"If what shone afar so grandTurn to nothing in thy hand,On again, the virtue liesIn the struggle, not the prize."
R. M. Milnes.
"One would like one's own failures to be one's friends' stepping stones.... I am trying to teach myself that if onehasbeen working, one has not necessarily been working to good purpose, and that one may waste strength and forces of all sorts, as well as time."
Mrs. Ewing's Letters.
"Rise ... as children learn, be thouWiser for falling."
Tennyson.
True Patience
NOVEMBER 5
"There are those who think it is Christian patience to sit down by the wayside to endure the storm, crying in themselves, 'God is hard on me, but I will bear His smiting'; but their endurance is only idleness which is ignoble, and hiding from the battle which is cowardice. Or they cry, 'I am the victim of Fate, but I will be patient'—as if any one could be a victim if God be love, or as if there were such a thing as blind fate, when the order of the world is to lead men into righteousness; when to be victor and not victim is the main word of that order. No, the severity of the battle is to force us into self-forgetfulness; and this lazy resignation, this wailing patience, is mere self-remembrance. The true patience is activity of faith and hope and righteousness in the cause of men for the sake of God's love of them; is in glad proclamation of the gospel; is in wielding the sword of the Truth of God against all that injures mankind."
The Gospel of Joy,Stopford Brooke.
"Wise men ne'er sit and wail their loss,But cheerly seek how to redress their harms.What though the mast be now blown overboard,The cable broke, the holding anchor lost,And half our sailors swallowed in the flood—Yet lives our Pilot still."
Shakespeare.
The Appetite for Condolence
NOVEMBER 6
"It is right to exercise a great deal of self-restraint in speaking of our troubles, and not to let the appetite for condolence grow on us."
Studies in the Christian Character, BishopPaget.
"Carlyle says, 'My father had one virtue which I should try to imitate—he never spoke of what was disagreeable and past,' and my mother was the same; she turned her back at once upon the last months, which she put away for ever like a sealed volume."
The Story of my Life,Augustus Hare.
"Hacket's motto, 'Serve God and be cheerful.'"
"The Sharp Ferule of Calamity"
NOVEMBER 7
"It is to keep a man awake, to keep him alive to his own soul and its fixed design of righteousness, that the better part of moral and religious education is directed; not only that of words and doctors, but the sharp ferule of calamity under which we are all God's scholars till we die."
The Life of R. L. Stevenson,Graham Balfour.
"The best help is not to bear the troubles of others for them, but to inspire them with courage and energy to bear their burdens for themselves and meet the difficulties of life bravely."
LordAvebury.
The Essentials of Happiness
NOVEMBER 8
"We weigh ourselves down with burdens of sorrow which are the results of our selfish thoughts and selfish desires; and every one of these burdens lessens our power to live righteously in ourselves, and to live usefully for others."
The Gospel of Joy,Stopford Brooke.
"When you find yourself overpowered, as it were by melancholy, the best way is to go out, and do something kind to somebody or other."
Letters of Spiritual Counsel,Keble.
"The grand essentials of happiness are, something to do, something to love, and something to hope for."
Chalmers.
"Happiness is easy when we have learnt to renounce."
Mme. de Staël.
Unrest
NOVEMBER 9
"Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender."
Amiel's Journal.
"What are the chief causes ofUnrest? If you know yourself, you will answer Pride, Selfishness, Ambition. As you look back upon the past years of your life, is it not true that its unhappiness has chiefly come from the succession of personal mortifications and almost trivial disappointments which the intercourse of life has brought you? Great trials come at lengthened intervals, and we rise to breast them; but it is the petty friction of our everyday life with one another, the jar of business or of work, the discord of the domestic circle, the collapse of our ambition, the crossing of our will, the taking down of our conceit, which make inward peace impossible. Wounded vanity, then, disappointed hopes, unsatisfied selfishness—these are the old, vulgar, universal sources of man's unrest."
Pax Vobiscum,Henry Drummond.
Rest
NOVEMBER 10
"Now, what is the first step towards the winning of that rest? It is the giving up of self-will and the receiving of God's will as our own—and what that means is clear. It is to make our life at one with God's character, with justice and purity, with truth and love, with mercy and joy. It is the surrender of our own pleasure and the making of God's desire for us the master of our life. That is the first step—a direction of the soul to God. The second has to do with mankind. It is the replacing of all self-love by the love of our fellow-men; a direction of the soul to God through man.
"These two ways are in reality one; and there is no other way, if we search the whole world over, in which we may attain rest. Simple as it sounds, it is the very last way many of us seek. We fight against this truth, and it has to be beaten into us by pain. Clear as it seems, it is a secret which is as difficult to discover as the Elixir of Life, but it is so difficult because we do not will to discover it."
The Gospel of Joy,Stopford Brooke.
The Duty of Happiness
NOVEMBER 11
"I cannot think but that the world would be better and brighter if our teachers would dwell on the Duty of Happiness as well as the Happiness of Duty."
LordAvebury.
"Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some."
Dickens.
"Half the world is on the wrong scent in the pursuit of happiness. They think it consists in having and getting, and in being served by others. It consists in giving and in serving others."
Henry Drummond.
Discontent
NOVEMBER 12
"He or she that is idle, be they of what condition they will, never so rich, so well allied, fortunate, happy—let them have all things in abundance and felicity that heart can wish and desire,—all contentment—so long as he, or she, or they are idle, they shall never be pleased, never well in mind or body, but weary still, sickly still, vexed still, loathing still, weeping, sighing, grieving, suspecting, offended with the world, with every object, wishing themselves gone or dead, or else carried away with some foolish phantasy or other."
