lves without respect to God.

_All Saints' Day Sermons_.

October.

A beautiful October morning it was; one of those in which Dame Nature,
healthily tired with the revelry of summer, is composing herself, with a
quiet satisfied smile, for her winter's sleep. Sheets of dappled cloud
were sliding slowly from the west; long bars of hazy blue hung over the
southern chalk downs, which gleamed pearly gray beneath the low south-
eastern sun. In the vale below, soft white flakes of mist still hung
over the water meadows, and barred the dark trunks of the huge elms and
poplars, whose fast-yellowing leaves came showering down at every rustle
of the western breeze, spotting the grass below. The river swirled
along, glassy no more, but dingy gray with autumn rains and rotting
leaves. All beyond the garden told of autumn, bright and peaceful even
in decay; but up the sunny slope of the garden itself, and to the very
window-sill, summer still lingered. The beds of red verbena and geranium
were still brilliant, though choked with fallen leaves of acacia and
plane; the canary plant, still untouched by frost, twined its delicate
green leaves, and more delicate yellow blossoms, through the crimson lace-
work of the Virginia creeper; and the great yellow noisette swung its
long canes across the window, filling all the air with fruity fragrance.

_Two Years Ago_, chap. i.

Blessing of Daily Work. October 1.

Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do
that day which must be done whether you like it or not. Being forced to
work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-
control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content, and a
hundred virtues which the idle will never know.

_Town and Country Sermons_. 1861.

The Forming Form. October 2.

As the acorn, because God has given it "a forming form," and life after
its kind, bears within it not only the builder oak but shade for many a
herd, food for countless animals, and at last the gallant ship itself,
and the materials of every use to which Nature or Art can put it, and its
descendants after it, throughout all time, so does every good deed
contain within itself endless and unexpected possibilities of other good,
which may and will grow and multiply for ever, in the genial light of Him
whose eternal mind conceived it, and whose eternal spirit will for ever
quicken it, with that life of whic