| The Glory of the Common Life |
Chapter 15 |
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A larger heart makes a larger man. Love is the final measure of life. There is just as much of life in a man as there is of love, for love is the essential thing. Not to love is not to live. Love is the perfect tense of live. St. Paul tells us that though we have the eloquence of angels, the gift of prophecy, and though we have all knowledge, and faith to work the most stupendous miracles, and the largest benevolence, and have even a martyr spirit, but have not love, we are nothing. We are empty. When we say that our heart is enlarged, we mean we are growing in love, becoming more kind, more longsuffering, less envious, less irritable, seeing more of the good in others and less of things to blame and condemn, having more patience, more gentleness, more sympathy.
We must also make sure that what seems to us to be enlargement of life is really enlargement. “Getting is not always gaining.” A man may be growing in certain ways and yet be really dwindling. He may bulk more largely before the eyes of men, and yet in the sight of Heaven be a smaller man that when he seemed least. Writers distinguish between possessing and inheriting. In one of the Beatitudes we read, “Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth.” The meek are the unresisting. They are not the strenuous among men. Ordinarily they do not grow rich. They do not add field to field. They are not generally regarded as successful. They are not shrewd, and are easily imposed upon. Ambitious and unscrupulous men often take advantage of them. They do not contend for their rights. They give to him who asks of them, and from him that takes away their goods they demand them not again.
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