Burton.
"We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves. The consciousness of wrong-doing makes us irritable, and our heart in its cunning quarrels with what is outside it, in order that it may deafen the clamour within."
Amiel's Journal.
"Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig."
Marcus Aurelius.
Self-centred People
NOVEMBER 13
"It is self-centred people that are lonely—the richer the gift, the richer the giver. No one was ever the worse for giving."
F. F. Montrésor.
"Misanthropy is always traceable to some vicious experience or imperception—to some false reading in the lore of right and wrong, or it proceeds from positive defects in ourselves, from a departure from things simple and pure, whereby we forfeit happiness without losing the sense of the proper basis on which it rests; yet even thus perverted by the prejudices of the world, we still find a soothing pleasure in contemplating that happiness which belongs to simplicity and virtue."
Acton.
"The largest and most comprehensive natures are generally the most cheerful, the most loving, the most hopeful, the most trustful. It is the wise man, of large vision, who is the quickest to discern the moral sunshine gleaming through the darkest cloud."
Contentment
NOVEMBER 14
"Contentment comes neither by culture nor by wishing; it is reconciliation with our lot, growing out of an inward superiority to our surroundings."
J. K. McLean.
"If you wish to be miserable, think about yourself, about what you want, what you like, what respect people ought to pay you; and then to you nothing will be pure. You will spoil everything you touch, you will make misery for yourself out of everything which God sends you: you will be as wretched as you choose."
Charles Kingsley.
"Do not let your head run upon that which is none of your own, but pick out some of the best of your circumstances, and consider how eagerly you would wish for them, were they not in your possession."
Marcus Aurelius.
Contentment
NOVEMBER 15
"Man seeks pleasure and self—great unforeseen results follow. Man seeks God and others—and there follows pleasure."
Arnold Toynbee.
"The true felicity of life is to be free from perturbations; to understand our duties towards God and man; to enjoy the present without any serious dependence upon the future. Not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears, but to rest satisfied with what we have. The great blessings of mankind are within our reach; but we shut our eyes, and, like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for, without finding it. Tranquillity is the state of human perfection, it raises us as high as we can go, and makes every man his own supporter; whereas he that is borne up by anything else may fall. He that judges right and perseveres in it, enjoys a perpetual calm; he takes a true prospect of things; he observes an order, measure, a decorum in all his actions; he has a benevolence in his nature; and squares his life according to reason, and draws to himself love and admiration. Without a certain and unchangeable judgment, all the rest is but fluctuation. Liberty and serenity of mind must necessarily ensue upon the mastering of those things which either allure or affright us, when, instead of those flashy pleasures we shall find ourselves possessed of joys transporting and everlasting."
Seneca.
"Nothing can bring you peace but yourself, nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principle."
Emerson.
Discontent
NOVEMBER 16
"Discontent is want of self-reliance; it is infirmity of will."
Emerson.
"To repel one's cross is to make it heavier."
Amiel's Journal.
"She had that rare sense which discerns what is unalterable; and submits to it without murmuring."
George Eliot.
"But for me,What good I see, humbly I seek to do,And live obedient to the Law, in trustThat what will come and shall come, must come well."
The Light of Asia,E. Arnold.
Magnifying Troubles
NOVEMBER 17
"Another weight is the cares of life. We keep so many which we might shake off, that it is more than pitiful. We encourage fears for our life, our future, our wealth, till all our days are harassed out of peace, till the very notion of trust in God is an absurdity. We waste life away in petty details, spending infinite trouble on transient things, magnifying the gnats of life into elephants, tormenting ourselves and others over household disturbances, children, servants, little losses, foolish presentiments, our state of health, our finances,—till every one around us is infected with our disease of fret and worry. This is indeed to weight our soul. Our life with God, our work for man, are dragged to earth."
The Gospel of Joy,Stopford Brooke.
"I pack my troubles in as little compass as I can for myself, and never let them annoy others."
Southey.
Bearing Trouble
NOVEMBER 18
"Once open the door to trouble, and its visits are three-fold; first, anticipation; second, in actual presence; third, in living it over again. Therefore never anticipate trouble, make as little of its presence as possible, forget it as soon as past."
"It is better to employ our minds in bearing the ills we have, than in providing against those which may never befall us."
La Rochefoucauld.
"Let us be of good cheer, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come."
Lowell.
"If you want to be cheerful, jes' set yer mind on it an' do it. Can't none of us help what traits we start out in life with, but we kin help what we end up with. When things first got to goin' wrong with me, I says, 'Oh, Lord, whatever comes, keep me from gettin' sour.'... Since then I've made it a practice to put all my worries down in the bottom of my heart, then set on the lid an' smile."
Lovey Mary,Alice Hegan Rice.
The Secret of the Joy of Living
NOVEMBER 19
"We live not in our moments or our years—The Present we fling from us like the rindOf some sweet Future, which we after findBitter to taste, or bind that in with fears,And water it beforehand with our tears—Vain tears for that which never may arrive:Meanwhile the joy whereby we ought to live,Neglected or unheeded, disappears.Wiser it were to welcome and make oursWhate'er of good, tho' small, the present brings—Kind greetings, sunshine, song of birds, and flowers,With a child's pure delight in little things;And of the griefs unborn to rest secure,Knowing that mercy ever will endure."
