friendship, it is happily none the less true that friend may powerfully
influence friend though the two be by no means constant associates. Even
far removal in place, or in occupation, or in fortunes, cannot arrest
influence. For once any man has true friends, he never again frames his
decisions, even those that are most secret, as if he were alone in the
world. He frames them habitually in the imagined company of his friends.
In their visionary presence he thinks and acts; and by them, as
visionary tribunal, he feels himself, even in his unspoken intentions
and inmost feelings, to be judged. In this aspect friendship may become
a supreme force both to encourage and restrain. For it is not simply
what our friends expect of us that is the vital matter here. They are
often more tolerant of our failings than is perhaps good for us. It is
what in our best moments we believe that they expect of us. For it is
then that they become to us, not of their own choice but of ours, a kind
of second conscience, in whose presence our weaknesses and backslidings
become 'that worst kind of sacrilege that tears down the invisible altar
of trust.'"
_The Making of Character_, Professor MACCUNN.
Friendship
AUGUST 19
"Few things are more fatal to friendship than the stiffness which cannot
take a step towards acknowledgment."
_Life of F. W. Crossley_, RENDEL HARRIS.
"Do not discharge in haste the arrow which can never return: it is easy
to destroy happiness; most difficult to restore it."
HERDER.
"Discord harder is to end than to begin."
SPENSER.
"Think of this doctrine--that reasoning beings were created for one
another's sake; that to be patient is a branch of justice, and that men
sin without intending it."
MARCUS AURELIUS.
Friendship
AUGUST 20
"We should learn from Jesus that the essential quality in the heart of
friendship is not the desire to have friends, but the desire to be a
friend; not to get good and help from others, but to impart blessing to
others. Many of the sighings for friendship which we have are merely
selfish longings,--a desire for happiness, for pleasure, for the
gratification of the heart, which friends would bring. If the desire
were to be a friend, to do others good, to serve and to give help, it
would be a far more Christlike longing, and would transform the life and
character."
_Personal Friendships of Jesus_, J. R. MILLER.
"To love is better, nobler, more elevating, and more sure, than to be
loved. To love is to have found that which lifts us above ourselves;
which makes us capable of sacrifice; which unseals the forces of another
world. He who is loved has gained the highest tribute of earth; he who
loves has entered into the spirit of heaven. The love which comes to us
must always be alloyed with the sad sense of our own unworthiness. The
love which goes out from us is kept bright by the ideal to which it is
directed."
Bishop WESTCOTT.
Friendship
AUGUST 21
"Friendships that have been renewed require more care than those that
have never been broken off."
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
"Broken friendship may be soldered, but never made sound."
Spanish Proverb.
"A friend once won need never be lost, if we will be only trusty and
true ourselves. Friends may part, not merely in body, but in spirit for
a while. In the bustle of business and the accidents of life, they may
lose sight of each other for years; and more, they may begin to differ
in their success in life, in their opinions, in their habits, and there
may be, for a time, coldness and estrangement between them, but not for
ever if each will be trusty and true. For then they will be like two
ships who set sail at morning from the same port, and ere night-fall
lose sight of each other, and go each on its own course and at its own
pace for many days, through many storms and seas, and yet meet again,
and find themselves lying side by side in the same haven when their long
voyage is past."
CHARLES KINGSLEY.
Friendship
AUGUST 22
"The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay or dislike,
hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint and too numerous
for removal. Those who are angry may be reconciled, those who have been
injured may receive a recompense; but when the desire of pleasing, and
willingness to be pleased, is silently diminished, the renovation of
friendship is hopeless: as when the vital powers sink into languor,
there is no longer any use for the physician."
_The Idler._
"... There is such a disaster, so to speak, as having to break off
friendship.... In such cases friendships should be allowed to die out
gradually by an intermission of intercourse. They should, as I have been
told that Cato used to say, rather be unstitched than torn in twain....
For there can be nothing more discreditable than to be at open war with
a man with whom you have been intimate.... Our first object then should
be to prevent a breach; our second to secure that if it does occur, our
friendship should seem to have died a natural rather than a violent
death."
CICERO.
Friendship
AUGUST 23
"Friends--those relations that one makes for one's self."
DESCHAMPS.
"Some one asked Kingsley what was the secret of his strong joyous life;
and he answered, 'I had a friend.'"
