order, intellectual order, moral order. To know where one is going and
what one wishes--this is order; to keep one's word and one's
engagements--again order; to have everything ready under one's hand, to
be able to dispose of all one's forces, and to have all one's means of
whatever kind under command--still order; to discipline one's habits,
one's efforts, one's wishes; to organise one's life, to distribute one's
time, to take the measure of one's duties and make one's rights
respected; to employ one's capital and resources, one's talent and one's
chances profitably;--all this belongs to and is included in the word
_order_. Order means light and peace, inward liberty and free command
over oneself; order is power. Aesthetic and moral beauty consist, the
first in a true conception of order, and the second in submission to it,
and in the realisation of it, by, in, and around oneself. Order is man's
greatest need and his true well-being."
_Amiel's Journal._
"The commissioning of the Twelve imposed no particular form of rule; but
it taught the lesson that organisation and order and the distribution of
duty were essential in things spiritual as well as in things temporal,
and that it was well for the children of light to be as 'wise in their
generation' as the children of the world."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
The Secret of Thrift
FEBRUARY 11
"The secret of thriving is thrift; saving of force; to get as much work
as possible done with the least expenditure of power, the least jar and
obstruction, the least wear and tear. And the secret of thrift is
knowledge. In proportion as you know the laws and nature of a subject,
you will be able to work at it easily, surely, rapidly, successfully,
instead of wasting your money or your energies in mistaken schemes,
irregular efforts, which end in disappointment and exhaustion."
CHARLES KINGSLEY.
"It is never enough for us simply to _know_. We must also _weigh_."
_The Making of Character_, PROF. MACCUNN.
"Doing good, being so divine a privilege, is beset by its own dangers.
Let us see that our good be not evil spoken of by want of thought,
method, and self-denial in the doing of it. The world is waiting for us,
with our little store. Oh that we might economise it more, devote it
more thoroughly, and add to it! Every time we pray, or study, or work,
we are receiving to give away. Men are looking to us in faintness,
weariness, and want, and a voice says to us, 'Give ye them to eat.' If
it is but five loaves, we can offer them to Christ, and He will multiply
them."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
Endurance
FEBRUARY 12
"'A somewhat varied experience of men has led me, the longer I live,'
said Huxley, 'to set less value on mere cleverness; to attach more and
more importance to industry and physical endurance. Indeed, I am much
disposed to think that endurance is the most valuable quality of all;
for industry, as the desire to work hard, does not come to much if a
feeble frame is unable to respond to the desire. No life is wasted
unless it ends in sloth, dishonesty, or cowardice. No success is worthy
of the name unless it is won by honest industry and brave breasting of
the waves of fortune.'"
"Of all work producing results, nine-tenths must be drudgery. There is
no work, from the highest to the lowest, which can be done well by any
man who is unwilling to make that sacrifice. Part of the very nobility
of the devotion of the true workman to his work consists in the fact
that a man is not daunted by finding that drudgery must be done, and no
man can really succeed in any walk of life without a good deal of what
in ordinary English is called pluck. That is the condition of all
success, and there is nothing which so truly repays itself as this
perseverance against weariness."
Bishop PHILPOTTS.
Perseverance
FEBRUARY 13
"Practise thyself even in the things which thou despairest of
accomplishing. For even the left hand, which is ineffectual for all
other things for want of practice, holds the bridle more vigorously than
the right hand; for it has been practised in this."
MARCUS AURELIUS.
"'It is not the spurt at the start, but the continued, unresting,
unhasting advance that wins the day.'"
"The same law runs in ordinary life, and he only need expect to attain
success and win the honour of his fellow-men who is thorough. The reason
why men fail is, in five cases out of six, not through want of influence
or brains, or opportunity, or good guidance, but because they are slack;
and the reason why certain men with few advantages succeed, is that they
are diligent, concentrated, persevering and conscientious--because, in
fact, they are thorough."
_The Homely Virtues_, DR. JOHN WATSON.
"Unto him who works, and feels he works,
This same grand year is ever at the doors."
TENNYSON.
