THE SEEING EYE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 May 1941, Page 3

THE SEEING EYE

SCENE OF THE HAY WAIN. One day I had been driven across the whole country of Suffolk, writes the late Dr. John Oman in his book. “Honest Religion,” just published posthumously. The spring was at its full, the variety of greens and browns infinite. the light of an unearthly perfection, under the splendour of the sky the farmhouses and old world villages of changing panorama of varied beauty. Then we came to Fiatford Mill, and I went in to see where Constable had first earned his bread by grinding flour for its making. I looked out of the unglazed window, as he might have done any time he lifted his head from his work, and there, framed in it, what, after all I had seen, seemed rather commonplace. But it was the scene of the Hay Wain; and Constable had done nothing to it except to see it with an artist’s eye, which, however, had transformed it into perfect beauty and inspired meaning. Perhaps all we need for blessedness is for life's meaning so to unveil itself. Here in imagination we may range in the infinits, but the real infinity of meaning and value is in the common folks around; could we love and serve them better, and in the common- joys and sorrows, could we respond better, and in the common tasks, were they freed from imperfections of motive and purpose. And if there be any works that follow us, will they not be the simple things in which our souls have been most open and sincerely honest and what we learned of the depths of God's wisdom and mercy, not the things of high notoriety?