"The years have taught some sweet, some bitter lessons--none wiser than
this: to spend in all things else, but of old friends to be most
miserly."
LOWELL.
"The best wish for us all is, that when we grow old, as we must do, the
fast friends of our age may be those we have loved in our youth."
MASON.
Jealousy
AUGUST 24
"Jealousy is a terrible thing. It resembles love, only it is precisely
love's contrary. Instead of wishing for the welfare of the object loved,
it desires the dependence of that object upon itself, and its own
triumph. Love is the forgetfulness of self; jealousy is the most
passionate form of egotism, the glorification of a despotic, exacting,
and vain _ego_, which can neither forget nor subordinate itself. The
contrast is perfect."
_Amiel's Journal._
"Jealousy is a secret avowal of inferiority."
MASSILLON.
Jealousy
AUGUST 25
"We are not jealous of what we give up, but of what is wrested from our
unwilling hands. The first is always ours, the second never can be.
* * * * *
"Jealousy is not love, but it is the two-edged sword that parts true
love from counterfeit. At its touch, the knowledge of what it is to love
without reward, thrills heart and brain, sharp and clear, almost a
vision of hell. Then if we are base, we die to love; but if we are
noble, it is to ourselves we die.
* * * * *
"It is only what we surrender willingly that is ours always, as the wave
never loses what it surrenders to the sea."
_Turkish Bonds_, MAY KENDALL.
Jealousy
AUGUST 26
"What state of mind can be so blest,
As love that warms the gentle brest;
Two souls in one; the same desire
To grant the bliss, and to require?
If in this heaven a hell we find,
'Tis all from thee,
O Jealousie!
Thou tyrant, tyrant of the mind.
"All other ills, tho' sharp they prove,
Serve to refine a perfect love;
In absence, or unkind disdain
Sweet hope relieves the lover's pain;
But O! no cure but death we find
To sett us free
From Jealousie,
Thou tyrant, tyrant of the mind.
"False in thy glass all objects are,
Some set too near, and some too far:
Thou art the fire of endless might,
The fire that burns and gives no light.
All torments of the damned, we find
In only thee,
O Jealousie;
Thou tyrant, tyrant of the mind."
DRYDEN.
Love and Remorse
AUGUST 27
"We should get a lesson in friendship's ministry. Too many wait until
those they love are dead, and then bring their alabaster boxes of
affection and break them. They keep silent about their love when words
would mean so much, would give such cheer, encouragement, and hope, and
then, when the friend lies in the coffin, their lips are unsealed and
speak out their glowing tribute on ears that heed not the laggard
praise. Many persons go through life, struggling bravely with
difficulty, temptation, and hardship, carrying burdens too heavy for
them, pouring out their love in unselfish serving of others, and yet are
scarcely ever cheered by a word of approval or commendation, or by
delicate tenderness of friendship; then, when they lie silent in death,
a whole circle of admiring friends gathers to do them honour. Every one
remembers a personal kindness received, a favour shown, some help given,
and speaks of it in grateful words. Letters full of appreciation,
commendation, and gratitude are written to sorrowing friends. Flowers
are sent and piled about the coffin, enough to have strewn every hard
path of the long years of struggle. How surprised some good men and
women would be, after lives with scarcely a word of affection to cheer
their hearts, were they to awake suddenly in the midst of their friends,
a few hours after their death, and hear the testimonies that are falling
from every tongue, the appreciation, the grateful words of love, the
rememberings of kindness! They had never dreamed in life that they had
so many friends, that so many had thought well of them, that they were
helpful to so many."
_Personal Friendships of Jesus_, J. R. MILLER.
Love and Remorse
AUGUST 28
"When our indignation is borne in submissive silence, we are apt to feel
twinges of doubt afterwards as to our own generosity, if not justice;
how much more when the object of our anger has gone into everlasting
silence, and we have seen his face for the last time in the meekness of
death."
GEORGE ELIOT.
"All about us move, these common days, those who would be strengthened
and comforted by the good cheer that we could give. Let us not reserve
all the flowers for coffin-lids. Let us not keep our alabaster boxes
sealed and unbroken till our loved ones are dead. Let us show kindness
when kindness will do good. It will make sorrow all the harder to bear
if we have to say beside our dead, 'I might have brightened the way a
little, if only I had been kinder.'"
