Part 2
_Of Henry Drummond._--"He seemed to be invariably in good spirits, and invariably disengaged. He was always ready for any and every office of friendship. It should be said that though few men were more criticised or misconceived, he himself never wrote an unkind word about any one, never retaliated, never bore malice, and could do full justice to the abilities and character of his opponents. I have just heard that he exerted himself privately to secure an important appointment for one of his most trenchant critics, and was successful.... The spectacle of his long struggle with a mortal disease was something more than impressive. Those who saw him in his illness saw that, as the physical life flickered low, the spiritual energy grew. Always gentle and considerate, he became even more careful, more tender, more thoughtful, more unselfish. He never in any way complained. His doctors found it very difficult to get him to talk of his illness. It was strange and painful, but inspiring, to see his keenness, his mental elasticity, his universal interest. Dr. Barbour says: 'I have never seen pain or weariness, or the being obliged to do nothing, more entirely overcome, treated, in fact, as if they were not. The end came suddenly from failure of the heart. Those with him received only a few hours' warning of his critical condition.' It was not like death. He lay on his couch in the drawing-room, and passed away in his sleep, with the sun shining in, and the birds singing at the open window. There was no sadness nor farewell. It recalled what he himself said of a friend's death--'putting by the well-worn tools without a sigh, and expecting elsewhere better work to do.'"
_Character Sketch by_ W. ROBERTSON NICOLL _in "The Ideal Life."_
Character of R. L. Stevenson
JANUARY 23
"I Have referred to his chivalry only to find that in reality I was thinking of every one of the whole group of attributes which are associated with that name. Loyalty, honesty, generosity, courage; courtesy, tenderness, and self-devotion; to impute no unworthy motives and to bear no grudge; to bear misfortune with cheerfulness and without a murmur; to strike hard for the right and take no mean advantage; to be gentle to women and kind to all that are weak; to be very rigorous with oneself and very lenient to others--these, and any other virtues ever implied in 'chivalry,' were the traits that distinguished Stevenson."
_The Life of R. L. Stevenson_, GRAHAM BALFOUR.
"Through life he did the thing he was doing as if it were the one thing in the world that was worth being done."
_The Life of R. L. Stevenson_, GRAHAM BALFOUR.
Being and Doing
JANUARY 24
"Upon the man who desired to be His disciple and a member of God's Kingdom were laid the conditions of a pure heart, of a forgiving spirit, of a helpful hand, of a heavenly purpose, of an unworldly mind. Christ did not ground His Christianity in thinking, or in doing, but, first of all, in being."
_The Mind of the Master_, DR. JOHN WATSON.
"History and literature furnish many instances of men who have made their mark in virtue of a striking _personality_; whose reputation rests, not on any visible tokens,--not on kingdoms conquered, institutions founded, books written, or inventions perfected or anything else that they _did_,--but mainly on what they _were_. Their merely having passed along a course on earth, and lived and talked and acted with others, has left lasting effects on mankind."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
Being and Doing
JANUARY 25
"Perfection is being, not doing--it is not to effect an act, but to achieve a character. If the aim of life were to do something, then, as in an earthly business, except in doing this one thing the business would be at a standstill. The student is not doing the one thing of student-life when he has ceased to think or read. The labourer leaves his work undone when the spade is not in his hand, and he sits beneath the hedge to rest. But in Christian life, every moment and every act is an opportunity for doing the one thing of _becoming_ Christ-like. Every day is full of a most expressive experience. Every temptation to evil temper which can assail us to-day will be an opportunity to decide the question whether we shall gain the calmness and the rest of Christ, or whether we shall be tossed by the restlessness and agitation of the world. Nay, the very vicissitudes of the season, day and night, heat and cold, affecting us variably, and producing exhilaration or depression, are so contrived as to conduce towards the being which we become, and decide whether we shall be masters of ourselves, or whether we shall be swept at the mercy of accident and circumstance, miserably susceptible of merely outward influences. Infinite as are the varieties of life, so manifold are the paths to saintly character; and he who has not found out how directly or indirectly to make everything converge towards his soul's sanctification, has as yet missed the meaning of this life."
FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON.
