Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 31 – Looking Forward

If the old year has brought to you trial and sorrow, sin or failure, bid them farewell and look forward to the New Year.  It is the habit at this time to look back and mourn over what has been; to linger round its crosses and to think that in that gloomy retrospection we shall find Christ.   It is a foolish habit;  it may become an evil habit.   Not backward are our glances bent, but forward to our Father’s home.   Christ is not in our past sins, sorrows, and failures.   He is risen;  gone before us into the Galilee of a New Year, waiting for us to join Him in a nobler life.   Indeed, there is nothing which spoils life more than daily walking among graves.   It disables us from doing good work for God and Man;  and therefore takes away our most healthy and enduring joy.   It adds the querulousness of inward sickness to all that is said and done, and this wearies the soul of our fellow-men.   It dims the sight of the soul, so that when new modes of work open themselves, they are not seen.   It sometimes kills, if always injures , the energies of faith and hope and love.  Progress is slain by this habit in every sphere of human work, and not less in the sphere of the spiritual. Whenever we are riveted, in mourning, to the past, how can we change from glory to glory by the spirit of the Lord?

It is well then, when, as at this time, we look on the past year, to look forward also to the coming year.

(Reverend Stopford A. Brooke)

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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