not only outward prosperity; victory over evil at its source, and not in
its consequences; reforms which shall regard the welfare of future
generations, who are 'the greatest number.'"
Bishop WESTCOTT.
"We fall under the temptation of seeking material solutions for
spiritual problems; material remedies for spiritual maladies. The
thought of spiritual poverty, of spiritual destitution, is crowded out.
We treat the symptoms and neglect the disease itself."
Bishop WESTCOTT.
Work--Effective Reforms
MARCH 7
"If you are moved with a vague desire to help men be better men, you
must know that you can do it not by belabouring the evil but by training
the good that there is in them."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"The Christian, therefore, I repeat, as Christian, will take his full
part in preparing for the amelioration of the conditions of men no less
than for their conversion. He will in due measure strive to follow,
under the limitations of his own labour, the whole example of his Lord,
who removed outward distresses and satisfied outward wants, even as He
brought spiritual strength and rest to the weak and weary. Moreover,
this effort based upon resolute thought, belongs to the completeness of
the religious life of the Christian."
Bishop WESTCOTT.
"Reforms which are effective must develop and strengthen character."
Bishop WESTCOTT.
Work--"To cure is the Voice of the Past"
MARCH 8
"All measures of reformation are effective in exact proportion to their
timeliness. Partial decay may be cut away and cleansed, incipient error
corrected: but there is a point at which corruption can no more be
stayed, nor wandering recalled. It has been the manner of modern
philanthropy to remain passive until that precise period, and to leave
the sick to perish, and the foolish to stray, while it spent itself in
frantic exertions to raise the dead, and reform the dust."
_The Queen of the Air_, JOHN RUSKIN.
"THE real work of charity is not to afford facilities to the poor to
lower their standard, but to step in when calamity threatens and prevent
it from falling."
_The Standard of Life_, MRS. BERNARD BOSANQUET.
"To cure is the voice of the past; to prevent, the divine whisper of
to-day."
_Children's Rights_, KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN.
Satan's Opportunities
MARCH 9
"Physiologists know as much about morality as ministers of the gospel.
The vices which drag men and women into crime spring as often from
unhealthy bodies as from weak wills and callous consciences. Vile
fancies and sensual appetites grow stronger and more terrible when a
feeble physique and low vitality offer no opposing force. Deadly vices
are nourished in the weak diseased bodies that are penned, day after
day, in filthy crowded tenements of great cities."
_Children's Rights_, KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN.
"Man's unpitied misery is Satan's opportunity."
"Mould conditions aright, and men will grow good to fit them."
HORACE FLETCHER.
"Evil is Wrought by want of Thought"
MARCH 10
"But evil is wrought by want of thought, As well as want of heart."
THOMAS HOOD.
"It is clear that in whatever it is our duty to act, those matters also
it is our duty to study."
DR. ARNOLD.
"No alms-giving of money is so helpful as alms-giving of care and
thought; the giving of money without thought is indeed continually
mischievous; but the invective of the economist against indiscriminate
charity is idle if it be not coupled with pleading for discriminate
charity, and above all, for that charity which discerns the uses that
people may be put to, and helps them by setting them to work in those
services. That is the help beyond all others; find out how to make
useless people useful, and let them earn their money instead of begging
it."
_Arrows of the Chace_, JOHN RUSKIN.
(From a letter published in the _Daily Telegraph_ of
December 20, 1868.)
The Hallowing of Work
March 11
"We shall not do much of that which is best worth doing in the world if
we only consecrate to it our gifts. We have something else to consecrate
for our work's sake, for our friend's sake, for the sake of all for whom
in any way we are responsible. Beyond and above all that we may do, is
that which we may be. 'For their sakes I sanctify, I consecrate,
Myself.' So our Blessed Lord spoke in regard to those whom He had drawn
nearest to Himself--His friends; those whose characters He would fashion
for the greatest task that ever yet was laid upon frail men. And even
when we have set apart all that was unique in the nature and results of
His Self-consecration, all that He alone could, once for all, achieve;
still, I think, the words disclose a principle that concerns every one
of us--the principle of all that is highest and purest in the influence
of one life upon the lives it touches: 'For their sakes I consecrate
Myself.' There is the ultimate secret of power; the one sure way of
doing good in our generation. We cannot anticipate or analyse the power
of a pure and holy life; but there can be no doubt about its reality,
and there seems no limit to its range. We can only know in part the laws
and forces of the spiritual world; and it may be that every soul that is
purified and given up to God and to His work releases or awakens
energies of which we have no suspicion--energies viewless as the wind;
but we can be sure of the result, and we may have glimpses sometimes of
the process--surely, there is no power in the world so unerring or so
irrepressible as the power of personal holiness. All else at times goes
wrong, blunders, loses proportion, falls disastrously short of its aim,
grows stiff or one-sided, or out of date--'whether there be prophecies,
they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether
there be knowledge, it shall vanish away;' but nothing mars or misleads
the influence that issues from a pure and humble and unselfish
character."
