Making the Most of Life Part 8

So it is of all great thoughts. Thinkers brood long in the silence and then come forth and their eloquence sways us. So it is with art. We look at a fine picture and our hearts are warmed by its wondrous beauty. But do we know the story of the picture? Years and years of thought and of tireless toil lie back of its enrapturing beauty. Or here is a book which charms you, which thrills and inspires you. Great thoughts lie on its pages. Do you know the book's story? The author lived, struggled, toiled, suffered, wept, that he might write the words which now help you. Back of every good life-thought which blesses men, lies a dark quarry where the thought was born and shaped into the beauty of form which makes it a blessing to the world.

Or here is a n.o.ble and beautiful character. Goodness appears natural to it. It seems easy for the man to be n.o.ble and to do n.o.ble things.

But again the quarry is back of the temple. Each one's heart is the quarry out of which comes all that the person builds into his life.

"As he thinketh in his heart so is he." Everything that appears in our lives comes out of our hearts. All our acts are first thoughts. The artist's picture, the poet's poem, the singer's song, the architect's building, are thoughts before they are wrought out into forms of beauty. All dispositions, tempers, feelings, words, and acts start in the heart. If the workmen had quarried faulty stones in the caverns, the temple would have been spoiled. An evil heart, with stained thoughts, impure imaginings, blurred feelings, can never build up a fair and lovely character.

We need to guard our heart-quarry with all diligence, since out of it are the issues of life. The thoughts build the life and make the character. White thoughts rear up a beautiful fabric before G.o.d and man. Soiled thoughts pile up a stained life, without beauty or honor.

We should look well, therefore, to our heart-quarry, where the work goes on in the darkness without ceasing. If all be right there we need give little concern to the building of character. Diligent heart-keeping yields a life unspotted from the world.

A little child had been reading the beat.i.tudes, and was asked which of the qualities named in them she most desired. "I would rather be pure in heart," she said. When asked the reason for her choice, she answered: "If I could but have a pure heart, I should then possess all the other qualities of the beat.i.tudes in the one." The child was right. A pure heart will build a beautiful life, a fit temple for Christ. Thinking over G.o.d's holy thoughts after him will make us like G.o.d. Thinking habitually about Christ, Christ's beauty will come into our souls and shine in our faces.

CHAPTER XIV.

DOING THINGS FOB CHRIST.

"We can best minister to him by helping them Who dare not touch his hallowed garment's hem; Their lives are even as ours--one piece, one plan.

Him know we not, him shall we never know, Till we behold him in the least of these Who suffer or who sin. In sick souls he Lies bound and sighing, asks our sympathies; Their grateful eyes thy benison bestow, Brother and Lord,--'Ye did it unto me.'"

--LUCY LARCOM.

If Christ were here, we say, we would do many things for him. The women who love him would gladly minister to him as did the women who followed him from Galilee. The men who are his friends would work to help him in any ways he might direct. The children who are trying to please him would run errands for him. We all say we would be delighted to serve him if only he would come again to our world and visit our homes. But we can do things for him just as really as if he were here again in human form.

One way of doing this is by obeying him. He is our Lord. Nothing pleases him so well as our obedience. It is told of a great philosopher that a friend called one day to see him, and was entertained by the philosopher's little daughter till her father came in. The friend supposed that the child of so wise a man would be learning something very deep. So he asked her, "What is your father teaching you?" The little maid looked up into his face with her clear eyes and said, "Obedience." That is the one great lesson our Lord is teaching us. He wants us to learn obedience. If we obey him always we shall always be doing things for him.

We do things for Christ which we do through love to him. Even obedience without love does not please him. But the smallest services we can render, if love inspire them, he accepts. Thus we can make the commonest tasks of our lives holy ministries, as sacred as what the angels do. There is a legend of a monk who painted in an old convent-cell pictures of martyrs and holy saints and of the sweet Christ-face with the crown of thorns. Men called his pictures only daubs.

"One night the poor monk mused, 'Could I but render Honor to Christ as other painters do-- Were but my skill as great as is the tender Love that inspires me when his cross I view.'

"'But no, 'tis vain I toil and strive in sorrow; What man so scorns still less can _He_ admire; My life's work is all valueless; to-morrow I'll cast my ill-wrought pictures in the fire.'

"He raised his eyes within his cell--O wonder!

