By J.R. Miller
Not one of us ever dreams of all the possibilities of his life. The plainest of us, carries concealed splendors within him. If we knew what noble qualities are lying undeveloped in us, what virtues are waiting to be called out, what fine things we may achieve in the years before us--it ought to inspire us to our best life and effort. Perhaps no one ever does reach in this world--all that he might attain.
In one of the Psalms is a suggestive call to awake. The writer cries to himself as one calling another from sleep; "Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp." His harp had been hanging on the wall silent, its strings untouched, and he would rouse himself--that the harp might awake. All of us at times need to make this call upon ourselves. The harps are lying silent in our hearts. We do not rejoice any more. No songs break from our lips.
The figure of instruments of music sleeping--is very suggestive. They are capable of giving out rich strains--but not a note is heard from them. Sometimes it is sorrow which silences the song. Sometimes it is weariness. Sometimes it is discouragement. Whatever the cause, it is not fitting that we should remain songless. The ideal Christian life is one of joy. Christ Himself always rejoiced, though His life was so full of sorrows. He sang a hymn of praise as He was leaving the upper room for Gethsemane. His harp never was songless. We are not like our Master when our hearts do not sing. We should call upon our silent harps to awake.
But there is a wider application. Our lives are to be songs--but music is not all. "Awake up, my glory." What is this glory which is in a man, and which needs to be wakened up? When we think of it, all life is glorious in itself and also in its possibilities. Glory is a great word. In the dictionary it has many definitions. It means brightness, splendor, luster, honor, greatness, excellence. It always has in it, a suggestion of something divine. The word is fitly used of human life. It would take a whole library of books to answer the question, "What is man?" An old writer speaks of man as being "not only the noblest creature in the world--but even a very world in himself." Merely to describe the mechanism of the human hand--and to give a record of the wonderful achievements the hand has wrought, would require a volume. Or the eye with its marvelous structure, or the ear with its delicate functions, or the brain with its amazing processes, or the heart, or the lungs--each of the organs in a bodily organism is so wonderful, that a whole lifetime might be devoted to the study of anatomy alone--and the subject would not be exhausted.
Then that is not all of man. Think of the intellectual part, with all that the mind of man has achieved in literature, in science, in art, in invention, in music. Think of the moral part, man's immortal nature, his spiritual nature, that in man which makes him like God, capable of holding communion with God and of belonging to the family of God. When we begin to think even most superficially of what man is--we see an almost infinite meaning in the word "glory" as defining life.
No one in the highest flights of imagination, has ever begun to dream of the full content of his own life, what it is at present--and then what it may become under the influence of divine love and grace. Even now, man is but "a little lower than God." "It is not yet made manifest what we shall be." The full glory is hidden, unrevealed, as a marvelous rose is hidden in a little bud in springtime. All we know about our future--is that we shall be like Christ. We are awed even by such a hint of what we shall be, when the work in us is completed.
The call to awake, implies that the glory in us is asleep and needs to be awakened. For one thing, not one of us has more than the faintest conception of the potential greatness, the beauty, the power of his own life. We do not think of ourselves as enfolding splendors. We travel over seas to look at scenes of grandeur, to study works of art, to see wonders of nature--while we have in ourselves greater grandeur, rarer beauty, and sublimer art--than any land has to show us. We should pray to be made conscious of our own glory!
Then we should seek to awake all these marvelous powers. The harp is standing silent--when it might be pouring out entrancing music. The hand is folded and idle--when it might be doing beautiful things--painting a picture that would charm the world, doing a deed of kindness that would give gladness to a gentle heart, visiting a sick or suffering one and winning the commendation, "You did it unto Me." The power of sympathy is sleeping in our hearts when it might be adding strength to human weakness on one of life's battlefields, making struggling ones braver, and inspiring them to victory.
If we would have our glory waked up when we must seek to have all the best that is in us called out. There is a familiar story of Cromwell, that coming upon twelve silver statues he asked, "What are these?" "The twelve apostles," he was told. Then he gave orders that they should be melted down and coined, and the money distributed among the poor. He said the real apostles went about doing good, and would not be pleased to see their statues standing up in niches, merely as ornament. The glory of our lives is not given us for admiration, for adorning--but for service. Consecration means becoming a living sacrifice.
