Once it was a lump of
common clay lying in the darkness. Then it was rudely dug out and
crushed and ground in the mill, and then put upon the wheel and shaped,
then polished and tinted and put into the furnace and burned. At last,
after many processes, it stood upon the table, a gem of graceful
beauty. In some way analogous to this every noble character is formed.
Common clay at first, it passes through a thousand processes and
experiences, many of them hard and painful, until at length it is
presented before God, faultless in its beauty, bearing the features of
Christ himself.
Spiritual beauty never can be reached without cost. The blessing is
always hidden away in the burden, and can be gotten only by lifting the
burden. Self must die if the good in us is to live and shine out in
radiance. Michael Angelo used to say, as the chippings flew thick from
the marble on the floor of his studio, "While the marble wastes, the
image grows." There must be a wasting of self, a chipping away
continually of things that are dear to nature, if the things that are
true, and just, and honorable, and pure, and lovely, are to come out in
the life. The marble must waste while the image grows.
Then take suffering. Here, too, the same law prevails. Every one
suffers. Said Augustine, "God had one Son without sin; he has none
without sorrow." From infancy's first cry until the old man's life
goes out in a gasp of pain, suffering is a condition of existence.
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