PREFACE (continued 2)

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

"Excess is not the only thing which breaks men in their health, and in the comfortable enjoyment of themselves; but many are brought into a very ill and languishing habit of body by mere sloth; and sloth is in itself both a great sin, and the cause of many more."

Bishop South.

"There is no true care for the body which forgets the soul. There is no true care for the soul which is not mindful of the body.... The duty of physical health and the duty of spiritual purity and loftiness are not two duties; they are two parts of one duty,—which is the living of the completest life which it is possible for man to live. And the two parts minister to one another. Be good that you may be well; be well that you may be good. Both of those two injunctions are reasonable, and both are binding on us all."

Phillips Brooks.

The Duty of Physical Health

MARCH 26

"Moreover, health is not only a great element of happiness, but it is essential to good work. It is not merely wasteful but selfish to throw it away.

"It is impossible to do good work,—at any rate, it is impossible to do our best,—if we overstrain ourselves. It is bad policy, because all work done under such circumstances will inevitably involve an additional period of quiet and rest afterwards; but apart from this, work so done will not be of a high quality, it will show traces of irritability and weakness: the judgment will not be good: if it involves co-operation with others there will be great possibility of friction and misunderstandings."

Lord Avebury.

"When we are out of sorts things get on our nerves, the most trifling annoyances assume the proportions of a catastrophe. It is a sure sign that we need rest and fresh air."

Lord Avebury.

"O Almighty and most merciful God, of Thy bountiful goodness keep us, we beseech Thee, from all things that may hurt us; that we, being ready both in body and soul, may cheerfully accomplish those things that Thou wouldest have done; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

The Book of Common Prayer.

Physical Morality

MARCH 27

"The preservation of health is a duty. Few men seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality. Men's habitual words and acts imply the idea that they are at liberty to treat their bodies as they please. Disorders entailed by disobedience to Nature's dictates they regard simply as grievances, not as the effects of a conduct more or less flagitious. Though the evil consequences inflicted on their dependants, and on future generations, are often as great as those caused by crime, yet they do not think themselves in any degree criminal. It is true that in the case of drunkenness the viciousness of this bodily transgression is recognised, but none appear to infer that if this bodily transgression is vicious, so, too, is every bodily transgression. The fact is that all breaches of the laws of health are physical sins."

Herbert Spencer.

"... Health is not merely a matter of the body. 'Anger, hatred, grief, and fear are among the influences most destructive of vitality.' And, on the other hand, cheerfulness, good-humour, and peace of mind are powerful elements of health."

Lord Avebury.

Invalids

MARCH 28

"If you are an invalid, do your best to get well; but, if you must remain an invalid, still strive for the unselfishness and serenity which are the best possessions of health. There are no sublimer victories than some that are won on sick-beds."

"We have sometimes known some men or women, helpless so that their lives seemed to be all dependent, who yet, through their sickness, had so mounted to a higher life and so identified themselves with Christ that those on whom they rested found the Christ in them and rested upon it. Their sick-rooms became churches. Their weak voices spoke gospels. The hands they seemed to clasp were really clasping theirs. They were depended on while they seemed to be most dependent. And when they died, when the faint flicker of their life went out, strong men whose light seemed radiant found themselves walking in the darkness; and stout hearts, on which theirs used to lean, trembled as if the staff and substance of their strength was gone."

Phillips Brooks.

"Pain is no evil unless it conquers us."

George Eliot.

Invalids

MARCH 29

"It may be that God used to give you plentiful chances to work for Him. Your days went singing by, each winged with some enthusiastic duty for the Master whom you loved.... You can be idle for Him, if so He wills, with the same joy with which you once laboured for Him. The sick-bed or the prison is as welcome as the harvest-field or the battle-field, when once your soul has come to value as the end of life the privilege of seeking and of finding Him."

Phillips Brooks.

"To be well enough to work is the wish of my natural heart; but if that may not be, I know that 'they also serve who only stand and wait.' God will not require healthy men's labour from you or me; and if we are poor in power and opportunity to serve Him, our widow's mite will weigh against the gold ingots of His chosen apostles."

Memoir of George Wilson.

"The widow's mite? Well, when they laughed at S. Theresa because she wanted to build a great orphanage and had only three ducats to begin with, she answered, 'With three ducats Theresa can do nothing, but with God and her three ducats there is nothing which Theresa cannot do.'"

F. W. Farrar.

Lessons of Suffering

MARCH 30

"To have suffered much is like knowing many languages. You have learnt to understand all, and to make yourself intelligible to all."

"We have all met some great sufferers, whose cheerfulness and good-humour are not only a lesson to us who enjoy good health, but who seem to be, as it were, raised and consecrated by a life of suffering."

Lord Avebury.

