Part 21

What makes a woman's life worth living? That she has had this or that pleasure--that she has riches or poverty--that she is married or lonely, that she married the right man or the wrong?

No! What matters is, whether she is growing more and more into tune with the Infinite? Is she learning God's lesson, and fitting herself for the still nobler life He wants to give her?

You and I came into the world to do our part in a noble battle--

"'Twere worth a thousand years of strife, 'Twere worth a wise man's best of life. If he could lessen but by one The countless ills beneath the sun."

Besides, you will not find Pleasure-seeking pays in the long run! If you are feeling that Pleasure with a big "P" is your due, then all the little annoyances prick and irritate. If you pay heavily for a new dress which hangs badly, it is trying; if you never expected a new dress at all, and that same dress was unexpectedly given you, the drawback would be looked at very differently.

It would pay pleasure-seekers to try the old plan of looking on life as a Duty, where pleasures came by accident or kindness, and were heartily and gratefully enjoyed. Do you remember in the "Daisy Chain," how Ethel says, after the picnic, that the big attempts at pleasure generally go wrong, and that the true pleasures of life are the little unsought joys that come in the natural course of things? Dr. May disliked hearing her so wise at her age, but I think it must have been rather a comfort to Ethel to have found it out. No thought of that kind damps your pleasure when the dance or the picnic turn out a great success! And when they do not, it is nice to feel there are other things in life. Every one knows how often something goes wrong at a big pleasure; the right people are not there, or your dress is not quite right; you are tired, or you say the wrong thing; while, if you get much pleasure, a certain monotony is soon felt, and you envy the vivid enjoyment of the girl who scarcely ever has a treat.

It stands to reason, that if you are deliberately arranging to get pleasure, and plenty of it, you cannot (from a purely pleasure point of view) enjoy it as much as if your life consisted of duties, and your pleasures came by the way. But there is a deeper reason why a life of amusement fails to amuse. It is not only that we are so made that nearly all our sensations of pleasure depend on novelty, the keenness wearing off if a sensation is repeated.

The reason lies in a fact which militates against the Pleasure-seeker's foundation idea:--the fact that we are made for something else than pleasure, failing which we remain unsatisfied. "There is in man a HIGHER than Love of Happiness: he can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness."

Here is the point I should like you to think clearly out for yourselves. Fifty years ago, Carlyle taught this truth as with thunder from Sinai. Let us imbue our minds with his passionate scorn for those who come into this noble world to suck sweets,--to have "a good time." "Sartor Resartus," one of the Battle-cries of Life, and "Past and Present," which has small mercy for idlers and pleasure-seekers, are character-making books:--

"There went to the making of man Time with a gift of tears, Grief with a glass that ran,"

and there also go, to the making of man and woman, certain books.

These may vary in each case and in generation. Tom Brown and Mr. Knowles' "King Arthur" may not do for you what they did for me; "Sesame and Lilies," "Past and Present," Emerson's "Twenty Essays" may be superseded, though I can hardly believe it; but see to it that you find and read their true successors, carry out Dr. Abbott's advice to his boys--to "read half a dozen de-vulgarizing books before leaving school."

Surely R.L. Stevenson should be on the list, for he speaks so splendidly on Carlyle's great point that man was born for something better than Happiness. He says, over and over again, "Happiness is not the reward that mankind seeks. Happinesses are but his wayside campings; his soul is in the journey; he was born for struggle, and only tastes his life in effort." He sounds the same note as Marcus Aurelius, another of the de-vulgarizing man-making books of the world.

The message of all these men is, "Love not Pleasure; love God. This is the EVERLASTING YEA, wherein who walks and works it is well with him."

Surely, when we look into things and leave our hungry wishes on one side, it seems clear to the best side of our nature that we are born, not with a right to Pleasure, but with a right to opportunity for development on our own highest lines.

A pig has a right to pigs-wash--he has no higher capacity. You and I have a capacity for courage and helpfulness and friendship with God. Our life will be a success if these things are developed, and a failure if they are not. This is the success we have a right to, but as likely as not it may need Pain, not Pleasure, for its achievement; and in this case you and I are born with a right to Pain, and we should be defrauded if any one saved us from it.

I know you want Happiness and pleasure, and I sympathize with you; but it makes all the difference to your whole life if you go out into the world like a vulture screaming for prey, or if you start out hoping, in the first place, to be brave and helpful, and, only in the second place, ready to take any pleasure as a good gift to be happy and grateful about.

"How needlessly mean our life is; though we, by the depth of our living, can deck it with more than regal splendour!"

Do you feel that this is very tall talk for quiet lives like yours and mine? Yes, it is; but we need great ideals to live even small lives by. Probably no one of us will ever get near living a noble life, but we can make our lives of the same fibre as those of the heroes. We can live on noble lines.

How?

I.--Let us work for others: which may mean no more than being the useful one in the house and perhaps taking a Sunday-school class.

II.--Let us live with noble people, i.e. read steadily books which keep us in touch with larger minds--if you are constantly meeting clever people that does instead, but if you lead quiet lives with not much to talk about, except gossip and family events, then secure a daily talk with people worth talking to.

III.--Let us live part of each day with God. St. Christopher is the patron saint of those who want to lead a noble, helpful life, and yet feel that in them there lies no touch of saintliness, save it be some far-off touch to know well they are not saints.

You know his story: how he sought to serve the strongest, first the Emperor, then the Devil, then the Crucified; how he went to an old hermit and said, "I am no saint, I cannot pray, but teach me to work for the Master;" and how at last he found that in his common work he attained to the service of the Crucified.

You and I are sent into the world to serve the strongest, and we know that means the Crucified.

What makes Life worth while, and increasingly worth while, every year you live, is that He does not offer us Pleasure, though He gives it to most of us in overflowing measure: He offers us a share in His work. Think of all we owe to others, to all who love us--to all who make life easy to us--and feel what a debt we owe. Think of the work He is doing--of the work He died for. Think how He calls each one to His side to be His friend and helper and fellow-soldier. Think of the possibility which belongs to each one of us, of being one of His great army of those whose name is Help.

Let us thank Him for our Creation, in that such possibilities are before us. Verily, Life is well worth living.

"Go forth and bravely do your part, O knights of the unshielded heart."