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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #67366 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67366)
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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Cap and Gown, by Charles Reynolds
-Brown
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: The Cap and Gown
-
-Author: Charles Reynolds Brown
-
-Release Date: February 9, 2022 [eBook #67366]
-
-Language: English
-
-Produced by: Sonya Schermann and the Online Distributed Proofreading
-             Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
-             images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAP AND GOWN ***
-
-
-
-
-
-  _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
-
-
-  THE MAIN POINTS
-  THE STRANGE WAYS OF GOD
-  THE SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT
-  THE YOUNG MAN’S AFFAIRS
-  FAITH AND HEALTH
-  THE GOSPEL OF GOOD HEALTH
-
-
-
-
-  THE
-  CAP AND GOWN
-
-  BY
-  CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN
-
-  [Illustration: Decorative Image]
-
-  THE PILGRIM PRESS
-  NEW YORK      BOSTON      CHICAGO
-
-
-
-
-  COPYRIGHT, 1910
-  BY LUTHER H. CARY
-
-
-  THE · PLIMPTON · PRESS
-  [W · D · O]
-  NORWOOD · MASS · U · S · A
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE
-
-
-The larger part of the material in this book was originally used in a
-number of addresses given in various colleges and universities reaching
-from Yale and Cornell in the East to Stanford and the University of
-California in the West. It is here offered to a wider circle in the
-hope that these chapters may prove suggestive to college students and
-to those who are interested in having them make the best use of the
-bewildering array of opportunities awaiting them on the modern campus.
-
-It was one of the shrewdest and kindliest observers of student life,
-himself a long-time resident of Cambridge and a genial friend of
-Harvard men, who said: “It is a never-failing delight to behold every
-autumn the hundreds of newcomers who then throng our streets, boys with
-smooth, unworn faces, full of the zest of their own being, taking
-the whole world as having been made for them, as indeed it was. Their
-visible self-confidence is well founded and has the facts on its side.
-The future is theirs to command, not ours; it belongs to them even more
-than they think it does, and this is undoubtedly saying a good deal.”
-
-It is this joyous and confident company arrayed or about to be arrayed
-in “cap and gown” which the writer of these chapters would fain
-address. The academic costume and accent may speedily be replaced by
-the less picturesque garb and tone of the work-a-day world, but the
-advantage of special training, of accurate knowledge and of the larger
-outlook upon life attainable in any well-equipped university will give
-to the fortunate possessors of all this a significance for the life of
-the nation far beyond that belonging to an equal number of similarly
-endowed but untrained men.
-
-
-
-
-  CONTENTS
-
-
-  CHAPTER                              PAGE
-
-  I. THE FIRST INNING                     3
-
-  II. ATHLETICS                          23
-
-  III. THE FRATERNITY QUESTION           41
-
-  IV. THE RELIGION OF A COLLEGE MAN      59
-
-  V. THE CHOICE OF A LIFE-WORK           75
-
-  VI. MORAL VENTURES                     93
-
-  VII. THE LAW OF RETURNS               107
-
-  VIII. THE HIGHEST FORM OF REWARD      127
-
-  IX. THE USE OF THE INCOMPLETE         145
-
-  X. FIGHTING THE STARS                 169
-
-  XI. THE POWER OF VISION               183
-
-  XII. THE WAR AGAINST WAR              201
-
-
-
-
-I
-
-THE FIRST INNING
-
-
-The significance of the first year in college can scarcely
-be overstated. The first man called to the bat in some great
-intercollegiate game may be pardoned for feeling a bit nervous. He
-realizes that players and spectators are eagerly waiting for him to
-give them the key-note of the contest by the way he acquits himself.
-The young man just entering college, if he senses the situation
-accurately, is equally alive to the importance of his first hits.
-
-It is a time when freedom and responsibility come in new and larger
-measure. College men as a rule are away from home. There is no one to
-ask, with the accent of authority, how they spend their evenings, who
-their intimates are, what habits they are forming. Studying is not done
-under the immediate eye of an instructor as in the grammar-school
-days. The young man who heretofore has felt the wholesome restraint
-of well-ordered family life, suddenly finds himself a free citizen
-in a republic, and this larger measure of liberty involves risk.
-The freshman may decide the case against himself before he is ever
-permitted to put on his sophomore hat. The way is open for him to go
-to the devil, physically, intellectually, socially, morally, if he
-chooses. The way is open, the bars are down and as often as not some
-young fool is just starting and beckoning his friends to “Come along.”
-The bad plays in the first inning are frequently so numerous and so
-serious as to mean the loss of the game. It is a time then to summon
-into action all the wisdom and conscience which may be brought to bear
-upon those early decisions.
-
-There is one choice not strictly of the first year, but so intimately
-connected with it that I speak of it here--the decision as to whether
-or not one shall go to college. “It will take four of the best years of
-my life,” the young man says. “While I am reading books and attending
-lectures, playing football, and practising the college yell, other
-young men will be learning the ways of the business world; they will be
-actually laying the foundations for prosperous careers. Can I afford
-the time?” Furthermore, does it justify the expense? On an average it
-costs each student somewhere from five hundred to a thousand dollars a
-year in all first-class colleges, though the state universities in the
-West cut down that figure by remitting tuition fees, and many splendid
-young men take the course on much less. Is it worth what it costs?
-
-Every young man who can compass it by any reasonable outlay of energy
-and sacrifice had better go to college and stay there until graduation
-day. There is a deal of education to be gained outside of books or
-college halls. The business life of a great city is a university in
-itself with its lectures and recitations, its examinations and other
-requirements. Its courses of instruction have a value all their own and
-its exacting demands flunk more men ten to one than either Harvard or
-Yale, Stanford or California. In this “university of experience” the
-college colors are “black and blue,” for the lessons are learned by
-hard knocks. But the man who knows his full share of what is in the
-books will show himself more competent in finding his way about in that
-larger school of experience. “Systematic training counts everywhere,
-from a prize fight up to being a bishop or a bank president.”
-
-It is true that many men have won high place in the world’s life
-without college training, Benjamin Franklin, Horace Greeley, Abraham
-Lincoln, and all the rest,--we know the list by heart. But it did not
-please the Lord to make Lincolns and Franklins when he made most of
-us. A little extra schooling which those men might get on without, in
-our case will not come amiss. Furthermore, those very men with all
-their unusual ability did not have to compete with college men to
-the extent that you will be compelled to do. College men in ordinary
-life were scarce then; now there are three under every log. In law
-and medicine, in teaching and the ministry, in the administration of
-large business enterprises and in the world of political life, you will
-have to meet and try conclusions with men who have received the best
-the universities can give. It will be to your interest, therefore,
-to add to the stock of ability which the Creator has given you all
-the training that high school, college, and university can yield. To
-neglect carelessly or decline wilfully such opportunities when they are
-offered, becomes a wrong committed against yourself, against all who
-are interested in your growth, and against society which is entitled to
-the most competent service you can render.
-
-When you have actually set foot upon the campus there comes the choice
-of courses. The modern drift toward unlimited electives, especially in
-the first two years, is open to serious criticism. The tendency is to
-allow each student to study only what he likes, consulting merely his
-own interest and preference. Even where young people have reached the
-mature age of nineteen or twenty, and are regularly entered freshmen or
-sophomores, it is just possible that more wisdom can be found somewhere
-as to what is best for their intellectual growth and training, than
-is discoverable in their own individual preferences. There is a
-disposition on their part to select courses of two kinds, those in
-which they are already strong or those which are supposed to be “snaps.”
-
-Moving along the line of least resistance is not the royal road to
-anything worth while. Insight, grasp, and self-mastery come rather by
-doing hard jobs. Rolling down hill on green grass does not develop
-robust, enduring, effective manhood as does climbing Shasta or Whitney
-over loose rock and rugged snow-fields. There is no such thing as
-“painless education” in the market.
-
-In the judgment of many there is peril in the fact that at one end of
-our educational system we have the kindergarten, bowing with almost
-idolatrous reverence before the untaught inclinations of the child in
-its effort to make the work of education as enjoyable as a game, and
-at the other end the university with its wide-open elective system
-tending to breed distaste for hard courses or for studies in which the
-young people do not already feel a warm interest. We shall not rear
-up sturdy character by too much humoring of individual taste, which
-is often abnormal in intellectual as in other directions. Mr. Dooley
-indicates a weakness in the present method where he says: “To-day the
-college president takes the young man into a Turkish room and gives
-him a cigarette, and says, ‘Now, my dear boy, what special branch of
-larnin’ would ye like to have studied for ye, by one of our compitint
-professors?’”
-
-In the selection of courses it is unwise to ignore completely certain
-fields because you feel you are weak on that side--you may need
-rounding out. The man who sits in the seat of the scornful, displaying
-a contemptuous indifference toward fields which lie aside from his
-personal preference, may live to find that narrow seat as uncomfortable
-as a sharp stick. It is well not to specialize too soon, or too
-rigidly. We are compelled to specialize at last in order to forge
-ahead, but it is more important to be a man, round, full, rich in
-contents, than to be an expert lawyer, physician, or mining engineer.
-The early and rigid specialization, sometimes extending even down into
-the high school, tends to sacrifice the man to the profession.
-
-There are certain fundamental interests which cannot be left out of
-the consideration of any educated man or woman. Take these five
-main fields: every student should know something of language, the
-instrument of communication. He should for the purposes of comparison
-and enlargement know something of two or three languages. His knowledge
-should extend beyond the mere ability to read and write and spell--it
-ought to include some acquaintance with the best literature of each
-language, the widest acquaintance naturally with the best that has been
-thought and said in his own tongue.
-
-He should know something of history. There is too much of it for any
-one man to master it all, but he should have some genuine understanding
-of the chief sources of history, and of the main courses and movements
-of thought and life in the world. He should enlarge his own brief and
-local experience by some participation in age-long, national, and
-international experience.
-
-He should know something of science. The general method of science is
-the same, whether observed in chemistry, zoology, botany, or elsewhere.
-One may never be a specialist in any single science, yet he may know
-the scientific habit of mind and appreciate the fundamental positions
-of science sufficiently to make him a more effective worker in his own
-chosen field, which may, indeed, lie quite over the divide from any
-directly scientific pursuit.
-
-He should know something of the organized life of men through the study
-of sociology, economics, and civics. He should have some understanding
-of institutional life in its various industrial, political, and
-ecclesiastical expressions.
-
-He should feel in some measure the power of that group of studies which
-have to do with mental and moral processes considered apart from the
-world of outward phenomena, psychology, ethics, philosophy, religion.
-He needs to relate his individual activity to the larger life of the
-whole by some genuine grasp of fundamentals in his thinking.
-
-No single student can be at his best in all these or can even make any
-two of them his major interest, but a certain elementary knowledge of
-all these fields, thorough as far as it goes, is a better foundation
-for a genuine education than the most elaborate training in any one
-specialty.
-
-When one builds a pyramid it must come to a point somewhere. It can
-only be built, with the conditions as we find them, at a certain angle,
-for material will not lie on a slope too steep. How high it may be,
-therefore, when the apex is reached will depend upon the breadth of the
-base. In your education, you are building character and personality,
-which is much more important than any special ability for money-making,
-and the apex of that personality will be high in proportion as you
-avoid the narrow base which results from too much specializing in
-the earlier years. Let the foundation which precedes your special or
-professional training be as broad as it lies within your power to make
-it.
-
-If you specialize rigidly in the early years, you may a little later
-change your purpose in life and find yourself handicapped by the former
-narrow outlook. The college is a place where many a fellow finds
-himself for the first time, and the fellow he finds is oftentimes
-another and perhaps a better man than the one he had planned for in the
-earlier years. He may take his college course expecting to be a lawyer,
-but that spiritual impulse, which lands many a man in the ministry,
-may be at work beneath the surface, none the less potent for being
-one of those unseen things which are eternal. If in his college days
-he entirely ignores Greek or turns his back on philosophy and ethics
-as having little practical worth, he will find himself at a great
-disadvantage if he finally faces about toward the pulpit. As Cromwell
-said to the theologians who were so cock-sure in their opinions,
-“Beloved brethren, I beseech you by the mercies of God believe it
-possible that you may be mistaken.” You may be mistaken as to the work
-you will do in life. It is unwise therefore to discount that possible
-future by narrowing down too soon to some specialty which may prove to
-be off the turnpike when you make final selection of your life-work.
-
-The selection of habits in a modern university is left almost entirely
-to the judgment of the individual student. The college rules grow
-fewer year by year. Personal supervision becomes impossible where the
-enrolment reaches into the thousands. Parents are sometimes unaware of
-the measure of liberty accorded. College presidents entertain each
-other with experiences which come to them in the way of letters from
-anxious mammas. One president tells us of a letter received from a fond
-mother whose son had just entered--“I shall expect you to send me a
-long letter each week telling me how my darling boy is doing.” Another
-reports a letter from a father--“Please send me each week a full report
-of my son’s absences, of his failures in recitation, and your own
-impression as to the progress he is making.” The very humor of these
-suggestions indicates to what measure the freedom of the student has
-been extended. It would be somewhat difficult for President Lowell or
-President Hadley, for President Jordan or President Wheeler to see to
-it that the boys and girls eat the proper amounts of wholesome food and
-put on their rubbers when it rains.
-
-University life is not a personally conducted tour with the trains
-and hotels, the points of interest and suggestions as to clothing,
-all printed in the schedule. It is a case of going abroad upon the
-continent of learning, relying upon your own letter of credit to draw
-supplies from the banks of opportunity open to you, with the necessity
-upon you of learning to speak the language and order your trip for
-yourself in a way to gain the utmost possible good. The sheltered life
-policy, suitable for little boys, must come to an end some time and
-the young man be compelled to face the good or bad results of his own
-choices. The beginning of the college course is no doubt an appropriate
-time to inaugurate this new régime.
-
-You will enter college without any definite college habits. This will
-be at once an advantage and a peril. Habits are sometimes heavy,
-troublesome chains; they are sometimes the best friends in sight. In
-driving over a mountain road on a dark night when one cannot see even
-his team, the deep ruts are a comfort and a safeguard--as the driver
-hears the wagon chuckling along in the ruts he knows that he is not
-on the point of going over the grade. Certain useful habits, which
-come from doing certain things in certain ways over and over again,
-are beneficial in that they take sufficient care of those lines of
-action and leave the man’s will and attention free to deal with other
-problems.
-
-The habits you select and exhibit during the first year will
-almost inevitably determine your standing with the faculty and
-with the students. When you enter you are what cattlemen call a
-“maverick”--there is no brand on you. Your associates will wait to
-see where you belong. By your own choices you will brand yourself as
-studious or trifling, as thorough or a dabbler, as honest or a cheat,
-as clean and sound in your moral life or as shady. The habits of the
-first year will brand you and in the award of college honors at the
-hands of the faculty or of the students, and in the operation of
-university influences upon your career after you graduate, the brand
-you wear will be well-nigh determinative. Look at it carefully, then,
-before you apply it to yourself, for its mark will stay.
-
-You cannot afford to shilly-shally. The man who spends his time in high
-school or college mainly for his own amusement is a sham and a sneak.
-He is there at considerable cost to somebody--parents, tax-payers,
-professors who are doing educational work out of love for it when they
-might be doing something much more remunerative--and when he merely
-puts up a bluff at studying he stamps himself as a sneak.
-
-The men who undertake to get through their examinations by a kind of
-death-bed repentance become cheap men. In the moral world a man is
-judged not by the few holy emotions he can scramble together in the
-last fifteen minutes of earthly existence; he is judged by the whole
-trend and drift of his life, by the deeds done in the body, by the
-entire accumulation and net result of his living as deposited in the
-character formed. This is sound theology in any branch of the Christian
-Church and the principle involved is also sound in pedagogy. The real
-test of the student’s work is not to be found in what he did last night
-or in what he can show upon occasion as the result of a hasty cramming,
-but in what he has been doing through all the days and nights preceding
-the examination and in that net result which stands revealed in his
-mental grasp and effectiveness. Whether he becomes a man who will
-stand the hard tests the world puts upon every one who undertakes to
-do important work, will depend largely upon the habits he forms in the
-first year. He may take low ideals and live down to them; or he may
-set high ideals and then direct his energy and shape the methods of his
-life unceasingly to the hard task of living up to them.
-
-There will also come the choice of intimates. You will have
-acquaintances many--the more the better. You will have, I hope, a large
-circle of friends and you will discover that college friendships are
-the most lasting and perhaps the most rewarding of any you form. But of
-lives so close as to give shape and color and odor to your life, there
-will not be many; and for that reason the intimates are to be chosen
-with the greater care.
-
-You can know all sorts and conditions of men. You can be on good terms
-with many whose prevailing attitudes toward life do not meet your wish.
-You cannot afford to be on intimate terms with a man lacking in those
-fundamental qualities of every-day rectitude which are legal tender the
-world over. The man you admit to your heart and life as an intimate
-ought to be “hall marked” as they say in England; he ought to have
-the word “sterling” stamped upon him, indicating that in the great
-melting-pot of human experience he will meet the test and show full
-face value.
-
-It will be good to have a few close friends who are not students. There
-are townspeople whose main interest is in the larger life outside the
-university whose friendship you need. There is some member of the
-faculty whom you ought to know well. In many colleges every student has
-a “personal adviser” in the faculty. It is a foolish mistake to look
-upon the professors as your enemies or as being indifferent to you,
-lacking in any genuine interest in your problems. They covet a closer
-touch with their students than the young men in their mistaken reserve
-are ready to accord them. The closer friendship of some one, wise,
-mature, sympathetic man in the faculty will be an influence wholesome
-and abiding, making always for your best development. The mere fact
-that some weak man may undertake to “cultivate” a professor in the
-spirit of the sycophant need not deter strong men from the enjoyment of
-such friendships in straightforward, manly fashion.
-
-Let me congratulate you that you are in college! It is a jolly thing
-to be alive at all, these days, and to be alive and young and at
-school--why, the whole world is yours! The world is yours potentially,
-and wise, right decisions during that first year will aid mightily in
-making a generous measure of it actually yours. You may, if you will,
-score a good number of runs off your own batting by the way you play
-the game in the first inning.
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-ATHLETICS
-
-
-All the human beings we know anything about have the cheerful habit of
-living in bodies; there is a physical basis underlying and conditioning
-all earthly activity. Physical vitality, therefore, has a direct
-bearing on possible achievement. A rousing stomach ready to take what
-you give it and rejoice over it; lungs large, sound, and unspoiled by
-inhaling what was never meant for them; heart action reliable because
-never tampered with by drugs or hurtful indulgences; nerves prompt and
-accurate as telegraph instruments, but ready to sleep when put to bed
-because never abused; muscles which take up hard work and laugh over
-it as those who find great spoil--all these are useful items in that
-physical excellence to be gained and guarded as a priceless heritage.
-In all intellectual work where men undertake to think, write, or
-speak there is a demand for red blood, which is better ten times over
-than the blue blood of any fancied aristocracy! And in moral life, if
-you are to put down evil under your feet and be vigorously, joyously,
-winsomely good, a sound physique for your moral nature to ride in all
-weathers will be a perpetual advantage.
-
-In making young men physically competent, high school and college
-athletics, provided they are not tacked on from the outside as a frill
-or held as a mere aside to which the students carelessly turn in hours
-of leisure, may possess high value. They can be made a genuine, vital
-expression of the life of the school and be related in some wise way to
-the larger purpose of education. Rightly ordered they aid mightily in
-keeping the tools sharp, in developing a full stock of vital force, in
-giving the poise, self-mastery, endurance needed for the work of life.
-The boy who learns to play with zest will be better able to do the work
-of a man with his own full sense of joy in it.
-
-David Starr Jordan has said many times that “the football field is a
-more wholesome place for a young man than the ballroom,” and those who
-know the facts endorse his claim. The young fellow gets hurt now and
-then in football, but taking into consideration the part of him which
-suffers and the after effects of it, we commonly find that the injury
-is less damaging than are the hurts received in indoor, fashionable
-dissipation. Athletics bring men out under God’s open sky, into the
-fresh air, and under the stimulus of healthy rivalries. They train men
-to see clearly, to hear accurately the first time, to decide quickly,
-to move instantly, and to stand together in a genuinely social spirit.
-These qualities have high place in the combination of talents which
-makes for success; they have high place as well in the formation of
-sound character.
-
-But to tackle the subject more closely let me name several ways in
-which athletics worthy of an educational institution are particularly
-beneficial. They serve as an outlet for the surplus physical energy of
-boys and young men. In simply walking to school, even though he carries
-some girl’s books as well as his own, the healthy young man does not
-consume in twenty-four hours all the physical energy he manufactures.
-Throbbing within him there is an exuberant physical life, excitable
-and not yet under firm control. There is the consciousness of new and
-untried powers in regard to which he feels deep concern. There is the
-push of impulse not fully regulated by conscience or experience. Unless
-there is some wholesome outlet he will burst the levee, devastating
-whole fields of his own nature and of other natures besides, by an
-unwholesome use of that surplus physical energy.
-
-Training for athletic events means early hours, clean habits, constant
-occupation of mind and body, for in any college worthy of the name the
-young man must be a student all the while, as well as a quarterback or
-a pitcher. The training, therefore, becomes a mighty safeguard thrown
-around a lot of young fellows who are face to face with the devil of
-temptation. Even for those who do not make the team or the nine or
-the track, if they are taking regular gymnasium work in hope of that
-success next year, or if in other ways they have caught the spirit of
-clean, honest, joyous sport, athletics give an added motive and a
-stronger impulse toward clean living.
-
-“Wild oats,” as they are lightly called, produce a sorry and a debasing
-harvest. No man with sense enough to be allowed to run at large ever
-looks himself in the face and takes satisfaction in the memory of such
-sowing. The fellow who thinks he is not wise or experienced until he
-has become familiar with the haunts of gamblers and harlots, until he
-has the smut and smell of those associations upon him, is regarded by
-saner men as green, oh, so green! He sometimes calls his escapades
-“seeing life,” but it is not life he sees there; it is death--and a
-foul, rotten, ill-smelling type of death. The trainer will not tolerate
-it. The man himself would be regarded as a traitor to the university
-if on the team he “broke training” for such indulgence. And the whole
-spirit of wholesome athletics is such as to stamp that course as base
-and mean. As an outlet for surplus energy then and as a safeguard
-against certain forms of wrong-doing, wholesome athletics in college
-life hold a place of honor.
-
-They furnish also a means of joyous recreation. The mind bent and
-strained all the time with serious employment loses its spring, if not
-sometimes its sanity. The relaxation of honest fun, the excitement
-of a sport where one measures his strength and skill against that of
-others, the self-forgetfulness which comes with absorption in something
-other than one’s work--all these are imperatively demanded for the
-normal development of youth into maturity. We would all bring up in the
-madhouse or the sanitarium, if we did not now and then have some such
-diversion!
-
-This demand for recreation, if no intelligent and wholesome forms
-of expression are at hand, crops out in those college pranks which
-sometimes border on lawlessness. The spontaneous fun of college life
-is ever enjoyed and applauded. There was a Yale man once suspended for
-this excusable caper. The students were required to attend service
-on Sunday in the chapel where the preacher was sometimes dull and
-tiresome. One particular offender against the youthful demand for
-vitality and brevity used to divide his sermons into heads and subheads
-almost endlessly, Roman 1, Arabic 1. One in brackets, a, b, c, etc.,
-etc. This friend of mine arranged to have his class of one hundred and
-sixty men sit together well up in front, and every time the preacher
-passed from one head to another, they uncrossed their legs in unison
-and crossed them over the other way. When the reverend doctor passed
-from one in brackets to two, or from a to b, he saw one hundred and
-sixty pairs of legs taken apart and recrossed simultaneously. When this
-had been done six or eight times the people in the adjacent section
-and in the galleries became more interested in watching this mighty
-movement of legs than in the sermon, and the minister himself was so
-disconcerted that he presently gave it up and closed the service with
-the sermon unfinished. The dull preacher might better have put more
-life into his sermon, thus affording some legitimate opportunity for
-the exercise of interest on the part of his hearers.
-
-Athletics bring wholesome recreation not only to those who play on the
-eleven or the nine, or who appear on the track, but to that larger
-company of fellows who strive for that honor; to a multitude whose
-interest in exercise and outdoor sport is quickened though they
-never aspire to ’varsity positions; to the thousands of spectators
-who assemble to witness the game and cheer the winners. The physical
-quickening, the mental relaxation, the temporary forgetfulness of
-hard work, the joyous hours in the open air, are all good for the
-whole company of people who thus, directly and indirectly, share in
-the advantages of athletics. Keep the game free from the taint of
-professionalism, free from betting, free from the disposition that
-would win fairly if possible, but win at any cost, and we have a form
-of recreation distinctly beneficial to the whole community!
-
-The discipline of athletics develops obedience, self-control, and the
-spirit of cooperation, all of them useful, moral qualities. Many a rich
-man’s son, ambitious for college honors, has gotten his first taste
-of real discipline on the athletic field. At home he had indulgent
-parents--they were self-indulgent because of their wealth and they
-scarcely knew how to be other than indulgent to their children. The boy
-was waited upon by well-paid servants eager to do his bidding and humor
-his whims. His generous tips greased the way for him when he traveled
-or went in pursuit of pleasure. He had never felt the rough, raw edge
-of an exacting discipline.
-
-But when the trainer took him in hand this son of affluence was treated
-as though he had been working his way through college by currying
-some man’s horse or by waiting on the table at a boarding club. If he
-played football he was knocked down as promptly and as hard, when he
-got in the way of a bigger and better player, as if his father had
-been a hod-carrier. And all this is exactly as it should be! Sometime,
-somewhere, he should learn the democratic spirit by being compelled to
-meet his fellow men without favor shown or advantage given; he should
-learn how to take the hard knocks and keep sweet, not losing his head
-or his temper. The boys say, “If a fellow plays football it does not
-take long to find out what kind of a fellow he is.” The real quality of
-the man comes out more readily and more genuinely perhaps than it would
-in a college prayer-meeting. And the man himself finds out what kind of
-a fellow he is, to his own lasting advantage.
-
-Wellington used to say that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the
-athletic fields of the English schools. He meant that when he found
-himself standing up against Napoleon’s fiercest attacks, he had under
-him a body of men who had not waited for their army experience to learn
-discipline. Obedience, self-control, and the necessity of standing
-together had all been learned long ago at Rugby and Eton and Harrow
-until these qualities were bred in the bone! Now as mature men they
-fought the great battle through to a finish just as they used to put
-the pigskin across their opponent’s goal in the years gone by.
-
-To gain this benefit in any worthy measure there must be a genuine
-participation in the athletic life of the institution. Some students
-imagine that they are greatly interested in athletics because they talk
-about the various events, smoke countless cigarettes on the bleachers,
-gossip endlessly in the fraternity house as to how the game was lost or
-won, taking up the time of the players with their useless prattle. All
-this, however, is as much like real interest in athletics as a bandbox
-is like a granite block. The interest to be worthy of the name and to
-insure any actual benefit must be a genuine interest.
-
-There is something admirable in the attitude of those men who try
-for the team or the nine, and having failed, show themselves glad to
-play on the second eleven or nine. “Scrub teams” they are sometimes
-ignominiously and erroneously called--their loyalty and devotion to the
-institution is often such that they might be called “Sequoia teams.”
-Their spirit of sacrifice is such that they are willing to stand out as
-only second best and to be practised on by better men to the end that
-those better men may gain still more honor and glory for themselves.
-This spirit of loyalty and good will serves to exalt the part they take
-into a genuine culture in character.
-
-The spirit of cooperation is strengthened by college athletics. Men are
-knit together by close ties when they participate in training or in the
-game. They learn to rely upon each other. Conceit and selfish pride
-are eliminated until the whole nature is in a fair way to be genuinely
-socialized. The man learns that he cannot catch and pitch and play
-left field all at once. He must fill his own place and act with other
-men who are filling their places. He must take his color in the pattern
-and join his yarn to their yarn in a genuine spirit of fraternal
-cooperation. He must subordinate his own personal interest or advantage
-to the larger interests of the institution which he represents. If he
-has really entered into the spirit of the best college athletics, he
-will forever after be a better husband and father, a better neighbor
-and citizen, a better man in the world of industry, and a better
-churchman, for his systematic training in this spirit of cooperation.
-
-Athletics also express and develop what we call “college spirit.” This
-sense of joy in one’s own college, the generous pride and enthusiasm
-over victories won by other students, the knitting together of the
-student body in paying the necessary dues, in cheering the games, in
-helping to maintain high and honest standards, all go to make up that
-“college spirit.”
-
-This bit of sentiment over one’s own institution does not pay term
-bills or prepare lessons or write examination papers, but it aids
-in the doing of every one of these things. The fife and drum in the
-army do not throw up breastworks or fire off guns to disable the
-enemy, but they do aid in the general undertaking by the enthusiasm
-and _esprit de corps_ they help to arouse. That college spirit,
-which is indeed a useful educational force, is always heightened by
-wholesome athletics. That splendid hit when there were three men on the
-bases; that break through the line or around the end and the run down
-the field; that last spurt at the end of the hundred-yard dash, with a
-whole horizon of students and other spectators rending the skies with
-their enthusiastic cheers, all aid in the development of a wholesome
-enthusiasm over one’s own college.
-
-The student who holds himself apart from it all in blasé fashion,
-affecting to look with cool contempt on the joyous fervor of his
-fellows is either diseased or else his show of indifference is only
-skin deep. The sneering, flippant, cynical young person is as much of
-a freak as would be a ten-year-old boy bald-headed, with a long white
-beard. Intensity, enthusiasm, absorption, belong to college life and
-they work their good results in transforming youth into manhood.
-
-The two main evils, aside from the common evils of betting and
-dissipation which are not confined to athletes, to be guarded against
-are the spirit of professionalism and the habit of unfairness. The
-smuggling in of a professional baseball or football player whose
-college standing is maintained by snap courses or by indulgent
-professors, is a thing despicable in the eyes of all right-minded
-college men. It is the sacrifice of the university idea to the demand
-for victory in college sports. And in similar fashion the disposition
-to win by fair means or by foul, which has sometimes disfigured our
-college athletics, lies at the root of the ugly distrust felt by
-institutions for each other on the athletic field. Better no victories
-than victories of dishonor! The word of the old professor is always
-in point: “Play your games as gentlemen, fair, true, and generous.
-Win your games as gentlemen when you can, with no offensive conceit
-over your success. Lose your games as gentlemen when you must, with no
-whimpering or silly excuses.”
-
-It is of vital importance that the whole interest of college
-athletics be held firmly within the grasp of that larger purpose
-already indicated. The main business of life is not to play baseball
-or football, but to do certain things treated more directly in other
-departments of college life. You cannot afford to play any game at the
-expense of your highest development as one preparing to do his full
-share of the world’s work. Strive to make your life rich in meaning,
-full of the power to serve, fine and true in its inner quality, and
-that fundamental purpose will so dominate your interest in athletics as
-to render your bodily exercise profitable both for the life that now is
-and for that larger life that lies ahead.
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-THE FRATERNITY QUESTION
-
-
-The sentiment of love between persons of the opposite sex has
-monopolized the popular interest, while other fine forms of human
-relationship have failed of their due recognition. The feeling of
-friendship between persons of the same sex has a profound significance.
-The friendship of Damon and Pythias and that of David and Jonathan
-have been sung by the poets and the memory of them perpetuated in the
-rituals of well known fraternal orders in such a way as to make them
-classic.
-
-It is good for us to know and to love those with whom the question of
-sex, with its mysterious attractions and repulsions, does not enter
-in. The woman who cares little for other women, who is only happy when
-she is talking with men, or the man who is so much of a “ladies’ man”
-as to be ill at ease when thrown for an hour exclusively with men, is
-mentally, if not morally, diseased. It is good for the souls of men
-to be knit with the souls of their fellows; it is fitting that women
-should know and enjoy other women.
-
-It is the need for that association which lies at the root of the
-almost countless fraternities found in all our cities. In searching
-out names and mysterious forms for them all, men have gone clear over
-the border into what is both fantastic and foolish. The secrecy of
-these societies is not to be taken too seriously--as a rule it is
-mere dust thrown in the eyes of the uninitiated. The members laugh
-in their sleeves knowing how little the “secrets” amount to, but the
-organizations offer opportunity for social fellowship in a way to
-satisfy a wide-spread desire.
-
-The same tendency, with some additional leaning to clannishness and
-to the love of mystery found in most young people, is evidenced by
-the Greek letter fraternities in the colleges and in many of the
-high schools. These have been in operation for more than a quarter
-of a century and they have not yet by any means so justified their
-existence as to win the cordial support of the best educational
-authorities. There is still “the fraternity question,” with a big
-interrogation point after it, put there by parents, teachers, and
-citizens, and by many of the young people themselves as they grow wiser.
-
-I speak of this matter as a fraternity man. I have been initiated; I
-have worn a “pin,” at such odd times as my “best girl” did not happen
-to be wearing it. I know the mysterious significance attaching to the
-“grip” when one student meets another and taking him by the little
-finger pulls it surreptitiously nine times to the left. I have been
-through all this, for I am a member of Alpha Eta of Sigma Chi. What
-I say, therefore, is not spoken in that prejudice which sometimes
-attaches to the utterances of the “anti-frat” man who sees it all from
-the outside and comes up hot, perhaps, from some hard-fought campaign
-where the line was closely drawn between “frats” and “anti-frats.”
-
-I speak also with a deep sense of the importance of the question. The
-principal of the high school in my own city, which has an enrolment
-of twelve hundred pupils, said to me recently when I had been asked to
-speak on fraternities, “You have a big subject on your hands.” He spoke
-as an educator watching the lives of that large company of young people
-five days in the week. I speak as a pastor and a teacher of spiritual
-values and I agree with him that it is “a big subject.”
-
-The power of intimate association for good or ill--no nation under
-heaven, Christian or pagan, has failed to condense its observation and
-experience on that point into some terse proverb. “He that walketh with
-wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed,”
-said the old Hebrew. “Evil company doth corrupt good manners,” said
-the Greek, and Paul quoted it in his letter to the Greek Christians
-at Corinth. “Talent is perfected in solitude, but character is formed
-in the stream of the world,” is the German of it. “Live with wolves
-and you will learn to howl,” the Spanish proverb has it; and in homely
-Holland fashion, the Dutch proverb is, “Lie down with dogs and you will
-get up with fleas.” In these terse sayings, elegant and inelegant,
-the race has recorded its judgment as to the power of association.
-The fraternity promotes certain forms of most intimate association at
-a crucial period and thus enters powerfully for good or ill into the
-lives of young people.
-
-There are certain credits to be entered in making up a trial balance
-for the fraternity. It marks out a definite group of special friends
-for closer association. One cannot become intimately acquainted
-with the whole human race or even with as much of it as happens to
-be present in a large high school or college. Whether it is done
-in organized or in unorganized ways, there must come a process of
-selection by which one’s social interests are kept to a manageable size.
-
-The fraternity gives opportunity for learning to subordinate the purely
-personal and selfish interests to the larger good. The fraternity man
-has in view something beyond his own individual pleasure or success.
-He is taught to aid some fraternity brother who has good prospects,
-in athletics, in a race for some class honor, or in debate. Mutual
-admiration, a common enthusiasm, a corporate ambition and the spirit
-of cooperation, are thus developed in the whole group by a feeling of
-common interest.
-
-The fraternity brings the lower class man into closer touch with
-upper class men. The first year man is not a mere unbaked freshman to
-the juniors and seniors in his fraternity. They have an interest in
-him, a responsibility for him, because of his fraternity connection.
-These organizations thus cause the line of social cleavage to run
-perpendicularly as well as horizontally. My own life will be forever
-different by reason of the friendship of two upper class men in my
-university days. Such friendships are wholesome for both the younger
-and the older men.
-
-The fraternity serves as a convenient basis for fellowship when a man
-visits another college or when alumni return to their alma mater. The
-house of one’s own fraternity is open to him, and affords opportunity
-for him to come into touch with the eager, throbbing life about him.
-The alumni of a chapter may also exert a real influence for good upon
-the resident members of the fraternity, because of this continued
-association.
-
-The fraternity house offers a useful center for returning social
-courtesies. The students, in their class-day spreads and at other
-times, may thus indicate their appreciation of social attentions
-received from townspeople.
-
-All this can be said and said heartily. It may seem that I am making
-out such a strong case for the fraternities that any criticism offered
-later will be of no avail. It would be unfair, however, not to state
-the advantages as strongly as one’s own judgment would approve.
-
-But there are certain offsets in fraternity life which must come up
-for an equally frank and thorough consideration. There is a constant
-tendency in any fraternity house to spend more time and more money
-than many a student can afford. No fellow of spirit can allow others
-to treat him, take him to the theater, show him all manner of
-attentions without feeling an obligation resting upon him to return
-these courtesies. A few men in a fraternity with rich fathers, large
-allowances, and warm hearts, can, with no sort of wrong intent, set the
-pace in such a way as to demoralize a whole group of young men. The
-man of modest means and simple habits, dependent upon a hard-working
-father for his education and for all the comforts of his home life,
-is apparently forced into a gait which it is wrong for him to take.
-He does not intend to be mean or cruel, but he adopts a scale of
-expenditure which he cannot afford; he runs into debt; he becomes
-unjust to his parents, who are making sacrifices for his education.
-It requires more grit than nine out of ten young fellows of the high
-school or college age possess, to stand up and oppose the course of
-action which leads to these ill-advised “good times.”
-
-It is to be regretted that simplicity is so overborne in all our social
-life by the elaborate and the expensive. Business men, husbands,
-and fathers, are being killed off, before their time, by nervous
-prostration, heart disease, or exhaustion of other vital organs, in
-making the necessary money to keep it up. Society women, mothers and
-daughters, are being sent to sanitariums and rest cures by reason of
-the strenuous tasks imposed upon them in devising and arranging new and
-elaborate ways of spending the money. What a caricature much of it is
-upon real social life, which ought to be a joy, a recreation, a means
-of relief from serious work, but never a burdensome, exacting labor!
-
-The young girl in high school gives a luncheon for her fraternity
-elaborate enough for a society woman of fifty. The boys plan for a good
-time on a scale which might indicate that they were solid business men
-well on in their prime, with fortunes of their own earning completely
-at their disposal. The whole tendency of it is bad and only bad. The
-simple pleasures are the best for everybody and especially so for young
-people. The tuxedo is not a suitable garment for a five-year-old boy
-even though his father is able to buy him a hundred of them; and some
-of our social activity is quite as ridiculous as such a coat would be
-on the youngster. It rears up a set of young people who, having tasted
-it all and become blasé before their time, are now nervously intent
-upon some new sensation by more startling and stimulating forms of
-social life. And all the while the simple, serious, quiet interests of
-education have been suffering a loss irreparable.
-
-There is also the tendency in most fraternity houses toward a wasteful
-use of time. Where there is a lounging room with its open fire, the
-university colors, pillows, pictures, trophies scattered about, and a
-group of jolly good fellows always accessible, it is not easy to turn
-one’s back upon it and sit alone digging on some difficult subject. Eve
-holding out an apple or even a ripe peach in the garden of Eden suffers
-by comparison when placed alongside the temptations thus offered to a
-student whose will may already be a trifle lame.
-
-I recall a certain fraternity house which I watched for a number of
-years. Splendid fellows they were--my heart warms within me as I think
-of their faces! It was always Indian summer there--cigarette smoke
-until one could scarcely see through it. It would not be entirely true
-to say that one could cut it with a knife; some stronger implement
-would have been needed, an axe maybe--perhaps “the Stanford axe.” A
-number of the boys were keen and the jolly talk was sometimes equal to
-a page from “Life” or “Fliegende Blätter.”
-
-But men cannot make perpetual chimneys of themselves in order to
-furnish such a volume of smoke or become perpetual jokers without
-imperiling certain other interests, much more important than smoke
-or jokes. And that same fraternity, genuinely attractive though it
-was in its social aspects, became the banner house on the campus for
-furnishing men who suddenly went home at the end of the term, because
-“their fathers needed them in business,” or because “their health would
-not stand the strain of college study”--those graceful explanations
-which sound well and deceive nobody, either at the college end or the
-home end of the line. The constant tendency in all fraternity life
-is to spend upon pleasure more time and more money than the average
-student can justly afford.
-
-There is furthermore the tendency to a narrow exclusiveness which
-sometimes degenerates into actual snobbishness. This is especially true
-of the high-school fraternities. The spirit of narrow clannishness is
-stronger then than later. Breadth of sympathy, which ought to be the
-spirit of our public schools, is thus destroyed. The girl is tempted to
-think that, out of hundreds of girls in high school, only the little
-group of twenty in her own fraternity are fine, choice girls. When the
-social interests are thus being “cribbed, cabined, and confined,” it
-is not a long step to the spirit of that bigot who prayed, “O Lord,
-bless me and my wife, my son John and his wife, us four and no more.”
-The “us four and no more” attitude is apparent to thoughtful observers
-in almost all of the high-school fraternities. The larger loyalty and
-broader sympathy is overborne by a narrowed social interest.
-
-It is the judgment of an ever-increasing number of men at the head
-of the secondary schools that the high-school fraternities at least
-are nuisances. This is their verdict in spite of the fact that many
-of the best students are members of them, striving to make them
-helpful, not hurtful. But when the losses and the gains are accurately
-computed, the losses seem to far outrank the gains. The spirit of
-social exclusiveness is opposed to the spirit of our public schools and
-encourages the development of qualities that have no rightful place in
-American young people.
-
-Some high-school principals are non-committal, but more of them
-frankly utter their condemnation of the fraternity as prejudicial to
-the legitimate work of the school; as weakening the more inclusive
-class loyalty and as offering an effective temptation to social
-dissipation. They may not hope as yet to carry all high-school students
-with them in this judgment, but if they could line up all parents who
-believe that fraternities tend to alienate young people from their
-homes, all high-school teachers who deplore the evil which results from
-loyalty to a part instead of to the whole school, and all those who,
-having advanced to college, look back upon those earlier fraternities
-as cases of premature development, the young people would be amazed at
-the verdict against the high-school fraternity!
-
-We are constantly hearing the assertion that it is difficult for
-girls to complete the high-school course without breaking down. Under
-anything like normal conditions such a claim should be preposterous!
-There are good reasons for believing that the nervous collapse is
-due less to faithful study than to the unnecessary excitements of
-fraternity rivalry and to the irregular hours and social dissipation
-consequent upon fraternity life.
-
-The right place for the fraternity is in the university where boys
-and girls have become young men and young women, better able to guard
-such organizations against these abuses; better able to see to it that
-no barriers are built between them and those whom they ought to know;
-better able to extend their generous admiration to those not of their
-particular clique. In the university large numbers of students are away
-from home, as is not the case in high school--and where it is wisely
-controlled, the fraternity may be made a center for the deepening of
-wholesome intimacies, in a way to render it a useful educational force.
-
-It is well for every student to postpone the choice of a fraternity
-until near the end of the first year. Before he joins, he will need to
-look the various chapters over carefully and learn more about them than
-appears in the shape of the pin or in the color of the flag at the top
-of the house. He will want to ask what kind of men belong; what are
-their ambitions and aims; what is their rank and standing in college;
-whether their habits are clean, sound, wholesome, or enervating and
-shady; what is the moral atmosphere about their house; what sort of
-alumni have been sent out. He will only join one fraternity and he
-wishes to make no mistake in that choice.
-
-The habit of “rushing” men for membership has become inexpressibly
-silly. The heads of weak men are turned by the social attentions thrust
-upon them and the stronger men are frequently repelled by this overdone
-eagerness. One would suppose the various chapters would be ashamed
-to exhibit such anxiety to have men join as would seem to indicate a
-sense of their own weakness. Let the fraternities make themselves worth
-joining and a sufficient number of promising candidates to fill all the
-lists will be forthcoming! Let any student make himself worth having
-and the door will be open into a desirable house whenever he is ready
-to enter it.
-
-It would be well if each student made his fraternity experience
-preparatory to the larger social status into which he will enter as a
-mature man--a status where the narrow exclusiveness of the snob finds
-the door shut in its face by men of sense. If he has really gained a
-genuinely social spirit, he will be better able to take his place in
-the business world as one ready to aid in building it upon the basis of
-honor, integrity and mutual consideration. If he has rightly learned
-the lessons of fraternity life he ought to be a better citizen, ready
-to work in harmony with men who are bent upon making the State an
-organized expression of wise and just principles. He ought to be fitted
-to be a better churchman, making that institution a worthy expression
-of the organized spirit of reverence toward God, of fellowship with
-men, and of helpfulness for all good causes. And he will best attain
-all these high aims if, in the supreme relationship of his life,
-his own soul is knit with that “friend that sticketh closer than a
-brother.” The Master of men came to found a fraternal kingdom of which
-there shall be no end, and in that kingdom every man of fraternal
-spirit should have standing.
-
-
-
-
-IV
-
-THE RELIGION OF A COLLEGE MAN
-
-
-The leading notes in the religious life of a student will naturally be
-intellectual and ethical. The mind is feeling its way out among the
-immensities which have come into view as childhood is left behind. It
-is seeking to know things as they are, learning how to bear itself
-in thought toward the natural and the supernatural, the earthly and
-the heavenly, the present and the future. It is no longer content
-with a child’s faith received on the word of another; it has not yet
-found the repose of tried and mature conviction. It is in process of
-shaping its beliefs about God, about the world, about the Bible, about
-prayer, about a future life. The college man is taken out-of-doors
-intellectually where the walls are all down, and his religious life,
-like the other sections of his nature, will naturally show signs
-of restlessness. “The religion of youth is commonly a religion of
-rationalism--the intellectual life is just starting on its long journey
-in all the exhilaration and freshness of the morning.”
-
-The ethical note in the college man’s religion will also be clear and
-strong. Young people in sound health are commonly rigorous and even
-merciless in their moral judgments. They are oftentimes unduly critical
-touching the shortcomings of others. They are confused as to many of
-the moral sanctions and uncertain as to what distinctions are essential
-and what are merely conventional. They have a desire to know what is
-right and why it is right, and they wish to discover the motive and
-stimulus which will render them strong in doing the right. The best
-results are always attained by taking into account lines of interest
-already established, rather than by cutting squarely across the grain,
-and the most effective approach to the heart of the student can be made
-by observing these two leading notes in his religious life.
-
-I am confirmed in this view by this bit of personal experience.
