orama of beauty. We must
roll up our sleeves and take up the rugged toil and, mid sweat and grime
and noise and discord, produce the real results that feed and clothe and
shelter us. The real accomplishments of life are not on the mountain-top,
but in the monotonous, soul-trying daily grind of business. If you imagine
that you are to live in the idealism of a mountain-top experience you will
find yourself coming short of it most of the time. You will be continually
lamenting over your failure to make your experience measure to your ideal.
So long as you are reaching toward this ideal and are conscious of your
failure to reach it, your attention will be absorbed by this, and you will
be of little use to God. The sooner you come down to the place where you
stop condemning yourself because your emotions are not always joyous or
because you can not always pray with that full outpouring of soul, the
better it will be for you. You will never become a practical Christian
till you learn that the Christian life, like the natural life, is largely
made up of a monotonous round of duties.

There is little of glamor or brilliancy in labor or ordinary things. That
is reserved for the special things in life. It is true that there is joy
in the toil and in the hardness, yea, even in the bitterness, if there is
a consciousness of duty well done. It is the daily grind that tests the
faithfulness. God wants people who will be true in the daily toil of life,
who will do well the little, uninteresting things. He wants practical
Christians, people who are willing to do the work even if it means
weariness, even if it means little of emotion, even if it means sacrifice.

If you lived on the mountain-top always, the scene would soon lose its
beauty, and you would soon forget its loveliness. When, after the days of
toil, after the months of the prosaic, you lay aside your tools and turn
from your labors, it is then that you can go out and enjoy the beauties of
nature. It is then that you can enter into her moods and be her comrade.
You can enjoy her then and be refreshed by her as you could not be without
those weary days of toil. Many people are willing to enjoy, but they shun
the work. In natural things we call such persons lazy.

Idealism has its place in life, but it must not close our eyes to the
practical side of life. Enjoy what of the mountain-top God may give to
you, but do not count this the ordinary, usual thing of Christian life.
Le