"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest"
(Matt. 11:28).
Who are the happiest people that you meet? The man who thinks of no one but himself, and whose narrow horizons are bounded by his own selfish interests? Certainly not. But mothers living for their children--listen how they sing about the house. And men spending themselves for some great cause; and youths and maidens so full of the other that they have never a thought to spare for self. And, above all, those to whom to live is Christ.
The Lord God fashioned us for mighty ends, and nothing less than following that for which He made us can heal our restlessness of heart. He called us, says Paul, He called you and me "to be partners with His Son Jesus Christ" in His amazing enterprise. And, made for that, do you imagine we can be content with pottering at these shabby little nothings with which people seek to fill their days? For a time it may seem to satisfy, but not for long. No, not the cleanest and most beautiful that this life has to offer. Did not even Ruskin cry out in a sobbing anguish, "Oh, why did no one tell me that the colors would fade, and that the glory of the earth would vanish; and that the soul asks and must have something bigger and better and more splendid than this earth can give it?" You may be long in realizing that. But if so, one day you must stand with life all spent, and all for which you paid it faded and gone out, and you, poor dupe, left empty-handed, hungry-hearted, fooled! Why should we hesitate to close with Christ? It is so glorious a chance He offers us.
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Arthur John Gossip was Professor of Christian Ethics and Practical Theology at the University from 1939 until 1945.
Born in Glasgow, Gossip graduated MA from the University of Edinburgh and was licensed as a Free Church of Scotland minister in 1898. He was minister of a number of churches before coming to St Matthew's United Free Church in Glasgow in 1910; he served as a chaplain in Belgium and France during the First World War, and he returned to Scotland as minister of Beechgrove Church in Aberdeen.
In 1928, Gossip was appointed Professor of Christian Ethics and Practical Training in the United Free Church's Divinity school in Glasgow (known as Trinity College after the reunion of the United Free and Church of Scotland in 1929, and the amalgamation of the Divinity schools at the College and the University). The University's Chair of Ethics and Practical Theology was suppressed after Gossip's retirement in 1945.