Part 22

"Christian greatness is born of willingness to lay the lowliest duties on yourself, and the way to be first is to be ready to remain last."

Pastor Pastorum, HENRY LATHAM.

"Nobleness consists in a valiant suffering for others, not in making others suffer for us. The chief of men is he who stands in the van of men; fronting the peril which frightens back all others.... Every noble crown is, and on earth will for ever be, a crown of thorns."

Past and Present, CARLYLE.

"No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to any one else."

DICKENS.

Service

MARCH 22

"They were to mortify the self-importance and vain dignity that will not render commonplace kindness. 'If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet.'"

The Mind of the Master, Dr. JOHN WATSON.

"Nothing is degrading which a high and graceful purpose ennobles, and offices the most menial cease to be menial the moment they are wrought in love."

J. MARTINEAU.

"And service will be the personal tribute to Jesus, whom we shall recognise under any disguise, as his nurse detected Ulysses by his wounds, and whose Body, in the poor and miserable, will ever be with us for our discernment. Jesus is the leper whom the saint kissed, and the child the monk carried over the stream, and the sick man the widow nursed into health, after the legends of the ages of faith. And Jesus will say at the close of the day, 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.'"

The Mind of the Master, Dr. JOHN WATSON.

Service

MARCH 23

"We must not be perplexed or put out if we have to change our plans. God sends us hither and thither; we may think that we are wasting our special talents, when God has, after all, some particular need for our particular work at a particular time. And equally we must learn to measure our strength; we cannot all do the same things, we are not all adapted to the same work, or charged with the same duties. Why should we overstrain ourselves in that which is beyond our strength, or neglect plain duties for others less obvious? Ah! God receives many a Corban now which He will never accept; self-chosen work done at the expense of duty; work outside done to the neglect of our own proper work; work done at the entire expense of our home and social duties; the clear commandment of God shattered to pieces by some purely human tradition."

Canon NEWBOLT.

"Every Christian is the servant of men, always and everywhere, without respect to the distinctions of sex, or class, or nationality, or creed."

Canon BODY.

Mens Sana in Corpore Sano

MARCH 24

"As there is a will of God for our higher nature--the moral laws--as emphatically is there a will of God for the lower, the natural laws. If you would know God's will in the higher, therefore, you must begin with God's will in the lower: which simply means this--that if you want to live the ideal life, you must begin with the ideal body. The law of moderation, the law of sleep, the law of regularity, the law of exercise, the law of cleanliness,--this is the law or will of God for you. This is the first law, the beginning of His will for you. And if we are ambitious to get on to do God's will in the higher reaches, let us respect it as much in the lower; for there may be as much of God's will in minor things, as much of God's will in taking good bread and pure water, as in keeping a good conscience or living a pure life. Whoever heard of gluttony doing God's will, or laziness, or uncleanness, or the man who was careless and wanton of natural life? Let a man disobey God in these, and you have no certainty that he has any true principle for obeying God in anything else: for God's will does not only run into the church and the prayer-meeting and the higher chambers of the soul, but into the common rooms at home down to wardrobe and larder and cellar, and into the bodily frame down to blood and muscle and brain."

The Ideal Life, HENRY DRUMMOND.

The Duty of Physical Health

MARCH 25

"Excess is not the only thing which breaks men in their health, and in the comfortable enjoyment of themselves; but many are brought into a very ill and languishing habit of body by mere sloth; and sloth is in itself both a great sin, and the cause of many more."

Bishop SOUTH.