Character and Conduct – 3 October – The Lord’s Supper

THE Lord’s Supper, the right and need of every man to feed on God, the bread of divine sustenance, the wine of divine inspiration offered to every man, and turned by every man into what form of spiritual force the duty and the nature of each man required, how grand and glorious its mission might become!   No longer the mystic source of unintelligible influence;  no longer, certainly, the test of arbitrary orthodoxy;  no longer the initiation rite of a selected brotherhood;  but the great sacrament of man!…   There is no other rallying place for all the good activity and worthy hopes of man.   It is in the power of the great Christian Sacrament, the great human sacrament, to become that rallying place.   Think how it would be, if some morning all the men, women, and children in this city who mean well, from the reformer meaning to meet some giant evil at the peril of his life to the school-boy meaning to learn his day’s lesson with all his strength, were to meet in a great host at the table of the Lord, and own themselves His children, and claim the strength of His bread and wine, and then go out with calm, strong, earnest faces to their work.   How the communion service would lift up its voice and sing itself in triumph, the great anthem of dedicated human life!   Ah, my friends, that, nothing less than that, is the real Holy Communion of the Church of the living God.

PHILLIPS BROOKS

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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.