^ I remember some years ago being present at a meeting held
' The Gospel of Jvy, 269. ^ Bishop Gore.
* E. Brewin. * E. W. Dale.
ST. MARK . 203
in honour of an old teacher who was passing into retirement. A large company had gathered together, among them men who had made their mark in public life. Several of these rose and spoke in the old man's praise. He was not a man of unusual attainments or of notable gifts, but he had evidently done these men, who were paying him honour, a service they had come long distances to acknowledge. As I listened to the words of generous eulogy I discerned what it was that drew them all to respectful gratitude. The words they quoted with deepest feeling were not his pregnant comments on men and things, not his wittiest jests, and not his wisest counsels. They were the words in which they had felt the trembling of a deep passion, all the deeper for a shy man's reticence, which believed that each of them had a spiritual nature to be created anew in the image of Christ. These men, busy in the keen struggle of life, one by one bowed down in reverence before the man whose years had been spent, and whose duty had been fulfilled, under a supreme sense of the value of the soul.i
IIL
The Exchange.
The exchange is to give the man himself, all that makes him a man, for the things that are without. And when the discovery is made that the exchange is a bad one, it is the futile attempt to get back the man in exchange for the things. But it may be considered in respect of the physical life, the intellectual life, the moral and social hfe, and the spiritual life.
1. The Physical Life. — Does it profit a man if he gain the world and forfeit his physical life ? Is the loss of bodily strength, physical vigour, nervous energy, and all the capacity for enjoyment which these things briug — is that loss sufficiently offset by the gain of a whole world ? The other evening I counted over in my mind no fewer than thirteen men who within recent years had died under fifty-two years of age literally from the pressure of overwork. These were all highly successful men, not licentious nor drunkards, and not all of them were irreligious men. But in gaining their little world they had simply toiled and struggled for themselves, denied
' W. M. Clow.
204 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
themselves hours of relaxation and rest. Late and soon they were at the daily grind of getting without spending, and, physically depicted, they died, not only in the prime of manhood, but in the summit of success, when, humanly speaking, there was everything to live for. They had gained a world, and had forfeited the only life which could enjoy it. At their funerals, I doubt not, remarks were made on the mysterious Providence which had cut short their days in the meridian of their maturity. But, as a matter of fact, there was no mysterious Providence about it. The men had died by their own acts, by the surrender of the righteous claims of their physical life in the struggle to gain a world. Well, was it worth while ? Does that bargain pay ? Is money of so much matter to any man that he should make himself a suicide for that one end ? ^
^ One summer afternoon a steamer crowded with passengers, many of them miners from California, was speeding along the Mississippi. Striking suddenly and strongly against the wreck of another vessel, which, unknown to the captain, lay near the surface of the water, her bow was stove in, and she began to fill rapidly. Her deck was a scene of wild confusion. Her boats were launched, but did not suffice to carry off one-fourth of the terrified passengers. The rest, divesting themselves of their garments, cast themselves into the river, " some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship. And so it came to pass that they escaped all safe to land." All except one. Some minutes after the last of them had quitted the vessel, another man appeared on her deck. Seizing a spar, he also leaped into the river, but, instead of floating, as the others had done, he sank instantly, as if he had been a stone. His body was afterwards recovered, and it was found that he had employed the quarter of an hour in which his fellow passengers had been striving to save their lives, in rifling the trunks of the miners. All round his waist their bags of gold were fastened. In one short quarter of an hour he had gained more gold than most men earn in their lifetime.^
2. The Intellectual Life. — You can see men dying, dying as trees sometimes die, not from the roots but from the top. It is a melancholy sight. Their intellect is dying year by year as they become richer. Fifteen years ago their intellectual interests were vigorous, varied, and active ; now they are
* D, .*!age Mackay. ' A. 0. Price.
ST. MARK 205
narrow, monotonous, and languid; their whole strength has gone into the pursuit of wealth, and all their higher in- tellectual faculties are withering. I do not mean merely that very much of the book knowledge that they had when they left school or college has been lost — loss of that kind is almost inevitable, and no great harm comes of it. I remember hearing a very able man, who was a high wrangler (I am not sure whether he was not a senior), I remember hearing him say, " I should be very sorry if I remembered all the mathematics I knew when I took my degree." But men not only lose their book knowledge, they lose their very intellectual life. Through this passionate devotion to business some of the intellectual powers decay, and you can see them decaying, and that, I say, is a melancholy thing ; they keep their eyesight, their hearing is as keen as ever ; but their higher faculties are fast going ; they are no longer able to feel the enchantment, the fascination, the wonder of the great creations of genius — Milton's majestic song, the meditative verse of Wordsworth, the sweet music of Shelley, the storm winds that sweep through the verse of Byron, the childlike charm of Charles Lamb, the political vision of Edmund Burke and the gorgeous pomp of his rhetoric — have lost all power to console, to charm, to animate them.^