Part 24

One has little ground for satisfaction over a mere random success. It is real achievement that brings enduring satisfaction.

Awareness/Perspective/Thought

The best thing that can happen to the truth is that it be investigated.

The truth, however, is never reached by methods of prejudice or undue assumption. It is approached by fair and honest habits of thought. We need but to look at the facts.

One owes it to truth also to know the other side.

One must at least give others credit for having opinions. Listen to all, and accept only that which seems to bear the test of truth.

Stay with the right, though all the rest of the world disagree with you. If you find that your position was wrong, forsake it immediately.

Thinking is not always the order of the day, however, when either profit or appetite is involved.

It is a rather pitiful fact that it became necessary to have laws to do what the rational conscience had failed to do.

A certain advantage can be taken at a time when everyone is afraid of being misjudged. Like the undertaker’s bill, such things are often brought forward at a time when everyone feels that he must swallow the dose and ask no questions.

A wrong philosophy can lead a nation to its ruin within the space of a few generations. A worthy one can as promptly and definitely determine a nation’s progress and happiness.---The thinkers of a nation sow the seeds. The people sooner or later harvest the fruit.

The lack of idealism is the most expensive thing the people of any city can have on their hands.---If you want thieves, hoodlums, and libertines, create a low standard of ideals in the community, and you will get them.

Only the constructive thinker makes the great general, the great leader, or the great engineer.

It is the unnecessary that changes bare existence into throbbing and purposeful life.

We need to remember that it is the will uncompelled that tames the wilderness, that it is the hand unconstrained that reclaims the desert, and that it is the kindness born of spontaneous impulse which brings into life the uplifting and the helpful.

We do not get at the danger of any evil by comparing one evil with another. The question for a vigorous Nation in a trying time is not as to what is the harm in a thing but as to what is the good.

A thought or a feeling of aspiration, however great or strong, is not meant to be an end within itself. It is a means to the end of its actual realization in action and accomplishment.

No less important than the things which we have been given are the things from which we have been saved.

Great movements must always be fathered by self-sacrificing spirits before they are finally taken upon the hearts of the people.

There is only one way to change the past, and that is to change it before it becomes the past.

Make this day what you desire.... It must dwell in your thoughts forever as a piercing thorn or a blooming flower. Your hand is on its gate for the last time.

...we must recognize the common human tendency to glorify the past to the disadvantage of the present.---One may read something of this sort in the literature of ancient as well as modern ages. Yet the progress of the world has gone right on.

...the religious consciousness is best developed in the solitudes.

Any reform is rapid when men once get to thinking. The case is hopeless so long as apathy and lethargy prevail.

Nothing is to be gained by compromising with the mind of the flesh, which is death.

Our place as a nation is largely the result of this union of hope and thing, this combination of dream and realization, this blending of the ideal and the practical.

Man is he who thinks, and the most successful man is he who thinks most promptly and accurately.

Community/Relationship

We can never have a world that is anything more or less than it is made by the people who live in it.

One can do much more working for society than he can if he works only for himself.

Neither the school nor the Church is an orphans’ home for the purpose of taking the responsibility of raising people’s children from the shoulders of those to whom it belongs.

A righteous community, state, or nation is only a group of individuals wearing, each for himself, the clean, white garments of right living.

Each individual transgression writes itself into the world life.

Freedom needs to recognize its own proper limits, and it will do so in any properly organized social system.

A city is not made of streets, but of those who walk on them; not of stores, but of those who trade in them; not of machinery, but of those who drive it; not of houses, but of those who live in them. A city is its people. It is exactly as good or bad, as strong or weak, as desirable or undesirable, as enduring or temporary, as are they. With them it will go forward or backward, be an object of admiration or contempt, stand or fall, live or die.

The life and destiny of a nation are largely determined by what it considers great.---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.

...we must not forget that the principle of democracy does not diminish the necessity for conviction and fidelity. The disregard of obligation is not freedom.

The apostolic Church was not a temple but a community. It must be the same with the modern Church.

Only while the mind craves knowledge and the heart feels the throb of the social impulse does the eye remain undimmed and the natural force unabated.

As we once tried to have the Holy Spirit transform hearts, and still must, so too we must now endeavor to have the Holy Spirit cleanse and exalt social relationships.

Friendship, like everything else worth while, is the reward of proper effort.

The most valuable friend is the friend who is one for friendship’s sake alone.

One must live for more than self, or he never lives at all.

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.

It has always taken the prophet and the toiler together to achieve human progress in the best sense.

No one else cares to help the person who tries to help no one but himself. The world has its heroes, but they are those whose chief concern has been for their people.

Think of others sympathetically, and give them credit for everything you can.

The ties that bind us to the hearts of others are the cables that help to drag us toward the dust or to lift us in the direction of the heights.

Economics

It is better, even for nations, to have less and have it honestly, to possess less and live in a world safe for each generation and its posterity. When the hearts of men are right, our economic systems will also be right.

Greater moderation in many things would leave us a healthier and happier race, to say nothing of what it would do for our bank accounts.

