Faith’s meanest deed more favour bears,
Where hearts and wills are weighed, 
Than brightest transports, choicest prayers,
Which bloom their hour and fade.

There is a sense in which we must pay for all we give.   But when our gift is made, and has its work, then the joy of the freshly quickened life flows back upon us, and we are allowed to reap the fruit of the sacrifice.

But the tender, the humble, the selfless…. they remain faithful to us.   They are not the slaves of their emotions, whether of sympathy or contempt, and the admiration may have died out of their love for us, but it has left a great Christ-like compassion.

When Love is hurt, it is self-love that requires the opiate,

Precept and Practice – AUGUST 3 – Faithfulness You feel, as I do, that the real tie lies in the feelings and expectations we have raised in other minds.   Else all pledges might be broken, when there was no outward penalty.   There would be no such thing as faithfulness. George Eliot Friend, if earthly violence or ill,  Suspicion,… Continue reading Precept and Practice – AUGUST 3 – Faithfulness

It isn’t your mind that is needed here, or what you know; it is your heart and what you feel.

Friendship is the forest to which we flee from the city of toil.