_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND. "Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good." MARCUS AURELIUS. The Power of the Holy Spirit JANUARY 5 "We are haunted by an ideal life, and it is because we have within us the beginning and the possibility of it." PHILLIPS BROOKS. "The power of the Holy Spirit!--an everlasting spiritual presence among men. What but that is the thing we want? That is what the old oracles were dreaming of, what the modern Spiritualists tonight are fumbling after. The power of the Holy Ghost, by which every man who is in doubt may know what is right, every man whose soul is sick may be made spiritually whole, every weak man may be made a strong man,--that is God's one sufficient answer to the endless appeal of man's spiritual life; that is God's one great response to the unconscious need of spiritual guidance, which He hears crying out of the deep heart of every man.--I hope that I have made clear to you what I mean. I would that we might understand ourselves, see what we might be; nay, see what we are. While you are living a worldly and a wicked life, letting all sacred things go, caring for no duty, serving no God, there is another self, your possibility, the thing that you might be, the thing that God gave you a chance to be." PHILLIPS BROOKS. A Symphony JANUARY 6 "To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common--this is to be my symphony." WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. "Heed how thou livest. Do no act by day Which from the night shall drive thy peace away. In months of sun so live that months of rain Shall still be happy." WHITTIER, _Translation_. Patience with Ourselves JANUARY 7 "To be honest, to be kind--to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends but these without capitulation--above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself--here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy." _Across the Plains_, R. L. STEVENSON.