Precept & Practice – MARCH 10 – Fault-finding

Fault must be found;  faults must be told, errors corrected.   Reproof and admonition are duties of householders to their families, and of all true friends to one another…..   How much of it is well-timed, well-pointed, deliberate, just, and so spoken as to be effective?

‘A wise reprover upon an obedient ear’ is one of the rare things spoken of by Solomon – the rarest, perhaps, to be met with.

H. Beecher Stowe (Little Foxes)

We have been on our knees….  we have deplored our errors daily, hourly, and confessed that ‘the remembrance of them is grievous unto us, the burden of them is intolerable,’ and then we draw near in the Sacrament to that Incarnate Divinity Whose infinite love covers all our imperfections with the mantle of His perfections.   But when we return, do we take our servants and children by the throat because they are as untrained and awkward and careless in earthly things as we have been in heavenly?   Does no remembrance of Christ’s infinite patience temper our impatience, when we have spoken seventy times seven, and our words have been disregarded?   There is no mistake as to the sincerity of the religion which the Church excites.  What we want is to have it used in common life, instead of going up like hot air in a fireplace to lose itself in the infinite abysses above. 

H. Beecher Stowe (Little Foxes)

oooOOOooo

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