_The Hallowing of Work_, Bishop PAGET.
One by One
MARCH 12
"Nothing is more characteristic of Jesus' method than His indifference
to the many--His devotion to the single soul. His attitude to the
public, and His attitude to a private person were a contrast and a
contradiction. If His work was likely to cause a sensation Jesus charged
His disciples to let no man know it: if the people got wind of Him, He
fled to solitary places: if they found Him, as soon as might be He
escaped. But He used to take young men home with Him, who wished to ask
questions: He would spend all night with a perplexed scholar: He gave an
afternoon to a Samaritan woman. He denied Himself to the multitude: He
lay in wait for the individual. This was not because He under-valued a
thousand, it was because He could not work on the thousand scale: it was
not because He over-valued the individual, it was because His method was
arranged for the scale of one. Jesus never succeeded in public save
once, when He was crucified: He never failed in private save once, with
Pontius Pilate. His method was not sensation: it was influence. He did
not rely on impulses: He believed in discipline. He never numbered
converts, because He knew what was in man: He sifted them, as one
winnoweth the wheat from the chaff. Spiritual statistics are unknown in
the Gospels: they came in with St. Peter in the pardonable intoxication
of success: they have since grown to be a mania. As the Church coarsens
she estimates salvation by quantity, how many souls are saved: Jesus was
concerned with quality, after what fashion they were saved. His mission
was to bring Humanity to perfection."
_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
One by One
MARCH 13
"Our Lord ... does not, on entering a village, ordain that all the
lepers in it shall be cleansed, or all the palsied restored to the use
of their limbs. He condescends to take each case by itself."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
"'One by one' is not only the safest way of helping, it is the only
possible way of ensuring that any real good is done."
_Rich and Poor_, Mrs. BERNARD BOSANQUET.
"Love cannot be content while any suffer,--cannot rest while any sin."
"I would not let one cry whom I could save."
_The Light of Asia_, E. ARNOLD.
Interruptions
MARCH 14
"So long as there is work to do there will be interruptions--breaks in
its progress. The minister at work on his sermon, the merchant at his
desk, the woman in her household duties--all must expect these calls to
turn aside from the work in hand. And it is a part of one's character
growth to bear these timely or untimely interruptions without any break
in good temper or courtesy. A young student who was privileged to call
often upon Phillips Brooks in his study, told the writer that he could
never have learned from the Bishop's manner or words, that the
big-hearted, busy man was ever too busy to receive him. To bear
interruptions thus serenely is an opportunity for self-control not to be
overlooked by any one who wants to do God's work in the right spirit."
"He threw himself spontaneously, apparently without effort and yet
irresistibly, into the griefs and joys, the needs and interests of
others. He had the happy gift of taking everybody to his heart. He was
never inattentive. As you talked to him you always felt he was listening
and really trying to understand your case. In the light of sympathy you
saw yourself reflected in the mirror of his heart. Nor did he forget you
when you were gone from sight. His was not the cheap sympathy of an
outward manner, but the true emotion of the inward self. To your
surprise, when you had left Bishop Fraser with a sense of shame at
having occupied, in your interview, so much of his overcrowded time, you
would find the next morning a letter upon your table giving his fuller
and more mature opinion of your plans or course of action."... "Tender
and loving, in sympathy with the lowliest, forbearing with the most
unreasonable, often interrupted, but never resenting, the sacrifice of
self crowning all."
_Bishop Fraser's Lancashire Life_, Archdeacon DIGGLE.
Mechanical Work
MARCH 15
"Miss Keane took but little heed of the presence of Rachel and Hester in
her brother's house. Those who work mechanically on fixed lines seem as
a rule to miss the pith of life. She was kind when she remembered them,
but her heart was where her treasure was--namely, in her escritoire,
with her list of Bible classes, and servants' choral unions, and the
long roll of contributors to the guild of work which she herself had
started."
_Red Pottage_, MARY CHOLMONDELEY.
