We give thanks often with a tearful, doubtful voice, for our spiritual mercies positive, but what an almost infinite field there is for mercies negative! We cannot even imagine all that God has allowed us not to do, not to be.

Silence is no certain token that no secret grief is there; Sorrow which is never spoken is the heaviest load to bear.

Take my will, and make it Thine, It shall be no longer mine; Take my heart, it is Thine own; It shall be Thy royal throne.

Poetry is a second translation of the soul's feeling; it must be rendered into thought, and thought must change its nebulous robe of semi-wording into definite language, before it reaches another heart. Music is a first translation of feeling, needing no second, but entering the heart direct.

Writing is praying with me. You know a child would look up at every sentence and say, 'And what shall I say next?' That is just what I do; I ask Him that at every line He would give me not merely thoughts and power, but also every word, even the very rhymes.

They would make the 'Church ' their great meeting-point, rather than the Atonement of Christ. As far as my experience goes, they have more devoutness and less devotion, more fear and less love, more feeling of duty than of desire, laying more stress on Phil. ii. 12 than ver. 13, and in practice working upon the intellect and imagination rather than aiming at the heart, skirmishing among the outworks rather than assaulting the citadel.

No life can be dreary when work is delight.