The True Measure of Life.
THERE are other measures of things valuable than those which tell of bulk or quantity. A handful of gold-dust occupies but little space in comparison with a wagon-load of common earth; yet the wagon-load of common earth is of trivial value when contrasted with the handful of gold. Kind and quality have, therefore, as much to do with the real value of precious things as the mere question of quantity. The value of life is no exception to this general rule. The depth of the individual life must be counted as well as its length, its intensity as well as its duration, ere we can come to any real appreciation of its true value. . . . In this mode of measuring life, the longest life is not necessarily the longest life. We recognize with sadness the fact that there are human creatures whose lives may almost be described as vegetative. They labor for their daily bread; they eat and drink and sleep; but they are touched by no noble thought, by no wide-reaching sympathy, by no care for the higher interests of life. They are content to live upon the surface, and never seek to dip beneath it. Such living can hardly be called living. Except that it is human, there is little in it that gives it a higher value than the life of an intelligent animal. It has never developed those elements within itself which constitute it a human life; so that, however long the animal part of it lives, one cannot rightly call it a long human life. Slowly recurrent seasons have passed over the man's head; but they have included only a few brief hours devoted to the higher life. The man had hardly begun to live when he died. The measurement by quality is therefore more important in this matter of human life than the measurement by quantity. Intensity, not attenuation, is the true measure of being. Young's poetical canon is the true one:— "That life is long which answers life's great end"— That, and that only; for all other lives, however prolonged they may be in time, have fallen short of their appointed goal. . . . Measured by this standard, the majority of human lives seem brief and vain. The higher life is not cultivated as it ought to be; life is spent in spiritual sloth and intellectual torpor. . . . Briefer and vainer still is the life that is consumed in self-destructive wickedness. . . . Spent in wrath, it is brought to an end as a tale that is told, as yesterday when it is past, as a watch in the night. It seems but a fruitless, feverish episode in the long story of human life. Not in the increase of knowledge merely, not in any mere mastery of human arts and sciences, is the secret of the deeper and truer life to be found. . . . But where that fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom is the ruling principle in life,—where this is joined to an earnest purpose, a deep enthusiasm, a broad capacity, an unwearying diligence,—there are present the elements whereof true life is made. Where these are present, humanistic culture will be assimilated and wrought over into something higher; it will form part of the rich chord of life wherein all that is true finds somewhere its harmony. Pain and anguish, sorrow and desire, will also enter into that life, but they too will be transmuted—swallowed up as the full tide of harmony receives into itself the sub-tone of the base and the climbing tenor. No life runs very deep whose channels have not been hollowed out by suffering. It is often in moments of the keenest suffering that the current of life rises to its flood-tide, and our intuition of life and the world becomes most clear. It is with God to decide how many suns shall rise upon us, how many wanings of the moon we shall see. It is left to ourselves to decide whether we shall live while we live, and whether our days shall be those which the Lord lengthens, or our years those which his wrath shortens. We can choose that course in which the great end of life is attained, or that other course which ends in the dreariness and emptiness of death. . . . Life is a great and worthy gift; we shall misuse it utterly if when we live we do not live, and short indeed will be our lives if at their ending we have nothing to show of worthy accomplishment. For time is not the true measure of life; but that life is a long life which attains life's great end; which has been made rich with pure thoughts, lofty purposes, worthy enthusiasms; and which has been filled with the deeds of Christ.—Sunday School Times.