| The Hidden Life |
Chapter 3 |
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A traveler tells of holding in his hand the egg of a rare East India bird which was so near the hatching that the bird inside was pecking away at the shell. He could hear it struggling to get out. It was shut away in the darkness, cramped, confined, but it was not content to stay there. It seemed to know that there was a larger life for it outside, that on wings it might soar away to greet the morning light, that it might put on splendors of beauty, that it might look on mountain, valleys, and rivers, and bathe in the pure air of sunny skies.
This bird in the shell is a picture of the higher nature which is within every human life. It is not satisfied. It is a prisoner longing to be liberated. It is conscious of a wider freedom, a larger liberty that is possible to it. We are made for communion with God. The mission of Christ to us is to bring us out into this larger, fuller life. Instead of vainly trying to satisfy our spiritual needs and cravings at earth’s fountains, he leads us to heaven’s fountains. He reveals to us the love of God. He tells us that we are God’s children, and brings us into intimate relations with our Father in heaven. He gives us intimations of a future for ourselves that is full of blessedness and glory. He calls us to this larger life.
So the hunger for love in our beating heart is the prophecy of a satisfaction of love which is possible in Christ. The longing for holiness, for strength, for beauty of character, for power of helpfulness, for Christ-likeness, is a revealing of our capacity for noble living, and of the spiritual growth to which we may attain and shall attain, unless by unbelief and sin we stunt, choke, and smother the immortal life that is ours as Christians.
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