Chapter 4 No.4

Putting the Best Into Others.

There is nothing more worthy than the desire to perpetuate the good. That desire implies that the person cherishing it has good within himself, and that he wishes that good to live and flourish after his death. If a man thinks that his views are the best that can be held, then, if he is a noble soul, interested in the world's welfare, he longs to have his best enter into other lives, and so continue to bless the world.

This longing characterized Elijah. He came upon the scene of human life at a time when the worship of the low and debased threatened to dominate the people of Israel. The priests of Baal, an impure god, were in the ascendant. Vices, as a consequence, prevailed. These vices controlled even the court. King Ahab and Queen Jezebel were impiously wrong. Elijah had stern work to do. He must reprove the people for their errors. He must face the priests of Baal and show them and show the nation that their god, as compared to Jehovah, was powerless. He must tell those in high places, even the king and queen themselves, that their sins, if persisted in, would surely be visited by Jehovah's wrath.

His was a difficult task. It required courage, persistency, and determined purpose. It would have been folly for him to undertake it unless he felt that his ideas were essential to the nation's good. He would be resisted and hated. Hours would come when he would seem to stand wholly alone, and the cause he represented would appear to him hopeless. Still, difficult as his task was, he undertook it. All this worship of Baal and all these vicious practices of the people were wrecking the nation. As a patriot, as a lover of his fellow-man, as a good servant of God, he must do and he would do whatever was in his power to replace the wrong with the right, to implant in the lives of the people, from peasant to king, the truest and purest ideals. Accordingly he faithfully taught the will of God, called upon God to reveal Himself on Mount Carmel, reproved Ahab and Jezebel, and did his best to put the best into the life of his day.

But he could not live forever. At any hour he might be stricken down by the hand of an enemy or by the power of some illness. Like a wise man, loving the cause he had espoused, he looked about for some one who, in case of his disability or death, could take up his work and carry forward his ideas. His mind turned toward one special man, perhaps just coming out of boyhood into maturity, a man who seemed to have the inherent power of development, and he set his heart on putting into him, Elisha, the best thought and the best principles that he had. He came upon Elisha in the full vigor of youth, plowing with twelve yoke of oxen. The distinctive garment of Elijah's mission was his mantle. That stood for Elijah's special work of speaking the truth of God and calling the nation to righteousness. Upon seeing Elisha in the field, Elijah passed over from the caravan path that he was traveling, and threw his mantle upon Elisha's shoulders! The action carried its own meaning. It indicated to Elisha that Elijah wished him to take up his work and stand for his ideas. Elisha instantly realized the meaning of the act, and, in briefest time compatible with filial duty, he answered to Elijah's wish.

One little sentence in the story of these two men's lives is very instructive. "They two went on." It is a very brief summary of what was occurring for days and months and years before Elijah died. "They two went on." They were together. They talked together. They thought together. They prayed together. Little by little Elijah imparted to Elisha his views of life and imparted to him also his enthusiasm for the welfare of Israel. When the time came for Elisha to step forward and do his part for Israel's good, he was ready to act. He became and long continued to be a wise, helpful, instructive benefactor to Israel. The best that had been in Elijah's life was perpetuated in Elisha's life.

It is a beautiful way to live, this way of putting the best into other lives. It confers such a blessing on the particular individual who is thus helped. We cannot say with positiveness that the world might never have known the full force of Elisha's character had not Elijah cast his mantle over Elisha's shoulder, but the probability is that it was Elijah's interest in Elisha and his success in educating him toward his own ideals that gave the world Elisha's elevated personality. Paul acted similarly with Timothy. Timothy was undoubtedly a good boy of many worthy parts, and with many noble views of life. But Paul laid his hand and heart upon him, and claimed him for the special purpose of continuing the ministry of the gospel, and educated him to be a faithful representative of the truth. Often there is much hesitancy to be overcome, even in worthy people, before natural endowments will be put to the best use. Such may have been the case with both Elisha and Timothy. They needed encouragement. They needed inspiration through a sense of responsibility. This was the situation with John Knox. He, humanly speaking, never could have come forward as an advocate of Christ's truth and religious freedom had it not been that another approached him, put his hand on his shoulder, and said, "You have powers of good in you. You must use them in standing up for God and Scotland."

