Charity is a naked child, giving honey to a bee without wings; naked, because excuseless and simple; a child, because tender and growing; giving honey, because honey is pleasant and comfortable; to a bee, because a bee is laborious and deserving; without wings, because helpless and wanting. If thou deniest to such, thou killest a bee; if thou givest to other than such, thou preservest a drone. 697 Quarles: Enchiridion. Cent. II. No. 2. The right Christian mind will find its own image wherever it exists, it will seek for what it loves, and draw it out of all dens and caves, and it will believe in its being often when it cannot see it, and always turn away its eyes from beholding vanity; and so it will lie lovingly over all the faults and rough places of the human heart, as the snow from heaven does over the hard and black and broken mountain rocks, following their forms truly, and yet catching light for them to make them fair, and that must be a steep and unkindly crag indeed which it cannot cover. 698 Ruskin: Modern Painters. Pt. iii. Sec. i. Ch. 14. Charity, in whatever guise she appears, is the best-natured and the best-complexioned thing in the world. 699 Frederick Saunders: Stray Leaves of Literature. This is one bad effect of a good character, it invites application from the unfortunate, and there needs no small degree of address to gain the reputation of benevolence without incurring the expense. The silver ore of pure charity is an expensive article in the catalogue of a man's good qualities. 700 Sheridan: The School for Scandal. Act v. Sc. 1. The charity that thinketh no evil trusts in God and trust in men. 701 Timothy_Titcomb (J. G. Holland): Gold-Foil. If charity denies its birth and parentage, if it turns infidel to the great doctrines of the Christian religion, if it turns unbeliever, it is no longer charity. There is no longer charity, either in a Christian sense or in the sense of jurisprudence, for it separates itself from the fountain of its own creation. Daniel Webster: Speech, Supreme Court at Washington, Feb. 20, 1844. The Christian Ministry and the Religious Instruction of the Young. 702 see Temperance. The very ice of chastity is in them. 703 Shakespeare: As You Like It. Act iii. Sc. 4. CHEERFULNESS -see Wisdom. It lies in our own power to attune the mind to cheerfulness. 704 Auerbach: On the Heights. (Bennett, Translator.) Cheerfulness, the character of common hope, is, in strong hope, like glimpses of sunshine on a cloudy day. 705 Joanna Baillie: Plays on the Passions. Vol. iii. To the Reader. (Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans' edition, 1853, p. 231.) Cheerfulness is the sunny ray of life. It is the constant portion of none, and the word itself comprehends a multitude of degrees and modifications. The sum of all is this, that man, out of inward and outward circumstances, forms himself and the track on which his life glides on. 706 Wilhelm von Humboldt: Letters to a Female Friend. Vol. ii. No. 23. (Catharine M. A. Couper, Trans.) The most certain sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulHer state is like that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene. ness. 707 Montaigne: Essays. Bk. i. Ch. 25. (Hazlitt, Trans.) Cheerfulness, or joyousness, is the heaven under which everything but poison thrives. 708 Richter: Levana. Third Fragment. Ch. 2. Sec. 44. (A. H., Translator.) life. Laughing cheerfulness throws sunlight on all the paths of 709 Richter: Levana. Fourth Fragment. Ch. 4, Sec. 97. (A. H., Translator.) What, indeed, does not that word cheerfulness imply? It means a contented spirit, it means a pure heart, it means a kind and loving disposition, it means humility and charity, it means a generous appreciation of others, and a modest opinion of self. 710 Thackeray Sketches and Travels in London. On A man's task is always light if his heart is light. Lew Wallace: Ben-Hur. Bk. iii. Ch. 3. Cheerfulness, in most cheerful people, is the rich and satisfying result of strenuous discipline. 712 E. P. Whipple: Success and its Conditions. CHILDHOOD – A happy childhood is the pledge of a ripe manhood. Childhood has no forebodings; but then it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow. 714 George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss. Bk. i. Ch. 9. These bitter sorrows of childhood! when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from suminer to summer seems measureless. 715 George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss. Bk. i. Ch. 5. The most sublime psalm that can be heard on this earth is the lisping of a human soul from the lips of childhood. 716 Victor Hugo: Ninety-Three. Pt. iii. Bk. ii. Ch. 1. (Benedict, Translator.) CHILDREN -see Discipline, Necessity, Obedience, Parents, Sleep, Trustfulness. Children sweeten labors, but they make misfortunes more bitter; they increase the cares of life, but they mitigate the remembrance of death. 