Self-Security. May 24.
Strange it is how mortal man, “who cometh up and is cut down like the flower,” can harden himself into a stoical security, and count on the morrow which may never come. Yet so it is, and perhaps if it were not so no work would get done on earth—at least by the many who know not that God is guiding them, while they fancy they are guiding themselves.
Two Years Ago, chap. i.
There is a Providence which rules this earth, whose name is neither Political Economy nor Expediency, but the Living God, who makes every right action reward, and every wrong action punish, itself.
History Lecture, Cambridge. 1866.
Loss and Gain. May 25.
“He has yet to learn what losing his life to save it means, Amyas. Bad men have taught him (and I fear these Anabaptists and Puritans at home teach little else) that it is the one great business of every man to save his own soul after he dies; every one for himself; and that that, and not divine self-sacrifice, is the one thing needful, and the better part which Mary chose.”
“I think,” said Amyas, “men are enough inclined to be selfish without being taught that.”
Westward Ho! chap. vii. 1854.