Living for the Best Part 2

But with his forced departure into Egypt, probably into the city of Memphis, all his surroundings are new and untried. The shepherd boy is given the duties of a household servant, exchanging the freedom of the field for the confinement of the palace. But he takes up his new duties, magnifying them as an opportunity of development, and he makes the best use of them. Later, he who has known only a tent and a palace is in a prison, and is charged with the work of a prison guard. Right well he does that work, studying it, giving himself to it, and making a success of it by his heartiness and fidelity. Later still, he who has only tended sheep and ordered a household and enforced discipline is called to be a comforter to souls. He summons his sympathy, he persuasively approaches those whose hearts are sore, he obtains their confidence, and relieves their anxiety. Still again, this prisoner, this shepherd boy, this household servant, this man with pity in his eyes, is called to a new adaptation. He must appear before a Pharaoh and as a courtier have interview with him! That underlying purpose of his heart, always to make the best of the hour and place, stands him in good stead, and the courtier conducts himself so wisely that he is advanced to be an Egyptian viceroy. Later still this viceroy must become a minister of agriculture and charge a nation when and how to sow the fields. Still later he must become a secretary of the treasury, purchasing grain and building store-houses. Still later he must be a great premier, both providing for present need and making arrangements for future taxation.

Later he must be a brother with a true brother's heart and a son with a son's gentleness toward an aged and perhaps imperious parent. Later he must be a mourner, then a traveler, and then as an orphan son he must a.s.sume again the heavy burdens of statesmanship.

What strange varieties of experience Joseph thus met! How those experiences kept changing every little while! Why did he succeed so well in them? Because in every one of them he made the best use of himself that the occasion allowed. He magnified the opportunity he had. The thing that was at hand to do he did with absolute fidelity.

We do not forget and we must not forget that at the very bottom of his life was a _belief in G.o.d_ and an intention to do what G.o.d sanctioned and only what G.o.d sanctioned. He would not disobey what he believed to be a wish of G.o.d! Somehow, in that far-away country, surrounded by temples and idols, meeting the thousands of priests of Isis, hearing the daily services of heathenism, and seeing the unceasing vices of the land, he kept G.o.d and G.o.d's principles in his soul. Those principles in general taught him purity and honesty; in particular they taught him _fidelity_ in the service of others and _desire to benefit_ his fellow-men. Such fidelity and helpfulness--united with dependence on the aid of G.o.d--enabled him always and everywhere to make the best use of his life. He trusted G.o.d when doors were shut as well as when they were open. Privation as truly as prosperity was to him an opportunity.

Accordingly, _heartiness_ went into his opportunities. The spirit of grumbling never appeared in his career. No hour came too suddenly for him, no task was too small nor too great, no occasion too low nor too high, no a.s.sociation too mean nor too n.o.ble. As a household servant he did his work as under G.o.d and for G.o.d, and as a ruler of a nation he did it as under G.o.d and for G.o.d, and as an obedient son he did it as under G.o.d and for G.o.d.

A physician whose life has been beautiful in good deeds and in a high faith once said, "My happiness and usefulness in the world are due to a chance question from a stranger. I was a poor boy and a cripple. One day, standing on a ball-field and watching other boys who were strong, well clothed, and healthy, I felt bitter and envious. The friends of the players were waiting to applaud them. I never could play nor have applause! I was sick at heart.

"A young man beside me must have seen the discontent on my face. He touched my arm, and said, 'You wish you were one of those boys, do you?'

'Yes, I do,' I answered quickly. 'They have everything and I have nothing.'

"Quietly he said, 'G.o.d has given them money, education, and health that they may be of some account in the world. Did it never strike you that he gave you your lameness for the same reason, to make a splendid man of you?'

"I did not answer, but I never forgot the words. 'My lameness given me by G.o.d to teach me patience and strength!'

"At first I did not believe the words, but I was a thoughtful boy, taught to reverence G.o.d, and the more I considered the words, the clearer I saw their truth. I decided to accept the words. I let them work upon my temper, my purposes, my actions. I now looked on every difficulty as an opportunity for struggle, every situation of my life as an occasion for good. If a helpless invalid was cast on me for support, or whatever the burden that came to me, I resolved to do my best. Since then life has been sweetened and growth into peace and usefulness has come."

