Making the Most of Life Part 11

"He lives to us who dies; he is but lost who lives."

Thus even death doth not quench the influence of a good life. It continues to bless others long after the life has pa.s.sed from earth.

It is true, as Mrs. Sangster writes:--

"They never quite leave us, our friends who have pa.s.sed Through the shadows of death to the sunlight above; A thousand sweet memories are holding them fast To the places they blessed with their presence and love.

"The work which they left and the books which they read Speak mutely, though still with an eloquence rare, And the songs that they sung, and the dear words that they said Yet linger and sigh on the desolate air.

"And oft when alone, and oft in the throng, Or when evil allures us, or sin draweth nigh, A whisper comes gently, 'Nay, do not the wrong,'

And we feel that our weakness is pitied on high."

It must be remembered that not all influence is good. Evil deeds also have influence. Bad men live, too, after they are gone. Cried a dying man whose life had been full of harm to others: "Gather up my influence, and bury it with me in my grave." But the frantic, remorseful wish was in vain. The man went out of the world, but his influence stayed behind him, its poison to work for ages in the lives of others.

We need, therefore, to guard our influence with most conscientious care. It is a crime to fling into the street an infected garment which may carry contagion to men's homes. It is a worse crime to send out a printed page bearing words infected with the virus of moral death. The men who prepare and publish the vile literature which to-day goes everywhere, polluting and defiling innocent lives, will have a fearful account to render when they stand at G.o.d's bar to meet their influence.

If we would make our lives worthy of G.o.d, and a blessing to the world, we must see to it that nothing we do shall influence others in the slightest degree to evil.

In the early days of American art there went from this country to London a young artist of genius and of a pure heart. He was poor, but had an aspiration for n.o.ble living as well as for fine painting. Among his pictures was one that in itself was pure, but that by a sensuous mind might be interpreted in an evil way. A lover of art saw this picture and purchased it. But when it was gone the young artist began to think of its possible hurtful influence on the weak, and his conscience troubled him. He went to his patron and said, "I have come to buy back my picture." The purchaser could not understand him.

"Didn't I pay you enough for it? Do you need money?" he asked. "I am poor," replied the artist, "but my art is my life. Its mission must be good. The influence of that picture may possibly be harmful. I cannot be happy with it before the eyes of the world. It must be withdrawn."

We should keep watch not only over our words and deeds in their intent and purpose, but also in their possible influence over others. There may be liberties which in us lead to no danger, but which to others, with less stable character and less helpful environment, would be full of peril. It is part of our duty to think of these weaker ones and of the influence of our example upon them. We may not do anything, in our strength and security, which might possibly harm others. We must be willing to sacrifice our liberty, if by its exercise we endanger another's soul. This is the teaching of St. Paul in the words: "It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor to do anything whereby thy brother stumbleth"; and "If meat maketh my brother to stumble, I will eat no flesh for evermore, that I make not my brother to stumble."

How can we make sure of an influence that shall be only a benediction?

There is no way but by making our life pure and good. Just in the measure in which we are filled with the Spirit of G.o.d and have the love of Christ in us, shall our influence be holy and a blessing to the world.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE MEANING OF OPPORTUNITIES.

"'To-day' unsullied comes to thee--newborn, To-morrow is not thine; The sun may cease to shine For thee, ere earth shall greet its morn.

"Be earnest, then, in thought and deed, Nor fear approaching night; Calm comes with evening light, And hope and peace. Thy duty heed 'to-day.'"

--RUSKIN.

If people's first thoughts were but as good and wise as their after-thoughts, life would be better and more beautiful than it is. We can all see our errors more clearly after we have committed them than we saw them before. We frequently hear persons utter the wish that they could go again over a certain period of their life, saying that they would live it differently, that they would not repeat the mistakes or follies which had so marred and stained the record they had made.

Of course the wish that one might have a second chance with any past period of time is altogether vain. No doubt there ofttimes is much reason for shame and pain in our retrospects. We live poorly enough at the best, even the saintliest of us, and many of us certainly make sad work of our life. Human life must appear very pathetic, and ofttimes tragical, as the angels look down upon it. There are almost infinitely fewer wrecks on the great sea where the ships go, than on that other sea of which poets write, where lives with their freightage of immortal hopes and possibilities sail on to their destiny. We talk sometimes with wonder of what the ocean contains, of the treasures that lie buried far down beneath the waves. But who shall tell of the treasures that are hidden in the deeper, darker sea of human life, where they have gone down in the sad hours of defeat and failure?

