| Secrets of a Beautiful Life |
Chapter 1 |
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Thus the words which describe wrong-doing all suggest marring, spoiling, and the failure to fulfill the perfect design. It is as if an architect was to make a plan for a perfect building, and the builder, through ignorance or carelessness, should spoil the house, not making it like the plan. The building is not beautiful when finished, because it is not what the architect intended it to be. A life which fulfills the Divine Architect’s purpose, whether it be great and conspicuous, or lowly and obscure, is beautiful. We need not seek to do large things; the greatest thing for any human life in this world is God’s will for that life. That is the only true beauty.
There are some special words which may be said to hold the secret of beauty in a life. One is “victoriousness.” Many people let themselves be defeated almost habitually. It begins in childhood. The lessons are hard, and the child does not master them. It costs exertion to succeed in the games, and the boy indolently concludes that he cannot win, and does not do his best. The girl finds that she cannot play her exercises on the piano without a great deal of tiresome practice, and lets herself be defeated. It is hard to restrain temper and appetite in youth, and the young man gives up the struggle, and yields to the indulgence. Thus at the very beginning the battle is lost, and ofttimes all life afterward carries the debilitating effect. Always duty is too large, and lessons are too hard, and discipline is too severe, and passion is too strong. To its close the life is weak, never victorious, and unable to cope with its environment. It is a fatal thing to form in youth the habit of permitting one’s self to be defeated. Life then never can be what it might have become.
On the other hand, when the lesson of being victorious is learned in childhood, all is different. Studies are mastered; exercises are played over, a hundred times, if need be, till they are played accurately; games are not indolently lost for want of exertion. Later in life, when the lessons are larger and the discipline is sorer, and the tasks require more labour, and the battles test the soul to its last particle of strength, the habit of overcoming still avails and the life is ever victorious. The thought of giving up is never entertained for a moment. The Indians say that, when a man kills a foe, the strength of the slain enemy passes into the victor’s arm. In the weird fancy lies a truth. Each defeat leaves us weaker for the next battle, but each conquest makes us stronger.
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