Part 21

In the second century before Christ, Antipater of Sidon wrote an epigram in which he catalogued what he considered the seven most wonderful things in the world at that time. The list included the walls of Babylon, the statue of Zeus by Phidias at Olympia, the hanging gardens at Babylon, the Colossus of Rhodes, the pyramids of Egypt, the mausoleum at Halicarnassus, and the temple of Diana at Ephesus.

Rather recently the editor of a well-known American magazine undertook to discover what is the best opinion as to the seven most wonderful things in the world today. He addressed a thousand letters to leading thinkers in various countries, asking each to record his choice among a considerable list of things.

The seven things receiving the highest number of votes were the wireless, the telephone, the aeroplane, radium, antiseptics and antitoxins, spectrum analysis, and the X-ray. The eighth wonder chosen, had the call been for that number, would have been the Panama Canal.

It will be noted that nothing in Antipater’s list expressed service to mankind. At the same time, it will be noted that everything in the modern list enumerated does signify service. This means that we are moving forward in the direction of a Christian standard of greatness.

=The True Ideal for Humanity=

It will be a blessed day for humanity when people in general come to see that the one who is servant of his times is the true ideal of greatness. Since we are hero-worshippers, and since we do take one another for our patterns, it is highly desirable that the highest type of manhood and womanhood we have shall be the examples for the rest.

The human struggle will always be in the direction of whatever is considered great. We shall always struggle to become like that which we most admire. Therefore, it is important that we shall most admire the thing that is best. Doing so, we shall become increasingly like it.

A nation made up of people who measure greatness by service will not be treading the path to national doom so long as this is true. It will be moving forward in the way of a larger and richer life. Selfishness and envy are disintegrating influences, but service in the spirit of Christ is a building force both for time and for all eternity.

The Objective of Service (1922)

The present social situation demands that we shall push forward in the direction of a twofold objective. First, we must give human life the best possible set of conditions under which to exist and develop. Second, we must do what is properly possible to assist it to develop at its best under those conditions. We must make of the physical world the best environment we can. We must then encourage people to obtain the largest benefit from that environment.

The highest values we can cultivate are the human values. It is all well enough to lay out beautiful parks, build broad streets, erect costly monuments, and rear majestic buildings. However, to do these things alone would be following a very short-sighted plan. Such a program cannot long continue unless we keep producing men who can carry it forward. Furthermore, its results would be of no value to the future without a vigorous and hardy race to enjoy them when the future arrives.

If we develop the highest type of human beings we shall not be lacking any good thing when the to-morrows come. After all, the human problems are about the only ones we have. Give us worthy people, and everything else will take care of itself. Where wealth accumulates and men decay the country decays with them. Where humanity is regnant and ascendent everything else is certain to be at its best. The world goes upward or downward, forward or backward with its people. All that enters into our physical environment must first be conceived in the mind and wrought by the hand of man. Humanity is, therefore, the most important object to which our interest and service can be dedicated. It represents both the divine problem and the human task. Only by discharging our full duty to it can we realize the dream of a new heaven and a new earth. The strength, and worth, and happiness of human beings are the things for which we should all be living, both for the sake of others and that of ourselves.

Our Blessings of Deliverance (1922)

When Thanksgiving Day comes ’round, it always reminds us how numberless are our blessings. This is true even of the visible blessings which could be listed on paper, if there were a volume large enough to hold them. It is also true of a great body of invisible blessings. We might call them our blessings of deliverance. No less important than the things which we have been given are the things from which we have been saved. What the extent of that group of blessings is we can never know.

We are here because God did not see fit to call us away this year. Our homes still shelter us because He has not decided to foreclose the mortgage He held upon them before we were born. We still receive our livings because He has not seen fit to discontinue honoring the old petition, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Our loved ones are still about us because He has not seen fit to sunder any of the bands that hold them to earth.

What sad misfortunes might have come to us, and did not! What pitiful events might have occurred, and did not! What dark storm clouds might have arisen, when the skies remained clear! Every absence of trouble is a mercy of God.

