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 BRUYERE.
"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.