Concerning life

Contents

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I. Is Life Worth Living ? 1

II. The Happy Life 11

II

— happy slialt thou be and it shall be well with thee. — Psalm cxxviii, 2.

Yesterday we opened a fresh page in the ledger of life. We closed the old accounts, as best we could, and opened new ones. The calendar is arbitrary ; but our sentiment makes a great difference between December 31st and January 1st. Jean Paul Richter said he believed heaven was made up of beginnings. The genial Charles Lamb declared that every man had two birthdays; his own and the new year. To-day we shall wish each other a Happy New Year. A week ago we were wishing our friends a Merry Christmas.

There is a great, a significant difference in these greetings. Have you ever thought of it? We wish our friends a Merry Christmas, but a Happy New Year. Our greeting for Christmas is for the day only. We wish this great festival of the year to be joyous, gay, full of unre- 11 strained mirth. May you be merry ! that is, may all care and anxiety be banished. May you return to the high-spirits and glee of childhood.

Our greeting now is for the whole year. It would be childish to wish that a whole year should be filled with merriment — merriment is for particular days and seasons — and so our wish is that our friends may be happy in the new year.

In this simple matter of holiday greetings we make a distinction that goes very deep into life. It is the difference between pleasure and happiness. Pleasure refers to the gratification of the senses ; a game of ball, a dance, a drive, a visit to a picture gallery, a concert, all these things give pleasure because they call into healthy activity certain muscles, or because they gratify the eye and ear. Happiness, on the other hand, has reference to mental or moral gratifications. A friend makes you happy because your life is made larger and richer by his sympathy. To conquer a temptation makes one happy because we wish to be upright, honorable men. The noble action of another gives us happiness because it confirms our faith in human nature; because we have an abiding interest in the triumph of the good.

Pleasure is also of a temporary character.

The game, the dance, the drive, give pleasure because they are short-lived, because they are in such marked contrast with the routine employment they break up. A game or dance or drive indefinitely prolonged would be a vexation of the spirit as well as a weariness of the flesh. It would be so, likewise, with the higher form of pleasure we derive from music and pictures. Their charm is in their occasional character. We can spend just about so much time in the concert hall or art gallery before we feel fatigued.

Happiness, on the other hand, has a permanent quality. It is applied to a life-time rather than to days and seasons. The value of friendship is in its staying power, it is constant in prosperity or adversity. A moral victory, some intellectual triumph, an heroic action, — these are lasting sources of delight. They bring happy thoughts whenever they enter the mind.

The most important difference is that happiness may include some sorrow, pain, disappointment, as well as pleasure. I suppose that heroic Peary would speak of those years in the Arctic circle as happy, despite the loneliness and privation and suffering, since he was realizing the dream of his mature life. Hammerton, artist and man of letters, was a happy man in his literary work, and yet the writing of each book was an arduous task demanding a long aftertime of recuperation. Happiness, like health, does not mean that one never has an ache or pain. It means that despite occasional weariness of mind or body the man's life is sound, wholesome, satisfying.

One more difference we may note, and that is that happiness has a moral quality; it is closely associated with duty. A great many of our pleasures are unmoral; that is, they are merely physical or intelligent without any moral issues ; they exercise our powers of body or mind, and in this healthy, functional activity, we are refreshed and delighted. But happiness on the other hand takes more account of life as a whole. It is a state of mind resulting from many actions, and so is inevitably, affected by the moral life of a man.

Noting these differences between pleasure and happiness, let us ask ourselves, at the beginning of a new year, wherein happiness consists. It is not the highest aim. Duty is a greater word than happiness. But as I have just said happiness is closely associated with duty. And, again, consciously or unconsciously most of us are seeking happiness. It is well for us to seek happiness on the new year, as well as to wish it for our friends. But let us try to see a little more clearly, if it may be, what it implies and how we are most likely to obtain it.

If you were to ask the first person you met on the street what is happiness, the chances are he would say, " oh, to be rich or clever or influential, to have whatever you want." And how well we know that those things, by and in themselves, do not give happiness. Experience again and again has shown the inability of money or reputation or influence, in itself, without other possessions, to make a man happy.

