Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel Part 11

His joy is not that he has got his crown, But that the power to win the crown is his."

Another important item in the attainment of self-culture is the

ECONOMY OF TIME.

Time is a divine inheritance that no man has a right to squander. The antediluvians might have afforded to be a little profligate in this direction, but the man who would fulfill his high destiny in this age has no time to lose. Lost time is forever lost. There is much useless complaint in the world of a want of time. It is not more time we need, so much as a better use of that we have. I do not mean that we should deprive ourselves of requisite sleep and rest. On the contrary, the regulation of these const.i.tutes a part of the economy of which I speak.

Rest is necessary; but all rest is not idleness. We should learn to rest by changing our employment, not by its abandonment. The man whose mind becomes weary in his study, finds the most invigorating rest in manual labor. The physical and intellectual have a happy reflective influence on each other. The moments wisely taken for intellectual and moral culture by the laboring man are fountains whose refreshing stream, like that from h.o.r.eb, follows him through his daily toil. They are a ceaseless pleasure, both in remembrance and antic.i.p.ation. Those, also whose lives are disconnected with manual labor should have such a variety of work that one kind prepares the way for the enjoyment of another. There are both pleasure and health in a change of diet. To happily manage this variety requires a training of the mind essential to self-culture. We must learn to do the right thing at the right time.

The happy influence of one thing upon another depends on their arrangement and the manner of their execution. It may not be well to have too many irons in the fire, but it is certainly best to have enough for some to be heating while others are cooling.

In order to do the right thing at the right time, and do it well, we must learn to think about the right thing at the right time. This is one of the most important features in mental training. We can think well on but one thing at a time. Therefore, the mind that is filled with various kinds of thoughts can prosecute none of them successfully.

We must learn to select the guests that we would have sit at our intellectual banquets, summon or exclude them at will, and never permit the intrusion of a promiscuous crowd. When our work is arranged for the day, the week, the month, the year, we should set apart the time to be devoted to each item, both in work and in thought; and then never allow the thoughts of one to encroach upon the time allotted to another. We should so train the mind that we can think about the thing only of which we wish to think, concentrate our whole mind upon it till the time comes to put it away; then dismiss it in a moment, turn to something else, and think no more about it, till its proper time. The mind is soon trained to pa.s.s from one subject to another in a moment, with all its powers of concentration. This mastery of the mind, once attained, will enable us to study at all times and places regardless of circ.u.mstances. The man who can not study amid the wild shouts of the excited mult.i.tude is not his own master. He who can command his time and his talents only when no surging billows beat against his quiet retreat, has necessarily to spend much of life in which he has neither time nor talents which he can call his own. A very important item, then, in the economy of time, is to learn to labor under difficulties, till we rise superior to external surroundings. To keep the reins of the mind well in hand when there is a stampede all around us, is absolutely essential in the great crises of life. This is attained only by training the mind to instantaneous concentration under all circ.u.mstances. This, then, I would urge you to persist in until it is accomplished. Without this you will lose much time in acquiring information, and, what is of vastly more importance, you will be unprepared to use what you have at the very time, it may be, when it is most needed.

Another important element in the economy of time we learn from the great Teacher who said, "Gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost." If He who had the power to create as well as to preserve, was such an economist of the remnants of loaves and fishes, how much more should we save the fragments of time, which we can not lengthen out a span?

Many people seem to think they can make garments only out of whole cloth. If they have not an abundance of uninterrupted time in which to accomplish a thing, they think they can not accomplish it at all. Such men accomplish but little, not for want of time, but for want of its economy. To avoid this waste, we must learn to weave whole garments out of the mere ravelings of the fabric of time. But some complain that they can not "get up steam" for intellectual labor in these fractions of time. We don't need to "get up steam." The "steam" should be already up. We only need to change the gearing. "There is a momentum in the active man," says Mathews, "which of itself almost carries him to the mark, just as a very light stroke will keep a hoop going, when a smart one was required to set it in motion. While others are yawning and stretching themselves to overcome the _vis inertiae_, he has his eyes wide open, his faculties keyed up for action, and is thoroughly alive in every fiber. He walks through the world with his hands unm.u.f.fled and ready by his side, and so can sometimes do more by a single touch in pa.s.sing than a vacant man is likely to do by strenuous effort."

