There is no more subtle temptation than that which sets the soul as a
hindrance to the service we should render. A surprise awaits him who
carefully will compare the emphasis laid upon the individual soul and
its salvation by the modern church with the place given this in the
teachings of the Bible. Perhaps he will find in modern preaching, with
its insistent appeal to men to save their own souls, an explanation of
prevalent selfishness. The moral effect of urging a man to save his
soul is not much better than that which comes from advising him to save
his skin at any cost.
The most serious objection ever made to religion is that it produces a
narrow, self-centred type of mind. That type of religion cannot be
right, regardless of its doctrinal orthodoxy, which produces a wrong
type of men and women. But may not failure here be accounted for by
the selfish basis on which men build the plea for what they call
personal salvation?
What could be more selfish than this continual appeal to fear, this
urging of men to escape from punishment, to make sure of a house in the
heavenly city, this offering of crowns and perpetual rest, plenty and
peace, this emphasis on the great object of saving your own soul? It
is opposite directly to what the great Teacher told men. Did He not
say that the man who would save his own life should lose it?
The concentration of mind on the self, whether in the name of religion
or in any other name, is but moral suicide. People who have no other
object in life than that of saving their own souls are but little
better than those whose whole object is to fatten, protect, and keep
safe their bodies.
But Christianity must be perverted greatly to make it teach men to set
their own interests first. It is the religion of the other man. Its
appeal is not to the love of self, but to the love of society. It
offers a way of salvation, not as a thing desirable for your exclusive
use, but as the pathway for all lives, for all the people. Its tree of
life is not for a single pair, but for the healing of the nations.
True religion is not in self-centred culture, but in the culture of all
through the service of the single ones and the culture of the one
through his service for all. Only in the atmosphere of service does
the soul grow, expand, and find itself. To live in a circle is to die;
it is the centrifugal life that finds salvation. They court death who
seek only their own lives; they find life who, disregarding death and
loss, seek only to make others live.
Religion is not simply a cure for my ills. True, it does cure many of
them, but only that I may be better able to do its work. It is a great
cause, a mighty project, commanding the noblest enthusiasms and the
highest efficiency of effort, the project of bringing this whole world
to salvation. And that not the salvation of a mental condition but of
the perfection of its whole being, the realization of its highest
possibilities, the full noontide of the day of God.
Is not this enough to satisfy any man and to call forth the best in
him, that he should in some way serve this glorious ideal? Is not this
man's purpose in this world even as it was the purpose of the one who
called Himself the Son of Man? What nobler summary could any life have
than His, that He went about doing good? How quickly would that
kingdom of heaven come if this were the program of every life!
Let but a man do his duty towards this shining ideal, let him but be
lifted up, carried along in the mighty enthusiasm it ought to engender,
and his own soul, his own development, his character perfection will
take care of itself. No man ever did any great work without becoming
greater himself, and greatness never was found in any other way. This
is an unvarying law. Service is the secret of culture.
The pious hypochondriac is sure to be a sickly soul. The best thing
you can do for your soul is to forget that you have one, just as the
healthy man forgets he has a heart or liver. The self-forgetting
service is the secret of happiness, of full finding of self. Freedom
in self-giving brings fullness in living.
In the right life the hour of prayer, the quiet thought, the search for
abstract truth, may all have their place; but it is only the place that
the wise workman gives to his meals. He does not live for these
things; they are but ministrants to his work. He uses everything that
will make him a better workman; but not because he sees the workman as
his end. He forgets himself in the perfection of that he seeks to
make. The saving of the soul, the culture of the self, as an end is
shame and suicide; as a means to service it is life and peace and
perfection.