Ask your question however of some thoughtful person, some one who is worldly wise, and he will probably tell you that happiness depends upon health, a competency and a good conscience. You cannot be happy, he will tell you, if you are suffering pain, if you do not know where your next dinner is to come from, or if you are an evil-minded man. This is an excellent answer. It seems to meet all requirements. Certainly, to be happy one must enjoy good health, an assured income, and a clear conscience. There is no doubt about the clear conscience; the man who lives in fear of detection, of disgrace and punishment, cannot be called happy. But good health? an assured income? Are these really essential? Hardly. Among the happy people we know many are invalids with their hours or days of pain ! many are poor, never quite certain what their income may be the next year, or even six months hence ! And then how often we find discontented, complaining, disagreeable people who have health and money and every reason to be happy !

It does not require very much reflection to perceive that happiness depends upon personal traits, upon a man's own disposition, upon the resources of his inner life. And so we turn from the sensible man even as from the thoughtless man to ask again wherein happiness lies. This time let us look deeper into the matter. What are these personal traits, what is the disposition, what are the resources that make happiness possible ?

In each one of us there is what we may call the individual self, and again the universal self. We eat, sleep, exercise, amuse ourselves, and in these things consider simply our physical wants. We look at pictures, listen to music, read books, converse with friends. In these things also we are thinking of the needs of our own nature. Thus we build up our individual life day by day, maintaining health, and cultivating our mind.

But there are certain interests in our lives we may call universal, since they unite us very closely with one another, and are the very founelation of civilization. This is the universal self, or the manifestation of the Divine Life in each one of us ; just as the rhythm of a large orchestra is the manifestation of the conductor's skill shown in the many and various instruments. Now sympathy is the earliest and simplest expression of this universal life. You are hurt if you receive a blow ; but do you not wince if you see another struck? How often we are indignant at the sight of some cruelty or even injustice! Have we not waxed eloquent over outrages in Armenia and Russia! You and I are not personally affected, our rights are not molested, our self-respect is unimpaired. But that is not enough. We indentify, to some degree, the poor wretch we know is maltreated with our own humanity. In his degradation our own manhood suffers. In his need we also are pained.

Another expression of this universal self is found in that splendid service so often and so freely given to others, friends, acquaintances, even strangers. How magnificently it appears in the missionaries, the reformers, the philanthropists of these Christian centuries ! What a stimulus we find in St. Paul's answer to that far away cry from Macedonia ! in the heroic work of St. Vincent de Paul among the galley slaves of

France! in Clara Barton's Red Cross carried freely among the contending armies of Europe ! in the countless men and women of our day found in social settlements and reform movements!

Yet still another, the highest expression of this universal self is seen in the supreme act of sacrifice that springs from the life of service. It is the affection of lovers, it is the devotion of the mother to her children, it is one life for another, as Sidney Carton dying on the scaffold for his friend. Greatest of all, it is Jesus living for others, forgetful of self, ending a life of tender ministration by an ignominious death, when cowardice or selfishness would have saved Him. That is the permanent ideal of the Christian Church — " not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give one's life a ransom for many." In such a life as that of Christ we see God made manifest. We see those evidences of constant affection, of loyal service, of the willingness to offer up one's own life to aid the life of another, that confirm our faith in the Fatherhood of God.

Happiness, I think, is very largely to be found in the development of this universal self within each one of us. There is little need to advise our friends to care for the individual self, with the imperious desires of the body and the acquired tastes of the mind. That part of our life is in no danger of neglect. But here is the larger self, the life we share with others, the one all-embracing life of God in which our lives exist, as the life-giving sap flows through root and branch and every leaf of the tree, however different root and branch and leaves may appear. And just because our lives have this universal, divine element, the best men and women are never satisfied with those things that simply minister to the physical and intellectual life, but they are always seeking a larger realization of themselves in human brotherhood. Such a life has its sorrows ; plenty of them I suppose, since the larger our life is the more opportunities there are for pain to enter it. And yet the men and women who live such lives, — and who is not blessed by the friendship of such, are they not to be called happy? Just because happiness means so much more than pleasure or contentment, because it is permanent and related to duty, we do speak of such lives as happy. They make us happy, and we believe they are themselves happy.

