September, 1941
T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
834
Getting the Best of Loneliness By CLARENCE EDWARD MACARTNEY* Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
through it the deep, diapason note of loneliness. Man was made for man, and it is not meet for him to be alone. It has been well said that he who loves solitude, that is, permanent, unbroken solitude, must be either a beast or a god. The spirit of loneliness unrelieved, and uncontrolled, has a tendency to para lyze the energies of life and reduce one’s efficiency and one’s usefulness in life. Loneliness, too, especially the loneliness of a great city, if not dealt with, is likely to open dangerous gates and doors of temptation. It is an important vic tory in life to get the best of loneliness. How, then, can we get the best of this kind of loneliness, the loneliness of absence of friends? One way to do this is by the spirit of friendliness. It was said long ago, but still it is true: “A man that hath friends must show himself friendly.” The kindly, warm outlook toward other lives opens the way for pleasant, human relationships; and the best place to make stich contacts is in a Christian church. One of the deepest satisfactions of min isters of wide experience is the tes timony which they receive through the years from those who found escape from loneliness in the friendly atmosphere of the church. Some are those who have come in and taken an active part in the work of the church, who are well known to the minister; others have slipped quietly into their pew at the morning or evening service, and in the worship of God’s house and in the medi tations of the preacher, had their hearts warmed and their faith in God estab lished. The Loneliness o f Sorrow There is no doubt about that kind of loneliness. Many who have been bereft of their friends have said to me that the hardest part to bear was the lone liness of it. We say, then, to our faith, “Hast thou a medicine for this kind of loneliness?" To get the best of this kind of loneli ness do not cling to sorrow, and, in a sense, worship it> I n s t e a d , the soul
the lamp of his library, have come back to. me: “Now I am all alone.” Any series of meditations on the Subject of facing’ life and getting the best of it, without a sermon on loneliness, would be obviously incomplete, for loneliness is one of the deepest shadows cast upon our world. There is no doubt that a great part of the appeal, the universal appeal, of Robinson Crusoe, is not in his adventures and his clever devices to arrange and regulate his life, but in his lone liness. That strikes a universal chord. The Loneliness o f Place and State There is a loneliness of place and state. By that I mean the
N OW I AM all alone.” I sat with a physician in his library. I was speaking the usual words of sympathy and condolence. He gave me a brief history of his sister’s illness, their past fellowship, and then concluded With these words, “I am all alone now.” On the desk was the framed photo graph of a beautiful woman. I lifted it, and glancing at it, asked him, “Another sister?” # “No,” he answered, as the shadow of another and earlier, perhaps deeper, sorrow came over his face. Then again he said, / ‘I am all alone now.” His words followed me to the vesti bule, down thesteps, around the comer, down the avenue, back to my own home. Sometimes, as I pass down the crowded street and see some face shrouded with loneliness (and how many such there are in the great city with its teeming thousands!) or as I have spoken a word of encouragement to one who has been left to be brave alone, the words of that physician, spoken to me as he sat there, with his pale face lighted up by
absence of friends and intimate relation ships in life. In that respect, the noisiest and busiest and most inhabited places may be the loneliest places. A celebrated war correspondent of the Civil War had a home in a lonely and remote part of beautiful South Mountain. A friend of this man once met him hurrying through the railroad station in New York, ■and asked him where he was going. “I am going down to the mountains in Maryland,” was his answer. “It is too lonely here in New York.” The lonely mountain home was not a lonely place, to him, for he had in timate relationships there and friendly, neighborly fellowship. If I were a composer, I should like to compose an anthem on the voice, of the cry, of a great city. In such an anthem there would be the note and chord of ambition and mounting de sire, the major chord of hope and worship, the minor chord of guilt and sin and fear and sorrow, the penetrat ing note of pain, the low-sounding chord of despair, the strident, piercing note of greed, the howl of hate. But no anthem of the city would be com plete which did not have sounding
•Pot/or. First Presbyterian Church,
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