"What man goes worthily through sorrow and does not come out hating shams and pretences, hungering for truth; and also full of sympathy for his fellow-man whose capacity for suffering has been revealed to him by his own?"

Phillips Brooks.

Hypochondriacs

MARCH 31—APRIL 1

"There is a temperament called Hypochondriac, to which many persons, some of them the brightest, the most interesting, the most gifted, are born heirs,—a want of balance of the nervous powers, which tends constantly to periods of high excitement and of consequent depression,—an unfortunate inheritance for the possessor, though accompanied often with the greatest talents....

"People of this temperament are subject to fits of gloom and despondency, of nervous irritability and suffering, which darken the aspect of the whole world to them, which present lying reports of their friends, of themselves, of the circumstances of their life, and of all with which they have to do.

"Now the highest philosophy for persons thus afflicted is to understand themselves and their tendencies, to know that these fits of gloom and depression are just as much a form of disease as a fever or a toothache,—to know that it is the peculiarity of the disease to fill the mind with wretched illusions, to make them seem miserable and unlovely to themselves, to make their nearest friends seem unjust and unkind, to make all events appear to be going wrong and tending to destruction and ruin.

"The evils and burdens of such a temperament are half removed when a man once knows that he has it, and recognises it for a disease,—when he does not trust himself to speak and act in those bitter hours as if there were any truth in what he thinks and feels and sees. He who has not attained to this wisdom overwhelms his friends and his family with the waters of bitterness; he stings with unjust accusations, and makes his fireside dreadful with fancies which are real to him, but false as the ravings of fever.

"A sensible person, thus diseased, who has found out what ails him, will shut his mouth resolutely, not to give utterance to the dark thoughts that infest his soul.

"A lady of great brilliancy and wit, who was subject to these periods, once said to me, 'My dear sir, there are times when I know I am possessed of the Devil, and then I never let myself speak.' And so this wise woman carried her burden about with her in a determined, cheerful reticence, leaving always the impression of a cheery, kindly temper, when, if she had spoken out a tithe of what she thought and felt in her morbid hours, she would have driven all her friends from her, and made others as miserable as she was herself. She was a sunbeam, a life-giving presence in every family, by the power of self-knowledge and self-control."

Little Foxes, Harriet Beecher Stowe.

"Comfort's Art"

APRIL 2

"It would be very petty of us who are well and can bear things, to think much of small offences from those who carry a weight of trial."

George Eliot.

"Trouble is so hard to bear, is it not? How can we live and think that any one has trouble—piercing trouble—and we could help them and never try?"

George Eliot.

"Pity makes the world soft to the weak and noble for the strong."

The Light of Asia, E. Arnold.

"Ask God to give thee skill For comfort's art, That thou may'st consecrated be, And set apart Unto a life of sympathy! For heavy is the weight of ill For every heart, And comforters are needed much Of Christlike touch."

Irritability

APRIL 3

"Irritability is, more than most unlovely states, a sin of the flesh. It is not, like envy, malice, spite, revenge, a vice which we may suppose to belong equally to an embodied or a disembodied spirit: in fact, it comes nearer to being physical depravity than anything I know of. There are some bodily states, some conditions of the nerves, such that we could not conceive of even an angelic spirit, confined in a body thus disordered, as being able to do any more than simply endure. It is a state of nervous torture; and the attacks which the wretched victim makes on others are as much a result of disease as the snapping and biting of a patient convulsed with hydrophobia.... I think it is undeniable that the peace and happiness of the home-circle are very generally much invaded by the recurrence in its members of these states of bodily irritability. Every person, if he thinks the matter over, will see that his condition in life, the character of his friends, his estimate of their virtues and failings, his hopes and expectations, are all very much modified by these things. Cannot we all remember going to bed as very ill-used, persecuted individuals, all whose friends were unreasonable, whose life was full of trials and crosses, and waking up on a bright bird-singing morning to find all these illusions gone with the fogs of the night? Our friends are nice people, after all; the little things that annoyed us look ridiculous by bright sunshine; and we are fortunate individuals."

Little Foxes, Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Irritability

APRIL 4

"The philosophy of life, then, as far as this matter is concerned, must consist of two things: first, to keep ourselves out of irritable bodily states; and, second, to understand and control these states, when we cannot ward them off. Of course, the first of these is the most important; and yet, of all things, it seems to be least looked into and understood. We find abundant rules for the government of the tongue and temper; it is a slough into which, John Bunyan hath it, cartloads of wholesome instructions have been thrown; but how to get and keep that healthy state of brain, stomach, and nerves which takes away the temptation to ill-temper and anger is a subject which moral and religious teachers seem scarcely to touch upon.... We have a common saying, that this or that person is soon used up. Now most nervous, irritable states of temper are the mere physical result of a used-up condition. The person has overspent his nervous energy,—like a man who should eat up on Monday the whole food which was to keep him for a week, and go growling and faint through the other days; or the quantity of nervous force which was wanted to carry on the whole system in all its parts is seized on by some one monopolising portion, and used up to the loss and detriment of the rest."