Pleasure in Work
FEBRUARY 14
"Joy or delight in what we are doing is not a mere luxury; it is a
means, a help for the more perfect doing of our work. Indeed, it may be
truly said that no man does any work perfectly who does not enjoy his
work. Joy in one's work is the consummate tool without which the work
may be done indeed, but without which the work will always be done
slowly, clumsily, and without its finest perfectness. Men who do their
work without enjoying it are like men carving statues with hatchets. The
statue gets carved perhaps, and is a monument for ever of the dogged
perseverance of the artist; but there is a perpetual waste of toil, and
there is no fine result in the end."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"Efforts to be permanently useful must be uniformly joyous,--a spirit
all sunshine; graceful from very gladness, beautiful because bright."
CARLYLE.
"Every joy is gain, and gain is gain, however small."
BROWNING.
Duty
FEBRUARY 15
"In Life's small things be resolute and great
To keep thy muscle trained: know'st thou when Fate
Thy measure takes, or when she'll say to thee
'I find thee worthy; do this thing for me'?"
LOWELL.
"Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to
our powers."
_Amiel's Journal._
"I'll bind myself to that which, once being right, Will not be less
right when I shrink from it."
KINGSLEY.
"There's life alone in duty done,
And rest alone in striving."
WHITTIER.
Duty
FEBRUARY 16
"A duty is no sooner divined than from that very moment it becomes
binding upon us."
_Amiel's Journal._
"Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before
you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will
be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it."
EMERSON.
"The toppling crags of duty scaled
Are close upon the shining table-lands
To which our God Himself is moon and sun."
TENNYSON.
The Iron Chains of Duty
FEBRUARY 17
"... One conviction I have gained from the experience of the last
years--life is not jest and amusement; life is not even enjoyment ...
life is hard labour. Renunciation, continual renunciation--that is its
secret meaning, its solution. Not the fulfilment of cherished dreams and
aspirations, however lofty they may be--the fulfilment of duty, that is
what must be the care of man. Without laying on himself chains, the iron
chains of duty, he cannot reach without a fall the end of his career."
_A Lear of the Steppes_, IVAN TURGENEV.
"Granted that life is tragic to the marrow, it seems the proper function
of religion to make us accept and serve in that tragedy, as officers in
that other and comparable one of war. Service is the word, active
service, in the military sense; and the religious man is he who has a
military joy in duty--not he who weeps over the wounded."
_Lay Morals_, R. L. STEVENSON.
Power
FEBRUARY 18
"Oh, do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray
for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks!
Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a
miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life
which has come in you by the grace of God.
"THERE is nothing which comes to seem more foolish to us, I think, as
years go by, than the limitations which have been quietly set to the
moral possibilities of man. They are placidly and perpetually assumed.
'You must not expect too much of him,' so it is said. 'You must remember
that he is only a man after all.' 'Only a man!' That sounds to me as if
one said, 'You may launch your boat and sail a little way, but you must
not expect to go very far. It is only the Atlantic Ocean.' Why, man's
moral range and reach is practically infinite, at least no man has yet
begun to comprehend where its limit lies. Man's powers of conquering
temptation, of despising danger, of being true to principle, have never
been even indicated, save in Christ."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"Virgil said of the winning crew in his boat-race, 'They can, because
they believe they can.'"
An Ideal Level
FEBRUARY 19
"No man who, being a Christian, desires the kingdom of God, can justly
neglect giving his energy to the bettering of the social, physical, and
educational condition of the poor, the diseased, and the criminal
classes. But he is not a Christian, or he has not realised the problem
fully, if that is all he does. Social improvement is a work portions of
which any one can do, in which all ought to share; but if we who follow
Christ desire to do the best work in that improvement, and in the best
way, we ought to strive--while we join in the universal movement towards
a juster society--to give a spiritual life to that movement; to keep it
at an ideal level; to free it from mere materialism; to maintain in it
the monarchy of self-sacrifice; to fix its eyes on invisible and
unworldly truths; to supply it with noble and spiritual faiths; to base
all associations of men on the ground of their spiritual union--all
being children of God, and brothers of one another, in the love and
faith by which Jesus lived; and to maintain the dignity of this
spiritual communion of men in faith in their immortal union with God.
