Making the Most of Life | Page 2

his axe, and the tree quivers in all its branches, under his sturdy
blows. "I am being destroyed," it cries. So it seems, as the great tree
crashes down to the ground. And the children are sad because they can
play no more beneath the broad branches; the birds grieve because they
can no more nest and sing amid the summer foliage.
But let us follow the tree's history. It is cut into boards, and built into a
beautiful cottage, where human hearts find their happy nest. Or it is

used in making a great organ which leads the worship of a congregation.
The losing of its life was the saving of it. It died that it might become
deeply, truly useful.
The plates, cups, dishes, and vases which we use in our homes and on
our tables, once lay as common clay in the earth, quiet and restful, but
in no way doing good, serving man. Then came men with picks, and
the clay was rudely torn out and plunged into a mortar and beaten and
ground in a mill, then pressed, and then put into a furnace, and burned
and burned, at last coming forth in beauty, and beginning its history of
usefulness. It was apparently destroyed that it might begin to be of
service.
A great church-building is going up, and the stones that are being laid
on the walls are brought out of the dark quarry for this purpose. We can
imagine them complaining, groaning, and repining, as the quarry men's
drills and hammers struck them. They supposed they were being
destroyed as they were torn out from the bed of rock where they had
lain undisturbed for ages, and were cut into blocks, and lifted out, and
then as they were chiselled and dressed into form. But they were being
destroyed only that they might become useful. They become part of a
new sanctuary, in which God is to be worshipped, where the Gospel
will be preached, where penitent sinners will find the Christ-Saviour,
where sorrowing ones will be comforted. Surely it was better that these
stones should be torn out, even amid agony, and built into the wall of
the church, than that they should have lain ages more, undisturbed in
the dark quarry. They were saved from uselessness by being destroyed.
These are simple illustrations of the law which applies also in human
life. We must die to be useful--to be truly a blessing. Our Lord put this
truth in a little parable, when he said that the seed must fall into the
earth and die that it may bear fruit. Christ's own cross is the highest
illustration of this. His friends said he wasted his precious life; but was
that life wasted when Jesus was crucified? George MacDonald in one
of his little poems, with deep spiritual insight, presents this truth of the
blessed gain of Christ's life through his sacrifice and death:--
"For three and thirty years, a living seed, A lonely germ, dropt on our

waste world's side, Thy death and rising, thou didst calmly bide; Sore
compassed by many a clinging weed Sprung from the fallow soil of
evil and need; Hither and thither tossed, by friends denied; Pitied of
goodness dull, and scorned of pride; Until at length was done the awful
deed, And thou didst lie outworn in stony bower-- Three days
asleep--oh, slumber godlike, brief, For Man of sorrows and acquaint
with grief, Heaven's seed, Thou diedst, that out of thee might tower
Aloft, with rooted stem and shadowy leaf Of all Humanity the crimson
flower."
People said that Harriet Newell's beautiful life was wasted when she
gave it to missions, and then died and was buried far from home--bride,
missionary, mother, saint, all in one short year,--without even telling to
one heathen woman or child the story of the Saviour. But was that
lovely young life indeed wasted? No; all this century her name has
been one of the strongest inspirations to missionary work, and her
influence has brooded everywhere, touching thousands of hearts of
gentle women and strong men, as the story of her consecration has been
told. Had Harriet Newell lived a thousand years of quiet, sweet life at
home, she could not have done the work that she did in one short year
by giving her life, as it seemed, an unavailing sacrifice. She lost her life
that she might save it. She died that she might live. She offered herself
a living sacrifice that she might become useful.
In heart and spirit we must all do the same if we would ever be a real
blessing in the world. We must be willing to lose our life--to sacrifice
ourself, to give up our own way, our own ease, our own comfort,
possibly even