The Threshold Grace: Meditations in the PsalmsAinsworth, Percy C. (Percy Clough)
Religion
The Threshold Grace: Meditations in the Psalms
Ainsworth, Percy C. (Percy Clough)
Bible. Psalms -- Meditations
for the fretful soul is not to go _round_ the world; it is to get _beyond_
it.
_Mine eyes are ever toward the Lord._ That is the view we want. We gaze
contemptuously on the little one-story lodge just inside the park gates,
and fail to get a glimpse of the magnificent mansion, with its wealth of
adornment and treasure, that lies a mile among the trees. No wonder that
men grow discontented or contemptuous when they mistake the porch for the
house. If a man would understand himself and discover his resources and put
his hand on all life's highest uses, he must look out and up unto his God.
Then he comes to know that sunrise and sunset, and the beauty of the earth,
and child-life and old age, and duty and sorrow, and all else that life
holds, are linked to the larger life of an eternal world.
That is the true foresight. They called him a far-seeing man. How did he
get that name? Well, he made a fortune. He managed to make use of the ebb
and flow of the market, and never once got stranded. He was shrewd and did
some good guessing, and now, forsooth, they say he is 'very far-seeing.'
But he has not opened his Bible for years, and the fountains of sympathy
are dried up in his soul. He can see as far into the money column as most
men, but the financial vista is not very satisfying for those who see it
best. The Gospel of St. John is a sealed book to him, and that is in God's
handwriting and opens the gates of heaven. Far-seeing? Why, the man is in a
tiny cell, and he is going blind. 'Mine eyes are ever toward the Lord.'
That is the far-sighted man. He can see an ever larger life opening out
before him. He can see the glory of the eternal righteousness beneath his
daily duties and the wonder of eternal love in the daily fellowships and
fulfilments of the brotherhood. This is measuring life by the heavenly
measurement. This is the vision we need day by day and at the end of the
days. For interest in some things must wane, and life must become less
responsive to all that lies about it, and many an earthly link is broken
and many an earthly window is darkened, and the old faces and old ways
pass, and the thing the old man cherishes is trodden under foot by the
impetuous tread of a new generation, and desire fails. Then it is well with
him whose eyes have already caught glimpses of 'the King in His beauty,'
and 'the land that is very far off.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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