To My Dear Friend

Helen M. Archibald

This Book

Is Affectionately Inscribed.

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.