CAllFOfife, v. ? g | 2 3 I)NIVER% ^ *"^ O c& n o IBRARYOc r| N^X O J. S C? %a3AIN Stack / Annex 5019066 THE EASIEST WAY. AN ADDRESS IN THE RODEF SHALOM TEMPLE PITTSBURGH, SUNDAY, MARCH 30, 1913. Scripture Reading: Exodus xiii, xiv. And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was nearer. (Exodus xiii., 17.) Among the interesting and unique specimens found in a public aquarium is the hermit-crab. It is an exceed- ingly curious aquatic object. In appearance it is one of the strangest specimens of marine life, a crustacean which insists upon living in the shell of a mollusk. This crab is quite capable of developing its own shell, yet, from birth, it refuses to do so. If you have ever* observed a hermit-crab you cannot fail to have noticed that it fails to obtain a natural home by the process employed by other crustaceans. Yet, strange as it may seem, this ab- normal creature manages to live, to find food, and to ob- tain shelter; but it does so at the expense of true crab- hood. It is a parasite. It obtains a house under false pretences. *By the Rev. J. Leonard Levy, Rabbi of the Congregation. Stenographically reported by Caroline Loewenthal. Parasite Life. If you have ever wandered through the woods and have enjoyed gazing upon some fine maple or apple tree, if you have permitted your eyes to wander thoughtfully over some forest giant, you will see a natural product which, after the storms and stress of the years, appeals to you as a type of beauty, strength and grandeur. But, en- twined around the tree may be found the dainty mistletoe. Charming as is this shrub, it has renounced its individuali- ty; for, instead of developing limbs of its own, it clings, with almost invisible fingers, to the virile tree, sucks nour- ishment from it, and reposes calmly and sweetly under its shadow. Here again, in the vegetable kingdom, we find a parallel illustration to that taken from the animate aquatic world. The mistletoe, like the hermit-crab, has refused to do its own work, has found the easiest way of living and, has, therefore, committed self-destruction as a fine specimen of vegetation. Animal Parasites. When we consider the animal kingdom, we find abundant illustrations of the same truth. I am sure that you, at once, recall individuals whom you have met, who have long since given up thinking, who are the toys and playthings of every word of tyrannical passion uttered by the lips of hired liars. You have observed long since that there are muscles of our bodies which are no longer used, whose power and vigor have disappeared, because of this disuse, or which have atrophied or become rudi- mentary because we no longer employ them. Primitive man could move his nose and ears like the animals to which he was related, and which are still near relations of many of the moderns. But as these muscles were no longer used to obtain food, shelter and clothing, nature took her revenge, caused them to atrophy, and denied man the privilege of retaining them. \ The Path of Least Resistance. Sometimes, when you go to the mountains, you may profit by visiting the head waters of a great river system. You will observe that the springs at the mountain tops, as they congregate in pools and take their downward course toward the river which is to flow into the never- ending ocean, take the path of least resistance. They always go the easiest way. Finding a rock, the waters refuse to surmount it; they circumvent it. Arrested by an obstacle, over or around which the waters cannot flow, they burrow their way under it. Nature hates straight paths and short cuts. She seems to wish to avoid all semblance of haste and every attempt at speed. Infinite in patience, consummate in the art of endurance, she at- tains her end with a minimum of effort but with a maxi- mum result. A calm and deliberate survey of her achievements will indicate that her method is the easiest way. The Easiest, Often the Hardest, Way. Let these few simple illustrations serve to indicate to you that sufficient warranty exists in animate and in- animate nature for men and women to seek for them- selves the easiest way of doing things ; yet if we properly and fully consider this easiest way which nature mani- fests we shall find that it may be interpreted from many angles of vision. My message to you this morning is that the easiest way is sometimes the hardest road, and that the shortest path is very frequently the longest route. When God brought Israel out of Egypt, let us be old-fashioned enough to use the language of Scripture, He did not take them by the way of the Philistines, al- though that was nearer, but He led them by means of a detour through the Arabian desert which consumed forty years, although they might have reached their destina- tion in a week or so. Whatever may be the method of inanimate nature it is apparent that God urges His children not to go by the easiest way, but that they rather go by that route which will most surely bring them to their Promised Land duly prepared and properly equipped for the enjoyment of its privileges. The Easiest is the Least Profitable Way. The thief takes the easiest way when he robs to gain wealth most quickly; and every man who, by usurious rates of interest, acquires money speedily, takes the easiest and the shortest way to wealth, a way, which, before he dies, he will yet discover was not, necessarily, the best way. The boy or girl attending school, to whom is assigned the duty of studying the classics in a foreign, living or dead, tongue, may, perhaps, learn the lesson most speedily with the aid of a translation, and it may be that only the fewest do not resort to this method of getting their lessons in the easiest way. I am quite sun-. after many years of experience as a teacher, that the easiest way proves the hardest way in the long run ; that that child who should know something of Latin, or Greek, or some modern tongue, becomes handicapped in later life when an intimate knowledge of the classic or modern language may be a determining factor in obtaining the long-sought prize of life; for, such a one