Soon after the death of Carlyle two friends met: "And so Carlyle is dead," said one. "Yes," said the other, "he is gone; but he did me a very good turn once." "How was that," asked the first speaker, "did you ever see him or hear him?" "No," came the answer, "I never saw him nor heard him. But when I was beginning life, almost through my apprenticeship, I lost all interest in everything and every one. I felt as if I had no duty of importance to discharge; that it did not matter whether I lived or not; that the world would do as well without me as with me. This condition continued more than a year. I should have been glad to die. One gloomy night, feeling that I could stand my darkness no longer, I went into a library, and lifting a book I found lying upon a table, I opened it. It was Sartor Resartus, by Thomas Carlyle. My eye fell upon one sentence, marked in italics, 'Do the duty which _lies nearest to thee_, which thou knowest to be a duty! The second duty will already have become clearer.' That sentence," continued the speaker, "was a flash of lightning striking into my dark soul. It gave me a new glimpse of human existence. It made a changed man of me. Carlyle, under G.o.d, saved me. He put content and purpose and power into my life."

"The duty lying nearest" was the duty Joseph magnified. He accepted that duty as divine, and he performed it under G.o.d faithfully, serviceably, and cheerily. Any and every life that meets duty as Joseph did, will make the best of its life. We may be placed in low position or in high position; we may have menial or kingly responsibilities; we may have temptations of all possible kinds about us; but if we look to G.o.d for guidance, and carry faithfulness, serviceableness, and cheer into each and every duty, we shall have made of life the best.

PUTTING THE BEST INTO OTHERS.

CHAPTER IV.

PUTTING THE BEST INTO OTHERS.

There is nothing more worthy than the desire to perpetuate the good.

That desire implies that the person cherishing it has good within himself, and that he wishes that good to live and flourish after his death. If a man thinks that his views are the best that can be held, then, if he is a n.o.ble soul, interested in the world's welfare, he longs to have his best enter into other lives, and so continue to bless the world.

This longing characterized Elijah. He came upon the scene of human life at a time when the worship of the low and debased threatened to dominate the people of Israel. The priests of Baal, an impure G.o.d, were in the ascendant. Vices, as a consequence, prevailed. These vices controlled even the court. King Ahab and Queen Jezebel were impiously wrong. Elijah had stern work to do. He must reprove the people for their errors. He must face the priests of Baal and show them and show the nation that their G.o.d, as compared to Jehovah, was powerless. He must tell those in high places, even the king and queen themselves, that their sins, if persisted in, would surely be visited by Jehovah's wrath.

His was a difficult task. It required courage, persistency, and determined purpose. It would have been folly for him to undertake it unless he felt that his ideas were essential to the nation's good. He would be resisted and hated. Hours would come when he would seem to stand wholly alone, and the cause he represented would appear to him hopeless. Still, difficult as his task was, he undertook it. All this worship of Baal and all these vicious practices of the people were wrecking the nation. As a patriot, as a lover of his fellow-man, as a good servant of G.o.d, he must do and he would do whatever was in his power to replace the wrong with the right, to implant in the lives of the people, from peasant to king, the truest and purest ideals.

Accordingly he faithfully taught the will of G.o.d, called upon G.o.d to reveal Himself on Mount Carmel, reproved Ahab and Jezebel, and did his best to put the best into the life of his day.

But he could not live forever. At any hour he might be stricken down by the hand of an enemy or by the power of some illness. Like a wise man, loving the cause he had espoused, he looked about for some one who, in case of his disability or death, could take up his work and carry forward his ideas. His mind turned toward one special man, perhaps just coming out of boyhood into maturity, a man who seemed to have the inherent power of development, and he set his heart on putting into him, Elisha, the best thought and the best principles that he had. He came upon Elisha in the full vigor of youth, plowing with twelve yoke of oxen. The distinctive garment of Elijah's mission was his mantle. That stood for Elijah's special work of speaking the truth of G.o.d and calling the nation to righteousness. Upon seeing Elisha in the field, Elijah pa.s.sed over from the caravan path that he was traveling, and threw his mantle upon Elisha's shoulders! The action carried its own meaning. It indicated to Elisha that Elijah wished him to take up his work and stand for his ideas. Elisha instantly realized the meaning of the act, and, in briefest time compatible with filial duty, he answered to Elijah's wish.

One little sentence in the story of these two men's lives is very instructive. "They two went on." It is a very brief summary of what was occurring for days and months and years before Elijah died. "They two went on." They were together. They talked together. They thought together. They prayed together. Little by little Elijah imparted to Elisha his views of life and imparted to him also his enthusiasm for the welfare of Israel. When the time came for Elisha to step forward and do his part for Israel's good, he was ready to act. He became and long continued to be a wise, helpful, instructive benefactor to Israel. The best that had been in Elijah's life was perpetuated in Elisha's life.

