Read Ebook: Unfinished Rainbows and Other Essays by Anderson George Wood

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UNFINISHED RAINBOWS

The rainbow was only a fragment of an arch because the needed sunshine was withheld. Had the sunlight been permitted to permeate all the atmosphere with its golden glow, the arch would have spanned the entire heavens.

This is the reason why, in hours of sorrow, we do not grasp the fullness of God's promise; we permit the denser clouds of doubt and faithlessness to keep the light of God from shining through our griefs; or, with a little faith, we get a gleam of light that gives us but a tiny fragment of the bow.

While all the operations of this natural world are tokens of God's unfailing thoughtfulness in keeping his covenant with man, a great event has made the rainbow peculiarly the embodiment of that thought. Looking from the narrow window of the wave-tossed ark, upon the silent grandeur of a world slowly arising from the waters of an universal flood, Noah beheld the rainbow and rejoiced in the blest assurance, that, while the things of man are subject to the ravages of time and destruction of contending elements, the things of God are always stable and secure. The most permanent products of man's hand and mind are soon swept away, but the things of God endure, and continue faithful, in working out their appointed courses. Through storm or calm, events march with steady, unceasing tread, knowing that God's roads are never worn, and God's bridges never tremble and fall. Above the placid, mysterious world, calmly emerging from the muddy, wreck-strewn waters, was the peaceful, radiant bow, smiling in confidence upon him and his companions. The world had changed, but the rainbow was just as it had always been, stately, serene, and unaffrighted. The crumbling, flood-torn earth had not weakened its foundations, the drenching rains had not faded its colors, the hurrying, wind-swept clouds could not disturb it. Though it were made out of hurrying light and drifting mist it would not be swayed or moved even a little. Under its archway walked the guarding angels of God. Over the waters came the clear voice once heard in Eden, uttering the promise, "And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: and I will remember my covenant."

That is a sweeping promise that is literally fulfilled in nature. All clouds carry rainbows. Most of them are never seen by us because we lack the necessary keenness of vision, or the proper point of view to behold their woven colors; many are only partially seen because something intervenes and prevents a perfect intersection of heavenly sunlight with our earth-born mists; many are within the vision of all observing men; but, whether we see it or not, for every cloud there is a scarf of red and orange and yellow and green and blue and scarlet and purple. So, in spiritual matters, we find that for every sorrow there are beautiful assurances of God's presence and unwavering covenant-keeping power. If we do not see them it is not God's fault, for the light of his faithfulness transfixes every cloud that arises above his earth-born children.

There are the clouds of bereavement. The Death Angel defied your love-locked doors and bolted windows. Heeding neither your cry nor your pleadings, he entered your home and pushed aside the doctor and attending nurses and friends, and touching the heart of your loved one, stilled it to sleep. Your grief was such that you did not see how you could live. The home seemed empty and strangely silent. The entire pathway seemed shrouded in the somber shadows of your grief. Life was a desolation. But you did not give up in despair. There was a bow in the cloud. An arch of seven brilliant hues reached from one horizon to another horizon, and you knew that the One in whom you had placed your trust had proven true. He had not forgotten you. Looking at the rainbow, the token of his covenant, you read in its mingled colors the words of the Lord Jesus, "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." In your sorrow you found that the bow of God's promises never trembles.

You were facing financial disaster. All your investments had proven bad. You had been misled by false counsel. The savings of years had been swept away by one fell swoop of disaster, and with them had gone all the fond plans for the future of your family and loved ones. Your head reeled as you felt the earth giving way beneath you; you were about to close your eyes in despair, when suddenly, in the darkest part of the overshadowing cloud, you saw the rainbow. God had not forgotten you. Amid the whirl and destruction of things his promises never trembled. Its gleaming colors told you that you were not alone, and spelled such a message of hope and inspiration to your soul, that you smiled in the face of adversity. Here was the promise, "There is no want to them that fear Him." You had never seen the beauty of those words before. You felt the thrill of a new life and the confidence that you once placed in riches, you now centered upon God.

