point of view, to grow too fond of thinking of one's burden....
"The hard path of daily duty is the only path to tread, not because one
is thinking of oneself, but because one wishes to forget oneself, and to
think only of God, and of those that remain.
"Self-denial: to put self last, not out of sight, but last, that is what
one is always called to do, and it is a sad bit of disloyalty to God's
grace if one becomes more selfish in Sorrow."
Canon SCOTT HOLLAND.
Bearing Sorrow
SEPTEMBER 16
"A great Sorrow which changes life altogether is apt to produce a
certain irritability, a sort of nervous jar.
"Very often this is an affair of nerves, of physical health, but it is
well to watch--'watch and pray.'
"All sorts of things will jar and hurt us. People will do and say things
with perfect unconsciousness that they are wounding us to the quick.
Some careless allusion, some chance speech, will set our nerves
quivering.... The worries, the jarring incidents, the introduction of
discordant topics in the very presence of death, the disappointments,
are all to lead us upwards. It is a rough bit of road on which we are
set to walk, and the sharp stones cut our feet, but every step brings us
nearer God.
"Do not let _temper_ mar the days of Sorrow.
"There most probably will be something to try our temper. Who does not
know the trials which seem peculiar to a break-up, a change in our
outward life? Who has not seen real Christians giving way to
peevishness, fretfulness, petty dislikes, petty jealousies of near
relations, of those who may be taking the place of the one they mourn?
Perhaps there is nothing which so mars and spoils the religious life as
bad temper and selfishness.
"Nothing which is so apt to make outsiders shrug their shoulders at
those who make frequent Communions, and go much to Church, and who,
especially in dark hours, give way to crossness. There is no better
name."
Canon SCOTT HOLLAND.
The Meaning of Religion
SEPTEMBER 17
"The meaning of religion is a rule of life; it is an obligation to do
well; if that rule, that obligation, is not seen, your thousand texts
will be to you like the thousand lanterns to the blind man. As he goes
about the house in the night of his blindness, he will only break the
glass and burn his feet and fingers: and so you, as you go through life
in the night of your ignorance, will only break and hurt yourselves on
broken laws.
"Before Christ came, the Jewish religion had forbidden many evil things;
it was a religion that a man could fulfil, I had almost said, in
idleness; all he had to do was to pray and to sing psalms, and to
refrain from things forbidden. Do not deceive yourselves; when Christ
came, all was changed. The injunction was then laid upon us not to
refrain from doing, but to do. At the last day He is to ask us not what
sins we have avoided, but what righteousness we have done, what we have
done for others, how we have helped good and hindered evil: what
difference has it made to this world and to our country and our family
and our friends, that we have lived. The man who has been only pious and
not useful will stand with a long face on that great day, when Christ
puts to him His questions.
"But this is not all that we must learn: we must beware everywhere of
the letter that kills, seek everywhere for the spirit that makes glad
and strong. For example, these questions that we have just read are
again only the letter. We must study what they mean, not what they are.
We are told to visit them that are in prison. A good thing, but it were
better if we could save them going there. We are told to visit the sick;
it were better still, and we should so better have fulfilled the law, if
we could have saved some of them from falling sick."
_The Life of R. L. Stevenson_, GRAHAM BALFOUR.
Pure Religion
SEPTEMBER 18
"Righteousness in the Old Testament is not a theological, but an ethical
word, and has to do not with a person's creed, but with a person's
character."
Dr. JOHN WATSON.
"In those days men were working their passage to Heaven by keeping the
Ten Commandments, and the hundred and ten other commandments which they
had manufactured out of them. Christ said, I will show you a more simple
way. If you do one thing, you will do these hundred and ten things,
without ever thinking about them. If you love, you will unconsciously
fulfil the whole law.... Love is the rule for fulfilling all rules, the
new commandment for keeping all the old commandments, Christ's one
secret of the Christian life."
_The Greatest Thing in the World_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
"Pure religion as taught by Jesus Christ is a life, a growth, a divine
spirit within, coming out in love and sympathy, and helpfulness to our
fellow-men."
