[Illustration: Cover art] [Illustration: Inside cover] [Frontispiece: Roses] [Illustration: Title page] Heart's-ease from Phillips Brooks COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY NEW YORK [Illustration: Flowers] Happiness is perfectly hollow unless there is ameaning behind it, unless it tells of intentionsomewhere, unless it means love. "Eat and drinkand be merry" is not the end of it all. [Illustration: Flowers] Whoever, by a Christian word he speaks or by aChristian life he lives, brings a new soul to seethe perfect life and take the perfect grace, haspoured out of his full hands a blessing on hisbrother that leaves utterly out of sight any giftthat riches can bestow on poverty. We want a faith, a truth, a grace to help us_now_, ... And we can have it. One who was man, yet mightier than man, has walked the vale beforeus. Every attempt to do right has a tendency toreveal to us more spiritual ways of doing right, and our need of spiritual helps in doing it. The thought of life is like that untouched linewe call the "sky, " but which, when we try toreach it, proves to be not one single line, butan infinite depth ... Stored with what strangeuses and benefactions we dare not say. Some men's faith only makes itself visible; othermen's lightens everything within its reach. [Illustration: Flowers] There is positive proof in the single sunbeam ofthe existence of the sun. Strike God's iron on the anvil, see God's goodsacross the counter, put God's wealth incirculation, teach God's children in theschool, --so shall the dust of your labor builditself into a little sanctuary where you and Godmay dwell together. Make truth your friend and guide in all yourhourly business, --truth of plan, and purpose, andlabor... Whoever will not bow before thismonarch you have crowned, let him be rebel to you. If you are not spiritually minded, do not waitfor mysterious light and vision. Go and give upyour dearest sin. Go and do what is right. Goand put yourself thoroughly into the power of theholiness of duty. All the world is an utterance of the Almighty. [Illustration: Cherubs, flowers] It seems so far off, that Cross of Jesus, and itreally is so near! For it is lifted up so highthat the waves of time roll unheeded andunmeaning at its foot. It is the power ofperfection for us to-day. Each high achievement is a sign and token of thewhole nature's possibility. What a piece of theman was for that shining moment, it is the dutyof the whole man to be always. May we not daily tread the same paths of holinessand sorrow, joy and love, that Christ hastrodden, and see His footsteps on them still? Even if you have to force yourself to yourduty, --still, _do it_. Do your duty, even ifduty be wearisome and hard, for then you are inthe place where it can become joyous and easy toyou. We must answer for our actions; God will answerfor our powers. [Illustration: Graveyard scene] Some day certainly the fog shall rise, the cloudsshall scatter, and in the perfect enlightenmentof the other life the soul shall see its Lord, and be thankful for every darkest step that wetook towards Him here. Devotion is like the candle which Michael Angeloused to carry stuck on his forehead in apaste-board cap, and which kept his own shadowfrom being cast upon his work when he was hewingout his statues. David's pilgrims, going through the vale ofmisery, "use it for a well. " ... When they grewthirsty they looked not merely farther on intothe heart of the future, but deeper down into thebosom of the present. The sense of evil in life does not _deny_, butimplies the noblest capacities in men. Man must be a ray of the great sunshine underwhose touch some special flower may open, andsome special fruit fill itself with healthy andnutritious juice, some little corner of the fieldgrow rich. Any honest task is capable of being so largelyconceived that he who enters into it may see, stretching before him, the promise of things todo and be, that will stir his enthusiasm andsatisfy his best desires. Your life cannot be frivolous or vulgar unlessyou are frivolous or vulgar. He who complains ofhis circumstances really complains of himself, and is his own accuser. God is as willing that you should read yourlesson in the sunlight as in the storm. Heaven at last will be the perfect sight ofChrist. [Illustration: Flowers] A life with no intention of God in it _must be_shallow. The thoughtful trader believes that Trade, in itsideal, is generous and beautiful. It is thereality that he makes of it, by the way in whichhe does it, that seems to him sordid. Character is the divinest thing on earth. It isthe one thing that you can put into the shop orinto the study, and be sure that the fire isgoing to burn. Never does human nature seem so glorious and sowicked all at once as when we stand before thecross of Jesus! The most enthusiastic hopes, themost profound humiliation, have found theirinspiration there. The only way to run from God is to run to Him. The Infinite Knowledge is also the Infinite Pity. [Illustration: House and