Precept and Practice – SEPTEMBER 16 – The Inexorableness of God

If we are selfish and indolent, we may talk of temperament, and of heredity, and circumstance, and the clay and the potter;  and all the while God is waiting for the only true apology – sacrifice and honest work.   It is not enough to confess that we have robbed Him;  we must pay the price of every sin;  and the price is righteousness.   Not pain – mere pain cancels no debt, though it may be a necessary factor in the exaction of payment.   But if we have been weak, we must coin a deeper strength from weakness;  and if we have been hard and bitter and revengeful, we must distil love from hate.

The saint is the only explanation of the sinner that is accepted by God;  and He not only accepts, but demands it;  not only demands, but impels it.    For the final guarantee of man’s divinity is the humanity of God.

It is this Divine insistence, this relentlessness of God’s grace, that is our hope.   Words and tears are of no avail: we must pay the uttermost farthing.

Hate might spare us:  love never will.   And if it seems a hard doctrine, this inexorableness of God, we must remember that His exaction of righteousness from unrighteousness is likewise His exaction of infinite joy from pain, and peace from thwarted passion and selfish agony.

(May Kendall)

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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