Character and Conduct – 19 February – An Ideal Level

NO man who, being a Christian, desires the kingdom of God, can justly neglect giving his energy to the bettering of the social, physical, and educational condition of the poor, the diseased, and the criminal classes.   But he is not a Christian, or he has not realised the problem fully, if that is all he does.   Social improvement is a work portions of which any one can do, in which all ought to share; but if we who follow Christ desire to do the best work in that improvement, and in the best way, we ought to strive – while we join in the universal movement towards a juster society – to give a spiritual life to that movement;  to keep it at an ideal level;  to free it from mere materialism;  to maintain in it the monarchy of self-sacrifice;  to fix its eyes on invisible and unworldly truths;  to supply it with noble and spiritual faiths;  to base all associations of men on the ground of their spiritual union – all being children of God, and brothers of one another, in the love and faith by which Jesus lived;  and to maintain the dignity of this spiritual communion of men in faith in their immortal union with God.  This is the fight of faith we, as fellow-workers with God, shall have to wage;  and this not only binds us up with the poor, but with the rich, not only with the ignorant, but the learned; for on these grounds all men are seen as stripped of everything save of their humanity and their divine kinship…   Improve, then, the material condition and the knowledge of all who are struggling for justice;  it is part of your life which if you neglect, you are out of touch with the new life;  but kindle in it, uphold and sanctify in it, the life which is divine, the communion with man of God, without union with whose character all effort for social improvement will revert to new miseries and new despair.

The Gospel of Joy, 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.