"The hard path of daily duty is the only path to tread, not because one is thinking of oneself, but because one wishes to forget oneself, and to think only of God, and of those that remain. "Self-denial: to put self last, not out of sight, but last, that is what one is always called to do, and it is a sad bit of disloyalty to God's grace if one becomes more selfish in Sorrow." Canon SCOTT HOLLAND. Bearing Sorrow SEPTEMBER 16 "A great Sorrow which changes life altogether is apt to produce a certain irritability, a sort of nervous jar. "Very often this is an affair of nerves, of physical health, but it is well to watch--'watch and pray.' "All sorts of things will jar and hurt us. People will do and say things with perfect unconsciousness that they are wounding us to the quick. Some careless allusion, some chance speech, will set our nerves quivering.... The worries, the jarring incidents, the introduction of discordant topics in the very presence of death, the disappointments, are all to lead us upwards. It is a rough bit of road on which we are set to walk, and the sharp stones cut our feet, but every step brings us nearer God. "Do not let _temper_ mar the days of Sorrow. "There most probably will be something to try our temper. Who does not know the trials which seem peculiar to a break-up, a change in our outward life? Who has not seen real Christians giving way to peevishness, fretfulness, petty dislikes, petty jealousies of near relations, of those who may be taking the place of the one they mourn? Perhaps there is nothing which so mars and spoils the religious life as bad temper and selfishness. "Nothing which is so apt to make outsiders shrug their shoulders at those who make frequent Communions, and go much to Church, and who, especially in dark hours, give way to crossness. There is no better name." Canon SCOTT HOLLAND. The Meaning of Religion SEPTEMBER 17 "The meaning of religion is a rule of life; it is an obligation to do well; if that rule, that obligation, is not seen, your thousand texts will be to you like the thousand lanterns to the blind man. As he goes about the house in the night of his blindness, he will only break the glass and burn his feet and fingers: and so you, as you go through life in the night of your ignorance, will only break and hurt yourselves on broken laws.