September 28th.  It is the beautiful work of Christianity everywhere to adjust the burden of life to those who bear it, and them to it.  It has a perfectly miraculous gift of healing.  Without doing any violence to human nature it sets it right with life, harmonizing it with all surrounding things, and restoring those who are jaded with the fatigue and dust of the world to a new grace of living.  Pax Vobiscum, p. 46.

September 29th.  The penalty of backsliding is not something unreal and vague, some unknown quantity which may be measured out to us disproportionately, or which, perchance, since God is good, we may altogether evade.  The consequences are already marked within the structure of the soul.  So to speak, they are physiological.  The thing effected by our in difference or by our indulgence is not the book of final judgment, but the present fabric of the soul.  Natural Law, p. 346.

September 30th.  The punishment of degeneration is simply degeneration—­ the loss of functions, the decay of organs, the atrophy of the spiritual nature.  It is well known that the recovery of the backslider is one of the hardest problems in spiritual work.  To reinvigorate an old organ seems more difficult and hopeless than to develop a new one; and the backslider’s terrible lot is to have to retrace with enfeebled feet each step of the way along which he strayed; to make up inch by inch the leeway he has lost, carrying with him a dead-weight of acquired reluctance, and scarce knowing whether to be stimulated or discouraged by the oppressive memory of the previous fall.  Natural Law, p. 346.

October 1st.  He who abandons the personal search for truth, under whatever pretext, abandons truth.  The very word truth, by becoming the limited possession of a guild, ceases to have any meaning; and faith, which can only be founded on truth, gives way to credulity, resting on mere opinion.  Natural Law, p. 352.

October 2d.  It is more necessary for us to be active than to be orthodox.  To be orthodox is what we wish to be, but we can only truly reach it by being honest, by being original, by seeing with our own eyes, by believing with our own heart.  Natural Law. p. 364.

October 3d.  Better a little faith dearly won, better launched alone on the infinite bewilderment of Truth, than perish on the splendid plenty of the richest creeds.  Such Doubt is no self-willed presumption.  Nor, truly exercised, will it prove itself, as much doubt does, the synonym for sorrow.  Natural Law, p. 365.

October 4th.  Christianity removes the attraction of the earth; and this is one way in which it diminishes men’s burden.  It makes them citizens of another world.  Pax Vobiscum, p. 47.

October 5th.  Then the Christian experiences are our own making?  In the same sense in which grapes are our own making, and no more.  All fruits grow—­whether they grow in the soil or in the soul; whether they are the fruits of the wild grape or of the True Vine.  No man can make things grow.  He can get them to grow by arranging all the circumstances and fulfilling all the conditions.  But the growing is done by God.  Pax Vobiscum, p. 56.