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 joysAnd 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."
CanonScott 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."
CanonScott 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 lettempermar 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."
CanonScott 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, BishopWestcott.
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, BishopWestcott.
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, BishopWestcott.
"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."
BishopThorold.
"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 surethatis the true way of keeping them."
Letters fromBishop Fraser'sLancashire Life, ArchdeaconDiggle.
"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, CanonBody.
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 attestHis faith in goodness by no creed confessed.Whatever in love's name is truly doneTo free the bound and lift the fallen oneIs done to Christ. Whoso in deed and wordIs not against Him labours for our Lord.When He, who, sad and weary, longing soreFor 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 condemnThy 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 yearsTo 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 inrealfaith.' '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."
BishopTaylor.
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 Mounthas 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 openingof the prison to them that are bound:To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, andthe day of vengeance of our God:To comfort all that mourn:To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to giveunto 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."
BishopThorold.
"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, BishopWinnington 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 thatweseem 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 worldAnd 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 prayerThan 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?"
BishopWestcott.
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 theSpectatorput 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 glareMust beat upon them, we would largely steepAnd 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."
BishopTemple.
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."
BishopWalsham How.
"... It is a clear view of higher motives, which at once reveals and defeats our meaner impulses; which assists the discipline ofproperself-searching, by making it healthy and hopeful; and resists any habit of morbid introspectiveness with its fatal tendency to paralyse activity of character."
CanonKnox 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 backWere 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 downself, 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."
BishopWilberforce.
"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, ProfessorMacCunn.
"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, ProfessorMacCunn.
"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 singsTo one clear harp in divers tones,That men may rise on stepping stonesOf 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, ProfessorMacCunn.
"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 dawningAnother blue day;Think, wilt thou let itSlip 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 lawIn 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 totry 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 areFor one transcendent moment!Before the Present, poor and bare,Can make its sneering comment!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Longing is God's fresh heavenward willWith our poor earthward striving;We quench it that we may be stillContent with merely living;But would we learn that heart's full scopeWhich we are hourly wronging,Our lives must climb from hope to hopeAnd realise our longing!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Ah! let us hope that to our praiseGood God not only reckonsThe moments when we tread His ways,But when the spirit beckons—That some slight good is also wroughtBeyond 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 powerWhose 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