Wonderful resources are often developed in others through this purpose to put our best into them. No one knows the power latent in another life. The most unpromising looking people may have faculties that, once awakened, directed, and called into action, will do a blessed part in the world's advance. Every school whose history can be followed for fifty years has had pupils that at the outset seemed absolutely unpromising, that seemed even incapable of appreciation or development, but who, under the devotion and inspiration of some teacher or fellow-pupil, became so aroused and so efficient that their names are an honor to the school. The glory of every Ragged Boys' Home in a great city is that former inmates who were thieves, parentless and friendless, were so reached by a patient, loving man or woman that they became industrious and honorable citizens, holding positions of power in the city itself or possessing prosperous acres in the country. It is the boy picked up in the streets of New York and sent West to be a member of a farmer's household that was led by that household's interest into such character that he was appointed governor of Alaska. "I have made," said Sir Humphry Davy, "many discoveries, but the best discovery was when I discovered Michael Faraday." There is scarcely any joy comparable with the joy of discovering to himself and to the world the best elements possible in another's life. The one who brought about this discovery gladly sinks into the background, and rejoices to let the field be occupied by the one discovered. It would seem as though God Himself must have rejoiced when, after all His patient teaching of Moses on the side of Horeb, He saw Moses showing his superb power of leadership in Egypt, and that God must have similarly rejoiced when He saw Paul responding to His charge and manifesting traits of love, forbearance, and humility that Paul had not thought he possessed. To put one Elisha into the world's arena, there to stand and battle for the right, was the crowning glory and the crowning joy of Elijah's life. The men or women that can take the best that is in them and put it into another, so that another shall live the best, honor the best, and glorify the best, can ask no higher privilege in life.

But beyond the good secured to the individual by putting the best into him is the good secured to the world thereby. It was not merely that Elijah inspired a new life in Elisha's soul and transformed a man, it was also that he set in operation a new influence. The influence was not exactly like his own. It was like Elijah's in that it was righteous, safe, and helpful, but it was unlike Elijah's in its temper and expression. Elijah was a great destroyer of evil: Elisha was a great uplifter of good. Elijah's earliest proclamation was, "There shall not be dew nor rain these years": Elisha's earliest miracle is, "There shall be from hence life and fruitful land." Both were alike in their general purpose, both alike in their courage. Neither one of them could be moved from the path of duty by fear of man or men. But each was himself, as distinct as two mountain peaks in the same range or as two ships on the same sea. Elijah imparted his best to Elisha, but that best took shape in Elisha according to Elisha's individuality. Elisha was not Elijah over again, but he was Elijah's best in a new form-a new form that was demanded by the needs of a new day. Elijah had laid blows of condemnation on the nation: Elisha was to apply the balm of healing where those blows had fallen. Elijah was an agitator: Elisha was a teacher. Elijah was denunciatory: Elisha was tolerant. Each in his place held the best views held by any man of his time, but each in his place was called upon to hold those views according to his own temperament and express them according to the need immediately at hand.

No parent, teacher, or friend can possibly reproduce himself in another. It is God's law that, however alike plants may seem in reproduction, no child shall see life exactly as his parents, nor shall a pupil see it exactly as a teacher. This law is most wise. The same work is never given to any two people to do. It may be work of the same general nature, but never work the same in all particulars. Different types of men, actuated by the same motives, are required for different types of work. Any man who endeavors to be a pure copyist of another gone before him, always fails of individual development and fails of usefulness. Elijah could not foresee the changed circumstances in which Elisha would live, when many of the vexatious questions of Elijah's day would be settled and new questions of morality and public welfare would arise. All that he could do, all that any man can do, is to give the best he has to another, and send him forth to use that best as well as the other can in the new place. The beauty of human history is that the work the best man of one age could not accomplish, another coming after him does accomplish, and he accomplishes it, not because he is any better than his predecessor, but because he is the man for this hour as his predecessor was for the hour before this. There is always work to be done. There are always tasks left over from a previous generation. There are always ideas hitherto unemphasized that to-day must be emphasized, else society will not know its duty. For this work and task and emphasis new men are needed, men who do not see exactly as their fathers saw, nor pronounce nor act exactly as their fathers did. To provide such men, to inspire them with a great sense of duty, and send them out into life with open minds toward God and open hearts toward their fellows, and then withdraw our hand and let them do their own work, in their own way, this is our blessed privilege.

We may endeavor to put the best into others directly. A parent is a parent largely for this particular purpose. The father and mother have this end as their greatest and highest responsibility. They cannot shirk it without hurt to themselves and to their child. No one can and no one should influence a child as directly as does a parent. The parent may temporarily place the child beneath the influence of a nurse, a pastor, or a teacher, but the abiding influence should be and is the parent's. Little by little, line upon line, precept upon precept, conduct upon conduct, the parent should endeavor to set before the child the highest ideas of life. Skill is requisite in stating these ideas, in illustrating them, in making them attractive, in persuading to their acceptance. The evil or the inferior lodged in the child's heart needs to be forced out, that the best may enter. Happy the parent whose forcing process is like the incoming of light into a darkened room, a process that is gentle and conciliatory, a process that never boasts of victory and never leaves a pain.

