Making the Most of Life Part 3

There was wonderful power in the touch of Christ when he was on the earth. Wherever he laid his hand, he left a blessing, and sick, sad, and weary ones received health, comfort, and peace. That hand, glorified, now holds in its clasp the seven stars. Yet there are senses in which the blessed touch of Christ is felt yet on men's lives.

He is as really in this world to-day as he was when he walked in human form through Judea and Galilee. His hand is yet laid on the weary, the suffering, the sorrowing, and, though its pressure is unfelt, its power to bless is the same as in the ancient days. It is laid on the sick, when precious heavenly words of cheer and encouragement from the Scriptures are read at their bedside, giving them the blessing of sweet patience, and quieting their fears. It is laid on the sorrowing, when the consolations of divine love come to their hearts with tender comfort, giving them strength to submit to G.o.d's will and rejoice in the midst of trial. It is laid on the faint and weary, when the grace of Christ comes to them with its holy peace, hushing the wild tumult, and giving true rest of soul.

But there is another way in which the hand of Christ is laid on human lives. He sends his disciples into the world to represent him. "As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you," is his own word. Of course the best and holiest Christian life can be only the dimmest, faintest reproduction of the rich, full, blessed life of Christ. Yet it is in this way, through these earthen vessels, that he has ordained to save the world, and to heal, help, comfort, lift up, and build up men.

"In these earthen vessels heavenly treasure For the enrichment of thy poor may shine; Thou canst fill us in our human measure With thy being's overflow divine."

Perhaps in thinking of what G.o.d does for the world, we are too apt to overlook the human agents and instruments, and to think of him touching lives directly and immediately. A friend of ours is in sorrow, and, going to our knees, we pray G.o.d to give him comfort. But may it not be that he would send the comfort through our own heart and lips? One we love is not doing well, is drifting away from a true life, is in danger of being lost. In anguish of heart we cry to G.o.d, beseeching him to lay his hand on the imperilled life, and rescue it. But may it not be that ours is the hand that must be stretched out in love, and laid, in Christ's name, on the life that is in danger?

Certain it is, at least, that each one of us who knows the love of Christ is ordained to be as Christ to others; that is, to be the messenger to carry to them the gift of Christ's grace and help, and to show to them the spirit of Christ, the patience, gentleness, thoughtfulness, love, and yearning of Christ. We are taught to say, "Christ liveth in me." If this be true, Christ would love others through us, and our touch must be to others as the very touch of Christ himself. Every Christian ought to be, in his human measure, a new incarnation of the Christ, so that people shall say: "He interprets Christ to me. He comforts me in my sorrow as Christ himself would do if he were to come and sit down beside me. He is hopeful and patient as Christ would be if he were to return and take me as his disciple."

But before we can be in the place of Christ to sorrowing, suffering, and struggling ones, we must have the mind in us that was in him. When St. Paul said, "The love of Christ constraineth me," he meant that he had the very love of Christ in him--the love that loved even the most unlovely, that helped even the most unworthy, that was gentle and affectionate even to the most loathsome. We are never ready to do good in the world, in the truest sense or in any large measure, until we have become thus filled with the very spirit of Christ. We may help people in a certain way without loving them. We may render them services of a certain kind, benefiting them externally or temporally.

We may put material gifts into their hands, build them houses, purchase clothing for them, carry them bread, or improve their circ.u.mstances and condition. We may thus do many things for them without having in our heart any love for them, anything better than common philanthropy. But the highest and most real help we can give them only through loving them.

"When I have attempted," says Emerson, "to give myself to others by services, it proved an intellectual trick--no more. They eat your services like apples, and leave you out. But love them, and they feel you and delight in you all the time." When we love others we can help them in all deep and true ways. We can put blessings into their hearts instead of merely into their hands. We can enter into their very being, becoming new breath of life to them,--quickening, inspiration, impulse.

"What is the best a friend can be To any soul, to you or me?

Not only shelter, comfort, rest-- Inmost refreshment unexpressed; Not only a beloved guide To thread life's labyrinth at our side, Or with love's torch lead on before; Though these be much, there yet is more.

"The best friend is an atmosphere Warm with all inspirations dear, Wherein we breathe the large, free breath Of life that hath no taint of death.

Our friend is an unconscious part Of every true beat of our heart; A strength, a growth, whence we derive G.o.d's health, that keeps the world alive."

There is a touching and very suggestive story of a good woman in Sweden, who opened a home for crippled and diseased children--children for whom no one else was ready to care. In due time she received into her home about twenty of these unfortunate little ones. Among them was a boy of three years, who was a most frightful and disagreeable object.

