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 KINDNESS 
 
 BY 
 
 FATHER FABER 
 
 R. & T. WASHBOURNE 
 
 i8 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago : BENZIGER BROS. 
 
 Copies may be had from 
 
 THE URSULINE CONVENT, THURLES, IRELAND 
 
 1 901
 
 ^ikil (Dbstnt : 
 
 GULIELMUS CANONICUS GILDEA, S.T.D. 
 Censor Deputatus. 
 
 Imprimatur : 
 
 ►fi HERBERTUS CARDINALIS VAUGHAN, 
 A rdtiepiscopus Westtnonast.
 
 TO THE 
 
 DIVINE HEART OF JESUS, 
 
 THE ONE INFINITELY EXHAUSTLESS SOURCE 
 
 WHENCE ALL HUMAN KINDNESS EMANATES, 
 
 THESE PAGES ARE DEDICATED WITH 
 
 PROFOUNDEST WORSHIP 
 
 BY 
 
 THE EDITOR 
 
 2057159
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 MEMOIR OF FATHER FABER - - I 
 
 I 
 
 ON KINDNESS IN GENERAL - - I7 
 
 II 
 
 KIND THOUGHTS - - - "45 
 
 III 
 KIND WORDS - - - - - 66 
 
 IV 
 
 KIND ACTIONS - - - - "85
 
 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 Though it is not customary to prefix the 
 memoir of an author to so small a portion 
 of his works as the present, still the three 
 decades of years that have elapsed since 
 his death may have at least partially obliter- 
 ated the memory of the great and gifted 
 Father Faber. To prevent that memory 
 fading from the minds of our young people 
 this sketch is given. Those desirous of 
 learning more of the illustrious Oratorian 
 will find exhaustive details of his conver- 
 sion to the Faith, etc., in his Life, written 
 by the Rev. John Bowden, from which 
 many of the facts of this memoir are 
 borrowed.
 
 MEMOIR OF FATHER FABER 
 
 Frederick William Faber was the son 
 of Mr. Thomas Henry Faber, a Protestant 
 gentleman of French descent. He was 
 born at his grandfather's residence, the 
 Vicarage of Calverley, in Yorkshire, on 
 June 28, 1814. In the following year his 
 father removed to Bishop Auckland, where 
 the family continued to reside till his 
 father's death in 1833. 
 
 Frederick, who was his mother's idol, 
 was a singularly attractive child, and gave 
 early indications of the brilliant genius 
 which afterwards distinguished him. His 
 parents, both of whom were persons of 
 much intellectual culture, spared no pains 
 to foster the nascent talents of their boy, 
 and were rewarded beyond their dreams by 
 the results. 
 
 After a brief sojourn at the Grammar 
 School of Bishop Auckland, Frederick was 
 
 I
 
 2 Memoir of Father Faber 
 
 placed for a time under the tuition of the 
 Rev. John Gibson, at Kirkby Stephen. In 
 1825 he was removed to Shrewsbury School. 
 After a short stay there, he proceeded to 
 Harrow, where he remained till he entered 
 the University of Oxford. 
 
 Whilst in Harrow, scepticism, then as 
 now so rampant in England, had well-nigh 
 dealt his spiritual being a deadly blow. 
 God's merciful providence rescued him in 
 the hour of danger. 
 
 He matriculated at Balliol College, 
 Oxford, and came into residence there in 
 1833. One of his contemporaries whites: 
 * He resisted from first to last the tempta- 
 tions to w^hich many succumb, and, by the 
 grace of God, was able to preserve un- 
 stained the purity of his life.' He went to 
 Oxford imbued with Calvinistic principles 
 inherited from his parents, and treasured 
 by him all the more in that he had so 
 narrowly escaped the loss of faith in 
 Harrow. After some months, however, 
 Frederick's religious tendencies underwent 
 a change. This change w^as brought about 
 by the High Church movement, under the 
 influence of which he had now to some
 
 Memoir of Father Fahev 3 
 
 extent fallen. For the leader of the move- 
 ment, the illustrious John Henry Newman, 
 afterwards Cardinal, Faber conceived an 
 affectionate veneration which lasted through 
 life. But whilst fully sympathizing with the 
 spirit which animated this movement, he, 
 nevertheless, shrank from the lengths to 
 which some of its advocates were going. 
 
 That his earnest and deeply religious 
 nature was even now striving after truth is 
 evidenced in every page of the voluminous 
 correspondence penned by him at this 
 period. A few extracts from his letters 
 may not be out of place here as showing 
 the tone of his mind at this time. In a 
 letter dated from the University in January, 
 1835, he thanks God that the temporali- 
 ties of the Church of England are no longer 
 such as to induce men to enter the ministry 
 from motives of mere worldly ambition. 
 
 To realize fully the disinterestedness of 
 these views, we must bear in mind that 
 from his earliest years his aspirations had 
 all tended towards the clerical state. In a 
 letter dated the same month and year as 
 the above, he writes : 
 
 ' I feel to an almost sinful degree that I 
 
 I — 2
 
 4 Memoir of Father Faber 
 
 never could be happy or content in any- 
 other profession. It has thrown a colour 
 over all my boyhood ; it has been my hfe's 
 one dream, so much so that I sometimes 
 fancy I am called to it. So high, how- 
 ever, is the standard which I have set up 
 in my own mind, and so much below that 
 standard do I feel myself, that I do at times 
 question my fitness for so awful a vocation.' 
 
 What wonder that the deep personal 
 love of our Divine Lord, which even now 
 is so apparent, should, increasing with his 
 years, give him that wonderful success in 
 dealing with souls which marked his mis- 
 sionary labours as a Catholic priest ! 
 
 On May 26, 1839, he received ordina- 
 tion in Oxford, and soon after made a 
 brief visit to the Continent, whence he 
 returned very unfavourably impressed with 
 what he had seen of Catholicism, a result, 
 no doubt, of his prejudices against the faith. 
 In 1840 he accepted the post of tutor to the 
 eldest son of Mr. Harrison of Ambleside. 
 The greater part of 1841 was spent on the 
 Continent as travelling companion to Mr. 
 Harrison. 
 
 Meanwhile prayer and spiritual reading
 
 Memoir of Father Fabcr 5 
 
 had been doing their work in his soul, and 
 it was from a different standpoint that he 
 now studied the Church which he had 
 recently regarded so unfavourably. Already 
 the light of faith, under the touch of grace, 
 was beginning to dawn upon his mind. 
 
 In 1842 Faber, after some hesitation, 
 accepted the rectory of Elton, and on 
 April 2, 1843, he introduced himself there. 
 Next day, accompanied by his late pupil, 
 he set out on his travels. 
 
 While in Rome, Dr. Grant took him to 
 see St. Peter's. Writing of it, he says : 
 
 ' The roof gives one the true notion of 
 its enormous size ; the cottages of the 
 workmen, with the spacious offices, the 
 fountains, and the whole appurtenances 
 of a little village, seem only to occupy a 
 moderate portion of the roof of a single 
 church ! The idea of people living, cook- 
 ing, sleeping, etc., on the roof struck me 
 beyond anything.' 
 
 On June 17, 1843, Faber had a private 
 audience with the Pope, Gregory XVI. 
 His Holiness, who was alone, said : ' You 
 must not mislead yourself in wishing for 
 unity, yet waiting for your Church to move.
 
 6 Memoir of Father Faber 
 
 Think of the salvation of your own soul.' 
 After some further words of counsel, he 
 laid his hands on Faber's shoulders, who 
 immediately knelt down, upon which he 
 laid them on his head, saying : ' May the 
 grace of God correspond to your good 
 wishes and deliver you from the nets of 
 Anglicanism, and bring you to the true 
 holy Church.' And for answer to the 
 holy Pontiff's prayer he had not long 
 to wait. Gradually the veil was removed 
 from his eyes, till at last he beheld in all 
 her majesty and beauty the One, Holy, 
 Catholic Church, the nursing Mother of 
 the Saints, from whom all ecclesiastical 
 authority emanates, whose Founder neither 
 can deceive nor be deceived, Who will be 
 with her all days, even to the consumma- 
 tion of the w^orld. 
 
 While in Florence he began to wear the 
 miraculous medal, and would have made 
 a practice of invoking our Immaculate 
 Mother were he not withheld from doing 
 so by Newman, who disapproved of his 
 taking so pronounced a step in favour of 
 Rome whilst still fluctuating as to her 
 claims on his allegiance.
 
 Memoir of Father Faber y 
 
 "' It seems, indeed, certain that he would 
 have entered the Church before returning 
 to England had not Newman succeeded in 
 dissuading him. He, who later on was to 
 shed so bright a lustre on the Church, was 
 still undecided in his religious opinions, 
 and resolved to make no move towards 
 Catholicity till he had sounded to their 
 depths the vitally important questions on 
 which such momentous issues hung. He 
 strongly advised his friend to do likewise, 
 and the latter, in deference to the wishes 
 of one whose counsels he had been accus- 
 tomed to follow, consented to remain for 
 the present in the Anglican communion. 
 
 On his return to England, Faber at once 
 entered upon his duties at Elton. Notorious 
 as they were for their callousness and in- 
 difference, his new flock afforded ample 
 scope for the exercise of his zeal. Care- 
 fully avoiding controversy, he selected such 
 subjects for his sermons as were calculated 
 to instil a love and reverence for God and 
 the moral life. Devotion to the Sacred 
 Heart formed his favourite theme, as 
 appealing to every denomination of Chris- 
 tians. Keeping his religious doubts in
 
 8 Memoir of Father Faber 
 
 abeyance, the young pastor merged all 
 liis anxieties into zeal for the salvation of 
 the souls confided to him. He visited the 
 sick, consoled the sorrowing, taught the 
 suffering to sanctify their pains by uniting 
 them to those of our Divine Lord, and 
 spared no effort to aid and encourage the 
 faint-hearted in their striving after good. 
 His utter unselfishness and entire devotion 
 to their interests, combined with the 
 unction of his preaching and his sanctity 
 and austerity of life, soon obtained for 
 him an absolute ascendancy over the minds 
 of his people. The change wrought in 
 them was marvellous. A number of his 
 parishioners, especially the young men, 
 began to come to confession to him weekly, 
 and they frequently communicated. 
 
 In 1845 many of Faber's friends were 
 received into the Church. Foremost 
 amongst them was Newman. All his 
 doubts dispelled, that great man, whose 
 magnificent intellect and spotless integrity 
 of life were the admiration of Protestants 
 and Catholics alike, brought with him to 
 the Church a loyalty as unswerving as his 
 gifts were great. Till now he had retarded
 
 Memoir of Father Faber g 
 
 Faber's conversion, but no sooner had he 
 himself received the gift of faith than he 
 hastened to communicate the joyful tidings 
 to his erstwhile disciple, urging upon him 
 the imperative necessity of at once making 
 his submission to the Church of Christ. 
 Scarcely had the voice so long listened to 
 as an oracle spoken in this sense than 
 Faber's mind was made up, and he* re- 
 solved with as little delay as possible to 
 enrol himself amongst the children of the 
 Catholic Church. 
 
 On November i6, 1845, he officiated for 
 the last time as Rector of Elton. At the 
 evening service, after a few introductory 
 words, he told his people that he could no 
 longer remain in the Anglican Church, 
 being convinced of its untenable position. 
 Had a thunderbolt fallen amongst them, 
 his audience could not have been more 
 electrified. With saddened hearts, some 
 bent their steps homewards, while others 
 followed him to the Rectory, imploring him 
 to reconsider his decision. On the follow- 
 ing morning, November 17, he left Elton 
 for ever, accompanied by Mr. T. F. Knox, 
 Scholar of Trinity College, his two servants,
 
 10 Memoir of Father Faher 
 
 and seven of his parishioners, all of whom 
 were to enter the Church with him. Loved 
 and venerated as he had been by his flock, 
 their grief at losing him was indescribable. 
 Many, with streaming eyes and voices 
 stifled by sobs, exclaimed : ' God bless 
 you, Mr. Faber, wherever you go !' It 
 was an hour of the intensest suffering for 
 Faber ; but the sacrifice was for God, and 
 His servant counted not the cost. On 
 that evening he and his companions were 
 received into the Church by Dr. Wareing, 
 Bishop of Northampton. They made their 
 First Communion, and were confirmed on 
 the next morning. 
 
 After a brief stay with his brother, Faber 
 repaired to Birmingham on the invitation 
 of the Rev. Father Moore, and took up his 
 residence at St. Chad's till he should come 
 to some decision concerning the future. 
 No sooner was he admitted into the Church 
 than he began to devote himself exclusively 
 to the furtherance of her interests. With 
 the approbation of Dr., afterwards Cardinal, 
 Wiseman, he took a small house in Caro- 
 line Street, Birmingham, and, with his 
 eight Elton converts to form a community,
 
 Memoir of Father Faher ii 
 
 of which he was Superior, took possession 
 on December 19, 1845. From the moment 
 of his conversion all Faber's aspirations 
 tended towards the priesthood. October 1 2, 
 1846, December ig of the same year, and 
 March 20 following, w^ere dates for ever 
 memorable to him. On these several 
 days he received the Orders preparatory 
 to priesthood, and on Holy Saturday, 
 April 3, he saw the realization of his 
 fondest hopes in the crowning grace of 
 his priestly ordination. 
 
 He immediately received faculties to 
 hear confessions, and was entrusted with 
 the sole charge of the Mission of Cotton. 
 Overflowing with gratitude to God, Who 
 had dealt so tenderly with him,' all the 
 energies of his being were devoted to the 
 service of this good Master. He toiled 
 incessantly to lead others to the truth. ' For 
 this he preached and w^orked and wrote. 
 And when with fervid eloquence he cries 
 out, ' Go and help Jesus : why should a 
 single soul for which He died be lost ?' he 
 but gives utterance to the feeling that 
 dominated his whole life, and which, united 
 with a patience and kindliness that never
 
 12 Memoir of Father Faber 
 
 failed, was the great secret of his success 
 as a spiritual guide. We have already 
 seen that he was essentially a man of 
 prayer, bringing everything, even his least 
 important avocations, under its influence. 
 Writing on the subject, he says : ' Intel- 
 lectually speaking, it is very hard to be- 
 lieve in prayer ; yet let us spend but one 
 week in the real earnest service of God 
 and the exercises of the spiritual life, and 
 the fact, and far more than the fact, will 
 lie before us, bright beyond the brilliance 
 of human demonstration.' And again : 
 ' All experience concurs with God's written 
 word to tell us that the Immutable is 
 changed by prayer.' 
 