There stood a Visitor; thorn-crowned was He; And a sweet voice the silence rent asunder: 'I scorn no work that's done for love of me.'

"And round the walls the paintings shone resplendent With lights and colors to this world unknown, A perfect beauty and a hue transcendent, That never yet on mortal canvas shone."

There is a beautiful meaning in the old legend. Christ scorns no work that is done for love of him. Most of us have much drudgery in our lives, but even this we can make glorious by doing it through love for Christ.

Things we do for others in Christ's name, are done for him. We all remember that wonderful "inasmuch" in the twenty-fifth of Matthew. If we find the sick one, or the poor one, and go and minister, as we may be able, as unto the Lord, the deed is accepted as if done to him in person. Mrs. Margaret J. Preston, in one of her beautiful poems, tells of a weary sister who grieved sorely because, as it seemed to her, she had not been able to do any work for Christ. By a mother's dying bed she had promised to care for her little sister, and her work for the child so filled her hands that she had not time for anything else. As she grieved thus once, the little sister sleeping beside her stirred and told her of a sweet, strange dream she had had. She thought her sister was sitting sad because the King had bidden each one to bring him a gift.

"And in my dream I saw you there, And heard you say, 'No hands can bear A gift, that are so filled with care.'

"What care?' the King said, and he smiled To hear you answer, wailing wild, 'I only toil to feed a child.'

"And then with such a look divine ('Twas that awaked me with its shine), He whispered, 'But the child is mine.'"

There are many for whom this little story-poem should have sweet comfort. There are fathers and mothers who find it hard to provide for their children. It takes all their time and strength, and sometimes they say, "I cannot do any work for Christ, because it takes every moment to earn bread and clothing for my little ones, and to care for them." But Jesus whispers, "Yes; yet your children are mine, and what you do for them you do for me."

There is in a home an invalid who requires all the time and thought of another member of the household in loving attention. It may be an aged parent needing the help of a child; it may be a child, crippled, blind, or sick, needing all a parent's care; or it may be a brother broken in health on whom a sister is called to wait continually with patient love. And sometimes those who are required thus to spend their days and nights in ministry for others feel that their lives count for nothing in work for Christ. They hear the appeals for laborers and for service, but cannot respond. Their hands are already filled. Yet Jesus whispers, "These for whom you are toiling, caring, and spending time and strength are mine, and in doing for them you are doing for me just as acceptable work as are those who are toiling without distraction or hindrance in the great open field."

Sometimes the work we do for Christ with purest love fails, or seems to fail of result. Nothing appears to come of it. There are whole lifetimes of G.o.dly people that seem to yield nothing. A word ought to be said about this kind of doing for Christ. We are to set it down as true without exception, that no work wrought in Christ's name and with love for him is ever lost. What we, in our limited, short-sighted vision, planned to do may not be accomplished, but G.o.d's purpose goes on in every consecrated life, in every true deed done. The disciples thought that Mary's costly ointment was wasted. So it seemed; but this world has been a little sweeter ever since the breaking of the vase that let the perfume escape into its common air. So it is with many things that are done, and many lives that are lived. They seem to fail, and there is nothing on the earth to show where they have been.

Yet somehow the stock of human happiness is larger and the world is a little better.

Our work for Christ that fails in what we intended may yet leave a blessing in some other way. A faithful Bible-cla.s.s teacher through many months visited a young man, a member of her cla.s.s, in sickness.

She read the Bible to him and sang sweet hymns and prayed by his bedside. He was not a Christian and she hoped that he would be led to Christ. But at length he recovered and went out again, unchanged, or even more indifferent than ever to his spiritual interests. All the faithful teacher's work seemed to have been in vain. Then she learned that a frail, invalid girl, living in an adjoining house, had been brought to Christ through the loving work done for the careless scholar. The songs sung by the sick man's bedside, and which seemed to have left no blessing in his heart, had been heard through the thin wall of the house in the girl's sick-room, and had told her of the love of the Saviour.

The records of Christian ministry are full of such good work done unintentionally. Failing to leave a blessing where it was hoped a blessing would be received, it blessed some other life. We may not say that any good work has failed until we know in the last great harvest all the results of the things we have done and the words we have spoken.

