Do the duty which lies nearest to you; your duty to the man who lives next door, and to the man who lives in the next street. Do your duty to your parish, that you may do your duty by your country and to all mankind, and prove yourselves thereby civilised men.
Water of Life Sermons. 1866.
Nature and Grace. May 8.
Why speak of the God of Nature and the God of grace as two antithetical terms? The Bible never in a single instance makes the distinction, and surely if God be the eternal and unchangeable One, and if all the universe bears the impress of His signet, we have no right, in the present infantile state of science, to put arbitrary limits of our own to the revelation which He may have thought good to make of Himself in Nature. Nay, rather, let us believe that if our eyes were opened we should fulfil the requirement of genius and see the universal in the particular by seeing God’s whole likeness, His whole glory, reflected as in a mirror in the meanest flower, and that nothing but the dulness of our simple souls prevents them from seeing day and night in all things the Lord Jesus Christ fulfilling His own saying, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.”
Glaucus. 1855.
Wisdom the Child of Goodness. May 9.
Goodness rather than talent had given her a wisdom, and goodness rather than courage a power of using that wisdom, which to those simple folk seemed almost an inspiration.
Two Years Ago, chap. ii. 1857.
Rule of Life. May 10.
Two great rules for the attainment of heavenly wisdom are simple enough—“Never forget what and where you are,” and “Grieve not the Holy Spirit.”