We who are not of the earth need not be earthy;
God made our nature like His own–divine;
Nothing of selfishness can be unworthy
Of this pure image, meant through us to shine.
The death of deaths it is, ourselves to smother
In our own pleasuring His honoured gift;
And life–eternal life–to love each other;
Our souls with Christ in sacrifice to lift.
This is the beauty of our new born morning;
In Him humanity may now arise
Out of the grace of self, all baseness scorning
The holy radiance of His glorious eyes
Illumines everywhere uplifted faces;
Touches the earthly with a heavenly glow;
And in that blessed light all human graces
Unto divine beatitudes must grow.
One of the great problems in Christian life is to get through this world without being harmed by it. Either good people must be so sheltered that the evil of the world cannot reach them, or they must be left amid the evil and kept unspotted from it. Jesus prayed that His disciples should not be taken from the world. He needs them here. A young mother whose husband had died said she would be glad to join him in heaven, but that her babies needed her here.
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