{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_67403/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_67403","id":"gutenberg_67403","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67403","summary":null,"tags":["Category: American Literature","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Character","Christian life","Conduct of life","Moral education"],"text":"THE STUFF OF MANHOOD\n\n\n\n\n                          By ROBERT E. SPEER\n\n\n _The Stuff of Manhood_                        12mo, cloth, net $1.00\n\n _John\u2019s Gospel_, The Greatest Book in the World\n                                                12mo, cloth, net 60c.\n\n _Men Who Were Found Faithful_                 12mo, cloth, net $1.00\n\n _Some Great Leaders in the World Movement_\n     _The Cole Lectures for 1911._             12mo, cloth, net $1.25\n\n _The Foreign Doctor_: \u201cThe Hakim Sahib\u201d\n     A Biography of Joseph Plumb Cochran, M.D.,\n     of Persia.                   Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, net $1.50\n\n _Christianity and the Nations_\n     _The Duff Lectures for 1910._              8vo, cloth, net $2.00\n\n _Missionary Principles and Practice_           8vo, cloth, net $1.50\n\n _A Memorial of Alice Jackson_                  12mo, cloth, net 75c.\n\n _A Memorial of Horace Tracy Pitkin_           12mo, cloth, net $1.00\n\n _A Memorial of a True Life_\n     A Biography of Hugh McAllister Beaver With\n     Portrait                                      12mo, cloth, $1.00\n\n _Young Men Who Overcame_                      12mo, cloth, net $1.00\n\n _Paul, the All-Round Man_                      16mo, cloth, net 50c.\n\n _The Master of the Heart_                     12mo, cloth, net $1.00\n\n _A Young Man\u2019s Questions_                     12mo, cloth, net $1.00\n\n _The Principles of Jesus_ In Some Applications\n     to Present Life                                   16mo, net 60c.\n\n _Christ and Life_ The Practice of the Christian\n     Life                                      12mo, cloth, net $1.00\n\n _Studies of the Man Paul_                          16mo, cloth, 75c.\n\n _Studies of \u201cThe Man Christ Jesus\u201d_                16mo, cloth, 75c.\n\n _Remember Jesus Christ_ And Other Talks About\n     Christ and the Christian Life                  16mo, cloth, 75c.\n\n _The Deity of Christ_                         18mo, boards, net 25c.\n\n\n\n\n       _The Merrick Lectures for 1916\u201317. Delivered at the Ohio\n         Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio, April 1\u20135, 1917_\n\n\n                         The Stuff of Manhood\n\n                         _SOME NEEDED NOTES IN\n                          AMERICAN CHARACTER_\n\n                                  By\n                            ROBERT E. SPEER\n\n                            [Illustration]\n\n                  NEW YORK       CHICAGO      TORONTO\n                       Fleming H. Revell Company\n                       LONDON   AND   EDINBURGH\n\n\n\n\n                          Copyright, 1917, by\n                       FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY\n\n\n                      New York: 158 Fifth Avenue\n                     Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.\n                    Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W.\n                     London: 21 Paternoster Square\n                     Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street\n\n\n\n\nThe Merrick Lectures\n\n\nBy the gift of the late Rev. Frederick Merrick, M. D., D. D., LL. D.,\nfor fifty-one years a member of the Faculty, and for thirteen of those\nyears President of Ohio Wesleyan University, a fund was established\nproviding an annual income for the purpose of securing lectures within\nthe general field of Experimental and Practical Religion. The following\ncourses have previously been given on this foundation:\n\nDaniel Curry, D. D.\u2015\u2015\u201cChristian Education.\u201d\n\nPresident James McCosh, D. D., LL. D.\u2015\u2015\u201cTests of the Various Kinds of\nTruth.\u201d\n\nBishop Randolph S. Foster, D. D., LL. D.\u2015\u2015\u201cThe Philosophy of Christian\nExperience.\u201d\n\nProfessor James Stalker, D. D.\u2015\u2015\u201cThe Preacher and His Models.\u201d\n\nJohn W. Butler, D. D.\u2015\u2015\u201cMission Work in Mexico.\u201d\n\nProfessor George Adam Smith, D. D., LL. D.\u2015\u2015\u201cChrist in the Old\nTestament.\u201d\n\nBishop James W. Bashford, Ph. D., D. D., LL. D.\u2015\u2015\u201cThe Science of\nReligion.\u201d\n\nJames M. Buckley, D. D., LL. D.\u2015\u2015\u201cThe Natural and Spiritual Orders and\nTheir Relations.\u201d\n\nJohn R. Mott, M. A., F. R. G. S.\u2015\u2015\u201cThe Pastor and Modern Missions.\u201d\n\nBishop Elijah E. Hoss, D. D., LL. D.; Professor Doremus A. Hayes, Ph.\nD., S. T. D., LL. D.; Charles E. Jefferson, D. D., LL. D.; Bishop\nWilliam F. McDowell, D. D., LL. D.; President Edwin H. Hughes, D.\nD.\u2015\u2015\u201cThe New Age and Its Creed.\u201d\n\nRobert E. Speer, M. A.\u2015\u2015\u201cThe Marks of a Man, or The Essentials of\nChristian Character.\u201d\n\nRev. Charles Stelzle, Miss Jane Addams, Commissioner of Labor Charles\nP. Neill, Ph. D., Professor Graham Taylor, and Rev. George P. Eckman,\nD. D.\u2015\u2015\u201cThe Social Application of Religion.\u201d\n\nRev. George Jackson, M. A.\u2015\u2015\u201cSome Old Testament Problems.\u201d\n\nProfessor Walter Rauschenbusch, D. D.\u2015\u2015\u201cChristianizing the Social\nOrder.\u201d\n\nProfessor G. A. Johnston Ross, M. A.\u2015\u2015\u201cOne Avenue of Faith.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nIntroduction\n\n\nThe moral elements of individual character are inevitably social.\nAnd the social obligation immensely strengthens the sanctions which\nenjoin them. When a man \u201chas trained himself,\u201d to use the words of\nLord Morley in dealing with Voltaire\u2019s religion, \u201cto look upon every\nwrong in thought, every duty omitted from act, each infringement of the\ninner spiritual law which humanity is constantly perfecting for its\nown guidance and advantage ... as an ungrateful infection, weakening\nand corrupting the future of his brothers,\u201d he views each struggle\nwithin his own soul against evil and each firm aspiration after purity\nnot as a mere incident in his own spiritual biography but as a fight\nfor social good and for the perfecting of the nation and of humanity.\nAnd the struggle for social good and the perfecting of human life is\nfundamentally a struggle for the triumph of ideals in personal wills.\nGod can take hold of men only in man. He revealed Himself and wrought\nredemption less by a social process than by a personal incarnation. And\nthe only way of which we know to uplift the life of the nation and to\nfit it for its mission and its ministry is to reform our own and other\nmen\u2019s characters, and ourselves to be what manner of man among men we\nwould have the nation be among nations. It is of some of the elements\nof character of which men stand specially in need to-day that we are to\nspeak in these lectures. What is good in our lives as individuals and\nin our life as a nation is not in need of discussion here. And there is\nno nobility in analyzing and deriding our weaknesses. Our purpose is\nto urge our keeping if we have not lost them, and our regaining if we\nfeel them slipping from us, some of the elemental moral qualities and\nspiritual resources which are vital to the capacity for duty and to the\nliving of a full and efficient life.\n\nIt has seemed best, on the whole, to preserve in the printed volume the\nfree colloquialism of the lectures as they were delivered.\n\n                                                             R. E. S.\n\n_New York._\n\n\n\n\nContents\n\n\n   I. DISCIPLINE AND AUSTERITY                             11\n\n  II. THE CONSERVATION AND RELEASE OF MORAL RESOURCES      50\n\n III. AN UNFRIGHTENED HOPE                                 85\n\n  IV. THE JOY OF THE MINORITY                             118\n\n   V. THE LIFE INVISIBLE                                  160\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE I\n\nDISCIPLINE AND AUSTERITY\n\n\nWhether there should be compulsory military training in America is a\nquestion which some people will answer yes or no according to their\ngeneral theories and others according to their observation of the\nactual effects of such training on moral character. But whatever our\nviews may be on this familiar question, whether we regard military\nservice as ethically helpful in its influence or as morally injurious,\nwe cannot differ as to the need in our national character of those\nqualities of self-control, of quick and unquestioning obedience to\nduty, of joyful contempt of hardship, and of zest in difficult and\narduous undertakings which, rightly or wrongly, we consider soldierly,\nwhich we attribute in such rich measure to our forefathers, and which\nthe moral exigencies of our national task to-day as peremptorily\ndemand. To put these primary and elemental needs as sharply as\npossible, let us call them discipline and austerity. Our American\ncharacter needs more of both.\n\nI do not know a better starting point than is found in one of those\nvivid modern touches upon which we constantly come in the Old\nTestament. This one is in the account of the closing year of King\nDavid\u2019s life. The story seems ancient and far away until we suddenly\nread: \u201cHis father had not displeased him at any time saying, Why hast\nthou done so?\u201d If we were to translate the words more directly into\nthe language of our own day, we should say, \u201cHis father had always let\nhim do exactly as he pleased.\u201d The reference is to David and his son\nAdonijah, and to the want of discipline by which the father had ruined\nhis boy.\n\nIt is not hard to reconstruct the story. David was busy about his cares\nas king, and his heart was indulgent towards his children. Adonijah\nseems to have been his youngest son, and the father let him have his\nway, never reining him up or checking him by asking why he had done\nthus or so. David pursued, in other words, the modern theory of child\ntraining: that the one principle by which children should be educated\nis the principle of letting what is naturally in them come out; that\nthey must not be crossed or frustrated, or have any external discipline\nor control laid upon their lives. This is, of course, the extreme of\nit, but in some form we hear the theory and see it applied all about us\nevery day.\n\nAnd it is a modern theory of self-education, also. We are told that\nlife should be left free to follow its native impulses; that it should\nnot be thwarted and intimidated by the conventions and prohibitions of\nsociety; that men and women should consult their own hearts and then\nshould move out quite freely in obedience to their promptings; that\ntheir lives and the lives of their children should not be twisted or\ndeflected by the imposition of any external authority or command.\n\nWell, that was the way Adonijah was brought up. His father was rich.\nThe boy had his own establishment, his own horses, his own retinue of\nattendants, and round about him, as about any oriental king\u2019s son,\nthere would be the usual crowd of flatterers and sycophants. There was\nno will or desire that he had not the means to gratify, and his father\nlet him have his way.\n\nFurther, he was the younger brother of Absalom, and the ancient record\nsays that they were handsome and popular boys. They had a way that\ncarried along those who came in touch with them, and as the king\u2019s\nsons, and the leading young men of the city, we have no difficulty in\nunderstanding the atmosphere in which they lived and the conditions\nwithin which they grew.\n\nIt must be confessed that this was the easy way of going about the\nmatter. It is far easier to let a child have its own way than to\nendeavour by wisdom and patience and strength, to study and decide what\nis best for the child and without hurting the child\u2019s will, to guide it\ninto the better way. It was far less care to David to let Absalom and\nAdonijah go than it would have been to take these high-strung sons of\nhis in hand and endeavour to break them to discipline and truth, and to\nsend them out into life real men of power. It was much easier never to\ncall them and to say, \u201cBoys, why did you do this?\u201d Much easier never\nto lay any authority or guidance upon them from without, much easier,\nespecially for a man like David. He had grown up on a farm, with all\nthe hardship and frugality of farm life, with no privileges as a lad,\nand now that he was the king of his nation, he was able to do anything\nwhatever for his sons. It was difficult to refuse them the things he\nhad never had. Easily and indulgently\u2015\u2015for he was a man of kindly heart\nall his days\u2015\u2015he found it simpler not to lay hard restraints upon his\nboys when he could give them their own way.\n\nAnd, of course, this is the easier way of self-education too. For a\nman to love himself so much that he never thinks of his neighbours, to\nblind his eyes so completely to consequences that he can live for the\npassing moment,\u2015\u2015this is a very easy philosophy, and the man or the\nwoman who is able to practice it will seem, for a while, to live in\nthe sunshine, a fine butterfly, smooth-going life. All this is easier\nthan to say, not, What is my impulse? but, What ought I? not, What do\nI like? but, What is best for all the world? not, What is the easy\nway? but, What is the hard way over which the feet go that carry the\nburdens of mankind, that bear the load of the world?\n\nBut, though it is the easy way for a while, there comes a time when\nit is no longer the easy way. When in his little room above the gate\nthe old king bowed his gray head in his hands and with breaking heart\nsobbed out: \u201cO my son Absalom! my son, my son Absalom! would God I had\ndied for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!\u201d\u2015\u2015it was no longer the easy\nway. When Adonijah rose up in insurrection against his old father as he\nlay on his dying bed, gathering his little company of sycophants around\nhim and setting himself up in his father\u2019s place, then it was no longer\nthe easy way that the old man had pursued.\n\nAnd to-day still, fathers and mothers who for a little while thought\nthe easy way was never to ask their children why they had done so, but\nto let them go their own way with no imposition of outward authority or\ncontrol, find after a while that the easy way has turned bitterly hard.\nI have a friend, a leading merchant in one of our large cities. Some\ntime ago another friend was visiting him, and as they walked down the\nstreet together, suddenly a large car whizzed around the corner, full\nof young people, among them the merchant\u2019s son. This was the middle of\nthe forenoon and the boy was supposed to be at work in his father\u2019s\nestablishment. The father turned to his friend and said: \u201cI wish I knew\nhow I could hold my boy in.\u201d But my friend understood why he could not.\nHe knew that only two or three years before the son had been rewarded\nfor passing examinations at college, examinations that it ought to have\nbeen taken for granted that he would pass. But his father thought he\nshould be rewarded for passing them, and he bought a car and sent it\nup to him at college. Now he wonders why this son does not know how to\nbind himself to arduous duty.\n\nAnd in our own lives the easy education does not go easily all the way.\nThere comes a time when, having always indulged ourselves, we can\u2019t\nbreak the habit; when, never having taken our lives in our hands and\nreined them to the great ministries of mankind, we discover that we\ncannot. We find that we obey our caprices; follow any impulse; cannot\nstick to any task; do not know a principle when we see it; have no\niron or steel anywhere in our character; are the riffraff of the world\nthat the worthy men and women have to bear along as they go. In Mr.\nKipling\u2019s inelegant lines:\n\n    \u201cWe was rotten \u2019fore we started\u2015\u2015we was never disci_plined_;\n     We made it out a favour if an order was obeyed;\n     Yes, every little drummer \u2019ad \u2019is rights and wrongs to mind,\n     So we had to pay for teachin\u2019\u2015\u2015an\u2019 we paid!\u201d\n\nNow I suggest that we put all this positively to ourselves, for every\none of us knows that we are treading near some of the moral realities\nof weakness and need in our day and nation. Why should restraint,\nobedience, the authority of duty and God be let into our lives? In\norder that out of all these things self-control may come. And why\nshould there be this submission and control of our lives by duty, and\ntruth and God? Well, the reasons are obvious, the moment we begin to\nthink about them.\n\nThere is the indisputable fact that the strongest and best men and\nwomen we know are men and women who were trained in this school, who\nsome time during their life, and the earlier the better, passed under\nthe discipline and influence of that chastening spoken about in the\ntwelfth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, without which we are not\nchildren of a clean God. All around us are these men and women, fathers\nand mothers, who indulge their sons and daughters, who never confront\nthem with moral principle and obligation and duty, and then lament\nbecause their children do not seem to have the old iron grasp of duty,\nthe old rigid love of truth and righteousness. Well, it is all very\nsimple. It is because those fathers and mothers are denying to their\nchildren the very education that made themselves what they are. The men\nand women, who will not run away from any task, who stand steadfast in\nthe truth, upon whose every word we can rest our whole soul, grew out\nof a certain discipline, a certain education, and it was the kind that\nAdonijah did not have. And all men and women who want to be masters of\ntheir lives and to have strength to lay beneath the work of the world\nmust ask God that such discipline may be given to them.\n\nNot alone is this the only kind of training that can produce this kind\nof character, but unless a man learns control from without, he will\nnever learn self-control. Unless he passes under the discipline of a\nwiser and stronger hand at the beginning, he will never come to the\ntime of deliberate and moral self-discipline, which alone is character.\nFor this only is character,\u2015\u2015the binding of life beneath the firm\nsovereignty of the principle that is the heart of God. If nations do\nnot realize this they will pay heavily for their failure. \u201cMake your\neducational laws strict,\u201d said Ruskin, \u201cand your criminal laws may be\ngentle; but leave youth its liberty and you will have to dig dungeons\nfor age.\u201d\n\nAnd it is this that gives freedom. There is no freedom outside of\ncharacter. Liberty, as Montesquieu says, is not freedom to do just as\nwe please. Liberty is the ability to do as we ought. And the freedom\nthat we need is not the freedom of caprice and whim and listening to\nour impulses. It is the freedom that enables our eyes clearly to see\nwhat right is, and then empowers us to do it. Symonds put it in his\nverse:\n\n    \u201cSoul, rule thyself. On passion, deed, desire,\n     Lay thou the law of thy deliberate will.\n     Stand at thy chosen post, faith\u2019s sentinel.\n     Learn to endure. Thine the reward\n     Of those who make living light their Lord.\n     Clad with celestial steel these stand secure,\n     Masters, not slaves.\u201d\n\nAnd if such self-control goes as far even as the self-extinction of\nthat voluntarily accepted Cross, on the green hill outside Jerusalem,\neven so it will bring victory at the last, because it has brought\none long succession of victories over self all the days. I cut this\nfugitive bit of verse from a newspaper the other day:\n\n    \u201cPausing a moment ere the day was done,\n     While yet the earth was scintillant with light,\n     I backward glanced. From valley, plain and height,\n     At intervals, where my life path had run,\n     Rose cross on cross: and nailed upon each one\n     Was my dead self. And yet that gruesome sight\n     Lent sudden splendour to the falling night.\n     Showing the conquests that my soul had won.\n\n    \u201cUp to the rising stars I looked and cried,\n     There is no death! For year on year reborn,\n     I wake to larger life, to joy more great.\n     So many times have I been crucified,\n     So often seen the resurrection morn,\n     I go triumphant, though new Calvaries wait.\u201d\n\nAnd this freedom and victory are waiting only for those lives that have\nbeen broken beneath the cross of an absolute restraint of God, and\nhave so mastered themselves under God\u2019s name by the help of Christ that\ncontrol has been given over in trust into their own hands.\n\nAnd we all know that power is to be won here in this school where men\nare trained both to feel and to wield dominion. There is no power in\nthe world that is not power cabined, power held in some way. Loose\npower is imperceptible and utterly useless. The only power we know is\npower walled in, shut down, confined and beating against its barriers\nand its walls. We know this in the athletic life of our colleges\nto-day. No athletic trainer in any college ever followed David\u2019s method\nwith Adonijah. The trainer is there to say: \u201cWhy did you do it that\nway?\u201d \u201cWhy did you not do it this way? You have no right to waste your\nenergy in that way. You must do it so.\u201d There is one scene in _Quo\nVadis_ that redeems much else in the book. It is the scene in the\nColiseum, when the giant Gothic slave is shown saving the life of his\nmistress, whom he loved. The great bull has come out with the girl\u2019s\nform tied to his horns, and there is dead silence as the bull stands\nangrily facing the man. You remember the picture. As Ursus lays one\nhand on each horn of the auroch the struggle begins. There is not a\nsound. The great multitude watches the man\u2019s muscles rise and harden\nand the sweat come out and drop from every pore. They see his feet\nsinking down in the arena, until the sand is above his ankles. Suddenly\nthe great head of the bull begins to twist under that awful strength.\nThen the neck breaks and the giant lifts the limp form from the beast\u2019s\nneck and stands with the burden in his hands before the Emperor. One\nlikes to read such a picture of power secured by self-discipline. Do we\nwant to go out limp and beaten and ineffective in our lives against the\ngreat mass of work in the world that waits to be done? Or do we want to\ngo in the strength of Him Who, having bent beneath His Father\u2019s will,\nwas able to carry on the Cross the whole burden of human sin?\n\nAnd we must learn in this school the things we value and desire most:\npurity and delicacy and refinement of character, for they cannot be\nacquired elsewhere. So much social standing nowadays is uttered in\nterms of self-assertion and indulgence and the ability to have any whim\nor caprice gratified. This sort of self-assertion, this caprice, is\nregarded by many of us as the highest mark of social authority, whereas\nwe know it is precisely the opposite, that it is self-restraint and\nself-control and self-surrender that mark the finest lives.\n\nThere is a beautiful story in the life of Goldwin Smith that\nillustrates what I mean. In the early sixties, when he was one of the\nkeenest liberal minds of England, he was associated with Cobden and\nBright in the Manchester School. Again and again he found himself the\nmark of the bitterest criticism from Disraeli. Later Goldwin Smith,\nresigning his professorship at Oxford, came to Canada. At that time\nDisraeli\u2019s novel, \u201cLothair,\u201d appeared in which he attacked Smith\u2015\u2015of\ncourse, without using his name\u2015\u2015as a social parasite. It stung Smith\nto the depths of his soul, but as it was an anonymous book there was\nnothing he could do but sit down and write this note personally to\nDisraeli:\n\n    \u201cYou well know that if you had ventured openly to accuse me\n    of any social baseness, you would have had to answer for your\n    words; but when sheltering yourself under the literary forms of\n    a work of fiction, you seek to traduce with impunity the social\n    character of a political opponent, your expressions can touch\n    no man\u2019s honour\u2015\u2015they are the stingless insults of a coward.\u201d\n\nThat was all he did. And yet, at that very moment, Goldwin Smith had in\nhis possession letters of Disraeli, with which he could have crushed\nhim. Openly in Parliament Disraeli had said that he had never asked\nPeel for any position. But among Peel\u2019s papers which had been placed\nin his hands Smith had a letter in which Disraeli had abjectly begged\nPeel to give him office. All that Smith needed to do was to publish\nDisraeli\u2019s own letter to Peel and it would have ruined Disraeli\u2019s\ncareer. But to Goldwin Smith that was not a noble thing to do. Peel\u2019s\ncorrespondence had not been given to him to use in self-defense, or\nfor any personal justification of his own, and he repressed that\nletter until Disraeli was dead. Then, years after, all of Peel\u2019s\ncorrespondence was published and the whole world knew what a gentleman\nGoldwin Smith had been. Our modern ideals of what constitutes high\nsocial and national standing and character say: \u201cFight fire with fire.\nDishonour releases honour from itself. He struck you foul; strike him\nso in return.\u201d But the man who had learned self-restraint in the school\nof God\u2019s loyalty and truth, who understood that power is ours, not to\nuse for self-seeking, but for the good of men and for God\u2019s honour,\nwould not stoop to any such disloyalty and shame.\n\nOnce more. Whose judgment is of any value? Who would have thought of\ngoing to Adonijah and asking his opinion on anything whatsoever? He\ndid not know right from wrong. He never thought over the issues of\nright or wrong. What would I like to do? What does passion bid me do?\nWhat is my whim or caprice for to-night?\u2015\u2015that was as far as Adonijah\nhad ever thought. No man would ever go to him, as no men will ever\ncome to you and me if we have not been trained in the school of moral\ndiscrimination, if we have not looked on ethical principle and duty in\ndeciding the question whether each thing is really right for us and for\nthe whole world. If we are to be men and women to whom people will come\nfor comfort and strength and guidance, to whom our own children can\ncome with assurance that they will get the truth, we must be men and\nwomen who now place ourselves beneath the firm discipline of God.\n\nWe see all this put simply in two great things. We see it in our Lord\u2019s\nconstant appeal, while here in the world, for men and women of fiber\nand discipline. One came to Him and said: \u201cLord, what shall I do to\ninherit eternal life?\u201d And Jesus, looking upon him, loved him and\nsaid: \u201cI would not think of counselling anything hard. You must not\nsacrifice anything. It is all very easy. The Father above is a Father\nof great tenderness and compassion. He would not lay a straw\u2019s weight\nupon any child of His. Go; live according to your desires and by the\nnatural impulses of your heart, and for that you shall have treasure\nin heaven.\u201d Oh, no; He did not say that. He said: \u201cGo, sell all that\nthou hast, and come and follow me. Except ye love less than duty your\nfather and mother and brother and sister, yea, and your own life also,\nye cannot enter the kingdom of God.\u201d\n\nWe see it, too, in God\u2019s way with men as He laid down His great laws at\nthe beginning, when His people were but as a race of little children.\nWhy did He not say to them: \u201cThis ye may do. The world is sweet and\nfair. This ye may do, and all shall be easy to you\u201d? Why, on the other\nhand, did He speak to them in the stern admonitions of the Decalogue:\n\u201cThou shalt. Thou shalt not\u201d? God never hesitates to lay His great\ndenials upon mankind and at last to stifle us beneath the restraint\nof death that He may issue us forth through that restraint into the\ninfinite liberties of the life immortal.\n\nNow do not brush all this away to-day, or any day, light-heartedly, as\nit can be so easily brushed away. \u201cOh, don\u2019t shadow our lives,\u201d you\nwill say, \u201cwith your denials and your prohibitions and your restraints.\nLeave life free and sweet as the summer air and the flowers of the\nfield\u201d\u2015\u2015that last how long? No, my friends, it were well for us that\nwe should learn this lesson, and learn it now, ere the time comes when\nthe silver cord is loosed and the wheel is broken at the cistern and\nthe grinders cease and the long shadows fall. You remember a tragic\nincident in New York a few years ago\u2015\u2015I do not need to recall the\ndetails of it\u2015\u2015when two young lives made shipwreck of themselves just\nbecause they thought that impulse and caprice were the free voices that\nthey might obey. When it was all over, and the two lives had drawn the\nveil of night across their short-lived evil joy, one of the papers\npublished a letter which the girl had written to a friend:\n\n    \u201cMy friend,\u201d she wrote, \u201cyou and I and Fred, young, heedless,\n    cynical, living in this reckless town of New York, may laugh\n    sometimes at the old things like law and religion, when they\n    say, \u2018Thou shalt not.\u2019 We may think that phrase was written for\n    old fogies, and we may sneer at \u2018the wages of sin is death\u2019;\n    but, my friend, there comes to us some time knowledge that the\n    law and religion are right. What they say we shall not do, we\n    cannot do without suffering. Fred and I have learned that. The\n    wages of sin is death.\u201d\n\nIt is worse than death; for what was Hell in that great vision that\nJohn saw? Why, nothing but the removal of all restraint. \u201cHe which is\nfilthy, let him be filthy still.\u201d He is unclean, let him be unclean.\nHe is unholy, let him be unholy. Take all the restraints away. That is\nHell.\n\nAway from the dark gates that open thither may another voice call us\nhere to-day, the clear, strong, summoning voice of Him Who said of\nHimself: \u201cI came not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent\nme. I do always those things that please my Father,\u201d and Who in the\ngarden of Gethsemane, when the anguish was almost greater than He could\nbear, yet found rest when He prayed, \u201cFather, not my will, but thine\nbe done\u201d; that out of the willfulness and capriciousness and the whim\nand mood of our little self-indulgent lives we may pass into the great,\nstrong, steadfast, sovereign will that waits for us; that we may stand\nfast and be strong in the strength and chastening of God!\n\nNow I have put it\u2015\u2015this matter of our need of discipline\u2015\u2015in the\nmost personal and individual way, but it is our great national and\ncorporate need. The body of a nation can only exist through the\nordered discipline of its members and the spirit of a nation like the\nspirit of a man needs to be cleansed of all the lusts of willfulness\nand self-indulgence. The spirit of our American nation needs such\ncleansing. Mr. Kipling has drawn us his picture of it:\n\n    \u201cThrough many roads, by me possessed,\n       He shambles forth in cosmic guise;\n     He is the Jester and the Jest,\n       And he the Text himself applies.\n\n    \u201cHis easy unswept hearth he lends\n       From Labrador to Guadaloupe;\n     Till, elbowed out by sloven friends,\n       He camps, at sufferance, on the stoop.\n\n    \u201cCalm-eyed he scoffs at sword and crown,\n       Or panic-blinded stabs and slays:\n     Blatant he bids the world bow down,\n       Or cringing begs a crust of praise;\n\n    \u201cOr, sombre-drunk, at mine and mart,\n       He dubs his dreary brethren Kings.\n     His hands are black with blood\u2015\u2015his heart\n       Leaps, as a babe\u2019s, at little things.\n\n    \u201cBut, through the shift of mood and mood,\n       Mine ancient humour saves him whole\u2015\u2015\n     The cynic devil in his blood\n       That bids him mock his hurrying soul;\n\n    \u201cThat bids him flout the Law he makes,\n       That bids him make the Law he flouts,\n     Till, dazed by many doubts, he wakes\n       The drumming guns that\u2015\u2015have no doubts;\n\n    \u201cThat checks him foolish-hot and fond,\n       That chuckles through his deepest ire,\n     That gilds the slough of his despond\n       But dims the goal of his desire;\n\n    \u201cInopportune, shrill-accented,\n       The acrid Asiatic mirth\n     That leaves him, careless \u2019mid his dead,\n       The scandal of the elder earth.\u201d\n\nDoubtless we do not like this picture. We call it a libel or a\ncaricature. Let it be so. Draw your own picture. If there is any\ntruth or faithfulness in it, if it is not blind with national vanity\nand self-deceit, it will still be a revelation of national need of\ndiscipline and of self-empire.\n\nAnd how can such discipline and self-empire be won? Well, it will\nnot be won on any ground of prudential expediency or practical\nself-interest. It is well for men and nations to discern their moral\nshortcomings and to realize their need of a new character. But there\nare no automatic processes of community salvation. The disciplined\nnation comes in only one way\u2015\u2015by the answers of individuals to the\naustere call of the one Person who can remake character and mould\nthe stuff of manhood and nationality. The austere call! This is the\nnation\u2019s need and it is the fundamental summons and the central note\nof Christianity. \u201cThen said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will\ncome after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow\nme.