Precept & Practice – JANUARY 7 – The High Calling

Pray, and, as you pray, review those dangers and temptations which you know will beset you, and in the heat of conflict you will keep ‘the law in calmness made.’   Live with the Book.   Let it be often before your eyes, often in your hands, and always in your heart.   In the midst of your earthly calling here, it will remind you of that other calling, ‘the high calling of God.’   Make that calling and election sure.   You will have to endure hardness.   Don’t shirk it;  count it all joy.   You will have to deny self.   Is there anything more contemptible than the self-indulgent life of the rich to-day who stand by and see the perishing of the poor?

Bear your part bravely and unfalteringly in the redeeming of the world;  be a fellow-worker with God in this His great purpose, and you will find that in the service of others for the sake of Christ, though you seemed to lose your life, you have gained it; though you seemed to be spending, your treasure is laid up in heaven;  though you gave yourself freely, you have been growing into that highest and ideal manhood, ‘the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.’

J. Lewis Paton. (From a Letter)

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From the Introduction to Precept and Practice

The kindly welcome given to my other little books, ‘Being and Doing’ and ‘Character and Conduct,’ must be my excuse for adding another collection of extracts to the number now in circulation.

The quotations are gathered from the books of many earnest thinkers, and deal with Life in all its length and breadth, with ourselves, our characters, our plain unvarnished faults and weaknesses, our often untoward circumstances, and with all that drags us down;-  with our purposes, our religion, our love and friendships, and with all that uplifts us;-  with our relation to others, our influence and responsibilities, and finally with those stages of our journey which bring us to the Road’s Last Turn and to the Silent Land.

CONSTANCE  M. WHISHAW