Latest / Sermons on Several Occasions / Kindness-Frederick William Faber

Transcript

Kindness-Frederick William Faber · Sermons on Several Occasions

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Prefatory note and memoir of Kindness. This is a LibriVox recording.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: All Librivoq's recordings are in the public domain. For more
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Kindness
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: by Father Fabre prefatory note. Though it is not customary
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: to prefix the memoir of an author to so small
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: a portion of his works as the present, still, the
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: three decades of years that have elapsed since his death
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: may have at least partially obliterated the memory of the
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: great and gifted Father Fabre. To prevent that memory fading
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: from the minds of our young people, this sketch is
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: given those desires of learning more of the illustrious Oratorian
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: will find exhaustive details of his conversion to the faith,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: et cetera in his life, written by the Reverend John Bowden,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: from which many of the facts of this memoir are borrowed.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Memoir of Father Faber. Frederick William Faber was the son
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: of mister Thomas Henry Faber, a Protestant gentleman of French descent.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: He was born at his grandfather's residence, the Vicarage of
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Calvary in Yorkshire, on June twenty eighth eighteen fourteen. In
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: the following year, his father removed to Bishop Auckland, where
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: the family continued to reside till his father's death in
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: eighteen thirty three. Frederick, who was his mother's idol, was
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: a singularly attractive child and gave early indications of the
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: brilliant genius which afterwards distinguished him. His parents, both of
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: whom were persons of much intellectual culture, spared no pains
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: to foster the nascent talents of their boy, and were
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: re ordered beyond their dreams by the results. After a
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: brief sojourn at the grammar school of Bishop Auckland, Frederick
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: was placed for a time under the tuition of the
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Reverend John Gibson at kirkby Stephen. In eighteen twenty five,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: he was removed to Shrewsbury School. After a short stay there,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: he proceeded to Harrow, where he remained till he entered
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: the University of Oxford. Whilst in Harrow, skepticism, then as
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: now so rampant in England, had well nigh dealt his
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: spiritual being a deadly blow. God's merciful providence rescued him
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: in the hour of danger. He matriculated at Balliol College, Oxford,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: and came into residence there in eighteen thirty three. One
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: of his contemporary's rites, he resisted from first to last
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: the temptations to which many succumb, and, by the grace
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: of God, was able to preserve unstain the purity of
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: his life. He went to Oxford imbued with Calvinistic principles
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: inherited from his parents and treasured by him, all the
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: more in that he had so narrowly escaped the loss
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: of faith in herow. After some months, however, Frederick's religious
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: tendencies underwent a change. This change was brought about by
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: the High Church movement, under the influence of which he
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: had now to some extent fallen for the leader of
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: the movement, the illustrious John Henry Newman. Afterwards, Cardinal Faber
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: conceived an affectionate veneration which lasted through life. But whilst
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: fully sympathizing with the spirit which animated this movement, he
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: nevertheless shrank from the lengths to which some of its
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: advocates were going. That his earnest and deeply religious nature
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: was even now strung after truth is evidenced in every
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: page of the voluminous correspondence penned by him at this period.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: A few extracts from his letters may not be out
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: of place here as showing the tone of his mind
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: at this time. In a letter dated from the University
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: in January eighteen thirty five, he thanks God that the
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: temporalities of the Church of England are no longer such
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: as to induce men to enter the ministry from motives
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: of mere worldly ambition. To realize fully the disinterestedness of
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: these views, we must bear in mind that from his
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: earliest years his aspirations had all tended towards the clerical state.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: In a letter dated the same month and year as
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: the above, he writes, I feel to an almost sinful
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: degree that I never could be happy or content in
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: any other profession. It has thrown a color over all
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: my boyhood. It has been my life's one dream, so
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: much so that I sometimes fancy I am called to it.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: So high, however, is the standard which I have set
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: up in my own mind, And so much below that
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: standard do I feel myself that I do at times
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: question my fitness for so awful a vocation. What wonder
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: that the deep personal love of our Divine Lord which
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: even now is so apparent, should increasing with his years,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: give him that wonderful success in dealing with souls which
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: marked his missionary labors as a Catholic priest. On May
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: twenty sixth, eighteen thirty nine, he received ordination in Oxford,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: and soon after made a brief visit to the continent,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: whence he returned very unfavorably, impressed with what he had
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: seen of Catholicism. As a result, no doubt of his
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: prejudices against the faith, In eighteen forty he accepted the
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: post of tutor to the eldest son of mister Harrison
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: of Ambleside. The greater part of eighteen forty one was
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: spent on the continent as traveling companion to mister Harrison. Meanwhile,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: prayer and spiritual reading had been doing their work in
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: his soul, and it was from a different standpoint that
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: he now studied the Church which he had recently regarded
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: so unfavorably. Already the light of faith under the touch
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: of grace was beginning to dawn upon his mind. In
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: eighteen forty two, Faber, after some hesitation, accepted the rectory
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: of Elton, and on April second, eighteen forty three, he
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: introduced himself there. Next day, accompanied by his late pupil,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: he set out on his travels. While in Rome, doctor
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Grant took him to see Saint Peter's writing of it.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: He says, the roof gives one the true notion of
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: its enormous size. The cottages of the workmen, with the
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: spacious offices, the fountains, and the whole appurtenances of a
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: little village, seem only to occupy a moderate portion of
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: the roof of a single church. The idea of people living, cooking, sleeping,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: et cetera on the roof struck me beyond anything. On
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: June seventeenth, eighteen forty three, Faber had a private audience
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: with the Pope Gregory the sixteenth. His Holiness, who was alone, said,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: you must not mislead yourself in wishing for unity yet
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: waiting for your church to move, Think of the salvation
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: of your own soul. After some further words of counsel,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: he laid his hands on Faber's shoulders, who immediately knelt down,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: upon which he laid them on his head, saying, may
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: the grace of God correspond to your good wishes and
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: deliver you from the nets of Anglicanism, and bring you
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: to the true Holy Church, and for answer to the
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Holy Pontiff's prayer. He had not long to wait. Gradually
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: the veil was removed from his eyes, till at last
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: he beheld in all her majesty and beauty, the One
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: Holy Catholic Church, the nursing Mother of the Saints, from
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: whom all ecclesiastical authority emanates, whose founder neither can deceive
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: nor be deceived, who will be with her all days,
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: even to the consummation of the world. While in Florence
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: he began to wear the miraculous metal, and would have
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: made a practice of invoking our Immaculate Mother, were he
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: not withheld from doing so by Newman, who disapproved of
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: his taking so pronounced a step in favor of Rome,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: while still fluctuating as to her claims on his allegiance.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: It seems indeed certain that he would have entered the
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Church before returning to England, had not Newman succeeded in
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: dissuading him. He, who later on was to shed so
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: bright a luster on the Church, was still undecided in
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: his religious opinions, and resolved to make no move towards Catholicity,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: till he had sounded to their depths the vitally important
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: questions on which such momentous issues hung. He strongly advised
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: his friend to do likewise, and the latter, in deference
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: to the wishes of one whose counsels he had been
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: accustomed to follow, consented to remain for the present in
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: the Anglican Communion. On his return to England, Faber at
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: once said, entered upon his duties at Elton. Notorious as
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: they were for their callousness and indifference, his new flock
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: afforded ample scope for the exercise of his zeal. Carefully
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: avoiding controversy, he selected such subjects for his sermons as
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: were calculated to instill a love and reverence for God
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: and the moral life. Devotion to the Sacred Heart formed
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: his favorite theme, as appealing to every denomination of Christians.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Keeping his religious doubts in abeyance, the young pastor merged
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: all his anxieties into zeal for the salvation of souls
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: confided to him. He visited the sick, consoled the sorrowing,
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: taught the suffering to sanctify their pains by uniting them
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: to those of our Divine Lord. And spared no effort
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: to aid and encourage the faint hearted in their striving
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: after good. His utter unselfishness and entire devotion to their interests,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: combined with the unction of his preaching and his sanctity
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: and austerity of life, soon obtained for him an absolute
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: ascendency over the minds of his people. The change wrought
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: in them was marvelous. A number of his parishioners, especially
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: the young men, began to come to confession to him weakly,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: and they frequently communicated. In eighteen forty five, many A.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Faber's friends were received into the church. Foremost amongst them
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: was Newman. All his doubts dispelled. That great man, whose
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: magnificent intellect and spotless integrity of life were the admiration
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: of Protestants and Catholics alike, brought with him to the
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: church a loyalty as unswerving as his gifts were great.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Till now he had retarded Fabre's conversion. But no sooner
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: had he himself received the gift of faith than he
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: hastened to communicate the joyful tidings to his erstwhile disciple,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: urging upon him the imperative necessity of at once making
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: his submission to the Church of Christ. Scarcely had the
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: voice so long listened to as an oracle spoken in
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: this sense than Fabre's mind was made up, and he
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: resolved with as little delay as possible, to enroll himself
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: amongst the children of the Catholic Church. On November sixteenth,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: eighteen forty five, he officiated for the last time as
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Rector of Elton at the evening service. After a few
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: introductory words, he told his people that he could no
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: longer remain in the Anglican Church, being convinced of its
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: untenable position. Hadnder Bolt fallen amongst them. His audience could
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: not have been more electrified. With saddened hearts, some bent
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: their steps homewards, while others followed him to the rectory,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: imploring him to reconsider his decision. On the following morning,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: November seventeenth, he left Elton Forever, accompanied by mister T. F. Knox,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: scholar of Trinity College, his two servants, and seven of
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: his parishioners, all of whom were to enter the church
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: with him. Loved and venerated as he had been by
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: his flock, their grief at losing him was indescribable. Many
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: with streaming eyes and voices stifled by sobs, exclaimed God,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: bless you, mister Faber, wherever you go. It was an
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: hour of the intensest suffering for favor, but the sacrifice
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: was for God, and his servant counted not the cost.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: On that evening he and his companions were received into
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: the church by Doctor Waring, Bishop of Northampton. They made
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: their first communion and were confirmed on the next morning.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: After a brief stay with his brother, Faber repaired to
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Birmingham on the invitation of the Reverend Father Moore, and
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: took up his residence at Saint Chad's till he should
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: come to some decision concerning the future. No sooner was
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: he admitted into the church than he began to devote
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: himself exclusively to the furtherance of her interests. With the
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: approbation of doctor Afterwards Cardinal Wiseman, he took a small
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: house in Caroline Street, Birmingham, and with his eight Elton converts,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: to form a community of which he was superior, took
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: possession on December nineteenth, eighteen forty five. From the moment
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: of his conversion, all Faber's aspirations tended towards the priesthood
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: on October twelfth, eighteen forty six. December nineteenth of the
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: same year, and March twentieth following were dates forever memorable
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: to him. On these several days he received the order's
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: preparatory to priesthood, and on Holy Saturday, April third, he
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: saw the realization of his fondest hopes in the crowning
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: grace of his priestly ordination. He immediately received faculties to
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: hear confessions and was intrusted with the sole charge of
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: the mission of cotton Overflowing with gratitude to God who
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: had dealt so tenderly with him, all the energies of
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: his being were devoted to the service of this good Master.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: He toiled incessantly to lead others to the truth. For
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: this he preached, and worked and wrote. And when with
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: fervid eloquence he cries out, go and help Jesus, Why
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: should a single soul for which he died be lost?
