WHAT DO YOU DO? by Clinton Locke

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 6, 1900

WHAT DO YOU DO?

By Clinton Locke

Clinton Locke, in the Living Church.

WHAT do you go about doing? “He,” says the Bible, “went about doing good.” What an epitaph those words would make for a man! I remember reading over a pompous epitaph in Westminster Abbey. The poor crumbling dust that lay beneath had been duke of this, marquis of that, earl of the other. He had been so many times lord-lieutenant of his county; he had been sent ambassador to this court and that court. He had been His Majesty’s this, that, and the other; he was brave, he was pious, he was generous; he was, in fact, the model of all the virtues, and it took a big slab of marble to tell all he had been.

Now contrast with all that the simple words of Scripture about Christ, “He went about doing good.” Do you think you could have anything better than that put on your tombstone? Not put there to be as “lying as an epitaph,” but put there because it was true, and no one in the world dare say, “Chisel it off, it is false.”

We could not put that epitaph over all. We sometimes come home from a funeral, and we say of the dead, “He went about making money, and a lot of it he made. He made it, and he kept it, and he left it to his family. He did not waste any of it on hospitals and asylums, and such ‘foolery.’ He always said, ‘The county may take care of the poor and sick. Let them behave themselves and work; I did it.’ He went about highly respectable, and never broke any of the commandments except the two unimportant ones, ‘Love God,’ and ‘Love your neighbor.’”

Then we sometimes have to say of a woman who is gone, “She went about showing clothes, and she did her duty in that respect. She showed the most expensive ones she could find, and she varied them as often as she could. She worked hard at it, and gave her time and her life to it.” It would be very appropriate to put up over such a woman one of those dressmaker’s lay figures.

Or we have to say of another, “She went about making mischief. She repeated in one house what she heard in another. She exaggerated every little expression. She amplified every little detail. Anything ugly about any one else was a sweet morsel to roll under her tongue. She went about sowing the seeds of discord and scandal and detraction.”

Then we say of another, “She went about doing—nothing.” The late Bishop of Manchester, being about to preach a sermon to young women, wrote a note to a fashionable girl, asking her to be kind enough to write him exactly how she ordinarily spent the day. This was her answer: “My dear Lord-Bishop: We breakfast at ten. I always try to be up and ready for that. Then I arrange the flowers in the vases, and feed the birds, and write some notes for my mother or myself. Then it is time to get ready for lunch. After lunch I drive or make visits, and get home for afternoon tea. Then it is time to dress for dinner, and after dinner we go to the opera or a party, and I come home at one in the morning so tired that I can scarcely hold up my head.” Is not that a record? Is not that a splendid thing to have your recording angel each day jotting down as the outcome of your life? Imagine such persons coming to the judgment seat, and conscience bringing this all up,—this emptiness, this nothingness, this laborious idleness, this busy vacancy, this trifling with such an awful thing as life, given only one second at a time!

Contrast with all these the words, “He went about doing good.” To be able to say that of a man or woman is sweet, not only to the priest who consigns them to the grave, and to the family who feel the consolation of that thought, but even to the chance acquaintance who sees the funeral train passing. He went about the place where he lived, just like sunshine starting into some cold, wretched room, making the coldness seem less cold, and the wretchedness a little more bearable. His heart beat responsive to a tale of woe. He loved to offer the helping hand, to speak the cheering word, to show himself a brother.

Remember, too, you can take an epitaph like that with you when you die, and you know well that there is nothing else you can take that is worth taking. You can not take a single dollar. You can not even take your expensive coffin and your will. It will do no good for your guardian angel to say, “This person was very rich, and went in the best society, and was highly respected.” Such talk would sound in that clear air like hollow laughter; but every gate will fly open at the cry, “He went about doing good.”