Lately I have heard some discussion as to the name and manner of keeping the day. “The Sabbath,” they say, “was a Jewish institution, not a Christian festival, such as we should keep.” But I believe that _rest_ is still the noblest idea of the day; the old Sabbath was a type of Christian rest; not constrained, but free, full, peaceful; so I like not anything that disturbs the _quiet_ of the day. September 17. Whether such a record as this is a useful thing, or entirely useless, I begin to question. I don’t want to feel interested in anything which is only to benefit myself, and I don’t want to write these trifles for other people’s eyes. A journal of the “subjective” kind I have always thought foolish, as nurturing a morbid self-consciousness in the writer; and yet, alone so much as I am, it is well to have some sort of a ventilator from the interior. Letter-writing is a better safety valve than a journal, when we write to those we can trust, and this I meant to be a sort of prolonged letter, a mirror of my occupations and progress, for my old friend, Esther. But she, I fear will never read it; she is on her way to a place of better occupation, and I feel that the first stimulus is gone. Shall I stop in the middle of my book? No, I believe not; for I think it will be indirectly a useful thing, and I shall write just when I feel like it, often enough to keep track of myself, and give account of myself to myself. Since I returned to school I have read--well, not much; two little works on natural history; I have begun Ruskin’s fifth volume, with great interest, and Trench on the Parables for my Sunday class. “The Limits of Religious Thought” I am reading with a pupil, and with it Maurice’s reply, “What is Revelation?” My impression of these two writers, so far, is that Maurice is a much more deeply religious man than Mansel; and that the latter’s logic will not always sustain his footing. I do not like logic in religion,--reason is not always logic; reason seems to me to be the mind wide open--no faculty numb or asleep; and to that state of inner being, truth must come like sunshine, and the mysteries which cannot be explained will be harmonized with our certain knowledge, in such light. September 22. Morris’s Poems have come to me to-day, by mail. I have just glanced through the book, and find myself attracted by the clearness and simplicity of the songs; the most beautiful the most familiar, as songs should be. It does not strike me that any of them came from the very deep places of the heart,--many of them sound as if written only to please, and as if the highest aim of the author was to have them pretty and unobjectionable. I’ve written things in that way myself sometimes, and I don’t like it.