairly in the face, and then allows himself to be swept away by 
 the trampling torrent arid unescapable force of the things that he 
 would not foresee, and could not understand, so the noble person, 
 looking the facts of the world full in the face, and fathoming 
 them with deep faculty, then deals with them in unalarmed in- 
 telligence and unhurried strength, and becomes, with his human 
 intellect and will, no unconscious nor insignificant agent in con- 
 summating their good and restraining their evil." 
 
 John Ruskin.
 
 156 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " He only lives with the world's life, 
 Who hath renounced his own." 
 
 Matthew Arnold, 
 
 " Man lives from the unseen, and therefore cannot rest in the 
 seen." Rev. John Pulsford. 
 
 " Life is an outliving of world after world." 
 
 William Mountford. 
 
 " Life is not mean. It spreads itself in aspiration, it has 
 possession through its hope. It inhabits all remoteness that the 
 eye can reach ; it inherits all sweetness that the ear can prove j 
 always bereaved of the whole, it yet looks for a whole ; always 
 clasping its little part, it believes in the remainder. Sometimes, 
 too often, like a bird, it gets tangled in a net, which notwithstanding 
 it knew of. It must fly with broken wings ever after. Or, worse, 
 it is tempted to descend, as the genii into the vase, for a little 
 while, when sealed down at once unaware, it must lie in the dark 
 so long that it perhaps denies the light in heaven for lack of 
 seeing. If those who have the most satisfying lot that life can 
 give are to breathe freely, they must get through, and on, and out 
 
 of it. 
 
 " This is God ! 
 
 He moves me so to take of Him what lacks ; 
 My want is God's desire to give ; He yearns 
 To add Himself to life, and so for aye 
 
 Make it enough." Jean Ingeloui. 
 
 " ' Time flies too fast, too fast our life decays.' 
 
 Ah, faithless ! in the present lies our being ; 
 And not in lingering love for vanished days ! 
 
 . * * * * * * 
 
 ' Live for what is : future and past are nought.' 
 
 Ah, blind ! a flash, and what shall be, has been, 
 Where, then, is that for which thou takest thought ? 
 
 Not in what has been, is, or is to be, 
 
 The wise soul lives, but in a wider time, 
 Which is not any, but contains the three." 
 
 Lewis Morris.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 157 
 
 " The energy of life may be 
 Kept on after the grave, but not begun." 
 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 "Every calling of life has its serious side, if it be not sinful." 
 
 Thomas Arnold, D.D. 
 
 " Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every 
 circle another can be drawn ; that there is no end in nature, but 
 every end is a beginning ; that there is always another dawn 
 risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens." 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 " Sad things in this life of breath 
 Are truest, sweetest, deepest." 
 
 Robert Buchanan. 
 
 " There is more in human life of the song than the sigh, if we 
 only know how to draw out the notes and make the harmony. 
 And in every life there are special mercies." 
 
 Alexander Raleigh, D.D. 
 
 " Pleasure is a component part of human life, without which 
 life cannot be healthy. What you have got to do is, not to 
 crush it, and not to abuse it, but to use it. ... In Christ's 
 life do you suppose there were no flowers springing up by 
 the wayside ? There were. There were quiet moments at 
 Bethany, quiet moments in the olive garden often and often 
 before the night of the bloody sweat ; also when He walked by 
 the way, or by the sea, enjoying social converse, and there were 
 associations of happiness, and of joy, and of friendship about the 
 quiet vineyards and hills of Galilee. Remember that His joy 
 was our joy, His sorrow our sorrow. Jesus Christ chose to be 
 found at the marriage supper of Cana as well as at the grave 
 of Lazarus. He did not seek to check mirth, to crush pleasure ; 
 He came that we might have joy, and have it more abundantly. 
 Pleasure for Himself or for others was not the pursuit of His life, 
 but His life-work radiated goodness, from whence came enjoy- 
 ment and satisfaction, exhilaration, happiness." 
 
 Rev. H. R. Haweis.
 
 158 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion ; it 
 is easy in solitude to live after our own ; but the great man is he 
 who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the 
 
 independence of solitude." 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 " Seldom comes the moment 
 In life, which is indeed sublime and weighty. 
 To make a great decision possible, 
 Oh ! many things, all transient and all rapid, 
 Must meet at once : and, haply, they thus met 
 May, by that confluence, be enforced to pause 
 Time long enough for wisdom, though too short, 
 Far, far too short a time for doubt and scruple." 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 " Our little lives are kept in equipoise 
 
 By opposite attractions and desires ; 
 The struggle of the instinct that enjoys, 
 And the more noble instinct that aspires. 
 
 These perturbations, this perpetual jar 
 Of earthly wants and aspirations high, 
 
 Come from the influence of an unseen star, 
 An undiscovered planet in our sky. 
 
 And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud 
 Throws o'er the sea a floating bridge of light, 
 'Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd 
 Into the realm of mystery and night, 
 
 So from the world of spirits there descends 
 A bridge of light, connecting it with this, 
 
 O'er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends, 
 Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss." 
 
 Henry W. Longfellow. 
 
 " The great unhappiness of men is, that they live abroad, they 
 lose themselves in the accidents around, they are engrossed by 
 outward events, by the changes of the natural or political world 
 They do not explore the grander world within." 
 
 W. E. C banning, D.D.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 159 
 
 " The great lesson to be learned in life is to make the right 
 choice to refuse the evil and to choose the good, to distinguish 
 between them, and to prefer the one to the other." 
 
 Thomas Erskine. 
 
 " If you mean to act nobly, and seek to know the best things 
 God has put within reach of men, you must learn to fix your mind 
 on that end, and not on what will happen to you because of it. 
 And remember, if you were to choose something lower, and make 
 it the rule of your life to seek your own pleasure, and escape from 
 what is disagreeable, calamity might come just the same ; and it 
 would be calamity falling on a base mind, which is the one form 
 of sorrow that has no balm in it, and that may well make a man 
 say, ' It would have been better for me if I had never been born.'" 
 
 George Eliot. 
 
 "All life is full of opportunities of choice, and as we choose in 
 them, and abide by our choice, such are we. It is by the often 
 repeated choice in little things that our characters are fixed." 
 
 Bishop Wilberforce. 
 
 " The more inward the life the more potent it^becomes." 
 
 " The present complexity of life and relation settles surely into 
 a Simplicity in which only Self and God remain Self alone with 
 God ! Hence, life in its full sense, ideal life, is simply a true 
 adjustment and interplay between these two, self living unto and 
 in God, and God returning upon self with joy, a process more 
 stable than the universe, and as enduring as God Himself." 
 
 Rev. John Pulsford. 
 
 "As our outward life widens, our inward one must deepen. 
 That which is spreading itself broadly in the light must be ever 
 more securely rooting itself in the darkness. Germination begins 
 in darkness, but its first movement is towards the light. If light 
 be attained, then growth is twofold the hidden and the visible ; 
 and because of the hidden, the visible will be stable and 
 productive. If light be not attained, then all growth ceases. 
 Live outwardly, or you cannot have health live inwardly, or the 
 outward life will be futile and worthless." 
 
 Rev. T. T. Lynch.
 
 160 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess to-day the mood, 
 the pleasure, the power of to-morrow, when we are building up our 
 being. Of lower states, of acts of routine and sense, we can 
 tell somewhat ; but the masterpieces of God, the total growths and 
 universal movements of the soul, He hideth ; they are incalculable. 
 I can know that truth is Divine and helpful ; but how it shall help 
 me I can have no guess, for so to be is the sole inlet of so to know. 
 The new position of the advancing man has all the powers of the 
 old, yet has them all new. It carries in its bosom all the energies 
 of the past, yet is itself an exhalation of the morning." 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 "To live is to vary; in death only is sameness. Where the 
 dew of the Lord is wanting, there surely will be uniformity the 
 uniformity of emptiness and barrenness, but where the dew falls, 
 there will be variety the blossoming of the lily, the root striking 
 of the mountain forests, the dusky olive's branch, and Lebanon's 
 smell." Rev. S. A. Tipple. 
 
 " Life always appears to us beautiful and good. It is a very 
 synonym for good, indeed. But wherever we see a whole there 
 we see life ; therefore if we saw the whole, we should see it to 
 be life ; i.e., absolute beauty and good. Ugliness and evil are 
 not life ; types of sin, which is death. Ugly, evil, false, mean 
 simply that we do not see the life ; they are phenomena of which 
 we are unable to see that they are vital parts of a living whole." 
 
 James Hinton. 
 
 " The living Life of God perpetually lightens ; 
 
 And created life is nothing but a radiant shadow fleeing 
 From the unapproached lustres of that Unbeginning Being." 
 
 F. W. Faber, D.D. 
 
 " If I may but touch the hem of His garment that is 
 sufficient for the commencement of spiritual life. But they who 
 do so will soon seek to converse with Him ; they will look into 
 His face : faith grows into fellowship j the joy of trust passes into 
 the higher joy of oneness with Him in character and purpose." 
 
 Alexander Mackennal, B.A.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 161 
 
 " This life is but the childhood in which we are to be trained 
 up to the manhood of eternal life." 
 
 Thomas Arnold, D.D. 
 
 " O life ! how like the common-breathed air, 
 Which is thy outward instrument, thou liest 
 Ever about us, with sustaining force, 
 In the calm current of our usual days 
 Unfelt, unthought of; nay, how dense a crowd y 
 
 Float on upborne by the prolific stream, 
 Even to the ridges of the eternal sea, 
 Spending profuse the passion of their mind 
 On every flower that gleams on either bank, 
 On every rock that bends its rugged brow, 
 Conscious of all things, only not of thee. 
 
 Yet some there are, who in their greenest youth, 
 
 At some rare hours, have known the dazzling light 
 
 Intolerable, that glares upon the soul, 
 
 In the mere sense of Being, and grown faint 
 
 With awe, and striven to press their folded hands 
 
 Upon their inner eyes, and bowed their heads, 
 
 As in the presence of a mighty Ghost, 
 
 Which they must feel, but cannot dare to see. 
 
 It is before me now, that fearful truth, 
 
 That single solitary truth, which hangs 
 
 In the dark heaven of our uncertainties, 
 
 Seen by no other light than its own fire, 
 
 Self-balanced, like the Arab Magian's tomb, 
 
 Between the inner and the outer World ; 
 
 How utterly the wretched shred of Time, 
 
 Which in our blindness we call Human Life, 
 
 Is lost with all its train of circumstance, 
 
 And appanage of after and before, 
 
 In this eternal present ; that we are ! 
 
 No when, no where, no how, but that we are, 
 
 And nought besides.
 
 1 62 THOUGHTS ON LIPE. 
 
 He was a bitter Mocker, that old Man 
 Who bade us ' know ourselves,' yet not unwise ; 
 . For though the science of our life and being 
 Be unattained and unattainable 
 By these weak organs, though the athlete mind, 
 Hardened by practice of unpausing toil,, 
 And fed to manhood with robustest meats, 
 Never can train its sinews strong enough 
 * To raise itself from off the solid ground, 
 To which the mandate of creating Will 
 Has bound it ; though we all must patient stand, 
 Like statues on appointed pedestals, 
 Yet we may choose (since choice is given) to shun 
 Servile contentment or ignoble fear, 
 In the expression of our attitude : 
 And with far-straining eyes, and hands upcast, 
 And feet half raised, declare our painful state, 
 Yearning for wings to reach the fields of Truth, 
 Mourning for wisdom, panting to be free." 
 
 Lord Houghton. 
 
 " Men nowhere, east or west, live yet a natural life, round 
 which the vine clings, and which the elm willingly shadows. 
 Man would desecrate it by his touch, and so the beauty of the 
 world remains veiled to him. He needs not only to be 
 spiritualized, but naturalized, on the soil of earth, who shall 
 conceive what kind of roof the heavens might extend over him, 
 what seasons minister to him, and what employments dignify 
 his life ! Only the convalescent raise the veil of nature. An 
 immortality in his life would confer immortality on his abode. 
 The winds should be his breath, the seasons his moods, and he 
 should impart of his serenity to Nature herself." 
 
 H. D. Thoreau. 
 
 " There is a trial and probation throughout man's whole life 
 but the trial is subservient to the education ; he is tried that he 
 may be educated, he is not educated that he may be tried." 
 
 Thomas Erskine.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 163 
 
 " By the sacrifice of life, voluntary or involuntary, and by that 
 alone, can other and higher life exist" 
 
 Rev. F. W. Robertson. 
 
 " Life is, for the most part, a varied web. It is woven of glow 
 and gloom, thunder purple and shining gold. Even in the midst 
 of our darkest days deep joy rushed in ; even that which we now 
 most sorrow for had in it, when we lived in it, inexplicable 
 pleasure. Often, as we look back, that which was our happiness 
 in hours gone by so strangely mixed is life is now our tragedy, 
 and that which was our tragedy is now our blessedness. And on 
 the whole the greater number of us have more joy than sorrow, 
 though in the weight of sorrow we forget the multitude of joy. For 
 sorrows keep together, while joys are dispersed through life, and 
 in the centre of sorrow we cannot recall the joys that are scattered 
 all over|the circle of life." 
 
 Rev. Stopford A. Brooke. 
 
 " Accident does very little towards the production of any 
 great result in life." Samuel Smiles. 
 
 " Let us consider now this life of the Vine, 
 Whereof we are partakers : we shall see 
 Its way is not of pleasure nor of ease. 
 It groweth not like the wild trailing weeds 
 Whither it willeth, flowering here and there : 
 Or lifting up proud blossoms to the sun, 
 Kissed by the butterflies, and glad of life, 
 And glorious in their beautiful array ; 
 Or running into lovely labyrinths 
 Of many forms and many fantasies, 
 Rejoicing in its own luxuriant life. 
 
 The flower of the Vine is but a little thing, 
 The least part of its life ; you scarce could tell 
 It ever had a flower ; the fruit begins 
 Almost before the flower has had its day. 
 And as it grows, it is not free to heaven, 
 But tied to a stake ; and if its arms stretch out,
 
 164 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 It is but cross-wise, also forced and bound, 
 
 And so it draws out of the hard hill-side, 
 
 Fixed in its own place, its own food of life ; 
 
 And quickens with it, breaking forth in bud, 
 
 Joyous and green, and exquisite of form, 
 
 Wreathed lightly into tendril, leaf, and bloom. 
 
 Yea, the grace of the green vine makes all the land 
 
 Lovely in spring-time ; and it still grows on 
 
 Faster, in lavishness of its own life ; 
 
 Till the fair shoots begin to wind and wave 
 
 In the blue air, and feel how sweet it is. 
 
 But so they leave it not ; the husbandman 
 
 Comes early, with the pruning-hooks and shears, 
 
 And strips it bare of all its innocent pride, 
 
 And wandering garlands, and cuts deep and sure r 
 
 Unsparing for its tenderness and joy. 
 
 And in its loss and pain it wasteth not : 
 
 But yields itself with unabated life, 
 
 More perfect under the despoiling hand. 
 
 The bleeding limbs are hardened into wood ; 
 
 The thinned-out bunches ripen into fruit 
 
 More full and precious to the purple prime. 
 
 And still, the more it grows, the straitlier bound 
 Are all its branches ; and as rounds the fruit, 
 And the heart's crimson comes to show in it, 
 And it advances to its hour, its leaves 
 Begin to droop and wither in the sun ; 
 But still the life-blood flows, and does not fail,. 
 All into fruitfulness, all into form. 
 
 Then comes the vintage, for the days are ripe. 
 
 And surely now in its perfected bloom, 
 
 It may rejoice a little in its crown, 
 
 Though it bend low beneath the weight of it, 
 
 Wrought out of the long striving of its heart. 
 
 But ah ! the hands are ready to tear down 
 
 The treasures of the grapes ; the feet are there
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 165 
 
 To tread them in the winepress, gathered in ; 
 Until the blood-red rivers of the wine 
 Run over, and the land is full of joy. 
 But the vine standeth stripped and desolate, 
 Having given all ; and now its own dark time 
 Is come, and no man payeth back to it 
 The comfort and the glory of its gift ; 
 But rather, now most merciless, all pain 
 And loss are piled together, as its days 
 Decline, and the spring sap has ceased to flow, 
 Now is it cut back to the very stem ; 
 Despoiled, disfigured, left a leafless stock, 
 Alone through all the dark days that shall come. 
 And all the winter- time the wine gives joy 
 To those who else were dismal in the cold ; 
 But the vine standeth out amid the frost ; 
 And after all, hath only this grace left, 
 That it endures in long, lone stedfastness 
 The winter through : and next year blooms again ; 
 Not bitter for the torment undergone, 
 Not barren for the fulness yielded up ; 
 As fair and fruitful towards the sacrifice, 
 As if no touch had ever come to it, 
 But the soft airs of heaven and dews of earth ; 
 And so fulfils itself in love once more. 
 * * * * * 
 
 Measure thy life by loss instead of gain ; 
 Not by the wine drunk, but the wine poured forth ; 
 For love's strength standeth in love's sacrifice ; 
 And whoso suffers most hath most to give." 
 
 H. E. Hamilton 
 
 " The connections of human life stretch before us, and are 
 lost in the endless ages which are needed to accomplish God's 
 designs." W. E. Channing, D.D. 
 
 " Many ministries are necessary for every single life." 
 
 H. Allan, D.D.
 
 166 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Life has its hum even in the dead hush of a midsummer 
 noon. When the air seems so still that silence grows oppressive, 
 lay your ear to the ground, and listen to the stir of the myriad 
 insects that are keeping their summer festival. You will not 
 marvel that simple hearts, in the good old times, believed that 
 the grasses and the flower-cups were haunted, and that all the 
 earth and air was thronged with troops of joyous invisible sprites, 
 dancing in the sunbeams, swinging in the gossamer chains, hiding 
 in the flower-bells, and making the summer air musical with the 
 breath of their merriment and song. It needs a more trained 
 and observant ear to catch the same undertone through the 
 sighing winds and swirling leaves of autumn, but it is there \. 
 life has but drawn back to its source awhile, and there it is 
 gathering up its forces, renewing its youth, and preparing for the 
 outburst of the spring. It is the sense that there is no death in 
 nature, that she but weaves the dress of Him who ever liveth, 
 and has commission to weave on while He liveth, which robs 
 the autumn and the deepening winter of all but a passing breath 
 of sadness, and makes their twilight hour the season of our most 
 peaceful and happy musings. We, too, if we have caught the 
 Divine keynote, are content to rest with them when the main 
 toil of our life-work is over ; to rest and ripen, and lay up in 
 the inner cells the sap which shall make the flowers of our eternal 
 spring." Rev. J. Baldwin Brown. 
 
 " There are moments when the liberty of the inner life, opposed 
 to the trammels of the outer, becomes too oppressive ; moments 
 when we wish that our mental horizon' were less extended, 
 thought less free ; when we long to put the discursive soul into 
 a narrow path like a railway, and force it to run on in a straight 
 line to some determined goal." 
 
 Anna Jameson. 
 
 "Gather up the fragments. In every human life there are 
 sure to be some. Every one of us has a secret chamber some- 
 where, filled with inhabitants whom none but himself can see ; 
 it rests with himself alone whether they shall be decaying corpses 
 or only beautiful ghosts." 
 
 Dinah M. Muloch.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 167 
 
 " To embody is to define, to limit, to fix ; but the Ideas which 
 are the life of man's soul are not thus comprehensible : they are 
 so akin to the Divine as to be illimitable. What man has made, 
 man can measure ; he can extract from it all its meaning, and 
 that meaning is substantially ever the same. But that which is 
 emphatically of GOD has many meanings, and in each there is 
 more than man can ever discern or comprehend. Life in them- 
 selves, this is what man's works have not and GOD'S have. Light 
 and shadow, perpetual motion and visible happiness, these only 
 give endless significance to form ; and these are God's works 
 alone." Frederick Myers. 
 
 " As in geometry so in life, distinct threads of influencing truth 
 are often introduced abruptly, presently to be interwoven with 
 one or with several of the many-threaded and related lines of 
 truth." Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 " There are numerous fragments of life which, so far as action 
 or enjoyment is concerned, might be subtracted without injury. 
 Yet these very seasons may afford peculiar advantages for the 
 cultivation of patience, which is often more important than either 
 action or enjoyment." W. B. Clulow. 
 
 " Life is a revelation." Joseph Parker, D.D. 
 
 " Our God in hours retired 
 
 Can open in our heart 
 
 A fount of good desired, 
 
 And such supplies impart, 
 That more it has, the more it gives, 
 And all our life upon it lives. 
 
 O sacred stream of love, 
 
 Hast thou begun thy flow, 
 And from the hills above 
 
 Reached now the lands below ? 
 Then blessed by thee, life's common field 
 Will corn, and fruit, and herbage yield." 
 
 Rev. T. T. Lynch.
 
 168 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 "The Life of the body may complete itself in the physical 
 world ; that is its legitimate Environment. The Life of the senses, 
 high and low, may perfect itself in Nature. Even the Life of 
 thought may find a large complement in surrounding things. 
 But the higher thought, and the conscience, and the religious 
 Life, can only perfect themselves in God." 
 
 Professor Henry Drummond. 
 
 " The faith that life on earth is being shaped 
 To glorious ends, that order, justice, love 
 Mean man's completeness, mean effect as sure 
 As roundness in the dewdrop that great faith 
 Is but the rushing and expanding stream 
 Of thought, of feeling, fed by all the past. 
 Our finest hope is finest memory, 
 As they who love in age think youth is blest 
 Because it has a life to fill with love. 
 Full souls are double mirrors, making still 
 An endless vista of fair things before 
 Repeating things behind : so faith is strong 
 Only when we are strong, shrinks when we shrink. 
 It comes when music stirs us, and the chords 
 Moving on some grand climax shake our souls 
 With influx new that makes new energies. 
 It comes in swellings of the heart and tears 
 That rise at noble and at gentle deeds 
 At labours of the master-artist's hand 
 Which, trembling, touches to a finer end, 
 Trembling before an image seen within. 
 It comes in moments of heroic love, 
 Unjealous joy in joy not made for us 
 In conscious triumph of the good within 
 Making us worship goodness that rebukes. 
 Even our failures are a prophecy, 
 Even our yearnings and our bitter tears 
 After that fair and true we cannot grasp ; 
 As patriots who seem to die in vain 
 Make liberty more sacred by their pangs.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 169 
 
 I % 
 
 Presentiment of better things on earth 
 Sweeps in with every force that stirs our souls 
 To admiration, self- renouncing love, 
 Or thoughts, like light, that bind the world in one : 
 Sweeps like the sense of vastness, when at night 
 We hear the roll and dash of waves that break 
 Nearer and nearer with the rushing tide, 
 Which rises to the level of the cliff, 
 Because the wide Atlantic rolls behind 
 Throbbing respondent to the far-off orbs." 
 
 George Eliot. 
 
 " Worship expresses, though it may be feeble, the worshipper's 
 supreme ideal of life." Joseph Parker, D.D. 
 
 " The life unto God flows out of the life of God in the soul." 
 
 H. R. Reynolds, D.D. 
 
 "Our first life is spontaneous and instinctive. Our second 
 life is reflective. There is a moment when the life spontaneous 
 passes into the life reflective. We live at first by instinct ; then 
 we look in feel ourselves ask what' we are and whence we 
 come, and whither we are bound. In an awful new world of 
 mystery, and destinies, and duties, we feel God, and know that 
 our true home is our Father's house which has many mansions." 
 
 Rev. F. W. Robertson. 
 
 " Life, as it has been, is a book always at hand, in which the 
 tale of God's individual mercies to ourselves may plainly be read ; 
 and with this view it is good for us to look back upon it at our 
 leisure in its great outlines, and to endeavour to regard it as a 
 history belonging to some other person, which we are permitted 
 to read." 
 
 "Every man's life, however outwardly uneventful, is full of 
 importance the moment he looks back upon it, for it becomes to 
 him a history, and he is able to see it in its true light, its relation 
 to Eternity." Elizabeth M. Sewell. 
 
 " Life, for the most part, blooms only once, and, like the aloe, 
 it blooms late." R W. Faber, D.D.
 
 170 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 * 
 
 " We abide 
 
 Not on this earth ; but for a little space 
 We pass upon it : and while so we pass, 
 God through the dark hath set the Light of Life, 
 With witness for Himself, the Word of God, 
 To be among us Man, with human heart, 
 And human language, thus interpreting 
 The One great Will incomprehensible, 
 Only so far as we in human life 
 Are able to receive it ; men, as men, 
 Can reach no higher than the Son of God, 
 The perfect Head and Pattern of mankind. 
 The time is short, and this sufficeth us 
 To live and die by ; and in Him again 
 We see the same first starry attribute, 
 ' Perfect through suffering,' our salvation's seal 
 Set in the front of His Humanity. 
 For God has other Words for other worlds, 
 But for this world the Word of God is Christ. 
 And when we come to die we shall not find 
 The day has been too long for any of us 
 To have fulfilled the perfect law of Christ. 
 Who is there that can say, ' My part is done 
 
 In this ; now I am ready for a law 
 More wide, more perfect for the rest of life'? 
 Is any living that has not come short ? 
 Has any died that was not short at last ?" 
 
