Precept & Practice – JANUARY 25 – The Importance of Beginnings

Did you ever change your feelings by force?   Do you suppose any one ever did?   I have found that if one fights for good behaviour, God makes one a present of the good feelings…..  I don’t think it is possible to over-rate the hardness of the first close struggle with any natural passion, but indeed the easiness of later steps is often quite beyond one’s expectations.   The free gift of grace by which God perfects our efforts may come in many ways, but I am convinced that it is the common experience of Christians that it does come.

J. H. Ewing

The importance of beginnings is the veriest commonplace of practical virtue.  That first step which costs, we know, cannot be too costly, if it starts the enterprise aright.

Bishop Phillips Brooks

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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