Precept & Practice – JANUARY 13 – Circumstances

There is a certain parallel between the relation of the soul to circumstances and that of the flower to the mineral kingdom.   That small brown object, the seed, looking no better than a mineral itself, has somewhere concealed within it a distinct intention of becoming a rose.   To this end it works steadily upward. It uses earth and water, air and sunshine, when it can, strives to ignore them when it cannot, resists them when it must; and, with the ordinary chances, becomes a rose in due time.   It is a miraculous proceeding, a thing that we should know with absolute certainty could not happen, if we did not know that it does!   Surely, if a human being has only as much real or apparent power of moulding or subduing circumstances as an acorn or other seed, it would be wise to study certain aspects of his relation to them.   But some of us hold that he has infinitely more power, not only of adapting the circumstances of time and space, but of fulfilling his own life-purpose apart from them, in a world they cannot enter.

May Kendall

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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