Going Up
How We Become Great
WE go up as we grow great. That is, we go up as we grow up. But so many are trying to grow great on the outside without growing great on the inside. They rattle on the inside!
They fool themselves, but nobody else.
There is only one greatness--inside greatness. All outside greatness is merely an incidental reflection of the inside.
Greatness is not measured in any material terms. It is not measured in inches, dollars, acres, votes, hurrahs, or by any other of the world's yardsticks or barometers.
Greatness is measured in spiritual terms. It is education. It is life expansion.
We go up from selfishness to unselfishness.
We go up from impurity to purity.
We go up from unhappiness to happiness.
We go up from weakness to strength.
We go up from low ideals to high ideals.
We go up from little vision to greater vision.
We go up from foolishness to wisdom.
We go up from fear to faith.
We go up from ignorance to understanding.
We go up by our own personal efforts. We go up by our own service, sacrifice, struggle and overcoming. We push out our own skyline. We rise above our own obstacles. We learn to see, hear, hold and understand.
We may become very great, very educated, rise very high, and yet not leave our kitchen or blacksmith shop. We take the kitchen or blacksmith shop right up with us! We make it a great kitchen or great blacksmith shop. It becomes our throne-room!
Come, let us grow greater. There is a throne for each of us.
"Getting to the Top"
"Getting to the top" is the world's pet delusion. There is no top.
No matter how high we rise, we discover infinite distances above.
The higher we rise, the better we see that life on this planet is the going up from the Finite to the Infinite.
The world says that to get greatness means to get great things. So the world is in the business of getting--getting great fortunes, great lands, great titles, great applause, great fame, and folderol. Afterwhile the poor old world hears the empty rattle of the inside, and wails, "All is vanity. I find no pleasure in them.
Life is a failure." All outside life is a failure. Real life is in being things on the inside, not in getting things on the outside.
I weary of the world's pink-sheet extras about "Getting to the Top" and "Forging to the Front." Too often they are the sordid story of a few scrambling over the heads of the weaker ones. Sometimes they are the story of one pig crowding the other pigs out of the trough and cornering all the swill!
The Secret of Greatness Christ Jesus was a great Teacher. His mission was to educate humanity.
There came to him those two disciples who wanted to "get to the top." Those two sons of Zebedee wanted to have the greatest places in the new kingdom they imagined he would establish on earth.
They got very busy pursuing greatness, but I do not read that they were half so busy preparing for greatness. They even had their mother out electioneering for them.
"O, Master," said the mother, "grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom."
The Master looked with love and pity upon their unpreparedness.
"Are ye able to drink of the cup?" Then he gave the only definition of greatness that can ever stand: "Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant."
That is we cannot be "born great," nor "have greatness thrust upon" us. We must "achieve greatness" by developing it on the inside--developing ability to minister and to serve.
We cannot buy a great arm. Our arm must become a great servant, and thus it becomes great.
We cannot buy a great mind. Our mind must become a great servant, and thus it becomes great.
We cannot buy a great character. It is earned in great moral service.
The First Step at Hand This is the Big Business of life--going up, getting educated, getting greatness on the inside. Getting greatness on the outside is little business. Much of it mighty little.
Everybody's privilege and duty is to become great. And the joy of it is that the first step is always nearest at hand. We do not have to go off to New York or Chicago or go chasing around the world to become great. It is a great stairway that leads from where our feet are now upward for an infinite number of steps.
We must take the first step now. Most of us want to take the hundredth step or the thousandth step now. We want to make some spectacular stride of a thousand steps at one leap. That is why we fall so hard when we miss our step.
We must go right back to our old place--into our kitchen or our workshop or our office and take the first step, solve the problem nearest at hand. We must make our old work luminous with a new devotion. We must battle up over every inch. And as fast as we solve and dissolve the difficulties and turn our burdens into blessings, we find love, the universal solvent, shining out of our lives. We find our spiritual influences going upward. So the winds of earth are born; they rush in from the cold lands to the warm upward currents. And so as our problems disappear and our life currents set upward, the world is drawn toward us with its problems.
We find our kitchen or workshop or office becoming a new throne of power. We find the world around us rising up to call us blessed.
As we grow greater our troubles grow smaller, for we see them thru greater eyes. We rise above them.
As we grow greater our opportunities grow greater. That is, we begin to see them. They are around us all the time, but we must get greater eyes to see them.
Generally speaking, the smaller our vision of our work, the more we admire what we have accomplished and "point with pride." The greater our vision, the more we see what is yet to be accomplished.
It was the sweet girl graduate who at commencement wondered how one small head could contain it all. It was Newton after giving the world a new science who looked back over it and said, "I seem to have been only a boy playing on the seashore * * * while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." That great ocean is before us all.