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LEADERSHIP

LEADERSHIP

The William Belden Noble Lectures Delivered at Sanders Theatre, Harvard University December, 1907 v\^^'^

By the Rt. Rev, CHARLES h!^BRENT

BISHOP OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

A

Before Man's First, and after Man's poor Last God operated and will operate

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK LONDON AND BOxMBAY

1908

COPYRIGHT. 1908, BY CHARLES H. BRENT

THE NEW YORK

PUBLIC LIBRARY

457159

ASTOR, LENOX ANB

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R 1909 L

COMPOSITION AND ELECTROTYPE PLATES BY D. B. UPDIKE, THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS, BOSTON

TO

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

MOTHER OF LEADERS

AND

TRINITY COLLEGE TORONTO

MOTHER BELOVED

THE WILLIAM BELDEN NOBLE LECTURES

This Lectureship was constituted a perpetual foundation in Harvard University in 1898, as a memorial to the late Wil- liam Belden Noble of Washington, D. C. (Harvard, 188.5). The deed of gift provides that the lectures shall be not less than six in number, that they shall be delivered annually, and, if convenient, in the Phillips Brooks House, during the season of Advent. Each lecturer shall have ample notice of his appointment, and the publication of each course of lec- tures is required. The purpose of the Lectureship will be fur- ther seen in the following citation from the deed of gift by which it was established :

*' The object of the founder of the Lectures is to continue the " mission of WiUiam Belden Noble, whose supreme desire it " was to extend the influence of Jesus as the way, the truth, "and the life ; to make known the meaning of the words of *' Jesus, ' I am come that they might have life, and that they "might have it more abundantly.' In accordance with the "large interpretation of the Influence of Jesus by the late " Phillips Brooks, with whose religious teaching he in whose "memory the Lectures are established and also the founder " of the Lectures were in deep sympathy, it is intended that "the scope of the Lectures shall be as wide as the highest " interests of humanity. With this end in view, — the perfec- " tion of the spiritual man and the consecration by the spirit " of Jesus of every department of human character, thought, "and activity, — the Lectures may include philosophy, ht- " erature, art, poetry, the natural sciences, poUtical economy, "sociology, ethics, history both civil and ecclesiastical, as " well as theology, and the more direct interests of the re- "ligious life. Beyond a sympathy with the purpose of the " Lectures, as thus defined, no restriction i? placed upon the " lecturer."

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTORY xi

I. THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP 3

II. THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE 45

III. THE POWER OF THE HUiMAN WILL 89

IV. THE POWER OF THE BLAMELESS LIFE 129

V. THE POWER OF FELLOWSHIP WITH THE DIVINE 173

VI. THE REPRESENTATIVE LEADER OF MEN 213

NOTES 249

INTRODUCTORY

IT was a mixed audience to whom these Lectures were addressed, but in dehver- ing them I tried to forget it. I had prepared myself strictly with reference to the student body, and I kept this fact steadily in view as I spoke. I saw before my mind's eye those who were destined to be Leaders of the na- tion, and my appeal was to them as men, citizens, and Christians.

It would have been interesting and easy to have chosen a different line of thought under the same caption, but, rather than apply myself to more striking, though in reality subordinate, aspects of the subject, I preferred dealing with those broad princi- ples of eternal and unchanging worth which, by virtue of the fact that they are so uni- versally recognized, in theory at any rate, are only too apt to be disregarded and undervalued in practice.

I have tried as far as possible to repro-

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duce the exact line of thought employ* in the spoken addresses, though I ha made no effort to recall the language o ginally employed. In some few instances have put into the written text that whic either through lack of time or momenta failure of memory, was not given in t delivery of the Lectures.

In casting about for suitable illustratio of the principles that I desire to promol I have found them as far as possible in m of our own nation. Biblical characters w always be typical above aU others. But u fortunately we have allowed the men Scripture fame to be placed in a class themselves. How they would resent and come out of it if they were of the s ciety of to-day! With what celerity wou they tear up some of the books that d course upon them ! To counteract this coi mon error which makes for unreality ai tends to place the righteousness of the here of the Bible out of reach, it is good to me [ xii ]

INTRODUCTORY

tion in the same breath Moses and Lincoln, Paul and Phillips Brooks. Men whom per- haps we have known ought to be specially capable of inspiring us. The names referred to once and again in these Lectures are written in the hearts of all Americans. Like Bible characters, they moulded their lives on the lines of the universal, so that they have in them not only the greatest that national life can desire, but also that catho- lic quality which places them upon the heights and gives them the sceptre of un- dying influence.

O Almighty Ood, whom truly to know is everlast- ing life; Grant us perfectly to know Thy Son Jesus Christ to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life; that xoe may steadfastly walk in the way that leadeth to eternal life ; through the same Thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

LECTURE I

In light, in darkness too. Through winds and tides one compass guides — To that, and your own selves, be true.

Where lies the land to which the ship would go? Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know. And where the land she travels from? Away, Far, far behind, is all that they can say.

Clough

One far-off Divine event To which the whole creation moves.

Tennyson

LECTURE I THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

GENTLEMEN of Harvard University: I cannot forbear telling you in my first words with what mingled feelings of eagerness and trepidation I approach this moment, — eagerness to render you service, trepidation lest I should fail in my attempt to offer you a worthy contribution. I have always treasured the ties which, though slender, have connected me with your great University, and now, to crown the past, I find myself called from the other side of the world to deliver you a message in the name of one of your graduates whose course on earth is finished, — William Belden Noble, in memory of whom this Lecture- ship was founded. Though I am not a Har- vard man, in a sense, and that a no unreal one, I shall feel myself of you and not merely with you during the course of these Lectures, in that I am speaking in behalf [3]

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of your alumnus whose ideals I hold in common with him.

If I apprehend my responsibility aright, it was not that I might add to your stock of academic learning that you called me hither, but that out of my experience I might bear witness to truths which, how- ever old, are never too old to need the rein- forcement and confirmation of th e latest life, and never so completely expressed as not to require the interpretation of every honest voice. No man who has gone halfway down life's pathway can fail to be possessed by a passionate desire for reality in himself and others. He wants to get at the root of things. Side issues are relegated to their proper place, and matters of indifference, which somehow have an egotistic habit of monopolizing attention to the disadvan- tage of profound interests, disappear from the landscape. The things that really count — and they are surprisingly few when you sit down and sort them out — bulk large; [4]

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

and you wonder how it is that you have dis- covered so obvious a fact so late in the day. This being so, I am bent upon the con- sideration of old and tried truths during these Lectures, — the oldest of which I have had any experience. I shall deal with no- thing that I have not pressed my personal- ity against as a coveted ideal, nothing which has not recognized worth as a practi- cal factor in life. The terms of the Lecture- ship require that those upon whom the trust devolves should present "original intellec- tual material, not used before." However, I understand by this not that the thought expressed should not have the dignity of age, but that old and well seasoned thought should be worked into new form to fit the occasion; not that the glitter of novelty should be strained after, but that the pro- duct should come forth bearing upon it the impress of the personality and experience of the producer, thus being in the highest sense "original." Sir Joshua Reynolds was [5]

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once asked how long it took him to paint a certain picture executed toward the close of his career. His reply was, "All my life." The testimony that I have to bear will be as simple as I can make it. I shall speak constructively, and avoid, as far as may be, those unfertile and rocky fields of contro- versy where profits are small and weariness abundant. At times it will be necessary to cross the threshold of philosophy, for every man has his own little volume of philoso- phic thought which he cannot help draw- ing from his pocket, whenever he tries to utter himself. I lay no claim to a system. Indeed it is my deliberate purpose "to have all the good things going, without being careful as to how they agree or disagree"^ according to a trained philosopher's concep- tion of agreement or disagreement. I pre-

1 James' Pragmatism, p. 281. This is a good definition of an optimist, though not equal to that suggested by S. Paul when he said: The days are evil. Buy up the opportunity. I have heard a pessimist cleverly described as "one who of two evils chooses both, "which is the converse of Professor James' defi- nition of an optimist.

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fer to be eclectic and inconsistent rather than restricted in my freedom and consis- tent. I wonder sometimes whether bald in- tellectual consistency is not idolized too much just now. I am not quite sure whether it is a virtue; at any rate, if it is, it is a purely theoretic one, capable of attainment only in beings who are pure mind. This ends my apologia,

I To proceed to the task in hand. My pur- pose is practical in character. It is to help you, so far as in me lies, to live the life to which you are called by virtue of the fact that you are to-day what you are, — under- graduates, shortly to become graduates, of one of the world's great centres of oppor- tunity.

To be a graduate of such a University as is your Alma Mater, is what? It is to be trusted with the responsibility of carrying everywhere you go the treasures you have

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culled from your life of privilege here for the benefit of all you meet. You are trained not solely that you may be equipped to make a living, — though self-help is the first axiom of self-respect, — but that you may contribute to the living and well-being of your fellows, especially those less favoured than you; that you may make their lives wiser, more competent, stronger, braver, nobler, purer, — for this is the only worthy goal of learning. In brief you graduate not into scholarship, or business, or professional life, or science, but into expert service — or as I prefer to call it at this time into Leader- ship.

Your University charges you to be Leaders, and it is to you as Leaders in the course of making that I speak. It has al- ways been so, and will always be so, unless the University abdicates its vocation, that its sons will guide the destinies of nations, preside over the progress of science, steer the ship of commerce, shepherd the souls [8]

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of men, spell out for the masses their own ideals in practical form, and reveal to them their own unrealized wealth and undeve- loped force. This is especially and increas- ingly true of an American University the doors of which are thrown wide open, not to wealth, not to a class of any sort, but more and more to every young man who aspires to the training it affords, and who has virility enough to make his way into its halls. Grit, ambition, manhood, form the open sesame to American University life in its essential and deeper reaches. Just be- cause this is the case, your life becomes more and more diversified and enriched with those new departments of instruction that make the University not merely a school for schol- arship and thought, but for all the practical activities which constitute the major por- tion of the busy operations that fill the workshop of the world.

Education is no synonym for intellec- tualism, barren and aloof from the hurly- [9]

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burly of productive activity. It is the co- ordinating of all the gifts that endow man- kind and the putting them into shape for broad and effective use ; it is the discover- ing of man to himself, his place in the social order, his responsibility, his opportunity, his liberty. Just as Monday can be no longer separated from Sunday, the "secular" from the "religious," so political economy cannot be studied apart from morals, or history be viewed as mere record, — interesting,but not playing its forces on the generation of the moment, — or science be treated indepen- dently of the whole of Hfe. In so far as the University recognizes these things it ap- proximates the ideal and sends out into the world an unbroken stream of Leaders whose wisdom the multitudes wait for, on whose strength they depend, at whose call they rise above themselves and lift the whole of God's big purpose for mankind a notch nearer the summit. The University is the school of Leadership.

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There are various capacities in which you might be addressed severally or in groups, but it is as incipient Leaders that I think of you just now, for this classification in- cludes within its boundaries every indi- vidual and group without exception. You will presently be men of the older genera- tion, bearing the world's burdens and steer- ing the course of human affairs, some bril- liantly and conspicuously, others in more homely and obscure but not less valuable places. I see you now, Sons of Harvard, not as detached students, not as a society forming an independent, cloistered world, but as men whom your nation has bidden come hither. The masses know you are here. They are watching you, waiting for you to come out into the open as Leaders, after the manner that the world has always waited for and welcomed every new Leader that has arisen, from Moses to Christ, and from Christ to Lincoln and Lee and Brooks. So keen are men to be led that they are [11 ]

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headstrong and silly and undiscerning, ac- cepting any man who proclaims himself to be some one great, who professes to have a message, who moves towards a purpose, who unfolds before the public a plan. Men walk singly and alone only until the right voice calls them to follow. The world is greedy for Leadership, so much so that it is easy to impose upon the credulity of the multitudes. But this makes it all the more necessary that your Leadership should be a real thing, sound to the core, determined as fate, pure as the sea.

II Let us try to express as explicitly as pos- sible just what a Leader is. He is, I think, simply a high type of man — the most thoroughly human man in sight is the most representative Leader. The qualities found in him are those which you find in every good man, only in a Leader they exist in a marked degree. He may or may not have [12]

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conspicuous talent or high genius, but if he has exceptional endowment that is to be a factor in Leadership, he can use it, never in lieu of, but only and always in conjunc- tion with, those fundamental characteris- tics which make him one of the crowd. By themselves unique gifts separate men from their fellows. They become social instru- ments only when placed in the hands of the common but most potent qualities of manhood at its best.

A Leader is one who goes before, who keeps in advance of the crowd without de- taching himself from the crowd, but so in- fluencing them as to attach them to his ideal selfhood. Obviously and of necessity he is a social personage who has the power of enabhng other people to see what he sees, to feel what he feels, to desire what he desires. He contracts the crowd into the span of his own personality. He converts them into a composite second self. He gets to understand their limitations, their antagon- [13]

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isms, their passions, their virtues, by draw- ing them with magnetic force into his own soul to occupy his very experience, until they are himself and he is they in no unreal or forced sense. It is only by this process — a process akin to metempsychosis by which a Leader becomes as a crowd and makes a crowd become as himself — that the talent or genius of the one is passed on for univer- sal use and perpetual endowment.

Not only does a Leader contract the crowd into himself, but he expands himself into the crowd until they feel him entering their being at every opening. He seeks out their undeveloped capacity and makes it hungry for self-expression ; he is the centri- petal force that focuses in a common pur- pose their energies; he becomes to them what motive is to personality, — in fact he gives to the masses coherence vivid and in- dividual, a genuine personality, not neces- sarily the compound reproduction of his own self, but a new and composite charac- [14]

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ter bearing the impress of his loftiest as- pirations. He is hke the Leader of an or- chestra who gets harmonious and melodious cooperation from all his musicians, then adds to the symphonic effect the charm of his own interpretation which distinguishes his musical product from that which would come to birth at the bidding of any other conductor. He does not hesitate to say "Follow me," nor does he lose in humility in the invitation, in that, for the moment at any rate, he is the best available embodi- ment of the ideal that he lives to promote. A demagogue is a very different person. He is a Leader suffering from arrested de- velopment— what might be called a half- leader. He is of the crowd, it is true. But he never touches their higher desires, or awakens their dormant virtue. He sways them along the level of their lower passions, but, in that he has no lifting power, he never enables them to rise above them- selves. When he became one with the crowd [15]

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it called for no effort, for he had not to stoop. With something of the meanness of a be- trayer, who is one who uses for selfish ends, — thatis to say to the injury of his fellows, — knowledge gained by intimacy trustfiilly permitted by them, he makes his way by subtlety into the secret recesses of others' Hyes without allowing them to share in his life. He says to the crowd: "A\Tiat is mine is mine, and what is thine is also mine.''

I haye spoken asthough Leadership were all sunshine and haye hinted that it has many joys. Let us look at another side of the subject. In one sense it is a solitar}^ way —

That rare track made by great ones, lone and beaten

Through soHtary hours, Chmbing past fear and fate and sin, iron-eaten.

To godUer powers :

A road of lonely mom and midnight, sloping

O'er earth's dim bars; ^^^le^e out at last the soul, life's pinnacles topping.

Stands with the stars.

It by no means follows that the crowd im- [ 16 1

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mediately responds to a Leader s calL All experience proves to the contran'. Some- times he has to tug the crowd after him. At first his followers are few and fickle. A"o prophet is accepted in his own country. The ease with which he leads is largely de- pendent upon the difference in stature and in power of \ision between himself and the crowd. If it is much his task is difficult, and it decreases in proportion to the lessen- ing of the gulf between. Sometimes — it was the case of the prophets of Hebrew fame, and of not a few Leaders in science, morals, and religion of eveiy" nation — the crowd catch up with their Leader only after he is dead, when they build him a monu- ment with the stones that they originally picked up to fling at him. Xor are instances wanting — conspicuously in the case of Him who. though in nature and s^Tnpathy standing nearest to all. was in actual vir- tue farthest from His fellows — where the beneficence of the Leader was recoomized [IT]

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only after the stones had been hurled and beaten out His life.

So you see Leaders must be prepared for pain, — the pain of loneliness, the hardest of all disciplines to a social nature, of visions ridiculed, enthusiasm misunderstood, plans rejected by those in whose interest they were formulated. You cannot have the joy of Leadership without its discipline, or at times its anguish.

Ill ;

Allowing for the fact that Leaders are not always immediately recognized as such, it is a phenomenon of sufficient dimensions to justify the application to it of "univer- sal," that there is in human life a passion to lead, on the one hand, and a correspond- ing passion to be led, on the other. When we look for an explanation I think I am not mistaken in affirming that the impulse to lead, with its correlative the impulse to follow, is due to the fact that the universal

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scheme of which we are a part is not a mere desultory movement, but a coherent design. By a progress we advance toward a veiled goal, the nature of which declares itself in the progress. In other words the metaphy- sic of Leadership consists in the passion for purpose, the craving for a goal, which char- acterizes the whole universe beginning with the largest manifestations of it that we can grasp, permeating the various aspects of energy in our own world, seething in mi- croscopic life, and rising up to its supreme height in man. He whose sense of purpose for life is more acute and glowing and de- finite than that of his fellows is a Leader, at any rate in posse.

Darwinism, it may be, has "once for all displaced design from the minds of the scientific; "^ but whether this be true or not, it has greatly strengthened the conception of purpose. Evolution is motion forward and upward, impetus toward a goal. Pur-

^ Pragmatism, p. 70.

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pose is the force behind progress propelhng it, or perhaps the force in front drawing it on. A worthy goal is not always predicated, much less achieved; but the passion for pur- pose, the feeling adventurously after it, is apparent everywhere in everything.

It begins in mere restlessness and confu- sion— motion without apparent order or aim, the whirling nebulae of world stuff, or burnt-out suns chasing through space in search of a purpose. The earth was waste and void in those early days. Its beginning was in conflict and disorder. The material out of which it was formed having con- cluded one purpose sought for further use for itself, and out of its dissatisfaction sprang that which we call "order." Movement is the simplest manifestation of energy. But movement is never content to settle down into mere commotion. Just as the earth it- self was stimulated from without or within, or both, to evolve its present degree of or- der, so every fragment of it has its own [ 20 ]

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definite purpose to fulfil and fit into the whole ; that is to say, there is, so far as we can gather from data in hand, an instinc- tive recognition of responsibility to the larger order in every part. Even the par- ticles of an atom, we are assured, move in a definite and ascertainable way to reach a palpable end. There is no movement of a plant that has not its reason — to gain foothold, to secure light, to propagate its kind. Once as I was making my way into a mammoth cave, at the point where the last ray of light licked the threshold of dark- ness, I saw a little plant stretching its form toward the day, bravely determined to es- cape the maw of darkness and death. It was so purposeful and human that I was moved to stoop and caress it. Or again look at yonder seed that has set its sails and is travelling down the wind, not idly but in search of a garden where it can grow; or at that flower that invites the bee to feast up- on the honey held in its deep throat, and [21 ]

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sends him out laden with a message of love that will be understood by the kindred flower which thus receives the kiss of her distant wooer and gives birth to progeny.

But let us look further. In the microsco- pic cell there is motion which at first sight seems aimless and without purpose. It is not so, however. At worst it is experimen- tal at the beginning, and careful observa- tion indicates that the "incipient locomo- tory power can be extended till light and air and moisture and many other things can be sought and moved towards." Its motion eventually ceases to be experimental and becomes productive of definite results. It assimilates food, shrinks from pain and dan- ger, reproduces its kind, and advances in the scale of progress.

The ant from the days of the " wise man " has been a good illustration of deep prin- ciples. So let us call him into service in this connection. Across my window-sill flows day after day a tireless stream of these tiny [ 22 ]

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workers, fetching and carrying. How mer- ciless have I been in my endeavour to tease and thwart them! I have brought to bear upon their threadhke Hne every kind of obstacle and danger, but they have always won the day. Their purposeful movement was more powerful than my strategy, and the stream now flows along its chosen course unmolested by my hand.

As the scale of life rises, motion assumes increased definiteness until it reaches con- -|^ scious achievement which is the character- istic feature of human movement. At first, perhaps, it lacks in definiteness because in human life the dependent and experimen- tal stage consumes more time than in lower manifestations of energy. But in the end it more than makes up for deficiency in the beginning. I believe that it may be said with truth that there is no such thing as a wholly aimless hfe among sentient beings. That which comes nearest to it is an apa- thetic character. But at bottom the ex- [ 23]

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planation of the listless disposition is the desire to gratify self — an unworthy goal surely, but none the less a goal.

At the dawn of history man's earliest ef- forts were competitive in a more marked way than at any later period. The struggle, however, was something beyond a scramble for mere self-preservation. It had in it posi- tive and constructive elements, else there could not have been any progress. There was struggle for existence, it is true, but there was also struggle for opportunity to work out a more or less definite and con- scious purpose ; that is, it was aggressive as well as defensive. The method of the strong was to ensconce himself in some in- accessible spot and there workout his plans. His safety was away from the multitude, not with them, as the Rhenish castles in their ruined beauty live to testify.

With the advance of time things have taken on a new complexion. We have come to learn that it is in company with, and [24]

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not apart from, the crowd that security Hes, and that purpose is social rather than individual; or, to speak more accurately, individual in a way that can be worked out to best advantage in society. We have as yet done little more than begin to learn this lesson, we with our social and national exclusion acts. Our purpose is only semi- social thus far. In theory we are ready to say that "the unit is the instrument of all," but we do not trust the principle all the way through.

Be this as it may, on every side we see movement which is never content to be mere ebullition, everywhere purpose, al- ways a goal fancied or real, always unrest but always expectant unrest. All that unrest needs to convert it into purposeful move- ment is that drop of hope which God let fall at the beginning into chaos, and which the past failures and disappointments of the world's history, so far from extinguishing, have developed into the dominating force [25]

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in every phase of life. Purpose is the child of hope, and purpose has a final goal. But what is the goal, the

One far-off Divine event To which the whole creation moves?

What it is not to be is tolerably certain. It is not to be a flare of judgement, such as is depicted in a Michael Angelo fresco, nor perpetual ecclesiastical order and song, a sort of unending choral service. It will com- bine in itself, however, the best of every- thing that is worthy in human experience, though, as we are aware, purpose never more than half reveals the glory of its goal until we have achieved it. The goal that we aim at, if we live life aright, holds in its halls a throne which we shall be unable to discern until our journey is over and our task done. Though the goal must, then, continue to be veiled, there are certain cha- racteristics which inhere in it of which we may feel tolerably sure.

1. It has Personality as its centre. The [26]

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world that came from God and moves in God, ends in God. The Bible begins with Personality and ends with Personahty. ''In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.'' ''He which testijieth these things saith. Yea: I come quickly. Amen: come. Lord Jesus. The grace [i.e., the personal inner working] of the Lord Jesus be with the saints. Ainen.'" In between the first and last lie the multitude that no man could num- ber,— persons of every nation and kindred and tongue.

Jesus comes to fill in the outline sketch of universal purpose with colour and detail, to save it from pettiness and incomplete- ness and waste. He proclaims God to be the God of the minutiae of purpose, of the individual in society. He acutely individ- ualizes purpose without detracting from its magnitude or its massive aspects. He de- clares Him to be a God who concerns Him- self with the curves of an insect's flight, the modulations of the nightingale's song, the [ 2^ ]

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number of hairs in the human head, and the most Divine Being is revealed to be the most human and companionable of all. The Goal of all is equally the Goal of one.

2. It is certain. Not merely is purpose in God, but God is in His purpose. He dwells in His creation. His plan is vv^ound up with His personality, and He bears witness to His determination to carry His purpose to a successful issue by His habit of imma- nence. Nothing is left to chance ; therefore we can move about among mysteries as a child among the pieces of a picture puzzle, with the same interest, with the same as- surance that piece fits to piece until a whole is formed.

