By Henry Drummond
March 1st. "Consider the lilies of the field how they grow." Christ made the lilies and He made me--both on the same broad principle. Both together, man and flower . . .; but as men are dull at studying themselves. He points to this companion-phenomenon to teach us how to live a free and natural life, a life which God will unfold for us, without our anxiety, as He unfolds the flower. Natural Law, Growth, p. 123.
March 2d. Our efforts after Christian growth seem only a succession of failures, and, instead of rising into the beauty of holiness, our life is a daily heart-break and humiliation. Natural Law, Growth, p. 125.
March 3d. The lilies grow, Christ says, of themselves; they toil not, neither do they spin. They grow, that is, automatically, spontaneously, without trying, without fretting, without thinking. Natural Law, Growth, p. 126.
March 4th. Violent efforts to grow are right in earnestness, but wholly wrong in principle. There is but one principle of growth both for the natural and spiritual, for animal and plant, for body and soul. For all growth is an organic thing. And the principle of growing in grace is once more this, "Consider the lilies how they grow." Natural Law, Growth, p. 125.
March 5th. Earnest souls who are attempting sanctification by struggle, instead of sanctification by faith, might be spared much humiliation by learning the botany of the Sermon on the Mount. Natural Law, Growth, p. 127.
March 6th. There is only one thing greater than happiness in the world, and that is holiness; and it is not in our keeping; but what God HAS put in our power is the happiness of those about us, and that is largely to be secured by our being kind to them. The Greatest Thing in the World.
March 7th. We have all felt the brazenness of words without emotion, the hollowness, the unaccountable unpersuasiveness of eloquence behind which lies no love. The Greatest Thing in the World.
March 8th. Patience; kindness; generosity; humility; courtesy; unselfishness; good-temper; guilelessness; sincerity--these make up the supreme gift, the stature of the perfect man. The Greatest Thing in the World.
March 9th. We hear much of love to God; Christ spoke much of love to man. We make a great deal of peace with heaven; Christ spoke much of peace on earth. The Greatest Thing in the World.
March 10th. If God is spending work upon a Christian, let him be still and know that it is God. And if he wants work, he will find it there--in the being still. Natural Law, Growth, p. 137.
March 11th. If the amount of energy lost in trying to grow were spent in fulfilling rather the conditions of growth, we should have many more cubits to show for our stature. Natural Law, Growth, p. 137.
March 12th. The conditions of growth, then, and the inward principle of growth being both supplied by Nature, the thing man has to do, the little junction left for him to complete, is to apply the one to the other. He manufactures nothing; he earns nothing; he need be anxious for nothing; his one duty is to be IN these conditions, to abide in them, to allow grace to play over him, to be still and know that this is God. Natural Law, Growth, p. 138.
March 13th. A man will often have to wrestle with his God--but not for growth. The Christian life is a composed life. The Gospel is Peace. Yet the most anxious people in the world are Christians--Christians who misunderstand the nature of growth. Life is a perpetual self-condemning because they are not growing. Natural Law, Growth, p. 139.
March 14th. All the work of the world is merely a taking advantage of energies already there. Natural Law, Growth, p. 140.
March 15th. Religion is not a strange or added thing; but the inspiration of the secular life, the breathing of an eternal spirit through this temporal world. The Greatest Thing in the World.
March 16th. The stature of the Lord Jesus was not itself reached by work, and he who thinks to approach its mystical height by anxious effort is really receding from it. Natural Law, Growth, p. 127.
March 17th. For the Life must develop out according to its type; and being a germ of the Christ-life, it must unfold into a Christ. Natural Law, Growth, p. 129.
March 18th. The sneer at the godly man for his imperfections is ill-judged. A blade is a small thing. At first it grows very near the earth. It is often soiled and crushed and downtrodden. But it is a living thing,. . . and "it doth not yet appear what it shall be." Natural Law, Growth, p. 129.
March 19th. Christ's protest is not against work, but against anxious thought. Natural Law, Growth, p. 136.
March 20th. If God is adding to our spiritual stature, unfolding the new nature within us, it is a mistake to keep twitching at the petals with our coarse fingers. We must seek to let the Creative Hand alone. "It is God which giveth the increase." Natural Law, Growth, p. 137.
March 21st. Love is PATIENCE. This is the normal attitude of Love; Love passive, Love waiting to begin; not in a hurry; calm; ready to do its work when the summons comes, but meantime wearing the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. The Greatest Thing in the World.
March 22d. Have you ever noticed how much of Christ's life was spent in doing kind things? The Greatest Thing in the World.
March 23d. I wonder why it is we are not all kinder than we are! How much the world needs it. How easily it is done. How instantaneously it acts. How infallibly it is remembered. How superabundantly it pays itself back --for there is no debtor in the world so honourable, so superbly honourable as Love. The Greatest Thing in the World.
March 24th. To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever is to live forever. Hence, eternal life is inextricably bound up with love. The Greatest Thing in the World.
March 25th. Man is a mass of correspondences, and because of these, because he is alive to countless objects and influences to which lower organisms are dead, he is the most living of all creatures. Natural Law, Death, p. 155.
March 26th. All organisms are living and dead--living to all within the circumference of their correspondences, dead to all beyond. . . . Until man appears there is no organism to correspond with the whole environment. Natural Law, Death, p. 155.
March 27th. Is man in correspondence with the whole environment or is he not? . . . He is not. Of men generally it cannot be said that they are in living contact with that part of the environment which is called the spiritual world. Natural Law, Death, p. 156.
March 28th. The animal world and the plant world are the same world. They are different parts of one environment. And the natural and spiritual are likewise one. Natural Law, Death, p. 157.
March 29th. What we have correspondence with, that we call natural; what we have little or no correspondence with, that we call Spiritual. Natural Law, Death, p. 157.
March 30th. Those who are in communion with God live, those who are not are dead. Natural Law, Death, p. 158.
March 31st. This earthly mind may be of noble calibre, enriched by culture, high-toned, virtuous, and pure. But if it know not God? What though its correspondences reach to the stars of heaven or grasp the magnitudes of Time and Space? The stars of heaven are not heaven. Space is not God. Natural Law, Death, p. 158.