"In dim green depths rot ingot-laden ships, While gold doubloons, that from the drowned hand fell, Lie nestled in the ocean-flowers' bell With love's gemmed rings once kissed by now dead lips; And round some wrought-gold cup the sea-gra.s.s whips, And hides lost pearls, near pearls still in their sh.e.l.l Where sea-weed forests fill each ocean dell, And seek dim sunlight with their countless tips.

"So lie the wasted gifts, the long-lost hopes, Beneath the now hushed surface of myself.

In lonelier depths than where the river gropes, They lie deep, deep; but I at times behold, In doubtful glimpses, on some reefy shelf, The gleam of irrecoverable gold."

Glimpses of these lost things--these squandered treasures, these wasted possibilities, these pearls and gems of life that have gone down into the sea of our past--we may have when the reefs are left bare by the refluent tides, but glimpses only can we see. We cannot recover our treasures. The gleams only mock us. The past will not give again its gold and pearls to any frantic appealing of ours.

There is something truly startling in this irreparableness of the past, this irrevocableness of the losses which we have suffered through our follies or our sins. About two centuries ago a great sun-dial was erected in All Souls' College, Oxford, England, the largest and n.o.blest dial, it is said, in the whole kingdom. Over the long pointer were written, in large letters of gold, the Latin words, referring to the hours, "_Pereunt et imputantur_." Literally, the meaning is, "They perish, and are set down to our account"; or, as they have been rendered in terser phrase, "They are wasted, and are added to our debt."

It is said that these words on the dial have exerted a wonderful influence on the boyhood of many of the distinguished men who have received their training at Oxford, stimulating them to the most conscientious use of the golden hours as they pa.s.sed, and bearing fruit in long lives of earnestness and faithfulness. The lesson is one that every young person should learn. In youth the hours are full of privileges. They come like angels, holding in their hands rich treasures, sent to us from G.o.d, which they offer to us; and if we are laggard or indolent, or if we are too intent on our own little trifles to give welcome to these heavenly messengers with their heavenly gifts, they quickly pa.s.s on and are gone. And they never come back again to renew the offer.

On the dial of a clock in the palace of Napoleon at Malmaison, the maker has put, the words, "_Non nescit reverti_"; "It does not know how to go backward." It is so of the great clock of Time--it never can be turned backward. The moments come to us but once; whatever we do with them we must do as they pa.s.s, for they will never come to us again.

Then privilege makes responsibility. We shall have to give account to G.o.d for all that he sends to us by the mystic hands of the pa.s.sing hours, and which we refuse or neglect to receive. "They are wasted and are added to our debt."

The real problem of living, therefore, is how to take what the hours bring. He who does this, will live n.o.bly and faithfully, and will fulfil G.o.d's plan for his life. The difference in men is not in the opportunities that come to them, but in their use of their opportunities. Many people who fail to make much of their life charge their failure to the lack of opportunities. They look at one who is continually doing good and beautiful things, or great and n.o.ble things, and think that he is specially favored, that the chances which come to him for such things are exceptional. Really, however, it is in his capacity for seeing and accepting what the hours bring of duty or privilege, that his success lies. Where other men see nothing, he sees a battle to fight, a duty to perform, a service to render, or an honor to win. Many a man waits long for opportunities, wondering why they never come to him, when really they have been pa.s.sing by him day after day, unrecognized and unaccepted.

There is a legend of an artist, who long sought for a piece of sandal-wood out of which to carve a Madonna. At last he was about to give up in despair, leaving the vision of his life unrealized, when in a dream he was bidden to shape the figure from a block of oak-wood, which was destined for the fire. Obeying the command, he produced from the log of common firewood a masterpiece.

