| The Secrets of a Beautiful Life |
Chapter 4 |
Page 3 |
It is said that one day Carlyle suddenly stopped at a street crossing, and, stooping down, picked up something out of the mud, even at the risk of being knocked down and run over by passing vehicles. With his bare hands he gently rubbed the mud off this thing which he had picked up, holding it as carefully and touching it as gently as if it had be something of great value. He took it to the pavement and laid it down on a clean spot on the curbstone. “That,” said the old man, in a tone of sweetness he rarely used, “is only a crust of bread. Yet I was taught by my mother never to waste anything, and, above all, bread, more precious than gold. I am sure that the little sparrows, or a hungry dog, will get nourishment form this bit of bread.”
This is a suggestion of the way God looks upon a human life which bears his image. The merest fragment of life he regards as sacred. So long as there is the least trace of divine possibility in a human soul, he is ready to make something out of it, to take it out of the mire and give it another chance. “The vessel that he made was marred in the hands of the potter; so he made it again, — another vessel.”
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