There were the dark clouds of misplaced friendship. You were confident that the one in whom you were placing your trust was worthy, but through that friendship you were betrayed, and misrepresented, and made the object of scorn and criticism. No cloud is darker than that, no sorrow is harder to bear, and yet you did not lose confidence in man. Above the feathered edges of the cloud was the rainbow of God's promise, and you knew that if even father and mother forsook you, the Lord would take you up. The rainbow, as the symbol of God's promise, said: "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."

The earthly rainbows will never be complete. Here we behold at best only a segment of a perfect circle. We have but a one-world view and therefore can behold but half the rainbow. In heaven we shall see the completed circle, as John beheld it in his vision and exclaimed, with rapturous delight, "There was a rainbow round about the throne." So glorious is the light of the great, white throne, and the face, and the raiment of Him that sat upon it, that to angelic vision it is nestled in the center of a perfectly rounded bow of brilliant hue.

The rainbow can never be destroyed, for the light of Christ can never fade. Ever about the throne of God, in perfect circle, shall gleam the steady, colored token of God's faithfulness through all time and all eternity. The multitude of white-robed ones that worship before the throne are those who have come out "of great tribulation," they are those who have "overcome through the blood of the Lamb," therefore it is fitting that the one choicest treasure saved from the natural world in which they fought their battles, and won their victories, should be the rainbow, the richly colored symbol of God's faithfulness and mercy. What emotions thrill our souls in this world when we look upon the rainbow! What memories shall sweep through our souls when we behold the rainbow that is ever round about the great white throne of God!

GATHERING SUNSETS

The sunset is the sheaf of the day's activities, wherein are bound all the roses and poppies and fruits and grains of the passing hours, for the experiences of life are constantly coming to full harvest. Weary with toil and worn with watching, we do not see the riches of to-day; or, stirred by some new ambition, our eyes become so fixed upon the future, that to-day's golden grain is trampled under foot and lost. Instead of facing the morrow's morn, rich with garnered treasures, we greet it with empty hands. We are not householders seeking strong-walled dwellings and broad, extending acres, but are careless, nomadic folk, wandering aimlessly from day to day, as gypsies wander from town to town. Having all things within our grasp, we possess nothing. When touched by the hand of Death, and taken out of life, the world is no more disturbed than by the bursting of a bubble on the ocean wave.

Sunsets are sheaves, and the brilliancy of their coloring is God's way of calling our attention to their value. The waving of so many golden and scarlet banners, by a myriad of unseen hands, should awaken the most careless soul to the consciousness that something mighty is transpiring. Such banners and pageantry passing through our streets would awaken the entire city to wonderment and concern. For what king are the banners waving? For what worthy cause are all these ensigns thrown upon the wind? What victory is celebrated here? Yet the sunsets pass unheeded, and the golden sheaf of another day is trampled under careless feet, and left to mildew and decay.

The art of gathering sunsets, the grasping of each day's experiences with firm and constant hold, is one to covet. Days are not something to "pass through." Each day is like unto an acre of land, through which one may hurry, as in a train, without thought of right or ownership; or unto an acre of land which he holds in perpetual ownership, adding that much to his estate, and increasing his income through all the days that follow. Rather, it is a sheaf of grain, supplying food and affording strength for an ever-increasing work which he may throw away, or keep for future use. Sunset time is harvest time, and the evening hour is the one in which to fill full the granaries and treasure chests for days unborn. Sunsets should be bound with the golden cords of memory and kept forever.

The pathway of life grows brightest for those who have wasted fewest of their yesterdays. Hours well spent and safely garnered never lose the brightness of their sunshine. It always glows in the sparkle of the eye, in the brightness of a winning smile, in the warm atmosphere of helpfulness with which they are surrounded. Hours spent in sin and dissipation have no luster to cast upon the afterdays, but goodness is always luminous. Hours of right-living may be likened to blazing suns that never cease to glow. The ability to retain their brightness means an ever-increasing splendor of life. It is this that the inspired writer must have had in mind when he wrote that the pathway of the just is as a shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.

