| Strength and Beauty |
Chapter 23 |
Page 4 |
What made the same world so totally different to the two men? The difference was in the men themselves. In one the lamp of joy was burning, and wherever he went he found light – the light of his own life pouring out on all things. In the other the lamp had gone out, leaving darkness in his soul. Wherever he went, even amid the rarest beauty, he saw nothing lively, for he was as one blind. Though all about him songs of joy filled the air, he heard no sweet note, for he was as one deaf.
“In ourselves the sunshine dwell,
In ourselves the music swells;
Everywhere the heart awake
Finds what pleasure it can make,
Everywhere the light and shade
By the gazer’s eye is made.”
This is a serious teaching, and it has an intensely practical side for every one of us. It is ourselves that we are discovering all the while as we go about judging others. If we seem to find all men unjust, unreasonable, proud, vain, deceitful, or false, there is enough in the discovery to startle us. It is the echoes of our own heart that we are hearing. It is the revelation of our own inner self that we are seeing reflected. We should seek instantly to find a new self, and then we shall find ourselves in a new world.
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