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: He but gives utterance to the feeling that dominated his
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: whole life, and which united with a patience and kindliness
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: that never failed, was the great secret of his success
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: as a spiritual guide. We have already seen that he
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: was essentially a man of prayer, bringing everything, even his
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: least important avocations, under its influence. Writing on the subject,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: he says, intellectually speaking, it is very hard to believe
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: in prayer. Yet let us spend but one week in
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: the real, earnest service of God and the exercises of
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: the spiritual life, and the fact, and far more than
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: the fact, will lie before us bright beyond the brilliance
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: of human demonstration. And again all experience concurs with God's
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: written word to tell us that the immutable is changed
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: by prayer. In eighteen forty seven, Father Faber proposed that
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: he and Father Anthony Hutchinson, who were the only priests
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: in the community, should pronounce their vows as members of
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: the Congregation of the Will of God, and he had
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: actually written to doctor Weisman for the requisite permission. However,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: just at this time, the news of Father Newman's projected
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: return to England as superior of the Oratorians reached him
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: and suggested to him the idea of amalgamating the two communities.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: On February fourteenth, eighteen forty eight, they were admitted Oratorians.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: Father Wilfrid, for such was his relation religious name. Began
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: his noviceship under the immediate supervision of Doctor Newman on
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: February twenty first, eighteen forty eight, and at the end
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: of six months he was appointed novice Master. The influx
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: of novices was soon so great as to necessitate a
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: removal to Saint Wilfrid's, which was much more spacious than Maryville.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: The number of subjects continuing to increase, Doctor Newman removed
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: with part of the community to Birmingham and opened a
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: second house in London, of which he appointed Father Faber rector,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: and when in eighteen fifty Newman erected it into a
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: separate congregation, Father Wilfrid was elected superior, a post which
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: he held till his death. The present oratory house at
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Brompton became the residence of the fathers in eighteen fifty five.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: O Their Fabre's literary career, which began when he was
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: scarcely twenty, was from the outset a most active one,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: but in eighteen fifty three he commenced a series of
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: spiritual works, the first of which was All for Jesus.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: This delightful book, so fascinating in style, so replete with instruction,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: was written in six weeks. It was followed in quick
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: succession by growth in holiness, the blessed Sacrament, the Creator
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: and the Creature, the foot of the Cross, the spiritual conferences,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: the Precious Blood, and Bethlehem. When we take into account
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: Father Fabre's duties as Superior and the many calls upon
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: his time from the thousands that sought his spiritual help,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: we are lost in wonder at the amount of work accomplished.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: But he was, in truth an indefatigable worker. Such constant
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: application impaired a constitution never robust, and engendered the germs
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: of disease. On November eleventh, he was summoned to Arundel
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Castle to attend the death bed of Canon Tyranny, but
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: had scarcely arrived when he was attacked with acute bronchitis.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: From this he recovered sufficiently to return to London for
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: the celebration of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. He
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: wrote at this time pain does not altogether dispense, either
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: from penance or prayer. Ejaculations about the passion and mental
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: acts of conformity to God's will do me most good.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: On April twenty third, eighteen sixty three, there was a
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: consultation of doctors as to his state, and their verdict
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: caused grave uneasiness. On the twenty sixth he set his
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: last Mass, and on June sixth tee it was deemed
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: necessary to administer to him the last sacraments, as death
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: seemed imminent, But he lingered till the end of September.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: For months, his sufferings had been so intense that he
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: had been unable to lie down. On September twenty fifth,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: his attendants, noticing a great change for the worse, placed
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: him in bed. Here he lay supported by pillows, not speaking,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: but gazing steadily at a large white crucifix before him,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: and moving his eyes sometimes from one of the five
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: wounds to the other. Just before seven o'clock a m
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: a sudden change came over the Father. His head turned
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: a little to the right, his breathing seemed to stop.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: A few spasmodic gasps followed, and his spirit passed away.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: In these last moments, his eyes opened, clear, bright, intelligent
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: as ever in spite of the look of agony on
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: his face, but open to the sight of nothing earthly,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: with a touching expression half of sweetness and half of surprise.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: He was only in the forty ninth year of his age.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: The news of his death cast a gloom over the metropolis,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: where he was mourned by thousands. Many lost in him
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: a venerated father and trusted friend, whilst to countless souls
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: his loss as a spiritual guide is not to be
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: expressed through life. The kindness he has so eloquently advocated
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: formed the keynote of his character. May the brightness of
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: his example, ever linger with us that won by its attractiveness,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: and aided by its influence, we may strive to follow
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: in his footsteps, However imperfectly usilign convent Thorals Feast of
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Our Lady, Help of Christians nineteen oh one, and of
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Memoir of Father Fabre, Chapter one, Part one of Kindness
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: by Father Fabre. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Chapter one Unkindness in General, Part one. The weakness of
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: man and the way in which he is at the
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: mercy of external accidents in the world has always been
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: a favorite topic with the moralists. They have expatiated on
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: it with so much amplitude of rhetorical exaggeration that it
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: has at last produced in our minds a sense of
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: unreality against which we rebel. Man is no doubt very weak.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: He can only be passive in a thunderstorm or run
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: in an earthquake. The odds are against him when he
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: is managing his ship in a hurricane, or when pestilence
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: is raging in the house where he lives. Heat and cold,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: drought and rain are his masters. He is weaker than
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: an elephant, and subordinate to the east wind. This is
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: all very true. Nevertheless, man has considerable powers, considerable enough
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: to leave him, as proprietor of this planet, in possession
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: of at least as much comfortable jurisdiction as most landed
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: proprietors have in a free country. He has one power
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: in particular, which is not sufficiently dwelt on, and with
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: which we will at present occupy ourselves. It is the
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: power of making the world happy, or at least of
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: so greatly diminishing the amount of unhappy happiness in it
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: as to make it quite a different world from what
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: it is at present. This power is called kindness. The
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: worst kinds of unhappiness, as well as the greatest amount
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: of it, come from our conduct to each other. If
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: our conduct therefore were under the control of kindness, it
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: would be nearly the opposite of what it is, and
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: so the state of the world would be almost reversed.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: We are, for the most part unhappy because the world
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: is an unkind world. But the world is only unkind
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: for the lack of kindness in us units who compose it. Now,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: if all this is but so much as half true,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: it is plainly worth our while to take some trouble
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: to gain clear and definite notions of kindness. We practice
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: more easily what we already know clearly, We must first
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: ask ourselves what kind kindness is. Words which we are
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: using constantly soon cease to have much distinct meaning in
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: our minds. They become symbols and figures rather than words,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: and we become content with the general impression they make
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: upon us. Now, let us be a little particular about
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: kindness and describe it as accurately as we can. Kindness
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: is the overflowing of self upon others. We put others
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: in the place of self. We treat them as we
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: would wish to be treated ourselves. We change places with them.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: For the time self is another and others ourself our self.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Love takes the shape of complaisance in unselfishness, we cannot
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: speak of the virtues without thinking of God. What would
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: the overflow of self upon others be in Him, the
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: ever blessed and eternal. It was the act of creation.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: Creation was divine kindness. From it, as from a fountain,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: flow the possibilities, the powers, the blessings of all created kindness.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: This is an honorable genealogy for kindness. Then again, kindness
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: is the coming to the rescue of others when they
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: need it, and it is in our power to supply
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: what they need. And this is the work of the
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: attributes of God towards his creatures. His omnipotence is forever
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: making up our deficiency of power. His justice is continually
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: correcting our erroneous judgments. His mercy is always consoling our
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: fellow creatures under our hardheartedness. His truth is perpetually hindering
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: the consequences of our falsehood. His omniscience makes our ignorance
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: succeed as if it were knowledge. His perfections are incessantly
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: coming to the rescue of our imperfections. This is the
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: definition of providence, and kindness is our imitation of this
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: divine action. Moreover, kindness is also like divine grace, for
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: it gives men something which neither self nor nature can
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: give them. What it gives them is something of which
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: they are in want, or something which only another person
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: can give, such as consolation. And besides this, the manner
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: in which this is given is a true gift in itself,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: better far than the thing given. And what is all
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: this but an allegory of grace. Kindness adds sweetness to everything.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: It is kindness which makes life's capabilities blossom, and paints
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: them with their cheering hues, and endows them with their
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: invigorating fragrance. Whether it waits on its superiors, or ministers
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: to its inferiors, or disports itself with its equals, its
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: work is marked by a prodigality which the strictest discretion
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: cannot blame. It does unnecessary work, which, when done, looks
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: the most necessary work that could be. If it goes
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: to soothe the sorrow, it does more than soothe it.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: If it relieves a want, it cannot do so without
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: doing more than relieve it. Its manner is something extra,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: and it is the choice thing in the bargain, even
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: when it is economical in what it gives, it is
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: not economical of the gracefulness with which it gives it.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: But what is all this like except the exuberance of
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: the divine government? See how now turn which way we will.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Kindness is entangled with the thought of God. Last of all,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: the secret impulse out of which kindness acts is an
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: instinct which is the noblest part of ourselves, the most
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: undoubted remnant of the image of God, which was given
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: us at the first. We must therefore never think of
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: kindness as being a common growth of our nature, common
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: in the sense of its being of little value. It
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: is the nobility of man in all its modifications. It
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: reflects a heavenly type. It runs up into eternal mysteries.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: It is a divine thing rather than a human one.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: And it is human because it springs from the soul
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: of man, just at the point where the divine image
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: was grave and deepest. Such is kindness. Now let us
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: consider its all in the world, in order that we
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: may get a clearer view of itself. It makes life
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: more endurable. The burden of life presses heavily upon multitudes
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: of the children of men. It is a yoke, often
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: of such a peculiar nature that familiarity. Instead of practically lightening,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: it makes it harder to bear. Perseverance is the hand
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: of time, pressing the yoke down on our galled shoulders
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: with all its might. There are many men to whom
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: life is always approaching the unbearable. It stops only just
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: short of it. We expect it to transgress every moment.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: But without having recourse to these extreme cases, sin alone
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: is sufficient to make life intolerable to a virtuous man.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Actual sin is not essential to this. The possibility of sinning,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: the danger of sinning, the facility of sinning, the temptation
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: to sin, the example of so much sin around us,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: and above all, the sinful unworthiness of men much better
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: than ourselves. These are sufficient to make life drain us
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: to the last dregs of our endurance. In all these cases,
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: it is the office of kindness to make life more bearable,
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: And if its success in its office is often only partial,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: some amount of success is at least invariable. It is
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: true that we make ourselves more unhappy than other people
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: make us. No slight portion of this unhappiness arises from
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: our sense of justice, being so continually wounded by the
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: events of life, while the incessant friction of the world
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: never allows the wound to heal. There are some men
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: whose practical talents are completely swamp by the keenness of
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: their sense of injustice. They go through life as failures
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: because the pressure of injustice upon themselves, or the sight
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: of its pressing upon others, has unmanned them. If they
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: begin a line of action, they cannot go through with it.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: They are perpetually shying like a meddlesome horse at the
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: objects by the roadside. They had much in them, but
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: they have died without anything coming of them. Kindness steps
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: forward to remedy this evil. Also, each solitary kind action
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: that is done, the whole world over is working briskly
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: in its own sphere to restore the balance between right
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: and wrong. The more kindness there is on the earth
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: at any given moment, the greater is the tendency of
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: the balance between right and wrong to correct itself and
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: remain in equilibrium. Nay, this is short of the truth.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: Kindness allies itself with right to invade the wrong and
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: beat it off the earth. Justice is necessarily an aggressive virtue,
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: and kindness is the amiability of justice, mindful of its
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: divine origin and of its hereditary descent from the primal
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: act of creation. This dear virtue is forever entering into
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: God's original dispositions. As Creator, he meant the world to
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: be a happy world, and kindness means it. Also he
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: gave it the power to be happy, and kindness was
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: a great part of that very power. By his benediction,
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: he commanded creation to be happy. Kindness, with its usual
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: genial spirit of accommodation, now tries to persuade a world
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: which has dared to disobey a divine command God. He
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: looks over the fallen world and repents that he made man.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: Kindness sees less clearly the ruin of God's original idea
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: than it sees still that first beneficent idea, and it
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: sets to work to cleanse what is defiled and to
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: restore what is defaced. It sorrows over sin, but like
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: boy and hearted men, it finds in it sorrow the
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: best impulse of its activity. It is laboring, always in
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: ten thousand places, and the work at which it labors
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: is always the same, to make God's world more like
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: his original conception of it. But while it thus ministers
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: to him as creator, it is no less energetic and
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: successful in preparing and enlarging his ways as savior, it
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: is constantly winning strayed souls back to him, opening hearts
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: that seemed obstinately closed, enlightening minds that had been wilfully darkened,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: skillfully throwing the succorers of hope into the strongholds that
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: were on the point of capitulating to despair, lifting endeavor
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: from low to high, from high to higher, from higher
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: to highest everywhere. Kindness is the best pioneer of the
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: precious blood. We often begin our own repentance by acts
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: of kindness, or through them. Probably the majority of repentances
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: have begun in the reception of acts of kindness, which,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: if not unexpected, touched men by the sense of their
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: being so undeserved. Doubtless, the terrors of the Lord are
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: often the beginning of that wisdom which we name conversion.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: But men must be frightened in a kind way, or
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: the fright will only make them unbelievers. Kindness has converted
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: more sinners than either zeal, eloquence, or learning, and these
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: three last have never converted anyone unless they were kind. Also,
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: in short, kindness makes us as gods to each other.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: Yet while it lifts us so high, it sweetly keeps
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: us slow. For the continual sense which a kind heart
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: has of its own need of kindness keeps it humble.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: There are no hearts to which kindness is so indispensable
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: as those that are exuberantly kind themselves. But let us
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: look at the matter from another point. What does kindness
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: do for those to whom we show it. We have
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: looked at its office on a grand scale in the
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: whole world. Let us narrow our field of observation and
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: see what it does for those who are its immediate object.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: What we note first, as of great consequence is the
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: immense power of kindness in bringing out the good points
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: of the characters of others. Almost all men have more
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: goodness in them than the ordinary intercourse of the world
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: enables us to discover. Indeed, most men, from the glimpses
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: we now and then obtain, carry with them to the
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: grave much undeveloped nobility. Life is seldom so varied or
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: so adventurous as to enable a man to unfold all
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: that is in him. A creature who has got capabilities
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: in him to live forever can hardly have room in
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: threescore years to do more than give specimens of what
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: he might be and will be. But beside this, who
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: has not seen how disagreeable and faulty characters will expand
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: under kindness generosities brings up, fresh and vigorous from under
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: a superincumbent load of meanness. Modesty suddenly discloses itself from
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: some safe cavern where it has survived years of sin.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: Virtues come to life, and in their infantine robustness strangle
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: habits which a score of years has been spent in forming.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: It is wonderful what capabilities grace can find in the
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: most unpromising character. It is a thing to be much pondered,
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: duly reflected upon. It might alter our view of the
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: world altogether. But kindness does not reveal these things to
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: us external spectators. Only it reveals a man to himself.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: It rouses the long dormant self respect with which Grace
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: will speedily ally itself and purify it by the alliance.
