Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1907-04-05
LEARNING TO LIVE.


dom and the man that getteth under
standing.-Prov. iii, ID.
Literally the text says that he is
happy who draws forth understanding,
who is educated through living. With
all our learning the greatest lesson be-
fore us is this one of living right, OF
finding our full heritage and filling
our places as Gnen and women in this
world. If our systems of education
fail to teach us how to live, they fail
altogether.
The great need of our delay is that
we shall train the conscience to right
moral judgment, that we shall educate
all for the business of living, and that
we shall so educate all that we shall
not only have a generation of bright,
smart moneymaking or famemaking
machines, but that we may have clean,
| upright truth loving, self-reverencing,
God-fearing men and women.
There is little likelihood that Ameri-
ca will fail for lack of ability to do
| business. We have brains and we have
| a healthier people nor a more intelli-
gent. The danger is that we shall fail
| at the point of character; that we shall
| fail where failure is fatal to every
| other kind of success. This is the cru
! cial point.
We do we'll to perfect the plans by
| which we teach men the encyclopedia
| of their bodies their country, the
world and its history. But we cannot
| forget, and recent events have remind
ed us with a terrible note of warning,
| that no amount of knowledge consti
tutes any sort, even the feeblest kind,
| of guarantee as to rectitude of life.
If you neglect the heart, the Will
| and conscience, if you neglect the
| knowledge of and training in right re-
| lations with men, reverence and right
| relations to the most high, your Gull
ture of the intellect is forse than
waste: it is the perfecting of the poi
son of our social life; 1t is the whet-
ting Of the edge of a mans villainy
and grossness.
| Above all things. the most desirable
is that men shall love truth and hate
le that they shall love honor and
| truth SO much more than fame, power,
| or possessions that never for an in
| slant will these weigh in the scale
| against the former. But for long it
| has been thought that this choice flow.
er of nobility grew by chance the cul-
@r-r0 0f 4h0 cniJ uSfD
never to be brought under scientific
| law.
If man grew up to be good it was
| due either to accident or to miracle.
| The realm of character has been the
last to come under the reign of law.
Now we recognize that we must learn
to live as truly as we rnust learn to
read, and that the culture of the soul
must profit by the wondrOus strides
that all educational science has made
that all our efforts to produce character
must be so wisely directed that We
shall secure most enduring results.
One message comes from the lips of
| every seer, from every page of history.
It is that the man or the nation alone
is wise, alone finds enduring life, who
sets before commercial supremacy or
political power or fame in learning the
glory of righteousness, the beauty Of
practical holiness. Their wealth lies
beyond corruption and their days know
no end who are wise and rich in the
things within.
The greatest living service we can
render our day is by giving it the
riches of worthy living, by setting be-
fore ourselves the production of high
character through all life's processes
of learning, and by bringing in every
way we may to an age engrOssed in
selfshness and commercialsn the sig
nificance Of the call of character.
No wonder it sometimes seems to us
that we have forgotten to smile that
our faces are so drawn with the tense
struggle of life that we have lost sight
of the meaning of happiness. How can
we be happy unless we shall set our
whole lives in harmony with the things
that are fundamental and eternal?
We must learn to order our lives,
not as machines to be driven in the
money mill at the top of their eff
cheney, but as part of the great life
of the spiritual world. as inheritors of
things divine sublime, and glorious as
possessors of the JOY that made the
morning stars sing together and the
beauty that paints the evening red.
Short Meter Sermons.
A long sermon has short life.
You cannot teach a hog by talking.