{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_22482/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_22482","id":"gutenberg_22482","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22482","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Christian life","Free Church of England -- Sermons","Sermons, English","Young men"],"text":"E-text prepared by Al Haines\n\n\n\nMEN IN THE MAKING\n\nby\n\nAMBROSE SHEPHERD, D.D.\n\nAuthor of\n\"The Gospel and Social Questions,\" Etc.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHodder and Stoughton\nLondon\nMCMIX\n\n\n\n\nI INSCRIBE THIS BOOK\n\n\nTO\n\nTWO VALUED FRIENDS\n\nJOHN GLAISTER, M.D.\n\nPROFESSOR OF FORENSIC MEDICINE\n\nUNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW\n\n\nAND\n\nCHARLES SCARTH, ESQ., J.P.\n\nOF MORLEY, YORKS.\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nThe addresses which make up this book are printed, almost exactly, as\nthey were spoken from my pulpit in Glasgow.  I have yielded to repeated\nrequests that I would put them in a more permanent form than memory, or\nnotes, can supply.  There is always room for a book to young men; whether\nor not the book I now offer them is worth its room, is a matter about\nwhich I, possibly, am not the best judge.  This I can say: There was a\ntime in my life when I should have been helped, had I met through the\nspoken word, or printed page, some of the things I have tried to say as\nfaithfully as I know how to say them, within the limits of taste and\ndiscretion.  Whatever these addresses lack in thought, and in the\nhandling of the subjects discussed, I have done my best to make them\nreadable.  In the case of the average young man of to-day, if a book does\nnot interest him in the matter of style, any other merits it may possess\nwill have a weakened chance of making themselves felt.  If I have failed\nto meet this one condition of securing his attention--provided he give me\na fair trial--I shall be disappointed and, to be candid, surprised.\nShould, however, his interest be tolerably well sustained through the\nethical part of these addresses, say to the end of the chapter on \"The\nRoyal Law,\" I shall, perhaps, have no reason to complain.  At the same\ntime I would advise him to persevere with the rest, even at the cost of\nsome effort.\n\nThere are one or two things which should be said by way of introduction\nto these addresses.  When the manuscript was out of my hands and in those\nof the printer, I was informed that Archdeacon Wilberforce had, in one of\nhis books, a sermon on much the same lines that are found in my chapter\nentitled \"A Devil's Trinity.\"   I have only to say that, so far as I\nknow, I have never seen a line from the pen of Archdeacon Wilberforce.\nAnd in this connection I should like to quote a sentence or two from the\nPreface to my book on _The Gospel and Social Questions_.  I remark there\nthat, fortunately or otherwise for me, I have a tenacious memory which\nretains for long, not only a thought which arrests me, but the form in\nwhich it is expressed.  Where I have made use of a quotation, or tried to\nparaphrase something I have read--and this applies to the following\naddresses--I have indicated the circumstances in the usual way.\n\nThe concluding chapter of this series is, in the main, a transcript of my\nbooklet on _The Responsibility of God_, published by Oliphant, Anderson\nand Ferrier, of Edinburgh.  I have to thank these gentlemen, and I do so\nheartily, for their permission to make this further use of it.\nConsiderable changes are made in the reproduction; but I think this\nadmission is due to any buyers the book may secure.  I have also to\nmention my great indebtedness to Rev. J. F. Shepherd, M.A., of\nManchester, for his help with the proofs, and for some valuable\nsuggestions as to emendations of expression.\n\nAMBROSE SHEPHERD.\n\n6, Thornville Terrace,\n  Glasgow.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nI\n\nYOUTH AND AFTER\n\n\nII\n\nYOUTH'S STRATEGIC PLACES\n\n\nIII\n\nTHE WORSHIP OF LUCK\n\n\nIV\n\nA DEVIL'S TRINITY\n\n\nV\n\nTEMPTATION AND RESPONSIBILITY\n\n\nVI\n\nSELF-RESPECT AND COMPANIONSHIPS\n\n\nVII\n\nTHE ROYAL LAW\n\n\nVIII\n\n'HE WAS DESPISED AND REJECTED'\n\n\nIX\n\n'WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED?'\n\n\nX\n\nDOES GOD HAVE FAIR-PLAY?\n\n\n\n\nYOUTH AND AFTER\n\n\n\"And Terah died in Haran.\"--Gen. xi. 32.\n\n\nYOUTH AND AFTER\n\n\"And Terah died in Haran.\"  This bit of prosaic information becomes\nsuggestive by the emphasis of one word: \"And Terah _died_ in Haran.\"\nThis was not his birthplace, but here he ended his days, and that for a\nreason over which it is worth our while to pause.  \"And Terah died in\nHaran.\"  What of that?  All people have died somewhere, who have lived\nand are dead.\n\nWhen we first meet this man, he was a citizen of no mean city.  Ur of\nthe Chaldees was a great and representative centre in its day.  Rising\nsheer from the midst of it, we are told, was an immense tower, or\nobservatory, from the height of which men, reputed wise, watched the\nmovements of the heavenly bodies; and especially the moon, for the moon\nwas worshipped in Ur of the Chaldees as the great tutelary deity of\nthis people.  Here it was that Terah lived, at this time an old man,\nand \"to trade,\" as the Scotch people would say, a maker of images.  His\ncraft was in things which symbolized some form of this lunar worship,\nand which people bought to put in their houses.\n\nTerah had a son called Abram, who, as he came to years of thought, did\nnot fall in very readily with this worship of the moon.  He appears to\nhave become very early in life one of an order of doubters to whom the\nworld owes much; to have suspected, at least, that the moon was not, as\nthe priests taught, a cause in itself, but the effect of a cause.  What\nwas that cause?  What was the fashioning hand behind the effect?  In\nother words, he had come upon the doubt which explains much of the\nfaith and achievement of the reformers and path-finders of the world.\nNeither doubt nor belief has any virtue in itself; we must determine\nthe moral quality by its expression in action.  Had Abram merely begun\nand ended with his doubts about the moon, he would have died and been\nas soon forgotten as any other commonplace sceptic before or since his\nday.  The trouble is not that men doubt, but that they are often\ncontent to do nothing else.  It may be better that they should believe\nwrong things, than that they should cease to believe in anything.\n\nAbram began, we imagine, to talk to his father about his misgivings,\nand notwithstanding the fact that Terah's trade was dependent on the\npopular religion, he seems to have yielded with something like\nenthusiasm to the greater personality of his son.  Eventually they\ndetermined to leave Ur of the Chaldees and go, no matter how far, until\nthey came to some place where they could worship in the new light which\nhad come to them, or, as we should say, according to conscience.\n\nIt was a formidable undertaking, for they knew not their\ndestination--if even, indeed, they knew their direction.  Some one--I\nforget who--has traced their route through Larsa, where men worshipped\nthe sun; through Erech, where they worshipped the planet Venus--the\nbright evening star; through Nipur, where they bowed the knee to Baal;\nthrough Borsippa, where they worshipped the planet Jupiter; and on and\non until they came to Haran, where the people worshipped--the moon!  It\nwas not until they came to Haran, that they touched, as it were, their\nfirst footprints, and found the old religion.\n\nAnd this was the finish for the poor old father Terah.  Whatever the\nmotives with which he had set out on this pilgrimage, whether of\nconviction more or less, or parental affection entirely, he was now\nweary.  There had been little temptation to pause before on the score\nof a people's worship.  That of the sun, of Venus, of Baal, of Jupiter,\nprobably did not arouse in him even a passing interest.  But when, worn\nout in body and mind, he suddenly came upon the old religion, his\njourneyings after another faith and form of worship were at an end.\nThis powerful appeal to his past, with its resurrection of old\nmemories, old prejudices, and the pathos of old associations, was too\nmuch for the old man.  No second call came to him; or if it did, he had\nneither heart nor ear for it.  It was Abram the younger man who\nwithstood the temptations of Haran and with the faithful went on to a\nland they knew not of.  It was the younger who had the staying power\nwhich, when acquired early, goes through life, and rejoins it in\neternity sure as ever it came to it in time.  Terah travelled some six\nhundred miles--a big journey in those days--to get away from the\nworship of the moon, and in the worship of the moon he ended his years.\nHis evening and his morning were the same day: \"And Terah died in\nHaran.\"\n\nYou see the thought underlying this bit of prosaic information.  It\nsimply means that the years close down the possibilities of a certain\nkind of moral exodus.  It is in the days of your youth that you must\nmake the \"legs of iron,\" as Emerson calls them, for the journey which\nlies before you.  If you wait until you get into years before you find\nright principles, and form good resolutions--well, even then it is\nbetter to make some start in the right direction.  But why pile up the\nodds, that start you never will; or that you will not go far if you do?\nThe enthusiasms of old men are as rare as they are short-lived, unless\nthey are evolved out of earlier and worthy days.\n\nThere may be exceptions.  If there are, I have never known one.  The\nrule is practically a law, that old men, who are nothing more than old\nmen, cannot make mighty resolves and carry them through.  They may, for\nmany reasons, start out from Ur of the Chaldees; but it is not often\nthey get past Haran, if, indeed, they ever get so far.  More likely\nwill it end in the old defeat: \"I will return into the house whence I\ncame out,\" which is much the same, or, in some cases, is even worse,\nthan if they had never left it.  The old man Terah would get an\ninteresting tour; although very probably people would hear from him\nmore about it at the end than he had ever seen on the way.  He would be\na much-travelled man for those days, but he never found the new\nreligion.  It was the old religion that re-found him.\n\nUnderstand me: I am far from saying that old age necessarily blocks the\nway to great attempts, or to conspicuous success in them.  All history\nwould cry out against such a statement.  There is an old age we delight\nto honour, and which reverses the ordinary attitude to it in the\ngeneral world.  Instead of considering it a legitimate matter for lying\nabout, and polite not to be aware of its presence, we make our boast in\nthe virility which, in some men, accompanies their years until they\nquite shade out in a mellow maze of glory.\n\nTake some of our statesmen.  Were not the mighty men of the great\nnineteenth century aged men, if we count age only by shadows on the\ndial?  At a time of life when most men are honoured with a natural\nright to senility, Mr. Gladstone was girding on his armour for one of\nthe biggest conflicts ever waged in the arena of our Parliament.  And\nyears after, as the struggle still raged--to see him, almost blind and\ndeaf, looking like so much vitalized parchment rather than a figure of\nflesh and blood, as night after night he stood up to the agility of a\nChamberlain, and the subtlety of a Balfour--each perfected to a fine\nart--surely never gamer, grander sight ever challenged the imagination\nof poet, patriot, or historian.  It was a testimony to all time of what\ncan come out of the brain and soul of a man, when the body that houses\nthem is written and re-written over with the hieroglyphics of age.  It\nwas a fitting termination to what may be, and ought to be, the great\nand sacred processes of life.\n\nBut Mr. Gladstone was great at the end, because all the way had been a\npreparation for it.  This is the secret, if secret it be, which young\nmen cannot know and master too soon.  To end well, you must begin well;\nand you must fill in well the distance between the one and the other.\nStudy carefully the triumph of old age in statesmanship, in science,\nand in affairs, and you will have to connect them with years of stern\ndiscipline and strenuous endeavour.  In no case will you find strength\nwhere there has been no strain, or palm where there has been no dust.\nThere are levels on which the truth, that \"we reap what we sow,\" admits\nof no qualification.  Omnipotence itself cannot make it possible for us\nto gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles.  To attempt after a\ngiven age, and on the strength of a chance impulse, to leave Ur of the\nChaldees with its old habits and associations, its old moral settings,\nwill carry us far as the impulse lasts, but that in all probability\nwill be only as far as Haran.  And as Terah died at Haran, so shall we.\nIt will be from moon to moon.  Youth is the time to determine whether\nold age shall be a beautiful consummation, or a bitter regret.  The\nthreshold of manhood is the place to form resolutions that will have\nsome chance of being kept, to cultivate the thoughts you would have\nultimately become things.  The serious danger is that, with the\nimpression of a long future before you, you should merely drift in the\npresent, and forget how inextricably the texture of to-day will be\nwoven into the fabric of to-morrow.\n\nI am quite aware that what I have so far said is more likely to hinder\nthan help the purpose I have in saying it.  You will not question that\na clear nexus runs through our years, but my teaching about it, you\ntell me, is needlessly severe.  If as the beginning is, so must the end\nbe, what are we to say of a man's will?  What are we to say about the\npower and working of divine grace?  While there is life, does there\never come a time when it is no longer true to say that out of it can\npass the old, or into it can come the new?\n\nSurely to affirm that such a time can be is to give the lie to religion\nand experience.  Many a young man is having what is called his \"fling,\"\nwho is yet quite sure in his own mind that when the time comes to\naccept the more serious responsibilities of life, he will change his\nhabits and turn to ways that befit the new occasion.  So we are told.\nAnd is it not true?  Have we not known young men cover a considerable\nspace of life with questionable, and even more than questionable\ncourses, and yet settle down into exemplary domestic men and admirable\ncitizens?\n\nYes, we have known them, and, whatever influences have brought about\nthe change, let us be thankful for it.  But what proportion do they\nbear to the legions who, once in Ur of the Chaldees, have neither\nthought nor desire for a better country?  While, again, they may leave\nit from anything but worthy motives.  Men may be compelled to change\ntheir habits without changing their natures.  It is really to multiply\nwords to no profit to debate the question.  Your instinct tells you\nthat it would be wickedness to encourage you to take your \"fling\" in Ur\nof the Chaldees on the risk that you can get away from it when prudence\nspeaks the word.  Settle it, then, as true for you, that out of to-day\nwalks a to-morrow; and that what you shall do with to-morrow is\npractically determined by what you are doing to-day.\n\nThis counsel, or admonition, cannot be over-emphasized.  I assume that\nI am talking to young men who do not intend to make a failure of life;\nthen, I tell you again, that you must seize the one great chance you\nhave, to make it a success.\n\nPermit me now to apply very briefly what has been so far advanced,\nfirst, to your pleasures; and, secondly, to something more important to\nyou than old age, and that is--middle life.\n\nTo everything, says the Preacher, there is a time and a season, and it\nmust be that youth is the time for amusements and pleasures, which are\nnot so much the privileges of youth as native to it.  We are told that\nDarwin in his old age expressed regret that he had deprived himself of\nso many of the pleasures and resources of life by his concentration\nupon that study, the results of which have made his name so justly\nfamous.  He gave to get; but he lived to doubt his own right to pay the\nprice.  And no young man should give place, no not for a moment, to a\ndoctrine of work which excludes his right to the joys and abandon of\nhis years.  There is danger, and very real danger, lest we should take\nfor granted what the \"Grad-grinds\" tell us, that the only thing which\nmatters is that we do work, and are not idle.  Work for its own sake is\nnot enough.  It may turn men into machines--all clatter and monotony;\nor it may make them fussy nuisances.  \"A soulless activity,\" says Canon\nAinger, \"may save a man from vagrancy only by turning him into a thing;\nor it may keep him from idleness by making him an egotist.\"  There is\nthe man who, to use the common phrase, \"sticks at it\" with scarcely a\ncompeting thought or interest.  He scorns ease, and lives laborious\ndays.  For what?  I once heard it said, and I believe it was true, of a\nprosperous Yorkshireman, that the real pleasure he had in his money,\nfor which he had toiled hard, was in a kind of mental calculation as to\nhow many of his neighbours he could buy up.\n\n\"I do all things that I may honour the Father,\" said Jesus: and work\nwhich is not under this impulse, has in it no element of permanent\nsatisfaction.  In some way every work has to be brought into a\nconscious relation to God, or we only swell the crowd either of\nself-seekers, or of the men whose toil leaves no such impression upon\ntheir character as gives sign or evidence of a sane or worthy aim and\nend.\n\nTo give to work its essential dignity, and preserve it from mechanical\nroutine we must bring motive into it--high and worthy purpose.  There\nis no virtue necessarily in being always at work, but there is\ntremendous power in being able to work when we do work.  Do not\ndiscount the old advice because it is commonplace: \"work when you work,\nand play when you play.\"  Master the distinction there is between\nhaving what is called your \"fling,\" and having your really \"good time.\"\nGet all the rational pleasure you can out of your young days.  Let your\nreligion be no dog Cerberus, snarling at the heels of innocent\nenjoyment.  But never lose sight of the fact that unless you have a\ndefinite and worthy purpose, to attain which you keep your good time\nsubordinate, that good time will have the same relation to genuine\npleasure that the throbbings of an ulcer have to the healthy action of\nthe heart.  And a very plain word is needed here.  Our trouble to-day\nis not that young people will have their pleasures and amusements; it\nis that so many of them will have nothing else.  One who knows his day\nhas told us, that were it not for the sporting intelligence in the\nevening paper, not a few of our young men would forget how to read.  It\nis a common experience to meet young men who have been decently\neducated, as things go, and yet they are ignorant as babies about the\nsocial and political questions which so vitally affect the welfare of\nthe State.  Decently educated, I say, as things go.  But how far is\nthat?  \"I have five clerks in my office,\" said a Bradford merchant\nlately, \"who probably could tell me all I want to know and more, about\na horse race, a cricket, or a football match; and not one of them could\ntranslate for me a foreign business letter.  This is one principal\nreason,\" he added, \"why Bradford is overrun with Germans, and why the\nGermans are getting hold of so much of our trade.\"  On what is called\nthe practical side of life, the first duty of a young man is to be\nefficient in whatever honest thing he is doing to earn his bread; and\nat the same time be preparing himself for whatever surprise or\nopportunity the future may have in store for him.  A few hours in the\nweek given seriously to the latter, will leave an ample margin of time\nfor recreation and amusement; and who knows what he may need, until the\nneed is there to test what he knows?  To be great on sport, and a\n\"stick\" at one's business; to be an authority on amusements, and an\nignoramus about almost everything else that is anything, is the\nsurrender of manhood, and that in a day which has no need comparable\nwith its need of capable men.\n\nAnd such surrender has consequences that lie nearer than those which\nmake themselves manifest in old age.  Your next step is into middle\nlife; and it is here where the question is finally decided whether it\nis, or is not, well for us that we are here at all.  If a man has put\nlittle more than the rubbish of a selfish existence into his years he\nwill, by the time he is old in them, be the victim of a callous\ninsensibility which will carry him over into the stage beyond our human\nken.  An unworthy old age rarely feels much moral suffering; that but\nwaits its awakening in the fires which shall try every man's work of\nwhat sort it is.\n\nBut when a man begins to sight the middle years, he learns to know\nhimself as never before or after.  This is the stage where increase of\nknowledge often means increase of sorrow.  It is, in truth, the sorrow\nof finding out our limitations which, on their first acquaintance,\noften seem more appalling than they actually are.  While youth may be\nsaved by hope, by what is to be, middle life is often lost in the drab\nreality of what is.  Every youth, who is not as indifferent to his\npossibilities as though he were nothing more than a lump of flesh, is\nabout to become a numeral in the world.  The tragedy enters when he\nknows himself to be what in a sense he must remain--a cipher, merely\ngiving value to the men who do represent the numerals.  When the youth,\nwho used to talk about having the \"ball at his feet,\" seems to have\nbecome very much the ball itself, to be kicked hither and thither as\ncircumstances may determine, what then?  Will he show that kicked he\nmay be, but ball he is not?  That circumstances may use him, but they\nshall not make him?  The answer to this question will very much depend\nupon the stuff he put into his years, while as yet he knew not his\nlimitations.\n\nAnd even where middle life has won success in the things men covet, and\nfor which they strive, it may be the success that is just deadly in its\nreaction of monotony.  How often do we hear it said of a prosperous\nman, who in middle years is giving place to unworthy habits, or to\nill-humour and chronic depression: \"Would he had something to take him\nout of himself; some interest in anything, if it were but a harmless\nhobby.\"  Think of a man being reduced to the need of a \"hobby\" to keep\nhim out of moral mischief!  What such a man, if man he can be called,\nreally needs is some higher interest or a coffin.  A hobby is well\nenough in its place, and much can be said for it, but when it becomes a\nman's only peradventure between himself and the devil, the world can\nprobably spare him to its own advantage.  The young have no little\nsafety in their years, in the temporary buoyancy of the blood.  It is\nwhen the former draw in, and the latter thins out, that dangerous\nthings get their more obvious and, too often, fatal chance with men.\nIt is when the first fires of passion have slowed down, and the ties of\nearly friendship have relaxed, and the outlook appears to leave us with\nthe problem, not how to live, but how to exist.  I tremble at times\nwhen my experience suggests the dangers of those long stretches of\nemptiness, that so easily fill with the sinister and the unspeakable.\nI would pray, as a man in mortal terror, against the bottomless pit of\na motiveless existence.\n\nThis is why I put emphasis upon the threshold of manhood; not that I\nbelieve it to be the most dangerous part of human life, but because I\nbelieve it is the time to safeguard the part that is.  It is the time\nwhen habits can be cultivated, and resources acquired, which can make\nmiddle life as crowded with interest and good to enjoy as any of the\nearlier years, and infinitely more useful.  But this is possible only\nwhen the middle years can command their own.  Just as many of us\n\"postpone life until after our funeral,\" so may we find ourselves in\nmiddle life discouraged and sullen because we cannot do what we would,\nonly because we have not done what we ought.  Men do not always go\nunder because they cannot do things.  They fail, not because they do\nnot know what it is well to do, but because they do not choose to\nattempt it.  And why do they not choose?  So far as this question\naffects middle life, it is largely because so few of us have the grit\nto face its difficulties, and attack them, when we have to do it with\nthe serious handicap of self-made disadvantages.  It is while you are\nyoung that you must lay up these stores of living material for the\nafter years; and this is the significance of it all--you can only do\nit, or you can do it most effectually, when you are young.  As touching\ncertain advantages, \"the day after to-morrow is the only day that never\ncomes.\"\n\nHave your good time, I say, and in it fear God, and fear nothing else.\nKeep a clean youth, and enjoy it to the full.  But let the thought have\nits place as a goad when required, or as a steadying influence when the\nspirits would gallop too fast--the thought in the question: How will it\nbe with me when my years are thirty-five or forty?  That trying, and in\nso many cases, that fatal forty!  When the youth of \"rose-light and\nromance has faded into the light of common day, and the horizon of life\nhas shrunk incalculably, and when the flagging spirit no longer answers\nto the spur of external things, but must find its motive and energy\nfrom within, or find them not at all.\"  See to it while you may, that\nthese forces, when needed, are there, or whatever else you may gain\nwill be but a mocking remembrancer of the greater thing you have lost.\n\nI have but another word to add.  If there are, as I trust there are,\nmiddle-aged, or even old men, who would leave this Ur of the Chaldees,\nwith all its unworthy past, and make for a better country, do not, I\nplead with you, be discouraged by anything I have said.  Remember, I\nhave been talking to the young; but God forbid that what I have said to\nthem should seem to exclude hope for you.  Make your start, though you\nshould get no further than Haran.  In a matter so supreme, it is better\nto have tried and failed, than never to have tried at all.  But you\nneed not fail in any degree that success is possible to you; and a\nsuccess is possible to you in which are issues of everlasting life.\nWhatever the past, build up with courage and humility what you can do.\nGod willing, and by His grace, you have time yet to prove how a\nconsecrated determination can stretch out life's limits, and wondrously\nredeem no little of past failure.\n\n\n\n\nYOUTH'S STRATEGIC PLACES\n\n\n\"I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong.\"--1 St.\nJohn ii. 14.\n\nII\n\nYOUTH'S STRATEGIC PLACES\n\n\"I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong.\"  This\ndescription \"young men\" probably indicates that those to whom this part\nof St. John's letter was addressed were seriously engaged in the work\nof grounding their character, forming their habits, disciplining their\ninclinations, and confirming the election all must make between good\nand evil.  He was not writing to those who had failed in the struggle,\nand had accepted their defeat.  He was not writing to those who,\nbeaten, knew that they did not intend to try again, and had thus\nwritten themselves out of the progressive forces of the human world.\nHe was writing to those who had shown promise of better things, who\nwere evidently pressing \"toward the mark for the prize of the high\ncalling of God in Christ Jesus.\"  I do not take it that the Apostle\ncredits the young men to whom he wrote with having won a victory which\nis never finally decided on this side the grave, or with having\nattained to a moral altitude outside the reach of their years.  When he\nsays, \"I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong,\" he\nmay be understood as referring to a strength consistent with, and yet\npeculiar to, their years--a strength the whole force of which was set\nin a right and healthy direction.\n\nI want now to deal with the first part of this particular reference to\nthe strength of young men.  It would be away from my present purpose to\nweight this address with any attempt to say what the writer means when\nhe tells them that, \"The word of God abideth in you, and ye have\novercome the wicked one.\"  I shall take the words of our text out of\ntheir context, and use them as a topic: \"I have written unto you, young\nmen, because ye are strong.\"  Strong in what sense?  How may we give\nthe words a useful setting, as a remembrancer and a call to the young\nmen of to-day?\n\nIn the first place, one great constituent of strength which is, or\nought to be, the special possession of young life is--Hope.  It is a\ncommon remark that as we grow older we become chary of convictions, and\ncontent ourselves with opinions.  I should be sorry to believe it, but\nI am obliged to admit that age, even with good people, changes to a\nlarge extent their centre of gravity from hope to faith.\n\nIt is suggestive to mark the order of these in St. Paul's famous\nprocession--faith, hope, love.  Love, he says, is the greatest.  But he\nranks hope before faith.  Why?  The passage in which this\nclassification occurs is part of the distinctive literature of the\nBible.  Hence terms are not used carelessly.  What is the difference\nbetween the two?  \"Hope,\" says David Hume, \"is the real riches of human\nlife; as fear is the real poverty.