“Oh, to be nothing, nothing,
Only to lie at his feet,
A broken and emptied vessel
For the Master’s use made meet—
Emptied, that he might fill me
As forth to his service I go;
Broken, that so unhindered
His life through me might flow!”
There are few entirely unbroken lives in this world; there are few men who fulfill their own hopes and plans without thwarting or interruption at some point. Now and then there is one who in early youth marks out a course for himself and then moves straight on in it to its goal, but most persons live very differently from their own early dreaming. Many find at the close of their career that in scarcely one particular have they realized their own life-dreams; at every point God has simply set aside their plans and substituted his own.
There are some lives whose plans are so completely thwarted that their story is most pathetic as we read it; yet we have but to follow it through to the end to see that the broken life was better and more effective than if its own plan had been carried out.
Page 1