[The Investment of Influence by Newell Dwight Hillis]@TWC D-Link book
The Investment of Influence

CHAPTER V
19/20

Happy the man who hath stored up such treasures of mind and heart as that he stands forth among his fellows like a lighthouse on some ledge, sending guiding rays far out o'er dark and troubled seas.

Happy the woman whose ripened affection and inspiration have permeated the common life until to her come the poor and weak and heart-broken, standing forth like some beauteous bower offering shade and filling all the air with sweet perfume.
In crisis hours the patriot and martyr, the hero and the philanthropist, die for the public good, but not less do they serve their fellows who live and through years employ their gifts and heart-treasures, not for themselves, but for the happiness and highest welfare of others.

Richter, the German artist, painted a series of paintings illustrating the ministry of angels.

He showed us the child-angels who sit talking with mortal children among the flowers, now holding them by their coats lest they fall upon the stairs, now with apples enticing them back when they draw too near the precipice; when the boy grows tall and is tempted, ringing in the chambers of memory the sweet mother's name; in the hour of death coming in the garb of pilgrim, made ready for convoy and guidance to the heavenly land.
Oh beautiful pictures! setting forth the sacred ministry of each true Christian heart.
History tells of the servant whose master was sold into Algeria, and who sold himself and wandered years in the great desert in the mere hope of at last finding and freeing his lord; of the obscure man in the Eastern city who, misunderstood and unpopular, left a will stating that he had been poor and suffered for lack of water, and so had starved and slaved through life to build an aqueduct for his native town, that the poor might not suffer as he had; of the soldier in the battle, wounded in cheek and mouth and dying of thirst, but who would not drink lest he should spoil the water for others, and so yielded up his life.

But this capacity of sacrifice and sympathy is but the little in man answering to what is large in God.


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