H. W. THOMAS.
The Christian Law
SEPTEMBER 19
"We are often reminded that Christ left no code of commandments. It is
in Him--in His Person and His work--the Law lies. He has given indeed
for our instruction some applications of the negative precepts of the
Decalogue to the New Order. He has added some illustrations of positive
duties, almsgiving, prayer, fasting. He has set up an ideal and a motive
for life; and, at the same time, He has endowed His Church with
spiritual power, and has promised that the Paraclete, sent in His Name,
shall guide it into all the Truth.
(The fundamental principle of the Christian Social Union is "to claim
for the Christian Law the ultimate authority to rule social practice.")
"The Christian Law, then, is the embodiment of the Truth for action in
forms answering to the conditions of society from age to age. The
embodiment takes place slowly, and it can never be complete. It is
impossible for us to rest indolently in the conclusions of the past. In
each generation the obligation is laid on Christians to bring new
problems of conduct and duty into the Divine light, and to find their
solution under the teaching of the Spirit. The unceasing effort to
fulfil the obligation establishes the highest prerogative of man, and
manifests the life of the Church. From this effort there can be no
release; and the effort itself becomes more difficult as human relations
grow fuller, wider, more complex."
_Christian Social Union Addresses_, Bishop WESTCOTT.
The Christian Law
SEPTEMBER 20
"The sanction of this Law (the Christian Law) is not fear of punishment,
but that self-surrender to an ever-present Lord, of those who are His
slaves at once and His friends, which is perfect freedom. This Law
animates the heart of him who receives it with the invigorating truth
that character is formed rather by what we do than by what we refrain
from doing. It requires that every personal gift and possession should
minister to the common welfare, not in the way of ransom, or as a forced
loan, but as an offering of love. It reaches to the springs of action,
and gives to the most mechanical toil the dignity of a divine service.
It makes the strong arm co-operate in one work with the warm heart and
the creative brain. It constrains the poet and the artist to concentrate
their magnificent powers on things lovely and of good report, to
introduce us to characters whom to know is a purifying discipline, and
to fill the souls of common men with visions of hidden beauty and
memories of heroic deeds. It enables us to lift up our eyes to a pattern
of human society which we have not yet dared to contemplate, a pattern
which answers to the constitution of man as he was made in the Divine
image to gain the Divine likeness. It forbids us to seek repose till, as
far as lies in us, all labour is seen to be not a provision for living,
but a true human life; all education a preparation for the vision of God
here and hereafter; all political enterprise a conscious hastening of
the time when the many nations shall walk in the light of the holy city,
and the kings of the earth bring their glory into it."
_Christian Social Union Addresses_, Bishop WESTCOTT.
Trustees
SEPTEMBER 21
"For the Christian there can be but one ideal, the perfect development
of every man for the occupation of his appointed place, for the
fulfilment of his peculiar office in the 'Body of Christ'; and as a
first step towards this, we are all bound as Christians to bring to our
country the offering of our individual service in return for the
opportunities of culture and labour which we receive from its
organisation. We are all as Christians trustees and stewards of
everything which we possess, of our time, our intellect, our influence,
no less than of our riches. We ourselves are not our own: still less can
we say of that which we inherit or acquire, 'It is my own.' We all
belong, in the fulness of life 'in Christ,' to our fellow-citizens, and
our nation belongs to mankind. What we hold for a time is to be
administered for the relief of distresses, and for the elevation of
those among whom we are placed. Personal and social egoism are equally
at variance with this conception of humanity. The repression of
individuality and the individual appropriation of the fruits of special
vigour and insight equally tend to impoverish the race. Service always
ready to become sacrifice is the condition of our growth, and the
condition of our joy."
_Christian Social Union Addresses_, Bishop WESTCOTT.
"Not to Destroy, but to Fulfil"
SEPTEMBER 22
"Christ took the world as He found it, He left it as it was. He had no
quarrel with existing institutions. He did not overthrow the Church--He
went to Church. He said nothing against politics--He supported the
government of the country. He did not denounce society--His first public
action was to go to a marriage. His great aim, in fact, outwardly, and
all along, was to be as normal, as little eccentric as possible. The
true fanatic always tries the opposite. The spirit alone was singular in
Jesus; a fanatic always spoils his cause by extending it to the letter.
Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfil. A fanatic comes not to
fulfil, but to destroy. If we would follow the eccentricity of our
Master, let it not be in asceticism, in denunciation, in
punctiliousness, and scruples about trifles, but in largeness of heart,
singleness of eye, true breadth of character, true love to men, and
heroism for Christ."
_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
"Religion has been treated as if it were a special exercise of a special
power, not as if it were the possible loftiness of everything that a man
could think or be or do."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
Religion in Daily Life
SEPTEMBER 23
"If we want to get religion into life, or anything whatever in us into
life, we are bound to have no contentment, no rest, no dreaming, no
delays, till we get thought into shape, feeling into labour, some
conviction, some belief, some idea, into form without us, among the
world of men. This is the main principle, and it applies to every sphere
of human effort. So much for the habit whereby we gain power to bring
religion into daily life.
"Righteousness, shaped from within to without in the world of men, is
justice, and the doing of justice. This is the first need of
commonwealths, the first duty of individuals, and the practical religion
of both. A still higher form into which we may put our religion in life
is in doing the things which belong to love; and love is the higher form
because it secures justice. These are the things we should shape into
life because we love them. To be faithful always to that which we
believe to be true; to be faithful to our principles and our conscience
when trial comes, or when we are tempted to sacrifice them for place or
pelf; to be faithful to our given word; to keep our promises when we
might win favour by eluding or breaking them; to cling to intellectual
as well as to moral truth; to so live among men that they may know where
we are; to fly our flag in the storm as well as in the calm. It is to
pass by with contempt the dark cavern where men worship Mammon; to fix
our thought and effort on the attainment of righteousness in public and
in private homes, to have the courage to attempt what seems impossible
through love of the ideals of truth and beauty, and to prefer to die on
the field of work and self-devotion rather than to live in idleness and
luxury."
STOPFORD BROOKE.
Unfelt Creeds
SEPTEMBER 24
"There are also some who forget that the laws of the spiritual world are
no less inflexible and inviolable than those of the physical world; that
conduct is everything; and that the faith which saves, and which,
working by love, makes conduct, is something much deeper and more
substantial than the muttering of an unfelt creed, or than the
melancholy presumption that to think ourselves saved is by itself a
passport into the everlasting habitations."
Bishop THOROLD.
"Holiness is an infinite compassion for others: Greatness is to take the
common things of life and walk truly among them: Happiness is a great
love and much serving."
"Heaven does not make holiness, but holiness makes heaven."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
Fasting
SEPTEMBER 25
"It makes me half afraid, half angry, to see the formal, mechanical way
in which people do what they call their 'Lenten Penances,' and then rush
off, only with increased ardour, to their Easter festivities. Literal
fasting does not suit me--it makes me irritable and uncomfortable, and
certainly does not spiritualise me; so I have always tried to keep my
Lents in the nobler and more healthful spirit of Isaiah lviii. I have
kept them but poorly, after all; still, I am sure _that_ is the true way
of keeping them."
_Letters from_ Bishop Fraser's _Lancashire Life_, Archdeacon DIGGLE.
"God does not call us to give up some sin or some harmful
self-indulgence in Lent that we may resume it at Easter."
_The Guided Life_, Canon BODY.
Fasting
SEPTEMBER 26
"Fasting comes by nature when a man is sad, and it is in consequence the
natural token of sadness: when a man is very sad, for the loss of
relations or the like, he loses all inclination for food. But every
outward sign that can be displayed at will is liable to abuse, and so
men sometimes fasted when they were not really sad, but when it was
decorous to appear so. Moreover a kind of merit came to be attached to
fasting as betokening sorrow for transgressions; and at last it came to
be regarded as a sort of self-punishment which it was thought the
Almighty would accept in lieu of inflicting punishment Himself. Our Lord
does not decry stated fasts or any other Jewish practices, they had
their uses and would last their times; only He points men to the
underlying truth which was at the bottom of the ordinance."
_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.
The Great Law of Love
SEPTEMBER 27
"Those who go to Christ and not to custom for their view of that which
is essential in religion, know the infinitesimal value of profession and
ceremonies, beside the great law of love to our neighbour."
