| The Every Day of Life |
Chapter 3 |
Page 6 |
So at least when the race is over and the victors are crowned, some with fame’s laurels, some with love’s flowers, some with gold circlets on their brows, all unknown, unheeded, with empty hands and uncrowned heads, stands this, the real winner of the race. Earth had no crown for him, but on his face shines heaven’s serene and holy light.
This tells the story of thousands of earth’s failures. Those who might have won highest honors among men, turn aside from their ambitions to do God’s work in the world. They stop to bless others, to comfort sorrows, to cheer loneliness, to lift up fallen ones, to help the weak. In the race with the world’s men they lose, but in God’s sight they are the real winners. Angels applaud them, and Christ will reward and crown them.
The world has honor enough for those who succeed. There are plenty of books about men and women who became famous. There is glory for those who began among the ranks of the poor and climbed upward to the highest places. There are poets enough to sing the story of those who win in the battle. But the Bible wreaths its laurel chaplets for the unsuccessful. It sings the songs of those who fail. Its hands of help are under the fallen. Its brightest crowns are for those whom earth passes by. When the end comes, and life’s revelations are all made, then it will appear that many who in this world have been thrust aside, or trampled down in the dust, or even burned at the stake, or nailed on crosses, have been exalted to highest honor in the life beyond earth.
We would better, therefore, learn to measure life by true standards. No one has really failed who has lived for God, who has lived according to God’s law, who has wrought on the temple of truth, in the cause of righteousness.
“Speak, history! Who are life’s victors? Unroll thy long annals and say–
Are they those, whom the world calls the victors, who won the success of the day?
The martyrs, or Nero? The Spartans who fell at Thermopylae’s tryst,
Or the Persians and Xerxes? His judges, or Socrates? Pilate, or Christ?”
Page 6