 H. E. Hamilton King. 
 
 " How many lives, made beautiful and sweet 
 By self-devotion and by self-restraint, 
 Whose pleasure is to run without complaint 
 On unknown errands of the Paraclete, 
 Wanting the reverence of unshodden feet, 
 Fail of the nimbus which the artists paint 
 Around the shining forehead of the saint, 
 And are in their completeness incomplete ! " 
 
 Henry W, Longfellow.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 171 
 
 l 
 
 " Degeneration compasses Degeneration. It is only a character 
 which is itself developing that can aid the Evolution of the 
 world, and so fulfil the end of life. For this high usury, each 
 of our lives, however small may seem our capital, was given 
 us by God. And it is just the men whose capital seems small 
 who need to choose the best investments." 
 
 Professor Henry Drummond. 
 
 " The Life of man is made of many lives, 
 His heart and mind of many minds and hearts, 
 And he in inward growth most surely thrives 
 Who lets wise Nature order all the parts." 
 
 Lord Houghton. 
 
 " Life is seldom so varied or so adventurous as to enable 
 a man to unfold all that is in him." 
 
 F. W. Faber, D.D. 
 
 " In dreams we see ourselves naked, and acting out our real 
 characters, even more clearly than we see others awake. . . . 
 Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake." 
 
 H. D. Thoreau. 
 
 " The next life must be a state of retribution. Thither we 
 carry nothing but ourselves, our naked selves. Our fortune 
 we leave behind us ; our honours and rank return to such as 
 gave ; even our reputation, the good or ill men thought we were, 
 clings to us no more. We go thither without our staff or scrip ; 
 nothing but the man we are. Yet that man is the result of 
 all life's daily work : it is the one thing which we have brought 
 to pass." Rev. Theodore Parker. 
 
 " There is in life no blessing like affection : 
 It soothes, it hallows, elevates, subdues, 
 And bringeth down to earth its native heaven." 
 
 Letitia E. Landon. 
 
 " The bread of life is love ; the salt of life is work ; the 
 sweetness of life poesy ; the water of life faith." 
 
 Anna Jameson.
 
 172 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 11 Life catches its ruddiest hue from the glow of the household 
 fire. And just in the measure in which men and women, however 
 isolated to the eye their lives may seem, learn the secret of 
 fatherly, motherly, brotherly, or sisterly ministry to the men 
 and women and little ones around them, does their life rise 
 into nobleness and beauty, and become harmonic with the life 
 of heaven." Rev. J. Baldwin Brown. 
 
 " Life ... is energy of love, 
 Divine or human, exercised in pain, 
 In strife, and tribulation, and ordain'd, 
 If so approved and sanctified, to pass, 
 Through shades and silent rest, to endless joy." 
 
 William Wordsworth. 
 
 " There are many trials in life which do not seem to come from 
 unwisdom or folly. They are silver arrows shot from the bow of 
 God, and fixed inextricably in the quivering heart. They are to 
 be borne. They were not meant, like snow on water, to melt as 
 soon as they strike. But the moment an ill can be patiently 
 borne, it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain." 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher, D.D. 
 
 " When life from death's dark shade looks back, 
 
 How different all the past appears 
 To him who tries each well-known track 
 
 Far through the dim and silent years ! 
 He sees it all ; the lesson taught 
 
 In Sorrow's school by slow degrees, 
 Now with its last conviction brought 
 
 Home to his heart he clearly sees. 
 The Love that led him by a way 
 
 He knew not, sore against his will ; 
 The Love that, changeless, day by day 
 
 Watches and waits around him still ; 
 The Love that crown'd his life with bliss, 
 
 Making it all one happy dream ; 
 The Love that woke him, lest he miss 
 
 Through over-love the Love supreme ;
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 173, 
 
 The Love that when it bid him part 
 
 From all on earth he loved so well, 
 Folded him closer to the heart 
 
 In which eternal mercies dwell, 
 He sees it all, and is content ; 
 
 The travail of his soul is o'er ; 
 The weary hours in anguish spent 
 
 His joy remembereth no more. 
 Daily his cross had grown more light ; 
 
 Now. from his shoulder it doth glide, 
 And rises to his dying sight 
 
 The cross on which his Saviour died. 
 It was his death in life, to bow 
 
 His broken heart submissive down : 
 It is his life in death, and now 
 
 Points through the shadow to the Crown." 
 
 " Life below 
 Is but the school of life above." 
 
 Rev. J. S. B. Monsett, LL.D. 
 
 11 Physical life is a growth ; so is intellectual, so is spiritual. 
 But the condition of growth is use, exercise ; use what you have 
 got, keep your mind open, do no violence to your reason, keep 
 your heart pure, and you may safely lay aside fears about not 
 having a right faith, or not believing enough. You will grow as 
 infallibly as the corn grows in summer. Even here, your light 
 will begin to shine before men ; you will begin to adorn Christ's 
 doctrine in some things, and yonder, when the clouds roll away, 
 you will see face to face ; and being changed from glory to glory, 
 you shall then adorn the doctrine of God your Saviour in all 
 things." Rev. H. R. Haweis. 
 
 " The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring 
 imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and 
 larger circles, and that without end. The extent to which this 
 generation of circles, wheel within wheel, will go, depends on 
 the force or truth of the individual soul." 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson.
 
 174 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 "Every life has three aspects. All of us live, it may be said, 
 three lives in one. We live to one another. A large part of every 
 day is spent in the exercise of relations, in the discharge of offices, 
 which have to do with others. These relations may be well or 
 ill exercised. These offices may be well or ill discharged. But 
 in some way or other they must of necessity be exercised and 
 discharged by all of us. No man (in this sense) can live altogether 
 to himself. He must affect others. He must, unless he would 
 absolutely go out of the world, act upon and act towards other 
 men. We live to ourselves. There is a secret life in each one of 
 us, as well as an outward. Every man, well or ill, manages and 
 directs himself. Every man holds the reins of his inner beirfg, 
 and for good, or else for evil, is (in the last resort) his own ruler, 
 and his own counsellor, and his own physician. We live to God. 
 Either negligently or else watchfully, either presumptuously or 
 else reverently, either disobediently or else dutifully, each one of 
 us must behave and deport himself somehow and in some manner 
 toward the Most High God ; towards Him in whom, whether he 
 will or no, he lives, and moves, and has his being. To have 
 nothing to do with God, is to have cast aside utterly the first law 
 of our being, and in the highest possible degree to be blaspheming 
 and defying Him daily. The creature must have a life towards 
 the Creator ; the only question is, What manner of life ? A life 
 of rebellion, or a life of love ?" Dean Vaughan, D.D. 
 
 " Live daily, constantly, with a high purpose, putting forth 
 moral energy in the minute conflicts of desire with the sense of 
 right." W. E. C fanning, D.D. 
 
 " If you are rooted in Christ, you are rooted in all the holy 
 powers of God and of eternity." Rev. John Pulsford. 
 
 " Only by being filled with a higher Spirit than our own, which, 
 having caused our spirits, is one with our spirits, and is in them 
 the present life principle, are we or can we be safe from this 
 eternal death of our being." 
 
 George Macdonald, LL.D. 
 
 " Never does any part or province of life become independent 
 of knowledge." Rev.J. Llewelyn Davies.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 175 
 
 " Every human being is now forming, though unconsciously, a 
 picture of his life, which he must hereafter present before God. 
 If we would have ours such as we shall not shrink from then 
 offering in Christ's name, we must work at it in the same chjld-like 
 spirit, copying in every minute detail the picture of Holiness 
 which Jesus has set before us, until the finishing stroke shall be 
 put to it in the moment of death, and our picture be confided to 
 God's keeping, never to be seen by us again till, in the Day of 
 Resurrection, we discover that we have, unknown to ourselves, 
 and through God's grace, caught though in an immeasurably 
 faint degree the form, and colour, and spirit of the Great 
 Original." Elizabeth M. Sewell. 
 
 "How cruel life is to the wicked man ! Take him at his best 
 estate, . reckon up the pains he takes, the efforts he makes, the 
 activity he expends, how he is burnt up with the fever of insatiable 
 desires, running a race after impossible ends, impoverishing heart 
 and mind with excitements which are their own punishment ; what a 
 tyranny the slow lapse of time is to him, what a bitter step-mother 
 the world he has so adored ! The flood-tide of irritation and 
 then the ebb of helpless languor, who would live a life of which 
 those are the incessant alternations ? The wilful sinner is but a 
 man who, in order to get rid of God, explores, to his own cost, 
 every species of disappointment, and nowhere finds contentment 
 or repose." F. W. Faber, D,D. 
 
 " The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure 
 much." W. Hazlitt. 
 
 " Strange is the life of man, and fatal or fated are moments, 
 Whereupon turn, as on hinges, the gates of the wall adaman- 
 tine ! " Henry W. Longfellow. 
 
 " Life is but thought. 
 
 * * # * 
 
 Dewdrops are the gems of morning, 
 But the tears of mournful eve ! 
 Where no hope is, life's a warning 
 That only serves to make us grieve." 
 
 5. T. Coleridge.
 
 176 THOUGHTS UN LIFE. 
 
 " Those to whom life is a succession of particular businesses, how- 
 ever intelligent, energetic, and conscientious, must rank in the 
 scale of human excellence below those to whom life is rather the 
 fiou> oL one spirit. In the former there is always to be noticed 
 a cerrain want of porportion in the parts and methods of their 
 career. It has not the unity of a pervading aim, the ground- 
 colouring of a latent affection. It is not the spontaneous 
 expression of a given mind, but the activity provoked by a given 
 lot ; so that its highest energy is that of adaptation rather than 
 creation. . . . But a soul kindling with devout aspiration cannot 
 mistake instrumental details for ultimate ends. The act of the 
 hour belongs to the business of the day ; the business of the day 
 has its place in the scheme of years ; the scheme of years is but 
 the element of an eternal work ; and all is the expression of a 
 constant spirit, conversing with God in the present, and in quest 
 of his higher mind in the future. To such a one life is not a 
 mere voyage by the log and line, an experimental cruise over 
 waters unexplored ; but a course computed by the everlasting 
 stars over an ocean unvisited indeed, but not unknown ; with its 
 relations to the heavens discerned, and sunny inlets and blessed 
 islands ever in the thoughts. The difference between a life 
 pieced together from even the stoutest remnants, and a life 
 woven, though with fragile woof and fading colours, from the 
 continuous warp of a pure heart, is conspicuous especially in the 
 temper with which the ills and wrongs of the human lot are 
 borne." James Martineau, D.D. 
 
 "The new life cannot be led except as new sensibilities to 
 goodness are awakened. Sufficient ability for living it is not 
 acquired by our independent contemplation of the Holy Pattern." 
 
 Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 " It is the strange truth of life that unknowingly we are 
 continually hovering close to our destiny. We think again and 
 again, in the street, at night before sleep attack us with her 
 envious silence, that perhaps to-day we met, or perhaps to-morrow 
 we shall meet, him or her who will upturn our life and make it 
 new. To come truly into contact with another human soul, 
 whom you feel, it seems, that you have known before, and with
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 177 
 
 whom friendship seems but a renewal of some forgotten life ; or 
 to feel the revelation of a wholly new life to yours, so that you 
 are renewed in absorbing that life, there are few pleasures in 
 life so profound as that, so eagerly desired, so rarely made the 
 most of, so recklessly squandered when they come. It is God 
 who sends them, but we often act as if it were the devil ; and 
 that is a sore pity and a great wrong. 
 
 " Many a seed lies in the soil of a field unable to germinate. 
 The rain falls on the land, the sun sends his heat into the ground, 
 but all in vain. At last a new element is added to the soil ; the 
 rain dissolves it around the seed, and now life awakens in its 
 husk, it pushes up its trembling spear of green, the sunlight 
 touches and a new thing is born on earth." 
 
 Rev. Stopford A. Brooke. 
 ' We, too, are deathless ; we, 
 
 Eternal as the Earth, 
 
 We cannot cease to be 
 
 While springtide comes or birth. 
 
 If our being cease to hold 
 
 Reflected lights divine 
 
 On budding lives, they day by day do shine 
 
 With unabated gold. 
 
 Though lost, it may be, to our mortal sight, 
 
 It cannot be that any perish quite 
 
 Only the baser part forgets to be, 
 
 And if within the hidden Treasury 
 
 Of the great Ruler we awhile should rest, 
 
 Or issue with a higher stamp imprest, 
 
 With all our baser alloy purged and spent, 
 
 Were we not thus content ? 
 ****** 
 
 The nobler portions of ourselves shall last 
 
 Till all the lower rounds of life be past, 
 
 And we regenerate. 
 
 We, too, again shall rise 
 
 The same, and not the same, 
 
 As daily rise upon the orient skies 
 
 New dawns with wheels of flame. 
 
 12
 
 178 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 So, if it worthy prove, 
 
 Our being, self-perfected, shall upward move 
 
 To higher essence, and still higher grown, 
 
 Not sweeping idle harps before a throne, 
 
 Nor spending praise where is no need of praise, 
 
 But through unnumbered lives and ages come, 
 
 Of pure laborious days, 
 
 To an eternal home, 
 
 Where spring is not, nor birth, nor any dawn, 
 
 But life's full noontide never is withdrawn." 
 
 Lewis Morris. 
 
 " Each advancing form of life, which God takes up, springs, 
 out of the failure of that which has preceded it." 
 
 Rev. Andrew Jukes. 
 
 "The ideal Christian life is a life in God a life under the 
 absolute control of the laws of an invisible, eternal, and Divine 
 kingdom." R. W. Dale, D.D. 
 
 " It is now, in this earth life, we weave our heaven robes ; now 
 we set the jewels in our heaven crown ; now we learn the heaven 
 songs ; now we become fitted in choice, and love, and character 
 for the realms of the holy. The whiteness of heaven is a further 
 glory which comes upon the whitened earth-robes of an earnest 
 Christian life." Rev. R. Tuck. 
 
 " Life, whether we build the pyramid of jasper or of common 
 clay, however broad we make its base, mercifully narrows to the 
 top ; and as on our upward path we successively leave behind us 
 the beauty and joy of childhood, and the strength of manhood, 
 and the few interests that survive, like pale flowers on the Alpine 
 turf, to those days in which we shall say that we have no pleasure 
 in them, as all things fall away from us, and leave us on our little 
 narrow standing-place amid the cold, barren snows of old age, 
 eternity is seen to be more and more beneath us as well as around 
 us and above us ; the heavenly world becomes more and more 
 part of our own home, and the transition in the end is easy and 
 immediate.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 179 
 
 " The life of faith exists behind the life of sense, the life hid 
 with Christ in God behind and beneath the life lived with men. 
 Just as our world is even now among the stars, so is our life even 
 now, in the spiritual and eternal world, covered and hid by the 
 material frame and the circumstances of external life, as the flame 
 of a lamp covers and conceals the changes of the elements on 
 which it feeds and by which it lives." 
 
 Rev, Hugh Macmillan. 
 
 " The events of life sometimes startle us by an apparent eccen- 
 tricity. Some line of thought or current of enterprise has been 
 carrying us, and we feel that the path of the future is beginning 
 to be plain. We shall go forward as we are ; the aim we have 
 in view will be slowly accomplished, and every day will add 
 something to its realization ; to-morrow will be as to-day, and 
 the steady weeks will succeed one another with monotonous 
 resemblance. Such are our thoughts ; but the thread which our 
 imagination pictures as running on straight and firm in the future 
 as in the past, is often broken with startling suddenness, and the 
 whole of our life overspread with the hues of uncertainty. Such 
 events are out of harmony with our plans they cross our pur- 
 poses or our expectations ; they are disturbing to our sense of 
 repose"; they break up the petrifactions which the constant 
 routine of life tends to form over the surface of the spirit. But 
 there are other moods which succeed. There are times when 
 our stirred and agitated minds are ready for any event. We 
 have seen how life is constantly broken up, and its old combi- 
 nations displaced, and new ones created. The wayward progress 
 of Fortune has angered us, or terrified us, or depressed us; we 
 cease to be surprised at any of her whimsical deeds she cannot 
 astonish us with anything. There is a recklessness about us 
 which obstinately refuses to be surprised ; there is an anger at 
 everything in life, which is almost eager to anticipate every mis- 
 fortune." 
 
 Bishop Boyd Carpenter. 
 
 " Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles 
 and cope-stones for the masonry of to : day." 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson.
 
 i8o THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Our lives are not the accidental and purposeless fragments 
 they often seem to us to be. God is so disposing them as that 
 we may be sifted from all evil, converted to all goodness, His end 
 for us being that we may become perfect and entire, lacking 
 nothing." Samuel Cox, D.D. 
 
 V 
 
 " Life is not mere continuance or development ; it is not a 
 harmony, but a struggle. It continues, it develops, it may reach 
 a harmony, but these are not now its main aspects. It is this 
 element of struggle that separates us from other creations. A 
 tree grows, a brute develops what was lodged within it; but 
 man chooses, and choice, by its nature, involves struggle. It is 
 through choice and its conflicts that man makes his world, 
 himself, and his destiny; for in the last analysis character is 
 choice ultimated. The animals live on in their vast variety and 
 generations without changing the surface of the earth, or varying 
 the sequences wrought into their being ; but man transforms the 
 earth, and works out for himself diverse histories and destinies. 
 One is perfectly co-ordinated to nature ; the other is but partially 
 so, and is man-like just in the degree in which he gets out of the 
 formal categories of nature into the freedom of his 'own spiritual 
 and eternal order; great just in the degree in which he rises 
 above instincts, and gets to living out of moral choices." 
 
 Rev. Theodore T. Hunger. 
 
 " I love a life whose plot is simple, 
 And does not thicken with every pimple ; 
 A soul so sound no sickly conscience binds it, 
 That makes the universe no worse than 't finds it 
 I love an earnest soul, 
 Whose mighty joy and sorrow 
 Are not drowned in a bowl, 
 And brought to life to-morrow ; 
 That lives one tragedy, 
 And not seventy ; 
 A conscience worth keeping, 
 Laughing not weeping ; 
 A conscience wise and steady, 
 And for ever ready ;
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 181 
 
 Not changing with events, 
 
 Dealing in compliments ; 
 
 A conscience exercised about 
 
 Large things, where one may doubt. 
 
 I love a soul not all of wood, 
 
 Predestinated to be good, 
 
 But true to the backbone 
 
 Unto itself alone, 
 
 And false to none ; 
 
 Born to its own affairs, 
 
 Its own joys and own cares ; 
 
 By whom the work which God begun 
 
 Is finished, and not undone ; 
 
 Taken up where He left off, 
 
 Whether to worship or to scoff; 
 
 If not good, why then evil, 
 
 If not good god, good devil. 
 
 Goodness ! you hypocrite, come out of that, 
 
 Live your life, do your work, then take your hat, 
 
 I have no patience towards 
 
 Such conscientious cowards. 
 
 Give me simple labouring folk, 
 
 Who love their work, 
 
 Whose virtue is a song 
 
 To cheer God along." 
 
 H. D. Thoreau. 
 
 11 To man, in the realization of his own personality, there is open 
 the life that is infinite. . . . God suffers the limitations of the 
 finite, that man may rise to the life that is infinite. God becomes 
 subject to the conditions of time that man may enter into the 
 life that is eternal." 
 
 Elisha Mulford, LL.D. 
 
 " There is no death ! What seems so is transition. 
 
 This life of mortal breath 
 Is but a suburb of the life elysian, 
 Whose portal we call Death." 
 
 Henry W. Longfellow.
 
 1 82 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " The immortal life we hope for is not the mere continuance of 
 our personal life in happiness ; it is its continuance in labour, in 
 sacrifice, in love, and all these not for self, but for others. It is 
 not isolation in comfort or in rest, apart from human interests ; it 
 is a deeper and more passionate life in the whole of man, anu in 
 all its knowledge, art, and love. It is not a life in which self or 
 self-objects can enter in, which the world can even touch ; it is a 
 life which God will fill to its remotest vein with Himself, so that 
 we shall become one burning flame of love love which will make 
 goodness certain, which, making us see into the heart of things, 
 will make our knowledge of them clear, and our enjoyment of 
 them even greater than our knowledge love which will make our 
 aspirations endless and our effort endless also. And this which 
 is God's activity of life in each of us will be in all, for ever and 
 ever, till, in that world to come, we shall know and rejoice to live 
 in the knowledge that mankind will grow, labour, love, and enjoy, 
 with a zest which ages will not lessen but increase." 
 
 Rev. Stopford A. Brooke. 
 
 11 Ask yourselves whether this is not the true ideal of our life ? 
 That, while we are on earth, we should be as the reed shaken 
 by and serving the wind, yielding to the Divine Spirit, following 
 Him, and bearing witness to Him in all our changes; loyal to 
 Hun, even though to be loyal we must often lash the earth, or be 
 bruised against the tumultuous waters, or be torn on the hard, 
 sharp rocks. Our language may be often nothing but a sigh over 
 the mysteries of life, over the dark problems we cannot solve ; 
 and, indeed, reeds that lie under the heavy and the weary weight 
 of all this unintelligible world have but a hard time of it, and may 
 well sigh, and even groan. But if we are faithful to the promptings 
 of the Divine Spirit, if we yield to His constraints, we are gathering 
 strength and sweetness of character ; we are attuning ourselves for 
 His uses ; we are preparing ourselves for happier service. When 
 Death cuts us down, we may become instruments more meet for 
 the Spirit's hands, and pour forth clearer, richer strains. Then we 
 shall beat our music out at last, and all the discords of earth and 
 time will pass away from us for ever." 
 
 Samuel Cox, D.D.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 183 
 
 " We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by 
 mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which 
 does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more 
 encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate 
 his life by a conscious endeavour. It is something to be able to 
 paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a 
 few objects beautiful ; but it is far more glorious to carve and 
 paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, 
 which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that 
 is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even 
 in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated 
 and critical hour." H. D. Thoreau. 
 
 " Each hour has its lesson, and each life ; 
 And if we miss one life, we shall not find 
 Its lesson in another ; rather, go 
 So much the less complete for evermore, 
 Still missing something that we cannot name, 
 Still with our senses so far unattuned 
 To what the Present brings to harmonise 
 
 With our soul's Past." 
 
 H. E. Hamilton King. 
 
 " This life, for the most part, is but a ripple that stirs the surface 
 of our being ; the depths of that being, like the depths of the sea, 
 are holden of a deep sleep." Ellice Hopkins. 
 
 " The service of God must be co-extensive with our whole life, 
 and reach over our whole compass of duties, without a single 
 exception." Dean Goulburn. 
 
 " A great deal of our heart-life is cryptogamous mosses and 
 inconspicuous blooms hidden in the grass, thoughtlets, the intents 
 of the heart. We are hardly aware of this life ; but as God sees 
 in winter all the flowers which are yet sleeping beneath the soil, 
 so He sees all the hidden feelings of our hearts. He knows 
 every root, and what will spring from it, and comprehends its 
 intents, which are yet but germs, as well as its thoughts, which 
 
 have already blossomed." 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher, D.D.
 
 1 84 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " The nner life reveals itself, not in detail, but In its spirit." 
 
 Rev. Stopford A. Brooke. 
 
 " Life, in its very essence, is movement and transition. Not 
 what we have, but what we gain or lose ; not what we are, but 
 what we are becoming ; not where we stand, but whence we come 
 and whither we go, constitute its real interest and worth ; and 
 the only value of that ease and virtual stagnation at which main 
 delusively aim is to provoke their desires, and stir up the ferment- 
 ing energies that contradict and exclude it." 
 
 James Martineau, D.D. 
 
 " The experience of life nearly always works towards the 
 confirmation of faith. It is the total significance of life that it 
 reveals God to man ; and life only can do this ; neither thought, 
 nor demonstration, nor miracle, but life only, weaving its threads 
 of daily toil, and trial, and joy into a pattern on which at last is 
 inscribed the name God." Rev. Theodore T. Munger. 
 
 " There is a subtle law of assimilation whereby man, in his 
 deepest life, receives an impress from the object on which his gaze 
 is habitually fixed." Canon Liddon. 
 
 " Could we but turn upon ourselves the eyes 
 With which we look on others, life would pass 
 In one perpetual blush and smile. 
 The smile, how bitter ! for 'tis scorn's worst task 
 To scorn ourselves ; and yet we could not choose 
 But mock our actions, all we say or do, 
 If we but saw them as we others see. 
 Life's best repose is blindness to itself." 
 
 Letitia E. Landon. 
 