will usually have to make way for the student, who was honest and faithful in the performance of duty while attending school. The child in the home likes to have things don-- in the easiest way, and parents frequently indulge their children by permitting them to avoid everything wlii -h savors of effort. This is the manner in which the de- pendent child is manufactured, and thus is created an environment out of which the defective child grows. The Way of the Failure. Daily we see the wrecks along the shores of liic's stream. Daily we observe the flotsam and jetsam on the- flowing river of life. Daily we see the derelicts danger- ously obstructing the channels of progress. Daily \v see the scum and froth borne without resistance ai-),:-- the currents of time to end in the idle fury of usi-l (88- ness on the vacuous shores of failure. Daily the ship- wrecks of high hopes affright our vision. Daily the promising life ends in defeat, the brilliant light is ex- tinguished, the sun sets above the hori/mi. Nothing is more common than to find the bright and hopeful lad set aside l\v the discriminating hand of unbribable nature. Sad as it is to contemplate, it is. nevertheless, true fiat the roseate morn of life is often succeeded by the lowering afternoon and stormy sunset. "The easiest way" has, all to often, been the damning motto. The path of least resistance has been the route pursued, and in that path, all too often, destruction has been found. Ease, comfort, facility, convenience, luxury, pleasure, self-in- dulgence, self-gratification, these are the poisoned vines which have ever grown on that road whose ways are the ways of destruction and whose paths lead to death. Our Duty to Struggle. We have been born to fight. We are created to struggle. We are formed to enter upon a combat in life. He who imagines that the world is aught but a football field will, before he takes his long farewell in the fullness of time, discover that he has been playing the game of life under a misapprehension of the important rules of the fray. We need some clear guiding principle by which to live. No sane man enters upon a business undertaking without knowing something of what he hopes to achieve by it. No man, endowed with an average amount of com- mon sense, starts upon an enterprise without calculating where it will land him. In spite of the fact that so many of us possess a certain degree of assurance and self-as- sertiveness, it is, nevertheless, sure that each of us who possesses the slightest amount of conservatism does some- times ponder long enough to ask whither we are tending, whither the road will lead. We Need Principles. If we wish to make a real success of life we need some principle or example by w r hich to guide ourselves. Animals need no such motifs. Beasts need no Decalogue. Brutes require no sign-posts, on which moral precepts are engraven ; human beings do. When we notice how often so many flounder between high purpose and base aims, we ought sometimes pause to consider what life may mean to us. Ought it mean parasitism and tin- easiest way, or should it mean mastery and conquest? Are we to make of ourselves human mistletoes and her- mit-crabs, or are we to be warriors in a stout fight, the issue of which the centuries yet unborn are to know? The Way of the Parasite. Is it not sadly true that in spite of the warnings inscribed on the pages of history, in spite of the ad\ ! which the weed-covered ruins of once promising lives offer us, all too many seek the easiest way of parasitism? Man's supreme qualifications are mental, moral, spiritual. These are never developed by pursuing the dalliam-.- path of the easiest way. In an age like the present when wealth has been accumulated all too rapidly for human good, when, because of the sudden accession of wealth, there exists a shameful confusion of ideas on moral issues, many are tempted to seek the parasitic ease of luxury instead of developing a noble ideal. Because we lack ennobling hopes and visions to guide us, we select certain individuals as types of perfection and accept their opinions. The woman buys her fashion paper, which repre- sents to her the authority for her appearance; and though it is said that the demi-monde of Paris issues the fiats of fashion, it is strange how often superior-minded and pure women allow themselves to be clothed in the glaring attire of the courtesan. The man chooses some individual in the community, and seeks to pattern after him. Some imagine that the man with high financial rating is the desirable model. Such a one has the right to sign a check with a long row of zeros after the initial figure; or he owns a very large house; or he has a certain number of automobiles. And many of us select such an individual, in this age of confused morality, and set him on a pedestal, and bow down before him. So few of us have sane ideas in this particular, for fashion and money, pleasant leaders as they may seem, are, in reality, the worst of all possible task-masters. Their devotees are never happy, seldom useful, and gen- erally engrossed in bestial selfishness. Their worshippers are among .the kings and queens of the undesirables. Their servants are bound and tied, hand and foot, to the idols of vanity and greed. They encumber the earth with their odious presence and shame their Maker by their hateful indulgences. Of course there are the hon- orable exceptions, but the slaves of fashion and money are the weeds, not the fiowers, of life 's fertile fields. The Stigma of Differing. If it were only possible for us to do our own think- ing; if it were only possible to find men and women who are bent upon developing their own individuality, nine- tenths of the complaints we hear about modern conditions would soon be remedied. But so many of us wish to go the 8 easiest way that, the individual who dares to invite us to alter the prevailing methods is usually stigmatized as an awful bore or denounced as a veritable crank. I have scm my fine society lady take her lorgnette and hold it disdain- fully as, with contemptuous sneer she ga/ed, astonished, at