| The Every Day of Life |
Chapter 7 |
Page 4 |
In all relations the same lesson has somehow to be learned. We must learn to live with other people and live with them in harmony of love. And people are not all good and gentle. Not many of them are so self-forgetful that they are willing to do all the yielding, all the giving up or sacrificing. We must each do our share of this office of love if we are to live happily in relations. Some people’s idea of giving up is that the other person must do it all. That is what some despotic husband’s in Turkey and some other places think that their wives ought to do.
In all associated life there is the same tendency to let the yielding be done by the other person. “We get along splendidly,” a man says, referring to his business, or to some associated work. “So and so is very easy to live with. He is gentle and yielding and always gives up. So I have things my own way, and we get on together beautifully.”
Certainly, but that is not the Christian way of getting on together. The self-repression and self-renunciation should be mutual. “In honor preferring one another,” is St. Paul’s rule. When each person in any association of lives does this, seeking the honor and promotion of the other, not thinking of himself, the music is full of harmony. The essential thing in love is not receiving, but giving; not the desire to be helped or humored, but to help or humor.
Then, not in relations only, but in circumstances also, must we learn to make our life a song. This is not hard when all things are to our mind, when we are in prosperity, when friends surround us, when the family circle is unbroken, when health is good, when there are no crosses, and when no self-denials are required. But it is not so easy when the flow of pleasant circumstances is rudely broken, when sorrow comes, when bitter disappointment dashes away the hopes of years. Yet Christian faith can keep the music unbroken even through such experiences as these. The music is changed, growing tenderer. Its tones become deeper, tremulous sometimes, as the tear’s creep into them. But it is really enriched and made more sweet and beautiful.
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