A Child’s Heart. May 23.
“I saw at last! I found out that I had been trying for years which was stronger, God or I; I found out I had been trying whether I could not do well enough without Him; and there I found that I could not—could not! I felt like a child who had marched off from home, fancying it can find its way, and is lost at once. I did not know that I had a Father in heaven who had been looking after me, when I fancied I was looking after myself. I don’t half believe it now.” . . . And so the old heart passed away from Thomas Thurnall, and instead of it grew up the heart of a little child.
Two Years Ago, chap. xxviii. 1857.
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.”