Any cause, any ambition, any great endeavor that can stir the blood, and give a life direction, purpose, and continuity of achievement, has the power to rescue life from ennui, from emptiness, and give it positive worth.  But most ambitions pall in time, and many a cause that has taken a man’s best energies has come to seem mistaken or futile with the years.  There is only one great campaign which is so eternal, so surely necessary, so clear in its summons to all men, that the heart can rest in it as in something great enough to ennoble a whole life.  That is the age-long war against evil, the unending summons to duty, the service of God.  Once a man learns this deepest of joys, nothing can take it from him; whatever his limitations, however narrow his sphere, there will not fail to be a right way, a brave way, a beautiful way to live.  There is comradeship in it; in this common service of God — or of good, if we must avoid religious terms — we stand shoulder to shoulder with the saints and heroes of all races and times, with all, of whatever land or tongue, who are striving to push forward the line, to make the right prevail and banish evil.  Every effort, every sacrifice, has its inextinguishable effect; in his moral conquests a man is no longer an individual, he is a part of the great tide that is resistlessly making toward the better world of the future, the Kingdom of God.  The great Power in the world that makes for righteousness is back of him, and in him; in no loyal moment is he alone. . . .  Inevitably the tongue slips into religious language in dealing with these high truths; but nonetheless are they scientific truths, matters of plain every day observation.

The essential point is, that it is not enough to obey the Law; we must espouse the Law, clasp it to our bosoms, love it, and give ourselves to it utterly.  We must — to use the pregnant words of James “base our lives on doing and being, not on having”; base our lives solidly upon it, so that everything else is secondary.  The pleasures of life are well enough in their time, but they must not usurp the chief place in a man’s thought.[Footnote:  Cf.  J. S. Mill, Autobiography, p. 142:  “The enjoyments of life are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken en passant, without being made a principal object.  The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life.”] His first concern must be to keep true, to play the game; he must seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, if he would have these other things added unto him.  He must lose his life his worldly interests, his dependence upon ease and luxury, and even love if he would truly find it.  In a hundred such phrases from the Great Teacher’s lips one finds the secret.  More baldly expressed, it comes to this, that only through putting the main emphasis upon doing the right, obeying the call of duty, only through the courageous attack and the giving of our utmost allegiance, can we keep a positive zest in living, exorcise the specter of aimlessness and depression, and lift ordinary commonplace life to the level of heroism.  Blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord.