Part 7
"Where Love is, God is. He that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in God. God is Love. Therefore _love_. Without distinction, without calculation, without procrastination, love. Lavish it upon the poor, where it is very easy; especially upon the rich, who often need it most; most of all upon our equals, where it is very difficult, and for whom perhaps we each do least of all. There is a difference between _trying to please_ and _giving pleasure_. Give pleasure. Lose no chance of giving pleasure. For that is the ceaseless and anonymous triumph of a truly loving spirit. 'I shall pass through this world but once. Any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.'"
_The Greatest Thing in the World_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
"Let the weakest, let the humblest remember, that in his daily course he can, if he will, shed around him almost a heaven. Kindly words, sympathising attentions, watchfulness against wounding men's sensitiveness--these cost very little, but they are priceless in their value. Are they not almost the staple of our daily happiness? From hour to hour, from moment to moment, we are supported, blest, by small kindnesses."
F. W. ROBERTSON.
Oil and Wine
MAY 7
"Whatever impatience we may feel towards our neighbour, and whatever indignation our race may rouse in us, we are chained one to another, and, companions in labour and misfortune, have everything to lose by mutual recrimination and reproach. Let us be silent as to each other's weakness, helpful, tolerant, nay, tender towards each other! Or, if we cannot feel tenderness, may we at least feel pity! May we put away from us the satire which scourges and the anger which brands; the oil and wine of the good Samaritan are of more avail. We may make the ideal a reason for contempt; but it is more beautiful to make it a reason for tenderness."
_Amiel's Journal._
"It is always a mistake to paint people blacker than the facts warrant, both because such exaggeration is pretty sure to cause a reaction to the opposite extreme, and also because we are likely to miss the lesson which the errors or misconduct of others should teach us, if we think them so exceptionally wicked that we are ourselves in no danger of following their example."
_Life Here and Hereafter_, Canon MACCOLL.
Family Life--"Without Jar or Jostle"
MAY 8
"Let us give everybody a right to live his own life, as far as possible, and avoid imposing our own peculiarities on another.
"If we were to picture a perfect family, it should be a union of people of individual and marked character, who, through love, have come to a perfect appreciation of each other, and who so wisely understand themselves and one another, that each may move freely along his or her own track without jar or jostle,--a family where affection is always sympathetic and receptive, but never inquisitive,--where all personal delicacies are respected,--and where there is a sense of privacy and seclusion in following one's own course, unchallenged by the watchfulness of others, yet withal a sense of society and support in a knowledge of the kind dispositions and interpretations of all around.
"In treating of family discourtesies, I have avoided speaking of those which come from ill-temper and brute selfishness, because these are sins more than mistakes. An angry person is generally impolite; and where contention and ill-will are, there can be no courteousness. What I have mentioned are rather the lackings of good and often admirable people, who merely need to consider in their family-life a little more of whatsoever things are lovely. With such the mere admission of anything to be pursued as a duty secures the purpose; only in their somewhat earnest pursuit of the substantials of life, they drop and pass by the little things that give it sweetness and perfume."
_Little Foxes_, HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
Ungraciousness
MAY 9
"We can recall occasions in which we have been impatient, inconsiderate, self-willed, self-asserting. We have sharply resented some want of good taste: we have made light of a scruple or of a difficulty which weighed heavily on another: we have yielded ungraciously a service which may have been claimed inopportunely: we have been exact in requiring conventional deference to our judgment: we have not checked the keen word, or the smile which might be interpreted to assert a proud superiority.
"In all this we may have been justifiable according to common rules of conduct; but we have given offence. We have not, that is, shewn, when we might have shewn, that Christian sympathy, devotion, fellowship, come down to little things; that the generosity of love looks tenderly, if by any means it may find the soul which has not revealed itself."
Bishop WESTCOTT.
"Seek the graces of God with all your strength; but above all seek the graces that specially belong to heaven. Try hard to be humble, to be free from all conceit, to question your own opinions, to give up your own way, to put simplicity first among all excellences of character, to be ready to think yourself in the wrong, to prefer others to yourself; for this character is nearest to God's heart, and to babes who are of this sort does God reveal His most secret mysteries."
Bishop TEMPLE.
The Spectrum of Love
May 10
"The spectrum of Love has nine ingredients:--
_Patience_--'Love suffereth long.'
_Kindness_--'And is kind.'