Life-Giver, not Deed-Doer
JANUARY 26
"Christ was not primarily the Deed-Doer or the Word-Sayer. He was the Life-Giver. He made men live. Wherever He went He brought vitality. Both in the days of His Incarnation and in the long years of His power which have followed since He vanished from men's sight, His work has been to create the conditions in which all sorts of men should live."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"Therefore with all the strength God has given us, let us be fulfillers. Let us try to make the life of the world more complete. What can we do? First, each of us can put one more healthy and holy life into the world, and so directly increase the aggregation of righteousness. That is much. To fasten one more link, however small, in the growing chain that is ultimately to bind humanity to God beyond all fear of separation, is very much indeed. And besides that, we can, with sympathy and intelligence, patience and hope, bring up the lagging side in all the vitality around us, and assert for man the worth, the meaning, and the possibility of this his human life."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
Seeing One's Life in Perspective
JANUARY 27
"If we wish to cultivate our higher nature we must have solitude. It is vitally necessary at times that we should be able to get away from every other being on the face of the earth. What thoughtful person does not love to be alone; to be surrounded with no objects but the fields and the trees, the mountains and the waters, to hear nothing but the rustling of the foliage and the songs of the birds, and to feel the fresh breeze of heaven playing upon his cheeks? Moreover, when we are very much in contact with human life, when we are mingling with it, we are liable to become too conscious of its turbid side, or drearily oppressed with its commonplace features. To see human life, and weigh it in its many aspects, we need at times to go away and be as it were on a pinnacle, where we can take it all in with one sweeping glance. Solitude can affect us somewhat as religious worship does. It can take us out of the consciousness of where we belong, away from the ordinary selfish instincts by which we may be dominated.
"Too much solitude may be dangerous, just as too much of the sense of mystery may be. Yet something of it is essential to our advance in spiritual life. A man must go away where he can feel the mystery of his own being. Moreover, a certain degree of solitude seems necessary to the full growth of the mind, and it is in solitude that great principles are first thought out, and the genius of eminent men formed, for solitude is the nurse of enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is the real parent of genius. Solitude, moreover, is essential to any depth of meditation or of character, and is the cradle of thoughts and aspirations."
H. W. SMITH.
"One sees one's life in perspective when one goes abroad, and to be spectators of ourselves is very solemn."
HENRY DRUMMOND.
Triviality
JANUARY 28
"Triviality is the modern equivalent for worldliness, the regard for the outward and the visible. The trivial mind is enmity with God, and it is of many kinds. There is the triviality which concerns itself with 'nothing,' which gossips about 'him' and 'her,' and becomes serious over a form, a phrase, a dress, a race or a show. There is the triviality to which the working people are forced by the cares of this life, who all day and every day have to think of the bread which perisheth, while their souls starve for lack of knowledge which endureth. The cares of life as often choke the growth of the Word as the deceitfulness of riches. There is also that most insidious kind of triviality which tends to haunt the more serious circles, wrapping itself in talk about social schemes, Church progress, policies and philosophies, passing itself off as serious, when all the time the concern of the talker is to achieve a wordy success or to get notice for his little self or his little system."
_The Service of God,_ CANON BARNETT.
"I believe that the mind can be profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality."
THOREAU.
Triviality
JANUARY 29
"They that use to employ their Minds too much upon Trifles, commonly make themselves incapable of any Thing that is Serious or Great."
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
"Be still and cool in thy own mind and spirit from thy own thoughts, and then thou wilt feel the principle of God to turn thy mind to the Lord, from whom cometh life; whereby thou mayest receive the strength and power to allay all storms and tempests. That is it which works up into patience, innocency, soberness, into stillness, staidness, quietness up to God, with His power. Therefore mind; that is the word of the Lord God unto thee, that thou mayest feel the authority of God, and thy faith in that, to work down that which troubles thee; for that is it which keeps peace, and brings up the witness in thee, which hath been transgressed, to feel after God with His power and life, who is a God of order and peace."
GEORGE FOX.
"It is not sin so much as triviality which hides God."
_The Service of God_, CANON BARNETT.
The Art of being Quiet
JANUARY 30
"It is only when we begin to _think_ about life, and how we should live, that the art of being quiet assumes its real value; to the irrational creature it is nothing, to the rational it is much. In the first place, it removes what De Quincey, with his usual grand felicity of expression, calls 'the burden of that distraction which lurks in the infinite littleness of details.' It is the infinite littleness of details which takes the glory and the dignity from our common life, and which we who value that life for its own sake and for the sake of its great Giver must strive to make finite.
"Since unconscious life is not possible to the intellectual adult, as it is to the child--since he cannot go on living without a thought about the nature of his own being, its end and aim--it is good for him to cultivate a habit of repose, that he may think and feel like a man putting away those childish things--the carelessness, the thoughtless joy, 'the tear forgot as soon as shed,' which, however beautiful, because appropriate, in childhood, are not beautiful because not appropriate in mature age.
"The art of being quiet is necessary to enable a man to possess his own soul in peace and integrity--to examine himself, to understand what gifts God has endowed him with, and to consider how he may best employ them in the business of the world. This is its universal utility. It is unwholesome activity which requires not repose and thoughtful quiet as its forerunner, and every man should secure some portion of each day for voluntary retirement and repose within himself."