 In 1847 Father Faber proposed that he 
 and Father Anthony Hutchinson, who were 
 the only priests in the community, should 
 pronounce their vows as members of the 
 Congregation of the Will of God, and he 
 had actually written to Dr. Wiseman for 
 the requisite permission. However, just 
 at this time the news of Father Newman's 
 projected return to England as Superior of 
 the Oratorians reached him and suggested 
 to him the idea of amalsfamatinc( the two
 
 Meijwir of Father Fahev 13 
 
 communities. On February 14, 1848, they 
 were ' admitted Oratorians.' Father Wil- 
 frid, for such was his rehgious name, began 
 his noviceship under the immediate super- 
 vision of Dr. Newman on February 21, 
 1848, and at the end of six months he was 
 appointed Novice Master. The influx of 
 novices was soon so great as to necessitate 
 a removal to St. Wilfrid's, which was 
 much more spacious than IMaryvale. The 
 number of subjects continuing to increase, 
 Dr. Newman removed with part of the 
 community to Birmingham, and opened a 
 second house in London, of which he 
 appointed Father Faber Rector; and when, 
 in 1850, Newman erected it into a separate 
 congregation, Father Wilfrid was elected 
 Superior, a post which he held till his 
 death. The present Oratory house at 
 Brompton became the residence of the 
 Fathers in 1855. 
 
 Father Faber's literary career, which 
 began when he was scarcely twenty, w^as 
 from the outset a most active one. But 
 in 1853 he commenced a series of spiritual 
 works, the first of which was ' All for 
 Jesus.' This delightful book, so fascinating
 
 14 Memoir of Father Faher 
 
 in style, so replete with instruction, was 
 written in six weeks. It was followed in 
 quick succession by ' Growth in Holiness,' 
 ' The Blessed Sacrament,' ' The Creator 
 and the Creature,' ' The Foot of the 
 Cross,' 'The Spiritual Conferences,' 'The 
 Precious Blood,' and ' Bethlehem.' 
 
 When we take into account Father 
 Faber's duties as Superior, and the many 
 calls upon his time from the thousands 
 that sought his spiritual help, we are lost 
 in wonder at the amount of work accom- 
 plished. But he was, in truth, an inde- 
 fatigable worker. 
 
 Such constant application impaired a 
 constitution never robust, and engendered 
 the germs of disease. 
 
 On November ii he was summoned to 
 Arundel Castle to attend the death-bed of 
 Canon Tierney, but had scarcely arrived 
 when he was attacked with acute bron- 
 chitis. From this he recovered sufficiently 
 to return to London for the celebration of 
 the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. 
 He wrote at this time : ' Pain does not 
 altogether dispense either from penance 
 or prayer. . . . Ejaculations about the
 
 Memoir of Father Faber 15 
 
 Passion and mental acts of conformity to 
 God's will do me most good.' 
 
 On April 23, 1863, there was a consulta- 
 tion of doctors as to his state, and their 
 verdict caused grave uneasiness. On the 
 26th he said his last Mass, and on June 16 
 it was deemed necessary to administer to 
 him the last Sacraments, as death seemed 
 imminent ; but he Hngered till the end of 
 September. For months his sufferings had 
 been so intense that he had been unable to 
 lie down. On September 25 his atten- 
 dants, noticing a great change for the 
 worse, placed him in bed. ' Here he lay 
 supported by pillows, not speaking, but 
 gazing steadily at a large white crucifix 
 before him, and moving his eyes some- 
 times from one of the Five Wounds to the 
 other. . . . Just before seven o'clock a.m. 
 a sudden change came over the Father ; 
 his head turned a little to the right, his 
 breathing seemed to stop ; a few spasmodic 
 gasps followed, and his spirit passed away. 
 In these last moments his eyes opened, 
 clear, bright, intelligent as ever, in spite of 
 the look of agony on his face, but opened 
 to the sight of nothing earthly, with a
 
 1 6 Memoir of Father Faher 
 
 touching expression, half of sweetness and 
 half of surprise.' He was only in the forty- 
 ninth year of his age. 
 
 ■ The news of his death cast a gloom over 
 the Metropolis, where he w^as mourned by 
 thousands. Many lost in him a venerated 
 father and trusted friend, whilst to count- 
 less souls his loss as a spiritual guide is 
 not to be expressed. 
 
 Through life the kindness he has so 
 eloquently advocated formed the keynote 
 of his character. May the brightness of 
 his example ever linger with us, that, won 
 by its attractiveness and aided by its influ- 
 ence, we. may stri\e to follow in his foot- 
 steps, however imperfectly. 
 
 Ursuline Convent, Thurles, 
 Feast of Our Lady Help of Christians, 1901.
 
 KINDNESS 
 
 ON KINDNESS IN GENERAL 
 
 The weakness of man, and the way in 
 which he is at the mercy of external acci- 
 dents in the world, has always been a 
 favourite topic with the moralists. They 
 have expatiated on it with so much ampli- 
 tude of rhetorical exaggeration, that it has 
 at last produced in our minds a sense of 
 unreality, against which we rebel. Man 
 is no doubt very weak. He can only be 
 passive in a thunderstorm, or run in an 
 earthquake. The odds are against him 
 when he is managing his ship in a hurri- 
 cane, or when pestilence is raging in the 
 house where he lives. Heat and cold, 
 drought and rain, are his masters. He is 
 
 2
 
 1 8 Kindness 
 
 weaker than an elephant, and subordinate 
 to the east wind. This is all very true. 
 Nevertheless, man has considerable powers, 
 considerable enough to leave him, as pro- 
 prietor of this planet, in possession of at 
 least as much comfortable jurisdiction as 
 most landed proprietors have in a free 
 country. He has one power in particular, 
 which is not sufficiently dwelt on, and with 
 which we will at present occupy ourselves. 
 It is the power of making the world happy, 
 or, at least, of so greatly diminishing the 
 amount of unhappiness in it as to make it 
 quite a different world from what it is at 
 present. This power is called kindness. 
 The worst kinds of unhappiness, as well 
 as the greatest amount of it, come from 
 our conduct to each other. If our con- 
 duct, therefore, were under the control of 
 kindness, it would be nearly the opposite 
 of what it is, and so the state of the world 
 would be almost reversed. We are for 
 the most part unhappy because the world 
 is an unkind world ; but the world is only 
 unkind for the lack of kindness in us units 
 who compose it. Now, if all this is but so 
 much as half true, it is plainly worth our
 
 On Kindness in General 19 
 
 while to take some trouble to gain clear 
 and definite notions of kindness. We 
 practise more easily what we already 
 know clearly. 
 
 We must first ask ourselves what kind- 
 ness is. Words which we are using con- 
 stantly soon cease to have much distinct 
 meaning in our minds. They become 
 symbols and figures rather than words, 
 and we become content with the general 
 impression they make upon us. 
 
 Now, let us be a little particular about 
 kindness, and describe it as accurately as 
 we can. Kindness is the overflowing of self 
 upon others. We put others in the place 
 of self. We treat them as we would wish 
 to be treated ourselves. We change places 
 with them. For the time self is another, 
 and others are self. Our self-love takes 
 the shape of complacence in unselfishness. 
 We cannot speak of the virtues without 
 thinking of God. What would the over- 
 flow of self upon others be in Him, the 
 Ever-blessed and Eternal ? It was the act 
 of creation. Creation was Divine kind- 
 ness. From it, as from a fountain, flow 
 the possibilities, the powers, the blessings, 
 
 2 — 2
 
 20 Kindness 
 
 of all created kindness. This is an honour- 
 able genealogy for kindness. Then, again, 
 kindness is the coming to the rescue of 
 others when they need it, and it is in our 
 power to supply what they need, and this 
 is the w^ork of the attributes of God to- 
 wards His creatures. His omnipotence is 
 for ever making up our deficiency of power. 
 His justice is continually correcting our 
 erroneous judgments. His mercy is always 
 consoling our fellow-creatures under our 
 hard-heartedness. His truth is perpetually 
 hindering the consequences of our false- 
 hood. His omniscience makes our ignor- 
 ance succeed as if it were knowledge. His 
 perfections are incessantly coming to the 
 rescue of our imperfections. This is the 
 definition of Providence, and kindness is 
 our imitation of this Divine action. 
 
 Moreover, kindness is also like Divine 
 grace, for it gives men something which 
 neither self nor Nature can give them. 
 What it gives them is something of which 
 they are in want, or something which only 
 another person can give, such as consola- 
 tion; and besides this, the manner in w^hich 
 this is given is a true gift in itself, better far
 
 On Kindness in General 21 
 
 than the thing given. And what is all this 
 but an allegory of grace ? Kindness adds 
 sweetness to everything. It is kindness 
 which makes life's capabilities blossom, 
 and paints them with their cheering hues, 
 and endows them with their invigorating 
 fragrance. Whether it waits on its 
 superiors, or ministers to its inferiors, or 
 disports itself with its equals, its work is 
 marked by a prodigality which the strictest 
 discretion cannot blame. It does unneces- 
 sary work, which when done looks the 
 most necessary work that could be. If it 
 goes to soothe a sorrow, it does more than 
 soothe it. If it relieves a want, it cannot 
 do so without doing more than relieve it. 
 Its manner is something extra, and it is 
 the choice thing in the bargain. Even 
 when it is economical in what it gives, it 
 is not economical of the gracefulness with 
 which it gives it. But what is all this 
 like, except the exuberance of the Divine 
 government ? See how, turn which way 
 we will, kindness is entangled with the 
 thought of God ! Last of all, the secret 
 impulse out of which kindness acts is an 
 instinct which is the noblest part of our-
 
 22 Kindness 
 
 selves, the most undoubted remnant of the 
 image of God which was given us at the 
 first. We must, therefore, never think of 
 kindness as being a common growth of our 
 nature, common in the sense of its being 
 of little value. It is the nobility of man. 
 In all its modifications it reflects a heavenly 
 type. It runs up into eternal mysteries. 
 It is a Divine thing rather than a human 
 one, and it is human because it springs 
 from the soul of man just at the point 
 where the Divine image was graven 
 deepest. 
 
 Such is kindness. Now let us consider 
 its office in the world, in order that we 
 may get a clearer view of itself. It makes 
 life more endurable. The burden of life 
 presses heavily upon multitudes of the 
 children of men. It is a yoke, often of 
 such a peculiar nature that familiarity, 
 instead of practically lightening it, makes 
 it harder to bear. Perseverance is the 
 hand of time pressing the yoke down on 
 our galled shoulders with all its might. 
 There are many men to whom life is 
 always approaching the unbearable. It 
 stops only just short of it. We expect it
 
 On Kindness in General 23 
 
 to transgress every moment. But without 
 having recourse to these extreme cases, 
 sin alone is sufficient to make Hfe intoler- 
 able to a virtuous man. Actual sin is not 
 essential to this. The possibility of sinning, 
 the danger of sinning, the facility of sinning, 
 the temptation to sin, the example of so 
 much sin around us, and, above all, the 
 sinful unworthiness of men much better 
 than ourselves — these are sufficient to 
 make life drain us to the last dregs of our 
 endurance. In all these cases it is the 
 office of kindness to make life more bear- 
 able, and if its success in its office is often 
 only partial, some amount of success is at 
 least invariable. 
 
 It is true that we make ourselves more 
 unhappy than other people make us. No 
 slight portion of this unhappiness arises 
 from our sense of justice being so continu- 
 ally wounded by the events of life, while 
 the incessant friction of the world never 
 allows the wound to heal. There are 
 some men whose practical talents are 
 completely swamped by the keenness of 
 their sense of injustice. They go through 
 life as failures because the pressure of
 
 24 Kindness 
 
 injustice upon themselves, or the sight of 
 its pressing upon others, has unmanned 
 them. If they begin a Une of action, they 
 cannot go through with it. They are per- 
 petually shying, like a mettlesome horse, 
 at the objects by the roadside. They had 
 much in them, but they have died without 
 anything coming of them. Kindness steps 
 forward to remedy this evil also. Each 
 solitary kind action that is done the whole 
 world over is working briskly in its own 
 sphere to restore the balance between 
 right and wrong. The more kindness 
 there is on the earth at any given moment, 
 the greater is the tendency of the balance 
 between right and wrong to correct itself, 
 and remain in equilibrium. Nay, this is 
 short of the truth. Kindness allies itself 
 with right to invade the wrong and beat it 
 off the earth. Justice is necessarily an 
 aggressive virtue, and kindness is the 
 amiability of justice. 
 
 Mindful of its Divine origin, and of its 
 hereditary descent from the primal act of 
 creation, this dear virtue is for ever enter- 
 ing into God's original dispositions as 
 Creator. He meant the world to be a
 
 On Kindness in General 25 
 
 happy world, and kindness means it also. 
 He gave it the power to be happy, and 
 kindness was a great part of that very 
 power. By His benediction He com- 
 manded creation to be happy ; kindness, 
 w^ith its usual genial spirit of accommoda- 
 tion, now tries to persuade a world which 
 has dared to disobey a Divine command. 
 God looks over the fallen world, and 
 repents that He made man. Kindness 
 sees less clearly the ruin of God's original 
 idea than it sees still that first beneficent 
 idea, and it sets to work to cleanse w^hat is 
 defiled and to restore what is defaced. It 
 sorrows over sin, but, like buoyant-hearted 
 men, it finds in its sorrow the l3est impulse 
 of its activity. It is labouring always in 
 ten thousand places, and the work at 
 which it labours is always the same — to 
 make God's world more like His original 
 conception of it. - 
 
 But, while it thus ministers to Him as 
 Creator, it is no less energetic and success- 
 ful in preparing and enlarging His ways as 
 Saviour. It is constantly winning strayed 
 souls back to Him, opening hearts that 
 seemed obstinatefy closed, enlightening
 
 26 Kindness 
 
 minds that had been wilfully darkened, 
 skilfully throwing the succours of hope 
 into the strongholds that were on the point 
 of capitulating to despair, lifting endeavour 
 from low to high, from high to higher, 
 from higher to highest. Everywhere kind- 
 ness is the best pioneer of the Precious 
 Blood. We often begin our own repent- 
 ance by acts of kindness, or through them. 
 Probably the majority of repentances have 
 begun in the reception of acts of kindness, 
 which, if not unexpected, touched men by 
 the sense of their being so undeserved. 
 Doubtless the terrors of the Lord are 
 often the beginning of that wisdom which 
 we name conversion ; but men must be 
 frightened in a kind way, or the fright will 
 only make them unbelievers. Kindness has 
 converted more sinners than either zeal, 
 eloquence, or learning ; and these three 
 last have never converted anyone unless 
 they were kind also. In short, kindness 
 makes us as Gods to each other. Yet 
 while it lifts us so high, it sweetly keeps 
 us low. For the continual sense which a 
 kind heart has of its own need of kindness 
 keeps it humble. There are no hearts to
 
 On Kindness in General 27 
 
 which kindness is so indispensable as those 
 that are exuberantly kind themselves. 
 