_Generosity_--'Love envieth not.'
_Humility_--'Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.'
_Courtesy_--'Doth not behave itself unseemly.'
_Unselfishness_--'Seeketh not her own.'
_Good Temper_--'Is not easily provoked.'
_Guilelessness_--'Thinketh no evil.'
_Sincerity_--'Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.'
Patience; kindness; generosity; humility; courtesy; unselfishness; good temper; guilelessness; sincerity--these make up the supreme gift, the stature of the perfect man. You will observe that all are in relation to men, in relation to life, in relation to the known to-day and the near to-morrow, and not to the unknown eternity. We hear much of love to God; Christ spoke much of love to man. We make a great deal of peace with heaven; Christ made much of peace on earth. Religion is not a strange or added thing, but the inspiration of the secular life, the breathing of an eternal spirit through this temporal world. The supreme thing, in short, is not a thing at all, but the giving of a further finish to the multitudinous words and acts which make up the sum of every common day."
_The Greatest Thing in the World_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
"My Duty to my Neighbour"
MAY 11
"There is an idea abroad among moral people that they should make their neighbours good. One person I have to make good: myself. But my duty to my neighbour is much more nearly expressed by saying that I have to make him happy--if I may."
_Across the Plains_, R. L. STEVENSON.
"Of all the weapons we wield against wrong, there is none more effective than pure and burning joy."
_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.
"There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behaviour, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us."
EMERSON.
Duty of giving Happiness
MAY 12
"It is astonishing how large a part of Christ's precepts is devoted solely to the inculcation of happiness. How much of His life, too, was spent simply in making people happy! There was no word more often on His lips than 'blessed,' and it is recognised by Him as a distinct end in life, _the_ end for this life, to secure the happiness of others. This simple grace, too, needs little equipment. Christ had little. One need scarcely even be happy one's self. Holiness, of course, is a greater word, but we cannot produce that in others. That is reserved for God Himself, but what is put in our power is happiness, and for that each man is his brother's keeper. Now society is an arrangement for producing and sustaining human happiness, and temper is an agent for thwarting and destroying it. Look at the parable of the Prodigal Son for a moment, and see how the elder brother's wretched pettiness, explosion of temper, churlishness, spoiled the happiness of a whole circle. First, it certainly spoiled his own. How ashamed of himself he must have been when the fit was over, one can well guess. Yet these things are never so quickly over as they seem. Self-disgust and humiliation may come at once, but a good deal else within has to wait till the spirit is tuned again. For instance, prayer must wait. A man cannot pray till the sourness is out of his soul. He must first forgive his brother who trespassed against him before he can go to God to have his own trespasses forgiven."
_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
Duty of giving Happiness
MAY 13
"The function of culture is not merely to train the powers of enjoyment, but first and supremely for helpful service."
Bishop POTTER.
"It was often in George Eliot's mind and on her lips that the only worthy end of all learning, of all science, of all life, in fact, is that human beings should love one another better. Culture merely for culture's sake can never be anything but a sapless root, capable of producing at best a shrivelled branch.... She was cheered by the hope and by the belief in gradual improvement of the mass; for in her view each individual must find the better part of happiness in helping another. She often thought it wisest not to raise too ambitious an ideal, especially in young people, but to impress on ordinary natures the immense possibilities of making a small circle brighter and better. Few are born to do the great work of the world, but all are born to this. And to the natures capable of the larger effort the field of usefulness will constantly widen."
_The Life of George Eliot_, J. W. CROSS.
"Blessed are the Happiness Makers"
MAY 14
"Have you ever noticed how much of Christ's life was spent in doing kind things--in _merely_ doing kind things? Run over it with that in view, and you will find that He spent a great proportion of His time simply in making people happy, in doing good turns to people."
_The Greatest Thing in the World_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
"Take life all through, its adversity as well as its prosperity, its sickness as well as its health, its loss of its rights as well as its enjoyment of them, and we shall find that no natural sweetness of temper, much less any acquired philosophical equanimity, is equal to the support of a uniform habit of kindness. Nevertheless, with the help of grace, the habit of saying kind words is very quickly formed, and when once formed it is not speedily lost. Sharpness, bitterness, sarcasm, acute observation, divination of motives--all these things disappear when a man is earnestly conforming himself to the image of Christ Jesus. The very attempt to be like our dearest Lord is already a wellspring of sweetness within us, flowing with an easy grace over all who come within our reach."
