The Cloud of Witness - moving

I've decided not to post The Cloud of Witness here any more. It's taking over my blog! Instead, I'll be posting it at my homeschoolblogger blog, which I only use for cross-posting some of what I post here.

The Cloud of Witness Wednesday

[362]

Wednesday. Eleventh after Trinity.

Spiritual Pride.

"Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them and be clean?" So he turned and went away in a rage.--2 Kings v. 12.

Shall I take on me to change His tasks,
And dare,--dispatched to a river-head
For a simple draught of the element,--
Neglect the thing for which He sent
And return with another thing instead?--
Saying, "Because the water found
Welling up from underground
Is mingled with the taints of earth . . .
Therefore I turned from the oozings muddy,
And bring Thee a chalice I found instead . . .
What matters the water? A hope I have nursed,
The waterless cup will quench my thirst!"
--Better have knelt at the poorest stream
That trickles in pain from the straightest rift!
For the less or more is all God's gift,
Who blocks up, or breaks wide the granite seam;
And here, is there water or not to drink?
Browning.

Never be ashamed of assistance! Like a Soldier at the storming of a town, your business is to maintain your post and execute your Orders. Now suppose you happen to be lame at an assault and cannot mount the breach upon your own feet, will you not suffer your Comrade to help you?
Marcus Aerelius.

Peace begins just where ambition ends.
What makes man wretched! Happiness denied?
No! 'tis happiness disdained.
She comes too meanly dressed to win our smile;
And calls herself Content, a homely name!
Our flame is transport, and content our scorn,
Ambition turns, and shuts the door against her,
And weds a toil, a tempest, in her stead.
Young.

The Cloud of Witness Tuesday

[361]

Tuesday.

Spiritual Pride.

Who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?--I Cor. iv. 7.

They do not well
Who, walking up a trodden path, all smooth
With footsteps of their fellows, and made straight
From town to town, will scorn at them that wonn
Under the covert of God's eldest trees--
They do not well who mock at such and cry,
"We peaceably, without or fault or fear,
Proceed and miss not of our end; but these
Are slow and fearful; with uncertain pace,
And ever reasoning of the way, they oft,
After all reasoning, choose the worser course."
J. Ingelow.

If there be any good in thee, believe that there is much more in others,--that so thou mayest preserve humility within thee.
Thos. A Kempis.

Look straight at all things from the soul!
But boast not much to understand;
Make each new action sound and whole,
Then leave it in its place unscanned!
Be true! devoid of aim or care;
Nor posture, nor antagonize!
Know well that clouds of this our air
But seem to wrap the mighty skies!
Allingham.

Heavier responsibility attaches to those who have larger knowledge.
Westcott.

The lawless wish, the unaverted eye,
Are as a taint upon the breeze,
To lure foul spirits:--haughty brows and high
Are signals to invite Them nigh,
Whose onset ever Saints await on bended knees.
Keble.

Lest being lifted up with Pride he fall into the temptation of the Devil.
I Tim. iii. 6.

The Cloud of Witness Monday

[360]

Monday. Eleventh after Trinity.

Spiritual Pride.

God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.--Luke xviii. II.

Judge not! the workings of his brain
And of his heart thou canst not see;
What looks to thy dim eyes a stain,
In God's pure light may only be
A scar, brought from some well-won field--
Where thou wouldst only faint and yield.

The look, the air that frets thy sight,
May be a token, that below
The soul has closed in deadly fight
With some eternal foe,
Whose glance would scorch thy smiling grace,
And cast thee shuddering on thy face!

The fall thou darest to despise,--
May-be the Angel's slackened hand
Has suffered it, that he may rise
And take a firmer, surer stand;
Or, trusting less to earthly things,
May henceforth learn to use his wings.

And judge none lost! but wait and see,
With hopeful pity, not disdain!
The depth of the abyss may be
The measure of the height of pain,
And love and glory that may raise
This soul to God in after days.
A. Proctor.

The pride of lettered ignorance, that binds
In chains of error our accomplished minds,
That seeks with all the splendour of the true,
A false religion!
Cowper.

They repenting and groaning for anguish of spirit shall say within themselves, "This was he, whom we had sometimes in derision, and a proverb of reproach; we fools accounted his life madness, and his end to be without honour: how is he numbered among the children of God, and his lot among the saints!
Wisdom v. 3-5.