 " Is not all our life our lower life, at least a miserable and 
 fruitless attempt to reconcile the indulgence of our low desires 
 for a summer holiday with the infinite and ever-increasing calls 
 of conscience and law ? Is not all our higher life a perpetual 
 struggle to reach a horizon of duty, which is unbounded and 
 ever-widening before us, as we fulfil its claims ? " 
 
 Rev. F. W. Robertson.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 185 
 
 ' In this wild element of a Life man has to struggle onwards ; 
 now fallen, deep-abased ; and ever, with tears, repentance, with 
 bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still onwards 
 That his struggle be a faithful unconquerable one : that is the 
 question of questions." Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 " How near to good is what is wild /" 
 
 " Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. 
 Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One who 
 pressed forward incessantly, and never rested from his labours, 
 who grew fast and made infinite demands on life, would always 
 find himself in a new country or wilderness, and surrounded by 
 the raw material of life. He would be climbing over the pros- 
 trate stems of primitive forest trees." H. D. Thoreau. 
 
 " The value of life is measured by the richness and variety 
 of its experiences. Life ought to be worth double to your child 
 what it has been worth to you. Your life ought to be his 
 vantage ground, from which, through the culture which God has 
 strengthened you to give him, he may gather in the impressions of 
 a far wider world." Rev. J. Baldwin Brown. 
 
 "Out of the attempt to harmonize our actual life with our 
 aspirations, our experience with our faith, we make poetry* or, it 
 may be, religion." Anna Jameson. 
 
 " One adequate support 
 For the calamities of mortal life 
 Exists one only an assured belief 
 That the procession of our fate, howe'er 
 Sad or disturb'd, is order'd by a Being 
 Of infinite benevolence and power, 
 Whose everlasting purposes embrace 
 All accidents, converting them to good." 
 
 William Wordsworth. 
 
 " The events of life are not appointed as testing us, whether 
 we will choose God's will or our own, but real lessons to train us 
 into making the right choice." Thomas Erskine.
 
 186 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " To respect myself, to develop myself this is my true duty 
 in life." Samuel Smiles. 
 
 "Your life is a school, exactly adapted to your lesson, and 
 that to the best, last end of your existence." 
 
 H. Bushnell, D.D. 
 
 " The best test for Life is just living" 
 
 Professor Henry Drummond. 
 
 "Life lives with youth, and its first rush is wonderful. 
 Thoughts break out into leaf, feelings into blossom ; a single day 
 in that time of sun and rain may make the whole heart like a 
 woodland ; when the foliage of sweet thoughts first appears the 
 grass is not seen for flowers. The first touch of love, the touch 
 of a new aspiration, the winning of one new knowledge, may 
 loosen the bonds of a thousand seeds of thought, and set them 
 shooting upwards into growth and life. We are often born in 
 a day ; life then begins, and I hold it our duty in youth to put 
 our whole force into living. But how ? It is life, some say, to 
 indulge our passions and desires to the full, and to send all the 
 ardour of youth by the wild will to the service of the senses and 
 the appetites. But is that really life, or death in the garb of life ? 
 It is said, with wisdom just and deep, that he that liveth in such 
 pleasure is dead while he liveth. The germs of death are hidden 
 in such life the germ of weary exhaustion, the germ of consuming 
 satiety ; and where deathful things are hidden, there is no true 
 life. Men call this a fast life. It is the fast life of a field flower 
 in a hothouse, so driven beyond its due speed, overworked 
 towards the production of the flower, that when it has finished 
 flowering it is worthless, and will flower no more. And winter 
 kills it ; but its brothers of the field that have lived as swiftly only 
 as Nature bade them, sleep unexhausted till the sunshine of the 
 spring. The forced life is itself disease, and the lesson youth 
 should learn from the life of the woods in spring is that in 
 natural life only is to be found quick life. . . . Along with the 
 leaves is born the cup of the flower, and with the flowers are 
 involved the seeds. In all true life future life is hidden ; pro- 
 vision is made for that production which is the first mark of life,
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 187 
 
 for continuance of life and for its flower. Think of that truth as 
 the spring moves your blood. Is there the element of continu- 
 ance in anything you do ? In your life are there seeds which, 
 when decay comes, will insure a new outburst of life ? Have you 
 so TIC certainty that you have life enough to flower? Is the true 
 flower of a beautiful or useful life already formed in you ? Are 
 you showing forth already the beauty, and sweetness, and charm 
 which tells that the flower is coming ? If these things be so, then 
 you are living the fullest and the quickest life, the life of which 
 Spring is the image, of which God is the reality." 
 
 Rev. Stopford A. Brooke. 
 
 " There is a releasing power in life." 
 
 Joseph Parker, D.D. 
 
 "Enough is an ever-receding goal. These ideals and aspira- 
 tions after something which the world cannot give, are to man, in 
 the material body and the material world, what the organization 
 of the sparrow is to the egg. They are voices implanted in man's 
 nature prophesying another world, that shall be adequate to his 
 largest desires. These stirrings of a higher life within us, these 
 surgings of mighty impulses against the walls of clay, are the 
 struggles of the unfledged bird for a new state of being. They 
 are not, they cannot be, the mockings of some tormenting fiend ; 
 they are the powerful voices of an all-merciful, all-wise Father, 
 who has provided a better world for us than this voices of love, 
 and hope, in which He calls us to believe in that world, and 
 prepare for it." Chaimcey Ones. 
 
 " The discipline of our souls determines half the temptations 
 of our life." Henry Alton, D.D. 
 
 " Life is God's school, and they that will listen to the Master 
 there will learn at God's speed." 
 
 George MacDonald, LL.D. 
 
 11 There is no wind but soweth seeds 
 
 Of a more true and open life, 
 Which burst, unlocked for, into high-souled deeds, 
 
 With wayside beauty rife." J. Russell Lowell.
 
 188 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Every man has within him rudiments of Divine life as well 
 as rudiments of diabolic life." 
 
 Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 " The active life which has only the service of man for its end, 
 and therefore gathers flowers, with Leah, for its own decoration, 
 is indeed happy, but not perfectly so ; it has only the happiness 
 of the dream, belonging essentially to the dream of human life 
 and passing away with it. But the active life which labours for 
 the more and more discovery of God's work, is perfectly happy, 
 and is the life of the terrestrial paradise, being a true foretaste of 
 heaven, and beginning in earth, as heaven's vestibule. So also 
 the contemplative life, which is concerned with human feeling, and 
 thought, and beauty the life which is in earthly poetry and 
 imagery of noble earthly emotion is happy, but it is the happi- 
 ness of the dream ; the contemplative life which has God's person 
 and love in Christ for its object, has the happiness of eternity." 
 
 John Ruskin. 
 
 "We are always doing too much so for finest being; are 
 always striving too much so for highest attaining. There is 
 no life, indeed, no healthy and wholesome soul life, without the 
 bustle and swelter of action ; and many a man is acquiring and 
 growing more divinely in his daily buying, and selling, and 
 manifold mundane anxieties and labours, than others in their 
 cloistered stillness and seclusion, and amid the quiet of meditative 
 days. But are we not, as a rule, too unbrokenly busy, for ever 
 eagerly hearing something, reading something, pursuing some- 
 thing, inquiring into something ; rarely resting from the strain of 
 desire and enterprise, to bathe in the waters of leisurely thought, 
 rarely pausing to breathe and inspire at large, rarely allowing 
 ourselves the mental hush and silence, in which the finest sounds 
 may be heard, and that which is hidden be able to come forth 
 and show itself; as when the noisy merry-makers or travellers 
 have passed, and all is profoundly still again, the hidden Ijfe of 
 the forest steals out, and many a beautiful timid creature, whose 
 adjacency had not been suspected, glides into the open from 
 
 behind the trees." 
 
 Rev. S. A. Tipple.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 189 
 
 " Our life is twofold : sleep has its own world, 
 A boundary between the things misnamed 
 Death and existence : Sleep hath its own world, 
 And a wide realm of wild reality, 
 And dreams in their development have breath, 
 And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy; 
 They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts, 
 They take a weight from off our waking toils, 
 They do divide our being ; they become 
 A portion of ourselves as of our time, 
 And look like heralds of eternity ; 
 They pass like spirits of the past, they speak 
 Like sibyls of the future ; they have power 
 The tyranny of pleasure and of pain ; 
 They make us what we were not what they will, 
 And shake us with the vision that's gone by, 
 The dread of vanish'd shadows. Are they so ? 
 Is not the past all shadow ? What are they ? 
 Creations of the mind ? The mind can make 
 Substance, and people planets of its own 
 With beings brighter than have been, and give 
 A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh. 
 * # # * * * 
 
 For in itself a thought, 
 A slumbering thought, is capable of years, 
 
 And curdles a long life into one hour." 
 
 Lord Byron. 
 
 " Life is but the long phantasm of the sleep-walker ; replete 
 with the consciousness of nimble thoughts, and vivid passions, 
 and precarious glories, and strenuous deeds, a perfect conflict of 
 awful forces to him that is within it ; but to the eye of waking 
 truth outside, still and passive as the sculptured slumber of a 
 marble image ; a casket of mimic battles and ideal woes." 
 
 James Martineau, D.D. 
 
 " Faith's moonbeams softly glisten 
 Upon the breast of life's most troubled sea." 
 
 F. W. Faber, D.D.
 
 190 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " There are episodes in most men's lives in which their highest 
 qualities can only cast a deterring shadow over the objects that 
 fill their inward vision. . . . Only those who know the supremacy 
 of the intellectual life the life which has seed of ennobling 
 thought and purpose within it can understand the grief of one 
 who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing, soul- 
 wasting struggle with worldly annoyances." 
 
 " Life never seems so clear and easy as when the heart is 
 beating faster at the sight of some generous self-risking deed. 
 We feel no doubt then what is the highest prize the soul can 
 win ; we almost believe in our own power to attain it." 
 
 George Eliot. 
 
 " There exist moments in the life of man 
 When he is nearer the great Soul of the world 
 Than is man's custom, and possesses freely 
 The power of questioning his destiny." 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 " Never is our true life greater, never is it more consciously 
 precious to us, than when we hold to it, and pursue its highest 
 aims, amid the wintry gloom of some present disappointment, and 
 with the withered leaves of present failure rustling on our path." 
 
 Alexander Raleigh, D.D. 
 
 " It is far easier to scatter blessings than to stoop to the low r 
 and to live with them as a friend. The Son of God walking 
 amidst the band of His disciples as an equal, sitting at their 
 table, inviting to it the publican, and conversing with all He met 
 on the highway and in. the palace with like sympathy and interest, 
 displays to my mind a charity stronger than when He employed 
 His power to raise the dead. In every act and relation of common 
 life, we see that His very life and spirit was benignity." 
 
 W. E. Channing, D.D. 
 
 " For ah ! life's stream is bitter, 
 When too greedily we drink." 
 
 Robert Buchanan.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 191 
 
 " The thought of God will be as a true talisman of strength ; 
 it will give simplicity and directness to our life. Over the 
 intervening crowd of daily difficulties will rise clear and high 
 before us the mountain of God's presence, drawing to itself our 
 advancing steps." Bishop Wilberforce. 
 
 " Life is a festival to the wise." 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 "Whatever has the deepest place in our life has also the chief 
 dominion over us, and whatever has the chief dominion over us 
 is our Lord. Memory, conviction, sentimentality, conscience, 
 habit, etc., etc., may call Jesus 'Lord and Master,' while a very 
 different Lord inspires and rules our life. Let us not deceive 
 ourselves. What we are when we are most free, that we really 
 are." Rev. J^ohn Pulsford. 
 
 " There is one solitude common to all one solitude which 
 God alone invades. There is a world which the vulture's eye 
 hath not seen, nor foot of man hath trod. It is the world in a 
 man's own heart. It belongs often to the present. There he is 
 ever solitary. No ear hears the songs sung in its woods ; no 
 eye sees the tears which water its fields ; none the battles which 
 make its plains terrible ; none the graveyards there, where are 
 broken vows, abandoned plans, worn-out hopes, joys blind and 
 deaf, faiths betrayed or gone astray, lost, lost love ; silent spaces 
 where only one mourner ever comes. Stillness as of death dwells 
 in this world, yet work as of infinite life is wrought therein. A 
 hundred thoughts and emotions meet and interchange in the 
 present, and we only hear the conclusion of all this toil in 
 our companion's heart in a single sentence, or see it in a single 
 act. It belongs often to the past. In that rushing swiftness of 
 thought which suggests our immortality, we resume within a 
 few minutes the memories of years gone by, embody all theu\ 
 sadness in a sigh, conclude all their experience into a thought ; 
 and no one sees aught of this labour but a new touch of ex- 
 pression in the face which alters it for a moment and flits away. 
 It belongs often to the future. Far into the coming time, years 
 and years away, we wander, slaves of the imagination, building
 
 *92 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 our air-wrought castles, picturing what we shall be when we walk 
 by alien streams, and have lost the love and interests of the 
 present ; dreaming of fame, or love, or death, or of life brought 
 at last out of shadow into quick reality. And of all this wild 
 world of activity created in an hour there is no trace that man 
 can see but an eye dimmed for an instant or a smile which 
 hides itself. And more, within that lonely world there are long 
 histories in which the soul exhausts itself and finds no end, trials 
 which keep life for ever on the strain, this way and that dividing 
 the swift mind, till the battle rages round the thing as raged of 
 old the fight around the body of Patroclus, from morn till even, 
 and is taken up again next day, and the day after, and for year 
 after year, incessant as the waves, and as changeful in its force. 
 And not the nearest and the dearest to our life knows that 
 beneath the quiet commonplace is hidden a tragedy, a comedy, 
 or a romance. Only now and then, in some moment of im- 
 perious passion, or in some crisis in which life concentrates, some 
 touch, some trace of it, rushes to the lips in dim, confused 
 expression. Sometimes it is not these things which have no 
 connection with our outward life, but a life opposed to it which 
 we lead in the solitary soul. There are currents in the ocean, 
 deep below, which stream the contrary way to those that flow 
 above ; and no one guesses their existence, save when the 
 sounding line visiting the deeps is borne away, and comes to 
 the surface tangled ; save when some plant or shell that cannot 
 live in the warm surface waters trending northwards, comes up 
 and tells that below a tide is streaming southwards from the 
 pole. Many lives are such, and they are lonely and stern enough 
 God knows. The artist-nature is caught in business ; the soldier- 
 heart has to mount the pulpit, not the breach ; the woman made 
 for one life has slid into its opposite ; the sceptical nature has 
 to fight for faith in a life which demands faith ; the believing 
 nature is thrown into a world of doubt. Above, to men's eyes, 
 their lives trend all one way; far, far below, and only known 
 when one casts the plummet deep, or a strange thought appears 
 on the surface, the whole true current of the life sets steadily 
 and always the other way. Yet there, and there only, in that 
 silent sphere is the true enthusiasm, joy, and sorrow ; there only
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 193 
 
 is life known and felt. And yet, because to disclose it, or to 
 let it rise to the surface, would tangle life inextricably, would 
 overthrow and slay the necessary duties or because it is too 
 sacred, from long hiding and long worship, to expose to the 
 coarse wonder of the world, it is never known. These die, and 
 make no sign. No one has known them but God alone. This 
 is something of the solitude of the inner life, and no one can 
 say that it is an evil solitude, unless one should dwell in it always 
 to the loss of duty, and then it is solitude no longer ; or unless 
 its thoughts and emotions be evil in themselves." 
 
 Rev. Stopford A. Brooke. 
 
 "It is the life within which truly corresponds to the life to 
 come ; so he that dwells most in himself, dwells most in hell or 
 in heaven. In the outward world there is an inward soul. We 
 may commune with peace and goodness as we gaze on sky and 
 meadows ; and there is that within God's work which brings 
 sympathy for what is within man's heart. So that when we sit 
 upon a ledge of rock, and enjoy a hush filled only with murmur- 
 ing sounds, and look upon the bloom of the world, so wide, 
 so bountiful, there rises a longing for heaven ; for we are indeed 
 now tasting heaven. We have gone within our heart, and have 
 gone, as it were, within the veil of visible things. The life 
 beyond all we see is the life within all we see. And the life 
 most within ourselves is the life, then, that must needs look 
 farthest, and sustain itself most by expectations." 
 
 Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 " Life it not a little cup dipped from the stream of time. It 
 is itself a stream ; and though at its birth it may dance and 
 send forth cheerful murmurs as it does not afterwards, still it is 
 intended to flow, as it advances, through more beautiful regions, 
 and to adorn its shores with richer verdure and more abundant 
 harvests." W. E. Channing, D.D. 
 
 " The voyage of human life under any other Head than Christ, 
 and under any other wind than the wind of His Spirit, is 
 sorrowful beyond all expression." 
 
 Rev. John Pulsford. 
 
 13
 
 194 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong 
 man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we 
 have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory 
 of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with 
 God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook 
 and the rustle of the corn." 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 " The material, operating upon our senses, is always asserting 
 its existence ; and if our inner life is not equally vigorous,we 
 shall be moved, urged, what is called actuated, from without, 
 whereas all our activity ought to be from within." 
 
 George MacDonald, LL.D. 
 
 " But often, in the world's most crowded streets, 
 But often, in the din of strife, 
 There rises an unspeakable desire 
 After the knowledge of our buried life : 
 A thirst to spend our fire and restless force 
 In tracking out our true, original course ; 
 A longing to inquire 
 
 Into the mystery of this heart which beats 
 So wild, so deep in us to know 
 Whence our thoughts come and where they go. 
 And many a man in his own breast then delves, 
 But deep enough, alas ! none ever mines. 
 And we have been on many thousand lines, 
 And we have shown, on each, spirit and power; 
 But hardly have we, for one little hour, 
 Been on our own line, have we been ourselves 
 Hardly had skill to utter one of all 
 The nameless feelings that course through our breast, 
 But they course on for ever unexpress'd. 
 And long we try in vain to speak and act 
 Our hidden self, and what we say and do 
 Is eloquent, is well but 'tis not true ! 
 And then we will no more be rack'd 
 With inward striving, and demand
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 19 
 
 Of all the thousand nothings of the hour 
 
 Their stupefying power ; 
 
 Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call ! 
 
 Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn, 
 
 From the soul's subterranean depth upborne 
 
 As from an infinitely distant land, 
 
 Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey 
 
 A melancholy into all our day. 
 
 Only but this is rare 
 
 When a beloved hand is laid in ours, 
 
 When, jaded with the rush and glare 
 
 Of the interminable hours, 
 
 Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear, 
 
 When our world-deafen' d ear 
 
 Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd 
 
 A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast, 
 
 And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again. 
 
 The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain, 
 
 And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know. 
 
 A man becomes aware of his life's flow, 
 
 And hears its winding murmur, and he sees 
 
 The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze. 
 
 And there arrives a lull in the hot race 
 
 Wherein he doth for ever chase 
 
 That flying and elusive shadow, rest. -. 
 
 An air of coolness plays upon his face, 
 
 And an unwonted calm pervades his breast. 
 
 And then he thinks he knows 
 
 The hills where his life rose, 
 
 And the sea where it goes." 
 
 Robert Buchanan. 
 
 " The only life which is not worth living is not of God's giving, 
 but of our own creation the life of no duty, no love, no trust ; 
 which is indeed separated by an immeasurable interval from its 
 opposite, and amounts to a spiritual suicide of our humanity." 
 
 James Martineau, D.D.
 
 196 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 11 Christ is the inward rectification of the life of man, the pure 
 strong germ of the new heart within the big, rough old one. 
 When the busy energies of the world are ordered ' according 
 to the love of God in -Christ Jesus,' nothing will pass away but 
 that it may exist in a nobler form ; nothing will be excluded 
 by the laws of spirit that appertains to the nature of man. 
 Though all that appertains to the nature of man did not 
 outivardly appear in the life of Christ, the life of Christ, as 
 He was and is, will inwardly appear in all departments of this 
 nature. God in Christ, is Christ in the world ; and Christ in 
 the world, is the world in God" Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 " Man cannot well face life without some shield between. He 
 may fight ever so bravely, but the spears of life will be too many 
 and too sharp for him. And no shield will thoroughly defend 
 him but God. The lowest, by its very condition, demands the 
 highest ; the weakest calls out for the strongest, none but the 
 strongest can succour the weakest ; the saddest can be comforted 
 only by the most blessed ; the finite can get deliverance from its 
 binding and torturing condition only in the eternal one. When 
 Hamlet caught sight of life, and saw what he had got to do and 
 bear, he said, ' I'll go pray.' You have but to name God before 
 sorrow, and it changes colour; name Him before burdens, and 
 they grow less ; name Him before the vanity of life, and it dis- 
 appears. The whole sphere and scene of life is changed, lifted 
 into a realm of power, and wisdom, and gladness. With the 
 incoming of God there is a sense of reversal, everything that is 
 sad, and poor, and dark, and wrong is turned about, and gathers 
 meaning and purpose. A prophetic sense enters into us, and 
 these wandering, disorderly, fragmentary features and experiences 
 of life are built up into a city that hath foundations in which 
 we repose by faith." Rev. Theodore T. Hunger. 
 
 "So materialistic is the course of common life, that we ask 
 daily new Messiahs from literature and art, to turn us from the 
 Pharisaic observance of law to the baptism of spirit. But stars 
 arise upon our murky sky, and the flute sonpire from the quarter 
 where we least expect it." Margaret Fuller Ossoli.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 197 
 
 "The consciousness of deadness is itself a sign of life 
 equivocal, unworthy, unsatisfactory, but still there is life." 
 
 W. Morley Punshon, D.D. 
 
 " Noble thought produces 
 
 Noble ends and uses, 
 Noble hopes are part of Hope wherever she may be ; 
 
 Noble thought enhances 
 
 Life and all its chances, 
 And noble self is noble song, all this I learn from thee ! 
 
 And I learn, moreover, 
 
 'Mid the city's strife, too, 
 That such faint song as sweetens Death can sweeten the 
 
 Singer's life, too ! " Robert Buchanan. 
 
 " Not in a close and bounded atmosphere 
 Does life put forth its noblest and its best ; 
 'Tis from the mountain's top that we look forth, 
 And see how small the world is at our feet 
 There the free winds sweep with unfettered wing ; 
 There the sun rises first, and flings the last, 
 The purple glories of the summer eve ; 
 There does the eagle build his mighty nest ; 
 And there the snow stains not its purity. 
 When we descend, the vapour gathers round, 
 And the path narrows ; small and worthless things 
 Obstruct our way ; and in ourselves we feel 
 The strong compulsion of their influence." 
 
 Letitia E. Landon. 
 
 " However mean your life is, meet it and live it ; do not shun 
 it, and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks 
 poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults 
 even in Paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may 
 perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in 
 a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of 
 the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the 
 snow melts before its door as early in the spring." 
 
 H. D. Thoreau.
 
 198 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " The purest joys of a man's life are strangely independent of 
 his surroundings. What he has in the way of pleasures and 
 possessions is literally nothing in the account ; what he is, and 
 what he has in the inward treasure-house, is all in all." 
 
 Rev. y. Baldwin Brmun. 
 
 " Love is ever busy with his shuttle, 
 Is ever weaving into life's dull warp 
 Bright, gorgeous flowers and scenes Arcadian ; 
 Hanging our gloomy prison-house about 
 With tapestries, that make its walls dilate 
 In never-ending vistas of delight." 
 
 Henry W. Longfellow. 
 
 " How much nobler the inspirations of all true life than its 
 realizations ! How we picture the holiness, and love, and service 
 of our discipleship what we are to be, what we are to do. We 
 do not realize the serpent that finds its way into every Eden, the 
 failure that mars every purpose, the element of disenchantment 
 and disappointment that corrects every illusion. The chief 
 pathos of later life is the mournful contrast between the promise 
 and the performance 'I am not better than my fathers were.' 
 Still the idealism has its great uses ; it is not delusion that 
 discredits it, so much as shortcoming. What would life be without 
 it? Perhaps it could not be as we imagine it;. but it may be 
 better for our imaginings." Henry Alton, D.D. 
 
 " As you penetrate the labyrinth of life in pursuit of Christian 
 duty, you will often be surprised and charmed by meeting your 
 Master Himself amid its windings and turnings, and receive His 
 soul-inspiring smile." Elizabeth Prentiss. 
 
 " We cannot tell of what elements our life is made up. It is 
 no one shower of rain that makes the summer green. We are 
 gathering from every point all day long ; we are daily at school, 
 and every providence that passes before us leaves some impress 
 on our life." Joseph Parker, D.D. 
 
 " Death itself is only one among many beginnings ; walking in 
 newness of life." Elizabeth Charles.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 199 
 
 " There are myriads of illusions which, colouring the scenes of 
 life as they arise, pass away as shadows, and are forgotten, but 
 which have a function and a significance somewhat as the leaves 
 of a tree, that after flourishing for a while in the summer sun, at 
 length fall off and perish, yet leave behind some addition to that 
 solid structure which expands itself in the trunk and branches. 
 Viewed as a system of transient but inevitable mental changes, 
 the later outgrowing or obliterating the earlier, the whole of our 
 present existence is but a species of prolonged illusion, or rather 
 a succession of illusions ; not to be interpreted apart from those 
 ulterior aims comprehended in our destiny, whose consummation 
 is no more to be estimated by its introductory stages, than the 
 grandest choral strain by its elemental notes on the gamut Yet 
 if mankind could always know to what extent their hopes are 
 visionary, or how impressions now familiar are to vanish before 
 others that will steal on them as insensibly as the light of morning, 
 existence would almost arrive at a stand, a great portion of its 
 happiness be lost, and duty itself often remain undischarged." 
 
