Going Up
How We Become Great
WE go up as we grow great. That is, we go up as we grow up. But so many
are trying to grow great on the outside without growing great on the
inside. They rattle on the inside!
They fool themselves, but nobody else.
There is only one greatness--inside greatness. All outside greatness is
merely an incidental reflection of the inside.
Greatness is not measured in any material terms. It is not measured in
inches, dollars, acres, votes, hurrahs, or by any other of the world's
yardsticks or barometers.
Greatness is measured in spiritual terms. It is education. It is life
expansion.
We go up from selfishness to unselfishness.
We go up from impurity to purity.
We go up from unhappiness to happiness.
We go up from weakness to strength.
We go up from low ideals to high ideals.
We go up from little vision to greater vision.
We go up from foolishness to wisdom.
We go up from fear to faith.
We go up from ignorance to understanding.
We go up by our own personal efforts. We go up by our own service,
sacrifice, struggle and overcoming. We push out our own skyline. We
rise above our own obstacles. We learn to see, hear, hold and
understand.
We may become very great, very educated, rise very high, and yet not
leave our kitchen or blacksmith shop. We take the kitchen or blacksmith
shop right up with us! We make it a great kitchen or great blacksmith
shop. It becomes our throne-room!
Come, let us grow greater. There is a throne for each of us.
"Getting to the Top"
"Getting to the top" is the world's pet delusion. There is no top. No
matter how high we rise, we discover infinite distances above. The
higher we rise, the better we see that life on this planet is the going
up from the Finite to the Infinite.
The world says that to get greatness means to get great things. So the
world is in the business of getting--getting great fortunes, great
lands, great titles, great applause, great fame, and folderol.
Afterwhile the poor old world hears the empty rattle of the inside, and
wails, "All is vanity. I find no pleasure in them. Life is a failure."
All outside life is a failure. Real life is in being things on the
inside, not in getting things on the outside.
I weary of the world's pink-sheet extras about "Getting to the Top" and
"Forging to the Front." Too often they are the sordid story of a few
scrambling over the heads of the weaker ones. Sometimes they are the
story of one pig crowding the other pigs out of the trough and
cornering all the swill!
The Secret of Greatness
Christ Jesus was a great Teacher. His mission was to educate humanity.
There came to him those two disciples who wanted to "get to the top."
Those two sons of Zebedee wanted to have the greatest places in the new
kingdom they imagined he would establish on earth.
They got very busy pursuing greatness, but I do not read that they were
half so busy preparing for greatness. They even had their mother out
electioneering for them.
"O, Master," said the mother, "grant that these my two sons may sit,
the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom."
The Master looked with love and pity upon their unpreparedness. "Are ye
able to drink of the cup?" Then he gave the only definition of
greatness that can ever stand: "Whosoever will be great among you, let
him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be
your servant."
That is we cannot be "born great," nor "have greatness thrust upon" us.
We must "achieve greatness" by developing it on the inside--developing
ability to minister and to serve.
We cannot buy a great arm. Our arm must become a great servant, and
thus it becomes great.
We cannot buy a great mind. Our mind must become a great servant, and
thus it becomes great.
We cannot buy a great character. It is earned in great moral service.
The First Step at Hand
This is the Big Business of life--going up, getting educated, getting
greatness on the inside. Getting greatness on the outside is little
business. Much of it mighty little.
Everybody's privilege and duty is to become great. And the joy of it is
that the first step is always nearest at hand. We do not have to go off
to New York or Chicago or go chasing around the world to become great.
It is a great stairway that leads from where our feet are now upward
for an infinite number of steps.
We must take the first step now. Most of us want to take the hundredth
step or the thousandth step now. We want to make some spectacular
stride of a thousand steps at one leap. That is why we fall so hard
when we miss our step.
We must go right back to our old place--into our kitchen or our
workshop or our office and take the first step, solve the problem
nearest at hand. We must make our old work luminous with a new
devotion. We must battle up over every inch. And as fast as we solve
and dissolve the difficulties and turn our burdens into blessings, we
find love, the universal solvent, shining out of our lives. We find our
spiritual influences going upward. So the winds of earth are born; they
rush in from the cold lands to the warm upward currents. And so as our
problems disappear and our life currents set upward, the world is drawn
toward us with its problems. We find our kitchen or workshop or office
becoming a new throne of power. We find the world around us rising up
to call us blessed.
As we grow greater our troubles grow smaller, for we see them thru
greater eyes. We rise above them.
As we grow greater our opportunities grow greater. That is, we begin to
see them. They are around us all the time, but we must get greater eyes
to see them.
Generally speaking, the smaller our vision of our work, the more we
admire what we have accomplished and "point with pride." The greater
our vision, the more we see what is yet to be accomplished.
It was the sweet girl graduate who at commencement wondered how one
small head could contain it all. It was Newton after giving the world a
new science who looked back over it and said, "I seem to have been only
a boy playing on the seashore * * * while the great ocean of truth lay
all undiscovered before me." That great ocean is before us all.
The Widow's Mites
The great Teacher pointed to the widow who cast her two mites into the
treasury, and then to the rich men who had cast in much more. "This
poor widow hath cast in more than they all. For all these have of their
abundance cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury hath
cast in all the living that she had."