\u201d\n\nThe appeal of Christ was always addressed to the sacrificial and\nthe heroic. In every call which He issued to men there is this\nunmistakable note of austerity. He never smooths things over for the\nsake of pleasing people or of winning followers. There were times when\nHe seemed almost needlessly to draw in these repelling aspects of\ndiscipleship, and to make the conditions of following Him unnecessarily\nhard. It is related that it came to pass that, as they went in the way,\na certain man said unto Him, \u201cLord, I will follow thee whithersoever\nthou goest.\u201d And Jesus said unto him, \u201cFoxes have holes, and birds of\nthe air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.\u201d\nAnd He said unto another, \u201cFollow me.\u201d But he said, \u201cLord, suffer me\nfirst to go and bury my father.\u201d Jesus said unto him, \u201cLet the dead\nbury their dead; but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.\u201d And\nanother also said, \u201cLord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid\nthem farewell which are at home at my house.\u201d And Jesus said unto him,\n\u201cNo man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit\nfor the kingdom of God.\u201d\n\nChrist never concealed His own judgments and convictions as to life\u2019s\nvalues in these matters, and spoke with the greatest scorn of all\nindulgence and softness of life. \u201cWhat went ye out for to see?\u201d He\nasked the people, regarding John. \u201cA man clothed in soft raiment?\nBehold, they that wear soft clothing are in king\u2019s houses.\u201d He was\nlooking after men of iron and of austerity. \u201cIf any man will come after\nme, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.\u201d\n\nThe beautiful thing is that this appeal of Christ\u2019s was not futile.\nInstead of repelling men it drew them. He actually obtained the men\nwhom He was hunting for, not by offering them worldly inducements,\nnot by making such appeals as anybody but Christ would have made, but\nby addressing the sacrificial spirit in them, and making an appeal to\ntheir latent capacity for heroism. There is a wonderful tribute in\nJesus\u2019 method to those characteristics in human nature which have never\nbeen destroyed, which can answer to the highest motives, which do not\nneed to be bought by any low compensations, but which spring into full\nlife when appealed to on the most heroic and unselfish plane. We know\nhow, in consequence, this exultation in difficulties, this love of\nhardship, this scorn of ease became the characteristic note of early\nChristianity. In the best summary description which Saint Paul gives\nof Christian character and manhood, in the twelfth chapter of Romans\nwe find him speaking of \u201crejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation.\u201d\nAnd when he comes to write his conception of the character of the happy\nwarrior, we find him setting this in the foreground, \u201cEndure hardship,\nas a good soldier of Jesus Christ.\u201d The praise of the New Testament is\nnever given to those who have lived in luxurious, indulgent ease. It is\nfor that little company of men and women who have loved the difficult\ntasks, and who with joy trod the rough ways that transcend the stars.\nEvery one of the great New Testament leaders is a man who exalts for\nus this same love of moral hardship, this same scorn of indulgence and\nsmooth ease, and this same virtue of steadfastness, \u201cAnd not only so,\u201d\nsays Paul, \u201cbut we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation\nworketh stedfastness; and stedfastness, experience; and experience,\nhope.\u201d And Peter writes, \u201cYea, and for this very cause adding on your\npart all diligence, in your faith supply virtue; and in your virtue\nknowledge; and in your knowledge self-control; and in your self-control\nstedfastness; and in your stedfastness godliness.\u201d James joins in,\n\u201cMy brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;\nknowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.\u201d And you\nremember the description which John gives of himself in Revelation as\n\u201cyour brother and partaker with you in the tribulation and kingdom and\nstedfastness which are in Jesus.\u201d\n\nNow, we ask ourselves the question why our Lord poured out all this\nscorn on what the world counts the desirable condition and atmosphere\nof life, why the New Testament has no patience with self-seeking,\nindulgence, contentment, or ease as the standard of a human life,\nwhy it speaks contemptuously of smooth ease of every kind, and\nexalts, instead, the austere life, the life of strength, and of\nself-discipline, why our Lord said to men when He came to call them\ninto the best thing there was in the world, \u201cIf any man will come after\nme, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow after\nme.\u201d\n\nWell, one reason why the whole New Testament pours out such contempt\nupon the smooth life and exalts hardness, is because only hardness can\nmake a great soul, and the end of the Gospel, the end of life, was the\ngrowing of souls. The words of Socrates, understood in the social sense\nwhich he intended and not selfishly, contain the central end. \u201cFor I\ndo nothing,\u201d said he, \u201cbut go about persuading you all, old and young\nalike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but\nfirst and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul.\u201d\nIt is true, in a sense, that we are here for the work we can do, but it\nis also true, in a yet deeper sense, that we are here to become the\nbest workmen that we can become, and that the work we do has a large\nmeasure of its value in its reflex power of making us capable of doing\nbetter work. Evidently this is not the real workshop where God needs\nHis best men and women. When He has perfected His workmen and workwomen\nand recognizes that they are prepared to do their best work, does He\nmake use of them here? Never. He takes them elsewhere, where evidently\nthe real work is to be done. Everything we see in this world would seem\nto indicate that it is only the preparatory school, a place where men\nand women are equipped for the real thing, that the career that is to\nabide lies elsewhere than here. The purpose of these days is to make\nus ready for the work God has for us to do in a larger sphere than\nthis, where we pass on, as Chinese Gordon told Mr. Huxley, to have a\nlarger government given to us to administer. God pours out His contempt\non smoothness of life because it cannot make greatness of soul, and\ngreatness of soul is one object of our being here.\n\nThe Christian ideal despised, also, this smoothness which seems to many\nof us the most desirable thing that life has for us, because there is\nsuch little knowledge given with it. At best it can only play on the\nvery surface of life. We know no more than springs out of the deep\nexperience through which we pass. You remember the lines of Father\nTabb:\n\n    \u201c\u2018Where wast thou, little song,\n      That hast delayed so long\n      To come to me?\u2019\n     \u2018Mute in the mind of God\n      Till where thy feet had trod\n      I followed thee.\u2019\u201d\n\nIt is only where we have gone that we know the way; it is only the\nexperience in life that we have passed through that gives us our true\nknowledge of life, because the end of life is its relationships, and\nwealth of life depends on the breadth of true knowledge and the riches\nof true relationship. Smoothness of life is simply deadening because it\nkeeps us out of what is real life.\n\nAnd Christianity derided smoothness of life, and scorned it, because\nit separates us from fellowship with the noble and suffering life\nof God. You know the long controversy in theology as to whether the\nidea of suffering is compatible with the idea of a perfect God. There\nhave been some theologians who insist it could not be possible that\nGod should suffer. If He could suffer, He could not be God. Well, I\nsuppose all of us here are prepared without one moment of hesitation\nto range ourselves on the other side, and to say that if God cannot\nsuffer He cannot be our God. He could not be a father if He did not\nsuffer. Christ could not have been the revelation of Him if He is not\na suffering God; for \u201cHe was the man of sorrows, and acquainted with\ngrief.\u201d What He laid bare was a heart of love sharing the anguish of\nothers; for we have not a Father who cannot be touched with the feeling\nof our infirmities,\u2015\u2015We can say that of Him because of what we know\nof Him who revealed Him,\u2015\u2015We have not a Father who cannot be touched\nwith the feeling of our infirmities, no impassive God sitting where \u201cno\nsound of human sorrow mounts to mar His sacred everlasting calm,\u201d but\na Father who pities His children, who enters into their life, and who\nloves them with all His soul. We can have no knowledge of that God, no\nfellowship with His life, if what we are living is the smooth, easy,\nindulgent life, everything bought for us by others, nothing done by us\nfor others, no blood of sacrifice colouring our life red with the glow\nof God and His incarnate Son. The New Testament despises the smooth\nlife that makes it impossible for men and women to have any part in the\ndeepest life of their Father.\n\nAnd the New Testament scorns the smooth, indulgent life because it\ncannot connect men and women with the real springs of strength and of\npower. No strong man was ever made against no resistance. We develop no\nphysical power by putting forth no physical effort. All the strength of\nlife we have we get by pushing against opposition. We acquire power\nas we draw it out of deep experience and effort. And the new Christian\nideal made no place for indulgence and ease because these things leave\nmen and women weak, with no strength either themselves to bear or to\nachieve for others. It is as Mrs. King puts it in Ugo Bassi\u2019s \u201cSermon\nin the Hospital\u201d:\n\n    \u201cThe Vine from every living limb bleeds wine;\n     Is it the poorer for the spirit shed?\n     The drunkard and the wanton drink thereof;\n     Are they the richer for that gift\u2019s excess?\n     Measure thy life by loss instead of gain;\n     Not by the wine drunk, but the wine poured forth\n     For love\u2019s strength standeth in love\u2019s sacrifice;\n     And whoso suffers most hath most to give.\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n       God said to Man and Woman, \u2018By thy sweat,\n     And by thy travail, thou shalt conquer earth,\u2019\n     Not, by thy ease or pleasure:\u2015\u2015and no good\n     Or glory of this life but comes by pain.\n     How poor were earth if all its martrydoms,\n     If all its struggling sighs of sacrifice\n     Were swept away, and all were satiate-smooth,\n     If this were such a heaven of soul and sense\n     As some have dreamed of;\u2015\u2015and we human still.\n     Nay, we were fashioned not for perfect peace\n     In this world, howsoever in the next:\n     And what we win and hold is through some strife.\u201d\n\nAnd it was because our Lord knew this that He set over against men\u2019s\nwills the strait door of the kingdom of life. He did not betray the\ntrust that had been given to Him. He did not say, \u201cCome, I will make\nlife easy for you.\u201d He did not say, \u201cCome, let us indulge ourselves\nto heart\u2019s content.\u201d He said, \u201cIf any man will come after me, let him\nleave all that behind, let him deny himself, and let him take up his\ncross daily, and let him come after me.\u201d\n\nNow, I know what many of us will be saying of all this. We will be\nsaying, \u201cGod did not bring us into the world with any cross. All our\nlife long has been a sheltered life. None of this hardness of which\nyou speak has ever come to us. Maybe our fathers and mothers knew it\nbefore us, but they have shielded us from its pressure. Are we to go\nback to crudeness and asceticism for the good of our souls? Are we who\nhave no cross deliberately to take our smooth lives and roughen them?\u201d\nYes, that is precisely what I am saying. Those of us who were not born\nwith a cross must find one, those whose lives have been smooth are\ndeliberately to find ways of roughening them, so that we may know a\nlife of power and fellowship with the suffering God, and can go out to\nreal work, and be prepared for that greater life and greater service\nwhich await us elsewhere than here.\n\nWe shall not have any great difficulty in obeying this call of Christ\nto roughen our lives. There are many crosses in the world too heavy for\nthe men and women who are trying to carry them. We can go out and find\none of these crosses and help to bear it. They are not far away. Here\nis a clipping from the New York _Sun_:\n\n    \u201cA comely young Hungarian woman with a three-months-old baby in\n    her arms dropped to the sidewalk at Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth\n    Street late yesterday afternoon and lay half conscious. An\n    ambulance surgeon who came said the woman was starving and that\n    her baby had bronchitis.\n\n    \u201cThe woman recovered enough to tell the surgeon that she was\n    Mrs. Mary Scheinn, twenty years old, and that her husband had\n    died recently. She had been living with a friend at 97 Seigel\n    Street, Brooklyn, she said, but this woman also was very poor\n    and expected to be evicted to-day, so Mrs. Scheinn had walked\n    to New York to try to get her sick child into a hospital. She\n    tramped from hospital to hospital, and everywhere they refused\n    to take the child, she said. But she kept up the quest until\n    she gave out. She had had nothing to eat since yesterday and\n    little then.\n\n    \u201cThe ambulance took the woman and child to Bellevue Hospital.\n    Both are in a rather serious condition.\u201d\n\nBeing young and comely, doubtless, if she had not had the baby, some\npimp or other American citizen, for a consideration within her power,\nmight have helped her, but being innocent and carrying a baby there she\nstood until she fell down, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth\nStreet, in the heart of the city, a woman carrying a baby and a cross\nthat were too heavy for her. There were millions of Christian people\nround about her. Thousands of us never knew what a cross was and we\nlet the woman with her child in her arms fall down under the weight of\nhers. This world is black with the shadows of crosses. If we have none\nof our own, in the name of the great Cross, let us borrow one.\n\nHere is a note from a girl. She is one of thousands and the note is\nreal. I had been speaking in one of the New York churches and the next\nday came a letter from her asking me, if I really believed what I had\nsaid, to answer some questions for her. I wrote in reply and this was\npart of her answer: \u201cThe great trouble with me is that I have to fight\ncontinually against despondency. Life to me is a series of sorrows and\ntroubles, that accumulate and grow larger, and just when I am at the\npoint of giving up altogether some little word or act deters me.... I\nknow I would be happy if I were, as you say, truly trustful towards\nGod, but God to me seems very far off and rather mythical. Your letter,\nalso the fact that you wrote, was a help to me. The part that perhaps\nappealed to me most was the idea that God and God\u2019s love are longing\nfor us. It is very fine to feel that when one is always lonesome.\u201d I\nlearned more of her story but it is not for telling here. It was a\ncross too heavy for her which she was trying to bear. Women who knew\nher lifted its weight for her, taking it over upon themselves.\n\nAnd not only by taking up crosses, of which the world is full, can we\nroughen our lives. Many of us can do it by simply cutting off some of\nour waste and extravagance. There are many of us who never ask before\nwe spend money, \u201cHow can I get the greatest return from this money?\u201d We\nwaste it like water, while Belgium, Serbia, Poland and Armenia call. It\nis said that there are thirty million people in India who have only one\nmeal a day, and who never know what it is to have enough to eat. Some\nof them say that if they could have enough to eat for just two days,\nthey would be willing to lie down and die content. Again and again,\nhundreds of thousands of people in China have been the victims of\nfamine, while we were throwing wealth away. We can roughen life a bit\nby denying ourselves, by abridging expenditure and devoting the money\nto human need and to some of the services the world is dying for.\n\nStudents often reject the ethical and economic arguments against\ngambling. These arguments are valid but it is very hard to get a\nclutch for them on many minds. You can point out how dishonourable\nand essentially immoral it is for a man to have money which he did\nnot earn, for which he gave no equivalent, which came to him as no\nexpression of friendship or by no legitimate inheritance. All this\nis clear to the healthy and manly moral sense. But the gambler does\nnot have such a sense. I have often wondered that the case is not\nmore frequently put from the other side, from the side of the wrong\nof spending money in gambling. When a man has won on a bet the moral\nquestion is lulled but when he has lost there is a chastened mood which\ncan be invited to reflect. What moral warrant did he have for throwing\nhis money away? What does he have to show for it? A million hungry\nhands were outstretched to him, a world of want and suffering called\ntowards him over land and sea? And he threw his money away\u2015\u2015got nothing\nfor it, did nothing with it. In a world like ours, there are parched\nlips waiting for drink; there are hungry mouths in need of bread:\u2015\u2015do\nwe have any right to waste in indulgence in a world like this? Men\nshould scrutinize every dollar that passes through their hands and ask,\n\u201cWhat is the very best thing that I can do with this?\u201d\n\nAnd frugality, self-imposed for the sake of service, will come back\nto us in rich reward in character and power. Horace Bushnell drew a\nnoble picture of the fruitage of true parsimony in his address at the\nLitchfield County Centennial in 1851, on \u201cThe Age of Homespun\u201d:\n\n    \u201cIt was also a great point, in this homespun mode of life, that\n    it imparted exactly what many speak of only with contempt, a\n    closely girded habit of economy. Harnessed, all together, into\n    the producing process, young and old, male and female, from the\n    boy that rode the plow-horse, to the grandmother knitting under\n    her spectacles, they had no conception of squandering lightly\n    what they all had been at work, thread by thread, and grain by\n    grain, to produce. They knew too exactly what everything cost,\n    even small things, not to husband them carefully. Men of\n    patrimony in the great world, therefore, noticing their small\n    way in trade, or expenditure, are ready, as we often see, to\n    charge them with meanness\u2015\u2015simply because they knew things only\n    in the small; or, what is not far different, because they were\n    too simple and rustic to have any conception of the big\n    operations by which other men are wont to get their money\n    without earning it, and lavish the more freely because it was\n    not earned. Still, this knowing life only in the small, it will\n    be found, is really anything but meanness.\n\n    \u201cProbably enough the man who is heard threshing in his barn of a\n    winter evening, by the light of a lantern, (I knew such an\n    example) will be seen driving his team next day, the coldest day\n    of the year, through the deep snow to a distant wood-lot to draw\n    a load for a present to his minister. So the housewife that\n    higgles for a half hour with the merchant over some small trade\n    is yet one that will keep watch, not unlikely, when the\n    schoolmaster, boarding round the district, comes to some hard\n    quarter, and commence asking him to dinner, then to tea, then to\n    stay over night, and literally boarding him, till the hard\n    quarter is passed. Who now, in the great world of money, will\n    do, not to say the same, as much, proportionally as much, in any\n    of the pure hospitalities of life?\n\n    \u201cBesides, what sufficiently disproves any real meanness, it will\n    be found that children brought up, in this way, to know things\n    in the small\u2015\u2015what they cost and what is their value\u2015\u2015have, in\n    just that fact, one of the best securities of character and most\n    certain elements of power and success in life; because they\n    expect to get on by small advances followed up and saved by\n    others, not by sudden leaps of fortune that despise the slow but\n    surer methods of industry and merit. When the hard, wiry-looking\n    patriarch of homespun, for example, sets off for Hartford, or\n    Bridgeport, to exchange the little surplus of his year\u2019s\n    production, carrying his provision with him and the fodder for\n    his team, and taking his boy along to show him the great world,\n    you may laugh at the simplicity, or pity, if you will, the\n    sordid look of the picture; but, five or ten years hence, this\n    boy will probably enough be found in college, digging out the\n    cent\u2019s worths of his father\u2019s money in hard study; and some\n    twenty years later he will be returning, in his honours, as the\n    celebrated Judge, or Governor, or Senator and public orator,\n    from some one of the great states of the republic, to bless the\n    sight once more of that venerated pair who shaped his beginnings,\n    and planted the small seeds of his future success. Small seeds,\n    you may have thought, of meanness; but now they have grown up\n    and blossomed into a large-minded life, a generous public\n    devotion, and a free benevolence to mankind.\n\n    \u201cAnd just here, I am persuaded, is the secret, in no small\n    degree, of the very peculiar success that has distinguished the\n    sons of Connecticut, and, not least, those of Litchfield County,\n    in their migration to other states. It is because they have gone\n    out in the wise economy of a simple, homespun training,\n    expecting to get on in the world by merit and patience, and by a\n    careful husbanding of small advances; secured in their virtue by\n    just that which makes their perseverance successful. For the men\n    who see the great in the small, and go on to build the great by\n    small increments, and so form a character of integrity before\n    God and men, as solid and massive as the outward successes they\n    conquer. The great men who think to be great in general, having\n    yet nothing great in particular, are a much more windy affair.\u201d\n\nEvery one ought to roughen life by friendships that will bring into it\nthose influences which are not naturally in our daily associations and\nwill carry us into contact with men and women who struggle harder than\nwe do. A few such friendships will help to keep life from petrification\nand to make us aware that the world is under a cross, and that our\nhearts must be as open to all its needs as the heart of the Father of\nhuman life is open always.\n\nAnd we can help to roughen our lives in the very sense in which Christ\nmeant them to be roughened if we will resist the steadily increasing\ntendency of our day to multiply ways in which we are released from\ndoing things for ourselves. There are none of us who do not have a\nhundred things done for us that our fathers and mothers had to do\nfor themselves. Little by little, we are ridding ourselves of the\nresponsibility of doing any service for ourselves whatsoever. There is\nimmense gain in this. It gives freedom for larger living but it can go\ntoo far, and it would be a great thing if we resolved at periods that\nwe would not let anybody else do for us what we could do for ourselves.\nThere was a day, perhaps, when men needed the other rule, when it\nwas a great deal better to get other people to do things for us than\nto do them ourselves, but the time has come when the world needs to\nreverse that principle. What the world wants is not organizers, but\ndeorganizers, men and women who will increase the number of personal\nservices and activities, and who will bring something frugal, simple\nand elementary back into life to deliver us from the false heaven of\nease and self-indulgence, which is as bad as any other kind of hell.\nChrist came to save us from that.\n\nThere is one other way in which we can answer this call, and can\ndeliver ourselves from the curse of smooth living. Around about us on\nevery side there are causes waiting for what men and women can do for\nthem. I do not mean crosses in any great, general, organized sense,\nin which we send our five, our twenty-five or our hundred dollars to\nsome society and think we have, in that way, carried all the cross that\nChrist means to have us carry. We cannot fulfill Christ\u2019s command by\npaying an organization to carry a cross for us. All the work they do\nmust be done, and it must be supported. Millions of dollars that are\nnot being given now ought to be given. But what Christ is waiting for\nalso and what we have got to do if we are to have the satisfaction of\nthe enduring life is to find each of us for himself some true cross of\npersonal service. There are men and women around us who are waiting for\nsome touch of sympathy, some kindness, some unflinching word of ours to\nthem that shall mean the awakening of their own discouraged or sleeping\nsouls, that they may come out to live. \u201cIf any man will come after me,\nlet him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.\u201d\n\nOne of the saddest things in the world to-day is the principle under\nwhich those are living who are unwilling to bear these crosses and\nto bring home into their lives the wholesome spiritual stimulus that\nthis roughening of life alone can give to them. We have reacted too far\nfrom the old monastic idea. Men speak with scorn now of those men and\nwomen who went away into monasteries and convents, despising the joys\nof the world for the sake of their souls. But these men and women were\ninfinitely better than the great multitudes who go out into the world\nto-day, despising their souls for the sake of the joys of the world. If\na man or woman wants to do any despising it is better to despise the\nworld than the soul. It were well for us to go back a little to the\nspirit of the medi\u00e6val time. When that spirit was pure and good the\nworld\u2019s richest service flowed out from it.\n\nThe glory of life for us consists in finding the rough, the morally\naustere things in life and then fearlessly and unhesitatingly doing\nthem. There is no splendour in the easy indulgent way. The splendour\nlies in finding the hard thing to be achieved and revelling in it.\n\nMany years ago I clipped this story from the editorials of what was\nthen our ablest newspaper:\n\n    \u201cA young Briton named Felix Oswald became interested a while ago\n    in the geology of Turkish Armenia. He made long journeys through\n    that country and finally came home with an important amount of\n    valuable new material. It was not matter, however, that would\n    find favour in the eyes of the general publisher and Mr. Oswald\n    had to undertake its publication himself. He had the type set at\n    the lowest rates in a small town. There were 516 pages of print\n    and the author undertook the large task of doing the printing\n    himself. He hired a hand press and after weeks of hard work he\n    had produced 101 copies of the book. Feeling certain that this\n    edition would fill the demand he went about the next large job,\n    which was the hand colouring of all his maps and profiles. Then\n    the copies were bound and the book was out.\n\n    \u201cLeading geologists say that the work is one of the best of its\n    kind. The small edition is exhausted and the book will not be\n    reprinted. The editor of _Petermann\u2019s Mitteilungen_, believing\n    that a wide circle of geologists would be glad to have the\n    important results of Oswald\u2019s investigations, has just printed\n    in his periodical an extended r\u00e9sum\u00e9 of them together with some\n    of the maps. The University of London has crowned the work with\n    its approval by conferring the degree of Doctor of Science upon\n    the author. Oswald has certainly earned the congratulations of\n    all who admire the qualities of courage, perseverance and\n    intelligent devotion to a special task.\u201d\n\nA man does not have to go to Armenia to find the hard thing to do,\nalthough there are harder and nobler tasks waiting there to-day than\nOswald undertook, tasks that are crosses in the divinest sense, scarred\nwith sorrow and grief. And perhaps there are some among us here now who\nare bearing crosses and finding them beyond their strength. But they\nare not to be mourned over. They were not of our making, were they? If\nthey were of our making, perhaps there is some penitence to be felt,\nsome restitution to be made. If they were not of our making, we may be\nsure that they were built just for our shoulder, that One who knew us\nmade them that we might carry them, and become under them what we could\nnever become without them. And if we have no such cross, out from our\nsmooth and easy living, our cozy shelters in which we have been kept\nand are kept now, One is calling us to come whose ancient word we hear\nto-day: \u201cI came not to send peace, but a sword. Whosoever would be my\ndisciple must love nothing as much as me, and must be willing to rise\nup and follow me.\u201d For men and women who will do this in the full and\njoyous spirit of Francis of Assisi but in the forms suitable to our\nmodern life the summons of God and the world is clear.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE II\n\nTHE CONSERVATION AND RELEASE OF MORAL RESOURCES\n\n\nOne of our most familiar national ideas during recent years has been\nthe conservation of our natural resources, our mines, our forests, our\nwater power, the agricultural capacities of our soil. It would have\nbeen a good thing if this idea had occurred to us fifty years earlier.\nBut it is an idea which always comes late to a young nation. So long\nas the population is sparse and the supply of good land unlimited\nand it is an easy thing to pick up a living from the surface of the\nground, perhaps it is too much to expect that any people would be\ncareful and frugal. But when the population has increased and begins\nto press against the means of subsistence, when the good public lands\nare exhausted and a mere living becomes harder for the masses of the\npeople to secure, then any nation awakens to wisdom and turns from\nrecklessness and prodigality.\n\nAnd, doubtless, the idea would have occurred to us a full generation\nearlier if it had not been for the terrible education of our Civil War.\nThere is a great deal to be set down on the good side of the account\nof the Civil War. It took the putty of our national character and\nburned it into stone. It ran steel fibres through our national life.\nAnd it brought us for the first time to a sense of national unity. But\nalas there is a great deal also on the ledger\u2019s other page. For war\nis not conservation, it is destruction. It educates any people not in\nfrugality but in wastefulness. Military supplies must be bought at once\nat any cost. Everything is thrown away with a negligent and wasteful\nhand. And so long as any people is pouring out its best possession, the\nprecious life-blood of its sons, like water on the battle-field, you\ncannot expect it to be saving and careful in its material possessions.\n\nThe days of waste that followed the Civil War are gone forever. The\nnation has begun now to count carefully the amount of its available\nwealth. We have seen calculations of how many millions of feet of\nlumber we have standing in our forests and how many millions of tons of\ncoal we have still hid away in our treasure houses underground. And far\nand wide over the nation now we are learning to husband the resources\nwe have left, mindful of our children who are to come after us.\n\nAnd it is a good thing that the nation in conserving her resources\nrealizes that there is something more important than a careful\nhusbanding of her mere material wealth. The vital resources of any\npeople are of more significance to her than clods of coal, or timber\non her hillsides. Of what use would it be to conserve the material\nresources of any nation if we conserve them only for a deteriorating\nracial stock? The nation has come to realize that the men and women\nwho compose it are its largest wealth, and that this treasure must be\nguarded more sacredly than our mines, our forests, or our water power.\nWe have seen, accordingly, a whole new body of legislation growing up,\nthat would have made our fathers stand aghast, fixing the conditions\nof employment, the age of employees, the sanitary condition of homes\nand mills, the hours of work and the care of women. The expenditure\nof immense sums for the protection of the life and health of factory\nlabourers is now readily recognized even by \u201csoul-less corporations,\u201d\nwhich formerly fought against all such outlay, as money well invested.