Little Foxes, Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Accidie

APRIL 5

"... 'Accidie,' the spiritual sloth, which we rechristen 'depression' and 'low spirits,' and meet with sympathy! Dante met it by fixing its victims in the mire beneath the water, where they keep gurgling in their throats the confession—

'We sullen were In the sweet air, which by the sun is gladdened, Bearing within ourselves the sluggish reek; Now we are sullen in this sable mire.'"

Stray Thoughts on Reading, Lucy Soulsby.

"A dull day need not be a depressing day; depression always implies physical or moral weakness, and is therefore never to be tolerated so long as one can struggle against it."

Hamilton W. Mabie.

Accidie

APRIL 6

"... The sin of accidie, which is 'a sorrowfulness so weighing down the mind that there is no good it likes to do. It has attached to it as its inseparable comrade a distress and weariness of soul, and a sluggishness in all good works, which plunges the whole man into lazy languor, and works in him a constant bitterness. And out of this vehement woe springs silence and a flagging of the voice, because the soul is so absorbed and taken up with its own indolent dejection, that it has no energy for utterance, but is cramped, and hampered, and imprisoned in its own confused bewilderment, and has not a word to say.'"

The Spirit of Discipline, Bishop Paget.

"Try it for a day, I beseech you, to preserve yourself in an easy and cheerful frame of mind. Compare the day in which you have rooted out the weed of dissatisfaction with that on which you have allowed it to grow up, and you will find your heart open to every good motive, your life strengthened and your breast armed with a panoply against every trick of fate; truly, you will wonder at your own improvement."

Richter.

Accidie

APRIL 7

"As one compares the various estimates of the sin, one can mark three main elements which help to make it what it is—elements which can be distinguished, though in experience, I think, they almost always tend to meet and mingle; they are gloom and sloth and irritation."

The Spirit of Discipline, Bishop Paget.

"You find yourself refreshed by the presence of cheerful people. Why not make earnest effort to confer that pleasure on others? You will find half the battle is gained if you never allow yourself to say anything gloomy."

Lydia Maria Childs.

"Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness; altogether past calculation its power of endurance."

Carlyle.

Accidie

APRIL 8

"'It is a mood which severs a man from thoughts of God, and suffers him not to be calm and kindly to his brethren. Sometimes, without any provoking cause, we are suddenly depressed by so great sorrowfulness, that we cannot greet with wonted courtesy the coming even of those who are dear and near to us, and all they say in conversation, however appropriate it may be, we think annoying and unnecessary, and have no pleasant answer for it, because the gall of bitterness fills all the recesses of our soul.' Those who are sad after this fashion have, as St. Gregory says, anger already close to them; for from sadness such as this come forth (as he says in another place) malice, grudging, faint-heartedness, despair, torpor as to that which is commanded, and the straying of the mind after that which is forbidden."

The Spirit of Discipline, Bishop Paget.

"Activity is the antidote to the depressions that lower our vitality, whether they come from physical or psychical causes."

Accidie

APRIL 9

"We may be somewhat surprised when we discover how precisely Pascal, or Shakspeare, or Montaigne, can put his finger on our weak point, or tell us the truth about some moral lameness or disorder of which we, perhaps, were beginning to accept a more lenient and comfortable diagnosis. But when a poet, controversialist and preacher of the Eastern Church, under the dominion of the Saracens, or an anchoret of Egypt, an Abbot of Gaul, in the sixth century, tells us, in the midst of our letters, and railway journeys, and magazines, and movements, exactly what it is that on some days makes us so singularly unpleasant to ourselves and to others—tells us in effect that it is not simply the east wind, or dyspepsia, or overwork, or the contrariness of things in general, but that it is a certain subtle and complex trouble of our own hearts, which we perhaps have never had the patience or the frankness to see as it really is; that he knew it quite well, only too well for his own happiness and peace, and that he can put us in a good way of dealing with it—the very strangeness of the intrusion from such a quarter into our most private affairs may secure for him a certain degree of our interest and attention."

The Spirit of Discipline, Bishop Paget.