The secret of perfection along any line of endeavor is the gathering in and retaining the good, at the same time sorting out and permanently eliminating that which is bad. It is a work of patience and progression. It requires the fruitage of many days, the garnered glories of many sunsets, to endow one with the riches of genius; and not one single day should be lost. The lapidist, whose magic touch changes pebbles into glittering jewels to adorn the neck of beauty; the sculptor, whose mallet-stroke is so accurate that rough, ill-shapen stones become forms of grace to inspire the generations; the artist, whose brush quickens the common dust and clay into marvelous paintings of unfading color and undying sentiment; the botanist, whose carefulness transforms barren waysides into gardens, and the desert places into banqueting halls; the metallurgist, whose powerful hand takes the knotted lumps of ore and fashions them into the bronze doors of a great cathedral--all these represent that priceless frugality that will not permit a sunset to escape. Their first crude efforts were sheaves of rich experiences, which they garnered and stored away in the treasure chests of memory. They had the bright light of their first sunsets to add to the morning light of their second endeavors. They continued to store the brightness of the passing experiences. Day by day the light grew brighter, until at last there came the perfect day, when the whole world stood amazed at the perfection of their handiwork. The loss of one sunset would have faded the light and dimmed the glory of their final achievement. All perfect art is but gathered sunsets.

This law holds in the matter of spiritual perfection. God does much for us at conversion, when, through faith in him, we are changed by his grace into new men and new women. It is like a lost planet finding its central sun, and resuming its accustomed place, and finding light, and warmth, and life, and joy again. Wonderful indeed is the power of God as manifested in the conversion of any individual, but conversion is not perfection. Perfection is something that the inspired writer urges us "to go unto." "And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity."

Do not permit the colors of triumph to fade from your first day's sky. Hold on to that sunset. Each day will furnish its added beam of light. Faith, hope, and love, and all the Christian graces will become more beautiful for you, to you, and in you. The pathway will become brighter and brighter. Life will have fewer shadows because the light falls upon you from so many angles and becomes more perfectly diffused. To-morrow can have no hindering uncertainties, for the light of the past experiences illumines the future. There is light for every darkened corner, and one may rejoice that all things are working together for good, because we do love God. Gathered sunsets make life's trail ablaze with light.

Let no to-day become yesterday, except in the calendar, as we reckon time. Each day must become part of us as we live in an ever-present now. The same alphabet we learned in childhood is ours to-day. Because we did not forget it with the setting of the sun, it served us to-day as we spell out, in polysyllables, a newly discovered truth. The alphabet did not fade with the death of the day we learned it, so that it is now part of our lives. As we cannot think apart from the words we learned long ago; and as we cannot calculate, save as we use the first-learned characters from one to ten; so, in the developing of the soul, we must not lose one single hour of prayer or inspiration of a noble purpose.

Both building and growing are alike in this--they are processes of "adding to." Brick added to brick and timber added to timber means a stately building. Cell added to cell means growth of body and increase in stature. But handling brick is not enough, they must be placed with a purpose and kept firmly fixed in the place desired. The brick of yesterday must be where it can have added to it the brick of to-day. Physical growth depends upon the keeping the cells of yesterday for a foundation upon which to build the cells of to-day. Christian living is similar. We build a character and grow a soul but the process is the same, with both character and soul. We gain by adding to. Therefore we must not permit any of our sunsets to fade away. All that we have gained through prayer and Christian service must be held to brighten each new morn. The spiritual victory over temptation, the answer to our intercessory prayers, the moment of spiritual illumination as we read the Bible, all these are priceless experiences upon which to add the newer conquests of to-day. We must not permit the disease of sin to sap our vitality and destroy the growth of yesterday. We must guard our spiritual health that we may grow. This is what Christ meant when he said: "Men ought always to pray." The culture of the soul is an eternal process. Days must not pass; they must remain as part of our own selves.

BEYOND THE CURTAINED CLOUDS

One of the rarest treasures of the May time is the richness and purity of the sky. The winter wraps the heavens in robes of somber hue as though in mourning for the summer dead; but at the coming of the first white cloud, and sound of first lark's song, the sky seems to melt in tenderness, and assume the softest, richest hue of blue. As far as the eye can reach there is nothing but blue--soft, rich, warm, tender, melting, soul-entrancing blue. Blue, as clear as an unshadowed midland lake. Blue as a translucent sapphire without a flaw to disturb its gleaming surface. A great arch of caressing tenderness through which the white-flecked clouds ride in state, as they sail majestically from one port of mystery to another port of mystery. Among the richest treasures of the spring must be mentioned the deepening of the blue and the hanging of the snow-white curtains of the clouds.

