JULY 29.

It is not necessary that God should speak in order to disclose the signs of his will. We may discern them in the tendency of events. The progressive development of social equality is the past and future of history, and has the character of a divine decree. To attempt to check democracy is in this case to resist the will of God.

Alexis De Tocqueville, born July 29, 1805.

JULY 30.

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned,
Left the warn precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?
Thomas Gray, died July 30, 1771, aged 55.

JULY 31.

Men need to have faith in a social embodiment of the spirit which was in Jesus, associations that shall apply the Divine spirit to every relation of life; by which in our existing society we may be educated from its prejudices and falsehoods into the truth as it is in Jesus, into the application of his life and teachings to the problems which now cloud our path-slavery, hired labor, pauperism, crime. James Handasyd Perkins, born July 31, 1810.

AUGUST 1.

The minister in days like these ought to make it his duty as well as his right to express the fellowship of faith with all believers, whatever christian name they bear. Let not religon seem the affair of a party.

We ought never to seem to have despaired of truth, or leave the region of thought, and retreat into organizaton and drill as safe refuges. This is what ecclesiasticism and ritualism have done. Phillips Brooks.

AUGUST 2.

There is no parallel to the authority of Christ. He bears no sword. He has no armies. He reigns in conscience, the one person in all time whose authority cannot be disputed, yet which never rests on physical force. He is supreme through the ascendancy of his almighty love. He holds men as the law of gravitation holds the physical universe, and they circle around him, every planet in its place, every sun in its sphere, moving in harmony by his supreme love. Andrew M. Fairbairn.

AUGUST 3.

The system of parochial churches, each a center of all Christian influences, is essential to the right working of our principle of local self-government in the State. The genius of our people dreads the centralization of power, refuses to collect the majority of government into one imperial locality, sets up everywhere the municipal, local democracy, and insists that the people shall attend to the business of governing themselves. In such a system of society, the only religious principle, so far as order and organization are concerned, in harmony with the genius of the people, is the principle of self-governed churches. How happy the lot of a great people whose institutions in Church and State rest on the basis of local self-government!

Leonard Bacon, died Dec. 23, 1881, aged 80.

AUGUST 4.

The State ought not to be considered as a partnership for a temporary interest, to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is a partnership in all science, in all art, in every virtue, in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living and those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Edmund Burke.

AUGUST 5.

The Mayflower and the Speedwell, freighted with the first colony of New England, leave Southampton for America, August 5. 1620. They had not gone far before the smaller vessel was found to need repairs, and they put back to Plymouth, and dismiss her.

George Bancroft, 1800-1891.

May freedom's oak for ever live
With stronger life from day to day;
That man's the best Conservative
Who lops the mouldered branch away.
Gigantic daughter of the West,

We drink to thee across the flood;
We know thee and we love thee best,
For art thou not of British blood?

Alfred Tennyson, born Aug. 5, 1809.

AUGUST 6.

The best manner of preparing for the last moment is to spend all the preceding well. The Christian life is a long and continued tendency toward the Eternal Goodness. Our happiness consists in thirsting for it. This thirst is prayer. Ever desire to approach your Creator, and you will never cease to pray. Do not think it necessary to pronounce many words. The best of all prayers is to act with a pure intention, a continual reference to the will of God.

Francis Fenelon, born Aug. 6, 1651.

AUGUST 7.

The witness of History to Christ has ever seemed to my mind the most convincing external evidence of our faith. We read the systems of ancient philosophy, and in spite of great and noble elements in which they abound, we see their incapacity to regenerate the world. Then we see the light of Christianity dawning. It breathes a new life, a new hope, and a new holiness into a guilty and decrepit world. We see the work grow and spread. And we recall the principle the wise Rabbi uttered, "If this work be of men, it will come to nought; but if of God, ye cannot overthrow it."

Frederic W. Farrar, born Aug. 7, 1831.

AUGUST 8.

We humbly believe the day is fast approaching when He whom Jews crucified, and whose revelation Christians have often disgraced, will break down the partition between them, and make both races one in religion, in heart, and life-Semite and Aryan, Jew and Gentile, united to bless and evangelize the world. F. W. Farrar.