-For six years I lectured every Monday during the second semester at
-Stanford University, giving courses on “The Ethics of Christ,” a study
-in the four Gospels, on “The Life and Literature of the Early Hebrews,”
-a study in the Old Testament, on “Social Ethics,” a study of moral
-values in the various relationships of modern life. These courses
-were offered as any courses would be. A full syllabus was used and
-much collateral reading suggested; a monthly written quiz and a final
-examination were held; credit was given for work done as in any other
-department. The courses were popular though the requirements brought a
-sufficient number of failures each year to keep the thought of a day of
-judgment before the mind of the class. There was evident throughout a
-strong, healthy interest in the intellectual problems of faith, in the
-interpretation of scripture, in the ethical questions discussed, and
-in the intelligent application of moral principles to modern life. The
-sight of those young faces and the reading of the papers offered have
-helped to confirm me in the view that the two characteristic qualities
-of the college man’s religion are those already indicated.
-
-The expression of that religious interest will take many forms. It
-will utter itself in rational worship. The clear-headed student will
-not continue to do things which seem to him meaningless or useless.
-There are church services in which he will refuse to participate, but
-sincere, reverent, and rational worship will commend itself to him as a
-suitable expression of that deeper something growing within his heart.
-The upward look, the outward reach of a higher aspiration, the need of
-a hand-clasp which is not of earth, all these appeal to him! Let the
-music, the lessons, the prayers, and the atmosphere of the church be
-made a true, good, and beautiful expression of intelligent worship and
-the thoughtful student will rejoice in the aid it gives him in working
-out his problems.
-
-The words of Thomas Carlyle addressed to the students in the University
-of Edinburgh are in point: “No nation that did not contemplate this
-wonderful universe with an awe-stricken and reverential feeling
-that there is an omnipotent, all-wise, and all-virtuous Being
-superintending all men and all the interests in it--no such nation has
-ever done much nor has any man who has forgotten God.” In much blunter
-fashion the Bible says, “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all
-the nations that forget God.” The word “hell” can be spelled with four
-letters, but to spell that for which it stands, the moral failure,
-the personal disappointment, the pain, and the distress of spiritual
-defeat, the bitter regret and remorse over years wasted by turning away
-from the Highest, would require all the letters of the alphabet and the
-sum total of human experience. In order to do justly and to love mercy,
-we need to stand humbly before God as the one entitled to our supreme
-and final allegiance. Where all this is made plain in a provision for
-worship which is rational, beautiful, and helpful, the college man will
-find in it a natural expression for his religious life.
-
-The religious interest will also express itself in the study of
-religious truth. Courses in ethics, and in philosophy where it relates
-to life and is not all clouds and mist; courses in the Hebrew and
-other sacred literatures; courses in the history of religion and in
-comparative religion, may all be made genuinely spiritual exercises.
-The students are aided by such work in knowing that truth which sets
-mind and heart free from whatever hinders growth and usefulness.
-
-Still more directly, the courses of Bible study offered through the
-Christian associations in our universities become wholesome expressions
-of religious interest. The history and literature of the Hebrews,
-the life of Christ, the story of the early Church, studied with the
-system, the thoroughness, and the fearlessness found in other lines of
-investigation, afford a genuine ministry to the spiritual life. Many
-students who lose their Christian faith in the colleges suffer this
-loss because the mind has gone ahead in science, in philosophy, and
-in history, but has lagged back in religion. It has been belated in
-the childish conceptions gained in early life. Such students sometimes
-throw away their Christian faith and habits, and then wonder that the
-rest of us are so stupid and credulous. As a matter of fact they have
-simply failed to make the advance and readjustment which serious and
-growing minds habitually make on their way from childhood to maturity.
-The thorough study of religious truth, then, as an aid to a rational
-restatement of one’s personal faith, becomes another worthy expression
-of religious life and a useful source of culture for the spiritual
-nature.
-
-The religious life of the student will also utter itself in a personal
-quest for righteousness. No life ever comes to have that which the
-world really trusts and values until it can say in its whole purpose,
-“I do these certain things not because they are easy or common or funny
-or politic; I do them because they are right.” If religion is to enter
-into its own in any educational institution it will be necessary to
-have a great deal more downright honesty in college life than there
-is in many institutions of learning at this time. The sneer that “in
-college and in the custom house” it is all right to lie and to cheat
-if one can do it without being caught, has had much to justify it. The
-student who asks to be excused from a college engagement because he is
-too sick to work, but who will go to a ball and dance every number on
-the program, or to a football game and yell until his throat is raw,
-is simply a liar! The student who copies from another’s examination
-paper and signs his name to it as though it were his own, is a cheat
-and a forger. The man who steals spoons from some hotel or restaurant
-in the town for his fraternity table is not funny; he is simply a
-thief and an outlaw! The student who spends on vice or dissipation,
-money furnished by his father for term bills, entering them up in his
-financial statement as “sundries” or what not, is a whelp and a cad, no
-matter how good looking he is or how well his dress suit fits him! Dirt
-is dirt no matter how we may adorn it with lace; a lie is a lie, and
-theft is theft, no matter how they are smoothed over with fine words!
-There ought to be in all college life rigid, unsympathetic honesty,
-like that of the bank or the counting-room. The perpetual effort after
-personal righteousness should stand as an abiding expression of the
-religious life.
-
-The genuinely religious spirit will show itself in mutual helpfulness.
-The Christian service rendered by students can best be rendered in
-terms of student life. The readiness to lend a hand to some fellow
-working his way through; the thoughtfulness and unselfishness shown
-to a student who is sick; the organized usefulness of the Christian
-Associations in meeting first-year students and aiding them in those
-strange first days on the campus; the ability to exert steadily a
-wholesome influence on the side of what is right and wise, without
-self-consciousness or ostentation--all these are forms of Christian
-helpfulness natural and appropriate to student life.
-
-During an epidemic of typhoid fever at Stanford University some years
-ago the students stood together and insisted that every patient unable
-to provide himself with a trained nurse should have, through their
-cooperation, the best care which medical science could afford. They
-gladly gave up the senior dance and other social entertainments and
-receptions, in order to devote the money to this unselfish purpose.
-They raised in various ways among themselves more than five thousand
-dollars for this practical form of helpfulness. “By this shall all men
-know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” This
-was the original test of Christian discipleship proposed by Christ
-himself, and none better has been found.
-
-The nurture of the college man’s religion will come mainly in two ways:
-first, through fellowship with a larger group of Christian people.
-“Gather two or three together in my name,” Christ said, “and there am I
-in the midst.” He thus indicated the social character of the religion
-he taught and suggested the help to be found in wholesome fellowship.
-The actual experience of mankind has strongly endorsed his claim.
-
-The best fellowship will naturally be found in some one of the churches
-of the community. The student will find there friends as well as
-worship and instruction; he may find also his place in some concrete
-activity for the progress of the kingdom. Oliver Wendell Holmes used
-to say in explanation of his habit of church attendance, “There is a
-little plant within me called reverence which needs watering at least
-once a week.” He might also have added that it needed the warm southern
-exposure of meeting in spiritual fellowship those who were similarly
-bent on noble living, and that it found wholesome expression through
-some useful participation in the activities of a parish church.
-
-Each student needs the church even more than the church needs him. He
-will learn by its aid to more wisely and more conscientiously use the
-opportunities which Sunday offers. The day of the Lord ought to be a
-day of turning aside to see the bushes that burn with divine fire. The
-habit of Sunday study is a mistake, physically, mentally, and morally.
-The pioneers who crossed the plains in ’49, driving six days in the
-week and resting one, reached California ahead of those who drove
-straight along day in and day out, week in and week out; and the cattle
-of the men who observed the method of a regularly recurring rest day,
-arrived in better condition. The one who said, “Labor six days and
-do all thy work,” holding the seventh apart for rest and spiritual
-opportunity, knew something about the muscles and the nerves as well as
-about the souls of men. Sunday held apart from the ordinary grind of
-college life and used as a time of privilege for the higher nature to
-have its undisputed chance to grow, becomes a useful factor in normal
-development.
-
-The religious life of the student will be deepened and strengthened
-most of all through personal fellowship with Jesus Christ. To know
-him who stands revealed in brief on the pages of the four gospels and
-revealed at large in the splendid history into which he has built
-himself during the last nineteen hundred years, is to gain the utmost
-help for character-building that the world has thus far found.
-
-We know Jesus Christ, not only by the study of his life and teachings,
-but by sharing in his purpose for the race and by participation in
-his spirit. It is this that enables us to see life whole, and to put
-ourselves in the way of gaining a fuller measure of that life complete.
-Through our fellowship with him we come to the point where we see life
-in its deeper, hidden attitudes, as well as on its surface; we see its
-upper, unseen relations as well as those upon its own level; we see
-its ultimate future, beyond the event we call death, as well as the
-pressing claims of the immediate present. We see life whole through
-Christ and by our personal fellowship with him we are increasingly
-enabled to possess that rounded life for ourselves.
-
-There is one supreme reason why every college man should be a
-Christian--the final Christianity is not yet here. It is waiting for
-the contribution of thought, of spiritual experience and of useful
-activity, which the generation to which you belong is in a position
-to make. Jesus had, and still has, many things to say, which the
-world even yet is not able to bear. It is for each man, by personal
-consecration and individual effort, to so weave his activities into the
-unfinished story of the world’s redemption as to aid in bringing about
-the true attitude toward those unseen things which are eternal.
-
-College men are eager to make personal experiment of other unseen
-forces. They love to lay bare hidden secrets by the use of the Roentgen
-ray; they rejoice in sending and receiving messages by wireless
-telegraphy; they cluster around an experiment which displays the
-mysterious attributes of that strange substance called radium; they
-show themselves eager to witness the wonders of liquid air. They should
-be no less eager to know by genuine personal experience the efficacy
-of prayer, the power of faith, the joy of spiritual renewal through
-divine grace. They should be no less eager to send and receive those
-messages which come and go between God and man, when the heavens are
-open and the angels are ascending and descending upon the sons of
-men. You have, each one of you, a clear responsibility and obligation
-in this matter. Gain for yourself an intelligent faith; show to the
-world one more consistent Christian life; render to his cause your own
-personal quota of competent service, and in doing this you will not
-only be spiritually enriched yourself, you will aid in bringing in that
-greater Christianity which is yet to be.
-
-
-
-
-V
-
-THE CHOICE OF A LIFE-WORK
-
-
-The man who said, “I am doing a great work, I cannot come down,” was
-laying bricks. But the bricks went into a wall, and the wall surrounded
-the capital city of his country as its main defense, and the city was
-Jerusalem, the headquarters of the Hebrew people! The moral history of
-that people has woven itself into the story of the world’s redemption,
-as has no other history on earth. Its writings furnish us the best
-book we have: its Messiah, born in Bethlehem of Judea, has become the
-world’s Saviour; and the high claim that “Salvation is of the Jews,” is
-well sustained by the facts. Simple deeds are sometimes far-reaching
-in their divine significance. Laying bricks in a wall which protected
-the city out of which came the world’s Messiah, was surely a splendid
-occupation. The man was well within the facts, when he cried to those
-who tried to interrupt him, “I am doing a great work, I cannot come
-down.”
-
-I quote these words as indicating the sense of vocation, the honest
-pride in his work, the personal appreciation of its wider meanings,
-the safeguard it affords against unworthy ideals, the means of culture
-it opens for moral character, which ought to be found in every one’s
-attitude toward his life-work. Alas for you, if you cannot all say, by
-and by, what the bricklayer said!
-
-Some college men unfortunately allow themselves to be driven into
-this or that occupation by force of circumstances. They forget that
-college training ought to fit us to oppose circumstances if need be and
-resolutely work out some splendid purpose in the teeth of opposition.
-
-Some college men drift into anything that offers--they must do
-something to earn their bread and they catch the nearest way. This
-puts them on a level with the hungry dog looking for a bone and facing
-in whatever direction he smells meat. Such men are opportunists all
-their lives, taking whatever offers, even though on the face of it a
-temporary makeshift, trusting that when one job is finished another may
-turn up. They are like so many fleas, jumping from job to job, wherever
-they see a chance for a good bite. They fail to exercise that power of
-choice and determination which ought to prevail in the selection of
-that which is to claim six-sevenths of one’s time and interest during
-all his working years.
-
-There is spiritual value in any legitimate calling, and this
-satisfying return is open and possible to every college man bent on
-doing square work. “To every man his work”; _his_ by personal
-fitness; _his_ by the sense of fulfilling a divine purpose in
-selecting it; _his_ in the feeling that it belongs to him! Some
-men are called of God to the Christian ministry and others are no less
-called of God to teach or to heal or to build. God’s calls announce
-themselves in a variety of ways. The shining vision that came to Paul
-on the Damascus road or the mighty spiritual impulse which visited
-the heart of President Finney of Oberlin as he struggled in the woods
-alone, are forms of the divine call, but there are other forms equally
-valid. The call of the world’s need for some special work and your
-own consciousness of power to render that service will bring you a
-genuine sense of vocation as you gird yourself for it. There are many
-intimations as to the place one should take and hold, which may have
-all the compelling force of a vision from on high.
-
-But to speak more closely of the matter in hand, let me name some of
-the considerations which must enter into the choice of a life-work. I
-can only speak in the most general way, addressing as I do young men of
-varying abilities and temperaments. If one should discuss the value or
-attractiveness of any particular vocation, the personal element and the
-question of individual fitness would instantly come in. Some general
-considerations however may prove suggestive.
-
-It is best not to make one’s decision too early or too rigidly. The
-average young man is not sufficiently acquainted either with himself
-or with the vocations to make his final decision during his last year
-in high school, or during his first year in college. One of the chief
-values of college training is that it discovers the man to himself.
-You have scarcely a bowing acquaintance with yourself when you only
-know yourself as a freshman--wait and meet this same fellow within,
-as a sophomore, as a junior, as a senior. There are unsuspected
-capabilities in him which training and experience will bring out.
-
-Wait also until you learn more about the vocations themselves. In
-making choice of a wife it is well to become acquainted with a number
-of young ladies before you settle down to an exclusive intimacy with
-one. There are other girls who can look sweet and say pleasant things
-too; it is not wise to fall so completely in love with the first
-dainty bit of white muslin you see as to exclude other delightful
-associations. The law has its attractions, so has medicine, so has
-the ministry, so has the work of education, or the business career,
-or the work of an architect, a chemist, or a forester. It is wise not
-to conclude too early in life that the attractions of this particular
-vocation shut out all the rest from consideration. Look yourself over
-and look the field over with great care at least a hundred times before
-making a final choice. It will be a sorry thing if you start out to
-unlock the door of your future with the wrong key.
-
-Consider the whole man in your choice. It is not simply what you carry
-home in your pocket, as a result of your day’s work and of all the days
-of work, but what you carry away in mind and heart as well; what you
-carry away in the gratitude and appreciation of your fellow men; what
-you gain in the beneficent influence you may exert upon the community
-through your calling. Ten thousand a year is a splendid return from
-the investment of one’s personal ability, but there are other returns
-which may be added to the figures named in your contract in such a way
-as to make the money consideration seem the small end of it. And there
-are other returns which may make it seem as if the man who received
-the ten thousand a year had worked all his life for meager pay. Many a
-saloon-keeper has made ten times as much money out of his calling as
-the college professor or the clergyman makes out of his, but when the
-books are opened, other books as well as the cash book, the comparative
-values of the vocations will stand revealed.
-
-The young man may be doing some honest and useful work, but without the
-sense of joy or pride in it. In such event it fails to render him back
-a full return. The culture of one’s own best life must come with his
-ordinary work or else the man is sacrificed to the profession. We are
-not here to be effective machines for grinding out sermons or briefs,
-operations or lectures, bargains or manufactured products: we are
-here to be men, strong, fine, aspiring, and useful men. The whole man
-therefore must be considered, his body, his brain, his heart, and his
-soul, as well as his purse when you make selection of his life-work.
-What you make out of your vocation is an important question, but what
-it makes out of you is tenfold more important!
-
-Make up your mind that in the long run your work will be estimated
-by its genuine utility. Success comes not by luck, but by law. The
-apparent exceptions, like four-leaf clovers, are not sufficiently
-numerous to disturb the principle. It is three-leaf clover that feeds
-the cows and fills the haymows. It is ordinary industry, fidelity,
-persistence, and efficiency that bring the largest measure of abiding
-success. Your work will be estimated by its utility in satisfying human
-need.
-
-This principle well understood, thoroughly believed, and constantly
-acted upon, will be of untold value to you. Canfield says to the
-young men at Columbia, “Measure your daily work by the efficiency and
-completeness with which it meets the needs of your fellow men.” You
-must measure it thus, for that is the way the world will estimate it.
-You will not be able to live by your wits; you must live by your work
-and your worth. Therefore, in making selection, consider carefully the
-usefulness of the work you choose, for men are like medicines, when
-they show themselves useful, they will be used.
-
-The idea that success comes by luck or pull, or chance, is a fool’s
-idea. Some such instances occur, but they are not even so common as
-four-leaf clover--the man who starts out in life depending upon them is
-more foolish than the farmer who would rely upon four-leaf clover for
-his hay crop. And you will find as you come to live with him on close
-terms that the world is a very sagacious old fellow in his estimate of
-values. He has wonderful ability in discerning the real thing and in
-putting away shoddy. You cannot sell him gold bricks straight along--if
-now and then one is palmed off on the unwary, still they never become
-a staple quoted in the market reports. Good clay bricks in the long
-run are more profitable. Your work will be estimated, and estimated
-accurately, by its utility in satisfying genuine human need. The
-intelligent observance of this principle in making your selection will
-introduce that spirit of service which ennobles the whole effort.
-
-May your choice of vocation be so wise and right that you will be
-content to have it dominate all minor matters in your life! Horace
-Bushnell used to speak to Yale men about “the expulsive power of a new
-affection.” The love for a pure woman making all impurity hateful and
-disgusting; the love for some man of integrity making all lying and
-dishonesty seem foul and mean; the love for God making all wrong-doing
-repulsive! So there comes into the life, by the right choice of
-vocation, a supreme interest and delight in one’s work, which drives
-out all the low, cheap, mean things that would hinder it. “I am doing
-a great work,” the man cries; “I am content to be absorbed in it and it
-is morally impossible for me to come down to the trivial or the base.”
-
-The famous Vienna surgeon, Dr. Lorenz, at a banquet during his visit
-to this country, drank nothing but water. The man who sat next him at
-table, knowing the love which so many Germans have for wine and beer,
-asked the doctor if he were a teetotaler. The reply was: “I do not
-know that I could be called that; I am not in any sense a temperance
-agitator. But I am a surgeon and must keep my brain clear, my nerves
-steady, my muscles tense.” Here spoke the voice of science on one of
-its higher levels as to the effect of stimulants! Here spoke also
-the voice of one who finds splendid moral culture in his devotion to
-his life-work. “I am doing a great work, known on two continents and
-beyond,” he seemed to say; “therefore I cannot, for the sake of an
-abnormal sensation, come down to tickle my stomach, or tamper with my
-nerves or drug my brain by the use of stimulants.”
-
-Make such a selection of your life-work as will enable you to regard it
-as the main expression of your spiritual life. Every man, no matter
-what the special form of his employment may be, can so relate himself
-to it and so strive to relate it and the results which flow from it,
-to the life of the community as to make his ordinary work the main
-utterance of his deeper nature. There will be the expression of his
-spirituality in worship, in directly religious activity, in other forms
-of effort, but the main expression should lie in that useful work which
-claims six-sevenths of his time and strength.
-
-“Give us this day our daily bread,” the Master said in the model
-prayer. It ought to be the daily utterance of every serious man’s life.
-Utter it with your lips alone and your body will starve to death! Utter
-it with hands and brain alone, and your soul will famish! But utter
-it with your entire nature, hands, brain, heart, and soul, addressing
-themselves to God, to the resources God has placed at your call, and to
-the need of the community for the service you can render, and then your
-prayer will bring the bread which feeds the total nature up to its full
-strength! Industry, intelligence and moral purpose, cooperating with
-the divine bounty and with the needs of men, will work out the highest
-type of character and make one’s daily employment sacramental in its
-influence upon his own heart and upon the lives of others.
-
-I have not spoken of the claims of the various vocations, but let me
-utter one last word, as strong as I can make it, for the Christian
-ministry. There are splendid rewards and honors to be won today at
-the bar, in medicine, in the work of education, in commerce, in
-manufacture, in engineering. Into all these callings strong and useful
-men are going in such numbers that there is no cry of need coming back.
-It is not so in the ministry. There is in every branch of the Church
-and in all the states of the Union, a loud and a sore cry for young men
-of sound health, good sense, trained intelligence, social sympathy,
-and genuine character, to enter the ministry and furnish the moral and
-spiritual leadership the country craves. Like the man of Macedonia the
-modern pulpit stands up and cries, “Come over into Macedonia, and help
-us.”
-
-If I can read my Church history aright there never was a time when
-the opportunities and the rewards of the ministry were so great. A
-man will earn less money in the ministry than the same degree of
-ability would command in other fields of labor, though congregations,
-especially in cities, were never so generous with their pastors as
-now. What he carries away in his purse, however, is only one of many
-rewards the vocation brings. In the Church today there is liberty of
-thought; in some branch of it every man desiring to aid his fellows in
-doing justly, in loving mercy and in walking humbly with God, can find
-a hearty welcome and a place to work. There is a wide-spread hunger
-on the part of the people for a competent and helpful interpretation
-of this literature in the Bible. There is a call for men who can
-intelligently and effectively apply Christian principles to modern
-conditions and problems. There is an abiding demand for men who can
-bring the eternal verities of the Spirit before their congregations
-with power, and offer strength, cheer, courage, and comfort to those
-who come up weary and heavy-laden out of the work of the week.
-
-And in return for this highest form of service any one can hope to
-render to his fellows, there is a mighty tide of appreciation and
-gratitude waiting to flow in upon the heart of the man who has been
-doing genuine, helpful service as a minister of Jesus Christ. The field
-is wide, the rewards are rich and perpetual, the opportunities are like
-wide-open and effectual doors, but the strong, wise, devoted laborers
-are all too few! You cannot anywhere on earth invest your life with
-more satisfaction to yourself, with a greater sense of serviceableness
-to your brother men, with a warmer sense of God’s own approving favor,
-than in the ministry of the modern Church.
-
-In selecting your life-work, you wish to consider the whole man, to
-estimate possible success by the utility of the service rendered,
-to have a vocation to which all minor interests shall bow in glad
-obedience, and to make it the supreme expression of your spiritual
-life! Does any work on earth so meet these requirements as does the
-Christian ministry? In your individual case, if the call of God, the
-recognized needs of the world, and the sense of spiritual obligation
-should bear you into that vocation, you would forever thank him that
-among all the good things in life he had given you the best! You
-would gladly put away all the allurements which might defeat your
-spiritual effectiveness! You would say, to all beholders, by sincere
-and whole-hearted devotion to your calling, “I am doing a great work;
-I cannot come down.”
-
-
-
-
-VI
-
-MORAL VENTURES
-
-
-The old saw, “Nothing venture, nothing have,” is true in mining; the
-miner who is unwilling to risk his money on a hole in the ground
-without knowing what may lie at the other end of it never grows rich.
-It is true in farming, for the man who is not willing to throw his seed
-wheat away on an uncertainty will never reap a harvest. It is true in
-business, for if no man had been willing to invest a dollar until he
-had something as sure as a government bond, we would not have reached
-first base yet in our commercial development. It is true in all the
-finer forms of outdoor sport. The plaintive cry goes up now and then
-from certain quarters against the idea of having any element of risk or
-danger in college athletics--such people had better stick to ping-pong
-or croquet, leaving the other games to those of us who still have a
-sprinkling of red corpuscles in our veins. Nothing venture, nothing
-have!
-
-The same principle holds on the higher levels of moral life, for in
-all the more heroic forms of duty there is an element of risk. There
-are those who hold that right is nothing more than expediency and that
-wrong is simply a bad blunder. They can make quite a showing on paper.
-“Honesty is the best policy” in the long run, but it is a great deal
-more than that. Genuine honesty, financial, physical, intellectual,
-moral, the sort of honesty that adds two and two and gets four every
-time with never a fraction more nor less, is something more than good
-policy. It reaches down and takes hold of things fundamental in a way
-that mere policy never does, never can. And the fact stands that the
-saints and the seers, the heroes and the martyrs, the poets and the
-singers who have furnished inspiration and leadership, who have kindled
-the fire of moral passion in other breasts because it burned hot in
-their own, have been men to whom right was more than good policy. The
-moral leaders have been men who were ready to take risks in doing
-certain things because they believed those things to be right.
-
-There is a certain short story which brings this point out in telling
-fashion. There was a king who lived “somewhere east of Suez, where
-there ain’t no Ten Commandments and the best is like the worst.” He
-was the fortunate possessor of a big stick and he wielded it with
-striking success. To celebrate one of his notable victories he caused
-to be made a huge, gold-plated image ninety feet high and eighteen feet
-broad. He set it up out on the campus and called upon the people of his
-realm to bow down and worship it. He coupled that invitation with the
-stimulating announcement that if any man refused he would be cast into
-a furnace of fire.
-
-Now with that alternative in plain sight, the popular, the politic,
-the expedient thing was to get down and worship the image, or at least
-to go through the form. “In Rome you must do as the Romans do”--so the
-moral jelly-fish who have never reached the vertebrate level are ever
-saying. With a golden image ninety feet high and eighteen feet broad,
-with the king leading off in the worship and all his captains and
-counselors, his rulers and his governors backing him up, what could any
-ordinary man do but conform!
-
-But there in that same country east of Suez there were three young
-fellows who knew about the Ten Commandments. They had learned them “by
-heart” as we say, which means much more than the mere ability to reel
-them off the tongue as one might repeat the multiplication table. It
-was a matter of principle with them not to worship images of any sort.
-When the multitude flopped down on its knees before the Thing that was
-ninety feet high the three young men stood erect.
-
-Their defiant action was promptly reported to the king, and with all
-the fury of an oriental despot he caused them to be brought before
-him and again threatened with the fiery furnace. Then there came from
-the lips of uncalculating youth those ringing words of moral defiance
-which cause the heart of every man under forty to leap, “Our God whom
-we serve is able to deliver us from the fiery furnace! We believe that
-he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king! _But if not_”--there
-is the nub of the statement and there I want to rest my whole weight in
-this address--“but if not, be it known unto thee, O king, we will not
-serve thy gods!” No matter what might come, they stood ready to take
-the risk of obedience to the highest they saw.
-
-The men who are really putting the world ahead in its business methods
-and in its civic affairs, in the quality of the ideals which dominate
-the work of education and in the standards which obtain in society at
-large, are not men who are always making shrewd calculations as to
-what will be most expedient. These royal leaders of the race sitting
-upon their respective thrones of spiritual usefulness endeavor to
-shape means to ends. They indulge in no sort of bluster or heroics.
-They seek as far as may be to avoid open disaster. They say frankly,
-“We believe that this course of action will bring us out all right,
-vindicating itself here and now, _but if not_,”--even though
-personal loss, popular opposition and apparent defeat seem to be the
-immediate result--“we will stand for the right as we see the right.”
-These men ready to take risks in doing their duty in the face of heavy
-odds, ready to make the moral venture of fidelity to the highest ideals
-in sight, are the only men who are really worth while.
-
-Yonder on the coast at a life-saving station a group of determined
-men see a wreck off shore. They know all about the peril of the sea;
-it has been their major study for years. They quietly put on their
-storm clothes and their helmets, equipping themselves with all those
-appliances which experience has indicated as having value. They push
-their life-boat through the angry surf and are off. “We hope to bring
-those imperiled passengers and sailors safe to land and to get back
-ourselves,” they say; “but, if not, we go just the same. It is our
-duty.”
-
-Here in the crowded city a fireman climbs up the longest ladder
-available on the side of a burning building. Through a window on the
-fourth floor he catches a glimpse of the body of a woman who has been
-overcome by heat and smoke. He has been thoroughly trained by years
-of stern experience with city fires. He knows that the floor of that
-room may drop at any moment, that, if he ventures in, he, too, may be
-overcome by heat and smoke; that if he leaves his ladder for one moment
-it may mean certain death. In the face of everything he climbs right in
-to rescue the woman. “I hope to get out all right,” he says; “but if
-not, here goes just the same. It’s my duty.”
-
-Now the world will never be saved from its sin and shame until the rest
-of us who wear no uniforms of any kind are ready for that same sort of
-moral venture in the realms of business and politics, in educational
-and in social life. Here and there are small groups of men entering
-actively into the political life of the city, the state, the nation,
-ready to know machine politicians from the inside rather than from the
-outside, willing to get down and be muddied with their mud, in order
-that better men and better methods may prevail. Here and there are
-small groups of men who know that some of the methods in the world
-of business are fatal to that larger prosperity in which all classes
-may equitably share and fatal to the human values at stake. They are
-not sitting on the bleachers idly criticizing the players--they are
-in the game, but intent upon playing it according to finer rules
-and nobler methods. They are standing oftentimes at great cost to
-themselves for ideals which were not born in the counting-room, which
-do not receive their most accurate appraisement from the entries in the
-cash-book. These groups of idealists are not large as yet, but they
-are significant--they are the hope of the nation. They are the saving
-remnant in our modern Israel.
-
-Only as men are ready to lash themselves like Ulysses of old to those
-enduring principles of righteousness and honor which stand erect
-like masts and sail on, no matter what alluring sirens of temporary
-expediency sing along the course, shall we make moral headway or at
-last make port.
-
-You have read the history of those brave Dutchmen at the siege of
-Leyden. They were besieged by the powerful army of Spain. They
-were fighting for the safety of their city, for the freedom of the
-Netherlands, and for those principles of civil and religious liberty
-which they held dear. Unable to carry the place by assault the
-Spaniards undertook to starve the Dutchmen out. The Spanish commander
-demanded the surrender of the place coupled with the threat that if
-his demand were refused he would starve them all to death, men, women,
-and children.
-
-The sturdy Hollanders sent back this reply--“Tell the Spanish commander
-we will eat our left arms first and fight on with the right.” But as
-the siege went on some of the less heroic souls finally suggested to
-the governor that the food supply was very low and that it might be
-well to make some compromise. “Never,” he cried; “eat me first, but do
-not surrender.” They held on until finally in their desperation a few
-of them stole out at night and opened the dikes to let in the Atlantic
-Ocean. It might mean death to them, but it would also mean death to
-their enemies. In the confusion which ensued when the enemy’s camp was
-flooded, the Dutchmen had their opportunity--they rushed forth and from
-apparent defeat wrested a splendid victory. The great victories by
-land or by sea, in the stirring times of war or in the slower, harder
-battles of peace, are won by men who stand ready for that sort of moral
-venture.
-
-The people of any state have the right--they have paid for it in
-honest money--to look to the university not only for mental insight
-and efficiency, but for moral energy and spiritual passion. If the
-university is worthy to bear that high name it ought to be a place
-where moral idealism can breathe and grow as upon its native heath.
-This is thoroughly understood by all those who know the full meaning of
-“higher education.”
-
-If any of you have come up to this place of privilege merely with the
-idea of being trained so that you can more successfully compete with
-your fellows in feathering your own nests, making them thick and warm
-and soft as untrained men might be unable to do, you would better go
-home. If your associates knew that fact they would be ashamed of you.
-The members of the faculty, as soon as they discover that spirit in
-you, are ashamed of you. The people of the state would be ashamed of
-you did they know that you were here using the privileges they have
-provided in that mood. You are here to be made ready and competent to
-take more steadily and more largely the risks which public service
-involves.
-
-Hundreds of people, many of them good and respectable people
-too, confess themselves unable to stand up against the spirit of
-self-indulgence, the worship of luxury, the fierce pursuit of things
-material which are today dwarfing the souls of men in countless homes.
-All the more honor to those university men and women who stand out and
-bear witness to their firm confidence in the beauty of simplicity, in
-the value of sincerity of soul, in the vital importance of directing
-the ultimate aspirations to things spiritual!
-
-Hundreds of men in commercial and political life are hanging out the
-flag of distress. “We are caught in a system,” they say. “We cannot
-help ourselves. We must play the game in the same ruthless way our
-competitors are playing it.” All the more honor to those men who
-are ready to face defeat if need be, that they may stand clearly
-for unflinching integrity, for genuine consideration for the higher
-interests involved in industry, and for all those sacred ideals which
-ought to shine in the secular sky every day in the week as well as
-through the stained glass windows on the first day.
-
-In the face of the insistent demand for moral leadership it would be a
-downright shame if the university men should be found skulking in the
-rear, choosing the lower because it is the easier and in their weak
-attempts at moral advance following the line of least resistance. The
-persistent refusal of the call to high and responsible service becomes
-in these exacting days the act of a scoundrel. It is for every college
-man to stand ready to make the moral venture of fidelity to the highest
-in sight and to share in the honor of the ultimate victory.
-
-
-
-
-VII
-
-THE LAW OF RETURNS
-
-
-It was a well-seasoned parson who once remarked that he made it a point
-never to speak in public without taking a text. It mattered not whether
-it was an after-dinner speech, a Fourth of July oration or a sermon,
-he always took a text, that he might be sure, as he said, to “give the
-people something worth remembering.”
-
-In imitation of his pious example I will take a text. You will find my
-text in the book of Numbers, the first chapter and the second verse.
-It reads like this--“Two and two make four.” That particular statement
-does not happen to be in the Bible, but it is as true as anything which
-is found there, and it will serve as a basis for what I wish to say
-regarding the law of returns.
-
-Two and two make four. Never by any sort of bad luck or ill chance
-only three and a half; never by any amount of pulling or stretching
-or coaxing four and a half, but always and everywhere just four and no
-more! It is a definite, absolute statement of fact. It always has been
-so and it always will be so. No one can imagine a world where two and
-two will not make four.
-
-If a man deposits two dollars in the bank today and two tomorrow, he
-can draw out four the third day. In forty years from that time he
-can still draw out exactly four dollars and whatever interest upon
-his original deposit the bank may allow. Life is like that. With
-what measure we mete, it is measured back to us again. We get out of
-life what we put in, by a law as definite and as unyielding as the
-statement about two and two. There are no Santa Clauses lurking in the
-shadow--each individual takes out of the big stocking what has been
-previously put in, not by magic, but by solid and verifiable effort.
-
-Once for all dismiss the idea that success in life is the result
-of luck or pull or any such artificial thing. There was a man in
-San Francisco who once picked up a five dollar gold piece in the
-street-car. He was a poor man and it was a great find for him. He
-thenceforth spent a large part of his time studying the floor of the
-street-car, peering in and out among the feet of the passengers, to
-find another gold piece. He never found another one, but the time
-wasted, if it had been given to thought and effort touching his own
-trade, would have earned for him many an extra gold piece. Now and
-then something may occur which men call “luck,” but it offers nothing
-reliable by which one may safely shape his course.
-
-Young men and maidens look for four-leaf clovers on the lawn. They are
-commonly intent upon something else besides the clover as they creep
-about on their hands and knees--something sweeter and more satisfying
-than clover, and they find this too. Occasionally they do find a
-four-leaf clover, but the clover which makes the lawn green, feeds the
-cows, supplies the bees with honey and fills the haymow, is three-leaf
-clover--the ordinary, every-day sort of clover. The farmer, the
-dairyman, and the bee all know that the reliable and satisfying returns
-in life come not by some happy chance, but in those common and usual
-events which are according to law.
-
-When the blood is warm, the heart beating high and fast, the nerves
-eager to yield their thrills, young people see visions and dream
-dreams. It ought to be so. The girl who does not have her day-dreams is
-no girl at all. The boy who does not see ahead of him shapes and forms
-of activity, achievement, advance, higher and more commanding than
-the Sierra, if not quite so solid, does not deserve to be young. The
-loftier, the richer, the rosier these day-dreams, the better!
-
-But those visions will have to be worked out and realized, in so far
-as they come to have a definite, ascertainable value, in a world of
-plain, hard fact. The girl will marry a man with feet and hands like
-the rest of us; and the home she has, the place she makes for herself
-in society, the record of useful service she writes opposite her name,
-will be determined according to law. And the place in the world’s life
-which the boy carves out for himself as he climbs toward maturity,
-the size of it, the location of it, the comfort of it, will be the
-inevitable reaction from wise and useful effort. The law of returns is
-as sure as the statement about two and two making four.
-
-We find this made plain in several directions--first of all in the
-gaining and maintenance of sound health. Genuine achievement in many
-lines becomes in the last analysis largely a question of nerves,
-digestion, physical stamina. In the busy, hurried city life the
-question is, “Can this man stand up to it as long and as effectively
-as any other man--and then just that much longer which gives him
-preeminence?” The lawyer must be able to go into court day after day
-clear-headed, so that he will have all the law he knows at his command,
-patient and smooth with blundering witnesses, wise and self-controlled
-in the face of the nagging of the opposing counsel; he must be able to
-do this all day long for weeks together, looking up his authorities at
-night oftentimes, and not break down. The physician must do something
-more than ride around in an automobile and look wise; he must be able
-to carry upon his mind and heart the anxieties of a hundred households
-at once, work all day, frequently half the night, eating and sleeping
-as he can, and do all this without resorting to stimulants or drugs
-to keep himself up to the mark. The teacher bent not on imparting
-information or on merely keeping the wheels of a pedagogical machine
-turning, but upon the high task of forming, developing, enriching
-personality in fifty or sixty restless lives there in plain view, needs
-a sound physique. The minister of religion if he is to stand up before
-the same congregation for a score of years or more and put faith, hope,
-courage, heart, and resolution into them and not become fagged out and
-stale, must be a man who can sleep nights, digest his meals, maintain
-his poise, rise early, and go all day without losing his head or his
-health--and for all this he needs a prime body. The same is true in the
-life of the merchant or the mechanic, in the work of the manufacturer
-or the farmer.
-
-Henry Ward Beecher used to say that there were three kinds of people in
-the world--the sick people who must be taken care of with sympathetic
-tenderness; the people who are not sick, able to be up and to take
-their nourishment; and the people who are positively, radiantly,
-and joyously well. If the young man has not been handicapped by some
-accident or by an unfortunate heredity, it lies easily within his power
-to be enrolled in this third class. He ought to hold himself resolutely
-unwilling to accept anything less.
-
-It is much more than a matter of personal prudence or of self-interest.
-Up to the limit of his powers each man owes it to his family, to
-his friends, and to the world about him to furnish it one more
-healthy, vigorous life. The world is defrauded if by his foolishness,
-dissipation, or laziness it is put off with a whining, grumbling,
-irritable caricature of what the man might have been. He owes it to
-the members of his family not to burden them with unnecessary doctor’s
-bills, nursing, and anxiety. He owes it to them not to break down and
-die before his time, leaving them to struggle on alone. Good, sound
-health, clear up to the limit of what intelligence, conscience, and
-that resolution which will not take “no” for an answer may achieve,
-becomes a moral obligation! The man who shirks this physical duty
-becomes to that extent a scamp.
-
-Such physical efficiency comes not as a piece of good luck; nor
-is disease to be regarded always as a misfortune or “a mysterious
-dispensation of providence.” The man careless about the drainage or
-thoughtlessly allowing decaying vegetables to lie in the cellar of his
-home need not prate about “providence” if fever attacks some member
-of his household. The man who eats hot biscuits three times a day and
-drinks coffee by the quart until he is as yellow as a Chinaman has no
-right to shake his head over “the mysterious ways of God,” when he
-becomes ill. The young fellow who inhales whole fog-banks of cigarette
-smoke until his lungs are weak and his heart action defective, who
-tampers with his nerves by the use of stimulants or narcotics, need
-not be surprised that in the hard contests of life sounder men walk on
-ahead, leaving him in the rear. In each case the man forgot that two
-and two make four, that we must settle by the books, that according to
-the law of returns we take out what we put in.
-
-Physical efficiency cannot be hastily bought in the drug store at a
-dollar a bottle any more than women can buy good complexions there
-for fifty cents a box. Beauty is more than skin deep; it roots all
-the way down into those vital processes which give the fair woman the
-appearance and the reality of joyous, engaging health. And the physical
-efficiency which stands the strain of modern life cannot be rapidly
-gained by the use of drugs; it comes according to the law of definite
-returns. It comes only as men eat good food, enough and not too much,
-drink that which slakes rather than creates thirst, sleep a sufficient
-number of hours, some of them before midnight, breathe their full share
-of the outdoor air where there is plenty for everybody, and exercise
-themselves sanely in some wholesome industry. It all comes according to
-method and not by magic.
-
-The newspapers on the morning after the presidential election of
-nineteen hundred brought us an interesting picture. One of the
-candidates for vice-president that year had been traveling for weeks
-together, speaking ten or fifteen times a day to great audiences
-eager to drain him of his last drop of vitality. He had been meeting
-influential citizens by the hundreds, shaking hands with them
-until his right arm might have felt like the handle of some outworn
-town pump. He had been doing all this under the constant strain of
-tremendous excitement and personal interest. A man who had wasted his
-strength in vicious indulgences would have lasted about as long in
-such a situation as an old lady would last in a football game. This
-man went through it without breaking down, without losing his head
-or making foolish, damaging statements. And when the reporters went
-to call on him the night of the election they found him in evening
-dress, rejoicing in the companionship of his family, from whom he had
-been separated for those weeks, calmly awaiting the returns. Theodore
-Roosevelt--whether we agree with all his policies or not, we admire
-a vigorous, intelligent, public-spirited American citizen wherever
-found! He entered college a delicate lad. He gained and maintained that
-splendid efficiency by remembering that two and two make four. He was
-willing to pay the full price for virility by his steady attention to
-the law of returns.
-
-The same rule holds in the mental field. There are men who fall
-into the way of relying upon what they are pleased to call “genius.”
-A bad case of “genius” in a young man is almost as fatal to his
-highest success as smallpox. There are a few men in each generation
-exceptionally endowed, just as there are a few four-leaf clovers in
-every field, but the work of the world is done mainly by men of average
-build.
-
-And even men of undeniable genius attribute their success mainly to
-persistent effort. Agassiz used to say, “I seem to have formed the
-habit of observing more closely than many of my associates.” Darwin,
-whose work was epoch making, made that famous trip for observation on
-H. M. S. _Beagle_ in 1837. In 1844 he ventured to show a few of
-his notes to some intimate friends. In 1859, twenty-two years after
-he had collected the first data for the theory finally announced,
-he published “The Origin of Species,” and the world of science, of
-philosophy, of religion, underwent a radical change as a result of his
-thorough work.
-
-Ask ninety-nine men out of a hundred how they succeeded and the answer
-will come back--“Hard work.” Inspiration is all very well, but for the
-mass of us perspiration is a surer pathway to achievement. Wellington,
-Newton, Lord Clive, Napoleon, Walter Scott, Daniel Webster were all
-regarded as dull boys--in each case advancement came by persistent
-effort. The capacity was there, but it was brought out not by magic nor
-by some sudden burst of inspiration, but by hard work.
-
-Knowledge is power, where the knowledge is not a mere mass of
-information. The mere accumulation of facts has little worth, for all
-this lies ready to our hand in the encyclopedia whenever it is needed.
-The knowledge which brings power lies in the ability to read and to
-know what it is all about and how it bears on other things we have
-read; in the ability to think and when one thinks to produce something
-with the look and taste of his own mind upon it; in the ability to see
-three things, sharply distinguishing them, and then to see them in
-their relations, and then to see another group of three and another,
-organizing the whole nine into some sort of system. The knowledge which
-is power means insight, grasp, discrimination, productiveness. It is
-not the sole property of genius, but rather the natural return for a
-long life of consistent, intellectual effort.
-
-Each man owes it to society to make his utmost effort to furnish it
-one more such well-equipped member. This purpose includes much more
-than the desire for that individual success and preeminence which might
-prompt the effort--it indicates a wish to be capable and serviceable to
-those larger interests which lag for lack of competent service.
-
-When Booker Washington addresses the students gathered at Tuskegee,
-it is after this fashion. “You have not come here to receive training
-in order that you may go back and compete more successfully with your
-untrained associates, in earning higher wages to feather your own nests
-quickly and warmly. You have not come here to become intelligent and
-cultivated that you may go back and proudly establish better homes
-and higher types of family life than the untutored negroes maintain.
-You are here that being trained you may feel more heavily and capably
-responsible for the welfare of your race in the several communities
-where you are to live and work.” If this is the splendid ideal in the
-green tree of a black man’s school, what shall we expect in the dry
-tree of the white man’s school! The high office of all mental drill
-should be to send men out “more heavily and capably responsible” for
-the general good, and this high quality of competency comes only by
-strict attention to the law of returns.
-
-The same method holds in moral values although many people feel that
-here we enter a region of hocus-pocus, a realm of magic and sleight of
-hand where two and two may possibly, upon occasion, make five or even
-fifty. There is an impression in some quarters that a young fellow
-may sow an abundant crop of wild oats, that he may wallow in the mire
-of vicious indulgence, that he may for years disregard his spiritual
-interests with flat indifference, and then by some sudden spasm of
-moral feeling begin anew, as fine and as sound a man as if he had never
-been in the far country with the harlots and the swine.
-
-The standard books on ethics give us no hint that such is the fact.
-The Bible says nothing in support of such a notion. There is not a
-land the sun shines on where two and two do not make four in morals as
-well as in mathematics. There are no short cuts to spiritual soundness.
-The Almighty is a careful bookkeeper and the teaching of reason,
-experience, and conscience is to the effect that here, as everywhere,
-we must accept those reactions which come inevitably by this great law
-of returns.
-
-There was a missionary to the Indians who, in seeking to induce habits
-of Sabbath observance, told them that if they planted their corn on
-Sunday it would not grow. In that spirit of human perversity which we
-all understand and share, they immediately went out and planted an acre
-of corn on Sunday! They hoed it and tended it always on Sunday. And
-because they took especial pains with it, when autumn came it yielded
-more corn than any other acre on the reservation. Then the Indians
-laughed at the good missionary and would not go to church.
-
-There is a penalty for planting and hoeing corn on Sunday, but it does
-not show in the corn--it shows in the men. The corn may grow to its
-full size, but the men will not grow to their full size, nor yield
-the full return appropriate to the cultivation of human values. The
-missionary was sound in his main purpose, but faulty in his method,
-because in the moral world as elsewhere, we find the reign of law and
-not the operation of magic. The neglect of the higher values for which
-the Sabbath stands will not at once affect the cornfield, but it will
-show in the spiritual deficiencies of the men who have no place in the
-week for the cultivation of reverence, aspiration, and the sense of
-fellowship with the Unseen.
-
-There is no shuffling nor chance in the moral world. Impulses lead to
-choices; choices readily become habits; habits harden speedily into
-character, and character determines destiny. Two and two make four all
-the way up, all the way down, and all the way in.
-
-In a New York hotel the chambermaid one morning discovered the dead
-body of a young man and at his side, scrawled on a piece of paper, she
-found this last will and testament: “I leave to society a bad example.
