Precept and Practice – JULY 4 – Personal Influence

The secret power of personal influence is immeasurable.   None of us can tell how far our personal influence may extend, how deep it may penetrate.   You drop a pebble into a still pool, and you see it form a circle, which gradually extends till it fades from your vision, but from your vision only.   It still goes on widening, though you no longer see it.   And so true is this, that it is a well-known fact in mathematical science that if you were to drop a stone in mid-ocean when it is agitated by a tempest it would make a circle which, in spite of intervening waves, would go on enlarging its circumference till its progress was arrested by the shore.   So mysterious, though invisible, may be the ever widening sphere of personal influence, even of the poorest and humblest.

(Canon MacColl – Life Here and Hereafter)

Personal influence…..   that subtle virtue which is always going out of a man who lives consistently a life of entire unselfishness and absolute trust in God.

(Canon MacColl – Life Here and Hereafter)

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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