\"\n\nHope is that which is \"at the bottom of the vase,\" as the ancients\nsaid, when \"every other thing has gone out of it\"--by which, as it has\nbeen suggested, they probably meant the human heart.  \"While hope\ntrembles in expectation, faith is quiet in possession.  Hope leaps out\ntowards what will be; faith holds on to what is.  Hope idealizes; faith\nrealizes.  Faith sees; hope foresees.\" [1]  In other words, faith is\napt to be content with what it has; hope ventures out to annex the\nwider provinces of the imagination.  Faith is the prose of our\nreligious life, hope is its poetry.\n\nUnless you think about it, this will glance off your mind as a\ndistinction without a difference.  It is more than that, in the sense I\nam using the distinction.  The loss of youth is not so much in the\nflight of years, as in the stealing away of our hopes.  We may be\njustified by faith, but we are saved by hope, in theology and in life.\nThere are twenty men who have faith in Christ for one man who has hope\nthat His Spirit will ever incarnate itself in the life of the world.\nAs we get older, most of us, I am afraid, are only too glad to keep our\nfaith in great principles, without hoping much for them.  The usual\nproduct of experience, and more especially experience gained in\nattempting some great reform, is, as Dr. Martineau remarks, \"a certain\ncaution and lowering of hope.  When the spent enthusiast looks back\nupon the riches of his early hopes, and the poverty of his\nachievements, he is tempted to regret the magnitude of his aims, and\nadvise a zeal too temperate to live through the frosts of inevitable\ndisappointments.\"\n\nNothing more damps the ardour of young people with good stuff in them\nthan this caution called wisdom, which so often creeps over us as we\nadvance in years.  Then it is so frequently the case that the precepts\nthat most naturally flow from our lips are the negatives that stifle\nhope.  \"I can no longer afford convictions,\" said a man to me once, \"I\nhave come to limit myself to opinions; they can be held at less risk,\nand changed at less cost.\"  And the disposition to regard both faith\nand hope in great things as subject to the same insecure and miserable\ntenure, is apt to grow with the growing years, until we come to\nsympathize with nothing which cannot take out a policy of assurance.\n\nWhen we are young we may be susceptible to the new, only because it is\nnew to us.  We are ready to welcome in book or speech anything which\ncharms us with a novelty we readily mistake for originality.  After we\nhave crossed a line it may be well that most of us should become a bit\nobstinate, a little stiff in our beliefs, lest we be blown about by\nevery wind of doctrine.[2]  At the same time, there is always the\ndanger of becoming so rigid in our opinions and faith as to permit no\nhorizon of hope.  There are multitudes, in our churches and outside\nthem, who, from want of the hope that saves, are dying from the top\ndownwards.\n\nAnd among them is an increasing proportion of young men.  I hear them\nboast that they have no ideals, no hopes or aspirations that are above\nthe earth earthy.  For once, at any rate, they have a conviction, and\nit is, that man lives by bread alone, that his life is in the abundance\nof the things which he possesses.  They are too \"knowing\" to be caught\nprisoners by ideas, too much \"men of the world\" to concern themselves\nabout the \"Utopias of religion.\"  And they call it strength.  Strength!\nIt reminds one of the bitter remark of an historian on the march of the\nRoman legions: \"They make a solitude, and call it peace.\"  Strength!\nThere are those in perdition at this moment who could tell them that\nwhat they call strength is the stupidity which adds to sin the\nincrement of a huge blunder.\n\nThe young man who is strong is he who has the moral genius of his\nyears.  He does not deny that man lives by bread, but he does deny that\nman lives by bread alone.  He has faith in the upward trend of the\nworld; and he has the hope which can give to faith its adequate\ntranslation.  He does not believe that there are two Almighties in the\nworld and that the devil is the greater; that sin shall breed sin for\never.  He does not believe that the many must drudge to the limit of\nendurance and starve their higher nature as long as the world lasts,\nthat the few may taste the sweets of culture and opulence.  He does not\nbelieve that brute force shall for ever trample splendid intelligence\nunderfoot, or that we must always stand on the margin of the dark river\nof wrong, in the unfathomed depths of which lie mysteries of\nterror--the despair of man, the sorrow of God.  He has hope, that\nmighty dynamic--God's pledge to the young and unspoiled soul of a\ncoming day when all that is false and unbelieving and wicked shall be\ncast into the consuming fire of divine holiness.  He has faith in the\ngreat day of the Lord; and with the splendid optimism, the hope\npeculiar to his years, he cries: \"I can, and I will, hasten the coming\nof my Lord.\"  This is one great element of a young man's strength--hope\nin goodness, which goes so far to sustain the toil that can realize it.\n\"I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong.\"\n\nAnother factor in this strength is--Freedom.  I hardly like the word,\nbut I want to express by it immunity from certain responsibilities.\nYoung men, up to a given period, are, as never again, free to sacrifice\nfor what look like the forlorn hopes and apparently lost causes of\nhumanity.  \"My six reasons for taking no risks,\" said a man in the\nAmerican Civil War, \"are a wife and five children.\"  The reasons which\nin one man may resolve themselves into prudence, in the case of another\nman, differently circumstanced, may be nothing better than cowardice.\nSome years ago four men stood on the cage at the mouth of the shaft\nthat penetrated to the workings of a Yorkshire coal-mine.  There had\nbeen an explosion, and over forty men were imprisoned in what seemed\nlikely to be their grave.  The brave fellows on the cage knew they were\ntaking their lives in their hands, but they stood calmly waiting the\nsignal which should lower them into a possible death.  While some\ndetail of the machinery was being adjusted, a fine stalwart young man,\nsome three-and-twenty years of age, forced his way through the crowd,\nand, seizing one of the rescue-party, literally flung him out of the\ncage to the pit-bank, and before the people could recover from their\nastonishment the men were being lowered through the pathway of the\ndeep.  Then they realized the meaning of the action.  \"He did it,\" said\nthe man who had been so summarily handled, and his voice shook with\nemotion, \"because I have a wife and bairns.\"  The younger man was free\nfrom responsibility; he could better afford the risk.\n\nThere is a very real sense in which the same consideration tells in the\nwarfare against sin and wrong.  Some of us have less to risk in taking\nup the challenge which the powers of death and hell throw down to every\ntrue man.  I write unto you, young men, because from your relationship\nto circumstances you are more free to accept risks.\n\nWe often hear men lament, and it may be sincerely, that they cannot\nafford to face the practical logic of their social, political, and\nreligious beliefs.  They shrink from the consequences of the good fight\nof faith.  \"Had I only myself to consider,\" says one, \"how gladly would\nI sacrifice myself to attack this wrong or that iniquity.\"  We need\noffer no opinion about the moral quality of such a position; enough to\nsay that it is idle to ignore, or even to underrate, the force of it.\n\nThere are circumstances which are too strong for most men after they\nhave put themselves in a given relation to circumstances.\n\nLet me say a word here about circumstances, which will seem to\ncontradict some things you will find in this book, if you have interest\nenough in it to read it through.  A Glasgow minister some time ago made\na stand against a considerable minority in his church over some matter\nthat, as he said, involved a principle for which he should fight.  It\ncost him many of his more wealthy members and adherents.  \"Not many of\nus,\" I said to him after, \"have your courage to take so serious a\nrisk.\"  \"Nor should I have had it,\" he answered, \"had I not means that\nmake me independent of my salary.\"  It was a candid admission, and it\nreaches a long way.  The strength of this man was in his position quite\nas much as in himself; and this is probably true of the great average\nof us.  Circumstances may mean possibilities, more often than\npossibilities mean, or create, circumstances.  What we can do is not\nonly determined by what we bring into the world, but by what we find\nwhen we get here.  Give, then, whatever courage is native to you its\nfull purchase, by whatever favour you have in circumstances.  It is\nhere the young man has a great advantage; he is at an age when he can\nafford risks; let him use it before his years are mortgaged by other\ndemands.\n\nIn public life he can base his efforts on the fact that there are\ntremendous evils that need resistance, that there are sacred causes\nwhich need assistance.  He can afford, as never again, to close with\nthe truth that there is a corporate life, a public virtue, a humanity\nof the body politic, with laws, responsibilities, and duties.  In\nsocial life he can refuse to bow to an arbitrary and often empty\nfashion, or to immolate himself on the altar of mammon.  He can be a\nliving protest against the tyranny and lust of money, which are eating\naway the heart and destroying the soul of Christendom.  He can stand\nfor the sane and rational ideas and habits of life, without which\nsociety but personifies the unscrupulous and vulgar parvenu.  And in\nreligion he can accept the teaching and obey the commands of Christ\nwithout any overwhelming temptation to escape them behind some\nexegetical device or the plea of expediency.  He can devote the rose\nbloom of his years to great principles, before he has had time to catch\nthe infection of a commonplace belief in God.  He can be a soldier of\nthe Cross, and have himself placed in the forefront of the battle.  He\ncan go down into the pit to rescue the perishing, and take daring,\nawful risks for the Captain of his salvation and the race of which he\nforms a part.  I have written unto you, young men, because you can\nafford to be strong.\n\nA third, and for my present purpose a closing consideration in a young\nman's strength is--Audacity.  I might call it courage, but it is that\nplus something else.  It is courage carried to a point of daring that\namounts to what I have called it, audacity, or, as the world would call\nit, foolhardiness.  It is the merciful blindness which will not see\ndifficulties; it is the glorious recklessness which will not be stopped\nby them.  It is neither blindness nor recklessness; it is the baptism\nwith which a young man must be baptized whose life is penalized for the\nCross.\n\nWhen a certain woman came into the presence of Jesus, and anointed Him\nwith an ointment very precious, He answered the selfish criticism of\nsome of the disciples with the unqualified remark that \"long as His\nGospel should be preached, this that she had done would be told for a\nmemorial of her.\"  To these disciples it is probable that the answer\nsounded like a benediction on waste.  Jesus saw in the deed an abandon\non the side of good, which on the side of evil makes evil so popular\nand, as it seems at times, almost universal.  No one but a woman,\nunless it were a young man of true fibre, would have broken the vessel.\nYour middle-aged or old man would have cautiously taken out the\nstopper, that the costly unguent might have been expended economically,\neven on the Saviour.  But this woman, in her uncalculating devotion,\nbroke the vessel, that all its contents might issue forth in one\nconsecrated gift of love.  And it was what this broken vase symbolized\nthat explains, or does something to explain, the unmeasured recognition\nof the action.\n\nThis is the moral temper of the young man whom St. John describes as\nstrong.  He does not fumble with the stopper in the vase-held forces of\ngood.  \"If you believe,\" he cries, \"what Christ lived believing and\ndied believing, then break the vase, and do not keep as a private\npossession powers that are meant for the world.  Do not keep as a\npersonal luxury what is meant to be the family treasure.\"  Such a young\nman is the living exegesis of Christ's revolutionary word: \"The kingdom\nof heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.\"\n\nWhen he is warned not to expect too much from human nature, not to put\ntoo much trust in men, not to waste his strength in trying to remove\nmountains, not to jeopardize his chances on the threshold of manhood in\ntrying to serve a world which, so far from thanking him, will very\neffectually resent his most disinterested efforts on its behalf; when\nhe is reminded of some once aspirant who, young and confident as he,\nset out to reform the world, and now cynically affirms that the only\nwisdom is to let the world go to the devil in its own way--the young\nman who is strong says: \"I acknowledge your facts, such as they are,\nbut they are not facts for me.  I, too, may be beaten in the right, but\nI would rather be that a thousand times over than succeed in the wrong.\nIt is the temptation of the wicked one to conclude that, because\nhistory is said to have repeated itself hitherto, it must needs repeat\nitself for ever.  I do not live on history; I live to make history.  I\nbelieve that I was sent into the world new from the fashioning hand of\nthe Creator, and that I have a new man's work to do.  If my life of\nfaith on the Son of God seem recklessness to you, wanting in proportion\nand eccentric, hold your opinions for all they are worth; but you shall\nnot influence me by your abandoned hopes, you shall not even chill me\nwith the east wind of your selfish ethics.\"\n\nThese are the young men we need to-day.  Strong in hope, in position,\nand in daring; strong in the strength which they find in their years,\nand the strength they put into them.\n\nAnd the Church has a right, society has a right, the nation has a right\nto look to young men for a greater and a better future.  We who are\nolder have a claim to look to you to confirm our faith in the survival\nof Christianity as the living force of the future.  We need fresh\nleaders and men who incarnate new forces.  We need, in fact, a certain\nstyle of man--we never needed him more.  We want young men who are\ninspired by the truth that ideas are realities, and that scepticism\nabout high principles is the most destructive form of ignorance.\n\nWe want young men of vision in business.  Not cranks, not men who are\nresponsible for their own failure in whatsoever their hand findeth to\ndo; but men who see that the institution of business is God's present\nplan for distributing wealth, comfort, and intelligence.  We want men\nin law who shall realize that the function of the legal profession is\nto build up justice and ensphere it in the will of the people.  We want\nmen in politics who have a clear conception of what the kingdom of God\nis, who recognize that the work of legislation and legislators is to\nthink and speak and act for the interests of that kingdom--in the\nspirit and on the basis of Divine Fatherhood and human brotherhood.\nAnd in the pulpit we want men who have in them the vision of an Isaiah,\na Paul, a John, and a Luther; men who shall make themselves felt as\nperennial gifts to their day--to tell us what we can do and what we\nought to do, to lift up a voice for the eternally true, amid the\nclamour of self-interest and cries of craven fear.\n\n\"The world needs nothing more; the great English-speaking race has no\nneed comparable with this need of men who can carry the spirit of\nvision, which is really the power of achievement, into every phase of\nour individual and collective life.\" [3]\n\nMany of you represent great possibilities.  You are, or you ought to\nbe, at the flow-tide of an untainted enthusiasm.  Your life should be a\nmoral heat, which radiates in ever-enlarging circles of hope and\nservice.  But there are fires which, once they are allowed to slow\ndown, can never be rekindled.  There are large and generous beliefs at\ntwenty-five years of age which, unless we cultivate and keep ourselves\nin the love of them, thin out like wasting magic, and no necromancy can\never conjure them back again.  You young men have potencies of hope and\nenthusiasm which, if denied expression, strike inwardly and corrupt the\nsource out of which they came.\n\nAnd now, I repeat, is the time when you can give a true man's best\nhostages to the future.  Now is the time to make the most of your\nstrategic places in life.  Almost before you know it, your power to\ndetermine many things will have merged into obligations that not one\nman in fifty is free to disregard.  While it is called your day--before\nyou are compassed behind and before with a commonplace that locks up so\nmany lives like a numbing fate--signalize your record by some bit of\nheroism.  If you would have posterity call you wise, seize your chance,\nwhile you have it, to be God's fool.  Find the faith that can help you\nto play a man's part in the world; find in your faith the power which\ncan grasp you by your weakness and sin, and lift you into strength and\nachievement.  The Church needs you.  For of all the institutions in\nChristendom the Church is stifled with safety, propriety, and\nconventional wisdom.  It is the world which seems to monopolize the\nsparkle, the daring, and the picturesque.  Respect us, your seniors in\nyears, if we have done anything worthy in the past; but do not let it\ninfluence you unduly if now we seem to you perhaps timid and\nconservative.  Time will bring most of you to the same place.  But\nif--which God forbid--you do little after, do at least something now to\nredeem your career from impotence or from miserable aims that all end\nin selfishness.  Find, I say again, on the threshold of your years, the\npower that can grasp you by your real requirement.  Your first need is\nnot wisdom, but grace; it is not education, but regeneration; it is not\nan ideal even, but a Saviour.  Wisdom, education, and moral enthusiasms\nare but the machinery of our uplifting, the driving-power is Life.  You\nknow the Source of this power; you know the way to Him of Whom it is\nwritten: \"In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.\"  Now is\nyour accepted time--\n\n  \"Are you in earnest?  Seize this very minute:\n  What you can do, or dream you can, begin it;\n  Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.\n  Only engage, and then the mind grows heated;\n  Begin, and then the work will be completed.\"\n\n\n\n[1] Robert Collyer.\n\n[2] Dr. Maclaren.\n\n[3] Dr. Lyman Abbot.\n\n\n\n\nTHE WORSHIP OF LUCK\n\n\n\"The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of\nthe Lord.\"--Proverbs xvi. 33.\n\nIII\n\nTHE WORSHIP OF LUCK\n\nIt is reported that Prince Bismarck once and again attributed some of\nthe most remarkable successes he had won in diplomacy to the\ncircumstance that he had used truth as one of his greatest resources.\nWell aware of the fact that truth, for its own sake, was not the first\nthing that was expected from him, the use of truth gave him the\ntactical advantage of knowing how almost inevitably the opposite\ndiplomacy would interpret it.  He told the truth in order that it might\nbe acted upon as something else.  To adopt his own characteristic\nphrase, he \"used the truth.\"  If half the truth, or an untruth, would\nhave served his purpose better, either most likely would have been\nadopted and as readily used.\n\n\"You call that witty,\" said a great statesman once, when some one\nrelated to him the saying of a well-known politician to the same\neffect--\"you call that witty--I call it devilish.\"  It is a just\ndescription.  If the report is reliable that Bismarck, even in grim\njest, spoke of truth in this sense as one of his great resources, the\nconfession ought to cover his name with infamy.  I do not commit myself\nto the statement that he ever said this; but whether he did or not, he\nis credited with acting upon what is a very general impression of how\ntruth _may_ be used.  With vast masses of people it has become\nperilously like a conviction that strict integrity, while good and\ndesirable as an ideal, is yet too much of a risk for the purpose of\nwhat is popularly known as practical life.  The advice said to have\nbeen given by a Yorkshireman to his son who was entering on a business\ncareer would, I imagine, be widely acclaimed as common-sense: \"Get\nmoney; get it honestly, if you can--but get it.\"\n\nWe preachers tell young men that whether or not they get on in\nbusiness, they cannot afford not to go up in character; and they are\nnot in the world very long before they realize that its hopes in this\nadmonition are but inverted fears, that the shake of its head is a\nscepticism which troubles not to articulate itself in words.  A French\ncynic counsels us to always deal with a friend to-day on the\npossibility that he may be an enemy to-morrow.  And there is a wide and\ndeeply-rooted prejudice in favour of holding the imperatives of\nintegrity on the same terms.  Our very language in this direction\nbetrays us.  We talk about \"smart\" business men, \"smart\" professional\nmen, and by the adjective we may mean men who, though \"keen,\" are yet\nhonourable in their methods; or we may mean men who are just as\nscrupulous as the law of the land or the arbitrary criterions of\nsociety oblige them to be.  And young men feel the impress of this\nwidely-shared sentiment in a way particularly vivid.  They have,\nindeed, small chance to escape it.  The world is profuse in its\nexplanations of why men fail, but it has no mercy on the man who fails.\nIt has its cheap jargon about inheritances and environment, and then\nkicks the man who is preached as their victim, into perdition.  Our\noperations may not be nice, but young men soon find out, or they think\nthey do, that it is success, not charity, which covers a multitude of\nsins.  Hence the new commandment: \"With all thy getting, get success\"--\n\n  \"Get place and wealth, if possible with grace,\n  If not, by any means get wealth and place.\"\n\n\nThe clamant need of our day is a clear teaching that shall appeal to us\nall, but especially to young men, as to what are the things that cannot\nbe shaken, the things inseparable from a human life that is worth\nliving.  It is easy to part with our fine sense of integrity, but, once\nit is gone, it is the hardest thing in the world to recover.  There are\nmore senses than one in which we may speak of riches that are \"beyond\nthe dreams of avarice.\"  The most valuable possession any man can have\nis the fight, either in his own conscience or to the world, to affirm\nhimself to be an honest man.  And the position I shall maintain in this\naddress is, that there can be no sure success without honesty.  Nor\nshall I speak about \"absolute honesty\" or the \"strictest honesty,\" for\nI agree with those who say that there is but one degree of honesty.  It\nis not a quality with grades and modulations.  As well think, or try to\nthink, of grades and modulations in the chastity of man and woman.\nHonesty, like chastity, is, or it is not.\n\nWe are often told that, from the lowest possible commercial standpoint,\nhonesty is not only the best policy, it is the only policy.  Whether or\nnot it is the only policy depends upon the meaning we import into the\nterm; of this I am sure--it is the best policy.  But I shall not urge\nthis doctrine upon you from the lower standpoint.  That might do more\nthan insult your intelligence; it would, I trust, offend against your\nmoral self-respect.  I assume that you all would hold it true with\nArchbishop Whately when he says, that though \"honesty is the best\npolicy, he is not an honest man who is honest for that reason.\"  If,\nthen, these latter remarks can carry the weight I want them to bear,\nwhat of those that have preceded them?  How are we to explain a\nsentiment which is virtually a religion, having this one article for\nits creed: that honesty, while good as an ideal, cannot be invariably\nrelied upon for practical concerns?  How is it that so many men have to\ndiscover, when they are no longer young, that the thing which has\npassed from them and which they cannot recall is, after all, the one\nsupreme value they possessed?  There are many explanations of this\ntragedy, for tragedy it is, and not the least of them is, that so many\nyoung men have but one conception, one definition of success.  These\nare men, and one is tempted to think at times that they are not so much\na class as a people, who want material success and seek nothing else.\nThey have no other standard by which to judge the thing behind the\nword.  Not what we are, but what we have, if the latter is substantial\nand declarative, is the only idea which multitudes have of success.  In\na clever character-study of a well-known public man we are told that,\n\"As far as he has a philosophy at all, it is this, that merit rides in\na motor-car.\"  It is a definition which fosters the impression that\nsuccess can be secured the more quickly and surely by methods that are\nbound up with smartness, chance, or luck.\n\nIt is with the last of these I would come into somewhat close quarters.\nAnd let me admit, in the first place, that there is such a thing as\nluck, using the word in its common acceptation.  In what is called a\nscientific treatment of the subject in hand I ought to say, as exactly\nas I can, what I myself understand by luck.  It will leave abundance of\nroom for criticism if I venture to define it--as some advantage that\ncomes to a man independent of his moral worth, his native gifts, or of\nany equivalent he has rendered for it of industry and self-denial.\nThat some people have such an advantage it would be useless to deny.\nTwo youths, let us say, enter a business house about the same age, and\nat the same time.  They are, as near as can be, equally matched in\nequipment to command success.  In this respect there is little to\nchoose between them.  One begins entirely on his merits; he has no\ninfluence behind him to open doors before him as by some invisible\nhand.  The other has influence; no matter what it is, or how it works,\nhe has it, and it operates distinctly in his favour.  A few years\nafter, and the latter has far out distanced the former in position,\nsalary, and outlook.  And the reason is not the capacity of either; it\nis the arbitrary advantage, the piece of luck that one has had over the\nother from the start.  \"He has not much ability,\" I heard it remarked\nlately of a young fellow who, just having been licensed to preach, had\nalso received a \"call\" to an influential church, and the remark\nelicited the significant answer: \"No, but whether he has ability or\nnot, his father has position and influence.\"  This hints to us why\ncertain men, if they do not fill, yet hold the positions they do.  Take\nsome men in high places, say in the political world.  Recall a few\nnames, if you can, of men who have held great positions in the State\nwithin the last quarter of a century, and does any sane person contend\nthat in ability they stand out sheer above ten thousand good average\nmen who crowd about them?  I think it was Sydney Smith who said it was\nabout equal to being canonized to marry into certain families.  And a\nman would need to be a very emphasized fool quite to spoil the\nadvantages of a long line of position, privilege, and family ascendency.\n\nTake, again, a more typical case of what I mean by luck.  It came under\nmy own notice.  A cloth-worker in Yorkshire, by carelessness or\ninadvertence, raises the nap of a given fabric a shade above the\nregulation height.  He is dismissed, and the cloth is laid aside as\nspoiled.  A French buyer comes in the place, and casting his eyes on\nit, instantly sees for it a future.  That touch of heightened nap has\ndone it.  The manufacturer has his wits about him, and what a week\nbefore was a mistake is now a new and valuable design which, in a\ncouple of years, makes him what some of us would regard as a\nsubstantial fortune.  We are usually told that to admit the operation\nof this questionable factor in human affairs, called chance or luck, is\ninconsistent with a belief in the moral government of God, or, as we\nmay prefer to call it, the reign of law.  If this is so, how are we to\nread those old words that \"chance happeneth to them all\"?  If we\nseriously contend that everything which happens in our human life is in\naccord with God's plans in us, and working through us, then I see not\nhow we can refuse to hold such fore-ordination responsible for the\ngrotesque, the irrational, the sinister, and the wicked in our actions.\nI could understand the objection were it limited to Nature, because\nthat is a sphere in which it is the uses of things, and the uses\nprecisely, which are the most obvious, and these compose, when taken\ntogether, a mighty reciprocal whole in which part answers to part,\nconstituting an all-comprehensive and wondrous whole.  There is no\nplace in Nature for chance.  Every particle of air is governed by laws\nof as great precision as the laws of the heavenly bodies.  It keeps its\nappointed order, it serves its appointed ends.  Nature never breaks out\nof its place.  It has no such power--but human nature has.  Man has\nenough free-will to make him responsible for what he does with it, and\nin the exercise of this mighty prerogative enters the element of chance\nor luck.  We cannot establish free-will by rules of logic, we cannot\ngainsay it on the score of conviction.  It helps us to interpret the\ngreat in human life and history, and what is sometimes even more to the\npurpose, it helps us to account for the little.  