^ One of the most distinguished men in this country once described in a public address what he called his creed. Hf disclaimed any intention of speaking in the name of religion. " I do not trench," he said, " on the province of spiritual guides." None the less, he was led to sum up his faith in what he called the triune formula of the joy, the duty, and the end of life. What is the joy of life ? It is to use one's powers. And what is the duty of life ? It is to do with thy might what thy hand finds to do. And what is the end of life ? It is nothing else than life itself. So to live as to live more truly, wisely, effectively, abundantly, — that is at once joy, duty, and end. It is most interesting to observe a man who may be properly called, in the best
438 GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD
sense, a man of the world, approaching so closely to the language of the Christian religion. Throughout the New Testament the aim of life is to gain more life. " I came," says Jesus, " that they may have life, and may have it abundantly." What is the reward of one's bodily exercise ? It is the capacity to use the body more effectively. You train your life, and the result of your training is more life. What is the reward of keeping your temper ? It is the capacity to keep your temper better. What is the consequence of doing your duty ? It is the ability to do more duties. Out of the duty done opens the strength to do a larger duty. You have been faithful over a few things and become the ruler over many things.
There is, however, one striking difference between the self- cultivating life and the Christian life. The man of the world finds the joy and duty and end of life in its increase of his own resources. The Christian teaching finds that joy and duty and end, not in getting, but in giving life. " I came," says Jesus, not to secure more life for Myself, but "that they may have life." " He that fiudeth his life shall lose it ; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." "Death worketh in us," says the Apostle Paul, " but life in you." The triune formula of joy, duty, and end, according to the Christian teaching, is discovered in the communicative and self-propagating nature of spiritual power. What is the joy of life ? It is the discovery of the capacity to inspire life. And what is the duty of life ? It is not acquisition, but service. And what is the end of life, or, in the language of the New Testament, its crown ? It is not a crown of gold, or gems, which one may wear on his own head ; it is, as the Book of Revelation says, " a crown of life," — the increase of capacity, the enrichment of opportunity, the chance to be of use, the power to say with Jesus Christ : " I give unto them eternal life." ^
(3) Life is the realization of self — What a responsibility it is to live at all, to be one link in that great chain of existence which God is ever weaving in the secrets of His providence. Just as in some great carpet factory you see the coloured threads darting in under the swift-gliding machinery — to be lost, as you think, in the intricacies of the meshes — but reappearing, a tuft here, a shade there, a colour there, in a pattern slowly unfolding at your feet, so nations, individuals, lives great and small appear, disappear, reappear in the great secrets of God's will. It is a wonderful thing to live ; even to have opened our eyes on the order, the
F. G. Peabody, Mornings in the College Chapelt ii. 107.
ST. JOHN X. TO 439
beauty of this world, with its marvellous history and its glorious possibility, is to merit that burst of approving wonder, if one may venture to say so with reverence, which escaped from the lips of our blessed Lord, " Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see."
But what is that undertone of sorrow which we see stamped sometimes as the dominant mark of expression on the faces we meet ? What is that awful mystery of pain and death and sickness and bereavement ? It is the echo of the old wail of the Greek tragedy, " Not to be born is the best thing in the world, and failing that, to die as quickly as possible, and to fade away into nothingness." A life alone, unilluminated, unspiritualized, unhelped, may be a doubtful blessing after all.
It was just when men had found out this, just when it .was bursting upon them in the most bitter anguish of a startling truth, when emperors were offering a reward to any one who could teach them a new pleasure, when Stoics were asserting that death was the end and the only mode of escape from the evils of life — it was then that a new revelation burst upon the world, heralded by the angels who appeared in the heavens on that Christmas Eve ; God came to make life a richer blessing, a truer happiness, to make possible that life which alone can be called life. He came in His Incarnation, with His glorious proclamation, to which the suffer- ing world clings with eager tenacity, " I came that they may have life." Man may now claim something more than existence, something more even than a conscious contribution to the great widening out of the ages ; he can claim life in its highest form, supernatural life, by the power and the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ. Supernatural life, what is this ? A life which is above nature, above its aches and pains, its failures, its disappointments, above death itself. " I came that they may have life."