Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 24 – Hope
God does not give us strange flowers every year,
When the spring winds blow o’er the pleasant places
The same dear things lift up the same fair faces:
The violet is here.
It all comes back: the odour, grace and hue:
Each sweet relation of its life repeated –
No blank is left – no looking – for is cheated,
it is the thing we knew.
So after death’s great winter it must be.
God will not put strange sights in heavenly places.
The old love shall look out from the old faces.
Veilchen! I shall have thee.
And do not fear to hope. Can poet’s brain
More than the Father’s heart rich good invent?
Each time we smell the autumn’s dying scent
We know the primrose time will come again;
Not more we hope, nor less would soothe our pain.
(George MacDonald)
oooOOOooo
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 