This is the fight of faith we, as fellow-workers with God, shall have to
wage; and this not only binds us up with the poor, but with the rich,
not only with the ignorant, but the learned; for on these grounds all
men are seen as stripped of everything save of their humanity and their
divine kinship.... Improve, then, the material condition and the
knowledge of all who are struggling for justice; it is part of your life
which if you neglect, you are out of touch with the new life; but kindle
in it, uphold and sanctify in it, the life which is divine, the
communion with man of God, without union with whose character all effort
for social improvement will revert to new miseries and new despair."
_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.
Work
FEBRUARY 20
"Idleness standing in the midst of unattempted tasks is always proud.
Work is always tending to humility. Work touches the keys of endless
activity, opens the infinite, and stands awe-struck before the immensity
of what there is to do. Work brings a man into the good realm of facts.
Work takes the dreamy youth who is growing proud in his closet over one
or two sprouting powers which he has discovered in himself, and sets him
out among the gigantic needs and the vast processes of the world, and
makes him feel his littleness. Work opens the measureless fields of
knowledge and skill that reach far out of sight. I am sure we all know
the fine, calm, sober humbleness of men who have really tried themselves
against the great tasks of life. It was great in Paul, and in Luther,
and in Cromwell. It is something that never comes into the character,
never shows in the face of a man who has never worked."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"No man is born into the world, whose work
Is not born with him; there is always work,
And tools to work withal, for those who will;
And blessed are the horny hands of toil!
The busy world shoves angrily aside
The man who stands with arms akimbo set,
Until occasion tells him what to do;
And he who waits to have his task marked out
Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled."
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
Special Work for Each
FEBRUARY 21
"There is some particular work which lies to every one's hand which he
can do better than any other person. What we ought to be concerned about
is not whether it be on a large scale or a small--about which we can
never be quite certain--nor whether it is going to bring us fame or
leave us in obscurity--an issue which is in the hands of God--but that
we do it, and that we do it with all our might. Having done that, there
is no cause to fret ourselves or ask questions which cannot be answered.
We may rest with a quiet conscience and a contented heart, for we have
filled our place and done what we could. The battle of life extends over
a vast area, and it is vain for us to inquire about the other wings of
the army; it is enough that we have received our orders, and that we
have held the few feet of ground committed to our charge. There let us
fight and there let us die, and so fighting and so dying in the place of
duty we cannot be condemned, we must be justified. Brilliant qualities
may never be ours, but the homely virtues are within our reach, and
character is built up not out of great intellectual gifts and splendid
public achievements, but out of honesty, industry, thrift, kindness,
courtesy, and gratitude, resting upon faith in God and love towards man.
And the inheritance of the soul which ranks highest and lasts for ever
is character."
_The Homely Virtues,_ Dr. JOHN WATSON.
The Sin of Idleness
FEBRUARY 22
"There is a certain amount of work to be done in this world. If any of
us does not take his full share, he imposes that which he does not take
on the shoulders of another; and the first cause of poverty, of disease,
of misery in all States, is the overwork which is imposed on men and
women by the idle and indifferent members of the nation. This is to
steal from the human race; to steal from them joy, leisure, health,
comfort and peace, and to impose on them sorrow and overwork, disease
and homelessness, bitter anger and fruitless tears. This is the curse
which the selfish dreamer leaves behind him. Many have been the fierce
oppressors and defrauders of the human race, but the evil they have done
is less than that done by those who drop by drop and hour by hour drain
the blood of mankind by doing no work for the overworked. This is the
crime with which the idle and indifferent will be confronted when the
great throne is set in our soul, and the books we have written on men's
lives are opened, and God shall lay judgment to the line and
righteousness to the plummet. 'Lord, what hast Thou to do with it?' we
will say. 'I did not neglect Thee; I took my ease, it is true, but I
kept Thy law. I was never impious, never an atheist. When was I not
religious?' Then He will answer: 'Inasmuch as ye never worked for the
least of these My brothers, ye never worked for Me!'"
_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.
"Let us start up and live: here come moments that cannot be had again;
some few may yet be filled with imperishable good."
J. MARTINEAU.
Idleness
FEBRUARY 23
"It is not necessary for a man to be actively bad in order to make a
failure of life; simple inaction will accomplish it. Nature has
everywhere written her protest against idleness; everything which ceases
to struggle, which remains inactive, rapidly deteriorates. It is the
struggle towards an ideal, the constant effort to get higher and further
which develops manhood and character."
