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THE INSPIRATION
OF RESPONSIBILITY
AND OTHER PAPERS
By the Rt. Rev. CHARLES H. BRENT, D.D.
A.DVENTUBE FOB GOD. CrOWU 8V0.
THE CONSOLATIONS OF THE CROSS. SmoU 12mO»
LEADERSHIP. CrOVM 8V0.
LIBERTY AND OTHER SERMONS. CrOWTl 8V0.
THE MIND OF CHRIST JESUS ON THE CHURCH OF THE
LIVING GOD. Small Svo. PRESENCE. Small 12mo.
THE SPLENDOR OF THE HUMAN BODY. Small 12mO.
WITH GOD IN THE WORLD. Small 12mo.
THE REVELATION OF DISCOVERY. CrOWTl 8V0. PRISONEES OF HOPE. CrOWTl 8vO.
LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.
THE INSPIRATION OF RESPONSIBILITY
AND OTHER PAPERS
BY ^o.
The Rt. Rev. CHARLES H. BRENT
BISHOP OP THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
FOURTH AVENUE & 30th STREET, NEW YORK LONDON, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
1915
THH NEW YOM PUBLIC LIBRARY
730814-
ASTOR, LENOX and' TILDEN FOUNDAT/ONS
1916 L
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
I Published December, igisl
TO
MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS
NOTE
THESE papers and addresses, with a few excep- tions, have been printed separately or else in cur- rent journals. I wish to express my appreciation for permission accorded by these latter to republish such as have appeared in their columns.
C. H. B.
CONTENTS
CHAPTEB PAGE
I. The Inspiration op Responsibility .... 1
II. Concerning the Home 12
III. Human Brotherhood 24
rV. The Divided Kingdom 38
V. The World Missionary Conference — An Inter- pretation 55
VI. The Edinburgh Conference and the Future . 69
VII. The Realization of Christian Unity ... 76
VIII. The Church of the Living God 94
IX. Prayer Ill
X. The Romance op Missions and their Lack op
Romance 117
XI. An Apportionment of Men 128
XII. Financial Missionaries 135
XIII. The Nation's Demand upon American Young
Men 141
XIV. A Vision of Manhood 148
XV. Progress and Problems in the Philippines . 153
XVI. Philippine Facts and Theories 166
XVII. National Awakening in the Philippines . . 173
XVIII. A Study of Alexander Hamilton .... 183
XIX. Abraham Lincoln 191
XX. Queen Victoria 206
XXI. William McKinley 215
XXII. The Coronation of George V 221
XXIII. Memorl^l Day Address 228
THE II^SPIEATIOX
OF eespo:n^8ibility
I
THE INSPIRATION OF RESPONSIBILITY ^
EVERY self-respecting person craves an exacting task, a task that strains human nature. We need more than that degree of obligation which de- mands the exercise only of those gifts and powers that we know are ours. We must be under the domination of a responsibility which calls for the assertion of our latent and untried capacity, the power that declares itself only in the using. No one is so fully aware of this as those who are still under the spell of life's morning. The distinguishing characteristic of the activity of youth is its venture- someness. It is always reaching beyond itself and risking the charge of recklessness. When I was at col- lege two of my companions lost their lives by sailing out into a stormy sea against the advice of an old salt. There were those who bemoaned their temerity as an offence; but the voice that stirred me spoke of the
' From Time and Talents.
2 INSPIRATION OF RESPONSIBILITY
glory of their fearlessness which matched the magnifi- cence of their youth against the elements with the ex- pectation that they would be victorious. I knew those lads, and when the engulfing wave curled over their frail craft, their clean lives and unbroken wills were not conquered but conquering.
It is essential that human life should run risks. It is something less worthy of admiration than a brute beast, if it does not. We are first introduced to hu- manity in a garden of risk, for the Garden of Eden held in its bosom lurking death. Consequently it is impossible to think with satisfaction of that over- mo therliness — I would call it grandmotherliness if I had not too high an esteem for seniority! — which tries to guard sons and daughters from the risks and disciplines without which there can be no robustness of character. Virility is too often mollycoddled out of youth by the materialistic solicitude of parents, who think that true safety may be had only by dwelling within a circumscribed social set, doing the conven- tional things in the conventional way, and keeping the influence of the cushions and golden fetters of luxury.
Let it be said once for all that it is better for both body and soul to be obliged to go hungry some- times than to be full always; it is wholesomer to be weary frequently from hard work than to keep on a
INSPIRATION OF RESPONSIBILITY 3
dead level of comfort, or to know weariness only from the spinning dance and the daily pleasure; it is cleaner to be dusty and bathed in the blood and sweat of battle, than to be so sheltered as not to know the meaning of a hand to hand conflict with a real problem or fierce temptation; it is grander to break the shackles of exclusiveness and walk free in the dingy city of social unpopularity, than to be the idol of men and women who do not count for, but rather against, the progress of the race.
We are responsible beings! That is to say we are so built that calls come to us which look for the answer of our whole nature. Vocation introduces us to responsibility. There is no one who is not called. There is no one who does not count for good or for bad. There is no one who has not an opportunity and responsibility which is all his own. Of course responsibility has a variety of aspects, but the curious and satisfactory thing is that each man's — I do not say "or woman's,'' because in this connec- tion sex is negligible — each man's responsibility fits him as a glove fits the hand. Do you object that this is not always so, and that there are misfits.'^ I do not deny it, but ordinarily the question is not one of misfit, for the explanation is that the glove has never been drawn wholly upon the hand. In
4 INSPIRATION OF RESPONSIBILITY
other words responsibility has not been translated into terms of intimate personal experience.
Now here is a secret known only to those who labor long and diligently over their responsibilities. The most thrilling experience in life is found in matching our wit, our courage, our capacity against — or shall I say fitting it into? — our duty, that which we owe to ourselves, without regard, for the moment, to our duty toward others. It is as nor- mal for human life to linger in the embrace of responsibility as for the rose bush to strike its roots into the moist soil. Out of it comes inspira- tion for further responsibility. By doing we be- come enabled to do. The response of the will to the call of obhgation becomes the opportunity of God to enlarge our capacity. He breathes into us fresh wisdom, new courage, added strength. His breath is life. And He can give us life only when we choose to live.
So much for the abstract. Now let us turn to that which is more concrete. The call to responsi- bility greets us in a number of different ways. First there is the responsibility which is inherent in the relations of human life, the home and the family. These responsibilities are simple as a rule, and seem- ingly insignificant when considered singly. But in
INSPIRATION OF RESPONSIBILITY 5
their multitude and variety they bulk large and assume a place of first importance. To do little things well is an approach to that ej05ciency which is one of the watchwords of to-day. There is extraor- dinary satisfaction — inspiration, if you like the word better — in thinking or speaking or doing something extraordinarily well, whether it be preparing for a speech on a public platform or tying a parcel. The first thirty years of every one's life should be devoted to a mastery of detail, not to the exclusion but under the domination of a universal or eternal motive. The responsibility of loyalty to detail is of first rank. The home is the natural place in which to begin this course of training.
Then comes our responsibility to the social order into which we are launched at an early date. Why should we ever demean ourselves by inward accept- ance of custom, whether it be of dress, or of speech, or of occupation, or of pleasure, against which our best instincts revolt? The work of reforming and bettering social life is dependent upon your absolute loyalty to your inner convictions. Do not be afraid to speak out, even at the cost of ridicule or opposi- tion. More often than not you will meet with ap- probation and co-operation, for society is not so unregenerate as to be deaf to the voice of a true and
6 INSPIRATION OF RESPONSIBILITY
honest leader. Years ago a leader of men had a hot controversy with another, in which the former con- tended for a matter of principle. There were a number of bystanders who took no share in the contest although desirous to share in the fruits of victory should the champion of right win, which he eventually did. After the battle was decided a murmur of applause arose. The champion of right turned on his companions with scorn as exemplifying those who remained passive in the face of evil, and lingered in their tents on the day of battle. There are times when he that is not with good is against it. It is truly pitiful to see how men and women are bowled over by majorities. Their self-respect is not strong enough to enable them to resist doubtful, or even coarse and evil, social custom.
The most inspiring trust men can have is that of high privilege. Privilege is a call to responsibility. If the call be unheeded, privilege becomes a destroy- ing angel; if heeded, a crown and a joy. The great mass of men have responsibility laid upon them by the rude hand of necessity. The mill hand must eat his breakfast by gas-light before the dawn breaks, and must be at his loom before the hour strikes. He is hedged in by the regulations of his trade. It is controlled by an imperative "must." You, however.
INSPIRATION OF RESPONSIBILITY 7
have no such stern master of your movements. You are free to come and go, to walk and rest, to do and desist, to produce and consume, at your will. You have the responsibility of ordering your own time and talents — time and talents that are no more yours to trifle with than are those of the mill hand. God has laid upon your superior culture and privi- lege the extra responsibility, of ordering your time and deploying your gifts — that is all the difference there is between you and a shop girl. You are no more a woman of leisure than your sister at the wash-tub. The only question is how and what and when you may will to wash. That is not for me to decide but for you. What would be presumptuous for me to do is your common, ordinary, every-day responsibility. See that you do it.
The difficulty of the day for "women of leisure" — I use the current phrase — ought not to be, "What is there for me to do.^^" but "Out of all the opportunities open to me which shall I take.'^" There are valuable contributions to be made to the whole social order by those who still abide under the paternal roof, or who are themselves at the head of a family. Philanthropies have reached a stage of efficiency which call for proficient helpers, and shun the dilettante. Never in history has it been more
8 INSPIRATION OF RESPONSIBILITY
important that those who undertake voluntary church work, whether it be in choir or Sunday- school or societies or parish visiting, should do it with the same thoroughness and loyalty to responsi- bility that moves the employe of a successful busi- ness concern. It is just as reprehensible to abandon a church engagement because of a dance or some other pleasure, as it would be for your banker to neglect the care of your funds for an automobile trip or a game of golf.
As one looks over life as it is lived by the "leisure classes," one is impressed by the unused talents and vitality among the unmarried of both sexes. The whole world of men aches for the lack of what they alone can supply. The days are happily past when it was thought contrary to propriety for young women of means or '* blood" to launch out into useful occupation. If there were as many donations to great causes of talented lives as there are dona- tions of money, humanity would not go limping the way it does. Just think of the openings there are for the expenditure of your best ! — college and church settlements, education in its manifold branches, the various forms of social service in its organized form, mission work at home, mission work abroad, the vocation of deaconess or sister, nursing, and so on.
INSPIRATION OF RESPONSIBILITY 9
Of none of these things am I thinking as a means of livelihood, but as a privilege and a joy that would fill the life of many a young woman whose misfor- tune is her lack of a deliberately chosen responsibility. Yes, there are those who would gladly embrace and be embraced by vocation, were it not for opposition at home. It may be that in some instances, many probably, there are paramount obligations in the do- mestic circle which forbid a daughter leaving home. Where these exist, the pot of gold is not to be found at the distant foot of the rainbow, but close at hand beneath the homely soil of family cares. But some- times it is not parental wisdom but parental selfish- ness and tyranny which bar the door to young life's true fulfilment. Parents ought to understand that frequently there comes a moment when youth is obliged, in loyalty to itself, to seek paths foreign to parental taste and interest. When this happens, blessed is the father or mother who speeds the child on its way with benediction. If it is a command- ment that a child should honor its parents, it is of the essence of life that parents should honor their child. To forbid a child to enter a sisterhood, to become a nurse, to go to India as a teacher or a missionary, simply because these vocations are unin- telligible to the parent, distasteful to him, or inter-
10 INSPIRATION OF RESPONSIBILITY
fere with schemes of matrimony and dreams of material prosperity, is — I do not hesitate to say — the perversion of a parent's duty and an abuse of his prerogatives. On the other hand, for a child to long for untried responsibilities merely because those near at hand are irksome, and so, probably, shirked and slighted, is to court disappointment and failure for himseK and others wherever he goes.
I have led you, my readers, to the shore of a vast ocean, "sad at the edges but all right in the middle," and there I must leave you with the counsel that you should not be afraid to launch out into the deep of responsibility where, amid the billows and winds, alone is safety for the human soul. The higher life begins "only when your health and your strength and your skill and your good cheer appear to you merely as talents, few or many, which you propose to devote, to surrender, to the Divine order, to whatever ideal cause most inspires your loyalty, and gives sense and dignity to your life — talents, I say, that you intend to return to your Master with usury. And the work of the higher life consists, not in winning good fortune, but in transmuting all the transient values of fortune into eternal values. This you best do when you learn by experience how your worst fortime may be glorified, through wise resolve,
INSPIRATION OF RESPONSIBILITY 11
and through the grace that comes from your con- scious union with the Divine, into something far better than any good fortune could give to you; namely, into a knowledge of how God Himself en- dures evil, and triumphs over it, and lifts it out of itself, and wins it over to the service of good."
II
CONCERNING THE HOME ^
THERE is no substitute for the home. It is the ultimate source of all the creative force in human society. The stainless passion of procreative love links groom to bride. Every child-bearing wife, when her annunciation comes, utters a note of ecstatic music more beautiful than ever trembled from the throat of winged songster. There is no mother but has her Magnificat. It is a renewal of the hymn of creation which made the morning stars sing together and the sons of God shout for joy.
The tiny, pink creation cradled in its mother's bosom, each time the miracle of birth occurs, has latent in it a new universe of power and beauty, ready to be called into being by everything which relates this latest seK to that which is not self — God, mankind, nature, history, and all the rest — until it becomes a character, a personality. The
^ No. 10 of the Patriot Series of the Duty and Disciplme Move- ment.
CONCERNING THE HOME 13
foremost creative force which completes the miracle of birth, by setting into operation the influences of education, is the home. God's fiat, "Let there be!" is in the voice of the parent. The school of the home, where love and authority, privilege and duty, discipline and responsibility, cross and intertwine their glistening threads, has no peer in the organiza- tions or institutions of time. The child goes to Eton or to Groton, the youth to Oxford or to Harvard, the statesman to his task, wearing on his brow the glory of his home — or its shame. As a rule, men are ulti- mately what they are by virtue of their homes. That is to say, the strongest and most enduring mark made on life is that of the home.
The disciplines of the boarding-school can never be a substitute for the disciplines of the home. A great schoolmaster once said to me that the boarding- school was a "necessary evil." His words implied something wrong with the average family life. Under the artificial conditions of the boarding- school — this, I think, is what he meant — children received those disciplines, and were inducted into those responsibilities which were weak or lacking in their homes. In one sense, then, a boarding-school might be described as a reformatory for the children of ill-regulated families. Certain it is that there is
14 CONCERNING THE HOME
an accepted tradition that at a given moment it is salutary, if not necessary, to get training for child life in obedience, punctuality, economy, courtesy, elsewhere than in the home. There are many in- fluences at work at the present day which lead parents of all classes, unconsciously to themselves, to shift a large part of the responsibility for discipline to the shoulders of the schoolmaster, who, poor man! spends no small amount of his patience and energy in correcting the enervating influences of his pupils' homes. Johnnie would not come to school clean. The teacher expostulated with the mother on the ground that the child was so dirty as to be offensive to the smell, whereupon the fond parent retorted: "Johnnie ain't no rose. Don't smell him. Learn him!" The trouble is that the schoolmaster cannot "learn" Johnnie if the elementary disciplines and duties of the home have been ignored or slurred over. Boarding-schools, like the use of candles or in- cense in religion, owe their origin to physical neces- sity. There was a time when schools were few in number, so that if a child was to have an oppor- tunity of intellectual training, he would have to live elsewhere than under the parental roof. That character survived the evil conditions of life in the earlier boarding-schools and seats of learning was
CONCERNING THE HOME 15
due chiefly to the integrity of the homes from which pupils came. To-day the boarding-school justifies its existence by courageously endeavoring to supply the robust and orderly influences in which the homes of people of wealth or "comfortable circumstances'* — what a suggestive phrase ! — are commonly de- void. The modern educational ideal, sadly crippled though it be because of the divided Christendom which secularizes it, is sound at the core. It aims to put facilities for learning within daily reach of every home, and is more productive of good results in well- ordered families than any other system that could be devised. But in homes where luxury, indulgence and ease form the key-note, the sooner the children go to boarding-school, the stiffer the discipline there, and the longer they stay, the better for themselves and their posterity. Whatever there is or may be in heredity, that much befogged supervisor of character, there is an enormous force in environment. If it is impossible to get the warmth of a mother's bosom to hatch our eggs, let us secure the best incubator in the market. Good art is somewhat preferable to perverted nature.
One of the best schools I have ever known — I speak as an erstwhile schoolmaster — has for its sole watchword "Obey." Authority, if the mature fruit
16 CONCERNING THE HOME
of experience, is childhood's benediction. It is the kind guardian of innocence, reUeving child-life of the wear and tear of experiment not yet due. It is not untrue to say that, at a certain stage in develop- ment, experience is the teacher of fools, and author- ity the teacher of the wise. There is no greater stimulus to the cultivation of a right and ripe judg- ment, than for a parent to recognize his own obli- gation of authority and his child's obligation of obedience. This authority must be enforced, even if resort have to be made to corporal punishment should moral suasion prove to be ineffective. Parents live but to convert their experience into a rational authority, which, in turn, is used as a force creative of a habit of self -obedience in the new generation. Obedience is the voluntary absorption of the expe- rience of the wise. Submission is not obedience. Let a father once clearly realize this, and he will never become despotic, or his children restive and rebellious under the smooth surface of their external acquiescence. It were a crime to condone that inter- ference with the sacredness of personality, as sacred in child as in man, which persistently and as a habit imposes self-will upon another's will. Never- theless, this I can say from a long and large experi- ence of life: whatever other defects men may have
CONCERNING THE HOME 17
who are the product of austere homes and even tyrannical parents, they do not lack fibre and tough- ness. However far they may have strayed, I find a solid bottom to them, and a capacity for self-obedi- ence. By self-obedience I mean the opposite of self-indulgence. Self-obedience is doing what you resolve to do, be it easy or hard; self-indulgence is doing what you want to do, under the prompting of taste or passion. On the other hand, those who as children have had a history of indulgence and pam- pering, no matter how artistically gilded by so-called culture, are of all men the least likely to have any grit or stamina. If they go wrong, they afford as little secure ground for character-building as a quagmire or quicksand. Frequently they are not bad; they have not enough character to enable them to be bad.
The home, if it is to be an adequate preparation for life in the outside world, must have all the ingre- dients of the future represented, and in due propor- tion — privilege and duty, hardship and pleasure, discipline and reward. It may not be a great play- house with every day a holiday and every dish a dainty. Short-sighted love desires child-life to be given every joy and sheltered from every pang. That home has probably the healthiest influence in
18 CONCERNING THE HOME
which this is impossible, because a wholesome type of poverty obtrudes its kindly discipline upon the notice of every member of the family. A boy with daily "chores'* has a better chance of becoming a personality than his little neighbor, who accepts without question the luscious fruits of service, with- out being compelled by ever recurrent necessity, laid upon him by circumstances, to render reciprocal service at the cost of genuine effort.
It is an indulgent, crippling love that removes difficulties from a life that should be taught to sur- mount them, which snatches a child out of the reach of normal temptations and normal risks (and in so doing intensifies its perils), which by too solicitous and exclusive a consideration of the weakness of youth becomes blinded to any practical recognition of its strength. I once knew a mother who rigidly guarded her little girl's happiness by never letting her come into full view of poverty. Another parent kept his children from the knowledge of death until its grim reality suddenly struck them with staggering force. Still another is in the habit of anticipating any unpleasantness that threatens, by yielding to whatever course his children select.
The world is largely a world of compulsions. In consequence it is apt to embitter or crush a man who
CONCERNING THE HOME 19
has not been taught in the home the meaning of in- flexible law and how to convert a necessity into a virtue. Freedom of choice is a treasured possession, but the necessary concomitant of choice, to make it worth while, is vision. One has to see just what there is before him from which to choose. To choose away from what is diflScult or distasteful as a habit is to fetter liberty and maim character. Unless, therefore, we are early taught that difficulty has a beautiful and invigorating inside which can be dis- covered to us only by experiencing it, that many a seeming peril is in reality a thrilling inspiration, when once we are enveloped by it, that it is the fear of our enemies, rather than our enemies, from which we need emancipation, we are going to shy away from the disagreeable and menacing side of things, under the delusion that we are thus securing our liberty and enjoying freedom of choice. A right judgment in all things is the crowning gift of the spirit of God, but the Cross guards all approaches to it. In like manner that many a hard and desolating thing is not an evil but an opportunity, so similarly many an attractive and dazzling invitation is not an oppor- tunity but an evil. A man must learn something, at least, of these truths from and in the conditions of his home training. Duty and preference may be
20 . CONCERNING THE HOME
twins; and so may duty and agony, as every patriot and lover of his country knows.
The elective system, therefore, has its severely prescribed limits. For instance, it is as ridiculous to leave a child to select his own religious belief and observances as to allow him to select his own litera- ture, his own habits of dress, or his own food. The discipline of simple faith demanded of the child soul by spiritual affirmation, made by parents' lips and conduct, can have no substitute. It often springs in from the past, as the deciding factor in the life of a man, who, under the stress of severe trial, is trembling on the brink of ruin, and would be lost but for this breath of a sacred yesterday. Again, in the matter of a vocation, it is equally misguided on the part of parents forcibly to compel a child to a profession or occupation without regard for his bent or talent, and to sit so detached as to give the impression of indifference, while he gropes un- aided to find his footing. The former course is liable to create a misfit, the latter a dilettante. The wise, steady pressure of a parent during the forma- tive years in the direction of some seemingly fitting vocation issues in the single-minded loyalty of a Samuel, or the iron steadfastness of a John Baptist. A child's vocation should be no independent dis-
CONCERNING THE HOME 21
CO very of his own. It should reveal itself in co- operation with, and under the inspiration of, his parents.
In the school of the home, boys and girls should be taught things about their bodies which too frequently are learned accidentally or under evil auspices. The marvel surrounding conception and birth can be so taught a son by a mother's lips before the age of puberty, as to be for ever a shield of his purity and a challenge to his chivalry. Par- ents ought never to allow their boys and girls to grow up without so much as a single word of instruc- tion and warning about their bodily functions, a reticence which wrongly shelters itself under the traditional fear of disturbing an ignorance which, however blissful and beautiful for a while, eventu- ally becomes what is probably the most perilous of all states of mind in adolescence.
I think I have said enough to accomplish my purpose — to make vivid the wonderful creative power resident in the home, and the extraordinary responsibility and opportunity resting on the shoul- ders of parents. There are two principal influences working against the influence of the home: one is the multitudinous activities of modern life, and the other is the lack of self-obedience on the part of
22 CONCERNING THE HOME
parents. Is it not so that parents, under the excuse of business or of philanthropy, or of church or social obligations, delegate a responsibility for the personal training of childhood which cannot be delegated? Life is ill-proportioned when men and women are driven to such an expedient, and give a minimum of thought and time to their offspring. I know mothers who, if their sons go astray, will have only them- selves to blame, unless they hasten to cut out half the time which they are now spending in and on "society"; and fathers who, because they think they can best serve their children by diligence in amassing wealth for them, are allowing these same children to grow up ignorant of the inestimable benefit of a father's unhurried, understanding com- panionship. In the second place, let it be said that wise selfobedience can be inculcated only by those who practise it. The authority of self-indul- gent parents, even though it be theoretically perfect, has not creative energy and will not avail. We can only give what we possess. In the peasant home of Mary and Joseph we find the authority for which we are looking. It was born of the parents* self- obedience, and was so wise and creative that the Boy Jesus was glad to be subject to its duties and discipline.
CONCERNING THE HOME 23
We are living in a democratic age. Usually we understand by democracy a state in which people make their own laws. A successful, working democ- racy, however, is more than that. It is a state in which the people obey their own laws. In other words, democracy is self -obedience. I close with this reminder, as making it tolerably obvious with- out further disquisition, how intimate is the connec- tion between the order and authority and obedience of the home, and the well-being of the State and its citizens.
m
HUMAN BROTHERHOOD 1
I DARE not speak of Human Brotherhood with- out speaking first of Divine Sonship. There is no meaning to the word "fraternal" until we have learned the meaning of "fiUal." There is no meaning to brotherhood until we have been taught the mean- ing of fatherhood and sonship. If I said nothing else to you but this one thing, and were able to say- it in terms which would go home to your inmost being, that you are the sons of God, I would have done a great thing, because a man who has once learned that he is the son of God must forthwith accept all of his race as his brethren. Look at the one spotless figure that stands out in the midst of history. Look at the Lord Christ and see how He began His work of public ministry. He identified Himself with the human race and its weak- ness, but He saw that it was only in His Divine
1 Address delivered at Conference on Foreign Missions and Social Reform Problems, Liverpool, January 2 to 8, 1912.
HUMAN BROTHERHOOD 25
Sonship that He could fulfil a life of service, and at His Baptism, before He went among men to preach and to teach about the Kingdom of God, He rose to the supreme consciousness of that Sonship. He heard His Father say: *'Thou art My Beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased.*' Men and women, let me say to you, that you will lack the sense of voca- tion, that you will be without that sustained enthusiasm and that unquenchable passion which is necessary if you are to live the life of true men and women on this earth, unless you too are able to look up into the face of the Most Loving and the Most Holy, and to see in that face a Father's countenance and to hear within your souls His words, "Thou art My Beloved son in Whom I am well pleased." The filial relation must precede the fraternal, and as it has been well said by the previous speaker, this is to be worked out in the life of faith. God does not expect you to use any more faith than you have got, but He does expect you to use what you have. It may be but a tiny spark, yet that spark must glow heavenward, Godward, in the filial relation. Upon that we base the fraternal.
Our fellowship with God is the most treasured thing which life holds, and it has in its keeping the richest and the most joyous, as well as the most powerful,
26 HUMAN BROTHERHOOD
elements of experience. Moreover, it is a privilege common to all. Do not listen to that voice which says some men are gifted with the religious sense which is withheld from others ! There is no man who wears the human form who is not essentially in his being religious, and therefore has capacity for fellow- ship with God; if he has but a pure heart he can see God — dimly it may be, yet he can see Him. Let us build, then, the fraternal, this human brotherhood of which we talk, upon the filial, upon our sonship in Christ, and let us consider — briefly, of course, it must be — two things relative to human brotherhood which, let me say, is also divine. Human brother- hood has ceased to be merely human, since the Lord Jesus Christ walked as the Son of man among the sons of men. He has lifted up the human, so that now it has a divine capacity and a divine quality. Let us consider, first, the depth of brotherhood, and then the breadth of brotherhood.
