There is little hope that we shall learn the lessons God is for ever teaching us in the events of life till we get rid of our secret Atheism, till we give up the notion that God only visits now and then to disorder and destroy His own handiwork, and take back the old scriptural notion that God is visiting all day long for ever, to give order and life to His own work, to set it right where it goes wrong, and re-create it whenever it decays. _Water of Life Sermons_. 1866. Tolerance. March 16. If we really love God and long to do good and work for God, if we really love our neighbours and wish to help them, we shall have no heart to quarrel about _how_ the good is to be done, provided _it is_ done. "Master," said St. John, "we saw one casting out devils in Thy name, and he followeth not us; wilt Thou that we forbid him? And Jesus said, Forbid him not." _Sermons_. The Hopes of Old Age. March 17. Christianity alone deprives old age of its bitterness, making it the gate of heaven. Our bodies will fade and grow weak and shapeless, just when we shall not want them, being ready and in close expectation of that resurrection of the flesh which is the great promise of Christianity (no miserable fancies about "pure souls" escaped from matter, but)--of bodies, _our_ bodies, beloved, beautiful, ministers to us in all our joys, sufferers with us in all our sorrows--yea, our very own selves raised up again to live and love in a manner inconceivable from its perfection. _MS._ 1842. . . . No! I can wait: Another body!--Ah, new limbs are ready, Free, pure, instinct with soul through every nerve, Kept for us in the treasuries of God! _Santa Maura_. 1852. The Highest Study for Man, March 18. Man is _not_, as the poet said, "the noblest study of mankind." God is the noblest study of man, and Him we can study in three ways. 1st. From His image as developed in Christ the Ideal, and in all good men--great good men. 2dly. From His works. 3dly. From His dealings in history; this is the real philosophy of history. _Letters and Memories_. 1842. Eclecticism. March 19. An eclectic, if it mean anything, means this--one who in any branch of art or science refuses to acknowledge Bacon's great law, that "Nature is only conquered by obeying her;" who will not take a full and reverent view of the whole mass of facts with which he has to deal, and from them deducing the fundamental laws of his subject, obey them whithersoever they may lead; but who picks and chooses out of them just so many as may be pleasant to his private taste, and then constructs a partial system which differs from the essential ideas of Nature in proportion to the number of facts which he has determined to discard. _Miscellanies_. 1849. Duty. March 20.