| The Building of Character |
Chapter 24 |
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Take heart-life — the life you lived yesterday, with its hopes and fears, its joys and sorrows, its pleasures and pains, its cars and its affections, its thousand varying experiences. Does the world know what is going on in your breast today, any day? People see the smile or the shadow that flits across your face, but they do not see the emotion which produced it. Even to your closest bosom friend your life is unrevealed, cannot be revealed. Says Keble:
“Not even the tenderest heart and next our own
Knows half the reasons why we smile or sigh.”
Take spiritual life. We see the effects of the Holy Spirit’s work — new dispositions, new conduct, new character; but the Divine spark of life we cannot see as it comes down from above. It is secret, hidden. One day you are sad, disheartened, and taking up your Bible you find a sweet word of promise, a revealing of God’s love, and into your heart there comes a strange peace. You are in sorrow. A friend sits down beside you and speaks a few words of strong comfort. You are calmed and quieted. Yet no one sees any of these spiritual processes. They are hidden, secret.
There is an inspired word which says, “Your life is hid with Christ in God.” The thought is wonderfully bold and strong. Christ is the source of the Christian’s life. Christ is in heaven with God, in God, wrapped up in the very glory of Divinity. Hence the Christian’s life is with Christ in God. Its source is thus in the very heart of God.
Outside an old garden wall hung a great branch covered with purple clusters of grapes. No root was visible anywhere, and those who saw it wondered how the vine grew, how its life was nourished, where is root clung. It was then discovered that the great vine from which this branch sprang grew inside the garden. There it had an immense root, with a stem like the trunk of a tree. This one branch had pushed out over the wall and hung there, bearing in the mellow autumn its clusters of luscious fruit.
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