Accidie

APRIL 10

"And now, as ever, over against Accidie rises the great grace of Fortitude; the grace that makes men undertake hard things by their own will wisely and reasonably. There is something in the very name of Fortitude which speaks to the almost indelible love of heroism in men's hearts; but perhaps the truest Fortitude may often be a less heroic, a more tame and business-like affair than we are apt to think. It may be exercised chiefly in doing very little things, whose whole value lies in this, that, if one did not hope in God, one would not do them; in secretly dispelling moods which one would like to show; in saying nothing about one's lesser troubles and vexations; in seeing whether it may not be best to bear a burden before one tries to see whither one can shift it; in refusing for one's self excuses which one would not refuse for others. These, anyhow, are ways in which a man may every day be strengthening himself in the discipline of Fortitude; and then, if greater things are asked of him, he is not very likely to draw back from them. And while he waits the asking of these greater things, he may be gaining from the love of God a hidden strength and glory such as he himself would least of all suspect; he may be growing in the patience and perseverance of the saints. For most of us the chief temptation to lose heart, the chief demand upon our strength, comes in the monotony of our failures, and in the tedious persistence of prosaic difficulties; it is the distance, not the pace, that tries us. To go on choosing what has but a look of being the more excellent way, pushing on towards a faintly glimmering light, and never doubting the supreme worth of goodness even in its least brilliant fragments,—this is the normal task of many lives; in this men show what they are like. And for this we need a quiet and sober Fortitude, somewhat like that which Botticelli painted, and Mr. Ruskin has described."

The Spirit of Discipline, Bishop Paget.

Temper

APRIL 11

"What is temper? Its primary meaning, the proportion and mode in which qualities are mingled, is much neglected in popular speech, yet even here the word often carries a reference to an habitual state or general tendency of the organism in distinction from what are held to be specific virtues and vices. As people confess to bad memory without expecting to sink in mental reputation, so we hear a man declared to have a bad temper and yet glorified as the possessor of every high quality. When he errs or in any way commits himself, his temper is accused, not his character, and it is understood that but for a brutal bearish mood he is kindness itself. If he kicks small animals, swears violently at a servant who mistakes orders, or is grossly rude to his wife, it is remarked apologetically that these things mean nothing—they are all temper.

"Certainly there is a limit to this form of apology; and the forgery of a bill, or the ordering of goods without any prospect of paying for them, has never been set down to an unfortunate habit of sulkiness or of irascibility. But on the whole there is a peculiar exercise of indulgence towards the manifestations of bad temper which tends to encourage them, so that we are in danger of having among us a number of virtuous persons who conduct themselves detestably, just as we have hysterical patients who, with sound organs, are apparently labouring under many sorts of organic disease. Let it be admitted, however, that a man may be a 'good fellow' and yet have a bad temper, so bad that we recognise his merits with reluctance, and are inclined to resent his occasionally amiable behaviour as an unfair demand on our admiration."

George Eliot.

Temper

APRIL 12

"Jealousy, anger, pride, uncharity, cruelty, self-righteousness, sulkiness, touchiness, doggedness,—these are the staple ingredients of Ill-Temper. And yet men laugh over it. 'Only temper,' they call it: a little hot-headedness, a momentary ruffling of the surface, a mere passing cloud. But the passing cloud is composed of drops, and the drops here betoken an ocean, foul and rancorous, seething somewhere within the life—an ocean made up of jealousy, anger, pride, uncharity, cruelty, self-righteousness, sulkiness, touchiness, doggedness, lashed into a raging storm.

"This is why temper is significant. It is not in what it is that its significance lies, but in what it reveals. But for this it were not worth notice. It is the intermittent fever which tells of un-intermittent disease; the occasional bubble escaping to the surface, betraying the rottenness underneath; a hastily prepared specimen of the hidden products of the soul, dropped involuntarily when you are off your guard. In one word, it is the lightning-form of a dozen hideous and unchristian sins."

The Ideal Life, Henry Drummond.

"Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil, but that you have increased a habit."

Epictetus.

Temper

APRIL 13

"Certainly if a bad-tempered man can be admirably virtuous, he must be so under extreme difficulties. I doubt the possibility that a high order of character can co-exist with a temper like Touchwood's. For it is of the nature of such temper to interrupt the formation of healthy mental habits, which depend on a growing harmony between perception, conviction, and impulse. There may be good feelings, good deeds—for a human nature may pack endless varieties and blessed inconsistencies in its windings—but it is essential to what is worthy to be called high character, that it may be safely calculated on, and that its qualities shall have taken the form of principles or laws habitually, if not perfectly, obeyed. If a man frequently passes unjust judgments, takes up false attitudes, intermits his acts of kindness with rude behaviour or cruel words, and falls into the consequent vulgar error of supposing that he can make amends by laboured agreeableness, I cannot consider such courses any the less ugly because they are ascribed to 'temper.' Especially I object to the assumption that his having a fundamentally good disposition is either an apology or a compensation for his bad behaviour."

George Eliot.

Temper

APRIL 14

"Consider how much more often you suffer from your anger and grief, than from those very things for which you are angry and grieved."

Marcus Aurelius.

