And yet it is the thing that does happen occasionally in real life. We sometimes do get the target when we are aiming for something else. The name which we have been worrying to recall strolls casually into our memory when we have given up trying and are not thinking of it at all. There are certain stars, astronomers tell us, which they see best when they look askance. And I have come to think that there are certain precious goods of His which God allows us to possess on the same conditions. You see them by looking past them. You get them by aiming at something else. “Look at your goal and go for it straight,” says worldly wisdom, wisely and truly enough in many instances. All the same there are good things in life to which that is emphatically not the road. The real way to secure these is to aim for something else.
This is true, for example, of happiness. Everyone of us wants to be happy. And there is such a bountiful provision of the means of happiness all about us that it is difficult to resist the conclusion that God means us all to be happy. Yet when those for whom happiness is meant and prepared seek it directly and for itself, it is as certain as anything can be that they won’t find it. You ask, perhaps you pray for this boon, and God shows you only some bare duty that is clearly yours. Out to it you go, like a brave man, not thinking there can be any blessings on that road, when, lo! as you journey, happiness comes to you, quietly, filling your heart with peace.
One does not find that the New Testament, as a matter of fact, has much to say about being happy at all. There is so little reference to it that it looks as if God had forgotten our need. I find that the Book which I had thought might tell me how to find happiness tells me instead of “bearing one another’s burdens,” doing it “unto one of the least of these”; tells me about my brother’s need of me when he is sick or naked or hungry; tells me even about such a thing as a cup of cold water to a thirsty disciple. Ah! but when, in however poor a fashion, I forget my own quest and gird myself in Christ’s name and try to do some of these things, I find that God has not forgotten after all, that, all the time He has been showing me the way to happiness, and I did not recognise it because it is not a straight road. It’s not a question of seeking, but of forgetting to seek. Happiness comes to you oftenest when you are intent on bringing it to your brother.
The same principle holds true also with regard to influence. It is natural that a man should desire that his shadow when it falls on others should heal and not hurt. But the healing, helpful shadow is not got by wishing for it. As soon as you begin to think about it and aim for it, you will go astray. Here is a little poem which tells how the strange magnetic quality of influence for good comes to a man:—
“He kept his lamp still lighted,
Though round about him came
Men who, by commerce blighted,
Laughed at his little flame.He kept his sacred altar
Lit with the torch divine,
Nor let his purpose falter,
Like yours, O World, and mine.And they whose cold derision
Had mocked him, came one day
To beg of him the vision
To help them on their way.And, barefoot or in sandal,
When forth they fared to die,
They took from his poor candle
One spark to guide them by.”
That is the secret—a roundabout way, as you see. If influence is to be ours, that is how it will come, not by our trying to be influential, but by our striving to be upright, loyal, and true.
In the third place, this is true of Life in Christ’s sense of the term. Life was one of His favourite words. It was Life, in the highest sense, that He claimed to bring to men. And the greatest calamity in His eyes that could fall on any man is that that inward soul-life should die.
Yet when those in whom He has awakened it, aim directly for its growth and culture, they make mistakes. To the question—Shall I regard the development and deepening of that soul-life of mine as the one end and object of my living? The answer of Jesus, as I understand it, is “no.” Life, said He, at its highest and fullest and most perfect, is reached by giving it away. He that loseth his life shall save it.
What a long way from this ideal are those good people who are forever laying their fingers on their spiritual pulse and plucking their soul-life up by the roots to see how it is growing! There is a nobler use of life than to save it in that fearful fashion. There is a truer way to grow in grace than by hoarding up virtue so, namely, by letting it go generously out from us. When St. Nicholas got to Heaven with his white robes of sainthood stained with mud through stopping on his way to help a carter pull his wagon out of a rut—a task which his fellow St. Cassianus, for the sake of his robes, avoided and declined—it was the muddy saint whom the Master welcomed with the sweetest smile and the most gracious words. Whoso loseth his life, the same shall save it.
Happiness, Influence, Life, these three, and the road to each of them is indirect. May God bless it to