ArchbishopTrench.
"The secret of the joy of living is the proper appreciation of what we actually possess."
Causes of Thankfulness
NOVEMBER 20
"I sleep, I eat and drink, I read and meditate, I walk in my neighbour's pleasant fields, and see the varieties of natural beauties, and delight in all that in which God delights—that is, in virtue and wisdom, in the whole creation, and in God Himself. And he that hath so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness, who loses all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down upon his little handful of thorns."
Jeremy Taylor.
"Where much is given, much shall be required. There are never privileges to enjoy without corresponding duties to fulfil in return."
Phillips Brooks.
"Thou that hast given so much to me,Give one thing more—a grateful heart."
George Herbert.
Causes of Thankfulness
NOVEMBER 21
ON LEAVING A HOME FOR INCURABLES
"It didn't seem much to be able to walk away, to look back, to remember what we had seen; and yet how is it that we are not on our knees in gratitude and thankfulness for every active motion of the body, every word we speak, every intelligent experience and interest that passes through our minds?"
MissThackeray.
"Nothing raises the price of a blessing like its removal; whereas, it was its continuance which should have taught us its value."
Hannah More.
"O God, animate us to cheerfulness! May we have a joyful sense of our blessings, learn to look on the bright circumstances of our lot, and maintain a perpetual contentedness."
Channing.
Grumbling
NOVEMBER 22
"His eyes were bright with intelligence and trained powers of observation; and they were beautiful with kindliness, and with the well-bred habit of giving complete attention to other people and their affairs when he talked with them. He had a rare smile ... but the real beauty of such mouths as his comes from the lips being restrained into firm and sensitive lines, through years of self-control and fine sympathies.... Under-bred and ill-educated women are, as a general rule, much less good-looking than well-bred and highly-educated ones, especially in middle life; not because good features and pretty complexions belong to one class more than to another, but because nicer personal habits and stricter discipline of the mind do.... And if, into the bargain, a woman has nothing to talk about but her own and her neighbour's everyday affairs, and nothing to think about to keep her from continually talking, life, my dear child, is so full of little rubs, that constant chatter of this kind must almost certainly be constant grumbling. And constant grumbling makes an ugly under-lip, a forehead wrinkled with frowning, and dull eyes that see nothing but grievances."
A Bad Habit, Mrs.Ewing.
Grumbling
NOVEMBER 23
"Cultivate the habit of never putting disagreeables into words, even if it be only the weather which is in question; also of never drawing other people's attention to words or things which will irritate them."
Lucy Soulsby.
"A cucumber is bitter—Throw it away.—There are briars in the road—Turn aside from them.—This is enough. Do not add, And why were such things made in the world?"
Marcus Aurelius.
"Patience under adverse circumstances will often bring about favourable results, while complaint only accentuates and fixes the cause of complaint. Avoid mention of the disagreeable things that may come into your life. If you cannot be patient you can at least be silent. The secret of success lies not so much in knowing what to say as in what to avoid saying."
Grumbling
NOVEMBER 24
"If you have not slept, or if you have slept, or if you have a headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder-stroke, I beseech you by all the angels to hold your peace, and not pollute the morning, to which all the housemates bring serene and pleasant thoughts, by corruptions and groans."
Emerson.
"Walk thy way greatly! So do thou endureThy small, thy narrow, dwarfed and cankered life,That soothing Patience shall be half the cureFor ills that lesser souls keep sore with strife."
C. Greene.
"Our personal interests, by the force of their importunity, exclude all larger sympathies if these are not already matured before the conflict begins. In the press of the world we lose sight of life, if the life is not within us."
BishopWestcott.
Grumblers
NOVEMBER 25
"There is a sect, unfortunately known to most in this land, under the denomination of Grumblers, whose fundamental maxim is—whatever is, is wrong. Wherever they are found, and they are found almost everywhere, they operate as a social poison; and though they contrive to embitter the enjoyments of everybody about them, they perpetually assume that themselves are the only aggrieved persons, and with such art as to be believed, till thoroughly known. They have often some excellent qualities, and the appearance of many amiable ones; but rank selfishness is their chief characteristic, accompanied by inordinate pride and vanity. They have a habit of laying the consequences of their own sins, whether of omission or of commission, upon others; and, covered with faults, they flatter themselves they 'walk blameless.' Where their selfishness, pride, or vanity are interested, they exhibit signs of boundless zeal, attention, and affection, to which those who are not aware of their motives, are the dupes; but the very moment their predominant feelings are offended, they change from April to December. They have smiles and tears at command for their holiday humour; but in 'the winter of their discontent,' there is no safety from the bitterest blasts. Their grievances are seldom real, or if real, are grossly exaggerated, and are generally attributed to themselves; for, absorbed in their own feelings, they are wonderful losers of opportunities. In conclusion, I think it would be for their advantage, as it certainly would be for that of the rest of the world, if they were made subject to some severe discipline; and I would suggest for the first, second, and third offence, bread and water and the treadmill, for one, two, and three months respectively; for the fourth offence, transportation for seven years to Boothia Felix, or some such climate; and any subsequent delinquency I would make capital, and cause the criminal to be shut up with some offender in equal degree, there to grumble each other to death."
The Original,Thomas Walker.
Cheerfulness
NOVEMBER 26
"'Tis a Dutch proverb that 'paint costs nothing,' such are its preserving qualities in damp climates. Well, sunshine costs less, yet is finer pigment. And so of cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is spent, the more of it remains."