But life's horizon is ever draped with rich folds of white and blue, that hang like silken curtains, to hide, with tantalizing secrecy, the mysteries that lie beyond. Day by day the curtains hide their treasure-chests of mystery, tempting us to strike tents and journey toward them. With the eagerness with which little children watch the unwrapping of a Christmas package we watch the moving of these clouds, trusting that each new shifting of the curtains will make the coveted revelation, but as we journey on they still evade us.

Conservative people, ones who never startle themselves or their friends by doing anything new, not that they are averse to doing anything new but simply because they are not mentally capable of entertaining new ideas, say that the mysteries that lie behind the curtained clouds are childish fancies and youth's illusions; and that energy expended in reaching the buried treasure at the rainbow's end were as fruitful an enterprise. Those of us who have endeavored to solve these mysteries know better, for we have found that the curtained clouds that hide, are the ones that, like banners, guide us to the things we really need.

Man must not be unmindful of the ministry of mystery. Over against everything enigmatic God has given man an insatiable desire to find out the hidden meaning. Yielding to that divinely implanted impulse develops powers that otherwise would atrophy. Behold the benefits of these endeavors as they lifted the human race out of stagnation and taught it the way of progress. Tented in the low swamplands, eating roots and bark, man saw these curtains that suggested to his hunger-pinched body the thought of a banqueting-hall where he might feed. His quest never brought him to the ladened tables of his desire, but as he journeyed he found grain and fruits and nuts and berries, substantial food for a full twelvemonth. Dwelling amid the sick and dying, man saw the moving of the curtains that God hangs along our sky-line, and felt that, somewhere, beyond their folds, must exist a spring, whose living waters would not only heal the sick but give the drinker perpetual youth. The spring was never found, but as man journeyed westward in the quest he found a land whose liberties and institutions crowd a century of blessings into every decade. Toiling with small recompense, like some dull beast of burden, man saw the clouds that suggested a palace of ease and luxury. He failed to find the palace of his dreams, but on the way he discovered labor-saving machinery that has made his labor a delight, and given to every laborer a home surpassing in comforts the baron's stately castle.

Because of the ministry of mystery he has been able to discover the depth and values of his own soul. In his effort to reach the curtained clouds man has had to rally his forces, and, to meet arising exigencies, he has been compelled to draw upon the resources of his nature, until he startled himself with his newly discovered possibilities and powers. He trained his body to wrestle against physical odds; he trained his mind to master the handicaps of ignorance; he found the glittering sword of courage with which to destroy defeating fear; he learned the value of faith and hope with which to enrich the soul when disaster would impoverish. Without the effort aroused by the cloudy curtains of mystery, he could not have found himself, and perfected his work of invention, art and letters.

It was from behind the curtained clouds that God spoke, introducing Jesus as the world's Redeemer, saying, "This is my beloved Son, hear ye him." It was an overhanging canopy of cloud that curtained the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration, and it was in this curtained tabernacle that they beheld the glory of their Lord. To hide the shame of those who crucified His Son, God hung a curtain of cloud about the sun, enveloping Calvary in the shades of night. It was a curtain of cloud that hid the ascending Lord from the sight of the wondering, astonished, fear-filled disciples. It was from amid their soft drapery that the angels spoke of his coming again, and it is upon the clouds that the Son of man shall come in his glory to judge the nations. From the glory of the Patmos vision, John exclaimed, "Behold he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him!" To the very end Christ is surrounded with the curtained clouds of mystery. "And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud One sat like unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle. And he that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped."

Mystery has a large part in the Christian faith, not to discourage, but to encourage the prayerful, aspiring souls of men. The drapery of cloud hangs all about, not to defeat, but to challenge. It is no illusion like a great desert distance filled with the blue of emptiness, that strews the sands with the bones of those whom it deceives, but is as real as the curtains of the ancient tabernacle that held the symbol of Jehovah's presence. Life's mysteries are often most tantalizing; its problems artfully made difficult of solution; but always within their depths is God.

