Signs of the Times

[From the Pacific Unitarian, San Francisco, California]

Individually we should face a New Year with a fixed determination to do and act well our part. It is ours to enjoy its opportunities and to fulfill our responsibilities—to be diligent and patient and determined; to be reasonable and courageous and good-natured; to be unselfish, considerate, and kindly. We will help to make life better if we can help to make it happier; and while it is of first concern to be upright, to be true, to be honorable, he is performing valuable service who keeps of good cheer and meets each day with a smile. Indeed, the man who is able to laugh, now and then, is a real helper. Our dear Dr. Gannett once upon a time made a plea for it as a duty. He said: "Educate your laugh, if you can, to ring often and sweet, that you may be able to radiate widely your pleasure and health." Many of us find little to laugh at, but we all are willing to do it. We can at least feel gladness of spirit and hold ourselves in readiness to laugh when we can.

[From the Southern Florist and Nurseryman, Fort Worth, Texas]

What better plans could the business-man adopt, on the threshold of the New Year, than to shape all his policies and actions by the rule of "How can I best serve the community?" Business, rightly conceived, is for simply the intelligent doing of beneficent, necessary things for the individual and society. The doer of things in this spirit earns the good will of society, and that good will is rightly (and cheerfully) expressed in reciprocal service.

[From the New Outlook, Toronto, Ontario, Canada]

It is Robert Louis Stevenson who speaks of happiness as a great task, and it is interesting to consider just what he meant by that way of putting the matter. Those who know him know that he is not likely to use words carelessly, and that therefore he must have had something very definite in his mind when he spoke of his great task of happiness. Happiness as a great and difficult duty might at first flush seem to be happiness under impossible conditions, but it is only when we think of the matter very superficially that we reach any such conclusion. Those extremely light-hearted, if not light-headed, poets who gaily advise us just to be glad, as if happiness were like turning one's hand over, are not very convincing; indeed, sometimes they are very tiresome, or even annoying. That extremely fair-weather kind of happiness would need to come very easily, for it is not worth very much when it does come, and is not a thing greatly to be craved. The happiness that is worth anything, the kind that stays with a man overnight and goes down deep into the heart and reality of living, is something that does not come easily and is not to be had by mere wishing. ... If human history reveals anything it reveals the fact that happiness is not had by having or getting, or of necessity kept away by wanting and denial. It is a condition of soul and not a set of circumstances. I am sure, too, that humanity's long history has taught us this, that real and enduring happiness does not come to any great degree to undisciplined souls. There are some great foes to happiness that a man must work out of his system before happiness can come to him. Envy is one of them. Too great a lust for having is another. Vaulting ambition is a third. And quite a few others might be mentioned. And in place of these, some positive qualities must be built in, upon which happiness may find some sort of foundation. Simplicity makes a good basis upon which to found happiness. Plain living and high thinking do open doors into satisfactions that may not be reached in any other way. And so, the way to happiness, it would seem, must ever be a way of discipline. And who will say that the way of discipline is an easy way? ... No wonder Stevenson spoke of the task of happiness and indicated that even as brave-spirited and courageous a man as he might somewhat fail in it at times. But this is to be insisted upon—happiness is in the great divine scheme of things for every man, and if any one of us fails to achieve it he fails in a great task that has been divinely laid upon him. ... And there is not any doubt in the world that if he will accept his God-given task he shall be able to find that way and walk in it with great joy and rejoicing.

[From the Record of the United Free Church of Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland]

If thanklessness be a denial of our faith, equally is it a wrong done to our fellow-men. When a man goes about with low views of God, of himself, and of his world, he chills the whole atmosphere. He is a moral iceberg. A stagnant humor, a sour spirit, a cynical temper, are not only the sure sings of a depressed spiritual vitality, but an injury to the world a man moves in. "To be happy is the first step to being pious" is a dictum which has the bite of truth in it. And, certainly, the New Testament weaves into the duty of being good that also of being glad. No room in the New Testament for the "grouser"! It is long since William Law pointed out the implications of one whole book in Holy Writ being given to praise. Thankfulness is a virtue which breaks bounds like the thrush in February, when on the bare branches and in face of the chilliest air it trills out its song. It proves the livableness of life, and rejoices in the steadiness of the love of God. We ought to cultivate it more than we do in this land of gray skies and rugged piety. We commend the gospel of the grace of God each time we hold by the sunny side of life's street.

