Exceeding gifts from God are not blessings, they are duties, and very solemn and heavy duties. They do not always increase a man's happiness; they always increase his responsibility, the awful account which he must render at last of the talents committed to his charge. They increase, too, his danger. _Water of Life Sermons_. Summer Days. June 5. Now let the young be glad, Fair girl and gallant lad, And sun themselves to-day By lawn and garden gay; 'Tis play befits the noon Of rosy-girdled June; . . . . . The world before them, and above The light of Universal Love. _Installation Ode_, _Cambridge_. 1862. "Sufficient for the Day." June 6. Let us not meddle with the future, and matters which are too high for us, but refrain our souls, and keep them low like little children, content with the day's food, and the day's schooling, and the day's play-hours, sure that the Divine Master knows that all is right, and how to train us, and whither to lead us; though we know not and need not know, save this, that the path by which He is leading each of us, if we will but obey and follow step by step, leads up to everlasting life. _All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1871. Secret of Thrift. June 7. The secret of thrift is knowledge. The more you know the more you can save yourself and that which belongs to you, and can do more work with less effort. Knowledge of domestic economy saves income; knowledge of sanitary laws saves health and life: knowledge of the laws of the intellect saves wear and tear of brain, and knowledge of the laws of the spirit--what does it not save? _Lecture on Thrift_. 1869. Out-door Worship. June 8. In the forest, every branch and leaf, with the thousand living things which cluster on them, all worship, worship, worship with us! Let us go up in the evenings and pray there, with nothing but God's cloud temple between us and His heaven! And His choir of small birds and night crickets and booming beetles, and all happy things who praise Him all night long! And in the still summer noon, too, with the lazy-paced clouds above, and the distant sheep-bell, and the bee humming in the beds of thyme, and one bird making the hollies ring a moment, and then all still--hushed--awe-bound, as the great thunder-clouds slide up from the far south! Then, then, to praise God! Ay, even when the heaven is black with wind, the thunder crackling over our heads, then to join in the paean of the storm-spirits to Him whose pageant of power passes over the earth and harms us not in its mercy! _Letters and Memories_. 1844. God's Countenance. June 9. Study nature as the countenance of God! Try to extract every line of beauty, every association, every moral reflection, every inexpressible feeling from it. _Letters and Memories_. 1842. Certain and Uncertain. June 10.