"The difficult part of good temper consists in forbearance, and accommodation to the ill-humour of others."

Empson.

"Do we not know that the storm of feeling can be checked, if only we can prevent the first word from being spoken, the first gesture from being made. And is it not matter of common observation that persons who begin by being Stoics in demeanour end by becoming Stoics in reality?"

The Making of Character, Professor MacCunn.

Temper

APRIL 15

"If this be one of our chief duties—promoting the happiness of our neighbours—most certainly there is nothing which so entirely runs counter to it, and makes it impossible, as an undisciplined temper. For of all things that are to be met with here on earth, there is nothing which can give such continual, such cutting, such useless pain. The touchy and sensitive temper, which takes offence at a word; the irritable temper, which finds offence in everything whether intended or not; the violent temper, which breaks through all bounds of reason when once roused; the jealous or sullen temper, which wears a cloud on the face all day, and never utters a word of complaint; the discontented temper, brooding over its own wrongs; the severe temper, which always looks at the worst side of whatever is done; the wilful temper, which over-rides every scruple to gratify a whim,—what an amount of pain have these caused in the hearts of men, if we could but sum up their results! How many a soul have they stirred to evil impulses; how many a prayer have they stifled; how many an emotion of true affection have they turned to bitterness! How hard they sometimes make all duties! How painful they make all daily life! How they kill the sweetest and warmest of domestic charities! The misery caused by other sins is often much deeper and much keener, more disastrous, more terrible to the sight; but the accumulated pain caused by ill-temper must, I verily believe, if added together, outweigh all other pains that men have to bear from one another."

Bishop Temple.

Quarrels

APRIL 16

"Blow not into a flame the spark which is kindled between two friends. They are easily reconciled, and will both hate you."

From the German.

"Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side."

La Rochefoucauld.

"He approaches nearest to the gods who knows how to be silent even though he knows he is in the right."

Cato.

"When any one has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offence cannot reach it."

Descartes.

Quarrels

APRIL 17

"The mind is often clouded by passion until it is incapable of clear thought. Harsh words, stinging words, cruel words are usually spoken without thought. Rash deeds which result in most serious consequences are performed without thought. The wrong-doer does not consider beforehand the character of his deed, its effects on himself and others, and its ultimate consequences."

"We shall never be sorry afterwards for thinking twice before we speak, for counting the cost before entering upon any new course, for sleeping over stings and injuries before saying or doing anything in answer, or for carefully considering any business scheme presented to us before putting money or name into it. It will save us from much regret, loss, and sorrow, always to remember to do nothing rashly."

"Do nothing in a hurry. Nature never does. 'Most haste, worst speed,' says the old proverb. If you are in doubt, sleep over it. But, above all, never quarrel in a hurry. Think it over well. Take time. However vexed you may be overnight, things will often look very different in the morning. If you have written a clever and conclusive, but scathing letter, keep it back till the next day, and it will very often never go at all."

Lord Avebury.

Revenge

APRIL 18

"He that studieth revenge keepeth his own wounds green."

Bacon.

"Ill-temper and envy and revenge find here an arsenal of pious disguises; this is the playground of inverted lusts. With a little more patience and a little less temper, a gentler and wiser method might be found in almost every case; and the knot that we cut by some fine heady quarrel-scene in private life, or, in public affairs, by some denunciatory act against what we are pleased to call our neighbour's vices, might yet have been unwoven by the hand of sympathy."

Across the Plains, R. L. Stevenson.

"Still in thy right hand carry gentle Peace To silence envious tongues." Shakespeare.

Touchiness

APRIL 19

"Touchiness, when it becomes chronic, is a morbid condition of the inward disposition. It is self-love inflamed to the acute point."

Henry Drummond.

"Purge out of every heart the lurking grudge. Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Offenders, give us the grace to accept and to forgive offences. Forgetful ourselves, help us to bear cheerfully the forgetfulness of others. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies. Bless us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavours. If it may not, give us the strength to encounter that which is to come, that we be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath, and in all changes of fortune, and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving one to another. As the clay to the potter, as the windmill to the wind—as children of their sire, we beseech of Thee this help and mercy for Christ's sake."

Vailima Prayers, R. L. Stevenson.

Unbalanced Memory

APRIL 20

"It is so easy to forget a kindness, and to remember a kick. Yet controlling our recollections is almost as important as controlling our temper. We are apt to forget completely a hundred little kindnesses and courtesies which one has shown us, and to remember a single careless slight or thoughtless word. Often we hear it said of some wrong or foolish deed, 'I have never thought so well of that man since then; it was there he showed his real character,'—as if a man's real character appeared more in one separate deed to which, perhaps, he was sorely tempted, than in the striving and overcoming of many days and years."