\nIn all the nation to-day we realize that there is a more precious\nwealth than our material wealth. I saw an interesting illustration of\nthis new frame of mind a little while ago in a statement issued by some\nleading men in Tennessee dealing with the excessive death rate among\nthe negroes of the South. They pointed out that among nine millions\nof white people the death rate is 160,000, and that among the nine\nmillions of the negroes the death rate is 266,000. In other words,\namong the negroes, 106,000 more people die every year than among a\ncorresponding number of the whites of our country. In the negro, these\nmen argued, the South had an invaluable asset, a better type of labour\non the whole, with all its drawbacks, than any other section of the\nnation possessed, more docile, more faithful, less troublesome, and\nthe South could not afford to lose this labour which it needed for\ndeveloping its wealth. These men estimated the economic value of each\none of these lives at $350 a year, and the period of that economic\nvalue at ten years, so that each one of these wasted lives was a loss\nof $3,500 to the South, or $371,000,000 each year, one million dollars\na day, and they argued that the South could not afford such a waste.\nThe South, they held, must see that the death rate among the negro\nis reduced to the same proportions as the death rate among the white\npeople, in order that such an enormous economic loss might be averted.\nWe are realizing all over the nation now that a man is a very costly\nproduct. You can breed an animal in a few months for the market, but\nit takes twenty years to grow a man, and no nation can afford to\nthrow away such costly products as men and women. These are its most\npriceless wealth. If it expects to conserve its treasures and to be\nprepared for the services of the days to come, it is bound to guard\nthis wealth more sacredly than any other. And American capital and\nindustry have come to see this clearly. Here is one typical utterance\nby a leading engineer at a meeting of the Immigration Committee of the\nChamber of Commerce of the United States:\n\n    \u201cIndustrial Americanization is a part of the prevalent\n    present-day movement towards the humanizing of industry. It\n    aims to make what is commonly called \u2018welfare work\u2019 not an\n    exercise of the individual employer\u2019s \u2018paternalism,\u2019 but a\n    legitimate kind of business organization everywhere. There are\n    now innumerable kinds of \u2018welfare work.\u2019 One employer does it\n    from the point of view of \u2018good business\u2019; another on the \u2018big\n    brothers\u2019 theory. One man confines himself to playgrounds,\n    another to safety appliances. In one firm it is under the\n    employment manager; in another under a Y. M. C. A. director;\n    and in a number of other firms it is classified in as many\n    different ways.\n\n    \u201cThere is no agreement among American employers as to where the\n    organization of the human side of industry really belongs. And\n    there are absolutely no standards for it. What we need to do is\n    to extend scientific methods to the human phases of industrial\n    organization, and thus give \u2018welfare work\u2019 a definite place\n    and definite standards. The engineer as the \u2018consulting mind\u2019\n    of industry must be the leader in this work. It is he who\n    determines the site of the plant and its construction. Inside\n    the plant again, the engineer has much to do with efficiency\n    methods. No efficiency methods that are unrelated to the men in\n    the plant can prosper permanently.\u201d\n\nBut there is another sort of resource and national treasure greater by\nfar than these, which most of the nations are passing by. I mean the\nlatent and undeveloped capacities for ministry and achievement which\nlie dormant inside human life. Every life is a reservoir of unawakened\npossibilities. There is no one of us that is more than a fraction of\nthe man he should be. There is not one who is not falling short by\na wide margin of the ideals that he ought to attain, not one who is\nmaking the contribution to the nation or building the share in the\nKingdom of God that God and mankind alike have a right to expect of\nhim. Not long before his death, an article contributed by Prof. William\nJames, of Harvard, appeared in the _American Magazine_, entitled \u201cThe\nPowers of Man,\u201d in which Professor James argued that mankind is living\non a very small fraction of its vitality, and that there are buried\nunderground strata of possibilities and of power which are never tapped\nexcept in times of great emergency. For a little time then a man draws\non these reserves, and then seals the strata over again and falls back\non the surface levels once more. For illustration he spoke of the\nfamiliar phenomenon of the second wind. Every boy can remember such\nexperiences. There came a time in the game when he was \u201call in.\u201d He had\ndone his best and drawn on his last available power. Suddenly it was as\nthough something broke. A partition wall fell in. Unsuspected reserves\nwere released. The second wind came and reservoirs of power that had\nbeen withheld came unexpectedly into play and he did better than he\nhad done before, what he had never been able to do before. That is an\nabsolute truth of experience all through life. In our great crises, any\none of many forces may unlock these energies and let them loose. And\nthe present needed appeal of the world is to men and women that they\nshould not be content to draw upon these reservoirs in crises alone.\nThe tragic crises come because these powers are not drawn forth and\nused. The great wealth of the nations and of the world that needs now\nto be unsealed is just this wealth of moral capacity lying latent and\ndormant within.\n\nWhat I have been saying is certainly true in the realm of our physical\nenergies. I remember a story of John Lawrence, who went out to India a\nraw, uninfluential Irish boy in the service of the East India Company,\nresolved to do his work well and make himself a name. Very early in\nhis career he was assigned to the collectorship of the Jullundur Doab,\non what was then the frontier of India. He made himself perfectly\nat home among his people, entering into their life, mastering their\nvernaculars, learning their secrets, until at last men came to think of\n\u201cJans Larens\u201d as a demi-god with powers beyond the knowledge of common\nmen. One day as he was sitting in his house a messenger came in from\none of his districts and reported that a village was burning down and\nbegged him to come. He hurried out to the village. When he arrived he\nasked the headmen if they had all the people out of the houses and was\ntold that all had been brought out except one old woman who refused to\ncome. He went to the house where the woman lived and looked in. There\nshe sat on a bag of grain. Lawrence entreated her to come out but she\nrefused, explaining that this bag of grain was all her earthly wealth.\nIf she came out she would starve; she would rather stay and be burned.\nWhen Lawrence found his commands and entreaties unavailing, he rushed\nin, with the embers from the burning roof falling on his shoulders,\nstooped over and picked up the bag of grain, and left the burning\nbuilding, the old woman following obediently behind. The next day as he\nwas sitting in his house it flashed on his mind that the bag of grain\nhad been exceedingly heavy and he rode out curiously to the village\nagain to see how much he had lifted. He had no difficulty in finding\nthe old woman and her bag of grain. He stooped over to lift it but\ncould not budge it from the ground. But the day before he had budged\nit. He had picked it up and carried it. The power to do it was lying\nlatent in him all the while. All he needed was just the piercing call\nor inspiration adequate to release the buried energy.\n\nAnd the world is full of evidences that what is true physically is true\nmorally. In every man lies the power with the grace and help of God to\nmeet his great crisis and in every woman the power to bear the agony\nand pain of her great hour. Only a few years ago, when the _Titanic_\nwent down and some men who had walked as dogs at the heel of their\npassions suddenly became masters of themselves and laughing stood at\nattention to death as they waited on the deck, we all wondered what it\nwas that gave these men who had been slaves their sudden moral mastery.\nThat mastery was within all the time. It did not come out of the frame\nof the _Titanic_. It did not come out of the iceberg. It was lying\nburied all the while only waiting the hour and the Voice that was to\nsummon it to come forth.\n\nAmong the nations to-day this is the needed truth as it is the needed\ntruth here in our own lives. There are boys here to-day who have been\nyielding to temptation, to whom God would give energies to withstand\ntheir enemy. In the nation there are even now capacities to conquer all\nthe evils with which the nation abounds. Some day our children will\nlook back and ask why we have allowed immorality to dominate the moral\nlife of the land and why in the world we have endured the saloon so\nlong. These things will be cleaned away some day and men will wonder\nthen what their mothers and fathers were about that they surrendered\nwhere that happier generation will not surrender but will achieve. The\nneeded capacities are buried of God in life, but we are not willing to\nbelieve that they are there or to have faith in Him to energize them.\n\nLet me put the truth in yet a different way.\n\nLast spring, just after Holy Week, I received a very interesting letter\nfrom a friend who is one of the best known and best loved judges in our\ncountry. It was written on the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter\nDay, and he said in it that he was pursuing the practice which he had\npursued for many years, of trying in the interval between Good Friday\nand Easter morning to eliminate Jesus Christ entirely from his thought\nof life and of the world in order that he might thus bring home to his\nown mind and conscience more deeply the significance of Jesus, and he\nsaid he could hardly wait for Easter morning to come to escape from the\noppressive gloom and depression in which his spirit was as a result of\nhis enforced practice. And he begged me, as one of his friends, to try\nthis between the next Good Friday and Easter Day and to see what the\nexperience would mean.\n\nOddly enough my own thoughts that same day on which my friend was\nwriting this letter were exactly the opposite of his. He was thinking\nof Jesus Christ as extinguished, he was thinking of all that He had\ncome to be and to do as gone, and he was trying to bring home to his\nown heart what this utter loss of Christ would mean. I was meditating,\non the other hand, on that Saturday morning, on just the contrary idea.\nOn Good Friday, the day before this Saturday, there had been a great\nPersonality; now that Personality must be somewhere still. Personality\ndoes not die. The next day, on Easter morning, there was to be a great\noutburst of energy. That energy must be somewhere now. It will not be\ncreated to-morrow morning. It must be somewhere to-day waiting to come\nforth to-morrow. Where is it? And then I suddenly realized that it was\nall there, that all that was to break loose Easter morning was shut\nup inside that grave, that all the energies that were to peal across\nthe world on the new day were there asleep in that tomb that Saturday.\nAll the great love and power that had been had not been annihilated.\nIt was there somewhere, only out of sight for a little while. And the\ngreat truth urged itself that all the dormant energies of life, all the\nenshrouded and enfolded powers are here now and always just as truly as\nthey will be to-morrow when they awake, though for the hour they lie\nlatent and unused.\n\nThen I began to see, as one\u2019s thought ran easily on, that that Saturday\nbetween Good Friday and Easter Day was in reality a sort of symbol of\nthe whole of history. For history, as we look back upon it, is full of\nthese repressions and these emergences, and then perhaps repressions\nagain, of great impulses and outbursts of energy and of power. Now and\nthen they are for good, as when the Reformation broke across men\u2019s\nminds, shattering their shackles, opening old prison doors, allowing\nthe enslaved human spirit to come out and breathe the air of freedom.\nBut why had it not come before? All the great energies of God that\nburst forth in it must have been here even before that hour. And why\ndid they have to subside afterwards? They all _were_ still? Why might\nthey not have gone beating their way onward and not have ceased so soon?\n\nThen also great explosions of evil come. We look out across the world\nto-day and see all these dogs of war unleashed. But these dogs of war\nwere not born the year before last. They had been here all the time,\nonly they were chained and held in leash. Why were they not kept\nchained and in leash? Why were they allowed to break loose and go wild\nacross the world in their havoc and devastation? We know perfectly well\nthat after a few months they are going to be chained again, and the\ngreat reconstructive processes will begin to make the world anew. But\nwhy do these reconstructive forces have to wait? They will not exist\nany more truly then than they do to-day. Why not release them to-day\nto go out and do their creative work in the world now? Why not on\nSaturday let loose that which is to burst with creative freedom on the\nworld on Easter morning?\n\nAnd I saw that this was a symbol not of history only but also of human\nlife, that every human life is just the mystery of the infolding of\nlatent capacities that are there wrapped up, the infolding of great\nends of which no man can foretell. That is why, I suppose, a man feels\nsuch awe every time he holds a very little child in his arms. He does\nnot know what it is that he has in his arms, what it is that will\nsome day come bursting forth from that little child. That must have\nbeen Mary\u2019s thrill in those early days when she held her little one,\nknowing dimly and far away, if not clearly, that she held in her arms\nthe mighty Redeemer of men. \u201cWhen I see a child,\u201d said Pasteur, \u201che\ninspires me with two feelings: tenderness for what he is now, respect\nfor what he may become hereafter.\u201d Of personal life it is as true as of\nhistory. Vast latent possibilities for good may come breaking forth.\nNow and then they do, in some truth-loving, unfearing, plain-speaking,\nGod-obeying Martin Luther. Or they may issue in some tranquil, patient,\nloving-hearted, steady-spirited, immovable Lincoln. Goodness comes\nleaping forth, and oftentimes we are tempted to think the surroundings,\nthe circumstances, produced it. They produced none of it. They gave it\nits opportunity and its chance, but it was all somewhere all the time\nand it might not have come forth if something inside had not released\nthe spring of our will to God\u2019s will and let those great energies of\ngood come pulsing out to do their work.\n\nAnd the same thing is true of the inwrought and enshrouded capacities\nfor ill. Jesus Christ laid off His limitations as well as His\nactivities that Saturday in the grave; and He left His limitations\nthere when He came out. Out of such Saturday graves in man\u2019s character\nit may be only the limitations that emerge. Out of many a man\u2019s life\nit is the dog that ought to be chained that is allowed to roam free,\nwhile all the possibilities for good and sacrifice and ministry are\nstill-born inside. And sometimes, thank God, men discover all this\nlatent ill within and lay on it the restraining and throttling hand.\nAs godly old John Newton said when one day he saw a criminal being\nled by, \u201cThere, but for the grace of God, goes John Newton.\u201d He knew\nthat everything that had escaped in that brother of his lay latent in\nhimself, and he thanked God that a hand had been laid on all those\ninner capacities for evil and wreckage and that that hand held them in\ncheck and let only the good and the true and the pure go free.\n\nThere is something infinitely hopeful and encouraging in the principle\nof that Saturday in our Lord\u2019s last week for every man and woman of\nus, as we think of life\u2019s work and what we are trying to get done in\nthe world. So many times a thing seems all vain. The teacher tried to\nbreed in the boy whom he taught a hate of lies and a love of the truth,\nand he wrought with tears and blood at his task, and the boy went out\nfrom him and it seemed to him to have been futile, this that he had\ndone for him. We put ourselves out in this or that effort of service\nin the hope of achieving this or that great end. Every little while it\nseems to us to have been all fruitless. But wait. It is only Saturday.\nEaster morning is going to break and the seed that was sown in the\nground in darkness and obscurity will come forth then. The life that\nwas let go for a little while, all that we did not see and therefore\nthought had run sheer to waste, we shall discover then will come\npulsating back. \u201cNo effort is wasted,\u201d said Pasteur.\n\nIt is a great joy of life to believe this, that what Isaiah said is\ntrue through all the ages, by the very principle of the life of God,\nthat no word of His will come back to Him vain or be void, that it\nwill accomplish the thing He pleases and prosper in the errand whereon\nHe sent it. I received a letter the other day from a friend, the Rev.\nAdolphus Pieters, who is a missionary in Japan. He had for very many\nyears been engaged in an interesting work. He published advertisements\nof Christianity in the Japanese papers, and then occasionally printed\na brief attractive account of what Christianity was, with the hope\nof arousing the curiosity of Japanese readers. At the end he would\nadd that if any one were interested he might correspond with him. As\na result of this work he came into correspondence with hundreds of\nmen. In this recent letter he writes: \u201cThe total number of people who\napplied to us for tracts last year was 959, making the total from\nFebruary, 1914, when the work began, to December 31, 1915, 3,590. There\nhave been seven baptisms since my previous letter, and the total number\nto date is forty-five. Number Forty-Five is a most instructive case of\nthe Lord\u2019s blessing resting upon what was, humanly speaking, a complete\nfailure. The young man in question is a bright young student in the\nNormal School at this place, who was baptized a week ago last Sunday,\nafter coming to my house off and on for two years, and getting a good\ndeal of instruction. I did not reckon him among the results of the\nnewspaper work, but after he was baptized he told me that he originally\ngot interested in the Gospel when he was attending the primary school\nin his home town. Among his teachers was one named Okabe Katsumi, who\nhad seen our advertisements and secured some tracts, among which were\ncopies of the Gospels. He did not care for them himself, and had given\nthem to this boy, who was deeply impressed. In the course of time the\nboy graduated from school and went to Oita to attend the Normal, and\nhe did so with the resolution already formed to look up the man who\nadvertised in the papers and learn from him more about the Christian\nreligion.\n\n\u201cWhen I heard that, I looked up the card index, and found among the\n4 \u2018dead\u2019 cards one for Okabe Katsumi. It was number 444, and he had\napplied for tracts in the spring of 1912, but in August he wrote that\nhe had found something in our tracts that he did not like, and so had\nmade up his mind to have nothing more to do with Christianity. So his\ncard was marked in red ink, \u2018Closed August 12, 1913,\u2019 and filed away\namong the \u2018dead\u2019 ones\u2015\u2015a complete failure, so far as any one could see.\nBut it wasn\u2019t a failure. God knew better. On the fifth of March, 1916,\na young man made public confession of his faith and was baptized as a\nsequel to that application of Okabe Katsumi in 1912.\n\n\u201cSuch things sometimes make me look with something like awe upon my\ncard index. What is going on beneath the surface? How is God working\nin the hearts of the \u2018failures,\u2019 or, if not in their hearts, through\nthem in the hearts of others? It is one more proof that \u2018the foundation\nof God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are\nhis.\u2019\u201d\n\nLooking back across the years it could be seen that bread sown upon\nthe waters returned again. Absolutely no energy goes to waste in this\nworld,\u2015\u2015no moral energy, no spiritual energy, any more than physical\nenergy. All that is released goes about its work. Let us thank God,\nthat there that Saturday morning in the dark of the grave all that\nbroke free the next day _was_, and was not dead beyond the resurrection\nof life.\n\nAnd the assurance that a man simply cannot do anything in vain is not\nonly a word of great courage to us in the work that we are trying to\ndo in the world, it is a word of hope and courage to us also in our\nown personal life and struggle for character. All the energy we need\nto accomplish anything that ought to be accomplished in us is in our\nreach. \u201cAll power,\u201d said Christ, \u201cis given to me in heaven and in\nearth. I stand within at the centre of your life. Draw on me. Go out\nin the faith of that and do whatever your work is in the world. I have\nthe energy that you need.\u201d All the energy that we require for any task\nin life or out of life is there, by token and assurance of the closed\ngrave and resurrection, in Christ, waiting to be drawn upon by any man\nwho wants to make use of it.\n\nAnd all this is not the exaltation of human will, the setting up of a\nman\u2019s own resolution and high purpose. It is precisely the opposite of\nthat. It is saying to a man: \u201cThere do not lie in the boastful surface\nof your life the power and the resources that you need. Retire upon\nGod. You must get behind into the unplumbed depths where Christ waits.\nYou must go back of the Easter morning in the grave, the unopened womb\nof the grave, to find it there. All of it is there in the now Risen\nChrist Who that Saturday morning awaited resurrection.\u201d This is simply\nmaking faith a living, acting reality by which a man works; so that he\narises in the morning and can say: \u201cO God, I have in Thee in me all\nthe energy and strength that I shall need this day. No temptation can\ncome to me to-day that I have not got the power in Thee, that I never\nhave used yet, to draw upon, that will enable me to meet and conquer.\nNo work will come to me to-day that is too much for me, no matter how\nexacting or unprecedented in my experience. There is power in Thee for\nme for this work that is come to me to do.\u201d\n\nThat Saturday morning, more vividly than any other day that brings back\nthe triumph and pain and glory of Easter to us, makes a man assured\nthat all the energies he needs are near by, that in God\u2019s own presence\nthere are all the powers he wants, awaiting release by God\u2019s grace for\nall the necessities of his life. And if we could not believe this about\nthe world we are living in to-day, surely a man could not go on living\nin it. If we had to surrender to the present order and temper of the\nworld what would be left to uphold us? It is because we know it is\nSaturday night in human history that we can live through it.\n\nWe know that as in individuals so in all the races of mankind, God has\nplanted these great dormant energies and powers. For scores and scores\nof years the Chinese had despaired of their power to throw off the\nopium curse. They knew it was sapping the very vitality of their land,\nand yet they wondered whether the day would ever come when they would\nhave power enough to break those hateful chains that had been forged\nupon them, and get back their freedom. Twenty years ago, as we went\nto and fro in China, the most striking odour in the Chinese streets\nwas the pungent stench of smoking opium. One could scarcely go into a\nChinese city or walk in a Chinese highway without seeing the wretched\nshipwrecks who were the products of that vice. Poppy fields bloomed red\nover the Empire, and the race had almost come to despair. And what do\nwe find to-day? There is scarcely a great poppy field in the Republic,\nscarcely a fume of opium that you can smell on the public street in any\nChinese city. The bonfires flared across the land as they burned up the\nsigns of the old bondage. A great race arose in power and in a massive\nmoral upheaval shook itself free. God had planted the energies there\nthat needed only the touch of a living faith in Him, a new assurance\nof the freedom of man to do His will, and in this matter the whole\nnation came out of its bondage into its liberty.\n\nFor generations men wondered whether slaves could ever be set free.\nWe almost feared in our land here that slavery was a permanent\ninstitution. But there came a time at last when from the wrist of every\nAmerican slave the chains fell away. It might have been generations\nbefore; it might not have been until generations after; only in that\ntime appointed the moral energies awoke and came forth, and Saturday\nburst into Easter Day for the negro bondmen of America.\n\nPrecisely the same principle holds with regard to the things that we\nfight to-day. It holds with regard to the war on war. Some day we shall\nslay it. The kingdom of heaven, said Jesus, is among you. Well, let it\nloose. The kingdom of heaven will have no war in it; the kingdom of\nheaven will have no brothers cutting one another\u2019s throats in it; the\nkingdom of heaven will have in it no vice and lust dragging its slimy\ntrail across men\u2019s hearths and hearts. If the kingdom of heaven is\nwithin, why not set it free, that we may live in it as well as have it\nburied inside of us! The world that we are living in is calling us to\ngo back to that principle of Saturday morning and to believe that all\nwe need to do the will of God is made available for us by God\u2019s grace\nnow, if we will but obey.\n\nAnd if some men say that all this is only to put in other words the\ntheory of development, of historic evolution, why, what of it? Of\ncourse it is, but what is development except the drawing out of what\nhas been folded in? What is evolution except the letting loose of what\nthe mind of God Himself at the beginning had planted within,\u2015\u2015when in\nthe Lamb slain from the foundation of the world He poured the blood of\nChrist into humanity in order that humanity might be reinforced with\nthe adequate energies to enable it to accomplish the thing that was\nGod\u2019s first dream for it? Of course it is, and that is precisely the\nground of Christ\u2019s constant appeal. \u201cCome unto me,\u201d He said to men,\nbelieving that they could. \u201cUnless you hear My call and follow Me, you\ncannot be My disciple.\u201d What meaning was there to His summons unless\nthe power to respond was there in answer to His call? \u201cI stand at the\ndoor of your inner being,\u201d said He, \u201cand knock. I am there waiting.\u201d\n\nAnd so to us to-day, just as clearly as in those days, His voice\nspeaks: \u201cCome out of your tomb, out of your chains, out of your\nnarrowness, out of your limitations, out of your despairs, out of your\ndejections, out of your failures,\u2015\u2015come out of them. The power of the\nendless life is here for you, if only by faith and love you will lay\nhold of it to-day.\u201d Is that not, after all, the great central message\nand the fundamental principle of Christ\u2019s Gospel to us, which He\nsymbolized and illustrated in the shadow of the Saturday before the\nEaster victory? It is in one of the old hymns:\n\n    \u201cLow in the grave He lay\u2015\u2015\n     Jesus, my Saviour!\n     Waiting the coming day\u2015\u2015\n     Jesus, my Lord!\n     Death cannot keep his prey\u2015\u2015\n     Jesus, my Saviour!\n     He tore the bars away\u2015\u2015\n     Jesus, my Lord!\n     Up from the grave He arose,\n     With a mighty triumph o\u2019er His foes;\n     He arose a victor from the dark domain,\n     And He lives forever with His saints to reign:\n     He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose!\u201d\n\nAnd He arose once on Easter morning that on the Saturday before and\non every day, every one of us might also rise out of the old, low,\nselfish, defeated life into the life through which are beating the\nvictorious energies and the sufficient strength of God. Shall it be so\nwith us?\n\n    \u201cRigid I lie in a winding sheet,\n       Which mine own hands did weave,\n     And my narrow cell is myself\u2015\u2015myself,\n       Which yet I may not cleave.\n\n    \u201cAnd yet in the dawn of the early morn,\n       A clear voice seems to say,\n    \u2018I am the Lord of the final word,\n       And ye may not say Me nay.\n\n    \u201c\u2018Unloose your hands that your brother\u2019s need\n       May ever find them free.\n     Unbind your feet from their winding sheet;\n       Henceforth they walk with Me.\u2019\n\n    \u201cAnd lo! I hear! I am blind no more!\n       I am no longer dumb!\n    Out from the doom of a self-wrought tomb,\n       Pulsate with life, I come.\u201d\n\nYes, I may come if I will, by His life Who will live again in me.\n\nBut the trouble is men do not believe this. They do not believe in any\nlatent capacities adequate to the great task of life. They accept the\nprinciple of surrender and incompetence. They have nothing for God and\nGod can make no use of them. And I imagine that it is such unbelief,\nsuch misgiving as to whether after all we have any possibilities for\nGod in us, the undervaluation of God\u2019s need of us and power to make and\nuse us, that lead many of us to live the futile, unfruitful, negative\nlives which we do live. Men do not think their lives worth very much.\nThey do not deny that there are great men and that great work is to be\ndone in the world, but they think that God requires only those, that\nHe builds His kingdom on a few outstanding figures, that the common\nmen can look after themselves, and that they are not indispensable to\nGod. If we are to prevent this waste, and if we are to secure the life\nwithout which God is impotent to build His kingdom in the world, we\nmust somehow bring home to men the recognition of the great truth that\nGod cannot get along without every man and all of that man, and that\nevery human life and all its buried powers are essential to God.\n\nOne of the great purposes of our Lord\u2019s coming here to earth was that\nHe might show men the value of a man\u2019s life in the plan and thought\nof God. Even the most sacred and time-honoured institution our Lord\nweighed over against one man and found him outweighing the institution.\nWhat was His own example but the illustration of the immeasurable value\nof man? He did not come to teach the uselessness of human life, but\nits pricelessness. He did this by becoming a man Himself. And this\nprinciple of God\u2019s need of men and their latent possibilities is not\nmere theological theory. It is the hard historic fact that God has ever\nneeded men and waited for them and for what they were the men to do for\nHim. Look at the great inventions, discoveries, achievements. What is\nthe whole lesson of the Incarnation but that there are things that God\nHimself will not do except as He uses man? God Himself, we must say\nreverently, was communicable and a Saviour only as man. And His call\nto-day as it has been all through the years is for men who will believe\nthat the thing God wants done can be done by Him through them. The\nWestern Hemisphere was here before ever Columbus drew aside the veil\nand broadened the horizon of mankind. These great energies which drive\nthe modern world were here from the beginning. We did not invent any\nof them. There is not an ounce of power in the world to-day that was\nnot here when the world began. All that man has done has been simply to\ndiscover existing secrets. He has created no power. He has only found\nout what God has put here for him to find out. It took man a long time\nto discover this. But God waited for him. And God needs these finding\nmen now as much as He has needed them at any time. He needs such men\nnow to break open what is still concealed. The past has not exhausted\nall the heroisms, has not accomplished all the tasks. There are greater\nones yet for the days that are, if God can only find His men.\n\nThink how greatly God needs men to-day just to bring need and supply\ntogether in the world. You remember the incident in the life of our\nLord as He came by the Pool of Bethesda where the sick lay, and spoke\nto one poor man lying on his pallet.\n\n\u201cAre you going in?\u201d said He.\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said the man. \u201cI have no friend who will help me in and others\nget the benefit before I can come near.\u201d\n\nThere was the good, waiting to be gained, and here was the man, but\nhe had no man to stand for him between the need and the supply. A\nfew years ago a great famine raged just back from the coast of China.\nThere were millions of Chinese families who were in want and hundreds\nof thousands died of starvation because there was not bread enough to\nfeed them. Little children lay crying at the breasts of dead mothers\nby the roadsides. At that very hour the wheat was piled up at railroad\nstations in Argentina as high as church spires. There was grain enough\nto feed the starving millions in China. Here was the supply and there\nwas the need, but where were the men? God had not men enough on whom to\nfloat the supply across to meet the need. What is true of outward need\nis true of inward need as well. There is never a want where there is\nnot an adequate supply. No little child on this earth need go hungry\nbecause God has not put enough in this world to feed it. No human heart\nneed go starved because there is not enough love to meet its wants.\nThere is all the food and all the love that humanity needs. But there\nare lacking the men who for God will bring the supply to the demand.