Ever since early girlhood Joy Irving had formed a habit of jotting
down in black and white her own ideas regarding any book, painting,
concert, conversation or sermon, which interested her, and
epitomising the train of thought to which they led.
The evening after her walk and talk with the rector of St Blank's,
she took out her note-book, which bore a date four years old under
its title "My Impressions," and read over the last page of entries.
They had evidently been written at the close of some Sabbath day and
ran as follows:-
Many a kneeling woman is more occupied with how her skirts hang than
how her prayers ascend. I am inclined to think we all ought to wear
a uniform to church if we would really worship there. God must grow
weary looking down on so many new bonnets.
I wore a smart hat to church to-day, and I found myself criticising
every other woman's bonnet during service, so that I failed in some
of my responses.
If we could all be compelled by some mysterious power to THINK ALOUD
on Sunday, what a veritable holy day we would make of it! Though we
are taught from childhood that God hears our thoughts, the best of us
would be afraid to have our nearest friends know them.
I sometimes think it is a presumption on the part of any man to rise
in the pulpit and undertake to tell me about a Creator with whom I
feel every whit as well acquainted as he. I suppose such thoughts
are wicked, however, and should be suppressed.
It is a curious fact, that the most aggressively sensitive persons
are at heart the most conceited.
I wish people smiled more in church aisles. In fact, I think we all
laugh at one another too much and smile at one another too seldom.
After the devil had made all the trouble for woman he could with the
fig leaf, he introduced the French heel.
It is well to see the ridiculous side of things, but not of people.
Most of us would rather be popular than right.
To these impressions Joy added the following:-
It is not the interior of one's house, but the interior of one's mind
which makes home.
It seems to me that to be, is to love. I can conceive of no state of
existence which is not permeated with this feeling toward something,
somebody or the illimitable "nothing" which is mother to everything.
I wish we had more religion in the world and fewer churches.