124 "^^^ COMING OF MAN 



different appearance, meaning, value and interest for different 

 men and women, and for the same man at two o'clock of a 

 restless night and an hour after breakfast the next morning. 

 Finally, the great thing is to see men, women, and especially 

 boys and girls, not only as they are but as they may become. 

 Without this vision men and people perish. 



We hear much, and cannot think too much, of the psychology 

 of interest.^ Interest is focussed and absorbed attention; 

 and focussed attention means will, purpose, and action along 

 the line of the absorbing, controlling interest. The object of 

 interest, has great value in our eyes, though others may not 

 share our estimate. Most of us have some hazy, more or 

 less distorted sense of values. Few of us have any fixed in- 

 telligent scale by which we measure values of different degrees 

 and especially of different quality and kind. That which is of 

 highest value and therefore of most intense interest and closest 

 attention becomes the end of life. 



The Westminster Catechism took it for granted that man 

 has a chief end. This view is now a back-number, though we 

 may return to it. Our denial or forgetfulness of it has dis- 

 advantages. The architecture of our life, if we have any, is 

 of the Queen Anne style, mostly additions and departures; 

 and the same defect mars our minor efforts. To change our 

 illustration, our course even in fairest weather is that of a 

 boat carrying much sail, beating against the wind. The zig- 

 zag seems to be our line of beauty, as '' jazz " is our ideal of 

 melody. 



This sense of values was a characteristic of the Hebrew and 

 Greek mind. The whole '' wisdom literature " is a study of 

 values. It underlies all the teaching of the Master. His 

 great question is: " What shall it profit a man? " The hero 

 of his most striking parables is the man who knows a really 

 good thing when he discovers it, a unique pearl, a hidden 

 treasure. He was a dealer in futures and loved such. The 

 same is true of the wisdom of Greek philosophy, art and litera- 

 ture, with its marvellous clearness, wholeness and sanity of 



^ id2. 114. 188. 