\nThe human need in the world can be met by the supply only through men\nwho will fill up the gap. God can do it only as men lend themselves to\nHim. That is why, through all the years, the call of God has been for\nvolunteers. For every unique, external, individual call that has been\ngiven to men, you can find a million calls that have been just the\nanswer of men to the great call of God for volunteers. And God surely\nvalues the volunteer above the conscript. Isaiah did not wait for any\nspecial coercive call. \u201cAlso I heard the voice of the Lord, saying,\nWhom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I;\nsend me.\u201d That call was enough to cover him, and he answered it. There\nis so much work to be done that God cannot go marching through the\nworld looking for individuals, performing new miracles by which each\nindividual is to be thaumaturgically led up to his particular work.\nGod\u2019s general way has been to picture before the eyes of His sons the\nwork to be done and to wait for their hearts to leap in response, as\nIsaiah\u2019s leaped: \u201cLord, let me have a share in this work \u2018Here am I;\nsend me.\u2019\u201d\n\nMen are indispensable to God to put meaning into the words in which He\ntries to tell His message to men. Words have no meaning of their own.\nWords mean only as much as one man puts into them, or another man takes\nout of them. The meaning of the word does not come from the word; it\ncomes from some life in which the word gets incarnated, or from some\nother life which interprets the word. What would the word \u201cfriend\u201d\nsignify to a man who had never had one? What does \u201ctenderness\u201d mean to\none who has never seen a mother and her child? Or what is \u201cpatriotism\u201d\nto one who has never seen or felt the contagion? You remember what the\neunuch said when Philip met him in the chariot reading the prophet\nEsaias. \u201cUnderstandest thou what thou readest?\u201d Philip asked. And he\nreplied, \u201cHow can I, except some man should guide me?\u201d Things mean\nnothing to men until they are shown to them. Men go to China or Japan\nand preach the Gospel. How is it done? Why, they take words that have\nold meanings and fill them with new and different meanings by living\nnew ideas in deeds before the people. In our colleges this year what\nmeaning will honour, truth and friendship have, except as these words\nderive their meaning from the object lessons in some men\u2019s lives? There\nare places where honour means dishonour; where purity means impurity;\nwhere truth means falsehood. These noble words are confused with their\nvery opposites because no man has incarnated their right meaning in his\nlife. That was one reason why the incarnation was necessary nineteen\nhundred years ago. There was no adequate religious or spiritual\nvocabulary and never could have been otherwise. If God had not come in\nthe flesh, men would not have had the ideas that we use to describe\nGod\u2019s coming in the flesh. To-day, as then, God is dependent upon men\nin whom He can put meaning into His message to the world.\n\nMen are indispensable in enabling God to get His other men. He gives\nmen guidance for their lives. But how? I appeal to your own hearts.\nHow do we get the guidance of our lives? There are many who are sure\nof having divine guidance in their lives, surer of that than they are\nof any material thing, and yet, as we look back upon this supernatural\nguidance, we realize that it has all been mediated through men. We can\nname man after man who did for our lives, in smaller measure, just what\nthat man of Macedonia did for Paul. We get our guidance through men.\nSaint Paul got his through a man. Through what man was it? Sir William\nRamsay has no doubt whatever that the man whom Saint Paul saw in his\ndreams was none other than his friend Luke. A real man and a friend,\nand no ghost figure, was the man of Macedonia through whom God gave\nPaul his great missionary call.\n\nIt would be easy to recall the lives of great missionaries and point\nout how they received their divine guidance through other men\u2015\u2015not\neven through a dream, far less through some miraculous vision, but\nthrough a brother man who came to talk with them, reasoned with them,\nand showed them the best way in which a man could use his life. Men\nare indispensable to God in order to guide other men into the work\nwhich God has for them to do. And one reason why there is such an\nawful waste of life to-day, why so many men, going out of the colleges,\nmiss the highest work of their lives, is simply because there are not\nenough other men who recognize that they are indispensable to God in\norder that, through them, God may guide men to their highest and most\nefficient places.\n\nMen are indispensable to God in bringing men to Jesus Christ. As\nmen were brought to Christ by other men in the beginning, so has it\nbeen during all the succeeding years. The angels are willing to do\nwhat they can, but none of us have had any visible object lessons of\nwhat they do. Men have been brought to Christ always by other men.\nImperfect lives are to be brought up to the Perfect Life, and to do\nthis service Christ uses common men, just such as we are. That is what\nPaul conceived as the glory of his life, that he had the privilege of\nbeing the bond\u2015\u2015no other beings in the universe being able to take that\nplace\u2015\u2015between men who had not found Christ and Christ hunting for His\nown.\n\nThen God requires men now as He never required them in all the days\ngone by to bear testimony to the Deity of Jesus Christ. We know how\nlittle value our Lord attached to any accrediting evidences that did\nnot come right out of pure, human personality. He discredited the\nadvantages of bringing back Abraham from the dead, for example, to\nbear testimony to the truth. If men were not willing to accept adequate\nmoral evidence, valid human testimony, they would not believe by\nmiracle, He said. That is why He was so pleased with the confession of\nSimon Peter. \u201cBlessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona; for flesh and blood\nhath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.\u201d\nIt rejoiced Him to get such testimony from a man who, in turn, had\ndrawn it out of his own experience of God. There is no greater need\nin the world to-day than for a great body of men who know Christ to\nbe God more surely than they know themselves to be men, and are able\nto go out and testify to what Christ can do with a definiteness and\ncertainty greater than that of any other testimony they can bear, who\ncan say what John said, \u201cThat which we have seen and heard declare we\nunto you.\u201d If there ever was a day when God was calling men to a great\nundertaking, He is calling them now to be His witnesses, unimpeachable,\nunflinching, to the unique personality, to the supreme divine character\nand power of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ.\n\nAnd it is not only for great men that God is calling to do these\nindispensable tasks for Him. He wants the great men, no doubt, but He\nwants, more than that, the great mass of the common men. After all,\nthe great man is only one man, and every little man counts just as\nmany as one great man. Since God has to have all, one little man is\nas indispensable to the all as one great man can be. And until He has\nall, He cannot do what He purposes to do. It is only when we _all_ come\n\u201cunto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ\u201d that any\none of us can come. It is only when we \u201ccomprehend with _all_ saints,\nwhat is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height\u201d of the love\nof Christ, that any one of us can comprehend it. It is only when we\n_all_ reflect as in a mirror the character of Christ that any one of\nus shall be \u201cchanged ... from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of\nthe Lord.\u201d And the little men, as a matter of fact, are doing as much\nas the great. The night that Gough stood alone, with all hope gone, a\ndrunkard in the gutter, an almost forgotten man laid his hand on his\nshoulder and said, \u201cMan, there is a better life than this for you.\u201d\nThe name of that man is remembered by a few, but forgotten by the\nmultitudes who will never forget the name of John B. Gough, or cease to\nfeel the glow of the fires which he kindled to blaze until the Judgment\nDay. Even a little man may fill such an indispensable place as that of\nhelping God lay hold of a great man who will be one of the unmistakable\nforces of God.\n\nAnd it is not only every man that is indispensable to God, but also\nevery bit of every man. We cannot take some sections of our lives and\neliminate them as though they were not indispensable to God. There can\nbe no schism between a man\u2019s public and his private life. His hands\nand what he does with them, his imaginings and where they go when\nhe is alone by himself without any coercing, these are just as much\nindispensable to God as a man\u2019s public worship or any of his activities\nin the open ministry of Christ\u2019s kingdom. It is every bit of the\nman\u2015\u2015body, soul, and spirit\u2015\u2015that is indispensable to God.\n\nAnd if we are indispensable to God, we may be very sure that we are\nindispensable to the world also. If God needs us, the world needs us\neven more. It is waiting for the rising up of men who know that God\nneeds them, and who hand themselves over completely to His uses. \u201cThe\nmightiest of civilizing agencies are persons,\u201d said Dr. Fairbairn,\n\u201cand the mightiest civilizing persons are Christian men.\u201d Those men\nare doing most for the world who are doing most to make men aware of\nhow necessary they are to God, and who are going up and down the lands\nallying men\u2019s lives to the eternal life and power of God. This is the\ngreatest of all works\u2015\u2015getting God His men. I heard Dr. J. Campbell\nGibson tell the Chamber of Commerce in Glasgow of a visit which he made\nto a temple which had been turned into a modern school in inland China.\nOver the gate of the school were these words in Chinese: \u201cIf you are\nplanting for ten years, plant trees; if you are planting for a hundred\nyears, plant men.\u201d Men are God\u2019s great interest and want.\n\nWhat an opportunity this opens for every man of us! We have thought of\nour lives as little, insignificant, trivial, of no consequence. There\nis One walking in the midst of us Who was speaking to Ezekiel. \u201cI am\nhunting for a man,\u201d He is saying, \u201cI am hunting for a man,\u201d and it is\nopen to every one of us to rise up and say, \u201cLord, I am that man you\nare hunting for. Seek no further. Here am I. Have me for your man.\u201d Is\nthat the answer that He is getting from us?\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE III\n\nAN UNFRIGHTENED HOPE\n\n\nIf we were asked what we considered to be the supremest motive in\nlife, the motive which does actually exercise the largest control\nover human conduct, what would our answer be? A generation ago men\nwould have answered glibly enough: \u201cThe desire for happiness.\u201d That\nwas then supposed to be the one commanding motive of mankind. But it\nwas not long before the answer seemed unsatisfactory and indefinite,\nbecause what brings happiness to one man brings misery to another, or\nwhat a man thinks will delight him in the end disappoints and such\nexperiences issue in confusion. It was ethically indiscriminate also.\nThe same motive covered moral contradictions, and men wanted some more\nconsistent answer to the question. Nowadays those who look despondently\nat life often say in reply: \u201cAvarice,\u2015\u2015the desire for wealth.\u201d Or,\nthose who look a little more deeply say it is not money, but the power\nthat money represents that men desire, and that their real motive is\nto acquire sources of influence and control. Some who look at life\nmore hopefully are likely to reply: \u201cLove or friendship.\u201d That is\nthe thesis of one of the noblest books of our generation, written by\nthe late Dr. Henry Clay Trumbull, entitled \u201cFriendship, the Master\nPassion.\u201d Doctor Trumbull told me once that when he first began the\nwork on this theme he spoke about it to his friend Charles Dudley\nWarner, who said: \u201cTrumbull, you cannot prove that thesis.\u201d After the\nbook was done, Doctor Trumbull took the book to him and asked if he\nwould read it. He read it, gave it back, saying: \u201cWell, Trumbull, you\nhave shown that it is true, after all.\u201d And that is a lovely view to\ntake of life: that the motive that lies deeper than any other, and that\nreally in the actual conduct of men and women is the most controlling,\nis the motive of unselfish friendship, of love.\n\nBut what would you say if instead of any one of these three or other\nanswers that may suggest themselves, some one were to reply: \u201cNot a bit\nof it. The motive that really controls human life, that does actually\nand not theoretically play the largest part in determining the conduct\nof men and women, is\u2015\u2015_fear_.\u201d And before we pass that contention by it\nmay be worth our while to look at it and ask whether, or how far, it is\ntrue.\n\nTake it in the matter of dress, for example. Does not fear play a large\npart there,\u2015\u2015either the fear of being unlike everybody else, or the\nfear of being too much like everybody else? In every land, more even\nin civilized lands than in uncivilized, the element of fear enters into\nthe small external characteristics of our daily living.\n\nAnd in the matter of opinion. We speak of public opinion as though it\nwere a free and stable and trustworthy thing. But the public opinion of\none generation contradicts the public opinion of another generation.\nThe public opinion of one section of the land denies the public opinion\nof another section, in the same way in which two sections of society\nin one community think in opposite ways. Why? Not because all the\nindividuals of these particular generations, or sections, or portions\nof the community really and independently have thought the thing out\nfor themselves, but because, held under the atmospheric constraint of\nfear, they are unwilling to break away from what is determined for them\nby the opinions in the midst of which they live. There is a good deal\nof pacifist opinion and a great deal more of militarist which is not\nfree and personal at all, but simply herd intimidation. And a great\ndeal of race prejudice and international suspicion is nothing but the\nmiasma arising from cowardice or that bullying selfishness which is\nessentially cowardly.\n\nAnd a great deal of religion is of the same character. The predominant\nelement in many of the non-Christian religions is fear. It is so in\nall of the earlier or animistic religions, where men live in constant\nterror of the spirits that haunt the air or the world, and where a\nlarge element of their worship is shaped by that dominant principle of\ntheir religion, the dread of the unseen and the unexperienced. Even\namong us is there not a great deal, both of religious orthodoxy and of\nreligious heresy, that is only the child of fear? There is a coercion\nof sound doctrine and there is a coercion of false doctrine, and a\ngreat many men and women belong to their school of religious opinion\nsimply because they are afraid to break away from the companionship in\nwhich they have always been or to disagree with the associations which\ncondition them.\n\nMuch religious conduct, too, springs only from the fear of one\u2019s\nenvironment. One of the saddest things which one meets in going out\nacross the world is the great multitude, especially of young men, who,\nwhen they have left Christian lands and the environment and support of\nChristian surroundings, have simply collapsed in all their religious\nconviction and character. Asia is strewn from one end of it to the\nother with the wrecks of men who, while they were at home, supposedly\nwere men of religious character and conviction, but who showed when\nthey went away from home that it was not a matter of their own real\nselves at all. It was just a matter of their timid servility and\nacceptance of the conditions imposed upon them from without, so that\nonce they were away from home and free to do as they pleased and had no\nlonger the help and uplift of their surroundings, their environmental\nreligion collapsed and they went in an entirely different way.\n\nAnd I think if only we would go deep enough in our own lives, and be\nhonest enough with ourselves to gain a clear insight into our motives\nand impulses, we would discover how large a part fear has played in\nus,\u2015\u2015fear, of course, in all the wide range of its aspects, that shades\noff on the one side into arrant cowardice and on the other side into\na mere hesitancy of character and timidity, but fear nevertheless.\nSome of us are even now cloaking the things that lie deepest in our\nhearts, because we are afraid to give expression to them. We go into\ncommunities, into circles, into conditions where what has been natural\nand real to us is unnatural and abnormal, and we hide our colours and\nconceal our principles. And we do things we ought not to do or we do\nnot do the thing we know we ought to do simply because of fear.\n\nI had an experience a little while ago when this diagnosis was\nconfirmed to me. In a visit to one of our colleges, among the boys who\ncame around to talk quietly was one whom I knew as one of the leading\nmen in the life of the institution. He played on the eleven; he was\npresident of his class. He was very timid about talking lest somebody\nshould overhear, but when assured that we had the whole house to\nourselves he took a letter out of his pocket and handed it to me.\n\nHe said: \u201cMr. Speer, I wish you would read this.\u201d\n\nI looked at it and saw that it was written in a girl\u2019s handwriting, and\nsaid: \u201cNo, tell me about it.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d he said, \u201cplease read it. It will tell you a great deal better\nthan I can.\u201d\n\nSo I opened his letter and began to read, substantially as follows:\n\n    \u201cDEAR \u2015\u2015\u2015\u2015:\n\n    \u201cI know all about your life at \u2015\u2015\u2015\u2015 College, and I want to tell\n    you what I think about you. You and I have known one another\n    all our lives, and we have been good friends; but I think you\n    are a coward and I think that I ought to tell you so.\u201d\n\nI closed his letter and handed it back to him. His lips were quivering\nand his eyes were moist as he said:\n\n\u201cYou can believe that when I got that letter it cut me all up, and the\nworst of it is that what she says is true.\u201d\n\nHis father was a minister; his mother was of the salt of the earth.\nHe had grown up under the best influences of a clean and wholesome\nChristian home, and he had slipped those strings. He had thought that\nit was manly to surrender to the current ideals of the college; that\nin cutting loose from the influence of his home he was doing a brave\nand courageous thing. But the girl knew he was doing it because he was\na coward and she had the courage to tell him so. And he had come to\nsee it in that light for himself. In his college fraternity and in his\nown class, men were praising him because he had broken from the old\nenslavements of home and was living his own life like a man. But he\nknew that he was nothing but a coward, who\n\n    \u201cHeld that hope was all a lie\n     And faith a form of bigotry\n       And love a snare that caught him.\n     Then thought to comfort human tears\n     With sundry ill-considered sneers\n       At things his mother taught him.\u201d\n\nAnd he had thought he was doing it because he was courageous, whereas\nthe real motive was that of fear. He was a coward, without courage\nenough to fly his own flag unflinchingly, to be and do the thing which\nin his heart, in the very fibres of his being, flesh of his mother\u2019s\nflesh, he knew was the thing he should be and do.\n\nAnd if we would really look into our lives we should discover that\nfear plays a far larger part with us than we ever dreamed. Men and\nwomen lie. Why? Simply because they are afraid of telling the truth\nand taking the consequences. Nine out of every ten falsehoods\u2015\u2015perhaps\nninety-nine out of every hundred\u2015\u2015are the spawn of fear. And the same\nthing is true of sin, and of no small measure of unbelief, as well as\nof no small measure of pretended belief.\n\nOur great need is the discovering of something that will cast fear out\nof our lives, that will enable us to walk unafraid in the open sunlight\nof His pathway Who bade men to be afraid of nothing. Think how greatly\nwe need this emancipation from fear in the simple matter of loyalty to\nprinciple. There is so much of expediency and compromise and adaptation\namong us, so great reluctance to ruffle the smooth conventionalities\nof life, whereas what the world needs is men and women who can see\nright principle as principle, unconfused and undistorted, and then who,\nunafraid, will abide in that right principle.\n\nHow greatly, too, this is needed in the plain, commonplace matter of\nduty-doing! All around us much simple work waits to be done by men and\nwomen who, first of all, can see it, and then have the courage to do\nit. The obscure tasks that, after all, are the really great and worthy\nones, how few there are to do them! There is a fine passage in Morley\u2019s\nessay on Rousseau in which he describes what real history is, and how\nmuch we make of history that really is not history at all, but simply\nthe spectacular doings of men who for the time being were deemed great\nand who usually were engaged in war, whereas the great bulk of life\nwas not the life of warfare at all. It was the life of peace,\u2015\u2015of the\nquiet agricultural people, of the tradespeople, of the homes, which is\nnot written up in any history at all,\u2015\u2015that was the real history of the\nworld. The men and the women who were doing earth\u2019s work were not those\nwho went out to battle or on great expeditions, but those who, day by\nday, heroically, unflinchingly, and without fear of oblivion, did the\nreal business of the world. There are some familiar lines of Lowell\u2019s\nin \u201cUnder the Old Elm\u201d that put the principle for us:\n\n    \u201cThe longer on this earth we live\n     And weigh the various qualities of men,\n     Seeing how most are fugitive,\n     Or fitful gifts, at best, of now and then,\n     Wind-wavered, corpse-lights, daughters of the fen,\n     The more we feel the high stern-featured beauty\n     Of plain devotedness to duty, steadfast and still,\n     Not fed with mortal praise,\n     But finding amplest recompense\n     For life\u2019s ungarlanded expense\n     In work done squarely and unwasted days.\u201d\n\nAnd take this matter of Christian service that lies before the thought\nof every earnest young life. Why are so many of us going to be, in the\ncities and homes from which we came, the same useless driftwood that\nwe have been? Why? Simply because of our want of courage to face the\nwork that needs to be done there, and to undertake that work without\nfear that we cannot do it, without fear that God will desert us in\nattempting to do it, without fear of the irregularity and uniqueness of\nour being seen engaged in it. Throughout the world Christ waits for men\nand women to-day, as He waited for them\u2015\u2015and so often in vain\u2015\u2015while\nHe was here on earth. Who will hear His call now? \u201cLay aside your fear\nand trust Me to be with you and to enable you to do the thing. Come and\ntake up My task after Me.\u201d\n\nSome of us would dread to go out to live among the Chinese or\nMohammedan peoples, so far away. But we would not dread going out to\nlive in the legation, nor would we dread it much if we were to be\nemployed in some great commercial enterprise. Yet the geography would\nbe precisely the same, and our dangers and friendlessness would be\nfar greater. But we would not fear all that, because others would\nthink it natural and appropriate for us. But this other thing\u2015\u2015the\nmissionary call\u2015\u2015would be so exceptional, so unusual, so fantastic,\neven fanatical, that we would fear to do any such dreadful thing! But\nwhich life of us is worth mentioning in the same breath with the life\nof God\u2019s Son Who came into a carpenter\u2019s home in a wretched little\nJewish village amid an outcast race, in a bare remote corner of the\nearth, and lived there among peasant folk and farmers, pent up in the\ncharnel house of humanity, and Who was willing to count His equality\nwith God not a prize jealously to be retained, Who emptied Himself and\ntook on Him the form of a servant and became obedient unto death, even\nthe death of the Cross? The contrast between our life, with all its\nprivileges, to-day and the most squalid African village is invisible\nover against the contrast between what Christ laid down and what Christ\ntook up for the love He bore us and His world.\n\nAnd we need greatly this fearlessness in our confession of Him,\u2015\u2015that,\nwithout concealing Whom we follow and Whose servants we are, we should\ngo out now, openly to avow our discipleship and the vow we have taken\nof loyalty to our Lord Jesus Christ! Think how many betrayals of Him\nthere have been, and how much of putting afresh to shame the Son of God\nand crucifying Him anew by men and women who had said they were going\nto follow Him faithfully, just as Simon said he was resolved to do on\nthat very night in which before the cock crew he denied his Lord. Shall\nwe not go out into the coming days with something in us that casts out\nthis fear?\n\nWe look with longing and admiration upon such deliverance from fear\nwhen we find it in other lives. I was in Edinburgh during the South\nAfrican war, just after the battle of Maegersfontein, and was staying\nin the house of friends. There was one little boy in the family\nnamed after Prof. Henry Drummond. I had been in the library all\nthe afternoon, the very room in which Sir James Simpson discovered\nchloroform, and then had gone into the drawing-room for afternoon tea.\nThe boy and his governess were the only other members of the household\nwho came down. He and I fell to talking about the war. I asked him:\n\u201cWhat do you think about the war in South Africa?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d he said, \u201cI did not think much about it at the beginning; I did\nnot think about it much until a friend of mine was killed.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d I said, \u201cwho was the friend?\u201d\n\n\u201cGeneral Wauchope.\u201d\n\nHe was, as you know, the commander of the Black Watch, and the Black\nWatch had been recruited from Edinburgh. The boy told me about the\nregiment and its fate, and shortly after his story was filled up by an\nOxford man who had been in Edinburgh when the tidings of the battle\ncame. He said every shop was closed, and along the streets little knots\nof men were gathered, and you could see the sobbing of strong men\neverywhere. There was scarcely a great family in Edinburgh that had not\nbeen touched. And yet, at the same time, all through the city there was\na subdued sense of moral elevation, as though something had lifted the\ncharacter and temper of the city. They sorrowed in what had gone out\nfrom them; but they rejoiced in the way that it had gone. That regiment\nhad been organized as a Scotch kirk. The chaplain was the minister of\nthe kirk. The officers constituted the kirk\u2019s session. I believe almost\nevery man in the regiment was a member of the kirk, and I was told\nthat as they went down through the streets of Cork to embark for South\nAfrica, although not under orders or restraint, the men walked with\narms on one another\u2019s shoulders, singing:\n\n    \u201cI\u2019m not ashamed to own my Lord,\n       Or to defend His cause,\n     Maintain the honour of His Word,\n       The glory of His laws.\u201d\n\nAnd when they were disembarked at Cape Town and were taking their train\nto go to the front, they went on board singing the old Gospel soldier\u2019s\nhymn:\n\n    \u201cWhen the roll is called up yonder,\n       I\u2019ll be there.\u201d\n\nThey were sent right up and almost at once into that fateful battle.\nGeneral Wauchope knew somebody had blundered, and he said to the men:\n\u201cMen, do not blame me for this.\u201d And without any fear they went into\nthe ending from which no soldier such as they would draw back, unafraid\nof anything that might come to them because unashamed to own their\nLord and unfearing to follow Him.\n\nOf such as those are we to be? Or will temptation intimidate us, and\nthe tone of the conversation of the men and women with whom we mingle\npull us down and cause us to fold our colours up and lay them away, as\nthe man did whom the sneer of a serving maid caused to deny the Lord\nWho was dying for him?\n\nWhere are we to find that which will drive out this fear? \u201cPerfect love\ncasteth out fear.... He that feareth is not made perfect in love.\u201d\nFrom how many of our hearts to-day will the perfect love of Him Whom\nwe call Master and Lord expel all fear? Let it be so now. Not years\nafterwards, when other things shall have palled upon us, years that\nshall have brought their dulling influence with them, but now, in all\nthe full strength and richness and glory and eagerness of our lives,\nlet us admit the perfect love that shall cast out fear and send us out\nthe kind of men and women Christ would have us be, to join the great\ncompany of men and women and girls and boys who, unfearing,\n\n    \u201c... climbed the steep ascent of Heaven,\n       Through peril, toil and pain.\n     O God, to us may grace be given\n       To follow in their train!\u201d\n\nChristian character needs this conquest of fear and it needs the love\nwhich is one of the deep springs of such conquest. It needs also in\nour day an immensely more practical use of the principle of hope, a\nprinciple almost totally neglected in theology and made nothing of in\nour codes of conduct or in our creeds. Paul had a far deeper insight\ninto the human heart and a vastly richer grasp on life. \u201cNow abideth\nfaith, hope, love, these three,\u201d said he.\n\nPaul rendered a large service when he condensed the central ideals and\nprinciples of Christianity in this way. The human mind is very fond\nof formulas. If it had not been for some authoritative, simplifying\nword like this, we might have gone on to construct all sorts of\nprescriptions like the threes and sixes and tens and fifteens with\nwhich we are so familiar in Buddhism. And yet the service which Paul\nrendered is not without its dangers, for men are prone to simplify\nfurther and to see whether the three cannot be reduced to one, or to\narrange the order and proportions of the three, or to contend alone\nfor that which some one of them signifies at the expense of the other\ntwo. Paul\u2019s own words should have saved us from such folly, for he\nsaid quite clearly that one of these three was the greatest, \u201cAnd now\nabideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is\nlove.\u201d And yet his own doctrine elsewhere has been used to correct and\nto counteract his expressed judgment here, and through the years we\nhave had our theologies constructed in disregard of the domination of\nthat one of these three principles which Saint Paul exalts. It has been\nin terms of faith, and faith given a very definitive construction, that\nour theological thinking with regard to Christianity has been chiefly\ndone. Little by little however the proportions have changed, and now\nlove, as one of the three great fundamental principles of Christianity,\nis coming to its own, not as a principle of action only but as a\nregulative principle also of our thought.\n\nBut it is a strange thing that no one has ever arisen, apparently,\nto say of hope what the intellect of the Church, over against Paul\u2019s\njudgment, has been prepared to say of faith. He declared that of these\nthree, love is the greatest. The current opinion of Christian thought\nthrough the Christian centuries has contended that faith was the\ngreatest. What would men say if some one should arise now to restore\nthe proportions, who would make bold to declare, \u201cNow abideth faith,\nhope, and love; and the greatest of these is hope\u201d? Surely the day will\ncome some time when hope will come to its own, when the Christian heart\nand mind will no longer be content to construe its interpretation of\nChristianity in terms either of love or of faith, or of love and faith\ntogether, but will insist that these three abide\u2015\u2015faith and love and\nhope.\n\nAnd when a man stops for a moment to think, to disengage himself\nfrom the unscrutinized conventions, he begins to realize immediately\nthat he has no faith and love unless he makes larger room for hope\nin his thinking and feeling than has been allowed to us. For there\ncannot be any faith detached from hope. You can conceive of faith in\nthree different ways. You may think of it in its primary form, in its\nprimary form in the New Testament at least, as personal trust, as the\nconfidence that exists between two personal spirits. But even so, can\nyou think of it without hope? If I have no hope of seeing Him in Whom\nI trust, of consulting with Him, or serving Him, of entering into a\ndeeper and enlarged fellowship with Him, will not my personal trust\nsoon empty itself of reality? Or, secondly, you may think of faith as\nthe writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews does, as the \u201csubstance of\nthings hoped for\u201d; in which without any flinching, he binds faith up\nwith hope in terms that cannot be severed. And, thirdly, if you go on\nto the rest of his definition, \u201cthe substance of things hoped for, the\nevidence of things not seen,\u201d still faith is undetachable from hope;\nfor, as Paul says in another passage, \u201cWe are saved by hope: but hope\nthat is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope\nfor? