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righteousness would never have satisfied Paul; neither, you may be sure, did
it satisfy Abraham. But his faith was nevertheless righteousness.
[ 226 ] Perception of Duties
You may say this is not one's first feeling of duty. True: but the
first in reality is seldom the first perceived. The first duty is too high
and too deep to come first into consciousness. If anyone were born perfect
... the highest duty would come first into the consciousness. As we are
born, it is the doing of, or at least the honest trying to do many another
duty, that will at length lead a man to see that his duty to God is the
first and deepest and highest of all, including and requiring the
performance of all other duties whatever.
[ 227 ] Righteousness of Faith
To the man who has no faith in God, faith in God cannot look like
righteousness; neither can he know that it is creative of all other
righteousness toward equal and inferior lives.
[ 228 ] The Same
It is not like some single separate act of righteousness: it is the
action of the whole man, turning to good from evil-turning his back on all
that is opposed to righteousness, and starting on a road on which he cannot
stop, in which he must go on growing more and more righteous, discovering
more and more what righteousness is, and more and more what is unrighteous
in himself.
[ 229 ] Reckoned unto Us for Righteousness
With what life and possibility is in him, he must keep turning to
righteousness and abjuring iniquity, ever aiming at the righteousness of
God. Such an obedient faith is most justly and fairly, being all that God
Himself can require of the man, called by God righteousness in the man. It
would not be enough for the righteousness of God, or Jesus, or any perfected
saint, because they are capable of perfect righteousness.
[ 230 ] St. Paul's Faith
His faith was an act recognizing God as his law, and that is not a
partial act, but an all-embracing and all-determining action. A single
righteous deed toward one's fellow could hardly be imputed to a man as
righteousness. A man who is not trying after righteousness may yet do many a
righteous act: they will not be forgotten to him, neither will they be
imputed to him as righteousness.
[ 231 ] The Full-Grown Christian
He does not take his joy from himself. He feels joy in himself, but it
comes to him from others, not from himself-from God first, and from
somebody, anybody, everybody next.. .. He could do without knowing himself,
but he could not know himself and spare one of the brothers or sisters God
has given him. . . . His consciousness of himself is the reflex from those
about him, not the result of his own turning in of his regard upon himself.
It is not the contemplation of what God had made him, it is the being what
God has made him, and the contemplation of what God himself is, and what He
has made his fellows, that gives him his joy.
[ 232 ] Revealed to Babes
The wise and prudent must make a system and arrange things to his mind
before he can say, / believe. The child sees, believes, obeys-and knows he
must be perfect as his Father in heaven is perfect. If an angel, seeming to
come from heaven, told him that God had let him off, that He did not require
so much of him, but would be content with less ... the child would at once
recognize, woven with the angel's starry brilliancy, the flicker of the
flames of hell.
[ 233 ] Answer
"But how can God bring this about in me?"-Let Him do it and perhaps you
will know.
[ 234 ] Useless Knowledge
To teach your intellect what has to be learned by your whole being,
what cannot be understood without the whole being, what it would do you no
good to understand save you understood it in your whole being-if this be the
province of any man, it is not mine. Let the dead bury their dead, and the
dead teach their dead.
[ 235 ] The Art of Being Created
Let patience have her perfect work. Statue under the chisel of the
sculptor, stand steady to the blows of his mallet. Clay on the wheel, let
the fingers of the divine potter model you at their will. Obey the Father's
lightest word: hear the Brother who knows you and died for you.
[ 236 ] When We Do Not Find Him
Thy hand be on the latch to open the door at His first knock. Shouldst
thou open the door and not see Him, do not say He did not knock, but
understand that He is there, and wants thee to go out to Him. It may be He
has something for thee to do for Him. Go and do it, and perhaps thou wilt
return with a new prayer, to find a new window in thy soul.
[ 237 ] Prayer
Never wait for fitter time or place to talk to Him. To wait till thou
go to church or to thy closet is to make Him wait. He will listen as thou
walkest.
[ 238 ] On One's Critics
Do not heed much if men mock you and speak lies of you, or in goodwill
defend you unworthily. Heed not much if even the righteous turn their backs
upon you. Only take heed that you turn not from them.
[ 239 ] Free Will
He gave man the power to thwart His will, that, by means of that same
power, he might come at last to do His will in a higher kind and way than
would otherwise have been possible to him.
[ 240 ] On Idle Tongues
Let a man do right, not trouble himself about worthless opinion; the
less he heeds tongues, the less difficult will he find it to love men.
[ 241 ] Do We Love Light?
Do you so love the truth and the right that you welcome, or at least
submit willingly to, the idea of an exposure of what in you is yet unknown
to yourself-an exposure that may redound to the glory of the truth by making
you ashamed and humble? . . . Are you willing to be made glad that you were
wrong when you thought others were wrong?
[ 242 ] Shame
We may trust God with our past as heartily as with our future. It will
not hurt us so long as we do not try to hide things, so long as we are ready
to bow our heads in hearty shame where it is fit we should be ashamed. For
to be ashamed is a holy and blessed thing. Shame is a thing to shame only
those who want to appear, not those who want to be. Shame is to shame those
who want to pass their examination, not those who would get into the heart
of things. ... To be humbly ashamed is to be plunged in the cleansing bath
of truth.
[ 243 ] The Wakening
What a horror will it not be to a vile man .. . when his eyes are
opened to see himself as the pure see him, as God sees him! Imagine such a
man waking all at once, not only to see the eyes of the universe fixed upon
him with loathing astonishment, but to see himself at the same moment as
those eyes see him.
[ 244 ] The Wakening of the Rich
What riches and fancied religion, with the self-sufficiency they
generate between them, can make man or woman capable of, is appalling. ...
To many of the religious rich in that day, the great damning revelation will
be their behavior to the poor to whom they thought themselves very kind.
[ 245 ] Self-Deception
A man may loathe a thing in the abstract for years, and find at last
that all the time he has been, in his own person, guilty of it. To carry a
thing under our cloak caressingly, hides from us its identity with something
that stands before us on the public pillory. Many a man might read this and
assent to it, who cages in his own bosom a carrion bird that he never knows
for what it is, because there are points of difference in its plumage from
that of the bird he calls by an ugly name.
[ 246 ] Warning
"Oh God," we think, "How terrible if it were I!" Just so terrible is it
that it should be Judas. And have I not done things with the same germ in
them, a germ which, brought to its evil perfection, would have shown itself
the cankerworm, treachery? Except I love my neighbor as myself, I may one
day betray him! Let us therefore be compassionate and humble, and hope for
every man.
[ 247 ] The Slow Descent
A man may sink by such slow degrees that, long after he is a devil, he
may go on being a good churchman or a good dissenter and thinking himself a
good Christian.
[ 248 ] Justice and Revenge
While a satisfied justice is an unavoidable eternal event, a satisfied
revenge is an eternal impossibility.
[ 249 ] Recognition Hereafter
Our friends will know us then; for their joy, will it be, or their
sorrow? Will their hearts sink within them when they look on the real
likeness of us? Or will they rejoice to find that we were not so much to be
blamed as they thought?
[ 250 ] From Dante
To have a share in any earthly inheritance is to diminish the share of
the other inheritors. In the inheritance of the saints, that which each has
goes to increase the possession of the test.
[ 251 ] What God Means by "Good"
"They are good"; that is, "They are what I mean."
[ 252 ] All Things from God
All things are God's, not as being in His power-that of course-but as
coming from Him. The darkness itself becomes light around Him when we think
that verily He hath created the darkness, for there could have been no
darkness but for the light.
[ 253 ] Absolute Being
There is no word to represent that which is not God, no word for the
where without God in it; for it is not, could not be.
[ 254 ] Beasts
The ways of God go down into microscopic depths as well as up to
telescopic heights. ... So with mind; the ways of God go into the depths yet
unrevealed to us: He knows His horses and dogs as we cannot know them,
because we are not yet pure sons of God. When through our sonship, as Paul
teaches, the redemption of these lower brothers and sisters shall have come,
then we shall understand each other better. But now the Lord of Life has to
look on at the willful torture of multitudes of His creatures. It must be
that offenses come, but woe unto that man by whom they come! The Lord may
seem not to heed, but He sees and knows.
[ 255 ] Diversity of Souls
Every one of us is something that the other is not, and therefore knows
something-it may be without knowing that he knows it-which no one else
knows: and ... it is everyone's business, as one of the kingdom of light and
inheritor in it all, to give his portion to the rest.
[ 256 ] The Disillusioned
Loving but the body of Truth, even here they come to call it a lie, and
break out in maudlin moaning over the illusions of life.
[ 257 ] Evil
What springs from myself and not from God is evil: It is a perversion
of something of God's. Whatever is not of faith is sin; it is a stream cut
off-a stream that cuts itself off from its source and thinks to run on
without it.
[ 258 ] The Loss of the Shadow
I learned that it was not myself but only my shadow that I had lost. I
learned that it is better ... for a proud man to fall and be humbled than to
hold up his head in pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will
be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of
his work, is sure of his manhood.