Tho the rich men had cast in more, yet it was only a part of their
possessions. The widow cast in less, but it was all she had. The Master
cared little what the footings of the money were in the treasury. That
is not why we give. We give to become great. The widow had given
all--had completely overcome her selfishness and fear of want.
Becoming great is overcoming our selfishness and fear. He that saveth
his life shall lose it, but he that loseth his life for the advancement
of the kingdom of happiness on earth shall find it great and glorified.
Our greatness therefore does not depend upon how much we give or upon
what we do, whether peeling potatoes or ruling a nation, but upon the
percentage of our output to our resources. Upon doing with our might
what our hands find to do. Quit worrying about what you cannot get to
do. Rejoice in doing the things you can get to do. And as you are
faithful over a few things you go up to be ruler over many.
The world says some of us have golden gifts and some have copper gifts.
But when we cast them all into the treasury of right service, there is
an alchemy that transmutes every gift into gold. Every work is drudgery
when done selfishly. Every work becomes golden when done in a golden
manner.
Finding the Great People
I do not know who fitted the boards into the floor I stand upon. I do
not know all the great people who may come and stand upon this floor.
But I do know that the one who made the floor--and the one who sweeps
it--is just as great as anybody in the world who may come and stand
upon it, if each be doing his work with the same love, faithfulness and
capability.
We have to look farther than the "Who's Who" and Dun and Bradstreet to
make a roster of the great people of a community. You will find the
community heart in the precious handful who believe that the service of
God is the service of man.
The great people of the community serve and sacrifice for a better
tomorrow. They are the faithful few who get behind the churches, the
schools, the lyceum and chautauqua, and all the other movements that go
upward.
They are the ones who are "always trying to run things." They are the
happy ones, happy for the larger vision that comes as they go higher by
unselfish service. They are discovering that their sweetest pay comes
from doing many things they are not paid for. They rarely get thanked,
for the community does not often think of thanking them until it comes
time to draft the "resolutions of respect."
I had to go to the mouth of a coal-mine in a little Illinois town, to
find the man the bureau had given as lyceum committeeman there. I
wondered what the grimy-faced man from the shaft, wearing the miner's
lamp in his cap, could possibly have to do with the lyceum course. But
I learned that he had all to do with it. He had sold the tickets and
had done all the managing. He was superintendent of the Sunday school.
He was the storm-center of every altruistic effort in the town--the
greatest man there, because the most serviceable, tho he worked every
day full time with his pick at his bread-and-butter job.
The great people are so busy serving that they have little time to
strut and pose in the show places. Few of them are "prominent clubmen."
You rarely find their names in the society page. They rarely give
"brilliant social functions." Their idle families attend to such things.
A Glimpse of Gunsaulus
I found a great man lecturing at the chautauquas. He preaches in
Chicago on Sundays to thousands. He writes books and runs a college he
founded by his own preaching. He is the mainspring of so many uplift
movements that his name gets into the papers about every day, and you
read it in almost every committee doing good things in Chicago.
He had broken away from Chicago to have a vacation. Many people think
that a vacation means going off somewhere and stretching out under
trees or letting the mind become a blank. But this Chicago preacher
went from one chautauqua town to another, and took his vacation going
up and down the streets. He dug into the local history of each place,
and before dinner he knew more about the place than most of the natives.
"There is a sermon for me," he would exclaim every half-hour. He went
to see people who were doing things. He went to see people who were
doing nothing. In every town he would discover somebody of unusual
attainment. He made every town an unusual town. He turned the humdrum
travel map into a wonderland. He scolded lazy towns and praised
enterprising ones. He stopped young fellows on the streets. "What are
you going to do in life?" Perhaps the young man would say, "I have no
chance." "You come to Chicago and I'll give you a chance," the man on
his vacation would reply.
So this Chicago preacher was busy every day, working overtime on his
vacation. He was busy about other people's business. He did not once
ask the price of land, nor where there was a good investment for
himself, but every day he was trying to make an investment in somebody
else.
His friends would sometimes worry about him. They would say, "Why
doesn't the doctor take care of himself, instead of taking care of
everybody else? He wears himself out for other people until he hasn't
strength enough left to lecture and do his own work."
Sometimes they were right about that.
But he that saveth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life
in loving service finds it returning to him great and glorious. This
man's preaching did not make him great. His college did not make him
great. His books did not make him great. These are the by-products. His
life of service for others makes him great--makes his preaching, his
college and his books great.
This Chicago man gives his life into the service of humanity, and it
becomes the fuel to make the steam to accomplish the wonderful things
he does. Let him stop and "take care of himself," and his career would
stop.
If he had begun life by "taking care of himself" and "looking out for
number one," stipulating in advance every cent he was to get and
writing it all down in the contract, most likely Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus
would have remained a struggling, discouraged preacher in the backwoods
of Morrow county, Ohio.
Give It Now
Gunsaulus often says, "You are planning and saving and telling yourself
that afterwhile you are going to give great things and do great things.
Give it now! Give your dollar now, rather than your thousands
afterwhile. You need to give it now, and the world needs to get it now."