Judah was too small to be independent of the powerful warlike states
to its north and south, unless miraculously guarded and preserved. So
it must either keep near God, and therefore free and safe from
invasion, or else, departing from God and following its own ways, fall
under alien dominion. Its experience was a type of that of universal
humanity. Man is not independent. His mass is not enough for him to do
without a central orb round which he may revolve. He has a choice of
the form of service and the master that he will choose, but one or
other must dominate his life and sway his motions. 'Ye cannot serve
God and Mammon'; ye must serve God _or_ Mammon. The solemn choice
is presented to every man, but the misery of many lives is that they
drift along, making their election unawares, and infallibly choosing
the worse by the very act of lazily or weakly allowing accident to
determine their lives. Not consciously and strongly to will the right,
not resolutely and with coercion of the vagrant self to will to take
God for our aim, is to choose the low, the wrong. Perhaps none, or
very few of us, would deliberately say 'I choose Mammon, having
carefully compared the claims of the opposite systems of life that
solicit me, and with open-eyed scrutiny measured their courses, their
goods and their ends.' But how many of us there are who have in effect
made that choice, and never have given one moment's clear, patient
examination of the grounds of our choice! The policy of drift is
unworthy of a man and is sure to end in ruin.
It is not for me to attempt here to draw out the contrast between man's
chief end and all other rival claimants of our lives. Each man must do
that for himself, and I venture to assert that the more thoroughly the
process of comparison is carried out, and the more complete the analysis
not only of the rival claims and gifts, but of our capacities and needs,
the more sun-clear will be the truth of the old, well-worn answer:
'Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.' The old
woman by her solitary fireside who has learned that and practises it,
has chosen the better part which will last when many shining careers
have sunk into darkness, and many will-o'-the-wisps, which have been
pursued with immense acclamations, have danced away into the bog, and
many a man who has been envied and admired has had to sum up his
successful career in the sad words, 'I have played the fool and erred
exceedingly.' I cannot pretend to conduct the investigation for you, but
I can press on every one who does not wish to let accidents mould him,
at least to recognise that there is a choice to be made, and to make it
deliberately and with eyes open to the facts of the case. It is a shabby
way of ruining yourself to do it for want of thought. The rabble of
competitors of God catch more souls by accident than of set purpose.
Most men are godless because they have never fairly faced the question:
what does my soul require in order to reach its highest blessedness and
its noblest energy?