Precept and Practice – NOVEMBER 11 – A Divine Experience
If religious character is developed and strengthened in the battle of the world, it is no less true that religious talents are cultivated in quiet contemplation and communion alone with God. Then the worshippers who do all their religion in public, there are none more profoundly to be pitied; and he who knows not what it is to go out from the crowd sometimes and be alone with God is a stranger to the most divine experience that comes to sanctify a Christian heart.
(Professor Henry Drummond – The Ideal Life)
It may indeed be phantasy when I
Essay to draw from all created things
Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings;
And trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie
Lessons of love and earnest piety.
In mock of this belief, it brings
Nor fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity.
So will I build my altar in the fields,
And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields
Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee, Thee only God!
and Thou shalt not despise
Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice.
(Coleridge)
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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
Suffolk Vicar 