Or here is one who dies in early youth. There was great promise in the
beautiful life. Affection had reared for it a noble fabric of hope.
Perhaps the beauty had begun to shine out in the face, and the hands
had begun to show their skill. Then death came and all the fair hopes
were folded away. The visions of loveliness and the dreams of noble
attainments and achievements lay like withered flowers upon the grave.
An unfinished life! friends cry in their disappointment and sorrow. So
it seems, surely, to love's eyes, from the earth-side. But so it is
not, as God's eye looks upon it. There is nothing unfinished that
fulfils the divine plan. God cuts off no young life till its earthly
work is done. Then the soul-building which began here and seemed to be
interrupted by death, was only hidden from our eyes by a thin veil,
behind which it still goes up with unbroken continuity, rising into
fairest beauty in the presence of God.
But there are abandoned life-buildings whose story tells only of shame
and failure. Many persons begin to follow Christ, and after a little
time turn away from their profession and leave only a pretentious
beginning to stand as a ruin to be laughed at by the world and to
dishonor the Master's name.
Sometimes it is discouragement that leads men to give up the work to
which they have put their hand. In one of his poems, Wordsworth tells
a pathetic story of a straggling heap of unhewn stones, and the
beginning of a sheepfold which was never finished.
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