Part 8

"We deceive ourselves in another way, namely, by seeking for all manner of excuses and palliations. The strength of the temptation, or the suddenness of it, or the length of it; our own weakness, our natural tendency to that particular sort of sin; our wishes to be better, the excellence of our feelings, the excellence of our desires; the peculiarity of our circumstances, the special disadvantages which make us worse off than others; all these we put before our minds as excuses for having done wrong, and persuade ourselves too often that wrong is not really wrong, and that though the deed was sinful the doer of it was not. I do not mean that these palliations are never worth anything, nor do I mean that in every case the same deed is the same sin. There are no doubt infinite varieties of guilt in what appears outwardly the same deed, and God will distinguish between them and will judge justly. But the habit of mind which leads us to palliate our sins and find good excuses for them, has this dangerous tendency, that it blinds us to the evil of evil. We slip into the delusion that we are better than we seem, that our faults look worse than they are, that inside we have good dispositions, and good desires, and warm feelings, and religious emotions, and that it is only the outside that is marked by those evil stains. This _is_ a delusion and a grievous delusion. You cannot _be_ good and _do_ wrong. You cannot _be_ righteous and _do_ unrighteousness. Granted that you may slip once into a sin which notwithstanding is not really a part of your nature. Still, this cannot happen several times over. Make no mistake. If you _do_ wrong the deed is a real part of your life, and cannot be removed out of it by any fancy of yours that it is on your circumstances, your temptations, your peculiar disadvantages that the blame can be cast, still less by any wishes or emotions or feelings even of the most religious kind."

Bishop TEMPLE.

"The strength of a man's virtue is not to be measured by the efforts he makes under pressure, but by his ordinary conduct."

PASCAL.

Sins of the Spirit

MAY 27

"We must remember that it is by the mercy of Christ that we are saved from being what we might have been. 'There goes John Bradford, but for the grace of God,' said a good man when he saw a criminal being led to execution. We are too apt to take the credit to ourselves for our circumstances. Imagine that you were born of poor parents out of work in Whitechapel, and had to pick up your living in the docks, or that you were a working girl in Bethnal Green, trying to keep your poor parents or nurse a sick brother out of making match-boxes at 2¼d. a gross, and then thank God you were spared the temptation to a bad life, which they have to undergo. So, again, we must remember that sins of the spirit are quite as bad in the eyes of Christ as sins of the flesh; He never spoke a hard word of the publican and sinner, but He lashed with His scorn the 'Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.' The sins that we respectable people commit lightly every day, of pride and indolence and indifference to the sufferings of the poor, may be worse in His sight than the most flagrant sins of those who know no better."

_Friends of the Master_, Bishop WINNINGTON INGRAM.

Sin

MAY 28

"I have often observed in the course of my experience of human life, that every man, even the worst, has something good about him; though often nothing else than a happy temperament of constitution, inclining him to this or that virtue. For this reason, no man can say in what degree any other person besides himself can be, with strict justice, called wicked. Let any one with the strictest character for regularity of conduct among us, examine impartially how many vices he has never been guilty of, not from any care or vigilance, but for want of opportunity, or some accidental circumstances intervening; how many of the weaknesses of mankind he has escaped because he was out of the line of such temptation; and--what often, if not always, weighs more than all the rest--how much he is indebted to the world's good opinion because the world does not know all: I say, any man who can thus think will scan the failings, nay, the faults and crimes of mankind with a brother's eye."

BURNS.

"Very late in life, and only after many experiences, does a man learn, at the sight of a fellow-creature's real failing or weakness, to sympathise with him, and help him without a secret self-congratulation at his own virtue and strength, but on the contrary, with every humility and comprehension of the naturalness, almost the inevitableness of sin."

_An Unhappy Girl_, IVAN TURGENEV.