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: Neither does it content itself with making a revelation. It develops,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: as well as reveals. It gives these newly disclosed capabilities
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: of virtue, vigor, and animation. It presents them with occasions.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: It even trains and tutors them. It causes the first
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: actions of the recovering soul to be actions on high
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: principles and from generous motives. It shields and defends moral
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: convalescence from the dangers which beset it. A kind act
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: has picked up many a fallen man, who has afterwards
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: slain his tens of thousands for his Lord, and has
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: entered the heavenly City at last as a conqueror, amidst
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: the acclamations of the saints, and with the welcome of
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: its sovereign. It is probable that no man ever had
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: a kind action done to him who did not, in consequence,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: commit a sin less than he otherwise would have done.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: I can look out over the earth at any hour,
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: and I see in spirit innumerable angels threading the crowds
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: of men, and hindering sin by all manner of artifices
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: which shall not interfere with the freedom of man's will.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: I see also invisible grace made visible for the moment,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: flowing straight from God in and upon and around the
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: souls of men, and sin, giving way and yielding a
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: place to it. It is only in the deserts that
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: I do not see it. And on the tracks of
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: shipless seas in the fields of polar ice. But together
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: with Grace and the angels, there is a third band
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: of diminutive figures with veils upon their heads, which are
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: flitting everywhere, making gloomy men cease to groan, lighting up
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: hope in the eyes of the dying, sweetening the heart
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: of the bidder, and adroitly turning men away from sin
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: just when they are on the point of committing it.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: They seem to have a strange power. Men listen to
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: them who have been deaf to the pleading of angels.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: They gain admittance into hearts before the doors of which
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: Grace has lost its patience and gone away. No sooner
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: are the doors open than these veiled messengers. These cunning
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: ministers of God have gone and returned with lightning like speed,
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: and brought back Grace with them. They are most versatile
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: in their operations. One while they are the spies of Grace,
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: another while sappers and miners, another while it's light cavalry,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: another while they bear the brunt of the battle. And
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: for more than five thousand years they have hardly known
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: the meaning of defeat. They are the acts of kindness
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: which are daily enrolled in God's service, from the rising
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: to the setting of the sun. And this is the
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: second work they do in souls, to lessen the number
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: of their sins. There are few gifts more precious to
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: a soul than to make its sins fewer. It is
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: in our power to do this almost daily, and sometimes
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: often in a day. End of Chapter one, Part one,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Chapter one, Part two of Kindness by Father Favor. This
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter one on
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: Kindness in General, Part two. Another work which our kindness
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: does in the hearts of others is to encourage them
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: in their efforts after good habits of sin, even when
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: put to death. As habits leave many evil legacies behind them,
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: one of the most disastrous parts of their inheritance is discouragement.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: There are few things which resist grace as it does obstinacy,
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: even is more hopeful. We may see floods of grace
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: descend on the disheartened soul, and it shows no symptom
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: of reviving. Grace runs off it as the rain runs
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: from the roofs. Whichever of its three forms peevishness, lethargy,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: or delusion, it may assume God's mercy must lay regular
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: siege to it, or it will never be taken. But
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: we all of us need encouragement to do good. The
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: path of virtue, even when it is not up hill,
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: is rough and stony, and each day's journey is a
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: little longer than our strength admits of. Only there are
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: no means of shortening it. The twenty four hours are
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: the same to every one except the idol, and to
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: the idol they are thirty six for weariness and dulness.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: You may love God, and love him truly as you do,
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: and high motives may be continually before you. Nevertheless, you
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: must be quite conscious to yourself of being soon fatigued,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: nay perhaps of a normal lassitude growing with your years.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: And you must remember how especially the absence of sympathy
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: tried you, and how all things began to look like
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: delusion because no one encouraged you in your work. Alas,
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: how many noble hearts have sunk under this not ignoble weariness,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: how many plans for God's glory have fallen to the
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: ground which a bright look or a kind eye would
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: have propped up. But either because because we were busy
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: with our own work, and never looked at that of others,
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: or because we were jealous and looked coldly and spoke critically,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: we have not come with this facile succor to the rescue,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: not so much for our brother as of our dearest
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: lord himself. How many institutions for the comfort of the
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: poor or saving of souls have languished more for want
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: of approbation than of money. And though sympathy is so cheap,
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: the lone priest has struggled on till his solitude, His weariness,
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: and his lack of sympathy have almost given way beneath
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: the burden, and the wolves have rushed in upon that
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: little nook of his master's sheepfold, which he had so
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: lovingly partitioned off as his own peculiar work. Oh what
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: a wretched thing it is to be unkind. I think,
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: with the thought of the precious blood, I can better
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: face my sins at the last judgment than my unkindness,
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: with all its miserable fertility of evil consequences. But if
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: we have no notion of the far reaching mischief which
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: unkindness does, so neither can we rightly estimate the good
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: which kindness may do. Very often a heart is drooping.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: It is bending over itself, lower and lower. The cloud
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: of sadness thickens, temptations lie all around, and are multiplying
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: in strength and number every moment. Everything forebodes approaching sin,
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: not so much as a kind action, not so much
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: as a kind word, But the mere tone of voice,
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: the mere fixing of the eye, has conveyed sympathy to
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: the poor, suffering heart, and all is right again. In
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: one instant, the downcast soul has revived under that mere
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: peep of human and sunshine, and is encouraged to do
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: bravely the very thing which, in despondency it had almost
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: resolved to leave undone. That coming sin might have been
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: the soul's first step to an irretrievable ruin. That encouragement
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: may be the first link of a new chain, which,
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: when its length is finished, shall be called final perseverance.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: Few men can do without praise, and there are few
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: circumstances under which a man can be praised without injuring him.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: Here is a difficulty. It is wise to take a
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: kindly view of all human infirmities, but it is not
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: wise to humor them. In act, some men can do
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: without the praise of others because their own is so unfailing.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: Their vanity enables them to find self praise sufficient. Vanity
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: is the most comfortable of vices. The misfortune is that
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: nevertheless is a vice. Some try to do without praise
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: and grow moody and critical, which shows their grace was
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: not adequate for their attempt. Some do without praise because
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: they are all for God. But alas it would not
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: occupy us long to take the sensus of that portion
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: of the world's population, most men must have praise. Their
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: fountains dry up without it. Everyone in authority knows this
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: well enough. He has to learn to praise without seeming
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: to praise. Now, Kindness has all the virtues of praise
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: without its vices. It is equally medicinal without having the
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: poisonous qualities. When we are praised, we are praised at
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: some expense, and at our own expense. Kindness puts us
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: to no expense, while it enriches those who are kind
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: to us. Praise always implies some degree of condescension, and
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: condescension is a thing intrinsically ungraceful, whereas kindness is the
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: most graceful attitude one man can assume towards another. So
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: here is another work it does. It supplies the place
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: of praise. It is, in fact the only sort of
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: praise which does not injure, the only sort which is
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: always and everywhere true, the only kind which those who
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: are afraid of growing conceited may welcome safely. Moreover, kindness
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: is infectious, no kind action ever stopped with itself. Fecundity
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: belongs to it in its own right. One kind action
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: leads to another, by one we commit ourselves to more
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: than one. Our example is followed. The single act of
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: spring up and make fresh trees, And the rapidity of
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: the growth is equal to its extent. But this fertility
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: is not confined to ourselves or to others, who may
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: be kind to the same person to whom we have
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: been kind. It is chiefly to be found in the
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: person himself, whom we have benefited. This is the greatest
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: work which kindness does to others, that it makes them
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: kind themselves. The kindest men are generally those who have
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: received the greatest number of kindnesses. It does, indeed, sometimes
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: happen according to the law which in noble natures produces
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: good out of evil. That men who have had to
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: feel the want of kindness are themselves lavishly kind when
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: they have the power. But in general the rule is
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: that kindness makes menkind. As we become kinder ourselves by
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: practicing kindness, So the objects of our kindness, if they
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: were kind before, learn how to be kinder, and to
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: be kind now if they were never so before. Thus
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: does kindness propagate itself on all sides. Perhaps an act
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: of kindness never dies, but extends the invisible undulations of
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: its influence over the breath of centuries. Thus, for all
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: these reasons, there is no better thing which we can
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: do for others than to be kind to them, And
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: our kindness is the greatest gift they can receive, except
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: the grace of God. There is always a certain sort
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: of selfishness in the spiritual life. The order of charity
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: rules it. So our first consideration is the glory of
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: God in our own souls. We must take hold of
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: this glory by the handle. First of all, everything will
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: be presumption and delusion if it is taken in any
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: other order. Hence, even while speaking of kindness, it is
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: not out of place for us to consider the work
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: which it does for ourselves. We have seen what it
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: does for the world. We have seen what it does
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: for our neighbors. Now let us see how it blesses ourselves.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: To be kind to ourselves is a very peculiar feature
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: of the spiritual life, but does not come within our
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: range at present. Foremost among the common ways in which
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: kind actions benefit ourselves may be mentioned the help they
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: give us in getting clear of selfishness. The tendency of
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: nature to love itself has more the character of a
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: habit than a law. Opposite conduct always tends to weaken it,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: which would hardly be the case if it were a law. Kindness, moreover,
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: partly from the pleasure which accompanies it, partly from the
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: blessing it draws down upon itself, and partly from its
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: similitude to God, tends very rapidly to set into a
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: well formed habit. Selfishness is, in no slight degree a
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: point of view from which we regard things. Kindness alters
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: our view. By altering our point of view, Now does
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: anything tease us more than our selfishness does anything more
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: effectually retard our spiritual growth. Selfishness indeed furnishes us with
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: a grand opportunity of getting to hate ourselves because of
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: the odiousness of this self worship. But how few of
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: us have got either the depth or the bravery to
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: profit by this magnificent case. On the whole selfishness must
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: be put down, or our progress will cease. A series
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: of kind actions turned against it with playful courage. And
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: selfishness is I will not say, killed, but stunned, And
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: that is a great convenience, though it is not the
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: whole work accomplished. Perhaps we may never come to be
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: quite unselfish. However, there is but one road towards that,
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: which is kindness, and every step taken on that road
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: is a long stride heavenwards. Kindness seems to know of
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: some secret fountain of joy deep in the soul, which
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: it can touch without revealing its locality, and cause to
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: send its waters upwards and overflow the heart. Inward happiness
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: almost always follows a kind action, and who has not
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: long since experienced in him that inward happiness is the
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: atmosphere in which great things are done for God. Furthermore,
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: kindness is a constant godlike occupation and implies many supernatural
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: operations in those who practice kindness. Upon motives of faith.
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: Much grace goes along with kindness, collateral graces more than
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: sufficient in themselves to make a saint. Observation would lead
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: us to the conclusion that kindness is not a native
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: of the land of youth. Men grow kinder as they
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: grow older. There are, of course natures which are kindly
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: from the cradle, but not many men have seen a
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: really kind boy or girl in like manner. As kindness
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: in the natural world implies age, in the spiritual world,
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: it implies grace. It does not belong to the fervor
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: of beginnings, but to the solidity of progress. Indeed, Christian
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: kindness implies so much grace that it almost assures the
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: exercise of humility. A proud man is seldom a kind man.
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: Humility makes us kind, and kindness makes us humble. It
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: is one of the many instances in the matter of
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: the virtues of good qualities being at once not only
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: causes and effects together, but also their own causes and effects.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: It would be foolish to say that humility is an
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: easy virtue. The very lowest degree of it is a
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: difficult height to climb. But this much must be said
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: for kindness, that it is the easiest road to humility,
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: and infallible as well as easy, and is not humility
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: just what we want, just what we are this moment
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: coveting what will break down barriers and give us free
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: course on our way to God. Kindness does so much
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: for us that it would be almost more easy to
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: enumerate what it does not do than to sum up
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: what it does. It operates more energetically in some characters
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: than in others, but it works wondrous changes in all.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: It is kindness which enables most men to put off
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: the inseparable unpleasantness of youth. It watches the thoughts, controls
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: the words, and helps us to unlearn early manhood's inveterate
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: habit of criticism. It is astonishing how masterful it is
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: in its influence over our dispositions, and yet how gentle, quiet, consistent,
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: and successful. It makes us thoughtful and considerate. Detached acts
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: of kindness may be the offspring of impulse, yet he
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: is mostly a good man whose impulses are good. But
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: in the long run, habitual kindness is not a mere
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: series of generous impulses, but the steadfast growth of generous deliberation.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: Much thought must go to consistent kindness and much self
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: denying legislation. With most of us, the very outward shape
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: of our lives is without fault of ours, out of harmony.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: With persevering kindness. We have to humor circumstances, our opportunities
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: require management, and to be patient in waiting to do
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: good to others is a fine work of grace. It
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: is on account of all this that kindness makes us
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: so attractive to others. It imports a tinge of pathos
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: to our characters, in which our asperities disappear, or at
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: least only give a breath of shadow to our hearts,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: which increases their beauty by making it more serious. We
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: also become manly by being kind. Querulousness, which is the
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: unattractive side of youthful piety, is no longer noticeable. It
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: is alive because an ailing or an isolated old age
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: may bring it to the surface again. But kindness at
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: any rate keeps it under water, for it is the
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: high tide of the soul's nobility, and hides many an
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: unseemly shallow which exposed its uninteresting sand in early days,
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: and will disclose itself once more by ripples and stained water.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: When age comes upon us unless we are of those
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: fortunate few whose hearts get younger as their heads grow older.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: A kind man is a man who is never self occupied.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: He is genial, he is sympathetic, he is brave. How
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: shall we express in one word these many things which
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: kindness does for us who practice it. It prepares us
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: with a special preparation for the paths of the disinterested
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: love of God. Now, surely we cannot say that this
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: subject of kindness is an unimportant one. It is, in reality,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: as subsequent conferences will show, a great part of the
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: spiritual life. It is found in all regions, and in
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: all of them with different functions, and in none of
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: them playing an inferior part. It is also a peculiar
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: participation of the spirit of Jesus, which is itself the
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: life of all holiness. It reconciles worldly men to religious people,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: And really, however contemptible worldly men are in themselves, they
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: have souls to save, and they were so much to
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: be wished that devout persons would make their devotion a
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: little less angular and aggressive to worldly people, provided they
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: can do so without lowering practice or conceiting principle. Devout
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: people are as a class the least kind of all classes.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: This is a scandalous thing to say. But the scandal
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: of the fact is so much greater than the scandal
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: of acknowledging it, that I will brave this last for
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: the sake of a greater good. Religious people are an
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: unkindly lot. Poor human nature cannot do everything, and kindness
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: is too often left uncultivated because men do not sufficiently
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: understand its value. Men may be charitable yet not kind,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: merciful yet not kind, self denying yet not kind. If
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: they would add a little common kindness to their uncommon graces,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: they would convert ten where they now only abate the
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: prejudices of one. There is a sort of spiritual selfishness
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: in devotion which is rather to be regretted than condemned.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: I should not like to think it is unavoidable. Certainly,
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: its interfering with kindness is not unavoidable. It is only
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: a little difficult, and calls for watchfulness. Kindness as a
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: grace is certainly not sufficiently cultivated, while the self gravitating,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: self contemplating, self inspecting parts of the spiritual life are
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: cultivated too exclusively. Rightly considered kindness is the grand cause
