A Career? or God's Will?

“Dear Lord, my wUlfrom thine doth run
Too oft a different way;
I cannot say, Thy will be dons’*

Through all life’s darkened day.
My heart grows chill to see thy will
Turn all eartKs gold to gray.

“My will is set to gather flowers
Thine blights them in my hand;

Mine reaxihesfor lifers sunny hours
Thine leads through shadow-land;

And all my days go on in ways
I cannot understand,”**

a Career.^ or doD’sj miiu

HAT is success? What is the true aim in life? What should one, setting out to make his way through this world, take as the goal of all his striving? Views of life differ widely. Many men think they are in this world to make a career for themselves. They set out with some splendid vision of success in their mind, and they devote their life to the realizing of this vision. If they fail in this, they suppose they have failed in life. If they achieve their dream, they consider themselves, and are considered by their fellow-men, successful. The world has no other standard of success. It may be the amassing of wealth; it may be the winning of power among men in the state or in war; it may be the triumph of skill or of [131]

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genius in art, in literature, in music, in oratory, — whatever the definite object may be, it is purely an earthly ambition. The two elements in the life, according to this view, are, that the career is one which the world honors, and that a man wins worthy distinction in it. Applying this standard to life, but few men are really successful. Great men are as rare as lofty mountain peaks. Only a few win the high places; the mass remain in the low vales. The percentage of those who succeed in business is small. In the professions, too, in literature, in art, in civil life, in all the callings, it is the same, — only a few win honor, rise into fame, achieve distinction, while the great multitude remain in obscurity or go down in the dust of earthly defeat.

Is this the only standard of success in life? Do all men, save the few who win earth’s prizes, really fcdl? Is there no other kind of success? The world’s answer gives no comfort to those who find themselves among the unhonored. But [ 132 ] a Career or «od*ibi mnu

there is another sphere, the sphere of the invisible. There is a life whose tokens and tests are not material, but spiritual. One may utterly fail, so far as earthly results are concerned, and yet, in the realm invisible, be a splendid winner in the race. Faithfulness in the humblest part

Is better, at least, than proud success; And patience and love in a chastened heart

Are pearls more precious than happiness; And in the morning when we shall awake

To the springtime freshness ofyovth again, All troubles will seem but a Jlying Jlake, And lifelong sorrow a breath on the pane”

The true test of life is character. All else is extraneous, belonging only to the husk, which shall fall off in the day of ripening; character is the kernel, the wheat, that which is true and enduring. Nothing is worth while save that which we can carry with us through death into eternity. St. Paul puts it in a sentence when he says, “The things which are [ 133 ]

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seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.“”

It is altogether possible that a man may fail of winning any earthly greatness, any distinction among men, anything that will immortalize him in this worlds calendars, and yet be richly and nobly successful in moral things, in character, in a ministry of useftilness, in things which shall abide when mountains have crumbled. It is possible for one to fall behind in the race for wealth, for honor, for distinction in art or literature, and yet all the while to be building up in himself a fabric of beauty and strength which angels shall admire. Here is a man who at mid-life is a physical wreck. He has dropped out of the ranks and fallen far behind those who at the first were his comrades. He is a hopeless invalid. The other day the physician said that he never can be any better. He may live for many years, yet there is nothing before him but pathetic invalidism.

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Shall we say that this mane’s life is a failure because of his physical condition, which has put a stop to all effort and compels him to sit with folded hands in the shadows, watching busy men at their tasks as they continue to win honor and success? No, his life is not a failure. He has lived nobly all his years. There is not a stain upon his name. He has been building up in himself a character in which the beatitudes shine, — lowliness, meekness, hunger for righteousness, mercifulness, purity of heart, the peacemaking spirit. He has won no name in the world’s ranks, but he has followed Christ faithfully, and has pleased him. He has lived a life of love, too — love which has expressed itself not merely in word, but in countless ministries of grace to those who have turned to him in faith and expectation for sjnmpathy and help. He has had God and heaven in all his life, and has lived near the heart of Christ. No doubt there is a mystery about the strange ways of Providence with him, but we may be [136]

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sure that this good mans life is in God’s sight no less successful now, when all activity has ceased, than it was in the days when he was busiest, fall of energy and toil. Who will say, indeed, that these are not his best days? While the outer man has been perishing, decaying, may not the inner man have been growing in all worthy qualities, in all spiritual graces, in the things which shall endure forever? Ofttimes it is in what the world regards as failure that a man really achieves his noblest and best success. Many a man has found his soul only when he had lost his fortune or his health or his place.

“God lets us go our way alone,

Till we are homesick and distressed,
And humbly, then, come hack to own
His way is best.

“He lets us thirst by Horebs rock.
And hunger in the wilderness;
Yet, at our feeblest, faintest knock,
He waits to bless.
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“He lets us faint in far-off lands,

And feed on husks, and feel the smart. Till we come home with empty hands. And swelling heart.

