O Lord God, grant thy peace unto us, for thou hast supplied us with all things; the peace of rest, the peace of the Sabbath, which hath no evening. For all this most beautiful order of things, “very good” (all their courses being finished), is to pass away, for in them there was morning and evening. But the seventh day is without any evening, nor hath it any setting, because thou hast sanctified it to an everlasting continuance; that which thou didst after thy words, which were very good, resting on the seventh day, although in unbroken rest thou madest them, that the voice of thy Book may speak beforehand unto us, that we also after our works (therefore very good, because thou hast given them unto us) may repose in thee, also in the Sabbath of eternal life.—_From St. Augustine._[1] [_January 25._] Now tell me, Christians, have you hitherto understood it, and do you still understand it, in this manner? Let each candidly examine himself in the presence of God. Where is the ambitious man, who, looking on his ambition as the wound of his soul, desires in good earnest to be thoroughly cured? Where is the voluptuous man, who, truly afflicted at his unhappy situation, wishes efficaciously, and as his sovereign good, to be freed from his passion? Where is the avaricious man, who, ashamed of his injustice, sincerely and from his heart detests his iniquity? Where is the woman, who, listening to religion, hath a horror of vanity, and thinks of extirpating her self-love? From what passion, from what vicious and ruling inclination hath this divine Savior as yet delivered you? By what, then, do you know him to be a Savior? And if he be a Savior, by what mark do you pretend to know that he is yours? What hath he by your own means performed in your regard? Now, as I perceive that you are so ill disposed, should I not prevaricate, did I declare to you his coming as a cause of joy? And to speak as a faithful minister of the Gospel, ought I not to tell you, what in fact I tell you? Undeceive yourselves, and bewail your woeful situation, for, while enamored with the world, you obstinately persist in such criminal dispositions, though the Savior be born, no more advantage accrues to you from his sacred birth, than if he were not born.…