Character and Conduct Part 48

Bishop WILBERFORCE.

"Those who have never sought to attain true humility ... have yet to learn how it lies at the root of all our dear Lord's teaching.... The first step towards the inner life is to attain a childlike spirit in Heavenly things.... It is solely G.o.d's gift."

GROU.

Love the Destroyer of Sin

OCTOBER 21

"It is quite idle, by force of will, to seek to empty the angry pa.s.sions out of our life. Who has not made a thousand resolutions in this direction, only and with unutterable mortification to behold them dashed to pieces with the first temptation? The soul is to be made sweet not by taking the acidulous fluids out, but by putting something in--a great love, G.o.d's great love. This is to work a chemical change upon them, to renovate and regenerate them, to dissolve them in its own rich fragrant substance. If a man let this into his life, his cure is complete; if not, it is hopeless."

_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.

"The secret of success consists not in the habit of making numerous resolutions about various faults and sins, but in one great, absorbing, controlling purpose to serve G.o.d and do His will! If this be the controlling motive of life, all other motives will be swept into the force of its mighty current and guided aright."

Love the Destroyer of Sin

OCTOBER 22

"For the most of us the more hopeful plan is to overcome our pa.s.sions by thinking of something else. This something else need by no means be a serious thing. For it happens sometimes that ideas that do not soar above trivialities may nevertheless have sent down such roots into a man's life, and become so fruitful of suggestion, that they prove more effective allies than more imposing and pretentious resources. Whence it comes that a sport, or a pastime, have before now weaned many from cares and sorrows which seemed proof against even the consolations of religion. Be it granted that, severely construed, this is a proof of the frivolity of human nature. But it is none the less an ill.u.s.tration of the expulsive power of ideas."

_The Making of Character_, Professor MACCUNN.

"He proposed to make sin impossible by replacing it with love. If sin be an act of self-will, each person making himself the centre, then Love is the destruction of sin, because Love connects instead of isolating. No one can be envious, avaricious, hard-hearted; no one can be gross, sensual, unclean, if he loves. Love is the death of all bitter and unholy moods of the soul, because Love lifts the man out of himself and teaches him to live in another."

_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.

Mental Hygiene

OCTOBER 23

"It is poor strategy to wage against evil feelings or propulsions a war of mere repression. We have seen that this is so in educational control of others. It is not less so in control of ourselves. If we would really oust our evil proclivities, we must cultivate others that are positively good. It is not enough to hate our failings or our vices with a perfect hatred. We must love something else. In other words, we must contrive to open mind and heart to tenants in whose presence unwelcome intruders, unable to find a home, will torment us only for a season and at last take their departure. 'There is a mental just as much as a bodily hygiene.'"

_The Making of Character_, Professor MACCUNN.

"Moses said, 'Do this or do that.' Jesus refrained from regulations--He proposed that we should love. Jesus, while hardly mentioning the word, planted the idea in His disciples' minds, that Love was Law. For three years He exhibited and enforced Love as the principle of life, until, before He died, they understood that all duty to G.o.d and man was summed up in Love. Progress in the moral world is ever from complexity to simplicity. First one hundred duties; afterwards they are gathered into ten commandments; then they are reduced to two: love of G.o.d and love of man; and, finally, Jesus says His last word: 'This is My commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you.'"

_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.

"As Night Enters, Darkness Departs"

OCTOBER 24

"If sin be a principle in a man's life, then it is evident that it cannot be affected by the most pathetic act in history exhibited from without; it must be met by an opposite principle working from within. If sin be selfishness, as Jesus taught, then it can only be overcome by the introduction of a spirit of self-renunciation. Jesus did not denounce sin: negative religion is always impotent. He replaced sin by virtue, which is a silent revolution. As the light enters, the darkness departs, and as soon as one renounced himself, he had ceased from sin."

_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.

"'Why could not we cast him out?'

"Let His love fill you with love, and then the conquering of your sins by His help shall be in its course one long enthusiasm and at the end a glorious success. That is your hope; and that hope, if you will, you may seize to-day."

PHILLIPS BROOKS.

Stepping-stones

OCTOBER 25

"The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong."

CARLYLE.

"Out of difficulties grow miracles."

"I hold it truth with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on stepping stones Of their dead selves to higher things."

TENNYSON.

"Why wilt thou defer thy good purpose from day to day? Arise and begin this very instant, and say, 'Now is the time to be doing, now is the time to be striving, now is the fit time to amend myself.'"

THOMAS a KEMPIS.

Never Lose a Battle

OCTOBER 26

"A fourth maxim is 'never if possible to lose a battle.' And none can be sounder. For it is always to be remembered that a single lapse involves here something worse than a simple failure. The alternative is not between good habit or no habit, but between good habit and bad. For, as Professor Bain points out, the characteristic difficulty here lies in the fact that in the moral life rival tendencies are in constant compet.i.tion for mastery over us. The loss of a battle here is therefore worse than a defeat. It strengthens the enemy, whether this enemy be some powerful pa.s.sion, or nothing more than the allurements of an easy life. It has worse effects still. For if by persistence in well-doing we all of us create a moral tradition for our individual selves, so do we by every failure hang in the memory a humiliating and paralysing record of defeat."

_The Making of Character_, Professor MACCUNN.

"If one surrender himself to Jesus, and is crucified on His cross, there is no sin he will not overcome, no service he will not render, no virtue to which he will not attain."

_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.

Living in the Present