A Complete Attainment

What is full-orbed manhood?

What is ideal womanhood?

We are human beings at the highest possible of attainment in all that tends to make them strong and pure and beautiful?

Let us consider a man.

What is he?

What constitutes the best variety of genus homo?

The opinion will differ but let us get at the correct standard if we can.

Here is a man, who may be pronounced a splendid specimen of physical manhood.

He stands erect, is well proportioned, and is in the prime of health.

His frame is well-knit, well-developed, symmetrical, and graceful.

The bunches of muscles stand out upon his arm like miniature mountains, and his power of endurance is well-nigh limitless.

No other man dares to give him battle.

His admirers look at him and say, there is a man.

Here is another, whose specialty as a mental culture.

He is versed in the wisdom of schools.

He holds converse with old philosophers of Greece and Rome Of science,

he is the master, and for the work of art, he has a practiced and appreciative eye.

He as indeed climbed step by step to the very pinnacle of intellectual attainment, and multitude hang.

with rapt attention upon his wise eloquent words.

Many listen to such and one and say,

Now there is a man,

Here is yet another.

He has not only head to think, but a heart to feel.

He sympathizes with others in their distresses and rejoices with them in their joys.

To his ear, the word “home” is full of music,

And he is deaf to the enticing world of pleasure as she chants her sweetest songs to lure him from his duty there.

He thinks not of gain but justice.

He does not say will such and such project serves my purpose?

But, it’s right?

He is honest and brave.

Comes danger in its most appealing form, it shall not deter him.

The road may be rugged and mountain steep, but he will reach the summit.

The world may frown upon his plans, and men opposed most bitterly,

but what cares he?

My object is right e says and it shall be gained.

There is something majesty and noble about the character like this,

And we are not surprised that many unite in pronouncing him representative of the highest form of manliness.

But is there any standard yet nobler?

These ideals are great, no mistake about that,

but is there nothing more to incorporate into life and mold into character?

Let us go a step further.

Here is a man who possibly possesses all noble quality above the enumerated,

A fine body, a cultured intellect, and a full warm heart,

And he has yet more;

He has developed soul.

In him the finite as been brought into touch with the infinite.

He has heard the voice,

“My son, give me a thin heart” and have obeyed.

He stands among the redeemed.

Self and sin have been put under his feet.

The blood of Emmanuel has made him clean.

He uses the word as not abusing it while enjoying everything in it that is good.

This man represents God.

That is, he represents what God can do for a man when he has a fair chance.

His motives are high, his spirit is sweet, and his life is fragrant with the perfume of noble and unselfish deeds.

This man has the best kind of time.

He is as happy as lark.

He is as strong as a lion.

He is as gentle as a dove.

He is as attractive as a magnet.

He is as stable as the sun.

You can bank upon his character,

And draw fund for noble service from his bank,

This man does good not merely because it is popular or expedient to do so, but because this sort of activity suits his spirit;

it harmonizes with his transformed nature.

To him there no arbitrary rules no compulsory outside pressure.

Services privilege.

Helping others is joy.

This man takes no narrow views of life, or duty or responsibility.

The horizon of his vision goes beyond this life.

While he stays here on Earth, his character is having a well developed,

And the spiritual graces are reaching completion.

A halo of coming glory is already in his soul.

And beams forth upon his countenance.

He is a man after God’s own heart.

This is the highest type of man.

It is not insisted that the physical perfection and peerless mental endowment are always essential to the unfolding of the type, for many manly men of God have possessed neither of these things, but when the best physical, mental and moral endowment are thoroughly fused by the spiritual and actuated by the principles of the higher life, an ideal of truest and loftiest manhood stands forth.