{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_27563/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_27563","id":"gutenberg_27563","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27563","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Christian life"],"text":"Produced by Al Haines\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Cover art]\n\n\n[Illustration: Inside cover]\n\n\n[Frontispiece: Roses]\n\n\n[Illustration: Title page]\n\n\n\nHeart's-ease\n\nfrom\n\nPhillips Brooks\n\n\n\n\n\nCOPYRIGHT, 1909, BY\n\nCUPPLES & LEON COMPANY\n\nNEW YORK\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Flowers]\n\n\nHappiness is perfectly hollow unless there is a\nmeaning behind it, unless it tells of intention\nsomewhere, unless it means love.  \"Eat and drink\nand be merry\" is not the end of it all.\n\n\n[Illustration: Flowers]\n\n\nWhoever, by a Christian word he speaks or by a\nChristian life he lives, brings a new soul to see\nthe perfect life and take the perfect grace, has\npoured out of his full hands a blessing on his\nbrother that leaves utterly out of sight any gift\nthat riches can bestow on poverty.\n\nWe want a faith, a truth, a grace to help us\n_now_, ... and we can have it.  One who was man,\nyet mightier than man, has walked the vale before\nus.\n\nEvery attempt to do right has a tendency to\nreveal to us more spiritual ways of doing right,\nand our need of spiritual helps in doing it.\n\nThe thought of life is like that untouched line\nwe call the \"sky,\" but which, when we try to\nreach it, proves to be not one single line, but\nan infinite depth ... stored with what strange\nuses and benefactions we dare not say.\n\nSome men's faith only makes itself visible; other\nmen's lightens everything within its reach.\n\n\n[Illustration: Flowers]\n\n\nThere is positive proof in the single sunbeam of\nthe existence of the sun.\n\nStrike God's iron on the anvil, see God's goods\nacross the counter, put God's wealth in\ncirculation, teach God's children in the\nschool,--so shall the dust of your labor build\nitself into a little sanctuary where you and God\nmay dwell together.\n\nMake truth your friend and guide in all your\nhourly business,--truth of plan, and purpose, and\nlabor...  Whoever will not bow before this\nmonarch you have crowned, let him be rebel to you.\n\nIf you are not spiritually minded, do not wait\nfor mysterious light and vision.  Go and give up\nyour dearest sin.  Go and do what is right.  Go\nand put yourself thoroughly into the power of the\nholiness of duty.\n\nAll the world is an utterance of the Almighty.\n\n\n[Illustration: Cherubs, flowers]\n\n\nIt seems so far off, that Cross of Jesus, and it\nreally is so near!  For it is lifted up so high\nthat the waves of time roll unheeded and\nunmeaning at its foot.  It is the power of\nperfection for us to-day.\n\n\nEach high achievement is a sign and token of the\nwhole nature's possibility.  What a piece of the\nman was for that shining moment, it is the duty\nof the whole man to be always.\n\nMay we not daily tread the same paths of holiness\nand sorrow, joy and love, that Christ has\ntrodden, and see His footsteps on them still?\n\nEven if you have to force yourself to your\nduty,--still, _do it_.  Do your duty, even if\nduty be wearisome and hard, for then you are in\nthe place where it can become joyous and easy to\nyou.\n\nWe must answer for our actions; God will answer\nfor our powers.\n\n\n[Illustration: Graveyard scene]\n\n\nSome day certainly the fog shall rise, the clouds\nshall scatter, and in the perfect enlightenment\nof the other life the soul shall see its Lord,\nand be thankful for every darkest step that we\ntook towards Him here.\n\nDevotion is like the candle which Michael Angelo\nused to carry stuck on his forehead in a\npaste-board cap, and which kept his own shadow\nfrom being cast upon his work when he was hewing\nout his statues.\n\nDavid's pilgrims, going through the vale of\nmisery, \"use it for a well.\" ...  When they grew\nthirsty they looked not merely farther on into\nthe heart of the future, but deeper down into the\nbosom of the present.\n\nThe sense of evil in life does not _deny_, but\nimplies the noblest capacities in men.\n\nMan must be a ray of the great sunshine under\nwhose touch some special flower may open, and\nsome special fruit fill itself with healthy and\nnutritious juice, some little corner of the field\ngrow rich.\n\nAny honest task is capable of being so largely\nconceived that he who enters into it may see,\nstretching before him, the promise of things to\ndo and be, that will stir his enthusiasm and\nsatisfy his best desires.\n\nYour life cannot be frivolous or vulgar unless\nyou are frivolous or vulgar.  He who complains of\nhis circumstances really complains of himself,\nand is his own accuser.\n\nGod is as willing that you should read your\nlesson in the sunlight as in the storm.\n\nHeaven at last will be the perfect sight of\nChrist.\n\n\n[Illustration: Flowers]\n\n\nA life with no intention of God in it _must be_\nshallow.\n\nThe thoughtful trader believes that Trade, in its\nideal, is generous and beautiful.  It is the\nreality that he makes of it, by the way in which\nhe does it, that seems to him sordid.\n\nCharacter is the divinest thing on earth.  It is\nthe one thing that you can put into the shop or\ninto the study, and be sure that the fire is\ngoing to burn.\n\nNever does human nature seem so glorious and so\nwicked all at once as when we stand before the\ncross of Jesus!  The most enthusiastic hopes, the\nmost profound humiliation, have found their\ninspiration there.