If we do not understand our fellow-creatures we shall never love them. And it is equally true, that if we do not love them we shall never understand them. Want of charity, want of sympathy, want of good feeling and fellow-feeling--what does it, what can it breed but endless mistakes and ignorances, both of men's characters and men's circumstances? _Westminster Sermons_. 1873. A Religion. May 6. If all that a man wants is "a _religion_," he ought to be able to make a very pretty one for himself, and a fresh one as often as he is tired of the old. But the heart and soul of man wants more than that; as it is written, "My soul is athirst for GOD, even for the living God." I want a living God, who cares for men, forgives men, saves men from their sins: and Him I have found in the Bible, and nowhere else, save in the facts of life which the Bible alone interprets. _Sermons on the Pentateuch_. 1863. True Civilisation. May 7. Do the duty which lies nearest to you; your duty to the man who lives next door, and to the man who lives in the next street. Do your duty to your parish, that you may do your duty by your country and to all mankind, and prove yourselves thereby civilised men. _Water of Life Sermons_. 1866. Nature and Grace. May 8. Why speak of the God of Nature and the God of grace as two antithetical terms? The Bible never in a single instance makes the distinction, and surely if God be the eternal and unchangeable One, and if all the universe bears the impress of His signet, we have no right, in the present infantile state of science, to put arbitrary limits of our own to the revelation which He may have thought good to make of Himself in Nature. Nay, rather, let us believe that if our eyes were opened we should fulfil the requirement of genius and see the universal in the particular by seeing God's whole likeness, His whole glory, reflected as in a mirror in the meanest flower, and that nothing but the dulness of our simple souls prevents them from seeing day and night in all things the Lord Jesus Christ fulfilling His own saying, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." _Glaucus_. 1855. Wisdom the Child of Goodness. May 9. Goodness rather than talent had given her a wisdom, and goodness rather than courage a power of using that wisdom, which to those simple folk seemed almost an inspiration. _Two Years Ago_, chap. ii. 1857. Rule of Life. May 10. Two great rules for the attainment of heavenly wisdom are simple enough--"Never forget what and where you are," and "Grieve not the Holy Spirit." _MS. Letter_. 1841. Music the Speech of God. May 11.