[ 259 ] Love
It is by loving and not by being loved that one can come nearest to the
soul of another.
[ 260 ] From Spring to Summer
The birds grew silent, because their history kid hold on them,
compelling them to turn their words into deeds, and keep eggs warm, and hunt
for worms.
[ 261 ] The Door into Life
But the door into life generally opens behind us, and a hand is put
forth which draws us in backwards. The sole wisdom for man or boy who is
haunted with the hovering of unseen wings, with the scent of unseen roses,
and the subtle enticements of "melodies unheard," is work. If he follow any
of those, they will vanish. But if he work, they will come unsought.
[ 262 ] A Lonely Religion
There is one kind of religion in which the more devoted a man is, the
fewer proselytes he makes: the worship of himself.
[ 263 ] Love
Love makes everything lovely: hate concentrates itself on the one thing
hated.
[ 264 ] A False Method
It is not by driving away our brother that we can be alone with God.
[ 265 ] Assimilation
All wickedness tends to destroy individuality and declining natures
assimilate as they sink.
[ 266 ] Looking
"But ye was luikin' for somebody, auntie."-"Na. I was only jist
luikin'." ... It is this formless idea of something at hand that keeps men
and women striving to tear from the bosom of the world the secret of their
own hopes. How little they know that what they look for in reality is their
God!
[ 267 ] Progress
To tell the truth, I feel a good deal younger. For then I only knew
that a man had to take up his cross; whereas now I know that a man has to
follow Him.
[ 268 ] Providence
People talk about special providences. I believe in the providences,
but not in the specialty. . . . The so-called special providences are no
exception to the rule-they are common to all men at all moments.
[ 269 ] Ordinariness
That which is best He gives most plentifully, as is reason with Him.
Hence the quiet fullness of ordinary nature; hence the Spirit to them that
ask it.
[ 270 ] Forgiveness
I prayed to God that He would make me . . . into a rock which swallowed
up the waves of wrong in its great caverns and never threw them back to
swell the commotion of the angry sea whence they came. Ah, what it would be
actually to annihilate wrong in this way-to be able to say, "It shall not be
wrong against me, so utterly do I forgive it!" . . . But the painful fact
will show itself, not less curious than painful, that it is more difficult
to forgive small wrongs than great ones. Perhaps, however, the forgiveness
of the great wrongs is not so true as it seems. For do we not think it a
fine thing to forgive such wrongs and so do it rather for our own sakes than
for the sake of the wrongdoer? It is dreadful not to be good, and to have
bad ways inside one.
[ 271 ] Visitors
By all means tell people, when you are busy about something that must
be done, that you cannot spare the time for them except they want of you
something of yet more pressing necessity; but tell them, and do not get rid
of them by the use of the instrument commonly called the cold shoulder. It
is a wicked instrument.
[ 272 ] Prose
My own conviction is that the poetry is far the deepest in us and that
the prose is only broken-down poetry; and likewise that to this our lives
correspond. ... As you will hear some people read poetry so that no mortal
could tell it was poetry, so do some people read their own lives and those
of others.
[ 273 ] Integrity
I would not favor a fiction to keep a whole world out of hell. The hell
that a lie would keep any man out of is doubtless the very best place for
him to go to. It is truth . . . that saves the world!
[ 274 ] Contentment
Let me, if I may, be ever welcomed to my room in winter by a glowing
hearth, in summer by a vase of flowers; if I may not, let me think how nice
they would be, and bury myself in my work. I do not think that the road to
contentment lies in despising what we have not got. Let us acknowledge all
good, all delight that the world holds, and be content without it.
[ 275 ] Psychical Research
Offered the Spirit of God for the asking .. . they betake themselves to
necromancy instead, and raise the dead to ask their advice, and follow it,
and will find some day that Satan had not forgotten how to dress like an
angel of light. . . . What religion is there in being convinced of a future
state? Is that to worship God? It is no more religion than the belief that
the sun will rise tomorrow is religion. It may be a source of happiness to
those who could not believe it before, but it is not religion.
[ 276 ] The Blotting Out
If He pleases to forget anything, then He can forget it. And I think
that is what He does with our sins- that is, after He has got them away from
us, once we are clean from them altogether. It would be a dreadful thing if
He forgot them before that. . . .
[ 277 ] On a Chapter in Isaiah
The power of God is put side by side with the weakness of men, not that
He, the perfect, may glory over His feeble children ... but that He may say
thus: "Look, my children, you will never be strong with my strength. I have
no other to give you."
[ 278 ] Providence
And if we believe that God is everywhere, why should we not think Him
present even in the coincidences that sometimes seem so strange? For, if He
be in the things that coincide, He must be in the coincidence of those
things.
[ 279 ] No Other Way
The Old Man of the Earth stooped over the floor of the cave, raised a
huge stone, and left it leaning. It disclosed a great hole that went
plumb-down. "That is the way," he said. "But there are no stairs. You must
throw yourself in. There is no other way."
[ 280 ] Death
"You have tasted of death now," said the Old Man. "Is it good?" "It is
good," said Mossy. "It is better than life." "No," said the Old Man. "It is
only more life."
[ 281 ] Criterion of a True Vision
This made it the more likely that he had seen a true vision; for
instead of making common things look commonplace, as a false vision would
have done, it had made common things disclose the wonderful that was in
them.
[ 282 ] One Reason for Sex
One of the great goods that come of having two parents is that the one
balances and rectifies the motions of the other. No one is good but God. No
one holds the truth, or can hold it, in one and the same thought, but God.
Our human life is often, at best, but an oscillation between the extremes
which together make the truth.
[ 283 ] Easy Work
Do you think the work God gives us to do is never easy? Jesus says His
yoke is easy, His burden is light. People sometimes refuse to do God's work
just because it is easy. This is sometimes because they cannot believe that
easy work is His work; but there may be a very bad pride in it. ... Some,
again, accept it with half a heart and do it with half a hand. But however
easy any work may be, it cannot be well done without taking thought about
it. And such people, instead of taking thought about their work, generally
take thought about the morrow, in which no work can be done any more than in
yesterday. The Holy Present!
[ 284 ] Lebensraum
It is only in Him that the soul has room. In knowing Him is life and
its gladness. The secret of your own heart you can never know; but you can
know Him who knows its secret.
[ 285 ] Nature
If the flowers were not perishable, we should cease to contemplate
their beauty, either blinded by the passion for hoarding the bodies of them,
or dulled by the hebetude of commonplaceness that the constant presence of
them would occasion. To compare great things with small, the flowers wither,
the bubbles break, the clouds and sunsets pass, for the very same holy
reason (in the degree of its application to them) for which the Lord
withdrew from His disciples and ascended again to His Father-that the
Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, the Soul of things, might come to them and
abide with them, and so, the Son return, and the Father be revealed. The
flower is not its loveliness, and its loveliness we must love, else we shall
only treat them as flower-greedy children, who gather and gather, and fill
hands and baskets from a mere desire of acquisition.
[ 286 ] For Parents
A parent must respect the spiritual person of his child, and approach
it with reverence, for that too looks the Father in the face and has an
audience with Him into which no earthly parent can enter even if he dared to
desire it.
[ 287 ] Hoarding
The heart of man cannot hoard. His brain or his hand may gather into
its box and hoard, but the moment the thing has passed into the box, the
heart has lost it and is hungry again. If a man would have, it is the Giver
he must have; . .. Therefore all that He makes must be free to come and go
through the heart of His child; he can enjoy it only as it passes, can enjoy
only its life, its soul, its vision, its meaning, not itself.
[ 288 ] Today and Yesterday
This day's adventure, however, did not turn out like yesterday's,
although it began like it; and indeed today is very seldom like yesterday,
if people would note the differences. . . . The princess ran through passage
after passage, and could not find the stair of the tower. My own suspicion
is that she had not gone up high enough, and was searching on the second
instead of the third floor.
[ 289 ] Obstinate Illusion
He jumped up, as he thought, and began to dress, but, to his dismay,
found that he was still lying in bed. "Now then I will!" he said. "Here
goes! I am up now!" But yet again he found himself snug in bed. Twenty times
he tried, and twenty times he failed; for in fact he was not awake, only
dreaming that he was.
[ 290 ] Possessions
Happily for our blessedness, the joy of possession soon palls.
[ 291 ] Lost in the Mountains
The fear returned. People had died in the mountains of hunger, and I
began to make up my mind to meet the worst. I had not yet learned that the
approach of any fate is just the preparation for that fate. I troubled
myself with the care of that which was not impending over me. . . . Had I
been wearier and fainter, it would have appeared less dreadful.
[ 292 ] The Birth of Persecution
Clara's words appeared to me quite irreverent . . . but what to answer
here I did not know. I almost began to dislike her; for it is often
incapacity for defending the faith they love which turns men into
persecutors.
[ 293 ] Daily Death
We die daily. Happy those who daily come to life as well.
