Text of the meditation
The Gospel of Jesus is a Gospel of living and doing. That Jesus was meek and lowly and loving and compassionate and pure is very beautiful, but it is not sufficient; it is necessary that you also should be meek and lowly and loving and compassionate and pure. That Jesus subordinated His own will to the will of the Father is inspiring to know, but it is not sufficient; it is necessary that you, too, should likewise subordinate your will to that of the overruling Good.
The grace and beauty and goodness that were in Jesus can be of no value to you, and cannot be understood by you, unless they are also in you, and they can never be in you until you practise them, for, apart from doing, the qualities that constitute Goodness do not, as far as you are concerned, exist.
Pure Goodness is religion, and outside it there is no religion.
James Allen (1864–1912), Book of Meditations for Every Day in the Year (1913) – public-domain text, gently modernised.
The original 1913 text is in the public domain.
