| The Hidden Life |
Chapter 1 |
Page 6 |
The sea covers great fields of concealed splendors. Now and then a storm stirs its depths, and washes up a few brilliant shells or pebbles, which shine like fragments broken from heaven’s walls. Yet these few stones or shells are only specimens of millions more, even more brilliant, that are buried in the ocean depths. So there come out here and there, in a human life, in times of special exaltation, glimpses of something rarely beautiful — an act, a word, a self denial, a disposition, the revealing of some noble quality or some marvelous power or measure of love; and we say as we see it, “That is like Christ. That is a gleam of heavenly life. That is a fragment of divinity.” But that flashing gleam of character, that glimmering of Christ-likeness, that act which seems too pure for earth, is only a hint of the infinite possibilities of each human soul. Hidden in the depths of the nature, under all its faults and imperfections, is a life which far surpasses the highest things that are reached in this world. The love, joy, peace, unselfishness, purity, holiness, attained in the saintliest experience of earthly Christian life, are but divine intimations of what we shall be when the limiting conditions of earth shall have been left behind.
There will be a time when all this hidden life shall be revealed. The bud shall burst into the rich flower. The gem shall break through its rough imprisoning crust, and shine in lustrous splendour. The dull character that here shows only gleams and flashes of spiritual beauty, amid manifold defects, flaws, and infirmities, shall yet show in its every feature the beauty of Christ. The holy thoughts, desires, longings, and the hunger after righteousness, which here are hindered, restrained, limited, and which fail to take full form in life and character, shall yet be wrought out in deeds as beautiful and holy as themselves. We shall see Christ, and we shall be like him, when we shall see him as he is.
Page 6