Levels of Living | Page 7

the movements of history, in the
forces of nature, they hear Him in the hum of commerce and in the
silence of the fields, in every human voice they catch His tone. He is
ever in the midst. He is more than a force, a dream, a thought. He is to
men to-day what He was to men when He walked their streets and
touched their sick; all that we think He would have been in that long
ago He is to-day.
Personal? Yes, that He may reach persons, for we cannot know
impersonal love or impersonal help. His personality turns the universe
from an institution into an organism. Yet more than personal; this one
in the midst is infinite; He is the whole where we are but fractions. But
He does not hide Himself in His infinity; He is "among you," with men.
Not by descent into the grave of the past, nor by ascent into heaven do
we find Him; He is here, on every hand. This it is that transforms
individual character, to know that He is by my side; this it is that solves
our problems, to see Him linking my fellow to me; this it is that gives

strength, to hear His voice; this it is that gives hope, to know He is
working with us; this it is that makes burdens bearable, to know that He
is sympathetic and strong. This one in the midst explains suffering,
inspires heroism, is the promise and the potency of all the possibilities
of the sons of men.

III
The Sovereignty of Service
Self and Service My Soul or My Service The Satisfaction of Service
The fruits of sacrifice become the roots of love.
A tin halo makes a fine trap for a man to tangle himself in.
It takes the base line of two worlds to get a correct elevation of any life.
Life is always a dull grind to the man who thinks only of the grist.
Knocking the saints will not open the doors of paradise.
Capacity for that heaven comes from creating this one.
Another man's burden is the Christian's best badge.
The only way to lift life is to lay life down.
It doesn't take long to choose between a sinner who swears once in a
while and a saint who makes every one swear all the while.
You cannot lift folks while you are looking down on them.
III
SELF AND SERVICE
There is such a thing as supremely selfish self-denial. A man retires

into the monk's pietic seclusion; he isolates himself from interest in the
world battles; he shuts himself from sympathy with the struggles of
business, civil, and even social life. To him these things are carnal. He
is engrossed with the complication of interpretations of languages long
dead, or with visions of an unknown heaven, and this, he thinks, is
living the life of self-denial.
The denial of self is not the death of self; it is the leading of the best
self into larger life. It is not the dwarfing of the life; it is its
development into usefulness. It is not the emasculation of character; it
is the submission and discipline of the life to new and nobler motives.
He best denies himself who best develops himself with the purpose of
serving his fellows. What Jesus meant was that if any man would be
one of His he must cease to make his own selfish pleasures, ambitions,
and passions the end of his living; he must make the most of himself
that he might have the more to give to the service of mankind; he must
make the one motive and end of his life the benefit and help of every
other man.
That kind of a life means a change of centre. Instead of regarding the
universe as revolving about itself it sees that self as but part of the great
machinery of life, planned and operating for the good of all. A man
begins to deny himself as soon as he begins to love another. Even a
yellow dog may act to deflect the heart from its old self-centre. The
love of kin and family, of friends, and associates all serve to strengthen
the habit of self-denial.
The fewer people a man takes into his plan of life the more likely is he
to be selfish. But some lives are but the more selfish because they take
in all mankind and look on them as designed to contribute to their
single enriching. That kind of a life commits suicide; ever grasping and
never giving it dies of plethora. It had never learned that strange secret
of the best self-development, sacrificing service.
We need to guard ourselves against the delusion that the denial of
oneself means the