December 1

“When you are examining yourself, never call yourself a ‘sinner’, that is very cheap abuse and utterly useless. Call yourself a liar, a coward, a sluggard, a glutton, and so on, if you indeed find yourself to be in any wise any of these. Take steady means to check yourself in whatever fault you have ascertained and justly accused yourself of. And as soon as you are in active way of mending, you will be no more inclined to moan over an undefined corruption. For the rest, you will find it less easy to uproot faults than to choke them by gaining virtues. Do not think of your faults, still less of other people's faults; in every person who comes near you, look for what is good and strong; honour that; rejoice in it; and as you can, try to imitate it; and your faults will drop off like dead leaves when their time comes.”

RUSKIN

“We are wrong always when we think too much
Of what we think or are.”

E. B. BROWNING

November 30

“Self-examination at certain times, fixed and earnest, is a very needful spiritual discipline, but it is not penitence.”

KNOX LITTLE

“To all true modesty the necessary business is not in-look, but out-look, and especially up-look. . . . It is quite easy to peep and potter about one’s own deficiencies, in a quite im-modest discontent; but modesty is so pleased with other people’s doings, that she has no leisure to lament her own.”

RUSKIN

“The dignity is the dignity of a simple purpose, of a mind too lost in other thoughts to have room for thoughts of self.”

Bishop TEMPLE

November 29

“The Pharisees wanted not to serve God and man, but to gratify the petty pride of having done exactly what they had to do; a pardonable feeling in mere trifles, a mischievous feeling when it goes beyond trifles, and downright ruin when it takes possession of the whole life. Something of the same sort is very possible still. And the only way to avoid it is always to press the gaze of our consciences towards God and God’s will, rather than toward ourselves.”

Bishop TEMPLE

“History and experience are not without examples of a hard self-obliteration in most things, which makes a soul as cruel to others as it is to itself. Rigid in observation of rule, such souls fail utterly in the cultivation of the spirit and the temper, which alone is valuable. It may be the outcome of an obstinate nature, it may be the sad result of narrowness of mind, it may be a form of subtle self-pleasing. . . . but it has the deathly pallor of fanaticism, not the clear complexion of the religion of Christ.”

KNOX LITTLE

November 28

“To a young girl who had just left school, she wrote – ‘I think this is such an important year of your life, and such a difficult one; the getting into regular employment when you have to plan it for yourself. I used always to be getting more to do than I could manage; there is great fret and worry running after work, it is not good, spiritually or intellectually. I wish I could help you; but I am so often in this state myself that I hardly know how. I think I find most help in trying to look on all interruptions and hindrances, to work that one has planned out for oneself, as discipline, trials sent by God to help one against getting selfish over one’s work. One’s work for God consists in doing some trifling, haphazard thing that has been thrown into one’s day. It is not waste of time, as one is tempted to think. It is the most important part of the work of the day – the part one can best offer to God. After such a hindrance do not rush after planned work, trust that the time to finish it well will be given some time, and keep a quiet heart above it.’”

ANNIE KEARY

“Perhaps there is nothing so irritating to others as a morbid passion for order. Dis-ordered order is the most active cause of disorder. Over-restless activity is the parent of a despairing in-activity in others.”

STOPFORD BROOKE

November 27

“Any strictness which sours our temper, which makes us dislike our fellow-creatures, which shuts us up in ourselves; or, again, any which interferes with our duties, and oppresses us with little fidgety difficulties, instead of carrying us along in obeying the laws of our state of life, is almost certain to be a morbid strictness. The object of all strictness is to fence duties round, so as to make their performance more sure, and to fence our hearts round, so as to make the feeling more human and so more heavenly; and if our strictness do not give us these results, we must look to it that we are not making some great blunder.”

Bishop TEMPLE

“Take care not to lay upon yourselves unnecessary burdens. Do not attempt more prayers than your time and strength allow. . . . Beware of a fidgety, fussy kind of religion. Do not be over anxious. A great saint was once asked, ‘How can I live the higher life?’ and he answered, ‘My child, go and live the lower life, and God will teach you the higher.’”

Bishop WILKINSON

November 26

“Rules of holy living may be a snare, and prove burdensome and entangling rather than helpful, if, in administering them to ourselves, we do not continually keep our eye fixed on the spirit and principle of them. ‘The end of the commandment is love’, a growing and ever deepening recognition of God as our tender Father through Christ, and of men as our brethren.”

