The Chief End of Man

by George Spring Merriam

To many, the disclosure of God is made in some way especially personal to themselves. Very often some human friend is the best manifestation and assurance of divinity. Our faith leans on the faith of the best and most loving person we have known. Sometimes the heart's natural language is "My father's God," "my mother's God." With some, the life beyond death first becomes real to consciousness when the heart's treasure has been taken there. Sometimes, in looking upon one's own life, one becomes deeply conscious of the higher guidance that has led it. There are hours in which past sorrows shine out as heavenly messengers of good. There dawns upon us a sense of the blessedness that life has held; all its highest experiences become instinct with the suggestion of a celestial meaning that we as yet but half apprehend. We escape for the moment from the thralldom of self; personal happiness merges in something higher; we are glad and still in the sense of a divine Will working in us and in all things. In such hours the soul says, "My God."

There is infinite variety of personal experience; "so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them without signification." One man has been deep in drunkenness and debauchery, he has grown reckless and hopeless; but through some friendly voice there reaches him an impulse to a new and successful effort; there comes in upon him the sense of a divine love; a mighty forgiving and restoring force seems to seize him and draw him back to life. In his religion thereafter there may be the glowing emotion of one who has been forgiven much and loves much. Another man walks always in steady allegiance to conscience and right, and never has any rapturous emotions; is not he, too, the child of God? We dislike the prodigal's elder brother for his jealousy; but his father's word to him, despite that touch of unworthiness, was: "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine."

One whose life flows with smooth current may find the significance of religion in duty rather than in trust. To such a one God may appear as an ideal, inspiring conduct, but not as a power, controlling events. But upon him, it may be, there breaks some great emergency of life and death; the heart cries out like a child waking frightened in the night, and there answers it, from some depth far below its fear, a voice that says "Peace!" In that hour the soul finds its father. Thereafter passing doubts and fears can but ruffle the surface for a moment.

In our northern winter, how perfectly the trees blend with the scene about them! They seem wholly a part of winter's grand but lifeless world, and with what beauty do they crown that world,—the columnar trunks, the mighty grip of the roots upon the firm earth, the arching sweep of stalwart boughs, the delicate tracery against the sky! They answer to the season's mood, bending in patient grace beneath a load of snow, casing themselves in jewels, or springing up again in slender strength; silent, except when the deep voice of the wind speaks through them. Their shadows soften the sunlight glittering on the snow, or weave a black fretwork when the cold moon shines. Yet vital in their hearts the trees hold summer's secret. A little while, and they will be clothed in the leafy glory of June. The robin and catbird and oriole will sing hidden among their branches. Of that summer season the trees will be the delight and crown, that now stand like true children of winter. They stand now so strong and true because of that hidden life within them which summer will fully disclose. It is because it is alive that the trunk bends to the storm but does not break, and the twigs hold up their load of snow. So, there are lives that so fit themselves to this world in which they stand that they become its finest part. Their sympathy finds out the secret needs and possibilities of those about them. Their insight discerns the work which society most needs, and their fidelity accomplishes that part of the work which falls to them. Their natures stand open to all the glad influences of earth; their hearts rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep. They make full proof of those experiences in which fortitude and silent endurance are the only resource. Sometimes they are happy, and sometimes they are sad; but always other people are happier because of them. They are the children of a better country. For them the soul's full summer waits. Knowing them, we do indeed know something of God and the eternal life.

There is freedom to be achieved from the pettiness of our lives. They never, perhaps, look so pitiful as when they seem made up altogether of little, necessary details. Our planting and reaping, building and buying, all the half-mechanical operations that absorb our thought and time, seem sometimes little better than the bustle of a colony of ants. When we look down upon it all from the height of some quiet, meditative hour, are we not at times oppressed with a sense of its triviality and worthlessness? Trivial and worthless it is, except as amidst it all we are working out something higher. But to a man whose heart is set on noble ends; one whose great aim is, not to get his bread and butter, but to be a man; one who wants, not just to make a profit out of his neighbors, but to serve them and help them, these details are no more trivial or degrading than the rough dress and homely tools of a sculptor are unworthy of the marble beauty that is growing under his hands. The high purpose consecrates and transfigures all, the want of purpose degrades all. I have stood in Switzerland upon the Gorner Grat, looking upon the grandest scene in Europe. On every side a circle of towering heights look down; against the sky rise dazzling snowy summits, celestially pure, celestially tender; the Matterhorn frowns in awful majesty; vast ice-rivers sweep down toward the valley in solemn, silent march. If there be upon earth a spot that of itself has power to hush the soul with noblest emotion, it should be that. Yet there I have seen a company of travelers spend their half-hour in senseless gabble and banter and the laughter of fools. Amid the squalid surroundings of a New York tenement-house, I have seen a poor Irish woman living with such fortitude and faith and generosity that it was a comfort and inspiration to meet her. That brave soul ennobled its mean surroundings with a glory which not the Alps and the sky could flash in upon a heart made blind and dull by ignoble thoughts.