He resembled a skeleton. His skin was covered with hideous blotches and sores. He was always whining and crying. This poor little fellow gave the good lady more care and trouble than all the others together.

She did her best for him, and was as kind as possible--washed him, fed him, nursed him. But the child was so repulsive in his looks and ways, that, try as she would, she could not bring herself to like him, and often her disgust would show itself in her face in spite of her effort to hide it. She could not really love the child.

One day she was sitting on the veranda steps with this child in her arms. The sun was shining brightly, and the perfume of the autumn honeysuckles, the chirping of the birds, and the buzzing of the insects, lulled her into a sort of sleep. Then in a half-waking, half-dreaming state, she thought of herself as having changed places with the child, and as lying there, only more foul, more repulsive in her sinfulness than he was.

Over her she saw the Lord Jesus bending, looking lovingly into her face, yet with an expression of gentle rebuke in his eye, as if he meant to say, "If I can bear with you who are so full of sin, surely you ought, for my sake, to love that innocent child who suffers for the sin of his parents."

She woke up with a sudden start, and looked into the boy's face. He had waked, too, and was looking very earnestly into her face. Sorry for her past disgust, and feeling in her heart a new compa.s.sion for him, she bent her face to his, and kissed him as tenderly as ever she had kissed babe of her own. With a startled look in his eyes, and a flush on his cheek, the boy gave her back a smile so sweet that she had never seen one like it before. From that moment a wonderful change came over the child. He understood the new affection that had come instead of dislike and loathing in the woman's heart. That touch of human love transformed his peevish, fretful nature into gentle quiet and beauty. The woman had seen a vision of herself in that blotched, repulsive child, and of Christ's wonderful love for her in spite of her sinfulness. Under the inspiration of this vision she had become indeed as Christ to the child. The love of Christ had come into her heart, and was pouring through her upon that poor, wretched, wronged life.

Christ loves the unlovely, the deformed, the loathsome, the leprous.

We have only to think of ourselves as we are in his sight, and then remember that, in spite of all the moral and spiritual loathsomeness in us, he yet loves us, does not shrink from us, lays his hand upon us to heal us, takes us into most intimate companionship with himself. This Christian woman had seen a vision of herself, and of Christ loving her still and condescending to bless and save her; and now she was ready to be as Christ, to show the spirit of Christ, to be the pity and the love of Christ to this poor, loathsome child lying on her knee.

She had gotten the touch of Christ by getting the love of Christ in her heart. And we can get it in no other way. We must see ourselves as Christ's servants, sent by him to be to others what he is to us. Then shall we be fitted to be a blessing to every life which our life touches. Our words then shall throb with love, and find their way to the hearts of the weary and sorrowing. Then there will be a sympathetic quality in our life which shall give a strange power of helpfulness to whatever we do.

Says a thoughtful writer, speaking of influence: "Let a man press nearer to Christ, and open his nature more widely to admit the energy of Christ, and, whether he knows it or not,--it is better, perhaps, if he does not know it,--he will certainly be growing in power for G.o.d with men, and for men with G.o.d." We get power for Christ only as we become filled with the very life of Christ.

Everywhere about us there are lives, cold, and cheerless, and dull, which by the touch of our hand, in loving warmth, in Christ's name, would be wondrously blessed and transformed. Some one tells of going into a jeweller's store to look at certain gems. Among other stones he was shown an opal. As it lay there, however, it appeared dull and altogether l.u.s.treless. Then the jeweller took it in his hand and held it for some moments, and again showed it to his customer. Now it gleamed and flashed with all the glories of the rainbow. It needed the touch and warmth of a human hand to bring out its iridescence. There are human lives everywhere about us that are rich in their possibilities of beauty and glory. No gems or jewels are so precious; but as we see them in their earthly condition they are dull and l.u.s.treless, without brightness or loveliness. Perhaps they are even covered with stain and denied by sin. Yet they need only the touch of the hand of Christ to bring out the radiance, the loveliness, the beauty of the divine image in them. And you and I must be the hand of Christ to these l.u.s.treless or stained lives. Touching them with our warm love, the sleeping splendor that is in them, hidden mayhap under sin's marring and ruin, will yet shine out, the beginning of glory for them.

CHAPTER VI.

THE BLESSING OF A BURDEN.

"Then welcome each rebuff, That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand nor go.

Be our joys three parts pain!

Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!"

--ROBERT BROWNING.

