One little weakness, we are apt to fancy, all men must be allowed, and we even claim a certain indulgence for that apparent necessity of nature which we call our besetting sin. Yet to break with the lower environment at all, to many, is to break at this single point.
In the spiritual world ... he will be wise who courts acquaintance with the most ordinary and transparent facts of Nature; and in laying the foundations for a religious life he will make no unworthy beginning who carries with him an impressive sense of so obvious a truth as that without Environment there can be no life.
Topics: Wisdom Source: Natural Law, Environment, p. 264.
If God is spending work upon a Christian, let him be still and know that it is God. And if he wants work, he will find it there--in the being still.
Topics: Work, Rest Source: Natural Law, Growth, p. 137.
The stature of the Lord Jesus was not itself reached by work, and he who thinks to approach its mystical height by anxious effort is really receding from it.
Whenever you attempt a good work you will find other men doing the same kind of work, and probably doing it better. Envy them not.
Topics: Work, Envy Source: The Greatest Thing in the World.
Take into your new sphere of labour, where you also mean to lay down your life, that simple charm, Love, and your life-work must succeed. You can take nothing greater, you need take nothing less. It is not worth while going if you take anything less.
Topics: Work Source: The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 17.
To break altogether, and at every point, with the old environment, is a simple impossibility. So long as the regenerate man is kept in this world he must find the old environment at many points a severe temptation.
Topics: Worldliness Source: Natural Law, Mortification, p. 190.
Do not spoil your life at the outset with unworthy and impoverishing correspondences; and if it is growing truly rich and abundant, be very jealous of ever diluting its high eternal quality with anything of earth.
Topics: Worldliness Source: Natural Law, Mortification, p. 196.
To concentrate upon a few great correspondences, to oppose to the death the perpetual petty larceny of our life by trifles--these are the conditions for the highest and happiest life... The penalty of evading self-denial also is just that we get the lesser instead of the larger good. The punishment of sin is inseparably bound up with itself.
Topics: Worldliness Source: Natural Law, Mortification, p. 196.
When we feel the need of a power by which to overcome the world, how often do we not seek to generate it within ourselves by some forced process, some fresh girding of the will, some strained activity which only leaves the soul in further exhaustion?
Topics: Worldliness Source: Natural Law, Environment, p. 265.
A photograph prints from the negative only while exposed to the sun. While the artist is looking to see how it is getting on he simply stops the getting on. Whatever of wise supervision the soul may need, it is certain it can never be over-exposed, or that, being exposed, anything else in the world can improve the result or quicken it.
Topics: Worldliness Source: The Changed Life, pp. 56, 57.
Do not quarrel ... with your lot in life. Do not complain of its never-ceasing cares, its petty environment, the vexations you have to stand, the small and sordid souls you have to live and work with.
Topics: Worry Source: The Greatest Thing in the World.
One little weakness, we are apt to fancy, all men must be allowed, and we even claim a certain indulgence for that apparent necessity of nature which we call our besetting sin. Yet to break with the lower environment at all, to many, is to break at this single point.