3. It is social. Bible history — and for that matter all history — begins with a gar- den and closes with a city. There is an in- satiable appetite in man for friends, a ca- pacity which expands indefinitely with use. The greatest possible punishment is lone- liness. Lazarus of the parable had fellow-

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ship — he was m Abraham's bosom; Dives was alone, craving not only a drop of water, but much more for the touch of the human hand. Send Lazarus, he cried.

The Jews are distinguished from other na- tions of old in the sweep of their movement. God's design was for them not a thing of the moment, fickle and liable to be changed according to the incomprehensible whim of divinity, not a matter of dynasty, but fixed and definite once for all, folding into its amplitude yesterday and to-morrow. In its later developments the entire world of men is caught into its august progress in the judgement of the great leaders of the chosen people, and the design that was first intelligible in connection with one nation is discerned to be coincident with the ut- termost limits of humanity. The goal be- comes so social that its numbers no man can reckon.

I personally am unwilling "to think that the prodigal-son attitude ... is not the right [^9]

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and final attitude towards the whole of life;" I am unwilling "that there should be real losses and real losers, and no total preservation of all that is." ^ It is not the will of your Father which is in heaven^ that one of these little ones should perish.

My own hope is a sun will pierce The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; That, after Last, returns the First, Though a wide compass round be fetched; That what began best can't end worst. Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst.

At any rate if there are to be real losers and losses, it is our duty to adopt the prodi- gal-son attitude towards the whole of life, that whatever waste there is to be may be minimized to the last degree. A brave at- tempt must be made to gather up the frag- ments, that nothing be lost. I know from experience that it is worth while.

I believe that when we meet Jesus He will be distinguished not by His state or by outward marks, — none of us know what

^Pragmatisms p. 296.

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His human face looks like ; for years I have felt that His traditional portrait has nothing especial to commend it as extraordinarily r winsome, — but by the attractive power of His friendliness, reaching after us and draw- ing us to Him. The highest reward that human life has in store after fellowship with God will be capacity to enter deeply into the life and friendship of the vast crowd that will make up the human contingent in heaven. One reason why the missionary ideal rings true is because, in its nobler ef- forts, it aims to make friendships as broad as the human family. We are cramped for lack of sufficient fellowship and reach out in every direction for an extension of it. I have not the least doubt that those who are trying to get into communication with Mars are impelled far more by a desire to in- crease companionship than by a curiosity as to how the people of the other planet manage their irrigation ! It is devoutly to be hoped that we shall have settled our ht- [31 ]

LEADERSHIP

tie differences, and be on friendly terms with the Orient before we actually exchange thoughts with the dwellers on INIars, for it would complicate matters to introduce among them our little family troubles, would it not?

4. Man must play his part in promoting and furthering it. In our progress from the garden to the city we move from nature to the highest construction of the human hand. The ideal is from heaven, the performance is man's.

We cannot destroy the world-purpose or alter it. But we can exclude ourselves tem- porarily at least — I have nothing to say about the hereafter — from participating in it, on the one hand; or, on the other, we can contribute to it here and now. Human life is becoming more and more evidently the controller of the world and its contents. Though " our power of direct action is prac- tically limited to muscular and mental ac- tivity " we are able to do wonders by com- [ ^- ]

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

bination. In the laboratory, the stock farm, the garden, new marvels are being born continuously. The hand of power is slowly but surely closing upon the throat of infec- tious disease, animal life is given at man's command a new and upward trend, fruits and flowers wed and propagate fresh varie- ties almost as the wizard gardener wills. Moreover, we are living in the early, not in the latter days. We are infants in know- ledge and control of the universe compared with those who are to follow us. Next in importance to things spiritual and moral comes science, which is worthy of the best devotion of the best men. It is not unim- portant, either, in relation to the final goal ; and when alhed, as is natural, to the spirit- ual and moral order, it contributes directly to its consummation. The day will surely dawn when our present stage of progress will seem antique, and when, perhaps, even power to make such chemical combina- tions as to give life an opportunity for self- [33]

LEADERSHIP

expression in the laboratory similar to that which it finds in nature, will be as much a commonplace as the telephone is to-day. The great thing to do is to turn the full force of our growing knowledge of and power over life upon men, individually and socially, that the world may be a more righteous world. In this way the city will be builded according to the Designer's plan and method.

IV

In view of the foregoing, if it be in the main true to things as they are, a man may be a Leader in the highest sense, let his voca- tion be what it may, provided only that it be honourable. All Leaders worthy the name possess common characteristics — they" see life steadily and see it whole; " they discern, more distinctly than their fellows, evidences of purpose in themselves and in human life at large; they aid the world-purpose by their activity and their surrender to it. They

[34]

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

may have interests widely varying and pur- suits of every possible type, but this means simply that their several vocations are the instruments which they have individually selected for the prosecution of the common cause.

Granted thatthere is one"Divine event" for the whole creation, it follows that it is the part of wisdom, to go no farther, for every man to put himself in tune with the world-purpose, so far as it is discernible. The world-purpose exhibits certain charac- teristics which should find their counter- part in human life, and especially in those who have the gift of Leadership or who aspire to become Leaders. The distinguish- ing features of the whole must be found in the part, especially if the part be of the re- lative importance that man is to the uni- verse. The truest Leader is he who best aids the world-purpose in extinguishing the lower elements that are at war with it, ei- ther byconversion or by dissipation, and by [35]

LEADERSHIP

encouraging the production of the higher. 1. The universe is unified. It all hangs together as a coherent whole. Though it has its contradictions and its pluralistic aspect, the unities and conjunctions prevail. "No existing universe can tend on the whole towards contraction and decay> because that would foster annihilation, and so any- incipient attempt would not have survived ; consequently an actual and existing and flowing universe must on the whole cherish development, expansion, and growth ; and so tend towards infinity rather than towards

zero Given existence, of a non-stagnant

kind, and ultimate development must be its law."^ In our universe there is kinship between all parts and elements, sympathy between organic and inorganic life, between man and the rest of nature. Every embryo makes a rapid progress "through its an- cestral chain of development." Each lives (or dies) for all, and all for each. Pluralism

1 Lodge's Substance of Faiths p. 40.

[36]

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

when controlled by a unifying force be- comes diversity, enhancing and fortifying the oneness of the whole, like the members of a cantilever construction. Even a system of philosophy may have in it pluralistic as- pects and arguments, but the very attempt to weave a system involves consistency, that is to say, its aim and purpose is to make some sort of unifying force the final master.

It is clear, then, that in so complex and diversified a thing as human life the earliest essential is that which will give cohe- rence to the whole, a pervasive rather than a conjunctive force. It is to be found in Singleness of Motive. As the purpose con- troUing the totality of men and things is in its last analysis unifying in its influence, so the motive which governs each agent of purpose must be in tune with it and as sin- gle as it is. He whose motive is purest and who is wed by it to purpose will lead his fellows as a shepherd his flock.

2. It goes about its work with dogged de- [37]

•4.,,

LEADERSHIP

termination and masterful power. Nothing can turn nature's attention away from her appointed task. The sun will not stand still nor the tide cease to pulsate at our bidding.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain, Far back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

The movement of the glacier pursues its slow race to the foot of the hills with un- hastened but certain power. Night and day, seed-time and harvest, do not fail. Even our annual circle about the sun does not ex- haust our world movement. It has a momen- tum toward some distant goal as well. The will of the universe is set and will prevail. Its attention is fixed on that which lies be- fore, and what it has set out to do it will do.

To singleness of motive must be added Effectiveness of Will, dogged, masterful.

3. The struggle toward perfection — that is to say, the upward and onward tendency of the universe, which modern terminology

[38] .

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

has denominated evolution. There is a ris- ing from the lower to the higher, not with- out setbacks and lapses, but in the main. Everything strives to be true to the law of its being. The detail of nature is careful and exact — its carvings are inimitably ex- ecuted, its colourings shaded to a nicety, its minutest performances thorough.

Human Leadership calls for like aspira- tion toward perfection according to the law of our being, a perfection that finds expres- sion in the moral sphere in the guise of Blamelessness.

4. Correspondence with the Unseen. There is that mysterious force called "life" which is neither a product nor a mere property of matter, that peeps out from behind and vitalizes everything that is. The highest forms of matter are those in which life struggles most to declare itself, suggesting that which cannot be spoken, a source whence all else flows, an ideal that is inde- pendent of the actual for its existence, but [39]

LEADERSHIP

without which the actual is corpselike and useless. There is constant and unbroken cor- respondence between the world and the unseen agency which sustains and energizes every part.

In the case of man, there is a call for something more than passive surrender to the operation of life ; there is asking as well as receiving, an interchange of confidences, if you will — Fellowship with the Divine.

Such, then, I understand to be the meta- physic of Leadership, and the qualities. Leadership having its source where it does, necessary for the highest type of Leader. A Leader bearing in developed form all these marks has been given us as a pattern and Leader of Leaders. No tribute to Jesus is necessary, but, as we pause at this point for to-night, it is fitting. He holds the reins of final purpose in His hands. That He will conduct securely to the goal the unimagin- ably vast multitudes of sentient beings from [40]

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

this and other worlds, the myriads belong- ing to all the yesterdays added to the myriads of all the to-morrows, together with the generations of to-day in which you and I have place, is fixed and sure. We are too remote just now from the consummation to comprehend it all, but the immortal in us, our infinite capacity for progress, our aspirations which are as soaring as the bird which tries to mount until it can beat its wings against the dome of the blue, enable us to apprehend when we cannot under- stand. We can prophesy of that which is to be as little as the silk of the cocoon can de- scribe the brocaded splendour that awaits it.

Where lies the land to which the ship would go? Far, far ahead^ is all her seamen know.

Amid all that is mysterious and baffling, the supreme Leader stands within view, — yes, not a handbreadth away from the life of to-day, — to quiet our doubts and deepen our certainties. In His personality are the fundamental experience of man and the [41 ]

LEADERSHIP

fundamental experience of God, blended and unified. In our loyalty to Him as we know Him — He asks nothing more than sincerity of us — consists our hope of mak- ing a good contribution to the "one far-off Divine event," the complete manifestation of which we await. His sovereignty over the individual life is no less careful, no less lov- ing, because He has worlds to whirl through space or generations to unify into a com- mon family life; so that we can commit our case to Him with the assurance that we shall not be lost in the crowd or drowned in the depths of time and immensity. And whatever gifts a man may possess, whatever efficiency he may develop by industry and application, whatever genius he may have for Leadership, his power climbs to its throne only if. Leader of men as he may be, he is also the follower of Him who claims to be that which experience more and more proves Him to be, — the Way, the Truth, and the Life,

[42]

LECTURE II

The light of the body is the eye : if therefore thine eye he singUy

thy whole body shall be full of light.

Matt. vi. 22

/ have always had one lode-star; noWy As I look back, I see that I have wasted Or progressed as I looked toward that star.

Browning

Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is, let me say, of no mean force in the government of mankind. Genuine simplicity of heart is an healing and cementing principle.

Burke

LECTURE II THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

IEADERSHIP is a natural topic at a Uni- U versity, for a University is a school of Leadership, and Harvard has justified her character as such in her past history. The metaphysic of Leadership, as we have seen, consists in the passion for purpose, the craving for a goal which characterizes the whole universe in its totality and in its parts, and reaches its highest level in man. Motion is not content to be mere commotion. Even the confused throbbings of chaos are a pe- tition for order. Motion becomes increas- ingly definite and intelligible as life rises in the scale, until in man it assumes the shape of conscious purpose. A Leader is one who has the sense of purpose for himself and the universe of which he is a part in a marked degree, and who bears in his character the features discernible in the larger order. He is the highest embodiment of motion, pos- [45 ]

LEADERSHIP

sessing in singleness of motive a factor that makes for unity, in a sturdy will that which issues in productivity and achievement, in a blameless character an influence that de- serts the good for the better and aspires to the best, in fellowship with the Divine that which dignifies the seen by expanding it to the utmost to receive the largest possible measure of life and glory — by "glory" I mean success so complete as to overflow and to radiate splendour. To-night we shall consider the first of these qualifications — the Power of the Single Motive.

I

The universe presents a twofold aspect, — pluralistic and monistic, — but its diversity is crowned by its unity. There are contra- dictions, or seeming contradictions, in its se- veral parts, but the general tendency is, and always has been, toward greater unification. A complex creation is made simple by the lordship of one dominating motive. Given [46]

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

such a motive and diversity is capable of in- definite extension or ramification, without impairing the reahty of oneness ; antinomies are made to render mutual service, each to each, and there is a net gain of both enrich- ment and strength by the increase of that which at first sight would seem to militate against unity. A universe is made more mar- vellous, though not less coherent, by the re- velation of worlds within a world ; architec- ture finds its interest and beauty in the free- dom of detail allowed by the style or motive ; a typical melody or a 7notif weaves crashing chords, moaning dissonances, wild arpeg- gios.into a musical blend that is as truly one as the level sea; and as for the universe of the human body — what could be more complex? — it is so finely constructed that in a minimum of matter there is at once a max- imum of diversity and a triumph of unity. Motive is like the sunlight and the air. It is solicitous for every portion of that which it is called upon to pervade, not over- [47]

LEADERSHIP

looking the small for the great, or neglect- ing the great in over-anxiety for the small ; establishing a basis for mutual helpfulness throughout the whole by imparting its es- sential character to the least part. Its touch has the Midas effect of turning even that which is base into gold. Given a sufficient motive and the ethics of the dust become the ethics of the skies, and all life a dead level of splendour. This is a commonplace of history.

All service ranks the same with God:

If now, as formerly He trod

Paradise, His presence fills

Our earth, each only as God wills

Can work — God's puppets, best and worst.

Are we ; there is no last or first.

Say not "a small event!" Why "small"? Costs it more pain that this, ye call A "great event," should come to pass. Than that? Untwine me from the mass Of deeds which make up life, one deed Power shall fall short in, or exceed!

Just as there is no such thing as a pur- poseless life, motion without a goal, but [48]

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

everywhere purpose, so everywhere we dis- cern the existence of motive which gives character or colour to activity, and deter- mines the direction of purpose. One central motive controls every personality. There may be a number of motives, auxiliary or contending, but only one of them is king and what that one says is law. This is a mathematical necessity rather than a moral theory. It is not a matter of permission, but of capacity — no man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and de- spise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Two supreme authorities in the same sphere spell a house divided against itself and in the end civil war. Indeed it is as unthinkable as that there should be two centres to a circle, or that a man should walk in two opposite directions at the same time. One motive either converts, ousts, or absorbs all others until its rule is absolute. We can hardly speak accurately of "mixed [49 ]

A

LEADERSHIP

motives," if our reference is to those which are Hkeminded, for in such a case there is no disputed sovereignty. The auxiharies are to the central motive what the creeks and rivulets are to the river that calls them into its bosom.

No motive, however, becomes great and masterful without war. And experience would seem to indicate that the higher the motive, the fiercer the war. The character and extent of our freedom has been a mat- ter of dispute for centuries, but those who admit that there is any such thing at all as freedom will agree that it is found, if no- where else, in our liberty to choose and ap- ply the motive of life. That is all our own, and it is to our interest, as well as to that of the common weal, that we should choose the best in sight. The very moment we make our selection, or as often as we confirm our choice, we go through the experience Paul did in the process of becoming a saint — / delight in the law of God after the inward [50]

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

vian: but I see a different law in my mem- bers, warring against the law of my mind. We begin to understand the parable of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." We are con- scious that one or the other must ultimately win out, even though for a while we seem to be able to play fast and loose with im- punity. The light will either be light or darkness : the good, or the bad, motive must ascend the throne to the exclusion of the worsted contestant. The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. The triumph of the good motive will mean that the whole life will be flooded with splen- dour. ^2/^ if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! There can be no place in the end for any light : the evil motive will reign in undisturbed and deadly peace ; and worst of all, its victim will think his dark- ness is light, for it will simulate the func- [51 ]

LEADERSHIP

tion of light and guide into pretended se- curity. From such observation as I have made of so-called "duplex personality," I have come to the conclusion that it is but an abnormal variation of the commonest thing to be found in human history — inte- rior struggle betw^een conflicting motives. For a while there is confusion and a seem- ing disintegration or splitting up of person- ality; in the end one of the tw^o (or more) conflicting forces gains the supremacy.

Mohammed presents an interesting study in the battle of motives. "He was at first a religious enthusiast of the practical order, truly, humbly, earnestly attempting the work of reforming the national faith: his enthusiasm was strong enough to overbear personal difficulties and disgraces and make him unselfish in the consciousness of a mis- sion. . . . The change comes with the He- gira. He loses with the unexpected access of power, first, his intentness, second, his simplicity and singleness of action, third, [52]

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

his unselfishness. Passion of power and self- indulgence sweep him unstably into their control, but the better spirit is underneath all the time and will occasionally burst out." ^ "The better spirit is underneath all the time" — oh, faithful "better spirit" that suf- fers to be underneath, patiently waiting till the last moment for our human choice, to give it the regal place in our lives which for our sake it covets ! If the better spirit is defeated in the end, it is long-suffering be- yond words and loyal to the limit. But the light that is in us may become darkness, and when it does, how great is that dark- ness! It is an interesting speculation what Mohammedanism would have been to-day if its founder had been true to his first love. We must be equipped for war, then, when we deal with motives. No one who has in the end achieved a kingly character has failed to feel the allurements of lower mo- tives as he has pledged himself repeatedly

^Ijife of Phillips Brooks, i. 503.

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to the highest. The story of the Temptation in the Wilderness is the story of a battle of motives, and every virile character has a similar narrative to tell. In the struggle for the superior motive we gain a new appre- ciation of its beauty and power. There seems to be an illumination contingent upon strug- gle which reveals what would otherwise re- main hidden of the attractiveness of the coveted treasure. Let me insist again that our motive is in our power, becoming what we say. It may be that we are limited on the right hand and on the left, that we are not altogether free agents in the sphere in which we live, that we are not responsible for our temperament or ideas, but we are responsi- ble for our motive — and the motive is the deed, and not merely the deed, but, speak- ing in terms of eternity, the life and char- acter behind the deed. Having once deci- phered a worthy motive all our life can be spelled out in its alphabet. There is no safer guardian to which a man can unreservedly [ 54]

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

commit himself and his interests than a high motive. It is a pure pool in which every im- / pulse and thought must bathe itself before being converted into action. Personality is so built that nothing which the soul puts forth can escape the influence of its domi- nant motive. Too much time or pains can- not be spent in ensuring that we gain a worthy one. It is a life companion and the master of our destiny. A-

II

A single motive being a necessity for every life, and its deliberate and conscious selec- tion our business, the question arises, What shall it be ? Manifestly the undertaking is so important and costly we cannot afford to waste ourselves on experiments. It is the part of wisdom to choose so well that there will be no necessity ever to regret or re- verse our decision. A difficult task, you say, because of the countless directions in which our choice might fall. Very well. Let us see. [55]

LEADERSHIP

All such motives as a serious person would care to wed have a certain family likeness. In the first place, a high motive is not the child of expediency. Expediency may be permitted to determine methods, but never motives. A motive of the kind we are considering is of permanent worth, and is as valuable and practical at the end of life as at the beginning. It will meet with equal, or perhaps I should say with pro- gressive, aptitude the manifold changes, surprises, and exigencies of a career from youth to age.

Again a worthy motive never takes pains to hide from sight. It does not fear publicity, though it does not court it. While scorn- ing to parade the streets, it meets the gaze of scrutiny with steady eye. It is transpar- ent, and, like the diamond, of the same pure substance from front to back. It has not one character for show and a w^holly different one for use. The apparent is the ulterior.

A third characteristic is dignity — it could [56 ]

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

not condescend to apologize for itself if it would. Knowing its purity, it points to its products as its justification and explanation.

Lastly, as an outcome, perhaps, of its other qualities, it does not know narrowness, but rejoices in its generosity. An incom- parable freedom is the certain gift which it bestows. Its process of simplification is by in- clusion, not exclusion. It rules out no inter- est that is human or divine, and encourages a man to multiply rather than contract his activities. It forms a steady centre from which innumerable radii may reach out in every direction, without disturbing or weak- ening the unity of life. Diversity under its reign means enrichment, not distraction. The single eye makes a personality and all that it touches full of light, and he who possesses the single motive has the key to the much coveted, much travestied, little understood, "simple life."

It is legitimate to raise the question whether there is one motive sufficiently [57]

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sympathetic to suit every person in human society. Our several natures are so individ- ual that at first sight it looks as though there w^ere not. Various as the differences are, however, the unity of human life tran- scends its diversity. Our deepest nature is social, and seizes first, as being of highest value, that which fits all men everywhere. That this is done instinctively and increas- ingly is proved by the fact that society, so far from falling away, part from part, holds together as firmly as it does. It is timid enough in enlarging the boundaries of its corporate manifestations, but the ideal of the Church has never ceased to be the as- sembling of all nations under a common family roof, and the ideal becomes a more reasonable and practicable proposition daily.

Yes, there is one motive serviceable for all. It is at once suited to man as an indi- vidual and as a member of society. Time cannot alter its beauty or its power, adver- [58]

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

sity cannot dim its brightness, perplexity cannot break its singleness. The Single Mo- tive is what for lack of a better term I shall denominate the Social Motive.

All motives can be classed under one or the other of two heads, — competitive or ^ social. Indeed, I might go farther and say there are but two motives which dispute the right to supremacy, the distinguishing characterofeach being sufficiently described by the foregoing terms. All other claim- ants for the control of purpose belong to the competitive or the social family, in the relation of children to parent. The competi- tive motive has for its centre a man, and the social for its centre man. Let us con- sider them separately.

1. The Cojiipetitive Motive. In order to make this important matter as tangible and concrete as possible, let us resort to illus- tration, and take some typical happenings from authentic history which represent the competitive motive in operation. [59]

LEADERSHIP

A group ot men, normal in every respect, were walking together from one town to another and conversing as they journeyed. As they were all members of the same vol- untary society their friendship was more than ordinarily intimate. Their conversa- tion turned, as was natural, upon their com- mon ideal — the establishment of a superior social order that promised to be so perfect as to be final. But before they knew it they revealed their incompetency to create any social unity by disputing who was the great- est. They were controlled by the competi- tive motive, which has as its principle ac- tivity struggle for the ascendancy.^

The competitive motive leads its victim to think of others always with a view to comparison and the measuring of relative (supposed or real) merits. It is of a jealous disposition and cannot remain unperturbed at the success of others. Its aim is at great- ness by contrast, and it is quicker to observe

1 Mark ix. 33 ff.

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THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

the defects than the merits of those who are, or to its suspicious eye seem to be, Hned up as rivals. Undoubtedly it does promote a man to greatness, but to a greatness that is false. There is nothing cheaper than great- ness to which men elect themselves, the greatness that makes others feel small. And it is an absolute disqualification for Leader- ship in that it separates its victim wholly from the crowd. It may be able to drive, but it cannot lead. There is nothing which it shuns more than identification with the crowd. It is the repudiation of broad fel- lowship, and its logical culmination is com- plete loneliness — the sort that Dives had. No wonder that the men of the story when they were asked by Jesus what they had been disputing about in the way were si- lent. The competitive motive cannot bear the scrutiny of an honest eye.

A bit later two of their number exhibited another characteristic of the competitive motive, when they asked their Master to [61 ]

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give them the best places in the coming kingdom ; and the rest of their company- were every whit as defective in temper as their bolder fellows because they showed anger at the request that had been made — that is, each wanted the best place for him- self. Evidently from what Jesus says to them later they expected to follow along the usual lines of Oriental greatness and find their chief pleasure in lording it over subordinates.^

The competitive motive forces a man so to overvalue himself as to believe that he ought to occupy conspicuous position, and lend his energies to great matters. He views place and responsibility not mainly as an opportunity to become eminently produc- tive, but as a sort of candlestick for the dis- play of his own glory. Desire for lordship is preparation for tyranny in a strong man, and for conspicuous failure in a weak one. A lord cannot be a Leader. He can be a dicta-

1 Mark x. 35 if.

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tor or a bully, but not a Leader, for a I^eader is merely the foremost companion. Self-im- portance more than anything else cripples Leadership. It wastes its vitality on self- contemplation, and chills sympathy to death. It is unable to give to co-workers or subordinates credit for their own per- formances, and demands that all that it touches should be copyrighted in its own name, as though production got its value from its reputation rather than from its in- herent worth.