 W. B. Clulow. 
 
 " There are moments in the life of every contemplative being 
 when the healing power of Nature is felt even as Wordsworth 
 describes it felt in the blood, in every pulse along the veins. 
 In such moments converse, sympathy, the faces, the presence of 
 the dearest, come so near to us, they make us shrink ; books, 
 pictures, music, anything, any object which has passed through 
 the medium of mind, and has been in a manner humanised, is 
 felt as an intrusive reflection of the busy,' weary, thought- worn 
 self within us. Only Nature, speaking through no interpreter, 
 gently steals us out of our humanity, giving us a foretaste of that 
 more diffused, disembodied life which may hereafter be ours. 
 Beautiful and genial, and not wholly untrue, were the old super- 
 stitions which placed a haunting divinity in every grove, and 
 heard a living voice responsive in every murmuring stream." 
 
 Anna Jameson. 
 
 " How much more the happiness and usefulness of life depend 
 on a right balance of mind than on remarkable gifts ! " 
 
 W. E. Channing, D.D.
 
 200 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Our lives here are mostly in the power 
 Of other lives, and each of us is bound 
 To be his brother's keeper." 
 
 H. E. Hamilton King. 
 
 " Our life is an act of dying ; and we die just as fast as we 
 live." Rev. William Mountford. 
 
 " Happy is he who lives to understand 
 Not human nature only, but explores 
 All natures, to the end that he may find 
 The law that governs each ; and where begins 
 The union, the partition where that makes 
 Kind and degree among all visible beings ; 
 The constitutions, powers, and faculties, 
 Which they inherit, cannot step beyond, 
 And cannot fall beneath ; that do assign 
 To every class its station and its office, 
 Through all the mighty commonwealth of things, 
 Up from the creeping plant to sovereign man. 
 Such converse, if directed by a meek, 
 Sincere, and humble spirit, teaches love ; 
 For knowledge is delight ; and such delight 
 Breeds love ; yet, suited as it rather is 
 To thought and to the climbing intellect, 
 It teaches less to love, than to adore ; 
 If that be not indeed the highest love ! " 
 
 William Wordsworth. 
 
 " Nothing admits culture, but that which has a principle of 
 life capable of being expanded." 
 
 W. E. Channing, D.D. 
 
 " The interest of man in men, and of God in all men, shown 
 by deeds of love, and the irresistible power of a holy life, that 
 ... is the heart and marrow of Christianity, as it is sketched 
 lightly but firmly by the Master's own hand in the Sermon on 
 the Mount ; and that was, and ever must be, the only life, and 
 heat, and radiance which the Christian Church ever had or ever 
 can have." Rev. H. R. Haiveis.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 201 
 
 " The life of the Spirit is the eternal life of man. It is not 
 spatial nor temporal ; it is not bounded by these coasts of time 
 H is here and nfcw, but it is not at this place to be described by 
 the location of the place, and it is not at this time to be measured 
 by the termination of this time. It is not in the past, and it is not 
 to be foisted away into the future ; he that believeth hath eternal life. 
 There is in man the suspect that in the transient course of things 
 there is yet an intimation of that which is not transient. The 
 grass that fades has yet in the folded and falling leaves of its 
 flower that perishes the intimation of a beauty that does not fade. 
 The treasures that are frayed by the moth and worn by the rust 
 are not as those in which love, and faith, and hope abide. There 
 is a will that in its purpose does not yield to mortal wrong. 
 There is a joy that is not of emulation. There is a freedom that 
 is other than the mere struggle for existence in physical relations, 
 and is not determined in its source or end by these finite con- 
 ditions. This is the life of the Spirit. It is born of God ; it is of 
 the uncreated Spirit ; it is begotten, not made ; it proceeds from 
 the Father and the Son ; it is in the fellowship of the Holy Ghost." 
 
 Elisha Mulford. 
 
 " We become conscious of Life in the degree that our minds, 
 though at work, are in repose ; not unemployed, but at ease 
 and peaceful. Work and repose are not antagonistic ; they are 
 each other's complement. The grandest workings of nature are 
 precisely those which present to us, along with movement, the 
 sublimest pictures of tranquillity, as the roll of the sea, the 
 circling of the constellations round the pole. Great workers, or 
 those who most largely realize life, are always at rest. They 
 accomplish so much because they have learned the secret of 
 tranquillity. Free from those contentions of spirit which most 
 men allow to distract them from the true ends and prerogatives 
 of life, the tranquil find the time and the opportunity which the 
 mass of mankind so loudly complain that they have not. Like 
 the calm flowing river, they reflect every tree and cloud, while 
 the brawling and troubled stream shows not a single picture. It 
 is the tranquil who truly ' inherit the earth. ' " 
 
 Leo H. Grindon.
 
 -202 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Is it nothing that we can withdraw from the beaten roadside 
 of this outer life, and enter a world, which always tranquillizes 
 us and fills us with wonder and worship ? To trlis higher world 
 we are indebted for the lasting sublimity and freshness of human 
 life." Rev. John Pulsford. 
 
 " We are to make mercy the trust of our life, because we are 
 learning to make justice the rule of our life." 
 
 Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 " We keep but what we give, 
 And only daily dying may we live." 
 
 Lewis Morris. 
 
 "What if we live many and various lives, each providing us 
 its peculiar opportunities of acquiring some new good, and casting 
 away the slough of some old evil ; so that the course of our 
 existence should include a series of lessons, and the world be 
 indeed a stage on which every man fills many parts? If the 
 doctrine of transmigration has never been taught in this form, 
 such is perhaps the idea embodied in the p.vOo<s." 
 
 Archdeacon Julius C. Hare. 
 
 " Using the sensuous life aright, is taking the crystal from the 
 quarry, and converting it into a magnifying lens." 
 
 Leo H. Grindon. 
 
 " The summer life of the soul. It abides in the light of God's 
 countenance ; it glows beneath His blessing ; the sound of living 
 waters is among its woods, the colours and life of God's character 
 are in its flowers ; the freshness of immortal being falls on it 
 like dew ; deep sunlight from God's love streams into its glades, 
 songs of joy are often heard therein ; in the air it breathes is 
 the Peace that passeth all understanding." 
 
 " Few sights are fairer than that seen autumn after autumn 
 round many an English homestead, when, as evening falls, the 
 wains stand laden among the golden stubble, and the gleaners 
 are scattered over the misty field ; when men and women cluster 
 round the gathered sheaves, and rejoice in the lovingkindness
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 203 
 
 of the earth ; where, in the dewy air, the shouts of happy people 
 ring, and over all the broad moon shines down to bless with its 
 yellow light the same old recurring scene it has looked on and 
 loved for so many thousand years. It is the picture of a fruitful 
 human life when its autumntide has come ; and blessed are they 
 of whom men can feel the same as when they share in a harvest- 
 home, of whom they can say, ' He has reached his autumn, we 
 reap his golden produce, and we thank him in our hearts ' ; 
 and in whose own spirit glimmers fair the moonlight of peace 
 in the evening of life, the peace that is born of work completed, 
 the humble, happy knowledge that can say, ' Men will feed on 
 my thoughts, my work shall nourish them, and God, in whose 
 strength I have lived, will garner all for me.' There is no 
 blessedness in life to be compared with 'that; it is the true, 
 unselfish joy of harvest." 
 
 " Look beneath the surface of the earth, under the shroud of 
 snow. What do you see ? In every root the force of life 
 upstoring, round every seed the close embrace of the earth 
 inducing that slow movement that will enable it to bring forth 
 life out of its death from the snow-water as it niters down 
 taking up new elements from the earth in its passage, the powers 
 brought to the seed that send its green lance above the ground 
 in spring to meet the light and win the flower of light. Beneath 
 the winding-sheet is, not death, but life in preparation hidden, 
 but in slow activity. The forces are being laid up which will be 
 the green leaves of a thousand woods, the roses and lilies of a 
 thousand gardens, the fountain rush of spring. That is what 
 winter tells the man who knows. It is the story it tells also to 
 the Christian, who has found and known the Fatherhood of God. 
 He comes to the wintry time of age. Decay deals hardly with 
 him. The senses fail, the brain refuses work ; he knows that 
 death cannot be far away. But he has an inward life that refuses 
 death. It takes to itself, during this dark time, all things that 
 are faithful, loving, clear, and pure. The winter of age has 
 frozen his outward activity. But in the patient waiting and 
 repose of a faithful age the spiritual forces which will make the 
 form, and colour, and power, and work of his coming life are
 
 204 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 gathering together into a store that waits but the touch of death 
 to break into immortal enegry. He will sleep beneath the snow, 
 but it will be to awaken." Rev. Stopford A. Brooke. 
 
 " The small events of life, taken singly, may seem exceedingly 
 unimportant, like snow that falls silently, flake by flake ; yet, 
 accumulated, these snowflakes form the avalanche." 
 
 Samuel Smiles. 
 
 " We write our lives, indeed, 
 But in a cipher none can read, 
 Except the author. He may pore 
 The life-accumulating lore 
 
 For evermore, 
 
 And find the records strange and true 
 Bring wisdom old and new. 
 But though he break the soul, 
 No power has he to give the key, 
 
 No license to reveal. 
 We wait the all-declaring day, 
 When love shall know as it is known. 
 Till then, the secrets of our lives are 
 ours and God's alone." 
 
 Frances Ridley Havergal. 
 
 "The worth of life lies in a man's own hands." 
 
 Dinah M. Muloch. 
 
 " Life, that is, action, is alone the human condition into which 
 the light of the Living can penetrate ; life alone can assimilate 
 life, can change food into growth." 
 
 George MacDonald, LL.D. 
 
 " The true problem of the spiritual life may be said to be, do 
 the opposite of neglect. Whatever this is, do it, and you shall 
 escape. It will just mean that you are so to cultivate the soul 
 that all its powers will open out to God, and in beholding God 
 be drawn away from sin." 
 
 Professor Henry Drummond.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 205 
 
 " Human life, as a great whole, is very wonderful to look at in 
 its vastness and complexity ; we may contemplate it from the 
 outside, as a spectacle, as a growth, as a machine, in which 
 individuals are swallowed up in countless numbers, in which even 
 the greatest men count but for little, and are not long missed. 
 But it is, besides, a scene of innumerable separate responsibilities, 
 each of them as real, as grave, as stringent, as if there were no 
 others. The spectator of it suddenly finds that what he watches 
 and judges has recoiled on himself; that he himself is called on 
 to give an account, that he himself is on his trial, that he 
 himself is the object of judgment. The mightiest is not excused; 
 the most obscure cannot escape. In the midst of the world's 
 changes, the world's debate, each has his separate life to live." 
 
 Dean Church. 
 
 " To the receptive soul the river of life pauseth not, nor is 
 diminished." George Eliot. 
 
 " We are born to crave ; we live by longing ; our life is tested, 
 and proved, and prolonged, by the activity of our desires." 
 
 H. R. Reynolds, D.D. 
 
 " Within the graven lintels of the gate 
 That here divides our vision and our fate, 
 
 The dreams we walk in and the truths of sleep, 
 All sense and spirit have life inseparate. 
 
 There what one thinks is his to grasp and keep ; 
 There are no dreams, but very joys to reap, 
 No foiled desires that die before delight, 
 No fears to see across our joys and weep." 
 
 Algernon C. Swinburne. 
 
 " Man's spiritual life consists in the number and fulness of his 
 correspondences with God." 
 
 Professor Henry Drummond. 
 
 " Prayer is the bringing of one's heart into the sunshine, of 
 that, like a plant, its inward life may thrive for an outward 
 development." Rev. T. T. Lynch.
 
 206 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " We need pray for no higher heaven than the pure senses can 
 furnish, a purely sensuous life. Our present senses are but the 
 rudiments of what they are destined to become. We are, com- 
 paratively, deaf, and dumb, and blind, and without smell, or taste, 
 or feeling. Every generation makes the discovery, that its divine 
 vigour has been dissipated, and each sense and faculty misapplied 
 and debauched. The ears were made, not for such trivial uses 
 as men are wont to suppose, but to hear celestial sounds. The 
 eyes were not made for such grovelling uses as they are now 
 put to and worn out by, but to behold beauty now invisible. 
 May we not see God ? Are we to be put off and amused in this 
 life, as it were with a mere allegory? Is not Nature, rightly read, 
 that of which she is commonly taken to be the symbol merely ? 
 When the common man looks into the sky, which he has not so 
 much profaned, he thinks it less gross than the earth, and with 
 reverence speaks of ' the Heavens,' but the seer will in the same 
 sense speak of ' the Earths,' and his Father who is in them. Did 
 not He that made that which is within make that which is without 
 also?" H. D. Thoreau. 
 
 " If God be consciously in your life, there is nothing He does 
 not make divine." Rev. Stopford A. Brooke. 
 
 "Everything depends upon the level of your life. It is 
 possible to live so high up in intellectual and spiritual companion- 
 ship as to receive, with grateful ease and friendly recognition, 
 appearances and communications, which at one time would have 
 afflicted us with the surprise of a miracle. We must ourselves be 
 miracles; then every opening of Providence, how bright soever 
 or startling, will be accepted as one of the assured blessings of 
 daily life.'' Joseph Parker, D.D. 
 
 " To succeed in life, . . . must be to acquire that inwrought 
 likeness with God which constitutes the creature's capacity to 
 receive and enjoy the Divine favour." 
 
 Rev. John Pulsford. 
 
 "Life is too precious to spend in a treadmill." 
 
 Elizabeth Prentiss.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 207 
 
 "It is he whose life has the most frequent Easters, who is 
 always getting up to new affection, and a loftier standard, and 
 a purer tone, and a clearer atmosphere, who has the best 
 justification for his hope, that in that great day when Jesus shall 
 come he shall take his part in the heavenly celebration, and 
 mingle his love and joys with ' the whole family ' of the saints, 
 in those blessed meetings of the resurrection morning." 
 
 Dean Vaughan. 
 
 " In duty, and in duty only, does the individual begin to come 
 into real contact with life ; therein only can he see what life is, 
 and grow fit for it." 
 
 George MacDonald, LL.D. 
 
 "We may prove what we like or what we can about the 
 documents of which the Bible is composed, but the life-receipts 
 are hung up out of the reach of criticism ; and these are the 
 soul's true Jacob's ladder ; by these we climb up to God ; once 
 uttered they are uttered for all time, and they are true, experi- 
 mentally true, for all time ; the promise is to you and to your 
 children, the banquet is spread, ' And the Spirit and the Bride 
 say, Come. 5 " Rev. H. R. Haweis. 
 
 " The world is full of crystals. Swift, or slow, ". 
 Or dark, or bright their varying formation ; 
 From pure calm heights of fair untrodden snow, 
 To fire-wrought depths of earliest creation. 
 And life is full of crystals/forming still 
 In myriad-shaped results from good and seeming ill. 
 
 Yes ! forming everywhere ; in busiest street, 
 In noisiest throng. Oh, how it would astound us, 
 The strange soul-chemistry of some we meet 
 In slight and passing talk ! For all around us, 
 Deep, inner silence broods o'er gems to be." 
 
 Frances Ridley Havergal. 
 
 " Our lives are never fairly poised or truly rich, unless there 
 is something outside our own orbit which we can love and enjoy 
 without coveting to possess. What would the earth be without 
 the sunbeams ? " Edward Garrett.
 
 208 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Energy enables a man to force his way through irksome 
 drudgery and dry details, and carries him onward and upward 
 in every station in life. It accomplishes more than genius, with 
 not one-half the disappointment and peril. It is not eminent 
 talent that is required to ensure success in any pursuit, so much 
 as purpose, not merely the power to achieve, but the will to 
 labour energetically and perseveringly. Hence energy of will 
 may be defined to be the very central power of character in a 
 man in a word, it is the Man himself. It gives impulse to 
 his every action, and soul to every effort. True hope is based 
 on it, and it is hope that gives the real perfume to life. There 
 is a fine heraldic motto on a broken helmet in Battle Abbey, 
 ' L'espoir est ma force,' which might be the motto of every man's 
 life. 'Woe unto him that is faint-hearted,' says the son of 
 Sirach. There is, indeed, no blessing equal to the possession of 
 a stout heart. Even if a man fail in his efforts, it will be a 
 satisfaction to him to enjoy the consciousness of having done his 
 test. In humble life nothing can be more cheering and beautiful 
 than to see a man combating suffering by patience, triumphing in 
 his integrity, and who, when his feet are bleeding and his limbs 
 failing him, still walks upon his courage." 
 
 Samuel Smiles. 
 
 " There is a Gethsemane in every noble life." 
 
 'Joseph Parker, D.D. 
 
 " Sometimes our path in life seems like a lane full of windings, 
 where the steep banks shut out the light and air, and all we 
 can do is to trudge steadily on through the thick mire. But 
 if we look high up in front of us we shall see, as Israel saw, 
 the faint blue hills of the Land of Promise rising up against the 
 sky. The path will come out at length in full view of the 
 Celestial City; and at last we shall be at home." 
 
 Bishop Thorold. 
 
 ' Life is variety of power ; it is full and rich where there are 
 many and diverse abilities, poor and mean where there are few." 
 
 J. F. Stevenson, LL.B., D.D.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 209 
 
 "The only true way to live in this world, constituted just as 
 we are, is to make all our employments subserve the one great 
 end and aim of existence namely, to glorify God and to enjoy 
 Him for ever. But in order to do this we must be wise task- 
 masters, and not require of ourselves what we cannot possibly 
 perform. Recreation we must have. Otherwise, the strings of 
 our soul, wound up to an unnatural tension, will break." 
 
 Elizabeth Prentiss. 
 
 "That which in lifeless things ennobles them by seeming to 
 indicate life, ennobles higher creatures by indicating the exaltation 
 of their earthly vitality into a Divine vitality; and raising the 
 life of sense into the life of faith, faith, whether we receive it 
 in the sense of adherence to resolution, obedience to law, regard- 
 fulness of promise, in which from all time it has been the test 
 as the shield of the true being and life of man, or in the still 
 higher sense of trustfulness in the presence, kindness, and word 
 of God ; in which form it has been exhibited under the Christian 
 dispensation. For whether in one or other form, whether the 
 faithfulness of men whose path is chosen and portion fixed, in 
 the following and receiving of that path and portion, as in the 
 Thermopylae camp ; or the happier faithfulness of children in the 
 good giving of their Father, and of subjects in the conduct of 
 their King, as in the ' Stand still, and see the salvation of God/ 
 of the Red Sea shore, there is rest and peacefulness, the ' standing 
 still ' in both, the quietness of action determined, of spirit un- 
 alarmed, of expectation unimpatient : beautiful, even when based 
 only, as of old, on the self-command and self-possession, the 
 persistent dignity or the uncalculating love of the creature, but 
 more beautiful yet when the rest is one of humility instead of 
 pride, and the trust no more in the resolution we have taken, but 
 in the hand we hold." John Ruskin, 
 
 " No life, however long, will suffice to take us into the deepest 
 depths of the Gospels ; but it is not a slight thing to be always 
 going deeper, or even to be only learning more and more how 
 astonishingly deep they are." 
 
 F. W. Faber, D.D. 
 14
 
 2io THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 "When the regularities of habit and the perseverance of will 
 become simply automatic, they lose their claim to moral admi- 
 ration : however they may pace with heavier grist the mill of 
 wealth, they have ever less to offer at the shrine of worship : the 
 windows are darkened through which gleams of Divine and 
 solemn light once entered and enriched the soul : the voice loses 
 its mellow tones, and is no longer flexible enough to sing a song 
 of hope to the heavy hearts of sorrowing men. No withered 
 unconcern, no dead exactitude, is fitted for a life like ours, a 
 life full of free elements, related not merely to the punctualities 
 of material nature, but to the heaving passions of living men ; a 
 life strewed with various sorrows and full of struggling nobleness, 
 where no open ear is ever far from the curse, the sigh, the 
 prayer : a life of outward heats and inward thirst, that no 
 sleeping mill-pond can keep clear and fresh, but only the running 
 waters of the pure soul descending from the upland wilds." 
 
 James Martineau, D.D. 
 
 " Thought is for ever enlarging its horizon. Were man destined 
 to live only in this world, his desires and powers would have been 
 fitted wholly for this world, and his capacities would have been 
 limited to the means of present enjoyment. But his faculties are 
 now continually overleaping the bounds of earth ; he delights in 
 discoveries which have no relation to his existence on this planet ; 
 he calls to his aid the arts, not merely to render life comfortable, 
 but to assist him in the most remote researches ; invents instru- 
 ments which extend his sight beyond these visible heavens, and 
 reveal hidden stars and systems ; and presses on and on to 
 fathom the profoundest secrets of the universe. The human 
 mind has an intense delight in what is vast and unexplored. 
 Does such a mind carry with it no proof that it is destined to 
 wider spheres of experience than earth affords, that it is designed 
 to improve for ever in the knowledge of God's wonderful works ? " 
 
 W. E. Channing, D.D. 
 
 " Life is the true reality in death, the immortal germ that 
 survives all its ravages, and perpetuates itself indefinitely in new 
 forms." Rev. Hiigh Macmillan.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 21 1 
 
 "Life may be lyric or epic, as well as a poem or a romance." 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 " Life has no higher end than to come into a conscious love 
 of God." Rev. Theodore T. Munger. 
 
 " We know not what we shall be, but are sure 
 The spark once kindled by the eternal breath, 
 Goes not out quite, but somewhere doth endure 
 In that strange life we blindly christen death." 
 
 Lewis Morris. 
 
 11 We are the children of God, the heirs of immortality, but a 
 little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honour. 
 This is the only thought that can give true ' grandeur to the 
 beatings of the heart ' ; this is the only thought which, however 
 mean and narrow be the stage whereon our life is played, can yet 
 make the drama of stately and most regal argument. Oh, if we 
 could but grasp the thought, we should live lives nobler and more 
 beautiful ; we should breathe a purer, a sweeter, and a calmer 
 air ; time would present to us a richer aspect, and its daily voices 
 echo in our ears with a sweeter melody ; for then, from the cradle 
 to the grave, the dark waters of life would be illuminated, and its 
 dense clouds would be pierced through and through with the 
 splendour of heaven- with the unchangeable sunlight of that 
 eternal life which is hid with Christ in God!" 
 
 Archdeacon F. W. Farrar. 
 
 11 Life's smallest miseries are, perhaps, its worst : 
 Great sufferings have great strength : there is a pride 
 In the bold energy that braves the worst, 
 And bears, proud in the bearing ; but the heart 
 Consumes with those small sorrows, and small shames, 
 Which crave, yet cannot ask for sympathy." 
 
 Letitia E. Land on. 
 
 " When the strain of life is great it is not the counterfeit of 
 the heavenly life man wants, however clearly executed, but its 
 grand reality." Sarah Doudney.
 
 212 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 11 The whole of this life is one grand march toward life indeed 
 and life in earnest." 
 
 Henry Ward JBeecher, D.D. 
 
 " Most of us are far less happy than we might be, if we had 
 learned the Divine art of wringing the last drop of good out 
 of everything. After our rude attempts at smelting there is 
 a great deal of valuable metal left in the dross, which a wiser 
 system would extract. One wonders when one gets a glimpse 
 of how much of the raw material of happiness goes to waste 
 in the manufacture in all our lives. There is so little to spare, 
 and yet so much is flung away." 
 
 Alexander Maclaren, D.D. 
 
 " So near along life's stream are the fountains of innocence 
 and youth making fertile its sandy margin ; and the voyageur 
 will do well to replenish his vessels often at these uncontaminated 
 sources. Some youthful spring, perchance, still empties with 
 tinkling music into the oldest river, even when it is falling into 
 the sea, and we imagine that its music is distinguished by the 
 river gods from the general lapse of the stream, and falls sweeter 
 on their ears in proportion as it is nearer to the ocean. As 
 the evaporations of the river feed thus these unsuspected springs 
 which filter through its banks, so, perchance, our aspirations 
 fall back again in springs on the margin of life's stream to refresh 
 and purify it. The yellow and tepid river may float his scow, 
 and cheer his eye with its reflections and its ripples, but the 
 boatman quenches his thirst at this small rill alone. It is this 
 purer and cooler element that chiefly sustains his life." 
 
 H. D. Thoreau. 
 
 " It is in life in the wear and tear of life that those graces 
 must be wrought and fashioned which perfect the soul, immortal, 
 over death." Dean Stanley, D.D. 
 
 '' We live by admiration, hope, and love ; 
 And, even as these are well and wisely fix'd, 
 In dignity of being we ascend." 
 
 William Wordsworth.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 213 
 
 "The home-life is the sphere of the most intense of human 
 experiences. It is life in the keenest tension and to the loftiest 
 strain." Rev. J. Baldwin Brown. 
 