We have looked at the shallowness of some of our human relationships. We have hated them in our hearts, and we have put on that stable repugnance toward the past which is the essence of penitence. Now let us turn away from that and look at the possibilities that lie before us. Let us think of the depth of human brotherhood, because human rela-
HUIMAN BROTHERHOOD 27
tionships as worked out under the Divine Spirit become ineffably deep. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." There is the depth of human brotherhood, and it is something that must apply to life here and now. It is not some transcendental feature of brotherhood which existed in former days, but which can be discarded at this moment. There was no period in history, when men who were ready to lay down their lives for their brethren were more needed; but let me tell you that no one can lay down his life, no one can die for his fellows, until he has learned first to live for them, and frequently it is much harder to live than it would be to die. Some- times it is harder to face the dull, heavy problems of everyday Hfe, than it would be to allow one's soul to go out swiftly in an esctasy of pain with the full knowledge that beyond lay God and peace. What is needed to-day, men and brethren, is men who will live for their fellows, and by that I mean who will give every inch of their time and every particle of their being for the welfare of mankind, the common weal. Everybody needs a supreme passion in life. A man cannot have purity unless he is passionate. A man cannot have power unless he is enthusiastic, and one of the first things needed
28 HUMAN BROTHERHOOD
in our schools and colleges is a living interest in some of the real problems of life. "Ah," you say, "you mean some of those great problems into which we shall go when we have finished our education." I mean nothing of the sort. I mean problems that lie at your hand, the problems that are within the compass of your college gates, the problems of which you yourselves are a part, and a man must give himself to these problems, I say, enthusiastically. In a book that I have just been reading, a most de- pressing book and yet alas! a book that tells of life as it is to-day — I refer to "The Old Wives' Tale," by Arnold Bennett — there is a picture of a small man who was living a small life. A relative of his committed a crime. This small man became a great man by espousing the cause of the criminal, and the novelist says he became a hero because he espoused a cause, he failed, and he died for it. Be sincere and real about your problems — the problems of brother- hood, that is my counsel to you. Then you will give depth to your fellowship.
There are two particular barriers to brotherhood. One of them is so obvious that it is hardly necessary to speak of it, because it is the contradiction of brotherhood. I mean selfishness, and by selfishness I mean going just a little bit off the perfect balance
HUMAN BROTHERHOOD 29
of the Golden Rule. A man who does not do as he would be done by, a man who does not love his neighbor as himself, is selfish. In other words, he is using some part of society for his own individual advantage, without regard to what the effect is upon society itself. He makes himself a centre around which he swings his fellows. Of course, there are degrees of egotism, and I recognize that motives are mixed; but at the same time I maintain that selfish- ness, the departure from that simple, direct law, is at the root of all our conflicts and troubles. Egotism may rise to such a height as to put the egotist almost, in his own estimation, in the place of God. Again a phrase from a modern novel comes to my mind, where he, who afterwards became a hero when he forgot himself and began to love his neighbor as himself, was told by her who afterwards became his bride that "his cosmos was all ego." He himself was the centre of life and everything whirled around him. Now, if you get an enthusiasm to which you will give yourself completely, an enthusiasm which has as its chief motive power the benefit of person- ality, then you will begin a life of deep brotherhood and you will never put the possession of mere physi- cal comfort, or the retention of mere physical life, above those things that are grander than life itself.
30 HUMAN BROTHERHOOD
You will never say, *'I have got to live at all costs. It may be that the necessity which is laid upon me of maintaining my position in life will require that I should trample upon the tastes and the interests, or even the needs of other people."
Another thing that I think is most detrimental to human brotherhood is what is commonly called dignity. We must preserve our dignity — our dig- nity as individuals, our dignity as a nation. Let me read you the words of one who was an adminis- trator in Egypt and who now holds high office in another country: "We are morbidly afraid, espe- cially as young men, of appearing undignified. Ah, that terrible word dignity! What foUies are com- mitted in its name! How many pleasures we deny ourselves for fear of it. How often we do violence to our best feelings lest it should suffer. Dignity puffs us up and makes us unkind to our inferiors and subordinates. Dignity makes us forget our common humanity. Dignity makes us think the world of dropping an *h'. It makes us spend more than we can afford in cabs, though in our hearts we would be just as happy on foot. ... It is all false, this dignity. The true is present, unknown to the owner. It is an unconscious emanation of the mind, a visible sign of spiritual qualities. True
HUMAN BROTHERHOOD 31
dignity comes not for the asking, but rather flies from him who seeks it. It comes naturally or not at all. He who acts with the object of appearing dignified may be sure that he achieves nothing but the pain- ful, distorted image of dignity, and the effort is visible to all except him who strives. Dignity lies not in an action, but in the motive which underlies it. Honesty, incorruptibility, straightforwardness, kindness, gentleness, consideration for the feelings of the humblest, all that we can gain by the study of Christ and the lives of the great — therein lies dig- nity. Let no one, therefore, strive to achieve dig- nity itself. It is a vain quest. But let him achieve the virtues which bring dignity in their train."
I need not add a single word regarding the struggle for individual dignity. False dignity is too common a thing in schools and colleges to need further com- ment. But let me add a thought about the dignity of the nation, that sometimes expresses itself in false patriotism. We are even now trying to push out of our way the horrors of war. Consider the false dignity of the nation that fails to recognize the broth- erhood of nations. Let me say that it is for you in your speech regarding your country to check the haughty cries of false patriotism and to give to the
S2 HUMAN BROTHERHOOD
brotherhood of nations rightful respect. It is fitting at this moment, and in this presence, to repeat what was said not long since by a British statesman, that if war does come it will not be because of the pressure of inevitable, irresistible law, but because of the lack of wisdom and the sinfulness of man; and you, you are the nation — in your hands is peace for the nation; at any rate, in motive. Re- member it and live your responsibility.
We turn from the consideration of the depth of hu- man brotherhood to the consideration of its breadth. Depth without breadth becomes exclusiveness, but by beginning our fraternal life deeply we gain capac- ity for universal friendship. In other words, the scope of brotherhood is mankind. "God has made of one blood all nations of men on the face of the whole earth." That which at an earlier era of the world's history was largely a matter of theory, now in these days of rapid transit and international action, is a commonplace of experience. We are constantly brought into touch with those who belong to the uttermost parts of the earth, men of different type and tongue and color and race from ourselves. In each of these we must see a brother. As a great scientist has said, "There is only one species of man. The variations are numerous. They do not go
HUMAN BROTHERHOOD 33
deep." Unhappily, through the distorted ideas that have been current for a century, we of the West have learned to look on men of the East as though we and they were divided by a gulf almost impassable. I grant you that considered purely on the animal and human side, brotherhood is impossible. It is only when the Divine comes in to rescue and trans- form the human, that we see the consummation of God's purpose for mankind. It is of the utmost importance that we who are launching out on a career should, at the very beginning, recognize that we owe obligation to every man with whom we come into contact; and although in our intercourse with peoples of the Far East we shall find many differ- ences, let us remember that all the differences are incidental and all the likenesses fundamental. More- over, similarities exceed dissimilarities. It was well brought out by the last speaker that as our attitude is to our neighbor near at hand, so will it be to every representative of humanity. For instance, if we are given to that critical temper of mind which finds difficulty in fellowship with those who are not like- minded, then when it comes to our time to go abroad in missionary work, or, say, to the Civil Service in India, an impassable barrier will rise to defeat our highest purposes. How often we hear such a sen-
34 HUMAN BROTHERHOOD
tence as this in our college halls, '*He is a first-rate fellow, but a bit queer.'* What we are really think- ing about is his queerness and not his good qualities. As a matter of fact, probably many men have said just the same thing about us with truth. We think that queer which is unfamiliar, and if we school ourselves to see what is queer in the lives of our immediate companions, much more shall we have the full view of human nature shut off from us, when we are called upon to deal with men of distant climes and different race.
Again, those who lack considerateness at home are going to be equally inconsiderate abroad. Not long since a man of great renown visited the Far East. He was met with singular attention and courtesy. It was made known that he was a great collector of a certain artistic product, and he was presented by the nation whose guest he was with some rather rare specimens. He met this courtesy by asking for still further contributions from the treasure house in which he stood. His request was denied. In all probability it was thoughtlessness, but little does he dream, that among the cultured people of the nation in question there arose a storm of indignation at his discourtesy. This seems to be a trifle, but it is an illustration of how the inconsiderate life will be
HUMAN BROTHERHOOD 35
doubly inconsiderate, when inferior and backward races are concerned.
I have referred to the exclusive spirit which takes shape in a variety of forms in home life. It creates that intolerable spirit of snobbishness which is a contradiction of brotherhood and is wholly con- temptible. Man has been made with such a wealth of affection and such a capacity for service, that the only proper setting in which he can live out his life is the entire human family. It may be that Provi- dence will require that he should fulfil his vocation in circumscribed conditions; but in this our day, be his conditions as circumscribed as they may, oppor- tunity will be afforded him to link his life with a variety of types and conditions. To desire to belong to an exclusive set is to cramp the soul. Appeal for and aim at wealth of friendships; hate snobbish- ness as you would hate a venomous serpent. I speak of this particular vice because it is so painfully common. Human nature, even in its primitive conditions, falls an easy prey to it. Just a year ago I was on a lonely island, remote from the influences of what is called civilization. The natives were liv- ing in the most primitive manner, the little children for the most part, wearing a single garment quite suflficient for the purposes of protection from climate
36 HUMAN BROTHERHOOD
and for modesty. One of our party, in engaging a group of boys in conversation, paid some attention to a little lad who was clad in the manner I described. Another boy, who had had superior advantages and was clothed as boys of our own race are clad, pushed forward and said to my friend, **He is a bad boy, don't speak to him, he doesn't wear trousers." You can smile at this if you will, but it finds its precise counterpart in the snobbishness that defiles our schools and our universities. The one thing to do with an exclusive set is to break down its barriers, or else leave it. I am advocating no mere passion or ecstasy of altruism when I say aim to have your friendships broad. I am asking you to enrich your lives as they can be enriched by no other process. God has two great gifts to bestow on mankind. One is friendship with Himself, and the other, springing out of the first, is friendship with every child of His, and we look forward to the day when all na- tions and peoples and tongues will be gathered to- gether before the great White Throne, retaining their racial and local characteristics, and yet bound to- gether in the beauty of Divine family life. When that day dawns, then the individual will find himself by losing himself in the completeness of redeemed humanity.
HUMAN BROTHERHOOD 37
I am going back to my original thought. In Jesus Christ is the hope of the world and an in- telligent understanding of brotherhood. If you get to know Him, then you will know human nature, not in its limitations and weaknesses, but in its capacity and in its power. I know it is possible that some of you now are troubled by intellectual doubt, because you do not know exactly what place Jesus Christ holds in the economy of mankind. Let me tell you that even if you do not know it all, you know this at least, that He is the central Figure of history. You can turn to Him with more readiness than to any one else, and it is to personality that you must go, not to theory. Turn to Him with all the belief you have in Him; He will lead to the truth, and the truth will make you free.
IV
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and house falleth upon house. Luke, xi, 17 (margin).
If a kingdom be divided against itself that kingdom cannot stand. And if a h)use be divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. Mark, xi, 25, 26.
THIS is an axiomatic fact, as little open to dis- cussion as is the statement that ponderable matter released from the hand seeks the ground. It is prophetic of the sure fate of organic life of whatever sort that is divided against itself. Condi- tions justify the merciless application of these words of Christ to the Church of to-day. If she fails to heed it as a warning, it will be fulfilled in her as a prophecy.
All division is not militant. There are the divi- sions of a formative stage which are moving toward unity. Then there is analytical division which is merely that distinction which is necessary to and precedes synthesis. Science promotes specialization
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM 39
in the process of constructing an intelligible universe. Hope, not despair, lies beneath division of this sort. But the division against itself of a kingdom or house, that is of any perfected unity, is a self-destructive antagonism, desolating the parts and eventually destroying the whole. The more developed the kingdom concerned, and consequently the more com- plex its organism, the greater the disaster of internal disorder. The climax of peril is reached in a divided Church. The Church is not the only, but the chief, visible manifestation of the Kingdom of God on earth, and the highest phase of organic life in exist- ence. Being in part controlled by human minds and hands, and subject to human limitations and frailties, it is conceivable that she can and, unless she mends her ways, certain that she will be destroyed. The Kingdom itself, being under God's dominance, can perish only if God can perish — which is unthink- able. The corruption or disorder of the best is the worst — corruptio optimi pessima — hence disorder in the Church is more terrible than feuds in the family or civil war in the State.
The misery of it is, not that some part or member of the organism of a divided kingdom is injured, weakened, or destroyed, but that the whole, so far as its corporate vocation is concerned, is rendered
40 THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
ineffective and futile. An organism ceases to be an organism, if its vital parts try to live an independent life or a life of mutual hostility. That which fails to achieve its end is at the best the shadow of a reality. Because of her self -antagonisms, the Church to-day is powerless to rise to those magnificent achievements which depend upon corporate oneness — the revela- tion of the truth in progressive splendor, the estab- lishment of a universal or catholic Christian society, and the extension of God's Kingdom among men by national conversions. Fragments, great and small, aspire to the task and their failures are pathos itself. It is not so that the Church of to-day is an illus- tration of diversity in unity. It is a salve to com- fortable idealism to pretend so. The Church is a kingdom or house divided against itself in four chief sections, with many subdivisions. Two would be bad enough. Four are twice worse. In God's pur- pose the Church is the Body of Christ, a visible, highly organized social organism, in which the unity of the members among one another is not less inti- mate than the unity between the members and the Head. Both in form and substance the Church has, as its foremost distinguishing feature, oneness. There are individuals, and groups of individuals, whose union with God is so full that they transcend
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM 41
the conditions that make for separation, by embrac- ing the ideal of a Christian society, convert it into a mystical reality for themselves and, in a limited degree, a fact for others. The man, who to-day has the most powerful constructive religious influence, that probably was ever wielded by any one individ- ual, over young men and women of every com- munion. Catholic and Protestant, has so overleaped the limitations of the denomination to which he belongs that he has become a cementing force in the Christian world. Such souls are the saving element in the Church. They are a last strand in the. cord of unity binding it together. If it were not for them the Church would dissolve and disappear, and God would have to find a new instrument wherewith to work out His purpose, just as in former days He did when Israel failed Him. I do not believe the Church, as usually understood, is such that the gates of hell cannot prevail against her. If the candle- stick can be removed from one of the churches, it can be removed from all. Any and all existing ecclesiastical organizations: might fail, notwithstand- ing the smug application to ourselves of the words of prophecy. The Christian Church has no more assurance of indestructibility than Israel had. Yet Israel failed. Let us rest on prophecy and not on a
42 THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
partial application of prophecy. If it is prophecy that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church, it is also prophecy that the Church divided against herself will fall. We are flying in the face of primary principles when we invoke prophecy as a ground of confidence against the results of funda- mental transgression.
The Church has fallen, though all is not yet lost as long as there are those who, in the various frag- ments, labor and pray for restoration and unity. But she is unable to cope with the problems and responsibilities presented by modern life in country and city, at home and abroad. Most of her frag- ments are putting up a brave struggle, and all are whistling to keep up their courage. There is success in spots — I mean real moral and spiritual victory. But usually it is because some strong personality or vigorous local organization is responsible for it. Behind the bland apologies, and clever statistics, and self-important encyclicals, and frenzied activities, there is consciousness of defeat and loss of ground. The wail goes forth on the part of one fragment or another, that the evil of division lies at other doors than its own, whereas the sin is the sin of all, and calls for the humility of self-rebuke instead of the arrogance of charges and counter-charges.
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM 43
It appears to me that it shows confusion of thought to maintain that the Church is a formless something which performs its function regardless of organization or visibility. As I understand it, the Church, like the family or the nation, is a society, visible and definite, charged with the perpetuation of Christ's work among men. Man, being man, knows no method of receiving yesterday into to-day, and giving to-day to to-morrow, except through care- fully ordered society. There had been no Chris- tianity had there been no visible Church. There will be no Christianity, if the Church dies, unless God raises up a visible organization to take its place.
Just as without the family the home is an inopera- tive sentiment, and without the state the nation is an illusive theory, so without the Church the King- dom of Heaven is a transcendental thought, intangi- ble and ineffective in a world of men. Idea may be superior to, though it can never be independent of, form. Form is idea's mode of expression.
The end and aim of the Church is to put and keep man in communion with God and himself. Out of this relationship grows knowledge of the truth, articulate and co-operative righteousness, and un- limited power of seK-extension, progressive in charac- ter and climbing from height to height with the
44 THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
enlarging capacity of man. I say man not men. The creation of a few towering individuals, here and there, who are made great in wisdom or righteous- ness by reaction against the lack of these qualities in the multitudes, smacks of a spiritual disorder in the whole that is intolerable even to average human compassion. It may be the method of naturalism. It is not the work of the Church.
As to knowledge of the truth, honest men are everywhere crying out in bewilderment, "What is truth?" Glowing, inspiring, spiritual affirmation is lacking in the churches because the preacher is led up to his office by apologetic and halting and uncer- tain teaching which at the outset dulls spiritual perception, encourages argumentativeness, fosters self-consciousness, and wet-blankets sustained en- thusiasm. A minister or priest whose commission comes from a partisan church goes forth with a mouth full of negatives or of arrogance or both. This increases, I have observed, with the degree of infallibility claimed by the communion concerned. It is the divided Church which is responsible for the weak teaching and complex explanation, the apologies and attacks, the special pleading and palterings, with which the pulpit rings. The consciousness of a commission granted, it may be in the name of the
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM 45
whole Church, by a fragment of the Church and contested or questioned by the greater or lesser other fragments, tends to make even validity ineffective. Just think of the glory of a ministry that could stride forth with an undisputed and indisputable commission from a Church at unity with itself! We see it in the apostolic life and triumphs. The nearest we can come to it now is subjectively to interpret our commission in terms of the ideal.
Again, it is owing to a divided Church that we suffer from that sharp dividing line, characteristic of modern life, which separates the imparting of in- formation, falsely called education, from spiritual and moral training. The ideal of public schools is the best in sight, conditions being what they are. It starts with the purpose and sincere intention on the part of the State to be impartial, that is, equally favorable, to all phases of religious belief. Every attempt, however, to find even a lowest common denominator, much less a highest common measure, has proved futile. The public school system thus retreats, of necessity though almost unconsciously, to a position of neutrality, that is, of being favorable to none. Neutrality is a form of vacuum which can be sustained, even for a moment, only by artifice or violence. It ends, like all phases of agnosticism, in
46 THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
partisanship on the side of its own specialty or natural predilection, and, speaking mildly, upsets the proportion of life, putting materialism first and spiritualism second. Though the movement of the age in philosophic thinking is to defeat multiplicity and weave unity out of diversity, the divided Church forces practical life into the confusion of multiplicity during childhood, when most of all, unity should dominate, and where most of all, creative and forma- tive influences should stand together in co-operative effort. The imparting of secular information, a view of outsides with but little view of insides, except so far as scientific explanations open up vistas, is given chief place in child life. Its effect is to breed materialism, to maim capacity for soul enthusiasms, and to build up a sort of Positivism as a substitute for, if not an antagonist of, the Christian religion. It takes a powerful home and church influence to counteract this tendency.
Then as to the teaching of morality apart from religion, when it is done in public schools at all, it is and must be but a trickling stream divorced from its source. It is devoid of inspiration in both teacher and pupil, excepting in occasional instances. For- tunately the permeative character of Christian thought works secretly where it is forbidden to work
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM 47
publicly, so that the incompleteness of secular knowledge has some reinforcement, which even legislative impartiality or neutrality cannot lock out from the schools.
I do not fault the State for the position taken. It is forced upon her by the strife of the churches, and the lack of powerful and effective moral train- ing of the citizen in his youth lies at the door of divided Christendom.
Once more, the quarrels between the churches in their contradictory conceptions of God and warring ecclesiastical methods and organizations, are respon- sible for a confused moral ideal, and the planting in the hearts of their adherents, jealousies and hatreds, intrigues and cruelties, slanders and contradictions, at the very centre of what should be the home of righteousness. The very methods by which churches struggle to maintain their distinctiveness are often open to criticism on primary moral grounds. For instance, the continuance of a rigid adherence to the principle of celibacy, because it is effective from the standpoint of ecclesiastical policy, in conditions which force priests into unhallowed wedlock or worse, and the condoning of the sins of the rich and influential, in a desire to retain their interest and support, which has justly laid churches open to the
48 THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
charge of being unfair to the poor, are pertinent and prevalent illustrations. If in the main instru- ment on earth for the promotion of righteousness, there is fundamental unrighteousness, we cannot hope to advance far when we set out to convert erring mankind.
The whole moral code is not preached, salutary discipline is neglected, compromise is resorted to, as often as not, quite unconsciously, for fear of damag- ing ecclesiastical prestige or losing adherents. That which seems to be effective as an expedient for increasing numbers is likely to be adopted. When discipline is instituted, if it be due to political motives, it cannot be conducive to righteousness but only to external conformity. A whole world of false motives and methods ulcerate the conscience of the churches, because a house divided against itself cannot be healthy, that is, whole-thy.
When it comes to the building up of the weak in righteousness, how is it? The world is more full of weak than of strong. So are the churches. Free associations here and there create a solidarity, limited in scope, by which the weak are able to use the assets of the strong. It is glorious to have liberty. But there is more liberty in a safe depend- ence than in a perilous independence. There is no
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM 49
true righteousness in the individual apart from a righteous society. The Church should be a great organization so constituted as to present a protection and support for the weak, and to lay at their dis- posal the combined strength of the strong. A weak man, who is liable to go astray or has fallen, ought to be so supported by Christian society as to be kept from undue and inordinate temptations. He is not so protected. Conglomerate Christian society has so conformed itself to this world, as to be full of snares and pitfalls, where there should be helping hands and self-sacrificing restraints. The hackneyed case of the use of intoxicants is pertinent. With the trend of science toward, and experience unmistakably for, total abstinence, even the churchman continues to assist the weak man to his doom. The number of those who, claiming to be, are, moderate drinkers, are a mere handful compared with the number made up of those who, claiming to be moderate drinkers, are occasional drunkards, and the dipsomaniacs and the perennial drunkards. Frankly, is there any such thing as distinctively Christian society, society con- trolled by the spirit of service and self -donation.'^ There are groups of Christians here and groups of Christians there, usually like-minded and working along lines or according to methods that are con-
50 THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
genial and to their taste. But where is there a great, overwhelming, compact society, which welcomes the weak and erring, and lays restraints on itself for their sake? Let the divided Church reply. An undivided Christianity would provide this automatic- ally. As things are, it is a pale shadow. The morally weak go to the wall, excepting for the favored few, of whom I count myself one, who have fallen into the hands of strong, clear-eyed men. Had my environment been less fortunate I should without doubt have been in the moral abyss where weak men must go if the Church fails to furnish them with the support and guidance ordained by God. There are none so worthy of high honor as those choice few, twice-born men, who, though temperamentally weak, and set in a permanently hostile environment, by mystical effort have been able to lay hold of God's sufficiency to their salva- tion. But the cost of a divided Church is the doom of multitudes of the ignorant and weak. They fall with the fallen Church and in her desolation find theirs.
Finally, as to Church extension. I suppose never in the history of Christianity has missionary activity abroad been so earnest, and never so conscious of the disqualifying and disabling effect of division. In
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM 51
imperfectly organized or primitive conditions the immediate evils of division would obviously be less than in developed nationality. In the Orient at least, nations are rapidly being born or reshaped and their organic completeness demands similar complete- ness in religion. It would seem that missionary progress in the future will depend mainly upon the Church's unity, and that national conversions can be brought about by no other influence. As for Mohammedanism, it is a unity which must be met by unity. Though it has its sects, its unity would appear to be more powerful than its sectarianism. If the Church fails to bring the Mohammedan world to the full knowledge of, and life in, Christ, the cause should be sought less in the stubbornness of Islam, than in the scattered effort and disorganized forces of Christendom. It may be that up to the present a divided Church has been used by God for the exten- sion of His Kingdom among men, but we have no guarantee that He will continue to do so. Indeed there are indications that the divided Church has passed the zenith of such power as it has had, and is declining toward desolation.
Now if the divisions in Christendom were not the creation of man they could not be healed by him. But they are his fault in inception and continuance,
52 THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
so that he must gird himself to their removal. In saying this I am not unheedful of the work of the Spirit. But the Spirit cannot do much with the Spirit-bearing body, if the body refuses to exert itself, to behave like a body instead of a bundle of independent sections, each comformable only to those movements of the Spirit which are in accord with its individual preference or ideas. Our times call for unprecedented effort by individuals and churches toward unity. The pen has its part to play, though it is small. I recognize this as I sit lonely amidst a neglected Mohammedan population^ and write these words, conscious however that my sermon's worth consists chiefly in its being a renewal of my pledge to labor for the peace of Jerusalem till I die.
Eucken says that "what has kept modern men together to the greatest extent is work.'* Because this is so we must promote that co-operative move- ment in Christianity which was justly emphasized at the World Missionary Conference and is per- petuated by various associations and federations. But such co-operation, even if it were more catholic than it is, would be in itself inadequate. It is again Eucken who says of work that "whatever has been 1 In Jolo, P. I.
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM 53
accomplished in this respect by such co-ordination, it unites men only with regard to their outward actions, and does not produce a spiritual unity. . . . As a general rule, the modern movement after some sort of connection is too external, and does not go back to spiritual foundations: we are conscious of a great gap with nothing to fill it."
Whatever may be accomplished through co- operative work, we may never forget, except at the cost of ruin, that the Christian Church which began as a life must be continued as a life — through a system, an order, a polity, if you will. It began in a personal relationship, human and divine, and developed into an institution — but an institution for the establishment and perpetuation of the rela- tionship. The institution, however, is but the means to an end and must measurably fulfil its function to justify its continuance. The superior order, system, or polity is that which reaches its end most nearly. Where a number of systems are all accomplishing about an equal work, and all falling dismally short of what the records of primitive Christianity en- courage us to expect of the Gospel, the first step to be taken is to examine the system with which we are most familiar and see why it is not a more proficient instrument in the promotion of the life.
54 THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
Granted that any given church which claims to be all right is what it claims to be, and other Christian folk are all wrong, or granted that any one com- munion is mainly in the right and the others mainly in the wrong, then the course to take is the course that the Son of God took, though He was all right and mankind all wrong. He entered into the heart of the situation and became in love and sympathy identified with those who were all WTong. One thing we are sure of — if Christ ever could have erred, His apology and reparation would have been so splendid as to dazzle mankind. What church has not sinned grievously against unity, and what church has yet made adequate reparation?
THE WORLD MISSIONARY CONFERENCE AN INTERPRETATION 1
THIS paper aims to be an interpretation of the World Missionary Conference which has now passed into history. The official literature of the Conference contains an accurate report of its thought, and a record of its proceedings. Many pens have written the description and given personal impres- sions of this remarkable assemblage. My somewhat bolder aspiration is to discover, so far as in me lies, the spirit of the Conference and to suggest its significance.
The progress of history alone reveals the true worth of a movement or occurrence, hence we are at too close quarters with the event under considera- tion to allot it a final place or credit it with a fixed value. But while this is certainly so, there inheres in it an importance at least partially discernible now, which is superior to that derived from its ^ From East and West.
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56 THE WORLD MISSIONARY CONFERENCE
personnel, methods or tabulated achievements. It is that for which I am reaching. I recognize the risk involved, but doubtless there are many vigilant minds ready to correct my errors and clip the wings of my extravagances.
It is difficult, I admit, to write dispassionately of a movement of which one was a part, and which stirred the soul as it cannot hope to be often stirred in a lifetime. But just because I care profoundly I shall hold mere emotion in check and let no extreme thought register itself without being chal- lenged. The influence of a movement is fettered if its reputation is allowed to outrun its character, or if it is given authority beyond its dignity, such as for example, happened in the case of the Protestant Reformation and more recently of the Oxford Move- ment. We may not attribute to the Conference a purpose which it never claimed for itself. It would be hardly less unkind to do so than to view and treat it with the suspicion and scorn due only to a malefactor.
