must at
moments), what a happiness it is to have a body at all: how lonely, cold,
barren, would it be to be a "disembodied spirit." As St. Paul says, "Not
that we desire to be unclothed, but to be clothed upon"--to have a
spiritual, deathless, griefless life instilled into the body.

_MS. Letter_. 1842.

Home at Last. December 20.

When all the world is old, lad,
And all the trees are brown,
And all the sport is stale, lad,
And all the wheels run down;
Creep home and take your place there,
The spent and maimed among:
God grant you find one face there
You loved when all was young.

_The Water Babies_. 1862.

The Bible. December 21.

The hearts and minds of the sick, the poor, the sorrowing, the truly
human, all demand a living God who has revealed Himself in living acts; a
God who has taught mankind by facts, not left them to discover Him by
theories and sentiments; a Judge, a Father, a Saviour, an Inspirer; in a
word, their hearts demand the historic truth of the Bible--of the Old
Testament no less than the New.

_Sermons on Pentateuch_. 1863.

Shaking of Heaven and Earth. December 22.

"Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but heaven" (Hebrews xii. 26-
29). This is one of the royal texts of Scripture. It declares one of
those great laws of the kingdom of God which may fulfil itself once and
again at many eras and by many methods; which fulfilled itself most
gloriously in the first century after Christ; again in the fifth century;
again at the time of the Crusades; and again at the great Reformation in
the sixteenth century,--and is fulfilling itself again at this very day.

_Westminster Sermons_. 1872.

Self-Respect the Voice of God. December 23.

Never hurt any one's self-respect. Never trample on any soul, though it
may be lying in the veriest mire; for that last spark of self-respect is
as its only hope, its only chance; the last seed of a new and better
life; the voice of God which still whispers to it, "You are not what you
ought to be, and you are not what you can be. You are still God's child,
still an immortal soul. You may rise yet, and fight a good fight yet,
and conquer yet, and be a man yet, after the likeness of God who made
you, and Christ who died for you." Oh! why crush that voice in any
heart? If you do the poor creature is lost, and lies where he or she
falls, and never tries to rise again.

_Good News of God Sermons_. 1859