Practical Religion As Great Sculptor Felt It in His Life

1917

John Bacon, the noted English sculptor, whose genius was immortalized in prose by Lord Macaulay and in verse by the poet Cowper, was a man of pronounced and practical piety. No matter how much he was occupied with business, how exalted by applause, or how tempted by wealth, religion was always his greatest concern.

One day when Bacon was hard at work in his studio a lady visited him, and in the course of the conversation he happened to make a remark about religion. The lady then said: "My religion is to fear God and to keep the commandments." Then she showed plainly that she did not care to discuss religion any further; whereupon Bacon said quietly: "Do you not recollect that it is said, 'They that fear the Lord spake often one to another?'"

In other words, he believed that if two people with true religious feeling met they should never be afraid or feel embarrassed to talk about their religion.

On the day of his death, Bacon desired to bear such testimony that it would be lasting and have a good influence upon others, and so he dictated the following and requested that it be placed near his grave:

What I was as an Artist
Seemed to me of some importance
While I lived; but
What I really was as a Believer
In Christ Jesus
Is the only thing of importance
To me now.

—From Home and School.


The Source of Its Beauty

Once there was a brier growing in a ditch, and there came along a gardener with his spade. As he dug around it, and lifted it out, the brier said to itself, "What is he doing that for?" Doesn't he know that I am only an old worthless brier?" But the gardener took it into the garden and planted it amid his flowers, while the brier said, "What a mistake he has made, planting an old brier like myself among such rose trees as these!" But the gardener came once more with his keen-edged knife, made a slit in the brier, and "budded" it with a rose, and by and by when summer came, lovely roses were blooming on that old brier. Then the gardener said, "Your beauty is not due to that which came out, but to that which I put into you." This is just what Christ is doing all the time with poor human lives. — Selected.