LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. i]^. - ioitgrigj^ Ifo '*t "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. i £I)is5 3.arcom'S 13oofes; POETICAL V/ORKS. HeruseJwld Edition. With Portrait. lamo, $1.75 ; full gilt, $2.25. POEMS. i6mo, $1.25. AN IDYL OF WORK. i6mo, ^1.25. Wl LD ROSES OF CAPE ANN, AND OTHER POEMS. i6mo, gilt top, ^1.25. CHILDHOOD SONGS. Illustrated. i2mo, |i.oo. BREATHINGS OF THE BETTER LIFE. Edited by Lucy Larcom. iSmo, I1.25. ROADSIDE POEMS FOR SUMMER TRAVELLERS. Selected by Lucy Larcom. i8mo, $1.00. HILLSIDE AND SEASIDE IN POETRY. Selected by Lucy Larcom. iSmo, $1.00. BECKONINGS FOR EVERY DAY. A Collection of Quotations for each day in the year. Com|Hled by Lucy Larcom. i6mo. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY', Boston and New York. BECKONINGS A CALENDAR OF THOUGHT ARRANfftlD BY LUCY LARCOM ^^^^S ^^s ^^H^¥^B^m 1 1 ^S5^^^ OCT 16 .^, ^ Op WASHIWO t-^ BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY i886 Copyright, 1886, By LUCY LARCOM. All rights reserved. J ^ % ^ ^' The Riverside Press, Cambridge : Electrotyped and Printed by H, 0. Houghton & Co. MONTHS AND THEMES. January . February- March April . May . June . July . August September October . November December . The Invisible Presence . . 6 . Our Work 24 . Our Neighbor 41 . Nature and Ourselves ... 59 . Sunbeam and Shadow ... 77 . Blossom-Time 96 . Freedom, Beauty, and Poetry 114 . Toward the Heights . . . 130 . Heart unto Heart .... 149 . Among the Sheaves .... 168 . Heaven-Life on Earth . . . 183 . Within the Yeil 203 INTRODUCTORY. This little volume is not wholly dissimilar in idea from others of the kind which have been issued from year to year; yet it has features sufficiently distinctive to give it a reason for being. It grew up in the arranger's mind from a desire to share with others thoughts which had given uplift and enlargement to her own life, and the work seemed more and more worth doing as it went on. Such a book, to be really valuable, must be a growth, and scarcely a rapid one : this has been taken up as a pleasant side-occupa- tion during two or three years ; and has been in itself a refreshing and stimulating compan- ionship. Aiming, as its title suggests, to give some of the most awakening and inspiring words of the great and good in all ages, there are naturally many familiar passages ; not a few, perhaps, which have appeared in other compilations ; yet it is believed that the amount of fresh material hitherto unappropriated in this way is unusually large, 2 INTRODUCTORY. The effort has been to enter into the spirit of modern thought and aspiration, and also to show how the best expressions of the best minds of ear- lier and later times harmonize in the truth. Poet and philosopher and Christian thinker, speaking from their deepest insight, strike the same key- note, and meet in one concord of eternal verities. And it is wonderful to see and to feel how all high thought converges, as the ray to the centre, in the highest Christian thought — that of the Divine Humanity, the Presence of the Son of God in the world. Believers are perhaps too ready to satisfy themselves with the consolations of their faith, forgetting that its real power is in its imceasing upward call. It is not good for us to breathe always the soft atmosphere of the valley, how- ever soothing it may be : the bracing air of spiritual heights strengthens the soul to ascend towards the grandeur of its immortal destiny. The saint were scarcely a saint, if he were not also capable of more than earthly heroisms ; and the leading endeavor has been to keep in sight this loftier aspect of Christianity, which is as much more nobl/ human as it is deeply and in- tensely Christian. The thought that all truth is Divine truth, and that all real life is Eternal Life, is more deeply impressing itself upon the heart and soul of our age than of any preceding ; and herein is deep INTRODUCTORY. 3 ground for gratitude and prophetic hope. What poetry and philosophy had announced, Revela* tion has confirmed, with an ever-widening out- look through illimitable vistas. The arrangement of subjects under the differ- ent months has necessarily been in some degree arbitrary ; but it was thought that something of coherence would make the book more useful to the reader. If honored names among the living and the departed are often repeated, it is because to them have been committed larger measures of that truth which belongs to all the world, because it is of God. The compiler has connected these groups of thought by a thread of her own, from month to month ; but credit has been given for everything not original by quotation-marks where unknown, or by the names of known authors. L. L. Beverly, Mass, June, 1886. THE NEW YEAR. Behold, the New Year beckons, like a flower Hid in its roots among the untrodden hills : God show thee how its sweetness every hour Grows only as His breath thy spirit fills ! Behold, the New Year beckons, like a star, A splendid mystery of the unf athomed skies : God guide thee through His mystic spaces far, Till all His stars as suns within thee rise ! The New Year beckons. He too, beckoning, nears ; Forget not thou that all its gifts are His ! Take from His hand all blessings of the years, And of the blossoming, starred eternities ! FIRST MONTH. The year opens with a beauty of its own. Its gateway is crystal; its threshold is garnished with the tints of all manner of precious stones= In the glittering pendants over doorway and window, in the iridescence of ice-hung trees, we catch the changeful hues of blossoms, fountains, blue skies, and rainbows, hidden within this white gate, in the summer that is yet far away, a promise unfulfilled. And in this wonder of blended purity and color, this splendor which transfigures the famil- iar landscape, other visions flash upon us, — the illumination of the unseen, — ^' A glimpse of glory infinite — The f oregleam of the Holy City Like that to him of Patmos given ; The white bride coming down from heaven." " The twelve gates were twelve pearls ; every several gate was of one pearl." By each of our months we enter upon a distinct and beautiful revelation of this world, which was meant to be the City of the Living God. The gateways that let in the cool of the north, the balm of the south, the glow of the east, and the tenderness of the west, — winter, spring, summer, autumn, — each 6 BECKONING S. brings earth its own peculiar charm. It is the same world, yet without sameness, seen through a halo of infinitely-varying beauty. Light is life. Alike in the visible and spirit- ual worlds, it is the one primal element of being. Through luminous gateways opening all around us, the soul passes on into glory which no eye hath seen or can see — into the nearer Presence of Him who is Light ; in whom "is no darkness at aU." JANUARY, THE INVISIBLE PRESENCE. 1 January. There is something in the hu- man mind which makes it know that in all finite quantity there is an infinite, in all measure of time an eternal; that the latter are the basis, the substance, the true and abiding reality, of the former ; and that as we truly are only as far as God is with us, so neither can we truly possess (that is, enjoy) our being, or any other real good, but by living in the sense of His holy presence. S. T. COLERIDaE. There is a Height higher than mortal thought ; There is a Love warmer than mortal love ; There is a Life which taketh not its hues From Earth or earthly things, and so grows pure, And higher than the petty cares of men, And is a blessed life and glorified. Edwin Mobbis. 2 January, Man's unhappiness, as I con- THE INVISIBLE PRESENCE. 7 strue, comes of his greatness : it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the finite. Thomas Carlyle. Are there not aspirations in each heart After a better, brighter world than this ; — Longings for beings nobler in each part. Things more exalted, steeped in deeper bliss ? Who gave us these ? What are they ? Soul, in thee The bud is budding now for immortality ! Robert Nicoll. 3 January. A divine discontent is wrought into us, — divine, because it attends our highest faculties. The repose of the greater spirits is not acquies- cence in the allotments of time, but the conscious possession of eternal life. t. t. Mungeh. I hear it often in the dark, — I hear it in the light, — Where is the voice that calls to me With such a quiet might ? It seems but echo to my thought, And yet beyond the stars : It seems a heart-beat in a hush, And yet the planet jars ! Oh, may it be that far within My inmost soul there lies A spirit-sky, that opens with Those voices of surprise ? 8 BECKOXINGS. And can it be, by night and day, That firmament serene Is just the heaven where God Himself, The Father, dwells unseen ? w. c. Gi^csFrr. 4 January. The soul, in its highest sense, is a vast capacibi^ for God. It is like a curious chamber added on to being, a chamber with elas- tic and contractile walls, which can be expanded, with God as its guest, inimitably ; but which without God shrinks and shrivels until every ves- tige of the Divine is gone, and God's image is left without God's Spirit. — Nature has her re- venge upon neglect as well as upon extravagance. Misuse, with her, is as mortal a sin as abuse. Upward the soul forever turns her eyes ; The next hour always shames the hour before ; One beauty, at its highest, prophesies That by whose side it shall seem mean and poor. No God-like thing knows aught of less and less, But widens to the boundless Perfectness. James Russelx Lowell. 5 January. Man is not placed in the world of sense alone, but the essential root of his being is in God. When the consciousness of the true source of his existence first rises upon him, and he joyfully resigns himself to it, till his being is steeped in the thought, then peace and joy and blessedness flow in upon his soul. And it lies in the Divine Idea that aU men must come to this gladden- THE INVISIBLE PRESENCE. 9 ing consciousness, — that the outward and taste- less finite life may be pervaded by the Infinite, and so enjoyed ; and to this end all who have been filled with the Divine Idea have labored and shall still labor, — that this consciousness, in its purest possible form, may be spread through- out the race. Fichtb. " Every inward aspiration Is God's angel undefiled ; And in every ' O my Father ! ' Slumbers deep a ' Here, my child ! ' " 6 January. Our lot is greater than our- selves, and gives to our souls a worth they would not else have dared to claim. Hence, the hum- bleness there always is in Christian dignity. The immortal lot infinitely transcends our poor deserts ; how we are to grow into the propor- tions of so high a life, it is wonderful to think. And yet, though it be above us always, — nay, even because it is above us, — there is something in it true and answering to our nature still ; so that, having once lived with it, we are only half ourselves — and that the meaner half — without it. James Martineau. No true man can live a half life when he has genuinely learned that it is only a half life. The other half, the higher half, must haunt him. Phillips Brooks. 7 January. It is the one sufficient proof of the grandeur and awfulness of our nature, I 10 BECKOI^INGS. that we have faith in God : for no merely finite being can possibly believe the infinite. James Maetineau. Oh ! what is man, great Maker of mankind, That Thou to him so great respect dost bear ? That Thou adornest him with so bright a mind, Makest him a king, and even an angel's peer ? Thou leavest Thy print in other works of thine ; But Thy whole image Thou in man hast writ : There cannot be a creature more divine, Except, like Thee, it should be infinite. Sir John Davies. 8 January. If I were to construct one all- embracing argument for immortality, and were I to put it into one word, it would be God. T. T. MUNGEB. Yes ! in my spirit doth Thy Spirit shine, As shines the sunbeam in a drop of dew. In Thee I live and breathe, aspiring high, Even to the Throne of Thy Divinity : I am, O God, and surely Thou must be ! Derzhavin. 9 January. When Christ showed us God, then man had only to stand at his highest and look up to the Infinite above him to see how small he was. And, always, the true way to be humble is not to stoop till you are smaller than yourself, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that shall show you what the real smallness of your greatest greatness is. The THE INVISIBLE PRESENCE. 11 first is the unreal humility that always goes about depreciating human nature ; the second is the genuine humility that always stands in love and adoration, glorifying God. Phillips Brooks. God is in all that liberates and lifts ; In all that humbles, sweetens, and consoles. J. R. Lowell. 10 January. By humility, by self-denial, by unworldliness, by spiritual thought, by devout aspiration, by silent communion with God, we grow into an abiding sense of eternal life. " Join thyself," says Augustine, " to the eternal God, and thou wilt be eternal.'' t. t. Hunger. The saint that wears heaven's brightest crown In deepest adoration bends : The weight of glory bears him down Then most, when most his soul ascends : Nearest the throne itself must be The footstool of humility. James Montgomery. 11 January. Let us be men with men, and always children before God ; for in His eyes we are but children. Old age itself, in the presence of eternity, is but the first moment of a morn- ing. JOUBERT. Our little lives are kept in equipoise By opposite attractions and desires : The struggle of the instinct that enjoys, And the more noble instinct that aspires. H. W. Longfellow. 12 BECKONES'GS. 12 January. The unworldly Christian, if he has the true mettle of a great life in him. never looks away from the things of time, hut looks only the more piercingly into them and through them. He does not expect to find God heyond them, hut in them, and by means of them. these grand, unworldly souls, how majestic their aspirations, how solid their objects, how firm their sense of God ! They Hve in the present as a kind of eternity, never sick of it, and never wantinof more, but only what this simifies. Horace BuaHyrj.T,. To live, to live, is life's great joy, — to feel The living God within. — to look abroad. And. in the beauty that all things reveal. Still meet the living God. Roezet Lzightox. 13 January. The place of a man before the pure, all-witnessing Spirit of God. and in the estimation of those who are heavenly-minded, determines his place in the world. All true rela- tions are eternal. p. c. Mozoomdab. 'T is the sublime of man, Our noontide majesty, to know ourselves Parts and proportions of one wondrous whole ! This fraternizes man; this constitutes Our charities and bearings. But 't is God Diffused through all, that doth make aU one whole. S. T. COLEEIDGE. 14 January. The love of God is the love THE INVISIBLE PRESENCE. 13 of goodness. The old Saxon word God is iden- tical with Good : God the Good One — personi- fied goodness. There is in that derivation not a niere play of words — there is deep truth. None loves God but he who loves good. F. W. Robertson. Souls that of His own good life partake, He loves as His own self ; dear as His eye They are to Hini : He '11 never them forsake : When they shall die, then God Himself shall die : They live, they live in blest eternity. Henry More. 15 January. If you always remember that in all you do in soul or body, God stands by as a witness, in all your prayers and your actions you will not err ; and you shall have God dwell- ing with you. ' Epictetus. O Thou, who in the inaccessible depths Dwellest, of all central Being, and of whom We can see but the star-dust of Thy feet Left on heaven's roads ; — from world nathless to world, From firmament to firmament can we trace. Each soul, his individual link with Thee ! p. J. Bailey. 16 January. For God made our individual- ity as well as our dependence ; made our apart- ness from Himself, that freedom should bind us divinely dearer to Himself, with a new and in- 14 BECKOXINGS. scrutable marvel of love : for the Godhead is still at the root, is the making root of om* indi- viduality ; and the freer the man, the stronger the bond that binds him to Him who made his fi-eedom. He made our wills, and is striving to make them free ; for only in the perfection of our individuality and the freedom of our wills can we be altogether His children. Geobge macDonald. 17 January. Every man who has a Chris- tian ideal of life finds, as it grows into his ex- perience, that he is driven in upon his own soul more and more imperatively. Secret resources become more and more necessary to him. Con- ceptions of truth grow up within him which the soul must develop alone. Men who are not c}Tiics often live, by force of nature, apart from their equals. They do their life's work better alone than they could with hu- man help. Such men must meet Christ in the ^' solitary places." They have no adequate re- sources elsewhere. Austin Phelps. Mine be the reverent, listening love That waits all day on Thee, "With the service of a watchful heart Which no one else can see ; — The faith that, in a hidden way No other eye may know. Finds all its daily work prepared. And loves to have it so. A. l. waeixg. THE INVISIBLE PRESENCE. 15 18 January. Each in his hidden sphere of joy or woe Our hermit spirits dwell, and range apart ; Our eyes see all around in gloom or glow, Hues of their own, fresh borrowed from the heart. And well it is for us our God should feel Alone our secret throbbings : so our prayer May readier spring to heaven, nor spend its zeal On cloud-born idols of this lower air. Keble. 19 January. Wliat we want to make us true men, over and above that which we bring into the world with us, is some sort of God-given in- stinct, motive, and new principle of life in us, which shall make us not only see the right and the true and the noble, but love it, and give up our wills and hearts to it, and find in the confes- sion of our weakness a strength, in the subjec- tion of our own wills a freedom, in the utter carelessness about self a self-respect, such as we have never known before. Chakles Kingsley. Man's weakness waiting upon God Its end can never miss ; For men on earth no work can do More angel-like than this. Ill that He blesses is our good, And unblest good is ill; And all is right that seems most wrong, If it be His sweet Will ! f. w. faber. 16 BECKONINGS. 20 January. Selfishness is the direct an- tagonist to the sense of the Infinite. The former cramps us within our own miserable body ; the latter spreads one abroad through the universe. F. W. Newman. All the doors that lead inward to the secret place of the Most High, are doors outward — out of self — out of smallness — out of wrong. Geoege MacDonald. 21 January. Nothing is eternal but that which is done for God and others. That which is done for self dies. Perhaps it is not wrong, but it perishes. That which ends in self is mortal ; that alone which goes out of self into God lasts forever. F. W. Robertson. O brooding Spirit of Wisdom and of Love, Whose mighty wings even now o'ershadow me, Absorb me in Thine own immensity, And raise me far my finite self above ! Let no desire of ease, No lack of courage, faith, or love delay Mine own steps on that high, thought-paven way In which my soul her clear commission sees ! Yet with an equal joy let me behold Thy chariot o'er that way by others rolled ! W. R. Hamilton. 22 January. God is infinite and without end ; but the soul's desire is an abyss which can- not be filled except by a Good which is infinite. THE INVISIBLE PRESENCE. 17 God is a Good without drawback, and a well of living water without bottom ; and the soul is made in the image of God, and is therefore cre- ated to know and love God. John taulkr. From Thee is all that soothes the life of man, — His high endeavor, and his glad success, His strength to suffer, and his will to serve. But oh. Thou bounteous Giver of all good, Thou art of all Thy gifts Thyself the crown ! Give what Thou canst, without Thee we are poor, And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away. COWPEK. 23 January. In our outward occupations let us be more occupied with God than with all else. To do them well, we must do them in His presence and for His sake. At the sight of the majesty of God, calmness and serenity should possess the soul. A word from the Lord stilled the raging of the sea, and a glance from Him to us, and from us to Him, should still do the same in our daily life. f^elon. I sit within my room and joy to find That Thou, who always lovest, art with me here ; That I am never left by Thee behind. But by Thyself Thou keepest me ever near. The fire burns brighter when with Thee I look, And seems a kinder servant sent to me : With gladder eyes I read Thy holy book, Because Thou art the eyes by which I see. Jones Very. 18 BECKONINGS. 24 January. There is a darkness that comes of effulgence ; and the most veiling of all veils is the light. That for which the eye exists is light, but through light no human eye can pierce. I find myself beyond my depth. I am ever beyond my depth, afloat in an infinite sea ; but the depth of the sea knows me, for the ocean of my being is God. Gboegs MacDonald. Yea ! in Thy life our little lives are ended ; Into Thy depths our trembling spirits fall ; In Thee enfolded, gathered, comprehended, As holds the sea her waves — Thou boldest us all. Eliza Scuddbb. 25 January. The mystery of light is the privilege and the prerogative of the profoundest things. The shallow things are capable only of the mystery of darkness. Nothing is so thin, so light, so small, that if you cover it with clouds and hide it in half-lights, it will not seem mysteri- ous. But the most genuine and profound things you may bring forth into the fullest light, and let the sunshine bathe them through and through, and in them will open ever new wonders of mys- teriousness. Philups bbcwks. What heart can comprehend Thy name. Or, searching, find Thee out. Who art within a quickening Flame, A Presence round about ? THE INVISIBLE PRESENCE. 19 O sweeter than all else besides, The tender mystery That like a veil of shadow hides The Light I may not see ! F. L. HOSMEB. 26 January. Sweep away the illusions of time ; glance, if thou have eyes, from the near moving cause to the far-distant Mover ! — Then sawest thou that this fair universe, were it in the meanest province thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City of God ; that through every star, through every grass-blade, and most through every living soul, the glory of a present God still beams. But Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from the foolish. Thomas Carlylb. Crystal the pavement Seen through the stream ; Firm the reality Under the dream : We may not feel it ; Still we may mend ; How we have conquered Not known till the end. Henry Alpord. 27 January. Among the children of God, while there is always that fearful and bowed ap- prehension of His majesty, and that sacred dread of all offense to Him, which is called the fear of God, yet of real and essential fear there is not any, but clinging of confidence to Him as their 20 BECKONINGS. Kock, Fortress, and Deliverer, and perfect love, and casting out of fear ; so that it is not possi- ble that while the mind is rightly bent on Him there should be any dread of anything either earthly or supernatural ; and the more dreadful seems the height of His majesty, the less fear they feel that dwell in the shadow of it. John Ruskin. 28 January. From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all. R. W. Emerson. Well, I have had my turn, have been Raised from the darkness of the clod, And for a glorious moment seen The brightness of the skirts of God ; And known the light within my breast, Though wavering oftentimes, and dim, — The power, the will, that never rest. And cannot die, — were all from Him. W. C. Bryant. 29 January. Christ came to bring man's spirit into immediate contact with God's Spirit ; to sweep away everything intermediate. In lonely union,. face to face, man's spirit and God's Spirit must come together. It is a grand thought. Aspire to this 1 Aspire to greatness, goodness ! So let your spirit mingle with the Spirit of the Everlasting. F. W. Robertson. There is in heaven a light, whose goodly shine Makes the Creator visible to all THE INVISIBLE PRESENCE. 21 Created, that in seeing Him alone Have peace : and in its circuit spreads so far That the circumference, with enlarging zone Doth girdle in the worlds. dante. 30 January. Behold, He who hid Himself in darkness has come forth into the region which our most dear affections and our loftiest thoughts keep forever flooded with brightness. He is our Father, our Brother, our Inspiring Friend, — Father, Brother, Friend ! These are words of light. Phillips Brooks. Oh Light, so white and pure, Oft-clouded, and yet sure ! What matter by what Name We call Thee, — still art Thou the same, — God call we Thee, or Good. When now our day of life draws to its end, Looking, with less of awe and more of love, To Thy high throne above, We see no dazzling brightness as of old, No kingly splendors cold, But the sweet Presence of a heavenly Friend. Edwin Morris. 31 January. We hear Thy voice when thunders roll Through the wide field of air ; The waves obey Thy dread control, — But still Thou art not there ! — Where shall I find Him, O my soul, Who yet is everywhere ? 22 BECKONINGS. Oh, not in circling depth or height, But in the conscious breast, Present to faith, though veiled from sight, There does His Spirit rest. Oh come, Thou Presence Infinite, And make thy creature blest ! Condke. " Glory about thee, within thee ; and thou fulfill- est thy doom. Making Him broken gleams and a stifled splen- dor and gloom. Speak to Him, then, for He hears, and spirit with spirit can meet : Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than . hands and feet." SECOND MONTH. In February, the bare boughs of the elms have a pathetic look, stretching up towards the gray, unresponsive sky. Yet they seem to know it to be the same sky through which the summer sunshine melted into every fibre, winning forth delicate bud and luxuriant leafage, the same sky through which came to them the music of the west wind and the singing of birds. Now their innumerable little twigs reach out and upward, like beseeching fingers, numb with cold ; as if from the heart of the tree arose a si- lent prayer for warmth and light. But the sky gives no answer, except by the rough voice of the North Wind, that chills back the shivering germs into their cells. The great boughs groan, shaken by the gale, and all the branches shudder and sway in the bitter air. But they never withdraw their patient appeal, however tossed about and repulsed. For sum- mer is there, within the sky, and these fierce winds are her messengers, most friendly to the tree's growth, stirring its stagnant juices, and making it strong through resistance, for its won- derful future life. The heart of heaven is warm, behind her chilling breath, and the awaited bless- ing will surely come. 24 BECKOXINGS. And the toil of the ti-ee goes on with her praver. Even in the midst of her struggle with the elements, the sap is steadily carried up from root to remotest branch, ready for earUest use. Natural creations as well as spiritual, work out their own salyation with fear and trembling, obeying the Inyisible Power that is at work within them. FEBRUARY. OUR WORK. 1 February. The God of the Bible and the God of the Uniyerse. I now diyine afar off, may- be known as One. But I am sure that to know Him at all, except by guess. I must resolve to do my work within His world, rather than to specu- late about Him. Jobs Stfettvg. I slept, and dreamed that life was beauty ; 1 woke, and found that life was duty. TVas my dream, then, a shadowy lie ? Toil on. sad heart, courageously, And thou shalt find thy dream shall be A noonday light and truth to thee. Mes. Hooper. 2 Febniary. To be at work, to do things for the world, to turn the currents of the things about us at our will, to make our existence a positiye element, eyen though it be no bigger OUR WORK. 25 than a grain of sand, in this great system where we live, — that is a new joy of which the idle man knows no more than the mole knows of the sunshine, or the serpent of the eagle's triumphant flight into the upper ^air. The man who knows indeed what it is to act, to work, cries out, " This, this alone is to live ! " Phillips Brooks. Was it right, While my unnumbered brethren toiled and bled. That I should dream away the intrusted hours On rose-leaf beds, pampering the coward heart With feelings all too delicate for use ? S. T. Coleridge. 