"Shun idleness, it is the rust that attaches itself to the most
brilliant metals."
VOLTAIRE.
"There is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works. In
idleness alone is there perpetual despair."
CARLYLE.
"'Twere all as good to ease one breast of grief
As sit and watch the sorrows of the world."
_The Light of Asia_, E. ARNOLD.
Fear of Failure
FEBRUARY 24
"Who would ever stir a finger, if only on condition of being guaranteed
against oversights, misinformation, mistakes, ignorance, loss, and
danger?"
H. MARTINEAU.
"The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he
decides, never decides."
_Amiel's Journal._
"He who is too much afraid of being duped has lost the power of being
magnanimous."
_Amiel's Journal._
"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first
overcome."
DR. JOHNSON.
Fear of Failure
FEBRUARY 25
"Extreme caution is no less harmful than its opposite."
VAUVENARGUES.
"The men who succeed best in public life are those who take the risk of
standing by their own convictions."
GARFIELD.
"Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt."
SHAKESPEARE.
"IT is better by a noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to
half of the evils which we anticipate, than to remain in cowardly
listlessness for fear of what may happen."
HERODOTUS.
Falterers
FEBRUARY 26
"Nay, never falter: no great deed is done
By falterers who ask for certainty.
No good is certain, but the steadfast mind,
The undivided will to seek the good:
'Tis that compels the elements, and wrings
A human music from the indifferent air.
The greatest gift the hero leaves his race
Is to have been a hero. Say we fail!--
We feed the high tradition of the world,
And leave our spirit in our children's breasts."
GEORGE ELIOT.
"How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rest unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life."
TENNYSON.
"After all, depend upon it, it is better to be worn out with work in a
thronged community, than to perish in inaction in a stagnant solitude:
take this truth into consideration whenever you get tired of work and
bustle."
MRS. GASKELL'S _Life of C. Bronte_.
Courage
FEBRUARY 27
"Whether you be man or woman you will never do anything in the world
without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honour."
JAMES LANE ALLEN.
"The brave man is not he who feels no fear,
For that were stupid and irrational,
But he whose noble soul its fear subdues
And bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from."
JOANNA BAILLIE.
"Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh--that is to
say, over fear: fear of poverty, of suffering, of calumny, of sickness,
of isolation, and of death. There is no serious piety without heroism.
Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage."
_Amiel's Journal._
"Self-trust is the essence of heroism."
EMERSON.
Responsibility
FEBRUARY 28
"Thousands live and die in the dim borderland of destitution; that
little children wail, and starve, and perish, and soak and blacken soul
and sense, in our streets; that there are hundreds and thousands of the
unemployed, not all of whom, as some would persuade us, are lazy
impostors; that the demon of drink still causes among us daily horrors
which would disgrace Dahomey or Ashantee, and rakes into his coffers
millions of pounds which are wet with tears and red with blood; these
are facts patent to every eye. Now, God will work no miracle to mend
these miseries. If we neglect them they will be left uncured, but He
will hold us responsible for the neglect. It is vain for us to ask, 'Am
I my brother's keeper?' In spite of all the political economists, in
spite of all superfine theories of chilly and purse-saving wisdom, in
spite of all the critiques of the irreligious--still more of the
semi-religious, and the religious press, He will say to the callous and
the slothful, with such a glance 'as struck Gehazi with leprosy, and
Simon Magus with a curse,' 'What hast thou done? Smooth religionist,
orthodox Churchman, scrupulous Levite, befringed and bephylacteried
Pharisee, thy brother's blood crieth to Me from the ground!'"
F. W. FARRAR.
"The healing of the world
Is in its nameless saints. Each separate star
Seems nothing, but a myriad scattered stars
Break up the night, and make it beautiful."
BAYARD TAYLOR.
