Character and Conduct – 11 January – Character and Service

NEVER should we forget the close connection between character and service, between inward nobleness and outward philanthropy.   We are not here to dream, or even to build up in grace and beauty our individual life;  we are responsible, each in our own little way, for trying to leave this sad world happier, this evil world better than we found it.   In this way slackness is infamy, and power to the last particle means duty.   Each of us, in some degree, must have the ambition to be an ‘Alter Christus’ – another Christ, shouldering with the compassionate Son of God to lift our shadowed world from the gates of death.

WHAT men want is not talent, it is purpose;  not the power to achieve, but the will to labour.

BULWER LYTTON

‘AWAKE, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.’   This is the principle with which we should look forth upon the world and our own life at the beginning of this year.   We look upon the world;  it seems as if it were sleeping still, like Rome, as if it needed as much as ever to hear the shout, ‘Awake, thou that sleepest.!

STOPFORD BROOKE

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

Collected by Constance M Whishaw and first published in 1905 as a follow up to her volume of Daily Readings for members of the Being and Doing Guild who asked for an additional volume

In her preface Whishaw writes:

‘This collection of noble thoughts expressed by men and women of past and present ages who have endeavoured to leave the world a little better than they found it.’

It is my hope in publishing the her readers may be inspired to imitate the example of the authors.