 But let us look at the matter from another 
 point. What does kindness do for those to 
 whom we show it ? We have looked at its 
 office on a grand scale in the whole world ; 
 let us narrow our field of observation, and 
 see what it does for those who are its imme- 
 diate objects. What we note first as of 
 great consequence, is the immense power 
 of kindness in bringing out the good points 
 of the characters of others. Almost all 
 men have more goodness in them than the 
 ordinary intercourse of the world enables 
 us to discover. Indeed, most men, from 
 the glimpses we now and then obtain, carry 
 with them to the grave much undeveloped 
 nobility. Life is seldom so varied or so 
 adventurous as to enable a man to unfold 
 all that is in him. A creature who has got 
 capabilities in him to live for ever can 
 hardly have room in threescore years to 
 do more than give specimens of what he 
 might be and will be. But, beside this, 
 who has not seen how disagreeable and 
 faulty characters will expand under kind- 
 ness ? Generosity springs up fresh and
 
 28 Kindness 
 
 vigorous from under a superincumbent 
 load of meanness. Modesty suddenly dis- 
 closes itself from some safe cavern where 
 it has survived years of sin. Virtues 
 come to life, and in their infantine robust- 
 ness strangle habits which a score of years 
 has been spent in forming. It is wonder- 
 ful what capabihties grace can find in the 
 most unpromising character. It is a thing 
 to be much pondered. Duly reflected on, 
 it might alter our view of the world alto- 
 gether. But kindness does not reveal these 
 things to us external spectators only. It 
 reveals a man to himself. It rouses the 
 long - dormant self - respect with which 
 grace will speedily ally itself, and purify 
 it by the alliance. Neither does it content 
 itself with making a revelation. It develops 
 as well as reveals; it gives these newly 
 disclosed capabilities of virtue, vigour and 
 animation. It presents them with occa- 
 sions ; it even trains and tutors them. It 
 causes the first actions of the recovering 
 soul to be actions on high principles, and 
 from generous motives. It shields and 
 defends moral convalescence from the 
 dangers which beset it. A kind act has
 
 On Kindness in Genera! 29 
 
 picked up many a fallen man who has 
 afterwards slain his tens of thousands for 
 his Lord, and has entered the Heavenly 
 City at last as a conqueror amidst the 
 acclamations of the Saints, and with the 
 welcome of its Sovereign. 
 
 It is probable that no man ever had a 
 kind action done to him who did not in 
 consequence commit a sin less than he 
 otherwise would have done. I can look 
 out over the earth at any hour, and I see 
 in spirit innumerable Angels threading the 
 crowds of men and hindering sin by all 
 manner of artifices which shall not inter- 
 fere with the freedom of man's will. I see 
 also invisible grace, m.ade visible for the 
 moment, flowing straight from God in and 
 upon and around the souls of men, and sin 
 giving way and yielding a place to it. It 
 is only in the deserts that I do not see it, 
 and on the tracts of shipless seas, and the 
 fields of polar ice. But together with 
 grace and the Angels there is a third band 
 of diminutive figures, with veils upon 
 their heads which are flitting everywhere, 
 making gloomy men cease to groan, light- 
 ing up hope in the eyes of the dying,
 
 30 Kindness 
 
 sweetening the heart of the bitter, and 
 adroitly turning men away from sin just 
 when they are on the point of committing 
 it. They seem to have a strange power. 
 Men listen to them who have been deaf to 
 the pleading of Angels. They gain admit- 
 tance into hearts before the doors of which 
 grace has lost its patience and gone away. 
 No sooner are the doors open than these 
 veiled messengers, these cunning ministers 
 of God, have gone and returned with light- 
 ning-like speed and brought back grace 
 with them. They are most versatile in 
 their operations. One while they are the 
 spies of grace, another while sappers and 
 miners, another while its light cavalry, 
 another while they bear the brunt of the 
 battle, and for more than five thousand years 
 they have hardly known the meaning of 
 defeat. They are the acts of kindness which 
 are daily enrolled in God's service from the 
 rising to the setting of the sun ; and this is 
 the second work they do in souls to lessen 
 the number of their sins. There are few 
 gifts more precious to a soul than to make 
 its sins fewer. It is in our power to do this 
 almost daily, and sometimes often in a day.
 
 On Kindness in General 31 
 
 Another work which our kindness does 
 in the hearts of others is to encourage them 
 in their efforts after good. Habits of sin, 
 even when put to death as habits, leave 
 many evil legacies behind them. One of 
 the most disastrous parts of their inherit- 
 ance is discouragement. There are few 
 things which resist grace as it does. 
 Obstinacy, even, is more hopeful. We 
 may see floods of grace descend on the 
 disheartened soul, and it shows no symp- 
 tom of reviving. Grace runs off it as the 
 rain runs from the roofs. Whichever of 
 its three forms — peevishness, lethargy, or 
 delusion — it may assume, God's mercy 
 must lay regular siege to it, or it will never 
 be taken. But we all of us need en- 
 couragement to do good. The path of 
 virtue, even when it is not uphill, is rough 
 and stony, and each day's journey is a 
 little longer than our strength admits of, 
 only there are no means of shortening it. 
 The twenty-four hours are the same to 
 everyone, except the idle, and to the idle 
 they are thirty-six, for weariness and dul- 
 ness. You may love God, and love Him 
 truly, as you do, and high motives may be
 
 32 Kindness 
 
 continually before you. Nevertheless, you 
 must be quite conscious to yourself of 
 being soon fatigued— nay, perhaps of a 
 normal lassitude growing with your years ; 
 and you must remember how especially 
 the absence of sympathy tried you, and 
 how all things began to look like delusion 
 because no one encouraged you in your 
 work. Alas ! how many noble hearts have 
 sunk under this not ignoble weariness ! 
 How many plans for God's glory have 
 fallen to the ground, which a bright look 
 or a kind eye would have propped up ! 
 But either because we were busy with our 
 own work, and never looked at that of 
 others, or because we were jealous, and 
 looked coldly and spoke critically, we have 
 not come with this facile succour to the 
 rescue, not so much of our brother, as of 
 our dearest Lord Himself! How many 
 institutions for the comfort of the poor or 
 saving of souls have languished more for 
 want of approbation than of money ! and 
 though sympathy is so cheap, the lone 
 priest has struggled on till his solitude, his 
 weariness, and his lack of sympathy, have 
 almost given way beneath the burden, and
 
 On Kindness in General ^2> 
 
 the wolves have rushed in upon that Httle 
 nook of his Master's sheepfold which he 
 had so lovingly partitioned off as his own 
 peculiar work ! Oh, what a wretched 
 thing it is to be unkind ! I think, with 
 the thought of the Precious Blood, I can 
 better face my sins at the last judgment 
 than my unkindness, with all its miserable 
 fertility of evil consequences. But if we 
 have no notion of the far-reaching mischief 
 which unkindness does, so neither can we 
 rightly estimate the good which kindness 
 may do. Very often a heart is drooping. 
 It is bending over itself lower and lower. 
 The cloud of sadness thickens. Tempta- 
 tions lie all around, and are multiplying 
 in strength and number every moment. 
 Everything forebodes approaching sin. 
 Not so much as a kind action, not so 
 much as a kind word, but the mere tone 
 of voice, the mere fixing of the eye, has 
 conveyed sympathy to the poor suffering 
 heart, and all is right again in one instant. 
 The downcast soul has revived under that 
 mere peep of human sunshine, and is en- 
 couraged to do bravely the very thing 
 which in despondency it had almost re- 
 
 3
 
 34 Kindness 
 
 solved to leave undone. That coming sin 
 might have been the soul's first step to an 
 irretrievable ruin. That encouragement 
 may be the first link of a new chain, which, 
 when its length is finished, shall be called 
 final perseverance. 
 
 Few men can do without praise, and 
 there are few circumstances under which a 
 man can be praised without injuring him. 
 Here is a difficulty. It is wise to take a 
 kindly view of all human infirmities, but it 
 is not wise to humour them in act. Some 
 men can do without the praise of others 
 because their own is so unfailing. Their 
 vanity enables them to find self-praise 
 sufficient. Vanity is the most comfortable 
 of vices. THe misfortune is, that never- 
 theless it is a vice. Some try to do with- 
 out praise, and grow moody and critical, 
 which shows their grace was not adequate 
 for their attempt. Some do without praise 
 because they are all for God, but, alas ! it 
 would not occupy us long to take the 
 census of that portion of the world's popu- 
 lation. Most men must have praise. 
 Their fountains dry up without it. Every- 
 one in authority knows this well enough.
 
 On Kindness in General 35 
 
 He has to learn to praise without seeming 
 to praise. Now, kindness has all the 
 virtues of praise without its vices. It is 
 equally medicinal without ha^■ing the 
 poisonous qualities. When we are praised, 
 we are praised at some expense, and at our 
 own expense. Kindness puts us to no 
 expense, while it enriches those who are 
 kind to us. Praise always implies some 
 degree of condescension, and condescension 
 is a thing intrinsically ungraceful, whereas 
 kindness is the most graceful attitude one 
 man can assume towards another. So 
 here is another work it does. It supplies 
 the place of praise. It is, in fact, the only 
 sort of praise which does not injure, the 
 only sort which is always and everywhere 
 true, the only kind which those who are 
 afraid of growing conceited may welcome 
 safely. 
 
 Moreover, kindness is infectious. No 
 kind action ever stopped with itself. 
 Fecundity belongs to it in its owm right. 
 One kind action leads to another. By one 
 we commit ourselves to more than one. 
 Our example is followed. The single act 
 of kindness throws out roots in all direc- 
 
 3—2
 
 36 Kindness 
 
 tions, and the roots spring up and make 
 fresh trees, and the rapidity of the growth 
 is equal to its extent. But this fertihty is 
 not confined to ourselves, or to others who 
 may be kind to the same person to whom 
 we have been kind. It is chiefly to be 
 found in the person himself whom we have 
 benefited. This is the greatest work 
 which kindness does to others — that it 
 makes them kind themselves. The kindest 
 men are generally those who have received 
 the greatest number of kindnesses. It 
 does indeed sometimes happen, according 
 to the law which in noble natures produces 
 good out of evil, that men who have had 
 to feel the want of kindness are themselves 
 lavishly kind when they have the power. 
 But, in general, the rule is that kindness 
 makes men kind. As we become kinder 
 ourselves by practising kindness, so the 
 objects of our kindness, if they were kind 
 before, learn now to be kinder, and to be 
 kind now if they were never so before. Thus 
 does kindness propagate itself on all sides. 
 Perhaps an act of kindness never dies, but 
 extends the invisible undulations of its 
 influence over the breadth of centuries.
 
 On Kindness in General 37 
 
 Thus, for all these reasons there is no 
 better thing which we can do for others 
 than to be kind to them, and our kindness 
 is the greatest gift • they can receive, 
 except the grace of God. 
 
 There is always a certain sort of selfish- 
 ness in the spiritual life. The order of 
 charity rules it so. Our first considera- 
 tion is the glory of God in our own souls. 
 We must take hold of this glory by the 
 handle first of all. Everything will be 
 presumption and delusion if it is taken in 
 any other order. Hence, even while 
 speaking of kindness, it is not out of place 
 for us to consider the work which it does 
 for ourselves. We have seen what it 
 does for the world. We have seen what 
 it does for our neighbours. Now let us 
 see how it blesses ourselves. To be kind 
 to ourselves is a very peculiar feature of 
 the spiritual life, but does not come within 
 our range at present. Foremost among 
 the common ways in which kind actions 
 benefit ourselves may be mentioned the 
 help they gi\'e us in getting clear of sel- 
 fishness. The tendency of nature to love 
 itself has more the character of a habit
 
 38 Kindness 
 
 than a law. Opposite conduct always 
 tends to weaken it, which would hardly be 
 the case if it were a law. Kindness, more- 
 over, partly from the pleasure, which ac- 
 companies it, partly from the blessing it 
 draws down upon itself, and partly from 
 its similitude to God, tends very rapidly to 
 set into a well-formed habit. Selfishness 
 is in no slight degree a point of view from 
 which we regard things. Kindness alters 
 our view by altering our point of view. 
 Now, does anything tease us more than 
 our selfishness ? Does anything more 
 effectually retard our spiritual growth ? 
 Selfishness, indeed, furnishes us with a 
 grand opportunity of getting to hate our- 
 selves, because of the odiousness of this 
 self-worship. But how few of us have 
 got either the depth or the bravery to 
 profit by this magnificent occasion ! On 
 the whole, selfishness must be put down, 
 or our progress will cease. A series of 
 kind actions turned against it with playful 
 courage, and selfishness is, I will not say 
 killed, but stunned, and that is a great 
 convenience, though it is not the whole 
 work accomplished. Perhaps we may
 
 On KittdjKss in General 39 
 
 never come to be quite unselfish. How- 
 ever, there is but one road towards that, 
 which is kindness, and every step taken 
 on that road is a long stride heavenwards. 
 Kindness seems to know of some secret 
 fountain of joy deep in the soul which it 
 can touch without revealing its locality, 
 and cause to send its waters upwards and 
 overflow the heart. Inward happiness 
 almost always follows a kind action ; and 
 who has not long since experienced in 
 himself that inward happiness is the atmo- 
 sphere in which great things are done for 
 God ? Furthermore, kindness is a con- 
 stant godlike occupation, and implies many 
 supernatural operations in those who prac- 
 tise kindness upon motives of faith. Much 
 grace goes along wath kindness, collateral 
 graces more than sufficient in themselves 
 to make a saint. Observation would lead 
 us to the conclusion that kindness is not a 
 native of the land of youth. Men grow 
 kinder as they grow older. There are, of 
 course, natures which are kindly from the 
 cradle. But not many men have seen a 
 really kind boy or girl. In like manner, as 
 kindness in the natural world implies age.
 
