inanimate world around us only because its kindness is unobtrusive.
Nature is always noiseless. All her greatest gifts are given in secret.
And we forget how truly every good and perfect gift comes from without,
and from above, because no pause in her changeless beneficence teaches us
the sad lessons of deprivation. Natural Law, p. 274.
July 29th. It is not a strange thing for the soul to find its life in
God. This is its native air. God as the Environment of the soul has been
from the remotest age the doctrine of all the deepest thinkers in
religion. How profoundly Hebrew poetry is saturated with this high
thought will appear when we try to conceive of it with this left out.
Natural Law, p. 374.
July 30th. The alternatives of the intellectual life are Christianity or
Agnosticism. The Agnostic is right when he trumpets his incompleteness.
He who is not complete in Him must be for ever incomplete. Natural Law,
p. 278.
July 31st. The problems of the heart and conscience are infinitely more
perplexing than those of the intellect. Has love no future? Has right no
triumph? Is the unfinished self to remain unfinished? The alternatives
are two, Christianity or Pessimism. But when we ascend the further height
of the religious nature, the crisis comes. There, without Environment,
the darkness is unutterable. So maddening now becomes the mystery that
men are compelled to construct an Environment for themselves. No
Environment here is unthinkable. An altar of some sort men must have--
God, or Nature, or Law. But the anguish of Atheism is only a negative
proof of man's incompleteness. Natural Law, p. 279.
August 1st. A photograph prints from the negative only while exposed to
the sun. While the artist is looking to see how it is getting on he
simply stops the getting on. Whatever of wise supervision the soul may
need, it is certain it can never be over-exposed, or that, being exposed,
anything else in the world can improve the result or quicken it. The
Changed Life, pp. 56, 57.
August 2d. What a very strange thing, is it not, for man to pray? It is
the symbol at once of his littleness and of his greatness. Here the sense
of imperfection, controlled and silenced in the narrower reaches of his
being, becomes audible. Now he must utter himself. The sense of need is
so real, and the sense of Environment, that he calls out to it,
addressing it articulately, and imploring it to satisfy his need. Surely
there is nothing more touching in Nature than this? Man could never so
expose himself, so break through all constraint, except from a dire
necessity. Natural Law, p. 279.
August 3d. What is Truth? The natural Environment answers, "Increase of
Knowledge increaseth Sorrow," and "much study is a Weariness." Christ
replies, "Learn of Me, and ye shall find Rest." Contrast the world's word
"Weariness" with Christ's word "Rest." No other teacher since the world
began has ever associated "learn" with "Rest." Learn of me, says the
philosopher, and you shall find Restlessness. Learn of Me, says Christ,
and ye shall find Rest. Natural Law, p. 280.
August 4th. Men will have to give up the experiment of attempting to live
in half an Environment. Half an Environment will give but half a Life.
. . . He whose correspondences are with this world alone has only a
thousandth part, a fraction, the mere rim and shade of an Environment,
and only the fraction of a Life. How long will it take Science to believe
its own creed, that the material universe we see around us is only a
fragment of the universe we do not see? Natural Law, p. 282.
August 5th. The Life of the senses, high and low, may perfect itself in
Nature. Even the Life of thought may find a large complement in
surrounding things. But the higher thought, and the conscience, and the
religious Life, can only perfect themselves in God. Natural Law, p. 283.
August 6th. To make the influence of Environment stop with the natural
world is to doom the spiritual nature to death. For the soul, like the
body, can never perfect itself in isolation. The law for both is to be
complete in the appropriate Environment. Natural Law, p. 283.
August 7th. Take into your new sphere of labour, where you also mean to
lay down your life, that simple charm, Love, and your life-work must
succeed. You can take nothing greater, you need take nothing less. It is
not worth while going if you take anything less. The Greatest Thing in
the World, p. 17.
August 8th. Politeness has been defined as love in trifles. Courtesy is
said to be love in little things. And the one secret of politeness is to
love. Love CANNOT behave itself unseemly. You can put the most untutored
persons into the highest society, and if they have a reservoir of Love in
their heart, they will not behave themselves unseemly. They simply cannot
do it. The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 26.
