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Character and Conduct – 18 March – God’s Children

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Character and Conduct – 18 March – God’s Children

HALLOW the name of God, hallow His character, in all noble and good humanity.

That is not difficult.  But to hallow God’s character in men and women who are not good, in sinful humanity – that is not so easy.   Yet, if we would be true to this prayer of Christ, this too is part of our duty.   The evil are also the children of God.   They have not hallowed His character, but abandoned its worship.   Nevertheless they cannot get rid of it.   That divine thing lies hid, ineradicably, beneath their evil doing, and evil thought.   The truth, justice, love, piety, and goodness of God are in abeyance in wrong-doer, but they are not dead in him.   They cannot die;  nothing can destroy them.   And we, whose desire it should be to save men, can, if we have faith in the indestructible God in men, pierce to this immortal good in the evil, appeal to it, and call it forth to light, like Lazarus, from the tomb.   This we can do, if, like Jesus, we love men enough;  if our faith that the evil are still God’s children be deep and firm enough.   In this we can keep closest to Christ, for it was His daily way of life; and divinely beautiful it was.   He hallowed God’s character in the criminal and the harlot.   He saw the good beneath the evil.   At His touch it leaped into life, and its life destroyed the death in the sinner’s soul.   It seems as if He said when He looked into the face of the wrong-doer,

‘Father, hallowed be Thy character.’   No lesson for life can be wiser or deeper than this.   It ought to rule all our doings with the weak and guilty.   It is at the very centre of the prayer, 

‘Hallowed be Thy name.’

The Gospel of Joy, STOPFORD BROOKE.

ALWAYS at the door

Of foulest hearts, the angel-nature yet 

Knocks to return and cancel all its debt.

J. R. LOWELL.

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

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