Beware of depending on your own _emotions_, which are often but the fallings and risings of the frail flesh, and mistaking them for spiritual feelings and affections! * * * * * Think less of what you _feel_--even of trying _to be_ anything. Look out of yourself at God. Pray and praise, and God will give you His Spirit often when you feel most dull. _MS. Letter_. 1842. Christ's Church. December 12. . . . What a thought it is that there is a God! a Father, a King! a Husband not of individuals, that is a Popish fancy, which the Puritans have adopted--but of the Church--of collective humanity. Let us be content to be members; let us be, if we may, the feet, lowest, hardest worked, trodden on, bleeding, brought into harshest contact with the evil world! Still we are members of Christ's Church! . . . _Letters and Memories_. 1843. Confound me not. December 13. Have charity, have patience, have mercy. Never bring a human being, however silly, ignorant, or weak, above all, any little child, to shame and confusion of face. Never by petulance, by suspicion, by ridicule, even by selfish and silly haste, never, above all, by indulging in the devilish pleasure of a sneer, crush what is finest, and rouse up what is coarsest in the heart of any fellow-creature. _Westminster Sermons_. 1872. The Divine Hunger and Thirst. December 14. God grant us to be among "those who really hunger and thirst after righteousness," and who therefore long to know what righteousness is, that they may copy it--those who long to be freed not merely from the punishment of sin after they die, but from sin itself while they live on earth, and who therefore wish to know what sin is that they may avoid it. _Preface to Tauler's Sermons_. 1854. Religion or Godliness? December 15. This is the especial curse of our day, that religion does not mean, as it used, the service of God--the being like God and showing forth God's glory. No, religion means nowadays the art of getting to heaven when we die, and saving our own miserable souls, and getting God's wages without doing God's work--as if that was godliness, as if that was anything but selfishness, as if selfishness was any the better for being everlasting selfishness! _Village Sermons_. 1849. Christ's Coming. December 16. Christ may come to us when we are fierce and prejudiced, with that still small voice--so sweet and yet so keen, "Understand those who misunderstand thee. Be fair to those who are unfair to thee. Be just and merciful to those whom thou wouldst like to hate. Forgive and thou shalt be forgiven." He comes to us surely, when we are selfish and luxurious, in every sufferer who needs our help, and says, "If you do good to one of these, my brethren, you do it unto Me." _Last Sermon_. _MS._ 1874. God's Nature. December 17.