2. The Social Motive is the exact con- trary of all this, and as antagonistic to it as light to darkness. We find it tersely de- scribed in connection with the incidents that we have been considering. When Jesus saw the aspiration for greatness that pos- sessed His followers. He fostered it by con- trasting the true conception with that false one which the disciples held. In a single breath He rebuked and inspired. If any man would be first, he shall be last of all and [63]

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minister of all. Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them; and their great ones eccerdse au- thority over them. But it is not so among you: but whosoever would become great [you see the desire for greatness is encou- raged], shall be your minister; and whoso- ever would be first among you^ shall be ser- vant of all. This was His precept.

But He had already illustrated its force by acting it out in His own person. By His own choice and act He became one of the crowd. Milton, though in the terms of a faulty theology, splendidly describes it:

That glorious form, that light insufferable

And that far-beaming blaze of majesty,

Wherewith He wont at Heaven's high council table

To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,

He laid aside; and here with us to be.

Forsook the courts of everlasting day.

And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.

Or as S. Paul, in one of his most moving letters, records it ; Who being in the form of God counted it not a prize to be on equal-

[64]

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ity with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross. By identifying Himself with the least and the lowest, and lifting them up, His union with humanity became of uni- versal sweep. So complete and real was His assumption of human nature that He re- tained nothing of Godhead which inter- fered with His humanity. He was careful to be known as the Son of Man, and His ac- tions were such as never to force upon those who did not look beneath the surface the be- lief that He was more than He appeared to be. Whatever else might or might not be believed of Him, He would leave no room for doubt that He was Man. From first to last He was always with the multitudes or their representatives. His human career is wonderfully social even in the manger and on the cross. The result is that there has [65]

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never been an undisputed metaphysic of His personality. There have always been those who could not see in Him more than the foremost of the human family, just one of the crowd. Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Judas, and Simon ? Is not this Joseph's son? is a question that men have never ceased to ask. And the question is a tribute to the thoroughness with which He took that step which alone could make Him supreme Leader. The only competi- tion that He engaged in was for the lowest place, so that no one could feel that there was any human life below Him. The First became by His own choice Last of all and Servant of all.

The foxes found rest, and the birds had their nest In the shade of the forest tree : But thy couch was the sod, O Thou Son of God, In the desert of GaHlee.

He came into the world naked of all but His humanity, and so far from putting this

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in contrast with the humanity of his fel- lows He used it as a mantle for theirs. He pressed mankind to His breast as a mother her babe. He came not to make others feel small, but to make them feel and be great. He did not cheapen God's greatness by pa- rading it before poor dazzled human eyes, but He came to declare among men igno- rant of their destiny how great man is.

Such ever was love's way: to rise, it stoops.

His purpose is to make the crowd great, to raise them to His own high level. If I go and prepare a place for you, I come again, and will receive you unto viysef; that where I am, there ye may be also.

Again, He confutes the claim of the com- petitive motive that position and prestige are necessary to success, by avoiding them, not as evil, but as of no fundamental con- sequence. He occupies Himself with small matters greatly. He holds no official van- tage ground. He is the peasant artisan — a "nobody" according to the phraseology of [67]

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"society. "He could have graced the throne of a Caesar or the office of a high priest, but He chose the course that would bring out as clearly and as unmistakably as might be the power and beauty of human nature in itsunembellished, unimpeded condition. He did not allow His manhood to be swallowed up by the glory of divinity or smothered by the accessories of the world. He kept Him- self free that His opportunity might be full. There was no ornate frame to draw atten- tion from the picture. He taught by exam- ple that it is not the place that makes the man, but the man that makes the place. A small man makes a great place the same size as himself, and the great man makes the small place as great as he is. Jesus satis- fies the exacting requirements of the latest modern philosophy as expounded by its most brilliant exponent.^ For He lived in "the very dirt of private fact."^ He occu- pied Himself with "the sweat and dirt" of

1 Professor James. 2 Pragmatism, p. 80.

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"this real world," so as to make them noble not "in a bad sense," but in the highest sense. In short He proved Himself, He the First of all and the Greatest of all, not "inapt for humble service."^ The most neg- lected are His constant solicitude and call forth His finest activities, and little chil- dren, whom His followers were inclined to push away as an insignificant nuisance, are bathed in His benediction and exhibited as a pattern for mature men. Of Him the sep- aratists said in despair. Behold, the whole world is gone after him. He was and is the true Leader, for the centre of His motive and of His work is mankind — "for us men and for our salvation He came down from heaven, and was made man." The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.

Ill The Social Motive, then, is the Single Mo- tive. It is the only one suited to all men

'^Pragmatism, p. 79.

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alike, and without it Leadership can be but a blind leading of the blind. In the light of the social motive Leadership is helpfulness — ability to help the weakest and most neg- lected and least to the uttermost and to the last. The virtue that it lays greatest store by is humility. In our day of push and strenuousness humility is apt to be lost sight of because it seems so unsuited to the conditions that obtain. Most people think of it as the grace of the unsuccessful, as a quality pretty and theoretic and the pet of theologians, but of no practical worth. No- thing could be further astray. Humility is the virtue that keeps a man always and everywhere and healthily one of the crowd. It is not a shrinking away from men : on the contrary it is a clinging with both arms to the many, identification with the multi- tudes of ordinary rather than with the hand- ful of extraordinary persons. Pride and self- importance separate : humility unites. Low- liness and kingliness are coordinates. One

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cannot exist without the other. Behold, thy King Cometh unto thee; he is just, and hav- ing salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, even upon a colt the foal of an ass,

Moses stumbled at being called out as a Leader. He pleaded as his excuse that he ' had limitations, was but an ordinary man, one of the crowd. Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt ? But his plea for exemption was a revela- tion of the quality of humility which before all others was necessary — more necessary than his meekness. He was one of the crowd. It was just that — his knowledge of and intense sympathy with (not for) his peo- ple, that flashed out in anger in behalf of an ill-treated fellow countryman against an offending Egyptian — that qualified him to lead. Others could supply his limitations. A humble man has the grace to allow an- other to be tongue or eyes or hand for him without jealousy or dissatisfaction at the [71 ]

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display of gifts in which he is deficient.

Darwin was a king among scientists. No one disputes the fact. He and Gladstone never met until both were advanced in years, when both were grayheaded. The statesman visited the scientist in his village home where the latter was observing the habits of the strange little insect destroying sundew. It was at the time of the Bulga- rian atrocities that the visit took place, and Gladstone poured forth a torrent of elo- quence on the subject of the hour, the scien- tist listening with rapt attention. When Gladstone left, Darwin accompanied his guest to the gate, and shading his eyes from the rays of the setting sun, looked after the retreating figure, and said: "How wonder- ful that so great a man should come to visit me!" The king in science was kingly in character. He refused to be separated from his fellows by his greatness. He grouped himself with the crowd.

Lincoln was another man who became a [72 ]

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great Leader because he jealously refused to allow privilege to separate him from the crowd from which he emerged. He appears first "a child born to an inheritance of want; a boy growing into a narrow world of ignorance ; a youth taking up the burden of coarsest heavy labour; a man entering on the doubtful struggle of a local back- woods career." But all the while he was de- veloping a brave spirit and powerful mind and coming into close touch with man. The lowly life is the easiest life to know because it is not made opaque by artifici- alities, and Lincoln knowing the lowly life learned to read all men at a glance. "The sense of equality was his, for he grew from childhood to manhood in a state of society where there were neither rich to envy nor poor to despise, and where the gifts and hardships of the forest were distributed without favour to each and all alike. In the forest he learned charity, sympathy, helpful- ness,— in a word neighbourhness, — for in [73]

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/ that far-off frontier life all the wealth of y India, had a man possessed it, could not have bought relief from danger or help in time of need, and neighbourliness became of prime importance. Constant opportunity- was found there to practise the virtue which Christ declared to be next to the love of God — to love one's neighbour as oneself."^

It has been urged against Lincoln that he never was emancipated from a certain streak of coarseness that marred his char- acter. Perhaps his coarseness was a defect, but it was a defect of his strength. He was of the crowd and could speak to them in their own tongue. Then, too, is it not so that the man's reality was too pure to al- low of that veneer of nice manners which only hides and does not destroy an inhe- rent coarseness that polite society suffers from as much as backwoods life ? The truth of it is that in Lincoln's case, as well as in

1 H. Nicolay's School Boy's Life of Lincoln, pp. 301, 302.

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that of every other Leader in his class, neither in appearance nor in fact, would he allow place and privilege to obliterate the marks of his origin or divorce him from the masses. " Manners makyth man " only when they are as deep as man.

It would be easy to multiply illustra- tions reinforcing my contention that the Leader must never allow himself to be any- thing less than of the crowd, that his de- liberate aim must be to identify himself with them. But enough has been said to show that in practical working it is a prin- ciple of indispensable character, and that only he who is in the profoundest sense of the crowd can reach that consummation of kingliness which expresses itself in ability to be the servant of all. You can serve only those whom your sympathy embraces and understands.

In the case of a Leader, perhaps the hard- est thing is to help those who stand im- mediately next — those who hold the trying [75]

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position of second in command, or who are near enough to the front to be constantly impressed by the fact that they fall short of being at the front. The temptation to treat them as possible rivals and to depreci- ate their gifts instead of magnifying them is constant to every one but a truly great man. But it is clear that it is useless to be able to touch any and every man in the crowd without at the same time being able to make him great according to his capa- city for greatness. The competitive motive would lead to the selection of men of small calibre for the second place, but the Social Motive selects the biggest to be found. Lincoln, to quote the example of this hero again, surrounded himself with strong na- tures— those who had been his most dis- tinguished and capable rivals.

This is a fitting moment in which to say

a word regarding the importance of those

Leaders who, however high their place,

never reach that of ultimate authority. It

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takes a great nature to fill second or third or fourth place greatly. Ambition and self- importance spoil a man for it hopelessly. It is easy to be Caesar; it is easy to be merely one of the crowd, an average man. Aut Caesar aut nullus seems to be a reasonable alternative to the competitive motive. But the Social Motive values place not for its glory, but for its opportunity, and is willing to fit in wherever the best opportunity lies. Second place in the estimate of the worldly- minded is only a trying phase of insignifi- cance ; in the estimate of a Leader it is not an occasion for rivalry, but for service. Ri- valry as well as tyranny among Leaders was ruled out by Jesus — for they were Leaders in the making whom He addressed when He said in rebuke of their unholy ambitions, It is not so among you.

The relationship of the first to the se- cond, and of the second to the first, is beautifully summed up in the case of Jesus and John the Baptist. The First said of the [ "^T ]

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Second, He was a burning and a shining light. Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a gi^eater than John the Baptist, And the Second said of the First, He that cometh after is mightier than /, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear. The friend of the bride- groom, which standeth and heareth him, re- joiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease. FamiHar as I am with these words, I can never re- read them without emotion.

There are few incidents more edifying than the struggle for second place between Darwin and his great cotemporary Wal- lace, both of whom at the same moment hit upon the principle of the origin of species. Each desired the other to receive the full credit due him. Though first place justly belonged to Darwin he hesitated to take it, and did so only after long deliberation. Wal- lace with equal modesty took second place [78]

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in the spirit of John the Baptist. Long years afterwards Wallace wrote to his re- nowned fellow scientist: "I hope it is a sat- isfaction to you to reflect — and very few things in my life have been more satisfac- tory to me — that we have never felt any jealousy towards each other, though in some sense rivals. I believe I can say this of myself with truth, and I am absolutely sure that it is true of you."

One more incident worth citing comes to mind, and I refer to it largely because it has to do with the history of one of our own statesmen whose worth is variously measured. The genius of Alexander Ham- ilton is a fact that no one denies, but was there not a higher kind of greatness than genius in a man who, conscious that he had transcendent capacity, settled down in second place in such a way as to lend his gifts to Washington with a generosity and self-eflacement that at this distance of time make it difficult, and in some instances im- [79]

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possible, to say what was the work of Wash- ington and what that of Hamilton?

Characters of the type that we have been considering are more or less indifferent to accessories, prestige, place, privilege, for the chief instrument which they depend upon for the performance of their work is their own personality. Still they are the men to whom we gladly commit privilege and whom we call to high position, for we know that in their hands privilege and place will never separate them from the crowd and will always be used for the weal of the whole social fabric. Self-importance is re- pulsive to them, and their ambition is to serve. The possession of place and privilege is in itself always a challenge to service. It ought not to be looked upon as a burden- some responsibility, but as a fine opportu- nity. But the alternative is sharp and search- ing— privilege either separates from, or unites with, the crowd. It does the latter when it is employed intelligently, actively, [80]

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and thoroughly in behalf of the entire so- cial body. There is a certain use of privilege which has the appearance of generosity, but which in reality is a phase of selfishness called to the birth by the taste and whim- sicalness of the administrator. It results in the promotion of class and sectional inter- ests. One of the main lessons to be learned in our day of privilege is that it must either be used as has been indicated or relinquished — there is no other alternative. To put the case in terms of the effect upon the trustee — I dare not call him owner — it must either isolate him from or bind him to men, it must be either a toy or an instrument in his hands.

One day a rich young man came into the presence of Jesus. Looking upon him Jesus fell in love with him at sight. The youth was morally blameless, — a man of charac- ter, as we would say, — and yet apparently he was unable to bear the strain of privilege. Everything points to his righteousness as [81 ]

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being of a self-centred sort. He wanted the best things for himself, and he stopped at that. Jesus invited him to give up his w^ealth — not to Himself or to the Apostolic fel- lowship, but to the poor — and join in His own free, unembarrassed, healthy mode of life. The young man sorrowfully refused.

I cannot for an instant believe that if he had been administering his possessions as a trust, Jesus would have bidden him relin- quish them, any more than in the case of the rich Zacchasus ; though it would seem tolerably certain that had Jesus counselled Zacchaeus as He did the young man, Zac- chseus would have gladly responded. He whose sense of responsibility regarding wealth is so great as to lead him on his own initiative to give fifty per cent of it, princi- pal and interest, to the poor, and make four- fold restitution in case of injury to another sits lightly to his riches, and could easily be prevailed upon by the Master of life to surrender all.

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No, that young man was not using pri- vilege so as to unite him to the crowd. That was the trouble. His wealth was a toy, not an instrument, and stood between him and perfection. He was not strong enough to bear the burden of trusteeship. How hardly, says Jesus as the young man turns sorrow- fully away, shall they that have riches en- ter into the Kingdom of God! which is a different thing from the words which fol- low: How hard it is for them that trust in riches to enter into the Kingdom of God! The former is a challenge to high service and good stewardship. To tell a strong man that a thing is hard is to whet his desire to accomplish it, and to make him gird him- self for the task. The latter is a call for a change of heart.

Undoubtedly there are those who are called upon to relinquish all, and among Christians it should not be counted as odd for a. man to do in our day that which Jesus bade a fine young fellow do, and [83]

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which every one who reads the story re- grets that he did not do. But frequently it is more difficult to administer wealth as a trust, expertly and wisely, than to give it away. The time is slowly approaching when it will be as impossible for an individual to achieve wealth at the cost of the suffering of the multitude, as it already is for him to call himself a feudal baron and defy society as it is organized; or, having wealth, to em- ploy it without regard to the principle of stewardship, as it now is for an insurance company to conduct its affairs without re- ference to the interests of the policy-holders. As soon as those who have privilege awaken to the realization of their opportunity, there will be a change in the complexion of hu- man affairs. Awhile ago I spent a night in the house of a savage far remote from civi- lized life. Decked in its untarnished shop- paint, I saw hanging on the wall a garden rake. My host had received it from the gov- ernment as an aid to the cultivation of the [84]

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ground, but he hung it up as a curio. Simi- larly the whole face of what we are pleased to call civilized society is cluttered up with privilege, used as a toy for self-pleasing, — privilege which was bestowed as an incen- tive to and instrument for the kingly duty of broad and effective service. S. Paul, a man who apparently^ had at least what used to be termed a competency, and did not feel called to relinquish it in order to make his discipleship perfect, sums it all up when he says : Charge them that are ?ich in this present wo?^ld, that they be not highminded, nor have their hope set on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who giveth us jichly all things to enjoy; that they do good, that they be rich in good works, that they be ready to distribute, willing to communicate. The temper of mind that shuts its eyes to the enormous evils of our day, and ga- thers all its force to maintain the present order of society, is lamentable. What we

1 Acts xxiv. 26 ; xxviii. 30.

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ought to do to remedy matters is not easy to formulate. The gospel of philanthropy with its daily basket of contributions is out of date, the gospel of political economy with its cold science has no adequate scheme to propose ; but the Social Motive with its gos- pel of sharing is the spark from which some day a great fire will be kindled at which the whole world will warm itself Society, as we know it, is not a permanent order; it is not a sacrosanct thing which it is a crime to fault. It is transitional, as all imperfect things are, and will give way to a better order, becoming a curiosity of the past to be grouped with the feudal system and the days of slavery, just as soon as the leaven works a little more. It is the bounden duty of masters of privilege so to employ their Leadership as to hasten the arrival of a new era by a whole-hearted devotion to the So- cial Motive.

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LECTURE III

One thing makes the years its pedestal.

Springs from the ashes of its pyre, and claps

A skyward icing above its epitaph —

The will of man willing immortal things.

The ages are hut baubles hung upon

The thread of some strong lives — and one slight wrist

May lift a century above the dust.

Wharton

Ismene.

But you desire impossibilities. Antigone.

Well, when I find I have no power to stir I will cease trying. Ismene.

But things impossible ^Tis wrong to attempt at all. Antigone.

/ shall meet with nothing

More grievous at the worst than death with honour.

Sophocles

He who did most, shall bear most ; the

strongest shall stand the most weak. ^Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for!

my flesh that I seek In the Godhead! I seek and I find it.

Browning

LECTURE III

THE POWER OF THE HUMAN WILL

WE have considered the first of those four qualities which characterize the totahty of things. Whether in matter or man it alone unifies, correlating part to part and each to the whole. As it finds expression in human life we know it as motive. Motive is the atmosphere which oxygenizes all other qualities. It is the central factor in character, and is the only one that we are altogether responsible for. There are many motives, but all may be grouped as either competitive or social. The one regal motive is the Social Motive. Possessed of this uni- fying principle a man has the earliest and most essential qualification for Leadership. It identifies him with the crowd which he is to lead, and turns every privilege of wealth or place into an instrument for use in behalf of the whole social body.

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If a Leader needs the single motive as his first requisite, he must add to it force as the second. The forcefulness of the move- ment of our universe stands side by side with its unity. Now the symbol and agent of power in human personality is the will. Its first act, and if you wish, its only abso- lutely free act, is to choose its motive. This done motive in turn plays upon the will that wooed and won it, and upon the emo- tions which always stand at the elbow of the will, and the net result is purpose mounting into achievement. The emotions are the first to feel the influence of motive, and they respond by contributing to life those beneficent agents known as good de- sires, which form the raw material out of which character is spun. Smiling with the joy of promise, they are the measure of our capacity, generously giving us a taste be- forehand of the good things that we are inheritors of They are not to be viewed as [90]

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doubtful optimism or deceitful emotion. As a rule the best desires we have are toward that which is unwonted and foreign to our experience. They move in the direction of adventurous activity and encourage us to inquire whether, perhaps, we may not have capacity which we have never done justice to.

There is something in us that delights to depreciate these infant progeny of high mo- tive, and dismiss them as mockers of our weakness. Our distrust of good desires is due to our sense of feebleness in part. We are in a state of imperfection and have our spells of growing pains. Then, too, he who has had but small experience has had ex- perience of failure. We hear the call of good desires to rise and walk, but past experience reminds us that we have tried on previous occasions and failed. We do not know how much we rise in an attempt to rise. It is better to try and fail than never to try at all, for honest effort minimizes the evil of [91 ]

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failure when we are unfortunate enough to fail.

But our chief disloyalty to the friendly aid of good desires consists in our chronic distrust of the power of the human will. The human will is the symbol and agent of power. In activity it presents the highest aspect of motion, more potent than the in- exorable pressure of the glacier or the wild- est moods of the sea.

The will of man willing immortal things.

There are some clearly ascertainable causes for our low estimate of the power of the will and for its frequent failures — its ofttime feebleness, its barren resolutions, its broken vows. Among us Christians there is the inherited fear of dishonouring God's operations within the human soul by in- sisting upon our power to be and do as we will. The ire of Pelagius was rightly "raised by the manner in which many persons al- leged the weakness of human nature as an

excuse for carelessness or slothfulness in [92]

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religion ; in opposition to this he insisted on the freedom of the will." His exaggerations we of to-day are not interested to defend, but exaggeration in the opposite direction is productive of grave evil. God's inner working can never be dishonoured by at- tributing to the greatest endowment with which He has gifted personality the power which is resident in it. The sole function of the will is to act, to do, to achieve, morally, spiritually, physically. It has no other rai- son detre.

Another reason why the will has been given a bad name is because we so fre- quently substitute wishing for willing — two vastly different things. Wishing is merely sending a flood of emotion in the direction of desire. Unaided its life ebbs out in sentimentalism that saps the will of its strength. Motive without will is idea — that and nothing more; clouds without water. Force without motive, on the other hand, is a destroying angel making for rout [93]

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and disorder. Purpose is force inspired and unified by motive, stimulated by desire and backed by will.

A still further cause of our weakness is to be found in the prevailing manner in which we abuse our wills by not taking our promises to ourselves seriously. A resolu- tion is a promise to self, which we are as bound to keep as though it were made to another. The humanity that we find in our- selves is as deserving of reverence as that which we see in others. This is the first axiom of self-respect, and there can be no high degree of respect for others without it. As a matter of fact, however, most of us sit lightly to our resolutions. We will dis- miss a broken promise to self without the courtesy of an excuse, or with such an ex- planation as we would scorn to give in apology for a failure to keep faith with a friend. Why should this be? If a broken promise to another is an insult, a broken resolution is self-insult. A promise is one of [94]

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the more sacred things of hfe, and even the morally careless are as a rule loyal to their promises. The whole structure of society is built up on promises and the assurance that they will be kept. It may be pleaded that though a resolution may be a promise to self it has not the binding effect of a vow. I am inclined to think, however, that as an oath is but the state aspect of an affirmation and perjury but the state aspect of a lie, so a resolution and a vow are not very widely separated at any rate. There is a difference chiefly in formality and intensity of expres- sion. Our resolutions, though frequently not consciously made in God's presence, cannot be made out of His presence. A pro- mise with another as witness is more likely to be kept than a solitary resolution — in part because two wills, instead of one, are operating on the purpose, and in part be- cause a promise to or before another adds the incentive of twofold obligation.

There is a passage in the Diary of Samuel [95]

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Pepys which is too representative of the fate that befalls most of us at one time or an- other to be altogether amusing. Here it is :

**Feb. 27th. I called for a dish of fish, which we had for dinner, this being the first day of Lent; and I do intend to try whether I can keep it or no.

"28th. Notwithstanding my resolution, yet, for want of other victualls, I did eat flesh this Lent, but am resolved to eat as little as I can.

