However constant the visitations of sickness and bereavement, the fall of the year is most thickly strewn with the fall of human life. Everywhere the spirit of some sad power seems to direct the time; it hides from us the blue heavens, it makes the green wave turbid; it walks through the fields, and lays the damp ungathered harvest low; it cries out in the night wind and the shrill hail; it steals the summer bloom from the infant cheek; it makes old age shiver to the heart; it goes to the churchyard, and chooses many a grave.

If we listen to our self-love, we shall estimate our lot less by what it is than by what it is not; shall dwell upon its hindrances and be blind to its possibilities; and, comparing it only with imaginary lives, shall indulge in flattering dreams of what we should do if we had but power, and give if we had but wealth, and be if we had no temptations.

Every man's highest, nameless though it be, is his 'living God'.

Heaven and God are best discerned through tears; scarcely perhaps are discerned at all without them. The constant association of prayer with the hour of bereavement and the scenes of death suffice to show this.

The scepticism which men affect towards their higher inspirations is often not an honest doubt, but a guilty negligence, and is a sign of narrow mind and defective wisdom.

The heavens, with their everlasting faithfulness, look down on no sadder contradiction than the sluggard and the slattern in their prayers.

The incarnation is true, not of Christ exclusively, but of Man universally, and God everlastingly.