| Dr. J.R. Miller | Page 17 |
No teacher can put knowledge into a pupil’s mind, or skill into his hand, save through the pupil’s own striving. Even Christ cannot make our life unanxious save through our own eager desire and seeking. Prayer will help, but prayer alone will not get a child’s lesson for him. Standing before a masterpiece of art in one of the Old World’s galleries, a young artist said to Ruskin: “Ah! If I could put such a dream on canvas!” “Dream on canvas!” growled the critic; “it will take ten thousand touches of the brush on the canvas to make your dream.” Looking at the divine ideal of an unanxious life, as we see it, first in the words and then in the character of Jesus, we are all ready to wish we might realize it. But wishing alone will never lift us up to this holy beauty. We must toil to reach it. It will take ten thousand touches of the brush to put the dream on canvas.
Mere dreaming does little. Chiselled on the tomb of a disappointed, heartbroken king, Joseph II of Austria, in the royal cemetery at Vienna, is this pitiable epitaph: “Here lies a monarch who, with the best intentions, never carried out a single plan.” Not thus can we learn our lesson. Good intentions will do nothing unless they are wrought into deeds and into character. Better far was the spirit of Joan of Arc, who, when asked the secret of the victoriousness of her famous white standard, replied: “I said to it, ‘Go boldly among the English, and then I followed it myself.” Thus only can we win the splendor of a life without worry. We must have our good intentions, and send them forward like white banners, but we must follow them ourselves. We must put our dreams into beautiful life.
Thus day by day, “no day without a line,” we may get the lesson learned. Christ will help us if we try in His name. As we go forward, He will make the struggle easier for us. He will make the dreams come true as we strive to make them real.
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