[ 294 ] On Duty to Oneself
"But does a man owe nothing to himself?"-"Nothing that I know of. I am
under no obligation to myself. How can I divide myself and say that the one
half of me is indebted to the other? To my mind, it is a mere fiction of
speech."-"But whence, then, should such a fiction arise?"-"From the dim
sense of a real obligation, I suspect-the object of which is mistaken. I
suspect it really springs from our relation to the unknown God, so vaguely
felt that a false form is readily accepted for its embodiment. .
[ 295 ] A Theory of Sleep
It may be said of the body in regard of sleep as well as in regard of
death, "It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. . . ." No one can
deny the power of the wearied body to paralyze the soul; but I have a
correlate theory which I love, and which I expect to find true-that, while
the body wearies the mind, it is the mind that restores vigor to the body,
and then, like the man who has built him a stately palace, rejoices to dwell
in it. I believe that, if there be a living, conscious love at the heart of
the universe, the mind, in the quiescence of its consciousness in sleep,
comes into a less disturbed contact with its origin, the heart of the
creation; whence gifted with calmness and strength for itself, it grows able
to impart comfort and restoration to the weary frame. The cessation of labor
affords but the necessary occasion; makes it possible, as it were, for the
occupant of an outlying station in the wilderness to return to his Father's
house for fresh supplies. . . . The child-soul goes home at night, and
returns in the morning to the labors of the school.
[ 296 ] Sacred Idleness
Work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred
idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.
[ 297 ] The Modern Bane
Former periods of the world's history when that blinding
self-consciousness which is the bane of ours was yet undeveloped. . .
[ 298 ] Immortality
To some minds the argument for immortality drawn from the apparently
universal shrinking from annihilation must be ineffectual, seeing they
themselves do not shrink from it. ... If there is no God, annihilation is
the one thing to be longed for, with all that might of longing which is the
mainspring of human action. In a word, it is not immortality the human heart
cries out after, but that immortal, eternal thought whose life is its life,
whose wisdom is its wisdom. . . . Dissociate immortality from the living
Immortality, and it is not a thing to be desired.
[ 299 ] Prayer
"O God!" I cried and that was all. But what are the prayers of the
whole universe more than expansion of that one cry? It is not what God can
give us, but God that we want.
[ 300 ] Self
I sickened at the sight of Myself; how should I ever get rid of the
demon? The same instant I saw the one escape: I must offer it back to its
source-commit it to Him who had made it. I must live no more from it but
from the source of it; seek to know nothing more of it than He gave me to
know by His presence therein... . What flashes of self-consciousness might
cross me, should be God's gift, not of my seeking, and offered again to Him
in every new self-sacrifice.
[ 301 ] Visions
A man may see visions manifold, and believe them all; . . . something
more is needed-he must have that presence of God in his soul of which the
Son of Man spoke, saying "If a man love me, he will keep my words; and my
Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with
him."
[ 302 ] The Impervious Soul
As for any influence from the public officers of religion, a contented
soul may glide through them all for a long life, unstruck to the last,
buoyant and evasive as a bee among hailstones.
[ 303 ] An Old Garden
Not one of the family had ever cared for it on the ground of its
old-fashionedness; its preservation was owing merely to the fact that their
gardener was blessed with a wholesome stupidity rendering him incapable of
unlearning what his father, who had been gardener there before him, had had
marvelous difficulty in teaching him. We do not half appreciate the benefits
to the race that spring from honest dullness. The clever people are the ruin
of everything.
[ 304 ] Experience
Those who gain no experience are those who shirk the King's highway for
fear of encountering the Duty seated by the roadside.
[ 305 ] Difficulties
It often seems to those in earnest about the right as if all things
conspired to prevent their progress. This, of course, is but an appearance,
arising in part from this, that the pilgrim must be headed back from the
side-paths into which he is constantly wandering.
[ 306 ] A Hard Saying
There are those who in their very first seeking of it are nearer to the
Kingdom of Heaven than many who have for years believed themselves of it. In
the former there is more of the mind of Jesus, and when He calls them they
recognize Him at once and go after Him; while the others examine Him from
head to foot, and finding Him not sufficiently like the Jesus of their
conception, turn their backs and go to church or chapel or chamber to kneel
before a vague form mingled of tradition and fancy.
[ 307 ] Truisms
A mere truism, is it? Yes, it is, and more is the pity; for what is a
truism, as most men count truisms? What is it but a truth that ought to have
been buried long ago in the lives of men-to send up forever the corn of true
deeds and the wine of loving kindness-but, instead of being buried in
friendly soil, is allowed to lie about, kicked hither and thither in the dry
and empty garret of their brains, till they are sick of the sight and sound
of it and, to be rid of the thought of it, declare it to be no living truth
but only a lifeless truism? Yet in their brain that truism must rattle until
they shift to its rightful quarters in their heart, where it will rattle no
longer but take root and be a strength and loveliness.
[ 308 ] On Asking Advice
When people seek advice it is too often in the hope of finding the
adviser side with their second familiar self instead of their awful first
self of which they know so little.
[ 309 ] No Heel Taps
It must be remembered that a little conceit is no more to be endured
than a great one, but must be swept utterly away.
[ 310 ] Silence Before the Judge
Think not about thy sin so as to make it either less or greater in
thine own eyes. Bring it to Jesus and let Him show thee how vile a thing it
is. And leave it to Him to judge thee, sure that He will judge thee justly;
extenuating nothing, for He hath to cleanse thee utterly; and yet forgetting
no smallest excuse that may cover the amazement of thy guilt or witness for
thee that not with open eyes didst thou do the deed. . . . But again, I say,
let it be Christ that excuseth thee. He will do it to more purpose than
thou, and will not wrong thy soul by excusing thee a hair too much.
[ 311 ] Nothing So Deadening
Nothing is so deadening to the divine as an habitual dealing with the
outsides of holy things.
[ 312 ] Rounding and Completion
The only perfect idea of life is a unit, self-existent and creative.
That is God, the only One. But to this idea, in its kind, must every life,
to be complete as life, correspond; and the human correspondence to
self-existence is that the man should round and complete himself by taking
in to himself his Origin; by going back and in his own will adopting that
Origin.. . . Then has he completed the cycle by turning back upon his
history, laying hold of his Cause, and willing his own being in the will of
the only I AM.
[ 313 ] Immortality
"I cannot see what harm would come of letting us know a little-as much
at least as might serve to assure us that there was more of something on the
other side"-Just this; that, their fears allayed, their hopes encouraged
from any lower quarter, men would (as usual) turn away from the Fountain, to
the cistern of life. . . . That there are thousands who would forget God if
they could but be assured of such a tolerable state of things beyond the
grave as even this wherein we now live, is plainly to be anticipated from
the fact that the doubts of so many in respect of religion concentrate
themselves nowadays upon the question whether there is any life beyond the
grave; a question which . . . does not immediately belong to religion at
all. Satisfy such people, if you can, that they shall live, and what have
they gained? A little comfort perhaps-but a comfort not from the highest
source, and possibly gained too soon for their well-being. Does it bring
them any nearer to God than they were before? Is He filling one cranny more
of their hearts in consequence?
[ 314 ] The Eternal Now
The bliss of the animals lies in this, that, on their lower level, they
shadow the bliss of those-few at any moment on the earth-who do not "look
before and after, and pine for what is not" but live in the holy
carelessness of the eternal now.
[ 315 ] The Silences Below
Even the damned must at times become aware of what they are, and then
surely a terrible though momentary hush must fall upon the forsaken regions.
[ 316 ] Dipsomania
It is a human soul still, and wretched in the midst of all that whisky
can do for it. From the pit of hell it cries out. So long as there is that
which can sin, it is a man. And the prayer of misery carries its own
justification, when the sober petitions of the self-righteous and the unkind
are rejected. He who forgives not is not forgiven, and the prayer of the
Pharisee is as the weary beating of the surf of hell, while the cry of a
soul out of its fire sets the heartstrings of love trembling.
[ 317 ] Reminder
But the sparrow and the rook are just as respectable in reality, though
not in the eyes of the henwife, as the egg-laying fowl, or the dirt-gobbling
duck.
[ 318 ] Things Rare and Common
The best things are the commonest, but the highest types and the best
combinations of them are the rarest. There is more love in the world than
anything else, for instance; but the best love and the individual in whom
love is supreme are the rarest of all things.
[ 319 ] Holy Laughter
It is the heart that is not yet sure of its God that is afraid to laugh
in His presence.
[ 320 ] The Self
Vain were the fancy, by treatise, or sermon, or poem, or tale, to
persuade a man to forget himself. He cannot if he would. Sooner will he
forget the presence of a raging tooth. There is no forgetting of ourselves
but in the finding of our deeper, our true self-God's idea of us when He
devised us-the Christ in us. Nothing but that self can displace the false,
greedy, whining self, of which most of us are so fond and proud. And that
self no man can find for himself . . . "but as many as received Him, to them
gave He power to become the sons of God."
