VIII

THE PRIMROSE PATH

The path of the righteous is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.-Prov. 4: 18.

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T may seem strange to identify the primrose path with the course of Christian obedience, but it is strictly accurate: the life of faith in the Son of God is a springing, expanding, evergrowing life of power and joy.

"As

Christian life is bright in its inception. the shining light"-it is that to begin with, never less than that. God shines into our heart, and then everything shines. What a glorious hour is that in which the faculty of hearing is recovered-entering into a world of music! What a memorable moment when blind eyes are opened, and the restored one looks for the first time on the glory of earth and sky! How sweet the day when the invalid is able to leave his sickchamber!

The common air, the earth, the skies,

To him are opening paradise!

Now, conversion is all this in the highest sense. It is the opening of the soul to the lights,

harmonies, and delectable things of the spiritual universe, and no language can express the interior joy of one who enters into newness of life. The butterfly may forget the day when it burst forth from the chrysalis into the splendor of the sylph; the soul, however, can never forget the period of its transformation and emergence into a marvellous sphere of sunshine and blue. From the first glad hour we may testify, "The darkness is past, and the true light now shineth." But is it not true that in the beginnings of the spiritual life, and in some of its earlier stages, passages of disappointment and gloomy moods occur in which the undisciplined soul inclines to the lower pathway, as the Israelites longingly remembered Egypt? The better life appears less desirable than some aspects of the lower life. Nature knows transition-points where real progress is for the moment frankly disappointing. In the early dawn it oftentimes seems as though the night were grander than the day, the darkness more desirable than the light. We lose the jewelled stars, the splendor of the moon, the vastness of the firmament, whilst only leaden clouds hang in the sky, and the landscape shows sadly in the ashen light. It is often much the same in the transition from winter to spring. The winter has glories of its own; and when it is passing away in fog and mire, we feel as though it were a retrogression, and for the time we dis

count the golden summer.

In the developments

of spiritual experience and character we may be similarly staggered. But all these things only seem to be retrogressive; the dimmest dawn is an advance on the night, the most uncomfortable spring day hastens the flowers, and the most depressing hours of a true spiritual history are infinitely beyond the rarest pleasures of the sensual life, and a stage towards experiences more blessed still. Only the other day an explorer told of his travelling in valleys of Thibet which were higher than the summit of Mont Blanc; and the depressions of a true, pure life are higher far than the altitudes of worldliness and sin, and starting-points for summits of yet grander vision and rapture.

Christian life is brighter in its development. It has been said that "life is a journeying from south to north, from spring to winter, from morning to night." The writer of that was not a Christian; nor did he describe the direction of the Christian life: that life is a journey towards the south, from spring to summer, from morning to noon. In one sense, life is a process of spoiling to all men, the Christian included. Look at a gathering of young people, with their strength, freshness, enthusiasm, and poetry, and then think of their melancholy aspect in fifty years! Time makes sad havoc of us and of our dreams. But a change of the most glorious order may be in

progress within us, bringing with it strength, beauty, and peace beyond all the gay features of carnal youth. "Our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day." It is all there. In the south of France, cassia, jasmine, tuberose, violets, jonquils, and other blooms are cultivated on a large scale, being ultimately sold to the distillers. They make a very pretty sight when first laid down at the factory door, but far less pleasing in the discolored heap which consists of the same golden flowers after they have suffered a sad change in a caldron of boiling lard; yet if their loveliness has been sacrificed in a vulgar ordeal, their essence, the treasure of their fragrance, is not lost; that is secure, and goes forth to refresh life in many climes. Thus in the process of years, in many a bitter ordeal of toil and pain, does the surfacebeauty and glory of humanity perish, and in age and death we are pathetic creatures indeed: but the choice essence of life and the delicate purity and sweetness of the soul need not perish; the supreme excellence distilled through the painful years goes up finally as a sweet odor to the throne of God.

IX

THE EDUCATION OF THE HEART

And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the seashore.-1 Kings 4: 29.

The love of God hath been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Ghost which was given unto us.-Rom. 5: 5.

WOW rarely men think of putting the

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heart to school! All understand that the intellectual powers demand careful training and discipline if they are to attain fullness and efficacy: the imaginative, mathematical, musical, histrionic, æsthetic, literary, and technical faculties are stimulated, drawn out, and perfected with something like pathetic industry. Nor are we altogether insensible of the fact that the conscience and will need development, although this branch of education does not receive a tithe of the attention given to mental culture. The strengthening of the affections, however, is almost entirely neglected: the impulses of pity, clemency, and sacrifice which stir our deepest nature come and go with the least effort on our part to render them vivid, full, and habitual. The brain is solicited and schooled to the utmost,