If you are good at games or athletics you can tell your mates that you made two goals or eighty-three runs or whatever it is, and delight in their admiration. If you are an athlete the applause of the bystanders is your right and your reward.
But whom can you tell of the little intimate triumphs, the secret successes, the temptations resisted, the kind things done, the gentle refrainings, the noble darings of that struggling, bewildered, storm-tossed little thing you call your soul?
God, your Father, is the only person to whom you can talk of these. To him you can say: "Father, I wanted to pay Smith Minor out to-day for something he did last week, and I didn't because I thought You wouldn't like it. Are You pleased with Your boy?" Do they teach you this in schools or give you any hint or hope of what you will feel when your Father answers: "Yes, My son, I am pleased." Or do they teach you to say: "Father, I am sorry I was a beast to-day, and I'll try not to do it again"--and tell you that a Voice will answer, "I am sorry too, My son--but I am glad you told Me. Try again, dear lad. And let Me help you"?
As you show your Latin exes. to your master, so you should be taught to show the leaves of your life to the only One who can read and understand that blotted record. And if you learn to show that book every day there will be less and less in it that you mind showing, and more and more that will give you the glow and glory of the heart that comes to him who hears "Faithful and good, well done."
You cannot suppose that your life is rhyming with the will of God when you destroy the beauty of the country and of the lives of men so that you may get rich and you and your children may live without working.
Can you imagine a company promoter who should say: "Father, I have made a lot of money out of a company which has gone to pieces, and a lot of other people are ruined, but I know that there must always be rich and poor, and if I didn't do it some one else would"?
Or--"Father, I spoiled the green fields where children used to play and I have built a lot of streets of hideous and uncomfortable houses, but they are quite good enough for the working people. As long as they have such low wages they can't live like human beings. And Thou knowest, O Father, that wages are and must be regulated by the divine law of supply and demand."