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Title: Character and Conduct - A Book of Helpful Thoughts by Great Writers of Past and Present Ages
Author: Various
Language: English
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CHARACTER AND CONDUCT
[Illustration: FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH
SIR E. J. POYNTER, BART., P.R.A.
_This picture represents a Roman Guard on duty at one of the palaces
during the destruction of Herculanæum, who, although he might perhaps
have made his escape prefers to remain at his post, faithful unto
death._]
CHARACTER AND CONDUCT
A Book of Helpful Thoughts by
Great Writers of Past and
Present Ages
Selected and Arranged for Daily
Reading by the Author of
"Being And Doing"
With a Frontispiece by
Sir E. J. Poynter, Bart., P.R.A.
Liverpool
Henry Young & Sons
London
Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co. Ltd.
1905
First Edition, 2000 copies, printed November 1904
Second Edition, 1000 copies, printed December 1904
TO
_E. K._
_"It is more_ men _that the world wants, not more systems. It is
character that our modern life waits for, to redeem and transform it;
and conduct as the fruitage of character."_
_The Citizen in his Relation to the Industrial
Situation_, BISHOP POTTER.
PREFACE
This collection of noble thoughts expressed by men and women of past and
present ages who have endeavoured to leave the world a little better
than they found it, is similar in arrangement and purpose to my former
volume "Being and Doing"; and has been compiled at the request of
several readers who have found that book helpful.
It is obvious that without the kindly co-operation of many authors and
publishers such books could not exist, and I tender sincere and hearty
thanks to those who have made the work possible. All have treated me
with unfailing courtesy and generosity.
Where I have occasionally used short quotations without permission I ask
forgiveness.
It would be impossible to name separately each one to whom I am a
grateful debtor, so special mention must only be made of the more
heavily taxed, and of those who have asked for a formal acknowledgment,
namely:--
The Literary Executors of the late Mr. Ruskin, _per_ Mr. George Allen,
for extracts from Mr. Ruskin's works.
Mr. Edward Arnold for those from _Red Pottage_, by Mary Cholmondeley.
Canon Barnett for those from _The Service of God_.
Messrs. Deighton Bell & Co. for those from _Pastor Pastorum_, by the
Rev. Henry Latham.
Mr. James Drummond for those from the writings of Professor Henry
Drummond.
Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. for those from Sir Edwin
Arnold's _Light of Asia_.
Miss May Kendall for those from _Turkish Bonds_, &c.
Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co. for those from the works of Bishop Paget,
and from Canon MacColl's _Here and Hereafter_.
Professor MacCunn for those from _The Making of Character_.
Messrs. Macmillan & Co. for those from the works of Bishop Westcott,
Mrs. Bernard Bosanquet; Tennyson's Poems; from the present Lord
Tennyson's Life of his father; from the _Mettle of the Pasture_, by
James Lane Allen; and from Mrs. Humphry Ward's translation of _Amiel's
Journal_.
Messrs. Methuen & Co. for one from the _Life of R. L. Stevenson_.
Mr. Lloyd Osbourne for those from R. L. Stevenson's works.
Messrs. Wells, Gardner, Darton & Co. for those from Bishop Winnington
Ingram's _Under the Dome_ and _Friends of the Master_.
Dr. John Watson for those from his writings.
Permission was kindly given me before by Messrs. Macmillan to quote from
the works of the late Archbishop Temple and of Matthew Arnold. By
Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. for quotations from Robert Browning. By Mr.
C. Lewes for quotations from George Eliot; and from Lord Avebury and the
Rev. Stopford Brooke for those from their works.
In my experience the reading of extracts often leads to the reading of
the books from which they were taken, and I hope and believe many of
these gleanings will serve as introductions.
CONSTANCE M. WHISHAW.
SUNNY BANK, ARNSIDE,
CARNFORTH.
New Year's Day
JANUARY 1
"Here you stand at the parting of the ways; some road you are to take;
and as you stand here, consider and know how it is that you intend to
live. Carry no bad habits, no corrupting associations, no enmities and
strifes into this New Year. Leave these behind, and let the Dead Past
bury its Dead; leave them behind, and thank God that you are able to
leave them."
EPHRAIM PEABODY.
"WOULD'ST shape a noble life? Then cast
No backward glances toward the past,
And though somewhat be lost and gone,
Yet do thou act as one new-born;
What each day needs, that shalt thou ask,
Each day will set its proper task."
GOETHE.
"No aim is too high, no task too great, no sin too strong, no trial too
hard for those who patiently and humbly rest upon God's grace: who wait
on Him that He may renew their strength."
_Faculties and Difficulties for Belief and
Disbelief_, BISHOP PAGET.
Purpose
JANUARY 2
"You did not come into this world by chance, you were not born by
accident. You all came charged with a mission to use your best efforts
to extend the frontier of your Master's Kingdom by purifying your own
hearts and leavening for good the hearts of all who come within the
sphere of your influence. Your business here is not to enjoy yourselves
in those fleeting pleasures which perish in the using; not to sip as
many dainties as you can from the moments as they fly; not to gather as
many flowers as you can pluck from the garden of this perishing earth;
not even to rest in the enjoyment of those nobler delights which come
from the exercise of the intellect in the investigation of the works of
God and man; but rather to do your best to fit yourselves and others for
the new heavens and new earth, which God has prepared for those who love
Him."
_Life Here and Hereafter_, CANON MACCOLL.
"Do not despise your situation; in it you must act, suffer, and conquer.
From every point on earth we are equally near to heaven and to the
infinite."
_Amiel's Journal._
A Noble Life
JANUARY 3
"A man's greatness lies not in wealth and station, as the vulgar
believe, nor yet in his intellectual capacity, which is often associated
with the meanest moral character, the most abject servility to those in
high places, and arrogance to the poor and lowly; but a man's true
greatness lies in the consciousness of an honest purpose in life,
founded on a just estimate of himself and everything else, on frequent
self-examination, and a steady obedience to the rule which he knows to
be right, without troubling himself about what others may think or say,
or whether they do or do not do that which he thinks and says and does."
GEORGE LONG.
"Whether a life is noble or ignoble depends not on the calling which is
adopted, but on the spirit in which it is followed."
_The Pleasures of Life_, LORD AVEBURY.
"Every noble life leaves the fibre of itself interwoven for ever in the
work of the world."
TRENCH.
Holiness
JANUARY 4
"Jesus and His Apostles teach that the supreme success of life is not to
escape pain but to lay hold on righteousness, not to possess but to be
holy, not to get things from God but to be like God. They were ever
bidding Christians beware of ease, ever rousing them to surrender and
sacrifice."
_The Potter's Wheel_, DR. JOHN WATSON.
"The end of life is not to deny self, nor to be true, nor to keep the
Ten Commandments--it is simply to do God's will. It is not to get good
nor be good, nor even to do good--it is just what God wills, whether
that be working or waiting, or winning or losing, or suffering or
recovering, or living or dying."
_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
"Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death
hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good."
MARCUS AURELIUS.
The Power of the Holy Spirit
JANUARY 5
"We are haunted by an ideal life, and it is because we have within us
the beginning and the possibility of it."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"The power of the Holy Spirit!--an everlasting spiritual presence among
men. What but that is the thing we want? That is what the old oracles
were dreaming of, what the modern Spiritualists tonight are fumbling
after. The power of the Holy Ghost, by which every man who is in doubt
may know what is right, every man whose soul is sick may be made
spiritually whole, every weak man may be made a strong man,--that is
God's one sufficient answer to the endless appeal of man's spiritual
life; that is God's one great response to the unconscious need of
spiritual guidance, which He hears crying out of the deep heart of every
man.--I hope that I have made clear to you what I mean. I would that we
might understand ourselves, see what we might be; nay, see what we are.
While you are living a worldly and a wicked life, letting all sacred
things go, caring for no duty, serving no God, there is another self,
your possibility, the thing that you might be, the thing that God gave
you a chance to be."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
A Symphony
JANUARY 6
"To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and
wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act
frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open
heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry
never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow
up through the common--this is to be my symphony."
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING.
"Heed how thou livest. Do no act by day Which from the night shall drive
thy peace away. In months of sun so live that months of rain Shall still
be happy."
WHITTIER, _Translation_.
Patience with Ourselves
JANUARY 7
"To be honest, to be kind--to earn a little and to spend a little less,
to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce
when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few
friends but these without capitulation--above all, on the same grim
condition, to keep friends with himself--here is a task for all that a
man has of fortitude and delicacy."
_Across the Plains_, R. L. STEVENSON.
"People who love themselves aright, even as they ought to love their
neighbour, bear charitably, though without flattery, with self as with
another. They know what needs correction at home as well as elsewhere;
they strive heartily and vigorously to correct it, but they deal with
self as they would deal with some one else they wished to bring to God.
They set to work patiently, not exacting more than is practicable under
present circumstances from themselves any more than from others, and not
being disheartened because perfection is not attainable in a day."
FÉNÉLON.
"One is so apt to think that what works smoothest works to the highest
ends, having no patience for the results of friction."
Mrs. EWING.
The Foot-path to Peace
JANUARY 8
"To be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work
and to play and to look up at the stars; to be satisfied with your
possessions, but not contented with yourself until you have made the
best of them; to despise nothing in the world except falsehood and
meanness, and to fear nothing except cowardice; to be governed by your
admirations rather than by your disgusts; to covet nothing that is your
neighbour's except his kindness of heart and gentleness of manners; to
think seldom of your enemies, often of your friends, and every day of
Christ; and to spend as much time as you can, with body and with spirit,
in God's out-of-doors--these are little guideposts on the foot-path to
peace."
HENRY VAN DYKE.
"O Lord, that lends me life, lend me a heart replete with thankfulness."
SHAKESPEARE.
Purpose
JANUARY 9
"He who lives without a definite purpose achieves no higher end than to
serve as a warning to others. He is a kind of bell-buoy, mournfully
tolled by the waves of circumstance, to mark the rocks or shoals which
are to be avoided."
"Surely there is something to be done from morning till night, and to
find out _what_ is the appointed work of the onward-tending soul."
FANNY KEMBLE.
"I ask you while hope is still fresh and enthusiasm unchilled to gain
some conception of the solemnity, the vastness, the unity, the purpose
of life: to pause in the street or on the river bank and ask yourselves
what that strange stream of pleasure and frivolity and sorrow and vice
means, and means to you: to reflect that you are bound by intelligible
bonds to every suffering, sinning man and woman: to learn, while the
lesson is comparatively easy, the secret of human sympathy: to search
after some of the essential relationships of man to man: to interpret a
little of the worth of even trivial labour: to grow sensitive to the
feelings of the poor: to grow considerate to the claims of the weak."
Bishop WESTCOTT.
Life, a School
January 10
"All life is a school, a preparation, a purpose: nor can we pass current
in a higher college, if we do not undergo the tedium of education in
this lower one."
_Tennyson--a Memoir_, by his Son.
"Life is a succession of lessons, which must be lived to be understood."
EMERSON.
"We never know for what God is preparing us in His schools, for what
work on earth, for what work in the hereafter. Our business is to do our
work well in the present place, whatever that may be."
LYMAN ABBOTT.
Character and Service
January 11
"Never should we forget the close connection between character and
service, between inward nobleness and outward philanthropy. We are not
here to dream, or even to build up in grace and beauty our individual
life; we are responsible, each in our own little way, for trying to
leave this sad world happier, this evil world better than we found it.
In this way slackness is infamy, and power to the last particle means
duty. Each of us, in some degree, must have the ambition to be an 'Alter
Christus'--another Christ, shouldering with the compassionate Son of God
to lift our shadowed world from the gates of death."
"What men want is not talent, it is purpose; not the power to achieve,
but the will to labour."
BULWER LYTTON.
"'Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall
give thee light.' This is the principle with which we should look forth
upon the world and our own life at the beginning of this year. We look
upon the world; it seems as if it were sleeping still, like Rome, as if
it needed as much as ever to hear the shout, 'Awake, thou that
sleepest.'"
STOPFORD BROOKE.
Present Circumstances
JANUARY 12
"Everywhere and at all times it is in thy power piously to acquiesce in
thy present condition, and to behave justly to those who are about thee,
and to exert thy skill upon thy present thoughts, that nothing shall
steal into them without being well examined."
MARCUS AURELIUS.
"Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of
thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts. Dye it then with a
continuous series of such thoughts as these: for instance, that where a
man can live, there he can also live well. But he must live in a
palace;--well then, he can also live well in a palace."
MARCUS AURELIUS.
"Of nothing can we be more sure than this: that, if we cannot sanctify
our present lot, we could sanctify no other."
MARTINEAU.
Circumstances
JANUARY 13
"Occasion is the father of most that is good in us. As you have seen the
awkward fingers and clumsy tools of a prisoner cut and fashion the most
delicate little pieces of carved work; or achieve the most prodigious
underground labours, and cut through walls of masonry, and saw iron bars
and fetters; 'tis misfortune that awakens ingenuity, or fortitude or
endurance, in hearts where these qualities had never come to life but
for the circumstance which gave them a being."
_Esmond_, W. M. THACKERAY.
"It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstances would
have been less strong against us."
G. ELIOT.
"A consideration of petty circumstances is the tomb of great things."
VOLTAIRE.
The Ifs of Life
JANUARY 14
"If it were--_if_ it might be--_if_ it could be--_if_ it had been. One
portion of mankind go through life always regretting, always whining,
always imagining. _As_ it is--this is the way in which the other class
of people look at the conditions in which they find themselves. I
venture to say that if one should count the _ifs_ and the _ases_ in the
conversation of his acquaintances, he would find the more able and
important persons among them--statesmen, generals, men of
business--among the _ases_, and the majority of conspicuous failures
among the _ifs_."
_Over the Teacups_, O. W. HOLMES.
"It is sad, indeed, to see how man wastes his opportunities. How many
could be made happy, with the blessings which are recklessly wasted or
thrown away! Happiness is a condition of Mind, not a result of
circumstances; and, in the words of Dugald Stewart, the great secret of
happiness is to accommodate ourselves to things external, rather than to
struggle to accommodate external things to ourselves. Hume wisely said
that a happy disposition was better than an estate of £10,000 a year.
Try to realise all the blessings you have, and you will find perhaps
that they are more than you suppose. Many a blessing has been recognised
too late."
Lord AVEBURY.
"The pleasure of life is according to the man that lives it, and not
according to the work or the place."
EMERSON.
Harmony
JANUARY 15
"... Have good will
To all that lives, letting unkindness die
And greed and wrath; so that your lives be made
Like soft airs passing by.
... Govern the lips
As they were palace-doors, the King within;
Tranquil and fair and courteous be all words
Which from that presence win.
... Let each act
Assoil a fault or help a merit grow:
Like threads of silver seen through crystal beads
Let love through good deeds show."
_The Light of Asia_, E. ARNOLD.
"The Past is something, but the Present more;
Will It not, too, be past? Nor fail withal
To recognise the Future in your hopes;
Unite them in your manhood, each and all,
Nor mutilate the perfectness of life!--
You can remember; you can also hope."
A. H. CLOUGH.
Harmony
JANUARY 16
... "THIS is peace
To conquer love of self and lust of life,
To tear deep-rooted passion from the breast,
To still the inward strife;
For love to clasp Eternal Beauty close;
For glory to be Lord of self; for pleasure
To live beyond the gods; for countless wealth
To lay up lasting treasure
Of perfect service rendered, duties done
In charity, soft speech, and stainless days:
These riches shall not fade away in life,
Nor any death dispraise."
_The Light of Asia_, E. ARNOLD.
"WE are all of us made more graceful by the inward presence of what we
believe to be a generous purpose; our actions move to a hidden music--'a
melody that's sweetly played in tune.'"
GEORGE ELIOT.
Ideals
JANUARY 17
"It is not the ideals of earlier years that are the most unattainable.
'The petty done, the undone vast' is not the thought of the youth, but
of those who, having done the most, yet count themselves unprofitable
servants, because it is to them only that the experience, the knowledge,
and the reflection of maturer years have opened up the far vistas of
moral possibility."
_The Making of Character_, PROF. MACCUNN.
"In doing is this knowledge won,
To see what yet remains undone.
With this our pride repress,
And give us grace, a growing store,
That day by day we may do more
And may esteem it less."
TRENCH.
"Comfort me not!--for if aught be worse than failure from over-stress
Of a life's prime purpose, it is to sit down content with a little
success."
LYTTON.
The Celestial Surgeon
JANUARY 18
THE CELESTIAL SURGEON
"If I have faltered more or less
In my great task of happiness;
If I have moved among my race
And shown no glorious morning face;
If beams from happy human eyes
Have moved me not; if morning skies,
Books, and my food, and summer rain
Knocked on my sullen heart in vain:--
Lord, Thy most pointed pleasure take
And stab my spirit broad awake;
Or, Lord, if too obdurate I,
Choose Thou, before that spirit die,
A piercing pain, a killing sin,
And to my dead heart run them in."
_Underwoods_, R. L. STEVENSON.
Influence of Great Men
JANUARY 19
"The thirst for memoirs and lives and letters is not all to be put down
to the hero-worship which is natural to every heart. It means, perhaps,
a higher thing than that. It means, in the first place, that great
living is being appreciated for its own sake; and, in the second, that
great living is being imitated. If it is true that any of us are
beginning to appreciate greatness for its own sake--greatness, that is
to say, in the sense of great and true living--it is one of the most
hopeful symptoms of our history. And, further, if we are going on from
the mere admiration of great men to try and live like them, we are
obeying one of the happiest impulses of our being. There is indeed no
finer influence abroad than the influence of great men in great books,
and all that literature can do in supplying the deformed world with
worthy and shapely models is entitled to gratitude and respect."
_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
"Glimpses into the inner regions of a great soul do one good. Contact of
this kind strengthens, restores, refreshes. Courage returns as we gaze;
when we see what has been, we doubt no more that it can be again. At the
sight of a MAN we too say to ourselves, Let us also be men."
_Amiel's Journal._
Influence of Great Men
JANUARY 20
"We cannot look, however imperfectly, upon a great man, without gaining
something by him. He is the living life-fountain, which it is good and
pleasant to be near; the light which enlightens, which has enlightened,
the darkness of the world; and this not as a kindling lamp only, but
rather as a natural luminary, shining by the gift of Heaven; a flowing
light-fountain, as I say, of native original insight, of manhood and
heroic nobleness, in whose radiance all souls feel that it is well with
them."
CARLYLE.
"My sole fear was the fear of doing an unrighteous or unholy thing."
SOCRATES.
"The truly honest man, here and there to be found, is not only without
thought of legal, religious, or social compulsion, when he discharges an
equitable claim on him, but he is without thought of self-compulsion. He
does the right thing with a simple feeling of satisfaction in doing it;
and is, indeed, impatient if anything prevents him from having the
satisfaction of doing it."
HERBERT SPENCER.
The Habit of Admiration
JANUARY 21
"'We live by admiration, hope, and love,' Wordsworth tells us,--not,
therefore, by contempt, despondency, and hatred. These contract and
narrow the soul, as the others enlarge it. The more a man heartily
admires, the more he takes into his nature the goodness and beauty which
excite his admiration. His being grows up toward what thus evokes his
enthusiasm. And the habit of admiration is the outcome of a moral
discipline which represses peevish and fault-finding dispositions, and
seeks the admirable in every situation and every person that life brings
to us. 'Be ye enlarged' implies 'learn to admire and to praise.'"
"Learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what
the great men admired; they admired great things: narrow spirits admire
basely, and worship meanly."
THACKERAY.
Character of Henry Drummond
JANUARY 22
_Of Henry Drummond._--"He seemed to be invariably in good spirits, and
invariably disengaged. He was always ready for any and every office of
friendship. It should be said that though few men were more criticised
or misconceived, he himself never wrote an unkind word about any one,
never retaliated, never bore malice, and could do full justice to the
abilities and character of his opponents. I have just heard that he
exerted himself privately to secure an important appointment for one of
his most trenchant critics, and was successful.... The spectacle of his
long struggle with a mortal disease was something more than impressive.
Those who saw him in his illness saw that, as the physical life
flickered low, the spiritual energy grew. Always gentle and considerate,
he became even more careful, more tender, more thoughtful, more
unselfish. He never in any way complained. His doctors found it very
difficult to get him to talk of his illness. It was strange and painful,
but inspiring, to see his keenness, his mental elasticity, his universal
interest. Dr. Barbour says: 'I have never seen pain or weariness, or the
being obliged to do nothing, more entirely overcome, treated, in fact,
as if they were not. The end came suddenly from failure of the heart.
Those with him received only a few hours' warning of his critical
condition.' It was not like death. He lay on his couch in the
drawing-room, and passed away in his sleep, with the sun shining in, and
the birds singing at the open window. There was no sadness nor farewell.
It recalled what he himself said of a friend's death--'putting by the
well-worn tools without a sigh, and expecting elsewhere better work to
do.'"
_Character Sketch by_ W. ROBERTSON NICOLL
_in "The Ideal Life."_
Character of R. L. Stevenson
JANUARY 23
"I Have referred to his chivalry only to find that in reality I was
thinking of every one of the whole group of attributes which are
associated with that name. Loyalty, honesty, generosity, courage;
courtesy, tenderness, and self-devotion; to impute no unworthy motives
and to bear no grudge; to bear misfortune with cheerfulness and without
a murmur; to strike hard for the right and take no mean advantage; to be
gentle to women and kind to all that are weak; to be very rigorous with
oneself and very lenient to others--these, and any other virtues ever
implied in 'chivalry,' were the traits that distinguished Stevenson."
_The Life of R. L. Stevenson_, GRAHAM BALFOUR.
"Through life he did the thing he was doing as if it were the one thing
in the world that was worth being done."
_The Life of R. L. Stevenson_, GRAHAM BALFOUR.
Being and Doing
JANUARY 24
"Upon the man who desired to be His disciple and a member of God's
Kingdom were laid the conditions of a pure heart, of a forgiving spirit,
of a helpful hand, of a heavenly purpose, of an unworldly mind. Christ
did not ground His Christianity in thinking, or in doing, but, first of
all, in being."
_The Mind of the Master_, DR. JOHN WATSON.
"History and literature furnish many instances of men who have made
their mark in virtue of a striking _personality_; whose reputation
rests, not on any visible tokens,--not on kingdoms conquered,
institutions founded, books written, or inventions perfected or anything
else that they _did_,--but mainly on what they _were_. Their merely
having passed along a course on earth, and lived and talked and acted
with others, has left lasting effects on mankind."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
Being and Doing
JANUARY 25
"Perfection is being, not doing--it is not to effect an act, but to
achieve a character. If the aim of life were to do something, then, as
in an earthly business, except in doing this one thing the business
would be at a standstill. The student is not doing the one thing of
student-life when he has ceased to think or read. The labourer leaves
his work undone when the spade is not in his hand, and he sits beneath
the hedge to rest. But in Christian life, every moment and every act is
an opportunity for doing the one thing of _becoming_ Christ-like. Every
day is full of a most expressive experience. Every temptation to evil
temper which can assail us to-day will be an opportunity to decide the
question whether we shall gain the calmness and the rest of Christ, or
whether we shall be tossed by the restlessness and agitation of the
world. Nay, the very vicissitudes of the season, day and night, heat and
cold, affecting us variably, and producing exhilaration or depression,
are so contrived as to conduce towards the being which we become, and
decide whether we shall be masters of ourselves, or whether we shall be
swept at the mercy of accident and circumstance, miserably susceptible
of merely outward influences. Infinite as are the varieties of life, so
manifold are the paths to saintly character; and he who has not found
out how directly or indirectly to make everything converge towards his
soul's sanctification, has as yet missed the meaning of this life."
FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON.
Life-Giver, not Deed-Doer
JANUARY 26
"Christ was not primarily the Deed-Doer or the Word-Sayer. He was the
Life-Giver. He made men live. Wherever He went He brought vitality. Both
in the days of His Incarnation and in the long years of His power which
have followed since He vanished from men's sight, His work has been to
create the conditions in which all sorts of men should live."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"Therefore with all the strength God has given us, let us be fulfillers.
Let us try to make the life of the world more complete. What can we do?
First, each of us can put one more healthy and holy life into the world,
and so directly increase the aggregation of righteousness. That is much.
To fasten one more link, however small, in the growing chain that is
ultimately to bind humanity to God beyond all fear of separation, is
very much indeed. And besides that, we can, with sympathy and
intelligence, patience and hope, bring up the lagging side in all the
vitality around us, and assert for man the worth, the meaning, and the
possibility of this his human life."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
Seeing One's Life in Perspective
JANUARY 27
"If we wish to cultivate our higher nature we must have solitude. It is
vitally necessary at times that we should be able to get away from every
other being on the face of the earth. What thoughtful person does not
love to be alone; to be surrounded with no objects but the fields and
the trees, the mountains and the waters, to hear nothing but the
rustling of the foliage and the songs of the birds, and to feel the
fresh breeze of heaven playing upon his cheeks? Moreover, when we are
very much in contact with human life, when we are mingling with it, we
are liable to become too conscious of its turbid side, or drearily
oppressed with its commonplace features. To see human life, and weigh it
in its many aspects, we need at times to go away and be as it were on a
pinnacle, where we can take it all in with one sweeping glance. Solitude
can affect us somewhat as religious worship does. It can take us out of
the consciousness of where we belong, away from the ordinary selfish
instincts by which we may be dominated.
"Too much solitude may be dangerous, just as too much of the sense of
mystery may be. Yet something of it is essential to our advance in
spiritual life. A man must go away where he can feel the mystery of his
own being. Moreover, a certain degree of solitude seems necessary to the
full growth of the mind, and it is in solitude that great principles are
first thought out, and the genius of eminent men formed, for solitude is
the nurse of enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is the real parent of genius.
Solitude, moreover, is essential to any depth of meditation or of
character, and is the cradle of thoughts and aspirations."
H. W. SMITH.
"One sees one's life in perspective when one goes abroad, and to be
spectators of ourselves is very solemn."
HENRY DRUMMOND.
Triviality
JANUARY 28
"Triviality is the modern equivalent for worldliness, the regard for the
outward and the visible. The trivial mind is enmity with God, and it is
of many kinds. There is the triviality which concerns itself with
'nothing,' which gossips about 'him' and 'her,' and becomes serious over
a form, a phrase, a dress, a race or a show. There is the triviality to
which the working people are forced by the cares of this life, who all
day and every day have to think of the bread which perisheth, while
their souls starve for lack of knowledge which endureth. The cares of
life as often choke the growth of the Word as the deceitfulness of
riches. There is also that most insidious kind of triviality which tends
to haunt the more serious circles, wrapping itself in talk about social
schemes, Church progress, policies and philosophies, passing itself off
as serious, when all the time the concern of the talker is to achieve a
wordy success or to get notice for his little self or his little
system."
_The Service of God,_ CANON BARNETT.
"I believe that the mind can be profaned by the habit of attending to
trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with
triviality."
THOREAU.
Triviality
JANUARY 29
"They that use to employ their Minds too much upon Trifles, commonly
make themselves incapable of any Thing that is Serious or Great."
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
"Be still and cool in thy own mind and spirit from thy own thoughts, and
then thou wilt feel the principle of God to turn thy mind to the Lord,
from whom cometh life; whereby thou mayest receive the strength and
power to allay all storms and tempests. That is it which works up into
patience, innocency, soberness, into stillness, staidness, quietness up
to God, with His power. Therefore mind; that is the word of the Lord God
unto thee, that thou mayest feel the authority of God, and thy faith in
that, to work down that which troubles thee; for that is it which keeps
peace, and brings up the witness in thee, which hath been transgressed,
to feel after God with His power and life, who is a God of order and
peace."
GEORGE FOX.
"It is not sin so much as triviality which hides God."
_The Service of God_, CANON BARNETT.
The Art of being Quiet
JANUARY 30
"It is only when we begin to _think_ about life, and how we should live,
that the art of being quiet assumes its real value; to the irrational
creature it is nothing, to the rational it is much. In the first place,
it removes what De Quincey, with his usual grand felicity of expression,
calls 'the burden of that distraction which lurks in the infinite
littleness of details.' It is the infinite littleness of details which
takes the glory and the dignity from our common life, and which we who
value that life for its own sake and for the sake of its great Giver
must strive to make finite.
"Since unconscious life is not possible to the intellectual adult, as it
is to the child--since he cannot go on living without a thought about
the nature of his own being, its end and aim--it is good for him to
cultivate a habit of repose, that he may think and feel like a man
putting away those childish things--the carelessness, the thoughtless
joy, 'the tear forgot as soon as shed,' which, however beautiful,
because appropriate, in childhood, are not beautiful because not
appropriate in mature age.
"The art of being quiet is necessary to enable a man to possess his own
soul in peace and integrity--to examine himself, to understand what
gifts God has endowed him with, and to consider how he may best employ
them in the business of the world. This is its universal utility. It is
unwholesome activity which requires not repose and thoughtful quiet as
its forerunner, and every man should secure some portion of each day for
voluntary retirement and repose within himself."
The Art of being Quiet
JANUARY 31
"One of the special needs of our day is more time for meditation and
reflection."
_Life Here and Hereafter_, Canon MACCOLL.
"We are too busy, too encumbered, too much occupied, too active! We read
too much! The one thing needful is to throw off all one's load of cares,
of preoccupations, of pedantry, and to become again young, simple,
child-like, living happily and gratefully in the present hour. We must
know how to put occupation aside, which does not mean that we must be
idle. In an inaction which is meditative and attentive the wrinkles of
the soul are smoothed away, and the soul itself spreads, unfolds, and
springs afresh, and, like the trodden grass of the roadside or the
bruised leaf of a plant, repairs its injuries, becomes new, spontaneous,
true, and original. Reverie, like the rain of night, restores colour and
force to thoughts which have been blanched and wearied by the heat of
the day. With gentle fertilising power it awakens within us a thousand
sleeping germs, and, as though in play, gathers round us materials for
the future, and images for the use of talent."
_Amiel's Journal._
Inward Stillness
February 1
"Let each of us sit still, and keep watch for awhile in the silent house
of his spirit.... As near as is the light to one sleeping in the light,
so near is Christ, the Awakener, to every Eternal man, deeply as he may
be asleep within his outer man."
JOHN PULSFORD.
"Let us then labour for an inward stillness,
An inward stillness and an inward healing;
That perfect silence where the lips and heart
Are still, and we no longer entertain
Our own imperfect thoughts and vain opinions,
But God alone speaks in us, and we wait
In singleness of heart that we may know
His will, and in the silence of our own spirits,
That we may do His will, and that only."
LONGFELLOW.
Commune with your Own Heart and be Still
FEBRUARY 2
"Perhaps one very simple, but alas too often neglected rule, may be
suggested to those who are indeed desirous of realising through all the
petty vicissitudes and monotonous or trivial round of their daily life,
the Divine presence and power. 'Devotion early in the day _before the
day's worries begin._ It is the _only_ way to keep the spirit Godward
through them all.' Devotion, it is needless to add, is not 'saying
prayers' in words either of our own or any one else's--nor is it only or
chiefly 'making request.' It is pre-eminently _worship_, the deliberate
homage of the mind and heart--of the whole being to God who is its
source. And here steadfastness of will, showing itself in determined
concentration of attention, is the indispensable condition of success;
for such concentration is by no means always an easy matter to attain,
even when the effort is 'made early in the day before the day's worries
begin.' Sometimes there are sleepless 'worries' which assert their
presence with the first dawn of consciousness; sometimes we are mentally
or physically lazy, inert or languid. Well, if we habitually give in to
such difficulties in a way of which we should be utterly ashamed were
any other object of mental effort in question, we must not be surprised
if the entirely natural result ensues that we fail to 'realise' what we
have never honestly set ourselves to treat as real.... Amid the
thronging duties, the ceaseless cares, the toilsome or pleasurable round
of daily life, we must take and we must keep time to 'commune with our
own hearts and in our own chamber, and be still.'"
E. M. CAILLARD.
The Receptive Side of Life
FEBRUARY 3
"To all who are active in Christian work I would say, ever remember that
there must be fidelity to the receptive side of life if you are to
exercise any real abiding influence. How often do we hear men say that
they have worked hard in their district, or their school, or their
class, and yet there is no result.
"Perhaps they have worked too hard. There are a multitude of Marthas in
modern English life; but it were good for such if, at times, they would
follow the example of the wiser Mary, and sit down quietly at Jesus'
feet, and draw in from Him that power which cannot by any possibility be
given out, before it is taken in."
Canon BODY.
"The problem set before us is to bring our daily task into the temple of
contemplation and ply it there, to act as in the presence of God, to
interfuse one's little part with religion. So only can we inform the
detail of life, all that is passing, temporary, and insignificant, with
beauty and nobility. So may we dignify and consecrate the meanest of
occupations. So may we feel that we are paying our tribute to the
universal work and the eternal will. So are we reconciled with life and
delivered from the fear of death. So are we in order and at peace."
_Amiel's Journal._
Regulation of Time
FEBRUARY 4
"No two things differ more than hurry and despatch. Hurry is the mark of
a weak mind, despatch of a strong one. A weak man in office, like a
squirrel in a cage, is labouring eternally, but to no purpose, and in
constant motion, without getting on a jot: like a turnstile, he is in
everybody's way, but stops nobody: he talks a great deal, but says very
little; looks into everything, but sees into nothing; and has a hundred
irons in the fire, but very few of them are hot, and with these few that
are he burns his fingers."
COLTON.
"Hurry belongs to the mortal who wants to see the outcome of his work,
while eternity is lavish of time."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
"Unfaithfulness in the keeping of an appointment is an act of clear
dishonesty. You may as well borrow a person's money as his time."
HORACE MANN.
"Punctuality is the politeness of kings."
LOUIS XIV.
Business-like Habits
FEBRUARY 5
"It is very important to cultivate business-like habits. An eminent
friend of mine assured me not long ago that when he thought over the
many cases he had known of men, even of good ability and high character,
who had been unsuccessful in life, by far the most frequent cause of
failure was that they were dilatory, unpunctual, unable to work
cordially with others, obstinate in small things, and, in fact, what we
call unbusiness-like."
LORD AVEBURY.
"A 'bustling' man is, to a man of business, what a monkey is to a man.
He is the shadow of despatch, or, rather, the echo thereof; for he
maketh noise enough for an alarm. The quickness of a true man of
business he imitateth, imitateth excellently well, but neither his
silence nor his method; and it is to be noted that he is ever most
vehement about matters of no significance. He is always in such headlong
haste to overtake the next minute, that he loses half the minute in
hand; and yet is full of indignation and impatience at other people's
slowness, and wasteth more time in reiterating his love of despatch than
would suffice for doing a great deal of business. He never giveth you
his quiet attention with a mind centred on what you are saying, but
hears you with a restless eye, and a perpetual shifting posture, and is
so eager to show his quickness that he interrupteth you a dozen times,
misunderstands you as often, and ends by making you and himself lose
twice as much time as was necessary."
H. ROGERS.
Time and Method
FEBRUARY 6
"The thrift of time will repay in after life with usury of profit beyond
your most sanguine dreams, and waste of it will make you dwindle alike
in intellectual and moral stature beyond your darkest reckoning."
GLADSTONE.
"One of the striking characteristics of successful persons is their
faculty of readily determining the relative importance of different
things. There are many things which it is desirable to do, a few are
essential, and there is no more useful quality of the human mind than
that which enables its possessor at once to distinguish which the few
essential things are. Life is so short and time so fleeting that much
which one would wish to do must fain be omitted. He is fortunate who
perceives at a glance what it will do, and what it will not do, to omit.
This invaluable faculty, if not possessed in a remarkable degree
naturally, is susceptible of cultivation to a considerable extent. Let
any one adopt the practice of reflecting, every morning, what must
necessarily be done during the day, and then begin by doing the most
important things first, leaving the others to take their chance of being
done or left undone. In this way attention first to the things of first
importance soon acquires the almost irresistible force of habit, and
becomes a rule of life. There is no rule more indispensable to
success."
Concentration
FEBRUARY 7
"The marked differences of working power among men are due chiefly to
differences in the power of concentration. A retentive and accurate
memory is conditioned upon close attention. If one gives entire
attention to what is passing before him, he is not likely to forget it,
or to confuse persons or incidents. The book which one reads with eyes
which are continually lifted from the page may furnish entertainment for
the moment, but cannot enrich the reader, because it cannot become part
of his knowledge. Attention is the simplest form of concentration, and
its value illustrates the supreme importance of that focussing of all
the powers upon the thing in hand which may be called the sustained
attention of the whole nature.
"Here, as everywhere in the field of man's life, there enters that
element of sacrifice without which no real achievement is possible. To
secure a great end, one must be willing to pay a great price. The exact
adjustment of achievement to sacrifice makes us aware, at every step, of
the invisible spiritual order with which all men are in every kind of
endeavour. If the highest skill could be secured without long and
painful effort, it would be wasted through ignorance of its value, or
misused through lack of education; but a man rarely attains great skill
without undergoing a discipline of self-denial and work which gives him
steadiness, restraint, and a certain kind of character. The giving up of
pleasures which are wholesome, the turning aside from fields which are
inviting, the steady refusal of invitations and claims which one would
be glad to accept or recognise, invest the power of concentration with
moral quality, and throw a searching light on the nature of genuine
success.
"To do one thing well, a man must be willing to hold all other interests
and activities subordinate; to attain the largest freedom, a man must
first bear the cross of self-denial."
Concentration
FEBRUARY 8
"Strive constantly to concentrate yourself; never dissipate your powers;
incessant activity, of whatever kind, leads finally to bankruptcy."
GOETHE.
"All impatience disturbs the circulation, scatters force, makes
concentration difficult if not impossible."
C. B. NEWCOMB.
"They have great powers, and they waste them pitifully, for they have
not the greatest power,--the power to rule the use of their powers."
F. W. ROBERTSON.
"Concentration is the secret of strength."
EMERSON.
Readiness
FEBRUARY 9
"To know how to be ready--a great thing--a precious gift,--and one that
implies calculation, grasp and decision. To be always ready, a man must
be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied; he must know how
to disengage what is essential from the detail in which it is enwrapped,
for everything cannot be equally considered; in a word, he must be able
to simplify his duties, his business, and his life. To know how to be
ready, is to know how to start.
"It is astonishing how all of us are generally cumbered up with the
thousand and one hindrances and duties which are not such, but which
nevertheless wind us about with their spider threads and fetter the
movement of our wings. It is the lack of order which makes us slaves;
the confusion of to-day discounts the freedom of to-morrow.
"Confusion is the enemy of all comfort, and confusion is born of
procrastination. To know how to be ready we must be able to finish.
Nothing is done but what is finished. The things which we leave dragging
behind us will start up again later on before us and harass our path.
Let each day take thought for what concerns it, liquidate its own
affairs and respect the day which is to follow, and then we shall be
always ready. To know how to be ready, is at bottom to know how to die."
_Amiel's Journal._
Order
FEBRUARY 10
"What comfort, what strength, what economy there is in _order_--material
order, intellectual order, moral order. To know where one is going and
what one wishes--this is order; to keep one's word and one's
engagements--again order; to have everything ready under one's hand, to
be able to dispose of all one's forces, and to have all one's means of
whatever kind under command--still order; to discipline one's habits,
one's efforts, one's wishes; to organise one's life, to distribute one's
time, to take the measure of one's duties and make one's rights
respected; to employ one's capital and resources, one's talent and one's
chances profitably;--all this belongs to and is included in the word
_order_. Order means light and peace, inward liberty and free command
over oneself; order is power. Æsthetic and moral beauty consist, the
first in a true conception of order, and the second in submission to it,
and in the realisation of it, by, in, and around oneself. Order is man's
greatest need and his true well-being."
_Amiel's Journal._
"The commissioning of the Twelve imposed no particular form of rule; but
it taught the lesson that organisation and order and the distribution of
duty were essential in things spiritual as well as in things temporal,
and that it was well for the children of light to be as 'wise in their
generation' as the children of the world."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
The Secret of Thrift
FEBRUARY 11
"The secret of thriving is thrift; saving of force; to get as much work
as possible done with the least expenditure of power, the least jar and
obstruction, the least wear and tear. And the secret of thrift is
knowledge. In proportion as you know the laws and nature of a subject,
you will be able to work at it easily, surely, rapidly, successfully,
instead of wasting your money or your energies in mistaken schemes,
irregular efforts, which end in disappointment and exhaustion."
CHARLES KINGSLEY.
"It is never enough for us simply to _know_. We must also _weigh_."
_The Making of Character_, PROF. MACCUNN.
"Doing good, being so divine a privilege, is beset by its own dangers.