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: of God in the world. Where it is natural, it
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: must forthwith be supernaturalized. Where it is not natural, it
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: must be supernaturally planted. What is our life? It is
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: a mission to go into every corner it can reach
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: and reconquer for God's beatitude, his unhappy world back to him.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: It is a devotion of ourselves to the bliss of
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: the divine life by the beautiful apostolate of kindness and
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: of Chapter one, Part two, Chapter two of Kindness, by
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: Father favor. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: Chapter two kind thoughts. Everywhere in creation there is a charm,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: the fountain of which is invisible. In the natural, the moral,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: and the spiritual world. It is the same. We are
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: constantly referring it to causes, which are only effects. Faith
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: alone reveals to us its true origin. God is behind everything.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: His sweetness transpires through the thick shades which hide him.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: It comes to the surface, and with gentle mastery, overwhelms
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: the whole world. The sweetness of the hidden God is
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: the delight of the life. It is the pleasantness of
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: nature and the consolation which is omnipresent in all suffering.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: We touch him, we lean on him, we feel him,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: we see him always and everywhere. Yet he makes himself
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: so natural to us that we almost overlook him. Indeed,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: if it were not for faith, we should overlook him altogether.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: His presence is like light when we do not see
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: the face of the sun. It is like light on
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: the stony folds of the mountain top, come through rents,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: in the waving clouds, or in the close forest where
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: the wind weaves and unweaves the canopy of foliage, or
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: like the silver arrows of underwater light in the deep
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: blue sea, with colored stones and bright weeds glancing there. Still,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: God does not shine equally through all things. Some things
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: are more transparent, other things more opaque. Some have a
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: greater capacity for disclosing God than others. In the moral world,
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: with which alone we are concerned at present, kind thoughts
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: have a special power to let in upon us the
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: light of the hidden God. The thoughts of men are
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: a world by themselves, vast and populous. Each man's thoughts
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: are a world to himself. There is an astonishing breath
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: in the thoughts of even the most narrow minded man. Thus, we,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: all of us, have an interior world to govern, and
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: he is the only real king who governs it effectually.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: There is no doubt that we are very much influenced
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: by external things, and that our natural dispositions are in
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: no slight degree dependent upon education. Nevertheless, our character is
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: formed within. It is manufactured in the world of our thoughts,
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: and there we must go to influence it. He who
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: is master there is master everywhere. He whose energy covers
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: his thoughts covers the whole extent of self. He has
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: himself under his own control. If he has learned to
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: control his thoughts. The fountains of words and actions have
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: their untrodden springs in the caverns of the world of thought.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: He who can command and the fountains, is master of
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: the city. The power of suffering is the grandest merchandise
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: of life, and it also is manufactured in the world
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: of thought. The union of grace and nature is the
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: significance of our whole life. It is there precisely in
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: that union that the secret of our vocation resides. The
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: shape of our work and the character of our holiness
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: are regulated from the point different in different men at
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: which nature and grace are united. The knowledge of this
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: point brings with it not only the understanding of our past,
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: but a sufficiently clear vision of our future, to say
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: nothing of its being the broad sunshine of the present.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: But the union of nature and grace is for the
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: most part effected in the world of thought. But I
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: will go even further than this, and will venture to
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: contradict a common opinion. It seems to me that our
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: thoughts are a more true measure of ourselves than our
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: actions are. They are not under the control of human respect.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: It is not easy for them to be ashamed of themselves.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: They have no witnesses but God. They are not bound
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: to keep within certain limits or observe certain proprieties. Religious
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: motives alone can claim jurisdiction over them. The struggle which
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: so often ensues within us before we can bring ourselves
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: to do our duty, goes on entirely within our thoughts.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: It is our own secret, and men cannot put us
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: to the blush because of it. The contradiction which too
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: often exists between our outward actions and our inward intentions
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: is only to be detected in the realm of our thoughts.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: Whether none but God can penetrate except by guesses, which
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: are not the less offenses against charity, because they happen
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: to be correct in like manner, as an impulse will
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: sometimes show more of our real character than what we
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: do after deliberation. Our first thoughts will often reveal to
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: us faults of disposition, which outward restraints will hinder from
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: issuing in action. Actions have their external hindrances, while our
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: thoughts better disclose to us our possibilities of good and evil.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: Of course, there is a most true sense in which
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: the conscientious effort to cure a fault is a better
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: indication of our character than the fault we have not
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: yet succeeded in curing. Nevertheless, we may die at any
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: more moment, and when we die, we die as we are.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: Thus our thoughts tell us, better than our actions can do,
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: what we shall be like the moment after death. Lastly,
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: it is in the world of thought that we most
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: often meet with God walking as in the shades of
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: ancient Eden. It is there we hear his whispers. It
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: is there we perceive the fragrance of his recent presence.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: It is thence that the first vibrations of grace proceed
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: now if our thoughts be of this importance, and also
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: if kindness be of the importance, which was assigned to
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: it in the last conference. It follows that kind thoughts
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: must be of immense consequence. If a man habitually has
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: kind thoughts of others, and that on supernatural motives, he
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: is not far from being a saint. Such a man's
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: thoughts are not kind intermittently, or on impulse or at haphazard.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: His first thoughts are kind, and he does not repent
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: of them, although they often bring suffering and disgust in
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: their train. All his thoughts are kind, and he does
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: not checker them with unkindly ones. Even when sudden passions
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: or vehement excitements have thrown them into commotion, they settle
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: down into a kindly humor, and cannot settle otherwise. These
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: men are rare. Kind thoughts are rare than either kind
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: words or kind deeds. They imply a great deal of
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: thinking about others. This in itself is rare. But they
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: imply also a great deal of thinking about others without
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: the thoughts being criticisms. This is rarer. Still, active minded
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: men are naturally the most given to criticize, and they
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: are also the men whose thoughts are generally the most exuberant.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: Such men therefore must make kind thoughts a defense against self.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: By sweetening the fountain of their thoughts, they will destroy
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: the bitterness of their judgments. But kind thoughts also imply
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: a contract with God and a divine ideal in our minds.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: Their origin cannot be anything short of divine, Like the
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: love of beauty, they can spring from no base or source.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: They are not dictated by self interest, nor stimulated by passion.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: They have nothing in them which is insidious, and they
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: are almost always the preludes to some sacrifice of self.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: It must be from God's touch that such waters spring.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: They only live in the clan mists of earth because
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: they breathe the fresh air of heaven. They are the
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: scent with which the creature is penetrated through the indwelling
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: of the creator. They imply also the reverse of a
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: superficial view of things. Nothing deepens the mind so much
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: as a habit of charity. A man's surfaces are always
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: worse than his real depths. There may be exceptions to
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: this rule, but I believe them to be very rare.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: Self is the only person who does not improve on acquaintance.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: Our deepest views of life are doubtless very shallow ones.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: For how little do we know of what God intends
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: to do with his own world. We know something about
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: his glory and our own salvation. But how the last
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: becomes the first in the face of so much evil,
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: neither theologian nor Phlawlosopher has ever been able adequately to explain.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: But so much We are warranted in saying that charity
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: is the deepest view of life, and nearest to God's view,
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: and therefore also not merely the truest view, but the
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: only view that is true at all. Kind thoughts, then,
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: are in the creature what his science is to the creator.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: They embody the deepest, purest, grandest truth to which we
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: untruthful creatures can attain about others or ourselves. Why are
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: some men so forward to praise others? Is it not
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: that it is their fashion of investing themselves with importance?
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: But why are most men so reluctant to praise others?
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: It is because they have such an inordinate opinion of themselves. Now,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: kind thoughts, for the most part, imply a low opinion
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: of self. They are an inward praise of others. And
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: because inward therefore genuine, no one who has a high
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: opinion of himself finds his merits acknowledged according to his
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: own estimate of them. His reputation therefore cannot take care
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: of itself. He must push it. And a man who
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: is pushing anything in the world is always unamiable because
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: he is obliged to stand so much on the defensive.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: A pugnacious man is far less disagreeable than a defensive man.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: Every man who is habitually holding out for his rights
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: makes himself the equal of his inferiors, even if he
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: be a king, and he must take the consequences, which
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: are far from pleasant. But the kind, thoughted man has
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: no rights to defend, no self importance to push. He
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: thinks meanly of himself, and with so much honesty that
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: he thinks thus of himself with tranquility, he finds others
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: pleasanter to deal with the self, and others find him
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: so pleasant to deal with that love follows him wherever
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: he goes, a love which is the more faithful to
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: him because he makes so few pretenses to be loved. Last,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: of all, kind thoughts imply also supernatural principles, for inward
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: kindness can be consistent on no others. Kindness is the
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: occupation of our whole nature by the atmosphere and spirit
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: of heaven. This is no inconsiderable affair. Nature cannot do
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: the work itself, nor can it do it with ordinary succors.
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: Were there ever any consistently kind heathens, If so so,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: they are in heaven now, for they must have been
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: under the dominion of grace on earth. We must not
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: confound kindness and mere good humor. Good humor is know
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: on such an unkindly earth as this. It will be
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: better not to say a disparaging word, even of mere
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: good humor. Would that there were more even of that
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: in the world. I suspect angels cluster around a good
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: humored man, as the gnats cluster around the trees they like.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: But there is one class of kind thoughts which must
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: be dwelt upon a part. I allude to kind interpretations.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: The habit of not judging others is one which it
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: is very difficult to acquire, and which is generally not
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: acquired till late on in the spiritual life. If men
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: have ever indulged in judging others, the mere sight of
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: an action, almost involuntarily suggests an internal commentary upon it.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: It has become so natural to judge, however little their
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: own duties or responsibilities are connected with what they are judging,
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: that the actions of others present themselves to the mind,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: as in the attitude of asking a verdict from it.
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: All our fellow men who come within the reach of
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: our knowledge, and for the most retired of us, the
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: circle is a wide one are prisoners at the bar.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: And if we are unjust, ignorant, capricious judges, it must
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: be granted to us that we are indefatigable ones. Now,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: all this is simple ruin to our souls at any risk,
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: at the cost of life. There must be an end
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: of this, or it will end in everlasting banishment from God.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: The standard of the last mass judgment is absolute. It
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: is this the measure which we have meted to others.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: Our present humor in judging others reveals to us what
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: our sentence would be if we died. Now are we
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: content to abide that issue? But as it is impossible
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: all at once to stop judging, and as it is
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: also impossible to go on judging uncharitably, we must pass
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: through the intermediate stage of kind interpretations. Few men have
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: passed beyond this to a habit of perfect charity which
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: has blessedly stripped them of their judicial ermine and their
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: deep rooted judicial habits of mind. We ought therefore to
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: cultivate most sedulously the habit of kind interpretations. Men's actions
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: are very difficult to judge. Their real character depends in
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: a great measure on the motives which prompt them, and
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: those motives are invisible to us. Appearances are often against
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: what we afterwards discovered to have been deeds of virtue. Moreover,
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: a line of conduct is, in its look at least,
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: very little like a logical process. It is complicated with
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: all manner of inconsistencies, and often deformed by what is
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: in reality a hidden consistency. Nobody can judge men but God,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: and we can hardly obtain a higher or more reverend
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: view of God than that which represents him to us
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: as judging men with perfect knowledge, unperplexed certainty, and undisturbed compassion. Now,
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: kind interpretations are imitations of the merciful ingenuity of the
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: Creator finding excuses for his creatures. It is almost a
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: day of revelation to us when theology enables us to
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: perceive that God is so merciful precisely because he is
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: so wise, and from this truth it is an easy
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: inference that kindness is our best wisdom, because it is
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: an image of the wisdom of God. This is the
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: idea of kind interpretations, and this is the use which
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: we must make of them. The habit of judging is
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: so nearly incurable, and its cure is such an almost
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: interminable process, that we must concentrate ourselves for a long
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: while on keeping it in check. And this check is
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: to be found in kind interpretations. We must come to
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: esteem very lightly our sharp eye for evil, on which
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: perhaps we once prided ourselves as cleverness. It has been
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: to us a fountain of sarcasm. And how seldom since
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: Adam was created has sarcasm fallen short of being a sin.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: We must look at our talent for analysis of character
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: as a dreadful possibility of huge uncharitableness. We should have
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: been much better without it from the first. It is
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: the hardest talent of all to manage, because it is
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: so difficult to make any glory for God out of it.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: We are sure to continue to say clever things so
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: long as we continue to indulge in this analysis, and
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: clever things are equally sure to be sharp and acid.
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: Sight is a great blessing, But there are times and
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: places where it is far more blessed not to see.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: It would be comparatively easy for us to be holy
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: if only we could always see the care character of
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: our neighbors, either in soft shade or with the kindly
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: deceits of moonlight upon them. Of course, we are not
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: to grow blind to evil, for thus we should speedily
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: become unreal. But we must grow to something higher, and
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: something truer than a quickness in detecting evil. We must
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: rise to something truer. Yes, have we not always found
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: in our past experience that on the whole our kind
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: interpretations were truer than our harsh ones. What mistakes have
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: we not made in judging others? But have they not
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: almost always been on the side of harshness? Every day
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: some phenomenon of this kind occurs. We have seen a
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: thing as clear as day it could have but one
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: meaning we have already taken measures. We have roused our
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: righteous indignation all at once. The whole matter is differently explained,
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: and that in some most simple way, so simple that
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: we are lost at astonishment, that we should never have
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: thought of it. Ourselves always distrust very plain cases, says
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: a legal writer. Things that were dark begin to give light.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: What seemed opaque is perceived to be transparent. Things that
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: everybody differed about as people in planting a tree can
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: never agree what it wants to make it straight. Now
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: everybody sees in the same light, so natural and obvious.
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: Has the explanation been Nay, things that it appeared impossible
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: to explain are just those the explanation of which are
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: the most simple. How many times in life have we
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: been wrong when we put a kind construction on the
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: conduct of others? We shall not need our fingers to
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: count those mistakes upon. Moreover, grace is really much more
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: common than our querulousness is generally willing to allow. We
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: may suspect its operations in the worst men we meet with. Thus,
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: without any forced impossibility, we may call in supernatural considerations
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: in order to make our criticisms more ingenuous in their charity.
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: When we grow a little holier, we shall summon also
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: to our aid those supernatural motives in ourselves, which, by
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: depressing our own ideas of ourselves, elevate our generous belief
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: in others. But while common sense convinces us of the
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: truth of kind interpretations. Common selfishness ought to open our
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: eyes to their wisdom and their policy. We must have
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: passed through life unobservantly if we have never perceived that
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: a man is very much himself what he thinks of others.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: Of course, his own faults may be the cause of
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: his unfavorable judgments of others, but they are also, and
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: in a very marked way, effects of those same judgments.
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: A man who was on a higher eminence before will soon,
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: by harsh judgments of others, sink to the level of
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: his own judgments. When you hear a man attribute meanness
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: to another, you may be sure not only that the
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: critic is an ill natured man, but that he has
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: got a similar element of meanness in himself, or is
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: fast sinking to it. A man is always capable himself
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: of a sin which he thinks another is capable of,
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: or which he himself is capable of imputing to another.
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: Even a well founded suspicion more or less degrades a man.