In like manner many people wait for great and brilliant opportunities for doing the good things, the beautiful things, of which they dream, while through all the plain, common days, the very opportunities they require for such deeds lie close to them, in the simplest and most familiar pa.s.sing events, and in the homeliest circ.u.mstances. They wait to find sandal-wood out of which to carve Madonnas, while far more lovely Madonnas than they dream of, are hidden in the common logs of oak they burn in their open fire-place, or spurn with their feet in the wood-yard.

Opportunities come to all. The days of every life are full of them.

But the trouble with too many of us is that we do not make anything out of them while we have them. Then next moment they are gone. One man goes through life sighing for opportunities. If only he had this or that gift, or place, or position, he would do great things, he says; but with his means, his poor chances, his meagre privileges, his uncongenial circ.u.mstances, his limitations, he can do nothing worthy of himself. Then another man comes up close beside him, with like means, chances, circ.u.mstances, privileges, and he achieves n.o.ble results, does heroic things, wins for himself honor and renown. The secret is in the man, not in his environment. Mr. Sill puts this well in his lines:--

"This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream: There spread a cloud of dust along a plain; And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.

A craven hung along the battle's edge, And thought, 'Had I a sword of keener steel-- That blue blade that the king's son bears--but this Blunt thing.'--He snapt and flung it from his hand, And lowering crept away and left the field.

Then came the king's son wounded, sore bestead, And weaponless, and saw the broken sword, Hilt buried in the dry and trodden sand, And ran and s.n.a.t.c.hed it, and with battle shout Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down, And saved a great cause that heroic day."

With the blunt sword, broken now, which the craven had flung away as unfit for use, the princely hand won its great victory. Life is full of ill.u.s.trations of this very experience. The materials of life which one man has despised and spurned as unworthy of him, as having in them no charmed secret of success, another man is forever picking up out of the dust, and with them achieving n.o.ble and brilliant successes. Men, alert and eager, are wanted, men with heroic heart and princely hand, to see and use the opportunities that lie everywhere in the most commonplace life.

There is but one thing to do to get out of life all its possibilities of attainment and achievement; we must train ourselves to take what every moment brings to us of privilege and of duty. Some people worry themselves over the vague wonder as to what the divine plan in life is for them. They have a feeling that G.o.d had some definite purpose in creating them, and that there is something he wants them to do in this world, and they would like to know how they can learn this divine thought for their life. The answer is really very simple. G.o.d is ready to reveal to us, with unerring definiteness, his plan for our life. This revealing he makes as we go on, showing us each moment one little fragment of his purpose. Says Faber: "The surest method of aiming at a knowledge of G.o.d's eternal purposes about us is to be found in the right use of the present moment. Each hour comes with some little f.a.got of G.o.d's will fastened upon its back."

We have nothing to do, therefore, with anything save the privilege and duty of the one hour now pa.s.sing. This makes the problem of living very simple. We need not look at our life as a whole, nor even carry the burden of a single year; if we but grasp well the meaning of the one little fragment of time immediately present, and do instantly all the duty and take all the privilege that the one hour brings, we shall thus do that which shall best please G.o.d and build up our own life into completeness. It ought never to be hard for us to do this.

"G.o.d broke our years to hours and days, that hour by hour And day by day Just going on a little way, We might be able all along To keep quite strong.

Should all the weight of life Be laid across our shoulder, and the future, rife With woe and struggle, meet us face to face At just one place, We could not go, Our feet would stop; and so G.o.d lays a little on us every day, And never, I believe, on all the way Will burdens bear so deep, Or pathways lie so threatening and so steep, But we can go, if by G.o.d's power We only bear the burden of the hour."

Living thus we shall make each hour radiant with the radiancy of duty well done, and radiant hours will make radiant years. But the missing of privileges and the neglecting of duties will leave days and years marred and blemished and make the life at last like a moth-eaten garment. We must catch the sacred meaning of our opportunities if we would live up to our best.

CHAPTER XX.

THE SIN OF INGRAt.i.tUDE.

"The sun may shine upon the clod till it is warm, Warm for its own poor darkling self to live.

He smites the diamond, and oh, how glows the gem, Chilling itself, irradiant, to give.

"The silent soul, that takes but gives not out again, In shining thankfulness, a smile, a tear, Absorbing, makes none other glad, and misses so The purest and the best of love's rich cheer."