Part 9 (1/2)

Most men spend their lives in the attempt to acc.u.mulate the means to live, and forget to begin to live at all. Sometimes, as you are riding through the country on a winter evening, you come to a silent farm- house, and you see one window lighted; and, if you should go and knock at the door, you would probably find out that the light is s.h.i.+ning from the kitchen, where the family is gathered in the evening, perhaps as a matter of economy to save fire, perhaps to save trouble. And, if you examine the lives of these people, you would find that they live chiefly in the kitchen. They may have a sitting-room where they spend a few leisure hours; perhaps they have the beginning of a library; but they do not spend much time in that. They have little opportunity for the life of the parlor, representing the expansive, social human life which comes into contact with other lives. And so you will find that this, which is a figure, represents that which is true of most of us.

We have only begun to live; and we live in the lower ranges of our nature, or perhaps we have touched life on a higher level in some tentative sort of way. But the most of us are only partly alive, have only developed a little of what is possible in us, have only come in contact with some fragments of this wonderful universe that is all around us on every hand.

What, then, is the meaning of life? What shall we try to do? What are we here for? I do not attempt to go into the profound explanation of mysteries too deep for me to answer, as to what must have been in the mind of G.o.d when he planned and created this universe of which we are a part. My task is a humbler one. Let us see if I can help you comprehend a little part of it. Take an ill.u.s.tration.

An immensely wealthy man suddenly dies, leaving his estates to a little boy seven or eight years of age. He has wide stretches of land, hill and valley, river, woods, all that is beautiful as making up a landscape. The house represents the acc.u.mulated resources of the experiences and the intelligence of a lifetime. There are not only beautiful drawing-rooms, telling of taste, but there is a library in which is all that the world has been able to acc.u.mulate of learning, of literature in every department. Here is another room containing instruments of music and the works of the great composers. There is an art gallery, containing some of the finest masterpieces in the way of painting and sculpture; and then there is a room devoted to scientific experiments,-- chemistry, the microscope, the telescope. Here are means and opportunity for finding out what the world has so far developed.

Now has this young boy come into possession of these things? He has inherited them, he is his father's heir. We say they belong to him; but do they belong to him? In what sense and to what extent do they belong to him? They belong to him just in so far and just as fast as he develops himself into capacity of comprehension and enjoyment, no faster, no farther. As he enters upon his inheritance then he is put under tutors. Some man comes to teach him the languages which he does not comprehend; and by and by that part of the library which is composed of books written in other speech than his own begins to belong to him. It belongs to the tutor a good deal more than it does to the child, until the child has learned the lessons of the tutor. And so another teacher comes to instruct him in art; and the masterpieces of art belong to the person of taste, of culture, with appreciation, to the teacher again, to any one who knows and who feels, instead of to the boy, who merely has possession of the t.i.tle-deeds.

Do you see the suggestion of the picture? Man wakes up here on this planet what sort of a being? Not at first ”a little lower than G.o.d,” as the old Psalmist says of him, but only a little higher than the animals, ignorant of himself, ignorant of his surroundings, weak, undeveloped in every faculty and power. He begins, we say, to live; and what does that mean? He begins to explore this wonderful world, which is his heritage; and do you not see that along with this exploration there goes of necessity a process of self- development? I would pit against that statement of Kant's a phrase something like this. The object of life is threefold: it is to become all possible, it is to serve all possible, it is to enjoy all possible. But I cannot outline completely either one of these suggestions; for they blend, they intermingle, as you will see in a moment. They are like different notes in a piece of music that are so blended together that they const.i.tute one tune, while separate they are only fragments, or discords.

The first thing, then, if a man wishes really to live, is that he should develop himself, unfold the faculties and powers which lie dormant in him. He is a child of G.o.d. He is capable of comprehending within his limit that which is divine. He is capable of being touched, played on, by all the phases and forces of the universe surrounding him. He is an instrument of ten thousand strings; and marvellous may be the music of his life.

First, he should be as complete an animal as possible. Then he should develop himself as a being capable of thinking, of knowing. How many men are there that take possession of the intellectual realm that lies around them on every hand? Just think. Let me hint suggestions, ill.u.s.trations, in one or two directions. A man goes out for a walk in the park, or, better yet, into the country. The park is too artificial, perhaps, to carry just the meaning that I have in mind. Let it be a walk in the country, then. How much do the gra.s.ses and the flowers have to say to him?

