Precept and Practice – OCTOBER 8 – A Citizen’s Duty

What is a citizen’s duty, as implied in the teaching and spirit of the religion of the New Testament?   I may not undertake to define it in detail, but plainly it is in his dealings with his fellow-citizens, with the commonwealth, and with the nation, to illustrate that peculiar spirit which is the distinctive characteristic of Christ and His religion.   That characteristic is not its courage in rebuking wrong, nor its justice in dealing with sin, nor its explicitness in defining the divine authority of the personal conscience and moral truth, though all these are in it;  but in one word, in its unselfishness.   Looking back over the ministry of Christ and His apostles this is the one principle that interprets the whole.   These men and their divine Leader were burning and throbbing with what the author of ‘Ecce Homo’ has called the enthusiasm of humanity.   They saw in their fellows not the actual but the ideal man.   They saw in the meanest and guiltiest wretch that lived possibilities of the divinest graces that human character can illustrate.   And when they went out from the presence of their Master they went with the determination to make the world better and nobler and happier by what they should do for it.

Bishop Potter (Sermons of the City)

oooOOOooo

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