 " The true philosophy of life consists in great thoughts being 
 habitually connected with little things ; how the discipline of 
 life consists principally of small matters ; how these may exercise 
 the divinest principles, call forth the deepest sympathy, and 
 nourish and perfect the highest excellence ; how we are to be 
 interested in each other with respect to the ordinary events 
 of life, as well as with respect to what is to be evolved in a 
 higher world ; how the little accidents and duties of time are 
 the proper preparation for the revelations of eternity; how, 
 in short, the true spiritual greatness of man in this life is not 
 to be looked for in his doing great things, but in his doing 
 small things after a great and serious manner." 
 
 Rev. Thomas Binney. 
 
 " Christianity is help from without, that enters to commune 
 with and assist what is most inwardly within; it is the action 
 of life on life, the holy life on the sinning one ; it wakens the 
 slumbering, frees the enslaved, who, shaking off slumber, are 
 yet at first amazed and dreamy, and, losing chains, do not at 
 once lose stiffness and the pain of limbs." 
 
 Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 " A complete human life must have in it not only submission 
 "but resistance ; the fighting against evil and in defence of good ; 
 the struggle with Divine help to overcome evil with good ; and 
 finally the determination not to sit down tamely to misery, but 
 to strive after happiness lawful happiness, both for ourselves 
 and others. In short, not only passively to accept joy or grief, 
 but to take means to secure the one and escape the other : 
 to ' work out our own salvation,' for each day, as we are told 
 to do it for an eternity. Though with the same Divine limitation 
 humbling to all pride, and yet encouraging to ceaseless effort 
 * for it is God that worketh in us, both to will and to do, of His 
 good pleasure.' " Dinah M. Muloch.
 
 214 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " All our earthly life is but a beginning. Nothing is finished on- 
 earth ; the world is full of unfinished undertakings. We begin 
 sentences that we hope to conclude in heaven. We are always 
 stammering through alphabets, and lisping the first syllables of a 
 never-ending song." H. R. Reynolds, D.D. 
 
 " Let me move slowly through the street, 
 
 Filled with an ever-shifting train, 
 Amid the sound of steps that beat 
 The murmuring walks like autumn rain. 
 ***** 
 
 Each, where his tasks or pleasures call, 
 They pass, and heed each other not. 
 
 There is who heeds, who holds them all, 
 In His large love and boundless thought. 
 
 These struggling tides of life that seem 
 In wayward, aimless course to tend, 
 
 Are eddies of the mighty stream 
 That rolls to its appointed end." 
 
 W. C. Bryant. 
 
 " No distinct boundary can be discerned to limit our personal 
 life on the inward side ; and however deeply we may reflect on 
 that constancy in variation which makes our identity, we are always 
 dimly aware of a lower depth, which, while it is continuous with 
 our consciousness, is utterly beyond sounding or measurement. 
 Thus we get an idea vague, it may be, but unspeakably 
 impressive and real to those who feel the ultimate oneness of all 
 existence of a measureless ocean of living energy, which rolls 
 its tide, as it were, into the little creek that is bounded by our 
 senses, there to take the form of finite personal life. This 
 flowing tide ripples on the shore of the objective world, and toys, 
 with pebbles, and drinks the scent of flowers ; but, behind, is the 
 broadening flood which widens out beyond vision or sounding- 
 line into the inconceivable grandeur of God." 
 
 y. Allanson Picton. 
 
 " No man ever lived whose acts were not smaller than himself."' 
 
 Rev. F. W. Robertson.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 215 
 
 " Death ever fronts the wise ; 
 Not fearfully, but with clear promises 
 Of larger life, on whose broad vans upborne, 
 Their outlook widens, and they see beyond 
 The horizon of the Present and the Past, 
 Even to the very source and end of things." 
 
 y. Russell Lowell. 
 
 " It is a wonderful life, this of ours, 
 Every child at its birth is an Elnathan, a gift of God." 
 
 William Mountford, M.A. 
 
 " The brook represents to us our present life limited, and yet 
 restless ; narrow, yet with capabilities of opening into what is very 
 great. And the sea represents what that greatness is the endless 
 power, and strength, and life of that to which our souls may come 
 if we will be faithful." Archbishop Benson. 
 
 " What the skin is to the human body, holding all the parts of 
 the inner machinery compactly to their work ; what the simple 
 constitution is to a highly-elaborated state, enveloping all its 
 functions with a few great first principles which none of those 
 functions must violate or transcend, such to the manifold actions 
 of a man is some great simple conception of what life is and what 
 it means surrounding all details, giving them unity, simplicity, 
 effectiveness." RQV. Phillips Brooks. 
 
 " There are two lives to each of us, gliding on at the same time, 
 scarcely connected with each other ; the life of our actions, the 
 life of our minds ; the external and the inward history ; the 
 movements of the frame, the deep and ever-restless workings of 
 the heart. They who have loved know that there is a diary of 
 the affections, which we might keep for years without having 
 occasion even to touch upon the exterior surface of life, our busy 
 occupations the mechanical progress of our existence ; yet by 
 the last are we judged, the first is never known. History reveals 
 men's deeds, men's outward characters, but not themselves. There 
 is a secret self that hath its own life 'rounded by a dream' 
 impenetrated, unguessed." Bulwer Lytton.
 
 21 6 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Our life, like the fancies of our sleep, is blended of the inter- 
 mingling realities of the unseen and the seen. All of us live two 
 lives in one : the outward, temporal, accidental life of routine and 
 circumstance ; and that inward, invisible life, which is unlimited 
 by time or space, which can either soar into the heaven of 
 heavens, gaze undazzled upon the very throne of God, and move 
 un trembling, the Arm that moves the world ; or which, sinking 
 downwards into the very deepest and deadliest abysses, can dwell 
 familiarly in the evil darkness, with all monstrous and prodigious 
 things. And this inner and outer life are often wholly disparate ; 
 in some men they brighten and fade into alternate prominence 
 and oblivion ; in some the outer life is all, the inner nothing ; in 
 some the inner is the awful reality, the outer but a passing 
 and inconsiderable dream. And again, the relations between 
 these two lives often wholly differ. In some the outer life is 
 false a mere hypocrisy : a whitened sepulchre covering the deep 
 uncleanness ; a fair face hiding the inward leprosy ; the network 
 of sunbeams over a treacherous and turbid sea. In some this 
 outer life is not false but inadequate ; it fails somehow to express 
 and reflect the inward goodness ; it creates an unjust prejudice 
 like the rough robe that conceals a king, or the stained fringe of 
 the shallow waves that are so poor an outcome of the mighty sea. 
 And there are some again oh, happy they ! whose two lives, the 
 outer and the inner, are mutually expressive, exquisitely har- 
 monious. Sings our great poet : 
 
 ' How sour sweet music is 
 When time is broke, and no proportion kept ; 
 So is it with the music of men's lives ! ' ' 
 
 Archdeacon F. W. Farrar. 
 
 " 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God.' There should be some- 
 thing strong, steady, settled as the under-current of life. There 
 are plenty of little eddies, plenty of little gusts of wind coming 
 and breathing fitfully upon the surface of the waters, which may 
 be extremely healthy and delightful, but down below should be 
 calm depths something deep and permanent must strike the 
 keynote of your life a moral something." 
 
 Rev. H. R. Haweis.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 217 
 
 " Nothing worth calling good can, or ever will be, started full 
 grown. The essential of any good is life, and the very body of 
 created life, and essential to it, being its self-operant, is growth. 
 The larger start you make, the less room you leave for life to 
 extend itself. You fill with the dead matter of your construction 
 the places where assimilation ought to have its perfect work, 
 building by a life -process, self-extending, and subserving the whole. 
 Small beginnings with slow growings have time to root themselves 
 thoroughly. 
 
 God's beginnings are imperceptible, whether in the region of 
 soul or of matter." 
 
 George MacDonald, LL.D. 
 
 "Our life is turn'd 
 
 Out of her course, wherever man is made 
 An offering or a sacrifice, a tool 
 Or implement, a passive thing employ'd 
 As a brute mean, without acknowledgment 
 Of common right or interest in the end ; 
 Used or abused, as selfishness may prompt, 
 Say, what can follow for a rational soul 
 Perverted thus, but weakness in all good, 
 And strength in evil ? Hence an after-call 
 For chastisement, and custody, and bonds, 
 And ofttimes death, avenger of the past, 
 And the soul guardian in whose hands we dare 
 Intrust the future. Not for these sad issues 
 Was man created ; but t' obey the law 
 Of life, and hope, and action. And 'tis known, 
 That when we stand upon our native soil, 
 Unelbow'd by such objects as oppress 
 Our active powers, those powers themselves become 
 Strong to subvert our noxious qualities : 
 They sweep away infection from the heart, 
 And by the substitution of delight, 
 Suppress all evil ; whence the being moves 
 In beauty through the world." 
 
 William Wordsworth.
 
 2i8 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " To take up our life as it is, and do the best we can to make 
 it great and good our best to make it fit to give back one day 
 to the God who gave it that is to live" 
 
 Mrs. Leith Adams. 
 
 "So little turns 
 
 The stream of our lives from the right ; 
 So like is the flame that burns 
 
 To the hearth that gives warmth and light ; 
 So fine the impassable fence, 
 
 Set for ever 'twixt right and wrong, 
 Between white lives of innocence 
 
 And dark lives too dreadful for song." 
 
 Lewis Morris. 
 
 " All knowledge which alters our lives penetrates us more when 
 it comes in the early morning : the day that has to be travelled 
 with something new and perhaps for ever sad in its light, is an 
 image of the life that spreads beyond." 
 
 George Eliot. 
 
 " Our every day's life reveals the accumulated effects of a past 
 lifetime ; each day's life adds to that effect, whatever it may be, 
 and prepares the way for the character of every to-morrow." 
 
 H. R. Reynolds, D.D. 
 
 "God has as many plans for men as He has men ; and, there- 
 fore, He never requires them to measure their life exactly by any 
 other life." H. Bushnell, D.D. 
 
 " How little we know the moments which decide the destinies 
 of life. We live on as usual. The day is a common day, the 
 hour a common hour. We never thought twice about the change 
 of intention, which by one of the accidents (accidents !) of life 
 determined for good or for evil, for happiness or misery, the 
 colour of our remaining years. The stroke of the pen was done 
 in a moment which led unconsciously to our ruin ; the word was 
 uttered quite heedlessly, on which turned for ever the decision of 
 our weal or woe." Archdeacon F. W. Farrar.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 219 
 
 " So slender is 
 The boundary that divideth life's two paths." 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 " Life only avails, not having lived." 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 " If a man has not the whole of himself with himself, he ought 
 to inquire into it ; for it is hard to be a man and not to have the 
 enjoyment of a man. There is always a peculiar charm about 
 the man who lives wholly and heartily while he lives. The man 
 himself has the first enjoyment of this charm. Heaven and earth 
 make one in a man's life, when he has the consent of his whole 
 nature for what he is, and for what he does. " 
 
 Rev. John Pulsford. 
 
 " It has been well believed through many ages that the begin- 
 ning of compunction is the beginning of a new life ; that the mind 
 which sees itself blameless may be called dead in trespasses in 
 trespasses on the love of others, in trespasses on their weakness, 
 in trespasses on all those great claims which are the image of our 
 own need." George Eliot. 
 
 " In every new relation of life into which we come, we find out 
 finer shades, higher colours, nicer distinctions, and wider circuits 
 of justice." Henry Ward Beecher, D.D. 
 
 " For strong souls 
 
 Live like fire-hearted suns to spend their strength 
 In farthest striving action ; breathe more free 
 In mighty anguish than in trivial ease." 
 
 George Eliot. 
 
 " A merely ascetic life is an unsympathetic one ; and a life 
 
 without sympathy is a life without God." 
 
 Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 " We live in a system of approximations. Every end is pro- 
 spective of some other end, which is also temporary ; a round 
 and final success nowhere. We are encamped in nature, not 
 domesticated." Ralph Waldo Emerson.
 
 220 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " The greatness that inspires also weakens : the perfection that 
 stimulates our finer qualities presses heavily on our weaker ones. 
 We hold our lives under this two-fold condition of perfect require- 
 ment and human weakness, and the result is an experience sharing 
 in the qualities of each. But it is better that there should be 
 fluctuation under high requirement than uniformity under low 
 requirement. For the kingdom of Heaven aims only at the 
 best ; it does not concern itself with what is inferior ; it is gauged 
 throughout upon the scale of the perfect and the infinite." 
 
 Rev. Theodore T. Hunger. 
 
 " Once the void of life revealed, 
 It must deepen on for ever, 
 Unless God fill up the heart 
 With Himself for once and ever." 
 
 Lord Houghton. 
 
 " Who can look upon the marvellous effects of spring-time, as 
 the generations of the sun by the earth, and not rather as witnesses 
 of the coming forth of a universal energy from Heaven namely, 
 from the Spirit and power of God in Heaven ? by which He brings 
 forth, in temporal nature, the best and loveliest representation 
 possible of that higher world of life and beauty. If the subject- 
 matter were of a more ' heavenly sort, the manifestation would be 
 more heavenly. But crude as the earthly material is, see the 
 hedges and woods, bud and leaf, see the fruit trees blossom, 
 hear the song-birds giving utterance to their new life and delight, 
 let the genial spirit of the atmosphere embrace and inspire you, 
 and say, whether Heaven is not in the effort to bring itself forth 
 in a physical form ? ' Canst thou restrain the sweet influences of 
 Pleiades?' Is there not present throughout all elements, all 
 fields, and woods, a loving and love-generating sea of life ? Is it 
 not as though all the virtues of Heaven said, ' Come, let us 
 embody ourselves in the earth : let us rejoice together before the 
 eyes of the children of men, that they also may rejoice with us'?" 
 
 Rev. John Pulsford. 
 
 " The aids to nobler life are all within." 
 
 Matthew Arnold.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 221 
 
 " Wherever there is life it must go on and on, growing from one 
 stage to another ; not resting at any one point of attainment, but 
 advancing until it has covered every branch and twig with fruit." 
 
 Rev. Hugh Macmillan. 
 
 " Life has its pauses. There come times when we are forced 
 away from the treadmill of our daily occupation, and set free from 
 the necessity of fixing our attention upon external objects, or the 
 care of others. We are left to ourselves ; we have only to consult 
 ourselves about the disposal of the day. We can rise when we 
 please, go where we please, see whom we please ; we can be idle, 
 and none will chide us ; we can be industrious, though then 
 perhaps some gentle voice will bid us lay aside our work, and 
 take the rest which our leisure time affords. 
 
 The mind gains freedom and strength at such seasons ; new 
 topics are considered, and old ones come before us in new lights ; 
 the atmosphere which surrounds the thoughts is no longer laden 
 with conventionalisms ; best of all, care no longer frets us, and 
 our minds grow calm from clearer notions." 
 
 Bishop Boyd Carpenter. 
 
 " We are not the birds and butterflies, but the labourers of the 
 earthly vineyard. To discover one's right work and do it, must 
 be the grand secret of life." Dinah M. Muloch. 
 
 " God is the hidden spring, the open river, and the ocean 
 fulness of universal life and being." 
 
 William Pulsford, D.D. 
 
 " Such is, more or less, our life-trial to cultivate trust in God, 
 and other good things, without allowing them to run into evil 
 without suffering them to ferment toward corruption ; to carry 
 our graces safely through and above all the weakness, and folly, 
 and disorder in us, that lies around them, and tends to mix with 
 and mar them ; to learn to be pure and self-denying, high- 
 principled and devout, with no less of humanity, or natural fluency 
 and sweetness ; to come out purged and sanctified at last, with 
 no incidentally contracted twist or narrowness.'" 
 
 Rev. S. A. Tipple.
 
 222 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 "To go to Christ and get the perfect idea of life, and of 
 every action of life, and then to go forth, and by His strength 
 fulfil it, that is the New Testament conception of a strong, 
 successful life. 
 
 "We are like a Moses, who, at any moment, whenever the 
 building of the tabernacle flagged and hesitated, was able to turn 
 and go up into the mountain and look once more the pattern in 
 the face, and come down strong, ambitious for the best, and full 
 of hope. So any moment we may turn from the poor reality 
 to the great ideal of our own lives, which is in Christ, with one 
 earnest question, ' Lord, what wouldst Thou have me to be ? ' 
 We may pierce through the clouds and reach the summit, and 
 there, seeing His vision of our possibilities, be freed at once from 
 our brethren's tyranny, and from our own content and sluggish- 
 ness, and set to work with all our might to fulfil God's image 
 of our lives, to be all that He has shown us that it is possible 
 for us to be, to make all things in these valley lives of ours after 
 the pattern showed to us in the mount." 
 
 Rev. Phillips Brooks. 
 
 " A life regardful of duty is crowned with an object, directed 
 by a purpose, inspired by an enthusiasm, till the very humblest 
 routine, carried out conscientiously for the sake of God, is 
 elevated into moral grandeur ; and the very obscurest office, 
 filled conscientiously at the bidding of God, becomes an imperial 
 stage on which all the virtues play." 
 
 Archdeacon F. W. Farrar. 
 
 " Life, the patient and universal teacher, has its various zones 
 of experience, and in each of them we are at school with our 
 Father. Sometimes we feel to be dwelling in a sluggish lagoon 
 oozing through Y sunny flats of marsh and osier beds. Then the 
 scene changes, and it is an Alpine valley, where jagged peaks 
 lose themselves in frozen vapour, and gloomy ravines, never rosy 
 with the dawn, depress us with their indescribable solitude. Let 
 us be sure that our heavenly Father speaks to us all in turn, 
 as and when we need Him." 
 
 Bishop Thorold.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 223 
 
 ..." Study to make prevail 
 One colour in thy life, the hue of truth." 
 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 " Thou hadst no youth, great God ! 
 An Unbeginning End Thou art ; 
 
 Thy glory in itself abode, 
 And still abides in its own tranquil heart : 
 No age can heap its outward years on Thee : 
 Dear God ! Thou art Thyself Thine own eternity ! 
 
 Without an end or bound 
 Thy life lies all outspread in light ; 
 
 Our lives feel Thy life all around, 
 Making our weakness strong, our darkness bright ; 
 Yet is it neither wilderness nor sea, 
 But the calm gladness of a full eternity." 
 
 F. W. Faber, D.D. 
 
 " Life is the one universal soul, which, by virtue of the 
 enlivening BREATH, and the informing Word, all organized bodies 
 have in common, each after its kind. This, therefore, all animals 
 possess, and man as an animal. But, in addition to this, God 
 transfused into man a higher gift, and specially inbreathed : 
 even a living (that is, self-subsisting) soul, a soul having its life 
 in itself. ' And man became a living soul.' He did not merely 
 possess it, he became it. It was his proper being, his truest self, 
 the man is in the man. None then, not one of human kind, so 
 poor and destitute, but there is provided for him, even in his 
 present state, a house not built with hands" 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 " A moral life, easily and habitually, though not at the cost 
 of any great suffering, kind, is a lovable one ; but, like much 
 that is ornamental and attractive, it beareth not the root, but the 
 root it. Much may be done to the tree by training, much to the 
 man by teaching, but you cannot learn to do what you have not 
 the heart to do. You cannot learn to manage, on any stream, a 
 vessel that draws more water than the depth of the stream 
 supplies." Rev. T. T. Lynch.
 
 224 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 "A man's life may be influenced, but it is not determined, by 
 his circumstances. No aid, save that which comes from above 
 to every man, can help him to climb the mountain path of life,.' 
 or enter the wicket-gate of righteousness ; nor can any will or 
 power except his own retard his ascent or forbid his ingress." 
 
 Archdeacon F. W. Farrar. 
 
 " If there is any failure in the force of our religious life now, 
 it is not a new ideal that we want, but only an expansion of 
 Christ's Spirit. Why should you be alarmed at the responsibility 
 of living in the spirit instead of on the letter ? God is with you, 
 God is in you ; and because He is with you He asks, ' Why 
 even of yourselves judge ye not that which is right?' He will 
 not condemn you for any intellectual mistake, but only for the 
 disloyalty of soul, which will not follow the guidance of Hi& 
 Spirit towards a higher tone of life and a larger-hearted faith." 
 
 y. Allanson Picton. 
 
 " Waste is the rule of life : the gay flowers spring, 
 The fat fruits drop, upon the untrodden plain ; 
 Sea-sands at ebb are silvered o'er with pain ; 
 The fierce rain beats and mars the feeble wing ; 
 Fair forms grow fairer still for deep disease ; 
 Hearts made to bless are spent apart, alone." 
 
 Lewis Morn's. 
 
 " Life is comic or pitiful as soon as the high ends of being 
 fade out of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and can only 
 attend to what addresses the senses." 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 " We live together years and years, 
 
 And live unsounded still 
 Each other's springs of hopes and fears, 
 
 Each other's depths of will : 
 We live together day by day, 
 
 And some chance look or tone 
 Lights up, with instantaneous ray, 
 An inner world unknown." 
 
 Lord Houghton*
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 225 
 
 " The free-will, the reason, and the power of self-command, 
 struggle perpetually with an array of chance incidents, of mechani- 
 cal forces, of material causes, beyond foresight or control, but 
 not beyond skilful management. This gives a delicate zest and 
 point to life, which it would surely want if we had the power to 
 frame it as we would. We did not make the world, and are not 
 responsible for its state, but we can make life a fine art, and, 
 taking things as we find them, like wise men, mould them as may 
 best serve our own ends." 
 
 John Jnglesant. 
 
 " As the broad ocean endlessly upheaveth, 
 With the majestic beating of his heart, 
 The mighty tides, whereof its rightful part 
 Each sea-wide bay and little weed receiveth, 
 So, through his soul who earnestly believeth, 
 Life from the universal Heart doth flow, 
 Whereby some conquest of the eternal Woe, 
 By instinct of God's nature, he achieveth." 
 
 y. Russell Lowell. 
 
 "The indication of a capacity for a higher life is ever a 
 dissatisfaction with the present." 
 
 James Hinton. 
 
 " It is through loss that all gain in this world is made. The 
 winter leaves must fall that the summer leaves raay grow. But in 
 heaven a different law of development will prevail. In the trees 
 of warm climates the buds have no winter leaves or protective 
 scales, being simply formed of the ordinary leaves rolled up ; 
 consequently they expand in growth without losing anything. 
 And so it will be in the eternal summer above. There will be 
 a constant unfolding of the fulness of immortal life from glory 
 to glory ; but there will be no loss of the processes and ex- 
 periences through which the unfolding will take place. The 
 means and the end will be one and the same. There will be a 
 constant reaching forth unto those things which are before, but 
 there will be no forgetting the things that are behind." 
 
 Rev. Hugh Macmillan. 
 15
 
 226 THOUGHTS Off LIFE. 
 
 " A life of prayer is a life whose litanies are ever fresh acts of 
 self-devoting love." Rev. F. W. Robertson. 
 
 " The tenses of Christian life are not mere narrative tenses. 
 They are perfect and present. ' Thou hast redeemed us to God 
 by Thy blood, and hast made us kings and priests.' " 
 
 Elizabeth Charles. 
 
 " We school our manners, act our parts 
 But He, who sees us through and through, 
 Knows that the bent of both our hearts 
 Was to be gentle, tranquil, true. 
 
 And though we wear out life, alas ! 
 Distracted as a homeless wind, 
 In beating where we must not pass, 
 In seeking what we shall not find ; 
 
 Yet we shall one day gain, life past, 
 Clear prospect o'er our being's whole ; 
 Shall see ourselves, and learn at last 
 Our true affinities of soul. 
 
 We shall not then deny a course 
 To every thought the mass ignore ; 
 We shall not then call hardness force, 
 Nor lightness wisdom any more. 
 
 Then*, in the eternal Father's smile, 
 Our soothed, encouraged souls will dare 
 To seem as free, from pride and guile, 
 As good, as generous, as they are." 
 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 " God's fatherliness. This is the one unfailing key to all [the 
 problems of life its denials and its bountifulness, its sunshine 
 
 and its storm, its voices and its silence." 
 
 Bishop Thorold. 
 
 " Without thought, we live a parasitic life, and, having no root 
 in ourselves, are strangers to the world's great wonder to God." 
 
 W. Pulsford, D.D.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE, 227 
 
 " Love excites the profoundest life of man ; and each lower 
 degree of love prepares the way for one which is higher. The 
 love of God is the end of all, and I suppose that all must drop 
 off, leaf by leaf, till that fruit is matured. The withering, no 
 doubt, is often exquisitely painful ; still we find that the heart 
 cannot grow here of itself, and that it retains to the last its strong 
 necessity of loving. In the ordinary appointment this goes on 
 gradually through the successive stages of filial tenderness, 
 fraternal affection, intense love, wedded purity and confidence, 
 friendship, patriotism. In other cases it is done by wrenches, 
 as there are some flowers that blossom with a loud crack, when 
 the old covering, once green and tender, falls off; and the great 
 thing, then, seems to be to go on to the next stage humbly, if 
 one has been missed, instead of sinking to the same level again." 
 
 Rev. F. W. Robertson. 
 
