Part 16

Falterers

FEBRUARY 26

"Nay, never falter: no great deed is done By falterers who ask for certainty. No good is certain, but the steadfast mind, The undivided will to seek the good: 'Tis that compels the elements, and wrings A human music from the indifferent air. The greatest gift the hero leaves his race Is to have been a hero. Say we fail!-- We feed the high tradition of the world, And leave our spirit in our children's breasts."

GEORGE ELIOT.

"How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rest unburnish'd, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life."

TENNYSON.

"After all, depend upon it, it is better to be worn out with work in a thronged community, than to perish in inaction in a stagnant solitude: take this truth into consideration whenever you get tired of work and bustle."

MRS. GASKELL'S Life of C. Bronte.

Courage

FEBRUARY 27

"Whether you be man or woman you will never do anything in the world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honour."

JAMES LANE ALLEN.

"The brave man is not he who feels no fear, For that were stupid and irrational, But he whose noble soul its fear subdues And bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from."

JOANNA BAILLIE.

"Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh--that is to say, over fear: fear of poverty, of suffering, of calumny, of sickness, of isolation, and of death. There is no serious piety without heroism. Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage."

Amiel's Journal.

"Self-trust is the essence of heroism."

EMERSON.

Responsibility

FEBRUARY 28

"Thousands live and die in the dim borderland of destitution; that little children wail, and starve, and perish, and soak and blacken soul and sense, in our streets; that there are hundreds and thousands of the unemployed, not all of whom, as some would persuade us, are lazy impostors; that the demon of drink still causes among us daily horrors which would disgrace Dahomey or Ashantee, and rakes into his coffers millions of pounds which are wet with tears and red with blood; these are facts patent to every eye. Now, God will work no miracle to mend these miseries. If we neglect them they will be left uncured, but He will hold us responsible for the neglect. It is vain for us to ask, 'Am I my brother's keeper?' In spite of all the political economists, in spite of all superfine theories of chilly and purse-saving wisdom, in spite of all the critiques of the irreligious--still more of the semi-religious, and the religious press, He will say to the callous and the slothful, with such a glance 'as struck Gehazi with leprosy, and Simon Magus with a curse,' 'What hast thou done? Smooth religionist, orthodox Churchman, scrupulous Levite, befringed and bephylacteried Pharisee, thy brother's blood crieth to Me from the ground!'"

F. W. FARRAR.

"The healing of the world Is in its nameless saints. Each separate star Seems nothing, but a myriad scattered stars Break up the night, and make it beautiful."

BAYARD TAYLOR.

The Sin of Indifference

MARCH 1

"They hear no more the cries of their brothers caught in the nets of misery: 'Help us, we are perishing.' The curtains of their comfort are fast drawn; they sit at home wrapt in family ease. Outside, the sleet is falling, the bitter wind is blowing, thousands of the children of sorrow are dying in the fierce weather. God Himself is knocking at the door, calling 'Come forth and seek the lost with Jesus.' We hear nothing, the cotton of comfort stops our ears. For a time, till God Himself breaks in on us with storm, and disperses our comfort to the winds, we can run no Christian race.... Therefore, lay aside, not all comfort--men have a right to that--but that excess of it which softens and enfeebles the soul; which sends to sleep the longing for God's perfection; which makes our life too slothful to follow Christ, the Healer of the world!"

The Gospel of Joy, STOPFORD BROOKE.