| Week-Day Religion |
Chapter 28 |
Page 2 |
Many people move amid unbroken music, hearing not one note; so, in a spiritual world full of heavenly presences, men remain unconscious of the love and companionship that linger about them. Having eyes they see not, and having ears they hear not. Their sorrows go uncomforted, while the Comforter stands close beside them. The world seems dreary and cold, while tender warmth and rich beauty lie close around them.
This is true in our commonest life. How many of us find all the good there is in our lot! Do we extract the honey from every flower that blooms in our path? Do we find all the gold that lies in the hard rocks over which our feet stumble? Do we behold all the beauty that glows along the ways of our sore toil? Do not many good things pass through our hands and slip away from us forever before we even recognize their loveliness or their worth? Do not angels come to us unaware in homely disguise, walk with us, talk with us, minister to us, and then only become known to us when their place is empty and they have spread their radiant wings in flight which we have no power ever to recall?
The baby seemed very troublesome as it broke your night’s rest with its cries and you were compelled to rise and care for it. But when it lay hushed and still for ever among the flowers, what would you not have given to have heard it cry again? We never see the beauty of our friends till they are vanishing out of our sight. While they were with us we were impatient of their faults. Their habits fretted us. But when death touched them it clothed them in a garb of brilliant beauty. They appeared transfigured. Out of the dull, faulty character sprang a radiant angel form, and hovered just beyond our reach for ever. What joy and blessing it had brought to our lives to have seen the beauty and the worth before the evanishing!
So it is in all life. It really takes but very little to make any one happy, yet there are many who cannot extract even a reasonable happiness from a world of luxuries and joys. There are some who see nothing to admire in the most magnificent collections of rare works of art, while others stand enraptured before the rudest picture. There are those who will go through a forest on a June morning when a thousand birds are warbling and hear not one note of song, while others are thrilled and charmed by the coarsest bird note that falls out of the air. One man sees no beauty in the most picturesque landscape; another finds some tender bit of loveliness in the barest and most rugged scenery. One cannot find pleasure or contentment amid the most lavish abundance; another finds enough in the sheerest poverty to give deep happiness and evoke hearty praise.
Page 2
<< Prior Page 1 2 3 Next Page >>