Precept and Practice – OCTOBER 1 – Religion in our Occupations

The Christian man or woman can make a Christian household a place where you see the traces of the highest life, of the life and love of God at every turn;  for he holds by Christ, lives with His life, sees with His eyes, loves with His love, thinks His thoughts…..

Is there not a perfection of order, a considerateness, a special kind of beauty even in the business arrangements of the shop, and in the home of Christian people, which belong to a higher life than the life of mere trade or domestic convenience?…..   Oh! the difference it would make to life in the shop, or in the home, if we remembered – here is business indeed, business which brings with it a personal claim of God upon me and the power of the life of God enabling me in Christ to respond to it.   Thus business is transformed:  Christ risen from the dead, raises all this common work belonging to the order of nature, up to the level of the joy of Grace.

The Reverend George Congreve (The Spiritual Order)

The newness of a new life must not be in new circumstances, but in a new spirit.   This is the very thing that religion has to do for you;-  to make your studying and your money – getting attain their full ideal, to fill them out to their true capacity, to take their sordidness out of them and fill them with their true spirit.   It is with you in your occupation that religion has to do.

Bishop Phillips Brooks

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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