So much for the analysis of Love. Now the business of our lives
is to have these things fitted into our characters. That is the
supreme work to which we need to address ourselves in this world,
to learn Love. Is life not full of opportunities for learning
Love? Every man and woman every day has a thousand of them. The
world is not a playground; it is a schoolroom. Life is not a
holiday, but an education. And
The one eternal lesson
for us all is HOW BETTER WE CAN LOVE.
What makes a man a good cricketer? Practice. What makes a man
a good artist, a good sculptor, a good musician? Practice. What
makes a man a good linguist, a good stenographer? Practice. What
makes a man a good man? Practice. Nothing else. There is nothing
capricious about religion. We do not get the soul in different
ways, under different laws, from those in which we get the body
and the mind. If a man does not exercise his arm he develops no
biceps muscle; and if a man does not exercise his soul, he acquires
no muscle in his soul, no strength of character, no vigor of
moral fibre, no beauty of spiritual growth. Love is not a thing
of enthusiastic emotion. It is a rich, strong, manly, vigorous
expression of the whole round Christian character--the Christlike
nature in its fullest development. And the constituents of this
great character are only to be built up by
Ceaseless practice.
What was Christ doing in the carpenter's shop? Practising. Though
perfect, we read that he LEARNED obedience, and grew in wisdom
and in favor with God. Do not quarrel, therefore, with your lot
in life. Do not complain of its never-ceasing cares, its petty
environment, the vexations you have to stand, the small and sordid
souls you have to live and work with. Above all, do not resent
temptation; do not be perplexed because it seems to thicken round
you more and more, and ceases neither for effort nor for agony nor
prayer. That is your practice. That is the practice which god
appoints you; and it is having its work in making you patient, and
humble, and generous, and unselfish, and kind, and courteous. Do
not grudge the hand that is moulding the still too shapeless image
within you. It is growing more beautiful, though you see it not;
and every touch of temptation may add to its perfection. Therefore
keep in the midst of life. Do not isolate yourself. Be among
men and among things, and among troubles, and difficulties, and
obstacles. You remember Goethe's words: "Talent develops itself
in solitude; character in the stream of life." Talent develops
itself in solitude--the talent of prayer, of faith, of meditation,
of seeing the unseen; character grows in the stream of the world's
life. That chiefly is where men are to learn love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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