The Relative and the Absolute
“And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest.” — LUKE xxii. 24.
THE strife was among the disciples of Jesus, and it took place at the very table where He sat with them on the night before His crucifixion. We say “How strange it was!” and it was very strange, in deed. That the personal presence of their Master should not have taken those men up above all question of precedence or superiority, and made each rejoice to hope and believe that the other was a greater man and a better disciple than himself, — this certainly was strange. But, after all, there is some thing to be gained out of the story, in the reminder which it gives us that these men were still men, that even with Christ visibly among them, the occupation of their natures by His power had to be gradual and slow, and so that we must not be too ready to despair either of ourselves or of each other. It ought to make us see how the new power of Christ does not destroy, but purifies and uses the faculties and dispositions which it finds in man. This last will be the special lesson from the story on which I shall dwell to-day.
Think, then, of that old picture. Artists have tried to put it upon canvas, and not one of them has satisfied that imagination of it which has been bright in Christian souls that saw in it the essence of their faith. Jesus, the Master, sits at the table, and all around Him are His twelve disciples. He is the Life, and so His presence sheds vitality on every side. It is like the sun shining on a fertile field; all kinds of dispositions and emotions spring up freely. Love, regret, indignation, resolution, expectation — these and a host of others are all there. And among all the rest, out of these fruitful hearts quickened by the warm sunshine of Christ’s nature present with them, springs up emulation. The disciples begin to look suspiciously on one another. The clear air becomes thick with comparisons. They are not content to be asking simply how great and good each of them can be, but there grows up in each soul a desire to be greater and better than the others. There is a strife among them which of them shall be accounted the greatest.
We want, first of all, to recognize how perfectly natural this is. There are two ways in which a man may estimate his progress and the position which he holds at any moment. There is the absolute method, and there is the comparative method. Take your profession. You are engaged in some one of the great recognized departments of human action. You have been engaged in it for a long time. You have been working as a mechanic, a lawyer, a merchant, or a physician for many years. You ask yourself some morning, “How do I stand to-day?”
I am sure there is no better test of what sort of man you are than the way in which you go about to get your answer. More significant than the answer which you get is the way in which you go about to get it. On the one hand, you may look round and see how other men are doing. You may take men whose life in your profession is recognized as a success, and ask yourself whether you are as successful as they. “Am I as honest, as prosperous, as well esteemed as this man or as that man who, upon the whole, is accepted as a fair specimen of what a man in this profession ought to be?” You try to find your true place in a long scale marked and graduated by the greater or less attainment of your brethren. That is the comparative method of self-estimate.
On the other hand, instead of looking about upon your brethren you may sit down and try to realize absolutely what your profession and the man working in it ought to be. You try to summon back that vision of it which you saw burning before your imagination when you first set out upon it. You summon its essential principles and pure ideas. You ask yourself how far you have satisfied the final purposes for which your occupation has its being in the world. That is the absolute method of self-estimate.
The difference is clear. And if we let ourselves think, not of two men calmly judging of their lives in these two ways, but of two men living their lives under the impulses which these two ways of judgment will create, — then the difference is more striking still. One man is anxious to outstrip as many of his brethren as possible; the other is anxious to get as near as possible to the true standard of his occupation. One is all keenly alive with rivalry; the other is earnestly set upon attainment.
When we state it thus, I think we see at once how the absolute method and impulse are finer and higher than the comparative, and at the same time we realize how largely the comparative method and impulse rule the lives of men. Look at the boy at school; is it always pure love of learning that makes him struggle so to learn his lesson? Surely not! It is the passion to outstrip the other boys and win the head of the class or the medal that shall show he has surpassed them. Look at the busy citizen, eager in all public affairs, restless, observant, impatient, putting a useful hand to necessary tasks of every kind. Is it a simple public spirit that inspires him? Surely not! A desire to be first among the citizens, to be more valued by his fellow-citizens than any other — that certainly is a large part of what we see kindling in his eye and moving in his tireless hands and feet. It is a race, not merely to do the distance and to do it in a certain time, but to do it in shorter time than other men, — that is what makes it fascination. To see our fellow-runner, who is far in front of us at first, grow nearer as we gain upon him, and by and by to feel ourselves close at his side; and then to hear his footfalls die away behind us as we shoot far ahead, — that is a large part of the fascination of the running. To take out competition, to bid each man do his work from the pure impulse of the work itself, to bid each man run round the race-course of his life alone, do we not know what listless runners that would make?
