Precept and Practice – OCTOBER 13 – An Energy of Spiritual Force

We need, I repeat, an energy of spiritual force.

The world is full of eager and restless endeavours to better the conditions of life, to bring amusement and knowledge within the reach of all.   It is well, but it is not enough.   You cannot bring back life to the dead by painting and clothing the corpse.   As long as we remain within the region of material and intellectual powers, our highest hopes will be doomed to disappointment.   Selfishness in the accumulation and the use of wealth – of wealth of body and mind – will assert its supremacy.   We must invoke and receive the new life of God:  we must see ourselves and others in connection with the unseen.   We must confess and use the powers of the new age.   We must appeal to the spiritual of which all else is a transitory symbol.

Bishop Westcott (The Victory of the Cross)

Every love is religious in proportion to its pure intensity;  in proportion to its purity, the measure of its spiritualness;  in proportion to its intensity, the measure in which it floats the being out over all shoals of selfishness.

Heber Newton

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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