Let us see that our good be not evil spoken of by want of thought,
method, and self-denial in the doing of it. The world is waiting for us,
with our little store. Oh that we might economise it more, devote it
more thoroughly, and add to it! Every time we pray, or study, or work,
we are receiving to give away. Men are looking to us in faintness,
weariness, and want, and a voice says to us, 'Give ye them to eat.' If
it is but five loaves, we can offer them to Christ, and He will multiply
them."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
Endurance
FEBRUARY 12
"'A somewhat varied experience of men has led me, the longer I live,'
said Huxley, 'to set less value on mere cleverness; to attach more and
more importance to industry and physical endurance. Indeed, I am much
disposed to think that endurance is the most valuable quality of all;
for industry, as the desire to work hard, does not come to much if a
feeble frame is unable to respond to the desire. No life is wasted
unless it ends in sloth, dishonesty, or cowardice. No success is worthy
of the name unless it is won by honest industry and brave breasting of
the waves of fortune.'"
"Of all work producing results, nine-tenths must be drudgery. There is
no work, from the highest to the lowest, which can be done well by any
man who is unwilling to make that sacrifice. Part of the very nobility
of the devotion of the true workman to his work consists in the fact
that a man is not daunted by finding that drudgery must be done, and no
man can really succeed in any walk of life without a good deal of what
in ordinary English is called pluck. That is the condition of all
success, and there is nothing which so truly repays itself as this
perseverance against weariness."
Bishop PHILPOTTS.
Perseverance
FEBRUARY 13
"Practise thyself even in the things which thou despairest of
accomplishing. For even the left hand, which is ineffectual for all
other things for want of practice, holds the bridle more vigorously than
the right hand; for it has been practised in this."
MARCUS AURELIUS.
"'It is not the spurt at the start, but the continued, unresting,
unhasting advance that wins the day.'"
"The same law runs in ordinary life, and he only need expect to attain
success and win the honour of his fellow-men who is thorough. The reason
why men fail is, in five cases out of six, not through want of influence
or brains, or opportunity, or good guidance, but because they are slack;
and the reason why certain men with few advantages succeed, is that they
are diligent, concentrated, persevering and conscientious--because, in
fact, they are thorough."
_The Homely Virtues_, DR. JOHN WATSON.
"Unto him who works, and feels he works,
This same grand year is ever at the doors."
TENNYSON.
Pleasure in Work
FEBRUARY 14
"Joy or delight in what we are doing is not a mere luxury; it is a
means, a help for the more perfect doing of our work. Indeed, it may be
truly said that no man does any work perfectly who does not enjoy his
work. Joy in one's work is the consummate tool without which the work
may be done indeed, but without which the work will always be done
slowly, clumsily, and without its finest perfectness. Men who do their
work without enjoying it are like men carving statues with hatchets. The
statue gets carved perhaps, and is a monument for ever of the dogged
perseverance of the artist; but there is a perpetual waste of toil, and
there is no fine result in the end."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"Efforts to be permanently useful must be uniformly joyous,--a spirit
all sunshine; graceful from very gladness, beautiful because bright."
CARLYLE.
"Every joy is gain, and gain is gain, however small."
BROWNING.
Duty
FEBRUARY 15
"In Life's small things be resolute and great
To keep thy muscle trained: know'st thou when Fate
Thy measure takes, or when she'll say to thee
'I find thee worthy; do this thing for me'?"
LOWELL.
"Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to
our powers."
_Amiel's Journal._
"I'll bind myself to that which, once being right, Will not be less
right when I shrink from it."
KINGSLEY.
"There's life alone in duty done,
And rest alone in striving."
WHITTIER.
Duty
FEBRUARY 16
"A duty is no sooner divined than from that very moment it becomes
binding upon us."
_Amiel's Journal._
"Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before
you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will
be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it."
EMERSON.
"The toppling crags of duty scaled
Are close upon the shining table-lands
To which our God Himself is moon and sun."
TENNYSON.
The Iron Chains of Duty
FEBRUARY 17
"... One conviction I have gained from the experience of the last
years--life is not jest and amusement; life is not even enjoyment ...
life is hard labour. Renunciation, continual renunciation--that is its
secret meaning, its solution. Not the fulfilment of cherished dreams and
aspirations, however lofty they may be--the fulfilment of duty, that is
what must be the care of man. Without laying on himself chains, the iron
chains of duty, he cannot reach without a fall the end of his career."
_A Lear of the Steppes_, IVAN TURGENEV.
"Granted that life is tragic to the marrow, it seems the proper function
of religion to make us accept and serve in that tragedy, as officers in
that other and comparable one of war. Service is the word, active
service, in the military sense; and the religious man is he who has a
military joy in duty--not he who weeps over the wounded."
_Lay Morals_, R. L. STEVENSON.
Power
FEBRUARY 18
"Oh, do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray
for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks!
Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a
miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life
which has come in you by the grace of God.
"THERE is nothing which comes to seem more foolish to us, I think, as
years go by, than the limitations which have been quietly set to the
moral possibilities of man. They are placidly and perpetually assumed.
'You must not expect too much of him,' so it is said. 'You must remember
that he is only a man after all.' 'Only a man!' That sounds to me as if
one said, 'You may launch your boat and sail a little way, but you must
not expect to go very far. It is only the Atlantic Ocean.' Why, man's
moral range and reach is practically infinite, at least no man has yet
begun to comprehend where its limit lies. Man's powers of conquering
temptation, of despising danger, of being true to principle, have never
been even indicated, save in Christ."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"Virgil said of the winning crew in his boat-race, 'They can, because
they believe they can.'"
An Ideal Level
FEBRUARY 19
"No man who, being a Christian, desires the kingdom of God, can justly
neglect giving his energy to the bettering of the social, physical, and
educational condition of the poor, the diseased, and the criminal
classes. But he is not a Christian, or he has not realised the problem
fully, if that is all he does. Social improvement is a work portions of
which any one can do, in which all ought to share; but if we who follow
Christ desire to do the best work in that improvement, and in the best
way, we ought to strive--while we join in the universal movement towards
a juster society--to give a spiritual life to that movement; to keep it
at an ideal level; to free it from mere materialism; to maintain in it
the monarchy of self-sacrifice; to fix its eyes on invisible and
unworldly truths; to supply it with noble and spiritual faiths; to base
all associations of men on the ground of their spiritual union--all
being children of God, and brothers of one another, in the love and
faith by which Jesus lived; and to maintain the dignity of this
spiritual communion of men in faith in their immortal union with God.
This is the fight of faith we, as fellow-workers with God, shall have to
wage; and this not only binds us up with the poor, but with the rich,
not only with the ignorant, but the learned; for on these grounds all
men are seen as stripped of everything save of their humanity and their
divine kinship.... Improve, then, the material condition and the
knowledge of all who are struggling for justice; it is part of your life
which if you neglect, you are out of touch with the new life; but kindle
in it, uphold and sanctify in it, the life which is divine, the
communion with man of God, without union with whose character all effort
for social improvement will revert to new miseries and new despair."
_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.
Work
FEBRUARY 20
"Idleness standing in the midst of unattempted tasks is always proud.
Work is always tending to humility. Work touches the keys of endless
activity, opens the infinite, and stands awe-struck before the immensity
of what there is to do. Work brings a man into the good realm of facts.
Work takes the dreamy youth who is growing proud in his closet over one
or two sprouting powers which he has discovered in himself, and sets him
out among the gigantic needs and the vast processes of the world, and
makes him feel his littleness. Work opens the measureless fields of
knowledge and skill that reach far out of sight. I am sure we all know
the fine, calm, sober humbleness of men who have really tried themselves
against the great tasks of life. It was great in Paul, and in Luther,
and in Cromwell. It is something that never comes into the character,
never shows in the face of a man who has never worked."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"No man is born into the world, whose work
Is not born with him; there is always work,
And tools to work withal, for those who will;
And blessed are the horny hands of toil!
The busy world shoves angrily aside
The man who stands with arms akimbo set,
Until occasion tells him what to do;
And he who waits to have his task marked out
Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled."
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
Special Work for Each
FEBRUARY 21
"There is some particular work which lies to every one's hand which he
can do better than any other person. What we ought to be concerned about
is not whether it be on a large scale or a small--about which we can
never be quite certain--nor whether it is going to bring us fame or
leave us in obscurity--an issue which is in the hands of God--but that
we do it, and that we do it with all our might. Having done that, there
is no cause to fret ourselves or ask questions which cannot be answered.
We may rest with a quiet conscience and a contented heart, for we have
filled our place and done what we could. The battle of life extends over
a vast area, and it is vain for us to inquire about the other wings of
the army; it is enough that we have received our orders, and that we
have held the few feet of ground committed to our charge. There let us
fight and there let us die, and so fighting and so dying in the place of
duty we cannot be condemned, we must be justified. Brilliant qualities
may never be ours, but the homely virtues are within our reach, and
character is built up not out of great intellectual gifts and splendid
public achievements, but out of honesty, industry, thrift, kindness,
courtesy, and gratitude, resting upon faith in God and love towards man.
And the inheritance of the soul which ranks highest and lasts for ever
is character."
_The Homely Virtues,_ Dr. JOHN WATSON.
The Sin of Idleness
FEBRUARY 22
"There is a certain amount of work to be done in this world. If any of
us does not take his full share, he imposes that which he does not take
on the shoulders of another; and the first cause of poverty, of disease,
of misery in all States, is the overwork which is imposed on men and
women by the idle and indifferent members of the nation. This is to
steal from the human race; to steal from them joy, leisure, health,
comfort and peace, and to impose on them sorrow and overwork, disease
and homelessness, bitter anger and fruitless tears. This is the curse
which the selfish dreamer leaves behind him. Many have been the fierce
oppressors and defrauders of the human race, but the evil they have done
is less than that done by those who drop by drop and hour by hour drain
the blood of mankind by doing no work for the overworked. This is the
crime with which the idle and indifferent will be confronted when the
great throne is set in our soul, and the books we have written on men's
lives are opened, and God shall lay judgment to the line and
righteousness to the plummet. 'Lord, what hast Thou to do with it?' we
will say. 'I did not neglect Thee; I took my ease, it is true, but I
kept Thy law. I was never impious, never an atheist. When was I not
religious?' Then He will answer: 'Inasmuch as ye never worked for the
least of these My brothers, ye never worked for Me!'"
_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.
"Let us start up and live: here come moments that cannot be had again;
some few may yet be filled with imperishable good."
J. MARTINEAU.
Idleness
FEBRUARY 23
"It is not necessary for a man to be actively bad in order to make a
failure of life; simple inaction will accomplish it. Nature has
everywhere written her protest against idleness; everything which ceases
to struggle, which remains inactive, rapidly deteriorates. It is the
struggle towards an ideal, the constant effort to get higher and further
which develops manhood and character."
"Shun idleness, it is the rust that attaches itself to the most
brilliant metals."
VOLTAIRE.
"There is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works. In
idleness alone is there perpetual despair."
CARLYLE.
"'Twere all as good to ease one breast of grief
As sit and watch the sorrows of the world."
_The Light of Asia_, E. ARNOLD.
Fear of Failure
FEBRUARY 24
"Who would ever stir a finger, if only on condition of being guaranteed
against oversights, misinformation, mistakes, ignorance, loss, and
danger?"
H. MARTINEAU.
"The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he
decides, never decides."
_Amiel's Journal._
"He who is too much afraid of being duped has lost the power of being
magnanimous."
_Amiel's Journal._
"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first
overcome."
DR. JOHNSON.
Fear of Failure
FEBRUARY 25
"Extreme caution is no less harmful than its opposite."
VAUVENARGUES.
"The men who succeed best in public life are those who take the risk of
standing by their own convictions."
GARFIELD.
"Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt."
SHAKESPEARE.
"IT is better by a noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to
half of the evils which we anticipate, than to remain in cowardly
listlessness for fear of what may happen."
HERODOTUS.
Falterers
FEBRUARY 26
"Nay, never falter: no great deed is done
By falterers who ask for certainty.
No good is certain, but the steadfast mind,
The undivided will to seek the good:
'Tis that compels the elements, and wrings
A human music from the indifferent air.
The greatest gift the hero leaves his race
Is to have been a hero. Say we fail!--
We feed the high tradition of the world,
And leave our spirit in our children's breasts."
GEORGE ELIOT.
"How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rest unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life."
TENNYSON.
"After all, depend upon it, it is better to be worn out with work in a
thronged community, than to perish in inaction in a stagnant solitude:
take this truth into consideration whenever you get tired of work and
bustle."
MRS. GASKELL'S _Life of C. Brontë_.
Courage
FEBRUARY 27
"Whether you be man or woman you will never do anything in the world
without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honour."
JAMES LANE ALLEN.
"The brave man is not he who feels no fear,
For that were stupid and irrational,
But he whose noble soul its fear subdues
And bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from."
JOANNA BAILLIE.
"Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh--that is to
say, over fear: fear of poverty, of suffering, of calumny, of sickness,
of isolation, and of death. There is no serious piety without heroism.
Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage."
_Amiel's Journal._
"Self-trust is the essence of heroism."
EMERSON.
Responsibility
FEBRUARY 28
"Thousands live and die in the dim borderland of destitution; that
little children wail, and starve, and perish, and soak and blacken soul
and sense, in our streets; that there are hundreds and thousands of the
unemployed, not all of whom, as some would persuade us, are lazy
impostors; that the demon of drink still causes among us daily horrors
which would disgrace Dahomey or Ashantee, and rakes into his coffers
millions of pounds which are wet with tears and red with blood; these
are facts patent to every eye. Now, God will work no miracle to mend
these miseries. If we neglect them they will be left uncured, but He
will hold us responsible for the neglect. It is vain for us to ask, 'Am
I my brother's keeper?' In spite of all the political economists, in
spite of all superfine theories of chilly and purse-saving wisdom, in
spite of all the critiques of the irreligious--still more of the
semi-religious, and the religious press, He will say to the callous and
the slothful, with such a glance 'as struck Gehazi with leprosy, and
Simon Magus with a curse,' 'What hast thou done? Smooth religionist,
orthodox Churchman, scrupulous Levite, befringed and bephylacteried
Pharisee, thy brother's blood crieth to Me from the ground!'"
F. W. FARRAR.
"The healing of the world
Is in its nameless saints. Each separate star
Seems nothing, but a myriad scattered stars
Break up the night, and make it beautiful."
BAYARD TAYLOR.
The Sin of Indifference
MARCH 1
"They hear no more the cries of their brothers caught in the nets of
misery: 'Help us, we are perishing.' The curtains of their comfort are
fast drawn; they sit at home wrapt in family ease. Outside, the sleet is
falling, the bitter wind is blowing, thousands of the children of sorrow
are dying in the fierce weather. God Himself is knocking at the door,
calling 'Come forth and seek the lost with Jesus.' We hear nothing, the
cotton of comfort stops our ears. For a time, till God Himself breaks in
on us with storm, and disperses our comfort to the winds, we can run no
Christian race.... Therefore, lay aside, not all comfort--men have a
right to that--but that excess of it which softens and enfeebles the
soul; which sends to sleep the longing for God's perfection; which makes
our life too slothful to follow Christ, the Healer of the world!"
_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.
"All my soul is full
Of pity for the sickness of this world;
Which I will heal, if healing may be found
By uttermost renouncing and strong strife."
_The Light of Asia_, E. ARNOLD.
Wasted Emotions
MARCH 2
"Pity, indignation, love, felt and not made into acts of pity or of
self-sacrifice, lose their very heart in our dainty dreaming, and are
turned into their opposites. Our animation and activity of love,
unexercised, becomes like the unused muscle, attenuated; and we are
content to think with pleasure of the times when we were animated and
active--a vile condition. But the worst wretchedness of these losses
does not consist in the damage we do ourselves, but in the loss of power
to benefit mankind, in the loss of power to do God's work for the
salvation and the greater happiness of man. We are guilty to man, and
guilty before God, when we lose our powers in inglorious ease. We owe
ourselves to men and women; no amount of work frees us from the duty of
keeping ourselves in the best possible trim, body and soul, mind and
spirit, that we may nobly work the loving work of Him that sent us."
_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.
"Opportunities are swarming around us all the time, thicker than gnats
at sundown. We walk through a cloud of them."
VAN DYKE.
"Doing" more than "Feeling"
MARCH 3
"Our Lord ... always brings back to mind that doing is more than
feeling."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
"A maxim of Professor James 'never to suffer a single emotion to
evaporate without exacting from it some practical service.'"
_The Making of Character_, Prof. JOHN MACCUNN.
"But two ways are offered to our will--
Toil with rare triumph, Ease with safe disgrace:--
Nor deem that acts heroic wait on chance!
The man's whole life preludes the single deed
That shall decide if his inheritance
Be with the sifted few of matchless breed,
Or with the unnoticed herd that only sleep and feed."
LOWELL.
The Sacredness of Work
MARCH 4
"All true work is sacred; in all true work, were it but true
hand-labour, there is something of divineness."
CARLYLE.
"Some of the commonest faults of thought and work are those which come
from thinking too poorly of our own lives, and of that which must
rightly be demanded of us. A high standard of accuracy, a chivalrous
loyalty to exact truth, generosity to fellow-workers, indifference to
results, distrust of all that is showy, self-discipline and
undiscouraged patience through all difficulties,--these are among the
first and greatest conditions of good work; and they ought never to seem
too hard for us if we remember what we owe to the best work of bygone
days."
_The Spirit of Discipline_, Bishop PAGET.
"Whether thy work be fine or coarse, planting corn or writing epics, so
only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a
reward to the senses as well as to the thought; no matter how often
defeated, you are born to victory. The reward of a thing well done is to
have done it."
EMERSON.
Doing our Best
MARCH 5
"It is not the quantity of our work that He regards, but the quality of
it. He is less anxious that we should fulfil our task--for He can make
up for our deficiencies--than that we should do our best; for what He
desires is the improvement of our characters, and that requires the
co-operation of our own wills with His."
_Life Here and Hereafter_, Canon MACCOLL.
"Experience shows that success is due less to ability than to zeal. The
winner is he who gives himself to his work, body and soul."
CHARLES BUXTON.
"Life is too short to waste,
* * * * *
'Twill soon be dark;
Up! mind thine own aim, and
God speed the mark!"
EMERSON.
Work--Effective Reforms
MARCH 6
"We must be careful not to undermine independence in our anxiety to
relieve distress. There is always the initial difficulty that whatever
is done for men takes from them a great stimulus to work, and weakens
the feeling of independence; all creatures which depend on others tend
to become mere parasites. It is important therefore, as far as possible,
not so much to give a man bread, as to put him in the way of earning it
for himself; not to give direct aid, but to help others to help
themselves. The world is so complex that we must all inevitably owe much
to our neighbours; but, as far as possible, every man should stand on
his own feet."
Lord AVEBURY.
"We are now generally agreed upon our aims: nobility of character and
not only outward prosperity; victory over evil at its source, and not in
its consequences; reforms which shall regard the welfare of future
generations, who are 'the greatest number.'"
Bishop WESTCOTT.
"We fall under the temptation of seeking material solutions for
spiritual problems; material remedies for spiritual maladies. The
thought of spiritual poverty, of spiritual destitution, is crowded out.
We treat the symptoms and neglect the disease itself."
Bishop WESTCOTT.
Work--Effective Reforms
MARCH 7
"If you are moved with a vague desire to help men be better men, you
must know that you can do it not by belabouring the evil but by training
the good that there is in them."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"The Christian, therefore, I repeat, as Christian, will take his full
part in preparing for the amelioration of the conditions of men no less
than for their conversion. He will in due measure strive to follow,
under the limitations of his own labour, the whole example of his Lord,
who removed outward distresses and satisfied outward wants, even as He
brought spiritual strength and rest to the weak and weary. Moreover,
this effort based upon resolute thought, belongs to the completeness of
the religious life of the Christian."
Bishop WESTCOTT.
"Reforms which are effective must develop and strengthen character."
Bishop WESTCOTT.
Work--"To cure is the Voice of the Past"
MARCH 8
"All measures of reformation are effective in exact proportion to their
timeliness. Partial decay may be cut away and cleansed, incipient error
corrected: but there is a point at which corruption can no more be
stayed, nor wandering recalled. It has been the manner of modern
philanthropy to remain passive until that precise period, and to leave
the sick to perish, and the foolish to stray, while it spent itself in
frantic exertions to raise the dead, and reform the dust."
_The Queen of the Air_, JOHN RUSKIN.
"THE real work of charity is not to afford facilities to the poor to
lower their standard, but to step in when calamity threatens and prevent
it from falling."
_The Standard of Life_, MRS. BERNARD BOSANQUET.
"To cure is the voice of the past; to prevent, the divine whisper of
to-day."
_Children's Rights_, KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN.
Satan's Opportunities
MARCH 9
"Physiologists know as much about morality as ministers of the gospel.
The vices which drag men and women into crime spring as often from
unhealthy bodies as from weak wills and callous consciences. Vile
fancies and sensual appetites grow stronger and more terrible when a
feeble physique and low vitality offer no opposing force. Deadly vices
are nourished in the weak diseased bodies that are penned, day after
day, in filthy crowded tenements of great cities."
_Children's Rights_, KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN.
"Man's unpitied misery is Satan's opportunity."
"Mould conditions aright, and men will grow good to fit them."
HORACE FLETCHER.
"Evil is Wrought by want of Thought"
MARCH 10
"But evil is wrought by want of thought, As well as want of heart."
THOMAS HOOD.
"It is clear that in whatever it is our duty to act, those matters also
it is our duty to study."
DR. ARNOLD.
"No alms-giving of money is so helpful as alms-giving of care and
thought; the giving of money without thought is indeed continually
mischievous; but the invective of the economist against indiscriminate
charity is idle if it be not coupled with pleading for discriminate
charity, and above all, for that charity which discerns the uses that
people may be put to, and helps them by setting them to work in those
services. That is the help beyond all others; find out how to make
useless people useful, and let them earn their money instead of begging
it."
_Arrows of the Chace_, JOHN RUSKIN.
(From a letter published in the _Daily Telegraph_ of
December 20, 1868.)
The Hallowing of Work
March 11
"We shall not do much of that which is best worth doing in the world if
we only consecrate to it our gifts. We have something else to consecrate
for our work's sake, for our friend's sake, for the sake of all for whom
in any way we are responsible. Beyond and above all that we may do, is
that which we may be. 'For their sakes I sanctify, I consecrate,
Myself.' So our Blessed Lord spoke in regard to those whom He had drawn
nearest to Himself--His friends; those whose characters He would fashion
for the greatest task that ever yet was laid upon frail men. And even
when we have set apart all that was unique in the nature and results of
His Self-consecration, all that He alone could, once for all, achieve;
still, I think, the words disclose a principle that concerns every one
of us--the principle of all that is highest and purest in the influence
of one life upon the lives it touches: 'For their sakes I consecrate
Myself.' There is the ultimate secret of power; the one sure way of
doing good in our generation. We cannot anticipate or analyse the power
of a pure and holy life; but there can be no doubt about its reality,
and there seems no limit to its range. We can only know in part the laws
and forces of the spiritual world; and it may be that every soul that is
purified and given up to God and to His work releases or awakens
energies of which we have no suspicion--energies viewless as the wind;
but we can be sure of the result, and we may have glimpses sometimes of
the process--surely, there is no power in the world so unerring or so
irrepressible as the power of personal holiness. All else at times goes
wrong, blunders, loses proportion, falls disastrously short of its aim,
grows stiff or one-sided, or out of date--'whether there be prophecies,
they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether
there be knowledge, it shall vanish away;' but nothing mars or misleads
the influence that issues from a pure and humble and unselfish
character."
_The Hallowing of Work_, Bishop PAGET.
One by One
MARCH 12
"Nothing is more characteristic of Jesus' method than His indifference
to the many--His devotion to the single soul. His attitude to the
public, and His attitude to a private person were a contrast and a
contradiction. If His work was likely to cause a sensation Jesus charged
His disciples to let no man know it: if the people got wind of Him, He
fled to solitary places: if they found Him, as soon as might be He
escaped. But He used to take young men home with Him, who wished to ask
questions: He would spend all night with a perplexed scholar: He gave an
afternoon to a Samaritan woman. He denied Himself to the multitude: He
lay in wait for the individual. This was not because He under-valued a
thousand, it was because He could not work on the thousand scale: it was
not because He over-valued the individual, it was because His method was
arranged for the scale of one. Jesus never succeeded in public save
once, when He was crucified: He never failed in private save once, with
Pontius Pilate. His method was not sensation: it was influence. He did
not rely on impulses: He believed in discipline. He never numbered
converts, because He knew what was in man: He sifted them, as one
winnoweth the wheat from the chaff. Spiritual statistics are unknown in
the Gospels: they came in with St. Peter in the pardonable intoxication
of success: they have since grown to be a mania. As the Church coarsens
she estimates salvation by quantity, how many souls are saved: Jesus was
concerned with quality, after what fashion they were saved. His mission
was to bring Humanity to perfection."
_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
One by One
MARCH 13
"Our Lord ... does not, on entering a village, ordain that all the
lepers in it shall be cleansed, or all the palsied restored to the use
of their limbs. He condescends to take each case by itself."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
"'One by one' is not only the safest way of helping, it is the only
possible way of ensuring that any real good is done."
_Rich and Poor_, Mrs. BERNARD BOSANQUET.
"Love cannot be content while any suffer,--cannot rest while any sin."
"I would not let one cry whom I could save."
_The Light of Asia_, E. ARNOLD.
Interruptions
MARCH 14
"So long as there is work to do there will be interruptions--breaks in
its progress. The minister at work on his sermon, the merchant at his
desk, the woman in her household duties--all must expect these calls to
turn aside from the work in hand. And it is a part of one's character
growth to bear these timely or untimely interruptions without any break
in good temper or courtesy. A young student who was privileged to call
often upon Phillips Brooks in his study, told the writer that he could
never have learned from the Bishop's manner or words, that the
big-hearted, busy man was ever too busy to receive him. To bear
interruptions thus serenely is an opportunity for self-control not to be
overlooked by any one who wants to do God's work in the right spirit."
"He threw himself spontaneously, apparently without effort and yet
irresistibly, into the griefs and joys, the needs and interests of
others. He had the happy gift of taking everybody to his heart. He was
never inattentive. As you talked to him you always felt he was listening
and really trying to understand your case. In the light of sympathy you
saw yourself reflected in the mirror of his heart. Nor did he forget you
when you were gone from sight. His was not the cheap sympathy of an
outward manner, but the true emotion of the inward self. To your
surprise, when you had left Bishop Fraser with a sense of shame at
having occupied, in your interview, so much of his overcrowded time, you
would find the next morning a letter upon your table giving his fuller
and more mature opinion of your plans or course of action."... "Tender
and loving, in sympathy with the lowliest, forbearing with the most
unreasonable, often interrupted, but never resenting, the sacrifice of
self crowning all."
_Bishop Fraser's Lancashire Life_, Archdeacon DIGGLE.
Mechanical Work
MARCH 15
"Miss Keane took but little heed of the presence of Rachel and Hester in
her brother's house. Those who work mechanically on fixed lines seem as
a rule to miss the pith of life. She was kind when she remembered them,
but her heart was where her treasure was--namely, in her escritoire,
with her list of Bible classes, and servants' choral unions, and the
long roll of contributors to the guild of work which she herself had
started."
_Red Pottage_, MARY CHOLMONDELEY.
"Any man seeking to be holy who does not set himself in close live
contact with the life about him, stands in great danger of growing pious
or punctilious instead of holy."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
An Ideal Guest-chamber
MARCH 16
"In Mrs. Charles' well-known book, 'Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta
family,' there is a beautiful passage where Fritz and Eva, beginning
their young life together, take into their house a penitent woman who
was thought to be near death. Eva writes: 'There is a little room over
the porch that we had set apart as a guest-chamber, and very sweet it
was to me that Bertha should be its first inmate; very sweet to Fritz
and me that our home should be what our Lord's heart is, a refuge for
the outcast, the penitent, the solitary, and the sorrowful.'"
"We all say we follow Christ, but most of us only follow Him and His
cross--part of the way. When we are told that our Lord bore our sins,
and was wounded for our transgressions, I suppose that meant that He
felt as if they were His own, in His great love for us. But when you
shrink from bearing your fellow-creatures' transgressions, it shows that
your love is small."
_Red Pottage_, MARY CHOLMONDELEY.
"Radiant with heavenly pity, lost in care
For those he knew not, save as fellow lives."
_The Light of Asia_, E. ARNOLD.
"To be Trusted is to be Saved"
MARCH 17
"No one can perish in whom any spark of the Divine life is still
burning. No one can be plucked out of the Saviour's hands who still
struggles towards Him, however feebly and falteringly."
_Life Here and Hereafter_, Canon MACCOLL.
"To be trusted is to be saved. And if we try to influence or elevate
others, we shall soon see that success is in proportion to their belief
of our belief in them. For the respect of another is the first
restoration of the self-respect a man has lost; our ideal of what he is
becomes to him the hope and pattern of what he may become."
_The Greatest Thing in the World_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
"Coarse treatment never wins souls."
God's Children
MARCH 18
"Hallow the name of God, hallow His character, in all noble and good
humanity.
"That is not difficult. But to hallow God's character in men and women
who are not good, in sinful humanity--that is not so easy. Yet, if we
would be true to this prayer of Christ, this too is part of our duty.
The evil are also the children of God. They have not hallowed His
character, but abandoned its worship. Nevertheless they cannot get rid
of it. That divine thing lies hid, ineradicably, beneath their evil
doing and evil thought. The truth, justice, love, piety, and goodness of
God are in abeyance in the wrong-doer, but they are not dead in him.
They cannot die; nothing can destroy them. And we, whose desire it
should be to save men, can, if we have faith in the indestructible God
in men, pierce to this immortal good in the evil, appeal to it, and call
it forth to light, like Lazarus, from the tomb. This we can do, if, like
Jesus, we love men enough; if our faith that the evil are still God's
children be deep and firm enough. In this we can keep closest to Christ,
for it was His daily way of life; and divinely beautiful it was. He
hallowed God's character in the criminal and the harlot. He saw the good
beneath the evil. At His touch it leaped into life, and its life
destroyed the death in the sinner's soul. It seems as if He said when He
looked into the face of the wrong-doer, 'Father, hallowed be Thy
character.' No lesson for life can be wiser or deeper than this. It
ought to rule all our doings with the weak and guilty. It is at the very
centre of the prayer, 'Hallowed be Thy name.'"
_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.
"Always at the door
Of foulest hearts, the angel-nature yet
Knocks to return and cancel all its debt."
J. R. Lowell.
Raw Material
MARCH 19
"One also is filled with _hope_ at the figure of the clay, because it
suggests the immense and unimagined possibilities of human nature. Upon
first sight how poor a thing is this man, with his ignorances,
prejudices, pettinesses, his envy, jealousy, evil temper. Upon second
thoughts how much may be in this man, how much he may achieve, how high
he may attain. This dull and unattractive man must not be despised,
whether he be yourself or another: he is incalculable and unfathomable.
He is simply raw material, soul stuff, and one can no more anticipate
him than you could foresee a Turner from the master's colours--some of
them very strange--or a Persian rug from a heap of wool. Out of that
unpromising face, that sleeping intellect, those awkward ways, this
crust of selfishness and a hundred faults, is going to be made a man
whom the world will admire and honour."
_The Potter's Wheel_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
"To have faith is to create; to have hope is to call down blessing; to
have love is to work miracles."
_The Roadmender_, MICHAEL FAIRLESS.
"The faith which saves others is the enthusiasm of patience."
_The Service of God_, Canon BARNETT.
Pessimism
MARCH 20
"The next thing to speak of is a tendency in the world which is the very
opposite of that of which we have spoken, but which is equally
characteristic of a time when a new life and spirit is on the verge of
taking its form. As part of the fight of faith is to support and direct
the first, so part of that battle is to weaken and oppose the doctrine
that the world is going from bad to worse, that there is no regeneration
for it, and that there ought to be none. On this doctrine I have
frequently spoken, but I do not hesitate to speak of it again. It is the
fashion to praise it; it deserves no praise, it is detestable. This is a
favourite doctrine of the comfortable classes who are idle and luxurious
or merely fantastic, and of a certain type of scientific men, both of
whom are profoundly ignorant of the working world and of the poor, who
hate this doctrine and despise it. The sufferings of the poor and the
oppressed are used as an argument in its favour, but, curiously enough,
you scarcely ever find it held by the poor and the oppressed;--on the
contrary, these are the creators and builders of Utopias: out of this
class grow those who prophesy a golden year. Those who have most reason
to despair never despair."
_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.
"Of all bad habits despondency is among the least respectable, and there
is no one quite so tiresome as the sad-visaged Christian who is
oppressed by the wickedness and hopelessness of the world."
Service
MARCH 21
"Service implies self-giving. There is service which is just
self-satisfaction, pleasing to the taste for doing and meddling, and
there is service which is exactly measured to its pay. True service
implies giving, the surrender of time or taste, the subjection of self
to others, the gift which is neither noticed nor returned."
_The Service of God_, Canon BARNETT.
"Christian greatness is born of willingness to lay the lowliest duties
on yourself, and the way to be first is to be ready to remain last."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
"Nobleness consists in a valiant suffering for others, not in making
others suffer for us. The chief of men is he who stands in the van of
men; fronting the peril which frightens back all others.... Every noble
crown is, and on earth will for ever be, a crown of thorns."
_Past and Present_, CARLYLE.
"No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to any
one else."
DICKENS.
Service
MARCH 22
"They were to mortify the self-importance and vain dignity that will not
render commonplace kindness. 'If I then, your Lord and Master, have
washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet.'"
_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
"Nothing is degrading which a high and graceful purpose ennobles, and
offices the most menial cease to be menial the moment they are wrought
in love."
J. MARTINEAU.
"And service will be the personal tribute to Jesus, whom we shall
recognise under any disguise, as his nurse detected Ulysses by his
wounds, and whose Body, in the poor and miserable, will ever be with us
for our discernment. Jesus is the leper whom the saint kissed, and the
child the monk carried over the stream, and the sick man the widow
nursed into health, after the legends of the ages of faith. And Jesus
will say at the close of the day, 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one
of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.'"
_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
Service
MARCH 23
"We must not be perplexed or put out if we have to change our plans. God
sends us hither and thither; we may think that we are wasting our
special talents, when God has, after all, some particular need for our
particular work at a particular time. And equally we must learn to
measure our strength; we cannot all do the same things, we are not all
adapted to the same work, or charged with the same duties. Why should we
overstrain ourselves in that which is beyond our strength, or neglect
plain duties for others less obvious? Ah! God receives many a Corban now
which He will never accept; self-chosen work done at the expense of
duty; work outside done to the neglect of our own proper work; work done
at the entire expense of our home and social duties; the clear
commandment of God shattered to pieces by some purely human tradition."
Canon NEWBOLT.
"Every Christian is the servant of men, always and everywhere, without
respect to the distinctions of sex, or class, or nationality, or creed."
Canon BODY.
Mens Sana in Corpore Sano
MARCH 24
"As there is a will of God for our higher nature--the moral laws--as
emphatically is there a will of God for the lower, the natural laws. If
you would know God's will in the higher, therefore, you must begin with
God's will in the lower: which simply means this--that if you want to
live the ideal life, you must begin with the ideal body. The law of
moderation, the law of sleep, the law of regularity, the law of
exercise, the law of cleanliness,--this is the law or will of God for
you. This is the first law, the beginning of His will for you. And if we
are ambitious to get on to do God's will in the higher reaches, let us
respect it as much in the lower; for there may be as much of God's will
in minor things, as much of God's will in taking good bread and pure
water, as in keeping a good conscience or living a pure life. Whoever
heard of gluttony doing God's will, or laziness, or uncleanness, or the
man who was careless and wanton of natural life? Let a man disobey God
in these, and you have no certainty that he has any true principle for
obeying God in anything else: for God's will does not only run into the
church and the prayer-meeting and the higher chambers of the soul, but
into the common rooms at home down to wardrobe and larder and cellar,
and into the bodily frame down to blood and muscle and brain."
_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
The Duty of Physical Health
MARCH 25
"Excess is not the only thing which breaks men in their health, and in
the comfortable enjoyment of themselves; but many are brought into a
very ill and languishing habit of body by mere sloth; and sloth is in
itself both a great sin, and the cause of many more."
Bishop SOUTH.
"There is no true care for the body which forgets the soul. There is no
true care for the soul which is not mindful of the body.... The duty of
physical health and the duty of spiritual purity and loftiness are not
two duties; they are two parts of one duty,--which is the living of the
completest life which it is possible for man to live. And the two parts
minister to one another. Be good that you may be well; be well that you
may be good. Both of those two injunctions are reasonable, and both are
binding on us all."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
The Duty of Physical Health
MARCH 26
"Moreover, health is not only a great element of happiness, but it is
essential to good work. It is not merely wasteful but selfish to throw
it away.
"It is impossible to do good work,--at any rate, it is impossible to do
our best,--if we overstrain ourselves. It is bad policy, because all
work done under such circumstances will inevitably involve an additional
period of quiet and rest afterwards; but apart from this, work so done
will not be of a high quality, it will show traces of irritability and
weakness: the judgment will not be good: if it involves co-operation
with others there will be great possibility of friction and
misunderstandings."
Lord AVEBURY.
"When we are out of sorts things get on our nerves, the most trifling
annoyances assume the proportions of a catastrophe. It is a sure sign
that we need rest and fresh air."
Lord AVEBURY.
"O Almighty and most merciful God, of Thy bountiful goodness keep us, we
beseech Thee, from all things that may hurt us; that we, being ready
both in body and soul, may cheerfully accomplish those things that Thou
wouldest have done; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."
_The Book of Common Prayer._
Physical Morality
MARCH 27
"The preservation of health is a _duty_. Few men seem conscious that
there is such a thing as physical morality. Men's habitual words and
acts imply the idea that they are at liberty to treat their bodies as
they please. Disorders entailed by disobedience to Nature's dictates
they regard simply as grievances, not as the effects of a conduct more
or less flagitious. Though the evil consequences inflicted on their
dependants, and on future generations, are often as great as those
caused by crime, yet they do not think themselves in any degree
criminal. It is true that in the case of drunkenness the viciousness of
this bodily transgression is recognised, but none appear to infer that
if this bodily transgression is vicious, so, too, is every bodily
transgression. The fact is that all breaches of the laws of health are
_physical sins_."
HERBERT SPENCER.
"... Health is not merely a matter of the body. 'Anger, hatred, grief,
and fear are among the influences most destructive of vitality.' And, on
the other hand, cheerfulness, good-humour, and peace of mind are
powerful elements of health."
Lord AVEBURY.
Invalids
MARCH 28
"If you are an invalid, do your best to get well; but, if you must
remain an invalid, still strive for the unselfishness and serenity which
are the best possessions of health. There are no sublimer victories than
some that are won on sick-beds."
"We have sometimes known some men or women, helpless so that their lives
seemed to be all dependent, who yet, through their sickness, had so
mounted to a higher life and so identified themselves with Christ that
those on whom they rested found the Christ in them and rested upon it.
Their sick-rooms became churches. Their weak voices spoke gospels. The
hands they seemed to clasp were really clasping theirs. They were
depended on while they seemed to be most dependent. And when they died,
when the faint flicker of their life went out, strong men whose light
seemed radiant found themselves walking in the darkness; and stout
hearts, on which theirs used to lean, trembled as if the staff and
substance of their strength was gone."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"Pain is no evil unless it conquers us."
GEORGE ELIOT.
Invalids
MARCH 29
"It may be that God used to give you plentiful chances to work for Him.
Your days went singing by, each winged with some enthusiastic duty for
the Master whom you loved.... You can be idle for Him, if so He wills,
with the same joy with which you once laboured for Him. The sick-bed or
the prison is as welcome as the harvest-field or the battle-field, when
once your soul has come to value as the end of life the privilege of
seeking and of finding Him."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"To be well enough to work is the wish of my natural heart; but if that
may not be, I know that 'they also serve who only stand and wait.' God
will not require healthy men's labour from you or me; and if we are poor
in power and opportunity to serve Him, our widow's mite will weigh
against the gold ingots of His chosen apostles."
_Memoir of George Wilson._
"The widow's mite? Well, when they laughed at S. Theresa because she
wanted to build a great orphanage and had only three ducats to begin
with, she answered, 'With three ducats Theresa can do nothing, but with
God and her three ducats there is nothing which Theresa cannot do.'"
F. W. FARRAR.
Lessons of Suffering
MARCH 30
"To have suffered much is like knowing many languages. You have learnt
to understand all, and to make yourself intelligible to all."
"We have all met some great sufferers, whose cheerfulness and
good-humour are not only a lesson to us who enjoy good health, but who
seem to be, as it were, raised and consecrated by a life of suffering."
Lord AVEBURY.
"What man goes worthily through sorrow and does not come out hating
shams and pretences, hungering for truth; and also full of sympathy for
his fellow-man whose capacity for suffering has been revealed to him by
his own?"
