Character and conduct : $b A book of helpful thoughts by great writers of past and present ages
Philosophy
Character and conduct : $b A book of helpful thoughts by great writers of past and present ages
Calendars; Meditations
"Any insistence on heredity would have depreciated responsibility, and
Jesus held every man to his own sin. Science and theology have joined
hands in magnifying heredity and lowering individuality, till a man
comes to be little more than the resultant of certain forces, a
projectile shot forth from the past, and describing a calculated course.
Jesus made a brave stand for each man as the possessor of will-power,
and master of his life. He sadly admitted that a human will might be
weakened by evil habits of thought, He declared gladly that the Divine
Grace reinforced the halting will: but, with every qualification,
decision still rested in the last issue with the man. 'If Thou wilt,
Thou canst make me clean,' as if his cure hinged on the Divine Will. Of
course, I am willing, said Jesus, and referred the man back to his
inalienable human rights. Jesus never diverged into metaphysics, even to
reconcile the freedom of the human will with the sovereignty of the
Divine. His function was not academic debate, it was the solution of an
actual situation. Logically, men might be puppets; consciously, they
were self-determinating, and Jesus said with emphasis, 'Wilt thou?'"
_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
"Even natural disposition, of which we make so much when we speak of
heredity, is only a tendency till habit takes it and sets it and hardens
it and drives it to a settled goal."
HUGH BLACK.
Bearing Criticism
JUNE 4
"When people detect in us what are actually imperfections and faults, it
is clear that they do us no wrong, since it is not they who cause them;
and it is clear, too, that they do us a service, inasmuch as they help
us to free ourselves from an evil, namely, the ignorance of these
defects. We should not be angry because they know them and despise us,
for it is right that they should know us for what we are, and that they
should despise us if we are despicable.
"Such are the feelings which would rise in a heart filled with equity
and justice. What then should we say of our own heart when we see in it
a quite contrary frame of mind? For is it not a fact that we hate the
truth and those who tell it us, that we love those who deceive
themselves in our favour, and that we wish to be esteemed by them as
other than we really are?"
PASCAL.
"A man should never be ashamed to say he has been in the wrong, which is
but saying, in other words, that he is wiser to-day than he was
yesterday."
POPE.
Faults
JUNE 5
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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