FEBRUARY 2. The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, COMMONLY CALLED The Purification of the Virgin Mary. Little children may think of Christ as a child now and always. For to them He is always the Babe of Bethlehem. Let them not say to themselves, "Christ is grown up long ago." He is, and yet He is not. His life is eternal in the heavens, above all change of time and space. . . . Such is the sacred heart of Jesus -- all things to all. To the strong He can be strongest, to the weak weakest of all. With the aged and dying He goes down for ever to the grave; and yet with you children Christ lies for ever on His mother's bosom, and looks up for ever into His mother's face, full of young life and happiness and innocence, the Everlasting Christ- child, in whom you must believe, whom you must love, to whom you must offer up your childish prayers. The Christ-child, FEBRUARY 24. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. They rest from their labours -- all their struggles, failures, past and over for ever. But their works follow them. The good which they did on earth -- that is not past and over. It cannot die. It lives and grows for ever, following on in their path long after they are dead, and bearing fruit unto everlasting life, not only in them, but in men whom they never saw, and in generations yet unborn. Sermons (Good News of God). Ash Wednesday. There is a repentance too deep for words -- too deep for all confessionals, penances, and emotions or acts of contrition; the repentance, not of the excitable, theatric Southern, unstable as water even in his most violent remorse, but of the still, deep-hearted Northern, whose pride breaks slowly and silently, but breaks once for all; who tells to God what he will never tell to man, and having told it, is a new creature from that day forth for ever. Two Years Ago, chap. xviii. The True Fast. The rationale of Fasting is to give up habitual indulgences for a time, lest they become our masters -- artificial necessities. MS. |
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