Henry Frederick Cope

“ When all the work of the ages appears, when the weaving of the centuries is turned with its finished side towards us, we may see that the man who has laid the brick or fed the furnace or the woman who has washed and cooked in the home and tended the little ones, doing these things for love, has shot the most glowing colours into the great fabric.
It is not the thing you do so much as the spirit in which you do it that makes it great or small. Faith determines this spirit, for faith is that which fashions the ideal of the one we love, the ideal we serve and for which we joyfully suffer. ”

“ A home without books is like a house with only one window; it can look out in only one direction, in that of the present. It knows only a limited world; its children have a short measure of the joy of life, they can know here only those whom they see today, their friends must be few, their world narrow and confined.
If the books are not in your home the children will find them elsewhere. Unless the school kills the taste for reading, as it sometimes does, the young folks will open ways somehow into the ideal realm of books. As they grow up, the book takes the place of the story. ”

“ Worry is weakness. The successful men may be always wide-awake, but they never worry. Fret and fear are like fine sand, thrown into life's delicate mechanism; they cause more than half the friction; they steal half the power.
Cheer is strength. Nothing is so well done as that which is done heartily, and nothing is so heartily done as that which is done happily. Be happy, is an injunction not impossible of fulfillment. Pleasure may be an accident; but happiness comes in definite ways. It is the casting out of our foolish fears that we may have room for a few of our common joys. ”

“ No man ever found the celestial city or its glorious king so long as he regarded his religion as a cyclone cellar.
To those who, with eyes of reverence, seek to find the good in all things here, believing that love is better and mightier than hate, that whatever is good, kindly, tender, pure, and ennobling in us, is but the reflection from the glory of the infinite, traces in our dust by which we find our way to Him who inhabits eternity, these, through eyes of faith, have found a presence beyond description or definition. ”

“ The sweetest memories of our lives cluster about the scenes of family life. The rose-embowered cottage of the poet is not the only spot that claims affectionate gratitude; many look back to a city house wedged into its monotonous row. But, wherever it might be, if it sheltered love and held a shrine where the altar fires of family sacrifice burned, earth has no fairer or more sacred spot. The people rather than the place made it potent. ”

“ From the caricature of religion we turn with loathing. Mummeries and mockeries, fads and forms leave us empty and impatient. The heart of man goes out to things fair, lovely, joyous, and uplifting, and they who find no God in the elaborate sermon or the service in the church somehow are thrilled with the feeling of the divine and inspiring in the woods and field and mountains.
All things good, all things attractive and lovely, uplifting and sublime have but one source. They touch our hearts because they come from the heart of all being; they reach our spirits because they are spiritual. ”

“ Perhaps, remembering our toilsome youth, we seek to shield them. It is a serious unkindness. It is a wrong to our world. The religious mind is the one that takes life in terms of service, sees the days as doors to ways of usefulness, girds itself with the towel, and finds honor in bending to do the little things for the least of men. Vain is all family worship, all prayer and praise and catechism, unless we train the feet to walk this way so that they may visit the imprisoned, clothe the naked, comfort the sad, and cheer the broken in heart. The family may make this the normal way to live. ”

“ But it is ever speaking through the things of daily life; it is ever revealing truth and beauty to the inner ear, for it comes not from without but springs up within; heard by the heart rather than by the ear.
The best things have not dropped down; they have grown up. Life is not from without, but from within. God speaks not in thunders, but in the hopes and the longings of hearts. Even the voice we hear in the sighings of the wind or the message we read in the rays of setting sun must be in us before it means aught to us. ”

“ Sorrow, injustice, oppression, hatred, the things that seem to crush are the things that elevate. Only by opposition has any life discovered power. The fiercer blow these winds the firmer grows the tree. Out of the petty persecutions, the countless meannesses, the littleness of those who oppose him the great soul builds its greatness. It is, and ever has been by a cross that men are lifted up. History abounds with prisons, gibbets, and crosses which have become thrones of eternal glory. ”

