But, after all, this similitude is short and paltry, for it is of
comparatively small moment that so many men and women spend their lives in
making bad cherubs in marble, and hideous landscapes in oil. It is
industry, and it keeps them in bread; in butter, too, if their cherubs and
trees are very bad. But, when it is a human being that is to be moulded,
how do we dare, even with all the help which we can ask and find in earth
and in heaven, to shape it by our touch!
Clay in the hands of the potter is not more plastic than is the little
child's soul in the hands of those who tend it. Alas! how many shapeless,
how many ill-formed, how many broken do we see! Who does not believe that
the image of God could have been beautiful on all? Sooner or later it will
be, thank Christ! But what a pity, what a loss, not to have had the sweet
blessedness of being even here fellow-workers with him in this glorious
modelling for eternity!
The King's Friend.
We are a gay party, summering among the hills. New-comers into the little
boarding-house where we, by reason of prior possession, hold a kind of
sway are apt to fare hardly at our hands unless they come up to our
standard.
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