The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Cap and Gown, by Charles Reynolds Brown

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)

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[Pg vi] 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.

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[Pg 4] 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[Pg 5] 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[Pg 6] 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[Pg 7] 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[Pg 8] 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[Pg 9] 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[Pg 10] 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[Pg 11] 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.

[Pg 12]

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[Pg 13] 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[Pg 14] 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[Pg 15] 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.

[Pg 16]

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[Pg 17] 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[Pg 18] 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[Pg 19] 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[Pg 20] 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.

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[Pg 24] 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[Pg 25] 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[Pg 26] 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[Pg 27] 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.[Pg 28] 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[Pg 29] 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[Pg 30] 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[Pg 31] 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.

[Pg 32]

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[Pg 33] 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[Pg 34] 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[Pg 35] 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[Pg 36] 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[Pg 37] 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.

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[Pg 42] 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[Pg 43] 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[Pg 44] 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[Pg 45] 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,[Pg 46] 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[Pg 47] 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[Pg 48] 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[Pg 49] 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.

[Pg 50]

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[Pg 51] 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[Pg 52] 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,[Pg 53] 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[Pg 54] 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[Pg 55] 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[Pg 56] 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.

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,[Pg 60] 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[Pg 61] 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[Pg 62] 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[Pg 63] 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;[Pg 64] 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[Pg 65] 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[Pg 66] 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[Pg 67] 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[Pg 68] 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[Pg 69] 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.

[Pg 70]

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.

[Pg 71]

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[Pg 72] 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.

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.[Pg 76] 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[Pg 77] 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.[Pg 78] 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[Pg 79] 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[Pg 80] 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.

[Pg 81]

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[Pg 82] 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.[Pg 83] 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[Pg 84] 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[Pg 85] 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[Pg 86] 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[Pg 87] 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.

[Pg 88]

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[Pg 89] 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 [Pg 90]work; I cannot come down.”

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[Pg 94] 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[Pg 95] 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[Pg 96] 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[Pg 97] 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[Pg 98] 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,[Pg 99] 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[Pg 100] 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[Pg 101] 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[Pg 102] 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[Pg 103] 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[Pg 104] 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.

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[Pg 108] 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[Pg 109] 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,[Pg 110] 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[Pg 111] 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[Pg 112] 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[Pg 113] 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.

[Pg 114]

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[Pg 115] 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,[Pg 116] 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.[Pg 117] 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[Pg 118] 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[Pg 119] 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[Pg 120] 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[Pg 121] 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[Pg 122] 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.[Pg 123] 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,[Pg 124] 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.

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[Pg 128] 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[Pg 129] 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[Pg 130] 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[Pg 131] 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.

[Pg 132]

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[Pg 133] 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[Pg 134] 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[Pg 135] 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[Pg 136] 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[Pg 137] 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.

[Pg 138]

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[Pg 139] 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[Pg 140] 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,”[Pg 141] 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,[Pg 142] 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.

“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[Pg 146] 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[Pg 147] 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[Pg 148] 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.”

[Pg 149]

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[Pg 150] 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.”[Pg 151] 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[Pg 152] 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[Pg 153] 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[Pg 154] 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[Pg 155] 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[Pg 156] 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[Pg 157] 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,[Pg 158] 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[Pg 159] 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[Pg 160] 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[Pg 161] 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[Pg 162] 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[Pg 163] 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[Pg 164] 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[Pg 165] 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[Pg 166] 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.

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[Pg 170] 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[Pg 171] 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.

[Pg 172]

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[Pg 173] 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.[Pg 174] 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[Pg 175] 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[Pg 176] 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[Pg 177] 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[Pg 178] 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[Pg 179] 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[Pg 180] 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.

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[Pg 184] 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[Pg 185] 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[Pg 186] 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[Pg 187] 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,[Pg 188] 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[Pg 189] 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[Pg 190] 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[Pg 191] 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[Pg 192] 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![Pg 193] 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[Pg 194] 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,[Pg 195] 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[Pg 196] 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[Pg 197] 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.

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[Pg 202] 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[Pg 203] 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[Pg 204] 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![Pg 205] 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![Pg 206] 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[Pg 207] 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[Pg 208] 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[Pg 209] 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[Pg 210] 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[Pg 211] 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[Pg 212] 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[Pg 213] 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[Pg 214] 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[Pg 215] 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.[Pg 216] 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[Pg 217] 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[Pg 218] 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[Pg 219] 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[Pg 220] 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[Pg 221] 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.

[Pg 222]

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[Pg 223] 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[Pg 224] 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[Pg 225] 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[Pg 226] 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.[Pg 227] 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[Pg 228] 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[Pg 229] 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,[Pg 230] 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[Pg 231] 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[Pg 232] 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.”

[Pg 233]

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!