Is Life Worth Living? by William P. Pearce

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Dec 5, 1907

Is Life Worth Living?

By William P. Pearce

WILLIAM P. PEARCE

The answer to this question depends upon one's conception of what is meant by life. When asked to define life, Herbert Spencer said it was “the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.” This simply tells what life does, not what life is. The scientist begins with the lowest form represented by a mere atom of living matter, known as protoplasm, but he, with all other great intellects, staggers at the contemplation of life. It is not life from a scientific standpoint which should trouble us, but life from a practical side. Is it worth living?

Much depends on one's perspective. The poets Gray and Longfellow looked from different points. The former said,— “Life is a jest, and all things show it; I thought so once, but now I know it.” The other wrote,— “Life is real, life is earnest, And the grave is not its goal.”

Horace Bushnell says, “Every man's life is a plan of God.” That is true. Where there is a distorted life, it is because of the distortion of the plans of God. He asks no less than the architect asks of the builder.

There is a law of gravitation in one's life as well as in nature, which seems to oppose progress upward. No man ever achieved true greatness without a struggle, but in all our struggles life can be a “Te Deum” or a “Gloria in Excelsis.”

“Our lives are songs; God writes the words, And we set them to music at leisure; And the song is sad, Or the song is glad, As we choose to fashion the measure. “We must write the song, Whatever the words, Whatever its rhyme or meter; And if it is sad, We must make it glad; And if sweet, we must make it sweeter.”

The answer to whether life is worth living depends upon one of two things; is it—

Self-Centered or Christ-Centered?

A self-centered life is a self-destroying one. It is lost in what the possessor supposes the best way to preserve it. Take the one who likes to live easy. Ease is a necessity. The overwrought brain, muscle, and nerve must rest. Broken-down tissues must be built up. But that life that says, like the rich man, “Soul, take thine ease,” never worry over anything or any one,—that life is not worth living. “A man's life,” said Samuel Smiles, “is to be measured by what he does in it, and what he feels in it.” William Bryan said to the Union College students, “Life is not measured by what you get out of the world, but by what you put into it.” Of Edward VI, Hooker said, “He died young, but lived long if life be action.” “Whither are you going?” asked Carlyle of a young man. “Don't know,” was the reply. “What do you carry?”—“Nothing.” “What are you doing on life's sea?” And the young man answered what thousands of purposeless people now answer, “Only drifting.”

Life must be spiced to be congenial. But that life that simply lives to sip the rounds of amusements is not worth living. Lord Chesterfield tried it, and called it “romantic dreams,” like those produced by opium, which he did not wish to repeat. How much better the philosophy of George Herbert, “Give me simplicity that I may live.”

But the life that simply lives to accumulate a large bank account or property, is not only a strenuous, but a contemptible one not worth living. Money!—it's the god of too many. Touch it, and not infrequently you touch character. Touch it, and you touch the destiny of the soul. What shall it profit to put one's heart in dollars and one's soul in hell?

To be famous is not wrong, provided it be in the interest of humanity, and if fame is not the end sought. One can without sinning covet the gifts which made Newton and Field, Livingstone and Gladstone, Lincoln and Tennyson famous. But living just to make a name, as Phrine, who offered to rebuild the walls of Thebes if permitted to engrave, “Alexander overthrew Thebes, and Phrine did in this manner restore it;” or to achieve notoriety, as Marie Bashkirtseff, the brilliant Russian girl who wrote in her journal, “It is the new year. At the theater, precisely at midnight, with watch in hand, I wish in a single word, fame,”—such a life is not worth living. It is, as Byron said, “Something, nothing, words, illusion, wind.”

Take the one who lives without God. That life is not worth living. It does more harm than good. It rolls up a list of demerits rather than merits against the day of reckoning. When a man said to Diogenes that it was a bad thing to live, the philosopher answered, “Not to live, but to live badly.” It was because there was no God in his life that Schopenhauer cried: “This world is the worst possible; the life of man is one of unbounded misery and wretchedness.” A godless life is a lost life. The only life worth living is—

The Christ-Centered Life

That is constructive and eternal. “Live while you live,” was the apparently suspicious motto of Philip Doddridge, suggesting Horace or Aristophanes rather than Isaiah or Paul; but Dr. Doddridge rendered it into what Dr. Samuel Johnson pronounced “one of the finest epigrams in the English language:”— “Live while you live, the epicure would say, And seize the pleasures of the present day; Live while you live, the sacred preacher cries, And give to God each moment as it flies. Lord, in my views let both united be. I live in pleasure when I live in thee.”

The Christ-centered life will exhibit itself. Buds, leaves, blossoms, and fruits are only indicative of the hidden life in the tree. The piston-rod moving in and

out of the cylinder is an evidence of the steam-life within the locomotive. The Christian life, says Paul, “is hid with Christ in God.” Col. 3:3. The external life is only the thermometer which indicates the degree of internal life. Life was given as a trust, not to hoard, but to use. “He lived for others,” is the epitaph on the tomb of John Howard. “Why not rest from your labor?” said a friend to John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians, who was found on the day of his death, at eighty years of age, teaching an Indian child its alphabet. “Because,” said he, “I have prayed God to make me useful in my sphere, and he has heard my prayer. Now that I can not preach, he leaves me strength to teach this poor child.” Until we learn to live for others, we have not begun to live at all. We live, as Bailey wrote— “In deeds, not years—in thoughts, not breaths— In feelings, not in figures on a dial. We count time by heart-throbs. He most lives Who thinks most, feels the noblest, and acts the best.”

What Is Your Life?

Not the life of some one else, but yours. What have you done, and what are you doing, to perpetuate a loving, blessed memory? What heart have you comforted? What struggling person have you cheered? What weakening faith have you strengthened? What other youth have you turned from folly? What needy cause have you assisted with a God-desired liberality? What soul have you been instrumental in saving?

When I think that God is as just as loving, I tremble for some, who, I fear, when they come to die, will suddenly realize that they have not lived. How much better to leave behind a beautiful picture of a blessed example, as did the old grandfather. The little girl had gone into his room to ask him to read to her. Finding him asleep with his head upon the back of the chair, his Bible upon his knees, and the sunlight coming through the window at the proper angle to cast about him a halo of glory, she ran to her mother, saying, “I have been in grandpa's room, and I have seen God.” Can others see God in you? They saw him in Paul when he cried, “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” Gal. 2:20. That life, and only that life, is worth living. Is that your life?

Louisiana, Mo.