The Warriors | Page 5

this cry of the
soul:
"_As pants the hart for cooling streams, When heated in the chase, So
longs my soul, O God, for Thee, And Thy refreshing grace.
"For Thee, my God, the living God, My thirsty soul doth pine; Oh!
when shall I behold Thy face, Thou Majesty divine_?"
1. Jesus calls us by the mystery of life. There are hours of silence and
meditation when the great thought I am beats in upon the soul. But

what am I? Whence came I? A heap of atoms in some strange human
semblance--is that all? And so many other heaps of atoms have already
been, and passed away! Blown hither and thither--where? The universe
reels with change. Star-dust and earth-dust are alike in ceaseless whirl.
Little it profits to build the spire, the sea-wall, the dome, the bridge, the
myriad-roofed town. A new era shall dawn upon them, and they shall
fall away.
Not only that, but each man who lives to-day has less possible material
dominion than he had who preceded him. Only so many square feet of
earth, and now there are more to walk upon them! The ground we tread
was once trodden by the feet of those long dead. I am taking up their
room, and in due time I must myself depart, that there may be footway
for those who are to come after me. Only the under-sod is really
mine--the little earth-barrow to which I go.
There is no question more baffling than this simple, ever-recurring one:
What am I? If I should decide what I am to-day, I discover that
yesterday I was quite a different person. To-day I may be six feet in
height, and climb the Alps; yesterday I lay helpless in swaddling
clothes. Yesterday I was a thing of laughter and frolic; to-day I am
grave, and brush away tears. As a babe, was I still I? What is Myself?
When did I come to Myself? How far can I extend Myself? My feet are
here, but in a moment my spirit can flee to Xanadu and Zanzibar. There
is no spot in the universe where I may not go. Where, then, are the
limits of Myself?
Personality is never for a single moment fixed: it is as changing and
evanescent as a cloud. We are whirlwind spirits, swept through time
and space, bearing within our souls hopes, fears, joys, sorrows, which
are never twice the same. Every aspect of the universe leaves new
impressions on us, and our wills, in their world-sweep, daily desire
different things.
Incompleteness lies on life--restlessness is in the heart. True love has
no final habitation on earth; there is no abiding-place for our deepest
affection, our most tender yearning. It is curious how deeply one may
love, and yet feel that there is something more. In all our journeys,

skyward and sunward, we never reach the End of All.
Over against this vague and changing self, there stands out the figure of
the changeless Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. In Him
we find the environment of all our lives, and the sum of all our dreams.
2. Jesus calls us by our earth-born cares. In Mendelssohn's Elijah, there
is a voice which sings: "O rest in the Lord!" This angel's message is the
voice of Jesus to the human race.
The voice of Jesus calls us to awake to toil. We sometimes forget this,
and imagine that if we follow Jesus, we shall never have anything to do.
Christ does not still the machinery of the world, nor shut the mine, nor
take away the sowing and the reaping. The call of Jesus is not a call to
rest from work, but to rest in work. The rest we receive is that of
sympathy, of inspiration, of efficiency. Christ really increases the
toil-capacity of man. Man can do more work, harder work, and always
better work, because of the faith that is in him. What makes the
confusion and fatigue of life is, that men are everywhere scrambling for
themselves, and trying to manage their own undertakings, instead of
falling into harmony with God, and through Him, with all that is. What
wears the soul out is not the work of life itself--it is its drudgery, its
monotony, its blind vagueness, its apparent purposelessness. We do not
wish to scatter our lives and spend our years in nothingness.
Christ comes into the world and says: Over-fatigue is abnormal. There
is not enough work in the universe to tire every one all out. There is
just enough for each one to do happily, and to do well. I am come as
the great industrial organizer. My mission is not to take away toil, but
to redistribute it. My industrial plan is the largest of