Sin

MAY 29

"Remove from us the protection, the encompassing safeguards and shelters we enjoy; withdraw the influences for good that are daily and weekly dropped on us like gentle dew from heaven, and have dropped ever since we had any being; deprive us of the comforts and interests, the innocent substitutes for forbidden pleasures; expose us to the loneliness, the vacancy, the dreary monotony, the hopeless struggle, the despair in which the majority of the men and women who fall find themselves immersed; and bring before us, thus exposed and bereft, what temptation you will--uncleanness, intemperance, theft, lying, blasphemy--and not one in ten of ordinary Christian people, I believe, would stand before it."

R. W. BARBOUR.

"Looking within myself, I note how thin A plank of station, chance, or prosperous fate, Doth fence me from the clutching waves of sin;-- In my own heart I find the worst man's mate, And see not dimly the smooth-hingëd gate That opes to those abysses Where ye grope darkly,--ye who never knew On your young hearts love's consecrating dew Or felt a mother's kisses, Or home's restraining tendrils round you curled; Ah, side by side with heart's-ease in this world, The fatal night-shade grows and bitter rue!"

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

Conscience

MAY 30

"Conscience is harder than our enemies, Knows more, accuses with more nicety, Nor needs to question Rumour if we fall Below the perfect model of our thought."

GEORGE ELIOT.

"If a man has nothing to reproach himself with, he can bear anything."

PHILLIPS BROOKS.

"Character is the ground of trust and the guarantee for good living, and that character only is sound which rests upon a good conscience and a clean heart and a strong will."

Dr. JOHN WATSON.

Repentance

MAY 31

"What is true contrition? Sorrow for sin in itself, not for sin's consequences."

_The Guided Life_, Canon BODY.

"Remorse and repentance are two very different things. Repentance leads back to life; but remorse ends often in the painless apathy and fatal mortification of despair."

Dean FARRAR.

"Penitence is like the dawn.... It is the breaking of the light in the soul,--dark enough sometimes no doubt, but a darkness giving place steadily to the growing light."

Bishop WALSHAM HOW.

Heredity

JUNE 1

"The father says of his profligate son whom he has never done one wise or vigorous thing to make a noble and pure-minded man: 'I cannot tell how it has come. It has not been my fault. I put him into the world and this came out.' The father whose faith has been mean and selfish says the same of his boy who is a sceptic. Everywhere there is this cowardly casting off of responsibilities upon the dead circumstances around us. It is a very hard treatment of the poor, dumb, helpless world which cannot answer to defend itself. It takes us as we give ourselves to it. It is our minister fulfilling our commissions for us upon our own souls. If we say to it, 'Make us noble,' it does make us noble. If we say to it, 'Make us mean,' it does make us mean. And then we take the nobility and say, 'Behold, how noble I have made myself.' And we take the meanness and say, 'See how mean the world has made me.'"

PHILLIPS BROOKS.

"Speaking of ancestors--'What right have I to question them, or judge them, or bring them forward in my life as being responsible for my nature? If I roll back the responsibility to them, had they not fathers? and had not their fathers fathers? and if a man rolls back his deeds upon those who are his past, then where will responsibility be found at all, and of what poor cowardly stuff is each of us?"

_The Mettle of the Pasture_, JAMES LANE ALLEN.

Heredity

JUNE 2

"This tracing of the sin to its root now suggests this further topic--its cure. Christianity professes to cure anything. The process may be slow, the discipline may be severe, but it can be done. But is not temper a constitutional thing? Is it not hereditary, a family failing, a matter of temperament, and can _that_ be cured? Yes, if there is anything in Christianity. If there is no provision for that, then Christianity stands convicted of being unequal to human need. What course then did the father take, in the case before us, to pacify the angry passions of his ill-natured son? Mark that he made no attempt in the first instance to reason with him! To do so is a common mistake, and utterly useless both with ourselves and others. We are perfectly convinced of the puerility of it all, but that does not help us in the least to mend it. The malady has its seat in the affections, and therefore the father went there at once. Reason came in its place, and the son was supplied with valid arguments--stated in the last verse of the chapter--against his conduct, but he was first plied with love."

