| Week-Day Religion |
Chapter 15 |
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There are great multitudes of lowly lives lived on the earth which have no name among men, whose work no pen records, no marble immortalizes, but which are well known and unspeakably dear to God, and whose influence will be seen, in the end, to reach to farthest shores. They make no noise in the world, but it needs not noise to make a life beautiful and noble. Many of God’s most potent ministries are noiseless. How silently all day long the sunbeams fall upon the fields and gardens! And yet what cheer, what inspiration, what life and beauty, they diffuse! How silently the flowers bloom! And yet what rich blessings of fragrance do they emit! How silently the stars move on in their majestic marches around God’s throne! And yet the telescope shows us that they are mighty worlds or great central suns representing utterly incalculable power. How silently the angels work, stepping with noiseless tread through our homes and performing ever their tireless ministries for us and about us! Who hears the flutter of their wings or the whisper of their tongues? And yet they throng along our path and bring rich joys of comfort, suggestion, protection, guidance and strength to us every day. How silently God himself works! He gives his blessing while we sleep. He makes no ado. We hear not his footfalls, and yet he is ever moving about us and ministering to us in ten thousand ways and bringing to us the rarest and finest gifts of his love. Then who does not remember the noiselessness of our Lord’s human life on the earth? He did not strive to cry, nor did men hear his voice on the street. He sought not, but rather shunned, publicity and notoriety. His wondrous power was life power, heart power, which he shed forth in silent influence among the people, but which is pulsing yet in all the lands, in millions of hearts, and in all the vast abodes of redeemed spirits.
And many of our Lord’s earthly servants have caught his spirit, and work so quietly that they are scarcely recognized among men as workers. In their humility they do not even suppose themselves to be of any use and mourn over their unprofitableness as Christ’s servants, and yet in heaven they are written down as among the very noblest of his ministers. They do no great things, but their lives are full of radiations of blessing. There is a quiet and unconscious influence ever going forth from them that falls like a benediction on every life that comes into their shadow; for it is not only our elaborately wrought deeds that leave results behind. Much of the best work we do in this world is done unconsciously. There are many people who are so busied in what is called secular toil that they can find few moments to give to works of benevolence. But they come out every morning from the presence of God and go to their daily business or toil, and all day, as they move about, they drop gentle words from their lips and scatter seeds of kindness along their path. Tomorrow flowers of the garden of God spring up in the hard, dusty streets of earth and along the paths of toil in which their feet have trodden.
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