RADIANCIES OF THE WILL
There are three things I wish to radiate as to my own will. We speak of
men being self-willed, strong-willed, weak-willed, and the like, but at
the outset I wish to radiate my desire to be "Divine-willed." By this I
mean I wish to recognize the world-wide--nay, the
universe-wide--difference between the great, all-powerful, all-wise,
all-beneficent, all-harmonious _will_ of the Great Creator, and the
oftentimes foolish, weak, wavering, irresponsible, ignorant, mistaken
will of the human being. Every real man and woman wishes his, her, life
to be a useful life, a life that accomplishes something, and that
something must be "worth while." It is essential, however, if one would
accomplish this that he start right. Now, here is the crucial
question--How can you know that you are right? The answer to this
question is what I would put into every young man's and young woman's
heart--into every boy's and girl's heart--so that, at the start, he,
she, may be sure a right start is being made. _The only sure way is to
drop your own will and become "Divine-willed."_ This by no means
signifies that you become a nobody, a cipher, an insignificant ant in
the world. It is just the reverse. It is allying yourself with the
right, the only right, the perfect right, the unchangeable right.
Suppose the case that a man starts out in life with the determination to
be self-willed about the multiplication table. He insists upon his
freedom, his individuality, his self-will, and refuses to be tied to any
table made by any one else, be that one God, angel, or man. Who cannot
see that such a man is a fool? It is impossible to reject, to "buck
against" the multiplication table. Every man, sooner or later, has to
swallow it, accept it wholly, completely, unreservedly, live by it,
swear by it, die by it, and more than that he has to do it gladly,
willingly, or it can never be a real part of himself. If he is all the
time protesting against it, and declaring that it ought to be changed or
abolished, or not quite so dogmatic in its assertions, he will all the
time be worried, distressed, irritated, because it pays no attention to
his wishes. Two times two make four, no matter who kicks, or is
irritated, or wishes it to be changed, and so with every other statement
of the whole table.
What I am getting at is this, that, though we may not always see it at
first, or even at second or third sight, the moral world is governed by
a multiplication table as sure and certain, as unchangeable and fixed
as is the mathematical world. And it is the acceptance of the moral
multiplication table that I call being "Divine-Willed." A man may live
for years swindling his neighbors and giving them fourteen ounces for a
pound, and think he has fooled the multiplication table as easily as he
has fooled his customers, but the rate never changed; it was sixteen
ounces all the time. A man may fool his neighbors and himself in regard
to the _moral_ multiplication table, but sooner or later, here or
hereafter, in this incarnation or some other, he will have to learn to
accept, love, and live by it in every act, thought, and word. It cannot
be any other--there is no other door--this is the only salvation. _This_
is accepting Christ--the Truth, the Way, the Life, living the Life He
lived, filled with the Divine-Will, the Divine Spirit, that filled him.
Whether you are a gambler, a sport, a liar, a cheat, a Sunday-school
superintendent, a fool, a drunkard, a senator, a professor of religion,
an agnostic, a wise man or a mere child in knowledge, you can never
enter the Kingdom of Joy, Peace, Blessedness, that we call Heaven,
unless you conform to the Divine Moral Multiplication Table. This is
what I am endeavoring to radiate--that I am trying to set aside my
imperfect human will, which sometimes kicks against the unchangeable and
immovable, and accept the perfect, complete, and unchangeable.
But you ask: How am I to know this moral multiplication table? Easy
enough. Don't try to take it all in at once. Begin at the beginning.
Learn the "twos" first. Twice one are two, twice two are four, twice
three are six, and so on. Start on the Ten Commandments. Master and
_live_ them. Then absorb the Golden Rule. Then try the Sermon on the
Mount.
There's enough to keep you busy for a few days, anyhow. But I suppose
some of you will say you can't do it. Nonsense! You've got to do it, and
you won't _really_ live until you do. You can't dodge the multiplication
table; nor can you dodge these. There is no escape. Divinity never made
any man or any woman who could get away from them. Creeds, church
dogmas, men's ideas about religion or what they call religion may be
true, or may not be true, but the fundamental principles of the life of
the Spirit always have existed, always will exist, and every man, sooner
or later, must come into perfect harmony with them. This is what I want
to radiate--my desire that I should become Divine-willed and that every
one else should be the same--quick, soon, now.
