Life's poverty is due, not to what we have had and lost, not to what
has been withheld or taken from us, but to the good which we might have
had which we carelessly have passed by. No others despoil us as we
despoil ourselves by our blindness and indifference to the wealth of
our own lives and the beauty ever close at hand.
We who scurry over land and sea, who dig, and toil, and fret to find
happiness, come back at last to learn that the sweet-faced guest has
been waiting close by our door all the time.
He perishes in the pitiless snows who, blind to the good and the glory
in every valley and hillside, heeds only the impulse to climb and find
the good in some remote height. Ambition and pride lift ever new peaks
ahead only to mock him when at last, worn, spent, and empty in heart,
he falls by the way.
The old theology talked much of a heaven far away, to be attained in
the remote future; the new theology often seems inclined to ignore any
heaven, but what the hearts of men need is the sense of the heaven that
is all about them, the God who ever is near, and the blessedness even
now attainable.
Some live in the past, complacently contemplating the glories that once
were theirs or their ancestors'; some live in the future, dreaming of
felicities yet to be; but they are wise only who live to the full in
the present, who catch the richness and beauty, all the wealth that the
passing hour or the present opportunity may have.
He is truly godly who sees God in all things, in the affairs of this
day, in the faces of living men, in the flowers and fields, who sees
all the divine wonder and beauty of life, and not he who sees the Most
High only in some legendary past or in a strange, imaginary future.
No man becomes strong by reminiscence of his breakfast or dreaming of
his next meal alone; each portion of time must have its own fitting
food. The soul of man never can find its fullness through either
history or prophecy; it needs the sense of the spiritual in this
living, pulsating, matter-of-fact present.
This world is slovenly, sinful, and evil because so many of us are
content with the past or the future, with myth or with imagination, and
fail to demand the development of the good that is our heritage to-day.
The better day comes not by dreams, but by each man doing the best he
can and securing all the good he can for his own day.
We need to give up the plan of saving the world by the piety of
postponed pleasures and to find the fullness of life in the present, to
get below the surface of things and discover life's real riches, to
interpret this daily toil and struggle, and all this world of ours, in
terms of the divine and infinite.
How much it would mean to our lives if we might learn, instead of
sighing for the impossible, to get all the sweetness and joy that is in
the things we have, how rich we would find the common lot to be, how
many things that now seem dreary and empty would bloom into new beauty.
In a child's smile, a wild flower's fragrance, a glint of sunlight,
things possible to all, we would find joys unspeakable and full of
glory.
This does not mean dull content with things as they are; it does mean
the development of the faculties of appreciation, the growth of the
life in power to see, the development of vision. It means the
transformation of the dull earth with the glory of the ideal.
Some day, when we look back over our lives, how keen will be our regret
as we realize what we have missed, how we have spurned the substance of
life's lasting treasures, human loves, friendships, every-day beauties,
and happiness, while chasing the shadows of imaginary joys.