| Strength and Beauty |
Chapter 5 |
Page 4 |
It is so when a man begins to discover his mental powers. He wakes ups to the consciousness that he has a mind. He can think. Beautiful visions begin to form themselves in his brain. He discovers that he has a marvelous gift of imagination. Or he has the logical faculty. Heretofore he has been plodding on at school, poring over books, wearying himself with task work which has never ceased to be dull and distasteful, finding no delight in his studies, without interest or enthusiasm in his work. Then one day something wonderful happens. It is as if he were suddenly waked from sleep to look about upon a new world. Everything is changed. His books begin to interest him, and as he reads on a strange light shine upon the pages. His studies are no more dreary tasks, but delightful exercises. It is as when the angel, lost and dumb until now, sees the harp, and grasping it, begins to make enrapturing music on its strings. He has found his soul.
It is so with the artist, when after years of struggling and failure he at length discovers his powers, and begins to put on the canvas or cut in the marble the lovely dreams he had sought long in vain to interpret. It is so with the musician, who, after carrying in his soul through many days and nights a burden of melody, struggling unavailingly to utter itself, at last discovers a mode of expression and begins to pour forth notes of song. Dumb until his eyes fell on the wondrous harp, his soul awoke that moment, and his fingers began to evoke harmonies which thrilled and charmed every ear that heard them.
The same is true in spiritual spheres. Men live for years an altogether worldly life. They go with their work, pursuing their earthly callings on and ambitions, in business, in study, in pleasure, yet unconscious all the while of the splendid spiritual world that lies above them and all about them. They never see God nor hear his voice. They are unaware of the vast realm of invisible things which is theirs by inheritance. They have no eyes for the glories of the heavenly kingdom. The only world they know of is the material world.
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