"March 26th. Very merry at dinner; among other things, because Mrs. Turner and her company eat no flesh at all this Lent, and I had a great deal of good flesh which made their mouths water. "^

Before Lent was out Samuel Pepys, Esq., had added not inconsiderably to his pre- vious record of intemperance in both meats and drinks. Might it not have been quite dif- ferent had he honoured the promise made to himself at the beginning, and not have

1 Diary, vol. i. pp. 328 ff.

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let himself off so easily from its fulfilment ?

But enough of failure. It is time to turn from evidences of weakness in the will to exhibitions of its power. Experience de- clares that the human will is the most po- tent of all known forces, and that its unex- ploited power exceeds that which has thus far been displayed among men.

The one human Life with an uncorrupted and incorruptible will said: He that be- lieveth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do. We do not know, we cannot fore- cast, the exploits that are waiting for the Leaders of the race just below the horizon. But we have ceased to be surprised when fresh manifestations of power are adduced. The marvellous becomes the commonplace so fast that it is difficult to keep pace with the transformation. We are gradually awak- ening to the consciousness that the will has a scope that bears witness to its origin —

The will of man willing immortal things.

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As in the past it has achieved not merely where there is every encouragement and aid to bring it up to its best, but also much more where everything has conspired to crush and prevent perseverance and accom- plishment, so will it be in the future.

I recently came across some extraordi- nary illustrations of the power of the will backed up by a religious motive. Among the Hindus of the Malay Peninsula it is the custom of sick people to make a vow to perform some dreadful act of self-discipline or self-torture if recovery is vouchsafed. At an appointed time and place those thus pledged assemble to fulfil their several ob- ligations. The devotees allow their bodies, even in their most sensitive parts, to be pierced with silver stilettos, and in this plight walk a distance of three miles. Others walk the distance in shoes studded with nails that tear the feet. And here is a man who is buried head downwards, power to breathe sufficiently to enable him to pre- [98]

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serve life being afforded by means of a coarse cloth over his head. The tortures of the star chamber can hardly rival these self- imposed horrors, — horrors that are volun- tarily embraced in order that the will may vindicate its honour and its capability be- fore the gods. So many vows begin as a pa- radise and end as a prison. As Burke says : "Ease would retract vows made in pain as violent and void." Nevertheless these fana- tics, as we would call them, play their part without flinching. We can understand, too, something of the spiritual intoxication which results when the obligation is bravely undertaken — there is nothing quite com- parable to it. I suppose that one aspect of a vow is a solemn pledge of the will to it- self, and its fulfilment is an act of loyalty to and respect for the will. The wise man says: When thou vowest a vow unto God,

defer not to pay it Better is it that thou

shoiddest not vow, than that thou shouldest

vow and not pay. His idea is that it will

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grieve God if we pay not ; but there is an- other side to it: it will weaken and insult the will.

It is a far cry from the blind determina- tion of the untutored Oriental to the states- man and scholar with his clear mind and ordered purpose. Yet power of will is not dependent upon ignorant frenzy. Its might as well as its beauty is enhanced by an hon- est alliance with culture and reason. It is less headlong, though more enduring, than the erratic flights of fanaticism.

As splendid a triumph of a trained character as I know is that of the great American statesman, Alexander Hamilton, which by sheer weight of purpose he won over his opponents in the Convention of the State of New York assembled in 1788 to consider the draft of the Constitution. A friend finding him one day alone, "took the liberty to say to him, that they would inquire of me in New York what was the prospect in relation to the adoption of the [ 100 ]

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Constitution; and asked him what I should say to them. His manner immediately changed, and he answered: *God only knows. Several votes have been taken, by which it appears there are two to one against us.'" On a previous occasion he had written: "Two thirds of the Convention and four sevenths of the people are against us." "Supposing he had concluded his an- swer," continues the narrator, " I was about to retire, when he added in a most em- phatic manner: * Tell them that the Conven- tion shall never rise until the Constitution is adopt edy

Hamilton's victory now lives in our na- tional institutions. "On his return to New York it seemed as if a unanimous people had come out to celebrate his victory. It was not only the Convention of Pough- keepsie which had been conquered by his masterful and persuasive influence. The minds also of the men who welcomed him with hymns and banners had been subdued [101 ]

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and fascinated by the dramatic spectacle of a 'visionary young man' struggling against the discipline of overwhelming odds, day after day for six weary weeks, and in the end overcoming all opposition, by the power of a great character strung to its highest pitch by the inspiration of a great idea."^

II

Let us consider now some of the conditions in which the will is most likely to do some- thing worth while and make it a worthy in- strument of a Leader.

1. The will must aim at the seemingly im- possible. It can be at its best, and can bear witness to its capacity, not merely when it is struggling with a difficult task, but when it is bold enough to tackle that which to the ordinary eye appears to be beyond hu- man reach — in short it must will immortal things.

Now to the common breed the unwonted

1 Oliver's Hamilton, pp. 177 fF.

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is the impossible, — things as they have been are sacred and must be held inviolable, and everything but the present order is dis- order. It is the part of a Leader to confute the unbrave and to disregard the worship of things as they are in his essay to reach things as they ought to be. Unknown coun- try may be dangerous ; lions, perhaps, will be in the way. But the Leader sees secu- rity in the midst of danger and rather likes lions. He says in the words of sturdy Israel Putnam when he volunteered to captain a forlorn hope: "I will dare to lead where any dare to follow." Fear impedes the will dreadfully. Fortunately fear shuns analysis and flees before the calm eye of relentless scrutiny. In a Leader it usually runs to one of two extremes — fear of being considered eccentric on the one hand, and fear of be- ing lost in the crowd on the other.

Eccentricity is frequently a brave break- ing away for conscience' sake from popular ignorance. It diminishes the following and [ 103 ]

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makes its advocate unpopular — two conse- quences that in our day of worship of ma- jorities and theoretic belief in democratic infallibihty are hard for a Leader to face. But Christ was eccentric in the eyes of the ultra-conservatives. So was S. Paul. So was WykclifFe. So was Luther. So was Wash- ington. A true Leader must expect at times to be held eccentric in the judgement of the populace. Darwin knew it and was undis- turbed by the onslaught of ignorant critics, though he looked with eagerness for the opinions of those who were in a position to pronounce a verdict.

Antigone, that heroine of antiquity whose fine and genuinely feminine womanhood makes her a pattern for her sex in every age, and whose courage places her in the ranks of Leaders, did not hesitate to step out from the crowd when duty called and bear the charge of eccentricity. She found grounds for added zest in her determination to secure honourable burial for her brother [ 104 ]

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in her sister's opposition and arguments of impossibility.

Is. But you desire impossibilities.

Antig. Wellj when I find I have no power to stir,

I will cease trying. Is. But things impossible

'Tis wrong to attempt at all. -"

Antig. I shall meet with nothing

More grievous at the worst than death.

Poor Ismene is too tame to dare —

I was born too feeble to contend Against the state.

She was of the crowd, when it was the part of greatness to be above it. It is one of the perplexities of a Leader to know when S. he ought to guide and when to be guided. Each one must work it out for himself. Clive once wrote to Warren Hastings: "From the little knowledge I have of you, I am convinced that you have not only abilities and personal resolution, but integ- rity and moderation with regard to riches ; but thought I discovered in you a diffi- dence in your own judgement, and too great

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an easiness of disposition, which may sub- ject you insensibly to be led where you ought to guide. Another evil which may arise from it is, that you may pay too great an attention to the reports of the natives, and be inclined to look upon things in the worst instead of the best light. A proper confidence in yourself, and never-failing hope of success, will be a bar to this, and every other ill that your situation is liable to." Hastings' fault seemed to have been in the direction of being too much of the crowd, and not being ready on occasions to appear eccentric. It is a triumph indeed to be able to think, speak, and act as one amongst others and yet as one in advance of others.

It is not eccentricity when the old centre is false, as it was in the case of the Greek custom against which Antigone revolted. The Leader in reality is striking a new and a true centre by his moving away from the old. The social motive prevents him from [106]

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being separated from the crowd, for he never ceases to try to Hft them to the place where he stands, and his action is not an individual protest so much as a representa- tive and sympathetic service.

On the other hand, the Leader must not fall into the error of supposing that he must ;4^ cultivate a certain aloofness lest he should lose power, or suffer from obscurity in and obliteration by the crowd. He is in danger of being a tyrant who loves to feel the power of his will held as a force over his followers, as a teamster holds his whip over his horses. It is the better part to insinuate it as an influence into the life of the many, so subtly that they will hardly realize the source of their new power. To do this a man must be of the crowd. Oh, the joy of being one of the crowd, close pressed to the whole so that you are to those whose breath is upon your cheek as a vital organ is to the body! You can pass your gifts and life into them as secretly and jubilantly as [ 107 ]

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you choose; so greedy to miss none that you can enfold in the warmth of your pur- pose the least and the greatest ahke — ah, this is to be a Leader! But of all lonely positions that of being in the crowd and not, at least in sympathy, of the crowd is the loneliest. What is the use of strength, of gifts, of graces, if not to endow others with them? Apart from all other consid- erations self-realization is possible only in society, — society viewed in its most magni- ficent breadth including the men of yester- day, to-day, and forever. / saw a multitude which no man could number^ said the most famous of all mystics. There was nothing sectional in his conception of society. S. John knew well enough that though the crowd needs what a Leader can give, the Leader in his turn depends in great mea- sure upon the crowd for the development of his gifts. S. Paul, too, saw the impor- tance of keeping the crowd together. He fought the battle of his life for the estab- [108]

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lishment of a universal society under the unifying power of a universal Leader. How he would have lamented over those churches of to-day which are drawing-rooms of fashion, groups of select philosophers, sec- tarian to the core, whatever their claim to catholicity! The missionary ideal of the times is the truest thing in all the churches, for it at least stands for the conscious unity of the whole crowd, to the uttermost part of the earth.

But with all the insistence that Chris- tianity lays upon the value of being of the crowd, there is no let-up in the realm of in- dividual responsibility. It does not relieve but loads the will, thus silently but elo- quently indicating its latent capacity. It challenges us to attempt the unknown, and men respond by plunging into the gloom of the untried with the same cheerful con- fidence that the Alpine train, emitting a chirpy whistle of confidence, darts into a hole in the mountains. "You are strong. [109]

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Therefore dare" — that is the challenge of Christianity. In sharp distinction stands the wail of Mohammedanism : " God is minded to make his religion light unto you; for man was created weak." ^ The creed of Islam which preaches mediocrity has done little constructive work. It must be so with every belief that underrates the extent of indi- vidual responsibility. The Buddhist world, and generally speaking most Oriental cults, are deficient in definite achievement. The Western world, under the tutelage of a re- ligion that daily aims at the impossible, is the world of achievement, though not what it might be if it had faith as a grain of mustard seed.

After all it is not that we strive to do the impossible, but that which to the self of mere experience looks impossible. This self has valuable lessons to teach, but its pro- vince is the past. The self that sees, that lives ahead of to-day, descries an ideal, —

"^Alkorauy iv.

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that is, an unachieved accompHshment, — and beUeving that what vision lays hold of by anticipation the will can gather into ex- perience, it makes its venture. The higher, tutored self is convinced that that is pos- sible which the lesser self, product as it is of a few days of activity, balks at as be- yond the sphere of endeavour. The human will is just as much the instrument of the greater as of the lesser self. Hence it grows faint and spiritless when it confines its oper- ations to familiar tasks along some rutted road. To prove its supremacy it must de- sert the highway, penetrate the jungle, leap at mountains, breast the rush of rivers. History says it does not do it in vain.

2. The will must win its freedom by acting as if it were free. No one cares to discuss the freedom of the human will except as an aca- demic question fit for fireside argument.

The will of man willing immortal things.

And doing them is the common spectacle of the ages. "The free man is he who can

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control himself, who does not obey every idea as it occurs to him, but weighs and determines for himself, and is not at the mercy of external influences. This is the real meaning of choice and free will. It does not mean that actions are capricious and undetermined; but that they are de- termined by nothing less than the totality of things. They are not determined by the external world alone, so that they can be calculated and predicted from outside: they are determined by self and external world together. A free man is master of his motives, and selects that motive which he wills to obey."^ Fate, environment, here- dity, luck — all that you can conjure up as making against freedom of will — form an ocean through which our will must make its way. We can never change these ad- verse things perhaps; but we can steer a course through their currents. It is a case of the will of the ship, as it were, making

1 Lodge's The Substance of Faith, p. 27.

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the will of the sea stoop to serve it. The pounding waves, the stubborn tides, and the unfriendly winds will that the ship should go in the opposite direction to that in which her course lies. The ship reaches port without the waves having ceased or the currents subsided or the winds died, and yet she arrives where she wills on the bosom of that selfsame sea that threatened her with defeat before she weighed anchor and set sail. She has never left the close embrace of the waters — indeed, to have done so would have meant the surrender of freedom, the defeat of purpose, and the fate of shipwreck. So is it with human life. We cannot get away from the totality of things except by making shipwreck of our- selves. But with the power of the will we can reach the safe harbour that lies east of the shadows, by steering a faithful course through the limitations of time and confine- ment of space.

A Leader must believe that he is mas- [ 113]

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ter of his destiny and cheer his followers into the same belief.

Ill There are two principal directions in which the will finds opportunity for exercise, re- presenting two phases of power — obedi- ence and service, restraint and initiative. The two are not contrary the. one to the other, but the reverse. A Leader must ap- ply himself to both. Indeed, power to do depends upon efficiency in power not to do, which is but another way of expressing the trite saying that he who would com- mand must first learn to obey. Obedience is the school of action.

The earliest period of obedience is coin- cident with that of development where, luxuriant in spirits, we are most anxious to do, to cut all restraints, to be independent. But the reason for it is not difficult to ap- prehend. The philosophy of obedience is that, especially in our formative stage, w^e [ 114]

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lean upon the wisdom and experience of our elders, in order that we may store up that reserve fund of vigour which every one needs for good work. It is not by chance that it is repeatedly poihted out that the commandment of obedience is the com- mandment of vitality. ''Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee'' ''My son, forget not my law; hut let thine heart keep my commandments; for length of days and years of life and peace shall they add to thee'' "Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother ; which is the first commandment with promise; that it may be well with thee, and thou may est live long on the earth." By obedience is meant not mere acquiescence in the commands of another, but a whole-souled embracing of an experienced judgement so that it be- comes as our own. It is a fitting of the life into the supreme order. Doing God's will [ 115 ]

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is, looked at from another angle, receiving God's life so that it becomes our vitality. Obedience, whether to those who are our interpreters of the totality of things, or to God's law as we know it, is the same sort of motion that a babe makes when it nestles closer to its mother's bosom.

But obedience is something more than a temporary agent of vitality, which, having been employed for a while, may be curtly dismissed. It is the preceptor of conserva- tism and a link binding us to the crowd who have achieved. Command, ideally con- sidered, is the handmaid of successful ex- perience and of corporate wisdom. Obedi- ence, likewise ideally viewed, enables us to discern and understand quickly the thoughts, desires, and hopes of mankind. Part of a Leader's duty is to interpret the emotions of the crowd to themselves. But before he can do this he must make their emotions his own. Obedience, then, is a training in delicate sympathy, and, as life [116]

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goes on, becomes under changed conditions the quaUty that enables us to command in so graceful a manner as to give injunction the form of invitation in the eyes of the crowd.

Then comes the sphere of doing, the great world of honourable activity branch- ing out in innumerable directions bewilder- ing in their variety, and yet all waiting to be unified under the reign of the Social Motive. The vitality won in obedience is ready to be shared in service. Motive rises into purpose and is conducted by the will to the goal of achievement. We know what our activity is to be, for the Social Motive has already determined that it must take the form of service, service of a nonsecta- rian character, for the whole crowd. The spirit of the Leader has been so tuned to humanity by obedience that he enters his sphere of service as one entering the house of friends. He does not view the crowd as aliens and ingrates, but as men of his own

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family, children of a common Father, and so service takes on at once something of the form of privilege.

The exact spot in the crowd toward which a Leader should direct his steps is not al- ways easy to determine. Obviously, you say, to where the need is greatest. That is true enough. The greatest Leader is he who has ability to help the weakest and most neglected and least to the uttermost, and to turn in their direction the aid of his own strength together with that of others of the crowd who are strong. But where to stand in order best to accomplish this end is a problem more easy to propound than to solve. Each man must determine it for him- self, remembering that when the great group together congestion ensues; when the small group together impoverishment ensues. In some way congestion must be brought over against impoverishment so as to dissipate the one and the other social disease.

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Without the great, the small Make the tower but feeble wall; And happiest ordered were that state Where small are companied with great, Where strong are propped by weak.^

So Sophocles saw it.

Jesus, the strong Son of God, was always found among the people. The great and the wealthy sometimes sought Him out, but they looked for Him where they found Him — in the crowd. And much of the time, too, He was with the worst of the crowd, giving them His best and pointing them to the highest.

If the structure of society is good, then a man should not be averse to committing himself and his fortunes to any part of it where opportunity seems to lie — the stronger and more privileged his person- ality the more willing should he be to en- ter into the distressed sections. As the case stands, those are in the hard places who have the least powers of resistance, and

1 Ajax.

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the privileged have an excess of protection which means of course over-indulgence and weakness. On the one hand, there is too heavy a burden of discipline under which lives break, and on the other, such a strained effort to gain a full share of the world's joy and to shut out all that is possible of its sorrow, as amply to account for the mo- ral and spiritual defection among the chil- dren of the rich. " You cannot train great men if their whole lives are to be one long protracted good time." When I think of the unprotected girls and the fight they put up against the wiles and attacks, not only of their own conditions, but also of those who are strong, and yet who in the face of it all preserve womanly integrity, my heart throbs with joy at the splendour of human life — and at the same time aches with indignation at the ignominy of man- hood, that in its strength does less than protect the weak.

The world is waiting for men endowed [ 120 ]

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with the gift of Leadership, who will show their sense of vocation by ruling out of their lives all interests that promote sec- tionalism and increase congestion, by re- jecting as impossible for themselves occu- pations which cannot be brought into cap- tivity to the Social Motive, and by a rough lack of reverence for so crude and unlovely a thing as our present order — men who will not hesitate to close the doors of pri- vilege against themselves, if, in so doing, they see an opportunity of serving the masses. We can live this life but once, as has often been said, and it is only common sense to live it for all that it is worth, and in a way that would count even if death were to close accounts forever. If it is a thing of value and of power, let us test its capacity to the breaking point and to the finish. "Enter not into temptation" may mean for many of us, and must mean for some of us, an invitation away from much that is comfortable and pleasant — certainly [ 121 ] "^

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for all who possess, a call from the worship of prosperity and isolated luxury into mo- deration in living and the companionship of the crowd. We who are rich have yet to learn the lesson of high thinking and plain living enjoined by the Concord philoso- phers— and, if I may venture on the cor- rection, '*eat bread and pulse at the ^oor mans table." It is not an ecclesiastical whim that leads to the vow of poverty, celibacy, and obedience, but stirrings of the instinct for Leadership, demanding for itself free- dom, fellowship, and whole-hearted service. It frequently loses its purity of motive when it assumes professional shape. But if it is done under the domination of the So- cial Motive, it cannot fail in its end.

Society should be the weak man's castle. It is in large measure his snare. Think of the men who have gone to the wilderness because they were sore beset by tempta- tion! It is creditable to them — but what a commentary on society! Consideration for [ 122 ]

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the weakest always has been a sign that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. When the King came ''the bruised reed did he not break, the smoking flax did he not quench'' " The people which sat in darkness saw a great light. And to them which sat in the re- gion and shadow of deaths to them did light spring up.'' ''The Lord hath built up Zion. He hath appeared in his glory; he hath re- garded the prayer of the destitute, and hath despised not their prayer." " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor ; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. . . . This day is this scripture fulfllled in your ears." It has been made clear by Jesus that the best is not only within the reach of the worst, but is pre- pared for them if they will but claim it, and it is for the stewards in whose keeping the [ 123 ]

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best is to go out and meet the worst while they are still a long way off, and conduct them to their heritage. We have power to do this if we will to do it.

Need I repeat so obvious a truth? — all this means suffering. The will to do in- volves the will to suffer — which is much more than mere willingness : / lay down my life. . . . No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself, I have power to lay it down. Leadership means pain. Yes, more than that — the greater the servant the

greater the sufferer. Behold, my servant

He was despised, and rejected of men: a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief

lie who did most^ shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most weak.

In suggesting this, and its corollary that the fiercest tempest of pain that ever beat, or could beat, on a Leader of men is power- less to undo or weaken him, but on the contrary gives him a new coign of advan- tage for the exercise of his Leadership — [ 124 ]

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/, if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all men unto me. This he said signifying what death he should die — in this testimony, I say, I have borne true and sufficient wit- ness to the Power of the Human Will.

Our wills are ours, we know not how. Our wills are ours, to make them Thine.

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One that hath been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Heb, iv. 15.

And so the Word had breath, and wrought

With human hands the creed of creeds

In loveliness of perfect deeds. More strong than all poetic thought.

Tennyson I charge thee in the sight of God . . . that thou keep the com- mandment without spot, without reproach.

1 Tim. vi. 12.

How very hard it is to be

A Christian! Hard for you and me,

— Not the mere task of making real

That duty up to its ideal.

Effecting, thus complete and whole,

A purpose of the human soul —

For that is always hard to do;

But hard, I mean, for me and you

To realize it, more or less.

With even the moderate success

Which commonly repays our strife

To carry out the aims of life.

And the sole thing that I remark Upon the difficulty, this: We do not see it where it is. At the beginning of the race; As ive proceed it shifts its place. And where we looked for crowns to falU We find the tug''s to come, — that^s all.

Browning

For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.

John xvii. 19.

LECTURE IV THE POWER OF THE BLAMELESS LIFE

THE quotations with which I intro- duce this Lecture indicate respec- tively the ideal, the duty, the difficulty, and the social value of the Blameless Life, which is the third qualification for a Leader that we shall consider. We have thus far given our attention to singleness of motive, which attains its highest influence as the Social Motive, and the Power of the Hu- man Will which, wedded to the proper mo- tive, finds expression in service, especially in lending aid to the weakest and least, that they may receive a full share of the best there is. The next topic in logical order is righteousness, for the first and greatest fruit of the alliance between motive and will is blamelessness, moral integrity, in short, character, first ideally then actually. It is the principle of progress toward per-

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fection that is hardly less marked a feature of nature than its unity.

Few men can speak from the standpoint of attainment on more than a very limited degree of righteousness, so lofty is the alti- tude of its possibilities. But any one of an honest and sensitive disposition is aware that it is hard for him to pitch the reach- able ideal too high, not only or chiefly be- cause he sees that the glory of history con- sists in the number of its saints, but also because he knows from his own experience that the shame of history consists in the fewness of its saints. He is deeply alive to the fact that his moral incompleteness is due to his own fault and to no other cause. The highest ideal he can unfold is that which ought to have been — and as he fondly hopes may yet be — his actual char- acter. Somehow, too, it is only when one takes the "prodigal- son attitude" toward his own case that the best robe, the ring, and the rest, seem possible for oneself and [ 130 ]

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for others. It is in this spirit that I desire to treat the subject of the blameless life.

I

It is my conviction that aspiration toward virtue is a fundamental appetite of human life everywhere, and that the beatitude, Blessed are they that hunger and thirst af- ter righteousness, is indicative of a univer- sal characteristic as common as the physi- cal phenomena which form its analogue.

There are, I believe, peoples so low in the human scale as to feel the attractive power of the character of Jesus as little as a deaf man the beauty of a Beethoven sonata. Even after years of continuous teaching there seems to be little or no improvement, and an impatient judgement attributes it to lack of capacity. This is quite contrary to my own experience, and I quote it only be- cause fairness requires that I should do so, as there seem to be some well authenti- cated instances. Moral perception may be [ isi ]

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in an embryonic state and requires a long treatment before it awakens, but I am con- vinced the capacity always exists. Such cases are so rare, too, that it seems as though the explanation might be found in some obscure, moral disease, which stubbornly suppresses the appetite for advancement. My own experience and observation among those who are counted at the bottom of humanity's ladder are of a very different sort. Among as primitive people as you will find anywhere in the world to-day, I have been surprised at the quickness with which not only moral perception, but even moral sensitiveness, is developed. This is espe- cially true of the boys with whom I have had to do. A real appetite for righteousness is rapidly manifested, and in a few short years those who were formerly untutored savages find their delight, like the Psalmist, in God's law.