"Any man seeking to be holy who does not set himself in close live
contact with the life about him, stands in great danger of growing pious
or punctilious instead of holy."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
An Ideal Guest-chamber
MARCH 16
"In Mrs. Charles' well-known book, 'Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta
family,' there is a beautiful passage where Fritz and Eva, beginning
their young life together, take into their house a penitent woman who
was thought to be near death. Eva writes: 'There is a little room over
the porch that we had set apart as a guest-chamber, and very sweet it
was to me that Bertha should be its first inmate; very sweet to Fritz
and me that our home should be what our Lord's heart is, a refuge for
the outcast, the penitent, the solitary, and the sorrowful.'"
"We all say we follow Christ, but most of us only follow Him and His
cross--part of the way. When we are told that our Lord bore our sins,
and was wounded for our transgressions, I suppose that meant that He
felt as if they were His own, in His great love for us. But when you
shrink from bearing your fellow-creatures' transgressions, it shows that
your love is small."
_Red Pottage_, MARY CHOLMONDELEY.
"Radiant with heavenly pity, lost in care
For those he knew not, save as fellow lives."
_The Light of Asia_, E. ARNOLD.
"To be Trusted is to be Saved"
MARCH 17
"No one can perish in whom any spark of the Divine life is still
burning. No one can be plucked out of the Saviour's hands who still
struggles towards Him, however feebly and falteringly."
_Life Here and Hereafter_, Canon MACCOLL.
"To be trusted is to be saved. And if we try to influence or elevate
others, we shall soon see that success is in proportion to their belief
of our belief in them. For the respect of another is the first
restoration of the self-respect a man has lost; our ideal of what he is
becomes to him the hope and pattern of what he may become."
_The Greatest Thing in the World_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
"Coarse treatment never wins souls."
God's Children
MARCH 18
"Hallow the name of God, hallow His character, in all noble and good
humanity.
"That is not difficult. But to hallow God's character in men and women
who are not good, in sinful humanity--that is not so easy. Yet, if we
would be true to this prayer of Christ, this too is part of our duty.
The evil are also the children of God. They have not hallowed His
character, but abandoned its worship. Nevertheless they cannot get rid
of it. That divine thing lies hid, ineradicably, beneath their evil
doing and evil thought. The truth, justice, love, piety, and goodness of
God are in abeyance in the wrong-doer, but they are not dead in him.
They cannot die; nothing can destroy them. And we, whose desire it
should be to save men, can, if we have faith in the indestructible God
in men, pierce to this immortal good in the evil, appeal to it, and call
it forth to light, like Lazarus, from the tomb. This we can do, if, like
Jesus, we love men enough; if our faith that the evil are still God's
children be deep and firm enough. In this we can keep closest to Christ,
for it was His daily way of life; and divinely beautiful it was. He
hallowed God's character in the criminal and the harlot. He saw the good
beneath the evil. At His touch it leaped into life, and its life
destroyed the death in the sinner's soul. It seems as if He said when He
looked into the face of the wrong-doer, 'Father, hallowed be Thy
character.' No lesson for life can be wiser or deeper than this. It
ought to rule all our doings with the weak and guilty. It is at the very
centre of the prayer, 'Hallowed be Thy name.'"
_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.
"Always at the door
Of foulest hearts, the angel-nature yet
Knocks to return and cancel all its debt."
J. R. Lowell.
Raw Material
MARCH 19
"One also is filled with _hope_ at the figure of the clay, because it
suggests the immense and unimagined possibilities of human nature. Upon
first sight how poor a thing is this man, with his ignorances,
prejudices, pettinesses, his envy, jealousy, evil temper. Upon second
thoughts how much may be in this man, how much he may achieve, how high
he may attain. This dull and unattractive man must not be despised,
whether he be yourself or another: he is incalculable and unfathomable.
He is simply raw material, soul stuff, and one can no more anticipate
him than you could foresee a Turner from the master's colours--some of
them very strange--or a Persian rug from a heap of wool. Out of that
unpromising face, that sleeping intellect, those awkward ways, this
crust of selfishness and a hundred faults, is going to be made a man
whom the world will admire and honour."
_The Potter's Wheel_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
"To have faith is to create; to have hope is to call down blessing; to
have love is to work miracles."
_The Roadmender_, MICHAEL FAIRLESS.
"The faith which saves others is the enthusiasm of patience."
_The Service of God_, Canon BARNETT.
