Part 4

"Some of the commonest faults of thought and work are those which come from thinking too poorly of our own lives, and of that which must rightly be demanded of us. A high standard of accuracy, a chivalrous loyalty to exact truth, generosity to fellow-workers, indifference to results, distrust of all that is showy, self-discipline and undiscouraged patience through all difficulties,--these are among the first and greatest conditions of good work; and they ought never to seem too hard for us if we remember what we owe to the best work of bygone days."

_The Spirit of Discipline_, Bishop PAGET.

"Whether thy work be fine or coarse, planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought; no matter how often defeated, you are born to victory. The reward of a thing well done is to have done it."

EMERSON.

Doing our Best

MARCH 5

"It is not the quantity of our work that He regards, but the quality of it. He is less anxious that we should fulfil our task--for He can make up for our deficiencies--than that we should do our best; for what He desires is the improvement of our characters, and that requires the co-operation of our own wills with His."

_Life Here and Hereafter_, Canon MACCOLL.

"Experience shows that success is due less to ability than to zeal. The winner is he who gives himself to his work, body and soul."

CHARLES BUXTON.

"Life is too short to waste,

* * * * *

'Twill soon be dark; Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark!"

EMERSON.

Work--Effective Reforms

MARCH 6

"We must be careful not to undermine independence in our anxiety to relieve distress. There is always the initial difficulty that whatever is done for men takes from them a great stimulus to work, and weakens the feeling of independence; all creatures which depend on others tend to become mere parasites. It is important therefore, as far as possible, not so much to give a man bread, as to put him in the way of earning it for himself; not to give direct aid, but to help others to help themselves. The world is so complex that we must all inevitably owe much to our neighbours; but, as far as possible, every man should stand on his own feet."

Lord AVEBURY.

"We are now generally agreed upon our aims: nobility of character and not only outward prosperity; victory over evil at its source, and not in its consequences; reforms which shall regard the welfare of future generations, who are 'the greatest number.'"

Bishop WESTCOTT.

"We fall under the temptation of seeking material solutions for spiritual problems; material remedies for spiritual maladies. The thought of spiritual poverty, of spiritual destitution, is crowded out. We treat the symptoms and neglect the disease itself."

Bishop WESTCOTT.

Work--Effective Reforms

MARCH 7

"If you are moved with a vague desire to help men be better men, you must know that you can do it not by belabouring the evil but by training the good that there is in them."

PHILLIPS BROOKS.

"The Christian, therefore, I repeat, as Christian, will take his full part in preparing for the amelioration of the conditions of men no less than for their conversion. He will in due measure strive to follow, under the limitations of his own labour, the whole example of his Lord, who removed outward distresses and satisfied outward wants, even as He brought spiritual strength and rest to the weak and weary. Moreover, this effort based upon resolute thought, belongs to the completeness of the religious life of the Christian."

Bishop WESTCOTT.

"Reforms which are effective must develop and strengthen character."

Bishop WESTCOTT.

Work--"To cure is the Voice of the Past"

MARCH 8

"All measures of reformation are effective in exact proportion to their timeliness. Partial decay may be cut away and cleansed, incipient error corrected: but there is a point at which corruption can no more be stayed, nor wandering recalled. It has been the manner of modern philanthropy to remain passive until that precise period, and to leave the sick to perish, and the foolish to stray, while it spent itself in frantic exertions to raise the dead, and reform the dust."

_The Queen of the Air_, JOHN RUSKIN.

"THE real work of charity is not to afford facilities to the poor to lower their standard, but to step in when calamity threatens and prevent it from falling."

_The Standard of Life_, MRS. BERNARD BOSANQUET.

"To cure is the voice of the past; to prevent, the divine whisper of to-day."

_Children's Rights_, KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN.

Satan's Opportunities

MARCH 9

"Physiologists know as much about morality as ministers of the gospel. The vices which drag men and women into crime spring as often from unhealthy bodies as from weak wills and callous consciences. Vile fancies and sensual appetites grow stronger and more terrible when a feeble physique and low vitality offer no opposing force. Deadly vices are nourished in the weak diseased bodies that are penned, day after day, in filthy crowded tenements of great cities."

_Children's Rights_, KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN.

"Man's unpitied misery is Satan's opportunity."

"Mould conditions aright, and men will grow good to fit them."

HORACE FLETCHER.

"Evil is Wrought by want of Thought"

MARCH 10

"But evil is wrought by want of thought, As well as want of heart."

THOMAS HOOD.

"It is clear that in whatever it is our duty to act, those matters also it is our duty to study."

DR. ARNOLD.

"No alms-giving of money is so helpful as alms-giving of care and thought; the giving of money without thought is indeed continually mischievous; but the invective of the economist against indiscriminate charity is idle if it be not coupled with pleading for discriminate charity, and above all, for that charity which discerns the uses that people may be put to, and helps them by setting them to work in those services. That is the help beyond all others; find out how to make useless people useful, and let them earn their money instead of begging it."