At the close of her great novel, George Eliot makes the disciplined and ennobled Romola say to the little Lillo, who wished to be a great man and a happy man, when he grew up, " We can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts, and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves : and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good. And so, my Lillo, if you mean to act nobly and seek to know the best things God has put within reach of men, you must learn to think of that end, and not what will happen to you because of it."

What shall I add, except to say that this universal self, this life of sympathy and fellow service is the movement of the indwelling Spirit among men? And does it not follow that as we yield to this influence and enter more and more into the varied interests of others, their labors, their sorrows, their j oys, their ambitions, our own lives do become nobler, more beneficent, more Christ-like, more worthy to reveal the Fatherhood of God unto other men!

Be ye therefore 'perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect. — Matt, v, 48.

This great fifth chapter of Matthew closes with the exhortation to perfection. The Christian is to aim at nothing less than the divine life. If the words of Jesus seem exaggerated it is because we think of our weakness ; because we more often observe life at the bottom than at the top. Every judgment depends upon the point of view. No one would dream of saying to the average school boy, write like Shakespeare, paint like Raphael, compose like Beethoven. Rut whenever we come upon the exceptional youth, some boy endowed with the creative gift, we bid him aim at the greatest things. We tell the young poet to study Shakespeare and Milton. We advise the young artist to go to the art schools of Rome and Paris. This " Counsel of Perfection " Christ uttered to picked men, His chosen disciples, to the Apostles who were to carry on 21

His work after He should lay it down. Any aim less than the highest, therefore, would have been unworthy of Him and of them. For it is only as we keep the highest in mind, only as we steadily refuse the lower success, that we can ever reach the heights. The divine exhortation is addressed to men and women who expect to grow in character, to attain unto the richer life of faith, to press forward in the footsteps of Christ, to live even in this world as Sons of God.

And it is the inestimable privilege of the Christian to believe that all progress in this life aids progress in the life to come; that whatever intellectual and moral gains we make in this world directly serve us in the world to come.

" Fearless and unperplext, When I wage battle next, What weapons to select, what armor to endue."

Be ye therefore perfect! The words suggest life as an art, as a fine art, as some rare and precious yield of creative power. That is to say, a man may have something of that feeling towards his own life that the artist has for his picture, the poet for his verse, the musician for his score. It shall express his thought, it shall be worthily clothed in action, it shall give delight to all who can appreciate the labor and the result. This is, in fact, the analysis of every work of art, whether it is a Greek statue, an Italian painting or a German symphony. There are exactly these three elements that enter into its composition. First, there is the ideal, that is the thought in the creative mind, the something the artist wishes to say to his fellow-men, whether he is a sculptor, a painter or a musician. It is something we do not see but which he sees and wants to make evident to us.

Then there is the sensuous form in which this ideal must be expressed if we are to see or hear and understand. It may be the horror and agony of the offending priest when the twin serpents bind him and his young sons in their terrible folds, as all that suffering is shown in the Laocoon. It may be maternal love and divine pity as they are represented in Holbein's Madonna and the Burgomaster's family. Or it may seek to indicate the fierce strife and final triumph of life as we hear it all in the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven. By his special gift, whatever it may be, the artist clothes his ideal, bodies it forth in some form that may be known and understood of men.

And lastly, there is the uplift of spirit that comes to the beholder in the presence of a masterpiece, a permanent delight for each succeeding generation brought face to face with an ideal that creative thought has made real in some objective form. " A thing of beauty is a joy forever: Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness."

These then are the three elements of every work of art, — the ideal, the form in which it is expressed and the delight it awakens. Now may not human life be lived so that it shall impress us in similar fashion? What man can do with marble, with paint and canvas, with musical instruments, that shall he not also be able to do with his own life?

It is an ancient saying that man is the architect of his own fortunes. To a great extent this is true as regards material prosperity and a public career. To a much greater degree it is true as regards his own personality and the development of his character. All our judgments upon one another are based upon the assumption that we are rational, self-directing creatures, that from day to day we have the power of choice, that we can make of our lives pretty much what we will. If we ask ourselves what should be the ideal in human life, I think we all would answer that the manifestation and the perfection of our personality is the true function of the free man.

