CHAPTER III.
Making the Best Use of Our Lives.
The great Humboldt once said, "The aim of every man should be to secure the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole." Another thoughtful man, Sir John Lubbock, also said, "Our first object should be to make the most and best of ourselves."
Prominent among the historic personages who have made the best use of their lives is Joseph. Touch his career at any point that is open to investigation, and always Joseph will be found doing the very best that under the circumstances can be done. When his father tells him to carry food to his envious brothers, he obediently faces the danger of their hatred and goes. When he is a slave in Potiphar's house he discharges all his duties so discreetly that the prison-keeper trusts him implicitly. When his fellow-prisoners have heavy hearts, he feels their sorrows and tries to give them relief. When Pharaoh commits the ordering of a kingdom to his keeping, he governs the nation ably. When foresight has placed abundant food in his control, he feeds the famishing nations so that all are preserved. When his father and his brethren are in need, he graciously supplies their wants. When that father is dying, the son is as tender with him as a mother with her child. And when that father has died, the son reverences his father's last request and carries Jacob's body far up into the old home country at Machpelah for burial.
There were many occasions in Joseph's life in which he might have failed. At least, in any one of them he might have come short of the best. Seneca used to say of himself, "All I require of myself is, not to be equal to the best, but only to be better than the bad." But Joseph aimed in every individual experience to be equal to the best. In that aim he succeeded wondrously. Going out, as a young boy, from the simple home of a shepherd, becoming a captive in a strange land, subjected to great temptations in a luxurious civilization, tested with a great variety of important duties, exposed to the peril of pride and self-sufficiency, given opportunity for revenge upon those who had injured him, he always, without exception, carried himself well, doing his part bravely, earnestly, and wisely, and making of his life, in each opportunity, the best.
It is not every one that is called to such a vast range of experience as was Joseph. Even Christ never traveled out of His own little environment of Judea, that was a few miles north and south, and still fewer miles east and west. The great majority of lives never come into public prominence. They have no part in administering the affairs of a kingdom or in managing large mercantile transactions. Even among the apostles there were some whose history is almost lost in obscurity. We scarce know anything of what Bartholomew said or Lebbeus did. It is not a question whether we can make a great name for ourselves. That may be absolutely impossible. Many a beautiful flower is so placed in some extensive field that human eyes never see it and human lips consequently never praise it. But the question is, whether we are doing the best that can be done with our lives such as they are.
Every human life is like the life of some tree. Each tree is at its best when it well fulfils the purpose for which it was made. There are trees which must stand as towering as the date-palm if they answer their end, and there are other trees which can never expect to be towering, for they were made, like the box, to keep near the ground. Some trees are for outward fruit, as the apple, and some for inward fruit, as the ash. Fruit is "correspondence in development with the purpose for which the tree exists," is "production in the line of the nature of the tree." When, then, the orange tree produces sound, sweet oranges that refresh the dry lips of an invalid or ornament the table of a prince, the orange tree does well; and if it produces such fruit to as large a degree as possible, and for as long a time as possible, it has done its best. So, too, does the pine do well when it produces wood wherewith a good house for family joy may be built, and the spruce does well when it brings forth a fiber that may be fashioned into paper on which words of truth can be printed, and the oak does well when it develops a grain suitable for the construction of a vessel that plowing the waves shall carry cargoes of merchandise. If the pine, the spruce, the oak, grow to the extent of their opportunity, and become all that they can become in the line of their own possibility, each and all have made the best use of their lives.