 40 Kindness 
 
 in the spiritual world it implies ijrace. It 
 does not belong to the fervour of begin- 
 nings, but to the solidity of progress. 
 Indeed, Christian kindness implies so 
 much grace that it almost assures the 
 exercise of humility. A proud man is 
 seldom a kind man. Humility makes us 
 kind, and kindness makes us humble. It 
 is one of the many instances in the matter 
 of the virtues of good qualities being at 
 once not only causes and effects together, 
 but also their own causes and effects. It 
 would be foolish to say that humility is an 
 easy virtue. The very lowest degree of it 
 is a difficult height to climb. But this 
 much must be said for kindness, that it 
 is the easiest road to humility, and infal- 
 lible as well as easy ; and is not humility 
 just what we want, just what we are this 
 moment coveting, just what will break 
 down barriers, and give us free course on 
 our way to God ? 
 
 Kindness does so much for us that it 
 would be almost more easy to enumerate 
 what it does not do than to sum up what 
 it does. It operates more energetically in 
 some characters than in others ; but it
 
 On Kindness in General 41 
 
 works wondrous changes in all. It is kind- 
 ness which enables most men to put off the 
 inseparable unpleasantness of youth. It 
 watches the thoughts, controls the words, 
 and helps us to unlearn early manhood's 
 inveterate habit of criticism. It is astonish- 
 ing how masterful it is in its influence over 
 our dispositions, and yet how gentle, quiet, 
 consistent, and successful. It makes us 
 thoughtful and considerate. Detached acts 
 of kindness may be the offspring of impulse. 
 Yet he is mostly a good man whose im- 
 pulses~ are good. But in the long-run 
 habitual kindness is not a mere series of 
 generous impulses, but the steadfast growth 
 of generous deliberation. Much thought 
 must go to consistent kindness, and much 
 self-denying legislation. With most of us 
 the very outward shape of our lives is, 
 without fault of ours, out of harmony with 
 persevering kindness. We have to humour 
 circumstances. Our opportunities require 
 management, and to be patient in waiting 
 to do good to others is a fine work of grace. 
 It is on account of all this that kindness 
 makes us so attractive to others. It im- 
 parts a tinge of pathos to our characters,
 
 42 Kindness 
 
 in which our asperities disappear, or at 
 least only give a breadth of shadow to our 
 hearts, which increases their beauty by 
 making it more serious. We also become 
 manly by being kind. Querulousness, 
 which is the unattractive side of youthful 
 piety, is no longer noticeable. It is alive, 
 because an ailing or an isolated old age 
 may bring it to the surface again. But 
 kindness at any rate keeps it under water ; 
 for it is the high-tide of the soul's nobility, 
 and hides many an unseemly shallow w^hich 
 exposed its uninteresting sand in early days, 
 and will disclose itself once more by ripples 
 and stained water when age comes upon 
 us, unless we are of those fortunate few 
 whose hearts get younger as their heads 
 grow older. 
 
 A kind man is a man who is never self- 
 occupied. He is genial, he is sympathetic, 
 he is brave. How shall we express in one 
 word these many things which kindness 
 does for us who practise it ? It prepares 
 us with a special preparation for the paths 
 of the disinterested love of God. 
 
 Now, surely we cannot say that this 
 subject of kindness is an unimportant one.
 
 On Kindness in General 43 
 
 It is in reality, as subsequent Conferences 
 will show, a great part of the spiritual life. 
 It is found in all regions, and in all of them 
 with different functions, and in none of 
 them playing an inferior part. It is also a 
 peculiar participation of the spirit of Jesus 
 which is itself the life of all holiness. It 
 reconciles worldly men to religious people ; 
 and, really, however .contemptible worldly 
 men are in themselves, they have souls to 
 save, and it were much to be wished that 
 devout persons would make their devo- 
 tion a little less angular and aggressive 
 to worldly people, provided they can do 
 so without lowering practice or conceding 
 principle. Devout people are, as a class, 
 the least kind of all classes. This is a 
 scandalous thing to say ; but the scandal 
 of the fact is so much greater than the 
 scandal of acknowledging it, that I will 
 brave this last for the sake of a greater 
 good. Religious people are an unkindly 
 lot. Poor human nature cannot do every- 
 thing ; and kindness is too often left un- 
 cultivated because men do not sufficiently 
 understand its value. Men may be chari- 
 table, yet not kind ; merciful, yet not kind ;
 
 44 Kindness 
 
 self-denying, yet not kind. If they would 
 add a little common kindness to their un- 
 common graces, they would convert ten 
 where they now only abate the prejudices 
 of one. There is a sort of spiritual selfish- 
 ness in devotion which is rather to be 
 regretted than condemned. I should not 
 like to think it is unavoidable. Certainly 
 its interfering with kindness is not un- 
 avoidable. It is only a little difficult, 
 and calls for watchfulness. Kindness, as 
 a grace, is certainly not sufficiently culti- 
 vated, while the self-gravitating, self-con- 
 templating, self-inspecting parts of the 
 spiritual life are cultivated too exclusively. 
 Rightly considered, kindness is the grand 
 cause of God in the world. Where it is 
 natural, it must forthwith be supernatural- 
 ized. Where it is not natural, it must be 
 supernaturally planted. What is our life ? 
 It is a mission to go into every corner it 
 can reach, and reconquer for God's beati- 
 tude His unhappy world back to Him. It 
 is a devotion of ourselves to the bliss of the 
 Divine Life by the beautiful apostolate of 
 kindness.
 
 II 
 
 KIND THOUGHTS 
 
 Everywhere in creation there is a charm, 
 the fountain of which is invisible. In the 
 natural, the moral, and the spiritual world 
 it is the same. We are constantly re- 
 ferring it to causes which are only effects. 
 Faith alone reveals to us its true origin. 
 God is behind everything. His sweetness 
 transpires through the thick shades which 
 hide Him. It comes to the surface, and 
 with gentle mastery overwhelms the whole 
 world. The sweetness of the hidden God 
 is the delight of the life. It is the pleasant- 
 ness of nature, and the consolation w^hich 
 is omnipresent is all-suffering. We touch 
 Him, we lean on Him, we feel Him, we 
 see Him, always and everywhere. Yet 
 He makes Himself so natural to us that 
 we almost overlook Him. Indeed, if it 
 were not for faith we should overlook 
 Him altogether. His presence is like 
 light when we do not see the face of the
 
 4 b Kindness 
 
 sun. It is like light on the stony folds of 
 the mountain-top coming through rents in 
 the waving clouds ; or in the close forest, 
 where the wind weaves and unweaves the 
 canopy of foliage ; or like the silver arrows 
 of under-water hght in the deep blue sea, 
 with coloured stones and bright weeds 
 glancing there. Still, God does not shine 
 equally through all things. Some things 
 are more transparent, other things more 
 opaque. Some have a greater capacity 
 for disclosing God than others. 
 
 In the moral world, with which alone 
 we are concerned at present, kind thoughts 
 have a special power to let in upon us the 
 light of the hidden God. 
 
 The thoughts of men are a world by 
 themselves, vast and populous. Each 
 man's thoughts are a world to himself. 
 There is an astonishing breadth in the 
 thoughts of even the most narrow-minded 
 man. Thus, we all of us have an interior 
 world to govern, and he is the only real 
 king who governs it effectually. There is 
 no doubt that we are very much influenced 
 by external things, and that our natural 
 dispositions are in no slight degree depen-
 
 Ki)id Thuughts 47 
 
 dent upon education. Nevertheless, our 
 character is formed within. It is manu- 
 factured in the world of our thoughts, and 
 there we must go to influence it. He 
 who is master there is master everywhere. 
 He whose energy covers his thoughts, 
 covers the whole extent of self. He ha*s 
 himself under his own control if he has 
 learned to control his thoughts. The 
 fountains of word and action have their 
 untrodden springs in the caverns of the 
 world of thought. He who can command 
 the fountains is master of the city. The 
 power of suffering is the grandest mer- 
 chandise of life, and it also is manufactured 
 in the world of thought. The union of 
 grace and nature is the significance of our 
 whole life. It is there, precisely in that 
 union, that the secret of our vocation 
 resides. The shape of our w^ork and the 
 character of our holiness are regulated 
 from the point, different in different men, 
 at which nature and grace are united. 
 The knowledge of this point brings with 
 it, not only the understanding of our past, 
 but a sufficiently clear vision of our future, 
 to say nothing of its being the broad sun-
 
 48 Kindness 
 
 shine of the present. But the union of 
 nature and grace is, for the most part, 
 effected in the world of thought. 
 
 But I will go even further than this, 
 and will venture to contradict a common 
 opinion. It seems to me that our thoughts 
 are a more true measure of ourselves than 
 our actions are. They are not under the 
 control of human respect. It is not easy 
 for them to be ashamed of themselves. 
 They have no witnesses but God. They 
 are not bound to keep within certain 
 limits or observe certain proprieties. 
 Religious motives alone can claim juris- 
 diction over them. The struggle which 
 so often ensues within us before we can 
 bring ourselves to do our duty goes on 
 entirely within our thoughts. It is our 
 own secret, and men cannot put us to the 
 blush because of it. The contradiction 
 which too often exists between our out- 
 ward actions and our inward intentions is 
 only to be detected in the realm of our 
 thoughts, whither none but God can pene- 
 trate, except by guesses, which are not 
 the less offences against charity because 
 they happen to be correct. In like manner,
 
 Kind Thoughts 49 
 
 as an impulse will sometimes show more 
 of our real character than what w^e do 
 after deliberation, our first thoughts will 
 often reveal to us faults of disposition 
 which outward restraints will hinder from 
 issuing in action. Actions have their 
 external hindrances, while our thoughts 
 better disclose to us our possibilities of 
 good and evil. Of course, there is a most 
 true sense in w^hich the conscientious effort 
 to cure a fault is a better indication of our 
 character than the fault we have not yet 
 succeeded in curing. Nevertheless, we 
 may die at any moment, and when we 
 die we die as we are. Thus, our thoughts 
 tell us better than our actions can do what 
 we shall be like the moment after death. 
 Lastly, it is in the world of thought that 
 we most often meet with God, walking as 
 in the shades of ancient Eden. It is there 
 we hear His whispers. It is there we per- 
 ceive the fragrance of His recent presence. 
 It is thence that the first vibrations of 
 grace proceed. 
 
 Now, if our thoughts be of this im- 
 portance, and also if kindness be of the 
 importance which was assigned to it in 
 
 4
 
 50 Kindness 
 
 the last. Conference, it follows that kind 
 thoughts must be of immense consequence. 
 If a man habitually has kind thoughts of 
 others, and that on supernatural motives, 
 he is not far from being a saint. Such a 
 man's thoughts are not kind intermittingly, 
 or on impulse, or at haphazard. His first 
 thoughts are kind, and he does not repent 
 of them, although they often bring suffer- 
 ing and disgust in their train. All his 
 thoughts are kind, and he does not chequer 
 them with unkindly ones. Even when 
 sudden passions or vehement excitements 
 have thrown them into commotion, they 
 settle down into a kindly humour, and 
 cannot settle otherwise. These men are 
 rare. Kind thoughts are rarer than either 
 kind words or kind deeds. They imply a^ 
 great deal of thinking about others. This 
 in itself is rare. But they imply also a 
 great deal of thinking about others without 
 the thoughts being criticisms. This is 
 rarer still. Active-minded men are natur- 
 ally the most given to criticise, and they 
 are also the men whose thoughts are 
 generally the most exuberant. Such men, 
 therefore, must make kind thoughts a
 
 Kind Thoughis 51 
 
 defence against self. By sweetening the 
 fountain of their thoughts they will destroy 
 the bitterness of their judgments. 
 
 But kind thoughts imply also a contact 
 with God, and a Divine ideal in our minds. 
 Their origin cannot be anything short of 
 Divine. Like the love of beauty, they can 
 spring from no baser source. They are 
 not dictated by self-interest nor stimulated 
 by passion. They have nothing in them 
 which is insidious, and they are almost 
 always the preludes to some sacrifice of 
 self. It must be from God's touch that 
 such waters spring. They only live in the 
 clammy mists of earth because they breathe 
 the fresh air of heaven. They are the 
 scent with which the creature is penetrated 
 through the indwelling of the Creator. 
 They imply also the reverse of a super- 
 ficial view of things. Nothing deepens 
 the mind so much as a habit of charity. 
 A man's surfaces are always worse than 
 his real depths. There may be exceptions 
 to this rule, but I believe them to be very 
 rare. Self is the only person who does not 
 improve on acquaintance. Our deepest 
 views of life are doubtless very shallow 
 
 4—2
 
 52 Kindness 
 
 ones, for how little do we know of what 
 God intends to do with His own world ! 
 We know something about His glory and 
 our own salvation, but how the last be- 
 comes the first in the face of so much evil 
 neither theologian nor philosopher has ever 
 been able adequately to explain. But so 
 much w^e are warranted in saying, that 
 charity is the deepest view of life, and 
 nearest to God's view, and therefore also 
 not merely the truest view, but the only 
 view that is true at all. Kind thoughts, 
 then, are in the creature what His science 
 is to the Creator. They embody the 
 deepest, purest, grandest truth to which 
 we untruthful creatures can attain about 
 others or ourselves. 
 
 Why are some men so forward to praise 
 others ? Is it not that it is their fashion 
 of investing themselves with importance ? 
 But why are most men so reluctant to 
 praise others? It is because they have 
 such an inordinate opinion of themselves. 
 Now, kind thoughts for the most part 
 imply a low opinion of self. They are ari 
 inward praise of others, and because in- 
 ward therefore genuine. No one who has
 
 Kind Thoughts 53 
 
 a high opinion of himself finds his merits 
 acknowledged according to his own esti- 
 mate of them. His reputation therefore 
 cannot take care of itself. He must push 
 it ; and a man who is pushing anything in 
 the world is always unamiable, because he 
 is obHged to stand so much on the de- 
 fensive. A pugnacious man is far less dis- 
 agreeable than a defensive man. Every 
 man who is habitually holding out for his 
 rights makes himself the equal of his 
 inferiors, even if he be a king, and he 
 must take the consequences, which are far 
 from pleasant. But the kind-thoughted 
 man has no rights to defend, no self-impor- 
 tance to push. He thinks meanly of him- 
 self, and with so much honesty that he 
 thinks thus of himself with tranquillity. 
 He finds others pleasanter to deal with 
 than self ; and others find him so pleasant 
 to deal with that love follows him wherever 
 he goes — a love which is the more faithful 
 to him because he makes so few pretences 
 to be loved. Last of all, kind thoughts 
 imply also supernatural principles, for in- 
 ward kindness can be consistent on no 
 others. Kindness is the occupation of our
 
 54 Kindness 
 
 whole nature by the atmosphere and spirit 
 of heaven. This is no inconsiderable affair. 
 Nature cannot do the work itself, nor can 
 it do it with ordinary succours. Were 
 there ever any consistently kind heathens ? 
 If so, they are in heaven now, for they 
 must have been under the dominion of 
 grace on earth. We must not confound 
 kindness and mere good-humour. Good- 
 humour is — no! on such an unkindly 
 earth as this, it will be better not to say 
 a disparaging word even of mere good- 
 humour. Would that there were more 
 even of that in the world ! I suspect 
 angels cluster round a good - humoured 
 man, as the gnats cluster round the trees 
 they like. 
 
