In the third chapter of the Book of Ecclesiastes occur some verses which have suggested the subject of this talk. They illustrate a certain balance or rhythm in nature and in life.

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven;

“A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

“A time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance.”

These words are used by the author, not so much to illustrate the rhythm of life as its monotony. He is not admiring the wonderful harmony which meets us in nature wherever we turn, so much as he is lamenting that there is nothing new in nature or in human life. The same things recur over and over again. The sun rises in the morning only to go down again in the evening, and the same process will be repeated through endless to-morrows. “The rivers all run into the sea, yet the sea is not full.” “That which hath been is what shall be.” Man is born, laughs and labors and weeps, and when his little life is ended, dies. This has been the history of countless multitudes and it will be the history of countless multitudes to come. There is nothing new under the sun.

Written as this book was at the darkest hour of Hebrew history, at a time of oppression and unrest, it is a sad book. The writer, a serious and earnest-minded man, strives nobly to discover light for himself and his race, but the world looks dark. Yet he is a brave and devout soul, and his book, so full of stimulus to high endeavor, ought to be read more widely than it is.

The words I have quoted may well start several different trains of thought. One of these I will suggest. There is nothing new under the sun, it is true; but we do not need anything new. The same old things we have always had are just what we need and shall always need; as springtime and harvest, day and night, work and rest. In the regular recurrence of these great and necessary things is found the rhythm of life in accordance with which we live and must live. May we learn something from nature’s ways that will help us to make our lives strong? I think so.

Have you ever thought of rhythm in nature? Here there is no monotony, but constant and beneficent change. Nothing, perhaps, is quite so blessed as the sunshine, yet eternal day would be almost as bad as eternal night. How our tired eyes would long for the calm and restful darkness! We love the springtime and the warm days and the green growing things; but how much more we love them because they follow cold and snow, leafless trees and bare earth!

Nowhere do we find the rhythm of nature better illustrated than in our bodies, these wonderful machines only partially under our control. Sleeping and waking, the contraction and extension of the muscles, the inhalation and exhalation of the breath are a few of the many examples. The most important of all the activities of the body, the systole and diastole of the heart, Nature keeps within her own control, and gives alternate work and rest to that vital organ, as if to say that when it comes to a matter of life and death, man cannot be trusted to his own keeping. Fortunate it is that this is so, for if it rested with us to decide when they should work and when rest, some eager, ambitious hearts would beat themselves to death ere life had well begun.

This polarity in nature is nowhere better stated than in Emerson’s essay on “Compensation”:—

“Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature; in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male and female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals; in the systole and diastole of the heart; in the undulations of fluids and of sounds; in the centrifugal and centripetal gravity; in electricity, galvanism and chemical affinity. If the south attracts, the north repels. To empty here, you must condense there.”

What can nature teach us of rhythm that will help us build our lives up into rounded completion? To begin with, we may learn something of the relations which should exist between us and our fellow men. The hermit who withdraws himself from the society of his fellows to live by himself, even though his purpose may be to commune with nature or with nature’s God, is not living in accordance with God’s laws. Man is a social being and is dependent upon intercourse with other human beings for his complete development. No one can cut himself off from his fellow men without damage.

On the other hand, too constant association with others works even greater harm. Wordsworth felt this when he wrote:—

We may learn from nature’s rhythm of life that we need both society and solitude. To adjust these to each other in proper degree is a problem for each of us. Are you one of the unfortunate persons who cannot be happy for a moment unless in the company of others? If so, you are preparing an unhappy future. If you find yourself so dull a companion, how can you expect others to find you interesting? You are not developing the resources without which no life can be permanently happy. Give yourself occasionally an opportunity to think your own thoughts, to question your own heart, and to get acquainted with yourself. You will be all the better a companion to others for it, and, moreover, you will be better company for yourself, for you will be led to develop inner resources. I once heard an Indian Buddhist priest tell of the custom in his country of requiring each child in a family to spend one hour a day quietly in a room by himself, “thinking good thoughts.” An hour a day so spent by some young people I know would be helpful in arousing to greater independence of mind and originality of thought.

