Precept and Practice – JULY 12 – Personality

Which is it that sways us most?   Is it the teacher who tells us, ‘This is the way you are to think, this is what you are to believe, and what you are to do’?

Or is it the friend who blends his life and heart and mind with ours, with whom we argue and differ, but take something each from the other, which assimilates with what is most our own?   Surely we yield more freely to the one who helps to foster our particular personality than to him who would thrust it aside, and replace it by his own.

(The Reverend Henry Latham – Pastor Pastorum)

After the call of the fishermen on the lakeside, He was constantly accompanied by His disciples, and from that time forth the education of His followers was always in His mind.   This education went on like the quiet processes of nature;  the subjects of it never felt that they were being educated at all, but those who were of the right natures slowly changed in the direction of what He would have them be.   He did not make them all copies after one pattern.   That which was native to the man, and which marked him off from all other men, was lovingly preserved.   He intensified in each man his proper life, which grew with all the greater vigour through being let to follow its own bent.   As yet we hear of no lessons given to the disciples by themselves, they only shared what was said to the crowd:  this may have been as much as they could then receive, and probably their greatest profit came from what was not given in the way of lessons at all, from words dropped in daily intercourse, and from watching their Master’s doings in the thousand little occurrences of their wayfaring daily life.

(The Reverend Henry Latham – Pastor Pastorum)

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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