In any department of life, no matter where it be, the man who can look up and admire something that is higher than his present attainment,- he is the one who is reaching out towards God. This, again, is one of the main qualities and characteristics of what we must agree to speak of as human. There is one more that I wish to touch on a moment. You may not agree with me here; but it seems to me that the grandest men of the world have been those who have felt that this life was but a beginning, who have laid out their lives on a scheme that included the Beyond, who have said, This is but a fragment, who have felt, as did Victor Hugo in his old age, that he had just begun to express what was in him, who felt that this life was only the porch, the gateway, and that there is an infinite outreach beyond. They are those who have purposely, consciously, planned their lives with this in mind, and have been grandly content, if need be, with temporary and partial failure here, so they were true to their ideals, and have said, No matter: yonder is to be the fruition of my hopes, the culmination of all my endeavor. This, again, I think, is one of the peculiar characteristics of the highest type of man. One more, and the last. The grandest men in all ages have tried to link their lives with God's. Perhaps, humbly, some of them have refrained from saying "God." All of them, if they have thought deeply and carefully, have been conscious of the fact that their idea of God must be infinitely, pitifully small as compared with the unthinkable reality. But they have believed there was a purpose in this life, a line of light and leading running through it; and they have not been content to live their own little lives, but have tried to link them in with this great movement, this onward march of the invisible. And they have bowed in the presence of their thought of this God, have dared to hope that he was their father, have dared to believe that he cared for all who cared and tried, and have have felt that, so long as they were true to him, no matter what failure came, success must crown the outcome. Now, friends, is it not true that these qualities, characteristics, peculiarities, that I have thus touched on and briefly attempted to define, are those which are essential to a man? Is a man a man who lacks these? Does he fill out your ideal? Does he come up to the fulness of the stature of your dream of what is possible to humanity? The few men who have in some way expressed the human ideal in this direction men have called divine. They have been worshipped, they have been regarded as expressions and manifestations of the divine life here on earth, and they have witnessed to the fact that men believed that the highest human life takes hold of the divine and becomes partner with it for the accomplishment of its work. Now what place has the Church in a human life as thus defined? Do you not see,-I need to take very little of your time in answering.- do you not see that merely pointing out the fact is the answer? The Church is the one institution, is the only institution, on the face of the earth that concerns itself chiefly with just these peculiarities and characteristics which make our ideal of humanity. The Church is organized for the purpose of cultivating and developing these ideals; that is, of making men men in the highest sense of that word, making women women in the noblest sense in which we can dream. That is what the Church is for. Is there any other institution on the face of the earth that exists specifically for these ends? I do not know of one. You may devote yourselves as much as you please to the organization and success of any other institution, and leave most of these out. I am perfectly well aware that no one Church on the face of the earth perfectly embodies these ideals; but the Church is the only institution that attempts to embody them in any complete and perfect way. Now the upshot of it is that the Church must, as it has in the past,— if we are true, if we are noble, if we are worthy, occupy the supreme place in a human life. Is it not so? Does not this appeal simply to your common sense, to your reason as men? Now I do not say, as the result of what I have been discoursing, that you must attend this church or any Unitarian church. Perhaps I may say, and not contradict in principle what I have just uttered, some men may not necessarily attend any church. But you must consecrate your lives to the development of those things for which the Church stands, and is the only institution on earth which does stand. And you know perfectly well that, if you give some time and some place and some specific effort to the accomplishment of definite ends, they are a good deal more likely to be accomplished than they are if you leave them to take care of themselves hap-hazard. If you link yourselves with the Church, then, the Church which at present embodies the highest which you can find, and try to make it what it ought to be, try to live out its ideals in your own life, try to help others live them out in theirs, you are much more likely, are you not, to develop those things which are highest and finest and sweetest in human nature than you are if you leave these to take care of themselves? The finest and most beautiful flower may possibly grow wild, develop itself in the wilderness. We will grant the possibility. But those who have hundreds and hundreds of kinds of roses, the most delicate, dainty, beautiful on the face of the earth, are the ones who cultivate them, devote time and money and care to them, who shelter them, who set apart special places for them, who do their utmost to bring them to perfection. The men who have the most perfect. orchids are the ones who have places and times for the cultivation of the orchid, giving it the best possible opportunity. You may find a beautiful one wild; but they are rare. So, if you wish to come to the highest and finest and sweetest that there is in humanity, ought you not to give time, to give care, to give effort, to give devotion to this which is the supremest end of life? Father, let us consecrate ourselves to Thee, give ourselves to that which is highest and finest and best, and be grateful to Thee that we may help others also in attaining that which is the noblest end of existence. Amen. |