In one of Paul's letters to Timothy, the old apostle gave this young man a most earnest charge. He bade him stir up the gift of God that was in him. Timothy was not doing his best. The glory in him was not shining out, was not warming and brightening the world as it should. The picture in Paul's mind as he wrote, was that of a fire covered up, smouldering, and he bade Timothy stir it up that it might burn into a flame. There is no lack of spiritual gifts with splendid possibilities in the hearts and lives of Christian people--but they are not at their best, and need to be stirred up.
We hold ourselves back from the full service to which the Master calls us. We do not like to make sacrifices. We have not realized that there is no true glory in life--until it has reached the point of sacrifice.
One was speaking the other day of another who for years had professed faithful friendship--but whom the moment that friendship demanded an act of self denial--had failed and fell back. Nothing ever really begins to count as worthy living--until love passes out of commonplace expression, into the splendor of sacrifice. There is no true glory in life--there may be beauty, there may be winsomeness--but there is no glory, in any service for Christ--if it stops short of sacrifice. When we cry, "Awake up, my glory," we must be ready to go out to self denial, to hunger and thirst, to suffering, to death. It is said that when Dr. Temple was Bishop of London he sent a young man to a position involving much hardship. The young man's friends tried to dissuade him from accepting it, and he went to the bishop and told him that he believed he would not live two years if he accepted the appointment. Dr. Temple listened and replied somewhat in this way: "But you and I do not mind a little thing like that--do we?"
We have been used so long--to easy-going self-indulgent ways--that our ideal of true Christian life is low. The best in us never has been called out. Perhaps none of us ever has risen to his best in anything. The boys and girls have not reached their best in school--they might have done better. The artist's picture might have been a little more beautiful, a little more artistic in its technique, a little finer in its sentiment. The singer might have sung her song a little better, with more heart, more sweetly, with less of self consciousness. The best day any of us ever lived--we might have made a little purer, fuller of duties done, more sacred in its memories. In Christian life, not one of us is as good, as useful, as unselfish, as thoughtful, as holy in influence, as we might be. We should get this great word "glory," as defining our life, so fixed in our minds--that we shall never forget it. The word calls us to our best. No other living is worthy.
Recently a Swiss vase, about sixteen inches in height, was put up at auction. No history of it was given. But the vase was so exquisite in its beauty and so surely genuine, that it brought more than twenty thousand dollars. Yet this rare thing was once a mere lump of common clay with a few moist colors on it. The value was in the toil and skill of the artist who shaped and colored it with such delicate patience. He did his best, and the vase witnesses today to his devotion and faithfulness.
The frieze on the Parthenon at Athens was chiefly the work of Phidias. The figures were life size and stood fifty feet above the floor of the temple. For nearly two thousand years the work remained undisturbed. Near the close of the seventeenth century the frieze was shattered and its fragments fell upon the pavement. Then it was seen that in the smallest detail the work was perfect. Phidias had wrought for the eyes of the gods--for no human eyes could see his work. We should do perfect work, even when we work most obscurely, for nothing less is worthy the glory of our own life. We should set higher ideals for ourselves. We are not worms of the dust--we are immortal spirits, and this dignifies the lowest thing we do. Sweeping a room for Christ, is glorious work. Cobbling shoes may be made as radiant service in Heaven's sight--as angel ministry before God's throne. The glory is in ourselves, and we must express it in all that we do.
We should never rest content with any achievement or attainment, as if it were the best we can reach. We never attain our largest opportunity--there is always new land to discover beyond that which we have taken possession of.
There is no end to the sky. There is no limit to life. There is always something beyond. He, who thinks there is nothing further, nothing beyond where he is now, does not understand the meaning of the glory of life. The ancients wrote, "Nothing more beyond." On the Pillars of Hercules. That was the end of the world, they said. But one man heard the interminable whisper, "A continent beyond. Go and find it," and Columbus sailed away and discovered a new world. We settle down in our little circle of life and opportunity, and suppose we have done our best; but the glory which is in us, ever whispers of something greater and worthier, and calls us to go out to find it!
