Levels of Living: Essays on Everyday IdealsCope, Henry Frederick
Religion
Levels of Living: Essays on Everyday Ideals
Cope, Henry Frederick
Conduct of life
Jesus, Shakespeare, Browning, Lowell, Emerson left no goods and
chattels, no bonds and mortgages; they left inspirations; they
bequeathed ideals; living first for the soul, their souls survive and
remain to us all. The truly great who still stand after the test of
the years are those who have lived for the spirit.
This is as true of the worker and the warrior as of the philosopher and
poet. All were inspired by glowing visions; they set their affections
on things above the trifles for which we struggle and spend ourselves.
They endured as seeing glories to us invisible; therefore their names
endure.
The great undertakings of our own day are possible only under spiritual
inspirations. No rewards of money only can induce a man to steadfastly
conduct affairs of great moment and enterprise; he is buoyed up by a
great hope; often the very greatness of the task and the sense of
serving great ends carry him on; always he sees the worth in the ideal
rather than the wage.
We must learn to measure life with the sense of the infinite. We must
not think that a man has failed because he has not left burdened
warehouses and bonds. We must cease to think that we can tell whether
work be high or lowly by the size of the wage. We need eyes to see the
glory of the least act in the light of the glowing motive.
A new estimate is placed on each act when it is measured not by bread
alone but by the things of the soul. The mother's care of the
children; the father's steady humble toil for them, the faithful
watching over the sick, the ministry of the lowly, all have a new glory
in the light of the love that leads the way and the spirit that guides
those who do the least of these things.
We need to learn for ourselves what is the work that endures. It is a
good thing to lay a course of bricks so that it shall be true, but of
greater value to the world than the wall that stands firm is the spirit
that forces the man to build aright. No man can do even this without
an ideal set in his heart, and when the wall shall have fallen the
world shall still be enriched by his ideal.
Too many of us are fretting because we are not getting on in the world.
Seeing the apparent ease with which some acquire fortune, we become
discontented with our small gains. We talk as though fortunes and
follies, money and lands were the only things worth while. Yet we know
better, for we all find our real joys in other things.
THE BREAD OF LIFE
There are lives that have bread in abundance and yet are starved; with
barns and warehouses filled, with shelves and larders laden they are
empty and hungry. No man need envy them; their feverish, restless
whirl in the dust of publicity is but the search for a satisfaction
never to be found in things. They are called rich in a world where no
others are more truly, pitiably poor; having all, they are yet lacking
in all because they have neglected the things within.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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