Beautiful Thoughts.
by Henry Drummond.
Preface.
My first thought of writing out this little book of brief selections sprang from the desire to assist a dear friend to enjoy the Author's helpful books.
The epigrammatic style lends itself to quotation. Taste of the spring brings the traveller back to the same fountain on a day of greater leisure. Many times these "Beautiful Thoughts" have enlightened my darkness, and I send them forth with a hope and prayer that they may find echo in other hearts. E. C.
January 1st. Christianity wants nothing so much in the world as sunny people, and the old are hungrier for love than for bread, and the Oil of Joy is very cheap, and if you can help the poor on with a Garment of Praise it will be better for them than blankets. The Programme of Christianity, p. 33.
January 2d. No one who knows the content of Christianity, or feels the universal need of a Religion, can stand idly by while the intellect of his age is slowly divorcing itself from it. Natural Law, Preface, p. 22
January 3d. A Science without mystery is unknown; a Religion without mystery is absurd. However far the scientific method may penetrate the Spiritual World, there will always remain a region to be explored by a scientific faith. Natural Law, Introduction, p. 28.
January 4th. Among the mysteries which compass the world beyond, none is greater than how there can be in store for man a work more wonderful, a life more God-like than this. The Programme of Christianity, p. 62.
January 5th. The Spiritual Life is the gift of the Living Spirit. The spiritual man is no mere development of the Natural man. He is a New Creation born from Above. Natural Law, Bio-genesis, p. 65.
January 6th. Love is success, Love is happiness, Love is life. God is Love. Therefore LOVE. The Greatest Thing in the World.
January 7th. Give me the Charity which delights not in exposing the weakness of others, but "covereth all things." The Greatest Thing in the World.
January 8th. There is a sense of solidity about a Law of Nature which belongs to nothing else in the world. Here, at last, amid all that is shifting, is one thing sure; one thing outside ourselves, unbiassed, unprejudiced, uninfluenced by like or dislike, by doubt or fear. . . .
This more than anything else makes one eager to see the Reign of Law traced in the Spiritual Sphere. Natural Law, Preface, p. 23.
January 9th. With Nature as the symbol of all of harmony and beauty that is known to man, must we still talk of the supernatural, not as a convenient word, but as a different order of world, . . . where the Reign of Mystery supersedes the Reign of Law? Natural Law, Introduction, p. 6.
January 10th. The Reign of Law has gradually crept into every department of Nature, transforming knowledge everywhere into Science. The process goes on, and Nature slowly appears to us as one great unity, until the borders of the Spiritual World are reached. Natural Law, Introduction, p.
13.
January 11th. No single fact in Science has ever discredited a fact in Religion. Natural Law, Introduction, p. 30.
January 12th. I shall never rise to the point of view which wishes to "raise" faith to knowledge. To me, the way of truth is to come through the knowledge of my ignorance to the submissiveness of faith, and then, making that my starting-place, to raise my knowledge into faith. Natural Law, Introduction, p. 28. Quotation from Beck: Bib. Psychol.
January 13th. If the purification of Religion comes from Science, the purification of Science, in a deeper sense, shall come from Religion.
Natural Law, Introduction, p. 31.
January 14th. With the demonstration of the naturalness of the supernatural, scepticism even may come to be regarded as unscientific.
And those who have wrestled long for a few bare truths to ennoble life and rest their souls in thinking of the future will not be left in doubt.
Natural Law, Introduction, p. 32.
January 15th. The religion of Jesus has probably always suffered more from those who have misunderstood than from those who have opposed it.
Natural Law, Bio-genesis, p. 67.
January 16th. It is impossible to believe that the amazing successions of revelations in the domain of Nature, during the last few centuries, at which the world has all but grown tired wondering, are to yield nothing for the higher life. Natural Law, Introduction, p. 32.
January 17th. Is life not full of opportunities for learning love? Every man and woman every day has a thousand of them. Greatest Thing in the World.
January 18th. What is Science but what the Natural World has said to natural men? What is Revelation but what the Spiritual World has said to Spiritual men? Natural Law, Bio-genesis, p. 73.
January 19th. Life depends upon contact with Life. It cannot spring up out of itself. It cannot develop out of anything that is not Life. There is no Spontaneous Generation in religion any more than in Nature. Christ is the source of Life in the Spiritual World; and he that hath the Son hath Life, and he that hath not the Son, whatever else he may have, hath not Life. Natural Law, Bio-genesis, p. 74.