"Our thoughts are often worse than we are, just as they are often better than we are. And God sees us as we are altogether, not in separate feelings or actions, as our fellow-men see us. We are always doing each other injustice, and thinking better or worse of each other than we deserve, because we only hear and see separate words and actions. We don't see each other's whole nature."

George Eliot.

"Enveloped in a common mist, we seem to walk in clearness ourselves, and behold only the mist that enshrouds others."

George Eliot.

Unbalanced Memory

APRIL 21

"Strange endurance of human vanity! a million of much more important conversations have escaped one since then, most likely—but the memory of this little mortification (for such it is, after all) remains quite fresh in the mind, and unforgotten, though it is a trifle, and more than half a score of years old. We forgive injuries, we survive even our remorse for great wrongs that we ourselves commit; but I doubt if we ever forgive slights of this nature put upon us, or forget circumstances in which our self-love has been made to suffer."

W. M. Thackeray.

"A past error may urge a grand retrieval."

George Eliot.

"Memory is not a pocket, but a living instructor, with a prophetic sense of the values which he guards; a guardian angel set there within you to record your life, and by recording it to animate you to uplift it."

Emerson.

"Silence a great Peacemaker"

APRIL 22

"Hard speech between those who have loved is hideous in the memory, like the sight of greatness and beauty sunk into vice and rags."

George Eliot.

"I don't want to say anything nasty, because nasty words always leave a scar behind."

Isabel Carnaby, Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler.

"Silence is a great peacemaker."

Longfellow.

"If bitterness has crept into the heart in the friction of the busy day's unguarded moments, be sure it steals away with the setting sun. Twilight is God's interval for peace-making."

Reconciliation

APRIL 23

"It is exceedingly noteworthy that in the rule laid down here by our Lord, the responsibility of seeking reconciliation is laid primarily, not upon the man who has done wrong, but upon the man who has received the wrong. It is the injured man who is to take the initiative, to go after the offender, to seek him out, and to exhaust all proper means of bringing him to a right state of mind, and of getting him reconciled to the man whom he has wronged. It is only after all these proper means have been exhausted, after the man who has been injured has done everything in his power—a great deal more than the law prescribed—it is then only that he is to regard the offender as 'a heathen man and a publican.' Is not this the exact opposite to the world's code of morality upon that subject? Is it not the rule among men of the world—I do not use the word in a bad sense—is it not the rule among Christian men of the world, who live what we should call on the whole good honest lives, to wait until the offender has come to them with a confession and an apology? And if they then accept the apology and forgive the offence, they probably think they have done something very magnanimous; nor would they consider they had done anything very much amiss if they refused to accept the apology, especially if the offence had been a gross one. If the offender did not apologise, even an otherwise good Christian would probably think that he might treat the matter with indifference, take no notice of it, and say to himself, 'He has offended me, I will take no notice, I will leave him to himself.' Would not men of the world—Christian men—consider that they had upon the whole discharged the Christian duty of forgiveness if they treated the offender in that way? But the law which our Lord laid down in His answer to Peter, which governed His own conduct, the law which rules the dealing of Almighty God with sinful man, is that the man who has been injured, to whom the wrong has been done, is to make the first move, is to take the first step, is to go after the man who has done the wrong, and use his utmost means of persuasion to convince him of his guilt, and to bring him back from the error of his ways."

Life Here and Hereafter, Canon MacColl.

Reconciliation and Forgiveness

APRIL 24

"Never forget, when you have been injured, that your duty is not only to refrain from retaliating, not simply to retire upon your dignity and self-respect, not to leave the offender severely alone; but to seek him out, to reason with him, to pray for him, to exhaust all your powers of persuasion, all the resources of gentleness and love. It is only when all this has been done that your responsibility is ended, and you are justified in leaving him to be dealt with by Almighty God."

Life Here and Hereafter, Canon MacColl.

"'Remember,' he said, ... 'that if you forgive him, you become changed yourself. You no longer see what he has done as you see it now. That is the beauty of forgiveness: it enables us better to understand those whom we have forgiven. Perhaps it will enable you to put yourself in his place.'"

The Mettle of the Pasture, James Lane Allen.

"Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?"

Thoreau.

Forgiveness

APRIL 25

"The little hearts that know not how to forgive!"

Tennyson.

"Oh, make my anger pure—let no worst wrong Rouse in me the old niggard selfishness. Give me Thine indignation—which is love Turned on the evil that would part love's throng; Thy anger scathes because it needs must bless, Gathering into union calm and strong All things on earth, and under, and above. "Make my forgiveness downright—such as I Should perish if I did not have from Thee; I let the wrong go, withered up and dry, Cursed with divine forgetfulness in me. 'Tis but self-pity, pleasant, mean and sly, Low whispering bids the paltry memory live:— What am I brother for, but to forgive? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lord, I forgive—and step in unto Thee."

