| The Glory of the Common Life |
Chapter 9 |
Page 5 |
“True religion and undefiled before our God and Father is… to keep one’s self unspotted from the world.” That is the problem of Christian life – whatever the life may have of hardness, of wrong, of injustice, of struggle, of sorrow – to keep the heart pure and sweet, at peace, filled with love through it all. The lesson is hard, you say. Yes, but not half so hard in the end as to have your life scarred, bruised, blotted, its possibilities of love atrophied, its gentleness petrified. There are people no more than middle aged, who are incapable of any sweet joy, incapable of loving deeply, richly, ardently, incapable of enthusiasm in living and doing good, because they have become a prey to care, or have let themselves be hardened by bitter feelings.
Life is too sacred, too holy, with too many possibilities of beauty and happiness to be so mistreated, so perverted, so irremediably injured. How then can we keep our hearts unspotted from the evil of the world? The lesson is particularly for the young. Perhaps the old can never now learn it well – it is too late – but the young can do it, if they begin now, living with Christ, in his love, in his joy, in his companionship, in his obedience. God can keep your life hidden in the secret of his presence. Scientists tell us of the charmed life of frail things. The tiny flower that grows on the mountain crag is safer than the mountain itself. It bends and yields and remains unbroken, unbruised, in the wildest storms. Its frailness is its strength and its security. How frail our lives are in comparison with the great mountains and the mighty rocks! Yet we have a charmed existence. Our very weakness is our safety.
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