ce more crystal clear, the trees once more
luxuriant, and the desert, which man has created in his haste and greed,
shall in literal fact once more blossom as the rose. And just so can I
conceive a time when by a higher civilisation, formed on a political
economy more truly scientific, because more truly according to the will
of God, our human refuse shall be utilised like our material refuse; when
man as man, down to the weakest and most ignorant, shall be found (as he
really is) so valuable that it will be worth while to preserve his
health, to develop his capabilities, to save him alive, body, intellect,
and character, at any cost; because men will see that a man is, after
all, the most precious and useful thing on the earth, and that no cost
spent on the development of human beings can possibly be thrown away.

_All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1870.

God's Pleasure. November 21.

The world was not made for man: but man, like all the world, was made for
God. Not for man's pleasure merely, not for man's use, but for God's
pleasure all things are, and for God's pleasure they were, created.

_All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1869.

The Hospital Nurse. November 22.

Fearless, uncomplaining, she "trusted in God and made no haste." She did
her work and read her Bible; and read, too, again and again at stolen
moments of rest, a book which was to her as the finding of an unknown
sister--Longfellow's "Evangeline."

_Two Years Ago_, chap. xxviii.

Let us learn to look on hospitals not as acts of charity, supererogatory
benevolences of ours towards those to whom we owe nothing, but as
confessions of sin, and worthy fruits of penitence; as poor and late and
partial compensation for misery which _we_ might have prevented.

_National Sermons_. 1851.

No Work Lost. November 23.

If you lose heart about your work, remember that none of it is
_lost_--that the good of every good deed remains and breeds and works on
for ever, and that all that fails and is lost is the outside shell of the
thing, which, perhaps, might have been better done; but better or worse
has nothing to do with the real spiritual good which you have done to
men's hearts.

_Letters and Memories_. 1862.

True Temperance. November 24.

What we all want is inward rest; rest of heart and brain; the calm,
strong, self-contained, self-denying character, which needs no
stimulants, for it has no fits of depression; which needs no narco