Thy secret judgment's depths profound Still sings the silent night; The day, upon his golden round, Thy pity infinite. I. WILLIAMS. _Tr. from Latin_. Now that I have no longer any sense for the transitory and perishable, the universe appears before my eyes under a transformed aspect. The dead, heavy mass which did but stop up space has vanished, and in its place there flows onward, with the rushing music of mighty waves, an eternal stream of life, and power, and action, which issues from the original source of all life,--from Thy life, O Infinite One! for all life is Thy life, and only the religious eye penetrates to the realm of true Beauty. J. G. FICHTE. What is Nature? Art thou not the "Living Garment" of God? O Heavens, is it, in very deed, He then that ever speaks through thee; that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me? Sweeter than dayspring to the shipwrecked in Nova Zembla; ah! like the mother's voice to her little child that strays bewildered, weeping, in unknown tumults; like soft streamings of celestial music to my too exasperated heart, came that Evangel. The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel-house with spectres; but godlike, and my Father's. T. CARLYLE. December 19 _And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in Thee_.--PS. xxxix. 7. _O Lord, be gracious unto us; we have waited for Thee_.--ISA. xxxiii. 2. He never comes too late; He knoweth what is best; Vex not thyself in vain; Until He cometh, rest. B. T. We make mistakes, or what we call such. The nature that could fall into such mistake exactly needs, and in the goodness of the dear God is given, the living of it out, And beyond this, I believe more. That in the pure and patient living of it out we come to find that we have fallen, not into hopeless confusion of our own wild, ignorant making; but that the finger of God has been at work among our lines, and that the emerging is into His blessed order; that He is forever making up for us our own undoings; that He makes them up beforehand; that He evermore restoreth our souls. A. D. T. WHITNEY. THE Lord knows how to make stepping-stones for us of our defects, even; it is what He lets them be for. He remembereth--He remembered in the making--that we are but dust; the dust of earth, that He _chose_ to make something little lower than the angels out of. A. D. T. WHITNEY. December 20 _Take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak_.--MATT. x. 19. Just to follow hour by hour As He leadeth; Just to draw the moment's power As it needeth. F. R. HAVERGAL.