Various

“ I fancy that we have all felt the need of a change of air, of life, of our physical surroundings, our mental and moral environment; and we have experienced the good that such a change has done us. We have toiled on through the bad weather, the hard work, the much worry of a long winter; or we have been kept at our post and laboured listlessly through a hot and oppressive summer. The wheels of life have dragged slowly. We have felt below par. Everything has been more or less a trouble to us. The routine of daily duty has become dismally monotonous. ”

“ Appalling and terrible it is when we do not. How sad and awful is the fate of one given over to the slavery, the bondage, the tyranny of some wicked habit! Unless such an one is visited by the grace of God, unless the heinousness of his guilt is brought home to him, unless divine light strikes in upon his darkened life, he will sink deeper and deeper into degradation, until, perhaps, he is driven to self-destruction like one of whom I lately read, and who left these terribly touching words behind him. ”

“ So we ought to have our life fed through Christ from God. If we are in Christ, we shall have the same hatred of sin as He had. We shall be removing ourselves further from evil; we shall ever be getting more like Christ, ever increasing in personal holiness and helpfulness to others, ever also willing to accept whatever He sends us, subordinating our weak, wayward wills to His holy and perfect will. If we let these words of charm, "In Christ," be written over our lives, we shall feel the old fetters fall off, the old unhappiness disappear, the old insubordination cease to assert itself. ”

“ We have not been long in our changed place of abode, when we begin to say to ourselves and to write home that we feel quite new persons—a different man, a different woman. And when we return our very appearance, our talk, the whole attitude in which we regard life, the eagerness with which we take up the old task, tell to all who are interested in us how much improved we are, how much healthier and better we look. More to the purpose, we ourselves feel better in every way. ”

“ We are prone by nature to do what is wrong rather than what is right; we are born with passions wild and strong, and early give the reins to evil desires. By the strength of our animal propensities we are often carried to ruin unless we are arrested in our headlong and miserable career. Sometimes—nay, thank God, often—we are thus arrested. For a time, the voice of conscience may have been hushed. Our heart is cold and dead, and there is no spring of life in it at all. ”

“ Mrs. Lancaster did not appear when Llewellyn went, but Laura, who had been her own chaperon all her life, entertained him in the handsome drawing-room with great composure. He had never seen a girl with such an assured manner before.
Over his cup of tea he ventured, humbly and meekly, to hint at the restoration of the church.
"It's such a picturesque old place that it would be a shame to pull it to pieces and spoil it by injudicious restoration," returned Laura decidedly. ”

“ And David—a sudden flush and smile illumining his face—took her from Sandy's unwilling clasp.
No apologies were made that day. In David's arms the baby accompanied her new friends—all clamouring, all seeking to amuse—down the hill to the gate.
Marjorie and Mr. Pelham followed slowly. If the man found the young girl interesting, he was to her equally so. She had come across no one like him before. He had come out of a world of which she knew nothing—of which, until to-day, she had never thought. Not many working people had hitherto come under her notice. ”

“ And surely it is the Church, this kingdom which our Lord spoke of as a field where tares were growing, as a little seed which became a tree, as a net which embraced alike good fish and bad?
It is the organised coherent power of the world to come, confronting evil with an influence and mastery superior to its own. ”

“ Lastly, death itself, the old foe of the human race, as he is supposed by many to be, takes a new form. The awful and awesome shroud in which he seems to be enveloped falls off, and what we recognise is not the spectral skeleton with the hollow eyes coming to consign us to darkness and to death, but a radiant angel, a sweet, blessed messenger from the Father, bidding us come with him to our happy and eternal Home to meet our loved and lost, to be in Christ and with Christ for ever, with no chance any more of breaking off from Him or losing Him. ”

“ To be miserably poor throughout life is a burden sufficiently hard; to sink from riches to poverty is a tragedy. Yet it is a tragedy that we see constantly occurring around us. To struggle with despairing pride to preserve that outward show which is falsely termed respectability; to see fair-weather friends slink one by one away; to surrender the little luxuries, innocent enough in themselves, that have grown to become a part of life itself—that is what it means to slip down the hill of fortune. ”