The Cloud of Witness Sunday

[359]

Sunday.

Spiritual Pride.

Jesus spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others.--Gospel for the Day.

Some lead a life unblameable and just--
Their own dear virtues their unshaken trust!
They never sin!--or if (as all offend)
Some trivial slips their daily walk attend,
The poor are near at hand,--the charge is small,--
A slight gratuity atones for all!
Cowper.

We to our cost our bounds transgress
In Thy eternal plan;
Pride grasps the powers by Thee display'd,
Yet ne'er the rebel effort made,
But fell beneath the sudden shade
Of Nature's withering ban.
Newman.

Be assured
That least of all can aught--that ever owned
The heaven-regarding eye and front sublime
Which man is born to--sink, howe'er depressed,
So low as to be scorned, without a sin.
Wordsworth.

It may be that the suppliant's life
Has lain on many an evil way
Of foul delight and brutal strife,
And lawless deeds that shun the day;
But how can any gauge of yours
The depth of that temptation try!
--What man resists--what man endures--
Is open to one only eye.
Houghton.

How little thou canst tell
How much in thee is ill or well!
Nor for thy neighbour, nor for thee,
Be sure! was life designed to be
A draught of dull Complacency!
Clough.

The Cloud of Witness Saturday

[357]

Week of the Eleventh Sunday After Trinity.

"The Snare of Pride"

"God resisteth the Proud."

A Prayer for the Week

O Lord, Father and God of my Life, give me not a proud look, but turn away from Thy servants a haughty mind.

------------------------------------

[358]

Saturday. Eleventh after Trinity.

Spritual Pride.

The Pharisees answered and said unto him, "Thou wast altogether born in sin, and dost thou teach us?" And they cast him out.--John ix. 34.

Men who proudly clung
To their first fault--and withered in their Pride!
Browning.

A mean estate is not always to be condemned; nor the rich that is foolish to be had in admiration.
Ecclus. xxii. 23.

Pride brandishes the favours he confers.
Young.

On the verge of never-ending woe
Man doubting stands, yet plum'd with Pride the while,
Folding his arms in self-admir'd repose,
Cased in self-confidence!
I. Williams.

Let not the refinement of Society make us forget, that it is not the refined only who are received into the Kingdom of God.
Jowett.

O seeming sole to awake,--thy sun-bathed head
Piercing the solemn cloud
Round thy still dreaming brother-world outspread . . .
Be not too proud!
Oh! When most self-exalted, most alone!
Chief Dreamer, own thy dream!
Thy brother-world stirs at they feet unknown;
Who hath a Monarch's hath no Brother's part.
Matt. Arnold.

Esteem not thyself better than others, lest perhaps in the sight of God, Who knoweth what is in a Man, thou be accounted worse than they.
Thos. A. Kempis.

Do thy day's work, dare
Refuse no help thereto, since help refused
Is hindrance sought and found.
Browning.

The Cloud of Witness Friday

[356]

Friday. Tenth after Trinity.

Sympathy.

Whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.--I Cor. xii. 26.

I ask Thee for a thoughtful love,
Through constant watching wise,
To meet the glad with joyful smiles
And wipe the weeping eyes;
And a heart at leisure from itself
To soothe and sympathize.
Wherever in the world I am,
In whatsoe'er estate,
I have a fellowship with hearts
To keep and cultivate,
And a work of lowly love to do,
For the Lord on Whom I wait.
A. L. Waring.

Mystical, more than magical, is that communing of Soul with Soul, both looking heavenward! Here properly Soul first speaks with Soul.
Carlyle.

'Tis but brother's speech we need,
Speech where an accent's change gives each
The other's Soul!
Browning.

No distance breaks the tie of blood,
Brothers are brothers evermore,
Nor wrong, nor wrath of deadliest mood
That magic may o'erpower:
Oft ere the common source be known,
The kindred drops will claim their own,
And throbbing pulses silently
Move heart towards heart by Sympathy.
So it is with true Christian hearts;
Their mutual share in Jesus' blood
An everlasting bond imparts
Of holiest brotherhood.
Oh! might we all our lineage prove,
Give and forgive,--do good and love,--
By soft endearments in kind strife
Lightening the load of daily life!
Keble.

The Cloud of Witness Thursday

I especially like today's.

[355]

Thursday

Sympathy.

Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.--Rom. xii. 15.