This is the parent's greatest hope and greatest reward, to have a child who shall in the child's own time and place be an advancer of the world's good. A thousand spheres of opportunity open before each new generation. Into any one of them the child may carry the best his father or mother ever thought or said. Many parents wish their children to do in life work of the very same type that they once did. It was therefore a gratification to their ministerial fathers when they saw their own sons enter the ministry, Henry Ward Beecher, Jonathan Edwards, Frederick W. Farrar, Charles H. Spurgeon, John Wesley, and Reginald Heber. But other ministerial fathers likewise might be gratified when they saw their sons helpfully laboring in noble spheres not specifically "the ministry," as in poetry, Joseph Addison, Samuel T. Coleridge, William Cowper, Ben Jonson, Oliver Goldsmith, Alfred Tennyson, James Russell Lowell, Oliver W. Holmes, John Keble, and James Montgomery; as in literature, Matthew Arnold, Bancroft, Froude, Hallam, and Parkman; as in art, Joshua Reynolds and Christopher Wren; as in law, Lord Ellenborough, Stephen J. Field, David J. Brewer, David Dudley Field; as in statesmanship, Henry Clay, Edward Everett, Sir William Harcourt, John B. Balfour, and William Forster; and as in invention, Samuel F. B. Morse.

But while the great opportunity of putting the best into others is the parent's (and men out in earnest usefulness thank God most of all for their mothers and fathers, especially as they grow older and realize how early in youth it was that their characters received determining impressions), still others, besides parents, may use direct means toward this same end. Here is the teacher's opportunity. A plastic, receptive mind is before him. It says to him: "I am here to be taught. Teach me the best-the best way to see, to reason, to act, the best way to do my part in society and the world." Many a teacher has looked on that opportunity as sacred; has valued it as much as Elijah valued his opportunity to cast his mantle on Elisha. Such teachers have wrought out most valuable results. They have put ideas, methods, principles, and a spirit into pupils that have made those pupils a blessing to the world. The pupils may not recall much of what the teacher said-perhaps they cannot recall one particular truth that the teacher enforced-but they recall a purpose that dominated the teacher, and the pupils now are endeavoring to fulfil what they feel would be the wishes of that teacher if the teacher to-day could stand beside them.

And why should we stop with parents and teachers in speaking of this direct effort to put the best into other lives. Nurses in homes have endeavored to give little children the truest knowledge of God and of beauty, and have succeeded. The world owes them much for its best men and women. Had they not seconded parents, had they attempted to uproot the good implanted by parents, all would have been ruined. So, too, have friends, masters, employers, writers in the press, writers of books, lecturers, and preachers aimed at this same end. They have felt a great desire to give their fellows beautiful thoughts, strong principles, supporting comforts, and heavenly ideals. They have felt that their heart's supreme wish would be met if they could only cause a double portion of their own spirit-aye, a four-fold, a hundred-fold of their good purposes to rest upon others-and to this end they have prayed, given money and counsel, spoken to employees and friends and comrades, written, sung, preached, labored, and died. The company of those who have wished to put the best into others is a glorious company, the company of prophets, apostles, saints, martyrs, workmen in every sphere, in every clime, in every age. Surely this host is the host of the elect, the choicest ones of all God's people on earth and in heaven.

Apart from and beyond our direct effort to put the best into other lives is our indirect, our unconscious influence to this good end. Personality is more potent than words. Men and women impart ozone to the atmosphere without knowing what good they have done. They become standards of righteousness and are all unaware that any one looks at them to gauge his own opinion or shape his own conduct. They are like regulator clocks, by which the watches of the world seen to be wrong are set aright and are kept aright. To try to live the best in the hope that somehow one can put the best into the very air, and get it into the life of the school and community, and have it become a part of public sentiment, that surely is noble. That is the way to live. No one ever lives in vain who so lives. Some one is helped by him. Some one tells of him. Cecil's saying of Sir Walter Raleigh, "I know he can toil terribly," is an electric touch.

In one of my pastorates there was a farmer's son, living two miles from the church. Almost all the young men of his age in the village and congregation were careless, selfish, and a little fast. His father was out of sympathy with religious earnestness. But the son resolved that he would put his best into others' lives. He thought, prayed, worshiped, to that end. Through snow and rain and mud he came where earnestness and high ideals were in the air. He did a manly, helpful part in his home, in his village, and in his church. Then, thinking that he knew farming and could teach it, he volunteered to go to an Indian school in Indian Territory, and as a farm manager, teach farming. He went, on almost no salary, and lived and labored, that through his words, conduct, and spirit he might put the best into others' lives. Thus he lived and labored till he died, two thousand miles from home, and was buried there, the only one of his family not placed in the village graveyard. But his work has not died. It lives in all who know of it. They think of it again and again, and it always makes them wish to fulfil to the best all their opportunity for the good of others.

There are many, many hearts so conscious of the help they have received from others that they read with appreciation the commemorative tablet placed by the distinguished Pasteur on the house of his birth: "O my father and mother, who lived so simply in that tiny house, it is to you that I owe everything! Your eager enthusiasm, my mother, you passed on into my life. And you, my father, whose life and trade were so toilsome, you taught me what patience can accomplish with prolonged effort. It is to you that I owe tenacity in daily labor."

"Others shall sing the song;

Others shall right the wrong,

Finish what I begin,

And all I fail of, win.

What matter, I or they,

Mine or another's day,

So the right word be said,

And life the sweeter made."

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Developing Our Best Under Difficulties.

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