Character and Conduct Part 35

Bishop WESTCOTT.

"Do we not all know how apt we are to become like those whom we see, with whom we spend our hours, and, above all, like those whom we admire and honour? For good and for evil, alas! For evil--for those who a.s.sociate with evil or frivolous persons are too apt to catch not only their low tone, but their very manner, their very expression of face, speaking and thinking and acting.... But thank G.o.d, ... just in the same way does good company tend to make them high-minded.... I have lived long enough to see more than one man of real genius stamp his own character, thought, even his very manner of speaking, for good or for evil, on a whole school or party of his disciples. It has been said, and truly, I believe, that children cannot be brought up among beautiful pictures,--I believe, even among any beautiful sights and sounds--without the very expression of their faces becoming more beautiful, purer, gentler, n.o.bler."

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

Influence

AUGUST 3

"Throw a stone into the stream, and the circles that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence."

EMERSON.

"It requires but little knowledge of society and history to a.s.sure us of the strong permeating invisible influence upon society at large of any body of men of clear thought, strong conviction, and disciplined conduct. At once many things respond to the magnetism; many are put on their mettle who would not for the world own it: many recognise their own best things more clearly in the new light shed upon them; there is instinctive moral compet.i.tion. Such influences travel fast and far.... I have always myself believed that the later thought of the Roman world--the mellow stoicism of Aurelius and Epictetus in the second century, with its strong unexplained instinct for a personal and fatherly G.o.d, with its gentle and self-denying ethics, shews the tincture of the influence diffused through the thoughts and prayers, the quiet conversations or the dropped words and overheard phrases--or the bearing and countenance of a slave here or a friend there, known or perhaps not known to belong to that strange new body of people with their foolish yet arresting faith, with their practices everywhere spoken against yet of such pure and winning charm--who bore the name of the Nazarene."

_The Church's Failures and the Work of Christ_, Bishop TALBOT.

Friends.h.i.+p

AUGUST 4

"We should ever have it fixed in our memories, that by the characters of those whom we choose for our friends, our own is likely to be formed, and will certainly be judged of by the world. We ought, therefore, to be slow and cautious in contracting intimacy; but when a virtuous friends.h.i.+p is once established, we must ever consider it as a sacred engagement."

BLAIR.

"Might I give counsel to any young hearer, I would say unto him: Try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and life is the most wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admired--they admired great things; narrow spirits admire basely, and wors.h.i.+p meanly."

THACKERAY.

"Be slow to fall into friends.h.i.+p; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant."

SOCRATES.

Friends.h.i.+p

AUGUST 5

"There is nothing so bad for man or woman as to live always with their inferiors. It is a truth so important, that one might well wish to turn aside a moment and urge it, even in its lower aspects, upon the young people who are just making their a.s.sociations and friends.h.i.+ps. Many a temptation of laziness or pride induces us to draw towards those who do not know as much or are not in some way as strong as we are. It is a smaller tax upon our powers to be in their society. But it is bad for us. I am sure that I have known men, intellectually and morally very strong, the whole development of whose intellectual and moral life has suffered and been dwarfed, because they have only accompanied with their inferiors, because they have not lived with men greater than themselves.

Whatever else they lose, they surely must lose some culture of humility.

If I could choose a young man's companions, some should be weaker than himself, that he might learn patience and charity; many should be as nearly as possible his equals, that he might have the full freedom of friends.h.i.+p; but most should be stronger than he was, that he might for ever be thinking humbly of himself and be tempted to higher things."

PHILLIPS BROOKS.

Friends.h.i.+p

AUGUST 6

"For good or evil a man's moral and spiritual outlook is altered by the outlook of his comrade. It is inevitable, and in all true comrades.h.i.+p it makes for truth, and generosity, and freedom. It is an incalculable enlargement of human responsibility, because it const.i.tutes us, in a measure, guardians each of the other's soul. And yet, it is never the suppression of a weak individuality by a strong one. That is not even true disciples.h.i.+p, but spiritual tyranny. What the play of two personalities brings about is a fuller, deeper self-realisation on either side. The experience of comrades.h.i.+p, with all the new knowledge and insight that it brings into a life, can leave no ideal unchanged, but the change is not of the nature of a subst.i.tution, but of continuous growth. It is not mental or moral bondage, but deliverance from both.

"And it is the deliverance from bondage to ourselves. It is our refuge from pride. More than all else, comrades.h.i.+p teaches us to walk humbly with G.o.d. For while G.o.d's trivial gifts may allow us to grow vain and self-complacent, His great gifts, if we once recognise them, make us own our deep unworthiness, and bow our heads in unspeakable grat.i.tude. We may have rated our deserts high, and taken flattery as our just due; we may have competed for the world's prizes, and been filled with gratified ambition at securing them. But however high we rate ourselves, in the hour in which the soul is conscious of its spiritual comrades, we know that G.o.d's great infinite gift of human love is something we have never earned, could never earn by merit or achievement, by toil, or prayer, or fasting. It has come to us straight out of the heart of the eternal Fatherhood; and all our pride and vanity fall away, and our lives come again to us as the lives of little children."

_Comrades.h.i.+p_, MAY KENDALL.

Friends.h.i.+p

AUGUST 7

"Friends.h.i.+p is a plant which cannot be forced. True friends.h.i.+p is no gourd, springing in a night and withering in a day."

CHARLOTTE BRONTe.

"Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of G.o.d's best gifts. It involves many things, but, above all, the power of going out of one's self, and appreciating whatever is n.o.ble and loving in another."

THOMAS HUGHES.

"Friends.h.i.+p cannot be permanent unless it becomes spiritual. There must be fellows.h.i.+p in the deepest things of the soul, community in the highest thoughts, sympathy with the best endeavours."

HUGH BLACK.

Friends.h.i.+p

AUGUST 8

"Our chief want in life is, somebody who shall make us do what we can.

This is the service of a friend."

EMERSON.

"The end of friends.h.i.+p is for aid and comfort through all the pa.s.sages of life and death."

EMERSON.

"Every man rejoices twice when he has a partner of his joy. A friend shares my sorrow, and makes it but a moiety; but he swells my joy, and makes it double."

JEREMY TAYLOR.