Illusion and Disenchantment.
MUCH of life consists in illusion and disenchantment. In everyday life the future is the realm of illusion; the time of disenchantment is when the future becomes the present. It is pathetic to see how human nature clings to the belief in a golden age just beyond the present. Somewhere on the earth a time and place of peace is waiting for us; sometime we shall enter into it, and be at rest, and enjoy the full fruition of life; but not now—no, not now! Sometime, after the hurry of business is over, when the son has been educated, when the daughter has been happily married, there shall come "a calm time in which there shall be no fretting;" and we cherish the vision of a quiet nook on the mountains or by the sea, for that crowning scene of life, when the golden hours shall be filled with peace and contentment. But when the longed-for time of quiet comes, we find that it is not so different from the other portions of life, after all; that the serpent enters into every Eden; and that the mountain and sea offer no barriers to vulgar hate and desire. Perhaps the mistake which all alike make, "saints" and "sinners," is that of wishing to get good, rather than to give good. James Martineau has said: "To get good is animal; to do good is human; to be good is divine." Most of our illusions begin in the desire to get good. We imagine to ourselves some earthly paradise into which no evil may enter,—except ourselves,—and there, we say, we will be happy, and careless of what goes on in the wide world. We even imagine that there is a kind of negative righteousness in making to ourselves a picture of a state of life in which there shall be no selfish struggle with other men, no uplifting of ourselves by the oppression of others, no angry feeling toward any son of man. But we conveniently forget that our imaginary paradise is the very apotheosis of selfishness; that in such a life we should want nothing from others, only because we already had all; that God did not send us into this life to enjoy ourselves but to do our work, to bear our part of the world's toil, to sweeten with a little kindness the bitter draught of the heavy and oppressed. Why should we take any credit to ourselves for not coveting, where nothing is left to covet? Why do we imagine that we shall be just and generous and loving a few years hence, if we cannot be just and generous and loving, here and now? It is in this here and now that there is the secret of a blessed life, a life free as may be from illusions. The pain of disenchantment is the keener, when we know that we had no right, at any time, to cherish the illusion. But human wills are wayward; and instead of doing the work which lies before us, too many of us fold our hands, and give ourselves up to happy dreams of what will be, to-morrow or next year. There is where the mistake lies. With the future we have nothing to do, except as it is related to the present; and if we attend, with sober minds and busy hands, to the undeniable realities with which we have to deal in the present, we shall have little time to give ourselves over to brilliant illusions which are sure to end only in disenchantment. The present is as rich in the materials of happiness, if only we are willing to recognize our true happiness, as any earthly future will be. If the duties of the present are despised and neglected, we have no guarantee that we will not despise the duties of the future, in their turn. And the materials for happiness are not outside of ourselves, but in ourselves; for we are the temple of the Holy Ghost, from whom all holy fruits of the Spirit proceed. And if we think that the materials for happiness are slight and ineffectual, then, as Carlyle has said, there remains for us a better than happiness, even blessedness. It is a great step in advance when a man realizes that enjoyment is not the chief end of life; when he gets a glimpse of the higher summit of blessedness, he is less apt to cherish vain illusions. When he gives up the instinctive desire to get good, and tries to do good, when he sees before him the shining height of being good, he is traveling upon a path where illusions have little power, and when he reaches that height there will be no disenchantment. The prevailing cant about the emptiness of life is not only wicked, but foolish. Life is not empty save to those who make it empty. To the brave souls who give up everything that would be a delight to the flesh and to the fleshy mind, and who labor manfully for Christ's sake in the present, leaving to him the future, life brings few illusions and no cruel disenchantments. The cry of emptiness comes up from those who are empty; who have tried to please themselves instead of Christ; who have sought in culture, in art, in the delights of the flesh and of the intellect, that which can only be given them by the indwelling life of Christ. Sad is the disenchantment to those who have followed the illusions of the fleshy mind, who have thought that they were eating of life's sweetest fruits, and who awake to find themselves full of bitterness. But no follower of Christ need pass through such an illusion to such a disenchantment. To him that door has been shut by Christ himself; and the woe is his own if he opens it. An earnest life has no place for harmful illusions. A life which gives no place to harmful illusions will suffer no cruel disenchantment. If it is true that they who follow the marsh-light will end in the quagmire, it is also true that they who, in obedience to the Master, go forth as light-bearers in the darkness, unheeding the roughnesses and the perils of the way, will also stand with Him in the dawn. And in the brightness of that dawn there will be neither illusion nor disenchantment.—S. S. Times.