| Week-Day Religion |
Chapter 28 |
Page 3 |
In nothing does this distinction come out more clearly than in the way the ills of life appear. One class of persons sees nothing but ills. Every thing wears to them a sombre aspect. Smallest trials are magnified into crushing disasters. All troubles look exaggerated to their vision.
“We overstate the ills of life, and take
Imagination (given us to bring down
The choirs of singing angels overshone
By God’s clear glory) down on earth to rake
The dismal snows instead, flake following flake,
To cover all the corn. We walk upon
The shadow of hills across a level thrown,
And pant like climbers.”
These see nothing but adversity in all their days. They find some cause for discontent in the serenest circumstances.
Then others find only blessing wherever they go. Their sorrows are struck through with the glory of God’s love. In the baptistery at Pisa the dome is so constructed that sounds uttered below come back in a delightful response of melodious music, and even a discord is converted into a harmony as it floats up into the resonant vault and returns to the ear. Such a dome hangs over these souls. Even the painful and discordant things are changed into rich harmonies.
Life seems different to different people because their hearts differ. One man listens to thrilling music and is not moved; under the same strains another feels his soul kindled into rapture. The first has no music in his own bosom to interpret the melody that strikes his ear from without; the other has a singing angel in his breast that responds to every sweet note that breathes through the air about him. “You must have the bird in your heart,” says some one, “before you can find it in the bush.”
It is not, the, half so much the outward in life that we need to have changed as the spirit of the inner life. The cause of discontent is not in men’s circumstances, but in their own spirit and temper. Get the song into your heart, and you will hear songs all about you. Even the wailing storm will but make music for you. Get the beauty and the good into your own soul, and you will see only beauty and good in all things. Get the peace deep into your own life, and you will find peace in every lot.
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