Precept and Practice – JULY 1 – Silence

Perhaps, in these days especially, too much cannot be said in praise of silence.    ‘Were this an altar building time,’ writes Carlyle, ‘altars might still be raised to silence and secrecy,’ for ‘silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves, that at length they may emerge full formed and majestic into the daylight of life which thenceforth they are to rule.’   Bees will not work except in darkness, thought will not work except in silence, neither will virtue work except in secrecy.   As Emerson says most truly:  ‘Real action is in silent moments.   The epochs of our lives are not in the visible facts of a calling, our marriage, our acquisition of an office and the like, but in a silent thought by the wayside as we walk, in a thought which revises our entire manner of life.’

And by silence is not meant hours with book or pen, when the brain is working hard, but the quiet of reception, when, being in harmony with God in nature and in man, we allow the Spirit to fill us. It is the silence of attention and listening.

(The Reverend G. H. S. Walpole – Personality and Power)

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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