When we take into account the condition of modern Christianity, ecclesiastically and theologic- ally, and pass under review the stormy career of the Church which has made us what we are, the conference stands out as a new and striking land-
AN INTERPRETATION 57
mark in Christian history. It was probably as great a conception as was possible at this date, and a quarter of a century ago would have been an imprac- ticable idea. Incomplete and halting it was bound to be, but it was less partisan in motive and execu- tion than any movement of which I am cognizant, since the Reformation. It was a step in the right direction, a first step without which there could be no hope of advance. To characterize it as more than this would be to obscure its real worth.
In a true, though not in the fullest sense, it was a World Missionary Conference. Its aim was world- wide and so was its charity. There was something more than ordinarily grand in the struggle made to be just toward Roman Catholicism, that phase of Christianity which stood at the antipodes of its sympathies. Even those who may have had right- eous cause for complaint were at any rate restrained enough to keep silence, under the conviction that it was not a moment in which to draw the sword. Neither the Roman Catholic nor the Greek Churches were represented. It is just as well. At this juncture the presence of delegates from these com- munions would have added nothing, even if they could have received appointment. They are not yet in a frame of mind which would enable them to
58 THE WORLD MISSIONARY CONFERENCE
confer. The Roman Catholic Church, the church which more than any other has it in her power to unite Christendom, is still in a chronic state of anger toward those who cannot bow to her dictation, and the Orthodox Churches of the East know too little of other communions to discuss unity of Christian life and action with intelligence.
But the letter of the Italian ecclesiastic which was written for the Conference was the little cloud not larger than a man's hand to-day, destined to-morrow to cover the Roman heavens. A major law may temporarily be held in suspense by a minor law. When this happens we need not be over-anxious. The issue is certain. Already the true greatness of the Roman Catholic Church is busy at her heart, and the secondary power of the modern Vatican can do no more than delay its triumph. The Bishop of Cremona did not speak of himself or for himself, but, consciously or unconsciously, voiced the mind of a growing minority who are the soul of his communion. It may not be to-morrow or a century hence — Christianity, be it remembered, is very young — but ultimate victory is as sure as Christ is real.
Nor is the mention in the literature of the Con- ference of the noble Bishop Nicolai, whose praise is throughout the churches of the Far East, without
AN INTERPRETATION 59
significance. It has been his good fortune to be brought into close contact with other churches than his own. The result, of course, is a generosity, intelligence and breadth of vision that is not in- compatible with stable conviction. He has seen and he knows the value of Christianity as a whole. Wherever the Orthodox Church is found in the mission field, it is awake to the need of fellowship and seems to be slowly moving away from isolated conservatism.
The Conference, then, was represented by all churches ready to confer, and with the intention at any rate to be fair to those who were not ready. Its statistical records indicate that credit is given to the work of the whole Church, represented or unrepresented in Edinburgh. The Conference thus stood for an inclusive view of the Church, although, if I mistake not, there were, among the delegates, those who would advocate an exclusive conception.
The Conference was not a construction. It was a normal growth springing from the best elements in modern Christendom. For this reason it will find a permanent place in history. It is the bent of modern life to reach after agreement where there is differ- ence. Men, nations and churches are less ready than of yore to be self-assertive to the point of quarrel-
60 THE WORLD MISSIONARY CONFERENCE
someness. Conference is preliminary and representa- tive fellowship looking toward at worst a modus Vivendi, at best like-mindedness. It was of vital importance that the World Missionary Conference refused to do anything but confer. The formation of the continuation Committee may have been a mild departure from. this determination, but if so it was a case where loyalty to the principle was in the breach rather than in the observance. It aims at little more than keeping the doors of conference wide open, in order that we may together arrive some- whither, for conference is not an end in itself. Speaking internationally, conference should some day result in a convention or international agreement. But let us hasten slowly.
Two central forces brought the Conference into existence and were the pulse of its being — the conviction that Jesus Christ is the complete revela- tion of God in and to man, and that the Christian is responsible for the highest well-being of the entire race. Undoubtedly all of us who are at work in the unevangelized part of the world, are disturbed by the uneconomic character of things as they are. We see the waste in competition and overlapping, as well as the relative ineffectiveness of attacking the strong- holds of ignorance and sin with forces which are
AN INTERPRETATION 61
divided, if not actually jealous of one another's injfluence. But towering above this is the conscious- ness that the servants of a common Master must be servants and friends of one another, if they are to please Him or do His will, and that they must have no ideals but His.
The devotional meetings which began each day's proceedings, and the intercessions which were poured Godward every noontide, brought Jesus Christ so near as to mean to some of us a new vision of the Son of Man. Obviously many of those who spoke words of prayer were among the nearer friends of our Lord. Both the power and the weakness of "free prayer" were manifested. Three prayers stand out prominently in my mind as bearing witness to its strength. It was at a noontide service and a special need was placed before us. Three voices from different parts of the hall uttered their petitions in terms that were satisfying. They were the voices of disciplined minds which were in the habit of addressing God as a man communes with his friend. On the other hand it was, generally speaking, clear that those who had not had liturgical training, were as limited as those who were slaves of a book. Men who know beforehand that they are expected to lead a public gathering in prayer are as little justified in
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coming unprepared as a preacher would be. If the average AngUcan is too much tied to his forms of devotion, the average non-conformist is too regard- less of those elementary laws of order, which are as essential to decent and edifying worship as to any other expressions of mind known to man. Liturgical training is a necessary preparation for the highest type of informal prayer.
It was notably a fact that the main thought of God was as Jesus Christ. There was little mention of the Holy Spirit. One thought of Pliny's letter to Trajan in which he describes the Christians as men who address hymns to Christ as God. I explained this to myself in two ways. Our minds just now are filled with Christological thought, and the Person of our Lord is brought very vividly before us, so that it is natural for us to address Him. Then, too, is it not so that there is a strong realization to-day of the PauUne conception, which identifies the Holy Spirit with Christ? At any rate, from whatever cause, the Conference clung to Jesus Christ as the devotional centre of life and the starting point of all activity. Certain it is, as those of us who have had the experience are fully aware, to lose grasp of the Incarnation in the Mission Field is to lose vocation.
Side by side with this loyalty to the Person of
AN INTERPRETATION 63
Christ stood loyalty to His undisputed ideals. There was no flicker of doubt in anyone's mind that it was his common duty to do his utmost for those who are far off as well as for those who are nigh. The Archbishop of Canterbury in a moving address which opened the Conference struck the keynote of its aims and deliberations — if the Church relates her life properly to missions, everything else will fall into order. Missions are the Church's primary duty — not her only or her only important, but her foremost duty. Mission work is never a voluntary undertak- ing but always an obligation, never an avocation but always a vocation, for a Christian. Again and again, like the theme of a symphony, this fundamental thought sang its song. Men discussed how they would reach the most remote corner of the globe with the same simplicity that one would consider domestic affairs. It was as natural for them to go thither and abide, as for the husbandman to go to his spring ploughing. There was no minimizing of difficulty, no expectation of failure, no measuring of sacrifice. I think I am not wide of the mark when I say that there was a universal abhorence of senti- mentalism. The missionary did not bid for attention or pity. On the contrary he showed himself to be a man, glowing with ardor, lost in a cause, bent on an
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errand, heedless of self, conscious that his safety lay in peril.
There was an appearance of unity in the Confer- ence that might be deceptive unless explained. In the first place polemical topics were not under discussion. There are certain subjects pertaining to faith and polity on which we are not ready as yet to confer, at any rate not in a great and heterogeneous assembly. These were not in evidence. In the second place carefully worked out themes, on which a consensus of opinion had already been reached in the various Commissions, occupied our whole atten- tion. Unity in the mystical elements of Christian belief and the possibility of unity in some methods of practical operation was presupposed, in the prosecu- tion of a common aim. A small area of common ground was occupied and found large enough for edifying fellowship, without trespassing on areas held by the respective churches as more or less private property, so to speak. I saw no evidence of men trifling with their convictions, though everywhere there was the desire to be fair to the other man's position. If there were evidences of an undervalua- tion of Roman, Greek and Anglican Catholicism, there was at least a recognition that it could not be ignored. The papalism which not only proclaims its
AN INTERPRETATION 65
own dictum as the truth, but brands every utterance which conflicts with it as untruth, a papaHsm not unknown to the Protestant churches, was conspicuous by its absence. The spirit of magnanimity was abroad. The various churches represented had the dignity of self-respect which recognized their own acceptance by God but did not on that account deem it necessary to unchurch their neighbors.
The constructive temper of the Conference, which never languished from first to last, could not fail to make a serious-minded man reflect upon the influence, which a union of all the churches represented, would have on the balance of the Christian World and on the whole of mankind. It is painful to contemplate and hard to calculate the amount of vitality which is being expended in competition and avoidable con- troversy. Certain it is that if we could combine in a truly catholic way, our power would be such as to compel respectful attention from Latin Christianity. Unity at all costs is not unlike peace at all costs, but it is unity for Christ's sake and in Christ's way, so far as our dim understanding can spell it out, that we are reaching after.
There is something both pathetic and encouraging in the way in which missionary churches are draw- ing together, in the face of the problem of the
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unevangelized peoples of the world. They see the folly, and worse, of dragging sectarian names into their remote fields of labor, and the madness of perpetuating ancient quarrels among nations starving for the need of God's good tidings in Christ, and so they forget to be hostile and instead they lean on one another.
This is no moment in which to stand apart. The Anglican Communion has reason to be proud that it was represented at the Conference by men of all schools of thought within its borders. There are those who point to eccentricities and extravagances in Protestant churches as a reason for holding aloof from fellowship. Is it not more than probable that these very defects have sprung up because in the days that are past we withheld our help when it might have been given, and that they will be mag- nified and multiplied in proportion to the extent of our aloofness in the future? Their presence is an additional reason for closing ranks as nearly as we may with those who are separated from us. Cer- tainly, unless I quite misunderstand the meaning of the Incarnation, and the demand it makes upon us, it is no excuse for isolation. The Incarnation means nearness — the nearness of strength to weakness, of wisdom to ignorance, of wealth to poverty, of purity
AN INTERPRETATION 67
to uncleanness, of God to man. Those churches which claim the highest Hneage and the largest deposit of moral and spiritual wealth must be leaders in committing themselves unequivocally and irrevo- cably to the principle of the Incarnation, if our Lord's great disappointment of a divided Church is to be done away.
To conclude. A single step has been taken toward a distant goal. The very fact that the Conference had to exclude from the field of discussion the subjects on which men feel most strongly is in itself a true index of its limitations, and the magni- tude of the task that remains to be performed. It means that minor problems were dealt with and the major ones left unconsidered. On the few occasions when passing reference was made to questions of faith and polity the Conference was nervous to a man. Why? Because here is the real issue at stake, and we have not yet girded ourselves to grapple with it. Men have varied and deep-seated convictions concerning what they conceive to be the fundamentals of faith and polity in the Christian church, convictions which they cannot trust them- selves or others to discuss dispassionately. It is not because the church's faith and polity are of small concern that they move men mightily when they are
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mentioned, but on the contrary because they are more dear to the Christian than the constitution and government of a nation are to its citizens.
Hence we may not allow the little advance we have made in good-feeling and comity to deceive us or to obscure the main issue, but rather should we be encouraged by reason of it, to go on from the lesser to the greater until we have faced and routed the real forces of disunion. If the World Missionary Conference by direct or indirect influence brings about this ultimate result, as I have confidence that it may, it will rank as the greatest event in modern Christian history, and will be an undying glory to the Protestant Churches to which we are indebted for the movement.
VI
THE EDINBURGH CONFERENCE AND THE FUTURE 1
LET me first enunciate a few principles which, I think, are pertinent.
The idea always antedates and is superior to its embodiment. A true idea is both prophetic, indicat- ing that which is to be, and creative, preparing for itself a fitting mode of expression. Tentative ven- tures are the earlier stages in the triumph of the idea. They are to be honored for professing to be only what they are — preliminary steps. Were they to lay pretence to any finality, men would be justi- fied in viewing them with suspicion.
The idea to which the World Missionary Confer- ence gave partial expression is as old as the idea of Christianity — that the Christian Church is a unity. The various churches came together as though their points of agreement were fundamental, and their points of difference incidental. In so doing they ^ From The Churchman.
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foreshadowed that which is to be and started the idea on the road toward its final embodiment. No thoughtful man claims that we did anything except elementary work. The value of the Conference consists mainly in its being a wisely conceived be- ginning, and pretending to be nothing more. First things are humble, but they must be done first. To try to do even a second thing first will defeat tem- porarily, and perhaps permanently, any purpose however worthy.
This is what we have done. We have called a halt in the midst of our individualistic strivings, and have made a conjoint study of the Christian situation in the Mission Field, with the honest desire to know just where we stand, and what can be done toward an immediate amelioration of adverse conditions. With the facts before us we have conferred, and have resolved that we shall continue to confer. Out of conference will come bit by bit mutual under- standing and opportunities for common action. If to the impatient this does not seem much, to the patient it seems so great that there is nothing more important to which attention could be given. We are slow and cautious just because our ultimate aim is not to establish a truce for a day, in the Protestant section of Christendom, but to promote peace and
AND THE FUTURE 71
unity for all time throughout the whole Christian world.
The idea seeking embodiment is something superior to friendliness and considerateness for one another among the churches, or to co-operation in missionary- activities, such as in methods of education, in giving every man a chance to hear of Jesus Christ, in deal- ing with governments. This is only the first step of which I have spoken. But we must go on, en- couraged to take the second step because we took the first one without falling. Further conference will be necessary along the lines of that just con- cluded.
But let us look at the larger beyond. The prin- ciple of the late Conference was the only sound one — that God's Church is one and that it is man's church that is multiple. God's Church is: man's embodiment of it partly is and wholly hopes to be. Whether or not any serious effort was made to secure representatives of the Roman and Greek Cath- olic Churches at the Conference, their existence as an integral part of the Church of Christ was not overlooked. On the whole they were treated with a considerateness which, if persisted in and increased, will tend to make them considerate in their inter- ecclesiastic relations. Absentees seldom have full
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justice done them. Their statistics are given as being part of the record of the Christian Church, indicating neither more nor less than the other figures of the Conference. I wish, and here I feel a little uncomfortable, that I were sure that such churches as were not represented at the Conference were absent, because in their own minds they felt unable just now to enter into conference, and not from the want of an urgent and sincere invitation. We must not merely think of men and churches as being Christian, but we must treat them as such whenever opportunity presents itself. Great words like "oecumenical," "catholic," "world," must be honestly used. They can be justly applied only to movements that strive to be as big as the name chosen. The World Missionary Conference was world-wide in its aim and struggled to be so in its sympathies. For this reason it was one of the most notable assemblages since the division of Christen- dom and justified its title.
I think I can see whither the Conference is leading us. Thus far we have not. been ready to confer on questions of faith and polity. We have assumed, with good reason, that we all agree in recognizing Jesus Christ as being God's complete revelation in and to and for man, and that His
AND THE FUTURE 73
desires must fix our purpose. As a consequence of this like-mindedness, we have been able to get to- gether as brethren on matters that directly spring out of it, matters, which though subsidiary, are among the things that pertain to God's Kingdom on earth. Beyond that we have not ventured.
Questions touching the extent and limitations of dogma, the character of authority, the framework of the Church's government, lie just beyond inviting dispassionate treatment. There are too many who hold them to be closed questions, when on the con- trary they are wide open. They must be considered by a representative Conference yet to be, in the same good-tempered way that characterized discussion on the topics treated in Edinburgh. It is worse than folly to pretend that such things matter little or do not matter at all. Everyone knows that they hold a chief place in the Christian consciousness. You cannot dispose of living problems by burying them out of sight or ignoring them. Reference was not made to them in Edinburgh without a ripple of agitation disturbing the equanimity of the meeting. They were ruled out of discussion because they were the danger line. Men felt too strongly about them to trust them to public discussion at this juncture. In other words faith and polity hold a place of first
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importance in the Church's life and thought. It would be extraordinary if it were otherwise, seeing that, with all our professed transcendentalism, even in national affairs, it is in defence of questions of constitution and government that men are well con- tent to die. Much more must this be true of God's Kingdom among men as it finds expression in the Church. The day is coming when the churches must meet for a World Conference on these funda- mentals. The Edinburgh Conference is no cul- de-sac but a high-way leading straight up to such a culmination.
No church, even viewing the matter from a selfish standpoint, can afford to sit apart. Aloofness in anything that has to do, or which possibly has to do, with the being or the well-being of the Church, is the road to moral and spiritual sterility. The principle of the Incarnation, which is the greatest principle known to God or man, is the antipodes of aloofness; it is nearness. The churches far and near must be ready to submit themselves, their faith and polity, to the same searching criticism that has given us a new Bible, an impregnable Bible. Strength challenges criticism. The truth welcomes scrutiny. The desire and purpose of the churches must be not to establish their own contentions re-
AND THE FUTURE 75
garding the Church's faith and poUty, her doctrine and sacraments, but to get at the mind of Christ. This we can do, for the Spirit of God is with us to lead us into all Truth.
O, Spirit of God, who hast promised to lead Thy Church into all Truth, fail us not who aspire to know Thy mind and to do Thy bidding. Fill us with that vivid expectancy which moved the waiting disciples in the infant Church until Pentecost was fully come. Grant that we may learn from Thee the things essential to the Church's being and wel- fare, that the knowledge of the Lord may speedily cover the earth as the waters cover the sea, for the sake of Him Who is the Light of the World, Jesus Christ our Lord.
VII
THE REALIZATION OF CHRISTIAN UNITY 1
THE theme that I want to present to you to-day is a very daring one, and before dealing with it I wish to say that I approach it with the utmost humihty. No man can venture to throw himself into the great movements of the Church to-day, with- out turning with deep earnestness to God and pray- ing to be preserved from the evil possibilities of his own nature, and from those perversities and that self-will which are hindrances, and always will be hindrances, to the realization of God's purposes among men.
No one who has been in the mission field can fail to recognize how sadly hampered the Church is in all her work, by virtue of the divisions and separa- tions among Christians. If I were to lay my hand
* An address delivered by Right Reverend C. H. Brent before the student body of the General Theological Seminary, November 9, 1910.
REALIZATION OF CHRISTIAN UNITY 77
on any one cause which more than another prevents the progress of God's kingdom among men in the mission field, I should say that the disunion of Christianity stands, if not in the first place, at least in the second place. There is something else that hampers us at every step, but I suppose not more than in the old settled communities where the Church has been long established; I refer to the unworthi- ness and ungodliness of professing Christians — the failure of Christians, or so-called Christians, to aim at squaring their characters with their professions.
The lack of unity in the Church must always be a barrier to the advance of God's kingdom in the Far East. It is a very notable thing that observing men of a variety of Christian beliefs should advo- cate the dropping of sectarian names in that portion of the world. Even that hardy, much attacked word, Protestant, is increasingly unpopular amongst those who in the homeland might be its champions. We must realize certain things in dealing with the mission field, especially such countries as China, Japan and India; they do not care in the least about quarrellings that may have given us names which have adhered to us, but which have no significance whatever in their own lives.
A little over a year ago I was in one of the most
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lonely islands in the Pacific, the island of Guam; it is almost entirely cut off from the outside world. A U. S. transport calls once a month and occasion- ally a Japanese trading craft comes to Agana. The Roman Catholic Church has been established there through several centuries. About twelve years ago the Congregationalists established a mission there. When I went to Guam I expected of course that the mission would bear the name of the communion under whose auspices it does its work. But the missionary said, *'0f course we did not call it a Congregationalist mission, because the phrase would have no meaning in the minds of these simple people; it would bring in a thought which we do not desire to emphasize." So they call it an evangelical mis- sion. The point which this illustrates is that many men in the mission field are feeling that sectarian names are hindrances to Christianity, and if a sec- tarian name is an obstacle, how much more is that spirit of sectarianism which the name represents.
We missionaries have moments of deep depression, when the consciousness sweeps over us, that it is little short of absurd to try and bring into the Church of Christ the great nations of the Far East, unless we can present an undivided front. For purely practical reasons we on the firing line feel
REALIZATION OF CHRISTIAN UNITY 79
the necessity of the Church's reaHzation of unity. It must be either that, or failure, in our vocation. I think however that the Church is not going to fail in respect of this at any rate; she will succeed in planting a fairly respectable sort of Christianity in certain spots, like oases in a desert, and she will gather little groups of honest souls. But I am con- fident that nations will not be converted without a unifying Christianity. The statesmanship of Christ and the great apostolic leaders aimed at the conversion of nations, not the mere gathering in of isolated communities. Moreover without a unified Christianity there cannot be that interpretation of Christ that ought to come from such people as the Chinese and the Japanese. An undivided church, and an undivided church alone, is capable of bring- ing about this glorious result. It was, I am sure, this conviction which eventuated in the World's Missionary Conference.
That Conference was a very notable occasion, notable not so much for what it accomplished, as for what it was and what it suggested. Let me make a perfectly plain and frank admission. Al- though I had some small share in preparing for the Conference I was extremely doubtful as to its value, especially when I found that there was no intention.
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so far as I knew or could ascertain, to give a proper recognition to the Latin and Greek communions; and I wrote an expostulatory letter when this was drawn to my attention. What effect that letter had, I do not know, but at any rate it freed my conscience. Later, when I was informed that the Board of Missions had appointed me as one of the representatives of our communion, I wrote back saying that I was doubtful about the whole thing, and that I felt that I could not make much contribu- tion, so that probably someone else might better fill the position, but I added that I would talk the matter over with my fellow- workers, and if I thought better of my conclusions I would inform the Board. Well, I went and was converted. I learned that there was something working that was not of man in that World Conference; that the Spirit of God was manifesting Himself with new power and so far as I could see He was preparing for a new era in the history of Christianity.
The men who shaped that Conference and brought it into existence builded better than they knew; as a matter of fact, when men, individually or in groups, act from a high motive and aim at a noble goal they always transcend their own plans. Those men were destined to open such new meanings of
REALIZATION OF CHRISTIAN UNITY 81
catholicity as Christendom has not recognized since its division. I believe that meeting, both poten- tially and actually, was the greatest Christian assemblage that has gathered since the Reformation of the sixteenth century.
I was greatly interested in all the points brought up and discussed, but I do not think that anyone failed to recognize, that the topics to be considered were so nicely adjusted and prepared, that the chance of friction was reduced to a minimum. As a result there was a spirit of caution, almost of timidity, which at times threatened us with a shower of sentiment alism, or endangered the fixed convic- tions of sincere men. It was necessary that the mind of the Conference should be jarred, and that those present should be made to recognize that they were only touching the fringe of things so dear to their hearts; that they must look ugly facts straight in the face, and there were men there who succeeded in making the Conference realize that there was a great field of endeavor to be undertaken, before the World's Missionary Conference at Edinburgh could reap its full harvest. A vision of unity rose before the assemblage such as never could come to an indi- vidual, no matter how earnestly he prayed or how carefully he studied, as long as he kept in isolation.
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It was necessary that these men should get together before the Spirit of God could bring before their spiritual sight the complete vision of unity. Many of us have had our limited conception of it, but the unity of one section of Christianity, ideally speaking, would leave us in little better condition than now obtains. Perhaps the chief reason that has prevented any marked progress toward the realization of unity is that men have not believed that it was the pur- pose of Jesus Christ to bring it about. Possibly one of the deepest impressions that the Edinburgh Confer- ence has left on many of us is the conviction that it is the purpose of Jesus Christ to unify the Church. Hope, expectancy, and all kindred virtues and emo- tions are creative; and, until we have them im- planted in the minds and hearts of Christian men, the ideal can never become actual. So again I would say that the greatest thing the World's Conference did was to give Christendom a conception, not only of the necessity, but of the possibility of unity. I know that some men, indeed I might say truthfully many men, left the Conference ashamed of their sectarianism, and of their unfairness to those whose convictions differed from their own. Now when you can get that spirit moving among men, misunder- standings will be swept away and we shall arrive at
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clear issues. When everything is befogged we cannot hope to reach anywhere. To-day the whole Chris- tian situation is befogged, largely through our mis- understanding and, so far as our own communion is concerned, because of what has frequently been termed our aloofness. We have been so careful of our virtues, or what we deemed to be our virtues, that we have been afraid to put them where they will be exposed to the vices, or what appear to be the vices, of others. Surely this is not the spirit of Him Who was a friend of sinners. If our communion possesses virtues, they can become truly operative only when they are laid over against the lives of those who do not possess them. It will thus be proved whether or not we have strength or only seeming strength; whether or not we have virtue, or merely an appearance of virtue without the real- ity behind it. The method of the Incarnation is nearness not aloofness.
It was out of the Edinburgh Conference that^the vision of another Conference came to some of us. We felt that if men were willing to come together to see how far they could work along certain lines, excluding defects and differences, and if in thus coming together, in spite of those defects and dif- ferences, there was a fine spirit of self-restraint and
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generosity, then the moment was ripe for us to say: "This time we will try for more daring experience. We will not play the part of ostriches and hide from the sight of differences, but we will bring all our differences into the full glare of God's sunshine and see just what all our quarrelling is about."
Among those of us who are advocating a confer- ence on questions pertaining to Faith and Order, there has never been the least desire that we our- selves or any other Christian communion should weaken our convictions, or water down our respective positions. The least common denominator idea is fatal to Christianity. We do not care to trifle with it. What is more reasonable is to take every organic group in Christendom and discover why it is strong; to bring out in the fullest degree its strength, and then to relate it to every other principle of an en- during character that is exhibited in Christendom. It is what the Archbishop of York in a limited appli- cation of the idea called "A synthesis of distinc- tions," which we ought to strive for. We must discover what other people believe and why they believe it. Having done this, we shall be in a posi- tion to proceed to the synthetic process of which I have made mention.
Now permit me to speak along the lines of experi-
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ence in such a way as to adduce practical sugges- tions. I was brought up to suppose, to all intents and purposes at any rate, that there were a lot of Christs — the Presbyterian Christ, the Methodist Christ, the Baptist Christ — but that the superior Christ was the Episcopal Christ; and that whatever Christianity those other people might have was of a very inferior sort, not worthy of being grouped with my kind. This travesty of Christian thought reaches such lengths in some places as to create the principle of caste, as deadly as though it were born of Brahma. One of the fundamental truths of Christianity at the time to which I refer had not yet been recognized by myself and those who were about me, namely, the indivisibility of the body of Christ. You cannot break the body of Christ. It is utterly impossible, in that it is impossible to break God in Whom we live and move and have our being. We can make wounds in the body of Christ; we can weaken the life that flows through us all; but we cannot break the body of Christ.
There is a word which we are constantly using, and constantly abusing; I mean the word "The Church." However many meanings there may be to this word in the New Testament, I do not think we can find any justification for employing it as
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many of us are constantly doing — the Presbyterian Church, the Episcopal Church, the Roman Catholic Church. The word Church is so splendidly generous in its meaning that it revolts against exclusive or sectarian epithets. It can bear no adjectival modifications except perhaps those of territorial significance. The Church should mean just one thing; it is the spotless, glorious bride of Christ, without spot or blemish; I should like to see it reserved for this one meaning and for it alone. It is preferable to talk about the Roman Catholic communion, or body or fellowship, the Presbyterian communion, body, or fellowship, to cheapening the majestic word Church in the way we are in the habit of doing. I do not believe that I am astray in the suggestion; the principle seems to me a right one.