[ 321 ] Either-Or
Of all teachings that which presents a far distant God is the nearest
to absurdity. Either there is none, or He is nearer to every one of us than
our nearest consciousness of self.
[ 322 ] Prayer
So thinking, she began to pray to what dim, distorted reflection of God
there was in her mind. They alone pray to the real God, the Maker of the
heart that prays, who know His son Jesus. If our prayers were heard only in
accordance with the idea of God to which we seem to ourselves to pray, how
miserably would our infinite wants be met! But every honest cry, even if
sent into the deaf ear of an idol, passes on to the ears of the unknown God,
the heart of the unknown Father.
[ 323 ] A Bad Conscience
She was sorely troubled with what is, by huge discourtesy, called a bad
conscience-being in reality a conscience doing its duty so well that it
makes the whole house uncomfortable.
[ 324 ] Money
He had a great respect for money and much overrated its value as a
means of doing even what he called good: religious people generally do.
[ 325 ] Scrubbing the Cell
The things that come out of a man are they that defile him, and to get
rid of them a man must go into himself, be a convict, and scrub the floor of
his cell.
[ 326 ] The Mystery of Evil
Middling people are shocked at the wickedness of the wicked; Gibbie,
who knew both so well, was shocked only at the wickedness of the righteous.
He never came quite to understand Mr. Sclater: the inconsistent never can be
understood. That only which has absolute reason in it can be understood of
man. There is a bewilderment about the very nature of evil which only He who
made up capable of evil that we might be good, can comprehend.
[ 327 ] Prudence
No man can order his life, for it comes flowing over him from behind. .
. . The one secret of life and development is not to devise and plan but to
fall in with the forces at work-to do every moment's duty aright-that being
the part in the process allotted to us: and let come-not what will, for
there is no such thing -but what the eternal thought wills for each of us,
has intended in each of us from the first.
[ 328 ] Competition
No work noble or lastingly good can come of emulation any more than of
greed: I think the motives are spiritually the same.
[ 329 ] Method
By obeying one learns how to obey.
[ 330 ] Prudence
Had he had more of the wisdom of the serpent ... he would perhaps have
known that to try too hard to make people good is one way to make them
worse; that the only way to make them good is to be good-remembering well
the beam and the mote; that the time for speaking comes rarely, the time for
being never departs.
[ 331 ] How to Become a Dunce
Naturally capable, he had already made of himself rather a dull fellow;
for when a man spends his energy on appearing to have, he is all the time
destroying what he has, and therein the very means of becoming what he
desires to seem. If he gains his end, his success is his punishment.
[ 332 ] Love
He was... one who did not make the common miserable blunder of taking
the shadow cast by love-the desire, namely, to be loved-for love itself; his
love was a vertical sun, and his own shadow was under his feet.... But do
not mistake me through confounding, on the other hand, the desire to be
loved-which is neither wrong nor noble, any more than hunger is either wrong
or noble-and the delight in being loved, to be devoid of which a man must be
lost in an immeasurably deeper, in an evil, ruinous, yea, a fiendish
selfishness.
[ 333 ] Preacher's Repentance
O Lord, I have been talking to the people;
Thought's wheels have round me whirled a fiery zone,
And the recoil of my word's airy ripple
My heart heedful has purled up and blown.
Therefore I cast myself before thee prone:
Lay cool hands on my burning brain and press
From my weak heart the swelling emptiness.
[ 334 ] Deeds
I would go near thee-but I cannot press
Into thy presence-it helps not to presume.
Thy doors are deeds.
[ 335 ] Prayer
My prayers, my God, flow from what I am not;
I think thy answers make me what I am.
Like weary waves thought follows upon thought,
But the still depth beneath is all thine own,
And there thou mov'st in paths to us unknown.
Out of strange strife thy peace is strangely wrought;
If the lion in us pray-thou answerest the lamb.
[ 336 ] The House Is Not for Me
The house is not for me-it is for Him.
His royal thoughts require many a stair,
Many a tower, many an outlook fair
Of which I have no thought.
[ 337 ] Hoarding
In holy things may be unholy greed.
Thou giv'st a glimpse of many a lovely thing
Not to be stored for use in any mind,
But only for the present spiritual need.
The holiest bread, if hoarded, soon will breed
The mammon-moth, the having pride....
[ 338 ] The Day's First Job
With every morn my life afresh must break
The crust of self, gathered about me fresh.
[ 339 ] Obstinate Illusion
Have pity on us for the look of things,
When blank denial stares us in the face.
Although the serpent mask have lied before
It fascinates the bird.
[ 340 ] The Rules of Conversation
Only no word of mine must ever foster
The self that in a brother's bosom gnaws;
I may not fondle failing, nor the boaster
Encourage with the breath of my applause.
[ 341 ] A Neglected Form of Justice
We should never wish our children or friends to do what we would not do
ourselves if we were in their positions. We must accept righteous sacrifices
as well as make them.
[ 342 ] Good
"But if a body was never to do anything but what he knew to be good, he
would have to live half his time doing nothing"-"How little you must have
thought! Why, you don't seem even to know the good of the things you are
constantly doing. Now don't mistake me. I don't mean you are good for doing
them. It is a good thing to eat your breakfast, but you don't fancy it's
very good of you to do it. The thing is good-not you. . . . There are a
great many more good things than bad things to do."
[ 343 ] Thou Shalt Not Make Any Graven Image
"Could you not give me some sign, or tell me something about you that
never changes, or some other way to know you, or thing to know you by?"-"No,
Curdie: that would be to keep you from knowing me. You must know me in quite
another way from that. It would not be the least use to you or me either if
I were to make you know me in that way. It would be but to know the sign of
me-not to know me myself."
[ 344 ] How to Become a Dunce
A beast does not know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to
being a beast the less he knows it.
[ 345 ] Our Insolvency
If we spent our lives in charity, we should never overtake neglected
claims-claims neglected from the very begining of the relations of men.
[ 346 ] A Sad Pity
"If ever I prayed, mother, I certainly have not given it up."-"Ever
prayed, Ian! When a mere child you prayed like an aged Christian!"-"Ah,
mother, that was a sad pity! I asked for things of which I felt no need. I
was a hypocrite. I ought to have prayed like a little child."
[ 347 ] On Method
"Can a conscience ever get too fastidious, Ian?"-"The only way to find
out is always to obey it."
[ 348 ] Wishing
She sometimes wished she were good; but there are thousands of
wandering ghosts who would be good if they might without taking trouble; the
kind of goodness they desire would not be worth a life to hold it.
[ 349 ] Fear
Until a man has love, it is well he should have fear. So long as there
are wild beasts about, it is better to be afraid than secure.
[350] The Root of All Rebellion
It is because we are not near enough to Thee to partake of thy liberty
that we want a liberty of our own different from thine.
[ 351 ] Two Silly Young Women
They had a feeling, or a feeling had them, till another feeling came
and took its place. When a feeling was there, they felt as if it would never
go; when it was gone they felt as if it had never been; when it returned,
they felt as if it had never gone.
[ 352 ] Hospitality
I am proud of a race whose social relations are the last upon which
they will retrench, whose latest yielded pleasure is their hospitality. It
is a common feeling that only the well-to-do have a right to be hospitable.
The ideal flower of hospitality is almost unknown to the rich; it can hardly
be grown save in the gardens of the poor; it is one of their beatitudes.
[ 353 ] Boredom
It is not the banished demon only that wanders seeking rest, but souls
upon souls in ever growing numbers. The world and Hades swarm with them.
They long after a repose that is not mere cessation of labor; there is a
positive, an active rest. Mercy was only beginning to seek it, and that
without knowing what it was she needed. Ian sought it in silence with God;
she in crepitant intercourse with her kind. Naturally ready to fall into
gloom, but healthy enough to avoid it, she would rush at anything to do- not
to keep herself from thinking, for she had hardly begun to think, but to
escape that heavy sense of non-existence, that weary and testless want which
is the only form life can take to the yet unliving.
[ 354 ] Counting the Cost
I am sometimes almost terrified at the scope of the demands made upon
me, at the perfection of the self-abandonment required of me; yet outside of
such absoluteness can be no salvation. In God we live every commonplace as
well as most exalted moment of our being. To trust in Him when no need is
pressing, when things seem going right of themselves, may be harder than
when things seem going wrong.
[ 355 ] Realism
It is when we are most aware of the j'attitude of things that we are
most aware of our need of God, and most able to trust in Him. . . . The
recognition of inexorable reality in any shape, or kind, or way, tends to
rouse the soul to the yet more real, to its relations with higher and deeper
existence. It is not the hysterical alone for whom the great dash of cold
water is good. All who dream life instead of living it, require some similar
shock.
[ 356 ] Avarice
"Did you ever think of the origin of the word Avarice?" -"No."-"It
comes-at least it seems to me to come- from the same root as the verb have.
It is the desire to call things ours-the desire of company which is not of
our kind-company such as, if small enough, you would put in your pocket and
carry about with you. We call the holding in the hand, or the house, or the
pocket, or the power, having: but things so held cannot really be had;
it satisfy Abraham. But his faith was nevertheless righteousness.
[ 226 ] Perception of Duties
You may say this is not one's first feeling of duty. True: but the
first in reality is seldom the first perceived. The first duty is too high
and too deep to come first into consciousness. If anyone were born perfect
... the highest duty would come first into the consciousness. As we are
born, it is the doing of, or at least the honest trying to do many another
duty, that will at length lead a man to see that his duty to God is the
first and deepest and highest of all, including and requiring the
performance of all other duties whatever.
[ 227 ] Righteousness of Faith
To the man who has no faith in God, faith in God cannot look like
righteousness; neither can he know that it is creative of all other
righteousness toward equal and inferior lives.
[ 228 ] The Same
It is not like some single separate act of righteousness: it is the
action of the whole man, turning to good from evil-turning his back on all
that is opposed to righteousness, and starting on a road on which he cannot
stop, in which he must go on growing more and more righteous, discovering
more and more what righteousness is, and more and more what is unrighteous
in himself.
[ 229 ] Reckoned unto Us for Righteousness
With what life and possibility is in him, he must keep turning to
righteousness and abjuring iniquity, ever aiming at the righteousness of
God. Such an obedient faith is most justly and fairly, being all that God
Himself can require of the man, called by God righteousness in the man. It
would not be enough for the righteousness of God, or Jesus, or any perfected
saint, because they are capable of perfect righteousness.
[ 230 ] St. Paul's Faith
His faith was an act recognizing God as his law, and that is not a
partial act, but an all-embracing and all-determining action. A single
righteous deed toward one's fellow could hardly be imputed to a man as
righteousness. A man who is not trying after righteousness may yet do many a
righteous act: they will not be forgotten to him, neither will they be
imputed to him as righteousness.
[ 231 ] The Full-Grown Christian
He does not take his joy from himself. He feels joy in himself, but it
comes to him from others, not from himself-from God first, and from
somebody, anybody, everybody next.. .. He could do without knowing himself,
but he could not know himself and spare one of the brothers or sisters God
has given him. . . . His consciousness of himself is the reflex from those
about him, not the result of his own turning in of his regard upon himself.
It is not the contemplation of what God had made him, it is the being what
God has made him, and the contemplation of what God himself is, and what He
has made his fellows, that gives him his joy.
[ 232 ] Revealed to Babes
The wise and prudent must make a system and arrange things to his mind
before he can say, / believe. The child sees, believes, obeys-and knows he
must be perfect as his Father in heaven is perfect. If an angel, seeming to
come from heaven, told him that God had let him off, that He did not require
so much of him, but would be content with less ... the child would at once
recognize, woven with the angel's starry brilliancy, the flicker of the
flames of hell.
[ 233 ] Answer
"But how can God bring this about in me?"-Let Him do it and perhaps you
will know.
[ 234 ] Useless Knowledge
To teach your intellect what has to be learned by your whole being,
what cannot be understood without the whole being, what it would do you no
good to understand save you understood it in your whole being-if this be the
province of any man, it is not mine. Let the dead bury their dead, and the
dead teach their dead.
[ 235 ] The Art of Being Created
Let patience have her perfect work. Statue under the chisel of the
sculptor, stand steady to the blows of his mallet. Clay on the wheel, let
the fingers of the divine potter model you at their will. Obey the Father's
lightest word: hear the Brother who knows you and died for you.
[ 236 ] When We Do Not Find Him
Thy hand be on the latch to open the door at His first knock. Shouldst
thou open the door and not see Him, do not say He did not knock, but
understand that He is there, and wants thee to go out to Him. It may be He
has something for thee to do for Him. Go and do it, and perhaps thou wilt
return with a new prayer, to find a new window in thy soul.
[ 237 ] Prayer
Never wait for fitter time or place to talk to Him. To wait till thou
go to church or to thy closet is to make Him wait. He will listen as thou
walkest.
[ 238 ] On One's Critics
Do not heed much if men mock you and speak lies of you, or in goodwill
defend you unworthily. Heed not much if even the righteous turn their backs
upon you. Only take heed that you turn not from them.
[ 239 ] Free Will
He gave man the power to thwart His will, that, by means of that same
power, he might come at last to do His will in a higher kind and way than
would otherwise have been possible to him.
[ 240 ] On Idle Tongues
Let a man do right, not trouble himself about worthless opinion; the
less he heeds tongues, the less difficult will he find it to love men.
[ 241 ] Do We Love Light?
Do you so love the truth and the right that you welcome, or at least
submit willingly to, the idea of an exposure of what in you is yet unknown
to yourself-an exposure that may redound to the glory of the truth by making
you ashamed and humble? . . . Are you willing to be made glad that you were
wrong when you thought others were wrong?
[ 242 ] Shame
We may trust God with our past as heartily as with our future. It will
not hurt us so long as we do not try to hide things, so long as we are ready
to bow our heads in hearty shame where it is fit we should be ashamed. For
to be ashamed is a holy and blessed thing. Shame is a thing to shame only
those who want to appear, not those who want to be. Shame is to shame those
who want to pass their examination, not those who would get into the heart
of things. ... To be humbly ashamed is to be plunged in the cleansing bath
of truth.
[ 243 ] The Wakening
What a horror will it not be to a vile man .. . when his eyes are
opened to see himself as the pure see him, as God sees him! Imagine such a
man waking all at once, not only to see the eyes of the universe fixed upon
him with loathing astonishment, but to see himself at the same moment as
those eyes see him.
[ 244 ] The Wakening of the Rich
What riches and fancied religion, with the self-sufficiency they
generate between them, can make man or woman capable of, is appalling. ...
To many of the religious rich in that day, the great damning revelation will
be their behavior to the poor to whom they thought themselves very kind.
[ 245 ] Self-Deception
A man may loathe a thing in the abstract for years, and find at last
that all the time he has been, in his own person, guilty of it. To carry a
thing under our cloak caressingly, hides from us its identity with something
that stands before us on the public pillory. Many a man might read this and
assent to it, who cages in his own bosom a carrion bird that he never knows
for what it is, because there are points of difference in its plumage from
that of the bird he calls by an ugly name.
[ 246 ] Warning
"Oh God," we think, "How terrible if it were I!" Just so terrible is it
that it should be Judas. And have I not done things with the same germ in
them, a germ which, brought to its evil perfection, would have shown itself
the cankerworm, treachery? Except I love my neighbor as myself, I may one
day betray him! Let us therefore be compassionate and humble, and hope for
every man.
[ 247 ] The Slow Descent
A man may sink by such slow degrees that, long after he is a devil, he
may go on being a good churchman or a good dissenter and thinking himself a
good Christian.
[ 248 ] Justice and Revenge
While a satisfied justice is an unavoidable eternal event, a satisfied
revenge is an eternal impossibility.
[ 249 ] Recognition Hereafter
Our friends will know us then; for their joy, will it be, or their
sorrow? Will their hearts sink within them when they look on the real
likeness of us? Or will they rejoice to find that we were not so much to be
blamed as they thought?
[ 250 ] From Dante
To have a share in any earthly inheritance is to diminish the share of
the other inheritors. In the inheritance of the saints, that which each has
goes to increase the possession of the test.
[ 251 ] What God Means by "Good"
"They are good"; that is, "They are what I mean."
[ 252 ] All Things from God
All things are God's, not as being in His power-that of course-but as
coming from Him. The darkness itself becomes light around Him when we think
that verily He hath created the darkness, for there could have been no
darkness but for the light.
[ 253 ] Absolute Being
There is no word to represent that which is not God, no word for the
where without God in it; for it is not, could not be.
[ 254 ] Beasts
The ways of God go down into microscopic depths as well as up to
telescopic heights. ... So with mind; the ways of God go into the depths yet
unrevealed to us: He knows His horses and dogs as we cannot know them,
because we are not yet pure sons of God. When through our sonship, as Paul
teaches, the redemption of these lower brothers and sisters shall have come,
then we shall understand each other better. But now the Lord of Life has to
look on at the willful torture of multitudes of His creatures. It must be
that offenses come, but woe unto that man by whom they come! The Lord may
seem not to heed, but He sees and knows.
[ 255 ] Diversity of Souls
Every one of us is something that the other is not, and therefore knows
something-it may be without knowing that he knows it-which no one else
knows: and ... it is everyone's business, as one of the kingdom of light and
inheritor in it all, to give his portion to the rest.
[ 256 ] The Disillusioned
Loving but the body of Truth, even here they come to call it a lie, and
break out in maudlin moaning over the illusions of life.
[ 257 ] Evil
What springs from myself and not from God is evil: It is a perversion
of something of God's. Whatever is not of faith is sin; it is a stream cut
off-a stream that cuts itself off from its source and thinks to run on
without it.
[ 258 ] The Loss of the Shadow
I learned that it was not myself but only my shadow that I had lost. I
learned that it is better ... for a proud man to fall and be humbled than to
hold up his head in pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will
be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of
his work, is sure of his manhood.
