| The Glory of the Common Life |
Chapter 16 |
Page 5 |
If we go through a year with God, we shall come to its close with enlarged life, with fairer character, with richer personality, in every way a better man or woman. Growth is a law of life. When growth ceases death is beginning. Men count the ages of trees by the circles which the years make. God counts our age, not by the date in the old family register, but by the accretions his eye sees in our inner life. If a man is put down as threescore and ten, and has lived only one year with God, he is really only one year old, not seventy.
Growth, too, is not marked by height or weight or by accumulations of money or property or earthly honour, but by character. You may be more popular at the end of a year, people may know you better, you may be more in the newspapers, but these are not the real measurements of life. You may be a really smaller man at the heart of the notoriety you have achieved than you were without fame. Ruskin says, “He only is advancing in life whose heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into living peace.”
The journey through the year with God should be joyous, from beginning to end. A life of praise is the ideal life. No other is beautiful. Ye praise is by no means universal even among Christians. Somehow many people do not train themselves to see the glad things. There are a thousand times more things to make us glad than to make us sad. A writer tells of cycling in England with a friend. They were flying down a hill, through a wood. The friend stopped and jumped off his wheel, and they both stood and listened.
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