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I take the Tuscan nature to be so constituted that it will play with any given subject of speculation in much the same way. With one or two mighty exceptions to be sure Dante, of course, Buonarroti, of course, and, for all his secularities. Boccace it is not imagination you find in Tuscany.

It was too dark to see Lippi's light-hearted secularities in the choir; one saw them, however, best in the congregation the same appealing innocence in the grey-eyed women, and the men with the same grave self-possession and the same respectful but deliberate concern with their own affairs which gives you the idea that they are lending themselves to divine service rather out of politeness than from any more intimate motive.

Every cup and tumbler in a poor man's kitchen may be as sacred as the communion chalice that passes from lip to lip with the 'blood of Jesus Christ' in it. Every common piece of service that we do, down among the vulgarities and the secularities and the meannesses of daily life, may be lifted up to stand upon precisely the same level as the sacredest office that we undertake.

He who rises from his knees to his daily task, and, with an eye not so much to please men as God, does it well, carries divine worship to the workshop, and throws a sacred halo around the ordinary secularities of life.

That service which costs nothing God accounts as nothing. A week-night service thrusts religion in the secularities of the week. It is as much as to say, "This is God's Wednesday, or God's Thursday, or God's Friday, or God's week."

He had learned what so many of us need to learn far more thoroughly, that if our religion does not drive the wheels of our daily business, it is of little use; and that if the field in which our religion has power to control and impel is not that of the trivialities and secularities of our ordinary life, there is no field for it at all.

Again, he vexed the souls of his churchwardens and influential parishioners by his fertile suggestiveness as to what it would be well for them to do in the matter of the church repairs, and other ecclesiastical secularities. 'I never saw the like to parsons, Mr. Hackit said one day in conversation with his brother churchwarden, Mr.

Either ethical or spiritual power alone is defective. Morality without spirituality is principle without passion. Spirituality without morality is passion without principle. Union supplements the defectiveness of each alone, and develops its full forcefulness. The Bible marries morality and spirituality, and these twain become one. The secularities become sacred, and the sanctities become sound.

We need special watchfulness and prayer, or we shall not escape this subtle danger, which is truly for many of us 'the pestilence that walketh in darkness. So be not tossed about by these secularities, for the root of them all is heathenish distrust of your Father in heaven. Then, finally, we have the cure for all agitation.