When we talk thus of rivalry or emulation, we see immediately its dangers and how great they are. We see how rivalry must oftentimes be tempted to detract from the good name of others, and to hold those back whom it is hard to keep up with or surpass. That is one danger. And there also is the danger of too easy self-content, the danger which comes to all of us when we have found no competitors in any particular race whom we could not outstrip, and yet are far from having put forth all the power that is in us, or from reaching the goal which is the only really worthy satisfaction.
Among the men whose struggles are comparative, not absolute, the ugly, envious faces and the complacent, satisfied faces are too common. If they are strugglers hard-pushed by their competitors, they grow jealous; if they have won their victory and are no longer likely to be outrun, they grow self-satisfied. To be eager and earnest, and yet not to want to hinder any other man from doing his best; to be calm and serene, and yet to be full of energy and hope of higher things, — this comes to him whose life aims at the absolute, who strives, not to be stronger than his brethren, but to be ever stronger than himself, ever nearer to the fullest strength which it is in him to obtain.
Rivalry and emulation, then, if they have their places at all in a well-ordered human life, as impulses of action, must be satisfied to be wholly subordinate and accidental. Two regiments start side by side to storm the works of the enemy. On their fierce rush across the plain each may well be stimulated by the desire to beat the other and come first to where the hand-to-hand battle must be fought; but the real inspiration must be in the frowning guns of the foe and the determination that they must be taken.
One would like to speak urgently and earnestly to the young people here, and remind them of how much of the solidity and independent strength of life depends upon their learning very early to depend upon absolute and personal relations to the objects which they desire. Insist on feeling the intrinsic power of the things you seek. So, and so only, can you be sure that even if every other seeker should become discouraged and drop away, your search would still go on. You start upon a course of reading or of study with congenial companions. A generous rivalry begins at once. Who will be quickest and most faithful? Who will pierce most deeply and directly to the author’s meaning? That is very good, of course. But if that be all, or be the principal thing, the whole enterprise is weak. The book itself, the author’s valuable thought, the truth he has to tell, — in these must be the real attraction. If you are really set on these, then you may gladly accept the stimulus and pleasant excitement which comes from matching mind with mind among your fellow-students; just as a ship bound for the North Pole may easily indulge, some sunny day, in a friendly race with another ship, bound for the same mysterious goal, which it has met on some great, free expanse among the icy seas; but the true purpose of the voyage, the thing which keeps the ship stern and determined, and makes it safe not to be misled by the fascinations of the race, is the unseen purpose of its voyage, the mysterious pole whose deeper fascination has drawn it out of its home-harbor and keeps it steadfast on its way until it finds its prize, or turns back before a hopeless obstacle, or goes down in the midst of storms it cannot weather.
It is not only the persistence of life, it is also the purity of life, which is secured by service of the absolute. The eagerness which comes by rivalry not merely is unreliable and ready to give way, but while it lasts it is of poorer quality than the eagerness which comes from a real desire for the essential natures of the things we see. The essential nature of things has its true and constant relations to the soul of man. The two are made to answer healthily to one another. Learning shines upon its hill-top, and the desire to know in the soul of man leaps up to greet it. Strength calls from the distance with its rugged voice, and the desire to be strong which is in man hears and answers to the call. The struggle and search which follow until the purpose is attained are legitimate and pure. There is no base admixture of low motive. But rivalry, the desire to outstrip our brethren, is always trembling on the brink of jealousy and spite. It is so easy to pull down the reputation which is a little too high for us to match; it is so hard to be glad of the good thing which another man does, when it makes the less good thing which we are doing seem poor and in significant. And even when the temptation to spite and jealousy is resisted, and the rivalry is absolutely generous and fair, and the victory is honorably ours, the whole side issue of comparison is an alloy and distraction to that pure desire for a noble thing which, quite apart from the attainment of the thing, is one of the noblest educations of a human life.