It is not always the easiest things that are the best things. Usually we have to pay for any good thing about its full value. In all markets commodities that cost little may be set down as worth but little. All our blessings may be rated in the same way. If they come easily, without great cost of effort or sacrifice, their value to us is not great. But if we can get them only through self-denial, tears, anguish, and pain, we may be sure that they hide in them the very gold of G.o.d. So it is that many of our best and richest blessings come to us in some form of rugged hardness.

Take what we call drudgery. Life is full of it. It begins in childhood. There is school, with its set hours, its lessons, rules, tables, tasks, recitations. Then, when we grow up, instead of getting away from this bondage of routine, this interminable drudgery, it goes on just as in childhood. It is rising at the same hour every morning, and hurrying away to the day's tasks, and doing the same things over and over, six days in the week, fifty-two weeks in the year, and on and on unto life's end. For the great majority of us, there is almost no break in the monotonous rounds of our days through the long years.

Many of us sigh and wish we might in some way free ourselves from this endless routine. We think of it as a sore bondage and by no means the ideal of a n.o.ble and beautiful life.

But really, much that is best in life comes out of this very bondage.

A recent writer suggests a new beat.i.tude: "Blessed be drudgery." He reminds us that no Bible beat.i.tude comes easily, but that every one of them is the fruit of some experience of hardness or pain. He shows us that life's drudgery, wearisome and disagreeable as it is, yields rich treasures of good and blessing. Drudgery, he tells us, is the secret of all culture. He names as fundamentals in a strong, fine character, "power of attention; power of industry; prompt.i.tude in beginning work; method, accuracy, and despatch in doing work; perseverance; courage before difficulties; cheer under straining burdens; self-control; self-denial; temperance"; and claims that nowhere else can these qualities be gotten save in the unending grind and pressure of those routine duties which we call drudgery. "It is because we have to go, morning after morning, through rain, through shine, through headache, heartache, to the appointed spot and do the appointed work; because, and only because, we have to stick to that work through the eight or ten hours, long after rest would be so sweet; because the school-boy's lessons must be learned at nine o'clock, and learned without a slip; because the accounts on the ledger must square to a cent; because the goods must tally exactly with the invoice; because good temper must be kept with children, customers, neighbors, not seven times, but seventy times seven; because the besetting sin must be watched to-day, to-morrow, next day; in short, . . . it is because, and only because, of the rut, plod, grind, hum-drum in the work, that we get at last those self-foundations laid," which are essential to all n.o.ble character.

So there is a blessing for us in the commonest, wearisomest task-work of our lives. "Blessed be drudgery" is truly a beat.i.tude. We all need the discipline of this tireless plodding to build us up into beautiful character. Even the loveliest flowers must have their roots in common earth; so, many of the sweetest things in human lives grow out of the soil of drudgery. "Be thou, O man, like unto the rose. Its root is indeed in dirt and mud, but its flowers still send forth grace and perfume."

Take again life's struggles and conflicts. There are, in the experience of each one, obstacles, hindrances, and difficulties, which make it hard to live successfully. Every one has to move onward and upward through ranks of resistances. This is true of physical life.

Every baby that is born begins at once a struggle for existence. To be victorious and live, or to succ.u.mb and die? is the question of every cradle, and only half the babies born reach their teens. After that, until its close, life is a continuous struggle with the manifold forms of physical infirmity. If we live to be old it must be through our victoriousness over the unceasing antagonism of accident and disease.

The same is true in mental progress. It must be made against resistance. It is never easy to become a scholar or to attain intellectual culture. It takes years and years of study and discipline to draw out and train the faculties of the mind. An indolent, self-indulgent student may have an easy time; he never troubles himself with difficult problems; he lets the hard things pa.s.s, not vexing his brain with them. But in evading the burden he misses the blessing that was in it for him. The only path to the joys and rewards of scholarship is that of patient, persistent toil.

It is true also in spiritual life. We enter a world of antagonism and opposition the moment we resolve at Christ's feet to be Christians, to be true men or women, to forsake sin, to obey G.o.d, to do our duty.

There never comes a day when we can live n.o.bly and worthily without effort, without resistance to wrong influences, without struggle against the power of temptation. It never gets easy to be good.

Evermore the cross lies at our feet, and daily it must be taken up and carried, if we would follow Christ. We are apt to grow weary of this unending struggle, and to become discouraged, because there is neither rest nor abatement in it.

But here again we learn that it is out of just such struggles that we must get the n.o.bleness and beauty of character after which we are striving. One of the old Scotch martyrs had on his crest the motto, _Sub pondere cresco_ ("I grow under a weight"). On the crest was a palm-tree, with weights depending from its fronds. In spite of the weights the tree was straight as an arrow, lifting its crown of graceful foliage high up in the serene air. It is well known that the palm grows best loaded down with weights. Thus this martyr testified that he, like the beautiful tree of the Orient, grew best in his spiritual life under weights.

