Preface:
It is a bold thing for one who is not a Religious to add a Preface to a book like this, but I have been asked to write a few words of commendation, and I do not like to refuse.
I do not like to refuse, because these short addresses seem to me to be quite excellently adapted for reading or meditation in Religious Houses.
It is evident that the writer has thought long and deeply about the meaning of self-surrender, and he knows how hardly self-will dies in us all.
“It is so easy for us to be heroic, if only we are recognized as heroes and heroines. To give up comforts and reputation, if only we get some sympathy and credit for it. To do humble tasks proudly, while we let people know that we are capable of better things. To yield up our will in trivial details which do not touch us closely, if only we may do our own will in matters which are dear to us. All this is so easy; but it is not self-surrender. It is self-will; but it is not self-surrender.”
It is this kind of sentence (and there are not a few in this little book) which we may ponder again and again, and never without profit.
B. W. RANDOLPH.
THE ALMONRY, ELY.
Feast of the Transfiguration,
1913.
CrossReach Publications