O Lord, we thank Thee for the spring, which brought her handsome promise, for the gorgeous preparation which the summer made in his manly strength, and we bless Thee for the months of autumn, whose sober beauty now is cast on every hill and every tree. We thank Thee for the harvests which the toil and the thought of man have gathered already from the surface of the ground, or digged from its bosom. We bless Thee for the other harvests still growing beneath the earth, or hanging abundant beauties in the autumnal sun from many a tree, all over our blessed Northern land. Amen. THEODORE PARKER. September 4 _Do right, and God's recompense to you will be the power to do more right. Give, and God's reward to you will be the spirit of giving more: blessed spirit, for it is the Spirit of God Himself, whose Life is the blessedness of giving. Love, and God will pay you with the capacity of more love; for love is Heaven, love is God within you._ FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON. O Lord, we thank Thee for Thy manifold gifts unto the children of men. Thou givest life and all the sustenance of life. Thou givest our fair and beautiful world. Thou givest us the power of hope and faith and thought. From Thine own giving may we learn that it is more blessed to give than to receive. Teach us, O Lord, to give more freely and more gladly, and may we learn how our own life, and joy and growth are involved in the spirit in which we give and serve. In all our giving and all our serving may we keep before us the vision of the Master who gave Himself that we might live. Amen. GEORGE L. PERIN. September 5 _Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar. Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory, do we come From God who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy, At length the man perceives it die away And fade into the light of common day._ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. O Eternal God, Who art without beginning of days or end of years, from Whom cometh all our life; pardon, we beseech Thee, the sins of Thy children, wherein we have darkened Thine own image within us. Let not our light die away amid the common toil and daily care, but so glorify our life with Thy spirit, that we may gladly present both souls and bodies to Thy service an acceptable sacrifice, and, learning to love Thee above all things, may be approved in Thy sight as true disciples of Thy Son Jesus Christ. Amen. WILLIAM E. GASKIN. September 6 _A haze on the far horizon, The infinite tender sky, The ripe, rich tint of the corn-fields, And the wild geese sailing high, And all over upland and lowland The charm of the goldenrod-- Some of us call it Autumn, And others call it God._