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
Hypochondriacs
MARCH 31--APRIL 1
"There is a temperament called _Hypochondriac_, to which many persons,
some of them the brightest, the most interesting, the most gifted, are
born heirs,--a want of balance of the nervous powers, which tends
constantly to periods of high excitement and of consequent
depression,--an unfortunate inheritance for the possessor, though
accompanied often with the greatest talents....
"People of this temperament are subject to fits of gloom and
despondency, of nervous irritability and suffering, which darken the
aspect of the whole world to them, which present lying reports of their
friends, of themselves, of the circumstances of their life, and of all
with which they have to do.
"Now the highest philosophy for persons thus afflicted is to understand
themselves and their tendencies, to know that these fits of gloom and
depression are just as much a form of disease as a fever or a
toothache,--to know that it is the peculiarity of the disease to fill
the mind with wretched illusions, to make them seem miserable and
unlovely to themselves, to make their nearest friends seem unjust and
unkind, to make all events appear to be going wrong and tending to
destruction and ruin.
"The evils and burdens of such a temperament are half removed when a man
once knows that he has it, and recognises it for a disease,--when he
does not trust himself to speak and act in those bitter hours as if
there were any truth in what he thinks and feels and sees. He who has
not attained to this wisdom overwhelms his friends and his family with
the waters of bitterness; he stings with unjust accusations, and makes
his fireside dreadful with fancies which are real to him, but false as
the ravings of fever.
"A sensible person, thus diseased, who has found out what ails him, will
shut his mouth resolutely, not to give utterance to the dark thoughts
that infest his soul.
"A lady of great brilliancy and wit, who was subject to these periods,
once said to me, 'My dear sir, there are times when I know I am
possessed of the Devil, and then I never let myself speak.' And so this
wise woman carried her burden about with her in a determined, cheerful
reticence, leaving always the impression of a cheery, kindly temper,
when, if she had spoken out a tithe of what she thought and felt in her
morbid hours, she would have driven all her friends from her, and made
others as miserable as she was herself. She was a sunbeam, a life-giving
presence in every family, by the power of self-knowledge and
self-control."
_Little Foxes_, HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
"Comfort's Art"
APRIL 2
"It would be very petty of us who are well and can bear things, to think
much of small offences from those who carry a weight of trial."
GEORGE ELIOT.
"Trouble is so hard to bear, is it not? How can we live and think that
any one has trouble--piercing trouble--and we could help them and never
try?"
GEORGE ELIOT.
"Pity makes the world soft to the weak and noble for the strong."
_The Light of Asia_, E. ARNOLD.
"Ask God to give thee skill
For comfort's art,
That thou may'st consecrated be,
And set apart
Unto a life of sympathy!
For heavy is the weight of ill
For every heart,
And comforters are needed much
Of Christlike touch."
Irritability
APRIL 3
"Irritability is, more than most unlovely states, a sin of the flesh. It
is not, like envy, malice, spite, revenge, a vice which we may suppose
to belong equally to an embodied or a disembodied spirit: in fact, it
comes nearer to being physical depravity than anything I know of. There
are some bodily states, some conditions of the nerves, such that we
could not conceive of even an angelic spirit, confined in a body thus
disordered, as being able to do any more than simply endure. It is a
state of nervous torture; and the attacks which the wretched victim
makes on others are as much a result of disease as the snapping and
biting of a patient convulsed with hydrophobia.... I think it is
undeniable that the peace and happiness of the home-circle are very
generally much invaded by the recurrence in its members of these states
of bodily irritability. Every person, if he thinks the matter over, will
see that his condition in life, the character of his friends, his
estimate of their virtues and failings, his hopes and expectations, are
all very much modified by these things. Cannot we all remember going to
bed as very ill-used, persecuted individuals, all whose friends were
unreasonable, whose life was full of trials and crosses, and waking up
on a bright bird-singing morning to find all these illusions gone with
the fogs of the night? Our friends are nice people, after all; the
little things that annoyed us look ridiculous by bright sunshine; and we
are fortunate individuals."
_Little Foxes_, HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
Irritability
APRIL 4
"The philosophy of life, then, as far as this matter is concerned, must
consist of two things: first, to keep ourselves out of irritable bodily
states; and, second, to understand and control these states, when we
cannot ward them off. Of course, the first of these is the most
important; and yet, of all things, it seems to be least looked into and
understood. We find abundant rules for the government of the tongue and
temper; it is a slough into which, John Bunyan hath it, cartloads of
wholesome instructions have been thrown; but how to get and keep that
healthy state of brain, stomach, and nerves which takes away the
temptation to ill-temper and anger is a subject which moral and
religious teachers seem scarcely to touch upon.... We have a common
saying, that this or that person is soon used up. Now most nervous,
irritable states of temper are the mere physical result of a used-up
condition. The person has overspent his nervous energy,--like a man who
should eat up on Monday the whole food which was to keep him for a week,
and go growling and faint through the other days; or the quantity of
nervous force which was wanted to carry on the whole system in all its
parts is seized on by some one monopolising portion, and used up to the
loss and detriment of the rest."
_Little Foxes_, HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
Accidie
APRIL 5
"... 'Accidie,' the spiritual sloth, which we rechristen 'depression'
and 'low spirits,' and meet with sympathy! Dante met it by fixing its
victims in the mire beneath the water, where they keep gurgling in their
throats the confession--
'We sullen were
In the sweet air, which by the sun is gladdened,
Bearing within ourselves the sluggish reek;
Now we are sullen in this sable mire.'"
_Stray Thoughts on Reading_, LUCY SOULSBY.
"A dull day need not be a depressing day; depression always implies
physical or moral weakness, and is therefore never to be tolerated so
long as one can struggle against it."
HAMILTON W. MABIE.
Accidie
APRIL 6
"... The sin of accidie, which is 'a sorrowfulness so weighing down the
mind that there is no good it likes to do. It has attached to it as its
inseparable comrade a distress and weariness of soul, and a sluggishness
in all good works, which plunges the whole man into lazy languor, and
works in him a constant bitterness. And out of this vehement woe springs
silence and a flagging of the voice, because the soul is so absorbed and
taken up with its own indolent dejection, that it has no energy for
utterance, but is cramped, and hampered, and imprisoned in its own
confused bewilderment, and has not a word to say.'"
_The Spirit of Discipline_, Bishop PAGET.
"Try it for a day, I beseech you, to preserve yourself in an easy and
cheerful frame of mind. Compare the day in which you have rooted out the
weed of dissatisfaction with that on which you have allowed it to grow
up, and you will find your heart open to every good motive, your life
strengthened and your breast armed with a panoply against every trick of
fate; truly, you will wonder at your own improvement."
RICHTER.
Accidie
APRIL 7
"As one compares the various estimates of the sin, one can mark three
main elements which help to make it what it is--elements which can be
distinguished, though in experience, I think, they almost always tend to
meet and mingle; they are _gloom_ and _sloth_ and _irritation_."
_The Spirit of Discipline_, Bishop PAGET.
"You find yourself refreshed by the presence of cheerful people. Why not
make earnest effort to confer that pleasure on others? You will find
half the battle is gained if you never allow yourself to say anything
gloomy."
LYDIA MARIA CHILDS.
"Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness; altogether past calculation
its power of endurance."
CARLYLE.
Accidie
APRIL 8
"'It is a mood which severs a man from thoughts of God, and suffers him
not to be calm and kindly to his brethren. Sometimes, without any
provoking cause, we are suddenly depressed by so great sorrowfulness,
that we cannot greet with wonted courtesy the coming even of those who
are dear and near to us, and all they say in conversation, however
appropriate it may be, we think annoying and unnecessary, and have no
pleasant answer for it, because the gall of bitterness fills all the
recesses of our soul.' Those who are sad after this fashion have, as St.
Gregory says, anger already close to them; for from sadness such as this
come forth (as he says in another place) malice, grudging,
faint-heartedness, despair, torpor as to that which is commanded, and
the straying of the mind after that which is forbidden."
_The Spirit of Discipline_, Bishop PAGET.
"Activity is the antidote to the depressions that lower our vitality,
whether they come from physical or psychical causes."
Accidie
APRIL 9
"We may be somewhat surprised when we discover how precisely Pascal, or
Shakspeare, or Montaigne, can put his finger on our weak point, or tell
us the truth about some moral lameness or disorder of which we, perhaps,
were beginning to accept a more lenient and comfortable diagnosis. But
when a poet, controversialist and preacher of the Eastern Church, under
the dominion of the Saracens, or an anchoret of Egypt, an Abbot of Gaul,
in the sixth century, tells us, in the midst of our letters, and railway
journeys, and magazines, and movements, exactly what it is that on some
days makes us so singularly unpleasant to ourselves and to others--tells
us in effect that it is not simply the east wind, or dyspepsia, or
overwork, or the contrariness of things in general, but that it is a
certain subtle and complex trouble of our own hearts, which we perhaps
have never had the patience or the frankness to see as it really is;
that he knew it quite well, only too well for his own happiness and
peace, and that he can put us in a good way of dealing with it--the very
strangeness of the intrusion from such a quarter into our most private
affairs may secure for him a certain degree of our interest and
attention."
_The Spirit of Discipline_, Bishop PAGET.
Accidie
APRIL 10
"And now, as ever, over against Accidie rises the great grace of
Fortitude; the grace that makes men undertake hard things by their own
will wisely and reasonably. There is something in the very name of
Fortitude which speaks to the almost indelible love of heroism in men's
hearts; but perhaps the truest Fortitude may often be a less heroic, a
more tame and business-like affair than we are apt to think. It may be
exercised chiefly in doing very little things, whose whole value lies in
this, that, if one did not hope in God, one would not do them; in
secretly dispelling moods which one would like to show; in saying
nothing about one's lesser troubles and vexations; in seeing whether it
may not be best to bear a burden before one tries to see whither one can
shift it; in refusing for one's self excuses which one would not refuse
for others. These, anyhow, are ways in which a man may every day be
strengthening himself in the discipline of Fortitude; and then, if
greater things are asked of him, he is not very likely to draw back from
them. And while he waits the asking of these greater things, he may be
gaining from the love of God a hidden strength and glory such as he
himself would least of all suspect; he may be growing in the patience
and perseverance of the saints. For most of us the chief temptation to
lose heart, the chief demand upon our strength, comes in the monotony of
our failures, and in the tedious persistence of prosaic difficulties; it
is the distance, not the pace, that tries us. To go on choosing what has
but a look of being the more excellent way, pushing on towards a faintly
glimmering light, and never doubting the supreme worth of goodness even
in its least brilliant fragments,--this is the normal task of many
lives; in this men show what they are like. And for this we need a quiet
and sober Fortitude, somewhat like that which Botticelli painted, and
Mr. Ruskin has described."
_The Spirit of Discipline_, Bishop PAGET.
Temper
APRIL 11
"What is temper? Its primary meaning, the proportion and mode in which
qualities are mingled, is much neglected in popular speech, yet even
here the word often carries a reference to an habitual state or general
tendency of the organism in distinction from what are held to be
specific virtues and vices. As people confess to bad memory without
expecting to sink in mental reputation, so we hear a man declared to
have a bad temper and yet glorified as the possessor of every high
quality. When he errs or in any way commits himself, his temper is
accused, not his character, and it is understood that but for a brutal
bearish mood he is kindness itself. If he kicks small animals, swears
violently at a servant who mistakes orders, or is grossly rude to his
wife, it is remarked apologetically that these things mean nothing--they
are all temper.
"Certainly there is a limit to this form of apology; and the forgery of
a bill, or the ordering of goods without any prospect of paying for
them, has never been set down to an unfortunate habit of sulkiness or of
irascibility. But on the whole there is a peculiar exercise of
indulgence towards the manifestations of bad temper which tends to
encourage them, so that we are in danger of having among us a number of
virtuous persons who conduct themselves detestably, just as we have
hysterical patients who, with sound organs, are apparently labouring
under many sorts of organic disease. Let it be admitted, however, that a
man may be a 'good fellow' and yet have a bad temper, so bad that we
recognise his merits with reluctance, and are inclined to resent his
occasionally amiable behaviour as an unfair demand on our admiration."
GEORGE ELIOT.
Temper
APRIL 12
"Jealousy, anger, pride, uncharity, cruelty, self-righteousness,
sulkiness, touchiness, doggedness,--these are the staple ingredients of
Ill-Temper. And yet men laugh over it. 'Only temper,' they call it: a
little hot-headedness, a momentary ruffling of the surface, a mere
passing cloud. But the passing cloud is composed of drops, and the drops
here betoken an ocean, foul and rancorous, seething somewhere within the
life--an ocean made up of jealousy, anger, pride, uncharity, cruelty,
self-righteousness, sulkiness, touchiness, doggedness, lashed into a
raging storm.
"This is why temper is significant. It is not in what it is that its
significance lies, but in what it reveals. But for this it were not
worth notice. It is the intermittent fever which tells of
un-intermittent disease; the occasional bubble escaping to the surface,
betraying the rottenness underneath; a hastily prepared specimen of the
hidden products of the soul, dropped involuntarily when you are off your
guard. In one word, it is the lightning-form of a dozen hideous and
unchristian sins."
_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
"Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil,
but that you have increased a habit."
EPICTETUS.
Temper
APRIL 13
"Certainly if a bad-tempered man can be admirably virtuous, he must be
so under extreme difficulties. I doubt the possibility that a high order
of character can co-exist with a temper like Touchwood's. For it is of
the nature of such temper to interrupt the formation of healthy mental
habits, which depend on a growing harmony between perception,
conviction, and impulse. There may be good feelings, good deeds--for a
human nature may pack endless varieties and blessed inconsistencies in
its windings--but it is essential to what is worthy to be called high
character, that it may be safely calculated on, and that its qualities
shall have taken the form of principles or laws habitually, if not
perfectly, obeyed. If a man frequently passes unjust judgments, takes up
false attitudes, intermits his acts of kindness with rude behaviour or
cruel words, and falls into the consequent vulgar error of supposing
that he can make amends by laboured agreeableness, I cannot consider
such courses any the less ugly because they are ascribed to 'temper.'
Especially I object to the assumption that his having a fundamentally
good disposition is either an apology or a compensation for his bad
behaviour."
GEORGE ELIOT.
Temper
APRIL 14
"Consider how much more often you suffer from your anger and grief, than
from those very things for which you are angry and grieved."
MARCUS AURELIUS.
"The _difficult_ part of good temper consists in forbearance, and
accommodation to the ill-humour of others."
EMPSON.
"Do we not know that the storm of feeling can be checked, if only we can
prevent the first word from being spoken, the first gesture from being
made. And is it not matter of common observation that persons who begin
by being Stoics in demeanour end by becoming Stoics in reality?"
_The Making of Character_, Professor MACCUNN.
Temper
APRIL 15
"If this be one of our chief duties--promoting the happiness of our
neighbours--most certainly there is nothing which so entirely runs
counter to it, and makes it impossible, as an undisciplined temper. For
of all things that are to be met with here on earth, there is nothing
which can give such continual, such cutting, such useless pain. The
touchy and sensitive temper, which takes offence at a word; the
irritable temper, which finds offence in everything whether intended or
not; the violent temper, which breaks through all bounds of reason when
once roused; the jealous or sullen temper, which wears a cloud on the
face all day, and never utters a word of complaint; the discontented
temper, brooding over its own wrongs; the severe temper, which always
looks at the worst side of whatever is done; the wilful temper, which
over-rides every scruple to gratify a whim,--what an amount of pain have
these caused in the hearts of men, if we could but sum up their results!
How many a soul have they stirred to evil impulses; how many a prayer
have they stifled; how many an emotion of true affection have they
turned to bitterness! How hard they sometimes make all duties! How
painful they make all daily life! How they kill the sweetest and warmest
of domestic charities! The misery caused by other sins is often much
deeper and much keener, more disastrous, more terrible to the sight; but
the accumulated pain caused by ill-temper must, I verily believe, if
added together, outweigh all other pains that men have to bear from one
another."
Bishop TEMPLE.
Quarrels
APRIL 16
"Blow not into a flame the spark which is kindled between two friends.
They are easily reconciled, and will both hate you."
From the German.
"Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side."
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
"He approaches nearest to the gods who knows how to be silent even
though he knows he is in the right."
CATO.
"When any one has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the
offence cannot reach it."
DESCARTES.
Quarrels
APRIL 17
"The mind is often clouded by passion until it is incapable of clear
thought. Harsh words, stinging words, cruel words are usually spoken
without thought. Rash deeds which result in most serious consequences
are performed without thought. The wrong-doer does not consider
beforehand the character of his deed, its effects on himself and others,
and its ultimate consequences."
"We shall never be sorry afterwards for thinking twice before we speak,
for counting the cost before entering upon any new course, for sleeping
over stings and injuries before saying or doing anything in answer, or
for carefully considering any business scheme presented to us before
putting money or name into it. It will save us from much regret, loss,
and sorrow, always to remember to do nothing rashly."
"Do nothing in a hurry. Nature never does. 'Most haste, worst speed,'
says the old proverb. If you are in doubt, sleep over it. But, above
all, never quarrel in a hurry. Think it over well. Take time. However
vexed you may be overnight, things will often look very different in the
morning. If you have written a clever and conclusive, but scathing
letter, keep it back till the next day, and it will very often never go
at all."
Lord AVEBURY.
Revenge
APRIL 18
"He that studieth revenge keepeth his own wounds green."
BACON.
"Ill-temper and envy and revenge find here an arsenal of pious
disguises; this is the playground of inverted lusts. With a little more
patience and a little less temper, a gentler and wiser method might be
found in almost every case; and the knot that we cut by some fine heady
quarrel-scene in private life, or, in public affairs, by some
denunciatory act against what we are pleased to call our neighbour's
vices, might yet have been unwoven by the hand of sympathy."
_Across the Plains_, R. L. STEVENSON.
"Still in thy right hand carry gentle Peace
To silence envious tongues."
SHAKESPEARE.
Touchiness
APRIL 19
"Touchiness, when it becomes chronic, is a morbid condition of the
inward disposition. It is self-love inflamed to the acute point."
HENRY DRUMMOND.
"Purge out of every heart the lurking grudge. Give us grace and strength
to forbear and to persevere. Offenders, give us the grace to accept and
to forgive offences. Forgetful ourselves, help us to bear cheerfully the
forgetfulness of others. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind.
Spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies. Bless us, if it may
be, in all our innocent endeavours. If it may not, give us the strength
to encounter that which is to come, that we be brave in peril, constant
in tribulation, temperate in wrath, and in all changes of fortune, and
down to the gates of death, loyal and loving one to another. As the clay
to the potter, as the windmill to the wind--as children of their sire,
we beseech of Thee this help and mercy for Christ's sake."
_Vailima Prayers_, R. L. STEVENSON.
Unbalanced Memory
APRIL 20
"It is so easy to forget a kindness, and to remember a kick. Yet
controlling our recollections is almost as important as controlling our
temper. We are apt to forget completely a hundred little kindnesses and
courtesies which one has shown us, and to remember a single careless
slight or thoughtless word. Often we hear it said of some wrong or
foolish deed, 'I have never thought so well of that man since then; it
was there he showed his real character,'--as if a man's real character
appeared more in one separate deed to which, perhaps, he was sorely
tempted, than in the striving and overcoming of many days and years."
"Our thoughts are often worse than we are, just as they are often better
than we are. And God sees us as we are altogether, not in separate
feelings or actions, as our fellow-men see us. We are always doing each
other injustice, and thinking better or worse of each other than we
deserve, because we only hear and see separate words and actions. We
don't see each other's whole nature."
GEORGE ELIOT.
"Enveloped in a common mist, we seem to walk in clearness ourselves, and
behold only the mist that enshrouds others."
GEORGE ELIOT.
Unbalanced Memory
APRIL 21
"Strange endurance of human vanity! a million of much more important
conversations have escaped one since then, most likely--but the memory
of this little mortification (for such it is, after all) remains quite
fresh in the mind, and unforgotten, though it is a trifle, and more than
half a score of years old. We forgive injuries, we survive even our
remorse for great wrongs that we ourselves commit; but I doubt if we
ever forgive slights of this nature put upon us, or forget circumstances
in which our self-love has been made to suffer."
W. M. THACKERAY.
"A past error may urge a grand retrieval."
GEORGE ELIOT.
"Memory is not a pocket, but a living instructor, with a prophetic sense
of the values which he guards; a guardian angel set there within you to
record your life, and by recording it to animate you to uplift it."
EMERSON.
"Silence a great Peacemaker"
APRIL 22
"Hard speech between those who have loved is hideous in the memory, like
the sight of greatness and beauty sunk into vice and rags."
GEORGE ELIOT.
"I don't want to say anything nasty, because nasty words always leave a
scar behind."
_Isabel Carnaby_, ELLEN THORNEYCROFT FOWLER.
"Silence is a great peacemaker."
LONGFELLOW.
"If bitterness has crept into the heart in the friction of the busy
day's unguarded moments, be sure it steals away with the setting sun.
Twilight is God's interval for peace-making."
Reconciliation
APRIL 23
"It is exceedingly noteworthy that in the rule laid down here by our
Lord, the responsibility of seeking reconciliation is laid primarily,
not upon the man who has done wrong, but upon the man who has received
the wrong. It is the injured man who is to take the initiative, to go
after the offender, to seek him out, and to exhaust all proper means of
bringing him to a right state of mind, and of getting him reconciled to
the man whom he has wronged. It is only after all these proper means
have been exhausted, after the man who has been injured has done
everything in his power--a great deal more than the law prescribed--it
is then only that he is to regard the offender as 'a heathen man and a
publican.' Is not this the exact opposite to the world's code of
morality upon that subject? Is it not the rule among men of the world--I
do not use the word in a bad sense--is it not the rule among Christian
men of the world, who live what we should call on the whole good honest
lives, to wait until the offender has come to them with a confession and
an apology? And if they then accept the apology and forgive the offence,
they probably think they have done something very magnanimous; nor would
they consider they had done anything very much amiss if they refused to
accept the apology, especially if the offence had been a gross one. If
the offender did not apologise, even an otherwise good Christian would
probably think that he might treat the matter with indifference, take no
notice of it, and say to himself, 'He has offended me, I will take no
notice, I will leave him to himself.' Would not men of the
world--Christian men--consider that they had upon the whole discharged
the Christian duty of forgiveness if they treated the offender in that
way? But the law which our Lord laid down in His answer to Peter, which
governed His own conduct, the law which rules the dealing of Almighty
God with sinful man, is that the man who has been injured, to whom the
wrong has been done, is to make the first move, is to take the first
step, is to go after the man who has done the wrong, and use his utmost
means of persuasion to convince him of his guilt, and to bring him back
from the error of his ways."
_Life Here and Hereafter_, Canon MACCOLL.
Reconciliation and Forgiveness
APRIL 24
"Never forget, when you have been injured, that your duty is not only to
refrain from retaliating, not simply to retire upon your dignity and
self-respect, not to leave the offender severely alone; but to seek him
out, to reason with him, to pray for him, to exhaust all your powers of
persuasion, all the resources of gentleness and love. It is only when
all this has been done that your responsibility is ended, and you are
justified in leaving him to be dealt with by Almighty God."
_Life Here and Hereafter_, Canon MACCOLL.
"'Remember,' he said, ... 'that if you forgive him, you become changed
yourself. You no longer see what he has done as you see it now. That is
the beauty of forgiveness: it enables us better to understand those whom
we have forgiven. Perhaps it will enable you to put yourself in his
place.'"
_The Mettle of the Pasture_, JAMES LANE ALLEN.
"Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each
other's eyes for an instant?"
THOREAU.
Forgiveness
APRIL 25
"The little hearts that know not how to forgive!"
TENNYSON.
"Oh, make my anger pure--let no worst wrong
Rouse in me the old niggard selfishness.
Give me Thine indignation--which is love
Turned on the evil that would part love's throng;
Thy anger scathes because it needs must bless,
Gathering into union calm and strong
All things on earth, and under, and above.
"Make my forgiveness downright--such as I
Should perish if I did not have from Thee;
I let the wrong go, withered up and dry,
Cursed with divine forgetfulness in me.
'Tis but self-pity, pleasant, mean and sly,
Low whispering bids the paltry memory live:--
What am I brother for, but to forgive?
* * * * *
Lord, I forgive--and step in unto Thee."
GEORGE MACDONALD.
Reparation
APRIL 26
"All high happiness has in it some element of love; all love contains a
desire for peace. One immediate effect of new happiness is to make us
turn toward the past with a wish to straighten out its difficulties,
heal its breaches and forgive its wrongs."
JAMES LANE ALLEN.
"As long as we love, we can forgive."
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
"When it is our duty to do an act of justice it should be done promptly.
To delay is injustice."
LA BRUYÈRE.
"His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to
hold the memory of a wrong."
EMERSON (_said of Lincoln_).
The Unamiable
APRIL 27
"Of all mortals none are so awfully self-deluded as the unamiable. They
do not, any more than others, sin for the sake of sinning, but it may be
doubted whether, in the hour when all shall be uncovered to the eternal
day, there will be revealed a lower depth than the hell which they have
made. They inflict torments with an unconsciousness almost worthy of
spirits of light. The spirit sinks under the prospect of the retribution
of the unamiable, if all that happens be indeed for eternity, if there
be, indeed, a record of every chilling frown, of every querulous tone,
of every bitter jest, of every insulting word, of all abuses of that
tremendous power which mind has over mind. The throbbing pulse, the
quivering nerves, the wrung hearts that surround the unamiable; what a
cloud of witnesses is here! The terror of innocents who should know no
fear, the vindictive emotions of dependents who dare not complain, the
faintness of heart of lifelong companions, the anguish of those who
love; what an array of judges is here! The unamiable, the domestic
torturer, has heaped wrong upon wrong, woe upon woe, through the whole
portion of time which was given into his power, till it would be rash to
say that any others are more guilty than he."
HARRIET MARTINEAU.
Ill-Nature
APRIL 28
"HOW is ill-nature to be met and overcome? First, by humility: when a
man knows his own weaknesses, why should he be angry with others for
pointing them out? No doubt it is not very amiable of them to do so, but
still, truth is on their side. Secondly, by reflection: after all we are
what we are, and if we have been thinking too much of ourselves, it is
only an opinion to be modified; the incivility of our neighbours leaves
us what we were before. Above all, by pardon: there is only one way of
not hating those who do us wrong, and that is by doing them good; anger
is best conquered by kindness. Such a victory over feeling may not
indeed affect those who have wronged us, but it is a valuable piece of
self-discipline. It is vulgar to be angry on one's own account; we ought
only to be angry for great causes. Besides, the poisoned dart can only
be extracted from the wound by the balm of a silent and thoughtful
charity. Why do we let human malignity embitter us? Why should
ingratitude, jealousy--perfidy even--enrage us? There is no end to
recriminations, complaints, or reprisals. The simplest plan is to blot
everything out. Anger, rancour, bitterness, trouble the soul. Every man
is a dispenser of justice; but there is one wrong that he is not bound
to punish--that of which he himself is the victim. Such a wrong is to be
healed, not avenged."
_Amiel's Journal._
The Science of Social Life
APRIL 29
"Every man has his faults, his failings, peculiarities, eccentricities.
Every one of us finds himself crossed by such failings of others, from
hour to hour. And if he were to resent them all, or even notice all,
life would be intolerable. If for every outburst of hasty temper, and
for every rudeness that wounds us in our daily path, we were to demand
an apology, require an explanation, or resent it by retaliation, daily
intercourse would be impossible. The very science of social life
consists in that gliding tact which avoids contact with the sharp
angularities of character, which does not argue about such things, does
not seek to adjust or cure them all, but covers them, as if it did not
see."
FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON.
"If you would have a happy family life, remember two things,--in matters
of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with the
current."
The Science of Social Life
APRIL 30
"Much of the sorrow of life, however, springs from the accumulation, day
by day and year by year, of little trials--a letter written in less than
courteous terms, a wrangle at the breakfast table over some arrangement
of the day, the rudeness of an acquaintance on the way to the city, an
unfriendly act on the part of another firm, a cruel criticism needlessly
reported by some meddler, a feline amenity at afternoon tea, the
disobedience of one of your children, a social slight by one of your
circle, a controversy too hotly conducted. The trials within this class
are innumerable, and consider, not one of them is inevitable, not one of
them but might have been spared if we or our brother man had had a grain
of kindliness. Our social insolences, our irritating manners, our
censorious judgment, our venomous letters, our pinpricks in
conversation, are all forms of deliberate unkindness, and are all
evidences of an ill-conditioned nature."
_The Homely Virtues_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
"Let us think, too, how much forbearance must have been shown us that we
were not even conscious of needing; how often, beyond doubt, we have
wounded, or annoyed, or wearied those who were so skilful and
considerate that we never suspected either our clumsiness or their
pain."
_Studies in the Christian Character_, Bishop PAGET.
The Science of Social Life
MAY 1
"Then, to be able, when we live with our brother men, not to remember
what we wish for ourselves, but only their wants, their joy and their
sorrow; to think, not of our own desires, but how to minister to the
great causes and the great conceptions which help mankind; to be eager
to give pity to men, and forgiveness to their wrong; to desire with
thirst to bind up the broken heart of man, and to realise our desire in
act--this is to thirst for God as Love. For this is self-forgetfulness,
and in the abysmal depths of His Being, as well as in every surface-form
into which He throws Himself out of Himself, God is the absolute
Self-forgetfulness."
_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.
"If, in the paths of the world,
Stones might have wounded thy feet,
Toil or dejection have tried
Thy spirit, of that we saw
Nothing--to us thou wast still
Cheerful, and helpful, and firm!
Therefore to thee it was given
Many to save with thyself;
And, at the end of thy day,
O faithful shepherd! to come,
Bringing thy sheep in thy hand."
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
The Science of Social Life
MAY 2
"If you would be loved as a companion, avoid unnecessary criticism upon
those with whom you live. The number of people who have taken out
judges' patents for themselves is very large in any society. Now it
would be hard for a man to live with another who was always criticising
his actions, even if it were kindly and just criticism. It would be like
living between the glasses of a microscope. But these self-elected
judges, like their prototypes, are very apt to have the persons they
judge brought before them in the guise of culprits.
"Let not familiarity swallow up old courtesy. Many of us have a habit of
saying to those with whom we live such things as we say about strangers
behind their backs. There is no place, however, where real politeness is
of more value than where we mostly think it would be superfluous. You
may say more truth, or rather speak out more plainly to your associates,
but not less courteously than to strangers."
Sir ARTHUR HELPS.
"For manners are not idle, but the fruit
Of loyal nature, and of noble mind."
TENNYSON.
Sympathy
MAY 3
"There is nothing which seems to try men's patience and good temper more
than feebleness: the timidity, the vacillation, the conventionality, the
fretfulness, the prejudices of the weak; the fact that people can be so
well-meaning and so disappointing, these things make many men impatient
to a degree of which they are themselves ashamed. But it is something
far more than patience and good temper towards weakness that is demanded
here. It is that the strong, in whatsoever sphere their strength may
lie, should try in silence and simplicity, escaping the observation of
men, to take upon their own shoulders the burdens which the weak are
bearing; to submit themselves to the difficulties amidst which the weak
are stumbling on; to be, for their help's sake, as they are; to share
the fear, the dimness, the anxiety, the trouble and heart-sinking
through which they have to work their way; to forego and lay aside the
privilege of strength in order to understand the weak and backward and
bewildered, in order to be with them, to enter into their thoughts, to
wait on their advance; to be content, if they can only serve, so to
speak, as a favourable circumstance for their growth towards that which
God intended them to be. It is the innermost reality of sympathy, it is
the very heart and life of courtesy, that is touched here: but like all
that is best in moral beauty, it loses almost all its grace the moment
it attracts attention."
_The Spirit of Discipline_, Bishop PAGET.
"Nothing but the Infinite pity is sufficient for the infinite pathos of
human life."
J. SHORTHOUSE.
Patience
MAY 4
"The example of our Lord, as He humbly and calmly takes the rebuff, and
turns to go to another village, may help us in the ordinary ways of
ordinary daily life. The little things that vex us in the manner or the
words of those with whom we have to do; the things which seem to us so
inconsiderate, or wilful, or annoying, that we think it impossible to
get on with the people who are capable of them; the mistakes which no
one, we say, has any right to make; the shallowness, or conventionality,
or narrowness, or positiveness in talk which makes us wince and tempts
us towards the cruelty and wickedness of scorn;--surely in all these
things, and in many others like them, of which conscience may be ready
enough to speak to most of us, there are really opportunities for thus
following the example of our Saviour's great humility and patience. How
many friendships we might win or keep, how many chances of serving
others we might find, how many lessons we might learn, how much of
unsuspected moral beauty might be disclosed around us, if only we were
more careful to give people time, to stay judgment, to trust that they
will see things more justly, speak of them more wisely, after a while.
We are sure to go on closing doors of sympathy, and narrowing in the
interests and opportunities of work around us, if we let ourselves
imagine that we can quickly measure the capacities and sift the
characters of our fellow-men."
_Studies in the Christian Character_, Bishop PAGET.
Selfishness
MAY 5
"Any man--with the heart of a man and not of a mouse--is more likely
than not to behave well at a pinch; but no man who is habitually selfish
can be _sure_ that he will, when the choice comes sharp between his own
life and the lives of others. The impulse of a supreme moment only
focusses the habits and customs of a man's soul. The supreme moment may
never come, but habits and customs mould us from the cradle to the
grave.... Vice and cowardice become alike impossible to a man who has
never--cradled in selfishness, and made callous by custom--learned to
pamper himself at the expense of others!"
_A Happy Family_, Mrs. EWING.
"Sympathy is the safeguard of the human soul against selfishness."
CARLYLE.
"Where Love is, God is"
MAY 6
"Where Love is, God is. He that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in God. God is
Love. Therefore _love_. Without distinction, without calculation,
without procrastination, love. Lavish it upon the poor, where it is very
easy; especially upon the rich, who often need it most; most of all upon
our equals, where it is very difficult, and for whom perhaps we each do
least of all. There is a difference between _trying to please_ and
_giving pleasure_. Give pleasure. Lose no chance of giving pleasure. For
that is the ceaseless and anonymous triumph of a truly loving spirit. 'I
shall pass through this world but once. Any good thing therefore that I
can do, or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it
now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way
again.'"
_The Greatest Thing in the World_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
"Let the weakest, let the humblest remember, that in his daily course he
can, if he will, shed around him almost a heaven. Kindly words,
sympathising attentions, watchfulness against wounding men's
sensitiveness--these cost very little, but they are priceless in their
value. Are they not almost the staple of our daily happiness? From hour
to hour, from moment to moment, we are supported, blest, by small
kindnesses."
F. W. ROBERTSON.
Oil and Wine
MAY 7
"Whatever impatience we may feel towards our neighbour, and whatever
indignation our race may rouse in us, we are chained one to another,
and, companions in labour and misfortune, have everything to lose by
mutual recrimination and reproach. Let us be silent as to each other's
weakness, helpful, tolerant, nay, tender towards each other! Or, if we
cannot feel tenderness, may we at least feel pity! May we put away from
us the satire which scourges and the anger which brands; the oil and
wine of the good Samaritan are of more avail. We may make the ideal a
reason for contempt; but it is more beautiful to make it a reason for
tenderness."
_Amiel's Journal._
"It is always a mistake to paint people blacker than the facts warrant,
both because such exaggeration is pretty sure to cause a reaction to the
opposite extreme, and also because we are likely to miss the lesson
which the errors or misconduct of others should teach us, if we think
them so exceptionally wicked that we are ourselves in no danger of
following their example."
_Life Here and Hereafter_, Canon MACCOLL.
Family Life--"Without Jar or Jostle"
MAY 8
"Let us give everybody a right to live his own life, as far as possible,
and avoid imposing our own peculiarities on another.
"If we were to picture a perfect family, it should be a union of people
of individual and marked character, who, through love, have come to a
perfect appreciation of each other, and who so wisely understand
themselves and one another, that each may move freely along his or her
own track without jar or jostle,--a family where affection is always
sympathetic and receptive, but never inquisitive,--where all personal
delicacies are respected,--and where there is a sense of privacy and
seclusion in following one's own course, unchallenged by the
watchfulness of others, yet withal a sense of society and support in a
knowledge of the kind dispositions and interpretations of all around.
"In treating of family discourtesies, I have avoided speaking of those
which come from ill-temper and brute selfishness, because these are sins
more than mistakes. An angry person is generally impolite; and where
contention and ill-will are, there can be no courteousness. What I have
mentioned are rather the lackings of good and often admirable people,
who merely need to consider in their family-life a little more of
whatsoever things are lovely. With such the mere admission of anything
to be pursued as a duty secures the purpose; only in their somewhat
earnest pursuit of the substantials of life, they drop and pass by the
little things that give it sweetness and perfume."
_Little Foxes_, HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
Ungraciousness
MAY 9
"We can recall occasions in which we have been impatient, inconsiderate,
self-willed, self-asserting. We have sharply resented some want of good
taste: we have made light of a scruple or of a difficulty which weighed
heavily on another: we have yielded ungraciously a service which may
have been claimed inopportunely: we have been exact in requiring
conventional deference to our judgment: we have not checked the keen
word, or the smile which might be interpreted to assert a proud
superiority.
"In all this we may have been justifiable according to common rules of
conduct; but we have given offence. We have not, that is, shewn, when we
might have shewn, that Christian sympathy, devotion, fellowship, come
down to little things; that the generosity of love looks tenderly, if by
any means it may find the soul which has not revealed itself."
Bishop WESTCOTT.
"Seek the graces of God with all your strength; but above all seek the
graces that specially belong to heaven. Try hard to be humble, to be
free from all conceit, to question your own opinions, to give up your
own way, to put simplicity first among all excellences of character, to
be ready to think yourself in the wrong, to prefer others to yourself;
for this character is nearest to God's heart, and to babes who are of
this sort does God reveal His most secret mysteries."
Bishop TEMPLE.
The Spectrum of Love
May 10
"The spectrum of Love has nine ingredients:--
_Patience_--'Love suffereth long.'
_Kindness_--'And is kind.'
_Generosity_--'Love envieth not.'
_Humility_--'Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.'
_Courtesy_--'Doth not behave itself unseemly.'
_Unselfishness_--'Seeketh not her own.'
_Good Temper_--'Is not easily provoked.'
_Guilelessness_--'Thinketh no evil.'
_Sincerity_--'Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in
the truth.'
Patience; kindness; generosity; humility; courtesy; unselfishness; good
temper; guilelessness; sincerity--these make up the supreme gift, the
stature of the perfect man. You will observe that all are in relation to
men, in relation to life, in relation to the known to-day and the near
to-morrow, and not to the unknown eternity. We hear much of love to God;
Christ spoke much of love to man. We make a great deal of peace with
heaven; Christ made much of peace on earth. Religion is not a strange or
added thing, but the inspiration of the secular life, the breathing of
an eternal spirit through this temporal world. The supreme thing, in
short, is not a thing at all, but the giving of a further finish to the
multitudinous words and acts which make up the sum of every common day."
_The Greatest Thing in the World_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
"My Duty to my Neighbour"
MAY 11
"There is an idea abroad among moral people that they should make their
neighbours good. One person I have to make good: myself. But my duty to
my neighbour is much more nearly expressed by saying that I have to make
him happy--if I may."
_Across the Plains_, R. L. STEVENSON.
"Of all the weapons we wield against wrong, there is none more effective
than pure and burning joy."
_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.
"There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behaviour, like the
wish to scatter joy and not pain around us."
EMERSON.
Duty of giving Happiness
MAY 12
"It is astonishing how large a part of Christ's precepts is devoted
solely to the inculcation of happiness. How much of His life, too, was
spent simply in making people happy! There was no word more often on His
lips than 'blessed,' and it is recognised by Him as a distinct end in
life, _the_ end for this life, to secure the happiness of others. This
simple grace, too, needs little equipment. Christ had little. One need
scarcely even be happy one's self. Holiness, of course, is a greater
word, but we cannot produce that in others. That is reserved for God
Himself, but what is put in our power is happiness, and for that each
man is his brother's keeper. Now society is an arrangement for producing
and sustaining human happiness, and temper is an agent for thwarting and
destroying it. Look at the parable of the Prodigal Son for a moment, and
see how the elder brother's wretched pettiness, explosion of temper,
churlishness, spoiled the happiness of a whole circle. First, it
certainly spoiled his own. How ashamed of himself he must have been when
the fit was over, one can well guess. Yet these things are never so
quickly over as they seem. Self-disgust and humiliation may come at
once, but a good deal else within has to wait till the spirit is tuned
again. For instance, prayer must wait. A man cannot pray till the
sourness is out of his soul. He must first forgive his brother who
trespassed against him before he can go to God to have his own
trespasses forgiven."
_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
Duty of giving Happiness
MAY 13
"The function of culture is not merely to train the powers of enjoyment,
but first and supremely for helpful service."
