Precept and Practice – JULY 23 – Self-sacrifice

Self-denial, for the sake of self-denial, does no good;  self-sacrifice for its own sake is no religious act at all.   If you give up a meal for the sake of showing power over self, or for the sale of self-discipline, it is the most miserable of all delusions.   You are not more religious in doing this than before.   This is mere self-culture, and self-culture being occupied for ever about self, leaves you only in that circle of self from which religion is to free you;  but to give up a meal that one you love may have it, is properly a religious act – no hard and dismal duty, because made easy by affection.    To bear pain for the sake of bearing it, has in it no moral quality at all, but to bear it rather than surrender truth, or in order to save another, is positive enjoyment as well as ennobling to the soul…..   This element of love is that which makes this doctrine an intelligible and blessed truth.   So sacrifice alone, bare and unrelieved, is ghastly, unnatural, and dead; but self-sacrifice, illuminated by love, is warmth and life;  it is the death of Christ, the life of God, the blessedness, and only proper life of man.

(The Reverend F. W. Robertson)

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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