Precept and Practice – AUGUST 13 – Many Waters cannot quench Love

The human love by which men have drawn nearest to God is not blind, but clear-sighted.   The selfish and the treacherous may try to deceive it, often with apparent success.   Love is so patient, so swift to pardon or extenuate, so prone to idealise, so unwilling to exact, that it seems to make treachery easy.   We become sure of it, and if our natures are base, we sometimes prize it less than the wary, calculating sentiment miscalled love, which sets a price upon itself, and wins that price. We are heed-less, disloyal, ungrateful.   But the day of reckoning is certain to come, a day in which we realise that its own nature, and no illusion concerning our natures, has kept love from forsaking us.

We have easily ignored our treacheries and insincerities.  But no treachery or insincerity has been ignored by love.   It has been slow indeed to judge, it has sought long and wistfully for evidence that should exculpate us;  but we are judged at last.   We have posed as marble;  we are known for what we are – extremely common clay.   And it is just the people to whom we looked for constant blind belief who have divined the truth of us.

The jealous, emotional egotist is easy, to cheat – a pressure of the hand, a tone of voice, will give him back his confidence – because he loves, not us, but our love for him.   But the tender, the humble, the selfless – these have known us all the while.   These, whom we almost scorned for the blindness of their constancy, have been hoping against hope.   Of course they remain faithful to us.   They are not the slaves of their emotions, whether of sympathy or contempt, and the admiration may have died out of their love for us, but it has left a great Christ-like compassion.

(May Kendall)

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.

(The Bible)

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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