Our fathers used to have a phrase in their prayers that expressed this idea. They used to say: “Lord, we thank Thee that it is as well with us as it is.” That old prayer, so often on their lips, is worth repeating each time we come to the Throne of Mercy and Grace. How much worse things might have been than they are! God has blessed us with incalculable good. He has also preserved us from incalculable evil. Let us not forget to praise him for the storms that did not break, the tears that did not fall, the problems that did not arise, the disappointments we did not suffer, the heartaches we did not feel, the blossoms that did not wither, the hopes that were not shattered, and the graves that were not made.

The Redemption of Jean Valjean (1922)

Among all the characters of fiction, Victor Hugo’s Jean Valjean stands out in a light of special distinction. The author intended him to indicate the limiting influence of social law and custom. However, he accomplishes a much better thing than that. He furnishes us a master picture of the upward struggle of a soul despite the influences acting within and without to keep it down. In certain broad and general features, the redemption of Jean Valjean is a picture of the redemption of any person in any place or time.

The opening chapters of the story of _Les Miserables_ reveal a man with sullen features, suspicious eyes, and unkempt appearance, entering the town of D. at evening time. He has just escaped from nineteen years in the galleys. His crime was a serious one. He thrust his hand through a baker’s window, and stole a loaf of bread to feed the hungry children of his poor sister. Nineteen years at the oars have been the expiation of this and his various efforts to escape. He is now a fugitive, forever branded a criminal by society. The law pursues him. Every man’s hand is against him.

Turned with suspicion from every other place of entertainment, he is finally received in the home of an aged priest—the first stranger who has ever trusted him. He yields to his criminal propensity, cultivated by his years in the galleys, and steals away in the night with the bishop’s silver.

On the way, he meets a little savoyard, and robs him of his scanty store of money. The helplessness of the child touches him. Remorse lays hold of him. He sits down upon a stone and weeps. Restoring the bishop’s silver, he kneels in prayer at the gate. In a word, Jean Valjean has found himself. He has taken the first step on the road to better things by seeing himself as he is. An angel has held a mirror before his face, and in it he has beheld himself aright.

There is no getting further on the pathway to the higher life until one has first realized his own situation. So long as he pities himself and occupies his mind with finding excuses for his own shortcomings, there is little hope for him. When he sees himself a sinner, the heavenward gates suddenly swing open. The picture of Jean Valjean seated on a stone, weeping bitter tears over his sins, is nothing but a powerful sermon on the old-time doctrine which taught the necessity of conviction as a step on the road to conversion. Jean Valjean stood convicted in the court of God. That made him a candidate for divine mercy. The mercy was not withheld. It is so with us all. There is too little real conviction of sin in these days. We need the mirror held before us.

Jean Valjean had shared in the experience of Isaiah many centuries before. When an invisible hand swept aside the curtains that hid the divine glory from human gaze, Isaiah saw the Lord sitting in his glory in the temple. Its effect was normal. It forced upon the man a sense of the distressing contrast between himself and what he saw. Consequently, he cried out that he was undone because of his uncleanness. Before the scene was over, he received the dross-destroying touch which made him fit to be a servant of his Lord. The redemption of Isaiah, too, began with a sense of his own sinfulness.

The years pass, and Jean Valjean reappears upon the surface of social life. He has begun life anew in the town of M. sur M. under another name. He is now Father Madeleine, the head of a large manufacturing establishment, the mayor of his city, and known among his people as a gentle-hearted and saintly character.

He is in his room at night, pacing back and forth. His step is nervous, his face is feverish, his breast is heaving. There is every indication that he is fighting a great battle. Hugo calls this scene, “The Tempest in a Skull.”

An old man has been taken in the streets. Under suspicion of being the long-lost criminal, Jean Valjean, he is under arrest and about to be committed to the galleys. The question which confronts the prosperous and honored mayor of M. sur M. is evident. For him, the conflict is between the choice of wealth, ease, and honor and that of confession, disgrace, and the prison. He must decide whether he himself will answer to the charge society has against him, or whether he will avail himself of the opportunity to let an innocent man suffer in his place.

As the hours pass, the question is settled as an honorable man must necessarily settle it. The tempest subsides. He seeks the courtroom, makes himself known, and sees the old man set at liberty. He has accomplished the next great step in his redemption by conquering himself.