There is yet another danger that comes from giving rivalry too large a place among our impulses. It lies in the temptation to limit our lives to those companionships in which we can easily be first, and so losing the broader fields of action in which we should get the greatest exercise and growth, even though we were constantly outstripped. “Better be first man in this small village than second man in Rome,” we cry; and so we shut ourselves up in the village where we can be first, and all the great inspirations and delights and cultures of Rome are lost. How many men are doing this! What multitudes of souls are spending their lives in playing children’s games, because they know the petty cards and can easily beat in them, and letting the brave man’s work which they ought to be doing, but in which they fear to be outstripped by other men, lie undone. How one wants to cry to them: “For shame! Go and meet men worthy of your manhood. Go and match yourself with the best men you can find. Go and be beaten. It is better to be beaten in wrestling with the strongest than to win a thousand battles over adversaries just a little weaker than yourself. By such defeats you grow strong. By such victories you grow ever feebler as you become more proud!”
All that is good to say. It is good to bid men run races with feet swifter than their own. But is it not better still to beg them to make as little as possible of the race-running motive altogether? Do not think about outstripping each other; think of getting to the goal! Let your whole soul be set on God, on getting to Him. Entering into Him, filling your life with His, then look round with joy at every progress which other souls are making towards that only satisfaction of a human life. Cultivate everywhere the habit of dealing directly with the absolute, and the merely relative and comparative ways of estimating life will come to be profoundly uninteresting to you. You will not care for much which now seems to you of vast importance. “He is the best athlete, the best lawyer, the best merchant, the best Christian in the town,” — that will sound very tame and uninteresting to you. You will not care whether it is true or not when you have really seen the perfection of those attainments shine before you, and your soul is set on being the best athlete, the best lawyer, the best merchant, the best Christian that it is possible for you to be. Only in pursuit of the absolute comes freedom from the slavery of the relative, with its rivalries and comparisons, with its close atmospheres and small satisfactions, and restlessness and jealousy and spite!
I want to turn now to Jesus, and see how in the story which we have before us He dealt with this disposition of rivalry of which I have been speaking at such length, and which he found breaking out in His disciples. I cannot doubt that in general His way of dealing with it was that which I have been trying to describe. The whole great spirit of His Gospel was forever trying to draw men away from the slavery of the relative into the freedom of the absolute. He never encourages men to compare themselves with one another. He is always bidding them be perfect like their Father. He hardly ever says, “Outstrip one another.” He almost always says, “Come to me.”
And yet it would not be hard to quote passages in which Jesus recognized the power of comparison, and stimulated His disciples by bidding them see how their lives stood beside the lives of others of God’s servants. He told them of John the Baptist that no man born of woman had surpassed him in true greatness. He warned the cities of the Lake of Gennesaret that the men of Nineveh had been more ready to hear the word of God than they.
Jesus, then, does not ignore the power of com parison. He does not ignore any of the powers which have their essence in the very constitution of humanity. That is His glory. He takes two powers and says of one: “This is the noblest. Do your work with this by all means, if you can.” But He does not forbid the using of the lower power if only it be pure, and be kept in its true degree, and be used rightly. “This ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.”
But there is another thing which He does often, anu which it seems to me that He does here. He takes the lower power and makes it higher than it is often made, and rescues it from many of its dangers, by suggesting a higher method of its use.
