| Strength and Beauty |
Chapter 24 |
Page 6 |
This is the law of unselfish living. We are apt to pity those who are called to deny themselves for the sake of others, but every call to self denial is a call to a new enrichment of our own life as well as to a new service of love which shall do good to others. The lower is to be sacrificed for the sake of obtaining the higher. As in the grain of wheat is hidden a secret of value and growth which can be realized only through the dying of the grain in the earth, so in every fragment of human happiness and comfort there is covered up a secret of blessing and of good which can be brought out only through the losing of it, and the giving it up.
Phillips Brooks has put this truth well in these words:
“You are called on to give up a luxury, and you do it. The little piece of comfortable living is quietly buried away underground. But that is not the last of it. The small indulgence which would have made your bodily life easier for a day or two, or a year or two, undergoes some strange alteration in its burial, and comes out a spiritual quality that blesses and enriches your soul for ever and ever. You surrender some ambition that had exercised a proud power over you, in whose train and shadow you had hoped to live with something of its glory cast on you. You send that down into its grave, and that too will not rest there. … You surrender a dear friend at the call of death, and out of his grave the real power of friendship rises stronger and more eternal into your life.”
Thus everywhere this truth of the gospel comes to us with its divine revealing. We deceive ourselves whenever we try to save our own life, keeping it back from hard duty, from costly service, or from sacrifice. The only way to the best and the highest is through the losing of the lower. The rose leaf must be bruised to get it fragrance. Love must suffer to reveal its richest tenderness and beauty. Life is always double. There is an outer form in which it presents itself to our senses, and there is an inner spirit which is the vital quality. But this inner, spiritual, immortal element can be found only through the dying of the outer and temporary form. The golden grain must be buried in service or sacrifice of love, that from its grave may rise that which is unseen and eternal.
“When bursts the rose of the spirit
From its withering calyx sheath,
And the bud has become a blossom
Of heavenly color and breath,
Life utters its true revelation
Through the silence that we call death.”
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