Certainly, before buying a thing, one should honestly ask himself whether he needs it. He should, likewise, give himself an honest answer.

The poor we always have with us, but many of them are with us unnecessarily.---Money is made to spend, but the financially independent are those who have learned to spend it wisely.

The budget system is a desirable plan in the home of wealth; it is a helpful thing in the home of moderate circumstances; but it is a necessity in the home where takes place an occasional battle with want.

Moreover, the consumer has the last word in every argument. He holds the purse-strings, and when he is tired of talking, he can stop buying. It does not bode well when he conceives the feeling that undue difficulty attaches to trying to exist on the planet.

Education

The purpose of education is not to qualify one for getting through life on a minimum of toil.---The test of learning is service.

As knowledge becomes a matter of action, it becomes a matter of purpose, ideal, and character.

The years teach us that the only test of the correctness of any educational method is its result in terms of life.

The growing life most easily adapts itself to newly discovered fact.

One may take a vine and train it in any direction. One may take a young life and make of it what he will.

A great many parents are wondering these days why their children did not grow up to be good.

A man’s education can not be measured by what he has committed to memory, but by what he has learned by heart. Education is no more what one knows than what he is.

The testimony of opinion is uncertain. The testimony of experience is final and unanswerable. Arguments on the existence of love do not count with one who loves. The thing experienced demands no proof by logical processes.

Humanity

Humanity is the center of all creation, and the proper object of all our striving.

Humanity knows no dividing line, and whoever lays them down will simply sow the seeds of sorrow and trouble.

Despite all the cheap ways in which the world indulges, its real hunger is for genuine worth, unveneered culture, real character.

When one has made a living, he has not necessarily lived.---Earth and its physical necessities are only the stage and the setting for the drama. The play itself lies beyond them and is separate from them.

The world is ready for anything that spells deliverance, and nothing will deliver humanity save rightness of heart.

There is no place in the modern conception of government for any regime which does not strive to better the condition of the people within its scope of power. In these times, we see with increasing clearness that there is but one worthy conception of kingliness, and that it is the kingliness of service.

The emphasis of Jesus was upon the human being. He held all men in much the same esteem, for to Him a human being was inherently worthy of respect and honor.

The human soul, however, was not made to perish. It is a thing of universal interests and eternal possibilities. It is life in its highest terms, and it was life with which Jesus was essentially concerned.

It is the glad service which lifts the world a little farther in its long, hard climb.

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.

Where humanity is regnant and ascendent everything else is certain to be at its best.

Speech

Words slip back the shutters from the windows of the inner life.

The reason for a great deal of unjust and unkind comment is to be found in the proneness of man to condemn his brother most fiercely for that fault which lies most deeply imbedded in his own life.

[A helpful word] will echo where you little know, and it will speak for you when your lips of clay can speak no more.

When mind reaches its limit it often abdicates in favor of temper. Argument exhausted, the stores of abuse are open.

Speak kindly of the friend who is away from you, for unkind speech has yet to win its first victory for the speaker.

All keen observers of social and spiritual influences know that the prophet is one of the most potent factors in the building of our destiny, both as a nation and as a race.

Spiritual

God, the church, and human hearts are all things our relationship to which should hush our souls.

Let us not be victims of the idea that holiness excludes the sunshine.

The cardinal sins are less dangerous because we are more afraid of them.

Those who fail to obtain [life’s intellectual and spiritual necessities] pay the penalty by living cramped lives and usually dying with their deeper longings unsatisfied.

One cannot long conceal a lack of mind and soul with clothes and paint.---The more flash and parade the ignorant indulge in, the cheaper they look.

The deeper hunger is satisfied only with a world made beautiful with the things that were whispered only into the more sacred chambers of the heart of man—the beautiful and the unnecessary things.

The only happiness which has lasting quality comes from within. No one can be happy long who is not happy in soul.

The person who treasures an unhappy spirit sins not only against himself and his fellow men, but he also sins against the Almighty.

The person who thinks religion must be sombre has misread his Bible and misinterpreted his Master. It may be serious and earnest, but never morose and gloomy.---A despondent person is no ornament to religion. It is the joy-lighted face which inspires and wins.

The people who are really living want a religion which is more than a fashion or a convenience. It must include a working program which means something and is not too easy.

When we widen it, plant primroses in it, and take the stones out of it, we no longer have a path of salvation. Then real followers of God no longer care to walk in it.

The nature of a man can be altered or reversed.---It is the power of the will to resist or submit.

Whoever is not physically equal to an hour or two in the sanctuary is hardly a fit candidate for the world’s responsibilities.

The problems of the age are ethical and social. Fundamental to ethical and social problems are spiritual conditions. The Christian Gospel is an ethical and social message based on spiritual principles.

The divine plan looks only to the constant narrowing of the chasm between man and God.

We all know perfectly well that life is not all that it ought to be without the presence of the Personality which completes us.

The only argument against [Jesus Christ] is an unfaithful follower, and that is refuted by a follower who is true.

