Helps for Daily Living. 150 pages. 1889 1.00 1.00 1892 Is this a Good World? 60 pages. 1893. Paper Four Great Questions concerning God. 86 pp. 1891. Paper .25 1.00 .25 1.00 MISCELLANEOUS. 1878 Light on the Cloud. 176 pages. 1876. Full gilt Sacred Songs for Public Worship. A Hymn and Tune Leather Unitarian Catechism. With an Introduction by E. A. Horton. Cloth, 1.25 1.50 1.50 .50 .75 1.00 1.50 1.50 2.50 Mr. Savage's weekly sermons are regularly printed in pamphlet form in "Unity Pulpit.' Subscription price, for the season, $1.50; single copies, 5 cents. GEO. H. ELLIS, Publisher, 141 Franklin St., Boston, Mass. A BETTER YEAR. "Even so run, that ye may attain.”— 1 Cor. ix. 24. "Brethren, I count not myself as having apprehended: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal."-PHIL. iii. 13. "Therefore let us also, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us."HEB. Xxii. I. I HAD it in my mind to announce, as my theme of the morning, the phrase "Breaking the Record." I desisted, and called it "A Better Year," lest some should suppose that I wish to attract attention merely by the title, lest they might think that it bordered on sensationalism; and yet this is my theme. When I was crossing the Atlantic this summer on my return voyage, our ship, one of the older ones of the line and counted, in the main, a slow, commonplace sort of steamer, succeeded in making the swiftest voyage that she has ever made since she was afloat; and leaning over the rail one day, as we approached this side, when we knew that without any accident she would succeed in breaking her record, I was talking with one of the Harvard professors, and he asked me why I did not take that as the theme of my first Sunday. It occurred to me then that it might be well before we are further advanced in our religious year, that year which runs from the end of one vacation to the beginning of the next, and which seems to be the more natural way for me at any rate to reckon my time, it seemed to me that it would be well for us, looking back over the past year, and looking forward a little to the coming, to consider the question as to whether in those respects that are important to our life we should not try to break the record of the past, to make a better year in a high sense, a more successful year than any that we have ever yet succeeded in doing. I do not know why it should be regarded as sensational to use the achievement of the most wonderful thing that man has yet created, the ocean steamship, as the subject of a sermon, any more than it was sensational in Paul when more than once he took the race, the Olympic games, as the suggestion for some of his grandest lessons of life. We are all of us on a voyage. We are all of us running a race, whichever way you may choose to look at it; and we are all of us interested, and perforce must be, in the achievements of other men, and in the question whether we ourselves are to succeed in reaching the things after which we strive. We ought to be. I have never yet known a man who was sane and healthy who was satisfied. I do not believe that any man ever ought to be satisfied, no matter what he has become. No matter what he has achieved, no matter what he has in the world. There is always a something higher that leads and lures and incites, and there always ought to be. I do not believe that we shall ever find any time in this world, or in any other, when we shall be ready to sit down, and say, The voyage is accomplished, the race is run: henceforth there is for us only rest, sitting still. This does not belong to the nature of him who is fitted to be clothed upon with immortality. I shall not say any particularly new or striking thing this morning. I shall deal almost exclusively with that which is very commonplace. Our lives are not made up of startling and striking things. The important things are not startling or striking. Our lives are made up of commonplaces; and in the midst of the commonplace we must face our defeats or we must achieve our victories. And yet, as you have often heard me say, the commonplace is not empty of the divine. They who cannot see wonder, cannot see poetry, cannot see divinity, cannot see magnificent and high things, in what are the commonplace matters of every day, simply lack vision. The commonplace does not lack these things. As we look over the past year, we shall recognize, all of us, that we have been striving after a great many things that we have not succeeded in attaining. I wish with all my heart that next year might be a better one in a financial way than the past has been. You have learned, and learned the lesson over and over again,— I trust you will take it to heart, and learn from it a deeper insight of life,- that there are certain things that we think desirable, and that perhaps we spend the larger part of our lives on, over which we have no control. A man may say, I have wrought out my fortune with my own hands; but he has learned this year that other people, circumstances, conditions, are mightier than he. Let us learn, then, one lesson: that, whereas we fail because of other people, when we succeed, it may also be because of other people. Let us learn a little more of the sense of brotherhood and mutual interdependence, and lose a little. of the conceit of our own mastery, our own ability to control the world. As a matter of fact, and here is the strongest argument for mutual helpfulness, we are bound together, whether we will or not. If we succeed, we succeed in virtue of the help that other people render us. If we fail, we fail because we do not have the assistance of other people. There is not one of us that can stand alone; and we ought not to try to stand alone. We have one Father in heaven; and we all are brethren. And it is our Father; and it is we who must go up or must go down. But the lesson that I wish you to learn here chiefly is this: I have said that there are certain things that we strive for that we cannot control. There are certain other things that we strive for that we can control, and the one thing I wish to do this morning is to try to help you a little, along with myself, to fix your attention on the facts that you can control, and to note this one fact: that the things which you cannot control are of secondary importance always. The things that are supreme, the first, great, high things for men and women, are the things concerning which there need never be a failure. We cannot control the matter of money-making, because, as I have said, we are linked in with thousands of others all round the globe, and we are touched by general conditions that we cannot master, because they are stronger than we. I would not advise you overmuch then, though I wish you might succeed in it, to make that the object of your endeavor during the coming year. Do not misunderstand me. I wish the world were a thousand times richer than it is; and, as it becomes more and more civilized, and we learn to control natural advantages, the world will grow ever richer and richer. It is an old and trite saying, said millions and millions of times, but learned only here and there by a few who have felt the divine lesson, that money is a secondary matter, and manhood and life are supreme. Money is for a purpose. It is not the end. It is a condition; and it is a condition that we can afford to get along without. It is not the main thing. We have raced during the past year after another thing that we have failed in achieving. We have striven after satisfaction; and, as I said, no man ever yet gained it, and in that I rejoice. I only wish to say that this idea of our ever reaching a moment in our lives when we shall say we have enough, we have done enough, we are enough, is something that we ought to put one side. It is an illusion that we shall never be able to grasp; and, if we could grasp it, it would be fatal,- fatal to all that is highest and best in us. There is another thing. These are commonplace, but I wish to allude to them because they are so important. We have striven this year after position, certain grades of social life, perhaps. We have tried to make ourselves conspicuous in the world or to get among those who regard themselves as conspicuous, those occupying a higher station in the estimate of their fellow-men. These things we cannot control. And |