 " The circumstances of our lives .are not unmeaning, but 
 infinitely otherwise ; but this we very often do not see for want 
 of vision. High as heaven and wide as the earth is the 
 atmosphere of holy opportunity, in which our souls have their 
 being." William Mountford. 
 
 " Live in the calm clear light, 
 The sunlight of God's loving fatherhood. 
 Small things are only great to little men, 
 And an unruffled mind is no mean wealth. 
 It is the tallest tree i' th' wood enjoys 
 Most of the sunshine. To the soul erect, 
 And living far above the dust of things, 
 Joy shall be strength, to do and to endure ; 
 For 'tis the heavenliest spirit has most strength, 
 
 As the top leaf falls last." 
 
 S. W. Partridge. 
 
 " In many of our neighbours' lives there is much not only 
 of error and lapse, but of a certain exquisite goodness which 
 can never be written or even spoken only divined by each 
 of us, according to the inward instruction of our own privacy." 
 
 George Eliot.
 
 228 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Animal and vegetable life both form round a nucleus, or 
 centre, which is at first a mere point or speck undiscernible 
 except by the microscope, but which contains in it the germ 
 of the animal or plant which is to be formed by expansion 
 from it. And in some eminent servants of God the spiritual 
 life has all formed itself from this one centre, developed itself 
 from this one nucleus, the realization of the Presence of God." 
 
 Dean Goulburn. 
 
 " And if I list to sing of sad things oft, 
 It is that sad things in this life of breath 
 Are deepest and divinest. Tears bring forth 
 The richness of our natures, as the rain 
 Sweetens the smelling brier." 
 
 Robert Buchanan. 
 
 " The orbs of heaven introduce curves and turning-points 
 into the path of life, which relieve its monotony, and impart 
 interest and variety to it. Life is not a continuous drudgery, 
 a going on wearily in a perpetual straight line; but a constant 
 ending and beginning. We do not see all the road of life before 
 us ; the bends of its days, and months, and years hide the future 
 from our view, and allure us on with new hopes and fresh 
 expectations, until at last we come without fatigue to the end 
 of the journey. The lights which God hath set in the firmament 
 divide our life into separate and manageable portions. Just 
 as the horizon takes out of the great globe a landscape which 
 does not bewilder us with its vastness, but spreads around our 
 home and sphere of labour a sufficient variety of scenery and 
 objects to draw out and exercise our faculties of mind and body ; 
 so the horizon of each day, or week, or month, or year takes 
 out of our whole existence a part, which enables us most 
 efficiently to transact on its stage the business, and carry on 
 the relations of life. We have to deal, not with the whole of 
 life, but with small portions of it, as they are measured out to 
 us one by one." Rev. Hugh Macmillan. 
 
 " All our life must be a selection." 
 
 Thomas Arnold, D.D.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 229 
 
 " There are many mornings in our lives, many moments 
 which are as fountains, from which the rest of our life continues 
 to flow." Elizabeth Charles. 
 
 " What is our life but an endless flight of winged facts or 
 events ? In splendid variety these changes come, all putting 
 questions/to the human spirit. Those men who cannot answer 
 by a superior wisdom these facts or questions of time, serve them. 
 Facts encumber them, tyrannize over them, and make the 
 men of routine the men of sense, in whom a literal obedience 
 to facts has extinguished every spark of that light by which man 
 is truly man. But if the man is true to his better instincts or 
 sentiments, and refuses the dominion of facts, as one that 
 comes of a higher race, remains fast by the soul, and sees the 
 principle, then the facts fall aptly and supple into their places ; 
 they know their master, and the meanest of them glorifies him." 
 
 Rplph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 " The intelligence of Nature's life is intelligence within her 
 own sphere ; but it pierceth not Nature's veil, and knows nothing 
 of absolute truth." Rev. John Pulsford. 
 
 " The seed must rot ere life come out of it. What is carnal 
 in us must be mortified ere some fresh burst of life manifest it." 
 
 Thomas Guthrie, D.D. 
 
 " There is no infinite in Nature. All 
 
 Is finite, set within a self-made bound. 
 Thought builds round space itself a brazen wall, 
 
 And hates the barren cycle's endless round. 
 Life grown too perfect is not life at all ; 
 
 Some hidden discords sweeten every strain ; 
 No virtue is, where is no power to fall, 
 Nor true delight without a touch of pain." 
 
 Lewis Morris. 
 
 " In some regions of infinity, and from among its splendours, 
 this earth will be looked back on like a lowly home, and this life 
 of ours be remembered like a short apprenticeship to duty." 
 
 William Mountford.
 
 230 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Who could recite all the marvels of water, which now hardens 
 to a stone, and now softens to a feather; which you may find 
 distributed into innumerable portions, every one of which has 
 form, and every one of which reflects loveliness, in the morning 
 dew ; which comes upon us from the fulness of the cloud with 
 power that overpowers not, disparting itself into innumerable 
 tiniest drops, distilling gently on us, so that neither we nor our 
 husbandries may be borne away by its strength, the blessing 
 which God thus accommodates to our wants and weakness ? 
 Truly, water is itself an emblem of life life for ever moving, 
 life for ever bounteous, life capable of assuming conditions full 
 of awe and of dread, and other conditions of tranquillity, and 
 abounding ease, and power ; life that enables us to perform all 
 the various offices by which we secure and advance our own 
 vitality ; life which is simple and yet manifold, inexhaustible, and 
 yet now appearing in constancy, as a river that ever runs, and 
 now awhile inconstant tb us, as a brook which the summer beams 
 dry up, but which the winter rains bring back." 
 
 Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 " The life in time is a life of defect, of passion, of getting, from 
 the pressure and torment of our want. The life of heaven, the 
 life eternal, is the life of being, of action, of giving from the riches 
 of our having." Barnes Hinton. 
 
 "Opportunities for doing greatly seldom occur life is made 
 up of infinitesimals." Rev. F. W. Robertson. 
 
 " It is the way with half the truth amidst which we live, that 
 it only haunts us, and makes dull pulsations that are never born 
 into sound." George Eliot. 
 
 "The healing of Christianity can only come into a human life 
 as Christianity itself comes. We must take the whole cure, or 
 we shall not feel it perfectly in any of its parts." 
 
 Alexander Raleigh, D.D. 
 
 " How often has the Spirit chosen the time, when no ray came 
 from without, to descend upon the orphan life ! " 
 
 Margaret Fuller Ossoli.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 231 
 
 " As soon as the soul quits its own life, the life of God enters 
 in, and possesses that soul. Strictly speaking, the life of man 
 is the Divine life in him. Hence the repeated teaching of our 
 Lord : That, whoever keepeth his fallen life, shall never regain 
 his original life." Rev. John Pulsford. 
 
 " Left to ourselves to peer about from the dull prison of our 
 grosser mind, unaided by the mighty spirits of our race, who 
 emancipate us by their greatness and snatch us by their genius 
 into the free light, how little should we see of the sanctity and 
 glory of this world ! What a dim and subterranean life we 
 should live ! Yet the instant we are taken aloft we find that the 
 darkness was the dream, and the splendour is come true 1 " 
 
 James Martineau> D.D. 
 
 " Life has dark secrets ; and the hearts are few 
 That treasure not some sorrow from the world 
 A sorrow silent, gloomy, and unknown, 
 Yet colouring the future from the past. 
 We see the eye subdued, the practised smile, 
 The word well weighed before it pass the lip, 
 And know not of the misery within." 
 
 Letitia E. Landon. 
 
 "The idea of Christ in the holy mind becomes gradually 
 blended with all the actions of its daily life ; thought goes out 
 to Him as by a Divine instinct ; an ever-acting attraction draws 
 the heart upwards to its great and first object, and life becomes 
 an unconscious yet continuous prayer. The transition from 
 motive to act, from holy intention and design to holy doing, 
 becomes less and less marked, until at last the will acquires an 
 almost mechanical certainty, an almost unconscious smoothness 
 and rapidity of action. And so, with the unfettered ease of one 
 * who playeth well upon an instrument,' from the many-stringed 
 harp of life the soul renders up to God the sweet melody of holy 
 deeds." John Catrd, D.D. 
 
 " He who leaves a holy life behind him, to bless and guide his 
 fellows, bequeaths to the world a richer legacy than any book." 
 
 IV. E. Channing, D.D.
 
 232 THOUGHTS ON LIPE. 
 
 " Why, who would live if unto mortal eye 
 The things lay glaring, which within our hearts 
 
 We treasure up for God's ? " 
 
 Felicia Hemans. 
 
 " Our life is a vapour that appeareth for a little, and then 
 vanisheth away ; but this brief vapour life of ours is laden with 
 eternity, and is a fact so real and grand as to strike the imagination 
 with amazement. We can make it very beautiful or very gloomy. 
 Let it not be to any of us the mere thick mist that broods over 
 the ceaseless machinery of toil and care, or the foul exhalation 
 that rises from the muddy pools of the world's pleasures ; but let 
 it be what God intended it to be, a cloud in the height of heaven, 
 in the world, but not of it ; brightened by the sun of righteousness, 
 and assuming fairer and more heavenly hues as it nears the gates 
 of the west ! " Rev. Hugh Macmillan. 
 
 " The tree of life 
 
 Must strike its roots in secret in the earth ; 
 The well-spring gush from hidden depths." 
 
 Bishop Bickersteth. 
 
 " All life is a history of the power of involuntary, unconscious 
 influences. . . . Our conscious influence is the result of intention ,. 
 and on the whole does little ; but our unconscious influence is 
 the aggregate result of our whole character, manifesting itself 
 in words, looks, acts, that are not meant to effect anything, but 
 which inevitably mould others. Our conscious and intentional 
 influence may fail or may be false, but our involuntary is inevit- 
 able, and every moment operative, and must be true." 
 
 Rev. F. W. Robertson. 
 
 " We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience, 
 but a successful life knows no law. It is an unfortunate discovery 
 certainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not know 
 before that we were bound. Live free, child of the mist, and 
 with respect to knowledge we are all children of the mist. The 
 man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by 
 virtue of his relation to the law-maker." 
 
 H. D. Thoreau.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 23 J 
 
 " Whatever a man lives for is his faith." 
 
 Joseph Parker, D.D. 
 
 " Every life is a pilgrimage, seeking its goal in some Canaan of 
 rest." Henry Alton, D.D. 
 
 " If death is only the completion of the first little round in life 
 the first short flight ; if it marks the end only of man's seed- 
 time ; if his budding hopes, his lofty aspirations, and dawning 
 consciousness of desires which no earthly good can fill, are but 
 the swelling germs of faculties that are to blossom and bear 
 immortal fruit ; if he leaves in the grave only the swaddling clothes 
 of his spiritual infancy, and rises, as from a sleep, in perfect 
 human form, with all his memory, his consciousness of individual 
 being, to enter upon an endless career, in which hope is changed 
 into fruition, and aspiration into attainment ; then death is the 
 grand step in life. It solves all its enigmas ; it is the fulfilment, 
 of which this life is but the prophecy ; and to the wise and pure 
 it opens the shining portals of an endless day." 
 
 Chauncey Giles. 
 
 " Life carries with it its own signet." John Ker, D.D. 
 
 " Under every guilty secret there is hidden a brood of guilty 
 wishes, whose unwholesome, infecting life is cherished by the 
 darkness. The contaminating effect of deeds often lies less in 
 the commission than in the consequent adjustment of our desires 
 the enlistment of our self-interest on the side of falsity ; as, on 
 the other hand, the purifying influence of public confession springs 
 from the fact, that by it the hope in lies is for ever swept away, 
 and the soul recovers the noble attitude of simplicity." 
 
 George Eliot. 
 
 " A word may be recalled, a life can never be." 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 " The soul's life is written in itself. Nothing is lost, nothing 
 omitted. Whatsoever is hiddenly done in the closet of the soul, 
 shall come into manifestation in eternity ; and the raiment without 
 shall express all 'the beauty of holiness,' which has been acquired 
 within." Rev. John Puhford.
 
 234 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Praise God, creature of earth, for the mercies linked with secrecy, 
 That spices of uncertainty enrich thy cup of life. 
 Praise God, His hosts on high, for the mysteries that make all 
 
 joy; 
 What were intelligence, with nothing more to learn, or heaven, 
 
 in eternity of sameness ? " 
 
 Martin R Tupper, D.C.L. 
 
 "At first our everlasting life will be like a summer's day, so 
 calm, and beautiful, and long. But it will prove a day that will 
 last on, and on, and on. And when no night comes, and we 
 do not get weary, and all things keep on brightening about us, 
 as the eyes of our understandings open, then, little by little, 
 we shall begin, in awe and wonder, to feel what it is to be 
 immortal." William Mountford. 
 
 " All experience is a correction of life's delusions a modifica- 
 tion, a reversal of the judgment of the senses ; and all life is a 
 lesson on the falsehood of appearances." 
 
 Rev. F. W. Robertson. 
 
 " What is time past but to-day, 
 
 Mirror'd in still pools peacefully; 
 The future but the same to-day, 
 
 Reflected in a heaving sea ? 
 Only the present hour has life, 
 The home of work, the field of strife. 
 Choose not thy bride among the dead, 
 
 But press the present to thy breast ; 
 In her, thy soul shall find its bread, 
 
 Thy mind its sphere, thy heart its rest. 
 Till God shall speak another ' Let there be,' 
 And time, like darkness before light, shall flee 
 Before the Now of His eternity." 
 
 Elizabeth Charles. 
 
 " The course of God for man is always from lower things to 
 higher, from an inferior to a nobler life. The course of nature 
 is birth and death, but the Divine order for human life is birth, 
 and birth, and birth." Rev. John Pulsford.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 235 
 
 " Life here, it is spring's fickle time, 
 
 Alternate blight and balm ; 
 But Heaven will be our summer's prime, 
 One bright unending calm." 
 
 Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 " It is very mistaken to think that the great occasions of life 
 only demand religious feeling and principle ; it is in the every-day 
 petty annoyances, the constant call upon our charity, forbearance, 
 and meekness, that we feel the constant want of some stronger 
 and more powerful stimulant than the feeling of the moment, 
 to smooth down the rubs of life, and make our existence one of 
 peace and happiness." Maria Hare. 
 
 "With the sinking of high human trust, the dignity of life 
 sinks too ; we cease to believe in our own better self, since that 
 also is part of the common nature which is degraded in our 
 thought; and all the finer impulses of the soul are dulled." 
 
 George Eliot. 
 
 " Living by faith, we wait for the new heavens and new earth 
 wherein dwelleth righteousness; for the beautiful glory of the 
 last, the happy day ; for Christ coming to be admired by those 
 who love Him ; for the Paradise of God, with its trees, and bloom, 
 and fruit; for the city of God, with its order, wealth, and 
 grandeur; for the satisfaction of our souls when we wake up 
 in the likeness of the Son of man, and see Him as He is. Then 
 may we say, ' As it was in the beginning so it never more shall 
 be. Sorrow and doubt are gone.' " 
 
 Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 " As the law of our life is, ' first, that which is natural ; and, 
 afterwards, that which is spiritual,' we should expect the certitude 
 of our hearts, in relation to spiritual things, to fluctuate with our 
 own state. There will be times of spiritual apathy, when we 
 shall be glad to fall back upon the letter of the Word, saying, 
 'Thus it is written, and therefore must be'; and there will be 
 other times of spiritual fervour, when, with 'the eyes of the heart,' 
 we enjoy open vision, and in light see light." 
 
 William Pulsford, D.D.
 
 236 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " Man receives life only in that plane of his nature which he 
 exercises." Chauncey Giles. 
 
 " The law of Christ is a law of service : to the man who is 
 penetrated with the Spirit of Christ, the humblest place is the 
 highest place if it is the place in which he can do most for 
 God and for man, and the obscurest duties are the most 
 honourable, if, by discharging them, he can contribute most 
 effectively to the triumph of the Divine love over the miseries 
 and sins of mankind. To serve men for Christ's sake, in Christ's 
 name, as His representative, though the service wins no praise, 
 though it is met with coldness, ingratitude, calumny, by those 
 to whom it is rendered this is the true Christian life." 
 
 R. W. Dale, D.D. 
 
 "There is no form of spiritual life which in its progress 
 towards the perfect man must not be tried to the uttermost. The 
 form of the trial varies with the growing form of the elect life, for 
 that which tries us at first is not the trial of the riper and more 
 advanced spirit; but a cross and trial there must be at every 
 stage, to purify the elect from the hereditary evil which still so 
 perseveringly cleaves to him. Many, therefore, are the inward 
 groans and deaths, which must be passed through in the journey 
 towards perfection. For as the vine draws its sap from the 
 impure earth, and so yields a fluid fruit, first sour, then sweet, 
 which, being crushed in the wine-press, is then turned into wine 
 by fermentation, and thus by successive changes spiritualized and 
 advanced unto a more powerful and enduring form of being, so 
 in the great change of man's renewal unto God, the new life, 
 growing out of, and in part, and for a season sustained by the 
 defiled and earthly nature, is dissolved and purified by successive 
 changes and ferments, till it is transformed and rectified into 
 that which is immortal." Rev. Andrew Jukes. 
 
 " That deep awful rest which is the most endearing of all the 
 attributes of the life that shall be the rest which is order instead 
 of disorder, harmony instead of chaotic passions in jar and 
 discord, and duty instead of the conflict of self-will with His 
 loving will." Rev. F. W. Robertson.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 237 
 
 " True love 
 
 Takes joy as solace, not as aim, 
 And looks beyond, and looks above ; 
 And sometimes through the bitterest strife 
 First learns to live her highest life." 
 
 Adelaide A. Procter. 
 
 " About the river of human life there is a wintry wind, though 
 a heavenly sunshine ; the iris colours its agitation, the frost fixes 
 upon its repose. Let us beware that our rest become not the 
 rest of stones, which so long as they are torrent-tossed and 
 thunder-stricken maintain their majesty, but when the stream is 
 silent, and the storm passed, suffer the grass to cover them and 
 the lichen to feed on them, and are ploughed down into dust." 
 
 John Ruskin. 
 
 " To live through but one perfect hour of life, 
 With hope enlarging all the space beyond, 
 Is better than a lifetime, and more long, 
 Looking back on it." 
 
 H. E. Hamilton King. 
 
 "Wherever healing power is, there is life. And so any great 
 process of redemption is bright with the tokens of a living God." 
 
 y. A Hanson Picton. 
 
 " ' It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.' 
 The ' hands of the living God ' are what we call the ' laws ' of 
 Nature. When God is spoken of as the 'living,' it is ever with 
 special reference to Nature. It is Nature, the Creation, that is 
 the life of God. It is thus in respect to ourselves ; our life is 
 that which we produce by our self-sacrifice ; we are living in 
 respect to that which we have so created by self-control. Thus 
 the passage means what we daily see. It is a fearful thing for a 
 man living in this universe to be wicked. Nature infallibly 
 and fearfully avenges every wrong." "James Hiuton. 
 
 " Life is no series of chances with a few providences sprinkled 
 between to keep up a justly failing belief, but one providence of 
 God." George MacDonold, LL.D.
 
 238 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " The growing good of the world is partly dependent on 
 unhistoric acts ; and that things are not so ill with you or me as 
 they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived 
 faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs." 
 
 George Eliot. 
 
 " Our most solemn moments are never as we picture them. 
 God's angels are generally entertained unawares ; when we most 
 look for the gleam of their white wings at some mysterious turn of 
 our life's path, we come instead on some common linen whitening 
 on the hedge, some utterly trivial occurrence of daily life, wholly 
 impervious to the sublime and to high-wrought sentiment." 
 
 Ellice Hopkins. 
 
 " Our life, as a whole, embraces our past, which is absolutely 
 unchangeable, and our future , which is not yet within our reach ; 
 we are conscious of no present power over either. Our separate 
 acts are perceptibly subject to our own control ; nay, it is by the 
 use of our free-will in our separate acts that we are able to change 
 the character of our life or to preserve it from change ; and with 
 this corresponds our responsibility." Bishop Temple. 
 
 " We get accustomed to mental as well as bodily pain, without, 
 for all that, losing our sensibility to it ; it becomes a habit of our 
 lives ; and we cease to imagine a condition of perfect ease as 
 possible for us. Desire is chastened into submission ; and we 
 are contented with our day when we have been able to bear our 
 grief in silence, and act as if we were not suffering. For it is at 
 such periods that the sense of our lives, having visible and in- 
 visible relations beyond any of which either our present or pro- 
 spective self is the centre, grows like a muscle that we are 
 obliged to lean on and exert." George Eliot. 
 
 " Say thou not sadly, ' never,' and ' no more,' 
 
 But from thy lips banish those falsest words ; 
 While life remains, that which was thine before 
 Again may be thine, in Time's storehouse lie 
 
 Days, hours, and moments, that have unknown hoards 
 Of joy, as well as sorrow." 
 
 Frances A. Kemble.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 239 
 
 "Unbroken stands the scheme before us. Life infinite and 
 ( boundless, throbbing in our veins with a tiny thrill of the vast 
 pulse that courses through the infinitude of space, the joy and 
 sorrow in our hearts calling us to an universal sympathy, guaran- 
 teeing to us a sympathy that is universal in return." 
 
 James Hinton. 
 
 " When we have panted past life's middle space, 
 And stand and breathe a moment from the race, 
 
 These graver thoughts the heaving breast annoy : 
 Of all our fields how very few are green ! 
 
 And ah ! what brakes, moors, quagmires, lie between 
 Tired age and childhood ramping wild with joy." 
 
 W. S. London. 
 
 " It is the hardness of life which gives us power. Patience, 
 courage, generosity, can never be learned, or practised, unless 
 there be trial, danger, temptation. Life is an education ; we may 
 make it help us to grow nobler, and more fair to God." 
 
 Bishop W. Boyd Carpenter. 
 
 " Life has its perspective for us ; bright forms and slanting 
 gleams and shadows in the past ; a haze not without its glory in 
 the future ; both, looked at with a sigh from thorny ways and 
 wasting heats in the present. In relation to lower existence, our 
 human consciousness of time is a prerogative; in comparison 
 with God's life, it- is an infirmity, or at least a limitation. And, 
 according as we use or abuse it, we may verge towards either 
 extreme, sinking ourselves into nature or merging into God. Do 
 we use change, or does change use us ? Do we drift into the 
 currents of necessity, or keep the open sea, where, with the good 
 winds of heaven, a course may yet be steered ? Do we surrender 
 the eternal in us to the temporal, and yield the soul to the 
 seasonal pressures of life ? Then do we go over to the side of 
 mere nature, and claim our slave-lineage with pride. Or do we 
 convert the temporal in us into the eternal, and appropriate all 
 change and loss to feed imperishable love and glorify divinest 
 truth ? Then do we draw nearer unto God, and humbly own our 
 heavenly filiation." James Martineau> D.D.
 
 240 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 "A life of constant action and unwearied exertion excludes 
 universal knowledge." W. E. Channing, D.D. 
 
 " Life is a unity, not a group of results ; a power, not a mere 
 effect." James Hinton. 
 
 " The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and 
 we see nothing but sand ; the angels come to visit us, and we 
 only know them when they are gone. 
 
 "It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the thought of a 
 man's death hallows him anew to us ; as if life were not sacred 
 too as if it were comparatively a light thing to fail in love and 
 reverence to the brother who has to climb the whole toilsome 
 steep with us, and all our tears and tenderness were due to the 
 one who is spared that hard journey. 
 
 " There are moments when by some strange impulse we contra- 
 dict our past selves fatal moments, when a fit of passion, like 
 a lava stream, lays low the work of half our lives." 
 
 George Eliot, 
 
 " When we look towards winter from the last borders of 
 autumn, it seems as if we could not encounter it, and as if it 
 never would go over. So does threatened trouble of any kind 
 seem to us as we look forward upon its miry ways from the last 
 borders of the pleasant greensward on which we have hitherto 
 been walking. But not only do both run their course, but each 
 has its own alleviations, its own pleasures ; and very marvellously 
 does the healthy mind fit itself to the new circumstances ; while 
 to those who will bravely take up their burden and bear it, 
 asking no more questions than just, ' Is this my burden ? ' a 
 thousand ministrations of nature and life will come with gentle 
 comfortings. Across a dark, verdureless field will blow a wind 
 through the heart of the winter which will wake in the patient 
 mind not a memory merely, but a prophecy of the spring, with 
 a glimmer of crocus, or snowdrop, or primrose ; and across the 
 waste of tired endeavour will a gentle hope, coming he knows 
 not whence, breathe spring-like upon the heart of the man around 
 whom life looks desolate and dreary." 
 
 George MacDonald, LL.D.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 241 
 
 " Life hath its high and its ignoble tasks, 
 Fitted to every nature. Will the free 
 And royal eagle stoop to learn the arts 
 By which the serpent wins the spell-bound prey ? " 
 
 Felicia Hemans. 
 
