No syllable is left to tell us what Amasiah did to win this praise.
Probably the words enshrine some now forgotten memory of his cheerful
courage, some heroic feat on an unrecorded battlefield. Particulars
are not given nor needed. Specific actions are unimportant; the spirit
of a life can be told with very incomplete details, and it, not the
details, is the important thing. Sometimes, as in many modern
biographies, one 'cannot see the wood for the trees,' and misses the
main drift and aim of a life in the chaos of a bewildering mass of
nothings. How much more happy the lot of this man of whom we have only
the generalised expression of the text, unweighted and undisturbed by
petty incidents! It takes tons of rose leaves to make a tiny phial of
otto of roses, but the fragrance is far more pungent in a drop of the
distillation than in armfuls of leaves. Every life shrinks into very
small compass, and the centuries do not tolerate long biographies.
Shall we not seek to order our life so that Amasiah's epitaph may
serve for us? It will be blessed if this--and nothing else--is known
about us, that we 'willingly offered ourselves to the Lord.' My
friend: will that be a true epitome of your life?