3 February. Hold fast by the present! Every situation — nay, every moment — is of in- finite value, for it is the representative of a whole eternity. Goethe. Even the wisest are long in learning that there is no better work for them than the bit God puts into their hands. Edward Garrett. Better to stem with heart and hand The roaring tide of life, than lie Unmindful, on its flowery strand. Of God's occasions drifting by. J. G. Whittier. 4 February. The situation that has not its duty, its ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes, here in this poor, miserable, hampered, des- picable Actual, wherein thou even now standest. k 26 BECKONINGS. — here or nowhere is thy Ideal : work it out therefrom ; and working, believe, live, be free I T. Caeltlb. No man is born into the world, whose work Is not born with him. There is always work And tools to work withal, for those who will: And blessed are the horny hands of toil. James Russell Lowell. 6 February. I cannot but think that one of the truest ways in which Christianity has made humility at once a commoner and a nobler grace, has been in the way it has furnished work for the higher powers of man, which used to be idle and only ponder proudly on themselves. Idleness standing in the midst of unattempted tasks is always proud. Work is always tending to humility. Work touches the keys of endless activity, opens the infinite, and stands awe-struck before the immensity of what there is to do. I am sure we all know the fine, calm, sober humbleness of men who have tried themselves against the tasks of life. It was great in Paul, and in Luther, and in Cromwell. It is some- thing that never comes into the character, never shows in the face of a man who has never worked. Phillips Beooks. 6 February. Oh, labor truly blest! Thou rulest all the race : Over all the toiling earth I see thy gracious face Stand forth confest. OUR WORK. 27 Where most thou art, Man rises upward to a loftier height And views the earth and heavens with clearer sight, And holds a cleaner heart. Edwin Moeris. There is no work so small, no art so mean, but it all comes from God, and is a special gift from Him. If, when at thy work, thou feel thy spirit stirred within thee, receive it with solemn joy, and thus learn to do thy work in God, instead of straightway fleeing from thy task. John tauler. 7 February. It is no man's business whether he has genius or not : work he must, whatever he is, but quietly and steadily ; and the natural and unforced results of such work will always be the things that God meant him to do, and will be his best. If he be a great man, they will be great things ; if a small man, small things ; but always, if thus peacefully done, good and right. John Ruskin. But to the spirit elect there is no choice ; He cannot say. This will I do, or that : A hand is stretched to him from out the dark. Which grasping without question, he is led Where there is work that he must do for God. J. R. Lowell. 8 February. Man, it is not thy works — which are mortal, infinitely little, and the great- est no greater than the least — but only the spirit thou workest in, that can have continuance. T. Carlyle. 28 BECKONESTGS. Be sure, no earnest work Of any honest creature, howbeit weak, Imperfect, ill-adapted, fails so much It is not gathered as a grain of sand To enlarge the sum of human action used For carrying out God's end. I count that heaven itself is only work To a surer issue. Let us be content, in work, To do the thing we can, and not presume To fret because it 's little. Mes. e. b. BKowmNo. 9 February. Every man's business, what- ever it be, becomes a liberal education to him just as soon and just as far as he lives not in its methods but in its principles. Phillips Bkooks. The smallest things become great when God requires them of us: they are small only in themselves : they are always great when they are done for God, and when they serve to unite us with Him eternally. Fekelon. All may of Thee partake : Nothing can be so mean, Which, with this tincture — FOR Thy sake, Will not grow bright and clean. A servant, with this clause, Makes drudgery divine : Who sweeps a room as by Thy laws, Makes that and the action fine. George Hebbebt. OUR WORK. 29 10 February. A Christian should never plead spirituality for being a sloven. If he be but a shoe-cleaner, he should be the best in the parish. John Newton. This world has work for us ; we must refuse No honest task, no uncongenial toil. Fear not your feet to tire, nor robe to soil ; Nor let your hands grow white for want of use ! T. Ashe. 11 February. If two angels were sent from heaven to execute a divine command, one to conduct an empire, and another to sweep a street in it, they would feel no inclination to change employments. John Newton. You and I, toiling for earth, may toil also for heaven ; and every day's work may be a Jacob's ladder reaching up nearer to our God. Theodore Paeker. Like the star That shines afar, Without haste And without rest Let each man wheel with steady sway Round the task that rules the day, * And do his best ! Goethe. 12 February. It is right that we should have an aim of our own, with something peculiar in it, determined by our individuality and our surroundings ; but this may readily degenerate 30 BECKONINGS. into exclusive narrowness, unless it has for a background the great thought that there is a Kingdom of God within us, around us, and above us, in which we, with all our powers and aims, are called to be conscious workers. Towards the forwarding of this silent, ever - advancing kingdom, our little work, whatever it be, if good and true, may contribute something. And this thought lends to any calling, however lowly, a consecration which is wanting even to the loftiest self-chosen ideals. J. c. Shairp. I would not be A worker for mine own bread, or one hired For mine own profit. Oh, I would be free To work for others ; Love so earned of them Should be my wages and my diadem. Jean Ingblow. 13 February. It seems as if the heroes had done almost all for the world that they can do, and not much more can come till common men awake and take their common tasks. I do be- lieve the common man's task is the hardest. The hero has the hero's aspiration that lifts him to his labor. All great duties are easier than the little ones, though they cost far more blood and agony. That is a truth we all find out. , Phillips Brooks. Art little ? Do thy little well, and for thy com- fort know Great men can do their greatest work no better than just so. Goethe. OUR WORK. 31 14 February. The primal duties shine aloft, like stars ; The charities that soothe, and heal, and bless. Are scattered at the feet of man like flowers. The generous inclination, the just rule. Kind wishes and good actions and pure thoughts. No mystery is here, no special boon For high and not for low. Wordsworth. Work for some good, be it ever so slowly : Cherish some flower, be it ever so lowly : Labor ! all labor is noble and holy : Let thy great deeds be thy prayer to thy God ! Frances S. Osgood. 16 February. Let the children of labor re- member that they are of the class which He of Nazareth dignified; that, peradventure, in His youthful days of mechanic toil, He too was looked down upon by the coarse eye of sheer power, — and yet He nurtured, amid indignities and neglect, the spirit that made Him divinely wise. James Martineau. And rugged toil no more shall bear The burden of old crime, or mark of primal shame : A blessing now, — a curse no more ; Since He whose name we breathe with awe, The coarse mechanic vesture wore, — A poor man toiling with the poor, In labor, as in prayer, fulfilling the same law. J. G. Whittier. 16 February. Out of the common stones of 32 BECKOXIXGS. your daily work you may build yourself a tem- ple which shall shelter your head from all harm, and bring down on you the inspii^ation of God. Theodobb PA£EEB. What though unmarked the happy workman toil, And break, unthanked of men, the stubborn clod: It is enough, for sacred is the soil, Dear are the hills of God. Jean In-gelow. 17 February. The advent of better times for the working-classes depends on their own per- sonal reformation, chastity, sobriety, and self-con- trol. It will be said, '• Is this your message to the poor — this severe, heartless message ? " Yes, even so ; the laws of the universe are very stem, alter them you cannot. It would be far more easy, far more palatable to lay the blame on their oppressors rather than on them ; the only objection to such a course is the stern unalterable law of God's universe. The law of life is this : No one can be good, or great, or happy, except through inward efforts of his own, sustained by faith, and strengthened by the grace of God. The message of the Baptist must be repeated : '• Change yourselves, or to you at least no kingdom of God can come." f. w. Robertson. 18 February. Is it not true that a man's heart can really be only in the heart of his work, and that the most conscientious faithfulness in details will always belong to the man, not who OUR WORK. 33 serves the details, but who serves the idea of the work which he has to do ? Phillips Brooks. On bravely through the sunshine and the showers ! Time hath his work to do, and we have ours. R. W. Emerson. 19 February. A great, growing, grandly unfolding soul can be fashioned anywhere, if only God is with him; and his faculty, it may be, will be completing itself as truly in one employ- ment as in another. His heart will grow as big, his imagination kindle itself in fires to him of as great beauty, he will be as original, as deep, as free, and will swing his nature into as high force every way, in using a hammer as in using a pen. God nowhere allows what we so constantly as- sume, that souls are kept back from their com- pleteness by their trades, and grades, and employ- ments. He is going to complete them all, if they will suffer it, in the highest and most perfect form of being possible. h. Bushnell. 20 February. I would not ask Thee that my work Should never bring me pain or fear, Lest I should learn to work alone. And never wish Thy presence near. But I would ask a humble heart, A changeless will to work and wake, A firm faith in Thy providence : The rest — 't is Thine to give or take. Alfred Norris. 34 BECKONINGS. 21 February. This, then, is the great truth of Christ. The treasury of life, your life and mine, the life of every man and every woman, however different they are from one another, they are all in Him. In Him there is the perfeet- ness of every occupation : the perfect trading, the perfect housekeeping, the perfect handicraft, the perfect school-teaching, they are all in Him. In Him lay the completeness of that incomplete act which you did yesterday. In Him lay the possi- ble holiness of that which you made actual sin. To go to Him and get the perfect idea of life and of every action of life, and then to go forth and by His strength fulfill it, — that is the New Testament conception of a strong, successful life. How simple and how glorious it is ! Phillips Beooks. 22 February. They find their glory in their task, Their gladness in their care : What grace, what glory, need they ask, Who of Thy household are ? No weariness overcomes their feet ; For Thee they go and come : Their painful pilgrimage how sweet ! Still, still they are at home. Lord, may I call this bliss my own, — This nearness sweet to Thee ? May I, poor weakling wanderer lone, Of Thine own household be ? OUR WORK. 35 For Thee my hands would toil ; for Thee My feet would go and come : Still of Thy household I would be On earth, in heaven at home. T. H. Gill. 23 February. Make use even of those times in the day when you are only partially occupied with external things to occupy yourself inwardly with God ; for instance, while doing needlework, maintain a close sense of the presence of God. The thought of His presence is less easily pre- served in conversation, but even then you can frequently recall a general consciousness of it, overruling your every word. Fenelon. Lo ! amid the press, The whirl and hum and pressure of my day, I hear Thy garment's sweep, Thy seamless dress, And close beside my work and weariness Discern Thy gracious form, not far away, But very near, O Lord, to help and bless. The busy fingers fly, the eyes may see Only the glancing needle which they hold. But all my life is blossoming inwardly. And every breath is like a litany ; While through each labor, like a thread of gold, Is woven the sweet consciousness of Thee ! Susan Coolidge. 24 February. There is no service like his that serves because he loves. Sm Philip Sidney. 36 BECKONINGS. And deign, O Watcher, with the sleepless brow, Pathetic in its yearning, — deign reply : Is there, oh, is there aught that such as Thou Wouldst take from such as I ? Are there no briers across Thy pathway thrust, Are there no thorns that compass it about, Nor any stones that Thou wilt deign to trust My hands to gather out ? Jean ingelow. 25 February. In most of the relations of life we find it a tough lesson — yet we are far the more robust for learning it — to be content to do good for the doing of it only. One has achieved heroic self-conquest when one's habit of mind takes it as a thing of course that the best life is to be one of unthanked self-denial. That is a discovery which we all have to make, in the economics of beneficence, if we have any persist- ent plan of unselfish living. Austin Phelps. Honest love, honest sorrow, Honest work for the day, honest hope for the mor- row. Are these worth nothing more than the hand they make weary. The heart they have saddened, the life they leave dreary ? Hush ! the sevenfold heavens to the voice of the Spirit Echo, " He that o'ercometh shall aU things in- herit ! " OwKN Meredith. OUR WORK. 37 26 February. Spirits are not finely touched, But to fine issues. Shakespeare. God did anoint thee with His odorous oil, To wrestle, not to reign. Mrs. Browning. God doth not need Either man's works or His own gifts ; who best Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state Is kingly ; thousands at His bidding speed And post o'er land and ocean without rest : They also serve who only stand and wait. John Milton. 27 February. Every great work is endless : we can never accomplish it perfectly. The Son of God, when called away, found the world far away from the kingdom of heaven He came to establish. For what He accomplished He glori- fied God : for what He could not accomplish, He looked up in trust to the Holy Spirit to accom- plish when He was gone. p. c. mozoomdar. We know the arduous strife, the eternal laws To which the triumph of all good is given, — High sacrifice, and labor without pause Even to the death ! else, wherefore should the eye Of man converse with immortality ? Wordsworth. 28 February. Rest is not quitting The busy career ; Rest is the fitting Of self to its sphere. 38 BECKONINGS. 'T is the brook's motion, Clear without strife, Fleeing to ocean After its life. 'T is loving and serving The highest and best : 'T is onward, unswerving ! — And that is true rest. J. s. Dwight. 29 February. For the reward is not repose, but fresh work, a larger sphere of usefulness and influence. The command over ten cities is given to the man whose pound had grown to ten pounds ; the command of five cities to the man whose pound had grown to five pounds. The faculty of doing good, by an eternal law, is mul- tiplied and magnified according to the use which is made of it. F. D. Maurice. Beloved, let us love so well Our work shall still be better for our love, And still our love be sweeter for our work ! Mrs. Browning. SPEING. Ko matter what the almanac may say, The year begins with the first m.onth of spring", When snowdrifts into rivulets slip away. And bluebirds of the coming violet sing ; When March winds sweep the stairway of the rocks From rubbish-heaps of autumn leafage clear, And the sun turns back from the equinox To welcome and lead home the baby year. The baby's name is Spring. Around her feet Quaint ferns their scrolls unroll, and mosses rare With coral fairy-cups steal down to meet Her winsome footsteps on the woodland stair. THIRD MONTH. There comes a season — we hardly know whether it is winter or spring — after Earth is unclothed of her white cerements, but while she is not yet clothed upon with her May radiance and freshness, when the air seems stu'red with mighty prophecies. VTe can almost imagine that the seed and the rootlet sleeping beneath the sod hear the voices that call to them from above. The March wind is the archangel's trumpet of the flowers, bidding them arise and Hve. Ah ! could we but hear and understand the grander prophet-cry that resounds over our sleep- ing powers, every one of which was meant to bless the earth by its bloom : could we oj^en our ears to the tenderness hidden in the stern blast that disturbs, though it does not always arouse us. we should be fitter inhabitants of God's earth and heaven. But we can slumber on, we can let our best impulses die within us, we can be per- versely deaf to the loudest call out of the heaven so close above us, we can make ourselves believe that this call is only a voice heard in a dream, and that the earth where we drowse is all ; and this, alas I we do too willingly. OUR NEIGHBOR. 41 But the great, summoning angels sent from God make a vast unrest in the air of the world for us who know ourselves heirs of the life and immortality which Christ has brought to light. May the lofty music of that " Awake, O sleep- er ! '* sound on until we hear ! MARCH. OUR NEIGHBOR. 1 March. That habit of the old painters of introducing portrait into all their highest works I look to, not as error in them, but as the very source and root of their superiority in all things ; for they were too great and too humble not to see in every face about them that which was above them, and which no fancies of theirs could match or take place of. John Rusxin. We live by admiration, hope, and love ; And even as these are well and wisely fixed. In dignity of being we ascend. Wordsworth. 2 March. Every individual nature has its own beauty. There is no face, no form, which one cannot in fancy associate with great power of intellect or with generosity of soul. Every face, every figure, suggests its own right and sound estate. Our friends are not their own highest form. We see on the lip of our companion the pres- I 42 BECKONINGS. ence or absence of the great masters of thought and poetry to his mind. We read on his brow, on meeting him after many years, that he is where we left him, or that he has made great strides. R. w. Emeeson. How little thou canst tell How much in thee is ill or well ! Nor for thy neighbor nor for thee, Be sure, was life designed to be A draught of dull complacency. Arthur Hugh Clough. 3 March. If not by sympathy discovered, it is not in words explicable with what divine lines and lights the exercise of godliness and charity will mould and gild the hardest and cold- est countenance, neither to what darkness their departure will consign the loveliest. John Ruskin. In the yearning tenderness of a child For every bird that sings above his head, And every creature feeding on the hills. And every tree, and flower, and running brook, We see how everything was made to love, And how they err who, in a world like this, Find anything to hate but human pride. N. P. Willis. 4 March. When we believe that God is the common Father, and that all men and all things which He has made are dear to Him when we think that He is near to every one of us, and that in Him we live and move and have our OUR NEIGHBOR. 48 being, then we cannot count any man or any thing common or unclean. We believe that there is a divine element in each man and each object, and our constant effort must be to draw out this divine element. w. h. Feeemantle. You must, for wisdom, for sanity, have some access to the mind and heart of the common hu- manity. The exclusive excludes himself. R. W. Emeeson. 6 March. Poor and shallow as one's own soul is, it is blessed to think that a sort of tran- substantiation is possible by which the greater ones can live in us. Egotism apart, another's greatness, beauty, or bliss is one's own. And let us sing a Magnificat when we are conscious that this power of expansion and sympathy is grow- ing just in proportion as the individual satisfac- tions are lessening. Miserable dust of the earth we are, but it is worth while to be so for the sake of the living soul, — the breath of God within us. Geoegb Eliot. 6 March. What is meant by our neighbor we cannot doubt ; it is every one with whom we are brought into contact, he or she, whosoever it be, whom we have any means of helping. Dean Stanley. Man is God's image ; but a poor man is Christ's stamp to boot. Geoegb Heebeet. Give human nature reverence for the sake Of One who bore it, making it divine I 44 BECKONINGS. With the ineffable tenderness of God ! Let common need, the brotherhood of prayer, The heirship of an unknown destiny, The unsolved mystery round about us, make A man more precious than the gold of Ophir ! J. G. Whittiee. 7 March. Men will never be joined in true brotherhood by mere plans to give them a self- interest in common. To feel for each other they must first feel with each other. They must have, not one object of gain, but an object of admira- tion in common. To know that they are brothers, they must feel that they have one Father. Chaeles Kingsley. Since Enoch, other men have walked with God ; Not Abraham only has He called His friend ; But men who have our dusty highways trod, Whose hands we touch, with whose our voices blend. His friends will know His friends. How much we miss, Shutting Him out of our heart's holy place — Not recognizing every soul as His — Not seeing Him in every human face ! 8 March. I am certain that it is impossible to keep the law towards one's neighbor except one loves him. The law itself is infinite, reach- ing to such delicacies of action that the man who tries most will be the man most aware of defeat. We are not made for law, but for love. Love is law, because it is infinitely more than law. George MacDonald. OUR NEIGHBOR. 45 Poor indeed thou must be, if around thee Thou no ray of light and joy canst throw ; If no silken cord of love hath bound thee To some little world, through weal and woe. Daily struggling, though unloved and lonely, Every day a rich reward will give : Thou wilt find, by hearty striving only. And truly loving, thou canst truly live. Harriet W. Sewall. 9 March. There is no beautifier of complex- ion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. It is good to give a stranger a meal or a night's lodging. It is better to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, and give courage to a companion. R. W. Emerson. The meal unshared is food unblest : Thou hoard'st in vain what love should spend. Self-ease is pain ; thy only rest Is labor for a worthy end. J. G. Whittier. 10 March. If there be a pleasure on earth which angels cannot enjoy, and which they might almost envy man the possession of, it is the power of relieving distress. If there be a pain which devils might pity man for enduring, it is the death-bed reflection that we have possessed the power of doing good, but that we have abused and perverted it to pur- poses of evil. Lacon. Man is dear to man ; the poorest poor Long for some moments in a weary life 46 BECKONINGS. When they can know and feel that they have been Themselves the fathers and the dealers-out Of some small blessings ; have been kind to such As needed kindness, — for this single cause, That we have all of us one human heart. WOEDSWOETH. 11 March. To understand any man, we must have sympathy for him, even affection. No in- tellectual acuteness, no amount even of pity for his errors, will enable us to see the man from within, and put our own souls into the place of his soul. To do that, one must have passed more or less through his temptations, doubts, hunger of heart and brain. Chaeles Kingslby. I ask Thee for a thoughtful love, Through constant watching wise, To meet the glad with joyful smiles, And wipe the weeping eyes ; And a heart at leisure from itself. To soothe and sympathize. a. l. waeinq. 12 March. The tale of the Divine Pity was never yet believed from lips that were not felt to be moved by human pity. Geoege Euot. " Ask God to give thee skill In comfort's art, That thou mayest consecrated be, And set apart Unto a life of sympathy ! OUR NEIGHBOR. 47 For heavy is the weight of ill In every heart ; And comforters are needed much, Of Christ-Hke touch." 13 March. The more we believe in a Christ who is the divine type, the root, the holder to- gether of all the creation and of all human na- ture, the more certain we feel that, in holding to truth and love where they are found, men are holding to Christ Himself. By unbelievers this might be doubted ; but by believers in Christ it must be held true. And this enables us to em- brace (whether they respond to the embrace or not) all who have a sympathy with goodness, even in its simplest elements. w. h. Feeemantle. But heaven and earth have been More near, since earth hath seen Its God walk earth as Man, since heaven hath shown A Man upon its throne : The street and market-place Grow holy ground ; each face — Pale faces, marked with care. Dark, toil-worn brows — grows fair. King's children are these all : though want and sin Have marred their beauty glorious within, We may not pass them but with reverent eye. Dora Greenwell. 14 March. How can the Son of Man be 48 BECKONINGS. acknowledged, how can the King of men be seen in Him who humbled Himself to the lowest estate, if the rich man does not feel himself on a level with the poorest, if his humanity is not that which is most precious to him ? To be saved from this self-exaltation, this in- humanity, is indeed impossible by any efforts of men, by any precepts of men, by any conven- tions of society. But God, who has appointed riches for men, who has intended that one man should have what another is without, who has organized society on the law of mutual depend- ency and charity, does not leave rich men, any more than poor men, to be the victims of their circumstances. He awakens a hunger and thirst in them which nothing but His righteousness will appease. By a thousand methods of gracious discipline He makes them feel that the sorrows which cause the beggar's heart to ache are those which cause the rich man's heart to ache ; that the sky and the air which they and the poorest share together are more than what they possess and the other wants ; that God is the peasant's God as well as theirs. F. D. maueice. 15 March. How greatly the value of a gift depends upon the manner of giving ! " He who gives soon," according to the old proverb, " gives twice." So he who gives with simplicity, that is, with singleness of purpose, without an underhand design, without expecting praise or notice, he gives twice, thrice, a hundredfold, more than he OUR NEIGHBOR. 49 who gives grudgingly, than he who gives late, than he who gives ostentatiously. One gift well given is as good as a thousand ; a thousand gifts ill given are hardly better than none. Dean Stanley. Sweet is the tear that from some Howard's eye Drops on the cheek of one he lifts from earth : And he that works me good with unmoved face Does it but half ; he chills me while he aids ; My benefactor, not my brother man ! S. T. COLEEIDGE. 16 March. Only the man who gives, hop- ing for nothing again, who gives freely, without calculation, out of the fullness of his heart, ever can find his love returned to him. He may win hatred as well as love ; but love does come in measures he could never dream of. We see it every day ; and every day, perhaps, we may be disappointed at finding some favors which we thought were well laid out bringing back no rec- ompense. They were bestowed with the hope of something again. F. D. maueicb. Give, as the morning that flows out of heaven ! Give, as the waves when their channel is riven ! Give, as the free air and sunshine are given ! Lavishly, utterly, carelessly, give ! Give, as He gave thee, who gave thee to live ! Rose Terry Cooke. 