The University of Hard Knocks Part 9

We go up by our own personal efforts. We go up by our own service, sacrifice, struggle and overcoming. We push out our own skyline. We rise above our own obstacles. We learn to see, hear, hold and understand.

We may become very great, very educated, rise very high, and yet not leave our kitchen or blacksmith shop. We take the kitchen or blacksmith shop right up with us! We make it a great kitchen or great blacksmith shop. It becomes our throne-room!

Come, let us grow greater. There is a throne for each of us.

"Getting to the Top"

"Getting to the top" is the world's pet delusion. There is no top. No matter how high we rise, we discover infinite distances above. The higher we rise, the better we see that life on this planet is the going up from the Finite to the Infinite.

The world says that to get greatness means to get great things. So the world is in the business of getting--getting great fortunes, great lands, great t.i.tles, great applause, great fame, and folderol.

Afterwhile the poor old world hears the empty rattle of the inside, and wails, "All is vanity. I find no pleasure in them. Life is a failure."

All outside life is a failure. Real life is in being things on the inside, not in getting things on the outside.

I weary of the world's pink-sheet extras about "Getting to the Top" and "Forging to the Front." Too often they are the sordid story of a few scrambling over the heads of the weaker ones. Sometimes they are the story of one pig crowding the other pigs out of the trough and cornering all the swill!

The Secret of Greatness

Christ Jesus was a great Teacher. His mission was to educate humanity.

There came to him those two disciples who wanted to "get to the top."

Those two sons of Zebedee wanted to have the greatest places in the new kingdom they imagined he would establish on earth.

They got very busy pursuing greatness, but I do not read that they were half so busy preparing for greatness. They even had their mother out electioneering for them.

"O, Master," said the mother, "grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom."

The Master looked with love and pity upon their unpreparedness. "Are ye able to drink of the cup?" Then he gave the only definition of greatness that can ever stand: "Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant."

That is we cannot be "born great," nor "have greatness thrust upon" us.

We must "achieve greatness" by developing it on the inside--developing ability to minister and to serve.

We cannot buy a great arm. Our arm must become a great servant, and thus it becomes great.

We cannot buy a great mind. Our mind must become a great servant, and thus it becomes great.

We cannot buy a great character. It is earned in great moral service.

The First Step at Hand

This is the Big Business of life--going up, getting educated, getting greatness on the inside. Getting greatness on the outside is little business. Much of it mighty little.

Everybody's privilege and duty is to become great. And the joy of it is that the first step is always nearest at hand. We do not have to go off to New York or Chicago or go chasing around the world to become great.

It is a great stairway that leads from where our feet are now upward for an infinite number of steps.

We must take the first step now. Most of us want to take the hundredth step or the thousandth step now. We want to make some spectacular stride of a thousand steps at one leap. That is why we fall so hard when we miss our step.

We must go right back to our old place--into our kitchen or our workshop or our office and take the first step, solve the problem nearest at hand. We must make our old work luminous with a new devotion. We must battle up over every inch. And as fast as we solve and dissolve the difficulties and turn our burdens into blessings, we find love, the universal solvent, s.h.i.+ning out of our lives. We find our spiritual influences going upward. So the winds of earth are born; they rush in from the cold lands to the warm upward currents. And so as our problems disappear and our life currents set upward, the world is drawn toward us with its problems. We find our kitchen or workshop or office becoming a new throne of power. We find the world around us rising up to call us blessed.

As we grow greater our troubles grow smaller, for we see them thru greater eyes. We rise above them.

As we grow greater our opportunities grow greater. That is, we begin to see them. They are around us all the time, but we must get greater eyes to see them.

Generally speaking, the smaller our vision of our work, the more we admire what we have accomplished and "point with pride." The greater our vision, the more we see what is yet to be accomplished.

It was the sweet girl graduate who at commencement wondered how one small head could contain it all. It was Newton after giving the world a new science who looked back over it and said, "I seem to have been only a boy playing on the seash.o.r.e * * * while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." That great ocean is before us all.

The Widow's Mites

The great Teacher pointed to the widow who cast her two mites into the treasury, and then to the rich men who had cast in much more. "This poor widow hath cast in more than they all. For all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of G.o.d: but she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had."

Tho the rich men had cast in more, yet it was only a part of their possessions. The widow cast in less, but it was all she had. The Master cared little what the footings of the money were in the treasury. That is not why we give. We give to become great. The widow had given all--had completely overcome her selfishness and fear of want.

Becoming great is overcoming our selfishness and fear. He that saveth his life shall lose it, but he that loseth his life for the advancement of the kingdom of happiness on earth shall find it great and glorified.

Our greatness therefore does not depend upon how much we give or upon what we do, whether peeling potatoes or ruling a nation, but upon the percentage of our output to our resources. Upon doing with our might what our hands find to do. Quit worrying about what you cannot get to do. Rejoice in doing the things you can get to do. And as you are faithful over a few things you go up to be ruler over many.

The world says some of us have golden gifts and some have copper gifts.

But when we cast them all into the treasury of right service, there is an alchemy that trans.m.u.tes every gift into gold. Every work is drudgery when done selfishly. Every work becomes golden when done in a golden manner.

Finding the Great People

I do not know who fitted the boards into the floor I stand upon. I do not know all the great people who may come and stand upon this floor.

But I do know that the one who made the floor--and the one who sweeps it--is just as great as anybody in the world who may come and stand upon it, if each be doing his work with the same love, faithfulness and capability.

We have to look farther than the "Who's Who" and Dun and Bradstreet to make a roster of the great people of a community. You will find the community heart in the precious handful who believe that the service of G.o.d is the service of man.

The great people of the community serve and sacrifice for a better tomorrow. They are the faithful few who get behind the churches, the schools, the lyceum and chautauqua, and all the other movements that go upward.