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait\nfor it.\u201d And you cannot detach love from hope or have anything that\nis real in the experience of love unless it inevitably leads a man on\ninto those things that clearly were in Paul\u2019s mind when he spoke not\nof faith and love only but also of hope. I ask any man\u2019s heart if it\nis possible to divorce hope from love. I suppose in one sense it may\nbe, and that you can speak of a hopeless love. Henry Martyn\u2019s heroic\nand tragic life was the unfolding of a hopeless love. But how different\nthat is from love that is undershot with hope. One looks towards\nevening to see the children waiting as he comes home. The workman lives\nin the hope of all that is there of joy and confidence and perfect\ntrust inside his home. Love would be a sorry thing to-day if it were\nstripped of the hopes that give it its sweetness and its joy.\n\nAnd it is not only faith and love that root themselves inseparably in\nhope, and that lose their fragrance and meaning if they do not continue\nto draw both out of hope, but regarding almost everything else that\nis dearest and most precious to us in life, does it not spring from\nthis same great treasury? In one of the chapters of the Epistle to\nthe Romans we find Paul again and again, in his efforts to bring his\nmessage out to those to whom he writes, describing God in different\nterms of speech. He begins by speaking of Him as the God of comfort,\nthe God of patience, and then he goes on to speak of Him as the God\nof hope. \u201cNow the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in\nbelieving, that ye may abound in hope.\u201d And then he closes by speaking\nof the God of peace who is to order all hearts. Quite evidently in\nhis thought these things all run together, as again he writes: \u201cBe ye\nsober. Walk as children of light. Put on the breastplate of faith and\nlove, and for an helmet the hope of salvation.\u201d Joy and gladness and\nconfidence and trust and hope,\u2015\u2015all are rooted each in the other in his\nown mind and experience. The best that we have got in life springs from\nthe fountains of hope.\n\nWe do not wonder, accordingly, that the old religious experience and\nthe richer Christian experience, when it came, conceived and spoke of\nGod as the God of love and the God of hope. They never spoke of Him as\nthe God of faith. The old Hebrew idea of Him was as the ground-rock of\ntheir hope. \u201cO hope of Israel,\u201d was their cry. The lovely thing is that\nthat burst from the lips of the man who mourned for his nation: \u201cO the\nhope of Israel, the saviour thereof in time of trouble.\u201d \u201cHope thou in\nGod: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance,\nand my God.\u201d God Himself when He comes to let Himself be richly known\nto men makes on them the impression of a great and joyous and glad and\neager and boundless hope.\n\nAnd when we turn away from such clews as these and look right into\nthe face of life to ask what the powers and services and functionings\nof hope in the actual life of man and in the life of the world are,\nwe realize that all this exultant hope has its deep grounding in\nthe actual living needs of men. It is by hope\u2015\u2015the New Testament is\nunequivocal about it, and our own experience answers to that word\u2015\u2015it\nis by hope that we are saved. Not in one passage in the New Testament\ncan you find the declaration that we are saved by faith. We are saved\n\u201cby grace through faith,\u201d but Paul is flat-footed in his declaration\nthat we are saved by hope. And the moment a man looks life square\nin the face he sees why it should be so. Were it not for hope there\ncould not be any saving that were worth a man\u2019s while. There might\nbe a clearing up of the past; we might secure something like a clean\nconscience; but there could not be any confidence, any ease, any rest,\nas over against the tragic problem of life, if a man could not look\nout into the future\u2015\u2015which is really the thing he now has to deal\nwith\u2015\u2015with boundless hope. Salvation is just that thing. It is not\ncleaning up our lives from the point of view of the past, just for the\nsake of cleaning up our lives; but it is the hope that for the sake of\nour future God is going to live in us a saving life.\n\nAll this is true whether we think of salvation as it comes penetrating\nour lives and dealing with such problems as in shame and self-distrust\nwe think of in our hours of recollection and penitence, or whether we\nthink of it as something reaching out into the expanding experience\nof the future. Either way, salvation is a matter of hope. There is a\nlovely touch in one of Paul\u2019s epistles where he says: \u201cHaving therefore\nthese promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all\nfilthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear\nof God.\u201d What do you think of that motive? He does not say, \u201cSeeing\nthat our sin is so black and abhorrent as it is, seeing that the past\nis so shameful and unworthy as it is, let us cleanse ourselves.\u201d \u201cMy\nbrothers,\u201d he said, \u201cseeing we have such promises\u201d\u2015\u2015that is, \u201cthat the\nhope is so bright, that there is no ground for despair, that we can\nbelieve victory can actually be achieved by us, seeing that we have\nthese hopes, let us cleanse ourselves in growing holiness.\u201d\n\nAnd then when those first Christian men came to look not only at\nthis present purging of life which should leave it rich and fragrant\nand glorious but out upon the wide ranges of the untried and the\nunforeseeable, they still construed salvation in terms of hope. \u201cNow\nare we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be:\nbut we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we\nshall see him as he is. And he that hath this hope in him purifieth\nhimself, even as he is pure.\u201d It is so because there is in front of us\nthe dear voice calling, the voice that says to every one of us: \u201cMan,\nlet that old past go now. It is done and gone beyond recall. Come out\nwith Me. There is a new road for your feet and Mine, a new tale that is\nto be unfolded now, a new story, the contradiction of the old. Let the\npast go now, and come and walk with Me in the limitless hope of the new\nways.\u201d\n\nAnd it is not only by hope, as a simple downright matter of fact, that\nmen are saved and held fast to the Saviour; it is by hope also that\nmen are nerved and empowered. In the hour of darkness, it is what\nlights all the darkness and makes it possible for men to bear. \u201cYes,\u201d\nwe say to ourselves in the hour of pain, \u201cI know; but I can stand it,\nfor after this comes something that is different from this.\u201d That is\nwhat the honest doctor says to us when he deals with us. \u201cNow hold\nsteady for a moment. I am going to cut and it will hurt dreadfully.\nBut just wait. Beyond the pain lies freedom from pain.\u201d And we say,\n\u201cYes, doctor, cut. I can stand it.\u201d In a moment the anguish is over. We\nendure in that hope. Has it not always been so? For a little while the\nmother bears her anguish and her pain for the joy and hope that a child\nis born into the world. For a little while Jesus bore the loneliness\nand the anguish of His grief and the shadow and the pain and the\ndisgrace of His Cross, because, looking over it, He saw the glory that\nawaited Him and the world, and He endured all this, this anguish of\nthe Cross, for the joy that was set beyond. \u201cTherefore,\u201d says Paul,\n\u201cwe rejoice in tribulation, in being flailed, in being pressed down as\ngrapes in the wine-press, in being put through discipline and strain,\nwe rejoice in all that, because we know that tribulation worketh\nsteadfastness, steadfastness experience, and experience hope, and hope\nmaketh not ashamed.\u201d\n\nAnd you know the paradox, and the glory of it, is that the darker\nyou make the shadows the more triumphantly hope laughs in the midst\nof them. The more difficult you make the night, the more hopeful and\nenticing is the sure confidence of the dawn that is not far away. Our\nword, \u201cCheer up! The worst is yet to come,\u201d is as deep a Christian\nword as was ever yet spoken. Be glad, because darker things lie just\nahead and then light beyond. Thank God that you are counted worthy for\ntribulations like these; for these are what wash white a man\u2019s robes\nand make him fit to walk after the Lamb whithersoever He goes, in\ncompany with the men whose lips have never known a lie.\n\nAll this is put finely for us in \u201cThe Ballad of the White Horse,\u201d the\nbest piece of work Chesterton has done. They were as dark days as ever\nhad been in English history. Tide after tide of invasion from Norse and\nDane had come pouring in. Again and again Alfred had called his men\nand gone out and fought, and each time in vain. Now, as he sits on his\nlittle island in the Thames among the reeds, the news comes to him that\nthe Danes are on their way for a fresh invasion of his land. He kneels\nin prayer and asks the Virgin Mother whether he ought to go out yet\nonce more. Again and again, he tells her, he has gone out in hope, and\neach time in the confidence that victory would be his, and each time he\nhas come back defeated, his men killed, and his people to sink lower\nafter each despair than the time before. And yet, as he prays to her he\nsays that if she will give him one word of assurance, he will go again.\nBut only this, as she stands by his side, will she say,\n\n    \u201cI tell you naught for your comfort,\n       Yea, naught for your desire,\n     Save that the sky grows darker yet,\n       And the sea rises higher.\u201d\n\nAnd there that day among the reeds under the promise only that the\nnight was going to be blacker than he had ever known, that storms\nfiercer than he had ever breasted were coming, Alfred rises up to do\nwhat he had never done under the old assurance of easy victory,\n\n    \u201cUp over windy wastes and up\n       Went Alfred over the shaws,\n     Shaken of the joy of giants,\n       The joy without a cause.\u201d\n\nAnd as his men saw him coming, they thought it was with the old vain\nword of a sure victory, and they were about to tell him in advance that\nif he came with such a message they would follow him no more. But not\nnow was Alfred\u2019s word the easy word. No, but\u2015\u2015\n\n    \u201cThis is the word of Mary,\n       The word of the world\u2019s desire;\n    \u2018No more of comfort shall you get\n     Save that the sky grows darker yet,\n       And the sea rises higher.\u2019\u201d\n\nAnd in front of that darkening sky and that rising sea his men rose up\nto go with him, and this time, from the darkest night they had ever\nknown, came the bright morning of their lasting victory. Thank God, we\nare not called out on any soft errand under the incitement of bright\nchoices, but challenged by great difficulties, black nights and rising\nstorms, to work in the hope of that which is invisible and which lies\nbeyond. It is by hope, and hope that lies behind impenetrable clouds,\nthat men are nerved and empowered. It is because the world is so black\nand dark to-day that we walk out into it smiling in its face, knowing\nthat behind all this the morning the more surely waits, the morning in\nwhich the men believe who have faith and love and hope.\n\nAnd it is by hope that our comforts are drawn down into our lives when\nthe darkest of all days come, and everything is quiet about the house\nand the little feet that had run to and fro are still. We say, \u201cYes, a\nlittle while and then those angel faces will smile, that I have loved\nand lost and love.\u201d What would we do in those hours if it were not for\nthe sure hope? Saint Paul lays his own heart open to all his friends\nin one of his epistles: \u201cBut I would not have you to be ignorant,\nbrethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even\nas others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and\nrose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with\nhim. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which\nare alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them\nwhich are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a\nshout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and\nthe dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain\nshall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord\nin the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort\none another with these words.\u201d\n\nAnd as for us who are in the full flush and possession of all that\nwe have, it is by hope that we draw our comfort for our struggle. As\nagainst the background of our defeats and failures, we say to our own\nhearts: \u201cWell, wait, just wait; my time will come. No matter how much\nof this there has been, some day my hope will be fulfilled. It is sure\nthat something else than this there will yet be.\u201d William Henry Green\nbecame the outstanding Hebrew scholar in America. He was plucked when\nhe entered college in Latin and Greek. At Lafayette College for months\nand months he found himself beaten on the very battle-field where\nhe stood at last the first man in the land. At Lexington, Virginia,\nseveral years ago, I went to the grave of General Lee in the chancel\nof the chapel of his college and then I went out to the grave of\nStonewall Jackson on that little hill. One of his townsmen was telling\nme the story of Jackson and how by hope he wrested triumph out of his\nuttermost failure. He had been teaching in the military academy, and\nhad just been about to give up his work because he had no gift of\ndiscipline. He could not maintain order in his own classroom, my friend\nsaid, and was about to surrender his career as a teacher, because he\nthought he was incapable there. Then the war broke out, and within\ntwelve months Stonewall Jackson was the most famous disciplinarian on\nearth. On the very field where the man\u2019s failure had been most clear,\nthere he achieved his richest and greatest victory, by hope. And so we\ncomfort our hearts here to-day. \u201cYes,\u201d we say to memories of which we\nare reminded in our searching hours, \u201cthe evil and unworthy imaginings\nand desires cling to us still, but it will not be forever. Some day, no\nmatter how often I have failed, if I live in hope, it will come to me,\nthe clean thing that the Lord said should be mine.\u201d\n\nAnd last of all, there is nothing adequate for us in the way of\nactually moulding men and doing that with life which we were set here\nto do unless we can go to the work in the spirit in which our Lord and\nSaint Paul entered it. If I have no hope for another man, I cannot\nawaken any hope in him for himself. Unless I believe in him, how can he\nbelieve? The glory of Christ was that, though He knew just what was in\nman, and saw all the weaknesses and the slavery and the impurity and\nthe unwholesomeness, though He saw all this in man, He shut His eyes to\nit deliberately and believed in the better capacities and possibilities\nthat were there and that He by His grace and His power could plant and\nnurture and bring out until all that old baseness that had been the man\nwas not the man any more, and all this new purity that had not been the\nman was the man, and Simon was turned at last out of his putty into\nrock and stone.\n\nI do not know whether the apostles were conscious or not of what was\nhappening to them. Maybe they did not appreciate their Master, but\none likes to think that they must have done so, and that often they\nwould go off by themselves and one would say: \u201cAndrew, is He not just\ngreat? Did you ever meet any one like that before? Did you see what He\ndid this morning? He just shut His eyes completely to that meanness\nthat He saw in me, and that I saw the moment I let it out, too, and\nHe pretended that He never saw it at all, and He believed in me when\nHe knew and I knew there was nothing there to believe in. Is He not\nwonderful? He will make a man of me yet.\u201d And to this day He is still\ndoing just what He was doing then. In this place now He is doing just\nthat thing. He is shutting His eyes to what we do not want Him to see\nand opening them to what only He can see in us. And His law must be our\nlaw.\n\nI can put it in a little story that a friend of some of us, George\nTruett, told to a little group some years ago in a western city. \u201cI am\nfond,\u201d he said, \u201cof recalling the first soul it was ever given me to\nwin to Jesus. I was a lad barely grown and a teacher in the mountains\nof Carolina. One morning, as we were ready for prayers in the chapel,\nthere hobbled down the aisle to the front seat a boy of about sixteen\nyears old. He was an eager, lonely-looking lad. I read the Scriptures\nand prayed and then sent the teachers to their classes. But my little\ncripple lad stayed. I supposed that he was a beggar. And I said to\nmyself, \u2018Surely this boy deserves alms. His condition betokens his\nneed.\u2019 So I went to him at recess and said, \u2018My lad, what do you want?\u2019\nHe looked me eagerly in the face and said: \u2018Mr. Truett, I want to go to\nschool. Oh, sir, I want to be somebody in the world. I will always be\na cripple. The doctors have told me that, but,\u2019 he said, \u2018I want to be\nsomebody.\u2019\n\n\u201cHe had won me. He told me of their poverty, and that was taken care\nof. I watched that lad for weeks and weeks. How bright his mind was!\nHow eager he was to know! One day I called him into my office and said\nto him: \u2018My boy, I want you to tell me something more about yourself.\u2019\nHe told me how, a few months before, his father had been killed in the\ngreat cotton mill where he worked, and the few dollars he had saved up\nwere soon gone. They tried to do their best in the county where they\nwere, but found it difficult; so his mother said one day: \u2018Let us move\nto the next county, where they do not know us. Perhaps we can do better\nwhere we are not known.\u2019 So they moved and now he had come into my\nschool. He said, \u2018I want to help mother, and I want to be somebody in\nthe world; so I made my appeal to you to come to your school.\u2019 It was\ntime in a moment for the bell to ring for books. I laid my hand on the\nhead of the little fellow and said to him: \u2018Jim, I am for you, my boy.\nI believe in you thoroughly, and I want you to know that I love you, my\nboy.\u2019 And when I said that last word, the little pinched face looked\nup into my face almost in a lightning flash, and he said: \u2018Mr. Truett,\ndid you say you loved me? Did you say that?\u2019 I said, \u2018I said that,\nJim.\u2019 And then with a great sob he said: \u2018I did not know anybody loved\nme but mother and the two little girls. Mr. Truett, if you love me, I\nam going to be a man yet, by the help of God.\u2019 And when a few Friday\nnights afterwards I was leading the boys in their chapel meeting, as\nwas the custom, I heard the boy\u2019s crutches over in the corner. There\nJim sat, in a chair away from the other boys to protect his leg. And\na little later he got up, sobbing and laughing at the same time, and\nsaid, \u2018Mr. Truett, I have found the Saviour, and that time you told\nme you loved me started me towards Him.\u2019\u201d And then our friend added,\n\u201cBrothers, working men in the shops and everywhere are dying for love.\nYour grammar may be broken, your plans may be imperfect, your machinery\nmay be crude, your organization may be rough; but if you love men and\npour your hearts out to them honestly and directly, there will be a\nresponse that will fill your hearts with joy and heaven with praises.\u201d\n\nAnd the need and functions of hope should be viewed in no narrow\npersonal way. We want to-day men who have a large and courageous\nfaith in God for the nation and the world. Of recent years a mood of\npessimism has spread through America. In one sense it represents a\nwholesome reaction from the spirit of braggadocio and spreadeagleism of\nan earlier day. So far it is wholesome. We need to be sobered and made\nmodest and quiet in our national spirit. But it is a bad thing when a\nnation loses the zest of a great consciousness and a brave patriotism,\nand thinks meanly of what God can do with it. Our nation needs now\nnot a timid and fearful sense of its impotence and incapacity, but a\nrealization that, whatever its difficulties and defects, God has a\nmission for us which only we can fulfill for Him. For this mission\nthose men must be the nation\u2019s soul of hope and expectation who know\nthat our greatest duty and service lie ahead of us and are waiting to\nbe grasped by men whose hearts face the untried without fear.\n\nAnd now shall we have this hope that nothing can slay? Do we want it?\nWell, it is so near to us that we do not need to reach out after it.\nYou know where it is, \u201cChrist in you, the hope of glory.\u201d \u201cThe Lord\nJesus Christ,\u201d as Saint Paul says in the opening words of his first\nEpistle to Timothy, \u201cThe Lord Jesus Christ, our hope.\u201d This hope is not\nsomething that we work up out of the fragments of moral ideals that we\nfind lying around in our lives or our nation. Jesus Christ is the hope\nfor a man and a people. If we want it, why not now take Him? Genuinely,\nI mean, in a deep, living, religious way, take Him in His fullness of\nlife? God and the nation want the men who are filled with His courage\nand hope:\n\n    \u201cGod\u2019s trumpet wakes the slumbering world,\n     Now each man to his post.\n     The red cross banner is unfurl\u2019d,\n     Who joins the glorious host? Who joins the glorious host?\n     He who in fealty to the truth\n     And counting all the cost\n     Doth consecrate his gen\u2019rous youth,\n     He joins the noble host! He joins the noble host!\n\n    \u201cHe who, no anger on his tongue\n     Nor any idle boast,\n     Bears steadfast witness \u2019gainst the wrong,\n     He joins the sacred host! He joins the sacred host!\n     He who with calm, undaunted will\n     Ne\u2019er counts the battle lost\n     But though defeated battles still,\n     He joins the faithful host! He joins the faithful host!\n\n    \u201cHe who is ready for the cross,\n     The cause despised loves most,\n     And shows not pain or shame or loss,\n     He joins the martyr host! He joins the martyr host!\n     God\u2019s trumpet wakes the slumbering world.\n     Now each man to his post.\n     The red cross banner is unfurled.\n     We join the glorious host! We join the glorious host!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE IV\n\nTHE JOY OF THE MINORITY\n\n\nThere are two forms of disloyalty. One is flinching, the other is\ncompromise. Of course, the compromiser will never allow that he is\ndisloyal. He is a practical man who realizes that theories and ideals\nhave to be adapted to a practical world, and he gives up a part, and\nas unimportant a part as possible, in order that he may gain the rest.\nHe feels himself quite capable of judging how much to give up and what\npart may rightly be given up. He will simply abate the unreason of\na God who demands all righteousness, and to Whom the whole truth is\ntruth. Let us set up against such men the uncompromising principle of\nthe duty of non-compromise. It is a principle from which the wisest\nand best of men are sometimes won away in the supposed interest of\nthe great ends which they seek, and for which they feel that they may\nrightly sacrifice subordinate issues. There is what some regard as a\nstriking incident of this character in the life of that uncompromising\nman, Saint Paul. It is an exciting and instructive story. This is the\nway it is told in the twenty-first chapter of Acts (vs. 17\u201330):\n\n    \u201cAnd when we were come to Jerusalem, the brethren received\n    us gladly. And the day following Paul went in with us unto\n    James; and all the elders were present. And when he had saluted\n    them, he rehearsed one by one the things which God had wrought\n    among the Gentiles through his ministry. And they, when they\n    heard it, glorified God; and they said unto him, Thou seest,\n    brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of them\n    that have believed; and they are all zealous for the law: and\n    they have been informed concerning thee, that thou teachest all\n    the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling\n    them not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after\n    the customs. What is it therefore? they will certainly hear\n    that thou art come. Do therefore this that we say to thee: We\n    have four men that have a vow on them; these take, and purify\n    thyself with them, and be at charges for them, that they may\n    shave their heads: and all shall know that there is no truth\n    in the things whereof they have been informed concerning\n    thee; but that thou thyself also walkest orderly, keeping\n    the law. But as touching the Gentiles that have believed, we\n    wrote, giving judgment that they should keep themselves from\n    things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what is\n    strangled, and from fornication. Then Paul took the men, and\n    the next day purifying himself with them went into the temple,\n    declaring the fulfillment of the days of purification, until\n    the offering was offered for every one of them.\n\n    \u201cAnd when the seven days were almost completed, the Jews from\n    Asia, when they saw him in the temple, stirred up all the\n    multitude and laid hands on him, crying out, Men of Israel,\n    help: This is the man that teacheth all men everywhere against\n    the people, and the law, and this place; and moreover he\n    brought Greeks also into the temple, and hath defiled this holy\n    place. For they had before seen with him in the city Trophimus\n    the Ephesian, whom they supposed that Paul had brought into\n    the temple. And all the city was moved, and the people ran\n    together; and they laid hold on Paul, and dragged him out of\n    the temple: and straightway the doors were shut.\u201d\n\nAnd that was the disastrous end of this conscientious experiment. Paul\nnever tried another like it. Perhaps there is a construction of the\nstory which forbids the idea that it was compromise but it suffices\nat any rate to raise the whole question of the wisdom of compromise\nas a principle of action. It is the one incident in Paul\u2019s life\nwhere he might be thought even for a moment to have embarked on that\ncourse. Wherever else we see him, he is a man of firm and unflinching\nprinciples, who made no concealment of what he believed, and did not\ntry to adjust his convictions and practices to other convictions and\npractices that were at variance with them.\n\nIn the second chapter of Galatians, you will remember, Paul is telling\nof a visit he made to Jerusalem some time before with Barnabas and\nTitus, in which they went up to consider these very questions. Some\nof the brethren in Jerusalem had endeavoured to persuade Paul to have\nTitus, who was a Gentile, circumcised, and Paul says, \u201cTo whom we\ngave place ... no, not for an hour.\u201d And then he tells of the time\nwhen Peter came to Antioch and he withstood him to his face because he\nhad been a trimmer and compromiser; for Peter, acting on the generous\nimpulse of his own heart as to what was right, had indeed bravely eaten\nwith the converted Gentiles, but when some men came down from Jerusalem\nwho were close to James, he withdrew himself from the Gentiles,\nfearing, no doubt, that it might injure him in Jerusalem.\n\nPaul does not say anything in any letter about this particular\nincident in Jerusalem, in which, for the one time in his life, he\nwas overpersuaded by his friends and put in a position where he was\nvery much misunderstood, and where he appeared to be compromising the\ngreat principles in which he earnestly believed. We know what the\nfar-reaching consequences were. A great deal of trouble was brought\ninto his life by this act. It was out of it that all those succeeding\nevents came which took him at last to Rome to be tried before C\u00e6sar.\nSome may say that these results were good. Undoubtedly God led Paul\u2019s\ncourse on, but we may believe that God might have had even greater\nthings for him to do if only he had in this incident pursued his\ncustomary course.\n\nBut we want to go far beyond the question as to whether the consequences\nmay ever appear to justify acts of compromise. A course of action is\nright or wrong, not according to the consequences, but according to its\nconformity or unconformity to the character of God. And the point now\nraised is whether it is ever right for us to compromise our own firm\nconvictions of truth and principle.\n\nNow, the world tells us that such compromise is to-day absolutely\nunavoidable. Men and women, we are assured, cannot get along in a world\nlike this without adaptations. If it is meant by this only that we are\noften obliged to adapt ourselves to that with which we do not agree,\nwhy, of course, we have to assent, because we are in a world of give\nand take of which we have to be a part, and it is necessary for us\nto live our life and do our work in this world. Here in many of our\ncommunities, for example, the saloons flourish. There is not one of\nus here in this audience who believes that it is wise that the saloon\nshould exist under the protection of the government, but we have to\nlive in a land where the principle with which we disagree prevails,\nand the only way we can escape is to go to some other land, and we\nwould only find there some other principle with which we could not\nagree. We cannot live at all unless we are willing to adjust ourselves\nto an actual world. \u201cCompromise\u201d when used as the principle of such\nadjustment means simply that we must of necessity find room for\nourselves among the crossing strands of life. \u201cAll government,\u201d says\nBurke, \u201cindeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every vital and every\nprudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.\u201d \u201cIt cannot be too\nemphatically asserted,\u201d says Spencer, \u201cthat this policy of compromise\nalike in institution, in action and in belief which especially\ncharacterizes English life is a policy essential to a society going\nthrough the transition caused by continuous growth and development.\u201d\nAnd Emerson remarks, \u201cAlmost all people descend to meet. All\nassociation must be a compromise, and, what is worst, the very flower\nand aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful natures disappears as\nthey approach each other.\u201d\n\nIf it is meant by compromise that we have to live under conditions\nwith which we do not agree and to which we must adjust ourselves,\nwhy, of course, we must assent to that\u2015\u2015it is perfectly obvious; but\nwe do not need to live under those conditions assenting to them. We\ncan bear our testimony against whatever we morally disapprove. We\ncan assert our conviction by word or by the silent protest of life\nthat those conditions are not right, and so to live in the midst of\nconditions in which we do not believe, but from which we cannot escape,\nis not compromise. It is compromise when we surrender our principles\nso that others do not understand what those principles are, or when\nwe hold back something that is vital, or cover over deceptively or\nmisleadingly something essential. When we take before men a position\nthat is inconsistent with the position that in our hearts we are taking\nbefore God, that is compromise, and that is wrong. Regarding the truth\nin which we believe, the principles by which we know life ought to be\nlived, regarding these things there cannot be compromise, in our lives\nor in the Christian Church.\n\nThere is a noble essay by Mr. John Morley, as he once was, on this\nsubject of compromise, its nature and limits, of which Scott Holland\nsays in \u201cLux Mundi\u201d that \u201cno one can read that book without being\neither the better or the worse for it.\u201d In it Morley takes up three\ndifferent spheres of life. First, the formation of opinion; second,\nthe expression of opinion when it is called out from us; and, third,\nthe propagation of opinion; and then he pursues this line of argument:\nIn the matter of the formation of opinion there cannot be any\ncompromise at all. Every one of us is bound to hunt for the truth, no\nmatter what the truth may be, and when we have found it, to give our\nlives absolutely to it. In the realm of the expression of opinion,\nnobody has any right to deceive any one regarding his principles and\nconvictions when they are called forth. But in the third place, he\nadmits room for compromise when it comes to the aggressive propagation\nof our convictions. He says that every man is not bound to propagate\nwhat he believes, and he takes for example his own case,\u2015\u2015that of\na man who does not believe in the Bible, who has abandoned the old\nreligious views of his people, but who does not regard it as his duty\naggressively to propagate his dissentient convictions.