-I leave to my father and mother all the sorrow they can bear in their
-old age. I leave to my brothers and sisters the memory of a misspent
-life. I leave to my wife a broken heart and to my children the name of
-a drunkard and a suicide. I leave to God a lost soul which has defied
-and insulted his loving mercy.”
-
-He wrote it all out, signed it, and then shot himself. His appetites
-had gotten away with him, his habits were no longer under his control.
-He began as many an enthusiastic, generous young fellow begins by
-simply having a succession of “good times” and they grew on him until
-the habits he had developed were no longer his--he was theirs. He
-forgot that two and two make four, and the gruesome legacy he was
-compelled to leave issued as inevitably from his course of life as the
-sum total at the foot of a column of figures.
-
-The sound health which serves as the physical basis of enlarging and
-enduring efficiency; the trained intelligence which knows what to do
-next and finds itself competent for the task; the type of character
-which is reliable and profitable for the life that now is and for
-that which is to come, all come to us as splendid reactions from that
-stable, definite, methodical order, seen and unseen, which enfolds us
-ever. What you receive as the natural rebound from your mode of life
-will be like in quality and proportionate in amount to that which you
-express in effort, for the law of returns, like the law of gravitation,
-is always on duty.
-
-
-
-
-VIII
-
-THE HIGHEST FORM OF REWARD
-
-
-The Scriptures show their good sense by frankly facing and accepting
-the hope of reward as a legitimate source of motive. There are fine
-people who almost go into spasms over the idea of working for a reward.
-“Do right,” they say, “because it is right, not because you will gain
-something by it.” “Live nobly, because it is the highest duty there
-is, with no thought of what may come to you in consequence.” “Do your
-work well for the sheer joy of it, not because you will be paid well
-for good work.” All this is very pretty and does credit to the lovely
-dispositions of those who utter these sentiments, but it is just a
-little too good for this common earth.
-
-It was just a little too good for the men who wrote the Bible. Jesus
-himself did not hesitate to say, “Do this, and great shall be your
-reward in heaven.” He said, “If any man shall give a cup of cold water
-in my name,” that is to say, in the right spirit, “he shall in no wise
-lose his reward.” He built squarely upon the foundation laid by that
-singer of old, “The statutes of the Lord are right; the commandments
-of the Lord are pure; the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous
-altogether, and in keeping of them there is great reward.” The hope of
-reward according to the Scriptures is a legitimate source of motive.
-
-But what form should the reward take? What is the highest form of
-reward? One finds all manner of answers to this question strung along
-in an ascending series. We find those who always think of reward in
-terms of material success. “It pays to be good,” these men say--to
-be good, at any rate, up to a certain point. “Honesty is the best
-policy”--in the long run as a method of business procedure it can show
-more dividends than dishonesty can. “The way of the transgressor is
-hard,” now in one way, now in another, but always hard at the end.
-Transgression does not pay when the returns are all in. The main theme
-of the book of Deuteronomy is that obedience to Jehovah will bring
-blessings wrought out in terms of material prosperity. “If thou shalt
-hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, blessed shalt thou be in
-basket and in store; blessed shalt thou be in the city and in the
-field; blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out and when thou comest
-in.” Reckoned up in terms of visible success, righteousness would be
-the best asset a nation could possess.
-
-We have here a great truth; it is not the whole truth, but it is a
-fragment of truth not to be despised. The young man in New York, whose
-main interest is material success, setting out to achieve his ambition
-by dishonesty is trying to make the Hudson River turn round and flow
-back to Albany. It cannot be done. He will get wet and muddy and be
-drowned, perhaps, for his pains and, when he is all through with his
-experiment, the Hudson will be flowing right along just the same.
-
-In like manner, the big, strong, moral order which enfolds us whether
-we like it or not, whether we think about it or believe in it or not,
-the big, strong, moral order cannot be defied nor ignored. Here and
-there some young fellow thinks he has found a way of turning it round
-in what he supposes to be his own interest. He, too, simply gets wet
-and muddy, and drowned, perhaps, in his foolish efforts while the
-great, eternal verities of right and wrong are still there as they were
-before he pitted his puny strength against them. The fact stands that
-righteousness exalts a nation or an individual as nothing else can.
-
-But this fragment of truth is only a fragment. A man who is righteous
-to a certain extent because it pays is not a high type. The one who
-is honest because honesty is the best policy is not very honest--put
-him in a situation where honesty involves personal sacrifice and one
-could not bank on his honesty. The man who is intent upon furnishing
-the world so much uprightness in exchange for a certain amount of
-advancement which he hopes to gain can scarcely be said to be in the
-moral field at all. He is merely doing a little business with the
-Lord,--so much character for so much success. It may all be as purely
-a commercial transaction, when analyzed down to its roots, as the
-buying of a suit of clothes. His gifts to benevolence when scrutinized
-are seen to be only shrewd “investments.” Increased material prosperity
-is a form of reward, but it is not the highest form, and it does not
-furnish a praiseworthy source of motive.
-
-We find those who look for their reward in the appreciation of others.
-We all like to have the esteem of our fellows and we ought to like it.
-That queer stick who is always flinging out sneers about popularity,
-who insists that he does not care a straw what people think about him,
-cares more than any of us. He has an idea that by this strange course
-he will be talked about more and be regarded more highly for his oddity
-than he would be if he shaped up his life in a more rational way.
-
-Reputation is not character; it may be only the uncertain shadow cast
-by character, but it can be, for all that, a pleasant and a healing
-shadow. One of the wisest of men said, “A good name is rather to be
-chosen than great riches.” A good name is simply what people say about
-a man. The appreciation and the esteem which right living wins is a
-legitimate form of reward.
-
-But this also is liable to be distorted. Jesus saw certain people
-making this form of reward the object of supreme desire. He warned his
-disciples against that course. “Take heed that you do not your alms
-before men to be seen of them. When thou doest thine alms sound not a
-trumpet before thee as the hypocrites do, that they may have glory of
-men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.” These men rendered
-their generous service with showy ostentation, blowing their horns as
-they went. They did it that they might have glory of men and they had
-glory of men--they got the dividends they desired.
-
-“And when thou prayest thou shalt not be as the hypocrites: they love
-to pray standing on the street corners that they may be seen of men.
-Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.” They prayed on the
-street corners that they might be seen of men and they were seen of
-men--they got what they prayed for.
-
-The desire for esteem is not a satisfactory source of motive. The boy
-who cannot do his duty unless he is praised and petted for it afterward
-is a poor specimen--he is likely to become a vain, self-conscious
-little prig. The man who cannot perform unless he is in the lime-light,
-hearing the plaudits of the many, is made of poor stuff--he is lath
-and plaster, where there should be sound material. All such speedily
-lose the finer qualities out of whatever measure of righteousness they
-seem to possess. When a man goes straight along about his business,
-intent upon doing his own piece of work well and succeeds in such
-a way that the gratitude, esteem, and appreciation of his fellows
-come, he scarcely knows how, he finds this a beautiful and enduring
-source of satisfaction. But here as everywhere the law of indirection
-operates--he that saves his popularity by aiming for it loses it; he
-that loses all thought of it by investing his life in useful service
-finds it.
-
-There are men who think of the highest form of reward as standing
-in the approval of one’s own conscience and in the sense of having
-the favor of God. The throne of judgment where I must stand and give
-account is not away yonder among the clouds--it is in here where I am.
-It is within my own heart where God is--where my God is. It is here
-that I meet him now and must meet and face him ever.
-
-And no quantity of outward success, no full, warm tide of popular
-esteem will supply the lack of moral self-respect within. If any man
-knows that his heart is not right before God, that his purposes are
-not true, that his aspirations are low, then no amount of material
-success or popular applause will give him tranquillity of spirit. And,
-conversely, where there is honesty of purpose, where a man may look
-himself in the face with unsparing candor and know that he is entitled
-to respect, this fact of itself brings a peace which passeth all
-understanding. This inner sense of worth and peace is from on high and
-it becomes a fine form of reward.
-
-There are ugly distortions of it. The Pharisee who went into the
-temple to pray felt very comfortable in his own mind. We saw it in
-his strut as he walked down the aisle. We noticed it in the way he
-stood, when he prayed thus with himself, “God, I thank thee, that I
-am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers.” He named
-the lowest, meanest men he could think of. It would not be hard to
-outrun such men morally, but such a race as it was the Pharisee had
-won it. “I thank thee that I am not as other men are, or even as this
-publican.” It was fortunate that the publican chanced to be there; it
-added a cubit of self-complacency to the Pharisee to have the publican
-present. “I fast twice in the week; I give a tenth of all that I
-possess,” the Pharisee continued. He had been doing right for the sake
-of the self-satisfaction which would result--and he had his reward. I
-do not know of a man in history who seemed to have more of it. He was
-comfortable to “the thirty-third and last degree” in that feeling of
-self-approval which clothed him as with a garment.
-
-But what a narrow, self-centered life it produces where this becomes
-the chief form of reward for which a man strives! “I will speak this
-kind word and do this generous deed and stand firm in the path of duty,
-because of the warm feelings of self-approval which will steal upon my
-heart,” such a man cries. It is better to have the approval of one’s
-conscience than not to have it; it is better to strive for inner peace
-and satisfaction than to have one’s eye constantly on material success
-or popular applause. But where this becomes the object of supreme
-interest it is a disappointing and a narrowing form of reward.
-
-What shall we say, then, is the highest form, if neither material
-success nor popular esteem nor the approval of one’s own conscience
-is worthy to stand in that holy place? I find the highest form of
-reward named by the Master in the parable of the Good Samaritan, “This
-do and thou shalt live.” The reward for right living, for loving God
-and loving one’s neighbor after the manner indicated in the parable,
-lies in the increased power we gain to live. This do and thou shalt
-live--live more abundantly, more effectively, more serviceably. The
-reward of right life is a larger life.
-
-The man in the parable who had been faithful and diligent with the one
-pound entrusted to him received this reward: “Well done, thou good and
-faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will
-make thee ruler over many things! Have thou authority over ten cities.”
-The reward for good conduct was enlarged capacity and enlarged
-opportunity for more good conduct. The man’s powers were increased by
-what he had been doing and his chance for the exercise of them was
-greater; now, in place of the single pound to be used in trading, he
-had authority over ten cities. In this sense of increased capacity to
-meet the increasing obligations of life lies the highest form of reward.
-
-In one of his little books, Henry van Dyke speaks of three ideals of
-education. The man with “the decorative ideal” thinks it is a fine
-thing to go through college. It gives one an air of distinction. It
-enables him to belong to the University Club in the city where he
-lives. It enables him to refer to “my class,” and to the “good old
-days” at Harvard or Yale, at Cornell or Princeton, at Stanford or
-California. He may even be prompted to become a “dig” in the hope that
-a Phi Beta Kappa key will unlock doors closed to other men. And because
-he is a university man he feels that he possesses a rare and cultivated
-taste in poetry and in philosophy, in music and in art. He thinks of
-his education as a highly decorative appendage to his personal life.
-
-The second man has no use for all this; he has “the marketable ideal”
-of education. He is one of those “no-nonsense-about-me” fellows. In
-selecting his courses he has a thoroughly practical eye to the main
-chance. He is very contemptuous in his attitude toward the study of
-dead languages or of metaphysics. “What good would all that do me, when
-I got out into the world?” he says. He thinks of himself as a tool to
-be ground and sharpened so that in the world of business it will cut
-where other tools fail. He is intent upon gaining an education not for
-the purpose of living but for the purpose of making a living, which is
-a very different thing.
-
-The true ideal of education is “the creative ideal.” The work of the
-school is not to enable the shoemaker to stick to his last and make
-more money out of it than uneducated men are making out of their lasts.
-“Education is to lift the shoemaker above his last, and to carry the
-merchant beyond his store, the lawyer beyond his brief, the minister
-beyond his sermon.” The supreme reward for being educated lies in
-the enlarged capacity one gains for life. The reward for physical
-exercise, for mental drill, for hard study, for the steady effort to
-do one’s duty, is to be found in that increased power to live. This do
-and thou shalt live a larger, freer, finer life. This do and thou shalt
-be alive at more points, on higher levels, and in more efficient and
-serviceable ways.
-
-We cannot possibly stop short of that. If a man thinks of his education
-as only making him more marketable, he has his mind fixed upon material
-success as the highest form of reward. If he thinks of it mainly as a
-thing that will win the admiration of his less cultured associates, he
-is still in the clutches of that decorative idea. If he thinks of it
-mainly as having value in giving him the consciousness of intelligence
-and culture, he is still on an unsatisfactory level of thought and
-purpose.
-
-“Come on up to the head of the stairs,” the great educational processes
-of the world call to us! “Come on up where you can see and breathe
-and grow.” This do and thou shalt live; this alone indicates the
-great end in view. Enlarged capacity for real life is the goal of all
-serious endeavor. We may or may not gain material success; we may or
-may not secure a large measure of popular applause; we will beyond a
-peradventure have a deep, sweet feeling of peace within as we face that
-way, but the main result will be that, by doing all these things well,
-we shall gain increased power and capacity for living the life. Here
-we reach that which is ultimate. “This do and thou shalt live” is the
-final word on the subject of reward.
-
-The highest return for doing anything lies in the power one gains to do
-it better and to do more of it. The reward for reading is not in the
-information gained or in the ideas acquired so much as in the mental
-stimulus which comes, enabling one to read more books and better ones
-and in time to produce ideas of his own. The artist goes out into the
-world to see the beauty of it in tree and flower, in landscape and
-mountain, in the quiet lake, and in the restless sea. His reward comes
-in increased power to see more beauty there than other people see and
-to transfer what he sees to canvas. “I never saw anything like that
-in nature,” a woman once said to Turner as she looked at one of his
-pictures. “Very likely,” replied the artist; “how much would you give,
-madam, if you could?” Turn your face any way you choose and the great
-statement of the Master about reward holds true,--this do and thou
-shalt live.
-
-Carry it up to the moral level. The reward for doing your duty lies in
-the increased power you gain to keep on doing it and to do it better.
-The reward for loving lies in the increased power to love and to love
-more worthily. The reward for meeting and mastering some hard situation
-in life, temptation, disappointment, struggle, sorrow, lies in the
-added strength you gain to master still harder situations which may
-arise. In your spiritual pilgrimage you go “from strength to strength,”
-from one form of strength to another and a higher form, from one
-measure of strength to another and a fuller measure, until at last you
-reach the fulness of the stature of Christ.
-
-You may recall that great promise made in the last book of the Bible!
-“Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee”--what? What form
-will the ultimate reward take? “I will give thee a crown,” not of
-gold with diamonds in it larger than the Kohinoor, not the crown
-of material success. “I will give thee a crown,” not of laurel such
-as the Greeks placed upon the brow of the victors in the games, the
-crown of popular applause. “I will give thee a crown,” not of personal
-satisfaction such as men of honest purpose may be entitled to wear. “Be
-thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown _of life_!”
-The ultimate reward for living right lies in the increased power and
-the increased opportunity which will be ours to live on and to live
-more abundantly.
-
-
-
-
-IX
-
-THE USE OF THE INCOMPLETE
-
-
-“We know in part.” This is not the statement of some indifferent
-agnostic, who, because religious questions are difficult, insists that
-he does not know anything about them. It is not the statement of a
-defiant infidel, who, because he does not understand everything about
-religion, declares that neither he nor any one knows anything about
-it. It is not the statement of one of those hesitating individuals who
-are always trying to steer a safe course somewhere between yes and
-no, between the right of it and the wrong of it; who are never quite
-sure whether there is or is not a God, but think that the truth lies,
-perhaps, about halfway between the two claims.
-
-This man Paul was not an agnostic, nor an infidel, nor a hesitator. He
-knew certain things, he was sure of them. He was ready to say so right
-out loud, and to stand up and be cut in two for them if need be. “I
-know whom I have believed,” he cries; there was no uncertainty in his
-mind on that point. “I know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ”--and
-it had changed him from a narrow, bigoted, persecuting Pharisee into
-one who wrote the best hymn on love to be found in print and who
-embodied the spirit of it in his daily conduct. “I know that all things
-work together for good to them that love God”--and in Paul’s case
-“all things” included a great deal of hardship and persecution, of
-disappointment and sorrow, but he never wavered in his confidence that
-some wise purpose was being furthered by it all. These and many other
-things he knew. “In part we know,” was the way he would have placed his
-emphasis and the actual content of his knowledge was large indeed.
-
-He makes this statement as an honest, modest, reasonable man face to
-face with spiritual realities too great for perfect comprehension or
-final statement. His knowledge of them was large, but they were still
-larger. He must have known when he wrote those words that he was a
-man of no mean attainments. He wrote a third of the New Testament with
-his own hand. He did more to shape Christian thought than any one save
-Christ himself. He had been “caught up into the third heaven,” whatever
-that may mean. He was the most effective missionary of the new faith
-the world has ever seen. He was a man of marvelous reach and grasp, but
-face to face with these great spiritual realities, God and redemption,
-prayer and duty, immortality and the final judgment, he frankly
-confesses that the returns are not all in; the last words have not been
-said and cannot be said; the full appreciation of these high values has
-not been reached. We know in part.
-
-We are glad to find these words on the lips of the world’s greatest
-apostle. They are reassuring to those of us who are troubled by the
-limitations of our own religious knowledge. They match the mood of this
-modern time of questioning and unrest which is so much in evidence
-on the college campus and in university circles. They suggest that
-finality is much more difficult than some of the earlier generations
-in their simplicity supposed. One does not find those familiar words,
-“Finis” or “The End,” printed on the last page of a book so commonly
-as in other days. Even where the author has said his say in several
-volumes, each one as bulky as a volume of the “Britannica,” he knows
-that there is more to be said. He leaves the way open without trying to
-block it by writing, “The End.”
-
-We are conscious that we have not reached the terminus on any of the
-great trunk lines of religious inquiry. We are scattered along at
-various way stations, thankful for the part we know, grateful for
-progress made, but confessing with Paul that we have not attained, that
-we are not made perfect either in theory or in practise. But whatever
-headway we have made we are determined in the spirit of Paul to use
-the part we know and press forward toward the mark of the prize of
-the high calling of God. This is the dominant mood of the serious but
-cautious, inquiring element in modern life. We are, therefore, grateful
-for the word of this modest, reasonable man, who with all his store of
-spiritual experience said quietly, “We know in part.”
-
-We might carry these words in many directions and find them helpful.
-Some of us have been greatly disturbed as to the doctrine of
-Providence. We have been told on high authority that God reigns and
-that “He doeth all things well.” When times are good we really believe
-it. We see that the way of the transgressor is hard, as it ought to be,
-and that on the whole the way of righteousness is the way of peace and
-honor. We have a comfortable persuasion that all things taken in their
-completeness and final outcome are working together for good to those
-whose purposes are right.
-
-But just when we have gotten our doctrine of Providence all snug we
-witness something like this: Yonder a young Christian mother dies. She
-was an ideal daughter, a devoted wife, and the beautiful mother of
-children who loved her and needed her more than they did anything else
-on earth. But with a whole community of people, perhaps, praying for
-her recovery she dies, while just around the corner a group of scamps,
-who are making the world worse, rather than better, live on, fat and
-hearty. And then somehow our doctrine of Providence, our belief as to
-the reign of a wise and good God, receives a hard shock.
-
-But we know in part. We know the usefulness of that life here; we do
-not know to what further and, perhaps, higher service it has been
-called there. We see what has been interrupted here; we do not see what
-has been taken up further on. We do not know the ultimate effect of
-this stern sorrow upon that household, the result of this necessity for
-the regirding of all their powers as they walk now in the shadow of a
-great bereavement. We do not even know God’s ultimate purpose for those
-scamps who live on; the returns are not all in for them either. We know
-in part, and what we know, taking human life broadly, is so reassuring
-that we are willing to trust God and walk on by faith.
-
-Ships in Norway, entering the great fiords, sometimes sail so close to
-the cliffs that one can stand on deck and almost lay his hand upon the
-face of the rock. When one captain was asked about it, he said, “That
-which is in sight indicates what is out of sight. The slant above the
-water-line indicates the slant below and we are perfectly safe.” The
-general slant of God’s dealings with us, taking the facts we know in
-the total impression they make as to his wisdom and justice, is such
-that we are prepared to trust him below the water-line. Therefore when
-I cannot in some difficult situation make out his ultimate purpose with
-the naked eye, I fall back upon my confidence in his moral character.
-
-As to this faith in the divine integrity no serious, observant man
-should remain in doubt. It is a faith which rests upon a wide induction
-of fact, vaster by far than my own experience of his dealings with me.
-It is like repeating an axiom to say that the creature does not rise
-above the Creator. If men at any time, anywhere are good, there must be
-goodness in the Creator of those men, goodness in the force or forces
-lying back of them, call those forces by what name we may. And if the
-stream of human goodness has been widening, deepening, flowing more
-strongly as the ages have come and gone, it points back to character
-and purpose in the One who created the stream itself. That goodness
-in man argues goodness in God, while badness in man does not argue
-badness in God is plain, in that sane men everywhere regard goodness as
-normal, while badness is abnormal.
-
-And look at the swelling tide of human goodness down through the ages!
-Look at Livingstone laying down his life to carry light into the dark
-continent! Look at Cromwell fearing God and none else, neither king nor
-pope, neither nobles nor bishops, and giving his life that he might win
-constitutional and religious freedom for the English-speaking race!
-Look at Lincoln counting not his life dear if he might serve the cause
-of the Union and the interests of his brothers in bonds! Look at the
-vast array of human goodness massing itself in saints and seers, in
-heroes and martyrs, in teachers and mothers, going forth not to be
-ministered unto, but to minister, giving their lives for the betterment
-of the world! Look at it all and then ask yourself if you can believe
-for one moment that all this goodness originated itself, persisted, and
-increased in opposition to the will of the Creator or in the face of
-his moral indifference or without creative goodness in him! The claim
-would be monstrous! This wide induction of fact begets a profound
-faith in the moral character of God and when we cannot see we trust,
-because as to the final meaning of many strange experiences we know in
-part.
-
-Take the matter of prayer and the way it enters into the formation of
-character and the shaping of events. We know that prayer registers
-a definite and wholesome influence on many a life. Those who loudly
-assert that virtue and vice are as purely physical products as sugar
-and vitriol, that all right action and wrong action can be accounted
-for on material grounds, have not made out their case, they have not
-begun to make it out. There is something unseen, mysterious, but real
-and powerful, which impels certain people to love the unlovely, to
-make sacrifices for the thoughtless and ungrateful, to stand firm in
-the path of duty when it is anything but the line of least resistance.
-The love of right, the sense of obligation, the habit of adherence
-to principle, all these are as real as granite. But the forces which
-make them strong are spiritual, and these forces receive constant
-reenforcement from the habit of prayer.
-
-This part we know. We have seen the hearts of men turned from anger
-to love, from unholy to holy purpose, from weakness to strong resolve
-by prayer. We have seen home life made sweeter because once at least
-in every twenty-four hours the members of the household came together
-and knelt before God, confessing their faults, asking his guidance
-and allowing that which was true and right within them to grow by its
-communion with him who is altogether true and right. Any sensible man
-would feel that his life, his property, his family were all safer in a
-community where men prayed, than in one where they only used the name
-of God profanely. This part we know about prayer.
-
-But as to the ultimate effect of it, the final philosophy of it, the
-precise way in which the finite spirit becomes a colaborer with the
-Infinite Spirit in shaping events, I freely confess that there is a
-great deal which I do not understand. I know in part, but the part I
-know is so full of blessed and beautiful results that I want my prayer
-for the coming of God’s kingdom, for the doing of his will on earth,
-for the gift of bread for the daily need, for forgiveness, and final
-deliverance from evil--I want that prayer to go up, winging its way to
-the throne backed by all the faith and hope and love I can put into it.
-And I am not troubled by the fact that I cannot explain all the grounds
-of my confidence, for, like Paul, I know in part.
-
-Take the matter of the future life! There is much here we would like
-to know. What are our loved ones who have gone on doing now? Are they
-witnesses of the blunders and the failures we make here? Just how is
-right rewarded and wrong punished when the two are so intricately
-interwoven? No man is so white a sheep but that there are patches of
-goat about him here and there. No man is so bad but that there is some
-good in him if we observingly distil it out. And what of the final
-outcome--can good people be happily content if the sinful souls they
-loved are in conscious pain or even if they have been remorselessly
-wiped off the slate of existence? Is it too much to hope that God’s
-persuasions to righteousness being infinite may prove irresistible
-and so at last successful in every case? So men and women who have
-loved and lost those who passed out of this world without a sign of
-genuine repentance or of saving faith have queried ever. A child can
-ask more questions here in five minutes than all the philosophers and
-theologians on earth can answer in as many years.
-
-We know in part! We cannot measure off the streets of the new Jerusalem
-in kilometers. We cannot describe its attractions in any kind of
-Baedeker. We cannot lay out a detailed program of God’s dealings with
-the good and the bad people of earth in all the unending years. Nor is
-there any obligation whatsoever upon us to undertake the construction
-of such a program.
-
-We know in part and the part we know is something like this: I feel a
-profound confidence that I shall live on after death. The grounds of
-my hope are many. The mass of unreason and injustice I would have left
-upon my hands unexplained and unexplainable if I were to undertake
-to deny the truth of immortality is one. The all but universal and
-persistent desire of men for future life is another. Somehow the
-integrity of the universe is such that it does not develop in men
-normal, wide-spread, and persistent desires unless there is somewhere
-to be found a corresponding satisfaction for such desires standing over
-against them. The fact that the clear visions and the bright hopes of
-the best poets and prophets the world has known have been on the side
-of immortality means much. The seers have sung and the prophets have
-uttered their high anticipations by the power of an endless life. The
-words of the supreme figure in history, Jesus Christ, as to the truth
-of immortality mean still more. He saw clearly, spoke wisely, lived
-divinely, and I cannot believe that here he reared his expectations on
-a fundamental mistake.
-
-It ought to be remembered that for those who affirm and for those who
-deny the truth of immortality, it is alike a matter of moral faith
-because no convincing demonstration has been made out either for or
-against. The men who deny immortality are not opposing knowledge to
-faith; they are only meeting a positive faith with a negative one. But
-inasmuch as reason and experience, the best in literature and the One
-who has taken the moral government of the world upon his shoulders as
-none other ever did, stand so strongly upon the side of the positive
-faith, I feel confident of an unbroken life.
-
-As to the final judgment, I know that righteousness and love which
-are useful and beautiful here will be useful and beautiful always
-and everywhere; the clearer the light in which they stand the more
-their glory will be revealed. I know that sin and selfishness are
-mean and hateful here, and they will be mean and hateful everywhere;
-the clearer the light in which they stand the more their hatefulness
-will be manifest. What shall be their final fate I do not undertake
-to say. We know in part, but the clear prospects of the life to come,
-where righteousness and love shall have their freer chance to be and
-to do, where sin and selfishness shall meet with more awful rebuke,
-are sufficient to stimulate right action and to give warning to those
-who would identify their destinies with evil. As to the rest, in the
-incompleteness of our knowledge, we may safely leave it to the wisdom
-and the justice of God.
-
-I might carry this idea in other directions, but let me turn at once to
-the other phase of the topic. In part we know, and the part we know
-is naturally the part we use. We wish that we knew more. We hope to
-know more some time. In the meantime we recognize that the way to make
-progress along that line is to use the part we already know.
-
-In almost any direction, unless it be pure mathematics or formal logic,
-our knowledge, even in the sophomore year, stops a long way this
-side of complete understanding. No man knows the length and breadth,
-the height and depth of his wife’s love for him, if she is a good
-woman. Some part of it he knows, but the love she might show in some
-emergency, nursing him through a long illness, sharing with him some
-painful experience, bearing with him some heavy burden--that fuller
-love he does not know and cannot know until the time comes for its
-manifestation. But the part he knows about his wife’s love for him is
-the part he uses and the very thought of how beautiful it is and of the
-unrevealed capacity it may contain for willing and joyous sacrifice
-on his behalf, makes him feel that he ought to be a better man to be
-deserving of it. Thus he moves along in that part of the strength and
-beauty of a woman’s love which he knows, allowing the fuller knowledge
-of it to come as it may. And this is precisely the attitude of the
-reasonably religious man--those realities with which he deals, God and
-redemption, prayer and duty, immortality and the final judgment, are
-confessedly too great for final statement, but he knows something about
-them and the part he knows is the part he uses.
-
-Next door to my home I have two little neighbors, boys of three and
-five. They are close friends of mine and they have taught me much.
-Their father is a physician, a busy, useful, Christian man. The boys
-understand their father’s life “in part.” They know that he is a doctor
-and that he goes to see sick people and make them well. But as to the
-methods he employs and the remedies he uses they know nothing at all.
-They know in a dim sort of way that he makes the money which pays the
-bills and keeps them in a home full of comfort and beauty. But as to
-his financial standing, his investments, and his prospects, they know
-nothing. They know that along with the hearty good-will which he feels
-for everybody, he loves their mother and them supremely; but how he
-came to love that particular woman rather than some other one, and how
-they were born of that love, or how far that love might go in defending
-and providing for them, they do not concern themselves for one moment.
-They know their father’s love in part.
-
-But the part they know is the part they use. They live in their
-father’s house; they sit at his table; they greet him with a shout when
-he comes in from his practise. They obey him and trust him and think he
-is the best man in the world. They climb up into his lap and talk to
-him, not about his practise, but about their own small affairs, their
-tops, their marbles, their little wagon--as he wants them to do. He
-meets them always on their own ground and deals with them in the terms
-and interests of their own lives. Thus my two little friends live and
-grow, knowing their father’s life in part.
-
-“Except we become as little children” in the house of our Father, whose
-total life exceeds our present comprehension, whose plans and purposes
-for us are too high for complete understanding, whose outlook for us
-is vaster every way than our own outlook--“except we become as little
-children we shall in no wise enter his kingdom.” But if we take the
-part we know and use it, acting on it and living by it, we will be
-treading the way which leads to a fuller and more blessed experience
-of the Father’s wisdom and love as surely as my two small friends are
-doing as they grow up toward their manhood in their father’s house.
-
-In how many ways Jesus made plain this duty of utilizing the near and
-the familiar when we would learn the remote! He seemed to realize that
-religion would be crusted over with misconceptions so that ordinary
-people would find it hard to get at; that some men would write big dull
-books about it, which no one would want to read; that other men in
-talking about it would use words which would not go into a suit-case
-without being folded twice, thus confusing the people. For that reason,
-perhaps, he made his own teaching simpler than that of any one whose
-words stand recorded in Holy Writ.
-
-He stood once at midnight among the trees talking with a thoughtful man
-as to certain aspects of the religious life. “How can these things
-be?” the man asked. “How can a man be born when he is old?” Just then
-the wind rustled the leaves at his side and Jesus remarked: “The wind
-bloweth where it listeth. You hear the sound thereof, but you cannot
-tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth.” We cannot tell why the wind
-blows one day from the north and we have cold, another day from the
-south and we have heat, another day from the east and we have rain. We
-cannot explain satisfactorily many of the mysteries connected with the
-wind. But a man who is a fisherman can put up his sail and fill it with
-this wind which is such a mystery. He can sail out through the Golden
-Gate and come back in the evening with a boatload of fish for the needs
-of his family and for other hungry men. The wind that fills his sail he
-knows, but the origin, the ultimate destiny, and all the relationships
-it sustains to the other forces in the universe he does not know. The
-part he knows, however, is the part he uses by relating it to his own
-life. And this is the act of a man of sense in matters spiritual as
-well. He knows the life of the Infinite Spirit in part, but he uses the
-part he knows by relating it helpfully to his own life.
-
-When we start in after that fashion it is a straight course. The boy
-begins his study of mathematics by learning to count ten--one, two,
-three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. He moves straight
-along by that path until, with these same ten figures, he is computing
-the courses the planets take and measuring the distances of the fixed
-stars. He begins his study of literature by learning his letters, a, b,
-c, etc. By and by, using these same familiar letters, he is making his
-way through the intricacies of “Hamlet” and “Macbeth”; he is walking
-with Emerson and Hegel across the fields of philosophy. He begins his
-study of music by learning the elementary sounds, do, re, mi, fa,
-sol, la, si, do. Presently, with these same tones, he is singing in a
-great chorus which renders “The Messiah” or playing his instrument in
-some orchestra which is producing the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven. In
-every situation in life progress is made not by being appalled over
-the amount we do not know, or by vainly wishing we knew more, but by
-taking the part we know, relating it to our lives, and making it the
-instrument of gaining that fuller knowledge.
-
-God is greater than any wise and good father but not different. Carry
-the love of a wise and good father up to the _nth_ degree and you
-have the love of God for his people. The life of the spirit is nobler
-than the life of the flesh, but it stands closely related; it is a
-life which hungers after righteousness, thirsts for the living God,
-and grows strong by exercising itself in useful service. Heaven is
-finer and purer than earth, but not unlike. It was for the Jew a “New
-Jerusalem,” and it is for every man a “new --” whatever may be the
-name of the city where he dwells. It is the ordinary life ennobled and
-glorified by the infusion of a finer spirit. The glorious fulfilment
-comes through the richer combinations and the fuller development of the
-simpler parts we know already.
-
-I wish I could persuade the college man who has never entered into an
-open, joyous, Christian life to just begin. There are many things which
-he does not understand nor, perhaps, believe. We will put them aside
-for the moment, not ignoring them, but postponing their consideration.
-Let him take the part he knows, the moral imperative of living the
-best life one sees, and no finer life than that of the Christian can
-be named; the necessity for some competent guide, and none better
-than Jesus of Nazareth has thus far appeared; the clearly ascertained
-benefits to be gained by trust and obedience; the helpful reactions
-which come through prayer and the reading of the Bible; the manifest
-advantage of cherishing the hope of a future life and of facing
-squarely upon the fact that what we sow we reap. All this he knows! Let
-the part he knows be the part he uses. If he will only act upon it,
-building it into his own life and following where it leads, he will be
-on his way toward the place where he will know even as he is known.
-
-
-
-
-X
-
-FIGHTING THE STARS
-
-
-In an ancient song we find this striking statement, “The stars in their
-courses fought against Sisera.” This is poetry. It must be dealt with
-according to the rules which govern poetical expression. The plain
-prose facts underlying the statement were these: The northern tribes of
-Israel were being oppressed by the warlike Canaanites of that region.
-Israelites living on the outskirts were frequently slaughtered until
-certain villages had been entirely destroyed. The oppression became so
-bitter that it was not safe for an Israelite to travel the ordinary
-roads. “In the days of Shamgar the highways were unoccupied, and the
-people walked through by-paths.” They were in constant fear for their
-lives and the situation at length became unendurable.
-
-Then there came an armed revolt of the Israelites against their
-oppressors. Ten thousand men under the leadership of Deborah and Barak
-went out to give battle in the plain of Esdraelon. The commander of the
-opposing army was Sisera. He had been uniformly victorious over the
-Israelites chiefly by his use of chariots and war-horses, riding his
-enemies down before they could accomplish anything with their slings
-and arrows. And into the famous battle referred to in the song the
-author says, “Sisera brought nine hundred chariots of iron” to fight
-against the army of Israel.
-
-But just as the battle opened there came a fierce storm converting the
-black loam of that fertile field into a morass. The heavy war-horses
-and huge chariots were unable to charge. The song pictures them as
-floundering, helpless, in the deep mud. The cold rain turned gradually
-into sleet and the sleet driven by a fierce wind directly into the
-faces of the advancing Canaanites made their use of sling and spear
-comparatively ineffective. On the other hand, the Israelites, with the
-storm at their backs and with their courage heightened by the feeling
-that all the circumstances of the situation were in their favor,
-fought splendidly and successfully. They slaughtered the helpless men
-who were trying in vain to use the heavy chariots; they put to flight
-the foot soldiers who could not properly defend themselves with the
-storm beating in their faces, and thus they won a notable victory over
-the army of Sisera.
-
-When the Israelites came to add up the forces which entered into the
-result, they were not so short-sighted as to fancy that their own right
-arms had gotten them the victory. They saw that certain other forces
-which they had not created, which they did not in any wise control,
-had entered decisively into the determination of the issue. “The Lord
-discomfited Sisera, and all his chariots,” they said. “The stars in
-their courses fought against Sisera.” The wind and the rain, the hail
-and the sleet, coming down out of the skies by no act of theirs, had
-lined up with them as effective allies; and as their eyes ran over
-the complete muster roll, the forces from above combining with their
-own determined valor, they knew that Sisera was foredoomed to defeat
-because he had been fighting against the stars.
-
-The stars in their courses fought against Sisera--this is poetry! It
-is a bold literary statement of a splendid moral truth. In the long
-run the forces of earth and sky are alike hostile to the low type of
-life which Sisera represents. Cruelty, oppression, inhumanity, are
-doomed to defeat. Individuals or nations cultivating those qualities
-are fighting the stars, and the stars will be too much for them. As it
-was with Sisera, so it is now and ever shall be, world without end!
-Those evils are sometimes victorious in a skirmish; now and then they
-win a battle, but the war goes always against them. When the end comes
-and the articles of capitulation are signed, they are to be found with
-Sisera, biting the dust. Forces, human and divine, seen and unseen, are
-perpetually at war with wrong-doing and the combination of all these
-mighty energies makes the outcome inevitable. The man who, in any wise,
-undertakes to live a wrong life is undertaking to fight the stars.
-
-The presence of universal moral forces is here symbolized. All about
-us are familiar forces which we did not originate, which we do not
-control--the light and the heat of the sun, the power of gravitation,
-the movements of the winds, and the pulsating tides. We cannot control
-them; we can only adjust ourselves to their movements and wisely
-cooperate with them for certain ends. Even while I am speaking this
-huge mass under our feet is whirling us swiftly onward, covering
-the whole twenty-five thousand miles in a single twenty-four hours.
-Scientific men thus far have nothing to offer as to how it gained its
-initial velocity; we find it moving and it carries us with it whether
-we will or no.
-
-This is a symbol! There are other forces, unseen but mighty, moving the
-race up out of darkness into great and ever greater light. With all
-its groping and stumbling the race has never been allowed to lose its
-way altogether. Yesterday it thought as a child and understood as a
-child; today it puts away childish things and knows in part; tomorrow
-it will know still “in part,” but a larger part. And it is the sublime
-conviction of serious men that it is on its way to know even as it is
-known. This movement is as resistless as the motion of the planets.
-
-The race is also making headway in righteousness. Certain forms of
-evil which once stood out naked and unashamed have been driven into
-rat-holes. Presently these holes will be stopped up from the top and
-those forms of evil will be seen no more. The power of conscience grows
-and its dominion widens. Matthew Arnold, speaking as a poet, said,
-“There is a power not ourselves which makes for righteousness.” Herbert
-Spencer, speaking as a philosopher, said, “There is an infinite and
-eternal energy from which all things proceed,” and in his judgment it
-was, on the whole, friendly to righteousness. The Psalmist, speaking
-as a religious man, said, “The judgments of the Lord are true and
-righteous altogether, and in keeping of them there is great reward.”
-It does not matter what words are used; it all amounts to the same
-thing. The very stars are symbols to us, as they were to this writer of
-old, of forces unseen, august, cosmic, which are insistently set upon
-righteousness. Sisera and all the horde of wrong-doers are compelled to
-look that fact in the face.
-
-The antagonism of these universal forces spells defeat for those who
-are willing to do wrong. Sometimes the letters which spell out defeat
-are formally arranged in order; at other times the letters must be
-selected from a mass of confusing details, but they are there, and
-they spell the same word, “defeat.” The stars never tarry long in
-bringing in their verdict upon the coarser sins of the flesh, murder
-and adultery, stealing and lying, drunkenness and gluttony. But the
-operation of this law reaches all the way down to those subtler sins
-of pride and envy, meanness and selfishness, moral indifference and
-spiritual neglect--all these in their final outcome make for misery and
-discontent as surely as two and two make four. No man ever outwitted
-or vanquished the stars, no man ever will. The sun rises when it is
-due, no matter how he chooses to set his individual clock, no matter
-what lies he may tell in his particular almanac. No man ever outwitted
-the moral order of the universe which is august and irresistible in
-its ongoings. He may have sought out many devices, but at last he is
-compelled to settle by the books. He must reap what he has sown, no
-matter how terrible the harvest may be.
-
-Go through any modern city with your eyes open and you will find this
-statement about Sisera written out in a plain hand. You will find
-people, some of them well-dressed, some in rags, with their hearts
-draped in wretchedness and despair. Poor deluded mortals, they have
-been butting their brains out against the moral corner-stones of the
-universe in the vain hope that possibly the way of the transgressor
-might not be hard for them. Some by intemperance and some by
-licentiousness, some by sly dishonesty and some by cold-hearted
-selfishness--the roads to ruin are various, and men travel them all!
-Here they come at last, bruised, battered, and broken! They have been
-fighting the stars with the usual result. If here and there one keeps
-his head up and his face like polished brass, thinking he may escape
-the same ugly fate, you have only to wait for a time to see him with
-his face broken and his heart crushed like the rest.
-
-Here are two young men at college, one of them living a true life,
-maintaining good habits, keeping himself hard at work, cultivating the
-right sort of friends! The other young fellow keeps his lungs drenched
-with cigarette smoke, his brain drugged with alcohol; he seeks out
-the shady places in the life of the city and cultivates the refuse;
-he loafs when he ought to be at work. You can tell at a glance which
-one will be sitting in the directors’ meeting or in some similar place
-of responsibility twenty years from now, and which one will be out
-somewhere on a high stool or tramping the streets periodically in
-search of a job, wondering why his luck has been against him. There is
-no luck about it. He enlisted in the great army of fools who, under
-the leadership of Sisera, are undertaking to fight the stars. Certain
-habits, certain courses of action, certain aspirations bring honor,
-joy, advancement; certain other courses of action bring just the
-reverse. It is all as sure as the movement of the planets; it comes
-according to law equally unyielding.
-
-The ultimate well-being of any life is secured through cooperation with
-those forces symbolized by the stars. I was on the Mediterranean once
-on my way from Italy to Egypt when off the coast of Crete our ship
-ran into a terrible storm. We were beaten and tossed, for the wind
-was contrary. An accident made it necessary to lay to for several
-hours while the waves dashed over the highest decks. In the absence of
-either sun or stars, exact reckoning was lost, but toward midnight of
-the second day the storm broke and presently the stars shone out, here
-and there, in the irregular patches of the sky. Then the first officer
-appeared on deck with his instruments and soon he knew exactly where we
-were on the face of the troubled waters. All uncertainty was over; we
-were sailing by the stars and the next day we were casting anchor off
-the coast of Egypt. The motion of the ship and the tossing of the waves
-were uncertain, but the movement of the stars was sure.
-
-Our safety in the whole cruise of life depends upon the adjustment of
-our movements to those universal forces which enfold us. My watch,
-carried though it is in my individual pocket, keeps step with the stars
-so that I could show you where each hand will be tomorrow morning when
-the sun comes up over the horizon. And our purposes, our affections,
-and our wills are to be similarly adjusted so that they shall keep step
-with God’s infinite will and purpose for us. Those universal forces of
-love and grace, of forgiveness and redemption, of guidance and comfort,
-to which in all ages men have learned to look, they are all ours if we
-will only use them. And when we learn to use them aright they bring
-peace, and strength, and joy.
-
-There was the sense of an adequate horizon, then, in the words of this
-ancient poet as he stood that night on the field of battle looking up
-at the stars. The wind and the rain, the hail and the sleet had all
-aided the Israelites in winning the victory. The very skies seemed to
-be interested in that moral struggle there on the plain of Esdraelon.
-And he was correct--the stars helped; they always help; they fight
-perpetually in their own appointed way on the side of right.
-
-You may trust the forces which they symbolize! You may work out your
-own highest well-being in joyous confidence, for God is working within
-you toward the same great end! You need have no doubt about it, for
-the evidence is plain. Heroes and martyrs lay down their lives for
-a principle. The mother cares for the sick child, counting not her
-pleasure, her comfort, or even her own life dear if she may save the
-child. The poor dog attached to his master goes to the spot where
-he saw them lay the body and whines for the sound of a voice that
-is still. Has the Creator of such moral integrity in the heroes and
-martyrs kept none of it for himself? Has he out of the ages gone
-produced such devotion in the heart of the mother with no devotion
-in his own heart toward his helpless child? Has he instilled such
-faithful affection in the very dogs that perish, but failed to share in
-that love himself? Serious men cannot bring themselves to believe in
-anything so absurd. These forces which produce attachment to the right,
-devotion to the helpless, faithful affection, are universal forces.
-
-“O heart I made, a heart beats here”--that was the word of God through
-the lips of the poet! These forces of love and grace are universal and
-enduring as the stars. To fight them spells defeat. To coöperate with
-them, bringing the scattered and aimless activities of the life into
-harmony with the supreme purpose of God declared in Jesus Christ, means
-life abundant and eternal.
-
-
-
-
-XI
-
-THE POWER OF VISION
-
-
-In an old school reader there was a sketch, “Eyes or no eyes.” Two
-young men went for a walk in the same field. One of them saw just
-the commonplace shapes and forms; he saw nothing that a dog or a
-kodak would not have seen. He had eyes to see, but he saw not. The
-other one saw the bumblebees appearing later in the season than do
-the honey-bees, and thought of the relation this fact sustains to
-the production of red clover seed--a relation which every farmer
-understands when he cuts the second crop in place of the first to get
-seed. He saw at one side of the field a great granite boulder deposited
-there in the glacial period, and although the day was hot his mind was
-cool as it dwelt upon that age of ice. He saw the imprint of the shell
-of some water-breathing creature deep bedded as a fossil in a piece of
-stone. His imagination went back to the time when that very field was
-part of an inland sea, and this bit of life was making its impress upon
-the soft mud of some ancient seashore. He saw a score of interesting
-things which need not be named here; they were all there to be seen,
-but his friend had overlooked them. It was a question of “eyes or no
-eyes.” What any man sees in a field, or in his fellow beings, in his
-college course, or in life as a whole, depends upon the power of vision
-that he carries with him.
-
-Here in a well-known story was a man keeping sheep on the slopes of
-Horeb. In reading the narrative it seems that the imagination of the
-poet has blended with the plain prose facts of history. We do not know
-what kind of fire it was which burned in that mysterious and vocal
-bush. We may believe it was the same kind of fire which burns in the
-grate or we may conclude that it was an extraordinary bit of autumnal
-splendor which at a certain season of the year is aflame on many
-hillsides as if the glory and color of a thousand sunsets might have
-lodged in the tree tops. However that may be, what Moses actually saw
-and heard that day is far more important than any conceivable amount of
-literal fire or of autumn color.