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: His suspicion may be verified, and he may escape some
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: material harm by having cherished the suspicion, but he is
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: unavoidably the worst man in consequence of having entertained it.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: This is a very serious consideration, and rather a frightening
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: argument in favor of charitable interpretations. Furthermore, our hidden judgments
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: of others are almost with a show of special and
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: miraculous interference visited upon ourselves. Virtue grows in us under
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: the influence of kindly judgments, as if they were its nutriment.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: But in the case of harsh judgments we find we
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: often fall into the sin of which we have judged
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: another guilty, although it is not perhaps a sin at
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: all common to ourselves. Or if matters do not go
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: so far as this, we find ourselves suddenly overwhelmed with
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: a tempest of unusual temptations, And on reflection, conscience is
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: ready to remind us that the sin to which we
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: are thus violently and unexpectedly tempted is one which we
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: have of late been uncharitably attributing to others. Sometimes also,
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: we are ourselves falsely accused and widely believed to be
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: guilty of some fault of which we are quite innocent.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: But it is a fault of which we have recently,
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: in our mind at least accused another. Moreover, the truth
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: or falsehood of our judgments seem to have very little
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: to do with the matter. The truth of them does
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: not protect us from their unpleasant consequences, just as the
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: truth of a libel is no sufficient defense of it.
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: It is the uncharitableness of the judgment, or the judging
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: at all, to which this self avenging power is fastened.
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: It works itself out like a law, quietly but infallibly.
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: Is not this matter for very serious reflection? But in conclusion,
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: what does all this doctrine of kind interpretations amount to?
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: To nothing? Less in the case of most of us,
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: than living a new life in a new world. We
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: may imagine life in another planet, with whose physical laws
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: we may happen to have a sufficient acquaintance, but it
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: would hardly differ more in a physical way from our
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: earthly life than our moral life would differ from what
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: it is at present. If we were habitually to put
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: a kind interpretation on all we saw and heard, and
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: habitually had kind thoughts of every one of whom we
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: thought at all, it would not merely put a new
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: face on life. It would put a new depth to it.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: We should come as near as possible to becoming another
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: kind of creatures. Look, what an amount of bitterness we
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: have about us? What is to become of us? It
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: plainly cannot be taken into heaven? Where must it be
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: left behind? We clearly cannot put it off by the
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: mere fact of dying, as we can put off thereby
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: a rheumatic limb or wasted lungs or diseased blood. It
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: will surely be a long and painful process in the
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: heats of purgatory. But we may be happy if mercy
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: so abound upon us that the weight of our bitterness
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: shall not sink us deeper into the fire, into that
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: depth from which no one ever rises to the surface. More.
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: But when we reach heaven, in what state shall we be? Certainly,
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: one very important feature of it will be the absence
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: of all bitterness and criticism, and the way in which
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: our expanded minds will be possessed with thoughts of the
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: most tender and overflowing kindness. Thus, by cultivating kind thoughts,
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: we are, in a very special way rehearsing for heaven.
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: But more than this, we are effectually earning heaven, For
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: by God's grace, we are imitating in our own minds,
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: that which in the divine mind. We rest all our
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: hopes on merciful allowances, ingeniously favorable interpretations, thoughts of unmingled kindness,
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: and all the inventions and tolerations of a supreme compassion.
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: The practice of kind thoughts also tells most decisively on
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: our spiritual life. It leads to great self denial about
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: our talents and influence. Criticism is an element in our
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: reputation and an item in our influence. We partly attract
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: persons to us by it, We partly push principles by
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: means of it. The practice of kind thoughts commits us
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: to the surrenderings of all this. It makes us again
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: and again in life sacrifice successes at the moment they
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: are within our reach. Our conduct becomes a perpetual, voluntary
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: forfeiture of little triumphs, the necessary result of which is
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: a hidden life. He who has ever struggled with a
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: proud heart and the bitter temper will perceive at once
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: what innumerable and vast processes of spiritual combat. All this implies,
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: but it brings its reward. Also. It endows us with
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: a marvelous facility in spiritual things. It opens and smooths
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: the paths of prayer. It sheds a clear still light
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: over our self knowledge. It adds a peculiar delight to
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: the exercise of faith. It enables us to find God easily.
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: It is a fountain of joy in our souls, which
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: rarely intermits its flowing, and then only for a little while,
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: and for a greater good above all things. The practice
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: of kind thoughts is our main help to that complete
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: government of the tongue which we all so much covet,
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: and without which the Apostle says that our religion is vain.
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: The interior beauty of a soul, through habitual kindliness of thought,
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: is greater than our words can tell. To such a man,
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: life is a perpetual bright evening with the goad, all
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: things calm and fragrant and RESTful. The dust of life
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: is laid and its fever cools. All sounds are softer
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: as in the way of evening, and all sights are fairer.
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: And the golden light makes our enjoyment of earth a happy,
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: pensive preparation for Heaven. End of chapter two, Chapter three
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: of Kindness by Father Favor. This LibriVox recording is in
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: the public domain. Chapter three kind Words from Thoughts we
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: naturally pass to words. Kind words are the music of
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: the world. They have a power which seems to be
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: beyond natural causes, as if they were some angel's song
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: which had lost its way and come on earth and
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: sang on undyingly, smiting the hearts of men with sweetest wounds,
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: and putting for the while an angel's nature into us.
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: Let us then, think first of all, of the power
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: of kind words. In truth, there is hardly a power
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: on earth equal to them. It seems as if they
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: could almost do what in reality God alone can do,
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: namely soften the hard and angry hearts of men. Many
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: a friendship, long loyal and self sacrificing, rested at first
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: on no thicker a foundation than a kind word. The
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: two men were not likely to be friends. Perhaps each
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: of them regarded the other's antecedents with somewhat of distrust.
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: They had possibly been setting against each other by the
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: circulation of gossip, or they had been looked upon as rivals,
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: and the success of one was regarded as incompatible with
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: the success of the other. But a kind word, perhaps
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: a mere report of a kind word, has been enough
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: to set all things straight, and to be the commencement
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: of an enduring friendship. The power of kind words is
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: shown also in the destruction of prejudices, however inveterate they
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: may have been. Surely we must all of us have
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: experienced this ourselves for a long time. We have had
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: prejudices against a person. They seem to be extremely well founded.
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: We have a complete view of the whole case in
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: our own mind. Some particular circumstances bring us into connection
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: with this man. We see nothing to disabuse us of
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: our prejudices. There is not an approach to any kind
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: of proof, however indirect, that we were either mistaken in
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: forming such a judgment, or that we have exaggerated the matter.
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: But kind words pass and the prejudices thaw away, right
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: or wrong. There was some reason or show of reason
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: for forming them, while there is neither reason nor show
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: of reason for their departure. There is no logic in
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: the matter, but a power which is above logic, the simple,
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: unassisted power of a few kind words. What has been
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: said of prejudices applies equally to quarrels. Kind words will
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: set right things which have got most intricately wrong. In reality,
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: an unforgiving heart is a rare monster. Most men get
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: tired of the justice quarrels. Even those quarrels where the
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: quarrel has all been on one side, and which are
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: always the hardest to set right, give way in time
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: to kind words. At first they will be unfairly taken
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: as admissions that we have been in the wrong. Then
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: they will be put down to deceit and flattery. Then
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: they will irritate by the discomfort of conscience which they
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: will produce in the other But finally they will succeed
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: in healing the wound that has been so often and
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: so obstinately torn open. All quarrels probably rest on misunderstanding,
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: and only live by silence, which, as it were, stereotypes
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: the misunderstanding. A misunderstanding which is more than a month
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: old may generally be regarded as incapable of explanation. Renewed
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: explanations become renewed misunderstandings. Kind words, patiently uttered for long
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: together and without visible fruit, are our only hope. They
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: will succeed. They will not explain what has been misunderstood,
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: but they will do what is much better, make explanation unnecessary,
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: and so avoid the risk which always accompanies explanations. Of
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: reopening old sores in all the foregoing instances. The power
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: of kind words is remedial, but it can be productive. Also,
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: kind words produce happiness. How often have we ourselves been
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: made happy by kind words in a manner and to
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: an extent which we are quite unable to explain. No
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: analysis enables us to detect the secret of the power
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: of kind words. Even self love is found inadequate as
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: a cause. Now, as I have said before, happiness is
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: a great power of holiness. Thus kind words, by their
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: power of producing happiness, have also a power of producing holiness,
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: and so winning men to God. I have already touched
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: on this when I spoke of kindness in general. But
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: it must now be added that words have a power
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: of their own, both for good and evil, which I
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: believe to be more influential and energetic over our fellow
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: men than even actions. If I may use such a
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: word when I am speaking of religious subjects. It is
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: by voice and words that men mesmerize each other. Hence
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: it is that the world is converted by the foolishness
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: of preaching. Hence it is that an angry word rankles
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: longer in the heart than an angry gesture, nay, very
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: often even longer than a blow. Thus, all that has
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: been said of the power of kindness in general applies
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: with an additional and peculiar force to kind words. They
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: prepare men for conversion. They convert them, they sanctify them.
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: They procure entrance for wholesome counsels into their souls. They
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: blunt temptations, they dissolve the dangerous clouds of gloom and sadness.
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: They are beforehand with evil, they exercise the devil. Sometimes
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: the conversions they work are gradual and take time, but
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: more often they are sudden. More often they are like
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: instantaneous revelations from heaven, not only unraveling complicated misunderstandings and
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: softening the hardened conviction of years, but giving a divine
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: vocation to the soul. Truly, it would be worth going
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: through fire and water to acquire the right and to
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: find the opportunity of saying kind words. Surely, then it
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: gives life a peculiar character that it should be gifted
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: with a power so great, even if the exercise of
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: it were difficult and rare. But the facility of this
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: power is a fresh wonder about it. In addition to
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: its greatness. It involves very little self sacrifice, and for
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: the most part none at all. It can be exercised
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: generally without much effort, with no more effort than the
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: water makes in flowing from the spring. Moreover, the occasions
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: for it do not lie scattered over life at great
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: distances from each other. They occur continually, They come daily,
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: they are frequent in the day. All these are commonplaces.
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: But really, it would seem as if very few of
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: us give this power of kind words, the consideration which
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: is due to it. So great a power, such a
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: facility in the exercise of it, such a frequency of
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: opportunities for the application of it, and yet the world
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: still what it is, and we still what we are.
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: It seems incredible. I can only compare it to the
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: innumerable sacraments which inundate our souls with grace, and the
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: inexplicable modicum of holiness which is the total result of
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: them all, or again to the immense amount of knowledge
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: of God which there is in the world. And yet
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: the little worship He receives kind words cost us nothing.
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: Yet how often do we grudge them on the few
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: occasions when they do imply some degree of self sacrifice,
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: they almost instantly repay us a hundredfold. The opportunities are frequent,
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: but we show no eagerness, either in looking out for
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: them or in embracing them. What inference are we to
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: draw from all this? Surely this that it is next
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: to impossible to be habitually kind except by the help
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: of divine grace. And upon such supernatural motives. Take life
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: all through its adversity as well as its prosperity, its
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: sickness as well as its health, its loss of its rights,
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: as well as its enjoyment of them, and we shall
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: find that no natural sweetness of temper, much less any
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: acquired philosophical equanimity, is equal to the support of a
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: uniform habit of kindness. Nevertheless, with the help of grace,
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: the habit of saying kind words is very quickly formed,
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: and when once formed, it is not speedily lost. I
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: have often thought that unkindness is very much a mental habit,
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: almost as much mental as moral. Observation. Has confirmed me
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: in this idea, because I have met so many men
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: with unkind heads, and have been fortunate enough, never to
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: my own knowledge, to have come across an unkind heart.
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: I believe cruelty to be less uncommon than real inward unkindness.
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: Self interest makes it comparatively easy for us to do
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: that which we are well paid for doing. The great
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: price which everyone puts on a little kind word makes
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: the practice of saying them still easier. They become more
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: easy the more on the one hand that we know ourselves,
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: and on the other that we are united to God. Yet,
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: what are these but the two contemporaneous operations of grace
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: in which the life of holiness consists Kindness. To be perfect,
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: to be lasting, must be a conscious imitation of God. Sharpness, bitterness, sarcasm,
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: acute observation, divination of motives. All these things disappear when
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: a man is earnestly conforming himself to the image of
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: Christ Jesus. The very attempt to be like our dearest
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: Lord Lord is already a well spring of sweetness within us,
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: flowing with an easy grace over all who come within
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: our reach. It is true that a special sort of
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: unkindness is one of the uglinesses of pious beginnings. But
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: this arises from our inability to manage our fresh grace properly.
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: Our old bitterness gets the impulse meant for our sweetness,
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: and the machine cannot be got right. In a moment,
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: he who is not patient with converts to God will
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: forfeit many of his own graces before he is aware.
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: Not only is kindness due to every one, but a
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: special kindness is due to every one. Kindness is not
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: kindness unless it be special. It is in its fitness, seasonableness,
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: and individual application that its charm consists. It is natural
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: to pass from the facility of kind words to its reward.
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: I find myself always talking about happiness when I am
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: treating of kindness. The fact is that two things go together.
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: The double reward of kind words is in the happiness
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: they cause in others and the happiness they cause in ourselves.
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: The very process of uttering them is a happiness in itself.
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: Even the imagining of them fills our minds with sweetness
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: and makes our hearts glow pleasurably. Is there any happiness
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: in the world like the happiness of a disposition made
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: happy by the happiness of others. There is no joy
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: to be compared with it. The luxuries which wealth can buy,
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: the rewards which ambition can attain, the pleasures of art
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: and scenery, the abounding sense of health and the exquisite
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: enjoyment of mental creations are nothing to this pure and
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: heavenly happiness, where self is drowned in the blessedness of others.
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: Yet this happiness follows close upon kind words and is
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: their legitimate result. But independently of this, kind words make
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: us happy in ourselves. They soothe our own irritation. They
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: charm our cares away, They draw us nearer to God.
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: They raise the temperature of our love. They produce in
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: us a sense of quiet restfulness, like that which accompanies
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: the consciousness of forgiven sin. They shed abroad the peace
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: of God within our hearts. Then moreover, we become kinder
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: by saying kind words, and this is in itself a
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: third reward. They help us also to attain the grace
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: of purity, which is another excellent reward. They win us
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: many other graces from God, but one especially. They appear
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: to have a peculiar congeniality with the grace of contrition,
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: which is soft heartedness towards God. Everything which makes us
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: gentle has at the same time a tendency to make
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: us contrite. A natural melting of the heart has often
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: been the beginning of an acceptable repentance. Hence it is
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: that seasons of sorrow are apt to be seasons of grace.
