| Week-Day Religion |
Chapter 32 |
Page 4 |
So uncertain is life and so manifold are the vicissitudes of human experience that any leave taking may be for ever. We are never sure of an opportunity to unsay the angry word or draw out the torn we left rankling in another’s heart. The kindness which we felt prompted to do today, but neglected or deferred, we may never be able to perform. The only way, therefore, to save ourselves from unavailing sorrow and regret is to let love always rule in our hearts and control our speech. If we should in a thoughtless moment speak unadvisedly, giving pain to another heart, let reparation be made upon the spot. The sun should never go down upon our wrath. We should never leave anything over night that we would not be willing to leave finally and forever just in that shape, and which we would blush to meet again in the great disclosure.
Life’s actions do not appear to us in the same colors when viewed in the noontide glare and in the evening’s twilight. Little things in our treatment of others, which at the time, under the crosslights of emulation and rivalry or in the excitement of business and social life, do not seem wrong, when seen from the shadows of final separation or great grief, fill us with shame and regret. This after view is by far the truest. After thoughts are the wiser thoughts. We get the most faithful representation of life in retrospect. The things we regret in such an hour are things we ought not to have done. The things we wish then we had done are things we ought to have done. There could be no better test of life’s actions than the question, “How will this appear when I look back upon it from the end? Will it give me pleasure or pain?”
We all want to have beautiful endings to our lives. We want to leave sweet memories behind in the hearts of those who know and love us. We want our names to be fragrant in the homes on whose thresholds our footfalls are wont to be heard. We want the memory of our last parting with our friends to live tender joy with them as the days pass away. We want, if we should stand by a friend’s coffin tomorrow, to have the consciousness that we have done nothing to embitter his life, to add to his burdens or to tarnish his soul, and that we have left nothing undone which it lay in our power to do to help him or to minister to him comfort or cheer. We can make sure of this only by so living always that any day would make a tender and beautiful last day; that any hand grasp would be a fitting farewell; that any hour’s intercourse with friend or neighbor would leave a fragrant memory; and that no treatment of another would leave a regret or cause a pang if death or space should divide us forever.
For after any heart throb, any sentence, any good bye, God may write.
Finis
Page 4
<< Prior Page 1 2 3 4 Next Page >>