Let no one conclude that nothing important can be accomplished by these scattered fragments. It is said that "Hugh Miller found time while pursuing his trade as a stone-mason, not only to read but to write, cultivating his style till he became one of the most facile and brilliant authors of the day." Also, that Elihu Burritt "acquired a mastery of eighteen languages and twenty-two dialects, not by rare genius, which he disclaimed, but by improving the bits and fragments of time which he could steal from his occupation as a blacksmith."

With these examples before us, then, let no one conclude that he can not get time from his daily vocation, whatever it may be, to cultivate his mind, and develop his moral and intellectual faculties. Another essential element in self-culture is

SINGLENESS OF PURPOSE.

"A man," says Emerson, "is like a bit of Labrador spar, which has no l.u.s.tre as you turn it in your hand until you come to a particular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful colors." There is no adaptation or universal applicability in man; but each has his special talent; and the mastery of successful men consists in adroitly keeping themselves where and when that turn shall need oftenest to be practiced. The successful man in every calling, whether literary, scientific or business, is he who is _totus in illo_--who can say with Paul, this one thing I do! With the exception of a few great creative minds, the men whose names are historic are identified with some one achievement, upon which all their life force is spent. "Whatever I have tried to do in my life," says d.i.c.kens, "I have tried with all my heart to do well. What I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely. Never to put one hand to a thing on which I would not throw my whole self, and never to affect depreciation of my work, whatever it was, I find now to have been golden rules." The fact is, the range of human knowledge has become so extensive that the man who would know some things well must have the courage to be ignorant of many others. There are many things for which one is wholly incapacitated; for which he has no talent, and, as a rule, time spent in this direction is time lost. Goethe justly says: "We should guard against a talent which we can not hope to practice in perfection. Improve it as we may, we shall always, in the end, when the merit of the master has become apparent to us, painfully lament the loss of time and strength devoted to such botching." Sidney Smith condemns what he calls the "foppery of _universality_--of knowing all sciences and excelling in all arts." "Now _my_ advice," he says, "on the contrary, is to have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything."

I do not mean that you should try to learn but one thing, or be a man or woman of one idea; far from it. I simply mean that you must be select. Select your calling, and then bend all your energies in that direction. Let those branches of knowledge that bear most directly on your vocation be mastered first, then widen the circle as opportunity affords. Do not scatter your powers over so much territory that they are felt nowhere. It is only when the sun's rays are brought to a focus that they burn. The man who is one thing this year, another next; studies medicine a while, then law, is next a school-teacher, and then an insurance agent, will, in the end, be nothing. Men who are always changing, never learn enough about anything to make it of any value.

Men who are eminent in their professions have stuck to them with a singleness of purpose. Men talk much about genius, when, generally, the genius of which they speak is but the result of unremitting application. The genius that blesses this world is simply a talent for hard work. They are men who have the resolution to try, and the courage to persevere. Idle men of the most eminent natural ability are soon distanced in the race by the mediocre who sticks to his purpose and plods. Then, I repeat, if you would succeed in life, in whatever calling you may select, divest yourself of the idea that you are a genius and do not need the application demanded by common mortality; rely not on the caprices of fickle fortune; but rely on G.o.d and yourself, economize your time, apply yourself with diligence and with singleness of purpose. With these you will be a blessing to the world, and fulfill the high and holy purposes of G.o.d in giving you being.

Self-culture looks not simply to time, but to eternity. No man is truly cultured who is not cultured for eternity. His culture is but one-sided, and that the most inferior side. The well-rounded and perfected culture, though it may be only partial so far as the culture of this world is concerned, is the culture that prepares one to matriculate in the great university over which G.o.d presides, and sit forever in delightful appreciation at the feet of the great Teacher.