Emerson.
"Mirth is like a flash of lightning that breaks through a gloom of clouds and glitters for a moment. Cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity."
Addison.
"Always laugh when you can; it is a cheap medicine. Merriment is a philosophy not well understood. It is the sunny side of existence."
Byron.
"Fortune will call at the smiling gate."
Japanese Proverb.
Humour
NOVEMBER 27
"The sense of humour is the oil of life's engine. Without it, the machinery creaks and groans. No lot is so hard, no aspect of things is so grim, but it relaxes before a hearty laugh."
G. S. Merriam.
"It was a novel with a purpose, and its purpose was to show that it is only by righteousness that men and nations prevail; also that there is much that is humorous in life as well as much that is holy, and that healing virtue lies in laughter as well as in prayers and tears."
Isabel Carnaby,Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler.
"I dare not tell you how high I rate humour, which is generally most fruitful in the highest and most solemn human spirits. Dante is full of it, Shakespeare, Cervantes, and almost all the greatest have been pregnant with this glorious power. You will find it even in the Gospel of Christ."
Tennyson—a Memoir, by his Son.
Humour
NOVEMBER 28
"Gird up the loins of your mind, be sober."
1Peteri. 13.
"A merry heart doeth good like a medicine."
Prov.xvii. 22.
"Gravity ... I mean simply that grave and serious way of looking at life which, while it never repels the true light-heartedness of pure and trustful hearts, welcomes into a manifest sympathy the souls of men who are oppressed and burdened, anxious and full of questions which for the time at least have banished all laughter from their faces.... Gravity has a delicate power of discrimination. It attracts all that it can help, and it repels all that could harm it or be harmed by it. It admits the earnest and simple with a cordial welcome. It shuts out the impertinent and insincere inexorably.
"The gravity of which I speak is not inconsistent with the keenest perception of the ludicrous side of things. It is more than consistent with—it is even necessary to—humour. Humour involves the perception of the true proportions of life.... It has softened the bitterness of controversy a thousand times. You cannot encourage it too much. You cannot grow too familiar with the books of all ages which have in them the truest humour, for the truest humour is the bloom of the highest life. Read George Eliot and Thackeray, and, above all, Shakespeare. They will help you to keep from extravagances without fading into insipidity. They will preserve your gravity while they save you from pompous solemnity."
Phillips Brooks.
Beauties of Nature
NOVEMBER 29
"There are few of us that are not rather ashamed of our sins and follies as we look out on the blessed morning sunlight, which comes to us like a bright-winged angel beckoning us to quit the old path of vanity that stretches its dreary length behind us."
George Eliot.
"That man is blessed who every day is permitted to behold anything so pure and serene as the western sky at sunset, while revolutions vex the world."
Thoreau.
"So then believe that every bird that sings,And every flower that stars the elastic sod,And every thought the happy summer bringsTo the pure spirit is a word of God."
Coleridge.
Sense of the Beautiful
NOVEMBER 30
"No man receives the true culture of a man in whom the sensibility to the beautiful is not cherished; and I know of no condition in life from which it should be excluded. Of all luxuries this is cheapest and the most to hand; and it seems to me to be the most important to those conditions where coarse labour tends to give a grossness to the mind. From the diffusion of the sense of beauty in ancient Greece, and of the taste for music in modern Germany, we learn that the people at large may partake of refined gratifications which have hitherto been thought to be necessarily restricted to a few."
Channing.
"Music—there is something very wonderful in music. Words are wonderful enough, but music is more wonderful. It speaks not to our thoughts as words do, it speaks straight to our hearts and spirits, to the very core and root of our souls. Music soothes us, stirs us up; it puts noble feelings into us; it melts us to tears, we know not how; it is a language by itself, just as perfect, in its way, as speech, as words; just as divine, just as blessed. Music has been called the speech of angels; I will go farther, and call it the speech of God Himself.
"The old Greeks, the wisest of all the heathen, made a point of teaching their children music, because, they said, it taught them not to be self-willed and fanciful, but to see the beauty of order, the usefulness of rule, the divineness of law."
Good News of God Sermons,Charles Kingsley.
The Gospel of Beauty
DECEMBER 1
"Beauty is far too much neglected. It never belongs to criticism; it ought by right to be always bound up with creation. What it is, is hard to define; but, whenever anything in nature or in the thoughts and doings of man awakens a noble desire of seeing more of it; kindles pure love of it; seems to open out before us an infinite of it which allures us into an endless pursuit; stimulates reverence, and makes the heart leap with joy—there is beauty, and with it always is imagination, the shaping power.
"The capacity for seeing beauty with the heart is one of the first necessities for such a life in a living world as I now urge upon you. When you see it, you always see more and more of it. And the more you see it, the more love and reverence you will feel in your heart; and the less you will care to criticise, and the more you will care to create. The world needs it now, and the glory of it, more almost than anything else, for nearly all the world has lost the power of seeing it. The monied men want it; the scientific men want it; the artists themselves have of late betrayed it; the business men want it. The middle-class and the aristocracy are almost destitute of it; the working men abide in conditions in which its outward forms are absent. To give them the power to see all that is lovely in nature, in human thought, in art, and in the noble acts of men—that is a great part of your work, and you should realise it, and shape it day by day."
The Gospel of Joy,Stopford Brooke.