If there dwells in us the spirit of life we shall be freed from the bondage of doubt. On how many earnest and aspiring lives does doubt throw its chill shadow! The world is crossing the flood that divides the old form of faith from the new. The rising water strikes cold to many a heart. Here and there the waves sweep men off from all moral footing. I know not that for the resolute and thoughtful there is any escape from some suffering in the transition. Could we be always sure that it is only a transition,—could we know always that a better country lies waiting us,—all might be easily borne. The suffering we may not decline; but safety, utter safety, we may keep through all. Life is always possible to us. Fidelity, purity, self-sacrifice,—these may always be ours. Are we baffled in our search for a divine plan in the universe? Let us look nearer home; can we not find the clew to a divine plan in our own lives? Yes, there need never fail to us an immediate token of divinity. There is always, at the lowest, a duty to be done. There is always, at the very lowest, a burden to be bravely borne. There is always some one to be helped. Do we say, But this does not comfort me, does not reassure me? Then let it guide me! It is not essential that I should be always in the sunshine. It is only essential that in sunshine or in darkness my steering should be true. And I am never without a compass while I see that there is for me a higher and a lower, a right and a wrong, to choose between.

Does any sense of bondage weigh you down? Disappointment, it may be,—failure, life's fair promise blighted. It may be the bitter slavery of evil habit. It may be a dull and apathetic way of life, stirred with a vague yearning toward higher possibilities. It may be the darkness of a lost faith. It may be a bereavement that has emptied life. Whatever it be, the angel of deliverance stands beside you. He is perhaps in very humble garb, unsuspected of you. Some lowly duty awaits you. Some saddened life, unnoticed by your side, asks you to cheer it. Whatever opportunity of duty or of service lies in the path before you is God's own messenger. Meet it like the messenger of a king! So meet every duty, every opportunity. Find them, make them, for yourself. Live no longer in solitude but in brotherhood. So shall the very spirit of God dwell in you; so in his service shall you find perfect freedom.

The end of February is near, and not a hint or whisper of spring does Nature give us yet. We are wont to have earlier than this a few days at least that seem to start the sap in the trees and the blood in the veins, when the first bluebird is heard, and we get one swift, delicious glimpse of the good time coming. But this year the cold only takes a sharper clutch. At its average, our northern winter has a fierce and almost merciless persistence. Those first days of spring are hardly more than the taste of freedom with which the cat tantalizes the mouse. It is this lingering close of winter that is hard to bear. The supplies begin to give out. The wood-pile that stood so high when the first snow came is getting lowered to very near the ground. The poor man's little hoard, that was to bridge him over till the season of good work, is perilously shrunken. Vitality, too, begins to run low. The body pines for the out-door life from which it has too long been shut off. Winter is a hard-fisted churl who does n't give just measure. He drives off the mellow and jolly Autumn before its mid-month October is fairly gone. He bullies Spring so that the poor, gentle-hearted thing has to get almost under the wing of Summer before she dares take possession of the remnant of her own. The great robber gets almost half the year. The very bears, curled up for their long nap, must in these days wake sometimes with an uneasy shiver and wonder whether their stock of fat will hold out.

This last and worst onset of winter may stand for those experiences that come as the sharpest test of the stuff that is in men. The pressure of adversity goes on and on, until we say it has reached the last point of endurance, and then another turn is given to the screw! For three long days the battle has raged around the heights of Gettysburg, and each side seems to have done its utmost, when the word is given for Pickett's division in solid column to throw itself straight against Cemetery Hill, that becomes a volcano to meet it. Those are the times that mark men for the rest of their lives as heroes. Yet there are finer heroisms than this. The very splendor of such an hour, with a nation's fate at stake and the world looking on, is enough to find out and kindle any spark of manhood in a man. With no such inspiration as that, there are in every community men and women who are battling with poverty and adversity and all kinds of trouble with a finer courage than that of the battlefield. They cover an anxious heart with a cheerful face, for the sake of husband or wife or children who are watching the face. No winter is long enough, no lifetime is long enough, to tire out their fortitude and patience and love. There are resources in human nature that never are known until things are at their hardest.

So at winter's worst—come it in one form or another—man summons up his courage, and though the winter be longer and sharper than he had thought—though poverty pinches him or trouble weighs upon him—he sets himself stoutly to bear it. Alone and unhelped he seems, perhaps,—the march of the seasons and the vast order of the universe taking no account of him; yet manfully he will face whatever comes. Whatever comes? It is the summer that is coming! As certain as to-day's snow and cold, the season of all beauty and warmth and delight is on its way! The apple-blossoms, the wild-flowers, the budding of every twig, the greenness of the pastures, the rejoicing life of animals and birds and insects, the sweet airs of May, the sunshine of June,—these, and all varied loveliness beyond imagination's reach or heart's desire, lie just before us. So for every soul that patiently endures an unimagined summer waits. Our patient endurance seems to us now a great matter, and indeed if we have it not we are little worth; but when the more genial season comes—when there fully reveals itself to us that high meaning of our lives and that divine destiny of which now we catch but a glimpse—we shall say, not "How well we endured the winter," but "How glorious is God's summer!"