_Personal Friendships of Jesus_, J. R. MILLER.
"I like not only to be loved, but to be told I am loved. The realm of
silence is large enough beyond the grave."
GEORGE ELIOT.
Love and Remorse
AUGUST 29
"Oh! do not let us wait to be just or pitiful or demonstrative towards
those we love until they or we are struck down by illness or threatened
with death! Life is short, and we have never too much time for
gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with
us. Oh, be swift to love, make haste to be kind!"
_Amiel's Journal._
"Too soon, too soon comes Death to show
We love more deeply than we know!
The rain that fell upon the height
Too gently to be called delight,
Within the dark vale reappears
As a wild cataract of tears;
And love in life should strive to see
Sometimes what love in death would be!"
COVENTRY PATMORE.
Dissension
AUGUST 30
"Alas! how light a cause may move
Dissension between hearts that love!
Hearts that the world in vain had tried,
And sorrow but more closely tied;
That stood the storm when waves were rough,
Yet in a sunny hour fall off,
Like ships that have gone down at sea,
When heaven was all tranquillity!
A something, light as air--a look,
A word unkind or wrongly taken--
Oh! love that tempests never shook,
A breath, a touch like this has shaken;
And ruder words will soon rush in
To spread the breach that words begin;
And eyes forget the gentle ray
They wore in courtship's smiling day;
And voices lose the tone that shed
A tenderness round all they said;
Till fast declining, one by one,
The sweetnesses of love are gone,
And hearts, so lately mingled, seem
Like broken clouds--or like the stream
That smiling left the mountain's brow,
As though its waters ne'er could sever,
Yet, ere it reach the plain below,
Breaks into floods, that part for ever.
O you that have the charge of Love,
Keep him in rosy bondage bound!"
_Lalla Rookh_, T. MOORE.
Love
AUGUST 31
"Love is the first and the last and the strongest bond in experience. It
conquers distance, outlives all changes, bears the strain of the most
diverse opinions."
_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
"Say never, ye loved once!
God is too near above, the Grave, beneath:
And all our moments breathe
Too quick in mysteries of life and death,
For such a word. The eternities avenge
Affections light of range;
There comes no change to justify that change,
Whatever comes,--Loved _once_."
E. B. BROWNING.
Unrequited Love
September 1
"It was the old problem, of love that may not even spend itself for
those it loves. Some hold that the purpose of such privation--as bitter
to the spirit as the loss of light, and warmth, and air to the body--is
to teach men to love God, and not their fellow-men. Rather, it is to
teach them to love human beings more, with love not separate from the
love of God, but near to His own heart. Such love is never fruitless,
though it may seem to be. Our longing to serve personally is often only
longing for the personal reward of service; and love that serves in
finite fashion often misses the mark. We hurt where we desire to heal:
we bind a greater burden on the life whose load we only strive to
lighten. God's cross is always a crown: our crowns are often crosses.
The cup of water that we put to our friend's lips is from a poisoned
spring. Only the cup that we give God to bear to him, is always pure and
cool."
_Turkish Bonds_, MAY KENDALL.
Unrequited Love
SEPTEMBER 2
"Infancy? What if the rose-streak of morning
Pale and depart in a passion of tears?
Once to have hoped is no matter for scorning:
Love once: e'en love's disappointment endears,
A moment's success pays the failure of years."
R. BROWNING.
"It looks like a waste of life, that mowing down of our best years by a
relentless passion which itself falls dead on the top of them. But it is
not so. Every year I live I am more convinced that the waste of life
lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the
selfish prudence which will risk nothing, and which, shirking pain,
misses happiness as well. No one ever yet was the poorer in the long run
for having once in a lifetime 'let out all the length of the reins.'"
_Red Pottage_, MARY CHOLMONDELEY.
Bereavement
SEPTEMBER 3
"If we still love those we lose, can we altogether lose those we love?"
_The Newcomes_, THACKERAY.
"They that love beyond the World cannot be separated by it.
"Death cannot kill what never dies. Nor can Spirits ever be divided that
love and live in the same Divine Principle; the Root and Record of their
Friendship.
"If Absence be not Death, neither is it theirs.
"Death is but Crossing the World, as Friends do the Seas; they live in
one another still.
"For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is
omnipresent.