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: This too is a huge reward. Then, last of all,
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: kind words make us truthful. Oh, this is what we
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: want to be true. It is our insincerity, manifold inseparable falseness,
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: which is the load under which we grown. There is
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: no slavery but untruthfulness. How have years passed in fighting,
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 1: and still we are so untrue? It clings to us,
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: for it is the proper stain of creatures. We fight
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: on wearily. Kind words come and ally themselves to us,
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 1: and we make way. They make us true because kindness is,
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: so far as we know, the most probable truth in
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: the world. They make us true because what is untruthful
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: is not kind. They make us true because kindness is
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: God's view, and his view is already the true view.
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: Why then, are we ever anything else but kind in
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: our words? There are some difficulties, This must be honestly admitted.
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: In some respects. A clever man is more likely to
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: be kind than a man who is not clever, because
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: his mind is wider and takes in a broader range,
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: and is more capable of looking at things from different
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: points of view. But there are other respects in which
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: it is harder for a clever man to be kind,
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: especially in his words. He has a temptation, and it
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: is one of those temptations which appear sometimes to border
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: on the irresistible, to say clever things. And somehow clever
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: things are hardly ever kind things. There is a drop
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: either of acid or of bitter in them, and it
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: seems as if that drop was exactly what Genius had insinuated.
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: I believe if we were to make an honest resolution
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: never to say a clever thing, we should advance much
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: more rapidly on the road to Heaven. Our Lord's words
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 1: in the Gospels should be our models, if we may
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: reverently say it. When we consider of what a sententious
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: and proverbial character his words were, it is remarkable how
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: little of epigram or sharpness there is in them. Of course,
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: the words of the Eternal Word are all of them
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: heavenly mysteries, each one with the light and seal of
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: His Divinity upon it. At the same time, they are
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: also examples to us on the whole. To say clever
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: things of others is hardly ever without sin. There is
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: something ingenious which is analogous to a sting, its sharpness,
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: its speed, its delicacy, its wantonness, its and it's poison.
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: Genius has all these things as well as the sting.
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: There are some men who make it a kind of
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: social profession to be amusing talkers. One is sometimes overwhelmed
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: with melancholy by their professional efforts to be entertaining. They
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: are the bugbears of real conversation. But the thing to
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: notice about them here is that they can hardly ever
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: be religious men. A man who lays himself out to
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 1: amuse is never a safe man to have for a
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: friend or even for an acquaintance. He is not a
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: man whom anyone really loves or respects. He is never innocent.
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: He is forever jostling charity by the pungency of his criticisms,
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: and wounding justice by the revelation of secrets ill at power.
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: Denaire said as la briere quis sluis key fate reer
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: se fas este maier. There is also a grace of
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: kind listening as well as a grace of kind speaking.
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: Some men listen with an abstracted air, which shows that
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: their thoughts are elsewhere, or they seem to listen, but
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: by wide answers and irrelevant questions show that they have
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: been occupied with their own thoughts as being more interesting,
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: at least in their own estimation, than what you were saying.
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: Some listen with a kind of importunate ferocity, which makes
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 1: you feel that you have been put on your trial,
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: and that your auditor expects beforehand that you are going
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: to tell him a lie, or to be inaccurate, or
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: to say something which he will disapprove, and that you
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: must mind your expressions. Some interrupt and will not hear
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: you to the end. Some hear you to the end,
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: and then forthwith begin to speak to you of a
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: similar experience, which has befallen themselves, making your case only
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: an illustration of their own. Some meaning to be kind,
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: listen with such a determined, lively, violent attention that you
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: are at once made uncomfortable, and the charm of conversation
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: is at an end. Many persons whose manners will stand
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: the test of speaking, break down under the trial of listening.
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: But all these things ought to be brought under the
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: sweet influences of religion. Kind listening is often an act
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: of the most delicate interior mortification, and is a great
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: assistance towards kind speaking. Those who govern others must take
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: care to be kind listeners, or else they will soon
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: offend God and fall into secret sins. We may then
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: put down clever speeches as the first and greatest difficulty
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 1: in the way of kind words. A second difficulty is
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: that of repressing vexation. At certain times and in certain places,
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: each man meets with peculiar characters who have a specialty,
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: often quite inexplicable, of irritating him. They always come at
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 1: the wrong time, say the most importune things, and make
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: the most unfortunate choice of topics of conversation. Their presence
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: has always something intrusive about it. You may admire respect
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: even like the persons, yet you give out sparks when
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: they touch you, and explode if they rub against you.
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: This is only one example of many species of vexation
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: which it is difficult to repress in our social intercourse,
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: and which it is the office of the spirit of
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: kindness to allay. The unselfishness of speedily and gracefully distracting
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: ourselves from self is also singularly difficult to practice. A
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: man comes to us with an imaginary sorrow, when we
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: are bowed to the earth with a real one. Or
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: he speaks to us with a loud voice and metallic
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: laugh of robust health, when our nerves are all shrinking
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: up with pain, and our whole being quivering like a mimosa,
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: with excruciating sensitiveness. Or he comes to pour out the
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: exuberance of his happiness into our hearts, which are full
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 1: of gloom, and his brightness is a reproach, sometimes almost
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: a menace to our happiness. Or we are completely possessed
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: with some responsibility, harassed by some pecuniary difficulty, or haunted
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 1: by some tyrannical presentiment of evil, and yet we are
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: called upon to throw ourselves into some ridiculous little embarrassment,
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: some almost fictitious wrong, or some shadow of a suffering
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: for which another claims our sympathy. Here is a grand
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: material for sanctification. Nevertheless, such materials are hard to work
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: up in practice. It is weary work cleaning old bricks
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 1: to build a new house with. These are difficulties, but
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: we have got to reach Heaven and must push on.
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: The more humble we are, the more kindly we shall talk,
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: the more kindly we talk, the more humble we shall grow.
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 1: An air of superiority is foreign to the genius of kindness.
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: The look of kindness is that of one receiving a favor,
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 1: rather than conferring it. Indeed, it is the case with
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: all the virtues that kindness is a road to them.
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: Kind words will help us to them. Thus, out of
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: the difficulties of kind speaking will come the grand and
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: more than sufficient reward of kind speaking. A sanctification a
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: higher complet, swifter, easier than any other, sanctification, weak and
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 1: full of wants. As we are ourselves, we must make
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: up our minds, or rather take heart, to do some
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: little good to this poor world while we are in it.
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: Kind words are our chief implements for this work. A
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: kind worded man is a genial man, and geniality is power.
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: Nothing sets wrong right so soon as geniality. There are
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: a thousand things to be reformed, and no reform succeeds
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: unless it be genial. No one was ever corrected by
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: a sarcasm, crushed perhaps if the sarcasm was clever enough,
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 1: But draw nearer to God. Never men want to advocate changes.
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 1: It may be in politics, or in science, or in philosophy,
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 1: or in literature, or perhaps in the working of the church.
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 1: They give lectures, they write books, they start reviews. They
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 1: found schools to propagate their views. They coalesce in associations,
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 1: they collect money, they move reforms in public meetings, and
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: all to further their peculiar ideas. They are unsuccessful. From
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 1: being unsuccessful themselves, they become unsympathetic with others. From this
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: comes narrowness of mind. Their very talents are deteriorated. The
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: next step is to be snappish, then bitter, then eccentric
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: than rude. After that they abuse people for not taking
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: their advice. And last of all, their impotence, like that
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: of all angry prophets, ends in the shrillness of a scream.
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: Why they scream is not so obvious, perhaps for their
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: own relief, It is the frenzy of the disregarded sybil.
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 1: All this comes of their not being genial. Without geniality,
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 1: no solid reform was ever made yet. But if there
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 1: are a thousand things to reform in the world, there
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: are tens of thousands of people to convert. Satire will
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 1: not convert them. Hell threatened very kindly is more persuasive
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: than abiding truth about a man's false position. The fact is,
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 1: geniality is the best controversy. The genial man is the
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 1: only successful man. Nothing can be done for God without geniality.
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: More plans fail for want of that than for the
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 1: want of anything else. A genial man is both an
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: apostle and an evangelist. An apostle because he brings men
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 1: to Christ. An evangelist because he portrays Christ to men.
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 1: End of chapter three, Chapter four of Kindness by Father Favor.
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter four
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: kind Actions. There is always one bright thought in our minds,
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: when all the rest is dark. There is one thought
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 1: out of which a moderately cheerful man can always make
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: some satisfactory sunshine, if not a sufficiency of it. It
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 1: is the thought of the bright populouce Heaven. There is
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 1: a joy there, at least if there is a joy
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 1: nowhere else. There is true service of God there, however
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 1: poor and interested the love of Him may be. On earth,
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 1: multitudes are abounding in the golden light there, even if
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 1: they that rejoice on earth be few at this hour.
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 1: It is all going on so near us that we
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: cannot be hopelessly unhappy, with so much happiness so near,
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 1: yet its nearness makes us wistful. Then let us think
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 1: that there are multitudes in heaven today who are there
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: because of kind actions. Many are there for doing them,
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 1: many for having had them done to them. We cannot
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 1: do justice to the subject of kindness if we conclude
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 1: without saying something about kind actions and kind suffering. So
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 1: let us think first of all, how much we ourselves
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 1: owe in past life to kind actions. If we look
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 1: back through the last twenty or thirty years, it is
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 1: amazing to consider the number of kind actions that have
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: been done to us. They are almost beyond our counting. Indeed,
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 1: we feel that those we remember are hardly so numerous
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 1: as those we have forgotten. Forgotten not through ingratitude, but
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 1: because of the distractions of life and the shortness of
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 1: our memory. Under what various circumstances, too, they have been
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: done to us. They have come to us together with blame,
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 1: as well as been the accompaniments of praise. They have
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 1: made our darkness light and our light brighter. They have
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 1: made us smile in the midst of our tears, and
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 1: have made us shed tears of joy when we were
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 1: laughing carelessly. They have come to us also from all quarters.
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 1: They have reached us from persons in whom we might
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 1: have expected to meet them. They have reached us from
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 1: unexpected persons who would naturally have been indifferent to us.
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 1: They have reached us from those from whom we had
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 1: every reason to expect the opposite. They have come to
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 1: us from such unhoped for quarters, and under such an
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 1: affecting variety of circumstances, that each one of us must
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 1: have seemed to himself to have exhausted the possibilities of kindness.
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: The thought of them all melts our hearts. Now, every
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 1: one of those acts of kindness has doubtless done us
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 1: a certain amount of spiritual good. If they did not
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 1: make us better at the time, they prepared the way
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 1: for our becoming better, or they sewed a seed of
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: future goodness and made an impression which we never suspected,
• 2:08:40
  Speaker 1: and yet which was ineffaceable. Graces from God kindness, as
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 1: from men. We seemed to have stood all our lives
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 1: under the beneficent drippings of these beneficent showers. But who
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 1: can say if there were two showers, and if it
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 1: was not all the while but one kindness being nothing
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 1: more than a peculiar form of grace. There is no
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 1: great harm in confounding the two, but to be strict,
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 1: grace is one thing, and kindness is another. Let us
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 1: content ourselves, then, with saying that kindness has again and
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 1: again done the preliminary work for grace in our souls.
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 1: Let us think also how little we have deserved all
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 1: these kind actions, not only so far as God is concerned,
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: but so far as our fellow creatures are concerned. Also.
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: There is no one who has not received tenfold more
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 1: kindness himself than he has shown to others. The thought
• 2:09:46
  Speaker 1: of all the kindness of so many persons to us
• 2:09:50
  Speaker 1: sometimes grows to be almost intolerable because of the sense
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 1: of our own unkindness. These kind actions have been to
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 1: us like importunate angels. They have surrounded us almost against
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 1: our own will, and done us all manner of unasking good,
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 1: of extra good, of good, apparently unconnected with themselves. From
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: How many evils have they not also rescued us? We
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 1: know of many, but there are many more of which
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 1: we do not know. But in this respect, as well
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 1: as in others, they have done. Angels work in our
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 1: behalf to how much good have they encouraged us. We
• 2:10:36
  Speaker 1: know of much, but there is much more of which
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 1: we do not know. We can hardly tell what we
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 1: should have been had we been treated one whit less
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 1: kindly than we have been. Have we not sometimes been
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 1: on the verge of doing something which a life would
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 1: have been short to repent of? Have not words been
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 1: on our tongues, which, had we said them, we would
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 1: willingly have lost a limb afterwards to have unsaid? Have
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 1: we not vacillated in the face of decisions which we
• 2:11:09
  Speaker 1: now perceive concerned eternity as well as time. Can we
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 1: not now see in the retrospect steep places down which
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 1: we were beginning to fall, and a kind act saved us,
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 1: and at the time we thought we had stumbled over
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 1: a stone By the way, we are indeed very far
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 1: from what we ought to be now. But it is
• 2:11:34
  Speaker 1: frightening to think what we might have been had parents, friends, nurses, masters, servants, schoolfellows,
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 1: enemies been less kind than they have been. All through life,
• 2:11:50
  Speaker 1: kindness has been bridling the devil that was in us.
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 1: The surprised and affectionate recollection of it now is one
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 1: of our greatest powers for virtue, and may easily be
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 1: made a fountain of interior sweetness within ourselves, feeling that
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 1: we ourselves owe all this to the kindness of others.
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 1: Are we not bound so far as lies in our power,
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 1: to be putting everyone else on all sides of us
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 1: under similarly blessed obligations. It is not hard to do this.
• 2:12:28
  Speaker 1: The occasions for kind actions are manifold. No one passes
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 1: a day without meeting these fortunate opportunities. They grow round
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 1: us even when we lie on a bed of sickness,
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 1: and the helpless are rich in a power of kindness
• 2:12:44
  Speaker 1: towards the helpful. Yet, as is always the rule with kindness,
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 1: the frequency of its opportunities is rivaled by the facility
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 1: of its execution. Hardly out of twenty kind actions does
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 1: one call for an effort of self denial on our part.