“ Make life happier and you will make it holier. Make it full of pleasure—not that of a fool's paradise—but that of peace with heaven's plans, with the joy of knowing that over all is infinite love, the strength that comes from knowing right is invincible, the tender and sweet joys that spring up at the touch of human love. Go your ways to make them paths of gladness, to show love shining through sorrow, to give love in the name of the Lord of love and yours shall be religious service indeed. ”

“ The danger is that in our hard workaday we shall forget the reality of the unseen, we shall get to think that gold and steel and land are the only real things, and we shall shape ourselves by the blind and base creed of gold, and steel, and land. How easy it is to measure every man by his possessions in tangible things. How easy to make these our chief end in life, to slight the real prizes, the unseen wealth that lies so close at hand or already possessed, while we rush and strive for the rainbow of riches. ”

“ Fear sets afar off a mighty monarch; faith finds near at hand one whom it calls "Father." Fear shrinks from the impending wrath, love rests in the unchanging goodness. Fear imagines a throne and flaming sword; faith has confidence in a better day ever dawning, in the triumph at last of right, in the reality of an incomprehensible love that sings in its joy, soothes in its sorrow, strengthens in its discipline, a life and love nearer and more real than any of the other facts of living. ”

“ Character may need for its full development the storms and wintry blasts of life, but it needs just as truly and just as much the sunshine, the days when the heart goes out and joins in the song of nature, when something leaps within us at the gladness of being alive, and we drink in of the infinite love that is over all.
Just as the sun seems to call the flowers out of the dark earth and draw out their beauty, calls forth the buds and brings the blossom into perfect fruit, so there is a spirit of divine life in our world calling us out to the best, seeking to woo us to the things beautiful. ”

“ But men have ever set aside the weavings of minds so absorbed in the wonder of their speculations that they could not see the truth. They have seen through the dreamings of poets, painters, and preachers, who pictured only their sickly ideals. And, instead of their caricatures, men have held in their hearts a man, one of their own. And this true fellow, brother and friend, has spurred them to noble deeds and lofty living.
Perfection is seen in strength, not in weakness, in virility and not in tears, in majesty, the majesty truly of meekness, but not of a maudlin, mooning etherealism. ”

“ Let a man face life in this confidence and he is invincible. He goes forth and an unseen army goes with him. He gains the seer's vision to see even the plotting of the enemy and the forces that fight against him all working for his good. From many combats he gains strength for the decisive struggle. All things work together for good. He serves the right, the truth, the things that are eternal; he fights for character, for manhood, and the good; and the eternal forces that rule the universe fight by his side. He beholds the hills full of the hosts of heaven ”

“ None of us can know what these new days hold for us; fear readily conjures up pictures of disaster. But because of certain sublime confidences we hold we banish our fears, shake off our sloth, and gladly step out into the unknown and untrodden country of to-morrow.
Faith is the force of all the ages. It accounts for the past; it enters and determines the future. Because certain men in days gone by believed certain things intensely; because they were thrilled by great visions, by glorious ideals, history was wrought out in the forge of their convictions, under the hammer of their wills. ”

“ True religion is not in self-centred culture, but in the culture of all through the service of the single ones and the culture of the one through his service for all. Only in the atmosphere of service does the soul grow, expand, and find itself. To live in a circle is to die; it is the centrifugal life that finds salvation. They court death who seek only their own lives; they find life who, disregarding death and loss, seek only to make others live.
Religion is not simply a cure for my ills. True, it does cure many of them, but only that I may be better able to do its work. ”

“ How much it would mean to our lives if we might learn, instead of sighing for the impossible, to get all the sweetness and joy that is in the things we have, how rich we would find the common lot to be, how many things that now seem dreary and empty would bloom into new beauty. In a child's smile, a wild flower's fragrance, a glint of sunlight, things possible to all, we would find joys unspeakable and full of glory. ”