"I will take heart to lay down what I hold to be a fundamental rule, that, while we endeavour to gain the largest and keenest power of appreciating all that is noblest in nature and art and literature, we must seek to live on as little as will support the full vigour of our life and work. The standard cannot be fixed. It will necessarily vary, within certain limits, according to the nature and office of each man. But generally we shall strive diligently to suppress all wants which do not tend through their satisfaction to create a nobler type of manhood, and individually we shall recognise no wants which do not express what is required for the due cultivation of our own powers and the fulfilment of that which we owe to others. We shall guard ourselves against the temptations of artificial wants which the ingenuity of producers offers in seductive forms. We shall refuse to admit that the caprice of fashion represents any valuable element in our constitution, or calls into play any faculties which would otherwise be unused, or encourages industry. On the contrary, we shall see in the dignity and changelessness of Eastern dress a typical condemnation of our restless inconstancy. We shall perceive, and act as perceiving, that the passion for novelty is morally and materially wasteful: that it distracts and confuses our power of appreciating true beauty: that it tends to the constant displacement of labour: that it produces instability both in the manufacture and in the sale of goods to the detriment of economy. We shall, to sum up all in one master-principle, estimate value and costs in terms of life, as Mr. Ruskin has taught us; and, accepting this principle, we shall seek nothing of which the cost to the producer so measured exceeds the gain to ourselves." _Christian Social Union Addresses_, Bishop WESTCOTT. Money DECEMBER 20 "If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that wealth may be said to possess him." BACON. "The covetous man is like the camel, with a great haunch on his back; heaven's gate must be made higher and broader, or he will hardly get in." ADAMS. "Who shuts his hand hath lost his gold, Who opens it hath it twice told." GEORGE HERBERT. "Wealth in every form, material, intellectual, moral, has to be administered for the common good. God only can say of any possession 'My own.'" Bishop WESTCOTT. Courage to be Poor DECEMBER 21 "How the sting of poverty, or small means, is gone when one keeps house for one's own comfort, and not for the comfort of one's neighbours." DINAH MARIA MULOCH.