Let this, then, be the ultimatum of all your efforts.

It is for this reason that you should so highly appreciate this inst.i.tution from which you go out to-day as honored students. While the various branches of the arts and sciences that pertain to this life, have been carefully and accurately taught you, the great Science of eternal life, if I may so term it, has been, I trust, indelibly engraved on your every heart. A college whose faculty is composed exclusively of Christian men and women, and in which the systematic study of the Bible by both ladies and gentlemen is made one of its most prominent features, will ever be most highly appreciated by those who appreciate true culture, and know in what it consists. I think I appreciate a high standard of education, and I want, if possible, to give my children its advantages; but I should infinitely prefer their never going beyond the common school than to be graduated with the first honors from the most renowned colleges or universities of Europe or America, in which the authority of Jesus is not held as supreme, and the Bible honored as our only divine guide. Other things being equal, we should always honor those inst.i.tutions most that honor G.o.d's word most. For this reason, then, as well as for many others, we delight to honor this inst.i.tution from whose fostering care you this day go forth.

In conclusion, let me entreat you to be what this world now most needs--MEN and WOMEN. The world is now burdened with "gentlemen and ladies;" but it is perishing for the want of MEN and WOMEN. The world needs men and women that are true to themselves, true to each other, and true to G.o.d--men and women who know what manliness is, and what womanly virtues are; who delight in the real, and scorn the counterfeit; who have the courage to do right because it is right; who would rather stand alone on the side of truth, than with the world on the side of error; who are governed by high and holy principle, not by selfish policy. We need men and women that will create a healthier public sentiment, rather than to float on that which exists; who will frown out of countenance the fraud, dishonesty and meanness that now lifts high its head in society; who will not live in fine palaces, drive fast horses, and occupy the first pews in the sanctuary, at ten cents on the dollar. The world needs men and women who have hearts and consciences, as well as brains; who realize that they have a soul as well as a body; who live for eternity rather than for time.

G.o.d grant that you may all make such men and women. That you may not only be a blessing to the age and generation in which you live; but that your influence for the "true, the beautiful and the good," may be felt like the gentle dews of heaven upon the earth, generations after you are gathered to your fathers! May you be diligent and faithful in the cultivation of your n.o.bler powers of mind and heart till the world shall bless G.o.d that you have lived in it; then laying aside the body, in which you have fought the grand fight for righteousness and truth--a fight on which G.o.d and angels have looked with interest and delight--as you would lay aside a worn-out garment, and pa.s.sing through "the gates ajar," enter on a higher plane of culture, where you will not have to rely upon self, and struggle against adversity as here; but where you will have all the facilities of Heaven, and be forever pupils of the great Teacher!

III.--PLUS ULTRA VS. NE PLUS ULTRA.

[An Address Delivered Before Eminence College, June 10, 1881.]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF EMINENCE COLLEGE:--It has ever been a delight to me to meet with the faculty and students of Eminence College on these festive occasions. It is but natural that the hearts of those who have gone out from these cla.s.sic halls should turn on these gala days, and in feeling if not in fact, renew the fond a.s.sociations of the past.

They are oases in the desert; well-springs to the thirsty soul in the journey of life. I should, therefore, be untrue to myself, and unjust to you, were I not to confess to a pardonable pride in the privilege of addressing for the second time one of the graduating cla.s.ses of this renowned inst.i.tution. The subject on which I shall to-day address you is

"_Plus Ultra vs. Ne Plus Ultra._"

Spain is the great southwestern peninsula of Europe. It juts out between two seas as does no other country of that continent. Before the discovery of America by Columbus, the Spaniards prided themselves on the supposed fact that their country was the last point of solid land on the earth westward. Beyond them, they thought, there was nothing but a vast expanse of water--a sh.o.r.eless ocean--a mystery never to be solved. Consequently the early coins of that country, in order to give prominence to this idea, were indented with a picture of the pillars of Hercules, the two great sentries on each side of the straits of Gibraltar. Encircling these pillars on their coins was the inscription, _ne plus ultra_--nothing beyond. They imagined, therefore, that they const.i.tuted the limits of creation; that beyond them there was nothing.

