There must especially rise to full certainty in the soul the conviction that an eternal divine order exists, against which all the might of men who still have freedom of action contends quite vainly, and that all real success and all true happiness consists only in the free harmony of the free human will with this order, and that punishment does not follow every violation of this harmony, but resides within it, and can only be set aside through God’s mercy. Then, as the Berlenburg Bible says, “the commands of God acquire a pleasant aspect, and we become their good friends and look upon them as true helps and preservers, by whose means God wishes to set to one side whatever hinders us from companionship and union with Him.”
Only when this conviction has become established within us, can we have a guiding principle for fruitful activity outward; before, it is too early, and so in most cases without result. Salvation is not a doctrine in which one can remain quite the same, can say Lord, Lord, and yet be far from him, but it is some actual thing that really happens to us if we give up our will to it.
But in order that this may be able to happen to us, we must first be free from self-love, from self-concern in all its forms; that is the difficult work that is wrought within us slowly, with many a halting-place and with much cross-bearing. For we must be quite empty of ourselves before we can receive everything that we need for our understanding and feeling, but it must come in daily rations like the manna of the Old Testament, not all at once as the crafty “old man” would much rather have it, so as to be as independent as possible of God’s daily grace; that is the “last error, that is worse than the first.” To train us thereto, so that we may receive the right gifts in their fulness, is the meaning of our life-guidance up to this point; only then, and not before, will our activity be full of blessing. In this connection the “social question” comes in, not only for the men of our time, but of every time; it has always existed, and always will exist, so long as there are human beings; it will never find its solution either through Church or through State, but only through the ethical power and the personal love of infinitely many individuals, each one of whom must, in the sphere of work indicated to him, do that which is specially laid upon him, and neither bury nor exchange his talent. That is his outward task in life, which he may neither evade nor be unfaithful to, and only when and in so far as he is just to this shall he teach it to others also, and help, during his lifetime, to maintain this teaching of love upon the earth. When once money, ambition, and pleasure no longer play any considerable rôle with a man, then he finds so much leisure time upon his hands that he must really look about him for some activity to fill it up, else he runs the risk of falling back, through tedium, to where he was before.
This period is, therefore, essentially made up of work and struggle, but if all goes rightly, the work is more and more joyous, done with greater and greater gladness, and without any feeling of distress, and the struggle against everything undivine in oneself or in others is more and more victorious, more and more quiet; and in this period there is finally “a rest that remaineth for the people of God.” God will give them the end they are waiting for, and an end that is not sad, like that of so many noble men who had a different aim in life.
Schiller’s picture is not the right one when he says, “Quietly, with vessel barely saved, the old man returns to the harbor from which, in youth, he set out with a thousand masts.” No; thankful for all he has done and suffered, content with what he has become through God’s mercy, and with the confident prospect of a yet greater and better field of action, he already, without waiting for his death-bed, lays his life-accounts to one side, and looks with simple quietness upon the (for him) unimportant transition into a new sphere of life.
IV
Age comes on suddenly, in most cases; very often with some special event, usually some sickness, which performs the function of what is called picket-duty in military life. Then oftentimes there is disclosed, just as suddenly, the difference (hitherto concealed) between men and the various outcomes of their lives. While some still endeavor with redoubled eagerness to enjoy the last fruits of their autumnal days (though age often reveals them now as so little worth while), or else give themselves up to pessimistic despair over the transitoriness of all things earthly (which always forms the close of each great period of pleasure), more earnestly minded spirits are now for the first time saying: “Whither am I bound? The world’s call to pleasure sounds hollow to me, now that the doors of eternity stand open before; I am sated with the whited bowl of untruth and its vapid draughts, and I bear my empty pitchers to thy springs, O thou city of God!” These are the laborers that stood idle all the day, or fatigued themselves with useless toil. These also will be accepted still, and will receive their penny at the end of the day’s labor as well as those who came earlier. The mercy of the Lord of Toil thus wills it, though many murmur against this, even yet.
But it is better, nevertheless, if this incoming has taken place earlier and the third period is not a time of turning about, but merely the natural sequence and development of the second. For the true steps of life have about them something of the Dantean Paradise; namely this, that in each of them, even in the lowest, already resides something of the uppermost—something that pacifies the soul, without longing for more, and yet with hope for more.
In the life of people who have become old, three sorts of dispositions are regularly shown. The ordinary one, when outward circumstances are favorable, is that of elderly people who are fond of life and who want as much as possible to enjoy the remnant of their existence in a finer or coarser manner, and accordingly sink now and then into caricatures of youth. The basis of this disposition is selfishness, which, even in its finer form, at last affects unpleasantly every one who meets it. Aristocratic idlers have such an exit to life, for the most part. A worthier end is when people who have been busy for the most of life take their repose, whether it be a resting upon their laurels, or, as more frequently happens, upon their accumulated capital. These are, in the best instances, the cheerful old people who are treasured and cared for by their relatives, spend their last days in respectably doing nothing, revel in memories of their youth, or student-years, or travels, or campaigns, and now and then compose memoirs, or let their jubilees be celebrated. Apart from a certain vanity and pettiness that is always joined therewith, this is an innocent exit to life, and the world is as a rule lenient toward it—if for no other reason, at least for the reason that these people no longer stand in anybody’s way; therefore it gladly gives them a handsome burial and a few fitting obituary notices in the papers on the day of the funeral, and with that its concernment is definitely fulfilled. The third kind of conclusion to life is the moving forward to a higher existence, the hand continuously at the plough, never looking backward to the past, but always directing the eyes toward what is yet to be attained. This conception of life is really only possible with persons who believe in a future life; nevertheless, it also appears among other earnest workers, but is then joined with sadness over the continual decline of the powers. This is the worthiest, indeed the only worthy exit to life, though often accompanied with sorrows of some sort, to keep one in fit condition for conflict. These three endings of life resemble the three caskets in Shakespeare’s drama: the first, in the golden casket, is outwardly the most splendid, but within is full of emptiness and is at bottom to be despised; the second, in the silver casket, is not unworthy, but somewhat “ordinary”; the third contains, in mostly invisible form, the real crown of a life that has been wisely understood and well-employed to the very end, and that bears within itself the full assurance of a yet better continuation beyond.
At any rate, the special task of the final step of life is living in all sincerity in nearness to God—something that it is much easier to think of than to describe. The descriptions of those who have themselves experienced this suddenly leave us, as a rule, in the lurch, whether because they lived in order to act, and not to describe, or because they disdained saying things about themselves which, at their stage of advancement, seemed matters of course and nowise meritorious, but something to be continuously received in humility. The goal of this period is just here—no longer to receive anything for one’s own sake, but to become a blessing to others in that humble spirit which now has come to belong to the virtues that have been won.