BR 115 .P7 H3 1919

Hadley, Arthur Twining, 1856

-1930. The moral basis of democracy

THE MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

THE MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

SUNDAY MORNING TALKS TO STUDENTS AND GRADUATES

BY

ARTHUR TWINING HADLEY

PRESIDENT Or YALE UNIVERSITY

P^gs^i

NEW HAVEN YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON • HUMPHREY MILFORD ■ OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

MDCCCCXIX

COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

Two years ago this place was filled with men in uniform, eager in their enthusiasm for the work that was before them. A year ago they had left us; and among those who remained the spirit of en- thusiasm had given place to one of solemn resolu- tion. Today those who went out have returned in triumph to lay aside their uniforms and to resume the work of peace. The spirit of the day is one of rejoicing.

But not all of those who went have come back. Two hundred Yale men have given their lives in their country's service. Some had the joy and the glory of being killed in action. The runner hag ended his last race on the fields of France. The oarsman has fought his best contest to a finish in the waves of the English Channel. The scholar has in a single immortal day set forth more of the true meaning of what Yale had to teach than others, less privileged, have done in a lifetime. And side by side with those who have thus borne public testi- mony of their devotion, there is a larger number called to bear the yet heavier burden of lingering death from wounds or from disease. Theirs has been the greater sacrifice, with the lesser visible good; and to them belongs today the fullest measure of recognition.

vi FOREWORD

These men have fought their fight; ours remains before us. Fifty years ago Abraham Lincoln pointed out the way — the only way — in which the living can worthily commemorate the dead. It is for us to see that these heroic dead shall not have died in vain. The visible memorials which we may erect, whatever their usefulness or their beauty, are but symbols of our gratitude and affection. The gratitude and the affection themselves are manifested in seeing that the work of the dead is not left half done.

The need of this admonition is even greater today than it was when Lincoln spoke; for the dangers to freedom are more immediate and more complex today than they were fifty years ago. At the close of our Civil War we faced the comparatively simple problem of preserving freedom for men already trained in the principles of law and morals on which free institutions had been based. Today we have to secure freedom to men of many races, with many standards of law and morals, more accus- tomed to despotic authority than to the exercise of self-government. Liberty is threatened from below as well as from above. Those who died have pro- tected democracy against the attacks of those who conceived themselves to be above the law. To us remains the harder task of protecting it against the

FOREWORD vii

machinations of those who conceive themselves to be beneath it.

It is one of history's plainest lessons that democ- racy is based upon self-control; that a people cannot remain free unless its members will volun- tarily use their freedom for the purposes of the community under a system of moral law. Yale has taught this lesson in the past. May she continue to do so in the future; and may we, as Yale men, take our part in the teaching! Thus shall we ren- der to the dead the highest honor that is in our power, by keeping our hand day and night upon the maintenance of the work to which they have given their lives.

Commemoration Service

June 15, 19.19.

CONTENTS

ETHICS OF CITIZENSHIP pA(JE

The Word of the Lord 's Patience . . 1

Animosity : Its Causes and Its Cure . . 13

Belief in Men 25

The Honor of the Service ... 37

A Citizen of Zion ..... 48

mhe Duty of Straightforwardness . . 56

The Duty of Independent Thinking . . 68

The Union of Faith and Intelligence . 78

Conflicting Philosophies of Life . . 91

The Unconscious and the Intangible . 105

ETHICS OF LEADERSHIP

The Man Who Was Prepared ... 119

Fitness for Command .... 130

The Price of Greatness .... 142

The Christian Standard of Success . . 153

The Personality of Jesus . . . 164

The Good Fight of Faith ... 175

Self-Consecration ..... 185

The Compelling Power of Ideals . . 196

ETHICS OF CITIZENSHIP

THE WORD OF THE LORD'S PATIENCE

1915

Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath : For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.

When Mr. Great-heart, in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, was guiding his party along the trouble- some road to the Celestial City, they found an old gentleman, obviously a pilgrim, lying asleep under a tree. They awoke him, in order to have the pleas- ure and profit of his company ; but his first impulse was to treat them all as enemies. When at length he was persuaded that they were pilgrims like him- self, he told them that his name was Honest and that he came from the town of Stupidity. "Your town," said Mr. Great-heart, "is worse than the city of Destruction itself."