This is the universal law of spiritual growth. There must be resistance, struggle, conflict, or there can be no development of strength. We are inclined to pity those whose lives are scenes of toil and hardship, but G.o.d's angels do not pity them, if only they are victorious; for in their overcoming they are climbing daily upward toward the holy heights of sainthood. The beat.i.tudes in the Apocalypse are all for over-comers. Heaven's rewards and crowns lie beyond battle-plains. Spiritual life always needs opposition. It flourishes most luxuriantly in adverse circ.u.mstances. We grow best under weights.

We find our richest blessings in the burdens we dread to take up.

The word "character" in its origin is suggestive. It is from a root which signifies to scratch, to engrave, to cut into furrows. Then it comes to mean that which is engraved or cut on anything. In life, therefore, it is that which experiences cut or furrow in the soul. A baby has no character. Its life is like a piece of white paper, with nothing yet written upon it; or it is like a smooth marble tablet, on which, as yet, the sculptor has cut nothing; or the canvas, waiting for the painter's colors. Character is formed as the years go on. It is the writing,--the song, the story, put upon the paper. It is the engraving, the sculpturing, which the marble receives under the chisel.

It is the picture which the artist paints on the canvas. Final character is what a man is when he has lived through all his earthly years. In the Christian it is the lines of the likeness of Christ limned, sometimes furrowed and scarred, upon his soul by the divine Spirit through the means of grace and the experiences of his own life.

I saw a beautiful vase, and asked its story. Once it was a lump of common clay lying in the darkness. Then it was rudely dug out and crushed and ground in the mill, and then put upon the wheel and shaped, then polished and tinted and put into the furnace and burned. At last, after many processes, it stood upon the table, a gem of graceful beauty. In some way a.n.a.logous to this every n.o.ble character is formed.

Common clay at first, it pa.s.ses through a thousand processes and experiences, many of them hard and painful, until at length it is presented before G.o.d, faultless in its beauty, bearing the features of Christ himself.

Spiritual beauty never can be reached without cost. The blessing is always hidden away in the burden, and can be gotten only by lifting the burden. Self must die if the good in us is to live and shine out in radiance. Michael Angelo used to say, as the chippings flew thick from the marble on the floor of his studio, "While the marble wastes, the image grows." There must be a wasting of self, a chipping away continually of things that are dear to nature, if the things that are true, and just, and honorable, and pure, and lovely, are to come out in the life. The marble must waste while the image grows.

Then take suffering. Here, too, the same law prevails. Every one suffers. Said Augustine, "G.o.d had one Son without sin; he has none without sorrow." From infancy's first cry until the old man's life goes out in a gasp of pain, suffering is a condition of existence. It comes in manifold forms. Now it is in sickness; the body is racked with pain or burns in fever. Ofttimes sickness is a heavy burden. Yet even this burden has a blessing in it for the Christian. Sickness rightly borne makes us better. It unbinds the world's fetters. It purifies the heart. It sobers the spirit. It turns the eyes heavenward. It strips off much of the illusion of life and uncovers its better realities. Sickness in a home of faith, prayer, and love, softens all the household hearts, makes sympathy deeper, draws all the family closer together.

Trouble comes in many other forms. It may be a bitter disappointment which falls upon a young life when love has not been true, or when character has proved unworthy, turning the fair blossoms of hope to dead leaves under the feet. There are lives that bear the pain and carry the hidden memorials of such a grief through long years, making them sad at heart even when walking in sweetest sunshine.

Or it may be the failure of some other hope, as when one has followed a bright dream of ambition for days and years, finding it only a dream.

Or it may be the keener, more bitter grief which comes to one when a friend--a child, a brother or sister, a husband or wife--does badly.

In such a case even the divine comfort cannot heal the heart's hurt; love cannot but suffer, and there is no hand that can lessen the pang.

The anguish which love endures for others' sins is among the saddest of earth's sorrows.

There are griefs that hang no c.r.a.pe on the door-bell, that wear no black garments, that close no shutters, that drop no tears which men can see, that can get no sympathy save that of the blessed Christ and perhaps of a closest human brother, and must wear smiles before men and go on with life's work as if all were gladness within the heart. If we knew the inner life of many of the people we meet, we would be very gentle with them and would excuse the things in them that seem strange or eccentric to us. They are carrying burdens of secret grief. We do not begin to know the sorrows of our brothers.