To-day, for our development, it is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but it is the promise that some day we shall see, not through the mists darkly, but face to face with God. Some day we shall pass beyond the cloudy portals, and the vision of God and our own immortality shall lie before our enraptured vision. The puzzle of life shall there find perfect solution. The equation in which life is now the unknown quantity shall find its answer. In that cloudless land we shall know even as we are known. The shadows of death are the last shadow the soul of the righteous shall ever see. Until that glad day comes, let us fit ourselves, through prayer and goodness, to receive such revelations of the mystery of godliness as God may care to reveal as he parts the curtains of our life's horizon, knowing that we journey to a perfect, unclouded day.

TILLING THE SKY

Man, that must till the soil for the building of his body, must also till the sky for the growing of his soul. This was the thought of a little woman among the Ozarks, who had given a long and beautiful life in training her people of the hills. It was Commencement Day in the college she had founded. Gathered about her were the young men and young women from the humble homes of those rugged hills. They were now leaving her sheltering care to "commence" life. She was such a tiny bit of woman, but through the lens of tears in those students' eyes, she was greater and more stately than any queen. Her eyes gleamed with a love-lighted moisture, her lips trembled with great emotions as she rose to offer her last words of counsel. She knew that very soon they would be beyond the reach of her voice, and her desire was to write just one more message upon the pages of their memories, a message that should never be erased. Breathlessly we awaited her words, which were these: "My children, whatever you do, or wherever you go, this one task I place before you. Continue your study of astronomy, for there is nothing that so uplifts and widens one's life as a study of the sky."

These were not the words of a mere dreamer, but of a very practical woman, and were words of wisdom uttered to young men and young women who were practical students, yearning to make their lives count. These students were trained observers who would travel that they might see things as they are; they were scholars who would study in order to make discoveries. They were to enter the strain and struggle of competition. They were to match their brawn and brain against honest rivalry and unscrupulous dishonesty. They were not entering paradise, yet, amid it all, the one who yearned most for their unmeasured success and honor, urged them to cast their plowshare deep into the wide expanse of overarching blue, whose owner is God, but whose harvests belong to the reaper.

The little woman was very practical, for a man must not permit the narrowing influences of earthly endeavor to cramp and destroy the soul. This is the tendency of most of our daily duties, even those of the most fascinating and absorbing scientific character. A man may follow the footsteps of Luther Burbank and devote his life to the study of plants, and through his magic touch, may bring beauty of form and richness of flavor to bud and blossom, vegetable and fruit, and yet the very fascination of the work may bind him into a narrow world of just buds and blossoms, vegetables and fruits. He may, like Edison or Steinmetz, choose the fairyland of electricity; or, like Madame Cur?, enter the enchanted realm of radio-activity; or, like Morse and Bell and Davenport, become wizards in the world of invention, and find a joy that is as perilous as it is unutterable. Any realm of nature or invention, absorbs and fascinates as clover blossoms claim the bee. He who studies will find that a lifetime is too short to fathom the unmeasured depths of an atom or explore the mysteries of one drop of dew.

But the very fascination of these things is their peril, for the tendency of any line of endeavor is to narrow and to restrict one's life. One need not yield to this tendency, but the chances are that he will. Darwin reports spending several delightful years studying fish-worms, but while engaged in this absorbing task he lost all taste for music. Ericsson had a similar experience. Planning, with steel armor, to remake the navies of the world, he refused his soul all sound of blended tones, endeavoring to feed his whole nature on armor plate. It was not until Ole Bull, against Ericsson's desire, entered his factory, and began playing his violin, that the great inventor became a weeping, willing captive, kneeling at the shrine of music, tearfully confessing that he had then found that which he had lost, and for which his soul had been craving. When a man, through the microscope, begins a life study of the infinitesimal, he is apt to get his own ego into the field of vision and magnify himself. On the other hand, considering only his own achievements in art or architecture, one is apt to exaggerate his own importance saying, "Is not this great Babylon, which I have builded?" However, when he begins to study the stars and comprehend something of the vastness of the plan upon which God has made the heaven and the earth, he will see his own littleness and exclaim with the psalmist, "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man?"

