Being and Doing – 5 April – Principle Applied to Detail

ARNOLD certainly did teach us that we could not cut our life into slices, and say, ‘In this slice your actions are indifferent, and you need not trouble yourself about them one way or another; but in this slice mind what you are about, for they are important.’  He taught us that in this wonderful world, no boy or man can tell which of his actions is indifferent and which is not, and that by a thoughtless word or look we may lead astray a brother for whom Christ died.  He taught as that life is a whole, made up of actions, and thoughts, and longings, great and small, noble and ignoble; therefore the only true wisdom, for boy or man, is to bring the whole life into obedience to Him whose world we live in, and Who has purchased us with His blood; and that whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever we do, we are to do all in His Name and to His glory; in such teaching, faithfully, as it seems to me, following that of Paul of Tarsus, who was in the habit of meaning what he said, and who set up this standard for every boy and man in his time.

‘I think it lies with those who say that such teaching will not do for us now, to show why a teacher in the nineteenth century is to teach a lower standard than one in the first.’

TOM HUGHES

HE that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.  

S. Luke, xvi. 10

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