“ Graydon beguiled the time by genial gossip with every man, woman, and child who came the way.
"How well you get on with the people, sir," Sir Anthony could not help saying.
"Do you think so?" said Mr. Graydon, with a little surprise. "You see, we've known each other so long. Things and people change little in these out-of-the-way places."
"I couldn't do it, if it was to save my life. Besides, the people where I come from wouldn't understand it."
"Ah, I suppose not. We Irish are more of a large family—which is, perhaps, the reason why we wrangle sometimes." ”

“ God has placed a love for the lovely in every human heart. He Himself—in all reverence be it spoken—has led the way. When designing furniture for the Tabernacle built for glory and for beauty in the far-away desert, He made it in the most artistic, most serviceable, and most simple of forms. Look at the description of those golden candlesticks, with their golden almond-shaped knops and elegant branches. Think of the curtains of scarlet and blue and purple, and fine twined linen. ”

“ The consciousness of the possession of higher powers, of perhaps our real powers, has come to us. We have discovered that we have been endowed with the possession of some gift of which we were not aware. Some power has been lying dormant. It has now been awakened, and upon the very threshold of what we feel must now be a better and a higher life, we realise that we are new creatures. ”

“ And, recognising this, we shall go with him with the eagerness of a child to begin a new life, to enter upon a higher existence, to do nobler work with a more untiring zeal and energy, to love with a greater love; and as we stand for a moment to look back upon our earthly life, in the freshness of the Eternal Morning, in the beauty of our new Home, we shall realise that in Christ's Heaven, which through His great mercy and sacrifice we have reached, we are to be new creatures for evermore. ”

“ It is a great joy to think that old things have passed away, that all things have become new. Then the very earth upon which we live will have a new beauty for us. We shall look upon it as the creation of our Heavenly Father, as the place in which we are to work for Him, making our little corner of it better, happier, more blessed than we found it. Then, too, we shall regard our fellow-men and women quite differently. We find that they are related to us in new ways and with holier, more sacred ties; they are our veritable brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus. ”

“ They are honest, plucky boys, and chivalric in a peculiar manner. And their sister—ah! there she is!"
The Bishop passed on to greet Marjorie, without the meed of praise he was on the point of bestowing; but Mr. Pelham, watching them, gathered that Marjorie was a favourite. She was looking well, distinguished, in her youthful, immature way, in a graceful, soft dress, whose clinging folds suited her height and slimness. Charity's pink prettiness, aided by every careful detail of dress and ornament, faded to nothing beside her. ”

“ Even when you are most miserably defeated in striving to be good, most ashamed of failure, even when (to return to our starting-point) you declare that you cannot do the thing that you would, even then you do not entirely believe yourself; the conviction of lofty possibilities will not quite begone; righteousness, and peace, and joy, still haunt your imaginings and disturb your guilty pleasures ”

“ Marjorie sprang up to try and stop an excursion into the drawing-room. Her friend leant back in her chair, and looked after her.
"If Marjorie were well-dressed," she thought, "she'd be a beauty. That girl they were fussing after isn't in with her—only she's got clothes; clothes mean so much. Why, Sandy, what have you got there?"
Sandy panted to her side, both his arms laden with a baby. She did not appear to mind her uncomfortable position; but when deposited upon Charity's lap, bent her brows in a scowl, as she studied Miss Francklin's dainty finery. ”

“ In poverty, as in all things else, there are degrees. What may be wealth to one may be destitution to another. It depends upon what the previous habits of life have been. Take, for instance, the gentlemen and ladies, many of them bearing the noblest English names, to whom the Queen grants apartments in the old Palace of Hampton Court. They are not without small incomes themselves, and the rates and taxes they have to pay amount to no inconsiderable sum. Yet to live rent free is a boon that enables them to live comfortably. ”

“ It was difficult making sonnets, in her busy life. She had to snatch moments when she could.
"Of course, 'lone' would rhyme with 'atone,'" she murmured; "but it is so obvious. Love doesn't want a crowd—I gathered that from mother. Have you done your sonnet, Charity?" as the other girl ran back and sat down again, Orme and Ross following in pursuit, as fast as their fat legs would allow.
"My sonnet? Not I! I've been basking in the Duchess's smiles and wearing my new frocks. She asked after you; she didn't know you'd got back. I put on this new one to show you, Marjorie." ”

