By J.R. Miller
We are always coming to the end of something; nothing earthly is long-lived. Many things last but for a day; many, for only a moment. You look at the sunset clouds, and there is a glory in them which thrills your soul; you turn to call a friend to behold the splendor with you--and it has vanished, and a new splendor--as wondrous, though altogether different--is in its place. You cross a field on an early summer morning, and every leaf and every blade of grass is covered with dewdrops, which sparkle like millions of diamonds as the first sunbeams fall on them; but a few moments later you return, and not a dewdrop is to be seen. You walk through your garden today, and note its wondrous variety of flowers in bloom, with their marvelous tints and their exquisite loveliness; tomorrow you walk again along the same paths, and there is just as great variety and as rich beauty--but all is changed.
So it is in all our personal experiences. Life is a kaleidoscope--every moment the view changes. The beautiful things of one glance are missing at the next, while new things--just as lovely, though not the same--appear in their place. The joys we had yesterday, we do not have today, though our hearts may be quite as happy now, with gladness just as pure and deep. In a sense, to most of us--life is routine, an endless repetition--the same tasks, the same duties, the same cares, day after day, year after year; yet in this routine, there is constant change.
We meet new people, we read new books, we see new pictures, we learn new facts, while at the same time many of the old familiar things are continually dropping out of our lives. The face we saw yesterday--we miss today, and there are new faces in the throng; the songs we sang last year--we do not sing this year; the books we used to read with zest--we do not care for any longer; the pleasures which once delighted us--have no more charm for us; the toys that meant so much to childhood and were so real--have no fascination whatever for manhood and womanhood; the happy days of youth, with their sports and games, their schools and studies, their friendships and visions--are left behind, though never forgotten, as we pass on into actual life with its harder tasks, its rougher paths, its heavier burdens, its deeper studies, its sterner realities. So we are ever coming to the end of old things--and to the beginning of new things. We keep nothing very long.
This is true of our friendships. Our hearts are made to love and cling. Very early the little child begins to tie itself to others lives, by the subtle cords of affection. All through life we go on gathering friends and binding them to us by cords of varying strength, sometimes light as a gossamer thread, and as easily broken; sometimes strong as life itself--the very knitting of soul to soul. Yet our friendships are ever changing. Some of them we outgrow and leave behind as we pass from childhood and youth to maturity; some of them have only an external attachment, and easily fall off and are scarcely missed and leave no scar.
In every true life, there is an inner circle of loved ones who are bound to us by ties woven out of our heart's very fibers. The closest of these are the members of our own household. The child's first friend is the child's mother; then comes the father; then the other members of the family are taken into sacred clasp by the opening life. By and by the young heart reaches outside and chooses other friends from the great world of people, and out of the multitude of passing associates, and binds them to itself with friendship's strongest cords. Thus all true men and true women come up to mature years, clustered about by a circle of friends who are as dear to them as their own life.
Our debt to our life's pure and good friendships is incalculable; they make us what we are. The mother's heart is the child's first school room! The early home influences, give their tints and hues to the whole afterlife; a gentle home where only kindly words are spoken and loving thoughts and dispositions are nourished, fills with tender beauty--the lives that go out from its shelter. All early friendships print their own stamp on the ripening character. Our souls are like the sensitive plates which the photographer puts into his camera, which catch every image whose reflection falls upon them and hold it ready to be brought out in the finished picture.
True in general, this is especially true of the pure friendships of our lives. None of the impressions that they make on our lives are ever lost; they sink away into our souls--and then reappear at length, in our character.
But even these tender and holy friendships, we cannot keep forever; one by one they fall off or are torn out of our lives. There are many ways of losing friends. Sometimes, without explanation, without offence or a shadow of a reason which we know, without hint or warning given--our friend suddenly withdraws from us and goes his own way, and through life we never have hint or token of the old friendship.
Some friends are lost to us, not by any sudden rupture--but by a slow and gradual falling apart which goes on imperceptibly through long periods, tie after tie unclasping until all are loosed, when hearts once knit together in holy union, find themselves hopelessly estranged. A little bird dropped a seed on a rock. The seed fell into a crevice and grew, and at length the great rock was rent asunder by the root of the tree that sprang up. So little seeds of alienation sometimes fall between two friends and in the end produce a separation which rends their friendship and sunders them forever!
Friends are lost, too, through misunderstanding, which in many cases a few honest words at first might have removed. The proverb says, "A whisperer separates chief friends."
Friends are lost, too, in the sharp competitions of business, in the keen rivalries of ambition. For love of money or of fame or of power or of special distinction, many throw away holy friendships.
Friends are lost, too, by death. All through life--the sad story of bereavement goes on. As the leaves are torn from the trees by the crude storm, so are friendships plucked from our lives by Death's remorseless hand. There is something inexpressibly sad, in the loneliness of old people who have survived the loss of nearly all their friends, and who stand almost entirely alone amid the gathering shadows of their life's eventide. Once they were rich in human affection. Children sat about their table and grew up in their happy home; other true hearts were drawn to them along the years. But one by one, their Christian children are gathered home into God's bosom, until all are gone. Other friends--some in one way and some in another--are also removed. At last the husband or the wife is called away, and one only survives of the once happy pair, lonely and desolate amid the ruin of all earthly gladness, and the tender memories of lost joys.
