| The Secrets of a Beautiful Life |
Chapter 22 |
Page 6 |
The mind can never find satisfaction for its thirst save in learning. The desire to know is part of the Divine likeness in us. On all sides books are lying open and we are bidden to read. The voices of wisdom are evermore speaking in our ears, and we are bidden to listen. “He that hath ears to hear let him hear.” One of the first words the great Teacher speaks to those who come to Him to find rest for their souls is, “Learn — learn of Me.” Our minds are made to know, and they can find rest only through knowing. There is no true peace in ignorance. It is only an empty and shallow “bliss” that is found in not knowing. Our minds are made to think, and can be satisfied only in thinking. Satisfaction can come to any function of our being only when it finds the use for which it was made, and devotes itself to that use.
The spirit can find satisfaction only as it attains the character which belongs to it. There is beatitude for hunger and thirst — for those who long for righteousness. Such thirst is a mark of life. The dead have no longings, no desires. They are satisfied. Wherever there is spiritual life there is unrest, unsatisfying, a hunger for larger life, richer, fuller and holier. Such thirst can never find satisfaction save in ever-new attainments of holiness, in forgetting the things that are behind and reaching forward to the things that are behind and reaching forward to the things that are before. Complete satisfying will never come until we reach the full stature of Christ, until we se Him and are made like Him; but in the Christian life on earth the beginnings of this perfect satisfying are realized.
So it is with all the powers of our being. Longing is a quality of true living and a mark of health. It is the upward looking and striving of our nature. We can attain satisfaction only as our powers find their right functions and their right uses, and train themselves to run in the channels in which they were made to run. The word of Augustine is true enough almost to be an inspired word: “Our souls were made for God, and can find no rest until they find it in God.” But not always have our life-teachers explained to us all the full meaning of this Divine truth. Too often they give us only half of it. It is not enough to come to Christ and nestle in His bosom in the joy of reconciliation and forgiveness. Sometimes that is as far as our teachers lead us. Satisfaction can never come in inaction, however holy the state may be. The powers of the life must be disciplined and trained, and then led out into active service. They must find the use for which they were made. Knowing and doing must go together, or there can be no fullness of life or any true rest in living.
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