 But there is one class of kind thoughts 
 which must be dwelt upon apart. I allude 
 to kind interpretations. The habit of not 
 judging others is one which it is very 
 difficult to acquire, and which is generally 
 not acquired till late on in the spiritual life. 
 If men have ever indulged in judging 
 others, the mere sight of an action almost 
 involuntarily suggests an internal com'- 
 mentary upon it. It has become so
 
 Kind Thoughts 55 
 
 natural to judge, however little their own 
 duties or responsibilities are connected with 
 what they are judging, that the actions of 
 others present themselves to the mind as 
 in the attitude of asking a verdict from it. 
 All our fellow-men who come within the 
 reach of our knowledge — and for the most 
 retired of us the circle is a wdde one — are 
 prisoners at the bar ; and if we are unjust, 
 ignorant, capricious judges, it must be 
 granted to us that we are indefatigable 
 ones. Now, all this is simple ruin to our 
 souls. At any risk, at the cost of life, 
 there nmst be an end of this, or it will end 
 in everlasting banishment from God. The 
 standard of the last judgment is absolute. 
 It is this — the measure which we have 
 meted to others. Our present humour in 
 judging others reveals to us what our 
 sentence would be if we died now. Are 
 we content to abide that issue ? But, as 
 it is impossible all at once to stop judging, 
 and as it is also impossible to go on 
 judging uncharitably, we must pass through 
 the intermediate stage of kind interpreta- 
 *tions. Few men have passed beyond this 
 to a habit of perfect charity, which has
 
 56 Kindness 
 
 blessedly stripped them of their judicial 
 ermine and their deeply - rooted judicial 
 habits of mind. We ought, therefore, to 
 cultivate most sedulously the habit of kind 
 interpretations. 
 
 Men's actions are very difficult to judge. 
 Their real character depends in a great' 
 measure on the motives which prompt 
 them, and those motives are invisible to 
 us. Appearances are often against what 
 we afterwards discover to have been deeds 
 of virtue. Moreover, a line of conduct is, 
 in its look at least, very little like a logical 
 process. It is complicated with all manner 
 of inconsistencies, and often deformed by 
 what is in reality a hidden consistency. 
 Nobody can judge men but God, and we 
 can hardly obtain a higher or more reverent 
 view of God than that which represents 
 Him to us as judging men wdth perfect 
 knowledge, unperplexed certainty, and un- 
 disturbed compassion. Now, kind inter- 
 pretations are imitations of the merciful 
 ingenuity of the Creator finding excuses 
 for His creatures. It is almost a day of 
 revelation to us when theology enables us' 
 to perceive that God is so merciful pre-
 
 Kind Thoughts 57 
 
 cisely because He is so wise ; and from 
 this truth it is an easy inference that kind- 
 ness is our best wisdom, because it is an 
 image of the wisdom of God. This is the 
 idea of kind interpretations, and this is the 
 use which we must make of them. The 
 habit of judging is so nearly incurable, 
 and its cure is such an almost interminable 
 process, that we must concentrate ourselves 
 for a long while on keeping it in check, 
 and this check is to be found in kind inter- 
 pretations. We must come to esteem very 
 lightly our sharp eye for evil, on which, 
 perhaps, we once prided ourselves as 
 cleverness. It has been to us a fountain 
 of sarcasm ; and how seldom since Adam 
 was created has sarcasm fallen short of 
 being a sin ! We must look at our talent 
 for analysis of character as a dreadful possi- 
 bility of huge uncharitableness. We should 
 have been much better without it from the 
 first. It is the hardest talent of all to 
 manage, because it is so difficult to make 
 any glory for God out of it. We are sure 
 to continue to say clever things so long as 
 we continue to indulge in this analysis ; 
 and clever things are equally sure to be
 
 58 Kindness 
 
 sharp and acid. Sight is a great blessing, 
 but there are times and places where it is 
 far more blessed not to see. It would be 
 comparatively easy for us to be holy if 
 only we could always see the character 
 of our neighbours either in soft shade or 
 with the kindly deceits of moonlight upon 
 them. Of course, we are not to grow blind 
 to evil, for thus we should speedily become 
 unreal ; but we must grow to something 
 higher, and something truer, than a quick- 
 ness in detecting evil. 
 
 We must rise to something truer. Yes ! 
 Have we not always found in our past 
 experience that on the whole our kind 
 interpretations were truer than our harsh 
 ones ? What mistakes have we not made 
 in judging others ! But have they not 
 almost always been on the side of harsh- 
 ness ? Every day some phenomenon of 
 this kind occurs. We have seen a thing as 
 clear as day. It could have but one mean- 
 ing. We have already taken measures. 
 We have roused our righteous indignation. 
 All at once the whole matter is differently 
 explained, and that in some most simple 
 way, so simple that we are lost in astonish- .
 
 Kind Thoughts 59 
 
 ment that we should never have thought 
 of it ourselves. Always distrust very plain 
 cases, says a legal writer. Things that 
 were dark begin to give light. What 
 seemed opaque is perceived to be trans- 
 parent. Things that everybody differed 
 about, as people in planting a tree can 
 never agree what it wants to make it 
 straight, now everyone sees in the same 
 light, so natural and obvious has the 
 explanation been. Nay, things that it 
 appeared impossible to explain are just 
 those the explanation of which are the 
 most simple. 
 
 How many times in life have we been 
 wrong when we put a kind construction on 
 the conduct of others ? We shall not need 
 our fingers to count those mistakes upon. 
 jN'Ioreover, grace is really much more 
 common than our querulousness is gene- 
 rally willing to allow. We may suspect 
 its operations in the worst men we meet 
 with. Thus, without any forced impossi- 
 bility, we may call in supernatural con- 
 siderations in order to make our criticisms 
 more ingenious in their charity. When 
 we grow a little holier, we shall summon
 
 6o Kindness 
 
 also to our aid those supernatural motives 
 in ourselves which, by depressing our own 
 ideas of ourselves, elevate our generous 
 belief in others. 
 
 But while common-sense convinces us of 
 the truth of kind interpretations, common 
 selfishness ought to open our eyes to their 
 wisdom and their policy. We must have 
 passed through life unobservantly if we 
 have never perceived that a man is very 
 much himself what he thinks of others. 
 Of course his own faults may be the cause 
 of his unfavourable judgments of others ; 
 but they are also, and in a very marked 
 way, effects of those same judgments. A 
 man who was on a higher eminence before 
 will soon by harsh judgments of others 
 sink to the level of his own judgments. 
 When you hear a man attribute meanness 
 to another, you may be sure, not only that 
 the critic is an ill-natured man, but that 
 he has got a similar element of meanness 
 in himself, or is fast sinking to it. A man 
 is always capable himself of a sin which 
 he thinks another is capaljle of, or which 
 he himself is capable of imputing to 
 another. Even a well-founded suspicion
 
 Kind Thouo^hts 6i 
 
 more or less degrades a man. His sus- 
 picion may be verified, and he may escape 
 some material harm by having cherished 
 the suspicion. But he is unavoidably the 
 worse man in consequence of having enter- 
 tained it. ^This is a very serious considera- 
 tion, and rather a frightening argument 
 in favour of charitable interpretations. 
 Furthermore, our hidden judgments of 
 others are, almost with a show of special 
 and miraculous interference, visited upon 
 ourselves. \^irtue grows in us under the 
 influence of kindly judgments, as if they 
 were its nutriment. But in the case of 
 harsh judgments we find we often fall into 
 the sin of which we have judged another 
 guilty, although it is not perhaps a sin at 
 all common to ourselves. Or, if matters 
 do not go so far as this, we find ourselves 
 suddenly overwhelmed with a tempest of 
 unusual temptations, and on reflection con- 
 science is ready to remind us that the sin 
 to which we are thus violently and unex- 
 pectedly tempted is one which we have of 
 late been uncharitably attributing to others. 
 Sometimes also we are ourselves falsely 
 accused and widely believed to be guilty
 
 62 Kindness 
 
 of some fault of which we are quite inno- 
 cent ; but it is a fault of which we have 
 recently, in our mind at least, accused 
 another. Moreover, the truth or false- 
 hood of our judgments seem to have very 
 little to do with the matter. The truth of 
 them does not protect us from their un- 
 pleasant consequences ; just as the truth 
 of a libel is no sufficient defence of it. It 
 is the uncharitableness of the judgment, 
 or the judging at all, to which this self- 
 avenging power is fastened. It works itself 
 out like a law, quietly but infallibly. Is 
 not this matter for very serious reflection ? 
 But, in conclusion, what does all this 
 doctrine of kind interpretations amount 
 to ? To nothing less, in the case of most 
 of us, than living a new life in a new world. 
 We may imagine life in another planet, 
 with whose physical laws we may happen 
 to have a sufficient acquaintance. But it 
 would hardly differ more in a physical way 
 from our earthly life, than our moral life 
 would differ from what it is at present, if 
 we were habitually to put a kind inter- 
 pretation on all we saw and heard, and 
 habitually had kind thoughts of everyone
 
 Kind Thoughts 63 
 
 of whom we thought at all. It would not 
 merely put a new face on life : it would put 
 a new depth to it. We should come as 
 near as possible to becoming another kind 
 of creatures. Look what an amount of 
 bitterness we have about us ! What is to 
 become of it ? It plainly cannot be taken 
 into heaven. Where must it be left be- 
 hind ? We clearly cannot put it off by 
 the mere fact of dying, as we can put off 
 thereby a rheumatic limb, or wasted lungs, 
 or diseased blood. It will surely be a long 
 and painful process in the heats of purga- 
 tory ; but we may be happy if mercy so 
 abound upon us that the weight of our 
 bitterness shall not sink us deeper into 
 the fire, into that depth from which no 
 one ever rises to the surface more. But 
 when we reach heaven, in what state shall 
 we be ? Certainly one very important 
 feature of it will be the absence of all 
 bitterness and criticism, and the way in 
 which our expanded minds will be pos- 
 sessed with thoughts of the most tender 
 and overflowing kindness. Thus by culti- 
 vating kind thoughts w^e are in a very 
 special way rehearsing for heaven. But
 
 64 Kindness 
 
 more than this : we are effectually earning 
 heaven. For by God's grace we are 
 imitating in our own minds that which in 
 the Divine Mind w^e rest all our hopes on 
 — merciful allowances, ingeniously favour- 
 able interpretations, thoughts of unmingled 
 kindness, and all the inventions and tolera- 
 tions of a supreme compassion. 
 
 The practice of kind thoughts also tells 
 most decisively on our spiritual life. It 
 leads to great self-denial about our talents 
 and influence. Criticism is an element in 
 our reputation, and an item in our influ- 
 ence. We partly attract persons to us by 
 it. We partly push principles by means 
 of it. The practice of kind thoughts com- 
 mits us to the surrendering of all this. It 
 makes us, again and again in life, sacrifice 
 successes at the moment they are within 
 our reach. Our conduct becomes a per- 
 petual voluntary forfeiture of little triumphs, 
 the necessary result of which is a hidden 
 life. He who has ever struggled with a 
 proud heart and a bitter temper will per- 
 ceive at once what innumerable and vast 
 processes of spiritual combat all this im- 
 plies. But it brings its reward also. It
 
 Kind Thoughts 65 
 
 endows us with a marvellous facility in 
 spiritual things. It opens and smooths 
 the paths of prayer. It sheds a clear, still 
 light over our self-knowledge. It adds a 
 peculiar delight to the exercise of faith. It 
 enables us to find God easily. It is a foun- 
 tain of joy in our souls which rarely inter- 
 mits its flowing, and then only for a little 
 while and for a greater good. Above all 
 things, the practice of kind thoughts is our 
 main help to that complete government of 
 the tongue which we all so much covet, 
 and without which the Apostle says that 
 our religion is vain. The interior beauty 
 of a soul through habitual kindliness of 
 thought is greater than our words can tell. 
 To such a man life is a perpetual bright 
 evening, wath all things calm and fragrant 
 and restful. The dust of life is laid, and 
 its fever cool. All sounds are softer, as in 
 the way of evening, and all sights are 
 fairer, and the golden light makes our 
 enjoyment of earth a happily pensive pre- 
 paration for heaven.
 
 Ill 
 
 KIND WORDS 
 
 From thoughts we naturally pass to words. 
 Kind words are the music of the world. 
 They have a power which seems to be 
 beyond natural causes, as if they were 
 some Angel's song w^hich had lost its way 
 and come on earth and sang on undyingly, 
 smiting the hearts of men with sw^eetest 
 wounds, and putting for the while an 
 Angel's nature into us. 
 
 Let us then think, first of all, of the 
 power of kind words. In truth, there is 
 hardly a power on earth equal to them. 
 It seems as if they could almost do what 
 in reality God alone can do — namely, soften 
 the hard and angry hearts of men. Many 
 a friendship, long, loyal and self-sacrificing, 
 rested at first on no thicker a foundation 
 than a kind word. The two men were not 
 likely to be friends. Perhaps each of them 
 regarded the other's antecedents with some- 
 w^hat of distrust. They had possibly been
 
 Kind Words 67 
 
 set against each other by the circulation of 
 gossip. Or they had been looked upon as 
 rivals, and the success of one was regarded 
 as incompatible with the success of the 
 other. But a kind word, perhaps a mere 
 report of a kind word, has been enough to 
 set all things straight, and to be the com- 
 mencement of an enduring friendship. The 
 power of kind words is shown also in the de- 
 struction of prejudices, however inveterate 
 they may have been. Surely we must all 
 of us have experienced this ourselves. For 
 a long time we have had prejudices against 
 a person. They seem to be extremely well 
 founded. We have a complete view of the 
 whole case in our own mind. Some par- 
 ticular circumstances bring us into connec- 
 tion with this man. We see nothing to 
 disabuse us of our prejudices. There is 
 not an approach to any kind of proof, 
 however indirect, that we were either mis- 
 taken in forming such a judgment, or that 
 we have exaggerated the matter. But kind 
 words pass, and the prejudices thaw away. 
 Right or wrong, there was some reason or 
 show of reason for forming them, while 
 there is neither reason nor show of reason 
 
 5-2
 
 68 Kindness 
 
 for their departure. There is no logic in 
 the matter, but a power which is above 
 logic, the simple, unassisted power of a 
 few kind words. \Miat has been said of 
 prejudices applies equally to quarrels. 
 Kind words will set right things which 
 have got most intricately wrong. In 
 reality an unforgiving heart is a rare 
 monster. Most men get tired of the 
 justest quarrels. Even those quarrels 
 where the quarrel has all been on one side, 
 and w^hich are always the hardest to set 
 right, give way in time to kind words. At 
 first they will be unfairly taken as admis- 
 sions that we have been in the wrong ; 
 \ then they will be put down to deceit and 
 ■ flattery ; then they will irritate by the dis- 
 comfort of conscience which they will pro- 
 duce in the other ; but finally they will 
 jsucceed in healing the wound that has been 
 iso often and so obstinately torn open. All 
 -quarrels probably rest on misunderstanding, 
 and only live by silence, which, as it were, 
 stereotypes the misunderstanding. A mis- 
 understanding which is more than a month 
 old may generally be regarded as incap- 
 able of explanation. Renewed explana-
 
 Kind Words 69 
 
 tions become renewed misunderstandings. 
 Kind words patiently uttered for long to- 
 gether, and without visible fruit, are our 
 only hope. They will succeed ; they will 
 not explain what has been misunderstood, 
 but they will do what is much better — make 
 explanation unnecessary, and so avoid the 
 risk which always accompanies explana- 
 tions of reopening old sores. 
 
