Precept and Practice – NOVEMBER 10 – Belief

What a religion makes a man become is of more consequence than what it makes him profess.   For belief is a mere means: the end of all creeds must be assumed to be the Transformation of Character.

And that creed and character are separable and not even necessarily allied – is an assertion which the testimony of all ecclesiastical history requires us to admit, and the experience of every day compels us most painfully to verify.   The little influence for good produced by the reiterated profession of belief in many articles of a theoretic creed, and the passionate advocacy of doctrinal dogmas by those who violate the primary principles of the gospel, would rather tend to impress upon one who deems likeness to Christ as the one thing needful for his disciple, the deliberate conviction that zeal for doctrine is not the first of Christian graces, nor want of a complete speculative creed the greatest loss a Christian can sustain.

(F. Myers)

Going to church will not make you a saint, any more than going to school will make you a scholar.

(Reverend C. H. Spurgeon)

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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