| Week-Day Religion |
Chapter 32 |
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Would we be so exacting, so calculating, so cold and formal, so undemonstrative, so selfish, in our intercourse with our friends, if we truly felt that today’s sunset might be the last we should behold or that we should never meet our friends again? Would not the realization of this ever imminent possibility act as a mighty restraint on all that is harsh or unloving in us, and as a powerful inspiration to bring out all that is kindly and tender? The poet’s words are well worth heeding:
“If thou dost bid they friend farewell,
But for one night though that farewell may be,
Press thou his hand in thine.
How canst thou tell how far from thee
Fate or caprice may lead his steps ere that tomorrow comes?
Men have been known lightly to turn the corner of a street,
And days have grown to months,
And months to lagging years, ere they
Have looked in loving eyes again…
Yea, find thou always time to say some earnest word
Between the idle talk, lest with thee henceforth,
Night and day, regret should walk.”
With many a lonely heart regret does indeed walk night and day because of the memory of unkind words spoken which can never be unspoken, since the ears that heard them are deaf to every sound of earth. Friends have separated with sharp words or in momentary estrangement through some trivial difference, and have never met again. Death has come suddenly to one of them or life has set their feet in paths divergent from that moment. Many a bitter and unavailing tear – bitter because unavailing – is shed over the grave of a departed one by one who would give worlds for a single moment in which to beg forgiveness or seek to make reparation.
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