What All The World's A-Seeking: The Vital Law of True Life, True Greatness Power and HappinessTrine, Ralph Waldo
Religion
What All The World's A-Seeking: The Vital Law of True Life, True Greatness Power and Happiness
Trine, Ralph Waldo
Character; Christian life; Conduct of life
Let us then to the answer, examine it closely, see if it will stand
every test, if it is the true one, and if so, rejoice that we have found
it, lay hold of it, build upon it, tell others of it. The last four
words have already entered us at the open door. The idea has prevailed
in the past, and this idea has dominated the world, that _self_ is the
great concern,--that if one would find success, greatness, happiness, he
must give all attention to self, and to self alone. This has been the
great mistake, this the fatal error, this the _direct_ opposite of the
right, the true as set forth in the great immutable law that--_we find
our own lives in losing them in the service of others_, in longer
form--the more of our lives we give to others, the fuller and the
richer, the greater and the grander, the more beautiful and the more
happy our own lives become. It is as that great and sweet soul who when
with us lived at Concord said,--that generous giving or losing of your
life which saves it.
This is an expression of one of the greatest truths, of one of the
greatest principles of practical ethics the world has thus far seen. In
a single word, it is _service_,--not self but the other self. We shall
soon see, however, that our love, our service, our helpfulness to
others, invariably comes back to us, intensified sometimes a hundred or
a thousand or a thousand thousand fold, and this by a great, immutable
law.
The Master Teacher, he who so many years ago in that far-away Eastern
land, now in the hill country, now in the lake country, as the people
gathered round him, taught them those great, high-born, and tender
truths of human life and destiny, the Christ Jesus, said identically
this when he said and so continually repeated,--"He that is greatest
among you shall be your servant"; and his whole life was but an
embodiment of this principle or truth, with the result that the greatest
name in the world to-day is his,--the name of him who as his life-work,
healed the sick; clothed the naked; bound up the broken-hearted;
sustained the weak, the faltering; befriended and aided the poor, the
needy; condemned the proud, the vain, the selfish; and through it all
taught the people to love justice and mercy and service, to live in
their higher, their diviner selves,--in brief, to _live_ his life, the
Christ-life, and who has helped in making it possible for this greatest
principle of practical ethics the world has thus far seen to be
enunciated, to be laid hold of, to be lived by to-day. "He that is
greatest among you shall be your servant," or, he who would be truly
great and recognized as such must find it in the capacity of a servant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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