Some of us, however, need to make serious effort to acquire the power of entering easily into cordial relations with others. If you have a tendency to hold aloof, if you are not at your ease with those with whom you happen to be thrown, and find it difficult to enter into friendly relations with them, set yourself earnestly to correct this defect. Such tendencies allowed to go unchecked are almost sure to result in many lonely hours.

Meditation without action makes dreamers. Constant activity without reflection means a loss of the intellectual grasp of things. Jesus, after a day of the most active ministry, usually sought the loneliness of the mountains and there found strength for the work of the following day. So, on one day in seven, our busy, hurrying tasks cease, and we have a day for rest and worship. Let us do all we can to guard Sunday against the dangers that threaten it and that would make it exactly like all other days. To say nothing of its religious uses, the rhythm of life demands that one day in the week be given to rest and to thoughts and interests far removed from those of our busy work-days. Some one has said that Sunday should be joyous (unlike the Sunday of the Puritans), different, that is, different from the other days of the week, and uplifting.

Not until we have passed out of early youth are we likely to comprehend the fact that life itself has tidal times. A mood of exaltation is likely to be followed by one of depression. Life waxes and wanes; it does not stand still. We learn to take ourselves at our best and to be patient with ourselves at our worst. When faith and courage are low, we come to know that soon they will return in all their strength. Doubt of self and one’s powers will be followed by self-confidence. Thus we learn never to make important decisions or to begin new and weighty enterprises at ebb tide. There is, in another sense from that which Shakespeare meant, “a tide in the affairs of men” which should be seized.

Work and play are both essential in the healthy life. We know the result of “all work and no play.” Even good, wholesome, congenial work makes us dull if it is never relieved and brightened by recreation. Many a faithful worker has broken down under the strain of unremitting toil, who might have doubled or trebled his years of usefulness if a little play could have been mingled with the work.

To one who plays all the time, that is, who has no work in life, play soon becomes stale and wearisome. After the period of childhood is passed, when play should be the main business of life, it seems to be an inexorable law of nature that those who will not work shall not play. Have you ever visited any of the great winter resorts of the South? If so you have noticed that they are filled largely with people who have no pursuit in life except that of having a good time. While the world’s work is being done by others, they lead a butterfly existence. What wonder that they wear a discontented look! Everywhere they seek for happiness and wonder why they fail to find the elusive creature. It would not be difficult to tell them. Those who refuse to do the world’s work are denied a share in its play, and thus does Nature assert the supremacy of her laws.

No people in the world have so good a time when they play as those who work hard—if they also know how to play well. Self-denial, waiting, and anticipation give a zest to pleasure that can come in no other way. In one of Charles Lamb’s essays he speaks of the keen delight which he and his sister took, during the days when toil was unceasing and income small, on the rare occasions when they could afford to go to the theater. The poorest seats amply satisfied their desires, and it seemed to them that no one in the house was so happy as they. “Could those good old one-shilling gallery days return, could you and I be once more struggling up those inconvenient staircases, pushed about and squeezed and elbowed by the poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers, I would be willing to bury more wealth than Croesus had to purchase it.”

The woman who gives herself up wholly to a society life never finds happiness in that life; but let her make something really worth while her main object, whether it be bringing up a family, writing books, or working in a settlement, and her social pleasures will then give her relaxation and delight. It is the student who works hard and who feels the glow of accomplishment who can put most zest into a game on the athletic field.

Our country probably has more workers than any other who do not take enough time to play. It is so easy for our earnest, energetic people to fall into this habit. Work is sweet and we think we cannot have too much of it. Sometimes, too, we get an exaggerated idea of our own importance. We think that if we stop work for a moment all the wheels of progress will stand still. Never did any people feel the intensity of life as we Americans of this generation do. We have heard the gospel of efficiency preached on every hand, but we have not often been told how to maintain a high level of efficiency for a long period. Those who are efficient, and at the same time willing, invariably have more put upon them than they can do. In addition to legitimate work, there is auxiliary work of various kinds. Committee meetings and other services for the general good consume for many of us a great deal of time. So we keep chasing duties and go to bed every night plagued by the host that we have left undone.

