Shall a man cultivate himself? No, not primarily. Shall a man
serve the world, strive to increase the kingdom of God in the world?
Yes, indeed, he shall. How shall he do it? By cultivating himself, and
instantly he is thrown back upon his own life. "For their sakes I
sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified." I am my best, not
simply for myself, but for the world. My brethren, is there anything in
all the teachings that man has had from his fellow-man, all that has
come down to him from the lips of God, that is nobler, that is more
far-reaching than that--to be my best not simply for my own sake, but
for the sake of the world into which, setting my best, I shall make that
world more complete, I shall do my little part to renew and to recreate
it in the image of God? That is the law of my existence. And the man
that makes that the law of his existence neither neglects himself nor
his fellow-men, neither becomes the self-absorbed student and cultivator
of his own life upon the one hand, nor does he become, abandoning
himself, simply the wasting benefactor of his brethren upon the other.
You can help your fellow-men: you must help your fellow-men; but the
only way you can help them is by being the noblest and the best man that
it is possible for you to be. I watch the workman build upon the
building which by and by is to soar into the skies, to toss its
pinnacles up to the heaven, and I see him looking up and wondering where
those pinnacles are to be, thinking how high they are to be, measuring
the feet, wondering how they are to be built, and all the time he is
cramming a rotten stone into the building just where he has set to work.
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