\n\nIn his own words his thesis is this:\n\n    \u201cIn the positive endeavour to realize an opinion, to convert\n    a theory into practice, it may be, and very often is, highly\n    expedient to defer to the prejudices of the majority, to\n    move very slowly, to bow to the conditions of the status\n    quo, to practice the very utmost sobriety, self-restraint,\n    and conciliatoriness. The mere expression of opinion, in the\n    next place, the avowal of dissent from received notions, the\n    refusal to conform to language which implies the acceptance\n    of such notions\u2015\u2015this rests on a different footing. Here\n    the reasons for respecting the wishes and sentiments of the\n    majority are far less strong, though, as we shall presently\n    see, such reasons certainly exist, and will weigh with all\n    well-considering men. Finally, in the formation of an opinion\n    as to the abstract preferableness of one course of action\n    over another, or as to the truth or falsehood or right\n    significance of a proposition, the fact that the majority of\n    one\u2019s contemporaries lean in the other direction is naught,\n    and no more than dust in the balance. In making up our minds\n    as to what would be the wisest line of policy if it were\n    practicable, we have nothing to do with the circumstance that\n    it is not practicable. And in settling with ourselves whether\n    propositions purporting to state matters of fact are true or\n    not, we have to consider how far they are conformable to the\n    evidence. We have nothing to do with the comfort and solace\n    which they would be likely to bring to others or ourselves, if\n    they were taken as true.\u201d\n\nNow, we cannot but be rather grateful that men, who if they spoke would\nhave to oppose Christianity, take this view and remain silent, and\nyet that is not our principle. Believing in Christianity, we believe\nthat it would be wrong and unworthy compromise to conceal it and to\nrefrain from propagating it. Mr. Morley prefixed to his essay Whately\u2019s\nsaying, \u201cIt makes all the difference in the world whether we put truth\nin the first place or in the second place.\u201d We hold to another word of\nWhately\u2019s also: \u201cIf our religion is false, we must change it. If it is\ntrue, we must propagate it.\u201d Notice that Morley is speaking not of his\ndoubts, but of his convictions. There is no obligation of a propaganda\nof insecurity. There is an obligation to propagate positive truth. It\nmust, of course, be the truth that I believe. When I am asked what I\nbelieve I must, of course, tell the truth. But we believe something\nfar more than that. The religious truth that one believes he must give\nhis life to propagate throughout the world, and it would not make any\ndifference if he were the only man in the world who held that truth,\nit would still be his duty, if he believed it was the truth and the\ngreat and necessary truth of life, to go out single-handed to defend\nand propagate it. Athanasius is regarded as an impracticable and\ntroublesome type but the progress of the world is often lifted forward\na sheer and discernible stage by such uncompromisingness.\n\nLet us set forth some of the reasons why we may believe that there\ndare not be, in our Christian life and our Christian service, any\ncompromise whatever, either in our searching for the truth, in our\nutterance of the truth, or in our aggressive and active propagation of\nthe truth throughout the world. This is to put the matter, of course,\nvery broadly and sweepingly. There is a great deal to be said for some\nof Morley\u2019s nice discriminations. But actual life is a very rough and\nimperative and elemental thing. The difficulty of acting on any body of\nwary and wavery casuistical principles is enormous. The really workable\nprinciple of actual living must be very simple and uncomplicated and\ndirect. The only safe ethical law is \u201cNo lie,\u201d no lie whatever or under\nany justification. So also, however crude and blunt the rule may be,\n\u201cNo compromise\u201d is the only practicable right rule. Mr. Morley closed\nhis essay with such a plain word: \u201cIt is better to bear the burden of\nimpracticableness, than to stifle conviction and to pare away principle\nuntil it becomes mere hollowness and triviality.\u201d And in the beginning\nhe wrote: \u201cOur day of small calculations and petty utilities must first\npass away; our vision of the true expediencies must reach further and\ndeeper; our resolution to search for the highest verities, to give up\nall and follow them, must first become the supreme part of ourselves.\u201d\nThe loss by compromise to ourselves and others is certain, while its\ngain is uncertain and problematical.\n\nIn the first place, one believes this because compromise makes no\ncontribution to the settlement of the real issue over truth. It is\ntrue that all the boundaries between truth and error are not clear and\nsharply drawn lines. Often there is a gray and misty region between.\nAnd much truth is only slowly and gradually won. But the ideal of truth\nis clearer than the sun and as pure as the character of God. And we\nhave a far richer chance of winning it and all that it brings with it,\nif we both think and live it uncompromisingly. \u201cThe political spirit,\u201d\nsays Mr. Morley in noble words, \u201cis the great force in throwing love\nof truth and accurate reasoning into a secondary place. The evil\ndoes not stop here. This achievement has indirectly countenanced the\npostponement of intellectual methods, and the diminution of the sense\nof intellectual responsibility, by a school that is anything rather\nthan political. Theology has borrowed, and coloured for her own use,\nthe principles which were first brought into vogue in politics. If in\nthe one field it is the fashion to consider convenience first and truth\nsecond, in the other there is a corresponding fashion of placing truth\nsecond and emotional comfort first. If there are some who compromise\ntheir real opinions, or the chance of reaching truth, for the sake of\ngain, there are far more who shrink from giving their intelligence free\nplay, for the sake of keeping undisturbed certain luxurious spiritual\nsensibilities....\n\n\u201cThe intelligence is not free in the presence of a mortal fear lest\nits conclusions should trouble soft tranquillity of spirit. There is\nalways hope of a man so long as he dwells in the region of the direct\ncategorical proposition and the unambiguous term; so long as he does\nnot deny the rightly drawn conclusions after accepting the major and\nminor premises. This may seem a scanty virtue and very easy grace. Yet\nexperience shows it to be too hard of attainment for those who tamper\nwith disinterestedness of conviction, for the sake of luxuriating\nin the softness of spiritual transport without interruption from a\nsyllogism. It is true that there are now and then in life as in history\nnoble and fair natures, that by the silent teaching and unconscious\nexample of their inborn purity, star-like constancy, and great\ndevotion, do carry the world about them to further heights of living\nthan can be attained by ratiocination. But these, the blameless and\nloved saints of the earth, rise too rarely on our dull horizons to\nmake a rule for the world. The law of things is that they who tamper\nwith veracity, from whatever motive, are tampering with the vital\nforce of human progress. Our comfort and the delight of the religious\nimagination are no better than forms of self-indulgence, when they\nare secured at the cost of that love of truth on which, more than on\nanything else, the increase of light and happiness among men must\ndepend. We have to fight and do lifelong battle against the forces of\ndarkness, and anything that turns the edge of reason blunts the surest\nand most potent of our weapons.\u201d We do not believe in compromising,\nbecause it makes no contribution to the larger discerning of truth or\nthe triumphing of that truth over error.\n\nIn the second place, we do not believe in it because it creates a great\nmany more difficulties than it removes. Now, Paul was invited to this\ncompromising course in Jerusalem by his misguided friends because they\nthought it would avoid trouble. They wanted to set Paul right with the\nJewish Christians in the city, and maybe with the Jews who were not\nChristians; they wanted to remove an impression which they thought\nprevailed regarding Paul\u2019s attitude towards the Mosaic customs in the\nGentile world.\n\nNow, as a matter of fact, the principle of that impression was true,\nfor although, as Dr. McGiffert says, Paul\n\n    \u201crecognized the legitimacy of Jewish Christianity, and the\n    right of Peter and other apostles to preach to the Jews the\n    Gospel of circumcision, and though there is no evidence that he\n    ever undertook to lead the Jews as a people to cease observing\n    their ancestral law, he had certainly been in the habit of\n    insisting that his Jewish converts should associate on equal\n    terms with their Gentile brethren, and that they should not\n    allow their law to act in any way as a barrier to the freest\n    and most intimate association with them. But this, of course,\n    meant, in so far, their violation of the law\u2019s commands. It\n    is certain also that Paul had preached for years the doctrine\n    that not the Gentile Christian alone but the Jewish Christian\n    as well is absolutely free from all obligation to keep the law\n    of Moses, and though such teaching might not always result in\n    a disregard of that law by his Jewish converts, it must have\n    a tendency to produce that effect and doubtless did in many\n    cases. It is clear therefore that both accusations had much\n    truth in them, and it is difficult to suppose that Paul can\n    have deliberately attempted in Jerusalem to prove them wholly\n    false.\n\n    \u201cAnd yet, though as an honourable man and a man of principle\n    he can hardly have undertaken to demonstrate that there was\n    no truth in the reports which were circulated concerning\n    him, it may well be that he tried to show that they were not\n    wholly true. It was evidently assumed by those who accused\n    him of \u2018teaching all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to\n    forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children,\n    neither to walk after the customs,\u2019 that he hated the Jewish\n    law and that he was doing all that lay in his power to destroy\n    it; that he believed and that he taught everywhere that its\n    observance was under any and all circumstances a positive\n    sin. But this assumption was not true. Paul was certainly not\n    hostile to the law in any such sense. He believed that it had\n    no binding authority over a Christian, and he opposed with\n    all his might the idea that its observance had any value as a\n    means of salvation, or that it contributed in any way to the\n    believer\u2019s righteousness or growth in grace; but he held no\n    such view of the law as made its observance necessarily sinful,\n    and rendered it impossible for him ever to observe it himself\n    in any respect. And it was not at all unnatural that he should\n    desire to convince the Christians of Jerusalem of the fact;\n    especially when he had come thither with the express purpose\n    of conciliating them and winning their favour for himself and\n    for his Gentile converts. He would have been very foolish under\n    these circumstances to allow such a false impression touching\n    his attitude towards the law to go uncontradicted.\u201d[1]\n\n    [1] \u201cThe Apostolic Age,\u201d p. 341.\n\nThis is a satisfactory defense if one were needed of Paul\u2019s course,\nbut no one would question his motive. That was right enough and he\nevidently acted in all good conscience, but the procedure, instead of\ngetting him out of his trouble, got him into worse trouble. It always\ndoes that. I do not believe any man was ever permanently helped by\ncompromise. Every man who has begun to play with it has been drawn into\nworse difficulties and troubles, or has gone down, perhaps without\nconscious difficulty but with real moral loss, to a lower level of\nlife. For one thing, compromise blurs the line of cleavage between\ntruth and error, and that is exactly what no one of us can afford to\nhave done. We do not want the lines of distinction between what is\ntrue and what is false slurred over for us. We want them sharpened\nso that we shall make as little mistake as possible as to where they\nlie. Furthermore compromise gets us into more difficulty than it\nremoves, because it throws together things that are not congruous or\nreconcilable. This is its very nature. It brings into one bed things\nthat cannot sleep together, into one union things that cannot be\ntied. And it postpones real settlements in the interest of spurious\narrangements, sacrificing some\n\n    \u201cgreater good for the less, on no more creditable ground than\n    that the less is nearer. It is better to wait, and to defer\n    the realization of our ideas until we can realize them fully,\n    than to defraud the future by truncating them, if truncate\n    them we must, in order to secure a partial triumph for them\n    in the immediate present.... What is the sense, and what is\n    the morality, of postponing the wider utility to the narrower?\n    Nothing is so sure to impoverish an epoch, to deprive conduct\n    of nobleness, and character of elevation.\u201d\n\nThese are Mr. Morley\u2019s closing words. This is the second reason why we\nbelieve there can be no room for compromise in our Christian life or\nservice.\n\nIn the third place, it encourages evil by making it think that having\ngot so much it can get the rest, and so it prolongs the life of evil.\nThat is exactly what compromise did in the old days of slavery. Every\none of those early compromises prolonged the life of evil which at\nlast the nation had to pour out its blood to destroy. That is what\ncompromise always does. It persuades evil that, after all, maybe evil\ncan win the victory, that having gotten so much from us it can get the\nrest if only it will be patient, and we simply increase the courage of\nour foe in proportion as we make any compromise with him instead of\nstanding up face to face against him from the very beginning. And so it\ndestroys the power and might of right causes by mixing in the taint of\nwrong. You do not make a good man better by putting a dash of bad in\nhim. You do not make a good cause stronger by letting the evil come in;\nyou only weaken its strength and power. Compromise plays into the hands\nof the very evil which we are here to overcome and destroy.\n\nIn the fourth place, compromise breaks down the strength of rigid\nconsistency, and by letting in one qualification prepares the way for\nothers. That is the reason why it is so much harder for a man to be a\nmoderate drinker than to be a total abstainer. As was said of Samuel\nJohnson, \u201cHe could practice abstinence but not temperance.\u201d When a man\nhas made up his mind that he will never do a thing, it is a great deal\neasier for him to refuse to do it in any given instance than if he has\nmade up his mind that he will do it moderately, because he never knows\nwhen he ceases to be moderate. There is a sharp line between moderate\ndrinking and total abstinence. That boundary line no one can ever\nmistake, but the boundary line between intemperance and moderation is\nnot located anywhere. There is no definite border between those two\ncountries. As a matter of fact, every man starts in by being a moderate\ndrinker. He never intended to become anything else but a moderate\ndrinker when he began. But there is a boundary line so clear that a\nblind man can see it between yes and no, between not doing a thing at\nall and doing that thing only moderately. We believe in the principle\nof absolutely no compromise in moral habit and principle, and we\nbelieve in the same principle in our clear and evangelical convictions\nregarding the Christian faith.\n\nIn the fifth place, we ought to shun all such compromise because\nit undermines our confidence in men, and the solid unity of their\nco\u00f6perative action. We know where truth is, but we never know where\ncalculating compromise may be. In the language of the deaf and dumb\nthis is the sign for truth\u2015\u2015a straight line right away from your\nmouth\u2015\u2015for the simple reason that between two points there is only\none straight line, but there may be many crooked lines. The truth is\nalways a single thing, but the error,\u2015\u2015no man knows what it may be. No\ncompromise makes possible unity of accord by giving people one standard\non which they can rely, and by supplying confidence in the stability of\nmen and their convictions. But we cannot follow the compromising man,\nfor as soon as he gets out of our sight we do not know where he will be.\n\nIt is the man who makes no compromise, who stands fast by truth, that\nwe know we can locate. It was that which gave Stonewall Jackson his\nhuge power as a leader of men in the Civil War. He was a man of the\nmost unflinching Christian convictions. He was one who never moved the\nbreadth of a hair from his loyalty to his Lord or to truth as he saw\ntruth in the presence of his Lord. Colonel Henderson draws for us a\nrich picture of the great soldier\u2019s character and it is full of genial\nand kindly touches, but it is faithful also in its account of the man\u2019s\nrigid and inflexible righteousness.\n\n    \u201cJackson\u2019s religion entered into every action of his life. No\n    duty, however trivial, was begun without asking a blessing, or\n    ended without returning thanks. \u2018He had long cultivated,\u2019 he\n    said, \u2018the habit of connecting the most trivial and customary\n    acts of life with a silent prayer.\u2019 He took the Bible as his\n    guide, and it is possible that his literal interpretation\n    of its precepts caused many to regard him as a fanatic. His\n    observance of the Sabbath was hardly in accordance with\n    ordinary usage. He never read a letter on that day, nor\n    posted one; he believed that the Government in carrying the\n    mails was violating a divine law, and he considered the\n    suppression of such traffic one of the most important duties\n    of the legislature. Such opinions were uncommon, even among\n    the Presbyterians, and his rigid respect for truth served to\n    strengthen the impression that he was morbidly scrupulous.\n    If he unintentionally made a misstatement\u2015\u2015even about some\n    trifling matter\u2015\u2015as soon as he discovered his mistake he would\n    lose no time and spare no trouble in hastening to correct it.\n    \u2018Why, in the name of reason,\u2019 he was asked, \u2018do you walk a mile\n    in the rain for a perfectly unimportant thing?\u2019 \u2018Simply because\n    I have discovered that it was a misstatement, I could not sleep\n    comfortably unless I put it right.\u2019\n\n    \u201cHe had occasion to censure a cadet who had given, as Jackson\n    believed, the wrong solution of a problem. On thinking the\n    matter over at home, he found that the pupil was right and\n    the teacher wrong. It was late at night and in the depth of\n    winter, but he immediately started off to the Institute,\n    some distance from his quarters, and sent for the cadet. The\n    delinquent, answering with much trepidation the untimely\n    summons, found himself to his astonishment the recipient\n    of a frank apology. Jackson\u2019s scruples carried him even\n    further. Persons who interlarded their conversation with the\n    unmeaning phrase \u2018you know\u2019 were often astonished by the blunt\n    interruption that he did _not_ know; and when he was entreated\n    at parties or receptions to break through his dietary rules,\n    and for courtesy\u2019s sake to seem to accept some delicacy, he\n    would always refuse with the reply that he had \u2018no genius for\n    seeming.\u2019 But if he carried his conscientiousness to extremes,\n    if he laid down stringent rules for his own governance, he\n    neither set himself up for a model nor did he attempt to\n    force his convictions upon others. He was always tolerant; he\n    knew his own faults, and his own temptations, and if he could\n    say nothing good of a man he would not speak of him at all.\n    But he was by no means disposed to overlook conduct of which\n    he disapproved, and undue leniency was a weakness to which\n    he never yielded. If he once lost confidence or discovered\n    deception on the part of one he trusted, he withdrew himself as\n    far as possible from any further dealings with him; and whether\n    with the cadets or with his brother-officers, if an offense\n    had been committed of which he was called upon to take notice,\n    he was absolutely inflexible. Punishment or report inevitably\n    followed. No excuses, no personal feelings, no appeals to\n    the suffering which might be brought upon the innocent, were\n    permitted to interfere with the execution of his duty.\u201d\n\n\u201cAs exact as the multiplication table,\u201d some one said of him, \u201cand as\nfull of things military as an arsenal.\u201d Those of us who are looking for\nthe secret of Christian influence over others may be sure that we will\nfind it here. Men are not going to follow the shifting man. They will\nfollow the man who makes no compromise, who has his firm convictions\nand who stands by those convictions, no matter what the cost of his\nloyalty may be. Recent American politics are rather eloquent and\nconvincing on this point.\n\nIn the sixth place, compromise in principle substitutes reliance upon\nmajorities for reliance upon the truth, and the majorities never have\nbeen right and we may doubt whether, until our Lord Jesus Christ comes\nagain, they ever will be right. God never has relied upon the majority.\nHe never has waited to do His work until it was ready to side with Him.\nIn all ages God has done His work by the few. In Old Testament times He\ndid it by the few. The one principle prevailed always\u2015\u2015not by might,\nnor by power. It was ever only \u201cthe Sword of the Lord and of Gideon.\u201d\nWhen our Lord came He did His work with the few. Through all the ages\nGod has been working so, and we simply depart from His whole method\nin history when by compromise we try to get the force of the majority\non our side. The force of the majority does not amount to anything in\ncomparison with the force of truth. \u201cThe history of success,\u201d says\nMr. Morley, \u201cas we can never too often repeat to ourselves, is the\nhistory of minorities.\u201d And we do not believe in compromise because\nit substitutes our reliance upon the majority for our reliance upon\nthe truth of God, and upon the strength of God to enable the few with\nthe truth to triumph against the error of the crowd. This passes for\nfoolish idealism and some of our most popular political leaders and\nreformers have poured scorn upon the idealists and dreamers, who are\nnot to be numbered among the practical men.\n\n    \u201cOne would like to ask them what purpose is served by an ideal,\n    if it is not to make a guide for practice and a landmark\n    in dealing with the real. A man\u2019s loftiest and most ideal\n    notions must be of a singularly ethereal and, shall we not\n    say, senseless kind, if he can never see how to take a single\n    step that may tend in the slightest degree towards making\n    them more real. If an ideal has no point of contact with what\n    exists, it is probably not much more than the vapid outcome\n    of intellectual or spiritual self-indulgence. If it has such\n    a point of contact, then there is sure to be something which\n    a man can do towards the fulfillment of his hopes. He cannot\n    substitute a new national religion for the old, but he can\n    at least do something to prevent people from supposing that\n    the adherents of the old are more numerous than they really\n    are, and something to show them that good ideas are not all\n    exhausted by the ancient forms. He cannot transform a monarchy\n    into a republic, but he can make sure that one citizen at least\n    shall aim at republican virtues, and abstain from the debasing\n    complaisance of the crowd.\u201d[2]\n\n    [2] Morley, \u201cCompromise,\u201d p. 226.\n\nAnd we might add, \u201che cannot instantly make truth the life of the\nnation, but he can be loyal to its commandments. He cannot make\npolitical leaders honest and patriotic, but he can refuse to profit by\ntheir dishonesty or to regard them as honest men if they will but wear\nhis badge and seek their own ends by promoting his. He can form his own\nideals of honour and glory and live by them whatever way others may go.\u201d\n\nIn the seventh place, compromise increases in peril as we draw near the\nhighest. If you take a man who is down on the lower levels, compromise\ndoes not mean as much to him as it does to men who have been climbing\nup. The nearer we come to Christ and the highest truth, the more\nperilous does compromise become. As Edward Thring said: \u201cIn proportion\nto excellence, compromise is impossible. A single leak sinks a great\nship, a raft that is all leaks floats.\u201d That is just the deep lesson\nthat men and women need to learn; that the higher and cleaner and\nmore morally lofty or exacting the life, the more perilous compromise\nbecomes to it. One has heard Christian men say sometimes that they\nthought they were safe in doing what this or that man, not as strong\nor experienced or mature, could do. It is a great mistake. The clearer\nand stronger a man\u2019s life, the more careful must the man be, the more\nsolicitous, the more anxious, lest thinking he stands he falls. One\nof the greatest things about the life of Paul was the humility and\nself-distrust in which he walked, fearing lest when he had preached\nto others he himself might be a castaway. We have to learn that here\nlies power and duty, and that the cleaner Christ makes any human life,\nthe more careful must that life be to keep all its habits pure and\nunsullied, and its convictions of truth unflinching and firm.\n\nIt was this principle that made our friend, S. H. Hadley, and that\nmakes so many men who have escaped from the slavery of drink, go to\nextremes in cutting off physical indulgences. Mr. Hadley not only\ndropped once and forever the use of alcohol, but he stopped tobacco\ntoo, and he tried to get every drunkard whom he was seeking to save to\ndiscontinue the use of nicotine. He held that men should be clean every\nwhit and his strong conviction was that while he would not for a moment\nclass such indulgences together, nevertheless the man who wanted to be\nfree from the one would find his deliverance far easier if he sloughed\noff the other also. It is safer and easier to be thoroughgoing and\nindiscriminate, if you will, than to be always calculating how great\nrisks can be safely run.\n\nAnd, lastly, we believe in no compromise because the truth is bound\nto prevail, and it will triumph the soonest when it is least hampered\nand tied up with error or with qualification. One might stop here to\nmake a defense on this ground of the fanatics and devotees, but it\nis enough to say that the truth is going to prevail because it is\nGod\u2019s truth, and hell and all hell\u2019s power in the world cannot stand\nagainst it. What is the use in delaying the day of that triumph by\ncompromising with error? The right will prevail all the faster if we\nmake no compromise with error, if we go out and preach unflinchingly\nand courageously with no compromise, with no surrender or economy or\nadaptations, the hard, plain truth of God as we see it. If what we\nthink is truth is really error, it will be the sooner beaten down for\nbeing made to stand up for itself. But if it is indeed the truth we\nknow it will prevail the more in the world as we keep it free from all\nconnection with anything that will weaken or becloud it.\n\nI know how much danger there is in such an attitude as this if we take\nit up towards the truth that we hold. It lies in our human nature to go\nto violence or extremes with everything. Martin Luther used to say that\nhuman nature is like a drunken man trying to ride a horse, you prop him\nup on one side and he topples over on the other. It is that way with\nus. We try to be firm and we become hard-hearted. We pride ourselves\non uncompromising loyalty to the truth and we lack the tenderness\nand sympathy. Moreover, as Bushnell said in his essay on \u201cChristian\nComprehensiveness\u201d:\n\n    \u201cIt is the common infirmity of mere human reformers that, when\n    they rise up to cast out an error, it is generally not till\n    they have kindled their passions against it. If they begin with\n    reason, they are commonly moved, in the last degree, by their\n    animosities instead of reason. And as animosities are blind,\n    they, of course, see nothing to respect, nothing to spare.\n    The question whether possibly there may not be some truth or\n    good in the error assailed, which is needed to qualify and\n    save the equilibrium of their own opposing truth, is not once\n    entertained. Hence it is that men, in expelling one error, are\n    perpetually thrusting themselves into another, as if unwilling\n    or unable to hold more than half the truth at once.\u201d\n\nAnd yet these dangers are lesser dangers than the danger of\nsurrendering the truth. And we can be guarded from them by the great\nand unselfish love that guarded Paul. The man who loves others more\nthan he loves himself, who holds human lives sacred and free from\ninvasion, who is seeking not his own glory, but the glory of God and\nthe good of men, is in little danger from an absolutely uncompromising\nloyalty to the truth.\n\nAnd if ever men have any doubts or misgivings regarding this, or if\nthe time of discouragements and fears comes to them, and they look\nwith longing to the multitudes who act together, while they think of\nthemselves as just a few, bearing testimony for the truth against\nerror and sin, they may encourage themselves with Mr. Matthew Arnold\u2019s\ndoctrine of the remnant, or better yet, by remembering the great\nSolitary, Jesus Christ. How lonesomely He walked His way; seeing what\nno other soul was seeing; standing alone for the great truth which He\nuttered, and at last meeting death upon the cross alone; one of His\ndisciples having betrayed Him, another having three times denied that\nhe ever knew Him, and all the others having left Him and gone away!\nAnd yet as we look back, we see that lonely cross ruling the whole\nworld, and that forsaken figure men are clothing now with the crown\nof everlasting light, and His name is above every name. All that we\nare asked to do is simply to follow in His train, to take up the truth\nwhich He opened, and for that truth to be willing to live, and, which\nis far easier, if need be, to die. Our lives are ours for this one\nthing, that through them, without compromise with error or with sin,\nGod may bear testimony to Himself, and whether He does that through\nmany years or through few, through peaceful personal service or through\nstorm and tragedy, is of no consequence. The one thing that is of\nconsequence is that we should know and be true to God.\n\nBut there is a better way to set forth and commend this principle\nas a law of life than by arguing it in these general terms. Let the\nprinciple put on flesh and live before us in a man:\n\n\u201cAnd Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the sojourners of Gilead, said\nunto Ahab, As the Lord, the God of Israel, liveth, before whom I stand,\nthere shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.\u201d\n\nThe old man who spoke these words was one of the four great characters\nof the Old Testament. He and Moses and Samuel and David stood apart in\nthe thought of the Hebrew people. Indeed, there was a sense in which\nhe and Moses were in a class by themselves. The appearance of those\ntwo with our Lord on the Mountain of Transfiguration was only an\nillustration of the place which they held in the imagination of Israel.\n\nThese were the first words he spoke as he bursts on our view. What\nlay behind them we can only surmise. He was a Tishbite, one \u201cof the\nsojourners of Gilead,\u201d dwelling beyond the Jordan, a man brought up\nin the desert. There on the level sands, with the eye of God looking\ndown upon him, he had come to a deep feeling of the soul\u2019s lonely stand\nbefore God, and convinced of God and the righteousness of God he came\nover the Jordan to speak his message and do his work in the organized\nnational life of his people. He was a clean-limbed, frugal-lived man,\nwho gathered up his skirts about him, we are told, and ran straight\naway sixteen miles before the chariot of Ahab, from Carmel to the\nentering in of Jezreel; a calm, quiet, courageous, firm-principled man;\nbred so in the desert with God.\n\nWe do not have any very elaborate story of his life. He appears on the\nstage and then he vanishes. There are long periods of time covering\nyears when he disappears entirely from the record. We can condense what\nwe know about his life into six brief chapters, between each two of\nwhich there is an interval, in some cases, a long interval of time.\n\nHe appears first of all in connection with the great drought which he\nprophesied and which lasted for the three years he had foretold. We\nsee him by the little brook Cherith, fed of the ravens, until through\nthe long cessation of the rain the brook itself disappeared. Then we\nsee him in the house of the widow of Sarepta, feeding with her on her\nlittle supply of meal, and in her hour of depthless sorrow raising her\nson from death to life. And then, in the second chapter, he breaks\nforth once more upon the national stage. Ahab and Obadiah, his chief\nman, had sought for him up and down the land, having divided the\ncountry between them, partly that they might seek water for their fast\ndiminishing herds, partly that they might meet again and punish this\ntroubler of Israel. At last, on one of the highways, the man of God\nappeared to the prime minister and told him that he had no fear to meet\nthe king and would do so if he would carry word to Ahab. True to his\nword, he met the king, confronted him with his disloyalty to Jehovah,\nand challenged him to produce the prophets of Baal for the great test\non Mount Carmel; and then, after his triumph, Elijah again disappears.