draw out their beauty, calls forth the buds and brings the blossom into
perfect fruit, so there is a spirit of divine life in our world calling
us out to the best, seeking to woo us to the things beautiful. Man
needs not to repress his life, but to learn to respond to every worthy
impulse, every high hope, to find the life beautiful.

The beauty of holiness is the beauty of character. It is the
adjustment of life to nature and neighbour and heaven so that strength
and harmony ensue, so that duty becomes a delight, labour a song of
praise, and out of life's burden and battle the beauties of godliness,
of love, and tenderness, joy and gratitude begin to bloom.

Lay hold on everything good and true, on all things glad and elevating;
cherish every fair thought and aspiration; learn to see the essentially
religious in whatever lifts up life, in whatever helps humanity, and so
make life rich in heavenly treasure and glowing with the glory of other
worlds.



THE GLADNESS OF GOODNESS

Life's poverty is due, not to what we have had and lost, not to what
has been withheld or taken from us, but to the good which we might have
had which we carelessly have passed by. No others despoil us as we
despoil ourselves by our blindness and indifference to the wealth of
our own lives and the beauty ever close at hand.

We who scurry over land and sea, who dig, and toil, and fret to find
happiness, come back at last to learn that the sweet-faced guest has