-
-“I will now turn aside and see”--and what he saw his own subsequent
-career indicates! He had the power of vision and he saw not merely
-the shapes and colors present in that sheep pasture. He saw things
-absent, things historic, things possible as present and real. He saw
-away yonder on the banks of the Nile where he formerly lived, the
-life of his own fellows being crushed out of them by wrong industrial
-conditions. He saw the capacity of that race, burning but unconsumed
-even by those years of oppression, for moral idealism and spiritual
-leadership among the nations of the earth. He felt within his own
-breast a fitness for service wider, higher, and more significant than
-that of keeping sheep. He felt himself commissioned from on high for
-that responsible service, and he became dissatisfied with his own easy
-content there in the land of Midian. He saw the great divine heart
-filled with sympathy for an enslaved and oppressed people. He heard
-the divine voice say, “I have seen the affliction of my people which
-are in Egypt; I have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters,
-and I am come down to deliver them.” He saw the divine hand reach out
-to employ mysterious agencies for the release of that people from the
-bondage of Egypt.
-
-He had the power of vision and this is what he saw when he led his
-flock to the back side of the desert, even to Horeb, the mountain of
-God. The sheep saw nothing of that burning bush or of those other
-mysterious realities. The dull Midianites watching their flocks a few
-hundred yards away on the same slope saw nothing of it. A man standing
-in Moses’ own shoes, his face turned in the same direction, would have
-seen nothing unless he had brought to the situation the insight of this
-man of vision.
-
-And Moses himself saw and heard what he did in that high hour because
-through long years he had cherished a profound sympathy for his brother
-men and a great abiding faith in God as one who works on behalf of
-suffering people everywhere. It was the whole mood and purpose of his
-life which stood declared in those splendid words, “I will now turn
-aside and see.” He was always saying just that! He was never content
-with the mere surface of reality. He was never satisfied with that
-which a hasty glance would bring in any given situation. He must get
-beneath the surface and know the deeper, hidden meaning.
-
-How much depends upon that power of vision! What mighty issues are knit
-up with it in this familiar scene! If Moses that day had seen and heard
-nothing more than did the Midianites, he would have gone on keeping his
-sheep and would have died a comfortable and prosperous sheep grower.
-If the Israelites along the banks of the Nile had been without the
-power of such leadership as he alone among the men of his generation
-seemed to be able to furnish, they would have gone on making bricks
-without straw until all capacity for spiritual advance would have been
-crushed out of them. If that Hebrew race, first among Semitic peoples
-in its ability to see and to impart spiritual truth, had never had its
-chance to develop in the free air of the steppes or within the pleasant
-borders of that land of promise, how different apparently would have
-been the moral history of the race! It is idle to speculate on what
-would have been the result had something never happened which did
-happen, but just this glance shows the momentous consequences which may
-at any juncture attach to the ability of some man to see. It is of the
-utmost importance in every quarter that some man should be at hand who
-can see the great sight.
-
-Your own life, the richness of it, the promise of it, the successful
-unfolding of it on higher levels, is bound up with this power of
-vision. If the world about you is only a sheep pasture, if success in
-life is to be measured solely or mainly in terms of wool and mutton, if
-the skilful avoidance of discomfort and the securing of easy content
-for yourself and your family are the main considerations with you, then
-by that limited outlook you are doomed. If here in these days of high
-privilege on the campus no bushes burn for you with a strange fire, if
-no hillsides in life become vocal with a divine voice, if no flames of
-sympathy, of moral passion, of aspiration burn within your breast, then
-alas for you! You are not entering into the meaning of life! You have
-eyes, but you see not, ears, but you hear not!
-
-“Can ye not discern?” Jesus said to those who regarded themselves as
-the most exemplary people of his day. They could look up at the sky
-and from the fact that it was red or lowering make a fairly good guess
-about tomorrow’s weather, but they could not discern the signs of the
-times. There they were in the presence of the beginnings of the most
-important spiritual movement in history, yet all they saw was the tired
-face of the Man of Nazareth, whom they finally put to death because his
-claims confused them. Can ye not discern? Will you not take pains to
-cultivate the power of turning aside to see the great sights awaiting
-you all in the sheep pastures of earth, in all scenes of industry and
-in all places of trade, in all lines of civic effort and in all forms
-of charitable intent, in every schoolroom and in every home? Will you
-not turn and with heightened power of vision see there the hidden,
-unrealized possibilities?
-
-“Where there is no vision, the people perish!” Something lives
-on--flesh and blood shapes which buy and sell, walk the street and
-talk small talk, but the people created potentially in the likeness
-and image of the Most High are gone. Where there is no vision, any
-life perishes. What keeps alive the mother-love in the face of all the
-hardships, sacrifices, buffetings it is called upon to meet? It is
-the power of vision cherished and cultivated more actively, perhaps,
-by women than by men. When her child is first laid in her arms it is
-only a bit of red flesh--that is all the canary in the window or the
-thoughtless observer who cares not for children would see. This bit of
-existence, so undeveloped as to have nothing one could call moral life,
-no power to choose or to aspire; so undeveloped as to have nothing
-one could call mental life, no power of recognition, discrimination,
-inference, has only the power to cry and to feed. But the mother sees
-in that tiny form another promise of a diviner day when the unsearched
-possibilities of that new life shall have been trained and nurtured
-by her love. And throughout the years when she nurses the child in
-sickness, bears with him in his ignorance, woos and wins him back from
-his moral waywardness, she is sustained by her maternal vision.
-
-No one can live strongly, effectively, joyously in any other way. The
-dull, dry, prosaic man who never sees the deeper significance of any
-given situation may be able to saw wood or add up columns of figures,
-but when it comes to relating these ordinary details of life to some
-over-arching, underlying, far-reaching purpose which will bring out
-the meaning and the beauty of existence, he fails. He has no power of
-vision and his real life goes down in defeat.
-
-It might be illustrated in this way--read Baedeker on Mont Blanc and
-then read Coleridge! Baedeker has the facts; he tells the height of
-the mountain, the exact distance from Chamounix to the summit in
-kilometers; he describes every glacier and crevasse. But Coleridge’s
-“Ode” to the mountain brings out the meaning and the beauty of it.
-Baedeker has facts, Coleridge has vision.
-
-Read Baedeker on Edinburgh and then read Robert Louis Stevenson’s
-little book on the same city; read Baedeker on Northern Italy,
-including his description of the city without streets, and then read
-Ruskin’s “Stones of Venice.” Read Baedeker on Belgium, including his
-description of the field and of the Battle of Waterloo, and then read
-Victor Hugo’s chapter on the same event in “Les Misérables.” In one
-case you have the camera recording the outward, visible, prose facts;
-in the other you have insight and vision interpreting the meaning of
-them. It is written, man shall not live by Baedeker alone, but by every
-word which proceedeth out of the mind and heart of that higher power of
-vision shall man live.
-
-Let me urge this habit upon every young man! Put your own personal life
-under the power, not of some lower mood or some ill-advised impulse,
-but under the power of the best you have ever seen or heard or felt as
-in any wise possible to you. It was a man in a million, measured by
-character and achievement, who said, while he was still in the vigor
-and promise of his youth, “Wherefore I was not disobedient unto”--what?
-I was not disobedient unto the rules and regulations posted on the
-wall of my schoolroom or the door of the factory where I earned my
-bread--that would have meant little! No one can set up the way of life
-in type and print it to be nailed on a door. I was not disobedient to
-the usages and customs of the society where I moved--that, too, might
-have meant only a weak, cheap mode of life. “I was not disobedient unto
-the heavenly vision!” I was true to the best I saw and heard and felt
-as possible to me!
-
-That habit of putting the life deliberately and persistently under the
-power of some noble vision caught in an hour of spiritual privilege
-will mean advance. You may, if you will allow your attention to be
-diverted by the underbrush around you and never see the bush that burns
-with a strange fire, never see things absent, things historic, things
-possible but unattained. The small things, the ant-hills, and the
-gopher mounds, may, because they are near, shut out your view of Shasta
-and Whitney. It is one of the tragedies of life that the insignificant,
-the unimportant details have a way of crushing out the finer purposes,
-thus bringing defeat to interests which are vital.
-
-When Abraham Lincoln had been unusually harassed by some professional
-politicians as to the bestowal of patronage, he said one day, half
-humorously and half sadly, “It is not the carrying on of the Civil War
-which is killing me; it is the work of deciding who shall be postmaster
-at the Four Corners. There is Mr. Blank”--naming a very troublesome
-office-seeker--“I never think of going to sleep at night without first
-looking under the bed to see if Blank is not there waiting to ask me
-for some office.”
-
-It was one of the tragedies of those hard years in our history that the
-great president of the republic, who himself had caught the vision and
-heard the voice--“I have seen the affliction of my people which are in
-bondage; I have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters, and
-I am come down to deliver them”--it was one of the tragedies of that
-period that his eyes should be turned away from the bush which burned
-with fire to study the underbrush piled up round him by narrow-minded
-politicians. It is one of the tragedies of many lives in less exalted
-station that the great things suffer defeat by the multiplicity and
-insistence of the small things. Busied here and there with a thousand
-petty interests--what we shall eat, what we shall drink, what we
-shall put on, and, what other women will say about it when we get it
-on--the vital things are left undone. The whole wretched habit of life
-comes from the lack of the power of vision, the inability to put these
-matters in right perspective, the great things great and the small
-things small.
-
-Your real life does not consist in what you have. Your real life does
-not consist in what you are actually able to do. Your real life does
-not consist even, as men often say, in what you are. Your real life
-consists in what you see as possible and desirable for you, and in
-that capacity you feel stirring within you to gain all that sometime!
-Not your possessions, not your outward achievements, not your inner
-acquirements, but your persistently cherished aspirations tell the
-story of your real life. It is what you hold in vision and steadily
-strive for which marks you up or down.
-
-But suppose one feels his lack of this power of vision, how shall he
-gain more of it? How shall we cultivate our own meager share of this
-fine ability? You may recall that word of Paul, “Eye hath not seen,
-nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to
-conceive the things that God hath prepared for those that love him.”
-This does not mean merely that the things prepared for us are superior
-to anything that eyes have seen or ears heard in this world; it means
-rather that they are discerned in another way. They come to us through
-the power of spiritual perception. “Eye hath not seen,” not by physical
-sensation; “ear hath not heard,” not by hearsay or common report; God
-reveals them to us by his Spirit. It was not that Moses had better eyes
-or better ears than the Midianite shepherds upon the hillsides; he had
-within him a soul of sympathy for his fellows, a spirit of trust toward
-God, an attitude of personal aspiration for the highest, which enabled
-him to see and to hear what they failed to detect.
-
-This power of vision grows like other powers, by right use. The soul
-sees and sees more as the man obediently translates his visions into
-deeds, his insights into actions. If any man, gifted or humble, will
-do his will he shall know, for “obedience,” as Robertson said, “is the
-organ of spiritual knowledge.” The power of vision grows through right
-use as each added insight becomes an effective impulse for noble action.
-
-It is this power of vision which keeps men alive all the way up and
-all the way in. It is for you who stand on the slopes of Horeb, the
-mountains of God, by reason of the higher education you have received
-to cultivate this power by a spirit of obedient trust and by the habit
-of loving service. In every situation form the habit of turning aside
-from the commonplace shapes which engage your eyes that you may see
-some great and significant sight. Watch for the bush which burns with a
-mysterious fire! Listen for the voice which issues out of it, calling
-you to larger and higher service! Welcome these finer impulses which
-burn within your own breast, for they will aid you in building your
-personal life into that great, divine plan of which you have caught a
-far-off vision.
-
-
-
-
-XII
-
-“THE WAR AGAINST WAR”
-
-
-In my selection of a theme I have ventured to break away from the
-conventional style of baccalaureate address. I bring you no word of
-counsel touching those moral values which are altogether private
-and personal. I would undertake rather to direct your minds to the
-consideration of a certain problem, vast and grave, whose scope is
-national and international.
-
-We live in a land governed by public opinion. The seat of authority
-is not at Washington; the seat of authority is to be found in those
-prevailing sentiments and convictions which determine the real attitude
-of the people themselves. As college-trained men and women you are to
-be leaders in the work of forming that body of public opinion. Where it
-is wise, honest, resolute, it becomes the final source of safety for
-the republic. It is of vital importance, then, that your contribution
-to that section of public opinion which bears upon the problem I have
-in mind be grounded in reason and conscience.
-
-Let me remind you of two sentences taken from Holy Writ, one from the
-greatest book in the Old Testament, “His name shall be called the
-Prince of Peace”; the other from the last book in the New Testament,
-“And he shall reign forever and ever.” His name shall be called the
-Prince of Peace and he shall reign forever and ever! We have here a
-miniature picture of one of the sublime processes of the ages! The
-highest anticipation of the Hebrew looked toward the coming of One who
-should establish a new line of succession. He saw a new quality of life
-winning its way to empire. The heir to the throne of Israel would be
-no more a man of war, he would be the Prince of Peace. And the highest
-anticipation of the Christian looked toward the complete success of
-that finer method of sovereignty--that coming One would reign forever!
-
-It is a splendid picture of that righteous and enduring conquest to
-be accomplished not by force but by principle; not by compulsion
-through slaughter but by moral instruction, persuasion, and reasonable
-agreement. It is a picture which will furnish any man a worthy ideal
-to hang in his sky and it will help him, as he takes part in shaping
-the public opinion of his country, to place the crown of his ultimate
-allegiance where it rightly belongs.
-
-His name shall be called the Prince of Peace! But what terrible mockery
-has been offered to that name by his avowed followers! It is one of
-the ironies of history that the most costly and deadly armaments for
-the killing of men in war are being wrought out in cold steel, not by
-the nations which owe their allegiance to Mahomet, the prophet of the
-sword, but by those nations which profess allegiance to the Prince of
-Peace. “Put up thy sword,” he said twenty centuries ago! The command
-has never been withdrawn nor revoked. Yet look out across the face of
-what we call Christendom and see the wicked and costly refusal!
-
-Christian Germany, where the Protestant Reformation was ushered in
-by the preaching of Martin Luther, has increased her national debt
-in a single generation from eighteen millions of dollars to over one
-thousand millions, chiefly by expenditures upon her army and navy.
-Christian England, known to the ends of the earth as a center of
-missionary impulse, is almost beside herself in her mad desire to
-increase the number of _Dreadnoughts_. She is spending three
-hundred millions of dollars a year on her army and navy as against
-eighty-two millions all told on education, science and art. Christian
-Russia, professing in her orthodox Greek Church to have the only true
-faith to be found upon the globe, is planning a billion dollar navy
-and is actually spending two hundred millions a year upon armament
-as against twenty-two millions a year upon education. And our own
-Christian country has been making a strange departure from that policy
-which has made us prosperous and happy, honored and useful, among the
-nations of the earth for more than one hundred years. The United States
-in the last ten years has increased in population ten per cent, and it
-has increased its military expenditures during that period by three
-hundred per cent. And this is Christendom! These are the nations which
-look up to the One whose name is called “The Prince of Peace” and crown
-him Lord of all! Alas, for the bitter irony of such a course!
-
-And all this at a time when the bare problem of bread is becoming
-more and more serious! England, spending her three hundred millions
-of dollars a year on military outlay, has little children in the
-streets of London and Glasgow eating refuse out of the garbage barrels
-because they are hungry. The problem of poverty and unemployment
-there is so grave that the British Parliament sets aside whole days
-for its consideration. In Germany a government expert said recently
-that, according to carefully prepared estimates based upon detailed
-investigation, there were two men applying for almost every job which
-promised a living wage; one-half of the skilled labor of the empire
-was out of employment. In Russia, people by the thousand die, like
-flies, from malnutrition at the very hour when her military experts are
-talking about that billion dollar navy. It is criminal to take thus the
-children’s bread and fling it to the dogs of war! How terrible all
-this is for nations which profess to honor and follow the One who came
-not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them!
-
-In our own country, while the situation is less serious, there are men
-enough out of work and unable to find bread to put into the mouths
-of their families. Never a week passes when men do not come asking
-me to use my influence with the employers in my congregation to find
-them work. Our national leaders are looking in every direction to
-discover how the revenue may be increased. The present revenue is sadly
-inadequate for the things which ought to be done. There are millions of
-acres of arid land to be irrigated by national enterprise and offered
-for settlement to industrious families. There are great areas of swamp
-land to be drained which would support a busy, happy population. There
-are forests to be conserved and renewed in a way that would change
-the whole face of the situation for the farmer and the fruit-grower
-in great sections of our country. There are inland waterways to be
-improved and developed, bringing producer and consumer nearer together
-by better means of transportation, thus reducing the cost of living.
-There is a merchant marine sadly needing assistance, for our flag
-should fly on all seas and in every port, in what could be a useful
-and profitable trade. All these things ought to be done, if only there
-was money available to do them. All these interests suffer for lack
-of money in the very period when within ten years we are increasing
-our military expenditure by three hundred per cent. His name shall
-be called “The Prince of Peace,” and it is under his banner that we
-profess to march!
-
-What is it all for? I know the scare-heads which sometimes fill the
-sillier type of newspaper. I know how frightened some people are
-when some “military expert,” as he calls himself, has the nightmare.
-“Men who spend the best years of their lives looking at the world
-through the bore of a gun get their vision distorted.” They cannot
-see straight; they become sorry and unreliable leaders, as Europe,
-staggering under her grievous burden, knows to her sorrow. Sir Edward
-Grey, foreign secretary in the present Cabinet, said recently in the
-British Parliament, “The vastness of the expenditure on armament is
-a satire on modern civilization and if continued it must lead Europe
-into bankruptcy.” The real security of any nation depends upon its
-schools and its churches, its useful industries and its happy homes a
-thousand times more than upon its army and navy. And the conceit of
-these militarists who are throwing dust in the eyes of the people would
-be funny, if it were not so costly and so perilous to our national
-well-being.
-
-It is the duty of the church and of the university, where men do
-not live in that state of chronic hysteria which possesses many a
-newspaper office, to arraign this evil of militarism as the most
-cruel and inexcusable burden, as the most gigantic crime against
-the toiling people, as the nearest approach to the unpardonable sin
-known to our twentieth century. The men who watch the world from that
-narrow station “behind the gun” are not competent leaders of public
-sentiment. The merchant and the mechanic, the wise lawyer and the
-skilled physician, the farmer, the miner, and the trained teacher,
-engaged in peaceful, useful industry, are vastly more competent to see
-things as they are and to aid in shaping a wholesome public sentiment.
-International relationships are being formed today as never before in
-the history of the race through community of interest in trade and by
-those associations which come through labor organizations and through
-literature, through the work of education and by religious affiliation.
-It is for these men and women whose main interest lies in those
-productive vocations to insist upon being heard.
-
-What are the reasons urged for this cruel and costly outlay? “In time
-of peace prepare for war!” This stupid sentiment is trotted out as if
-it were a fragment from the wisdom of the ages. History as well as
-common sense laughs it to scorn. In time of peace prepare for peace!
-We did just that with England along our northern border where for
-four thousand miles only an imaginary line divides us from one of the
-mightiest nations on earth. We agreed with her that not a solitary
-fort should mar that border, that not a single war-ship should trouble
-the friendly waters of the Great Lakes. If these two nations can make
-that treaty of disarmament for a frontier of four thousand miles and
-observe it faithfully for a century, what is there in the nature of the
-case to prevent the extension of that noble line of friendly agreement
-indefinitely?
-
-We prepared for peace and we have had peace. The whole history of
-our country has been, in the main, a history of peace. Since 1789,
-a hundred and twenty-one years ago, only three foreign wars have
-interrupted our progress, and they lasted, all told, less than eight
-years. For the other one hundred and thirteen years our swords have
-been plowshares, our spears have been pruning-hooks, the fine steel of
-our young manhood has been devoted to those useful activities which
-do not destroy, but feed and save. If we can thus live and grow to
-be one of the mightiest nations on earth by the policy of peace, why
-this sudden spasm of military preparation now retarding our genuine
-development!
-
-But we have become “a world power” men say, and some of the nations
-might attack us! Why should they? Never since we became a republic
-have we been attacked, though for decades and decades our navy was
-a negligible quantity. “But suppose Germany should land a hundred
-thousand soldiers on our Atlantic coast,” some man shrieked out
-recently. Why should she? Sane people deal with probabilities, not
-with wild and imaginary possibilities. If Germany wanted to attack us,
-why did she not do it in those years when we had no navy at all worth
-mentioning? We buy millions and millions of dollars worth of goods
-every year “made in Germany.” Does Germany wish to fight one of her
-best customers? If some man who keeps a meat-market has a customer
-who comes in every day to order chops or a steak for his lunch and a
-roast of beef or a leg of lamb for his dinner, does the butcher want
-to beat that customer over the head with a musket? Any one can see
-the absurdity of it! Is folly any the less folly when raised to the
-_nth_ power by being made international?
-
-So much for Germany! As for England, she ruled the sea for all those
-decades when we had no navy worth considering and she never thought
-of attacking us. Why should she fight the people of her own race and
-language whose commercial interests are so closely interwoven with
-her own economic life? France is our traditional and hereditary
-friend. No other nation on that side of the globe need be taken into
-our calculation. What a nightmare it is which sets us to building ten
-million dollar warships for fear some respectable neighbor might attack
-us!
-
-But there is Japan! At the very hour when ten thousand Japanese boys
-and girls were singing songs of welcome along the streets to the
-officers and men of the American fleet, when the whole empire from the
-officials of high rank down to the jinrikisha men in the street was
-showing its cordial good-will to the representatives of our country,
-an excitable young man, who owes his fame to the fact that he did one
-brave deed at Santiago and was thenceforth miscellaneously kissed by a
-lot of impressionable women--this excitable young man was rushing about
-saying, “War with Japan is inevitable!” And here on the Pacific coast
-recently a tired, sick, disappointed old man, an admiral in the navy,
-said to a bunch of newspaper reporters who wanted something yellow to
-fill up the front page, “Japan could tear this coast to ribbons in
-sixty days!” He made this thoughtless deliverance at the very time when
-the ink on the notable agreement entered into by President Roosevelt
-and the emperor of Japan was scarcely dry! The thoughtful people of
-both nations smiled and then mourned over his foolish word. Germany,
-England, France, Japan, these four are the only nations on the globe
-that we need take into such a consideration! How absurd to be imposing
-upon the toiling people the useless burden of expensive armament
-against these neighbors.
-
-But “we have colonies now and we must defend them--there are the
-Philippines!” Who wants the Philippines? Nobody! They have been, as all
-the world knows, an expensive and troublesome burden. We have already
-spent several hundreds of millions of dollars upon that undertaking,
-and the end is not yet. We could well afford to pay any country fifty
-millions of dollars to take them off our hands. But this is not the
-way national business is transacted. We found ourselves with the
-Philippines in our possession, contrary to the wish and judgment of
-many of us at the time, and now by an expenditure of these hundreds of
-millions of dollars upon schools and churches, upon better government,
-public improvements, and economic development, we have been trying
-to do our duty by that backward people. But nobody wants to fight us
-to get the Philippines. “They can be left out over night,” as Dr.
-Jefferson said in New York, “without the slightest anxiety on our
-part.” We certainly do not need to increase our military expenditures
-three hundred per cent to prevent some nation from robbing us of that
-precious colony.
-
-There are enemies against which we do need to arm ourselves! Not
-England and Germany, not France and Japan--no, the common enemies
-of hunger and cold, pain and disease, ignorance and vice, greed and
-graft, unemployment and inequitable distribution! Against these enemies
-we do need to arm. These alien elements are the dangerous foes of
-the republic, and they have landed their devastating forces upon our
-shores. Against them we must enlist; against them we must build the
-best armaments which statesmanship can devise and generous treasuries
-provide. And in that great and honorable warfare against the real
-enemies of human well-being the exalted Leader of our race, the One
-whose name written above every name is called the Prince of Peace, will
-march at the head of the advancing host.
-
-Not only the costliness, but the futility of this burdensome armament
-smites us in the face when we begin to think. Some years ago in
-Russia, a man named Jean Bloch began to write about war. He was not
-a dreamy sentimentalist; he was a banker and the administrator of a
-great railroad system. He had been studying war upon its scientific
-and economic side. He advanced the argument that the introduction
-of long-range, rapid-fire guns using smokeless powder made decisive
-engagements between large bodies of troops impossible; and thus made
-useless the appeal to arms as a mode of settling international disputes.
-
-A small force of men securely entrenched can now hold at bay
-indefinitely a mighty army. When men could safely march up within
-two or three hundred yards of earthworks, fortified positions were
-sometimes carried by the assault of a superior force. All this is now
-changed. The zone of fire today extends for more than a mile. Across
-that space the man behind the earthworks can shoot with marvelous
-accuracy fifteen to twenty-five bullets per minute. Smokeless powder
-keeps the zone of deadly fire clear, so that he can see how to shoot.
-The field is not obscured by smoke as it was when Longstreet made his
-advance at Gettysburg. Smokeless powder and the recently invented
-noiseless rifle make it impossible to locate the foe either by sight or
-by sound--men simply drop dead as they undertake to advance across that
-zone of fire which extends for a mile. The effect of all this upon the
-morale of an army undertaking to carry a fortified position by assault
-is instantly apparent. Such attempts are now things of the past.
-
-Jean Bloch had scarcely published his argument when the South
-African war came on to demonstrate the essential soundness of his
-main conclusions. The British empire was making war upon two little
-republics numbering all told, men, women, and children, about eighty
-thousand people--less than enough to provide inhabitants for some
-third-rate city. Imagine some unimportant city of eighty thousand
-people undertaking to wage war with England! Yet with all the resources
-of her army and navy, with the treasury drawn upon at the rate of a
-million dollars a day, with Lord Roberts in the field, and with the
-splendid courage of her best troops matched against the scanty numbers
-of the opposing forces, the Boers held out against Great Britain for
-nearly three years.
-
-It was a bitter experience for England. It burdened her with an
-increase of debt under which she staggers in her present industrial
-depression. It hastened the death of the good Queen Victoria. It brings
-an apologetic note into the voice of almost every Englishman one meets
-today when he refers to it, and yet it was the British empire against
-eighty thousand people. Imagine what it would have been in costliness
-and in futility had she been trying to overcome an equal! Picture the
-folly of England trying to overcome Germany, or of France trying to
-conquer the United States. Jean Bloch was right, and many of Europe’s
-wisest statesmen are openly endorsing his claim. They are using the
-sensible argument of this business man to stem this tide of militarism
-now sweeping across the face of Christendom.
-
-Artillery has become all but useless against modern fortifications.
-Plevna told us that, thirty years ago. The Russian general, Todleben,
-said of that campaign, “We would bombard Plevna for a whole day and
-kill perhaps a single Turk.” The South African war repeated the same
-sentiment with a loud “amen.” The correspondents on the English side
-reported, “We bombarded Cronje for a solid week and after the struggle
-was over we found he had lost in all that time less than a hundred men.”
-
-The costly operations of modern warfare, when a fleet can fire away
-fifty thousand dollars’ worth of ammunition in a few minutes and when
-armies in the field run up bills correspondingly great, impose burdens
-which lift the luxury of such performances out of the reach of all but
-the well-to-do nations. When the old-time fighters used battle-axes and
-broadswords, they could go out and hew Agag in pieces before the Lord
-as long as the strength of their right arms and the supply of Agags
-held out--they could do this indefinitely without entailing any serious
-expense upon their countries. But the costly weapons now in vogue, with
-their voracious appetites for expensive ammunition, make war another
-matter.
-
-Even these terrible outlays might be borne by the powerful nations for
-a brief period, but the inability of any large army to win a speedy and
-decisive victory over another would cause the campaigns to drag along
-until the economic resources of both parties to the struggle would be
-taxed beyond limit and thus the futility of the appeal to arms would
-again be demonstrated. All this has become so apparent that some of the
-wisest statesmen in Europe are insisting that war between great nations
-of approximately equal strength has become, on the face of it, such an
-absurdity as to make such an event in the highest degree improbable.
-
-In the city of Lucerne, on the shore of that lovely lake with the
-Rigi and Pilatus rising up in front, Jean Bloch caused to be erected
-a “Museum of Peace and War.” He knew that abstract arguments are
-sometimes weak where visible, tangible facts are strong in their power
-of appeal. He provided for exhibits of the various forms of armament
-from arrow-heads and primitive tomahawks down to Mauser rifles and
-Krupp cannon. He has shown how complete defenses may be made where
-barbed wire obstacles are stretched across that deadly zone which
-extends for more than a mile in front of the fortified spot--obstacles
-which men can neither cut nor pass under fire. He has shown the
-penetrative power of modern bullets. Napoleon used to say bluntly, “A
-boy will serve to stop a bullet as well as a man.” But neither boy nor
-man stops the bullet from one of these modern rifles, it goes right on
-in its bloody career. Experts had calculated that a rifle bullet from
-a Mauser gun would pierce fifteen thicknesses of cowhide, a hardwood
-plank three inches thick, and then go through a dozen more inch boards
-placed at intervals. I saw there in that museum the results of the
-test--the bullet pierced the cowhide, the three-inch plank, and went
-through sixteen inch boards, lodging in the seventeenth. Army men say
-that a bullet with force enough to pierce an inch board will kill a
-man. With such penetrative force any one can see the deadly effect of
-these long-range, rapid-fire guns using smokeless powder. It takes away
-some of the glamour and romance from the terrible business of war to
-have its appliances thus scientifically exhibited.
-
-In that same museum at Lucerne, where the exhibits of deadly weapons
-are educating thousands of tourists from all the nations of earth
-as they come and go, year by year, other exhibits show the increase
-of international arbitration as a means of determining differences.
-Within the last ten years eighty of these arbitration treaties have
-been signed, our own country being a party to more than a third of them
-all. There is a growing and an insistent demand in all the enlightened
-nations of the earth for an international judiciary. Men have come
-to see that this costly international dueling does not really settle
-anything. A few men have to sit down finally around a table somewhere
-and determine what shall stand. And as statesmen get their eyes open
-they will more and more insist that this shall be done before the
-costly and futile experiments in killing men take place rather than
-afterward.
-
-The great arbitrations of history might certainly be made as
-conspicuous in our schools, in the press, and in literature as the
-great battles. Beside that volume bound in red, “Fifteen Decisive
-Battles of the World,” there ought to stand another more significant
-volume bound in white and gold, “Fifty Decisive Arbitrations of the
-World.” Let the church and the university join hands in helping the
-people of our country to realize that when the final estimates are made
-up, it will not be “Blessed are the warmakers,” but “Blessed are the
-peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” How mighty
-would be the influence of the thirty millions of professing Christians
-in our own land in shaping public opinion, in determining our national
-policy, could their hearts be really fired with the magnificent
-principles and the passion for human well-being which possessed the
-heart of the Prince of Peace!
-
-There is a growing unwillingness among the nations to discount
-their futures by killing off large numbers of their bravest and
-most patriotic young men in war. David Starr Jordan’s two familiar
-principles are absolutely sound: “The blood of a nation determines
-its history,” and “The history of a nation determines its blood.” The
-truth of the first statement we see at a glance, for the blood, the
-inner life-quality, of any nation shapes its history. And the second
-statement is equally true; if the history of a nation is stained by
-incessant warfare, if generation after generation consents to the
-destruction of those courageous, virile young men whose hearts respond
-readily to the call for heroic sacrifice, such a history eliminates
-from the blood of that nation those very elements which it sorely needs.
-
-It cost us the lives of half a million men to abolish slavery and to
-keep our country whole. If that result was to be secured in no other
-way, men who love liberty and love the Union may say that the price
-was not too great for such unspeakable benefits. But we know that the
-nation today is less able to grapple with its present problems, with
-the greed and the graft, with the fraud and the lust which confront us,
-because of the loss of those brave men and of the children they might
-have reared, bequeathing to them their own heroic spirit, had their
-lives been lived out in peaceful industry. They went down cheerily to
-die at Shiloh and Chancellorsville, at Antietam and Gettysburg, but
-the nation to this hour feels the loss of such a priceless heritage of
-public spirit and uncalculating heroism. The serious-minded nations are
-becoming ever more reluctant to make such costly sacrifices for the
-sake of the doubtful advantage of a great war.
-
-In the growth of international agreements, in the gradual advance
-of what might be called international litigation before courts of
-arbitration replacing the barbarous methods of slaughter and conquest,
-in the steady increase of that good understanding and mutual good-will
-promoted by travel and the interchange of products, by fellowship in
-the work of science and education and through the joys of sharing
-responsibility in the cause of philanthropy and religion--in these
-vast movements of thought and feeling lies the hope of that better
-day when peace shall hold an undisputed sway. The nineteenth century,
-by steam and telegraph, by increased travel and the ready exchange
-of commodities, made the whole world a neighborhood. It is for the
-twentieth century, by the permeation of international intercourse
-with finer principles and a nobler spirit, to make the whole world a
-brotherhood.
-
-It is the duty of right-minded, honest-hearted people everywhere to
-use their utmost endeavors to maintain and increase that body of good
-feeling out of which shall issue this higher type of international
-life. To such proportions has this sentiment already grown, that if
-these four nations, England, Germany, France, and the United States,
-were to make arbitration before a properly constituted international
-court the method of their dealing with one another, the other Latin,
-Slavic, and Oriental countries would find themselves powerless against
-this mighty tide setting ever in the direction of the determination of
-all differences by the more rational method.
-
-The outlook for arbitration as a means of settlement is altogether
-hopeful. The convention creating a joint high commission to determine
-finally our Canadian boundary; the self-restraint shown by the nations
-at large in not using force against the late Castro government
-in Venezuela; the three great conventions among European powers
-neutralizing Norway and agreeing to respect each other’s territory on
-the Baltic; the exchange of notes between Japan and the United States
-relating to the Far East; the fact that the Central American states
-have thus far kept their agreement of 1907 to refer all differences
-to a court of their own creation; the fact that the Balkan crisis in
-1908, at one time fraught with possibilities frightful to contemplate,
-occasioned no European war as would have been the result of such a
-tangle twenty years ago--all these signs of the times are full of
-promise.
-
-We must confess that the churches of him whose name should be called
-the Prince of Peace have oftentimes been inefficient in their
-performance of an essential duty. The feeling between England and
-Germany, for example, at the present time is almost insanely acute.
-Germany has been jealous of the growing friendship between England and
-France, now happily replacing the ugly antagonism which harks back to
-the time of Napoleon. England is jealous of Germany’s growing supremacy
-in the world of manufacture. Technical schools, improved machinery,
-and the rapid increase of skilled labor has enabled the German to carry
-his wares into the markets of the world and to undersell the Briton.
-All this with certain other causes which make for ill feeling has
-aroused a measure of hostility on both sides of the North Sea.
-
-I spent four months in England a year ago. I attended church twice
-or three times each Sunday and never once in all that time from a
-Christian pulpit did I hear a minister of Christ speak in deprecation
-of that feeling of hostility or seek to allay that sentiment of
-international jealousy. Aside from the “International Peace Congress,”
-which met in England that summer, the only public effort of that
-kind I witnessed or heard of was made at a socialist meeting in St.
-James Hall, London. The International Socialist Party brought over
-from Berlin two well-known men, Kautsky, the editor of a socialist
-organ there, and Ledebour, the leader of the socialist party in the
-Reichstag, to address this meeting side by side with Hyndman, a
-long-time leader of the English socialists, and Keir Hardie, labor
-member of the British Parliament. These men, German and Briton, stood
-together and uttered their ringing words that night against the further
-increase of armament, and in the interests of brotherhood. Has it come
-to this, that titled bishop and archbishop of the Church of Christ,
-that learned scholars and teachers in Oxford and Cambridge shall
-hold their peace in the presence of threatened war, while out of the
-workshops of the poor and the weary ranks of organized labor shall come
-the prophets of better things, calling upon Christendom in the name of
-the Carpenter of Nazareth to put up its sword!
-
-Our own nation has been guilty of its full share of this gigantic
-folly. Our Congress faced a deficit last year of something like one
-hundred and thirty five millions of dollars, mainly because of the
-enormous outlays upon the navy in building those ten million dollar
-warships. If the present rate of expenditure is maintained for the next
-ten years, with no increase whatever, it means that we shall spend
-upon our navy the vast sum of one billion, three hundred and fifty
-millions of dollars. The reports show that for the fiscal year ending
-June 30, 1909, seventy-one per cent of our national revenue was spent
-upon the result of war and the preparation for war, upon pensions and
-upon the army and navy. What would you think of the housekeeping of a
-family where seventy-one per cent of their income was spent on guns!
-And because the government, with these huge outlays upon armament,
-cannot live upon its income, Congress insists upon increased taxation
-through these ingeniously devised tariffs, which fall most heavily upon
-the great consuming public. The cost of living has increased until it
-has become cruel to all people in modest circumstances and actually
-destructive to the struggling poor.
-
-Has not the time come for the plain people to call a halt! Has not the
-time come for the indignant toilers in peaceful occupations to restrain
-the unwise leaders who are responsible for this craze of militarism!
-Has not the solemn farce of seeing Christian nations build ten million
-dollar bulldogs in the remote possibility of being called upon to
-match them against the costly bulldogs of their neighbors, unless,
-perchance, these expensive creations should, before that, have been
-relegated to the scrap-heap by some new device--has not that solemn,
-ugly farce played itself out! “The welfare of the people is the supreme
-law of the land.” It is the supreme law of all lands and any one who
-has visited Europe, where every third peasant carries a useless and
-burdensome soldier on his back as he goes forth to his toil, knows that
-this modern evil of militarism is a mighty menace to the welfare of any
-people.
-
-The Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations in our Congress
-last winter called the attention of the House to the fact that, in
-pensions and in preparations for possible war, the United States was
-spending more money than any other nation in the world. He called
-attention to the fact that the appropriations for military and naval
-affairs for the coming year would exceed, by twenty-nine millions of
-dollars, all the money which the United States government has spent
-from the beginning of the republic up to the present hour upon public
-buildings. He spoke also of the fact that this nation, which we like
-to think of as a non-military nation, is spending at the present time
-more than two-thirds of the total national revenue on pensions and on
-preparations for war. What an abnormal condition for a republic whose
-splendid history has been almost entirely a history of peace!
-
-Would that our country might take higher ground in this whole matter!
-Would that there might go out from us a splendid endorsement of the
-principle of arbitration, a strong insistence upon the method of
-international litigation before such tribunals as have been outlined at
-the Hague conferences and a stinging rebuke to the policy of increasing
-these deadly and burdensome armaments! Would that our land might show
-itself a leader and a messiah among the nations in achieving that
-magnificent fulfilment when the promised Messiah, the Prince of Peace,
-shall reign in the affairs of men.
-
-The claim is made that risk is involved in refusing to maintain these
-costly armaments which are sapping the life-blood of the leading
-nations of Europe. Risk is involved, undoubtedly, but if we want peace,
-why not take that risk in showing the nations that such is our desire?
-It would be a magnificent form of moral venture. Risk is involved--so
-be it! A far greater risk to the general welfare and to the perpetuity
-of our institutions is involved in the opposite course. Why should
-not we, as a land of high principles and shining ideals, make the
-moral venture of staking our future upon a splendid obedience to the
-appeal of the great Messiah? Beat the swords into plowshares! Beat
-the spears into pruning-hooks! In peaceful, joyous industry let not
-this nation learn war any more! Let it place its reliance upon courts
-of arbitration for the settlement of international disputes, and the
-blessing of Almighty God, which maketh rich and bringeth no sorrow
-therewith, shall be ours!
-
-  “If drunk with sight of power we loose
-        Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
-  Such boastings as the Gentiles use
-        Or lesser breeds without the law,
-  Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
-  Lest we forget--lest we forget!
-
-  “The tumult and the shouting dies;
-        The captains and the kings depart;
-  Still stands thine ancient sacrifice
-        An humble and a contrite heart.
-  Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
-  Lest we forget--lest we forget.”
-
-O thou land whose Declaration of Independence was made in Philadelphia,
-the city of brotherly love! O thou land of Washington, who prayed in
-his farewell address that we might be kept from the scourge of war! O
-thou land of General Grant, who declared, “Though I have been trained
-as a soldier and have participated in many battles, there never was a
-time, in my opinion, when some way could not have been found to prevent
-the drawing of the sword.” O thou land of Lincoln, who pleaded in his
-second inaugural, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with
-firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us bind up
-the nation’s wounds and strive to achieve and cherish among ourselves
-and with all nations a just and lasting peace.” O thou land that we
-love, enter thou afresh into a nobler rivalry with all the nations of
-earth in the cultivation of good-will, in the reduction of burdensome
-armament and in the maintenance of those policies which make for the
-enduring welfare of the race!
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber’s Notes
-
-Page 5: “go to college and tay” changed to “go to college and stay”
-
-Page 14: “your own impress on” changed to “your own impression”
-
-Page 33: A missing period was added at the end of a sentence.
-
-Page 88: “the ewards are rich” changed to “the rewards are rich”
-
-Page 101: “stirring times of war on in the slower” changed to “stirring
-times of war or in the slower”
-
-Page 112: “to stand up befor” changed to “to stand up before”
-
-Page 130: “simply gets wet and muddy, and rowned” changed to “simply
-gets wet and muddy, and drowned”
-
-Page 176: “by intemperance and some fly” changed to “by intemperance
-and some by”
-
-Page 202: “his name shall be” changed to “His name shall be”
-
-Page 218: “conquer the united States” changed to “conquer the United
-States”
-
-Page 225: “England Germany, France,” changed to “England, Germany,
-France,”
-
-Page 231: “deadly and burdensone armaments!” changed to “deadly and
-burdensome armaments!”
-
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-<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Cap and Gown, by Charles Reynolds Brown</p>
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-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
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-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Cap and Gown</p>
-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Charles Reynolds Brown</p>
-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: February 9, 2022 [eBook #67366]</p>
-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p>
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-<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAP AND GOWN ***</div>
-
-
-
-
-
-<div class="bbox thin">
-<p class="center p0"><i>BY THE SAME AUTHOR</i></p>
-<p>
-THE MAIN POINTS
-</p><p>
-THE STRANGE WAYS OF GOD
-</p><p>
-THE SOCIAL MESSAGE OF THE MODERN PULPIT
-</p><p>
-THE YOUNG MAN’S AFFAIRS
-</p><p>
-FAITH AND HEALTH
-</p><p>
-THE GOSPEL OF GOOD HEALTH
-</p></div>
-
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h1><small>THE</small><br />
-<big>CAP AND GOWN</big></h1>
-
-<p class="center p0 p2">BY<br />
-  CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN</p>
-
-<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter"  id="img001">
-  <img src="images/001.jpg" class="w10"  alt="Decorative image" />
-</span></p>
-
-<p class="center p0 p2"><big>THE PILGRIM PRESS</big><br />
-  NEW YORK&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;BOSTON&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;CHICAGO
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-
-<p class="center p0">  <span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1910<br />
-  <span class="smcap">By Luther H. Cary</span></p>
-
-
-<p class="center p0 p2">  THE · PLIMPTON · PRESS<br />
-  [W · D · O]<br />
-  NORWOOD · <abbr title="Massachusetts">MASS</abbr> · <abbr title="United States of America">U · S · A</abbr>
-</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="PREFACE">PREFACE</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>The larger part of the material in this book was originally used in a
-number of addresses given in various colleges and universities reaching
-from Yale and Cornell in the East to Stanford and the University of
-California in the West. It is here offered to a wider circle in the
-hope that these chapters may prove suggestive to college students and
-to those who are interested in having them make the best use of the
-bewildering array of opportunities awaiting them on the modern campus.</p>
-
-<p>It was one of the shrewdest and kindliest observers of student life,
-himself a long-time resident of Cambridge and a genial friend of
-Harvard men, who said: “It is a never-failing delight to behold every
-autumn the hundreds of newcomers who then throng our streets, boys with
-smooth, unworn faces, full of the zest of their own being, taking<span class="pagenum" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</span>
-the whole world as having been made for them, as indeed it was. Their
-visible self-confidence is well founded and has the facts on its side.
-The future is theirs to command, not ours; it belongs to them even more
-than they think it does, and this is undoubtedly saying a good deal.”</p>
-
-<p>It is this joyous and confident company arrayed or about to be arrayed
-in “cap and gown” which the writer of these chapters would fain
-address. The academic costume and accent may speedily be replaced by
-the less picturesque garb and tone of the work-a-day world, but the
-advantage of special training, of accurate knowledge and of the larger
-outlook upon life attainable in any well-equipped university will give
-to the fortunate possessors of all this a significance for the life of
-the nation far beyond that belonging to an equal number of similarly
-endowed but untrained men.</p>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-<table class="autotable">
-<tr>
-<th>
-</th>
-<th>
-CHAPTER
-</th>
-<th class="tdr">
-PAGE
-</th>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td>
-<a href="#I">I.</a>
-</td>
-<td>
-THE FIRST INNING
-</td>
-<td class="tdr">
-<a href="#Page_3">3</a>
-</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td>
-<a href="#II">II.</a>
-</td>
-<td>
-ATHLETICS
-</td>
-<td class="tdr">
-<a href="#Page_23">23</a>
-</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td>
-<a href="#III">III.</a>
-</td>
-<td>
-THE FRATERNITY QUESTION
-</td>
-<td class="tdr">
-<a href="#Page_41">41</a>
-</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td>
-<a href="#IV">IV.</a>
-</td>
-<td>
-THE RELIGION OF A COLLEGE MAN
-</td>
-<td class="tdr">
-<a href="#Page_59">59</a>
-</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td>
-<a href="#V">V.</a>
-</td>
-<td>
-THE CHOICE OF A LIFE-WORK
-</td>
-<td class="tdr">
-<a href="#Page_75">75</a>
-</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td>
-<a href="#VI">VI.</a>
-</td>
-<td>
-MORAL VENTURES
-</td>
-<td class="tdr">
-<a href="#Page_93">93</a>
-</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td>
-<a href="#VII">VII.</a>
-</td>
-<td>
-THE LAW OF RETURNS
-</td>
-<td class="tdr">
-<a href="#Page_107">107</a>
-</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td>
-<a href="#VIII">VIII.</a>
-</td>
-<td>
-THE HIGHEST FORM OF REWARD
-</td>
-<td class="tdr">
-<a href="#Page_127">127</a>
-</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td>
-<a href="#IX">IX.</a>
-</td>
-<td>
-THE USE OF THE INCOMPLETE
-</td>
-<td class="tdr">
-<a href="#Page_145">145</a>
-</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td>
-<a href="#X">X.</a>
-</td>
-<td>
-FIGHTING THE STARS
-</td>
-<td class="tdr">
-<a href="#Page_169">169</a>
-</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td>
-<a href="#XI">XI.</a>
-</td>
-<td>
-THE POWER OF VISION
-</td>
-<td class="tdr">
-<a href="#Page_183">183</a>
-</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td>
-<a href="#XII">XII.</a>
-</td>
-<td>
-THE WAR AGAINST WAR
-</td>
-<td class="tdr">
-<a href="#Page_201">201</a>
-</td>
-</tr>
-</table>
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="I">I<br />
-THE FIRST INNING</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>The significance of the first year in college can scarcely
-be overstated. The first man called to the bat in some great
-intercollegiate game may be pardoned for feeling a bit nervous. He
-realizes that players and spectators are eagerly waiting for him to
-give them the key-note of the contest by the way he acquits himself.
