| The Secrets of a Beautiful Life |
Chapter 18 |
Page 6 |
If we would learn the lesson of contentment, we must also train ourselves to live for the higher things of life. One of the ancient wise men, having learned that a storm had destroyed his merchant ships, thus sweeping away all his fortune, said, “It is just as well, for now I can give up my mind more fully to study.” He had other and higher sources of enjoyment than his merchandise, and felt the loss of his ships no more than manhood feels the loss of childhood’s toys. He was but a heathen philosopher: we are Christians. He had only his studies to occupy his thought when his property was gone: we have all the blessed things of God’s love. No earthly misfortune can touch the wealth a Christian holds in the Divine promises and hopes.
Just in the measure, therefore, in which we learn to live for spiritual and unseen things do we find contentment amid earth’s trials and losses. If we would live to please God, to build up Christlike character in ourselves and to lay up treasure in heaven, we shall not depend for happiness on the way things go with us here, nor on the measure of temporal good we have. The lower desires are crowded out by the higher. We can do without childhood’s toys when we have manhood’s better possessions. We need this world less as we get more of God and heaven into our hearts.
There is a modern story of a merchant who was devoted to high purposes in life, who was determined to be a man free from bondage to the lower things. One day a ship of his that was coming home was delayed. He became anxious, and the next day was yet more troubled, and the third day still more. Then he came to himself, awaking to his true condition of bondage to earthly things, and said, “Is it possible that I have come to love money for itself, and not for its nobler uses?” Taking the value of the ship and its cargo, he gave it to charities, not because he wished to be rid of the money, but because only thus could he get the conquest over himself, holding his love of money under his feet. He was learning well one secret of contentment.
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