 In all the foregoing instances the power 
 of kind words is remedial. But it can be 
 productive also ; kind words produce happi- 
 ness. How often have we ourselves been 
 made happy by kind words, in a manner 
 and to an extent which we are quite unable 
 to explain ? No analysis enables us to 
 detect the secret of the power of kind 
 words ; even self-love is found inadequate 
 as a cause. Now, as I have said before, 
 happiness is a great power of holiness. 
 Thus, kind words, by their power of pro- 
 ducing happiness, have also a power of 
 producing holiness, and so winning men to 
 God. I have already touched on this when 
 I spoke of kindness in general, but it must 
 now be added that words have a power of 
 their own, both for good and evil, which I
 
 70 Kindness 
 
 believe to be more influential and energetic 
 over our fellow-men than even actions. If 
 I may use such a word when I am speak- 
 ing of religious subjects, it is by voice and 
 words that men mesmerize each other. 
 Hence it is that the world is converted by 
 the foolishness of preaching. Hence it is 
 that an angry word rankles longer in the 
 heart than an angry gesture — nay, very 
 often even longer than a blow. Thus, all 
 that has been said of the power of kindness 
 in general applies with an additional and 
 peculiar force to kind words. They prepare 
 men for conversion, they convert them, 
 they sanctify them, they procure entrance 
 for wholesome counsels into their souls ; 
 they blunt temptations, they dissolve the 
 dangerous clouds of gloom and sadness, 
 they are beforehand with evil, they exorcise 
 the devil. Sometimes the conversions they 
 work are gradual and take time ; but more 
 often they are sudden, more often they are 
 like instantaneous revelations from heaven, 
 not only unravelling complicated misunder- 
 standings, and softening the hardened con- 
 viction of years, but giving a divine voca- 
 tion to the soul. Truly it would be worth
 
 Kind Words 71 
 
 going through fire and water to acquire the 
 right and to find the opportunity of saying 
 kind words ! Surely, then, it gives life a 
 peculiar character that it should be gifted 
 with a power so great, even if the exercise 
 of it were difficult and rare. But the 
 facility of this power is a fresh wonder 
 about it in addition to its greatness. It 
 involves very little self-sacrifice, and for 
 the most part none at all. It can be 
 exercised generally without much effort, 
 with no more effort than the water makes 
 in flowing from the spring. Moreover, the 
 occasions for it do not lie scattered over life 
 at great distances from each other. They 
 occur continually ; they come daily ; they 
 are frequent in the' day. All these are 
 commonplaces ; but really it would seem 
 as if very few of us give this power of kind 
 words the consideration which is due to it. 
 So great a power, such a facility in the 
 exercise of it, such a frequency of oppor- 
 tunities for the application of it, and yet 
 the world still what it is, and we still what 
 we are ! It seems incredible. I can only 
 compare it to the innumerable sacraments 
 which inundate our souls with grace, and
 
 72 Kindness 
 
 the inexplicable modicum of holiness which 
 is the total result of them all, or, again, to 
 the immense amount of knowledge of God 
 which there is in the world, and yet the 
 little worship He receives. Kind words 
 cost us nothing, yet how often do we grudge 
 them ? On the few occasions when they 
 do imply some degree of self-sacrifice, they 
 almost instantly repay us a hundred-fold. 
 The opportunities are frequent, but we 
 show no eagerness either in looking out for 
 them, or in embracing them. What 
 inference are we to draw from all this ? 
 Surely this : That it is next to impossible 
 to be habitually kind, except by the help 
 of Divine grace and upon supernatural 
 motives. Take life all through, its 
 adversity as well as its prosperity, its 
 sickness as well as its health, its loss of its 
 rights as well as its enjoyment of them, and 
 we shall find that no natural sweetness of 
 temper, much less any acquired philoso- 
 phical equanimity, is equal to the support of 
 a uniform habit of kindness. Nevertheless, 
 with the help of grace, the habit of saying 
 kind words is very quickly formed, and 
 when once formed, it is not speedily lost.
 
 Kind Words 73 
 
 I have often thought that unkindness is 
 very much a mental habit, almost as much 
 mental as moral ; observation has confirmed 
 me in this idea, because I have met so 
 many men with unkind heads, and have 
 been fortunate enough never to my know- 
 ledge to have come across an unkind heart. 
 I believe cruelty to be less uncommon 
 than real inward unkindness. 
 
 Self-interest makes it comparatively easy 
 for us to do that which we are well paid 
 for doing. The great price which everyone 
 puts on a little kind word makes the 
 practice of saying them still easier. They 
 become more easy, the more on the one 
 hand that we know ourselves, and on the 
 other that we are united to God. Yet 
 what are these but the two contempo- 
 raneous operations of grace, in which the 
 life of holiness consists ? Kindness to be 
 perfect, to be lasting, must be a conscious 
 imitation of God : sharpness, bitterness, 
 sarcasm, acute observation, divination of 
 motives — all these things disappear when 
 a man is earnestly conforming himself to 
 the image of Christ Jesus. The very 
 attempt to be like our dearest Lord is
 
 74 Kindness 
 
 already a well-spring of sweetness within 
 us, flowing wdth an easy grace over all who 
 come within our reach. It is true that a 
 special sort of unkindness is one of the 
 uglinesses of pious beginnings. But this 
 arises from our inability to manage our fresh 
 grace properly. Our old bitterness gets 
 the impulse meant for our sweetness, and 
 the machine cannot be got right in a 
 moment. He who is not patient with con- 
 verts to God will forfeit many of his own 
 graces before he is aware. Not only is 
 kindness due to everyone, but a special 
 kindness is due to everyone. Kindness is 
 not kindness unless it be special ; it is in 
 its fitness, seasonableness, and individual 
 application, that its charm consists. 
 
 It is. natural to pass from the facility of 
 kind words to its reward. I find myself 
 always talking about happiness when I am 
 treating of kindness. The fact is the two 
 things go together ; the double reward of 
 kind words is in the happiness they cause 
 in others and the happiness they cause in 
 ourselves. The very process of uttering 
 them is a happiness in itself. Even the 
 imag^inine: of them fills our minds with
 
 Kind Words 75 
 
 sweetness, and makes our hearts glow 
 pleasurably. Is there any happiness in the 
 world Hke the happiness of a disposition 
 made happy by the happiness of others ? 
 There is no joy to be compared with it. 
 The luxuries which wealth can buy, the 
 rewards which ambition can attain, the 
 pleasures of art and scenery, the abounding 
 sense of health, and the exquisite enjoy- 
 ment of mental creations, are nothing to 
 this pure and heavenly happiness, where 
 self is drowned in the blessedness of others. 
 Yet this happiness follows close upon kind 
 words, and is their legitimate result. But, 
 independently of this, kind words make us 
 happy in ourselves. They soothe our own 
 irritation, they charm our cares away, they 
 draw us nearer to God, they raise the tem- 
 perature of our love. They produce in us 
 a sense of quiet restfulness like that which 
 accompanies the consciousness of forgiven 
 sin. They shed abroad the peace of God 
 within our hearts. Then, moreover, we 
 become kinder by saying kind words, and 
 this is in itself a third reward. They help 
 us also to attain the grace of purity, which 
 is another excellent reward. They wdn us
 
 76 Kindness 
 
 many other graces from God ; but one 
 especially : they appear to have a peculiar 
 congeniality with the grace of contrition, 
 which is softheartedness towards God. 
 Everything which makes us gentle has at 
 the same time a tendency to make us con- 
 trite. A natural melting of the heart has 
 often been the beginning of an acceptable 
 repentance. Hence it is that seasons of 
 sorrow are apt to be seasons of grace. This, 
 too, is a huge reward. Then, last of all, kind 
 words make us truthful. Oh, this is what 
 we want to be true ! It is our insincerity, 
 our manifold inseparable falseness, which 
 is the load under which we groan. There 
 is no slavery but untruthfulness. How have 
 years passed in fighting, and still we are so 
 untrue ! It clings to us; for it is the proper 
 stain of creatures. We fight on wearily ; 
 kind words come and ally themselves 
 to us, and we make way. They make us 
 true, because kindness is, so far as we know, 
 the most probable truth in the world. 
 They make us true, because what is un- 
 truthful is not kind. They make us true, 
 because kindness is God's view, and His 
 view is already the true view.
 
 Kind Words 77 
 
 Why, then, are we ever anything else 
 but kind in our words ? There are some 
 difficulties. This must be honestly ad- 
 mitted. In some respects a clever man is 
 more likely to be kind than a man who is 
 not clever, because his mind is wider, and 
 takes in a broader range, and is more 
 capable of looking at things from different 
 points of view. But there are other re- 
 spects in which it is harder for a clever man 
 to be kind, especially in his words. He has 
 a temptation, and it is one of those tempta- 
 tions which appear sometimes to border on 
 the irresistible, to say clever things ; and, 
 somehow, clever things are hardly ever 
 kind things. There is a drop either of 
 acid or of bitter in them, and it seems as if 
 that drop was exactly what genius had 
 insinuated. I believe, if we were to make 
 an honest resolution never to say a clever 
 thing, we should advance much more 
 rapidly on the road to heaven. Our Lord's 
 words in the Gospels should be our models. 
 
 If we may reverently say it, when we con- 
 sider of what a sententious and proverbial 
 character His words were, it is remarkable 
 how little of epigram or sharpness there is
 
 78 Kindness 
 
 m them. Of course the words of the 
 Eternal Word are all of them heavenly 
 mysteries, each one with the light and seal 
 of His Divinity upon it. At the same time 
 they are also examples to us. On the 
 whole, to say clever things of others is 
 hardly ever without sin. There is some- 
 thing in genius which is analogous to a 
 sting. Its sharpness, its speed, its delicacy, 
 its wantonness, its pain and its poison, 
 genius has all these things as well as the sting. 
 There are some men who make it a kind 
 of social profession to be amusing talkers. 
 One is sometimes overwhelmed with 
 melancholy by their professional efforts to 
 be entertaining. They are the bugbears of 
 real conversation. But the thing to notice 
 about them here is, that they can hardly 
 ever be religious men. A man who lays 
 himself out to amuse is never a safe man 
 to have for a friend, or even for an ac(iuain- 
 tance. He is not a man whom anyone 
 really loves or respects. He is never 
 innocent. He is for ever jostling charity 
 by the pungency of his criticisms, and 
 wounding justice by the revelation of 
 secrets. ' II n'est pas ordinaire,' says La
 
 Kind Words 79 
 
 Briiyere, ' qui celui qui fait rire, se fasse 
 estimer.' 
 
 There is also a grace of kind listening, as 
 well as a grace of kind speaking. Some 
 men listen with an abstracted air, which 
 shows that their thoughts are elsewhere. 
 Or they seem to listen, but by wide 
 answers and irrelevant questions show 
 that they have been occupied with their 
 own thoughts, as being more interest- 
 ing, at least in their own estimation, than 
 what you were saying. Some listen with 
 a kind of importunate ferocity, which 
 makes you feel that you have been put on 
 your trial, and that your auditor expects 
 beforehand that you are going to tell him 
 a lie, or to be inaccurate, or to say some- 
 thing which he will disapprove, and that 
 you must mind your expressions. Some 
 interrupt, and will not hear you to the 
 end. Some hear you to the end, and 
 then forthwith begin to speak to you 
 of a similar experience which has befallen 
 themselves, making your case only an 
 illustration of their own. Some, meaning 
 to be kind, listen with such a determined, 
 lively, violent attention that you are at
 
 8o Kindness 
 
 once made uncomfortable, and the charm 
 of conversation is at an end. Many persons 
 whose manners will stand the test of speak- 
 ing, break down under the trial of listening. 
 But all these things ought to be brought 
 under the sweet influences of religion. 
 Kind listening is often an act of the most 
 delicate mterior mortification, and is a great 
 assistance towards kind speaking. Those 
 who govern others must take care to be 
 kind listeners, or else they will soon offend 
 God and fall into secret sins. 
 
 We may, then, put down clever speeches 
 as the first and greatest difficulty in the 
 way of kind words. A second difficulty is 
 that of repressing vexation at certain times 
 and in certain places. Each man meets 
 with peculiar characters who have a 
 speciality, often quite inexplicable, of 
 irritating him. They always come at the 
 wrong time, say the most inopportune 
 things, and make the most unfortunate 
 choice of topics of conversation. Their 
 presence has always something intrusive 
 about it. You may admire, respect, even 
 like, the persons , yet you give out sparks 
 when they touch you, and explode if they
 
 Kind Words 8i 
 
 rub against you. This is only one example 
 of many species of vexation, which it is 
 difficult to repress in our social intercourse, 
 and which it is the office of the spirit of 
 kindness to allay. 
 