the man or woman who has dared to ask her to think. "Who am I," says she, ' v t!uit you have the audacity to I Laee in on me the burden of thinking.' I can buy every- thing except thinking, and that I do not desire. I can have machines to do my work. I can have amanuenses to w r rite my letters. I can even have fine preachers de- liver the sermons I desire to hear." Aye, and because there are so many of these fine ladies who attend churches today, we find so many ladylike males in the pulpits today ; for there are very few men who really assume the task of leading a congregation, and who refuse to step down to the level of the banality, the stupidity, the ignor- ance, of the average member of the average congregation. Let Us Alone! Most of us do not care to be disturbed. We are like the Israelites who saw the pursuing hosts of Pharaoh closing the gap between them and the fleeing slaves. An hour before the enfranchised hosts had, no doubt, been singing paeans of glory to Moses, their deliverer. An hour before they had, probably, been chanting hymns of praise to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But now the enemy appears. An obstacle falls athwart their path. A difficulty arises in their way. They need to think and act quickly. But, alas, they are still slaves in spirit, though free in body. They revert to the easiest way and abuse their great redeemer. "Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians. For it had been bet- ter for us to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness." We desire peace of mind. We demand to continue serenely on our own way. We do not care to do our own thinking. It is trouble enough for us to rise each morn- ing, to eat, to go down to our business and work, as other animals who eat and work; and, then, when we come home in the evening, we want to have some pleasure. I had been told scores of times, by men who are making a success of their business, that they would like to read at night, but their eyes are so tired. Yes, but their eyes never tire looking at playing-cards. Their eyes never tire looking at the filmy draperies of the captivating terpsichorean artistes in the theatres. Their eyes never tire as they gaze upon the ever-moving lips of the gossip and scandal-monger. Sad, is it not, that, only when they are expected to read a good book, their eyes get so tired ! Such persons remind me of the savage whom Lord Ave- bury mentions in one of'his books. A missionary came to the savage and presented certain ideas for his consid- eration. The more eloquent waxed the speaker the sounder became the sleep of the audience. When, exas- perated, the missionary aroused the savage, the latter petulantly said, "Don't bother me with your ideas; ideas make me sleepy. ' ' So many who succeed financially, fail intellectually, morally and spiritually, because they re- fuse to search out an idea for themselves. 10 Man's, Not God's, Method. The "easiest way" is the philosophy of the prostitute, the motto of every courtesan. The easirst way is* the philosophy of every fallen man and woman. Not so is God's method; not so is the philosophy of these men and women who form the salt of the earth, who are the chosen of mankind, the men and women who are beloved of God, in whom His heart delighteth. A short time ago, when so many men were accused of graft and wrong-doing in this city, when one man stood out in bold relief and as- sumed the burden of helping us to observe the old morali- ties, I remember how men said, it is the easiest way to submit. "These sins have always existed," they said. "Grafters and bribers have always found a place in civic ,life. They can't be eradicated." They shrugged their shoulders, spent their vituperation on the brave citizen who manfully did his duty and solaced themselves with the shameful philosophy, "the easiest way out is submis- sion." Not so argued my friend. He showed Pittsburgh the brighter vision of what she might be, and that to which Pittsburgh is now awakening and that to which she is aspiring she owes, in no small degree, to one man who selected the hardest way when nearly everyone counselled that the easiest way should be pursued. His is the dis- tinction today of having rendered an invaluable service, not only by his sacrifices but also by his example. He did his own thinking, and whenever Pittsburghers will devote a little time to think for themselves, whenever they cease to seek for themselves the easiest way, we shall 11 build t ,e city l-"Hut'ful whose name is right ousnesx and concerning which men will sy "The Lord is then-." There is not a citizen of Pittsburgh hut owes this reformer an unpayable debt, and often, in my heart of hearts, have I thanked God that, this man, who showed Pittsburgh her duty, was a Jew, a member of our congregation, and one whom I treasure as my loyal and devoted friend. The Longest, Often the Shortest, Way. It is so easy to go the shortest way immediately to gain that which we desire. Put when God brought Israel out of Egypt, he led the people not 'by the Avay of the Philistines, although that was nearer: lie led them to their Promised Land, even though we regard this oulv as a metaphor, by the longest way, proving that t 1 at was, in the ultimate, the shortest route. Life, T sav to you, is not to mean parasitism : it must mean struggle for mastery: it must mean fght: it must mean com':at. This is the peculiar Jewish view of tilings: and it. is strange, perhaps, that we, who are but a handful of peo- ple in the midst of a great world, should be those who indicate to the whole world that man's mission on earth is to struggle, to fight, against the contending angels, to wrestle with opposing forces to convert them into powers which bless. Resist Evil! After a patient and careful study of the themes of the two religions which engage our attention, Judaism and the daughter faith Christianity, I am led to con- clude that the younger faith laid its insistence upon non- 12 resistence, upon the peace and calm of other-worldli:: upon the traiiquility resulting from renunciation ;m