As it has been well\nsaid: \"It would save us much mental perplexity if we could assert\nwithout qualification that all is law, that everything happens as God\nordains.\"\n\nBut God cannot make two mountains without a valley between; and He\ncannot give us free-will and withhold from us at the same time the\nfreedom to make mistakes.  The contradictions in human life do not\nyield to verbal simplicities, and, whether we like it or not, we have\nto acknowledge that this something called luck is a force in human\nevents.\n\nBut let me say, in the second place, that there is nothing more easy\nthan to exaggerate its extent and importance.  Out of a hundred\nhappenings that are generally attributed to luck, if we could find the\ngenesis of each one and trace its evolution or unfolding, we should\nprobably not find more than one that could be associated with the\nthings that happen by chance.  The case of a man who achieved what is\ncalled a \"lucky fluke\" out of a piece of spoiled cloth is perhaps the\nonly instance of its kind on record in the history of cloth\nmanufacture.  I have admitted that there are cases where advantage\nfalls to a man which cannot be explained by anything he deserves, or\nhas done to win it.  And the advantage, such as it is, often works\nuntold hurt as an example.  Just as the winnings of one gambler may\ntempt a hundred others to their undoing, so a single case of coveted\nluck is apt to encourage young men to transfer their hopes of success\nin many directions, from law to luck.  You see here and there a man who\naccumulates a large fortune from beginnings that look as much like pure\nchance as was that piece of spoiled cloth.  You see men close to you\nput into positions that have been secured, not by training or ability\nto fill them, but by the accident of influence, or, as you may think,\nby even more reprehensible methods; and your first impulse is to say\nthat it is not merit but luck that holds the better cards.  But let the\nimpulse pass and bring quiet thought and good practical sense to this\nproblem of success in men, and you will find that the instances are\ncomparatively few where it is not about as wise to speak of it as luck\nas it would be so to characterize the law of cause and consequence.\nWhen you are discussing a man's success or his position, do not stop at\nthe mere fact that he has it--that is obvious enough; try to know how\nhe got it, and you may be surprised to find how little, after all, luck\nhas had to do with it.  In one of the most quoted of our Lord's\nparables we are told that \"they that were ready went in to the marriage\nfeast.\"  And this right of entry was not a matter of luck.  They went\nin because they were ready, and the others were left out because they\nhad made no effort to be ready.  And so if you would understand a man's\nsuccess, know what he was doing while the opportunity tarried, while\nhis chance seemed to wait, while his \"psychological moment\" appeared to\nlinger.\n\nOur fate or our fortune is not in great occasions; it is in our\nreadiness to seize the opportunities that make great occasions.  We\nfrequently hear young men complain that they have not had a chance.\nAre they always sure of that?  How often is it that their chance has\nbeen and gone, without their knowing it?  \"There are scores of young\nfellows in our place,\" said a large employer of labour lately, \"who\nwould be in vastly better positions than they are, had they worked as\nhard to be ready for the better positions as they are anxious to have\nthem.\"  There are multitudes of young men who appear to have lost sight\nof the distinction there may be between wishing for an opportunity and\nbeing ready to use the opportunity when it presents itself.  As Sir\nFrederick Treves once said to the students at the Aberdeen University:\n\"The man who is content to wait for a stroke of good fortune will\nprobably wait until he has a stroke of paralysis.\"  He who waits for\ngood fortune without doing his part to make it possible, opens up the\nway for lazy habits and morbid conclusions about the arrangements of\nlife.  Luck in any serious business or profession is not so much the\ncoming of opportunity as readiness to make the most of the opportunity\nwhen it comes.  A man was speaking to me not long ago about one of the\nleading commercial men in this city.  \"What is there in him or about\nhim to explain his success?\" asked the man, and he answered his own\nquestion with the round assertion that \"it was all luck.\"  It happened\nthat I had some reliable information about the man under discussion,\nand I want you to have it.  Thirty years ago he was working from ten to\ntwelve hours in the day as just an ordinary workman.  At the close of\neach day's toil he had his programme of studies, which, in its range\nand character of the subjects attacked, would not have disgraced a good\nstudent at any university.  Eventually his attention to business and\nhis marked attainments won for him the recognition of his employers,\nwhich meant in after years a place which was ultimately a leading\nplace, as one of them.  Yet this was the man who was said to have won\nhis success by a lucky turn of the wheel.  I admit his advantages.  I\ngrant you that he showed himself to have brains and will above the\naverage endowment of these great possessions.  But let me ask you to\nmark this: he might have left his gifts unused, as so many of us do.\nIt is probably not gifts, in eight cases out of every ten, that\ndetermine position, but our use of them.  We have infinitely more in us\nthan our will and determination ever bring out.  How few of us know the\nrich things God has put in our nature; and we verily live and die in\nignorance of rare deposits of wealth because we do not work the inward\nmines.  This young man was wiser.  He did not wait for his opportunity\nto turn up, he turned up the opportunity.  Because he neither slumbered\nnor slept while it tarried, he was prepared to make the most of it when\nit presented itself.  And I am persuaded that something like this is\nthe true explanation of practically the whole of what thoughtless\npeople set down to luck.  What we call fore-ordination is verily the\npresent which we have made out of the past.  We first make habits, and\nthen habits make us.  In our to-day walks our to-morrow, and in a very\nsolemn sense there is no \"dead past.\"  As it has been well said, \"the\ntree that falls so disastrously is no accident; it had the fall\ndetermined a century ago in some injury it received as a sapling.\" [1]\n\nThere is much less luck in human affairs than is popularly supposed;\nand, if there were more than there is, it would, in the next place, be\nmoral insanity to put our trust in it.  \"Nothing walks with aimless\nfeet.\"  Our life is no lottery.  We may make foolish experiments with\nit, but we do so at our own risk.  It is no plaything of chance, it is\na stern responsibility which is determined by law that brooks no\ninterference and excuses no indifference.  The proverb tells us that\n\"our lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing is of the Lord.\"\nAnd just as the dark forces that sweep through our life are not\nnecessarily hostile forces but form part of the order of the world, so\nthings that we regard as haphazard, merely cast into the lap of chance,\nmay be divine agents working out a marvellous equality of opportunity\nthroughout our human life.  I affirm it without a shadow of\nqualification, that chance has no place whatever in the responsible\nformation of character, and the formation of character is the decision\nof destiny.  Beware, then, lest in playing with this _ignis fatuus_ of\nchance you are trifling with law, for law will not spare you.\n\nYou young men cannot make up your mind too soon that there can be no\nsure success apart from uprightness and integrity.  You cannot too\nearly in this life settle it as an immovable truth for you, that\nunswerving rectitude is not only a great and desirable ideal, it is the\nonly practical course you can afford to follow.  Goodness, I say again,\nis the only success, and I shall not try to save this statement by\nfencing the word \"success\" with any arbitrary definition of my own.  I\njust mean by it what any man means by it who has a healthy moral\nperception of things.  Success, like honesty, has but one degree, and\nas nothing is worthy to be called life which cannot be affirmed of God,\nso nothing can be called success which is not the resultant of\nright-doing.  Every advantage which you would try to scheme or sneak or\ncoerce in face of the protest of conscience, has in it its own curse\nand its certain defeat.  Understand me: right-doing will not\nnecessarily help you to make a fortune or achieve some great position.\nYou may not have the special gifts to do either.  Such gifts are\nsomething not ourselves which we might easily have been without.\nNeither religion nor morality promises to bestow these gifts, any more\nthan religion or morality claims to regulate the colour of our hair or\nthe inches of our stature.  But when said, there is yet a wonderful\npower in right-doing.  The man who does the right because he believes\nin it and loves it, whether it is called successful or not, is always\nbringing out far more than he thought was in him.  The faithful doing\nof daily duty continually reveals opportunities which, used with\nreadiness and a good conscience, act upon life with a perpetual and\ngracious benediction.\n\nThen what about the end?  It may seem a far-off cry to talk to you\nyoung men about that.  But the end will come, and you will need nothing\nthen which you do not need all the way.  The end will only emphasize\nthe need--the need of a good conscience.  The day is coming when all\ntainted success will mock, as only a bad record can mock, when there is\nbut time left to regret, and none to retrieve the past.  \"I am getting\nold,\" writes one, \"and I am wealthy; but I would part with every\nshilling I possess, and take my risk for bread, to be at peace with my\nown conscience.\"  Trample under your feet the immoral side of the maxim\nthat nothing succeeds like success.  Success is not always in hitting\nthe things at which you aim; it is the good conscience that you are\naiming only at right things.  Let your success be goodness, and\ngoodness will be your success.  Leave luck to fools, and act as though\nit had no existence.  Believe that character or manhood, without which\nnothing great is possible, is the content of your endowment put out to\nfull advantage through grace and will.  Believe that every man, worthy\nto be called a man, has in him the promise of the gradual supremacy of\ncharacter over the accidents and happenings of circumstances.  Be,\nthen, your own luck.  Link your life in Christ to God, and stand up to\nall the world and say--\n\n  \"Perish policy and cunning,\n    Perish all that fears the light.\n  Whether losing, whether winning,\n    Trust in God and do the right.\"\n\n\n\n[1] Rev. Thomas Templeton, M.A.\n\n\n\n\nA DEVIL'S TRINITY\n\n\n\"Know ye not that ye are a temple of God?\"--I Corinthians iii. 16.\n\nIV\n\nA DEVIL'S TRINITY\n\nThere are expressions taken from the Bible which, by length of popular\nusage, become, as it were, independent either of their setting, or of\nmethods of exposition.  This usage has its length of days, not always\nin the sense of the expression so much as in its sound.  Those of you\nwho have been accustomed to listen to Christian preaching will have\noften heard appeals to your manhood, to self-mastery, to kingship over\nyour habitudes, rounded off with this question: \"Know ye not that ye\nare a temple of God?\"\n\nIn this way it has passed into what I have called popular usage.  And\nwhatever it may be as exegesis, it is good admonition.  If we may speak\nof a house made with hands as a dwelling-place of the Most High, we may\nalso claim an equal sacredness for this mortal temple which is the\ncrowning achievement of His creative power.  For myself, I have never\nhad the least sympathy with a teaching that almost amounts to a\nvilification of the body, and which is at the basis of much that passes\nfor religion, both Christian and pagan.  Our body is a gift worthy of\nthe Giver.  We can do much to mar it in ourselves, and through us for\nothers.  Hitherto the one perennial idolatry of the world has been\ndestruction; and if one thing has escaped this insanity less than\nanother, it is the human body.  But for all that, we do not deny that a\npicture may be a work of genius, because any madman could destroy it in\nless time than it takes to suggest the possibility.\n\nMuch is said and written about the duality that is in us; and many of\nus are Manichean without knowing technically what the term means.  The\ntwo parts in the same self are represented as East and West, and \"never\nthe twain shall meet.\"  We must understand, however, what we mean by\nthis bisection of man.  Between the carnal and the spiritual there must\nbe no compromise and there can be no peace.  But carnality is not in\nthe body, it is in the principle that uses the body as its medium and\nexpression.  We say much about \"sins of the flesh\"; as a matter of fact\nthere is no such thing.  Sin is, before it is wrought out through the\nflesh.  It is not the body that commits adultery or gets drunk, it is\nthe creature which owns it.  The same Apostle who tells us that the\n\"flesh lusteth against the Spirit,\" also speaks about the \"redemption\nof the body\"; which means that as the latter can be degraded, so can it\nbe honoured by him who uses it.  Hence the people who weaken the body\nto strengthen the soul begin at the wrong end.  Let them guard the\nlife, and the strength of the body will become an agent of pleasure and\nservice, not of sorrow and defeat.  It is surely better to ride a fine\nsteed well under control, than find our safety only because we mount a\nhack.  I have heard young men complain bitterly about the disproportion\nbetween their bodily passions and their will-power.  They overlook two\nthings--first, that will can be acquired, that an act of will means\nmore will; and, secondly, that passion in itself can be, and is\nintended to be, a great and precious possession.  The absence of\npassion may mean an anaemia, which virtually cuts us off from some of\nthe finest possibilities of human life.  Our bodies are part, and the\nhighest part, of a cosmic order which is \"sinful only when it refuses\nto be spiritualized.\"  If we regard the body as an exquisite instrument\nprovided by our Maker for the translation of the things of the Spirit,\nthen so long as the Spirit working by grace is the master, we can\nhardly attach too much importance to the body as a temple of God.\n\n\"If any man defile this temple,\" says the Apostle, \"him shall God\ndestroy.\"  The ways in which it can be defiled are endless, as some of\nthem are fatal.  For my present purpose there are three which I want to\nurge upon your serious consideration.  I must try to compress what I\nhave to say about them into one address, because the first I shall\nmention is something about which no clean-minded person would choose to\nwrite or talk without having, what he conceives to be, the gravest\nreasons for so doing.  In this case, the fewer the words the more\neffective they may be, if they arrest attention, arouse thought, and\nmake some headway with the conscience.\n\nThere are three ways, I repeat, in which we may defile this temple, and\nthe first I will venture to speak about is the sin of Impurity.  And\nwhen I say I will venture to mention it, I quite realize that I am\ntaking some risk.  He who would speak with authority and with wisdom on\nthis subject to a mixed audience, should possess a poet's gifts in the\nart of putting things.  But some one must speak, and to whom does the\nduty fall, if not upon him whose calling it is to stand between the\nquick and the dead?  If the good work of the world must wait to be done\nby perfect men, the lease of evil has a long while to run.  It is, in\ntruth, a sad reflection which should stir up strong protest in every\nearnest soul, that this sin--so deadly in its nature--should be\npractically safe so far as the pulpit is concerned.  In many cases this\nis a result of sensitive timidity, or it may be an affectation of\nrefinement which is but veneered coarseness.  If it be the first, it\nshould be respected but not yielded to; if it be the second, it should\nreceive no indulgence from us.  The great Hebrew prophets, and the\nSupreme Teacher Himself, did not surrender this stronghold of the soul\nto the evil one from a shrinking which, if a man cannot conquer, he is\nno preacher, and still less to a mental indolence that will not seek\nout acceptable words through which to convey a warning.  I speak as\nunto wise men, and submit it to your judgment whether the preacher who\nhas to any extent the ear of young men can afford this eternal silence\nconcerning a subject that so vitally affects character, society, and\nthe race to which we belong.\n\nThere are many reasons why this sin of impurity seems to be on the\nincrease.  The old order of town and country is fast breaking up, and\npractically the whole migration and emigration is to the former.\nBritain is fast becoming a series of congested centres of population.\nOne consequence is the increasing number of women and girls who find it\nterribly hard to survive in the pitiless struggle to exist.  And we\nknow what this means in so many cases.  It is no secret how the scanty\nearnings of a growing body of girls are eked out.  This is not a matter\non which to dwell, and while it is serious enough to compel some very\nsearching thoughts, I refer to it in order to say how much I want to\nsee the day when every calling, profession, and trade in which a woman\ncan earn her bread and efficiently make her way, shall be open to her\nequally with a man.  The education of our girls should be the care of\nparents and the State, every whit as much as the education of our lads.\nThere are positions in which I should not care to see women, and hence\nI would work all the harder to bring about the economic conditions in\nwhich sex, and the means of livelihood, can have some fitting\ncorrespondence.  This I say, that he who would exclude a woman because\nof her sex from any place where she can turn to honest account her\ncapacities and industry, is the enemy of women.  To the extent you\nrestrict what is called the sphere of a woman who is dependent upon her\nown toil, you set up temptations which every man worthy the name of man\nshould sacrifice much to make impossible.\n\nThere is also the growing reluctance of young men, more especially in\nthe upper and middle classes, to undertake the responsibilities of\nmarried life; so rarely now are they content to creep before they walk.\nThey must begin where their parents leave off in position, appearances,\nand comforts.  This often means to defer marriage until these can be\nsecured; but it does not always mean that these men keep a clean record\nin the meanwhile.  A sinister consideration which has much to answer\nfor in the existence of a class of women which, in turn, takes a\nterrible revenge on its makers!  Nor are parents always as free from\nblame as they might be.  I have known fathers and mothers who had the\nreputation of being good men and women, sternly forbid their daughters\nto engage themselves to young men who had most things to recommend\nthem, except too much means; and I have known them encourage the\nadvances of men whose past and present should have excluded them from\nany decent home--only because these men had money.\n\nMy purpose, however, in these remarks is not to discuss the sources or\ntemptations to impurity, so much as to say a faithful word to young men\nabout the thing itself.  Permit me to counsel you to face the truth and\nnot to fear it, that past a given age in your life and up to another\nthe cravings of our lower nature are tremendously strong.  If you would\nfight the good fight for a clean manhood, make no mistake about the\ntask that lies before you.  These cravings implanted in a healthy man\nor woman are in themselves beautiful and right.  All turns upon the\ncontrol of them.  If Nature could have let us off more easily the\nconflict would have been less searching; but nothing weaker would have\nsecured the perpetuation of the race, and all that it involves in\nstruggle, anxiety, and self-sacrifice.\n\nA young man came to me not long ago to ask for my signature to an\napplication he was making for a certain position.  He told me in a few\nwords about the years he had given to the fitting of himself for the\nplace he was seeking, and how anxious he was to get it, because, as he\nsaid, he wanted to be married and to make a home for himself.  As he\ntalked to me there was something so clean that looked out of the eyes\nof him, while at the same time he gave me the impression of so modest a\nself-efficiency, that my entire sympathy and heartiest good wishes were\nwon for him.  I mention this incident because I want to hint much that\nI cannot put into words.  As you sight the years of responsibility you\nwill, if you are wise, prepare yourselves by industry, thought, and\ncontrol, with a view to married life; for marriage, among other things,\nis the natural, the honourable, and the divine provision for the\nlegitimate cravings of our nature.  Whenever I hear a man speak\nsneeringly of marriage, if I have to conclude that he says what he\nfeels, I may not think him a fool, but I strongly suspect that he is a\nblackguard.  \"He who attacks marriage; he who by word or deed sets\nhimself to undermine this foundation of our moral society, must settle\nthe matter with me, and if I do not bring him to reason, then I have\nnothing more to do with him.\"  So wrote Goethe, and I echo his words in\nyour hearing.\n\nKeep marriage before you as a sacred goal, and as an incentive to put\nout the best there is in you in order to reach it.  Do more than this;\nresolve that when you enter this covenant you will carry into it as\nclean a conscience about the past as you expect her to have who gives\nher happiness into your keeping.  One sex can substantiate no claim to\nlicence, or even indulgence in this matter, that can be morally denied\nto the other.  There are events in life that are worth more than it\ncosts to meet them well; marriage is pre-eminently one of them, and you\ncan, if you elect to do so, enter it unspotted men.\n\nGet control of your imagination.  Be lord over your thoughts.  You\ncannot, as an old Puritan writer says, \"prevent the birds from flying\nover your head, but you can prevent them making their nests in your\nhair.\"  Which means that while you may not be able to prevent given\nthoughts from darting into the mind, you can forbid their finding a\nhome there.  The danger is not in what comes, but in what is permitted\nto stay.  You have some sense of the training that is needed in certain\nparts of your nature; and if you join that training to the help of God,\nyou can not only cast evil cravings out of your life, you can do\nsomething that is harder still--you can keep them out.  Be careful\nabout companionships.  Have no friendship with him who boasts of his\n\"amours,\" the \"affairs of the heart,\" that he can sustain at the same\ntime.  Shun, as you would a pestilence, the man of unclean speech.  Let\nit be a truth with you which must not be questioned, that the truest\nindication of nobility of character is reverence for womanhood.  By the\nsweet and holy thoughts of your mother, by your sacred love and wishes\nfor your sister, I would remind you of words in which the \"wisdom of\nmany buried ages lingers\": \"Keep innocence, keep purity, and do the\nthing which is right, so shalt thou be brought at the last to thine end\nin peace.\"  May you watch and pray, that you yield not to temptation.\nMay you watch and pray, that you enter not eternity with that stain\nupon the soul which no tears of your own can ever wash away, or time\nblot out of the memory.\n\nAnother way in which we may defile this temple of the body is by the\nhabit of Betting.  We usually speak of \"betting and gambling,\" but the\nlatter term includes and covers transactions so wide in extent, and\ncomplex in their nature, as to make it impossible for me in this\naddress to do more than refer to them.\n\nIt must be understood in the few remarks I purpose to offer on this\nsubject, that I confine them to what I have called the habit of\nbetting.  I shall not affirm that betting is necessarily a sin, but I\ndo state it as my conviction that its tendency and results are\npractically always in that direction.  William Cobbett--than whom no\nman has ever written more sensibly to young men--says that \"betting is\nalways criminal in itself, or in what it leads to.  The root of it is\ncovetousness, a desire to take from others something for which you have\ngiven, and intend to give, no equivalent.\"  These statements may be\ndebated, but they appeal to me as essentially sound.  A young man says:\n\"If I choose to risk a sum of money which I can afford to lose over a\nbet with some one else who can afford to do the same, what has talk\nabout equivalent got to do with it?  What, or where, is the wrong in\nsuch a transaction?\"  This is a test question, and I am disposed to\nanswer it by saying that I do not think any young man who takes himself\nseriously will urge it; and when put on a lower plane, the closer you\nexamine it the more rotten it is found to be.  Is it wrong to cultivate\nand indulge a habit that inevitably leads to bad results?  And that is\nwhat betting does, apologize for it as you may.  Putting aside for the\nmoment any considerations about the money you can afford to lose, you\ncannot afford, either in your own or in the interests of the community\nof which you are a part, to take the moral risks that are involved in\nbetting.  It is to insult our intelligence to deny that,\ncomprehensively speaking, the basis of betting is cupidity, and\ncupidity of a particularly dangerous kind.  There may be exceptions,\nbut they are scarcely worth mentioning; whatever may be the inception\nof the habit of betting, it almost inevitably roots itself as greed;\nand it is greed that consumes character like a furnace.  It is the\nblack altar on which everything worth being must suffer immolation.\n\nI was told some time ago of a place of worship which had a\nbilliard-table on its premises.  Provided at the suggestion of the\nminister with the best of intentions, it was soon turned into a means\nof betting.  The managers were obliged to take the matter into serious\nconsideration, and out of a regard to the susceptibilities of the young\nmen who used the table, they decided not to prohibit stakes upon a\ngame, but to insist that all winnings should be handed over to the\nHospital Fund.  The room was soon comparatively deserted.  The interest\nwas not billiards, so much as billiards plus the money won or lost in\nbetting on billiards.\n\nWhen I am told that to stake a trifle upon a game is not for the sake\nof winning money, so much as to give the due seasoning of excitement to\namusement, I have to remark that in a few cases this may be so, but it\nis not the explanation of betting.  Almost entirely it comes to mean\nthe desire to win money for which we have given, and intend to give, no\njust equivalent.  That almost deserted room on the church premises\ntells the truth about the whole squalid business.  Almost any kind of\namusement, not accompanied with betting, is, to an increasing number of\npeople, as insipid as water is to the palate of a brandy-drinker.  In\nthe case of young men the habit does two things: it gives rise to false\nand ruinous impressions, and it murders the soul.  As touching the\nformer, it tempts a young man to think he can get a living, and a\nflourishing one, without working for it--a greatly coveted science in\nthese days.  It seems so much easier to put money in the pocket this\nway, than by honest toil with head or hands, or both.  The notorious\nfact that betting strikes at the root-principle of worthy and strenuous\nlabour, is not the least of the vicious features of this many-sided\nevil.\n\nIt also creates the most hopeless form of selfishness, and it grows by\nwhat it feeds on.  The avarice of betting destroys the best part of us.\nAs I have said, it kills the soul.  Who, indeed, can call that which is\nleft in the confirmed gambler, a soul!  It is rather, as one well\ndescribes it, \"a shrunken, useless organ, a noble capacity sentenced to\ndeath by an ignoble passion, which droops as a withered hand by the\nside, and cumbers Nature like a rotten branch.\"\n\nTo my thinking, it is a waste of time to ask, and it is an abuse of\ntime to discuss the question, wherein the wrong or evil of betting\nconsists.  The practice has evil consequences, and evil consequences\nonly; and they necessarily become the more evil the more widely it is\ndiffused throughout society.  What other proof of wrong does a\nright-minded person ask?  My estimate of the effects of betting is such\nthat I would neither employ nor trust any man who is addicted to it.\n\nI hope and believe that I am talking to young men who have never\ntouched this dangerous thing.  Continue to be wise.  Others, it may be,\nhave ventured a little way.  My message to you is, turn away from it,\nanother step may make retreat impossible.  As you value the things that\nrightly enter into life for attainment and possession--honest\nenterprise, true success, worthy ambition, upright character, peace of\nmind, and hopefulness of outlook--bind these words about your neck,\nwrite them upon the table of your heart: \"He that getteth riches, and\nnot by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end\nshall be a fool.\"\n\nAnd once more, we may defile the temple of the body by Drunkenness.  Or\nif this term, and the state it connotes, be unduly aggressive, let me\nsay by an intemperate use of strong drink.\n\nThere are those who tell us that any use which passes it through the\nlips is intemperate.  