The Art of being Quiet
JANUARY 31
"One of the special needs of our day is more time for meditation and reflection."
_Life Here and Hereafter_, Canon MACCOLL.
"We are too busy, too encumbered, too much occupied, too active! We read too much! The one thing needful is to throw off all one's load of cares, of preoccupations, of pedantry, and to become again young, simple, child-like, living happily and gratefully in the present hour. We must know how to put occupation aside, which does not mean that we must be idle. In an inaction which is meditative and attentive the wrinkles of the soul are smoothed away, and the soul itself spreads, unfolds, and springs afresh, and, like the trodden grass of the roadside or the bruised leaf of a plant, repairs its injuries, becomes new, spontaneous, true, and original. Reverie, like the rain of night, restores colour and force to thoughts which have been blanched and wearied by the heat of the day. With gentle fertilising power it awakens within us a thousand sleeping germs, and, as though in play, gathers round us materials for the future, and images for the use of talent."
_Amiel's Journal._
Inward Stillness
February 1
"Let each of us sit still, and keep watch for awhile in the silent house of his spirit.... As near as is the light to one sleeping in the light, so near is Christ, the Awakener, to every Eternal man, deeply as he may be asleep within his outer man."
JOHN PULSFORD.
"Let us then labour for an inward stillness, An inward stillness and an inward healing; That perfect silence where the lips and heart Are still, and we no longer entertain Our own imperfect thoughts and vain opinions, But God alone speaks in us, and we wait In singleness of heart that we may know His will, and in the silence of our own spirits, That we may do His will, and that only."
LONGFELLOW.
Commune with your Own Heart and be Still
FEBRUARY 2
"Perhaps one very simple, but alas too often neglected rule, may be suggested to those who are indeed desirous of realising through all the petty vicissitudes and monotonous or trivial round of their daily life, the Divine presence and power. 'Devotion early in the day _before the day's worries begin._ It is the _only_ way to keep the spirit Godward through them all.' Devotion, it is needless to add, is not 'saying prayers' in words either of our own or any one else's--nor is it only or chiefly 'making request.' It is pre-eminently _worship_, the deliberate homage of the mind and heart--of the whole being to God who is its source. And here steadfastness of will, showing itself in determined concentration of attention, is the indispensable condition of success; for such concentration is by no means always an easy matter to attain, even when the effort is 'made early in the day before the day's worries begin.' Sometimes there are sleepless 'worries' which assert their presence with the first dawn of consciousness; sometimes we are mentally or physically lazy, inert or languid. Well, if we habitually give in to such difficulties in a way of which we should be utterly ashamed were any other object of mental effort in question, we must not be surprised if the entirely natural result ensues that we fail to 'realise' what we have never honestly set ourselves to treat as real.... Amid the thronging duties, the ceaseless cares, the toilsome or pleasurable round of daily life, we must take and we must keep time to 'commune with our own hearts and in our own chamber, and be still.'"
E. M. CAILLARD.
The Receptive Side of Life
FEBRUARY 3
"To all who are active in Christian work I would say, ever remember that there must be fidelity to the receptive side of life if you are to exercise any real abiding influence. How often do we hear men say that they have worked hard in their district, or their school, or their class, and yet there is no result.
"Perhaps they have worked too hard. There are a multitude of Marthas in modern English life; but it were good for such if, at times, they would follow the example of the wiser Mary, and sit down quietly at Jesus' feet, and draw in from Him that power which cannot by any possibility be given out, before it is taken in."
Canon BODY.
"The problem set before us is to bring our daily task into the temple of contemplation and ply it there, to act as in the presence of God, to interfuse one's little part with religion. So only can we inform the detail of life, all that is passing, temporary, and insignificant, with beauty and nobility. So may we dignify and consecrate the meanest of occupations. So may we feel that we are paying our tribute to the universal work and the eternal will. So are we reconciled with life and delivered from the fear of death. So are we in order and at peace."
_Amiel's Journal._
Regulation of Time
FEBRUARY 4
"No two things differ more than hurry and despatch. Hurry is the mark of a weak mind, despatch of a strong one. A weak man in office, like a squirrel in a cage, is labouring eternally, but to no purpose, and in constant motion, without getting on a jot: like a turnstile, he is in everybody's way, but stops nobody: he talks a great deal, but says very little; looks into everything, but sees into nothing; and has a hundred irons in the fire, but very few of them are hot, and with these few that are he burns his fingers."
COLTON.
"Hurry belongs to the mortal who wants to see the outcome of his work, while eternity is lavish of time."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
"Unfaithfulness in the keeping of an appointment is an act of clear dishonesty. You may as well borrow a person's money as his time."
HORACE MANN.
"Punctuality is the politeness of kings."
LOUIS XIV.