Perhaps a still stronger indication of the hold which moral integrity has upon our [ 132 ]

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deeper self is the homage paid by evil livers to moral beauty. A common mob will ap- plaud the hero and hiss the villain on the stage, though this perhaps is due in part to the environment of material attractiveness in which goodness finds its setting, and the unreal ugliness with which evil is endowed in the drama. At any rate there we see an emotional appreciation of virtue. But there is something more worthy of attention in the case of a person who is delinquent in duty, who is consciously and deliberately bad perhaps, and yet who at the very mo- ment that he is ridiculing or opposing a righteous course with his lips is paying homage in his heart to the doer. He has a sense of shame for his own life, sufficient to give an uneasy conscience, though not enough to check his career. In the Anti- gone there is a beautiful illustration of this. Ismene has exhausted her arguments against her sister's determination to secure honourable burial for Polynices, and Anti- [ 133 ]

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gone is turning away to carry out her lov- ing purpose. Ismene impatiently exclaims, as one who has been defeated in debate and could easily descend to abuse:

Then go, if you will have it ; and take this with you, You go on a fool's errand.

But no sooner does the brave Antigone de- part than her sister adds:

Lover true To your beloved, none the less, are you!

Here we have, without going any further, a striking instance of the power of blame- lessness and honour.

So strong is the moral appetite that it is difficult to destroy it, even in those cases where the depth of ignominy is magnified by the fact that the fall was from the height of opportunity. The poor profligate you can pick up any day in the purlieus of the North End or on the benches of the Common holds something more than maud- lin emotionalism in his assertion that he does desire better things and is resolved to [ 134 ]

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abandon his downward course. In most if not all such cases — and I have dealt with not a few men of this t}^e — there is a glim- mer of aspiration at least. In other words the hunger and thirst after righteousness is still alive.

I must not disguise the fact that I find it difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between the ethical content of revealed and that of natural religion. It appears to be a matter of degree — the curriculum of a higher or lower school. Natural rehgion stops short of refinements, but it supplies the raw material out of which, and the basis upon which, Christian character is constructed. Anima Chiistiana naturaliter is true ethically as well as devotionally. Indeed I find myself less and less able to draw any sharp dividing line between na- tural and revealed religion, not because the study of comparative religions has led me to believe that all religions are natural, so much as that all are revealed. Certainly [ 135 J

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family likenesses show them to be from a single source, all of them forming, each in its own way, a preparation for and so in- volving a relation to Christianity, the ful- filling religion.

Both in history and individual experience the intrinsic beauty of righteousness is felt before its power to transform us into its likeness. We are drawn by its attractive face, as men without developed skill in exe- cuting art, yet with artistic souls, are drawn to a painting or a statue. So it is that a cor- rupt nation may have an ethical code of extraordinary beauty, and a person of very loose life an ideal of high order. But the one and the other keep it as we keep a por- trait on the wall — merely a thing to look at and admire. Better still, the situation is comparable to persons who being within sight of food are out of reach of it, or though in full view of the rich man's table, feed on the crumbs that fall from it.

Human life considered in its entirety has [136]

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a strong intuitive admiration for righteous- ness. We are steeped in a sort of subcon- scious conviction that there is a certain completeness of personaUty or character that constitutes normaUty in man, just as we have the same feehng regarding phy- sique— witness the work of the Greek sculp- tors— or plant life. It exists first as a matter offitness,beauty,satisfaction,withoutknow- ledge on our part why it should be so. Its beauty antedates its utility or implication of personal obligation. It is an ideal com- pleteness that attracts us like that of a rose without blemish. But it is only thus that it begins. It eventually creates a sense of responsibility. An ethic a little in advance of our own pulls us toward it, and so the ex- ceptional becomes the normal, and blame- lessness a progressive phenomenon. It is that aspiration which in nature I have called struggle toward perfection, and which im- pels the lower to conform itself to the more advanced type, making the world the place [ 137 ]

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of bloom and beauty and progress that it is. If sin is reversion to a lower type after we have known a higher, blamelessness is steady movement from good to better in an endless chain of improvement, the aban- donment of the high for the higher, of the better for the best.

The development of ethics is a human development. There is a similarity of fun- damental ethics all the world over. Even where there could not have been corre- spondence between race and race this is so. It has been as much a feature of history as the universality of language and govern- ment wherever there are people. The ele- ments of ethics are the same wherever and whenever they have found expression. Long before the codification by Moses of the "Ten Words" their substance was understood by serious men of advanced moral sense. This is not a theory, but a fact of history. The Hammurabi code gives the essence of the Decalogue, showing that centuries be- [ 138 ]

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fore the Mosaic enactment it was the ideal of Oriental people.

The occupation of Moses on the moun- tain during his forty days of solitude is not hard to understand. He was in correspond- ence with God in His aspect as the Holy One, who taught His servant the meaning of personal holiness. Moses was in retire- ment, not to become a machine to accom- plish a task of recording, or a human der- rick to carry down heavy bits of graven stone for the edification of his fellows. He was alone with God to get understanding and holiness for himself in order that he might extend it to the world. He gathered the precepts of holiness into his own soul and made them consciously the law of his personal life, so that when he reappeared it was startlingly manifest to all that there was a new inner light in their Leader's character. He had risen from a haphazard groping after righteousness to a systematic adoption of it, in such a measure of com- [ 139 ]

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pleteness as, at that moment, he was capa- ble of apprehending. He focused during his retreat the moral law in "Ten Words" and surrendered himself to their rule. He married the virtues to one another and inaugurated a new era in which isolated bits of goodness could not be mistaken for the whole. The necessity of this was borne in upon his soul by looking at God in His moral wholeness or holiness, and by his ex- perience with human nature as he found it in himself, and the silly sheep of whom he was pastor.

Beauty, utility, and expediency inter- twined in his consciousness as the tables of the law took definite shape. The law came from above as an ideal, but its exact form was determined by utility, and expediency, the needs of man as JNIoses saw them at that time, otherwise immediately the sixth commandment would have been "Thou shalt not be angry," and the seventh " Thou shalt not lust after a woman in thy heart;" [ 140 ]

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indeed the negative form of the Decalogue further indicates utihty as their part origin ; they were defences erected in a besieged city. The social need of the moment re- quired abstinence from murder and the most aggressive form of lust, hence the shape and terms of the injunctions.

The prophets moved alongthe same lines as JNIoses in dealing with ethics, only they went deeper. They summarized the law: What doth the Lor d require ofthee.but to do justly^ and to love mercy, and to walk hum- bly with thy God? They dealt with motives: Rend your heart and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God. They outlined positive virtues: Is not this the fast that I have chosen ? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke ? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungi^y, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and [ 141 ]

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that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?

There is this to be noted in the Old Testa- ment ethics that self-interest, individual and national, is mainly the motive appealed to — either to save the soul alive, or for prosperity's sake, the particular phase of righteousness being expounded is enjoined. Be ye holy, for I your God am holy, is there, but it is not in the foreground.

Turning from the religion of Israel to other ethnic religions, a similar high regard for righteousness and a more or less clear ethical programme are to be found. As for Buddhism, w^hatever Gautama may or may not have taught, he roused in his foUow^ers such a refined appreciation of righteousness, that among the Pali scriptures we find some of the most attractively stated ethical pre- cepts in literature.^ The Buddhist call to

1 See the Dhammapada ; also the Introduction to the Jdtaka. Arnold's Light of Asia is not a good guide to Buddhistic phi- losophy. It imports into Buddhism too much of the Christian motive of which the religion is quite empty. However, see Note p. 249-254.

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self-obliteration has no parallel in history save that of Jesus. But it must be noted that self-interest is at its core. Release from perplexity and toil and unpleasantness is the motive. In Oriental judgement salva- tion consists in the total suppression of selfhood and absorption into some ideal whole where self is nought and the whole is all. So far as salvation, considered as an individual reward, is the Christian incen- tive, we have something not wholly dissim- ilar, the distinction being that our idea of salvation embraces the jealous preservation of personal identity in and through social completeness. The passive Oriental disposi- tion, with unquenchable racial and corpo- rate convictions, of necessity formulates a different conception of bliss from that of the strenuous, individualistic Anglo-Saxon. The Confucian system is not wanting in high ethical thought. "The principle of the measuring square" is so advanced as to be worthy of the characterization sometimes [ 143 ]

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given to it of a negative statement of the Golden Rule.^ In the Analects^ the idea of reciprocity is advanced. " What you do not want done to yourself do not do to others." Probably the last place that we would look for high moral teaching is the Koran. Nevertheless there we find it in flashes amidst pages of almost unintelligible maun- derings. "It is not righteousness that ye turn your faces in prayer towards the East and the West, but righteousness is of him who believeth in God and the last day, and the angels, and the Scriptures, and the prophets : who giveth money for God's sake unto his kindred, and unto orphans, and

1 Found in the Great Learning^ Commentary, x : "What a man dishkes in his superiors, let him not display in the treatment of his inferiors ; what he dislikes in inferiors, let him not dis- play in his service of his superiors ; what he dislikes in those who are before him, let him not therewith precede those who are behind him ; what he dislikes in those who are behind him, let him not therewith follow those who are before him ; what he dislikes to receive on the right, let him not bestow on the left ; what he dislikes to receive on the left, let him not be- stow on the right — this is what is called the principle with which, as with a measuring square, to regulate one's conduct."

2 Book V. 11; XV. 23.

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the needy, and the stranger, and those who ask, and for redemption of captives; who is constant at prayer and giveth alms ; and of those who perform their covenant when they have covenanted, and who behave themselves patiently in ad versity, and hard- ships, and in time of violence."^ "Clothe not the truth with vanity, neither conceal the truth against your own knowledge."^ Mohammed's followers claim for him, as the devotees of most cults claim for their respective founders, advanced righteous- ness. They "speak much of his religious and moral virtues ; as his piety, veracity, justice, liberality, clemency, humility, and abstinence. His charity, in particular, they say, was so conspicuous that he had seldom any money in his house, keeping no more for his own use than was just sufficient to maintain his family; and he frequently spared even some part of his own provi- sions to supply the necessities of the poor ;

^ Alkoran, chap. ii. entitled "The Cow." ^ Ibid.

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SO that before the year's end he had gener- ally little or nothing left: 'God,' says al Bokhari, * offered him the keys of the trea- sures of the earth, but he would not accept them.'"^

It would be aside from my purpose in this hasty survey of great religions to give more extended quotations, or to examine into the merits of Mohammed's character. The sole point I wish to make is, that human nature as such is drawn toward righteous- ness, and that moral integrity is held by the crowd to be an essential characteristic for a Leader. Either he has virtue, or else it is attributed to him by his followers.

II

Then Jesus Christ came. While He clarified, deepened, and focused ethical thought, the great thing that He did — that which sepa- rates Him from all ethical teachers before or since — was to give it a universal, endur-

1 Sale's Preliminary Discourse to the Koran, p. 32.

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ing dynamic, putting it within reach of the least, and the weakest, and the worst ; and to impart to it one motive for all. So far as "focusing" is concerned I cannot agree with Maeterlinck, who says: "Whatever the absolute moralists may say, as soon as one is no longer among equal con- sciences, every truth, to produce the effect of truth, requires focusing; and Jesus Christ Himself was obliged to focus the greater part of those which He revealed to His disciples, for, had He been addressing Plato or Seneca, instead of speaking to fishers of Galilee, He would probably have said to them things different from those which He did say."^ There is such a thing as a uni- versal tongue, and it was in terms of this tongue that Jesus taught. He could speak in no other language, for He was the Uni- versal Man. In addressing the woman of Samaria, S. Peter, or the crowd. He was addressing man, and chose His thought

1 Essay on Sincerity in the Double Garden, § ii.

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accordingly. If Plato and Seneca had been near Him and He had spoken to them, it would have been in terms not less intelligi- ble or suited to the crowd than those which He actually used ; that is to say, the focus- ing would have been just as intense and just as pertinent to universal need as what has come down to us, whatever His words. But I desire to give special attention to the more important features of His contribu- tion to ethics, — 1. Dynamic; 2. Motive.

1. Jesus expressed this dynamic first of all in terms of His own human experience. Whatever we may think of His teaching, and of the exposition of His teaching by His most intimate friends and companions, no one can dispute His loyalty to His pre- cepts. There is no hiatus, large or small, be- tween His life and His spoken exposition of what life should be. He makes to-day, after nearly threescore generations of cri- tics have studied His career, and with the same result, the boldest challenge that ever [ 148 ]

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escaped human lips — Which of you convict- eth me of sin? We may be confused in the metaphysic of His person, but we have no doubt that He achieved His ideal to the uttermost. He stood blameless at the be- ginning, and as He stood He stands. He teaches from the first that righteousness is not in word, but in power.

And so the Word had breath, and wrought With human hands the creed of creeds In loveliness of perfect deeds.

More strong than all poetic thought.

The "Ten Words" become one Word in Jesus Christ and spell Perfection.

Further let it be noted that the dynamic was expressed in terms of common life. Jesus was not an ecclesiastic. The ecclesias- tics did Him to death. He never held any official position. He was, as we would say, a layman, ^ — and so is the layman's pattern. The virtues which He portrays by living them are the layman's virtues. His teach- ing carries weight not because He has a

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position, but because He has a character of authority, that is, a character that has al- ready hved the teaching. He spent thirty years of labour upon Himself for the sake of others, and then took a holiday of three years from the carpenter's shop to teach the life He had learned to live, by giving public exposition of it. The Lord's Prayer, for instance, is so called not because He taught it, but because He prayed it into its concise perfection, and when His followers asked Him for help in prayer He was able to give it promptly from His own experi- ence. It is interesting to find in one of the novels of the day ^ the following passage : "*Why should not the saint of the future be a layman?' *I believe he will be,' ex- claimed Padre Salvati. The enthusiastic Don Fare, on the contrary, was convinced that he would be a Sovereign Pontiff." Benedetto tried to be an ecclesiastic, but his virtues were not of the order that the

1 II Santo, pp. 63, 64.

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ecclesiastics required, so they thrust him out of their midst — just as the Holy Office a little later treated the book that exalted these virtues.

When we scrutinize the lives of other ethical teachers and leaders somethirtg is always lacking ; either there is the little rift that damages all the music, or some glar- ing inconsistency, whether the person con- cerned is Moses, or Gautama, or the latest philosopher. If the observer chances to think that in this case or that there is an exception, he has but to ask, to be told by the person concerned that something is lacking. No one except Jesus has ever been able to say: "In me promise and fulfil- ment have met together. I am what I ought to have been." This is in part to be ac- counted for by the fact that the dynamic necessary for the fulfilment of teaching has been looked for from some external source, in the code itself generally. It is this that has been the bane of Christianity. Practical [ 151 ]

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ethics have singular beauty, and of course beauty is an aspect of power. A newly formulated code possesses, too, the win- someness of novelty. But wherever depend- ence is placed upon the code for dynamic, strength will fail as we grow familiar with the beauty of the code and the novelty of expression fades. As a matter of fact, is it not so that all, or practically all, modern philosophers with a high ethical code whether utilitarian, or pragmatic, or ration- alistic, or idealistic, who teach dogmatically and expect this system or that to take the place of rehgion, get their ability to be moderately true to their tenets in their own lives from some form of traditional or or- thodox Christianity learned in childhood ? They expect others to get a dynamic from philosophy which it is not, and never has been, in the power of philosophy to give. It is different with Jesus Christ and His teaching. The power is resident in the per- son, whatever impetus may be had from the [ 15^ ]

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appeal of the code. Christianity is built, I will not say on dynamic rather than on righteousness, but on dynamic anterior to righteousness, or at least coincident with it. " Life " is the watchword of Christianity. In Mm was life; and the life was the light of men; I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life; I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly. It was not until the dynamic of the Resurrection was let loose upon the disciples that, although filled with appreciation of the beauty of their Master's moral appeal, even the greatest of them was able to say, / can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth vie.

The dynamic revealed in the person of Jesus Christ is for universal use. In order to declare its full force He placed it over against the hardest proposition that life contains — the man who had known better, had had high privilege, and had dishon- oured all. You see I cannot help running into the "prodigal- son attitude" at every [ 153 ]

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turn in the road! Jesus proceeds to pro- claim that not the sackcloth and ashes of past failure, but the fair garment of right- eousness is the Christian's heritage. Nor is that garment one of forensic pardon or im- puted goodness, but goodness achieved by the unconquerable, all-conquering dynamic of eternal life. The dynamic that makes this possible is imperishable because it is organic ; it is the dynamic of sonship.

It is true enough that Christianity has as yet produced no character equal to that of its Founder ; but Christianity is very young still and just beginning to understand itself. Even so history has a fair sprinkling of characters so v^onderful that they are se- cond only to Jesus, and as for those who, but for the Gospel, so far from attaining a high degree of righteousness, would have been wrecks and failures, they are count- less. Then there are those other some who in penitence move on from strength to strength of blamelessness. Their past per- [ 154 ]

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haps blocks the way to immediate achieve- ment, but their penitence is undoing the past — penitence that sine qua non of hu- man life by which the days that are gone and the deeds that are done are remoulded and their eternal aspect reversed or puri- fied, and through the exercise of which we announce ourselves to be morally responsi- ble beings. Penitence is simply being abso- lutely sincere with oneself.

The Christian dynamic expresses itself only in terms of effort and is never dis- couraged by failure. No one from Jesus to ourselves has achieved or even known the meaning of power without struggle. I would like to repudiate the idea that saints are built that way from the first. As Ben Jon- son said of a poet — '*A good poet's made, as well as born" — so I say of a good man. Aptitude for goodness does not count much compared with struggle for goodness, and aptitude itself is of no account whatever without struggle. Jesus gives us a glimpse [ 155 ]

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of His own struggle which is typical not only of one experience, but also of His whole career. The picture He paints is in high colour and is not intended to be dis- sected too minutely or interpreted too lit- erally. What He would say to us through it is that He won gloriously through struggle, that He was not a demigod, but man. It is significant that the only two bits of auto- biography He has left us — the Wilderness and Gethsemane — are the record of fierce battle and conquest with weapons such as are at our disposal.

In a popular novel we are told that Washington "was not a man of genius, therefore fell into none of the pitfalls of that terrible gift ; he was great by virtue of his superhuman moral strength, — and it is safe to say that in public life he never ex- perienced a temptation, — by a wisdom no mental heat ever unbalanced, by an unri- valled instinct for the best and most use- ful in human beings, and by a public con- [156]

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science to which he would have unhesitat- ingly sacrificed himself and all he loved, were it a question of the nation's good."^ It is psychological nonsense to say that "in public life he never experienced a temptation." A man's vocation is invariably the sphere of his temptation. Washington's temper and pride both assailed him in public life, but he, not they, won the battle. Nor did Phillips Brooks without many a fight, and here and there a fall, reach the moral greatness that distinguished his char- acter. The reality of his struggle and the enduring and profound character of his penitence are reflected in a line of a late .^ sonnet from his hand, as distinctly as the forest in the mirror of the lake at its feet. The line runs — he is speaking about his house —

Where rests the shadow of my sin.

I refer to Washington and Phillips Brooks not only because they are near-by

1 The Conqueror, p. 323.

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men, but also because they are as truly saints as others of much higher ecclesiasti- cal fame. It is largely because the average person thinks of the yesterday saints as be- ing in a class by themselves, "born saints," that it is necessary to assert that the to-day saints are as real as the yesterday saints and in no wise inferior to them. It is hard to convince people that yesterday saints became saints by struggle, and it is equally hard to convince them that to-day saints are saints at all.

2. Jesus added a new motive to ethics. The beauty of this motive — I have already defined it as the Social Motive — consists not so much in its novelty as in its com- prehensiveness and generosity. It includes all that is good in existing motives and re- arranges the perspective of the moral land- scape. Self-interest and utility and expe- diency are all changed by being related to a central point, which heightens the value of all and destroys none. Self-interest, for [ 158 1

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instance, is not decried. It is taken out of isolation. Self-interest must be multiplied until it reaches beyond the fragment of humanity where it begins, to the whole of humanity. "Love yourself," is selfishness only when we fail to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. In the earlier stages of the development of ethical thought a neighbour was the man sitting in the / nearest chair; now he is the man, where- ever, whoever, he may be. Personal rewards are held out to the faithful, but they are not rewards to be competed for, or which will set a man above his brother; rather are they such as get their highest value from being possessed by the many.

Utility and expediency are matters of moment. God's commandments have prac- tical value here and now, not excepting humility, that forms the only means by which a Leader can always be of the crowd. Obedience is a source of vitality. Cleanli- ness began, among some peoples at any [159]

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rate, as a divine discipline and is now accepted as a commonplace of decency. Meekness is a powerful factor in the con- trol of others.

It's better being good than bad, It's safer being meek than fierce, It's fitter being sane than mad.

Doubtless many virtues came into play un- der the stimulus of expediency, but this does not make them any the less divine. Christianity in its ethical entirety has never been tried on a large scale or for an ex- tended period, but experience in a small way seems to indicate that the least pre- cept of its Founder will prove to be of immediate utility when the whole of His code is accepted con amove.

But lest we should lose sight of the main question in glancing at side issues, let us return to the Social Motive. It takes the righteousness of the individual and makes it the great instrument of influence, so that we aim at self-sanctifi cation to promote [ 160]

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the sanctification of mankind — Fo7^ their sokes I sanctify myself that they also may be sanctified,

III

A Leader must conform his hfe to the highest ethics. The power that integrity- sets in operation is too intangible to analyze with ease, but there is no power on earth that is more electrical in its action. And in Christian countries it is more and more re- quired of public men that they should have character. The framework of society is con- structed on the supposition that those who are administering trusts are sound morally, and when the popular confidence is shaken the whole structure totters. Moral qualifi- cations in a competition for office are always looked for and discussed, so that those who do not possess them, attempt to counterfeit them in order to win support from the peo- ple. But reputation without character is as empty of power as a valise which, though [161 ]

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well pasted over with foreign labels, has never been further than from Boston to New York, is innocent of travel. On the other hand character without reputation is a power like the cool breeze on a tropical day. It steals in and refreshes life without telling its name or source. A good charac- ter is in itself a social service.

Whatever may have been the loose and ill-balanced conceptions of past genera- tions, genius cannot now claim exemption from the highest moral principles with im- punity. Under the influence of his grief Wordsworth wrote in poetic form of the dying statesman, Charles James Fox —

And many thousands now are sad : — Wait for the fulfilment of their fear; For he must die who is their stay. Their glory disappear.

