The life and destiny of a nation are largely determined by what it
considers great. If its hero is a ruthless warrior, its nature will be
militaristic, and its end will be that of those who fight and kill. If its
idol is a man whose chief distinction is wealth, its career will be one
long struggle after gold, and its journey will be to the grave of
profligacy. If its ideal is a man whose sole objective is position and
power, its life will be a struggle for place, and its end the decadence
which such things always suffer.
This principle is true because greatness is a mirage after which all men
seek. It is a rainbow’s end to which, though we may never quite reach it,
we are always struggling. When a thing once comes to be considered great,
it at once becomes popular. Men of every kind and condition immediately
seek it. It becomes the fashion and, therefore, determines the life of
the period.
=The Question of Relative Greatness=
It was a perfectly natural thing that the disciples of Jesus should
concern themselves so much about the question of relative greatness in
the kingdom which their Master had proclaimed. It was nothing but the
world-old lust for chief positions. It was planted deeply in their
natures, just as it has been in the natures of those who have lived in
every age. Jesus understood it, and He realized the inevitableness of
their obsession with it. He dealt gently with some of their mistakes
because He knew these mistakes had their origin in this fact.
One day that wonderful little company of men arrived in the city of
Capernaum, tired out with their travel on the country road. When they
were safely in the house, Jesus sat down among them and asked what it was
they had been discussing on the way. He made this inquiry only to open up
the question, for He knew that they had been disputing about the question
as to who was greatest. Then He settled the question once and for all by
proclaiming a new standard of greatness. “If any man would be first,”
He said, “he shall be last of all and the servant of all.”
=A Permanent and Dependable Standard=
In those words, Jesus set forth the Christian measure of greatness. With
a wave of the hand, He set aside the ordinary standards and conceptions of
the world. Passing show and display, temporary wealth and position, the
deceitfulness of name and rank, the needless privilege of lording it over
others as some great one in the land—all these are disregarded in the
kingdom of things as they should be. Jesus measures greatness by the only
standard which is permanent and dependable. Since we are His followers, we
must do the same.
=The Paradoxes of Jesus=
The teachings of Jesus are full of the appearance of paradox. He
frequently said such things as He said to the disciples that day in
Capernaum. He said that to gain one’s life he must lose it, that to be
first one must be last, and that to be great one must not seek to be
served but to serve.
The world in general has never come to see that these things are really
true. At least it has not come to act as though it realized their truth.
However, the experiences of life are continually proving them. Repeatedly
we have seen that one carries nothing out of the world except what he has
given away. In a very real sense, one possesses only that which he has
lost. One is made of account in this world as well as the next not by
being ministered unto but by ministering.
=The Teachings of Jesus in Terms of Life=
Jesus was not one who preached one gospel and lived another. He preached a
possible gospel and proved its possibility by living it. He himself was a
perfect example of His own teachings worked out in terms of life. He went
about doing good. He is the supreme figure in the life of the ages because
He was the supreme servant of men. He was the divine Son of God.
Therefore, His life is full and sufficient proof to us that service is
more than great. It is divine.
This Christian conception of greatness has not been altogether easy for
the world to accept. Men have been so long steeped in the human love for
the gleam of gold, the trappings of power, and the couch of luxury that
they do not readily part with the old habits of thought and the old
ambitions of life.
Age-long ideas are not easy to banish. Nearly two-thousand years have
passed since Jesus preached His little sermon on greatness at Capernaum,
and we have not yet wholly learned the lesson. We are in process of
learning it, however. The world makes progress, and some day we shall have
reached the goal of high thinking, noble ideals, and great conceptions.
=Our Changing Conception of Greatness=
A little while ago one might have seen the marks of the old standard of
greatness on the walls of almost any school building in the land. He would
have seen displayed there a collection of pictures the great majority of
which were portraits of warriors and representations of battle scenes. A
census of the pictures in the ordinary school history would have revealed
the same situation. This is all in accordance with an ancient law. We are
hero worshippers. We have always pictured our idols on the schoolhouse
walls. And in accordance with the inevitable law of suggestion, they have
effected the life of the generations accordingly.
Today we see fewer warriors and battle scenes pictured. Instead we see an
increasing number of portraits of the great servants of humanity. Where
yesterday we saw the pictures of Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon, today we
see the faces of Faraday, Watts, Fulton, Pasteur, and Burbank. This simply
means that our conception of greatness is changing. We admire the great
destroyers less and less. We admire the great builders and servants of the
race more and more.
=Ancient and Modern Wonders of the World=
In the second century before Christ, Antipater of Sidon wrote an epigram
in which he catalogued what he considered the seven most wonderful things
in the world at that time. The list included the walls of Babylon, the
statue of Zeus by Phidias at Olympia, the hanging gardens at Babylon, the
Colossus of Rhodes, the pyramids of Egypt, the mausoleum at Halicarnassus,
and the temple of Diana at Ephesus.
Rather recently the editor of a well-known American magazine undertook to
discover what is the best opinion as to the seven most wonderful things
in the world today. He addressed a thousand letters to leading thinkers in
various countries, asking each to record his choice among a considerable
list of things.
The seven things receiving the highest number of votes were the wireless,
the telephone, the aeroplane, radium, antiseptics and antitoxins, spectrum
analysis, and the X-ray. The eighth wonder chosen, had the call been for
that number, would have been the Panama Canal.
It will be noted that nothing in Antipater’s list expressed service to
mankind. At the same time, it will be noted that everything in the modern
list enumerated does signify service. This means that we are moving
forward in the direction of a Christian standard of greatness.
=The True Ideal for Humanity=
It will be a blessed day for humanity when people in general come to see
that the one who is servant of his times is the true ideal of greatness.
Since we are hero-worshippers, and since we do take one another for our
patterns, it is highly desirable that the highest type of manhood and
womanhood we have shall be the examples for the rest.
The human struggle will always be in the direction of whatever is
considered great. We shall always struggle to become like that which we
most admire. Therefore, it is important that we shall most admire the
thing that is best. Doing so, we shall become increasingly like it.
A nation made up of people who measure greatness by service will not be
treading the path to national doom so long as this is true. It will be
moving forward in the way of a larger and richer life. Selfishness and
envy are disintegrating influences, but service in the spirit of Christ
is a building force both for time and for all eternity.