Christian fiction; Neighborhoods -- Scotland -- Fiction
There is a strange delight in motion, which I am not sure that I
altogether understand. The hope of the end as bringing fresh enjoyment
has something to do with it, no doubt; the accompaniments of the motion,
the change of scene, the mystery that lies beyond the next hill or the
next turn in the road, the breath of the summer wind, the scent of the
pine-trees especially, and of all the earth, the tinkling jangle of the
harness as you pass the trees on the roadside, the life of the horses,
the glitter and the shadow, the cottages and the roses and the rosy
faces, the scent of burning wood or peat from the chimneys, these and a
thousand other things combine to make such a journey delightful. But I
believe it needs something more than this--something even closer to the
human life--to account for the pleasure that motion gives us. I suspect
it is its living symbolism; the hidden relations which it bears to the
eternal soul in its aspirations and longings--ever following after, ever
attaining, never satisfied. Do not misunderstand me, my reader. A man,
you will allow, perhaps, may be content although he is not and cannot be
happy: I feel inclined to turn all this the other way, saying that a man
ought always to be happy, never to be content. You will see I do not say
_contented_; I say _content_. Here comes in his faith: his life is
hid with Christ in God, measureless, unbounded. All things are his, to
become his by blessed lovely gradations of gift, as his being enlarges
to receive; and if ever the shadow of his own necessary incompleteness
falls upon the man, he has only to remember that in God’s idea he is
complete, only his life is hid from himself with Christ in God the
Infinite. If anyone accuses me here of mysticism, I plead guilty with
gladness: I only hope it may be of that true mysticism which, inasmuch
as he makes constant use of it, St. Paul would understand at once. I
leave it, however.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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