 " Man is judged by man ; nothing else were fit. The deflec- 
 tions from perfect humanity cannot be measured by the standard 
 of perfect humanity. Hence it is the Son of man, the humanity 
 of God, who judges. When man meets Him, all is plain. His 
 perfection is the test ; He furnishes the contrast that repels, or 
 the likeness that draws. This, then, is judgment : man revealed 
 by the unveiling of his life, and tested by the Son of man." 
 
 Rev. Theodore T. Munger. 
 
 " Egypt is a good school for God's Son, while He is a junior, 
 but Egypt cannot complete His education. Israel must go forth 
 out of Egypt, yet not empty, as though Egypt contained nothing 
 worth preserving, but full rather. Egypt ruins the Egyptians, 
 because it is their all, but it serves Israel as a stepping-stone 
 to a higher life." Rev. John Pulsford. 
 
 " Let thyself die 
 And dying, rise again to fuller life. 
 To be a whole is to be small and weak 
 To be a part is to be great and mighty 
 In the one Spirit of the mighty whole 
 The spirit of the martyrs and the saints." 
 
 Canon Kingsley. 
 
 " What is the end and essence of life ? It is to expand all 
 our faculties and affections. It is to grow ; to gain, by exercise, 
 new energy, new intellect, new love. It is to hope, to strive, to 
 bring out what is within us, to press towards what is above us. 
 
 In other words, it is to be Free." 
 
 W. E. Channing, D.D. 
 
 " Practical life does all for a purpose ; yet it is precisely in a 
 reasonable ultimate purpose that it is most likely to be wanting." 
 
 John Sterling. 
 16
 
 242 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " What any life, however humble, can do, is a secret with God ; 
 it may widen its influence through ages, or it may leave a trace 
 seen only to Him." J. Cunningham Geikie, D.D. 
 
 " To hope and wait for the highest and best we can conceive, 
 this expands life, this stretches out its short span. This affords 
 a field for the solution of its mysteries, for the cure of its ills, 
 for regaining what is lost, for recomposing the 'sweet societies' 
 of earth, for that realized oneness with God which is the unceasing 
 cry of the God-created spirit." 
 
 Rev. Theodore T. Munger. 
 
 " Carry religious principle into common life, and common life 
 will lose its transitoriness. 
 
 " Live for Christ in the world, and you carry out with you 
 into eternity all the results of the world's business that are worth 
 the keeping. The river of life sweeps on, but the gold grains 
 it held in solution are left behind, deposited in the holy heart." 
 
 John Caird, D.D. 
 
 " A manly life is the best gift you can leave mankind ; that can- 
 be copied for ever." Rev. Theodore Parker. 
 
 " Life is a chase, 
 
 And Man the hunter, always following on, 
 With hounds of rushing thought or fiery sense, 
 Some hidden truth or beauty, fleeting still 
 For ever through the thick-leaved coverts deep 
 And wind-worn wolds of time. And if he turn 
 A moment from the hot pursuit to seize 
 Some chance-brought sweetness, other than the search 
 To which his soul is set, some dalliance, 
 Some* outward shape of Art, some lower love, 
 Some charm of wealth and sleek content and home, 
 Then, if he check an instant, the swift chase 
 Of fierce untempered energies which pursue, 
 With jaws unsated and a thirst for act, 
 Bears down on him with clanging shock, and whelms 
 
 His prize and him in ruin." 
 
 Ltwis Morris,
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 243 
 
 " An ignoble life genders ignoble thoughts. A spiritual life 
 will give rise to spiritual thoughts." 
 
 Rev. John Pulsford. 
 
 11 The tackings of the vessel are not its destination ; the 
 wanderings of life are not its end." 
 
 Rev. George Dawson. 
 
 " The religious life is one of sacred obligation and self-revision." 
 
 Rev. T. T. Lynch. 
 
 " All your lives on high 
 Are written fair, but mortal history 
 Is traced upon the sand that may not keep 
 The dint of wave, so quick the dash and leap 
 That follows on a picture on the wall 
 A name upon the stone a leaf whose green 
 Less quickly fades, because it once hath been 
 Within the dove's soft beak, and this is all." 
 
 Dora Greenwell. 
 
 " Out of God's boundless Bosom, the fount of life, we came. 
 Through selfish, stormy youth, and contrite tears just not too 
 late ; through manhood not altogether useless ; through slow and 
 chill old age, we return from Whence we came, to the Bosom of 
 God once more. Go forth again, it may be, with fresh knowledge, 
 
 and fresh powers, to nobler work. Amen." 
 
 Canon Kingsley. 
 
 11 Lo ! out of beauty cast away 
 
 Another beauty grows : 
 What Death reaps in the fields of life 
 In fairer fields he sows. 
 
 And through a thousand gates of gloom, 
 
 With tracts of life between, 
 The creatures that the Father made 
 
 Creep on, now hid, now seen ; 
 
 And duly out of every doom 
 
 A sweeter issue flows." 
 
 Robert Buchanan.
 
 244 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " In a life in which all duties meet, there is a harmony which 
 is favourable to all. One spirit circulates through all. They 
 grow like the limbs of a well-proportioned body." 
 
 W. E. Channing, D.D. 
 
 " Life consists, not in equilibrium, but in the passage towards 
 equilibrium. In man it is the leap from the potential, through 
 the actual, to repose. The passage often involves a fight. Every 
 natural growth is more or less of a struggle with other growths, 
 in which, in the long run, the fittest survives." 
 
 Professor Tyndall. 
 
 " The prospect of eternal life must be inconceivably more dear 
 to a benevolent heart than to any other being, because this heart 
 is fixed on an object so glorious and extensive, that it wants an 
 eternity to enjoy and pursue it." 
 
 W. E. Channtng, D.D. 
 
 " How many things make one feel as if one's whole life was 
 only a confused dream ! Wouldn't it be odd to wake at the end, 
 and find one had not lived at all ? Many perhaps will wake at 
 the end, and find it so indeed in one sense." 
 
 Frances A. Kemble. 
 
 " Till life is coming back, our death we do not feel, 
 Light must be entering in, our darkness to reveal." 
 
 Archbishop Trench. 
 
 "A lonely childhood and youth may make a great man, a 
 good man, but it rarely makes a happy man. Better all the 
 tussles and troubles of family life, where the angles of character 
 are rubbed ofj, and its inclinations to morbidness, sensitiveness, 
 and egotism knocked down." Dinah M. Muloch. 
 
 " The life of faith means the life which comes nearest to 
 Christ's in never forgetting the unseen Father in the activities 
 of the present." Dean Church, 
 
 " God has made us so that there is no certainty, however 
 dreadful, to which the life-forces do not in time adjust them- 
 selves." Harriet B. Stowe.
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 245 
 
 "The real beauty of life is in health of mind, strength of 
 will, vigour of purpose. The real poetry of life is in the noble 
 effort which does not rest till it has accomplished its end ; in 
 the undying pursuit of that which we know to be best ; in the 
 battle for right, in the resolution and the power to live above 
 the standard of the world; in the ravishment which is born 
 of seeming truth, love, justice, purity, as they are seen of God, 
 not as they are seen by men, and in unresting, yet unhasting 
 endeavour to become at one with them. 
 
 " It is faithful ; and what beauty is like the beauty of faithfulness, 
 what poetry is so glorious as that which is heard in the Doric 
 music of a life, marching with unshaken will to the Highest, 
 and suffering all things, rather than give way? " 
 
 Rev. Stopford A. Brooke. 
 
 " The Christian life is often like a mountain rill, all excitement, 
 and bubble, and foam at first ; but which, when it gets to level 
 ground, becomes slower, and sometimes looks as if it were almost 
 stagnant. At other times it is like the rising sun, which, before 
 it appears above the horizon, sends forth some rays of light 
 to commence the advent of another morning, and then shines 
 brighter and brighter until the perfect day." 
 
 Hubert Bower. 
 
 " This life, which seems so fair, 
 Is like a bubble blown up in the air, 
 By sporting children's breath, 
 Who chase it everywhere, 
 And strive who can most motion it bequeath." 
 
 William Drummond. 
 
 " The life of every individual may be compared to a river : rising 
 in obscurity, increasing by the accession of tributary streams, and, 
 after flowing through a longer or shorter distance, losing itself in 
 some common receptacle. The lives of individuals also, like the 
 course of rivers, may be more or less extensive, but will all vanish 
 and disappear in the gulf of eternity." Rev. Robert Hall. 
 
 " A man lives by believing something ; not by debating and 
 arguing about many things." Thomas Carlyle.
 
 246 THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 
 
 " In every earnest life, there are weary flats to tread, with the 
 heavens out of sight, no sun, no moon, and not a tint of light upon 
 the path below ; when the only guidance is the faith of brighter 
 hou/s, and the secret Hand we are too numb and dark to feel. 
 But to the meek and faithful it is not always so. Now and then, 
 something touches the dull dream of sense and custom, and the 
 desolation vanishes away : the spirit leaves its witness with us ; 
 the divine realities come up from the past and straightway enter 
 the present; the ear into which we poured our prayer is not deaf; 
 the infinite eye to which we turned is not blind, but looks in with 
 answering mercy on us. The mystery of life and the grievousness 
 of death are gone ; we know now the little from the great, the 
 transient from the eternal ; we can possess our souls in patience ; 
 and neither the waving palms and scattered flowers of triumph 
 can elate us, nor the weight of any cross appear too hard to 
 bear." James Martineau, D.D. 
 
 " Beside a well-reap'd field at eventide, 
 One laid him down to rest who'd wandered far, 
 And fought and wounded been in Life's great war. 
 ' These have done well their work,' he said, and sigh'd, 
 ' But on mine armour blots of earth remain ; 
 Nor blood, nor tears of mine, have wash'd that stain.' 
 Then came a voice from heaven's blue depths profound, 
 Beyond the shining of the evening star, 
 And breathless awe thrill'd through him at the sound : 
 ' I will make clean thine armour once again.' 
 Then down that weary soul devoutly kneel'd, 
 And lifted from the dust glad tearful eyes. 
 Sweet sleep fell on him from the solemn skies, 
 And perfect peace upon the well-reap'd field." 
 
 Frances A. Kemble.
 
 INDEX OF AUTHORS. 
 
 ABBOTT, DR. E. A., 25, 152. 
 
 Adams, Mrs. Leith, 218. 
 
 Allon, Dr. H., 45, 76, 144, 165, 187, 198, 
 
 233- 
 
 Arnold, Edwin, 3. 
 Arnold, Matthew, 7, 27, 36, 136, 156, 157, 
 
 220, 223, 226. 
 Arnold, Dr. Thomas, 26, 35, 55, 131, 157, 
 
 161, 228. 
 
 BAILEY, Philip. J., 15, 24, 29, 31, 34, 40, 
 
 43. 59. 64, 65. 
 Barrett, Rev. G. S., 119. 
 Beecher, Dr. H. W., 48, 49, 67, 101, 114, 
 
 121, 124, 139, 141, 153, 172, 183, 212, 
 
 219. 
 Benson, Archbishop E. W., 77, 106, 179, 
 
 215. 
 Bickersteth, Bishop E. H., 50, 76, 88, 107, 
 
 232. 
 
 Binney, Rev. Thomas, 213. 
 Blaikie, Dr. W. G., 65, 185. 
 Blore, J. W., 82. 
 
 Bonar, Dr. H., 113, 117, 151, 152. 
 Bower, Hubert, 6, 59, 245. 
 Bronte, Charlotte, 125, 141. 
 Brooke, Rev. Stopford A., 13, 31, 35, 96, 
 
 97, 112, 116, 130, 133, 134, 141, 144, 
 
 151, 163, 176, 182, 184, 187, 191, 202, 
 
 206, 245. 
 
 Brooks, Rev. Phillips, 215, 222. 
 Brown, Rev. H. S., 22. 
 Brown, Rev. J. Baldwin, 5, 12, 34, 99, 144, 
 
 151. 154- 
 
 Bryant, William Cullen, 52. 
 Buchanan, Robert, 14, 16, 39, 157. 
 
 Bunsen, Baroness, 58, 72. 
 Bushnell, Dr. Horace, 136, 147, 149. 
 Butler, Dr. Montagu, 99, 153. 
 Byron, Lord, 189. 
 
 CAIRO, DR. JOHN, 42, 50, 56, 90, 130, 147. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, i, n. 
 
 Carpenter, Bishop W. Boyd, 8, 12, 26, 
 
 60, 221, 239. 
 Channing, Dr. W. E., 98, 135, 142, 158, 
 
 165, 174, 190, 193, 199, 200, 210, 231, 
 
 240, 241, 244. 
 Charles, Elizabeth, 10, 37, 67, 83, 98, 123, 
 
 127, 142, 150, 198, 226, 229, 234. 
 Church, Dean, 205, 244. 
 Clulow, W. B., 76, 81, 167, 199. 
 Cobbe, Frances Power, 28, 78. 
 Coleridge, S. T., 142, 158, 175, 190, 219, 
 
 223, 233. 
 
 Cox, Dr. Samuel, 180, 182. 
 Culross, Dr. James, 16, 102, 115. 
 
 DALE, DR. R. W., 178, 236. 
 Davies, Rev. J. Llewellyn, 98, 174. 
 Dawson, Rev. George, 33, 49, 65, 70, 71, 
 
 243- 
 
 Dorling, Rev. W., 81. 
 Doudney, Sarah, 211. 
 Drummond, Prof. Henry, 100, 103, 118, 
 
 I 3S> ^S. 151. 168, 171, 186, 204, 205. 
 Drummond, William, 245. 
 
 ELIOT, GEORGE, 16, 20, 28, 39, 41, 43, 
 47. 7L 73. 77. 82, 91, 94, 95, 98, 103, 
 106, 116, 118, 126, 130, 133, 141, 154, 
 159, 168, 190, 205, 218, 219, 227, 229, 
 230, 233, 235, 238, 240.
 
 248 
 
 INDEX OF AUTHORS. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 4, 12, 13, 16, 30, 
 73. 95. 105. i7. 157. i5 8 . 160. 173. 179. 
 
 igi, 194, 211, 219, 224. 
 
 Erskine, Thomas, 3, 39, 47, 90, 139, 151, 
 159, 162, 185. 
 
 FABER, Dr. F. W., 3, 8, 27, 42, 79, 82, 
 106, 147, 160, 169, 171, 175, 189, 209, 223. 
 
 Fairbairn, Dr. A. M., 45. 
 
 Farrar, Archdeacon, 2, T4, 22, 77, 211, 
 216, 218, 222, 224 
 
 Fox, Caroline, 24. 
 
 Friswell, J. H., 43, 65, 70, 72, 74. 
 
 GARFIELD, J. A., 23. 
 
 Garrett, Edward, 65, 207. 
 
 Geikie, Dr. J. Cunningham, 5, 23, 47, 
 
 101, 102, 136, 150, 242. 
 Gilbert, Ann, 52, 88, 187. 
 Giles, Chauncey, 60, 233, 236. 
 Goulburn, Dean, 16, 37, 67, 69, 84, 89, 120, 
 
 125, 131, 183, 228. 
 Greenwell, Dora, 5, 15, 17, 20, 32, 57, 101, 
 
 243- 
 
 Grindon, Leo H., 201, 202. 
 Guthrie, Dr. Thomas, 127, 229. 
 
 HALL, Rev. Robert, 245. 
 
 Hare, Archdeacon J. C., 38, 80, 105, 121, 
 
 202. 
 
 Hare, Maria, 28, 65, 85, 98, 235. 
 Havergal, Frances R., 204, 207. 
 Haweis, Rev. H. R., 15, 28, 102, 157, 
 
 173, 200, 207. 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 54, 70, 81, 84. 
 Hazlitt, W., 175, 216. 
 Heard, Rev.J. B., 58. 
 Helps, Sir A., 18, 76. 
 Hemans, Felicia, 18, 94, 96, 108, 135, 232, 
 
 241. 
 Hinton, James, 2, 23, 33, 39, 42, 44, 79, 
 
 89, 92, 98, 106, 121, 125, 127, 132, 162, 
 
 225, 230, 237, 239, 240. 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 24, 115, 129. 
 Hood, Rev. E. Paxton, 19, 25. 
 Hopkins, Ellice, 36, 56, 183, 238. 
 
 INGELOW, JEAN, 43, 50, 55, 60, 61, 69, 
 
 116, 140, 151, 156. 
 Inglesant, John, 44, 75, 85, 92, 96, 154, 
 
 225. 
 Irving, Rev. Edward, 144. 
 
 JAMESON, ANNA, 143, 146, 166, 171, 185,. 
 
 199. 
 
 Jones, Rev. Thomas, 88. 
 Jukes, Rev. Andrew, 148, 178. 
 
 KEBLE, JOHN, 104, 119. 
 
 Kemble, Frances A., 13, 14, 18, 19, 26,. 
 
 39, 56, 123, 131, 238, 244, 246. 
 Kent, Rev. Benjamin, 47, 54. 
 Ker, Rev. John, 82, 233. 
 King, H. E. Hamilton, 138, 163, 170, 183, 
 
 200, 237. 
 Kingsley, Canon, 5, 9, 22, 47, 75, -120, 125, 
 
 241, 243. 
 
 LANDON, LETITIA E., 53, 56, 62, 90, 99, 
 
 100, in, 114, 117, 135, 137, 147, 171, 
 
 184, 197, 211, 231, 239. 
 Liddon, Canon, 14, 15, 18, 23, 59, 124, 
 
 132, 184. 
 Longfellow, Henry W., 3, 21, 55, 57, 60, 
 
 61, 63, 68, 99, 101, 107, 144, 158, 170, 
 
 176, 181, 198. 
 Lowell, J. Russell, 9, 78, 86, 92, 98, 132, 
 
 155, 187, 215, 225. 
 Lynch, Rev. Thomas T., 4, 18, 20, 24, 30, 
 
 3 8 . 45. 5. 7, 74. 8l . 8 4. 9 1 . 93. i8, 141, 
 
 144, 159, 167, 175, 188, 193, 196, 202, 
 
 205, 213, 219, 223, 230, 235. 
 Lytton, Sir E. Bulwer, 145, 215. 
 
 MACDONALD, DR. GEORGE, n, 44, 60, 
 7i. 75. 77, 88, 97, 128, 146, 174, 187, 
 194, 204, 207, 217, 237, 240. 
 
 Macduff, Dr. J. R., 76. 
 
 Mackennal, Rev. Alexander, 40, 160. 
 
 Maclaren, Dr. A., 81, 103, 114, 128, 129, 
 
 IS!, 212. 
 
 Macmillan, Rev. Hugh, 13, 14, 33, 38, 
 68, 74, 87, 95, 99, 104, 105, 106, 118, 
 J 35. 139. I 45, J 53, 178, 179. 210, 221,, 
 225, 228, 232. 
 
 McCann, Dr. J., 29, 96, 134. 
 
 Manning, Cardinal, 36, 47, 49, 52, 67. 
 
 Martineau, Dr. James, 2, 13, 17, 39, 48, 59, 
 66, 69, 73, 80, 85, 88, 89, 94, 98, 108, 115, 
 120, 129, 137, 176, 184, 189, 195, 210, 
 231, 239, 246. 
 
 M<ellor, Dr. Enoch, 129, 133. 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, 20. 
 
 Milnes, R. Monckton (Lord Houghton), 
 104, 136, 161, 171, 220, 224. 
 
 Monsell, Dr. J. S. B., 43, 49, 77, 172.
 
 INDEX OF AUTHORS. 
 
 249 
 
 Montgomery, James, 153. 
 
 Morley, John, 147. 
 
 Morris, Lewis, 97, 153, 156, 177, 202, 211, 
 
 218, 224, 229, 242. 
 Mountford, William, 118, 150, 156, 200, 
 
 215, 227, 229, 234. 
 Mulford, Dr. Elisha, 181, 201. 
 Muloch, Dinah M., 3, 57, 65, 113, 121, 
 
 166, 204, 213, 221, 244. 
 Munger, Rev. T. T., 18, 24, 26, 31, 33, 
 
 34, 37, 42, 43, 45, 48, 88, 97, 119, 126, 
 
 130, 180, 184, 196, 211, 220, 241, 242. 
 Mursell, Rev. A., 9, 37, 56, 71. 
 Myers, Rev. Frederick, 128, 129, 143, 167. 
 
 NEWMAN, W. Abiah, 84. 
 
 OSSOLI, Margaret Fuller, 53, HI, 116, 
 135, 146, 196, 230. 
 
 PARKER, Dr. JOSEPH, 35, 70, 76, 82, 95, 
 103, in, 118, 136, 138, 142, 144, 167, 
 169, 187, 198, 206, 208, 233. 
 
 Parker, Theodore, 46, 171, 242. 
 
 Partridge, S. W., 41, 62, 68, 72, 80, 83, 227. 
 
 Phelps, Elizabeth, S., 14, 117. 
 
 Picton, J. Allanson, 70, 80, 93, 98, 107, 
 
 213, 224, 237. 
 
 Plumptre, Dean E. H., 145. 
 Power, Rev. P. B., 84. 
 
 Prentiss, Elizabeth, 34, 82, 198, 206, 209. 
 Proctor, Adelaide A., 3, 140, 147, 237. 
 Pulsford, Rev.John,;8, 23, 32, 35,44, 51, 55, 
 
 57, 106, 154, 156, 159, 174, 191, 193, 202, 
 
 206, 219, 220, 229, 231, 233, 234, 241, 243. 
 Pulsford, Dr. William, 155, 221, 226, 235. 
 Punshon, Dr. Morley, 12, 26, 71, 131, 141, 
 
 197. 
 Pusey, Dr. Edward B., 17, 22, 24, 36, 58, 
 
 59, 65, 96, 119. 
 
 RALEIGH, DR. ALEXANDER, 45, 77, 142, 
 
 150, 157, 190, 230. 
 Reynolds, Dr. H. R., 137, 148, 169, 205, 
 
 214, 218. 
 
 Richter, Jean Paul, 42. 
 
 Robertson, Rev. F. W., 14, 30, 56, 91, 
 100, 115, 116, 117, 118, 128, 136, 143, 
 146, 163, 169, 184, 213, 226, 227, 230, 
 232, 234, 236. 
 
 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 29. 
 
 Ruskin, John, 6, n, 25, 28, 29, 30, 43, 44, 
 
 45. 55. 59. 63, 69, 99, 122, 149, 155, 188, 
 
 209, 237. 
 
 SAND, GEORGE, 72. 
 
 Sewell, Elizabeth M., 169, 175. 
 
 Shelley, Percy B., 36, 64, 90, 102, 148. 
 
 Simon, Rev. Henry, 24, 82. 
 
 Smiles, Samuel, 10, 47, 57, 99, 119, 152, 
 
 163, 186, 204, 208. 
 Smith, Rev. W. C., 5, 19, 25. 
 Smyth, Rev. Newman, 32, 72. 
 Stanley, Dean, 35, 73, 101, 212. 
 Sterling, Rev. John, 30, 32, 44, 45, 49, 50, 
 
 241. 
 
 Stevenson, Dr. J. F., 208. 
 Stoughton, Dr. John, 128. 
 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 244. 
 Swinburne, A. C., 205. 
 
 TAINSH, E. Campbell, 15. 
 Taylor, Sir Henry, 53. 
 Temple, Bishop, 146, 238. 
 Thirlwall, Bishop Connop, 40. 
 Thoreau, H. D., 42, 72, 87, 101, 138, 148, 
 
 162, 171, 180, 183, 185, 197, 206, 212, 
 
 232. 
 
 Thorold, Bishop, 2, 35, 84, 208, 222, 226. 
 Tipple, Rev. S. A., 60, 96, 120, 133, 160, 
 
 188, 221. 
 
 Trench, Archbishop, 15, 67, 119, 244. 
 Trollope, Anthony, 25. 
 Tuck, Rev. Robert, 40, 178. 
 Tulloch, Dr. J., 24. 
 Tupper, Martin F., 119, 125, 234. 
 Tyndall, Prof., 244. 
 
 VAUGHAN, DEAN C. J., 51, 116, 134, 
 174, 207. 
 
 WESTCOTT, CANON B. F., 70, 78. 
 Whitman, Walt., 128. 
 Whittier, J. G., 33, 38. 
 Wilberforce, Bishop, 159, 191. 
 Wordsworth, William, 58, 130, 147, 149, 
 172, 185, 200, 212, 217. 
 
 YONGE, CHARLOTTE M., 3. 
 Young, Edward, 76.
 
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 
 
 The first figure stands for the Page, the second for the number of the 
 quotation on the Page. 
 
 ORIGIN. 5 4; 125; 21 i ; 254; 366; 395; 45 7 ; 47 i ; 48 i ; 
 49S; 5555 753: 885; 964; 102 i ; 1043; 1074; "445 
 125 4,5; 128 6; 142 i; 156 2; 160 4; 194 3; 215 2; 2214; 
 2232 ; 2435. 
 