Once again in this connection. A man belongs as a Christian primarily to the one communion, whose name gives him a certain relation to a specific body of Christians, but to the Church in the sense in which I have just used it; the whole body of Chris- tians is to be claimed by him as the society to which he belongs. When we reach that conception you can readily see in what a position of advantage we are, what an enormous association of power is ours.
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The light and life and strength that come to us are from the entire body; from that Church which is the mystical body of Christ, and not from one exclu- sive group, organized apart from the balance of Chris- tianity. Obviously baptism in its essence ought to teach us this, without any such attempt at exposi- tion as I am making, nevertheless, many of us have not reached that position yet. One heroic soul, Father Tyrrell, brought out this conception glori- ously. He said to Rome: "It is not in your power to put me out of the Church. I am not going to associate myself with another organic Christian group, because I am already allied to one and so am in touch with all. I have my rights and privi- leges and I see my God from day to day. You are competent to withhold your fellowship from me, but are powerless to expel me from your spiritual society much less from the Catholic Church of Jesus Christ." That man was never less lonely than when the anathemas of Rome were hurled at him. His reply, more eloquent in what he did than what he said, was "You cannot break the body of Christ; the only thing that can break the body of Christ is sin de- liberate and wilful." Of course the central author- ities at Rome would say that schism is a sin, and that such a one is already outside of the body of Christ;
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but the most that any authoritative voice can ever say regarding an individual, or a group of individ- uals, is, that so far as they are able to say, they have already broken away from the body of Christ. But our union with Christ in baptism is so mystical and complete that we cannot break it finally and for- ever, unless at the same time we die an eternal death. Ecclesiastical history has many black pages, telling the story of unjust judgments and angry efforts to expel from the Church men who had offended the prejudices of the day, but all such judgments failed to sever a single soul from the Church of Christ, and in course of time recoiled upon those who pronounced judgment.
I believe that this is the first principle upon which we must take our stand if we are going to realize church unity. We must look upon other Christians of whatever name as Christians. We must treat them as Christians whatever they may be — Presby- terians, Baptists, Methodists, Roman Catholics, Greeks or what not.
In that the body of Christ ideally is indivisible, our first duty is to make the most of the unity that is, translating it into a power in our lives. Why should we not frequently pray for God's blessing on that communion, or group of Christians, which is
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farthest removed from our sympathies? Why should we not do it, I say? Our plan to-day is that we should not reserve our prayers for those nearest to us, but should share them with those farthest from us. In thinking about the strength that there is in the various Protestant communions, we must re- member that the explanation of their strength is to be found, not in their eccentricities, but in the elements of catholicity which they possess. They live, not by virtue of their error, but by virtue of the truth that is theirs. They live not by virtue of death but by virtue of life; and it is right and wise to ask God's blessing on them and to make their life more and more abundant. The more life they have, the more life all of us have, will make for unity, and tend to cure us of sectarianism. Truth is specific before it is militant.
Once again. Because the body of Christ is in- divisible let us not talk about reunion. The unity of the Church and its realization — that is our theme, our thought and our prayer, and must be the motive of our efforts. One of our leading bishops, in speaking on this subject, stated that our own communion to-day is in danger of being crushed be- tween the upper and nether millstones, between the extreme imperial conception of Christianity, as il-
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lustrated by Rome, and the federative movement, as developed by Protestantism. Neither the antiquated, though not ancient, imperialism of the Roman Church, nor the ingenious federative effort of modern Christian communions can bring about unity. I suppose most men will pass through both these stages as I have done, but such imperialism as the ultramontane conception maintains spells tyranny, and the federative idea suggests something of that kind of thought, which I believe Dr. Huntington characterizes as "the gluing together at the edges of Christianity."
That which we are in search of is unity organic and deep. Just how it is to come about I cannot tell you. I do not know. But I do know that what Christ paid for will some day be a fact — the unity which He describes as being like that between Him- self and the Father. He prayed that we might be one even as they are one. There is a beautiful prayer that is used not only in the Latin communion, but also by many of us expressive of that hope in majestic and satisfying terms: "Oh Lord Jesu Christ, who saidst to thine apostles * Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you'; regard not our sins, but the faith of thy Church; and vouch- safe to grant her that peace and unity which is
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agreeable to thy will; who livest and reignest God forever and ever.'* So then, what I am advocating is after all a very simple matter; I am advocating that we separate ourselves from the sectarian spirit. Retain your convictions, but use your convictions as instruments, delicate and strong, wherewith to carve some new beauty in the temple of the liv- ing God. Do not use your convictions as clubs with which to kill other people of different convic- tions.
No young man to-day, who is looking forward to holy orders, can fail to recognize that the man who fills his mouth with negatives and controversy can never be a leader of men. If Christ means anything, my brothers, He means inspiration; if the truth is anything, it is something so big that it will conquer error by virtue of its very existence, when its value is unveiled to the eyes of men. Men are naturally religious. They are naturally desirous to know the truth, and the Son has told us that we shall know the truth, and the truth will make us free.
Look then at this movement for unity with catholic mind. Catholic! I am so glad that that noble word is at last coming to its own; that it is being picked out of the hands of a little group who said.
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"We are the Catholics," and is being given its true meaning and proper setting. I trust that our Com- munion, in spite of all the turmoil in which we are living, will be able to wear that word somewhere in its title.
Look at unity with catholic mind; realize it in spirit; and after all, what we see with our souls we have. The man who has an ideal in his arms is not far from becoming what that ideal is. He may have momentary lapses, he may slip away from the pur- pose of his soul, but he has seen the city of life, and that city will forever be a part of him and of his inspiration. In old times, all that man longed for came in Christ. And when did Christ come? He came when Simeon and Anna lived ; when those who were constantly praying for the coming of the Lord Christ believed that He might come at any moment. Expectancy is prophecy; hope is promise. When we earnestly long for unity; when we who pray for it also expect it, the day of unity will be at hand. Longings and expectation are an invitation to Jesus Christ to come, in all the fullness of His power, and to give His wounded and bruised Church the fullness of His life. God never refuses man's in- vitation.
Therefore we will not be hopeless even when things
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seem without hope. We will believe our Lord's Promise; and even if you and I do not live to see the great day, the great day is coming; and its coming will be quickened in proportion to the quickening in our own hearts of the Spirit of Love.
VIII THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD *
THE Incarnation presents to us the Son of God as the Son of Man among the sons of men. But the historic Christ is not a Christ of white marble, a model man for us to imitate, a sinless life for us to follow. It would place man in a sad predicament indeed if he were given Christ merely as a pattern. From the outset we would stand con- demned men. Christ for us must be supplemented by Christ in us. Christ the pattern is a necessity, but, in order that that pattern may be reproduced in our lives, the living Christ must take up His abode in our souls. And that this might be accomplished He Himself founded the Church of the living God — the pillar and ground of the truth — and it is to this that we are to give our attention. The Church is inherent in the fact of the Incarnation.
I am going to read two quotations from the
1 An address at the Northfield Student Conference, June 27, 1913.
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Apostle Paul and one from Jesus Christ Himself: *' Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish." "There is one body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." And then the crowning words, the concluding passage in the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, which forms the prayer of the great High Priest offered just before He laid Himself, the pure unblemished victim, upon the altar of the cross, "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou. Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me." These three passages bring out three elemental things concerning the Church. First, its priceless value; "Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself for it." Secondly, that it is visible as well as invisible; it is not nebulous, a thing of spirit without body; there is one body and one spirit
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animating that body. Finally, its unity is as won- derful as the imity that exists between Christ and God.
The New Testament is filled with noble imagery used to depict the Church of Christ and to paint it upon our imagination in its ideal form. Sometimes it is the vine and the branches. "I am the vine; ye are the branches.*' Sometimes it is the shepherd and the flock. "There shall be one flock and one shepherd." Sometimes it is the temple and its stones. "Ye also as living stones are built up, a spiritual house, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone." Sometimes it is the body and the members. Sometimes it is the Bride of Christ.
Let me make clear that the Church is not synony- mous with the Kingdom of God. Very often the two phrases, "the Church of Christ" and "the Kingdom of God" are used as though they were the same. I venture to think they are not. The Kingdom of God is the climax and totality of all spiritual values. The Church is the highest symbol and instrument on earth of God's Kingdom among men. It is the special sphere of God's Spirit, but it itself is not the Kingdom of God; it leads to it. God's Spirit works through His Church in order, not only that Christ may live in us, but that we may
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live in Him. I think if you study carefully the let- ters of St. Paul, you will find that his chief thought, that which inspired him more than anything else, was the thought that he lived in Christ, and again in his writings we have the words "in Christ," the parable of the vine and the branches in two words. And it is the Spirit of God that lifts us up into the life of Christ, the less into the greater.
The Christian Church was born on the Feast of Pentecost, when the Spirit of Christ, now the Spirit of man as well as the Spirit of God, was poured out on the assembled group of the faithful, and that Spirit, which bound each individual disciple to Christ, by the same act bound each to all of the rest. Consequently in the Church of Christ there are only two commandments, one having to do with our relation to God in Jesus Christ, and the other having to do with our relation to man in Jesus Christ. Love God with all your heart and soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.
The Church of Christ thus born has lived through the ages, — and to-day you and I have spiritual life because it has come to us through the Church. The Church has a visible body; it is an organism rather than an organization; there is one Body and one Spirit. It is perhaps rather difficult to make clear
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the difference between an organism and an organiza- tion, but there is a difference which is fundamental. An organism is a unitary form; life is inherent in it and energizes and permeates it fully. An organ- ization is an assembling and co-ordination of con- genial elements, a communicating of life as the life. Organization is, so to speak, manufactured. The family, the nation, and the Church are all organisms, and every voluntary association, such as the Chris- tian Association, for instance, is an organization. The Church is the only eternal society, and all voluntary associations, if they fulfil their complete functions, pour their life into the Church, finding their highest and fullest realization in giving them- selves in all their completeness to the Church.
No one who has read carefully the life of Christ can fail to be struck with His extraordinary loyalty to the Jewish Church. And one wonders at it, because the Jewish Church at that age was so cor- rupt, was so fettered by formalism and outside show as to have throttled its spiritual life; yet at the great feasts Jesus was present as a worshipper. But the Jewish Church has passed away and we have an organism that was born of the Spirit at Pentecost. The Church to-day, the visible Church, is composed of all baptized people, people who have been ad-
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mitted by the sacrament of baptism in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. I want to lay some stress upon the fact that the Church is a visible organism. We must not allow ourselves to be carried away by any nebulous Chris- tian philosophy that considers the visible organiza- tion of the Church to be of little or no importance. The Church is the instrument through which the whole of man is to be saved. I believe that we, who are commissioned by God to teach and speak from the pulpit, lay too little stress on the part that the body has to play in matters spiritual and in the economy of salvation. It is true — indeed, it is a truism — to say that we look to Christ for the salvation of our souls, our inner selves. We must look to Christ too for the salvation of our bodies. We cannot have any spiritual union with God or man, that does not carry with it a union where our physical being plays a very real part. When our Master had finished His course on earth. He did not cast aside His body as a garment outworn; but He carried it into the heights, where it is forever imbedded in the Godhead, transfigured, changed, spiritualized, as different from the body on the cross, as the grain that springs in the full head is different from the corn of wheat that falls into the ground.
^
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But still, it is a body, a real body, all the more real because it is spiritual; and the organism, through which the Spirit is working and saving both men's bodies and men's souls, is a visible organism. Man is not body alone: body without soul is corpse. Neither is he soul alone: soul without body is ghost. Man is body and soul.
This visible organism has its officers. They are members of the body, ordained to perform special functions; consequently there is a ministry. I am not speaking now of any special form of ministry, Episcopalian, Methodist, Presbyterian or otherwise; but the visible organism must have a ministry, a ministry where the commission comes both from God and from man. Without such a twofold commission a ministry is a poor paralytic thing, incapable of leading men to God.
And remember — and let the laity lay this to heart — remember that the clergy are not the Church. The clergy without a laity form, as it were, a truncated head, and the laity without the clergy a decapitated trunk. Do not mistake me. The real head of the Church is the invisible head, Jesus Christ. But I am speaking in terms of a visible organism, in order to bring home to you the reality of the thought, that it is so easy to lay too
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grave a responsibility upon the clergy, and so for the laity to ascribe to the clergy responsibilities and faults, which belong to the followers just as truly as to the leaders, inasmuch as they form an integral part of the organism.
Now because there is a visible organism there are symbols in its method of life. I wish I had time to bring out the important place that symbols hold in ordinary life. Symbols are not ceremonies; they are sacraments. Indeed, this whole great world in which we live is one big sacrament, if we look at it right.
" Earth's crammed with heaven
And every common hush afire with God.'*
So in such a world we should expect symbols, and in so noble an organism as the Church we should expect noble symbols. Even in our ordinary friend- ships and in our social life we must have our sym- bols that are sacraments. What is the kiss but the lover's sacrament? And what is the grasp of the hand but the friend's sacrament? Symbols, yes; but not mere ceremonies. Friendship would die if it did not express itself outwardly in some physical touch. The body must find part in all that is deep and true when the soul is agitated. Consequently it is only as might have been expected that in the
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making up of this organism, the visible organism of the Church, there should be symbols, simple and yet profound — the sanctification of the bath and the sanctification of the meal, baptism and the Supper of the Lord.
Now baptism was not originated by Jesus Christ. He did with it, as He did with everything He touched in life, — He transfigured it; He changed its charac- ter; He gave it a meaning and a power which originally it did not possess. Jesus Christ has some- times had this brought against Him, that He was not original, that you find in the sacred books of the East some of the thoughts which He Himself expressed, that the Old Testament contains much which He taught. But originality does not consist chiefly in saying or doing something new; he is most truly original who takes the old and gives it a new beauty, a new profundity. Water is found in almost every developed religion as a symbol of the religion. The Jews had manifold lustrations; the Mohamme- dans have the same; and it would seem to me that baptism originated in a far-distant age, when man's power of expression was very inadequate. He realized, as you and I realize to-day, though not so fully, that when he offended his conscience and did something wrong he left a stain on his inner life,
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and in his desire to get free from that stain he poured water upon himself, or had another do it, in a sort of dumb show before God, making the act a prayer to God to cleanse him from the impure thing, as though to say, "O God, as my body is being washed, so wash my soul." So Christ came and He changed the prayer into an answer, or He made the prayer and the answer coincident.
He Himself was baptized. He had grown up among men so as to know them through and through, and He felt their sin with such sensitive acuteness that it seemed to Him as though it were His own. It is as though a mother had a son towards whom she had looked for a great future; but, instead of going on into that hoped-for future, he became a criminal, and as his character grew more and more degraded hers grew more and more refined. At last, when the son is upon the scaffold, reaping the reward of his life of crime, who is it, that feels the sin of that son the more? Is it the son himself or is it the mother .^^ Ah, it is the mother. And so Jesus, in the midst of those sin-laden penitents by the Jordan, feels with His sympathetic soul the weight of other men's wrong-doing as though it were His own. He goes down into the water, we may say, burdened, almost overwhelmed with the weight of their sins —
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He was made sin for us — and God gives Him the comfort of the vision from heaven and says, *'My son, thou art the spotless one in whom I am well pleased." Jesus sanctified for ever the waters of baptism, so that the bath thus sanctified stands as the initial sacrament of the Church. Now here is something that we all agree upon. We may give different meanings to baptism but it still remains the instrument through which the individual is admitted into the visible organism of the Church.
About sacraments I would say this, make them, as far as you can, symbols of God*s presence and not symbols of His absence. Take all the constructive teaching of all sections of the Christian Church regarding baptism and the Supper of the Lord and put them together, all the spiritual significance of them, and you will still fall short of what God intended them to mean for man. When Jesus Christ transfigured baptism He made what was originally a dumb prayer of man to God, a living answer of God to man. He says to the individual who comes to Him in baptism, "My son, thou art incorporated into my life." Baptism is not a momentary contact between the individual and God, but it is the begin- ning of a steady pressure of the life of God upon the life of man, until man is wholly caught in the tide of
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God's love. Let me say that baptism — and this is a most important thing — is one. It is impossible to be baptized an Episcopalian, a Roman Catholic, a Presbyterian, a Methodist, or a Baptist. You can only be baptized into one thing, and that is into the Church of God. When we realize this fully then there will be no more schisms, and men will stand shoulder to shoulder with all their fellow Christians, and there will indeed be one Body and one Spirit.
As to the other symbol in this great visible or- ganism of the Church, the Holy Communion, think of how it was ordained, the sanctification of the meal. It is not the Cross that explains the Lord's Supper; it is the Lord's Supper that explains the Cross. Eliminate the Lord's Supper from history and what do you have? You have very much of what you can get in Plato's story of Socrates and his death, the self-surrender to the uttermost and to the last of a noble man to his fate. But Jesus Christ, knowing that He was going to die, laid down His life, and showed us how we in His strength may always change a necessity into a virtue. He, knowing that He was about to die, broke His body Himself and poured out His blood. And the Holy Communion is to-day the invitation and the opportunity of men to
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come into the one great complete sacrifice and share in its glory and in its victory by feeding upon His life.
We have the visible organism, the body and its members, different functions being given to different members; we have the two great symbols, baptism and the Supper of the Lord; but our Church is splintered, broken into countless fragments; section wars against section. The Lord's prayer for the unity of His Church is not yet answered. There are many movements at this present day trying to bring about the unity of the Church of God, both in the visible and in the invisible way. Only a few weeks ago I was privileged to attend the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and also the General Assembly of the United Free Church of Scotland. On a given date both of these Churches considered in prayer and discussion how they might bind up the wound that was inflicted upon their unity in 1843, and the result was that unity is to be brought about just as soon as practicable. Steps are being taken immediately to consummate the plan. In the United States, some three years ago, the movement was begun to bring together officially appointed repre- sentatives of all the Christian Churches of the world in a conference on faith and order looking towards
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unity. These movements indeed make one thank God and take courage.
But in the interim, what are we to do? Above all things, be loyal to your own Communion; at the same time, give due respect to those who disagree with your point of view, and pray especially for those Communions about which you know least and with which you have no sympathy. That is a common, plain duty. I know that there are numbers of people who are unconnected with any part, any section of the Church, religious men, men who want to live with Christ, but who are living an individ- ualistic spiritual life, which in itself is almost a contradiction.
Some years ago a most estimable woman came to me and asked for work in my parish. She said that she would like to work in co-operation with those who were associated with me, but that she was un- connected with any church because the schisms of Christianity so disturbed her that she could not countenance any one of them. I replied to her, "Madam, don't you see that you have formed one more sect, and that it is more despicable than any of the others because there is only one person in it.'*" Well, that is the exact attitude of men and women who say that they are going to be Christians at
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large, but that they are not going to associate them- selves with the visible organism of the Church. I am happy to say to-day that that woman is working as a deaconess in the Church of God.
For the moment it is a primary duty that we should be loyal to that aspect of the truth that is set forth by the Communion to which we immedi- ately owe allegiance; and this loyalty does not for one moment mean that we are to enter into violent and negative controversy with those who disagree with us. We must have convictions; a man cannot live on opinions. And above all things, we must have convictions in religion. Just as a man cannot live a solitary, isolated life in letters, or in business, or in any other department of existence you can think of, so is it impossible that a man live a strong, religious life unless he be allied with the Church of God in its visible manifestation.
But you say, "Oh the Church is so dry and cold. I cannot get much from public worship" — I am only quoting what somebody said to me a day or two ago — "I can do a great deal better by going off into the woods by myself and there praying to God. The preachers do not give me a great deal of thought; I can get better thought from books.'* It is quite right to criticize the Church, if you
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criticize it as a worker within, and not as a cynic who sits without its gates. Jesus Christ was a critic of His Church, but He was loyal to it before He criticized it. And remember that you are the Church, and the Church is what it is because you are what you are, and the Church of to-morrow will be what it will be, by virtue of your relationship to the Church at this present time. The Bride of Christ — think of her in her distress and come to her in your strong young manhood and deliver her from some of her evils. You can bring to her the very things she lacks, and Jesus Christ through you can make the Church at least somewhat more like the ideal than she is at this present time.
Do not suppose for one moment that any volun- tary association can take the place of the Church. I yield to no man in my admiration of, and my devotion to, the Student Christian Movement and the Christian Association, but if the Christian Asso- ciation or the Student Movement were to take shape as a sect, then they have ended their usefulness in the service of Jesus Christ. The Association and the Student Movement do not form circles which touch the Church on the circumference, on the outside. They are movements of the Spirit of God within the chief sphere of the Spirit's action among
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men, even in the Church, and so I pray God with all my heart that this, perhaps the greatest move- ment of the Spirit in modern times, may turn the full force of its flood upon the Church's life, renewing her and strengthening her, that the day may be hastened when the unanswered prayer of Jesus Christ will be an answered prayer, and we shall all be one in Him.
IX
PRAYER 1
HUMANKIND cannot be fairly divided into those who pray and those who do not pray, for everybody prays. If we would make a differen- tiation of the sort in terms of prayer, it would be more correct to do so by distinguishing those who pray aright, from those who do not pray aright. Or, to be more fundamental still, by grouping together those who pray to the only true God, and those who pray to one or more of the many false gods. The kind of prayer offered is determined by the kind of God addressed.
Prayer is the universal practice of human nature. There is no commoner form of activity. It is not an artificial part of life, but as instinctive and auto- matic as breathing. It might be said that the capac- ity for prayer is the feature which distinguishes man from monkey or dog. The essence of prayer is desire, forming itself into hope and aspiration, and
* From The Churchman,
112 PRAYER
mounting up into effort, in the direction of the unat- tained. If hope and aspiration cease to exist both for here or hereafter, human character forthwith also ceases. At that stage, if there is any prayer left to be offered, it must be addressed to annihila- tion as the summum honum.
Advancing in definiteness, prayer is the address made by human personality to that with which it is desired to establish affiliations. It is a movement of the whole being which reaches after the heart's desire. Neither in religion, nor in any other possible understanding of the word, may we think of prayer as being exclusively lip service. Unless lip service is but an index and instrument of the heart's desire or the will's purpose, it has about as little moral significance as the repetition of the multiplication table. "Fulfil now, O Lord, the desires and peti- tions of Thy servants as may be most expedient for them" — that is the proper order. Desire is antece- dent to petition, that is to say, petition is the hand- maid of desire. Hence we pray chiefly to whatever we most covet or reverence.
The recipient of our address may be as stubbornly passive as a log, without eyes to see or ears to hear, wholly insensate, and as irresponsive to an appeal as the mass of corruption which the weeping mourner
PRAYER 113
addresses, above the newly-made grave, in blind grief, as Beloved. Nevertheless, contradictory as the statement may appear, no prayer ever rises in vain. It is as inevitably answered as is the call of gravita- tion to matter. Prayer and its answer belong to an established, immovable order, and work according to recognized law. If our lives are set toward money or fame or pleasure as our chief end, and most of our language is pressed into the discussion of these matters, the general effect is the same as though on bended knee we invoked our chosen God to bless us. The mountain may not come to Mahomet, but Mahomet goes to the mountain. The worshipper rubs up against the idol and extracts that which the idol is powerless otherwise to give. The prayer may not yield the exact answer we expect, but it meets with powerful response, the most powerful that can come to human appeal. The prayer to gold will probably make us as hard as the yellow god, to fame, as windy and fickle as the vox populi which awards it, to pleasure, as hectic, as the joys in its gift.
There is even a lower form of prayer than that to wealth or fame or pleasure. I mean the prayer which says, "Evil, be thou my good." Thus, for instance, the man or group of men who address themselves to an effort to defraud the people or some
114 PRAYER
section of the people, are praying to trickery and treachery and dishonesty to come to their aid, and beseeching them, probably, to do so in such a way that they may still be deemed reputable citizens. No more earnest prayers rise in the churches than those which are being daily addressed to their respective idols by misguided or weak or corrupt men everywhere. Everybody prays. Everybody is religious, that is to say, everybody is doing his best to tie himself up to his summum honum.
Therefore when our Lord came among men. His task was not to make a nature religious which up to that point had been without religious capacity. It was rather to lay hold of that which was, after a fashion, religious {beiai daLjiovearepos), and train and develop it to the utmost. It was a work of cultivation rather than of creation. His was not the responsibility of teaching men to pray, so much as it was of directing their prayers. Prayer, then as now, was rising in dense, frequently in murky, clouds. It was the purification of prayer that He undertook.
Consequently He revealed the character of the Personality to be addressed. When He was asked by those who had always been men of prayer to teach them to pray, He taught them by presenting
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to them a vivid spiritual portrait. The Lord's Prayer gives a rounded conception of God. It contains a complete theology. This is what it seems to say — though I recognize that no explana- tion of the Lord's Prayer is as lucid and simple as the Prayer itself.
"God is Personality; the Father of Jesus; our Father. Therefore you can approach Him as person approaches person among men. Address Him as your Lover — yours and your neighbor's alike — though with that awe with which imperfection should ad- dress perfection. Ask for His best gifts for you and your brother, for He made you to be princes of His Kingdom and sharers of His purpose. The least thing that affects human life is His concern, so that He hears the stomach's cry for food. Our conduct is of paramount importance in His sight. He desires to keep us white by frequent washings, and by casting over us that mysterious mantle of forgiveness which we in turn throw over our fellows. He would spare us only from those trials which are too difficult for us, and carry us triumphant through salutary battles."
The trained religious sense offers its prayers to a God of this sort. The sort of God before us, in Whom we really believe, remember, determines the
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116 PRA.YER
sort of prayers to be offered. This is theology's justification. The steady habit of setting life toward such a God as He Whom Jesus Christ revealed will, by degrees, force out of our experience prayers of a low or unworthy character. It takes a passion to cure a passion. The sure test of whether it is legiti- mate to pray for this or that is whether we can carry our desire to the Father of Jesus Christ. Some- times, often, we will have to fight hard, for upon our choice hinges our religious fate. The two, God's ideal and our desire, cannot occupy the same sphere. Where this is so, to choose our desire as against God, is to set up an idol. We cease praying for the object of our desire and instead pray to it. By daily effort we must twist and beat and shape our impulses, our thoughts, our desires into such a form as will stand the test of being presented to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ for His blessing. His answers are proportioned to our sincerity rather than to our mode of approach, though this is far from saying that formal prayer is unimportant. The great thing to remember is that God, being who He is, is more ready to hear than we to pray, more eager to give than we to receive, more active to find us than we to find Him.
X
THE ROMANCE OF MISSIONS AND THEIR LACK OF ROMANCE!
THE luxury of modern travel across continent and ocean, the comfort of living at moderate cost in most countries of the world, the facilities of communication by post and wire and wireless, which bind the ends of the earth in chatty neighborliness, have robbed forever the vocation of the foreign missionary of any special claim to self-sacrifice, and of that halo of romance which somehow attaches itself to voluntary undertakings in conditions of physical hardship.
What travel there may be off the beaten track is in the main only such as a virile man should rejoice in. In the larger towns and cities, and in many of the smaller places, the necessities of life are available, and missionaries have no grounds for self-pity or claim upon the pity of pious admirers at home; if, in a few stations among the fast-diminishing primitive * Reprinted from The Outlook.
118 THE ROMANCE OF MISSIONS
peoples, or in remote Asiatic posts, there are mis- sionaries of religion and government, living lives of marked hardships, such as endanger their physical well-being, they are in the minority; moreover, they would be the last ones to claim that they were doing anything heroic. They are heroes, but it is charac- teristic of a hero that he disclaims his heroism.
