Being and Doing – 19 October – Religion

RELIGION has been treated as if it were a special exercise of a special power, not as if it were the possible loftiness of everything that a man could think, or be, or do.

The result has been that certain men, and certain parts of men, have stood forth as distinctively religious, and that the possible religiousness of all life has been but very imperfectly felt and acknowledged.   This has made religion weak.   Man’s strongest powers, man’s intensest passions, have been involved in the working out of his career, and in the development of his relations with his fellow-men.  What has been left over from religion has been the weakest part of him, his sentiments and fears;  and so religion, very often, has come to seem a thing of mystic mood and frightened superstitions.

PHILLIPS BROOKS

PURE religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

S. James i. 27

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These quotes are from ‘Being and Doing’ A selection of helpful thoughts from various authors arranged for daily reading.

Collected by Constance M Whishaw and first published in 1908 for members of the Being and Doing Guild whose object is to do all they can for the relief of suffering and misery.

Most of the writers are 19th Century Christians from Britain and Europe who were committed to living their faith through deeds as well as words – Being AND Doing.

For many years these words have kept me company and encouraged me on the journey of faith.  I hope they will encourage others also.