Always say to yourself this one thing, "Good I will become, whatever it cost me; and in God's goodness I trust to make me good, for I am sure He wishes to see me good more than I do myself." And you will find that, because you have confessed in that best and most honest of ways that God is good, and have so given Him real glory, and real honour, and real praise, He will save you from the sins which torment you, and you shall never come, either in this world or the world to come, to that worst misery, the being ashamed of yourself. _Sermons for the Times_. 1855. Be good to do Good. September 2. What we wish to do for our fellow-creatures we must do first for ourselves. We can give them nothing save what God has already given us. We must become good before we can make them good, and wise before we can make them wise. _All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1867. The Undying I. September 3. The youngest child, by faith in God his Father, may look upon all heaven and earth and say, "Great and wonderful and awful as this earth and those skies may be, I am more precious in the sight of God than sun and moon and stars; for they are things, but I am a person, a spirit, an immortal soul, made in the likeness of God, redeemed into the likeness of God. This great earth was here thousands and thousands of years before I was born, and it will be here perhaps millions of years after I am dead. But it cannot harm _Me_, it cannot kill _Me_. When earth, and sun, and stars have passed away I shall live for ever, for I am the immortal child of an immortal Father, the child of the everlasting God." _Sermons for the Times_. 1855. Love and Time. September 4. Love proves its spiritual origin by rising above time and space and circumstance, wealth and age, and even temporary beauty, at the same time that it alone can perfectly _use_ all those material adjuncts. Being spiritual, it is Lord of matter, and can give and receive from it glory and beauty when it will, and yet live without it. _MS._ 1843. Common Duties. September 5. The only way to regenerate the world is to do the duty which lies nearest us, and not to hunt after grand, far-fetched ones for ourselves. If each drop of rain _chose_ where it should fall, God's showers would not fall as they do now, on the evil and the good alike. I know from the experience of my own heart how galling this doctrine is--how, like Naaman, one goes away in a rage, because the prophet has not bid us do some great thing, but only to go wash in the nearest brook and be clean. _Letters and Memories_. 1854. Despair--Hope. September 6. Does the age seem to you dark? Do you feel, as I do at times, the awful sadness of that text, "The time shall come when you shall desire to see one of the days of the Lord, and shall not see it"? Then remember that The night is never so long But at last it ringeth for matin song.