GOULBURN

“Love is higher than duty, just as it is more excellent to worship God than to hold fast by a rule, however excellent that rule may be. But the reason is that love in reality contains duty in itself. Love without a sense of duty is a mere delusion from which we cannot too soon set ourselves free. Love is duty and something more. Love is a noble tree of which duty is the trunk. Love is a beautiful plant, with a beautiful flower, of which duty is the stalk.”

Bishop TEMPLE

“He said . . . . ‘It was not well to be so wedded even to the mopst pious observances . . . as never to break through them, lest under the garb of faithful adherence to rule self-love should creep in. And moreover’, he added, ‘consideration for others is the offspring of love, and worth more than strictness.’”

From Life of St Francis de Sales

November 25

“No soul can preserve the bloom and delicacy of its existence without lonely musing and silent prayer; and the greatness of this necessity is in proportion to the greatness of the soul. There were many times during our Lord’s ministry when, even from the loneliness of desert places, He dismissed His most faithful and most beloved, that He might be yet more alone.”

Archdeacon FARRAR

“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence comes my help. My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”

PSALM 121

“He prayeth well who loveth well,
Both man and bird and beast.

"He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”

COLERIDGE

November 24

“Prayer is not only – perhaps in some of the holiest souls is not even chiefly – a petition for something that we want and do not possess. In the larger sense of the word, as the spiritual language of the soul, prayer is intercourse with God, often seeking no end beyond the pleasure of such intercourse. It is praise. . . . When we seek the company of our friends . . . it is a pleasure to be with them, to be talking to them at all about anything; to be in possession of their sympathies and to be showing our delight at it; to be assuring them of their place in our hearts and thoughts. So it is with the soul, when dealing with the Friend of friends – with God.”

Canon LIDDON

“Frequent intercourse even with an earthly friend, if he be of a strong, marked character, quickly makes itself seen in its influence upon us. We grow more and more like those with whom we associate, and especially if we admire and look up to them we unconsciously imitate them. It is no less so with our intercourse with God. The more time we spend in His presence, seeking His face and communing with Him in prayer, the more surely will godly graces and tempers spring up within us and bear fruit in our lives.”

Bishop WALSHAM HOW

November 23

“We all want quiet; we all want beauty for the refreshment of our souls. Sometimes we think of it as a luxury, but when God made the world, He made it very beautiful, and meant that we should live amongst its beauties, and that they should speak peace to us in our daily lives.”

OCTAVIA HILL

“Thou who hast given me eyes to see
And love this sight so fair,
Give me a heart to find out Thee,
And read Thee everywhere.”

KEBLE

“All my works praise You, O Lord; and Your saints give thanks unto You.”

PSALM 145, 10

November 22

“Every moment of deepening communion with His Father has its corresponding moment of sympathy with His brother-men. . . . Everywhere the solitary completes itself in the social. Solitude shapes and colours the precious forms of character which then the furnace of society burns to solidity, and brilliance, and permanence.”

PHILLIPS BROOKS

“Lord, what a change within us one short hour
Spent in thy presence will prevail to make,
What heavy burdens from our bosoms take.
What parchèd grounds refresh as with a shower!
We kneel, and all around us seems to lower;
We rise, and all, the distant and the near,
Stands forth in sunny outline brave and clear;
We kneel – how weak! We rise – how full of power!
Why therefore should we do ourselves this wrong,
Or others – that we are not always strong,
That we are ever overborne with care,
That we should ever weak or thoughtless be,
Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer,
And joy, and strength, and courage are with Thee?”

TRENCH

November 21

“And then let us abandon ourselves entirely to the will of God, and, without losing courage, let us wait in patience the return of His consolations, following the path of prayer and of good works. Let us offer our heart to God, dry as it is; it will be as well-pleasing to Him as if it were melting with love, if only it is sincerely determined to love God. It is a mistake to think that to serve God without feeling any pleasure in it is not pleasing Him; fresh roses are the most beautiful, but they have the most strength and fragrance when they are dry; so though what we do for God is more agreeable to us when it is done with a lively tenderness of heart, because we judge of the pleasure that we feel, yet the fragrance of our actions is greater before God when they are done in a state of spiritual dryness. For then our will gives itself to the service of God in spite of all the repugnances which it has to overcome, and consequently it must have more strength and constancy than in a time of deeply felt devotion.”

St FRANCIS DE SALES

“Let it make no difference to you whether you are cold or warm, if you are doing your duty.”

MARCUS AURELIUS