I have a friend in Was.h.i.+ngton, a famous botanist, a botanist not only of all things that live and grow to-day, but who has pushed his researches back and down into the prehistoric ages so as to understand and explain the records, the prints, the leaves and twigs, the forms of every kind that are on the rocks and left to tell the story of a life that has pa.s.sed away many thousands on thousands of years ago. How much of all this marvellous realm, or even a suggestion of it, is revealed to the ordinary man as he walks through the field?

Look in the direction of geology a moment. Here is a river course; here is the shape of a hill top; do they say anything to the ordinary man who walks with his head down, and occupied with some problem of Wall Street, perhaps? Here are marvels of creative power. G.o.d shaped the slope of that hill as really as though he smoothed it down with his hand. And he who understands the methods of world building, of landscape-sculpture, may stand in wonder and awe and reverence before the forces that have been at work for millions of years, and are at work the same to-day. How many men have even a conception of the wonders of the microscopic world? To how many men do the star have anything to say at night? A man looks at a bowlder, unlike any other rock there is to be found anywhere in the neighborhood, and perhaps he does not even ask a question about it; while a man who has made a careful study of these things sees spring up before him in his imagination that long ice age before man lived on the planet, when this bowlder was swept from some far-off place by the glacial power, deposited where it is, sc.r.a.ped on its surface by the pa.s.sing of the ice, as if G.o.d himself had left his sign-manual here, his autograph, that he, in after- ages who might make himself capable of reading, might understand.

These merely as fragmentary, brief hints of what it is to live in the intellectual realm.

Go up to that realm where the intellect is blended with the emotions, the glamour of pictures, poetry, sculpture, music, beauty of color and form and sound. What a world this is, infinite resources of an infinite universe, appealing to, and, if a man responds, calling out the faculties and powers of his own nature that are capable of dealing with these things, so that a man may feel that he is thinking over the thoughts of G.o.d, tracing his footsteps, listening to the marvellous music of his words! This is one of the results of self-development, if a man is unfolding, developing himself, becoming as much as possible.

Now let us turn sharply to one of these other phases which I spoke of, of doing what we can to help the world. And now note, this universe is so cunningly contrived that a man cannot possibly be successful as a selfish man. It is one of the most conclusive proofs, it seems to me, not only of the divine goodness, but of the moral meaning and scope of the world. Selfishness is not wicked only, it is the most outrageous folly on the face of the earth. If a man develop himself, if he develops that which is finest in him, that which is best and sweetest and truest, he develops not only his power to think, but his capacity to love, his capacity to enjoy, and to bestow enjoyment; and he cannot possibly succeed in the long run, and in the best ways, on selfish lines.

People used to have a notion that he who grasped and retained everything he could get hold of was the fortunate, the successful man.

People had an idea in politics, for example, that that nation was happiest which humbled other nations; and, if it was superior to all the rest, by as much as they were poor and devastated, this nation was fortunate. We know now that a nation finds its prosperity in that of other nations, in its ability to exchange, to trade, to carry on all the grand avocations of life with them. If a man writes a book, he wants the world intelligent enough to understand and appreciate it. If a man paints a picture, he wants artistic ability on the part of the public, so that they will appreciate and buy his pictures. If a man carves a statue, he wants the people to appreciate glory of form enough to see how great and true his work is, and reward him for his endeavor.

In other words, no man would write a book, and go off with it alone by himself. No man would paint a picture, and hide it. No man would carve a statue, and conceal it from his fellows.

We have learned, and are learning constantly in every direction, that our happiness is involved in the happiness of other people. The world is haunted to-day and I thank G.o.d that it is with the thought of the unhappiness, the misery, of men. What does it mean? It means that men have developed so on their sympathetic side that they cannot be happy themselves while the world is unhappy. So you see that this self- development, which I placed as the chief thing at the outset in the meaning of life, carries with it the necessity on the part of those who are developed, of doing everything they can to develop and lift up everybody else; so that making the most of yourself means making the most of everybody else.

