Levels of Living | Page 2

probable that many said
that it was a great pity when Jesus gave up so useful a trade as His? To
them He seemed to be but chasing the rainbow.
But to-day who possesses a single one of the things that young
carpenter made? And did we possess them all what better off would the
world be? Yet, on the other hand, how ill could this world afford to lose
what He gave it by those three years of the service of the ideal.
In our age of things we so easily forget how large is the place of the
ideal and the spiritual. Ever estimating our assets in the concrete, we
fail to recognize that our real wealth lies in thoughts and things abstract.
The permanent possessions of humanity are spiritual. Not acres nor
armies, not banks nor business make a nation, but mighty, compelling
ideals and traditions.
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.
The abundance of bread is the cause of many a man's deeper hunger.
Having known nothing of the discipline that develops life's hidden
sources of satisfaction, nothing of the struggle in which deep calls unto
deep and the true life finds itself, he spends his days seeking to satisfy
his soul with furniture, with houses and lands, with yachts and
merchandise, seeking to feed his heart on things, a process of less
promise and reason than feeding a snapping turtle on thoughts.
It takes many of us altogether too long to learn that you cannot find
satisfaction so long as you leave the soul out of your