There is one thing that people say very carelessly that always seems to
me to be a dreadful thing for a man to say. They say it when they talk
about their lives to one another, and think about their lives to
themselves, and by and by very often say it upon their death-bed with
the last gasp, as though their entrance into the eternal world had
brought them no deeper enlightenment. One wonders what is the revelation
that comes to them when they stand upon the borders of the other side
and are in the full life and eternity of God. The thing men say is, "I
have done the very best I can." It is an awful thing for a man to say.
The man never lived, save he who perfected our humanity, who ever did
the very best he could. You dishonor your life, you not simply shut your
eyes to certain facts, you not simply say an infinitely absurd and
foolish thing, but you dishonor your human life if you say that you have
done in any day of your life or in all the days of your life put
together, the very best that you could, or been the very best man that
you could be. You! what are you? Again I say, The child of God, and this
which you have been, what is it? Look over it, see how selfish it has
been, see how material it has been, how it has lived in the depths when
it might have lived on the heights, see how it has lived in the little
narrow range of selfishness when it might have been as broad as all
humanity, nay, when it might have been as the God of humanity.
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