[ 259 ] Love
It is by loving and not by being loved that one can come nearest to the
soul of another.
[ 260 ] From Spring to Summer
The birds grew silent, because their history kid hold on them,
compelling them to turn their words into deeds, and keep eggs warm, and hunt
for worms.
[ 261 ] The Door into Life
But the door into life generally opens behind us, and a hand is put
forth which draws us in backwards. The sole wisdom for man or boy who is
haunted with the hovering of unseen wings, with the scent of unseen roses,
and the subtle enticements of "melodies unheard," is work. If he follow any
of those, they will vanish. But if he work, they will come unsought.
[ 262 ] A Lonely Religion
There is one kind of religion in which the more devoted a man is, the
fewer proselytes he makes: the worship of himself.
[ 263 ] Love
Love makes everything lovely: hate concentrates itself on the one thing
hated.
[ 264 ] A False Method
It is not by driving away our brother that we can be alone with God.
[ 265 ] Assimilation
All wickedness tends to destroy individuality and declining natures
assimilate as they sink.
[ 266 ] Looking
"But ye was luikin' for somebody, auntie."-"Na. I was only jist
luikin'." ... It is this formless idea of something at hand that keeps men
and women striving to tear from the bosom of the world the secret of their
own hopes. How little they know that what they look for in reality is their
God!
[ 267 ] Progress
To tell the truth, I feel a good deal younger. For then I only knew
that a man had to take up his cross; whereas now I know that a man has to
follow Him.
[ 268 ] Providence
People talk about special providences. I believe in the providences,
but not in the specialty. . . . The so-called special providences are no
exception to the rule-they are common to all men at all moments.
[ 269 ] Ordinariness
That which is best He gives most plentifully, as is reason with Him.
Hence the quiet fullness of ordinary nature; hence the Spirit to them that
ask it.
[ 270 ] Forgiveness
I prayed to God that He would make me . . . into a rock which swallowed
up the waves of wrong in its great caverns and never threw them back to
swell the commotion of the angry sea whence they came. Ah, what it would be
actually to annihilate wrong in this way-to be able to say, "It shall not be
wrong against me, so utterly do I forgive it!" . . . But the painful fact
will show itself, not less curious than painful, that it is more difficult
to forgive small wrongs than great ones. Perhaps, however, the forgiveness
of the great wrongs is not so true as it seems. For do we not think it a
fine thing to forgive such wrongs and so do it rather for our own sakes than
for the sake of the wrongdoer? It is dreadful not to be good, and to have
bad ways inside one.
[ 271 ] Visitors
By all means tell people, when you are busy about something that must
be done, that you cannot spare the time for them except they want of you
something of yet more pressing necessity; but tell them, and do not get rid
of them by the use of the instrument commonly called the cold shoulder. It
is a wicked instrument.
[ 272 ] Prose
My own conviction is that the poetry is far the deepest in us and that
the prose is only broken-down poetry; and likewise that to this our lives
correspond. ... As you will hear some people read poetry so that no mortal
could tell it was poetry, so do some people read their own lives and those
of others.
[ 273 ] Integrity
I would not favor a fiction to keep a whole world out of hell. The hell
that a lie would keep any man out of is doubtless the very best place for
him to go to. It is truth . . . that saves the world!
[ 274 ] Contentment
Let me, if I may, be ever welcomed to my room in winter by a glowing
hearth, in summer by a vase of flowers; if I may not, let me think how nice
they would be, and bury myself in my work. I do not think that the road to
contentment lies in despising what we have not got. Let us acknowledge all
good, all delight that the world holds, and be content without it.
[ 275 ] Psychical Research
Offered the Spirit of God for the asking .. . they betake themselves to
necromancy instead, and raise the dead to ask their advice, and follow it,
and will find some day that Satan had not forgotten how to dress like an
angel of light. . . . What religion is there in being convinced of a future
state? Is that to worship God? It is no more religion than the belief that
the sun will rise tomorrow is religion. It may be a source of happiness to
those who could not believe it before, but it is not religion.
[ 276 ] The Blotting Out
If He pleases to forget anything, then He can forget it. And I think
that is what He does with our sins- that is, after He has got them away from
us, once we are clean from them altogether. It would be a dreadful thing if
He forgot them before that. . . .
[ 277 ] On a Chapter in Isaiah
The power of God is put side by side with the weakness of men, not that
He, the perfect, may glory over His feeble children ... but that He may say
thus: "Look, my children, you will never be strong with my strength. I have
no other to give you."
[ 278 ] Providence
And if we believe that God is everywhere, why should we not think Him
present even in the coincidences that sometimes seem so strange? For, if He
be in the things that coincide, He must be in the coincidence of those
things.
[ 279 ] No Other Way
The Old Man of the Earth stooped over the floor of the cave, raised a
huge stone, and left it leaning. It disclosed a great hole that went
plumb-down. "That is the way," he said. "But there are no stairs. You must
throw yourself in. There is no other way."
[ 280 ] Death
"You have tasted of death now," said the Old Man. "Is it good?" "It is
good," said Mossy. "It is better than life." "No," said the Old Man. "It is
only more life."
[ 281 ] Criterion of a True Vision
This made it the more likely that he had seen a true vision; for
instead of making common things look commonplace, as a false vision would
have done, it had made common things disclose the wonderful that was in
them.
[ 282 ] One Reason for Sex
One of the great goods that come of having two parents is that the one
balances and rectifies the motions of the other. No one is good but God. No
one holds the truth, or can hold it, in one and the same thought, but God.
Our human life is often, at best, but an oscillation between the extremes
which together make the truth.
[ 283 ] Easy Work
Do you think the work God gives us to do is never easy? Jesus says His
yoke is easy, His burden is light. People sometimes refuse to do God's work
just because it is easy. This is sometimes because they cannot believe that
easy work is His work; but there may be a very bad pride in it. ... Some,
again, accept it with half a heart and do it with half a hand. But however
easy any work may be, it cannot be well done without taking thought about
it. And such people, instead of taking thought about their work, generally
take thought about the morrow, in which no work can be done any more than in
yesterday. The Holy Present!
[ 284 ] Lebensraum
It is only in Him that the soul has room. In knowing Him is life and
its gladness. The secret of your own heart you can never know; but you can
know Him who knows its secret.
[ 285 ] Nature
If the flowers were not perishable, we should cease to contemplate
their beauty, either blinded by the passion for hoarding the bodies of them,
or dulled by the hebetude of commonplaceness that the constant presence of
them would occasion. To compare great things with small, the flowers wither,
the bubbles break, the clouds and sunsets pass, for the very same holy
reason (in the degree of its application to them) for which the Lord
withdrew from His disciples and ascended again to His Father-that the
Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, the Soul of things, might come to them and
abide with them, and so, the Son return, and the Father be revealed. The
flower is not its loveliness, and its loveliness we must love, else we shall
only treat them as flower-greedy children, who gather and gather, and fill
hands and baskets from a mere desire of acquisition.
[ 286 ] For Parents
A parent must respect the spiritual person of his child, and approach
it with reverence, for that too looks the Father in the face and has an
audience with Him into which no earthly parent can enter even if he dared to
desire it.
[ 287 ] Hoarding
The heart of man cannot hoard. His brain or his hand may gather into
its box and hoard, but the moment the thing has passed into the box, the
heart has lost it and is hungry again. If a man would have, it is the Giver
he must have; . .. Therefore all that He makes must be free to come and go
through the heart of His child; he can enjoy it only as it passes, can enjoy
only its life, its soul, its vision, its meaning, not itself.
[ 288 ] Today and Yesterday
This day's adventure, however, did not turn out like yesterday's,
although it began like it; and indeed today is very seldom like yesterday,
if people would note the differences. . . . The princess ran through passage
after passage, and could not find the stair of the tower. My own suspicion
is that she had not gone up high enough, and was searching on the second
instead of the third floor.
[ 289 ] Obstinate Illusion
He jumped up, as he thought, and began to dress, but, to his dismay,
found that he was still lying in bed. "Now then I will!" he said. "Here
goes! I am up now!" But yet again he found himself snug in bed. Twenty times
he tried, and twenty times he failed; for in fact he was not awake, only
dreaming that he was.
[ 290 ] Possessions
Happily for our blessedness, the joy of possession soon palls.
[ 291 ] Lost in the Mountains
The fear returned. People had died in the mountains of hunger, and I
began to make up my mind to meet the worst. I had not yet learned that the
approach of any fate is just the preparation for that fate. I troubled
myself with the care of that which was not impending over me. . . . Had I
been wearier and fainter, it would have appeared less dreadful.
[ 292 ] The Birth of Persecution
Clara's words appeared to me quite irreverent . . . but what to answer
here I did not know. I almost began to dislike her; for it is often
incapacity for defending the faith they love which turns men into
persecutors.
[ 293 ] Daily Death
We die daily. Happy those who daily come to life as well.
