Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 19 – Love and Death

To the faithful, death is only the last best sacrament.   However imperfectly, with whatever grievous failures, they have held their lives, they have not held them as their own; and neither terror nor dismay is in their hearts when the call comes to relinquish them.   They know that death can make no real difference, that God is not the God of the dead, but of the living;  and though they may have much to learn about Him, He has nothing to learn about them.   They have been judged already;  their record is written, their work known.   And over those who have died daily-the spiritual death to self, that other death has no power.   Only the selfish fear it, they who have never died.

Death makes feint to conquer love.   But its true office is not to conquer, but to crown.   It is in the supreme ecstasy of the conflict with death that love’s sovereignty is made manifest.   So Socrates conquered by the cup of hemlock, his Holy Grail.

So Christ conquered He who from the beginning had tasted death for all.   So men may conquer – called like the old Cyrenian, to bear the Cross of Christ.

(May Kendall)

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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