\n\nIn the third chapter we have the only account of the man\u2019s inner life.\nIf it were not for that chapter with its story of his subjective\nstruggle, Elijah would be no example for us men of this day. In all the\nother chapters of the story he appears absolutely undaunted, unafraid\nof the face of man, clearly convinced of what God would have him do,\nand absolutely fearless in the doing of it. But here we are shown the\nman in his own inward wavering, in doubt in some measure about the\nreality or power of his mission, afraid to carry forward that which he\nhad set out to do with such daring spirit; and in the wilderness alone,\nfirst beneath the juniper tree and then on Mount Horeb, Elijah had\nto face again his life and settle himself once more in that faith in\nthe living God which had brought him out of the desert. And God stood\nout and spoke to him, and Elijah rose up on his feet once more a man\nunafraid to resume his mission. God bade him return and anoint a new\nking over Syria and a new king over Israel, and to go to Abel-meholah\nand find his own successor, the young man Elisha, plowing behind his\noxen. And the prophet went out from his hour of discouragement to find\nat once the young man who was to take up his work after him and to be\nan even mightier prophet than he.\n\nThen for a long time Elijah disappears again, only to reappear when he\nconfronts Ahab once more, in Naboth\u2019s vineyard, shows him how little\nhe fears him, and pronounces upon him the judgment of Jehovah. Then he\nvanishes from the stage for three years at least of solitary meditation\nin the wilderness, vanishes so long that the common people apparently\nforgot him, so that when one day he met a little party of the servants\nof the new king Ahaziah on the highway bound to Ekron to consult\nBaal-zebub, they did not know who the prophet was and brought back his\nmessage to the king, able only to say of him that he was a hairy man,\nwith a leather girdle about his loins. But the king well knew that the\nTishbite had broken once more upon the stage of the nation\u2019s life,\nand he bowed beneath the judgments of God that the man from Gilead\ndenounced.\n\nThen in the concluding chapter we see Elijah and his young man coming\ndown from Gilgal to Bethel and then to Jericho and then back to the\nwilderness out of which he had come, that from his own deserts where\nhe had come to know God he might go back to God again. And there in\nthe chariot of fire the man who was himself \u201cthe chariots of Israel,\nand the horsemen thereof,\u201d went up to the Lord God of Israel, Who was\nalive, to meet Him before Whom he had always stood.\n\nOne does not wonder that the old man impressed as he did the\nimagination of his people, and that when centuries later John the\nBaptist emerged upon the stage challenging the attention of the nation,\nalmost the first question addressed to him was, \u201cArt thou Elijah?\u201d\n\nAnd we have the secret of Elijah\u2019s life given to us in these words\nwith which he is introduced to us, \u201cAs the LORD God of Israel liveth,\nbefore whom I stand.\u201d Out there in the barrenness of the desert beyond\nthe Jordan, Elijah had come to believe in a God Who was alive, and\nbefore Whom he lived his life. The deserts have never bred polytheism.\nThe great polytheistic systems have sprung from the lush jungles of the\ntropics. The great monotheisms have been born in the deserts. And out\non the lonely sands beyond the Jordan, beyond the hills and amid the\ngreat level places where there was no one but God, Elijah came to know\nthat He was and to know that his life stood in Him.\n\nThis was the principle of the man\u2019s life\u2015\u2015the consuming conviction of a\nliving God and of the commission of His uncompromising service. Indeed\nwe are not sure that we know Elijah\u2019s name. It is possible that the\nname by which we think we know him is only a pseudonym\u2015\u2015Elijah, \u201cMy God\nis Jehovah.\u201d It may be that from the very repetition of this phrase to\nwhich he was addicted, \u201cThe LORD God of Israel, before whom I stand,\u201d\nmen came at last to call him by the opening note of his message, \u201cthe\nman of the living God.\u201d\n\nNow what that message meant to Elijah was just this: that the Lord God\nwas no dead force, no unknown cause of things, that the Lord God was\nalive, and that a man was to have dealings with Him; that a man\u2019s life\nwas not his own personal and irresponsible experiment, but a work to be\ndone in front of God; and that a man must reckon in all his thoughts,\nin all his ways, with One Who lives, and go out and do his work in the\nworld in the consciousness of his relationship and his subjection to an\nactive, working, personal God Who would stand by him in the fire, would\nuphold him before kings, and carry him through to the end of each of\nhis appointed tasks. If there is one thing that we need to get clearly\nfixed in our own lives it is the matter of our attitude towards this\ninfinite and unseen God Who is alive.\n\nThis faith in a God Who is alive, before Whose face a man is to live\nhis life, is no mere theory. You cannot find any conviction that will\nmore really mould and transform all our conduct and put uncompromising\nstiffness in it than the conviction that we are living our lives\nthus before the eyes of a God Who observes. In the life of Thring of\nUppingham we are told of an incident that pleased him greatly. It is\na story that came to him regarding a little group of boys who were\nspending the summer in France. A visitor saw these English schoolboys\nand overheard their conversation as to what they should do on Sunday.\nSome of the boys were proposing a certain course of action, and all\nseemed to agree until one fellow spoke up and said: \u201cNo, I do not\nagree. I will not do it.\u201d And when the other lads urged him to come\nalong, he still insisted that he would not. They asked him his reasons.\nHe said: \u201cWell, Thring would not like it, and what Thring would not\nlike I do not intend to do.\u201d \u201cWell, but Thring isn\u2019t here,\u201d they said;\n\u201che\u2019s back at Uppingham.\u201d \u201cI do not care,\u201d said the boy; \u201cThring would\nnot like it.\u201d He believed that he was living in a real sense\u2015\u2015I mean in\nthe most real sense of all, in the life of his personal will\u2015\u2015before\nthe standards of his master, and by those standards as in the light of\nhis master\u2019s countenance he insisted that he would uncompromisingly\nlive. Before the eyes of God a man will beware how he lives his life.\nIf he knows that this life of his can find no darkness where he can\nhide himself from God, if he knows that all of his days are to be spent\nbefore His face, that all his deeds are to be done beneath the gaze of\nGod, assuredly that will govern and control a man\u2019s decisions about his\npractical ways. The consciousness of a living God will give direction\nto a man\u2019s moral life.\n\nAnd it will not only give direction. There is many a man among us who\nknows that the consciousness of a God Who is alive not only gives\ndetermination and direction to his ways, but puts a new power and\ninspiration in them.\n\nA friend in New York tells a lovely story about a boy in one of the\ngreat English schools. He was an only child, and his mother died when\nhe was but a little fellow. Between him and his father there grew up\nrelations of the most delicate and sensitive intimacy. The father was\nblind, so that the little boy had to be his father\u2019s eyes, and until\nthe day came when the lad had to go away to school there was scarcely\nan hour when the two were separated. But at last the time came and\nthe boy went. He became the best athlete in his school. One spring,\njust before the final game in which the boy was to bowl for his own\nschool, tidings came that his father was seriously ill and he must\ncome home. The news sent the whole school into lamentation, for they\nwere afraid that he might not recover and that if he did not the boy\ncould not play in the concluding and critical game. And indeed, as it\nturned out, the father died. The day before the game was to be played\nthe boy came back to school, and, to the amazement of all, let it be\nknown that he intended to play. The next day he took his place and\nplayed as he had never played in his life before. When at last the game\nwas over and the school had won its triumph, one of the masters came\nto the boy and expressed to him the delighted surprise of the school\nat what he had done and their amazement both that he had played at\nall and at the way he had played. \u201cWhy,\u201d said the boy, \u201cdidn\u2019t you\nunderstand? I wouldn\u2019t have missed it for anything. That was the first\ngame my father ever saw me play.\u201d Beneath the consciousness that for\nthe first time his father\u2019s eyes were open and watching him the boy had\ndiscovered capacities of power that he hardly knew he possessed before.\nBeneath the eye of our Father, Who is looking upon the game that we are\nplaying, where is the man that cannot play a better game, who cannot\ndraw on the reservoirs of power untouched before, who cannot come out\nand do his work in the world and live his life with larger inspiration\nand strength, with more dominion and sovereignty, because he is living\nit before a God Who is alive? To such a man will compromise not seem a\nfilial insult impossible except by a base degradation of the soul?\n\nAnd not only did Elijah\u2019s principle determine his conduct and pour\ninspiration into it; it was this principle of a God Who is alive that\nmade him absolutely fearless. He was not only unafraid of physical\nharm, but he had none of that subtler fear that every man knows\u2015\u2015the\nfear that he himself will fail, the fear that he cannot carry himself\nsafely through. What you and I are afraid of is not the things that are\nwithout; our enemy is inside. Treachery within the walls is all that we\nneed to dread, and our deepest fear is of our own failure. That was the\ngreat thing in Elijah\u2019s life, that he dared to stand on Mount Carmel,\nbefore all that crowd of priests, confident and fearless. He knew he\nwould prevail, that he had not promised in vain that God would answer.\nThe man who knows that he is living his life before a God Who is alive\nand doing his work in the name of a God Who is alive is not afraid\neither of what men can do to him or of the failure that he may make\nhimself.\n\nThere is a story in the life of Dr. Schauffler that illustrates how\nto-day too men can rise into just such fearlessness. The missionaries\nwere being bothered a great deal in Constantinople by Russian\nmachinations against the Protestant missions in the empire, and Dr.\nSchauffler went to see the Russian ambassador. \u201cI might as well tell\nyou now, Mr. Schauffler,\u201d said the ambassador, \u201cthat the Emperor of\nRussia, who is my master, will never allow Protestantism to set its\nfoot in Turkey.\u201d The old missionary looked at him for a moment and then\nreplied: \u201cYour Excellency, the kingdom of Christ, who is my Master,\nwill never ask the Emperor of all the Russias where it may set its\nfoot.\u201d And he went on with his mission unintimidated by any agencies\nworking in the dark against him, because he was confident that the\nliving God Whose work he was doing would achieve for him His own\nvictory.\n\nAnd we see in this story of Elijah another thing that this great\nconviction will do for a man: it will make a troubler of him. \u201cArt thou\nhe,\u201d said Ahab when he met Elijah in the midst of the great famine,\n\u201cart thou he that troubleth Israel?\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d said Elijah; \u201cthou art he\nwho troubles Israel.\u201d And yet they were both troubling Israel, the one\nwith the iniquities into which he was leading the people, the other\nbecause the principle of the living God dominating his life drove him\nas a great moral force against the evils of his time. A man cannot live\nin a college or university with a faith that God is living and that\nhe himself is living in front of God, and be quiet before the moral\niniquities and evils he will find. It is not enough for a man to say,\n\u201cI will simply be myself, live my own clean life, and let my silent\ninfluence count.\u201d If his silent influence does not count, no other\ninfluence of his will count. But the silence is not enough. A little\nwhile ago I copied from one of the letters of Mandel Creighton, late\nBishop of London, written to his boys who were away at school, this\nbit of advice. \u201cYou will see, then,\u201d he writes to one son, who had\njust been made a monitor in his school, \u201cyou will see, then, that the\nchief influence of a monitor is in his example. But this is the point\non which I have seen many people deceive themselves. They trust to what\nthey call the force of silent example. That is most pernicious. If you\ncontent yourself with merely keeping school rules and doing what is\nright yourself and keeping out of the way of any fellows who you know\nare doing wrong, or if you stand by and listen to them saying what they\nought not, without reproof, you are doing wrong. No, that won\u2019t do. It\nis part of the essence of good to fight against evil. You must set your\nface strongly against all that is bad, and must put down not only all\nthat you find in the course of your walk, but you must go out of your\nwalk to find it in order to put it down.\u201d\n\nThere has been much complaint these last years because in high places\nin this land there have been men who were troublers of the nation.\nThe great need of the nation has been men who were prepared to make\ntrouble in order that, at last, righteousness might come. Things that\nhave thought themselves secure will be shaken; long vested interests\nthat have believed themselves to be sacred will have their sanctity\nscrutinized; and men will come at last into their rights and their\nrighteousness, if we are prepared, following the old Tishbite, to live\nour lives before the God Who is alive.\n\nAnd this same principle brings peace and quiet and tranquillity to\nmen. Elijah shook once, we know, but only once. Every time we see him\non the public stage, no matter whom he is confronting\u2015\u2015Jezebel, Ahab,\nObadiah, Ahaziah\u2015\u2015he is standing with confident soul, quiet and still.\nWe can be sure that if on that day at Mount Carmel we could have first\nmingled with those four hundred and fifty priests of Baal who knew that\ntheir day of doom had come, and then have gone over and stood by the\nside of the old man, we should have found the old man the most quiet\nand placid person on the mountainside and his heart beat the calmest.\nAnd we may be sure that we can go in the same tranquillity and calm and\nsteadfastness in which the old Tishbite lived, if we will believe as\ndeeply as he did in a Lord God Who is alive, and will live our lives\nbefore His face with as little compromise and fear.\n\nAnd it is a great conviction like this of Elijah\u2019s that steadies men in\nthe hour of their trial and that when they fall redeems them again. The\nold prophet fell down. He ran from a woman\u2019s threats, and beneath the\njuniper tree and then on Horeb, he shook and was afraid. But God, Who\nwas alive before, was alive still, and He came to Mount Horeb, where\nthe man lay in his spiritual petulance and fear, and He was not in the\ngreat wind, and He was not in the great earthquake, and He was not in\nthe great fire, but at last in the still small voice of life He spoke\nto Elijah, and Elijah rose up on his feet once more and went out to\ncomplete his work in unfaltering triumph.\n\nIt works that way still. There is a letter of Abraham Lincoln, the\noriginal of which is preserved in the state capitol at Albany. It is a\nletter Lincoln wrote granting a pardon to a deserter.\n\n                          EXECUTIVE MANSION,\n                                     WASHINGTON, October 4, 1864.\n\n    Upon condition that Roswell McIntyre of Company E, Sixth\n    Regiment of New York Cavalry, returns to his regiment and\n    faithfully serves out his term, making up for lost time, or\n    until otherwise lawfully discharged, he is fully pardoned for\n    any supposed desertion heretofore committed; and this paper is\n    his pass to go to his regiment.\n\n                                                 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.\n\n\nOn the side of it is indorsed: \u201cQuartermaster\u2019s Office, New York City,\nOctober 22, 1864. Transportation furnished to Baltimore, Maryland. H.\nBrownson\u201d; and at the bottom in a different hand is this indorsement:\n\u201cTaken from the body of R. McIntyre at the Battle of Five Forks,\nVirginia, 1865.\u201d So he went back and died like a man, with his pardon\non his person. And to-day, to the coward and the deserter and the\ntraitor, the man who has compromised and the man who has run away, the\nsame Lord God Who set Elijah on his feet is speaking, and He is able to\nsend him back to be faithful, even unto death. Thanks be to a God Who\ndoes not compromise and Who is still alive.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE V\n\nTHE LIFE INVISIBLE\n\n\nIt is interesting to note two contrary tendencies in the current\nappraisal of spiritual values in America. On the one hand there is\nwhat has been called, not altogether happily, the tendency of ethical\nmaterialism. In its best form it is simply a demand for reality, the\nrenewal of the old words, \u201cBy their fruits ye shall know them.\u201d \u201cShow\nme thy faith by thy works.\u201d In its less worthy forms it is the effort\nto eliminate spiritual expression and formal religion from areas of\nlife where these have been most familiar. Illustrations in extreme\nforms abound.\n\nWe are told now that in charity love has nothing to do with the matter,\nthat the introduction of religious sentiment is only mischievous and\nmisleading, that the issue is one purely of proper economic principle\nand organization. It is a question of employment for the unemployed,\nor of calculating accurately the amount of need, counting the hungry\nmouths and fixing the quantity of bread, and then determining\nscientifically how much of the bread the hungry should earn, and how\nmuch society through appropriate and unsentimental machinery should\nsupply.\n\nIn medical philanthropy the new idea is that ideas have nothing to do\nwith it. The good Samaritan, we are told, did not give the wounded man\na tract or say anything to him about the religious views or motives of\nhis benefactor. He was satisfied to heal his skin and stop at that. Let\nthe chaplains depart from the hospitals.\n\nAnd so also in social service. The legitimate work is to improve the\nculinary methods of the neighbourhood, to provide innocent games and\nsports, to secure more adequate food supplies for living bodies and to\nassist in the burial of dead ones; but Christ must not be mentioned,\nand religious issues must not be raised.\n\nThese are extreme illustrations, but they are perfectly familiar, and\nthe tendency they represent is indisputable. In this view our Lord,\nof course, was far astray when He talked to His disciples by Jacob\u2019s\nwell about having meat to eat which they knew not. \u201cMeat!\u201d say our\nmodern ethical materialists. \u201cMeat is meat\u2015\u2015beef or bread. It is not a\nmetaphor. Meat that is a metaphor is a mockery.\u201d Well, it would be if\nit were offered for food to a hungry man, but it is not a mockery to\nthe man who would go hungry to feed the hungry. And the whole modern\nquestion is not between those who would give real meat to the hungry\nand those who would give only metaphorical meat. It is between those\nwho want to deal with people\u2019s skins only and those who mean to deal\nboth with their skins and with their souls, between those who conceive\nof man as mainly belly and back and those to whom our real life is the\nlife invisible.\n\nIt is a very curious phenomenon, this exclusion of Christian ideas from\nthe very area which they created. For all this charity and philanthropy\nand social service were produced by the ideas of Christianity. And now\nthe fruit says to the vine and to the inward life, \u201cI have no need of\nthee.\u201d Of course not all the fruit says this. Some of it only says,\n\u201cVine and inward life, there is a prejudice against you. You would do\nwell to conceal yourself. I will pretend to be the real thing.\u201d But\nsome of the fruit has gone further. \u201cI am the real thing,\u201d it says. \u201cI\nknow more than James. Faith must not only show works: works are faith.\nThere is no need of metaphysics or creeds. Deeds are religion. The\nonly wealth is tangible wealth, things handled, works seen, bread out\nof the ground, not down from heaven. Meat that the disciples could not\nsee is too pallid for this earth. Man is his skin and the bag which it\ncontains, and religion must understand this.\u201d\n\nAt the same time that this suicidal tendency is operating in the\nfield of man\u2019s highest values seeking to destroy his standards and to\ndiscredit the title-deeds of all his greatest treasures, a precisely\ncontrary tendency is acting in commerce and politics, in the field of\nman\u2019s lower values. While men are busy on the one hand in the effort to\nmaterialize the spiritual wealth which Christianity has produced, other\nmen are seeking with a new earnestness to spiritualize our material\nwealth. As education, science, philanthropy, surrenders the spiritual\nvision and ideal, trade and politics clutch after it. Never before\nin the history of the world has there been such an effort as there\nis to-day to idealize nationalism, to build up spiritual conceptions\nbehind the State, to make racial feeling a religion. If some men think\nthat religious values and spiritual ideas and so-called \u201cmetaphysical\u201d\nnotions can be spared from charity and social service, other men are\nstriving with all their might to secure all this rejected mass of\nvitality and power for patriotism and the national life.\n\nAnd the same spiritualizing and idealizing tendency is even more\nevident in commerce and finance. Wealth becomes less and less material.\nIn primitive times riches consisted in flocks and herds and land and\nin actual gold and silver bullion or coins which their owner put in\na crock and buried in his house. Now wealth consists in credit and\nsecurities, in figures written on a ledger in a bank, or in scraps\nof paper in a tin box. The world\u2019s work is done with little visible\nwealth. Our new banking system is meant for this very purpose,\nto provide immaterial instrumentalities. Millions of dollars are\ntransported invisibly. By a cable message or a message through the air\nuntold wealth that was in London can be made to appear in New York. And\nall these intangible forms of wealth are exceeded in the judgment of\nthe late Mr. J. P. Morgan by the credit of character, something still\nmore \u201cmetaphysical.\u201d The spiritualization of the material keeps pace on\none side with the materialization of the spiritual on the other.\n\nHowever clear or foggy our ideas on these issues may be now, viewing\nthem as present issues, we cannot fail to see sharply the indisputable\nfacts of the past. Looking backward we simply do not discern and cannot\nremember the visible and outward values or possessors of values at all.\nWhere is the actual material wealth of earlier days, the flocks, the\ngold and silver, the palaces? The amazing thing is that it is all gone.\nThe gold and silver which Rome gathered from the world, which went home\nto Spain in the days of the Conquistadores, where is it all now? Where\nare those who boasted it and built their fame or power on it? Shelley\ntells us in his sonnet, \u201cOzymandias,\u201d\n\n    \u201cI met a traveller from an antique land\n     Who said, \u2018Two vast and trunkless legs of stone\n     Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand\n     Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown\n     And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command\n     Tell that its sculptor well those passions read\n     Which yet survive, stamped on those lifeless things,\n     The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:\n     And on the pedestal these words appear:\n    \u201cMy name is Ozymandias, king of kings,\n     Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!\u201d\n     Nothing beside remains. Round the decay\n     Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,\n     The lone and level sands stretch far away.\u2019\u201d\n\nAnd what befell Ozymandias\u2019 image has befallen almost all the works of\nthe ancients\u2019 hands. A few of their temples remain, and the arches of\ntheir viaducts and some of the images of their public worship and of\ntheir national ideals. But their wealth and the treasure houses which\nthey kept it in and the palaces of their pleasure and the cities of\ntheir pride are gone. I never felt more keenly the tragedy and the\ntruth of this utter transitoriness and insecurity of all national glory\nthan looking over the massive ruins of the palace of the Chosroes kings\nat Kasr-i-Shirin. All of Browning\u2019s \u201cLove Among the Ruins\u201d seemed to be\nthere in mute evidence before one\u2019s eyes:\n\n    \u201cWhere the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles\n             Miles and miles\n     On the solitary pastures where our sheep\n             Half-asleep\n     Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stray or stop\n             As they crop\u2015\u2015\n     Was the site once of a city great and gay,\n             (So they say)\n     Of our country\u2019s very capital, its prince\n             Ages since\n     Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far\n             Peace or war.\n\n    \u201cNow,\u2015\u2015the country does not even boast a tree,\n             As you see,\n     To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills\n             From the hills\n     Intersect and give a name to, (else they run\n             Into one,)\n     Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires\n             Up like fires\n     O\u2019er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall\n             Bounding all,\n     Made of marble, men might march on nor be pressed,\n             Twelve abreast.\n\n    \u201cAnd such plenty and perfection, see, of grass\n             Never was!\n     Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o\u2019erspreads\n             And embeds\n     Every vestige of the city, guessed alone,\n             Stock or stone\u2015\u2015\n     Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe\n             Long ago;\n     Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame\n             Struck them tame;\n     And that glory and that shame alike, the gold\n             Bought and sold.\n\n    \u201cNow,\u2015\u2015the single little turret that remains\n             On the plains,\n     By the caper overrooted, by the gourd\n             Overscored,\n     While the patching houseleek\u2019s head of blossom winks\n             Through the chinks\u2015\u2015\n     Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time\n             Sprang sublime.\n     And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced\n             As they raced,\n     And the monarch and his minions and his dames\n             Viewed the games.\u201d\n\nAll this is gone. The only wealth of the past which has survived is\nsuch as Christ referred to. \u201cI have meat to eat that ye know not of.\u201d\nThe ideas and the literature which enshrined them alone remain. Not the\nmanuscripts. They are gone, as though God would show in the most vivid\nway His scorn of the visible and earth\u2019s \u201creal.\u201d Not one original page\nof Plato exists. But Plato\u2019s mind is here still. The kings are gone.\nBut Isaiah and Jeremiah, the men of the inward resources, spokesmen and\nministers of the invisible life, abide.\n\n    \u201cThe tumult and the shouting dies\n     The captains and the kings depart\n     Still stands Thine against sacrifice\n     A humble and a contrite heart.\u201d\n\nAnd the issue is clear enough when we look at it concretely to-day\nand contrast the men who have the inward resources with those who\nhave not, the movements which are fed from deep ideal springs with\nthose which deal skin-deep only with humanity. In one of our American\ncities the president of a large institution was shelved in the prime\nof life by younger and less conservative men who acquired control of\nthe business. They treated the older man well, gave him the nominal\nheadship with his former salary, but really transferred all the power\nto other men. It was the chance of a lifetime for the older man. He had\nhis strength and his time for any service or ministry or pleasure he\nmight choose. But the only meat which he had to eat was the management\nof the business, and accordingly he starved to death in a fine home\nand with a large salary. All that the bag of his body needed he had,\nbut man cannot live by bread alone without a word from God. The Tinker\nof Bedford Jail heard the key turn in the lock behind him. And did\nhe famish alone? He opened the gate of his house within and out they\ncame\u2015\u2015Christian and Great-Heart and Hopeful and Evangelist and Mercy\nand Dare-to-Die\u2015\u2015and the loneliness of John Bunyan\u2019s cell became the\ngreatest society on earth, and the immortals who marched out of the\nwealth of his soul are the companions of millions who could not name\none human being who was Bunyan\u2019s contemporary. The rich men who have\ntransmitted real wealth have been the lovers, the dreamers, the servers\nwho ate bread at God\u2019s hands and who knew and taught men that the life\nis more than meat and the body than raiment. \u201cShe was not daily bread,\u201d\nwrote her niece of Emily Dickinson. \u201cShe was star dust.\u201d\n\nThis above all was characteristic of Christ. Part of our Lord\u2019s\npre\u00ebminence of nature and of achievement was the untold wealth of His\ninward resources. No philanthropist or social worker ever lived who\nwas His equal in all that our ethical materialists admire and praise.\nBut behind all this and as explaining all this He had meat to eat that\nmen knew not, thoughts of God, ideas of origin and destiny, of whence\nHe came and whither He was going, fellowship, purposes, a spiritual\nprogram. His wealth was an inward, a communicable and eternal treasure.\nIt nourished Him and was for all men.\n\n\u201cI have meat to eat,\u201d said He. \u201cWho brought it to Him?\u201d asked they. \u201cA\nprimrose by the river\u2019s brim a yellow primrose\u201d was to them; and it was\nnothing more. Meat was meat, mutton or beef to His disciples. But to\nHim the primrose was a volume of revelation. Meat was very life of God\nwithin His soul. Language to Christ was windows into the wealth of the\neternities and the infinites. To men it was words. His discernment of\nlatent values in men made Him a rich man wherever He found a fellow.\nHe had cargoes of redeemable character afloat on the wide waters of\nmankind, and these He was forever drawing home. Men brought Him a\nsinner, flotsam of Galilee; and Jesus saw Himself rich with the latent\nlife of Peter of Pentecost, victor of the gates of hell. The stained\nhand of the Samaritan concubine became under His faith purified to bear\nthe chalice of the life of God. He had more wealth latent in human\ncharacter than Cr\u0153sus ever dreamed of. His universalism, also, made\nHim rich with all the wealth of humanity. All around Him men choked and\ndied in the stifling air of racial exclusion and prejudice. He lived in\nthe whole free world. Thinking in terms of all mankind and all the ages\nmakes the thinker rich beyond all the dreams of any racial avarice or\nnational pride.\n\nBut above all His meat was simply this: to walk with God, to do the\nwill of God and to accomplish His work. His life was in God\u2019s will, His\nstrength in God\u2019s companionship. He lived powerfully among men because\nHe dwelt deeply in God. His wealth was not herds and gold, nor bonds\nand credits, nor deeds; but the power to do deeds in the might and pity\nof God.\n\nAnd the inward resources of Christ which are true wealth are accessible\nalso to us; and not accessible only, but indispensable. We need not set\nmuch store by what the world calls wealth. Its one worthy use is as\ncapital for human service; and Christ who had none of it here still did\nand inspired more service than all the world\u2019s capital has performed.\nLouis Pasteur was living on a salary of a few hundred francs. All\nthat he did was to examine with a microscope things infinitesimally\nsmall and to reflect upon them, and then in his laboratory to write\ndown and send forth some new ideas. The practical men derided his\n\u201cpure science,\u201d\u2015\u2015a mere student of theories, spinner of silk dreams\nthinner than the filaments of the silkworms of southern France. But\nPasteur\u2019s thoughts were the richest source of wealth in France.\n\u201cPasteur\u2019s discoveries alone,\u201d said Huxley, \u201cwould suffice to cover the\nwar indemnity paid by France to Germany in 1870.\u201d[3] True wealth is\ninward resources, the love of God\u2019s world, of truth and holy thoughts,\nfriendship with the living and the dead, the possession of the Son of\nGod and His words which are spirit and life, and of His Spirit \u201cwhom\nthe world cannot receive; for it beholdeth Him not, neither knoweth\nHim; ye know Him; for He abideth with you, and shall be in you.