_Arrows of the Chace_, JOHN RUSKIN.

(From a letter published in the _Daily Telegraph_ of December 20, 1868.)

The Hallowing of Work

March 11

"We shall not do much of that which is best worth doing in the world if we only consecrate to it our gifts. We have something else to consecrate for our work's sake, for our friend's sake, for the sake of all for whom in any way we are responsible. Beyond and above all that we may do, is that which we may be. 'For their sakes I sanctify, I consecrate, Myself.' So our Blessed Lord spoke in regard to those whom He had drawn nearest to Himself--His friends; those whose characters He would fashion for the greatest task that ever yet was laid upon frail men. And even when we have set apart all that was unique in the nature and results of His Self-consecration, all that He alone could, once for all, achieve; still, I think, the words disclose a principle that concerns every one of us--the principle of all that is highest and purest in the influence of one life upon the lives it touches: 'For their sakes I consecrate Myself.' There is the ultimate secret of power; the one sure way of doing good in our generation. We cannot anticipate or analyse the power of a pure and holy life; but there can be no doubt about its reality, and there seems no limit to its range. We can only know in part the laws and forces of the spiritual world; and it may be that every soul that is purified and given up to God and to His work releases or awakens energies of which we have no suspicion--energies viewless as the wind; but we can be sure of the result, and we may have glimpses sometimes of the process--surely, there is no power in the world so unerring or so irrepressible as the power of personal holiness. All else at times goes wrong, blunders, loses proportion, falls disastrously short of its aim, grows stiff or one-sided, or out of date--'whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away;' but nothing mars or misleads the influence that issues from a pure and humble and unselfish character."

_The Hallowing of Work_, Bishop PAGET.

One by One

MARCH 12

"Nothing is more characteristic of Jesus' method than His indifference to the many--His devotion to the single soul. His attitude to the public, and His attitude to a private person were a contrast and a contradiction. If His work was likely to cause a sensation Jesus charged His disciples to let no man know it: if the people got wind of Him, He fled to solitary places: if they found Him, as soon as might be He escaped. But He used to take young men home with Him, who wished to ask questions: He would spend all night with a perplexed scholar: He gave an afternoon to a Samaritan woman. He denied Himself to the multitude: He lay in wait for the individual. This was not because He under-valued a thousand, it was because He could not work on the thousand scale: it was not because He over-valued the individual, it was because His method was arranged for the scale of one. Jesus never succeeded in public save once, when He was crucified: He never failed in private save once, with Pontius Pilate. His method was not sensation: it was influence. He did not rely on impulses: He believed in discipline. He never numbered converts, because He knew what was in man: He sifted them, as one winnoweth the wheat from the chaff. Spiritual statistics are unknown in the Gospels: they came in with St. Peter in the pardonable intoxication of success: they have since grown to be a mania. As the Church coarsens she estimates salvation by quantity, how many souls are saved: Jesus was concerned with quality, after what fashion they were saved. His mission was to bring Humanity to perfection."

_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.

One by One

MARCH 13

"Our Lord ... does not, on entering a village, ordain that all the lepers in it shall be cleansed, or all the palsied restored to the use of their limbs. He condescends to take each case by itself."

_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.

"'One by one' is not only the safest way of helping, it is the only possible way of ensuring that any real good is done."

_Rich and Poor_, Mrs. BERNARD BOSANQUET.

"Love cannot be content while any suffer,--cannot rest while any sin."

"I would not let one cry whom I could save."

_The Light of Asia_, E. ARNOLD.

Interruptions

MARCH 14

"So long as there is work to do there will be interruptions--breaks in its progress. The minister at work on his sermon, the merchant at his desk, the woman in her household duties--all must expect these calls to turn aside from the work in hand. And it is a part of one's character growth to bear these timely or untimely interruptions without any break in good temper or courtesy. A young student who was privileged to call often upon Phillips Brooks in his study, told the writer that he could never have learned from the Bishop's manner or words, that the big-hearted, busy man was ever too busy to receive him. To bear interruptions thus serenely is an opportunity for self-control not to be overlooked by any one who wants to do God's work in the right spirit."

"He threw himself spontaneously, apparently without effort and yet irresistibly, into the griefs and joys, the needs and interests of others. He had the happy gift of taking everybody to his heart. He was never inattentive. As you talked to him you always felt he was listening and really trying to understand your case. In the light of sympathy you saw yourself reflected in the mirror of his heart. Nor did he forget you when you were gone from sight. His was not the cheap sympathy of an outward manner, but the true emotion of the inward self. To your surprise, when you had left Bishop Fraser with a sense of shame at having occupied, in your interview, so much of his overcrowded time, you would find the next morning a letter upon your table giving his fuller and more mature opinion of your plans or course of action."... "Tender and loving, in sympathy with the lowliest, forbearing with the most unreasonable, often interrupted, but never resenting, the sacrifice of self crowning all."

