1077
THE KING’S BUSINESS
merit store that covers a block. ' Must I take soothing lotion to lull me to stagnant sleep? No, I must pray for a thorn in the flesh to make me move on. Oh, the misfortune of a realized ideal! Here are two artists. One standing by his latest production, bursts into tears. Why? “Because I am satisfied with my work.” On the other hand, the widow of the great artist, Opie, says that in the nine years she was his wife she never saw him satisfied with his work, and often he would enter the room and throw himself down in despair, crying, “I never shall be a painter, as long as I live.” This is the healthy dis satisfaction which means progress—the thing which distinguishes the civilized man from the barbarian. Can you imagine the Two side by side in a hut with a stick as the only implement? The barbarian says, “I am satisfied; this is life.” The civilized man says, “I may be here in a hut now, but I am not going to stay here. My ticket reads ‘Onward still, and upward,’ with no stop-overs till I reach the goal. My banner, ‘Excelsior.’ And after I reach the seventh heighth above me, somebody will hail me and cry, ‘Stop here; you are high enough,’—but my faithful banner will still read ‘Excelsior’.” Robert E. Speer was very much sur prised to receive from a young man on the Pacific Coast, a letter, saying, “I believe I am fully qualified for the work required.” Speer says, “Now what can you do for a man-like that, whose ideals have sunk down to his commonplace life?” We need dreamers. “We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town; We yearned beyond the sky-line, where the strange roads go down.” - II. A Forgotten Past. “Forgetting those" things which are behind.” Of course, there is a sense in which we can never forget. Manfred asks the spirits to wipe out his past, and they reply, “It is not in our power—but thou mayst die.” “Will'death confer it on me?”
REV. HERBERT BOOTH SMITH “We are immortal and do not forget.” There is a sense in which my past clings to me, dogs me like a shadow. Its habits have burned deep furrows in my brain; its unhallowed memories are painted on walls of imagination. But Jesus preached that a man could get away from his past: “Neither do I condemn thee.” Over in Dresden a sort of Jean Valjean has lately been discovered: Mr. Charles May, author and millionaire philanthropist, regarded as one of the foremost citizens of the king dom. Here, comes along a socialist and unmasks the identity of Mr. May and proves him to have been a desperado of forty years ago. That is always the way when a man tries to forget his past. Some haunting spirit comes along and says, “Aren’t you the man that killed that Egyp tian yesterday ?” Y esterday, as though God hadn’t forgiven all my yesterdays. These people like . Mephistopheles, who keep peering over our shoulder to remind us that we have an unsavory past—these peo ple who go around unlocking closets and letting out the skeleton of a dead past to haunt us during the sunshine of the pres ent—ought to be sent to State’s Prison. In the name of the dying Jesus, who for-
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