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.