August 9th. I believe that Christ's yoke is easy. Christ's "yoke" is just
His way of taking life. And I believe it is an easier way than any other.
I believe it is a happier way than any other. The most obvious lesson in
Christ's teaching is that there is no happiness in having and getting
anything, but only in giving. The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 29.
August 10th. Half the world is on the wrong scent in the pursuit of
happiness. They think it consists in having and getting, and in being
served by others. It consists in giving, and in serving others. He that
would be great among you, said Christ, let him serve. He that would be
happy, let him remember that there is but one way--it is more blessed, it
is more happy, to give than to receive. The Greatest Thing in the World,
p. 30.
August 11th. "Love is not easily provoked." . . . We are inclined to look
upon bad temper as a very harmless weakness. We speak of it as a mere
infirmity of nature, a family failing, a matter of temperament, not a
thing to take into very serious account in estimating a man's character.
And yet here, right in the heart of this analysis of love, it finds a
place; and the Bible again and again returns to condemn it as one of the
most destructive elements in human nature. The Greatest Thing in the
World, p. 30.
August 12th. The peculiarity of ill-temper is that it is the vice of the
virtuous. It is often the one blot on an otherwise noble character. You
know men who are all but perfect, and women who would be entirely
perfect, but for an easily ruffled, quick-tempered, or "touchy"
disposition. This compatibility of ill-temper with high moral character
is one of the strangest and saddest problems of ethics. The Greatest
Thing in the World, p. 31.
August 13th. What makes a man a good artist, a good sculptor, a good
musician? Practice. . . . What makes a man a good man? Practice. Nothing
else. There is nothing capricious about religion. We do not get the soul
in different ways, under different laws, from those in which we get the
body and the mind. The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 40.
August 14th. Love is not a thing of enthusiastic emotion. It is a rich,
strong, manly, vigorous expression of the whole round Christian
character--the Christ-like nature in its fullest development. And the
constituents of this great character are only to be built up by ceaseless
practice. The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 41.
August 15th. We know but little now about the conditions of the life that
is to come. But what is certain is that Love must last. God, the Eternal
God, is Love. Covet, therefore, that everlasting gift. The Greatest Thing
in the World, p. 54.
August 16th. To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love
forever is to live forever. Hence, eternal life is inextricably bound up
with love. . . . Love must be eternal. It is what God is. The Greatest
Thing in the World, pp. 57, 58.
August 17th. When a man becomes a Christian the natural process is this:
The Living Christ enters into his soul. Development begins. The
quickening Life seizes upon the soul, assimilates surrounding elements,
and begins to fashion it. According to the great Law of Conformity to
Type this fashioning takes a specific form. It is that of the Artist who
fashions. And all through Life this wonderful, mystical, glorious, yet
perfectly definite, process, goes on "until Christ be formed" in it.
Natural Law, p. 294.
August 18th. The Christian Life is not a vague effort after
righteousness--an ill-defined, pointless struggle for an ill-defined,
pointless end. Religion is no dishevelled mass of aspiration, prayer, and
faith. There is no more mystery in Religion as to its processes than in
Biology. Natural Law, p. 294.
August 19th. There is much mystery in Biology. "We know all but nothing
of Life" yet, nothing of development. There is the same mystery in the
spiritual Life. But the great lines are the same, as decided, as
luminous; and the laws of natural and spiritual are the same, as
unerring, as simple. Will everything else in the natural world unfold its
order, and yield to Science more and more a vision of harmony, and
Religion, which should complement and perfect all, remain a chaos?
Natural Law, p. 294.
August 20th. When one attempts to sanctify himself by effort, he is
trying to make his boat go by pushing against the mast. He is like a
drowning man trying to lift himself out of the water by pulling at the
hair of his own head. Christ held up this method almost to ridicule when
He said: "Which of you by taking thought can add a cubit to his stature?"
The one redeeming feature of the self-sufficient method is this--that
those who try it find out almost at once that it will not gain the goal.
The Changed Life, p. 11.