Then, having _started_ right, one may have more confidence and assurance
in taking the next step, which is the second thing connected with the
will that I would radiate, viz.: I will to be good for something. What
is the purpose, the object of life? What are we here for? To eat and
drink, sleep and satisfy our appetites and then die like other mere
animals who do the same thing? I don't believe it. I never did. As
Browning puts it, a spark has disturbed my clod, and now I am
discontented to remain a clod--a mere brute beast, living, as does the
hog, merely for the satisfaction of my physical senses. I feel higher,
nobler, worthier aspirations within me. John Muir, the great California
Nature-lover, scientist, and poet, wrote when he was twenty-seven years
old a letter in which he said:
A lifetime is so little a time that we die ere we get ready to live.
I would like to go to college, but then I have to say to myself "you
will die ere you can do anything else." I should like to invent
useful machinery, but it comes "you do not wish to spend your
lifetime among machines and you will die ere you can do anything
else." I should like to study medicine that I might do my part in
lessening human misery, but again it comes "you will die ere you are
ready, or able to do so." How intensely I desire to be a Humboldt,
but again the chilling answer is reiterated. But could we live a
million years then how delightful to spend in perfect contentment so
many thousand years in quiet study in college, so many amid the
grateful din of machines, so many among human pain, so many
thousands in the sweet study of Nature among the dingles and dells
of Scotland, and all the other less important parts of our world.
Here were four noble and beautiful aspirations. 1. To go to college and
learn more. 2. To invent useful machinery. 3. To study medicine that he
might lessen human misery. 4. To be a Humboldt and explore the world for
the enlightenment of mankind.
What do _you_ want to be?
To go to college to have a good time (!)--save the mark--as some
students do? I was once riding on a railway train going to Boston, and
at New Haven twenty-seven young students got on board and every one
drunk. Do you think Muir had anything of that kind in mind when he said
he wanted to go to college? At one of the great universities of the West
I was present when the students made a great uproar because the faculty
had prohibited beer-wagons from coming upon the campus to deliver their
wares at the "frat" houses. I have seen university "men" celebrating
some baseball or other victory when the celebration has taken the form
of a drunken and sensual orgy. Can you imagine a man like Muir ever
having wanted to engage in such a disgraceful and degrading scene?
Muir started out right. He began by seeking to be "Divine-willed," and
then by willing to be "good for something."
A friend of mine, who radiates love and helpfulness to every human
being no matter how low and degraded, once helped a poor, ugly, besotted
son of the gutter, who had sunk about as low as he possibly could sink.
One day as he sat on his piazza enjoying the beautiful calm of a
glorious spring afternoon he saw his protégé approaching. Giving him a
glad welcome the two were soon in conversation and the gutter-waif
finally expressed his thanks for the help and encouragement he had
received, and, as is natural with every really awakened soul, wanted to
_do something_ in return for what he felt my friend had done for him. In
vain the helper of men protested there was nothing he wished to have
done, but the one who had been helped kept on insisting that he must do
something. He said, "I not only want to be good, but I want to be _good
for something_. Now, what can I do?"
"Well," at last said my friend, "since you must do something, go out and
find somebody worse off, lower down, more needy than you were when you
first came to me, and help him."
As he went away my friend settled down to an afternoon's study and
enjoyment of his books, and of Nature, but within an hour his protégé
returned wearing a smile that reached almost from ear to ear. As he
entered the gate he called out: "I've got him! I've got him!"
"Got who?"
"Why, the man you sent me for!"
"What man?"
"The man you told me to go and find and help. I've found him, and I
thought I couldn't help him better than by bringing him to you."
"Where is he?"
"He's waiting out here by the barn, for I couldn't persuade him to come
up until I had first seen and told you."
"Bring him along!"
As the two derelicts returned, the one towing the other up the walk, my
friend said the sight of the second vagabond and outcast was almost too
much for him. He was not only ragged and filthy, but thin to emaciation,
with that horrible look of long continued debauching degradation. The
principal feature about him was his nose--the large, red, pimply nose of
the habitual drunkard. Almost instinctively the _lower_ human in my
friend asserted itself. It rebelled against having anything to do with
so vile-looking and disgusting a wretch. "What's the use?" he exclaimed,
almost aloud.
Then, suddenly, these thoughts came: "Inasmuch as ye did it unto the
least of these my brethren ye did it unto me." "This man is as much a
child of God as I am. The _real_ man in him is as Godlike as I. He is my
brother. We are both sons of God." "And," said he, "I instantly arose
and went to meet him, with outstretched hand of cordial welcome."
To shorten the story I can only relate how, after he had had a hearty
meal and a long conversation, the outcast finally poured out his soul to
the man who had met him as a brother.
