Chapter 11
The parable has wide-spread application. The foolish parent cannot be saved from the sorrow inflicted by a spoiled child; the idle cannot be saved from hunger and want; the lazy cannot be given the rewards of the diligent. The success that attends effort and rewards character cannot be awarded to the undeserving without paralyzing all the incentives to virtue and industry. Christ came not to destroy the law--either that revealed in the Word of God or that which was written on nature--He came to fulfill. In the brief years that He taught His disciples and the multitude He quoted the law and illustrated it. He did not come to relieve men of responsibility--He came to light the way--"That they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly."
Christ's doctrines are not limited in time or to numbers. They apply to everybody and last for all time. Paul, in Romans 12: 20, interprets the Master's teachings and applies them. "Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head." How different this way of dealing from the way the carnal man acts, and yet who can question the wisdom of the Saviour's plan? Hatred begets hatred; retaliation invites retaliation and the feud grows. The mountains of Kentucky have furnished numerous illustrations of the futility of revenge. Families were arrayed against families and sons took up inherited hatreds and died violent deaths bequeathing the spirit of revenge to their descendants.
We see the same false philosophy at work among nations. One war lays the foundation for another; generation after generation is sworn to avenge the crimes of preceding generations; and much of it is done in the name of patriotism and glorified as if it were service to the country.
Paul gives us the remedy and it is based upon the injunction that Jesus gave, namely, Love your enemies. Feeding an enemy is more effective than threats of punishment. It is a manifestation of love, and love is the weapon for which there is no shield. The philosophy that Paul applies to the individual is just as effective when applied to larger groups. Nations that have been at war cannot be reconciled by the methods of war. They can be suppressed by force but unless won by friendship there can be no reunion.
Paul concludes this chapter with a command "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." There never was a time in the world's history when this kind of doctrine was more imperatively needed for the healing of the wounds of the unprecedented conflict through which the world has passed. Christ has a remedy: Let the wrongs of the past be forgiven and forgotten; let the world be invited to build on friendship and cooperation. Let the rivalry be in the showing of magnanimity. Who dares to say that the plan will fail? The alternative policy has failed and failed miserably. Why not employ the only untried remedy for the ills which afflict civilization?
And the gifts of the Man of Galilee are permanent; they survive the tomb. As one nears the end of life he becomes conscious of an inner longing to attach himself to institutions that will outlive him. His affections having gone out to his fellows, and his heart having entwined itself with the causes that embrace all humankind, he does not like to drop out and be forgotten. His sympathies expand and sympathy is the real blood of the heart, forced by the pulsations of that major organ through all the arteries of society. Have you thought how few of each generation are remembered after death by any one outside of a small circle of friends? We have an hundred millions of people living in the largest republic in history--one of the greatest nations the world has ever known--and yet how many names will survive for a century after those who bore the names are buried? The vanity of man is rebuked by a visit to any old, neglected cemetery. As Bryant puts it
"The world will laugh when thou art gone And solemn brood of care plod on And each one as before will chase his favourite phantom."
It is partly to escape this dread oblivion that men and women, blessed with means, endow hospitals and colleges and charitable institutions. They yearn for an immortality on earth as well as in the world beyond, and nothing but the spiritual has promise of the life everlasting.
If we examine our expense accounts we will be ashamed to note how large a proportion of our money we spend on the _body_. We buy it the food that it most enjoys, and the raiment that most adorns it; we give it habitations of comfort and beauty, and yet the body is responsible for most of our easily besetting sins and its aches and pains fill life with much of its misery. We spend the first twenty years of life in an effort to develop the body, the second twenty years of life in an effort to keep it in a state of health and twenty more trying to preserve it from decline, and then the threescore years have passed. And, no matter how successful we may be in lifting the body toward physical perfection, we have no assurance that any physical perfection can be made use of in the world above. I believe in the resurrection of but I have not spent much time during the later years in worrying about what particular body I shall have over there. According to the scientists the body changes every seven years. If that be true, I have done little more than exchange an old body for a new one during the more than sixty years that I have lived. I had a baby body and a boy's body, then the body of a young man, and so on until I am now well along with my ninth body. I do not know which one of these will be best for me in the next world, but I know that the God who made this world and gave me an existence in it will give me, in the land beyond, the body that will best serve me there.
