Precept and Practice – OCTOBER 9 – Haves and Have Nots

Most of you belong to the class of the ‘haves.’   Would that I could tell you all I know of the ‘have nots.’   Would that I could raise up behind the careless or the ambitious life of cultivated homes a true picture of East London.   Truly has it been said that men only enjoy a feast by forgetting the starving.   If the life of the poor were realised;  if it were known how they spend their days in dull labour, looking forward to sleep as the greatest joy;  if it were known that for the majority of men there is neither ‘long’ nor short vacation, hardly the bank holiday;  if it were known how children capable of understanding ‘the best’ endure school as a drudgery, and go on to old age with hardly a memory of joy;

— if all this were not only known but realised, felt by us as it is felt by God – God looks down on the people He has fearfully and wonderfully made, He sees in each the likeness to His dear Son, He knows how each might have joy and do good;  God looks down to-day and sees them dwarfed by bad air, trampled on in the crowd;  God knows their sadness and their selfishness – if we saw them as God sees them, if we felt about them as the loving Father feels, then there would be an end of the waste of money and the waste of thought, an end to vulgar feasts and to vain talk, an end to schemes of life which take no account of the poor.

Canon Barnett (The Service of God)

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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