"I was not always what you now see me. I was in a good position,
honored, respected. Had a beautiful family, a good home, was the
superintendent of a Sunday School, the leader of a church choir, and
happy in my home, my church, my friends. But I was tempted and fell. I
ran away from home and all my responsibilities, and went on falling
lower and lower, until this very morning I vowed that the next fall
would be into the river or a suicide's grave. But God must have meant me
for something or He would not have taken the trouble to get me here this
morning. I'm going to try to rise."
With cheering words he was heartily and sincerely encouraged, with
neither rebukes nor cant. As he rose to go, he said, "What can I do for
you to show my gratitude for what you have done for me?" and he would
not take "No" for an answer. He was finally told he might mow the lawn
if he chose, and in telling the story, my friend said, with tears in his
eyes: "He was so sincere that he went over it four times. He really
seemed to have shaved, instead of mowed it." He was then allowed to
take a bath, and my friend fitted him out as well as he could with an
old suit of clothing. In the meantime a couple of hundred friends who
had been invited for an evening open-air social chat and singing began
to arrive. The organ was brought out from the parlor, one of the number
began to play, and then my friend called for a volunteer choir to come
and surround the organ to lead the singing. To his great surprise the
bathed and reclothed outcast gently sidled up with the rest. Some of the
elegantly dressed ladies looked upon him with suspicion and some fear,
which, however, dropped away in great measure, as he began to sing. For,
strange to say, though he afterwards declared he had not sung a note for
several years, the assertion of the purpose to live a new and clean
life, seemed not only to bring back the desire to sing, but actually
gave him back his voice. His rich clear tenor soared sweetly and without
effort over the voices of the others and then blended perfectly with
them in glorious harmony.
A week later, when the friends came, he was there again, and the short
seven days of new resolve and high endeavor had so changed him in
appearance that no one knew him again. A job had been found for him, and
this was done in a remarkable way. Without seeing him, a gentleman,
filled with the helpful spirit, and desirous of being good "for
something," at my friend's request interested himself in finding him
occupation. His capacity was so quickly proven that he was put into a
responsible position where a two-thousand-dollar bond was required,
which he supplied. He worked so thoroughly and efficiently that he was
soon promoted, and ere many months had gone by his family, so long
separated from him, was with him in happiness and content. Before a year
of service he gained the special reward of $1,000 given each year by the
firm that employed him for the highest general efficiency shown in any
department, and is to-day honored, respected, back again in the high
estate from which he had fallen, but a far wiser, nobler, and better
man.
Through tribulation and sorrow, pain and woe, wretchedness and despair,
sin and its consequences he had learned the lesson, that you cannot
shirk the moral multiplication table--that there is no short cut to
goodness, except to accept at once, instead of later, the will of the
Divine.
Go back for a few moments to the first outcast, who brought this second
one to my friend. Had he gone away with the thought that now he must
make some money, he must take care of himself _first_, the second man
might have filled a suicide's grave. He started out right--to be
Divine-willed--to be unselfish, to be helpful to the rest of the world,
and those worse off than himself. Muir didn't want to study medicine to
become a great physician for the purpose of making money, but to relieve
the pain of unfortunate sufferers. He willed to be good "for something."
This is the spirit, the life, I would radiate on every hand, every day.
I do not mean that all endeavor for self-improvement, self-culture,
self-benefit is undesirable. By no means. But the nearer it approximates
to the unselfish ideal, the better it will be. When Walt Whitman was a
young man, he was a house-builder. He happened to strike a "building
boom," and made money so fast that, said he, "I was in danger of
becoming rich." And he decided to go and be an unpaid nurse in the Union
Army, rather than spoil himself by becoming rich. To gain riches is good
as far as it goes--but it goes a very short way in the road to manhood,
character, nobleness of life. So whatever you will to do and be, put a
high ideal before you, something immeasurably better than mere
money-getting. Make your profession a means of grace, of
character-building, of enabling you to benefit and bless the world. Mere
financial success can easily be attained, but you will surely not be
content with that. Hitch your wagon to a star, and soar upwards. Aim at
the high things. Will to do great, noble, beneficent things and that
will be willing to be good "for something."
