It is only the great-hearted who can be true friends: the mean and cowardly can never know what true friendship means.
Sermons on David. 1866.
True Heroines. March 14.
What is the commonest, and yet the least remembered form of heroism? The heroism of an average mother. Ah! when I think of that broad fact I gather hope again for poor humanity, and this dark world looks bright, this diseased world looks wholesome to me once more, because, whatever else it is or is not full of, it is at least full of mothers.
Lecture on Heroism. 1873.
Secret Atheism. March 15.
There is little hope that we shall learn the lessons God is for ever teaching us in the events of life till we get rid of our secret Atheism, till we give up the notion that God only visits now and then to disorder and destroy His own handiwork, and take back the old scriptural notion that God is visiting all day long for ever, to give order and life to His own work, to set it right where it goes wrong, and re-create it whenever it decays.
Water of Life Sermons. 1866.
Tolerance. March 16.
If we really love God and long to do good and work for God, if we really love our neighbours and wish to help them, we shall have no heart to quarrel about how the good is to be done, provided it is done. “Master,” said St. John, “we saw one casting out devils in Thy name, and he followeth not us; wilt Thou that we forbid him? And Jesus said, Forbid him not.”