Character and Conduct Part 50

Aspiration

NOVEMBER 2

"If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated?"

Th.o.r.eAU.

"The thing we long for,--That we are For one transcendent moment!

Before the Present, poor and bare, Can make its sneering comment!

Longing is G.o.d's fresh heavenward will With our poor earthward striving; We quench it that we may be still Content with merely living; But would we learn that heart's full scope Which we are hourly wronging, Our lives must climb from hope to hope And realise our longing!

Ah! let us hope that to our praise Good G.o.d not only reckons The moments when we tread His ways, But when the spirit beckons-- That some slight good is also wrought Beyond self-satisfaction, When we are simply good in thought, Howe'er we fail in action."

LOWELL.

There shall never be one Lost Good

NOVEMBER 3

"Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name?

Builder and Maker, Thou, of houses not made with hands!

What, have fear of change from Thee Who art ever the same?

Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power expands?

There shall never be one lost good! What was shall live as before; The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist, Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist, When eternity confirms the conception of an hour.

The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, The pa.s.sion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, Are music sent up to G.o.d by the lover and the bard; Enough that He heard it once; we shall hear it by-and-bye."

_Abt Vogler_, ROBERT BROWNING.

Struggling

NOVEMBER 4

"If what shone afar so grand Turn to nothing in thy hand, On again, the virtue lies In the struggle, not the prize."

R. M. MILNES.

"One would like one's own failures to be one's friends' stepping stones.... I am trying to teach myself that if one _has_ been working, one has not necessarily been working to good purpose, and that one may waste strength and forces of all sorts, as well as time."

_Mrs. Ewing's Letters._

"Rise ... as children learn, be thou Wiser for falling."

TENNYSON.

True Patience

NOVEMBER 5

"There are those who think it is Christian patience to sit down by the wayside to endure the storm, crying in themselves, 'G.o.d is hard on me, but I will bear His smiting'; but their endurance is only idleness which is ign.o.ble, and hiding from the battle which is cowardice. Or they cry, 'I am the victim of Fate, but I will be patient'--as if any one could be a victim if G.o.d be love, or as if there were such a thing as blind fate, when the order of the world is to lead men into righteousness; when to be victor and not victim is the main word of that order. No, the severity of the battle is to force us into self-forgetfulness; and this lazy resignation, this wailing patience, is mere self-remembrance. The true patience is activity of faith and hope and righteousness in the cause of men for the sake of G.o.d's love of them; is in glad proclamation of the gospel; is in wielding the sword of the Truth of G.o.d against all that injures mankind."

_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.

"Wise men ne'er sit and wail their loss, But cheerly seek how to redress their harms.

What though the mast be now blown overboard, The cable broke, the holding anchor lost, And half our sailors swallowed in the flood-- Yet lives our Pilot still."

SHAKESPEARE.

The Appet.i.te for Condolence

NOVEMBER 6

"It is right to exercise a great deal of self-restraint in speaking of our troubles, and not to let the appet.i.te for condolence grow on us."

_Studies in the Christian Character_, Bishop PAGET.

"Carlyle says, 'My father had one virtue which I should try to imitate--he never spoke of what was disagreeable and past,' and my mother was the same; she turned her back at once upon the last months, which she put away for ever like a sealed volume."

_The Story of my Life_, AUGUSTUS HARE.

"Hacket's motto, 'Serve G.o.d and be cheerful.'"

"The Sharp Ferule of Calamity"

NOVEMBER 7

"It is to keep a man awake, to keep him alive to his own soul and its fixed design of righteousness, that the better part of moral and religious education is directed; not only that of words and doctors, but the sharp ferule of calamity under which we are all G.o.d's scholars till we die."

_The Life of R. L. Stevenson_, GRAHAM BALFOUR.

"The best help is not to bear the troubles of others for them, but to inspire them with courage and energy to bear their burdens for themselves and meet the difficulties of life bravely."