Part 4

"People who love themselves aright, even as they ought to love their neighbour, bear charitably, though without flattery, with self as with another. They know what needs correction at home as well as elsewhere; they strive heartily and vigorously to correct it, but they deal with self as they would deal with some one else they wished to bring to God. They set to work patiently, not exacting more than is practicable under present circumstances from themselves any more than from others, and not being disheartened because perfection is not attainable in a day."

FENELON.

"One is so apt to think that what works smoothest works to the highest ends, having no patience for the results of friction."

Mrs. EWING.

The Foot-path to Peace

JANUARY 8

"To be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars; to be satisfied with your possessions, but not contented with yourself until you have made the best of them; to despise nothing in the world except falsehood and meanness, and to fear nothing except cowardice; to be governed by your admirations rather than by your disgusts; to covet nothing that is your neighbour's except his kindness of heart and gentleness of manners; to think seldom of your enemies, often of your friends, and every day of Christ; and to spend as much time as you can, with body and with spirit, in God's out-of-doors--these are little guideposts on the foot-path to peace."

HENRY VAN DYKE.

"O Lord, that lends me life, lend me a heart replete with thankfulness."

SHAKESPEARE.

Purpose

JANUARY 9

"He who lives without a definite purpose achieves no higher end than to serve as a warning to others. He is a kind of bell-buoy, mournfully tolled by the waves of circumstance, to mark the rocks or shoals which are to be avoided."

"Surely there is something to be done from morning till night, and to find out what is the appointed work of the onward-tending soul."

FANNY KEMBLE.

"I ask you while hope is still fresh and enthusiasm unchilled to gain some conception of the solemnity, the vastness, the unity, the purpose of life: to pause in the street or on the river bank and ask yourselves what that strange stream of pleasure and frivolity and sorrow and vice means, and means to you: to reflect that you are bound by intelligible bonds to every suffering, sinning man and woman: to learn, while the lesson is comparatively easy, the secret of human sympathy: to search after some of the essential relationships of man to man: to interpret a little of the worth of even trivial labour: to grow sensitive to the feelings of the poor: to grow considerate to the claims of the weak."

Bishop WESTCOTT.

Life, a School

January 10

"All life is a school, a preparation, a purpose: nor can we pass current in a higher college, if we do not undergo the tedium of education in this lower one."

Tennyson--a Memoir, by his Son.

"Life is a succession of lessons, which must be lived to be understood."

EMERSON.

"We never know for what God is preparing us in His schools, for what work on earth, for what work in the hereafter. Our business is to do our work well in the present place, whatever that may be."

LYMAN ABBOTT.

Character and Service

January 11

"Never should we forget the close connection between character and service, between inward nobleness and outward philanthropy. We are not here to dream, or even to build up in grace and beauty our individual life; we are responsible, each in our own little way, for trying to leave this sad world happier, this evil world better than we found it. In this way slackness is infamy, and power to the last particle means duty. Each of us, in some degree, must have the ambition to be an 'Alter Christus'--another Christ, shouldering with the compassionate Son of God to lift our shadowed world from the gates of death."