| The Beauty of Self Control |
Chapter 13 |
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What is Christ to us in the development of our lives? A woman spent the summer in the mountains and brought home with her in the autumn some pieces of lovely moss. She put it in her conservatory, and in the warmth of the place a multitude of beautiful little flowers came up among the moss. There are in us possibilities which, in common experiences are not brought out, but when the warmth and light of the love of God pour about them they are wooed forth. The poet, when asked what Christ was to him; pointed to a rose bush near by, full of glorious roses. “What the sun is to this rose bush,” he said, “Christ is to me.” Whatever is lovely in our lives has been brought out by the warmth of Christ’s love touching us and calling out the loveliness. We do not realize all that Christ may be to us, what undeveloped beauty there is in our natures that he will bring out if we yield ourselves to him.
What is Christ to us in our hope for the future? The veil that hides the other world is not lifted here, but we have visions of something very wonderful waiting for us. “It is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall see him even as he is.” That is enough for us to want to know. A Christian woman was speaking of a saintly man who was for many years the superintendent of a large city Sunday school. He was a man of most gentle spirit. He loved the children with a love that made them most dear to him. When he lay in his coffin, the members of his Sunday school passed by to look at his face in their last farewell, and every child laid a flower on his breast, until he was literally buried beneath the sweet blossoms. Speaking of his death, the woman said, “He must have passed right into the bosom of Jesus, he was so true, so holy, so Christlike.” That is what death means to one who has followed Christ faithfully. When the news went out that Phillips Brooks was dead, the mother in one home where he was most dear told her little daughter that her good friend was gone. She had dreaded to break the news to her lest her grief might be overpowering, but the child only exclaimed, “Oh, mother, how glad the angles must be to have him in heaven!”
It is sweet to think that when we go away from the dear love of earth we shall be with Christ, lying on his bosom, welcomed by angels and by waiting saints. Christ is everything beautiful to us here: there he will be infinitely more to us.
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