17 March. How easy it is to show mercy in such a way that it will be no mercy, and how truly has the apostle laid his hand on the exact 50 BECKOXINGS. quality which causes kindness to be really kind and mercy really merciful ! Not tenderness, not generosity, no ; but something we can all com- mand, cheerfulness, A bright smile, a beaming countenance, a playful word, these find an en- trance into the closed heart, and raise the down- cast eye, and bless him that gives and him that takes. DEA^- STA^-LEY. " We might all of us give far more than we do, without being a bit the worse : It was never yet loving that emptied the heart, nor giving that emptied the purse. We must be like the woman our Saviour praised, and do but the best we can." " Ay, that '11 be just the plan, neighbor, that '11 be just the plan." Doba GEEE^-wELL. 18 March. But why need instances be mul- tiplied to confirm what all experience proves, that every generous and exalted life blesses — who shall say how greatly ? — not only through direct effort, but simply by being what it is ? Just as a selfish and contracted nature makes aU shrink and narrow up with which it comes in con- tact, so does a free and bountiful spirit expand and quicken all it meets with ; it touches more points than it is itself aware of, and is forever widening its circle of benediction, and drawing within it some fresh and warm interest. Who shaU tell where the warmth and radiance a gen- erous heart casts round it stops ? We may as OUR NEIGHBOR. 51 well try to measure a sunbeam, or to mark the place it falls on. The best blessing lies, " Not in that which we give, but that which we share ; For the gift without the giver is bare." Dora Greenwell. 19 March. Small service is true service while it lasts. The daisy, by the shadow that it casts, Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun. Wordsworth. The least flower, with a brimming cup, may stand And share its dewdrop with another near. Mrs. BROWNma. 20 March. A man is a poor limitary bene- factor. He ought to be a shower of benefits, — a great influence, which should never let his brother go, but should refresh old merits continually with new ones : so that, though absent, he should never be out of my mind, his name never far from my lips ; but if the earth should open at my side, or my last hour were come, his name should be the prayer I should utter to the uni- verse. R. W. Emerson. Be useful where thou livest, that they may Both want and wish thy pleasing presence still, — Find out men's wants and will. And meet them there. All worldly joys go less To the one joy of doing kindnesses. George Herbert. 52 BECKONINGS. 21 March. Where thought and love are act- ive — thought the formative power, love the vital- izing — there can be no sadness. They are in themselves a more intense and extended partici- pation of a divine existence. As they grow, the highest species of faith grows too, and all things are possible. George Eliot. Faith shares the future's promise ; Love's Self-off ering is a triumph won ; And each good thought or action moves The dark world nearer to the sun. J. G. Whittier. 22 March. As the sun does not wait for prayers and incantations that he may rise, but shines at once, and is greeted by all ; so neither wait thou for applause, and shouts, and eulogies, that thou mayest do well, but be a spontaneous benefactor, and thou shalt be beloved like the sun. Epictetxjs. It is not what the best men do, but what they are, that constitutes their truest benefaction to their fellow-men. Certainly, in our own little sphere, it is not the most active people to whom we owe the most. Among the common people whom we know, it is not necessarily those who are busiest, not those who, meteor-like, are ever on the rush after some visible change and work. It is the lives like the stars, which simply pour down on us the calm light of their bright and faithful being, up to which we look, and out of which we gather the deepest calm and courage. Phillips Brooks. OUR NEIGHBOR. 53 23 March. The principle is, that God is the ungrudging bestower of blessings, and that men are His stewards to distribute these blessings. So far as they enter into His mind, the delight will be in spreading abroad, not in accumulat- ing. Their reward will be a continually growing knowledge of His character and purposes. Their treasure will be in whatever things are good, pure, true; their heart will be occupied with these. ^' !>• maueice. Then draw we nearer, day by day. Each to his brethren, all to God : Let the world take us as she may. We must not change our road. Keblb. 24 March. The region of man's life is a spiritual region. God, his friends, his neighbors, his brothers all, is the wide world in which alone his spirit can find room. Himself is his dun- geon. His life is not in knowing that he lives, but in loving all forms of life. Geokge macDonald. I have unlearned contempt. Oh, if there is one law above the rest Written in reason, — if there is a word That I would trace as with a pen of fire Upon the unsunned temper of a child, — If there is anything that keeps the mind Open to angel-visits, and repels The ministry of ill, 't is human love ! God has made nothing worthy of contempt. N. p. Willis. 54 BECKONINGS. I 25 March. The right Christian mind will - find its own image wherever it exists ; it will seek for what it loves, and draw it out of all dens and caves, and it will believe in its being, often when it cannot see it. and always turn away its eyes fi'om beholding vanity : and so it will lie lovingly over all the faults and rough places offlj the human heart, as the snow from heaven does over the hard and black and broken mountain- rocks, following their forms truly, and yet catch- ing light for them to make them fair ; and that must be a steep and unkindly crag indeed which it cannot cover. Joh>- Ruskik. Be noble ! and the nobleness which lies In other men. sleeping, but never dead, Will rise in majesty to meet thine own. J, R. Lowmx. 26 March. It is not. if we understand it rightly, a sign of decreasing, but of increasing, spirituality that miracles have ceased. And so it is a truer discrimination that recognizes the presence of God in men. the saints that are in the world, not by the miracles they work, but by the miracles they are, — by the way in which they bring the grace of God to bear on the sim- ple duties of the household and the street. The sainthoods of the lireside and of the mar- ket-place, — they wear no glory round their heads ; they do their duties in the strength of God ; they have theu' mart^-rdoms and win their palms ; and though they get into no calendars, they leave OUR NEIGHBOR. 55 benediction and a force behind them on the earth when they go up to heaven. Phillips brooks. May I reach That purest heaven, — be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony, — Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, And in diffusion ever more intense ! So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world. George Eliot. 27 March. No man or woman of the hum- blest sort can really be strong, gentle, pure, and good without the world being better for it, with- out somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness. Phillips Brooks. No stream from its source Flows seaward, how lonely soever its course, But some land is gladdened. No star ever rose Or set without influence somewhere. Who knows What earth needs from earth's lowliest creature ? No life Can be pure in its purpose and strong in its strife. And aU life not be purer and stronger thereby. Owen Meredith. 28 March. We must advance, as we live on, from what is brilliant to what is pure, and from what is promised to what is fulfilled, and from what is our strength to what is our crown ; only observing in all things how that which is 56 BECKONINGS. indeed wrong, and to be cut up from the root, is dislike, and not affection. For by the very na- ture of these beautiful qualities which I have de- fined to be the signature of God upon His works it is evident that in whatever we altogether dislike we see not all ; that the keenness of our vision is to be tested by the expansiveness of our love. John Ruskin. 29 March. A man must not choose his neighbor ; he must take the neighbor that God sends him. In him, whoever he be, lies, hid- den or revealed, a beautiful brother. Any rough- hewn semblance of humanity will at length be enough to move the man to reverence and af- fection. It is harder for some to learn this than for others. There are . those whose first impulse is ever to repel, and not to receive. But even these may grow in this grace until a countenance un- known will awaken in them a yearning of affec- tion rising to pain, because there is for it no expression, and they can only give the man to God and be still. Gboege macDonald. And judge none lost ! but wait and see, With hopeful pity, not disdain. The depth of the abyss may be The measure of the height of pain And love and glory that may raise This soul to God in after-days. Adelaide A. Peocteb. 30 March. It is not for ourselves alone that OUR NEIGHBOR. 57 we live and aspire, but by our sympathy we carry others with us. For this, perhaps, is the highest form of influence : not one man doing good to another, but one holding the hand of his brother, as saying, " Let us aspire together, God helping us, towards that which is just and pure and true." W. H. Freemantlb. To thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. Shaeespeabb. He that feeds men serveth few ; He serves all who dares be true. R. W. Emerson. 31 March. And then comes that last and most difficult lesson of Love, to make allowance even for the uncharitable. For, surely, below all that uncharitableness which is so common there is often a germ of the life of Love ; and be- neath that intolerance which may often wound ourselves a loving and a candid eye may discern zeal for God. Earth has not a spectacle more glorious or more fair to show than this : Love tolerating intolerance, — Charity covering as with a veil even the sin of the lack of charity. F. W. Robertson. Yet in the eye of life's all-seeing sun We shall behold a something we have done ; Shall, of the work together we have wrought, Beyond our aspiration and our thought Some not unworthy issue yet receive, — For love is fellow-service, I believe. Arthur Hugh Clough. FOURTH MONTH. April is the promise-month. Sunshine and breeze and bird invite the hidden life of earth up into the freedom and glory of the air. The buds of arbutus and violet and anemone tremble tim- idly at the doors of their underground prison, and the grass hardly dares to spread its delicate carpet over the fields. But heaven vrill meet the shrinking earth more closely, more persuasively yet. The raiu descends from the skies, warm, tender, and fresh. It goes down to the roots of the grateful plant, and, like human sympathy, wins its way into darkness nothing else could penetrate. Now all fragile growing things venture forth, sparkling with Hght and dew, and are enfolded with rainbows every- where. " Come forth and be glad ! " a thousand voices are calling. '' Fear not the strong sunshine and the keen wind I Come forth into the searching light and the invigorating air, and find your life, the perfect bloom that awaits you I " And the blessing of this resurrection-time pen- etrates also human souls with the inmost tender- ness of heaven. NATURE AND OURSELVES. 59 Up, fearlessly, into the sunshine of truth, ye thoughts ! for more and more of light awaits, and more and heavenlier life is hid within you than ye have ever dreamed. Up, soul! open your eyes through grateful tears into the wide horizon of faith, and grow, through Him who is the Resur- rection and the Life, into and beyond your noblest visions of immortality ! APRIL. NATURE AND OURSELVES. 1 April. Happy he whose eye may, from dawn to twilight, wander at will to distant hori- zons ! Happy he who sees the meadows grow green in April, who gathers the violet in the valley, who with his own hand both plants and reaps ! Happy he who breathes the fresh air of the country! Happy he who works at some healthy out-door work ; whose faculties, constant- ly reinvigorated, apply themselves fully, yet not feverishly, to the task God has assigned them ! Madame de Gasparin. Whether men sow or reap the fields. Divine monition Nature yields. That not by bread alone we live, Or what a hand of flesh can give ; That every day should leave some part Free for a sabbath of the heart : So shall the seventh be truly blest. From morn to eve, with hallowed rest. Wordsworth. I 60 BECKONmGS. 2 April. It is the beautiful characteristic of industry that, instead of takmg us away from God and things eternal, it takes us directly to- wards Him, and puts us waiting on the seasons, the soil, the mechanical powers, which are but the faithful bosom of God Himself; and there we hang.; year by year, watching for our sup- plies and the nutriment that feeds our bodies. Our very industry is a kind of physical prayer, and the business itself of our busy life is to watch the gates of blessing He opens to us. HOKACE BUSHNELL. One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee ! One lesson which on every wind is blown ; One lesson of two duties kept at one. Though the loud world proclaim their en- mity ; — Of toil unsevered from tranquillity ; Of labor that in lasting fruit outgrows Far noisier schemes, accomplished in repose Too great for haste, too high for rivalry. Matthew Arnold. 3 April. As we travel the way of life, we have the choice, according to our working, of turning all the voices of Nature into one song of rejoicing, and all her lifeless creatures into a glad company, whereof the meanest shall be beau- tiful in our eyes by its kind message ; or of with- ering and quenching her sympathy into a fearful withdrawn silence of condemnation, or into a cry- ing out of her stones and a shaking off her dust against us. John Ruskin. NATURE AND OURSELVES. 61 Lady ! we receive but what we give, And in our life alone does Nature live ; Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud ! From the soul itself must issue forth A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud Enveloping the earth, — And from the soul itself must there be sent A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth. Of all sweet sounds the life and element ! S. T. COLEEIDGE. 4 April. There is in Nature just as much, or as little, as the soul of each can see in her. And in order to see, the soul must have been trained for it both by habitual converse with the outward world, and also by converse with other regions of being, with other teachers. For other teachers are not less necessary than the beauty which lies in the face of Nature. J. c. Shaiep. The soul discerns A ray of heavenly light, gilding all forms : — The unambiguous footsteps of the God Who gives its lustre to an insect's wing, And wheels His throne upon the rolling worlds. COWPER. 6 April. The knowledge of nature is a good thing, but it must be studied primarily in its nat- ural and healthy connection with ourselves. With every green tree that surrounds us with its rich leafage, with every shrub on the roadside where we walk, with every grass-blade that bends to the 62 BECKONINGS. breeze in the field through which we pass, we have a natural relationship ; they are our true compa- triots. The birds that hop from twig to twig in our gardens, that sing in our bowers, are part of ourselves ; they speak to us from our earliest years, and we learn to understand their lan- guage. Goethe. More servants wait on man Than he '11 take notice of. In every path He treads down that which doth befriend him When sickness makes him pale and wan. O mighty love ! Man is one world, and hath Another to attend him. George Herbert. 6 April. All about us, in earth and air, wherever eye or ear can reach, there is a power ever breathing itself forth in signs, now in a daisy, now in a wind-waft, a cloud, a sunset, — a power that holds constant and sweetest relation with the dark and silent world within us. The same God who is in us, and upon whose tree we are the buds, if not yet the flowers, also is all about us : inside, the Spirit ; outside, the Word. George MacDonald. The Lord is in His Holy Place, In all things near and far ! Shekinah of the snowflake He, And glory of the star. And secret of the April land That stirs the field to flowers, NATURE AND OURSELVES. 63 Whose little tabernacles rise To hold Him through the hours. W. C. Gannett. 7 April. There is nothing strange in our having afi&nity with the brutes and the herbs, with the rocks and the waves, if we acknowledge one Spirit which works through the whole crea- tion till it culminates in human morality and the cross of Jesus Christ. The perception of this is one of the highest effects of inspiration. It is nothing less than the divine thought inwrought in our minds, the divine order established in our renewed nature, the surest witness that we are made in the image of God, the spiritual mind by which we see each part of the universe in its re- lation to its centre, and evolving itself under the divine purpose towards complete organization and perfect harmony. w. h. Fbbemantle. We are part of an Infinite Scheme, All we that are ; Man the high crest and crown of things that be ; The fiery-hearted earth, the cold unfathomed sea. The central sun, the intermittent star : Things great and small, We are but parts of the Eternal All. Edwin Morris. 8 April. Who that hath watched their ways with an understanding heart, could, as the vision evolving still advanced towards him, contem- plate the filial and loyal bee ; the home-building, 64 BECKOXINGS. wedded, and divorceless swallow ; and above all the manifoldly intelligent ant-tribes, with their commonwealths and confederacies, their warriors and miners, the husbandfolk that fold in their tiny flocks on the honeyed leaf, and the virgin sisters with the holy instincts of maternal love, detached and in selfless purity — and not say to himself, Behold the shadow of approacliing hu- manit}^, the sun rising, from behind, in the kin- dling morn of creation ! Thus all lower natures find their highest good in semblances and seekings of what is higher and better. All things strive to ascend, and ascend in their striving. And shall man alone stoop ? Well saith the moral poet — " Unless above himself he can Erect himself, how mean a thing is man ! " S. T. Coleridge. 9 April. Insensate things, such as rocks and seas of water, do not grow. Animals and trees grow a little, for a little time, and come to their limit. But the grandest attribute of our created minds, one that belongs to no other finite crea- ture whatever, is that they have the gift of a growth everlasting. Hoe-^ce Busidnell. There can be no revelation to stones and trees and stars, nor of the spiritual to the physical. God is a person, and the revelation of God is of a person to and with a person. It thus presumes a ground of communion. eusha Mulpord. NATURE AND OURSELVES. 65 10 April. The fact of our deriving constant pleasure from whatever is a type or semblance of the Divine attributes, and from nothing but that which is so, is the most glorious of all that can be demonstrated of human nature ; it not only- sets a great gulf of separation between us and the lowe-r animals, but it seems a promise of a communion ultimately deep, close, and conscious with the Being whose darkened manifestations we here feebly and unthinkingly delight in. John Ruskin. Rejoice ! we are allied To That which doth provide And not partake — effect and not receive ! A spark disturbs our clod ; Nearer we hold of God Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe. Robert Browning. 11 April. The truly scientific man reverences all facts. Is not this one worth his considera- tion? The verdict of all ages has pronounced that the exclusively scientific man, he in whom the scientific side is everything, and the spiritual side — that is, heart, conscience, spiritual aspira- tion — goes for nothing, is but half a man, de- veloped only on one side of his nature, and that not the highest side. If God is to be appre- hended at all in a vital way, and not merely as an intellectual abstraction, it must be first from the spiritual side of our being — by the con- 66 BECKOXIXGS. science, the spirit, the reverence, that Is in man — that He is mainly to be approached. This is the centre of the whole matter. j. c. Sh^jep. 12 April. The more we see into nature and try to represent it, the more ignorant and help- less we find ourselves ; until sometimes I wonder whether God might not have made the world so rich and full just to teach His children humility. GSOBGB MacDOHJlLDl I but open my eyes, and perfection, no more and no less, In the kind I imagined, full-fi^onts me. and God is seen God In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod. And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew (With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too) The submission of man's nothing-perfect to Grod's all-complete, As by each new obeisance of spirit I climb to His feet. EoEEBT Baawmnsa. 13 April. To those who live by faith, every- thing they see speaks of that future world ; the very glories of nature, the sun, moon, and stars, and the richness and the beauty of the earth, are types and figures, witnessing and teaching the invisible things of God. All that we see is destined one day to burst forth into a heavenly NATURE AND OURSELVES. 67 bloom, and to be transfigured into immortal glory. J* H* Newman. My Father, each delightful hour Unveils Thy smiling face : I gather every glorious flower, And thank my God of grace. At home I breathe the quiet air, I cast my soul abroad ; I do the work, I lift the prayer. Still, still my gracious God ! Each step, each look, each thought of mine My gracious God lets in : All, all my joys are gifts divine ; All, all is grace I win ! t. h. Gill. 14 April. Do not study matter for its own sake, but as the countenance of God ! Try to extract every line of beauty, every association, every moral reflection, every inexpressible feel- ing, from it ! Charles Kingsley. We comprehend the earth only when we have known heaven. Without the spiritual world the material world is a disheartening enigma. JOUBERT. Come to me, come to me, O my God ! Come to me everywhere ! Let the trees mean Thee, and the grassy sod. And the water and the air ! George MacDonald. 16 April. For the light of Revelation is not 68 BECKONINGS. contrary to the light of Nature, but the comple- tion of it. It is no more contrary than flame is contrary to heat. Heat within takes ^e and blazes when external flame is applied. So the Life of God within is kindled by the Life of God manifested without in Christ. " As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God." Observe, they were the sons of God before, unconsciously. But when they received Christ they got fresh power, they knew themselves God's children, and got strength to live as what they were by right. F. W. Robertson. O Bearer of the Key That shuts and opens with a sound so sweet Its turning in the wards is melody. All things we move among are incomplete And vain until we fashion them in Thee ! DoEA Geeenwell. 16 April. It is Nature's highest reward to a true, simple, great soul that he gets thus to be a part of herself. Thomas Caklyle. Suppose that thou hast detached thyself from the natural unity ; — for thou wast made by na- ture a part, but now hast cut thyself off : — yet here is the beautiful provision that it is in thy power again to unite thyself. God has allowed this to no other part, — after it has been sepa- rated and cut asunder, to come together again. But consider the goodness with which He has NATURE AND OURSELVES. 69 privileged man ; for He has put it into his power, when he has been separated, to return and to be reunited and to resume his place. Marcus Aurelius. 17 April. A character is a completely fash- ioned will. NOVALIS. Our joy and grief consist alike in this : In knowing what to will and what to do. But only he whose judgment never strays Beyond the threshold of the right, learns this. Nor is it always good to have one's wish : What seemeth sweet full oft to bitter turns ; Fulfilled desire hath made mine eyes to weep. Therefore, O reader of these lines, if thou Wouldst virtuous be, and held by others dear, Will ever for the power to do aright ! Leonardo da Vinci. 18 April. Do you in good earnest aim at dignity of character ? By all the treasures of a peaceful mind, by all the charms of an open countenance, I conjure you, youth, turn away from those who live in the twilight between vice and virtue. Can anything manly proceed from those who for law and light would substitute shapeless feelings, sentiments, impulses, which, as far as they differ from the vital workings in the brute animals, owe the difference to their former connection with the proper virtues of humanity ? Remember that love itself, in its highest earthly bearing, as the ground of the marriage union, becomes love by an inward fiat of the will, by a 70 BECKONINGS. completing and sealing act of moral election, and lays claim to permanence only under the form of duty. S. T. COLKEIDGS. 19 April. Stern daughter of the voice of God I O Duty ! — Thou dost wear The Godhead's most benignant grace ; Nor know we anything so fair As is the smile upon thy face ! Flowers laugh before thee on their beds ; And fragrance in thy footing treads. Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ; And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong. Woedswosth. 20 April. The aim which God assigns to us as our highest is indeed the direct reverse of that which we propose to ourselves. He would have us in perpetual conflict ; we crave an unbroken peace. He keeps us ever on the march ; we pace the green sod by the way with many a sigh for rest. He throws us on a rugged universe ; our first care is to make it smooth. Every way He urges our reluctant will. He grows the thistle and the sedge, but expects us to raise the olive and the corn, having given us strength and skill for such an end. And after all, in spite of the inertia of their will, men are, in their inmost hearts, on the side of God, rather than their own, in this matter. James Mabtinbau. NATURE AND OURSELVES. 71 So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low. Thou must, The youth replies, I can. R. w. Emerson. 21 April. Thou art not the more holy for being praised, nor the more worthless for being dispraised. What thou art, that thou art ; neither by words canst thou be made greater than what thou art in the sight of God. If thou consider what thou art in thyself, thou wilt not care what men say of thee. Thomas a Kempis. We all need resistance to our errors on every side. " Woe unto us when all men speak well of us ! " And woe unto us when all men shall give way to us ! Henry more. 22 April. He that has energy enough in his constitution to root out a vice, ought to go a little further, and plant a virtue in its place ; other- wise he will have his labor to renew. A strong soil that has produced weeds may be made to produce wheat with far less difficulty than it would cost to make it produce nothing. Lacon. Fear to do base, unworthy things is valor ; If they be done to us, to suffer them Is valor, too. BenJonson. 23 April. Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue 72 BECKONINGS. and vice. Goodness is the only investment that never fails. h. d. thorbau. Things are saturated with the moral law. There is no escape from it. Violets and grass preach it ; rain and snow, wind and tides, every change, every cause in nature, is nothing but a disguised missionary. r. w. embrson. 24 April. Nothing can work me damage ex- cept myself ; the harm that I sustain I carry about with me, and never am a real sufferer but by my own fault. St. Bernard. Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt ; Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled. But evil on itself shall back recoil. And mix no more with goodness. If this fail, The pillared firmament is rottenness, And earth's base built on stubble. Milton. 25 April. The victory is most sure For him who, seeking faith by virtue, strives To yield entire submission to the law Of conscience, — conscience reverenced and obeyed As God's most intimate presence in the soul. And His most perfect image in the world. Wordsworth. Not to believe in good and in its final and complete victory is simply not to believe in God Himself. Dora Greenwell. NATURE AND OURSELVES. 73 For right is right, since God is God, And right the day must win : To doubt would be disloyalty ; To falter would be sin. f. w. faber. 26 April. Manhood begins when we have in any way made truce with necessity ; — but begins joyfully and hopefully only when we have reconciled ourselves to necessity, and thus in re- ality triumphed over it, and felt that in necessity we are free. Thomas Caelylb. Then welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough. Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go ! Robert Browning. 