The tropics of our day are being steadily tempered by the white man's mastery of conditions, until they are becoming healthy, and, in many places, so full of compensations as to create in not a few persons unwillingness to live elsewhere. Complete isolation is a rapidly vanishing discipline. The sources of the Nile and the "roof of the world" are within hailing distance of New York in these days when a man has laid his hand on the North Pole. There is little left of this globe of ours to explore, and soon, from sheer necessity, we shall be forced to turn our attention to what may be "lost behind the ranges" of the moon's Cordillera.
These things being so, it is time for us to drop, once and for all, that sentimental regard for missions and missionaries which is belittling to the missionary cause, supporters and missionaries alike. It is always harmful and unfair to pretend that the ordinary is the extraordinary. If, a while since, the
AND THEIR LACK OF ROMANCE 119
missionary's vocation was an extraordinary one, it is no longer so. It is now simply a normal part of religious duty, and should be accepted and recog- nized as such. When this is accomplished, we shall be in the way of securing the kind and number of missionaries that are needed.
All of us, doubtless, have been stung at one time or another, especially in the enthusiasm of begin- nings, with a sense of the splendor of martyrdom and its attendant impulse to glory, and have spoken as St. Paul did of the things which concern our weak- ness — our perils and journey ings and all the rest of our thrilling hardships, many of them in reality not more than the average fisherman or hunter goes through during his annual vacation. Probably some of us also feel, like the Apostle, though with more reason, that we spoke as fools. Bodily violence to the missionary is becoming less and less likely, and the martyrdom of the future will, at any rate, not be that most undesirable form of martyrdom, in which a man is rushed into the glory of the next world at the cost of those who promoted him thither becoming murderers and criminals. In our day religious feuds ending in brutality or slaughter are increasingly inexcusable, whether between Christians and ad- herents of other beliefs, or between two opposing
120 THE ROMANCE OF MISSIONS
sects of Christians. Denunciation of doctrine and a sort of religious braggadocio, which flaunts a given phase of faith in the face of those who believe other- wise have been known to end in physical violence. A person dying in such circumstances is hardly a martyr. He is one of a mob who dies in the disorder of a mob. The true martyr is one who, like Living- stone, constructively and wisely pursues a noble purpose to the end, and with deep sincerity declares, **I never made a sacrifice."
The real hardship of the missionary is that which founders of empire as well as religion have had to face from the beginning — failure, from whatever cause, on the part of the pioneer to make others see the vision of the "things that belong to their peace," neglect until it is too late of imperial opportunity by those on whose word and support action is depend- ent, timidity on the part of executive and administra- tive forces which clings to a policy and methods long since become threadbare. Of hardship of this sort there is enough and to spare.
To-day the missionary opportunity is at its height. It must be taken. There are a few primary principles that we need to emphasize:
1. Missionary work is a normal vocation for normal (that is to say, the best) men and women.
AND THEIR LACK OF ROMANCE 121
Romance in missionary work, in domestic and foreign fields alike, is in the character of the man who undertakes it, and not in the character of the work undertaken. There is no more romance in mission work in Yunan or Baroda than in Utah or Okla- homa, but there is just as much, and that is a good deal, provided that the missionary concerned is a good deal of a man.
The modern missionary needs special training for his work more than ever before. If St. Peter was an unlettered fisherman, St. Paul was a distinguished scholar and statesman, and it was St. Paul who gave Christianity to the world at large. St. Peter could not have done it. He had neither the head nor the training for it. The mere prophet, moralist, and exhorter have each their place in the mission field; but prophets and preachers who possess balance as well as fervor, conviction without bigotry, are some- what rare. No man below intellectual par, and without savoir faire, should be eligible for missionary work in such countries as China, Japan, and the Philippines. I speak as one who would defend his own interests.
No doubt we have had, we have, and we are going to have incompetent and eccentric missionaries. But it is unjust to judge the value and work of
122 THE ROMANCE OF MISSIONS
missions by a handful of misfits. Had it been just to generalize on the character of the American consular service from some representatives in high places whom I met in the Orient a while ago, I should have pronounced it to be a corps of scoun- drels. Were it fair to judge the civil service by a considerable number of civil servants I have known, I should say that it was a company of roisterers and thieves.
Let us have done with the pernicious habit of snatching at exceptions, as a ground for the universal condemnation of a cause, or an institution which we may not like, but of which we know little at first hand — perhaps nothing. Consular service, civil service, and missionary societies alike are bent upon eliminating incompetents and misfits. In the main, they are all proficient, with unlimited possi- bilities of greater proficiency.
2. Missionary life is as much a vocation for the laity as for the clergy. Missionaries should cover every known profession from a doctor to a carpenter, from a housekeeper to a seamstress. In much of the Orient the industrial mission is of greater importance to-day than any other. It at least holds equal place with literary education. The consecrated, well- equipped layman is needed not less, in some places
AND THEIR LACK OF ROMANCE 123
is needed more, than the priest and catechist. The Jesuits, the most self-obhterating and the greatest missionaries of modern history, have succeeded because they are learned, skilled in science, and experienced in almost every trade. Their lay brothers are not the least important members of their order.
3. The moment has arrived for us to review the institutional ventures of missions in the light of the progress of backward nations, and the growing wealth of the home Church. The continuance of an educa- tional or philanthropic society simply because it is under religious auspices, irrespective of the quality of the work done, is at best a doubtful procedure. A school or hospital merits support because it is an instrument of good education, or medically and surgically first-class, not because something bearing the name of school or hospital is used as a pretext for pious teaching and sectarian ends. Poorly conducted and professionally weak missionary institutions, when side by side with well-conducted secular institutions of a high order, are a menace, not an aid, to the cause of missions. Missions must unfalteringly stand for the best institutions of their kind, or else yield place to the best.
We have yet to contend against the old conception
124 THE ROMANCE OF MISSIONS
of missions and missionaries — that they need little, less than people with much easier tasks, that they must not have the ordinary comforts of life, and must work miracles withal. One of the chief troubles with missionary institutions is, that with a work far more taxing and difficult than in ordinary conditions at home, they are supposed to be greatly favored if they receive pennies where home institutions of a similar character receive dollars. The harder the task, the poorer the equipment, is not a proverb found in the sayings of the Wise Man, though it is practiced in the economy of the churches. If a wealthy home church, upon whose annual contri- butions a missionary institution subsists, steadily refuses to support it adequately, the missionary in charge is almost in duty bound, for the sake of the cause, to urge its abandonment.
The needs of a missionary institution of to-day must be measured by the breadth of its opportunity as discerned by those directly responsible for it, and not by an ancient and decrepit theory. What may have been generous for yesterday's needs is penurious in relation to to-day's. Missionary schools and hospitals cannot live on the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table; they can only starve on them. As much discredit has accrued to the missionary
AND THEIR LACK OF ROMANCE 125
cause because of inefficiency due to inadequate support, as to incompetent missionaries.
4. Competent persons, men and women of the privileged class, should be taught that there is a place for them in the mission field, permanently or temporarily, if they qualify by becoming proficient in some department of useful work. Why should not young women give a year or two of their fresh- ness and vitality after they leave college to teaching, or otherwise aiding in one or another of our missions.? If they are able to meet their own expenses, so much the better. This would be more profitable than the giddy dance around the world that the thousands indulge in annually, gathering for the most part a little geography, a bunch of curios, and considerable misinformation about nations whose skirts they touch. Japan, China, the Philippines, and India are good stopping-places for round-the-world travellers. A year or so in one place or another would be an education to the visitor and a material benefit to missions. The idea has already occurred to and been acted upon by a few.
Again, why cannot some of our colleges and schools, like Yale and Princeton and Trinity, Groton and St. Paul's and Phillips Exeter, systematically contribute one of their professors or masters, from
126 THE ROMANCE OF MISSIONS
time to time for a year, to teach in Peking Univer- sity, or St. John's University, Shanghai, or St. Paul's College, Tokyo? Indeed, Groton, all honor to her, has, unasked, inaugurated the movement, by lending to Baguio School a master who, with true missionary spirit, has contributed the major part of his sabbat- ical year to this end. Such a course brings a reward to the giver. The disease from which the academic world is apt to suffer is provincialism. In these days of international life, every college and school should have preceptors who have had a direct share in the puzzles and burdens of faraway lands.
Space forbids me to say more, though I have much more to say. But I trust that my purpose has been accomplished. I have aimed to present mission work as being a normal vocation for normal men and women, with just as much and just as little romance as any other reputable pursuit, and as demanding best possible equipment in all its enterprises. Par- ents should be no more surprised or chagrined that their children should plan to qualify for the mission field, whether as a vocation or as an avocation, than for finance or medicine or society. The religious public should no more be disturbed when we on the frontier ask for a hundred thousand dollars for a hospital or a school (usually we ask for much less
AND THEIR LACK OF ROIVIANCE 127
and do not get it) than when a home charity, or university, lays its plans to get a million or so for equipment or endowment. The biggest missionary request that I have as yet seen, if it has erred at all, has erred on the side of excessive modesty.
As I have experienced mission work, and I have known no other work in a ministry of close upon a quarter of a century, I conceive it to be as wonderful a sphere of opportunity for the investment of all that manhood is, or may be, as the market of time affords. I am further convinced, from a careful and extensive observation of missions in many lands, that, considering the number of men and the amount of money invested in missions, the returns are such as cannot be paralleled by any other enterprise in history.
XI AN APPORTIONMENT OF MEN *
IF an Apportionment of money, why, then, not an Apportionment of men? The Church made a great advance when the Apportionment plan was adopted for the financial support of missions. The plan lays the responsi- bility where it belongs — on the corporate body. The Church as a whole makes her offering through Diocese and Parish to missions as a whole, and it is no longer left solely to the individual to give as he will to what he will. When, at last, the Church shall have risen to the recognition of the privilege of an equitable sharing of her wealth, the need of appeals for special aid by missionaries will be mini- mized, though never will individuals be content to confine their gifts to the Apportionment. The Ap- portionment represents a minimum, not a maximum, of what should be contributed. In the bright future, when the Church shall have given all that is needed for the equipment and maintenance of the ordinary ^ From The Churchman.
AN APPORTIONMENT OF MEN 129
work of missions, there will still remain ample margin for special offerings — probably more than now, be- cause those who are most generous in making special gifts are the very ones who are giving far beyond their share to the Apportionment.
The time has come for us to consider the possi- bility of an Apportionment of Men. The means whereby the mission field is now furnished with workers is desultory and uneconomical. An indi- vidual here and there is moved by a public notice, a book, an address, the appeal of a friend, to offer for this or that missionary district. If he is accepted by the Board he goes to the field of his choice, or else, in the rare instances in which a man places himself at the disposal of the Board, to the field selected for him. Men are asked to offer themselves; they are not, barring an occasional case, called individually and particularly, because those upon whom the responsibility of choice rests discover fitness and ability. Missionaries should be both called and sent by the Church. Their sense of commission should not be left to rest wholly upon the inner call, or the appointment of an executive and administrative body like the Board, but should have behind it the Church, as represented by the Diocese and the Parish.
130 AN APPORTIONMENT OF MEN
That Parish must be spiritually poor indeed which out of, say, two hundred communicants cannot con- tribute from time to time, if not each year, at least one qualified lay worker to the mission field. Why should not a parish come together annually with the consciousness of the Divine guidance, and lay the responsibility upon some one of their number to give himself to the mission work of the Church? Declina- tion could be followed by a new choice, until one, the best available, who would worthily represent the parish, had accepted. Appointment, of course, would remain, as now, with the Board. A mission- ary thus selected would go forth with a profound sense of commission, without which there can be no high degree of efficiency and enthusiasm. He would go not only because he wished to go, and believed himself to be not without a measure of qualification, but also because he was bidden to go, just as truly as the ambassador who is sent by his country to a foreign court.
Even this does not take us far enough. That Diocese is poor indeed that cannot offer at least one priest or deacon annually to the mission field. Let the choice be made at the Diocesan Convention of the best man (or men), physically, intellectually, and spiritually, and let the responsibility of acceptance or
AN APPORTIONMENT OF MEN 131
declination rest on his (or their) shoulders. Why should we leave it to the individual clergy to dis- cover by chance, each for himself, their missionary vocation? I cannot but believe that it is the Church's duty, by some such method as I suggest, to call upon priests and deacons to go hither and yon, just as she does in the case of missionary bishops.
There is no special hardship in becoming a mis- sionary in these highly civilized times, and it is a pity to continue a superficial distinction between work at home and work abroad. When this is eliminated the question resolves itself into a matter of sharing clergy and money, in an approximately equitable fashion, throughout the whole Church. It ought to be no cause for wonder that a rector of Grace Church, New York, for instance, should be asked by his Diocese to resign, in the midst of a successful pastorate, to go to Salt Lake City or Hankow as a missionary priest.
Supposing, then, each Diocese were to agree to send annually one or two clergy, in addition to those who voluntarily offered, to the mission field for five years, what an enormous gain there would be both to the mission field and to the whole Church! Many Dioceses, however, could contribute more than ^wo. The great Dioceses of New York and Penn-
132 AN APPORTIONMENT OF MEN
sylvania could each give five good men and be richer in the end by giving than by retaining. No Diocese should give less than one and the number above that could be apportioned on the basis of the number of the clergy and ordinations from year to year.
I do not mean that men should be given for all time to the mission field. On the contrary let those who desire to return at the expiration of five years be free to do so. In a decade the missionary dis- tricts would be contributing strong men with broad experience and mature gifts to the Dioceses, and the whole Church would be aflame with a sense of world- wide mission. The world is growing so small that it is culpable to live a provincial or isolated life. No government that has any sense of responsibility fails to regulate national affairs with regard to interna- tional interests. No great business firm confines its attention to its own town or state or country. Why, then, should the one institution which has an age- long charter and a world-wide commission suffer its representatives to live a circumscribed life, and be so snarled up in petty concerns as to be unable to see the depth of the sky and the breadth of the universe?
It may be objected that those who go abroad will be forgotten and when they return they will find no place for themselves. Let them run the risk, I say.
AN APPORTIONMENT OF MEN 133
The only way to help the Church rise to her duty is to trust her. If the best men go to the mission field they will be the very ones to whom ultimately will be entrusted the biggest responsibilities at home. It is not within the realm of probability that the present occupant of the White House would be where he is, if he had not come, a while since, to the Orient as a Missionary of Government. Strong men can afford to be indifferent to the prestige of position, anyhow. Some of them, at least, do their best work by stripping themselves of honor and place and dignity, after the example of Him who, though He was rich, for our sakes became poor.
Again, it may be urged by Diocesan Bishops that they cannot afford to allow their clergy to go. Doubtless for a time it would mean a considerable sacrifice. But the law of sacrifice governs the Diocese and Parish as well as the individual. Most Dioceses and Parishes are in danger more from over caution, and the perils of a self-centred life, than from a career of daring and sharing.
I should like to see the Church set about preparing for an Apportionment of Men, the best men, laymen and clergy. We need every type, every extreme that our Church produces — I need some ritualists at this writing for our Northern work, and some evangel-
134 AN APPORTIONMENT OF MEN
icals for our Southern work; only let them be men of character and piety — but they must be given by the Church as Church, so that they will come to us crowned with the inspiration of commission. No Church but one organized as ours is, has the facilities for carrying out such a scheme. The lines of her organization are splendidly adapted for a Catholic work, as well as worthy of that, which is at present denied her, a Catholic name.
I have not touched upon the question of financial support for the greatly enlarged expenditure which the successful inauguration of the plan proposed would involve. Let us do the first thing first. Let us take the horse from behind the cart where he is now, and put him between the shafts where he be- longs. In other words let us set about getting men.
''Give us menl Men — JTom every rank. Fresh and free and frank ; Men of thought and reading. Men of light and leading. Men of loyal breeding. The Church's welfare speeding: Men of breadth and not of faction Men of lofty aim and action: Give us Men — I say again
Give us Men!
Give us Men!" ^
^ Adapted.
XII FINANCIAL MISSIONARIES i
IF medical missionaries, industrial missionaries and the like, then why not financial missionaries? I venture to write on the subject as a serious proposi- tion, not because I am expert in finance but because I am not. Indeed the modest degree of knowledge I possess has been purchased at painful cost, to myself and to the Church, which ought never to have been. My proposition, therefore, is that every unit of the Church's missionary organization (the same holds good of diocesan organization, but that is not for me to discuss at this time) should have as a matter of course an expert in charge of the financial and business department of the jurisdiction.
There probably was not the same acute need in the past that there is to-day of such an appointee. It comes as one of the demands of our development. Growth always means increased complexity and necessitates heightened functional efficiency. In * From The Pacific Churchman.
136 FINANCIAL MISSIONARIES
other words, specialization is one of the penalties of success. This involves a revision of organization and a judicious co-ordination of all the agencies employed therein.
Most if not all of our missionary districts have now reached a stage when a knowledge of business and financial affairs, beyond that possessed by the clergyman or layman of average education, is impera- tive, in order to induce a skilful handling of the Church's interests. Even if the Bishop, or one of his clergy, had the experience and training for the work, the time required could not be given without such a sacrifice of other duties as would be unjustifiable. The business aspect of the missionary district must be recognized as a thing apart, calling for careful organization with an expert hand at the helm.
No one recognizes or appreciates more fully than I the valuable services rendered here and there by men who save out of their business or professional hours, often at great sacrifice, sufficient time to perform the work of treasurer or business adviser. But the time has come for us to be more formal. Finance is a profession, and ordinarily the business of a missionary district would employ the entire time of a trained man, if we purpose, in this department of responsibility, to keep abreast of the best. The
FINANCIAL MISSIONARIES 137
voluntary treasurer will be needed not less but more — as one of an advisory board grouping around the financial missionary, whose duty it will be to conduct the Church's business affairs with the same alertness as would characterize any honorable commercial house.
There is no reason to suppose that we could not secure such men, who would consecrate their gifts in this way. There is no inherent war between money and piety. Even if the right man is not available, who would number himself among the missionaries — there are already such, as, for exam- ple, in Shanghai — an expert could be appointed from the professional men at hand, and remunerated accordingly. I know by experience the extreme value of such an appointment. The matter is not merely one of bookkeeping. There are purchases of land to be made, sites to be chosen, buildings to be erected, insurance to be cared for, supplies to be bought, institutions to be financed, investments to be made, stations to be visited — enough, in short, to give a first-class man an interesting and valuable vocation.
There are three benefits resulting from having an expert in the position outlined, as I have learned from experience:
138 FINANCIAL MISSIONARIES
1. Economy. — Though there may be a large annual outlay for salary, the extra sum expended will more than be saved, by the efficient handling of funds, and by the devices for economy conceived by one whose official responsibility is to guard against leakage or waste. By way of illustration: In the earlier years of my episcopate large sums of money were expended annually on the exorbitant rentals asked. It was nothing short of pitiful waste. Several years elapsed before some of us saw that we ought to advise means whereby we could secure permanent values in return for the rental money. At last a small loan fund was established which enabled us to erect domiciles. The rental money pays back the principal of the fund together with a small interest (3%). The result is the leakage has been stopped, property acquired, and a growing permanent fund established — though at a late, rather than an early, date and only after thousands of dollars were lost. Of course an expert would have adopted some such scheme at the beginning.
2. Increased Contributions. — Trustees of wealth will give with a free hand to causes which are under reliable business management. Some of our very wealthy citizens will not contribute to a work whose business methods have not been critically examined
FINANCIAL MISSIONARIES 139
and passed upon favorably. I sympathize with their position. Moreover, I have reason to beheve that one reason why the bequests and contributions of Churchmen to Church institutions is markedly less than those to secular, state or independent philanthropies and organizations, is because of the superior administration and financial solidity of many of the latter. If we admit that business occupies any position at all in the Church's affairs, we ought to bring it up to the best standards.
3. Relief to Bishop and Clergy. — This is a point upon which it is not necessary to dilate. In the rudimentary organization of the Church the deacons were business agents for the relief of the bishops or priests. They stand as the prototype of my "finan- cial missionary." If the Church of to-day were to observe the same solicitude for the pastoral and spiritual work of the clergy as at the beginning, she would resort to a similar development. It is far more abnormal for a bishop to play the role of a financier or business agent than it used to be for an apostle to baptize! St. Paul deprecates this latter. What would he say of the former.?
Every first-class business corporation has its financier, its promoter, and its attorney, with vari- ous lieutenants under each. If the Church were to
140 FINANCIAL MISSIONARIES
appoint similar ojQScials, not only would she greatly heighten her efficiency, spiritual and material, but she would be true to the principal which created the diaconate. Let us hold to good traditions!
XIII
THE NATION'S DEMAND UPON AMERICAN YOUNG MEN^
BECAUSE democracy aims at so high a standard and is so essentially a spiritual principle, it has been charged against it that it "lays too great a strain on human nature." Such a complaint forms part of the credentials which all idealism is proud to carry, the Christian religion first and fore- most. And democracy is the principle of Christian brotherhood applied to government, whether in a constitutional monarchy like that of England, or in a republican system of rule like our own.
Probably no American would admit that our ideal of democracy is visionary, or that we ought to strike some compromise, that would be more in tune with the limitations and defects of average human nature; but, owing to the inertness and apathy, from what- soever cause, of at any rate a large minority of citizens, methods contradictory and subversive of democracy have been allowed to creep into our 1 From The Outlook.
142 THE NATION'S DEMAND UPON
system of government, and abide there unmolested. Machine politics and "bossism" are usurping the field that should be controlled by forces of less selfish and more moral character, and the highest interests of the many are daily being sacrificed to the cupidity and lust for power of the few.
It is for the coming generation, the youth of to-day who are clothed with unprecedented privilege, to cure some of the excesses of liberty which mar our civilization. Let them stoop their shoulders to the burden in the prime of their young manhood, and strike across the problems of the Nation the fire of their strength. The first lesson that a young man should learn in the principles of government is that National problems and public questions are his own personal concern and responsibility, and that he will have to answer for his conduct toward them as exactly as for his individual moral behavior. Such a lesson well learned issues in something more than an occasional jeremiad from the sheltered cloisters of cultured ease, or the acid shriek of negative criticism. It burns itself into the flesh and blood, the nerves and muscle, until the flame of patriotism is kindled in the soul, and a citizen worthy the name moves out into the Nation's need, equipped to wrestle with its problems and overthrow its enemies. Of course this
AMERICAN YOUNG MEN 143
will mean self-sacrifice always, and oftentimes as complete and bold an adventure of faith as signalized the departure of Abraham from Ur, the enterprise of Cavour, the revolt of Washington. The spirit of adventure, with its bosom stored with those rich compensations which men who have surrendered to it for some worthy end know full well, seizes the life and swings it up to a new level of courage, to a sphere where the atmosphere is rare and the power of spiritual vision quick, to a realm of freedom where whatever gifts one possesses have their fullest exer- cise. American life has a faculty for adventure. Its main distraction is found in the amazing risks we run to secure wealth by a coup de main. This faculty stands in need of redemption by being shot into a new channel, whose lining is unselfishness and a nation's good. We are the sons of adventurers, and our lives stand so close to our pioneer fathers that we feel their heated breath upon us as they conquer the forests and enslave the rivers. None of us is true to his heritage who is not taking some considerable risk for the common weal. Young life cannot reach normal development if it is not some- where in the heat of a battle for others. It must be occupied on at least one common problem if it is to win its citizenship.
144 THE NATION'S DEMAND UPON
To-day the undeveloped or half-developed West is calling to the privileged youth to come to its aid. It is easy to succumb to the allurements of the older civilization and choose bondage with ease under the shadow of settled conditions, rather than strenuous liberty in unbeaten tracks. I am thinking now chiefly of those many young men of greater or lesser wealth, upon whom first of all the demand of the Nation for a large measure of self-sacrifice falls. But how fine it is when a richly endowed nature, after scrutinizing the field, picks out as its sphere of service the centre of some grave perplexity, the hardest spot, perhaps, on the ramparts! It is doubly fine, for it both administers succor where succor is needed, and weaves new stuff into American man- hood.
In our protest against militarism we must not lose sight of a still graver peril — "Corinthianism," or the moral enervation and decadence that is born of the soft uses of prosperity. However bad militarism may be, history teaches us that the military nation may live and flourish in health and manners, but the end of the self-indulgent nation is inevitably corruption and death. I say this not to defend militarism, but to indicate wherein the greater danger lies to-day, and to make a plea for that hardi-
AMERICAN YOUNG MEN 145
hood which enables a man sometimes to flip his fingers in the face of a risk. Though I would add that if we deprecate war and its concomitants, merely because it disturbs our ease and offends our aesthetic sense, we confess ourselves in need at least of the discipline and hardship of military life. A few days ago, in England, a lady spoke to me of an American book she had been reading which pictured school life. The hero was forbidden by his mother to play football. "Why," said my friend, "if an English boy were forbidden by his mother to play football, he wouldn't own her!" It was strong language to use, but the point underlying the exaggeration was that true boyhood requires peril for its development. And no one's life is secure unless it is dropped daily between a hope and a fear, a possibility and a risk. Years ago, when I was a student, two of my com- rades were drowned while trying to sail a boat across a dangerous piece of water in a storm. The in- stinctive ejaculation from most lips was, "Foolhardi- ness!" until one of our professors said, "Courageous! It is readiness to dare a hard thing that makes heroes," or words to that effect.
But, to return to our original thought, the young men of to-day, both for their own and the Nation's good, must be stirred to adventure. If they will
146 THE NATION'S DEMAND UPON
but listen to the just claims of the country, they will find inspiration and opportunity. A lawyer in a dreary Western town will have a dull time of it merely as a lawyer; but if he embraces and adheres to the ideals of Lincoln, the briefless barrister, if he studies his townspeople through the glasses of sympathy, if he fastens himself on some one muni- cipal or State problem, he may never ride in an automobile, or dazzle the habitues of a New York social club, but his name will be worn in the hearts of his fellows, and the Nation will be the richer be- cause he lived. A physician going to Porto Rico or the Philippines merely to make a fortune through the instrumentality of his profession would be a man to be avoided by natives and foreigners. But if he were to elect to go because of the depth of native need, the wide scope for research in unexplored diseases, the consciousness of the country's respon- sibility to the inhabitants of our island possessions, even though he were in the end to succumb to tropical conditions, his adventure would be nearer noble than imprudent, a success rather than a failure. In this attempt to emphasize a single phase of life I do not wish to seem to ignore other aspects at least as important, as, for example, the glory of abiding in the conditions into which a man has been
AMERICAN YOUNG MEN 147
born, the quelling of the spirit of adventure far afield because conscience requires it, the plunging into the old, time-worn, humdrum tasks of the older civilization with its painful and seemingly insoluble problems. Both in these latter, as well as in our more recent and novel responsibilities, the demand the country is making upon young men is as great as when the bugle sounds reveille in the early dawn to summon the army to order of the day. And I believe there will be a response worthy alike of our ideals and of our manhood.
XIV A VISION OF MANHOOD
1 SPEAK to men who have, in their best moments at any rate, a lofty conception of, and a rever- ence for, manhood and its possibilities. Probably in the case of most of us, our earliest awakening to a realization of the potential grandeur of human nature was due to our being brought into contact with developed greatness and nobility in a historical character or a living national hero. Though none can be so thrilled with the limitless possibilities of life as he who has come to understand it as God purposed it, and at least revealed it in the Man of Men, the Hero of heroes, Jesus Christ.