August 21st. The Image of Christ that is forming within us--that is
life's one charge. Let every project stand aside for that. "Till Christ
be formed," no man's work is finished, no religion crowned, no life has
fulfilled its end. The Changed Life, p. 62.
August 22d. Our companionship with Him, like all true companionship, is a
spiritual communion. All friendship, all love, human and Divine, is
purely spiritual. It was after He was risen that He influenced even the
disciples most. The Changed Life, p. 38.
August 23d. Make Christ your most constant companion. Be more under His
influence than under any other influence. Ten minutes spent in His
society every day, ay, two minutes if it be face to face, and heart to
heart, will make the whole day different. Every character has an inward
spring, let Christ be it. Every action has a key-note, let Christ set it.
The Changed Life, p. 40.
August 24th. Under the right conditions it is as natural for character to
become beautiful as for a flower; and if on God's earth there is not some
machinery for effecting it, the supreme gift to the world has been
forgotten. This is simply what man was made for. With Browning: "I say
that Man was made to grow, not stop." The Changed Life, p. 10.
August 25th. How can modern men today make Christ, the absent Christ,
their most constant companion still? The answer is that Friendship is a
spiritual thing. It is independent of Matter, or Space, or Time. That
which I love in my friend is not that which I see. What influences me in
my friend is not his body but his spirit. The Changed Life, p. 37.
August 26th. Love should be the supreme thing--because it is going to
last; because in the nature of things it is an Eternal Life. It is a
thing that we are living now, not that we get when we die; that we shall
have a poor chance of getting when we die unless we are living now. The
Greatest Thing in the World, p. 58.
August 27th. When will it be seen that the characteristic of the
Christian Religion is its Life, that a true theology must begin with a
Biology? Theology is the Science of God. Why will men treat God as
inorganic? Natural Law, p. 297.
August 28th. We should be forsaking the lines of nature were we to
imagine for a moment that the new creature was to be formed out of
nothing. Nothing can be made out of nothing. Matter is uncreatable and
indestructible; Nature and man can only form and transform. Hence when a
new animal is made, no new clay is made. Life merely enters into already
existing matter, assimilates more of the same sort and rebuilds it. The
spiritual Artist works in the same way. He must have a peculiar kind of
protoplasm, a basis of life, and that must be already existing. Natural
Law, p. 297.
August 29th. However active the intellectual or moral life may be, from
the point of view of this other Life it is dead. That which is flesh is
flesh. It wants, that is to say, the kind of Life which constitutes the
difference between the Christian and the not-a-Christian, It has not yet
been "born of the Spirit." Natural Law, p. 299.
August 30th. The protoplasm in man has a something in addition to its
instincts or its habits. It has a capacity for God. In this capacity for
God lies its receptivity; it is the very protoplasm that was necessary.
The chamber is not only ready to receive the new Life, but the Guest is
expected, and, till He comes, is missed. Till then the soul longs and
yearns, wastes and pines, waving its tentacles piteously in the empty
air, feeling after God if so be that it may find Him. This is not
peculiar to the protoplasm of the Christian's soul. In every land and in
every age there have been altars to the Known or Unknown God. Natural
Law, p. 300.
August 31st. It is now agreed as a mere question of anthropology that the
universal language of the human soul has always been "I perish with
hunger." This is what fits it for Christ. There is a grandeur in this cry
from the depths which makes its very unhappiness sublime. Natural Law, p.
300.
September 1st. In reflecting the character of Christ, it is no real
obstacle that we may never have been in visible contact with Himself.
Many men know Dante better than their own fathers. He influences them
more. As a spiritual presence he is more near to them, as a spiritual
force more real. Is there any reason why a greater than . . . Dante
should not also instruct, inspire, and mould the characters of men? The
Changed Life, pp. 38, 52.
September 2d. Mark this distinction. . . . Imitation is mechanical,
reflection organic. The one is occasional, the other habitual. In the one
case, man comes to God and imitates Him; in the other, God comes to man
and imprints Himself upon him. It is quite true that there is an
imitation of Christ which amounts to reflection. But Paul's term includes
all that the other holds, and is open to no mistake. "Whom having not
seen, I love." The Changed Life, p. 39.
