Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

only in that twofold commandment, but also in the Sermon on the Mount, we have a body of teaching that is the only hope of perfect society. In the center of the Sermon on the Mount is a prayer which we said together at the beginning of this meeting, and I wonder if we know just the significance of that for which we prayed-"Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven"-a goal of social perfection. Today, even in the business world, we find men taking a little bit of the Sermon on the Mount and saying, "We are going to live by that. Let us accept the Golden Rule." Or somebody else will take such part as appeals to him and say, "I will incorporate that in my life." But remember that the whole of the Sermon on the Mount stands or falls together; you cannot pick and choose. I would not trust a man to know how to treat his neighbor if he hadn't something more than the Golden Rule as his guide to conduct. I want to know just how he loves himself. There are various ways of loving yourself, and I certainly would not want to be loved by some men as they love themselves.

You will find that there are two things in common in the New Testament and in Plato's "Republic." Both require of us that we accept for here and now as perfect a social ideal as we can conceive of. At the same time both concede the limitations of human nature and face failure without relinquishing the ideal. Therefore both claim for life beyond the grave the full realization of that which must fall short of the best human endeavor in this life. Glancon says of the ideal of Socrates: "You speak of that city of which we are the founders, and which exist in idea only; for I do not think there is such an one on earth." "In heaven," replies Socrates, "there is laid up a pattern of such a city, and he who desires may behold this, and beholding, govern himself accordingly. But whether there really is or ever will be such an one is of no importance to him; for he will act according to the laws of that city and of no other." The New Testament caps Socrates in such passages as "a city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God"; and "the new heaven and the new earth" after the old is passed away.

We must aim to shape and order society after God's pattern, even though we know that we are not going to do a perfect work in time. Yet we must not be discouraged when we are thwarted and disappointed, for all the while we are gathering within ourselves a value-deposit which is so imperishable that it laughs at death. When we pass over to the other side into the perfect city of God we shall make that perfect city still more perfect because we have been loyal in this world to the vision we had of it, and without being fully conscious of it have become a part of the vision's reality.

The goal for the individual and that for society must both occupy the same high level. There cannot be mass salvation unless there is individual salvation for the sake of the common weal. Without the development of the mystical, as involved in the command to love God passionately, there can be no certainty of true social service. There is no more important duty today than worship. Worship is not hearing sermons. I realize at the close of a sermon like this, how second rate it is compared with the exercise of concentrating our attention upon God as the active, loving source of all that we think, do, and say, whose wisdom is our guide, whose strength is our sufficiency.

There is a memorial to a great social worker, Henry Scott Holland, in Christ Church, Oxford, bearing the following inscription which I leave with you as a perfect

phy of a Christian social worker: "As beholding God invisible, he was unceasfounding on earth His Heavenly Kingdom, in unshaken faith, vivid hope, joyous

DIVISION VII-THE LOCAL COMMUNITY

THE COMMUNITY, MAKER OF MEN

Joseph Lee, President, Community Service, Incorporated, Boston

The common object of the members of this conference is nurture-"that they ght have life and that they might have it more abundantly." And the sovereign cans of promoting life is action—the self-activity of the individual. It is by living, vesting what vitality they have, that men become alive.

It is true that in order to act, a man must have some command of the instruments f action-of his body and his natural faculties, of tools and sustenance, and of the hysical means of knowledge and expression. Accordingly, we fight disease and crime, ›upply tools, grant pensions, provide schools and libraries and art museums. But after all the parts have been assembled—body, mind, tools, and material to work with-we know that life does not result unless the man himself is brought to take a hand.

And action to win life must be whole-hearted. New growth will start no deeper than the spot from which the action sprung. Only what is exercised will be developed. If you want the man himself to grow you must get the whole of him enlisted. We must discard the foolish arithmetic of the primary school, that fallacy of the fixed total which teaches that the more you spend the less you have, and learn that it is only what we spend that we can keep.

Action, whole-hearted action! And there is one other requirement: action, to foster life, must be of certain kinds.

You have in your hospital a disabled soldier. He finds it almost impossible to walk: he cannot raise his hand above his head; his arms and legs will not respond to his command. And then you introduce a game, and as he plays the game there comes a change: he leaps and shouts and enters into the spirit of the contest; and behold his arms take on new life, and his legs acquit themselves in a manner he had thought impossible. What they would not do for him they do for the new spirit that has taken possession of him. And it is not his arms and legs alone. These are the visible beneficiaries. There is not a tissue of his body that does not know the difference. His heart has heard the summons and beats a march, his lungs have heard and sighed with happiness. All the organs fear and are rejoiced. Here at last, they feel, is something they somehow remember and have been homesick for, and they fall to with a "now then, all together!" like a good team when the game is on.