 The unselfishness of speedily and grace- 
 fully distracting ourselves from self is also 
 singularly difficult to practise. A man 
 comes to us with an imaginary sorrow 
 when we are bowed to the earth with a 
 real one. Or he speaks to us with the loud 
 voice and metallic laugh of robust health, 
 when our nerves are all shrinking up with 
 pain, and our whole being quivering, like a 
 mimosa, with excruciating sensitiveness. 
 Or he comes to pour out the exuberance of 
 his happiness into our hearts which are 
 full of gloom, and his brightness is a 
 reproach, sometimes almost a menace, to 
 our happiness. Or we are completely pos- 
 sessed with some responsibility, harassed 
 by some pecuniary difficulty, or haunted 
 by some tyrannical presentiment of evil, 
 and yet we are called upon to throw our- 
 selves into some ridiculous little embar- 
 rassment, some almost fictitious wrong, 
 or some shadow of a suffering, for which 
 
 6
 
 82 Kindness 
 
 another claims our sympathy. Here is a 
 grand material for sanctification. Never- 
 theless, such materials are hard to work up 
 in practice. It is weary work cleaning 
 old bricks to build a new house with. 
 
 These are difficulties, but we have got to 
 reach heaven, and must push on. The 
 more humble we are, the more kindly we 
 shall talk ; the more kindly we talk, the 
 more humble we shall grow. An air of 
 superiority is foreign to the genius of kind- 
 ness. The look of kindness is that of one 
 receiving a favour rather than conferring 
 it. Indeed, it is the case with all the 
 virtues, that kindness is a road to them. 
 Kind words will help us to them. Thus, 
 out of the difficulties of kind speaking will 
 come the grand and more than sufficient 
 reward of kind speaking, a sanctification 
 higher, completer, swifter, easier, than any 
 other sanctification. 
 
 Weak and full of wants as we are our- 
 selves, we must make up our minds, or rather 
 take heart, to do some httle good to this 
 poor world while we are in it. Kind words 
 are our chief implements for this work. A 
 kind-worded man is a genial man ; and
 
 Kind Words 83 
 
 geniality is power. Nothing sets wrong 
 right so soon as geniality. There are a 
 thousand things to be reformed, and no 
 reform succeeds unless it be genial. No 
 one was ever corrected by a sarcasm, 
 crushed, perhaps, if the sarcasm was clever 
 enough, but drawn nearer to God, never. 
 Men want to advocate changes, it may be 
 in politics, or in science, or in philosophy, 
 or in literature, or perhaps in the working 
 of the Church. They give lectures, they 
 write books, they start reviews, they found 
 schools to propagate their views, they 
 coalesce in associations, they collect money, 
 they move reforms in public meetings, and 
 all to further their peculiar ideas. They 
 are unsuccessful. From being unsuccess- 
 ful themselves, they become unsympathetic 
 with others. From this comes narrowness 
 of mind ; their very talents are deteriorated. 
 The next step is to be snappish, then 
 bitter, then eccentric, then rude, x^fter 
 that they abuse people for not taking their 
 advice ; and, last of all, their impotence, 
 like that of all angry prophets, ends in the 
 shrillness of a scream. Why they scream 
 is not so obvious. Perhaps for their 
 
 6—2
 
 84 Kindness 
 
 own relief. It is the frenzy of the 
 disregarded Sibyl. x\ll this comes of 
 their not being genial. Without geniality 
 no solid reform was ever made yet. 
 But if there are a thousand things to 
 reform in the w-orld, there are tens of 
 thousands of people to convert. Satire will 
 not convert men. Hell threatened very 
 kindly is more persuasive than a biting 
 truth about a man's false position. The 
 fact is, geniality is the best controversy. 
 The genial man is the only successful man. 
 Nothing can be done for God without 
 geniality. More plans fail for want of 
 that than for the want of anything else. A 
 genial man is both an apostle and an 
 evangelist — an apostle because he brings 
 men to Christ ; an evangelist because he 
 portrays Christ to men.
 
 IV 
 
 KIND ACTIONS 
 
 There is always one bright thought in 
 our minds when all the rest is dark. There 
 is one thought out of which a moderately 
 cheerful man can always make some 
 satisfactory sunshine, if not a sufficiency of 
 it. It is the thought of the bright populous 
 heaven. There is a joy there at least, 
 if there is a joy now^here else. There is 
 true service of God there, however poor 
 and interested the love of Him may be on 
 earth. Multitudes are abounding in the 
 golden light there, even if they that rejoice 
 on earth be few. i\t this hour it is all 
 going on so near us that w^e cannot be 
 hopelessly unhappy with so much happi- 
 ness so near. Yet its nearness makes us 
 wistful. Then let us think that there are 
 multitudes in heaven to-day who are there 
 because of kind actions ; many are there 
 for doing them, many for having had them 
 done to them.
 
 86 ■ Kindness 
 
 We cannot do justice to the subject of 
 kindness if we conclude without saying 
 something about kind actions and kind 
 suffering. So let us think, first of all, how 
 much we ourselves owe in past life to kind 
 actions. If we look back through the last 
 twenty or thirty years, it is amazing to con- 
 sider the number of kind actions that have 
 been done to us ; they are almost beyond 
 our counting. Indeed, we feel that those 
 we remember are hardly so numerous as 
 those we have forgotten — forgotten not 
 through ingratitude, but because of the 
 distractions of life and the shortness of our 
 memory. Under what various circum- 
 stances too, they have been done to us ! 
 They have come to us together with blame, 
 as well as been the accompaniments of 
 praise. They have made our darkness 
 light, and our light brighter. They have 
 made us smile in the midst of our tears, 
 and have made us shed tears of joy when 
 we were laughing carelessly. They have 
 come to us also from all quarters. They 
 have reached us from persons in whom 
 we might have expected to meet them. 
 They have reached us from unexpected
 
 Kind Actions ' 87 
 
 persons who would naturally have been 
 indifferent to us. They have reached us 
 from those from whom we had every reason 
 to expect the opposite. They have come 
 to us from such unhoped - for quarters, 
 and under such an affecting variety of 
 circumstances, that each one of us must 
 have seemed to himself to have exhausted 
 the possibilities of kindness. The thought 
 of them all melts our hearts. 
 
 Now, every one of those acts of kindness 
 has doubtless done us a certain amount of 
 spiritual good. If they did not make us 
 better at the time, they prepared the way 
 for our becoming better, or they sowed a 
 seed of future goodness, and made an im- 
 pression which we never suspected, and 
 yet which was ineffaceable. Graces from 
 God, kindnesses from men ; we seem to 
 have stood all our lives under the beneficent 
 drippings of these beneficent showers. 
 But who can say if there were two showers, 
 and if it was not all the while but one, 
 kindness being nothing more than a peculiar 
 form of grace ? There is no great harm 
 in confounding the two ; but to be strict, 
 grace is one thing, and kindness is another.
 
 88 Kindness 
 
 Let us content ourselves, then, with saying 
 that kindness has again and again done the 
 preHminary work for grace in our souls. 
 Let us think also how little we have 
 deserved all these kind actions, not only 
 so far as God is concerned, but so far as 
 our fellow-creatures are concerned also. 
 There is no one who has not received ten- 
 fold more kindness himself than he has 
 shown to others. The thought of all the 
 kindness of so many persons to us some- 
 times growls to be almost intolerable because 
 of the sense of our own unkindness. These 
 kind actions have been to us like impor- 
 tunate x\ngels. They have surrounded us 
 almost against our own will, and done us 
 all manner of unasked good, of extra good, 
 of good apparently unconnected with them- 
 selves. From how many evils have they 
 not also rescued us ? We know of many, 
 but there are many more of which we do 
 not know. But in this respect, as well as 
 in others, they have done Angels' work in 
 our behalf. To how much good have they 
 encouraged us ? We know of much, but 
 there is much more of which we do not 
 know. We can hardly tell what we should
 
 Kind Actions 8g 
 
 have been had we been treated one whit less 
 kindly than we have been. Have we not 
 sometimes been on the verge of doing some- 
 thing which a life would have been short to 
 repent of? Have not words been on our 
 tongues which, had we said them, we would 
 willingly have lost a limb afterwards to 
 have unsaid? Have we not vacillated in 
 the face of decisions which we now perceive 
 concerned eternity as well as time ? Can 
 we not now see in the retrospect steep 
 places down which we were beginning to 
 fall, and a kind act saved us, and at the 
 time we thought we had stumbled over a 
 stone by the way ? We are indeed very 
 far from what we ought to be now. But 
 it is frightening to think what we might 
 have been had parents, friends, nurses, 
 masters, servants, schoolfellows, enemies, 
 been less kind than they have been. All 
 through life kindness has been bridling the 
 devil that was in us. The surprised and 
 affectionate recollection of it now is one of 
 our greatest powers for virtue, and may 
 easily be made a fountain of interior sweet- 
 ness within ourselves. Feeling that we 
 ourselves owe all this to the kindness of
 
 90 Kindness 
 
 others, are we not bound, as far as lies in 
 our power, to be putting everyone else on 
 all sides of us under similarly blessed 
 obligations ? 
 
 It is not hard to do this. The occasions 
 for kind actions are manifold. No one 
 passes a day without meeting these for- 
 tunate opportunities. They grow round us 
 even when we lie on a bed of sickness, and 
 the helpless are rich in a power of kindness 
 towards the helpful. Yet, as is always the 
 rule with kindness, the frequency of its 
 opportunities is rivalled by the facility of 
 its execution. Hardly out of twenty kind 
 actions does one call for an effort of self- 
 denial on our part. Easiness is the rule, 
 and difficulty the exception. When kind- 
 ness does call for an effort, how noble and 
 self-rewarding is the sacrifice ! We always 
 gain more than we lose ; we gain outwardly, 
 and often even in kind. But the inward 
 gain is invariable ; nothing forfeits that. 
 Moreover, there is something very eco- 
 nomical about the generosity of kindness. 
 A little goes a long way ; it seems to be an 
 almost universal fallacy among mankind, 
 which leads them to put a higher price
 
 Kind Actions gi 
 
 on kindness than it deserves. Neither do 
 men look generally at what we have had 
 to give up in order to do for them what 
 we have done. They only look to the kind- 
 ness ; the manner is more to them than the 
 matter ; the sacrifice adds something, but 
 only a small proportion of the whole. The 
 very world, unkindly as it is, looks at kind- 
 ness through a glass which multiplies as 
 well as magnifies. I called this a fallacy ; 
 it is a sweet fallacy, and reminds us of that 
 apparent fallacy which leads God to put 
 such a price upon the pusillanimities of our 
 love. This fallacy, however, confers upon 
 kind actions a real power. The amount of 
 kindness bears no proportion to the effect 
 of kindness. The least kind action is taller 
 than the hugest wrong. The weakest 
 kindness can lift a heavy weight ; it reaches 
 far, and it travels swiftly. Every kind 
 action belongs to many persons, and lays 
 many persons under obligations. We 
 appropriate to ourselves kind actions done 
 to those we love, and we forthwith proceed 
 to love the doers of them. Nobody is kind 
 only to one person at once, but to many 
 persons in one. What a beautiful en-
 
 92 Kindness 
 
 tanglement of charity we get ourselves 
 into by doing kind things ! What pos- 
 sesses us that we do not do them oftener ? 
 Neither is a kind action short-Hved. 
 The doing of it is only the beginning of it ; 
 it is hardly the thing itself. Years of 
 estrangement can hardly take the odour 
 out of a good action. Hatred, truly, has 
 a chemistry of its own, by which it can 
 turn kind actions into its choicest food. 
 But, after all, hatred is an uncommon thing 
 as well as a brutal one — that is to say, 
 comparatively uncommon ; whereas, it is 
 not an uncommon thing for a man at the 
 end of half a century to do a kind action 
 because one was done to him fifty years 
 ago. There is also this peculiarity about 
 kind actions, that the more we try to repay 
 them, the further off we seem for having 
 repaid them. The obligation lengthens, 
 and widens, and deepens. We hasten to 
 fill up the chasm by our gratitude ; but we 
 only deepen it, as if we were digging a well 
 or sinking a pit. We go faster still ; the 
 abyss grows more hungry ; at last our lives 
 become delightfully committed to be nothing 
 but a profusion of kind actions, and we Hy
 
 Kind Actions 93 
 
 heavenwards on the wings of the wind. 
 There is a pathetic sweetness about grati- 
 tude which I suppose arises from this. It 
 is a pathos which is very humbhng, but 
 very invigorating also. What was the 
 father in the poet's mind to these exquisite 
 verses ? 
 
 ' I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds 
 
 With coldness still returning ; 
 Alas ! the gratitude of men 
 
 Hath oftener left me mourning ! ' 
 
 But by this time an objection to the 
 whole matter will have come plainly into 
 view. Indeed, to some it has already 
 presented itself before now. I have been 
 aware of it throughout, but have chosen to 
 defer noticing it till now. It may be said 
 that all this implies a very unsupernatural 
 view of the spiritual life, and lays undue 
 stress on what are almost natural virtues, 
 that it refers more to outward conduct than 
 to inward experiences, that there is too 
 much of common-sense in it, and too little 
 of mystical theology. I might content 
 myself with replying that a man cannot 
 write on more than one subject at once,
 
 94 Kindness 
 
 neither can he bring in the whole of 
 ascetical doctrine when he is illustrating 
 but one portion of it. But there is some- 
 thing more in the objection ; which I can 
 only answer by pleading guilty to the 
 charge, and refusing to be ashamed of my 
 guilt. When we read the lives of the 
 saints, or ponder on the teaching of mystical 
 books, we shall surely have no difHculty in 
 admitting that we ourselves are but be- 
 ginners, or at least men of very low attain- 
 ments in the matter of perfection. As 
 such, we are liable to two mistakes; I 
 hardly know whether to call them tempta- 
 tions or delusions. The first is to think 
 too little of external things. Do not mis- 
 understand me. I am not accusing you of 
 paying too much attention to the cultiva- 
 tion of an interior spirit. It is not easy to 
 do this. In our state perhaps it is im- 
 possible. But what I mean is, that be- 
 ginners like to turn their eye away from 
 outward conduct to the more hidden 
 processes of their own spiritual experiences. 
 If we allow a beginner to choose his own 
 subject for particular examen of conscience, 
 he will generally choose some very delicate
 
 Kind Actions 95 
 
 and imperceptible fault, the theatre of which 
 is almost wholly within, or some refined 
 form of self-love whose metamorphoses are 
 exceedingly difficult either to detect or to 
 control. He will not choose his temper, 
 or his tongue, or his love of nice dishes, or 
 some unworthy habit which is disagreeable 
 to those around him ; yet this is the rule of 
 St. Ignatius, and surely no one will accuse 
 him of not cultivating an interior spirit. 
 This, then, is the first of the two mistakes 
 which I attributed to men of low attain- 
 ments. They affect those parts of the 
 spiritual life which lie on the borders of 
 mystical theology, and do justice neither to 
 the common things of the faith nor to the 
 regulation of outward conduct. This leads 
 to hardness of heart, to spiritual pride, and 
 to self-righteousness. It has a peculiar 
 power to neutralize the operations of grace, 
 and to reduce our spirituality to a matter 
 of words and feelings. A man will remain 
 unimproved for years who travels upon 
 this path. 
 