F. W. FABER.
"Blessed are the Happiness Makers. Blessed are they who know how to shine on one's gloom with their cheer."
HENRY WARD BEECHER.
Character--The Right Atmosphere
MAY 15
"Character cannot be formed without action. Through it strength comes. But every action must have its reaction upon the nature of the one who puts it forth. If it does not, it fails of that which is its highest result; for the finest expression of a man's nature is not to be found in action, but in that very intangible thing which we call his atmosphere. There are a great many people who are alert, energetic, and decisive, but who give forth very little of this rare effluence--this quality which seems to issue out of the very recesses of one's nature. It is, however, through this quality that the most constant influence is exercised; that influence which is not only put forth most steadily, but which penetrates and affects others in the most searching way. The air we breathe has much to do with health; in a relaxing atmosphere it is difficult to work; in an atmosphere of vitality it is easy to work. We never meet some people without going away from them with our ideals a little blurred, or our faith in them a little disturbed. We can never part from others without a sense of increased hope. There are those who invigorate us by simple contact; something escapes from them of which they are not aware and which we cannot analyse, which makes us believe more deeply in ourselves and our kind.
"So far as charm is concerned, there is no quality which contributes so much to it as the subtle thing we call atmosphere. There are some people who do not need to speak in order not only to awaken our respect, but to give us a sense of something rare and fine. In such an influence, all that is most individual and characteristic flows together, and the woman reveals herself without being conscious that she is making herself known. Such an atmosphere in a home creates a sentiment and organises a life which would not be possible if one should attempt to fashion these things by intention. The finest things, like happiness, must be sought by indirection and are the results of character, rather than objects of immediate pursuit."
"It is always good to know, if only in passing, charming human beings. It refreshes one like flowers, and woods, and clear brooks."
GEORGE ELIOT.
Character--Child-like-ness
MAY 16
"Jesus afterwards focussed the new type of character in a lovely illustration which is not always appreciated at its full value, because we deny it perspective. Every reader of the Gospels has marked the sympathy of Jesus with children. How He watched their games! How angry He was with His disciples for belittling them! How He used to warn men, whatever they did, never to hurt a little child! How grateful were children's praises when all others had turned against Him! One is apt to admire the beautiful sentiment, and to forget that children were more to Jesus than helpless gentle creatures to be loved and protected. They were His chief parable of the Kingdom of Heaven. As a type of character the Kingdom was like unto a little child, and the greatest in the Kingdom would be the most child-like. According to Jesus, a well-conditioned child illustrates better than anything else on earth the distinctive features of Christian character. Because he does not assert nor aggrandise himself. Because he has no memory for injuries, and no room in his heart for a grudge. Because he has no previous opinions, and is not ashamed to confess his ignorance. Because he can imagine, and has the key of another world, entering in through the ivory gate and living amid the things unseen and eternal. The new society of Jesus was a magnificent imagination, and he who entered it must lay aside the world standards and ideals of character, and become as a little child."
_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
Character--Negative Virtues
MAY 17
"Some people seem to be here in the world just on their guard all the while, always so afraid of doing wrong that they never do anything really right. They do not add to the world's moral force; as the man, who, by constant watchfulness over his own health, just keeps himself from dying, contributes nothing to the world's vitality. All merely negative purity has something of the taint of the impurity that it resists. The effort not to be frivolous is frivolous itself. The effort not to be selfish is very apt to be only another form of selfishness."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues. It is good to abstain and teach others to abstain, from all that is sinful and hurtful. But making a business of it leads to emaciation of character, unless one feeds largely also on the more nutritious diet of active sympathetic benevolence."
O. W. HOLMES.
"The seductions of life are strong in every age and station; we make idols of our affections, idols of our customary virtues; we are content to avoid the inconvenient wrong, and to forego the inconvenient right with almost equal self-approval, until at last we make a home for our conscience among the negative virtues and the cowardly vices."
_The Life of R. L. Stevenson_, GRAHAM BALFOUR.
Character
MAY 18
"The moments of our most important decisions are often precisely those in which nothing seems to have been decided; and only long afterwards, when we perceive with astonishment that the Rubicon has been crossed, do we realise that in that half-forgotten instant of hesitation as to some apparently unimportant side issue, in that unconscious movement which betrayed a feeling of which we were not aware, our choice was made. The crises of life come, like the Kingdom of Heaven, without observation. Our characters, and not our deliberate actions, decide for us; and even when the moment of crisis is apprehended at the time by the troubling of the water, action is generally a little late. Character, as a rule, steps down first."