It is a beautiful way to live, this way of putting the best into other lives. It confers such a blessing on the particular _individual_ who is thus helped. We cannot say with positiveness that the world might never have known the full force of Elisha's character had not Elijah cast his mantle over Elisha's shoulder, but the probability is that it was Elijah's interest in Elisha and his success in educating him toward his own ideals that gave the world Elisha's elevated personality. Paul acted similarly with Timothy. Timothy was undoubtedly a good boy of many worthy parts, and with many n.o.ble views of life. But Paul laid his hand and heart upon him, and claimed him for the special purpose of continuing the ministry of the gospel, and educated him to be a faithful representative of the truth. Often there is much hesitancy to be overcome, even in worthy people, before natural endowments will be put to the best use. Such may have been the case with both Elisha and Timothy. They needed encouragement. They needed inspiration through a sense of responsibility. This was the situation with John Knox. He, humanly speaking, never could have come forward as an advocate of Christ's truth and religious freedom had it not been that another approached him, put his hand on his shoulder, and said, "You have powers of good in you. You must use them in standing up for G.o.d and Scotland."

Wonderful resources are often developed in others through this purpose to put our best into them. No one knows the power latent in another life. The most unpromising looking people may have faculties that, once awakened, directed, and called into action, will do a blessed part in the world's advance. Every school whose history can be followed for fifty years has had pupils that at the outset seemed absolutely unpromising, that seemed even incapable of appreciation or development, but who, under the devotion and inspiration of some teacher or fellow-pupil, became so aroused and so efficient that their names are an honor to the school. The glory of every Ragged Boys' Home in a great city is that former inmates who were thieves, parentless and friendless, were so reached by a patient, loving man or woman that they became industrious and honorable citizens, holding positions of power in the city itself or possessing prosperous acres in the country. It is the boy picked up in the streets of New York and sent West to be a member of a farmer's household that was led by that household's interest into such character that he was appointed governor of Alaska. "I have made," said Sir Humphry Davy, "many discoveries, but the best discovery was when I discovered Michael Faraday." There is scarcely any joy comparable with the joy of discovering to himself and to the world the best elements possible in another's life. The one who brought about this discovery gladly sinks into the background, and rejoices to let the field be occupied by the one discovered. It would seem as though G.o.d Himself must have rejoiced when, after all His patient teaching of Moses on the side of h.o.r.eb, He saw Moses showing his superb power of leadership in Egypt, and that G.o.d must have similarly rejoiced when He saw Paul responding to His charge and manifesting traits of love, forbearance, and humility that Paul had not thought he possessed. To put one Elisha into the world's arena, there to stand and battle for the right, was the crowning glory and the crowning joy of Elijah's life. The men or women that can take the best that is in them and put it into another, so that another shall live the best, honor the best, and glorify the best, can ask no higher privilege in life.

But beyond the good secured to the individual by putting the best into him is the good secured to the _world_ thereby. It was not merely that Elijah inspired a new life in Elisha's soul and transformed a man, it was also that he set in operation a new _influence_. The influence was not exactly like his own. It was like Elijah's in that it was righteous, safe, and helpful, but it was unlike Elijah's in its temper and expression. Elijah was a great destroyer of evil: Elisha was a great uplifter of good. Elijah's earliest proclamation was, "There shall not be dew nor rain these years": Elisha's earliest miracle is, "There shall be from hence life and fruitful land." Both were alike in their general purpose, both alike in their courage. Neither one of them could be moved from the path of duty by fear of man or men. But each was himself, as distinct as two mountain peaks in the same range or as two ships on the same sea. Elijah imparted his best to Elisha, but that best took shape in Elisha according to Elisha's individuality. Elisha was not Elijah over again, but he was Elijah's best in a new form--a new form that was demanded by the needs of a new day. Elijah had laid blows of condemnation on the nation: Elisha was to apply the balm of healing where those blows had fallen. Elijah was an agitator: Elisha was a teacher. Elijah was denunciatory: Elisha was tolerant. Each in his place held the best views held by any man of his time, but each in his place was called upon to hold those views according to his own temperament and express them according to the need immediately at hand.

