“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.
“Another followed fast,
And a book was in his hand,
Filled with the flashes of burning thought,
That are known in many a land;
But the child of Genius quailed to hear
Death’s pitiless demand.
“Here that book cannot enter with thee,
For the bright flash of Genius is nothing to me.””
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.
The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, ’mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior.
“Beware the pine tree’s wither’d branch
Beware the awful avalanche!”
This was the peasant’s last good-night, —
A voice replied, far up the height,
Excelsior.
At break of day, as heavenward
The pious monks of St. Bernard
Uttered the oft repeated prayer,
A voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior.
A traveller, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner with the strange device —
Excelsior.
There, in the twilight cold and grey,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky serene and far,
A voice fell, like a falling star,
Excelsior.
THE POOR CONSUMPTIVE
A COLPORTEUR SKETCH
“Is this the place where a princess dwells,
A favored daughter of the King of kings?
Within their humble and contracted cells,
Do heavenly spirits wave their guardian wings?”
Stretched on a bed of painful sickness there lay a woman in the last stages of consumption. Pale-faced poverty was an inmate of the hovel in which she dwelt. The broken panes of glass, the bare floor, the large cracks in the wall, the scanty covering, carefully thrown over the bed, all plainly bespoke the absence of the very necessaries of life. As I entered the door, my heart throbbed hurriedly when my eyes caught the destitution, the misery, the wretchedness, which surrounded me. Several children, from six to fourteen years of age, were in the room – some of them lying together on the floor, others seated on the remnant of a chair, while one little fellow, with matted hair and unwashed face, scowled at me from behind a door, as if he thought me an unwelcome visitor. The children had evidently been long neglected. No voice of love had often fallen on their ears; no smile of affection had cheered their loneliness. Their lives had been made up with scenes of want and wretchedness. Their minds were like gardens all overgrown with noxious weeds. But few seeds of truth had been sown in their little hearts by the hand of kindness, and their little voices had never sung the sweet notes of “Happy Day,” or “The Sabbath-school.”
But let me not forget the quiet sufferer, who, with such calm composure, has all this time been lying in unbroken silence. Her days are almost numbered. Consumption, that fell destroyer of human hopes, has long been gnawing at her heart-strings. The cord of life is worn almost to its last thread. Her hollow cheek, her wasted form, her sunken, death-glazed eye, all tell me that the cold, clammy hand of Death is gradually chilling her life-blood. She breathes with difficulty, for her lungs are too far gone to perform their functions. Now and then a hacking cough seems as if it would rend her frail chest to pieces. In her feeble hand she holds a fan, with which she is endeavoring to cool her burning brow. Its faint fluttering is but the counterpart of the almost fainter fluttering of life, as it hovers round her heart.
I sat for several moments quietly gazing on the wan and wasted features of the poor sufferer, before I could summon the resolution to say a word. I finally broke the solemn silence which filled the desolate chamber, by telling her that I sympathized very deeply with her in the suffering through which she had to pass.
I then asked her, if God should see fit to call her away from earth, did she think she was prepared for so awful a change. She feebly whispered “Yes.”
“What is then to become of your unprotected children?”
“God will take care of them.”
“Do you think it right that you should suffer so much, while others are in the enjoyment of countless blessings?”
“Perfectly.”
“Shall I read a portion of God’s Word, and pray with you?”
“If you please, sir.”
She reached her arm under the pillow and drew forth a Bible. Oh! how precious a thing it is, in the hour of death, to pillow one’s weary head on the precious promises of that blessed Book!
I slowly turned its sacred pages till I reached the fourteenth chapter of John – that chapter of blessed memory, which has soothed the troubled spirits of so many dying souls – after reading which, I knelt at her bedside and united with her in prayer. When I arose from my knees, her eyes were melted to tears, and a calm and holy peace rested on her pale and emaciated face.
Reader, it was a precious season to my own soul. God grant that the influences of that scene may never depart from me. My heart was cast down in humility, in penitence, as I remembered how often I had rebelled against God’s holy law. The unbidden tear was quietly trickling down my own cheek as I left that Bethel – that house of God.
Since writing the above, “The Poor Consumptive” has sweetly fallen asleep in Jesus.
“WHAT I LIVE FOR.”
“I live for those who love me,
For those who know me true;
For the heaven that smiles above me,
And awaits my spirit too;
For the cause that lacks assistance,
For the wrong that needs resistance,
For the Future in the distance,
And the good that I can do.”