[From the Boston Evening Transcript, Massachusetts]

Much is said in religious statement about things eternal and eternal life, and we may well ask what it really is they are trying to say, Rev. Richard H. Clapp of New Haven, Connecticut, said in his closing noonday address in King's Chapel. In the book of Ecclesiastes, he added, the philosopher suggests that there are two constant elements in experience, the possible beauty of everything for its own time, and the sense of eternal meaning and worth. "As to the first," the preacher continued, "do we not know, as we think back across the years, that every now and then there comes to us an experience, joyous or grievous, the conclusion of a bit of thinking, or insight into beauty, that we say is complete and satisfying? We have tried to do something and achieved it. There is joy in it like the joy of God in creation's story, as He looked on His work and saw that it was good. It is an accomplished fact that is beautiful in its time, and so with the culmination of careful and persistent thought.

"When Kepler, the astronomer, came to some conclusions in his studies, he exclaimed in ecstasy that he was thinking God's thoughts after Him. So it is time and again in our experience of beauty, of great and dear human fellowship. In such moments we see, and feel, and know that we possess the strange and glorious quality of the final good and ultimate satisfaction in which we could wish to abide. 'He hath made every thing beautiful in his time.' There is the other experience: 'He hath set eternity in their heart.' Sometimes in the midst of the day's work, with its commonplace, there comes a sense of utter strangeness and wonder, as if we were in the presence of vaster meanings to be apprehended, an infinitely greater world to be possessed. The work we are doing is only a little part of an infinite task, the beauty we see only the reflection of ineffable beauty. As the stars only suggest the illimitable spaces in which they move, so the common experiences now and again suggest a world of aspiration and opportunity and achievement, which only God can satisfy, and we understand a little better Augustine's saying, 'O God, Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.' This is the rhythm of life, preoccupation with the task at hand and the immediate interests, joy in work and the day's fellowship, then the constant and deep realization that these things in themselves are not enough, but that they belong to an eternal world through which alone life can come to its fullness, and of which the partial achievements and experiences of time insistently prophesy."

[From Great Thoughts, London, England]

How many of us are making the most of our life's task? To many that task seems so small and so unimportant that it appears to make but little difference how it is performed. Yet there is a right way to do everything; and between the listless and indifferent performance and the earnest and thoughtful one there is a world of difference. The world has little use for the slipshod worker, and he is soon elbowed aside; but the world has respect for the man who puts his conscience and his brain into his work; and it ought to have, for his work means safety, comfort, and progress. It is a good thing sanely to "magnigy" our work. It is a good thing to study it until we see its real and intimate relation to the world's welfare. There is no task so lowly that God is not concerned in it, no man so humble that God does not come near him, no life so dull that it cannot be transfigured by divine grace. Wherever God has placed us, there let us cheerfully serve; whatever task He has assigned us, that let us gladly do, assured that His wisdom never blunders, and satisfied that any task which He has planned is surely full of divinest dignity.

[From the Tribune, Chicago, Illinois]

The miracle of human life cannot be explained on materialistic grounds, Dr. Allan Craig of Chicago said in an address before the American College of Surgeons. "It is the spirit within him that makes the man supreme in the world and allows him to control materialistic things," Dr. Craig said. ... "The churches of to-day must come out of the clouds," he continued. "The people of to-day are not irreligious. ... The young people are interested in clean living and moral precepts as laid down in the Ten Commandments."

[Edward S. Martin in Harper's Magazine, New York, New York]

The understanding of life and of the true interest of nations that will bring world peace, if it ever comes, will be an understanding that will diminish the love of money by making other things seem more important than money getting.

[Rev. Manfred C. Wright, as quoted in the Pharos-Tribune, Logansport, Indiana]

What men and nations need is to conquer fear that men may emerge into the freedom of the sons of God and that nations may emerge from the fear of war into peace and liberty for all mankind.