27 April. Can man or woman choose duties? No more than they can choose their birthplace or their father and mother. George eliot. Thou camest not to thy place by accident ; It is the very place God meant for thee. Let not the time thou owest to God be spent In idly dreaming how thou mightest be, In what concerns thy spiritual life, more free From inward hindrance or impediment ! E. C. Trench. 28 April. Those that can look with dry and undispleased eyes upon another's sin never truly mourned for their own. It is a godless heart that doth not find itself concerned in God's quarrel. Bishop Hall. 74 BECKOKINGS. The joy that comes in sorrow's guise, The sweet pains of self-sacrifice, I would not have them otherwise. And what were life and death, if sin Knew not the dread rebuke within, The pang of merciful discipline ? J. G. WmmEE. 29 April. To be incapable of temptation is the privilege of involuntary creatures ; a man, or an angel, dares not desire it. So long as he feels Who it is that has made him capable of such danger. Who has given him a will, he is safe ; for his life is a prayer that he may not be left to his own guidance. F. D. Maurice. The idea that the gods hate and punish the desire of sin as itself a sin, is the germ of all spirituality. Duty, from having been finite, be- comes an infinite thing. Sin also enlarges its dimensions proportionablyo F Newman. 30 April. When you have closed your doors and made darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone. For you are not alone. God, too, is present there, and your guardian spirit : and what need have they of light to see what you are doing ? Emctbtus. Yield all the days their dues, But when the evening light is lost, or dim. Commune with your own spirit, and with Him ! Restore your soul with stiUness, as is meet. NATURE AND OURSELVES. 75 And when the sun bids forth, haste not to show Your strength, but kneel for blessing ere you go, And meekly bind the sandals on your feet. Thomas Ashe. FIFTH MONTH. The loveliest time of the year is also its busi- est working-time. During the fresh days of spring, Beauty and Toil walk hand in hand. The sweetness that fills the atmosphere comes from the steady, noiseless movement of all the working-forces of the earth and the heavens. In underground laboratories, in glowing sun- crucibles, powers both infinite and infinitesimal are weaving a garment of glory for the world — a seamless garment, of one texture throughout ; — for the rose-tinted petal of the wild anemone and the blush-pink concave of the May morning sky attest themselves to be of one tissue, one piece. Everything helps, — each for the whole, and all for each : the raindrop distilling through the soil to the plant's root, the breeze that wins forth the leaves with its restless murmur, and plant and leaf hastening upward with joyful persist- ence to sweeten raindrop and breeze with subtle essences which their fine chemistries have won from the clod. It is work, transmuting life into beauty and power, that keeps human souls fresh with peren- SUNBEAM AND SHADOW, 77 nial spring-time growth, that makes man know himself a sharer in the creative energies of God, His co-laborer as well as His offspring. MAY. SUNBEAM AND SHADOW. 1 May. How mankind defers from day to day the best it can do, and the most beautiful things it can enjoy, without thinking that every day may be the last one, and that lost time is lost eternity ! max Muller. Every day is a fresh beginning ; Every morn is the world made new : You who are weary of sorrow and sinning, Here is a beautiful hope for you — A hope for me, and a hope for you. Every day is a fresh beginning : Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain. And, spite of old sorrow and older sinning. And puzzles forecasted and possible pain, Take heart with the day, and begin again ! Susan CooLrooB. The fairest day that ever yet has shone Will be when thou the day within shalt see ; The fairest rose that ever yet has blown. When thou the flower thou lookest on shalt be. Jones Very. 2 May. '^ No day is commonplace, if we had only eyes to see its splendor." 78 BECKONINGS. 'T is always morning somewhere, and above The awakening continents, from shore to shore, Somewhere the birds are singing evermore. H. W. Longfellow. Lo ! here hath been dawning another blue day : Think ! wilt thou let it slip useless away ? Out of eternity this new day is born : Into eternity this night 't will return. See it aforetime no eye ever did ; So soon it forever from all eyes is hid. Here hath been dawning another blue day : Think ! wilt thou let it slip useless away ? Thomas Caelyle. 3 May. The wind that blew from the sun- rise made me hope in the God who had first breathed into my nostrils the breath of life, — that He would at length so fill me with His breath that I should think only His thoughts, and live His life, finding therein my own life, only glorified infinitely. What should we poor humans do without our God's nights and morn- ings ? George MacDonald. Walk with thy fellow-creatures : note the hush And whisperings among them. Not a spring Or leaf but hath his morning hymn. Each bush And oak doth know I AM. Canst thou not sing ? Heney Vaughan. To hear the lark's song, we must be At heaven's gate with the lark. Alice Oabt. SUNBEAM AND SHADOW. 79 4 May. As a look will reveal what no word can ever speak, so will a scent, a sound, the spring's warm breath, the green unraveling of the larch-bough, a sudden whisper in the summer leaves, the birds' clear song at early morning, bring our souls into contact with the illimitable, telling us that we are one with ourselves, with nature, and with God. These things have power to call forth a music within us, which has not yet had words set to it. Dora Greenwell. " With wakeful life the earth's warm pulses stir ; Brown buds unroll bright banners on the air; And countless fairy fingers, dripping myrrh, The summer's robes prepare. Impatient soul, weak and complaining still, Are all thy hopes, slow struggling to the light, Less worth than these frail buds no frost could kill, Or wind of winter blight ? We pray for growth and strength; grief's dreaded showers May be, in God's wise purpose, ripening rain ; He only knows how all our highest powers Are perfected by pain." 6 May. With other ministrations thou, Nature, Healest thy wandering and distempered child. Thou pourest on him thy soft influences, Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets, 80 BECKONINGS. Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters, Till he relent, and can no more endure To be a jarring and a dissonant thing Amid this general dance and minstrelsy. S. T. Coleridge. Is this a time to be cloudy and sad, When our mother Nature laughs around ; When even the deep blue heavens look glad, And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground ? W. C. Bryant. 6 May. I am heartily sorry for those persons who are constantly talking of the perishable na- ture of things and the nothingness of human life : for, for this very end we are here, to stamp the perishable with an imperishable worth ; and this can only be done by taking a just estimate of both. Goethe. I think we are too ready with complaint In this fair world of God's. Be comforted ! And like a cheerful traveler, take the road. Singing beside the hedge ! What if the bread Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod To meet the flints ? At least it may be said, " Because the way is short, I thank Thee, God." Mrs. Browning. 7 May. We should love God's gifts and de- nials ; love what He wishes and what He does not wish. jouBERT. SUNBEAM AND SHADOW. 81 Thou, that hast given so much to me, Give one thing more, a grateful heart ! — Not thankful when it pleaseth me, — But such a heart, whose pulse shall be Thy praise I Geoege Herbert. 8 May. The grand difficulty is, to feel the reality of both worlds, so as to give each its due place in our thoughts and feelings ; to keep our mind's eye and our heart's eye ever fixed on the Land of Promise, without looking away from the road along which we are to travel towards it. Hare. I have learned to seek my happiness by limit- ing my desires, rather than in attempting to sat- isfy them. John Stuart Mill. 9 May. There is no better test of men's progress than this advancing power to do with- out the things which used to be essential to their lives. As we climb a high mountain, we must keep our footing strong upon one ledge until we have fastened ourselves strongly on the next. Then we may let the lower foot-hold go. The lives of men who have been always growing are strewed along their whole course with the things which they have learned to do without. Phillips Brooks. Be like the bird, that, halting in her flight Awhile on boughs too slight, Feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, Knowing that she hath wings. Victor Hugo. 82 BECKONINGS. 10 May. By two wings a man is lifted up from the earthly; namely, by simplicity and purity. Simplicity ought to be in our intention ; purity in our affections. Simplicity doth tend towards God ; purity doth apprehend and taste Him. Thomas a. Kempis. Lord, he loveth Thee less, that loveth anything with Thee, which he loveth not for Thee. Who created all things, is better than all things ; who beautified all things, is more beau- tiful than all things ; who made strength, is stronger than all things. Whatsoever thou lov- est, that is He to thee. Learn to love the Workman in His work, the Creator in His creature. Let not that which was made by Him possess thee, lest thou lose Him by whom thyself was made. Saint Augustine. 11 May. Great is he who enjoys his earthen- ware as if it were plate, and not less great is the man to whom all his plate is no more than earth- enware. Seneca. I found this, That of goods I could not miss If I fell within the line ; Once a member, all was mine ; Houses, banquets, gardens, fountains, Fortune's delectable mountains ; But if I would walk alone ; Was neither cloak or crumb my own. R. W. Emekson. SUNBEAM AND SHADOW. 83 12 May. A weak mind sinks under prosper- ity, as well as under adversity. A strong and deep one has two highest tides, — when the moon is at the full, and when there is no moon. Hare. Wealth is a means, and life the end ; You lose your hoard, have what you spend. For that unhappy mortal pray, Who never learned to give away ! His heaped-up wealth made him its slave ; He did not use, who never gave. Saadi. Let him be rich and weary, that at least. If goodness lead him not, yet weariness May toss him to My breast ! George Herbert. 13 May. The heart may be engaged in a little business as much, if thou watch it not, as in many and great affairs. A man may drown in a little brook or pool, as well as in a great river, if he be down and plunge himself into it, and put his head under water. Some care thou must have, that thou mayest not care. Those things that are thorny, indeed, thou must make a hedge of them to keep out those temptations that accompany sloth, and ex- treme want that waits on it. But let them be the hedge ; suffer them not to grow within the garden. Leighton. 14 May. God is commanding us off, every hour of our lives, toward things eternal, there to 84 BECKONINGS. find our good, and build our rest. Sometimes He does it by taking us out of the world, and sometimes by taking the world out of us. H. BUSHNELL. Let us rejoice that we are poor, And have no gold to keep ; We do not need to bar the door Ere we can go to sleep : Who bars his door doth bar his mind, And shuts it against human kind ; Even the turning of a key Contracts the mind's humanity. ROBEBT LeIGHTON. 15 May. Those who always love have not the leisure to complain and to be unhappy. JOUBERT. Weeping for a night alone endureth ; God at last shall bring a morning hour : In the frozen buds of every winter Sleep the blossoms of a future flower. Mbs. H. B. Stowe. 16 May. There is but one way for the soul to escape from the iUs of life ; it is to escape from its pleasures, and to seek enjoyment higher up. JOUBEET. Then, fainting soul, arise and sing ! Mount, but be sober on the wing ! Mount up, for heaven is won by prayer ; Be sober, for thou art not there ! Till death the weary spirit free. Thy God hath said 't is good for thee To walk by faith and not by sight : SUNBEAM AND SHADOW. 85 Take it on trust a little while ! Soon shalt thou read the mystery right, In the full sunshine of His smile. Keblb. 17 May. A gay, serene spirit is the source of all that is noble and good. Whatever is ac- complished of the greatest and noblest sort flows from such a disposition. Petty, gloomy souls, that only mourn the past and dread the future, are not capable of seizing upon the holiest mo- ments of life, of enjoying and making use of them as they should. Frederick von Schiller. The world is all too sad for tears ; I would not weep, not I ! But smile along my life's short road, Until I smiling die. The little flowers breathe fragrance out Through all the dewy night ; Shall I more churlish be than they, And 'plain for constant light ? Not so ! not so ! no load of woe Need bring despairing frown ; For while we bear it, we can bear ; Past that, we lay it down. Sarah Williams. 18 May. Nothing that has ever lived is lost, nothing is useless ; not a sigh, a joy, or a sorrow which has not served its purpose. Our tears are numbered, the fragrance of our innocent pleas- ures mounts heavenward as a sweet-smelling sa- vor. Let us take courage. Honest labor, up- 86 BECKONINGS. right thoughts, healthy emotions endure. Let us give, love, become as little children ! so shall we reach self-forgetfulness, that supreme possession, that dominion over the universe. Madame de Gaspaein. There shall never be one lost good ! What was, shall live as before ; The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound ; What was good, shall be good, with for evil so much good more ; On the earth the broken arcs ; in the heavens, a perfect round. robeet BKowNma. 19 May. Some very excellent people tell you they dare not hope. To me it seems much more impious to despair. Sydney Smith. Say not the struggle naught availeth. The labor and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor faileth. And as things have been, they remain. For while the tired waves, vainly breaking. Seem here no painful inch to gain. Far back, through creeks and inlets making. Comes silent, flooding in, the main. A. H. Clough. 20 May. It is impossible for that man to de spair who remembers that his Helper is omnipo- tent. Jeeemy Taylob. More than our feeble hearts can ever pine For holiness, SUNBEAM AND SHADOW. 87 The Father in his tenderness divine Yearneth to bless. He never sends a joy not meant in love ; Still less a pain ; Our gratitude the sunlight falls to prove ; Our faith the rain. Frances power Cobbb. 21 May. As in nature the fierce rain, the wild wind, the raging fire, are often indispensable instruments for the purification of rivers, the in- vigoration of health, the reformation of cities, so also it is in individual experience. In our own lives how often it is that we come across what have been finely called " veiled angels : " " We know how radiant and how kind Their faces are, those veils behind ; We trust those veils, one happy day, In heaven and earth will pass away." Dean Stanley. 22 May. Give God thanks for every weak- ness, deformity, and imperfection, and accept it as a favor and grace of God, and an instrument to resist pride and nurse humility ; ever remem- bering that when God, by giving thee a crooked back, hath also made thy spirit stoop, or less vain, thou art more ready to enter the narrow gate of heaven than by being straight, and stand- ing upright, and thinking highly. Jeremy Taylor. But all God's angels come to us disguised ; Sorrow and sickness, poverty and death, 88 BECKO^TXGS. One after other lift their frowning masks, And we behold the seraph's face beneath. All radiant with the glory and the calm Of having looked upon the front of God. J. R. Lowell. 23 May. It is said that gardeners, some- times, when they would bring a rose to richer flowering, deprive it for a season, of light and moisture. Silent and dark it stands, dropping one fading leaf after another, and seeming to go patiently down to death. But when every leaf is dropped, and the plant stands stripped to the uttermost, a new life is even then working in the buds, from which shall spring a tenderer foli- age and a brighter wealth of flowers. So, often, in celestial gardening, every leaf of earthly joy must drop, before a new and divine bloom visits the soul. Haeeizt Beecheb Stowk. " Is it raining, little flower ? — Be glad of rain I Too much sun would wither thee ; 'T will shine again. The sky is very black, 't is true ; But just behind it shines the blue. Art thou weary, tender heart ? — Be glad of pain I In sorrow sweetest things will grow, As flowers in rain. God watches ; and thou wilt have sun. When clouds their perfect work have done." SUNBEAM AND SHApOW. 89 24 May. We rejoice in life because it seems to be carrying us somewhere ; because its dark- ness seems to be rolling on towards light, and even its pain to be moving onward to a hidden joy. Phillips Beooks. The light of smiles shall fill again The lids that overflow with tears ; And weary hours of woe and pain Are promises of happier years. There is a day of sunny rest For every dark and troubled night ; And grief may bide an evening guest, But joy shall come with early light. W. C. Bryant. 25 May. That man is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feel- ings and his desires, without a glow or an aspi- ration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to Him, " Thou art my refuge, because Thou art my home." George MacDonald. Nothing before, nothing behind ; The steps of Faith Fall on the seeming void, and find The rock beneath. J. G. Whittier. 26 May. To him to whom life is but an episode, a short stage in the existence of eternity, who is always cognizant of the great surround- ing world of mystery, grief comes as angels came 90 BECKONINGS. to the tent of Abraham. Laughter is hushed before them. The mere frolic of life stands still, but the soul takes the grief in as a guest, meets it at the door, kisses its hand, washes its travel- stained face, spreads the table with the best food, gives it the seat by the fireside, and listens rev- erently for what it has to say about the God from whom it came. Phillips Beooks. We can hardly learn humility and tenderness enough except by suffering. Geoege eliot. When God afflicts thee, think He hews a rugged stone. Which must be shaped, or else aside as useless thrown. R. C. Trench. 27 May. There are hours when the whole world and all it contains shrivels to nothingness, and God alone fills the mind, — hours of human desolation, seasons of strange, mysterious exalta- tion, times of earthly despair or of joy ; the height and excess of any emotion bears us away into a region where God Himself dwells. But even if we have taught ourselves to make the impression of these hours constant, there is still an unsatisfied element in the knowledge. We long for more, for nearness, for sight, or something that stands for sight, for the Father at hand, and the home of the soul. The unrest of this weary world is its unvoiced cry after God. t. t. Munger. SUNBEAM AND SHADOW. 91 28 May. There is in man a higher than love of happiness ; he can do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness ! Was it not to preach forth this same Higher that sages and martyrs, the poet and the priest, in all times have spoken and suffered, — bearing testimony through life and through death, of the Godlike that is in man, and how in the Godlike only has he strength and freedom ? Carlylk. How dark the discipline of pain, Were not the suffering followed by the sense Of infinite rest and infinite release ! This is our consolation ; and again A great soul cries to us in our suspense, " I came from martyrdom unto this peace ! " H. W. Longfellow. 29 May. What is it that can convert the complaints of mankind into a song of triumph ? I know of nothing but the old, old story of the Death, and Resurrection, and Ascension of our Lord, impressed on us by the Holy Spirit ; the assurance that self-sacrificing love, which has sounded the depths of human sin and misery and has not been overcome by them, is supreme in God's universe, and destined to complete domin- ion. W. H. Freemantle. Take me, Oh Infinite Cause, and cleanse me of wrong ! Take me, raise me to higher life through centu- ries long ! 92 BECKONINGS. Cleanse me, by pain, if need be, through aeons of days ! Take me and purge me, still will I answer with praise — There is no Death forever ! Edwin Mobrib. 30 May. Let the cross of Christ teach us to look calmly on this suffering world ! Life is full of trials, and it is a perplexing thing to look around us and see the race of man groaning under their burden. We know but one satisfac- tory explanation of this strange mystery — thor- oughly satisfactory — which calms all doubt. The cross of Christ is the explanation. The cross is the distinct announcement to us, of that wonderful law which fills all life, that '' through much tribulation we must enter into the king- dom of heaven." Perfection through suffering, — that is the doctrine of the cross. There is love in that law. f. w. Robektson. 31 May. A second voice was at mine ear ; A little whisper, silvery clear, A murmur, *^ Be of better cheer." As from some blissful neighborhood, A notice faintly understood, " I see the end and know the good." A little hint to solace woe, A hint, a whisper breatliing low, " I may not speak of what I know ! SUNBEAM AND SHADOW. 93 Like an ^olian harp, that wakes No certain air, but overtakes Far thought with music that it makes, — Such seemed the whisper at my side : " What is 't thou knowest, sweet voice ? " I cried ; " A hidden hope/' the voice replied. Tennyson. SUMMER. Three breezy steps, and on a sunlit floor Bordered with daisies, roses, and green grass, The maiden Year, at summer's open door Hears music summoning up the mountain-pass. And on she climbs ; soft strains the thickets thrill : Elusive airy visions flit beyond : The forest-path invites her upward stiU ; Light tendrils cling to her, with touches fond. O the enchanted world ! youth ! June ! No wonder that the heart cannot forget Those morning melodies, that first-learned tune ! Through deepening harmonies they haunt her yet ! SIXTH MONTH. Life ! Life ! " is the song of opening summer. Hitherto all has been struggle, hope, aspiration towards a mysterious future. But now the blos- som feels in itself the answer to the bygone per- plexities of climbing stem and timidly-unfolding bud. Life I Life ! The sun descending into the heart of the flower, and the flower drinking in the joy of sunshine, and the breath of the heavens whispering through all, rapture, and freedom, and peace ! Life ! What definition has ever given the faintest approach to the meaning of that supreme word ? It is an experience which overfloods and sweeps away all definitions. Human personality is the flower which all other blossoms hint at and prefigure. There is a June for every soul to fill with its own pecul- iar life and perfume ; a summer wherein the lowliest being may be gladdened with the splen- dors of the Divine Presence. Soul, receive into thyself the warm and radiant life of heaven, to breathe it out again as spiritual fragrance over other lives, and so change this 96 BECKONINGS. wilderness-world into the garden of the Lord! This is the lovely moral which hides within the roses of June, and makes more than half their sweetness. JUNE. BLOSSOM-TIME. 1 June. How beautiful it is to be alive ! To wake, each morn, as if the Maker's grace Did us afresh from nothingness derive, That we might sing, " How happy is our case ! How beautiful it is to be alive ! " To read in some good book, until we feel Love for the one who wrote it ; then to kneel Close unto Him whose love our soul doth shrive ; While every moment's joy doth more reveal How beautiful it is to be alive. Thus ever towards man's height of nobleness Striving some new progression to contrive, Till, just as any other friend's, we jDress Death's hand ; and having died, feel none the less How beautiful it is to be alive. h. s. Sutton. 2 June. It is good for a man perplexed and lost among many thoughts to come into closer intercourse with Nature, and to learn her ways and to catch her spirit. It is no fancy to believe BLOSSOM-TIME. 97 that if the children of this generation are taught a great deal more than we used to be taught of nature, and the ways of God in nature, they will be provided with the material for far healthier, happier, and less perplexed and anxious lives than some of us are living. Phillips Beooks. One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good. Than all the sages can. Wordsworth. 3 June. It is not possible for a Christian man to walk across so much as a rood of the natural earth, with mind unagitated and rightly poised, without receiving strength and hope from some stone, flower, leaf, or sound, nor without a sense of a dew falling on him out of the sky. It seems to me that the real sources of bluntness in the feelings towards the splendor of the grass and glory of the flower are less to be found in ardor of occupation, in seriousness of compassion, or heavenliness of desire, than in the turning of the eye at intervals of rest too selfishly within. John Ruskin. 4 June. If thou art worn, and hard beset With troubles that thou wouldst forget. If thou wouldst read a lesson that will keep Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep. Go to the woods and hills ! no tears Dim the sweet look that Nature wears. H. W. Longfellow. 98 BECKONINGS. Soar with the birds, and flutter with the leaf ! Dance with the seeded grass in fringy play 1 Sail with the cloud, wave with the dreaming pine, And float with Nature all the livelong day 1 Call not such hours an idle waste of time ! Land that lies fallow gains a quiet power ; It treasures, from the brooding of God's wings, Strength to unfold the future tree and flower. Mrs. H. B. Stowb. 5 June. One would almost fancy that the sky and air were full of feeling and thought. How can they have so much expression of the soul, without any soul ? Speaking of flowers, Wilberforce said that they seemed to him " like the smile on the Father's countenance." So all the beauty of the sky and the earth is like the smile of God ; and a smile shows us the disposi- tion of the person just as certainly as any words he can use. This accounts for the expression spoken of. One cannot sit down in the midst of this loveliness without being conscious that it is a Divine Presence that makes it lovely. Henry Ware, Jr. I cannot tell what you say, green leaves, I cannot tell what you say ; But I know that there is a spirit in you, And a word in you this day. I cannot tell what you say, rosy rocks, I cannot tell what you say ; But I know that there is a spirit in you, And a word in you this day. Charles Kingsley. BLOSSOM-TIME. 99 6 June. It is a true instinct when men are led to regard the beauty of the world that comes to them through the eye, and the moral light which shines from behind upon the soul, as com- ing from one centre, and leading upward to the thought of one Being who is above both. In this way all visible beauty becomes a hint and a foreshadowing of something more than itself. J. C. Shairp. No mere machine is Nature, Wound up, and left to play ; No wind-harp swept at random By airs that idly stray ; A spirit sways the music, — A hand is on the chords ; Oh, bow thy head and listen ! That hand — it is the Lord's. Mrs. Charles. 7 June. Every existing thing or object in the created empire of God, all forms, colors, heights, weights, magnitudes, forces, come out of God's mind covered all over with tokens, satu- rated aU through with flavors of His intelligence. They represent God's thought, — the invisible things of God ; and an angel coming out into the world, instead of seeing nothing in them but only walls, would see God expressed by them, just as we are expressed by our faces and bodies. The invisible things of God, all His eternal realities, would be clearly seen. h. Bushnell. Nothing 's small ! No lily-muffled hum of a summer-bee, 100 BECKONINGS. But finds some coupling with the spinning stars ; No pebble at your feet but proves a sphere ; No chaffinch, but implies the cherubim. Earth 's cranmied with heaven, And every common bush afire with God. Mes. E. B. Browxenq. 