The men whom I have seen succeed best in life have always been cheerful and hopeful men, who went about their business with a smile on their faces, and took the changes and chances of this mortal life like men, facing rough and smooth alike as it came, and so found the truth of the old proverb that "good times and bad times and all times pass over." _MS._ Want of Simplicity. October 10. Faith and prayer are simple things, . . . but when we begin to want faith, and to assist prayer by our own inventions and to explain away God's providence, then faith and prayer become intricate and uncertain. We cannot serve God and mammon. We must either utterly depend on God (and therefore on our own reason enlightened by His spirit after prayer), or we must utterly depend on the empirical maxims of the world. Choose! _MS. Letter_. True Rest. October 11. What is true rest? To rest from sin, from sorrow, from doubt, from care; this is true rest. Above all, to rest from the worst weariness of all--knowing one's duty and not being able to do it. That is true rest; the rest of God who works for ever, and yet is at rest for ever; as the stars over our heads move for ever, thousands of miles a day, and yet are at perfect rest, because they move orderly, harmoniously, fulfilling the law which God has given them. Perfect rest in perfect work; that surely is the rest of blessed spirits till the final consummation of all things. _Water of Life Sermons_. 1867. God's Image. October 12. . . . "Honour all men." Every man should be honoured as God's image, in the sense in which Novalis says--that we touch Heaven when we lay our hand on a human body! . . . The old Homeric Greeks, I think, felt that, and acted up to it, more than any nation. The Patriarchs too seem to have had the same feeling. . . . _Letters and Memories_. 1843. Woman's Work. October 13. Let woman never be persuaded to forget that her calling is not the lower and more earthly one of self-assertion, but the higher and diviner one of self-sacrifice; and let her never desert that higher life which lives in and for others, like her Redeemer and her Lord. _Lecture on Thrift_. 1869. Self-Enjoyment. October 14. "How do ye expect," said Sandy, "ever to be happy, or strong, or a man at a', as long as ye go on only looking to enjoy yersel--_yersel_? Mony was the year I looked for nought but my ain pleasure, and got it too, when it was a' "'Sandy Mackaye, bonny Sandy Mackaye, There he sits singing the lang simmer day; Lassies gae to him, And kiss him, and woo him-- Na bird is so merry as Sandy Mackaye.' An' muckle good cam' o't. Ye may fancy I'm talking like a sour, disappointed auld carle. But I tell ye nay. I've got that's worth living for, though I am downhearted at times, and fancy a's wrong, and there's na hope for us on earth, we be a' sic liars--a' liars, I think--I'm a great liar often mysel, especially when I'm praying."