It is doggerel, but I quote it to give a cotemporary's evidence of the popular at- titude. But listen to the melancholy verdict of to-day on this man whose genius had

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not the lifelong support of his integrity: "We have no desire to condemn Fox be- cause of the excesses of his life, and we are aware that profligates have by no means always been incapable of making sacrifices for high causes. In Fox's case, however, the unbridled indulgence of his passions had hardened all within and petrified the feeling to such an extent that he had be- come incapable of great actions, though, we admit, not of great speeches. When it was proposed to Cromwell that Charles II should marry his daughter, and as his suc- cessor unite the warring elements in the state, Cromwell cut short the proposal with the remark: * He is so damnably debauched that he would undo us all.'"^

It is with regret that one finds the fol- lowing passage in Mrs. Atherton's eulogy of Hamilton: "To expect a man of Ham- ilton's order of genius to keep faith with one woman for a lifetime would be as un-

1 The Spectator, September 15, 1906.

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reasonable as to look for such genius with- out the transcendent passions which are its furnace."^ Suffice it to say that we shall ex- pect of such geniuses, should they appear in our day, the commonest precepts of de- cency and fidelity. Nor have we such a poor opinion of Betsy Schuyler's womanhood as to write her down the moral monstrosity that the authoress makes her when she says that the knowledge of Hamilton's faults "did not detract from her happiness." Whatever Hamilton did or did not do, he marred his extraordinary influence by scan- dalous behaviour, and gave the woman who had taken him **for better, for worse," the worse rather than the better, to her infeli- city and his shame. That he had transcen- dent passions is undoubted, for they are the inevitable concomitant of creative genius. But the aids and incentives to tame them exceed greatly that which ordinary men possess. When Hamilton was found out he

1 The Conqueror^ p. 290.

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was manly enough to meet his shame squarely, and tacitly acknowledge his moral responsibility. He would be the first one to repudiate such a sentiment as his over- enthusiastic champion utters, if he could speak to us. The Greek gods are dead, and all excuses of divine lust are an anachro- nism.

I am alive to the fact that I am not giv- ing utterance to a conceit of my own in speaking as I do. The people, though mak- ing no claim to advanced virtue for them- selves, and gentle to a fault when one of the crowd goes far astray, are keen critics of those who in any sense may be classed as Leaders. Because it is not the custom to analyze character in the presence of the person concerned we are apt to live in blissful self-deceit that concludes that we have not been found out in our foibles, frailties, and sins. But the scrutinizing eyes of the people have been busy, and there are few of us indeed who have not long [165]

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since been found out in those very imper- fections we are most sure no one has de- tected. The more conspicuous a man's vo- cation and the more intimately it is related to the public, the more searching the judgement he undergoes, the more insistent the demand that he conform his life to a high standard. Dr. Nitobe, of Kyoto Im- perial University, recently said that hither- to "Japan has been what the Germans call a *Rechtstaat,' a legally organized state, a skeleton with little or no moral flesh on it. And it is to Christianity that we must look to give us the moral flesh. It is as a state, and not as a society, that we have made changes and progress, and now the time has come to make changes in society. This is dependent on the personal character of those in places of Leadership and authority, and personal character is best improved or changed by Christianity. That people in general believe that Christianity is the best form of character is evidenced by the fact [ 166 ]

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SO many of the characters in popular Japa- nese novels and dramas are Christian."^

The history of our own country bears witness to the truth of Dr. Nitobe's con- tention. When we review the hves of our great men we love to linger over their moral worth. Lincoln's statesmanship is a great heritage, but his rugged honesty a greater. He was a shepherd who fed his flock according to the integrity of Ms heart; and guided them by the skilfulness of his hands — and in that order. As a lawyer, he "never knowingly undertook a case in which justice was on the side of his oppo- nent. That same inconvenient honesty which prompted him, in his storekeeping days, to close the shop and go in search of a woman he had innocently defrauded of a few ounces of tea while weighing out her groceries, made it impossible for him to do his best with a poor case. " ^ As a conspicuous

1 East and West, October, 1906, p. 389.

2 The School Boy's Life of Lincoln, p. 66.

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Leader he was able to say to lawyers : " Per- suade your neigh hours to compromise when- ever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser — in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peace- maker the lawyer has a superior opportu- nity of being a good man."^ Or if we turn to the great Confederate general, Robert E. Lee, again we find integrity mounting above all other considerations, so that after the war, at a time when he was in penury, he refused the offer of a large sum of money if he would allow his name to be used in connection with a business concern, with the remark that "it was not his habit to re- ceive money except for services rendered." Both these men were blameless not merely when judged by the ethics of their day, but by the more absolute standards. They lived in advance of current ethics, and so, to quote a fine phrase, "practised immortality."

1 The School Boy's Life of Lincoln, p. 67.

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We have considered blamelessness as being a qualification demanded of Leaders by the crowd. Let us bring the considera- tion of this topic to a close by viewing it as a conscious source of power to the Leader. He knows that it cannot fail of its effect, because man was made for righteous- ness. But more than that, he is aware that it is necessary to him in order that he may be at his best. We can bear other people's sins without breaking under them, but, by some strange law, we cannot bear our own. A free conscience is one of the greatest conservers of vitality that human personality possesses. Phillips Brooks once said to a friend "with great solemnity, ' How wretched I should be if I felt that I was carrying about with me any secret which I should not be willing that all the world should know!'"^ Yes, not merely "wretched," but fettered, for everyone that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin,

1 Life of Phillips Brooks^ vol. ii. p. 778.

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Now to be a Leader it is first of all requisite that a man should be free.

[170]

LECTURE V

Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can

meet — Closer is He than breathing^ and nearer than hands and feet.

Tennyson

Loud mockers in the roaring street Say Christ is crucified again: Twice pierced His gospel-hearing feet. Twice broken His great heart in vain.

I hear and to myself I smile.

For Christ talks with me all the while.

Le Gallienne

Q. What do you understand by prayer?

A . I understand that when our spirits are attuned to the Spirit of righteousness, our hopes and aspirations exert an in- fluence far beyond their conscious range, and in a true sense bring us into communion with our Heavenly Father. This power of filial Communion is called prayer ; it is an attitude of min- gled worship and supplication ; v)e offer petitions in a spirit of trust and submission, and endeavour to realize the Divine at- tributes with the help and example of Chi'ist.

Lodge

LECTURE V

THE POWER OF FELLOWSHIP WITH THE DIVINE

WE have reached the last Hnk in the chain, and it is a Hnk of gold binding the things that are seen to the things that are not seen. All that we have considered thus far — motive, force, progress toward perfection, whether in nature or in man — are but so many aspects of one mysterious reality which we call life, and which lies behind the visible world sustaining and vitalizing it. Between our universe of men and things and this reality, there is un- broken correspondence. The heavens de- clare the glory of God: and the firmament showeth his handiwork. The world of mat- ter is as an instrument in the hands of a master which, submissive to His touch, gives forth to us His music. It were the least thing that man could do to be as

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responsive as things and plants and birds to the pressure of life.

I

Fellowship with the Divine is as normal as fellowship with man. Some years ago I was discussing with a friend the question of arousing men to a realization of their possibilities, and I said that I found that there was a response to the moral appeal whenever it was made with force. The dig- nity of manhood formed a noblesse oblige, and men needed to be told frequently that to be a son of man was an honour that ex- pected recognition in right living and self- respect. My friend replied that the moral appeal was good as far as it went, but that the human heart hungered for something more. "It is the spiritual appeal," he said, "that is the most telling among spiritual beings. We must awake men to know that they are sons of God."

He was right. The appeal to the Social

[ n4 ]

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Motive and to the moral nature of man are insufficient, unless they are capped by an appeal to his spiritual nature. We have seen that there is implanted within us an appe- tite for correspondence with our own kind which is as much a part of us as self-love, but the appetite for a knowledge of and correspondence with the Divine is not less marked. There is no one thing that has more constantly or fully occupied the at- tention of the human race than the things which are not seen — the life that lies be- hind life. The great literature of every country spends itself upon one phase or another of the subject. It is that which science is most solicitous to fathom, but before which she stands baffled. Whatever else she has ascertained, her ignorance of what hfe and death are is as profound as the stillness of the wilderness. Careless and devoid of seriousness as human society ap- pears to be on the surface, there is no per- son so wholly engrossed in the things of [ 1^5 ]

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sight and sound as not to reflect from time to time upon the mystery of the life that lies behind life, even if only long enough to negative its reality and relapse into materialism and frivolity. But with the vast majority of men the pressure of the unseen is so constant and deep that however little they may reveal to their companions their inmost thoughts, it forms a subconscious- ness as truly a part of their experience as the sobbing of the wind is part of the storm.

Mankind has always been listening for the voice of God. Never yet has a prophet announced his errand as being that of God's spokesman without creating excitement and attracting a following. The crowd may abandon him if they mislike his message, or crucify him if they hate it; but their violence only bears new witness to the im- portance attached to the question by the people. And it is also something to reflect upon that prophets are not put to death on [176]

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the score that they are prophets, but that they are false prophets, pretending to be messengers from God when they know they are not. He who speaks in the name of God and catches the pubhc con- fidence which, because of the imperishable, insatiable appetite for Fellowship with the Divine it is as easy to catch as is the down of the dandelion seed by the breeze, wields a power the hke of which is not paralleled upon earth. A Mohammed can bend the multitudes hither and thither as though they were the white-hot iron under the smith's hammer ; a Mahdi fills his followers with a frenzy that laughs in the face of death and rejoices in recklessness; a John Baptist, whose power is enhanced by the proclamation of his nothingness and of the paramount importance of his message, is surrounded by eager listeners; and as for Jesus, the whole world goes after Him.

And the message that men expect to get is that God is on their side. They resent [ 1^'7 ]

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any other. Their settled, though quite pro- bably unanalyzed, conviction is that God is, either actively or passively, friendly. In the Luxembourg there is a picture by Laurens called "L'Excommunication," which im- pressed me deeply as indicative of the de- pendence of man upon the consciousness or subconsciousness of God's friendliness to him. It represents Robert the Pious and his queen at the moment of excommunica- tion. The papal legate is seen departing, and the lifeless, smoking candle lies before the throne. From the King's nerveless hand the sceptre has fallen, and so hopeless and horror-stricken is the expression on the faces of the royal pair that the splendour of their surroundings seems as tawdry and valueless as tinsel. God was no longer on their side. Life was over. That was the ef- fect upon them of the papal pronuncia- mento.

So much for our elementary ideas of or belief in God's attitude toward us. Now [ ns]

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for ours toward Him. This depends for its character on whether we think of God as a force working on a design of which man is part, but in which he has no active share, or as a Being interested in interesting us in His design and purpose, and caUing for our cooperation. The former precludes, the latter necessitates, the conception of voca- tion. Mere identification on the part of a sentient being with a will, with the purpose of the universe, which is mere movement toward a goal, issues in fatalism. It lacks inspiration and fellowship. The will has not room to move in such conditions, where surrender, as of a straw to a current, is the only course open. Mere submission or ac- quiescence is the least action of the human will, that powerful instrument that wills immortal things. The end of acquiescence is the end of a bird caught in a snare, that hastens its death by its frenzy, or tamely settles down to accept the inevitable. The will was made not only to use forces less

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than itself, but forces greater than itself, and to be used by them through vigorous cooperation. Fatalism is the negation of freedom. Its highest gift is either fanaticism or gloom — irrational and diseased action or paralysis.

It is quite otherwise when we conceive of God as calling us into His counsels and reasoning with us. Then our response, so far from being tame acquiescence, is all eagerness, as when a friend of great capa- city makes advances to us in order to share with us his inner life. The fine phrase of the mystics that God "needs man" has an ele- ment of truth in it worth pondering over. Immediately we begin to get that proper respect for our own personality and work which, so far from fostering self-importance, defies it, and we are launched out on the sea of freedom. God becomes one with whom we correspond and who corresponds with us in our career, asking for our cooperation and allotting to each a defi- . [ 180 ]

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nite sphere of action. Mere acquiescence in what happens becomes impossible, and we rise up and seize upon God's will, using it as our own, as Jesus did in Gethsemane. A league of friendship takes the place of surrender to fate, and we step out into hu- man society and human interests as men possessed of and possessed by vocation.

A sense of vocation takes its origin in and is sustained by active correspondence with God. There is a certain correspon- dence with Nature which is elevating and enjoyable, but it hardly merits the name of fellowship. Indeed it becomes possible only so far as we play the game that children do with their dolls, and impart to the im- personal a shadow of personality. Professor James says: "I believe that we stand in much the same relation to the whole of the universe as our canine and feline pets do to the whole of human life."^ If size meant superior importance, and if man were not

1 Pragmatism^ p. 300.

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the crown of nature, this might be so. But I do not believe that we can allow our- selves to be thus considered. Man in his higher potentialities on earth here and now is deemed of sufficient dignity to walk with God and of sufficient godlikeness to be called God's friend — not as a dog is the friend of his master, but as brethren of a household are friends. So far as we can hold correspondence with nature at all it is, as I have said, by making nature as big as we are through an act of imagination and will, or by using it as a medium of approach to the life which lies behind things seen. In either case the universe stands to us "if not as our canine and feline pets," at any rate as an instrument obedient to our behests. Idealism, unaided by other agencies, is fascinating, though not strong enough to endow us with a sense of vocation. Ab- stract beauty, truth, and righteousness of- fer themselves for our contemplation. They appeal to our imagination. Unfortunately [ 182 ]

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the imagination soon gets weary of a steady job ; it demands variety and kaleidoscopic qualities, so that mere idealism usually be- gins as an inspiration and ends as a task. At first sight it gives the impression and has the appearance of being responsive, and actively corresponding with us. But the truth of the matter is we see in its clear, impassive bosom the reflection of our own eager face — our ideal self. Idealism is a placid lake without tide or stream.

So we reach the inevitable conclusion that whatever of pleasure or momentary impulse we may borrow from other sources, when we come to look for vocation it can be found only where there is towering per- sonality more determined to reach us than we it. That there may be a sense of pur- pose without Fellowship with the Divine I freely admit, as when a certain natural fitness or need determines our course. A man becomes a musician because he has taste and skill ; the oppression of his people [ 183]

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first suggested to Moses that he should do something in their behalf, and he hfted a death-dealing hand. But it is not until a call superior to that of mere incidental conditions, or abstract ideas, sounds in our ears, that we reach the zenith of power which changes Jacob into Israel, and makes Moses the Leader of God's chosen people in place of being a passionate avenger of wrong.

The secret of vocation lies in Fellowship with the Divine. Dependence upon mere immanence will not do. Immanence alone is but an exalted form of idealism : tran- scendence must be added. Fellowship to be a reality must be by personality with per- sonality. Nature and idealism hint at it. Religion realizes it. In nature we can see something manlike struggling to express itself. It is God who is there moving toward us, though He cannot move the whole way ; there must be responsive movement on our part. And as like can only blend with like, and in order that our craving for fellowship [ 184 ]

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with God might be encouraged, the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. Fellow- ship with the Divine is normal because that aspect of God's character which has been most clearly and unmistakably man- ifested to us is its human aspect. With all that is marvellous in the person of Jesus, that which is most truly Divine is reached through His humanity. So it is that in God we find that which satisfies, the possibility of correspondence mounting up through experience into friendship.

II Fellowship with the Divine begins in peti- tion. Petition is quite normal and must al- ways find place in the relationship between man and God. It is not so much the im- portunity of a needy suitor pleading with a wealthy patron for favour and relief, as it is the use of the sacrament of asking. Asking seems to be the condition of receiv- ing, and seeking that of finding. But the [ 185 ]

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foundation of it all is friendship. The re- quest is not, **Give, and I will go away and stop bothering," and the response, "Take, and begone;" but, "Bear witness that thou art ever with me by giving," and "Receive this pledge of friendship." Of course I am speaking with the conviction that comes of experience, that God's response is prompt and unfailing, and if He does not give what we ask, He gives something better. We speak to One who is not only willing, but who wills, to share.

But we must not end in that which after all is a beginning. Comradeship with God through a long stretch of time, or some- times after a striking manifestation of His character, rises into worship. Fellowship must find its culmination in love. So we learn to love God — we "fall in love" with Him. Then we begin to dwell upon His beauty and perfection, and we are moved to glorify and praise Him and tell of all His wondrous works. The praise of worship has , [ 186 ]

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as its counterpart in human life the address of a lover to his betrothed in which he enlarges upon the virtues and graces of her whose he is, and who is his. It is good for him and good for her that he should speak in such terms. The So7ig of Songs, rightly so called, is a love-song in its original pur- port. The king extols his bride and kindles her to answer with equal fervour. Just be- cause it is the finest thing of the sort in Hebrew poetry, it has survived as a song to God. Praise is the natural language of love, manward or Godward. That there should be songs of pure love to God, and that they should be the noblest expression of thought that the world holds, is as nat- ural as the letters of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In the language of Chris- tian worship you will find the most im- passioned utterances of the human tongue. Look at some of these Christian love-songs — for instance, the Magnificat, greatest of them all, —

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My soul doth magnify the Lord,

And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.

It has in it all that is delicate and truly feminine, and its origin is witnessed to by its character. The Te Deuiu, with its sono- rous phrases, is virile and bold, alternating between adoration and petition:

The holy Church throughout the world; doth ac- knowledge thee;

The Father of Majesty; the Son adorable;

The Holy Ghost the Comforter.

We pray thee, help thy servants.

Make them to be numbered with thy Saints in glory everlasting.

The Ter Sanctus is so ecstatic as to sum- mon the aid of angels and archangels and all the company of heaven to swell its chorus of praise before absolute righteous- ness:

Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts.

The Gloria in Eoocelsis, coming from whence no one knows, but hot with the ardour that belongs to early Christianity, has been adopted into one of the most [ 188 ]

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honoured places a hymn can hold, and keeps the song of the first Christmas night always pealing out its joy:

Glory be to God on high^

And on earth peace, good will towards men.

And who can hear unmoved the most popular of all hymns of pure love, the Dox- ology, sung by a great assemblage?

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below. Praise Him above, ye angelic host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

It is like the clash of cymbals and the blare of trumpets at the climax of some great triumphal celebration.

So it is that devotionally man tries to say that he loves God.

God's richest response comes to us in His gift of vocation. We are called by Him, and our consciousness becomes steeped in the power of His call. The sense of voca- tion is the deepest secret of the lives of the greatest Leaders, early and late. The call

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of a need and the call of the crowd are both inspiring, but it is not until there is added to them, or heard through them, the call of God that the Leader is fully equipped to achieve.

It is one thing to infer what the secret of a man's life is ; it is another for him to declare it in language that will not brook contradiction. Abraham has left us witness that it was Fellowship with the Divine which sent him on his extraordinary ven- ture of faith. The prophets boldly an- nounced themselves as not thinking, but knowing, that they were God's messengers because He had Himself commissioned them — " The Lord hath sent me : thus saith the Lord." Then towering supreme is He who proclaimed Himself to be the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. He was never alone. He and His Father were one. Hence, / came not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent vie. I have meat that ye know not of . , , My meat is to do the will [ 190]

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of him that sent me, and to accomplish his work. Duty with a sense of vocation comes to us as food for which we have a keen ap- petite. Mere duty is an aspect of the cate- gorical imperative ; or at any rate it carries the same stinging whip that exhausts and hurts. But the performance of duty under the mantle of vocation does not exhaust or empty man. It fills him — he receiveth •wages, and gathereth fruit unto eternal life, S. Paul's world-wide and age-long influ- ence began with the Divine voice, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? and the quick response, Lord, what shall I do? He delights to dwell upon the source of His power all through his after life — Paul called to be an apostle.

The Bible calls that I have cited are sam- ple calls. They belong to human experience. Capacity for Leadership seems to involve capacity for close communion with the Divine in varying forms, but with the un- varying result of a sense of vocation. It is [ 191 ]

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part of history — Augustine, Savonarola, Luther, Newman. One instance that in this course of Lectures touches us more closely than any other is that of Phillips Brooks. In later life when asked by a young friend what was the secret of his power he re- sponded: "I am sure you will not think that I dream that I have any secret to tell. I have only the testimony to bear which any friend may fully bear to his friend when he is cordially asked for it, as you have asked me.

" Indeed the more I have thought it over, the less in some sense I have seemed to have to say. And yet the more sure it has seemed to me that these last years have had a peace and fulness which there did not use to be. I say it in deep reverence and humility. I do not think it is the mere quietness of advancing age. I am sure it is not indifference to anything which I used to care for. I am sure it is a deeper know- ledge and truer love of Christ. [ 192 ]

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"And it seems to me impossible that this should have come in any way except by the experience of life. I find myself pitying the friends of my youth, who died when we were twenty-five years old, because whatever may be the richness of the life to which they have gone, and in which they have been living ever since, they never can know that particular manifestation of Christ which He makes to us here on earth, at each successive period of our human life. All experience comes to be but more and more of pressure of His life on ours. It can- not come by one flash of light, or one great convulsive event. It comes without haste and without rest in this perpetual living of our life with Him. And all the history, of outer or inner life, of the changes of circumstances, or the changes of thought, gets its meaning and value from the con- stantly growing relation to Christ.

" I cannot tell you how personal this grows to me. He is here. He knows me and I [ 193 ]

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know Him. It is no figure of speech. It is the reallest thing in the world. And every- day makes it realler. And one wonders with deUght what it will grow to as the years go on."'

To the same period belong the verses that round out the thought ;

The while I Hstened came a word — I knew not whence, I could not see — But when my waiting spirit heard, I cried, "Lord, here am I, send me!"

For in that word was all contained — The Master's wish, the servant's joy. Worth of the prize to be attained. And sweetness of the time's employ.

I turned and went — along the way That word was food and air and light; I feasted on it all the day. And rested on it all the night.

I wondered ; but when soon I came To where the word complete must be, I called my wonder by its name; For lo! the word I sought was He.^

It is only a step from the source of power

^Life, vol. ii. p. 871. ^ Ibid. p. 872.

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of the Christian minister to the source of power of the statesman — indeed one secret explains both hves and in both it is self- confessed with the naivete of a child. When Abraham Lincoln was leaving his Western home and facing the responsibili- ties of national Leadership, moved by his affection for his townsfolk he drew back the mantle of reserve and revealed the rock upon which his rugged nature was built: "With a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington, without the assistance of that Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me and remain with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell."^

Or to refer again to the great General,

^Ufe, p. 138.

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whose reinstatement in the nation's esteem has been signaUzed by the reinscribing of his name on the walls of the U. S. Military Academy, as the most conspicuous feature of his character, shines out Fellowship with the Divine. His letters and the authenti- cated facts of his history bear witness to it. God was his Heavenly Father and his daily life was moulded according to His will. He was too great to be sectarian in his religion, too wise to try to live with God independently of organized Christianity. His letters are usually adorned with God's name spoken with the same simplicity and sincerity as his wife's or children's. By his prayers he kept himself under the control of God's life, and it was his constant effort to draw others thither. His last public act was to attend a meeting pertaining to the affairs of his church and to make up from his slender resources a deficit in its funds. His last private act was inwardly to ask a blessing — his lips were too near death to [ 196 ]

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accomplish the task of utterance — on the food spread upon the family board.

In all these cases the men concerned knew that God was behind their lives, con- trolling and directing them, not from any theory learned by rote, but because He had told them so individually. No amount of argument could have disturbed their belief, no change in the perspective of theological truth, no psychological explanation of their experience wdth God could have robbed them of that which was the great fact of life.

Loud mockers in the roaring street Say Christ is crucified again: Twice pierced His gospel-bearing feet. Twice broken His great heart in vain.

I hear and to myself I smile,

For Christ talks with me all the while.

God s personal attention is fixed full upon us, and it could not be more complete if it were exclusively bestowed. His presence enfolds us as the sunshine enfolds the land- scape, and yet His attention could not be

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more individual if the rest of the world were to cease to be. His will for us is al- ways a clear-cut thing. As the phrase is commonly used, "Thy will be done " is a bit of pious fatalism meaning nothing Chris- tian. To the man with a sense of vocation it means entering with zest into God's plans and seeking for that in them which the hu- man will can lay hold of and make its own.

