The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1896-04-25

talent is by no means uncommon.
Wehave all felt the benumbing touch
of the shadow of the Improbable
servant. It's hurt has been felt at the
centre of our being; and we have in
quired anxiously and prayerfully
what we must do to rid ourselves of
it. The greatest men-that is, those
who have now the most lasting and
deserving esteem from their fellows
on account of their brave, heroic and
self-sacrifcing deeds have not been
wholly free from this dread plague.
The tempter, in one guise or another,
has come to them, and they have
thought to fold their talent in nap
kin and bury it in the earth.
We pick up such an epocE-making
book as Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus,"
and we find record there of the I'M
questionable struggles and triumphs
of that titanic spirit. Everywhere
throughout this soul stirring volume
there are effusions, lava-pouring from
the seething activity within, which
show how real the contest was while
it lasted. He wrestled with the
mighty powers of world-darkness and
evil, and he came off victorious. He
stood forth as the prophet of new
order of righteousness and divinity
among men. The one word full of
potency that he uttered was "work."
"Do the duty which Hest nearest thee,
which thou knowest to be duty" he
said, and thou shalt be blessed. And
as if to give still greater potency to
this word he made it the sum and
substance of the philosophy and the
religion of his own extraordinary and
unusually helpful life.
When we turn to the work of such
man as Emerson we find that the
one essay productive of as much good
as any he ever wrote was that Oh" Self
Reliance" Here he insists upon every
mans being himself. He says that
each one must be prepared to stand
in the right and truth with which
God has endowed him, if he would
experience truly satisfactory and
heaven ordained career. But all
through the works of Emerson there
is the minor strain of complaint
clearly revealed in prose and poetry
that of all Gods creatures man is
the most faithless. The rose, the
blowing clover, the dew and the rain
are true to the laws of their being,
but man is not true. He
"Crouches and bushes.
AbscoDds and conceals,
He creepeth peepeth,
He palters and steals;
Infirm. melancholy,
Jealous glancing around,
An oaf. an accomplice,
He poisons the ground"
There is but one cure for this NAL
ady of the spirit, according to this
greatest of modern teachers and seers,
and that is for every man to be him.
self-to be man, seeing that God
has endowed him, to limited extent
at least, to be such. What more have
we here than the teaching of Jesus,
that each one is to use the talent he
has or suffer consequent divine loss?
But am wondering whether any
of us fully realize as we should what
it must have cost this Son of Man to
give this parable to the world. We
will be greatly mistaken if We imagine
it did not have its origin in an exist
ence deeply and fearfully conscious
of human infrmity and sin. We are
told, and truly as l believe, that he
was tempted in all points like as we
are. He had to go all along that
weary, toilsome and dread way of
struggle with the low and bestial
within and without common to man.
All that the show and glamour of the
outward world could do to seduce
and lead him astray, and all that
the inward and secret desires could
do by way of adding to the confusion
and dismay, that they did. Again
and again the thought must have
come to him: What could he
do? He was only one man among
ten thousand.
say that even this man who stood
upon the very heights of spiritual at
tainment at last, who brought life and
Immortality to light, dallied with the
corners of the napkin, and would have
buried it in the earth, but the con-
seriousness of better and a divine
service came to him and he resolved
to spend and to be spent in its behalf.
OF himself he could do nothing, but
he could do all things through God,
who strengthened him.
This, in my conception, constitutes
the source of this parable. 1t is a
faithful and exact portrayal of the
sense of spiritual alienation and loss