"In this Divine Glass they see Face to Face; and their converse is Free
as well as Pure.
"This is the Comfort of Friends, that though they may be said to Die,
yet their Friendship and Society are, in the best Sense, ever present,
because Immortal."
WILLIAM PENN.
Bereavement
SEPTEMBER 4
"Parting and forgetting? What faithful heart can do these? Our great
thoughts, our great affections, the Truths of our life, never leave us.
Surely they cannot separate from our consciousness; shall follow it
whithersoever that shall go; and are of their nature divine and
immortal."
THACKERAY.
"I can only say that I sympathise with your grief, and if faith means
anything at all it is trusting to those instincts, or feelings, or
whatever they may be called, which assure us of some life after this."
_Tennyson--a Memoir_, by his Son.
"What is it when a child dies? It is the great head-master calling that
child up into his own room, away from all the under-teachers, to finish
his education under his own eye, close at his feet. The whole thought of
a child's growth and development in heaven instead of here on earth, is
one of the most exalting and bewildering on which the mind can rest."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
Death of Young Children
SEPTEMBER 5
"Nothing is left or lost, nothing of good
Or lovely; but whatever its first springs
Has drawn from God, returns to Him again."
_On an Early Death_, TRENCH.
"When one comes to the loss of young children--a sad perplexity--let it
not be forgotten that they were given. If in the hour of bitterest grief
it were asked of a bereaved mother whether she would prefer never to
have possessed in order that she might never have lost--her heart would
be very indignant. No little child has ever come from God and stayed a
brief while in some human home--to return again to the Father--without
making glad that home and leaving behind some trace of heaven. A family
had counted themselves poorer without those quaint sayings, those
cunning caresses, that soft touch, that sudden smile. This short visit
was not an incident: it was a benediction. The child departs, the
remembrances, the influence, the associations remain. If one should
allow us to have Sarto's Annunciation for a month, we would thank him:
when he resumed it for his home he would not take everything, for its
loveliness of maid and angel is now ours for ever. And if God recalls
the child He lent, then let us thank Him for the loan, and consider that
what made that child the messenger of God--its purity, modesty,
trustfulness, gladness--has passed into our soul."
_The Potter's Wheel_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
The Dead
SEPTEMBER 6
"The dead abide with us! Though stark and cold
Earth seems to grip them, they are with us still:--
They have forged our chains of being for good or ill
And their invisible hands these hands yet hold.
Our perishable bodies are the mould
In which their strong imperishable will--
Mortality's deep yearning to fulfil--
Hath grown incorporate through dim time untold.
"Vibrations infinite of life in death,
As a star's travelling light survives its star!
So may we hold our lives, that when we are
The fate of those who then will draw this breath,
They shall not drag us to their judgment bar,
And curse the heritage which we bequeath."
MATHILDE BLIND.
"We are learning, by the help of many teachers, the extent and the
authority of the dominion which the dead exercise over us, and which we
ourselves are shaping for our descendants.
"We feel, as perhaps it was impossible to feel before, how at every
moment influences from the past enter our souls, and how we in turn
scatter abroad that which will be fruitful in the distant future. It is
becoming clear to us that we are literally parts of others and they of
us."
Bishop WESTCOTT.
The Dead
SEPTEMBER 7
"I with uncovered head
Salute the sacred dead,
Who went and who return not. Say not so!
* * * * *
We rather seem the dead that stayed behind.
Blow, trumpets, all your exaltations blow!
For never shall their aureoled presence lack:
I see them muster in a gleaming row,
With ever-youthful brows that nobler show;
We find in our dull road their shining track:
In every nobler mood
We feel the orient of their spirit glow,
Part of our life's unalterable good,
Of all our saintlier aspiration:
They come transfigured back,
Secure from change in their high-hearted ways,
Beautiful evermore, and with the rays
Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation."
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
The Dead
SEPTEMBER 8
"And yet, dear heart! remembering thee,
Am I not richer than of old?
Safe in thy immortality,
What change can reach the wealth I hold?
What chance can mar the pearl and gold
Thy love hath left in trust for me?
And while in life's long afternoon,
Where cool and long the shadows grow,
I walk to meet the night that soon
Shall shape and shadow overflow,
I cannot feel that thou art far,
Since near at need the angels are;
And when the sunset gates unbar,
Shall I not see thee waiting stand,
And, white against the evening star,
The welcome of thy beckoning hand?"
