Unfinished Rainbows, and Other Essays

by George Wood Anderson

He lives who forgets to live and concentrates all his powers in bringing to light the vision of his beauty-loving soul. It may be the beauty of art or the beauty of worthy living; it may be the beauty of perfect workmanship in shop or factory, or the beauty of a wholesome influence flowing from noble character; it may be loveliness of sympathetic serving, or the beauty of aggressive battle for righteousness; it may take any one of many forms of exalted thinking and endeavor, yet its realization comes only when one eats, and drinks, and bends every energy, not for the sake of living, but for the realization of that which is more than living.

How lamentable for a human life to end and find at the final judgment that all its days were of less value to the world than that of a coral polyp! How wonderful for one to be made out of dust, and after a while to crumble back into dust, and yet, refusing to grovel in the dust, leave the world richer, and better, and more beautiful, so that people of another age will breathe his name in reverence as they behold that which he hath wrought. Professor Finsen, the inventor of the “light cure,” was an invalid for many years, yet he labored like a slave, in the severest self-denial, to bring his invention, without compensation, to the service of the world’s sick and suffering. He had but one dread and that was the regret of dying, and leaving his little five-year-old boy without any memory of his father. He desired to live long enough to impress his face and life upon the memory of his son, that, in the after years, the growing man would never forget the one who toiled so earnestly for him. He did not want to be forgotten. How little did he dream of the immortality that was his! He found an unquarried statue in the sunbeam where others had overlooked it. Through ceaseless toil he brought it within the vision of the world and gained a name that countless ages will not forget.

How wonderful to be the son of such a man! And though the image of the father’s face be blotted from the memory, the statue that he carved will help and heal the generations. How wonderful to be the son of such a man, but how much more wonderful it is to be the man himself! To fight with optimistic heart against the ravages of disease, to overcome the natural yearnings of a father’s heart, to endure the most slavish toil without thought or hope of compensation, to be a sick man fighting for others who were sick; a dying man making battle against disease that others may not taste of death!

This is the joy unspeakable, to know that life is not in vain, but everlastingly worth while. The visions shall not fade as summer clouds at twilight time, but shall live in that which is as imperishable as marble. Each one can say with deep resolve: “Men shall behold the beauty of my soul by beholding the beauty of my daily life. Since words are blossoms, I shall, with gracious speech, show my friends how choice a garden I have planted in my heart. Since every blossom bears a seed I shall take pleasure in planting them within the hearts of others, that the beauty of my life may live in them. Out of the marble block that it has been mine to break from its hiding place, I shall carve the image I have treasured so long within my heart.” To do this is to find a joy unspeakable. Life is not useless, but gloriously worth while. Eating, and drinking, and toiling for that which is far more than life, one can never die.

VI.
The Ages to Come

No matter how earnestly we may love our life-calling, and rejoice in our chosen field of activity, there are hours when the easiest task becomes irksome and its daily repetition seems unbearable. However healthy the soul and robust the moral nature, a constant onslaught of sorrow may wound like a poisoned dart, filling the soul with painful forebodings. Beholding the transitoriness of life, and the apparent frailty and uncertainty of those things upon which we place our heaviest dependence, we become depressed, and feel that nothing is permanent and that life’s products are but empty shadows. These are common experiences, and their frequent repetition does not lessen their depressive power. Coming upon us to-day they are just as hurtful as when they challenged us for the first time.

That we may overcome these disagreeable tendencies, and live a life victorious, Paul revealed the secret of his own achievements. To him work never became drudgery, sorrow never festered or left a feverish wound, while even the most commonplace incident was of the deepest significance because he had learned to acquire and maintain a deep perspective that placed each moment of time in the white light of eternity. He believed that we are not created for the hour but for the centuries, and that we must work not so much for the present hour as for the years that are yet to be. The one purpose of every word and deed, to Paul, was to “show the ages to come the exceeding riches of God’s grace.”

As the prolific and luxuriant vegetation of the carboniferous age bordered the lakes with ferns, the rivers with reeds, and the hillsides and valleys with gigantic trees of grotesque form, that, in the ages to come, man might have the exhaustless coalbeds to protect him from the cold; as the coral polyps, buried beneath the waves, love and labor and die, generation after generation, until a coral island lifts its head to receive the kisses of the passing waves and extend the arms of a protecting harbor, that, in the ages to come, the storm-tossed mariners may find safe shelter against the stormy wind and wave; so you and I are to love, and labor, and die, not for ourselves, but that the ages to come, through our goodness and fidelity, may behold the riches of God’s grace.

This does not mean that we are to so bury the present in the future that our lives shall consist of nothing save vague dreams and idle contemplations. It means the opposite. We are to magnify the present and give it increasing value by crowding it with an eternal significance. We are not to drop to-day into the silent ocean of the future and see it fade from sight, but into to-day we are to crowd to-morrow and all the other to-morrows that shall follow. Instead of losing the drop of water in Niagara we are to crowd all the dash and splendor and power of Niagara into the single drop of water; instead of losing the dew in the ocean, we crowd the ocean into the dewdrop; instead of burying the present into the future, we gather all eternity and crowd it into a single lifetime, so that every second of time becomes as precious as a thousand years of eternity, and the smallest task we have to perform becomes as sacred as the songs of the angels.