Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 28 – Sorrow and Selfishness There are doubtless cases not infrequent, in which the mind is unduly overpowered by affliction;  in which the tranquillity of the reason is wholly overset, and the energy of the will utterly prostrated.   Here, beyond controversy, is a state of mind morally wrong:  for God never absolves us from… Continue reading Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 28 – Sorrow and Selfishness

Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 27 – The Divine Art of Sympathy There is, however, a discipline by which we learn the lesson of service.   It is a discipline not only for undergraduates, but for all of us. It is not outward of authority, but inward the soul.   The best Universities cannot teach ‘the divine art of sympathy.’   It… Continue reading Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 27 – The Divine Art of Sympathy

Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 26 – Bearing Sorrow There is something sustaining in the very agitation that accompanies the first stocks of trouble, just as an acute pain is often a stimulus, and produces an excitement which is transient strength.   It is in the slow, changed life that follows – in the time when sorrow has… Continue reading Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 26 – Bearing Sorrow

Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 25 – Loneliness Then there are the lonely and the sorrowful who say that they cannot bear or share in the happiness of this time (Christmas).   The contrast is too great for the lonely, and the associations too bitter for the sorrowful;  and indeed I am grieved for them. The image of happy… Continue reading Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 25 – Loneliness

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… Continue reading Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 24 – Hope

Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 23 – Spiritual Fellowship  Love can never give an adequate account of itself;  it is invariably a dealing with infinite values, and when we come to that we come to God.   That is what we are doing now where true love is;  can death do anything to alter it?   No, indeed, it can but shatter… Continue reading Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 23 – Spiritual Fellowship 

Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 22 – Spiritual Fellowship Granted that time will heal most wounds, it still remains true that the deeper the nature the more there is to heal, and that there is something holy in the sorrow of wounded love. …..I do wish with all my heart that every mourner in the world… Continue reading Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 22 – Spiritual Fellowship

Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 21 – The Dead For the dead we have always with us, being enshrined in our hearts;  so that when we say the places that once knew them know them no more, we except one place that is consecrated for ever to their blessed remembrance,  (Follen) Those who are gone you have.   Those… Continue reading Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 21 – The Dead