Religious exercise

“ The formal exercise there being gone through by rote, without exciting new feelings, or touching new chords in their hearts, may cause them to break away from strictness, and give a rein to their passions after the exercise of their religious duties. ”

“ We may still feel the religious instinct, but we can scarcely be expected to acknowledge religious obligations in any such strictness as would demand in our already overstrenuous daily life with its many duties the devotion of time to religious exercises. ”

“ A divine influence seems still apparently to attend the means of grace, in a greater or less degree, in most of our meetings for religious exercises; whereby religious persons are refreshed, strengthened, and established,—convictions revived and promoted in many instances, and some few persons newly awakened from time to time. ”

“ With this prospect of eternal bliss for ourselves is united the special efficiency which the good Lord deigns to bestow on religious to procure the salvation of many souls. True, the exercise of the sacred ministry, with the sacramental power, is the ordinary channel of sanctification established by Christ in His Church; but there is a special efficiency in personal virtue to bring souls nearer to God; and the direct purpose and effect of the religious life is to increase personal holiness. ”

“ It has been said that the sanctification of a religious is effected primarily by his religious exercises, and secondarily by his work; but that of a secular is effected primarily by his work and only secondarily by his religious exercises. ”

“ Training in the performance of religious rites, such as the saying of grace before meals, prayers, attendance at religious services, participating in religious worship, are motor habits readily acquired at about the same age, which then remain as lifelong tendencies. ”

“ By all members of the order, of every rank of degree, by novices and adepts alike, four weeks were usually devoted once a year under an exercise master chosen for that work to exercitia spiritualia, in which rigid attention was given to prayer, meditation, examination of conscience, mortification, etc., as an effectual means of breaking in and breaking down the individual will. ”

“ Jesus will help you to make some gains each day if you will press your way through the crowd and touch him. It is the earnest prayer of faith that gets us through to God and makes us feel like giants in his strength. If you would be strengthened in your soul, you must exercise. This is the law of development in the spiritual as well as in the animal life. "Exercise thyself unto godliness." ”

“ We love to hear them speak or pray, not only because they bring [pg 099] us good and fresh and profitable thoughts, but because we know that these exercises are developing them into strong men for the future leaders of the church. Not only so, but our larger religious machinery, the wider sphere of our activity, furnish places for them to work. ”

“ But thou, my son, regard my faithful labourers who have been eminent for true religious perfection. They served me in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness, in labour and weariness, in watchings and fastings, in prayers and holy meditations, in many revilings and persecutions. How frequent were they, and fervent in holy exercises; they never relaxed their unsubdued spirit from prayer. ”

“ The same is in a measure true of religious life. It develops more activity, more benevolence. It invests religious instruction with [pg 098] more attractions, and throws more life and power into social worship. ”

“ Infused habits are advantaged by exercise. As the fire that kindled the wood for sacrifices upon the altar first came down from heaven, but then was to be kept alive by the care and labour of the priests, so the habits of spiritual grace are indeed infused from God, and must be maintained by daily influences from God, yet with a concurrence also of our own labours, in waiting upon God, and exercising ourselves with godliness; and the more a Christian doth so exercise himself, the more strong he shall grow. ”

“ Ought we not to rise above the mere forms and ceremonies of devotion, into that immediate intercourse with the Holy One which the Scriptures describe by the appropriate phrase of [73] 'walking with God?' May we not fairly presume that such an hallowed exercise will have a most material influence in inducing within us that pure and ardent spirit of devotion, without which the duties of our sacred profession will be discharged in a cold, formal, and unimpressive manner? ”

“ Religious work, the most direct spiritual activity, visiting the sick, or preaching the gospel, or celebrating the sacraments, make a tremendous call upon our devotional powers and directly tend to lower our spiritual vitality, unless we seek abundant and frequent renewal thereof at the source of all spiritual vitality and life. ”

“ But there is the same callousness attending religious practice as about everything else here, and although they see the beauty and the benefit of Christianity, the effort is too great to reduce its blessed precepts to daily practice. ”

“ Though the prayers for children are short, the preacher is greatly assisted by our method of education, inculcating the worship of the Supreme by habits which the child is led to form. Thus we require the greatest attention to cleanliness, to the mode of eating, sleeping, talking, and indeed to all the daily practices of life.
The inculcation and exercise of good habits is considered to form, as it were, a perpetual living hymn to the Creator. ”

“ In my view we are to use our intellect and our will in discovering duties and overcoming temptations, quite sure that God will, of course, aid those who aid themselves." This class of persons look upon all protracted seasons of prayer and periods spent in devotion as so much time taken from the active duties of life. A week devoted to prayer, a convention of Christians meeting to spend eight or ten days in exercises purely devotional, would strike them as something excessive and unnecessary, and tending to fanaticism. ”

“ In thy want of love to God, lift up thy eye of faith to heaven, behold his beauty, contemplate his excellencies, and see whether his amiableness and perfect goodness will not ravish thy heart. As exercise maintaineth appetite, strength, and vigor to the body; so these heavenly exercises will quickly cause the increase of grace and spiritual life. ”

“ Hence the missionary and other religious efforts. If every island and every house had a Bible, if every child was brought into the Sunday School, would the wounds of the world heal, and man be upright? ”

“ Physical fitness, morals and manners, are very largely the outcome of habit; and not only so, but the habits of the religious life also become fixed and delightful and give us due support in the effort to live a godly, righteous and sober life. We need not be deterred by the fear that religious habits in a child are mechanical, uninformed by the ideas which should give them value. ”