“But then for us the robe and ring.
The Fathers welcome and the feast,
While over us the angels sing, — Though last and least.”

We are not accustomed to thank God for our disappointments, for the blighting of our earthly hopes and expectations, for the failure of our plans, but we might safely do so, ofttimes; for it is in such experiences as these that we are led to the sources of truest blessedness and most enduring honor.

“Thank God for failure, shattered hopes, lost aims. And ungained garlands, for he knoweth best. They also serve who only stand and wait*; Perchance they also win who seem to fail; God’s eye sees clearer than our earth-dimmed sight.”

What is the standard of success in the sphere [ 137 ]

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of the unseen and the spiritual? It is the doing of the will of God. He who does the will of Grod makes his life radiant and beautiful, though in the worWs scale he is rated as having altogether failed in the battle. He who is true, just, right, and pure, pleasing Gk)d and living imselfishly, is the man who succeeds while all others fail.

Really, there is no other final and infallible standard of living. One who writes his name highest in earths lists, and yet has not done Gkxls will, meanwhile, has failed, as the angels look at his career. Grod had a purpose in our creation and redemption, and we succeed only when oiu” life carries out this purpose. The most radiant career, as it appears to men, means nothing if it is not that for which Grod made us. We fail in life if we do not realize God’s will for us.

In one of Browning’s poems is the beautiful

story of a boy working at his poor trade and

praising Grod mom, noon, and night. But one

whispered in the boy’s ear a word which left in his mind a feeling of discontent with his lowly plcue and work, and started in his heart a desire for something great and conspicuous. He craved now to praise Grod in the pope’s great and splendid way in St. Peter’s dome. He left his poor trade and became a priest. Meanwhile Gabriel took up the boy’s tasks and played the craftsman well, praising God in his place. At last Theocrite realized his early dream — he was pope now in St. Peter’s. But Gabriel appeared to him, saydng: —

/ did not well when I took thee from thy craftsmans cell and set thee here.

Go back to thy cell and thy poor employ;

Resume the craftsman and the boy. He seemed to be serving God now in a far grander way than when he was working at his trade in his lowly plcue. But really he pleased God better in those early days than now, amid splendor and pomp. God had missed the boy’s song all the years — his place had been really [139]

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vacant since he left it. Only when he went back to his poor employ was he fulfilling the divine plan for his life.

We live worthily only when we do what God sent us here to do. A splendid career in the sight of men has no splendor in heavetfs sight if it be but the prompting of human ambition, if it be not God’s thought for the life. The praise that pleases God best is that which is sung in the place where our life belongs. Heaven misses in the chorus the sweet voice strayed from the lowly place where it should be heard, and singing now in some sphere of honor to which it was never assigned. Not the making of a fine career, therefore, but the simple doing of God’s will is the one true aim in living. Thus only can we achieve real success. If we do this, though we fail in the earthly race, we shall not fail in God’s sight. We may make no name among men, may rear for ourself no monument of earthly glory, but if we please God by a life of obedience and [140] a Career? or dPoD’g mnu

lowly service, and build up within us a character in which divine qualities shine, we shall have attained abiding success. The only way, therefore, to make our life nobly and truly successful is to devote ourself to the doing of God’s will. It is not the things we want to do that are the best, but the things Grod would have us do, Ofttimes these may be things which to oiu: thought it is scarcely worth while to do, and the turning aside from our fine schemes and conspicuous efforts to attend to these trivialities may appear to be a wasting of talent and time. But always God’s will is the grandest thing we can find to do in all the world, though it be in men’s eyes the lowliest task our hands can do. An autobiographical passage in the life of Norman McLeod illustrates this. “My life,” he says,” is not what I would have chosen. I often long for quiet, for reading, and for thought. It seems to me to be a very paradise to be able to read, to think, go deep into things, to gather [141 ]

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the glorious riches of intellectual culture.... God has forbidden it to me in his providence. I must spend hours in receiving people who wish to speak to me about all manner of trifles; must reply to letters about nothing; must engage in public work on everything; must employ my life on what seems uncongenial, vanishing, temporary, waste. Yet God knows me better than I know myself. He knows my gifts, my powers, my failings, and my weakness; what I can do, and what not do. So I desire to be led, and not to lead; to follow him. I am quite sure he has thus enabled me to do a great deal more in ways which seemed to me almost a waste of life, in advancing his kingdom, than I would have done any other way.“” The most successftil life is the one which falls in the most cheerfully and the most completely with the will of God. It will not be an indolent life, nor will it be aimless and purposeless. It is the will of God that every power of our being shall be brought out, trained, and dis- [142] a Career? or dPoD’g mnu

ciplined to its highest possibility, and devoted to the noblest and worthiest service. But the dominant influence in our life should always be the will of God and not any ambition of our own. Then shall we fulfil the purpose God had in his thought for us, when he made us and sent us into the world. And this will be the noblest career possible for us.

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