Neither have we any assurance that the perfections of the mind survive the day of death. We spend a great deal of time on the mind, for this is an age of intellectual enthusiasm. My experience has not been different from the experience of others. My mother taught me at home until I was ten; then my parents sent me to the public school until I was fifteen; then I spent two years in an academy preparing for college; then four years in college and then two years in a law school. After nearly twenty years of schooling I took part in my last "Commencement," and then I began to learn, and have been learning ever since. I have accumulated something of history, something of science, a bit of poetry and philosophy, and I have read speeches without number. I have accumulated a large amount of information on politics and politicians that I know I shall not need in Heaven, if Heaven is half as good a place as I expect it to be. How much of the intellectual wealth that we have so laboriously acquired can we carry with us? We do not know.
But we know that that which is spiritual does not die--that the heart virtues will accompany us when we enter the future life. In the parable of the Tares, Christ explains that, just as the tares and the wheat grow together until the harvest, so the righteous and the unrighteous live together in this world, but that on the day of judgment they shall be separated. Then shall the righteous "shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father." We have no promise that the body will shine even as a star, or that the mind will shine even as one of the planets, but the sun in its splendour is used to illustrate the brightness with which those will shine who are counted righteous in that day.
I esteem it a privilege to be permitted to present the claims of the Larger Life to which Jesus, the Christ, calls all of the children of men. Why will one choose a life that is small and contracted, when there is within his reach the life that is full and complete--the Larger Life? Why will he be content with the pleasures of the body and the joys of the mind when he can have added to them the delights of the spirit? How can he delay acceptance of Christ's offer to ennoble that which he has, and to add to it the things that are highest and best and most enduring? This is the life that Christ brought to light when He came that men might have _life_ and have it more _abundantly_.
VI
THE VALUE OF THE SOUL
The fact that Christ dealt with this subject is proof conclusive that it is important, for He never dealt with trivial things. When Christ focused attention upon a theme it was because it was worthy of consideration--and Christ weighed the soul. He presented the subject, too, with surpassing force; no one will ever add to what He said. Christ used the question to give emphasis to the thought which He presented in regard to the soul's value.
On one side He put the world and all that the world can contain--all the wealth that one can accumulate, all the fame to which one can aspire, and all the happiness that one can covet; and on the other side He put the soul, and asked the question that has come ringing down the centuries: "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"
There is no compromise here--no partial statement of the matter. He leaves us to write one term of the equation ourselves. He gives us all the time we desire, and allows the imagination to work to the limit, and when we have gathered together into one sum all things but the soul, He asks--What if you gain it all--ALL--ALL, and lose the soul? What is the profit?
Some have thought the soul question a question of the next world only, but it is a question of this world also; some have thought the soul question a Sabbath-day question only, but it is a week-day question as well; some have thought the soul question a question for the ministers alone, but it is a question which we all must meet. Every day and every week, every month and every year, from the time we reach the period of accountability until we die, we--each of us--all of us, weigh the soul; and just in proportion as we put the soul above all things else we build character; the moment we allow the soul to become a matter of merchandise, we start on the downward way.
Tolstoy says that if you would investigate the career of a criminal it is not sufficient to begin with the commission of a crime; that you must go back to that day in his life when he deliberately trampled upon his conscience and did that which he knew to be wrong. And so with all of us, the turning point in the life is the day when we surrender the soul for something that for the time being seems more desirable.
Most of the temptations that come to us to sell the soul come in connection with the getting of money. The Bible says, "The love of money is the root of all evil." Or, as the Revised Version gives it, "A root of all kinds of evil."
Because so many of our temptations come through the love of money and the effort to obtain it, it is worth while to consider the laws of accumulation. We must all have money; we need food and clothing and shelter, and money is necessary for the purchase of these things. Money is not an evil in itself--money is, in fact, a very useful servant. It is bad only when it becomes the master, and the love of it is hurtful only because it can, and often does, crowd out the love of nobler things.
But since we must all use money and must in our active days store up money for the days when our strength fails, let us see if we can agree upon God's law of rewards. (See lecture on "His Government and Peace.")
How much money can a man rightfully collect from society? Surely, there can be no disagreement here. He cannot rightfully collect more than he honestly earns. If a man collects more than he earns, he collects what somebody else has earned, and we call it stealing if a man takes that which belongs to another. Not only is a man limited in his collection of what he honestly earns, but will an honest man _desire_ to collect more than he earns?