Bishop POTTER.
"It was often in George Eliot's mind and on her lips that the only
worthy end of all learning, of all science, of all life, in fact, is
that human beings should love one another better. Culture merely for
culture's sake can never be anything but a sapless root, capable of
producing at best a shrivelled branch.... She was cheered by the hope
and by the belief in gradual improvement of the mass; for in her view
each individual must find the better part of happiness in helping
another. She often thought it wisest not to raise too ambitious an
ideal, especially in young people, but to impress on ordinary natures
the immense possibilities of making a small circle brighter and better.
Few are born to do the great work of the world, but all are born to
this. And to the natures capable of the larger effort the field of
usefulness will constantly widen."
_The Life of George Eliot_, J. W. CROSS.
"Blessed are the Happiness Makers"
MAY 14
"Have you ever noticed how much of Christ's life was spent in doing kind
things--in _merely_ doing kind things? Run over it with that in view,
and you will find that He spent a great proportion of His time simply in
making people happy, in doing good turns to people."
_The Greatest Thing in the World_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
"Take life all through, its adversity as well as its prosperity, its
sickness as well as its health, its loss of its rights as well as its
enjoyment of them, and we shall find that no natural sweetness of
temper, much less any acquired philosophical equanimity, is equal to the
support of a uniform habit of kindness. Nevertheless, with the help of
grace, the habit of saying kind words is very quickly formed, and when
once formed it is not speedily lost. Sharpness, bitterness, sarcasm,
acute observation, divination of motives--all these things disappear
when a man is earnestly conforming himself to the image of Christ Jesus.
The very attempt to be like our dearest Lord is already a wellspring of
sweetness within us, flowing with an easy grace over all who come within
our reach."
F. W. FABER.
"Blessed are the Happiness Makers. Blessed are they who know how to
shine on one's gloom with their cheer."
HENRY WARD BEECHER.
Character--The Right Atmosphere
MAY 15
"Character cannot be formed without action. Through it strength comes.
But every action must have its reaction upon the nature of the one who
puts it forth. If it does not, it fails of that which is its highest
result; for the finest expression of a man's nature is not to be found
in action, but in that very intangible thing which we call his
atmosphere. There are a great many people who are alert, energetic, and
decisive, but who give forth very little of this rare effluence--this
quality which seems to issue out of the very recesses of one's nature.
It is, however, through this quality that the most constant influence is
exercised; that influence which is not only put forth most steadily, but
which penetrates and affects others in the most searching way. The air
we breathe has much to do with health; in a relaxing atmosphere it is
difficult to work; in an atmosphere of vitality it is easy to work. We
never meet some people without going away from them with our ideals a
little blurred, or our faith in them a little disturbed. We can never
part from others without a sense of increased hope. There are those who
invigorate us by simple contact; something escapes from them of which
they are not aware and which we cannot analyse, which makes us believe
more deeply in ourselves and our kind.
"So far as charm is concerned, there is no quality which contributes so
much to it as the subtle thing we call atmosphere. There are some people
who do not need to speak in order not only to awaken our respect, but to
give us a sense of something rare and fine. In such an influence, all
that is most individual and characteristic flows together, and the woman
reveals herself without being conscious that she is making herself
known. Such an atmosphere in a home creates a sentiment and organises a
life which would not be possible if one should attempt to fashion these
things by intention. The finest things, like happiness, must be sought
by indirection and are the results of character, rather than objects of
immediate pursuit."
"It is always good to know, if only in passing, charming human beings.
It refreshes one like flowers, and woods, and clear brooks."
GEORGE ELIOT.
Character--Child-like-ness
MAY 16
"Jesus afterwards focussed the new type of character in a lovely
illustration which is not always appreciated at its full value, because
we deny it perspective. Every reader of the Gospels has marked the
sympathy of Jesus with children. How He watched their games! How angry
He was with His disciples for belittling them! How He used to warn men,
whatever they did, never to hurt a little child! How grateful were
children's praises when all others had turned against Him! One is apt to
admire the beautiful sentiment, and to forget that children were more to
Jesus than helpless gentle creatures to be loved and protected. They
were His chief parable of the Kingdom of Heaven. As a type of character
the Kingdom was like unto a little child, and the greatest in the
Kingdom would be the most child-like. According to Jesus, a
well-conditioned child illustrates better than anything else on earth
the distinctive features of Christian character. Because he does not
assert nor aggrandise himself. Because he has no memory for injuries,
and no room in his heart for a grudge. Because he has no previous
opinions, and is not ashamed to confess his ignorance. Because he can
imagine, and has the key of another world, entering in through the ivory
gate and living amid the things unseen and eternal. The new society of
Jesus was a magnificent imagination, and he who entered it must lay
aside the world standards and ideals of character, and become as a
little child."
_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
Character--Negative Virtues
MAY 17
"Some people seem to be here in the world just on their guard all the
while, always so afraid of doing wrong that they never do anything
really right. They do not add to the world's moral force; as the man,
who, by constant watchfulness over his own health, just keeps himself
from dying, contributes nothing to the world's vitality. All merely
negative purity has something of the taint of the impurity that it
resists. The effort not to be frivolous is frivolous itself. The effort
not to be selfish is very apt to be only another form of selfishness."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues. It
is good to abstain and teach others to abstain, from all that is sinful
and hurtful. But making a business of it leads to emaciation of
character, unless one feeds largely also on the more nutritious diet of
active sympathetic benevolence."
O. W. HOLMES.
"The seductions of life are strong in every age and station; we make
idols of our affections, idols of our customary virtues; we are content
to avoid the inconvenient wrong, and to forego the inconvenient right
with almost equal self-approval, until at last we make a home for our
conscience among the negative virtues and the cowardly vices."
_The Life of R. L. Stevenson_, GRAHAM BALFOUR.
Character
MAY 18
"The moments of our most important decisions are often precisely those
in which nothing seems to have been decided; and only long afterwards,
when we perceive with astonishment that the Rubicon has been crossed, do
we realise that in that half-forgotten instant of hesitation as to some
apparently unimportant side issue, in that unconscious movement which
betrayed a feeling of which we were not aware, our choice was made. The
crises of life come, like the Kingdom of Heaven, without observation.
Our characters, and not our deliberate actions, decide for us; and even
when the moment of crisis is apprehended at the time by the troubling of
the water, action is generally a little late. Character, as a rule,
steps down first."
_Diana Tempest_, MARY CHOLMONDELEY.
"Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards--they simply unveil them
to the eyes of men. Silently and imperceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we
grow and wax strong, or we grow and wax weak, and at last some crisis
shows us what we have become."
Bishop WESTCOTT.
Character--"Our Echoes roll from Soul to Soul"
MAY 19
"One of the main seats of our weakness lies in this very notion, that
what we do at the moment cannot matter much; for that we shall be able
to alter and mend and patch it just as we like by-and-by."
HARE.
"We sleep, but the loom of life never stops; and the pattern which was
weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up to-morrow."
BEECHER.
"Let every soul
Heed what it doth to-day, because to-morrow
The same thing it shall find gone forward there
To meet and make and judge it."
_The Light of Asia_, E. ARNOLD.
"Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow for ever and for ever."
TENNYSON.
Habit
MAY 20
"Like flakes of snow that fall unperceived upon the earth, the seemingly
unimportant events of life succeed one another. As the snow gathers
together, so are our habits formed: no single flake that is added to the
pile produces a sensible change; no single flake creates, however it may
exhibit, a man's character; but as the tempest hurls the avalanche down
the mountain, and overwhelms the inhabitant and his habitation, so
passion, acting upon the elements of mischief, which pernicious habits
have brought together by imperceptible accumulation, may overwhelm the
edifice of truth and virtue."
JEREMY BENTHAM.
"In the conduct of life, habits count for more than maxims, because
habit is a living maxim, become flesh and instinct. To reform one's
maxims is nothing: it is but to change the title of the book. To learn
new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life
is but a tissue of habits."
_Amiel's Journal._
Habit
MAY 21
"The Hell to be endured hereafter which theology tells, is no worse than
the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning
our characters the wrong way. Could the young realise how soon they will
become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to
their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates,
good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or
of vice leaves its never-so-little scar."
_Psychology_, Professor WILLIAM JAMES.
"Routine is a terrible master, but she is a servant whom we can hardly
do without. Routine as a law is deadly. Routine as a resource in the
temporary exhaustion of impulse and suggestion is often our salvation."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"It is just as easy to form a good habit as it is a bad one. And it is
just as hard to break a good habit as a bad one. So get the good ones
and keep them."
MCKINLEY.
Sin has its Pedigree
MAY 22
"One false note will spoil the finest piece of music, and one little
sin, as we deem it, may ruin the most promising character, involving it
in a network of unforeseen consequences out of which there may be no
escape."
_Life Here and Hereafter_, Canon MACCOLL.
"There is a physical demonstration of sin as well as a religious; and no
sin can come in among the delicate faculties of the mind, or among the
coarser fibres of the body, without leaving a stain, either as a
positive injury to the life, or, what is equally fatal, as a
predisposition to commit the same sin again. This predisposition is
always one of the most real and appalling accompaniments of the stain of
sin. There is scarcely such a thing as an isolated sin in a man's life.
Most sins can be accounted for by what has gone before. Every sin, so to
speak, has its own pedigree, and is the result of the accumulated force,
which means the accumulated stain of many a preparatory sin."
_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
Temptation
MAY 23
"Two things a genuine Christian never does. He never makes light of any
known sin, and he never admits it to be invincible."
Canon LIDDON.
"We always meet the temptation which is to expose us when we least
expect it."
_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
"It is of the essence of temptation that it should come on us unawares."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
"If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let
us at least resist our temptations."
EMERSON.
Sin
MAY 24
"We judge of sins, as we judge of most things, by their outward form. We
arrange the vices of our neighbours according to a scale which society
has tacitly adopted, placing the more gross and public at the foot, the
slightly less gross higher up, and then by some strange process the
scale becomes obliterated. Finally it vanishes into space, leaving
lengths of itself unexplored, its sins unnamed, unheeded, and unshunned.
But we have no balance to weigh sins. Coarser and finer are but words of
our own. The chances are, if anything, that the finer are the lower. The
very fact that the world sees the coarser sins so well is against the
belief that they are the worst. The subtle and unseen sin, that sin in
the part of the nature most near to the spiritual, ought to be more
degrading than any other. Yet for many of the finer forms of sin society
has yet no brand."
_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
"Tried by final tests, and reduced to its essential elements, sin is the
preference of self to God, and the assertion of the human will against
the Will of God. With Jesus, from first to last, sin is selfishness."
_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
Sin
MAY 25-26
"We deceive ourselves in another way, namely, by seeking for all manner
of excuses and palliations. The strength of the temptation, or the
suddenness of it, or the length of it; our own weakness, our natural
tendency to that particular sort of sin; our wishes to be better, the
excellence of our feelings, the excellence of our desires; the
peculiarity of our circumstances, the special disadvantages which make
us worse off than others; all these we put before our minds as excuses
for having done wrong, and persuade ourselves too often that wrong is
not really wrong, and that though the deed was sinful the doer of it was
not. I do not mean that these palliations are never worth anything, nor
do I mean that in every case the same deed is the same sin. There are no
doubt infinite varieties of guilt in what appears outwardly the same
deed, and God will distinguish between them and will judge justly. But
the habit of mind which leads us to palliate our sins and find good
excuses for them, has this dangerous tendency, that it blinds us to the
evil of evil. We slip into the delusion that we are better than we
seem, that our faults look worse than they are, that inside we have good
dispositions, and good desires, and warm feelings, and religious
emotions, and that it is only the outside that is marked by those evil
stains. This _is_ a delusion and a grievous delusion. You cannot _be_
good and _do_ wrong. You cannot _be_ righteous and _do_ unrighteousness.
Granted that you may slip once into a sin which notwithstanding is not
really a part of your nature. Still, this cannot happen several times
over. Make no mistake. If you _do_ wrong the deed is a real part of your
life, and cannot be removed out of it by any fancy of yours that it is
on your circumstances, your temptations, your peculiar disadvantages
that the blame can be cast, still less by any wishes or emotions or
feelings even of the most religious kind."
Bishop TEMPLE.
"The strength of a man's virtue is not to be measured by the efforts he
makes under pressure, but by his ordinary conduct."
PASCAL.
Sins of the Spirit
MAY 27
"We must remember that it is by the mercy of Christ that we are saved
from being what we might have been. 'There goes John Bradford, but for
the grace of God,' said a good man when he saw a criminal being led to
execution. We are too apt to take the credit to ourselves for our
circumstances. Imagine that you were born of poor parents out of work in
Whitechapel, and had to pick up your living in the docks, or that you
were a working girl in Bethnal Green, trying to keep your poor parents
or nurse a sick brother out of making match-boxes at 2¼d. a gross,
and then thank God you were spared the temptation to a bad life, which
they have to undergo. So, again, we must remember that sins of the
spirit are quite as bad in the eyes of Christ as sins of the flesh; He
never spoke a hard word of the publican and sinner, but He lashed with
His scorn the 'Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.' The sins that we
respectable people commit lightly every day, of pride and indolence and
indifference to the sufferings of the poor, may be worse in His sight
than the most flagrant sins of those who know no better."
_Friends of the Master_, Bishop WINNINGTON INGRAM.
Sin
MAY 28
"I have often observed in the course of my experience of human life,
that every man, even the worst, has something good about him; though
often nothing else than a happy temperament of constitution, inclining
him to this or that virtue. For this reason, no man can say in what
degree any other person besides himself can be, with strict justice,
called wicked. Let any one with the strictest character for regularity
of conduct among us, examine impartially how many vices he has never
been guilty of, not from any care or vigilance, but for want of
opportunity, or some accidental circumstances intervening; how many of
the weaknesses of mankind he has escaped because he was out of the line
of such temptation; and--what often, if not always, weighs more than all
the rest--how much he is indebted to the world's good opinion because
the world does not know all: I say, any man who can thus think will scan
the failings, nay, the faults and crimes of mankind with a brother's
eye."
BURNS.
"Very late in life, and only after many experiences, does a man learn,
at the sight of a fellow-creature's real failing or weakness, to
sympathise with him, and help him without a secret self-congratulation
at his own virtue and strength, but on the contrary, with every humility
and comprehension of the naturalness, almost the inevitableness of sin."
_An Unhappy Girl_, IVAN TURGENEV.
Sin
MAY 29
"Remove from us the protection, the encompassing safeguards and shelters
we enjoy; withdraw the influences for good that are daily and weekly
dropped on us like gentle dew from heaven, and have dropped ever since
we had any being; deprive us of the comforts and interests, the innocent
substitutes for forbidden pleasures; expose us to the loneliness, the
vacancy, the dreary monotony, the hopeless struggle, the despair in
which the majority of the men and women who fall find themselves
immersed; and bring before us, thus exposed and bereft, what temptation
you will--uncleanness, intemperance, theft, lying, blasphemy--and not
one in ten of ordinary Christian people, I believe, would stand before
it."
R. W. BARBOUR.
"Looking within myself, I note how thin
A plank of station, chance, or prosperous fate,
Doth fence me from the clutching waves of sin;--
In my own heart I find the worst man's mate,
And see not dimly the smooth-hingëd gate
That opes to those abysses
Where ye grope darkly,--ye who never knew
On your young hearts love's consecrating dew
Or felt a mother's kisses,
Or home's restraining tendrils round you curled;
Ah, side by side with heart's-ease in this world,
The fatal night-shade grows and bitter rue!"
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
Conscience
MAY 30
"Conscience is harder than our enemies,
Knows more, accuses with more nicety,
Nor needs to question Rumour if we fall
Below the perfect model of our thought."
GEORGE ELIOT.
"If a man has nothing to reproach himself with, he can bear anything."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"Character is the ground of trust and the guarantee for good living, and
that character only is sound which rests upon a good conscience and a
clean heart and a strong will."
Dr. JOHN WATSON.
Repentance
MAY 31
"What is true contrition? Sorrow for sin in itself, not for sin's
consequences."
_The Guided Life_, Canon BODY.
"Remorse and repentance are two very different things. Repentance leads
back to life; but remorse ends often in the painless apathy and fatal
mortification of despair."
Dean FARRAR.
"Penitence is like the dawn.... It is the breaking of the light in the
soul,--dark enough sometimes no doubt, but a darkness giving place
steadily to the growing light."
Bishop WALSHAM HOW.
Heredity
JUNE 1
"The father says of his profligate son whom he has never done one wise
or vigorous thing to make a noble and pure-minded man: 'I cannot tell
how it has come. It has not been my fault. I put him into the world and
this came out.' The father whose faith has been mean and selfish says
the same of his boy who is a sceptic. Everywhere there is this cowardly
casting off of responsibilities upon the dead circumstances around us.
It is a very hard treatment of the poor, dumb, helpless world which
cannot answer to defend itself. It takes us as we give ourselves to it.
It is our minister fulfilling our commissions for us upon our own souls.
If we say to it, 'Make us noble,' it does make us noble. If we say to
it, 'Make us mean,' it does make us mean. And then we take the nobility
and say, 'Behold, how noble I have made myself.' And we take the
meanness and say, 'See how mean the world has made me.'"
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"Speaking of ancestors--'What right have I to question them, or judge
them, or bring them forward in my life as being responsible for my
nature? If I roll back the responsibility to them, had they not fathers?
and had not their fathers fathers? and if a man rolls back his deeds
upon those who are his past, then where will responsibility be found at
all, and of what poor cowardly stuff is each of us?"
_The Mettle of the Pasture_, JAMES LANE ALLEN.
Heredity
JUNE 2
"This tracing of the sin to its root now suggests this further
topic--its cure. Christianity professes to cure anything. The process
may be slow, the discipline may be severe, but it can be done. But is
not temper a constitutional thing? Is it not hereditary, a family
failing, a matter of temperament, and can _that_ be cured? Yes, if there
is anything in Christianity. If there is no provision for that, then
Christianity stands convicted of being unequal to human need. What
course then did the father take, in the case before us, to pacify the
angry passions of his ill-natured son? Mark that he made no attempt in
the first instance to reason with him! To do so is a common mistake, and
utterly useless both with ourselves and others. We are perfectly
convinced of the puerility of it all, but that does not help us in the
least to mend it. The malady has its seat in the affections, and
therefore the father went there at once. Reason came in its place, and
the son was supplied with valid arguments--stated in the last verse of
the chapter--against his conduct, but he was first plied with love."
_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
Heredity
JUNE 3
"Any insistence on heredity would have depreciated responsibility, and
Jesus held every man to his own sin. Science and theology have joined
hands in magnifying heredity and lowering individuality, till a man
comes to be little more than the resultant of certain forces, a
projectile shot forth from the past, and describing a calculated course.
Jesus made a brave stand for each man as the possessor of will-power,
and master of his life. He sadly admitted that a human will might be
weakened by evil habits of thought, He declared gladly that the Divine
Grace reinforced the halting will: but, with every qualification,
decision still rested in the last issue with the man. 'If Thou wilt,
Thou canst make me clean,' as if his cure hinged on the Divine Will. Of
course, I am willing, said Jesus, and referred the man back to his
inalienable human rights. Jesus never diverged into metaphysics, even to
reconcile the freedom of the human will with the sovereignty of the
Divine. His function was not academic debate, it was the solution of an
actual situation. Logically, men might be puppets; consciously, they
were self-determinating, and Jesus said with emphasis, 'Wilt thou?'"
_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
"Even natural disposition, of which we make so much when we speak of
heredity, is only a tendency till habit takes it and sets it and hardens
it and drives it to a settled goal."
HUGH BLACK.
Bearing Criticism
JUNE 4
"When people detect in us what are actually imperfections and faults, it
is clear that they do us no wrong, since it is not they who cause them;
and it is clear, too, that they do us a service, inasmuch as they help
us to free ourselves from an evil, namely, the ignorance of these
defects. We should not be angry because they know them and despise us,
for it is right that they should know us for what we are, and that they
should despise us if we are despicable.
"Such are the feelings which would rise in a heart filled with equity
and justice. What then should we say of our own heart when we see in it
a quite contrary frame of mind? For is it not a fact that we hate the
truth and those who tell it us, that we love those who deceive
themselves in our favour, and that we wish to be esteemed by them as
other than we really are?"
PASCAL.
"A man should never be ashamed to say he has been in the wrong, which is
but saying, in other words, that he is wiser to-day than he was
yesterday."
POPE.
Faults
JUNE 5
"Too many take the ready course to deceive themselves; for they look
with both eyes on the failings and defects of others, and scarcely give
their good qualities half an eye: on the contrary, in themselves they
study to the full their own advantages, while their weaknesses and
defects (as one says) they skip over, as children do the hard words in
their lessons that are troublesome to read; and making this uneven
parallel, what wonder if the result be a gross mistake of themselves."
Archbishop LEIGHTON.
"To hide a fault with a lie is to replace a blot by a hole."
"It is a great folly not to part with your own faults, which is
possible, but to try instead to escape from other people's faults, which
is impossible."
MARCUS AURELIUS.
"The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none."
CARLYLE.
Obstinacy
JUNE 6
"Obstinacy is will asserting itself without being able to justify
itself. It is persistence without a plausible motive. It is the tenacity
of self-love substituted for the tenacity of reason or conscience."
_Amiel's Journal._
"If any man is able to convince me and show me that I do not think or
act right, I will gladly change; for I seek the truth by which no man
was ever injured. But he is injured who abides in his error and
ignorance."
MARCUS AURELIUS.
"It is never too late to give up our prejudices."
THOREAU.
"When one's character is naturally firm, it is well to be able to yield
upon reflection."
VAUVENARGUES.
Calumny
JUNE 7
"Any man of many transactions can hardly expect to go through life
without being subject to one or two very severe calumnies. Amongst these
many transactions, some few will be with very ill-conditioned people,
with very ignorant people, or, perhaps, with monomaniacs; and he cannot
expect, therefore, but that some narrative of a calumnious kind will
have its origin in one of these transactions. It may be fanned by any
accidental breeze of malice or ill-fortune, and become a very serious
element of mischief to him. Such a thing is to be looked upon as pure
misfortune coming in the ordinary course of events; and the way to treat
it is to deal with it as calmly and philosophically as with any other
misfortune. As some one has said, the mud will rub off when it is dry,
and not before. The drying will not always come in the calumniated man's
time, unless in favourable seasons, which he cannot command."
HELPS.
"If any one tells you such a one has spoken ill of you, do not refute
them in that particular; but answer, had he known all my vices, he had
not spoken only of that one."
EPICTETUS.
Calumny
JUNE 8
"I am beholden to calumny that she hath so endeavoured and taken pains
to belie me. It shall make me set a surer guard on myself, and keep a
better watch upon my actions."
BEN JONSON.
"As to people saying a few idle words about us, we must not mind that,
any more than the old church-steeple minds the rooks cawing about it."
GEORGE ELIOT.
"The power men possess to annoy me I give them."
EMERSON.
"Assailed by scandal and the tongue of strife, His only answer was--a
blameless life."
COWPER.
Flattery
JUNE 9
"Flattery is a false coinage which would have no currency but for our
vanity."
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
"If we did not flatter ourselves, the flattery of others could do us no
harm."
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
"Self-love is the greatest Flatterer in the World."
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
"The Devil has no stauncher ally than want of perception."
PHILIP H. WICKSTEAD.
Pride
JUNE 10
"There are two states or conditions of pride. The first is one of
self-approval, the second one of self-contempt. Pride is seen probably
at its purest in the last."
_Amiel's Journal._
"The foundation of pride is the wish to respect one's self, whatever
others may think; the mainspring of vanity is the craving for the
admiration of others, no matter at what cost to one's self-respect."
_The Heart of Rome_, F. MARION CRAWFORD.
"Any revelation of greatness overwhelms petty thoughts.... The presence
of death turns enemies into friends. In the same way the petty feelings
of pride and vanity would lose much of their power if people had the
overwhelming feeling which comes from the contemplation of Almightiness,
All-goodness, and All-love. There would be a marked change in all human
relations if men turned from the presence of the Thrice Holy to face one
another; if thoughts of self and for self were driven out of their minds
by worship."
_The Service of God_, Canon BARNETT.
Conceit
JUNE 11
"It is indeed a desirable thing to be well descended, but the glory
belongs to our ancestors."
PLUTARCH.
"Conceit spoils many an excellency. Some persons are so proud of their
goodness, or of their attainments, or of their position, or of their
character, or of their family, that they become offensive to many who
would otherwise be won by their merit. Pride mars, blights, and withers
whatever it touches. It begets assumptions that are very belittling as
well as hard to bear. A man weakens his influence and retards his
personal and public interests by giving it full control. Its exhibition
may be natural; but noble manhood, high moral character, regard to the
feelings of others and Christianity all demand its suppression."
Humility
JUNE 12
"What hypocrites we seem to be, whenever we talk of ourselves! Our words
sound so humble, while our hearts are so proud."
_Guesses at Truth_, edited by Archdeacon HARE.
"By despising himself too much a man comes to be worthy of his own
contempt."
_Amiel's Journal._
"Just as criticism alone ministers to pride and then to death, so
creation, even of the smallest kind, ministers to humility. And that
stands to reason: the slightest act of shaping instantly opens before
you an ever-expanding sea, and the vision of the infinite is the death
of vanity and pride."
_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.
"Humility is the hall-mark of wisdom."
JEREMY COLLIER.
Egotism
JUNE 13
"We ought to have this measure of charity for egotistical people--a
willingness to suppose that they actually believe themselves to be what
they assume to be. It is quite possible for a person to be in such a fog
of misapprehension that everything about him--his little world, his
personal interest--will loom abnormally large. When the fog is
dispelled, he will see things as they are, and estimate them and himself
accordingly.
"Egotism of this kind is pardonable; and there is a great deal of it
which is peculiar to the mists and strange refractions of youth. When
the sun of a clearer and larger knowledge chases away the fog, a
right-minded young person emerges from this egotistical, too
self-conscious period of his life, and finds a new adjustment for
himself in the great and serious world."
"He who is always enquiring what people will say, will never give them
opportunity to say anything great about him."
"Reputation is in itself only a farthing candle, of wavering and
uncertain flame, and easily blown out; but it is the light by which the
world looks for and finds merit."
LOWELL.
The Code of Society
JUNE 14
"'Freedom' is not the power to do what we like, but to be what we ought
to be."
CHARLES GORE.
"There is no commoner danger than that of accepting the code of the
society in which you live as the rule of right."
Bishop TEMPLE.
"Strive all your life to free men from the bondage of custom and self,
the two great elements of the world that lieth in wickedness."
CHARLES KINGSLEY.
"What I _must_ do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.
This rule ... is harder, because you will always find those who think
they know what is your duty better than _you_ know it."
EMERSON.
Public Opinion
JUNE 15
"It is not the many who reform the world; but the few who rise superior
to that Public Opinion which crucified our Lord many years ago."
CHARLES KINGSLEY.
"We are tempted to measure ourselves by others, to acquiesce in an
average standard and an average attainment. We forget that while we are
not required to judge our neighbours, we are required to judge
ourselves."
Bishop WESTCOTT.
"Moral courage is obeying one's conscience, and doing what one believes
to be right in face of a hostile majority; and moral cowardice is
stifling one's conscience, and doing what is less than right to win
other people's favour."
Dr. JOHN WATSON.
Public Opinion
JUNE 16
"Opinion has its value and even its power: to have it against us is
painful when we are among friends, and harmful in the case of the outer
world. We should neither flatter opinion nor court it; but it is better,
if we can help it, not to throw it on to a false scent. The first error
is a meanness; the second an imprudence.... Be careful of your
reputation, not through vanity, but that you may not harm your life's
work, and out of love for truth. There is still something of
self-seeking in the refined disinterestedness which will not justify
itself, that it may feel itself superior to opinion. It requires ability
to make what we seem agree with what we are,--and humility to feel that
we are no great things."
_Amiel's Journal._
"Suppose any man shall despise me. Let him look to that himself. But I
will look to this, that I be not discovered doing or saying anything
deserving of contempt."
MARCUS AURELIUS.
Spiritual Balance and Proportion
JUNE 17
"A well-governed mind learns in time to find pleasure in nothing but the
true and the just."
_Amiel's Journal._
"Not only does sympathy lead us to see the opinions of others in a truer
light, it enables us to form a sounder judgment on our own; for as long
as a man looks only 'on his own things,' he fails to see them in true
proportion."
LUCY SOULSBY.
"If we can live in Christ and have His life in us, shall not the
spiritual balance and proportion which were His become ours too? If He
were really our Master and our Saviour, could it be that we should get
so eager and excited over little things? If we were His, could we
possibly be wretched over the losing of a little money which we do not
need, or be exalted at the sound of a little praise which we know that
we only half deserve and that the praisers only half intend? A moment's
disappointment, a moment's gratification, and then the ocean would be
calm again and quite forgetful of the ripple which disturbed its bosom."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
Temperance
JUNE 18
"(Of Training...) its aim must be to bring into human character more of
that unity, consistency, harmony, proportion, upon which the Greek
philosophers were never weary of insisting as the essence of virtue."
_The Making of Character_, Professor MACCUNN.
"_Temperance._--The original term describes that sovereign self-mastery,
that perfect self-control, in which the mysterious will of man holds in
harmonious subjection all the passions and faculties of his nature.
"Self-will is to mind what self-indulgence is to sense, the usurpation
by a part of that which belongs to the whole.
"_In Knowledge temperance._--The Apostle counsels temperance, the just
and proportionate use of every faculty and gift, and not the abolition
or abandonment of any.
"It is easier in many cases to pluck out the right eye or to cut off the
right hand than to discipline and employ them."
Bishop WESTCOTT.
Balance
JUNE 19
"Temperance is reason's girdle and passion's bridle."
JEREMY TAYLOR.
"Be wary and keep cool. A cool head is as necessary as a warm heart. In
any negotiations, steadiness and coolness are invaluable; while they
will often carry you in safety through times of danger and difficulty."
Lord AVEBURY.
"Place a guard over your strong points! Thrift may run into
niggardliness, generosity into prodigality or shiftlessness. Gentleness
may become pusillanimity, tact become insincerity, power become
oppression. Characters need sentries at their points of weakness, true
enough, but often the points of greatest strength are, paradoxically,
really points of weakness."
Balance
JUNE 20
"Culture implies all which gives a mind possession of its powers."
EMERSON.
"There are very, very few from whom we get that higher, deeper, broader
help which it is the prerogative of true excellence in judgment to
bestow: help to discern, through the haste and insistence of the
present, what is its real meaning and its just demand; help to give due
weight to what is reasonable, however unreasonably it may be stated or
defended; help to reverence alike the sacredness of a great cause and
the sacredness of each individual life, to adjust the claims of general
rules and special equity; help to carry with one conscientiously, on the
journey towards decision, all the various thoughts that ought to tell
upon the issue; help to keep consistency from hardening to obstinacy,
and common sense from sinking into time-serving; help to think out one's
duty as in a still, pure air, sensitive to all true signs and voices of
this world, and yet unshaken by its storms."
_Studies in the Christian Character_, Bishop PAGET.
Sound Judgment
JUNE 21
"We are all inclined to judge of others as we find them. Our estimate of
a character always depends much on the manner in which the character
affects our own interests and passions. We find it difficult to think
well of those by whom we are thwarted or depressed, and we are ready to
admit every excuse for the vices of those who are useful or agreeable to
us."
MACAULAY.
"To judge is to see clearly, to care for what is just, and therefore to
be impartial,--more exactly, to be disinterested,--more exactly still,
to be impersonal."
_Amiel's Journal._
"Of all human faculties there is none which more enriches our lives than
a sound moral judgment. Genius is rarer and more wonderful. But this
surpasses even genius in the fact that it is not only in itself a
virtue, but the fruitful mother of virtues. It is as Aristotle said,
'Given a sound judgment and all the virtues will follow in its train.'
* * * * *
"If the moral judgment is to be sound it must presuppose character,
faculty to deliberate, and enlightenment."
_The Making of Character_, Professor MACCUNN.
Sound Judgment
JUNE 22
"That is a penetrating sarcasm of George Eliot's in 'Amos Barton': 'It
is so much easier to say that a thing is black, than to discriminate the
particular shade of brown, blue, or green to which it really belongs. It
is so much easier to make up your mind that your neighbour is good for
nothing, than to enter into all the circumstances that would oblige you
to modify that opinion.' Everybody needs the suggestion that is embodied
in the above remark. Our judgments of men are always more or less
defective. But it is the man who prides himself on his outspokenness,
the man who thinks it would be cowardice to withhold an opinion of men
and things, particularly if he is charged with the duty of public
utterance, that needs to learn that blue or brown or green is not black,
and that in nothing is so much discrimination needed as in the diagnosis
of character."
"Never does a man portray his own character more vividly than in his
manner of portraying another."
RICHTER.
Sound Judgment
JUNE 23
"It hardly can seem strange that excellence in judgment is thus rare if
we go on to think of the manifold discipline that it needs.
"For we cannot deny that even physical conditions tend at least to tell
on it; and most of us may have to own that there are days on which we
know that we had better distrust the view we take of things. It is good
counsel that a man should, if he has the chance, reconsider after his
holiday any important decision that he was inclined to make just before
it; that he should appeal from his tired to his refreshed self; and men
need to deal strictly with the body, and to bring it into subjection,
not only lest its appetites grow riotous, but also lest it trouble, with
moods and miseries of its own, the exercise of judgment.
"And then, with the calmness of sound health, or the control that a
strong and vigilant will can sometimes gain over the encroachments of
health that is not sound, there must also be the insight and
resourcefulness of learning; that power to recognise, and weigh, and
measure, and forecast, which comes of long watching how things move; the
power that grows by constant thoughtfulness in study or in life; the
distinctive ability of those who, in Hooker's phrase, are 'diligent
observers of circumstances, the loose regard whereof is the nurse of
vulgar folly.'"
_Studies in the Christian Character_, Bishop PAGET.
Harsh Judgment
JUNE 24
"How often we judge unjustly when we judge harshly. The fret and temper
we despise may have its rise in the agony of some great unsuspected
self-sacrifice, or in the endurance of unavowed, almost intolerable
pain. Whoso judges harshly is sure to judge amiss."
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.
"We meet and mingle, we mark men's speech;
We judge by a word or a fancied slight;
We give our fellows a mere glance each,
Then brand them for ever black or white.
"Meanwhile God's patience is o'er us all,
He probes for motives, He waits for years;
No moment with Him is mean or small,
And His scales are turned by the weight of tears."
Judging
JUNE 25
"Perhaps it were better for most of us to complain less of being
misunderstood, and to take more care that we do not misunderstand other
people. It ought to give us pause at a time to remember that each one
has a stock of cut-and-dry judgments on his neighbours, and that the
chances are that most of them are quite erroneous. What our neighbour
really is we may never know, but we may be pretty certain that he is not
what we have imagined, and that many things we have thought of him are
quite beside the mark. What he does we have seen, but we have no idea
what may have been his thoughts and intentions. The mere surface of his
character may be exposed, but of the complexity within we have not the
faintest idea. People crammed with self-consciousness and self-conceit
are often praised as humble, while shy and reserved people are judged to
be proud. Some whose whole life is one subtle studied selfishness get
the name of self-sacrifice, and other silent heroic souls are condemned
for want of humanity."
_The Potter's Wheel_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
"To weigh other minds by our own is the false scale by which the greater
number of us miscalculate all human actions and most human characters."
JOHN OLIVER HOBBES.
Biassed Judgments
JUNE 26
"How difficult it is to submit anything to the opinion of another person
without perverting his judgment by the way in which we put the matter to
him. If one says, 'For my part I think it beautiful,' or 'I think it
obscure,' or the like, one inclines the hearer's imagination to that
opinion, or incites it to take the contrary view."
PASCAL.
"Human speech conveys different meanings to differently biassed minds."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
"We judge of others by what we see in them: and, what is more perilous
still, we are tempted to judge of ourselves by what others can see in
us."
Bishop WESTCOTT.
Judging
JUNE 27
"The sinner's own fault? So it was.
If every own fault found us out,
Dogged us and hedged us round about,
What comfort should we take because
Not half our due we thus wrung out?
"Clearly his own fault. Yet I think
My fault in part, who did not pray
But lagged and would not lead the way.
I, haply, proved his missing link.
God help us both to mind and pray."
CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
"She had the clear judicial mind which must inevitably see the tragic
pitifulness of things. She had thought too much to be able to indulge in
the primitive luxury of unqualified condemnation."
_In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim_,
Mrs. HODGSON BURNETT.
"She was one of those lowly women who apply the severity born of their
creed to themselves, and spend only the love born of the indwelling
Spirit upon their neighbour."
G. MACDONALD.
Justice and Mercy
JUNE 28
"It is not even, amongst men, the best and purest who are found to be
the severest censors and judges of others. Quickness to detect and
expose the weakness and frailties of a fellow-man, harshness in
condemning them, mercilessness in punishing them, are not the
characteristics which experience would lead us to expect in a very high
and noble nature.... To be gentle, pitying, forbearing to the fallen, to
be averse to see or hear of human faults and vices, and when it is
impossible not to see them to be pained and grieved by them, to be
considerate of every extenuating circumstance that will mitigate their
culpability, to delight in the detection of some redeeming excellence
even in the vilest.... Is not all this the sort of conduct which, as
experience teaches us, betokens, not moral apathy or indifference, but
the nature which is purest and most elevated beyond all personal
sympathy with vice.... If, then, human goodness is the more merciful in
proportion as it approaches nearer to perfection ... might we not
conclude that when goodness becomes absolutely perfect, just then will
mercy reach its climax and become absolutely unlimited?"
Principal CAIRD.
"Search thine own heart. What paineth thee
In others, in thyself may be;
All dust is frail, all flesh is weak;
Be thou the true man thou dost seek."
WHITTIER.
Judging
JUNE 29
"It is my way when I observe any instance of folly, any queer or absurd
illusion, straightway to look for something of the same type in myself,
feeling sure that amid all differences there will be a certain
correspondence; just as there is more or less correspondence in the
natural history even of continents widely apart, and of islands in
opposite zones....
"Introspection which starts with the purpose of finding out one's own
absurdities is not likely to be very mischievous, yet of course it is
not free from dangers any more than breathing is, or the other functions
that keep us alive or active. To judge of others by oneself is in its
most innocent meaning the briefest expression for our only method of
knowing mankind; yet, we perceive, it has come to mean in many cases
either the vulgar mistake which reduces every man's value to the very
low figure at which the valuer himself happens to stand; or else, the
amiable illusion of the higher nature misled by a too generous
construction of the lower. One cannot give a recipe for wise judgment:
it resembles appropriate muscular action, which is attained by the
myriad lessons in nicety of balance and of aim that only practice can
give."
GEORGE ELIOT.
Contemptuousness
JUNE 30
"Our Lord not only _told_ men that they were the children of God, that
they should strive after their Father's likeness, and that they might
approach nearer and nearer to being perfect as He is perfect: but, what
was more than this, in every word He spake,--whether of teaching, or
reproof, or expostulation, or in His passing words to those who received
His mercies,--He _treated_ them as God's children. Man, as man, has in
His eyes a right to respect. Anger we find with our Lord often, as also
surprise at slowness of heart, indignation at hypocrisy, and at the
Rabbinical evasions of the Law; but never in our Lord's words or looks
do we find personal disdain. Towards no human being does He show
contempt. The scribe would have trodden the rabble out of existence; but
there is no such thing as rabble in our Lord's eyes. The master, in the
parable, asks concerning the tree, which is unproductively exhausting
the soil, why cumbers it the ground; but it is not to be rooted up, till
all has been tried. There it stands, and mere existence gives it claims,
for all that exists is the Father's."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
"Tennyson was very grand on contemptuousness. It was, he said, a sure
sign of intellectual littleness. Simply to despise, nearly always meant
not to understand. Pride and contempt were specially characteristic of
barbarians. Real civilisation taught human beings to understand each
other better, and must therefore lessen contempt. It is a little or
immature or uneducated mind which readily despises. One who has
travelled and knows the world in its length and breadth, respects far
more views and standpoints other than his own."
_Tennyson--A Memoir_, by his Son.
False Impressions
JULY 1
"There are thousands and thousands of little untruths that hum and buzz
and sting in society, which are too small to be brushed or driven away.
They are in the looks, they are in the inflections and tones of the
voice, they are in the actions, they are in reflections rather than in
direct images that are represented. They are methods of producing
impressions that are false, though every means by which they are
produced is strictly true. There are little unfairnesses between man and
man, that are said to be minor matters and that are small things; there
are little unjust judgments and detractions; there are petty violations
of conscience; there are ten thousand of these flags of passions in men
which are called foibles or weaknesses, but which eat like moths. They
take away the temper, they take away magnanimity and generosity, they
take from the soul its enamel and its polish. Men palliate and excuse
them, but that has nothing to do with their natural effect on us. They
waste and destroy us, and that, too, in the soul's silent and hidden
parts."