 NATURE. 35 ; 41; 6 2; 93; 114; 12 2; 156; 16 4; 204; 
 232 ; 244, 5, 6 ; 311 ; 335 ; 342 ; 362 ; 394 ; 402, 5 ; 422, 
 3 I 442 ; 454 ; 474, 5, 8 ; 494 ; 511 ; 521 ; 533 ; 551 ; 575 ; 
 632 ; 652, 7 ; 703 ; 711 ; 723 ; 776 ; 813 ; 823 ; 843 ; 
 893 ; 99 5 ; 104 2 ; 106 2, 3 ; 107 i ; in i, 3 ; 113 i ; 114 i ; 
 120 2 ; 121 2 ; 122 2 ; 125 i ; 126 3 ; 135 3 ; 138 i ; 141 4 ; 148 4 ; 
 160 2 ; 163 2 ; 167 i ; 169 7 ; 187 2 ; 189 i ; 196 3 ; 208 4 ; 226 2 ; 
 229 2. 
 
 THE HIDDEN. 130 2; 132 i; 136 3; 142 i; 144 5, 6; 153 i, 4; 
 
 I S5 2 . 1584 ; 1594. 5 ; 166 2 ; 1741 ; 1771 ; 1791 ; 1835 ; 
 
 184 i; 191 3; 193 2; 194 2, 3; 198 i; 202 i; 204 3; 211 4; 
 2155 ; 2204 : 2245 I 2321 ; 2337 ; 2381. 
 
 VALUE. 4 3 ; 10 3 ; 12 3 ; 14 2, 6 ; 16 2 ; 17 4 ; 18 4 ; 23 5 ; 26 5 ; 
 342 ; 354, 5 ; 381, 4 ; 396 ; 424 ; 435 ; 441, 6 ; 473 ; 573 ; 
 62 i, 2 ; 68 3 ; 70 i ; 722 ; 76 6, 7 ; 79 i ; 81 5 ; 85 i ; 86 i ; 
 94 4 ; 95 5 ; 97 2 ; 102 2 ; 109 i ; 117 2 ; 118 5 ; 119 i ; 120 4 ; 
 1241 ; 126 i ; 1311 ; 1351 ; 1393 '< 141 J > *44 J ) 3 '< *47 2 i 
 1482 ; 1512 ; 1544; 1552 ; 1566 ; 159 3 ; 1696 ; 1753 : 1784 : 
 183 2 ; 184 2 ; 185 3 ; 190 4 ; 191 3 ; 197 4 ; 204 2 ; 206 5 ; 213 4 ; 
 218 4, 6 ; 225 i ; 227 2 ; 233 6, 7 ; 234 4 ; 240 3 ; 246 i. 
 
 PURPOSE. ii 3 ; 253 ; 313 ; 477 ; 541 ; 583 ; 591 ; 691 ; 705 ; 
 713 ; 722, 5 ; 75 3 ; 763 ; 771 ; 793 ; 831 ; 884 ; 891 ; 961 ; 
 103 4; 108 3; 114 2; 116 3; 118 3, 5; 123 i; 124 2; 1255; 
 1282 ; 1292 ; 1356 ; 1364, 5 ; 1402, 3 ; 1442 ; 1475, 8 > 1 5i 4 : 
 154 3 ; 161 i ; 163 3 ; 165 i; 174 2; 176 i ; 179 2; 180 i, 3; 182 2 ; 
 199 3 ; 2081 ; 209 i ; 214 2 ; 216 2 ; 218 5 ; 221 3 ; 227 2 ; 232 2 ; 
 2345 ; 2381 ; 2415, 6 ; 2421, 5 ; 2432 ; 2443.
 
 252 INDEX. 
 
 DUTY. 129 i; 136 i; 147 6; 183 4; 184 6; 186 i ; 193 i; 195 2; 
 198 4 ; 199 i ; 207 2 ; 222 2 ; 229 6 ; 230 3 ; 241 i ; 244 i. 
 
 PROVIDENCE. 2 4 ; 272 ; 493 ; 542 ; 674 ; 702 ; 773 ; 814 ^ 
 83 i; 88 2; 98 6; 109 i; in 3; 112 i; 124 i; 129 i; 136 4; 
 1394 ; 1513 ; 1564 : 1695 ? 1762, 3 ; 1855 ; 1873 ; 1985 ; 
 203 2 ; 226 4 ; 228 3 ; ^37 6 ; 243 4 ; 246 i. 
 
 DURATION. 14 3; 241 ; 323; 452; 511; 533; 584; 68 i ; 80 2. 4; 
 90 i ; 92 i ; 94 i ; too 3 ; 101 3 ; 107 3 ; 120 3 ; 123 2 ; 126 3 ; 
 1394; 1411; 143 3 ;~'i53 4 ; 1552; 156 6 j; 1571; 1652; 1696; 
 170 i ; 177 2; 201 i; 210 3; 223 2; 230 2; 232 2; 234 2; 238 5; 
 2391 ; 2443. 
 
 CONSCIOUSNESS. ii 2; 154; 16 6; 334; 391; 478; 50 i;6o z\ 
 
 79 3; 97 2; 99 7; 101 i; 109 i; no i; 115 2; 121 3; 146 3;. 
 
 151 3 1581; 161 2; 1694; 1713; 1754: 177 x ; 1831; 1843; 
 
 189 2 192 i ; 194 i ; 195 i ; 197 i ; 199 2 ; 201 2 ; 208 i ; 214 3 ; 
 
 219 2 220 2; 225 4; 228 i; 2304; 231 i, 2; 2355; 240 3; 
 
 2445- 
 ENTIRETY. 23 ; 33; 51, 5; 152; 172; 282, 5; 311; 33*^ 
 
 445 : 531 : 584 : 707 ; 826 : 852 ; 882 ; 1023, 4 ; 1053 < 
 
 112 i, 2 ; 113 2 ; 117 4 ; 118 i; 125 5 ; 129 2 ; 134 i ; 135 6 ; 140 i ; 
 
 146 5; 1515; 152 2; 173 i; 179 3; 180 i; 186 3; 205 i ; 211 i; 
 
 212 i ; 216 i ; 226 3 ; 228 3 ; 236 4 ; 238 3 ; 240 2 ; 244 -i. 
 
 GROWTH. i i ; 36, 7 ; 53 ; 8 i ; 124 ; 144, 7 ; 173 ; 233 ; 262 ; 
 284 ; 312 ; 333 ; 373 ; 403, 4 ; 451, 2 ; 511 ; 533 ; 652, 8 ; 
 675 : 691, 3, 4 ; 721 ; 731 ; 764 ; 81 i ; 831 ; 892 ; 921 ; 
 94 4 ; 97 i, 4 ; 98 7 ; 99 6 ; 103 i ; 106 6 ; 109 i ; 115 i ; 118 2, 6 ; 
 119 7; 121 4; 128 6; 131 2; 134 2, 3; 136 2, 4; 137 3; 138 2; 
 
 1403 ; 1413. 4 ; 1423. 5 ; 1462 ; 1473. 7 ; 1482, 4 ; 149! ; i s L 
 4 ; 1517 ; 1563 ; 1573 ; 1595 ; 160 i, 5 ; 16314 ; 1674, s ; 1694 ; 
 
 1711, 2, 3; 1732, 3; 1743; J 77 i. 2; 1785; 1821 
 184 2, 3 ; 185 2 ; 186 i, 4 ; 187 3 ; 188 3 ; 193 3 ; 199 i 
 202 4 ; 203 i, 2 ; 204 5 ; 205 2 ; 207 3 ; 210 3 ; 214 i 
 
 183-5 ; 
 2004 
 
 2171 ; 
 
 219 5 ; 221 i ; 225 4 ; 227 i ; 228 i ; 232 3 ; 234 5 ; 235 5 ; 236 3 ; 
 238- 1 ; 2393 ; 2413, 5 ; 2435 > 2442. 
 
 SOLITUDE. 14 i ; 363 ; 572, 5 ; 632 ; 682 ; 81 i ; 824, 5 ; 883 ; 
 89 i ; 91 i ; 105 2 ; 120 i ; 158 i ; 188 3 ; 191 4 ; 224 3. 
 
 INFLUENCE. 84; 134; 243; 31 4; 631; 642; 654,5; 7 6; 
 71 i ; 73 i ; 81 i, 2 ; 96 i ; 992 ; 100 3 ; 104 i ; 118 4 ; ''119 2 ; 
 123 i ; 128 3 ; 130 i ; 141 -3 ; 142 i ; 143 2; 144 2 ; 145 2; 152 i ;. 
 153 i ; 155 2 ; 165 3 ; 167 2 ; 168 2 ; 186 4 ; 187 6 ; 189 i ; 200 i, 
 5 ; 203 i ; 224 i ; 230 i ; 231 2, 5 ; 232 4 ; 233 4 ; 242 i, 4. 
 
 jf acuities 
 
 CONSERVATIVE. 
 
 MEMORY. 36 i ; 81 4 ; 124 3 ; 141 3. 
 REPRODUCTIVE. 
 
 REMINISCENCE. 212; 25 5; 42 5; 82 i; 119 6; 120 i; 124 3; 
 1371 ; 1464 ; 1914.
 
 INDEX. 253 
 
 REPRESENTATIVE. 
 
 IMAGINATION. 61 2 ; 76 i ; 87 i ; 101 4 ; 126 2 ; 130 3 ; 135 4 ; 
 140 2 ; 154 i ; 179 2 ; 189 i ; 198 3 ; 205 4 ; 232 2. 
 
 SYMBOLISM. 13 5 ; 16 5 ; 56 5 ; 691 ; 86 i ; 100 2; 138 i. 
 
 METAPHOR. 32 i ; 36 5 ; 40 i ; 50 5 ; 58 3 ; 97 3 ; 115 i ; 1284 ; 
 132 3 ; 183 3 ; 189 2, 4 ; 230 T ; 242 5. 
 
 COMPARISON. 40 5; 60 i; 74 2; 82 6; 87 2; 95 3; 101 5; 108 i; 
 1322 ; 1392 ; 1403 ; 1492. 
 
 REGULATIVE. 
 
 REASON. 48 3 ; 77 2 ; 137 3 ; 144 6 ; 152 3 ; 210 2 ; 226 5. 
 
 FAITH. 42:351; 43 i ; 66 i; 733; 984: 1033; 1083; 1313; 
 143 i ; 144 i ; 160 5 ; 168 2 ; 171 7 ; 173 2 ; 179 i ; 185 4 ; 
 195 2 ; 196 2 ; 209 2 ; 224 2 ; 233 i ; 235 3, 4 ; 2447 > 2 4S 5 > 
 246 i. 
 
 COMMON SENSE. 43 2 ; 47 2 ; 76 5 ; 98 8 ; 155 3 ; 229 3. 
 JUDGMENT. 32 2; 60 5; 76 6, 7; 89 i; 90 3; 92 3; 94 3; 99 8; 
 
 1341 ; 1452 ; 1845 '> 2051 ; 2263 : 2 34 3 ' 2412. 
 DISCIPLINE. 14 5 ; 16 i ; 18 3 ; 19 3 ; 28 i ; 37 2 ; 39 3 ; 41 2 ; 
 
 421 ; 483 ; 512 ; 581 ; 591, 2 ; 606 ; 724 ; 741 ; 751, 3 ; 
 
 77 3 ; 78 i ; 842, 4 ; 88 5 ; 96 5 ; 97 3 ; 99 i ; 100 i ; 104 i ; 
 
 106 4; 108 2; no i; 117 3, 4; 118 5; 121 i; 123 3; 124 2; 
 
 127 2 ; 133 i ; 140 i ; 149 2 ; 157 4 ; 162 3 ; 163 2 ; 164 i ; 
 
 167 3 ; 170 i ; 172 2, 3 ; 177 2 ; 182 2 ; 184 3 ; 185 6 ; 186 2 ; 
 
 187 4, 5 ; 192 i ; 198 5 ; 2074 > 208 2 ; 210 i ; 211 5, 6 ; 212 4 ; 
 
 213 2 ; 217 2 ; 219 6 ; 221 2, 5 ; 222 3 ; 224 3 ; 225 4 ; 227 i ; 
 
 228 2 ; 229 5 ; 231 3 ; 235 i ; 236 3 ; 237 2 ; 238 4 ; 243 6 ; 
 
 244 2, 6. 
 
 MORAL. 
 
 CONSCIENCE, 
 
 Power of 18 2 ; 20 i ; 29 i ; 39 2 ; 42 6 ; 50 3 ; 63 2 ; 80 i ; 
 
 1371 ; 1414 ; 1461. 
 Origin of 19 i. 
 Use of 2 5 ; 476 ; 582, 3 ; 596 ; 69 5 ; 752 ; 88 i ; 1164 5 
 
 133 2 ; 151 i ; 152 3 ; 158 3 ; 180 3 ; 1846 ; 218 2. 
 Accusations of 27 2 ; 29 2 ; 35 3 ; 82 7 ; 145 3 ; 175 2 ; 190 6. 
 Penitence 131 2 ; 219 4 ; 229 4. 
 Rewards of Conscience 496 ; 52 4 ; 142 4 ; 143 i ; 143 i ; 146 3 ; 
 
 155 i ; 182 2 ; 215 3 ; 222 2 ; 229 2. 
 
 Cental 2De0tce0. 
 
 MENTAL DESIRES. 
 
 FOR KNOWLEDGE. 130 5 ; 174 5 ; 190 i ; 194 3 ; 200 3 ; 210 2 ; 218 3 ; 
 226 3. 
 
 ,, ESTEEM. 37 i ; 146 i, 
 
 ,, SOCIETY. 98 8; 102 3; 116 6; 145 2.
 
 254 INDEX. 
 
 FOR PLEASURE. 30 2 ; 35 6 ; 43 3 ; 52 2 ; 1164 "9 S ; J 34 2 '> 
 136 3; 154 4; 157 ; 159 2; 198 i; 209 i; 2122; 2295; 
 2341 ; 2404. 
 
 ,, GLORY. 115 2; 178 4. 
 
 ,, IMMORTALITY. 341; 41 i; 55 4; 64 1:79 i; 91 4; 101 2; 
 123 2 ; 148 2 ; 158 3 ; 162 i, 2 ; 169 4 ; 178 5 ; 181 2 ; 182 i ; 
 1864 J l88 2 : I 9 2 i Z 93 2 ; X 96 2 ; 197 3 ; 204 i ; 211 3, 4 ; 
 2151 ; 2221 ; 223 3 ; 224 4 ; 227 3 ; 230 2 ; 232 2 ; 233 2 ; 
 
 2394- 
 
 (Emotion^ 
 
 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 DIVINE INFLUENCE. 607-4 ; 67 i ; 92 2 ; 93 2 ; 963 ; 102 4 ; 125 4 ; 
 
 1342, 3 > I 3 8 4 ; 1394 ; 1412 ; 1432 ; 1464 ; 1475 ; I 5 2 > 3 ; 
 1513; 1522; 1534; 1594; 160 i, 2; 1693; 1744; 1751. 4; 
 
 178 3 ; 182 2 ; 187 i ; 188 i ; 191 i ; 196 i, 2 ; 199 2 ; 201 i ; 
 206 i; 213 3, 4; 220 2, 3, 4; 223 2, 3. 
 
 WORSHIP. 5 6; 25 2; 46 i; 50 2556 i; 63 2574 3? 77 5; 82 2; 
 
 no i; 117 2; 131 i; 1516; 157 5; 169 2; 181 i; 183 4; 
 
 191 2 ; 202 i, 2, 6 ; 207 i ; 193 i ; 196 3 ; 210 i ; 231 4 ; 234 i ; 
 
 2451- 
 PRAYER. 13 3; 22 4 ; 1314 ; 176 i ; 205 6 ; 206 i ; 226 i ; 231 4. 
 
 REVERENCE. 19 i ; 22 2 ; 29 4 ; 46 2 ; 55 2 ; 67 2 ; 77 3 ; 85 2 ; 
 
 93 2 ; 106 i ; 109 i ; 129 4 ; 166 -i ; 170 2 ; 190 3. 
 PIETY. 3 2 ; 13 2 ; 14 7 ; 15 3 ; 20 2 ; 24 8 ; 264 ; 27 i ; 30 3 ; 
 
 374 : 434 : 456 : 491 ; 524 ; 561 ; 595 ; 632 ; 673 ; 
 
 694 ; 712, 4, 5, 6 ; 774 ; 851 ; 902 ; 951 ; 983, 5 ; 100 i ; 
 
 101 6; 103 2; 115 3; 128 i; 142 3; 144 4; 146 2; 150 i; 
 
 151 6 ; 173 2 ; 1741 ; 176 i ; 194 i ; 208 3 ; 209 3 ; 223 i ; 
 
 231 4 ; 236 2 ; 242 3 ; 2431, 3 ; 245 2. 
 
 SU PERSTITION. 56 4. 
 
 SCEPTICISM. 447; in i; 143 i. 
 
 SIN. 74 i ; 1342 ; 140 2 ; 157 2 ; 174 i ; 175 2 ; 188 i ; 237 5. 
 
 GENERAL. 
 
 LOVE. 7 3 ; 30 i ; 313 ; 343. 4 ; 462 ; 504 ; 596 ; 643 ; 66 2 ; 
 76 2 ; 78 2 ; 85 3 ; 87 2 ; 94 2 ; 98 5 ; 101 4 ; 102 i ; 104 3 ; 
 1071, 2, 4 ; i2i 4 ; 1274 ; 1304 ; 1383 ; 1394 ; 1422 ; 1443 ' 
 1463 ; 1471 ; 1493 : 1651 : 1674 ; 17* 6, 7 ; 1722, 4 ; 1741 ; 
 182 i ; 185 5 ; 187 3 ; 1882 ; 190 5 ; 195 2 ; 196 i ; 198 2 ; 
 200 3, 5; 202 6; 204 3; 207 5; 2ii 2; 212 5; 213 i ; 214 2; 
 215 5 ; 227 i ; 237 i ; 239 4. 
 
 HATRED. 107 i. 
 
 HOPE. 9 2 ; 19 2 ; 28 4 ; 68 i ; 73 3 ; 78 3 ; 90 i ; 103 i ; 131 3 ; 
 137 2 140 2 ; 147 4 ; 148 i ; 150 4 ; 156 4 ; 157 3 ; 168 2 ; 
 1755 1854; 1873; 1893; 1932; 1972; 1983; 1991; 
 207 i 208 i ; 212 5 ; 219 S.
 
 INDEX. 255. 
 
 DISAPPOINTMENT. in i ; 125 3; 1372; 138 3; 140 2; 142 2; 
 1491; 179 2; 214 4; 226 3; 239 2. 
 
 DREAD. 56 2 ; 101 2. 
 GRATITUDE. 166 i . 
 
 WONDER. 151 ; 263 ; 495 ; 543 ; 566 ; 621 ; 753 ; 853 ; 
 921; 99 i; 105 2; 155 3; 160 i? 161 2; 279 2; 182 2:202 i; 
 
 2265 ; 2444. 
 
 AMBITION. 44 4; 47 i; 53 3; 61 2; 69 2; 78 i; 91 4; 98 7; 
 
 107 i ; 108 2 ; 124 i ; 132 3 ; 133 3 ; 137 2 ; 142 3 
 148 2 ; 151 i ; 155 i ; 1583 ; 168 2 ; 170 i ; 1781 
 185 7 ; 187 3 ; 206 3 ; 210 2 ; 219 6 ; 220 i ; 221 i 
 2244 5 2253, 4 ; 2273 5 2341 ; 2414. 
 
 1476 : 
 1821 : 
 
 222- 
 
 SYMPATHY. 15 5 ; 18 6 ; 242 ; 413 ; 504 ; 512 ; 553, 5 ; 
 593; 61 i; 621; 656; 673; 804; 82 3 ; 84 3 ; 90 3, 4 ; 
 93 2 ; 95 2 ; 96 5 ; 98 2 ; 102 3 ; 103 i ; 105 i ; 107 i ; no i ; 
 115 2; 116 2, 6; 117 4; 116 3, 6; 117 4; 121 3 ; 126 i; 129 3,4; 
 
 1314 ; 1354 ; 1394 ; 1413. 5 ; 1422 ; 1431 ; 1452 ; 1518 ; 
 
 156 i ; 157 6 ; 158 3 ; 160 5 ; 170 i ; 172 i ; 176 3 ; 182 i ; 
 184 4 ; 190 5 ; 193 2 ; 195 i ; 196 2 ; 198 4 ; 204 6 ; 205 5 ; 
 209 2 ; 2ii 6 ; 213 2 ; 219 7 ; 226 3 ; 227 3, 4 ; 238 4 ; 239 i, 4 ; 
 240 3 ; 241 2; 242 2; 244 6. 
 
 SELF-SACRIFICE. 139-^1 ; 140 i ; 163 i ; 165 i ; 169 i ; 170 2 ; 
 190 2 ; 202 3 ; 203 i ; 223 4 ; 236 2 ; 237 5 ; 240 i. 
 
 AESTHETIC. 
 
 SUBLIMITY. 23 4 ; 158 2 ; 183 i ; 238 2. 
 
 BEAUTY. 6 i ; 38 3 ; 561 ; 148 3 ; 160 3 ; 172 i ; 178 5 ; 187 i ; 
 188 2 ; 201 i ; 206 i ; 2092 ; 217 2 ; 220 3 ; 2301 ; 232 2 ; 
 2436; 2451. 
 
 Volition. 
 
 GENERAL. 
 
 CHOICE. 3 4 ; 41 ; 71 : 203 ; 261 ; 283 ; 324 ; 352 ; 382 ; 
 
 443 ; 483 ; 503 ; 523 ; 573, 4 ; 683 ; 742 ; 815 ; 921 ; 
 
 1052; 1071; 1154; 1283; 1303; 1352; 1363, 5; 1431; 
 
 1447 ; 146 i ; 1471 ; 1483 ' 153 2, 5 ; I 54 3 ; *59 i. 2, 3 ; 1621. 
 MOTIVE. 2 i ; 4 i ; 7 2 ; n i ; 29 3 ; 70 4 ; 95 5 ; 116 i ; 1171 ; 
 
 129 4 ; 1334 ; 144 6 ; 171 4 ; 204 4 ; 217 2 ; 218 i. 
 
 WORK, 
 
 General. 57 ; 1313 ; 1717 : 2361. 
 
 Skill. 63 2 ; 803 ; 993 ; 145 i ; 1993 ' 2084 ; 2251 ; 2448 ; 
 
 PERSEVERANCE. 2 2 ; 10 2 ; 22 i ; 23 i ; 25 i ; 304 ; 33 2 ; 56 6 ; 
 571 ; 583 ; 596 ; 622 ; 765 ; 931 ; 962 ; 1014 > 1065 
 1241 ; 1312 ; 1323 ; 1331 ; 1343 ; 1381 ; 1413 ; 1564- 
 
 HINDRANCE. 26 5 ; 437 ; 493 ; 734 ; 1503 ; 1564 ; 2241.
 
 256 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 COMPLETION. 5 2 ; 45 5 ; 46 2 ; 54 i ; 56 2 ; 62 2 ; 72 6 ; 74 2 
 
 82 2; 84 6; 86 i; 91 2; 95 4; 97 4; 117 2; 122 i 
 
 1273 ; 132 2 ; 133 J ; 1341 ; 1353. s ; 1364 ; 1372 
 
 144 2 ; 148 2 ; 154 2 ; 164 i ; 166 i ; 168 i ; 170^-1 
 175 i ; 178 i ; 182 2 ; 199 i ; 203 i ; 205 4 ; 208 3 
 221 5 ; 229 6 ; 235 4 ; 245 2 ; 246 2. 
 
 SUCCESS. 18 5 ; 247 ; 251 ; 482 ; 491 ; 695 ; 921 
 119 3; 144 7; 152 2; 201 2; 206 4; 218 i; 219 3 
 2325- 
 
 FAILURE. 8 3 ; 163; 22 3 ; 23 2 ; 43 6 ; 45 3; 49 2 ; 51 
 59 4; 55 i; 88 6; 103 2; 106 3; in 2; 114 2, 3 
 1281, 5; 1323; 1332; 1453; 1534; 1594; 1682 
 190 i, 4, 6 ; 195 2 ; 198 3 ; 210 i ; 2431 ; 244 4. 
 
 1242 
 138-3 
 
 214 i 
 
 1163 
 
 ; 572 
 
 1163 
 1782 
 
 6 2 ; 13 6 ; 40 2 ; 65 7 ; 68 i ; 77 6 ; 84 5 ; 91 3 ; 97 2, 4 ; 
 98 i ; 100 3 ; 102 i ; 104 i ; 105 3 ; 106 3 ; 107 i ; 108 2 ; 
 115 i ; 127 i ; 128 4 ; 134 2 ; 136 2 ; 137 i ; 140 2 ; 144 2 ; 
 148 2 ; 150 2 ; 153 3, 4 ; 160 2, 3 ; 166 i ; 170 i ; 174 4 ; 175 i : 
 177 2 ; 181 3 ; 182 2 ; 186 4 ; 189 i ; 197 2 ; 198 6 ; 200 2 
 2032; 210 3; 211 3; 215 i ; 233 3; 241 4; 2436; 244 5. 
 
 Printed by Hazcll, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Ayleslmry