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‘And God said: Ask what I shall give thee.’
1Ki_3:5
I. What is your ideal?—It is too probable that the question takes many men and women by surprise. Ideal? We have none. What are we aiming at? Why, nothing at all. Yes, that is the curse of it. So many have no object. Men and women often drift hither and thither through life, never turning an eye to the guiding reins which to them have become useless. Do we not know scores of such moral ciphers?—petty in all their aims, not to be trusted at any time, without depth, without worth, without stability. We do not go to them when we need advice, we do not look to them when we crave for sympathy; as for asking them to be interested in any generous and unselfish aim, or to subscribe for any kind or worthy purpose, we never dream of it. If they are not often swept away into some unknown abyss of crime by some sudden hurricane of temptation, it is only because the devil, secure of these Laodiceans already, and not thinking much of them, though they think so much of themselves, does not deem them worth any expenditure of his energy.
But, if we have an ideal and aim, how infinitely important it is that it should be a worthy one! Many men have some ideal that they admire of persons or conditions. Very strange are the ideals of some men. To one class, the successful jockey seems to be the supreme of men, or the successful prize-fighter; and the personal effects of these heroes sell at fancy prices, so small are human aspirations. To others, the man of fashion seems to be the one to be admired, or the sleek man of business who has made money, and has his suburban villa and drives to his counting-house in his neatly-appointed brougham. These are the little gods of little men. And to what strange results such ideals lead!
Perhaps, however, men more often idealise conditions than they make heroes of persons; they set before them something which they desire and, because the object of their desire is often ignoble or delusive, they end in degradation, disappointment, or despair. It is a very fatal thing to have an inferior or a mistaken end in view. It is like steering straight upon a rock. And it is really marvellous how generation after generation, in spite of all experience, men go on being deceived. The Mohammedan legend about Christ is full of insight, but he compared the man who desired only earthly things to one who drinks sea water, and becomes more thirsty the more he drinks, and dies mad. And the strange thing is that the devil scarcely tries to lie to his votaries; he does not deceive—he tempts; he knows that that will be enough. Before the silly fish in the dim waters he dangles the gilded bait; he knows the victim will rush at it and swallow it. Then he will be able, in the. picture of St. James, to drag him out to gasp and lie torn and wounded on the shore.
One of the vilest ideals is that of wealth. The greed of gold is the meanest, and its ideals are attainable by anybody. Any fool, if he chooses only to creep and crawl enough, can get rich if he likes. And riches have made millions mean, and millions dishonest, and millions God-forgetting; but what man who ever lived have they made happy? Human souls are not low enough, after all, to be made happy by accumulation, as the beetle is, though they may spend their life at it as the beetle does. He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be honest, and many a man who is making, or has made, a fortune by dishonest bargains, by grinding the faces of the poor, by cheating the ignorant and the confiding, by trades which ruin the bodies and souls of men, by false weights and deceitful balances, which are an abomination to the Lord, has sold his eternal jewel for the dross, not one atom of which he can take away with him. ‘Who is that purpureal personage who has such a splendid dress?’ asks the Latin epigrammatist. The answer is, ‘Take the plaister off his forehead, and underneath you will read the three letters F U R, Fur [thief], branded there.’ Many a respected person in society, who has made money by base means, deserves just as much to have those very letters branded on his forehead, knowing very well that they are branded indelibly on his soul.
II. When God intends to fill the soul, it has been said, He first makes it empty; when He wishes to enrich a soul He first makes it poor; when He wishes to exalt a soul He first makes it sensible of its own want and nothingness. But as for earthly successes, they are vain in two ways: vain because they are often unattainable; vain because, when attained, they are of their very nature disappointing. God disillusionises us by refusing our desire, or by granting our desire and sending leanness withal into our souls. You all want happiness; earthly things do not and cannot give it, and never have done. Satiety and sloth are poor counterfeits, but these mock the poor worldling and vex the feverish.
There is one man, and one only, of whom the ideal is perfect, attainable, satisfying, ennobling, eternal; it is the ideal of Him by whose name every one of you is called—the Man Christ Jesus; it is the ideal of holiness to which He excited us, and the example which He set, ‘that we might follow in His steps.’
Dean Farrar.
Illustrations(1) ‘Youth is meant to be enthusiastic, and to feed its aspirations on noble ideas, and if, instead of that, it does as too many do, especially in countries where wealth abounds, namely, regards life as a garden of delights, or sometimes as a sty where young men may wallow in “pleasures,” then farewell to all hopes of high achievements, or of an honourable career. The ideals will fade fast enough; but alas for the life which had none to begin with!’
(2) ‘Put first things first. One of the most important lessons of life is to discern the relative value of the objects within our reach. The child will take the handful of glass beads, and leave the heap of diamonds in the rough. It is the terrible mistake of men that, perplexed by earth’s cross-lights, they put evil for good and good for evil; they make earth rather than heaven their centre, time rather than eternity their measurement.’