I have said the condition of new life was self-activity, but it is in truth the activity of something more than self that holds the secret-something of which the individual and all his members seem to be the product. Was the man playing that game or was the game playing him? His arms and legs seemed to think it was the game. They would not come out for him and go through their paces, but when the spirit of competition called, they recognized their master's voice. It was the same with the whole of him, not the body alone, but mind and spirit. "He smelleth the battle afar off, the

thunder of the captains and the shouting." The contest has become for the time the artificer of the man and has raised him up to be its instrument.

Something of the same effect is seen in the use of music. You find that the rhythm of a dance or a song will also carry your wounded patients beyond themselves and leave behind a permanent accession of new life.

The same spell resides in action in yet another form. A patient, confined to his bed, who has made but little progress through such gymnastic exercises as you could give him, is one day handed some material that he can make things of. He proceeds to mold it into certain forms. As he succeeds there comes a change in his condition. His eyes are brighter, his voice stronger. He laughs and jokes. His appetite improves. These shapes in clay, or raffia, or wood, possess a magic power over him. In fashioning these images, he has somehow made himself. There were gnomes imprisoned in the wood who thus evince their gratitude to the mortal who has divined their presence there and set them free.

Man, it would appear, is the child not merely of action but of certain forms of action, the fulfilment of certain purposes of contest, musical expression, the service of the beautiful in sound, in color, or in shape. As these purposes are satisfied in -as they play through him, make him their instrument, as warrior, artist, or musician-he becomes alive.

him,

And there is another ingredient, another dimension, in the purposes that recreate -a dimension that we must find to be represented if the man is to become thoroughly alive. I mean a market for his work. Your patient has been making images of wood or clay, and his idols, reversing the usual procedure, have returned the compliment by re-making him. For a time this is sufficient; he is contented to look upon his work and know in his own mind that it is good.

But pretty soon he seeks external confirmation, looks for some further mark of reality in what he has produced. It takes two to create beauty, just as we have learned from Emerson that it takes two to speak the truth. Nothing for us is quite done until it has achieved a social standing. And so he looks for outside testimony. The nurse says his things are beautiful, but he suspects the nurse: she is of a deceitful generation, not to be trusted in such matters. He requires a more impartial witness. Suppose somebody would really buy his stuff! That would be a testimonial indeed. There is no evidence so convincing as cash payment. And to what an invigorating truth it testifies! To have found a market! To have done work that compels the bedrock Philistine adhesion of the unsentimental dollar! Through such testimony as this your work itself has reached a new degree of actuality. And you, through it, have had the sustaining experience of being needed.

To make good, to be somebody, to hold a place as a competent member of society -this is an achievement which, as the members of this conference know from the daily experience of a thousand cases, is the prime social requisite of health. Here, indeed, is an instance where money talks, and with an eloquence for which the tongues of men and angels afford no substitute.

And so you get up sales, beneficial in proportion as they cease to be philanthropic; best of all when the man's work sells in the open market and is brought not because people want to help him, nor because he is a hero, nor has a large family, nor has done his best, nor is entitled to a minimum wage, but because they want the goods. This unbiased payment for things or service because they are really wanted is the onl

[merged small][ocr errors]

kind possessed of the true eloquence. The most deve
economic system can be guilty is that which diseas
It is a failure in that conservation of motive white I
method of enhancing life. Money to possess a
other man's need of you, not your need of him.