January 20th. It is a wonderful thing that here and there in this hard, uncharitable world, there should still be left a few rare souls who think no evil. Greatest Thing in the World.
January 21st. The physical Laws may explain the inorganic world; the biological Laws may account for the development of the organic. But of the point where they meet, of that strange borderland between the dead and the living, Science is silent. It is as if God had placed everything in earth and heaven in the hands of Nature, but reserved a point at the genesis of Life for His direct appearing. Natural Law, Bio-genesis, p.
69.
January 22d. Except a mineral be born "from above"--from the Kingdom just ABOVE it--it cannot enter the Kingdom just above it. And except a man be born "from above," by the same law, he cannot enter the Kingdom just above him. Natural Law, Bio-genesis, p. 72.
January 23d. If we try to influence or elevate others, we shall soon see that success is in proportion to their belief of our belief in them.
Greatest Thing in the World.
January 24th. The world is not a play-ground; it is a school-room. Life is not a holiday, but an education. And the one eternal lesson for us all is how better we can love. Greatest Thing in the World.
January 25th What a noble gift it is, the power of playing upon the souls and wills of men, and rousing them to lofty purposes and holy deeds.
Greatest Thing in the World.
January 26th. The test of Religion, the final test of Religion, is not Religiousness, but Love. Greatest Thing in the World.
January 27th. There are not two laws of Bio-genesis, one for the natural, the other for the Spiritual; one law is for both. Where-ever there is Life, Life of any kind, this same law holds. Natural Law, Bio-genesis, p.
75.
January 28th. The first step in peopling these worlds with the appropriate living forms is virtually miracle. Nor in one case is there less of mystery in the act than in the other. The second birth is scarcely less perplexing to the theologian than the first to the embryologist. Natural Law, Bio-genesis, p. 76.
January 29th. There may be cases--they are probably in the majority-- where the moment of contact with the Living Spirit, though sudden, has been obscure. But the real moment and the conscious moment are two different things. Science pronounces nothing as to the conscious moment.
If it did, it would probably say that that was seldom the real moment-- The moment of birth in the natural world is not a conscious moment--we do not know we are born till long afterward. Natural Law, Bio-genesis, p.
93.
January 30th. The stumbling-block to most minds is perhaps less the mere existence of the unseen than the want of definition, the apparently hopeless vagueness, and not least, the delight in this vagueness as mere vagueness by some who look upon this as the mark of quality in Spiritual things. It will be at least something to tell earnest seekers that the Spiritual World is not a castle in the air, of an architecture unknown to earth or heaven, but a fair ordered realm furnished with many familiar things and ruled by well-remembered Laws. Natural Law, Introduction, p.
26.
January 31st. Character grows in the stream of the world's life. That chiefly is where men are to learn love. The Greatest Thing in the World.
February 1st. If a man does not exercise his arm he develops no biceps muscle; and if a man does not exercise his soul, he acquires no muscle in his soul, no strength of character, no vigour of moral fibre, nor beauty of Spiritual growth. The Greatest Thing in the World.
February 2d. A Religion without mystery is an absurdity. Even Science has its mysteries, none more inscrutable than around this Science of Life. It taught us sooner or later to expect mystery, and now we enter its domain.
Let it be carefully marked, however, that the cloud does not fall and cover us till we have ascertained the most momentous truth of Religion-- that Christ is in the Christian. Natural Law, Bio-genesis, p. 88.
February 3d. Religion in having mystery is in analogy with all around it.
Where there is exceptional mystery in the Spiritual World it will generally be found that there is a corresponding mystery in the natural world. Natural Law, Bio-genesis, p. 91.
February 4th. Even to earnest minds the difficulty of grasping the truth at all has always proved extreme. Philosophically, one scarcely sees either the necessity or the possibility of being born again. Why a virtuous man should not simply grow better and better until in his own right he enter the Kingdom of God is what thousands honestly and seriously fail to understand. Natural Law, Bio-genesis, p. 80.
February 5th. Lavish Love upon our equals, where it is very difficult, and for whom perhaps we each do least of all. The Greatest Thing in the World.
February 6th. Spiritual Life is not something outside ourselves. The idea is not that Christ is in heaven and that we can stretch out some mysterious faculty and deal with Him there. This is the vague form in which many conceive the truth, but it is contrary to Christ's teaching and to the analogy of nature. Life is definite and resident; and Spiritual Life is not a visit from a force, but a resident tenant in the soul. Natural Law, Bio-genesis, p. 87.