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 1: Easiness is the rule, and difficulty the exception. When kindness
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 1: does call for an effort, how noble and self rewarding
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 1: is the sacrifice. We always gain more than we lose.
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 1: We gain outwardly, and often even in kind, but the
• 2:13:22
  Speaker 1: inward gain is invariable. Nothing forfeits that. Moreover, there is
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: something very economical about the generosity of kindness, a little
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: goes a long way. It seems to be an almost
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 1: universal fallacy among mankind, which leads them to put a
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 1: higher price on kindness than it deserves. Neither do men
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 1: look generally at what we have had to give up
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 1: in order to do for them what we have done.
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 1: They only look to the kindness. The manner is more
• 2:13:58
  Speaker 1: to them than the man. The sacrifice adds something, but
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: only a small proportion of the whole. The very world,
• 2:14:08
  Speaker 1: unkindly as it is, looks at kindness through a glass
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 1: which multiplies as well as magnifies. I called this a fallacy.
• 2:14:19
  Speaker 1: It is a sweet fallacy, and reminds us of that
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 1: apparent fallacy which leads God to put such a price
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 1: upon the pusillanimities of our love. This fallacy, however, confers
• 2:14:33
  Speaker 1: upon kind actions a real power. The amount of kindness
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 1: bears no proportion to the effect of kindness. The least
• 2:14:43
  Speaker 1: kind act is taller than the hugest wrong. The weakest
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 1: kindness can lift a heavy weight. It reaches far, and
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 1: it travels swiftly. Every kind action belongs to many persons,
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 1: and lays many persons under obligation. We appropriate to ourselves
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 1: kind actions done to those we love, and we forthwith
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 1: proceed to love the doers of them. Nobody is kind
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 1: only to one person at once, but to many persons
• 2:15:16
  Speaker 1: in one What a beautiful entanglement of charity we get
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 1: ourselves into by doing kind things. What possesses us that
• 2:15:27
  Speaker 1: we do not do them oftener? Neither is a kind
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: action short lived. The doing of it is only the
• 2:15:35
  Speaker 1: beginning of it. It is hardly the thing itself. Years
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 1: of estrangement can hardly take the odor out of a
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 1: good action. Hatred truly has a chemistry of its own
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 1: by which it can turn kind actions into its choicest food.
• 2:15:54
  Speaker 1: But after all, hatred is an uncommon thing, as well
• 2:15:58
  Speaker 1: as a brutal one. That is to say, comparatively uncommon.
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: Whereas it is not an uncommon thing for a man
• 2:16:07
  Speaker 1: at the end of half a century to do a
• 2:16:10
  Speaker 1: kind action because one was done to him fifty years ago.
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 1: There is also this peculiarity about kind actions, that the
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 1: more we try to repay them, the further off we
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 1: seem for having repaid them. The obligation lengthens and widens
• 2:16:30
  Speaker 1: and deepens. We hasten to fill up the chasm by
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 1: our gratitude, but we only deepen it, as if we
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 1: were digging a well or sinking a pit. We go faster,
• 2:16:43
  Speaker 1: Still the abyss grows more hungry. At last, our lives
• 2:16:48
  Speaker 1: become delightfully committed to be nothing but a profusion of
• 2:16:53
  Speaker 1: kind actions, and we fly heavenwards on the wings of
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 1: the wind. There is a leetic sweetness about gratitude, which
• 2:17:02
  Speaker 1: I suppose arises from this. It is a pathos which
• 2:17:07
  Speaker 1: is very humbling, but very invigorating. Also, what was the
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 1: father in the poet's mind to these exquisite verses? I've
• 2:17:17
  Speaker 1: heard of heart's unkind kind deeds with coldness still returning,
• 2:17:23
  Speaker 1: alas the gratitude of men hath Oftener left me mourning.
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 1: But by this time an objection to the whole matter
• 2:17:33
  Speaker 1: will have come plainly into view. Indeed, to some it
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 1: has already presented itself before now. I have been aware
• 2:17:42
  Speaker 1: of it throughout, but if chosen to defer noticing it
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 1: till now, it may be said that all this implies
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 1: a very unsupernatural view of the spiritual life, and lays
• 2:17:55
  Speaker 1: undue stress on what are almost natural virtues. That it
• 2:18:01
  Speaker 1: refers more to outward conduct than to inward experiences that
• 2:18:07
  Speaker 1: there is too much of common sense in it and
• 2:18:10
  Speaker 1: too little of mystical theology. I might content myself with
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 1: replying that a man cannot write on more than one
• 2:18:18
  Speaker 1: subject at once, neither can he bring in the whole
• 2:18:23
  Speaker 1: of ascetical doctrine when he is illustrating but one portion
• 2:18:27
  Speaker 1: of it. But there is something more in the objection,
• 2:18:31
  Speaker 1: which I can only answer by pleading guilty to the charge,
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 1: and refusing to be ashamed of my guilt. When we
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 1: read the lives of the saints, or ponder on the
• 2:18:43
  Speaker 1: teaching of mystical books, we shall surely have no difficulty
• 2:18:48
  Speaker 1: in admitting that we ourselves are but beginners, or at
• 2:18:52
  Speaker 1: least men of very low attainments in the matter of perfection.
• 2:18:58
  Speaker 1: As such, we are liable to two mistakes. I hardly
• 2:19:02
  Speaker 1: know whether to call them temptations or delusions. The first
• 2:19:08
  Speaker 1: is to think too little of external things. Do not
• 2:19:12
  Speaker 1: misunderstand me. I am not accusing you of paying too
• 2:19:16
  Speaker 1: much attention to the cultivation of an interior spirit. It
• 2:19:21
  Speaker 1: is not easy to do this in our state. Perhaps
• 2:19:25
  Speaker 1: it is impossible. But what I mean is that beginners
• 2:19:30
  Speaker 1: like to turn their eye away from outward conduct. To
• 2:19:34
  Speaker 1: the more hidden processes of their own spiritual experiences. If
• 2:19:40
  Speaker 1: we allow a beginner to choose his own subject for
• 2:19:43
  Speaker 1: particular examine of conscience, he will generally choose some very
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 1: delicate and imperceptible fault, the theater of which is almost
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 1: wholly within, or some refined form of self love whose
• 2:19:59
  Speaker 1: metamorphosy ease are exceedingly difficult either to detect or to control.
• 2:20:06
  Speaker 1: He will not choose his temper, or his tongue, or
• 2:20:09
  Speaker 1: his love of nice dishes, or some unworthy habit which
• 2:20:13
  Speaker 1: is disagreeable to those around him. Yet this is the
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 1: rule of Saint Ignatius, and surely no one will accuse
• 2:20:21
  Speaker 1: him of not cultivating an interior spirit. This, then, is
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 1: the first of the two mistakes which I attributed to
• 2:20:30
  Speaker 1: men of low attainments. They affect those parts of the
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 1: spiritual life which lie on the borders of mystical theology,
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 1: and do justice neither to the common things of the
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 1: faith nor to the regulation of outward conduct. This leads
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 1: to hardness of heart, to spiritual pride, and to self righteousness.
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 1: It has a peculiar power to neutralize the operations of
• 2:20:58
  Speaker 1: grace and to reduce our spirituality to a matter of
• 2:21:03
  Speaker 1: words and feelings. A man will remain unimproved for years
• 2:21:09
  Speaker 1: who travels upon this path. The second mistake is very
• 2:21:15
  Speaker 1: like the first, though there is a difference in it.
• 2:21:18
  Speaker 1: It consists in giving way to an attraction which is
• 2:21:22
  Speaker 1: too high for us. It is not that we divide
• 2:21:25
  Speaker 1: things into outward and inward, and exaggerate the latter, but
• 2:21:31
  Speaker 1: we divide them into high and commonplace, and are inclined
• 2:21:36
  Speaker 1: almost to despise the latter. We fasten with a sort
• 2:21:40
  Speaker 1: of diseased eagerness upon the exceptional practices of the saints.
• 2:21:46
  Speaker 1: Peculiarities have a kind of charm for us. We try
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 1: to force ourselves to thirst for suffering. When we have
• 2:21:54
  Speaker 1: hardly grace enough for the quiet endurance of a headache,
• 2:21:59
  Speaker 1: we ask leave to pray for calumny. When a jocose
• 2:22:03
  Speaker 1: retort puts us in a passion, we turn from the
• 2:22:07
  Speaker 1: four last things as subjects of prayer hardly suited to
• 2:22:11
  Speaker 1: our state of disinterested love. We skip like antelopes over
• 2:22:16
  Speaker 1: the purgative way, as if none but the herbage of
• 2:22:20
  Speaker 1: the illuminative or the desert flowers of the unitive way
• 2:22:24
  Speaker 1: were food delicate enough for us, we enjoy Father Baker
• 2:22:29
  Speaker 1: very much, while we think Rodriguez dry. In a word,
• 2:22:34
  Speaker 1: we traffic with exceptions rather than with rules. Hence, the
• 2:22:39
  Speaker 1: common moral virtues, the ordinary motives of religion, the duties
• 2:22:45
  Speaker 1: of our state of life, our responsibilities toward others, the
• 2:22:50
  Speaker 1: usual teaching of sermons and spiritual books are kept in
• 2:22:55
  Speaker 1: the background. We are too well instructed to speak evil
• 2:22:59
  Speaker 1: of them, or to show them contempt, but we treat
• 2:23:03
  Speaker 1: them with a respectful neglect. Thus our spiritual life becomes
• 2:23:09
  Speaker 1: a sort of elegant selfish solitude, a temple reared to
• 2:23:14
  Speaker 1: dainty delusions, a mere, fastidious and exclusive worship of self,
• 2:23:20
  Speaker 1: whose refinement is only an aggravation of its dishonesty. No
• 2:23:26
  Speaker 1: saint ever went along this road. We can only reach
• 2:23:30
  Speaker 1: the delicate truths of mysticism through the commonplace sincerities of asceticism.
• 2:23:38
  Speaker 1: We are never so likely to be high in the
• 2:23:41
  Speaker 1: spiritual life as when we are just like everybody else.
• 2:23:46
  Speaker 1: The grace to be indistinguishable from the good people around
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 1: us is a greater grace than that which visibly marks
• 2:23:54
  Speaker 1: us off from their practices or their attainments. Now I
• 2:23:59
  Speaker 1: believe that both these mistakes find an utterance in the
• 2:24:03
  Speaker 1: objection which I have noticed, and therefore, as being peculiarly
• 2:24:07
  Speaker 1: out of sympathy with both these errors, I willingly plead
• 2:24:12
  Speaker 1: guilty to the objection. I do not think we are
• 2:24:15
  Speaker 1: all in danger of making away with the supernatural by
• 2:24:19
  Speaker 1: having first used it to destroy the natural. I could
• 2:24:23
  Speaker 1: go on for hours illustrating this mischievous tendency, but I
• 2:24:28
  Speaker 1: must keep to my subject and endeavor to show those
• 2:24:32
  Speaker 1: who feel they cannot throw off the objection so lightly
• 2:24:35
  Speaker 1: as I do, what a very real connection there is
• 2:24:39
  Speaker 1: between this practice of kindness on supernatural motives and the
• 2:24:44
  Speaker 1: highest department of the spiritual life. Indeed, it would be
• 2:24:49
  Speaker 1: difficult to exaggerate the importance of kindness as an ally
• 2:24:54
  Speaker 1: in our invisible warfare. Naturalists say of the ant that
• 2:24:59
  Speaker 1: the most surprising part of its instinct is its genius
• 2:25:03
  Speaker 1: for extemporaneousness. In other words, it almost puts reason to
• 2:25:09
  Speaker 1: shame by the promptitude with which it acts under totally
• 2:25:13
  Speaker 1: new circumstances. Its inventiveness in meeting with difficulties of which
• 2:25:19
  Speaker 1: it can have had no previous experience, its ingenuity in
• 2:25:24
  Speaker 1: changing the use of its tools, its power of instantaneous
• 2:25:29
  Speaker 1: divination as to how it shall act in unexpected conjunctures,
• 2:25:34
  Speaker 1: and its far seeing judgment, in hardly ever having to
• 2:25:38
  Speaker 1: make an experiment or to try two ways of doing
• 2:25:42
  Speaker 1: a thing. Now there is something very like this in kindness.
• 2:25:48
  Speaker 1: Spiritual persons who specially cultivate kindness are singularly exempt from delusions.
• 2:25:55
  Speaker 1: Yet delusions form the most intricate and baffling part of
• 2:25:59
  Speaker 1: our space spiritual warfare. But the instinct of kindness is
• 2:26:04
  Speaker 1: never baffled. No position ever seems new to it, no
• 2:26:09
  Speaker 1: difficulty unforeseen. It appears to be dispensed from the necessity
• 2:26:14
  Speaker 1: of deliberating. It follows the lightning like changes of self
• 2:26:19
  Speaker 1: love or of the temper, with the speed as lightning
• 2:26:23
  Speaker 1: like as their own. It sees through all stratagems. It
• 2:26:28
  Speaker 1: is forever extemporizing new methods of defense and new varieties
• 2:26:33
  Speaker 1: of attack. It always has light enough to work by,
• 2:26:38
  Speaker 1: because it is luminous itself. Besides this, kindness has an
• 2:26:44
  Speaker 1: intrinsic congeniality with all the characteristics of the higher spiritual states.
• 2:26:50
  Speaker 1: Kind actions go upon unselfish motives and therefore tend to
• 2:26:56
  Speaker 1: form a habit of disinterestedness in us, which prepares us
• 2:27:01
  Speaker 1: for the highest motives of divine love. They also catch
• 2:27:05
  Speaker 1: us up like strong angels, into the regions of sacrifice.
• 2:27:10
  Speaker 1: Like God's goodness, they are constantly occupied where there is
• 2:27:15
  Speaker 1: no hope of payment and return. Like the shedding of
• 2:27:18
  Speaker 1: the precious blood. They have an actual preference for multiplying
• 2:27:23
  Speaker 1: themselves upon their enemies in like manner. As God acts
• 2:27:28
  Speaker 1: evermore for his own glory, so kind actions, when they
• 2:27:33
  Speaker 1: are habitual, must very frequently be done for Him alone.
