Precept & Practice – JANUARY 10 – Sweet Reasonableness

The character and discourse of Jesus Christ possess, I have elsewhere often said, two signal powers:  mildness and sweet reasonableness.   The latter, the power which so puts before our view duty of every kind as to give it the force of an intuition, as to make it seem – to make the total sacrifice of our ordinary self seem – the most simple, natural, winning, necessary thing in the world, has been hitherto applied with but a very limited range, it is destined to an infinitely wider application, and has a fruitfulness which will yet transform the world.

Matthew Arnold (Essays in Criticism)

A man conscious of God could not be conscious of self or fret to draw notice to his words and acts.

Canon Barnett (The Service of God)

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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