Oh! Love! Love! Love! the same in peasant and in peer! The more honour to you, then, old Love, to _be_ the same thing in this world which _is_ common to peasant and to peer. They say that you are blind, a dreamer, an exaggerator--a liar, in short! They just know nothing about you, then. You will not see people as they seem--as they have become, no doubt; but why? Because you see them as they ought to be, and are in some deep way eternally, in the sight of Him who conceived and created them! _Two Years Ago_, chap. xiv. 1856. Life--Love. January 11. We must live nobly to love nobly. _MS._ The Seed of Good. January 12. Never was the young Abbot heard to speak harshly of any human being. "When thou hast tried in vain for seven years," he used to say, "to convert a sinner, then only wilt thou have a right to suspect him of being a worse man than thyself." That there is a seed of good in all men, a divine word and spirit striving with all men, a gospel and good news which would turn the hearts of all men, if abbots and priests could but preach it aright, was his favourite doctrine, and one which he used to defend, when at rare intervals he allowed himself to discuss any subject, from the writings of his favourite theologian, Clement of Alexandria. Above all, Abbot Philamon stopped by stern rebuke any attempt to revile either heretics or heathens. "On the Catholic Church alone," he used to say, "lies the blame of all heresy and unbelief; for if she were but for one day that which she ought to be, the world would be converted before nightfall." _Hypatia_, chap. xxx. 1852. Danger of Thinking vaguely. January 13. Watch against any fallacies in your ideas which may arise, not from disingenuousness, but from allowing yourself in moments of feeling to think vaguely, and not to attach precise meaning to your words. Without any cold caution of expression, it is a duty we owe to God's truth, and to our own happiness and the happiness of those around us, to think and speak as correctly as we can. Almost all heresy, schism, and misunderstandings, between either churches or individuals who ought to be one, have arisen from this fault of an involved and vague style of thought. _MS._ 1842. The Possession of Faith. January 14. I don't want to possess a faith, I want a faith which will possess me. _Hypatia_, chap. xvii. 1852. The Eternal Life. January 15.