MS.
The Ancient Creeds. July 3.
Blessed and delightful it is when we find that even in these new ages the Creeds, which so many fancy to be at their last gasp, are still the finest and highest succour, not merely of the peasant and the outcast, but of the subtle artist and the daring speculator. Blessed it is to find the most cunning poet of our day able to combine the rhythm and melody of modern times with the old truths which gave heart to the martyrs at the stake, to see in the science and the history of the nineteenth century new and living fulfilments of the words which we learnt at our mother’s knee!
Miscellanies. 1850.
A Master-Truth. July 4.
Every creature of God is good, if it be sanctified with prayer and thanksgiving! This to me is the master-truth of Christianity, the forgetfulness of which is at the root of almost all error. It seems to me that it was to redeem man and the earth that Christ was made man and used the earth!—that Christianity has never yet been pure, because it never yet, since St. Paul’s time, has stood on this as the fundamental truth, and that it has been pure or impure, just in proportion as it has practically and really acknowledged this truth.
Letters and Memories. 1842.
English Women. July 5.
Let those who will sneer at the women of England. We who have to do the work and fight the battle of life know the inspiration which we derive from their virtue, their counsel, their tenderness—and, but too often, from their compassion and their forgiveness. There is, I doubt not, still left in England many a man with chivalry and patriotism enough to challenge the world to show so perfect a specimen of humanity as a cultivated British woman.
Lecture on Thrift. 1869.