Precept and Practice – JUNE 24 – Serenity

Rectitude and uprightness are the health and purity of a man’s soul.   A man is then right and straight;  he is whole within himself, and all things are as they should be.   There should never be any transporting imaginations;  no discomposure of mind, for that is a failure in the government of a man’s spirit.   There ought to be no eagerness or inordinancy towards the things of this world.   We should not be borne down by the objects of sense.   There ought to be serenity and calmness and clear apprehensions, fair weather within;…..   an intellectual calmness;  a just balance;  an equal poise of a man’s mind;  no perplexity of soul;  no confusion;  no provocation;  no disturbance;  no perturbation.   A man should not be borne off from himself, or put out of himself, because things without him are ungoverned and dis-ordered;  for these disturbances do unhallow the mind;  lay it open; and make it common. 

Benjamin Whichcote

The whole universe in which we live is arranged in such a fashion that, if we would be at all in harmony with it, we must have patience.

Reverend Stopford A. Brooke

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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