_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.

Heredity

JUNE 3

"Any insistence on heredity would have depreciated responsibility, and Jesus held every man to his own sin. Science and theology have joined hands in magnifying heredity and lowering individuality, till a man comes to be little more than the resultant of certain forces, a projectile shot forth from the past, and describing a calculated course. Jesus made a brave stand for each man as the possessor of will-power, and master of his life. He sadly admitted that a human will might be weakened by evil habits of thought, He declared gladly that the Divine Grace reinforced the halting will: but, with every qualification, decision still rested in the last issue with the man. 'If Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean,' as if his cure hinged on the Divine Will. Of course, I am willing, said Jesus, and referred the man back to his inalienable human rights. Jesus never diverged into metaphysics, even to reconcile the freedom of the human will with the sovereignty of the Divine. His function was not academic debate, it was the solution of an actual situation. Logically, men might be puppets; consciously, they were self-determinating, and Jesus said with emphasis, 'Wilt thou?'"

_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.

"Even natural disposition, of which we make so much when we speak of heredity, is only a tendency till habit takes it and sets it and hardens it and drives it to a settled goal."

HUGH BLACK.

Bearing Criticism

JUNE 4

"When people detect in us what are actually imperfections and faults, it is clear that they do us no wrong, since it is not they who cause them; and it is clear, too, that they do us a service, inasmuch as they help us to free ourselves from an evil, namely, the ignorance of these defects. We should not be angry because they know them and despise us, for it is right that they should know us for what we are, and that they should despise us if we are despicable.

"Such are the feelings which would rise in a heart filled with equity and justice. What then should we say of our own heart when we see in it a quite contrary frame of mind? For is it not a fact that we hate the truth and those who tell it us, that we love those who deceive themselves in our favour, and that we wish to be esteemed by them as other than we really are?"

PASCAL.

"A man should never be ashamed to say he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser to-day than he was yesterday."

POPE.

Faults

JUNE 5

"Too many take the ready course to deceive themselves; for they look with both eyes on the failings and defects of others, and scarcely give their good qualities half an eye: on the contrary, in themselves they study to the full their own advantages, while their weaknesses and defects (as one says) they skip over, as children do the hard words in their lessons that are troublesome to read; and making this uneven parallel, what wonder if the result be a gross mistake of themselves."

Archbishop LEIGHTON.

"To hide a fault with a lie is to replace a blot by a hole."

"It is a great folly not to part with your own faults, which is possible, but to try instead to escape from other people's faults, which is impossible."

MARCUS AURELIUS.

"The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none."

CARLYLE.

Obstinacy

JUNE 6

"Obstinacy is will asserting itself without being able to justify itself. It is persistence without a plausible motive. It is the tenacity of self-love substituted for the tenacity of reason or conscience."

_Amiel's Journal._

"If any man is able to convince me and show me that I do not think or act right, I will gladly change; for I seek the truth by which no man was ever injured. But he is injured who abides in his error and ignorance."

MARCUS AURELIUS.

"It is never too late to give up our prejudices."

THOREAU.

"When one's character is naturally firm, it is well to be able to yield upon reflection."

VAUVENARGUES.

Calumny

JUNE 7

"Any man of many transactions can hardly expect to go through life without being subject to one or two very severe calumnies. Amongst these many transactions, some few will be with very ill-conditioned people, with very ignorant people, or, perhaps, with monomaniacs; and he cannot expect, therefore, but that some narrative of a calumnious kind will have its origin in one of these transactions. It may be fanned by any accidental breeze of malice or ill-fortune, and become a very serious element of mischief to him. Such a thing is to be looked upon as pure misfortune coming in the ordinary course of events; and the way to treat it is to deal with it as calmly and philosophically as with any other misfortune. As some one has said, the mud will rub off when it is dry, and not before. The drying will not always come in the calumniated man's time, unless in favourable seasons, which he cannot command."