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.
The Dead
SEPTEMBER 9
"Lord, make me one with Thine own faithful ones,
Thy Saints who love Thee, and are loved by Thee;
Till the day break and till the shadows flee,
At one with them in alms and orisons;
At one with him who toils and him who runs,
And him who yearns for union yet to be;
At one with all who throng the crystal sea,
And wait the setting of our moons and suns.
Ah, my beloved ones gone on before,
Who looked not back with hand upon the plough!
If beautiful to me while still in sight,
How beautiful must be your aspects now;
Your unknown, well-known aspects in that light,
Which clouds shall never cloud for evermore!"
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.
Death
SEPTEMBER 10
"Most persons have died before they expire--died to all earthly
longings, so that the last breath is only, as it were, the locking of
the door of the already deserted mansion. The fact of the tranquillity
with which the great majority of dying persons await this locking of
those gates of life through which its airy angels have been coming and
going from the moment of the first cry, is familiar to those who have
been often called upon to witness the last period of life. Almost always
there is a preparation made by Nature for unearthing a soul, just as on
the smaller scale there is for the removal of a milk tooth. The roots
which hold human life to earth are absorbed before it is lifted from its
place. Some of the dying are weary, and want rest, the idea of which is
almost inseparable, in the universal mind, from death. Some are in pain,
and want to be rid of it, even though the anodyne be dropped, as in the
legend, from the sword of the Death-Angel. And some are strong in faith
and hope, so that, as they draw near the next world, they would fain
hurry toward it, as the caravan moves faster over the sands when the
foremost travellers send word along the file that water is in sight.
Though each little party that follows in a foot-track of its own will
have it that the water to which others think they are hastening is a
mirage, not the less has it been true in all ages, and for human beings
of every creed which recognised a future, that those who have fallen,
worn out by their march through the Desert, have dreamed at least of a
River of Life, and thought they heard its murmurs as they lay dying."
_The Professor at the Breakfast Table_, O. W. HOLMES.
Crossing the Bar
September 11
"Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea.
"But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
"Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell
When I embark;
"For, tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar."
TENNYSON.
Life after Death
SEPTEMBER 12
"If the immediate life after death be only sleep, and the spirit between
this life and the next should be folded like a flower in a night
slumber, then the remembrance of the past might remain, as the smell and
colour do in the sleeping flower; and in that case the memory of our
love would last as true, and would live pure and whole within the spirit
of my friend until after it was unfolded at the breaking of the morn,
when the sleep was over."
_Tennyson--a Memoir_, by his Son.
"Life! I know not what thou art,
But know that thou and I must part;
And when, or how, or where we met,
I own to me's a secret yet.
"Life! we have been long together,
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
'Tis hard to part when friends are dear;
Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear;--
Then steal away, give little warning,
Choose thine own time;
Say not Good Night, but in some brighter clime
Bid me Good Morning!"
A. L. BARBAULD.
Bearing Sorrow
SEPTEMBER 13
"It is dangerous to abandon oneself to the luxury of grief; it deprives
one of courage, and even of the wish for recovery."
_Amiel's Journal._
"Its way of suffering is the witness which a soul bears to itself."
_Amiel's Journal._
"We must bury our dead joys
And live above them with a living world."
GEORGE ELIOT.
Bearing Sorrow
SEPTEMBER 14
"Sorrow brings also a temptation to exactingness. It may be that friends
are very helpful to us. Let us take care that no selfishness mingles
with our love for their companionship, with our claims for their
sympathy.
"What, for the time, at any rate, is all the world to us, can only be a
small part of another's life.
"And one must struggle, as time goes on, to take what comes in one's way
of sympathy, of kindness, of companionship, but one must also try never
to exact sympathy, to allow ourselves to feel neglected, or slighted, or
forgotten.
"This is a hard lesson--sometimes.
"The whole of one's nature becomes sensitive, easily wounded, easily
depressed."
Canon SCOTT HOLLAND.
Bearing Sorrow
SEPTEMBER 15
"Selfishness in Sorrow is another temptation. One is so apt to become
absorbed in one's Sorrow.
"It is quite possible to become almost selfish in one's spiritual life
under the stress of great Sorrow.