| Making the Most of Life |
Chapter 8 |
Page 2 |
A stage driver had held the lines for many years, and when he grew old, his hands were crooked into hooks, and his fingers were so stiffened that they could not be straightened out. There is a similar process that goes on in men’s souls when they continue to do the same things over and over. One who is trained from childhood to be gentle, kindly, patient, to control the temper, to speak softly, to be loving and charitable, will grow into the radiant beauty of love. One who accustoms himself to think habitually and only of noble and worth things, who sets his affections on things above, and strives to reach “whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely.” will grow continually upward, toward spiritual beauty. But on the other hand, if one gives way from childhood to all ugly tempers, all resentful feeling, all bitterness and anger, his life will shape itself into the unbeauty of these dispositions. One whose mind turns to debasing things, things unholy, unclean, will find his whole soul bending and growing toward the earth in permanent moral curvature.
There is also a bending of the life by sorrow. The experience of sorrow is scarcely less perilous than that of temptation. The common belief is that grief always makes people better. But this is not true. If the sufferer submits to God with loving confidence, and is victorious through faith, sorrow’s outcome is blessing and good. But many are crushed by their sorrow. They yield to it, and it bears them down beneath its weight. They turn their faces away from heaven’s blue and the light of God, toward the grave’s darkness, and their souls grow toward the gloom.
Here is a mother who several years since lost by death a beautiful daughter. The mother was a Christian woman, and her child was also a Christian, dying in sweet hope. Yet never since that coffin was closed has the mother lifted up her eyes toward god in submission and hope. She visits the cemetery on Sundays but never the church. She goes with downcast look about her home, weeping whenever her daughter’s name is mentioned, and complains of God’s hardness and unkindness in taking away her child. She is bent down with her eyes to the earth, and sees only the clods and the dust and the grave’s gloom, and sees not the blue sky, the bright stars, and the sweet face of the Father. So long has she now been thus bowed down in the habit of sadness and grieving, that she can in nowise lift herself up.
Since I began to write this chapter I have had a long talk with one whose life is sorely bent. Ten years since I first knew her as a bright and happy young girl, her face sunny in the light of God’s love. Trouble came into her life in many forms. Her own father proved unworthy, failing in all the sacred duties of affection towards his child. Events in her own life were disappointing and discouraging. Friends in whom she had trusted failed in that faithfulness and helpfulness which one has a right to expect from one’s friends. There was a succession of unhappy experiences, through several years, all tending to hurt her heart life. As the result of all this, she has become embittered and hardened, not only against those who have wronged her and treated her unjustly, but even against God. So long has she yielded to these feelings that her whole life has been bent down from its upward, Godward look into settled despondency. God has altogether faded out of her soul’s vision, and she thinks of him only as unkind and unjust. To restore her life to its former brightness and beauty will require a moral miracle as great as that by which the body of the crooked woman was made straight.
Page 2
<< Prior Page 1 2 3 Next Page >>