Precept and Practice – JULY 20 – The Power of Understanding

What is the power of understanding?…..   We might sum it all up into one word and call it sympathy, but to give it its broader significance, it is the love of God and one’s fellow-creatures, and the knowledge that we ourselves, though not copies, are but types in our hopes and fears, our inmost thoughts and desires, of every other human being in the world.

Our life in the world?…..   It is to live the life that Jesus lived, to be the brother of men, to live and die for love of God’s children.   That is all. It has a thousand forms, it makes a thousand varying demands, but its root is one-Love men with all your heart and soul.   Do, say, and think nothing that violates Love: that is the worship of God the Father.  

(Reverend Stopford A. Brooke)

Love as many persons and as many creatures as you possibly can.   Love is the only power by which you can make yourself rich in a moral world. 

(John Stuart Blackie)

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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