Making the Most of Life Part 5

Since I began to write this chapter I have had a long talk with one whose life is sorely bent. Ten years since I first knew her as a bright and happy young girl, her face sunny in the light of G.o.d's love.

Trouble came into her life in many forms. Her own father proved unworthy, failing in all the sacred duties of affection toward his child. Events in her own life were disappointing and discouraging.

Friends in whom she had trusted failed in that faithfulness and helpfulness which one has a right to expect from one's friends. There was a succession of unhappy experiences, through several years, all tending to hurt her heart-life. As the result of all this, she has become embittered and hardened, not only against those who have wronged her and treated her unjustly, but even against G.o.d. So long has she yielded to these feelings that her whole life has been bent down from its upward, G.o.dward look into settled despondency. G.o.d has altogether faded out of her soul's vision, and she thinks of him only as unkind and unjust. To restore her life to its former brightness and beauty will require a moral miracle as great as that by which the body of the crooked woman was made straight.

Then there are lives also that are bowed down by toil and care. For many people, life's burdens are very heavy. There are fathers of large families who sometimes find their load almost more than they can bear, in their efforts to provide for those who are dear to them. There are mothers who, under their burdens of household care, at times feel themselves bowed down, and scarcely able longer to go on. In all places of responsibility, where men are called to stand, the load many times grows very heavy, and stalwart forms bend under it. This world's work is hard for most of us. Life is not play to any who take it earnestly.

And many persons yield to the weight of a duty, and let themselves be bent down under it. We see men bowing under their load, until their very body grows crooked, and they can look only downward. We see them become prematurely old. The light goes out of their eyes; the freshness fades out of their cheeks; the sweetness leaves their spirit.

Few things in life are sadder than the way some people let themselves be bent down by their load of duty or care. There really is no reason why this should be so. G.o.d never puts any greater burden upon us than we are able to bear, with the help he is ready to give. Christ stands ever close beside us, willing to carry the heaviest end of every load that is laid upon us.

Men never break down so long as they keep a happy, joyous heart. It is the sad heart that tires. Whatever our load, we should always keep a songful spirit in our breast. There are two ways of meeting hard experiences. One way is to struggle and resist, refusing to yield.

The result is, the wounding of the soul and the intensifying of the hardness. The other way is sweetly to accept the circ.u.mstances or the restraints, to make the best of them, and to endure them songfully and cheerfully. Those who live in the first of these ways grow old at mid-life. Those who take the other way of life keep a young, happy heart even to old age.

The true way to live is to yield to no burden; to carry the heaviest load with courage and gladness; never to let one's eyes be turned downward toward the earth, but to keep them ever lifted up to the hills. Men whose work requires them to stoop all the time--to work in a bent posture--every now and then may be seen straightening themselves up, taking a long, deep breath of air, and looking up toward the skies.

Thus their bodies are preserved in health and erectness in spite of their work. Whatever our toil or burden, we should train ourselves to look often upward, to stand erect, and get a frequent glimpse of the sky of G.o.d's love, and a frequent breath of heaven's pure, sweet air.

Thus we shall keep our souls erect under the heaviest load of work or care.

The miracle of the straightening of the woman who was bent double, has its gospel of precious hope for any who have failed to learn earlier the lesson of keeping straight. The bowed down may yet be lifted up.

The curvature of eighteen years' growth and stiffening was cured in a moment. The woman who for so long had not been able to look up, went away with her eyes upturned to G.o.d in praise.

The same miracle Christ is able to work now upon souls that are bent, whether by sin, by sorrow, or by life's load of toil. He can undo sin's terrible work, and restore the divine image to the soul. He can give such comfort to the sad heart that eyes long downcast shall be lifted up to look upon G.o.d's face in loving submission and joy. He can put such songs into the hearts of the weary and overwrought that the crooked form shall grow straight, and brightness shall come again into the tired face.

CHAPTER IX.

TRANSFIGURED LIVES.

"The lives which seem so poor, so low, The hearts which are so cramped and dull, The baffled hopes, the impulse slow, Thou takest, touchest all, and lo!

They blossom to the beautiful."

--SUSAN COOLIDGE.

Every Christian's life should be transfigured. There is a sense in which even a true believer's body becomes transfigured. We have all seen faces that appeared to shine as if there were some hidden light behind them. There are some old people who have learned well life's lessons of patience, peace, contentment, love, trust, and hope, and whose faces really glow as they near the sunset gates. Sometimes it is a saintly sufferer, who, in long endurance of pain, learns to lie on Christ's bosom in sweet unmurmuring quiet, and whose features take upon themselves increasingly the brightness of holy peace.

But whatever grace may do for the body, it always transfigures the character. The love of G.o.d finds us ruined sinners, and leaves us glorified saints. We are predestinated "to be conformed to the image of his Son." Nor are we to wait for death to transform us; the work should begin at once. We have a responsibility, too, in this work.

The sculptor takes the blackened marble block and hews it into a form of beauty. The marble is pa.s.sive in his hands, and does nothing but submit to be cut and hewn and polished as he will. But we are not insensate marble; we have a part in the fashioning of our lives into spiritual holiness. We will never become like Christ without our own desire and effort.