Were it not for the Christian's hope, these losses of friends along the years would be infinitely sad, without alleviation. But the wonderful grace of God comes not only with its revelation of after life--but with its present healing. God binds up his people's hearts in their sorrow and comforts them in their loneliness. The children and the friends who are gone are not lost; hand will clasp hand again and heart will clasp heart in inseparable reunion. The grave is only winter, and after winter comes spring with its wonderful resurrections, in which everything beautiful that seemed lost comes again.
We come to the end, also, of many of our life's visions and hopes as the years go on. Flowers are not the only things which fade. Morning clouds are not the only things which pass away. Sunset splendors are not the only gorgeous pictures which vanish. What comes of all childhood's fancies, of youth's dreams, of manhood's and womanhood's visions and hopes? How many of them are ever realized? Life is full of illusions. Many of our ships that we send out to imaginary lands of wealth, to bring back to us rich cargoes--never return at all, or, if they do, only creep back empty, with torn sails and battered hulks. Disappointments come to all of us along life's course. Many of our ventures on life's sea, are wrecked and never come back to port; many of our ardent hopes, prove only brilliant bubbles which burst as we grasp them!
Yet if we are living for the higher things--the things which are unseen and eternal--then the shattering of our life's dreams, and the failures of our earthly hopes--are only apparent losses. The things we can see, are but the shadows of things we cannot see. We chase the shadow, supposing it to be a reality; it eludes us and we do not grasp it! But instead we grasp in our hand that invisible thing of which the visible was only the shadow. A young man has his vision of great achievements and attainments; one by one, with toil and pain, and with quenchless ardor, he follows them. All along his life to its close, bright hopes shine before him, and he continues to press after them with unwearying quest. Perhaps he does not realize any of them, and he comes to old age with empty hands--an unsuccessful man, the world says--but yet all the while his faith in God has not faltered, and he has been gathering into his soul the treasures of spiritual conquest; in his inner life he has been growing richer every day.
Thus, God gives us friends, and our heart's tendrils twine about them; they stay with us for a time, and then leave us. Our loss is very sore, and we go out bereft and lonely, along life's paths. But we have not lost all. Loving our friends drew out to ripeness, the possibilities of love in our own hearts; then the friends were taken away--but the ripened love remains. Our hearts are empty--but our lives are larger. They are but the falling away of the crude scaffolding used in erecting the building, that the beautiful temple itself may stand out in enduring splendor.
We will come to the end of trials and sorrows. Every night has a morning, and, however dark it may be, we have only to wait a little while for the sun to rise, when light will chase away the gloom. Every black cloud which gathers in the sky, and blots out the blue, or hides the stars--passes away before long; and when it is gone there is no stain left on the blue, and not a star's beam is quenched or even dimmed. So it is with life's pains and troubles. Sickness gives place to health. Grief, however bitter, is comforted by the tender comfort of divine love. Sorrow, even the sorest, passes away and joy comes again, not one glad not hushed, its music even enriched by its experience of sadness.
There is another ending--we shall come to the end of life itself. We shall come to the close of our last day. We shall do our last piece of work, and take our last walk, and write our last letter, and sing our last song, and speak our last "good night"; then tomorrow we shall be gone, and the palaces which have known us, shall know us no more. Whatever other experiences we may miss--we shall not miss dying. Every human path, through whatever scenes it may wander, must bend at last, into the Valley of Shadows.
Yet we ought not to thinks of death as calamity or disaster; if we are Christians, it will be the brightest day of our whole life--when we are called to go away from earth, and enter heaven. Work will then be finished, conflict will be left behind--and life in its full, true, rich meaning--will begin.
True preparation for death is made when we live each day--as if it were the last. We are never sure of tomorrow; we should leave nothing incomplete any night. Each single, separate little day--should be a miniature life complete in itself--with nothing of duty left over. God gives us life by days, and with each day he gives its own allotment of duty--a portion of his plan to be wrought out, a fragment of his purpose to be accomplished by us. Our mission is to find that bit of divine will--and do it. Well-lived days, make completed years; and the well-lived years as they come, make a beautiful and full life. In such a life, no special preparation of any kind is needed; he who lives thus, is always ready to die. Each day prepares for the next--and the last day prepares for glory!
If we thus live, coming to the end of life need have no terror for us. Dying does not interrupt life for a moment. Death is not a barrier cutting off the path--but a gate through which passing out of this world of shadows and unrealities, we shall find ourselves in the immediate presence of the Lord, and in the midst of the glories of the eternal home.
We need have only one care--that we live well, our one short life as we go on; that we love God and our neighbor; that we believe on Christ and obey his commandments; that we do each duty as it comes to our hand--and do it well. Then no sudden coming to the end will ever surprise us unprepared. Then, while glad to live as long as it may be God's will to leave us here--we shall welcome the gentle angel who comes with great joy, to lead us to out eternal rest and home!
