Levels of Living | Page 4

prime thing, the life; it
is easy to forget that the great question is not, what have you? but, what
are you?
Life cannot consist in things any more than silk can consist of shuttles,
or pictures of brushes and palettes. Life is both process and product;

but things and fame and power are no more than the tools and
machinery serving to perfect the product. Life must consist in thoughts,
experiences, motives, ideals--in a word, in character. A man's life is
what he is.
But what a man is will depend on what he does with the things he has
or may have. Let him once set the possession of things as his loftiest
ideal, let this avarice of things enter the heart and speedily the love of
the good will leave. To that god all honour, all truth loving, all
gentleness and humanity are sacrificed. When possession becomes
life's ruling passion it doesn't take long for principle to be forgotten.
The danger to-day is not that our people will fail in the world's contests
because they lack either money, mind, or muscle. We are in little
danger from illiteracy or from business incompetency; but we are in
danger from moral paralysis, due to undue pressure on the money nerve.
We have talked before the youth in the home and amongst ourselves on
the street as though the only thing worth living for was money, as
though they alone were great who had it and they only to be despised
who had it not.
The danger is neither in our market, our commerce, nor our laws; the
danger is in our own hearts. No matter how world-potent our
merchandise, how marvellous our mechanical and material powers,
how brilliant our business strategy, all will not avail to silence the voice,
"Thou fool, this night thy soul is required of thee." Then whose shall
these things be?
We need, not fewer things, not the return to an age of poverty or dreary
destitution; we need more power over things; to let the man, so long
buried beneath the money and the lands and houses, come to the top; to
set ourselves over our things; to make them serve us, minister to our
lives and our purposes in living.
There must be an elevation of standards, the institution of new
valuations, clearer, nobler conceptions of what living means. Boys and
girls must be taught from the beginning that life is more than
self-serving, more than fame or glory; it is the service of humanity. A

passion for humanity will cure the passion for gold, will teach the true
value of life as something that only the infinite can estimate and will
give to the heart those true riches that do not tarnish and that cannot be
stolen.

II
Invisible Allies
More Than a Fighting Chance The Unseen Hand The One in the Midst

Logic may illumine, but love leads.
The religion that produces no sunshine is all moonshine.
Imaginary evils have more than imaginary effects.
He who lays out each day with prayer leaves it with praise.
Light from above is for the path below.
Singing of heaven gives no certainty of singing in heaven.
It is better to have your bank in heaven than your heaven in a bank.
The burdens of earth demand that our hearts be nourished with the
bread of heaven.
There are too many hungry for love for any ever to talk of suffering
from loneliness.
The man who lives with God does not have to advertise the fact.
II
MOKE THAN A FIGHTING CHANCE

Who has not cried out, in haste but still in anguish: "Alas! All things
are against me; foes are many and friends there are none!" The roads to
pessimism are many; but surely this is the shortest one, to get to think
that life is but a conflict waged single-handed against great odds, a long
story of struggle, difficulties, pains, disappointments, temptations,
failures, wounds, ending only in death.
Even though you escape that chronic jaundiced view of life there are
seasons of depression when it seems easy to get out of bed on the
wrong side and to plow all day into stumps instead of in the good, clear
ground. Ever we need the vision that Elisha of old gave to his young
man, to see the hills about us alive with our allies. Otherwise it is easy
to conclude the fates fight against us.
How slight is the evidence on which men base their gloomy
conclusions! The pessimist always argues from a single instance to a
general law. If he strikes a poor peach on top he throws the whole
basket away--or sells them as soon as he can. He insists on sitting
square on the cactus bunch when there is only