If I offer a word of criticism on this position,\nit is because I want the assent of your reason in the few things I have\nto say about this part of the subject before us.  The first condition\nof permanent reform is, that it shall be founded on truth.  The\npeculiar temptation, it has been said, of the ardent reformer is to\nexaggerate.  Intense feeling is apt to build upon a half-truth--the\nunsafest of all foundations.  It is one thing to insist upon the evils\nthat are inseparable from an intemperate indulgence in strong drink, it\nis quite another thing to assert that it is evil, and evil only, to\ntouch it at all.  The latter order of polemic is always liable to bring\nabout a reaction which is terribly prejudicial to the good we desire to\naccomplish.\n\nI have no warrant to question a man's loyalty to the forward movements\nof our time, who conscientiously for the sake of health, as he thinks,\nor social arrangements, cannot recognize it as his duty to forswear\ndrink altogether.  When a man claims his liberty to be the arbiter of\nhis habits in his home, or in society, for me to arrogate the right to\ncensure him may be impertinence; and, so far as I am concerned, to read\nhim out of Christian consistency may be to make myself, as St. James\nputs it, a judge of evil thoughts.  When a man has reached fifty years\nof age, and has worked hard and lived sparingly, if he should consider\nit advisable to relax somewhat the severities of earlier years, I have\nnothing to say to him unless it be to remind him of the example he owes\nto others, and of the need there always is to keep before us the\nwarning: \"Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.\"\n\nI think it right to put this side of the question in its just evidence,\nand having done so I willingly dismiss it with the remark that I am not\ntalking to middle-aged nor to old men.  My appeal is to young men, and\nI say to you without qualification, without a suspicion of mental\nreservation, you do not need strong drink.  There are conceivable\ncircumstances where it may be medically prescribed, but such\nprescription from competent men has well-nigh reached the\nvanishing-point.  Near as any statement can get to its ultimate, I\naffirm that you never have need of this drink.  Keep it, then, out of\nyour blood in your threshold years, and you will have less or no\ncraving for it at all in those that are travelling your way.  If you\nshould imagine that you inherit the craving, there is, at any rate, one\nrampart which, if held, the craving cannot force--that is, total\nabstinence from the thing craved.  Range yourselves with the\nabstainers, and be proud of your legion.  It will be better for you in\nevery way, whether it be in physical health, mental efficiency, moral\nforce, or spiritual attainment.  Settle it with yourselves, that there\nare no conditions in your life which can be called normal, and few that\nare abnormal, where you need the drink, and that to trifle with a thing\nso unnecessary, and yet so dangerous, is moral idiocy.\n\nI plead with you to take high ground in your conceptions of the duty\nyou owe to yourselves, and to your day and opportunities.  As a nation\nwe have to conquer drunkenness, or it will go far, as it is doing now,\nto conquer the nation.  And we have a right to look to you young men to\nlead us forth to this great victory.  We have the right to ask you to\nquit yourselves like men in mighty attack upon this devil's trinity of\nimpurity, gambling, and drunkenness.  I have said little in this\naddress on what is called its distinctively religious side.  The\nreligion is in the subject itself.  Realize what it is that needs to be\ndone in yourselves and in the world around you, and I will trust\nreligion to take care of itself.  Face this work of conquest first by\nself-conquest, and you will find the need of a help not yourselves and\ngreater than yourselves.  And the help will come: \"I can do all\nthings,\" said the Apostle, \"through Christ which strengtheneth me.\"\n\n\"I wish he would find the point again in this speaking man, and stick\nto it with tenacity, with deadly energy, for there is need of him yet.\"\nSo wrote Thomas Carlyle of the preacher.  \"Could we but find the point\nagain--take the old spectacles off his nose, and looking up discover,\nalmost in contact with him, what the real Satanas, the soul-devouring,\nworld-devouring devils are.\"  I have tried, however imperfectly, yet\nfaithfully, to talk to you about three of these \"soul-devouring,\nworld-devouring devils.\"  Give them no inch of foothold in your life,\nand do a brother's part for others who, perhaps weaker than you, are\nwaging the same conflict in the interest of the things that are sacred,\nand kingly, and divine.  And when your brief mortal life is over you\nshall have the noble satisfaction of knowing that you have done\nsomething to make sure and real the power of that new day when our\n\"sons shall be as plants grown up in their youth, and our daughters\nshall be as corner-stones, polished after the similitude of a palace.\"\n\n\n\n\nTEMPTATION AND RESPONSIBILITY\n\n\n\"Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot\nbe tempted with evil, and He Himself tempteth no man; but each man is\ntempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed.\"--St.\nJames i. 13, 14.\n\nV\n\nTEMPTATION AND RESPONSIBILITY\n\nSt. James has been called the Saxon of the goodly company of the\nApostles.  It is in many ways a happy description.  We associate the\nterm with thought, rugged, perspicuous, easily grasped, and expressed\nin the shortest and most readily understood words.  St. Peter, in a\nreference to the letters of his \"beloved brother Paul,\" warns the\nreader of these letters that there are things in them hard to be\nunderstood, which the ignorant handle only to their own confusion.  If\nthe former part of this warning were written about the Epistle General\nof St. James it would be dismissed at once, as having neither point nor\napplication.\n\nSt. James does not think deeply, but he thinks clearly.  He knows what\nhe wants to say, and he says it in language that he who runs may not\nonly read but understand.  He touches most of the great themes that\nengage the commanding mind of St. Paul, and settles them--for no other\nword so well describes the process--in his own characteristic fashion.\nIn the passage before us he attacks the most difficult subject which\nthe mind of man can approach, and disposes of it to his own\nsatisfaction in some forty-two of the shortest and most decisive words\nto be found in any speech or language.\n\nIt is well to come across a man like this occasionally; he may not be\nprofound, but he has abundance of common-sense.  We see him just as God\nmade him--genuine, sincere, calm, and clear, touching with searching\nwords, if not quite the roots of things, yet, without a doubt, the\nthings themselves.  He was the Apostle of that myriad-headed person\nknown as the \"man on the streets.\"  St. Paul, however, to the end of\nhis manifold and strenuous life, was always the student and the\ntheologian.\n\nAnd in nothing does the difference between these two men better\nillustrate itself than in their separate treatment of what is called\nthe Problem of Evil.  St. Paul speaks of evil as the law in his nature,\nas so entrenched there that the good he would do he does not, and the\nevil he would not do he does.  Unless we weigh these words carefully,\nwe overlook the significance, in the connection before us, of this term\nlaw.  It implies that evil is, somehow, a part of our being; a\nsomething not our higher selves, and yet so deeply rooted in our\nnature, that like an unsleeping sentinel must a man be on his guard\nagainst it to the end of his mortal days.  Were it not for this\nApostle's mighty faith in Him who can give us the victory through our\nLord Jesus Christ, we should say that he stands ever on the margin of\nthat dark river in whose mysterious deeps are possibilities of\nwickedness and disaster, the sorrow of God, and the despair of man.\n\nSt. James would not have put himself in opposition to a single thing\nthat St. Paul wrote about the seat and nature of evil, but to him the\npractical question was not its source but its control, and concerning\nthe latter he is sufficiently explicit: \"Let no man say when he is\ntempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil,\nneither tempteth He any man; but every man is tempted, when he is drawn\naway of his own lust, and by his own lust permits himself to be\nenticed.\"  You will notice that in this passage the writer puts no\nemphasis on outward inducements to sin; he says nothing, for example,\nabout a devil.  I do not assume that he would have questioned for a\nmoment the traditional teaching about Satan.  But he will allow no man\nto transfer to circumstances, inheritances, temptation, or devil, a\nresponsibility which is his own.  Comprehensively speaking, he declares\nthat if men do wrong it is because they want to do wrong, or because\nthey are not disposed to make a creditable fight against it.  So far as\nmen know the right, the right they can do, if they will.\n\nWe can readily imagine how this Apostle would handle one of the modern\nand enlightened critics, who appear to think they have but to refuse a\nname in order to get rid of the thing which the name is held to\nrepresent.  \"You tell us,\" he says to a man of this order, \"that there\nis no devil; that to think or talk of him in any personal sense, say in\nthe sense that Milton incarnates him in _Paradise Lost_, is mischievous\nand absurd.  That sounds formidable, but to what does it amount?  The\nword, or name, 'devil,' you, tell us, simply connotes a principle.\nVery well, take the initial letter from the word, and what have you\nleft?  You have 'evil,' and that is the only thing about which you and\nI need concern ourselves.  In what degree have you advanced 'liberal\nthought,' as you choose to call it, by telling us there is no devil,\nwhile yet there is so much that is devil-like in yourself and in us\nall?\"\n\nThe Apostle leaves a legion of questions unanswered, and, as compared\nwith St. Paul's treatment of this complex problem of moral evil, he\nmoves on the surface.  But he is himself; and, in his plain and terse\nfashion, he forces upon our attention one truth which, on the principle\nthat an inch of fact is worth a yard of theory, is, if well in the\nmind, more useful than acres of metaphysics which leave us very much\nwhere we were.  His broad affirmation is, that temptation does not, and\ncannot, put sin into a man's mind or heart.  Temptation does not make,\nit only finds.  \"The prince of this world cometh,\" said our Lord, \"and\nhath, or findeth, nothing in Me.\"  And His Apostle takes his stand on\nthe position, that temptation does no more than reveal the latent evil\nwithin us, waiting its opportunity to come out.  I mind me of a remark\nI once read, and which has suggested whatever of worth there is in this\naddress.  \"As to the notion,\" says the writer, \"that our adversary the\ndevil puts evil thoughts in our mind, I contend that neither God nor\ndevil does it.  God would not, the devil cannot.  The most that the\nenemy of our souls can do, is to stir and use the possibilities already\nthere.\" [1]\n\nThis, if I rightly apprehend his meaning, is essentially the contention\nof the Apostle James.  The temptation is to the latent evil what the\nspark is to the inflammable material.  If the material were not there\nthe spark would be as harmless as though it dropped into ice-water.  \"I\ncan hear words, I can see things, but they will have power over me only\nin the measure that something in me answers to the words and the\nthings.\"  \"I was so tempted,\" says a man, \"and I yielded,\" which means\nthat the desire already there came into contact with the opportunity to\ngratify it, and in what struggle there was, the desire was greater than\nthe will-power put out to control it.  To say that the sight of\nopportunity to do evil often makes evil done may be true, but the sight\ndoes not make the evil, it only discovers the evil ready for the sight.\n\nIn the first place, then, the Apostle admonishes us, that we cannot\nrefer the guilt of our sin, or the responsibility for moral failure, to\ncauses and sources outside ourselves.  We may do that with failure of\nmany kinds, but never in a case of conscious moral obliquity.  The\nApostle James would have agreed with the greater Apostle when he said:\n\"I find a law within me, that when I would do good, evil is ever\npresent\"; but he would not the less have stood his ground and said:\n\"Call it a law if you like, but it is not, and is not meant to be,\nbeyond our control.  It is one thing to be tempted, it is another thing\nto fall.\"  Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust\nand enticed.\n\nLet us allow at this point for a word of qualification, or we may find\nourselves in confusion.  As I have just hinted, we must not confound\nmoral guilt and its consequences with the consequences of troubles and\nfailures over which we have next to no control.\n\nHere is a man, let us say, who is a hard worker, temperate,\nenterprising, and upright.  He is making headway in a certain business.\nBut a powerful combination is formed in the same line, which offers him\nthe two alternatives of absorption or almost certain ruin.  He decides\nto hold out against it, to find possibly after a time that his business\nis gone, and with it his capital, and he himself in a world that\napparently has no further use for him.  Then, soured and bitter,\nnursing a sense of wrong, he gradually parts with his self-respect,\nprobably takes to drink, and goes down below the hope-mark of social\nredemption.\n\nThe man--and you probably have known such an one--may, or he may not,\nhave been responsible for his business disasters.  He had a right to\ntrust to his own judgment, and providing that he did not choose to\nenter the combination, he was justified in making a struggle for his\nown independence.  Whether his decision was a wise one is nothing to\nthe point; it was his decision, and he had the right to exercise it.\nIt brought trouble.  That was a contingency to be reckoned in the risk;\nbut having taken it, he had no right to sacrifice his manhood to his\ntrouble.  He might not be able to resist the strength of the\ncircumstances that selected him for a commercial victim, but he was\nbound to overcome the weakness in himself to which the circumstances\nappealed.  He might not be responsible for losing his business, but he\nwas responsible for losing himself.\n\nWe talk about people doing wrong from force of circumstances.  Well,\nevery man who knows anything about it, has felt something of the touch\nof omnipotence there may be in circumstances.  It is not always either\nkind or wise to try to hearten people who are in difficulties, by\nconcealing or underrating their force and gravity.  It is a terrible\nexperience for a man past a certain age in his life, to find himself in\nthe grip of financial difficulties, and face to face with social\nannihilation.  I have seen men there, and the very thought of it\nunnerves me.\n\nBut past it all, the old saying holds good, there is nothing in life we\ncan afford to do wrong for; and if, in the stress of circumstances, a\nman elects to take a wrong turn, he takes it according to the teaching\nof the text, because the inclination towards wrong is there, waiting\nits turn.  We may sympathize with a man who goes down in his outward\naffairs and social status before the impact of circumstances he cannot\nresist, but we must maintain at the same time, that while circumstances\nmay explain the trouble, whatever it is, they cannot justify\nwrong-doing either to escape trouble or as a refuge when in it.\n\nVictor Hugo declares that for every crisis we have in us an instinct to\nmeet it.  That is a fine saying.  If any man, who has had some moral\ntraining, will obey his first instinct of right, it is marvellous what\npossibilities there are at the heart of it.  If, finding himself after\nthe best he can do apparently defeated, he will take heed and be\nquiet--that is, do the best he can with what is left, and trust God--he\nwill also find that the resources of the old word are not yet\nexhausted: \"Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the\nupright in heart.\"\n\nHe may have to lose his means, and step down in the world, as it is\ncalled, but let him do it with a clean conscience and a fine integrity;\nand just as \"man's periods are only God's commas,\" so this man's going\ndown is but a more splendid way of going up.  I can imagine that\nnothing is more pleasing in the sight of Heaven than to see uprightness\nonly the more enlightened, quickened, and made imperative by the\ntroubles and vicissitudes of life.  Let a man keep, if he can, what he\nhas honourably got; but if go it must, let it go rather than attempt to\nsave it at the cost of moral integrity.  Let him say: \"Empty my purse\nif need be, but fill my soul; take my world, but spare my life; darken\nmy circumstances, but keep bright my spiritual outlook.\"  And what are\nthe slights and neglect of a passing and superficial world to a man\nwhose life is in tune with the Infinite, who hears in secret what one\nday will be said from the housetops of time and eternity: \"Well done,\ngood and faithful servant\"?\n\nWe are not always responsible for the temptations that sweep into our\nlife.  I will go further than that, and say that we are not necessarily\nresponsible for what the attack of temptation finds in us; that, in\nsome cases, may be our inheritance, and in others faults of early\ntraining; but we are responsible for what temptation does with what it\nfinds.  For it cannot be repeated too often that temptation never puts\nevil in our thoughts, it only makes manifest the evil that is there.\n\nAnd hardly more do we differ in our features than we do in the things\nwhich, and through which, we are temptable.  We cannot all be tempted\nby the same thing, but all of us can be tempted by something.  You\nremember how Achilles was dipped in the magic water and made\ninvulnerable in all parts except one.  \"Where the finger and thumb held\nthe heel it was dry, and, though the arrows glanced off from the other\nparts of the body, when they pierced this one soft place he was\nwounded, and that unto death.\"\n\nEach one of us has his vulnerable place, and it is our life-business to\nguard it.  The weak place is there; the arrow will be aimed at it, and\nif it find the place it is aimed at, we may refer the blame to what or\nwhere we will, it does not affect the truth, that the blame is nigh\nunto us, even at our own door.\n\n\"Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot\nbe tempted with evil things; neither tempteth He any man with, or unto,\nevil things; but every man is tempted when he is drawn away, when he\nyields to his own lust, and by it is enticed, by it is overcome.\"\n\nWhich means, in the second place, that not only is a man his own worst\nenemy, but that no enemy outside of man's self can vitally hurt him,\nexcept so far as he places himself within the enemy's power.  This is\nnot to say that other people cannot hurt us; still less is it to say\nthat it is not their will and wish to hurt us.  To commit oneself to\nsuch a statement would be to speak in the teeth of the commonest\nexperience of human life.  There are men, and women too, who have the\nwill, the wish, and the power to hurt us.  They are, as Christ said of\nthis brood in His day, of their \"father the devil.\"  To say a kind word\nabout any one, to do a generous turn for others on the road of life,\nwould be to them a positive task.  There are people with whom I would\nas soon think of entrusting anything I held sacred, as I would think of\nrisking the blood in my veins to the instinct of a deadly snake.\n\nNor is it want of charity to say this; it is want of sense to deny it.\n\"Beware of men\" is as much a word of Jesus as His command to love one\nanother.  There does not seem to be in the mind of most people any\nclear conception of the attitude of Christ towards sin and sinful\npeople.  And this confusion is at the bottom of many of our speculative\ndifficulties, as well as of our practical troubles in the Christian\nChurch.  When we are convinced that a man's policy and his motives as\ntranslated in his policy are inimical to the highest interests of\nothers, to the commonwealth of good, then we owe it to ourselves and\nothers to speak and act upon our conviction.\n\nThere are men, again, whose vested interests mean our hurt, working\nthrough institutions that are co-extensive with our civilization.  Look\nabout you on the effects of drink, and then think how attractive its\nsurface accessories are made.  Consider the men who make fortunes out\nof lust itself; how seductive they make the openings and avenues which\nend in the lethal chambers wherein are dead men's bones.  We have in\nour midst a well-organized body of men who make it their business for\nmoney to trade upon and to tempt the lowest and most dangerous forces\nof our carnal nature.  And what does it mean when these men are, by the\nacknowledgment of public sentiment, the representatives of what is\ncalled \"legitimate business\"?  It can only mean that the sentiment\nwhich should be the active and protective side of a worthy manhood is\nbeing used to destroy it.\n\nBeware of men who say to evil: \"Be thou my good!\"  Reckon with the fact\nthat in so far as we stand for anything in a life worth living, there\nare people who have the will, the wish, and the power to do us hurt.\n\nAnd yet, I say again, they can hurt us vitally--mark the word\nvitally--only so far as we place the opportunity within their power.\nWe have to hurt ourselves before we can be hurt by anything outside us.\nWe have to be our own enemy to give the enemy his advantage.\n\"Nothing,\" says St. Bernard, \"can work me harm except myself; the harm\nI sustain I carry about with me, and never am I a real sufferer but by\nmy own fault.\"\n\nRecall once more the word of the Lord Jesus, how He said: \"The prince\nof this world cometh, and findeth nothing in Me.\"  The prince of this\nworld crucified Christ; he made Him the victim of the fear, the hate,\nthe murderous fury of the organized religious classes of that day.  But\nthe prince of this world could not pass by a shade the extent which the\nsaving purpose of the Saviour had Himself decreed and set fast.  When\nthe prince of this world came to the soul of the Saviour, the power of\nthe prince of this world had reached its limits.  Had there been, I\nwill not say sin, but a sin; had there been the shade of a suspicion of\nwhat the world significantly calls a \"past\" in that Soul, the devil\nwould have had his leverage, and the Divine Saviourhood would have\nthinned out at the most in the ordinary tragedy of a human martyrdom.\n\nThe emissaries of the prince of this world could lay violent hands on\nthe body of Christ--that was permitted for your salvation and mine; but\ntheir power became impotence when it approached the soul, and there is\nwhere the battle is won or lost.  \"Fear not him who can kill the body\nonly, but fear it\"--that is the better translation--\"fear it, the evil\nprinciple within thee, that can cast both body and soul in hell.\"\n\nWe are told that a man once wrote the late Mr. Spurgeon saying that\nunless he received from him within two days a specified sum of money,\nhe would publish certain things that would go far to destroy the great\npreacher's hold upon public estimation.  And Mr. Spurgeon wrote back\nupon a postcard: \"You, and your like, are requested to publish all you\nknow about me across the heavens.\"  There is a world of meaning in the\nanswer.  This master in Israel had his enemies, who would have hailed\nas a providence any report, true or false, which could have been\neffectually used to strike at the message through the man.  And it was\nbecause the man had not made himself his own enemy, in the past or in\nthe present, that he could look this devil in the face and tell him\nthat he was the devil.\n\nThis is how one man came out of an encounter with an enemy outside him;\ntake another case where the enemy of a man was the man himself.  He\ncame to me, this man, when I was working in the South of England.  In a\nbitter temper he told me that he had been dismissed from a business\nhouse in the town.  He had left a good situation six months before he\nentered this house, and was now ousted to make room for one who had\nresented his appointment from the first, and had been his enemy.  I\nspoke, as I promised to do, to the employer, with whom I had some\ninfluence, and in whose integrity I had implicit confidence.  \"It is an\nabsolute misrepresentation of the facts,\" he assured me.  \"The man,\" he\nsaid, \"got his situation on no better than false pretences.  He had not\nbeen with us a week when it was evident that he was quite unequal to\nthe duties of the position he had professed himself competent to\nfulfil.  It is nonsense to say that any one has ousted him; the truth\nis, that he has wasted his time, and thrown away his opportunity, so\nthat in what should be his own line he has neither training nor\nproficiency to be other than a low-placed man.\"\n\nThis is a single line in a large literature.  It was a foolish use of\nthe past that became the man's enemy the moment his present required\nsomething better.  And this is an instance of how we can so become our\nown enemy, as to make it impossible for God to be our friend, in the\nsense we imagine God should be our friend.  It would be, not the law\nwhich is the deepest expression of divine thought and love, but immoral\nforce, if we could waste the time sacred to the preparation for a\nbetter position, and yet be ready for the position when it comes our\nway.  God can forgive the waste, but God cannot give us back what the\nwaste has lost out of our life.  We must never lose sight of the fact\nthat divine forgiveness cannot be vulgarized into impunity.  I do not\nsay for a moment, in the case of a middle-aged man, that the enemy he\nhas made of himself is irredeemable and hopeless.  I believe that a\nman's own effort and the grace of God can change this enemy into a\nvaluable friend, if a man is man enough to accept and honour the cost\nof the great transformation.  But how few people, past a given age,\never do quite conquer the inward foes whose sinister power is of their\nown cultivation?  For one man who goes down before an outward enemy,\nthere are a score who lay themselves in the dust and keep themselves\nthere by acts that become habits, and habits that become character, and\ncharacter that hardens into something that looks like destiny.\n\nThis, therefore, suggests a closing word to you younger people.  Many\nof you to whom I speak are in the making.  You are on the threshold of\nyour manhood, with practically the future in your own hands.\n\nI often recall my faltering energies in thought of a remark I once\nheard the revered principal[2] of my college make to a body of students\nwho were about to enter upon their ministry: \"Gentlemen,\" said he; \"you\nmay be able to offer twenty good reasons in after life for your\nfailure, if fail you do.  People will not concern themselves about your\nreason, they will simply look at the fact that you have failed.\"  The\ntruth in this remark is preeminently a truth for young people.  The\nworld, on one side of it, is very hard and cruel.  It will apologize\nfor failure in the abstract under tricks of speech, and cant about\ncharity, but for individual failure it has no mercy.\n\nListen to one who has to fight bitterly his own self-made enemies, when\nI counsel you to begin straight from the beginning.  Beware of making\nto-day the enemy of to-morrow.  The present, says a wise man, has\nalways got to pay the purchase price of the past.  Never let the\ntemptation overcome you, to take a \"short and shady\" cut to the\ngratification of desire, or in the achievement of what is sought as\nsuccess.  Nothing in life is unrelated, and everything you do which\ncannot pass the bar of your higher self is not only sin, but also a\nblunder.  It may sleep to-day, but it sleeps to wake.  When you can\nleast afford it, it will be more than awake, it will be hungry.\nEducate and cultivate your conscience, and never disregard its voice.\nKeep your heart with all diligence; keep your heart, and always have in\nit room for God.\n\nIn the open, and in the secret of your life, watch and pray that day by\nday you may say with Spurgeon: \"Write, if you like, all you know about\nme across the heavens.\"  And while you may have your enemies in men and\ncircumstances, they will be as nothing and vanity compared with the\nfriend you have in God and yourself.  Never seek to refer your moral\nresponsibility for actions to influences outside you.  Settle it once\nand for good, that a thing can radically hurt you there only so far as\nyou place yourself within its reach.  Yield yourselves to the Power\nthat can lift you by your real need, the need of regeneration, which\ncan so change your nature that while you are free to many things that\nhave in them the elements of temptation, you are yet too free to want\nthem--the Power which can enable each one of us to say: \"I fear no foe,\nbecause, by the help of God, I am my own friend.\"\n\n\n\n[1] George Dawson, M.A.\n\n[2] Rev. Dr. Falding--_Clarum et venerabile nomen_.\n\n\n\n\nSELF-RESPECT AND COMPANIONSHIPS\n\n\n\"Is Saul also among the prophets?\"--1 Samuel x. 12.\n\nVI\n\nSELF-RESPECT AND COMPANIONSHIPS\n\nEver since we could hear or notice sayings and things, and for long\nbefore we were here to do either, this text has been in the world as a\nkind of proverb-question: \"Is Saul also among the prophets?\"  If a man\nsays something which is decidedly in advance of his generally-accepted\nreputation for intelligence and good sense, if he surprise us by doing\nsomething which rises sheer above the plane of his average life, if we\nhappen to find him in company that is made up of men who are his\nsuperiors in attainments, character, and social importance, we mark the\nunlooked-for circumstance by repeating this text.  