| Making the Most of Life |
Chapter 13 |
Page 5 |
So it is of all great thoughts. Thinkers brood long in the silence and then come forth and their eloquence sways us. So it is with art. We look at a fine picture and our hearts are warmed by its wondrous beauty. But do we know the story of the picture? Years and years of thought and of tireless toil lie back of its enrapturing beauty. Or here is a book which charms you, which thrills and inspires you. Great thought lie on its pages. Do you know the book’s story? The author lived, struggled, toiled, suffered, wept, that he might write the words which now help you. Back of every good life thought which blesses men, lays a dark quarry where the thought was born and shaped into the beauty of form which makes it a blessing to the world.
Or here is a noble and beautiful character. Goodness appears natural to it. It seems easy for the man to be noble and to do noble things but again the quarry is back of the temple. Each one’s heart is the quarry out of which comes all that the person builds into his life. “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Everything that appears in our lives comes out of our hearts. All our acts are first thoughts. The artist’s picture, the poet’s poem, the singer’s song, the architect’s building, are thoughts before they are wrought out into forms of beauty. All dispositions, tempers, feeling, words, and acts start in the heart. If the workmen had quarried faulty stones in the caverns, the temple would have been spoiled. An evil heart, with stained thoughts, impure imaginings, blurred feelings, can never build up a fair and lovely character.
We need to guard our heart quarry with all diligence, since out of it are the issues of life. The thoughts build the life and make the character. White thoughts rear up a beautiful fabric before God and man. Soiled thoughts pile up a stained life, without beauty or honour. We should look well, therefore, to our heart quarry, where the work goes on in the darkness without ceasing. If all be right there we need give little concern to the building of character. Diligent heart keeping yields a life unspotted from the world.
A little child had been reading the beatitudes, and was asked which of the qualities named in them she most desired. “I would rather be pure in heart,” she said. When asked the reason for her choice, she answered: “If I could but have a pure heart, I should then possess all the other qualities of the beatitudes in the one.” The child was right. A pure heart will build a beautiful life, a fit temple for Christ. Thinking over God’s holy thoughts after him will make us like God. Thinking habitually about Christ, Christ’s beauty will come into our souls and shine in our faces.
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