 The second mistake is very like the first, 
 though there is a difference in it. It consists 
 in giving way to an attraction which is too
 
 g6 Kindness 
 
 high for us. It is not that we divide things 
 into outward and inward, and exaggerate 
 the latter. But we divide them into high 
 and commonplace, and are inclined almost 
 to despise the latter. We fasten with a 
 sort of diseased eagerness upon the excep- 
 tional practices of the saints. Peculiarities 
 have a kind of charm for us. We try to 
 force ourselves to thirst for suffering, when 
 we have hardly grace enough for the quiet 
 endurance of a headache. \\e ask leave to 
 pray for calumny, when a jocose retort puts 
 us in a passion. We turn from the Four 
 Last Things as subjects of prayer hardly 
 suited to our state of disinterested love. 
 W^e skip like antelopes over the purgative 
 way, as if none but the herbage of the 
 illuminative, or the desert flowers of the 
 unitive way, were food delicate enough for 
 us. We enjoy Father Baker very much 
 while we think Rodriguez dry. In a word, 
 we traffic with exceptions rather than with 
 rules. Hence the common moral virtues, 
 the ordinary motives of religion, the duties 
 of our state of life, our responsibilities 
 toward others, the usual teaching of 
 sermons and spiritual books, are kept in
 
 Kind Actions gy 
 
 the background. We are too well in- 
 structed to speak evil of them, or to show 
 them contempt, but we treat them with a 
 respectful neglect. Thus our spiritual life 
 becomes a sort of elegant selfish solitude, a 
 temple reared to dainty delusions, a mete 
 fastidious and exclusive worship of self 
 whose refinement is only an aggravation of 
 its dishonesty. No saint ever went along 
 this road. We can only reach the delicate 
 truths of mysticism through the common- 
 place sincerities of asceticism. We are 
 never so likely to be high in the spiritual 
 life as when we are just like everybody else. 
 
 The grace to be indistinguishable from 
 the good people round us is a greater 
 grace than that which visibly marks us off 
 from their practices or their attainments. 
 
 Now, I believe that both these mistakes 
 find an utterance in the objection which I 
 have noticed, and therefore, as being 
 peculiarly out of sympathy with both these 
 errors, I willingly plead guilty to the 
 objection. I do think we are all in danger 
 of making away with the supernatural by 
 having first used it to destroy the natural. 
 I could go on for hours illustrating this 
 
 7
 
 g8 Kindness 
 
 mischievous tendency ; but I must keep to 
 my subject, and endeavour to show those 
 who feel they cannot throw off the objec- 
 tion so lightly as I do, what a very real 
 connection there is between this practice of 
 kindness on supernatural motives, and the 
 highest department of the spiritual life. 
 Indeed, it would be difficult to exaggerate 
 the importance of kindness as an ally in our 
 invisible warfare. Naturalists say of the 
 ant that the most surprising part of its 
 instinct is its genius for extemporaneous- 
 ness. In other words, it almost puts 
 reason to shame, by the promptitude with 
 which it acts under totally new circum- 
 stances, its inventiveness in meeting with 
 difficulties of which it can have had no 
 previous experience, its ingenuity in chang- 
 ing the use of its tools, its power of instan- 
 taneous divination as to how it shall act 
 in unexpected conjunctures, and its far- 
 seeing judgment in hardly ever having to 
 make an experiment, or to try two ways of 
 doing a thing. Now, there is something 
 very like this in kindness. Spiritual 
 persons who specially cultivate kindness 
 are singularly exempt from delusions. Yet
 
 Kind Actions gg 
 
 delusions form the most intricate and 
 baffling part of our spiritual warfare. 
 But the instinct of kindness is never 
 baffled. No position ever seems new 
 to it, no difficulty unforeseen. It appears 
 to be dispensed from the necessity of 
 deliberating. It follows the lightning- 
 like changes of self-love or of the temper 
 with a speed as lightning-like as their 
 own. It sees through all stratagems. It 
 is for ever extemporizing new methods of 
 defence and new varieties of attack. It 
 always has light enough to work by, 
 because it is luminous itself. 
 
 Besides this, kindness has an intrinsic 
 congeniality with all the characteristics of 
 the higher spiritual states. Kind actions 
 go upon unselfish motives, and therefore 
 tend to form a habit of disinterestedness 
 in us, which prepares us for the highest 
 motives of Divine love. They also catch 
 us up, like strong Angels, into the regions 
 of sacrifice. Like God's goodness, they 
 are constantly occupied where there is no 
 hope of payment and return. Like the 
 shedding of the Precious Blood, they have 
 an actual preference for multiplying them- 
 
 7—2
 
 100 Kindness 
 
 selves upon their enemies. In like manner 
 as God acts evermore for His own glory, 
 so kind actions, when they are habitual, 
 must very frequently be done for Him 
 alone. It is their instinct to be hidden, 
 like the instinct of His providence. Nay, 
 God often rewards them by arranging that 
 they shall be unrequited, and so look only 
 to Him as Himself their recompense ; and 
 He shows frequently a most tender wisdom 
 in arranging that all this shall be without 
 the sin or ingratitude of others. He aven 
 shrouds our kind actions for us by letting 
 us look stern or speak sharply, or be quick- 
 tempered in the doing of them. I need 
 not stop to develop all this. Who does 
 not see that we are here right in the midst 
 of the motive-machinery of the very highest 
 spiritual condition of the soul ? 
 
 It may not be out of place, however, to 
 lay down a few plain rules for the doing of 
 kind actions. I have said that the majority 
 of them require no effort ; but when they 
 have to be done wnth effort, it is unkind 
 not to keep the effort out of view. At the 
 same time, so that our humility may not 
 be disquieted, we must bear in mind that
 
 Kind Actions loi 
 
 the being done with effort is no just cause 
 of disheartenment. We should never re- 
 peat to others our good actions. If we 
 do, their heavenly influence over ourselves 
 goes at once. Neither does it simply 
 evaporate ; it remains as a dead weight. 
 The soul has many heaps of rubbish in it, 
 but none more deleterious than this. When 
 men begin to thank us, we should play- 
 fully stop their thanks, but not stiffly or 
 unreally. There are some men who would 
 feel awkward and uncomfortable if they 
 were not allowed to pour out their feelings. 
 Such men we must not check. It is part 
 of the discernment of good manners to find 
 out who they are, and the perfection of good 
 manners to be natural and simple under the 
 operation of being praised. Being praised 
 puts us for the most part in a ludicrous posi- 
 tion. Either it mortifies us by a sense of 
 inferiority, or it makes us suspicious by a 
 feeling of disproportion, or it unseasonably 
 awakes our sense of humour, which is 
 always in proportion to the honest serious- 
 ness of those who are praising us. The 
 fact is, very few people know how to 
 praise, and fewer still know how to take
 
 102 Kindness 
 
 it. We should never dwell upon our kind 
 actions in our own minds. God is in them. 
 They have been operations of grace. God 
 is shy of being looked at, and withdraws. 
 When w^e are tempted to be complacent 
 about them, let us think of the sanctity of 
 God and be ashamed. Let us dwell on His 
 attribute of magnificence, and be especially 
 devout to it. We shall thus keep our- 
 selves within the limits of our own little- 
 ness, and even feel comfortable in them. 
 
 Before w^e conclude our task we must 
 say something about kind suffering. Kind 
 suffering is, in fact, a form of kind action, 
 with peculiar rubrics of its own. But if all 
 kindness needs grace, kind suffering needs 
 it a hundredfold. Of a truth those are. rare 
 natures which know how to suffer grace- 
 fully, and in whose endurance there is a 
 natural beauty which simulates, and some- 
 times even seems to surpass, what is super- 
 natural. To the Christian, no sight is more 
 melancholy than this simulating of grace 
 by nature. It is a problem which makes 
 him thoughtful, but to which no thinking 
 brings a satisfactory solution. With the 
 Christian kind sufferino: must be almost
 
 Kuid Actions 103 
 
 wholly supernatural. It is a region in 
 which grace must be despotic, so despotic 
 as hardly to allow nature to dwell in the 
 land. There is a harmonious fusion of 
 suffering and gentleness effected by grace, 
 which is one of the most attractive "features 
 of holiness. With quiet and unobtrusive 
 sweetness the sufferer makes us feel as if 
 he were ministering to us rather than we 
 to him. It is we who are under the obliga- 
 tion. To wait on him is a privilege rather 
 than a task. Even the softening, sancti- 
 fying influences of suffering seem to be 
 exercising themselves on us rather than on 
 him. His gentleness is making us gentle. 
 He casts a spell over us. We have all the 
 advantages of being his inferiors without 
 being vexed with a sense of our inferiority. 
 What is more beautiful than considerate- 
 ness for others when we ourselves are un- 
 happy ? It is a grace made out of a' variety 
 of graces, and yet while it makes a deep 
 impression on all who come within the 
 sphere of its influence, it is a very hidden 
 grace. It is part of those deep treasures of 
 the heart which the world can seldom rifle. 
 To be subject to low spirits is a sad
 
 104 Kindness 
 
 liability. Yet, to a vigorous, manly heart, 
 it may be a very complete sanctiftcation. 
 What can be more unkind than to com- 
 municate our low spirits to others, to go 
 about the world like demons, poisoning the 
 fountains of joy ? Have I more light be- 
 cause I have managed to involve those I 
 love in the same gloom as myself? Is it 
 not pleasant to see the sun shining on the 
 mountains, even though we have none of 
 it down in our valley ? Oh the littleness 
 and the meanness of that sickly appetite 
 for sympathy which will not let us keep 
 our tiny Lilliputian sorrows to ourselves ! 
 Why must we go sneaking about, like 
 some dishonourable insect, and feed our 
 darkness on other people's light ? We 
 hardly know in all this whether to be 
 more disgusted with the meanness, or 
 more indignant at the selfishness, or more 
 sorrowful at the sin. The thoughts of the 
 dying mother are all concentrated on her 
 new-born child. It is a beautiful emblem 
 of unselfish holiness. So also let us hide 
 our pains and sorrows. But while we hide 
 them, let them also be spurs within us to 
 urge us on to all manner of overflowing
 
 Kind Actions 105 
 
 kindness and sunny humour to those 
 around us. When the very darkness 
 within us creates a sunshine around us, 
 then has the Spirit of Jesus taken posses- 
 sion of our souls. 
 
 Social contact has something irritating 
 in it, even when it is kindliest. Those who 
 love us are continually aggravating us, 
 not only unintentionally, but even in the 
 display of their love. Unkindness also 
 abounds, and is of itself vexatious. Some- 
 thing goes wrong daily. It is difficult even 
 for sympathy not to exasperate. Consola- 
 tion is almost always chafing. We often 
 seem to have come into the world without 
 our skins, so that all intercourse is agony 
 to our sensitiveness. What a field for 
 sanctification all this opens out to us ! 
 Then there is another sort of sweetness 
 under God's visitations, and this shows 
 itself especially in taking all the burden 
 we can off others. For the fact is, that 
 everybody's cross is shared by many. No 
 one carries his own cross wholly ; at least, 
 such crosses are very rare. I am not quite 
 sure that they exist. Now, kind suffering 
 makes us habitually look rather at what
 
 io6 Kindness 
 
 others feel of our crosses than of what we 
 feel of them ourselves. We see our own 
 crosses on other people's shoulders, and 
 overwhelm them with kindness accordingly. 
 It is not we who have been tossing wakeful 
 all night that are the sufferers, but the 
 poor nurse who has been fighting all night 
 against the sleep of health by our bedside, 
 and only with partial success. It is not 
 we who cannot bear the least noise in the 
 house that deserve sympathy, but the poor 
 little constrained children who have not 
 been allowed to make the noise. For to 
 children is there any happiness which is 
 not also noise ? This is the turn of mind 
 which kind suffering gives us. Who will 
 say it is not a most converting thing ? 
 But, then, it must develop itself gracefully. 
 We must do all this unobtrusively, so as 
 not to let others see it is done on purpose. 
 Hence it is that the saints keep silence in 
 suffering ; for the mere knowledge of 
 what they suffer is itself a suffering to 
 those who love them. But suffering is a 
 world of miracles. It would fill a book to 
 say all that might be said about kindness 
 under suffering.
 
 Kind Actions 107 
 
 Let us conclude. We have been speak- 
 ing of kindness. Perhaps we might better 
 have called it the spirit of Jesus. What 
 an amulet we should find it in our passage 
 through life if we would say to ourselves 
 two or three times a day these soft words 
 of Scripture : ' My spirit is sweet above 
 honey, and my inheritance above honey 
 and the honeycomb.'" But you will say 
 perhaps : ' After all, it is a very little 
 virtue, very much a matter of natural 
 temperament, and rather an affair of good 
 manners than of holy living.' Well, I will 
 not argue with you. The grass of the 
 fields is better than the cedars of Lebanon. 
 It feeds more, and it rests the eye better — 
 that thymy, daisy - eyed carpet, making 
 earth sweet, and fair, and homelike. 
 Kindness is the turf of the spiritual world, 
 whereon the sheep of Christ feed quietly 
 beneath the Shepherd's eye. 
 
 ' It was only a sunny smile, 
 And little it cost in the giving ; 
 
 But it scattered the night 
 
 Like morning light, 
 And made the day worth living, 
 
 * Ecclus. xxiv. 27.
 
 io8 Kindness 
 
 Through life's dull warp a woof it wove 
 In shining colours of hope and love ; 
 And the Angels smiled as they watched above, 
 Yet little it cost in the giving. 
 
 ' It was but a kindly word, 
 A word that was lightly spoken ; 
 Yet not in vain, 
 For it stilled the pain 
 Of a heart that was nearly broken. 
 It strengthened a faith beset with fears, 
 And groping blindly through mists of tears, 
 For light to brighten the coming years, 
 Although it was lightly spoken. 
 
 ' It was only a helping hand. 
 And it seemed of little availing ; 
 But its clasp was warm, 
 And it saved from harm 
 A brother whose strength was failing. 
 Its touch was tender as angels' wings. 
 But it rolled the stone from the hidden springs. 
 And pointed the way to higher things. 
 Though it seemed of little availing.' 
 
 Anon. 
 
 THE END 
 
 /?. and T. Washbourne 18 Paternoster Row, London