Our intellectual life, our moral aims, our sympathies, these constitute our personality. These are the spiritual traits. They are a deeper part of our self than our physical traits or any possessions we may acquire. When we speak of our self, when we say " I," we mean the inner man, the soul, the spirit, our individuality, that something which others do not see, but which they can, in part at least, apprehend through our lives. Personality is the inner citadel where we entrench ourselves when foes assail and conquer our fortune, our health, our reputation, our friendships, our work. That was the thought of W. E. Henley, a gifted poet who recently died in England after a short and unhappy life.

" It matters not how straight the gate, How charged with punishment the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul."

At times this personality can show itself only in heroic endurance of the crowding ills of life. Money, health, occupation, friends even, may fail, yet the man remains strong in his conscious integrity, as Job amid his foolish friends. It is the knowledge of this inner life, the conviction that the spirit is above the reach of physical ills that sustained the early martyrs in their sufferings, that upholds the ridiculed reformer of our day in his unsuccessful labors, and that gives constancy and peace and even happiness to many a man and woman for whom life has seemed to mean only failure and sorrow. " For who would lose, though full of pain, this intellectual being, those thoughts that wander through eternity?"

More often, however, life lays many gifts in the cradle of the child, and the long, useful, honored, happy career of the man serves to make real to us the high purpose, the unfaltering faith, the tender sympathy, the untiring zeal, the cultivated spirit, all this inner, spiritual growth of the friend we have known and loved. Now this life of the spirit is what we have in mind when we speak of character, of that most precious possession we can ever have. In the truest, deepest sense the man of character is religious. He may not bow at our shrine, he may not call himself a Christian, he may not be seen in the church or take the attitude of prayer. But whoever prizes this inner life of the spirit above any and all outward gains, whoever maintains it under any and all circumstances, that man has a belief in goodness, a faith in the moral order of the world, a confidence in the eventual triumph of truth, that is nothing less than religious. We are coming to see that to-day, as never before in the history of the world. The theist as well as the Christian, the agnostic as well as the believer, the Hindoo, Parsee, Moslem, the poet, statesman and scientist — all these we judge, not by their profession of belief or of unbelief, a profession of unbelief is rather in fashion now, but by the personal character as it appears in their lives. " Human character is a lens through which God shines." All upright men are of that great and impressive Household of Faith in which the Holy Spirit dwells. Some such thought as this, I think, was in the mind of Christ when He bade His disciples aim at divine perfection. If that wonderful fifth chapter of the Gospel is still beyond our attainment, it nevertheless remains as the ideal of the Christian, the path our feet should tread, the object of our prayers. For in Christ it was realized. In His purity, in His spirit of forgiveness, in His love of mercy, we can trace the Divine Lineaments. The reverence we show Him, our aspiration for that perfect life, and even the very feeling that it is beyond our present powers — all these bear witness to our recognition that this is the permanent standard for human effort.

The artist, as we have seen, shows the ideal in that form in which his individual genius is at home. We do not criticize the poem, we give thanks for another masterpiece. The noble variety of labor we recognize also, as never before in the history of the world. There was a time when history was divided into sacred and profane. The Scriptures, devotional books, the lives of the saints — this was sacred writing for the edification of men, in comparison with which politics, history, literature and scientific works were deemed profane, that is secular, interesting to be sure, useful often, but of far less importance than the knowledge of God to be obtained in the sacred writings. That difference no longer holds. No one now would make such a distinction. For cultivated minds, Darwin's Origin of Species would be thought as religious a work as the Imitation of Christ. So also there was a time when the priest was believed to be a man of God in a sense that the scientist, the statesman, the merchant, could not be. The ministry was called the sacred profession, the clergyman a divine. In Puritan New England the clergyman had something of that authority and reverence that attaches to the person and words of the Catholic priest. All that has passed out of modern thought, happily. That is not because there is less respect for a good man, but because there are many good men. We advise young men to enter the ministry only when we think they are fitted to carry on the work of that important profession. Personal character, the great ideal of life, is quite as often seen in one as in another profession. In the monumental biography of Gladstone so many of us have read we learn that this remarkable man for sometime hesitated between the church and politics. He chose the latter; but the most conspicuous feature of that long, brilliant, valued public career was the conscience of the man as seen in the religious spirit, the moral enthusiasm, the personal responsibility he carried into his mighty labors as well as into his rare hours of leisure. In the course of his life he gave away more than three hundred thousand dollars to religious and charitable work. Like the ancient Hebrew, he believed that a tenth of his income should be set aside for such purposes. His particular private effort in reform was directed to the reclamation of fallen women, efforts we perceive that might very easily be misunderstood, an aspect of this noble life little known.