[ 294 ] On Duty to Oneself
"But does a man owe nothing to himself?"-"Nothing that I know of. I am
under no obligation to myself. How can I divide myself and say that the one
half of me is indebted to the other? To my mind, it is a mere fiction of
speech."-"But whence, then, should such a fiction arise?"-"From the dim
sense of a real obligation, I suspect-the object of which is mistaken. I
suspect it really springs from our relation to the unknown God, so vaguely
felt that a false form is readily accepted for its embodiment. .
[ 295 ] A Theory of Sleep
It may be said of the body in regard of sleep as well as in regard of
death, "It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. . . ." No one can
deny the power of the wearied body to paralyze the soul; but I have a
correlate theory which I love, and which I expect to find true-that, while
the body wearies the mind, it is the mind that restores vigor to the body,
and then, like the man who has built him a stately palace, rejoices to dwell
in it. I believe that, if there be a living, conscious love at the heart of
the universe, the mind, in the quiescence of its consciousness in sleep,
comes into a less disturbed contact with its origin, the heart of the
creation; whence gifted with calmness and strength for itself, it grows able
to impart comfort and restoration to the weary frame. The cessation of labor
affords but the necessary occasion; makes it possible, as it were, for the
occupant of an outlying station in the wilderness to return to his Father's
house for fresh supplies. . . . The child-soul goes home at night, and
returns in the morning to the labors of the school.
[ 296 ] Sacred Idleness
Work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred
idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.
[ 297 ] The Modern Bane
Former periods of the world's history when that blinding
self-consciousness which is the bane of ours was yet undeveloped. . .
[ 298 ] Immortality
To some minds the argument for immortality drawn from the apparently
universal shrinking from annihilation must be ineffectual, seeing they
themselves do not shrink from it. ... If there is no God, annihilation is
the one thing to be longed for, with all that might of longing which is the
mainspring of human action. In a word, it is not immortality the human heart
cries out after, but that immortal, eternal thought whose life is its life,
whose wisdom is its wisdom. . . . Dissociate immortality from the living
Immortality, and it is not a thing to be desired.
[ 299 ] Prayer
"O God!" I cried and that was all. But what are the prayers of the
whole universe more than expansion of that one cry? It is not what God can
give us, but God that we want.
[ 300 ] Self
I sickened at the sight of Myself; how should I ever get rid of the
demon? The same instant I saw the one escape: I must offer it back to its
source-commit it to Him who had made it. I must live no more from it but
from the source of it; seek to know nothing more of it than He gave me to
know by His presence therein... . What flashes of self-consciousness might
cross me, should be God's gift, not of my seeking, and offered again to Him
in every new self-sacrifice.
[ 301 ] Visions
A man may see visions manifold, and believe them all; . . . something
more is needed-he must have that presence of God in his soul of which the
Son of Man spoke, saying "If a man love me, he will keep my words; and my
Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with
him."
[ 302 ] The Impervious Soul
As for any influence from the public officers of religion, a contented
soul may glide through them all for a long life, unstruck to the last,
buoyant and evasive as a bee among hailstones.
[ 303 ] An Old Garden
Not one of the family had ever cared for it on the ground of its
old-fashionedness; its preservation was owing merely to the fact that their
gardener was blessed with a wholesome stupidity rendering him incapable of
unlearning what his father, who had been gardener there before him, had had
marvelous difficulty in teaching him. We do not half appreciate the benefits
to the race that spring from honest dullness. The clever people are the ruin
of everything.
[ 304 ] Experience
Those who gain no experience are those who shirk the King's highway for
fear of encountering the Duty seated by the roadside.
[ 305 ] Difficulties
It often seems to those in earnest about the right as if all things
conspired to prevent their progress. This, of course, is but an appearance,
arising in part from this, that the pilgrim must be headed back from the
side-paths into which he is constantly wandering.
[ 306 ] A Hard Saying
There are those who in their very first seeking of it are nearer to the
Kingdom of Heaven than many who have for years believed themselves of it. In
the former there is more of the mind of Jesus, and when He calls them they
recognize Him at once and go after Him; while the others examine Him from
head to foot, and finding Him not sufficiently like the Jesus of their
conception, turn their backs and go to church or chapel or chamber to kneel
before a vague form mingled of tradition and fancy.
[ 307 ] Truisms
A mere truism, is it? Yes, it is, and more is the pity; for what is a
truism, as most men count truisms? What is it but a truth that ought to have
been buried long ago in the lives of men-to send up forever the corn of true
deeds and the wine of loving kindness-but, instead of being buried in
friendly soil, is allowed to lie about, kicked hither and thither in the dry
and empty garret of their brains, till they are sick of the sight and sound
of it and, to be rid of the thought of it, declare it to be no living truth
but only a lifeless truism? Yet in their brain that truism must rattle until
they shift to its rightful quarters in their heart, where it will rattle no
longer but take root and be a strength and loveliness.
[ 308 ] On Asking Advice
When people seek advice it is too often in the hope of finding the
adviser side with their second familiar self instead of their awful first
self of which they know so little.
[ 309 ] No Heel Taps
It must be remembered that a little conceit is no more to be endured
than a great one, but must be swept utterly away.
[ 310 ] Silence Before the Judge
Think not about thy sin so as to make it either less or greater in
thine own eyes. Bring it to Jesus and let Him show thee how vile a thing it
is. And leave it to Him to judge thee, sure that He will judge thee justly;
extenuating nothing, for He hath to cleanse thee utterly; and yet forgetting
no smallest excuse that may cover the amazement of thy guilt or witness for
thee that not with open eyes didst thou do the deed. . . . But again, I say,
let it be Christ that excuseth thee. He will do it to more purpose than
thou, and will not wrong thy soul by excusing thee a hair too much.
[ 311 ] Nothing So Deadening
Nothing is so deadening to the divine as an habitual dealing with the
outsides of holy things.
[ 312 ] Rounding and Completion
The only perfect idea of life is a unit, self-existent and creative.
That is God, the only One. But to this idea, in its kind, must every life,
to be complete as life, correspond; and the human correspondence to
self-existence is that the man should round and complete himself by taking
in to himself his Origin; by going back and in his own will adopting that
Origin.. . . Then has he completed the cycle by turning back upon his
history, laying hold of his Cause, and willing his own being in the will of
the only I AM.
[ 313 ] Immortality
"I cannot see what harm would come of letting us know a little-as much
at least as might serve to assure us that there was more of something on the
other side"-Just this; that, their fears allayed, their hopes encouraged
from any lower quarter, men would (as usual) turn away from the Fountain, to
the cistern of life. . . . That there are thousands who would forget God if
they could but be assured of such a tolerable state of things beyond the
grave as even this wherein we now live, is plainly to be anticipated from
the fact that the doubts of so many in respect of religion concentrate
themselves nowadays upon the question whether there is any life beyond the
grave; a question which . . . does not immediately belong to religion at
all. Satisfy such people, if you can, that they shall live, and what have
they gained? A little comfort perhaps-but a comfort not from the highest
source, and possibly gained too soon for their well-being. Does it bring
them any nearer to God than they were before? Is He filling one cranny more
of their hearts in consequence?
[ 314 ] The Eternal Now
The bliss of the animals lies in this, that, on their lower level, they
shadow the bliss of those-few at any moment on the earth-who do not "look
before and after, and pine for what is not" but live in the holy
carelessness of the eternal now.
[ 315 ] The Silences Below
Even the damned must at times become aware of what they are, and then
surely a terrible though momentary hush must fall upon the forsaken regions.
[ 316 ] Dipsomania
It is a human soul still, and wretched in the midst of all that whisky
can do for it. From the pit of hell it cries out. So long as there is that
which can sin, it is a man. And the prayer of misery carries its own
justification, when the sober petitions of the self-righteous and the unkind
are rejected. He who forgives not is not forgiven, and the prayer of the
Pharisee is as the weary beating of the surf of hell, while the cry of a
soul out of its fire sets the heartstrings of love trembling.
[ 317 ] Reminder
But the sparrow and the rook are just as respectable in reality, though
not in the eyes of the henwife, as the egg-laying fowl, or the dirt-gobbling
duck.
[ 318 ] Things Rare and Common
The best things are the commonest, but the highest types and the best
combinations of them are the rarest. There is more love in the world than
anything else, for instance; but the best love and the individual in whom
love is supreme are the rarest of all things.
[ 319 ] Holy Laughter
It is the heart that is not yet sure of its God that is afraid to laugh
in His presence.
[ 320 ] The Self
Vain were the fancy, by treatise, or sermon, or poem, or tale, to
persuade a man to forget himself. He cannot if he would. Sooner will he
forget the presence of a raging tooth. There is no forgetting of ourselves
but in the finding of our deeper, our true self-God's idea of us when He
devised us-the Christ in us. Nothing but that self can displace the false,
greedy, whining self, of which most of us are so fond and proud. And that
self no man can find for himself . . . "but as many as received Him, to them
gave He power to become the sons of God."
