1 Peter 2:16-17

THE AMBITION OF LIFE

‘Servants of God.’

1 Peter 2:16

I wish to set before you service as the great object and ambition of life. There can be no more princely motto than this ‘I serve.’

I. Service is the only true measure of greatness.—Run your minds over the good men of the world, and ask why it is that generation after generation has determined to stamp them as great. Why is it? Because they have done great service to God and to man. Think of any of the departments of life. Why do we call Shakespeare great, or the Duke of Wellington, or the man of science—Mr. Darwin, for instance—or our great musicians, Handel, and so forth? Surely because if you apply this test to them you will find that in every case the man whom we stamp as great has done good service. And need I remind you that the greatest Servant the world has ever seen was the Incarnate Son of God Himself, Who said of Himself, ‘I am among you as one that serveth’?

II. Society is bound up by, consists of, a texture of services, great and small, rendered to one another. And if you were to attempt to resolve society into a very simple condition, in which there was not this wonderful variety of interdependent and mutually contributory services, we should be going back at once to barbarism. It is civilisation, Christian civilisation, that has brought about this marvellous texture of mutual services. If you think for a moment of what we term domestic service, consider how absolutely necessary it is for the work of life. Take a very simple instance, a Cabinet minister. Let us imagine for a moment that owing to the annihilation of our necessary system of division and combination of labour, he was to find himself some day compelled to provide for himself, to do his housework himself, and so forth, how would it be possible for him to do his service to the nation? His service to the nation can only be rendered if there are other servants doing departments of work which must fall upon him, unless he is able to get it done for him, by our system of domestic service. And in this respect the body politic is like the natural body.

III. We cannot hope to render great service; but what can we all do?—There is no one who cannot have this ambition, and hope to realise it; we can all greatly serve; we can all serve magnanimously; we can all, according to our different circumstances and equipment, and opportunities and capacities, and so forth, we can all render to God and to man the very best that He has put within our reach. Are we doing so? That is the question. Are we attempting to slip through life, getting as much self-enjoyment out of it and shirking the service in which our true happiness should be found? or are we spending our very best selves, bringing to bear upon that particular part of service which, for the time being, God has committed to our hands, whether it be small or great, are we bringing to bear upon it, I say, all our equipment of mind, all our resources, material, or money, or property, or influence, station, and the like? This is the question that goes to the very root of our life, goes to the very root of social happiness and progress. And may I especially lay stress upon this aspect of the matter to any of those who may be present who may think that the work and service of life which God has bestowed upon them is a small and dreary and unsatisfactory one, those who have not yet learnt to see its possibilities and dignity.

—Bishop Jayne.

Illustration

‘I dare say you may have heard these lines, very very familiar lines, which we should write upon our memories and try to live up to, setting them before us, incorporating this high and generous ambition:—

“Teach me, my God and King,

In all things Thee to see,

And what I do in any thing

To do it as to Thee.

All may of Thee partake;

Nothing can be so mean,

But with this tincture—for Thy sake—

Will not grow bright and clean.

A servant with this clause

Makes drudgery divine;

Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws,

Makes that and the action fine.”

Is that not true divinity? Is not that the secret of generous and high-minded life? Is that not the kind of spirit we all need in order to make us live worthy of our God and of ourselves, and of that human nature with which He has knit us together, so that it must thrive to some extent, or dwindle and decay, according as we are loyal or disloyal in our rendering of service?’