THE LAW OF PROPORTION
‘Is not the life more than meat?’
I. A law of proportion.—It is necessary that there should be the distinction of greater and less in the business of life. It is in this men differ most perhaps—the faculty of discriminating and of bending the force of their nature towards the major concerns. Not that there is any absolute, fixed proportion amongst human interests themselves. Yet are there certain acknowledged relations and proportions, as shown by the text. Yet this distinction is instinctive or common-sense rather than absolute.
II. Its bearing upon conduct.—It is ‘ the greater care for that which is more important and valuable.’ Not ‘neglect of ourselves,’ neglect of everything but the chief thing, but ‘let your care be properly distributed,’ or rather ‘seek the chief good in all things.’
(a) This restatement of the Law is provoked by the actual behaviour of men. No doubt there was coxcombry and finery in those days as in this. But even more pitiful, because more inveterate and invulnerable, was and is the anxiety to ‘get rich.’
(b) No real human interest, however trifling, is to be neglected.
(c) That which has the greatest claim upon human interest is here only suggested. The first steps in the calculation are stated; the hearer can follow out the process to the end for himself. If raiment be but secondary to the body it covers, what can the body itself be, compared with the spirit of which it, in turn, is but the raiment? What if our care for living be neglect of life?
—The Rev. St. John A. Frere.