Ill In any undertaking of considerable dimen- sions the sense of vocation is an apprecia- ble economy. It adds a force to purpose which has the effect of stirring men and giving a movement impulse that no amount of argument is capable of bestowing. It changes experiment into a factor of cer- tainty and relieves the agent of undue anx- iety. Obviously any one bent on a selfish errand cannot turn to God for counsel and aid. But it seems to me that the statesman, the steward of wealth, the captain of in- [ 198]

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dustry, who plunge along merely on the backing of their own theories or the princi- ple of expediency, would be afraid to pur- sue such a course if they believed in God as our Father in any but an unreal sense. Without a sense of vocation the burden is all their own, a bit of doubtful experiment, nothing more. Probably more men and women break from unnecessary solicitude than from any other disease to which the ranks of Leaders are subject. I am not ad- vocating a temper of indifference, or trying to loosen the reins of legitimate respon- sibility, but merely contending that God wishes to share with us whatever task He commits to us. He expects us to talk over with Him our problems and plans for His aid and counsel. When we are assured that we are called by God to a task and have His interest and supervision, our sole re- sponsibility is to commit ourselves to the activities involved. The ultimate issue is not the worker's concern. God's mode of [199]

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using failure for our own good and the fur- therance of His own great ends leaves us undismayed, however things come out — more than that, ready to start again with new power and wisdom. To the fatalist and egoist alike failure is crushing and the victim sinks back listless and unnerved.

We cannot always be conscious either of God's presence or of our own close rela- tionship with Him, Often enough we can apprehend these realities only by an ener- getic output of faith, and then but dimly. But a subconsciousness grows up in us that is a more powerful support than a vivid con- sciousness could be and never leaves us. It becomes to our work what a low accom- paniment is to a song. The prayer of the great English schoolmaster illustrates what I have in mind:

^^O Lord, I have a busy world around me. Eye, ear, and thought will be needed for all my work to be done in this busy world. Now, ere I enter on it, I would commit eye, ear, and thought to Thee. Do Thou bless them and keep their work Thine, that as through r 200 ]

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Thy natural laws my heart beats^ and my blood flows without any thought of mine, so my spiritual life may hold on its course at these times when my mind can- not consciously turn to Thee to commit each particu- lar thought to Thy service."

Side by side with our own assurance and growing consciousness of vocation must grow up the consciousness of a hke vocation as a feature of every human Ufe. He who thinks that he alone is called is a tyrant of dangerous type. The distinctness of God's call to us must not separate us from the crowd. The Leader's first duty is to remem- ber that vocation is a universal gift, and it is the part of Leadership to help all who follow to discern and obey their call. An- drew fij^st findeth his own brother Simo7i . . . and brought him to Jesus. The Church would be a very different society to-day from what it is if this had been the principle of the hierarchy always. The priest is never called to constitute himself, or be consti- tuted by others to act, as a special provi- dence for his brethren. This is to suppress, [ 201 ]

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not to foster, a universal consciousness of vocation. The clergy sometimes commit the fault, especially in dealing with women, through an excess of generosity; but its effect is bad.

Among those who have had both gifts and opportunity for Leadership, there has been in Church and State alike too much of the spirit of Napoleon. When his uncle the Cardinal Fesch remonstrated with him as he was about to plunge into war with Russia, the Emperor "led the Churchman to the window, opened it, and pointing upward said, *Do you see yonder star?' *No, Sire,' replied the Cardinal. 'But I see it,' answered Napoleon; and abruptly dismissed him."^ At the same period he said: **Is it my fault that the height of power which I have attained compels me to ascend the dictatorship of the world ? My destiny is not yet accomplished — the pic- ture exists as yet only in outline. There

1 Lockhart's Napoleon^ p. 336.

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must be one code, one court of appeal, and one coinage for all Europe. The states of Europe must be melted into one nation, and Paris be its capital."^ Napoleon saw no star but his own, and for this reason there came a day when others failed to see his star. He had failed to relate it to the great firmament studded with manifold lights, and at last his own shot out into darkness. In 1862 Lincoln was harassed by a great deal of advice regarding the Proclamation of Emancipation, some of it claiming the authority of Div ine inspiration. The min- isters of Chicago had approached the Pre- sident as though they had special wisdom from on high. His response was: "I am approached with the most opposite opin- ions and advice, and that by religious men, who are equally certain that they represent the Divine will. ... I hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that if it is proba- ble that God would reveal His will to

1 Lockhart's Napoleon, p. 337.

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others on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed He would re- veal it directly to me I can assure you

that the subject is on my mind by day and night more than any other. Whatever shall appear to be God's will, I will do."^

The right as well as the wrong use of one's consciousness of vocation is best set forth by citing illustrations from well known history. Jesus never overwhelmed with His vocation that of the least of His disciples. He even emphasized the fact that little children had a very noble vocation, and was disturbed and indignant when they were slighted. Mention was made in my second Lecture of the relations between Washington and Hamilton with special reference to the latter's exemplary attitude. But Washington's was not less ideal. There had been a moment of friction when Ham- ilton had resigned as private secretary. " From the declaration of peace there is a

^Life, p. 201.

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change in the relation of the two men. Their correspondence is still grave and formal; sometimes affectionate, never familiar. On the part of the elder there is an extraordi- nary generosity, a loyalty which never fails ; on that of the younger a respectful consid- eration which has no tinge of the histrionic. In a sense the Leadership passes into the hands of Hamilton. It is his thought which ever presses forward, binding and construct- ing and preparing the way. He is the in- terpreter of the federal idea, and his main support is Washington's instinct which ap- proves, Washington's character which up- holds him at every crisis of the struggle. Without diminishing his dignity or self- respect, without any abdication or surren- der of his personal convictions, Washington places the whole force of his great influence at the disposal of Hamilton, recognizing in him a genius for statecraft, and without a grudge or afterthought for his own glory. Such alliances are rare, but out of their [ 205 ]

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conjunction great events are apt to be be- gotten."^

It is only what we would expect of a man like Lincoln, not from mere magna- nimity, but from a sense of responsibility due to his own consciousness of vocation, to call into his first cabinet his most pow- erful rivals in the Republican party. In Seward, Chase, Cameron, and Bates he saw co-workers to be called to his side, not com- petitors to be feared, snubbed, and avoided. Seward's arrogant memorandum of "some thoughts for the President's consideration" did not disturb Lincoln or rouse his ani- mosity. He quietly responded that if the duty urged by Seward "must be done, I must do it." And later on when Seward, now won over to deep loyalty, advised postponement of the Proclamation of Emancipation, the President said: "The wisdom of the view of the secretary of state struck me with great force. It was an as-

^Life of Alexander Hamilton, pp. 109, 110.

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pect of the case that, in all my thought upon the subject, I had entirely overlooked. The result was that I put the draft of the Proclamation aside, as you do your sketch of a picture, waiting for a victory."^ It is no wonder, is it, that the backwoodsman who, as he emerged from obscurity into public life, said, " I must in candour say that I do not think myself fit for the Presidency," became one of the world's heroes? His pro- motion to office never separated him from the crowd, his high consciousness of voca- tion never led him to depreciate the vo- cation of the least. He reverenced his fol- lowers by helping them to greatness, he ele- vated his own vocation by recognizing the vocation of others. Only as great a man as he could have given to the world the defi- nition of democracy which is so full as al- most to exhaust the thought.

It is a lesson in proportion to be learned that human greatness is not made more

iLi>, p. 195.

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great by contrast. We must not make our hero the only hero, for that is to unmake him. S. Paul is at his greatest not when he is withstanding S. Peter, but when coope- rating with him; Luther is greatest not when he is presented as the opposite of Erasmus, but as the man who put into that form of practical embodiment best suited to his temperament the principles let loose by the patient genius of his fellow reformer; Hamilton is at his best, not as the man who did everything and let Washington get the credit, but as one whose talent was so social as to fit into Washington's gifts as hand meets hand in the grasp of friend- ship. Do not sweep all the stars from heaven in order to attract attention to one. The glory of the sky is in the constellations. We could not afford to lose even the soft glow of the Milky Way. The sun himself is not jealous of the stars, and night by night he hides his face that they may shine. There is one glory of the sun, and another [ 208 ]

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glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differ eth from another star in glory — so said one of the stars long ago.

One thing more remains to be said, and I shall say it briefly. As the Leaders of yesterday were able to preface their mes- sage with, "Thus saith the Lord," so is it required of the Leaders — for what were the prophets but great Leaders? — of to- day. We too must have our sense of voca- tion, not merely from the pressure of need and the call of expediency, but from the God who controls and guides. All of us cannot practise the ways of mysticism, but God is ever available for fellowship after some deep and real manner so that, if we will, our work may have the conscious benediction of His supervision and direc- tion.

Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with

Spirit can meet — Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands

and feet.

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It is the glory of the disciple that he should be able to find no words suitable to express his judgement in a great crisis except the words of his Master — / can of myself do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and niy judge- ment is righteous; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.

[ 210 ]

LECTURE VI

Jesus saith, I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life: no one Cometh unto the Father but by me.

John xiv. 6

/ came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

John x. 10

All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels.

Nor shall 1 deem his object served, his end

Attained, his genuine strength jput fairly forth.

While only here and there a star dispels

The darkness, here and there a towering mind

Overlooks its prostrate fellows. When the host

Is out at once, to the despair of night.

When all mankind alike is perfected.

Equal in full-blown powers — then, not till then,

1 say, begins mans general infancy.

Browning

The ministry in which these years have been spent seems to me the fulfilment of life. It is man living the best human life with the greatest opportunities of character and service. And there- fore on the ministry most closely may come the pressure of Christ. Therefore let us thank God that we are ministers.

Phillips Brooks, aet. 55

LECTURE VI THE REPRESENTATIVE LEADER OF MEN

IT is a coincidence full of inspiration and fitness that this closing Lecture, the subject of which is the Representative Leaderof Men, should come on the seventy- second anniversary^ of the birth of Phillips Brooks. He combined in his personality in a marked degree the very characteristics that we have been considering. His single- ness of motive was so settled that whatever criticism was launched against him, his sin- cerity and reality were never questioned; his purpose increased in intensity and force- fulness with his years, until at the last it resembled a pure white flame; he moved from strength to strength of blamelessness, so that his completed life stands peculiarly free from reproach or blot; his friendship with God was so close and constant that the mystics of old time knew the meaning

1 December 13.

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of God's touch no more vividly than he. His Leadership, whether as minister or bishop, w^as never a mere matter of office. Unspoiled by the least suspicion of self- consciousness, filled with an ardent desire to help his fellows, inspired with a clear sense of vocation, he did the work that was given him to do, and stands for all time in the first rank of Leaders.

I The characteristics which distinguish a Leader we have seen to be such as unite him to, and do not separate him from, the crowd. Brilliancy and genius by themselves are lines of division. They become bonds of union binding the great to the little and each to all only when they are subordinated to fundamental traits of character. Talent is bestowed here and there not as a toy for self-pleasing, or as an object of veneration for the common breed of man, but as a trust to be administered for the public wel- [ 214 ]

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fare. There was a time when men thought that the crowd existed for the benefit of Leaders and that the history of monarehs was the only history worth reading ; but we have learned better in these latter days, and have come to recognize that Leaders exist for the good of the crowd, and that real history has for its subject the multitude of common folk. Every one who possesses exceptional endowment, whether of natural gifts, or of any of the various forms of privilege, has it as his elementary duty to put it within reach of the social whole. The meaning of democracy is that the crowd must be valued at its true worth, and not as an adjunct to or setting for the few, however distinguished or blest by fortune. The "towering mind" appears in order to promote "man's general infancy." The re- volt of our day against men who are en- sconced in the treasure-house of privilege is not so much an envious effort to despoil the rich, as a just protest against indif- [215 ]

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ference to equity and abuse of stewardship on the part of those who, having posses- sions, use them for sectional and selfish ends. People do not rail against the trustee who honourably administers the estate he holds in trust, any more than against a Shakespeare because he has extraordinary mental gifts, or a Lincoln because he has a statesman's genius. It is not the principle of trusteeship that arouses the ire of the crowd. But it is against malversation and misappropriation, selfish extravagance and disregard of the well-being of the producer, that the masses array themselves in battle. There is no call to drag privilege from its throne or to destroy office, which is the highest external trust on earth. The task is to convert it to its proper use. It is this that society is reaching after and trying to bring about.

Now the only possible way of placing ourselves in a position to pass on any excep- tional gifts that w^e may happen to have [ 216 ]

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is by the adoption of and surrender to the Social Motive. It is the sole wire through which the electric force of a great life can discharge itself into the world of men. The will directs the current so that it is not a squandering of power, or a wild flash of brilliancy. As manhood is the goal of man, self-improvement advancing to blameless- ness before God and man becomes the first social task. The crowd flatly refuses to be taught by mere precept, or to believe in the existence of a force making for right- eousness, unless proved by the demonstra- tion of the teacher's character. Incidental faults and lapses through momentary weak- ness in a life otherwise stable and aspiring are lamentable enough, but they are dis- tinguished easily from settled viciousness of the will. They impair, but do not invali- date Leadership. To the human must be added the Divine fire. JNIen soon weary of ideas and the conceits of the human mind. They will have somehow the Divine ideals, [ 217 ]

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or their counterfeit if the reahty fails them. A man with the characteristics that have been holding our attention will be an ac- cepted Leader the moment he appears in society. The world is waiting for him. We may seem cold and critical and unaspiring, but we are so constituted in our deepest nature that when a real Leader rides into our midst our wintry coldness is coaxed away as by the spring sunshine, our critical spirit finds opportunity where before we could see only the graves of effort that had failed, and the fire of hope blazes out into adventurous zeal as we mount our chargers and join ranks with those who will dare to follow wherever he will dare to lead.

We have such a Leader. He has fre- quently been hidden from our sight, not by His own act, but because His followers have persistedin separating Him from the crowd. We have done everything conceivable to make Jesus as distant as possible, from obscuring Him under a veil of theological [ 218 ]

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and ecclesiastical confusion to reducing Him to a mere local hero whose life went out many centuries ago. What is needed to-day more than anything else are strong, skilled, brave hands that will tear aside the veil that obscures Him, and present the out- lines of His form clear and unmistakable be- fore men, so that the simplest can see Him and the weakest reach Him. Such hands can belong only to character like His own, patterned after His example, charged with His spirit. We discuss the Way as though He were an absent thing instead of a living Person; we analyze the Truth as if He were an abstruse theory instead of a simple fact; we view the Life as though He were an echo of yesterday instead of a present force of to-day. We argue when we should de- monstrate, and therein lies the secret of the half failure of the Ministry and the aliena- tion of the crowd from the Church.

But all the while Jesus persists in being ours. The title that He took long ago as [ 219 ]

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most distinctive of Himself, the Son of Man, still describes what He is. He would have to be plucked forever from history before He could be anything less. His re- moval from the touch of the senses does not mean that He left the sons of men, but that He came closer than He otherwise could have done to the deepest part of our nature. We speak of Him as being ours — "our Lord," '*our Saviour." There is no ad- dress which He loves more than this, or which is more descriptive of fact. His sole complaint is that when He offers Himself men do not accept Him. Ye will not come to me that ye might have life. His sharing only began on earth, and though He gave all that He then had to give, it was less, far less, than what He now offers. The whole wealth of His completed experience is His present gift. To him that overcometh, I will give to sit down with me in my throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with my Father in his throne,

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He represents His heavenly life as being a life of sharing to the uttermost, and his- tory testifies to the truth of His promises. We have at our disposal His power of will which dared the impossible and always achieved, so that one who takes Jesus at His word can say, / can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me. His victory over temptation is also ours. From innocence to sanctity He mounted, and He retains His character thus formed as a fund for us to draw upon at will. ''For in that he himself hath suffered being ternpted, he is able to succour them that are tempted.'' ''He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin'' "God is faithfid, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make the way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it," "Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall re- ceive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him." Such teach- [ 221 ]

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ing is distinctively Christian. Nowhere else is there anything similar to it. It is the out- come of the writers' experience. His holi- ness is for our use, so that a man can hon- estly pray for others in terms like these, with the expectation, too, that the answer will not fall short of the request. The very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, He came that we might have fellowship with God, and He went away that that fellowship might be perfected and rendered universally avail- able. It is a fellowship too close to be ex- pressed in ordinary terms. So intimate is it that it is hard to distinguish between what is ours and what is His. / live; yet not /, but Christ liveth in me. All this is common history, recorded as part of their experience by men who could not lie.

Jesus claims everything in heaven and earth, the small realm of the known and [ 222 ]

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seen as well as the boundlessness of that which is out of sight. He would be an appall- ing person to contemplate if we thought of Him as possessor and monarch instead of as trustee and sharer. He is the Head of the body in which we are members. We may heap up unlimited power and glory for Him in our most imaginative moods, we may crown Him with added sovereignty as the immensity of the universe expands under the touch of science, and He still re- mains ours. For He inherits only to share, and to make us as nearly like Himself as we will permit Him to do. / came that they may have life, and have it abundantly M His age-long purpose. Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am, tells us what lies just beneath the horizon.

We can rise to no higher conception of Leadership than this, can we? — living the richest possible life and sharing it univer- sally. That is what Jesus did and does, if [ 223 ]

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we reduce His experience to its simplest terms. He is His work. He is in all that He gives. He is His own best gift. Talented, though selfish, men can and do invent and construct benefits for the race out of words and steel and electricity. The world that uses snatches the gifts and forgets the crea- tor. Not so is it with what comes from Jesus, or from any true Leader. The gift cannot be separated from the Giver.

The most satisfying feature of our great Leader's life is that it is so essentially hu- man as to be adapted to every one in the world of men far and near. It had as its first setting the cottage home and the me- chanic's workshop, not by accident, but in order to make clear that it was the life for the common people who are the many. It began in conditions favourable to broad de- velopment. If it had started its career in ecclesiastical garments, it would have died of formalism before it could get clear of Jerusalem. Wealth would have pampered [ 224 ]

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it to death, if it had been born in a palace. It became a Ufe among the simple, unlet- tered folk long before it was reduced to a theology by the wise and learned. It was a thing of the character anterior to its be- coming a thing of the intellect.

II Jesus knew that ecclesiastical setting and theological expression were bound to come. He foretold it when he picked out Peter as being the best specimen of an ecclesias- tically minded man, to be the prototype of the new ecclesiastical order. He deliberate- ly hastened the day of theology when he called Saul of Tarsus to be an Apostle. But it was because He knew that to a Peter liv- ing faith w^ould always be a larger thing than a system, and the Kingdom of God more important than ecclesiasticism ; and that to a Paul the life would transcend in value its theological expression, that He laid His choice upon them for the work that they [ 225 ]

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performed. Do not mistake the import of what I say. I am not depreciating theology, which will always be what it ever has been, the queen of sciences ; or ecclesiastical or- der, which is as necessary to the Kingdom of God on earth as the hand is to the body. ^ But it is a matter of proportion, which many of us have lost, and which Jesus set unmistakably in the way in which He inaugurated His Kingdom. Our worriment to-day is too much over the intellectual and ecclesiastical form of Christianity, when it ought to be chiefly over what the life should be in modern conditions, why we are not living it for all it is worth, and why the common folk to whom it was first com- mitted are so largely alienated from the Church.

Jesus entered into the religious life of His day with heartiness, though in many respects it must have been a grave trial to Him. He called the existing Church to the

iSee pages 254-257.

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new life, but it was deaf to His invitation. When He selected the Leaders to whom it was His purpose to commit His gospel, He found them all in the ranks of the laity, and sent them out to live and preach the life. He oi^dained twelve that they should be with him, — that was their first work, and it is the first work of all who are called by Him to preach now.

I think the day is at hand when we shall get a balanced view of Christianity again, and begin to win back our losses. It is one of those facts which we do not like to men- tion above a whisper, that the churches are the home of the few and not of the many, and that there is not one of them that is not more or less sectional and sectarian in its behaviour. But under all the prevaihng disbehef in organized Christianity, those of the masses who think, feel that in the spirit of the Crucified One is the hope of the race. The other day I saw a cartoon by a Jew. It was a distressing picture to look upon. [ 227 ]

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It represented the world and its formal be- lief in Christianity. To the right rise the minarets of Eastern architecture to typify the Christianity of the Orient. To the left are the Gothic spires of our Western reli- gion. Beneath, in the semi-darkness that shrouds the whole picture, is a seething, struggling mass of men and women. Con- fusion, hatred, selfishness in every form are there; but, save for a deed of mercy per- formed by women, there is no redeeming feature. Striking its dim form across the picture is a cross on which is stretched a shadowy outline of the Crucified One, look- ing down with a face of pain and purpose and patience upon the wild scene beneath. In the Spirit of Jesus there is hope, our only hope — that is what the picture says, and what the people believe. Be the case never so bad, the Spirit of Jesus is sufficient to work order and peace out of the chaos and pain. But it must express itself in a life as powerful and of the same sort as when [ 228 ]

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Christianity was in its youthful ardour.

In a former Lecture I pointed out that Jesus did His work, to use the phraseo- logy of our day, as a layman, and therefore is the layman's pattern. He was prophet, priest, and king, it is true, — the last on His own admission, — but His titles were only the expression of His actual character. They gave Him nothing; He gave them everything. His office was not taken from man. It was what He was in Himself. Originally, if my study of the question has not led me astray, office was but an aspect of character — strength,wisdom, sympathy, in their relation to others. In other words the man, under God, made the office. The crowd recognized it and gave it a name. After the lapse of time office became ste- reotyped and conferred authority on any one who happened to hold it, whether or not he possessed the qualifications which formed the source of office, and of which office was the symbol. Then Jesus came [ 229 ]

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and set things straight once more, not by- despising office, but by illustrating that character creates authority higher than mere office, and that office is of advantage to mankind only so far as those who hold it remake it continually by the power of their personality. Office must be a nexus uniting its occupant to men. The Christian centuries have often forgotten this, and have allowed caste, which is the result of the abuse of office, to mar the life of Church and State. It is for our day to go back to the principle of Jesus. The life is the first thing, and the Minister^ of the Gospel is not primarily an office-holder, a man in authority — preacher or priest. He is the foremost Christian, the representative ser- vant, or, to apply Lincoln's phrase to the point in hand, the Minister is one "who has a superior opportunity of being a good man." Phillips Brooks, out of the abun- dance of his own rich career, said the same

1 "One who serves" — there is no title nobler. [ 230 ]

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thing: "It is man living the best human hfe with the greatest opportunities of char- acter and service. And therefore on the Ministry most closely may come the pres- sure of Christ." Only on this foundation can ecclesiastical organization and theologi- cal thought be built up into a spiritual structure.

This view of the Ministry calls for a sim- ilar conception of the Church. The Minis- try, as representative of a life to be lived, antedated the earliest phases of ecclesias- tical order, as we now understand it. "The Church is, after all, the development of what was primarily an apostolic, propa- gandist, or missionary body sent forth to preach and prepare the Kingdom of God, and is itself a ' Kingdom of God' only in a secondary sense. What personal religion should be among the factors of our inward personal life (principal but distinct; as the head is the principal part of the organism distinct from the others), that the Catholic [ 231 ]

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Church should be among the other factors or instruments of our pubhc civihzation. Plainly, I do not mean a sectarian Catho- licism, at war with heretics ; nor a political Catholicism, at war with the States ; but simply a spiritual society organized purely in the interests of religion and morality."^ Of course by the "Church" is meant not a hierarchy to which the mass of the people are subordinate, but the mass of the people served by the Ministry in company with whom they live the common life. All fol- low the one Leader without distinction. Office and privilege only emphasize the re- sponsibility of living the life, for office and privilege are receptacles containing oppor- tunitys to be further filled with the char- acter of the holder. On the other hand the laity, even if they would, could not be ab- solved from the obligation of conforming their lives to the same principles of devo- tion, character, and conduct as the clergy,

1 Tyrrell's Much Abused Letter, pp. 63, 64. [ 232 ]

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for the Head of the Church, the Leader of all, is the layman's pattern, and the minis- ter, pastor, or priest — according as you may view your religious Leader — is primarily the foremost layman.

