SUNSHINE IN HEART AND HOME.
By Cuyler
It is not where we are, but what we are, that determines whether we shall be happy, or be wretched. The sunshine or the shadow of life seldom depend on external conditions. When we read of the most eminent sovereign in the world sitting in her melancholy weeds of mourning, beside her dead husband's tomb, and refusing to be comforted, we say to ourselves, “Royalty cannot save a heart from the heaviness that maketh it to stoop!” In splendid mansions quite as often as in lowly huts, the heart knoweth its own bitterness. When an envied statesman was congratulated with the usual salute, “My lord, I wish you a happy New Year!” he sorrowfully replied, “It had need to be a happier one than the last, for I never knew one happy day in it.” After a gifted young man had, by hard study, won the first honor in old Cambridge University, he said, “I was surprised to find that I had grasped a shadow.” In more senses than one it was a shadow, for it shaded his soul with disappointment. But when that same brilliant young Henry Martyn gave himself to the missionary work, and lay dying alone under the wall of Tocat, he wrote in his diary, “I thought with sweet comfort of God—in solitude my companion, my friend, my comforter. Oh! when shall appear to me that new Heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness and love!” Ah! here was sunshine in the soul, that flowed from the light of God's countenance. It is not where we are, remember, but what we are, that determines the joy or sorrow of our lot. I know of many an one who walks the lowly vale of utter poverty with a perpetual sunshine on their path. I could take my reader to the little room of an aged widow of my flock, and show him how cheerful a Christian can be when the light of the eye has been extinguished Blindness has hidden from her the sight of her own grandchildren, the pages of her Bible, and the faces of those she loves. She lives in a perpetual night. Yet there is not a happier, serener spirit among us. The sun shines in her soul. Her inner eye sees Jesus, and the whole heart is full of light. “So lives she patient on, for God is kind,
And well she knows in Heaven no eye is blind.” Often do I receive the most cheerful epistles from a reader, or rather student, of The Independent, whose ears are closed to the music of a pastor's voice in the sanctuary, and of all friends at her own hearth-stone. Her heart has an open ear, and the voice that said “peace be unto you” is heard through the chambers of her Christ-loving soul. Sin makes the dreariest darkness that can oppress a human life. But the presence and smile of a forgiving, comforting Saviour has made a prisoner to sing praises at midnight in a dungeon. Paul sat in perpetual sunshine in his cell at Rome; the shadow passed over him, and rested on Nero Cæsar's guilty spirit in the imperial palace. It was not where the two men were, but what they were, that made all the difference. Sometimes a home is darkened by some one huge, hideous sin. There is a secret sorrow that broods over the whole household. The “skeleton” is not “in the closet,” alone; but it sits by the table, glowers at the fireside, and haunts every room in the dwelling. I went to such a home lately with a pledge of total abstinence from the sin that made that home so dreary. The husband signed it and kept it. What a heavenly burst of sunshine poured in at once into the long-darkened abode! How it played over the table, and kindled on the walls, and gilded every door-post, and blazed on the hearth-stone, and filled every apartment with its “rosy bloom!” Gladness has come back there to eyes that had failed through long wakefulness and tears. When the evil spirits were cast out of him who was possessed of them, the sunshine poured in. God grant that regenerating grace may soon follow this first decisive step of reform! “A good word maketh the heart glad,” says the blessed Book. A kind, gentle word has saved many a drunkard. It was the brief utterance of a few syllables, on a Sunday evening, by a poor mechanic, that saved, under God, my glorious friend, John B. Gough. Accents of kindness were a strange sound to the homeless, friendless, wretched, dissipated youth. And all the sunshine that Gough has ever poured into human hearts and homes came first through the loophole that was opened by Joel Stratton's hand on that Sabbath evening. Scalding words of contempt never saved any man, nor ever did aught but harden him. It never reforms an inebriate to call him a “sot,” or a fallen woman to fling her sin into her leering, woe-worn face. Contempt kills. Patient sympathy doeth good like a medicine. At the door of the darkest and most degraded heart, if love gives a gentle knock, a faint voice of welcome will often answer from within. There is a verse something like this in the English tongue, which we quote from memory: “If a soul thou would'st redeem
And lead a lost one back to God,
Would'st make a cheering sunlight gleam
On the darkened path he long has trod,
Go kindly to him, take his hand,
With gentlest words, within thy own,
And by his side a brother stand
Till all the demons thou dethrone.”
We must, before closing, say a word about the sunshine that is cast over our own homes by little words and actions. Some men—some honest, godly men—so neglect the little amenities of life that their presence affects us like a March wind. They forget that religion ought to regulate those little things that make up so much of the brightness or the shadow of daily existence. I know of men whose entrance into their own dwellings casts a painful restraint over their households; and they are not vicious or brutal men either. But they have no sunshine about them. They have no sympathy with the troubles, and no ready attentiveness to promote the enjoyment of those they meet. Their children are shy of them. They give their money to send the gospel to gladden far-away India and China; but they never bring any gladness to their own homes. Good friend! begin to sympathize with your own family before you expend so much on the heathen. As my dear friend, Dr. James W. Alexander, used to say, “Begin at home and work outward. If you do not love your own wife, do not pretend so much love for the people on the other side of the globe.” Don't let so much worry and irritation drizzle like a Scotch mist into your own family-circle. It is good to give money to support a missionary to China or Turkey; but pray begin to support at least one missionary of gospel love and daily kindness in your own shoes, and under your own hat! Keep your heart in the love of God and of your fellow-men; and then let the blessed sunlight fall on every human being that you meet. If a man have not the spirit of Christ, how can he prove that he is one of his disciples?—Cuyler.