We ought to know well what our part is, what we have to do with our own sanctification. How, then, may we become transfigured Christians?

There is a transfiguring power in prayer. It was as our Lord was praying that the fashion of his countenance was altered. What is prayer? It is far more than the tame saying over of certain forms of devotion. It is the pouring out of the heart's deepest cravings. It is the highest act of which the soul is capable. When you pray truly, all that is best, n.o.blest, most exalted, purest, heavenliest in you, presses up toward G.o.d. Hence earnest prayer always lights up the very face, and lifts up the life into higher, holier mood. We grow toward that which we much desire. Hence prayers for Christ-likeness have a transfiguring effect.

Holy thoughts in the heart have also a transfiguring influence on the life. "As he thinketh in his heart, so is he." If we allow jealousies, envies, ugly tempers, pride, and other evil things to stay in our heart, our life will grow into the likeness of these unlovely things. But if we cherish pure, gentle, unselfish, holy thoughts and feelings, our life will become beautiful.

Professor Drummond tells of a young girl whose character ripened into rare loveliness. Her friends watched her growing gentleness and heavenliness with wonder. They could not understand the secret of it.

She wore about her neck a little locket within which no one was allowed to look. Once, however, she was very ill, and one of her companions was permitted then to open this sacred ornament, and she saw there the words, "Whom having not seen I love." This was the secret. It was love for the unseen Christ that transfigured her life. If we think continually of the Christ, meditating upon him, thinking over sweet thoughts of him, and letting his love dwell within us, we shall grow like him.

Communion with Christ transfigures a life. Every one we meet leaves a touch upon us which becomes part of our character. Our lives are like sheets of paper, and every one who comes writes a word, or a line, or leaves a little picture painted there. Our intimate companions and friends, who draw very close to us, and are much with us, entering into our inner heart-life, make very deep impressions upon us.

If, therefore, we live with Christ, abide in him, the close, continued companionship with him will change us into his likeness. Personal friendship with Christ in this world is as possible as any merely human friendship. The companionship is spiritual, but it is real. The devout Christian has no other friend who enters so fully into his life as does the Lord Christ Jesus. The effect of this companionship is the transfiguring of the character. It is not without reason that the artists paint the beloved disciple as likest his Lord in features. He knew Jesus more intimately than any of the other disciples, and, in his deeper, closer companionship, was more affected and impressed by the Lord's beauty of holiness.

Again, keeping the eye upon the likeness of Christ transfigures the life. The old monks intently gazed upon the crucifix, and they said that the prints of the nails would come in their hands and feet, and the thorn-scars in their brow as they beheld. It was but a gross fancy; yet in the fancy there is a spiritual truth. Gazing by faith upon Christ, the lines of his beauty indeed print themselves on our hearts. This is the meaning of St. Paul's word: "We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image." The Gospel is the mirror. There we see the image of Christ. If we earnestly, continually, and lovingly behold it, the effect will be the changing of our own lives into the same likeness. The transformation is wrought by the divine Spirit, and our part is only to behold, to continue beholding, the blessed beauty. We sit before the camera, and our own picture is printed on the prepared gla.s.s. We sit before Christ, and we become the camera, and his image is printed on our soul.

There is a pathetic story of a French sculptor, which ill.u.s.trates the sacredness with which life's ideal should be cherished and guarded. He was a genius, and was at work on his masterpiece. But he was a poor man, and lived in a small garret, which was studio, workshop, and bedroom to him. He had his statue almost finished, in clay, when one night there came suddenly a great frost over the city. The sculptor lay on his bed, with his statue before him in the centre of the fireless room. As the chill air came down upon him, he knew that in the intense cold there was danger that the water in the interstices of the clay would freeze and destroy his precious work. So the old man arose from his bed, and took the clothes that had covered him in his sleep, and reverently wrapped them about his statue to save it, then lay down himself in the cold, uncovered. In the morning, when his friends came in, they found the old sculptor dead; but the image was preserved unharmed.

We each have in our soul, if we are true believers in Christ, a vision of spiritual loveliness into which we are striving to fashion our lives. This vision is our conception of the character of Christ.

"That is what I am going to be some day," we say. Far away beyond our present attainment as this vision may shine, yet we are ever striving to reach it. This is the ideal which we carry in our heart amid all our toiling and struggling. This ideal we must keep free from all marring or stain. We must save it though, like the old sculptor, we lose our very life in guarding it. We should be willing to die rather than give it up to be destroyed. We should preserve the image of Christ, bright, radiant, unsoiled, in our soul, until it transforms our dull, sinful, earthly life into its own transfigured beauty.

No other aim in life is worthy of an immortal being. We may become like the angels; what debas.e.m.e.nt, then, to let our lives, with all their glorious possibilities, be dragged down into the dust of shame and dishonor! Rather let us seek continually the glory for which we were made and redeemed. "Beloved, now are we children of G.o.d, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall see him even as he is. And every one that hath this hope set on him purifieth himself, even as he is pure."

"Wonderful the whiteness of thy glory; Can we truly that perfection share?

