_Miscellanies_. 1850. A Master-Truth. July 4. Every creature of God is good, if it be sanctified with prayer and thanksgiving! This to me is the master-truth of Christianity, the forgetfulness of which is at the root of almost all error. It seems to me that it was to redeem man and the earth that Christ was made man and used the earth!--that Christianity has never yet been pure, because it never yet, since St. Paul's time, has stood on _this_ as the fundamental truth, and that it has been pure or impure, just in proportion as it has _practically_ and _really_ acknowledged this truth. _Letters and Memories_. 1842. English Women. July 5. Let those who will sneer at the women of England. We who have to do the work and fight the battle of life know the inspiration which we derive from their virtue, their counsel, their tenderness--and, but too often, from their compassion and their forgiveness. There is, I doubt not, still left in England many a man with chivalry and patriotism enough to challenge the world to show so perfect a specimen of humanity as a cultivated British woman. _Lecture on Thrift_. 1869. Life retouched again. July 6. Even in the saddest woman's soul there linger snatches of old music, odours of flowers long dead and turned to dust,--pleasant ghosts, which still keep her mind attuned to that which may be in others, though in her never more; till she can hear her own wedding-hymn re-echoed in the tones of every girl who loves, and see her own wedding-torch re-lighted in the eyes of every bride. _Westward Ho_! chap. xxix. Mystery of Life. July 7. "All things begin in some wonder, and in some wonder end," said St. Augustine, wisest in his day of mortal men. It is a strange thing, and a mystery, how we ever got into this world; a stranger thing still to me how we shall ever get out of this world again. Yet they are common things enough--birth and death. _Good News of God Sermons_. Beauty of Life. July 8. The Greeks were, as far as we know, the most beautiful race which the world ever saw. Every educated man knows that they were the cleverest of all nations, and, next to his Bible, thanks God for Greek literature. Now the Greeks had made physical, as well as intellectual education a science as well as a study. Their women practised graceful, and in some cases even athletic exercises. They developed, by a free and healthy life, those figures which remain everlasting and unapproachable models of human beauty. _Lecture on Thrift_. 1869. Study the human figure, both as intrinsically beautiful and as expressing mind. It only expresses the broad natural childish emotions, which are just what we want to return to from our over subtlety. Study "natural language"--I mean the language of attitude. It is an inexhaustible source of knowledge and delight, and enables one human being to understand another so perfectly. Therefore learn to draw and paint figures. _Letters and Memories_. 1842.