JAMES MARTINEAU

Every man's highest, nameless though it be, is his 'living God'.

Grief is only the memory of widowed affections.

The incarnation is true, not of Christ exclusively, but of Man universally, and God everlastingly.

All that is noble in the world's past history, and especially the minds of the great and the good, are never lost.

Religion is no more possible without prayer than poetry without language, or music without atmosphere.

Religion is the belief in an ever-living God, that is, in a Divine Mind and Will ruling the Universe and holding moral relations with mankind.

The pinafore of the child will be more than a match for the frock of the bishop and the surplice of the priest.

When speech is given to a soul holy and true, time, and its dome of ages, becomes as a mighty whispering-gallery, round which the imprisoned utterance runs, and reverberates forever.

We are each of us responsible for the evil we may have prevented.

The scepticism which men affect towards their higher inspirations is often not an honest doubt, but a guilty negligence, and is a sign of narrow mind and defective wisdom.

We can neither change nor overpower God's eternal suffrage against selfishness and meanness.

Trust arises from the mind's instinctive feeling after fixed realities, after the substance of every shadow, the base of all appearance, the everlasting amid change.

We cannot embrace His cross, and yet refuse our own. We cannot raise the cup of His remembrance to our lips, without a secret pledge to Him, to one another, to the great company of the faithful in every age that we, too, hold ourselves at God's disposal, that we will ask nothing on our own account, that we will pass simply into the Divine hand to take us whither it will.

High hearts are never long without hearing some new call, some distant clarion of God, even in their dreams; and soon they are observed to break up the camp of ease, and start on some fresh march of faithful service.

Nothing less than the majesty of God, and the powers of the world to come, can maintain the peace and sanctity of our homes, the order and serenity of our minds, the spirit of patience and tender mercy in our hearts. Then will even the merest drudgery of duty cease to humble us, when we transfigure it by the glory of our own spirit.

To Him let us but cleave in all ouv strife; and the Tempte1 will flee; the wilderness will be desolate no more; angels will come and minister unto us; and when we pass from them to the ministry of life, be it to the glory of a transfiguration, the sorrows of a Gethsemane, or the sacrifice of the cross, the tran- quilizing peace of God will never be far from us.

Heaven and God are best discerned through tears; scarcely perhaps are discerned at all without them. The constant association of prayer with the hour of bereavement and the scenes of death suffice to show this.

There is no surer mark of a low and unregenerate nature than this tendency of power to loudness and wantonness instead of quietness and reverence. To souls baptized in Christian nobleness the largest sphere of command is but a wider empire of obedience, calling them, not to escape from holy rule, but to its full impersonation.

A mighty wind of resolution sets in strong upon him and freshens the whole atmosphere of his soul, sweeping down before it the light flakes of difficulty, till they vanish like snow upon the sea. He is imprisoned no more in a small compartment of time, but belongs to an eternity which is now and here. The isolation of his separate spirit passes away; and with the countless multitude of souls akin to God, he is but a wave of his unbounded deep. He is at one with Heaven, and hath found the secret place of the Almighty.

The mere lapse of years is not life. To eat, to drink, and sleep; to be exposed to darkness and the light; to pace around in the mill of habit, and turn thought into an instrument of trade-this is not life. Knowledge, truth, love, beauty, goodness, faith, alone can give vitality to the mechanism of existence.

I bow in reverence before the emotions of every melted heart....The more intense the delight in their presence, the more poignant the impression of their absence....When the tears of bereavement have had their natural flow, they lead us again to life and love's generous joy.

There is no human life so poor and small as not to hold many a divine possibility.

This it is that gives a majesty so pure and touching to the historic figure of Christ; self-abandonment to God, uttermost surrender, without reserve or stipulation, to the guidance of the Holy Spirit from the Soul of souls; pause in no darkness; hesitation in no perplexity, recoil in no extremity of anguish, but a gentle unfaltering hold of the invisible Hand, of the Only Holy and All Good--these are the features that have made Jesus of Nazareth the dearest and most sacred image to the heart of so many ages.

The secret belief that the Lord of conscience loves and accepts each faithful sacrifice is the ultimate and sufficient support of all goodness; dispensing with the chorus of approving voices; replacing all vain self-reliance with a Divine strength; and with the peace of a reconciled nature consoling the inevitable sorrows of a devoted life.

There is no room in the universe for the least contempt or pride; but only for a gentle and a reverent heart.