No earth-made ceiling is high enough for a growing brain. Each individual must have a God-made sky in which to lift his head and think the thoughts of the Almighty. The earthly thing upon which we set our affection and which we think so essential may mean the wreck and ruin of the soul. It is easy to neglect the brain, and direct all one's energies toward gaining earthly possessions, not for the opportunities afforded for benevolence, but that one may dress in style and enjoy a social life, not knowing that it is far better to be a great thinker than to be the best dressed man in Paris. Poverty may be infinitely better than wealth when the individual has a familiar sky above his head and a good book in his hand. How insignificant are earth's greatest obstacles compared with the immensities of stellar space! Nothing can hinder the man who is accustomed to measure the distances between stars. With his eyes on the distant suns, poverty becomes a mole-hill; poor health, but a breath of mist; and success is within easy reach. It is good for one to till the sky until he learns the vastness of his Creator's thoughts.

One of the richest harvests garnered from the sky is a revelation of the accuracy with which God works. The stars do not dwell in a land of "Hit and Miss," and eclipses are not accidental happenings. No ship cuts the waves of the sea with half the accuracy as star and planet move in their appointed courses. There are no swervings nor deviations from the plan of God, so that an astronomer can calculate the exact second when a comet will return from its long journey through unseen realms; as well as foretell the conjunction of planets a thousand years from now. God has appointed an exact second for the rising of the sun, and another exact second for its setting, and man knows what both of them are a thousand years before the day arrives. Then let us till the sky until we learn that He who planned the high-arched blue, and marked orbits for stars and planets, is also the Designer of our own lives, and has set for us a divine purpose somewhat like the vastness of the sky. Yielding ourselves to God as the heavenly constellations yield themselves to their controlling powers, each one has a greater life to live, and a more sublime destiny to attain, than his fondest dreams. How foolish it is to till the soil for money, and miss the very essence of life, by failing to utilize the sky that yields such tender ministries with so little effort!

It is well to look upward and learn a lesson of patience, for the open sky teaches that the plans of God are not worked out in a day. The journey from star-dust to harvest-ladened planet peopled by a happy family of contented men, requires many millions of years, yet, from the beginning it was in the mind of God. He has never altered his plan, but with divine accuracy the work has passed from stage to stage of development with perfect progression. With such an example, we must learn patience and not become discouraged when we cannot see the end from the beginning. A child can make a shelf full of mud pies in one summer's afternoon, and they will last no longer than the first rain. Hasty work means wasted effort. Life that endures must be planned of God, fulfilled with astronomical accuracy, and most patiently developed.

How wonderful the brain that is molded after something of the vastness of the open sky, and how thrilling to walk and till the fields of heavenly blue! We were meant for those heights. It does not require a very great elevation in the pure atmosphere of a Western State to push back the horizon forty and fifty miles. This planet is not the objective of life. It is only the hilltop where God has placed us for a little while that we may catch a vision as wide as the universe and as high as his own White Throne.

UNQUARRIED STATUES

Michael Angelo, with his statues of David and Moses, proved that Phidias and Praxiteles had not exhausted the marvelous possibilities of the art of sculpture. Rodin, with his "Thinker," has shown, while Phidias and Praxiteles demonstrated the possibility of giving immortality to the unsurpassed beauty of Grecian form, and while Michael Angelo revealed the power of expressing grace, as in David, and commanding leadership, as in Moses, that the achievements of these two schools of art were the Pillars of Hercules, not marking the limit of art, but the open gateway to uncharted seas and undiscovered realms in the art of reshaping marble. There is not a lofty sentiment of the soul, a struggling aspiration toward goodness, or form of idealism that cannot be made to live in marble, and exert undying influence. There is more than "an angel in the block of marble." There are all the hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, laughter and tears, longings and aspirations, desires and despairs; there is all that is manly, noble, and heroic, lying in any block of marble awaiting the coming of the liberating chisel. What inspiration to the young artist of to-day, and what joy to all lovers of the beautiful! The depths of earth are stored with a wealth of unquarried statues.

The progress of civilization is ofttimes hindered because youth, in thinking of statues, consider the pedestals upon which they rest rather than the depth from which they were quarried. They very often do not care to begin life at the right place. Because they covet praise, and enjoy the warm, congenial atmosphere of appreciation, they shun the depths, hours of loneliness, the unrequited toil of preparation, and the laborious efforts of beginning. Modeling clay is an important part of the achievement; but getting the proper marble is one of the first essentials.