We are told that a word, when it has fallen from the lips, never dies away; that the sound goes on widening and widening throughout the immensity of space.
Such are our lives. The acts which we do, the words which we utter, are exerting an untold influence for good or for evil. They are moulding, silently but certainly, the character of those by whom we are surrounded, for weal or for woe. Their influence extends even to eternity.
Fellow Christians! impressed with this solemn thought, let our heart’s desire be to minister to the wants of the sick and dying, to carry the glad tidings of salvation to the hovels of ignorance and poverty, to cheer the homeless orphan, to console the friendless widow; for by so doing, we shall surely gain our reward both in this world and that which is to come. Let us do what we can to dry the tear of sorrow, to gladden the heart of the laborer in his long hours of lonely toil; do what we can by precept, by prayer, by example, by toilsome labor, to win souls to Jesus Christ. Who had not rather be the means of saving one soul, than obtain all the riches or receive all the honors the world can furnish? —
THE LAST SERMON OF THE SEASON
“What a thought! The last opportunity I shall ever enjoy of making my peace with God; the last time I shall ever listen to the glad tidings of salvation; the last time I shall hear from the sacred desk the earnest entreaty, Come to Jesus; the last time I shall ever sing the songs of Zion!”
Such were the thoughts which rushed wildly through the mind of a young man as his unwilling feet lingered on the steps of the house of God. He was leaving that house with a heart at enmity with his heavenly Father. Again and again had he put off for a convenient season the eternal interests of his never-dying soul. Long, long had Satan pacified his restless conscience by whispering in his ear that to-morrow would be time enough. To-morrow after to-morrow had come and gone, yet he was farther from salvation than he had ever been.
The minister’s earnest entreaty, a conviction of the awful eternity which awaited him if he died in his sins, pressed with burning weight upon his thoughts. He seemed to be held fast by some resistless power. “Perhaps it may be the last night of the season of salvation; God only knows. I will arise and go to my Father,” thought he to himself. He sought the minister; went with him to his study; and there, by the aid of God’s Spirit, trusts he gave himself to his Saviour.
Fellow sinner, this may be the last night of the season of salvation to you. Will you not come to Jesus? Father and mother, brother and sister, those that love you tenderly, all join in the entreaty, Come to Jesus. He is a precious Saviour; he is a willing Saviour; he is an able Saviour. Then will you not come and cast your burden of sin upon him? He has never turned away one soul. “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”
“WILL NOBODY SAVE ME?”
“Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to thy cross I cling;
Naked come to thee for dress:
Helpless, look to thee for grace;
Vile, I to the fountain fly;
Wash me, Saviour, or I die.”
During the burning of the Richmond theatre, in 1811, a gentleman who had nobly endangered his own life in endeavoring to rescue others from the jaws of the devouring flames, was seen to leap from one of the topmost windows to the ground. So severe was the fall, he was unable to move an inch. Above him stood the tottering wall, ready to fall and crush him to death. He looked around him; not a soul was near. From the depths of his agony, he cried out, “Will nobody save me?” The cry fell on the ear of a sturdy negro, who rushed to him, and bore him away in his strong and brawny arms to a place of safety.
Such is the case with the sinner. When he finds that of himself he can do nothing, that God’s angry vengeance is tottering above his head, that no one is near to save him, then it is that he cries, “Will nobody save me?” The cry comes to the waiting ear of his blessed Saviour, and He bears him away in His arms of love to His Father’s bosom.
A SABBATH IN THE COUNTRY
There is something to me peculiarly pleasant in a country Sabbath. No rattle of carts, no bustle of crowds, no hum of voices, disturb the calm and holy quietude of the hallowed day. Cattle are quietly grazing on grassy meadows, or sleeping in the refreshing shade; the irregular tinkle of the sheep-bell falls sweetly on the ear; the plough stands motionless in the unfinished furrow; the little songster trills from some swinging bough its morning song. The household dog seems to know it is a day of peaceful rest. His voice is hushed in silence. The clouds glide calmly across the heavens; the rays of the Sabbath sun rest sweetly on the face of nature. A dreamy, delightful serenity hovers over all the land. The incense of prayer rises from many a family altar, and the accents of praise tremble on many a lip.
Let us go up to the house of God. How different from our city churches! Perhaps it is some venerable building whose foundation was laid by men to whom the faces and forms of a Samuel Davies, or William Wilson, were familiar; perhaps remains of the foundation erected for the protection of God’s people against savage cruelty still linger around it; perhaps marks of the Indian’s bullet have not yet been effaced from its rude stone walls. Let us cross its threshold. No stained glass softens the rays of light, no cushioned pew invites you to a seat, no costly pulpit meets your eye; no beautiful fresco will draw your attention from the minister or the word of God. Every thing is as plain, as practical, as solid, as the men who first worshipped beneath its roof, but who now sleep beneath the waving grass of the adjoining cemetery.