Man is dear to Man! the poorest Poor
Long for some moments in a weary life,
When they can know and feel that they have been
Themselves, the fathers and the dealers-out
Of some small blessings;--have been kind to such
As needed kindness.
Wordsworth.

I would have you be . . . like a fire well-kindled, which catches at everything you throw in, and turns it into flame and brightness.
M. Aurelius.

Some souls there are
Who, when they smite it, bring
Forth from the hardest rock its hidden spring.
Lytton.

Be calm in arguing; for fierceness makes
Error a fault, and truth discourtesy.
Why should I feel another man's mistakes
More than his fickleness or poverty!
In love I should: but anger is not love,
Nor wisdome neither;--therefore gently move!

Be useful where thou livest, that they may
Both want and wish thy pleasing presence still:--
Kindness, good parts, great places, are the way
To compass this. Find out men's Wants and Will,
And meet them there!--All the worldly joys go less
To the one joy of doing kindnesses.
Herbert.

Find they reward in the thing
Which thou hast been blest to do,
Let the joy of others cause joy to spring
Up in thy bosom too!--
And if the love of a grateful heart
As a rich reward be given,
Lift thou the love of a grateful heart
To the God of Love in Heaven!
MacDonald.

The Cloud of Witness Wednesday

A little late - I just plain forgot!

[354]

Wednesday Tenth after Trinity

Sympathy

By love serve one another.--Gal. v. 13.
None of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.--Rom. xiv. 7.

Wouldst thou the Life of Souls discern?
Nor human wisdom nor divine
Helps thee by aught beside to learn:--
Love is Life's only sign.
The spring of the regenerate heart--
The pulse, the glow of every part,
Is the true love of Christ our Lord,
As man embrac'd, as God ador'd.
Keble.

She never found fault with you, never implied
Your Wrong by her Right; and yet men at her side
Grew nobler, girls purer.
None knelt at her feet, confessed lovers in thrall,--
They knelt more to God than they used--that was all!
E.B. Browning.

"For this true nobleness I seek in Vain
In woman, and in man I find it not;
I almost weary of my earthly lot,
My life-springs are dried up with burning pain."
Thou find'st it not? I pray thee look again;--
Look inward through the depths of thine own soul!
How is it with thee? Art thou sound and whole?
Doth narrow search show thee no earthly stain?
*Be noble!* And the Nobleness that lies
In other men, sleeping, but never dead,--
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own!
Then wilt though see it gleam in many eye,
Then will pure light around thy path be shed,
And thou wilt never-more be sad and lone!
Lowell.

Let us no more contend, nor blame
Each other, blam'd enough elsewhere!--but strive
In offices of love how we may lighten
Each other's burden in our share of woe!
Milton.

The Cloud of Witness Tuesday

Good news (for me, anyway!) CM's Volume 3 is done, paraphrased in modern English!


[353]

Tuesday.

Sympathy.

Weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.--Luke xxiii. 27, 28.

A while ago I passed
Where every step seemed thornier and harder than the last;
Where bitterest disappointment and inly aching sorrow
Carved day by day a weary Cross, renewed with every morrow--
The heaviest end of that strange Cross I knew was laid on Thee;
So I could still press on, secure of Thy deep Sympathy.
F. R. Havergal.

There are hearts
So perilously fashion'd, that for them
God's touch alone hath gentleness enough
To waken,--and not break,--their thrilling strings!
F. Hemans.

One spring wind unbinds the mountain snow
And comforts violets in their hermitage.
Browning.

How feeble hath been all my Soul's essay
To aid one single man on all God's earth.
Buchanan.

And if a more auspicious fate
On thy advancing steps await,
Still let it ever be thy pride
To linger by the labourer's side;
With words of Sympathy or song
To cheer the dreary march along
Of the great Army of the Poor,
O'er desert sand, o'er dangerous moor!
Nor to thyself the task shall be
Without reward!
Lomgfellow.

The truest joys which we have experienced, have come when we had grace to enter most entirely into a sorrow not our own.
Westcott.

Cloud of Witness

Rather than start at the beginning of the book, I'll just pick up where I think we are chronologically - Monday in the tenth week after Trinity, to the best of my non-Anglican knowledge. I notice the names Keble and Westcott, who CM quoted in her books, and she also used the last quote from Marcus Aerelius. Maybe she wasn't as widely read as it appears from her books - maybe she just got all her quotes from her daily devotional! LOL!