If a man cannot rightfully collect more than he honestly earns, it is then a matter of the utmost importance to know how much money a man can honestly earn. I venture an answer to this, namely, that a man cannot honestly earn more than fairly measures the value of the service which he renders to society. I cannot conceive of any way of earning money except to give to society a service equivalent in value to the money collected. This is a fundamental proposition and it is important that it should be clearly understood, for if one desires to collect largely from society he must be prepared to render a large service to society; and our schools and colleges, our churches and all other organizations for the improvement of man have for one of their chief objects the enlargement of the capacity for service.
There is an apparent exception in the case of an inheritance, but it is not a real exception, for if the man who leaves the money has honestly earned it, he has already given society a service of equivalent value and, therefore, has a right to distribute it. And money received by inheritance is either payment for service already rendered, or payment in advance for service to be rendered. No right-minded person will accept money, even by inheritance, without recognizing the obligation it imposes to render a service in return. This service is not always rendered to the one from whom this money is received, but often to society in general. In fact, most of the blessings which we receive come to us in such a way that we cannot distinguish the donors and must make our return to the whole public. If one is not compelled to work for himself he has the larger pleasure of working for the public.
But I need not dwell upon this, because in this country more than anywhere else in the world we appreciate the dignity of labour and understand that it is honourable to serve. And yet there is room for improvement, for all over our land there are, scattered here and there, young men and young women--and even parents--who still think that it is more respectable for a young man to spend in idleness the money some one else has earned than to be himself a producer of wealth. As long as this sentiment is to be found anywhere there is educational work to be done, for public opinion will never be what it ought to be until it puts the badge of disgrace upon the idler, no matter how rich he may be, rather than upon the man who with brain or muscle contributes to the Nation's wealth, the Nation's strength and the Nation's progress.
But, as I said, the inheritance is an apparent, not an actual, exception, and we will return to the original proposition--that one's earnings must be measured by the service rendered. This is so vital a proposition that I beg leave to dwell upon it a moment longer, to ask whether it is possible to fix in dollars and cents a maximum limit to the amount one can earn in a lifetime.
Let us begin with one hundred thousand dollars. If we estimate a working life at thirty-three and one-third years--and I think this is a fair estimate--a man must earn _three_ thousand dollars per year on an average for thirty-three and one-third years to earn one hundred thousand dollars in a lifetime. I take it for granted that no one will deny that it is possible for one to earn this sum by rendering a service equal to it in value, but what shall we say of a million dollars? Can a man earn that much? To do so he must earn _thirty_ thousand dollars a year for thirty-three and one-third years. Is it possible for one to render so large a service? I believe it is. Well, what shall we say of ten millions? To earn that much one must earn on an average _three hundred_ thousand dollars a year for thirty-three and one-third years. Is it possible for one to render a service so large as to earn so vast a sum? At the risk of shocking some of my radical friends I am going to affirm that it is possible.
But can one earn an _hundred million_? Yes, I believe that it is even possible to serve society to such an extent as to earn a hundred million in the span of a human life, or an average of _three million_ a year for thirty-three and one-third years. We have one man in this country who is said to be worth five hundred million. To earn five hundred million one must earn on an average _fifteen_ million a year for thirty-three and one-third years. Is this within the range of human possibility? I believe that it is. Now, I have gone as high as any one has yet gone in collecting, but if there is any young man here with an ambition to render a larger service to the world, I will raise it another notch, if necessary, to encourage him. So almost limitless are the possibilities of service in this age that I am not willing to fix a maximum to the sum a man can honestly and legitimately earn.
Not only do I believe that one _can_ earn five hundred million, but I believe that men _have_ earned it.
In this and other countries many in public life might be mentioned, for even in politics men have great opportunities, which, if rightly improved, enable them to render incalculable service to their fellowmen.
But let us go outside of politics. What shall we say of the man who gave to the world a knowledge of the use of steam and revolutionized the transportation of the globe? How much did he earn? And the man who brought down lightning from the clouds and imprisoned it in a slender wire so that it lights our homes, draws our traffic across the land and carries our messages under the sea; what did he earn? And what of the man who showed us how to hurl our messages thousands of miles through space without the aid of wire? And how much did the man earn who taught us how to wrap the human voice around a little cylinder so that it can be laid away and echo throughout the ages?
