Farrar on Death & Self-Importance

The world hardly attaches any significance to any life except those of its heroes and benefactors, its mighty intellects, or its splendid conquerors. But these are, and must ever be, the few. One raindrop of myriads falling on moor or desert or mountain—one snowflake out of myriads melting into the immeasurable sea—is, and must be, for most men the symbol of their ordinary lives. They die, and barely have they died, when they are forgotten; a few years pass, and the creeping lichens eat away the letters of their names upon the churchyard stone; but even if those crumbling letters were still decipherable, they would recall no memory to those who stand upon their graves. Even common and ordinary men are very apt to think themselves of much importance; but, on the contrary, not even the greatest man is in any degree necessary, and after a very short space of time—

"His place, in all the pomp that fills
The circuit of the summer hills,
Is that his grave is green."

A relative insignificance, then, is, and must be, the destined lot of the immense majority, and many a man might hence be led to think, that since he fills so small a space—since, for the vast masses of mankind, he is of as little importance as the ephemerid which buzzes out its little hour in the summer noon—there is nothing better than to eat, and drink, and die. But Christ came to convince us that a relative insignificance may be an absolute importance. He came to teach that continual excitement, prominent action, distinguished services, brilliant success, are no essential elements of true and noble life, and that myriads of the beloved of God are to he found among the insignificant and the obscure. "Si vis divinus esse, late ut Deus," is the encouraging, consoling, ennobling lesson of those voiceless years. The calmest and most unknown lot is often the happiest, and we may safely infer that these years in the home and trade of the carpenter of Nazareth were happy years in our Saviour's life.

Frederic W. Farrar, The Life of Christ, Chapter VII, pages 88-89.