[ocr errors]

Man, it thus appears, is the child of punase take command and fashion him as he one which blends with and reinforces ever his work. There appears this COUSCHIL SA is his salvation to full

But cash payment is not the my DETSE the social need and corresponding s authoritative stamp of compete or extreme youth or age, or her able, to whom the money-sule o te w the craving for some tiger HOLME

There is another marker, & RECRAC that has magic power. I to HE not suppose that nye VOO WAS DI who stayed at tume i vas. #21 generazzr of vital orce 1 z I was there, thuc i min was o

It restored power the OU LES DET
to walk, ne nin o se, nat
I broke town nur most Joc
releasing he miser rom is
ged banker's ips with c
and established or nem cs

reaction totstan

trusen by their work. must were letter or

men into ts service. 12 elivery. YouETUR, augnen im je

The nust mmediate access 3st vas e

to 1 Cause F

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

51

life. I doubt ce to the same nct itself, in its is last analysis,abstracted-is the ing social orgasm,

He also was largely that most appeals to rity of our individual.res, whose citizens have il has been due as much qualities have in all ages itted to this instinct, both tature without its exercise. ssary means of spiritual life, n the past have gone on this arguing. War, apart from its suspension of democracy and

1 possibilities, especially in the of the best and bravest,-in addiemancipating pursuit. The story new, the moral degeneracy of both ent testimony upon this point. The pon his too abject worshipers.

artly the same thing among ourselves e the dog returning to his vomit-that .r hysteria.

war is that it is too exclusive. Madame n, and that is a profound as well as witty iters. None of us are fighters and nothing of expression. War may find a use for the 1 writing war songs, or painting camouflage, or r was found useful in interpreting the music of ise for Kreisler. Our human nature is a harp of t of them too little or too roughly.

r, can be cultivated apart from war, as they are tions in time of peace. War itself was originally and ion like baseball. The young Indian braves danced e warpath in the spring. It was in the spring that the Middle Ages were begun—an old campaigner of Philip ose knights whose warlike sentiments were only for the youth feel the same impulse and can be trusted to follow e warpath in the spring, and again in the fall until snow half a chance.

[blocks in formation]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

GENERAL SESSIONS

camps and trenches, back of the makers of supplies and the munition workers, it reached every home and workshop and every citizen. Rich men's sons spent their vacations in farm-work or passing rivets in the shipyards. Shop girls walked to and from their work to save their nickels for the Red Cross. Mothers, fathers, children, all had their part. An artist friend of mine, to whom arithmetic is an occult art and letter-writing an abstruse branch of interior decoration, telephoned to know whether he could help out by doing clerical work. People everywhere found their private interests and ambitions less compelling than the common need. Most interesting of all were the business men who stayed at home and carried on their ordinary work, shouldering everybody else's share besides their own in order that their partners might take up the more exciting and romantic kinds of service.

There was no question of ability or lack of it. The nation was fighting and every scrap of human power that could in any way contribute to the nation's strength was called. It was a question of giving what you had, and no one's gift was large or small in its relation to the cause. People who had never known the happiness of being wanted felt the bracing current of demand. The hardest service of all, the bitter contribution of not giving unnecessary trouble, by those to whom the joy of a positive contribution was denied, became illuminated. Even the law-breakers in the prisons were given their opportunity to help. There was exhilaration in this new equality of obligation and of sacrifice. For the first time in this generation everybody counted and everybody had a place. Each felt he had the purpose, the need, and in some way the recognition of the nation back of him.

This universality of appeal is a distinctive attribute of a great national purpose. Nobody is exempt and nobody's sacrifice scorned. All work like children in the hayfield when the rain is coming. It is no longer a question of how great a work you can accomplish, but of the spirit you share in the doing of it. Each serves according to his talent; all are one as members of the team. A great national purpose adds a new sanction to all forms of service. It makes of every worker an official, with a responsibility not to his customers alone but to the state. He is no longer merely the man who sells shoes to his neighbors; he is the shoemaker, one, who in the public economy, fills a necessary part. To the sense of rendering competent service to individuals, is added the sense of status, of holding a responsible position in the commonwealth. Such is the life-giving property of a public cause.

As a true purpose in an individual carries down into his spinal marrow until every cell and tissue thrills to it, so a true purpose of the commonwealth vibrates through every citizen and through his work. It is the maker of the citizen, as the sweep and tenseness of a rapid carves the shape of every wave, or the thrust of a great arch holds each stone in place.

At most times and in most nations this greatest of life-giving influences does not exist. The young, the old, the sick, the inexperienced, are made to feel that their services are not required. If they were to drop out altogether they would not be missed. Not even the skilled and able are subject to any national appeal. If they choose to build up a serviceable business, to perform distinguished work in a profession, that is their own affair; the rest of us are not concerned.

Nobody can be well or able under such conditions, or make his normal contribution to mankind. A community that is settled down to smug content or given to material pursuits, will not produce great men or only sporadically and by accident

« AnteriorContinuar »