One by one the congregation begin to enter and take their seats. They reverently bow their heads and seek the aid of God’s Spirit to enable them rightly to understand and apply the truths to which they shall listen. Many and varied are the personages which draw the attention. One is a venerable elder: time has not dealt gently with him; his brow is furrowed, his cheek wrinkled, and he totters feebly to his seat beneath the weight of many years, and a life of laborious toil. Though the fires of life are well nigh gone out, hope burns brightly in his heart, and beams forth from his eye. The assurance that his Redeemer liveth, is the rod and staff on which he leans for support. Another is a young man. His step is firm, his frame robust. He has not seen the snows of more than twenty winters. His countenance wears a thoughtful, solemn air. He is thinking of God, of heaven, of eternity. He has not come to the house of God because it is his custom, to see a friend, or to while away an hour. His is a nobler object. It is to worship God, to obtain instruction which shall lead his steps in the ways of righteousness, the paths of peace. At his side sits his mother – “he is the only son of his mother, and she a widow.”
But another form, of dignified, yet gentle, demeanor, enters the door. The placid features of his face, the mildness of his eye, point him out as “the man of God.” His appearance is such as at once to attract the attention. He is very tall, perhaps above six feet. His person is quite spare. He is slightly bowed with age, and as he feebly walks down the aisle, you almost involuntarily rise from your seat as if to do him reverence. He has long been a laborer in his Master’s vineyard. For more than half a century has he proclaimed the glad tidings of salvation from the same pulpit which he now occupies. His mind easily reverts to the time when the whistle of the red man’s bullet was liable at any moment to disturb the worship of God’s people; when the hardy pioneers of Christ and His kingdom came up to the house of God with muskets lashed to their backs. The thriving village in which he now resides was then almost a wilderness; cattle grazed, and corn grew in the fertile valleys from which now rises the populous city. The wild Alleghanies, then the home of the beasts of the forest, now daily echo with the rattle of the stage coach; and the shrill whistle of the locomotive has made the panther and the bear to seek shelter in the more distant West. He is one of a very few of the links which bind the Virginia of the present with the Virginia of fifty years ago. His few remaining silver locks are combed back from a forehead of fine proportions. He enters the sacred desk; bows his head and supplicates the assistance of God’s Spirit. He rises; “Let us worship God,” falls tremblingly from his lips, and the whole congregation rise to their feet. With earnestness, with simplicity, he invokes the presence of Him with whom is the residue of the Spirit. He then slowly turns to that beautiful old hymn, so dear to God’s people —
“Whilst Thee I seek protecting power!
Be my vain wishes stilled;
And may this consecrated hour
With better hopes be filled.”
So distinct is his enunciation that his voice falters on every syllable. Every heart trembles in unison with his, and many an eye is dimmed with the unbidden tear. From almost the entire congregation rises up a united song of praise. One voice after another catches it up, till there is scarcely one which does not join in the melodious hymn.
“They chant their artless notes in simple strain,
They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim;
Perhaps Dundee’s wild, warbling measures rise,
Or plaintive martyr’s, worthy of the name;
Or noble Elgin beats the heavenward flame;
The sweetest far of Scotia’s holy lays:
Compared with these, Italian trills are tame;
The tickled ears no heartfelt raptures raise,
No unison have they with our Creator’s praise.”
“This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief,” is announced as his text.
Such a sermon I never heard before; such an one I am afraid I shall never hear again. His voice, at first weak and tremulous, strengthens as he progresses with his subject. His eye burns with a new lustre; his frame becomes more erect, his features kindle with animation, as with pathetic eloquence he dwells on Christ’s mission to this sin-stained world of ours. And then, his invitation to those who know Him not. How simple, how sublime, how earnest! His whole heart is full of the deepest emotion struggling for utterance. As he looks anxiously on the waiting congregation, and in accents of melting tenderness, says, of whom I am chief! the hot blood rushes unbidden to my face, and the briny tear trickles unconsciously down my cheek.
I shall never forget that Sabbath, that sermon, that minister. They will go with me to my grave. When I am earnestly engaged in other pursuits, ever and anon visions of them flit across my mind, and awaken emotions of the most delightful nature.