Yes; our lives are pages of thy story, We thy shape and superscription bear; Tarnished forms--torn leaves--but thou canst mend them, Thou thine own completeness canst unfold From our imperfections, and wilt end them-- Dross consuming, turning dust to gold."

A drop of water lay one day in a gutter, soiled, stained, polluted.

Looking up into the blue of the sky, it began to wish for purity, to long to be cleansed and made crystalline. Its sigh was heard, and it was quickly lifted up by the sun's gentle fingers--up, out of the foul gutter, into the sweet air, then higher and higher; at length the gentle winds caught it and bore it away, away, and by and by it rested on a distant mountain-top, a flake of pure, white, beautiful snow.

This is a little parable of what the grace of G.o.d does for every sinful life that longs and cries for purity and holiness.

CHAPTER X.

THE INTERPRETATION OF SORROW.

"So much we miss If love is weak; so much we gain If love is strong; G.o.d thinks no pain Too sharp or lasting to ordain To teach us this."

--HELEN HUNT JACKSON.

There will always be mysteries in sorrow. Men will always wonder what it means. It is impossible for us, with our earthly limitations, to understand it. Even the strongest Christian faith will have its questions, and many of its questions will have to remain unanswered until the horizon of life is widened, and its dim light becomes full and clear in heaven. Meanwhile, however, some of these questions may be at least partially answered, and grief's poignancy in some slight measure alleviated. And surely no smallest gleam of comfort should be withheld from the world that needs comfort so sorely, and cries out so hungrily for it.

Human hearts are the same everywhere. Sorrow's experiences, while strangely diverse, are yet alike in their general features. Wherever we listen to the suppressed voices of grief, we hear the same questions. What has been answer to one, will therefore be answer to thousands more. Recently, in one day, two letters came to me from sorrowing ones, with questions. Whether any comfort was given in the private answers or not, it may be that the mere stating of the questions, with a few sentences concerning each, may be helpful to others who are carrying like burdens.

One of these letters is from a Christian man whose only son has been led into sinful courses, swiftly descending to the saddest depths. The story is too painful to be repeated in these pages. In his sore distress, the father, a G.o.dly man, a man of strong faith and n.o.ble wisdom, cries out: "What is the comfort even of Christ and the Bible for me? How can I roll this burden of mine upon G.o.d?"

In answer to these questions it must be remembered that there are some things which even the richest, divinest comfort cannot do. For one thing, it cannot take away the pain of grief or sorrow. Our first thought of comfort usually is that it shall lift off our burden. We soon learn, however, that it is not in this way that comfort ordinarily comes. It does not make the grief any less. It does not make our hearts any less sensitive to anguish. "Consolation implies rather an augmentation of the power of bearing than a diminution of the burden."

In this case, it cannot lift off the loving father's heart the burden of disappointment and anguish which he experiences in seeing his son swept away in the currents of temptation. No possible comfort can do this. The perfect peace in which G.o.d promises to keep those whose minds are stayed on him, is not a painless peace in any case of suffering. The crushed father cannot expect a comfort which will make him forget his wandering, sinning child, or which will cause him to feel no longer the poignant anguish which the boy's course causes in his heart. Father-love must be destroyed to make such comforting possible, and that would be a sorer calamity than any sorrow.

The comfort in such a grief, is that which comes through faith in G.o.d even in the sore pain. The child was given to G.o.d in his infancy, and was brought up as G.o.d's child along his early years. Who will say that he may not yet, in some way, at some time, be brought back to G.o.d? The daily burden may then daily be laid in the divine hands. The heart's anguish may express itself not in despairing cries, but in believing prayers, inspired by the promises, and kindled into fervency by blessed hope. Then peace will come, not painless peace, but peace which lies on Christ's bosom in the darkness, and loves and trusts and asks no questions, but waits with all of hope's expectancy.

At the same time we are never to forget, while we trust G.o.d for the outcome of our disappointments, that every sorrow has its mission to our life. There is something he desires it to work in us. What it may be in any particular instance we cannot tell; nor is it wise for us to ask. The wisest, truest thing we can do is reverently to open our hearts to the ministry of the sorrow, asking G.o.d to do his will in us, not allowing us to hinder the beautiful work he would do, and helping us to rejoice even in the grief. The tears may continue to flow, but then with Mrs. Browning we can sing:--

"I praise thee while my days go on; I love thee while my days go on; Through dark and death, through fire and frost, With emptied arms and treasure lost, I thank thee while my days go on."

The other letter referred to is from another father, over whom wave after wave of sorrow had pa.s.sed. Within a brief s.p.a.ce of time two children were taken away. The one was a son who had entered his professional career, and had large hope and promise for the future--a young man of rare abilities and many n.o.ble qualities. The other was a daughter, who had reached womanhood, and was a happy and beloved wife, surrounded by friends and the refinements of a beautiful home, and all that makes life sweet and desirable. Both of these children G.o.d took, one soon after the other. The father, a man of most tender affections, and yet of implicit faith in G.o.d, uttered no murmur when called to stand at the graves of his beloved ones; and yet his heart cries out for interpretation.