yard] [Illustration: Stream and flowers] Not simply His coming and His going, not simplyHis birth, or death, but the living, total lifeof Jesus is the world's salvation. And the Bookin which His life shines orbed and distinct isthe world's treasure. Remember we are debtors to the Good by birth, butremember we may become debtors to the Bad bylife; and both debts--of service andallegiance--must be paid alike. Not merely a Voice to be heard, but a Friend tobe loved, a Shepherd to be followed, a Bread tobe eaten, --so does the Christ of the Gospelspresent Himself in word and sacrament and everypresentation of His personality. The tent-life is the true life until the buildingof God, the "house not made with hands, " isreached. [Illustration: Flowers] The visionary is the man who has no present; thedrudge is the man who has no future. To be savedfrom being either, --that can come only by joininga clear, sharp, solid work to large hopes andgreat ambitions. Does not the soul, finding the heart of itssuffering full of joy, forget the mere roughoutside in which that heart of joy was folded? Ideality, magnanimity and bravery--these are whatmake the heroes. The materialist, the scepticand the coward--he cannot be a hero. To believe is the true glory of existence. Todisbelieve is to give ourselves into the power ofdeath, and just so far to cease from living. It is only in poor men and in the lower thingsthat success increases self-conceit. In everyhigh work and in men worthy of it, success isalways sure to bring humility. Our strength is measured by our plastic power... Bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks until thearchitect can make them into something else. A man who lives right, and is right, has morepower in his silence than another man by hiswords. Oh! believe me that no man lives at his best towhom life is not becoming better and better, always aware of greater and greater forces, capable of diviner and diviner deeds and joys. [Illustration: Sunset and pond] God is omnipotent, and man is immortal. Therefore be patient and work. The end shallcertainly be joy, not sorrow. The stone shallroll away and the dead come forth. Optimism is a belief in a great purposeunderlying the world for good, absolutely certainto fulfil itself somewhere, somehow. That musthave been what God saw when He looked upon theworld and called it "good. " A hundred men stand on the shore and say: "Thereis no land beyond. " One brave and trustful manlike Columbus, believes that the complete worldis complete, and sails for a fair land beyond thesea, and finds it. Put your faith where it will be safe; and theonly place where a faith ever can be safe is inthe shrine of an action. [Illustration: Flowers] I must have some notion in general of what I amalive for, or I cannot live rightly from hour tohour this evening and to-morrow morning. Give our lives room to grow to truth, and theywill grow to symmetry; give them leave to ripen, and they will richen too. The only real way to "prepare to meet thy God" isto live with thy God so that to meet Him shall benothing strange. It is not good for a man to devote himself topreparation for dying. It is preparation forliving that you need. Our virtue should not be a deed, or a work, but agrowth--a growth like a tree's, always risinghigher from its own inward strength and sap. The moment that the face is turned away from thedead past, and looks toward the living future, anew power comes. Hope is awake, and hope isinfinite. [Illustration: Flowers] The gracious mercy that binds Omnipotence awilling servant to every humble prayer! Self-restraint and honesty and independence, ifthey are the crown upon the head of a benignantdespotism, are the very lifeblood in the veins ofa self-governing republic. To be calm and serene, and yet to be full ofenergy and hope of higher things, --this comes tohim whose life aims at the absolute. If you cannot argue, live! Be true and pure andlofty and devout, and He who ever seeks the soulsof men shall find His way to some of them throughyou. When a man means to be honest solely becausehonesty is right, and not because honesty isprofitable, there is a perpetual and beautifultendency of his honesty to refine and deepenitself. Dependence upon God makes the independence of menin which are liberty and courage. [Illustration: Flowers] [Illustration: Flowers] There is a type of universal human life inharmony with the best life of all the ages, intune with the sublimest and finest spiritualmusic of the universe, which you can live in yourparlor and your shop. No beauty is really beautiful which in any wayhinders righteousness or weakens spiritual life. To every heart's experience comes its time ofdesert-journeyings.... It eats its manna in thewilderness. You can know nothing which you do not reverence. You can see nothing before which you do not veilyour eyes. Repentance for safety, even for cleanness, is notcomplete. The true motive is that God may beglorified in us. [Illustration: Angel] [Illustration: Inside back cover]