Greatness
J. H. Hitchens, D. D. 2 Samuel 3:38 And the king said to his servants, Know you not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel? When I speak of greatness I do not refer to the greatness which depends upon worldly fortune or favour — the dignities and distinctions which are the product of a royal smile — the mere accidentals of rank and riches — the greatness that glitters in the gay saloon, and is encompassed by the flatteries of courteous and captivated satellites. I refer to the greatness which consists in the possession of a grand, cultivated disciplined intellect — in the resolution to do, and doing, what Other men have shunned. Cousin makes a distinction between the man and the great man, He says "There are two parts in a great man — the part of the great man and the part of the man; the first belongs to history, the second should be abandoned to memoirs and biography. History should be a classic drama — it should bring together all the details and individual traits into a unity; it should place in clear light the idea which a great man represents. The philosophy of history does not know individuals; it omits, it ignores the purely individual and biographical side of man, for this very simple reason — that this is not what humanity has seen in him; that it has not adored him nor followed him on account of this, but notwithstanding this. The fundamental rule of the philosophy of history in regard to great men is to do as humanity does, to judge them by what they have done — by what they have wished to do; to neglect the description of weaknesses inherent in their individuality, and which have perished with it, and to fasten itself upon the great things which they have done, which have served humanity, and which still endure in the memory of men; in short, to search out and establish what constitutes them historical personages, what has given them power and glory — namely, the idea which they represent, and their intimate relation with the spirit of their times and of their nation." I. ACHIEVE GREATNESS. It is possible for you each to attain a position of usefulness and honour, such as at present you do not dream of reaching. Do not suppose that all the great and good men have sprung from the ranks of the leisured aristocracy. As a rule the foremost men in all branches have risen from the industrial classes. AEsop was a slave. Homer a beggar. Demosthenes was the son of a curler. Virgil was the son of a baker. Socrates was a statuary. Raffaelle was the son of a peasant. Luther the son of a miner. The Scotch poet, Ferguson, the son of a humble labourer. Burns was a farm rustic. Ben Jonson was a bricklayer. Blackstone was the son of a draper. Butler was the son of a farmer. Stephenson was a collier. Faraday a bookbinder. Arkwright a barber. Davy a druggist. Milton a schoolmaster. Caxton, Willis, Horace Greely, Dickens, Douglas Jerrold and Benjamin Franklin were all printers. Morrison, the great Chinese scholar and missionary, was a bootmaker. Carlyle was the son of a stonemason. Benjamin Disraeli, who became a peer of the realm, and made his Queen an Empress, was a solicitor's clerk. Such lives remind you that energy, perseverance, and integrity in the use of your God-given abilities may place you in the foremost rank of those who are benefactors of your race. Up! Up! select the calling which is congenial to your taste, which is honourable before men, and approved of God, and then be resolute, undaunted, persevering! If now and again defeated, remember that, though cast down, you are not utterly destroyed. There is, however, a nobler greatness yet — a greatness of the soul — a greatness that springs from relationship to and frequent communion with the King of kings; a greatness which is displayed in growing conformity to the likeness of Christ and increasing usefulness in His vineyard; a greatness much more to be desired than a mighty intellect, social grandeur, or worldly fame. II. RETAIN GREATNESS, It is often easier to rise than to keep the place procured. Many a time an army has stormed and carried a citadel which it was powerless to hold. So not infrequently men have stepped up to vantage ground from which by some lamentable moral declination, or culpable negligence, they have most ingloriously slipped. We have read of many men who have risen to a position of honour and influence, from which sunny altitude they have fallen for ever, like a. bright exhalation in the evening." You think of Saul the son of Kish, chosen of God, anointed by Samuel, and made the first king of Israel; and you remember how he disobeyed the Lord, was defeated in battle, craved death at the hand of a fellow-man, and then, by his own deed, terminated his career. You think of Wolsey, the son of a butcher, rising to be Cardinal and Lord-Chancellor, then stripped of his dignities and arrested for treason. Hear his words, as our great dramatic poet has given them: — "Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness! ... I have ventured Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders This many summers, in a sea of glory; But far beyond my depth, my high-blown pride At length broke under me, and now has left me, Weary and old with service, to the mercy Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me."Look at Thomas Cromwell, the son of a blacksmith at Putney, rising to be Earl of Essex and Lord High Chamberlain, yet arrested for treason, committed to the Tower for seven weeks, and then conducted to the scaffold and beheaded. Look at Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, becoming the special favourite of Queen Elizabeth, falling into disgrace and imprudence which led to his being arraigned for trial at Westminster, conveyed to the Tower, and a week afterwards. beheaded. In each of these cases we may use the text, and say, "A great man has fallen." But theirs was a fall into shame, loss, sorrow, and irretrievable ruin. Theirs was a moral fall, a fall in social esteem, a fall in national honour. If we have realised any of our fond hopes, achieved any of our cherished plans, let us not be unduly elated or incautious. Let not the man who girdeth himself with the robes of official dignity boast himself as he who putteth them off. There is a legitimate fear that all who have risen, or are rising, will do well to foster. There is a holy fear of falling which the noblest, the purest, and the most perfect cannot afford to disdain. It is that which is recommended by the inspired writers in the words, "Happy is the man that feareth always, but he that hardeneth his heart shall fall into mischief." "Let us, therefore, fear, lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest any of you should seem to come short of it." Happy is the man who perseveres to the end, and is faithful unto death. III. THE GREAT DIE. (J. H. Hitchens, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the king said unto his servants, Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel? WEB: The king said to his servants, "Don't you know that there a prince and a great man has fallen this day in Israel?