Pessimism
MARCH 20
"The next thing to speak of is a tendency in the world which is the very
opposite of that of which we have spoken, but which is equally
characteristic of a time when a new life and spirit is on the verge of
taking its form. As part of the fight of faith is to support and direct
the first, so part of that battle is to weaken and oppose the doctrine
that the world is going from bad to worse, that there is no regeneration
for it, and that there ought to be none. On this doctrine I have
frequently spoken, but I do not hesitate to speak of it again. It is the
fashion to praise it; it deserves no praise, it is detestable. This is a
favourite doctrine of the comfortable classes who are idle and luxurious
or merely fantastic, and of a certain type of scientific men, both of
whom are profoundly ignorant of the working world and of the poor, who
hate this doctrine and despise it. The sufferings of the poor and the
oppressed are used as an argument in its favour, but, curiously enough,
you scarcely ever find it held by the poor and the oppressed;--on the
contrary, these are the creators and builders of Utopias: out of this
class grow those who prophesy a golden year. Those who have most reason
to despair never despair."
_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.
"Of all bad habits despondency is among the least respectable, and there
is no one quite so tiresome as the sad-visaged Christian who is
oppressed by the wickedness and hopelessness of the world."
Service
MARCH 21
"Service implies self-giving. There is service which is just
self-satisfaction, pleasing to the taste for doing and meddling, and
there is service which is exactly measured to its pay. True service
implies giving, the surrender of time or taste, the subjection of self
to others, the gift which is neither noticed nor returned."
_The Service of God_, Canon BARNETT.
"Christian greatness is born of willingness to lay the lowliest duties
on yourself, and the way to be first is to be ready to remain last."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
"Nobleness consists in a valiant suffering for others, not in making
others suffer for us. The chief of men is he who stands in the van of
men; fronting the peril which frightens back all others.... Every noble
crown is, and on earth will for ever be, a crown of thorns."
_Past and Present_, CARLYLE.
"No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to any
one else."
DICKENS.
Service
MARCH 22
"They were to mortify the self-importance and vain dignity that will not
render commonplace kindness. 'If I then, your Lord and Master, have
washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet.'"
_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
"Nothing is degrading which a high and graceful purpose ennobles, and
offices the most menial cease to be menial the moment they are wrought
in love."
J. MARTINEAU.
"And service will be the personal tribute to Jesus, whom we shall
recognise under any disguise, as his nurse detected Ulysses by his
wounds, and whose Body, in the poor and miserable, will ever be with us
for our discernment. Jesus is the leper whom the saint kissed, and the
child the monk carried over the stream, and the sick man the widow
nursed into health, after the legends of the ages of faith. And Jesus
will say at the close of the day, 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one
of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.'"
_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
Service
MARCH 23
"We must not be perplexed or put out if we have to change our plans. God
sends us hither and thither; we may think that we are wasting our
special talents, when God has, after all, some particular need for our
particular work at a particular time. And equally we must learn to
measure our strength; we cannot all do the same things, we are not all
adapted to the same work, or charged with the same duties. Why should we
overstrain ourselves in that which is beyond our strength, or neglect
plain duties for others less obvious? Ah! God receives many a Corban now
which He will never accept; self-chosen work done at the expense of
duty; work outside done to the neglect of our own proper work; work done
at the entire expense of our home and social duties; the clear
commandment of God shattered to pieces by some purely human tradition."
Canon NEWBOLT.
"Every Christian is the servant of men, always and everywhere, without
respect to the distinctions of sex, or class, or nationality, or creed."
Canon BODY.
Mens Sana in Corpore Sano
MARCH 24
"As there is a will of God for our higher nature--the moral laws--as
emphatically is there a will of God for the lower, the natural laws. If
you would know God's will in the higher, therefore, you must begin with
God's will in the lower: which simply means this--that if you want to
live the ideal life, you must begin with the ideal body. The law of
moderation, the law of sleep, the law of regularity, the law of
exercise, the law of cleanliness,--this is the law or will of God for
you. This is the first law, the beginning of His will for you. And if we
are ambitious to get on to do God's will in the higher reaches, let us
respect it as much in the lower; for there may be as much of God's will
in minor things, as much of God's will in taking good bread and pure
water, as in keeping a good conscience or living a pure life. Whoever
heard of gluttony doing God's will, or laziness, or uncleanness, or the
man who was careless and wanton of natural life? Let a man disobey God
in these, and you have no certainty that he has any true principle for
obeying God in anything else: for God's will does not only run into the
church and the prayer-meeting and the higher chambers of the soul, but
into the common rooms at home down to wardrobe and larder and cellar,
and into the bodily frame down to blood and muscle and brain."
_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
The Duty of Physical Health
MARCH 25
"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