"Not all who seem to fail have failed indeed; Not all who fail have therefore worked in vain; For all our acts to many issues lead; And out of earnest purpose, pure and plain, Enforced by honest toil of hand or brain, The Lord will fashion in his own good time (Be this the laborer's proudly humble creed), Such ends as in his wisdom, fitliest chime With his vast love's eternal harmonies.

There is no failure for the good and wise; What though thy seed should fall by the wayside, And the birds s.n.a.t.c.h it?--Yet the birds are fed; Or they may bear it far across the tide, To give rich harvests after thou art dead."

Many people die, and see yet no harvest from their life's sowing. They come to the end of their years, and their hands are empty. But when they enter heaven they will find that they have really been building there all the while, that the things that have seemed to leave no result on the earth have left glorious results inside the gates of pearl.

"There is no end to the sky, And the stars are everywhere, And time is eternity, And the here is over there; For the common deeds of the common day Are ringing bells in the far away."

Then even if the work we do does not itself leave any record, the doing of it leaves a record--an impression--on our own life. There is a word of Scripture which says, "He that doeth the will of G.o.d abideth forever." Doing G.o.d's will builds up enduring character in us. Every obedience adds a new touch of beauty to the soul. Every true thing we do in Christ's name, though it leave no mark anywhere else in G.o.d's universe, leaves an imperishable mark on our own life. Every deed of unselfish kindness that we perform with love for Christ in our heart, though it bless no other soul in all the world, leaves its sure benediction on ourselves.

Thousands of years since a leaf fell on the soft clay and seemed to be lost. But last summer a geologist in his ramblings broke off a piece of rock with his hammer, and there lay the image of the leaf, with every line, and every vein, and all the delicate tracery, preserved in the stone through these centuries. So the words we speak, and the things we do for Christ to-day, may seem to be lost, but in the great final revealing the smallest of them will appear, to the glory of Christ and the reward of the doer.

CHAPTER XV.

HELPING AND OVER-HELPING.

"As we meet and touch each day The many travellers on our way, Let every such brief contact be A glorious, helpful ministry; The contact of the soil and seed, Each giving to the other's need, Each helping on the other's best, And blessing each as well as blest."

Even kindness may be overdone. One may be too gentle. Love may hold others back from duty, and thus may wreck destinies. We need to guard against meddling with G.o.d's discipline, softening the experience that he means to be hard, sheltering our friend from the wind that he intends to blow chillingly. All summer does not make a good zone to live in; we need autumn and winter to temper the heat, and keep vegetation from luxuriant overgrowth. The best thing we can do for others is not always to take their load or do their duty for them.

Of course we are to be helpful to others. No aim should be put higher in our life-plans than that of personal helpfulness. The motto of the true Christian cannot be other than that of the Master: "Not to be ministered unto, but to minister." Even in the ambition to gather and retain wealth, the spirit of the desire must be, if we are Christians at all, that thereby we may become more helpful to others; that through, or by means of, our wealth, we may be enabled to do larger and greater good. Whatever gift, power, or possession we have that we do not seek to use in this way is not yet truly devoted to G.o.d. Fruit is the test of character, and the purpose of fruit is not to adorn the tree or vine, but to feed hunger. Whatever we are, whatever we have, is fruit, and must be held for the feeding of the hunger of others.

Thus personal helpfulness is the aim of all truly consecrated life. In so far as we are living for ourselves, we are not Christians.

Then there are many ways of helping others. Some people help us in material ways. It is a still higher kind of help which we get from those who minister to our mental needs, who write the books which charm, instruct, and entertain us. Mind is greater than body. Bread, and clothing, and furniture, and houses will not satisfy our intellectual cravings. There are those, however, who do help us in these loftier ranges. Music, poetry, and art minister both to our gratification and our culture. Good books bring to us inestimable benefits. They tell us of new worlds, and inspire us to conquer them.

They show us lofty and n.o.ble ideals, and stimulate us to attain them.

They make us larger, better, stronger. The help we get from books is incalculable.

Yet the truest and best help any one can give to others is not in material things, but in ways that make them stronger and better. Money is good alms when money is really needed, but in comparison with the divine gifts of hope, friendship, courage, sympathy, and love, it is paltry and poor. Usually the help people need is not so much the lightening of their burden, as fresh strength to enable them to bear their burden, and stand up under it. The best thing we can do for another, some one has said, is not to make some things easy for him, but to make something of him.