The Old Stone House

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

"The old, who are past all labor, sometimes grow weary of waiting. 'I am of no use,' they say; 'I am only a burden to myself and every one else. I have outlived my time, and it would be better for the world if I was taken out of it. My day is over. Let me go.' Thus they all lament, and thus they sometimes pray, forgetting that the Lord knoweth best.

"The feeling is natural, and is founded upon the innate aspiration of the soul towards immortality, the consciousness and certainty that better things are laid up in store for us in another world. This innate consciousness of immortality is found in all men, even the most ignorant heathen possessing a glimmering of the idea, and this fact is an eternal contradiction to the arguments of the atheist; he cannot destroy this soul hope, for even if he should succeed in blighting it in the father, it would be there to confront him in the child, and so on from generation to generation. That there are persons who have wilfully stifled this divinely-given hope, that there are persons who have brought themselves to contradict their very being is an idea so awful that we shudder to think of it. A man may murder his companion and yet repent and be forgiven; but a man who murders his soul, a man who turns his back upon his Creator cannot repent, for he does not believe in his sin, and he cannot ask for forgiveness because he cannot believe in the existence of a power to forgive. My friends, the idea of such a man is almost super-human; and some wise persons have said that no such men have ever existed. They may think they have stifled their consciences and souls, and even live a long life in this belief, but sooner or later the terrible certainty of their mistake will overwhelm them, and they will find themselves stripped of their poor sophistries, of all sinners the most miserable.

"I hope and believe that there are no such persons in this congregation to-day. Do you not, on the contrary, feel in your hearts, the certainty of another and better life? I feel sure that you do,—that there is not one of you who is not looking forward to that happiness which God has prepared for those who love Him; a happiness which eye has not seen, which ear has not heard, and which it has not entered into the heart of men to conceive.

"But this precious engrafted hope must not be abused. It must not be twisted into an excuse for neglecting our duties here on earth. We are put into the world to live in it, and the duties which lie nearest to us must be faithfully performed, no matter how humble or how commonplace they may be. We must not go sighing through life, deluding ourselves with the idea that we are too good for our lot, and that it is praiseworthy to hold ourselves above common labor and dull routine, and devote our time to so-called religious aspiration. If the labor and routine are placed before us, it is our duty to accept them, and, whatever we do, do it with our might. I tell you, my friends, our path is clear before us, and we are sinning if we turn out of it. Suppose we are afflicted, suppose our loved ones are taken from us; we may weep, for Jesus wept. But we must not throw down our appointed work, and sit with idle hands and gloomy regret, while the precious time slips by. The mourner who stays in her darkened room, and refuses to interest herself in anything but her sorrow, is far less a Christian mourner than she who goes forth to take up her tasks again, thinking of her lost ones as only 'gone before.'

"Those of us who have dull lives, with neither the sunshine nor the thunder-cloud to vary the monotonous gray of our horizon, must still strive to perform faithfully our uninteresting duties. We must not murmur over our lot, or think we are fitted for better things; we are not so fitted if the Lord keeps us there. There is, perhaps, some fatal weakness in our character which needs just that routine; we must learn patience and humility in the world, not out of it. Here is our school-house. This is our appointed lesson.

"The old, also, who are full of eagerness to go,—they, too, are wrong. To them, life with its joys and sorrows, its labor and care, is over, and they look uneasily around them; their occupation is gone. Perhaps they were busy workers, and it is hard to be idle; perhaps they were self-reliant, and it is hard to become a care to others; perhaps they have had powerful intellects, and it is hard to endure the consciousness that their mental powers are failing, day by day. Still, there is one duty remaining, and that they must learn. It is this: to wait. To wait patiently for the Lord in the world in which He has placed them. And this is, sometimes, the hardest duty of a long life.

"My friends, I cannot too heartily condemn the spirit of scorn for this world which we sometimes meet among Christians. The world is full of beauty. God Himself pronounced it very good. The evil, and the sorrow in it, are owing to man. What can be more fair than this very summer afternoon? What more beautiful than that lake, with those white clouds heaped over the horizon? Let us enjoy it, and praise God for His goodness; it is ungrateful not to admire and love His tender care for us in every flower by the roadside, in every tree that shades the heated land. I say, then, love this fair world; notice its beauties; take pleasure in the gifts it offers to you, its fruits and its flowers, its spring-time and harvest. Learn to admire them; thank God for them, and teach your children to appreciate them. The same words apply here which the beloved disciple used in reference to our love for our fellow-men: 'For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?' That is, if we have never tried to love on earth, if our hearts have never been softened by unselfish affection for those of our own household, how can we expect to love in heaven? And, in the same manner, it seems to me that if we scorn this world, if we neglect the innocent pleasures it offers us, and never pause to admire and love its beauties, it will be very hard for us to love the Celestial country. We must learn to love here on earth if we would love in heaven.

"My friends, the text is a part of our Saviour's last prayer before he entered the garden of Gethsemane. He was praying for his disciples, so soon to be left to temptation and danger. Notice the words: 'I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.' He did not ask that they should be taken away from the earth, but that strength should be given them to fulfil their duty on the earth; they were men, the earth was their home, and on the earth were their duties.

"And so it is with us now. We have our work to do, and the time is none too long to accomplish it; every day brings its task and the man who stays among his fellows, doing his part with energy, actuated by firm religious principles, is a far better Christian than he who shuts himself up apart, scorning the fair world, unmindful of the suffering he might relieve, neglecting his own plain duties, and occupied only with his own brooding thoughts and gloomy self-analysis.

"No, my friends; we are not to be taken out of the world until our Lord so wills, we must not think of it, must not pray for it. He knows best. And, while He leaves us on the earth, let us work with all our might. Let us see to it that our faith is earnest, and that our gratitude and praise are expressed in our daily lives.