Consequently, as in creation the last is the best, they gave to themselves the preeminence. In this proud idea they rested and praised the Lord. In their own estimation, therefore, they const.i.tuted the _ne plus ultra_ of G.o.d's favored people. Thus they const.i.tuted another proud monument of man's folly and ignorance, from which it is well to take warning. In course of time, however, Columbus conceived the idea of another world west of Spain. After long years of discouragement, sufficient to crush the spirit of all but those of n.o.ble impulses and high resolves, he was permitted, with a small fleet, utterly insignificant in this age, to sail westward. He thus discovered the _new world_ whose existence, if ever known before, had faded from the memory of man. On his return, when the Spaniards became convinced that a great continent lay to the west of them, they were compelled, humiliating as it was, to change the inscription on their coins, encircling the pillars of Hercules, to _plus ultra_--more beyond. This the demonstrated truth demanded. Thus the discovery of America took the _ne_ off of their proud motto, thus teaching them a lesson which should be a lesson to the world. Their negation was changed to an affirmation.

Their boasted limit of creation was changed to an acknowledgment of the unknown beyond. Thus it has ever been in man's proud history. Thus it will doubtless continue to be till we know as we are known. "Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away; for now we know only in part, but then shall we know even also as we are known."

The first thought with which I would impress your minds to-day, especially the minds of those who go out from this inst.i.tution with the honors of graduation, is that there is something beyond--the _plus ultra_ of a collegiate education. One of the most fatal mistakes in securing a collegiate education is, that this is all. If one of you entertains the idea to-day that your education is "finished," you will be a failure. We hear much in this age about a "finished education" in college. Alas! there is too much truth in it. The education of many is thus "finished," and their progress in life is also _finished_. A college course is not the end, but simply the means, of an education.

This is simply the foundation, not the structure. On this you are to hereafter build; otherwise the foundation will be worthless. Without the after building the foundation itself will decay. This is alike the teaching of the history of man and the Son of G.o.d. On this foundation, therefore, I would urge you to build, not for time only, but for eternity. On it you should erect a n.o.ble structure, at once an ornament and a blessing to your race. This can not be done in a day. Patience and perseverance are the price of success. You must learn to "labor and to wait."

How often do we see the scintillations of genius within college walls, of which we see or hear nothing after the day of graduation? On that day the sun of their brilliancy seems to set forever. Why is this?

Simply because they think their graduation is the _ne plus ultra_ of their literary life.

It is not what we learn in college, but what we learn after leaving it, that makes us what we are in after life. The value of a collegiate education consists not in the amount of information it imparts, but in a preparation for the acc.u.mulation and use of information. Not simply the best minds, but the best students are those who win the prize in the end. Not the best students in college, but the best students after leaving it, are those who make the world feel their power. Many study hard for the honors of graduation, and beyond this seem to have no aspirations. If this is their _ne plus ultra_, then it is worthless.

This inst.i.tution does not educate you for graduation; it graduates you for education. Without this end in view, its labors would better cease.

An inst.i.tution is honored not by what its students know on the day of commencement, but by what they know and do ere they matriculate in the great university of worlds. It is, therefore, young ladies and gentlemen, to this end and not to this hour, that your teachers have faithfully labored to bring you. Without this in view, you will miss the grand purpose of your education thus far.

Doubtless many of us know men and women who have not grown an inch since the day that they went out from these or other halls of learning.

They may have promised much at the beginning. On their success high hopes were built. Loving hands were impatient to wreathe their brows with the garlands of victory. But, alas! those hopes have been blighted and those garlands have withered. We see them in the pulpit, at the bar, and in all the other vocations of life. They are failures, not for want of mind, but for want of application. They have not followed up their victories, and their victories have turned to defeat. They have been resting on the honor of faded laurels, that in their freshness so become you to-day. To gather these was the _ne plus ultra_ of their efforts, and hence the end of their success. Therefore, if any of you to-day look upon your graduation as the consummation of your literary struggles, let me exhort you to change your motto, and, like the Spaniards, on the birth of the new world, discard the idea of a possessed _ultimatum_, and imprint upon your banner _plus ultra_--more beyond.

