Precept & Practice – JANUARY 14 – Circumstances

We hold that happenings which may even compel the heart to break cannot break the human spirit, or rob it of its most essential qualities.   They can rob the body.   Bacteria invisible to the naked eye can wear out the body’s endurance.   They can turn it into a workshop for the manufacture of physical agony, or they can steep nerves and brain in unconsciousness.   But there is no such limit to the endurance of the soul – it has access to springs of peace and fortitude which the body cannot reach.   Souls within bodies are like dwellers in a wave-washed city, besieged by land but not by sea.   And the city may be taken, but its inhabitants, with all that is worth transport, will have embarked already on some glorious fresh adventure, banners flying and sails set.

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