Nature
DECEMBER 2
"To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal, and restores their tone. The tradesman, the attorney, comes out of the din and craft of the street, and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again. In their eternal calm, he finds himself."
Emerson.
"Nature is loved by what is best in us."
Emerson.
"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means waste of time."
LordAvebury.
Nature
DECEMBER 3
"The unobtrusive influences of earth, sea, and sky do their work. They pass imperceptibly and unsought into the soul."
"... Outdoor sightsSweep gradual gospels in.""Bid me work, but may no tieKeep me from the open sky" (Barnes).
The Making of Character, ProfessorMacCunn.
"The cheerfulness of heart which springs up in us from the survey of Nature's works, is an admirable preparation for gratitude. The mind has gone a great way towards praise and thanksgiving that is filled with such a secret gladness: a grateful reflection on the Supreme Cause who produces it, sanctifies the soul, and gives it its proper value. Such an habitual disposition of mind consecrates every field and wood, turns an ordinary walk into a morning or evening sacrifice, and will improve those transient gleams of joy, which naturally brighten up and refresh the soul on such occasions, into an inviolable and perpetual state of bliss and happiness."
Addison.
Holidays
DECEMBER 4
"There are only two rules for a successful holiday; the first is to earn it, the second is to have just enough holiday to make the prospect of work pleasant. Periods of rest we all need, but labour and not rest is the synonym of life. From these periods of rest we should return with a new appetite for the duties of common life. If we return dissatisfied, enervated, without heart for work, we may be sure our holiday has been a failure. If we return with the feeling that it is good to plunge into the mid-stream of life again, we may know by this sign that we are morally braced and strengthened by our exodus. The wise man will never allow his holiday to be a time of mere idleness. He will turn again to the books that interest him, he will touch the fringe of some science for which his holiday gives him opportunity, or he will plunge into physical recreation, and shake off the evil humours of the body in active exercise. The failure of holidays lies very much in the fact that nothing of this sort is attempted. The holiday is simply a series of aimless days, and the natural result isennui. The supreme purpose of a holiday should be to regain possession of ourselves. He who does this comes back from his holiday as from a sanctuary."
W. J. Dawson.
Books
DECEMBER 5
"But what strange art, what magic can disposeThe troubled mind to change its native woes?Or lead us willing from ourselves, to seeOthers more wretched, more undone than we?This, Books can do;—nor this alone, they giveNew views to life, and teach us how to live;They soothe the grieved, the stubborn they chastise,Fools they admonish, and confirm the wise:Their aid they yield to all: they never shunThe man of sorrow, nor the wretch undone:Unlike the hard, the selfish and the proud,They fly not sullen from the suppliant crowd;Nor tell to various people various things,But show to subjects, what they show to kings."
The Library,Crabbe.
Books
DECEMBER 6
"Narrowness may be met by recourse to the larger life revealed in Literature. There is no stronger plea for Biography, Drama, or Romance, or for any imaginative expansion of interests, than that founded upon the need for them as counteractives of the pitiable contractedness of outlook begotten of Division of Labour."
The Making of Character, ProfessorMacCunn.
"When I consider what some books have done for the world, and what they are doing, how they keep up our hope, awaken new courage and faith, soothe pain, give an ideal life to those whose hours are cold and hard, bind together distant ages and foreign lands, create new worlds of beauty, bring down truth from heaven; I give eternal blessings for this gift, and thank God for books."
James Freeman Clarke.
Reading
DECEMBER 7
"Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections; unless we chew them over again they will not give us strength and nourishment."
Locke.
"In the course of our reading we should lay up in our minds a store of goodly thoughts in well-wrought words, which should be a living treasure of knowledge always with us, and from which, at various times, and amidst all the shifting of circumstances, we might be sure of drawing some comfort, guidance, and sympathy."
Helps.
The Object of Education
DECEMBER 8
"We shall be agreed, I assume, that the object of Education is to train for life, and not for a special occupation; to train the whole man for all life, for life seen and unseen, for the unseen through the seen and in the seen; to trainmenin a word and notcraftsmen, to train citizens for the Kingdom of God. As we believe in God and the world to come, these must be master thoughts.
"We shall be agreed further that with this object in view, education must be so ordered as to awaken, to call into play, to develop, to direct, to strengthen powers of sense and intellect and spirit, not of one but of all: to give alertness and accuracy to observation: to supply fulness and precision to language: to arouse intelligent sympathy with every form of study and occupation: to set the many parts and aspects of the world before the growing scholar in their unity: to open the eyes of the heart to the eternal of which the temporal is the transitory sign.
"We shall be agreed again that the elements of restraint alike and of personal development which enter into education will be used to harmonise the social and individual instincts, and to inspire the young, when impressions are most easy and most enduring, with the sense of fellowship and the passion for service.
"We shall be agreed once more that the noblest fruit of education is character, and not acquirements: character which makes the simplest life rich and beneficent, character which for a Christian is determined by a true vision of God,of whom, through whom, unto whom, are all things."
Christian Social Union Addresses, BishopWestcott.
The Object of Education
DECEMBER 9
"The entire object of true education is to make people not merelydothe right things, but enjoy the right things—not merely industrious, but to love industry—not merely learned, but to love knowledge—not merely pure, but to love purity—not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice."
The Crown of Wild Olive,John Ruskin.
"Our great mistake in education is, as it seems to me, the worship of book-learning—the confusion of instruction and education. We strain the memory instead of cultivating the mind.... The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.... If we succeed in giving the love of learning, the learning itself is sure to follow."