F. W. FARRAR.
"Not only the happiness but the efficiency of the passive virtues, love
as a power, as a practical success in the world, is coming to be
recognised. The fact that Christ led no army, that He wrote no book,
built no church, spent no money, but that He loved, and so conquered,
this is beginning to strike men. And Paul's argument is gaining
adherents, that when all prophecies are fulfilled, and all our knowledge
is obsolete, and all tongues grow unintelligible, this thing, Love, will
abide and see them all out one by one into the oblivious past. This is
the hope for the world, that we shall learn to love, and in learning
that, unlearn all anger and wrath and evil-speaking and malice and
bitterness."
_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.
Soldiers of the same Army
SEPTEMBER 28
"To him, as to so many, truth is so infinitely great that all we can do
with our poor human utterances is to try and clothe it in such language
as will make it clear to ourselves, and clear to those to whom God sends
us with a message; but meanwhile above us and our thoughts--above our
broken lights--God in His mercy, God in His love, God in His infinite
nature is greater than all."
_Tennyson--a Memoir_, by his Son.
"Are not all true men that live, or that ever lived, soldiers of the
same army, enlisted under heaven's captaincy, to do battle against the
same enemy--the empire of darkness and wrong? Why should we mis-know one
another, fight not against the enemy, but against ourselves, from mere
difference of uniform?"
CARLYLE.
By their Works
SEPTEMBER 29
"Call him not heretic whose works attest
His faith in goodness by no creed confessed.
Whatever in love's name is truly done
To free the bound and lift the fallen one
Is done to Christ. Whoso in deed and word
Is not against Him labours for our Lord.
When He, who, sad and weary, longing sore
For love's sweet service, sought the sisters' door,
One saw the heavenly, one the human guest,
But who shall say which loved the Master best?"
WHITTIER.
"Hast thou made much of words, and forms, and tests,
And thought but little of the peace and love,--
His Gospel to the poor? Dost thou condemn
Thy brother, looking down, in pride of heart,
On each poor wanderer from the fold of Truth?...
Go thy way!--
Take Heaven's own armour for the heavenly strife,
Welcome all helpers in thy war with sin ...
And learn through all the future of thy years
To form thy life in likeness of thy Lord's!"
PLUMPTRE.
Faith
SEPTEMBER 30
"Faith is the communication of the Divine Spirit by which Christ as the
revealed God dwells in our heart. It is the awakening of the Spirit of
Adoption whereby we cry, 'Abba Father.'"
T. H. GREEN.
"He thought with Arthur Hallam, that 'the essential feelings of religion
subsist in the utmost diversity of forms,' that 'different language does
not always imply different opinions, nor different opinions any
difference in _real_ faith.' 'It is impossible,' he said, 'to imagine
that the Almighty will ask you, when you come before Him in the next
life, what your particular form of creed was; but the question will
rather be, "Have you been true to yourself and given in My name a cup of
cold water to one of these little ones?"'"
_Tennyson--a Memoir_, by his Son.
"Religion consists not in knowledge, but in a holy life."
Bishop TAYLOR.
A New Creed
October 1
"Imagine a body of Christians who should take their stand on the Sermon
of Jesus, and conceive their creed on His lines. Imagine how it would
read, 'I believe in the Fatherhood of God; I believe in the words of
Jesus; I believe in the clean heart; I believe in the service of love; I
believe in the unworldly life; I believe in the Beatitudes; I promise to
trust God and follow Christ, to forgive my enemies, and to seek after
the righteousness of God.' Could any form of words be more elevated,
more persuasive, more alluring? Do they not thrill the heart and
strengthen the conscience? Liberty of thought is allowed; liberty of
sinning is alone denied."
_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT
has been called
"The text-book of duty."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"The Magna Charta of the Kingdom of God."
NEANDER.
"Christ's manifesto, and the constitution of Christianity."
Dr. JOHN WATSON.
"The great proclamation, which by one effort lifted mankind on to that
new and higher ground on which it has been painfully struggling ever
since, but on the whole with sure but slow success, to plant itself, and
maintain sure foothold."
T. HUGHES.
The Programme of Christianity
OCTOBER 2
"There may be Worship without Words."
LONGFELLOW.
"All the world is the temple of God. Its worship is ministration. The
commonest service is Divine service."