The Sin of Indifference
MARCH 1
"They hear no more the cries of their brothers caught in the nets of
misery: 'Help us, we are perishing.' The curtains of their comfort are
fast drawn; they sit at home wrapt in family ease. Outside, the sleet is
falling, the bitter wind is blowing, thousands of the children of sorrow
are dying in the fierce weather. God Himself is knocking at the door,
calling 'Come forth and seek the lost with Jesus.' We hear nothing, the
cotton of comfort stops our ears. For a time, till God Himself breaks in
on us with storm, and disperses our comfort to the winds, we can run no
Christian race.... Therefore, lay aside, not all comfort--men have a
right to that--but that excess of it which softens and enfeebles the
soul; which sends to sleep the longing for God's perfection; which makes
our life too slothful to follow Christ, the Healer of the world!"
_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.
"All my soul is full
Of pity for the sickness of this world;
Which I will heal, if healing may be found
By uttermost renouncing and strong strife."
_The Light of Asia_, E. ARNOLD.
Wasted Emotions
MARCH 2
"Pity, indignation, love, felt and not made into acts of pity or of
self-sacrifice, lose their very heart in our dainty dreaming, and are
turned into their opposites. Our animation and activity of love,
unexercised, becomes like the unused muscle, attenuated; and we are
content to think with pleasure of the times when we were animated and
active--a vile condition. But the worst wretchedness of these losses
does not consist in the damage we do ourselves, but in the loss of power
to benefit mankind, in the loss of power to do God's work for the
salvation and the greater happiness of man. We are guilty to man, and
guilty before God, when we lose our powers in inglorious ease. We owe
ourselves to men and women; no amount of work frees us from the duty of
keeping ourselves in the best possible trim, body and soul, mind and
spirit, that we may nobly work the loving work of Him that sent us."
_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.
"Opportunities are swarming around us all the time, thicker than gnats
at sundown. We walk through a cloud of them."
VAN DYKE.
"Doing" more than "Feeling"
MARCH 3
"Our Lord ... always brings back to mind that doing is more than
feeling."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
"A maxim of Professor James 'never to suffer a single emotion to
evaporate without exacting from it some practical service.'"
_The Making of Character_, Prof. JOHN MACCUNN.
"But two ways are offered to our will--
Toil with rare triumph, Ease with safe disgrace:--
Nor deem that acts heroic wait on chance!
The man's whole life preludes the single deed
That shall decide if his inheritance
Be with the sifted few of matchless breed,
Or with the unnoticed herd that only sleep and feed."
LOWELL.
The Sacredness of Work
MARCH 4
"All true work is sacred; in all true work, were it but true
hand-labour, there is something of divineness."
CARLYLE.
"Some of the commonest faults of thought and work are those which come
from thinking too poorly of our own lives, and of that which must
rightly be demanded of us. A high standard of accuracy, a chivalrous
loyalty to exact truth, generosity to fellow-workers, indifference to
results, distrust of all that is showy, self-discipline and
undiscouraged patience through all difficulties,--these are among the
first and greatest conditions of good work; and they ought never to seem
too hard for us if we remember what we owe to the best work of bygone
days."
_The Spirit of Discipline_, Bishop PAGET.
"Whether thy work be fine or coarse, planting corn or writing epics, so
only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a
reward to the senses as well as to the thought; no matter how often
defeated, you are born to victory. The reward of a thing well done is to
have done it."
EMERSON.
Doing our Best
MARCH 5
"It is not the quantity of our work that He regards, but the quality of
it. He is less anxious that we should fulfil our task--for He can make
up for our deficiencies--than that we should do our best; for what He
desires is the improvement of our characters, and that requires the
co-operation of our own wills with His."
_Life Here and Hereafter_, Canon MACCOLL.
"Experience shows that success is due less to ability than to zeal. The
winner is he who gives himself to his work, body and soul."
CHARLES BUXTON.
"Life is too short to waste,
* * * * *
'Twill soon be dark;
Up! mind thine own aim, and
God speed the mark!"
EMERSON.
Work--Effective Reforms
MARCH 6
"We must be careful not to undermine independence in our anxiety to
relieve distress. There is always the initial difficulty that whatever
is done for men takes from them a great stimulus to work, and weakens
the feeling of independence; all creatures which depend on others tend
to become mere parasites. It is important therefore, as far as possible,
not so much to give a man bread, as to put him in the way of earning it
for himself; not to give direct aid, but to help others to help
themselves. The world is so complex that we must all inevitably owe much
to our neighbours; but, as far as possible, every man should stand on
his own feet."
Lord AVEBURY.