We say: \"How does\nthis come to pass?  What is the explanation?\"  \"Is Saul also among the\nprophets?\"  If we think out our impression, it means that the\nunexpected has somehow happened; that the man must have more in him, or\nabout him, than hitherto he has been credited with having, or by some\naccident he is found where we should least have thought of looking for\nhim.  In a word, the popular interpretation of Saul among the prophets\nis that Saul had taken a step up.  The truth is, the text may mean that\nhe had taken one down.  It all depends who these prophets were.  Before\nwe can say that it is to a man's credit to be found in a certain\ncompany, and that because he is there we must revise our judgments\nabout him, we must know what the company is, and why for the moment he\nis in it.  It is also well to reflect that a man may be in a company\nand not of it.\n\nIn these prophets of the time of Saul, when we first meet them, we have\nthe type which prophesying had first assumed on Canaanitish soil.  They\nwere men, as Professor Cornill in his suggestive book tells us, after\nthe manner of Mohammedan fakirs, or dancing and howling dervishes, who\nexpress their religious exaltation through their eccentric mode of\nlife, and thus it comes that the Hebrew word, which means \"to live as a\nprophet,\" has also the signification \"to rave, to behave in an unseemly\nway.\"\n\nThese men lived together in Israel until a very late date in guilds,\nthe so-called schools of the prophets.  They were, in fact, a species\nof begging friars, and were held by the people in a contempt which they\nevidently did their best to deserve.  To Ahab they prophesied\nwhatsoever was pleasing to him to hear; and as one of them came into\nthe camp unto Jehu with a message from Elisha to anoint him king, his\nfriends asked him: \"Wherefore came this mad fellow to thee?\"  Amos\nlikewise indignantly resents being placed on the same level with this\nbegging fraternity: \"I was no prophet,\" he says, \"neither was I a\nprophet's son.\"  And so when the people exclaimed in astonishment: \"Is\nSaul also among the prophets?\" they did not mean: \"How is it that such\na worldly-minded man finds himself in the company of such pious\npeople?\"  Their meaning is better represented in a question like this:\n\"How comes a person of such distinction to find himself in such\ndisreputable company?\"\n\nLet it be understood that these last two or three paragraphs are\nroughly paraphrased from Professor Cornill's book, _The Prophets of\nIsrael_.  My opinion as to how far his reading of this proverb-question\nwill bear criticism is of no value.  It may be open to debate whether,\nhistorically, he has not placed certain hysterical phenomena recorded\nof these prophets much too late.  But whatever scholarship may have to\nsay about his interpretation of our text, the interpretation commends\nitself to my judgment, and it serves the purpose before me.  It has, I\nventure to think, a very timely message for us all, and especially to\nyoung people.\n\nYou have heard the question a score of times, and you will hear it\nagain if you live.  Hear it then, for once, as the remembrancer of this\ntruth--that when Saul was found among these so-called prophets he had\nceased to respect himself, and when a man does that he must either\nrecover himself, or accept moral ruin.  I care not what his exterior\ncircumstances may be; just so far as he fears self-scrutiny is he\nself-damned, and he knows it.  We talk about the \"basis of character.\"\nIt is this, or it is that, according as a man may regard it from his\nstandpoint of morals or religion.  We may call it what we choose, but\none thing is certain, there can be no worthy character where we have\nnot established some right to respect ourselves.  And this right must\nbe born and reared, not out of egotism, nor in religious professions,\nbut in the findings of a cultivated conscience on the motives and\nactions of our everyday life.  A man may have many things, and many\nthings pre-eminently worth having--but as a question of character, if\nhe have not the right to respect himself, that is the lack of the one\nthing which is virtually the lack of all.\n\nI have mentioned religious profession, and it is well to mark the\ncommonplace but important distinction there may be between religion and\nour profession of it.  Religion, while it is a possession of infinite\nworth, may be of no worth to us so long as we know that we are keeping\nback some part of the righteousness which is the backbone of any\nreligion worth the name.  A man's religious beliefs and convictions are\nhis own business.  They are between him and a higher tribunal than\nours.  What he does concerns us; and what he does he is.  It may take a\ntime to identify the true relation between the two, but our instinct\ndecides the question, long, it may be, before the actions appear to\njustify the verdict of the instinct.  Somehow we know through this\nworth-discerning faculty whether a man is trying to be what we mean\nwhen we speak of a good man.\n\nI believe that human character is homogeneous.  It is of one substance\nand quality in each particular person.  Untold mischief has been done\nby excusing the unpardonable in a man, on the ground that in some other\ndirections he is a good man.  If he is ill to live with in the home, or\nis hard and overreaching in his business, if he willingly makes life\nmore difficult than it need be for others, this is conduct which is\ncharacter; and when it is found with a profession of religion, let the\nman, who thus outrages religion, be anathema.  But at the same time,\nyoung people should not conclude too hastily that a man is a hypocrite\nbecause he does some things they cannot reconcile with his profession.\nA man may be a very faulty man, and yet be a genuinely good man.  His\ngoodness does not excuse his faults, nor do his faults destroy his\nclaim to goodness.  I have known many a son judge a father very\nharshly, and find himself in after years glad to find a place of\nrepentance.  If you would have less reason later on to call yourself a\nfool, be told that as yet you are not the best judges of what are but\nfaults on the surface of a man, and what are vices that are the man\nhimself.  The truth about others will out sooner or later; what most\nconcerns you in the meanwhile is to know the truth about yourselves.\nWhile always trying to think fairly, and even generously about others,\nhave you the right to think well of yourselves?  \"It is above all\nthings necessary,\" said the late President Garfield, \"that in every\naction I should have the good opinion of James Garfield; for to eat,\nand drink, and sleep, and awake with one whom you despise, though that\none be yourself, is an intolerable thought, and what must it be as a\nlife experience?\"\n\nThis is his way of saying that, as he puts it, above all things he must\nbe able to respect himself; and therefore there must be no double\nexistence, no secret sin, no side streets off the open thoroughfare of\nhis life, which he preferred to visit when it was dark--for, although\nhis neighbours and friends might not know about them, James Garfield\nwould know about them, and to be this creature whom you despise was\nGarfield's idea of what every rightly ordered man should think of with\nloathing.  It is the word of wise old Polonius over again--\n\n  \"This above all: to thine own self be true,\n  And it must follow, as the night the day,\n  Thou canst not then be false to any man.\"\n\nLet a man have the right to respect himself, and he has that which can\ntake the sting out of his disappointments and the tyranny of victory\nout of his failures.  He may be no great success, as the world\nappreciates success.  He may not make much show at money-getting; the\nposition he fills may not excite much envy.  Whether or not he achieves\nthis order of success will be all the same fourscore years hence.\nThese things, seen and temporal, will be past and forgotten, but that\nwhich he makes himself in the use of them will remain, and that will\n_not_ be all the same whatever it is.\n\nI myself have been through a hard mill.  I know what it is to have to\nstruggle for self-respect over the toil by which I earned my bread.  I\nhave been counted as just a \"hand\" among a few hundred others, of\nimportance only so far as it affected the cost of a certain production.\nBut I say it advisedly, and speaking out of years which have left their\nmark, I would rather have this experience to the finish of my mortal\ndays and all the way, and at the end be able to look my soul in the\nface and say: \"There is no shadow between us, we are at peace\"--rather\nthis, I say, than any such success as I have had, multiplied a\nhundredfold, if it can only turn to conscience to be smitten by it.\n\nI would have you succeed; and by success I mean, for the moment, what\nthe world means by the term.  Why should you not?  There is no\nnecessary connection between a straight life and failure to win the\nkingdoms of this world.  You can be clean and conscientious in your\nmethods, and you can succeed if you have it in you to succeed.  If you\nhave not, scorn the trick of blaming honesty for what is really lack of\nability.  There may be cases where honesty handicaps a man for a time,\nbut they are comparatively few and short-lived in their operation.  But\nlift the definition of success to higher levels, and I assert without\nqualification that with the right to respect ourselves there can be no\nfailure, and without it there can be no success.  That I do or do not\nmake money is a question of gift or the favour of circumstances; that I\nam an honest man haps neither upon accident nor contingency.  It is the\ndeliberate and responsible exercise of my own moral will.  I may make\nmoney or position and be a failure; I may do neither and be a success.\n\nLet me counsel you to hold it true with the great President: \"I must,\nabove all things, have the good opinion of myself.\"  Look up to God and\npray: \"Keep Thou me from secret faults\"; then look in upon yourselves\nand say: \"By the help of God I will make it possible for God to give me\nthe help I ask.\"  To thine own self be true.  Put this estimate upon\nyourself, and whatever price the world may put upon you, time will show\nthat you have no more valuable asset than your own self-respect.  You\nmay not be able to command the declarative success upon which the world\nplaces its emphasis, but you can always deserve it.  He is the great\nman who can say, and mean it, I would rather be beaten in the right\nthan succeed in the wrong.\n\nSaul had ceased to respect himself, and this very probably supplies the\nexplanation of his being found in this questionable company.  Bear in\nmind who, and what, these so-called prophets were, and you gather the\nforce of the surprise with which it was asked: \"Is Saul also, the king,\nthe Lord's anointed, in the company of men like these?\"\n\nFor in this connection it suggests the influence of companionships.\nThere is a well-known saying that a man is known by the company he\nkeeps, and it is truer than many sayings that are oftener on our lips.\n\"Do you think him beyond further effort?\" I said lately to a good man\nconcerning one in whom we were both interested--a young man fast\nheading towards ruin.  \"I am afraid there is, humanly speaking, no\nhope,\" was the answer; \"he has taken up with company that forbids it.\"\n\nWhen we are young we are apt to evolve friendships out of our\nimagination.  We do not so much prove them as create them, according to\nthe impulses and undisciplined generosities of our disposition.  It is\nonly time, here as elsewhere, that can teach us how much there is that\nis human about the best of friends.  But how much may have been done,\nfor better or for worse, before we realize that the angels have gone\naway only because they were never here?  As we get older outside\nfriendships count for less.  Life fills with other interests, or it\nempties in a sense friendships can never fill.  If we who are older\nhave carried into the later years one or two, or two or three,\nwell-laid, well-tested and useful friendships, let us be very thankful,\nand cherish them.  They are pearls of great price, for no friends are\nlike old friends, and as they drop off we have to make the best we can\nof acquaintances.  It is when we are young that we have the genius for\nfriendships; they are, indeed, a necessary part of our life.  And\nwhether or not it is much use to warn young people about the formation\nof friendships, the warning is seriously needed.  Much will be\ndetermined by affinities and by mutual sympathies.  You may have to\nsample many friendships before you find a friend.  And while it is\ndifficult, not to say impossible, to lay down rules where affinities\nare involved, one thing you can do, you can allow the moral instinct to\ndecide, as it can decide, whether in the real interests of character a\ngiven friendship is worth cultivation.  If you realize that you must\nsurrender something of your better self to be the friend of a certain\nperson, you will be almost sure to establish that friendship at your\nperil.  It is far harder to save your life than it is to lose it, and\nthe chances are, not that you will lift the friendship up to your\nlevel, but that it will pull you down to its own.\n\nThese remarks on the general subject of personal friendship are\nwarranted by its importance.  But there is another aspect of it which,\nas a question of widespread and deep-seated influence, is even more\nimportant.  And it is one that is too rarely touched in or out of the\npulpit.  There is something which begins with only an acquaintance, but\nit readily grows into more, and that more is supplied at a heavy cost\nto the individual and to the community.\n\nIn a well-known passage in one of his letters, St. Paul asks: \"What\nconcord hath Christ with Belial, or what part hath he that believeth\nwith an infidel?  Wherefore come out from among them, saith the Lord,\nand be ye separate; touch not the unclean thing.\"  Both the question\nand the admonition apply to personal friendships and to other\nrelationships, such as marriage, social and business intercourse.  But\nit has another and wider application.  They refer to the general\nattitude of our thought, our bearing towards interests and people whom\nwe have reason to believe are hurtful themselves and represent hurtful\ninstitutions.  For me to call myself a Christian, and yet be on terms\nof apparent friendship, of easy good nature and tolerance of men and\nthings that stand for Belial, that are Belial, is one of the most\neffective ways I know of crucifying Christ afresh, and putting Him to\nopen shame.  Whatever the King of Israel might think of his company,\nthe fact that he was in it gave to their worthlessness a new tenure of\nexistence and to their wickedness an added licence.  He did not make\nthem better men, but they made him a worse man.  And for us to appear\nto countenance wrong things, so as to favour an impression that\npossibly they are not so wrong after all; to strengthen the wickedness\nwhich would hide itself behind the sinister expression, that the \"devil\nmay not be so bad as he is painted,\" is to be on the side of the devil.\nIt is to hearten the foes of good and perplex and discourage the\nenemies of evil.\n\nIn that remarkable book, _Mark Rutherford's Deliverance_, the writer\nspeaks of a day when politics will become a matter of life or death,\ndividing men with really private love and hate.  \"I have heard it\nsaid,\" he tells us, \"that we ought to congratulate ourselves that\npolitical differences do not in this country breed personal\nanimosities.  To me this seems anything but a subject of\ncongratulation.  Men who are totally at variance ought not to be\nfriends, and if Radical and Tory are not totally but merely\nsuperficially at variance, so much the worse for their Radicalism and\nToryism.  Most of us,\" he goes on to say, \"have no real loves and no\nreal hatreds.  Blessed is love, less blessed is hatred, but thrice\naccursed is the indifference which is neither one nor the other, the\nmuddy mess which men call friendship.\"  The truth underlying these\nwords is put in a severe form, but there is truth in it.  Our\ncompromises in politics, and the consequent slow and doubtful progress\nwe make in social conditions, have many explanations, but the abiding\none is, that at the moral root of things we have not, as Mark\nRutherford means it, those real loves and hatreds which vitally\ninfluence conduct.  Take any wrong that happens to appeal to your sense\nof indignation, and ask why it continues? in what does it get its lease\nof existence?  And the answer is, the fact that we have too many Sauls\namong the prophets.  The wrong remains because, although we do not\nprofess to be its friends, its friends have no need to reckon with us\nas its foes.\n\nI have already alluded to my experience in a hard school.  Indulge me\nif I return to it for a moment.  My earlier years were spent in a\nLancashire cloth mill.  In it I wrought from morning to night side by\nside with youths of my own age and men who were older.  For the most\npart, young and old, they were practised in almost every conceivable\ncoarse and brutal way of casting their existence as rubbish to the\nvoid.  But I think I can truthfully say that, while I tried to be loyal\nto the conditions of contact, and as a comrade in the ranks was not\nunpopular, yet they knew that neither within those grim walls nor\nwithout them was I of their world.\n\nIt is not easy, sometimes it is very hard, to take up this positive\nposition amid one's daily surroundings.  And it is not only hard to do\nthe thing itself; it may be even harder to do it wisely.  It is not\npleasant to have your conscientious attitudes to things which to you\nare neither expedient nor permissible interpreted by the old words used\nas a sneer: \"Stand aside, for I am holier than thou.\"  Young people\nlike to be what is called \"popular\" with those who touch their lives;\nand within well-defined limits they owe it to themselves and others to\ncultivate the qualities that invite popularity.  If, however, the price\nof popularity is some form of compromise with things that harm and\nthings that hate--then, if you are worth world-room, you will draw the\nline sharply and keep on one side of it.  And that can be done without\ngiving the impression that you are either a prig or a snob.  When you\ngo the right way about it, the attitude I advise is far harder in\ncontemplation than it is in practice.  The real difficulty in eight out\nof every ten of the critical places in life is not what is in them, but\nwhat we imagine is in them.  Let it be felt that the things you hold to\nbe wrong must expect from you neither compromise nor show of\nfriendship; that you are the open and declared enemy of unclean speech,\nfilthy jesting, secret sins, with their hints and implied fascinations,\nbrainless pursuits, frivolous conversation, and low down levels of\nexistence, and, with the exception of those whose enmity it is a\ndistinction to have, people will come to realize that your position is\nneither that of the religious crank nor of self-righteous conceit--that\nit is the expression and outcome of your reverence for whatsoever\nthings are pure and lovely and of good report.\n\nHuman society has no need more pressing than its need of young men and\nwomen with moral courage and religious conviction to take up the right\nattitude to wrong things.  \"Know ye not that whoever will be the friend\nof the world is the enemy of God?\"  When Saul was found in a certain\ncompany he had ceased to respect himself.  This is why he was found\nthere; and these two things were more than enough to sweep his life to\nits tragic close.  How many of us have read this man's life-finish?\nLet me suggest to you something new to read.  A story that has in it\nmore elemental material than half the fiction that ever was written, or\nhalf the facts that mortgage the attention of a superficial world.\nRead that chapter where Saul, face to face with the last things in his\ndarkened career, and hard upon the Nemesis of his own evil past, seeks\nout the woman with the familiar spirit, and in the words that he\naddresses to the apparition which he conjures up before his distorted\nvision you have the confession of a lost soul: \"The Philistines make\nwar against me, and the Lord answered me no more, neither by prophet\nnor by dream.\"  \"I have read nothing,\" says a well-known novelist,\n\"quite like this man's experience in its utter abandon of lonely\nhorror.\"\n\nThink what you may about the setting of this story, you will be\nstrangely lacking in moral insight if you miss the meaning that\npulsates through the words that were wrung out of Saul in his\nextremity.  They point to the lost, which once lost is lost for ever.\nEven God, I say again, cannot give us back the yesterdays.  Once they\nare gone we can only say: \"That which is written is written.\"\n\nMany of you have practically the best of your chances before you, but\nevery day takes some part of them out of your hands, and gives it to an\nirrecoverable past.  Be jealous about your own self-respect, and do\nonly the things that command it.  Take care of your self-respect, and\nyour success will take care of itself; as also will your\ncompanionships.  \"Seek ye the Lord while He may be found; call ye upon\nHim while He is near.\"  Do not put off and forget, forget and put off\nuntil your clock strikes, and so far as the best of your opportunities\nare concerned, you have to say: \"The Lord answereth me no more, neither\nby prophet nor by dream.\"  Lay hold at once upon the help that comes\nthrough genuine decision for God.  Place yourself in position where God\ncan help you; and you will find that God in Christ denies you nothing\nexcept that which disappoints in the seeking and defeats in the\nfinding.  You will realize that He offers you life; strong, sane, happy\nlife all the way, and at the end the more life and the fuller.\n\n\n\n\nTHE ROYAL LAW\n\n\n\"Howbeit if ye fulfil the royal law, according to the Scripture, Thou\nshalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well.\"--St. James ii. 8.\n\nVII\n\nTHE ROYAL LAW\n\nWhat St. James calls the Royal Law, is mentioned as far back as the\ntime of Moses.  It is one of the two commands to which our Lord gave\nnew incidence, into which He put fresh meaning.\n\nThere has been, I hardly need remind you, endless debate about the\nsource of some of Christ's most characteristic sayings.  Was He\noriginal in His teaching, as we use the word, or was He eclectic,\ngathering together the most luminous things that had been said?  Jewish\nscholars, as we might expect, have not been slow to point out that many\nof the sayings attributed to Jesus, and certainly many of His ideas,\nare to be found in the old Rabbinical writings; that many of His\nhighest truths had been announced by saints and seers of His race long\nbefore He came.\n\nWe need not question that there is truth in this representation.  But\nwe must question the inference from these words, \"long before He came.\"\nFor time has known no such solitude.  He, which is, and was, and is to\ncome, has ever been in the world teaching men how to pray, inspiring\nthem what to say.  He had taught \"them of old time.\"  \"Before Abraham\nwas,\" He says, \"I am.\"  And St. John tells us that \"He was in the\nworld, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not.\"\nOriginality is no mere traffic with words however skilfully\nmanipulated.  There is a language of God transcending all words, and\nintelligible only when we meet Him spirit to spirit in the secret\nplaces of His eternity.\n\n\"Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.\"  Observe the setting of\nthis admonition when first given: \"Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear\ngrudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy\nneighbour as thyself.\"  This word \"neighbour\" connoted something that\nwas a distinct advance in the upward trend of the race.  It did, at any\nrate, a little to lift the Israelite out of himself into the lives of\nothers.  But it meant to him, at the most, only those who were of the\nsame tribe or nation.  In the fulness of time--when the world was\nready--Jesus took up His own word spoken through Moses, and limited in\nits interpretation by the moral intelligence of that day; took up His\nown word, and made it co-extensive with humanity.\n\nThis is what I mean by a language of God transcending all speech.  \"You\nhave been told,\" says Jesus, \"to love your neighbour\"; and to the\nquestion, \"Who is my neighbour?\" He makes the answer reach out to its\nfull circumference--\"Thy neighbour is he or she who bears thy nature.\"\nBy the law which declares that God has made of one blood all the\nnations of the earth, the physical unity of the race is implied; so by\nthe operation of the law of love the moral unity, or, what we now call\nthe \"solidarity of humanity,\" is intended.\n\n\"Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.\"  And I hardly need point\nout, that it is this little word _as_ in the text which gives us pause.\nIs it possible, then, to bring down this command and incarnate it in\nour daily life?  It does not say, \"Thou shalt love thy neighbour with\ncertain arbitrary qualifications of thy own.\"  It evidently means what\nit says: \"Thou shalt love thy neighbour _as thyself_.\"  Is it possible\nto do it?  And many of us are ready to answer, It is not.  Either there\nhas been some mistake in the way it is reported, we tell ourselves, or\nit is useless to try to fulfil it with such natures as ours in such a\nworld as this.\n\nPut it in this way: granted we loved others as we love ourselves--this\nshould be good and pleasant for those who possessed our love, if it had\ngenuine strength in it.  Granted, again, we had the fulness of the\nstrong love of others, that should be helpful to us.  If we may\ncondition the Royal Law in some such manner as this, \"Love them who\nlove us;\" or, \"love them who are worthy of our love,\" the difficulty is\nobviously lessened, if not in fact removed.  But such a limit, while it\nmight amount to prudence, would not reach up to beatitude.  \"If ye love\nthem who love you, what do ye more than others?\"  \"Thou shalt love thy\nneighbour as thyself.\"  But who is thy neighbour?  And Jesus answers,\n\"thy neighbour is he who bears thy nature.\"  This is iteration, but I\nventure it because I want us to confront the real insistence of this\ntext.  They who share our nature may be, and often are, those who hate\nus with or without a cause.  There are people who perpetuate an\nexistence on others which is little better than a moral and physical\ncalamity.  To tell us to tolerate them, not to speak about loving them,\nis like telling us to attempt the impossible.  And yet Jesus did not\nforget these people when He said: \"Love your enemies, bless them that\ncurse you, pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you.\"\n\nWe, then, who say we accept Christ's teaching must accept it.  This is\none of the places where we cannot escape behind some ingenuity of\nexegesis or manipulation of text.  The command is plain.  We can take\nit or leave it.  One thing we cannot do, we cannot re-write it.  \"Thou\nshalt love thy neighbour as thyself.\"  As thyself.  If this but fixes a\nhard standard; or simply indicates the measurement of neighbourly love,\nthen we may almost as well close the discussion--its practical\nattainment is out of our reach.\n\nBut, as some one has very wisely said: \"Love of self must become a\nmedium before it becomes a measure.\" [1]  In other words, we cannot\nlove our neighbour as we ought until we love ourselves as we should.\nOut of love of self \"flow the ingredients which must enter into\nneighbour love.\"\n\nThe text, then, lays down a twofold obligation: to cultivate a right\nlove of self, and to translate this love of self into love for others.\n\nAs touching the first part of this obligation, it is useless to ask\nwhat it is in our neighbour we are to love as ourselves, until we know\nwhat it is in ourselves we are to love.  In what sense is a man to love\nhimself?  Because there is a radical difference between self-love as\ntaught and practised in the world, and the love of self sanctioned and\nregulated by the Royal Law.  Love of self is a right anxiety to secure\nthe things we need in this world.  It is based upon the principle that\nlife is not to be unclothed but clothed upon.  The fact that we are in\nthe world and have to fulfil its desired ends should carry with it\nreverence for our manhood, and the demand for space to work out its\nfull equation.  While the Apostle Paul was always ready to subject his\nrights to the law of love, he was equally careful to assert that they\nwere his rights before he yielded them.  In his care for the weak\nbrethren, he did not become a weak brother.  One of the first things we\nhave to learn, is how to take wise care of ourselves; and then, step by\nstep, a true life is a growth in the knowledge of how so to take care\nof ourselves as to promote the best interests of others.  In this\nmatter of a right love of self, the point of transition at which it\npasses into beneficence is the victory over a self-love which is\nselfishness.  It is really the basal principle of moral government in\nthe world.\n\nBut when this is said, the surest and simplest answer to the question,\nWhat is it in ourselves we are to love? is to say--We are to love that\nwhich God loves in us.  And what does God love in us?  From all we know\nof the divine nature as revealed in Jesus Christ, we are surely right\nin thinking that God loves in us what is most like Himself.  