What is this strange thing, without which even the true knowledge of doctrine is of no use? without which either a man or a nation is poor, and blind, and wretched, and naked in soul, notwithstanding all his religion? Isaiah will tell, “Wash you, make you clean, saith the Lord. Do justice to the fatherless, relieve the widow.” Church-building and church-going are well, but they are not repentance. Churches are not souls. I ask for your hearts, and you give me fine stones and fine words. I want souls, I want your souls.
National Sermons. 1851.
Work or Want. July 12.
Remember that we are in a world where it is not safe to sit under the tree and let the ripe fruit drop into your mouth; where the “competition of species” works with ruthless energy among all ranks of being, from kings upon their thrones to the weed upon the waste; where “he that is not hammer is sure to be anvil;” and “he who will not work neither shall he eat.”
Ancien Régime. 1867.
True Insight. July 13.
It is easy to see the spiritual beauty of Raffaelle’s Madonnas, but it requires a deeper and more practised, all-embracing, loving, simple spirituality, to see the same beauty in the face of a worn-out, painful, peasant woman haggling about the price of cottons.
Form and colour are but the vehicle for the spirit-meaning. In the “spiritual body” I fancy they will both be united with the meaning—all and every part and property of man and woman instinct with spirit!
MS. 1843.