It is no lack of modesty, but rather the stirring of latent strength, which leads the boy to turn away from the contemplation of his choice hero to an am- bitious reverie about himself. He knows that he and his hero have a human nature in common, he knows that Jesus Christ presses His own victories and achievements into men of to-day, and so he aspires
A VISION OF MANHOOD 149
to be something. That is to say, having learned re- spect for the human nature in others, he begins to respect human nature in himself. Maybe he is restless because he is only a boy, and must wait for the powers and wisdom of manhood to come in the slow unfolding of time. Nevertheless he has learned his earliest lesson in self-respect. He realizes that life is not a toy but a force, and somewhere within him is something splendid.
Now the only man who can hope to make his life a success is he who retains (or, having lost, regains) self-respect, who finds in himself that which is real and strong and sacred, and who guards and rever- ences his best qualities and aspirations. If he has no respect for himself he is sure to fail in respect for others, and mischief results.
Perhaps the most fundamental feature of true manhood is veracity. Veracity means much more than truthfulness in social and business intercourse. It means that inner hatred of unreality, that aver- sion to trickiness which moves a man to keep his mind free from crooked thinking, and gives him courage to face things as they are. He avoids soph- istry of thought, and does not clutch at every argu- ment that makes for his own opinions or convictions, but is honest and fair toward logic even when it
150 A VISION OF MANHOOD
necessitates a change of mind. Such a man cannot fail to be true and truthful to his fellows.
Then again eye service is not his motive for thor- ough service. He respects his powers, and he does good work not for the praise he may gain from his employer, or the advancement he may win, but for the joy of honest work. There is no satisfaction like that which comes to a man when all his faculties declare to him that he has used them well. His lot may be in conditions where he is under no surveil- lance, where he has the plotting out of his own work and the division of his own time, where there is no spur to keep him up to a high standard except his reverence for his manhood and his loyalty to his conception of duty to his fellows. But it makes no difference. Rather is he more, than less, dihgent because he is his own master. Such a man promotes productive industry among his fellows.
Manhood is body as well as mind and soul. So a vision of manhood includes a clean body as well as a clean mind. The former follows on the latter. There is no disgrace in being tempted to any one or all forms of fleshly indulgence. The disgrace is in yielding or trifling with temptation. If one form of temptation more than another calls for promptness of action and curtness of dismissal, it is temptation
A VISION OF MANHOOD 151
to lust. There is nothing to be ashamed of in fleeing from it. The lads and young men who are frequenters of the Manila dance halls are preparing the way to dethrone self-respect, and to stain their bodies with sin. He who trifles with sins of the flesh blunts his refinement, and gets a distorted and disgusting conception of womanhood. It is an awful thing to have "eyes full of adultery that cannot cease from sin.'* Sir Andrew Fraser, who spent twenty-five years in India, speaking about honor due to native women, says — "There are men in all countries whose estimate of women is tainted by the stain of their own impure minds." Be not such a man. Womanhood is by nature clean-minded, and would be shocked and horrified by the knowledge of what is sometimes in the minds of men in their company. Do you remember Browning's fine reverie over one of the poor, stark corpses in the "little Doric Morgue"?
**And this — why he was red in vain Or black, — poor fellow that is blue! What fancy was it, turned your brain Oh, women were the 'prize for youl Money gets women, cards and dice Get money, and ill-luck gets just The copper couch and one clear nice Cool squirt of water, o^er your buM, The right thing to extinguish Iv^t."
152 A VISION OF MANHOOD
So be pure, young men, because you are young men and are strong. Keep clean within, and you can never fail to respect womanhood with that high chivalry that is able to love well, because it loves purity and honor first.
Veracity, industry, and purity — they are yours for the asking, a treasure to be coveted, a dynamic of manhood which nothing can withstand.
XV
PROGRESS AND PROBLEMS IN THE PHILIPPINES 1
THE Philippine Islands constitute a problem within a problem, a responsibility within a responsibility. If they were not occupied and ad- ministered under the authority of the American Gov- ernment, this nation could in no wise be released from her responsibility to that greatest of modern problems, of which it is a fragment — I mean the problem of the Far East. Every serious-minded man recognizes that the greatest question of the na- tions to-day, the question of which we know least, but which is making the most persistent demands upon our sympathy, wisdom, and activities, is how to bring about a normal relationship between the nationalized half of the world and that more popu- lous half which is at the dawn of nationalization. It
1 Paper presented at the Twenty-eighth Annual Lake Mohonk Conference, 1910.
154 PROGRESS AND PROBLEMS
is a problem that touches us on all sides — politi- cally, religiously, industrially, and socially. Upon our right relation to it depends the future well-being of the Western world. Just now we of the West are the more progressive, the more compact, the stronger — in a word, the more privileged part of the globe, while our friends of the East are back- ward, loosely knit, and feeble. But the spirit of life is moving among them, and such stirrings are agitating them as leave no doubt regarding their future. It is of more importance to the West than to the East that we walk circumspectly from now henceforth, and there is but one large principle which can serve us and enable us to play our part worthily in this new era, in which distance has given place to nearness and the ends of the world are drawn together in close neighborliness — the principle that we be just, using our strength in behalf of the weak, not pleasing ourselves, not looking each at his own things but each on the things of others.
The early history of the approaches of the West to the East is a story of exploitation and selfishness. The record of the East India Company is as dis- graceful a chapter of robbery under the name of trade as stains the pages of international relations. The attitude of the West to China has been, and still
IN THE PHILIPPINES 155
in part is as the snarling of dogs over a bone, which each claims as his portion.
But the temper of the West is changing, partly because the weak are becoming too strong to be bullied with impunity, and partly because we our- selves are becoming fair-minded. The latter history of Great Britain in India, her magnificent record as guardian of the Chinese Imperial Customs for a half century, her unselfish administration of Egyp- tian affairs, the progressive character of Dutch rule in Java, the clean motive which has actuated the American occupation of the Philippines, bear witness to this fact.
It is probably true that in earlier imperial move- ments there were glimmerings of humanitarianism. But in most cases the lust of domination, the glory of self-aggrandizement, and the commercial instinct were the controlling motives in territorial expansion and colonization. The day is past when the con- science of the civilized world will allow these prin- ciples to prevail, and it is to the credit of most modern nations responsible for the well-being of dependencies, that it is due to their tutelage that national spirit has begun to rise in the bosom of backward peoples. "Egypt for the Egyptians," "Arya for the Aryans," "the Philippines for the
156 PROGRESS AND PROBLEMS
Filipinos," are watchwords for which the Western, and not the Eastern, world is responsible in the last analysis.
I am of the opinion that our nation would never have been shaken out of its placid self-conceit and serene ignorance of the Orient if a direct responsibil- ity in the Far East had not been thrust upon us. We needed the sort of discipline which ensued when it was determined by our Government to retain the Philippines — I mean unselfish entanglement in other Peoples' affairs, the unforeseen difficulties in- volved, the sacrifice demanded, the semi-failure of our plans. Already we have learned to sympathize as never before with countries like Great Britain and Holland under their burden of responsibility heroically borne. Already we are raising up a gen- eration of men who know the Orient as only those who have had Oriental experience in matters of government are able to know it. When I think of the many young Americans I have met in obscure posts in the Philippines, laboring on some educa- tional, political, scientific, or religious feature of the problem, with commendable zeal and fidelity, without any support in their untoward conditions except self-respect and a consciousness of duty to the nation, I feel that we need not fear the future.
IN THE PHILIPPINES 157
Our task is no easy one. It is the moral regenera- tion and the unification of a people. These are pre- requisites of self-government. There are encouraging features. In the first place we have racial homo- geneity. The people are sprung from a common stock. They have strong racial cohesion. After all, there are only two forces which bind men into a unit; racial affinity rising into national organiza- tion, and religious affinity. The Filipinos have both of these characteristics in their favor. It is true that there are various religions, from the crude superstitions of animism, and the fierce bigotry of Islamism, to the devout fervor of the Roman Catho- lic and Protestant Christian. But the prevailing religion both in power and numbers is Christianity. The pagans are relatively few, and the Moro Prov- ince is sufficiently detached, geographically and governmentally, to be considered a thing apart.
On the other hand, the Philippines present peculiar obstacles. For instance, we are dealing with an Archipelago composed of thousands of islands. Added to this geographical hindrance to the intercourse between the people, there is the further one of temper- amental disinclination on the part of the native to move far from his home. His modest house, the cock-pit, the parish church and his rice-fields form
158 PROGRESS AND PROBLEMS
the sphere of his activities. A journey to the neighboring market is frequently his farthest ex- pedition in a lifetime. Of course, highways and rail- roads will help to cure him of his extreme isolation and provincialism.
The difficulty of language would not be as much of a bar to progress as it is if one of the many Filipino tongues could be selected as a lingua franca. Failing this, English has been chosen as the common medium of thought, and the rising generation are learning it by thousands and hundreds of thousands. English is already the commercial language of the Orient, if not of the world, so we are making no error in teaching our wards, who are linguistically apt, our own tongue, which will eventually supersede Spanish in the courts and in the market-place.
The Filipino is constitutionally self-satisfied and not untainted with vanity. He is not endowed with great powers of resistance, either physically or morally. The result is that the bad concomitants of Western civilization are a constant menace to him. If we with our higher degree of vitality and the vigorous moral training of centuries stand so badly the pressure of that refined materialism which is the bane of modern civilization, we must not be surprised if the Filipinos are injured by
IN THE PHILIPPINES 159
it. The question is sometimes asked, Why press Christianity on the Orient? The answer is, because it is the one means by which the Oriental can be made strong enough to meet the menace of civiliza- tion, even in a third-rate way. Heathen cults may be good enough for him as long as he lives in isola- tion, but the moment the flood-gates of civilization are opened and he is caught in the swirl, the one conserving force in civilization, Christianity, must be given him or he will perish, and involve others in his ruin. The Christianity which the great mass of the Filipinos have now needs a strong injection of Puritan austerity and love of righteousness. It is to a large extent pious rather than moral.
There is a feature in the Philippine situation which is worthy of serious consideration, and which em- phasizes strongly the responsibility of America for the governmental eflaciency of the Filipino. It is this. Geographically and racially the Philippines belong to the East; religiously and politically they belong to the West. Though the best miscegena- tion for the Filipino is with other Orientals, notably the Chinese, sentiment, association with America, and industrial timidity, have combined to exclude the Chinese from the Islands. The Japanese, as a nation, inspire terror in the Filipino breast. Chris-
160 PROGRESS AND PROBLEMS
tianity has separated the Philippines from sympathy with adjacent lands, and three centuries of Western rule and ideals have alienated them from the Eastern conception of government, without as yet giving them a substitute. Democracy is thus far more of a vague idea, unintelligently accepted as a magic wand waving open the doors of independence, than of a principle to be framed into a form of government touching the entire populace. Though it is an open question, as with Western civilization, so with West- ern governmental thought, that it may not fit Eastern life, we have gone so far in the Philippines that we cannot turn back. The idea that haunts the minds of a very few Westerns, and of a large number of Orientals, that native society, whether in India or in other Eastern countries, can be reconstituted on an improved native model, is a pure delusion. The country over which the breath of the West, heavily charged with scientific thought, has once passed, and has, in passing, left an enduring mark, can never be the same as it was before. The new foundations must be of the Western, not of the Eastern type. As Sir Henry Maine very truly remarks, the British nation in dealing with India ''cannot evade the duty of rebuilding upon its own principles that which it unwittingly destroys. The most salient and gener-
IN THE PHILIPPINES 161
ally accepted of those principles is unquestionably self-government. That must manifestly constitute the corner-stone of the new edifice. There are, however, two methods of applying this principle. One is to aim at eventually creating a wholly inde- pendent nation in India; the other is gradually to extend local self-government, but with the fixed determination to maintain the supreme control in the hands of Great Britain. ... So far as I can judge from recent discussions, the only difference between the extremists and moderates is that, whereas, the former wish to precipitate, the latter would prefer to delay, the hour of separation."^ I am glad to quote this fair statement from the pages of so sturdy an imperialist author as Lord Cromer. They make admirably clear the Philippine situation. We ought to recognize this undeniable fact, that in the whole history of Colonial administration in the Orient, no dependency has ever approximated that measure of self-government which the Philippine Islands now enjoy. In a speech by Hon. Manuel L. Quezon in the House of Representatives last June is this passage: **I am glad to be able to affirm, first of all, that simultaneously with the American occupation, there has been established a * Ancient and Modem Imperialism, pp. 119, £f.
162 PROGRESS AND PROBLEMS
more liberal government, and, from that day, the Filipinos have enjoyed more personal and political liberty than they ever did under the Spanish Crown." The only fault I find with his statement is that he does not make his comparison broad enough. He should have included all the Oriental dependencies in history and put the liberality of America at the top. The ascendency of the American in Philippine Government affairs has been steadily on the decline, generosity to the Filipino running with speedier feet than to many of us seemed, and seems, best for the Filipino.
There are two features of our present policy on which I wish to comment:
1. It was some years ago maintained by various critics of our Philippine policy that we were not giving suflficient attention to the industrial aspect of the problem. At that time I could not feel that the criticism was just. The moment has now come when the manifest duty of the Philippine Govern- ment is to place industrial matters in the forefront of its thoughts. Political development has been such as no longer to need the amount of attention hitherto accorded. Several years have passed since Aguinaldo, the leader of the revolution against American rule, voluntarily presented his sword to
IN THE PHILIPPINES 163
the Governor General. On various occasions when efforts have been made to get an expression of opinion from Aguinaldo he has refused to discuss matters, saying that the problem was not political but industrial. He has pointed his assertion oft- times repeated by devoting himself to his farm. The Philippines must always be an agricultural country, dependent upon the industry of the inhabitants. Their industrial efficiency will largely determine their political efficiency.
2. The second matter is that of education. The policy obtaining has always been liberal. The work of the schools has on the whole been commend- able, lacking, however, in respect of industrial and technical training. This defect is being remedied. Provision was also made for sending promising stu- dents to America. The results have not been such as to justify continuance. This brings up an im- portant principle.
Experience would appear to have proved that a person should be educated in his own country in indigenous institutions of learning. Orientals must be educated in the Orient. Post-graduate work in a foreign country is valuable, but not secondary or university training, which should be provided at home. For this reason the Government is moving
164 PROGRESS AND PROBLEMS
wisely in the development of the higher education. The Philippine University is being organized, and some departments are already open. It is significant to note that in China strenuous efforts are being made to establish universities in Hongkong and Hankow, to the end that the best results of Western educa- tion may be brought to the aid of the Chinese in their own country. No man is so well fitted to serve his people with sympathy and intelligence as he who has been educated in the familiar surround- ings, and with the local color of his home land. But let it always be recognized that what the Filipino most requires "is, not so much that his mind should be trained, as that his character should be formed." At the last moment I have found that it will be impossible for me to present these thoughts in per- son. I have therefore written out in condensed form that which I had planned to discuss in a more free and extended manner. The responsibility rest- ing upon our nation is not one which daunts us. But we must work at it without academic regrets that cripple effort, or impatient haste which causes an appearance of progress rather than progress itself. Our goal is clear before us. I make Lord Cromer's words my own and apply them to the special obligation resting upon our consciences:
IN THE PHILIPPINES 165
*' Nations wax and wane. It may be that at some future and far distant time we shall be justified, to use a metaphor of perhaps the greatest of the Latin poets, in handing over the torch of progress and civilization" in the Philippines **to those whom we ourselves" have had such a large share in civilizing.
XVI PHILIPPINE FACTS AND THEORIES^
IN this brief survey of Philippine affairs, it will be my endeavor to separate facts from fancies, and to strip the problem of secondary considerations. At an earlier stage in my experience I might have spoken with the same tone of infallibility which characterizes the utterances of those doughty cham- pions of the Filipinos, who, clothed in the soft rai- ment of homespun theories, view the battle from afar. I have no solution of the Philippine problem to offer. My sole purpose is to urge upon the American Government slow speed, and not to dis- card a good policy until sure of a better. No cer- tainty can be reached without a study of facts. "Ce ne sont pas les theories qui doivent nous servir de base dans la recherche des faits, mais ce sont les faits qui doivent nous servir de base pour la composi- tion des theories."
1 From the New York Tribune, April 21, 1913.
PHILIPPINE FACTS AND THEORIES 167
The first fact to face is one which admits of no dispute. It is that America is in the control of the Philippines, and upon her wisdom or unwisdom hangs the fate of nine million Filipinos. Whether we erred in assuming such a responsibility is aside from the question. If America had not accepted it from unselfish motives, another nation would have seized it from motives of self interest, and at this date liberty would sit mourning without the gates of the Philippines instead of reigning throughout her borders. The Philippines to-day enjoy a measure of self- government hitherto unknown to dependencies, save in the Anglo-Saxon overseas dominions of Great Britain, and the responsibility of America is to further the progress of self-government to the utmost of her ability and the Filipino's capacity.
Thus are we brought to a second indisputable fact. We are pledged to execute our responsibility of con- trol as a trust to be administered with rather than for the Filipino. That is to say, we are to train him by co-operative methods in the principles of self- government until he has attained, and then, if he so elects, surrender to him the rights which belong to a full-grown nation. It is here that we arrive at the parting of the ways. The dispute, however, is not one of imperialism and anti-imperialism. It
168 PHILIPPINE FACTS AND THEORIES
fogs the issue to employ such terms. The question resolves itself into one of good judgment. The op- posing camps differ only in the matter of time. There are those who say, Now; others who say, To-morrow; still others who say, Day after to- morrow. If desire implied ability, the clamor for independence on the part of the Filipinos, which just now is more widespread than at any time in their history, would be the signal for our withdrawal, but only their achievements can determine their ability. A careful study should be made of the Malolos Government of 1899, the character of pro- vincial and municipal government up to date, the use of the franchise, the extent to which espionage and kindred evils prevail, the records of the Assem- bly, and the constructive work, religious, scientific, educational, industrial, accomplished under the present policy.
It is, to say the least, dangerous to argue on the theory that any autonomy, no matter how slovenly, is preferable to alien rule with "higher poHtical efficiency" as its motto. There are moments, at any rate, as in Cuba, San Domingo, Nicaragua, and Mexico, when alien interference, or even alien rule for a while, is not counted amiss by our most fanat- ical individualists. It is for this reason that I say.
PHILIPPINE FACTS AND THEORIES 169
Let us proceed from facts to theory. The facts are to be had for the asking, and the Philippine policy- should stand or fall upon its record.
A third fact is that the Philippine problem has a puzzling complexity due to its island character and diversified population, of which one tenth is com- posed of primitive folk of the hills and fanatical sons of Islam. The recognized leaders in the Philip- pines to-day, so far as racial qualifications are con- cerned, would have at least equal right to claim citizenship in Spain, China, or England. Thus far it is the men of mixed blood who are the politicians. The degree of capacity in the Filipino will not be revealed until the school boys of to-day are in active public life. Even among the Christianized peoples, because of their many tongues and limited, though increasing, intercommunication, there are sectional jealousies, but the wild peoples have a marked antipathy for their Christian neighbors because of a past history of harsh and unfair treatment at their hands. It is owing solely to the prodigious industry of the Secretary of the Interior of the Philippine Islands, and his sincere enthusiasm for the welfare of the inhabitants of the Mountain Province, that a notable work of protection and development has been begun which no one less well informed than
170 PHILIPPINE FACTS AND THEORIES
he could continue effectively. As for the Moros, they are the traditional enemies of the Filipinos, as the ruined watchtowers on the coast, even of north- ern islands, testify — nor has animosity diminished with time. Though there has probably been more order in the Moro Province since the beginning of the American occupation than during any corre- sponding period of time in history, the island of Jolo has steadily baffled the attempts of our ablest officers and administrators to pacify it. The with- drawal of the Spanish was the signal for outrage upon Christianized Filipinos within immediate reach of Moros, and there is no reason to suppose that history would fail to repeat itself the moment American control ceased.
Finally it must be recognized that the Philippine problem cannot be settled without reference to its international bearing. Neutralization has been pro- posed. But can American, or any other, diplomacy secure the neutrality of the Powers? Would it mean anything if promises of neutrality were made? Is it not so, that though no existing military power. East or West, would fight America in order to secure possession of the Philippines, there are at least two nations which would seize the first opportunity for interference if American sovereignty ceased? Can
PHILIPPINE FACTS AND THEORIES 171
America afford to protect a government half way round the world, which she does not actually and constructively control? She has found it difficult enough with one near at hand. It appears to me that it would be a measure of quixotry beyond the most altruistic administration, to stand sponsor for the order of an experimental government of more than doubtful stability ten thousand miles from our coasts. When the Philippines achieve independence they must swallow the bitter with the sweet, and accept the perils as well as the joys of walking alone. There are national risks involved even in a limited protectorate to which I trust America will never expose herself.
I have said nothing about the interests of Ameri- can commerce which has grown up in the Philippines, because it is not to the point. The most it can ask is an equitable protection and consideration such as the presence of the American flag guarantees. Nor have I made any appeal for the retention of the present personnel of government, for I believe office holders should stand or fall on their record, though it would indeed be a national calamity to degrade the Philippine question into a ball for party politi- cians and office seekers to buffet. My sole thought is for the enduring welfare of the Filipino people, and
172 PHILIPPINE FACTS AND THEORIES
the honor and wisdom of the American nation in the execution of a great trust.
My own conviction of our present duty, based on eleven years of observation and experience, is summed up in words written in relation to another dependency but which I apply, with a few verbal alterations, to our own case: "The people of the Philippines require our rule. We are not in the Philippines for our pleasure or profit. If we were, it would be the most natural thing in the world to say that the game is not worth the candle as soon as intense diflBculties and dangers arise, and leave the Philippines to go to perdition in her own way. But we cannot do that. We are in the Philippines, because we are required there. If our rule were removed, at this juncture at any rate, the Philip- pines would at once become a prey to the strongest of the sectional aggregations, and they in turn would ultimately be devoured by intruders from outside the borders of the PhiUppines. . . . *We do not know how to leave the Philippines and, therefore, let us see if we know how to govern them.*"
XVII
NATIONAL AWAKENING IN THE PHILIPPINES 1
I OFTEN recall a phrase of John Morley*s, when he was in this country in 1904. He said, in a speech in New York, that in the waters of the Pacific America had a great peril and a great op- portunity. It is true and all of us who have at all tried to live life realize that opportunity is adjacent to peril. And sometimes when we are a bit cowardly the peril so shakes us that we do not see with clear eye the opportunity. That has been the case more than once in relation to the Philippine Islands. There are amongst us those who are so afraid for the American Constitution, which is a very hearty constitution, that we have evaded the issue and not squarely faced the opportimity that the Philippine Islands presents both for our nation and for the Filipinos themselves. But I think I am right in
^ Address at the Thirty-first Annual Lake Mohonk Conference, 1913.
174 NATIONAL AWAKENING
asserting that in the main we are alive to our op- portunity, that it has challenged us and that we intend to rise to it. And we may feel perfectly sure of this, that what is best for the Filipino will be best for America. We are not going to be hampered or checked by theory; we are going to face facts and we are going to deal with them in the way that living men should always deal with living issues.
I am going to speak on the subject of the National Awakening in the Philippines, and I believe that my topic, thus phrased, will place me in your eyes where I stand, as one who believes heartily in the coming Filipino independence; but I am going to add at once that that independence must be synonymous with liberty; it cannot be now or in the very near future. It was not American influence which awoke the Filipinos to that corporate self-esteem which emerges ultimately in national consciousness; in the sixteenth century a force began to play upon them which has never ceased, the same force which made nations of France and Germany and England and America — the conscious acceptance of the Christ. While Japan was wrapped in profound slum- ber, and China dreaming of her ancestors, the Philip- pine Islands were awakened by the one touch which arouses aspiration towards nationality as a perma-
IN THE PHILIPPINES 175
nence. In a book that has become current of late and which, in spite of its universal generalizations is of extreme value — I mean Chamberlain's "Foun- dations of the Nineteenth Century" — we have this estimate of the place of Christ, in relation to national life:
"No battle, no change of dynasty, no natural phenomenon, no discovery possesses a significance which can be compared with that of the short life on earth of the Galilean. His birth is, in a sense, the beginning of history. The nations that are not Christian, such as the Chinese, the Turks and others, have no history; their story is but a chronicle on the one hand of ruling houses, butcheries and the like, and on the other represents the dull, humble, almost bestially happy life of millions that sink in the night of time without leaving a trace."
Because the Filipinos have, however inadequate their belief may be, loyalty as a people to Christ, they have a hope of national self-realization beyond any people of the Far East. So far as Japan and China have hope of permanent nationality it rests in Christianity, and solely in Christianity. Never yet has a nation been governed purely by politics so as to retain a high national character; machinery can no more create a nation than it can a personality.
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Greece tried to keep her national entity by creative art, and history tells us how she failed. Rome built the majesty of her dominion on law, and although Rome stands as one of the wonders of history, Rome as a nation failed. But when you add the personality of the living Christ to creative art and to the power that comes through law, then I venture to say you get such an element of permanence in a nation that its destiny is immortal.
The process of nationalization among the Filipinos may be slow, but it will be sure. It is not politics that keeps a nation stable and continuous. Politics come and go. Nor is it some subtle genius given to some and denied others. It is Christianity. That which distinguishes East and West is not a matter of race or color. The dominant (i.e., Aryan) West was born in the East. It came to the West and found Christ and was found by Him, Himself a son of the Semite East.
Prior to the Christian era, nations considered as corporate aggregations, waxed and waned. A whole civilization would disappear leaving no trace behind but a few memories and here and there a splash of paint on the wall of a desert tomb. But with Christ nationality gained new vitality, so that we now see nations to be sacred, not dependent on dynasties
IN THE PHILIPPINES 177
or accidental genius. Let me insist upon this, be- cause not only the future of the Philippines is bound up with it, but our own future as a nation; a nation in this new sense is the creation of Christ and will be perpetuated as long as it is loyal to Him. Chris- tianity is the religion of perseverance and permanence. The last and fatal blow to the disintegrating nation of the Jews was their rejection of the corner-stone of their race. That which distinguishes the West from the East is that the West, however inade- quately, accepts Christ, and the East does not. The Filipinos are the only people in the Orient who can be called Christian in a sense similar to that in which we speak of America as Christian.
Ranke prophesied that the nineteenth century would be one of nations. It proved true. The sixteenth century brought the awakening nations to their feet. The Reformation was the beginning of a war against compulsory and tyrannical imperialism which has never ceased. National differentiation is still going on, and since the beginning of the nine- teenth century nationality has been focussing itself and becoming crystallized. I trust you will agree with me in this, and I think you will, that war will automatically cease when national self-respect has reached a stage analogous to that of individual self-
178 NATIONAL AWAKENING
respect, which brought duelling to a close. A Chris- tian world would make an unchangeable map of nations.
Our race and nation are inheritors of the history and life of the centuries. We are able to direct and accelerate the forces that control us. Our reverence for nationality gives us the responsibility of de- fending nascent nations. It is no mere chance that related the Philippine Islands to America. Consider the situation for a moment. The Philippine Islands are cut off from contiguous peoples by their Chris- tianity. They fear, and shrink from, the Japanese as a menace. Though they belong to the Malay branch of the great Mongolian race, and intermar- riage with the Chinese is productive of good results, they have a rigid exclusion law forbidding Chinese entrance into their territory. And as for their Malay brothers to the South and West, they have about as much intercourse with them as with the Esquimaux.
