IN Mrs. Charles’ well-known book, ‘Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta family,’ there is a beautiful passage where Fritz and Eva, beginning their young life together, take into their house a penitent woman who was thought to be near death. 

Eva writes;  ‘There is a little room over the porch that we had set apart as a guest-chamber, and very sweet it was to me that Bertha should be its first inmate;  very sweet to Fritz and me that our home should be what our Lord’s heart is, a refuge for the outcast, the penitent, the solitary, and the sorrowful.’

WE all say we follow Christ, but most of us only follow Him and His cross – part of the way. When we are told that our Lord bore our sins, and was wounded for our transgressions, I suppose that meant that He felt as if they were His own, in His great love for us.   But when you shrink from bearing your fellow-creatures’ transgressions, it shows that your love is small.

RADIANT with heavenly pity, lost in care 

For those he knew not, save as fellow lives.

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 them here so that readers may be inspired to imitate the example of the authors.