• 2:27:38
  Speaker 1: It is their instinct to be hidden like the instinct
• 2:27:42
  Speaker 1: of his providence. Nay, God often rewards them by arranging
• 2:27:47
  Speaker 1: that they shall be unrequited, and so look only to
• 2:27:51
  Speaker 1: Him as himself their recompense. And He shows frequently a
• 2:27:56
  Speaker 1: most tender wisdom in arranging that all they shall be
• 2:28:00
  Speaker 1: without the sin or ingratitude of others. He even shrouds
• 2:28:06
  Speaker 1: our kind actions for us by letting us look stern,
• 2:28:10
  Speaker 1: or speak sharply, or be quick tempered in the doing
• 2:28:14
  Speaker 1: of them. I need not stop to develop all this.
• 2:28:18
  Speaker 1: Who does not see that we are here right in
• 2:28:21
  Speaker 1: the midst of the motive machinery of the very highest
• 2:28:24
  Speaker 1: spiritual condition of the soul. It may not be out
• 2:28:28
  Speaker 1: of place, however, to lay down a few plain rules
• 2:28:32
  Speaker 1: for the doing of kind actions. I have said that
• 2:28:36
  Speaker 1: the majority of them require no effort, But when they
• 2:28:40
  Speaker 1: have to be done with effort, it is unkind not
• 2:28:43
  Speaker 1: to keep the effort out of view. At the same time,
• 2:28:47
  Speaker 1: so that our humility may not be disquieted, we must
• 2:28:51
  Speaker 1: bear in mind that the being done with effort is
• 2:28:55
  Speaker 1: no just cause of disheartenment. We should never repeat to
• 2:28:59
  Speaker 1: ours others our good actions. If we do, their heavenly
• 2:29:04
  Speaker 1: influence over ourselves goes at once. Neither does it simply evaporate.
• 2:29:10
  Speaker 1: It remains as a dead weight. The soul has many
• 2:29:15
  Speaker 1: heaps of rubbish in it, but none more deleterious than this.
• 2:29:20
  Speaker 1: When men begin to thank us, we should playfully stop
• 2:29:24
  Speaker 1: their thanks, but not stiffly or unreally. There are some
• 2:29:29
  Speaker 1: men who would feel awkward and uncomfortable if they were
• 2:29:33
  Speaker 1: not allowed to pour out their feelings. Such men we
• 2:29:37
  Speaker 1: must not check. It is part of the discernment of
• 2:29:41
  Speaker 1: good manners to find out who they are, and the
• 2:29:45
  Speaker 1: perfection of good manners to be natural and simple under
• 2:29:49
  Speaker 1: the operation of being praised. Being praised puts us for
• 2:29:54
  Speaker 1: the most part in a ludicrous position, either it mortifies
• 2:29:59
  Speaker 1: us by a say of inferiority, or it makes us
• 2:30:03
  Speaker 1: suspicious by a feeling of disproportion, or it unseasonably awakes
• 2:30:09
  Speaker 1: our sense of humor, which is always in proportion to
• 2:30:13
  Speaker 1: the honest seriousness of those who are praising us. The
• 2:30:17
  Speaker 1: fact is very few people know how to praise, and
• 2:30:22
  Speaker 1: fewer still know how to take it. We should never
• 2:30:26
  Speaker 1: dwell upon our kind actions in our own minds. God
• 2:30:30
  Speaker 1: is in them. They have been operations of grace. God
• 2:30:35
  Speaker 1: is shy of being looked at, and withdraws when we
• 2:30:39
  Speaker 1: are tempted to be complaisant about them. Let us think
• 2:30:43
  Speaker 1: of the sanctity of God and be ashamed. Let us
• 2:30:48
  Speaker 1: dwell on his attribute of magnificence and be especially devout
• 2:30:53
  Speaker 1: to it. We shall thus keep ourselves within the limits
• 2:30:57
  Speaker 1: of our own littleness, and even feel comfortable in them.
• 2:31:03
  Speaker 1: Before we conclude our task, we must say something about
• 2:31:07
  Speaker 1: kind suffering. Kind suffering is in fact a form of
• 2:31:12
  Speaker 1: kind action with peculiar rubrics of its own. But if
• 2:31:17
  Speaker 1: all kindness needs grace, kind suffering needs it a hundredfold
• 2:31:23
  Speaker 1: of a truth. Those are rare natures which know how
• 2:31:27
  Speaker 1: to suffer gracefully, and in whose endurance there is a
• 2:31:31
  Speaker 1: natural beauty which simulates, and sometimes even seems to surpass,
• 2:31:36
  Speaker 1: what is supernatural. To the Christian no sight is more
• 2:31:41
  Speaker 1: melancholy than this simulating of grace by nature. It is
• 2:31:46
  Speaker 1: a problem which makes him thoughtful, but to which no
• 2:31:50
  Speaker 1: thinking brings a satisfactory solution. With the Christian kind, suffering
• 2:31:56
  Speaker 1: must be almost wholly supernatural. It is a region in
• 2:32:00
  Speaker 1: which grace must be despotic, so despotic as hardly to
• 2:32:05
  Speaker 1: allow nature to dwell in the land. There is a
• 2:32:09
  Speaker 1: harmonious fusion of suffering and gentleness effected by grace, which
• 2:32:15
  Speaker 1: is one of the most attractive features of holiness. With
• 2:32:19
  Speaker 1: quiet and unobtrusive sweetness, the sufferer makes us feel as
• 2:32:24
  Speaker 1: if he were ministering to us, rather than we to him.
• 2:32:29
  Speaker 1: It is we who are under the obligation to wait
• 2:32:33
  Speaker 1: on him as a privilege rather than a task. Even
• 2:32:37
  Speaker 1: the softening, sanctifying influences of suffering seem to be exercising
• 2:32:42
  Speaker 1: themselves on us rather than on him. His gentleness is
• 2:32:48
  Speaker 1: making us gentle. He casts a spell over us. We
• 2:32:52
  Speaker 1: have all the advantages of being his inferiors without being
• 2:32:57
  Speaker 1: vexed with a sense of our inferiority. What is more
• 2:33:02
  Speaker 1: beautiful than considerateness for others when we ourselves are unhappy.
• 2:33:08
  Speaker 1: It is a grace made out of a variety of graces.
• 2:33:12
  Speaker 1: And yet while it makes a deep impression on all
• 2:33:16
  Speaker 1: who come within the sphere of its influence, it is
• 2:33:19
  Speaker 1: a very hidden grace. It is part of those deep
• 2:33:23
  Speaker 1: treasures of the heart which the world can seldom rifle.
• 2:33:28
  Speaker 1: To be subject to low spirits is a sad liability,
• 2:33:33
  Speaker 1: Yet to a vigorous, manly heart it may be a
• 2:33:37
  Speaker 1: very complete sanctification. What can be more unkind than to
• 2:33:42
  Speaker 1: communicate our low spirits to others, or go about the
• 2:33:46
  Speaker 1: world like demons poisoning the fountains of joy? Have I
• 2:33:51
  Speaker 1: more light because I have managed to involve those I
• 2:33:55
  Speaker 1: love in the same gloom as myself? Is it not
• 2:33:59
  Speaker 1: pleasant to see the sun shining on the mountains even
• 2:34:03
  Speaker 1: though we have none of it down in our valley? Oh,
• 2:34:07
  Speaker 1: the littleness and the meanness of that sickly appetite for sympathy,
• 2:34:12
  Speaker 1: which will not let us keep our tiny, little Aputian
• 2:34:16
  Speaker 1: sorrows to ourselves. Why must we go sneaking about like
• 2:34:21
  Speaker 1: some dishonorable insect, and feed our darkness on other people's light.
• 2:34:27
  Speaker 1: We hardly know in all this whether to be more
• 2:34:31
  Speaker 1: disgusted with the meanness, or more indignant at the selfishness,
• 2:34:36
  Speaker 1: or more sorrowful at the sin. The thoughts of the
• 2:34:41
  Speaker 1: dying mother are all concentrated on her new born child.
• 2:34:46
  Speaker 1: It is a beautiful emblem of unselfish holiness. So also
• 2:34:51
  Speaker 1: let us hide our pains and sorrows. But while we
• 2:34:55
  Speaker 1: hide them, let them also be spurs within us to
• 2:35:00
  Speaker 1: urge us on to all manner of overflowing kindness and
• 2:35:04
  Speaker 1: sunny humor to those around us. When the very darkness
• 2:35:09
  Speaker 1: within us creates a sunshine around us, then has the
• 2:35:14
  Speaker 1: spirit of Jesus taken possession of our souls. Social contact
• 2:35:20
  Speaker 1: has something irritating in it, even when it is kindliest.
• 2:35:26
  Speaker 1: Those who love us are continually aggravating us, not only unintentionally,
• 2:35:32
  Speaker 1: but even in the display of their love. Unkindness also abounds,
• 2:35:37
  Speaker 1: and is of itself vexatious. Something goes wrong daily, It
• 2:35:42
  Speaker 1: is difficult even for sympathy not to exasperate. Consolation is
• 2:35:48
  Speaker 1: almost always chafing. We often seem to have come into
• 2:35:53
  Speaker 1: the world without our skins, so that all intercourse is
• 2:35:57
  Speaker 1: agony to our sensitiveness. What a field for sanctification all
• 2:36:03
  Speaker 1: this opens out to us. Then there is another sort
• 2:36:08
  Speaker 1: of sweetness under God's visitations, and this shows itself, especially
• 2:36:13
  Speaker 1: in taking all the burden we can off others. For
• 2:36:17
  Speaker 1: the fact is that everybody's cross is shared by many.
• 2:36:23
  Speaker 1: No one carries his own cross wholly. At least such
• 2:36:27
  Speaker 1: crosses are very rare. I am not quite sure that
• 2:36:30
  Speaker 1: they exist now. Kind suffering makes us habitually look rather
• 2:36:36
  Speaker 1: at what others feel of our crosses than of what
• 2:36:40
  Speaker 1: we feel of them ourselves. We see our own crosses
• 2:36:45
  Speaker 1: on other people's shoulders and overwhelm them with kindness. Accordingly,
• 2:36:51
  Speaker 1: it is not we who have been tossing wakeful all
• 2:36:54
  Speaker 1: night that are the sufferers, but the poor nurse who
• 2:36:58
  Speaker 1: has been fighting all night against the sleep of health
• 2:37:01
  Speaker 1: by our bedside, and only with partial success. It is
• 2:37:06
  Speaker 1: not we who cannot bear the least noise in the
• 2:37:10
  Speaker 1: house that deserves sympathy, but the poor, little constrained children
• 2:37:15
  Speaker 1: who have not been allowed to make the noise. For
• 2:37:19
  Speaker 1: to children is there any happiness which is not also noise?
• 2:37:24
  Speaker 1: This is the turn of mind which kind suffering gives us.
• 2:37:29
  Speaker 1: Who will say it is not a most converting thing,
• 2:37:32
  Speaker 1: But then it must develop itself gracefully. We must do
• 2:37:37
  Speaker 1: all this unobtrusively, so as not to let others see
• 2:37:41
  Speaker 1: it is done on purpose. Hence it is that the
• 2:37:45
  Speaker 1: saints keep silence in suffering, for the mere knowledge of
• 2:37:49
  Speaker 1: what they suffer is itself a suffering to those who
• 2:37:53
  Speaker 1: love them. But suffering is a world of miracles. It
• 2:37:58
  Speaker 1: would fill a book to say all that might be
• 2:38:01
  Speaker 1: said about kindness under suffering. Let us conclude we have
• 2:38:06
  Speaker 1: been speaking of kindness. Perhaps we might better have called
• 2:38:11
  Speaker 1: it the spirit of Jesus. What an amulet we should
• 2:38:15
  Speaker 1: find it in our passage through life, if we would
• 2:38:19
  Speaker 1: say to ourselves two or three times a day these
• 2:38:23
  Speaker 1: soft words of scripture, My spirit is sweet above honey,
• 2:38:28
  Speaker 1: and my inheritance above honey in the honeycomb. Ecclesiasticus, Chapter
• 2:38:34
  Speaker 1: twenty four, verse twenty seven. But you will say, perhaps,
• 2:38:39
  Speaker 1: after all, it is a very little virtue, very much
• 2:38:43
  Speaker 1: a matter of natural temperament, and rather an affair of
• 2:38:47
  Speaker 1: good manners than of holy living. Well, I will not
• 2:38:51
  Speaker 1: argue with you. The grass of the fields is better
• 2:38:55
  Speaker 1: than the cedars of Lebanon. It feeds more and at
• 2:38:59
  Speaker 1: rests the eye better that timey daisy eyed carpet, making
• 2:39:04
  Speaker 1: earth sweet and fair and homelike. Kindness is the turf
• 2:39:09
  Speaker 1: of the spiritual world, whereon the sheep of Christ feed
• 2:39:13
  Speaker 1: quietly beneath the shepherd's eye. It was only a sunny smile,
• 2:39:20
  Speaker 1: and little it cost in the giving, but it scattered
• 2:39:23
  Speaker 1: the night like morning light, and made the day worth living.
• 2:39:29
  Speaker 1: Through life's dull warp. A wolf, it wove in shining
• 2:39:33
  Speaker 1: colors of hope and love, and the angel smiled as
• 2:39:37
  Speaker 1: they watched above. Yet little it cost in the giving.
• 2:39:42
  Speaker 1: It was but a kindly word, a word that was
• 2:39:45
  Speaker 1: lightly spoken, yet not in vain, for it still the
• 2:39:50
  Speaker 1: pain of a heart that was nearly broken. It strengthened
• 2:39:55
  Speaker 1: a faith beset with fears and groping blindly through my
• 2:39:59
  Speaker 1: min of tears for light to brighten the coming years.
• 2:40:04
  Speaker 1: Although it was lightly spoken, it was only a helping hand,
• 2:40:10
  Speaker 1: and it seemed of little availing. But its clasp was warm,
• 2:40:15
  Speaker 1: and it saved from harm a brother whose strength was failing.
• 2:40:21
  Speaker 1: Its touch was tender as angels wings, but it rolled
• 2:40:25
  Speaker 1: the stone from the hidden springs, and pointed the way
• 2:40:29
  Speaker 1: to higher things, though it seemed of little availing. Anonymous
• 2:40:37
  Speaker 1: end of Chapter four, end of kindness by Father favor