[ 321 ] Either-Or
Of all teachings that which presents a far distant God is the nearest
to absurdity. Either there is none, or He is nearer to every one of us than
our nearest consciousness of self.
[ 322 ] Prayer
So thinking, she began to pray to what dim, distorted reflection of God
there was in her mind. They alone pray to the real God, the Maker of the
heart that prays, who know His son Jesus. If our prayers were heard only in
accordance with the idea of God to which we seem to ourselves to pray, how
miserably would our infinite wants be met! But every honest cry, even if
sent into the deaf ear of an idol, passes on to the ears of the unknown God,
the heart of the unknown Father.
[ 323 ] A Bad Conscience
She was sorely troubled with what is, by huge discourtesy, called a bad
conscience-being in reality a conscience doing its duty so well that it
makes the whole house uncomfortable.
[ 324 ] Money
He had a great respect for money and much overrated its value as a
means of doing even what he called good: religious people generally do.
[ 325 ] Scrubbing the Cell
The things that come out of a man are they that defile him, and to get
rid of them a man must go into himself, be a convict, and scrub the floor of
his cell.
[ 326 ] The Mystery of Evil
Middling people are shocked at the wickedness of the wicked; Gibbie,
who knew both so well, was shocked only at the wickedness of the righteous.
He never came quite to understand Mr. Sclater: the inconsistent never can be
understood. That only which has absolute reason in it can be understood of
man. There is a bewilderment about the very nature of evil which only He who
made up capable of evil that we might be good, can comprehend.
[ 327 ] Prudence
No man can order his life, for it comes flowing over him from behind. .
. . The one secret of life and development is not to devise and plan but to
fall in with the forces at work-to do every moment's duty aright-that being
the part in the process allotted to us: and let come-not what will, for
there is no such thing -but what the eternal thought wills for each of us,
has intended in each of us from the first.
[ 328 ] Competition
No work noble or lastingly good can come of emulation any more than of
greed: I think the motives are spiritually the same.
[ 329 ] Method
By obeying one learns how to obey.
[ 330 ] Prudence
Had he had more of the wisdom of the serpent ... he would perhaps have
known that to try too hard to make people good is one way to make them
worse; that the only way to make them good is to be good-remembering well
the beam and the mote; that the time for speaking comes rarely, the time for
being never departs.
[ 331 ] How to Become a Dunce
Naturally capable, he had already made of himself rather a dull fellow;
for when a man spends his energy on appearing to have, he is all the time
destroying what he has, and therein the very means of becoming what he
desires to seem. If he gains his end, his success is his punishment.
[ 332 ] Love
He was... one who did not make the common miserable blunder of taking
the shadow cast by love-the desire, namely, to be loved-for love itself; his
love was a vertical sun, and his own shadow was under his feet.... But do
not mistake me through confounding, on the other hand, the desire to be
loved-which is neither wrong nor noble, any more than hunger is either wrong
or noble-and the delight in being loved, to be devoid of which a man must be
lost in an immeasurably deeper, in an evil, ruinous, yea, a fiendish
selfishness.
[ 333 ] Preacher's Repentance
O Lord, I have been talking to the people;
Thought's wheels have round me whirled a fiery zone,
And the recoil of my word's airy ripple
My heart heedful has purled up and blown.
Therefore I cast myself before thee prone:
Lay cool hands on my burning brain and press
From my weak heart the swelling emptiness.
[ 334 ] Deeds
I would go near thee-but I cannot press
Into thy presence-it helps not to presume.
Thy doors are deeds.
[ 335 ] Prayer
My prayers, my God, flow from what I am not;
I think thy answers make me what I am.
Like weary waves thought follows upon thought,
But the still depth beneath is all thine own,
And there thou mov'st in paths to us unknown.
Out of strange strife thy peace is strangely wrought;
If the lion in us pray-thou answerest the lamb.
[ 336 ] The House Is Not for Me
The house is not for me-it is for Him.
His royal thoughts require many a stair,
Many a tower, many an outlook fair
Of which I have no thought.
[ 337 ] Hoarding
In holy things may be unholy greed.
Thou giv'st a glimpse of many a lovely thing
Not to be stored for use in any mind,
But only for the present spiritual need.
The holiest bread, if hoarded, soon will breed
The mammon-moth, the having pride....
[ 338 ] The Day's First Job
With every morn my life afresh must break
The crust of self, gathered about me fresh.
[ 339 ] Obstinate Illusion
Have pity on us for the look of things,
When blank denial stares us in the face.
Although the serpent mask have lied before
It fascinates the bird.
[ 340 ] The Rules of Conversation
Only no word of mine must ever foster
The self that in a brother's bosom gnaws;
I may not fondle failing, nor the boaster
Encourage with the breath of my applause.
[ 341 ] A Neglected Form of Justice
We should never wish our children or friends to do what we would not do
ourselves if we were in their positions. We must accept righteous sacrifices
as well as make them.
[ 342 ] Good
"But if a body was never to do anything but what he knew to be good, he
would have to live half his time doing nothing"-"How little you must have
thought! Why, you don't seem even to know the good of the things you are
constantly doing. Now don't mistake me. I don't mean you are good for doing
them. It is a good thing to eat your breakfast, but you don't fancy it's
very good of you to do it. The thing is good-not you. . . . There are a
great many more good things than bad things to do."
[ 343 ] Thou Shalt Not Make Any Graven Image
"Could you not give me some sign, or tell me something about you that
never changes, or some other way to know you, or thing to know you by?"-"No,
Curdie: that would be to keep you from knowing me. You must know me in quite
another way from that. It would not be the least use to you or me either if
I were to make you know me in that way. It would be but to know the sign of
me-not to know me myself."
[ 344 ] How to Become a Dunce
A beast does not know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to
being a beast the less he knows it.
[ 345 ] Our Insolvency
If we spent our lives in charity, we should never overtake neglected
claims-claims neglected from the very begining of the relations of men.
[ 346 ] A Sad Pity
"If ever I prayed, mother, I certainly have not given it up."-"Ever
prayed, Ian! When a mere child you prayed like an aged Christian!"-"Ah,
mother, that was a sad pity! I asked for things of which I felt no need. I
was a hypocrite. I ought to have prayed like a little child."
[ 347 ] On Method
"Can a conscience ever get too fastidious, Ian?"-"The only way to find
out is always to obey it."
[ 348 ] Wishing
She sometimes wished she were good; but there are thousands of
wandering ghosts who would be good if they might without taking trouble; the
kind of goodness they desire would not be worth a life to hold it.
[ 349 ] Fear
Until a man has love, it is well he should have fear. So long as there
are wild beasts about, it is better to be afraid than secure.
[350] The Root of All Rebellion
It is because we are not near enough to Thee to partake of thy liberty
that we want a liberty of our own different from thine.
[ 351 ] Two Silly Young Women
They had a feeling, or a feeling had them, till another feeling came
and took its place. When a feeling was there, they felt as if it would never
go; when it was gone they felt as if it had never been; when it returned,
they felt as if it had never gone.
[ 352 ] Hospitality
I am proud of a race whose social relations are the last upon which
they will retrench, whose latest yielded pleasure is their hospitality. It
is a common feeling that only the well-to-do have a right to be hospitable.
The ideal flower of hospitality is almost unknown to the rich; it can hardly
be grown save in the gardens of the poor; it is one of their beatitudes.
[ 353 ] Boredom
It is not the banished demon only that wanders seeking rest, but souls
upon souls in ever growing numbers. The world and Hades swarm with them.
They long after a repose that is not mere cessation of labor; there is a
positive, an active rest. Mercy was only beginning to seek it, and that
without knowing what it was she needed. Ian sought it in silence with God;
she in crepitant intercourse with her kind. Naturally ready to fall into
gloom, but healthy enough to avoid it, she would rush at anything to do- not
to keep herself from thinking, for she had hardly begun to think, but to
escape that heavy sense of non-existence, that weary and testless want which
is the only form life can take to the yet unliving.
[ 354 ] Counting the Cost
I am sometimes almost terrified at the scope of the demands made upon
me, at the perfection of the self-abandonment required of me; yet outside of
such absoluteness can be no salvation. In God we live every commonplace as
well as most exalted moment of our being. To trust in Him when no need is
pressing, when things seem going right of themselves, may be harder than
when things seem going wrong.
[ 355 ] Realism
It is when we are most aware of the j'attitude of things that we are
most aware of our need of God, and most able to trust in Him. . . . The
recognition of inexorable reality in any shape, or kind, or way, tends to
rouse the soul to the yet more real, to its relations with higher and deeper
existence. It is not the hysterical alone for whom the great dash of cold
water is good. All who dream life instead of living it, require some similar
shock.
[ 356 ] Avarice
"Did you ever think of the origin of the word Avarice?" -"No."-"It
comes-at least it seems to me to come- from the same root as the verb have.
It is the desire to call things ours-the desire of company which is not of
our kind-company such as, if small enough, you would put in your pocket and
carry about with you. We call the holding in the hand, or the house, or the
pocket, or the power, having: but things so held cannot really be had;