-The young man just entering college, if he senses the situation
-accurately, is equally alive to the importance of his first hits.</p>
-
-<p>It is a time when freedom and responsibility come in new and larger
-measure. College men as a rule are away from home. There is no one to
-ask, with the accent of authority, how they spend their evenings, who
-their intimates are, what habits they are forming. Studying is not done
-under the immediate eye of an instructor as in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span> the grammar-school
-days. The young man who heretofore has felt the wholesome restraint
-of well-ordered family life, suddenly finds himself a free citizen
-in a republic, and this larger measure of liberty involves risk.
-The freshman may decide the case against himself before he is ever
-permitted to put on his sophomore hat. The way is open for him to go
-to the devil, physically, intellectually, socially, morally, if he
-chooses. The way is open, the bars are down and as often as not some
-young fool is just starting and beckoning his friends to “Come along.”
-The bad plays in the first inning are frequently so numerous and so
-serious as to mean the loss of the game. It is a time then to summon
-into action all the wisdom and conscience which may be brought to bear
-upon those early decisions.</p>
-
-<p>There is one choice not strictly of the first year, but so intimately
-connected with it that I speak of it here&mdash;the decision as to whether
-or not one shall go to college. “It will take four of the best years of
-my life,” the young man says. “While I am reading books and attending
-lectures, playing football, and practising the college yell, other<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span>
-young men will be learning the ways of the business world; they will be
-actually laying the foundations for prosperous careers. Can I afford
-the time?” Furthermore, does it justify the expense? On an average it
-costs each student somewhere from five hundred to a thousand dollars a
-year in all first-class colleges, though the state universities in the
-West cut down that figure by remitting tuition fees, and many splendid
-young men take the course on much less. Is it worth what it costs?</p>
-
-<p>Every young man who can compass it by any reasonable outlay of energy
-and sacrifice had better go to college and stay there until graduation
-day. There is a deal of education to be gained outside of books or
-college halls. The business life of a great city is a university in
-itself with its lectures and recitations, its examinations and other
-requirements. Its courses of instruction have a value all their own and
-its exacting demands flunk more men ten to one than either Harvard or
-Yale, Stanford or California. In this “university of experience” the
-college colors are “black and blue,” for the lessons are learned by
-hard<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span> knocks. But the man who knows his full share of what is in the
-books will show himself more competent in finding his way about in that
-larger school of experience. “Systematic training counts everywhere,
-from a prize fight up to being a bishop or a bank president.”</p>
-
-<p>It is true that many men have won high place in the world’s life
-without college training, Benjamin Franklin, Horace Greeley, Abraham
-Lincoln, and all the rest,&mdash;we know the list by heart. But it did not
-please the Lord to make Lincolns and Franklins when he made most of
-us. A little extra schooling which those men might get on without, in
-our case will not come amiss. Furthermore, those very men with all
-their unusual ability did not have to compete with college men to
-the extent that you will be compelled to do. College men in ordinary
-life were scarce then; now there are three under every log. In law
-and medicine, in teaching and the ministry, in the administration of
-large business enterprises and in the world of political life, you will
-have to meet and try conclusions with men who have received the best
-the universities<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span> can give. It will be to your interest, therefore,
-to add to the stock of ability which the Creator has given you all
-the training that high school, college, and university can yield. To
-neglect carelessly or decline wilfully such opportunities when they are
-offered, becomes a wrong committed against yourself, against all who
-are interested in your growth, and against society which is entitled to
-the most competent service you can render.</p>
-
-<p>When you have actually set foot upon the campus there comes the choice
-of courses. The modern drift toward unlimited electives, especially in
-the first two years, is open to serious criticism. The tendency is to
-allow each student to study only what he likes, consulting merely his
-own interest and preference. Even where young people have reached the
-mature age of nineteen or twenty, and are regularly entered freshmen or
-sophomores, it is just possible that more wisdom can be found somewhere
-as to what is best for their intellectual growth and training, than
-is discoverable in their own individual preferences. There is a
-disposition on their part to select courses of two<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span> kinds, those in
-which they are already strong or those which are supposed to be “snaps.”</p>
-
-<p>Moving along the line of least resistance is not the royal road to
-anything worth while. Insight, grasp, and self-mastery come rather by
-doing hard jobs. Rolling down hill on green grass does not develop
-robust, enduring, effective manhood as does climbing Shasta or Whitney
-over loose rock and rugged snow-fields. There is no such thing as
-“painless education” in the market.</p>
-
-<p>In the judgment of many there is peril in the fact that at one end of
-our educational system we have the kindergarten, bowing with almost
-idolatrous reverence before the untaught inclinations of the child in
-its effort to make the work of education as enjoyable as a game, and
-at the other end the university with its wide-open elective system
-tending to breed distaste for hard courses or for studies in which the
-young people do not already feel a warm interest. We shall not rear
-up sturdy character by too much humoring of individual taste, which
-is often abnormal in intellectual as in other directions. <abbr title="Mister">Mr.</abbr> Dooley
-indicates a weakness<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span> in the present method where he says: “To-day the
-college president takes the young man into a Turkish room and gives
-him a cigarette, and says, ‘Now, my dear boy, what special branch of
-larnin’ would ye like to have studied for ye, by one of our compitint
-professors?’”</p>
-
-<p>In the selection of courses it is unwise to ignore completely certain
-fields because you feel you are weak on that side&mdash;you may need
-rounding out. The man who sits in the seat of the scornful, displaying
-a contemptuous indifference toward fields which lie aside from his
-personal preference, may live to find that narrow seat as uncomfortable
-as a sharp stick. It is well not to specialize too soon, or too
-rigidly. We are compelled to specialize at last in order to forge
-ahead, but it is more important to be a man, round, full, rich in
-contents, than to be an expert lawyer, physician, or mining engineer.
-The early and rigid specialization, sometimes extending even down into
-the high school, tends to sacrifice the man to the profession.</p>
-
-<p>There are certain fundamental interests which cannot be left out of
-the consideration<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span> of any educated man or woman. Take these five
-main fields: every student should know something of language, the
-instrument of communication. He should for the purposes of comparison
-and enlargement know something of two or three languages. His knowledge
-should extend beyond the mere ability to read and write and spell&mdash;it
-ought to include some acquaintance with the best literature of each
-language, the widest acquaintance naturally with the best that has been
-thought and said in his own tongue.</p>
-
-<p>He should know something of history. There is too much of it for any
-one man to master it all, but he should have some genuine understanding
-of the chief sources of history, and of the main courses and movements
-of thought and life in the world. He should enlarge his own brief and
-local experience by some participation in age-long, national, and
-international experience.</p>
-
-<p>He should know something of science. The general method of science is
-the same, whether observed in chemistry, zoology, botany, or elsewhere.
-One may never be a specialist in any single science, yet he may know
-the scientific habit of mind and appreciate<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span> the fundamental positions
-of science sufficiently to make him a more effective worker in his own
-chosen field, which may, indeed, lie quite over the divide from any
-directly scientific pursuit.</p>
-
-<p>He should know something of the organized life of men through the study
-of sociology, economics, and civics. He should have some understanding
-of institutional life in its various industrial, political, and
-ecclesiastical expressions.</p>
-
-<p>He should feel in some measure the power of that group of studies which
-have to do with mental and moral processes considered apart from the
-world of outward phenomena, psychology, ethics, philosophy, religion.
-He needs to relate his individual activity to the larger life of the
-whole by some genuine grasp of fundamentals in his thinking.</p>
-
-<p>No single student can be at his best in all these or can even make any
-two of them his major interest, but a certain elementary knowledge of
-all these fields, thorough as far as it goes, is a better foundation
-for a genuine education than the most elaborate training in any one
-specialty.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span></p>
-
-<p>When one builds a pyramid it must come to a point somewhere. It can
-only be built, with the conditions as we find them, at a certain angle,
-for material will not lie on a slope too steep. How high it may be,
-therefore, when the apex is reached will depend upon the breadth of the
-base. In your education, you are building character and personality,
-which is much more important than any special ability for money-making,
-and the apex of that personality will be high in proportion as you
-avoid the narrow base which results from too much specializing in
-the earlier years. Let the foundation which precedes your special or
-professional training be as broad as it lies within your power to make
-it.</p>
-
-<p>If you specialize rigidly in the early years, you may a little later
-change your purpose in life and find yourself handicapped by the former
-narrow outlook. The college is a place where many a fellow finds
-himself for the first time, and the fellow he finds is oftentimes
-another and perhaps a better man than the one he had planned for in the
-earlier years. He may take his college course expecting to be a lawyer,
-but that spiritual<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span> impulse, which lands many a man in the ministry,
-may be at work beneath the surface, none the less potent for being
-one of those unseen things which are eternal. If in his college days
-he entirely ignores Greek or turns his back on philosophy and ethics
-as having little practical worth, he will find himself at a great
-disadvantage if he finally faces about toward the pulpit. As Cromwell
-said to the theologians who were so cock-sure in their opinions,
-“Beloved brethren, I beseech you by the mercies of God believe it
-possible that you may be mistaken.” You may be mistaken as to the work
-you will do in life. It is unwise therefore to discount that possible
-future by narrowing down too soon to some specialty which may prove to
-be off the turnpike when you make final selection of your life-work.</p>
-
-<p>The selection of habits in a modern university is left almost entirely
-to the judgment of the individual student. The college rules grow
-fewer year by year. Personal supervision becomes impossible where the
-enrolment reaches into the thousands. Parents are sometimes unaware of
-the measure of liberty accorded. College presidents<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span> entertain each
-other with experiences which come to them in the way of letters from
-anxious mammas. One president tells us of a letter received from a fond
-mother whose son had just entered&mdash;“I shall expect you to send me a
-long letter each week telling me how my darling boy is doing.” Another
-reports a letter from a father&mdash;“Please send me each week a full report
-of my son’s absences, of his failures in recitation, and your own
-impression as to the progress he is making.” The very humor of these
-suggestions indicates to what measure the freedom of the student has
-been extended. It would be somewhat difficult for President Lowell or
-President Hadley, for President Jordan or President Wheeler to see to
-it that the boys and girls eat the proper amounts of wholesome food and
-put on their rubbers when it rains.</p>
-
-<p>University life is not a personally conducted tour with the trains
-and hotels, the points of interest and suggestions as to clothing,
-all printed in the schedule. It is a case of going abroad upon the
-continent of learning, relying upon your own letter of credit to draw
-supplies from the banks<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span> of opportunity open to you, with the necessity
-upon you of learning to speak the language and order your trip for
-yourself in a way to gain the utmost possible good. The sheltered life
-policy, suitable for little boys, must come to an end some time and
-the young man be compelled to face the good or bad results of his own
-choices. The beginning of the college course is no doubt an appropriate
-time to inaugurate this new régime.</p>
-
-<p>You will enter college without any definite college habits. This will
-be at once an advantage and a peril. Habits are sometimes heavy,
-troublesome chains; they are sometimes the best friends in sight. In
-driving over a mountain road on a dark night when one cannot see even
-his team, the deep ruts are a comfort and a safeguard&mdash;as the driver
-hears the wagon chuckling along in the ruts he knows that he is not
-on the point of going over the grade. Certain useful habits, which
-come from doing certain things in certain ways over and over again,
-are beneficial in that they take sufficient care of those lines of
-action and leave the man’s will and attention free to deal with other
-problems.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span></p>
-
-<p>The habits you select and exhibit during the first year will
-almost inevitably determine your standing with the faculty and
-with the students. When you enter you are what cattlemen call a
-“maverick”&mdash;there is no brand on you. Your associates will wait to
-see where you belong. By your own choices you will brand yourself as
-studious or trifling, as thorough or a dabbler, as honest or a cheat,
-as clean and sound in your moral life or as shady. The habits of the
-first year will brand you and in the award of college honors at the
-hands of the faculty or of the students, and in the operation of
-university influences upon your career after you graduate, the brand
-you wear will be well-nigh determinative. Look at it carefully, then,
-before you apply it to yourself, for its mark will stay.</p>
-
-<p>You cannot afford to shilly-shally. The man who spends his time in high
-school or college mainly for his own amusement is a sham and a sneak.
-He is there at considerable cost to somebody&mdash;parents, tax-payers,
-professors who are doing educational work out of love for it when they
-might be doing something much more remunerative&mdash;and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span> when he merely
-puts up a bluff at studying he stamps himself as a sneak.</p>
-
-<p>The men who undertake to get through their examinations by a kind of
-death-bed repentance become cheap men. In the moral world a man is
-judged not by the few holy emotions he can scramble together in the
-last fifteen minutes of earthly existence; he is judged by the whole
-trend and drift of his life, by the deeds done in the body, by the
-entire accumulation and net result of his living as deposited in the
-character formed. This is sound theology in any branch of the Christian
-Church and the principle involved is also sound in pedagogy. The real
-test of the student’s work is not to be found in what he did last night
-or in what he can show upon occasion as the result of a hasty cramming,
-but in what he has been doing through all the days and nights preceding
-the examination and in that net result which stands revealed in his
-mental grasp and effectiveness. Whether he becomes a man who will
-stand the hard tests the world puts upon every one who undertakes to
-do important work, will depend largely upon the habits he forms in the
-first year. He may take low<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span> ideals and live down to them; or he may
-set high ideals and then direct his energy and shape the methods of his
-life unceasingly to the hard task of living up to them.</p>
-
-<p>There will also come the choice of intimates. You will have
-acquaintances many&mdash;the more the better. You will have, I hope, a large
-circle of friends and you will discover that college friendships are
-the most lasting and perhaps the most rewarding of any you form. But of
-lives so close as to give shape and color and odor to your life, there
-will not be many; and for that reason the intimates are to be chosen
-with the greater care.</p>
-
-<p>You can know all sorts and conditions of men. You can be on good terms
-with many whose prevailing attitudes toward life do not meet your wish.
-You cannot afford to be on intimate terms with a man lacking in those
-fundamental qualities of every-day rectitude which are legal tender the
-world over. The man you admit to your heart and life as an intimate
-ought to be “hall marked” as they say in England; he ought to have
-the word “sterling” stamped upon him, indicating that in the great
-melting-pot<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span> of human experience he will meet the test and show full
-face value.</p>
-
-<p>It will be good to have a few close friends who are not students. There
-are townspeople whose main interest is in the larger life outside the
-university whose friendship you need. There is some member of the
-faculty whom you ought to know well. In many colleges every student has
-a “personal adviser” in the faculty. It is a foolish mistake to look
-upon the professors as your enemies or as being indifferent to you,
-lacking in any genuine interest in your problems. They covet a closer
-touch with their students than the young men in their mistaken reserve
-are ready to accord them. The closer friendship of some one, wise,
-mature, sympathetic man in the faculty will be an influence wholesome
-and abiding, making always for your best development. The mere fact
-that some weak man may undertake to “cultivate” a professor in the
-spirit of the sycophant need not deter strong men from the enjoyment of
-such friendships in straightforward, manly fashion.</p>
-
-<p>Let me congratulate you that you are in college! It is a jolly thing
-to be alive at<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span> all, these days, and to be alive and young and at
-school&mdash;why, the whole world is yours! The world is yours potentially,
-and wise, right decisions during that first year will aid mightily in
-making a generous measure of it actually yours. You may, if you will,
-score a good number of runs off your own batting by the way you play
-the game in the first inning.</p>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="II">II<br />
-ATHLETICS</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-<p>All the human beings we know anything about have the cheerful habit of
-living in bodies; there is a physical basis underlying and conditioning
-all earthly activity. Physical vitality, therefore, has a direct
-bearing on possible achievement. A rousing stomach ready to take what
-you give it and rejoice over it; lungs large, sound, and unspoiled by
-inhaling what was never meant for them; heart action reliable because
-never tampered with by drugs or hurtful indulgences; nerves prompt and
-accurate as telegraph instruments, but ready to sleep when put to bed
-because never abused; muscles which take up hard work and laugh over
-it as those who find great spoil&mdash;all these are useful items in that
-physical excellence to be gained and guarded as a priceless heritage.
-In all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span> intellectual work where men undertake to think, write, or
-speak there is a demand for red blood, which is better ten times over
-than the blue blood of any fancied aristocracy! And in moral life, if
-you are to put down evil under your feet and be vigorously, joyously,
-winsomely good, a sound physique for your moral nature to ride in all
-weathers will be a perpetual advantage.</p>
-
-<p>In making young men physically competent, high school and college
-athletics, provided they are not tacked on from the outside as a frill
-or held as a mere aside to which the students carelessly turn in hours
-of leisure, may possess high value. They can be made a genuine, vital
-expression of the life of the school and be related in some wise way to
-the larger purpose of education. Rightly ordered they aid mightily in
-keeping the tools sharp, in developing a full stock of vital force, in
-giving the poise, self-mastery, endurance needed for the work of life.
-The boy who learns to play with zest will be better able to do the work
-of a man with his own full sense of joy in it.</p>
-
-<p>David Starr Jordan has said many times that “the football field is a
-more wholesome<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span> place for a young man than the ballroom,” and those who
-know the facts endorse his claim. The young fellow gets hurt now and
-then in football, but taking into consideration the part of him which
-suffers and the after effects of it, we commonly find that the injury
-is less damaging than are the hurts received in indoor, fashionable
-dissipation. Athletics bring men out under God’s open sky, into the
-fresh air, and under the stimulus of healthy rivalries. They train men
-to see clearly, to hear accurately the first time, to decide quickly,
-to move instantly, and to stand together in a genuinely social spirit.
-These qualities have high place in the combination of talents which
-makes for success; they have high place as well in the formation of
-sound character.</p>
-
-<p>But to tackle the subject more closely let me name several ways in
-which athletics worthy of an educational institution are particularly
-beneficial. They serve as an outlet for the surplus physical energy of
-boys and young men. In simply walking to school, even though he carries
-some girl’s books as well as his own, the healthy young man does not
-consume in twenty-four hours<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span> all the physical energy he manufactures.
-Throbbing within him there is an exuberant physical life, excitable
-and not yet under firm control. There is the consciousness of new and
-untried powers in regard to which he feels deep concern. There is the
-push of impulse not fully regulated by conscience or experience. Unless
-there is some wholesome outlet he will burst the levee, devastating
-whole fields of his own nature and of other natures besides, by an
-unwholesome use of that surplus physical energy.</p>
-
-<p>Training for athletic events means early hours, clean habits, constant
-occupation of mind and body, for in any college worthy of the name the
-young man must be a student all the while, as well as a quarterback or
-a pitcher. The training, therefore, becomes a mighty safeguard thrown
-around a lot of young fellows who are face to face with the devil of
-temptation. Even for those who do not make the team or the nine or
-the track, if they are taking regular gymnasium work in hope of that
-success next year, or if in other ways they have caught the spirit of
-clean, honest, joyous sport, athletics<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span> give an added motive and a
-stronger impulse toward clean living.</p>
-
-<p>“Wild oats,” as they are lightly called, produce a sorry and a debasing
-harvest. No man with sense enough to be allowed to run at large ever
-looks himself in the face and takes satisfaction in the memory of such
-sowing. The fellow who thinks he is not wise or experienced until he
-has become familiar with the haunts of gamblers and harlots, until he
-has the smut and smell of those associations upon him, is regarded by
-saner men as green, oh, so green! He sometimes calls his escapades
-“seeing life,” but it is not life he sees there; it is death&mdash;and a
-foul, rotten, ill-smelling type of death. The trainer will not tolerate
-it. The man himself would be regarded as a traitor to the university
-if on the team he “broke training” for such indulgence. And the whole
-spirit of wholesome athletics is such as to stamp that course as base
-and mean. As an outlet for surplus energy then and as a safeguard
-against certain forms of wrong-doing, wholesome athletics in college
-life hold a place of honor.</p>
-
-<p>They furnish also a means of joyous recreation.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span> The mind bent and
-strained all the time with serious employment loses its spring, if not
-sometimes its sanity. The relaxation of honest fun, the excitement
-of a sport where one measures his strength and skill against that of
-others, the self-forgetfulness which comes with absorption in something
-other than one’s work&mdash;all these are imperatively demanded for the
-normal development of youth into maturity. We would all bring up in the
-madhouse or the sanitarium, if we did not now and then have some such
-diversion!</p>
-
-<p>This demand for recreation, if no intelligent and wholesome forms
-of expression are at hand, crops out in those college pranks which
-sometimes border on lawlessness. The spontaneous fun of college life
-is ever enjoyed and applauded. There was a Yale man once suspended for
-this excusable caper. The students were required to attend service
-on Sunday in the chapel where the preacher was sometimes dull and
-tiresome. One particular offender against the youthful demand for
-vitality and brevity used to divide his sermons into heads and subheads
-almost endlessly, Roman 1, Arabic 1. One in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span> brackets, a, b, c, etc.,
-etc. This friend of mine arranged to have his class of one hundred and
-sixty men sit together well up in front, and every time the preacher
-passed from one head to another, they uncrossed their legs in unison
-and crossed them over the other way. When the reverend doctor passed
-from one in brackets to two, or from a to b, he saw one hundred and
-sixty pairs of legs taken apart and recrossed simultaneously. When this
-had been done six or eight times the people in the adjacent section
-and in the galleries became more interested in watching this mighty
-movement of legs than in the sermon, and the minister himself was so
-disconcerted that he presently gave it up and closed the service with
-the sermon unfinished. The dull preacher might better have put more
-life into his sermon, thus affording some legitimate opportunity for
-the exercise of interest on the part of his hearers.</p>
-
-<p>Athletics bring wholesome recreation not only to those who play on the
-eleven or the nine, or who appear on the track, but to that larger
-company of fellows who strive for that honor; to a multitude whose
-interest<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span> in exercise and outdoor sport is quickened though they
-never aspire to ’varsity positions; to the thousands of spectators
-who assemble to witness the game and cheer the winners. The physical
-quickening, the mental relaxation, the temporary forgetfulness of
-hard work, the joyous hours in the open air, are all good for the
-whole company of people who thus, directly and indirectly, share in
-the advantages of athletics. Keep the game free from the taint of
-professionalism, free from betting, free from the disposition that
-would win fairly if possible, but win at any cost, and we have a form
-of recreation distinctly beneficial to the whole community!</p>
-
-<p>The discipline of athletics develops obedience, self-control, and the
-spirit of cooperation, all of them useful, moral qualities. Many a rich
-man’s son, ambitious for college honors, has gotten his first taste
-of real discipline on the athletic field. At home he had indulgent
-parents&mdash;they were self-indulgent because of their wealth and they
-scarcely knew how to be other than indulgent to their children. The boy
-was waited upon by well-paid servants eager to do his bidding and humor
-his whims. His<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span> generous tips greased the way for him when he traveled
-or went in pursuit of pleasure. He had never felt the rough, raw edge
-of an exacting discipline.</p>
-
-<p>But when the trainer took him in hand this son of affluence was treated
-as though he had been working his way through college by currying
-some man’s horse or by waiting on the table at a boarding club. If he
-played football he was knocked down as promptly and as hard, when he
-got in the way of a bigger and better player, as if his father had
-been a hod-carrier. And all this is exactly as it should be! Sometime,
-somewhere, he should learn the democratic spirit by being compelled to
-meet his fellow men without favor shown or advantage given; he should
-learn how to take the hard knocks and keep sweet, not losing his head
-or his temper. The boys say, “If a fellow plays football it does not
-take long to find out what kind of a fellow he is.” The real quality of
-the man comes out more readily and more genuinely perhaps than it would
-in a college prayer-meeting. And the man himself finds out what kind of
-a fellow he is, to his own lasting advantage.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span></p>
-
-<p>Wellington used to say that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the
-athletic fields of the English schools. He meant that when he found
-himself standing up against Napoleon’s fiercest attacks, he had under
-him a body of men who had not waited for their army experience to learn
-discipline. Obedience, self-control, and the necessity of standing
-together had all been learned long ago at Rugby and Eton and Harrow
-until these qualities were bred in the bone! Now as mature men they
-fought the great battle through to a finish just as they used to put
-the pigskin across their opponent’s goal in the years gone by.</p>
-
-<p>To gain this benefit in any worthy measure there must be a genuine
-participation in the athletic life of the institution. Some students
-imagine that they are greatly interested in athletics because they talk
-about the various events, smoke countless cigarettes on the bleachers,
-gossip endlessly in the fraternity house as to how the game was lost or
-won, taking up the time of the players with their useless prattle. All
-this, however, is as much like real interest in athletics as a bandbox
-is like a granite block. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span> interest to be worthy of the name and to
-insure any actual benefit must be a genuine interest.</p>
-
-<p>There is something admirable in the attitude of those men who try
-for the team or the nine, and having failed, show themselves glad to
-play on the second eleven or nine. “Scrub teams” they are sometimes
-ignominiously and erroneously called&mdash;their loyalty and devotion to the
-institution is often such that they might be called “Sequoia teams.”
-Their spirit of sacrifice is such that they are willing to stand out as
-only second best and to be practised on by better men to the end that
-those better men may gain still more honor and glory for themselves.
-This spirit of loyalty and good will serves to exalt the part they take
-into a genuine culture in character.</p>
-
-<p>The spirit of cooperation is strengthened by college athletics. Men are
-knit together by close ties when they participate in training or in the
-game. They learn to rely upon each other. Conceit and selfish pride
-are eliminated until the whole nature is in a fair way to be genuinely
-socialized. The man learns that he cannot catch and pitch and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span> play
-left field all at once. He must fill his own place and act with other
-men who are filling their places. He must take his color in the pattern
-and join his yarn to their yarn in a genuine spirit of fraternal
-cooperation. He must subordinate his own personal interest or advantage
-to the larger interests of the institution which he represents. If he
-has really entered into the spirit of the best college athletics, he
-will forever after be a better husband and father, a better neighbor
-and citizen, a better man in the world of industry, and a better
-churchman, for his systematic training in this spirit of cooperation.</p>
-
-<p>Athletics also express and develop what we call “college spirit.” This
-sense of joy in one’s own college, the generous pride and enthusiasm
-over victories won by other students, the knitting together of the
-student body in paying the necessary dues, in cheering the games, in
-helping to maintain high and honest standards, all go to make up that
-“college spirit.”</p>
-
-<p>This bit of sentiment over one’s own institution does not pay term
-bills or prepare lessons or write examination papers, but it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span> aids
-in the doing of every one of these things. The fife and drum in the
-army do not throw up breastworks or fire off guns to disable the
-enemy, but they do aid in the general undertaking by the enthusiasm
-and <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">esprit de corps</i> they help to arouse. That college spirit,
-which is indeed a useful educational force, is always heightened by
-wholesome athletics. That splendid hit when there were three men on the
-bases; that break through the line or around the end and the run down
-the field; that last spurt at the end of the hundred-yard dash, with a
-whole horizon of students and other spectators rending the skies with
-their enthusiastic cheers, all aid in the development of a wholesome
-enthusiasm over one’s own college.</p>
-
-<p>The student who holds himself apart from it all in blasé fashion,
-affecting to look with cool contempt on the joyous fervor of his
-fellows is either diseased or else his show of indifference is only
-skin deep. The sneering, flippant, cynical young person is as much of
-a freak as would be a ten-year-old boy bald-headed, with a long white
-beard. Intensity, enthusiasm, absorption, belong to college life and
-they work their good<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span> results in transforming youth into manhood.</p>
-
-<p>The two main evils, aside from the common evils of betting and
-dissipation which are not confined to athletes, to be guarded against
-are the spirit of professionalism and the habit of unfairness. The
-smuggling in of a professional baseball or football player whose
-college standing is maintained by snap courses or by indulgent
-professors, is a thing despicable in the eyes of all right-minded
-college men. It is the sacrifice of the university idea to the demand
-for victory in college sports. And in similar fashion the disposition
-to win by fair means or by foul, which has sometimes disfigured our
-college athletics, lies at the root of the ugly distrust felt by
-institutions for each other on the athletic field. Better no victories
-than victories of dishonor! The word of the old professor is always
-in point: “Play your games as gentlemen, fair, true, and generous.
-Win your games as gentlemen when you can, with no offensive conceit
-over your success. Lose your games as gentlemen when you must, with no
-whimpering or silly excuses.”</p>
-
-<p>It is of vital importance that the whole<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span> interest of college
-athletics be held firmly within the grasp of that larger purpose
-already indicated. The main business of life is not to play baseball
-or football, but to do certain things treated more directly in other
-departments of college life. You cannot afford to play any game at the
-expense of your highest development as one preparing to do his full
-share of the world’s work. Strive to make your life rich in meaning,
-full of the power to serve, fine and true in its inner quality, and
-that fundamental purpose will so dominate your interest in athletics as
-to render your bodily exercise profitable both for the life that now is
-and for that larger life that lies ahead.</p>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="III">III<br />
-THE FRATERNITY QUESTION</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>The sentiment of love between persons of the opposite sex has
-monopolized the popular interest, while other fine forms of human
-relationship have failed of their due recognition. The feeling of
-friendship between persons of the same sex has a profound significance.
-The friendship of Damon and Pythias and that of David and Jonathan
-have been sung by the poets and the memory of them perpetuated in the
-rituals of well known fraternal orders in such a way as to make them
-classic.</p>
-
-<p>It is good for us to know and to love those with whom the question of
-sex, with its mysterious attractions and repulsions, does not enter
-in. The woman who cares little for other women, who is only happy when
-she is talking with men, or the man who is so much of a “ladies’ man”
-as to be ill at<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span> ease when thrown for an hour exclusively with men, is
-mentally, if not morally, diseased. It is good for the souls of men
-to be knit with the souls of their fellows; it is fitting that women
-should know and enjoy other women.</p>
-
-<p>It is the need for that association which lies at the root of the
-almost countless fraternities found in all our cities. In searching
-out names and mysterious forms for them all, men have gone clear over
-the border into what is both fantastic and foolish. The secrecy of
-these societies is not to be taken too seriously&mdash;as a rule it is
-mere dust thrown in the eyes of the uninitiated. The members laugh
-in their sleeves knowing how little the “secrets” amount to, but the
-organizations offer opportunity for social fellowship in a way to
-satisfy a wide-spread desire.</p>
-
-<p>The same tendency, with some additional leaning to clannishness and
-to the love of mystery found in most young people, is evidenced by
-the Greek letter fraternities in the colleges and in many of the
-high schools. These have been in operation for more than a quarter
-of a century and they<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span> have not yet by any means so justified their
-existence as to win the cordial support of the best educational
-authorities. There is still “the fraternity question,” with a big
-interrogation point after it, put there by parents, teachers, and
-citizens, and by many of the young people themselves as they grow wiser.</p>
-
-<p>I speak of this matter as a fraternity man. I have been initiated; I
-have worn a “pin,” at such odd times as my “best girl” did not happen
-to be wearing it. I know the mysterious significance attaching to the
-“grip” when one student meets another and taking him by the little
-finger pulls it surreptitiously nine times to the left. I have been
-through all this, for I am a member of Alpha Eta of Sigma Chi. What
-I say, therefore, is not spoken in that prejudice which sometimes
-attaches to the utterances of the “anti-frat” man who sees it all from
-the outside and comes up hot, perhaps, from some hard-fought campaign
-where the line was closely drawn between “frats” and “anti-frats.”</p>
-
-<p>I speak also with a deep sense of the importance of the question. The
-principal of the high school in my own city, which has<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span> an enrolment
-of twelve hundred pupils, said to me recently when I had been asked to
-speak on fraternities, “You have a big subject on your hands.” He spoke
-as an educator watching the lives of that large company of young people
-five days in the week. I speak as a pastor and a teacher of spiritual
-values and I agree with him that it is “a big subject.”</p>
-
-<p>The power of intimate association for good or ill&mdash;no nation under
-heaven, Christian or pagan, has failed to condense its observation and
-experience on that point into some terse proverb. “He that walketh with
-wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed,”
-said the old Hebrew. “Evil company doth corrupt good manners,” said
-the Greek, and Paul quoted it in his letter to the Greek Christians
-at Corinth. “Talent is perfected in solitude, but character is formed
-in the stream of the world,” is the German of it. “Live with wolves
-and you will learn to howl,” the Spanish proverb has it; and in homely
-Holland fashion, the Dutch proverb is, “Lie down with dogs and you will
-get up with fleas.” In these terse sayings, elegant and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span> inelegant,
-the race has recorded its judgment as to the power of association.
-The fraternity promotes certain forms of most intimate association at
-a crucial period and thus enters powerfully for good or ill into the
-lives of young people.</p>
-
-<p>There are certain credits to be entered in making up a trial balance
-for the fraternity. It marks out a definite group of special friends
-for closer association. One cannot become intimately acquainted
-with the whole human race or even with as much of it as happens to
-be present in a large high school or college. Whether it is done
-in organized or in unorganized ways, there must come a process of
-selection by which one’s social interests are kept to a manageable size.</p>
-
-<p>The fraternity gives opportunity for learning to subordinate the purely
-personal and selfish interests to the larger good. The fraternity man
-has in view something beyond his own individual pleasure or success.
-He is taught to aid some fraternity brother who has good prospects,
-in athletics, in a race for some class honor, or in debate. Mutual
-admiration, a common enthusiasm, a corporate ambition and the spirit
-of cooperation,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span> are thus developed in the whole group by a feeling of
-common interest.</p>
-
-<p>The fraternity brings the lower class man into closer touch with
-upper class men. The first year man is not a mere unbaked freshman to
-the juniors and seniors in his fraternity. They have an interest in
-him, a responsibility for him, because of his fraternity connection.
-These organizations thus cause the line of social cleavage to run
-perpendicularly as well as horizontally. My own life will be forever
-different by reason of the friendship of two upper class men in my
-university days. Such friendships are wholesome for both the younger
-and the older men.</p>
-
-<p>The fraternity serves as a convenient basis for fellowship when a man
-visits another college or when alumni return to their alma mater. The
-house of one’s own fraternity is open to him, and affords opportunity
-for him to come into touch with the eager, throbbing life about him.
-The alumni of a chapter may also exert a real influence for good upon
-the resident members of the fraternity, because of this continued
-association.</p>
-
-<p>The fraternity house offers a useful center<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span> for returning social
-courtesies. The students, in their class-day spreads and at other
-times, may thus indicate their appreciation of social attentions
-received from townspeople.</p>
-
-<p>All this can be said and said heartily. It may seem that I am making
-out such a strong case for the fraternities that any criticism offered
-later will be of no avail. It would be unfair, however, not to state
-the advantages as strongly as one’s own judgment would approve.</p>
-
-<p>But there are certain offsets in fraternity life which must come up
-for an equally frank and thorough consideration. There is a constant
-tendency in any fraternity house to spend more time and more money
-than many a student can afford. No fellow of spirit can allow others
-to treat him, take him to the theater, show him all manner of
-attentions without feeling an obligation resting upon him to return
-these courtesies. A few men in a fraternity with rich fathers, large
-allowances, and warm hearts, can, with no sort of wrong intent, set the
-pace in such a way as to demoralize a whole group of young men. The
-man of modest means and simple<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span> habits, dependent upon a hard-working
-father for his education and for all the comforts of his home life,
-is apparently forced into a gait which it is wrong for him to take.
-He does not intend to be mean or cruel, but he adopts a scale of
-expenditure which he cannot afford; he runs into debt; he becomes
-unjust to his parents, who are making sacrifices for his education.
-It requires more grit than nine out of ten young fellows of the high
-school or college age possess, to stand up and oppose the course of
-action which leads to these ill-advised “good times.”</p>
-
-<p>It is to be regretted that simplicity is so overborne in all our social
-life by the elaborate and the expensive. Business men, husbands,
-and fathers, are being killed off, before their time, by nervous
-prostration, heart disease, or exhaustion of other vital organs, in
-making the necessary money to keep it up. Society women, mothers and
-daughters, are being sent to sanitariums and rest cures by reason of
-the strenuous tasks imposed upon them in devising and arranging new and
-elaborate ways of spending the money. What a caricature much of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span> it is
-upon real social life, which ought to be a joy, a recreation, a means
-of relief from serious work, but never a burdensome, exacting labor!</p>
-
-<p>The young girl in high school gives a luncheon for her fraternity
-elaborate enough for a society woman of fifty. The boys plan for a good
-time on a scale which might indicate that they were solid business men
-well on in their prime, with fortunes of their own earning completely
-at their disposal. The whole tendency of it is bad and only bad. The
-simple pleasures are the best for everybody and especially so for young
-people. The tuxedo is not a suitable garment for a five-year-old boy
-even though his father is able to buy him a hundred of them; and some
-of our social activity is quite as ridiculous as such a coat would be
-on the youngster. It rears up a set of young people who, having tasted
-it all and become blasé before their time, are now nervously intent
-upon some new sensation by more startling and stimulating forms of
-social life. And all the while the simple, serious, quiet interests of
-education have been suffering a loss irreparable.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span></p>
-
-<p>There is also the tendency in most fraternity houses toward a wasteful
-use of time. Where there is a lounging room with its open fire, the
-university colors, pillows, pictures, trophies scattered about, and a
-group of jolly good fellows always accessible, it is not easy to turn
-one’s back upon it and sit alone digging on some difficult subject. Eve
-holding out an apple or even a ripe peach in the garden of Eden suffers
-by comparison when placed alongside the temptations thus offered to a
-student whose will may already be a trifle lame.</p>
-
-<p>I recall a certain fraternity house which I watched for a number of
-years. Splendid fellows they were&mdash;my heart warms within me as I think
-of their faces! It was always Indian summer there&mdash;cigarette smoke
-until one could scarcely see through it. It would not be entirely true
-to say that one could cut it with a knife; some stronger implement
-would have been needed, an axe maybe&mdash;perhaps “the Stanford axe.” A
-number of the boys were keen and the jolly talk was sometimes equal to
-a page from “Life” or “Fliegende Blätter.”</p>
-
-<p>But men cannot make perpetual chimneys<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span> of themselves in order to
-furnish such a volume of smoke or become perpetual jokers without
-imperiling certain other interests, much more important than smoke
-or jokes. And that same fraternity, genuinely attractive though it
-was in its social aspects, became the banner house on the campus for
-furnishing men who suddenly went home at the end of the term, because
-“their fathers needed them in business,” or because “their health would
-not stand the strain of college study”&mdash;those graceful explanations
-which sound well and deceive nobody, either at the college end or the
-home end of the line. The constant tendency in all fraternity life
-is to spend upon pleasure more time and more money than the average
-student can justly afford.</p>
-
-<p>There is furthermore the tendency to a narrow exclusiveness which
-sometimes degenerates into actual snobbishness. This is especially true
-of the high-school fraternities. The spirit of narrow clannishness is
-stronger then than later. Breadth of sympathy, which ought to be the
-spirit of our public schools, is thus destroyed. The girl is tempted to
-think that, out of hundreds of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span> girls in high school, only the little
-group of twenty in her own fraternity are fine, choice girls. When the
-social interests are thus being “cribbed, cabined, and confined,” it
-is not a long step to the spirit of that bigot who prayed, “O Lord,
-bless me and my wife, my son John and his wife, us four and no more.”
-The “us four and no more” attitude is apparent to thoughtful observers
-in almost all of the high-school fraternities. The larger loyalty and
-broader sympathy is overborne by a narrowed social interest.</p>
-
-<p>It is the judgment of an ever-increasing number of men at the head
-of the secondary schools that the high-school fraternities at least
-are nuisances. This is their verdict in spite of the fact that many
-of the best students are members of them, striving to make them
-helpful, not hurtful. But when the losses and the gains are accurately
-computed, the losses seem to far outrank the gains. The spirit of
-social exclusiveness is opposed to the spirit of our public schools and
-encourages the development of qualities that have no rightful place in
-American young people.</p>
-
-<p>Some high-school principals are non-committal,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span> but more of them
-frankly utter their condemnation of the fraternity as prejudicial to
-the legitimate work of the school; as weakening the more inclusive
-class loyalty and as offering an effective temptation to social
-dissipation. They may not hope as yet to carry all high-school students
-with them in this judgment, but if they could line up all parents who
-believe that fraternities tend to alienate young people from their
-homes, all high-school teachers who deplore the evil which results from
-loyalty to a part instead of to the whole school, and all those who,
-having advanced to college, look back upon those earlier fraternities
-as cases of premature development, the young people would be amazed at
-the verdict against the high-school fraternity!</p>
-
-<p>We are constantly hearing the assertion that it is difficult for
-girls to complete the high-school course without breaking down. Under
-anything like normal conditions such a claim should be preposterous!
-There are good reasons for believing that the nervous collapse is
-due less to faithful study than to the unnecessary excitements of
-fraternity<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span> rivalry and to the irregular hours and social dissipation
-consequent upon fraternity life.</p>
-
-<p>The right place for the fraternity is in the university where boys
-and girls have become young men and young women, better able to guard
-such organizations against these abuses; better able to see to it that
-no barriers are built between them and those whom they ought to know;
-better able to extend their generous admiration to those not of their
-particular clique. In the university large numbers of students are away
-from home, as is not the case in high school&mdash;and where it is wisely
-controlled, the fraternity may be made a center for the deepening of
-wholesome intimacies, in a way to render it a useful educational force.</p>
-
-<p>It is well for every student to postpone the choice of a fraternity
-until near the end of the first year. Before he joins, he will need to
-look the various chapters over carefully and learn more about them than
-appears in the shape of the pin or in the color of the flag at the top
-of the house. He will want to ask what kind of men belong; what are
-their ambitions and aims; what is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span> their rank and standing in college;
-whether their habits are clean, sound, wholesome, or enervating and
-shady; what is the moral atmosphere about their house; what sort of
-alumni have been sent out. He will only join one fraternity and he
-wishes to make no mistake in that choice.</p>
-
-<p>The habit of “rushing” men for membership has become inexpressibly
-silly. The heads of weak men are turned by the social attentions thrust
-upon them and the stronger men are frequently repelled by this overdone
-eagerness. One would suppose the various chapters would be ashamed
-to exhibit such anxiety to have men join as would seem to indicate a
-sense of their own weakness. Let the fraternities make themselves worth
-joining and a sufficient number of promising candidates to fill all the
-lists will be forthcoming! Let any student make himself worth having
-and the door will be open into a desirable house whenever he is ready
-to enter it.</p>
-
-<p>It would be well if each student made his fraternity experience
-preparatory to the larger social status into which he will enter as a
-mature man&mdash;a status where the narrow<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span> exclusiveness of the snob finds
-the door shut in its face by men of sense. If he has really gained a
-genuinely social spirit, he will be better able to take his place in
-the business world as one ready to aid in building it upon the basis of
-honor, integrity and mutual consideration. If he has rightly learned
-the lessons of fraternity life he ought to be a better citizen, ready
-to work in harmony with men who are bent upon making the State an
-organized expression of wise and just principles. He ought to be fitted
-to be a better churchman, making that institution a worthy expression
-of the organized spirit of reverence toward God, of fellowship with
-men, and of helpfulness for all good causes. And he will best attain
-all these high aims if, in the supreme relationship of his life,
-his own soul is knit with that “friend that sticketh closer than a
-brother.” The Master of men came to found a fraternal kingdom of which
-there shall be no end, and in that kingdom every man of fraternal
-spirit should have standing.</p>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="IV">IV<br />
-THE RELIGION OF A COLLEGE MAN</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-<p>The leading notes in the religious life of a student will naturally be
-intellectual and ethical. The mind is feeling its way out among the
-immensities which have come into view as childhood is left behind. It
-is seeking to know things as they are, learning how to bear itself
-in thought toward the natural and the supernatural, the earthly and
-the heavenly, the present and the future. It is no longer content
-with a child’s faith received on the word of another; it has not yet
-found the repose of tried and mature conviction. It is in process of
-shaping its beliefs about God, about the world, about the Bible, about
-prayer, about a future life. The college man is taken out-of-doors
-intellectually where the walls are all down, and his religious life,
-like the other sections of his nature,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span> will naturally show signs
-of restlessness. “The religion of youth is commonly a religion of
-rationalism&mdash;the intellectual life is just starting on its long journey
-in all the exhilaration and freshness of the morning.”</p>
-
-<p>The ethical note in the college man’s religion will also be clear and
-strong. Young people in sound health are commonly rigorous and even
-merciless in their moral judgments. They are oftentimes unduly critical
-touching the shortcomings of others. They are confused as to many of
-the moral sanctions and uncertain as to what distinctions are essential
-and what are merely conventional. They have a desire to know what is
-right and why it is right, and they wish to discover the motive and
-stimulus which will render them strong in doing the right. The best
-results are always attained by taking into account lines of interest
-already established, rather than by cutting squarely across the grain,
-and the most effective approach to the heart of the student can be made
-by observing these two leading notes in his religious life.</p>
-
-<p>I am confirmed in this view by this bit of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span> personal experience.
-For six years I lectured every Monday during the second semester at
-Stanford University, giving courses on “The Ethics of Christ,” a study
-in the four Gospels, on “The Life and Literature of the Early Hebrews,”
-a study in the Old Testament, on “Social Ethics,” a study of moral
-values in the various relationships of modern life. These courses
-were offered as any courses would be. A full syllabus was used and
-much collateral reading suggested; a monthly written quiz and a final
-examination were held; credit was given for work done as in any other
-department. The courses were popular though the requirements brought a
-sufficient number of failures each year to keep the thought of a day of
-judgment before the mind of the class. There was evident throughout a
-strong, healthy interest in the intellectual problems of faith, in the
-interpretation of scripture, in the ethical questions discussed, and
-in the intelligent application of moral principles to modern life. The
-sight of those young faces and the reading of the papers offered have
-helped to confirm me in the view that the two characteristic<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span> qualities
-of the college man’s religion are those already indicated.</p>
-
-<p>The expression of that religious interest will take many forms. It
-will utter itself in rational worship. The clear-headed student will
-not continue to do things which seem to him meaningless or useless.
-There are church services in which he will refuse to participate, but
-sincere, reverent, and rational worship will commend itself to him as a
-suitable expression of that deeper something growing within his heart.