As most of the graduating cla.s.s are ladies, I feel the necessity of speaking especially of their hopes and prospects. Till recently, the hindrances of woman's education and literary position have been great and discouraging. But, thanks to the religion of Jesus, her disabilities have in Christian lands been removed. Woman was the crowning workmanship of G.o.d, and she has received the crowning blessings of Christianity. By the blessing of Christianity, the intellectual and spiritual powers of woman are encouraged. The world is often dazzled by her genius, astonished at her resources, and subdued by her spirit. She has stood in the halls of learning, walked in the groves of science, and gathered laurels on the mountains of fame. She has stimulated the world's genius, soothed its pa.s.sion, and strewed her pathway through it with the sweetest flowers. Women have ever been the world's brightest angels of mercy--

"Whose company has harmonized mankind, Soften'd the rude and calmed the boisterous mind."

There are positions in the world for which woman was not made. The finishing touches of creation's wondrous works were too delicate to fit her for the political arena, the command of armies, or the founding of empires. She was made for higher and holier ends than these. She is adapted to a work more n.o.ble and more enduring. Her empire is in the heart, and her scepter one of spiritual dominion. Here she is a queen, and reigns without a rival. While there is a limit to her appropriate field of action, there is no limit to her power. Some one has said: "The current of female existence runs more within the embankments of home." This is true, but her influence overflows those banks and inundates the world. Her influence may be compared to the sparkling rivulet that bursts from the mountain peak, then winding its way to the valley below, it flows gently onward for thousands of miles, through rugged hills and fertile plains, bathing the feet of great cities and slaking the thirst of great countries, augmented by its tributaries, till, bearing upon its bosom the commerce of a nation, it pours its flood of waters into the world's great ocean. As our grand Mississippi will readily yield to an infant's touch, and yet bear upon its bosom the proudest vessels of man's invention, so is the tenderness and the power of woman's influence.

I have spoken of woman being the "last of creation." This expression is generally used in a false sense. She was last because G.o.d created on an ascending scale. She was, therefore, last in creation and first in redemption. She gave to the world its Saviour, and first proclaimed His birth from the dead. She was His best friend while He was here, and has been most devoted to His cause during His absence. Hence where Christianity goes woman's power is felt. The extent to which woman is honored marks to-day with unerring certainty the extent of a nation's civilization.

Young ladies, you have before you a field of golden opportunities. Only thrust in your sickles and reap. In this age and country there are great potentialities to every young lady of a good mind and a pure heart. Let no one, therefore, be discouraged. Remember that there is something beyond--the _plus ultra_ of a well-begun life.

Having urged the necessity of _plus ultra_ as your motto, as against _ne plus ultra_, I may drop some profitable hints as to the attainment of success. You know that one may give good advice, though he may not have profited by it himself.

In the first place, everything depends on work. Intense application is the price of success. The world's benefactors are the world's hard workers. "Tickle the earth with a hoe, and it will laugh at you with a harvest." But it closes its fists against those who extend to it an idle hand. Many people contend that the world owes them a living, and grumble that it does not pay the debt. What have they done for the world to bring it into their debt? The world owes every man a living when he earns it by honest toil, and not before. Those who sow with a stingy hand may expect to reap a scanty harvest. You should, therefore, in whatever vocation you may elect, strive to succeed on this principle; otherwise you will not deserve success.

You should not be discouraged because surroundings are not favorable, and hope seems long deferred. Be not impatient of results. Do your whole duty, and leave the consequences with the Lord. Never strive to be great. Few men become great this way, and they never deserve it.

True greatness comes as a result of devotion to principle and duty. The highest and n.o.blest success comes through a spirit of self-forgetfulness.