GEORGE MACDONALD.
THE PROGRAMME OF CHRISTIANITY.
"To preach good tidings unto the meek:
To build up the broken-hearted:
To proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening
of the prison to them that are bound:
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and
the day of vengeance of our God:
To comfort all that mourn:
To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give
unto them--
Beauty for Ashes,
The Oil of Joy for Mourning,
The Garment of Praise for the Spirit of Heaviness."
HENRY DRUMMOND.
The Lord's Supper
OCTOBER 3
"The Lord's Supper, the right and need of every man to feed on God, the
bread of divine sustenance, the wine of divine inspiration offered to
every man, and turned by every man into what form of spiritual force the
duty and the nature of each man required, how grand and glorious its
mission might become! No longer the mystic source of unintelligible
influence; no longer, certainly, the test of arbitrary orthodoxy; no
longer the initiation rite of a selected brotherhood; but the great
sacrament of man!... There is no other rallying place for all the good
activity and worthy hopes of man. It is in the power of the great
Christian Sacrament, the great human sacrament, to become that rallying
place. Think how it would be, if some morning all the men, women, and
children in this city who mean well, from the reformer meaning to meet
some giant evil at the peril of his life to the school-boy meaning to
learn his day's lesson with all his strength, were to meet in a great
host at the table of the Lord, and own themselves His children, and
claim the strength of His bread and wine, and then go out with calm,
strong, earnest faces to their work. How the communion service would
lift up its voice and sing itself in triumph, the great anthem of
dedicated human life! Ah, my friends, that, nothing less than that, is
the real Holy Communion of the Church of the living God."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
Nominal Christians
OCTOBER 4
"The bane of the Church of God, the dishonour of Christ, the
laughing-stock of the world, is in that far too numerous body of
half-alive Christians who choose their own cross, and shape their own
standard, and regulate their own sacrifices, and measure their own
devotions; whose cross is very unlike the Saviour's, whose standard is
not that of as much holiness as they can attain, but of as little
holiness as they can safely be content with to be saved; whose
sacrifices do not deprive them from one year's end to another of a
single comfort, or even a real luxury, and whose devotions can never
make their dull hearts burn with love of Christ."
Bishop THOROLD.
"Men find Christ through their fellow-men, and every glimpse they get of
Him is a direct message from Himself."
HENRY DRUMMOND.
Manifestations of God
OCTOBER 5
"The distinguishing mark of religion is not so much liberty as
obedience, and its value is measured by the sacrifices which it can
extract from the individual."
_Amiel's Journal._
"There is perhaps no human soul which never hungers after God. Men's
unbelief in lies is often quoted against them, by the liar especially.
But we believe--not when we are told about, but when we are
shown--Christ."
_Turkish Bonds_, MAY KENDALL.
"Let your lives preach."
GEORGE FOX.
Manifestations of God
OCTOBER 6
"For how, as a matter of fact, do we grow to know God? Let me refer you
to Professor Flint's book on Theism for the best answer I know. We begin
to know God as we begin to know our fellow-man--through His
manifestations. We may be tempted to think that we cannot know what we
cannot see, but in a perfectly true sense we never see our fellow-man:
we see his manifestations; we see his outward appearance. We hear what
he says; we notice what he does, and we infer from all this what his
unseen character is like, what the man is in himself; so similarly and
as surely we learn to know God. We see what He has done in nature and in
history; we see what He is doing to-day; we read what He has conveyed to
us for our instruction 'in sundry times and in divers manners'; and so
we learn to listen for and to love 'the still small voice' in which He
speaks to our hearts. One knowledge is as gradual and yet as sure and
certain and logical as the other."
_Work in Great Cities_, Bishop WINNINGTON INGRAM.
Manifestations of God
OCTOBER 7
"It is human character or developed humanity that conducts us to our
notion of the character Divine.... In proportion as the mysteries of
man's goodness unfold themselves to us, in that proportion do we obtain
an insight into God's."
J. B. MOZLEY.
"If you want your neighbour to know what the Christ spirit will do for
him, let him see what it has done for you."
HENRY WARD BEECHER.
"When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of
the brook and the rustle of the corn."
EMERSON.
Prayer
OCTOBER 8