Precept and Practice – OCTOBER 21 – Weeping and Working

There are a good many of us who, from the elevation of a thoughtful observation, are looking down on the city in which we live.   How fevered and faithless and morally insensible seem multitudes of those who live in it.   How can one who loves his fellow-men, who thinks of the possibilities of good as well as of evil that there are in human nature, who sees daily the divine likeness being stamped out of many a young and innocent nature by the coarse and wicked influences that surround it – how can such a one look down on all this and not weep?

God forbid that such a spectacle should leave any one of us insensible or unmoved!   But when that is said, let us never forget that with Christ, weeping was but the prelude and forerunner of working.   There were tears first, but then what heroic and untiring toil!

Bishop Potter (Sermons of the City)

There is no time to parley.   There is a large crop, and it is ripe.   We must not say: Let us wait for the harvest.   The crop is ripe, and it is perishing.   We need the workers, the reapers, immediately – hearty ones, without much talk.

Tolstoi

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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