The experience of Michael Angelo is common to all men of real achievement: he found that the market place does not offer marble blocks of sufficient size for him to work out his divine conception. Hucksters and makers of money in the market place seldom understand ambitious youth that asks for larger blocks than they are capable of handling. Their idea of a great thought is an ornament for the mantelpiece. But men of achievement will not be daunted. Locking his studio, Angelo went to superintend the breaking of blocks in the mountain of Carrara, and when the sluggish-minded people of the mountains refused to do his bidding, he opened new quarries in Seravez. Before he could carve his statue he knew that he must quarry a block of marble sufficiently large. He knew also that the block of marble could be had for the digging. He found what he needed but did not exhaust the treasury. The world still has the material, richer than that which made Angelo and Rodin famous, awaiting the youth of ambition to undertake great things, and the willingness, at any cost, to superintend the breaking of the marble blocks from the buried storehouses.

The pleasure of nature is to store her raw material in seemingly inaccessible strongholds. She does not willingly yield them to men lacking vision and great conceptions. If they were of easy access, common men would crush them to make roads for donkeys to tramp over. Nature's treasures are too valuable for ignorance to destroy, so she locks them in secret depths or inaccessible heights, awaiting the coming of the man of genius. If only a man yields himself to the divine leadings, and catches a vision of a statue like Moses, or a fa?ade for the Church of San Lorenzo, or for a mausoleum for the Medici, no mountainside is too steep to chisel a roadway through the jagged rocks, no morass so yielding but that a solid highway may be erected, no water so troubled but that boats may safely transport the precious marble. He will not depend upon hirelings nor lean upon borrowed strength. The dream of beauty must be wrought in marble, the unquarried statue must be lifted from obscurity and made to live in some public place, therefore he will personally attend to the breaking of the blocks.

It is not an easy matter to live out a divine idea and make it a thing tangible and real for a critical world to examine and criticize and afterwards love and venerate. Sluggards and lovers of ease cannot do it. To them an unquarried statue is only a stone. For centuries no one has given it any attention; why should they? They would rather have something to eat and drink. A cushioned chair is far more comfortable to sit on, and a potato is much more substantial food. What they want is something to eat, and a place in which to lounge, and because they do not see the value of great ideas they can never be forgotten when dead, for they were never known while living.

He lives who forgets to live and concentrates all his powers in bringing to light the vision of his beauty-loving soul. It may be the beauty of art or the beauty of worthy living; it may be the beauty of perfect workmanship in shop or factory, or the beauty of a wholesome influence flowing from noble character; it may be loveliness of sympathetic serving, or the beauty of aggressive battle for righteousness; it may take any one of many forms of exalted thinking and endeavor, yet its realization comes only when one eats, and drinks, and bends every energy, not for the sake of living, but for the realization of that which is more than living.

How lamentable for a human life to end and find at the final judgment that all its days were of less value to the world than that of a coral polyp! How wonderful for one to be made out of dust, and after a while to crumble back into dust, and yet, refusing to grovel in the dust, leave the world richer, and better, and more beautiful, so that people of another age will breathe his name in reverence as they behold that which he hath wrought. Professor Finsen, the inventor of the "light cure," was an invalid for many years, yet he labored like a slave, in the severest self-denial, to bring his invention, without compensation, to the service of the world's sick and suffering. He had but one dread and that was the regret of dying, and leaving his little five-year-old boy without any memory of his father. He desired to live long enough to impress his face and life upon the memory of his son, that, in the after years, the growing man would never forget the one who toiled so earnestly for him. He did not want to be forgotten. How little did he dream of the immortality that was his! He found an unquarried statue in the sunbeam where others had overlooked it. Through ceaseless toil he brought it within the vision of the world and gained a name that countless ages will not forget.

How wonderful to be the son of such a man! And though the image of the father's face be blotted from the memory, the statue that he carved will help and heal the generations. How wonderful to be the son of such a man, but how much more wonderful it is to be the man himself! To fight with optimistic heart against the ravages of disease, to overcome the natural yearnings of a father's heart, to endure the most slavish toil without thought or hope of compensation, to be a sick man fighting for others who were sick; a dying man making battle against disease that others may not taste of death!

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