probably have given God more glory, and done more for Him, than one who has gone quietly on all day without failure; God created some people (it may be said) to serve Him by failure; for they give Him glory by their acts of contrition and humiliation, while if they had succeeded, their pride would have made them displeasing to Hun."
The thought of heaven and of that blessed time when we shall see God in the fulness of His beauty ought to keep our hearts over" flowing with peace and joy. We can be always bright and cheerful if we keep our eyes directed toward the eternal shores, to the blessed land of the saints, where the sky is ever cloudless, where the sun of happiness never sets, where a perfect torrent of delight inundates the soul, where, as the beloved disciple tells us, " God shall wipe away all tears, and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more; for the former things are passed away."
Apropos of this subject, Father Henry Calmer, S.J., of blessed memory, who for many years filled the pulpit of St. Xavier's, Cincinnati, and held vast audiences spellbound by his eloquence, wrote the following lines while visiting a Trappist monastery:
Eternity
The silent monks prayed in their oaken stalls;
In the tangled grass by the abbey walls
Bloomed the roses red with their drooping leaves,
and roses pink as the dreams youth weaves,
And roses white as when love deceives;
How they bloomed and swayed in the garden
there,
While the bell tolled out in the warm still air:
"Eternity!"
"Eternity!" the great bell rang.
"Leave life and love and youth," it sang;
And the red rose scattered its petals wide,
And the pink rose dreamed in the sun, and
sighed,
And the white rose pined on its stem and died.
O Life, Love, Youth I Ye are sweet, ye are
strong,
But barren lives shall bloom in a long
Eternity!