George MacDonald.

Reparation

APRIL 26

"All high happiness has in it some element of love; all love contains a desire for peace. One immediate effect of new happiness is to make us turn toward the past with a wish to straighten out its difficulties, heal its breaches and forgive its wrongs."

James Lane Allen.

"As long as we love, we can forgive."

La Rochefoucauld.

"When it is our duty to do an act of justice it should be done promptly. To delay is injustice."

La Bruyère.

"His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong."

Emerson (said of Lincoln).

The Unamiable

APRIL 27

"Of all mortals none are so awfully self-deluded as the unamiable. They do not, any more than others, sin for the sake of sinning, but it may be doubted whether, in the hour when all shall be uncovered to the eternal day, there will be revealed a lower depth than the hell which they have made. They inflict torments with an unconsciousness almost worthy of spirits of light. The spirit sinks under the prospect of the retribution of the unamiable, if all that happens be indeed for eternity, if there be, indeed, a record of every chilling frown, of every querulous tone, of every bitter jest, of every insulting word, of all abuses of that tremendous power which mind has over mind. The throbbing pulse, the quivering nerves, the wrung hearts that surround the unamiable; what a cloud of witnesses is here! The terror of innocents who should know no fear, the vindictive emotions of dependents who dare not complain, the faintness of heart of lifelong companions, the anguish of those who love; what an array of judges is here! The unamiable, the domestic torturer, has heaped wrong upon wrong, woe upon woe, through the whole portion of time which was given into his power, till it would be rash to say that any others are more guilty than he."

Harriet Martineau.

Ill-Nature

APRIL 28

"How is ill-nature to be met and overcome? First, by humility: when a man knows his own weaknesses, why should he be angry with others for pointing them out? No doubt it is not very amiable of them to do so, but still, truth is on their side. Secondly, by reflection: after all we are what we are, and if we have been thinking too much of ourselves, it is only an opinion to be modified; the incivility of our neighbours leaves us what we were before. Above all, by pardon: there is only one way of not hating those who do us wrong, and that is by doing them good; anger is best conquered by kindness. Such a victory over feeling may not indeed affect those who have wronged us, but it is a valuable piece of self-discipline. It is vulgar to be angry on one's own account; we ought only to be angry for great causes. Besides, the poisoned dart can only be extracted from the wound by the balm of a silent and thoughtful charity. Why do we let human malignity embitter us? Why should ingratitude, jealousy—perfidy even—enrage us? There is no end to recriminations, complaints, or reprisals. The simplest plan is to blot everything out. Anger, rancour, bitterness, trouble the soul. Every man is a dispenser of justice; but there is one wrong that he is not bound to punish—that of which he himself is the victim. Such a wrong is to be healed, not avenged."

Amiel's Journal.

The Science of Social Life

APRIL 29

"Every man has his faults, his failings, peculiarities, eccentricities. Every one of us finds himself crossed by such failings of others, from hour to hour. And if he were to resent them all, or even notice all, life would be intolerable. If for every outburst of hasty temper, and for every rudeness that wounds us in our daily path, we were to demand an apology, require an explanation, or resent it by retaliation, daily intercourse would be impossible. The very science of social life consists in that gliding tact which avoids contact with the sharp angularities of character, which does not argue about such things, does not seek to adjust or cure them all, but covers them, as if it did not see."

Frederick W. Robertson.

"If you would have a happy family life, remember two things,—in matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with the current."

The Science of Social Life

APRIL 30

"Much of the sorrow of life, however, springs from the accumulation, day by day and year by year, of little trials—a letter written in less than courteous terms, a wrangle at the breakfast table over some arrangement of the day, the rudeness of an acquaintance on the way to the city, an unfriendly act on the part of another firm, a cruel criticism needlessly reported by some meddler, a feline amenity at afternoon tea, the disobedience of one of your children, a social slight by one of your circle, a controversy too hotly conducted. The trials within this class are innumerable, and consider, not one of them is inevitable, not one of them but might have been spared if we or our brother man had had a grain of kindliness. Our social insolences, our irritating manners, our censorious judgment, our venomous letters, our pinpricks in conversation, are all forms of deliberate unkindness, and are all evidences of an ill-conditioned nature."

The Homely Virtues, Dr. John Watson.

"Let us think, too, how much forbearance must have been shown us that we were not even conscious of needing; how often, beyond doubt, we have wounded, or annoyed, or wearied those who were so skilful and considerate that we never suspected either our clumsiness or their pain."

Studies in the Christian Character, Bishop Paget.

