Then it is that veil after veil is lifted from the past,
till in the pitiless light we read ourselves with a new understanding
of our faults. We see that through some element of hardness in
ourselves which we allowed to grow unchecked; through vain pride, or
obstinate perversity, or mere thoughtless disregard, we repulsed love
from the dominion of our hearts, and made him the servitor of our
desires, but no longer the lord of our behaviour and the spirit of our
lives. And now as we gaze on these things across the gulf of the
irreparable, we see our sin and how it came to pass; how we were unkind
not in the things we did but in those we failed to do; how, without
being cruel, our denied response to hearts that craved our tenderness
became a more subtle cruelty than angry word or hasty blow; how with
every duty accurately measured and fulfilled, yet love evaporated in
the cold and cheerless atmosphere of repression and aloofness with
which we clothed ourselves; and then the significance of Christ's
teaching comes home to us, for we know too late, that kindness is more
than righteousness, and tenderness more than duty, and that to have
loved with all our hearts is the only fulfilling of the law which
heaven approves. None, bowed beside the newly dead, ever regretted
that they had loved too well; millions have wept the bitterest tears
known to mortals because they loved too little, and wronged by their
poverty of love the sacred human presences now withdrawn forever from
their vision.
Pages:
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64