-The upward look, the outward reach of a higher aspiration, the need of
-a hand-clasp which is not of earth, all these appeal to him! Let the
-music, the lessons, the prayers, and the atmosphere of the church be
-made a true, good, and beautiful expression of intelligent worship and
-the thoughtful student will rejoice in the aid it gives him in working
-out his problems.</p>
-
-<p>The words of Thomas Carlyle addressed to the students in the University
-of Edinburgh are in point: “No nation that did not contemplate this
-wonderful universe with an awe-stricken and reverential feeling
-that there is an omnipotent, all-wise, and all-virtuous<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span> Being
-superintending all men and all the interests in it&mdash;no such nation has
-ever done much nor has any man who has forgotten God.” In much blunter
-fashion the Bible says, “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all
-the nations that forget God.” The word “hell” can be spelled with four
-letters, but to spell that for which it stands, the moral failure,
-the personal disappointment, the pain, and the distress of spiritual
-defeat, the bitter regret and remorse over years wasted by turning away
-from the Highest, would require all the letters of the alphabet and the
-sum total of human experience. In order to do justly and to love mercy,
-we need to stand humbly before God as the one entitled to our supreme
-and final allegiance. Where all this is made plain in a provision for
-worship which is rational, beautiful, and helpful, the college man will
-find in it a natural expression for his religious life.</p>
-
-<p>The religious interest will also express itself in the study of
-religious truth. Courses in ethics, and in philosophy where it relates
-to life and is not all clouds and mist; courses in the Hebrew and
-other sacred literatures;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span> courses in the history of religion and in
-comparative religion, may all be made genuinely spiritual exercises.
-The students are aided by such work in knowing that truth which sets
-mind and heart free from whatever hinders growth and usefulness.</p>
-
-<p>Still more directly, the courses of Bible study offered through the
-Christian associations in our universities become wholesome expressions
-of religious interest. The history and literature of the Hebrews,
-the life of Christ, the story of the early Church, studied with the
-system, the thoroughness, and the fearlessness found in other lines of
-investigation, afford a genuine ministry to the spiritual life. Many
-students who lose their Christian faith in the colleges suffer this
-loss because the mind has gone ahead in science, in philosophy, and
-in history, but has lagged back in religion. It has been belated in
-the childish conceptions gained in early life. Such students sometimes
-throw away their Christian faith and habits, and then wonder that the
-rest of us are so stupid and credulous. As a matter of fact they have
-simply failed to make the advance and readjustment which serious and
-growing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span> minds habitually make on their way from childhood to maturity.
-The thorough study of religious truth, then, as an aid to a rational
-restatement of one’s personal faith, becomes another worthy expression
-of religious life and a useful source of culture for the spiritual
-nature.</p>
-
-<p>The religious life of the student will also utter itself in a personal
-quest for righteousness. No life ever comes to have that which the
-world really trusts and values until it can say in its whole purpose,
-“I do these certain things not because they are easy or common or funny
-or politic; I do them because they are right.” If religion is to enter
-into its own in any educational institution it will be necessary to
-have a great deal more downright honesty in college life than there
-is in many institutions of learning at this time. The sneer that “in
-college and in the custom house” it is all right to lie and to cheat
-if one can do it without being caught, has had much to justify it. The
-student who asks to be excused from a college engagement because he is
-too sick to work, but who will go to a ball and dance every number on
-the program, or to a football<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span> game and yell until his throat is raw,
-is simply a liar! The student who copies from another’s examination
-paper and signs his name to it as though it were his own, is a cheat
-and a forger. The man who steals spoons from some hotel or restaurant
-in the town for his fraternity table is not funny; he is simply a
-thief and an outlaw! The student who spends on vice or dissipation,
-money furnished by his father for term bills, entering them up in his
-financial statement as “sundries” or what not, is a whelp and a cad, no
-matter how good looking he is or how well his dress suit fits him! Dirt
-is dirt no matter how we may adorn it with lace; a lie is a lie, and
-theft is theft, no matter how they are smoothed over with fine words!
-There ought to be in all college life rigid, unsympathetic honesty,
-like that of the bank or the counting-room. The perpetual effort after
-personal righteousness should stand as an abiding expression of the
-religious life.</p>
-
-<p>The genuinely religious spirit will show itself in mutual helpfulness.
-The Christian service rendered by students can best be rendered in
-terms of student life. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span> readiness to lend a hand to some fellow
-working his way through; the thoughtfulness and unselfishness shown
-to a student who is sick; the organized usefulness of the Christian
-Associations in meeting first-year students and aiding them in those
-strange first days on the campus; the ability to exert steadily a
-wholesome influence on the side of what is right and wise, without
-self-consciousness or ostentation&mdash;all these are forms of Christian
-helpfulness natural and appropriate to student life.</p>
-
-<p>During an epidemic of typhoid fever at Stanford University some years
-ago the students stood together and insisted that every patient unable
-to provide himself with a trained nurse should have, through their
-cooperation, the best care which medical science could afford. They
-gladly gave up the senior dance and other social entertainments and
-receptions, in order to devote the money to this unselfish purpose.
-They raised in various ways among themselves more than five thousand
-dollars for this practical form of helpfulness. “By this shall all men
-know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” This
-was the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span> original test of Christian discipleship proposed by Christ
-himself, and none better has been found.</p>
-
-<p>The nurture of the college man’s religion will come mainly in two ways:
-first, through fellowship with a larger group of Christian people.
-“Gather two or three together in my name,” Christ said, “and there am I
-in the midst.” He thus indicated the social character of the religion
-he taught and suggested the help to be found in wholesome fellowship.
-The actual experience of mankind has strongly endorsed his claim.</p>
-
-<p>The best fellowship will naturally be found in some one of the churches
-of the community. The student will find there friends as well as
-worship and instruction; he may find also his place in some concrete
-activity for the progress of the kingdom. Oliver Wendell Holmes used
-to say in explanation of his habit of church attendance, “There is a
-little plant within me called reverence which needs watering at least
-once a week.” He might also have added that it needed the warm southern
-exposure of meeting in spiritual fellowship those who were similarly
-bent on noble living, and that it found wholesome<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span> expression through
-some useful participation in the activities of a parish church.</p>
-
-<p>Each student needs the church even more than the church needs him. He
-will learn by its aid to more wisely and more conscientiously use the
-opportunities which Sunday offers. The day of the Lord ought to be a
-day of turning aside to see the bushes that burn with divine fire. The
-habit of Sunday study is a mistake, physically, mentally, and morally.
-The pioneers who crossed the plains in ’49, driving six days in the
-week and resting one, reached California ahead of those who drove
-straight along day in and day out, week in and week out; and the cattle
-of the men who observed the method of a regularly recurring rest day,
-arrived in better condition. The one who said, “Labor six days and
-do all thy work,” holding the seventh apart for rest and spiritual
-opportunity, knew something about the muscles and the nerves as well as
-about the souls of men. Sunday held apart from the ordinary grind of
-college life and used as a time of privilege for the higher nature to
-have its undisputed chance to grow, becomes a useful factor in normal
-development.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span></p>
-
-<p>The religious life of the student will be deepened and strengthened
-most of all through personal fellowship with Jesus Christ. To know
-him who stands revealed in brief on the pages of the four gospels and
-revealed at large in the splendid history into which he has built
-himself during the last nineteen hundred years, is to gain the utmost
-help for character-building that the world has thus far found.</p>
-
-<p>We know Jesus Christ, not only by the study of his life and teachings,
-but by sharing in his purpose for the race and by participation in
-his spirit. It is this that enables us to see life whole, and to put
-ourselves in the way of gaining a fuller measure of that life complete.
-Through our fellowship with him we come to the point where we see life
-in its deeper, hidden attitudes, as well as on its surface; we see its
-upper, unseen relations as well as those upon its own level; we see
-its ultimate future, beyond the event we call death, as well as the
-pressing claims of the immediate present. We see life whole through
-Christ and by our personal fellowship with him we are increasingly
-enabled to possess that rounded life for ourselves.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span></p>
-
-<p>There is one supreme reason why every college man should be a
-Christian&mdash;the final Christianity is not yet here. It is waiting for
-the contribution of thought, of spiritual experience and of useful
-activity, which the generation to which you belong is in a position
-to make. Jesus had, and still has, many things to say, which the
-world even yet is not able to bear. It is for each man, by personal
-consecration and individual effort, to so weave his activities into the
-unfinished story of the world’s redemption as to aid in bringing about
-the true attitude toward those unseen things which are eternal.</p>
-
-<p>College men are eager to make personal experiment of other unseen
-forces. They love to lay bare hidden secrets by the use of the Roentgen
-ray; they rejoice in sending and receiving messages by wireless
-telegraphy; they cluster around an experiment which displays the
-mysterious attributes of that strange substance called radium; they
-show themselves eager to witness the wonders of liquid air. They should
-be no less eager to know by genuine personal experience the efficacy
-of prayer, the power of faith, the joy of spiritual renewal through<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span>
-divine grace. They should be no less eager to send and receive those
-messages which come and go between God and man, when the heavens are
-open and the angels are ascending and descending upon the sons of
-men. You have, each one of you, a clear responsibility and obligation
-in this matter. Gain for yourself an intelligent faith; show to the
-world one more consistent Christian life; render to his cause your own
-personal quota of competent service, and in doing this you will not
-only be spiritually enriched yourself, you will aid in bringing in that
-greater Christianity which is yet to be.</p>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="V">V<br />
-THE CHOICE OF A LIFE-WORK</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-<p>The man who said, “I am doing a great work, I cannot come down,” was
-laying bricks. But the bricks went into a wall, and the wall surrounded
-the capital city of his country as its main defense, and the city was
-Jerusalem, the headquarters of the Hebrew people! The moral history of
-that people has woven itself into the story of the world’s redemption,
-as has no other history on earth. Its writings furnish us the best
-book we have: its Messiah, born in Bethlehem of Judea, has become the
-world’s Saviour; and the high claim that “Salvation is of the Jews,” is
-well sustained by the facts. Simple deeds are sometimes far-reaching
-in their divine significance. Laying bricks in a wall which protected
-the city out of which came the world’s Messiah, was surely a splendid
-occupation.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span> The man was well within the facts, when he cried to those
-who tried to interrupt him, “I am doing a great work, I cannot come
-down.”</p>
-
-<p>I quote these words as indicating the sense of vocation, the honest
-pride in his work, the personal appreciation of its wider meanings,
-the safeguard it affords against unworthy ideals, the means of culture
-it opens for moral character, which ought to be found in every one’s
-attitude toward his life-work. Alas for you, if you cannot all say, by
-and by, what the bricklayer said!</p>
-
-<p>Some college men unfortunately allow themselves to be driven into
-this or that occupation by force of circumstances. They forget that
-college training ought to fit us to oppose circumstances if need be and
-resolutely work out some splendid purpose in the teeth of opposition.</p>
-
-<p>Some college men drift into anything that offers&mdash;they must do
-something to earn their bread and they catch the nearest way. This
-puts them on a level with the hungry dog looking for a bone and facing
-in whatever direction he smells meat. Such men are opportunists all
-their lives, taking whatever<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span> offers, even though on the face of it a
-temporary makeshift, trusting that when one job is finished another may
-turn up. They are like so many fleas, jumping from job to job, wherever
-they see a chance for a good bite. They fail to exercise that power of
-choice and determination which ought to prevail in the selection of
-that which is to claim six-sevenths of one’s time and interest during
-all his working years.</p>
-
-<p>There is spiritual value in any legitimate calling, and this
-satisfying return is open and possible to every college man bent on
-doing square work. “To every man his work”; <i>his</i> by personal
-fitness; <i>his</i> by the sense of fulfilling a divine purpose in
-selecting it; <i>his</i> in the feeling that it belongs to him! Some
-men are called of God to the Christian ministry and others are no less
-called of God to teach or to heal or to build. God’s calls announce
-themselves in a variety of ways. The shining vision that came to Paul
-on the Damascus road or the mighty spiritual impulse which visited
-the heart of President Finney of Oberlin as he struggled in the woods
-alone, are forms of the divine call, but there are other forms equally
-valid.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span> The call of the world’s need for some special work and your
-own consciousness of power to render that service will bring you a
-genuine sense of vocation as you gird yourself for it. There are many
-intimations as to the place one should take and hold, which may have
-all the compelling force of a vision from on high.</p>
-
-<p>But to speak more closely of the matter in hand, let me name some of
-the considerations which must enter into the choice of a life-work. I
-can only speak in the most general way, addressing as I do young men of
-varying abilities and temperaments. If one should discuss the value or
-attractiveness of any particular vocation, the personal element and the
-question of individual fitness would instantly come in. Some general
-considerations however may prove suggestive.</p>
-
-<p>It is best not to make one’s decision too early or too rigidly. The
-average young man is not sufficiently acquainted either with himself
-or with the vocations to make his final decision during his last year
-in high school, or during his first year in college. One of the chief
-values of college training is that it discovers the man to himself.
-You<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span> have scarcely a bowing acquaintance with yourself when you only
-know yourself as a freshman&mdash;wait and meet this same fellow within,
-as a sophomore, as a junior, as a senior. There are unsuspected
-capabilities in him which training and experience will bring out.</p>
-
-<p>Wait also until you learn more about the vocations themselves. In
-making choice of a wife it is well to become acquainted with a number
-of young ladies before you settle down to an exclusive intimacy with
-one. There are other girls who can look sweet and say pleasant things
-too; it is not wise to fall so completely in love with the first
-dainty bit of white muslin you see as to exclude other delightful
-associations. The law has its attractions, so has medicine, so has
-the ministry, so has the work of education, or the business career,
-or the work of an architect, a chemist, or a forester. It is wise not
-to conclude too early in life that the attractions of this particular
-vocation shut out all the rest from consideration. Look yourself over
-and look the field over with great care at least a hundred times before
-making a final choice. It will be a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span> sorry thing if you start out to
-unlock the door of your future with the wrong key.</p>
-
-<p>Consider the whole man in your choice. It is not simply what you carry
-home in your pocket, as a result of your day’s work and of all the days
-of work, but what you carry away in mind and heart as well; what you
-carry away in the gratitude and appreciation of your fellow men; what
-you gain in the beneficent influence you may exert upon the community
-through your calling. Ten thousand a year is a splendid return from
-the investment of one’s personal ability, but there are other returns
-which may be added to the figures named in your contract in such a way
-as to make the money consideration seem the small end of it. And there
-are other returns which may make it seem as if the man who received
-the ten thousand a year had worked all his life for meager pay. Many a
-saloon-keeper has made ten times as much money out of his calling as
-the college professor or the clergyman makes out of his, but when the
-books are opened, other books as well as the cash book, the comparative
-values of the vocations will stand revealed.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span></p>
-
-<p>The young man may be doing some honest and useful work, but without the
-sense of joy or pride in it. In such event it fails to render him back
-a full return. The culture of one’s own best life must come with his
-ordinary work or else the man is sacrificed to the profession. We are
-not here to be effective machines for grinding out sermons or briefs,
-operations or lectures, bargains or manufactured products: we are
-here to be men, strong, fine, aspiring, and useful men. The whole man
-therefore must be considered, his body, his brain, his heart, and his
-soul, as well as his purse when you make selection of his life-work.
-What you make out of your vocation is an important question, but what
-it makes out of you is tenfold more important!</p>
-
-<p>Make up your mind that in the long run your work will be estimated
-by its genuine utility. Success comes not by luck, but by law. The
-apparent exceptions, like four-leaf clovers, are not sufficiently
-numerous to disturb the principle. It is three-leaf clover that feeds
-the cows and fills the haymows. It is ordinary industry, fidelity,
-persistence, and efficiency that bring the largest<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span> measure of abiding
-success. Your work will be estimated by its utility in satisfying human
-need.</p>
-
-<p>This principle well understood, thoroughly believed, and constantly
-acted upon, will be of untold value to you. Canfield says to the
-young men at Columbia, “Measure your daily work by the efficiency and
-completeness with which it meets the needs of your fellow men.” You
-must measure it thus, for that is the way the world will estimate it.
-You will not be able to live by your wits; you must live by your work
-and your worth. Therefore, in making selection, consider carefully the
-usefulness of the work you choose, for men are like medicines, when
-they show themselves useful, they will be used.</p>
-
-<p>The idea that success comes by luck or pull, or chance, is a fool’s
-idea. Some such instances occur, but they are not even so common as
-four-leaf clover&mdash;the man who starts out in life depending upon them is
-more foolish than the farmer who would rely upon four-leaf clover for
-his hay crop. And you will find as you come to live with him on close
-terms that the world is a very sagacious old fellow in his estimate of
-values.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span> He has wonderful ability in discerning the real thing and in
-putting away shoddy. You cannot sell him gold bricks straight along&mdash;if
-now and then one is palmed off on the unwary, still they never become
-a staple quoted in the market reports. Good clay bricks in the long
-run are more profitable. Your work will be estimated, and estimated
-accurately, by its utility in satisfying genuine human need. The
-intelligent observance of this principle in making your selection will
-introduce that spirit of service which ennobles the whole effort.</p>
-
-<p>May your choice of vocation be so wise and right that you will be
-content to have it dominate all minor matters in your life! Horace
-Bushnell used to speak to Yale men about “the expulsive power of a new
-affection.” The love for a pure woman making all impurity hateful and
-disgusting; the love for some man of integrity making all lying and
-dishonesty seem foul and mean; the love for God making all wrong-doing
-repulsive! So there comes into the life, by the right choice of
-vocation, a supreme interest and delight in one’s work, which drives
-out all the low, cheap, mean things that would<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span> hinder it. “I am doing
-a great work,” the man cries; “I am content to be absorbed in it and it
-is morally impossible for me to come down to the trivial or the base.”</p>
-
-<p>The famous Vienna surgeon, <abbr title="Doctor">Dr.</abbr> Lorenz, at a banquet during his visit
-to this country, drank nothing but water. The man who sat next him at
-table, knowing the love which so many Germans have for wine and beer,
-asked the doctor if he were a teetotaler. The reply was: “I do not
-know that I could be called that; I am not in any sense a temperance
-agitator. But I am a surgeon and must keep my brain clear, my nerves
-steady, my muscles tense.” Here spoke the voice of science on one of
-its higher levels as to the effect of stimulants! Here spoke also
-the voice of one who finds splendid moral culture in his devotion to
-his life-work. “I am doing a great work, known on two continents and
-beyond,” he seemed to say; “therefore I cannot, for the sake of an
-abnormal sensation, come down to tickle my stomach, or tamper with my
-nerves or drug my brain by the use of stimulants.”</p>
-
-<p>Make such a selection of your life-work as will enable you to regard it
-as the main<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span> expression of your spiritual life. Every man, no matter
-what the special form of his employment may be, can so relate himself
-to it and so strive to relate it and the results which flow from it,
-to the life of the community as to make his ordinary work the main
-utterance of his deeper nature. There will be the expression of his
-spirituality in worship, in directly religious activity, in other forms
-of effort, but the main expression should lie in that useful work which
-claims six-sevenths of his time and strength.</p>
-
-<p>“Give us this day our daily bread,” the Master said in the model
-prayer. It ought to be the daily utterance of every serious man’s life.
-Utter it with your lips alone and your body will starve to death! Utter
-it with hands and brain alone, and your soul will famish! But utter
-it with your entire nature, hands, brain, heart, and soul, addressing
-themselves to God, to the resources God has placed at your call, and to
-the need of the community for the service you can render, and then your
-prayer will bring the bread which feeds the total nature up to its full
-strength! Industry, intelligence<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span> and moral purpose, cooperating with
-the divine bounty and with the needs of men, will work out the highest
-type of character and make one’s daily employment sacramental in its
-influence upon his own heart and upon the lives of others.</p>
-
-<p>I have not spoken of the claims of the various vocations, but let me
-utter one last word, as strong as I can make it, for the Christian
-ministry. There are splendid rewards and honors to be won today at
-the bar, in medicine, in the work of education, in commerce, in
-manufacture, in engineering. Into all these callings strong and useful
-men are going in such numbers that there is no cry of need coming back.
-It is not so in the ministry. There is in every branch of the Church
-and in all the states of the Union, a loud and a sore cry for young men
-of sound health, good sense, trained intelligence, social sympathy,
-and genuine character, to enter the ministry and furnish the moral and
-spiritual leadership the country craves. Like the man of Macedonia the
-modern pulpit stands up and cries, “Come over into Macedonia, and help
-us.”</p>
-
-<p>If I can read my Church history aright<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span> there never was a time when
-the opportunities and the rewards of the ministry were so great. A
-man will earn less money in the ministry than the same degree of
-ability would command in other fields of labor, though congregations,
-especially in cities, were never so generous with their pastors as
-now. What he carries away in his purse, however, is only one of many
-rewards the vocation brings. In the Church today there is liberty of
-thought; in some branch of it every man desiring to aid his fellows in
-doing justly, in loving mercy and in walking humbly with God, can find
-a hearty welcome and a place to work. There is a wide-spread hunger
-on the part of the people for a competent and helpful interpretation
-of this literature in the Bible. There is a call for men who can
-intelligently and effectively apply Christian principles to modern
-conditions and problems. There is an abiding demand for men who can
-bring the eternal verities of the Spirit before their congregations
-with power, and offer strength, cheer, courage, and comfort to those
-who come up weary and heavy-laden out of the work of the week.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span></p>
-
-<p>And in return for this highest form of service any one can hope to
-render to his fellows, there is a mighty tide of appreciation and
-gratitude waiting to flow in upon the heart of the man who has been
-doing genuine, helpful service as a minister of Jesus Christ. The field
-is wide, the rewards are rich and perpetual, the opportunities are like
-wide-open and effectual doors, but the strong, wise, devoted laborers
-are all too few! You cannot anywhere on earth invest your life with
-more satisfaction to yourself, with a greater sense of serviceableness
-to your brother men, with a warmer sense of God’s own approving favor,
-than in the ministry of the modern Church.</p>
-
-<p>In selecting your life-work, you wish to consider the whole man, to
-estimate possible success by the utility of the service rendered,
-to have a vocation to which all minor interests shall bow in glad
-obedience, and to make it the supreme expression of your spiritual
-life! Does any work on earth so meet these requirements as does the
-Christian ministry? In your individual case, if the call of God, the
-recognized needs of the world, and the sense of spiritual obligation<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span>
-should bear you into that vocation, you would forever thank him that
-among all the good things in life he had given you the best! You
-would gladly put away all the allurements which might defeat your
-spiritual effectiveness! You would say, to all beholders, by sincere
-and whole-hearted devotion to your calling, “I am doing a great <span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span>work;
-I cannot come down.”</p>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="VI">VI<br />
-MORAL VENTURES</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-
-<p>The old saw, “Nothing venture, nothing have,” is true in mining; the
-miner who is unwilling to risk his money on a hole in the ground
-without knowing what may lie at the other end of it never grows rich.
-It is true in farming, for the man who is not willing to throw his seed
-wheat away on an uncertainty will never reap a harvest. It is true in
-business, for if no man had been willing to invest a dollar until he
-had something as sure as a government bond, we would not have reached
-first base yet in our commercial development. It is true in all the
-finer forms of outdoor sport. The plaintive cry goes up now and then
-from certain quarters against the idea of having any element of risk or
-danger in college athletics&mdash;such people had better stick to ping-pong
-or croquet, leaving the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span> other games to those of us who still have a
-sprinkling of red corpuscles in our veins. Nothing venture, nothing
-have!</p>
-
-<p>The same principle holds on the higher levels of moral life, for in
-all the more heroic forms of duty there is an element of risk. There
-are those who hold that right is nothing more than expediency and that
-wrong is simply a bad blunder. They can make quite a showing on paper.
-“Honesty is the best policy” in the long run, but it is a great deal
-more than that. Genuine honesty, financial, physical, intellectual,
-moral, the sort of honesty that adds two and two and gets four every
-time with never a fraction more nor less, is something more than good
-policy. It reaches down and takes hold of things fundamental in a way
-that mere policy never does, never can. And the fact stands that the
-saints and the seers, the heroes and the martyrs, the poets and the
-singers who have furnished inspiration and leadership, who have kindled
-the fire of moral passion in other breasts because it burned hot in
-their own, have been men to whom right was more than good policy. The
-moral leaders have been men who were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span> ready to take risks in doing
-certain things because they believed those things to be right.</p>
-
-<p>There is a certain short story which brings this point out in telling
-fashion. There was a king who lived “somewhere east of Suez, where
-there ain’t no Ten Commandments and the best is like the worst.” He
-was the fortunate possessor of a big stick and he wielded it with
-striking success. To celebrate one of his notable victories he caused
-to be made a huge, gold-plated image ninety feet high and eighteen feet
-broad. He set it up out on the campus and called upon the people of his
-realm to bow down and worship it. He coupled that invitation with the
-stimulating announcement that if any man refused he would be cast into
-a furnace of fire.</p>
-
-<p>Now with that alternative in plain sight, the popular, the politic,
-the expedient thing was to get down and worship the image, or at least
-to go through the form. “In Rome you must do as the Romans do”&mdash;so the
-moral jelly-fish who have never reached the vertebrate level are ever
-saying. With a golden image ninety feet high and eighteen<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span> feet broad,
-with the king leading off in the worship and all his captains and
-counselors, his rulers and his governors backing him up, what could any
-ordinary man do but conform!</p>
-
-<p>But there in that same country east of Suez there were three young
-fellows who knew about the Ten Commandments. They had learned them “by
-heart” as we say, which means much more than the mere ability to reel
-them off the tongue as one might repeat the multiplication table. It
-was a matter of principle with them not to worship images of any sort.
-When the multitude flopped down on its knees before the Thing that was
-ninety feet high the three young men stood erect.</p>
-
-<p>Their defiant action was promptly reported to the king, and with all
-the fury of an oriental despot he caused them to be brought before
-him and again threatened with the fiery furnace. Then there came from
-the lips of uncalculating youth those ringing words of moral defiance
-which cause the heart of every man under forty to leap, “Our God whom
-we serve is able to deliver us from the fiery furnace! We believe<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span> that
-he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king! <i>But if not</i>”&mdash;there
-is the nub of the statement and there I want to rest my whole weight in
-this address&mdash;“but if not, be it known unto thee, O king, we will not
-serve thy gods!” No matter what might come, they stood ready to take
-the risk of obedience to the highest they saw.</p>
-
-<p>The men who are really putting the world ahead in its business methods
-and in its civic affairs, in the quality of the ideals which dominate
-the work of education and in the standards which obtain in society at
-large, are not men who are always making shrewd calculations as to
-what will be most expedient. These royal leaders of the race sitting
-upon their respective thrones of spiritual usefulness endeavor to
-shape means to ends. They indulge in no sort of bluster or heroics.
-They seek as far as may be to avoid open disaster. They say frankly,
-“We believe that this course of action will bring us out all right,
-vindicating itself here and now, <i>but if not</i>,”&mdash;even though
-personal loss, popular opposition and apparent defeat seem to be the
-immediate result&mdash;“we will stand for the right as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span> we see the right.”
-These men ready to take risks in doing their duty in the face of heavy
-odds, ready to make the moral venture of fidelity to the highest ideals
-in sight, are the only men who are really worth while.</p>
-
-<p>Yonder on the coast at a life-saving station a group of determined
-men see a wreck off shore. They know all about the peril of the sea;
-it has been their major study for years. They quietly put on their
-storm clothes and their helmets, equipping themselves with all those
-appliances which experience has indicated as having value. They push
-their life-boat through the angry surf and are off. “We hope to bring
-those imperiled passengers and sailors safe to land and to get back
-ourselves,” they say; “but, if not, we go just the same. It is our
-duty.”</p>
-
-<p>Here in the crowded city a fireman climbs up the longest ladder
-available on the side of a burning building. Through a window on the
-fourth floor he catches a glimpse of the body of a woman who has been
-overcome by heat and smoke. He has been thoroughly trained by years
-of stern experience with city fires. He knows that the floor of that
-room may drop at any moment,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span> that, if he ventures in, he, too, may be
-overcome by heat and smoke; that if he leaves his ladder for one moment
-it may mean certain death. In the face of everything he climbs right in
-to rescue the woman. “I hope to get out all right,” he says; “but if
-not, here goes just the same. It’s my duty.”</p>
-
-<p>Now the world will never be saved from its sin and shame until the rest
-of us who wear no uniforms of any kind are ready for that same sort of
-moral venture in the realms of business and politics, in educational
-and in social life. Here and there are small groups of men entering
-actively into the political life of the city, the state, the nation,
-ready to know machine politicians from the inside rather than from the
-outside, willing to get down and be muddied with their mud, in order
-that better men and better methods may prevail. Here and there are
-small groups of men who know that some of the methods in the world
-of business are fatal to that larger prosperity in which all classes
-may equitably share and fatal to the human values at stake. They are
-not sitting on the bleachers idly criticizing the players&mdash;they are
-in the game, but intent<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span> upon playing it according to finer rules
-and nobler methods. They are standing oftentimes at great cost to
-themselves for ideals which were not born in the counting-room, which
-do not receive their most accurate appraisement from the entries in the
-cash-book. These groups of idealists are not large as yet, but they
-are significant&mdash;they are the hope of the nation. They are the saving
-remnant in our modern Israel.</p>
-
-<p>Only as men are ready to lash themselves like Ulysses of old to those
-enduring principles of righteousness and honor which stand erect
-like masts and sail on, no matter what alluring sirens of temporary
-expediency sing along the course, shall we make moral headway or at
-last make port.</p>
-
-<p>You have read the history of those brave Dutchmen at the siege of
-Leyden. They were besieged by the powerful army of Spain. They
-were fighting for the safety of their city, for the freedom of the
-Netherlands, and for those principles of civil and religious liberty
-which they held dear. Unable to carry the place by assault the
-Spaniards undertook to starve the Dutchmen out. The Spanish commander
-demanded<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span> the surrender of the place coupled with the threat that if
-his demand were refused he would starve them all to death, men, women,
-and children.</p>
-
-<p>The sturdy Hollanders sent back this reply&mdash;“Tell the Spanish commander
-we will eat our left arms first and fight on with the right.” But as
-the siege went on some of the less heroic souls finally suggested to
-the governor that the food supply was very low and that it might be
-well to make some compromise. “Never,” he cried; “eat me first, but do
-not surrender.” They held on until finally in their desperation a few
-of them stole out at night and opened the dikes to let in the Atlantic
-Ocean. It might mean death to them, but it would also mean death to
-their enemies. In the confusion which ensued when the enemy’s camp was
-flooded, the Dutchmen had their opportunity&mdash;they rushed forth and from
-apparent defeat wrested a splendid victory. The great victories by
-land or by sea, in the stirring times of war or in the slower, harder
-battles of peace, are won by men who stand ready for that sort of moral
-venture.</p>
-
-<p>The people of any state have the right&mdash;they<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span> have paid for it in
-honest money&mdash;to look to the university not only for mental insight
-and efficiency, but for moral energy and spiritual passion. If the
-university is worthy to bear that high name it ought to be a place
-where moral idealism can breathe and grow as upon its native heath.
-This is thoroughly understood by all those who know the full meaning of
-“higher education.”</p>
-
-<p>If any of you have come up to this place of privilege merely with the
-idea of being trained so that you can more successfully compete with
-your fellows in feathering your own nests, making them thick and warm
-and soft as untrained men might be unable to do, you would better go
-home. If your associates knew that fact they would be ashamed of you.
-The members of the faculty, as soon as they discover that spirit in
-you, are ashamed of you. The people of the state would be ashamed of
-you did they know that you were here using the privileges they have
-provided in that mood. You are here to be made ready and competent to
-take more steadily and more largely the risks which public service
-involves.</p>
-
-<p>Hundreds of people, many of them good<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span> and respectable people
-too, confess themselves unable to stand up against the spirit of
-self-indulgence, the worship of luxury, the fierce pursuit of things
-material which are today dwarfing the souls of men in countless homes.
-All the more honor to those university men and women who stand out and
-bear witness to their firm confidence in the beauty of simplicity, in
-the value of sincerity of soul, in the vital importance of directing
-the ultimate aspirations to things spiritual!</p>
-
-<p>Hundreds of men in commercial and political life are hanging out the
-flag of distress. “We are caught in a system,” they say. “We cannot
-help ourselves. We must play the game in the same ruthless way our
-competitors are playing it.” All the more honor to those men who
-are ready to face defeat if need be, that they may stand clearly
-for unflinching integrity, for genuine consideration for the higher
-interests involved in industry, and for all those sacred ideals which
-ought to shine in the secular sky every day in the week as well as
-through the stained glass windows on the first day.</p>
-
-<p>In the face of the insistent demand for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span> moral leadership it would be a
-downright shame if the university men should be found skulking in the
-rear, choosing the lower because it is the easier and in their weak
-attempts at moral advance following the line of least resistance. The
-persistent refusal of the call to high and responsible service becomes
-in these exacting days the act of a scoundrel. It is for every college
-man to stand ready to make the moral venture of fidelity to the highest
-in sight and to share in the honor of the ultimate victory.</p>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="VII">VII<br />
-THE LAW OF RETURNS</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-<p>It was a well-seasoned parson who once remarked that he made it a point
-never to speak in public without taking a text. It mattered not whether
-it was an after-dinner speech, a Fourth of July oration or a sermon,
-he always took a text, that he might be sure, as he said, to “give the
-people something worth remembering.”</p>
-
-<p>In imitation of his pious example I will take a text. You will find my
-text in the book of Numbers, the first chapter and the second verse.
-It reads like this&mdash;“Two and two make four.” That particular statement
-does not happen to be in the Bible, but it is as true as anything which
-is found there, and it will serve as a basis for what I wish to say
-regarding the law of returns.</p>
-
-<p>Two and two make four. Never by any sort of bad luck or ill chance
-only three and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span> a half; never by any amount of pulling or stretching
-or coaxing four and a half, but always and everywhere just four and no
-more! It is a definite, absolute statement of fact. It always has been
-so and it always will be so. No one can imagine a world where two and
-two will not make four.</p>
-
-<p>If a man deposits two dollars in the bank today and two tomorrow, he
-can draw out four the third day. In forty years from that time he
-can still draw out exactly four dollars and whatever interest upon
-his original deposit the bank may allow. Life is like that. With
-what measure we mete, it is measured back to us again. We get out of
-life what we put in, by a law as definite and as unyielding as the
-statement about two and two. There are no Santa Clauses lurking in the
-shadow&mdash;each individual takes out of the big stocking what has been
-previously put in, not by magic, but by solid and verifiable effort.</p>
-
-<p>Once for all dismiss the idea that success in life is the result
-of luck or pull or any such artificial thing. There was a man in
-San Francisco who once picked up a five dollar<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span> gold piece in the
-street-car. He was a poor man and it was a great find for him. He
-thenceforth spent a large part of his time studying the floor of the
-street-car, peering in and out among the feet of the passengers, to
-find another gold piece. He never found another one, but the time
-wasted, if it had been given to thought and effort touching his own
-trade, would have earned for him many an extra gold piece. Now and
-then something may occur which men call “luck,” but it offers nothing
-reliable by which one may safely shape his course.</p>
-
-<p>Young men and maidens look for four-leaf clovers on the lawn. They are
-commonly intent upon something else besides the clover as they creep
-about on their hands and knees&mdash;something sweeter and more satisfying
-than clover, and they find this too. Occasionally they do find a
-four-leaf clover, but the clover which makes the lawn green, feeds the
-cows, supplies the bees with honey and fills the haymow, is three-leaf
-clover&mdash;the ordinary, every-day sort of clover. The farmer, the
-dairyman, and the bee all know that the reliable and satisfying returns
-in life come not by some happy chance,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span> but in those common and usual
-events which are according to law.</p>
-
-<p>When the blood is warm, the heart beating high and fast, the nerves
-eager to yield their thrills, young people see visions and dream
-dreams. It ought to be so. The girl who does not have her day-dreams is
-no girl at all. The boy who does not see ahead of him shapes and forms
-of activity, achievement, advance, higher and more commanding than
-the Sierra, if not quite so solid, does not deserve to be young. The
-loftier, the richer, the rosier these day-dreams, the better!</p>
-
-<p>But those visions will have to be worked out and realized, in so far
-as they come to have a definite, ascertainable value, in a world of
-plain, hard fact. The girl will marry a man with feet and hands like
-the rest of us; and the home she has, the place she makes for herself
-in society, the record of useful service she writes opposite her name,
-will be determined according to law. And the place in the world’s life
-which the boy carves out for himself as he climbs toward maturity,
-the size of it, the location of it, the comfort of it, will be the
-inevitable<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span> reaction from wise and useful effort. The law of returns is
-as sure as the statement about two and two making four.</p>
-
-<p>We find this made plain in several directions&mdash;first of all in the
-gaining and maintenance of sound health. Genuine achievement in many
-lines becomes in the last analysis largely a question of nerves,
-digestion, physical stamina. In the busy, hurried city life the
-question is, “Can this man stand up to it as long and as effectively
-as any other man&mdash;and then just that much longer which gives him
-preeminence?” The lawyer must be able to go into court day after day
-clear-headed, so that he will have all the law he knows at his command,
-patient and smooth with blundering witnesses, wise and self-controlled
-in the face of the nagging of the opposing counsel; he must be able to
-do this all day long for weeks together, looking up his authorities at
-night oftentimes, and not break down. The physician must do something
-more than ride around in an automobile and look wise; he must be able
-to carry upon his mind and heart the anxieties of a hundred households
-at once, work all day, frequently half the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span> night, eating and sleeping
-as he can, and do all this without resorting to stimulants or drugs
-to keep himself up to the mark. The teacher bent not on imparting
-information or on merely keeping the wheels of a pedagogical machine
-turning, but upon the high task of forming, developing, enriching
-personality in fifty or sixty restless lives there in plain view, needs
-a sound physique. The minister of religion if he is to stand up before
-the same congregation for a score of years or more and put faith, hope,
-courage, heart, and resolution into them and not become fagged out and
-stale, must be a man who can sleep nights, digest his meals, maintain
-his poise, rise early, and go all day without losing his head or his
-health&mdash;and for all this he needs a prime body. The same is true in the
-life of the merchant or the mechanic, in the work of the manufacturer
-or the farmer.</p>
-
-<p>Henry Ward Beecher used to say that there were three kinds of people in
-the world&mdash;the sick people who must be taken care of with sympathetic
-tenderness; the people who are not sick, able to be up and to take
-their nourishment; and the people who are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span> positively, radiantly,
-and joyously well. If the young man has not been handicapped by some
-accident or by an unfortunate heredity, it lies easily within his power
-to be enrolled in this third class. He ought to hold himself resolutely
-unwilling to accept anything less.</p>
-
-<p>It is much more than a matter of personal prudence or of self-interest.
-Up to the limit of his powers each man owes it to his family, to
-his friends, and to the world about him to furnish it one more
-healthy, vigorous life. The world is defrauded if by his foolishness,
-dissipation, or laziness it is put off with a whining, grumbling,
-irritable caricature of what the man might have been. He owes it to
-the members of his family not to burden them with unnecessary doctor’s
-bills, nursing, and anxiety. He owes it to them not to break down and
-die before his time, leaving them to struggle on alone. Good, sound
-health, clear up to the limit of what intelligence, conscience, and
-that resolution which will not take “no” for an answer may achieve,
-becomes a moral obligation! The man who shirks this physical duty
-becomes to that extent a scamp.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span></p>
-
-<p>Such physical efficiency comes not as a piece of good luck; nor
-is disease to be regarded always as a misfortune or “a mysterious
-dispensation of providence.” The man careless about the drainage or
-thoughtlessly allowing decaying vegetables to lie in the cellar of his
-home need not prate about “providence” if fever attacks some member
-of his household. The man who eats hot biscuits three times a day and
-drinks coffee by the quart until he is as yellow as a Chinaman has no
-right to shake his head over “the mysterious ways of God,” when he
-becomes ill. The young fellow who inhales whole fog-banks of cigarette
-smoke until his lungs are weak and his heart action defective, who
-tampers with his nerves by the use of stimulants or narcotics, need
-not be surprised that in the hard contests of life sounder men walk on
-ahead, leaving him in the rear. In each case the man forgot that two
-and two make four, that we must settle by the books, that according to
-the law of returns we take out what we put in.</p>
-
-<p>Physical efficiency cannot be hastily bought in the drug store at a
-dollar a bottle any more than women can buy good complexions<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span> there
-for fifty cents a box. Beauty is more than skin deep; it roots all
-the way down into those vital processes which give the fair woman the
-appearance and the reality of joyous, engaging health. And the physical
-efficiency which stands the strain of modern life cannot be rapidly
-gained by the use of drugs; it comes according to the law of definite
-returns. It comes only as men eat good food, enough and not too much,
-drink that which slakes rather than creates thirst, sleep a sufficient
-number of hours, some of them before midnight, breathe their full share
-of the outdoor air where there is plenty for everybody, and exercise
-themselves sanely in some wholesome industry. It all comes according to
-method and not by magic.</p>
-
-<p>The newspapers on the morning after the presidential election of
-nineteen hundred brought us an interesting picture. One of the
-candidates for vice-president that year had been traveling for weeks
-together, speaking ten or fifteen times a day to great audiences
-eager to drain him of his last drop of vitality. He had been meeting
-influential citizens by the hundreds,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span> shaking hands with them
-until his right arm might have felt like the handle of some outworn
-town pump. He had been doing all this under the constant strain of
-tremendous excitement and personal interest. A man who had wasted his
-strength in vicious indulgences would have lasted about as long in
-such a situation as an old lady would last in a football game. This
-man went through it without breaking down, without losing his head
-or making foolish, damaging statements. And when the reporters went
-to call on him the night of the election they found him in evening
-dress, rejoicing in the companionship of his family, from whom he had
-been separated for those weeks, calmly awaiting the returns. Theodore
-Roosevelt&mdash;whether we agree with all his policies or not, we admire
-a vigorous, intelligent, public-spirited American citizen wherever
-found! He entered college a delicate lad. He gained and maintained that
-splendid efficiency by remembering that two and two make four. He was
-willing to pay the full price for virility by his steady attention to
-the law of returns.</p>
-
-<p>The same rule holds in the mental field.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span> There are men who fall
-into the way of relying upon what they are pleased to call “genius.”
-A bad case of “genius” in a young man is almost as fatal to his
-highest success as smallpox. There are a few men in each generation
-exceptionally endowed, just as there are a few four-leaf clovers in
-every field, but the work of the world is done mainly by men of average
-build.</p>
-
-<p>And even men of undeniable genius attribute their success mainly to
-persistent effort. Agassiz used to say, “I seem to have formed the
-habit of observing more closely than many of my associates.” Darwin,
-whose work was epoch making, made that famous trip for observation on
-H. M. S. <i>Beagle</i> in 1837. In 1844 he ventured to show a few of
-his notes to some intimate friends. In 1859, twenty-two years after
-he had collected the first data for the theory finally announced,
-he published “The Origin of Species,” and the world of science, of
-philosophy, of religion, underwent a radical change as a result of his
-thorough work.</p>
-
-<p>Ask ninety-nine men out of a hundred how they succeeded and the answer
-will come back&mdash;“Hard work.” Inspiration is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span> all very well, but for the
-mass of us perspiration is a surer pathway to achievement. Wellington,
-Newton, Lord Clive, Napoleon, Walter Scott, Daniel Webster were all
-regarded as dull boys&mdash;in each case advancement came by persistent
-effort. The capacity was there, but it was brought out not by magic nor
-by some sudden burst of inspiration, but by hard work.</p>
-
-<p>Knowledge is power, where the knowledge is not a mere mass of
-information. The mere accumulation of facts has little worth, for all
-this lies ready to our hand in the encyclopedia whenever it is needed.
-The knowledge which brings power lies in the ability to read and to
-know what it is all about and how it bears on other things we have
-read; in the ability to think and when one thinks to produce something
-with the look and taste of his own mind upon it; in the ability to see
-three things, sharply distinguishing them, and then to see them in
-their relations, and then to see another group of three and another,
-organizing the whole nine into some sort of system. The knowledge which
-is power means insight, grasp, discrimination, productiveness. It<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span> is
-not the sole property of genius, but rather the natural return for a
-long life of consistent, intellectual effort.</p>
-
-<p>Each man owes it to society to make his utmost effort to furnish it
-one more such well-equipped member. This purpose includes much more
-than the desire for that individual success and preeminence which might
-prompt the effort&mdash;it indicates a wish to be capable and serviceable to
-those larger interests which lag for lack of competent service.</p>
-
-<p>When Booker Washington addresses the students gathered at Tuskegee,
-it is after this fashion. “You have not come here to receive training
-in order that you may go back and compete more successfully with your
-untrained associates, in earning higher wages to feather your own nests
-quickly and warmly. You have not come here to become intelligent and
-cultivated that you may go back and proudly establish better homes
-and higher types of family life than the untutored negroes maintain.
-You are here that being trained you may feel more heavily and capably
-responsible for the welfare of your race in the several communities<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span>
-where you are to live and work.” If this is the splendid ideal in the
-green tree of a black man’s school, what shall we expect in the dry
-tree of the white man’s school! The high office of all mental drill
-should be to send men out “more heavily and capably responsible” for
-the general good, and this high quality of competency comes only by
-strict attention to the law of returns.</p>
-
-<p>The same method holds in moral values although many people feel that
-here we enter a region of hocus-pocus, a realm of magic and sleight of
-hand where two and two may possibly, upon occasion, make five or even
-fifty. There is an impression in some quarters that a young fellow
-may sow an abundant crop of wild oats, that he may wallow in the mire
-of vicious indulgence, that he may for years disregard his spiritual
-interests with flat indifference, and then by some sudden spasm of
-moral feeling begin anew, as fine and as sound a man as if he had never
-been in the far country with the harlots and the swine.</p>
-
-<p>The standard books on ethics give us no hint that such is the fact.
-The Bible says nothing in support of such a notion. There<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span> is not a
-land the sun shines on where two and two do not make four in morals as
-well as in mathematics. There are no short cuts to spiritual soundness.
-The Almighty is a careful bookkeeper and the teaching of reason,
-experience, and conscience is to the effect that here, as everywhere,
-we must accept those reactions which come inevitably by this great law
-of returns.</p>
-
-<p>There was a missionary to the Indians who, in seeking to induce habits
-of Sabbath observance, told them that if they planted their corn on
-Sunday it would not grow. In that spirit of human perversity which we
-all understand and share, they immediately went out and planted an acre
-of corn on Sunday! They hoed it and tended it always on Sunday. And
-because they took especial pains with it, when autumn came it yielded
-more corn than any other acre on the reservation. Then the Indians
-laughed at the good missionary and would not go to church.</p>
-
-<p>There is a penalty for planting and hoeing corn on Sunday, but it does
-not show in the corn&mdash;it shows in the men. The corn may grow to its
-full size, but the men will not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span> grow to their full size, nor yield
-the full return appropriate to the cultivation of human values. The
-missionary was sound in his main purpose, but faulty in his method,
-because in the moral world as elsewhere, we find the reign of law and
-not the operation of magic. The neglect of the higher values for which
-the Sabbath stands will not at once affect the cornfield, but it will
-show in the spiritual deficiencies of the men who have no place in the
-week for the cultivation of reverence, aspiration, and the sense of
-fellowship with the Unseen.</p>
-
-<p>There is no shuffling nor chance in the moral world. Impulses lead to
-choices; choices readily become habits; habits harden speedily into
-character, and character determines destiny. Two and two make four all
-the way up, all the way down, and all the way in.</p>
-
-<p>In a New York hotel the chambermaid one morning discovered the dead
-body of a young man and at his side, scrawled on a piece of paper, she
-found this last will and testament: “I leave to society a bad example.
