| The Secrets of a Beautiful Life |
Chapter 4 |
Page 6 |
There is an impression among some people that a man is a better man after having tasted sin, after knowing evil by experience, then repenting, being forgiven, and restored. This is a mistaken impression. Innocence is far better than despair; but a life is never so beautiful after sin’s fires have swept over it as it would have been if it had been kept untarnished, and had realized God’s first thought for it. The bird with the broken pinion never soared so high again. There are some things we never get over. The wounds may be healed, but the scars remain. There are some losses we can never get back. Esau wept bitterly over the losing of his birthright, but wept in vain; he never could get again what he had profanely bartered off for a trifle. Lost innocence never can be restored.
The other lesson which the poem teaches is the same we have found already in the parable of the potter. The bird with the broken pinion was not useless; it kept another bird form the snare. Through its own hurt it had gotten a power of helpfulness which it never could have had without its experience of wounding and marring. The same is true of human lives which have failed and have fallen into sin.
“The life that sin had stricken,
Raised another form despair.”
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