HELPS.

"If any one tells you such a one has spoken ill of you, do not refute them in that particular; but answer, had he known all my vices, he had not spoken only of that one."

EPICTETUS.

Calumny

JUNE 8

"I am beholden to calumny that she hath so endeavoured and taken pains to belie me. It shall make me set a surer guard on myself, and keep a better watch upon my actions."

BEN JONSON.

"As to people saying a few idle words about us, we must not mind that, any more than the old church-steeple minds the rooks cawing about it."

GEORGE ELIOT.

"The power men possess to annoy me I give them."

EMERSON.

"Assailed by scandal and the tongue of strife, His only answer was--a blameless life."

COWPER.

Flattery

JUNE 9

"Flattery is a false coinage which would have no currency but for our vanity."

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

"If we did not flatter ourselves, the flattery of others could do us no harm."

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

"Self-love is the greatest Flatterer in the World."

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

"The Devil has no stauncher ally than want of perception."

PHILIP H. WICKSTEAD.

Pride

JUNE 10

"There are two states or conditions of pride. The first is one of self-approval, the second one of self-contempt. Pride is seen probably at its purest in the last."

_Amiel's Journal._

"The foundation of pride is the wish to respect one's self, whatever others may think; the mainspring of vanity is the craving for the admiration of others, no matter at what cost to one's self-respect."

_The Heart of Rome_, F. MARION CRAWFORD.

"Any revelation of greatness overwhelms petty thoughts.... The presence of death turns enemies into friends. In the same way the petty feelings of pride and vanity would lose much of their power if people had the overwhelming feeling which comes from the contemplation of Almightiness, All-goodness, and All-love. There would be a marked change in all human relations if men turned from the presence of the Thrice Holy to face one another; if thoughts of self and for self were driven out of their minds by worship."

_The Service of God_, Canon BARNETT.

Conceit

JUNE 11

"It is indeed a desirable thing to be well descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors."

PLUTARCH.

"Conceit spoils many an excellency. Some persons are so proud of their goodness, or of their attainments, or of their position, or of their character, or of their family, that they become offensive to many who would otherwise be won by their merit. Pride mars, blights, and withers whatever it touches. It begets assumptions that are very belittling as well as hard to bear. A man weakens his influence and retards his personal and public interests by giving it full control. Its exhibition may be natural; but noble manhood, high moral character, regard to the feelings of others and Christianity all demand its suppression."

Humility

JUNE 12

"What hypocrites we seem to be, whenever we talk of ourselves! Our words sound so humble, while our hearts are so proud."

_Guesses at Truth_, edited by Archdeacon HARE.

"By despising himself too much a man comes to be worthy of his own contempt."

_Amiel's Journal._

"Just as criticism alone ministers to pride and then to death, so creation, even of the smallest kind, ministers to humility. And that stands to reason: the slightest act of shaping instantly opens before you an ever-expanding sea, and the vision of the infinite is the death of vanity and pride."

_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.

"Humility is the hall-mark of wisdom."

JEREMY COLLIER.

Egotism

JUNE 13

"We ought to have this measure of charity for egotistical people--a willingness to suppose that they actually believe themselves to be what they assume to be. It is quite possible for a person to be in such a fog of misapprehension that everything about him--his little world, his personal interest--will loom abnormally large. When the fog is dispelled, he will see things as they are, and estimate them and himself accordingly.

"Egotism of this kind is pardonable; and there is a great deal of it which is peculiar to the mists and strange refractions of youth. When the sun of a clearer and larger knowledge chases away the fog, a right-minded young person emerges from this egotistical, too self-conscious period of his life, and finds a new adjustment for himself in the great and serious world."

"He who is always enquiring what people will say, will never give them opportunity to say anything great about him."

"Reputation is in itself only a farthing candle, of wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out; but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit."

LOWELL.

The Code of Society

JUNE 14

"'Freedom' is not the power to do what we like, but to be what we ought to be."