Our life can express our ideal. The material with which we work may be poor ; that is often the case. It is far more splendid to work in literature or statesmanship or scientific research than cobbling shoes or doing housework. But

SO CONCERNING LIFE the essential thing is that the man's labor should express the workman's ideal. Carlyle, you remember, praised his dead father for the honest work he put into the stone bridge at Ecclefechan. " Conduct is the trumpet held at the lips of character," is one of the splendid sayings of Phillips Brooks. All experience, all observation illustrate this truth. The ideal of a man's life is in his secret thought. Only as he expresses it in his daily living can we know it. The pious speech of the prayer meeting, the fine sentiments of the orator, the cultivated taste of the scholar, the moral convictions of the reformer are of value to the world only as the world can see them in the building of the daily life among us. " By their fruits ye shall know them," said Jesus. By the fruits, not by the roots. What we ask of the religious man and woman is that we shall,

" See golden days, fruitful of golden deeds, With love and joy triumphing."

Thus we come to the final element in every work of art — the satisfaction it yields to others, our deep-seated, permanent joy in perfection. The parent finds his exceeding reward for those long years of care and expense and personal sacrifice in the useful and honorable manhood of his child. " A wise son maketh a glad father."

That truth was early discovered in Israel. Parents desire many things for their children, health, happiness, money, distinction, friends; but they well know that the essential thing is that their boys and girls shall grow up into good men and women. For that object their prayers ascend; for that result their unceasing labor is expended.

The worldly success we view with ungrudging eye is that of the man of high character. We even take a solid satisfaction in the wealth of the man who has a sense of stewardship, in the talent of the artist whose mind is clean, in the career of the statesman with a conscience.

When we lay away our dead there is nothing of so much comfort as the memory of an unstained life.

" Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt, Dispraise or blame, nothing but well and fair And what may quiet us in a death so noble."

Life in all its periods of youth, maturity and even of the gradual failure of bodily vigor, can express your ideal of personal character, can awaken joy and noble emulation in the mind of the friend and neighbor, can, in the inspiring thought of Christ, give us hints of the divine perfection. " Human character," let me quote Phillips Brooks again, " is a lens through which God shines." In the best men and women, even as in the life of Christ Himself, we see the Divine Lineaments and thus our hearts are reassured. " Blessed are the pure in heart," said Jesus, " for they shall see God."

IV The Liberty Of The Inner Life

— where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. — II Cor. hi, 17.

Liberty is an iridescent bubble always floating before the eyes of men. Who of us does not at times sigh for complete independence, freedom from all outward restraint, whether it be the laws of the state or the customs of the community! We want to live our own lives, following out our own bent, granting unto others, it may be added, an equal privilege, doing as we wish from day to day, undertaking only those tasks that especially appeal to us, turning at will from work to play, free, happy, self-contained. That has seemed to many a thoughtless youth, to many a weary man, the enviable life. Its realization is one of the incentives to make money. Wealth alone seems to make possible this life of leisure and independence and happiness.

Well, there is nothing new in this vision. It is not a modern conception of life. It is as ancient as human society, it is as natural as the desire for food or the love of companionship.

In the Republic of Plato we have a brilliant picture of this conception of liberty. He is describing the son of a rich man for his youthful friend Glaucon. " So he lives through the day, indulging the appetite of the hour ; and sometimes he is lapped in drink and the strains of the flute ; then he is for total abstinence and tries to get thin : then, again, he is at gymnastics : sometimes idling and neglecting everything : then once more living the life of a philosopher ; often he is at politics, and starts to his feet and says and does anything that may turn up : and if he is emulous of any one who is a warrior off he is in that direction, or of men of business, once more in that. His life has neither law nor order : and this is the way of him — this he terms joy and freedom and happiness. " Then Glaucon replies " Admirably have you described the life of a man of freedom."