Precept and Practice – JULY 3 – Influence
No act or thought of ours stands by itself. It is always related to something else. The little handle of the steam valve on a locomotive is a small thing; but turn it, and you start the engine with a whole train behind it. In the same way, an act which may seem to us trivial will carry a train of consequences after it. Our rashness, or neglect, or carelessness, may cause a disaster in the moral world as surely as a lighted spark, heedlessly dropped in a powder magazine, may lay half a town in ruins.
(Canon MacColl – Life Here and Hereafter)
Our many deeds, the thoughts that we have thought,
They go out from us thronging every hour;
And in them all is folded up a power
That on the earth doth move them to and fro;
And mighty are the marvels they have wrought In hearts we know not and may never know.
(F. W. Faber)
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
Suffolk Vicar 