No man can\nstand at Calvary reverently and thoughtfully for five minutes without\nbeing impressed with the truth of a wondrous self-sacrifice.  I met\nwith a remark lately in a story I was reading which fastened itself on\nmy mind.  It was made by a poor, toiling woman who had scarcely\nsufficient means to keep body and soul together: \"I never, somehow,\"\nshe said, \"seem to think a thing is mine until I have given it away.\"\n\nThis is the spirit that God loves, a spirit ever getting further away\nfrom \"miserable aims that end with self.\"  God loves in us the\nself-mastery that scorns to compromise with self-indulgence.  God loves\nin us that which cannot find its true home in the things seen and\ntemporal, but must ever soar out to the things unseen and eternal; the\nthings that live in and wait upon the earnest man and after which he\nmust ceaselessly aspire.  God loves in us the strenuous effort which\nproceeds from the conviction that there is sacred power in every life\nwhich must not be wasted in \"egotistical pride, or in a narrowing\nself-love.\"  From instinct, from the moral consciousness, from the\nScriptures--these we know to be representative of the things that God\nloves.  And we know we are right in loving in ourselves what God loves\nin us.  We also know that no man can wisely love himself until he knows\nthe purifying power of a love that is divine.\n\nIf now I may assume that this exposition of the text shows the ground,\nand defines the sphere of a right love of self, I may further say that\nthe Royal Law does not require us to love in others what it does not\npermit us to love in ourselves.  And we do well to be clear about this.\nMany of us stumble over this text because, not getting at its true\ninwardness, we have an uneasy feeling that it carries us too far.\nOthers try to work up an artificial sentiment, and profess to exercise\na charity which is not theirs to extend.\n\nHere is a man, let us say, who calls himself a religious man, who yet\nnotoriously is a mean and shabby creature.  I once heard this man, well\nplaced and prosperous, boast of having that day become richer by some\ntwelve hundred pounds through an oversight of a solicitor in winding up\nthe affairs of a late client.  I afterwards learned that the mistake\nwas at the expense of a widow and her young children, who, because of\nit, were brought within very measurable distance of want.  Must my love\nfor my neighbour include one callous enough, not only to do a thing\nlike that, but to boast about it?  Must it annex the whole low plane of\nsuch a squalid disposition?  God forbid.  What I hope I should hate in\nmyself I am not asked to love in another.  If a man is base and\nunworthy we are to recognize the fact, however ugly; we are to look the\ndevil in him in the face, and say it is the devil.\n\nBut, on the other side, Christianity admonishes us that our judgments\nof our neighbours are neither infallible nor final.  It has been well\npointed out, that if we \"have found any part of the secret of God's\nmercy shown to us, we shall not find it hard to believe in God's mercy\nfor our neighbours.\"  To realize that the essential thing the Redeemer\nsaw in us and deemed it worth dying for, He sees in them, will help us,\nhowever weary at times in their service, not to weary of it.\n\nIn this command, then, we have the ground and motive for the sacrifice\nof each for the good of all.  We see that it is possible to love our\nneighbour in the sense we are to love ourselves.  We see that the\ncommand which, on the surface of it, seems to urge an unattainable\nexperience, is, in truth, what St. James calls it, the Royal Law that\nbinds us together not only as neighbours, but as children of the same\nAll-Father.\n\n\"Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.\"  Should any one ask, \"Who\ndoes it?\" I answer, That is not the question.  To deny that we can love\nour neighbour in this sense is to deny that we can love ourselves.  Yet\nI know what fate, especially for young men, may lurk in this cold,\nfaithless question.  And I want it to be understood, that my single aim\nin this address--the reason why I have wrestled at this length for the\nmeaning of the passage before us--is to show, that _whether we choose\nto do it or not, it can be done_.  I affirm that this text is a simple\nstatement of the principle of the only rational, helpful life man can\nlive.  And to prevail upon you to admit this, would be to accomplish\nmuch.  To accept it as the truth, that you can love your neighbour as\nyourself, is to win intellectual confidence in the service which your\nday demands of you.  It is to take the sting of death out of the old\nevil question: \"Who does it?\"  Once recognize that Christ asks for\nnothing impossible, when He gave a new and ever-abiding authority to\nthis ancient precept, and the question will not be, Who does it?\nRather will it be, Who can afford not to do it?  For not to do it is\nselfishness, and selfishness is self-defeat.  He who exists only for\nhimself, exists only to injure himself.  It is the fashion now to get\nrid of a judgment to come by telling us that we are our own judgment\nhere.  The latter part of the statement is not the whole truth, but\nthere is truth in it.  The strain brings out the strength there is, but\nshirk it and we have weakness.  Do as we like rather than do as we\nought, and the price must be paid in loss of manhood.  Everything we\ngain for selfishness we must steal from ourselves.\n\n\"Ah me,\" said Goethe once, \"that the yonder is never here.\"  Go deep\nenough into every wrong and sin and you find at its root this\nselfishness.  So many of us degrade life into a heartless scramble.  We\nfight each other because each man, dissatisfied himself, is convinced\nthat his neighbour is getting more than his share.  It may be doubted\nwhether there has ever been a day in the Western world when more people\nwere dominated by the conviction that gain is godliness.  So many about\nus have virtually ceased to put their trust in anything about which\nthey cannot lace their fingers.  With them, dreamers about anything\nelse are cranks, and martyrs for anything else are nuisances.  And this\nreacts upon such apology as they have for more serious thinking.  We\nseem in many ways to be returning to the pagan condition when judgment\nwas not feared and spiritual influences were unfelt.  In novel, drama,\nand much that passes for science, we have the monotonous iteration that\nman is the creature of blind chance under an indifferent sky.\n\nBut this, thank God, is not the whole story.  There is another and\nbrighter side.  If we take a very subdued estimate of our modern day\nand world, I am yet persuaded that never were the saving ideas of the\nSaviour more potent, never have His high aspirations been more ardently\nwelcomed or more strenuously followed than they are now.\n\nPast all human speculations about Christ, men hopelessly divided in\ncreed are yet getting nearer to what He lived believing and died\nbelieving.  In the weariness of so much of the modern world, and in the\nhopelessness of its outlook, I see an age ready to receive anew the\nbaptism of the Holy Spirit.  I see a temper ready to grasp with fresh\nearnestness the thoughts of the \"Living Lord and Supreme Teacher of our\nrace.\"  Men to-day are dreaming like dreams as shone before the souls\nof the ancient prophets, and in the visions of men who have wrought for\nhuman progress since the first days even until now.  Waking dreams of a\nnew and diviner order of society.  A state marked by righteousness,\npeace, and happiness for the whole people; the golden age, when man,\nknowing what it is in himself he ought to love, loves that in his\nneighbour as in himself.\n\nAnd Christianity, which came into the world to fulfil these heaven-born\ndreams, is being openly challenged as never before to substantiate them.\n\nIn the larger aims of our spiritual ideals the \"yonder is never here,\"\nnor, indeed, can it be.  There must always be above us something better\nthan our best.  When we cease to make progress we die, and that, in the\nlanguage of Scripture, is the second death.\n\nIf, therefore, the searching demand of the text confronts us with the\nweakness of our nature, we need not wonder and we need not be\ndiscouraged.  It is the purpose it has in view.  \"It discloses an\nideal, and it reveals an end.\"  If in seeking to realize the ideal and\ngain the end we are forced to know how insufficient we are in our own\nstrength--this, I repeat, is the end it seeks to accomplish in us and\nfor us.  Until our life is in Christ linked on to God, we cannot love\nour neighbour as we ought, because we have not the higher power to love\nourselves as we should.\n\nBut the power is offered us.  And it is for you young men to lay fast\nhold of it, and accept the world's challenge in a way it has never been\nhandled and faced before.  \"Do not talk about the things you believe,\"\nsays the world to us who name the name of Christ; \"convince me that you\nbelieve by what you do.\"  And this is said, not from an indifference to\ndogma, as some would have us think.  It means that a man's beliefs are\nbetween himself and God.  It is what comes out of his belief, that can\nbe reckoned with amid the forces of our everyday life.\n\nYou place in cold sheet one of the loftiest passages of a great\ncomposer before a man sensitive to music, but who does not know one\nnote from the other, and he looks at it with indifference.  You put the\nsheet before a gifted organist seated at his instrument; and as the\nmelody rolls forth in swells of power, then in cadences of persuasive\npathos, the indifference of the man vanishes as he catches his breath\nlike a sob, and feels a prayer he cannot speak.  We say we believe in\nChrist, and men turn aside with indifference.  We live Christ, and men\nlove Him.  It is common enough to find this indifference about\nreligion, and a marked want of what I have called intellectual\nconfidence in Christianity as we preach it from the pulpit.  But I have\nnever yet found a man infidel to the fruits of its spirit, which are,\nlove, peace, goodness, a living faith, and a genuine self-sacrifice.\nBefore men can be expected to become Christ-like, they must know what\nChrist is like, and how far are we prepared to put our lives before men\nas an answer to the question: \"What think ye of Christ?\"\n\nPreach Christ by living Christ.  \"All men,\" says the Koran, \"are\ncommanded by the Saint.\"  And no man ever casts the wealth of his life\nand the crown of his devotion at the feet of Jesus without \"quickening\nthe earth with a diviner life, and uplifting it with a new courage.\"\nOne of the most brilliant of the eighteenth-century poets said: \"The\nlapse of time changes all but man, who ever has been, and ever will be,\njust what he is.\"  Which means that man is by make incurably selfish.\nThis is a lie.  And it is the worst kind of lying, for it represents\nnot only the inability to find good in man, but the inability to\nbelieve that there is good to be found.  My own stand is where thought\nand experience have forced me.  From human nature left to itself I hope\nfor nothing; with that nature remade in Christ I despair of nothing.\nIt all turns on the remake.  And it can be remade: \"As many as received\nHim, to them gave He power to become sons of God: who were born not of\nblood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of\nGod.\"\n\nLet us, therefore, by divine grace, refashion our lives on the mighty\nprinciple of divine love.  And let us settle it as one of the truths\nnever to be questioned, that nothing is worthy to be called love that\ncannot be affirmed of God.  We know what God loves; or we know enough\nfor the practical ordering of our daily life.  Let us love in ourselves\nwhat God loves in us.  This will include for ourselves and others all\nthings which are good for us to have and enjoy; and because it will\nexclude all things that are narrow, mean, and selfish, it will go far\nto raise the world to a power of a new day.  Then, through hearts and\nhomes, through Churches and societies, the Royal Law, made royal life,\nwill solve the problem of the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.\nIt will become the touch of omnipotence that casts out of our life the\nunworthy, by bringing in the opposite virtues, resolving all into\ncharacter which shall transform mankind into one realm over which the\nright and the might of Christ shall at last prevail--\n\n  \"From creed and scheme the light goes out,\n    The saintly fact survives,\n  The Blessed Master who can doubt,\n    Revealed in human lives?\"\n\n\n\n[1] Two or three sentences in this chapter are memorized from a sermon\nI heard years ago, preached by Rev. H. E. Michie, M.A., of Stonehaven.\n\n\n\n\n'HE WAS DESPISED AND REJECTED'\n\n\n\"He is despised and rejected of men.\"--Isaiah liii. 3.\n\nVIII\n\n'HE WAS DESPISED AND REJECTED'\n\nSome two or three years ago the picture, \"He was despised and\nrejected,\" by Sigismund Goeetze, was on view in Glasgow.  In this\naddress I shall try to tell you something about the impression it made\non me; and the reason will be given at the end why I include it in this\nseries.  Some of you may have seen the picture; others may have read or\nheard about it.\n\nThe conception of it appears to have formed itself in the mind of the\nartist out of what ordinarily is a very commonplace circumstance.  He\nhad attended a Sunday service at St. Paul's Cathedral, and heard a\nsermon that made a deep impression upon him; which found his higher\nbeing with something like the touch of an immortal influence.  He\nthought within himself: \"What a real difference a word like this must\nmake in the thoughts and life of those who have been privileged to\nlisten to it.  Never again, surely, can they be as though they had not\nheard it.\"  It was a message, so he felt, to shake men, to arouse them,\nand make them turn on one another and cry: \"Men and brethren, what must\nwe do?\"\n\nUnder the impact of his own emotions and sensitive to his surroundings,\nhe was eager at the close of the service to share with others what he\nvirtually demanded they should impart to him.  But he was grievously\ndisappointed.  Not a word did he hear, not a look did he see on the\nface of a departing worshipper which so much as betrayed the transient\nemotion stirred by dream or romance.  If they had listened to the\ndiscourse, they had evidently forgotten what they had been at no pains\nto remember.  No new experience befell this man of artistic and\nimpulsive temperament.  I heard a sermon a short time ago preached in a\nseaside church, which deeply moved me; a sermon I was thankful to have\nheard, and the like of which I would walk a long way to hear again.  As\nI stood outside the building waiting for a friend, the congregation\ncame out, and I heard the usual interchange of verbal nothings.  The\nonly reference I did hear to the service was from a well-dressed young\nman to a girl by his side, and this is what he said: \"A long-winded\nfellow, that; let us go on the parade.\"  The remark did not unduly\nsurprise me.  \"I wonder,\" said a man to me lately, \"why some people go\nto a place of worship at all; they appear to be as indifferent to what\nis said, sung, or prayed, as the dog that barks is indifferent about\nthe dog-star.\"  In every congregation of fair size there is a strange\nmixture.  But it always includes those whose attention and evident\ninterest do something to compensate for others who show neither.  There\nare elect souls who hear the Word and receive it.  You may not trace\nthe fact by what they say, but you know it by the holiness of\nhelpfulness, which radiates from them like light, and is made by them\nas an atmosphere.  God has not ordained the foolishness of\npreaching--which does not mean foolish preaching--to thin out in the\nmiserable anti-climax of a remark like that of the young man I have\njust quoted.  Fortunately, however, our artist had not sufficient\nexperience of the conventional congregation at a place of worship to\nhave become philosophic about it--which usually amounts to\nindifference.  Judging others by what he himself felt, he thought they\nmust be equally moved.  But instead of having received the preached\nWord, there was nothing, so far as he could discern, to indicate that\nthey had even heard it, while there was much to lead to the conclusion\nthat they had not.  Hence he resolved to repeat the sermon through the\ntranslation of his art.  They should, if he could accomplish it,\nreceive through the eyes what they would not hear with the ears.\n\nSomething like this, we are told, was the genesis of this picture, with\nits central Figure of the Crucified One close by an ancient altar, yet\nimmediately outside a modern building called a Christian church.  There\nHe stands unregarded and silent, but so far as His anguish speaks the\neternal Passion of God, while there stream past Him the clearly-defined\ntypes of a twentieth-century multitude--each, with one doubtful\nexception, as indifferent about who, and whence, and why He is, as if\nHe were one of the stone pillars that support the vestibule of the\ntemple dedicated to His worship.  Poverty sits at His very feet and it\nis not even curious; fashion and vice, toil and sport, science and\nruin, culture and ignorance, want and opulence pass by, and do not so\nmuch as despise and reject Him--for that at least would argue some form\nof interest.  It is the indifference which, as Confucius says, is the\n\"night of the mind--night without a star.\"  I need not linger over the\ntypes.  You may see them any day in a characteristic London throng; you\nmay see them in a less emphasized form in a city like Glasgow.  If I\nmay make one reference to them, let it be where the artist attempts to\nrepresent the attitude of the Churches to the Man of Sorrows.  We have,\nfor example, a high ecclesiastic in one of the sacerdotal communions,\nand by his side there is some order of Nonconformist minister.  The\nlatter is evidently in earnest, not to entreat the attention of the\ncrowd to Him whom they pass by, but to convict his companion of error\nout of their commonly-received Scriptures.  And the great ecclesiastic,\nsleek, debonair, and well preserved, has a bored look on his capacious\nface which says: \"My dear good man, why excite yourself?  I readily\nmake you a present of your contention.  You take your truth and I will\nkeep my position.  As we can settle nothing but ourselves, why not\nsettle ourselves as comfortably as we can?\"\n\nAccording to the artist, each in his own way is in the crowd and of it.\nIt is anything and everything except the Crucified One, as in St.\nPaul's it was anything and everything except the message spoken to\nthose who, having ears, heard not.  How do we explain it, then, from\nhis point of view, that this stream of people, representative of a\nwidespread society, is utterly indifferent to that Figure so pathetic\nin its loneliness, so tragic in its appeal, and almost aggressive in\nits sorrow?  It is possible that not a type on the canvas is to be\ninterpreted as quite ignorant of the letter of the claims made for Him\nwho is yet the Object of the world's indifference.  There is a sense in\nwhich it is true that Christ was never better known than He is in your\nday and mine.  We have the well-authenticated Scriptures which testify\nof Him.  We are more sure that we possess many of His sayings than we\nare sure that the writings known as Shakespeare's plays were written by\na man called William Shakespeare.  In these Scriptures He is reported\nto have said:\n\n\"Before Abraham was, I am.\"  And in another word, that falls like a\nbeam of light on everything He did and said, He tells us that \"the Son\nof Man is come to seek and to save the lost.\"  We have the key-word of\nthe Father's message to the race in the wondrous declaration that \"God\nso loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever\nbelieveth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.\"\n\nWe have a mighty Christian literature which, if it be evolved out of a\nmyth, resolves itself into a miracle.  We have the fact that never\nbefore was Christ so admired, so much quoted, and so generally\napplauded as He is at the opening of the twentieth century.  We have\naccredited thinkers who reject, as they think, all dogmatic theologies\nabout Christ, and yet tell us that the spirit which Christ incarnated\nin His words and actions reveals a God humanity cannot improve upon.\nWe have, moreover, an army of men who are set apart by training, and\nwhat they believe to be their \"calling,\" to preach Christ by precept,\nand to teach Him by a life derived, as they declare, from Him whom they\npreach and teach.  And amid many failures, and motives of the earth\nearthy, these men do not all fail, nor do they all live by bread alone.\nWas there no place in that canvas-crowd for one of those devoted men\nwho, ill-paid, half-starved, and overwrought, toil night and day in\nthat most awful work on this earth, the attempt to rescue and raise the\nlapsed masses of our large populations?  Was there no room for the man\nwho penalizes body and soul to straining-point for words and thoughts\nthat shall inspire and hearten men to steer their lives by the higher\nstars, those eternal principles of truth and right?  Was there no room\nfor a woman of the Salvation Army who is out of some hideous slum for a\nmoment's breathing, before returning to it with a great self-renouncing\nlife of love and healing?\n\nBut take the picture as the artist's impression of the ail-but\nuniversal indifference about Him who is yet declared to be the soul and\ncentre of our Scriptures, our creeds, and our religious life, and how\ndo we explain it?  Or if we put the artist's impression aside, and on\nour own account face the truth which, for the purposes of constructive\nart, he may have exaggerated, is there any less need that we should\nask: Why is Christ despised and rejected of men?  Why is it that they\ndo not come unto Him that they may have life?  The answers are legion.\nTo my thinking, they resolve themselves into practically one.  Before\nwe can know Christ, before we can understand Christ, before we can come\nto Christ, we must come to ourselves.  And not a face on that crowded\ncanvas suggests a hope that he, or she, had taken an honest step in\nthis all-determining direction.  Before I can look to Christ as my\nSaviour I must know that I need a Saviour.  Before I can realize my\nneed of salvation from sin I must realize that I am a sinner.  So much,\nif not all, turns there.  It is not every man who feels that he is a\nsinner because he talks about being one.  But let him feel it, and out\nof the knowledge will come his saving health, or the death that dies.\n\nIt is declared to be the work of the Holy Spirit to convince men of\nsin, and the unbelief growing out of sin.  Analyse the causes of\nindifference about the things that belong to our peace, and you find\nthat for the most part they resolve themselves into sin, and the\nunbelief that follows sin, as consequence comes out of cause.  I know\nwith what impatience the world turns from what is called the\nevangelical teaching about the nature and effects of sin.  And we need\nnot go outside the Church to find the same impatience, not to say\ncontempt.  We have in our pulpits men who represent sin to us as good\nin the making.  It is in some sense a necessary means to an end.  They\nspeak of arrested development, of defect of will, of inheritances and\nsurroundings, of a vacancy as yet unfilled by virtue.  It is hard to\nthink that people held by a half-sceptical pantheism, and the\nrelativity of evil, have ever been face to face with the awful deeps\nand disobediences of their own heart, or have felt the hot breath of\nthe devil on their own cheek.  If we have any worth-discerning faculty,\nwe know when a man is handling certain subjects whether he knows what\nhe is talking about; whether or not, to use an expressive\ncolloquialism, \"he has been there.\"  No man who with the eyes of the\nsoul has looked down that awful cleft that separates between the carnal\nmind and the holy will of God, can use words here under the wasting\nimpression that he knows things.  If Christ only died to save us from\nsomething which, after all, is only good in the making, then the Cross\nof Calvary is the supreme irony of time.  We shall never find a Saviour\nby the road that, at the most, leads but to a martyr.\n\nHere is a man--and he is not an imaginary case--who is married, and has\nyoung people growing up in the home.  He is wealthy, with a reputable\nposition in society.  But there is a sinister something in the\nbackground of his life, and he sets himself to do what he knows full\nwell is an irreparable wrong to an inexperienced and defenceless\ncreature.  He makes no fight against the wicked prompting, and does the\nhurt which if another man were to do to one of his own family he would\nwillingly shoot him dead.  And say when the hurt is done, a\nsearchlight--he knows not whence it comes--is flashed across his soul\nand he sees himself as he is, a base scoundrel before God and man, will\nit help him to think of his sin as good in the making?  For whatever he\nmay become, he has done his part to damn another.  And let his\nconscience become, as it can become, and woe to him if it do not\nbecome, as real as the wicked thing he has done, and his first and\ndevastating question will be, not can God forgive him, but can he ever\nforgive himself?  Let his one hope come to be in some means of\nexpiation, which can give him a degree of rest from the sin by paying\nwhat he can of its wages, and he will begin to realize what is meant,\nnot by the remission of the consequences of sin, but by the remission\nof sin.  He will know the need, where the need is agony, which God in\nChrist has met for us, and which, had He not met, would have left the\nneed something greater than God Himself.  It is when a man must have\npeace with himself or die to all that is immortal in him--it is then I\nwill trust him never again to pass by with unconcern the anguish of Him\nwho bore our sin in His own body on the tree.\n\nSometimes we look at the Lamb of God without feeling that we are\nsinners, and then we have a thousand difficult questions to ask.  At\nother times the burden of sin is so heavy upon us, we see the\nsinfulness of sin so vividly, that we get away from the mere accident\nof place and time as far as it relates to sin, we see sin as God saw\nit, and must ever see it--then it is we look to the Crucified One.\n\"When I feel myself in my heart of hearts a sinner,\" I once heard Dr.\nParker say, \"a trespasser against God's law and God's love; when I feel\nthat a thought may overwhelm me in destruction, that a secret,\nunexpressed desire may shut me out of heaven and make me glad to go to\nhell to be away from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne--then\nwhen I am told that Jesus Christ was wounded for my transgressions,\nthat upon Him was laid the chastisement of my peace, I press my way\nthrough all the difficulties and say: If I perish I will pray and\nperish at the Cross; for if this be not sufficient, it hath not entered\ninto the heart of man to solve the problem of human depravity, and the\nhuman consciousness of sin.\"\n\nI am not seeking to explain or defend what I am saying.  I may try to\nmake it a little more clear before I close.  For the moment I am\nputting before you what I believe to be the truth of very truth.  To\nsome I may be speaking in an unknown tongue, but not to all.  If there\nis one here who, with some years behind him, has ever been in serious\nconference with himself, he knows that there is something radically\nwrong with himself, which calls for something he is powerless to\nsupply.  He knows that the springs of his being have been poisoned, and\nhe has no detergent to make them sweet.  It is the fashion in our day\nto speak of the old description of \"hell-deserving sinner\" as marred by\nexaggeration, if not to say morbid.  I do not fall into that fashion,\nfor it expresses just what I am--a hell-deserving sinner.  When the\ngreat Puritan, John Newton, saw a man taken out to be hanged, he said:\n\"But for the grace of God there goes John Newton.\"  It is when the true\nidea of sin is realized under the convincing power of the Holy Spirit,\nthat the \"necessity of the sacrificial work of Christ will be felt,\nunderstood, and become the one foundation of human hope.\"\n\nDo you say that you have felt nothing of this convicting and convincing\npower?  Then I ask: Have you ever passed through an hour of serious\ninquest with your own soul?  Have you ever tried to know yourself even\nas you are known?  The debate cannot be all on one side.  A man only\nknows that he is ignorant through the need of a knowledge he has not\ngot.  Before I can persuade you that Christ is your Saviour, you must\nrealize that it is a Saviour you need.  Before you can start out for\nChrist you must come to yourself.  And while men make a mock of sin,\nwhile they regard it as a matter of indifference, or profess to explain\nit away under the terms of science and philosophy, we need not wonder\nthat they have so little faith in higher things.  We need go no further\nfor an explanation of the thoughtless unbelief which is eating its way\nlike a festering sore to the heart of our modern world.  If the lusts\nof the flesh and the pride of life sum up the totality of our being\nhere, why should that crowd on the artist's canvas be represented as\nmoved by an anguish that touches no chord in its soul; which is,\nindeed, foreign to its every thought, sympathy, and pursuit?  So long\nas men are indifferent about the very question, Why that anguish? vain\nis the appeal, \"To you is it nothing your Saviour should die?\"  So long\nas men are utterly unconcerned about the fact, and nature, and effects\nof moral evil, then selfishness will remain for men the only recognized\nlaw of self-preservation.