LordAvebury.
A Happy Childhood
DECEMBER 10
"A happy childhood is one of the best gifts that parents have it in their power to bestow; second only to implanting the habit of obedience which puts the child in training for the habit of obeying himself, later on."
Diana Tempest,Mary Cholmondeley.
"The main duty of those who care for the young is to secure their wholesome, their entire growth; for health is just the development of the whole nature in its due sequences and proportions: first the blade—then the ear—then, and not till then, the full corn in the ear; and thus, as Dr. Temple wisely says, 'not to forget wisdom in teaching knowledge.' If the blade be forced, and usurp the capital it inherits; if it be robbed by you, its guardian, of its birthright, or squandered like a spendthrift, then there is not any ear, much less any corn; if the blade be blasted or dwarfed in our haste and greed for the full shock and its price, we spoil all three. It is not easy to keep this always before one's mind, that the young 'idea' is in a young body, and that healthy growth and harmless passing of the time are more to be cared for than what is vainly called accomplishment."
Dr.John Brown.
Moral Education
December 11
"Remember that the aim of your discipline should be to produce aself-governingbeing, not to produce a being to begoverned by others. Were your children fated to pass their lives as slaves, you could not too much accustom them to slavery during their childhood; but as they are by-and-by to be free men, with no one to control their daily conduct, you cannot too much accustom them to self-control while they are still under your eye. This is it which makes the system of discipline by natural consequences so especially appropriate to the social state which we in England have now reached. In feudal times, when one of the chief evils the citizen had to fear was the anger of his superiors, it was well that during childhood parental vengeance should be a chief means of government. But now that the citizen has little to fear from any one—now that the good or evil which he experiences is mainly that which in the order of things results from his own conduct, he should from his first years begin to learn, experimentally, the good or evil consequences which naturally follow this or that conduct. Aim, therefore, to diminish the parental government, as fast as you can substitute for it in your child's mind that self-government arising from a foresight of results....
"All transitions are dangerous; and the most dangerous is the transition from the restraint of the family circle to the non-restraint of the world. Hence the importance of pursuing the policy we advocate, which, by cultivating a boy's faculty of self-restraint, by continually increasing the degree in which he is left to his self-restraint, and by so bringing him, step by step, to a state of unaided self-restraint, obliterates the ordinary sudden and hazardous change from externally-governed youth to internally-governed maturity. Let the history of your domestic rule typify, in little, the history of our political rule. At the outset, autocratic control, where control is really needful; by-and-by an incipient constitutionalism, in which the liberty of the subject gains some express recognition; successive extensions of this liberty of the subject, gradually ending in parental abdication."
Education,Herbert Spencer.
Moral Education
DECEMBER 12
"Self-government with tenderness,—here you have the condition of all authority over children. The child must discover in us no passion, no weakness of which he can make use; he must feel himself powerless to deceive or to trouble us; then he will recognise in us his natural superiors, and he will attach a special value to our kindness, because he will respect it. The child who can rouse in us anger, or impatience, or excitement, feels himself stronger than we, and a child only respects strength. The mother should consider herself as her child's sun, a changeless and ever radiant world, whither the small restless creature, quick at tears and laughter, light, fickle, passionate, full of storms, may come for fresh stores of light, warmth and electricity, of calm and of courage. The mother represents goodness, providence, law; that is to say, the divinity under that form of it which is accessible to childhood. If she is herself passionate, she will inculcate on her child a capricious and despotic God, or even several discordant gods. The religion of a child depends on what its mother and its father are, and not on what they say. The inner and unconscious ideal which guides their life is precisely what touches the child; their words, their remonstrances, their punishments, their bursts of feeling, even, are for him merely thunder and comedy; what they worship—this it is which his instinct divines and reflects.
"The child sees what we are, behind what we wish to be. Hence his reputation as a physiognomist. He extends his power as far as he can with each of us; he is the most subtle of diplomatists. Unconsciously he passes under the influence of each person about him, and reflects it while transforming it after his own nature. He is a magnifying mirror. This is why the first principle of education is: train yourself; and the first rule to follow if you wish to possess yourself of a child's will is: master your own."
Amiel's Journal.
Moral Education
DECEMBER 13
"All wise teachers, I believe, recognise now that the best way of dealing with naughty children is to absorb their whole attention with someinterest, which will not only leave no energy to spare for naughtiness, but will of itself tend to organise their minds, to subordinate mental elements to apurpose, and so to develop character."
The Standard of Life, Mrs.Bernard Bosanquet.
"Discipline, like the bridle in the hand of a good rider, should exercise its influence without appearing to do so, should be ever active, both as a support and as a restraint, yet seem to lie easily in hand. It must be always ready to check or to pull up, as occasion may require; and only when the horse is a runaway, should the action of the curb be perceptible."
Guesses at Truth, edited by ArchdeaconHare.
"If 'Pas trop gouverner' is the best rule in politics, it is equally true of discipline."
Children's Rights,Kate Douglas Wiggin.
Punishment
DECEMBER 14
"Punishments, then, must in the first place be proportionate to the offence, lest, by an undiscriminating severity or an undiscriminating leniency, distinctions of moral desert be blurred or effaced.
"Secondly, they must be analogous to the offence. The greedy must be starved, the insolent humbled, the idle compelled to work. Otherwise the imposition will not effectually go home to the offender.
