Precept and Practice – OCTOBER 3 – Responsibility

There are a great many instances in which the crimes of others are only a little less chargeable to our carelessness than to their criminality.   ‘Study to be quiet and mind your own business,’ enjoins the apostle, but if in our indolence or preoccupation we choose to neglect our own business, we may not refuse to share the blame with those whose trust was not theirs only, but ours also.   No one of us has a right, by neglect of his own duty, to thrust upon another an overwhelming temptation to wrong-doing and then wonder if in some moment of desperate perplexity that other yields to it.   There is a wise and righteous caution born not of suspicion but of justice and of love, which is widely different from distrust.

Bishop Potter (Sermons of the City)

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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