_Bishop Fraser's Lancashire Life_, Archdeacon DIGGLE.

Mechanical Work

MARCH 15

"Miss Keane took but little heed of the presence of Rachel and Hester in her brother's house. Those who work mechanically on fixed lines seem as a rule to miss the pith of life. She was kind when she remembered them, but her heart was where her treasure was--namely, in her escritoire, with her list of Bible classes, and servants' choral unions, and the long roll of contributors to the guild of work which she herself had started."

_Red Pottage_, MARY CHOLMONDELEY.

"Any man seeking to be holy who does not set himself in close live contact with the life about him, stands in great danger of growing pious or punctilious instead of holy."

PHILLIPS BROOKS.

An Ideal Guest-chamber

MARCH 16

"In Mrs. Charles' well-known book, 'Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta family,' there is a beautiful passage where Fritz and Eva, beginning their young life together, take into their house a penitent woman who was thought to be near death. Eva writes: 'There is a little room over the porch that we had set apart as a guest-chamber, and very sweet it was to me that Bertha should be its first inmate; very sweet to Fritz and me that our home should be what our Lord's heart is, a refuge for the outcast, the penitent, the solitary, and the sorrowful.'"

"We all say we follow Christ, but most of us only follow Him and His cross--part of the way. When we are told that our Lord bore our sins, and was wounded for our transgressions, I suppose that meant that He felt as if they were His own, in His great love for us. But when you shrink from bearing your fellow-creatures' transgressions, it shows that your love is small."

_Red Pottage_, MARY CHOLMONDELEY.

"Radiant with heavenly pity, lost in care For those he knew not, save as fellow lives."

_The Light of Asia_, E. ARNOLD.

"To be Trusted is to be Saved"

MARCH 17

"No one can perish in whom any spark of the Divine life is still burning. No one can be plucked out of the Saviour's hands who still struggles towards Him, however feebly and falteringly."

_Life Here and Hereafter_, Canon MACCOLL.

"To be trusted is to be saved. And if we try to influence or elevate others, we shall soon see that success is in proportion to their belief of our belief in them. For the respect of another is the first restoration of the self-respect a man has lost; our ideal of what he is becomes to him the hope and pattern of what he may become."

_The Greatest Thing in the World_, HENRY DRUMMOND.

"Coarse treatment never wins souls."

God's Children

MARCH 18

"Hallow the name of God, hallow His character, in all noble and good humanity.

"That is not difficult. But to hallow God's character in men and women who are not good, in sinful humanity--that is not so easy. Yet, if we would be true to this prayer of Christ, this too is part of our duty. The evil are also the children of God. They have not hallowed His character, but abandoned its worship. Nevertheless they cannot get rid of it. That divine thing lies hid, ineradicably, beneath their evil doing and evil thought. The truth, justice, love, piety, and goodness of God are in abeyance in the wrong-doer, but they are not dead in him. They cannot die; nothing can destroy them. And we, whose desire it should be to save men, can, if we have faith in the indestructible God in men, pierce to this immortal good in the evil, appeal to it, and call it forth to light, like Lazarus, from the tomb. This we can do, if, like Jesus, we love men enough; if our faith that the evil are still God's children be deep and firm enough. In this we can keep closest to Christ, for it was His daily way of life; and divinely beautiful it was. He hallowed God's character in the criminal and the harlot. He saw the good beneath the evil. At His touch it leaped into life, and its life destroyed the death in the sinner's soul. It seems as if He said when He looked into the face of the wrong-doer, 'Father, hallowed be Thy character.' No lesson for life can be wiser or deeper than this. It ought to rule all our doings with the weak and guilty. It is at the very centre of the prayer, 'Hallowed be Thy name.'"

_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.

"Always at the door Of foulest hearts, the angel-nature yet Knocks to return and cancel all its debt."

J. R. Lowell.

Raw Material

MARCH 19

"One also is filled with _hope_ at the figure of the clay, because it suggests the immense and unimagined possibilities of human nature. Upon first sight how poor a thing is this man, with his ignorances, prejudices, pettinesses, his envy, jealousy, evil temper. Upon second thoughts how much may be in this man, how much he may achieve, how high he may attain. This dull and unattractive man must not be despised, whether he be yourself or another: he is incalculable and unfathomable. He is simply raw material, soul stuff, and one can no more anticipate him than you could foresee a Turner from the master's colours--some of them very strange--or a Persian rug from a heap of wool. Out of that unpromising face, that sleeping intellect, those awkward ways, this crust of selfishness and a hundred faults, is going to be made a man whom the world will admire and honour."

