Precept and Practice – JUNE 8 – Brooding

Pessimism never conquered life, and never ennobled a character.   Transient sorrows (and all sorrows are by their very nature transient), finely endured, and worked through to their other side, inform us of ourselves and of our fellow-men, and strengthen the powers of the soul by the exercise they force;  but sorrow made chronic, so far as we can, is an unmixed evil;  and miserable as the victim of appetite is, the victim of cherished sorrow is as enslaved morally as the other is physically…..

The best way to have oil in our lamps and to be ready for the change to health, is to systematically, by incessant effort of the will, put away the habit of continually dwelling on the pain, grief and difficulties of life;  to say to oneself – ‘I will not think of them’;  to watch over oneself whenever self-brooding or reckoning up one’s injuries attacks the will – and to stamp them down into silence in the name of the Love they injure and repress for how can we think of God or man if we are brooding on ourselves?   That is the way of cure.   It is troublesome, but it is effective.

Reverend Stopford A. Brooke.

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