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THE KING’S BUSINESS
great bard went wrong in his use of the word ambition. Still addressing Cromwell, he says, “I charge thee fling away ambi tion, by that sin fell the angels.”, The trou ble was not with his ambition but with the use that he made of it. His ambition was the power by which he could set a value upon right things and be driven towards the realization of right ends. He harnessed this magnificent power of his personality to wrong ends, and wrongly centered, it .became his ruin. Shakespeare •appreciated this fact and therefore says: “Let all the ends thou aimest at be thy country1 s, thy God’s and truth’s; Then if thou fallest, O Cromwell, thou fallest a blessed martyr.” THE END SOUGHT . What he wanted Cromwell to do was to set a real value upon these things and make them the aim and -end of his ambi tion. The Scarlet Sin was not the ambi tion, but the use that Wolsey made of that sublime power of his personality. If he had harnessed that power to the ser vice of his country, his God and truth, he would have been a different man and in all probability the history of the church of his time would have been a different story from what it now is. In the light of these facts, there is no reason why we should hesitate to accept Paul’s admonition to “be ambitious.” It is very interesting to note that the three times Paul uses this word he associated it with the very things the “Bard of Avon” asked Cromwell to make the aim of life. In 1 Thess. 4:11, he admonished the peo ple to be ambitious, to be themselves at their best, in order that they might serve their fellows in the best possible way. In the othpr two passages he tells us what his own ambition was, and in this way revealed the way in which men may best serve this day. In 2 Cor. 5 :9 he tells us that he was ambitious to please Christ. From the day he met Christ on the way to Damascus to the day he laid down his life an offering unto God, the dominating passion of his life was to please his great Master. To
WENT WRONG Now let us see where Shakespeare went wrong. The character that he took to warn men against this “Scarlet Sin” was Cardi nal Wolsey. He was a strong character and a man of wonderful powers and pos sibilities. He was the son of a Suffolk butcher, who gave him the advantages of the best education of his day. He gradu ated a “B. A.” from Oxford when only .16 years of age. He had great aspirations and a great ambition. He wanted to be at the top in whatever he took up. Hence he soon secured recognition and filled the highest positions in the educational world of his day. When he gave himself to the church he immediately sought her richest gifts. He aspired to be Pope. While he did not realize his ambition along this par ticular line, he did come within a step of it—he was made Cardinal. In all this he was extremely selfish'. He sought these honors not because of the service he could render in them and through them to his fellow men, but for the sake of what he could get out of them. So successful was he in this particular that his income came to be equal to that of the crown. When King Henry VIII found this out he saw to it that it was immediately curtailed. This was the begin ning of his rapid downfall. At last, stripped of his glory and forsaken, Shakespeare makes him cry out: “O' Cromwell, Cromwell, had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my king, He would not in mine age have left me naked to mine enemies.” As a matter of fact he had not served the King in the truest sense. He served the King only because he felt that was the best way to serve his own selfish interests. Shakespeare appreciated this fact. When he came to the final interpretation of the Cardinal’s fall, and would show Cromwell a way in which to rise out of his wreck, he says, “Love thyself last.” He appreci ated that the Cardinal loved himself first, and sought his own ends in everything he touched. But it is at this point that the
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