"Thirdly, punishments ought to be exemplary. Since they needs must come, it is not enough that they should simply open the eyes of the culprit, by giving him his deserts. They must be utilised as object-lessons for the behoof of that large class, the culprits in potentiality.
"Fourthly, they ought to be economical. 'It is good that they should suffer,' we sometimes say; and so it is, so long as suffering, in itself always an evil, do not exceed the quantum that is lamentably needful, needful, that is, to vindicate authority, to stigmatise the offence, and to impress the offender.
"Fifthly, punishments ought to be reformatory. Not only must they never, by vindictiveness in him who gives, and degradation in him who receives, impair the instincts and resolves for a better life; they must be devised in the belief, or at least in the hope, that these instincts and resolves exist, though they may be inhibited by the evil proclivities which punishment is meant to crush. The killing of what is bad must always look to the liberation of what is good.
"Finally, punishments ought to insist upon, and to define indemnity, so that the wrong-doer, in things small or great, may be forced to repair, so far as this is possible, the irreparable mischief which offence implies."
The Making of Character, ProfessorMacCunn.
Rebuking
DECEMBER 15
"The gentleness of our Lord in rebuking, has an effect which gentleness often has, it awakens compunctions in those to whom it is shown. A child, who by severity is set on its defence or drawn into falsehood, is often melted into full confession by being loved and trusted more than it deserves."
Pastor Pastorum,Henry Latham.
"Our Lord's reply is again gentle; to be hard on a fault that was confessed would have dried up that confidence which flowed so freely."
Pastor Pastorum,Henry Latham.
"Better make penitents by gentleness than hypocrites by severity."
S. Francis de Sales.
Example
DECEMBER 16
"Children have more need of models than of critics."
Joubert.
"It is by imitation, far more than by precept, that we learn everything; and what we learn thus we acquire not only more effectually, but more pleasantly. This forms our manners, our opinions, our lives."
Burke.
"Meanwhile there is much that we can do. It need not be said that home is the most effective school of character. On the duties of home I cannot dwell now. But there is a more general influence of common tone and habits of which serious account ought to be taken. We are at all times unconsciously educating others by our own example. Our standard of duty in the discharge of business and in the use of leisure necessarily influences the desires and the actions of those who look to us for guidance. The young are quick-eyed critics, and the sight of quiet devotion to work, of pleasure sought in common things—and all truly precious things are common—will enforce surely and silently some great lessons of school. We do not, as far as I can judge, rate highly enough our responsibility for the customary practices of society. Not infrequently we neutralise our teaching through want of imagination by failing to follow out the consequences of some traditional custom. We seem to be inconsiderate when we are only ignorant."
BishopWestcott.
Wealth
DECEMBER 17
"Christ did not denounce wealth any more than He denounced pauperism. He did not abhor money; He used it. He did not abhor the company of rich men; He sought it. He did not invariably scorn or even resent a certain profuseness of expenditure. With a fine discrimination, He, while habitually discouraging it, yet recognised that, here and there, there was place for it. What he denounced was theloveof, thelustof riches; the vulgar snobbishness that chose exclusively the fellowship or the ways of rich men; the habit of extravagance; in one word, greed and luxury and self-indulgence. He taught men, first of all and last of all, that they were stewards, that in the final analysis of men and things neither they nor theirs were their own.
We must not only affirm the brotherhood of man: we must live it. For then the State, and in the State, the home, the Church, and the individual shall become the incarnation of a regenerated humanity, and earth, this earth, our earth, here and to-day, the vestibule of heaven!"
The Citizen in Relation to the Industrial Situation,BishopPotter.
The Limit of Luxury
DECEMBER 18
"The expenditure of money is no easy matter. It is wrong to let the poor want. It is wrong to starve the nature which asks for other things than food. There is only one principle of guidance. Whatever is done must be done in thought for others, and not in thought for ourselves. Money on luxuries which end in ourselves is wrongly spent; money spent on luxuries—on scents, sounds and sights—which directly or indirectly pass on to others is rightly spent. The limit of luxury is the power of sharing."
The Service of God, CanonBarnett.
"All that depends on individual choice—our recreations, our expenditure—can be brought to one test, which we are generally able to apply: Does this or that help me to do my work more effectively? To us most literally, even if the confession overwhelms us with shame, whatsoever is not of faith is sin."
BishopWestcott.
"Imitate a little child.... While you gather and use this world's goods with one hand, always let your other be fast in your Heavenly Father's hand, and look round from time to time, and make sure that He is satisfied."
S. Francis de Sales.
Expenditure
DECEMBER 19
"I will take heart to lay down what I hold to be a fundamental rule, that, while we endeavour to gain the largest and keenest power of appreciating all that is noblest in nature and art and literature, we must seek to live on as little as will support the full vigour of our life and work. The standard cannot be fixed. It will necessarily vary, within certain limits, according to the nature and office of each man. But generally we shall strive diligently to suppress all wants which do not tend through their satisfaction to create a nobler type of manhood, and individually we shall recognise no wants which do not express what is required for the due cultivation of our own powers and the fulfilment of that which we owe to others. We shall guard ourselves against the temptations of artificial wants which the ingenuity of producers offers in seductive forms. We shall refuse to admit that the caprice of fashion represents any valuable element in our constitution, or calls into play any faculties which would otherwise be unused, or encourages industry. On the contrary, we shall see in the dignity and changelessness of Eastern dress a typical condemnation of our restless inconstancy. We shall perceive, and act as perceiving, that the passion for novelty is morally and materially wasteful: that it distracts and confuses our power of appreciating true beauty: that it tends to the constant displacement of labour: that it produces instability both in the manufacture and in the sale of goods to the detriment of economy. We shall, to sum up all in one master-principle, estimate value and costs in terms of life, as Mr. Ruskin has taught us; and, accepting this principle, we shall seek nothing of which the cost to the producer so measured exceeds the gain to ourselves."
