Part 8 (1/2)
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 s.h.i.+ne 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 s.h.i.+ne), He whispered, 'But the child is mine.'”