Part 75

"Moses said, 'Do this or do that.' Jesus refrained from regulations--He proposed that we should love. Jesus, while hardly mentioning the word, planted the idea in His disciples' minds, that Love was Law. For three years He exhibited and enforced Love as the principle of life, until, before He died, they understood that all duty to God and man was summed up in Love. Progress in the moral world is ever from complexity to simplicity. First one hundred duties; afterwards they are gathered into ten commandments; then they are reduced to two: love of God and love of man; and, finally, Jesus says His last word: 'This is My commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you.'"

The Mind of the Master, Dr. JOHN WATSON.

"As Night Enters, Darkness Departs"

OCTOBER 24

"If sin be a principle in a man's life, then it is evident that it cannot be affected by the most pathetic act in history exhibited from without; it must be met by an opposite principle working from within. If sin be selfishness, as Jesus taught, then it can only be overcome by the introduction of a spirit of self-renunciation. Jesus did not denounce sin: negative religion is always impotent. He replaced sin by virtue, which is a silent revolution. As the light enters, the darkness departs, and as soon as one renounced himself, he had ceased from sin."

The Mind of the Master, Dr. JOHN WATSON.

"'Why could not we cast him out?'

"Let His love fill you with love, and then the conquering of your sins by His help shall be in its course one long enthusiasm and at the end a glorious success. That is your hope; and that hope, if you will, you may seize to-day."

PHILLIPS BROOKS.

Stepping-stones

OCTOBER 25

"The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong."

CARLYLE.

"Out of difficulties grow miracles."

"I hold it truth with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on stepping stones Of their dead selves to higher things."

TENNYSON.

"Why wilt thou defer thy good purpose from day to day? Arise and begin this very instant, and say, 'Now is the time to be doing, now is the time to be striving, now is the fit time to amend myself.'"

THOMAS A KEMPIS.

Never Lose a Battle

OCTOBER 26

"A fourth maxim is 'never if possible to lose a battle.' And none can be sounder. For it is always to be remembered that a single lapse involves here something worse than a simple failure. The alternative is not between good habit or no habit, but between good habit and bad. For, as Professor Bain points out, the characteristic difficulty here lies in the fact that in the moral life rival tendencies are in constant competition for mastery over us. The loss of a battle here is therefore worse than a defeat. It strengthens the enemy, whether this enemy be some powerful passion, or nothing more than the allurements of an easy life. It has worse effects still. For if by persistence in well-doing we all of us create a moral tradition for our individual selves, so do we by every failure hang in the memory a humiliating and paralysing record of defeat."

The Making of Character, Professor MACCUNN.

"If one surrender himself to Jesus, and is crucified on His cross, there is no sin he will not overcome, no service he will not render, no virtue to which he will not attain."

The Mind of the Master, Dr. JOHN WATSON.

Living in the Present

OCTOBER 27

"Be not anxious about to-morrow. Do to-day's duty, fight to-day's temptation, and do not weaken and distract yourself by looking forward to things which you cannot see, and could not understand, if you saw them."

CHARLES KINGSLEY.