Precept and Practice – OCTOBER 10 – A Rebuking Vision

To live for our own pleasure, wealth, or fame, to live idly, to make the will for self-indulgence the mistress of the house of life, weaves woe and war and wretchedness for men and women, rags and poisoned shirts and death-shrouds for the poor folk who are sacrificed to our gods.   It is hard to have patience with these persons, or even to make that divine excuse for them, ‘They know not what they do,’ for most of them do know. A ‘grain of conscience makes them sour.’   A vision of true life arises amidst their death and looks them in the face.   They hide their eyes and wish it away.   When they gaze again it is gone;  but they do not quite forget the rebuking vision.

Of all the sad things in this world there is nothing so sad as that – to have seen the good and to have let it go.

Reverend Stopford A. Brooke

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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