This is one of the severest tests to which any man is ever put. It is also one which many fail to meet. It is easier to overcome others than to conquer oneself. Noah proved the hero of the flood, then failed to be sufficiently master of himself to keep sober when he had planted a vineyard. Men sometimes lead conquering armies and then fall victims to their own weaknesses and passions. Yet there is no truer greatness than that which comes from self-mastery. The ruler of his own spirit is greater than the conqueror of a city. The mastery of self may be costly. It was in the case of Jean Valjean. However, it is a necessary step on the upward road.

In the next significant scene, we see Jean Valjean, once more at liberty, slipping along a street of Paris holding the hand of a little girl. He has taken under his protection the orphan child of an unfortunate woman who worked in his factory at M. sur M. It has been many years since he has had any one upon whom to lavish his affection. The child receives all the love so long unreleased from his soul. He serves her as a real parent would do, as her mother would do had not grim circumstances robbed her of her life. She shares in his vicissitudes and dangers, but he sees her safely through to a beautiful womanhood.

As Father Madeline, mayor of M. sur M., Jean Valjean was a notably good man. Now he becomes a saint. There is no quality of tender-heartedness and no spirit of self-sacrifice which he does not possess. He has attained to the glory of a beautiful old age, an old age made beautiful by the presence within of a noble soul. On the last lap of the journey, he has been led by a little child. If the influence of a child will not call out the tenderness planted in the human constitution, then nothing will. Jean Valjean yields to its influence. He accomplishes the third stage in his redemption when he gives himself away.

The human heart must have something to love and something to which to cling. It is never at its best until it does. Much of the divinity planted in these hardened lives of ours is imprisoned until it finds some object of affection to draw it out. The lily of life never comes to the fullness of its bloom until the heart has found someone to love, to toil for, to sacrifice for. Silas Marner found that influence in little Eppie, who came to take the place of his paltry and failing gold. Jean Valjean found it in Cosette.

The human tendency is to make self the centre of the universe. It is plain that one can never arrive at his best until he recovers from this tendency. To have the stars and planets revolve about oneself means a small, narrow, constricted, and embittered life. The end is failure and disappointment. One must live for more than self, or he never lives at all.

Eulogy for Joseph E. Henley [excerpt] (1924)

I hope I do not err in my analysis of him when I say that it seems to me that the great immediate contribution to the community and the world made by Mr. Henley was that of kindliness. I do not know how carefully he had weighed and compared human values, but it does seem quite clear that in this he brought as his gift the one thing the world needs most and has least. We have beautiful temples, stately liturgies, comprehensive creeds, pretentious programs, strong organizations—but we have none too much of simple human kindness. Perhaps he saw that and resolved to leave the world a little richer in gentleness. If so, he has succeeded in his purpose.

The Corner Stones of Life (1925) Ephesians 2:20–22

In _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_, Ruskin has likened the principles of that art to those of life. Longfellow declares that, “All are architects of fate, working in these walls of time.” Paul speaks of us as God’s building. This is a proper and significant figure. A great architect has named the four corner stones of a rightly constructed building. They are also the four corner stones of a rightly constructed life.

I. The first is careful planning. Back of the actual building is always the blue print, carefully and laboriously made. Back of the blue print is the dream that has allowed a place for every part of the structure. Back of the dream is a soul that knows beauty and proportion. A life may be less beautiful than planned, for some plans fail, but it will never be more so.

II. The second is careful construction. What will it cost? What aid shall be employed? What methods of building shall be followed? Much slipshod work may be done and successfully covered up, but it detracts just that much from the value of the finished product. Our fathers knew how to build. Houses they reared still stand while more modern ones have fallen. May it not be said that our fathers also knew better than we do how to build lives?

III. The third is good materials. Here is where deception is especially easy. Poor materials can be worked in, [but] they cannot be made to stand the test of time. Any product that has in it only the very best of materials suggests just one thing—character. It is the same with a life. Incidentally, may it not be assumed that one will live in direct proportion to the endurance of the materials of which he builds his life?

IV. The fourth corner stone is correct decoration. These are things that could be left off, but the omission of which would leave the product less beautiful and worthy. One is culture. One is knowledge. One is religious consecration and ideals. One might exist without them, but life could never mean so much.

Eulogy for Sanford F. Teter [excerpt] (1928)

...when Sanford Teter was suddenly stricken with what seemed to be impending death, he went under the anaesthetic for the intricate and serious surgical operation which so marvelously prolonged his life....

