Strong Souls | Page 3

but only the living, can quicken. Fragrance makes fragrant: sweetness imparts sweetness: strength begets strength. How many of us have learned integrity from an upright father, and breathed in the confidence of faith at a mother's knee? They gave because they had; and Christ was their fountain-head.
The religious life, to some imaginations, presents itself as inclining largely to the side of the passive and the negative. It is abstinence from evil quite as much as eager realization of good. On this view, an air of cloistered sanctity hangs about it: it is full of prayers and mystic raptures: its eye is fixed within, or, if not within, only upon God. It is sweet rather than strong: more meditative than active: a faint fragrance exhales from it, but it does not forget itself to grapple with wrong, or descend upon the arena of human woes and oppressions, full of the heat of battle, or, with a careless heroism, spend itself to the last for the kingdom of God. I do not deny the reality and the sweetness of this type of goodness; but it is not the only type, and much less the type produced by the contagion of Christ upon a strong nature and an eager vitality. I have said that the abundant physical gift of life may carry with it a certain temptation to an unsympathizing self-sufficiency. It is difficult not to be proud of an untiring energy, and faculties that are always abreast of the demands made upon them, and an immunity from pain and languor which is like a double portion of strength. But what if all these things are only a larger gift to lay upon the altar of humanity? What if strength be used only to follow with swifter stride in the self-denying footsteps of Christ? What if the sense of joyous energy only fortifies the soul against disappointment, and makes light of hindrances, and enables patience to have her perfect work? We envy the strong because we think they can do more than we, and enjoy more than we--in a word, because they live more than we. Let us envy them, if at all, because they have more than we to give to God and men, and answer with a fuller and more eager impulse to the breath of inspiration, and can throw a less infinitesimal weight into the scale of the Divine purpose.
Such lives, believe me, are eminently happy. They have their full measure of sensibility, and therefore their full share of trouble too. What sorrows come to all, do not spare them; and it is the quickly throbbing heart that is the tenderest. They cannot take life with dull acquiescence, being neither keenly glad nor greatly sorry: to them, its brightness is like opening Paradise; its gloom, a very valley of the Shadow of Death. And as they emerge out of the narrowness of their personal lot, to go down into the ringing battle of the world, they encounter blows and bruises which more selfish lives are able to avoid; they lay bare their hearts to sorrows not their own, and are stricken with the disappointments of mankind. Was it not a part of the secret of Christ that his affections were so wide, his sympathies so keen, his identification with humanity so complete, that sin not his own cast a shadow upon him almost like remorse, and all his tears were for others' sorrows? So is it with his strong and eager disciples: they lay their breast against the thorn, and would not have it otherwise. And yet they are happy. If it be happiness to have life filled to the brim with occupation that never tires and always brings with it its own reward: to be conscious of the easy movement of power, the strong putting forth of faculty: to be secure against disappointment in reliance upon the righteous purposes of God, which must prevail at last: to have a sure escape from personal grief in the largeness of human sympathy and the vista of universal hope: to feel, as life wears away, no disenchantment of purpose, no stealing languor upon the will, no freezing chill upon the heart, but only a passionate desire to live to the last in the full glow of service, and an absolute completeness of self-renunciation--then are these strong souls happy. They cannot but find life good, because everywhere in it they feel the touch of God's hand; they see the skirt of Christ's garment as he goes before them in the way.
"He that believeth on me, out of him shall flow rivers of living water." The privilege of giving life is not Christ's alone, though still his in the first instance and the greatest degree: it is shared by all who are truly one