Unfinished Rainbows, and Other Essays

by George Wood Anderson

When one possesses this conception of life that crowds a vast eternity within the compass of a single individual life, no toil can ever become drudgery. Every deed has divine significance. The most ordinary task will be performed carefully, knowing that it must stand the scrutiny and criticisms of the passing centuries. We labor then with the various elements of life, as the artists of Venice toil with their priceless mosaics, willing to spend a lifetime of painstaking endeavor in forming a single feature of a saint, knowing that long after they themselves have ceased to toil the wisdom of untold centuries shall review their efforts to either praise or blame. Hitherto we have despised the commonplace things that fell to our hands, while we busied ourselves searching for some great thing worthy of our effort, with the result that nothing has been accomplished; now we find, that that only is truly great which is commonplace. Divine opportunities are everywhere. In the low-browed man upon the street we see the possibility of an ennobled and redeemed humanity. In the waif, crying from hunger, we see the center of world-wide and eternal destinies. Words are winged messengers, so we learn to study them with care, and speak them with the precision with which a musician strikes his chords. Divine destinies are depending upon the perfection with which we toil, adding a charm to every endeavor that never fades with weariness. There can be no drudgery to him who has a perspective eternity long.

This conception of life which Paul gives us will carry us unharmed through all the misfortunes of life. It is impossible for us to escape sorrow. By rigid economy we may save our money only to have it stolen by a deceitful friend; we may build a home, only to find it purchased and occupied by another; loved ones, more precious than our own lives, have been lured from our side by the hand of death. These hours are naturally dark and of tortuous length, and if it were not for the fact that we have learned to think in terms of eternity, we would die of a broken heart. But we do not die; we pass through them with triumphant tread. The soul sobs but does not bleed; the heart hurts but does not break. We are not living for this world alone; our horizon has been widened because we have been lifted to a higher level; we can now see two worlds; our faith sweeps onward as far as God can think. The earthly home for which we planned and toiled has passed into the hands of another, but we rejoice in the knowledge that we have a home, not made with toiling, blistered hands of earth, but one eternal in the heavens. Our loved ones no longer greet us at the table or occupy their accustomed places in the family circle, but we have not lost them forever. They have simply passed from time into eternity, and because we also are the children of eternity, they are still our own, and we shall see them once again. Thank God for the transforming power that comes into every human life when, by divine aid, one crowds eternal significance into his days, and works, not for himself, but for “the ages to come.”

Paul’s view of life enables us to find perfect satisfaction in working with the frailties of time in building that which is immortal in character and service. Possessed with such a purpose, the spider’s web becomes a cable, dust becomes slabs of marble, and seconds becomes decades. There is nothing more fragile than a word, spoken in stammering weakness, but with a trembling desire to be of service, yet out of one word fitly spoken may be created an influence that sweeps heaven and earth. A faltering word of Christian testimony was spoken by a godly man made weak by an unconquerable embarrassment, but his utterance proved mighty. Lodging in the heart of Charles Spurgeon, it started him on his wonderful career that is yet shaking all Christendom. The smile of the face is far more delicate than the frailest blossom that opens its soft petals in obedience to the caressing influence of the sun, for its existence is but for the fraction of a second; yet one kindly, love-illumined look has been the force that has lifted multitudes of mortals out of despondency and uselessness, and made them the creators of mighty moral and religious forces. It was a smile that saved John G. Wooley for the cause of temperance. A smile, and a word, and the gift of a handkerchief were all that Frances E. Willard used to redeem one of the most notorious characters of Chicago, and make her one of God’s ministers of light among the fallen.

When one learns to live with the light of eternity flooding his pathway there is not an event in life so small and insignificant that he cannot employ it to create, and afterward use it, to sustain eternal influences. There is joy now in living for Christ, but let us live, not for that joy alone, but that, in the ages to come, we may show the exceeding riches of God’s grace. Let them, through us, behold what the grace of God can do to save, to keep, to empower, and to make immortal such sin-smitten ones as we have been. This is the secret for making toil pleasant, sorrows helpless, and the humblest effort an enterprise of such character as crowds earth with richer meaning, and fills the heavens with new-found joys. Show them that the greatest of all known forces is a Christ-filled life.

VII.
The Unlocked Door of Truth

History has proven that the power of the “All Highest” War Lord is as weak as a baby’s arm compared with the power of the humblest individual who has entered into and taken possession of some great truth. A thousand lords and ladies were gathered within the Babylonian palace which was ablaze with light and filled with music. All hail to King Belshazzar! His praises were upon every lip. All honor to the royal family that had lifted the hanging gardens above the low-lying plains, who had swung gates of bronze and planned the mightiest city in the world. Every lip praised and every heart feared the power of the daring king. But when the finger of God wrote a message of fire upon the palace walls it was no longer Belshazzar who was ruler. The fate of king and lord and ladies was in the hand of Daniel. He alone of that great throng had seen and entered into the truth of temperance and self-control. Such was the sustaining power of that possessed truth that when the man-made king trembled, and a nation crumbled into oblivion, he alone stood unmoved and triumphant amid the wreck and chaos.

Before the throne of ecclesiastical autocracy the rulers of the nations bowed in weakness and everlasting shame. The autocracy of superstition is the most merciless and deadly known, but when the power of Rome was at the zenith of her unscrupulous reign, Martin Luther, a common man with uncommon sense, discovered and entered into the great truth that “the just shall live by faith.” Entering into that truth, he found a power before which the claims of the Pope became insignificant, and by his boldness, brought religious liberty to the people, thus gaining universal love and immortality.

Mary was Queen of England, and with that overzeal of religious bigotry, was ruling with unquestioned power and severity. Hugh Latimer was only a humble preacher, one of the least of the queen’s subjects, living among the poor, but beside him, Queen Mary sinks into everlasting contempt. The robes of fire wrapped his body in their golden folds, hiding him forever from the sight of man, but the world has not forgotten him. His dust knows no burial place, but because he lived in the sheltering tabernacle of a great truth he will live forever in the hearts of those who love religious tolerance, while the dust of Mary crumbles in the gruesome vault at Westminster Abbey, with no lip to sing her praises to the passing generations. Royal or ecclesiastical power is nothing compared with the enduring authority of a common man who has found, and entered into, and wholly and completely lives a great eternal truth of God.