Girls: Faults and Ideals: A Familiar Talk, with Quotations from Letters — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Girls: Faults and Ideals: A Familiar Talk, with Quotations from Letters
John Stuart Mill · en
You know the morning prayer which each "King's Daughter" is requested to
offer: "Take me, Lord, and use me to-day as thou wilt. Whatever work
thou has for me to do, give it into my hands. If there are those thou
wouldst have me to help in any way, send them to me. Take my time and
use it, as thou wilt. Let me be a vessel close to thy hand and meet for
thy service, to be employed only for thee and for ministry to others in
thy name."
It does not need great and conspicuous things to make a life golden and
radiant in God's sight. Go out each day with this prayer of consecration
on your lips, and be a blessing to every one you meet. Be a blessing,
first, in your own home, to those who love you most. Leave joy in their
hearts as you go forth, or as they go forth, for the day. Then go with
benedictions to every other life you meet or touch.
We are told of Jesus that when persons touched even his garment's hem,
virtue went out of him and healed them. We read of Peter that the people
laid their sick in the street, that the apostle's shadow as he passed by
might fall on them and heal them. It should be so, dear Christian young
people, with your lives. You should be so full of the Spirit of God that
at every touch of love or need or sorrow, virtue may flow out of you to
heal and bless, and that the mere shadow of your presence may have a
benediction for every one on whom it falls. Is there not some one whom
you know, perhaps some lowly one, whom it always does you good to meet?
Seek to have your life such a reservoir of good, of blessing, of life,
of peace, of joy, that no one can meet you without taking away some
blessing.
Some one may be discouraged by this setting forth of so high an ideal.
"I can never reach it. I can never train my life into such beauty. I can
never be such a woman. I can never do the duties of a Christian in such
a perfect way." No, never in your own strength. If no help came from
God, if there were set for us all the lofty ideals of the Scriptures,
and we were then left alone to work them out as best we could, unhelped,
we might well despair. But, for every duty and requirement there is a
promise of divine grace.
Ruskin says: "He gives us always strength enough, and sense enough, for
what he wants us to do. If we either tire ourselves or puzzle ourselves,
it is our own fault." This puts tersely, and in strong, homely phrase,
the essence of such promises of the Scriptures as "My grace is
sufficient for thee;" "As thy days so shall thy strength be," and many
others, "Strength enough and sense enough." The latter is a fresh
reading of the old assurance. We often say we shall get strength enough,
but we do not always remember that we shall get sense enough for every
duty, every perplexity, every place where great delicacy of wisdom is
required. Yet there is a promise to any one who knows that he lacks
wisdom and will ask for it.