Do not rashly count on some sudden radical change happening to you as soon as you die to make you fit for heaven. There is not one word in the Bible which gives us reason to suppose that we shall not be in the next world the same persons that we have made ourselves in this world. . . . What we sow here we shall reap there. And it is good for us to know and face this. Anything is good for us, however unpleasant it may be, which drives us from the only real misery, which is sin and selfishness, to the only true happiness, which is the everlasting life of Christ, a pure, loving, just, generous, useful life of goodness. _Good News of God Sermons_. Science and Virtue. May 22. Science is great; but she is not the greatest. She is an instrument and not a power--beneficent or deadly, according as she is wielded by the hand of virtue or vice. But her lawful mistress, the only one which can use her aright, the only one under whom she can truly grow and prosper and prove her divine descent, is Virtue, the likeness of Almighty God. _Roman and Teuton_. 1860. A Child's Heart. May 23. "I saw at last! I found out that I had been trying for years which was stronger, God or I; I found out I had been trying whether I could not do well enough without Him; and there I found that I could not--could not! I felt like a child who had marched off from home, fancying it can find its way, and is lost at once. I did not know that I had a Father in heaven who had been looking after me, when I fancied I was looking after myself. I don't half believe it now." . . . And so the old heart passed away from Thomas Thurnall, and instead of it grew up the heart of a little child. _Two Years Ago_, chap. xxviii. 1857. Self-Security. May 24. Strange it is how mortal man, "who cometh up and is cut down like the flower," can harden himself into a stoical security, and count on the morrow which may never come. Yet so it is, and perhaps if it were not so no work would get done on earth--at least by the many who know not that God is guiding them, while they fancy they are guiding themselves. _Two Years Ago_, chap. i. There is a Providence which rules this earth, whose name is neither Political Economy nor Expediency, but the Living God, who makes every right action reward, and every wrong action punish, _itself_. _History Lecture_, _Cambridge_. 1866. Loss and Gain. May 25. "He has yet to learn what losing his life to save it means, Amyas. Bad men have taught him (and I fear these Anabaptists and Puritans at home teach little else) that it is the one great business of every man to save his own soul after he dies; every one for himself; and that that, and not divine self-sacrifice, is the one thing needful, and the better part which Mary chose." "I think," said Amyas, "men are enough inclined to be selfish without being taught that." _Westward Ho_! chap. vii. 1854. The Law of Righteousness. May 26.