Christian fiction; Neighborhoods -- Scotland -- Fiction
The road being
very hilly, we had four horses; and with four horses, sunshine, a
gentle wind, hope and thankfulness, who would not be happy?
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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