I.
A Eace that All must Eun.
" Let us run with patience the race that is set before us."
1. Life is a race : an individual effort, not a fatality. Every man is what his life is ; and his life is just how he has run his race. The road is his ; the opportunity is his ; the means and ap- pliances are his ; and if he fails, the fault is his. To all alike God gives the race, and gives to each the properties for success. Men are differently constituted and gifted, but all have gifts and talents committed to them whereby to run the race of life. To be humble as this world goes is no test of the capacities with which a man is qualified for running the race.
HEBREWS XII. I, 2 461
The coarsest reed that trembles in the marsh, If Heaven select it for its instrument, May shed celestial music on the breeze As clearly as the pipe of virgin gold.
2. What do we see in a race ? Muscles strained ; veins like whipcords ; beaded perspiration ; strenuous, intense, earnest speed. The reality in the mental and spiritual man corresponding to these symbols in the physical man — that is our aim. The figure of the Olympian athlete means a life in earnest or it means nothing. Useful service in life, or duty well done — that is our goal. Temptation met and resisted and conquered — that is our goal. Power to love, to be just, to be pure, to be true, to control external life and internal life — that is our goal. Honest success in the vocation of life which we follow — that is our goal. The success of the Christian lawyer, of the Christian business man, of the Christian artificer, of the Christian scholar, is just so much power added to the personality which he consecrates to the cause of God and to the uplifting of humanity in the world. We should therefore look upon success in pur daily vocation as a duty which we owe to God and man. We should push our business or bur study, or our practice, or our manual toil until it has become a success. To reach success in every case will take hard work ; but to do hard and healthful work is the purpose of God in bringing us into the world. Hard work has always been the condition of success in all the departments of life. No man ever became a Bunsen or a Faraday in the laboratory apart from endless experimenting with chemicals. No man or woman ever went up the way of the violin, or the way of the piano, or the way of the organ, or the way of the orchestra, except by labour. The Beethovens, the Mendelssohns, the Mozarts, the Haydns, and the Handels, who cheer human life with their sweet- ness of music, were all incarnated energy and ambition and push.
^ The end of Mozart's life can be compared to nothing but a torch burning out rapidly in the wind. Unwearied alike as a composer and an artist, he kept pouring forth symphonies, sonatas, and operas, whilst disease could not shake his nerve as an execu- tant, and the hand of death found him unwilling to relinquish the pen of the ready writer. In April, 1783, we find him playing at no less than twenty concerts. The year 1785 is marked by the
462 THE RACE SET BEFORE US
six celebrated quartets dedicated to Haydn. In 1791 he entered upon his thirty-sixth and last year. Into it, amongst other works, were crowded La Clemenza di Tito, II Flauto Magico, and the Eequiem. His friends looked upon his wondrous career, as we have since looked upon Mendelssohn's, with a certain sad and bewildered astonishment. That prodigious childhood — that spring mellow with all the fruits of autumn — that startling haste "as the rapid of life shoots to the fall " — we understand it now. He would constantly remain writing at the Eequiem long after his dinner-hour. Neither fatigue nor hunger seemed to rouse him from his profound contemplation. At night he would sit brood- ing over the score until he not infrequently swooned in his chair. . . . One mild autumn morning his wife drove him out in an open carriage to some neighbouring woods. As he breathed the soft air, scented with the yellow leaves that lay thickly strewn around, he discovered to her the secret of the Eequiem. " I am writing it," he said, " for myself." A few days of flattering hope followed, and then Mozart was carried to the bed from which he was never destined to rise. Vienna was at that time ringing with the fame of his last opera. They brought him the rich appointment of organist to the Cathedral of St. Stephen, for which he had been longing all his life. Managers besieged his doors with handfuls of gold, summoning him to compose something for them — too late. He lay with swollen limbs and burning head, awaiting another summons. On the night of December 5, 1791, his wife, his sister, Sophie Weber, and his friend Slismayer, were with him. The score of the Eequiem lay open upon his bed. As the last faintness stole over him, he turned to Siismayer — his lips moved freely — he was trying to indicate a peculiar effect of kettle-drums in the score. It was the last act of expiring thought ; his head sank gently back ; he seemed to fall into a deep and tranquil sleep. In another hour he had ceased to breathe.^