September 3d. In paraphrase: We all reflecting as a mirror the character
of Christ are transformed into the same Image from character to
character--from a poor character to a better one, from a better one to
one a little better still, from that to one still more complete, until by
slow degrees the Perfect Image is attained. Here the solution of the
problem of sanctification is compressed into a sentence: Reflect the
character of Christ and you will become like Christ. The Changed Life, p.
24.
September 4th. Not more certain is it that it is something outside the
thermometer that produces a change in the thermometer, than it is
something outside the soul of man that produces a moral change upon him.
That he must be susceptible to that change, that he must be a party to
it, goes without saying; but that neither his aptitude nor his will can
produce it is equally certain. The Changed Life, p. 20.
September 5th. Just as in an organism we have these three things--
formative matter, formed matter, and the forming principle or life; so in
the soul we have the old nature, the renewed nature, and. the
transforming Life. Natural Law, p. 302.
September 6th. Is it hopeless to point out that one of the most
recognizable characteristics of life is its unrecognizableness, and that
the very token of its spiritual nature lies in its being beyond the
grossness of our eyes? Natural Law, p. 302.
September 7th. According to the doctrine of Bio-genesis, life can only
come from life. It was Christ's additional claim that His function in the
world, was to give men Life. "I am come that ye might have Life, and that
ye might have it more abundantly." This could, not refer to the natural
life, for men had that already. He that hath the Son hath another Life.
"Know ye not your own selves how that Jesus Christ is in you." Natural
Law, p. 303.
September 8th. The recognition of the Ideal is the first step in the
direction of Conformity. But let it be clearly observed that it is but a
step. There is no vital connection between merely seeing the Ideal and
being conformed to it. Thousands admire Christ who never become
Christians. Natural Law, p. 306.
September 9th. For centuries men have striven to find out ways and means
to conform themselves to the Christ Life. Impressive motives have been
pictured, the proper circumstances arranged, the direction of effort
defined, and men have toiled, struggled, and agonized to conform
themselves to the Image of the Son. Can the protoplasm CONFORM ITSELF to
its type? Can the embryo FASHION ITSELF? Is Conformity to Type produced
by the matter OR BY THE LIFE, by the protoplasm or by the Type? Is
organization the cause of life or the effect of it? It is the effect of
it. Conformity to Type, therefore, is secured by the type. Christ makes
the Christian. Natural Law, p. 307.
September 10th. O preposterous and vain man, thou who couldest not make a
fingernail of thy body, thinkest thou to fashion this wonderful,
mysterious, subtle soul of thine after the ineffable Image? Wilt thou
ever permit thyself TO BE conformed to the Image of the Son? Wilt thou,
who canst not add a cubit to thy stature, submit TO BE raised by the
Type-Life within thee to the perfect stature of Christ Natural Law, p.
308.
September 11th. Men will still experiment "by works of righteousness
which they have done" to earn the Ideal life. The doctrine of Human
Inability, as the Church calls it, has always been objectionable to men
who do not know themselves. Natural Law, p. 309.
September 12th. Let man choose Life; let him daily nourish his soul; let
him forever starve the old life; let him abide continuously as a living
branch in the Vine, and the True-Vine Life will flow into his soul,
assimilating, renewing, conforming to Type, till Christ, pledged by His
own law, be formed in him. Natural Law, p. 312.
September 13th. The work begun by Nature is finished by the Supernatural
--as we are wont to call the higher natural. And as the veil is lifted by
Christianity it strikes men dumb with wonder. For the goal of Evolution
is Jesus Christ. Natural Law, p. 314.
September 14th. The Christian life is the only life that will ever be
completed. Apart from Christ the life of man is a broken pillar, the race
of men an unfinished pyramid. One by one in sight of Eternity all human
Ideals fall short, one by one before the open grave all human hopes
dissolve. Natural Law, p. 314.
September 15th. I do not think we ourselves are aware how much our
religious life is made up of phrases; how much of what we call Christian
experience is only a dialect of the Churches, a mere religious
phraseology with almost nothing behind it in what we really feel and
know. Pax Vobiscum, p. 12.
