Character and Conduct – 6 August – Friendship

FOR good or evil a man’s moral and spiritual outlook is altered by the outlook of his comrade.   It is inevitable, and in all true comradeship it makes for truth, and generosity, and freedom.   It is an incalculable enlargement of human responsibility, because it constitutes us, in a measure, guardians each of the other’s soul.   And yet, it is never the suppression of a weak individuality by a strong one.   That is not even true discipleship, but spiritual tyranny.   What the play of two personalities brings about is a fuller, deeper self-realisation on either side.   The experience of comradeship, with all the new knowledge and insight that it brings into a life, can leave no ideal unchanged, but the change is not of the nature of a substitution, but of continuous growth. It is not mental or moral bondage, but deliverance from both.

AND it is the deliverance from bondage to ourselves.   It is our refuge from pride.   More than all else, comradeship teaches us to walk humbly with God.   For while God’s trivial gifts may allow us to grow vain and self. complacent, His great gifts, if we once recognise them, make us own our deep unworthiness, and bow our heads in unspeakable gratitude.   We may have rated our deserts high, and taken flattery as our just due;  we may have competed for the world’s prizes, and been filled with gratified ambition at securing them.   But however high we rate ourselves, in the hour in which the soul is conscious of its spiritual comrades, we know that God’s great infinite gift of human love is something we have never earned, could never earn by merit or achievement, by toil, or prayer, or fasting. It has come to us straight out of the heart of the eternal Fatherhood;  and all our pride and vanity fall away, and our lives come again to us as the lives of little children.

Comradeship, MAY KENDALL

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