# Heart's-ease

Phillips Brooks

## Heart's-ease

Happiness is perfectly
hollow unless there is a
meaning behind it, unless it
tells of intention somewhere,
unless it means love. "Eat and
drink and be merry" is not
the end of it all.

Whoever, by a Christian word he speaks or by
a Christian life he lives, brings a new soul to see
the perfect life and take the perfect grace, has
poured out of his full hands a blessing on his
brother that leaves utterly out of sight any gift
that riches can bestow on poverty.

We want a faith, a truth, a grace to help us now, … and we can have it. One who was man, yet mightier than man, has walked the vale before us.

Every attempt to do right has a tendency to reveal to us more spiritual ways of doing right, and our need of spiritual helps in doing it.

The thought of life is like that untouched line we call the "sky," but which, when we try to reach it, proves to be not one single line, but an infinite depth … stored with what strange uses and benefactions we dare not say.

Some men's faith only makes
itself visible; other men's lightens
everything within its reach.

There is positive proof
in the single sunbeam of
the existence of the sun.

Strike God's iron on the anvil, see God's goods across the counter, put God's wealth in circulation, teach God's children in the school, – so shall the dust of your labor build itself into a little sanctuary where you and God may dwell together.

Make truth your friend and guide in all your hourly business, – truth of plan, and purpose, and labor… Whoever will not bow before this monarch you have crowned, let him be rebel to you.

If you are not spiritually minded, do not wait for mysterious light and vision. Go and give up your dearest sin. Go and do what is right. Go and put yourself thoroughly into the power of the holiness of duty.

All the world is an utterance of the Almighty.

It seems so far off,
that Cross of Jesus, and
it really is so near! For
it is lifted up so high that
the waves of time roll
unheeded and unmeaning
at its foot. It is the
power of perfection for us
to-day.

Each high achievement is a sign and token of the whole nature's possibility. What a piece of the man was for that shining moment, it is the duty of the whole man to be always.

May we not daily tread the same paths of holiness and sorrow, joy and love, that Christ has trodden, and see His footsteps on them still?