Ill If I say that the Minister is one who makes religion his whole business, I do not intend to imply that full religious scope is not af- forded men in other vocations. Some of the most effective religious Leaders I have known have been doctors, lawyers, unlet- tered folk in humble paths; and, as the whole trend of these Lectures has indicated, the qualities that make a strong Leader in any honourable vocation are the soul of the Ministry. Nor need I remind you of the Carpenter of Nazareth and the tent-maker of Tarsus. But it is a matter of vocation. To those who are called, the Ministry to- day affords such opportunity of wide and deep service as will tax the aspirations of [ 233 ]

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the most ardent, talented, and cultivated character under heaven. By a tacit arrange- ment with society the Minister is given the entree, if he cares to accept it, into the deepest confidences of life. No one else, excepting perhaps a doctor, has such un- bounded trust reposed in him. He is grant- ed, as an unquestioned right, prerogatives v^hich most men in other vocations would ask for in vain. For breadth and depth of social opportunity, he is in a unique posi- tion.

All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels.

This is not the extravagant contention of a man who is in love with his vocation. It is the verdict of history. The greatest Lead- ers of the world have been those who have made religion their whole business, who have placed their conception of the King- dom of God and His righteousness first. These are they whose influence will flow on in pure, calm streams as long as the con- tinuity of the race remains unbroken. The [ 234 ]

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most conspicuous feature of their lives is a certain eternal, universal quality which will find Abraham, Gautama, John the Bap- tist, Paul, Confucius, living forces a thou- sand years hence, if the world lasts that long. Are we to suppose that religious Leadership has had its day, and now must abdicate in favour of philosophy, intellec- tualism, or science? Shall we look upon the religious Leaders of the past as we do upon the ruins of stately castles, memen- toes, grand and noble, of yesterday ? Was their vocation merely the product of tem- porary conditions, — conditions which have forever passed away?

To all such questionings the human heart and conscience say, No. Every rich nature, every manly man, who would live life for all it is worth, and place it where it will count for most, may not fail seriously to consider the Ministryas a possible vocation, without risking the loss of his largest op- portunity.

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Two initial difficulties seem so to block the way to the consideration of the Min- istry as a vocation that often when men meet them they go no farther. Let us in- vestigate them:

1. To-day there is so much theological confusion that it is impossible for a man to discover the truth. This obstacle would be fatal if the first duty of the Ministry were to expound theology, which it is not. It is to unveil and point to a Personality with whom the teacher is on familiar terms, and to live a life. Ordination makes personality a Sacrament of life. Whatever further du- ties round out the ministerial office, unless its main work is along the lines that I have suggested, it cannot help being a failure. Neither the pulpit nor the altar holds first place. I wish that in my early career I had clearly apprehended the fact. After all, the truth is not an idea, but an ideal. An idea rests content when it finds lodgment in suitable phrases ; an ideal is impatient with [ 236 ]

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words, and looks at its best uttered form as a shadow of itself — it must control the whole life as a ray of light the jewel, before it can reach scientific expression recognizable as a reflection of itself in the mirror of mind.

It is natural that men should be inclined to take intellectual difficulties in religion somewhat more seriously than is due, for the Church has encouraged them to do so by laying an over-emphasis on the impor- tance of theological assent, sometimes as though religion were to be viewed as a sum in arithmetic. Christian character used to come first. The first deacons were selected as being of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom. Such an one as Paul the aged, when his distinctively theologi- cal temper had subsided, in his letters to a pastor, presents a simplified doctrine, and the highest possible standard of life and character. There is a change of accent in his later writings which distinguishes them [ 237 ]

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from those of his earUer Hfe. It is not chiefly the theologically or ecclesiastically minded whom we need in the Ministry, but rather men who have it as a passion to develop in themselves and others the Social Motive, Achievement of Service, Blamelessness, Fellowship with the Divine, as portrayed in the Gospel. Such men are under obligation to the Church of Jesus Christ to consider the Ministry as having first claim upon them. If intellectual diffi- culties supervene, let them throw the re- sponsibility of acceptance or rejection upon the Church to which they present them- selves. When we review the past and see the number of dead theologies which once traded under the name of Christian and compelled assent, it is enough to move us to theological caution and generous consid- erateness. Would-be prophets take plea- sure in pointing out the characteristics that will distinguish the Church which is to possess the future. One thing, however, is [ 238 ]

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certain, namely, that it can only be a Church which makes the hfe and faith ^ of its Leaders its first care and its conspicu- ous feature. My own conviction is that theology, which has been going through an acute historical stage of late, after having run the gamut of scholasticism, is shifting the base of its operations to the psycholo- gical sphere, where its practical effect upon character will be more carefully studied than hitherto.^ We have a right to doubt the authority of theology that is not as closely connected with life as the law of levers is with a railroad bridge.

2. The divisions of Christendovi and the competitive character of vying ecclesiasti- cal organizations are a source of perplexity^ and chill one's ardour. It is, I fear, all too true that the competitive spirit is strong in most of the churches, as their tables of comparative growth, their open or secret

1 As distinguished from theological assent. 2See pages 257-260.

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efforts to win over adherents from other Christian folds, their aloofness from one another, bear witness. It would not be so bad were it not for the fact that the casus belli is superiority not of life, but of the- ology and organization. There is to-day not a church, great or small. Catholic or Pro- testant, that is in a whole-souled manner down among the crowd, or that can justify its claim to superiority in theology and or- ganization by displaying a marked superi- ority of life. The privileged Christians, in spite of some improvement in this respect, still cling to one another and reserve the best for themselves and their like, leaving to the weak the crumbs that fall from their tables. But the fact that so many recog- nize and deplore these things is a harbinger of better days and a call to men of mag- nanimous minds to come in and hasten the steps of progress. The critic who faults the Ministry for its lack of magnanimity is the very person needed by the Ministry. Let [ 240 ]

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him come in and act as a leaven. Jesus was a critic of the Church of His day, though a critic within. He did not reject the Church, the Church rejected Him, He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.

There is a hne of action open to the Min- ister to-day that has enough inspiration in it to make the obstacles which he has to meet rather a challenge to proceed than a deterrent force. Indeed, as I read the history of the past, I am led to wonder whether our forebears of every generation were not tempted to view their difficulties as being the worst that ever were. Of course they were not. Neither are ours. Those who con- quered yesterday have left us a heritage of example how to proceed to-day. First we must be constructive in our attitude, then we must be magnanimous.

It is instructive to note how singularly free from negation the teaching of both Jesus and S. Paul is. Neither the Master [ 241 ]

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nor His great follower was polemical except when forced to be. Doubtless there are oc- casions when the burden of preaching must be stern and denunciatory. But these are exceptional. The Minister of Him who came not to destroy but to fulfil must be in the main a bearer of good tidings. We ought to recognize, from the knowledge we have of our own hearts, what hunger there is for spiritual food ; and when most men are craving for bread, shall we give them a stone ? A Leader full of a message has not time to waste in wielding the "big stick" unless he is driven to it.

We must learn magnanimity, too. It is possible, and necessary, for a divided Chris- tendom to live without constant ecclesias- tical war. It is not toleration, as the word is usually understood, that is needed to compass this end. The day is gone when toleration was permissible. Toleration can hardly help being tainted with pride and condescension. Nor is it mere breadth that [ 242 ]

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will do the work. The desire to be broad for breadth's sake, because it is fashionable to be liberal, is like diverting some pretty little stream from its appointed course into a bog. There is good breadth and bad breadth, — the breadth of the ocean and the breadth of the morass. There is also dog- matic breadth, which is an eccentric phase of narrowness. The virtue we are in search of is not contemptuous like mere tolera- tion, or sentimental and mushy like mere breadth. It is largeness of soul, — magnani- mity, as we call it. It is the grace that does not carp at what it cannot understand or it fails to agree with; that avoids contro- versy except as a last resort, and when it is forced to it conducts it on the highest plane; that deprecates proselytism and scorns to build up its walls with materials torn out of a neighbour's edifice ; that looks for and welcomes evidences of God's Spirit wherever the Gospel is sincerely preached. It is this temper of mind, I am pro- [ 243 ]

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foundly convinced, that will best serve the Kingdom of God and prepare Christendom for the unity of thought and organization from lack of which mankind is suffering. The sure guarantee that it is a conquering and commendable spirit is the fact that it was the mind of the Founder of Christian- ity when He was among men. If the King- dom of God were of this world then would we fight for our sectarian position, what- ever it may be, as the only one permissible. But now is our Kingdom not from hence. To the impatient soul of youth, and to the practical temperament of a race which finds its chief satisfaction in immediate and tan- gible results, the programme of impercep- tible progress and magnanimity is not likely to be popular. But those who have faith enough to commit themselves to it will find that it is pregnant with such opportu- nity as the capacity and talents of manhood covet most. The very difficulty and deli- cacy of it add the zest and interest which [ 244 ]

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form part of the only call that strong natures will heed. It is useless to invite great manhood to pledge its powers to small things. But the Ministry becomes the height of opportunity if its fundamen- tal activity is the promotion, in a construc- tive and magnanimous spirit, by example and precept, of the Social Motive, the Power of the Human Will, the Blameless Life, and Fellowship with the Divine. Could any other type of Leadership be more truly representative?

As my final word let me urge upon you that, whatever vocation may determine your sphere of Leadership, you be brave enough to choose, and be chosen by, some- thing that will require you to strain your best powers. Let the unsolved problems of your day enter into your hearts and minds until they are as personal to you as the affairs of your own family. Do not seek for ease, which is the portion of babes, not of men. Seek for tasks, hard tasks, for the do- [ 245 ]

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ing of which strength is needed, and in the doing of which strength will come.

I have finished the duty to which your University has called me. It has always been a privilege, though not always a priv- ilege of pure joy. My subject has been too great for me, and, at the close of my Lec- tures, I see the ideal soaring so far above my attempt to portray it, that it is almost as though I had failed wholly. This, how- ever, I am aware I have not done. The ideal is the heritage of every man — a bow- shot away from each of us; and perhaps the most that anyone can hope to do is to make his fellows a little more conscious that it is theirs to have and to hold.

Before man's First, and after man's poor Last, God operated and will operate.

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NOTES

NOTES

Note to Page 142

The Mahayana Doctrine of Ashvagosha. Since the de- livery of the foregoing Lectures I have become ac- quainted with the Buddhist gospel of Ashvagosha, a little volume of 13,000 words (eighty pages of this book), which, known as the Mahayana doctrine or the awakening of faith, bears a relation to earUer Bud- dhism analogous to that which our New Testament bears to the Old. It is so profound a little volume as to be worthy of being characterized as a nexus be- tween the prevailing religions of the Orient and Chris- tianity. Its teachings represent the theoretic basis of the most numerous Buddhist schools of thought in China and Japan, that is to say, of the majority of the Buddhists in the world.

Ashvagosha was a native of India who was con- verted to Buddhism from Brahmanism in the first cen- tury of our era, dying about the beginning of the second. Thus he was a contemporary of the Apostles and wrote his book at the same time that the books of the New Testament were being written. The ori- ginal language employed was Sanskrit, but the cur- rent version is Chinese, dating back to the early sixth century. The English versions of to-day — by Suzuki, Open Court Co., Chicago, 1900; and by the Rev. Timothy Richards, Litt.D., Christian Literature So- ciety, Shanghai, 1907 — are a translation of a transla- tion and suffer from the hindering effect of remoteness from the original.

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The likeness to Christian teaching which the book bears is so startHng that Dr. Richards upon his first perusal of it exclaimed: "I have here a Christian book!" A while since, when men considered it a dis- honour to the Christian Faith to allow that writings containing doctrines in common with Christianity had their origin independently of Christian influence, doubtless Ashvagosha's scripture would have been pronounced pseudo-Christian, — it has been so termed by at least one writer, — and by a priori reasoning would have been discounted and flung aside as a Buddhist attempt to gain credit to itself by appropri- ating Christian doctrine. Fortunately we have forever left the era of unreasoning theological prejudice in the rear. Whether or not, as has been conjectured, its author was directly or indirectly influenced by Jewish prophecy, the book must stand as the result of the play of the Spirit of Wisdom and Holiness on a singu- larly devout character, at whose feet we of to-day may sit with profit. The Light that lighteth every man coming into the world was Ashvagosha's guide and counsellor.

The Mahayana text has been subject to the same chance afforded by any popular writing, frequently transcribed and handled by converts from opposing schools, for the introduction of glosses, whether from careless copying, through the unintentional incorpo- ration of annotations, or by deliberate interpolation. To what extent it has suffered in this way can be de- termined only when critical methods have been ap- plied to some early Sanskrit MS. But whatever emen-

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dations maybe necessary, a careful study of the English text indicates such homogeneity of thought and ex- pression that, it is safe to say, no essential feature is liable to alteration, and we have here the substance of Ashvagosha's teaching, which — allowing for the translator's inevitable tendency to tinge it with de- finite Christian bias — stands as a witness to the neces- sity in human life of the Christian evangel, and to the universality of the mind that is naturally Christian.

The scripture is singularly succint and definite for an Oriental pen to produce. This is partly explicable by the fact that its author had that passionate devo- tion to truth which seeks to attain form of expres- sion clear enough to inflame others, and that its end is practical. Its conception of the universe is monistic, — ^^mind and matter are eternally the same;" its philoso- phy is idealistic, — "without mind there is practically no objective existence. . . . All differences are differ- ences of mind;" throughout it sparkles with the hope and buoyancy of optimism. Though I have termed it a gospel, it is not presented in the historic setting that distinguishes the Christian Good News, but it does not fail to give a close point of contact between the un- seen and the seen, the eternal and the temporal. Ethi- cally its content is more comprehensive and satisfying than any Oriental classic that I have read.

Ashvagosha had a remarkable insight into human nature and its needs. While recognizing its diversity, which demands diverse and particular methods, his essential thought is of a universal substratum of na- ture common to mankind which admits of a universal

[ 251 ]

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Saviour available for and fitted to the needs of all, — a teaching we are familiar with in the missionary circles of the West^ but which here finds its first response in this voice from the East. Its author — as is obvious to the reader — foresaw that his gospel was bound to pre- cipitate controversy. Nevertheless the classic is nota- bly free from controversial tone, and the only evi- dence of the papal attitude of conversion by anathema, which usually accompanies the promulgation of new doctrine, is found at its close, where we are warned that, "if there should be any who speak evil and do not believe in this book, the recompence of their sin will be to suffer immense pain for measureless ages, &c.," — a passage that could easily have been interpo- lated after the Mahayana school had gained some as- cendancy over the Hinayana school, and was striving for more. Of course we are never permitted to forget that we are reading a product of the Eastern mind. Its emphasis is on the immanent, though the tran- scendant is recognized; its conception of personality has that blur about it that distinguishes it from the clear-cut notions of the Western mind ; its mysticism cUngs to its pages from first to last, as an atmosphere to its planet; it attaches to absorption in contempla- tion of abstract essence a value which to the restlessly pragmatic Anglo-Saxon or Teuton, who is content to "say prayers," is grossly exaggerated.

Deity is presented as an Over-Soul, as Emerson would phrase it. As I have just noted, it lacks that over-crispness of the Latin-Christian conception of God, which tries to indicate that man was made in

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God's image, by using the same term to define His being that is employed to designate human selfhood. If the Oriental mode is too vague, the Western is too definite and suggestive of limits contradictory of Deity. Each needs the aid of the other.

The Eternal is not merely present with a Panthe- istic passivity. He has tasted human experience, hav- ing "made eight kinds of sacrifice for man. He de- scends from his heaven of ease (the Tow Swai). He be- comes incarnate and mingles with his less fortunate fellow-beings. He grows in the womb of obscurity. He becomes well known. He sacrifices all other interests, even his home, and becomes a priest devoted to the Eternal. He discovers true religion. He preaches the law of the Eternal. He enters the true Nirvana of perfect peace." This divine helper of man is known as Ju Lai, — "the True Form become incarnate."

"Man's nature is like a great precious stone. It is bright and pure, but there is the dross of the quarry on it. If men think only of its precious nature and do not use various means to change it, it will never be pure. Thus it is with mankind." Man is made for pro- gress, but it cannot be achieved without the aid of the Source of life who works in and for us, and yet whose operations are unavailing if we do not exercise faith, rise from stage to stage of intelligent practice, and develop our attainments. The destiny of man is peace with the Eternal in immortal conditions where per- sonal identity is preserved.

The code of ethics is exact, being summed up in ten commandments, of which no less than four are

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aimed at insincerity and untruthfulness^ the besetting and temperamental sin of the Oriental; "Thou shalt not be double-faced;" "Thou shalt not lie;" "Thou shalt not speak vanity;" "Thou shalt not insult^ de- ceive, flatter, or trick." The principle of our Lord's second commandment of love is enunciated as funda- mental, though the terminology is cold. "As to the work of the True Form — it is that which is in all the Buddhas and Ju Lai from that first moment of great love and desire to cultivate their own salvation and then to save others, to the time of their great vow to save all beings throughout all future endless kalpas. They regard all living beings as their own selves, though they are not the same in form."

The Mahayana doctrine, to quote and comment no further, is well worth careful study, and merits the name of gospel. What it lacks to complete its mes- sage is the glow and dynamic of an exhibition of its theological content worked out in human conditions. This the Christian story alone can give. In the mean- time it stands as an index-finger pointing to that uni- versal craving for the knowledge of God and the par- ticipation in the divine wealth which is man's heritage, — a craving which will ultimately unite the men of the East and the men of the West as one flock under one Shepherd, the man and leader, Jesus.

Note to Page 226

Fr. Tyrrell's discussion of this subject in his Much Abused Letter is of great value, not only because of the balance and thoroughness which characterize all his

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work, but also because of his Christian spirit that claims and must receive the respect of all but wicked men. He substantially aids us to "a clearer and better understanding of the relation between revelation and theology; between faith and theological assent; be- tween religion and the scientific formulation of reli- gion. Of the natural necessity of theology, of a har- mony between the concepts of the understanding and the deep intuitions of faith, there can be no doubt; nor should the temporary impossibility of such a con- cord ever be acquiesced in or accepted as normal and healthy. Yet it is equally evident that, however closely allied and dependent the interests of the mind and the heart may be in general, they are not tied together by any law of ^convariance' that holds for individual cases. We cannot say that the deepest faith always goes hand in hand with the most correct the- ology, or that they may not often be in precisely in- verse proportion one to another. Religious experience, like every other sort of experience, is largely wasted for future and general utility unless it be subjected to the reflection of the understanding. Yet though such understanding enables us to control and com- mand a fuller experience than were otherwise possi- ble, it does not hinder the fact that experience may come to us, and come more abundantly in other ways. Much as the soil will yield to art in a stubborn clime, it will yield far more to unassisted Nature elsewhere ; and similarly, for all the service theology may render to faith, we may find a maximum of faith consistent in certain circumstances with a minimum of theology.

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"I am convinced that it is a fallacy to appeal to Christ's seeming anti-theological attitude in favour of non-dogmatic religion. His opposition, in this as in other matters, was to the abuse, not to the use, of the external and institutional side of religion. We are too apt to regard His informal wayside prayings and preachings as the substance of His religion, and not merely as a supplement; to forget that He lived and died a practising Jew; that if He was opposed to legalism, formalism, sacerdotalism, and the other dis- eases to which religion is liable. He accepted and reverenced the law and the forms, and the priesthood and the sacrifices of the religion of His fathers. Yet it is equally plain that His emphasis was all on the danger of exalting the external over the internal, the- ology over faith ; and on the preference to be given to the latter in case of conflict" {jyp. 31 ff.).

In another place he argues that "Catholicism is pri- marily a life, and the Church a spiritual organism in whose life we participate;" that '^theology is but an attempt of that life to formulate and understand it- self— an attempt which may fail wholly or in part without affecting the value and reality of the said life" (pp. 51, 52). And again: "Am I to say that Reli- gion is primarily theology, and not Eternal Life.'* Am I to say that Catholicism is not something greater and grander than can ever attain adequate expression in its theology or in its institutions, however they may progress ? I should be contradicting the Scriptures and the greatest saints and doctors of the Church" (p. 10).

It would seem to me that, just as at the beginning

[ ^56 ]

NOTES

the life came first and afterwards the theology, so now there must be a new flaming up of the life before we can make much forward progress in theology. S. Paul made the earliest coherent effort in an extensive way to relate faith and theological assent, religion and the scientific formulation of religion. But it was done with religion as a life and a power as his starting-point.

Note to Page 239

In 1857 the late Archbishop Temple, at the time an Inspector of Training Schools, wrote : " Our the- ology has been cast in the scholastic mode, i. e. all based on Logic. We are in need of, and we are being gradually forced into, a theology based on psychology. The transition, I fear, will not be without much pain ; but nothing can prevent it. Nor do I see how some of the discussion can be kept out of the teaching even of undergraduates. For it enters largely into what they have to learn." (Sanderson's Appreciation, p. IO9.) The defect of Anglicanism is that we allow ourselves to be "forced into" positions that we ought to be alive enough to seize and occupy with the promptness of true Leadership. The Church is constantly losing her opportunity by prematurely negativing thought that is new, or that she does not understand. She is suspicious and timid of what does not square with her preconceptions and intellectual formulas, even though accompanied by every evidence of God's presence and blessing. Already because of ultra-conservatism the advance posts of what might be fairly called psycholo- gical theology are occupied by radicals who are desti-

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tute of that sense of proportion which historic Chris- tianity alone is capable of giving, though our unbal- anced devotion to the historical and intellectual as- pects of the faith have made us so self-conscious that we have lost spontaneity.

Theology is a science partly empirical and partly rational. As such it must live not by virtue of presup- positions, a priori assertions, and the dicta of past ages, but in accordance with those laws in obedience to which alone lies its claim to be a science. An empiri- cal science is first of all the child of experience, and the experience of the days that have gone by must be checked and verified from moment to moment by the latest experience. Science is never static, but al- ways in the making. The Christian experience of to- day, if there be any truth in the indwelling of God's Spirit, is as worthy of respect in its bearing on the- ology as that of the first centuries. Early Christian theology was of necessity mainly psychological, with a moderate though sufficient regard for historicity as summed up in the Hebraic past, and for the essence of logic as embodied in current philosophies. Life comes before truth just as morals come before man- ners. More vigorous and daring Christian living is the only thing that will give us new material for this logical development. We have exhausted the content of history and need new auxiliaries. The mouths of our preachers are too full of the denials, many of them probably quite just and fair, culled from historical and critical research, but which, when emitted without being followed up by glowing inspiration that unveils

[ 258 ]

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God's face, only damage human character. The crea- tion of chaos is justified only as a preparation for an order which already exists in the mind that makes waste and void, — an order superior to that which ob- tains.

On the other hand, Christianity as a leaven has been a bit overworked. When we have found ourselves losing gi-ound and not appealing to human life, we have blamed human life, and said progress must be slow. The excuse is paltry. The true explanation is that ecclesiasticism is timid, preferring to trust the ways of yesterday rather than to penetrate to the heart of the human life of to-day. There is in the world of men a "slow tortuous movement in a generally upward direction which we call progress. In this up- ward movement Christianity ought to be the centri- petal force, spurring on and leading forward human- ity in the course of the various stages of its evolution, penetrating with its spirit and moulding with its Di- vine forms the manifestations pecuHar to each of them, yet not wholly identifying itself with any of them. And he who regards as definite forms of Chris- tianity what are only expressions peculiar to the civ- ilization which at a given moment it has made its own, is inevitably cooperating toward its ruin." Christian- ity must learn to be fearlessly permeative, and before it can effectively play its part as leaven, it must, here and there, be an explosive force breaking away the barriers of narrow customs and aristocratic taste. There is such a thing as being explosively constructive, as when the dynamite blasts a channel through the rock

[ 259 ]

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and makes a waterway to carry power to the mill. With all the profound sincerity and the hatred of ve- neer which, thank God, is one of the characteristics of our age, there is no need to fear the outcome of pronounced action'even if at first sight it seems to ob- literate old landmarks — provided that the waterway runs to the mill-wheel and not into a morass.

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