Yet, shall we regret that we live in an age of opportunity? If we are counted among the efficient, who are given a large share of work to do, shall we be sorry? On the contrary, let us remember that more to be pitied than any one else is the person who, because he has no work in life, is obliged to hunt for occupation.

The real trouble is that most of us do not know the secret of economizing our time and strength. Let us ask what the rhythm of life demands of us. No one is capable of incessant toil without serious damage. Our highest good demands that there shall be constant alternation of labor and rest, or work and play. Some forms of work are play because they involve different powers of mind and body from our regular work. Many a scholar has studied until his eyes were dimmed and his mind dulled only to find that he had himself defeated his own purpose. Many a business man has given himself no rest until increasing inefficiency compelled it. It is not the teacher who makes a practice of working late into the night, with never a moment for play, who makes the inspiring classroom instructor.

Some one has given this recipe for a happy life: “Work, play, study, laugh; have a job and a hobby.” Play should be regarded as a legitimate part of the business of life. Duty has been only half performed when happy recreation has been left out.

The wise student has, all through a hard term’s work, preserved the balance between work and play, society and solitude. Unless she has been particularly unfortunate she has come to the end of the term only healthily tired. By that I mean the kind of weariness from which recuperation is rapid and easy. She has not overdrawn her physical bank account. She has not run in debt to the future. Beware of any weariness of which that cannot be said.

The daily life of work and play for all of us ought to be so adjusted that each day’s strength is sufficient for each day’s needs. Wherever the conditions of work and play and of health are right, this is true. But school life, both for teachers and pupils, involves an unusual amount of wear and tear on the nervous system, and hence we should be more careful than others, industrial workers, for example, to see that this strain never becomes unduly severe. Few teachers or students could stand fifty weeks of school work in a year, an amount which in many occupations is accepted as a matter of course. That is the reason we have so many vacations. When vacation comes, then, let us realize its need, and its purpose; namely, to restore the balance of body and mind by allowing the beneficent restorative processes of Nature to do their work upon us; and let us coÖperate heartily with these forces. Some do not do this, but hinder Nature instead of helping her. Some go home for a three weeks’ vacation and spend the entire time in a whirl of social dissipation. Ask yourself whether that restores your powers so that you return to your work with mind and body at their best? We rest, not for the sake of resting, but that we may work better. Vacations are given to restore the balance of life, not to destroy it.

And some students carry all their school worries and responsibilities with them into vacation. They dream of their work by night and think of it by day. They count up all the lessons that must be learned and all the themes that must be written, as if there would not be a day in which to do each day’s work. “Take no thought [worry] for the things of the morrow, for the morrow will take thought for the things of itself.”

And yet, when the long summer vacation comes, I wonder if even a young student is justified in using it all for play. We older people, if we are doing a work in the world which we consider worth while, take an entire summer for play but rarely. The reason is that life is too short for all one wants to learn or to accomplish, and so each long vacation must see the fulfillment of some of the tasks which we have set for ourselves. For the student there is a middle ground between working at school tasks all summer and idling during the entire time. Remember that a change of occupation is one form of rest. If a portion of each bountiful summer vacation were spent in learning something quite worth while, yet different from the ordinary school tasks, work and play would each profit from the other.

Have you sometimes been disturbed because you did not feel just like beginning hard work at the close of a vacation? Do not let that trouble you. I have learned to distrust a vacation at the close of which I find myself wearing the harness too easily. We get the most out of a vacation by making it as different as possible from our regular work. The more different it has been, the more difficult it is to get the mind back into the usual channels.

When the process of “getting up steam” is over, and we settle down to steady work after a good vacation, the sensation is one of the most delightful I know. Here is an opportunity to begin life all over again, and by retrieving the mistakes of the past, to make the future worthier. As the weeks stretch out ahead of us, they loom up big with opportunity and privilege. Start home for your next vacation, then, with a resolution in your heart that you will so spend it that when it is over, this new outlook upon life and work shall be yours; for the chief purpose of a vacation is to restore the rhythm of life.