-I leave to my father and mother all the sorrow they can bear in their
-old age.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span> I leave to my brothers and sisters the memory of a misspent
-life. I leave to my wife a broken heart and to my children the name of
-a drunkard and a suicide. I leave to God a lost soul which has defied
-and insulted his loving mercy.”</p>
-
-<p>He wrote it all out, signed it, and then shot himself. His appetites
-had gotten away with him, his habits were no longer under his control.
-He began as many an enthusiastic, generous young fellow begins by
-simply having a succession of “good times” and they grew on him until
-the habits he had developed were no longer his&mdash;he was theirs. He
-forgot that two and two make four, and the gruesome legacy he was
-compelled to leave issued as inevitably from his course of life as the
-sum total at the foot of a column of figures.</p>
-
-<p>The sound health which serves as the physical basis of enlarging and
-enduring efficiency; the trained intelligence which knows what to do
-next and finds itself competent for the task; the type of character
-which is reliable and profitable for the life that now is and for
-that which is to come, all come to us as splendid reactions from that
-stable,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span> definite, methodical order, seen and unseen, which enfolds us
-ever. What you receive as the natural rebound from your mode of life
-will be like in quality and proportionate in amount to that which you
-express in effort, for the law of returns, like the law of gravitation,
-is always on duty.</p>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="VIII">VIII<br />
-THE HIGHEST FORM OF REWARD</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-
-<p>The Scriptures show their good sense by frankly facing and accepting
-the hope of reward as a legitimate source of motive. There are fine
-people who almost go into spasms over the idea of working for a reward.
-“Do right,” they say, “because it is right, not because you will gain
-something by it.” “Live nobly, because it is the highest duty there
-is, with no thought of what may come to you in consequence.” “Do your
-work well for the sheer joy of it, not because you will be paid well
-for good work.” All this is very pretty and does credit to the lovely
-dispositions of those who utter these sentiments, but it is just a
-little too good for this common earth.</p>
-
-<p>It was just a little too good for the men who wrote the Bible. Jesus
-himself did not hesitate to say, “Do this, and great<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span> shall be your
-reward in heaven.” He said, “If any man shall give a cup of cold water
-in my name,” that is to say, in the right spirit, “he shall in no wise
-lose his reward.” He built squarely upon the foundation laid by that
-singer of old, “The statutes of the Lord are right; the commandments
-of the Lord are pure; the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous
-altogether, and in keeping of them there is great reward.” The hope of
-reward according to the Scriptures is a legitimate source of motive.</p>
-
-<p>But what form should the reward take? What is the highest form of
-reward? One finds all manner of answers to this question strung along
-in an ascending series. We find those who always think of reward in
-terms of material success. “It pays to be good,” these men say&mdash;to
-be good, at any rate, up to a certain point. “Honesty is the best
-policy”&mdash;in the long run as a method of business procedure it can show
-more dividends than dishonesty can. “The way of the transgressor is
-hard,” now in one way, now in another, but always hard at the end.
-Transgression does not pay when the returns are all in. The main theme
-of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span> the book of Deuteronomy is that obedience to Jehovah will bring
-blessings wrought out in terms of material prosperity. “If thou shalt
-hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, blessed shalt thou be in
-basket and in store; blessed shalt thou be in the city and in the
-field; blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out and when thou comest
-in.” Reckoned up in terms of visible success, righteousness would be
-the best asset a nation could possess.</p>
-
-<p>We have here a great truth; it is not the whole truth, but it is a
-fragment of truth not to be despised. The young man in New York, whose
-main interest is material success, setting out to achieve his ambition
-by dishonesty is trying to make the Hudson River turn round and flow
-back to Albany. It cannot be done. He will get wet and muddy and be
-drowned, perhaps, for his pains and, when he is all through with his
-experiment, the Hudson will be flowing right along just the same.</p>
-
-<p>In like manner, the big, strong, moral order which enfolds us whether
-we like it or not, whether we think about it or believe in it or not,
-the big, strong, moral order cannot<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</span> be defied nor ignored. Here and
-there some young fellow thinks he has found a way of turning it round
-in what he supposes to be his own interest. He, too, simply gets wet
-and muddy, and drowned, perhaps, in his foolish efforts while the
-great, eternal verities of right and wrong are still there as they were
-before he pitted his puny strength against them. The fact stands that
-righteousness exalts a nation or an individual as nothing else can.</p>
-
-<p>But this fragment of truth is only a fragment. A man who is righteous
-to a certain extent because it pays is not a high type. The one who
-is honest because honesty is the best policy is not very honest&mdash;put
-him in a situation where honesty involves personal sacrifice and one
-could not bank on his honesty. The man who is intent upon furnishing
-the world so much uprightness in exchange for a certain amount of
-advancement which he hopes to gain can scarcely be said to be in the
-moral field at all. He is merely doing a little business with the
-Lord,&mdash;so much character for so much success. It may all be as purely
-a commercial transaction, when analyzed down<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span> to its roots, as the
-buying of a suit of clothes. His gifts to benevolence when scrutinized
-are seen to be only shrewd “investments.” Increased material prosperity
-is a form of reward, but it is not the highest form, and it does not
-furnish a praiseworthy source of motive.</p>
-
-<p>We find those who look for their reward in the appreciation of others.
-We all like to have the esteem of our fellows and we ought to like it.
-That queer stick who is always flinging out sneers about popularity,
-who insists that he does not care a straw what people think about him,
-cares more than any of us. He has an idea that by this strange course
-he will be talked about more and be regarded more highly for his oddity
-than he would be if he shaped up his life in a more rational way.</p>
-
-<p>Reputation is not character; it may be only the uncertain shadow cast
-by character, but it can be, for all that, a pleasant and a healing
-shadow. One of the wisest of men said, “A good name is rather to be
-chosen than great riches.” A good name is simply what people say about
-a man. The appreciation and the esteem which right living wins is a
-legitimate form of reward.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span></p>
-
-<p>But this also is liable to be distorted. Jesus saw certain people
-making this form of reward the object of supreme desire. He warned his
-disciples against that course. “Take heed that you do not your alms
-before men to be seen of them. When thou doest thine alms sound not a
-trumpet before thee as the hypocrites do, that they may have glory of
-men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.” These men rendered
-their generous service with showy ostentation, blowing their horns as
-they went. They did it that they might have glory of men and they had
-glory of men&mdash;they got the dividends they desired.</p>
-
-<p>“And when thou prayest thou shalt not be as the hypocrites: they love
-to pray standing on the street corners that they may be seen of men.
-Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.” They prayed on the
-street corners that they might be seen of men and they were seen of
-men&mdash;they got what they prayed for.</p>
-
-<p>The desire for esteem is not a satisfactory source of motive. The boy
-who cannot do his duty unless he is praised and petted for it afterward
-is a poor specimen&mdash;he is likely<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span> to become a vain, self-conscious
-little prig. The man who cannot perform unless he is in the lime-light,
-hearing the plaudits of the many, is made of poor stuff&mdash;he is lath
-and plaster, where there should be sound material. All such speedily
-lose the finer qualities out of whatever measure of righteousness they
-seem to possess. When a man goes straight along about his business,
-intent upon doing his own piece of work well and succeeds in such
-a way that the gratitude, esteem, and appreciation of his fellows
-come, he scarcely knows how, he finds this a beautiful and enduring
-source of satisfaction. But here as everywhere the law of indirection
-operates&mdash;he that saves his popularity by aiming for it loses it; he
-that loses all thought of it by investing his life in useful service
-finds it.</p>
-
-<p>There are men who think of the highest form of reward as standing
-in the approval of one’s own conscience and in the sense of having
-the favor of God. The throne of judgment where I must stand and give
-account is not away yonder among the clouds&mdash;it is in here where I am.
-It is within my own heart where God is&mdash;where my God<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span> is. It is here
-that I meet him now and must meet and face him ever.</p>
-
-<p>And no quantity of outward success, no full, warm tide of popular
-esteem will supply the lack of moral self-respect within. If any man
-knows that his heart is not right before God, that his purposes are
-not true, that his aspirations are low, then no amount of material
-success or popular applause will give him tranquillity of spirit. And,
-conversely, where there is honesty of purpose, where a man may look
-himself in the face with unsparing candor and know that he is entitled
-to respect, this fact of itself brings a peace which passeth all
-understanding. This inner sense of worth and peace is from on high and
-it becomes a fine form of reward.</p>
-
-<p>There are ugly distortions of it. The Pharisee who went into the
-temple to pray felt very comfortable in his own mind. We saw it in
-his strut as he walked down the aisle. We noticed it in the way he
-stood, when he prayed thus with himself, “God, I thank thee, that I
-am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers.” He named
-the lowest, meanest men he could<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</span> think of. It would not be hard to
-outrun such men morally, but such a race as it was the Pharisee had
-won it. “I thank thee that I am not as other men are, or even as this
-publican.” It was fortunate that the publican chanced to be there; it
-added a cubit of self-complacency to the Pharisee to have the publican
-present. “I fast twice in the week; I give a tenth of all that I
-possess,” the Pharisee continued. He had been doing right for the sake
-of the self-satisfaction which would result&mdash;and he had his reward. I
-do not know of a man in history who seemed to have more of it. He was
-comfortable to “the thirty-third and last degree” in that feeling of
-self-approval which clothed him as with a garment.</p>
-
-<p>But what a narrow, self-centered life it produces where this becomes
-the chief form of reward for which a man strives! “I will speak this
-kind word and do this generous deed and stand firm in the path of duty,
-because of the warm feelings of self-approval which will steal upon my
-heart,” such a man cries. It is better to have the approval of one’s
-conscience than not to have it; it is better to strive for inner peace
-and satisfaction<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span> than to have one’s eye constantly on material success
-or popular applause. But where this becomes the object of supreme
-interest it is a disappointing and a narrowing form of reward.</p>
-
-<p>What shall we say, then, is the highest form, if neither material
-success nor popular esteem nor the approval of one’s own conscience
-is worthy to stand in that holy place? I find the highest form of
-reward named by the Master in the parable of the Good Samaritan, “This
-do and thou shalt live.” The reward for right living, for loving God
-and loving one’s neighbor after the manner indicated in the parable,
-lies in the increased power we gain to live. This do and thou shalt
-live&mdash;live more abundantly, more effectively, more serviceably. The
-reward of right life is a larger life.</p>
-
-<p>The man in the parable who had been faithful and diligent with the one
-pound entrusted to him received this reward: “Well done, thou good and
-faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will
-make thee ruler over many things! Have thou authority over ten cities.”
-The reward for good conduct was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span> enlarged capacity and enlarged
-opportunity for more good conduct. The man’s powers were increased by
-what he had been doing and his chance for the exercise of them was
-greater; now, in place of the single pound to be used in trading, he
-had authority over ten cities. In this sense of increased capacity to
-meet the increasing obligations of life lies the highest form of reward.</p>
-
-<p>In one of his little books, Henry van Dyke speaks of three ideals of
-education. The man with “the decorative ideal” thinks it is a fine
-thing to go through college. It gives one an air of distinction. It
-enables him to belong to the University Club in the city where he
-lives. It enables him to refer to “my class,” and to the “good old
-days” at Harvard or Yale, at Cornell or Princeton, at Stanford or
-California. He may even be prompted to become a “dig” in the hope that
-a Phi Beta Kappa key will unlock doors closed to other men. And because
-he is a university man he feels that he possesses a rare and cultivated
-taste in poetry and in philosophy, in music and in art. He thinks of
-his education as a highly decorative appendage to his personal life.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span></p>
-
-<p>The second man has no use for all this; he has “the marketable ideal”
-of education. He is one of those “no-nonsense-about-me” fellows. In
-selecting his courses he has a thoroughly practical eye to the main
-chance. He is very contemptuous in his attitude toward the study of
-dead languages or of metaphysics. “What good would all that do me, when
-I got out into the world?” he says. He thinks of himself as a tool to
-be ground and sharpened so that in the world of business it will cut
-where other tools fail. He is intent upon gaining an education not for
-the purpose of living but for the purpose of making a living, which is
-a very different thing.</p>
-
-<p>The true ideal of education is “the creative ideal.” The work of the
-school is not to enable the shoemaker to stick to his last and make
-more money out of it than uneducated men are making out of their lasts.
-“Education is to lift the shoemaker above his last, and to carry the
-merchant beyond his store, the lawyer beyond his brief, the minister
-beyond his sermon.” The supreme reward for being educated lies in
-the enlarged capacity one gains for life. The reward<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span> for physical
-exercise, for mental drill, for hard study, for the steady effort to
-do one’s duty, is to be found in that increased power to live. This do
-and thou shalt live a larger, freer, finer life. This do and thou shalt
-be alive at more points, on higher levels, and in more efficient and
-serviceable ways.</p>
-
-<p>We cannot possibly stop short of that. If a man thinks of his education
-as only making him more marketable, he has his mind fixed upon material
-success as the highest form of reward. If he thinks of it mainly as a
-thing that will win the admiration of his less cultured associates, he
-is still in the clutches of that decorative idea. If he thinks of it
-mainly as having value in giving him the consciousness of intelligence
-and culture, he is still on an unsatisfactory level of thought and
-purpose.</p>
-
-<p>“Come on up to the head of the stairs,” the great educational processes
-of the world call to us! “Come on up where you can see and breathe
-and grow.” This do and thou shalt live; this alone indicates the
-great end in view. Enlarged capacity for real life is the goal of all
-serious endeavor. We may or may not gain material success; we<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span> may or
-may not secure a large measure of popular applause; we will beyond a
-peradventure have a deep, sweet feeling of peace within as we face that
-way, but the main result will be that, by doing all these things well,
-we shall gain increased power and capacity for living the life. Here
-we reach that which is ultimate. “This do and thou shalt live” is the
-final word on the subject of reward.</p>
-
-<p>The highest return for doing anything lies in the power one gains to do
-it better and to do more of it. The reward for reading is not in the
-information gained or in the ideas acquired so much as in the mental
-stimulus which comes, enabling one to read more books and better ones
-and in time to produce ideas of his own. The artist goes out into the
-world to see the beauty of it in tree and flower, in landscape and
-mountain, in the quiet lake, and in the restless sea. His reward comes
-in increased power to see more beauty there than other people see and
-to transfer what he sees to canvas. “I never saw anything like that
-in nature,” a woman once said to Turner as she looked at one of his
-pictures. “Very likely,”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span> replied the artist; “how much would you give,
-madam, if you could?” Turn your face any way you choose and the great
-statement of the Master about reward holds true,&mdash;this do and thou
-shalt live.</p>
-
-<p>Carry it up to the moral level. The reward for doing your duty lies in
-the increased power you gain to keep on doing it and to do it better.
-The reward for loving lies in the increased power to love and to love
-more worthily. The reward for meeting and mastering some hard situation
-in life, temptation, disappointment, struggle, sorrow, lies in the
-added strength you gain to master still harder situations which may
-arise. In your spiritual pilgrimage you go “from strength to strength,”
-from one form of strength to another and a higher form, from one
-measure of strength to another and a fuller measure, until at last you
-reach the fulness of the stature of Christ.</p>
-
-<p>You may recall that great promise made in the last book of the Bible!
-“Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee”&mdash;what? What form
-will the ultimate reward take? “I will give thee a crown,” not of
-gold with diamonds in it larger than the Kohinoor,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span> not the crown
-of material success. “I will give thee a crown,” not of laurel such
-as the Greeks placed upon the brow of the victors in the games, the
-crown of popular applause. “I will give thee a crown,” not of personal
-satisfaction such as men of honest purpose may be entitled to wear. “Be
-thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown <i>of life</i>!”
-The ultimate reward for living right lies in the increased power and
-the increased opportunity which will be ours to live on and to live
-more abundantly.</p>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="IX">IX<br />
-THE USE OF THE INCOMPLETE</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-<p>“We know in part.” This is not the statement of some indifferent
-agnostic, who, because religious questions are difficult, insists that
-he does not know anything about them. It is not the statement of a
-defiant infidel, who, because he does not understand everything about
-religion, declares that neither he nor any one knows anything about
-it. It is not the statement of one of those hesitating individuals who
-are always trying to steer a safe course somewhere between yes and
-no, between the right of it and the wrong of it; who are never quite
-sure whether there is or is not a God, but think that the truth lies,
-perhaps, about halfway between the two claims.</p>
-
-<p>This man Paul was not an agnostic, nor an infidel, nor a hesitator. He
-knew certain<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span> things, he was sure of them. He was ready to say so right
-out loud, and to stand up and be cut in two for them if need be. “I
-know whom I have believed,” he cries; there was no uncertainty in his
-mind on that point. “I know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ”&mdash;and
-it had changed him from a narrow, bigoted, persecuting Pharisee into
-one who wrote the best hymn on love to be found in print and who
-embodied the spirit of it in his daily conduct. “I know that all things
-work together for good to them that love God”&mdash;and in Paul’s case
-“all things” included a great deal of hardship and persecution, of
-disappointment and sorrow, but he never wavered in his confidence that
-some wise purpose was being furthered by it all. These and many other
-things he knew. “In part we know,” was the way he would have placed his
-emphasis and the actual content of his knowledge was large indeed.</p>
-
-<p>He makes this statement as an honest, modest, reasonable man face to
-face with spiritual realities too great for perfect comprehension or
-final statement. His knowledge of them was large, but they were still
-larger. He must have known when he wrote<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span> those words that he was a
-man of no mean attainments. He wrote a third of the New Testament with
-his own hand. He did more to shape Christian thought than any one save
-Christ himself. He had been “caught up into the third heaven,” whatever
-that may mean. He was the most effective missionary of the new faith
-the world has ever seen. He was a man of marvelous reach and grasp, but
-face to face with these great spiritual realities, God and redemption,
-prayer and duty, immortality and the final judgment, he frankly
-confesses that the returns are not all in; the last words have not been
-said and cannot be said; the full appreciation of these high values has
-not been reached. We know in part.</p>
-
-<p>We are glad to find these words on the lips of the world’s greatest
-apostle. They are reassuring to those of us who are troubled by the
-limitations of our own religious knowledge. They match the mood of this
-modern time of questioning and unrest which is so much in evidence
-on the college campus and in university circles. They suggest that
-finality is much more difficult than some of the earlier generations
-in their simplicity<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span> supposed. One does not find those familiar words,
-“Finis” or “The End,” printed on the last page of a book so commonly
-as in other days. Even where the author has said his say in several
-volumes, each one as bulky as a volume of the “Britannica,” he knows
-that there is more to be said. He leaves the way open without trying to
-block it by writing, “The End.”</p>
-
-<p>We are conscious that we have not reached the terminus on any of the
-great trunk lines of religious inquiry. We are scattered along at
-various way stations, thankful for the part we know, grateful for
-progress made, but confessing with Paul that we have not attained, that
-we are not made perfect either in theory or in practise. But whatever
-headway we have made we are determined in the spirit of Paul to use
-the part we know and press forward toward the mark of the prize of
-the high calling of God. This is the dominant mood of the serious but
-cautious, inquiring element in modern life. We are, therefore, grateful
-for the word of this modest, reasonable man, who with all his store of
-spiritual experience said quietly, “We know in part.”</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span></p>
-
-<p>We might carry these words in many directions and find them helpful.
-Some of us have been greatly disturbed as to the doctrine of
-Providence. We have been told on high authority that God reigns and
-that “He doeth all things well.” When times are good we really believe
-it. We see that the way of the transgressor is hard, as it ought to be,
-and that on the whole the way of righteousness is the way of peace and
-honor. We have a comfortable persuasion that all things taken in their
-completeness and final outcome are working together for good to those
-whose purposes are right.</p>
-
-<p>But just when we have gotten our doctrine of Providence all snug we
-witness something like this: Yonder a young Christian mother dies. She
-was an ideal daughter, a devoted wife, and the beautiful mother of
-children who loved her and needed her more than they did anything else
-on earth. But with a whole community of people, perhaps, praying for
-her recovery she dies, while just around the corner a group of scamps,
-who are making the world worse, rather than better, live on, fat and
-hearty. And then somehow our doctrine of Providence, our<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span> belief as to
-the reign of a wise and good God, receives a hard shock.</p>
-
-<p>But we know in part. We know the usefulness of that life here; we do
-not know to what further and, perhaps, higher service it has been
-called there. We see what has been interrupted here; we do not see what
-has been taken up further on. We do not know the ultimate effect of
-this stern sorrow upon that household, the result of this necessity for
-the regirding of all their powers as they walk now in the shadow of a
-great bereavement. We do not even know God’s ultimate purpose for those
-scamps who live on; the returns are not all in for them either. We know
-in part, and what we know, taking human life broadly, is so reassuring
-that we are willing to trust God and walk on by faith.</p>
-
-<p>Ships in Norway, entering the great fiords, sometimes sail so close to
-the cliffs that one can stand on deck and almost lay his hand upon the
-face of the rock. When one captain was asked about it, he said, “That
-which is in sight indicates what is out of sight. The slant above the
-water-line indicates the slant below and we are perfectly safe.”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span> The
-general slant of God’s dealings with us, taking the facts we know in
-the total impression they make as to his wisdom and justice, is such
-that we are prepared to trust him below the water-line. Therefore when
-I cannot in some difficult situation make out his ultimate purpose with
-the naked eye, I fall back upon my confidence in his moral character.</p>
-
-<p>As to this faith in the divine integrity no serious, observant man
-should remain in doubt. It is a faith which rests upon a wide induction
-of fact, vaster by far than my own experience of his dealings with me.
-It is like repeating an axiom to say that the creature does not rise
-above the Creator. If men at any time, anywhere are good, there must be
-goodness in the Creator of those men, goodness in the force or forces
-lying back of them, call those forces by what name we may. And if the
-stream of human goodness has been widening, deepening, flowing more
-strongly as the ages have come and gone, it points back to character
-and purpose in the One who created the stream itself. That goodness
-in man argues goodness in God, while badness in man does not argue<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span>
-badness in God is plain, in that sane men everywhere regard goodness as
-normal, while badness is abnormal.</p>
-
-<p>And look at the swelling tide of human goodness down through the ages!
-Look at Livingstone laying down his life to carry light into the dark
-continent! Look at Cromwell fearing God and none else, neither king nor
-pope, neither nobles nor bishops, and giving his life that he might win
-constitutional and religious freedom for the English-speaking race!
-Look at Lincoln counting not his life dear if he might serve the cause
-of the Union and the interests of his brothers in bonds! Look at the
-vast array of human goodness massing itself in saints and seers, in
-heroes and martyrs, in teachers and mothers, going forth not to be
-ministered unto, but to minister, giving their lives for the betterment
-of the world! Look at it all and then ask yourself if you can believe
-for one moment that all this goodness originated itself, persisted, and
-increased in opposition to the will of the Creator or in the face of
-his moral indifference or without creative goodness in him! The claim
-would be monstrous! This wide induction of fact<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span> begets a profound
-faith in the moral character of God and when we cannot see we trust,
-because as to the final meaning of many strange experiences we know in
-part.</p>
-
-<p>Take the matter of prayer and the way it enters into the formation of
-character and the shaping of events. We know that prayer registers
-a definite and wholesome influence on many a life. Those who loudly
-assert that virtue and vice are as purely physical products as sugar
-and vitriol, that all right action and wrong action can be accounted
-for on material grounds, have not made out their case, they have not
-begun to make it out. There is something unseen, mysterious, but real
-and powerful, which impels certain people to love the unlovely, to
-make sacrifices for the thoughtless and ungrateful, to stand firm in
-the path of duty when it is anything but the line of least resistance.
-The love of right, the sense of obligation, the habit of adherence
-to principle, all these are as real as granite. But the forces which
-make them strong are spiritual, and these forces receive constant
-reenforcement from the habit of prayer.</p>
-
-<p>This part we know. We have seen the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span> hearts of men turned from anger
-to love, from unholy to holy purpose, from weakness to strong resolve
-by prayer. We have seen home life made sweeter because once at least
-in every twenty-four hours the members of the household came together
-and knelt before God, confessing their faults, asking his guidance
-and allowing that which was true and right within them to grow by its
-communion with him who is altogether true and right. Any sensible man
-would feel that his life, his property, his family were all safer in a
-community where men prayed, than in one where they only used the name
-of God profanely. This part we know about prayer.</p>
-
-<p>But as to the ultimate effect of it, the final philosophy of it, the
-precise way in which the finite spirit becomes a colaborer with the
-Infinite Spirit in shaping events, I freely confess that there is a
-great deal which I do not understand. I know in part, but the part I
-know is so full of blessed and beautiful results that I want my prayer
-for the coming of God’s kingdom, for the doing of his will on earth,
-for the gift of bread for the daily need, for forgiveness, and final<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span>
-deliverance from evil&mdash;I want that prayer to go up, winging its way to
-the throne backed by all the faith and hope and love I can put into it.
-And I am not troubled by the fact that I cannot explain all the grounds
-of my confidence, for, like Paul, I know in part.</p>
-
-<p>Take the matter of the future life! There is much here we would like
-to know. What are our loved ones who have gone on doing now? Are they
-witnesses of the blunders and the failures we make here? Just how is
-right rewarded and wrong punished when the two are so intricately
-interwoven? No man is so white a sheep but that there are patches of
-goat about him here and there. No man is so bad but that there is some
-good in him if we observingly distil it out. And what of the final
-outcome&mdash;can good people be happily content if the sinful souls they
-loved are in conscious pain or even if they have been remorselessly
-wiped off the slate of existence? Is it too much to hope that God’s
-persuasions to righteousness being infinite may prove irresistible
-and so at last successful in every case? So men and women who have
-loved and lost those who passed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span> out of this world without a sign of
-genuine repentance or of saving faith have queried ever. A child can
-ask more questions here in five minutes than all the philosophers and
-theologians on earth can answer in as many years.</p>
-
-<p>We know in part! We cannot measure off the streets of the new Jerusalem
-in kilometers. We cannot describe its attractions in any kind of
-Baedeker. We cannot lay out a detailed program of God’s dealings with
-the good and the bad people of earth in all the unending years. Nor is
-there any obligation whatsoever upon us to undertake the construction
-of such a program.</p>
-
-<p>We know in part and the part we know is something like this: I feel a
-profound confidence that I shall live on after death. The grounds of
-my hope are many. The mass of unreason and injustice I would have left
-upon my hands unexplained and unexplainable if I were to undertake
-to deny the truth of immortality is one. The all but universal and
-persistent desire of men for future life is another. Somehow the
-integrity of the universe is such that it does not develop in men
-normal, wide-spread, and persistent<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span> desires unless there is somewhere
-to be found a corresponding satisfaction for such desires standing over
-against them. The fact that the clear visions and the bright hopes of
-the best poets and prophets the world has known have been on the side
-of immortality means much. The seers have sung and the prophets have
-uttered their high anticipations by the power of an endless life. The
-words of the supreme figure in history, Jesus Christ, as to the truth
-of immortality mean still more. He saw clearly, spoke wisely, lived
-divinely, and I cannot believe that here he reared his expectations on
-a fundamental mistake.</p>
-
-<p>It ought to be remembered that for those who affirm and for those who
-deny the truth of immortality, it is alike a matter of moral faith
-because no convincing demonstration has been made out either for or
-against. The men who deny immortality are not opposing knowledge to
-faith; they are only meeting a positive faith with a negative one. But
-inasmuch as reason and experience, the best in literature and the One
-who has taken the moral government of the world upon his shoulders as
-none other ever did,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span> stand so strongly upon the side of the positive
-faith, I feel confident of an unbroken life.</p>
-
-<p>As to the final judgment, I know that righteousness and love which
-are useful and beautiful here will be useful and beautiful always
-and everywhere; the clearer the light in which they stand the more
-their glory will be revealed. I know that sin and selfishness are
-mean and hateful here, and they will be mean and hateful everywhere;
-the clearer the light in which they stand the more their hatefulness
-will be manifest. What shall be their final fate I do not undertake
-to say. We know in part, but the clear prospects of the life to come,
-where righteousness and love shall have their freer chance to be and
-to do, where sin and selfishness shall meet with more awful rebuke,
-are sufficient to stimulate right action and to give warning to those
-who would identify their destinies with evil. As to the rest, in the
-incompleteness of our knowledge, we may safely leave it to the wisdom
-and the justice of God.</p>
-
-<p>I might carry this idea in other directions, but let me turn at once to
-the other phase<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</span> of the topic. In part we know, and the part we know
-is naturally the part we use. We wish that we knew more. We hope to
-know more some time. In the meantime we recognize that the way to make
-progress along that line is to use the part we already know.</p>
-
-<p>In almost any direction, unless it be pure mathematics or formal logic,
-our knowledge, even in the sophomore year, stops a long way this
-side of complete understanding. No man knows the length and breadth,
-the height and depth of his wife’s love for him, if she is a good
-woman. Some part of it he knows, but the love she might show in some
-emergency, nursing him through a long illness, sharing with him some
-painful experience, bearing with him some heavy burden&mdash;that fuller
-love he does not know and cannot know until the time comes for its
-manifestation. But the part he knows about his wife’s love for him is
-the part he uses and the very thought of how beautiful it is and of the
-unrevealed capacity it may contain for willing and joyous sacrifice
-on his behalf, makes him feel that he ought to be a better man to be
-deserving of it. Thus he moves along in that part of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</span> the strength and
-beauty of a woman’s love which he knows, allowing the fuller knowledge
-of it to come as it may. And this is precisely the attitude of the
-reasonably religious man&mdash;those realities with which he deals, God and
-redemption, prayer and duty, immortality and the final judgment, are
-confessedly too great for final statement, but he knows something about
-them and the part he knows is the part he uses.</p>
-
-<p>Next door to my home I have two little neighbors, boys of three and
-five. They are close friends of mine and they have taught me much.
-Their father is a physician, a busy, useful, Christian man. The boys
-understand their father’s life “in part.” They know that he is a doctor
-and that he goes to see sick people and make them well. But as to the
-methods he employs and the remedies he uses they know nothing at all.
-They know in a dim sort of way that he makes the money which pays the
-bills and keeps them in a home full of comfort and beauty. But as to
-his financial standing, his investments, and his prospects, they know
-nothing. They know that along with the hearty good-will which he feels
-for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</span> everybody, he loves their mother and them supremely; but how he
-came to love that particular woman rather than some other one, and how
-they were born of that love, or how far that love might go in defending
-and providing for them, they do not concern themselves for one moment.
-They know their father’s love in part.</p>
-
-<p>But the part they know is the part they use. They live in their
-father’s house; they sit at his table; they greet him with a shout when
-he comes in from his practise. They obey him and trust him and think he
-is the best man in the world. They climb up into his lap and talk to
-him, not about his practise, but about their own small affairs, their
-tops, their marbles, their little wagon&mdash;as he wants them to do. He
-meets them always on their own ground and deals with them in the terms
-and interests of their own lives. Thus my two little friends live and
-grow, knowing their father’s life in part.</p>
-
-<p>“Except we become as little children” in the house of our Father, whose
-total life exceeds our present comprehension, whose plans and purposes
-for us are too high for complete understanding, whose outlook for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</span> us
-is vaster every way than our own outlook&mdash;“except we become as little
-children we shall in no wise enter his kingdom.” But if we take the
-part we know and use it, acting on it and living by it, we will be
-treading the way which leads to a fuller and more blessed experience
-of the Father’s wisdom and love as surely as my two small friends are
-doing as they grow up toward their manhood in their father’s house.</p>
-
-<p>In how many ways Jesus made plain this duty of utilizing the near and
-the familiar when we would learn the remote! He seemed to realize that
-religion would be crusted over with misconceptions so that ordinary
-people would find it hard to get at; that some men would write big dull
-books about it, which no one would want to read; that other men in
-talking about it would use words which would not go into a suit-case
-without being folded twice, thus confusing the people. For that reason,
-perhaps, he made his own teaching simpler than that of any one whose
-words stand recorded in Holy Writ.</p>
-
-<p>He stood once at midnight among the trees talking with a thoughtful man
-as to certain aspects of the religious life. “How<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span> can these things
-be?” the man asked. “How can a man be born when he is old?” Just then
-the wind rustled the leaves at his side and Jesus remarked: “The wind
-bloweth where it listeth. You hear the sound thereof, but you cannot
-tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth.” We cannot tell why the wind
-blows one day from the north and we have cold, another day from the
-south and we have heat, another day from the east and we have rain. We
-cannot explain satisfactorily many of the mysteries connected with the
-wind. But a man who is a fisherman can put up his sail and fill it with
-this wind which is such a mystery. He can sail out through the Golden
-Gate and come back in the evening with a boatload of fish for the needs
-of his family and for other hungry men. The wind that fills his sail he
-knows, but the origin, the ultimate destiny, and all the relationships
-it sustains to the other forces in the universe he does not know. The
-part he knows, however, is the part he uses by relating it to his own
-life. And this is the act of a man of sense in matters spiritual as
-well. He knows the life of the Infinite Spirit in part, but he uses the
-part he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span> knows by relating it helpfully to his own life.</p>
-
-<p>When we start in after that fashion it is a straight course. The boy
-begins his study of mathematics by learning to count ten&mdash;one, two,
-three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. He moves straight
-along by that path until, with these same ten figures, he is computing
-the courses the planets take and measuring the distances of the fixed
-stars. He begins his study of literature by learning his letters, a, b,
-c, etc. By and by, using these same familiar letters, he is making his
-way through the intricacies of “Hamlet” and “Macbeth”; he is walking
-with Emerson and Hegel across the fields of philosophy. He begins his
-study of music by learning the elementary sounds, do, re, mi, fa,
-sol, la, si, do. Presently, with these same tones, he is singing in a
-great chorus which renders “The Messiah” or playing his instrument in
-some orchestra which is producing the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven. In
-every situation in life progress is made not by being appalled over
-the amount we do not know, or by vainly wishing we knew more, but by
-taking the part we know, relating it to our<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span> lives, and making it the
-instrument of gaining that fuller knowledge.</p>
-
-<p>God is greater than any wise and good father but not different. Carry
-the love of a wise and good father up to the <i>nth</i> degree and you
-have the love of God for his people. The life of the spirit is nobler
-than the life of the flesh, but it stands closely related; it is a
-life which hungers after righteousness, thirsts for the living God,
-and grows strong by exercising itself in useful service. Heaven is
-finer and purer than earth, but not unlike. It was for the Jew a “New
-Jerusalem,” and it is for every man a “new &mdash;” whatever may be the
-name of the city where he dwells. It is the ordinary life ennobled and
-glorified by the infusion of a finer spirit. The glorious fulfilment
-comes through the richer combinations and the fuller development of the
-simpler parts we know already.</p>
-
-<p>I wish I could persuade the college man who has never entered into an
-open, joyous, Christian life to just begin. There are many things which
-he does not understand nor, perhaps, believe. We will put them aside
-for the moment, not ignoring them, but postponing their consideration.
-Let him<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span> take the part he knows, the moral imperative of living the
-best life one sees, and no finer life than that of the Christian can
-be named; the necessity for some competent guide, and none better
-than Jesus of Nazareth has thus far appeared; the clearly ascertained
-benefits to be gained by trust and obedience; the helpful reactions
-which come through prayer and the reading of the Bible; the manifest
-advantage of cherishing the hope of a future life and of facing
-squarely upon the fact that what we sow we reap. All this he knows! Let
-the part he knows be the part he uses. If he will only act upon it,
-building it into his own life and following where it leads, he will be
-on his way toward the place where he will know even as he is known.</p>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="X">X<br />
-FIGHTING THE STARS</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-<p>In an ancient song we find this striking statement, “The stars in their
-courses fought against Sisera.” This is poetry. It must be dealt with
-according to the rules which govern poetical expression. The plain
-prose facts underlying the statement were these: The northern tribes of
-Israel were being oppressed by the warlike Canaanites of that region.
-Israelites living on the outskirts were frequently slaughtered until
-certain villages had been entirely destroyed. The oppression became so
-bitter that it was not safe for an Israelite to travel the ordinary
-roads. “In the days of Shamgar the highways were unoccupied, and the
-people walked through by-paths.” They were in constant fear for their
-lives and the situation at length became unendurable.</p>
-
-<p>Then there came an armed revolt of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</span> Israelites against their
-oppressors. Ten thousand men under the leadership of Deborah and Barak
-went out to give battle in the plain of Esdraelon. The commander of the
-opposing army was Sisera. He had been uniformly victorious over the
-Israelites chiefly by his use of chariots and war-horses, riding his
-enemies down before they could accomplish anything with their slings
-and arrows. And into the famous battle referred to in the song the
-author says, “Sisera brought nine hundred chariots of iron” to fight
-against the army of Israel.</p>
-
-<p>But just as the battle opened there came a fierce storm converting the
-black loam of that fertile field into a morass. The heavy war-horses
-and huge chariots were unable to charge. The song pictures them as
-floundering, helpless, in the deep mud. The cold rain turned gradually
-into sleet and the sleet driven by a fierce wind directly into the
-faces of the advancing Canaanites made their use of sling and spear
-comparatively ineffective. On the other hand, the Israelites, with the
-storm at their backs and with their courage heightened by the feeling
-that all the circumstances of the situation were in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span> their favor,
-fought splendidly and successfully. They slaughtered the helpless men
-who were trying in vain to use the heavy chariots; they put to flight
-the foot soldiers who could not properly defend themselves with the
-storm beating in their faces, and thus they won a notable victory over
-the army of Sisera.</p>
-
-<p>When the Israelites came to add up the forces which entered into the
-result, they were not so short-sighted as to fancy that their own right
-arms had gotten them the victory. They saw that certain other forces
-which they had not created, which they did not in any wise control,
-had entered decisively into the determination of the issue. “The Lord
-discomfited Sisera, and all his chariots,” they said. “The stars in
-their courses fought against Sisera.” The wind and the rain, the hail
-and the sleet, coming down out of the skies by no act of theirs, had
-lined up with them as effective allies; and as their eyes ran over
-the complete muster roll, the forces from above combining with their
-own determined valor, they knew that Sisera was foredoomed to defeat
-because he had been fighting against the stars.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span></p>
-
-<p>The stars in their courses fought against Sisera&mdash;this is poetry! It
-is a bold literary statement of a splendid moral truth. In the long
-run the forces of earth and sky are alike hostile to the low type of
-life which Sisera represents. Cruelty, oppression, inhumanity, are
-doomed to defeat. Individuals or nations cultivating those qualities
-are fighting the stars, and the stars will be too much for them. As it
-was with Sisera, so it is now and ever shall be, world without end!
-Those evils are sometimes victorious in a skirmish; now and then they
-win a battle, but the war goes always against them. When the end comes
-and the articles of capitulation are signed, they are to be found with
-Sisera, biting the dust. Forces, human and divine, seen and unseen, are
-perpetually at war with wrong-doing and the combination of all these
-mighty energies makes the outcome inevitable. The man who, in any wise,
-undertakes to live a wrong life is undertaking to fight the stars.</p>
-
-<p>The presence of universal moral forces is here symbolized. All about
-us are familiar forces which we did not originate, which we do not
-control&mdash;the light and the heat<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</span> of the sun, the power of gravitation,
-the movements of the winds, and the pulsating tides. We cannot control
-them; we can only adjust ourselves to their movements and wisely
-cooperate with them for certain ends. Even while I am speaking this
-huge mass under our feet is whirling us swiftly onward, covering
-the whole twenty-five thousand miles in a single twenty-four hours.
-Scientific men thus far have nothing to offer as to how it gained its
-initial velocity; we find it moving and it carries us with it whether
-we will or no.</p>
-
-<p>This is a symbol! There are other forces, unseen but mighty, moving the
-race up out of darkness into great and ever greater light. With all
-its groping and stumbling the race has never been allowed to lose its
-way altogether. Yesterday it thought as a child and understood as a
-child; today it puts away childish things and knows in part; tomorrow
-it will know still “in part,” but a larger part. And it is the sublime
-conviction of serious men that it is on its way to know even as it is
-known. This movement is as resistless as the motion of the planets.</p>
-
-<p>The race is also making headway in righteousness.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</span> Certain forms of
-evil which once stood out naked and unashamed have been driven into
-rat-holes. Presently these holes will be stopped up from the top and
-those forms of evil will be seen no more. The power of conscience grows
-and its dominion widens. Matthew Arnold, speaking as a poet, said,
-“There is a power not ourselves which makes for righteousness.” Herbert
-Spencer, speaking as a philosopher, said, “There is an infinite and
-eternal energy from which all things proceed,” and in his judgment it
-was, on the whole, friendly to righteousness. The Psalmist, speaking
-as a religious man, said, “The judgments of the Lord are true and
-righteous altogether, and in keeping of them there is great reward.”
-It does not matter what words are used; it all amounts to the same
-thing. The very stars are symbols to us, as they were to this writer of
-old, of forces unseen, august, cosmic, which are insistently set upon
-righteousness. Sisera and all the horde of wrong-doers are compelled to
-look that fact in the face.</p>
-
-<p>The antagonism of these universal forces spells defeat for those who
-are willing to do wrong. Sometimes the letters which spell<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</span> out defeat
-are formally arranged in order; at other times the letters must be
-selected from a mass of confusing details, but they are there, and
-they spell the same word, “defeat.” The stars never tarry long in
-bringing in their verdict upon the coarser sins of the flesh, murder
-and adultery, stealing and lying, drunkenness and gluttony. But the
-operation of this law reaches all the way down to those subtler sins
-of pride and envy, meanness and selfishness, moral indifference and
-spiritual neglect&mdash;all these in their final outcome make for misery and
-discontent as surely as two and two make four. No man ever outwitted
-or vanquished the stars, no man ever will. The sun rises when it is
-due, no matter how he chooses to set his individual clock, no matter
-what lies he may tell in his particular almanac. No man ever outwitted
-the moral order of the universe which is august and irresistible in
-its ongoings. He may have sought out many devices, but at last he is
-compelled to settle by the books. He must reap what he has sown, no
-matter how terrible the harvest may be.</p>
-
-<p>Go through any modern city with your<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</span> eyes open and you will find this
-statement about Sisera written out in a plain hand. You will find
-people, some of them well-dressed, some in rags, with their hearts
-draped in wretchedness and despair. Poor deluded mortals, they have
-been butting their brains out against the moral corner-stones of the
-universe in the vain hope that possibly the way of the transgressor
-might not be hard for them. Some by intemperance and some by
-licentiousness, some by sly dishonesty and some by cold-hearted
-selfishness&mdash;the roads to ruin are various, and men travel them all!
-Here they come at last, bruised, battered, and broken! They have been
-fighting the stars with the usual result. If here and there one keeps
-his head up and his face like polished brass, thinking he may escape
-the same ugly fate, you have only to wait for a time to see him with
-his face broken and his heart crushed like the rest.</p>
-
-<p>Here are two young men at college, one of them living a true life,
-maintaining good habits, keeping himself hard at work, cultivating the
-right sort of friends! The other young fellow keeps his lungs drenched
-with cigarette<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</span> smoke, his brain drugged with alcohol; he seeks out
-the shady places in the life of the city and cultivates the refuse;
-he loafs when he ought to be at work. You can tell at a glance which
-one will be sitting in the directors’ meeting or in some similar place
-of responsibility twenty years from now, and which one will be out
-somewhere on a high stool or tramping the streets periodically in
-search of a job, wondering why his luck has been against him. There is
-no luck about it. He enlisted in the great army of fools who, under
-the leadership of Sisera, are undertaking to fight the stars. Certain
-habits, certain courses of action, certain aspirations bring honor,
-joy, advancement; certain other courses of action bring just the
-reverse. It is all as sure as the movement of the planets; it comes
-according to law equally unyielding.</p>
-
-<p>The ultimate well-being of any life is secured through cooperation with
-those forces symbolized by the stars. I was on the Mediterranean once
-on my way from Italy to Egypt when off the coast of Crete our ship
-ran into a terrible storm. We were beaten and tossed, for the wind
-was contrary. An accident made it necessary<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</span> to lay to for several
-hours while the waves dashed over the highest decks. In the absence of
-either sun or stars, exact reckoning was lost, but toward midnight of
-the second day the storm broke and presently the stars shone out, here
-and there, in the irregular patches of the sky. Then the first officer
-appeared on deck with his instruments and soon he knew exactly where we
-were on the face of the troubled waters. All uncertainty was over; we
-were sailing by the stars and the next day we were casting anchor off
-the coast of Egypt. The motion of the ship and the tossing of the waves
-were uncertain, but the movement of the stars was sure.</p>
-
-<p>Our safety in the whole cruise of life depends upon the adjustment of
-our movements to those universal forces which enfold us. My watch,
-carried though it is in my individual pocket, keeps step with the stars
-so that I could show you where each hand will be tomorrow morning when
-the sun comes up over the horizon. And our purposes, our affections,
-and our wills are to be similarly adjusted so that they shall keep step
-with God’s infinite will and purpose<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</span> for us. Those universal forces of
-love and grace, of forgiveness and redemption, of guidance and comfort,
-to which in all ages men have learned to look, they are all ours if we
-will only use them. And when we learn to use them aright they bring
-peace, and strength, and joy.</p>
-
-<p>There was the sense of an adequate horizon, then, in the words of this
-ancient poet as he stood that night on the field of battle looking up
-at the stars. The wind and the rain, the hail and the sleet had all
-aided the Israelites in winning the victory. The very skies seemed to
-be interested in that moral struggle there on the plain of Esdraelon.