HENRY WARD BEECHER.
"A lie which is half a truth
Is ever the blackest of lies."
TENNYSON.
Truth
JULY 2
"Truth is the great mark at which we ought to aim in all things--truth
in thought, truth in expression, truth in work. Those who habitually
sacrifice truth in small things will find it difficult to pay her the
respect they should do in great things."
Lord IDDESLEIGH.
"Stand upright, speak thy thought, declare
The truth thou hast that all may share.
Be bold, proclaim it everywhere,
They only live who dare."
Sir LEWIS MORRIS.
"The mind can only repose upon the stability of truth."
Dr. JOHNSON.
Truthfulness
JULY 3
"Be profoundly honest. Never dare to say ... through ardent excitement
or conformity to what you know you are expected to say, one word which
at the moment when you say it, you do not believe. It would cut down the
range of what you say, perhaps, but it would endow every word that was
left with the force of ten."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"Be honest with yourself, whatever the temptation; say nothing to others
that you do not think, and play no tricks with your own mind. Of all the
evil spirits abroad at this hour in this world, insincerity is the most
dangerous."
J. A. FROUDE.
"Truthfulness is the foundation of all personal excellence. It exhibits
itself in conduct. It is rectitude, truth in action, and shines through
every word and deed."
SAMUEL SMILES.
Accuracy
JULY 4
"We always weaken what we exaggerate."
LA HARPE.
"It is no great advantage to have a lively wit if exactness be wanting.
The perfection of a clock does not consist in its going fast, but in its
keeping good time."
VAUVENARGUES.
"After much vehement talk about 'the veracities,' will come utterly
unveracious accounts of things and people--accounts made unveracious by
the use of emphatic words where ordinary words alone are warranted:
pictures of which the outlines are correct, but the lights and shades
and colours are doubly and trebly as strong as they should be."
HERBERT SPENCER.
Truthfulness
JULY 5
"It takes two to speak truth--one to speak and another to hear."
THOREAU.
"Truth of intercourse is something more difficult than to refrain from
open lies. It is possible to avoid falsehood and yet not tell the truth.
It is not enough to answer formal questions. To reach the truth by yea
and nay communications implies a questioner with a share of inspiration,
such as is often found in mutual love. _Yea_ and _nay_ mean nothing; the
meaning must have been related in the question. Many words are often
necessary to convey a very simple statement; for in this sort of
exercise we never hit the gold; the most that we can hope is by many
arrows, more or less far off on different sides, to indicate, in the
course of time, for what target we are aiming, and after an hour's talk,
back and forward, to convey the purport of a single principle or a
single thought."
_Virginibus Puerisque_, R. L. STEVENSON.
Truthfulness
JULY 6
"In very truth lying is a hateful and accursed vice. It is words alone
that distinguish us from the brute creation, and knit us to each other.
If we did but feel proper horror of it, and the fearful consequences
that spring from such a habit, we would pursue it with fire and sword,
and with far more justice than other crimes. I observe that parents take
pleasure in correcting their children for slight faults, which make
little impression on the character, and are of no real consequence.
Whereas lying, in my opinion, and obstinacy, though in a less degree,
are vices, the rise and progress of which ought to be particularly
watched and counteracted; these grow with their growth, and when once
the tongue has got a _wrong set, it is impossible to put it straight
again_. Whence we see men, otherwise of honourable natures, slaves to
this vice. If falsehood had, like truth, only one face, we should be on
more equal terms with it, for we should consider the contrary to what
the liar said as certain; but the reverse of truth has a hundred
thousand forms, and is a field of boundless extent."
MONTAIGNE.
"Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but
is a stab at the health of human society."
EMERSON.
Truthfulness
JULY 7
"The cruellest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a
room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a
disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished
because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame
which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the
critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his
tongue? And, again, a lie may be told by a truth, or a truth conveyed
through a lie. Truth to facts is not always truth to sentiment; and part
of the truth, as often happens in answer to a question, may be the
foulest calumny. A fact may be an exception; but the feeling is the law,
and it is that which you must neither garble nor belie. The whole tenor
of a conversation is a part of the meaning of each separate statement;
the beginning and the end define and travesty the intermediate
conversation. You never speak to God; you address a fellow-man, full of
his own tempers: and to tell truth, rightly understood, is not to state
the true facts, but to convey a true impression; truth in spirit, not
truth to letter, is the true veracity."
_Virginibus Puerisque_, R. L. STEVENSON.
"Truth is violated by falsehood, and it may be equally outraged by
silence."
AMMAN.
Gossip
JULY 8
"Gossip is a beast of prey that does not wait for the death of the
creature it devours."
_Diana of the Crossways_, G. MEREDITH.
"Give to a gracious message
A host of tongues; but let ill tidings tell
Themselves when they be felt."
SHAKESPEARE.
"Let evil words die as soon as they're spoken."
GEORGE ELIOT.
"If there is much art in speaking, there is no less in keeping silence.
There is an eloquent silence; it serves to praise and to condemn: there
is a scornful silence: and there is a respectful silence."
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
Back-biting
JULY 9
"Hear as little as you possibly can to the prejudice of others; believe
nothing of the kind unless you are forced to believe it; never
circulate, nor approve of those who circulate, loose reports; moderate
as far as you can the censure of others; always believe that if the
other side were heard a very different account would be given of the
matter."
_Everyday Christian Life_, Dean FARRAR.
"We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are
willing to give the advantage of a good light."
EMERSON.
"Refrain your tongue from back-biting; for there is no word so secret
that shall go for nought, and the mouth that belieth, slayeth the soul."
WISDOM i. 2.
Gossip
JULY 10
"When people run about to disseminate some scrap of news which they
alone possess, the result is not usually beneficial either to character
or to mind."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
"Slander meets with no regard from noble minds,
Only the base believe what the base only utter."
"No word, once spoken, returneth
Even if uttered unwillingly--
Shall God excuse our rashness?
That which is done, that abides."
CHARLES KINGSLEY.
Egotism
July 11
"Above all things, let us avoid speaking too often about ourselves, and
referring to our own experiences. Nothing is more disagreeable than a
man who is constantly quoting himself."
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
"The pest of society is egotists."
EMERSON.
"Avoid the personal view, the small view, the critical and fault-finding
view. Run away from gossip as from a pestilence, and keep in your soul
great ideals and ideals to solace your solitude. They will drive out
petty worries, conceits and thoughts of carking care."
ADA C. SWEET.
Conversation
JULY 12
"The etiquette of conversation consists as much in listening politely as
in talking agreeably."
H. A.
"The reason why so few persons are agreeable in conversation is that
every one thinks more about what he shall say than about what others are
saying, and because one cannot well be a good listener when one is eager
to speak."
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
"I am an enemy to long explanations; they deceive either the maker or
the hearer, generally both."
GOETHE.
Conversation
JULY 13
"The tone of good conversation is flowing and natural; it is neither
heavy nor frivolous; it is learned without pedantry, lively without
noise, polished without equivocation. It is neither made up of lectures
nor epigrams. Those who really converse, reason without arguing, joke
without punning, skilfully unite wit and reason, maxims and sallies,
ingenious raillery and severe morality. They speak of everything in
order that every one may have something to say: they do not investigate
too closely, for fear of wearying: questions are introduced as if
by-the-bye, and are treated with rapidity; precision leads to elegance,
each one giving his opinion, and supporting it with few words. No one
attacks wantonly another's opinion, no one supports his own obstinately.
They discuss in order to enlighten themselves, and leave off discussing
where dispute would begin: every one gains information, every one
recreates himself, and all go away contented; nay, the sage himself may
carry away from what he has heard matter worthy of silent meditation."
Argument
JULY 14
"Argument is always a little dangerous. It often leads to coolness and
misunderstandings. You may gain your argument and lose your friend,
which is probably a bad bargain. If you must argue, admit all you can,
but try to show that some point has been overlooked. Very few people
know when they have had the worst of an argument, and if they do, they
do not like it. Moreover, if they know they are beaten, it does not
follow that they are convinced. Indeed it is perhaps hardly going too
far to say that it is very little use trying to convince any one by
argument. State your case as clearly and concisely as possible, and if
you shake his confidence in his own opinion it is as much as you can
expect. It is the first step gained."
Lord AVEBURY.
"Speak fitly, or be silent wisely."
GEORGE HERBERT.
"After speech silence is the greatest power in the world."
LACORDAIRE.
"It is better to remain silent than to speak the truth ill-humouredly,
and so spoiling an excellent dish by covering it with bad sauce."
ST. FRANCIS DE SALES.
Argument
JULY 15
"When opposition of any kind is necessary, drop all colour of emotion
out of it and let it be seen in the white light of truth."
"Nothing does reason more right than the coolness of those that offer
it: For truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from
the arguments of its opposers."
WILLIAM PENN.
"Be calm in arguing: for fierceness makes
Error a fault, and truth discourtesy."
GEORGE HERBERT.
"To speak wisely may not always be easy, but not to speak ill requires
only silence."
Argument
JULY 16
"Prejudice is opinion without judgment."
"When a positive Man hath once begun to dispute anything, his Mind is
barred up against all Light and better Information. Opposition provokes
him, though there be never so good Ground for it, and he seems to be
afraid of nothing more, than lest he should be convinced of the Truth."
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
"In proportion as we love truth more and victory less, we shall become
anxious to know what it is which leads our opponents to think as they
do. We shall begin to suspect that the pertinacity of belief exhibited
by them must result from a perception of something we have not
perceived. And we shall aim to supplement the portion of truth we have
found with the portion found by them."
HERBERT SPENCER.
An Open Mind
JULY 17
"He often thought that Dr. Arnold's maxim of being prepared each morning
to consider everything an open question a good working rule. Not that
one should readily change one's opinions, but should always have an open
mind, never a closed one, on any question outside exact knowledge."
"He that never changed any of his opinions, never corrected any of his
mistakes; and he who was never wise enough to find out any mistakes in
himself, will not be charitable enough to excuse what he reckons
mistakes in others."
WHICHCOTE.
"Narrow-mindedness is a cause of self-sufficiency. We are slow to
believe what is beyond the scope of our vision."
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
Tolerance
JULY 18
"Nothing, in our Lord's wisdom, strikes me more than His moderation with
regard to error. What seems false to one man's mind may be true to that
of another."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
"A genuine universal tolerance is most surely attained, if we do not
quarrel with the peculiar characteristics of individual men and races,
but only hold fast to the conviction, that what is truly excellent is
distinguished by its belonging to all mankind."
GOETHE _to_ CARLYLE.
"New ideas want a little time to grow into shape: we know how easily a
man is startled into shutting his mind against novelty when it is
suddenly presented."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
Right Use of Speech
JULY 19
"There is no better way, I believe, in which to test the reality of our
culture than by the self-discipline it teaches us to use in talk; and it
may be that the chief service we can render, the chief outcome that God
looks for from our higher education, is that in our homes, in the
society around us, we should set a higher example of the right use of
speech; the right tone and temper and reticence in conversation; the
abhorrence of idle words. Neither let us think that this ever will be
easy to us. We must not be affected or pedantic, we must not be always
setting other people right; but we must be careful; we must keep our
wishes and passions from colouring our view of things; we must take
great pains to enter into the minds and feelings of others, to
understand how things look to them, and we must remember that, whatever
pains we take in that regard, the result is still sure to be imperfect;
we must rule our moods, our likes and dislikes, with a firm hand; we
must distrust our general impressions till we have frankly, faithfully
examined them; we must resist the desire to say clever or surprising
things; we must be resolute not to overstate our case; we must let
nothing pass our lips that charity would check; we must be always ready
to confess our ignorance, and to be silent.--Yes, it is a hard and long
task; but it is for a high end, and in a noble service. It is that we
may be able to help others; to possess our souls in days of confusion
and vehemence and controversy; to grow in the rare grace of judgment; to
be such that people may trust us, whether they agree with us or not. It
is that we may somewhat detach ourselves from the stream of talk, and
learn to listen for the voice of God, and to commit our ways to Him."
_Studies in the Christian Character_, Bishop PAGET.
Thoughts
JULY 20
"If we are not responsible for the thoughts that pass our doors, we are
at least responsible for those we admit and entertain."
CHARLES B. NEWCOMB.
"The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts, and the
great art in life is to have as many of them as possible."
BOVÉE.
"We lose vigour through thinking continually the same set of thoughts.
New thought is new life."
PRENTICE MULFORD.
Culture
JULY 21
"Culture is not an accident of birth, although our surroundings advance
or retard it; it is always a matter of individual education."
HAMILTON W. MABIE.
"The secret of culture is to learn that a few great points steadily
reappear, alike in the poverty of the obscurest farm, and in the
miscellany of metropolitan life, and that these few are alone to be
regarded:--the escape from all false ties; courage to be what we are;
and the love of what is simple and beautiful,--these, and the wish to
serve, to add somewhat to the well-being of men."
EMERSON.
"The highest we can attain to is not knowledge, but sympathy with
intelligence."
THOREAU.
Courtesy
JULY 22
"Courtesy is really doing unto others as you would be done unto, and the
heart of it lies in a careful consideration for the feelings of other
people. It comes from putting one's self in his neighbour's place, and
trying to enter into his mind, and it demands a certain suppression of
one's self, and a certain delicate sympathy with one's neighbour."
Dr. JOHN WATSON.
"Even as one tries thus to think out the quality and work of courtesy,
to understand the skill and power which it wields so quietly, to see the
issues upon which it tells in the lives that are affected by it, one may
begin to feel that its place is really with the great forces of
character that ennoble and redeem the world; that, simply and lightly as
it moves, it rests on deep self-discipline and deals with a real task;
that it is far more than a decoration or luxury of leisurely excellence.
But it is in contact with those who are growing perfect in it, those who
never fail in it, that one may more nearly realise its greatness. In
seeing how every part of life is lit and hallowed by it; how common
incidents, daily duties, chance meetings, come to be avenues of
brightness, and even means of grace; how points of light come quivering
out upon the dull routine of business, or the conventionality of
pleasure; how God is served through every hour of the day;--it is in
seeing this that one may come to think it far from strange that for His
beginning of miracles our Saviour chose an act of courtesy."
_Studies in the Christian Character_, Bishop PAGET.
Courtesy
JULY 23
"Courtesy. This is Love in society, Love in relation to etiquette. 'Love
doth not behave itself unseemly.' Politeness has been defined as love in
trifles. Courtesy is said to be love in little things. And the one
secret of politeness is to love. Love _cannot_ behave itself unseemly."
_The Greatest Thing in the World_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
"The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do
tact and courtesy become."
O. W. HOLMES.
"Kindness is the principle of tact, and respect for others the condition
of 'savoir-vivre.'"
_Amiel's Journal._
"Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for
courtesy."
EMERSON.
Courtesy
JULY 24
"True politeness arises from the heart, not the head."
"... The machinery of life is so apt to be heated, one keenly
appreciates those who are ever deftly pouring in the cooling oil, by
their patience and their tact, their sweetness and their sympathy. And
one resents keenly that class of people who are honest and well meaning,
but who are persistently discourteous and are not ashamed--I mean the
man who is credited with what is called a bluff, blunt manner, and who
credits himself with a special quality of downrightness and
straightforwardness. He considers it far better to say what he thinks,
and boasts that he never minces his words, and people make all kinds of
excuses for him, and rather talk as if he were a very fine fellow,
beside whom civil-spoken persons are little better than hypocrites. As a
matter of fact, no one can calculate the pain this outspoken gentleman
causes in a single day, both in his family and outside."
Dr. JOHN WATSON.
"There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. From it springs
the purest courtesy in the outward behaviour."
GOETHE.
Manners
JULY 25
"Manners are the happy ways of doing things. If they are superficial, so
are the dew-drops, which give such a depth to the morning meadows."
EMERSON.
"Love's perfect blossom only blows
Where noble manners veil defect."
C. PATMORE.
"The gentle minde by gentle deeds is knowne;
For a man by nothing is so well bewrayed
As by his manners."
SPENSER.
"True politeness is perfect ease and freedom. It simply consists in
treating others just as you love to be treated yourself."
Lord CHESTERFIELD.
Manners
JULY 26
"Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of all impediments. They aid
our dealings and conversation, as a railway aids travelling, by getting
rid of all the obstructions on the road."
EMERSON.
"Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions."
EMERSON.
"He is beautiful in face, in port, in manners, who is absorbed in
objects which he truly believes to be superior to himself."
EMERSON.
"Familiar acts are beautiful through love."
Manners
JULY 27
"Manners impress as they indicate real power. A man who is sure of his
point, carries a broad and contented expression, which everybody reads.
And you cannot rightly train one to an air and manner, except by making
him the kind of man of whom that manner is the natural expression.
Nature forever puts a premium on reality."
EMERSON.
"A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's
ill manners."
CHESTERFIELD.
"Manners are the ornament of action, and there is a way of speaking a
kind word, or of doing a kind thing, which greatly enhances its value.
What seems to be done with a grudge, or as an act of condescension, is
scarcely accepted as a favour."
S. SMILES.
Manners
JULY 28
"There are many tests by which a gentleman may be known;--but there is
one that never fails--How does he exercise power over those subordinate
to him? How does he conduct himself towards women and children?... He
who bullies those who are not in a position to resist, may be a snob,
but cannot be a gentleman. He who tyrannises over the weak and helpless
may be a coward, but no true man."
S. SMILES.
"Our servants never seem to leave us; they are paid what many people
would call absurdly high wages, but I do not think that is the
attraction. My mother does not see very much of them, and finds fault,
when rarely necessary, with a simple directness which I have in vain
tried to emulate; but her displeasure is so impersonal that there seems
to be no sting in it. It is not that they have failed in their duty to
herself, but they have been untrue to the larger duty to which she is
herself obedient."
_The House of Quiet._
Influence
JULY 29
"And just as we may ruin our own characters without knowing it, so we
may ruin the characters of others. We are always influencing each
other--a truth which I have often impressed upon you, because I feel its
deep importance. We cannot help ourselves. And this influence, which we
thus unconsciously exercise by our mere presence, by look, gesture,
expression of face, is probably all the more potent for being
unconscious. There are germs of moral health or disease continually
passing from us and infecting for good or ill those about us. We read
that when our Lord was on earth virtue went out of Him sometimes, and
healed the bodies of those who came in contact with it. His Divine
humanity was always diffusing a spiritual atmosphere of purity around
Him, which attracted, they knew not how, those who came within the
sphere of His influence. So it must be with us in so far as our
characters are pure and unselfish and Christlike. Our very presence will
influence for good all who are near us, making them purer and nobler and
more unselfish, and shaming what is mean and base out of them. If, on
the other hand, our characters are ignoble and impure, we shall exude,
without knowing or intending it, a poisonous influence on all who come
near us. Have we not sometimes felt this mysterious influence--a
presence attracting, perhaps awing, us by some sort of spiritual
magnetism; or, on the other hand, repelling us as by the presage of
impending danger? Let us endeavour to keep this inalienable
responsibility of ours always in our thoughts. And it will be a great
help to test ourselves now and then by the example of our Divine
Master."
_Life Here and Hereafter_, Canon MACCOLL.
Influence
JULY 30
"Let us reflect that the highest path is pointed out by the pure Ideal
of those who look up to us, and who, if we tread less loftily, may never
look so high again. Remembering this, let it suggest one generous motive
for walking heedfully amid the defilements of earthly ways."
N. HAWTHORNE.
"Others are affected by what I am, and say, and do. And these others
have also their sphere of influence. So that a single act of mine may
spread in widening circles through a nation or humanity."
CHANNING.
"A man who lives right, and is right, has more power in his silence than
another has by his words. Character is like bells which ring out sweet
music, and which, when touched accidentally even, resound with sweet
music."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"Quench not the Smoking Flax"
JULY 31
"Make a great deal more of your right to praise the good than of your
right to blame the bad. Never let a brave and serious struggle after
truth and goodness, however weak it may be, pass unrecognised. Do not be
chary of appreciation. Hearts are unconsciously hungry for it. There is
little danger that appreciation shall be given too abundantly. Here and
there, perhaps, in your shops and schools and households, there is some
one who has too lazily sunk down upon the praise he has received for
some good work, and rested in sluggish satisfaction on it; but such
disasters hardly count among the unfulfilled lives which have lived
meagrely and stuntedly for the lack of some simple cordial human
approval of what they have honestly, however blunderingly, tried to do."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"It is a great sign of mediocrity to be always praising moderately."
VAUVENARGUES.
"'Quench not the smoking flax'--to which I add, 'Never give unnecessary
pain.' The cricket is not the nightingale; why tell him so? Throw
yourself into the mind of the cricket--the process is newer and more
ingenious; and it is what charity commands."
_Amiel's Journal._
"Quench not the Smoking Flax"
AUGUST 1
"Christians are very often liable not, perhaps, to put obstacles into
the way of efforts to do right so much as to refuse them the needful
help, without which they have little chance of succeeding. To look
coldly on while our fellows are struggling in the waves of this evil sea
and never to hold out a hand or to say a word of encouragement, is very
often most cruelly to depress all energy of repentance. The strong
virtue that can go on its own way without being shaken by any ordinary
temptation too often forgets the duty due to the weakness close to its
side. By stern treatment of faults which were yet much struggled
against, by cold refusal to acknowledge any except plainly successful
efforts, by rejecting the approaches of those who have not yet learnt
the right way, but are really wishing in their secret hearts to learn
it, those who are strong not unfrequently do much harm to those who are
weak."
Bishop TEMPLE.
"The best we can do for each other is to remove unnecessary obstacles,
and the worst--to weaken any of the motives which urge us to strive."
_The Standard of Life_, Mrs. BERNARD BOSANQUET.
Influence
AUGUST 2
"Even in ordinary life, contact with nobler natures arouses the feeling
of unused power and quickens the consciousness of responsibility."
Bishop WESTCOTT.
"Do we not all know how apt we are to become like those whom we see,
with whom we spend our hours, and, above all, like those whom we admire
and honour? For good and for evil, alas! For evil--for those who
associate with evil or frivolous persons are too apt to catch not only
their low tone, but their very manner, their very expression of face,
speaking and thinking and acting.... But thank God, ... just in the same
way does good company tend to make them high-minded.... I have lived
long enough to see more than one man of real genius stamp his own
character, thought, even his very manner of speaking, for good or for
evil, on a whole school or party of his disciples. It has been said, and
truly, I believe, that children cannot be brought up among beautiful
pictures,--I believe, even among any beautiful sights and
sounds--without the very expression of their faces becoming more
beautiful, purer, gentler, nobler."
CHARLES KINGSLEY.
Influence
AUGUST 3
"Throw a stone into the stream, and the circles that propagate
themselves are the beautiful type of all influence."
EMERSON.
"It requires but little knowledge of society and history to assure us of
the strong permeating invisible influence upon society at large of any
body of men of clear thought, strong conviction, and disciplined
conduct. At once many things respond to the magnetism; many are put on
their mettle who would not for the world own it: many recognise their
own best things more clearly in the new light shed upon them; there is
instinctive moral competition. Such influences travel fast and far.... I
have always myself believed that the later thought of the Roman
world--the mellow stoicism of Aurelius and Epictetus in the second
century, with its strong unexplained instinct for a personal and
fatherly God, with its gentle and self-denying ethics, shews the
tincture of the influence diffused through the thoughts and prayers, the
quiet conversations or the dropped words and overheard phrases--or the
bearing and countenance of a slave here or a friend there, known or
perhaps not known to belong to that strange new body of people with
their foolish yet arresting faith, with their practices everywhere
spoken against yet of such pure and winning charm--who bore the name of
the Nazarene."
_The Church's Failures and the Work of Christ_, Bishop TALBOT.
Friendship
AUGUST 4
"We should ever have it fixed in our memories, that by the characters of
those whom we choose for our friends, our own is likely to be formed,
and will certainly be judged of by the world. We ought, therefore, to be
slow and cautious in contracting intimacy; but when a virtuous
friendship is once established, we must ever consider it as a sacred
engagement."
BLAIR.
"Might I give counsel to any young hearer, I would say unto him: Try to
frequent the company of your betters. In books and life is the most
wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life
is that. Note what the great men admired--they admired great things;
narrow spirits admire basely, and worship meanly."
THACKERAY.
"Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm
and constant."
SOCRATES.
Friendship
AUGUST 5
"There is nothing so bad for man or woman as to live always with their
inferiors. It is a truth so important, that one might well wish to turn
aside a moment and urge it, even in its lower aspects, upon the young
people who are just making their associations and friendships. Many a
temptation of laziness or pride induces us to draw towards those who do
not know as much or are not in some way as strong as we are. It is a
smaller tax upon our powers to be in their society. But it is bad for
us. I am sure that I have known men, intellectually and morally very
strong, the whole development of whose intellectual and moral life has
suffered and been dwarfed, because they have only accompanied with their
inferiors, because they have not lived with men greater than themselves.
Whatever else they lose, they surely must lose some culture of humility.
If I could choose a young man's companions, some should be weaker than
himself, that he might learn patience and charity; many should be as
nearly as possible his equals, that he might have the full freedom of
friendship; but most should be stronger than he was, that he might for
ever be thinking humbly of himself and be tempted to higher things."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
Friendship
AUGUST 6
"For good or evil a man's moral and spiritual outlook is altered by the
outlook of his comrade. It is inevitable, and in all true comradeship it
makes for truth, and generosity, and freedom. It is an incalculable
enlargement of human responsibility, because it constitutes us, in a
measure, guardians each of the other's soul. And yet, it is never the
suppression of a weak individuality by a strong one. That is not even
true discipleship, but spiritual tyranny. What the play of two
personalities brings about is a fuller, deeper self-realisation on
either side. The experience of comradeship, with all the new knowledge
and insight that it brings into a life, can leave no ideal unchanged,
but the change is not of the nature of a substitution, but of continuous
growth. It is not mental or moral bondage, but deliverance from both.
"And it is the deliverance from bondage to ourselves. It is our refuge
from pride. More than all else, comradeship teaches us to walk humbly
with God. For while God's trivial gifts may allow us to grow vain and
self-complacent, His great gifts, if we once recognise them, make us own
our deep unworthiness, and bow our heads in unspeakable gratitude. We
may have rated our deserts high, and taken flattery as our just due; we
may have competed for the world's prizes, and been filled with gratified
ambition at securing them. But however high we rate ourselves, in the
hour in which the soul is conscious of its spiritual comrades, we know
that God's great infinite gift of human love is something we have never
earned, could never earn by merit or achievement, by toil, or prayer, or
fasting. It has come to us straight out of the heart of the eternal
Fatherhood; and all our pride and vanity fall away, and our lives come
again to us as the lives of little children."
_Comradeship_, MAY KENDALL.
Friendship
AUGUST 7
"Friendship is a plant which cannot be forced. True friendship is no
gourd, springing in a night and withering in a day."
CHARLOTTE BRONTË.
"Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of
God's best gifts. It involves many things, but, above all, the power of
going out of one's self, and appreciating whatever is noble and loving
in another."
THOMAS HUGHES.
"Friendship cannot be permanent unless it becomes spiritual. There must
be fellowship in the deepest things of the soul, community in the
highest thoughts, sympathy with the best endeavours."
HUGH BLACK.
Friendship
AUGUST 8
"Our chief want in life is, somebody who shall make us do what we can.
This is the service of a friend."
EMERSON.
"The end of friendship is for aid and comfort through all the passages
of life and death."
EMERSON.
"Every man rejoices twice when he has a partner of his joy. A friend
shares my sorrow, and makes it but a moiety; but he swells my joy, and
makes it double."
JEREMY TAYLOR.
"He that is thy friend indeed,
He will help thee in thy need.
If thou sorrow, he will weep.
If thou wake, he cannot sleep.
Thus in every grief in heart
He with thee doth bear a part."
SHAKESPEARE.
Friendship
AUGUST 9
"To begin with, how can life be worth living, to use the words of
Ennius, which lacks that repose which is to be found in the mutual
good-will of a friend? What can be more delightful than to have some one
to whom you can say everything with the same absolute confidence as to
yourself? Is not prosperity robbed of half its value if you have no one
to share your joy? On the other hand, misfortunes would be hard to bear
if there were not some one to feel them even more acutely than
yourself."
CICERO.
"Comradeship is one of the finest facts, and one of the strongest forces
in life."
HUGH BLACK.
"... All I can do is to urge on you to regard friendship as the greatest
thing in the world; for there is nothing which so fits in with our
nature, or is so exactly what we want in prosperity or adversity."
CICERO.
Friendship
August 10
"Beware lest thy friend learn to tolerate one frailty of thine, and so
an obstacle be raised to the progress of thy love."
THOREAU.
"That he had 'a genius for friendship' goes without saying, for he was
rich in the humility, the patience and the powers of trust, which such a
genius implies. Yet his love had, too, the rarer and more strenuous
temper which requires 'the common aspiration,' is jealous for a friend's
growth, and has the nerve to criticise. It is the measure of what he
felt friendship to be, that he has defined religion in the terms of it."
_Of Henry Drummond_, GEORGE ADAM SMITH.
"All men have their frailties, and whoever looks for a friend without
imperfection will never find what he seeks. We love ourselves
notwithstanding our faults, and we ought to love our friends in like
manner."
CYRUS.
Friendship
AUGUST 11
"... For instance, it often happens that friends need remonstrance and
even reproof. When these are administered in a kindly spirit they ought
to be taken in good part. But somehow or other there is truth in what my
friend Terence says in his Andria: 'Compliance gets us friends, plain
speaking hate.'
"Plain speaking is a cause of trouble, if the result of it is
resentment, which is poison to friendship; but compliance is really the
cause of much more trouble, because by indulging his faults it lets a
friend plunge into headlong ruin. But the man who is most to blame is he
who resents plain speaking and allows flattery to egg him on to his
ruin.... If we remonstrate, it should be without bitterness; if we
reprove, there should be no word of insult.... But if a man's ears are
so closed to plain speaking that he cannot bear to hear the truth from a
friend, we may give him up in despair. This remark of Cato's, as so many
of his did, shews great acuteness: 'There are people who owe more to
bitter enemies than to apparently pleasant friends: the former often
speak the truth, the latter never.' Besides, it is a strange paradox
that the recipients of advice should feel no annoyance where they ought
to feel it, and yet feel so much where they ought not. They are not at
all vexed at having committed a fault, but very angry at being reproved
for it."
CICERO.
"Men of character like to hear of their faults; the other class do not."
EMERSON.
"Before giving advice we must have secured its acceptance, or rather,
have made it desired."
_Amiel's Journal._
Friendship
AUGUST 12
"The friendship of Jesus was not checked or foiled by the discovery of
faults or blemishes in those whom He had taken into His life. Even in
our ordinary human relations we do not know what we are engaging to do
when we become the friend of another. 'For better for worse, for richer
for poorer, in sickness and in health,' runs the marriage covenant. The
covenant in all true friendship is the same. We pledge our friend
faithfulness, with all that faithfulness includes. We know not what
demands upon us this sacred compact may make in years to come.
Misfortune may befall our friend, and he may require our aid in many
ways. Instead of being a help he may become a burden. But friendship
must not fail, whatever its cost may be. When we become the friend of
another, we do not know what faults and follies in him closer
acquaintance may disclose to our eyes. But here, again, ideal friendship
must not fail."
_Personal Friendships of Jesus_, J. R. MILLER.
"For he that wrongs his friend
Wrongs himself more, and ever bears about
A silent court of justice in his breast,
Himself the judge and jury, and himself
The prisoner at the bar, ever condemned."
TENNYSON.
Friendship
AUGUST 13
"Treat your friends for what you know them to be. Regard no surfaces.
Consider not what they did, but what they intended."
THOREAU.
"What makes us so changeable in our friendships, is our difficulty to
discern the qualities of the soul, and the ease with which we detect
those of the intellect."
"Judge not thy friend until thou standest in his place."
RABBI HILLEL.
"Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms
together."
Friendship
AUGUST 14
"There are two elements that go to the composition of friendship, each
so sovereign that I can detect no superiority in either, no reason why
either should be first named. One is Truth ... the other is Tenderness."
EMERSON.
"The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and
trust.... A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I
may think aloud."
EMERSON.
"People do not sufficiently remember that in every relation of life, as
in the closest one of all, they ought to take one another 'for better
for worse.' That, granting the tie of friendship, gratitude, esteem, be
strong enough to have existed at all, it ought, either actively or
passively, to exist for ever. And seeing we can at best know our
neighbour, companion, or friend as little, as alas! we often find he
knoweth of us, it behoveth us to trust him with the most patient
fidelity, the tenderest forbearance; granting unto all his words and
actions that we do not understand, the utmost limit of faith that common
sense and Christian justice will allow. Nay, these failing, is there not
left Christian charity? which being past believing and hoping, still
endureth all things."
Friendship
AUGUST 15
"Mutual respect implies discretion and reserve even in love itself; it
means preserving as much liberty as possible to those whose life we
share. We must distrust our instinct of intervention, for the desire to
make our own will prevail is often disguised under the mask of
solicitude."
_Amiel's Journal._
"Everything that is mine, even to my life, I may give to one I love, but
the secret of my friend is not mine to give."
PHILIP SIDNEY.
"When true friends part they should lock up one another's secrets and
change the keys."
FELTHAM.
Friendship
AUGUST 16
"So true it is that nature abhors isolation, and ever leans upon
something as a stay and support; and this is found in its most pleasing
form in our closest friend."
CICERO.
"And great and numerous as are the blessings of friendship, this
certainly is the sovereign one, that it gives us bright hopes for the
future and forbids weakness and despair. In the face of a true friend a
man sees as it were a second self. So that where his friend is he is; if
his friend be rich, he is not poor; though he be weak, his friend's
strength is his; and in his friend's life he enjoys a second life after
his own is finished."
CICERO.
"In distress a friend
Comes like a calm to the toss'd mariner."
EURIPIDES.
Friendship
AUGUST 17
"A man only understands what is akin to something already existing in
himself."
_Amiel's Journal._
"There are some to whom we speak almost in a language of our own, with
the confidence that all our broken hints are recognised with a thrill of
kinship, and our half-uttered thoughts discerned and shared: some with
whom we need not cramp our meaning into the dead form of an explicit
accuracy, and with whom we can forecast that we shall walk together in
undoubting sympathy even over tracks of taste and belief which we may
never yet have touched."
_Faculties and Difficulties for Belief and Disbelief_, Bishop PAGET.
"Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud."
ADDISON.
Friendship
AUGUST 18
"And though Aristotle does well to warn us that absence dissolves
friendship, it is happily none the less true that friend may powerfully
influence friend though the two be by no means constant associates. Even
far removal in place, or in occupation, or in fortunes, cannot arrest
influence. For once any man has true friends, he never again frames his
decisions, even those that are most secret, as if he were alone in the
world. He frames them habitually in the imagined company of his friends.
In their visionary presence he thinks and acts; and by them, as
visionary tribunal, he feels himself, even in his unspoken intentions
and inmost feelings, to be judged. In this aspect friendship may become
a supreme force both to encourage and restrain. For it is not simply
what our friends expect of us that is the vital matter here. They are
often more tolerant of our failings than is perhaps good for us. It is
what in our best moments we believe that they expect of us. For it is
then that they become to us, not of their own choice but of ours, a kind
of second conscience, in whose presence our weaknesses and backslidings
become 'that worst kind of sacrilege that tears down the invisible altar
of trust.'"
_The Making of Character_, Professor MACCUNN.
Friendship
AUGUST 19
"Few things are more fatal to friendship than the stiffness which cannot
take a step towards acknowledgment."
_Life of F. W. Crossley_, RENDEL HARRIS.
"Do not discharge in haste the arrow which can never return: it is easy
to destroy happiness; most difficult to restore it."
HERDER.
"Discord harder is to end than to begin."
SPENSER.
"Think of this doctrine--that reasoning beings were created for one
another's sake; that to be patient is a branch of justice, and that men
sin without intending it."
MARCUS AURELIUS.
Friendship
AUGUST 20
"We should learn from Jesus that the essential quality in the heart of
friendship is not the desire to have friends, but the desire to be a
friend; not to get good and help from others, but to impart blessing to
others. Many of the sighings for friendship which we have are merely
selfish longings,--a desire for happiness, for pleasure, for the
gratification of the heart, which friends would bring. If the desire
were to be a friend, to do others good, to serve and to give help, it
would be a far more Christlike longing, and would transform the life and
character."
_Personal Friendships of Jesus_, J. R. MILLER.
"To love is better, nobler, more elevating, and more sure, than to be
loved. To love is to have found that which lifts us above ourselves;
which makes us capable of sacrifice; which unseals the forces of another
world. He who is loved has gained the highest tribute of earth; he who
loves has entered into the spirit of heaven. The love which comes to us
must always be alloyed with the sad sense of our own unworthiness. The
love which goes out from us is kept bright by the ideal to which it is
directed."
Bishop WESTCOTT.
Friendship
AUGUST 21
"Friendships that have been renewed require more care than those that
have never been broken off."
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
"Broken friendship may be soldered, but never made sound."
Spanish Proverb.
"A friend once won need never be lost, if we will be only trusty and
true ourselves. Friends may part, not merely in body, but in spirit for
a while. In the bustle of business and the accidents of life, they may
lose sight of each other for years; and more, they may begin to differ
in their success in life, in their opinions, in their habits, and there
may be, for a time, coldness and estrangement between them, but not for
ever if each will be trusty and true. For then they will be like two
ships who set sail at morning from the same port, and ere night-fall
lose sight of each other, and go each on its own course and at its own
pace for many days, through many storms and seas, and yet meet again,
and find themselves lying side by side in the same haven when their long
voyage is past."
CHARLES KINGSLEY.
Friendship
AUGUST 22
"The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay or dislike,
hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint and too numerous
for removal. Those who are angry may be reconciled, those who have been
injured may receive a recompense; but when the desire of pleasing, and
willingness to be pleased, is silently diminished, the renovation of
friendship is hopeless: as when the vital powers sink into languor,
there is no longer any use for the physician."
_The Idler._
"... There is such a disaster, so to speak, as having to break off
friendship.... In such cases friendships should be allowed to die out
gradually by an intermission of intercourse. They should, as I have been
told that Cato used to say, rather be unstitched than torn in twain....
For there can be nothing more discreditable than to be at open war with
a man with whom you have been intimate.... Our first object then should
be to prevent a breach; our second to secure that if it does occur, our
friendship should seem to have died a natural rather than a violent
death."
CICERO.
Friendship
AUGUST 23
"Friends--those relations that one makes for one's self."
DESCHAMPS.
"Some one asked Kingsley what was the secret of his strong joyous life;
and he answered, 'I had a friend.'"
"The years have taught some sweet, some bitter lessons--none wiser than
this: to spend in all things else, but of old friends to be most
miserly."
LOWELL.
"The best wish for us all is, that when we grow old, as we must do, the
fast friends of our age may be those we have loved in our youth."
MASON.
Jealousy
AUGUST 24
"Jealousy is a terrible thing. It resembles love, only it is precisely
love's contrary. Instead of wishing for the welfare of the object loved,
it desires the dependence of that object upon itself, and its own
triumph. Love is the forgetfulness of self; jealousy is the most
passionate form of egotism, the glorification of a despotic, exacting,
and vain _ego_, which can neither forget nor subordinate itself. The
contrast is perfect."
_Amiel's Journal._
"Jealousy is a secret avowal of inferiority."
MASSILLON.
Jealousy
AUGUST 25
"We are not jealous of what we give up, but of what is wrested from our
unwilling hands. The first is always ours, the second never can be.
* * * * *
"Jealousy is not love, but it is the two-edged sword that parts true
love from counterfeit. At its touch, the knowledge of what it is to love
without reward, thrills heart and brain, sharp and clear, almost a
vision of hell. Then if we are base, we die to love; but if we are
noble, it is to ourselves we die.
* * * * *
"It is only what we surrender willingly that is ours always, as the wave
never loses what it surrenders to the sea."
_Turkish Bonds_, MAY KENDALL.
Jealousy
AUGUST 26
"What state of mind can be so blest,
As love that warms the gentle brest;
Two souls in one; the same desire
To grant the bliss, and to require?
If in this heaven a hell we find,
'Tis all from thee,
O Jealousie!
Thou tyrant, tyrant of the mind.
"All other ills, tho' sharp they prove,
Serve to refine a perfect love;
In absence, or unkind disdain
Sweet hope relieves the lover's pain;
But O! no cure but death we find
To sett us free
From Jealousie,
Thou tyrant, tyrant of the mind.
"False in thy glass all objects are,
Some set too near, and some too far:
Thou art the fire of endless might,
The fire that burns and gives no light.
All torments of the damned, we find
In only thee,
O Jealousie;
Thou tyrant, tyrant of the mind."