To learn what Christianity does for a people you only have to go from the Philippines to Malaysia. The difference between the Malays and the Filipinos is the difference between darkness and dawn. So we find the extraordinary phenomenon of an Oriental people isolated in the Orient and part of the solidar-
IN THE PHILIPPINES 179
ity of the Western world. The religion of Christ transcends the bond of race, and ignores geograph- ical contiguity. The fact that there is a higher type of Christianity in the Islands than formerly is in no small degree due to the fact that the Protes- tant Churches have come in with American sov- ereignty, some of them with a Puritan severity, and the whole religious situation has been toned up morally.
In their Christianity, even though a Christianity which needs to be vastly improved, lies the directing and conserving force of the Filipinos as a nation. The mestizos are already past masters in politics. What is needed is added character which comes to those who are given facilities for self-realization through the agencies of civilization under the aegis of the Christian faith. Given that, there is capacity in a Christian people for development. Govern- mental efficiency will rise automatically with the growth of character. It cannot be forced.
In the Philippines mediae valism, or compulsory imperialism, was the keynote of government until 1898. Since then the development into modernism has been by leaps rather than by even progression. To-day the Philippines have a measure of autonomy unknown in any existing dependency, unless you call
180 NATIONAL AWAKENING
Anglo-Saxon overseas dominions dependencies, but as one who is Canadian born I do not like to think of Canada as a dependency; Canada is a nation. I will go further. I know no instance in history where self-government has reached so high a development in a dependency. The Filipinos received after less than a decade that which was accorded Egypt in a restricted w^ay only when a generation had elapsed, and economic and industrial eflBciency had been insured. I mean a native legislative assembly. The Filipinos are now their own law-makers.
The most recent experiment of the American gov- ernment in giving the balance of power to the Filipinos on the Commission was the most conserva- tive measure that could be enacted if they were to take a further step toward the consummation of autonomy. An executive order can be re- scinded if the privilege granted by it is abused, whereas Congressional action would make with- drawal from a position once taken well nigh im- possible.
This last step is an experiment, and it is for the Filipinos themselves to prove that it was a wise experiment. Speed in so momentous a matter as the making of a nation is a thing to be feared rather than courted, and I hope that the last vestige of
EST THE PHILIPPINES 181
Spanish political influence will have vanished before that crowning phase of liberty which expresses itself in national independence is considered and granted. When those who are now school-boys are old enough and experienced enough to take the lead in the public life of their people, it will be time enough to discuss independence. Impatience is to be expected, but we must meet it with unruffled patience. Misunderstanding must be met by under- standing. Granted that there was a time when we needed to spur the Filipinos on toward independence, no such need now exists. To do so is to add fuel to an overfed fire.
America has the opportunity of the ages. She can, if she pursues a course consonant with the demands of the situation, stand by at the birth of a nation worthy of a permanent place in the family of Chris- tian nations. Her effort is not to rid herself of a difficulty, but to rise to an opportunity and to render a service. It is not so much to reproduce among an alien people her institutions as to create a character that will be able to express in Philippine life and institutions the principles of democracy. The political system developed, secularized education, and material progress, carry with them dangers which can be met only by deepened religious life.
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The corner-stone of the state there, as here, is the Christ. Without devotion to Him and His teaching there is no hope for nation or individual. In and through Him there will some day be a creditable Filipino nation.
XVIII A STUDY OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON '
HAMILTON'S place in history has not yet been determined, nor has he been credited with his full achievements, — as is frequently the case with those who have not held the highest office for which they have had capacity, or whose work has seemed to suffer defeat. In matters pertaining to our fame, as well as in other enduring departments of life, the broadest sweep of power comes in the shape of resurrection after death. In the readjustment which is compelling attention to Hamilton, there is a danger of making him great by contrast, disparaging Washington, who can never be considered other than the master spirit of the times. He and his contempo- raries were not rivals for fame, but men of varied gifts and powers whose individual greatness is best determined when laid against the greatness of all.
In considering Hamilton, we cannot afford to leave out of sight the characteristics of his boyhood.
1 Lecture before the University Club, Manila, July 19, 1907.
184 A STUDY OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON
He was ambitious and precocious. His ambition, however, was tempered by self-respect: he stood ready to risk his life, though not his character, to exalt his station. His precocity was not abnormal: he was not the child prodigy who repels, though in one sense he was never young; that is to say, he seems to have exhibited the fruits of experience before he had had experience, and a mature philoso- phy of life before he had lived.
As a mere boy he appears as an orator in the famous "speech in the fields." The wonder of it is not that he made a great speech, but that having made it he was ever heard of again. What charac- terized his whole life as an orator distinguishes his first utterance: he was fair to his opponents and paid due respect to the power of language.
It is not unnatural that when he became a soldier, and as a lad of nineteen commanded a battery of artillery, he should have aspired to military greatness; indeed, there is every reason to believe that military opportunity would have placed him among the great soldiers of history. One cannot help wondering what a Hamilton would have done with the opportunities of a Napoleon. As military Secretary he distinguished himself by controlling the feeble Gates and the sententious Putnam. He
A STUDY OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON 185
closed his military career with a brilliant exploit at Yorktown, and seventeen years afterwards, just before Washington's death, the great man seals his estimate of Hamilton as a soldier by accepting the position of Commander-in-Chief, in view of the possible war with France, only on condition that Hamilton should be second in command.
As a writer, Hamilton began his career at an early date, and when he was an undergraduate at Colum- bia produced pamphlets which were attributed to one of the ablest and most mature thinkers and writers of the day. "It is a rare quality in any man, but more than usually rare in lawyers and politicians, never to allow words a part in com- pleting the fabric of an imperfect thought." It is this quality which distinguished all the writings that came from the pen of Hamilton. In the "Conti- nentalist'* he makes a strong plea, a plea which found embodiment in national tradition, for the development of governmental power and stable revenue as being necessary to counteract the perni- cious effects of mere sentimentality as a bond of union. Sentiment is not unity: influence is not government.
His writing reaches its climax in the "Federalist," in which he advocates a plan, explains and justifies
186 A STUDY OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON
it, and prevails on a nation of practical men to make a trial of it. The aim of the "Federalist" was the adoption of the Constitution and the establishment of it as the key-stone of national life. Its fairness, the spirit of judicious compromise which marks it, and its literary beauty place the "Federalist" on a par with the immortal treatises on government. Oliver, in his recent publication, classes the "Fed- eralist" with the writings of Montesquieu and Machiavelli. It is written in a distinguished style, and has that happy combination of vision and practicality that is so rare in the productions of thinkers.
Washington's Farewell Address was undoubtedly also a message from Hamilton: it is futile to attempt to distinguish the part that each of these distin- guished characters played in producing this immortal document. We may say, however, relative to it — as also relative to the entire career of both men — that had one dropped out, the stature and products of the other would have been appreciably dimin- ished: Washington was as great as he was because there was a Hamilton, and Hamilton was as great as he was because there was a Washington.
No one will ever dispute the reality and splendor of Hamilton's statesmanship. His marvellous feat of
A STUDY OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON 187
inducing the New York Convention to adopt the Constitution stands as the typical achievement of his Hfe as a statesman. He fulfilled his ideal not by Bismarckian methods of compulsion and dictation, but by reason, by sentiment undimmed by senti- mentality, and by the superb and irresistible force of sincerity. The opposition that he met with during those six weeks of struggle was indicative of his fate during the entire period of his brief public career. As Secretary of the Treasury, though he fulfilled his specific duties with such efficiency and foresight as to contribute to the men of to-day a system that is effective and almost unchanged, he bent his energies also to establish the divine right of govern- ment, which, as Disraeli says, is the key-stone of human progress. "Hamilton sought his prime object by a three-fold means: the idea of his financial policy was the welding of the Union; of his com- mercial policy, the development of the estate; of his foreign policy, to confirm independence. Each of these undertakings was planned upon the heroic scale in accordance with the nature of its author; but all were subordinate to its main end, and never, even in the dust and heat of political controversy, were they permitted to escape from their true propor- tions." The permanence of Hamilton's work in the
188 A STUDY OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON
face of immediate attempts to overthrow it upon his retirement from office sufficiently indicates the quality of his achievement. He was the builder of foundations that will endure as long as the nation which stands upon them continues to exist.
His fight was against the idealist who laid undue stress upon the power of phrases and disparaged organization, and against the schemers who without principle lay in ambush to secure spoils for them- selves at the expense of national discomfiture. He could not but fight the school of Jefferson, on the one hand, and the school of Burr on the other. Hamilton's ideal was the hive; Jefferson's, the bee; Burr's, the honey. Hamilton viewed politics as a religion; Jefferson, as a philosophy; Burr, as a gamble.
The defects of Hamilton's character and his tragic death are passed by, not because it is fitting or right to slur over the moral imperfections of great men, but because this study of Hamilton is to bring out his actual accomplishment. Had he kept his escutcheon as clean as did Washington, his immortal- ity would have assumed a finer hue than it can now boast of.
The secret of Hamilton's efficiency was that he was a genius. Though genius has intangible qual-
A STUDY OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON 189
ities, it can never be other than comet-like unless it combines thoroughness which faces whole problems wholly and a passion for achievement which approxi- mates in practical affairs the realization of the ideal. "He was great in action, which is for the moment, and in thought, which is for all time." Though, as I have said, he was never young, yet he was always young: he combined the wisdom of maturity and the exalted enthusiasm of youth. He possessed the gift of vision. As Ruskin says of this gift in general, so we may say of Hamilton in particular: "The more I think of it, I find this conclusion impressed upon me — that the greatest thing a human soul ever does is to see something and tell what it is in a plain way. Hundreds can talk for one who can think: but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion all in one." Because Hamilton could see, he was able to make other people see: because he aspired, he was able to inspire. He had the happy combination of a genius for friendship and great masterfulness. It is one thing to be able to talk in the language of the masses and to interpret their wishes; such characters are not uncommon, but they are not leaders. A true leader must have also the element of masterful- ness. He sees all that the people see, but sees more:
190 A STUDY OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON
he has all the wisdom that the people have, but he has more: he identifies himself with the people, and then he identifies the people with himself. Like all great men, Hamilton had the gift of humility and was willing to take that most difficult of all positions, the second in command. It is easy to be Csesar, and it is easy to be nobody, and there are those who can see the two alternatives and who make their choice of the one or the other, but with Hamil- ton it was not aut Ccesar aut nulluSy because his vision inspired him to a task, and if the second place was the readiest instrument by which to perform the task, that was the place that he would choose. With this superb illustration of his restraint let us take leave of "the patriot of incorruptible integrity, the soldier of proved valor, the statesman of con- summate wisdom.**
XIX ABRAHAM LINCOLN »
IT IS my privilege to-night to speak of one who a hundred years hence will not be less a hero than now — Abraham Lincoln. Once a true hero, a true hero forever. As man's tongue cannot create a hero by singing him into fame, neither can it unmake him by belittling his worth. A hero lives in the citadel of a nation's heart and is discovered to the world by the homely criticism of intimate knowledge that is as careless of disclosing his faults as it is careful of unveiling his virtues. He stands in no need of the stucco art of flattery, and if the orator speaks of his fame, the honor that accrues is rather to the orator than to the hero. Of none is this more true than of our great fellow-countryman whose centenary we Americans, gathered in this threshold city of Asia, celebrate to-night.
^ A lecture delivered at a dinner of the University Club of Shang- hai on the one hundredth Anniversary of Lincoln's birth, February 12. 1909.
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It is a hundred years since Abraham Lincoln was born in the log cabin on the Kentucky farm. It is forty-four since his gaunt form sobbed out its martyr soul in the first mansion in the land. As the worn features sank into the repose of death, one of the bedside watchers exclaimed, **Now he belongs to the ages!" Yes, he belongs to the ages — the ages past which hold the record of completed lives, and the ages to come on which the force of such lives as his are let loose by death, to play beneficently on the successive generations of time. To Americans he will always be a band of steel holding their nation firm in its unity; a power available for to-morrow's stress not less than for the moment of storm which threatened to tear the ship of State from its anchor- age. To the world he is a perpetual asset as emanci- pator, benefactor, statesman. No future lover of men can strike a blow for right without some of Lincoln's power nerving his arm. Such is the happy lot of the great; they live in something deeper than frail memory; they live in the blood of the race, and to recall their death serves but to stir their immortal power anew. When death claims to have swallowed them, they refuse to die and go exulting down the ages.
Lincoln was the highest product of poverty and
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storm, and because its product, its master. He learned to dictate terms to the privation that was his chief inheritance, and to ride upon the wings of the storm that threatened a nation's life. Even we who are familiar with poverty, can find little to surpass that into which he was born, and of which the cabin with its one room, one door and one window, was the symbol. It was poverty merited by the shiftlessness of his father which formed the swathing bands of his babyhood and youth, poverty of the sort that does not commonly nurture heroes. It had in it too much that was depressing and pinch- ing. Only an unusual degree of innate vitality could circulate and thrive under its pressure. Even so, looking at the man he came to be, we see how priva- tion and cheerlessness stamped ineffaceably their plainness upon his very features, and contributed to the melancholy of his temperament.
If, however, he had a poor inheritance from his father, he had a good one in his handsome, sweet- tempered mother. The first event of importance in his life was when Nancy Hanks died, and his clinging affection was shocked by the cheerless funeral, unrelieved by prayer or ceremony, as the home-made coffin was thrust into the grave on the frontier farm. An unprompted letter from the hand of the nine-
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year-old lad brought, several months later, an itinerant pastor a hundred miles to preach the funeral sermon before the assembled countryside. The boy's filial demand for due respect to his mother's memory has outlived the eloquence of the preacher, and is like a certain alabaster box of oint- ment, very precious, once broken by a loving hand and destined to fill the centuries with fragrance.
We can say little about Nancy Hanks, for we know little, but it would be unbecoming, after her son's witness to her worth — and who is so wise in such things as a child? — if to-night, as we look with reverence at the mother and her new-born child, if we did not say the little we know. She loved her son and had ambitions for him. She was not with- out nobility, for great sons have much of their mother in them. This seems to be an instance where heredity plays true.
The lad's affection at heart was to find the solace it needed in that which is proverbially a doubtful, but which in his case proved a true, blessing — a stepmother. In 1819 Sallie Bush Johnston succeeded Nancy Hanks as head of the Lincoln household. She was a woman of character, and the tie which bound her to her stepson was of an intimacy that rivalled the tie of blood. He cherished her through-
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out his life, paying her a delicacy of attention worthy of his character. Almost his last act of preparation for his inauguration and the cares of State in 1861 was a day spent with her in familiar and affectionate intercourse. He was proud to say that the "strong- est influence which stimulated and guided him in his ambitions came from her and from his own mother." This is worth mentioning as being indicative of the victorious, counteractive force of maternal influence, which was strong enough in his case to nullify a paternal inheritance of shiftlessness, and to call forth the powerful resistance and resourcefulness of youth, wherewith he smote profit out of barren surroundings and hopefulness out of despair. Lincoln's strong family instinct held him for twenty-two years in a home which had little to commend it. A succession of migrations from one frontier farm to another, each with a story of failure and death, are not calculated to inspire a growing lad with stability. Loyalty to kin and the family tie, which to America's credit is strong in her common folk, seemed to have lifted him beyond the question as to whether he could not do better afield. His thirst for knowledge, which was as keen as his educational opportunities were scant, his independence which marked him out as a leader alike in action, thought, and fun, his
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ability to do a man's work before he was well within his teens, must have pulled hard in the opposite direction. But he chose the better part. America's greatness rests where it began, on the integrity of the home. It is profitable, at a moment when a trifle is counted sufficient to disturb the family quiet, or even to dissolve the family tie, to congratulate ourselves that not the least of our national heroes reckoned great home discouragements insufficient to justify removal from the family circle. When at last he went, he carried with him, unweakened by the separation, the obligations which inhered in him as son and brother. There are no finer lines in Lincoln's rich career than those which mark his relations with his family. Not only was he loyal to it, but he was also the strongest cohesive force which held it together.
Thus much of Lincoln's history it is fitting to rehearse afresh on this the centenary festival of his birth, a time when tender, home thoughts come unbidden to the mind. It would be impossible, however, were it expedient, to use the occasion for mere biographical reminiscence. We shall, therefore, pass by the story of his business ventures when he had at last stepped across the home threshold, of his struggle to the bar, of his ascent to political emi-
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nence, of his conduct of the affairs of a great nation in the most critical period of its history. We shall accept him as that which he aspired to be and became, a true leader of men, and try to discover some clue to the secret of his power as leader, in order that we, who in our small way are called upon to exercise leadership in a foreign land, may perhaps gain a new impulse under his inspiration.
The three most striking characteristics of the man, in my judgment, are those which best explain his power as a leader — he was always one of the people, "the plain folk" as he used to call them; he had a clear sense of vocation; he knew how to endure.
It stands to reason that a man of his history should understand men. The plain folk have less to obscure human nature than those who dress it up with the trappings of that refined materialism called civilization. He stood from the first at close quarters with the people, and what he learned of them was, in his judgment, so worthy of his permanent regard that he never allowed the shadow of a divorce to separate him from them or their interests. He knew human nature, a triumph of knowledge attained only by choice spirits; and not only did he know human nature, but he reverenced it in small and great, in
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young and old, in black and white, in bond and free. His love of children from his own little "Tad" perched on his shoulder to the wailing baby hugged to the breast of the deserter's wife as she petitioned for her husband's pardon, belongs to greatness of character. "Madam," said the doorkeeper to the rejoicing woman as she left the White House with her petition granted, "it was the baby that did it.'* His generous disposition and compassionate im- pulses ran into indulgence. "Some of our generals,'* he said, "complain that I impair discipline and encourage insubordination in the army, by my pardons and respites; but it rests me after a hard day's work if I can find some good cause for saving a man's life; and I go to bed happy as I think how joyous the signing of my name will make him and his family and his friends." Yet it was not a mere desire to bring relief to those in trouble that prompted his pardons and made him unable to say no to a request. It was rather that extraordinary sympathy which compels men to live the suffering of their fellows, to recognize and accept as genuine the faint glimmerings of penitence in the criminal, to attribute to others as their own, virtues reflected from itself. Without this quality a master mind may be able to lead the strong and perhaps to domi-
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nate the weak — never to lead the weak into that independent strength which is born only of daring trust and irrepressible expectancy.
Thus his hatred of slavery was not acquired but inborn. **If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not think so and feel so." He never had the task of reasoning himself into a repudiation of slavery. It was just because his antagonism was neither a policy nor an argument that it was a power beyond that of other abolition- ists, and made him the leader of leaders in the struggle for emancipation.
A weakness that no one would desire to call by another name, either harsher or milder, was never- theless a symptom of genuineness and strength. I mean his reputed coarseness of speech. It was the hall-mark of his origin. He came from the plain folk, and whether as a rail-splitter or President, he took no pains to obscure the fact, of which he was proud. The plain folk are apt to talk with free tongue and pure mind of matters which cultured society holds it to be immodest to discuss. For this reason in polite circles, a coarse bit of humor is more likely to be related because it is coarse than because it is humorous. It is safe to say that this was never true of Lincoln*s story telling. His stories were told
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for the point which they contained, to illustrate an idea or to drive home a truth. There has been among America's sons none more chivalrous toward women than Lincoln, — admirer of their virtues, de- fender of their honor.
I hope I have said enough to make clear the thought that Lincoln's knowledge of men, which is the soul of leadership, was due to his being of the people. He never had to go through the laborious process of iden- tifying himself with them, any more than a section of orange needs to prove that it is orange before it can be eaten. Let us now consider his sense of vocation.
No one who accomplishes anything worth while is without some interior compelling force, which may be generically termed a sense of vocation. The task to be done and the agent to perform it have been put over against one another in the relation of cause and effect, call and response. The superintending power is variously termed God, or luck, or fate, or manifest destiny. Lincoln called it God. At two of the critical moments of his career, when he bade farewell to his Springfield friends before leaving for Washington, and when the consideration of the right moment in which to publish the Proclamation of Emancipation was vexing him, his consciousness of vocation towers. He declares that the only thing
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that nerves him to his task as he assumes the office of President, is the conviction that God is with him. Without God he will fail; with God he will succeed. The suggestion from the Chicago ministers that God has told them in a special message how he should meet that which was his peculiar responsi- bility, when to declare the slaves free, calls for the dignified retort that if God is making his mind known to anyone regarding the matter, it is directly to himself rather than — with a touch of humor — by way of the wicked city of Chicago.
Prayer, in the life of one with a sense of vocation, is correspondence with the source of vocation. Hence Lincoln was a man who prayed. "I have been driven many times to my knees," he said, "by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.'* When he was told during the darkest days of the war by a young minister that the people were praying for him, he replied: "But for those prayers, I should have faltered, and perhaps failed, long ago. Tell every father and mother you know to keep on praying and I will keep on fighting, for I am sure God is on our side.'* Then he added, "I suppose I may consider this a sort of pastoral call.'*
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"Yes."
"Out in our county when a pastor makes a pas- toral call, it was always the custom for the folks to ask him to lead in prayer, and I should like to ask you to pray with me to-day: pray that I may have strength and wisdom."
There was an evenness in Lincoln's character which belongs only to those who have learned to endure, by whom personal happiness has never been much thought about and never claimed as a right, and who accept each new trouble that comes with neither surprise nor dismay. If a certain portrait painted toward the end of Lincoln's career speaks true, he had one of the most suffering faces that man has ever worn. Because he was of the people he bore their sorrows as being his own. Every tragedy of the Civil War came and rested in his heart as by right. He forbade none, he repudiated none. Early privation, acquiesced in and used, trained him to endure. From childhood he would suffer rather than do wrong; as, for instance, his quixotic plan in his supposed engagement, his incon- venient honesty, his inability to defend in court a man whom he believed guilty, his quietness and self control under misunderstanding and impertinence, all testify. Moral purpose always entails pain.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 203
'*You may burn my body to ashes," he said as a member of the Illinois State Legislature, when he was asked to endorse a wrong means to encompass a good result, "and scatter them to the winds of heaven; you may drag my soul down to the regions of darkness and despair to be tormented forever, but you will never get me to support a measure which I believe to be wrong, although by doing so I may accomplish that which I believe to be right." Legislative halls do not often ring to such words. It costs too much to utter them.
Amid all the discipline that came to him from the condition of life into which he was born and, later, from his vocation, he found room for self denial. It is not exactly what we should expect, to find him an abstainer from tobacco and intoxicants for the last thirty years of his life, though perhaps it is those who drink in discipline with their mother's milk who are best prepared to prune their tastes and train their preferences.
I do not care to disguise the fact that, in this portrayal of our national hero's character which I have attempted, I have reached after and tried to express those thoughts which would best serve to link his life to that of the men whom it is my happiness to address. We Americans of the Far
204 ABRAHAM LINCOLN
East are rich in the privilege with which our nation has clothed us. Our inheritance of privilege must be converted into an operative force playing upon those thickening problems of commerce, government and religion which, by our presence here, we admit to be our responsibility.
The day of great men and great deeds is not past. Give them due recognition. Do not leave it to the world of to-morrow to discover that the men whom we decried as small, because of blemishes magni- fied into vices by our prejudice, were immortally great. Even as I speak, a great man is preparing to change from the publicity of the White House to the seclusion of the African forest. We may fault his impetuosity, and lament his exaggerations — but commend to me always the man who is not afraid to be precipitate and make mistakes in a good cause, rather than him whose cool caution freezes initiative and never makes a venture of faith. Theodore Roosevelt aimed to set a new standard of honor in the commerce of the nation and to translate privilege into terms of duty. In his successor, we have a worthy follower in the illus- trious line of Presidents. I feel sure he would not fault me for quoting from a letter he wrote me shortly after his election: "You know and I know
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 205
something of the responsibilities of the oflBce, and know that while we may have a feeling of gratifica- tion at the expression of confidence which such an election is from one's fellow citizens, at the same time a man feels weighted down with the heavy charge he has taken up, in respect to the many interests of the people of the United States. It is a very different office from that of the Governor-General of the Philippine Islands, and I don't know whether I shall rise to the occasion or not. But I hope that will and effort will not be wanting."
Such words from our President-Elect, William Howard Taft, recall those of Lincoln when he said *'I am not fit to be President." Could Lincoln come among us again at this hour his plain, rugged face would light up with satisfaction in finding that the ideals for which he gave his life are still burning with undiminished flame in the hearts of his fellow countrymen.
XX
QUEEN VICTORIA!
TO-NIGHT the sun has set upon a moving spectacle — the whole world bowed in respect- ful silence over a new-made grave. Distance and nationality have for the moment been obliterated; and men, women and little children of every race have stooped to lay tribute of affection and esteem upon the bier of a truly royal character, the last chapter of whose long and remarkable career on earth has closed.
That to which we pay homage is not the glitter of high position. Victoria's brow no longer wears a crown. Death lifted that a few hours since, and the smile of preferment has swept by to rest upon another. It is not the empty conceit of outward splendor that constrains us. It is something endur- ing that stirs our souls, something whose reality is not dependent upon the favor of a fading world
^ An address at a memorial service for Queen Victoria in St. Stephen's Church, Boston.
QUEEN VICTORIA 207
which dances from spot to spot, like the fickle sun- beam abiding nowhere.
A nation may be loyal where it cannot love; but the days have passed when a monarch can be revered for royalty's sake alone. A ruler without a character is tolerated as an official — nothing more; his death calls out an expression of relief and not of sorrow. But what is this we see.^* A great nation of pro- verbial loyalty whose love for its Queen is of a magnitude equal to its fealty. That in itself is inspiring. But far beyond the boundaries within which loyalty and love commingle, there is sorrow, respectful sorrow as the half-masted flags in Paris and St. Petersburg, in Washington and Berlin bear witness. The explanation of this unprecedented homage is to be found in the personality that graced so long the English throne. The crown commands the loyalty of a nation; the woman who wore it, the respect and affection of a world.
However wide the gulf is between what men are and what they ought to be, the human eye is quick to detect what is really great; and it is encouraging that nobility of character, and wealth of manhood or womanhood, should command general admiration and esteem. Prejudices are over-leaped, oppositions buried, differences smoothed away when the richness
208 QUEEN VICTORIA
of a rich character is focussed before us by death's hand. Incidental defects fade out, and the frag- mentary conception of character gathered by the momentary gaze, gives place to the fuller knowledge and the broader estimate.
Death has removed forever hereditary honor and the sceptre of earthly rule from the hand of Victoria. But it has revealed more than it has stripped away. It has robbed a nation of its ruler, but it has un- veiled to the world an enduring pattern of noble womanhood. By the obliteration of the accidents of life, — position, wealth, authority, — her inner worth is enhanced. Hers was not a greatness that was but the reflection of external honor; not a greatness that has been sung into being by the lips of poets or the extravagances of blind admiration. Her greatness was of a simple order, that which will stand the test of fire — the greatness of womanly goodness, the moral worth of character which is born in interior struggle alone and lives only as it is born. The palace and the hovel alike threaten the dignity of men; and it takes more than common faith and determination either to rise to inner greatness in the splendor of a royal court, or to become "rich, from the very want of wealth." But Victoria gave honor to the crown she wore, whatever honor she may
QUEEN VICTORIA 209
have received from it, and she made her position contribute to her character.