-And he was correct&mdash;the stars helped; they always help; they fight
-perpetually in their own appointed way on the side of right.</p>
-
-<p>You may trust the forces which they symbolize! You may work out your
-own highest well-being in joyous confidence, for God is working within
-you toward the same great end! You need have no doubt about it, for
-the evidence is plain. Heroes and martyrs lay down their lives for
-a principle. The mother cares for the sick child, counting not her
-pleasure, her comfort, or even her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</span> own life dear if she may save the
-child. The poor dog attached to his master goes to the spot where
-he saw them lay the body and whines for the sound of a voice that
-is still. Has the Creator of such moral integrity in the heroes and
-martyrs kept none of it for himself? Has he out of the ages gone
-produced such devotion in the heart of the mother with no devotion
-in his own heart toward his helpless child? Has he instilled such
-faithful affection in the very dogs that perish, but failed to share in
-that love himself? Serious men cannot bring themselves to believe in
-anything so absurd. These forces which produce attachment to the right,
-devotion to the helpless, faithful affection, are universal forces.</p>
-
-<p>“O heart I made, a heart beats here”&mdash;that was the word of God through
-the lips of the poet! These forces of love and grace are universal and
-enduring as the stars. To fight them spells defeat. To coöperate with
-them, bringing the scattered and aimless activities of the life into
-harmony with the supreme purpose of God declared in Jesus Christ, means
-life abundant and eternal.</p>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="XI">XI<br />
-THE POWER OF VISION</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-<p>In an old school reader there was a sketch, “Eyes or no eyes.” Two
-young men went for a walk in the same field. One of them saw just
-the commonplace shapes and forms; he saw nothing that a dog or a
-kodak would not have seen. He had eyes to see, but he saw not. The
-other one saw the bumblebees appearing later in the season than do
-the honey-bees, and thought of the relation this fact sustains to
-the production of red clover seed&mdash;a relation which every farmer
-understands when he cuts the second crop in place of the first to get
-seed. He saw at one side of the field a great granite boulder deposited
-there in the glacial period, and although the day was hot his mind was
-cool as it dwelt upon that age of ice. He saw the imprint of the shell
-of some water-breathing creature deep<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</span> bedded as a fossil in a piece of
-stone. His imagination went back to the time when that very field was
-part of an inland sea, and this bit of life was making its impress upon
-the soft mud of some ancient seashore. He saw a score of interesting
-things which need not be named here; they were all there to be seen,
-but his friend had overlooked them. It was a question of “eyes or no
-eyes.” What any man sees in a field, or in his fellow beings, in his
-college course, or in life as a whole, depends upon the power of vision
-that he carries with him.</p>
-
-<p>Here in a well-known story was a man keeping sheep on the slopes of
-Horeb. In reading the narrative it seems that the imagination of the
-poet has blended with the plain prose facts of history. We do not know
-what kind of fire it was which burned in that mysterious and vocal
-bush. We may believe it was the same kind of fire which burns in the
-grate or we may conclude that it was an extraordinary bit of autumnal
-splendor which at a certain season of the year is aflame on many
-hillsides as if the glory and color of a thousand sunsets might have
-lodged in the tree tops. However that may<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</span> be, what Moses actually saw
-and heard that day is far more important than any conceivable amount of
-literal fire or of autumn color.</p>
-
-<p>“I will now turn aside and see”&mdash;and what he saw his own subsequent
-career indicates! He had the power of vision and he saw not merely
-the shapes and colors present in that sheep pasture. He saw things
-absent, things historic, things possible as present and real. He saw
-away yonder on the banks of the Nile where he formerly lived, the
-life of his own fellows being crushed out of them by wrong industrial
-conditions. He saw the capacity of that race, burning but unconsumed
-even by those years of oppression, for moral idealism and spiritual
-leadership among the nations of the earth. He felt within his own
-breast a fitness for service wider, higher, and more significant than
-that of keeping sheep. He felt himself commissioned from on high for
-that responsible service, and he became dissatisfied with his own easy
-content there in the land of Midian. He saw the great divine heart
-filled with sympathy for an enslaved and oppressed people. He heard<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</span>
-the divine voice say, “I have seen the affliction of my people which
-are in Egypt; I have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters,
-and I am come down to deliver them.” He saw the divine hand reach out
-to employ mysterious agencies for the release of that people from the
-bondage of Egypt.</p>
-
-<p>He had the power of vision and this is what he saw when he led his
-flock to the back side of the desert, even to Horeb, the mountain of
-God. The sheep saw nothing of that burning bush or of those other
-mysterious realities. The dull Midianites watching their flocks a few
-hundred yards away on the same slope saw nothing of it. A man standing
-in Moses’ own shoes, his face turned in the same direction, would have
-seen nothing unless he had brought to the situation the insight of this
-man of vision.</p>
-
-<p>And Moses himself saw and heard what he did in that high hour because
-through long years he had cherished a profound sympathy for his brother
-men and a great abiding faith in God as one who works on behalf of
-suffering people everywhere. It was the whole mood and purpose of his
-life<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</span> which stood declared in those splendid words, “I will now turn
-aside and see.” He was always saying just that! He was never content
-with the mere surface of reality. He was never satisfied with that
-which a hasty glance would bring in any given situation. He must get
-beneath the surface and know the deeper, hidden meaning.</p>
-
-<p>How much depends upon that power of vision! What mighty issues are knit
-up with it in this familiar scene! If Moses that day had seen and heard
-nothing more than did the Midianites, he would have gone on keeping his
-sheep and would have died a comfortable and prosperous sheep grower.
-If the Israelites along the banks of the Nile had been without the
-power of such leadership as he alone among the men of his generation
-seemed to be able to furnish, they would have gone on making bricks
-without straw until all capacity for spiritual advance would have been
-crushed out of them. If that Hebrew race, first among Semitic peoples
-in its ability to see and to impart spiritual truth, had never had its
-chance to develop in the free air of the steppes or within the pleasant
-borders of that land of promise,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</span> how different apparently would have
-been the moral history of the race! It is idle to speculate on what
-would have been the result had something never happened which did
-happen, but just this glance shows the momentous consequences which may
-at any juncture attach to the ability of some man to see. It is of the
-utmost importance in every quarter that some man should be at hand who
-can see the great sight.</p>
-
-<p>Your own life, the richness of it, the promise of it, the successful
-unfolding of it on higher levels, is bound up with this power of
-vision. If the world about you is only a sheep pasture, if success in
-life is to be measured solely or mainly in terms of wool and mutton, if
-the skilful avoidance of discomfort and the securing of easy content
-for yourself and your family are the main considerations with you, then
-by that limited outlook you are doomed. If here in these days of high
-privilege on the campus no bushes burn for you with a strange fire, if
-no hillsides in life become vocal with a divine voice, if no flames of
-sympathy, of moral passion, of aspiration burn within your breast, then
-alas for you! You are not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</span> entering into the meaning of life! You have
-eyes, but you see not, ears, but you hear not!</p>
-
-<p>“Can ye not discern?” Jesus said to those who regarded themselves as
-the most exemplary people of his day. They could look up at the sky
-and from the fact that it was red or lowering make a fairly good guess
-about tomorrow’s weather, but they could not discern the signs of the
-times. There they were in the presence of the beginnings of the most
-important spiritual movement in history, yet all they saw was the tired
-face of the Man of Nazareth, whom they finally put to death because his
-claims confused them. Can ye not discern? Will you not take pains to
-cultivate the power of turning aside to see the great sights awaiting
-you all in the sheep pastures of earth, in all scenes of industry and
-in all places of trade, in all lines of civic effort and in all forms
-of charitable intent, in every schoolroom and in every home? Will you
-not turn and with heightened power of vision see there the hidden,
-unrealized possibilities?</p>
-
-<p>“Where there is no vision, the people perish!” Something lives
-on&mdash;flesh and blood<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</span> shapes which buy and sell, walk the street and
-talk small talk, but the people created potentially in the likeness
-and image of the Most High are gone. Where there is no vision, any
-life perishes. What keeps alive the mother-love in the face of all the
-hardships, sacrifices, buffetings it is called upon to meet? It is
-the power of vision cherished and cultivated more actively, perhaps,
-by women than by men. When her child is first laid in her arms it is
-only a bit of red flesh&mdash;that is all the canary in the window or the
-thoughtless observer who cares not for children would see. This bit of
-existence, so undeveloped as to have nothing one could call moral life,
-no power to choose or to aspire; so undeveloped as to have nothing
-one could call mental life, no power of recognition, discrimination,
-inference, has only the power to cry and to feed. But the mother sees
-in that tiny form another promise of a diviner day when the unsearched
-possibilities of that new life shall have been trained and nurtured
-by her love. And throughout the years when she nurses the child in
-sickness, bears with him in his ignorance, woos and wins him back from
-his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</span> moral waywardness, she is sustained by her maternal vision.</p>
-
-<p>No one can live strongly, effectively, joyously in any other way. The
-dull, dry, prosaic man who never sees the deeper significance of any
-given situation may be able to saw wood or add up columns of figures,
-but when it comes to relating these ordinary details of life to some
-over-arching, underlying, far-reaching purpose which will bring out
-the meaning and the beauty of existence, he fails. He has no power of
-vision and his real life goes down in defeat.</p>
-
-<p>It might be illustrated in this way&mdash;read Baedeker on Mont Blanc and
-then read Coleridge! Baedeker has the facts; he tells the height of
-the mountain, the exact distance from Chamounix to the summit in
-kilometers; he describes every glacier and crevasse. But Coleridge’s
-“Ode” to the mountain brings out the meaning and the beauty of it.
-Baedeker has facts, Coleridge has vision.</p>
-
-<p>Read Baedeker on Edinburgh and then read Robert Louis Stevenson’s
-little book on the same city; read Baedeker on Northern Italy,
-including his description of the city without<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</span> streets, and then read
-Ruskin’s “Stones of Venice.” Read Baedeker on Belgium, including his
-description of the field and of the Battle of Waterloo, and then read
-Victor Hugo’s chapter on the same event in “Les Misérables.” In one
-case you have the camera recording the outward, visible, prose facts;
-in the other you have insight and vision interpreting the meaning of
-them. It is written, man shall not live by Baedeker alone, but by every
-word which proceedeth out of the mind and heart of that higher power of
-vision shall man live.</p>
-
-<p>Let me urge this habit upon every young man! Put your own personal life
-under the power, not of some lower mood or some ill-advised impulse,
-but under the power of the best you have ever seen or heard or felt as
-in any wise possible to you. It was a man in a million, measured by
-character and achievement, who said, while he was still in the vigor
-and promise of his youth, “Wherefore I was not disobedient unto”&mdash;what?
-I was not disobedient unto the rules and regulations posted on the
-wall of my schoolroom or the door of the factory where I earned my
-bread&mdash;that would have meant little!<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</span> No one can set up the way of life
-in type and print it to be nailed on a door. I was not disobedient to
-the usages and customs of the society where I moved&mdash;that, too, might
-have meant only a weak, cheap mode of life. “I was not disobedient unto
-the heavenly vision!” I was true to the best I saw and heard and felt
-as possible to me!</p>
-
-<p>That habit of putting the life deliberately and persistently under the
-power of some noble vision caught in an hour of spiritual privilege
-will mean advance. You may, if you will allow your attention to be
-diverted by the underbrush around you and never see the bush that burns
-with a strange fire, never see things absent, things historic, things
-possible but unattained. The small things, the ant-hills, and the
-gopher mounds, may, because they are near, shut out your view of Shasta
-and Whitney. It is one of the tragedies of life that the insignificant,
-the unimportant details have a way of crushing out the finer purposes,
-thus bringing defeat to interests which are vital.</p>
-
-<p>When Abraham Lincoln had been unusually harassed by some professional
-politicians as to the bestowal of patronage, he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</span> said one day, half
-humorously and half sadly, “It is not the carrying on of the Civil War
-which is killing me; it is the work of deciding who shall be postmaster
-at the Four Corners. There is <abbr title="Mister">Mr.</abbr> Blank”&mdash;naming a very troublesome
-office-seeker&mdash;“I never think of going to sleep at night without first
-looking under the bed to see if Blank is not there waiting to ask me
-for some office.”</p>
-
-<p>It was one of the tragedies of those hard years in our history that the
-great president of the republic, who himself had caught the vision and
-heard the voice&mdash;“I have seen the affliction of my people which are in
-bondage; I have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters, and
-I am come down to deliver them”&mdash;it was one of the tragedies of that
-period that his eyes should be turned away from the bush which burned
-with fire to study the underbrush piled up round him by narrow-minded
-politicians. It is one of the tragedies of many lives in less exalted
-station that the great things suffer defeat by the multiplicity and
-insistence of the small things. Busied here and there with a thousand
-petty interests&mdash;what we shall eat, what we shall drink, what we
-shall put on,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</span> and, what other women will say about it when we get it
-on&mdash;the vital things are left undone. The whole wretched habit of life
-comes from the lack of the power of vision, the inability to put these
-matters in right perspective, the great things great and the small
-things small.</p>
-
-<p>Your real life does not consist in what you have. Your real life does
-not consist in what you are actually able to do. Your real life does
-not consist even, as men often say, in what you are. Your real life
-consists in what you see as possible and desirable for you, and in
-that capacity you feel stirring within you to gain all that sometime!
-Not your possessions, not your outward achievements, not your inner
-acquirements, but your persistently cherished aspirations tell the
-story of your real life. It is what you hold in vision and steadily
-strive for which marks you up or down.</p>
-
-<p>But suppose one feels his lack of this power of vision, how shall he
-gain more of it? How shall we cultivate our own meager share of this
-fine ability? You may recall that word of Paul, “Eye hath not seen,
-nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</span> heart of man to
-conceive the things that God hath prepared for those that love him.”
-This does not mean merely that the things prepared for us are superior
-to anything that eyes have seen or ears heard in this world; it means
-rather that they are discerned in another way. They come to us through
-the power of spiritual perception. “Eye hath not seen,” not by physical
-sensation; “ear hath not heard,” not by hearsay or common report; God
-reveals them to us by his Spirit. It was not that Moses had better eyes
-or better ears than the Midianite shepherds upon the hillsides; he had
-within him a soul of sympathy for his fellows, a spirit of trust toward
-God, an attitude of personal aspiration for the highest, which enabled
-him to see and to hear what they failed to detect.</p>
-
-<p>This power of vision grows like other powers, by right use. The soul
-sees and sees more as the man obediently translates his visions into
-deeds, his insights into actions. If any man, gifted or humble, will
-do his will he shall know, for “obedience,” as Robertson said, “is the
-organ of spiritual knowledge.” The power of vision grows through<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</span> right
-use as each added insight becomes an effective impulse for noble action.</p>
-
-<p>It is this power of vision which keeps men alive all the way up and
-all the way in. It is for you who stand on the slopes of Horeb, the
-mountains of God, by reason of the higher education you have received
-to cultivate this power by a spirit of obedient trust and by the habit
-of loving service. In every situation form the habit of turning aside
-from the commonplace shapes which engage your eyes that you may see
-some great and significant sight. Watch for the bush which burns with a
-mysterious fire! Listen for the voice which issues out of it, calling
-you to larger and higher service! Welcome these finer impulses which
-burn within your own breast, for they will aid you in building your
-personal life into that great, divine plan of which you have caught a
-far-off vision.</p>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="XII">XII<br />
-“THE WAR AGAINST WAR”</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-<p>In my selection of a theme I have ventured to break away from the
-conventional style of baccalaureate address. I bring you no word of
-counsel touching those moral values which are altogether private
-and personal. I would undertake rather to direct your minds to the
-consideration of a certain problem, vast and grave, whose scope is
-national and international.</p>
-
-<p>We live in a land governed by public opinion. The seat of authority
-is not at Washington; the seat of authority is to be found in those
-prevailing sentiments and convictions which determine the real attitude
-of the people themselves. As college-trained men and women you are to
-be leaders in the work of forming that body of public opinion. Where it
-is wise, honest, resolute, it becomes the final source of safety for
-the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</span> republic. It is of vital importance, then, that your contribution
-to that section of public opinion which bears upon the problem I have
-in mind be grounded in reason and conscience.</p>
-
-<p>Let me remind you of two sentences taken from Holy Writ, one from the
-greatest book in the Old Testament, “His name shall be called the
-Prince of Peace”; the other from the last book in the New Testament,
-“And he shall reign forever and ever.” His name shall be called the
-Prince of Peace and he shall reign forever and ever! We have here a
-miniature picture of one of the sublime processes of the ages! The
-highest anticipation of the Hebrew looked toward the coming of One who
-should establish a new line of succession. He saw a new quality of life
-winning its way to empire. The heir to the throne of Israel would be
-no more a man of war, he would be the Prince of Peace. And the highest
-anticipation of the Christian looked toward the complete success of
-that finer method of sovereignty&mdash;that coming One would reign forever!</p>
-
-<p>It is a splendid picture of that righteous and enduring conquest to
-be accomplished<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</span> not by force but by principle; not by compulsion
-through slaughter but by moral instruction, persuasion, and reasonable
-agreement. It is a picture which will furnish any man a worthy ideal
-to hang in his sky and it will help him, as he takes part in shaping
-the public opinion of his country, to place the crown of his ultimate
-allegiance where it rightly belongs.</p>
-
-<p>His name shall be called the Prince of Peace! But what terrible mockery
-has been offered to that name by his avowed followers! It is one of
-the ironies of history that the most costly and deadly armaments for
-the killing of men in war are being wrought out in cold steel, not by
-the nations which owe their allegiance to Mahomet, the prophet of the
-sword, but by those nations which profess allegiance to the Prince of
-Peace. “Put up thy sword,” he said twenty centuries ago! The command
-has never been withdrawn nor revoked. Yet look out across the face of
-what we call Christendom and see the wicked and costly refusal!</p>
-
-<p>Christian Germany, where the Protestant Reformation was ushered in
-by the preaching of Martin Luther, has increased her national<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</span> debt
-in a single generation from eighteen millions of dollars to over one
-thousand millions, chiefly by expenditures upon her army and navy.
-Christian England, known to the ends of the earth as a center of
-missionary impulse, is almost beside herself in her mad desire to
-increase the number of <i>Dreadnoughts</i>. She is spending three
-hundred millions of dollars a year on her army and navy as against
-eighty-two millions all told on education, science and art. Christian
-Russia, professing in her orthodox Greek Church to have the only true
-faith to be found upon the globe, is planning a billion dollar navy
-and is actually spending two hundred millions a year upon armament
-as against twenty-two millions a year upon education. And our own
-Christian country has been making a strange departure from that policy
-which has made us prosperous and happy, honored and useful, among the
-nations of the earth for more than one hundred years. The United States
-in the last ten years has increased in population ten per cent, and it
-has increased its military expenditures during that period by three
-hundred per cent. And this is Christendom!<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</span> These are the nations which
-look up to the One whose name is called “The Prince of Peace” and crown
-him Lord of all! Alas, for the bitter irony of such a course!</p>
-
-<p>And all this at a time when the bare problem of bread is becoming
-more and more serious! England, spending her three hundred millions
-of dollars a year on military outlay, has little children in the
-streets of London and Glasgow eating refuse out of the garbage barrels
-because they are hungry. The problem of poverty and unemployment
-there is so grave that the British Parliament sets aside whole days
-for its consideration. In Germany a government expert said recently
-that, according to carefully prepared estimates based upon detailed
-investigation, there were two men applying for almost every job which
-promised a living wage; one-half of the skilled labor of the empire
-was out of employment. In Russia, people by the thousand die, like
-flies, from malnutrition at the very hour when her military experts are
-talking about that billion dollar navy. It is criminal to take thus the
-children’s bread and fling it to the dogs of war!<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</span> How terrible all
-this is for nations which profess to honor and follow the One who came
-not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them!</p>
-
-<p>In our own country, while the situation is less serious, there are men
-enough out of work and unable to find bread to put into the mouths
-of their families. Never a week passes when men do not come asking
-me to use my influence with the employers in my congregation to find
-them work. Our national leaders are looking in every direction to
-discover how the revenue may be increased. The present revenue is sadly
-inadequate for the things which ought to be done. There are millions of
-acres of arid land to be irrigated by national enterprise and offered
-for settlement to industrious families. There are great areas of swamp
-land to be drained which would support a busy, happy population. There
-are forests to be conserved and renewed in a way that would change
-the whole face of the situation for the farmer and the fruit-grower
-in great sections of our country. There are inland waterways to be
-improved and developed, bringing producer and consumer nearer together
-by better means of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</span> transportation, thus reducing the cost of living.
-There is a merchant marine sadly needing assistance, for our flag
-should fly on all seas and in every port, in what could be a useful
-and profitable trade. All these things ought to be done, if only there
-was money available to do them. All these interests suffer for lack
-of money in the very period when within ten years we are increasing
-our military expenditure by three hundred per cent. His name shall
-be called “The Prince of Peace,” and it is under his banner that we
-profess to march!</p>
-
-<p>What is it all for? I know the scare-heads which sometimes fill the
-sillier type of newspaper. I know how frightened some people are
-when some “military expert,” as he calls himself, has the nightmare.
-“Men who spend the best years of their lives looking at the world
-through the bore of a gun get their vision distorted.” They cannot
-see straight; they become sorry and unreliable leaders, as Europe,
-staggering under her grievous burden, knows to her sorrow. Sir Edward
-Grey, foreign secretary in the present Cabinet, said recently in the
-British Parliament, “The vastness of the expenditure<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</span> on armament is
-a satire on modern civilization and if continued it must lead Europe
-into bankruptcy.” The real security of any nation depends upon its
-schools and its churches, its useful industries and its happy homes a
-thousand times more than upon its army and navy. And the conceit of
-these militarists who are throwing dust in the eyes of the people would
-be funny, if it were not so costly and so perilous to our national
-well-being.</p>
-
-<p>It is the duty of the church and of the university, where men do
-not live in that state of chronic hysteria which possesses many a
-newspaper office, to arraign this evil of militarism as the most
-cruel and inexcusable burden, as the most gigantic crime against
-the toiling people, as the nearest approach to the unpardonable sin
-known to our twentieth century. The men who watch the world from that
-narrow station “behind the gun” are not competent leaders of public
-sentiment. The merchant and the mechanic, the wise lawyer and the
-skilled physician, the farmer, the miner, and the trained teacher,
-engaged in peaceful, useful industry, are vastly more competent to see
-things as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</span> they are and to aid in shaping a wholesome public sentiment.
-International relationships are being formed today as never before in
-the history of the race through community of interest in trade and by
-those associations which come through labor organizations and through
-literature, through the work of education and by religious affiliation.
-It is for these men and women whose main interest lies in those
-productive vocations to insist upon being heard.</p>
-
-<p>What are the reasons urged for this cruel and costly outlay? “In time
-of peace prepare for war!” This stupid sentiment is trotted out as if
-it were a fragment from the wisdom of the ages. History as well as
-common sense laughs it to scorn. In time of peace prepare for peace!
-We did just that with England along our northern border where for
-four thousand miles only an imaginary line divides us from one of the
-mightiest nations on earth. We agreed with her that not a solitary
-fort should mar that border, that not a single war-ship should trouble
-the friendly waters of the Great Lakes. If these two nations can make
-that treaty of disarmament for a frontier of four<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</span> thousand miles and
-observe it faithfully for a century, what is there in the nature of the
-case to prevent the extension of that noble line of friendly agreement
-indefinitely?</p>
-
-<p>We prepared for peace and we have had peace. The whole history of
-our country has been, in the main, a history of peace. Since 1789,
-a hundred and twenty-one years ago, only three foreign wars have
-interrupted our progress, and they lasted, all told, less than eight
-years. For the other one hundred and thirteen years our swords have
-been plowshares, our spears have been pruning-hooks, the fine steel of
-our young manhood has been devoted to those useful activities which
-do not destroy, but feed and save. If we can thus live and grow to
-be one of the mightiest nations on earth by the policy of peace, why
-this sudden spasm of military preparation now retarding our genuine
-development!</p>
-
-<p>But we have become “a world power” men say, and some of the nations
-might attack us! Why should they? Never since we became a republic
-have we been attacked, though for decades and decades our navy was
-a negligible quantity. “But suppose<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</span> Germany should land a hundred
-thousand soldiers on our Atlantic coast,” some man shrieked out
-recently. Why should she? Sane people deal with probabilities, not
-with wild and imaginary possibilities. If Germany wanted to attack us,
-why did she not do it in those years when we had no navy at all worth
-mentioning? We buy millions and millions of dollars worth of goods
-every year “made in Germany.” Does Germany wish to fight one of her
-best customers? If some man who keeps a meat-market has a customer
-who comes in every day to order chops or a steak for his lunch and a
-roast of beef or a leg of lamb for his dinner, does the butcher want
-to beat that customer over the head with a musket? Any one can see
-the absurdity of it! Is folly any the less folly when raised to the
-<i>nth</i> power by being made international?</p>
-
-<p>So much for Germany! As for England, she ruled the sea for all those
-decades when we had no navy worth considering and she never thought
-of attacking us. Why should she fight the people of her own race and
-language whose commercial interests are so closely interwoven with
-her own economic<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</span> life? France is our traditional and hereditary
-friend. No other nation on that side of the globe need be taken into
-our calculation. What a nightmare it is which sets us to building ten
-million dollar warships for fear some respectable neighbor might attack
-us!</p>
-
-<p>But there is Japan! At the very hour when ten thousand Japanese boys
-and girls were singing songs of welcome along the streets to the
-officers and men of the American fleet, when the whole empire from the
-officials of high rank down to the jinrikisha men in the street was
-showing its cordial good-will to the representatives of our country,
-an excitable young man, who owes his fame to the fact that he did one
-brave deed at Santiago and was thenceforth miscellaneously kissed by a
-lot of impressionable women&mdash;this excitable young man was rushing about
-saying, “War with Japan is inevitable!” And here on the Pacific coast
-recently a tired, sick, disappointed old man, an admiral in the navy,
-said to a bunch of newspaper reporters who wanted something yellow to
-fill up the front page, “Japan could tear this coast to ribbons<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</span> in
-sixty days!” He made this thoughtless deliverance at the very time when
-the ink on the notable agreement entered into by President Roosevelt
-and the emperor of Japan was scarcely dry! The thoughtful people of
-both nations smiled and then mourned over his foolish word. Germany,
-England, France, Japan, these four are the only nations on the globe
-that we need take into such a consideration! How absurd to be imposing
-upon the toiling people the useless burden of expensive armament
-against these neighbors.</p>
-
-<p>But “we have colonies now and we must defend them&mdash;there are the
-Philippines!” Who wants the Philippines? Nobody! They have been, as all
-the world knows, an expensive and troublesome burden. We have already
-spent several hundreds of millions of dollars upon that undertaking,
-and the end is not yet. We could well afford to pay any country fifty
-millions of dollars to take them off our hands. But this is not the
-way national business is transacted. We found ourselves with the
-Philippines in our possession, contrary to the wish and judgment of
-many of us at the time, and now by an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</span> expenditure of these hundreds of
-millions of dollars upon schools and churches, upon better government,
-public improvements, and economic development, we have been trying
-to do our duty by that backward people. But nobody wants to fight us
-to get the Philippines. “They can be left out over night,” as <abbr title="Doctor">Dr.</abbr>
-Jefferson said in New York, “without the slightest anxiety on our
-part.” We certainly do not need to increase our military expenditures
-three hundred per cent to prevent some nation from robbing us of that
-precious colony.</p>
-
-<p>There are enemies against which we do need to arm ourselves! Not
-England and Germany, not France and Japan&mdash;no, the common enemies
-of hunger and cold, pain and disease, ignorance and vice, greed and
-graft, unemployment and inequitable distribution! Against these enemies
-we do need to arm. These alien elements are the dangerous foes of
-the republic, and they have landed their devastating forces upon our
-shores. Against them we must enlist; against them we must build the
-best armaments which statesmanship can devise and generous treasuries
-provide. And in that great<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</span> and honorable warfare against the real
-enemies of human well-being the exalted Leader of our race, the One
-whose name written above every name is called the Prince of Peace, will
-march at the head of the advancing host.</p>
-
-<p>Not only the costliness, but the futility of this burdensome armament
-smites us in the face when we begin to think. Some years ago in
-Russia, a man named Jean Bloch began to write about war. He was not
-a dreamy sentimentalist; he was a banker and the administrator of a
-great railroad system. He had been studying war upon its scientific
-and economic side. He advanced the argument that the introduction
-of long-range, rapid-fire guns using smokeless powder made decisive
-engagements between large bodies of troops impossible; and thus made
-useless the appeal to arms as a mode of settling international disputes.</p>
-
-<p>A small force of men securely entrenched can now hold at bay
-indefinitely a mighty army. When men could safely march up within
-two or three hundred yards of earthworks, fortified positions were
-sometimes carried by the assault of a superior force.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</span> All this is now
-changed. The zone of fire today extends for more than a mile. Across
-that space the man behind the earthworks can shoot with marvelous
-accuracy fifteen to twenty-five bullets per minute. Smokeless powder
-keeps the zone of deadly fire clear, so that he can see how to shoot.
-The field is not obscured by smoke as it was when Longstreet made his
-advance at Gettysburg. Smokeless powder and the recently invented
-noiseless rifle make it impossible to locate the foe either by sight or
-by sound&mdash;men simply drop dead as they undertake to advance across that
-zone of fire which extends for a mile. The effect of all this upon the
-morale of an army undertaking to carry a fortified position by assault
-is instantly apparent. Such attempts are now things of the past.</p>
-
-<p>Jean Bloch had scarcely published his argument when the South
-African war came on to demonstrate the essential soundness of his
-main conclusions. The British empire was making war upon two little
-republics numbering all told, men, women, and children, about eighty
-thousand people&mdash;less than enough to provide inhabitants for some<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</span>
-third-rate city. Imagine some unimportant city of eighty thousand
-people undertaking to wage war with England! Yet with all the resources
-of her army and navy, with the treasury drawn upon at the rate of a
-million dollars a day, with Lord Roberts in the field, and with the
-splendid courage of her best troops matched against the scanty numbers
-of the opposing forces, the Boers held out against Great Britain for
-nearly three years.</p>
-
-<p>It was a bitter experience for England. It burdened her with an
-increase of debt under which she staggers in her present industrial
-depression. It hastened the death of the good Queen Victoria. It brings
-an apologetic note into the voice of almost every Englishman one meets
-today when he refers to it, and yet it was the British empire against
-eighty thousand people. Imagine what it would have been in costliness
-and in futility had she been trying to overcome an equal! Picture the
-folly of England trying to overcome Germany, or of France trying to
-conquer the United States. Jean Bloch was right, and many of Europe’s
-wisest statesmen are openly endorsing his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</span> claim. They are using the
-sensible argument of this business man to stem this tide of militarism
-now sweeping across the face of Christendom.</p>
-
-<p>Artillery has become all but useless against modern fortifications.
-Plevna told us that, thirty years ago. The Russian general, Todleben,
-said of that campaign, “We would bombard Plevna for a whole day and
-kill perhaps a single Turk.” The South African war repeated the same
-sentiment with a loud “amen.” The correspondents on the English side
-reported, “We bombarded Cronje for a solid week and after the struggle
-was over we found he had lost in all that time less than a hundred men.”</p>
-
-<p>The costly operations of modern warfare, when a fleet can fire away
-fifty thousand dollars’ worth of ammunition in a few minutes and when
-armies in the field run up bills correspondingly great, impose burdens
-which lift the luxury of such performances out of the reach of all but
-the well-to-do nations. When the old-time fighters used battle-axes and
-broadswords, they could go out and hew Agag in pieces before the Lord
-as long as the strength of their right arms<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</span> and the supply of Agags
-held out&mdash;they could do this indefinitely without entailing any serious
-expense upon their countries. But the costly weapons now in vogue, with
-their voracious appetites for expensive ammunition, make war another
-matter.</p>
-
-<p>Even these terrible outlays might be borne by the powerful nations for
-a brief period, but the inability of any large army to win a speedy and
-decisive victory over another would cause the campaigns to drag along
-until the economic resources of both parties to the struggle would be
-taxed beyond limit and thus the futility of the appeal to arms would
-again be demonstrated. All this has become so apparent that some of the
-wisest statesmen in Europe are insisting that war between great nations
-of approximately equal strength has become, on the face of it, such an
-absurdity as to make such an event in the highest degree improbable.</p>
-
-<p>In the city of Lucerne, on the shore of that lovely lake with the
-Rigi and Pilatus rising up in front, Jean Bloch caused to be erected
-a “Museum of Peace and War.” He knew that abstract arguments are
-sometimes weak where visible, tangible facts<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</span> are strong in their power
-of appeal. He provided for exhibits of the various forms of armament
-from arrow-heads and primitive tomahawks down to Mauser rifles and
-Krupp cannon. He has shown how complete defenses may be made where
-barbed wire obstacles are stretched across that deadly zone which
-extends for more than a mile in front of the fortified spot&mdash;obstacles
-which men can neither cut nor pass under fire. He has shown the
-penetrative power of modern bullets. Napoleon used to say bluntly, “A
-boy will serve to stop a bullet as well as a man.” But neither boy nor
-man stops the bullet from one of these modern rifles, it goes right on
-in its bloody career. Experts had calculated that a rifle bullet from
-a Mauser gun would pierce fifteen thicknesses of cowhide, a hardwood
-plank three inches thick, and then go through a dozen more inch boards
-placed at intervals. I saw there in that museum the results of the
-test&mdash;the bullet pierced the cowhide, the three-inch plank, and went
-through sixteen inch boards, lodging in the seventeenth. Army men say
-that a bullet with force enough to pierce an inch board will kill a
-man. With such<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</span> penetrative force any one can see the deadly effect of
-these long-range, rapid-fire guns using smokeless powder. It takes away
-some of the glamour and romance from the terrible business of war to
-have its appliances thus scientifically exhibited.</p>
-
-<p>In that same museum at Lucerne, where the exhibits of deadly weapons
-are educating thousands of tourists from all the nations of earth
-as they come and go, year by year, other exhibits show the increase
-of international arbitration as a means of determining differences.
-Within the last ten years eighty of these arbitration treaties have
-been signed, our own country being a party to more than a third of them
-all. There is a growing and an insistent demand in all the enlightened
-nations of the earth for an international judiciary. Men have come
-to see that this costly international dueling does not really settle
-anything. A few men have to sit down finally around a table somewhere
-and determine what shall stand. And as statesmen get their eyes open
-they will more and more insist that this shall be done before the
-costly and futile experiments in killing men take place rather than
-afterward.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</span></p>
-
-<p>The great arbitrations of history might certainly be made as
-conspicuous in our schools, in the press, and in literature as the
-great battles. Beside that volume bound in red, “Fifteen Decisive
-Battles of the World,” there ought to stand another more significant
-volume bound in white and gold, “Fifty Decisive Arbitrations of the
-World.” Let the church and the university join hands in helping the
-people of our country to realize that when the final estimates are made
-up, it will not be “Blessed are the warmakers,” but “Blessed are the
-peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” How mighty
-would be the influence of the thirty millions of professing Christians
-in our own land in shaping public opinion, in determining our national
-policy, could their hearts be really fired with the magnificent
-principles and the passion for human well-being which possessed the
-heart of the Prince of Peace!</p>
-
-<p>There is a growing unwillingness among the nations to discount
-their futures by killing off large numbers of their bravest and
-most patriotic young men in war. David Starr Jordan’s two familiar
-principles<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</span> are absolutely sound: “The blood of a nation determines
-its history,” and “The history of a nation determines its blood.” The
-truth of the first statement we see at a glance, for the blood, the
-inner life-quality, of any nation shapes its history. And the second
-statement is equally true; if the history of a nation is stained by
-incessant warfare, if generation after generation consents to the
-destruction of those courageous, virile young men whose hearts respond
-readily to the call for heroic sacrifice, such a history eliminates
-from the blood of that nation those very elements which it sorely needs.</p>
-
-<p>It cost us the lives of half a million men to abolish slavery and to
-keep our country whole. If that result was to be secured in no other
-way, men who love liberty and love the Union may say that the price
-was not too great for such unspeakable benefits. But we know that the
-nation today is less able to grapple with its present problems, with
-the greed and the graft, with the fraud and the lust which confront us,
-because of the loss of those brave men and of the children they might
-have reared, bequeathing to them their own heroic spirit, had their
-lives<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</span> been lived out in peaceful industry. They went down cheerily to
-die at Shiloh and Chancellorsville, at Antietam and Gettysburg, but
-the nation to this hour feels the loss of such a priceless heritage of
-public spirit and uncalculating heroism. The serious-minded nations are
-becoming ever more reluctant to make such costly sacrifices for the
-sake of the doubtful advantage of a great war.</p>
-
-<p>In the growth of international agreements, in the gradual advance
-of what might be called international litigation before courts of
-arbitration replacing the barbarous methods of slaughter and conquest,
-in the steady increase of that good understanding and mutual good-will
-promoted by travel and the interchange of products, by fellowship in
-the work of science and education and through the joys of sharing
-responsibility in the cause of philanthropy and religion&mdash;in these
-vast movements of thought and feeling lies the hope of that better
-day when peace shall hold an undisputed sway. The nineteenth century,
-by steam and telegraph, by increased travel and the ready exchange
-of commodities, made the whole<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</span> world a neighborhood. It is for the
-twentieth century, by the permeation of international intercourse
-with finer principles and a nobler spirit, to make the whole world a
-brotherhood.</p>
-
-<p>It is the duty of right-minded, honest-hearted people everywhere to
-use their utmost endeavors to maintain and increase that body of good
-feeling out of which shall issue this higher type of international
-life. To such proportions has this sentiment already grown, that if
-these four nations, England, Germany, France, and the United States,
-were to make arbitration before a properly constituted international
-court the method of their dealing with one another, the other Latin,
-Slavic, and Oriental countries would find themselves powerless against
-this mighty tide setting ever in the direction of the determination of
-all differences by the more rational method.</p>
-
-<p>The outlook for arbitration as a means of settlement is altogether
-hopeful. The convention creating a joint high commission to determine
-finally our Canadian boundary; the self-restraint shown by the nations
-at large in not using force against the late<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</span> Castro government
-in Venezuela; the three great conventions among European powers
-neutralizing Norway and agreeing to respect each other’s territory on
-the Baltic; the exchange of notes between Japan and the United States
-relating to the Far East; the fact that the Central American states
-have thus far kept their agreement of 1907 to refer all differences
-to a court of their own creation; the fact that the Balkan crisis in
-1908, at one time fraught with possibilities frightful to contemplate,
-occasioned no European war as would have been the result of such a
-tangle twenty years ago&mdash;all these signs of the times are full of
-promise.</p>
-
-<p>We must confess that the churches of him whose name should be called
-the Prince of Peace have oftentimes been inefficient in their
-performance of an essential duty. The feeling between England and
-Germany, for example, at the present time is almost insanely acute.
-Germany has been jealous of the growing friendship between England and
-France, now happily replacing the ugly antagonism which harks back to
-the time of Napoleon. England is jealous of Germany’s growing supremacy
-in the world of manufacture.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</span> Technical schools, improved machinery,
-and the rapid increase of skilled labor has enabled the German to carry
-his wares into the markets of the world and to undersell the Briton.
-All this with certain other causes which make for ill feeling has
-aroused a measure of hostility on both sides of the North Sea.</p>
-
-<p>I spent four months in England a year ago. I attended church twice
-or three times each Sunday and never once in all that time from a
-Christian pulpit did I hear a minister of Christ speak in deprecation
-of that feeling of hostility or seek to allay that sentiment of
-international jealousy. Aside from the “International Peace Congress,”
-which met in England that summer, the only public effort of that
-kind I witnessed or heard of was made at a socialist meeting in <abbr title="Saint">St.</abbr>
-James Hall, London. The International Socialist Party brought over
-from Berlin two well-known men, Kautsky, the editor of a socialist
-organ there, and Ledebour, the leader of the socialist party in the
-Reichstag, to address this meeting side by side with Hyndman, a
-long-time leader of the English socialists, and Keir Hardie, labor
-member<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</span> of the British Parliament. These men, German and Briton, stood
-together and uttered their ringing words that night against the further
-increase of armament, and in the interests of brotherhood. Has it come
-to this, that titled bishop and archbishop of the Church of Christ,
-that learned scholars and teachers in Oxford and Cambridge shall
-hold their peace in the presence of threatened war, while out of the
-workshops of the poor and the weary ranks of organized labor shall come
-the prophets of better things, calling upon Christendom in the name of
-the Carpenter of Nazareth to put up its sword!</p>
-
-<p>Our own nation has been guilty of its full share of this gigantic
-folly. Our Congress faced a deficit last year of something like one
-hundred and thirty five millions of dollars, mainly because of the
-enormous outlays upon the navy in building those ten million dollar
-warships. If the present rate of expenditure is maintained for the next
-ten years, with no increase whatever, it means that we shall spend
-upon our navy the vast sum of one billion, three hundred and fifty
-millions of dollars. The reports<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</span> show that for the fiscal year ending
-June 30, 1909, seventy-one per cent of our national revenue was spent
-upon the result of war and the preparation for war, upon pensions and
-upon the army and navy. What would you think of the housekeeping of a
-family where seventy-one per cent of their income was spent on guns!
-And because the government, with these huge outlays upon armament,
-cannot live upon its income, Congress insists upon increased taxation
-through these ingeniously devised tariffs, which fall most heavily upon
-the great consuming public. The cost of living has increased until it
-has become cruel to all people in modest circumstances and actually
-destructive to the struggling poor.</p>
-
-<p>Has not the time come for the plain people to call a halt! Has not the
-time come for the indignant toilers in peaceful occupations to restrain
-the unwise leaders who are responsible for this craze of militarism!
-Has not the solemn farce of seeing Christian nations build ten million
-dollar bulldogs in the remote possibility of being called upon to
-match them against the costly bulldogs of their neighbors, unless,
-perchance,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</span> these expensive creations should, before that, have been
-relegated to the scrap-heap by some new device&mdash;has not that solemn,
-ugly farce played itself out! “The welfare of the people is the supreme
-law of the land.” It is the supreme law of all lands and any one who
-has visited Europe, where every third peasant carries a useless and
-burdensome soldier on his back as he goes forth to his toil, knows that
-this modern evil of militarism is a mighty menace to the welfare of any
-people.</p>
-
-<p>The Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations in our Congress
-last winter called the attention of the House to the fact that, in
-pensions and in preparations for possible war, the United States was
-spending more money than any other nation in the world. He called
-attention to the fact that the appropriations for military and naval
-affairs for the coming year would exceed, by twenty-nine millions of
-dollars, all the money which the United States government has spent
-from the beginning of the republic up to the present hour upon public
-buildings. He spoke also of the fact that this nation, which we like
-to think of as a non-military nation, is spending at the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</span> present time
-more than two-thirds of the total national revenue on pensions and on
-preparations for war. What an abnormal condition for a republic whose
-splendid history has been almost entirely a history of peace!</p>
-
-<p>Would that our country might take higher ground in this whole matter!
-Would that there might go out from us a splendid endorsement of the
-principle of arbitration, a strong insistence upon the method of
-international litigation before such tribunals as have been outlined at
-the Hague conferences and a stinging rebuke to the policy of increasing
-these deadly and burdensome armaments! Would that our land might show
-itself a leader and a messiah among the nations in achieving that
-magnificent fulfilment when the promised Messiah, the Prince of Peace,
-shall reign in the affairs of men.</p>
-
-<p>The claim is made that risk is involved in refusing to maintain these
-costly armaments which are sapping the life-blood of the leading
-nations of Europe. Risk is involved, undoubtedly, but if we want peace,
-why not take that risk in showing the nations that such is our desire?
-It would be a magnificent<span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</span> form of moral venture. Risk is involved&mdash;so
-be it! A far greater risk to the general welfare and to the perpetuity
-of our institutions is involved in the opposite course. Why should
-not we, as a land of high principles and shining ideals, make the
-moral venture of staking our future upon a splendid obedience to the
-appeal of the great Messiah? Beat the swords into plowshares! Beat
-the spears into pruning-hooks! In peaceful, joyous industry let not
-this nation learn war any more! Let it place its reliance upon courts
-of arbitration for the settlement of international disputes, and the
-blessing of Almighty God, which maketh rich and bringeth no sorrow
-therewith, shall be ours!</p>
-
-<p class="p0 poetry">
-“If drunk with sight of power we loose<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,</span><br />
-Such boastings as the Gentiles use<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Or lesser breeds without the law,</span><br />
-Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,<br />
-Lest we forget&mdash;lest we forget!<br />
-<br />
-“The tumult and the shouting dies;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 4em;">The captains and the kings depart;</span><br />
-Still stands thine ancient sacrifice<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 4em;">An humble and a contrite heart.</span><br />
-Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,<br />
-Lest we forget&mdash;lest we forget.”<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</span></p>
-
-<p>O thou land whose Declaration of Independence was made in Philadelphia,
-the city of brotherly love! O thou land of Washington, who prayed in
-his farewell address that we might be kept from the scourge of war! O
-thou land of General Grant, who declared, “Though I have been trained
-as a soldier and have participated in many battles, there never was a
-time, in my opinion, when some way could not have been found to prevent
-the drawing of the sword.” O thou land of Lincoln, who pleaded in his
-second inaugural, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with
-firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us bind up
-the nation’s wounds and strive to achieve and cherish among ourselves
-and with all nations a just and lasting peace.” O thou land that we
-love, enter thou afresh into a nobler rivalry with all the nations of
-earth in the cultivation of good-will, in the reduction of burdensome
-armament and in the maintenance of those policies which make for the
-enduring welfare of the race!</p>
-
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter transnote">
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcribers_Notes">Transcriber’s Notes</h2>
-
-
-<p><a href="#Page_5">Page 5</a>: “go to college and tay” changed to “go to college and stay”</p>
-
-<p><a href="#Page_14">Page 14</a>: “your own impress on” changed to “your own impression”</p>
-
-<p><a href="#Page_33">Page 33</a>: A missing period was added at the end of a sentence.</p>
-
-<p><a href="#Page_88">Page 88</a>: “the ewards are rich” changed to “the rewards are rich”</p>
-
-<p><a href="#Page_101">Page 101</a>: “stirring times of war on in the slower” changed to “stirring
-times of war or in the slower”</p>
-
-<p><a href="#Page_112">Page 112</a>: “to stand up befor” changed to “to stand up before”</p>
-
-<p><a href="#Page_130">Page 130</a>: “simply gets wet and muddy, and rowned” changed to “simply gets
-wet and muddy, and drowned”</p>
-
-<p><a href="#Page_176">Page 176</a>: “by intemperance and some fly” changed to “by intemperance
-and some by”</p>
-
-<p><a href="#Page_202">Page 202</a>: “his name shall be” changed to “His name shall be”</p>
-
-<p><a href="#Page_218">Page 218</a>: “conquer the united States” changed to “conquer the United
-States”</p>
-
-<p><a href="#Page_225">Page 225</a>: “England Germany, France,” changed to “England, Germany,
-France,”</p>
-
-<p><a href="#Page_231">Page 231</a>: “deadly and burdensone armaments!” changed to “deadly and
-burdensome armaments!”</p>
-</div>
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