8 June. Every rose is an autograph from the hand of the Almighty God. The universe itself is a great autograph of the Almighty. Theodore Parker. " God of the granite and the rose ! Soul of the sparrow and the bee ! The mighty tide of being flows, Through countless channels, Lord, from Thee. It leaps to life in grass and flowers ; Through every grade of being runs ; While from creation's radiant towers Its glory streams in stars and suns." 9 June. If I am spiritual, then the world is a revelation of God to me ; and there is a spirit looks in upon my spirit from out of the sky, and the earth and the sea, fi^om out of the sun and the moon, and from out of the rose. MOUNTFORD. God's Spirit faUs on me as dew-drops on a rose, If I but like a rose my heart to him unclose. AXGELUS SiLBSIUS. 10 June. Flowers are the beautiful hiero- glyphics of Nature, with which she indicates how much she loves us. Gobthb. BLOSSOM-TIME. 101 The wild white rosebud in my hand Hath meanings meant for me alone, Which no one else can understand : To you it breathes with altered tone. Owen Meredith. 11 June. The world is the vesture of the unseen God ; its whole atmosphere is charged with His presence. Whoever, in humble faith, and with a heart which longs for truth and good- ness, opens his mouth and draws in his breath, that man is straightway filled, not with some vague influence only, but with all the fullness of God. The desire and the power to do right which he acquires is none other than the central force which animates the world. He lives and moves in God. w. h. Freemantle. For oh, but the world is fair, is fair ! And oh, but the world is sweet ! I will out in the gold of the blossoming mould, And sit at the Master's feet. And the love that my heart would speak I will fold in the lily's rim. That the lips of the blossoms, more pure and meek. May offer it up to Him ! Ina d. coolbrith. 12 June. If I knew all that is to be learned from a daisy even, I should be less a stranger to God than I am. All about me, tree unto tree is uttering speech, and flower unto flower is show- ing knowledge. But it is in a language that I 102 BECKONINGS. do not understand, but which I shall remember ; and so which I shall learn the whole meaning of hereafter. Motinttord. Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, — Hold you here, root and all, in my hand : Little flower, if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is, Alfeed Tennyson. 13 June. I have some favorite flowers in spring, among which are the mountain-daisy, the harebell, the fox-glove, the wild brier-rose, the budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular delight. I never hear the loud solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing cadence of a troop of gTay plover in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthu- siasm of devotion or poetry. Do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clod? I own myself partial to such proofs of those awful and important realities ; — a God that made all things, man's immaterial and im- mortal nature. Robert Burns. Flowers are not flowers unto the poet's eyes ; Their beauty thrills him by an inward sense ; He knows that outward seemings are but lies. Or, at the most, but earthly shadows, whence BLOSSOM-TIME. 103 The soul that looks within for truth may guess The presence of some wondrous heavenliness. J. R. Lowell. 14 June. " There is religion in a flower ; Its still, small voice is as the voice of conscience ; Mountains and oceans, planets, suns, and systems, Bear not the impress of Almighty power In characters more legible than those Which He hath written on the tiniest flower Whose light bell bends beneath the dew-drop's weight." 'Neath cloistered boughs, each floral bell that swingeth And tolls its perfume on the passing air. Makes Sabbath in the fields, and ever ringeth A call to prayer. Horace Smith. 15 June. It is our Maker's care that plants alike thorns and flowers in our path. To reject His flowers would be none the less unfilial than to repine at His thorns. Frances power Cobbe. The flowers, still faithful to the stems, Their fellowship renew ; The stems are faithful to the root That worketh out of view ; And to the rock the root adheres. In every fibre true. Close clings to earth the living rock, Though threatening still to fall ; 104 BECKONINGS. The earth is constant to her sphere, And God upholds them all. WOEDS^OBXa 16 June. Instead of complaming that the rose has thorns, I congratulate myself that the thorn is surmounted by roses, and that the bush bears flowers. Joubert. The grass is softer to my tread For rest it yields unnumbered feet ; Sweeter to me the wild rose red Because she makes the whole world sweet. Why so sad a moan ? Life is the rose's hope while yet unblown. Keats. Even for the dead I will not bind My soul to grief ; death cannot long divide : For is it not as if the rose that climbed My garden-wall, had bloomed the other side ? AucE Cabey. 17 June. The Divine Spirit permeates every pore of matter and of humanity, and yet is abso- lutely different fi'om both. There is no lily in the field and no rose in the valley whose bloom and fragrance do not come from the breath of Infi- nite Beauty. There is no beauty, no wisdom, no faithfulness, no purit^^, no j^iet^^ and self-sacrifice that is not inspired by Him. The goodness of all the good is a ray of reflection fi^om Him ; the greatness of all the great points to His throne on high. p. C. MOZOOMDAE. BLOSSOM-TIME. 105 To win the secret of a weed's plain heart Reveals some clew to spiritual things J. R. Lowell. 18 June. Oh, forests, with your fresh cool- ness ; glades, with tempered light, filled with winged creatures rejoicing in their life of a day ; mountains, with grassy summits, majesty of peaks of snow ; ineffable charm of the valley ; blue lakes, entranced, looking up to and reflecting the sky, — my God made you what you are. It is God who will create the new earth. Our low prose effaces your poetry. The hymn which rises from your solitudes is overpowered by our jarring voices. Your flowers pass away ; the flowers of Paradise will be sweeter still, and will never fade. Madame de Gasparin. 19 June. And the old warfare from within that had gone on so long, — The wasting of the inner strife, the sting of out- ward wrong, — Went with me o'er the breezy hill, went with me up the glade ; I found not God among the trees, and yet I was afraid. I mused, and fire that smouldered long within my breast brake free ; I said, "O God, Thy works are good, but yet they are not Thee ; Still greater to the sense is that which breathes through every part ; 106 BECKONINGS. Still sweeter to the heart than all is He who made the heart ! " Doea Grebis^ell. 20 June. Bright as are the sun, the sky, and the clouds ; green as are the leaves and the fields ; sweet as is the singing of the birds ; we know that they are not all, and we will not take up with a part for the whole. They proceed from a centre of love and goodness, which is God Himself ; but they are not His fullness ; they speak of heaven, but they are not heaven ; they are but as stray beams and dim reflections of His image. J. H. Newman. O ye trees that wave and glisten round ! O ye waters gurgling down the dell ! Pulses throb in every sight and sound ; Living Nature 's more than magic spell. Yet, O Nature, less is all of thine Than thy borrowings from the human breast ; Thou, O God, hast made Thy child divine ; And for him his world Thou hallowest. John Sterling. 21 June. More than mere growth is expected of a plant. Healthy juices may be in its veins, it may have vigor sufficient for its own suste- nance, and yet be no ornament, but an incum- brance to the place it fills. Flower or fruit, some loveliness of tint, some grace of waving spray or comforting shade, we always look for in the growths of earth. And so of spiritual development. More than BLOSSOM-TIME. 107 mere living, more than mere inward satisfaction, is required of us. Our best gifts, those that we count as peculiarly ours, are not for ourselves alone. They are hardly our own, until they have found expression in blossom and fruitage. Our prayer must be not only " Let Thy life be within us ! " but also, " Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us ! " Heaven does with us as we with torches do. Not light them for themselves. For if our virtues Did not go forth of us, 't were all alike As if we had them not. Shakespeare. 22 June. The secret that doth make a flower a flower, So frames it that to bloom is to be sweet, And to receive, to give. No soil so sterile, and no living lot So poor, but it hath somewhat still to spare In bounteous odors. s. Dobbll. The flower shines not for itself at all ; Its joy is the joy it freely diffuses ; Of beauty and balm it is prodigal ; And it lives' in the life it sweetly loses. No choice for the rose but glory or doom : To exhale or smother, to wither or bloom. To give, is to live ; To deny, is to die. h. w. pabker. 23 June. " All beautiful things bring sad- 108 BECKONINGS. ness." And why ? Because of what they are, and yet are not. Every rose-breath, every waft of the hidden melody of woodland brooks, every glimpse of sunset-glory beyond the hiUs, is a hint of the Infinite, that, in the very joy it brings, emphasizes the pathos of the unattained. When the year is in its full and perfect bloom, its deep- est suggestion is of some ineffable sweetness, some flower of spiritual light, half-revealed, re- treating into unseen heavens, forever beyond our reach. The truest enjoyment of the earthly is but the ache of the heart for the heavenly. 24 June. Midsummer Day, St. John the Baptist. Now is the high tide of the year. And whatever of Hfe hath ebbed away, Comes floating back with a ripply cheer, Into every inlet, creek, and bay ; Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it : We are happy now because God wills it. 'T is as easy now for the heart to be true As for grass to be green, or skies to be blue ; 'T is the natural way of living. J. R. Lowell. 25 June. There are flowers in the meadow, There are clouds in the sky ; Songs pour from the woodland ; The waters glide by : — Too many, too many For eye or for ear. BLOSSOM-TIME 109 The sights that we see And the sounds that we hear. Jones Vert. Everywhere the gate of Beauty- Fresh across the pathway swings, As we follow truth or duty Inward to the heart of things ; And we enter, foolish mortals. Thinking now the heart to find, — There to gaze on vaster portals ! Still the glory lies behind ! W. C. Gannett. 26 June. Each of us is a distinct flower or tree in the spiritual garden of God, — precious each for his own sake in the eyes of Him who is even now making us, — each of us watered and shone upon and filled with life for the sake of his flower, his completed being, which will blossom out of him at last to the glory and pleasure of the great Gardener. For each has within him a secret of the Divinity ; each is growing towards the revelation of that secret to himself, and so to the full reception, according to his measure, of the Divine. And what an end lies before us ! To have a consciousness of our own ideal being flashed through us from the thought of God ! Surely, for this may well give way all our paltry self- consciousness, our self-admiration, and self-wor- ships ! Surely, to know what He thinks about us will pale out of our souls all our thoughts about ourselves I George MacDonald. 110 BECKONIXGS. 27 June. We are like southern plants taken up to a northern climate and planted in a north- ern soil. They grow there, but they are always failing of their flowers. The poor exiled slirub dreams by a native longing of a splendid blossom which it has never seen, but is dimly conscious that it ought somehow to produce. It feels the flower which it has not strength to make in the half-chilled but still genuine juice of its southern nature. That is the way in which the ideal life, the life of fifll completions, haunts us aU. TTe feel the thing we ought to be beating beneath the thing we are. Phillips Beooks. Every natural flower which grows on earth Implies a flower on the spiritual side. Substantial, archetypal, all aglow With blossoming causes, — not so far away That we, whose spirit-sense is somewhat cleared, May catch at something of the bloom and breath — Too vaguely apprehended, though indeed Still apprehended. Mbs. e. b. Brow>'ing. 28 June. The Bible reveals that Christ, the Eternal Word, is in Nature. The world is but the form, of which Christ is the Personality ; the body, of which the soul is God; the outer ap- pearance, of which the reality is God, and which mediates between God and us. Beneath it all is Life, and that Life is God. The beauty of the sea-shell and of the field-flower is the loveliness BLOSSOM-TIME. Ill of God ; the Force which moves the waters ever- lastingly is the mighty movement of the One Living Being ; the instinct which brings the wild birds in long lines through heaven at the ap- pointed season, is the order of the mind of God in them, even though unknown to them. " He is in them, and they were made by Him, and they know Him not." F. W. Robertson. 29 June. One Spirit — His Who wore the plaited thorns with bleeding brows, Rules universal nature. Not a flower But shows some touch in freckle, streak, or stain, Of His unrivaled pencil. He inspires Their balmy odors, and imparts their hues, And bathes their eyes with nectar. Happy who walks with Him ! whom, what he finds Of flavor or of scent, in fruit or flower, Or what he views of beautiful or grand In nature, from the broad majestic oak To the green blade that twinkles in the sun. Prompts with remembrance of a present God. COWPER. 30 June. Farewell, dear flowers I sweetly your time ye spent. Fit, while ye lived, for smell and ornament, And after death, for cures. I follow straight without complaints or grief ; Since, if my scent be good, I care not if It be as short as yours. George Herbert. 112 BECKONINGS. The freshness that has cheered thy morning hours, The sunset glory that hath lit thine eye, The night-wind's voice, the sweet perfume of flowers, Have passed into thy life, no more to die, And shall be raised again, in that last day When thy first earth and heaven have fled away. Eliza Scuddeb. SEVENTH MONTH. The flood-tide of summer is upon the world. Earth sways dreamily on her own atmosphere among the stars, like the water-lily among her sister-blossoms upon the unruffled bosom of the lake. The white sails on the horizon are like lily-petals languidly drifted by their own breath along the breezeless shimmer of the sea. Nature, at the height and fullness of her beauty, like the enchanted princess, has fallen asleep among her flowers. It is the hour of peace which precedes the change from the morning to the afternoon of the year. For all things there is a noon-pause as well as a night-rest, — though but a half -sleep, thronged with wakeful dreams. The hours of early stir and activity are softly rounded by the resting- time that follows, — the pause of the soul where- in is heard, as of old, a Divine Voice at the centre of all creative effort and accomplishment, saying, in the calm of sacred meditation, '^ It is good." No man can say this of his own work ; but through the deep peace that embosoms his aspirations, he may listen for and hear the still, 114 BECKONING S. small voice that, in its very whisper of approval, calls him to nobler and more earnest endeavor. Every true achievement has within it the seed of something better than itself. The loveliest of blossoms is but a cradle for the ripening fruit ; and in the fruit lies hidden the germ of unimag- ined summers yet to be. JULY. FREEDOM, BEAUTY, AND POETRY. 1 July. I fancy that until a man loves space, he will never be at peace in a place. At least so I have found it. I am content if you but give me room. George MacDonald. The health of the eye seems to demand a hori- zon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough. R. w. Emeeson. I love all waste And solitary places, where we taste The pleasure of believing what we see Is boundless as we wish our souls to be. Shelley. 2 July. Nothing is so narrowing, contract- ing, hardening, as always to be moving in the same groove, with no thought beyond what we immediately see and hear close around us. Any FREEDOM, BEAUTY, AND POETRY. 115 shock which breaks this even course, anything which makes us think of other joys and sorrows besides our own, is of itself chastening, sanctify- ing, edifying. Dean Stanley. Let me not dwell so much within My bounded heart, with anxious heed, Where all my searches meet with sin, And nothing satisfies my need ! It shuts me from the sound and sight Of that pure world of life and light Which has no breadth, or length, or height. A. L. Waring. 3 July. 'T is liberty alone that gives the flower Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume, And we are weeds without it. COWPER. Though hearts brood o'er the past, our eyes With smiling futures glisten : For lo ! our day bursts up the skies ! Lean out your souls, and listen ! The world rolls Freedom's radiant way. And ripens with her sorrow : Take heart I who bear the cross to-day. Shall wear the crown to-morrow ! Gerald Massey. 4 July. Independence Day, I call that mind free, which escapes the bondage of matter ; which, instead of stopping at the material universe and making it a prison-wall, passes beyond it to its 116 BECKOXINGS. Author, and finds, in the radiant signatures which it everywhere bears of the Infinite Spirit, helps to its own spiritual enlargement. W. K CHAjonHOb He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, And all are slaves beside. His are the mountains, and the valleys his, And the resplendent rivers : his to enjoy, "Who. with a filial confidence inspired, Can lift to heaven an unpresmnptuous eye, Aud smiling say. — My Father made them alL None can love freedom heartily but good men ; the rest love not freedom, but license. JoBH MiunnL 5 July. Suffice it for the joy of the miiverse that we have not arrived at a wall^ but at inter- minable oceans. R^ w. Eiceesos. Free-born, it is my purpose to die free. Away, degrading cares ! and you not less, — Delights of sense and gauds of world 1 in ess I I have no part in you. nor you in me. Are there no flowers on earth, in heaven no stars. That we must place in such low things our trust ? ArsBET DS Tbbk. 6 July. Even-thing harmonizes with me. which is harmonious to thee. Universe ! Noth- ing for me is too early or too late which is in due time for thee. Evervthinof is fruit to me which thv seasons brinsr. FREEDOM, BEAUTY, AND POETRY. 117 The poet says, Dear city of Cecrops ; and wilt thou not say, Dear city of God ? Marcus Aureuus. Let me go where'er I will, I hear a sky-born music still. It is not only in the rose, It is not only in the bird, Not only where the rainbow glows, Nor in the song of woman heard ; But in the darkest, meanest things. There always, always something sings. R. W. Emerson. 7 July. In many persons, and not in poets only, a beautiful sunrise, or a gorgeous sunset, or the starry heavens on a cloudless night, create moral impressions, and something more ; these sights suggest to them, if vaguely yet powerfully, the presence of Him from whom came both Na- ture and the emotions it awakens. The tender lights that fleet over sea and sky are to them * ' Signalings from some high land Of One they feel, but dimly understand. ' ' J. C. Shairp. More than clouds of purple trail In the gold of setting day ; More than gleams of wing or sail Beckon from the sea-mist gray : Glimpses of immortal youth. Gleams and glories seen and flown. Far-heard voices sweet with truth. Airs from viewless Eden blown. J. G. Whittier. I 118 BECKOXIXGS. 8 July. The question of beauty takes us out of surfaces, to thinking of the foundations of things. Goethe said. *' The beautiful is a mani- festation of secret laws of nature, which, but for this appearance, had been forever concealed from us." The tint of the flower proceeds from its root, and the lustres of the sea-shell begin with its existence. R. ^. F.yp.Bsoy. A thing of beauty is a joy forever : Its loveliness increases : it will never Pass into nothingness, but still will keep A bower quiet for us. and a sleep FuH of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. Kkats, 9 July. Beauty — a living Presence of the earth, Sur^Dassing the most fair ideal forms Which craft of delicate spirits hath composed From earth's materials — waits upon my steps. Pitches her tent before me as I move, An hourly neighbor. Paradise, and groves Elysian, Fortunate Fields — like those of old Sought in the Atlantic Main, — whv should they be A history only of departed things, Or a mere fiction of what never was ? For the discerning intellect of man, When wedded to this goodly universe In love and holy passion, shall find these A simple produce of the common day. Wosdswobth. FREEDOM, BEAUTY, AND POETRY. 119 10 July. I suspect we shall find some day that the loss of the human paradise consists chiefly in the closing of the human eyes ; that at least far more of it than people think, remains about us still, only we are so filled with foolish desires and evil cares that we cannot see or hear, cannot even smell or taste, the pleasant things around us. George MacDonald. For, my God, Thy creatures are so frail, Thy bountiful creation is so fair, That, drawn before us like the temple-veil, It hides the Holy Place from thought and care, Giving man's eyes instead its sweeping fold, Rich as with cherub-wings, and apples wrought of gold. Jean Ingelow. 11 July. This beauty of Nature which is seen and felt as beauty, is the least part. The presence of a higher, namely, of the spiritual, ele- ment is essential to its perfection. Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue. R. w. Emerson. Never joy illumed my brow, Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free This world from its dark slavery, That thou, O awful Loveliness, Wouldst give whatever these words jeannot ex- press. Shelley. 12 July. Might but the sense of moral evil be as strong in me as is my delight in externcxl beauty ! Dr. Arnold. 120 BECKOl^INGS. I will never believe that a man has a real love for the good and the beautiful except he attack the evil and the disgusting the moment he sees it. Chables Kingsley. But I, my God and my Glory, do hence also sing a hymn to Thee, and do consecrate praise to Him who consecrateth me, because those beau- tiful patterns which, through men's souls are con- veyed into their cunning hands, came from that Beauty which is above our souls, which my soul day and night sigheth after. St. Augustes-e, 13 July. Nature is loved by what is best in us. It is loved as the city of God, although — or rather because — there is no citizen. The sunset is unlike anything underneath it; it wants men. And the beauty of nature must always seem unreal and mocking, until the landscape has human figures that are as good as itself. R. w. Emebson. I long to see the hallowed earth In new creation rise ; To find the germs of Eden hid Where its fallen beauty lies ; — To feel the spring-tide of a soul. By one deep love set free, Made meet to lay aside her dust, And be at home with Thee ! a. l. waking. 14 July. When tree, or river, or rock shows beauty, and my soul answers to it, it is as though FREEDOM, BEAUTY, AKD POETRY. 121 the spirit of Nature said, " We understand one another ; and so thou art mine, and I am thine." And then everything in Nature feels dear. William Mountpoed. So every spirit, as it is most pure. And hath in it the more of heavenly light, So it the fairer body doth procure To habit in, and is more fairly dight With cheerful grace and amiable sight : For of the soul the body form doth take ; For soul is form, and doth the body make. Spensee. 15 July. All inmost things, we may say, are melodious ; naturally utter themselves in song. The meaning of song goes deep. Poetry, there- fore, we will call musical thought. See deep enough, and you see musically ; the heart of Na- ture being everywhere music, if you can only reach it. Thomas Caelylb. For the world was built in order. And the atoms march in time. R. W. ITmerson. 16 July. Gladness can scarcely be a solitary thing : the very life of praise seems choral ; it is more than one bounded heart can utter. Surely when one has once entered into the blissful se- crets of harmony, the note seems to suggest the chord, to ask to be built up within it. DOEA Geekn'well. O the one life within us and abroad, Which meets all motion and becomes its soul I 122 BECKONINGS. A light in sound, a sound-like power in light, Rhythm in all thought, and joyance everywhere. Methinks it should have been impossible Not to love all things in a world so filled ; "Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air Is music slumbering on her instrument. S. T. COLEEroGE. 17 July. I have long loved art and poetry, because I saw that they had a power to raise and soften humanity ; more lately I have seen that they are good in themselves — or whence, but from their native affinity with things that are more excellent, should come this acknowledged power ? Why, when the heart would reveal its truest, deepest instincts, does it seek to express itself in music ? Why, when the mind would utter forth words of nobleness — when it would be truer and sweeter than under its ordinary con- ditions — does it speak in poetry ? Could there be a prose psalm ? Doea Greenwell. God Himself does not speak prose, but commu- nicates with us by hints, omens, inferences, and dark resemblances in objects lying all around us. R. W. Emeeson. There is no truth cognizable by man which may not shape itself into poetry. J. c. Shaiep. 18 July. " Poets are all who love, who feel great truths And tell them ; and the truth of truths is love," FREEDOM, BEAUTY, AND POETRY. 123 'T is pleasant, when blue skies are o'er us bending, Within old starry-gated Poesy, To meet a soul set to no worldly tune, Like thine, sweet Friend ! Oh, dearer this to me Than are the dewy trees, the sun, the moon. Or noble music with a golden ending. Alexander Smith. 19 July. Wherever there is a sky above him, and a world around him, the poet is in his place ; for here too is man's existence, with its infinite longings and small acquirings ; its ever-thwarted, ever-renewed endeavors; its unspeakable aspira- tions, its fears and hopes, that wander through eternity ; and all the mystery of brightness and of gloom that it was ever made of, in any age or climate, since man first began to live. The poet must have an eye to see these things, and a heart to understand them. Carlyle. Poets, in seeking the beautiful, find more truths than philosophers in seeking the true. Joubert. 20 July. The true end of poetry is to awa- ken men to the divine side of things, to bear wit- ness to the beauty that clothes the outer world, the nobility that lies hid, often obscured, in human souls ; to call forth sympathy for neglected truths, for noble but oppressed persons, for down-trodden causes; and to make men feel that through all outward beauty and all pure inward affection, God is addressing them. j. c. Shairp. 124 BECKONINGS. For I believed the poets : it is they Who utter wisdom from the central deep, And, listening to the inward flow of things, Speak to the age out of eternity. J. R. Lowell. 21 July. No poet ever yet has made, or ever can make, the most of human life, even poet- ically, who has not regarded it as standing on the threshold of an invisible world, as supported by divine foundations. - J. c. Shaiep. In all true works of Art wilt thou discern Eternity looking through Time ; the God-like ren- dered visible. Caelylb. 22 July. Science and Poetry recognizing, as they do, the order and the beauty of the miiverse, are alike handmaids of devotion. They have been, they may be, drawn away from her altar. But in their natural character they are cooper- ators, and, like twin sisters, they walk hand in hand. Science tracks the footprints of the great creating Power ; Poetry unveils the smile of the all-sustaining Love. Science adores as a sub- ject ; Poetry worships as a child. Heney wabe, Je. Even those who can in no sense be called ex- clusively religious poets, if they grasp life with a strong hand, are constrained to take in the sense of something beyond this life. J. c. Shaiep. 23 July. A true poet, a man in whose heart FREEDOM, BEAUTY, AND POETRY. 125 resides some effluence of wisdom, some tone of the eternal melodies, is the most precious gift that can be bestowed upon a generation ; we see in him a freer, purer development of whatever is noblest in ourselves. Cablylb. Better to have the poet's heart than brain, — . Feeling than song ; but better far than both, To be a song, a music of God's making. George MacDonald. 