The third thing in connection with the human will that I wish to
radiate is what I might term "the insistence of the human will." After I
have willed to be "Divine-willed," and to "will to achieve a high and
noble purpose," I want to compel my will to keep on willing that which I
have already willed. It is comparatively easy to will to do, or be,
something, but alas! how far short some of us come from attaining that
which we have willed to be. When Jesus sent out His disciples He gave
them many warnings, much encouragement, informed them of the
difficulties they would encounter, and then incited them to persistence
of endeavor by assuring them that "He that endureth to the end shall be
saved." It is this thought of "endurance," or "persistence" that I would
ever radiate. I have set before me an aim, an object, worthy to be
achieved. Though it may be difficult to attain, I will to keep on
willing until it is attained.
A short time ago I watched the students at the Physical Culture Training
School, in Chicago. It gives me a good illustration of what I would ever
radiate.
I saw the leader of one of the classes do a particular act, and then the
students, one after another, tried to follow the leader in doing that
thing. Some of the men who tried, willed to do it all right, but they
did not succeed. Many times a man wills to do a thing when he does not
seem competent, but the real man keeps on until he makes himself
competent. So with some of these. They went back and tried again--and
went back and tried again, and the men who willed and then kept at it
until they became competent were the ones that achieved.
One of the great lessons of all life is, not merely to learn to
will--that is easy enough--but to insist upon the will keeping at it
until we accomplish what we have determined to do. We "will" every day
to do things, and yet we do not do them. We say, "I am going to do this;
I am going to do that; or the other." We start out in life and we have
all kinds of ambitions and aspirations before us, and we say, "This is
going to be my achievement; I intend to accomplish this thing." But we
get to be twenty-five--thirty years of age, and we have not
achieved--that is, the great mass of people have not.
Why?
Because we have not learned this lesson of the Insistence of the Human
Will. We have determined to do a thing and then we have not had the
power or the courage or the determination or the endurance to keep on
willing until the thing desired was achieved.
Let us suppose a case: A man starts in a race; he is on the ground ready
to spring forward at the firing of the pistol. The moment the pistol is
fired he makes his forward bound and goes ahead as hard as he can. Is a
good start all that is needed? I picked up a picture recently of a
runner who was coming to the end of his race. His face revealed clearly
what a struggle he was having. His mouth was wide open, and he was
laboring to the very extremity of his strength and power; he was
"enduring to the end." He made a good start, but now at the latter part
of the journey the race was more difficult; it was almost dangerous
because he was panting so hard he could scarcely get his breath. The
whole face, the whole body, seemed in pain and distress; but he was
_enduring_; he was going on. It is the man who not only makes the start,
but _he who endures_ that wins the race.
It is not those who start in with the greatest hope, and faith, and
energy, and courage, but "He that shall endure to the _end_ shall be
saved." It is the enduring to the end. Hence let me urge upon you the
speedy learning of this important lesson of life. After you have willed
to do a good thing put your purpose before you; keep it clearly,
positively in sight all the time; then, every day and every hour,
resolve to _do_ that which you have _determined_ to do; in other words,
insist that you do what you have willed to do.
I was once very much interested in watching Bernarr Macfadden, the
editor of _Physical Culture_ magazine. I was favored with opportunities
for coming in close touch with him. The way he insists that his will
shall endure; the way he takes himself by the throat, as it were, and
insists, is most interesting to me. One day I started out with him for a
walk. He was quietly and easily getting himself in training so that he
could walk fifty miles and be fresh and vigorous enough at the end of
the walk so that he could give a lecture. Certainly it is a delightful
and a profitable thing to be able to walk fifty miles without exhausting
fatigue. We started out together, but after walking twelve miles I felt
weary, and returned. But he went on, and when he returned that night I
found he had walked thirty-seven miles. Though he was doing all his
regular and arduous work, he was quietly insisting on these long walks,
and in a very short time he would accomplish his fifty miles daily with
comparative ease. He has mastered the idea--"The Insistence of the Human
Will."
Take an inventor. No man ever invents anything unless he insists day
after day, in spite of discouragements, in spite of failures, in spite
of opposition, sometimes in spite of the stealings of people who would
rob him of what he has already accomplished. The man who has the real
desire to be an inventor keeps on and on, compelling his will to rewill
what he has already willed, and I could fill these pages with the life
stories of men who have determined, and of women who have determined,
and who have achieved because they have learned this lesson of the
insistence of the will.
I once had the pleasure of talking with Thomas A. Edison, in his
laboratory, in Orange, N. J. I said, pointing to a mass of interesting
looking materials: "What is this, Mr. Edison?" He said, "Oh, I have been
working for thirty years on that thing."
"How are you getting along with it?"
