Precept and Practice – NOVEMBER 21 – God – Our Father

When children begin to think and to form their own ideas about father and mother, if they believe their parents can do anything, give them everything, the very stars from the sky, take away all their little aches, forgive them all their sins, does a father mind it?…..

All this can only be a similitude, and the distance which separates us from the Divine is, as we all know, incommensurate with that which separates children from their parents. We cannot feel that too much;  but after we have felt it, and only after we have felt it, we cannot, I believe, in our relation to the Divine, and in our hopes of another life, be too much what we are, we cannot be too true to ourselves, too childlike, too human, or, as it is now called, too anthromorphous in our thoughts.   Let us know by all means that human nature is a very imperfect mirror to reflect the Divine, but instead of breaking that dark glass, let us rather try to keep it as bright as we can…..   However far the human may be from the Divine, nothing on earth is nearer to God than man, nothing on earth more Godlike than man.

(Professor Max Müller – Hibbert Lectures)

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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