No parent, teacher, or friend can possibly reproduce himself in another. It is G.o.d's law that, however alike plants may seem in reproduction, no child shall see life exactly as his parents, nor shall a pupil see it exactly as a teacher. This law is most wise. The same work is never given to any two people to do. It may be work of the same general nature, but never work the same in all particulars. Different types of men, actuated by the same motives, are required for different types of work. Any man who endeavors to be a pure copyist of another gone before him, always fails of individual development and fails of usefulness. Elijah could not foresee the changed circ.u.mstances in which Elisha would live, when many of the vexatious questions of Elijah's day would be settled and new questions of morality and public welfare would arise. All that he could do, all that any man can do, is to give the best he has to another, and send him forth to use that best as well as the other can in the new place. The beauty of human history is that the work the best man of one age could not accomplish, another coming after him does accomplish, and he accomplishes it, not because he is any better than his predecessor, but because he is the man for this hour as his predecessor was for the hour before this. There is always work to be done. There are always tasks left over from a previous generation. There are always ideas. .h.i.therto unemphasized that to-day must be emphasized, else society will not know its duty. For this work and task and emphasis new men are needed, men who do not see exactly as their fathers saw, nor p.r.o.nounce nor act exactly as their fathers did. To provide such men, to inspire them with a great sense of duty, and send them out into life with open minds toward G.o.d and open hearts toward their fellows, and then withdraw our hand and let them do their own work, in their own way, this is our blessed privilege.

We may endeavor to put the best into others _directly_. A parent is a parent largely for this particular purpose. The father and mother have this end as their greatest and highest responsibility. They cannot shirk it without hurt to themselves and to their child. No one can and no one should influence a child as directly as does a parent. The parent may temporarily place the child beneath the influence of a nurse, a pastor, or a teacher, but the abiding influence should be and is the parent's.

Little by little, line upon line, precept upon precept, conduct upon conduct, the parent should endeavor to set before the child the highest ideas of life. Skill is requisite in stating these ideas, in ill.u.s.trating them, in making them attractive, in persuading to their acceptance. The evil or the inferior lodged in the child's heart needs to be forced out, that the best may enter. Happy the parent whose forcing process is like the incoming of light into a darkened room, a process that is gentle and conciliatory, a process that never boasts of victory and never leaves a pain.

This is the parent's greatest hope and greatest reward, to have a child who shall in the child's own time and place be an advancer of the world's good. A thousand spheres of opportunity open before each new generation. Into any one of them the child may carry the best his father or mother ever thought or said. Many parents wish their children to do in life work of the very same type that they once did. It was therefore a gratification to their ministerial fathers when they saw their own sons enter the ministry, Henry Ward Beecher, Jonathan Edwards, Frederick W. Farrar, Charles H. Spurgeon, John Wesley, and Reginald Heber. But other ministerial fathers likewise might be gratified when they saw their sons helpfully laboring in n.o.ble spheres not specifically "the ministry," as in poetry, Joseph Addison, Samuel T. Coleridge, William Cowper, Ben Jonson, Oliver Goldsmith, Alfred Tennyson, James Russell Lowell, Oliver W. Holmes, John Keble, and James Montgomery; as in literature, Matthew Arnold, Bancroft, Froude, Hallam, and Parkman; as in art, Joshua Reynolds and Christopher Wren; as in law, Lord Ellenborough, Stephen J. Field, David J. Brewer, David Dudley Field; as in statesmanship, Henry Clay, Edward Everett, Sir William Harcourt, John B.

Balfour, and William Forster; and as in invention, Samuel F. B. Morse.

But while the great opportunity of putting the best into others is the parent's (and men out in earnest usefulness thank G.o.d most of all for their mothers and fathers, especially as they grow older and realize how early in youth it was that their characters received determining impressions), still others, besides parents, may use direct means toward this same end. Here is the teacher's opportunity. A plastic, receptive mind is before him. It says to him: "I am here to be taught. Teach me the best--the best way to see, to reason, to act, the best way to do my part in society and the world." Many a teacher has looked on that opportunity as sacred; has valued it as much as Elijah valued his opportunity to cast his mantle on Elisha. Such teachers have wrought out most valuable results. They have put ideas, methods, principles, and a spirit into pupils that have made those pupils a blessing to the world.

The pupils may not recall much of what the teacher said--perhaps they cannot recall one particular truth that the teacher enforced--but they recall a purpose that dominated the teacher, and the pupils now are endeavoring to fulfil what they feel would be the wishes of that teacher if the teacher to-day could stand beside them.

