Compensation

Sitting on the rocks one day, down by the ceaselessly throbbing sea, I watched the great waves come rolling in, throwing their white arms aloft as if in despair, and dashing their hearts out against the unyielding shore. I mused on the wonderful waste of energy. These waves, thought I, have been beating here for countless years, with power that it would seem might move mountains. What is the result? A few worthless pebbles have been polished. Even the great rocks themselves, seamed and gashed though they be, have been rounded and smoothed a little, it is true; but this is all. The barriers of the shore are still unbroken, its form, its position are practically the same. For countless aeons this magnificent display of energy has been wasted, and the grand old ocean continues to dash its heart out all in vain. My soul was sad. It is like human life, I said.  

All along the centuries grand men and true have arisen, and without reserve they have flung the measureless spiritual energy of their lives against earth’s barriers of hatred, and falsehood, and wrong. They have been made martyrs for their pains. Thorn-crowned, and cross-laden, they have walked the steep paths to their execution, the mighty heart throb of their passionate love for humanity breaking like a helpless wave against the hard, hoarse, mob—crying for their crucifixion.  

We all, too, have had our longings and our aspirations that transcend by far our realizations; and how are we the better for them? On wearied wings the centuries fly, and the world and they that dwell therein are ever much the same. Men still are slaves of lust, and ambition, and greed; earth’s millions still are expended for war, its pennies only for piety and peace.  

The yawning chasms of the rocks were around me; the roar of the surf was in my ears, but a more bottomless abyss of utter darkness seemed to open up before me. I stood on the giddy verge, led thither by my faithless musing. Stop, said I, this must be wrong since God is God. In some way my view is too narrow. I have looked, perhaps, too much only at the sea, and the rocky shore. Away to the verdant hills I glanced, and to the earth all glorified with harvest. The truth flashed in on my mind and heart. The ocean was the source of all this life and beauty, and fruitage. It sends out the showers to water the earth, without which the world would be a desert. These tireless waves throw their white spray into the air. It is caught up into invisible vapor to come down in showers of blessings. It is these ceaseless undulations of the ocean that increase its evaporating surface, till the earth is supplied with the early and the latter rain. It is this motion, too, that purifies the sea. The ocean still, would be the ocean dead, and slimy, and stagnant, and this would mean a fruitless, lifeless, desert world. Even the rocks on the shore do slowly yield to these tireless waves. Their roughness departs, and they become polished and beautiful. This limitless energy that looked so utterly wasted, is not wasted. It is, after all, the source of all the living glory of earth and sea.  

Ah, so, said I, it is in human life. Almost every truth has been blood-bought. 

These noble martyr lives have glorified the intellectual and spiritual world. 

Even as the sun and the moon have lifted the tides of ocean, so their mighty attraction has lifted the tide of human aspiration and longing and realization, too, till more and more it beats with resistless power on the shore line of ignorance and sin. We, too, are purer and better for having longed, and aspired, and patiently suffered. 

No good is ever really lost. The influence of the patient love of a quiet, sacrificing life knows no impassable barriers, but is the common heritage of the race.  

“Our echoes roll from soul to soul,  

And grow forever, and forever.”  

Anything is better than satisfaction in selfishness and sin. This is death, while all else is the manifestation of life.  

Let the soul struggle and aspire as it will, beating like a caged bird, its wings against the bars. Even this is not lost energy. It is the movings of the divine life within, ere we have learned fully the victory and rest of quiet trust. Jesus, too, had his wilderness conflict, and “was made perfect through suffering.” It is this ceaseless beating of the waves of human aspiration that is, after all, the basis of all spiritual beauty and progress. So truly, nothing, in this wonderful God’s world, is ever really lost.  

“No river from its source  

Flows seaward, how lonely soever its course,  

But some land is gladdened. No star ever rose  

And set without influence somewhere. Who knows  

What earth needs from earth’s lowliest creatures?  

      No life  

Can be pure in its purpose, and strong in its strife,  

And all life not be purer and stronger thereby.”