He replied, "Well, sometimes I think we are making progress, and then
again I think we are not, but the only way we can achieve is by keeping
everlastingly at it, and when I can't work, I set my men to work on it,
and we are slowly getting results."
And so Mr. Edison every once in awhile astounds the world with some
marvelous achievement. People suppose he stumbles on it--that he
discovers it in a moment, and perhaps he does, but that moment was made
possible by the thousands upon thousands of moments that were as steps
he had taken leading up to the place where the vision burst upon him. Do
you see the thought? It is the Insistence of the Human Will that compels
achievement. It is the man that never lets up that gains the reward.
Fifty years ago a man named Judah set out to survey a railroad across
the great Sierra Nevada range of mountains, that vast barrier that
seems to separate California from the rest of the world. The people
practically said, "You are a fool to think of such a thing," but he
calmly replied: "I know I can put a road through; I am going to try it
anyhow." So he began to climb those mountain heights. He threaded the
passes one by one. He took his men and they worked day after day, week
after week, month after month, upon what seemed to be an impossibility.
What was the result? He kept at it until he achieved. He made his plans
and made them so well that he ultimately succeeded in convincing the
House of Representatives and the United States Senate that such a
railroad was possible.
Then four men, Huntington, Crocker, Stanford, and Hopkins, determined to
build the road that he had surveyed. Again the pessimists said: "It is
impossible; you will never raise the money to build a railroad over the
Sierra Nevadas." But the four men worked away, and little by little got
the money. As they built they were harassed on every hand. Labor
troubles in those days were terrible. The President of the company said,
"I don't know what we are going to do." Crocker, the man who had
undertaken to see after the actual building of the road, said: "I know
what I am going to do; I am going to get help to build that railroad
somewhere." And so he sent a man to China to secure a lot of Chinese
laborers. These were brought to this country, and the result was that
with those Chinamen, in defiance of the President of his company, who
had said that Chinamen should not be employed, Crocker built the
railroad. And now you can cross the Sierra Nevada range without a
thought of care because of the dominant, insistent will of that man and
his associates.
The fact of the matter is, if you are going to achieve anything in life
you will have to be "drivers"--you will have to keep at it until you
succeed. You will have to be a slave driver, and you yourself will be
the slave, willingly, gladly, joyously, of your own purpose. Do you want
to be a slave to your own purpose? Do you want to _do_ the things that
you have willed to do? Some of us get the idea that bondage--to be bound
to anything--is always an unpleasant thing. Not at all! Bind yourself to
a high and noble purpose. Make yourself a slave to it in the sense of
conscientiously sticking to it. Now drive yourself, and compel yourself
to go ahead and do that which you have determined to do.
When I think of the old pioneers who walked and rode across this country
to reach California; when I think of the many dangers, difficulties, and
hardships that faced those men; when I see that they were living
illustrations of this thought I am trying to bring out--I wish I had
only time and space to give a definite account, instead of a mere
synopsis of the kind of things they had to endure. They were surrounded
by hostile Indians; again and again their lives were in jeopardy. Now
and then they came to great sloughs and marshes, and their wagons and
animals were bogged. They had to find their way across the dangerous
quicksands; hard storms came and they had whirlwinds and floods to
contend with. Now and again they found themselves in the heart of
canyons, where there was no apparent way out; yet they went on, and on,
until they either died or reached the land for which they had started!
A party of eighty set out to cross the great Sierra Nevada range, and
the difficulties they encountered can best be imagined when I tell you
that forty of them died on the way. The difficulties that beset the
forty that were left made it all but impossible for them to get out. One
of them told me about the terrible hardships they suffered. She said, "I
remember, distinctly, when the time came for us to get away, my dear
mother taking up the baby, and leaving me behind with the other baby.
She said, 'Now, Virginia, you stay right here!' She then went on with
the baby, and, after struggling step by step, in such a way that it
would break your heart to think of it, for about twenty paces, she put
down the baby and came back for the other baby and myself." And so, step
by step, step by step, that woman with her three little children,
started on that awful journey of scores of miles through deep snow.
Fortunately help came to her assistance and she finally achieved. She
reached California, though one would have thought it absolutely
impossible. There was the tremendous insistence of the human will.
Let us say "I will!" and then insist upon doing the things we have said
we will do.
I remember when I was a boy hearing some one recite something that I
thought was very foolish. A little piece of "poetry" it was called. It
was as follows:
Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on!
Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on!
Go on, go on, go on!
I have since learned that there is a great deal in that "poem."