Precept & Practice – APRIL 30 – Superficial Tumults

If we are really Christ’s…..   the needs of men shall touch us just as keenly as they touch Him, but the sneers and strifes of men shall pass us by as they pass by Him and leave no mark on His unruffled life.

It will be just as impossible for us to work ourselves into a passion about yesterday’s gossip as it was for Jesus to become a partisan in the quarrel about the undivided inheritance.   And yet for us, just as for Him, this will not mean a cold and selfish separation from our brethren.   We shall be infinitely closer to their real life when we separate ourselves from their outside strifes and superficial pride, and know and love them truly by knowing and loving them in God.   

This is the power and progress of true Christianity.   It leads us into, it abounds in, peace.   It is a brave, rigorous peace, full of life, full of interest and work.   It is a peace that means thoroughness, that refuses to waste its force and time in little superficial tumults which come to nothing, while there is so much real work to be done, so much real help to be given, and such a real life to be lived with God.   That Peace, His peace, may Jesus give to us all.

Bishop Phillips Brooks

Banish the trifling, oh so trifling matter, by things more deserving of attention, and in a couple of months you will wonder why it upset you so.

Let tiresome wounding trifles die unremarked.   – You begin by feeling it waste to let them go by in silence, and you end by thinking it greater waste to spend thought on them.

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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