717 Bacon Essays. Of Parents and Children. For what is a child? Ignorance. What is a child? Want of knowledge. For when a child knows these things, he is in no way inferior to us. 718 Epictetus: Discourses. Bk. ii. Ch. 1. (Long, We should deal with children as God deals with us: we are happiest under the influence of innocent delusions. 719 Goethe: Sorrows of Werther, July 6. (Baylon, Children are earthly idols that hold us from the stars. Children think not of what is past, nor what is to come, but enjoy the present time, which few of us do. 721 La Bruyère: Characters. Of Man. (Rowe, Trans.) The boy was the very staff of my age, my very prop. 722 Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice. Act ii. Sc. 2. CHIVALRY. As nature has given man the superiority above woman by endowing him with greater strength both of mind and body, it is his part to alleviate that superiority, as much as possible, by the generosity of his behavior, and by a studied deference and complaisance for all her inclinations and opinions. 723 Hume: Essays. XIII. Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences. CHOICE see Conscience, Difficulties. God offers to every man his choice between truth and repose. 724 CHRISTIANITY see Christians, Companionship Cross, The, Immortality, Neighbor, Sympathy. All the might of the world is now on the side of Christianity. 726 Henry Ward Beecher: Life Thoughts. Christianity is simply the ideal form of manhood represented to us by Jesus Christ. 727 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit. If a man cannot be a Christian in the place where he is, he cannot be a Christian anywhere. 728 Henry Ward Beecher Life Thoughts. Liberty comes with Christianity, because Christianity develops and strengthens the mass of men. 729 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth A deep, living sense of God is the true vitality of a human soul, which quenches the poisonous fires of corruption, as powerless to be hurt by it as the cold, calm sea is to be set on fire by the coals that you may cast burning into its bosom. 730 Phillips Brooks: Sermons. X. Unspotted from the World. Christianity is the bringing of God to man, and of man to God. 731 Phillips Brooks: Sermons. V. The Soul's Refuge in God. His Christianity was muscular. 733 J. C. and A. W. Hare: Guesses at Truth. Time cannot alter the incomparable wisdom, the divine flexibility of the Christian life. Time cannot alter "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day and forever." 734 Hugh R. Haweis: Speeches in Season. Bk. i. Christ's Hard Sayings. Sec. 87. Sacrifice is Essential. Religion and education are not a match for evil and organization without the grace of God, his Holy Spirit, and constant prayer, and then they are. 735 B. R. Haydon: Table Talk. Christianity, . . . the nurse and patron of all high study, has no fear of science, least of all that science which deals with material things. Go as far as science can, up or down, with spectrum or microscope, she never sets her eyes on the beginnings of things. Life remains still a mystery. And the institutions of the humblest thinker are grander than the stars shining in their solemn depths. 736 Roswell D. Hitchcock: Eternal Atonement. XII. The Witness of History to Christianity. CHRISTIANITY -- CHRISTIANS. Faith is required of thee, and a sincere life, not loftiness of intellect, nor deepness in the mysteries of God. 7837 Thomas à Kempis: Imitation of Christ. Bk. iv. A wise man will always be a Christian, because the perfection of wisdom is to know where lies tranquillity of mind, and how to attain it, which Christianity teaches. 738 Landor: Imaginary Conversations. Christianity is humanity. 739 Andrew Theodore Parker: Speeches, Addresses, and Occa- Church, Boston, Jan. 4, 1846. Silence the voice of Christianity, and the world is well-nigh dumb, for gone is that sweet music which kept in order the rulers of the people, which cheers the poor widow in her lonely toil, and comes like light through the windows of morning, to men who sit stooping and feeble, with failing It is gone, all gone; only the eyes and a hungering heart. cold, bleak world left before them. 740 Theodore Parker: Critical and Miscellaneous Writings. A Discourse of the Transient and Perma nent in Christianity. Christianity is first and last of all Christ in us, inwardly revealed as a law-giving direction to our life, inwardly at work as a force, developing our life in conformity with that law. 741 Charles H. Parkhurst: Sermons. V. Walking in Christianity is substantially friendship with God in Christ. 742 VII. Piety A Christian life is the great key of the Gospel. 743 CHRISTIANS -see Humility, Self-Sacrifice, geance, Wisdom. Ven Many Christians are like chestnuts, very pleasant nuts, but enclosed in very prickly burrs, which need various dealings of Nature and her grip of frost before the kernel is disclosed. 744 Paul Chatfield, M.D. (Horace Smith): The Tin A Christian is God Almighty's gentleman. 745 J. C. and A. W. Hare: Guesses at Truth. |