For powers are not invariable in their character. They vary with their uses. They grow finer when they are used on finer things. The power of thought grows subtle as it deals with subtle problems. The power of imagination becomes more radiant when it is picturing the possibilities of the celestial life than when it paints some base indulgence of the earthly nature.
This is the principle which Christ applies to the power of rivalry. He sees His disciples in danger of using it for low purposes, and so of making it a low thing. They wanted to compete for tawdry reputation and position, — “which of them should be accounted the greatest?” Such a use of it would make the power itself tawdry. Jesus says: “No! If you must use the power use it for a fine, unselfish thing, and so make it fine and unselfish.” And then he tells them what that use shall be. “He that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief as he that doth serve.”
How deep and wise and fine that is! Jesus says: “Must you then compete with one another? Must one be greater and the other less? Must you then use this power of competition? It might be better if you did not use it at all; but, if you must use it, make it as noble as you can by using it on noble things. Use it for human good. See not who shall be splendidest, but who shall be most useful.
Let your rivalry be a rivalry in self-sacrifice and in laborious doing of good. Compete with one another in humility. See which can be the truest servant.”
As if one took a stream which had been running waste in low and muddy places, and with a strong hand collected it and shut it up into its channel and turned it to the fields which needed and could welcome its fertility, so was it when Christ took this wasted, dissipated power of rivalry and said to it: 4< Come here. Here is your true work. Do this noble work nobly, and it shall ennoble you!” We can almost hear the stream laugh in its delight as it recognizes its true task. We can almost see the power lift itself to mightier proportions as it beholds the worthy work which it is called to do.
Imagine the difference to the disciples when they once really grasped the new teaching of their Master. They might very likely have looked for a rebuke. They might have expected that their Master would have forbidden them to use this power of rivalry at all; but this is different. He says: “Use it, — but use it for higher and holier purposes. Use it not to surpass one another in honor and esteem, but use it to increase the amount of usefulness and brother-help.” How the sword which they were just grasping, of which they were ashamed, which they expected to see snatched out of their hands, must have flashed into a new and surprising splendor when they saw in the light of Christ’s words to what noble uses it might be put!
If they did what Christ bade them do, as in some good degree they did, they must have been the subjects of a continually increasing surprise. The old power, transfigured by its new use, must have amazed them with its possibilities. Behold! there could be rivalry without hate or grudge. Behold! they could struggle to beat and yet rejoice to be beaten; for if they were beaten when they made their most earnest efforts to be useful, it merely meant that their brethren had more power of usefulness than they, and so the thing for which they strove became more perfectly accomplished.
I ask myself what would be the result if the same teaching of Jesus should be spoken to and should be accepted by all of this great world of competing men. Here are these eager hearts all eager to outstrip each other. Rivalry sparkles in every eye, and is the restless, almost frantic power which keeps all this life alive. Suppose some mighty power could take it all and make a change. Rivalry is not abolished, but the object of rivalry is altered. Not now, who shall be richest, or who shall be most powerful, or even who shall be most learned? — but who shall be most useful, who shall be most absolutely devoted to the good of fellow-man? — that is the question. The eagerness is kept just as intense. The city glistens and palpitates with the same active life. Each man upon the street watches his neighbor with the same keen vigilance. Only the purpose of it all is altered. It is a competition of beneficence. It is a rivalry of self-sacrificing service. All these men want to surpass each other by doing a little more good, by taking a little more of the burden of life upon their shoulders, by relieving a little more of misery, by lifting a few more of the fallen out of the mire!