There is no danger that [Jesus Christ] will ever be driven out. If there is any danger for Him today, it is that He be crowded out.---But many say, “I haven’t time.”

Only one thing should lead one to dedicate his life to Christian work. It is the great compulsion. One has it when he is conscious that he cannot do anything else and be quite content.

Any great idea or interest, however spiritual in its nature, must be incarnated in an institution or it will die.---An institution must make them visual, real, and effective. Such is the reason for the existence of the church.

The mission of the church is to make itself unnecessary. It will be dispensable when all the world shall at last have conformed to the purposes of God.

Jesus introduces a man and a truth to each other and sees that they become friends.

[Jesus] will become the spiritual ruler of the hearts of men. No power can go beyond that.

There is nothing in the purpose or the kingdom of God that needs fear the light [i.e., knowledge of the truth]. What will not stand the light is not of His designing. The best that His gospel and His power can ask is to be investigated and tested.

The world has always had strange ways, however, of putting an indefinite construction upon the words of Jesus. ...the wonder of them...their beauty...their truth. They are not so many, however, who venture to take them for a life program.

We look at the earth and think of it as hiding those whom we have loved when we ought to look upward and think of them as in the keeping of another world. We look backward and think of their lives as belonging to the past when we ought to look onward and think of them as belonging to the boundless future.

Not all the places by which [Jesus’s] footprints lead may seem pleasant.---A valley of pain matters much less, however, when a mountain of achievement lifts its head beyond.

A sunset would be a tragedy did one not know that the sun will rise again. We cease to dread the twilight [of life] when we reflect that it is but the pathway to another dawn.

The path to heaven lies directly through the earth.---This is a life of opportunity, to be lived out with full appreciation and emphasis upon the sweetness and the worth-whileness of each day and hour. Real religion will strive to make it more and not less beautiful.

Truth does not always follow the processes of formal logic. The tests of faith are not to be found in the syllogism but in life’s great laboratory.

...the object of religion is humanity. For the good of men are all laws established, all warnings issued, and all promises given.

[The achieving of the present and future salvation of people] calls for the actual application of religious principles in everyday thinking and action. It has not achieved its end until testimony to its power and blessing is borne by all social life and by every social institution. It is nothing until it has come to be expressed in terms of life.

Where such a [social] force is the cause of men doing that which they should not do, we can best do the work of our Lord by fighting the force and not the act. We can not kill the dragon by cutting off the heads; we must strike at the life-giving root of the evil.

Humanity is restless.---People seem to be afraid of themselves, and hence the quiet chamber and closet of secret prayer is often unappreciated.---We forget that great visions must be seen in solitude and then carried out among the crowd. Our lonely Sinais must precede our deeds of leadership. Every Calvary is preceded by its Gethsemane, and quietness and solitude are not to be despised.---Only small minds are always tossing upon a sea of restlessness. Great lives know how to be tranquil.

He who would die in the spirit of the cross must live there.

It is pitiable how often the offer [of Jesus’s yoke] is misconstrued as an attempt to increase the burden when it really amounts to an offer to help in carrying it.

[Christianity] can afford to invite the pragmatic test, for it is supremely a workable religion. The best things never can be adequately appraised at the first glance. They must be tried.

One is as old as the spirit within him.---The date of one’s birth may be misleading, but the spirit of his soul never is.

We greatly need to understand that our meeting with [God] is not only a future but also a present event.---He is the Silent Partner in all our upward struggles. He is the Inevitable Factor with which we must reckon in all our considerations. He is the Absolute Quantity to which we must relate ourselves, and to whose standards we must conform.---We are the children of One who takes into consideration but one tense. His word is _NOW_.

Virtue

It is the fact that love is so constituted that it finds joy in bearing burdens.

Love is the sweetest and the costliest thing in the world. It is the sweetest because it is the spirit and atmosphere of heaven. It is the costliest because its arms are always aching for loads to carry.

When we fail in a righteous cause the labor has not necessarily been in vain. One can never be robbed of the best fruit of his striving, which is the added sinew of strength gained in the trying.

One of the strongest forces now making for a day of lasting peace is the beautiful suggestion that comes from the spirit of those who make it their aim to help while others destroy.

The hardy virtues that make good men are the foundation stones upon which any sound national life must be built.---[National life] is, therefore, more largely dependent upon Christian agencies than upon any other one influence.

Responsibility is a wonderful tonic.

The ideal of Jesus will remain unrealized until men have learned to accept his words at their face value, and to act upon the assumption that they are true. Faith knows no other testimony so worthy as that of obedience.

Laziness is often a harder taskmaster than industry, and sin is always a harder taskmaster than righteousness.

The habit of being real deserves a place among the chiefest of all virtues.---We can no more outgrow the necessity for truth and honor than we can outdistance that for plain living and high thinking.

The only proper standard is rightness. It is a poor thing to be in fashion if the fashion is wrong.

...the man himself must not forget that what he can do and what he will do are entirely determined by what he is.---One may stand upon artificial good behavior for an hour or a day, but he cannot do it permanently without the staying force of a fixed principle. It takes more than good resolutions to make an ethical life.