And now, if I turn for a moment to that other point, merely to distinguish it by itself, although I have been dealing with it all the while, the end and aim of life once more is to be happy. I am perfectly well aware that the old Puritan theology has taught otherwise, so far as this life is concerned. I was brought up with the feeling that, if I wanted to do anything, the chances were it was wrong, that it was a good deal more likely to be in the way of virtue if it was something that was disagreeable to me. And yet, curiously enough, this old Puritan theology invented and held up before men, as a lure to lead them to virtue, the most tremendous bribe that ever entered into the imaginations of men, eternal felicity on the one hand, and eternal woe on the other. So that it conceded the very thing that it seemed to deny, that men naturally and necessarily sought happiness, and could not possibly do otherwise.

And so we learn to live, to think, to serve others. We are beginning to learn also that this desire for happiness is natural, is necessary, is right. If a man is not happy, you may be sure there is something wrong.

If there is pain in the body, it means disease, difficulty, obstruction, something out of the way. It means that G.o.d's laws are not perfectly kept. If there is pain up in the mental realm, pain in the moral realm, pain in the spiritual realm, it means always something wrong. Man ought to be happy. He ought to seek happiness as the great end and outcome of human life.

And we are learning, as the natural and necessary result of our experiences in knowing and in serving, that just in so far as we know the laws of G.o.d, just in so far as we obey the laws of G.o.d, just in so far as we help others to know and obey, just in so far there comes into our lives the blessedness of the blessed G.o.d.

The end of life, then, the object of life here on earth, is to develop ourselves to the utmost. It is to learn to know, take possession of our inheritance, this earth, control all its forces for the service of civilization. It is to rejoice in all this self-development, in all this help, in all this knowledge, in all this power. It is to feel ourselves thrilling with the consciousness that we are sons of G.o.d, and are co-operating with him in bringing about the grand result of the ages, the perfection of man.

And then what? Death? This is only one stage of our career. We are here at school; we learn our lessons or we do not; we attain the ends we seek after or we only partly attain them or do not attain them at all; and then we go on. Does that mean that it ends there? I do not believe it. I believe that it simply means that we go out into a larger opportunity, from the planet to the system, to the galaxy, to the universe, wider knowledge answering to more magnificent resources in the infinite universe. We, with undeveloped powers that may increase and advance forever, and a universe so complete, so exhaustless, that it may match and lure and lead and rejoice us forever; we being trained as G.o.d's children in G.o.d's likeness and helping others to attain the same magnificent ends, this I believe to be the significance, the meaning, the purpose, of life.

Are there any here this morning who think or fear that the taking away of the old idea concerning the results of Lying may remove moral motive, may undermine character, nay make people less careful to do right? It seems to me hat, if people understand the significance of this universe, and their relation to it, they will find that all the carelessness of motive, the ease of salvation, as they call it, is with the old idea. Our theory is a more strenuous and insistent one. Children are learning as they become wiser that evil is not only evil, but it is folly. A man wishes life, health, happiness, prosperity, all good. He learns, as he goes on, that the universe is in favor of the keeping of its own laws; and that, f he flings himself against the forces of the universe, he is only broken for his pains. If you wish to be healthful, sappy, strong, wish to attain any desirable thing, it is to be bound not in defiance of the laws of the universe, but in loving and tender obedience.

And, then, if you only remember that in this universe and coder the universal law of cause and effect you are building to-morrow out of to-day, and next week and next year, and all he future, that every thought, every word, every action, is cemented together as a part of this structure that you build, hat you can make your own future for good or ill, and that you cannot build it successfully except in accordance with he eternal laws of things, then you find that here are the most insistent and tremendous motives it is possible for the human mind to conceive.

This life of ours, if we lead it n.o.bly and truly, then, we shall find to be a growth into the likeness of the Divine, a growth into an increasing opportunity to share the work of our Father in building and helping men, and that, as the result of this, joy, infinite joy, is to fill our hearts until we share the very blessedness of our Father.

G.o.d made our lives to be a song Sweet as the music of the spheres, That still their harmonies prolong For him who rightly hears. The heavens and the earth do play Upon us, if we be in tune: Winter shouts hoa.r.s.e his roundelay, And tender sweet pipes June. But oftentimes the songs are pain, And discord mars our harmonies: Our strings are snapped by selfish strain, And harsh hands break our keys. But G.o.d meant music; and we may, If we will keep our lives in tune, Hear the whole year sing roundelay, December answering June. G.o.d ever at his keyboard plays, Harmonics, right; and discords, wrong: ”He that hath ears,” and who obeys, May hear the mystic song.

SIN AND ATONEMENT.