DRYDEN.
Love and Remorse
AUGUST 27
"We should get a lesson in friendship's ministry. Too many wait until
those they love are dead, and then bring their alabaster boxes of
affection and break them. They keep silent about their love when words
would mean so much, would give such cheer, encouragement, and hope, and
then, when the friend lies in the coffin, their lips are unsealed and
speak out their glowing tribute on ears that heed not the laggard
praise. Many persons go through life, struggling bravely with
difficulty, temptation, and hardship, carrying burdens too heavy for
them, pouring out their love in unselfish serving of others, and yet are
scarcely ever cheered by a word of approval or commendation, or by
delicate tenderness of friendship; then, when they lie silent in death,
a whole circle of admiring friends gathers to do them honour. Every one
remembers a personal kindness received, a favour shown, some help given,
and speaks of it in grateful words. Letters full of appreciation,
commendation, and gratitude are written to sorrowing friends. Flowers
are sent and piled about the coffin, enough to have strewn every hard
path of the long years of struggle. How surprised some good men and
women would be, after lives with scarcely a word of affection to cheer
their hearts, were they to awake suddenly in the midst of their friends,
a few hours after their death, and hear the testimonies that are falling
from every tongue, the appreciation, the grateful words of love, the
rememberings of kindness! They had never dreamed in life that they had
so many friends, that so many had thought well of them, that they were
helpful to so many."
_Personal Friendships of Jesus_, J. R. MILLER.
Love and Remorse
AUGUST 28
"When our indignation is borne in submissive silence, we are apt to feel
twinges of doubt afterwards as to our own generosity, if not justice;
how much more when the object of our anger has gone into everlasting
silence, and we have seen his face for the last time in the meekness of
death."
GEORGE ELIOT.
"All about us move, these common days, those who would be strengthened
and comforted by the good cheer that we could give. Let us not reserve
all the flowers for coffin-lids. Let us not keep our alabaster boxes
sealed and unbroken till our loved ones are dead. Let us show kindness
when kindness will do good. It will make sorrow all the harder to bear
if we have to say beside our dead, 'I might have brightened the way a
little, if only I had been kinder.'"
_Personal Friendships of Jesus_, J. R. MILLER.
"I like not only to be loved, but to be told I am loved. The realm of
silence is large enough beyond the grave."
GEORGE ELIOT.
Love and Remorse
AUGUST 29
"Oh! do not let us wait to be just or pitiful or demonstrative towards
those we love until they or we are struck down by illness or threatened
with death! Life is short, and we have never too much time for
gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with
us. Oh, be swift to love, make haste to be kind!"
_Amiel's Journal._
"Too soon, too soon comes Death to show
We love more deeply than we know!
The rain that fell upon the height
Too gently to be called delight,
Within the dark vale reappears
As a wild cataract of tears;
And love in life should strive to see
Sometimes what love in death would be!"
COVENTRY PATMORE.
Dissension
AUGUST 30
"Alas! how light a cause may move
Dissension between hearts that love!
Hearts that the world in vain had tried,
And sorrow but more closely tied;
That stood the storm when waves were rough,
Yet in a sunny hour fall off,
Like ships that have gone down at sea,
When heaven was all tranquillity!
A something, light as air--a look,
A word unkind or wrongly taken--
Oh! love that tempests never shook,
A breath, a touch like this has shaken;
And ruder words will soon rush in
To spread the breach that words begin;
And eyes forget the gentle ray
They wore in courtship's smiling day;
And voices lose the tone that shed
A tenderness round all they said;
Till fast declining, one by one,
The sweetnesses of love are gone,
And hearts, so lately mingled, seem
Like broken clouds--or like the stream
That smiling left the mountain's brow,
As though its waters ne'er could sever,
Yet, ere it reach the plain below,
Breaks into floods, that part for ever.
O you that have the charge of Love,
Keep him in rosy bondage bound!"
_Lalla Rookh_, T. MOORE.
Love
AUGUST 31
"Love is the first and the last and the strongest bond in experience. It
conquers distance, outlives all changes, bears the strain of the most
diverse opinions."
_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
"Say never, ye loved once!
God is too near above, the Grave, beneath:
And all our moments breathe
Too quick in mysteries of life and death,
For such a word. The eternities avenge
Affections light of range;
There comes no change to justify that change,
Whatever comes,--Loved _once_."
E. B. BROWNING.
Unrequited Love
September 1
"It was the old problem, of love that may not even spend itself for
those it loves. Some hold that the purpose of such privation--as bitter
to the spirit as the loss of light, and warmth, and air to the body--is
to teach men to love God, and not their fellow-men. Rather, it is to
teach them to love human beings more, with love not separate from the
love of God, but near to His own heart. Such love is never fruitless,
though it may seem to be. Our longing to serve personally is often only
longing for the personal reward of service; and love that serves in
finite fashion often misses the mark. We hurt where we desire to heal:
we bind a greater burden on the life whose load we only strive to
lighten. God's cross is always a crown: our crowns are often crosses.
The cup of water that we put to our friend's lips is from a poisoned
spring. Only the cup that we give God to bear to him, is always pure and
cool."
_Turkish Bonds_, MAY KENDALL.
Unrequited Love
SEPTEMBER 2
"Infancy? What if the rose-streak of morning
Pale and depart in a passion of tears?
Once to have hoped is no matter for scorning:
Love once: e'en love's disappointment endears,
A moment's success pays the failure of years."
R. BROWNING.
"It looks like a waste of life, that mowing down of our best years by a
relentless passion which itself falls dead on the top of them. But it is
not so. Every year I live I am more convinced that the waste of life
lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the
selfish prudence which will risk nothing, and which, shirking pain,
misses happiness as well. No one ever yet was the poorer in the long run
for having once in a lifetime 'let out all the length of the reins.'"
_Red Pottage_, MARY CHOLMONDELEY.
Bereavement
SEPTEMBER 3
"If we still love those we lose, can we altogether lose those we love?"
_The Newcomes_, THACKERAY.
"They that love beyond the World cannot be separated by it.
"Death cannot kill what never dies. Nor can Spirits ever be divided that
love and live in the same Divine Principle; the Root and Record of their
Friendship.
"If Absence be not Death, neither is it theirs.
"Death is but Crossing the World, as Friends do the Seas; they live in
one another still.
"For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is
omnipresent.
"In this Divine Glass they see Face to Face; and their converse is Free
as well as Pure.
"This is the Comfort of Friends, that though they may be said to Die,
yet their Friendship and Society are, in the best Sense, ever present,
because Immortal."
WILLIAM PENN.
Bereavement
SEPTEMBER 4
"Parting and forgetting? What faithful heart can do these? Our great
thoughts, our great affections, the Truths of our life, never leave us.
Surely they cannot separate from our consciousness; shall follow it
whithersoever that shall go; and are of their nature divine and
immortal."
THACKERAY.
"I can only say that I sympathise with your grief, and if faith means
anything at all it is trusting to those instincts, or feelings, or
whatever they may be called, which assure us of some life after this."
_Tennyson--a Memoir_, by his Son.
"What is it when a child dies? It is the great head-master calling that
child up into his own room, away from all the under-teachers, to finish
his education under his own eye, close at his feet. The whole thought of
a child's growth and development in heaven instead of here on earth, is
one of the most exalting and bewildering on which the mind can rest."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
Death of Young Children
SEPTEMBER 5
"Nothing is left or lost, nothing of good
Or lovely; but whatever its first springs
Has drawn from God, returns to Him again."
_On an Early Death_, TRENCH.
"When one comes to the loss of young children--a sad perplexity--let it
not be forgotten that they were given. If in the hour of bitterest grief
it were asked of a bereaved mother whether she would prefer never to
have possessed in order that she might never have lost--her heart would
be very indignant. No little child has ever come from God and stayed a
brief while in some human home--to return again to the Father--without
making glad that home and leaving behind some trace of heaven. A family
had counted themselves poorer without those quaint sayings, those
cunning caresses, that soft touch, that sudden smile. This short visit
was not an incident: it was a benediction. The child departs, the
remembrances, the influence, the associations remain. If one should
allow us to have Sarto's Annunciation for a month, we would thank him:
when he resumed it for his home he would not take everything, for its
loveliness of maid and angel is now ours for ever. And if God recalls
the child He lent, then let us thank Him for the loan, and consider that
what made that child the messenger of God--its purity, modesty,
trustfulness, gladness--has passed into our soul."
_The Potter's Wheel_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
The Dead
SEPTEMBER 6
"The dead abide with us! Though stark and cold
Earth seems to grip them, they are with us still:--
They have forged our chains of being for good or ill
And their invisible hands these hands yet hold.
Our perishable bodies are the mould
In which their strong imperishable will--
Mortality's deep yearning to fulfil--
Hath grown incorporate through dim time untold.
"Vibrations infinite of life in death,
As a star's travelling light survives its star!
So may we hold our lives, that when we are
The fate of those who then will draw this breath,
They shall not drag us to their judgment bar,
And curse the heritage which we bequeath."
MATHILDE BLIND.
"We are learning, by the help of many teachers, the extent and the
authority of the dominion which the dead exercise over us, and which we
ourselves are shaping for our descendants.
"We feel, as perhaps it was impossible to feel before, how at every
moment influences from the past enter our souls, and how we in turn
scatter abroad that which will be fruitful in the distant future. It is
becoming clear to us that we are literally parts of others and they of
us."
Bishop WESTCOTT.
The Dead
SEPTEMBER 7
"I with uncovered head
Salute the sacred dead,
Who went and who return not. Say not so!
* * * * *
We rather seem the dead that stayed behind.
Blow, trumpets, all your exaltations blow!
For never shall their aureoled presence lack:
I see them muster in a gleaming row,
With ever-youthful brows that nobler show;
We find in our dull road their shining track:
In every nobler mood
We feel the orient of their spirit glow,
Part of our life's unalterable good,
Of all our saintlier aspiration:
They come transfigured back,
Secure from change in their high-hearted ways,
Beautiful evermore, and with the rays
Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation."
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
The Dead
SEPTEMBER 8
"And yet, dear heart! remembering thee,
Am I not richer than of old?
Safe in thy immortality,
What change can reach the wealth I hold?
What chance can mar the pearl and gold
Thy love hath left in trust for me?
And while in life's long afternoon,
Where cool and long the shadows grow,
I walk to meet the night that soon
Shall shape and shadow overflow,
I cannot feel that thou art far,
Since near at need the angels are;
And when the sunset gates unbar,
Shall I not see thee waiting stand,
And, white against the evening star,
The welcome of thy beckoning hand?"
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.
The Dead
SEPTEMBER 9
"Lord, make me one with Thine own faithful ones,
Thy Saints who love Thee, and are loved by Thee;
Till the day break and till the shadows flee,
At one with them in alms and orisons;
At one with him who toils and him who runs,
And him who yearns for union yet to be;
At one with all who throng the crystal sea,
And wait the setting of our moons and suns.
Ah, my beloved ones gone on before,
Who looked not back with hand upon the plough!
If beautiful to me while still in sight,
How beautiful must be your aspects now;
Your unknown, well-known aspects in that light,
Which clouds shall never cloud for evermore!"
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.
Death
SEPTEMBER 10
"Most persons have died before they expire--died to all earthly
longings, so that the last breath is only, as it were, the locking of
the door of the already deserted mansion. The fact of the tranquillity
with which the great majority of dying persons await this locking of
those gates of life through which its airy angels have been coming and
going from the moment of the first cry, is familiar to those who have
been often called upon to witness the last period of life. Almost always
there is a preparation made by Nature for unearthing a soul, just as on
the smaller scale there is for the removal of a milk tooth. The roots
which hold human life to earth are absorbed before it is lifted from its
place. Some of the dying are weary, and want rest, the idea of which is
almost inseparable, in the universal mind, from death. Some are in pain,
and want to be rid of it, even though the anodyne be dropped, as in the
legend, from the sword of the Death-Angel. And some are strong in faith
and hope, so that, as they draw near the next world, they would fain
hurry toward it, as the caravan moves faster over the sands when the
foremost travellers send word along the file that water is in sight.
Though each little party that follows in a foot-track of its own will
have it that the water to which others think they are hastening is a
mirage, not the less has it been true in all ages, and for human beings
of every creed which recognised a future, that those who have fallen,
worn out by their march through the Desert, have dreamed at least of a
River of Life, and thought they heard its murmurs as they lay dying."
_The Professor at the Breakfast Table_, O. W. HOLMES.
Crossing the Bar
September 11
"Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea.
"But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
"Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell
When I embark;
"For, tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar."
TENNYSON.
Life after Death
SEPTEMBER 12
"If the immediate life after death be only sleep, and the spirit between
this life and the next should be folded like a flower in a night
slumber, then the remembrance of the past might remain, as the smell and
colour do in the sleeping flower; and in that case the memory of our
love would last as true, and would live pure and whole within the spirit
of my friend until after it was unfolded at the breaking of the morn,
when the sleep was over."
_Tennyson--a Memoir_, by his Son.
"Life! I know not what thou art,
But know that thou and I must part;
And when, or how, or where we met,
I own to me's a secret yet.
"Life! we have been long together,
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
'Tis hard to part when friends are dear;
Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear;--
Then steal away, give little warning,
Choose thine own time;
Say not Good Night, but in some brighter clime
Bid me Good Morning!"
A. L. BARBAULD.
Bearing Sorrow
SEPTEMBER 13
"It is dangerous to abandon oneself to the luxury of grief; it deprives
one of courage, and even of the wish for recovery."
_Amiel's Journal._
"Its way of suffering is the witness which a soul bears to itself."
_Amiel's Journal._
"We must bury our dead joys
And live above them with a living world."
GEORGE ELIOT.
Bearing Sorrow
SEPTEMBER 14
"Sorrow brings also a temptation to exactingness. It may be that friends
are very helpful to us. Let us take care that no selfishness mingles
with our love for their companionship, with our claims for their
sympathy.
"What, for the time, at any rate, is all the world to us, can only be a
small part of another's life.
"And one must struggle, as time goes on, to take what comes in one's way
of sympathy, of kindness, of companionship, but one must also try never
to exact sympathy, to allow ourselves to feel neglected, or slighted, or
forgotten.
"This is a hard lesson--sometimes.
"The whole of one's nature becomes sensitive, easily wounded, easily
depressed."
Canon SCOTT HOLLAND.
Bearing Sorrow
SEPTEMBER 15
"Selfishness in Sorrow is another temptation. One is so apt to become
absorbed in one's Sorrow.
"It is quite possible to become almost selfish in one's spiritual life
under the stress of great Sorrow.
"To see everything, every lesson, every allusion, solely from one's own
point of view, to grow too fond of thinking of one's burden....
"The hard path of daily duty is the only path to tread, not because one
is thinking of oneself, but because one wishes to forget oneself, and to
think only of God, and of those that remain.
"Self-denial: to put self last, not out of sight, but last, that is what
one is always called to do, and it is a sad bit of disloyalty to God's
grace if one becomes more selfish in Sorrow."
Canon SCOTT HOLLAND.
Bearing Sorrow
SEPTEMBER 16
"A great Sorrow which changes life altogether is apt to produce a
certain irritability, a sort of nervous jar.
"Very often this is an affair of nerves, of physical health, but it is
well to watch--'watch and pray.'
"All sorts of things will jar and hurt us. People will do and say things
with perfect unconsciousness that they are wounding us to the quick.
Some careless allusion, some chance speech, will set our nerves
quivering.... The worries, the jarring incidents, the introduction of
discordant topics in the very presence of death, the disappointments,
are all to lead us upwards. It is a rough bit of road on which we are
set to walk, and the sharp stones cut our feet, but every step brings us
nearer God.
"Do not let _temper_ mar the days of Sorrow.
"There most probably will be something to try our temper. Who does not
know the trials which seem peculiar to a break-up, a change in our
outward life? Who has not seen real Christians giving way to
peevishness, fretfulness, petty dislikes, petty jealousies of near
relations, of those who may be taking the place of the one they mourn?
Perhaps there is nothing which so mars and spoils the religious life as
bad temper and selfishness.
"Nothing which is so apt to make outsiders shrug their shoulders at
those who make frequent Communions, and go much to Church, and who,
especially in dark hours, give way to crossness. There is no better
name."
Canon SCOTT HOLLAND.
The Meaning of Religion
SEPTEMBER 17
"The meaning of religion is a rule of life; it is an obligation to do
well; if that rule, that obligation, is not seen, your thousand texts
will be to you like the thousand lanterns to the blind man. As he goes
about the house in the night of his blindness, he will only break the
glass and burn his feet and fingers: and so you, as you go through life
in the night of your ignorance, will only break and hurt yourselves on
broken laws.
"Before Christ came, the Jewish religion had forbidden many evil things;
it was a religion that a man could fulfil, I had almost said, in
idleness; all he had to do was to pray and to sing psalms, and to
refrain from things forbidden. Do not deceive yourselves; when Christ
came, all was changed. The injunction was then laid upon us not to
refrain from doing, but to do. At the last day He is to ask us not what
sins we have avoided, but what righteousness we have done, what we have
done for others, how we have helped good and hindered evil: what
difference has it made to this world and to our country and our family
and our friends, that we have lived. The man who has been only pious and
not useful will stand with a long face on that great day, when Christ
puts to him His questions.
"But this is not all that we must learn: we must beware everywhere of
the letter that kills, seek everywhere for the spirit that makes glad
and strong. For example, these questions that we have just read are
again only the letter. We must study what they mean, not what they are.
We are told to visit them that are in prison. A good thing, but it were
better if we could save them going there. We are told to visit the sick;
it were better still, and we should so better have fulfilled the law, if
we could have saved some of them from falling sick."
_The Life of R. L. Stevenson_, GRAHAM BALFOUR.
Pure Religion
SEPTEMBER 18
"Righteousness in the Old Testament is not a theological, but an ethical
word, and has to do not with a person's creed, but with a person's
character."
Dr. JOHN WATSON.
"In those days men were working their passage to Heaven by keeping the
Ten Commandments, and the hundred and ten other commandments which they
had manufactured out of them. Christ said, I will show you a more simple
way. If you do one thing, you will do these hundred and ten things,
without ever thinking about them. If you love, you will unconsciously
fulfil the whole law.... Love is the rule for fulfilling all rules, the
new commandment for keeping all the old commandments, Christ's one
secret of the Christian life."
_The Greatest Thing in the World_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
"Pure religion as taught by Jesus Christ is a life, a growth, a divine
spirit within, coming out in love and sympathy, and helpfulness to our
fellow-men."
H. W. THOMAS.
The Christian Law
SEPTEMBER 19
"We are often reminded that Christ left no code of commandments. It is
in Him--in His Person and His work--the Law lies. He has given indeed
for our instruction some applications of the negative precepts of the
Decalogue to the New Order. He has added some illustrations of positive
duties, almsgiving, prayer, fasting. He has set up an ideal and a motive
for life; and, at the same time, He has endowed His Church with
spiritual power, and has promised that the Paraclete, sent in His Name,
shall guide it into all the Truth.
(The fundamental principle of the Christian Social Union is "to claim
for the Christian Law the ultimate authority to rule social practice.")
"The Christian Law, then, is the embodiment of the Truth for action in
forms answering to the conditions of society from age to age. The
embodiment takes place slowly, and it can never be complete. It is
impossible for us to rest indolently in the conclusions of the past. In
each generation the obligation is laid on Christians to bring new
problems of conduct and duty into the Divine light, and to find their
solution under the teaching of the Spirit. The unceasing effort to
fulfil the obligation establishes the highest prerogative of man, and
manifests the life of the Church. From this effort there can be no
release; and the effort itself becomes more difficult as human relations
grow fuller, wider, more complex."
_Christian Social Union Addresses_, Bishop WESTCOTT.
The Christian Law
SEPTEMBER 20
"The sanction of this Law (the Christian Law) is not fear of punishment,
but that self-surrender to an ever-present Lord, of those who are His
slaves at once and His friends, which is perfect freedom. This Law
animates the heart of him who receives it with the invigorating truth
that character is formed rather by what we do than by what we refrain
from doing. It requires that every personal gift and possession should
minister to the common welfare, not in the way of ransom, or as a forced
loan, but as an offering of love. It reaches to the springs of action,
and gives to the most mechanical toil the dignity of a divine service.
It makes the strong arm co-operate in one work with the warm heart and
the creative brain. It constrains the poet and the artist to concentrate
their magnificent powers on things lovely and of good report, to
introduce us to characters whom to know is a purifying discipline, and
to fill the souls of common men with visions of hidden beauty and
memories of heroic deeds. It enables us to lift up our eyes to a pattern
of human society which we have not yet dared to contemplate, a pattern
which answers to the constitution of man as he was made in the Divine
image to gain the Divine likeness. It forbids us to seek repose till, as
far as lies in us, all labour is seen to be not a provision for living,
but a true human life; all education a preparation for the vision of God
here and hereafter; all political enterprise a conscious hastening of
the time when the many nations shall walk in the light of the holy city,
and the kings of the earth bring their glory into it."
_Christian Social Union Addresses_, Bishop WESTCOTT.
Trustees
SEPTEMBER 21
"For the Christian there can be but one ideal, the perfect development
of every man for the occupation of his appointed place, for the
fulfilment of his peculiar office in the 'Body of Christ'; and as a
first step towards this, we are all bound as Christians to bring to our
country the offering of our individual service in return for the
opportunities of culture and labour which we receive from its
organisation. We are all as Christians trustees and stewards of
everything which we possess, of our time, our intellect, our influence,
no less than of our riches. We ourselves are not our own: still less can
we say of that which we inherit or acquire, 'It is my own.' We all
belong, in the fulness of life 'in Christ,' to our fellow-citizens, and
our nation belongs to mankind. What we hold for a time is to be
administered for the relief of distresses, and for the elevation of
those among whom we are placed. Personal and social egoism are equally
at variance with this conception of humanity. The repression of
individuality and the individual appropriation of the fruits of special
vigour and insight equally tend to impoverish the race. Service always
ready to become sacrifice is the condition of our growth, and the
condition of our joy."
_Christian Social Union Addresses_, Bishop WESTCOTT.
"Not to Destroy, but to Fulfil"
SEPTEMBER 22
"Christ took the world as He found it, He left it as it was. He had no
quarrel with existing institutions. He did not overthrow the Church--He
went to Church. He said nothing against politics--He supported the
government of the country. He did not denounce society--His first public
action was to go to a marriage. His great aim, in fact, outwardly, and
all along, was to be as normal, as little eccentric as possible. The
true fanatic always tries the opposite. The spirit alone was singular in
Jesus; a fanatic always spoils his cause by extending it to the letter.
Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfil. A fanatic comes not to
fulfil, but to destroy. If we would follow the eccentricity of our
Master, let it not be in asceticism, in denunciation, in
punctiliousness, and scruples about trifles, but in largeness of heart,
singleness of eye, true breadth of character, true love to men, and
heroism for Christ."
_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
"Religion has been treated as if it were a special exercise of a special
power, not as if it were the possible loftiness of everything that a man
could think or be or do."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
Religion in Daily Life
SEPTEMBER 23
"If we want to get religion into life, or anything whatever in us into
life, we are bound to have no contentment, no rest, no dreaming, no
delays, till we get thought into shape, feeling into labour, some
conviction, some belief, some idea, into form without us, among the
world of men. This is the main principle, and it applies to every sphere
of human effort. So much for the habit whereby we gain power to bring
religion into daily life.
"Righteousness, shaped from within to without in the world of men, is
justice, and the doing of justice. This is the first need of
commonwealths, the first duty of individuals, and the practical religion
of both. A still higher form into which we may put our religion in life
is in doing the things which belong to love; and love is the higher form
because it secures justice. These are the things we should shape into
life because we love them. To be faithful always to that which we
believe to be true; to be faithful to our principles and our conscience
when trial comes, or when we are tempted to sacrifice them for place or
pelf; to be faithful to our given word; to keep our promises when we
might win favour by eluding or breaking them; to cling to intellectual
as well as to moral truth; to so live among men that they may know where
we are; to fly our flag in the storm as well as in the calm. It is to
pass by with contempt the dark cavern where men worship Mammon; to fix
our thought and effort on the attainment of righteousness in public and
in private homes, to have the courage to attempt what seems impossible
through love of the ideals of truth and beauty, and to prefer to die on
the field of work and self-devotion rather than to live in idleness and
luxury."
STOPFORD BROOKE.
Unfelt Creeds
SEPTEMBER 24
"There are also some who forget that the laws of the spiritual world are
no less inflexible and inviolable than those of the physical world; that
conduct is everything; and that the faith which saves, and which,
working by love, makes conduct, is something much deeper and more
substantial than the muttering of an unfelt creed, or than the
melancholy presumption that to think ourselves saved is by itself a
passport into the everlasting habitations."
Bishop THOROLD.
"Holiness is an infinite compassion for others: Greatness is to take the
common things of life and walk truly among them: Happiness is a great
love and much serving."
"Heaven does not make holiness, but holiness makes heaven."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
Fasting
SEPTEMBER 25
"It makes me half afraid, half angry, to see the formal, mechanical way
in which people do what they call their 'Lenten Penances,' and then rush
off, only with increased ardour, to their Easter festivities. Literal
fasting does not suit me--it makes me irritable and uncomfortable, and
certainly does not spiritualise me; so I have always tried to keep my
Lents in the nobler and more healthful spirit of Isaiah lviii. I have
kept them but poorly, after all; still, I am sure _that_ is the true way
of keeping them."
_Letters from_ Bishop Fraser's _Lancashire Life_, Archdeacon DIGGLE.
"God does not call us to give up some sin or some harmful
self-indulgence in Lent that we may resume it at Easter."
_The Guided Life_, Canon BODY.
Fasting
SEPTEMBER 26
"Fasting comes by nature when a man is sad, and it is in consequence the
natural token of sadness: when a man is very sad, for the loss of
relations or the like, he loses all inclination for food. But every
outward sign that can be displayed at will is liable to abuse, and so
men sometimes fasted when they were not really sad, but when it was
decorous to appear so. Moreover a kind of merit came to be attached to
fasting as betokening sorrow for transgressions; and at last it came to
be regarded as a sort of self-punishment which it was thought the
Almighty would accept in lieu of inflicting punishment Himself. Our Lord
does not decry stated fasts or any other Jewish practices, they had
their uses and would last their times; only He points men to the
underlying truth which was at the bottom of the ordinance."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
The Great Law of Love
SEPTEMBER 27
"Those who go to Christ and not to custom for their view of that which
is essential in religion, know the infinitesimal value of profession and
ceremonies, beside the great law of love to our neighbour."
F. W. FARRAR.
"Not only the happiness but the efficiency of the passive virtues, love
as a power, as a practical success in the world, is coming to be
recognised. The fact that Christ led no army, that He wrote no book,
built no church, spent no money, but that He loved, and so conquered,
this is beginning to strike men. And Paul's argument is gaining
adherents, that when all prophecies are fulfilled, and all our knowledge
is obsolete, and all tongues grow unintelligible, this thing, Love, will
abide and see them all out one by one into the oblivious past. This is
the hope for the world, that we shall learn to love, and in learning
that, unlearn all anger and wrath and evil-speaking and malice and
bitterness."
_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
Soldiers of the same Army
SEPTEMBER 28
"To him, as to so many, truth is so infinitely great that all we can do
with our poor human utterances is to try and clothe it in such language
as will make it clear to ourselves, and clear to those to whom God sends
us with a message; but meanwhile above us and our thoughts--above our
broken lights--God in His mercy, God in His love, God in His infinite
nature is greater than all."
_Tennyson--a Memoir_, by his Son.
"Are not all true men that live, or that ever lived, soldiers of the
same army, enlisted under heaven's captaincy, to do battle against the
same enemy--the empire of darkness and wrong? Why should we mis-know one
another, fight not against the enemy, but against ourselves, from mere
difference of uniform?"
CARLYLE.
By their Works
SEPTEMBER 29
"Call him not heretic whose works attest
His faith in goodness by no creed confessed.
Whatever in love's name is truly done
To free the bound and lift the fallen one
Is done to Christ. Whoso in deed and word
Is not against Him labours for our Lord.
When He, who, sad and weary, longing sore
For love's sweet service, sought the sisters' door,
One saw the heavenly, one the human guest,
But who shall say which loved the Master best?"
WHITTIER.
"Hast thou made much of words, and forms, and tests,
And thought but little of the peace and love,--
His Gospel to the poor? Dost thou condemn
Thy brother, looking down, in pride of heart,
On each poor wanderer from the fold of Truth?...
Go thy way!--
Take Heaven's own armour for the heavenly strife,
Welcome all helpers in thy war with sin ...
And learn through all the future of thy years
To form thy life in likeness of thy Lord's!"
PLUMPTRE.
Faith
SEPTEMBER 30
"Faith is the communication of the Divine Spirit by which Christ as the
revealed God dwells in our heart. It is the awakening of the Spirit of
Adoption whereby we cry, 'Abba Father.'"
T. H. GREEN.
"He thought with Arthur Hallam, that 'the essential feelings of religion
subsist in the utmost diversity of forms,' that 'different language does
not always imply different opinions, nor different opinions any
difference in _real_ faith.' 'It is impossible,' he said, 'to imagine
that the Almighty will ask you, when you come before Him in the next
life, what your particular form of creed was; but the question will
rather be, "Have you been true to yourself and given in My name a cup of
cold water to one of these little ones?"'"
_Tennyson--a Memoir_, by his Son.
"Religion consists not in knowledge, but in a holy life."
Bishop TAYLOR.
A New Creed
October 1
"Imagine a body of Christians who should take their stand on the Sermon
of Jesus, and conceive their creed on His lines. Imagine how it would
read, 'I believe in the Fatherhood of God; I believe in the words of
Jesus; I believe in the clean heart; I believe in the service of love; I
believe in the unworldly life; I believe in the Beatitudes; I promise to
trust God and follow Christ, to forgive my enemies, and to seek after
the righteousness of God.' Could any form of words be more elevated,
more persuasive, more alluring? Do they not thrill the heart and
strengthen the conscience? Liberty of thought is allowed; liberty of
sinning is alone denied."
_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT
has been called
"The text-book of duty."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"The Magna Charta of the Kingdom of God."
NEANDER.
"Christ's manifesto, and the constitution of Christianity."
Dr. JOHN WATSON.
"The great proclamation, which by one effort lifted mankind on to that
new and higher ground on which it has been painfully struggling ever
since, but on the whole with sure but slow success, to plant itself, and
maintain sure foothold."
T. HUGHES.
The Programme of Christianity
OCTOBER 2
"There may be Worship without Words."
LONGFELLOW.
"All the world is the temple of God. Its worship is ministration. The
commonest service is Divine service."
GEORGE MACDONALD.
THE PROGRAMME OF CHRISTIANITY.
"To preach good tidings unto the meek:
To build up the broken-hearted:
To proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening
of the prison to them that are bound:
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and
the day of vengeance of our God:
To comfort all that mourn:
To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give
unto them--
Beauty for Ashes,
The Oil of Joy for Mourning,
The Garment of Praise for the Spirit of Heaviness."
HENRY DRUMMOND.
The Lord's Supper
OCTOBER 3
"The Lord's Supper, the right and need of every man to feed on God, the
bread of divine sustenance, the wine of divine inspiration offered to
every man, and turned by every man into what form of spiritual force the
duty and the nature of each man required, how grand and glorious its
mission might become! No longer the mystic source of unintelligible
influence; no longer, certainly, the test of arbitrary orthodoxy; no
longer the initiation rite of a selected brotherhood; but the great
sacrament of man!... There is no other rallying place for all the good
activity and worthy hopes of man. It is in the power of the great
Christian Sacrament, the great human sacrament, to become that rallying
place. Think how it would be, if some morning all the men, women, and
children in this city who mean well, from the reformer meaning to meet
some giant evil at the peril of his life to the school-boy meaning to
learn his day's lesson with all his strength, were to meet in a great
host at the table of the Lord, and own themselves His children, and
claim the strength of His bread and wine, and then go out with calm,
strong, earnest faces to their work. How the communion service would
lift up its voice and sing itself in triumph, the great anthem of
dedicated human life! Ah, my friends, that, nothing less than that, is
the real Holy Communion of the Church of the living God."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
Nominal Christians
OCTOBER 4
"The bane of the Church of God, the dishonour of Christ, the
laughing-stock of the world, is in that far too numerous body of
half-alive Christians who choose their own cross, and shape their own
standard, and regulate their own sacrifices, and measure their own
devotions; whose cross is very unlike the Saviour's, whose standard is
not that of as much holiness as they can attain, but of as little
holiness as they can safely be content with to be saved; whose
sacrifices do not deprive them from one year's end to another of a
single comfort, or even a real luxury, and whose devotions can never
make their dull hearts burn with love of Christ."
Bishop THOROLD.
"Men find Christ through their fellow-men, and every glimpse they get of
Him is a direct message from Himself."
HENRY DRUMMOND.
Manifestations of God
OCTOBER 5
"The distinguishing mark of religion is not so much liberty as
obedience, and its value is measured by the sacrifices which it can
extract from the individual."
_Amiel's Journal._
"There is perhaps no human soul which never hungers after God. Men's
unbelief in lies is often quoted against them, by the liar especially.
But we believe--not when we are told about, but when we are
shown--Christ."
_Turkish Bonds_, MAY KENDALL.
"Let your lives preach."
GEORGE FOX.
Manifestations of God
OCTOBER 6
"For how, as a matter of fact, do we grow to know God? Let me refer you
to Professor Flint's book on Theism for the best answer I know. We begin
to know God as we begin to know our fellow-man--through His
manifestations. We may be tempted to think that we cannot know what we
cannot see, but in a perfectly true sense we never see our fellow-man:
we see his manifestations; we see his outward appearance. We hear what
he says; we notice what he does, and we infer from all this what his
unseen character is like, what the man is in himself; so similarly and
as surely we learn to know God. We see what He has done in nature and in
history; we see what He is doing to-day; we read what He has conveyed to
us for our instruction 'in sundry times and in divers manners'; and so
we learn to listen for and to love 'the still small voice' in which He
speaks to our hearts. One knowledge is as gradual and yet as sure and
certain and logical as the other."
_Work in Great Cities_, Bishop WINNINGTON INGRAM.
Manifestations of God
OCTOBER 7
"It is human character or developed humanity that conducts us to our
notion of the character Divine.... In proportion as the mysteries of
man's goodness unfold themselves to us, in that proportion do we obtain
an insight into God's."
J. B. MOZLEY.
"If you want your neighbour to know what the Christ spirit will do for
him, let him see what it has done for you."
HENRY WARD BEECHER.
"When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of
the brook and the rustle of the corn."
EMERSON.
Prayer
OCTOBER 8
"'We do not present our supplications before Thee for our righteousness,
but for Thy great mercies. O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord,
hearken and do.'--Dan. ix. 18, 19.
"Every true prayer has its background and its foreground. The foreground
of prayer is the intense, immediate desire for a certain blessing which
seems to be absolutely necessary for the soul to have; the background of
prayer is the quiet earnest desire that the will of God, whatever it may
be, should be done. What a picture is the perfect prayer of Jesus in
Gethsemane! In front burns the strong desire to escape death and to
live; but, behind, there stands, calm and strong, the craving of the
whole life for the doing of the will of God.... Leave out the
foreground--let there be no expression of the wish of him who prays--and
there is left a pure submission which is almost fatalism. Leave out the
background--let there be no acceptance of the will of God--and the
prayer is only an expression of self-will, a petulant claiming of the
uncorrected choice of him who prays. Only when the two, foreground and
background, are there together,--the special desire resting on the
universal submission, the universal submission opening into the special
desire,--only then is the picture perfect and the prayer complete!"
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
Prayer
OCTOBER 9
"About prayer he said: 'The reason why men find it hard to regard prayer
in the same light in which it was formerly regarded is that _we_ seem to
know more of the unchangeableness of Law. But I believe that God reveals
Himself in each individual soul. Prayer is, to take a mundane simile,
like opening a sluice between the great ocean and our little channels
when the great sea gathers itself together and flows in at full tide.'
'Prayer on our part is the highest aspiration of the soul.'"
"A Breath that fleets beyond this iron world
And touches Him who made it."
"Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet--
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet."
And
"More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of."
_Tennyson--a Memoir_, by his Son.
Prayer
OCTOBER 10
"There can be no objection to praying for certain special things. God
forbid! I cannot help doing it, any more than a child in the dark can
help calling for its mother. Only it seems to me that when we pray,
'Grant this day that we run into no kind of danger,' we ought to lay our
stress on the 'run' rather than on the 'danger,' to ask God not to take
away the danger by altering the course of nature, but to give us light
and guidance whereby to avoid it."
CHARLES KINGSLEY.
"Special prayer is based upon a fundamental instinct of our nature. And
in the fellowship which is established in prayer between man and God, we
are brought into personal union with Him in Whom all things have their
being.
"In this lies the possibility of boundless power; for when the
connection is once formed, who can lay down the limits of what man can
do in virtue of the communion of his spirit with the Infinite Spirit?"
Bishop WESTCOTT.
Prayer
October 11
"It is abundantly clear that answered prayer encourages faith and
personal relations in a way which broad principles only cannot effect.
As the _Spectator_ put it many years ago, much that would be positively
bad for us if given without prayer, is good if sent in answer. We feel
(do we not?) that all the evil of the world springs from mistrust of
God. Nothing can recover us from this state of alienated unrest like
answered prayer."
_Life of F. W. Crossley_, RENDEL HARRIS.
"Prayer will in time make the human countenance its own divinest altar;
years upon years of true thoughts, like ceaseless music shut up within,
will vibrate along the nerves of expression until the lines of the
living instrument are drawn into correspondence, and the harmony of
visible form matches the unheard harmonies of the mind."
_The Choir Invisible_, JAMES LANE ALLEN.
Prayer
OCTOBER 12
"Pray, till prayer makes you forget your own wish, and leave it or merge
it in God's will. The divine wisdom has given us prayer, not as a means
whereby to obtain the good things of earth, but as a means by which we
learn to do without them; not as a means whereby we escape evil, but as
a means whereby we become strong to meet it. 'There appeared an angel
unto Him from heaven, strengthening Him.' This was the true reply to the
prayer of Christ."
F. W. ROBERTSON.
"Never let us get into the common trick of calling
unbelief--resignation; of asking, and then because we have not faith to
believe, putting in a 'Thy will be done' at the end. Let us make God's
Will our will, and so say 'Thy will be done.'"
CHARLES KINGSLEY.
Prayer
OCTOBER 13
"Accustom yourself gradually to let your mental prayer spread over all
your daily external occupations. Speak, act, work quietly, as though you
were praying, as indeed you ought to be.
"Do everything without excitement, simply in the spirit of grace. So
soon as you perceive natural activity gliding in, recall yourself
quietly into the Presence of God. Hearken to what the leadings of grace
prompt, and say and do nothing but what God's Holy Spirit teaches. You
will find yourself infinitely more quiet, your words will be fewer and
more effectual, and while doing less, what you do will be more
profitable. It is not a question of a hopeless mental activity, but a
question of acquiring a quietude and peace in which you readily advise
with your Beloved as to all you have to do."
FÉNÉLON.
"A blessing such as this our hearts might reap,
The freshness of the garden they might share,
Through the long day an heavenly freshness keep,
If, knowing how the day and the day's glare
Must beat upon them, we would largely steep
And water them betimes with dews of Prayer."
TRENCH.
Self-examination
OCTOBER 14
"It is my custom every night to run all over the words and actions of
the past day; for why should I fear the sight of my errors when I can
admonish and forgive myself? I was a little too hot in such a dispute:
my opinion might have been as well spared, for it gave offence, and did
no good at all. The thing was true; but all truths are not to be spoken
at all times."
SENECA.
RESOLVES.
"To try to be thoroughly poor in spirit, meek, and to be ready to be
silent when others speak.
"To learn from every one.
"To try to feel my own insignificance.
"To believe in myself and the powers with which I am entrusted.
"To try to make conversation more useful, and therefore to store my mind
with facts, but to guard against a wish to shine.
"To try to despise the principle of the day 'every man his own
trumpeter,' and to feel it a degradation to speak of my own doings, as a
poor braggart.
"To speak less of self and to think less.
"To contend one by one against evil thoughts.
"To try to fix my thoughts in prayer without distraction.
"To watch over a growing habit of uncharitable judgment."
_F. W. Robertson's Life._
Confession of Sin
OCTOBER 15
"An immense quantity of modern confession of sin, even when honest, is
merely a sickly egotism which will rather gloat over its own evil than
lose the centralisation of its interest in itself."
_Ethics of the Dust_, JOHN RUSKIN.
"The fit of low spirits which comes to us when we find ourselves
overtaken in a fault, though we flatter ourselves to reckon it a certain
sign of penitence, and a set-off to the sin itself which God will surely
take into account, is often nothing more than vexation and annoyance
with ourselves, that, after all our good resolutions and attempts at
reformation, we have broken down again."
