Making the Most of Life

“Measure thy life by loss instead of gain; Not by the wine drunk, but the wine poured forth; For love’s strength standeth in love’s sacrifice, And whoso suffers most hath most to give.”

—The Disciples,

According to our Lord’s teaching, we can make the most of our life by losing it. He says that losing the life for his sake is saving it. There is a lower self that must be trampled down and trampled to death by the higher self. The alabaster vase must be broken, that the ointment may flow out to fill the house. The grapes must be crushed, that there may be wine to drink. The wheat must be bruised, before it can become bread to feed hunger.

It is so in life. Whole, unbruised, unbroken men are of but little use. True living is really a succession of battles, in which the better triumphs over the worse, the spirit over the flesh. Until we cease to live for self, we have not begun to live at all.

We can never become truly useful and helpful to others until we have learned this lesson. One may live for self and yet do many pleasant things for others; but one’s life can never become the great blessing to the world it was meant to be until the law of self-sacrifice has become its heart principle.

A great oak stands in the forest. It is beautiful in its majesty; it is ornamental; it casts a pleasant shade. Under its branches the children play; among its boughs the birds sing. One day the woodman comes with his axe, and the tree quivers in all its branches, under his sturdy blows. “I am being destroyed,” it cries. So it seems, as the great tree crashes down to the ground. And the children are sad because they can play no more beneath the broad branches; the birds grieve because they can no more nest and sing amid the summer foliage.

But let us follow the tree’s history. It is cut into boards, and built into a beautiful cottage, where human hearts find their happy nest. Or it is used in making a great organ which leads the worship of a congregation. The losing of its life was the saving of it. It died that it might become deeply, truly useful.

The plates, cups, dishes, and vases which we use in our homes and on our tables, once lay as common clay in the earth, quiet and restful, but in no way doing good, serving man. Then came men with picks, and the clay was rudely torn out and plunged into a mortar and beaten and ground in a mill, then pressed, and then put into a furnace, and burned and burned, at last coming forth in beauty, and beginning its history of usefulness. It was apparently destroyed that it might begin to be of service.

A great church-building is going up, and the stones that are being laid on the walls are brought out of the dark quarry for this purpose. We can imagine them complaining, groaning, and repining, as the quarry men’s drills and hammers struck them. They supposed they were being destroyed as they were torn out from the bed of rock where they had lain undisturbed for ages, and were cut into blocks, and lifted out, and then as they were chiselled and dressed into form. But they were being destroyed only that they might become useful. They become part of a new sanctuary, in which God is to be worshipped, where the Gospel will be preached, where penitent sinners will find the Christ-Saviour, where sorrowing ones will be comforted. Surely it was better that these stones should be torn out, even amid agony, and built into the wall of the church, than that they should have lain ages more, undisturbed in the dark quarry. They were saved from uselessness by being destroyed.

These are simple illustrations of the law which applies also in human life. We must die to be useful — to be truly a blessing. Our Lord put this truth in a little parable, when he said that the seed must fall into the earth and die that it may bear fruit. Christ’s own cross is the highest illustration of this. His friends said he wasted his precious life; but was that life wasted when Jesus was crucified y George

MacDonald in one of his little poems, with deep spiritual insight, presents this truth of the blessed gain of Christ’s life through his sacrifice and death: —

“For three and thirty years, a living seed,

A lonely germ, dropt on our waste world’s side, Thy death and rising, thou didst calmly bide; Sore compassed by many a clinging weed Sprung from the fallow soil of evil and need; Hither and thither tossed, by friends denied; Pitied of goodness dull, and scorned of pride; Until at length was done the awful deed, And thou didst lie outworn in stony bower — Three days asleep — oh, slumber godlike, brief, For Man of sorrows and acquaint with grief. Heaven’s seed. Thou diedst, that out of thee might tower Aloft, with rooted stem and shadowy leaf Of all Humanity the crimson flower.”

People said that Harriet Newell’s beautiful life was wasted when she gave it to missions, and then died and was buried far from home — bride, missionary, mother, saint, all in one short year, — without even telling to one heathen woman or child the story of the Saviour. But was that lovely young life indeed wasted? No; al this century her name has been one of the strongest inspirations to missionary work, and her influence has brooded everywhere, touching thousands of hearts of gentle women and strong men, as the story of her consecration has been told. Had Harriet Newell lived a thousand years of quiet, sweet life at home, she could not have done the work that she did in one short year by giving her life, as it seemed, an unavailing sacrifice. She lost her life that she might save it. She died that she might live. She offered herself a living sacrifice that she might become useful.

In heart and spirit we must all do the same if we would ever be a real blessing in the world. We must be willing to lose our life — to sacrifice ourself, to give up our own way, our own ease, our own comfort, possibly even our own life; for there come times when one’s life must literally be lost in order to be saved.

It was in a mine in England. There had been a fearful explosion, and the men came rushing up from the lower level, right into the danger of the deathly afterblast; when the only chance of safety was in another shaft. And one man knew this and stood there in the dangerous passage, warning the men. When urged to go himself the safe way, he said, “No; some one must stay here to guide the others.” Is there any heroism of this world’s life finer than that?

It was at Fredericksburg, after a bloody battle. Hundreds of Union soldiers lay wounded on the field. All night and all next day the space was swept by artillery from both armies, and no one could venture to the sufferers’ relief. All that time, too, there went up from the field agonizing cries for water, but there was no response save the roar of the guns. At length, however, one brave fellow behind the ramparts, a Southern soldier, felt that he could endure these piteous cries no longer. His compassion rose superior to his love of life.

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