Precept & Practice – MAY 1 – Burdens

…..Within, in the secret soul, carefully hidden from men – what do you keep which weigh down your activity for God, which checks your feet when you wish to help mankind as Jesus helped them?   Small and petty jealousies which gnaw away your high endeavour, which eat the heart out of your ideals and make mean your imagination;  dog-faced memories of injuries done to you;  monkey vanities which tell you hour by hour that you are not appreciated at your full value;  foolish fancies, decked, like the jay, in borrowed plumes, which you know you never will attain;  self-deceits which cheat you into following them, till you are lost in a morass of disappointment or of shame;  hatreds, envies, false ambitions, ill thoughts that cluster round forbidden food, like flies round poison-all silent, all unknown to others, hid in the locked chambers of the heart, and only God aware of them-what of these? Is there anything which more burdens the Christian runner?   Were they known, could you speak them, they would die; you would be ashamed to keep them for a moment.   But cherished as they are, like vipers in a blanket, they go with you everywhere!   When you walk the streets, they are there;  when you lie down at night, there they are.  Even in your dreams they are your companions.   They rise and mock you at your work;  they attend you into society.   They master and enslave the soul.   They must be banished.   Kill them by a fierce anger with them, starve them out by giving them no food.   Fling them off the shoulders of your life; fling them off your heart. 

Reverend Stopford A. Brooke (The Gospel of Joy)

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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