Precept and Practice – NOVEMBER 24 – Meditation 

There is an act of the mind, natural to the earnest and the wise, impossible only to the sensual and the fool, healthful to all who are sincere, which has small place in modern usage, and which few can now distinguish from vacuity.   Those who knew what it was, called it meditation. It is not reading, in which we apprehend the thoughts of others, and bring them to our critical tribunal.   It is not study, in which we strive to master the known and prevail over it, till it lies in order beneath our feet.   It is not reasoning, in which we seek to push forward the empire of our positive conceptions, and by combining what we have, reach others that we have not.

It is not deliberation, which computes the particular problems of action, reckons up the forces that surround our individual lot, and projects accordingly the expedient or the right.   It is not self-scrutiny, which by itself is only shrewdness or at most science turned within instead of without, and analysing mental feelings instead of physical facts. Its view is not personal and particular, but universal and immense, – the sweep of the nocturnal telescope over the infinitely great, not the insight of the solar microscope into the infinitely small.   It brings not an intense self-consciousness and spiritual egotism, but almost a renunciation of individuality, a mingling with the universe, a lapse of our little drop of existence into the boundless ocean of being.

(James Martineau)

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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