Every part of its impulse flows
through all of its substance, and it does the thing which it was made to
do. When the ice has melted upon the plain it is only when it finds its
way into the river and flows forth freely to do the work which the live
water has to do that it really attains to its freedom. Only then is it
really liberated from the bondage in which it was held while it was
fastened in the chains of winter. The same freed ice waits until it so
finds its freedom, and when man is set free simply into the enjoyment of
his own life, simply into the realization of his own existence, he has
not attained the purposes of his freedom, he has not come to the
purposes of his life.
It is one of the signs to me of how human words are constantly becoming
perverted that it surprises us when we think of freedom as a condition
in which a man is called upon to do, and is enabled to do, the duty that
God has laid upon him. Duty has become to us such a hard word, service
has become to us a word so full of the spirit of bondage, that it
surprises us at the first moment when we are called upon to realize that
it is in itself a word of freedom. And yet we constantly are lowering
the whole thought of our being, we are bringing down the greatness and
richness of that with which we have to deal, until we recognize that God
does not call us to our fullest life simply for ourselves. The spirit of
selfishness is continually creeping in. I think it may almost be said
that there has been no selfishness in the history of man like that which
has exhibited itself in man's religious life, showing itself in the way
in which man has seized upon spiritual privileges and rejoiced in the
good things that are to come to him in the hereafter, because he had
made himself the servant of God.
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