24 July. Poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down. R. w. Emerson. Of every noble work the silent part is best : Of all expressions, that which cannot be expressed. W. W. Story. 25 July. Beautiful it is to understand and know that a thought did never yet die ; that as thou, the originator thereof, hast gathered it and created it from the whole Past, so thou wilt transmit it to the whole Future. It is thus that the heroic heart, the seeing eye of the first times, still feels and sees in us of the latest ; that the wise man stands ever encompassed and spir- itually embraced by a cloud of witnesses and brothers, and there is a living, literal communion of saints, wide as the world itself, and as the his- tory of the world. Carlyle. 126 BECKONINGS. Neither do I utter anything right unto men which Thou hast not before heard from me ; nor dost Thou hear any such thing from me. which Thou hast not first said unto me. St. Augustinb. 26 July. How sure it is, That if we say a true word, instantly We feel 't is God's, not ours, and pass it on As bread at sacrament. mes. e. B. BEow^^^-G. Poetry is but another form of wisdom, of re- ligion ; is itself wisdom and rehgion. Cahlyia He who would write heroic poems must make his whole life a heroic poem. John Mhitok. 27 July. It may be glorious to write Thoughts that shall glad the two or three High souls, like those far stars that come to sight Once in a century : But better far it is to speak One simple word which now and then Shall waken their free nature in the weak And friendless sons of men ; To write some earnest verse or line, Which, seeking not the praise of art, Shall make a clearer faith and manhood shine In the untutored heart. Ja^ies Russell Low-kll. 28 July. -r , , ^ . I only ask to smg A little song, so true and strangely sweet, FREEDOM, BEAUTY, AND POETRY. 127 That, though it be not wise or even complete. The tired world, while going to and fro. More glad and faithful, hearing it, shall grow. L. B. BiCKFOED. " Sing to my soul the sweet song that thou livest ! Read me the poem that never was penned, — The wonderful idyl of life that thou givest Fresh from thy spirit, oh beautiful friend 1 " 29 July. The mighty spirits of our race are as the lyric thoughts of God that drop and breathe from His Almighty solitude, — transient chords flying forth from the strings, as His sol- emn hand wanders over the possibilities of beauty. One only finished expression of His mind, one entire symmetric strain, has fallen upon our world. In Christ we have the overflowing Word, the deep and beautiful soliloquy of the Most High : not His message and His argument, — for in that there were no religion, — but the very po- etry of God, which could not have been told us face to face, but only cast in meditation upon the silence of history. Were He the only-born — the solitary self -revelation — of the Creative Spirit, He could not more purely open the mind of Heaven, being the very Logos — the apprehensi- ble nature of God — which, long unuttered to the world, and abiding in the beginning with Him, has now come forth and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. James Martineau. 30 July. The life of Christ is the noblest 128 BECKONINGS. poetry ; the actions and words of Christ are po- etry. With that the mind intensely elevated labors, ^thout power of expressing it in words adequate, and therefore must find for itself figures ; just as God is obliged to speak to us by the symbols of this universe, and just as the universe tells us of the beauty of God ; but try to express in words the beauty, majesty, and love, and it will all fail. So in the words of Christ there is a something forever beautiful, but it is a beauty too refined for the mind to grasp ; therefore these acts of Christ remain forever full of a meaning which can never be exhausted. These words it is our privilege to find, each time we look into them, as fresh and new as if they had never been inter- preted before. F. W. Robertson. 31 July. You never get to the end of Christ's words. There is something in them always be- hind. They pass into proverbs, they pass into laws, they pass into doctrines, they pass into con- solations ; but they never pass away ; and, after all the use that is made of them, they are still not exhausted. Dean Stanley. Sweeter than any sound by angels heard Whispered or sung among their deathless flowers, Christ is the Beautiful, Etern?.! Word Breathed from God's heart into this world of ours. EIGHTH MONTH. Departing summer is eloquent with invitations and beckonings. There is a trail of elusive foot- steps on the hills, white, gauzy garments of un- seen messengers fading away into cloud-threads and tissues of mist. Mountains with bluer moun- tains behind them, summits overtopped by higher summits, pearly with distance, allure the pilgrim- eye towards the unimagined, the infinite. He has never received the fullest beauty of the at- tained, who has not seen the lower heights blent in aerial fusion with loftier peaks, — who has not felt himself, at his highest, refreshed and inspired by cool breezes from the unattained — yea, the unattainable beyond. Every step upward is tonic, though the divine impossibilities of the heavens overhang us. For the heavens themselves beckon us onward, not away, from earthly things, but through them into spiritual realities. So the pilgrim may rest under the flowering vines of the roadside — the traveler's joy, climb- ing as he climbs — and may read in their white blossoms a promise of the fairer flowers of im- mortality ; may know, by daily deepening reve- lations of beauty and truth on his upward path, 130 BECKOXrXGS. tkat he has not been mocked by the whisper which has floated through his spirit like a breeze from invisible horizons. — '' Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty ; they shall behold the land that is Tery far off." AUGUST. TOWARD THE HEIGHTS. 1 August. The feeding of the rivers and the purifying of the winds are the least of the services appointed to the hills. To fill the thirst of the human heart for the beauty of God's working — to startle its lethargy with the deep and pure agitation of astonishment — are their higher missions. It is impossible to examine in their connected system the features of even the most ordinary mountain-scenery, without con- cluding that it has been prepared in order to unite as far as possible, and in the closest com- pass, every means of delighting and sanctifying ji the heart of man. Jom? Eusds. I These old. eternal hills of Thine. What mighty cheer they breathe ! 'What fullness of delight divine i Thy solemn stars bequeath ! .p "When cheer and strength my soul doth lack, j Thy glorv' makes me ^hoie : 1 Amidst Thy summer I win back ? The summer of mv soul. i. h. Gill. TOWARD THE HEIGHTS. 131 2 August. But thou shalt wander like a breeze By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags Of ancient mountains, and beneath the clouds Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores. And mountain-crags : so shalt thou see and hear The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible Of that eternal language, which thy God Utters, who from eternity doth teach Himself in all, and all things in Himself. Great universal Teacher ! He shall mould Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask. S. T. COLERIDQB. 3 August. The earth is beautiful, I said to myself ; the earth is good. Then I raised my glance up the mountain-side, higher than the beeches, higher than the pines, higher than the chalets, than the pastures, up, up, to the snow — up to that sparkling cupola, whose outline sharply cuts the deep blue sky, — up to that region of Paradise ! Oh, ye heavens, ye are great and glorious ! My God, Thou art the mighty One, the Eternal ! Love ! — It is only that which I have been forgetting all this time ! — the love of God, the love which has come down to us, the love which defies time and space, the immortal, imperishable love Thou hast put into the heart of man ! Madame de Gasparin. 4 August. The mountain-wind ! most spiritual thing of all The wide earth knows ! When in the sultry time 132 BECKONINGS. He stoops him from his vast cerulean hall, He seems the breath of a celestial clime, — As if from heaven's wide-open gates did flow Health and refreshment on the world below. W. C. Bryant. Transfused through you, mountain friends, With mine your solemn spirit blends, And life no more hath sepacrate ends. I read each misty mountain-sign, I know the voice of wave and pine, And I am yours and ye are mine. Rocked on her breast, these pines and I Alike on Nature's love rely. And equal seems to live or die. j. g. Whittieb. 6 August. Arrived aloft, he finds himself lifted into the evening sunset light. The moun- tain-ranges are beneath, and folded together : only the loftier summits look down here and there as on a second plain ; lakes also lie clear and earnest in the solitude. No trace of man now visible. But sunwards, lo you ! how it tow- ers sheer up, a world of mountains, the diadem and centre of the mountain-region ! A hundred and a hundred savage peaks, in the last light of day ; all glowing, of gold and amethyst, like giant spirits of the wilderness. Thomas Caelyle. Oh, to keep it ! oh, to hold it, While the tremulous rays enfold it. Oh, to drink in all the beauty, and never thirst TOWARD THE HEIGHTS. 133 Yet less lovely if less fleeting ! For the mingling and the meeting Of the wonder and the rapture can but overflow in pain. f. r. Havergal. 6 August. How beautiful this dome of sky, And the vast hills, in fluctuation fixed At Thy command — how awful ! Shall the soul, Human and rational, report of Thee Even less than these ? Be mute who will, who can ; Yet will I praise Thee with impassioned voice ; My lips, that may forget Thee in the crowd. Cannot forget Thee here, where Thou hast built For Thy own glory in the wilderness ! Wordsworth. 7 August. As soon as the sun is set, the massive Jura stands out with outline admirably pure. The sky behind it then assumes that trans- parent, almost green tinge that one sees in Peru- gino's paintings. I do not know why that partic- ular sky, that ethereal hue, that light without rays, that brightness almost polar in its severity, should attract my gaze, as if it were just there that we might look for the opening of Paradise. When my thoughts travel along unbroken hori- zons, they get fainter and fainter, they melt away like mists before the breeze. When they meet that immutable fortress with its battlements of pine, — those slopes furrowed by steep paths, — those openings in the forest, — the perfect out- 134 BECKONINGS. m line of that far summit, — then my mind wakes, my life seems doubled. I do not say that the ideas raised are always very definite ; it is rather a healthy gust of energy and liberty that flows down thence, and fills my heart. Madame de Gaspasin. 8 August. Yes, glory out of glory breaks ; More than the gift itself is given : Each gift a glorious promise makes ; Thine Earth doth prophesy of Heaven. These mighty hills we joy to climb, These happy streams we wander by, Reveal the Eternal Hills sublime, — Of God's own River prophesy. These odors blest, these gracious flowers. These sweet sounds that around us rise, Give tidings of the heavenly bowers. Prelude the angelic harmonies. O mercies kindly incomplete ! Dear joys our hearts that may not fill! Strange grace ! that in Thy gifts most sweet We read of gifts diviner still. T. H. Gill. 9 August. We take our ideas of fearfulness and sublimity alternately from the mountains and the sea; but we associate them unjustly. The sea-wave, with all its beneficence, is yet devour- ing and terrible ; but the silent wave of the blue mountain is lifted towards heaven in a stillness of perpetual mercy : and the one surge, unfath- omable in its darkness, the other, unshaken in its TOWARD THE HEIGHTS. 135 faithfulness, forever bear the seal of their ap- pointed symbol : *' Thy righteousness is like the great mountains : Thj judgments are a great deep." John Ruskin. 10 August. There is sultry gloom on the mountain-brow, And a sultry glow beneath. Oh, for a breeze from the western sea. Soft and reviving, sweet and free. Over the shadowless hill and lea, Over the barren heath ! There are clouds and darkness around God's ways, And the noon of life grows hot : And, though His faithfulness standeth fast As the mighty mountains, a shroud is cast Over its glory, solemn and vast. Veiling, but changing it not. Send a sweet breeze from Thy sea, Lord, From Thy deep, deep sea of love ! Though it lift not the veil from the cloudy height, Let the brow grow cool, and the footsteps light, As it comes with holy and soothing might, Like the wing of a snowy dove ! F. R. Havergal. 11 August. The mountain-tops have the stars for their nearest neighbors, the only friends to whom they can look up with firm assurance of their faithfulness : — the most steadfast forms of earth, living forever alone in separated nearness to the most steadfast presences of heaven ! 136 BECKONINGS. On the mountain-top, a man can but ask him- self what there is within him that corresponds to this lofty strength and star-ward aspiration : for he, too, is of the earth, yet a near neighbor to the heavens. Tell me the song of the beautiful stars, As grandly they ghde on their blue way above us. Looking, despite of our spirits' sin-scars, Down on us tenderly, yearning to love us ! This is the song in their work-worship sung, — Down through the world- jeweled universe rung : '^ Onward forever ! for evermore onward ! " And ever they open their loving eyes sunward. Gerald Massey. 12 August. "A man's best things are nearest him, Lie close about his feet ; — It is the distant and the dim That we are sick to greet : For flowers that grow our hands beneath, We struggle and aspire ; Our hearts must die except we breathe The air of fresh desire. But, brothers, who up reason's hill Advance with hopeful cheer, Oh, loiter not ! those heights are chill, — As chill as they are clear. And still restrain your haughty gaze. The loftier that ye go. Remembering distance leaves a haze On all that lies below." TOWARD THE HEIGHTS. 137 13 August. Men seek retreats for them- selves, — houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains ; and thou, too, art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the commonest of men ; for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose, to retire into thyself. For nowhere, either with more quiet or more freedom, does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts, that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquillity, — which is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind. Makcus Aukelius. At summer eve, when heaven's aerial bow Spans with bright arch the glittering hills below, Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye, Whose sunbright summit mingles with the sky ? Why do those cliffs of shadowy tint appear More sweet than all the landscape smiling near ? — 'T is distance lends enchantment to the view, And robes the mountain in its azure hue ! Thomas Campbell. 14 August. New scenery is of no use to us unless our natures are clear enough to reflect it, as I have seen mountains doubled on quiet lakes. Edward Garrett. We are what suns, and winds, and waters make us, The mountains are our sponsors, and the riUs Fashion and win their nursling with their smiles. Landor. 15 August. If in our souls there were no 138 BECKONINGS. feeling of infinity, mountains would not be sub- lime to us; they would only be craggy steeps, and no more to us than to the goat and the chamois. Mountpord. These gray crags Not on crags are hung, But beads are of a rosary On prayer and music strung. R. W. Emeeson. 16 August. How welcome would it often be to many a child of anxiety and toil, to be sud- denly transferred from the heat and din of the city, the restlessness and worry of the mart, to the midnight garden or the mountain-top ! And like refreshment does a high faith, with its infi- nite prospects ever open to the heart, afford to the worn and weary. No laborious travels are needed for the devout mind, for it carries within it Alpine heights and starlit skies, which it may reach with a moment's thought, and feel at once the loneliness of nature and the magnificence of God. James Martineau. 17 August. We are too apt to look abroad for good. But the only true good is within. In this outward universe, magnificent as it is, in the bright day and the starry night, in the earth and the skies, we can discover nothing so vast as thought, so strong as the unconquerable purpose of duty, so sublime as the spirit of disinterested- ness and self-sacrifice. w. e. Channing. I TOWARD THE HEIGHTS. 139 He that by seeking hath himself once found, Hath ever found a happy fortune. George Herbert. 18 August. And though sometimes, on pass- ing from the turmoil of the city and the heats of restless life into the silent temple of the uni- verse, we are tempted to think that there is the taint of earth, and here the purity of heaven ; yet sure it is that God is seen by us through man, rather than through nature : and that without the eye of our brothers, and the voices of our kind, the winds might sigh, and the stars look down on us in vain. James Martineau. O all wide places, far from feverous towns ! Great shining seas ! pine forests ! mountains wild ! Rock-bosomed shores ! rough heaths, and sheep- cropt downs ! Vast pallid clouds ! blue spaces undefiled ! Room ! give me room ! give loneliness and air ! Free things and plenteous in your regions fair ! O God of mountains, stars, and boundless spaces ! O God of freedom and of joyous hearts ! When Thy face looketh forth from all men's faces, There will be room enough in crowded marts : Brood Thou around me, and the noise is o'er, Thy universe my closet with shut door. George MacDonald. 19 August. The mountains make in us a feeling sublimer than of what they are them- 140 BECKONINGS. selves. But they are what they are to us, be- cause there is that in our nature through which height beyond height might rise before us in the universe, and so our souls grow grander and more solemn ; but only to feel more grandly and more solemnly at further higher sights, forever. MOUNTFORD. Be thy duty high as angel's flight, Fulfill it, and a higher will arise Even from its ashes. Duty is infinite, Receding as the skies. Were it not wisdom, then, to close our eyes On duties crowding only to appall ? No : Duty is our ladder to the skies ; And, climbing not, we fall. Robert Leighton. 20 August. The heroes of mankind are the mountains, the highlands of the moral world. They diversify its monotony, they furnish the watershed of its history, as the Grampians, or the Alps, or the Andes, which tower over the low- lands and fertilize the plains and divide the basins of the world of nature. They are the '* full-welling fountain-heads of change," as well as the serene heights of repose. Dean Stanley. O great, befriending natures, Whom God hath set about Our human habitations, — How blank were life, without Your presences inspiring. Your silent, upward call ! TOWARD THE HEIGHTS. 141 Above us, and yet of us, One heaven enfolds us all !. 21 August. This, it seems to me, is the true use of the Heroic, of a life transcending life's ordinary possibilities ; such a life is a direct call upon the soul, saying, "Friend, come up high- er ! " And the heart recognizes its voice, exults in it, claims it as the voice of kindred risen to a more exalted sphere. It is like air from a moun- tain summit where we could not live, and yet it seems our native air, and braces us in every nerve. Dora Greenwell. Life hath its Tabor heights. Its lofty mounts of heavenly recognition. Whose unveiled glories flash to earth munition Of love, and truth, and clearer intuition : Hail ! mount of all delights ! i. c. Gilbert. 22 August. As a mountain seems to be the meeting-place of earth and heaven, the place where the bending skies meet the aspiring plan- et, the place where the sunshine and the cloud keep closest company with the granite and the grass, — so Christ is the meeting-place of divin- ity and humanity. He is at once the condescen- sion of divinity and the exaltation of humanity ; and man wanting to know God's idea of him, must go up into Christ, and he will find it there. Phillips Brooks. There are points from which we can command our life, — 142 BECKONINGS. When the soul sweeps the future like a glass, And coming, things, full-freighted with our fate, Jut out dark on the offing of the mind. p. J. Bailey. 23 August. 'T is, by comparison, an easy task Earth to despise ; but to converse with Heaven, — This is not easy. To relinquish all We have, or hope, of happiness or joy, And stand in freedom loosened from the world, I deem not arduous ; but must needs confess That 't is a thing impossible, to frame Conceptions equal to the souFs desires ; And the most difficult of tasks to keep Heights which the soul is competent to gain. WOEDSWORTH. 24 August. The Moss could not climb to the summit of the mountain, but it crept as high as it could, and then, pausing to rest, made of itself a softer path for tired feet to climb by, and a fresher slope for the descent of the mountain- rills. And the weary traveler afterward remem- bered the Moss of the shady cleft where he had rested, as a part of the mountain itself : and the people of the valleys looked up and were glad of the greenness that marked the birthplace of hid- den perennial springs. 25 August. It is out from the depth of our humility that the height of our destiny looks grandest. For let me truly feel that in myself I am nothing, and at once, through every inlet TOWARD THE HEIGHTS. 143 of my soul, God comes in and is everything in me. MOUNTPORD. No valley-life but hath some mountain-days, — Bright summits in the retrospective view, And toil-won passes to glad prospects new, — Fair sunlit memories of joy and praise. F. R. Havergal. 26 August. God makes the glow-worm as well as the star : the light in both is divine. If mine be an earth-star to gladden the wayside, I must cultivate humbly and rejoicingly its green earth-glow, and not seek to blanch it to the white- ness of the stars that He in the fields of blue. For to deny God in my own being is to cease to behold Him in any. God and man can only meet by the man's becoming that which God meant him to be. George MacDonald. I know not where to turn, each step is new ; No wish before me flies to point the way, But on I travel with no end in view, Save that from Him who leads I may not stray : He knows it all ; the turning of the road, Where this way leads, and that, — He knows it well, And finds for me at night a safe abode, Though I all houseless know not where to dwell. — And canst thou tell, then, where my journeying lies? If so, thou treadest with me the same blue skies. Jones Very. 144 BECKONmGS. 27 August. It is true that genius takes its rise out of the mountains of rectitude ; that all beauty and power which men covet are somehow born out of that Alpine district. R. w. Emerson. bright Ideals ! how ye shine Aloft in realms of air ! Ye pour your streams of light divine Above our low despair. Shine on, shine on, through earth's dark night, Nor let your glories pale ! Some stronger soul may win the height Where weaker ones must fail. Upon your awful heights of blue Shine on, forever shine ! 1 come ! I '11 climb, I '11 fly to you ; For endless years are mine. E. H. Sears. 28 August. If I cannot reaHze my Ideal, I can at least idealize my Real. If I am but a raindrop in a shower, I will at least be a perfect drop ; if but a leaf in a whole June, I will at least be a perfect leaf. w. c. Gannbtt. Love Virtue. She alone is free. She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery clime : Or, if Virtue feeble were. Heaven itself would stoop to her. Milton. 29 August. Not failure, but low aim, is crime. James Russell Lowell. TOWARD THE HEIGHTS. 145 The only failure a man ought to fear is fail- ure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best. George Eliot. They only the victory win, Who have fought the good fight and have van- quished the demon that tempts us within ; Who have held to their faith unseduced by the prize that the world holds on high ; Who have dared for a high cause to suffer, resist, fight, if need be, to die 1 w. w. Story. 30 August. Fail, yet rejoice ; because no less The failure that makes thy distress May teach another full success. It may be that in some great need Thy life's poor fragments are decreed To help build up a lofty deed. Thy heart should throb in vast content, Thus knowing that it was but meant As chord in one great instrument ; That even the discord in thy soul May make completer music roll From out the great harmonious whole. Adelaide A. Proctbb. Even our failures are a prophecy, — Even our yearnings and our bitter tears After that fair and good we could not grasp. George Eliot. 146 BECKONINGS. 31 August. I know How far high failure overleaps the bounds Of low successes. — Not from arrogant pride, Nor over-boldness fail they, who have striven To tell what they have heard, with voice too weak For such high message. More it is than ease, Palace and pomp, honors and luxuries. To have seen white Presences upon the hills ; To have heard the voices of the Eternal Gods. Edwin Morris. And thou shalt walk in soft white light, with kings and priests abroad ; And thou shalt summer high in bliss, upon the hills of God. Thomas Aird. AUTUMN. A WOMAN, moving up the orchard-slope With even gait, and steady, seeking eyes. Autumn, that ripens all things, ripens hope ; Trees bear fruit every month, in Paradise. September, standing on her golden round Of the year's ladder, mid her vintage-leaves, Hears through her harvest-fields a wail resound ; — Her starving sisters begging for her sheaves. Autumn did but enrich herself to give ; And, scattering blessings, see her now depart, Whispering that on life's hills 't was sweet to live. While Indian Summer sunshine warmed her heart I NINTH MONTH. Marts' kinds of fruit grow upon the tree of life, but none so sweet as friendship. It ripens at all seasons ; and, as with the orange-tree, its blos- soms and fruit appear at the same time, full of refreshment for sense and for soul. As we welcome the early apple and the peach, that come to us with the aroma of summer yet fresh within them and warm upon them, so gladly we reach out our hand for the friendship that enriches the autumn of our life, looking upon it, albeit, only as the promise of more enduring fruit which wiU solace and strengthen us in the winter of age. But who shall speak of friendship as ripening for earth alone ? If we are not to feed eternally upon this manna, our own immortality can have little meaning to us. No : when spirits have once found their true blending in the life divine, each shall be able to say of the other forever, '• I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. *' HEART UNTO HEART. 149 SEPTEMBER. HEART UNTO HEART. 1 September. In the progress of each man's character, his relations to the best men, which at first seem only the romances of youth, acquire a graver importance ; and he will have learned the lesson of life who is skillful in the ethics of friend- ship. R. W. Emerson. Beyond all wealth, honor, or even health, is the attachment we form to noble souls ; because to become one with the good, generous, and true, is to become in a measure good, generous, and true ourselves. Db. Arnold. 2 September. The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved, — loved for ourselves, — say, rather, loved in spite of our- selves. Victor Hugo. From irrepressible thoughts foreboding ill, I turn to thee as to a heaven apart : — Oh ! not apart, not distant, near me ever, So near my soul that nothing can thee sever ! How shall I fear, knowing there is for me A city of refuge, builded pleasantly Within the silent places of the heart ? Arthur Henry Hallam. 3 Septem.ber. Blessed is the man who has the gift of making friends ; for it is one of God's 150 BECKONINGS. best gifts. It involves many things ; but above all, the power of going out of one's self, and see- ing and appreciating whatever is noble and living in another man. Thomas Hughbs. Friendship, a dear balm, — Whose coming is as light and music are Mid dissonance and gloom : — a star Which moves not mid the moving heavens alone ; A smile among dark frowns ; a gentle tone Among rude voices ; a beloved light ; A solitude, a refuge, a delight. Shelley. 4 September. We can never replace a friend. When a man is fortunate enough to have several, he finds that they are all different : no one has a double in friendship. Frederick von Schilleb. Somewhere there waiteth in this world of ours For one lone soul another lonely soul, Each chasm g each through all the weary hours, And meeting strangely at one sudden goal : Then blend they, like green leaves with golden flowers. Into one beautiful and perfect whole ; And life's long night is ended, and the way Lies open onward to eternal day. Edwin Arnold. 6 September. By Friendship, I suppose you mean the greatest love, and the greatest useful- ness, and the most open communications, and the noblest sufferings, and the most exemplary faith- ^ HEART UNTO HEART. 151 fulness, and the severest truth, and the heartiest counsel, and the greatest union of minds, of which brave men and vromen are capable. Jeremy Taylor. O friend, my bosom said. Through thee alone the sky is arched. Through thee the rose is red. All things through thee take nobler form, And look beyond the earth ; The mill-round of our fate appears A sun-path in thy worth. Me, too, thy nobleness has taught To master my despair : The fountains of my hidden life Are through thy friendship fair. R. W. Emerson. 6 September. Blessed influence of one true, loving soul on another ! Not calculable by alge- bra, not deducible by logic, but mysterious, effec- tual, mighty as the hidden process by which the tiny seed is quickened, and bursts forth into tall stem and broad leaf, and glowing tasseled flower. Ideas are often poor ghosts ; our sun-filled eyes cannot discern them ; they pass athwart us in thin vapor, and cannot make themselves felt. But sometimes they are made flesh ; they breathe upon us with warm breath ; they touch us with soft, responsive hands ; they look upon us with sad, sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing tones ; they are clothed in a living, human soul, with all its conflicts, its faith, and its love. Then their presence is a power, then they shake us like 152 BECKOXCsGS. a passion, and we are drawn after them with gentle compulsion, as flame is drawn to flame. 7 September. True love in this differs from gold and day, That to divide is not to take away. — If you divide suffering and dross, you may Diminish till it is consumed away ; If you divide pleasure, and love, and thought, Each part exceeds the whole ; and we know not How much, while any yet remains unshared, Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared. Shellet. The love for one. from which there doth not spring Wide love for all. is but a worthless thing. jASCe RrSFfCTT. LoWBLZk 8 September. So long as thou hast a whole and undivided love towards all men, a share of the virtues and divine influences bestowed upon all flows out unto thee through this love. But if thou dost sever any one from this spirit of uni- versal love, thou wilt not receive the precious benefits of the outflowings of love. *»m Iaoib. Pure and true affection, weU I know, Leaves in the heart no room for seLflshness- When we love perfectly, for its own sake We love, and not our own ; being ready thus, TVhatever sacrifice is asked, to make ; — That which is best for it, is best for us- HEART UNTO HEART. 153 9 September. The highest compact we can make with our fellow is, " Let there be truth between us two for evermore.'' Between simple and noble persons there is al- ways a quick intelligence ; they recognize at sight, and meet on a better ground than the tal- ents and skills they may chance to possess, — namely on sincerity and uprightness. For it is not what talents or genius a man has, but how he is to his talents, that constitutes friendship and character. The man that stands by himself, the universe stands by him also. R. w. emekson. Only he who lives a life of his own can help the lives of other men. Phillips Bkooks. 10 September. It is folly to believe that one can faithfully love, who does not love faith- fulness. Sm Philip Sidney. Beloved, who love beauty and fair truth. Come nearer me I too near ye cannot come : Make me an atmosphere sweet with your youth ! Give me your souls to breathe in, a large room ! Speak not a word, for see, my spirit lies Helpless and dumb ; shine on me with your eyes ! George MacDonald. 11 September. Let him be to me a spirit. It is foolish to be afraid of making our ties too spiritual, as if we could lose any genuine love. I will owe to my friends this evanescent inter- 154 BECKOMNGS. course. I will receive from them, not what they have, but what they are. They shall give me that which properly they cannot give, but which emanates from them. But they shall not hold me by any relations less subtle and pure. R. W. EMEasoN. If thou hast something, bring thy goods ! A fair return be thine 1 If thou art something, bring thy soul And interchange with mine ! FSEDERICK VON SCHILLEB. 12 September. Every emotion which a man can feel, every experience which a man can un- dergo, has its little form and its great form. Love is either a whim of the eyes, or a devotion and consecration of the soul. Phillips Beooks. Far have I clambered in my mind, But nought so great as Love I find. Higher than heaven ! lower than hell ! What is thy tent ? Where mayest thou dwell ? My mansion hight Humility ; Heaven's vastest capability. The further it doth downward bend, The higher up it doth ascend ; If it go down to utmost nought, It shall return with what it sought. HEjfBY Moke. 13 September. I believe philosophers have not noticed one thing, — the absorbent character of the soul. Marvelous is its power of recep- tivity. It is a wonderfully impressionable sub- HEART UNTO HEART. 155 stance. An hour in the company of saints is enough. The whole heart is revolutionized. All scriptures bear testimony to this blessed influ- ence. Keshub Chunder Sen. Oh ! if we owe warm thanks to Heaven, 't is when In the slow progress of the struggling years Our touch is blest to feel the pulse of men Who walk in light and love above their peers White -robed, and forward point with guiding hand, Breathing a heaven around them where they stand* John Stuart Blackie. 14 September. We do know that we may receive purification from one another, that the tenderness, and love, and patience of one man act in a marvelous way upon another, when those qualities seem the furthest from him, when he most confesses that they do not belong to him. We do not set ourselves deliberately to follow examples. The examples get the mastery over us ; there is a life in the men who exhibit them which awakens life in us. f. d. Maurice. I know the face of him who with the sphere Of unseen presences communion keeps : His eyes retain its wonders in their clear Unfathomable deeps. He brings the thought that gives to earthly things Eternal meaning ; brings the living faith That, even now, puts on the immortal wings, And clears the shadow, Death. 156 BECKOXINGS. Tliis in his face I see : and, when we meet, My earthliness is shamed by him ; but yet Takes hope, to think that in the miholy street, Such men are to be met. Robekt Lekstooi. 15 September. The unity of spirits is partly in their sympathy, and partly in their giving and taking, and always in their love : and these are their delight and their sti^ength : for their strength is in their co-working and army fellowship, and their delight is in the giving and receiving of alternate and perpetual ctiirents of good. JOEDf BOSKDL O friendship, equal-poised control, O heart, with kiudhest motion warm, sacred essence ! other form, solemn ghost ! crowned soul ! Whatever way my days decline. 1 felt and feel, though left alone, His being working in mine own. The footsteps of his life in mine. ALiFbied Tesitibos. 16 September. I do not wish to treat friend- ships daintily, but with roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads of frost- work, but the solidest things we know. The sweet sincerity of joy and peace which I draw from this alliance with my brother's soul is the nut itself, whereof all nature and all thought is but the husk and shell. Happy is the house that shelters a friend ! R. w. HEART UNTO HEART. 157 Trust me ! but trust me not as aught divine ! Trust me with eyes wide open to all ill : Giving thy faith, but keeping fast thy will, Lest in one evil scheme we both combine. Trust me as honest, knowing I am weak ; Stronger, but yet as much in need of aid : Losing no step through faith, and not afraid To say, " We shall not find there what we seek." Lean on me, love ! but not so utterly That if I stumble, thou shouldst helpless be ! C. MONKHOUSE. 17 September. It has been truly said, that in those who love little, love is a primary affec- tion ; a secondary one in those who love much. Be sure he cannot love another much who loves not honor more. For that higher affection sus- tains and elevates the lower human one, casting round it a glory which mere personal feeling could never give. F. W. Robertson. Your love, — vouchsafe it, royal-hearted Few, And I will set no common price thereon ; Oh, I will keep, as Heaven his holy blue. Or Night her diamonds, that dear treasure won. But aught of inward faith nmst I forego. Or miss one drop from Truth's baptismal hand. Think poorer thoughts, pray cheaper prayers, and grow Less worthy trust, to meet your heart's de- mand, — Farewell ! — your wish I for your sake deny : Rebel to love in truth to love am I. D. A. wasson. 158 BECKONINGS. 18 September. How sweet is the prayer of the virgin heart to its love ! Thy virtues won me. With virtue preserve me ! Dost thou love me ? Keep me, then, still worthy to be loved ! Sm Philip Sidney. Each moment, as we nearer drew to each, A stern respect withheld us further yet, So that we seemed beyond each other's reach, And less acquainted than when first we met. If I but love that virtue which he is. Though it be scented in the morning air, Still shall we be truest acquaintances. Nor mortals know a sympathy more rare. H. D. Thoeeau. 19 September. Oh, call me but thy Friend ! Seek thou no other word when thou wouldst pour Thy soul in mine ; for this unto the core Of Love doth pierce, and in it comprehend ' All secrets of its lore. — This " Friend " Is like a full-stringed chord, that still doth seem Within its sound to gather up and blend All, all that life in other lives that takes Away life's curse of barrenness, and makes Our being's sweet and often-troubled dream. I never used it lightly ; unto me A sacredness hung round it ; for a Sign I held it, of our common words that be Initial letters of a speech divine. Oh, take this coin, too oft to worthless ends HEART UNTO HEART. 159 Profaned, and see upon its circlet shine One Image fair, one legend never dim ! This word by Him Was used at parting : " I have called you Friends,'^ Dora Greenwell. He hides himself within the love Of those whom we love best : The smiles and tones that make our homes Are shrines by Him possessed. He tents within the lonely heart, And shepherds every thought ; We find Him not by seeking long ; We lose Him not, unsought. w. c, Gannett. 20 September. No : there is not one sacred hour of the heart's intercourse with others, in which we are not looking to, and living upon, the Unseen. The eye that looks on us is but the material organ of an unseen spirit's love : the familiar voice that speaks to us draws its tones from an unsearchable heart, whose life is hid with God : the very hand that is clasped in ours has a pressure of tenderness that belongs not to flesh and blood, and is an impress from the un- seen soul. Blessed then be God, that they are the things that are seen that are temporal, and the things that are unseen that are everlasting ! J. H. Thom. He spake of love, such love as spirits feel In worlds whose course is equable and pure ; IGO BECKOXINGS. No fears to beat aTrav. no strife to heal, The past iinsighed for. and the future sure ; Spake, as a witness, of a second buth Fo/ all that is most perfect upon earth. WORDSWOBTH. 21 September. What, then, is the true way of loving one's friends ? It is to love them in God, to love God in them : to love what He has made them, and to bear, for love of Him, with what He has not made them. The love of God. loving fi'iends apart from self, knows how to love patiently through all their faults. What is lack- ing in any one it knows may yet be made up. if God wills. Fen-elon. But if He gTant a friend, that boon possessed Indeed is treasure, and crowns all the rest : And giving one whose heart is in the skies, Born fi'om above, and made divinely wise, He gives what bankru^^t Xatm-e never can, Whose noblest coin is light and brittle man, — Gold purer far than Ophir ever knew. — A soul, an image of Himself, and therefore true. COWPER. 22 September. To pray together, in what- ever tongue or ritual, is the most tender brother- hood of hope and sympathy that men can con- tract in this life. ^tiADAMz de Stael. Mystical, more than magical, is that commun- ing of soul with soul, both looking heavenward. Here properly soul first speaks with soul ; for HEART UNTO HEART. 161 only in looking heavenward, take it in what sense you may, not in looking earthward, does what we can call union, mutual love, society, begin to be possible. Caelyle. 23 September. If souls please thee, be they loved in God : for they too are mutable, but in Him are they firmly established ; else would they pass, and pass away. In Him, then, be they be- loved ; and carry unto Him along with thee what souls thou canst, and say to them, " Him let us love ; Him let us love." See, there He is, where truth is loved ! Saint Augustine. Love all for Jesus, but Jesus for Himself. He alone is found Good and Faithful above all friends. For Him, and in Him, let friends and foes be dear unto thee. Thomas a Kempis. By the deep stirring of my heart In yearning after Thee, By all the longing of the life That leaneth unto Thee, — As human friend to human friend, — Can I so think of Thee ? Like human love with human love Will heavenly rapture be ? Such more than human blessedness Be meant in truth for me ? Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. 24 September. I think that the two things above all others that have made men in all ages 162 BECKONINGS. believe in immortality, — apart, so far as we know, from any revelation save that which is written on the human heart, — have been the broken loves and the broken friendships of the world. Men could not believe that this young life, broken off so suddenly, was done forever. It suggested its own continuance. Instinctively friendship triumphed over the grave. Love was too strong for death. Phillips Bkooks. Gentle eyes we closed below, Tender voices heard once more, Smile and call us, as they go On and onward, still before. Guided thus, O friend of mine ! Let us walk our little way, Knowing by each beckoning sign That we are not quite astray. J. G. Whittier. 25 September. The love that will be anni- hilated sooner than be treacherous, has already made death impossible, and affirms itself no mortal, but a native of the deeps of absolute and inextinguishable being. R. w. Emerson. These eyes again thine eyes shall see ; Thy hands again these hands infold. Were not our souls immortal made, Our equal loves can make them such. Edward Herbert. 26 September. If it be God who gave us these affections, and pronounced His own work HEART UNTO HEART. 163 good, will He one day suddenly change, and pro- nounce it evil ? He who dowered the earth with these strong and sweet attachments, will He de- nude heaven of them ? Madame de Gaspaein. Ah yet, when all is thought and said. The heart still overrules the head ; Still what we hope we must believe, And what is given to us receive ; — Must still believe, for still we hope That in a world of larger scope What here is faithfully begun, Will be completed, not undone. My child, we still must think, when we That ampler life together see. Some true result will yet appear Of what we are, together, here. A. H. Clough. 27 September. There is another world : and some have deemed It is a world of music and of light, And human voices and delightful forms, , Where the material shall no more be cursed By dominance of evil, but become A beauteous evolution of pure spirit Opposite, but not warring, rather yielding New grace, and evidence of liberty : — Oh, may we recognize each other there ! A. H. Hallam. Dear friend, far ofP, my lost desire, So far, so near, in woe and weal ; Oh, loved the most when most I feel There is a lower and a hioher ! 164 BECKONINGS. Known and unknown, human, divine ! Sweet human hand, and lips, and eye, Dear heavenly friend that cannot die. Mine, mine, forever, ever mine ! Strange friend, past, present, and to be ! Loved deeplier, darklier understood ! Behold, I dream a dream of good. And mingle all the world with thee I A. Tennyson. 28 September. The Transfiguration has lived on through ages, and has shed its light upon all ages. It has brought the past into union with the present. Moses and Elijah have been felt to be not dead forms, but living men, because the Son of God and the Son of Man lives. " The decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem " has been owned as the bond of fellowship between those who walk the earth and suffer in it, and those who are departed from it. In the light of that " countenance which was al- tered, of that raiment which was white and glis- tering," all human countenances have acquired a brightness, all common things have been trans- figured. A glimpse of the divine beauty has broken through the darkness, and has cheered the humblest pilgrims. f. d. maueice. Three humble friends of His, in lofty light S^w Him with heaven's men talking, face to face : Still, where He meets His friends is Tabor's height. Above the obscuring mists of time and space. HEART UNTO HEART. 165 29 September. St, Michael and All Angels. Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep. John IMilton. What their works are we do not know, save as we cat(5h brief glimpses here and there : some- times sent forth as for guard and watch, also as couriers, also as convoys home of spirits depart- ed, also to be escort-trains for the Almighty, — chariots of God counting twenty thousand, even thousands of angels. One of them, great Michael, is set forth to head a war against the dragon power of persecution, though exactly what that means we may not know. Perhaps they go forth on excursions among distant worlds and peoples, reporting, for new study, what of God may be discovered among them. Doubtless they have all enough to do forever, and that which is good enough and high enough for their powers. Horace Bushnell. Neither are the alternations of joy and such sorrow as by us is inconceivable, being only as it were a softness and silence in the pulse of an infi- nite felicity, inconsistent with the state even of the unf alien ; for the angels who rejoice over repent- ance cannot but feel an uncomprehended pain as they try again and again whether they may not warm hard hearts with the brooding of their kind wings. John Ruskin. 166 BECKOXDsGS. 30 September. And in the changes which, thank God ! must take place when the mortal puts on immortahty, shall we not feel that the nobler our friends are, the more they are them- selves ? that the more the idea of each is carried out in the perfection of beauty, the more like they are to what we thought them in our most exalted moods, — to that which we saw*in them in the rarest moments of profoundest commun- ion. — to that which we beheld through the veil of all theii^ imperfections when we loved them the truest. geobge MacDoxald. "Those who Hve in the Lord never see each other for the last time.'' If I truly love The One, All He loves are mine ; Alien to my heart is none, And life grows divine. TENTH MONTH. ''We all do fade as a leaf That was the wail of the ancient prophet, when the glory of his nation was slowly passing into dull decay because of the deadness at its heart. And from many a grand tree the leaves fade and drop in- gloriously, coldly submitting to inevitable des- tiny. But in our northern woodlands, the fading of the leaf is a change from uniform verdure to many-hued magnificence ; it is a ripening and a blossoming, no less than a fading. The tree does not reveal its crown-jewels until it is about to lay them aside ; then, for a few days, the forests are burdened with the splendors of abdicating sovereignty. The October leaf-fading is a festi- val, a triumphal pageant, rather than a funeral. The ripening of beauty out of the tree's life into its autumnal leafage is no less a mystery, is perhaps a more deeply spiritual mystery, than the ripening of its fruit. For it is as if every drop of the hidden sap sought to express itself in glowing color — to say, " It is glorious to live and to die ! " and to say it with most eloquent intensity in its final hour. So the tree of humanity is meant not only to 168 BECKONINGS. bear fruit, but to be a glory upon the earth, and to be most glorious in its heroisms and sacrifices, in the la3ring down of life that it may be taken up again, renewed in other lives whose roots are to be nourished by its temporary decay. The hoary head is a crown of glory when its splendors of thought, and faith, and aspiration have been shaped by the life-long working of spiritual elements, by the indwelling of the Di- vine Spirit Himself. Character, human charac- ter, fashioned after the image of the heavenly, is the crown of glory that fadeth not away. Death cannot dim its radiance. The crown is only seemingly laid aside for a time, to be worn, eter- nally brightening, in the kingdom of God. OCTOBER. AMONG THE SHEAVES. 1 October. Thought and the struggle after truth are the best joys of the best men. To fol- low out the lines of speculation and revelation until they lead us near the heart of things, which yet we know we can never perfectly reach ; to make some few steps forward on the journey which stretches out before us, endlessly tempting and interesting, into eternity ; to add each day some new stone to the structure whose lines al- ready, as they leave the earth, prophesy an infi- nite height for the far top-stone, — he has not AMONG THE SHEAVES. 169 lived who has not felt this pleasure. He is not really living, however full he may be of warmth of feeling, and of energy in action, who does not in some degree know what it is to crave ideas and knowledge, to seek for truth, and to delight in finding it. Phillips Brooks. 2 October. That glorious word Know I — it is God's attribute, and includes in itself all others. Love — truth — all are parts of that awful power of Knowing, at a single glance, from and to all eternity, what a thing is in its essence, its properties, and its relations to the whole uni- verse through all time. I feel awe-struck when- ever I use that word rightly. Charles Kingsley. Philosophy is properly a home-sickness, — a longing to be everywhere at home. Novalis. 3 October. That one man should die igno- rant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy, were it to happen more than twenty times in the minute, as by some computations it does. Carlyle. A man should be a guest in his own house and a guest in his own thought. He is there to speak for truth ; but who is he ? Some clod the truth has snatched from the ground, and with fire has fashioned to a momentary man. Without the truth he is a clod again. r. w. emerson. 4 October. The human intellect has had 170 BECKONTNGS. placed before it by Him who made it, one object and one only, worthy of its efforts ; and that is Truth, — truth, not for the sake of any ulterior object, however high or holy, but truth for its own sake. We must seek and desire truth even as though it existed by and for itself alone. Dean Staslby. He who abandons the personal search for truth, under whatever pretext, abandons truth. He>":ey Dkummont). 5 October. It is no proof of a man's under- standing to be able to confirm what he pleases : but to be able to discern that what is true is truo, and that what is false is false, tliis is the mark and character of intelligence. Swkdexborg. Knowledo^e and wisdom, far from beinc^ one, Have oft-times no connection. Knowledge dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men ; Wisdom in minds attentive to theb own. Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much : Wisdom is humble that he knows no more. COWPER. 6 October. Simple and sincere minds are never more than half mistaken. JorBEBx. The single eye alone can see All truths around us thrown, In their eternal unity ; The humble ear alone Has room to hold and time to prize The sweetness of life's harmonies. Aubrey de Verb. AMONG THE SHEAVES. 171 7 October. Every one must think in his own way, to arrive at truth. But he ought to keep himself in hand ; we are too good for pure instinct. Goethe. To think what one does not feel is to lie to one's self. Joubert. 8 October. One man is as good as a mil- lion, when he stands for a great truth, and is clothed with its authority and majesty. E. H. Sears. Stand upright ! speak thy thoughts ! declare The truth thou hast, that all may share ! Be bold ! proclaim it everywhere ! They only live, who dare. L. Mobeis. 9 October. The irmest and noblest ground on which people can live is the truth ; the real with the real ; a ground on which nothing is as- sumed, but where they speak and think and do what they must, because they are so and ];iot otherwise. R. w. emeeson. " Thou must be true thyself, If thou the truth wouldst teach. — Think truly, and thy thoughts Will the world's famine feed : Speak truly, and each word of thine Will be a fruitful seed : Live truly, and thy life will be A great and noble creed." 172 BECKOXIXGS. 10 October. The man whom Xature has appointed to do great things is. first of all. fm^- nished with that openness to Nature which ren- ders him incapable of being insincere. He is under the noble necessity' of being ti^ue. Cablyxb. Wisdom is a pearl with most success Sought in still water and beneath clear skies. COWPEB.. 11 October. Imarination. far from beinof an enemy to Truth, brings it forward more than any- other faculty of the mind. Madamf. de Stakl. I would not always reason. The straight path Wearies us with its never-varving lines. And we grow melancholy. I would make Reason my guide, but she should sometimes sit Patiently by the wayside, while I traced The mazes of the pleasant wilderness Around me. She should be my counselor, But not my tyrant. For the spirit needs Impulses from a deeper source than hers, And there are motions in the mind of man That she must look upon with awe. W. C. Betan-t. 12 October. Few minds are spacious : few even have a vacant place in them. Almost all have capacities that are narrow and occupied by some knowledge that stops them up. To enjoy itself and let others enjoy it. a mind should ever keep itself larger than its own thoughts. JOUBEET. AMONG THE SHEAVES. 173 Fine thoughts are wealth, for the right use of which Men are, and ought to be, accountable, If not to Thee, to those they influence. Grant this, we pray Thee, and that all who read Or utter noble thoughts, may make them theirs, And thank God for them, to the betterment Of their succeeding life. P. J. Bailey. 13 October. All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times ; but, to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience. Goethe. The truly great Have all one age, and from one visible space Shed influence. They, both in power and act. Are permanent, and Time is not with them. Save as it worketh for them, they in it. S. T. Coleridge. 14 October. In conversation seek not so much either to vent thy knowledge, or to increase it, as to know more spiritually and effectually what thou dost know. And in this way those mean despised truths that every one thinks he is sufficiently seen in, will have a new sweetness and use in them, which thou didst not so well perceive before (for these flowers cannot be sucked dry), and in this humble, sincere way thou shalt grow in grace and knowledge. Robert Leighton. 174 BECKONINGS. We are wrong, always, when we think too much Of what we think or are. mes. Beowxln-g. 15 October. How can a man leam to know himself ? By reflection never ; only hy action. In the measure in which thou seekest to do thy duty shalt thou know what is in thee. But what is thy duty ? — The demand of the hour. GrOETHE. Wisdom doth hve with children round her knees ; Books, leisure, perfect freedom, and the talk Man holds with week-day man in the hourly walk Of the mind's business. Wobdswoeth. 16 October. The mind should he allowed to dwell only on thoughts that are happy, satisfy- ing, or perfect. Happy thoughts I we have them when we expect them, and are in a state to re- ceive them. JouBEET. Education should be tender and severe, and not cold and soft. Joubeet. 