_Life Here and Hereafter_, Canon MACCOLL.
"Let us reflect that the highest path is pointed out by the pure Ideal of those who look up to us, and who, if we tread less loftily, may never look so high again. Remembering this, let it suggest one generous motive for walking heedfully amid the defilements of earthly ways."
"Others are affected by what I am, and say, and do. And these others have also their sphere of influence. So that a single act of mine may spread in widening circles through a nation or humanity."
"A man who lives right, and is right, has more power in his silence than another has by his words. Character is like bells which ring out sweet music, and which, when touched accidentally even, resound with sweet music."
"Make a great deal more of your right to praise the good than of your right to blame the bad. Never let a brave and serious struggle after truth and goodness, however weak it may be, pass unrecognised. Do not be chary of appreciation. Hearts are unconsciously hungry for it. There is little danger that appreciation shall be given too abundantly. Here and there, perhaps, in your shops and schools and households, there is some one who has too lazily sunk down upon the praise he has received for some good work, and rested in sluggish satisfaction on it; but such disasters hardly count among the unfulfilled lives which have lived meagrely and stuntedly for the lack of some simple cordial human approval of what they have honestly, however blunderingly, tried to do."
"It is a great sign of mediocrity to be always praising moderately."
"'Quench not the smoking flax'--to which I add, 'Never give unnecessary pain.' The cricket is not the nightingale; why tell him so? Throw yourself into the mind of the cricket--the process is newer and more ingenious; and it is what charity commands."
"Christians are very often liable not, perhaps, to put obstacles into the way of efforts to do right so much as to refuse them the needful help, without which they have little chance of succeeding. To look coldly on while our fellows are struggling in the waves of this evil sea and never to hold out a hand or to say a word of encouragement, is very often most cruelly to depress all energy of repentance. The strong virtue that can go on its own way without being shaken by any ordinary temptation too often forgets the duty due to the weakness close to its side. By stern treatment of faults which were yet much struggled against, by cold refusal to acknowledge any except plainly successful efforts, by rejecting the approaches of those who have not yet learnt the right way, but are really wishing in their secret hearts to learn it, those who are strong not unfrequently do much harm to those who are weak."