\n\nAnd here is where I come into line with the practical side of the\nChristian evangel.  The Cross of Christ is no arbitrary arrangement.\nIt is not the expedient of a system cunningly devised by priest,\ntheologian, or Church.  It is the grimmest, sanest, divinest thing ever\nset up in this human world.  The Cross is symbol of the only Power that\ncan enter the lists against selfishness, and enter to throw it.  And\nlet me plead with you to think about this: every wrong in the world has\nselfishness, if not for its root, yet at its root.  Cast out the\nselfishness which is sin, and you cast out the first and the last thing\nthat stands between us and the new heaven and the new earth.  Think of\nthis, and you will better understand the anguish of Him who carries the\nsorrow, and is wounded in the wounds made by man's inhumanity to man.\nRefuse to think of it, and cease to wonder why countless thousands\nmourn; why the strong oppress the weak; why might is worshipped as\nright; why men seem to fear nothing but the hell of not making money.\nThink of it, and cease to wonder why men's bodies and souls are\nsacrificed in what is little better than a murderous struggle to exist;\nwhy one man has so much more than he earns, and others earn so much\nmore than they have.  Think of it and cease to wonder why our age is\ndistinguished by a bad pre-eminence of restlessness, by feverishness, a\npanting for excitement, and a poisonous atmosphere of pessimism.\n\nThe Cross of Christ means the life that lives in unselfish service as\nagainst the selfishness that is death and defeat.  It means not only\nindividuals and Churches, but the race, redeemed and lifted from the\ndark and narrow life of self, into the life and light of the kingdom of\nGod.  Can we wonder, then, that the rejection of the Cross blasts our\nbeliefs in everything divine and hopeful, and is accompanied everywhere\nby a \"melancholy introspection and lack-lustre view of human life?\"\nRecall then in this connection what I have said about sin, and the\nrelation of Christ's death to the forgiveness of sin.  What I am saying\nnow does not include all that is implied in that relation; but see in\nit what I have just put before you, and you will realize that I am not\ntalking in mere morbid terms, nor in those of theology except so far as\nit is the theology of life.  Long as men are willingly in their\nsin--which means selfishness in all its deadly forms--can we wonder at\nthe unbelief portrayed on that canvas?  Can we marvel why the Christ is\nstill despised and rejected?\n\nIt may be asked, and justly, what are the professed followers of Christ\ndoing to convince men of their need of Him as their Saviour; to\nconvince them by lives that are the evidence of triumph over sin?  What\nare Christian people, what are the Churches doing to fight down the\nwrongs, the hurtful conditions, the curse-centres that degrade men,\nkeep them ignorant, and as by a satanic ingenuity hide the real Christ\nfrom those who most need to find Him, and are the least able to oppose\nthe things that make Him so misunderstood and even unknown?  How far\nare we responsible, not only for the deliberately cultivated wickedness\nof men who choose evil as their good, but for the indifference that\npasses by only because our lives have never compelled its attention?\nThe Church is a Church but to the extent that it is the organic\nexpression of Christ's life, the visible Body of His soul.  What, I ask\nin all faithfulness, are we doing to make real and living to men the\npresence of a Lord who is ever suffering in their sin and for it?  The\nartist was well inspired to give his picture a twentieth-century\nsetting.  What an amount of grim Calvary there is in Glasgow every day\nunder the shadow of our Churches; ah! and behind the sanction of their\npower.  That is the word that should smite us; it is the word that must\nbe said--behind the sanction of their power.\n\nThe world would begin to see Christ, if we ourselves would see Him\ncrucified, not merely in the remote Palestine of the first century,\nbut, I say once more, in this Glasgow of to-day.  In the foul slum, in\nthe haunt of shame, in the abode of crime and wretchedness, in the\nplaces where children are robbed of their birthright before they know\nwhat things mean; in the sweater's den, in the heartless side of\nbusiness competition, in the drink hells, in frivolous pursuits and\nbrainless amusements, in the insolence of wealth, and the sullenness of\npoverty--in every place or thing where despite is done to the Divine\nHumanity.  Let us feel that whatever wrong is done to a single human\nbeing, throughout the world-wide family of man, is literally done to\nJesus Christ, and we shall better understand that central Figure in the\nartist's picture.  Let us see Christ crucified in whatever evil is\ndone, in whatever good is left undone that we could do, and sin will\nbecome to us not a term only, not a thing to be excused and explained\naway, but a real and tremendous horror.  We shall feel it to be what it\nis, a stab struck at the living heart of Jesus Christ.  As it has been\ntruly said: \"Fellowship with Christ's sufferings will become less of a\nmystical phrase, and more of a vital fact.\"\n\n\"To you is it nothing, all ye that pass by?\"  As I sat and looked at\nthat picture, this was the question that oppressed my thoughts.  And\nthen the further question forced itself--Why, in so many cases, and to\nall human seeming, is it just that--nothing?  It is not enough to talk\nof sin, and unbelief, and indifference, outside our life: they are real\nenough, but do they suggest no responsibility on our part?  Let it be a\ncall to prayer, an incentive to unceasing watchfulness lest one should\nbe passing by because there is nothing in us which constrains him, or\npersuades her, to look and be saved, to look and live.\n\nI said at the opening of this address that I would tell you later why I\ninclude it in this series.  I am not sure that I can keep my word.\nWhat has been said will glance from your mind unless you have, like\nLuther, and for the same reason, wrestled with the question: \"How shall\na man be just with God?\"  But assuming that as yet this is outside your\nexperience, still you know the difference between what may but\narbitrarily be called sin, and sin that is what it is called.  Believe\nme when I say that the first, and worst, and nearest of all problems\nfor each man of us, and for societies, is the fact of sin; and that\nwith it no one deals, or can deal, save Him upon whom the chastisement\nof our peace was laid, and with whose stripes we are healed.  What is\nthe exact relation between the death of Christ and the forgiveness of\nsin no one can tell us; but that there is a relation charged with\nredeeming power is not a theory about Christianity--it is Christianity.\n\nI read some time ago that a \"Van Missioner,\" who was preaching\nUnitarianism in the villages of Hampshire, found himself at one of them\ninterrupted by a number of farm labourers, who began to sing--\n\n  \"What can wash away my sin?\n    Nothing but the blood of Jesus!\n  What can make me whole again?\n    Nothing but the blood of Jesus.\n      It washes white as snow,\n      No other fount I know.\"\n\n\nTo the modern enlightenment which patronizes Jesus as a teacher and\nrejects Christ as a Saviour, the theology, or sentiment, in these lines\nis not so much crude as grotesque.  At the best it is but curiously\nreminiscent of the ignorance of a by-gone day.  Doubtless this\nwell-meaning man had much to say worth hearing; but he was talking in\nthe name of religion, and to these villagers there was in it the lack\nof the one thing, which is the lack of all.  Theology apart, these\nsimple folk found in these crude lines the heart of saving truth.  It\nis my conviction that they were right.  In this conviction I live, and\nin it, by God's grace, I trust I may die and live again.\n\n\"I do not despise Jesus: with all that is best in me do I reverence Him\nas one of the world's supreme teachers; but I cannot regard Him as more\nthan that,\" said a friend to me after reading over the manuscript of\nthis address.  \"And yet,\" he added quietly, \"if there is anything in\nChristianity which distinguishes it from any other great religion, it\nmust be near to the place you have been trying to get at.\"\n\n\n\n\n'WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED?'\n\n\n\"What must I do to be saved?\"--Acts xvi. 30.\n\n\"If any man will do his will, he shall know.\"--St. John vii. 17.\n\nIX\n\n'WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED?'\n\n\"When I was well into my teens,\" said a very intelligent woman to me\nsome time ago, \"and for long after I had left them, I listened to\npreachers and preaching; and such powers as I had I put into my\nlistening, for I wanted to get at something I could hold for sure and\nreal in the promises of religion.  I was told Sunday by Sunday to\nbelieve on the Lord Jesus Christ, to trust in Him, and commit to His\nkeeping my soul's welfare.  And as far as I knew what belief meant I\nbelieved; and tried to persuade myself that I was trusting Christ.  But\nI was not conscious that it made any real difference in my life; that\nit gave me anything I had not before.  Hence I gradually came to the\nconclusion that either the preachers could not tell me what it was on\nwhich I had specifically to lay hold, or it was useless for me to\nprosecute my attempt to grasp it.\"\n\nThis woman said what many think, who are as yet within listening\ndistance of our pulpits.  They want to understand what they must do and\nbelieve, to lay hold of that which can make a difference in their life;\nwhich can find in it, or bring into it, something that answers in very\ntruth to what the Bible calls \"the power of God unto salvation.\"\n\nIt is, surely, a reasonable thing to ask.  As religious teachers we can\nhave no right to plead with people to believe what we are not prepared\nto help them to understand.  Some of you may have reason, as you think,\nto endorse this woman's testimony as a fair statement of your own\nexperience.  Can I help you?  Most gladly will I do so if I can.\n\nOne thing should be said, as I come closer to the attempt.  If you are\nreally anxious to find help, guard against mistaken impressions of what\nthat help should be, or can be.  In religion, as in all the deeper\nplaces of human life, one great teacher is experience; and you can\nneither anticipate nor rush experience.  A mother says in answer to\ncertain questions of her child: \"Wait until you are older and you will\nfind out.\"  That, to the child, is no answer at all; but, while the\nchild is a child, it is the only answer there is.\n\nDivine truth is infallible; but, as it has often been pointed out,\nthere is no human infallible apprehension of divine truth.  We have to\nadmit that there may be, and indeed must be, many phases and aspects of\nsaving truth which we cannot comprehend.  There are others, again, of\nwhich we get only distant and fugitive glimpses as we study the Word of\nGod.  But we shall also admit, that these higher reaches of truth are\nnot those alone on which our faith is called to repose.  It may seem to\nmany of you, that in my treatment of the subject now before us, I\noverlook much that is essential to the Christian doctrine of salvation.\nI may even seem to eliminate the supernatural element from it.  A\nlittle thought, however, should correct the latter impression.  In\npassing I have only to say, that I am not trying to exhaust this theme,\nbut simply to give it a setting which, I venture to think, is worth\nconsideration.\n\n\"What must I do to be saved?\"--a question which may be put in two very\ndifferent states of moral being.  It may be asked in a temper merely\ncurious and academic; or it may, as in the case of the text, voice a\nprofound sense of need.  If we would be saved, we must realize that we\nneed to be saved.  It was when the prodigal \"came to himself\" that he\nsaid: \"I will arise and go to my father.\"\n\nWe are to be saved from what? and into what are we to be saved?  In\nother words, not only must old things pass away, but all things must\nbecome new.  From what, I repeat, are we to be saved?  There is but one\nanswer to the question: We are to be saved from sin by being delivered\nfrom the power of evil; and sin is the wilful assertion of our\nself-will against the holy will of God.  The sense of sin may vary in\ndifferent people; it may vary with the moods of the same personal\nexperience.  There are people who appear to be quite callous about the\nevil within them and the evil they do.  But just as our moral nature is\neducated, just as we grow in sympathy with the divine will, do we\nbecome increasingly sensitive to the distance there is between what we\nare, and do, and the holiness of Him who is a consuming fire.  We feel\nthat the Apostle was neither morbid, nor did he exaggerate the actual\nsituation when he cried: \"O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver\nme from the body of this death?\"\n\nIt has been said that the \"only way to be saved from sin is to cease to\nsin.\"  And it is true that a man cannot, at the same time, sin in any\ngiven direction, and cease from that sin.  But it is also true that he\nmay cease from sin in the sense of not doing certain things, and yet be\nthe greater sinner in the sight of God, because of the motive which\nacts as his deterrent or restraining force.  I have seen men repent of\ntheir sin, as the process was called, when I have had no faith in it\nwhatever.  They were not repenting of their sin, but lamenting the cost\nof its indulgence.\n\nWe must do more than cease to do evil things only because evil has its\nprice; we must learn to do well by learning to love all that is meant\nby well.  There is no escape from evil except through love of good.\nThe Christian salvation, which means the saving of the whole self-hood\nof man, is a positive thing from its inception into its endless\ndevelopment.  Where it is repression it is that there may be\nexpression.  This, I imagine, is what Robert L. Stevenson must have\nmeant when he said \"We are not damned for doing wrong, but for not\ndoing right.\"  Christ, he contends, \"would never hear of negative\nmorality; 'thou shalt' was ever His word, with which He superseded,\n'thou shalt not.'\"  According to Stevenson--I do not say he is right,\nbut I do quote his words as worth attention--we are not damned so much\nfor yielding to evil, as for not getting into our life its oppositive\nvirtue; some content vital enough to cast out the evil, and to keep it\nout.  To go on fighting some besetting sin is only to repeat, for the\nmost part, an experience many of us know but too well.  It almost\ninvariably ends one way.  In weariness and despair we ask: \"Why should\nwe war with evil?  It is more than our test, it is our fate; let us\ntake what sweet we can before it becomes all bitter.\"  Which is but\nanother way of saying: \"Evil, be thou my good.\"\n\nMark well, then, our next step.  It is not enough to tell us that we\nmust conquer the wrong by doing the right.  The question is this: Is\nthere any power, anything in what is called saving grace, which is\nadequate to the struggle on our part, and which appropriated can make\nus, to use the Apostle's description, \"more than conquerors\"?\n\nThere is; and I will try, first, to tell you what it is, and, secondly,\nhow we may realize it.  It is--call it by what name we may for the\nmoment--that which casts out the mean, the ignoble, and the selfish, by\nfilling out life with the great, the noble, and the unselfish.  It is,\nin a word, the salvation which means the \"highest character and\nblessedness, which we, individually and collectively, are capable of\nreaching and realizing.\"  Let us, then, call it what it is--the power\nof God unto salvation.  And how are we to get it into our possession?\nThe answer is, it needs no getting in.  Potentially it is there.  \"The\nkingdom of God is within you,\" says Jesus, and it is ours to bring it\nout in all its actual reality.  It is the greater which includes the\nless, of the gracious possessions God has put in our being, and of\nwhich we know so little because we do not work these inward mines:\n\"Work out your own salvation, for it is God that worketh in you.\"\n\nSome one makes a great inventor say: \"Anybody might have done it, but\nthe secret came to me.\"  Do you believe the first part of this\nstatement?  Would you hold me true in saying that anybody might have\nanticipated the discovery of wireless telegraphy?  There are times when\nthe world appears to halt for want of some new thing, or for want of\nsome one to put new meaning into the old.  And when the fulness of time\nhas come, the secret, which has been sleeping through centuries of men,\nawakes in a man.  He is the chosen of Providence to deliver unto us\nthat which he also has received.\n\nWhat is true of a few in the endowment of what we call genius, may be\ntrue of us all in the power of God unto salvation.  When we were \"made\nin secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth,\" the\nMaker of us all put a part of Himself into the mysterious substance.\n\"Let each man,\" says Browning, \"think himself a thought, an act, a\nbreath of God.\"  There is evil in our nature; but evil can mar us only\nso far as we allow it to become sin.  It is in victory over evil that\nwe find character and make.  There is evil in our nature, but there is\nalso a germ of God which He can touch into immortality and glorify with\nthe very splendour of His own image and being.  When that germ is\nquickened into life, we are, in the language of theology, converted; as\nit develops and becomes the more life and the fuller, we are, in the\nsame language, sanctified and made meet for the Master's use.\n\nIs there anything mysterious in this; anything we may not understand?\nChrist did not think so, if we may judge from His conversation with\nNicodemus.  \"Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.\"\nOur Lord, if I understand Him aright, tells this master of Israel that\nthere is nothing more wonderful about this new birth than there is\nabout a new affection or a new love.  And what cannot love do?  No one\nenters our life except through love.  They may influence it profoundly,\nbut that of itself gives no admittance to the heart.  What, I ask\nagain, cannot love do?  Have we never known lives changed, and indeed\ntransformed by a new affection?  I have seen love work miracles; and so\nfar from not believing in such miracles within their sphere, I believe\nin nothing else.  But does that which wakes love put it there?  Is some\nnew thing added to life?  Rather let us say that it is life coming to\nits own; just finding what was already there.  This may be what the\nPsalmist means when he speaks of deep calling to deep.  The deep in man\nanswers to the deep of attraction which appeals to it.  If man was\nconceived in the image of God, then God is immanent in man.  This is\nnot to say that this immanence is equal to, or implies the whole\ncontent of what is known as Christian salvation.  It is true that the\n\"eye and the brain must be there before the light can be perceived or\nany object interpreted.\"  But it has been pointed out with equal truth\nthat the \"eye would be useless did not the light come to it, and that\nthe brain would have nothing to work on, were not objects from without\nbrought for our perception.\" [1]  Which means that immanence alone\nwould be powerless apart from some transcendent influence.  Unless this\nbe so, what are we to say of the multitudes which sit in darkness and\nthe shadow of death?  Our salvation is in the answer of the life\nimmanent to the life transcendent, and the connecting and combining\npower is the Holy Spirit.\n\nBut what, in the next place, is our part in this matter?  How is this\npower to come?  How, to use a better term, are we to realize it?  Have\nwe to wait for something, or have we to do something to make it a real\nexperience?\n\nA youth, let us say, or a girl, is beginning to learn music, to play\nthe violin or the piano.  At first it is drudgery, and its immediate\nresults are a trial unto all that are in the house.  The parent or\nteacher says: \"Persevere, obey instructions, and as you pass through\nroutine into the soul, the task will soon be lost in the pleasure.\"\nThe beginner may not believe it; but granted the facility is there, and\ndetermination to bend to the task of learning, and the reward comes.\nThat which is within is brought out, and by the only way it can be\nbrought out: \"Stir up the gift that is in thee.\"\n\nThis hints to us the answer to the question, Have we to do something\nthat salvation may become a known and felt reality?  We have to do\nsomething.  We have _to do_, as we are told by Him who only can tell us\nwhat it is we have to do: \"Will to do the will,\" says the Christ, \"and\nye shall know.\"  And if we are really seeking a basis of assurance in\nHis saving power, we ought surely to take Him at His word, when He\ntells us how to find it.  It is not first through assured belief that\nwe become sure of Christ, it is by doing Christ's will that we become\nsure of our belief.  Have we to explain to a child the mechanism of its\nlimbs before it can attempt to walk?  The impulse comes, and the child\nwalks, that is all.  But the child has to walk to know that it can walk.\n\nBut what, you ask me, are we to say about sudden conversions, of which\nwe once heard so much, and which we are still taught to seek and\nexpect?  What, I ask you, about those sudden flashes of insight which\nat times seem to reveal in a moment a way out of difficulties which for\nyears we have sought in vain?  A man told me lately about a period in\nhis life when through drink and betting he was reduced from a\nprosperous man to a wreck in body and means.  \"I was down,\" he said,\n\"low as a human creature could get in this world.\"  He was converted to\nGod, and from the very hour his change came, he declared that his\ncraving for drink, and mania for gambling, dropped out of his being, as\na piece of dead matter falls away from a living organism.  And there\nare such cases, thank God, but we must not make our teaching about them\nmisleading by making it despotic.  As in the instances of sudden\ninsight, we do not because we dare not say they are general, deny that\nthey occur.  The soul-development on its immortal side is, for the most\npart, gradual and slow.  The life-faculty is there, but it often means\nhard work, patient waiting, and great faith, to realize its presence\nand bring out its power.\n\n[2] It has been said that modern psychology confirms scientifically\nthis method of seeking and finding the truth.  It teaches that action\nhas often to precede thought and feeling.  If this is the word of\npsychology, it is really in accord with the method of Jesus.\nPractically all His teaching is addressed, not so much to the intellect\nor to the emotions, but to the will.  He does not put doing and\nbelieving in opposition; in actual life they are really\nindistinguishable parts of a healthy spiritual growth.  But our Lord\ndoes put doing before knowing, as He puts religion before theology, and\nlife before the understanding of life.  His unmistakable object is to\nconstrain men to take action, rather than to wait for emotion, or even\nfor intellectual confidence and conviction.\n\nAs a matter of experience, we find at every turn on the road of life we\nhave to do things we do not want to do, to secure the things we want to\nhave.  Necessity does not humour us, and that is the reason the world\nowes so much to necessity.  We may be very \"superior\" about dogmatism\nin theology, but well for us that dogmatism will have no such nonsense\nin life.  It is just doing the duty that tasks us most, whatever our\nfeeling about it, which makes the difference between the worthy and the\nunworthy in character; between the numerals and the ciphers in the\nhuman world.  It is doing, not what we would, but as we ought which\nchanges reluctance into interest, and the sense of futility into the\njoy of achievement.  It is doing what we know to be true which\nillumines its ever-lasting significance.  \"You could write stories\nwhich people would read,\" said Lecky repeatedly to George Eliot.  She\ndid not believe him, and, strange as it may seem, she had almost a\nmorbid shrinking from making the attempt.  But she did make it, and we\nknow with what results.  The attempt to write a story had not only to\nprecede the belief that she could write one, it had to reveal the gift.\n\nAnd so Jesus, who came to manifest God, says to you and me: My brother,\nMy sister, there is that in you which, brought out and cultivated, can\nachieve in you the highest order and quality of life in this world, and\nfit you for whatever environment lies beyond.  Believe me.  Just take\nme at my word when I say to you, will to do my will, and doing it you\nshall come to love it--and that is to be saved; for it is to be at one\nwith the Father in me.  Leave your past, however unworthy it may be.\nWhat I have done and suffered for you has atoned for all.  Do your\npart, and you, too, shall testify: \"I live, and yet not I, but Christ\nthat liveth in Me.\"\n\nThis, then, is my position; and whether or not it answer to fact and to\nScripture, I leave with your judgment.  I ought to have accomplished\nsomething if I have made myself understood.  It probably overlooks much\nthat many of you hold to be integral to the nature and meaning of\nsalvation.  I have only to repeat, that what has been advanced is a\nsetting of this great subject; and I venture to urge it upon your\nconsideration.  It now remains for me to notice very briefly one or two\nfurther questions as I draw to a close.\n\nWhat, I may be asked, are we expected, as young people, to understand\nabout the doctrines and dogmas of Christianity as necessary to an\nintelligent religious faith?  And what about feeling or emotion, which\nis usually represented as a vital part of the driving power of\nChristian life and conduct?  Well, speaking for myself, I make no\npretension to the lofty disregard of doctrine which in so many quarters\nseems to be regarded as the hall-mark of enlightened thinking.  We do\nwell to beware of a so-called \"breadth,\" which is but a pet euphemism\nfor thinness.\n\nBut after all, we can hold a thing for true, and yet find no\nexplanation of it which quite satisfies us.  Theories about the heavens\nhave come and gone, but the stars remain.  Christ was, before creeds\ngathered about Him; and it is because He is, that men must formulate\ndoctrine to explain Him.  I have long had the conviction that in\nreligion nothing really matters but the Spirit of Christ.  This is not\nto say that if we have, or claim to have, the Spirit of Christ, it\nmakes no difference whether we do, or do not, believe in the\n\"historical Christ.\"  To my thinking such a position is nonsense.  We\nmay as well talk about an effect without a cause.  Spirit must needs\nclothe itself with body.  The \"external may come in at different points\nof the process, but the internal without the external cannot exist.\"  I\nam simply saying, that everything we need to know in a general sense\nabout Christian doctrine becomes intelligible and reasonable, not when\nwe approach Christ through our doubts and difficulties about doctrines,\nbut our doubts and difficulties through Christ.  In Him is life, and\nthe life is the light of men.  I care not for the moment what dogmas\nabout Christ you accept or reject; I ask you to think, and then say,\nwhat heaven worth entering, of state or place, could close against us,\nwere we in the Spirit of Christ walking in the footsteps of Christ?\n\nThen about feeling: Is there one of us who can say, that he, or she,\nhas never had the impulse that should lead to Christian decision?  Long\nas we make it possible for God to appeal to us, He will find His own\nway.  From Him is the impulse, whichever way it comes, but it is ours\nto put it in practice.  But just as we do not wait for feeling to take\nus out to earn our bread, and keep a roof over our head, so it is a far\nnobler thing to turn to God from a sense of duty, and conscience, and\nspiritual need, than it is to depend upon feeling to make us do, what\nnot to do, with or without feeling, is our loss and our shame.\n\nDo not wait for feeling.  Begin your part in the work of your own\nsalvation.  If feeling carry you into decision, and it sometimes does,\nwell and good.  But for one case where feeling leads to decision there\nare probably a score where feeling must be made by what follows\ndecision.  Take care of doing, and feeling will take care of itself;\nand as we rejoice in its inspiration, we shall realize that, perhaps\nfor the most part, it can come no other way.  To have the joy of doing\ngood, we must do good.  We cannot have the tonic and bracing sense of\nvigour by saying we will climb the mountain.  It is when we have scaled\nits heights that we have the experience of a new physical creation.\n\nWhy wait, then, for what is waiting for us?  The Divine Spirit is\nuniversal and infinite.  It is the mother-soul of the universe, with\neternal power and sweetness and beauty, and glory, shining down upon\nall men, stimulating them to be nobler, to go up higher.  And when we\naccept the influence of the Holy Spirit seeking the divine in us, and\nco-operate with it, we have found the answer to the question: What must\nI do to be saved?\n\nDoes any one say, I ask again, that he has never had this impulse?  As\ntruly can he say that he has never felt the sun.  Let him take heed.\nThe sun sets, and it is night.  There can be a night of the soul--the\ndarkest, blackest, most hopeless night of all.\n\n\"He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God\nhath not life.\"  To be saved is to live; and only to the life above us\ncan the life within us respond.  Out of Christ we do not live; we but\nexist.  