Seldom does fulfilment emerge from promise as richly as in her career. Too often the glorious bud ends in the shrivelled or insipid fruit. But not so with her. The conscientious truthfulness of child- hood ripened into soundness of judgment and sin- cerity, her simplicity into a naturalness that drew from the lips of a keen observer the exclamation: "She is the only piece of female royalty I ever saw who was also a creature such as God Almighty has created. Her smile is a real smile, her grace is natural; although it has received a high polish from cultivation, there is nothing artificial about her."
The warm affection of the girl broadened into that great sympathy that made her as worthy as her sixteenth century predecessor, Elizabeth, of the title the Mother of her Country — though, it may be, in a different sense. Who but a true mother of the nation could say of her soldiers: "Noble fellows! I own I feel as if they were my own children. My heart beats for them as for my nearest and dearest!'* She did not view her subjects merely from a throne. The cottagers near her Scottish home, and the peasants of the Isle of Wight have many a tale to tell of words of sympathy in sorrow, personal minis-
210 QUEEN VICTORIA
trations in sickness, and kindly attentions at unex- pected moments from their Queen and neighbor.
The little Mayflower, as her German relations were wont to call her, was a "fine animated child" filled with the joyous, playful spirit of healthy youth; but she began her life as she continued it, a loyal subject of duty. At an early moment she recognized what she never forgot — that life signified responsi- bility. She was but twelve when she first learned that her destiny was to be so closely linked with her nation's. Her mother, the good Duchess of Kent, and her instructors led her to the knowledge that a throne was her portion, by bidding her draw the genealogical tree of English royalty. Her task was complete all but the last step when she exclaimed: "I cannot see who is to come after Uncle William (William IV, the then king) unless it is myseK." Being told this was so she said with a wisdom and gravity beyond her years: "It is a very solemn thing. Many a child would boast, but they don't know the difficulty. There is splendor, but there is responsibility." And extending her hand to her governess she added, "I will be good."
This sense of duty was the solid and, to the end, the unimpaired, foundation of her greatness as a ruler. Coming to the throne at a moment when
QUEEN VICTORIA 211
English royalty was little revered, because of the two unlovely reigns that had preceded, she won back due homage by her sweet and strong per- sonality, until the widest Empire of the world's history yielded her a glad and loving loyalty. As Queen she refused to lie back on the cushions of privilege but made her power felt in shaping the policy of the Empire, in maintaining its traditions and in framing its laws until the last. She was a masterful person. Neither a Peel nor a Palmerston could dominate her will. To her to be Queen meant personal responsibility and decision which she would delegate to no one, whether in a matter that touched the arrangements of the royal household, or in one that had to do with a note from the Foreign Office. It was thus that she redeemed the difficult post of a constitutional monarch from being a pretty adorn- ment to the machinery of government, to make it a source of power and of a nation's inspiration. She has declared to all her successors upon the British throne an intelligible conception of limited monarchy. Her lofty ideals will both make it difficult for those who come after her, and will also stimulate them to do their best.
Not the least remarkable feature of the Queen's character was her stability. Spasmodic virtue is as
212 QUEEN VICTORIA
common as stable virtue is rare. Victoria had her blemishes and limitations, but they were of that incidental type that does not distract attention from essential character. There is an evenness in her career and a constancy in her life's history that add greatly to the high quality of her worth. Her devotion to her husband, a devotion that was undimmed by his death, was indicative of her faithfulness in things great and small. She never swerved from her standards, despite all the storms that assailed her and all the allurements that beckoned. Many a man would have been great had he not lived too long — as, for instance, Benedict Arnold, who would have been loved as an American hero had he died at the battle of Saratoga, but who lived to earn his nation's contempt. The test of virtue lies not in occasional flashes but in perma- nence. St. Stephens no doubt are rare, but St. Johns are more so. The character before us has had life's complete experience; the temptations of every age have fallen to her lot, from those of youth to those of very advanced years, and she has been faithful to the end.
Such was the lady and the Queen whom we mourn. Sincerity, and affection, stability and womanliness, strength and sweetness, were her
QUEEN VICTORIA 213
qualities; and lying behind all was a simple Christian faith, such as is more often found in the cottage than in the palace. Her mind was stayed upon her Saviour and the Lord granted her life, even a long life.
It is not remarkable that such a monarch should be beloved and revered by her subjects, or by those of us who were privileged first to look out on life from beneath the flag that's "braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze." National loyalty is deep-rooted. But it is not only a single nation, the nation she ruled so long and so well, that mourns her going. The heart of the great world, the world so absorbed by its myriad cares, so impassive, so cold, is touched: and this can be only because that precious thing called womanhood — O, fellow-men ! protect and cherish it ! — untarnished by a thousand joys, unbroken by a thousand trials, has thrown out its charms — and claims the wide homage due it. The throne of England has done for her character what the candlestick does for the light it bears aloft; it has held it so that its beams have reached far and wide. The world can wonder, but not weep, when a Bismarck dies or a Napoleon, but the passing of a noble soul moves human nature as the passing of a genius never can do. When Gladstone dies we look
214 QUEEN VICTORIA
on genius and manhood combined; but it was the man Gladstone who was widely mourned. His genius seemed to resolve itself into a means by which the whole world could see his character.
We who are gathered here to-night are largely Briton born. But this nation in which we sojourn, or to which we have sworn allegiance, this America, is bound by a hundred ties to the island home across the seas; and to-day as Columbia's sons commemorate England's loss as though it were their own, another cord is stretched from shore to shore and knotted fast by the hand of sympathy. If these things can be so soon, — for but three generations of royalty have passed away since the break in passionate anger between mother country and colony, — if America can sorrow unfeignedly at the death of the grand-daughter of George III, what closeness of international fellowship and amity lies in the unborn years!
XXI
WILLIAM McKINLEYi
THE nation mourns. It mourns because a man, not unworthy of the honor accorded him, has left us; it mourns because of the tragic manner of his going.
Not always have nations had reason to weep when their official head has been removed by death. A Nero of Rome, a John of England, a Louis XV of France, can die unmourned, and unmissed except for a sense of relief among their oppressed and out- raged subjects. No country of the old world can read with perfect equanimity the full roll of its sovereigns. Though there are those among their number whose integrity is an inspiration, whose statesmanship is a pattern, whose genius is a pride to their country- men, there are others whose memory can only be tolerated, and still others whose names are a dark blot on the history of the past and a standing shame to the nation that nurtured them.
^ Address at Memorial Service, Thursday, September 19, 1901.
216 WILLIAM McKINLEY
But how is it with us of this American Republic? Though our history as a nation is but brief, it has a long list of chief magistrates. A century and a quarter of life finds us with the twenty-fifth President occupying the Presidential chair in the thirty-third term of oflBce. In the list of men beginning with the name of Washington and ending with that of McKinley, nine were so trusted as to be asked a second time to accept the most distinguished honor in the nation's gift. With a wilUng hand we sweep back the veil from the roll of Presidential names, that all the world may read how in that line of statesmen there were none who disgraced the country, few who failed to rise to their solemn responsibihty with benefit to the nation and credit to themselves, many who by their purity of life, their wisdom and their patriotism, adorned their office, and some whose justly won fame will be international while the world stands. With becoming pride we review the past and glory in our record: and this nation is so jealous of her fair name and so loyal to her tradi- tions that we have reason to believe that the future will not tolerate less illustrious occupants of the Presidential chair than has the past. Moral in- tegrity, and high principle, not less than statesman- like gifts and broad experience are, and will be,
WILLIAM McKINLEY 217
demanded of all who aspire to the grave task of being at the helm of our ship of state.
Seldom has this Republic stood by the bier of a President. To-day for the fifth time in our history are we called upon to do national mourning for a leader who has fallen with his armor on. Taylor and the elder Harrison died during their term of office from natural causes; Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley were slain by the hand of unrighteous force in the midst of their activities and usefulness. It was a strangely rent and suffering nation that wept over Lincoln, a nation already clad in that deepest mourning which is worn when brother strikes down brother in the horrors of civil strife. But even those who could least sympathize with the policy of the eminent war President realized that a true-hearted man and a patriot had fallen. Can that be less the case to-day as we gather at the grave of our late chief magistrate, to-day when prosperity is enjoyed in a united state by a contented people?
The history of McKinley reveals a life of integrity. His home was a sanctuary where was bred and nur- tured the sympathy that put him in touch with the citizens of a nation. It is as significant a thing as it is touching that he who in early married life was
218 WILLIAM McKINLEY
bereft of his only little ones, as almost his last act before he was shot, stooped to speak a kindly word to a child and clasp her hand in his. His unvarying solicitude for the partner of his life in her embar- rassing affliction is a standing example to a nation that needs to be roused afresh to a sense of the holiness and inviolability of the wedded state; and it is not only an example, it is also a demand and a hope — nay, more, it is an illustration and a promise.
Sudden calamity is a revealer of character as nothing else can be. The assassin's act has laid bare to all who have eyes to see a character of dignity, simplicity and reality — three priceless quahties. Who could wish for a finer close to consciousness on earth than was his? — A close that was but the logical climax of a well-ordered Christian life. A word of pity and concern for his slayer — '*Let no one hurt him": an unmurmuring farewell to those objects of affection from which he was being so cruelly separated — "Goodbye": — a verdict on the power of God to control even tragedy and turn it to a beneficial purpose — "It is God's way": an inspiration than which there is no higher — "Nearer, my God, to Thee."
But we mourn not only the man, but also the
WILLIAM McKINLEY 219
citizen, the statesman, the patriot. A tried soldier who served his country in the thick of battle, a statesman with a singular ability to read the mind of the majority, a patriot who was called upon to stand his trial in the court of a critical democracy at a moment when unprecedented problems vexed the nation from first to last, he has been true to his trust; we inscribe on his tomb — "a faithful steward." His conscience and his intellect, his in- sight and his experience, were his guides: and this being so, there is no room for the vituperation of dissidents or the vilification of partisans. William McKinley was first an American, then a Republican; first a patriot, then a politician; first a seeker of the common weal, then of his own. It is a commentary on the charges laid at his door that he was the tool of wealth, that he deliberately refrained from enter- ing upon the field of financial speculation, though opportunity and temptation could not have been small, and that his whole fortune was so modest as to excite wonder and admiration.
This then is the man we mourn — a man of goodly stature as citizen and statesman. The exact degree of his patriotism and statesmanship the world of to-morrow alone can estimate, but the purity of its quality we are as capable of judging as any. There
220 WILLIAM McKINLEY
is no call for us to sing him into fame; his fame enthrones itself. We inscribe his name and record in the sacred volume of the nation's history, the one true hall of fame. We enshrine his memory in our hearts, grieving over the pathos of his death, rejoicing in the lustre of his life. We do him the highest honor that we can confer upon a fellow- citizen by thinking of him in company with the heroes and patriots who have gone before. He has joined the army of the illustrious dead whose bodies have crumbled to dust, whose example and influence abide in the nation's life and quicken her pulse, whose souls rest with God. He though being dead yet speaketh — speaketh no longer from our stately Capitol but from the spacious hall of national history. He calls upon us to live worthily of our traditions and to further the manifest destiny of our common wealth. Purity in personal life, zeal for the common good, unselfishness in oflfice are the virtues he bids us don, that we may be worthy citizens of a worthy state.
XXII THE CORONATION OF GEORGE V
THE interest of the world is to-day centred on the venerable Abbey of Edward the Confessor in the ancient City of London, where, with stately ceremonial and noble prayers steeped in the history of the centuries, a King is being crowned and for- mally inducted into the solemn responsibilities of his office. It is no idle sentiment that moves British subjects in this distant land to join their acclaims with those of their fellow-countrymen at home. The crowning of a king is of special significance to such as live on the outskirts of Empire, — men without whom the Empire could not survive, who are engaged in the nation's work, administering the intricacies of diplomacy, governing dependent peoples, manning the country's extensive marine, presiding over her commerce, braving peculiar perils. To them the
1 Preached at the Cathedral, Manila, on June 22, 1911, at a special service in connection with the Coronation of H. B. M., George V.
222 THE CORONATION OF GEORGE V
Monarch stands as the symbol and pledge, as well as an instrument, of the liberty, protection, and justice guaranteed by the British Constitution alike to least and greatest, near and far: from them he requires the loyalty of self-respecting citizenship that will uphold the Nation's honor by patriotism devoid of arrogance, industry built upon integrity, the promotion of the Nation's interests with rever- ence for the interests of sister nations.
We in our island home are among the first to gather before God on this momentous occasion. While England still is wrapped in slumber, creeping along the sun's path westward, from tropic Fiji, through Australia's vast spaces, across dusky India, moves a procession of prayers and hymns to God in behalf of King George and his gracious consort. Queen Mary. He needs the support of his subjects. He is entering upon a man's task. We look toward him to-day with something of that sobbing emotion which is aroused by the sight of one consecrating him- self to fulfil great public obligations. Be his royal state and wealth of privilege what it may, his chief and never absent companions throughout his career will be solicitude and care. He belongs to the Nation; never can he claim himseK as his own. With the solemnity of Ordination to the Christian
THE CORONATION OF GEORGE V 223
Ministry, the King covenants with God to be true to Him, that he may have Divine support in the ad- ministration of the Empire. The Bible is placed in his hands with the words: "Our gracious King, we present you with this Book, the most valuable thing this world affords. Here is wisdom; this is the royal Law; these are the lively Oracles of God."
It is true that democracy has been moving through the nations with rapid strides and here and there treating venerable institutions with unsparing hands, though all is not democracy that claims the name. Some have rashly concluded that democracy means death to monarchy. But the function of democracy is not necessarily to dethrone monarchy; rather is it to translate its privileges into responsibil- ities, and to relate the throne to the whole people. In the Coronation Service that which is called "The Recognition** is a distinctly democratic note, more ancient in origin than the oldest existing republic. The King is presented to the people by the Arch- bishop for recognition as their monarch. The People signify their "willingness and joy*' to do him homage and service by loud and repeated acclamations. It is an echo from the times when kings were chosen by popular vote.
The ignorant think that the throne of Great
224 THE CORONATION OF GEORGE V
Britain has been divested of all but its trappings, and that he who occupies it is but a lay figure. This is very far from fact. Even his unguarded pre- rogatives are enormous. The latest, and may it not be said the greatest, expositor ^ of the British Con- stitution writes:
"All told, the executive authority of the Crown is, in the eye of the law, very wide, far wider than that of the chief magistrate in many countries, and well-nigh as extensive as that now possessed by the monarch in any government not an absolute des- potism; and although the Crown has no inherent legislative power except in conjunction with Par- liament, it has been given by statute very large powers of subordinate legislation. *It would very much surprise people,' as Bagehot remarked in his incisive way (of Queen Victoria), 'if they were only told how many things the Queen could do without consulting Parliament. . . . Not to mention other things, she could disband the army (by law she cannot engage more than a certain number of men but she is not obliged to engage any men) ; she could dismiss all the officers, from the General Command- ing-in-Chief downwards; she could dismiss all the sailors too; she could sell off all our ships of war ^ Lawrence Lowell.
THE CORONATION OF GEORGE V 225
and all our naval stores; she could make a peace by the sacrifice of Cornwall, and begin a war for the conquest of Brittany. She could make every citizen in the United Kingdom, male or female, a peer; she could make every parish in the United Kingdom a university; she could dismiss most of the civil servants; she could pardon all offenders. In a word, the Queen could by prerogative upset all the action of civil government within the govern- ment. We might add that the crown could appoint bishops, and in many places clergymen, whose doc- trines were repulsive to their flocks; could cause every dog to be muzzled, every pauper to eat leeks, every child in the public elementary schools to study Welsh; and could make all local improvements, such as tramways and electric light, well-nigh impossible." Nevertheless the British public views the possession of this extraordinary discretionary power of the monarch with equanimity, for they know that it wiU not be abused. The King counts no preroga- tive so precious as his freedom in all such matters to lean on his counsellors, and to act in accord with his Ministers, unless he holds that they are con- tradicting the mind of the nation. If absolutism has been hindered by constitutionalism, the very restrictions which hinder it give the monarch the
226 THE CORONATION OF GEORGE V
broadest possible opportunity to use both the lesser right of independent authority and the larger right of exerting personal influence in affairs of state. More and more has the character of the monarch become important, until to-day in Europe it would be almost impossible for a wicked monarch to retain his crown. The British nation could not and would not brook the suggestion, a few months ago, which libellously tried to smirch the King's fair name with licentiousness. His attributes may not be of a showy sort; but after all, "great virtues are not noisy any more than great rivers."
He is a sailor king. How fitting that one who is to reign over an Empire on which the sun never sets should have already established personal ties with distant parts of the realm ! — with Canada and India and Australia. His problem will be the prob- lem of Empire, how to pacify the turbulent and dissatisfied elements that menace unity, how to de- velop the legitimate aspirations of backward races, how to relate his dominions in peace and amity to the states of the world, East and West.
Such is the burden of responsibility that rests upon his shoulders. So prodigious a task calls for the world-wide sympathy which he is receiving. Supported and cheered by his fair Queen, he will
THE CORONATION OF GEORGE V 227
not meet his duty with timidity or with blundering hands. His grandmother reconstructed a shattered loyalty and founded an Empire; his father brought England out of her not wholly splendid isolation and made friends with the world; it is for this ktest monarch of the house of Hanover to be stable and wise in a day of shifting lights, disappearing land- marks, and restless change.
No Empire or State can live forever. Each fulfils its allotted time and passes into history. As kings and their subjects alike disappear as the flower of the field, so kingdoms wax and wane. But no man can know just how big a part in his life and happi- ness patriotic emotion holds, until he sees his country threatened, humiliated, or broken in fortune. There can be but one hope and prayer in our hearts to-<lay — that the Empire of which the newly crowned King is monarch may long continue to play a leading and beneficent part in the family of nations, and that his majesty King George V may have a reign of peace and prosperity. Therefore with heart and voice we say: God save the King!
XXIII MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS i
THERE are moments, and this is one of them, when memory needs no stimulation to per- form her duty to the full. The eloquence of undying lives, surrendered in unquestioning loyalty to the nation's need, speaks to us from a myriad graves and makes the periods of the orator an ornament to deck a royal occasion, rather than a bugle to awaken emotions already alert.
It is the enviable part of memory to fetch the past and lay it at our feet. Two methods she em- ploys in thus raising dead yesterdays to life again. One is automatic and, without special bidding or conscious volition, it presents to us the valiant dead of every generation, their exploits and their great- nesses. The other is set in operation by the delib- erate mandate of the will which sends the memory delving into the humbler recesses of the past to bring to the light men and achievements too modest to be self -advertising.
1 Delivered at Camp John Hay, May 30, 1915.
MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS 229
To-day the two activities of the memory blend in one. Instinctively she floods the mind with the history of bygone days. Pride of national lineage and gratitude to national heroes makes memory rise to her full stature, so that all her effort is in the direction of her natural function and impulse.
Memorial Day began in the annual commemora- tion of those who fought in the struggle for the preservation of our nation's unity and who, for that great cause, laid down their lives. This motive still survives. Each year we mark afresh the his- toric moment, the crisis of blood, out of which our country rose as a giant refreshed with wine.
But Memorial Day has enlarged, and still will enlarge, its meaning with the passage of the years. The Civil War is fast receding into distance and, added to the roll of those who fell in that red trag- edy, are men whose faces and forms are still clear to us; men who less than two decades since hnked arms with us and walked, our comrades; men who in our latest war, obedient to the country's call, bled and suffered and died.
Memory enables us to claim fellowship with the throng of the named and unnamed heroes and citi- zens of worth, who belonged to a senior generation and whom we never knew. It carries us into any
230 MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS
great presence of the past with whom we may elect to consort, so democratic a marshal is memoxy. Gen- eral or enlisted men can it link to us with equal unconcern and ease in that fellowship of the dead where there is no distinction of rank or station. At will it unites us again with those of our contempo- raries whom we knew and loved, and by whose side we fought or labored before they were swept from sight.
This year Memorial Day takes on a grander significance and office than ever before. It ceases to be a purely national day and claims international character. We cannot think of our own patriotic dead without also paying tribute to those of other nations who have died, and are dying, each passing moment with the same devotion, the same uncom- plaining courage, as they.
One scant year of war has claimed for the unseen world more men than a hundred campaigns of the past. Whole regiments have marched in almost unbroken ranks through the swift avenue of battle into the valley of death. Other hundreds, undis- mayed, unsurprised, in compact order, have journeyed thitherward by the route of the sea's watery road, as their torpedoed ships sank beneath their feet. Human life was never held so cheap and, measured
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by the extent of human sacrifices offered, the concep- tion of the nation was never held so precious or so indifferent to any values less than itself, as now.
To-day, then, we associate ourselves with the myriads of men — British and German, Austrian and Russian, Belgian, French and Servian — who have taken their stand upon their nation's command and been loyal to the death. Animosities there may be, animosities there must be, among the living. But we bare our heads to the democracy of the dead of every nation. Enemies here yesterday; comrades there to-day.
We Americans, perhaps more readily than others, may pay this tribute of reverent honor to the slain. Our lot is cast in favored ground. We alone of the greater nations stand tense yet free, vigilant yet unentangled. It is not that we are afraid to fight, but we fight only when it is a dishonor to abide at peace. Neutral we are, neutral let us continue, provided that our neutrality does not leave us voiceless, or passive, or passionless, or timid. No country can afford, even for the sake of peace, to treat its convictions lightly, or allow others to molest them without rebuff. Though it is profoundly true that there is a position so morally impregnable that it slights itself by calling on force to defend it, a
282 MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS
neutral country must pursue the strong tenor of its way without fear or favor. If it may not resort to force, neither may it swerve from its plain duty because of the risk of being assailed by force.
A neutral nation has the highest and most diffi- cult task of all to perform. It stands for fairness, not for indifference; for mediation, not for aloofness; for the general welfare, not for provincialism. Amer- ica must aid the world to purchase something rich and enduring with this unparalleled expenditure of blood that is dyeing red the soil of Europe. I admit that if we play our part bravely and boldly, we shall risk being caught in the present embroglio. If so, let us risk it. Sometimes the most pernicious form of action is inaction.
If the world of men promote and preach a less exclusive conception of nationality than that which obtains, and if they succeed in establishing mutual respect and considerateness among the family of nations, Armageddon will not have been in vain.
The whole history of alliances, treaties, ententes, seems to say to us to-day — In a world of men un- changeably one, beware of the vice of incompleteness and think in terms of the whole. We must learn how to group vastly, completely, if we are to put together the confused pieces of the world puzzle. No
MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS 233
longer can there be either self-chosen national isola- tion, or internationally imposed neutralization. If national isolation has been splendid on occasions in the past, save for some great and rare moral end it can never be anything but cowardly and selfish m the future. As for neutralization, it is only an ex- pedient, and a futile one at that, for protecting a a lamb from a pack of wolves. Let small people who look to neutralization for succor read the hand- writing on the wall. The big nations seem to say to the weakling in semi-contempt and semi-covetous- ness: You are too feeble to defend yourself so we will draw a chalkline around you — but you had better look out all the same!
The brave Belgian, Abbe Noel, speaking for his brave fellow countrymen, says: "Unconscious of the right to take a definite attitude in international life, we became habituated to taking no interest in it, and that in no small measure has contracted our minds and confined our ideas and our dreams within the narrow limits of our own frontiers." In other words, neutralization has proved to be but a form and that no splendid one of isolation. Intent on her industrial development, Belgium lived in a fool's paradise until she was caught between the upper and nether mill-stone. The Abbe continues: "To-
234 MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS
morrow, when Force shall have yielded to Justice, Belgium will cherish the right to speak and to act in the new world which is coming to birth. With a broadened national consciousness all we Belgians feel that it is so; and we are ready to raise our mind to the height of a loftier part.** A neutralized nation is in a fair way of becoming a denationalized nation.
Hitherto in days of reconstruction following on war, men have been accustomed to think in terms of countries or continents or hemispheres. We can never again consider apart the concerns of Europe and of America, of East and of West. We must hereafter think in terms of the whole. It is no longer a matter of choice but of necessity. As it is with the coun- tries, so is it with the churches. Until they lay aside their exclusiveness and aloofness, their suspicions and unkindnesses, they are devoid of a basic prin- ciple of their common Master, Christ, and Christian- ity will continue to be the fragmentary and limping thing it is.
If we do not fail of our present opportunity and responsibility, the world of a hundred years hence will be thinking in terms of the human whole just as naturally as the United States are to-day thinking in terms of the National whole. At any rate this is
MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS 235
the goal at which to aim. As for the Christian churches, if they will fearlessly think and act in terms of the Christian whole, the Kingdom of God will be no longer divided against itself and will stand. This is a certainty.
There spreads out before us so sublime a future that it acts as a consolation in, if not a compensation for, the red horrors of the moment. Moan we must from time to time, as some new phase of the world tragedy sweeps over us with its hot breath, but even while we weep we will not cease to hold fast to the conviction that the brave have not been brave in vain, and that our redemption draweth nigh:
To all the valiant dead we say: *^ Between the heart and the lips we stay our words and remember The long fight in the sodden fields and the ultimate pledge they render Whom we never forget; and afraid lest by chance we betray and belie
them We call upon you that ride before, who rode lately by them. Lest we make you ashamed when you ride with the valiant of all the
earth. In the armies of God.
Lot we call upon you to stand as sentinels over us.
You from your griefs set free while the shadows still cover us.
From the heart that fails, and the heart that hates, alike deliver us;
From the frenzy that stabs at the weak, divide and dissever us.
Keeping our faith as you kept the line, holding the coward's cruel mind.
The final treason, afar.
236 MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS
Death for you is a sorrow endured, a thing passed over;
They are facing it still, son and brother and lover;
They keep the line, and we keep our faith, and the soul of a people lies
between us. From fear of phantoms, from a covetous dream, stand near and screen
us. Watch udth us, watch through the days of war; — then, pass to your
place With the armies of God."
THE -PLIMPTON -PRESS NORWOOD -MASS -U-S-A
Works BY THE Rt. Rev. CHARLES H. BRENT, D.D.
Bishop of the Philippine Islands
PRISONERS OF HOPE
AND OTHER SERMONS
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"Another inspirational volume from Bishop Brent. This is a collection of sermons preached in many places and on various occasions. All of them are of the highest order and many of them — very many — will be called great. Bishop Brent has always been able to take people up with him where a vision could be seen. . . . For the clergyman it will prove a help in seasons of aridity. It is decidedly a man's book and should be pressed upon the notice of laymen." Brian C. Roberts in the Living Church. " These sermons have the prophetic quality which differenti- ates them at once from the great mass of sermonic litera- ture. They are characterized by broad information, fervent imagination, and the spirit of devotion. The first four sermons which Bishop Brent puts under the general head of 'Revelation' have a special significance to-day; they press through the misery and blackness of the war to the great liberating spiritual results which the Bishop fore- sees. ..." Outlook, N. Y.
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WITH GOD IN THE WORLD
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PRESENT DAY PREACHING
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THE MASTER OF THE WORLD
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By CHARLES LEWIS SLATTERY
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* The LoneUness of Christ ' is one of much force and beauty. The volume is hkely to be useful, both as a hand book for the theological student and as a suggestive treatise for the preacher. It has its place as a contribution to Christian evidences.
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