| The Secrets of a Beautiful Life |
Chapter 22 |
Page 3 |
So the hunger for love in our beating heart is the prophecy of a satisfaction of love which is possible in Christ. The longing for holiness, for strength, for beauty of character, for power of helpfulness, for Christ likeness, is a revealing of our capacity for noble living, and of the spiritual growth to which we may attain and shall attain, unless by unbelief and sin we stunt, choke, and smother the immortal life that is ours as Christians.
Take another illustration from nature. The dragon-fly is born at the bottom of the pond, and for a time lives there, a low, meagre form of life. It does not know of anything better — that there is a higher sphere where insects and other creatures have wings and fly in glorious freedom in the sunny air. But one day there comes a wondrous change. Tennyson tells the story well:—
“Today I saw the dragon-fly
Come from the wells where he did lie.
An inner impulse rent the veil
Of his old husk; from head to tail
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.
He dried his wings: like gauze they grew;
Through crafts and pastures, wet with dew,
A living flash of light, he flew.”
This dragon-fly of the darkness and the mire now breathes heaven’s sweet air. It has wings, which unfold under the impulse of a new life into which it has emerged, and spread themselves out into shining beauty, and the lovely creature soars aloft. It is dead to its old life in the ooze, and lives now in the brightness and the fragrance of the fields and gardens.
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