Precept and Practice – NOVEMBER 18 – Faith – Simple Receptivity 

Faith is but an attitude, an empty hand for grasping an environing Presence.   When we feel the need of a power by which to overcome the world, how often do we not seek to generate it within ourselves by some forced process, some fresh girding of the will, some strained activity, which only leaves the soul in further exhaustion.   To examine ourselves is good – to bewail our weakness is right, but not remedial…..   My soul, wait thou only upon God.

……The condition is simple receptivity, and yet this is perhaps the least simple of all conditions.   So simple that we will not act upon it.

(Professor Henry Drummond)

It is not thy faith but God’s faithfulness thou must rely on.

(Fuller)

None can be cast out of God’s Kingdom if he loves, none received into it if he does not love.

(Reverend John Watson – The Mind of the Master)

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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