You say it is impossible. You say it is a dream. I answer that I know nothing about that, and I do not think you know much more than I do. I think that more impossibilities are possible and more dreams are coming true than we have any idea of. But what I want you to observe is this, — that if such a great rivalry of unselfish service ever should come to pass, it would probably free itself almost entirely from those evils of which, as we have seen, our present rivalries stand in such danger. Tell me, can you imagine him whose only competition with his brother is, which shall drag the most men out of drunkenness — not which shall get the credit of saving the most men, but which shall really save them — the whole impulse which creates the competition being the pity for the men’s perdition, — can you imagine that man hindering his brother-worker from doing some act of salvation for fear that his brotherworker’s list of rescued should exceed his own? Tell me, can you imagine the man, capable of entering into such a rivalry, deliberately drawing in his life and consorting only with the least useful people, so that he may not feel himself outstripped?
Such questions answer themselves. This nobler use to which the power has been put has in large degree robbed the power of its danger. It has preserved its best and cast out its worst tendencies. It has kept all its energy and cast out all its narrowness. It has made man able to struggle with his brother and to work all the harder because his brother is working by his side; and yet to rejoice in his brother’s victory as if it were his own. Such transfiguration and purification come to a power when it is put to its highest use!
All this applies not merely to individuals but to those larger persons which, though they are made up of many beings, have still a personal existence of their own. It applies to the Christian Churches and their rivalries with one another. “Which of them should be accounted the greatest?” — how Christendom has rung, how our Christian country rings to-day with the old question! There is not a village in the land where religion is not defamed and almost dying with the competition of rival churches. The country as a whole is distracted with the denominationalism which is simply at heart the wrestling of denomination with denomination, which of them shall be accounted the greatest. What hope is there of any peace? Good people dream of a Christian unity which shall swallow up denominational differences altogether. They picture a day when some great triumphal assertion of some form or principle, perhaps, shall have merged all these contentions and competitions in one millennial agreement on that principle or form. It is a case in which the wish is father to the thought. There is no sign which promises such a consummation. It is not in the killing out of denominationalism that the solution lies. The solution, at least the primary and immediate solution, lies in the turning of denominational rivalry to the most sacred uses. Let the churches of the land stop trying to outstrip each other in the number of their adherents, in the abundance of their wealth, in the magnificence of their sanctuaries, in the stateliness of their ser vice, and let each of them be honestly set to do all that it can — to do, if it can, more than its brethren for the attainment of truth, for the service of the poor, for the salvation of the bodies and the souls of men; and then what a change would come! Still there would be emulation, but it would be a holy emulation. It would be a strange, unworldly emulation, in which each party struggling to surpass the others would still lift up its voice in thankful joy when any of those others had surpassed its best efforts by supreme devotion or capacity. It would be an emulation in which each victor would honestly lament that those whom it had conquered could be conquered by such a feeble servant of the Master as it had felt itself to be!
One almost sure result of such a noble rivalry would be that every church, devoted to the profoundest purposes for which any church exists, would speedily develop its own especial aptitude to meet those purposes. And so the several churches — all of which are partial, none of which is final or complete — would speedily find themselves working in different but parallel lines towards one great, broad result, which should freely take all their several successes into itself. In that way they would best come to know their real unity; to understand that neither of them is The Church of Christ, that The Church of Christ is the great aggregate of all of them together — and vastly more!
But let us leave the churches, and come back to sum up in a few words all that we have said to-day about the principle of rivalry as it affects the lives of individuals. Does it not all come to these two exhortations which I press on you as I close? The first is this: As far as you can, get rid of emulation altogether. Live in the absolute, not in the relative. Measure yourself not by the unstable standard of your brother’s life, but by the great, eternal, unchanging patterns of life which are kept in the treasury of God. And the second is this: So far as you must still keep rivalry among your impulses, let it be always rivalry for the deepest and truest things. Refuse to enter into the race except for a prize so great that it shall rob the race of all its evil power. Most of all, make the great object of your emulation helpfulness to all who need the help of fellow-man.
He who is Christ’s servant, and whom Christ has really brought into the presence and the love of God, must find both of these exhortations gradually fulfilling themselves in him. May Christ become so truly our Master that they may both be more and more fulfilled in us.’