And why should we stop with parents and teachers in speaking of this direct effort to put the best into other lives. Nurses in homes have endeavored to give little children the truest knowledge of G.o.d and of beauty, and have succeeded. The world owes them much for its best men and women. Had they not seconded parents, had they attempted to uproot the good implanted by parents, all would have been ruined. So, too, have friends, masters, employers, writers in the press, writers of books, lecturers, and preachers aimed at this same end. They have felt a great desire to give their fellows beautiful thoughts, strong principles, supporting comforts, and heavenly ideals. They have felt that their heart's supreme wish would be met if they could only cause a double portion of their own spirit--aye, a four-fold, a hundred-fold of their good purposes to rest upon others--and to this end they have prayed, given money and counsel, spoken to employees and friends and comrades, written, sung, preached, labored, and died. The company of those who have wished to put the best into others is a glorious company, the company of prophets, apostles, saints, martyrs, workmen in every sphere, in every clime, in every age. Surely this host is the host of the elect, the choicest ones of all G.o.d's people on earth and in heaven.

Apart from and beyond our direct effort to put the best into other lives is our _indirect_, our unconscious influence to this good end.

Personality is more potent than words. Men and women impart ozone to the atmosphere without knowing what good they have done. They become standards of righteousness and are all unaware that any one looks at them to gauge his own opinion or shape his own conduct. They are like regulator clocks, by which the watches of the world seen to be wrong are set aright and are kept aright. To try to live the best in the hope that somehow one can put the best into the very air, and get it into the life of the school and community, and have it become a part of public sentiment, that surely is n.o.ble. That is the way to live. No one ever lives in vain who so lives. Some one is helped by him. Some one tells of him. Cecil's saying of Sir Walter Raleigh, "I know he can toil terribly," is an electric touch.

In one of my pastorates there was a farmer's son, living two miles from the church. Almost all the young men of his age in the village and congregation were careless, selfish, and a little fast. His father was out of sympathy with religious earnestness. But the son resolved that he would put his best into others' lives. He thought, prayed, worshiped, to that end. Through snow and rain and mud he came where earnestness and high ideals were in the air. He did a manly, helpful part in his home, in his village, and in his church. Then, thinking that he knew farming and could teach it, he volunteered to go to an Indian school in Indian Territory, and as a farm manager, teach farming. He went, on almost no salary, and lived and labored, that through his words, conduct, and spirit he might put the best into others' lives. Thus he lived and labored till he died, two thousand miles from home, and was buried there, the only one of his family not placed in the village graveyard.

But his work has not died. It lives in all who know of it. They think of it again and again, and it always makes them wish to fulfil to the best all their opportunity for the good of others.

There are many, many hearts so conscious of the help they have received from others that they read with appreciation the commemorative tablet placed by the distinguished Pasteur on the house of his birth: "O my father and mother, who lived so simply in that tiny house, it is to you that I owe everything! Your eager enthusiasm, my mother, you pa.s.sed on into my life. And you, my father, whose life and trade were so toilsome, you taught me what patience can accomplish with prolonged effort. It is to you that I owe tenacity in daily labor."

"Others shall sing the song; Others shall right the wrong, Finish what I begin, And all I fail of, win.

What matter, I or they, Mine or another's day, So the right word be said, And life the sweeter made."

DEVELOPING OUR BEST UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

CHAPTER V.

DEVELOPING OUR BEST UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

There is nothing in this world that more appeals to my admiration than a man who makes the best of himself _under difficulties_. Robert Louis Stevenson deservedly has many admirers by reason of his writings, but what in him most appeals to my admiration was the struggle he waged with difficulties. "For fourteen years," he wrote the year before his death, "I have not had a day's real health. I have wakened sick and gone to bed weary. I have written in bed, written in hemorrhages, written in sickness, written worn by coughing, written when my head swam for weakness. I am better now, and still few are the days when I am not in some physical distress. And the battle goes on--ill or well is a trifle, so as it goes. I was made for a contest, and the Powers have so willed that my battle-field should be this dingy, inglorious one of the bed and the physic bottle. I would have preferred a place of trumpetings and the open air over my head. Still I have done my work unflinchingly."

The story of many a strong and useful life is very similar to this story of Stevenson's.

Parkman wrote his histories in the brief intervals between racking headaches. Prescott struggled with blindness as he prepared his volumes.

Kitto was deaf from boyhood, but he wrote works that caught the hearing of the English-speaking world.