Here is a man who has got a handful of corn. He says, “I have got it, and I will keep it.” Here is another man who says, “I have got it too, but I will give it away. I will throw it into the earth.” “More fool you,” responds the first, “I will not throw mine away.”
The man throws it, and the whole chemistry of nature is set up in connection with it, until by-and-by there is the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear. The acres gleam at last with gold, and the return is sixty fold. The other man is still gripping his corn, and whatever you grip you lose. What are you going to do with your handful? It is not good for you or for others to hold it. You do not resort to the law of production and reduplication: you are not an economist, but a destroyer. But by giving we get; by scattering we gather; by watering others we receive a plentiful rain upon our own souls.
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Though there are parodoxes in Christianity there are no contradictions.
“I no more dare to fret than I dare to curse and swear.” — J. Wesley.
Your melancholy and long-faced Christians are not the “out and outers” but the “half and half” men — those who want to “fear the Lord and serve their own graven images,” to make the best of both worlds, or to be pious according to the flesh. They have never learned in their soul’s experience the truth of Luther’s definition of a Christian — that he is “a new man in a new world.” At any rate, they are not practically owning that “new man,” and living in that “new world.”
Let us maintain a good conscience and a thankful heart.
Wherever you go, endeavor to carry with you a sense of God’s presence, His holiness and His love; it will preserve you from a thousand snares.
So long as our hearts are cleaving to earthly things, we shall not be able to sing the pilgrim’s song; but if we are thorough pilgrims, and apprehend our great High Priest ever living for us at. God’s right hand, we shall be perpetually giving thanks.
“Rest, rest, beloved, thine head upon My bosom,
Lean on My arm and tell thy griefs to Me;
My heart is thine, in all the full perfection
Of sympathy, none else could give to thee.”