Precept and Practice – JULY 6 – Influence

The infirmities, the sorrows, the offences of others touch me by the connection of the one life.  I cannot sin alone:  I cannot, let me thank God, strive alone.   I cannot separate myself from the chequered record of human falls and achievements which every day offers for my discipline.   Each crime is a wound to the body of which I am a member.   Each sacrifice is the sign of an aspiration which is for me also.   The moral environment in which I act bears as certainly the effects of all human character as the atmosphere which I breathe bears the effects of all physical influences.   It is my own cause which is at stake there in the homes of thoughtless luxury:  my own cause which is at stake there in the haunts of squalid misery.   I may close my eyes to the facts which press upon me, but I cannot escape from them.   Fellowship, influence, failure: this is the teaching of nature.  And can we imagine any idea more able to lend fresh dignity to the feeblest powers than the spectacle of this vast fellowship which passes into a fellowship still wider, on which we do not pause to dwell now?   Can we imagine any motive for labour and for love more prevailing than this conviction that subtle influences pass off from each one of us at every moment which must work for ever:  that at every moment we are all entering on the inheritance of one life which we shall mar or make richer for those who will receive it from our hands?   Can we imagine any sorrow more crushing than that burden of sin which clouds our brightest hopes with present failure?   Nature shows us the ideal, the motive, the sorrow, and leaves us in the face of unreconciled contrasts. 

(Bishop Westcott – The Victory of the Cross)

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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