September 16th. The ceaseless chagrin of a self-centred life can be
removed at once by learning Meekness and Lowliness of heart. He who
learns them is forever proof against it. He lives henceforth a charmed
life. Pax Vobiscum, p. 29.
September 17th. Great trials come at lengthened intervals, and we rise to
breast them; but it is the petty friction of our everyday life with one
another, the jar of business or of work, the discord of the domestic
circle, the collapse of our ambition, the crossing of our will or the
taking down of our conceit, which makes inward peace impossible. Pax
Vobiscum, p. 28.
September 18th. There are people who go about the world looking out for
slights, and they are necessarily miserable, for they find them at every
turn--especially the imaginary ones. One has the same pity for such men
as for the very poor. They are the morally illiterate. They have had no
real education, for they have never learned how to live. Pax Vobiscum, p.
31.
September 19th. Christ never said much in mere words about the Christian
graces. He lived them, He was them. Yet we do not merely copy Him. We
learn His art by living with Him. Pax Vobiscum, p. 32.
September 20th. Christ's invitation to the weary and heavy-laden is a
call to begin life over again upon a new principle--upon His own
principle. "Watch My way of doing things," He says. "Follow Me. Take life
as I take it. Be meek and lowly, and you will find Rest." Pax Vobiscum,
p. 32.
September 21st. If a man could make himself humble to order, it might
simplify matters, but we do not find that this happens. Hence we must all
go through the mill. Hence death, death to the lower self, is the nearest
gate and the quickest road to life. Pax Vobiscum, p. 35.
September 22d. Whatever rest is provided by Christianity for the children
of God, it is certainly never contemplated that it should supersede
personal effort. And any rest which ministers to indifference is immoral
and unreal--it makes parasites and not men. Natural Law, p. 335.
September 23d. Just because God worketh in him, as the evidence and
triumph of it, the true child of God works out his own salvation--works
it out having really received it--not as a light thing, a superfluous
labour, but with fear and trembling as a reasonable and indispensable
service. Natural Law, p. 335.
September 24th. Christianity, as Christ taught, is the truest philosophy
of life ever spoken. But let us be quite sure when we speak of
Christianity, that we mean Christ's Christianity. Pax Vobiscum, p. 47.
September 25th. So far from ministering to growth, parasitism ministers
to decay. So far from ministering to holiness, that is to wholeness,
parasitism ministers to exactly the opposite. One by one the spiritual
faculties droop and die, one by one from lack of exercise the muscles of
the soul grow weak and flaccid, one by one the moral activities cease. So
from him that hath not, is taken away that which he hath, and after a few
years of parasitism there is nothing left to save. Natural Law, p. 336.
September 26th. The natural life, not less than the eternal, is the gift
of God. But life in either case is the beginning of growth and not the
end of grace. To pause where we should begin, to retrograde where we
should advance, to seek a mechanical security that we may cover inertia
and find a wholesale salvation in which there is no personal
sanctification--this is Parasitism. Natural Law, p. 336.
September 27th. Could we investigate the spirit as a living organism, or
study the soul of the backslider on principles of comparative anatomy, we
should have a revelation of the organic effects of sin, even of the mere
sin of carelessness as to growth and work, which must revolutionize our
ideas of practical religion. There is no room for the doubt even that
what goes on in the body does not with equal certainty take place in the
spirit under the corresponding conditions. Natural Law, p. 345.
September 28th. It is the beautiful work of Christianity everywhere to
adjust the burden of life to those who bear it, and them to it. It has a
perfectly miraculous gift of healing. Without doing any violence to human
nature it sets it right with life, harmonizing it with all surrounding
things, and restoring those who are jaded with the fatigue and dust of
the world to a new grace of living. Pax Vobiscum, p. 46.
September 29th. The penalty of backsliding is not something unreal and
vague, some unknown quantity which may be measured out to us
disproportionately, or which, perchance, since God is good, we may
altogether evade. The consequences are already marked within the
structure of the soul. So to speak, they are physiological. The thing
effected by our in difference or by our indulgence is not the book of
final judgment, but the present fabric of the soul. Natural Law, p. 346.