| Strength and Beauty |
Chapter 15 |
Page 5 |
The same principle applies to preparation for being of use to others, for being true helpers of our fellows. We must learn before we can teach, and there is only one school, the school of experience, of self discipline, in which we can get the lessons. The only true poets are those who have learned in cost of pain and tears the songs which they sing for us. The only books on life worth reading are those who sentences have been spelled out word by word in the school of struggle. One writes,
“Will you seek it? Will you brave it?
‘Tis a strange and solemn thing,
Learning long before your teaching,
Listening long before your preaching,
Suffering before you sing.
And the songs that echo longest,
Deepest, fullest, truest, strongest,
With your life blood you will write.”
But we should not shrink from life’s lofty attainments because it costs us so much to reach them. Rather, we should determine to live only for the best, whatever the cost. He throws his life away who is willing to take only the easy prizes, who is not ready to pay the price of the nobler, better, worthier, diviner things that are set before him. Young people should scorn ever to be satisfied with a life of self indulgence. The great Teacher said that he who saveth his life shall lose it. He meant the man who withholds himself from hard toil, self denial, and service, who will do only easy things. He said further that he who loses his life, that is, who lavishes it in duty, who shrinks from not cost, no labor, no sacrifice, in obeying love’s behests, saves it. The only way to make life truly worth while is to empty it out, as Christ emptied out his most precious life for God and for the world. Only the grain of wheat which falls into the ground and dies grows up into beauty and fruitfulness. The grain which is kept warm and dry and safe comes to nothing.
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