“ These poor and friendless little ones, to be found in every town and in many of our villages, want a kind-hearted neighbour who will mention their names and addresses to that genial but omniscient saint, and then, presto! there's joy for a forlorn little chap or maiden "on Christmas Day in the morning." We therefore earnestly invite all fathers and mothers, and uncles and aunts, and all who love to see the children glad on the Saviour's birthday, to co-operate with us in providing Christmas stockings for those forlorn youngsters, into whose life scarcely a ray of brightness ever enters. ”

“ Oh, if this is true, if the Conqueror of Death and Hell has received gifts for us, and ever liveth to make intercession for us, and if, in one grand and organised strain and stress of effort for the right, angels and principalities and powers, and things present and to come, and Paul and Cephas, all are ours, then, in the approach of such a kingdom, in the voice that bids us rally to such a standard of emancipation, what hope, what animation, what an opening of prison doors! ”

“ M. M. Ffinch, Chaplain of the College, has kindly lent me describes him as a tall, well-made man in "nankeen breeches, blue dress coat, with large gilt buttons, and a white beaver hat with the nap fully an inch long." Like many other founders of charitable institutions, he had seen that the hardest poverty of all is the poverty that will not beg and cannot, through age, infirmity, or misfortune, make enough to keep body and soul together. A hard worker all his life, he would have been the last man in the world to encourage the sloth that comes by indiscriminate charity. ”

“ Little could be done to the church before spring, as it proved a very severe winter, and outdoor work was impeded by frost. Tarpaulins were temporarily stretched over the cracked roof, but at best it was a very shivery and dreary spot, so that Llewellyn always returned with renewed eagerness to his magic-lantern journeys after a Sunday spent in the desolate building, where the howls of the ruined organ made the singing a mockery. In his private life he exercised the strictest self-denial, for the scanty income from his living left no margin for luxuries. ”

“ We shall hardly know ourselves, the joy of the new life is so great. It is a joy, too, which we cannot keep to ourselves; we wish others to share our happy experience. We are constrained to wish this by the new and imperial impulse by which we are dominated. Because we carry heaven in our hearts we wish that others should do so, too. ”

“ There is not a day which does not recall for us some great name in our country's history, some victory of peace or in war. Let us put ourselves in mind of a few of these—not necessarily of the most familiar or the most striking, but of some which more especially speak of movements and workers in the religious and philanthropic life of the nation. ”

“ A plain brown jug full of real daisies is far more beautiful than a glass bottle covered with varnished pictures and filled with paper or silk imitations. One bit of quaint crackle or Venetian ware on our chimney-piece is restful to the eye; highly coloured shams are distressful. "Although we may tolerate insipid prettiness in perishable confectionery, we ought not to do so in objects which become associated with our daily life." Power of design and power of imitation are the two widely divergent qualities of mind required to produce a beautiful drawing-room. ”

“ Now think how urgently a kingdom of heaven is required. We know to our cost that there is an awful kingdom of hell—an organised and systematic power of evil. Christ Himself said it. He declared that Satan could not cast out Satan because evil in this world is regulated, coherent, and organic—it is a house, a kingdom, working consistently, and it would fall if it were divided against itself. And we are beset by its forces, entangled, and made captive. Whatever be our frailty, they seize upon it. ”

“ We are led to think. We come to see the evil of our ways, the ruin that we are bringing on others as well as ourselves—on the wife whom we swore to love and cherish, the children whom we are neglecting, perhaps starving. ”

“ Let us take a day in the life of one of the "old gentlemen," as the attendants always call them. About eight o'clock a "nurse" comes bustling into his sitting-room, lights his fire, and sees that his breakfast is laid ready. At nine o'clock a bell goes for chapel. Each of the brethren must attend one chapel a day on pain of a shilling fine stopped out of his allowance; but he may choose the morning or evening service as he likes. The morning service is the more popular, and to chapel we will now bend our steps. ”