\u201d\n\n    [3] Vallery-Radot, \u201cLife of Pasteur,\u201d popular edition, p. 374.\n\nAnd all this wealth may be ours without going anywhere for it. No man\nbrought it to Him. \u201cI have meat,\u201d He said. So He calls us to be rich.\nWe do not need to go anywhere for it. No man needs to bring it to us.\nIt is here. It is Himself\u2015\u2015the Bread of Life. Can we also say, \u201cI have\nit\u2015\u2015meat to eat, of the world unknown, within my soul, within my soul\u201d?\n\nTo be able to say that is our great American need. I will not say\nthat it is a greater need now than it has ever been because we have\ndeteriorated and need to recover the element of spiritual idealism in\nour national character. We have not deteriorated. Doubtless we have\nlost many things that it would have been well for us to have kept,\nand have kept much that it would have been better to lose. But we have\ngained in our perception of the higher values and we seek them more\nand not less than ever before. We are far from being what we ought to\nbe, but the past was farther, and we only think otherwise because we\nclothe the past in mists of idealization. That very error is proof of\nour deeper spiritual discerning. Evils are challenged now which passed\nuncondemned a half generation ago. But though we have gained, we need\nto gain more, and what we need to gain is not something \u00e6sthetic or\nintellectual only, not broader philosophies or wider social programs,\nnot anything external or merely ethical, but something biological and\ndynamic. We need the push and power of what One and One only offers.\n\u201cThe thief cometh not,\u201d said Christ, \u201cbut that he may steal, and\nkill, and destroy: I came that they may have life, and may have it\nabundantly.\u201d\n\nNot long before his death, as all remember, the late Mr. Morgan was\nsummoned to testify before a congressional committee which was seeking\nto locate the seat of the money power. The object of those examining\nMr. Morgan was to bring out the extent of his own influence and\ncontrol, and to show, if possible, that in the hands of a few men was\nconcentrated the real domination of the financial life of America.\nThe popular impression, after the examination was over, was that Mr.\nMorgan\u2019s modest disavowals were justified by all the testimony, and\nthat there was no one person, or any group of individuals, in this\ncountry who possessed so much power as was supposed to reside in the\nhands of a little company of men.\n\nNow, at the best, there was no question of creating or producing\nanything. Nobody thought of asking Mr. Morgan whether he could create\na grain of wheat, or heal a disease, or bring into existence anything\nthat was not already here. The main question was how much of something\nthat was here already was he, or any other man, able to control. As one\nread the testimony, the one dominant impression it made on his mind was\nhow small and weak and ineffectual even the strongest human life was,\nand how little was the effect that it could produce in what it was able\nto do in behalf of others.\n\nHow weak does even the strongest personality appear when contrasted\nwith One Who can say such words as these I have just quoted! Suppose\nsome great man now living were to say to us: \u201cCome unto me, all ye\nthat labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. If any man\nthirst, let him come unto me, and drink. I am come that they may have\nlife, and may have it abundantly,\u201d how startled we should be! But\nwe have become familiar with the claim on the lips of Christ and do\nnot realize what we are really confronted with in that single great\nPersonality standing among men and offering to meet the ultimate human\nneed, to give us the deepest, richest, most priceless thing in the\nworld, which no one of us can give another. \u201cI am come that ye may have\nlife, and that ye may have it abundantly.\u201d\n\nAnd notice that here is not a claim only. There is a strange and\nstartling contrast. \u201cThe thief cometh to steal, and to kill, and to\ndestroy: I am come that ye may have life.\u201d On the one side is our Lord.\nHim we know. But who is this thief on the other side who has come, not\nto give life, but to reduce it, contract it, dilute it\u2015\u2015destroy it\naltogether? Well, we know well enough that sin is such a thief, that\nwherever sin is allowed to come into our lives it abridges those lives,\ndraws in the walls of their expansion, cuts down and impoverishes their\njoys. And there are many things short of sin, less coarse and evil,\nwhich, nevertheless, draw in the boundaries of life, narrow and stifle\nit, and do the work of the thief who came to kill, and to destroy, and\nto steal. Over against all these He stands Who said: \u201cI came to give\nlife, to give it abundantly.\u201d\n\nNow we know very well what men and women say when you bring them this\noffer of Christ\u2019s about His life. \u201cOh,\u201d they say, \u201cit all depends upon\nwhat you mean by life. I have my own idea of life. The life I am living\nis rich and satisfying to me, and I am not drawn to this life that\nyour tepid religion offers me in exchange.\u201d But are those who answer\nso fully satisfied? Are they really satisfied at all with any part of\ntheir life except such of it as consists of the kind of life that Jesus\nChrist our Lord Himself came to bring, with which alone the hearts of\nmen can be content?\n\nWhat do we mean when we speak of life that really satisfies us? I\nasked some boys a little while ago what they meant when they spoke\nabout life, real life that would satisfy men. Four were boys at the\nHill School, Pottstown, Pa. They sat down and collaborated for a while\nas to what real life meant to them, and when they got through it\ncame to this: Purity, integrity, the principle of Christian service,\nunselfishness, and the desire to be perfect. I asked another man at\nPrinceton what life meant to him, real life. He was one of the best\nathletes in the college, and this was the answer he gave: Humility,\ncharitableness, bravery, strength of conviction, honesty, sincerity,\ntruthfulness and the power to forgive. I asked a man at Yale what he\nthought life was. He was the most popular man in the senior class at\nthat time. This was what he wrote down: \u201cService after the manner of\nJesus, honesty carried all the way through, sympathy, capacity for\nwork, patience in holding to principle, as well as fidelity in actual\nduty.\u201d\n\nNow if we were to define life better than these boys, and yet in the\nway they were feeling after, not in any concrete expressions, but in\nits central principle, we should borrow the words which Professor\nDrummond borrowed from Herbert Spencer. Spencer said that the perfect\ncorrespondence of any organism with its environment would be perfect\nlife. Professor Drummond modified this by adding just one word: the\nperfect correspondence of any organism with a perfect environment would\nbe perfect life. Or, to put it as it is stated in one of our best\ndictionaries: life is that state in any animal or plant in which its\ndifferent functions are all occupied in active healthy expression. Now\nthat is just what those boys were feeling after. Life is the free and\nfearless completion of ourselves. Life is our utter unfolding in the\ndirection of that of which we are capable. Life is the pushing out of\nthe rim of our world into the great and boundless riches of God. Life\nis the opening up of the gates of our prison house that we may go after\nHim Whose word to men was: \u201cIf ye abide in my word, then are ye truly\nmy disciples; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make\nyou free.\u201d Life is what Jesus Christ came to give, for His mission was\nthis: \u201cThe thief came to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I am come\nthat they may have life, and may have it abundantly.\u201d\n\nOne great purpose of the Incarnation was to show what we are in our\ndeepest being in the purpose of God, and what we are capable of. Our\nLord did not come to parade before men the exceptional life to which\nthey could never attain. He came, as He Himself said, to show them\nwhat it had been His Father\u2019s will that they should all be. \u201cAs my\nFather hath sent me, even so send I you.\u201d \u201cI go unto my Father, and\nyour Father; and to my God, and your God.\u201d What Jesus Christ was in the\nfullness of His unlimited life was the revealing of what God has in\nHis will for every one of us. The amplitudes that we see in Him, the\nsubsidence of all the petty boundaries, the unhampered outgoing of His\nfree spirit in the area of His Father, God,\u2015\u2015all that is just a picture\nof what God meant the life of each one of us to be. That is why they\ncalled Him the Son of Man, because He was the picture of what God had\nmeant that His son, man, might be.\n\nAnd Christ came, not only to show the possibilities of such being, of\nwhat men could do and what they could be made, but to be Himself that\nexpression of power in them competent to effect such a result, the tide\nof the boundless life flowing through all the channels that they could\noffer to Him. He came to be in mankind the deep, flowing stream of a\nnew life. One regrets to find in some churches to-day in the repetition\nof the Apostles\u2019 Creed the omission of the sentence: \u201cHe descended\ninto hell.\u201d There is no word in the Creed which expresses more fully\nthe uttermost reach of the purpose of our Lord and the scope and\nboundlessness of His love. Down even into hell He went in the utterance\nof His love for mankind. How much this means! But to say no more, it\nmeans this, that deep into the dark of our human life He came, that\nthere, below all sight, below all thought, He might release the vital\nstreams that have been flowing from the fountain of Calvary ever since,\nand which have no other fountain.\n\nWe know what would happen in our bodies, to put it simply, if some\ngreat artery that fed our life were tied. Atrophy and palsy would\ncreep at once over our unnourished frames. Precisely the same thing is\ntrue in the deeper life of our souls, if the arteries, those channels\nthrough which Christ would pour His energy and strength and power, are\ntied. To put the same thing still more simply: Suppose the Mississippi\nRiver instead of running into the Gulf ran out of the Gulf deep into\nthe land. Suppose all of the rivers poured into the land instead of\ninto the seas. As a matter of fact, that is in one sense what they do.\nWe have got long past looking at rivers as drains for the land. We\nknow that they are arteries through which the life-blood of the seas\nflows upon the land by way of the skies. And suppose there were no\nMississippi River. Suppose it were stopped at the gate. What a chill\nand death would fall upon the land! And how often that life of Christ\nwhich comes up to the gates of men\u2019s lives is stifled, the stream that\nwould pour in kept out, the power that would control and remake blocked\nat the door through which it would enter. \u201cThe thief is come,\u201d He says,\n\u201cand you let him in, to kill, and to steal, and to destroy; I am come,\nand you keep Me out. And I am come that you may have life, and that you\nmay have it in all the abundance of God.\u201d\n\nAnd we know that this life of Christ is real and abundant life because\nit fulfills the tests of life. It is a life of fullness in all its\ncorrespondences and relationships. It completes life to the uttermost\nof its possibilities, setting it in all those ties with that which\nis outside of it, which constitute life. For, after all, there is no\nseparable life. All the life that we know is relationship. Our Lord\ndefined it in such terms in His great prayer: \u201cThis is life eternal,\nthat they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom\nthou hast sent.\u201d Life can only be construed in terms of correspondence.\n\nWe know that the life Christ came to give, and does give, is the\nsatisfying and real life, because it meets these testings. It gives us\nthis wealth of correspondence of relationship.\n\n    \u201cOh, the pure delight of a single hour,\n       That before Thy Cross I spend,\n     When I kneel in prayer, and with Thee, my God,\n       I commune as friend with friend.\u201d\n\nWe know that the life Christ brings is complete and full, because it\nre\u00ebstablishes the tie and union between ourselves and God, and He\nbecomes to us again our Father and our Friend. We know it, because it\nis the root of all deep and true and satisfying human relationships.\nHow can there be a real and full union of one man and one woman that is\nnot a union in Christ? And for the highest friendship and its ideals\nwe find sanction and nourishment best in Him and the groundwork of His\nlife.\n\nAnd Christ\u2019s is the real and satisfying life, because it is creative and\nenergizing. It is not like the influence of that thief\u2015\u2015selfishness, low\ndesire, sin and small ambition\u2015\u2015who kills and steals and destroys. But\nthe life that Christ is teems with vitalizing power; it is strength and\nenergy and new service in men. I have never seen it more beautifully put\nthan in a letter of Stanley to David Livingstone. It was found by Lady\nStanley in a little pocketbook which her husband had carried on the\nexpedition for the relief of Livingstone. It was written in lead pencil.\nIt was a copy of the letter that Stanley had written to the great\nexplorer the very day after he left him. It has sometimes been\nquestioned whether Livingstone really made on Stanley the impression\nwhich Stanley describes in his autobiography. There have been those who\nsaid that that picture was but the reading back over the intervening\nyears of a growing hero worship. But here is the letter which Stanley\nwrote as he came fresh from the old missionary\u2019s companionship and the\ninspiration of his personality:\n\n    \u201cMY DEAR DOCTOR:\n\n    \u201cI have parted from you all too soon; I feel it deeply; I am\n    entirely conscious of it from being so depressed.... In writing\n    to you, I am not writing to an idea now, but to an embodiment\n    of warm, good fellowship, of everything that is noble and\n    right, of sound common sense, of everything practical and\n    right-minded.\n\n    \u201cI have talked with you; your presence is almost palpable,\n    though you are absent....\n\n    \u201cIt seems as if I had left a community of friends and\n    relations. The utter loneliness of myself, the void that has\n    been created, the pang at parting, the bleak aspect of the\n    future, is the same as I have felt before, when parting from\n    dear friends.\n\n    \u201cWhy should people be subjected to these partings, with the\n    several sorrows and pangs that surely follow them?\u2015\u2015It is a\n    consolation, however, after tearing myself away, that I am\n    about to do you a service, for then I have not quite parted\n    from you; you and I are not quite separate. Though I am not\n    present to you bodily, you must think of me daily until your\n    caravan arrives. Though you are not before me visibly, I\n    shall think of you constantly, until your least wish has been\n    attended to. In this way the chain of remembrance will not be\n    severed.\n\n    \u201c\u2018Not yet,\u2019 I say to myself, \u2018are we apart,\u2019 and this to me,\n    dear Doctor, is consoling, believe me. Had I a series of\n    services to perform for you, why then! we should never have to\n    part.\n\n    \u201cDo not fear then, I beg, to ask, nay, to command, whatever\n    lies in my power. And do not, I beg of you, attribute these\n    professions to interested motives, but accept them, or believe\n    them, in the spirit in which they are made, in that true David\n    Livingstone spirit I have happily become acquainted with.\u201d\n\nAnd out from that lonely spot in eastern Africa, the younger man came\nto begin a new career; all the old aimlessness and shiftlessness and\ndrifting gone forever from his life, to pass on now to lift up the\nmission which, beneath the dripping eaves of the hut in which he died,\nDavid Livingstone laid down. The tide of a new life and a new service\nwas in him. \u201cI came that ye may have life, and that ye may have it\nabundantly.\u201d He had seen Christ and felt the contagion of the life of\nChrist in Livingstone, and Christ\u2019s word, articulate or inarticulate,\nhad come to live in him. And that life is life in the power and desire\nto serve.\n\nThis life that Christ came to give is the only real and satisfying\nlife, because it alone endures. We gather at Northfield each summer\nand always go up to read afresh the brief inscription on Mr. Moody\u2019s\ngrave on Round Top, \u201cThe world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but\nhe that doeth the will of God abideth forever.\u201d We sing the same great\ntruth constantly in George Matheson\u2019s hymn:\n\n    \u201cI lay in dust life\u2019s glory dead,\n     And from the ground there blossoms red\n       Life that shall endless be.\u201d\n\nI wrote the other day to a friend about her sister-in-law\u2019s death, and\nthis was the last sentence of the letter which she wrote in reply:\n\n    \u201cI do not know if he\u201d\u2015\u2015that was her brother\u2015\u2015\u201ctold you how\n    beautiful it was at the last; how S\u2015\u2015\u2015\u2015\u2019s face lighted up with\n    such an expression of surprise and adoration, with her eyes\n    open to their fullest extent, and then it was all over. Only a\n    glimpse into the life that was not to end could have brought\n    such a look to a human face.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd that life,\u201d said He Who was the life, \u201cI brought with Me and will\ngive to you.\u201d\n\nLet us lift our hearts to the life that shall endless be, to the\nliberty on which there never lay a chain, to the light of the land that\nhath no need of any sun, because the \u201cLamb is the light thereof,\u201d the\nland of the new morning and the tearless life. The thief cometh\u2015\u2015let\nhim not come in!\u2015\u2015only to kill, and to steal, and to destroy. \u201cI am\ncome, and I stand at the door and ask you now to let Me in, that you\nmay have life abundantly.\u201d\n\nAs these lectures close I would press all this in the most earnest and\npersonal terms upon each one individually. The processes of social and\nmoral progress in humanity are retarded or broken down because they\nare not carried on a volume of adequate spiritual life in men. There\nought to be a Kingdom of Living Love and Brotherly Will on the earth.\nAnd some day there will be, but there is not now and there cannot be\nuntil the anemia of man is healed, and it can be healed in only one\nway\u2015\u2015by more life in man, by life abounding in men. The commercial and\nmaterialistic solution of the world\u2019s problem has been fully tried.\nFor a generation it has been preached and practiced as the one saving\ngospel and out of the depths to which it brought us we begin to turn\nheavenward again. The day for a new creed has dawned\u2015\u2015the old creed of\ntruth and hope and freedom and life, of the wealth and glory of a city\nunseen as yet, hid in the heavens and only possible on the earth as\ndrawn down by men to whom the invisible things are the surest of all\nrealities and who live and are strong in God.\n\n\n               _Printed in the United States of America_\n\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n                          INSPIRATION FOR MEN\n\n\n _ROBERT W. BOLWELL_\n\n                         After College\u2015\u2015What?\n\n12mo, cloth, net 75c.\n\nA protest, in the form of autobiographical chapters, against dawdling\nthrough college. The author is sprightly and readable,\u2015\u2015anything but\npreachy\u2015\u2015but does put some very wholesome and helpful facts in such\nform as to grip the reader.\n\n\n _HALFORD E. LUCCOCK_\n\n                        Five-Minute Shop-Talks\n\n12mo, cloth, net $1.00.\n\nOne of the best things of its kind yet issued. In each of these thirty\nor more brief addresses, Mr. Luccock employs terse, epigrammatic\nlanguage and contrives to compress into a five-minute talk the wisdom\nand counsel of a fifty-minute sermon. Every word is made to tell\u2015\u2015to\ntell something worth hearing and heeding.\n\n\n _CHARLES CARROLL ALBERTSON_\n\n                             Chapel Talks\n\nA Collection of Sermons to College Students. 12mo, cloth, net $1.00.\n\nPractical discourses on essential subjects delivered in various\ncolleges and universities, including Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth,\nPrinceton, Yale, and Virginia. No one of these sermons required more\nthan twenty-five minutes to deliver. They are characterized by earnest\nargument, familiar illustrations and forceful appeal.\n\n\n _CORTLANDT MYERS, D. D._\n _Author of \u201cReal Prayer,\u201d \u201cThe Real Holy Spirit,\u201d etc._\n\n                            The Man Inside\n\nA Study of One\u2019s Self. By Minister at Tremont Temple, Boston. 12mo,\ncloth, net 50c.\n\nA four-fold study of the inner life of a man, in which the popular\npastor of Tremont Temple, discusses the forces that make him, lift him,\nsave him, and move him. The book is prepared in bright, interesting\nfashion, and abundantly furnished with suitable and forceful\nillustration.\n\n\n _JOHN T. FARIS_\n _Popular-Price Editions_\n\n                          The \u201cSuccess Books\u201d\n\nThree Vols. each, formerly $1.25 net. Now each 60c. net (postage extra).\n\n    =Seeking Success=\n    =Men Who Made Good=\n    =Making Good=\n\n_Dr. J. R. Miller_ says: \u201cBright and short and full of illustrations\nfrom actual life, they are just the sort that will help young men in\nthe home in school among associates and in business.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n                               BIOGRAPHY\n\n\n _CHARLES G. TRUMBULL_\n\n                       Anthony Comstock, Fighter\n\nIllustrated, 12mo, cloth, net $1.25.\n\nAn authorized biography of this great fighter for purity. The story\nis one of life-and-death adventure, moral and physical heroism, and\nincomparable achievement. During the thirty years in which Mr. Comstock\nhas been working for the suppression of vice he has destroyed over 43\ntons of vile books, 28,425 pounds of stereotype plates, two and a half\nmillion obscene pictures and 12,945 negatives. The detailed account of\nhow all this was done is a most thrilling and remarkable story.\n\n\n _FRANK J. CANNON\u2015\u2015DR. GEORGE L. KNAPP_\n\n                  Brigham Young and His Mormon Empire\n\nIllustrated, 8vo, cloth, net $1.50.\n\nEx-Senator Cannon\u2019s personal acquaintance with this apostle of the\nMormon Church and his knowledge of the religion and the people gained\nby having been born and brought up in the heart of Mormondom, give more\nthan usual authority and interest to this biography. This life story\nof the man who founded a Mohammedan kingdom in a puritan republic sets\nforth in true perspective, in impartial and unbiased manner, the facts\nabout one of the most romantic and interesting characters in American\nhistory.\n\n\n _FRANCES WILLARD_\n\n                Frances Willard: Her Life and Her Work\n\nBy Ray Strachey. With an Introduction by Lady Henry Somerset.\nIllustrated, 8vo, cloth, net $1.50.\n\nA notable new life of the great temperance advocate written by an\nEnglish woman from an entirely new standpoint. Mrs. Strachey, the\ngranddaughter of the author of \u201cA Christian\u2019s Secret of a Happy Life,\u201d\nhad immediate access to Miss Willard\u2019s letters, journals and papers,\nand the benefit of her grandmother\u2019s advice and knowledge.\n\nIsrael Zangwill says of the book, \u201cA masterpiece of condensation, an\nadequate biography of perhaps the greatest woman America has produced.\nNobody can read this book without becoming braver, better, wiser.\u201d\n\n\n _MRS. S. MOORE SITES_\n\n                             Nathan Sites:\n\nIntroduction by Bishop W. F. McDowell. Oriental Hand-Painted\nIllustrations, gilt top, net $1.50.\n\nThis is one of the notable books of the year. China looms large in\ncurrent political and religious interest, so that this life story of\none who for nearly half a century has been closely identified with\nsocial and religious reform in that country must have a large place in\ncurrent literature.\n\n\n\n\n                        QUESTIONS OF THE FAITH\n\n\n _JAMES H. SNOWDEN, D.D._\n\n                      The Psychology of Religion\n\n8vo, cloth, net $1.50.\n\nPsychology is one of the most rapidly advancing of modern sciences,\nand Dr. Snowden\u2019s book will find a ready welcome. While especially\nadapted for the use of ministers and teachers, it is not in any sense\nan ultra-academic work. This is evidenced by the fact that the material\nforming it has been delivered not only as a successful Summer School\ncourse, but in the form of popular lectures, open to the general public.\n\n\n _WILLIAM HALLOCK JOHNSON, Ph.D., D.D._\n _Professor of Greek and New Testament Literature in Lincoln University,\n Pa._\n\n             The Christian Faith under Modern Searchlight\n\nThe L. P. Stone Lectures, Princeton. Introduction by Francis L. Patton,\nD.D. Cloth, net $1.25.\n\nThe faith which is to survive must not only be a traditional but an\nintelligent faith which has its roots in reason and experience and\nits blossom and fruit in character and good works. To this end, the\nauthor examines the fundamentals of the Christian belief in the light\nof to-day and reaches the conclusion that every advance in knowledge\nestablishes its sovereign claim to be from heaven and not from men.\n\n\n _ANDREW W. ARCHIBALD, D.D._\n _Author of \u201cThe Bible Verified,\u201d \u201cThe Trend of the Centuries,\u201d etc._\n\n                The Modern Man Facing the Old Problems\n\n12mo, cloth, net $1.00.\n\nA thoughtful, ably-conducted study in which those problems of human\nlife, experience and destiny, which, in one form or another, seem\nrecurrent in every age, are examined from what may be called a Biblical\nviewpoint. That is to say, the author by its illuminating rays,\nendeavors to find elucidation and solution for the difficulties, which\nin more or less degree, perplex believer and unbeliever alike.\n\n\n _NOLAN RICE BEST_\n _Editor of \u201cThe Continent\u201d_\n\n                     Applied Religion for Everyman\n\n12mo, cloth, net $1.00.\n\n\u201cNolan Rice Best has earned a well-deserved reputation in the\nreligious press of America, as a writer of virile, trenchantly-phrased\neditorials. The selection here brought together represent his best\nefforts, and contains an experienced editor\u2019s suggestions for the\never-recurrent problems confronting Church members as a body, and as\nindividual Christians. Mr. Best wields a facile pen, and a sudden gleam\nof beauty, a difficult thought set in a perfect phrase, or an old idea\ninvested with new meaning and grace, meets one at every turn of the\npage.\u201d\u2015\u2015_The Record Herald._\n\n\n\n\n                              BIBLE STUDY\n\n\n _JOHN W. LIGON_\n _Pastor Christian Church, Barboursville, Ky._\n\nPaul the Apostle\n\n12mo, cloth, net $1.15.\n\nA life of the Apostle to the Gentiles, which, while fuller than the\nbrief outlines usually followed in class instruction, is sufficiently\ncondensed to admit of its being specially adapted to the use of busy\nmen and women and the young people of the Church. The events and\nincidents of Paul\u2019s career are woven into a continuous narrative,\nfurnishing a living picture of his wonderful life as far as that life\ncan be known.\n\n\n _DWIGHT GODDARD_\n\n                                 Jesus\n\nAnd the Problems of Human Life. Cloth, net 50c.\n\nThese discourses show the value and usefulness of the Good News of\na Spiritual Realm and the Way of Salvation to anyone who has felt a\ndesire to make that supreme adventure in faith. They set the \u201cGood\nNews\u201d into its right relation with present-day thought.\n\n\n                             The Good News\n\nOf a Spiritual Realm. Paraphrased by Dwight Goddard. _Second Edition._\n12mo, cloth, net $1.00.\n\nAn interweaving and paraphrasing of the Four Gospels, bringing out\nclearly the unity and reasonableness of Jesus\u2019 Life and Teachings.\nAppropriate for devotional reading, study classes, and as a gift book\nto those we would like to become interested in our Lord.\n\n\n _B. H. CARROLL, D.D._\n\n                An Interpretation of the English Bible\n\n                  _NEW VOLUMES ADDED TO THIS SERIES_\n\n=The Pastoral Epistles= of Paul and 1 and 2 Peter, Jude and 1, 2 and 3\nJohn. 8vo, cloth, net $1.75.\n\n=The Book of Daniel= and the Inter-Biblical Period. 8vo, cloth, net\n$1.75.\n\n=The Four Gospels. Vol. I.= 8vo, cloth, net $2.50.\n\n=The Four Gospels. Vol. II.= 8vo, cloth, net $2.50.\n\n=The Acts.= 8vo, cloth, net $2.25.\n\n=James I\u2013II=, =Thessalonians I= and =II Corinthians=. Net $1.75.\n\n\u201cThese works are designed especially for class use in the Seminary,\nChristian Colleges and Bible Schools, as well as the Sunday School.\nThat they will make the greatest commentary on the English Bible ever\npublished, is our sincere conviction.\u201d\u2015\u2015_Baptist and Reflector._\n\n\n _EDWARD AUGUSTUS GEORGE_\n\n             The Twelve: Apostolic Types of Christian Men\n\n12mo, cloth, net $1.15.\n\n\u201cUnder his living touch the apostles seem very much like the men we know\nand their problems not dissimilar to our own.\u201d\u2015\u2015_Congregationalist._\n\n\n _PROF. W. G. MOOREHEAD_\n _OUTLINE STUDIES in the NEW TESTAMENT SERIES_\n\n                 The Catholic Epistles and Revelation\n\nIn One Volume. _New Edition._ 12mo, net $1.20\n\nContaining James, I and II Peter, I, II and III John, and Jude, and the\nBook of Revelation.\n\n\n _ALEXANDER CRUDEN_\n\n                         Complete Concordance\n\nLarge 8vo, cloth, net $1.25.\n\n_New Unabridged Edition_, with the Table of Proper Names entirely\nrevised and mistranslations in the meanings corrected, many suggestive\nnotes.\n\n\n _WILLIAM SMITH, LL.D._\n\n                       A Dictionary of the Bible\n\nIts Antiquities, Biography, Geography and Natural History, with\nNumerous Illustrations and Maps.\n\n_A New Worker\u2019s Edition._ 776 pages. Net $1.25.\n\n\n _NEW THIN PAPER EDITION_\n\n            The Boy Scouts\u2019 Twentieth Century New Testament\n\nOfficially authorized by the Boy Scouts\u2019 of America. New Thin Paper\nEdition.\n\n  181. 16mo, khaki cloth, net 85c.\n  182. 16mo, ooze leather, khaki color, net $1.50.\n\nContains an introduction by the Executive Board, the Scouts\u2019 Oath, and\nthe Scouts\u2019 Law.\n\n\n _HENRY T. SELL, D.D. (Editor)_\n _Author of Sell\u2019s Bible Studies_\n\n                    XX Century Story of the Christ\n\n12mo, cloth, net 60c.\n\nFrom the text of The Twentieth Century New Testament, Dr. Sell has\ncompleted a Harmony of The Gospels which, while studiously avoiding\nrepetition omits no important word in the fourfold record of the\nearthly life and teaching of our Lord. He has done his work well, and\nthe result is a compilation specially designed and adapted for the use\nof the average reader.\n\n\n\n\n                       CHRIST\u2019S LIFE AND MESSAGE\n\n\n _ALBERT L. VAIL_\n\n                  Portraiture of Jesus in the Gospels\n\n12mo, cloth, net 75c.\n\nA fourfold portrait of Jesus as He stands out on the canvas of each\nof the Four Gospels. The varying and distinctive shadings of the four\npictures, are not, Mr. Vail contends, a matter of accident but of\nDivine arrangement and design. Our Lord is thus presented in a fourfold\naspect in order that His appeal to various classes of mankind might be\nthe more manifold.\n\n\n _FRANK E. WILSON, B.D._\n\n                 Contrasts in the Character of Christ\n\n12mo, cloth, net $1.00.\n\nJesus Christ is still the key to the modern situation. No matter\nwhat \u201cup-to-date\u201d methods, of reform and reclamation spring to life,\nthe message of Christ is the one great solution of the problems\nconfronting humanity. From this position Dr. Wilson leads his readers\nto a contemplation of an abiding Jesus, and to a consideration of many\nmodern points of contact contained in His all-sufficient Gospel.\n\n\n _WILLIAM BRUCE DOYLE_\n\n                            The Holy Family\n\nAs Viewed and Viewing in His Unfolding Ministry. 12mo, cloth, net 75c.\n\nThis book covers new ground; for although separate sketches of\nindividual members of Joseph\u2019s family abound, a study of the family\ngroup as a whole,\u2015\u2015one marked with satisfactory detail remained to be\nfurnished. This has been ably supplied. The author\u2019s work is everywhere\nsuffused with reverence, as becometh one writing of some of the most\nendeared traditions cherished by the human race.\n\n\n\n\n                               BOOKLETS\n\n\n _DAVID DE FOREST BURRELL_\n _Author of \u201cThe Gift\u201d_\n\n                             The Lost Star\n\nAn Idyll of the Desert. 16mo, net 35c.\n\nAn appealing story of a Shepherd\u2019s search for the Star. It is so\ntender, so sweet, so Christ-like, it is sure to captivate everyone.\n\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n Transcriber\u2019s Notes:\n\n \u2015\u2015Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_); text in\n   bold by \u201cequal\u201d signs (=bold=).\n\n \u2015\u2015Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.\n\n \u2015\u2015Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.\n\n \u2015\u2015Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.","title":"The Stuff of Manhood: Some Needed Notes in American Character","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":47155}