And existence at its highest estate has no power inherent in it\nto cast out the selfishness and death that build a hell's despair, in\nwhat might be the kingdom of heaven in our human life and world.  Do we\nwant to be saved?  Do we desire life?  Then pray, and begin at once to\ndo what our heart and conscience tell us the Christ would have us do.\nWill to do the will, and doing it we shall enter, gradually at first,\nand then with more royal progress and joy unspeakable, into the truth\nof His word: \"Because I live, ye shall live also.\"\n\n\n\n[1] Rev. W. L. Walker.\n\n[2] Dr. Lyman Abbot.\n\n\n\n\nDOES GOD HAVE FAIR-PLAY?\n\n\n\"Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful\nGod.\"--Deut. vii. 9.\n\nX\n\nDOES GOD HAVE FAIR-PLAY?\n\nA professor in one of our colleges, who is an acknowledged authority on\nthe prophets of the Old Testament, gave a course of lectures lately on\nhis own subject to a summer school of theology.  His aim in one of\nthese prelections was to show how the prophet Jeremiah developed\nhimself by debate and discussion with God.  At its close an elderly\nclergyman, shaking the lecturer by the hand, said to him: \"I was\ndelighted to hear what you said about Jeremiah.  I myself have for\nforty years preached the right and duty of men to stand up to their\nMaker.\"\n\nIt was, to say the least, a crude way of expressing himself; but the\nman had a meaning, and I think I know what it was.  We may, to a large\nextent, have grown out of the old Calvinistic representation of God;\nbut its reflex influence abides in a greater degree than we perhaps\nrealize.  This representation puts its emphasis, not so much upon the\nFatherhood as upon the Sovereignty of God.  It holds man responsible\nfor the moral quality of his actions to God; but all reference to man's\nclaims upon God are met with the stern question: \"Shall the thing\nformed say to Him that formed it, Why hast Thou made me thus?\"\n\nWhatever the Apostle may have meant, this question has been used to\nsupport an intolerable position, and the clergyman spoke out his revolt\nagainst it.  His divinely implanted instinct of justice assured him\nthat a God, who is to command our intellectual confidence and\nheart-trust, must, while exercising the prerogatives of a Sovereign,\naccept the responsibilities of a Father.  Family life would break all\nto pieces if we as fathers did not carry our recognition of the claims\nand rights of children past a severe, however just, parental authority\nand control into the larger realm of wise liberty and undoubted\naffection.  And it is out of the best and highest we know of our\nrelations to one another, that we are to understand what we ought to be\nto God, and what God has promised to be to us.\n\nFor God not only affirms His responsibility to us, He challenges us to\nsay, whether, having done our part, we have weighed His part in the\nbalance and found it wanting.  It is the declaration of the Scriptures\nfrom beginning to end, that the Lord our God is a faithful God.\nThrough the mouth of one of His prophets He confronts us with a\nquestion which, were it not His own question, would hurt us as almost\nprofane: \"What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they have\ngone far from me?\"\n\nWe need not shrink, therefore, from talking reverently about the\nresponsibility of God, for He asks us to build our trust, not only in\nHis promises, but upon our experience of the faithfulness with which He\nhas kept His promises.  What, then, is our testimony?  Has God been\nfaithful to us; and if so, are we justified in assuming that the same\nfaithfulness is the experience of others?\n\n\"Know therefore that the Lord thy God, He is God, the faithful God.\"\nTake this affirmation on its lowest grounds--as touching material\nthings.  It is not said that man does not live by bread, when it is\nsaid that he lives not by bread alone.  We may insist upon it, that\nmaterial concerns are not worthy to be compared with the things of the\nspirit; but this does not affect the truth, that while we are on this\nplanet we must have material things.  Jesus has told us that, \"Our\nHeavenly Father knoweth what things we have need of before we ask Him.\"\nIt does not follow that the things we desire are the things we need.\nChrist does not pledge the divine faithfulness to our desires; it is\npledged to our needs.\n\nAnd how is it redeemed, even in the case of the latter?  Think for a\nmoment of the poverty there is amid all our plenty.  Think of the evils\nand misery that are the consequence as well as the cause of poverty.\nThere are thousands of men, and women, and children dying every year in\nIndia from want and sheer starvation.  We are told that, in each case,\na penny a day would mean comparative plenty.  They are God's creatures,\nwilling, and indeed eager, to work themselves to skin and bone for a\npenny a day, and they cannot earn it.  Think again of the untold human\nbeings nearer home, locked in a warfare from which there is no\ndischarge but death; the grim struggle for a bare existence, with its\nchances at every turn of sickness, accident, no work, and then the\nabyss.  When we have reckoned off the probable proportion of those who\nhave done much to make the conditions in which they find themselves, we\nhave a large percentage of people who are no more responsible for the\npoverty and suffering they have to endure than they are responsible for\nthe fact that they are in the world which uses them so harshly.\n\nFor my part I can offer no explanation of these things, that can give a\nsensitive heart and an honest mind more than a very moderate degree of\nsatisfaction.  There are communities, and even races of people, whose\nexistence in this world appears to have no immediate relation to their\nown personal happiness and well-being.  They come and pass away as\nphases of what we must believe is an evolution towards higher things.\nBut this is the question: Have they who compose this lonely and sombre\nprocession no claims upon their Maker in the meanwhile?\n\nI do not believe that one human soul will fail of absolute, abundant,\nand rich compensation, in those eternal years that are at God's right\nhand.  I have a word to say about this later, but for the present I may\nsay that I answer many questions by my conviction that what we call\ndeath does not end all.  Columbus is reported to have said: \"I must\nhave another continent to keep the earth's balance true.\"  And I must\nhave the personal conscious future, which is to right the wrongs of the\nages, if I am to believe and preach the faithfulness of God.  But we\nmust guard against an impatience which is our littleness.  In the\nimmense times of the Almighty, every dark mystery of human being can\nmove away, and leave the \"sky of Providence at last, arching over the\nsoul with not a cloud to dim its stars.\"  For my present faith I hold\nit true with one who trusts--\n\n  \"That nothing walks with aimless feet,\n  That not one life shall be destroyed,\n  Or cast as rubbish to the void,\n  When God hath made the pile complete.\"\n\n\nWhen any man confronts me with the inequalities of our human lot, with\nthe suffering many have to endure from causes they have not instituted,\nand circumstances over which they have no control, I may be, and often\nam, obliged to make him a present of much that he has to urge.  But\nthere are two things to be said, on the other side, which I can only\nbriefly indicate, and ask you to work them out in your own mind.\n\nI affirm as the first of the two, that the good in our life far\noutweighs the evil.  When all is said, happiness is the rule of our\nnormal experience, and not misery.  We hear much, for example, about\nthe suffering which is part of the order of the animal creation; how a\nstronger beast feeds upon a weaker, and is in turn the prey of another\nstronger still.  While again we are told that the joys of these myriads\nof sentient creatures are immeasurably greater than their pains.  They\nhave pleasure more than sufficient to justify their call into\nexistence, in spite of the drawbacks to their happiness incident to the\nconditions of their existence.\n\nI am satisfied that the latter representation is true of the animal\nworld, as I am convinced that it is true of the human.  Let what may be\nsaid to the contrary, life is a mighty boon.  When men bring in a\nverdict of unsound mind in a case of suicide, the instinct may have\nmore to do with it than the order of evidence on which the verdict is\nbased.  We have to conclude that a man was insane before he could lay\nviolent hands on himself.  Look back upon our life, we who have\ntravelled some distance into it, and let us say whether so far we do\nnot account it a blessing to have lived and to be living.  We have had\nour hard lines, and we have known the pleasant places; we have had our\nsorrows, and we have had our joys; we have been under the clouds, and\nwe have lived in the sunshine.  Nay, I dare go further and say, that\nfor a day we have had of the former, we have had a week of the latter.\n\nIt is a narrow and unworthy conception of happiness to invest all our\nchances of it in the accident of circumstances.  There is some force in\nthe saying, that heaven is here or nowhere.  If we have any thought of\nhappiness worth turning into a fact, our life may be filled with it\nthough the hardest possible circumstances be surrounding us.  Not where\nwe are, but what we are, makes our much or little whether of good or\nill.  It is an ungrateful proceeding to go through life consuming as\nmuch as possible of the fruits of a gracious present, and yet with only\nplaints and complaints about the legislation which tempers the\nblessings with the little severity needed to teach us what the\nblessings are.\n\nSome one has remarked that it is the whole tragedy, and ultimately the\nwhole power of the Christian religion, that it is attacked from every\nside.  It is accused of faults that are hopelessly inconsistent with\neach other.  One day it is charged with making man too responsible; the\nnext, with not making him responsible enough.  The truth is, that we\nneed not try to make man too responsible in order to make him\nresponsible enough.  It has often been pointed out, that the Christian\nreligion is by turns optimistic and pessimistic.  St. Paul is pessimist\nenough where he says: \"For I know that in me--that is, in my\nflesh--dwelleth no good thing.\"  But who so optimistic as the same\nApostle when he declares: \"I can do all things through Christ which\nstrengtheneth me.\"\n\nMuch of the secret of it, under God, is in a cultivated and consecrated\nwill.  Every matter, says Epictetus, has two handles, and you can\nchoose which handle you will take.  Every man has in him some promise\nof the gradual supremacy of character over the accidents, happenings,\nforces and factors of circumstances.  These may be his tests; they need\nnot be his fate.  \"The real vital division of the religious part of our\nProtestant communities,\" says Wendell Holmes, \"is into Christian\noptimists and Christian pessimists.\"  I would rank myself among the\nformer and say again, that the good in the conditions of our life far\noutweighs the ill.  And while maintaining this position, I would also,\nas the second of the two things to be urged, have us face the question,\nWho is responsible for the ill there is?\n\nGeorge Meredith, in a reference to this subject, declares that no man\ncan _think_, and not think hopefully.  Whether or not this be true in\nthe case of every man who thinks, this can be said--it ought to be\ntrue.  Instead of multiplying words to no profit over the old question,\nWhy all this misery and suffering? let us think for a moment in another\ndirection, and we shall perchance be encouraged to think hopefully.\n\nIt has been said that human wisdom has arrived at no juster and higher\nview of the present state, than that it is intended to call forth power\nby obstruction; the power of a life that is perfect and entire, by the\nresponsibility of choice between the things that make or mar it.  If\nGod can rank in us nothing higher than character, and if character on\nthe man side can be achieved only out of right choice translated in its\nkindred action--then it must follow that the power to choose the right\nis the power to choose the wrong.  Which means in the fewest words,\nthat sin, and all the ills and suffering that proceed out of its\nselfishness, are the issue of this possibility of fatal choosing.  If\nit be asked: \"Why the possibility at all?\" I answer that without it men\nwould cease to be men and become something else; and what that\nsomething else would be need not enter into our speculation.  It is\nbecause we can do wrong that we can do right; and if we think about\nthis, may we not think hopefully?\n\nIt is the fashion in our day to write and talk as though heredity, and\nthe effects of the accumulation of heredity, were somehow sinister\nenough to drape the heavens in black, and silence all the songs of the\nangels.  This law, we are told, can have no moral interpretation\nconsistent with freedom and responsibility.  The more than tendency of\nmuch that is being written and said is to depress the mind with a sense\nof the relentless force of general laws and influences, and to diminish\nin the individual the conviction of his power to contend against them.\nI would avoid dogmatism about this matter and simply say that this\nseems plain to me: for one drawback we meet along the pathway of\ninheritances, we have a very legion of resource and help through the\ngains of time, and of the race.  The penalties we have to pay for\ntransgression against law are not a just indictment of the law, they\nare the penalty of its transgression; a by-product, which is always a\ndecaying product as the character of the race heightens.\n\nThe purpose of God in us is character, and once we have it, established\nin divine grace and ensphered in the human will of a sufficient number\nof us, we shall soon make our new and better world.  Without this\ncharacter we may hope for nothing, with it we need despair of nothing.\n\nGranted then for a moment that we had but a little more of this\nGod-fibre running through our individual and our collective life, such\nan experience as physical want would become but a memory of a hideous\npast.  This good old mother-earth can yield us, not only enough to go\nround, but enough to go round in generous abundance.  Why is it that a\nfew have so much more than they can use, and so many have less than\nthey need?  Do we think that God wills it?  Can we conceive of it as\nhaving any part in the economy of the Kingdom which Jesus came to\nestablish on the earth?  It is not God, but our selfishness that wills\nit; a selfishness that has its length of days and its malign power in\nthe widespread folly and culpable ignorance that play into its hands.\n\nThink again for a moment about the effects on society as a whole of the\nintemperate use of strong drink.  They are incarnated in horrors, look\nwhere we will.  The injuries which simply swarm out of our licensed\ntemptations to drunkenness are not exceptional and irregular; they are,\nas one of the most eminent of our publicists has said, \"uniform as the\nmovements of the planets, and as deadly as the sirocco of the desert or\nthe malaria of the marshes.\"  There is not a profession round which\ndrink has not thrown the spell of its sorcery; scarcely a household\nthat has not been despoiled by its leprous pollution.  And who is\nresponsible for it?  Does any one doubt that if the Christian Churches\nlooked at this accursed traffic through the eyes of God, and attacked\nit with faith in His omnipotence, that we could not break its back\nwithin the next ten years?\n\nLong as we are content merely to run the eyes of our intelligence over\nthe episodes of this great battle of wrong against right; to mark down\nits critical moments, and to analyse its issues while careful above all\nthings not to implicate ourselves in the agonies of its crises, then\nlet us not challenge the faithfulness of God for wrongs and sorrows\nbrought into the world, and kept here by our selfishness.  Those of us\nwho have part or lot in this selfishness--and most of us have--let us,\nat any rate, play the game, and accept our own responsibility.\n\nI do not wonder at the severity there is in the human world; for hard\nas it falls in places, it is yet the sign-manual of its uplifting and\nhope.  We sometimes talk bitterly about the crucifixions in our life;\nbut believe it when I say, that a world without them would be a dark\nand terrible vision.  If we could do evil with impunity, if its\npunishment were a mere peradventure, it would mean that evil was the\nheart of the world.  We may be profoundly thankful that wrong and\nsuffering are cause and effect which nothing can break.  Were it not\nso, it would mean that under skies dark and pitiless, a brutal scramble\nto survive would be the law, as in the animal world it is said to be\nthe instinct.  I know that many come into the world and leave it, never\nhaving had the chance to be all they might have been in more gracious\ncircumstances.  But I can trust them with Him who is too wise to err,\nand too good to be unjust.\n\nThis, then, is as far as I have got with the general merits of the\nsubject before us.  To say there are experiences in the lives of\nindividuals, and even of communities, which we cannot explain, is no\nproof that the universe is immoral.  I submit to you, that the good in\nour lot infinitely outweighs the ill for which we are not directly\nresponsible; and that the consequences of the ill for which we are\ndirectly responsible are intended to chastise it out of existence.\n\nMay I counsel you to think about what has been said?  Remember there\nare some things God cannot do for us, and yet leave us men.  He cannot\nmake a better world without the consent of our individual obedience and\nthe co-operation of our will.  I should, I trust, be the last man to\nask people to be content, or even patient, with things as they are in\nthe life that now is, on the assumption merely that they are to be\nbetter in the life that is to be.  I do not say that heaven is here or\nnowhere; but I do believe that it ought to be here, in its degree, as\ntruly as anywhere else.  If we can think of contempt as part of the\nBeing of God, surely this must be His feeling for much of the wrong and\nsuffering that finds a place in the human world.  It is so gratuitous,\nso insensate, so unnecessary.  Is it not a terrible reflection upon\nsome of us, that after the Cross has been silently teaching the world\nthese well-nigh two thousand years, it can yet be said with some show\nof reason, that the two forces that keep society, as we know it,\ntogether, are the ignorance and the patience of the poor?  Why should\nthey be so long ignorant?  Why should they be so chronically patient?\nThe sorrow of God must be, not only that they suffer, but that they are\nso patient under it as to make it scarcely distinguishable from\ncontent.  And why are they so patient?  This is the question God is\nasking through every thoughtful and humane man of us; and one day--man\nwith God speed its coming--we shall be numerous enough, and in earnest\nenough, to establish some real harmony, some true correspondence,\nbetween the inner dignity and the outward lot of the individual, and,\nthrough him, of the community.  In the meantime, then, instead of\nasking, how can God be God and permit wrong to be in the world?  let us\nface the truth, however it may smite us, the truth that wrong is in the\nworld for this reason--that we permit it.\n\nGrowing out of what has been advanced, suffer me to press the subject a\nlittle further, under one or two statements.  I purpose to do little\nmore than indicate them, and to ask for them your good consideration.\n\nGod is faithful: therefore good must be possible.  I was talking some\ntime ago with a very intelligent man, who has a well-known name in the\nworld of letters, and he said to me: \"I admit that we have made\nsomething that answers to progress in material things, but I deny that\nwe have made any advance in moral attainment.  A few rise above the\naverage level, for the rest it is the old story of cycles of abortive\neffort with no lasting good to the race.  We may theorize and idealize\nas we like,\" he went on to say, \"but Bebel is right when he tells us\nthat 'every man is the product of his times and the instrument of his\ncircumstances.'\"\n\nIt was talk that exactly expresses much of the \"time-spirit\" of our\nmodern day.  It is a doctrine with no God in it, and no invisible\nworld.  It assumes that man has no vision and no volition; that he is a\nmere billiard-ball in the game of existence, which goes whithersoever\nthe cue of blind fate sends it.  That one man rises, and another falls,\nis neither the virtue of one nor the vice of the other, but the\nnecessity of both.  We follow the better if we have the accident of\ncertain gifts, or we take hold of the worse, if we have not.  In either\ncase we are no more responsible for our direction than we are\nresponsible for the fact that we have to take a direction at all.\n\nI shall not build up words in trying to answer this position.  I can\nconceive of no man who has some conscience left, however he may seek a\nrefuge from himself in this doctrine of moral irresponsibility, who, at\nthe soul of him, does not know it to be a lie.  We commonly use the\nterms evil and sin as interchangeable; and in doing so we are apt to\nfall into confusion.  Evil is, as it were, embedded in our nature; and\nfor that we are not accountable.  Sin, as I have said before, is in\nyielding to the evil, and that is our responsibility.  St. Paul speaks\nof the evil he found in his nature, and while he admits its malignant\npower, he does not represent himself as powerless to contend against\nit.  He accepts no responsibility for the fact that evil is there; but\nhe does accept responsibility for what he does with it, or what it does\nwith him.\n\n  \"Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,\n  Another thing to fall.\"\n\n\nI know with any man the power of evil in my heart; and while it may\ncome, as it were, in spite of myself, I can determine the question as\nto whether it shall stay.  It is the vilest heresy of our day to preach\nand believe that circumstances can absolve us from our duty; or that\nthey can prevent us from following the right.  The battle is hard, at\ntimes very hard, but what battle is not hard that is worth winning?\nPut religion out of the question, and do we find that the prizes of the\nworld offer us easier terms?\n\nIt is the greatness of the Christian religion, that it not only tells\nus what it were good to do, but it offers to us the power to do it.\nThe great teachers of the world have said to their disciples: \"Accept\nour ideas\"; Christ says: \"Accept Me.\"  \"He makes everything centre in\nHis Own Personality.\"  And the men who have helped to make what so far\nin our human world is grand and glorious, have shown us that Christ's\nword is a real word, meaning a real thing.\n\nOne who has the right to testify has told us that, when we do the will\nof God as if it were our own will, we realize that God is doing our\nwill as His own.  There is a great truth in this.  We so often fail\nbecause ours is a broken obedience.  We expect God to do His part,\nwhile we keep back part of the price of our own, and what response we\nhave is the sense of being mocked in ourselves.  We have to find out\nthat we cannot serve two masters.  However we fall short in practice,\nthe intention must be all for God, or it will be none.  But let us be\ngenuine co-workers with Him in this great work of personal\ncharacter-building; and we find that we have a power not ourselves, and\ninfinitely greater than ourselves.  Our achievements are not so much a\nquestion of gift, as of dynamic.  They are not in the machinery, but in\nthe driving power.\n\n\"How is it\"--was a question recently asked concerning one of the most\nuseful men in the Christian ministry--\"that with his obvious\nlimitations he has accomplished so much?\"  And the answer was: \"Because\nhe has made it possible for God to use him for all he is worth.\"\nFailure is impossible in the man who can say: \"I live, and yet not I,\nbut Christ liveth in me.\"  We cannot explain the power; but it is\nthere, and we all may have it by obedience to the conditions through\nwhich it can be given.  \"I have been down deep in the hell of moral\nfailure,\" writes one, \"and by the grace of God I have come out of it.\nI may not be able to explain His grace to the satisfaction of others;\nbut will others explain me to my own?\"  Our lives may be the living\nevidences of this power.  The world asks for no more; the world will\naccept no less.  Our day, we are told, has ceased to believe in such\nmiracles.  It were truer to say that it has ceased to believe in\nanything else.\n\nGoodness is possible; and not to achieve it is to defeat the purpose\nfor which we were born into this world.  Let us believe in goodness.\nLet us learn to love goodness because it is goodness.  Let us say, and\nlive our word, that there are no charges we can pay which we are not\nprepared to pay to be, and to do, that which is possible to us--and God\nwill not fail us.  Any man who is putting out all his strength in work\nand prayer to build up his higher nature need have no devil-fear that\nhis strength will not be equal to his day.  He may not be able to\nchoose his circumstances; but he can show that he, and not the\ncircumstances, is the master.  He can offer to the world the living\nproof that the triumph of good is possible to him whose power is the\nfaithful God.\n\nAnd once more: Because He is faithful who has promised, we may safely\nleave the issues of our life in His keeping.  If by the help of God we\nare trying to do the will of God, nothing else really matters.  The\ncrooked places of to-day will be made straight to-morrow.  After all,\nit is not more knowledge we need, but more power to use the knowledge\nwe have.  Much of our unrest only means that we want to know more than\nthe silent God sees fit to tell us.  We know enough for the wise\nordering of life; and the highest, holiest thing any of us can do, is\nto do the wisest and best we know, in whatever honest sphere\ncircumstances have placed us.  The riddles of the universe, and the\nperplexities and heartache which come out of our attempts to reconcile\nmuch that we know and see with the rule of an Almighty, an all-wise and\nfaithful God--these will be here long after we are gone.  We must just\ntake the Master at His word when He says: \"What I do thou knowest not\nnow; but thou shalt know hereafter.\"\n\n\"We cannot,\" says a wise teacher, \"take up a drop of water, and find in\nthat drop the flow of the tides, and the soft and then loud music of\ncalm and storm.  To see the ocean we must grasp it in all its rocky\nbed, bordered by continents.\"  So before the very present troubles of\nlife, we cannot see all the government of the faithful God.  It has\nboundaries wider than these.  Human life is but a fraction of the sum\nof life.  The tides of the mind, the music and the tumult of human\nwaters, cannot be heard and felt in this drop of existence.\n\nWe may believe that the moral government of the world is in the hands\nof Him whose love and law are both the same; and we may, at the same\ntime, have to recognize the fact, that so many suffer grievously from\nforces they have not called into being, and which they are almost\nhelpless to control.  We may have to reconcile as best we can, a\ngeneral Providence, with much apparent severity in its particular\noperation.  Unless this be understood, some parts of this address will\nappear inconsistent with each other.  I leave this order of\nsuffering--not its causes--with the responsibility of God; and, for\nmyself, I am persuaded that our last word about it will be one of\npraise, and not of reproach--\n\n  \"Right for a while may yield to wrong,\n    And virtue be baffled by crime,\n  But the help of our need and the might of our creed\n    Are faith, patience, courage, and time.\"\n\n\nBut to say that the faithfulness of God cannot be fully measured now is\nnot to say that it cannot be measured at all.  Do justly, love mercy,\nand walk humbly with God, and our life will not only come out right at\nthe end, it will come out right all the way.  The lesson for us to\nlearn is to labour and to wait; to give God and ourselves space to work\nin.  Whether God is in His heaven or not, of this I am sure, that,\ngiven time, right always comes to its own, and all wrong, sooner or\nlater, is defeat and disaster.  Time forgets nothing, it omits nothing\nwhich God requires at our hands.  It may not be ours to choose our\ntask, but we can choose to do it well.  What is really everyday\nreligion is to do common things in an uncommon spirit.  There is\nnothing for us in the world that needs a lie; nothing that excuses us\nfrom the wise admonition--\n\n  \"Count that day lost whose low descending sun\n  Views by thy hand no worthy action done.\"\n\nThen let us just go on doing the highest we know, and the best we can.\nThe reward may not seem to be to-day, nor yet to-morrow; but we shall\nsee that it was everyday and all the way, when we look back upon it\nfrom the shores of the life eternal.  Let us trust the faithful God,\nand we shall be taught to regard the troubles that test, and the\nlimitations that perplex us, as the agents of His Providence through\nthe courses of time.  And as we see in each new revelation of His\ngoodness and mercy towards us an added circle of splendour in His halo\nof light, we shall learn to say of ourselves, and the race of which we\nform a part--\n\n  \"The God of Truth and Love,\n    The Ancient Friend of man,\n  Makes every age an onward stage,\n    And has, since time began;\n  Sing ye praises, oh, sing praises,\n    God has a glorious plan.\"","title":"Men in the Making","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":43930}