“ If you are an orthodox Christian, meditate ceaselessly upon the spotless purity and divine excellence of the character of Jesus, and apply his every precept to your inner life and outward conduct, so as to approximate more and more toward his perfection. Do not be as those religious ones, who, refusing to meditate upon the Law of Truth, and to put into practice the precepts given to them by their Master, are content to formally worship, to cling to their particular creeds, and to continue in the ceaseless round of sin and suffering. ”

“ For, to school discipline is added religious discipline, no less compulsory, just as rigid and more constant—daily pious exercises, ordinary devotions and extraordinary ceremonies, spiritual guidance, influence of the confessional and the example and behavior of a staff kept together around the same work by the same faith. ”

“ Of all the duties enjoined by Christianity none is more essential and yet more neglected than prayer. Most people consider the exercise a fatiguing ceremony, which they are justified in abridging as much as possible. Even those whose profession or fears lead them to pray, pray with such languor and wanderings of mind that their prayers, far from drawing down blessings, only increase their condemnation. ”

“ The child is a plant, must live out of doors in proper season, and there must be no forcing. Religion, then, at this important stage, at least, is naturalism pure and simple, and religious training is the supreme art of standing out of nature's way. So implicit is the unity of soul and body at this formative age that care of the body is the most effective ethico-religious culture. ”

“ It is the tendency of all ethico-religious systems, at least in their earliest stage of development, to discourage purely liturgical observances, and to enjoin on the disciple a state of self-concentration and self-absorption varied only by physical activity. ”

“ The teachings, pomp, and circumstance of the religious observances of this faith alone preserve these people from absolute stagnation. In obedience to its promptings they gladly attend church very regularly. ”

“ Whenever, during the time of the spiritual exercises, we are, through necessity, employed otherwise by our superiors, their intention is not that we neglect, but only that we defer for a while these spiritual exercises, and afterwards resume and fully perform them, according to the saying of the Wise Man: — w Let nothing hinder you from praying always. ”

“ It is only the finite that speaks. Our words are the idle wave-caps On the deep that never breaks. We may question with wand of science, Explain, decide, and discuss; But only in meditation The Mystery speaks to us."
Most of the religious orders, and it is in them particularly that the effect of religion on health and happiness and efficiency and increase of the power to achieve, under the influence of profoundly religious motives, can be studied, require by rule that their members shall spend at least half an hour in meditation each morning ”

“ His whole being was permeated by that deeper religiousness which consecrates to God not only the hour of prayer, a day of penitence, and longer or shorter periods of devotional exercise, but every step in the journey of life, which turns every aspiration of the soul toward Him, subjects everything to His will, and with childlike trust, commits everything to His keeping. ”

“ In the morning, you, perhaps, raise up your mind to the Lord in prayer; but does not the world, in a moment, resume its place in your heart, and is not the remainder of the day devoted to it? You regularly attend, perhaps, in order to fulfil the external duties of religion; but, without entering into the motives which frequently carry you there, this individual exercise of religion, is it not compensated by devoting the remainder of the day to indolent and worldly pursuits? ”

“ To be sure, the gatherings of God’s people for worship and instruction are indispensable to the life of the church, but unless we translate our worship and instruction into action, our religious observances will be idolatrous and sinful, and will separate men from each other and from God. ”

“ To properly estimate this example, it must be borne in mind that the main object of God was to set an example of the temporal rewards that follow obedience to the laws of the Creator, and at the same time to prepare religious teachers to extend the more enlarged views and duties resulting from the dangers of the future life revealed by Jesus Christ. ”

“ Religious rites are, first, rites of approach, whereby the community draws nigh to its god; and, afterwards, rites of sacramental meals whereby the community celebrates its reconciliation and enjoys communion with its god. ”

“ Any progress we make in a religious life, comes from doing just what you say you are doing, holding on. If we are regular in our prayers and Bible–reading, if we patiently attend to our church duties, and just try from hour to hour to do our duty to those about us, that is all one can do. ”

“ For, although, as we have stated before, our outward duties are apt, to some extent, to turn our minds and hearts from God to creatures, enough time for prayer is left us to repair our spiritual strength day by day, provided we perform our meditations, examinations of conscience, etc., with becoming fervor. In fact, our outward labors, if animated by the proper intention, which our spiritual exercises constantly inspire, will be helpful to bring us nearer to God, just as bodily labor helps the food to promote bodily health. ”

“ Worship and sacrifice, procedures for working on the dispositions of the deity, theology and ceremony and ecclesiastical organization, are the essentials of religion in the institutional branch. Were we to limit our view to it, we should have to define religion as an external art, the art of winning the favor of the gods. In the more personal branch of religion it is on the contrary the inner dispositions of man himself which form the centre of interest, his conscience, his deserts, his helplessness, his incompleteness. ”

“ Religion, and religious observance, was to them a practical reality which entered into their daily lives. The kindly Spirit that led them, brought them strength to bear their own and others’ burdens, in sickness and health, in adversity and prosperity, from childhood till their eyes closed in their last sleep. ”

“ And as God has always blessed the wise efforts of faithful men and holy women striving to save souls and to glorify Christ, so we have every spur and incitement to press on in our work, looking for and expecting gracious results to follow faithful labors. With all our hopes and encouragements, however, we must remember that the Divine blessing waits chiefly upon those efforts of His people that are in accordance with the universal law of fitness. ”