Precept and Practice – AUGUST 22 – Inspiration
Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, we must still say that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us.
(George Eliot)
It is the highest prerogative of our spiritual nature that, when we think best, it is not our own thoughts we think that it is possible to rise above ourselves as individual minds, and to yield ourselves up to a mind or thought that is other and larger than our own. All intellectual and spiritual progress may be said to be measured by the degree in which we cease to think our own thoughts, abnegate all self-assertion, and let our minds become the pure media of the universal and absolute intelligence.
(John Caird – Fundamental Ideas of Christianity)
We see but half the causes of our deeds,
Seeking them wholly in the outer life,
And heedless of the encircling spirit-world,
Which, though unseen, is felt, —and sows in us
All germs of pure and world-wide purposes.
(J. R. Lowell)
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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
Suffolk Vicar 