“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.

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THE POOR CONSUMPTIVE.

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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.

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