Fix in your minds--or rather ask God to fix in your minds--this one idea of an absolutely good God; good with all forms of goodness which you respect and love in man; good, as you, and I, and every honest man, understand the plain word good. Slowly you will acquire that grand and all-illuminating idea; slowly and most imperfectly at best: for who is mortal man that he should conceive and comprehend the goodness of the infinitely good God! But see, then, whether, in the light of that one idea, all the old-fashioned Christian ideas about the relation of God to man--whether Providence, Prayer, Inspiration, Revelation, the Incarnation, the Passion, and the final triumph of the Son of God--do not seem to you, not merely beautiful, not merely probable, but rational, and logical, and necessary, moral consequences from the one idea of an Absolute and Eternal Goodness, the Living Parent of the universe? _Westminster Sermons_. 1873. Nature's Lesson. November 9. Learn what feelings every object in Nature expresses, but do not let them mould the tone of your mind; else, by allowing a melancholy day to make you melancholy, you worship the creature more than the Creator. _MS. Letter_. 1842. Morals and Mind. November 10. Not upon mind, not upon mind, but upon morals, is human welfare founded. The true subjective history of man is not the history of his thought, but of his conscience: the true objective history of man is not that of his inventions, but of his vices and his virtues. So far from morals depending upon thought, thought, I believe, depends on morals. In proportion as a nation is righteous--in proportion as common justice is done between man and man, will thought grow rapidly, securely, triumphantly; will its discoveries be cheerfully accepted and faithfully obeyed, to the welfare of the whole common weal. _Inaugural Lecture_, _Cambridge_. 1860. Fastidiousness. November 11. Do not let us provoke God (though that is _really_ impossible) by complaining of His gifts because they do not come just in the form _we_ should have wished. . . . _MS. Letter_. 1844. Unconscious Faith. November 12. For the rest, Amyas never thought about thinking or felt about feeling; and had no ambition whatsoever beyond pleasing his father and mother, getting by honest means the maximum of "red quarrenders" and mazard cherries, and going to sea when he was big enough. Neither was he what would be nowadays called by many a pious child, for though he said his Creed and Lord's Prayer night and morning, and went to service at the church every forenoon, and read the day's Psalms with his mother every evening, and had learnt from her and his father that it was infinitely noble to do right and infinitely base to do wrong, yet he knew nothing more of theology or of his own soul than is contained in the Church Catechism. _Westward Ho_! chap. i. 1855. Silence. November 13. There are silences more pathetic than all words. _MS._