_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
"And be you sure that sorrow without resolute effort at amendment is one
of the most contemptible of all human frailties; deserving to be
despised by men, and certain to be rejected by God."
Bishop TEMPLE.
Morbid Introspectiveness
OCTOBER 16
"Plainly there is one danger in all self-discipline which has to be most
carefully watched and guarded against, that, namely, of valuing the
means at the expense of the end, and so falling into either
self-righteousness or formalism, and very probably into uncharitableness
also. If we esteem our obedience to rule, and self-imposed restraints,
for their own sake, we effectually destroy their power to train and
elevate. I suppose this is the real mistake of a false asceticism, which
sees the merit rather in the amount of discipline undergone than in the
character and self-conquest to be gained by it."
Bishop WALSHAM HOW.
"... It is a clear view of higher motives, which at once reveals and
defeats our meaner impulses; which assists the discipline of _proper_
self-searching, by making it healthy and hopeful; and resists any habit
of morbid introspectiveness with its fatal tendency to paralyse activity
of character."
Canon KNOX LITTLE.
Introspection
OCTOBER 17
"Beware of despairing about yourself."
ST. AUGUSTINE.
"Any man who is good for anything, if he is always thinking about
himself, will come to think himself good for nothing very soon. It is
only a fop or a fool who can bear to look at himself all day long,
without disgust. And so the first thing for a man to do, who wants to
use his best powers at their best, is to get rid of self-consciousness,
to stop thinking about himself and how he is working, altogether."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"On somehow. To go back
Were to lose all."
TENNYSON.
Our True Selves and Our Traditional Selves
OCTOBER 18
"I have sometimes thought that this facility of men in believing that
they are still what they once meant to be--this undisturbed
appropriation of a traditional character which is often but a melancholy
relic of early resolutions, like the worn and soiled testimonial to
soberness and honesty carried in the pocket of a tippler whom the need
of a dram has driven into peculation--may sometimes diminish the
turpitude of what seems a flat, barefaced falsehood. It is notorious
that a man may go on uttering false assertions about his own acts till
he at last believes in them: is it not possible that sometimes in the
very first utterance there may be a shade of creed-reciting belief, a
reproduction of a traditional self which is clung to against all
evidence? There is no knowing all the disguises of the lying serpent.
"When we come to examine in detail what is the sane mind in the sane
body, the final test of completeness seems to be a security of
distinction between what we have professed and what we have done; what
we have aimed at and what we have achieved; what we have invented and
what we have witnessed or had evidenced to us; what we think and feel in
the present and what we thought and felt in the past."
GEORGE ELIOT.
Un-self-consciousness
OCTOBER 19
"An unconscious, easy, selfish person shocks less and is more easily
loved than one who is laboriously and egotistically unselfish. There is
at least no fuss about the first; but the other parades his sacrifices,
and so sells his favours too dear. Selfishness is calm, a force of
nature: you might say the trees are selfish. But egoism is a piece of
vanity; it must always take you into its confidence; it is uneasy,
troublesome, searching; it can do good, but not handsomely; it is
uglier, because less dignified, than selfishness itself."
"If a man has self-surrender pressed incessantly upon him, this keeps
the idea of self ever before his view. Christ does not cry down _self_,
but He puts it out of a man's sight by giving him something better to
care for, something which shall take full and rightful possession of his
soul. The Apostles, without ever having any consciousness of sacrificing
self, were brought into a habit of self-sacrifice by merging all
thoughts for themselves in devotion to a Master and a cause, and in
thinking what they could do to serve it themselves."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
Un-self-consciousness
OCTOBER 20
"Think as little as possible about any good in yourself; turn your eyes
resolutely from any view of your acquirement, your influence, your plan,
your success, your following: above all, speak as little as possible
about yourself. The inordinateness of our self-love makes speech about
ourselves like the putting of the lighted torch to the dried wood which
has been laid in order for the burning. Nothing but duty should open our
lips upon this dangerous theme, except it be in humble confession of our
sinfulness before our God. Again, be specially upon the watch against
those little tricks by which the vain man seeks to bring round the
conversation to himself, and gain the praise or notice which the thirsty
ears drink in so greedily; and even if praise comes unsought, it is
well, whilst men are uttering it, to guard yourself by thinking of some
secret cause for humbling yourself inwardly to God; thinking into what
these pleasant accents would be changed if all that is known to God, and
even to yourself, stood suddenly revealed to man."
Bishop WILBERFORCE.
"Those who have never sought to attain true humility ... have yet to
learn how it lies at the root of all our dear Lord's teaching.... The
first step towards the inner life is to attain a childlike spirit in
Heavenly things.... It is solely God's gift."
GROU.
Love the Destroyer of Sin
OCTOBER 21
"It is quite idle, by force of will, to seek to empty the angry passions
out of our life. Who has not made a thousand resolutions in this
direction, only and with unutterable mortification to behold them dashed
to pieces with the first temptation? The soul is to be made sweet not by
taking the acidulous fluids out, but by putting something in--a great
love, God's great love. This is to work a chemical change upon them, to
renovate and regenerate them, to dissolve them in its own rich fragrant
substance. If a man let this into his life, his cure is complete; if
not, it is hopeless."
_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
"The secret of success consists not in the habit of making numerous
resolutions about various faults and sins, but in one great, absorbing,
controlling purpose to serve God and do His will! If this be the
controlling motive of life, all other motives will be swept into the
force of its mighty current and guided aright."
Love the Destroyer of Sin
OCTOBER 22
"For the most of us the more hopeful plan is to overcome our passions by
thinking of something else. This something else need by no means be a
serious thing. For it happens sometimes that ideas that do not soar
above trivialities may nevertheless have sent down such roots into a
man's life, and become so fruitful of suggestion, that they prove more
effective allies than more imposing and pretentious resources. Whence it
comes that a sport, or a pastime, have before now weaned many from cares
and sorrows which seemed proof against even the consolations of
religion. Be it granted that, severely construed, this is a proof of the
frivolity of human nature. But it is none the less an illustration of
the expulsive power of ideas."
_The Making of Character_, Professor MACCUNN.
"He proposed to make sin impossible by replacing it with love. If sin be
an act of self-will, each person making himself the centre, then Love is
the destruction of sin, because Love connects instead of isolating. No
one can be envious, avaricious, hard-hearted; no one can be gross,
sensual, unclean, if he loves. Love is the death of all bitter and
unholy moods of the soul, because Love lifts the man out of himself and
teaches him to live in another."
_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
Mental Hygiene
OCTOBER 23
"It is poor strategy to wage against evil feelings or propulsions a war
of mere repression. We have seen that this is so in educational control
of others. It is not less so in control of ourselves. If we would really
oust our evil proclivities, we must cultivate others that are positively
good. It is not enough to hate our failings or our vices with a perfect
hatred. We must love something else. In other words, we must contrive to
open mind and heart to tenants in whose presence unwelcome intruders,
unable to find a home, will torment us only for a season and at last
take their departure. 'There is a mental just as much as a bodily
hygiene.'"
_The Making of Character_, Professor MACCUNN.
"Moses said, 'Do this or do that.' Jesus refrained from regulations--He
proposed that we should love. Jesus, while hardly mentioning the word,
planted the idea in His disciples' minds, that Love was Law. For three
years He exhibited and enforced Love as the principle of life, until,
before He died, they understood that all duty to God and man was summed
up in Love. Progress in the moral world is ever from complexity to
simplicity. First one hundred duties; afterwards they are gathered into
ten commandments; then they are reduced to two: love of God and love of
man; and, finally, Jesus says His last word: 'This is My commandment,
that ye love one another, as I have loved you.'"
_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
"As Night Enters, Darkness Departs"
OCTOBER 24
"If sin be a principle in a man's life, then it is evident that it
cannot be affected by the most pathetic act in history exhibited from
without; it must be met by an opposite principle working from within. If
sin be selfishness, as Jesus taught, then it can only be overcome by the
introduction of a spirit of self-renunciation. Jesus did not denounce
sin: negative religion is always impotent. He replaced sin by virtue,
which is a silent revolution. As the light enters, the darkness departs,
and as soon as one renounced himself, he had ceased from sin."
_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
"'Why could not we cast him out?'
"Let His love fill you with love, and then the conquering of your sins
by His help shall be in its course one long enthusiasm and at the end a
glorious success. That is your hope; and that hope, if you will, you may
seize to-day."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
Stepping-stones
OCTOBER 25
"The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak,
becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong."
CARLYLE.
"Out of difficulties grow miracles."
"I hold it truth with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping stones
Of their dead selves to higher things."
TENNYSON.
"Why wilt thou defer thy good purpose from day to day? Arise and begin
this very instant, and say, 'Now is the time to be doing, now is the
time to be striving, now is the fit time to amend myself.'"
THOMAS À KEMPIS.
Never Lose a Battle
OCTOBER 26
"A fourth maxim is 'never if possible to lose a battle.' And none can be
sounder. For it is always to be remembered that a single lapse involves
here something worse than a simple failure. The alternative is not
between good habit or no habit, but between good habit and bad. For, as
Professor Bain points out, the characteristic difficulty here lies in
the fact that in the moral life rival tendencies are in constant
competition for mastery over us. The loss of a battle here is therefore
worse than a defeat. It strengthens the enemy, whether this enemy be
some powerful passion, or nothing more than the allurements of an easy
life. It has worse effects still. For if by persistence in well-doing we
all of us create a moral tradition for our individual selves, so do we
by every failure hang in the memory a humiliating and paralysing record
of defeat."
_The Making of Character_, Professor MACCUNN.
"If one surrender himself to Jesus, and is crucified on His cross, there
is no sin he will not overcome, no service he will not render, no virtue
to which he will not attain."
_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
Living in the Present
OCTOBER 27
"Be not anxious about to-morrow. Do to-day's duty, fight to-day's
temptation, and do not weaken and distract yourself by looking forward
to things which you cannot see, and could not understand, if you saw
them."
CHARLES KINGSLEY.
"Do not disturb thyself by thinking of the whole of thy life. Let not
thy thoughts at once embrace all the various troubles which thou mayest
expect to befall thee: but on every occasion ask thyself, What is there
in this which is intolerable and past bearing? for thou wilt be ashamed
to confess. In the next place remember that neither the future nor the
past pains thee, but only the present. But this is reduced to a very
little, if thou only circumscribest it, and chidest thy mind, if it is
unable to hold out against even this."
MARCUS AURELIUS.
"Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as
you can. To-morrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too
high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all
that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on the yesterdays."
EMERSON.
Day by Day
OCTOBER 28
"By trying to take in the idea of life as a whole we only give ourselves
mental indigestion; a day at a time is as much as a man can healthily
swallow."
EDNA LYALL.
"Think that this day will never dawn again.
The heavens are calling you and wheel around you,
Displaying to you their eternal beauties,
And still your eye is looking on the ground."
_The Divine Comedy_, DANTE.
"To-Day is a king in disguise: let us unmask the king as he passes."
EMERSON.
Day by Day
OCTOBER 29
"Lo, here hath been dawning
Another blue day;
Think, wilt thou let it
Slip useless away!"
CARLYLE.
"The perfection of moral character consists in this, in passing every
day as the last, and in being neither violently excited, nor torpid, nor
playing the hypocrite."
MARCUS AURELIUS.
"When night comes, list thy deeds; make plain the way
'Twixt heaven and thee; block it not with delays:
But perfect all before thou sleep'st; then say,
'There's one Sun more strung on my Bead of days.'
What's good store up for Joy, the bad, well scann'd,
Wash off with tears, and get thy Master's hand."
HENRY VAUGHAN.
Gaining or Losing Ground
OCTOBER 30
"Gaining or losing all the time is our condition, morally and
spiritually. We cannot stand utterly still. If we are not improving we
are losing ground. Outside forces compel that, in addition to the forces
that are working within. We are pressing forward and being helped in
that direction, or we are being pressed backward and are yielding to
that pressure. Let us not deceive ourselves with the idea that even
though we are making no progress we are at least holding our own. We can
no more stand still than time can."
"Whose high endeavours are an inward light,
That makes the path before him always bright.
"And through the heat of conflict, keeps the law
In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw.
"Who, not content that former worth stand fast,
Looks forward persevering to the last,
From well to better, daily self-surpassed."
_The Happy Warrior_, WORDSWORTH.
Pressing Forward
OCTOBER 31
"Plutarch records that when Simonides offered to teach Themistocles the
art of memory the latter said: 'Teach me rather the art of forgetting.'
How much the world needs to learn that art. Paul spoke of forgetting the
things that are behind. We should forget our mistakes and failures, so
far as these cause discouragement. We should forget our successes if
they cause pride or preoccupy the mind. We should forget the slights
that have been put upon us or the insults that have been given us. To
remember these is to be weak and miserable, if not worse. He who says he
can forgive but he cannot forget is deceived by the sound of words.
Forgiveness that is genuine involves forgetfulness of the injury. True
forgiveness means a putting away of the wrong behind the back and
remembering it no more. That is what God does when He forgives, and that
is what we all must do if we truly forgive."
"... It is wise to forget past errors. There is a kind of temperament
which, when indulged, greatly hinders growth in real godliness. It is
that rueful, repentant, self-accusing temper, which is always looking
back, and microscopically observing how that which is done might have
been better done. Something of this we ought to have. A Christian ought
to feel always that he has partially failed, but that ought not to be
the only feeling. Faith ought ever to be a sanguine, cheerful thing; and
perhaps in practical life we could not give a better account of faith
than by saying, that it is, amidst much failure, having the heart to
_try again_. Our best deeds are marked by imperfection; but if they
really were our best, 'forget the things that are behind'--we shall do
better next time."
F. W. ROBERTSON.
The Evil of Brooding
NOVEMBER 1
"Throughout the Gospel history we discern our Lord's care to keep men in
a fit condition to serve God by active work. All that would impair their
efficiency is to be shunned. Now, to repine and brood over some past
error cuts the sinews of action; from this the Apostles therefore are
always diverted, and they are to be watchful to prevent others from
sinking into dejection and folding their hands in despair. A man who is
hopeless has no heart for work, but when he is so far encouraged as to
be able to exert himself his despondency soon disappears."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
"Disappointment should always be taken as a stimulant, and never viewed
as a discouragement."
C. B. NEWCOMB.
"I always loved 'At evening time it shall be light,' and I am sure it
comes true to many a young troubled soul, which in its youthful zeal and
impatience cannot help eating its heart out over its own and other
people's failings and imperfections, and has not yet learnt the patience
which comes from realising that in this world we see but the beginning
of things."
Aspiration
NOVEMBER 2
"If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated?"
THOREAU.
"The thing we long for,--That we are
For one transcendent moment!
Before the Present, poor and bare,
Can make its sneering comment!
* * * * *
Longing is God's fresh heavenward will
With our poor earthward striving;
We quench it that we may be still
Content with merely living;
But would we learn that heart's full scope
Which we are hourly wronging,
Our lives must climb from hope to hope
And realise our longing!
* * * * *
Ah! let us hope that to our praise
Good God not only reckons
The moments when we tread His ways,
But when the spirit beckons--
That some slight good is also wrought
Beyond self-satisfaction,
When we are simply good in thought,
Howe'er we fail in action."
LOWELL.
There shall never be one Lost Good
NOVEMBER 3
"Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name?
Builder and Maker, Thou, of houses not made with hands!
What, have fear of change from Thee Who art ever the same?
Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power expands?
There shall never be one lost good! What was shall live as before;
The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;
What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.
All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist,
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist,
When eternity confirms the conception of an hour.
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
Enough that He heard it once; we shall hear it by-and-bye."
_Abt Vogler_, ROBERT BROWNING.
Struggling
NOVEMBER 4
"If what shone afar so grand
Turn to nothing in thy hand,
On again, the virtue lies
In the struggle, not the prize."
R. M. MILNES.
"One would like one's own failures to be one's friends' stepping
stones.... I am trying to teach myself that if one _has_ been working,
one has not necessarily been working to good purpose, and that one may
waste strength and forces of all sorts, as well as time."
_Mrs. Ewing's Letters._
"Rise ... as children learn, be thou
Wiser for falling."
TENNYSON.
True Patience
NOVEMBER 5
"There are those who think it is Christian patience to sit down by the
wayside to endure the storm, crying in themselves, 'God is hard on me,
but I will bear His smiting'; but their endurance is only idleness which
is ignoble, and hiding from the battle which is cowardice. Or they cry,
'I am the victim of Fate, but I will be patient'--as if any one could be
a victim if God be love, or as if there were such a thing as blind fate,
when the order of the world is to lead men into righteousness; when to
be victor and not victim is the main word of that order. No, the
severity of the battle is to force us into self-forgetfulness; and this
lazy resignation, this wailing patience, is mere self-remembrance. The
true patience is activity of faith and hope and righteousness in the
cause of men for the sake of God's love of them; is in glad proclamation
of the gospel; is in wielding the sword of the Truth of God against all
that injures mankind."
_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.
"Wise men ne'er sit and wail their loss,
But cheerly seek how to redress their harms.
What though the mast be now blown overboard,
The cable broke, the holding anchor lost,
And half our sailors swallowed in the flood--
Yet lives our Pilot still."
SHAKESPEARE.
The Appetite for Condolence
NOVEMBER 6
"It is right to exercise a great deal of self-restraint in speaking of
our troubles, and not to let the appetite for condolence grow on us."
_Studies in the Christian Character_, Bishop PAGET.
"Carlyle says, 'My father had one virtue which I should try to
imitate--he never spoke of what was disagreeable and past,' and my
mother was the same; she turned her back at once upon the last months,
which she put away for ever like a sealed volume."
_The Story of my Life_, AUGUSTUS HARE.
"Hacket's motto, 'Serve God and be cheerful.'"
"The Sharp Ferule of Calamity"
NOVEMBER 7
"It is to keep a man awake, to keep him alive to his own soul and its
fixed design of righteousness, that the better part of moral and
religious education is directed; not only that of words and doctors, but
the sharp ferule of calamity under which we are all God's scholars till
we die."
_The Life of R. L. Stevenson_, GRAHAM BALFOUR.
"The best help is not to bear the troubles of others for them, but to
inspire them with courage and energy to bear their burdens for
themselves and meet the difficulties of life bravely."
Lord AVEBURY.
The Essentials of Happiness
NOVEMBER 8
"We weigh ourselves down with burdens of sorrow which are the results of
our selfish thoughts and selfish desires; and every one of these burdens
lessens our power to live righteously in ourselves, and to live usefully
for others."
_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.
"When you find yourself overpowered, as it were by melancholy, the best
way is to go out, and do something kind to somebody or other."
_Letters of Spiritual Counsel_, KEBLE.
"The grand essentials of happiness are, something to do, something to
love, and something to hope for."
CHALMERS.
"Happiness is easy when we have learnt to renounce."
MME. DE STAËL.
Unrest
NOVEMBER 9
"Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only
begins for man with self-surrender."
_Amiel's Journal._
"What are the chief causes of _Unrest_? If you know yourself, you will
answer Pride, Selfishness, Ambition. As you look back upon the past
years of your life, is it not true that its unhappiness has chiefly come
from the succession of personal mortifications and almost trivial
disappointments which the intercourse of life has brought you? Great
trials come at lengthened intervals, and we rise to breast them; but it
is the petty friction of our everyday life with one another, the jar of
business or of work, the discord of the domestic circle, the collapse of
our ambition, the crossing of our will, the taking down of our conceit,
which make inward peace impossible. Wounded vanity, then, disappointed
hopes, unsatisfied selfishness--these are the old, vulgar, universal
sources of man's unrest."
_Pax Vobiscum_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
Rest
NOVEMBER 10
"Now, what is the first step towards the winning of that rest? It is the
giving up of self-will and the receiving of God's will as our own--and
what that means is clear. It is to make our life at one with God's
character, with justice and purity, with truth and love, with mercy and
joy. It is the surrender of our own pleasure and the making of God's
desire for us the master of our life. That is the first step--a
direction of the soul to God. The second has to do with mankind. It is
the replacing of all self-love by the love of our fellow-men; a
direction of the soul to God through man.
"These two ways are in reality one; and there is no other way, if we
search the whole world over, in which we may attain rest. Simple as it
sounds, it is the very last way many of us seek. We fight against this
truth, and it has to be beaten into us by pain. Clear as it seems, it is
a secret which is as difficult to discover as the Elixir of Life, but it
is so difficult because we do not will to discover it."
_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.
The Duty of Happiness
NOVEMBER 11
"I cannot think but that the world would be better and brighter if our
teachers would dwell on the Duty of Happiness as well as the Happiness
of Duty."
Lord AVEBURY.
"Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many; not
on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some."
DICKENS.
"Half the world is on the wrong scent in the pursuit of happiness. They
think it consists in having and getting, and in being served by others.
It consists in giving and in serving others."
HENRY DRUMMOND.
Discontent
NOVEMBER 12
"He or she that is idle, be they of what condition they will, never so
rich, so well allied, fortunate, happy--let them have all things in
abundance and felicity that heart can wish and desire,--all
contentment--so long as he, or she, or they are idle, they shall never
be pleased, never well in mind or body, but weary still, sickly still,
vexed still, loathing still, weeping, sighing, grieving, suspecting,
offended with the world, with every object, wishing themselves gone or
dead, or else carried away with some foolish phantasy or other."
BURTON.
"We are never more discontented with others than when we are
discontented with ourselves. The consciousness of wrong-doing makes us
irritable, and our heart in its cunning quarrels with what is outside
it, in order that it may deafen the clamour within."
_Amiel's Journal._
"Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble
up, if thou wilt ever dig."
MARCUS AURELIUS.
Self-centred People
NOVEMBER 13
"It is self-centred people that are lonely--the richer the gift, the
richer the giver. No one was ever the worse for giving."
F. F. MONTRÉSOR.
"Misanthropy is always traceable to some vicious experience or
imperception--to some false reading in the lore of right and wrong, or
it proceeds from positive defects in ourselves, from a departure from
things simple and pure, whereby we forfeit happiness without losing the
sense of the proper basis on which it rests; yet even thus perverted by
the prejudices of the world, we still find a soothing pleasure in
contemplating that happiness which belongs to simplicity and virtue."
ACTON.
"The largest and most comprehensive natures are generally the most
cheerful, the most loving, the most hopeful, the most trustful. It is
the wise man, of large vision, who is the quickest to discern the moral
sunshine gleaming through the darkest cloud."
Contentment
NOVEMBER 14
"Contentment comes neither by culture nor by wishing; it is
reconciliation with our lot, growing out of an inward superiority to our
surroundings."
J. K. MCLEAN.
"If you wish to be miserable, think about yourself, about what you want,
what you like, what respect people ought to pay you; and then to you
nothing will be pure. You will spoil everything you touch, you will make
misery for yourself out of everything which God sends you: you will be
as wretched as you choose."
CHARLES KINGSLEY.
"Do not let your head run upon that which is none of your own, but pick
out some of the best of your circumstances, and consider how eagerly you
would wish for them, were they not in your possession."
MARCUS AURELIUS.
Contentment
NOVEMBER 15
"Man seeks pleasure and self--great unforeseen results follow. Man seeks
God and others--and there follows pleasure."
ARNOLD TOYNBEE.
"The true felicity of life is to be free from perturbations; to
understand our duties towards God and man; to enjoy the present without
any serious dependence upon the future. Not to amuse ourselves with
either hopes or fears, but to rest satisfied with what we have. The
great blessings of mankind are within our reach; but we shut our eyes,
and, like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search
for, without finding it. Tranquillity is the state of human perfection,
it raises us as high as we can go, and makes every man his own
supporter; whereas he that is borne up by anything else may fall. He
that judges right and perseveres in it, enjoys a perpetual calm; he
takes a true prospect of things; he observes an order, measure, a
decorum in all his actions; he has a benevolence in his nature; and
squares his life according to reason, and draws to himself love and
admiration. Without a certain and unchangeable judgment, all the rest is
but fluctuation. Liberty and serenity of mind must necessarily ensue
upon the mastering of those things which either allure or affright us,
when, instead of those flashy pleasures we shall find ourselves
possessed of joys transporting and everlasting."
SENECA.
"Nothing can bring you peace but yourself, nothing can bring you peace
but the triumph of principle."
EMERSON.
Discontent
NOVEMBER 16
"Discontent is want of self-reliance; it is infirmity of will."
EMERSON.
"To repel one's cross is to make it heavier."
_Amiel's Journal._
"She had that rare sense which discerns what is unalterable; and submits
to it without murmuring."
GEORGE ELIOT.
"But for me,
What good I see, humbly I seek to do,
And live obedient to the Law, in trust
That what will come and shall come, must come well."
_The Light of Asia_, E. ARNOLD.
Magnifying Troubles
NOVEMBER 17
"Another weight is the cares of life. We keep so many which we might
shake off, that it is more than pitiful. We encourage fears for our
life, our future, our wealth, till all our days are harassed out of
peace, till the very notion of trust in God is an absurdity. We waste
life away in petty details, spending infinite trouble on transient
things, magnifying the gnats of life into elephants, tormenting
ourselves and others over household disturbances, children, servants,
little losses, foolish presentiments, our state of health, our
finances,--till every one around us is infected with our disease of fret
and worry. This is indeed to weight our soul. Our life with God, our
work for man, are dragged to earth."
_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.
"I pack my troubles in as little compass as I can for myself, and never
let them annoy others."
SOUTHEY.
Bearing Trouble
NOVEMBER 18
"Once open the door to trouble, and its visits are three-fold; first,
anticipation; second, in actual presence; third, in living it over
again. Therefore never anticipate trouble, make as little of its
presence as possible, forget it as soon as past."
"It is better to employ our minds in bearing the ills we have, than in
providing against those which may never befall us."
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
"Let us be of good cheer, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to
bear are those which never come."
LOWELL.
"If you want to be cheerful, jes' set yer mind on it an' do it. Can't
none of us help what traits we start out in life with, but we kin help
what we end up with. When things first got to goin' wrong with me, I
says, 'Oh, Lord, whatever comes, keep me from gettin' sour.'... Since
then I've made it a practice to put all my worries down in the bottom of
my heart, then set on the lid an' smile."
_Lovey Mary_, ALICE HEGAN RICE.
The Secret of the Joy of Living
NOVEMBER 19
"We live not in our moments or our years--
The Present we fling from us like the rind
Of some sweet Future, which we after find
Bitter to taste, or bind that in with fears,
And water it beforehand with our tears--
Vain tears for that which never may arrive:
Meanwhile the joy whereby we ought to live,
Neglected or unheeded, disappears.
Wiser it were to welcome and make ours
Whate'er of good, tho' small, the present brings--
Kind greetings, sunshine, song of birds, and flowers,
With a child's pure delight in little things;
And of the griefs unborn to rest secure,
Knowing that mercy ever will endure."
Archbishop TRENCH.
"The secret of the joy of living is the proper appreciation of what we
actually possess."
Causes of Thankfulness
NOVEMBER 20
"I sleep, I eat and drink, I read and meditate, I walk in my neighbour's
pleasant fields, and see the varieties of natural beauties, and delight
in all that in which God delights--that is, in virtue and wisdom, in the
whole creation, and in God Himself. And he that hath so many causes of
joy, and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness, who
loses all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down upon his little
handful of thorns."
JEREMY TAYLOR.
"Where much is given, much shall be required. There are never privileges
to enjoy without corresponding duties to fulfil in return."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"Thou that hast given so much to me,
Give one thing more--a grateful heart."
GEORGE HERBERT.
Causes of Thankfulness
NOVEMBER 21
ON LEAVING A HOME FOR INCURABLES
"It didn't seem much to be able to walk away, to look back, to remember
what we had seen; and yet how is it that we are not on our knees in
gratitude and thankfulness for every active motion of the body, every
word we speak, every intelligent experience and interest that passes
through our minds?"
Miss THACKERAY.
"Nothing raises the price of a blessing like its removal; whereas, it
was its continuance which should have taught us its value."
HANNAH MORE.
"O God, animate us to cheerfulness! May we have a joyful sense of our
blessings, learn to look on the bright circumstances of our lot, and
maintain a perpetual contentedness."
CHANNING.
Grumbling
NOVEMBER 22
"His eyes were bright with intelligence and trained powers of
observation; and they were beautiful with kindliness, and with the
well-bred habit of giving complete attention to other people and their
affairs when he talked with them. He had a rare smile ... but the real
beauty of such mouths as his comes from the lips being restrained into
firm and sensitive lines, through years of self-control and fine
sympathies.... Under-bred and ill-educated women are, as a general rule,
much less good-looking than well-bred and highly-educated ones,
especially in middle life; not because good features and pretty
complexions belong to one class more than to another, but because nicer
personal habits and stricter discipline of the mind do.... And if, into
the bargain, a woman has nothing to talk about but her own and her
neighbour's everyday affairs, and nothing to think about to keep her
from continually talking, life, my dear child, is so full of little
rubs, that constant chatter of this kind must almost certainly be
constant grumbling. And constant grumbling makes an ugly under-lip, a
forehead wrinkled with frowning, and dull eyes that see nothing but
grievances."
_A Bad Habit_, Mrs. EWING.
Grumbling
NOVEMBER 23
"Cultivate the habit of never putting disagreeables into words, even if
it be only the weather which is in question; also of never drawing other
people's attention to words or things which will irritate them."
LUCY SOULSBY.
"A cucumber is bitter--Throw it away.--There are briars in the
road--Turn aside from them.--This is enough. Do not add, And why were
such things made in the world?"
MARCUS AURELIUS.
"Patience under adverse circumstances will often bring about favourable
results, while complaint only accentuates and fixes the cause of
complaint. Avoid mention of the disagreeable things that may come into
your life. If you cannot be patient you can at least be silent. The
secret of success lies not so much in knowing what to say as in what to
avoid saying."
Grumbling
NOVEMBER 24
"If you have not slept, or if you have slept, or if you have a headache,
or sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder-stroke, I beseech you by all the
angels to hold your peace, and not pollute the morning, to which all the
housemates bring serene and pleasant thoughts, by corruptions and
groans."
EMERSON.
"Walk thy way greatly! So do thou endure
Thy small, thy narrow, dwarfed and cankered life,
That soothing Patience shall be half the cure
For ills that lesser souls keep sore with strife."
C. GREENE.
"Our personal interests, by the force of their importunity, exclude all
larger sympathies if these are not already matured before the conflict
begins. In the press of the world we lose sight of life, if the life is
not within us."
Bishop WESTCOTT.
Grumblers
NOVEMBER 25
"There is a sect, unfortunately known to most in this land, under the
denomination of Grumblers, whose fundamental maxim is--whatever is, is
wrong. Wherever they are found, and they are found almost everywhere,
they operate as a social poison; and though they contrive to embitter
the enjoyments of everybody about them, they perpetually assume that
themselves are the only aggrieved persons, and with such art as to be
believed, till thoroughly known. They have often some excellent
qualities, and the appearance of many amiable ones; but rank selfishness
is their chief characteristic, accompanied by inordinate pride and
vanity. They have a habit of laying the consequences of their own sins,
whether of omission or of commission, upon others; and, covered with
faults, they flatter themselves they 'walk blameless.' Where their
selfishness, pride, or vanity are interested, they exhibit signs of
boundless zeal, attention, and affection, to which those who are not
aware of their motives, are the dupes; but the very moment their
predominant feelings are offended, they change from April to December.
They have smiles and tears at command for their holiday humour; but in
'the winter of their discontent,' there is no safety from the bitterest
blasts. Their grievances are seldom real, or if real, are grossly
exaggerated, and are generally attributed to themselves; for, absorbed
in their own feelings, they are wonderful losers of opportunities. In
conclusion, I think it would be for their advantage, as it certainly
would be for that of the rest of the world, if they were made subject to
some severe discipline; and I would suggest for the first, second, and
third offence, bread and water and the treadmill, for one, two, and
three months respectively; for the fourth offence, transportation for
seven years to Boothia Felix, or some such climate; and any subsequent
delinquency I would make capital, and cause the criminal to be shut up
with some offender in equal degree, there to grumble each other to
death."
_The Original_, THOMAS WALKER.
Cheerfulness
NOVEMBER 26
"'Tis a Dutch proverb that 'paint costs nothing,' such are its
preserving qualities in damp climates. Well, sunshine costs less, yet is
finer pigment. And so of cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is
spent, the more of it remains."
EMERSON.
"Mirth is like a flash of lightning that breaks through a gloom of
clouds and glitters for a moment. Cheerfulness keeps up a kind of
daylight in the mind and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity."
ADDISON.
"Always laugh when you can; it is a cheap medicine. Merriment is a
philosophy not well understood. It is the sunny side of existence."
BYRON.
"Fortune will call at the smiling gate."
Japanese Proverb.
Humour
NOVEMBER 27
"The sense of humour is the oil of life's engine. Without it, the
machinery creaks and groans. No lot is so hard, no aspect of things is
so grim, but it relaxes before a hearty laugh."
G. S. MERRIAM.
"It was a novel with a purpose, and its purpose was to show that it is
only by righteousness that men and nations prevail; also that there is
much that is humorous in life as well as much that is holy, and that
healing virtue lies in laughter as well as in prayers and tears."
_Isabel Carnaby_, ELLEN THORNEYCROFT FOWLER.
"I dare not tell you how high I rate humour, which is generally most
fruitful in the highest and most solemn human spirits. Dante is full of
it, Shakespeare, Cervantes, and almost all the greatest have been
pregnant with this glorious power. You will find it even in the Gospel
of Christ."
_Tennyson--a Memoir_, by his Son.
Humour
NOVEMBER 28
"Gird up the loins of your mind, be sober."
1 PETER i. 13.
"A merry heart doeth good like a medicine."
PROV. xvii. 22.
"Gravity ... I mean simply that grave and serious way of looking at life
which, while it never repels the true light-heartedness of pure and
trustful hearts, welcomes into a manifest sympathy the souls of men who
are oppressed and burdened, anxious and full of questions which for the
time at least have banished all laughter from their faces.... Gravity
has a delicate power of discrimination. It attracts all that it can
help, and it repels all that could harm it or be harmed by it. It admits
the earnest and simple with a cordial welcome. It shuts out the
impertinent and insincere inexorably.
"The gravity of which I speak is not inconsistent with the keenest
perception of the ludicrous side of things. It is more than consistent
with--it is even necessary to--humour. Humour involves the perception of
the true proportions of life.... It has softened the bitterness of
controversy a thousand times. You cannot encourage it too much. You
cannot grow too familiar with the books of all ages which have in them
the truest humour, for the truest humour is the bloom of the highest
life. Read George Eliot and Thackeray, and, above all, Shakespeare. They
will help you to keep from extravagances without fading into insipidity.
They will preserve your gravity while they save you from pompous
solemnity."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
Beauties of Nature
NOVEMBER 29
"There are few of us that are not rather ashamed of our sins and follies
as we look out on the blessed morning sunlight, which comes to us like a
bright-winged angel beckoning us to quit the old path of vanity that
stretches its dreary length behind us."
GEORGE ELIOT.
"That man is blessed who every day is permitted to behold anything so
pure and serene as the western sky at sunset, while revolutions vex the
world."
THOREAU.
"So then believe that every bird that sings,
And every flower that stars the elastic sod,
And every thought the happy summer brings
To the pure spirit is a word of God."
COLERIDGE.
Sense of the Beautiful
NOVEMBER 30
"No man receives the true culture of a man in whom the sensibility to
the beautiful is not cherished; and I know of no condition in life from
which it should be excluded. Of all luxuries this is cheapest and the
most to hand; and it seems to me to be the most important to those
conditions where coarse labour tends to give a grossness to the mind.
From the diffusion of the sense of beauty in ancient Greece, and of the
taste for music in modern Germany, we learn that the people at large may
partake of refined gratifications which have hitherto been thought to be
necessarily restricted to a few."
CHANNING.
"Music--there is something very wonderful in music. Words are wonderful
enough, but music is more wonderful. It speaks not to our thoughts as
words do, it speaks straight to our hearts and spirits, to the very core
and root of our souls. Music soothes us, stirs us up; it puts noble
feelings into us; it melts us to tears, we know not how; it is a
language by itself, just as perfect, in its way, as speech, as words;
just as divine, just as blessed. Music has been called the speech of
angels; I will go farther, and call it the speech of God Himself.
"The old Greeks, the wisest of all the heathen, made a point of teaching
their children music, because, they said, it taught them not to be
self-willed and fanciful, but to see the beauty of order, the usefulness
of rule, the divineness of law."
_Good News of God Sermons_, CHARLES KINGSLEY.
The Gospel of Beauty
DECEMBER 1
"Beauty is far too much neglected. It never belongs to criticism; it
ought by right to be always bound up with creation. What it is, is hard
to define; but, whenever anything in nature or in the thoughts and
doings of man awakens a noble desire of seeing more of it; kindles pure
love of it; seems to open out before us an infinite of it which allures
us into an endless pursuit; stimulates reverence, and makes the heart
leap with joy--there is beauty, and with it always is imagination, the
shaping power.
"The capacity for seeing beauty with the heart is one of the first
necessities for such a life in a living world as I now urge upon you.
When you see it, you always see more and more of it. And the more you
see it, the more love and reverence you will feel in your heart; and the
less you will care to criticise, and the more you will care to create.
The world needs it now, and the glory of it, more almost than anything
else, for nearly all the world has lost the power of seeing it. The
monied men want it; the scientific men want it; the artists themselves
have of late betrayed it; the business men want it. The middle-class and
the aristocracy are almost destitute of it; the working men abide in
conditions in which its outward forms are absent. To give them the power
to see all that is lovely in nature, in human thought, in art, and in
the noble acts of men--that is a great part of your work, and you should
realise it, and shape it day by day."
_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.
Nature
DECEMBER 2
"To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or
company, nature is medicinal, and restores their tone. The tradesman,
the attorney, comes out of the din and craft of the street, and sees the
sky and the woods, and is a man again. In their eternal calm, he finds
himself."
EMERSON.
"Nature is loved by what is best in us."
EMERSON.
"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees
on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the
clouds float across the sky, is by no means waste of time."
Lord AVEBURY.
Nature
DECEMBER 3
"The unobtrusive influences of earth, sea, and sky do their work. They
pass imperceptibly and unsought into the soul."
"... Outdoor sights
Sweep gradual gospels in."
"Bid me work, but may no tie
Keep me from the open sky" (Barnes).
_The Making of Character_, Professor MACCUNN.
"The cheerfulness of heart which springs up in us from the survey of
Nature's works, is an admirable preparation for gratitude. The mind has
gone a great way towards praise and thanksgiving that is filled with
such a secret gladness: a grateful reflection on the Supreme Cause who
produces it, sanctifies the soul, and gives it its proper value. Such an
habitual disposition of mind consecrates every field and wood, turns an
ordinary walk into a morning or evening sacrifice, and will improve
those transient gleams of joy, which naturally brighten up and refresh
the soul on such occasions, into an inviolable and perpetual state of
bliss and happiness."
ADDISON.
Holidays
DECEMBER 4
"There are only two rules for a successful holiday; the first is to earn
it, the second is to have just enough holiday to make the prospect of
work pleasant. Periods of rest we all need, but labour and not rest is
the synonym of life. From these periods of rest we should return with a
new appetite for the duties of common life. If we return dissatisfied,
enervated, without heart for work, we may be sure our holiday has been a
failure. If we return with the feeling that it is good to plunge into
the mid-stream of life again, we may know by this sign that we are
morally braced and strengthened by our exodus. The wise man will never
allow his holiday to be a time of mere idleness. He will turn again to
the books that interest him, he will touch the fringe of some science
for which his holiday gives him opportunity, or he will plunge into
physical recreation, and shake off the evil humours of the body in
active exercise. The failure of holidays lies very much in the fact that
nothing of this sort is attempted. The holiday is simply a series of
aimless days, and the natural result is _ennui_. The supreme purpose of
a holiday should be to regain possession of ourselves. He who does this
comes back from his holiday as from a sanctuary."
W. J. DAWSON.
Books
DECEMBER 5
"But what strange art, what magic can dispose
The troubled mind to change its native woes?
Or lead us willing from ourselves, to see
Others more wretched, more undone than we?
This, Books can do;--nor this alone, they give
New views to life, and teach us how to live;
They soothe the grieved, the stubborn they chastise,
Fools they admonish, and confirm the wise:
Their aid they yield to all: they never shun
The man of sorrow, nor the wretch undone:
Unlike the hard, the selfish and the proud,
They fly not sullen from the suppliant crowd;
Nor tell to various people various things,
But show to subjects, what they show to kings."
_The Library_, CRABBE.
Books
DECEMBER 6
"Narrowness may be met by recourse to the larger life revealed in
Literature. There is no stronger plea for Biography, Drama, or Romance,
or for any imaginative expansion of interests, than that founded upon
the need for them as counteractives of the pitiable contractedness of
outlook begotten of Division of Labour."