\n\nThe only way to run from God is to run to Him.\nThe Infinite Knowledge is also the Infinite Pity.\n\n\n[Illustration: House and yard]\n\n\n[Illustration: Stream and flowers]\n\n\nNot simply His coming and His going, not simply\nHis birth, or death, but the living, total life\nof Jesus is the world's salvation.  And the Book\nin which His life shines orbed and distinct is\nthe world's treasure.\n\nRemember we are debtors to the Good by birth, but\nremember we may become debtors to the Bad by\nlife; and both debts--of service and\nallegiance--must be paid alike.\n\nNot merely a Voice to be heard, but a Friend to\nbe loved, a Shepherd to be followed, a Bread to\nbe eaten,--so does the Christ of the Gospels\npresent Himself in word and sacrament and every\npresentation of His personality.\n\nThe tent-life is the true life until the building\nof God, the \"house not made with hands,\" is\nreached.\n\n\n[Illustration: Flowers]\n\n\nThe visionary is the man who has no present; the\ndrudge is the man who has no future.  To be saved\nfrom being either,--that can come only by joining\na clear, sharp, solid work to large hopes and\ngreat ambitions.\n\nDoes not the soul, finding the heart of its\nsuffering full of joy, forget the mere rough\noutside in which that heart of joy was folded?\n\nIdeality, magnanimity and bravery--these are what\nmake the heroes.  The materialist, the sceptic\nand the coward--he cannot be a hero.\n\nTo believe is the true glory of existence.  To\ndisbelieve is to give ourselves into the power of\ndeath, and just so far to cease from living.\n\nIt is only in poor men and in the lower things\nthat success increases self-conceit.  In every\nhigh work and in men worthy of it, success is\nalways sure to bring humility.\n\nOur strength is measured by our plastic power...\nBricks and mortar are mortar and bricks until the\narchitect can make them into something else.\n\nA man who lives right, and is right, has more\npower in his silence than another man by his\nwords.\n\nOh! believe me that no man lives at his best to\nwhom life is not becoming better and better,\nalways aware of greater and greater forces,\ncapable of diviner and diviner deeds and joys.\n\n\n[Illustration: Sunset and pond]\n\n\nGod is omnipotent, and man is immortal.\nTherefore be patient and work.  The end shall\ncertainly be joy, not sorrow.  The stone shall\nroll away and the dead come forth.\n\nOptimism is a belief in a great purpose\nunderlying the world for good, absolutely certain\nto fulfil itself somewhere, somehow.  That must\nhave been what God saw when He looked upon the\nworld and called it \"good.\"\n\nA hundred men stand on the shore and say: \"There\nis no land beyond.\"  One brave and trustful man\nlike Columbus, believes that the complete world\nis complete, and sails for a fair land beyond the\nsea, and finds it.\n\nPut your faith where it will be safe; and the\nonly place where a faith ever can be safe is in\nthe shrine of an action.\n\n\n[Illustration: Flowers]\n\n\nI must have some notion in general of what I am\nalive for, or I cannot live rightly from hour to\nhour this evening and to-morrow morning.\n\nGive our lives room to grow to truth, and they\nwill grow to symmetry; give them leave to ripen,\nand they will richen too.\n\nThe only real way to \"prepare to meet thy God\" is\nto live with thy God so that to meet Him shall be\nnothing strange.\n\nIt is not good for a man to devote himself to\npreparation for dying.  It is preparation for\nliving that you need.\n\nOur virtue should not be a deed, or a work, but a\ngrowth--a growth like a tree's, always rising\nhigher from its own inward strength and sap.\n\nThe moment that the face is turned away from the\ndead past, and looks toward the living future, a\nnew power comes.  Hope is awake, and hope is\ninfinite.\n\n\n[Illustration: Flowers]\n\n\nThe gracious mercy that binds Omnipotence a\nwilling servant to every humble prayer!\n\nSelf-restraint and honesty and independence, if\nthey are the crown upon the head of a benignant\ndespotism, are the very lifeblood in the veins of\na self-governing republic.\n\nTo be calm and serene, and yet to be full of\nenergy and hope of higher things,--this comes to\nhim whose life aims at the absolute.\n\nIf you cannot argue, live!  Be true and pure and\nlofty and devout, and He who ever seeks the souls\nof men shall find His way to some of them through\nyou.\n\nWhen a man means to be honest solely because\nhonesty is right, and not because honesty is\nprofitable, there is a perpetual and beautiful\ntendency of his honesty to refine and deepen\nitself.\n\nDependence upon God makes the independence of men\nin which are liberty and courage.\n\n\n[Illustration: Flowers]\n\n\n[Illustration: Flowers]\n\n\nThere is a type of universal human life in\nharmony with the best life of all the ages, in\ntune with the sublimest and finest spiritual\nmusic of the universe, which you can live in your\nparlor and your shop.\n\nNo beauty is really beautiful which in any way\nhinders righteousness or weakens spiritual life.\n\nTo every heart's experience comes its time of\ndesert-journeyings....  It eats its manna in the\nwilderness.\n\nYou can know nothing which you do not reverence.\nYou can see nothing before which you do not veil\nyour eyes.\n\nRepentance for safety, even for cleanness, is not\ncomplete.  The true motive is that God may be\nglorified in us.\n\n\n[Illustration: Angel]\n\n\n[Illustration: Inside back cover]","title":"Heart's-ease","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":1860}