Lifters and Leaners

LIFTERS AND LEANERS. BY JOHN PHILLIPS MEAKIN, FRATERNAL LECTURER AND DRAMATIC READER. Wherever you go, you will find the world's masses Are always divided into just these two classes, The two kinds of people on earth I mean, Are the people who lift and the people who lean. To be truly great should be the aim and object of every human being. By this we mean that every person should be within him or herself an individual personality, worthy of confidence and respect. There are two kinds of people — those who lift and those who lean, or, in other words, the constructionists and the destructionists. As we look at the world through the glasses of the present, we see all the frailties and imperfections of those around us. The petty details of daily life do not bear close inspection ; it is only by viewing with a general gaze the sum total of noble lives, that one gets away from the thought that the world is retrograding. It is only the few who have moral courage enough to be true to their inner selves,and to be Lifters toward the higher intellectual life. The many shift their burdens of responsibility and duty to suit the passions and desires of their outer selves; thus they become Leaners — they stumble and fall. All human beings are endowed with the essence of divinity, mind, intelligence, heart and soul. These are gifts of the Godman, and within every human being lies dormant the stamp of the Creator.

414 IMPRO VEMENT ERA . This essence is the spark of divine life, and can be fanned into a brilliant flame, or allowed .to retire from its home of clay. This germ of good in all human beings is ready and waiting for the work of cultivation to begin. Man is a partner with God — a co-worker with him in self-construction. The result of our cultivation depends upon the application of God's law to our own individual development, and upon the soil or body which surrounds the germ within us. As the bulb or seed of a flower requires a good material home in which to grow and thrive, even so must the divine seed of God- life have a pure material body in which to develop into the blossom of righteous thought and intelligence. The conscience, God's monitor, is within us, and if, through habitual evil doing and evil thinking, we deaden that gentle voice, we become mere things, with vile, base instincts only. We cannot imagine that any destiny than the highest was intended for man; hence we are forced to the conclusion that through ignorant choice man has become lower than the dumb beast, for by appeasing and fostering the animal passions, he destroys the spark of divinity which the beast does not possess. BUILDING. 'Tis fearful building upon any sin, One mischief entered brings another in, The second draws a third, the third pulls more, Till they for all the rest set ope' the door; Then custom takes away the judging sense, And to offend we think it no offense. In all human life there seems to be a tendency to surrender one's individuality through leaning upon others. While we realize that isolation is almost impossible to man , we do know that individual personality is an absolute necessity to human development. God does not require that we borrow others' talents, but his law does demand an increase of our own, through cultivation. We will always be stronger as ourselves, though weak, than we will by leaning upon the talents of others. Our own faculties will always serve us better, because, being designed by the Creator for us, they are in harmony with our being. Better to think for

LIFTERS AND LEANERS. 415 yourself, if but partially right, than to allow others to think for you and be entirely right. It is not the lack of doing, but the lack of thinking which retards human progress. In order to work out any problem, we must have a basis to start from; hence, if we expect young men to develop into sterling manhood their thought-forces must be aroused — the mind must be put to work. This activity of mind and thought-power forms the basis for the character building, and without this sound basis, humanity drifts like a helmless vessel. Young men ! let a friend appeal to you briefly upon this subject of cultivation. Do not, in youth, through dissipation drive away the God-principle by destroying the body. Truly has it been said: "The wages of sin is death." If your minds, up to the present time, have not been awakened, and you are slumbering in the -cradle of apathy, you need proof of the results of evil doing. Look at the human wrecks around and about you — then ask yourself the question, — which shall it be — a Lifter or a Leaner? It lies with each individual to carve out hjs or her own destiny. Will you be a Lifter or a Leaner? The Leaner travels the downward path. He sacrifices character upon the altar of vice. He first takes the cigarette, a little demon, which suggests a larger one, — drink, followed closely by its satellites, late hours and revelry, and in their wake come the secret vices and debauchery. He is now a bundle of corruption. He has exchanged higher values for lower values. He lives the coarse, animal life, and pushes from him the divine essence, the God-spirit which was intrusted to his care and keeping. He becomes selfish, gloomy, indolent, cowardly and treacherous. He does not stand erect in manly courage and purity of soul. Having no power to battle with the vicissitudes of life, he becomes a weakling. He is now a Leaner. He is an outcast in awe of himself. His declining years find him in the solitude and gloom of his own undoing. He is the central figure in the picture of a ruined life, a life of unrighteous impressions and mistaken happiness, in which the mind has become stunted and warped. Naught greets his ears but his own requiem, in Death's Revelry. For the demons still sing:

416 IMPROVEMENT ERA. We meet 'neath the sounding rafter, And the walls around are bare; As they shout back our peals of laughter It seems that the dead are there. Now here are the goblets glowing, Now here is the vintage sweet; 'Tis cold as our hearts are growing, And dark as the doom we meet. Not a sigh for the loss that darkles, Not a tear for the friends that sink; We'll fall 'mid the wine cup's sparkle, As mute as the wine we drink. Come, stand to your glasses steady; 'Tis this that the respite buys, One cup for the dead already — Hurrah for the next that dies. The fixed and inimitable laws of nature forbid that man shall stand still. If he is not a Leaner he must of necessity be a Lifter. At the entrance upon each new day, one or the other of the human forces must give way; if the lower faculties do not give way to the higher, then the higher must fall prey to the lower. If man would enjoy life eternal and supreme earthly happiness, he must cast from his mind and soul all that is low and coarse . He must not exchange higher values for lower values . He must be: A truthful soul, a loving mind Full of affection for its kind, A helper of the human race, A soul of beauty and of grace; A spirit firm, erect and free, That never basely bends the knee. To exchange lower values for higher values one must develop all talents of mind and heart, however small or obscure they may be. By so doing, one unconsciously becomes a Lifter. Through the development of the higher faculties and sensibilities, the heart becomes humanized, and ere long it throbs in tender sympathy for the many heartaches and sorrows of the world. One then yearns

LIFTERS AND LEANERS. All with infinite longing to accomplish something that will alleviate the sufferings of humankind. What matters to the Lifter, the human passions and frailties of the children of men? he will see through it all, and understand the mistakes and errors growing out of human weaknesses. His sympathies are too broad and deep for unkindness or revenge. He realizes that life is a field where love, tenderness and civilization are growing amidst the tares of human failure, and, like a field of ripening grain, it gives promise of a golden harvest. Being a Lifter, he is on excellent terms with himself, because seeing a purpose in his living, he is true to himself. To him, ignorance and indolence are the tares of the field of life. He appreciates the fact that vice of every kind is the result of ignorance and weakness . From his heart of hearts the Lifter says : Time worketh, let me work, too; Time undoeth, 0 let me do; As busy as time my work I ply, Till I rest in the rest of eternity. Sin worketh, let me work, too; Sin undoeth, 0 let me do! As busy as sin my work I ply, Till I rest in the rest of eternity. Death worketh, let me work, too ! Death undoeth, 0 let me do; As busy as death my work I ply, Till I rest in the rest of eternity. Chicago, Illinois. HONESTY. On behalf of all our people, on behalf no less of the honest man of means than of the honest man who earns each day's livelihood by that day's sweat of his brow, it is necessary to insist upon honesty in business and politics alike, in all walks of life, in big things and in little things; upon just and fair dealing as between man and man. — President Theodore Roosevelt.