_The Making of Character_, Professor MACCUNN.
"When I consider what some books have done for the world, and what they
are doing, how they keep up our hope, awaken new courage and faith,
soothe pain, give an ideal life to those whose hours are cold and hard,
bind together distant ages and foreign lands, create new worlds of
beauty, bring down truth from heaven; I give eternal blessings for this
gift, and thank God for books."
JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE.
Reading
DECEMBER 7
"Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is
thinking makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it
is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections; unless
we chew them over again they will not give us strength and nourishment."
LOCKE.
"In the course of our reading we should lay up in our minds a store of
goodly thoughts in well-wrought words, which should be a living treasure
of knowledge always with us, and from which, at various times, and
amidst all the shifting of circumstances, we might be sure of drawing
some comfort, guidance, and sympathy."
HELPS.
The Object of Education
DECEMBER 8
"We shall be agreed, I assume, that the object of Education is to train
for life, and not for a special occupation; to train the whole man for
all life, for life seen and unseen, for the unseen through the seen and
in the seen; to train _men_ in a word and not _craftsmen_, to train
citizens for the Kingdom of God. As we believe in God and the world to
come, these must be master thoughts.
"We shall be agreed further that with this object in view, education
must be so ordered as to awaken, to call into play, to develop, to
direct, to strengthen powers of sense and intellect and spirit, not of
one but of all: to give alertness and accuracy to observation: to supply
fulness and precision to language: to arouse intelligent sympathy with
every form of study and occupation: to set the many parts and aspects of
the world before the growing scholar in their unity: to open the eyes of
the heart to the eternal of which the temporal is the transitory sign.
"We shall be agreed again that the elements of restraint alike and of
personal development which enter into education will be used to
harmonise the social and individual instincts, and to inspire the young,
when impressions are most easy and most enduring, with the sense of
fellowship and the passion for service.
"We shall be agreed once more that the noblest fruit of education is
character, and not acquirements: character which makes the simplest life
rich and beneficent, character which for a Christian is determined by a
true vision of God, _of whom, through whom, unto whom, are all things_."
_Christian Social Union Addresses_, Bishop WESTCOTT.
The Object of Education
DECEMBER 9
"The entire object of true education is to make people not merely _do_
the right things, but enjoy the right things--not merely industrious,
but to love industry--not merely learned, but to love knowledge--not
merely pure, but to love purity--not merely just, but to hunger and
thirst after justice."
_The Crown of Wild Olive_, JOHN RUSKIN.
"Our great mistake in education is, as it seems to me, the worship of
book-learning--the confusion of instruction and education. We strain the
memory instead of cultivating the mind.... The important thing is not so
much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be
given the wish to learn.... If we succeed in giving the love of
learning, the learning itself is sure to follow."
Lord AVEBURY.
A Happy Childhood
DECEMBER 10
"A happy childhood is one of the best gifts that parents have it in
their power to bestow; second only to implanting the habit of obedience
which puts the child in training for the habit of obeying himself, later
on."
_Diana Tempest_, MARY CHOLMONDELEY.
"The main duty of those who care for the young is to secure their
wholesome, their entire growth; for health is just the development of
the whole nature in its due sequences and proportions: first the
blade--then the ear--then, and not till then, the full corn in the ear;
and thus, as Dr. Temple wisely says, 'not to forget wisdom in teaching
knowledge.' If the blade be forced, and usurp the capital it inherits;
if it be robbed by you, its guardian, of its birthright, or squandered
like a spendthrift, then there is not any ear, much less any corn; if
the blade be blasted or dwarfed in our haste and greed for the full
shock and its price, we spoil all three. It is not easy to keep this
always before one's mind, that the young 'idea' is in a young body, and
that healthy growth and harmless passing of the time are more to be
cared for than what is vainly called accomplishment."
Dr. JOHN BROWN.
Moral Education
December 11
"Remember that the aim of your discipline should be to produce a
_self-governing_ being, not to produce a being to be _governed by
others_. Were your children fated to pass their lives as slaves, you
could not too much accustom them to slavery during their childhood; but
as they are by-and-by to be free men, with no one to control their daily
conduct, you cannot too much accustom them to self-control while they
are still under your eye. This is it which makes the system of
discipline by natural consequences so especially appropriate to the
social state which we in England have now reached. In feudal times, when
one of the chief evils the citizen had to fear was the anger of his
superiors, it was well that during childhood parental vengeance should
be a chief means of government. But now that the citizen has little to
fear from any one--now that the good or evil which he experiences is
mainly that which in the order of things results from his own conduct,
he should from his first years begin to learn, experimentally, the good
or evil consequences which naturally follow this or that conduct. Aim,
therefore, to diminish the parental government, as fast as you can
substitute for it in your child's mind that self-government arising from
a foresight of results....
"All transitions are dangerous; and the most dangerous is the transition
from the restraint of the family circle to the non-restraint of the
world. Hence the importance of pursuing the policy we advocate, which,
by cultivating a boy's faculty of self-restraint, by continually
increasing the degree in which he is left to his self-restraint, and by
so bringing him, step by step, to a state of unaided self-restraint,
obliterates the ordinary sudden and hazardous change from
externally-governed youth to internally-governed maturity. Let the
history of your domestic rule typify, in little, the history of our
political rule. At the outset, autocratic control, where control is
really needful; by-and-by an incipient constitutionalism, in which the
liberty of the subject gains some express recognition; successive
extensions of this liberty of the subject, gradually ending in parental
abdication."
_Education_, HERBERT SPENCER.
Moral Education
DECEMBER 12
"Self-government with tenderness,--here you have the condition of all
authority over children. The child must discover in us no passion, no
weakness of which he can make use; he must feel himself powerless to
deceive or to trouble us; then he will recognise in us his natural
superiors, and he will attach a special value to our kindness, because
he will respect it. The child who can rouse in us anger, or impatience,
or excitement, feels himself stronger than we, and a child only respects
strength. The mother should consider herself as her child's sun, a
changeless and ever radiant world, whither the small restless creature,
quick at tears and laughter, light, fickle, passionate, full of storms,
may come for fresh stores of light, warmth and electricity, of calm and
of courage. The mother represents goodness, providence, law; that is to
say, the divinity under that form of it which is accessible to
childhood. If she is herself passionate, she will inculcate on her child
a capricious and despotic God, or even several discordant gods. The
religion of a child depends on what its mother and its father are, and
not on what they say. The inner and unconscious ideal which guides their
life is precisely what touches the child; their words, their
remonstrances, their punishments, their bursts of feeling, even, are for
him merely thunder and comedy; what they worship--this it is which his
instinct divines and reflects.
"The child sees what we are, behind what we wish to be. Hence his
reputation as a physiognomist. He extends his power as far as he can
with each of us; he is the most subtle of diplomatists. Unconsciously he
passes under the influence of each person about him, and reflects it
while transforming it after his own nature. He is a magnifying mirror.
This is why the first principle of education is: train yourself; and the
first rule to follow if you wish to possess yourself of a child's will
is: master your own."
_Amiel's Journal._
Moral Education
DECEMBER 13
"All wise teachers, I believe, recognise now that the best way of
dealing with naughty children is to absorb their whole attention with
some _interest_, which will not only leave no energy to spare for
naughtiness, but will of itself tend to organise their minds, to
subordinate mental elements to a _purpose_, and so to develop
character."
_The Standard of Life_, Mrs. BERNARD BOSANQUET.
"Discipline, like the bridle in the hand of a good rider, should
exercise its influence without appearing to do so, should be ever
active, both as a support and as a restraint, yet seem to lie easily in
hand. It must be always ready to check or to pull up, as occasion may
require; and only when the horse is a runaway, should the action of the
curb be perceptible."
_Guesses at Truth_, edited by Archdeacon HARE.
"If 'Pas trop gouverner' is the best rule in politics, it is equally
true of discipline."
_Children's Rights_, KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN.
Punishment
DECEMBER 14
"Punishments, then, must in the first place be proportionate to the
offence, lest, by an undiscriminating severity or an undiscriminating
leniency, distinctions of moral desert be blurred or effaced.
"_Secondly_, they must be analogous to the offence. The greedy must be
starved, the insolent humbled, the idle compelled to work. Otherwise the
imposition will not effectually go home to the offender.
"_Thirdly_, punishments ought to be exemplary. Since they needs must
come, it is not enough that they should simply open the eyes of the
culprit, by giving him his deserts. They must be utilised as
object-lessons for the behoof of that large class, the culprits in
potentiality.
"_Fourthly_, they ought to be economical. 'It is good that they should
suffer,' we sometimes say; and so it is, so long as suffering, in itself
always an evil, do not exceed the quantum that is lamentably needful,
needful, that is, to vindicate authority, to stigmatise the offence, and
to impress the offender.
"_Fifthly_, punishments ought to be reformatory. Not only must they
never, by vindictiveness in him who gives, and degradation in him who
receives, impair the instincts and resolves for a better life; they must
be devised in the belief, or at least in the hope, that these instincts
and resolves exist, though they may be inhibited by the evil
proclivities which punishment is meant to crush. The killing of what is
bad must always look to the liberation of what is good.
"_Finally_, punishments ought to insist upon, and to define indemnity,
so that the wrong-doer, in things small or great, may be forced to
repair, so far as this is possible, the irreparable mischief which
offence implies."
_The Making of Character_, Professor MACCUNN.
Rebuking
DECEMBER 15
"The gentleness of our Lord in rebuking, has an effect which gentleness
often has, it awakens compunctions in those to whom it is shown. A
child, who by severity is set on its defence or drawn into falsehood, is
often melted into full confession by being loved and trusted more than
it deserves."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
"Our Lord's reply is again gentle; to be hard on a fault that was
confessed would have dried up that confidence which flowed so freely."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
"Better make penitents by gentleness than hypocrites by severity."
S. FRANCIS DE SALES.
Example
DECEMBER 16
"Children have more need of models than of critics."
JOUBERT.
"It is by imitation, far more than by precept, that we learn everything;
and what we learn thus we acquire not only more effectually, but more
pleasantly. This forms our manners, our opinions, our lives."
BURKE.
"Meanwhile there is much that we can do. It need not be said that home
is the most effective school of character. On the duties of home I
cannot dwell now. But there is a more general influence of common tone
and habits of which serious account ought to be taken. We are at all
times unconsciously educating others by our own example. Our standard of
duty in the discharge of business and in the use of leisure necessarily
influences the desires and the actions of those who look to us for
guidance. The young are quick-eyed critics, and the sight of quiet
devotion to work, of pleasure sought in common things--and all truly
precious things are common--will enforce surely and silently some great
lessons of school. We do not, as far as I can judge, rate highly enough
our responsibility for the customary practices of society. Not
infrequently we neutralise our teaching through want of imagination by
failing to follow out the consequences of some traditional custom. We
seem to be inconsiderate when we are only ignorant."
Bishop WESTCOTT.
Wealth
DECEMBER 17
"Christ did not denounce wealth any more than He denounced pauperism. He
did not abhor money; He used it. He did not abhor the company of rich
men; He sought it. He did not invariably scorn or even resent a certain
profuseness of expenditure. With a fine discrimination, He, while
habitually discouraging it, yet recognised that, here and there, there
was place for it. What he denounced was the _love_ of, the _lust_ of
riches; the vulgar snobbishness that chose exclusively the fellowship or
the ways of rich men; the habit of extravagance; in one word, greed and
luxury and self-indulgence. He taught men, first of all and last of all,
that they were stewards, that in the final analysis of men and things
neither they nor theirs were their own.
* * * * *
We must not only affirm the brotherhood of man: we must live it. For
then the State, and in the State, the home, the Church, and the
individual shall become the incarnation of a regenerated humanity, and
earth, this earth, our earth, here and to-day, the vestibule of heaven!"
_The Citizen in Relation to the Industrial Situation_,
Bishop POTTER.
The Limit of Luxury
DECEMBER 18
"The expenditure of money is no easy matter. It is wrong to let the poor
want. It is wrong to starve the nature which asks for other things than
food. There is only one principle of guidance. Whatever is done must be
done in thought for others, and not in thought for ourselves. Money on
luxuries which end in ourselves is wrongly spent; money spent on
luxuries--on scents, sounds and sights--which directly or indirectly
pass on to others is rightly spent. The limit of luxury is the power of
sharing."
_The Service of God_, Canon BARNETT.
"All that depends on individual choice--our recreations, our
expenditure--can be brought to one test, which we are generally able to
apply: Does this or that help me to do my work more effectively? To us
most literally, even if the confession overwhelms us with shame,
whatsoever is not of faith is sin."
Bishop WESTCOTT.
"Imitate a little child.... While you gather and use this world's goods
with one hand, always let your other be fast in your Heavenly Father's
hand, and look round from time to time, and make sure that He is
satisfied."
S. FRANCIS DE SALES.
Expenditure
DECEMBER 19
"I will take heart to lay down what I hold to be a fundamental rule,
that, while we endeavour to gain the largest and keenest power of
appreciating all that is noblest in nature and art and literature, we
must seek to live on as little as will support the full vigour of our
life and work. The standard cannot be fixed. It will necessarily vary,
within certain limits, according to the nature and office of each man.
But generally we shall strive diligently to suppress all wants which do
not tend through their satisfaction to create a nobler type of manhood,
and individually we shall recognise no wants which do not express what
is required for the due cultivation of our own powers and the fulfilment
of that which we owe to others. We shall guard ourselves against the
temptations of artificial wants which the ingenuity of producers offers
in seductive forms. We shall refuse to admit that the caprice of fashion
represents any valuable element in our constitution, or calls into play
any faculties which would otherwise be unused, or encourages industry.
On the contrary, we shall see in the dignity and changelessness of
Eastern dress a typical condemnation of our restless inconstancy. We
shall perceive, and act as perceiving, that the passion for novelty is
morally and materially wasteful: that it distracts and confuses our
power of appreciating true beauty: that it tends to the constant
displacement of labour: that it produces instability both in the
manufacture and in the sale of goods to the detriment of economy. We
shall, to sum up all in one master-principle, estimate value and costs
in terms of life, as Mr. Ruskin has taught us; and, accepting this
principle, we shall seek nothing of which the cost to the producer so
measured exceeds the gain to ourselves."
_Christian Social Union Addresses_, Bishop WESTCOTT.
Money
DECEMBER 20
"If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man
cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that wealth may be said
to possess him."
BACON.
"The covetous man is like the camel, with a great haunch on his back;
heaven's gate must be made higher and broader, or he will hardly get
in."
ADAMS.
"Who shuts his hand hath lost his gold,
Who opens it hath it twice told."
GEORGE HERBERT.
"Wealth in every form, material, intellectual, moral, has to be
administered for the common good. God only can say of any possession 'My
own.'"
Bishop WESTCOTT.
Courage to be Poor
DECEMBER 21
"How the sting of poverty, or small means, is gone when one keeps house
for one's own comfort, and not for the comfort of one's neighbours."
DINAH MARIA MULOCH.
"I wish that more of us had the courage to be poor; that the world had
not gone mad after fashion and display; but so it is, and the blessings
we might have are lost in the effort to get those which lie outside the
possible."
ALICE CAREY.
"To have what we want is riches; but to be able to do without is power."
GEORGE MACDONALD.
Hospitality
DECEMBER 22
"The truest hospitality is shown not in the effort to entertain, but in
the depth of welcome. What a guest loves to come for, and come again,
is not the meal, but those who sit at the meal. If we remembered this,
more homes would be habitually thrown open to win the benedictions
upon hospitality. It is our ceremony, not our poverty, it is
self-consciousness oftener than inability to be agreeable that makes us
willing to live cloistered. Seldom is it that pleasantest homes to visit
are the richest. The real compliment is _not_ to apologise for the
simple fare. That means trust, and trust is better than fried oysters."
W. C. GANNETT.
"Hospitality must be for service, and not for show, or it pulls down the
host."
EMERSON.
Hospitality
DECEMBER 23
"I pray you, O excellent wife, not to cumber yourself and me to get a
rich dinner for this man or this woman who has alighted at our gate, nor
a bedchamber made ready at too great a cost. These things, if they are
curious in, they can get for a dollar at any village. But let this
stranger, if he will, in your looks, in your accent and behaviour, read
in your heart and earnestness, your thought and will, which he cannot
buy at any price in any village or city, and which he may well travel
fifty miles and dine sparely and sleep hard in order to behold.
Certainly, let the board be spread and let the bed be dressed for the
traveller; but let not the emphasis of hospitality lie in these things.
Honour to the house where they are simple to the verge of hardship, so
that there the intellect is awake and reads the laws of the universe."
EMERSON.
"I should count myself fortunate if my home were remembered for some
inspiring quality of faith, charity and aspiring intelligence."
HAMILTON W. MABIE.
Christmas Eve
DECEMBER 24
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
"It chanced upon the merry, merry Christmas Eve,
I went sighing past the church across the moorland dreary--
'Oh! never sin and want and woe this earth will leave,
And the bells but mock the wailing rounds, they sing so cheery.
How long, O Lord! how long before Thou come again!
Still in cellar, and in garret, and on moorland dreary
The orphans moan, and widows weep, and poor men toil in vain,
Till earth is sick of hope deferred, though Christmas bells be cheery.'
"Then arose a joyous clamour from the wild-fowl on the mere,
Beneath the stars, across the snow, like clear bells ringing,
And a voice within cried,--'Listen! Christmas carols even here!
Tho' thou be dumb, yet o'er their work the stars and snows are singing.
Blind! I live, I love, I reign; and all the nations through,
With the thunder of my judgments even now are ringing;
Do thou fulfil thy work but as yon wild-fowl do,
Thou wilt heed no less the wailing, yet hear through it angels singing.'"
CHARLES KINGSLEY.
Christmas Day
DECEMBER 25
"And now once more comes Christmas Day. Once more, borne abroad on the
words of simple-minded shepherds, runs the story. God and man have met,
in visible, actual union, in a life which is both human and divine....
Lift up yourselves to the great meaning of the Day, and dare to think of
your Humanity as something so sublimely precious that it is worthy of
being made an offering to God. Count it a privilege to make that
offering as complete as possible, keeping nothing back, and then go out
to the pleasures and duties of your life, having been truly born anew
into His Divinity, as He was born into our Humanity, on Christmas Day."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"Let not the hearts, whose sorrow cannot call
This Christmas merry, slight the festival;
Let us be merry that may merry be,
But let us not forget that many mourn;
The smiling Baby came to give us glee,
But for the weepers was the Saviour born."
COLERIDGE.
Mile-marks
DECEMBER 26
"But Christmas is not only the mile-mark of another year, moving us to
thoughts of self-examination: it is a season, from all its associations,
whether domestic or religious, suggesting thoughts of joy. A man
dissatisfied with his endeavours is a man tempted to sadness. And in the
midst of the winter, when his life runs lowest and he is reminded of the
empty chairs of his beloved, it is well he should be condemned to this
fashion of the smiling face. Noble disappointment, noble self-denial,
are not to be admired, not even to be pardoned, if they bring
bitterness. It is one thing to enter the kingdom of heaven maimed;
another to maim yourself and stay without. And the kingdom of heaven is
of the childlike, of those who are easy to please, who love and who give
pleasure."
_Across the Plains_, R. L. STEVENSON.
Growing Old
DECEMBER 27
"To grow old is more difficult than to die, because to renounce a good
once and for all, costs less than to renew the sacrifice day by day and
in detail. To bear with one's own decay, to accept one's own lessening
capacity, is a harder and rarer virtue than to face death. There is a
halo round tragic and premature death; there is but a long sadness in
declining strength. But look closer: so studied, a resigned and
religious old age will often move us more than the heroic ardour of
young years. The maturity of the soul is worth more than the first
brilliance of its faculties, or the plenitude of its strength, and the
eternal in us can but profit from all the ravages made by time. There is
comfort in this thought."
_Amiel's Journal._
"To know how to grow old is the master-work of wisdom, and one of the
most difficult chapters in the great art of living."
_Amiel's Journal._
Old Age
DECEMBER 28
"We must not take the faults of our youth into our old age; for old age
brings with it its own faults."
GOETHE.
"It is only to the finest natures that age gives an added beauty and
distinction; for the most persistent self has then worked its way to the
surface, having modified the expression, and to some extent, the
features, to its own likeness."
MATHILDE BLIND.
"The most beautiful existence, it seems to me, would be that of a river
which should get through all its rapids and waterfalls not far from its
rising, and should then in its widening course form a succession of rich
valleys, and in each of them a lake equally but diversely beautiful, to
end, after the plains of age were past, in the ocean where all that is
weary and heavy-laden comes to seek for rest."
_Amiel's Journal._
The Love and Grace and Tenderness of Life
DECEMBER 29
"Neither toil, nor the end of toil in oneself or in the world, is all
vanity, in spite of the preacher; but there is enough vanity in both to
make one sit loose to them. What seems to grow fairer to me as life goes
by is the love and grace and tenderness of it; not its wit and
cleverness and grandeur of knowledge--grand as knowledge is--but just
the laughter of little children and the friendship of friends, the cosy
talk by the fireside, the sight of flowers and the sound of music."
J. R. GREEN.
"Life is sweet, brother.... There's night and day, brother, both sweet
things; sun, moon and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's likewise
the wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to
die?"
BORROW.
A Prayer
DECEMBER 30
"Be patient still; suffer us yet a while longer; with our broken
purposes of good, with our idle endeavours against evil, suffer us a
while longer to endure, and (if it may be) help us to do better. Bless
to us our extraordinary mercies; if the day come when these must be
taken, brace us to play the man under affliction. Be with our friends;
be with ourselves. Go with each of us to rest; if any dream, be their
dreams quiet; if any awake, temper to them the dark hours of watching;
and when the day returns, return to us our sun and comforter, and call
us up with morning faces and with morning hearts--eager to labour--eager
to be happy, if happiness shall be our portion--and if the day be marked
for sorrow, strong to endure it."
_Vailima Prayers_, R. L. STEVENSON.
New Year's Eve
DECEMBER 31
"Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
"Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
"Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
"Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
"Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
"Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
"Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
"Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be."
TENNYSON.
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
Accidie, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100
Accuracy, 185
Age, 361, 362
Appetite for Condolence, The, 310
Argument, 195, 196, 197
Art of Being Quiet, The, 30, 31
As Light enters Darkness departs, 297
Aspiration, 306
Back-biting, 190
Balance, 170, 171
Bearing Criticism, 155
Bearing Sorrow, 256, 257, 258, 259
Bearing Trouble, 322
Beauties of Nature, 333
Beautiful, Sense of, 334
Beauty, The Gospel of, 335
Being and Doing, 24, 25
Bereavement, 246, 247
Blessed are the Happiness-makers, 134
Books, 339, 340
Business-like Habits, 36
By their Works, 272
Calamity, Sharp Ferule of, 311
Calumny, 158, 159
Causes of Thankfulness, 324, 325
Celestial Surgeon, The, 18
Character, 138
Character--
Childlike-ness, 136
Negative Virtues, 137
Our Echoes roll from Soul to Soul, 139
The Right Atmosphere, 135
Character and Service, 11
Character of Henry Drummond, 22
---- R. L. Stevenson, 23
Cheerfulness, 330
Childhood, A Happy, 344
Christian Law, The, 262, 263
Christianity, Programme of, 275
Christmas Day, 359
Christmas Eve, 358
Circumstances, 12, 13
Code of Society, The, 165
Comfort's Art, 92
Commune with your own Heart and be Still, 33
Conceit, 162
Concentration, 38, 39
Condolence, Appetite for, 310
Confession of Sin, 288
Conscience, 150
Contemptuousness, 181
Contentment, 318, 319
Conversation, 193, 194
Courage, 58
Courage to be Poor, 355
Courtesy, 203, 204, 205
Creed, A New, 274
Creeds, 267
Criticism, 155
Crossing the Bar, 254
Culture, 202
Day by Day, 301, 302
Dead, The, 249, 250, 251, 252
Death, 253
Death of Young Children, 248
Discontent, 316, 320
Dissension, 242
Doing more than Feeling, 62
Doing our Best, 64
Duty, 46, 47, 48
Duty of Giving Happiness, 132, 133
Duty of Happiness, The, 315
Duty of Physical Health, The, 84, 85
Duty to my Neighbour, 131
Education, The Object of, 342, 343
---- Moral, 345, 346, 347
Egotism, 164, 192
Endurance, 43
Essentials of Happiness, The, 312
Evil is Wrought by Want of Thought, 69
Evil of Brooding, The, 305
Example, 350
Expenditure, 353
Faith, 273
False Impressions, 182
Falterers, 57
Family Life, 128
Fasting, 268, 269
Faults, 156
Fear of Failure, 55, 56
Flattery, 160
Foot-path to Peace, The, 8
Forgiveness, 115
Friendship, 216-235
Gaining or Losing Ground, 303
God, Manifestations of, 278, 279, 280
God's Children, 77
Gossip, 189, 191
Growing Old, 361
Grumblers, 329
Grumbling, 326, 327, 328
Habit, 140, 141
Habit of Admiration, The, 21
Hallowing of Work, The, 70
Happiness, 132, 133, 134, 312, 315
Happiness Makers, 134
Harmony, 15, 16
Health, Duty of, 84, 85
Heart, Commune with, 33
Heredity, 152, 153, 154
Holidays, 338
Holiness, 4
Holy Spirit, 5
Hospitality, 356, 357
Humility, 163
Humour, 331, 332
Hypochondriacs, 90, 91
Ideal Guest-chamber, An, 75
Ideal Level, An, 50
Ideals, 17
Idleness, 53, 54
Ifs of Life, The, 14
Ill-nature, 118
Indifference, Sin of, 60
Influence, 210, 211, 214, 215
Influence of Great Men, 19, 20
Interruptions, 73
Introspection, 290
Introspectiveness, 289
Invalids, 87, 88
Inward Stillness, 32
Iron Chains of Duty, The, 48
Irritability, 93, 94
Jealousy, 236, 237, 238
Judging, 176, 178, 180
Judgment, Biassed, 177
Judgment, Harsh, 175
Judgment, Sound, 172, 173, 174
Justice and Mercy, 179
Law of Love, The Great, 270
Lessons of Suffering, 89
Life, Ifs of, 14
Life a School, 10
Life after Death, 255
Life-giver, not Deed-doer, 26
Limit of Luxury, The, 352
Living in the Present, 300
Lord's Supper, The, 276
Love, 126, 130, 243
Love, Grace, and Tenderness of Life, The, 363
Love and Remorse, 239, 240, 241
Love Unrequited, 244, 245
Love, Law of, 270
Luxury, 352
Magnifying Troubles, 321
Manifestation of God, 278, 279, 280
Manners, 206, 207, 208, 209
Mechanical Work, 74
Memory, 110, 111
Mens Sana in Corpore Sano, 83
Mental Hygiene, 296
Mercy, 179
Method, 37
Mile-marks, 360
Money, 354
Morality, Physical, 86
Morbid Introspectiveness, 289
My Duty to my Neighbour, 131
Nature, 333, 336, 337
Never Lose a Battle, 299
New Year's Day, 1
New Year's Eve, 365
Noble Life, A, 3
Nominal Christians, 277
"Not to Destroy, but to Fulfil," 265
Obstinacy, 157
Oil and Wine, 127
Old Age, 362
One by One, 71, 72
Open Mind, An, 198
Order, 41
Our true Selves and our traditional Selves, 291
Patience, 124, 309
Patience with Ourselves, 7
Peace, 8
Perseverance, 44
Pessimism, 79
Physical Morality, 86
Pleasure in Work, 45
Poverty, 355
Power, 49
Power of the Holy Spirit, The, 5
Prayer, 281-286
Prayer, A, 364
Present Circumstances, 12
Pressing Forward, 304
Pride, 161
Programme of Christianity, The, 275
Public Opinion, 166, 167
Punishment, 348
Purpose, 2, 9
Quarrels, 106, 107
"Quench not the Smoking Flax," 212, 213
Quiet, 30, 31
Raw Material, 78
Readiness, 40
Reading, 341
Rebuking, 349
Receptive Side of Life, The, 34
Reconciliation, 113, 114
Regulation of Time, 35
Religion--
The Meaning of, 260
Pure, 261
In Daily Life, 266
Reparation, 116
Repentance, 151
Resolves, 287
Responsibility, 59
Rest, 314
Revenge, 108
Right Use of Speech, 200
Sacredness of Work, The, 63
Satan's Opportunities, 68
Science of Social Life, The, 119, 120, 121, 122
Secret of the Joy of Living, The, 323
Secret of Thrift, The, 42
Seeing one's Life in Perspective, 27
Self-centred People, 317
Self-examination, 287
Selfishness, 125
Sense of the Beautiful, 334
Sermon on the Mount, 274
Service, 80, 81, 82
Sharp Ferule of Calamity, The, 311
Silence a great Peacemaker, 112
Sin, 144, 145, 146, 148, 149, 288
Sin has its Pedigree, 142
Sin of Idleness, The, 53
Sin of Indifference, The, 60
Sins of the Spirit, 147
Sociability, 122
Society, 165
Soldiers of the Same Army, 271
Sorrow, 256, 257, 258, 259
Spectrum of Love, The, 130
Spiritual Balance and Proportion, 168
Stepping-Stones, 298
Struggling, 308
Sympathy, 123
Symphony, A, 6
Temper, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105
Temperance, 169
Temptation, 143
Thankfulness, 324, 325
There shall never be one lost Good, 307
Thoughts, 201
Thrift, 42
Time, 35
Time and Method, 37
To be Trusted is to be Saved, 76
Tolerance, 199
Touchiness, 109
Triviality, 28, 29
Trouble, 321, 322
True Patience, 309
Trustees, 264
Truth, 183
Truthfulness, 184, 186, 187, 188
Unamiable, The, 117
Unbalanced Memory, 110, 111
Unfelt Creeds, 267
Ungraciousness, 129
Unrest, 313
Un-self-consciousness, 292, 293
Wasted Emotions, 61
Wealth, 351
Where Love is, God is, 126
Work, 45, 51
Work--
Effective Reforms, 65, 66
Special, For each, 52
To Cure is the Voice of the Past, 67
Sacredness of, 63
Works, 272
INDEX OF AUTHORS
A. H., 193
Abbott, Lyman, 10
Acton, 317
Adams, 354
Addison, 229, 330, 337
Allen, James Lane, 58, 114, 116, 152, 284
_Amiel's Journal_ (translated by Mrs. Humphry Ward), 2, 19, 31, 34,
40, 41, 46, 47, 55, 58, 118, 127, 140, 157, 161, 163, 167, 168,
172, 204, 212, 223, 227, 229, 236, 241, 256, 278, 313, 316, 320,
346, 361, 362
Ammian, 188
Arnold, Dr., 69
Arnold, Sir Edwin, 15, 16, 54, 60, 72, 75, 92, 139, 320
Arnold, Matthew, 121
Augustine, Saint, 290
Avebury, Lord, 3, 14, 36, 65, 85, 86, 89, 107, 170, 195, 311, 315,
336, 343
Bacon, 108, 354
Baillie, Joanna, 58
Balfour, Graham, 23
Barbauld, Mrs. A. L., 255
Barbour, R. W., 149
Barnes, 337
Barnett, Canon, 28, 29, 78, 80, 161, 352
Beecher, Henry Ward, 134, 139, 182, 280
Bentham, Jeremy, 140
Black, Hugh, 154, 219, 221
Blair, 216
Blind, Mathilde, 249, 362
Body, Canon, 34, 82, 151, 268
Book of Common Prayer, 85
Borrow, G., 363
Bosanquet, Mrs. Bernard, 67, 72, 213, 347
Bovée, 201
Brontë, Charlotte, 219
Brooke, Stopford, 11, 50, 53, 60, 61, 77, 79, 121, 131, 163, 266,
309, 312, 314, 321, 335
Brooks, Bishop Phillips, 5, 26, 42, 45, 49, 51, 66, 74, 84, 87, 88,
89, 137, 141, 150, 152, 168, 184, 211, 212, 217, 247, 265, 267,
274, 276, 281, 290, 297, 324, 332, 359
Brown, Dr. John, 344
Browning, E. B., 243
Browning, Robert, 45, 245, 307
Bruyère, La, 116
Bulwer-Lytton, 11, 17
Burke, 350
Burnett, Mrs. Hodgson, 178
Burns, 148
Burton, 316
Buxton, Charles, 64
Byron, 330
Caillard, E. M., 33
Caird, Principal, 179
Carey, Alice, 355
Carlyle, Thomas, 20, 45, 54, 63, 80, 97, 125, 156, 271, 298, 302
Cato, 106
Chalmers, 312
Channing, W. E., 6, 211, 325, 334
Chesterfield, Lord, 206, 208
Childs, Lydia M., 97
Cholmondeley, Mary, 74, 75, 138, 245, 344
Cicero, 221, 223, 228, 234
Clarke, J. Freeman, 340
Clough, Arthur Hugh, 15
Coleridge, 333, 359
Collier, Jeremy, 163
Colton, 35
Cowper, 159
Crabbe, 339
Crawford, F. Marion, 161
Cross, J. W., 133
Cyrus, 222
Dante, 301
Dawson, Rev. W. J., 338
De Staël, Madame, 312
Descartes, 106
Deschamps, 235
Dickens, Charles, 80, 315
Diggle, Archdeacon, 73, 268
Drummond, Professor Henry, 4, 19, 27, 76, 83, 102, 109, 126, 130, 132,
134, 142, 143, 144, 153, 204, 261, 265, 270, 275, 277, 288, 294,
313, 315
Dryden, 238
Eliot, George, 13, 16, 57, 87, 92, 101, 103, 110, 111, 112, 135, 150,
159, 180, 189, 240, 256, 291, 320, 333
Emerson, R. W., 10, 14, 39, 47, 58, 63, 64, 111, 116, 131, 143, 159,
165, 171, 187, 190, 192, 202, 204, 206, 207, 208, 215, 220, 223,
226, 280, 300, 301, 319, 320, 328, 330, 336, 356, 357
Empson, 104
Epictetus, 102, 158
Euripides, 228
Ewing, Mrs., 7, 125, 308, 326
Faber, F. W., 134
Fairless, Michael, 78
Farrar, Dean, 59, 88, 151, 190, 270
Feltham, 227
Fénélon, 7, 286
Fletcher, Horace, 68
Fowler, Ellen Thorneycroft, 112, 331
Fox, George, 29, 278
Froude, J. A., 184
Gannett, W. C., 356
Garfield, 56
Gaskell, Mrs., 57
Gladstone, W. E., 37
Goethe, 1, 39, 193, 199, 205, 362
Gore, Bishop, 165
Green, T. H., 273
Green, J. R., 363
Greene, C., 328
Grou, 293
Hacket, 310
Hare, 139, 310
Hare, Archdeacon, 163, 347
Harpe, La, 185
Harris, Rendel, 231, 284
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 211
Helps, Sir Arthur, 122, 158, 341
Herbert, George, 195, 196, 324, 354
Herder, 231
Herodotus, 56
Hillel, Rabbi, 225
Hobbes, John Oliver, 176
Holland, Canon Scott, 257, 258, 259
Holmes, O. W., 14, 137, 204, 253
Hood, Thomas, 69
How, Bishop Walsham, 151, 289
Hughes, T., 219
Iddesleigh, Lord, 183
_Idler, The_, 234
Ingram, Bishop Winnington, 147, 279
James, Professor William, 141
Japanese Proverb, 330
Johnson, Dr., 55, 183
Jonson, Ben, 159
Joubert, 350
Keble, 312
Kemble, Fanny, 9
Kempis, Thomas à, 298
Kendall, May, 218, 237, 244, 278
Kingsley, Charles, 42, 46, 165, 166, 191, 214, 233, 283, 285, 300,
318, 334, 358
Lacordaire, 195
Latham, The Rev. Henry, 24, 35, 41, 62, 72, 80, 143, 177, 181, 191,
199, 269, 292, 305, 349
Leighton, Archbishop, 156
Liddon, Canon, 143
Little, Canon Knox, 289
Locke, 341
Long, George, 3
Longfellow, H. W., 32, 112, 275
Louis XIV., 35
Lowell, James Russell, 46, 51, 62, 77, 149, 164, 235, 250, 257, 306, 322
Lyall, Edna, 301
Lytton, 11, 17
Mabie, Hamilton W., 95, 202, 357
Macaulay, 172
MacColl, Canon, 2, 31, 64, 76, 113, 114, 127, 142, 210
MacCunn, Professor John, 17, 42, 62, 104, 169, 172, 230, 295, 296,
299, 337, 340, 348
MacDonald, George, 115, 178, 275, 355
Mann, Horace, 35
Marcus Aurelius, 4, 12, 44, 104, 156, 157, 167, 300, 302, 316, 318,
327
Martineau, 12
Martineau, H., 55, 117
Martineau, J., 53, 81
Mason, 235
Massillon, 236
McKinley, 141
McLean, Rev. J. K., 318
Meredith, George, 189
Merriam, G. S., 331
Miller, The Rev. J. R., 224, 232, 239, 240
Milnes, R. M., 308
Montaigne, 187
Montrésor, F. F., 317
Moore, T., 242
More, Hannah, 325
Morris, Sir Lewis, 183
Mozley, J. B., 280
Mulford, Prentice, 201
Muloch, Dinah M., 355
Neander, 274
Newbolt, Canon, 82
Newcomb, C. B., 39, 201, 305
Nicoll, W. Robertson, 22
Paget, Bishop, 1, 63, 70, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 120, 123, 124, 171,
174, 200, 203, 229, 310
Pascal, 146, 155, 177
Patmore, Coventry, 206, 241
Peabody, Ephraim, 1
Penn, William, 196, 246
Philpotts, Bishop, 43
Plumptre, 272
Plutarch, 162
Pope, 155
Potter, Bishop, 123, 351
Pulsford, John, 32
Rice, Alice Hegan, 322
Richter, 96, 173
Robertson, The Rev. F. W., 25, 39, 119, 126, 285, 304
_Robertson, Life of the Rev. F. W._, 287
Rochefoucauld, La, 29, 106, 116, 160, 189, 192, 193, 197, 198, 233, 322
Rogers, H., 36
Rossetti, Christina, 175, 178, 252
Ruskin, John, 67, 69, 288, 343
Sales, S. Francis de, 195, 349, 352
Seneca, 287, 319
Shakespeare, 8, 56, 108, 189, 220, 309
Shorthouse, John, 123
Sidney, Philip, 227
Smiles, Samuel, 184, 208, 209
Smith, George Adam, 222
Smith, H. W., 27
Socrates, 20, 216
Soulsby, Lucy, 95, 168, 327
South, Bishop, 84
Southey, 321
Spanish Proverb, 233
Spencer, Herbert, 20, 86, 185, 197, 345
Spenser, 206, 231
Staël, Madame de, 312
Stevenson, R. L., 7, 18, 48, 108, 109, 131, 137, 186, 188, 260,
311, 360, 364
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 90, 91, 93, 94, 128
Sweet, Ada C., 192
Talbot, Bishop, 215
Taylor, Bayard, 59
Taylor, Bishop, 273
Taylor, Jeremy, 170, 220, 324
Temple, Archbishop, 105, 129, 145, 146, 165, 213, 288
Tennyson, Lord, 44, 47, 57, 115, 122, 139, 182, 224, 254, 290, 298,
308, 365
_Tennyson--A Memoir_, by his Son, 10, 181, 247, 256, 271, 273, 282, 331
Thackeray, Miss, 325
Thackeray, W. M., 13, 21, 111, 216, 246, 247
Thomas, Dr. H. W., 261
Thoreau, 28, 114, 157, 186, 202, 222, 225, 306, 333
Thorold, Bishop, 267, 277
Toynbee, Arnold, 319
Trench, Archbishop, 3, 17, 248, 286, 323
Turgenev, Ivan, 48, 148
Van Dyke, 8, 61
Vaughan, Henry, 302
Vauvenargues, 56, 157, 185, 212
Virgil, 49
Voltaire, 13, 54
Walker, Thomas, 329
Watson, Dr. John, 4, 24, 44, 52, 71, 78, 81, 120, 136, 144, 150, 154,
166, 176, 203, 205, 243, 248, 261, 274, 295, 296, 297, 299
Westcott, Bishop, 9, 65, 66, 129, 138, 166, 169, 177, 214, 232, 249,
262, 263, 264, 283, 328, 342, 350, 352, 353, 354
Whichcote, 198
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 6, 46, 179, 251, 272
Wickstead, Philip H., 160
Wiggin, Kate D., 67, 68, 347
Wilberforce, Bishop, 293
Wilson, 88
Wisdom, Book of, 190
Wordsworth, 303
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
Edinburgh & London
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Variations in spelling have been preserved except in obvious cases
of typographical error and inconsistency. These have been corrected
without comment.
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