_The Potter's Wheel_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.

"To have faith is to create; to have hope is to call down blessing; to have love is to work miracles."

_The Roadmender_, MICHAEL FAIRLESS.

"The faith which saves others is the enthusiasm of patience."

_The Service of God_, Canon BARNETT.

Pessimism

MARCH 20

"The next thing to speak of is a tendency in the world which is the very opposite of that of which we have spoken, but which is equally characteristic of a time when a new life and spirit is on the verge of taking its form. As part of the fight of faith is to support and direct the first, so part of that battle is to weaken and oppose the doctrine that the world is going from bad to worse, that there is no regeneration for it, and that there ought to be none. On this doctrine I have frequently spoken, but I do not hesitate to speak of it again. It is the fashion to praise it; it deserves no praise, it is detestable. This is a favourite doctrine of the comfortable classes who are idle and luxurious or merely fantastic, and of a certain type of scientific men, both of whom are profoundly ignorant of the working world and of the poor, who hate this doctrine and despise it. The sufferings of the poor and the oppressed are used as an argument in its favour, but, curiously enough, you scarcely ever find it held by the poor and the oppressed;--on the contrary, these are the creators and builders of Utopias: out of this class grow those who prophesy a golden year. Those who have most reason to despair never despair."

_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.

"Of all bad habits despondency is among the least respectable, and there is no one quite so tiresome as the sad-visaged Christian who is oppressed by the wickedness and hopelessness of the world."

Service

MARCH 21

"Service implies self-giving. There is service which is just self-satisfaction, pleasing to the taste for doing and meddling, and there is service which is exactly measured to its pay. True service implies giving, the surrender of time or taste, the subjection of self to others, the gift which is neither noticed nor returned."

_The Service of God_, Canon BARNETT.

"Christian greatness is born of willingness to lay the lowliest duties on yourself, and the way to be first is to be ready to remain last."

_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.

"Nobleness consists in a valiant suffering for others, not in making others suffer for us. The chief of men is he who stands in the van of men; fronting the peril which frightens back all others.... Every noble crown is, and on earth will for ever be, a crown of thorns."

_Past and Present_, CARLYLE.

"No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to any one else."

DICKENS.

Service

MARCH 22

"They were to mortify the self-importance and vain dignity that will not render commonplace kindness. 'If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet.'"

_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.

"Nothing is degrading which a high and graceful purpose ennobles, and offices the most menial cease to be menial the moment they are wrought in love."

J. MARTINEAU.

"And service will be the personal tribute to Jesus, whom we shall recognise under any disguise, as his nurse detected Ulysses by his wounds, and whose Body, in the poor and miserable, will ever be with us for our discernment. Jesus is the leper whom the saint kissed, and the child the monk carried over the stream, and the sick man the widow nursed into health, after the legends of the ages of faith. And Jesus will say at the close of the day, 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.'"

_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.

Service

MARCH 23

"We must not be perplexed or put out if we have to change our plans. God sends us hither and thither; we may think that we are wasting our special talents, when God has, after all, some particular need for our particular work at a particular time. And equally we must learn to measure our strength; we cannot all do the same things, we are not all adapted to the same work, or charged with the same duties. Why should we overstrain ourselves in that which is beyond our strength, or neglect plain duties for others less obvious? Ah! God receives many a Corban now which He will never accept; self-chosen work done at the expense of duty; work outside done to the neglect of our own proper work; work done at the entire expense of our home and social duties; the clear commandment of God shattered to pieces by some purely human tradition."

Canon NEWBOLT.

"Every Christian is the servant of men, always and everywhere, without respect to the distinctions of sex, or class, or nationality, or creed."

Canon BODY.

Mens Sana in Corpore Sano

MARCH 24

"As there is a will of God for our higher nature--the moral laws--as emphatically is there a will of God for the lower, the natural laws. If you would know God's will in the higher, therefore, you must begin with God's will in the lower: which simply means this--that if you want to live the ideal life, you must begin with the ideal body. The law of moderation, the law of sleep, the law of regularity, the law of exercise, the law of cleanliness,--this is the law or will of God for you. This is the first law, the beginning of His will for you. And if we are ambitious to get on to do God's will in the higher reaches, let us respect it as much in the lower; for there may be as much of God's will in minor things, as much of God's will in taking good bread and pure water, as in keeping a good conscience or living a pure life. Whoever heard of gluttony doing God's will, or laziness, or uncleanness, or the man who was careless and wanton of natural life? Let a man disobey God in these, and you have no certainty that he has any true principle for obeying God in anything else: for God's will does not only run into the church and the prayer-meeting and the higher chambers of the soul, but into the common rooms at home down to wardrobe and larder and cellar, and into the bodily frame down to blood and muscle and brain."

_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.

The Duty of Physical Health

MARCH 25