Christian fiction; Neighborhoods -- Scotland -- Fiction
"If into the face of the dead body, lying on the bed, waiting for its
burial, the soul of the man should begin to dawn again, drawing near
from afar to look out once more at those eyes, to smile once again
through those lips, the change on that face would be indeed great and
wondrous, but nothing for marvel or greatness to that which passes on
the countenance, the very outward bodily face of the man who wakes from
his sleep, arises from the dead and receives light from Christ. Too
often indeed, the reposeful look on the face of the dead body would be
troubled, would vanish away at the revisiting of the restless ghost;
but when a man's own right true mind, which God made in him, is
restored to him again, and he wakes from the death of sin, then comes
the repose without the death. It may take long for the new spirit to
complete the visible change, but it begins at once, and will be
perfected. The bloated look of self-indulgence passes away like the
leprosy of Naaman, the cheek grows pure, the lips return to the smile
of hope instead of the grin of greed, and the eyes that made innocence
shrink and shudder with their yellow leer grow childlike and sweet and
faithful. The mammon-eyes, hitherto fixed on the earth, are lifted to
meet their kind; the lips that mumbled over figures and sums of gold
learn to say words of grace and tenderness. The truculent, repellent,
self-satisfied face begins to look thoughtful and doubtful, as if
searching for some treasure of whose whereabouts it had no certain
sign. The face anxious, wrinkled, peering, troubled, on whose lines you
read the dread of hunger, poverty, and nakedness, thaws into a smile;
the eyes reflect in courage the light of the Father's care, the back
grows erect under its burden with the assurance that the hairs of its
head are all numbered. But the face can with all its changes set but
dimly forth the rising from the dead which passes within. The heart,
which cared but for itself, becomes aware of surrounding thousands like
itself, in the love and care of which it feels a dawning blessedness
undreamt of before. From selfishness to love--is not this a rising from
the dead? The man whose ambition declares that his way in the world
would be to subject everything to his desires, to bring every human
care, affection, power, and aspiration to his feet--such a world it
would be, and such a king it would have, if individual ambition might
work its will! if a man's opinion of himself could be made out in the
world, degrading, compelling, oppressing, doing everything for his own
glory!--and such a glory!--but a pang of light strikes this man to the
heart; an arrow of truth, feathered with suffering and loss and dismay,
finds out--the open joint in his armour, I was going to say--no, finds
out the joint in the coffin where his heart lies festering in a death
so dead that itself calls it life. He trembles, he awakes, he rises
from the dead. No more he seeks the slavery of all: where can he find
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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