“WHO SHALL BE THE GREATEST?”
No. 3.
Men are Ambitious of Distinction.
As the child with uplifted hand and eager look chases the bubble which its tiny lips have fashioned, only to find that it vanishes into thin air as soon as it is grasped, so does man, seemingly but a child in understanding, spend days and nights of laborious toil in pursuit of the bubble Distinction.
The heart of some youthful aspirant is fixed with a burning desire for the gaudy tinsel of distinction, with which the name of some hero in life’s battle is clothed. He abandons the cheerful fireside and genial society of home, and chooses for himself some arduous profession. Every energy is bent towards this one great object of his life. Every faculty of mind and body is rendered subservient to this “heart’s desire.” Hours which Nature has allotted to rest, are spent in unwearied application. He finds himself not only burning the oil of his midnight lamp, but the oil of the very lamp of life itself. He soon finds that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong—that “there is a Divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may.”
As one competitor after another passes him, lean-faced Envy whispers words of malice in his ready ear, so that him whom he once loved he then despises.
As Themistocles could not sleep because of the deserved honors of Melviades, so do the deserved honors of his rivals drive peace from his side, repose from his couch.
Every laurel which crowns their brows becomes a thorn in his pillow. Anxiety for the future, dissatisfaction with the present, remorse for the past, embitter his lonely hours. Long-deferred hope makes his heart sick. And then he comes to the pass of death.
He presses into the unknown night alone, leaving behind him the sad warning to those who come after him—Love not the praise of men more than the praise of God. (John 12: 43.)
It may seem that we have painted the lovers of wealth and distinction in colors too deep and dark. They, however, are intended as the background from which true nobility and true greatness shall stand forth with greater beauty and loveliness.
He who is conscious of possessing powers capable of benefiting his fellow man, and spends his time and talents in inglorious ease, is guilty of sinful self-indulgence. It is not ours, like the stupid rustic, to sit still and wait until the stream passes by in order that we may cross, but rather stem the current and breast its billows. If we succeed, then success has been gained where it is always surest and sweetest, in the discharge of duty. We have sacrificed no principle; we have stooped to no mean act; our gold is not stained with the blood of trampled-on innocence; our reputation has not been gained in the pathway of shame.
If we fail, then we are encouraged by the thought that we have done what we could. (Mark 14: 8.)
In reply to a letter from a young man in which the following sentence occurred,—
“If I know my own heart, I ask not wealth or honor; but to do good and to communicate, (Heb. 13: 16) is the object of my life,”—a successful Christian merchant thus wrote:
“The object of your life as you explain it, is the noblest on the face of the earth; and although it will not bring you worldly wealth and ease, it is sure of much higher reward both here and hereafter. Press forward. Never lose sight of it. Be very thankful that God has thus called you to his service, and show Him your gratitude by consecrating yourself wholly to Him. I think I have lived long enough to know that your choice, or the service to which you are called, is not only the noblest, but in fact, the only service worth a man’s living for at all. How many failures do we see in the lives of the ambitious and the great, notwithstanding advantages of the highest distinction. But bankruptcy with a genuine child of God is impossible. His life cannot be a failure.
That there are and have been numberless persons, the object of whose lives was to advance Christ’s Kingdom and add to the happiness of their fellow-men, we have abundant testimony. The names of Howard, of Wilberforce, of McCheyne, of Henry Martyn, of Hedley Vicars, of Brainerd Taylor, of Harlan Page, of noble-hearted Daniel Baker, the pioneer of the cross in the wilds of Texas, of many others, of whom the world is not worthy, stand out in the boldest prominence. Yea, such men are to be seen around us every day. In the pulpit, at the bar, in the counting-room of the merchant, in the shop of the mechanic, at the bedside of the sick and dying, fearing neither the death-breathing pestilence, nor the destruction that wasteth at noonday.
Shall it not, then, be ours to follow in their footsteps? Is there any pleasure so great as the pleasure of doing good?
Who shall be the greatest? Not in worldly honors, but in the measureless wealth of disinterested kindness, and the unfading honors that cluster around the Cross of Christ.
Longfellow beautifully sketches the upward and onward career of a youth who, despite the warnings of the aged, the entreaties of the young, wound his weary way up the steep sides of one of the Alps mountains only to make his grave beneath the cold snow of the topmost peak.