_Diana Tempest_, MARY CHOLMONDELEY.
"Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards--they simply unveil them to the eyes of men. Silently and imperceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow and wax strong, or we grow and wax weak, and at last some crisis shows us what we have become."
Bishop WESTCOTT.
Character--"Our Echoes roll from Soul to Soul"
MAY 19
"One of the main seats of our weakness lies in this very notion, that what we do at the moment cannot matter much; for that we shall be able to alter and mend and patch it just as we like by-and-by."
HARE.
"We sleep, but the loom of life never stops; and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up to-morrow."
BEECHER.
"Let every soul Heed what it doth to-day, because to-morrow The same thing it shall find gone forward there To meet and make and judge it."
_The Light of Asia_, E. ARNOLD.
"Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow for ever and for ever."
TENNYSON.
Habit
MAY 20
"Like flakes of snow that fall unperceived upon the earth, the seemingly unimportant events of life succeed one another. As the snow gathers together, so are our habits formed: no single flake that is added to the pile produces a sensible change; no single flake creates, however it may exhibit, a man's character; but as the tempest hurls the avalanche down the mountain, and overwhelms the inhabitant and his habitation, so passion, acting upon the elements of mischief, which pernicious habits have brought together by imperceptible accumulation, may overwhelm the edifice of truth and virtue."
JEREMY BENTHAM.
"In the conduct of life, habits count for more than maxims, because habit is a living maxim, become flesh and instinct. To reform one's maxims is nothing: it is but to change the title of the book. To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits."
_Amiel's Journal._
Habit
MAY 21
"The Hell to be endured hereafter which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters the wrong way. Could the young realise how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar."
_Psychology_, Professor WILLIAM JAMES.
"Routine is a terrible master, but she is a servant whom we can hardly do without. Routine as a law is deadly. Routine as a resource in the temporary exhaustion of impulse and suggestion is often our salvation."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"It is just as easy to form a good habit as it is a bad one. And it is just as hard to break a good habit as a bad one. So get the good ones and keep them."
MCKINLEY.
Sin has its Pedigree
MAY 22
"One false note will spoil the finest piece of music, and one little sin, as we deem it, may ruin the most promising character, involving it in a network of unforeseen consequences out of which there may be no escape."
_Life Here and Hereafter_, Canon MACCOLL.
"There is a physical demonstration of sin as well as a religious; and no sin can come in among the delicate faculties of the mind, or among the coarser fibres of the body, without leaving a stain, either as a positive injury to the life, or, what is equally fatal, as a predisposition to commit the same sin again. This predisposition is always one of the most real and appalling accompaniments of the stain of sin. There is scarcely such a thing as an isolated sin in a man's life. Most sins can be accounted for by what has gone before. Every sin, so to speak, has its own pedigree, and is the result of the accumulated force, which means the accumulated stain of many a preparatory sin."
_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
Temptation
MAY 23
"Two things a genuine Christian never does. He never makes light of any known sin, and he never admits it to be invincible."
Canon LIDDON.
"We always meet the temptation which is to expose us when we least expect it."
_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
"It is of the essence of temptation that it should come on us unawares."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
"If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at least resist our temptations."
EMERSON.
Sin
MAY 24
"We judge of sins, as we judge of most things, by their outward form. We arrange the vices of our neighbours according to a scale which society has tacitly adopted, placing the more gross and public at the foot, the slightly less gross higher up, and then by some strange process the scale becomes obliterated. Finally it vanishes into space, leaving lengths of itself unexplored, its sins unnamed, unheeded, and unshunned. But we have no balance to weigh sins. Coarser and finer are but words of our own. The chances are, if anything, that the finer are the lower. The very fact that the world sees the coarser sins so well is against the belief that they are the worst. The subtle and unseen sin, that sin in the part of the nature most near to the spiritual, ought to be more degrading than any other. Yet for many of the finer forms of sin society has yet no brand."
_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
"Tried by final tests, and reduced to its essential elements, sin is the preference of self to God, and the assertion of the human will against the Will of God. With Jesus, from first to last, sin is selfishness."
_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
Sin
MAY 25-26