The Chautauquan, Vol. 04, April 1884, No. 7Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Religion
The Chautauquan, Vol. 04, April 1884, No. 7
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Chautauqua Institution -- Periodicals; Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle -- Periodicals
To do any work in the best manner, you would make use of the fittest
tools for it. And we trust that what has been said may serve in some
degree for the practical guidance of those who would like to reach the
great moral achievement of our text—but feel that the tendencies and
desires of nature are too strong for them. We know of no other way by
which to keep the love of the world out of our heart, than to keep in
our heart the love of God—and no other way by which to keep our hearts
in the love of God, than building ourselves up on our most holy faith.
That denial of the world which is not possible to him that dissents from
the gospel testimony, is possible, even as all things are possible to him
that believeth. To try this without faith, is to work without the right
tool or the right instrument. But faith worketh by love; and the way of
expelling from the heart the love that transgresseth the law, is to admit
into its receptacles the love which fulfilleth the law.
Conceive a man to be standing on the margin of this green world; and
that, when he looked toward it, he saw abundance smiling upon every
field, and all the blessings which earth can afford scattered in
profusion throughout every family, and the light of the sun sweetly
resting upon all the pleasant habitations, and the joys of human
companionship brightening many a happy circle of society—conceive of
this as being the general character of the scene upon one side of his
contemplation; and that on the other, beyond the verge of the goodly
planet on which he was situated, he could descry nothing but a dark and
fathomless unknown. Think you that he would bid a voluntary adieu to all
the brightness and all the beauty that were before him on earth, and
commit himself to the frightful solitude away from it? Would he leave
its peopled dwelling places, and become a solitary wanderer through the
fields of nonentity? If space offered him nothing but a wilderness, would
he abandon the homebred scenes of life and of cheerfulness that lay so
near, and exerted such a power of urgency to detain him? Would not he
cling to the regions of sense, and of life, and of society?—and shrinking
away from the desolation that was beyond it, would not he be glad to keep
his firm footing on the territory of this world, and to take shelter
under the silver canopy that was stretched over it?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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