The Science of Social Life

MAY 1

"Then, to be able, when we live with our brother men, not to remember what we wish for ourselves, but only their wants, their joy and their sorrow; to think, not of our own desires, but how to minister to the great causes and the great conceptions which help mankind; to be eager to give pity to men, and forgiveness to their wrong; to desire with thirst to bind up the broken heart of man, and to realise our desire in act—this is to thirst for God as Love. For this is self-forgetfulness, and in the abysmal depths of His Being, as well as in every surface-form into which He throws Himself out of Himself, God is the absolute Self-forgetfulness."

The Gospel of Joy, Stopford Brooke.

"If, in the paths of the world, Stones might have wounded thy feet, Toil or dejection have tried Thy spirit, of that we saw Nothing—to us thou wast still Cheerful, and helpful, and firm! Therefore to thee it was given Many to save with thyself; And, at the end of thy day, O faithful shepherd! to come, Bringing thy sheep in thy hand."

Matthew Arnold.

The Science of Social Life

MAY 2

"If you would be loved as a companion, avoid unnecessary criticism upon those with whom you live. The number of people who have taken out judges' patents for themselves is very large in any society. Now it would be hard for a man to live with another who was always criticising his actions, even if it were kindly and just criticism. It would be like living between the glasses of a microscope. But these self-elected judges, like their prototypes, are very apt to have the persons they judge brought before them in the guise of culprits.

"Let not familiarity swallow up old courtesy. Many of us have a habit of saying to those with whom we live such things as we say about strangers behind their backs. There is no place, however, where real politeness is of more value than where we mostly think it would be superfluous. You may say more truth, or rather speak out more plainly to your associates, but not less courteously than to strangers."

Sir Arthur Helps.

"For manners are not idle, but the fruit Of loyal nature, and of noble mind."

Tennyson.

Sympathy

MAY 3

"There is nothing which seems to try men's patience and good temper more than feebleness: the timidity, the vacillation, the conventionality, the fretfulness, the prejudices of the weak; the fact that people can be so well-meaning and so disappointing, these things make many men impatient to a degree of which they are themselves ashamed. But it is something far more than patience and good temper towards weakness that is demanded here. It is that the strong, in whatsoever sphere their strength may lie, should try in silence and simplicity, escaping the observation of men, to take upon their own shoulders the burdens which the weak are bearing; to submit themselves to the difficulties amidst which the weak are stumbling on; to be, for their help's sake, as they are; to share the fear, the dimness, the anxiety, the trouble and heart-sinking through which they have to work their way; to forego and lay aside the privilege of strength in order to understand the weak and backward and bewildered, in order to be with them, to enter into their thoughts, to wait on their advance; to be content, if they can only serve, so to speak, as a favourable circumstance for their growth towards that which God intended them to be. It is the innermost reality of sympathy, it is the very heart and life of courtesy, that is touched here: but like all that is best in moral beauty, it loses almost all its grace the moment it attracts attention."

The Spirit of Discipline, Bishop Paget.

"Nothing but the Infinite pity is sufficient for the infinite pathos of human life."

J. Shorthouse.

Patience

MAY 4

"The example of our Lord, as He humbly and calmly takes the rebuff, and turns to go to another village, may help us in the ordinary ways of ordinary daily life. The little things that vex us in the manner or the words of those with whom we have to do; the things which seem to us so inconsiderate, or wilful, or annoying, that we think it impossible to get on with the people who are capable of them; the mistakes which no one, we say, has any right to make; the shallowness, or conventionality, or narrowness, or positiveness in talk which makes us wince and tempts us towards the cruelty and wickedness of scorn;—surely in all these things, and in many others like them, of which conscience may be ready enough to speak to most of us, there are really opportunities for thus following the example of our Saviour's great humility and patience. How many friendships we might win or keep, how many chances of serving others we might find, how many lessons we might learn, how much of unsuspected moral beauty might be disclosed around us, if only we were more careful to give people time, to stay judgment, to trust that they will see things more justly, speak of them more wisely, after a while. We are sure to go on closing doors of sympathy, and narrowing in the interests and opportunities of work around us, if we let ourselves imagine that we can quickly measure the capacities and sift the characters of our fellow-men."

Studies in the Christian Character, Bishop Paget.

Selfishness

MAY 5

"Any man—with the heart of a man and not of a mouse—is more likely than not to behave well at a pinch; but no man who is habitually selfish can be sure that he will, when the choice comes sharp between his own life and the lives of others. The impulse of a supreme moment only focusses the habits and customs of a man's soul. The supreme moment may never come, but habits and customs mould us from the cradle to the grave.... Vice and cowardice become alike impossible to a man who has never—cradled in selfishness, and made callous by custom—learned to pamper himself at the expense of others!"

A Happy Family, Mrs. Ewing.

"Sympathy is the safeguard of the human soul against selfishness."

Carlyle.

"Where Love is, God is"

MAY 6

"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

"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."