2 Timothy 1:7 For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, gives, in one of his letters, an account of a saintly sister. For twenty years, through some disease, she was confined to a kind of crib; never once could she change her position for all that time. "And yet," said Dr. Arnold, and I think his words are very beautiful, "I never saw a more perfect instance of the power of love and of a sound mind. Intense love, almost to annihilation of selfishness; a daily martyrdom for twenty years, during which she adhered to her early-formed resolution of never talking about herself; thoughtful about the very pins and ribbons of my wife's dress, about the making of a doll's cap for a child, but of herself — save as regarded her improvement in all goodness — wholly thoughtless; enjoying everything lovely, graceful, beautiful, high-minded, whether in God's works or man's, with the keenest relish: inheriting the earth to the fulness of the promise; and preserved through the valley of the shadow of death from all fear of impatience, and from every cloud of impaired reason which might mar the beauty of Christ's glorious work. May God grant that I might come within one hundred degrees of her place in glory!" Such a life was true and beautiful. But the radiance of such a light never cheered this world by chance. A sunny patience, a bright-hearted self-forgetfulness, a sweet and winning interest in the little things of family intercourse, the Divine lustre of a Christian peace, are not fortuitous weeds carelessly flowering out of the life-garden. It is the internal which makes the external. It is the force residing in the atoms which shapes the pyramid. It is the beautiful soul which forms the crystal of the beautiful life without. Parallel Verses KJV: For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.WEB: For God didn't give us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-control. |