Take a very recent invention, the gasolene engine. It has already given us the automobile and the flying machine, and heaven only knows what yet may come with that gasolene engine. My first ride in an automobile was taken in the campaign of 1896; since then something like seventeen million automobiles have been brought into use.
Have you thought of the value of the ice machine? In Apalachicola, Florida, they have erected a little monument to a former citizen, Dr. John Gorry. A statue of him will be found in the capitol at Tallahassee, and the state of Florida has put another in the Hall of Fame at Washington. Out of his brain came the idea that made it possible for the world to have ice to-day without regard to the temperature outside. What did Gorry earn when he gave the world the ice machine?
When I first visited the Patent Office at Washington I saw a model of the first sewing machine. On it was a card on which was written:
"Mine are sinews superhuman, Ribs of brass and nerves of steel; I'm the iron needle woman, Born to toil but not to feel."
What did the man earn who gave the world a sewing machine?
These are only a few of the great inventions. Let us take up another group. To show how wide is the field of measureless endeavour, I call attention to the work of scientists. Who will measure the value of anesthetics in the treatment of disease and injury? What of vaccination and the labours of Pasteur? Who will estimate the value of the service rendered by the man who gave us a remedy for typhoid? In 1898 hundreds died of typhoid fever in the little army that was raised for the war with Spain--twenty-seven of my regiment died of that disease. Now we have a remedy so complete that of the nearly a million men who reached the battle-line in France not one died of typhoid, and only one hundred and twenty-five of the four millions called to the colours.
Have you tried to estimate the service rendered by Reed, who, in finding a remedy for yellow fever, made the tropics habitable and made it possible for the United States to add the Panama Canal to our great achievements?
But the field is larger still. Raikes established a Sunday school and now we have Sunday schools all over the world; Williams organized a Young Men's Christian Association and now there are nine thousand associations and more than a million and a half members march under the banners of that organization, half of them in the United States. Forty years ago a young preacher in Portland, Maine, gathered a few young people about him and formed a Christian Endeavour Society; now it numbers more than four million members. That young preacher, Dr. Francis E. Clark, is now one of the great religious leaders of the world and is Commander-in-Chief of this militant organization which is larger than the army that did our part in the World War. What has he earned?
Near Rochester, New York, there is a little town that has the proud distinction of being the birthplace of Frances Willard. There was nothing to distinguish her from other little girls when she was in school, but when she reached womanhood she gave her heart to a great cause; she became president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, probably the greatest of the organizations among women ever formed. Under her leadership that organization brought into the schools of the land instruction as to the effect of alcohol upon the system and that did more than any other one thing, I think, to bring National Prohibition. The state of Illinois has placed the statue of this great woman in the Hall of Fame in the National Capitol; she is the first woman to be thus honoured. What has she earned?
And so I might continue, for the name of the world's great benefactors is legion. And besides those whose services were of incalculable value a multitude have earned lesser sums ranging down to a modest fortune. Every one can earn enough to supply all needs. Every time I speak to the students of a college, high school, or primary grade I cannot help thinking that within the room there may be a boy or girl who will catch a vision of great achievement and, consecrating a life of service, do a work so valuable that all the arithmetics will not compute its worth.
But if I could furnish you a list containing the names of all who since time began rendered a service worth five hundred millions, one thing would be true of every one of them; namely, that never in a single case did the person collect the full amount earned. Those who have earned five hundred millions have been so busy earning it that they have not had time to collect it, and those who have collected five hundred millions have been so busy collecting it that they have not had time to earn it. Then, too, it must be remembered that those who render the greatest service serve more than their own generation--some serve all who live afterward so that it is never possible to compute what they have earned.
And what is more, those who render the largest service do not care to collect the full amount earned. What could they do with the sum that they actually earn? Or, what is more important, what would so great a sum _do with them_?
In that wonderful parable of the Sower, Christ speaks of the seeds that fell and of the thorns that sprang up and choked them, and He Himself explained what He meant by this illustration, namely: That the care of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the truth. If the great benefactors of the race had been burdened with the care of big fortunes, they could not have devoted themselves to the nobler things that gave them a place in the affection of their people and in history.
It seems, therefore, that while one cannot rightfully collect more than he honestly earns, he may earn more than it would be wise for him to collect. And that brings us to the next question: How much should one desire to collect from society? I answer, that no matter how large a service one may render or how much he may earn, he should not desire to collect more than he can wisely spend.