CHARLES GORE.

"There is no commoner danger than that of accepting the code of the society in which you live as the rule of right."

Bishop TEMPLE.

"Strive all your life to free men from the bondage of custom and self, the two great elements of the world that lieth in wickedness."

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

"What I _must_ do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule ... is harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than _you_ know it."

EMERSON.

Public Opinion

JUNE 15

"It is not the many who reform the world; but the few who rise superior to that Public Opinion which crucified our Lord many years ago."

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

"We are tempted to measure ourselves by others, to acquiesce in an average standard and an average attainment. We forget that while we are not required to judge our neighbours, we are required to judge ourselves."

Bishop WESTCOTT.

"Moral courage is obeying one's conscience, and doing what one believes to be right in face of a hostile majority; and moral cowardice is stifling one's conscience, and doing what is less than right to win other people's favour."

Dr. JOHN WATSON.

Public Opinion

JUNE 16

"Opinion has its value and even its power: to have it against us is painful when we are among friends, and harmful in the case of the outer world. We should neither flatter opinion nor court it; but it is better, if we can help it, not to throw it on to a false scent. The first error is a meanness; the second an imprudence.... Be careful of your reputation, not through vanity, but that you may not harm your life's work, and out of love for truth. There is still something of self-seeking in the refined disinterestedness which will not justify itself, that it may feel itself superior to opinion. It requires ability to make what we seem agree with what we are,--and humility to feel that we are no great things."

_Amiel's Journal._

"Suppose any man shall despise me. Let him look to that himself. But I will look to this, that I be not discovered doing or saying anything deserving of contempt."

MARCUS AURELIUS.

Spiritual Balance and Proportion

JUNE 17

"A well-governed mind learns in time to find pleasure in nothing but the true and the just."

_Amiel's Journal._

"Not only does sympathy lead us to see the opinions of others in a truer light, it enables us to form a sounder judgment on our own; for as long as a man looks only 'on his own things,' he fails to see them in true proportion."

LUCY SOULSBY.

"If we can live in Christ and have His life in us, shall not the spiritual balance and proportion which were His become ours too? If He were really our Master and our Saviour, could it be that we should get so eager and excited over little things? If we were His, could we possibly be wretched over the losing of a little money which we do not need, or be exalted at the sound of a little praise which we know that we only half deserve and that the praisers only half intend? A moment's disappointment, a moment's gratification, and then the ocean would be calm again and quite forgetful of the ripple which disturbed its bosom."

PHILLIPS BROOKS.

Temperance

JUNE 18

"(Of Training...) its aim must be to bring into human character more of that unity, consistency, harmony, proportion, upon which the Greek philosophers were never weary of insisting as the essence of virtue."

_The Making of Character_, Professor MACCUNN.

"_Temperance._--The original term describes that sovereign self-mastery, that perfect self-control, in which the mysterious will of man holds in harmonious subjection all the passions and faculties of his nature.

"Self-will is to mind what self-indulgence is to sense, the usurpation by a part of that which belongs to the whole.

"_In Knowledge temperance._--The Apostle counsels temperance, the just and proportionate use of every faculty and gift, and not the abolition or abandonment of any.

"It is easier in many cases to pluck out the right eye or to cut off the right hand than to discipline and employ them."

Bishop WESTCOTT.

Balance

JUNE 19

"Temperance is reason's girdle and passion's bridle."

JEREMY TAYLOR.

"Be wary and keep cool. A cool head is as necessary as a warm heart. In any negotiations, steadiness and coolness are invaluable; while they will often carry you in safety through times of danger and difficulty."

Lord AVEBURY.

"Place a guard over your strong points! Thrift may run into niggardliness, generosity into prodigality or shiftlessness. Gentleness may become pusillanimity, tact become insincerity, power become oppression. Characters need sentries at their points of weakness, true enough, but often the points of greatest strength are, paradoxically, really points of weakness."

Balance

JUNE 20