He recovered sufficiently for twelve additional years of courageous and victorious living. Surely those twelve years had their providential purpose. They were years which constituted an additional period of service for him. They were years in which he made himself a benediction to his friends.

But those twelve years constituted his fiercest and most fiery trial. A brave man is not afraid to die. There are many who can go down into the edge of the valley, not knowing whether they shall ever return, and yet not flinch nor falter. But, though the facing of what may be imminent death requires great courage, it requires greater courage on the part of a strong man to sit by the window for twelve years watching the rest of the world go by without being able to join in its activity. He longed with all the power of an intense spirit to be at work, to be moving among his friends, to be sharing in the life of a world of enterprise and endeavor. Not to be able to do so was a real trial by fire for him, but he came out unscathed by its flame. Life exacted a heavy price from him, but he paid it with a smile. There is no bitterness on this quiet face that lies before us, because there was no bitterness in his heart. He passed through the fire, but he did not let it burn away his courage....

Is Prohibition Paternalistic? (1919)

The history of temperance reform is largely a story of vilification. Those who have championed it have been steadily accused by the promoters of the liquor industry. They have resorted to these things for the want of better arguments. When mind reaches its limit it often abdicates in favor of temper. Argument exhausted, the stores of abuse are open. The liquor interests have drawn an utterly impossible picture of the temperance reformer, and have tried to create in the public mind a complete misconception of his purpose and motive.

The reform agitator may not always have fully appreciated the viewpoint of the man on the other side of the question. It is certain that the latter has seldom given much evidence of appreciating the position of the agitator. Whether or not it has been intentional, most of the protests coming from the liquor interests have originated in a misunderstanding of the attitude of the people who are striving for a sober land.

This misunderstanding was unnecessary. It would also have been impossible had really earnest and sincere thought been given the question. Thinking is not always the order of the day, however, when either profit or appetite is involved. There are still many people to whom life simply means blind following of the crowd and meek obedience to the dictates of superficial opinion. Comparatively few are accustomed to apply the keen edge of reason to each proposition. Had more defenders of the saloon cultivated this habit, the liquor problem would have perished of anaemia.

One of the cries raised in the rather recent past was that no sumptuary legislation should be permitted. Political parties were in the habit of writing into their platforms from year to year the statement that they were opposed to all such enactment. This declaration seldom failed to garner a harvest of votes from the self-styled liberal element.

It was cheap and easy to make such a declaration, but it would not have been so easy to bolster it up with any reasonable defence. In the light of deeper thought, such a position appears not only unreasonable and ridiculous, but vicious and perilous as well.

Were one to search the criminal code from the beginning to the end he could find no law which does not partake of the sumptuary nature. In one way or another, each provision sets a limit for human liberty. Each tells the citizen of a thing which he may not do and remain safe from the hand of the law. It does not do so because society wants to prescribe the rules of private conduct to be followed by any individual member. It does so because it must protect its peaceful members against the trespasses of those who do not regard the rights of others.

The law against burglary, for instance, is really a sumptuary measure. It limits liberty at the point of taking the property of other people. No one complains of the injustice of such a law. The menace of burglary, however, does not compare with the menace which the saloon system has been.

The law which prevents one man from selling and another from buying powerful narcotic and poisonous drugs is also a sumptuary provision. It limits human liberty at the point of eating and drinking. Seldom does any one complain about it. No other poison, however, has occupied so prominent a place and wrought such widespread havoc as has alcohol.

The saloonkeeper has harmed society more than has the burglar. He should therefore suffer at least an equal degree of restraint. Liquor has worked more damage than has any other article of common sale. There is, therefore, no reason why its manufacture and sale should not be affected by at least the same safeguards as those surrounding the manufacture and distribution of other dangerous drugs.

A kindred complaint from the liquor champions has been that the government shows increasing signs of the spirit of paternalism. The contention is that the prohibition reformer represents a meddlesome class who want to control the lives of others. As is the case with the first claim mentioned, this proposition needs but a second look. No proper government and no thoughtful citizen desires the mere power to control the conduct of other people. Especially have we tried to foster the spirit of freedom in America. No one who loves his country wants unduly to destroy or interfere with the liberty for which the nation stands.