Part 17

"All my soul is full Of pity for the sickness of this world; Which I will heal, if healing may be found By uttermost renouncing and strong strife."

The Light of Asia, E. ARNOLD.

Wasted Emotions

MARCH 2

"Pity, indignation, love, felt and not made into acts of pity or of self-sacrifice, lose their very heart in our dainty dreaming, and are turned into their opposites. Our animation and activity of love, unexercised, becomes like the unused muscle, attenuated; and we are content to think with pleasure of the times when we were animated and active--a vile condition. But the worst wretchedness of these losses does not consist in the damage we do ourselves, but in the loss of power to benefit mankind, in the loss of power to do God's work for the salvation and the greater happiness of man. We are guilty to man, and guilty before God, when we lose our powers in inglorious ease. We owe ourselves to men and women; no amount of work frees us from the duty of keeping ourselves in the best possible trim, body and soul, mind and spirit, that we may nobly work the loving work of Him that sent us."

The Gospel of Joy, STOPFORD BROOKE.

"Opportunities are swarming around us all the time, thicker than gnats at sundown. We walk through a cloud of them."

VAN DYKE.

"Doing" more than "Feeling"

MARCH 3

"Our Lord ... always brings back to mind that doing is more than feeling."

Pastor Pastorum, HENRY LATHAM.

"A maxim of Professor James 'never to suffer a single emotion to evaporate without exacting from it some practical service.'"

The Making of Character, Prof. JOHN MACCUNN.

"But two ways are offered to our will-- Toil with rare triumph, Ease with safe disgrace:-- Nor deem that acts heroic wait on chance! The man's whole life preludes the single deed That shall decide if his inheritance Be with the sifted few of matchless breed, Or with the unnoticed herd that only sleep and feed."

LOWELL.

The Sacredness of Work

MARCH 4

"All true work is sacred; in all true work, were it but true hand-labour, there is something of divineness."

CARLYLE.

"Some of the commonest faults of thought and work are those which come from thinking too poorly of our own lives, and of that which must rightly be demanded of us. A high standard of accuracy, a chivalrous loyalty to exact truth, generosity to fellow-workers, indifference to results, distrust of all that is showy, self-discipline and undiscouraged patience through all difficulties,--these are among the first and greatest conditions of good work; and they ought never to seem too hard for us if we remember what we owe to the best work of bygone days."

The Spirit of Discipline, Bishop PAGET.

"Whether thy work be fine or coarse, planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought; no matter how often defeated, you are born to victory. The reward of a thing well done is to have done it."

EMERSON.

Doing our Best

MARCH 5

"It is not the quantity of our work that He regards, but the quality of it. He is less anxious that we should fulfil our task--for He can make up for our deficiencies--than that we should do our best; for what He desires is the improvement of our characters, and that requires the co-operation of our own wills with His."

Life Here and Hereafter, Canon MACCOLL.