--------------------

[352] Tenth after Trinity

Monday

Sympathy

We have not a High priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our informaries.--Heb. iv. 15 (R.V.)

There is no sorrow, Lord, too light
To bring in prayer to Thee;--
There is no anxious care too slight
To wake Thy Sympathy!
Thou Who hast trod the thorny road
Wilt share each small distress;
The love which bore the greater load
Will not refuse the less.
There is no secret sigh we breathe
But meets Thine ear divine,
And every Cross grows light beneath
The shadow, Lord! of Thine.
Jane Crewdon.

Though sepulchred in absence, Sympathy
Leads a suspended life and cannot die.
Lytton.

He is tenderest, not who has sinned, as is sometimes vainly thought,--but who has known best the power of sin, by overcoming it.
Westcott.

If one heart in perfect Sympathy
Beat with another, answering love for love,--
Weak mortals, all entranc'd, on earth would lie,
Nor listen for those purer strains above . . .
Thou know'st our bitterness!--our joys are Thine!
No stranger Thou to all our wanderings wild!
Nor could we bear to think how every line
Of us,--Thy darken'd likeness and defil'd,--
Stands in full sunshine of Thy piercing eye,
But that Thou call'st us Brethren! Sweet repose
Is in that word;--the Lord who dwells on high
Knows all, yet loves us better than He knows.
Keble.

Men are born to be serviceable to one another; therefore either reform the World, or bear with it!
Marcus Aurelius.

The Cloud of Witness

In proofreading In Memoriam, I learned that, whenever Charlotte Mason's students would graduate and leave her teacher's college at Scale How in Ambleside, England, she would gift them with a book called "Gell's Cloud of Witness." I did a search online, but there's no etext online. I found a used copy at amazon.com, and it arrived today from England.

The book is small and red. It looks like a dailly devotional of Thoughts with an Anglican focus (it's set up to follow the Christian Calendar of Trinity weeks, Advent, etc, which I'm not familiar with.) I'm going to see how it goes if I type a page a day as a kind of devotional. Either I'll get tired of the project (I'm not going to pressure myself to complete it), or else, in a couple of years, I'll have finished the book and send it to Project Gutenberg for their online collection. ;)

Here are the opening pages:

The Cloud of Witness
One Hundred and Thirty-eighth Thousand

(handwritten inscription:)
"To know
That which before us lies in daily life
Is the prime wisdom."
Milton.


That was the True Light.

He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness.

The Cloud of Witness
A Daily Sequence
of
Great Thoughts from Many Minds
following the Christian Seasons

by the Hon. Mrs. Lyttelton Gell.

"Certain even of your own poets have said, For we are also His offspring."
"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights."

London
Henry Frowde
Oxford University Press Warehouse
Amen Corner, E.C.
New York; 91 & 93 Fifth Avenue

Oxford
Horace Hart, Printer to the University

Prepatory Note
by His Grace
The Archbishop of Canterbury.

____

These sequences of Thoughts, resting each on some one clear 'idea' presented to us in our Sundays, seem to me full of interest and help. Brief words chosen for a dayoften help the day through more strongly and brightly. That is our experience of the greatest Lections of all. The 'ideas' noted in the following pages are full of suggestion, and I know no like book with so wide a range of illustrations.

It is good to hear in pithy phrases what the observing, musing, poet-people, that is the 'maker-people' as the Greeks have it, are saying at this moment:--None the less good, because some of them are yet unable to 'beat their music out'--the music of a full faith. In such voices is heard what St. Paul calls 'the yearning of the Creation,' and that yearning is Creation's witness to the Son of God.

Edw. Cantuar.

Addington, Nov. 29, 1891.

Hear ye not the voices ringing down the ages--
Echoing still the message, though their task be done--
Voices, born of heroes, monarchs, poets, sages,
Yearning still to share the wisdom they had won?

Listen!--Thronging round you, deafening with their clamour,
Fashion-tyrants mock at your vaunt of self-control.
Wake!--Delusive visions fraught with poison glamour
Daze your eyes to blindness, while they paralyse your soul.

Yet the Cloud of Witness solemnly advances,
Widening as each clarion-voice is hushed in Death below;
Yet the Heavenly Vision gleams on raptured glances,
Prompt through changing vesture their changeless Lord to know!