Character and Conduct – 18 February – Power
OH, do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks! Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come in you by the grace of God.
There is nothing which comes to seem more foolish to us, I think, as years go by, than the limitations which have been quietly set to the moral possibilities of man. They are placidly and perpetually assumed.
‘ You must not expect too much of him,’ so it is said.
‘ You must remember that he is only a man after all’
‘Only a man!’ That sounds to me as if one said, ‘You may launch your boat and sail a little way, but you must not expect to go very far. It is only the Atlantic Ocean.’ Why, man’s moral range and reach is practically infinite, at least no man has yet begun to comprehend where its limits lies. Man’s powers of conquering temptation, of despising danger, of being true to principle, have never been even indicated, save in Christ.
PHILLIPS BROOKS
VIRGIL said of the winning crew in his boat-race,
‘They can, because they believe they can.’
oooOOOooo
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.
Suffolk Vicar 