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 scaledAre close upon the shining table-landsTo 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.
"Thereis 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 workIs 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 asideThe man who stands with arms akimbo set,Until occasion tells him what to do;And he who waits to have his task marked outShall 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 griefAs 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 doneBy 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 wringsA human music from the indifferent air.The greatest gift the hero leaves his raceIs 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'sLife 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 subduesAnd 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 worldIs in its nameless saints. Each separate starSeems nothing, but a myriad scattered starsBreak 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 fullOf pity for the sickness of this world;Which I will heal, if healing may be foundBy 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 deedThat shall decide if his inheritanceBe 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, BishopPaget.
"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, CanonMacColl.
"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, andGod 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."
LordAvebury.
"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.'"
BishopWestcott.
"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."
BishopWestcott.
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."
BishopWestcott.
"Reforms which are effective must develop and strengthen character."
BishopWestcott.
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 theDaily TelegraphofDecember 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, BishopPaget.
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, ArchdeaconDiggle.
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 careFor 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, CanonMacColl.
"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 doorOf foulest hearts, the angel-nature yetKnocks to return and cancel all its debt."J. R. Lowell.
Raw Material
MARCH 19
"One also is filled withhopeat 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, CanonBarnett.
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, CanonBarnett.
"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."
CanonNewbolt.
"Every Christian is the servant of men, always and everywhere, without respect to the distinctions of sex, or class, or nationality, or creed."
CanonBody.
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."
BishopSouth.
"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."
LordAvebury.
"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."
LordAvebury.
"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 aduty. 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 arephysical 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."
LordAvebury.
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."
LordAvebury.
"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 calledHypochondriac, 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 nottrust 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 skillFor comfort's art,That thou may'st consecrated be,And set apartUnto a life of sympathy!For heavy is the weight of illFor every heart,And comforters are needed muchOf 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 wereIn 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, BishopPaget.
"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."