“A sacred burden is the life ye bear.
Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly;
Stand up and walk beneath it steadfastly;
Fail not for sorrow, falter not for your sin,
But onward, upward, till the goal ye win.”
What one thinks about life, what conception he has of that strange thing called existence – particularly what he thinks of his own individual life – is a most vital matter. Life is noble or ignoble, glorious or groveling, just as a right or wrong, a high or a low, conception is cherished in the heart. No man builds higher or better than his plans. No artist surpasses in marble or on canvas the beauty imaged in his soul, and no one’s life can rise in grandeur above the thoughts of life which live in his heart.
No conception is true or worthy with does not consider life in its perspective, not as cut off and limited by the bounds of earthly existence, but as stretching away into immortality and vital at every point with important relations and solemn responsibilities. We are more than animals. Our lives are not little separate atoms of existence each one complete in itself and independent of all other atoms. He plans very shortsightedly who has no outlook from his hut in his narrow island home in the great wide sea, and who sees no existence for himself beyond the stoppage of his heart’s pulses – that strange experience which men call death.
We can only learn to live worthily when we take into our view and plan all the unending years that lie beyond the grave. We want a vivid and masterful consciousness of our personal immortality. A man who sees but a few bits of rock chipped from El Capitan, and a few dried leaves and faded flowers plucked from the trees that grow in that wondrous valley, has no true conception of the grandeur of the Yosemite; and no more just conception of human existence in its fullness and vastness has he who sees only the little fragment of broken, marred and shattered years which are fulfilled on this earth. We must try to see life as sweeping away into eternity if we would grasp its meaning and have a true sense of its grandeur or realize its solemn responsibility.
There are streams among the mountains which, after flowing a little way on the surface in a current broken, vexed and tossing, amid rocks, over cascades, through dark chasms, sink away out of sight and seem to be lost. You see their flashing crystal no more. But far down the mountain, amid the sweet valley scenes, they emerge again, these same streams, and flow away, no longer tossed and restless, but quiet and peaceful as they move on toward the sea. So our restless, perplexed lives roll in rock channels a little way on the earth and then pass out of sight and it seems the ends. But it is not the end. Leaping through the dark cavern of he grave, they will reappear, fuller, deeper, grander, on the other side, vexed and broken no longer, but realizing al the peace, joy and beauty of Christ; and thus they will flow on for ever. This is no poet’s fancy, no Utopian dream of a golden age, no mere picture of imagination. Life and immortality are brought to light in the gospel. Since Christ has risen again death is abolished, and to every one who believes in him there is the certainty of an endless life of blessedness in his presence and service. We only begin to live when the consciousness of immortality breaks upon our hearts.
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