17 October. The poorest education that teaches self-control, is better than the best that neglects it. Steeltn-g. A teacher who tries to awaken the sympathetic mterest of young persons in a single noble deed, or a single really good and heroic poem, does more towards his true growth than one who can AMONG THE SHEAVES. 175 tell off before him the names and describe the appearance of thousands of the inferior animals ; for the upshot of all that curious study of low organisms is simply what we know already, — that man, and man alone, has in a peculiar and special sense been created in the image of God. Always and everywhere the proper study of man- kind is man. Goethe. 18 October. I have learned to perceive that where good men have clung to a superstition, or a form, or a narrow miserable view, it is for the sake of some deep truth with which it seems to stand connected, and which I believe as well as they. So in the speculations so common in these days our sin is likely to be contempt. F. W. Robertson. Every wide-spread error contains a concealed truth. That is the point on which we must fas- ten if we wish to overthrow the error. Dean Stanley. 19 October. The truth is that ignorance and indifference are almost the same : we are sure to grow interested, as fast as our knowledge extends, in any subject whatever. W. B. O.Peabody. Know that pride, Howe'er disguised in its own majesty, Is littleness ; that he who feels contempt For any living thing, hath faculties Which he hath never used ; that thought with him Is in its infancy. Woedsworth. 176 BECKONINGS. 20 October. He never truly believed who was not fii^st made sensible and convinced of un- belief. Never be afraid to doubt, if only you have the disposition to believe, and doubt in order that you may end in believing the truth. ROBEET LeIGHTOK. To know a truth well, one must have fought it out. XOVALE. 21 October. Take care of the truth, and the errors will take care of themselves. You may destroy a hundred heresies, and yet not es- tabhsh a single truth. But you may, by estab- lishing a single truth, put to flight with one blow a hundred heresies. Dea>- Staxlet. It is certain, my belief gains innnitely, the mo- ment I can convince another mind thereof. XOTAIIS. 22 October. If e'er, when faith had fallen asleep, I heard a voice, " Beheve no more ! '* And heard an ever-brealdng shore That tuDibled in the Godless deep ; A warmth within the breast would melt The freezing reason's colder part ; And like a man in wrath the heart Stood up and answered. " I have felt ! " No, like a child in doubt and fear : But that blind clamor made me wise ; Then was I as a child that cries. But, crying, knows his Father near. -Vlfezd Tex>-yson. AMONG THE SHEAVES. 177 23 October. Let any one fix his attention on a moral truth, and it spreads out and enlarges its dimensions beneath his view, till what seemed at first as barren a proposition as words could express, appears like an interesting and glorious truth, momentous in its bearing on the destinies of men. And so it is with every material thing. Let the mind be intently fixed upon it, and hold it in the light of science, and it gradually unfolds new wonders. w. b. o. Peabody. We boast our light, but if we look not wisely on the sun itself, it smites us into darkness. The light which we have gained was given us, not to be ever staring on, but by it to discover onward things, now remote from all knowledge. John Milton. 24 October. The whole of human knowl- edge hangs together, and its centre is in human- ity itself, and the centre of humanity is Christian love. Therefore, let all knowledge, even to the utmost detail, group itself around the acknowl- edged centre. Seize upon each piece of knowl- edge that comes to you, and attach it to your own life. Every fact has something Divine in it. It comes in God's order, and .may be brought to bear in some way on your knowledge of men and your own work among them. W. H. Feeemantle. A thought is deep in proportion as it is near God. To be deep you must see the subject in its relation to God, yourself, and the universe ; 178 BECKONING S. and the more harmonious and simple it seems, the nearer God and the deeper it is. Chables Kingslet. 25 October. What I know of myself I know by Thy shining upon me ; and what I know not of myself, so long I know it not, until my darkness be made as the noon-day in Thy countenance. Saint Augustdjb. AU Are blessed, even as their sight descends Deeper into the truth, wherein rest is For every mind. Thus happiness hath root In seeing, not in loving, which of sight Is aftergrowth. Dantb. We needs must love the highest, when we see it. Tennyson. 26 October. I think that the first condi- tion of any permanent hold on truth is this : that the truth itself should be live enough and large enough to open constantly and bring to every new condition through which we pass some new experience of itself. The truth that is narrow and partial we outgrow ; only the truth that is broad and complete grows up into us and can be kept. The one is like the clothes of childhood that are cast aside ; the other is like the live body that grows up with the growing soul, and at each stage offers it a fit instrument for its work and a fit medium through which to receive its education^ phuj^ips bbooks. AMONG THE SHEAVES. 179 27 October. We are surrounded by mys- tery. Mind is more real than matter. Our souls and God are real. Of the reality of nothing else are we sure : it floats before us a fantastic shadow-world. Mind acts on mind. The Eter- nal Spirit blends mind with mind, soul with soul, and is moving over us all with His mystic inspi- ration every hour. F. W. Robertson. Our many deeds, the thoughts that we have thought, — They go out from us thronging every hour ; And in them all is folded up a power That on the earth doth move them to and fro ; And mighty are the marvels they have wrought In hearts we know not, and may never know. F. W. Faber. 28 October. Who would grieve, although there are some enclosed spots, quietudes in Cre- ation, which will be unexplored, unpenetrated forever ? Who that has felt the soft healing of Evening, can regret that even in the intellectual world there are regions into which faintness and weariness may sometimes flee, and take shelter and repose, away from the scorch and glare of oppressive light ? Sweet and inviting mysteries, among whose gentle shadows Hope, and Fear, and all unnamed yearnings tremblingly advance, and find or fashion for themselves images of pu- rity, convictions of immortality, vistas of a long life to come, through which the soul may wander. 180 BECKONINGS. freer and greater than now, " having gained the privilege by virtue ! " J. P. Nichol. 29 October. No man's soul is alone : Laoc- oon or Tobit. the serpent has it by the heart or the angel by the hand : the light or the fear of the spiritual things that move beside it may be seen on the body. John Ruskin. Our acts our Angels are, or good or ill ; Our fatal shadows that walk by us still. Man is his own Star, and that soul that can Be honest, is the only perfect man. John Fletcher. 30 October. " They supposed they had seen a spirit." How naturally does St. Luke describe just the confused apprehensions which have haunted men in all ages ! They tliink they see spirits. Every hour they are conversing with spiritual beings. Every message of affection which reaches us is a spiritual message. Every word which depresses or elevates us comes not from a material, but from a spiritual source. Our consciences and our reasons are ours, because we are spiritual ; we address the conscience and rea- son of other men because we own them to be spiritual. F. D. maueice. We see but half the causes of our deeds, Seeking them only in the outer life, And heedless of the encircling spirit-world, Which, though unseen, is felt, and sows in us All germs of pure and world-wide purposes. J. R. Lo\^'ELL. AMONG THE SHEAVES. 181 31 October. All-Hallow Eve, We do not hear less of spirits, less of spiritual communica- tions in this day than in former days. They do not assume less vulgar or less frivolous shapes. I believe we shall rise out of our delusions, if we can say to every man, " There is a communi- cation with the unseen world. The Son of God has established it forever in Himself. Therefore thou art not the servant of demons or spirits of the air. Therefore thou art not to play tricks with that which should be to thee awful, wonder- ful, blessed. Seek fellowship with the unseen in Him who is the Head of both worlds. Leave other roads to those who do not own the glory of man, his relation to God." r. d. maukice. They are alive, who seemed to die ; In every breeze a soul goes by. And whispers, " There is nothing dead ; Life stirs the very dust you tread." Haunted is every spot below ; Spirits around us come and go, Opening earth's doors to heavenly air ; "With us forever, everywhere ! ELEVENTH MONTH. Christian legend has woven into the associa- tions of the month which is traditionally the sad- dest and dreariest of the twelve — November — the tenderest thoughts and the most sacred inspi- rations. It opens with All-Saints' Day, and is heralded by the picturesque idealisms of All-Hal- low Eve. Surely it cannot be a superstition only which has consecrated one evening in the year to the thought of all souls, whether lingering in their mortal bodies, or released into spiritual freedom. It is good for us to keep in mind the vastness of the family to which we belong, the universal brotherhood, the life in God, which is our eternal bond of union. All-Saints' Day symbolizes the home-coming of souls to their Father's House. Not all have yet returned. Some are wandering in the midnight and the storm ; but this day dawns for them, no less than for those who have found shelter in the secret place of the Most High : and by the glad- ness and the warmth which radiate from that holy hearth-stone, the lost ones will find their way back, if they will but turn their faces thither- ward. HEAVEN-LIFE ON EARTH. 183 What thought is so grand as this, — that we are inalienably related to the pure and the holy in all ages and climes, if we but share their divine sympathies, and breathe with them the spiritual breath which not only the disciples of Jesus, but all seekers of His truth, have felt thrilling their inmost being from the Lord's words, " Eeceive ye the Holy Ghost ! " To breathe with Him the God-life of self-sacrificing love, is the only saint- liness. His breath makes summer in the air of a wintry world, when the trees are despoiled of their glory and beauty, and the song of the streams is frozen to silence. And November is Thanksgiving-month. The homely Puritan anniversary blends itself with the ancient festival of All-Saints and All Souls : — *' Homeward we haste to Heaven's Thanksgiving, The harvest-gathering of the heart." NOVEMBER. HEAVEN-LIFE ON EAKTH. 1 November. All-Saints' Day, How large a part of our God-ward life is traveled not by clear landmarks seen far off in the promised land, but as travelers climb a mountain - peak, by putting footstep after footstep slowly and patiently into the prints which some one, going before us, with keener sight, with stronger nerves, tied to us by the cord of saintly sympathy, has 184 BECKONINGS. planted deep into the pathless snow of the bleak distance that stretches up between humanity and God! We ascend by one another. No man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. We live and die not only to God but to each other. Phtllips Brooks. Where now with pain thou treadest, trod The whitest of the saints of God ! To show thee where their feet were set, The light which led them shineth yet. J. G. Whittier. 2 November. As pilgrims, we approach the great saints, and commune with them in spirit, killing the distance of time and space. We enter into them, and they into us. In our souls we cherish them, and imbibe their character and principles. They may be made to live and grow in us. Keshub Chuxder Sen. And still the heavens lie open as of old To the entranced gaze ; ay, nearer far. And brighter than of yore ; and Might is there, And Infinite Purity is there, and high Eternal Wisdom, and the calm clear face Of Duty ; and a higher, stronger Love And Light in one, and a new reverend Name, Greater than any and combining all : And over all, veiled with a veil of cloud, God set far off, too bright for mortal eyes. Edwin Morris. 3 November. I will frankly tell you that HEAVEN-LIFE ON EARTH. 185 my experience in prolonged scientific investiga- tions convinces me that a belief in God — a God who is behind and within the chaos of vanishing- points of human knowledge — adds a wonderful stimulus to the man who attempts to penetrate into the regions of the unknown. Of myself, I may say that I never make preparations for penetrating into some small province of nature hitherto undiscovered, without breathing a prayer to the Being who hides His secrets from me only to allure me graciously on to the unfolding of them. Louis Agassiz. Is not prayer also a study of truth, — a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite ? No man ever prayed heartily without learning something. R. W. Emerson. 4 November. Three blissful words I name to thee. Three words of potent charm, From eating care thy heart to free, Thy life to shield from harm ; — Pray, work, and sing ! John Stuart Blackie. Whate'er 't is good to wish, ask that of Heaven, Though it be what thou canst not hope to see : Pray to be perfect, though material leaven Forbid the spirit so on earth to be : But if for any wish thou darest not pray, Then pray to God to cast that wish away ! Hartley Coleridge. 6 November. In prayer, man is a laborer 186 BECKONINGS. together with his God. We have had enough in our day of the shallow evangel of labor, man's gospel preached to man ; we have been told till we weary of hearing it, that "he whd works, prays " ; but let us lift up our hearts high enough to meet a fuller, deeper, richer truth ; let us learn that " he who prays, works " ; works even with his God ; is humble enough, is bold enough to help Him who upholds all things by the word of His power. dora Geeenwell. Not tni the soul acts with all its strength, strains its every faculty, does prayer begin. Frances Power Cobbb. 6 November. A man beholds himself at his best when he prays. He realizes his whole future. He is incarnated to himself in his own destiny. The past in the shape of its prophets, the future in the shape of the kingdom of God, surround us when we pray. P. c. Mozoomdae. Prayer is the world-plant's purpose, the bright flower, The ultimate meaning of the stem and leaves. — Who uses prayer, a friend shall never miss ; If he should slip, a timely staff and kind. Placed in his grasp by hands unseen, shall find ; Sometimes upon his forehead a soft kiss ; And arms cast round him gently from behind. H. S. Sutton. 7 November. The true prayer is that of the heart, and the heart prays^ only through its desires. HEAVEN-LIFE ON EARTH. 187 We pray without ceasing when we unceasingly retain true love and true desire in our hearts. Love, hidden in the soul, prays constantly, even when the mind is drawn another way. We wish all and we wish nothing. What God wills to give us is exactly what we should have chosen ; for we wish all that He wills, and only what He wills. Fenelon. When one that holds communion with the skies Has filled his urn where these pure waters rise. And once more mingles with us meaner things, 'T is even as if an angel shook his wings : Immortal fragrance fills the circuit wide. That tells us whence his treasures are supplied. So when a ship, well freighted with the stores The sun matures on India's spicy shores. Has dropped her anchor, and her canvas furled In some safe haven of our western world, 'T were vain inquiry to what port she went ; The gale informs us, laden with the scent. COWPEE. 8 November. Prayer seeks that which lies below all words. From those who pray as chil- dren one desires only to learn; their lives are better and more beautiful commentaries upon their prayers than any the schools can furnish. F. D. Maueice. Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice 188 BECKONINGS. Rise like a fountain for me night and day ! For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend ? For so the whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. Alfred Tennyson. 9 November. What we desire for ourselves and for our race — the greatest redemption we can dream of — is gathered up in the words, " Thine is the glory." Self-wiUing, self-seeking, self-glorying, — here is the curse. No shackles remain when these are gone : nothing can be wanting when the spirit sees itself, loses itself in Him who is Light, and in whom is no darkness at all. In these words, therefore, we see the ground and consummation of our prayer ; they show how prayer begins and ends in sacrifice and adoration. They teach us how prayer, which we might fancy was derived from the wants of an imperfect, suffering crea- ture, belongs equally to the redeemed and per- fected. In these the craving for independence has ceased; they are content to ask and to re- ceive. But their desire of knowledge and love never ceases. They have awaked up after His likeness, and are satisfied with it : but the thought, " Thine is the glory," opens to them a vision which must become wider and brighter forever and ever. f. d. maueice. HEAVEN-LIFE ON EARTH. 189 10 November. It is not in prayer only that the soul approaches God, for it is drawn nigher Him by all the higher objects it turns to. If a poet will sing his noblest strain, it is into the ear of God he does it ; if an architect will build in his sublimest manner, it is a house for God he makes. And every earnest movement of the mind of man is upwards, and to God, — making us sure of the Divine Presence. Mountford, " The noblest prayer is when one evermore Grows inly liker Him he kneels before." 11 November. Christ not only prayed, but He was prayer. Prayer was incarnate in him. He prayed without ceasing. From the moment of His baptism to the awful moment when He committed His soul into the hands of the Father on the cross, did He not continually look up ? He looked up to Heaven for light, strength and guid- ance. And what is prayer but looking up ? When the true prayer is breathed, earth and heaven, the past and future, say Amen. And Christ prayed such prayers. P. c. Mozoomdar. The Lord's Prayer is a mighty prayer. Ye know not what ye pray for in it. God is Him- self the Kingdom, and in that Kingdom He reigns in all intelligent creatures. Therefore, what we ask for is God Himself with all His riches. That His name should be hallowed in us, means that He should reign in us, and accom- 190 BECKONINGS. plish through us His true work. And thus is His will done here on earth as it is in heaven : that is, when it is done in us as it is in Himself, in the Heaven which He Himself is. John tauleb. 12 November. As some rare perfume in a vase of clay Pervades it with a fragrance not its own, So, when Thou dwellest in a mortal soul, All heaven's own sweetness seems around it thrown. Abide in me ! There have been moments blest, When I have heard Thy voice and felt Thy power ; Then evil lost its grasp ; and passion, hushed. Owned the divine enchantment of the hour. These were but seasons, beautiful and rare : Abide in me, and they shall ever be I Fulfill at once Thy precept and my prayer : Come, and abide in me, and I in Thee ! Mrs. H. B. Stowe. 13 November. Blessed are the ears that gladly receive the pulses of the Divine whisper, and give no heed to the many whisperings of this world. Blessed are the eyes which are shut to out- ward things, but are intent on things within. Blessed are they that enter far into inward things, and endeavor to prepare themselves daily more and more for the receiving of heavenly secrets. Thomas a Kempis. HEAVEN-LIFE ON EARTH. 191 To keep the lamp alive. With oil we fill the bowl : 'T is water makes the willow thrive, And grace that feeds the soul. Man's wisdom is to seek His strength in God alone ; And even an angel would be weak Who trusted in his own. Cowpbr. 14 November. Christianity is not a religion, as religion has usually been understood, — a sys- tem of worship abstracted from the common life of men. It came to bind men together in just and true relations, to infuse into their societies the Divine Spirit, to transfigure the coarse ves- ture of humanity with that divinity which is love, till it shall become a temple in which He dwells. W. H. Freemantle. Self-sacrifice is the essential mark of the Chris- tian, and the absence of it is sufficient at once to condemn the man who calls himself by that name and yet has it not, and to declare that he has no right to it. Bolton. 15 November. The more spiritual is a man's religion, the more expansive and broad it always is. A stream may leave its deposits in the pool it flows through, but the stream itself hurries on to other pools in the thick woods. And so God's gifts a soul may selfishly appropriate ; but God Himself, the more truly a soul possesses Him, the more truly it will long and try to share Him. Phillips Brooks. 192 BECKONINGS. O rare sweet winds from Thy hills that blow ! O River so calm in its crystal flow ! O Love unf athomed — the depth, the height ! What joy wilt Thou not unto me impart, When Thou shalt enlarge my heart ? 16 November. Christianity is not a theory or a speculation ; but a life : — not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process. S. T. Coleridge. Christianity does not mean what you think, or what I think concerning Christ, but is of Christ. My Christianity, if I ever come to have any, will be what of Christ is in me ; your Christianity now is what of Christ is in you. Geoege MacDonald. 17 November. The Christ has passed through human life and human death, bearing all our burdens, connected with every individual of the race, not only by a bond of love, but a bond of relation, of brotherhood, — a bond which can never be broken. Eeskts-b. No fable old, nor m}i;hic lore, Nor dream of bards and seers, No dead fact stranded on the shore Of the oblivious years ; — But warm, sweet, tender, even yet A present help is He ; And faith has still its Olivet, And love its Galilee. J. G. WHrmEB. HEAVEN-LIFE ON EARTH. 193 18 November. The Christ says, Run not hither and thither ; the Kingdom of God is within you. Many others have been honored as divine messengers or as divinities. So there have been incarnations conceived, — as Buddha, Hercules. But the history of Christ is history for the com- munity, and has the witness of the spirit in the life of faith. It is maintained in a spiritual way, and not by external power. Hbgel. No need of going from one sect to another, for that is only a change from one human mas- ter to another. The Christ involves and compre- hends them all, and a great deal more besides ; and change, with Him, is nearing the sun-bright summits which overlook all the fields of thought, and from which all the artificial lines of division fade away and disappear. e. h. Seaes. 19 November. People say a church is a holy place. So it is if holy people be in it ; not else ; the kingdom is within you, not in stones. Where is the holiest place on earth? Where souls breathe the holiest vows, and execute the most heroic purposes. F. W. Robertson. It is those who understand what a church is, who are the least likely to rest in it, or in any- thing short of Him to whom it leads. Dora Greenwell. heart of mine, keep patience ! — Looking forth. 194 BECKONINGS. As from the Mount of Vision, I behold, Pure, just, and free, the Church of Christ on earth, — The martyr's dream, the golden age foretold I And, found at last, the mystic Graal I see. Brimmed with His blessing, pass from lip to lip In sacred pledge of human fellowship. J. G. Whittjjsr. 20 November. I hear men speak contin- ually of going to a "better world,'' rather than of its coming to them : but in that prayer, which they have straight from the lips of the Light of the World, there is not anything about going to another world ; only of another government com- ing into this, which will constitute it a world indeed ; new heavens and a new earth. " Thy kingdom come ; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." John Ruskin. 21 November. The fulfillment of the life of humanity in the world is in the Christ in God. The end is not another world. The end is the perfect and perfected world. And the life of man is not to be forever on and on, to overcome and still to overcome, to mark its advance by its journey from mile to mile, and by its transfer from field to field. That is the contingent of finite relations. The end is the consummation of life, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all. Elisha Mulpoed. Deep strike thy roots, O heavenly Vine, Within our earthly sod, HEAVEN-LIFE ON EARTH. 195 Most human and yet most divine, The flower of man and God ! J. G. "Whittier. 22 November. Whatever hopes of a heaven a neglected soul may have, can be shown to be an ignorant and delusive dream. How is the soul to escape to heaven if it has neglected for a lifetime the means of escape from the world and self ? And where is the capacity for heaven to come from, if it be not developed on earth ? Where, indeed, is even the smallest spiritual appreciation of God and heaven to come from, when so little of spirituality has ever been known or manifested here ? Heney Deummond. In imagining what is holy and divine, we take flight to other worlds, and conceive that there the film must fall away, and all adorable realities burst upon the sight. Alas I what reason have we to think any other station in the universe more sanctifying than our own ? The dimness we deplore, no traveling would cure : — we carry our darkness with us. Those to whom the earth is not consecrated will find their heaven profane. James Martineau. 23 November. There is no question for a finite creature, in his schooling-day, like this : " What shall my nature be worth, and what amount of being shall I carry with me, when I enter the great world before n>e ? " The old trivialities are gone by, the nonsense- 196 BECKONINGS. hours are over, and now it only remains to be set down in such quantity of being and character as are left, — and what shall it be ? His privilege was to make volume for himself ; to be so far a voluntary re-creator of himself; for his educa- tion-right was to be summed up, not in his ac- quirements, but in his enlargements. Is he then to be a stunted child when his education-day is over ? — that is the question, — or is he to be a JVLaJN"? Horace Bushnell. Short is the little that remains to thee of life. Live as on a mountain. For it makes no differ- ence whether a man lives here or there, if he lives everywhere in the world as in a civil com- munity. Let men see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he was meant to live. If they cannot endure him, let them kill him ; for that is better than to live as men do. maecus aueeuus. 24 November. Let a man breathe out but one hour of the charity of God, and feel but one true emotion of the reconciled heart, and then he knows forever what is meant by immor- tality, and he can understand the reality of his own. F. W. ROBEETSON. Above the dissonance of time, And discord of its angry words, I hear the everlasting chime — The music of un jarring chords. I bid it welcome ; and my haste To join it cannot brook delay. HEAVEN-LIFE ON EARTH. 197 O song of morning, come at last ! And ye who sing it, come away ! H. BONAE. 25 November. I have had some thoughts, on the first coming of which into my mind I clasped my hands and said, ^' O, not of my own thinking are these, hut Thy glorious sending, O my soul's God, thou God of truth ! " And sometimes I have had such beauty in my soul, that I could not but believe it a something out of heaven. MOUNTPOED. In some hour of solemn jubilee The massy gates of Paradise are thrown Wide open, and forth come, in fragments wild, Sweet echoes of unearthly melodies, And odors snatched from beds of amaranth. The favored good man in his lonely walk Perceives them, and his silent spirit drinks Strange bliss, which he shall recognize in heaven. S. T. Coleridge. 26 November. O feet grown weary as ye walk. Where down life's hill my pathway lies, What care I while my soul can mount, As the young eagle mounts the skies ? O eyes with weeping faded out, What matters it how dim ye be ? My inner vision sweeps untired The reaches of eternity. Ph