Learn to be indifferent to surroundings. You need not catch the "spirit of the age" unless the "spirit of the age" is worth catching. When you contemplate Marquis de Condorcet, in the dark days of the French Revolution, hiding in a lonely room in the city of Paris, while its streets ran red with n.o.ble and innocent blood, quietly writing a book whose subject was, "_Man's Certain Progress to Liberty, Virtue, and Happiness_," you will understand what I mean.

You must learn to _think_; to think regardless of surroundings; to think only of the thing of which you wish to think; and on this to concentrate the whole power of your mind. This requires careful training; but this only is _education_. With this you have full command of all your resources; without this they avail but little. The great motive power of the world is thought. Information without thought is simply a peddler burdened with stale wares on a dead market. It is not what one knows, but what he can produce, that makes the world feel his power. Hence one must be a producer as well as a receiver. The world's thought must be regenerated in his own mind. He should turn the world's dead facts into living thoughts--"Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn."

Avoid fickleness of purpose. Decide to do something in harmony with your endowments and the will of G.o.d, _and do it_. Many people of fine attainments and intellectual powers are spending their lives trying to decide for what purpose the Lord made them. Before they determine what they are good for, the world is certain to decide that they are good for nothing. Life is too precious to be spent in hesitation. He who vacillates will do nothing. Concentration is power. The rays of the sun that would hardly warm an infant's hand will, when concentrated by a lens, blister the palms of the hardiest sons of toil.

If we would make life a success, we must live for a purpose. He who lives simply for the sake of living, has no just conception of life.

Those who live for the gratification of the flesh should remember that the goat lives for the same purpose. How humiliating the thought, that so many of the cultured, as well as the ignorant; the rich as well as the poor; the "cream of society" as well as its dregs, are thus living on the low plane of animal life! The grand distinction between man and the brute creation is in his _spirit_ nature. Without spiritual culture, every thought, every aspiration, every gratification, is of the earth earthy. How sad, then, to see the gaudy "b.u.t.terflies of society" spending their lives without a thought above that which alone can lift them forever above the plane of animal life! It is sad thus to think, but sadder still 'tis true. The enjoyment of "society,"

therefore, must not be your _ne plus ultra_, else life will be a failure.

In order to the highest success, you should live fast, but not in the world's bad sense of that word. I simply mean that your life should be intense. Mere existence is not life. Life is action. Life is not measured by time, but by experience. It is our duty, therefore, to live all we can in the time allotted us. The patriarchs lived longer than we, but we may live more than they. This is a grand age in which we live. We may now live more in fifty years than Methuselah did before the flood. The time is short. Hence if we would live much we must live fast.

But here I antic.i.p.ate an objection. You say, "We shall shorten our days by fast living." Not by _this kind_ of fast living. The world will never be troubled for burying ground for those who kill themselves simply by hard work. It is not work, but worry, that wears men out. We have too much friction in our lives. This must be stopped. An hour's pa.s.sion will tell more on the const.i.tution than a week's work. The largest amount of action, with the smallest amount of friction, is the problem before you; and he is the wisest philosopher who gives to us its best practical solution.

I wish now to invite your attention to mistakes that men have made in supposing that their knowledge was the _ne plus ultra_ of human wisdom.

Time was when the alchemists thought they possessed the _ne plus ultra_ of human knowledge, and that wisdom would die with them; yet their knowledge is now to chemistry what astrology is to astronomy. It is a superst.i.tion on whose claims no scientist would dare to risk his reputation. Now chemistry is the _ne plus ultra_ of human wisdom, and every man is a fool who does not hold the key to the secret chambers of its hidden treasures! But how long till we shall have a new chemistry that will render the old a bundle of laughable folly? The fact is, by the advancement of human knowledge we demonstrate that our ancestors were a set of fools, and our posterity will doubtless pay us the same compliment! The philosophy of history should teach us to be modest, and to keep as our motto _plus ultra versus ne plus ultra_.