The Broken Life.
The mystery of evil has many aspects. There is one which is contained in that sad word, waste. How much that was born with each one of us must pass unused and undeveloped into the grave! Who is there that has begun to think, and has passed the entrance on actual life, what man of thirty, what woman of five-and-twenty, has not already learned to relinquish what had once seemed possible.
I. The vision of life in early youth, for those who think and feel, has a unity and completeness, as of the body of heaven in his clearness. Whether the aim of aspiration be the triumph of a single power, or the varied exercise of many, there is a flawless completeness in it, a rounded perfection, which those who have travelled further cannot but envy, if they retain enough of sympathy to perceive it. But we all find out at some point in our course that feeling and energy must be adapted to circumstances; that while desires and aims may be boundless, opportunity and time and human power are limited; that after all false starts and mistaken efforts, we have still a work to do, a place to fill, a line of action which experience points out to us as our duty.
II. And it is here that the difference becomes apparent between the true and false resolution of enthusiasm, which has attempted the impossible. The possible remains. But does there remain in us the strength and will to do it? While there is life there is the power of will, and that is the power of working, if need be of suffering. Disappointment will have a weakening effect for a while, but it will only be for a while if we have any strength in us. If there be the fixed determination to do what the hand findeth to do, even though it may seem poor and mean, we need not fear that any experience, any separation, any love, any effort of our past lives will be utterly lost to us. To act in the present is not necessarily to break with the past. Let us gather up the fragments that remain. Though sometimes we may be cast down, let us know that we are not destroyed; though we have sometimes fallen, let us trust that we shall not be cast away, for the Lord upholdeth us with His hand.
L. Campbell, Some Aspects of the Christian Ideal,p. 88.
References: 2 Corinthians 4:10. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xi., p. 59. 2 Corinthians 4:11. T. Birkett Dover, A Lent Manual,p. 139. 2 Corinthians 4:12, A. Parry, Phases of Truth,p. 5; W. M. Punshon, Sermons,p. 11.