Business-like Habits
FEBRUARY 5
"It is very important to cultivate business-like habits. An eminent friend of mine assured me not long ago that when he thought over the many cases he had known of men, even of good ability and high character, who had been unsuccessful in life, by far the most frequent cause of failure was that they were dilatory, unpunctual, unable to work cordially with others, obstinate in small things, and, in fact, what we call unbusiness-like."
LORD AVEBURY.
"A 'bustling' man is, to a man of business, what a monkey is to a man. He is the shadow of despatch, or, rather, the echo thereof; for he maketh noise enough for an alarm. The quickness of a true man of business he imitateth, imitateth excellently well, but neither his silence nor his method; and it is to be noted that he is ever most vehement about matters of no significance. He is always in such headlong haste to overtake the next minute, that he loses half the minute in hand; and yet is full of indignation and impatience at other people's slowness, and wasteth more time in reiterating his love of despatch than would suffice for doing a great deal of business. He never giveth you his quiet attention with a mind centred on what you are saying, but hears you with a restless eye, and a perpetual shifting posture, and is so eager to show his quickness that he interrupteth you a dozen times, misunderstands you as often, and ends by making you and himself lose twice as much time as was necessary."
H. ROGERS.
Time and Method
FEBRUARY 6
"The thrift of time will repay in after life with usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and waste of it will make you dwindle alike in intellectual and moral stature beyond your darkest reckoning."
GLADSTONE.
"One of the striking characteristics of successful persons is their faculty of readily determining the relative importance of different things. There are many things which it is desirable to do, a few are essential, and there is no more useful quality of the human mind than that which enables its possessor at once to distinguish which the few essential things are. Life is so short and time so fleeting that much which one would wish to do must fain be omitted. He is fortunate who perceives at a glance what it will do, and what it will not do, to omit. This invaluable faculty, if not possessed in a remarkable degree naturally, is susceptible of cultivation to a considerable extent. Let any one adopt the practice of reflecting, every morning, what must necessarily be done during the day, and then begin by doing the most important things first, leaving the others to take their chance of being done or left undone. In this way attention first to the things of first importance soon acquires the almost irresistible force of habit, and becomes a rule of life. There is no rule more indispensable to success."
Concentration
FEBRUARY 7
"The marked differences of working power among men are due chiefly to differences in the power of concentration. A retentive and accurate memory is conditioned upon close attention. If one gives entire attention to what is passing before him, he is not likely to forget it, or to confuse persons or incidents. The book which one reads with eyes which are continually lifted from the page may furnish entertainment for the moment, but cannot enrich the reader, because it cannot become part of his knowledge. Attention is the simplest form of concentration, and its value illustrates the supreme importance of that focussing of all the powers upon the thing in hand which may be called the sustained attention of the whole nature.
"Here, as everywhere in the field of man's life, there enters that element of sacrifice without which no real achievement is possible. To secure a great end, one must be willing to pay a great price. The exact adjustment of achievement to sacrifice makes us aware, at every step, of the invisible spiritual order with which all men are in every kind of endeavour. If the highest skill could be secured without long and painful effort, it would be wasted through ignorance of its value, or misused through lack of education; but a man rarely attains great skill without undergoing a discipline of self-denial and work which gives him steadiness, restraint, and a certain kind of character. The giving up of pleasures which are wholesome, the turning aside from fields which are inviting, the steady refusal of invitations and claims which one would be glad to accept or recognise, invest the power of concentration with moral quality, and throw a searching light on the nature of genuine success.
"To do one thing well, a man must be willing to hold all other interests and activities subordinate; to attain the largest freedom, a man must first bear the cross of self-denial."
Concentration
FEBRUARY 8
"Strive constantly to concentrate yourself; never dissipate your powers; incessant activity, of whatever kind, leads finally to bankruptcy."
GOETHE.
"All impatience disturbs the circulation, scatters force, makes concentration difficult if not impossible."
C. B. NEWCOMB.
"They have great powers, and they waste them pitifully, for they have not the greatest power,--the power to rule the use of their powers."
F. W. ROBERTSON.
"Concentration is the secret of strength."
EMERSON.
Readiness
FEBRUARY 9
"To know how to be ready--a great thing--a precious gift,--and one that implies calculation, grasp and decision. To be always ready, a man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied; he must know how to disengage what is essential from the detail in which it is enwrapped, for everything cannot be equally considered; in a word, he must be able to simplify his duties, his business, and his life. To know how to be ready, is to know how to start.
"It is astonishing how all of us are generally cumbered up with the thousand and one hindrances and duties which are not such, but which nevertheless wind us about with their spider threads and fetter the movement of our wings. It is the lack of order which makes us slaves; the confusion of to-day discounts the freedom of to-morrow.