'In their generation,' says Christ; and that is all that can be said,
The circle runs round its 360 degrees, and these people take a segment
of it, say forty-five degrees, and all the rest is as non-existent. If
I am to call a man a wise man out and out, there are two things that I
shall have to be satisfied about concerning him. The one is, what is
he aiming at? and the other, how does he aim at it? In regard to the
means, the men of the world bear the bell, and carry away the supremacy.
Let in the thought of the end, and things change. Two questions reduce
all the world's wisdom to stark, staring insanity. The first question
is, 'What are you doing it for?' And the second question is, 'And
suppose you get it, what then?' Nothing that cannot pass the barrier
of these two questions satisfactorily is other than madness, if taken
to be the aim of a man's life. You have to look at the end, and the
whole circumference of the circle of the human being, before you serve
out the epithets of 'wise' and 'foolish.'
I need not dwell on the manifest folly of men who give their lives
to aims and ends of which I have already said that they are
disproportioned to the capacity of the pursuer. Look at yourselves,
brothers; these hearts of yours that need an infinite love for their
satisfaction, these active spirits of yours that can never be at
rest in creatural perfection; these troubled consciences of yours
that stir and moan inarticulately over unperceived wounds until they
are healed by Christ. How can any man with a heart and a will, and a
progressive spirit and intellect, find what he needs in anything
beneath the stars? 'Whose image and superscription hath it? They say
unto Him, Caesar's'; we say 'God's.' 'Render unto God the things
that are God's.' The man who makes anything but God his end and aim
is relatively wise and absolutely foolish.
Let me remind you too, that the same sentence of folly passes, if we
consider the disproportion between the duration of the objects and
of him who makes them his aim. You live, and if you are a wise man,
your treasures will be of the kind that last as long as you. 'They
call their lands after their own name; they think that their houses
shall continue for ever. They go down into the dust. Their glory
shall not descend after them,' and, therefore, 'this, their way, is
their folly.'
Brethren, all that I would say may be gathered into two words. Let
there be a proportion between your aims and your capacity. That
signifies, let God be your end. And let there be a correspondence
between your end and your means. That signifies, 'Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with
all thy strength, and with all thy mind.' Or else, when everything
comes to be squared up and settled, the epitaph on your gravestone
will deservedly be; 'Thou fool !'