Christian Social Union Addresses, BishopWestcott.
Money
DECEMBER 20
"If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that wealth may be said to possess him."
Bacon.
"The covetous man is like the camel, with a great haunch on his back; heaven's gate must be made higher and broader, or he will hardly get in."
Adams.
"Who shuts his hand hath lost his gold,Who opens it hath it twice told."
George Herbert.
"Wealth in every form, material, intellectual, moral, has to be administered for the common good. God only can say of any possession 'My own.'"
BishopWestcott.
Courage to be Poor
DECEMBER 21
"How the sting of poverty, or small means, is gone when one keeps house for one's own comfort, and not for the comfort of one's neighbours."
Dinah Maria Muloch.
"I wish that more of us had the courage to be poor; that the world had not gone mad after fashion and display; but so it is, and the blessings we might have are lost in the effort to get those which lie outside the possible."
Alice Carey.
"To have what we want is riches; but to be able to do without is power."
George MacDonald.
Hospitality
DECEMBER 22
"The truest hospitality is shown not in the effort to entertain, but in the depth of welcome. What a guest loves to come for, and come again, is not the meal, but those who sit at the meal. If we remembered this, more homes would be habitually thrown open to win the benedictions upon hospitality. It is our ceremony, not our poverty, it is self-consciousness oftener than inability to be agreeable that makes us willing to live cloistered. Seldom is it that pleasantest homes to visit are the richest. The real compliment isnotto apologise for the simple fare. That means trust, and trust is better than fried oysters."
W. C. Gannett.
"Hospitality must be for service, and not for show, or it pulls down the host."
Emerson.
Hospitality
DECEMBER 23
"I pray you, O excellent wife, not to cumber yourself and me to get a rich dinner for this man or this woman who has alighted at our gate, nor a bedchamber made ready at too great a cost. These things, if they are curious in, they can get for a dollar at any village. But let this stranger, if he will, in your looks, in your accent and behaviour, read in your heart and earnestness, your thought and will, which he cannot buy at any price in any village or city, and which he may well travel fifty miles and dine sparely and sleep hard in order to behold. Certainly, let the board be spread and let the bed be dressed for the traveller; but let not the emphasis of hospitality lie in these things. Honour to the house where they are simple to the verge of hardship, so that there the intellect is awake and reads the laws of the universe."
Emerson.
"I should count myself fortunate if my home were remembered for some inspiring quality of faith, charity and aspiring intelligence."
Hamilton W. Mabie.
Christmas Eve
DECEMBER 24
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
"It chanced upon the merry, merry Christmas Eve,I went sighing past the church across the moorland dreary—'Oh! never sin and want and woe this earth will leave,And the bells but mock the wailing rounds, they sing so cheery.How long, O Lord! how long before Thou come again!Still in cellar, and in garret, and on moorland drearyThe orphans moan, and widows weep, and poor men toil in vain,Till earth is sick of hope deferred, though Christmas bells be cheery.'"Then arose a joyous clamour from the wild-fowl on the mere,Beneath the stars, across the snow, like clear bells ringing,And a voice within cried,—'Listen! Christmas carols even here!Tho' thou be dumb, yet o'er their work the stars and snows are singing.Blind! I live, I love, I reign; and all the nations through,With the thunder of my judgments even now are ringing;Do thou fulfil thy work but as yon wild-fowl do,Thou wilt heed no less the wailing, yet hear through it angels singing.'"
Charles Kingsley.
Christmas Day
DECEMBER 25
"And now once more comes Christmas Day. Once more, borne abroad on the words of simple-minded shepherds, runs the story. God and man have met, in visible, actual union, in a life which is both human and divine.... Lift up yourselves to the great meaning of the Day, and dare to think of your Humanity as something so sublimely precious that it is worthy of being made an offering to God. Count it a privilege to make that offering as complete as possible, keeping nothing back, and then go out to the pleasures and duties of your life, having been truly born anew into His Divinity, as He was born into our Humanity, on Christmas Day."
Phillips Brooks.
"Let not the hearts, whose sorrow cannot callThis Christmas merry, slight the festival;Let us be merry that may merry be,But let us not forget that many mourn;The smiling Baby came to give us glee,But for the weepers was the Saviour born."
Coleridge.
Mile-marks
DECEMBER 26
"But Christmas is not only the mile-mark of another year, moving us to thoughts of self-examination: it is a season, from all its associations, whether domestic or religious, suggesting thoughts of joy. A man dissatisfied with his endeavours is a man tempted to sadness. And in the midst of the winter, when his life runs lowest and he is reminded of the empty chairs of his beloved, it is well he should be condemned to this fashion of the smiling face. Noble disappointment, noble self-denial, are not to be admired, not even to be pardoned, if they bring bitterness. It is one thing to enter the kingdom of heaven maimed; another to maim yourself and stay without. And the kingdom of heaven is of the childlike, of those who are easy to please, who love and who give pleasure."