Character and Conduct Part 29

Mrs. HODGSON BURNETT.

"She was one of those lowly women who apply the severity born of their creed to themselves, and spend only the love born of the indwelling Spirit upon their neighbour."

G. MACDONALD.

Justice and Mercy

JUNE 28

"It is not even, amongst men, the best and purest who are found to be the severest censors and judges of others. Quickness to detect and expose the weakness and frailties of a fellow-man, harshness in condemning them, mercilessness in punis.h.i.+ng them, are not the characteristics which experience would lead us to expect in a very high and n.o.ble nature.... To be gentle, pitying, forbearing to the fallen, to be averse to see or hear of human faults and vices, and when it is impossible not to see them to be pained and grieved by them, to be considerate of every extenuating circ.u.mstance that will mitigate their culpability, to delight in the detection of some redeeming excellence even in the vilest.... Is not all this the sort of conduct which, as experience teaches us, betokens, not moral apathy or indifference, but the nature which is purest and most elevated beyond all personal sympathy with vice.... If, then, human goodness is the more merciful in proportion as it approaches nearer to perfection ... might we not conclude that when goodness becomes absolutely perfect, just then will mercy reach its climax and become absolutely unlimited?"

Princ.i.p.al CAIRD.

"Search thine own heart. What paineth thee In others, in thyself may be; All dust is frail, all flesh is weak; Be thou the true man thou dost seek."

WHITTIER.

Judging

JUNE 29

"It is my way when I observe any instance of folly, any queer or absurd illusion, straightway to look for something of the same type in myself, feeling sure that amid all differences there will be a certain correspondence; just as there is more or less correspondence in the natural history even of continents widely apart, and of islands in opposite zones....

"Introspection which starts with the purpose of finding out one's own absurdities is not likely to be very mischievous, yet of course it is not free from dangers any more than breathing is, or the other functions that keep us alive or active. To judge of others by oneself is in its most innocent meaning the briefest expression for our only method of knowing mankind; yet, we perceive, it has come to mean in many cases either the vulgar mistake which reduces every man's value to the very low figure at which the valuer himself happens to stand; or else, the amiable illusion of the higher nature misled by a too generous construction of the lower. One cannot give a recipe for wise judgment: it resembles appropriate muscular action, which is attained by the myriad lessons in nicety of balance and of aim that only practice can give."

GEORGE ELIOT.

Contemptuousness

JUNE 30

"Our Lord not only _told_ men that they were the children of G.o.d, that they should strive after their Father's likeness, and that they might approach nearer and nearer to being perfect as He is perfect: but, what was more than this, in every word He spake,--whether of teaching, or reproof, or expostulation, or in His pa.s.sing words to those who received His mercies,--He _treated_ them as G.o.d's children. Man, as man, has in His eyes a right to respect. Anger we find with our Lord often, as also surprise at slowness of heart, indignation at hypocrisy, and at the Rabbinical evasions of the Law; but never in our Lord's words or looks do we find personal disdain. Towards no human being does He show contempt. The scribe would have trodden the rabble out of existence; but there is no such thing as rabble in our Lord's eyes. The master, in the parable, asks concerning the tree, which is unproductively exhausting the soil, why c.u.mbers it the ground; but it is not to be rooted up, till all has been tried. There it stands, and mere existence gives it claims, for all that exists is the Father's."

_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.

"Tennyson was very grand on contemptuousness. It was, he said, a sure sign of intellectual littleness. Simply to despise, nearly always meant not to understand. Pride and contempt were specially characteristic of barbarians. Real civilisation taught human beings to understand each other better, and must therefore lessen contempt. It is a little or immature or uneducated mind which readily despises. One who has travelled and knows the world in its length and breadth, respects far more views and standpoints other than his own."

_Tennyson--A Memoir_, by his Son.

False Impressions

JULY 1

"There are thousands and thousands of little untruths that hum and buzz and sting in society, which are too small to be brushed or driven away.

They are in the looks, they are in the inflections and tones of the voice, they are in the actions, they are in reflections rather than in direct images that are represented. They are methods of producing impressions that are false, though every means by which they are produced is strictly true. There are little unfairnesses between man and man, that are said to be minor matters and that are small things; there are little unjust judgments and detractions; there are petty violations of conscience; there are ten thousand of these flags of pa.s.sions in men which are called foibles or weaknesses, but which eat like moths. They take away the temper, they take away magnanimity and generosity, they take from the soul its enamel and its polish. Men palliate and excuse them, but that has nothing to do with their natural effect on us. They waste and destroy us, and that, too, in the soul's silent and hidden parts."

HENRY WARD BEECHER.

"A lie which is half a truth Is ever the blackest of lies."

TENNYSON.

Truth

JULY 2

"Truth is the great mark at which we ought to aim in all things--truth in thought, truth in expression, truth in work. Those who habitually sacrifice truth in small things will find it difficult to pay her the respect they should do in great things."

Lord IDDESLEIGH.

"Stand upright, speak thy thought, declare The truth thou hast that all may share.

Be bold, proclaim it everywhere, They only live who dare."

Sir LEWIS MORRIS.

"The mind can only repose upon the stability of truth."

Dr. JOHNSON.

Truthfulness

JULY 3

"Be profoundly honest. Never dare to say ... through ardent excitement or conformity to what you know you are expected to say, one word which at the moment when you say it, you do not believe. It would cut down the range of what you say, perhaps, but it would endow every word that was left with the force of ten."

PHILLIPS BROOKS.

"Be honest with yourself, whatever the temptation; say nothing to others that you do not think, and play no tricks with your own mind. Of all the evil spirits abroad at this hour in this world, insincerity is the most dangerous."

J. A. FROUDE.

"Truthfulness is the foundation of all personal excellence. It exhibits itself in conduct. It is rect.i.tude, truth in action, and s.h.i.+nes through every word and deed."

SAMUEL SMILES.