' ' Evil is wrought by want of thought, as well as by want of heart. ' ' This is recognized by all of us as a matter of worldly wisdom. We are not equally ready to recognize it as an integral part of Chris- tian teaching. We should not be surprised to find this reference to the town of Stupidity in the works of a pagan moralist or philosopher ; but most of us receive a distinct shock when we read it in Pilgrim 's

2 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

Progress. We are so accustomed to think of reli- gion as an affair of the heart that we overlook the fact that its application to the practical conduct of life requires the use of the head. We hear so much about the mercy which is promised to the man who repents that we fall into the comfortable belief that all Christianity requires of a man is good intentions.

For this belief there is not the shadow of an excuse. Every page of the gospels teaches us the duty of intelligent conduct. The older Judaism followed the precepts of the law blindly. Not so the new message brought by Jesus. Where the elders would have had him leave disease uncured for fear of breaking the sabbath, Jesus preached the doctrine of rational religion by asking them, 1 ' Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath day, or to do evil ? ' ' This requirement of intelligent conduct is a fundamental and distinctive feature in Chris- tianity. It is this that has made it a religion for free men instead of for slaves, a religion for strong men instead of for weak ones. It is this which has made it last through the centuries and enabled it to meet the needs of varying times and various races.

The duty of applying our intelligence to the conduct of life is not only an essential element of

THE LORD'S PATIENCE 3

Christian doctrine; it is an element which we are in constant danger of forgetting. We dwell in the town of Stupidity a larger part of the time than it is pleasant for us to admit. For this town har- bors two sorts of inhabitants. There is one set which does not think at all. There is another set which does a fraction of the necessary thinking, and mistakes it for the whole. The former class consists of those who take their opinions ready made; who sometimes perhaps have thoughts but never ideas; who get their views on politics from their party, their views on religion from their minister, and their views on business from their associates. To this class I venture to hope that few college graduates belong. But the errors of the members of the second class, who do imperfect and inadequate thinking on these subjects, are just as dangerous as those of the first class — in fact perhaps more dangerous, because they natter them- selves that they are using judgment when they are using mis judgment.

There is a terrible temptation — I speak with feel- ing, for it is one to which I am myself subject in the last degree — to make up our minds on the basis of half of the evidence and then say and do things which prevent us from ever hearing or appreciating the other half. We act like the judge who, having

4 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

heard the witnesses for the complainant, refused to listen to those of the defendant, and could not re- frain from expressing his indignation that the defendant's counsel should try to offer any evi- dence at all in behalf of so bad a man as the prose- cution had shown his client to be.

I do not believe that there is one of us here who would wittingly do an injustice to a fellow man. Yet day by day and hour by hour we are un- wittingly doing our brothers injustice by taking our own point of view to the exclusion of theirs. We condemn men whose ends are as good as our own, because they are trying to reach them by a route which is not on our map. "We inflict the penalties of public disapproval, or the yet worse penalties of social ostracism, on men who ought to be our friends and could easily be our friends if it were not for the fact that we had judged them on the basis of some casual prejudice, or some newspaper story that was two-thirds untrue, before we had a chance to know what they really were doing. I hate to think how large a part of the sin and shame and pain of the world is of this unnecessary and preventable character.

This is just the sort of thing which it is our busi- ness to prevent, both as students and as Christians. Our college course has given us an opportunity for

THE LORD'S PATIENCE 5

a wide outlook on life. We have been taught to know many kinds of men, to judge evidence de- liberately, to weigh the value of different sorts of achievement. We shall be false to our trust if we confine this study of men and of evidence and of values to our professional life, and leave it out of our friendship and our politics and our religion. The more our college life means to us, the greater is our duty to judge of men and their conduct de- liberately and wisely, even as Jesus himself judged of the conduct of those about him.

How can we go to work to do this? Our text gives us three practical directions, which have proved valuable lessons to me each day of my life, though I am far from having learned them yet. "Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath."

Swift to hear. Half of our trouble lies in the fact that our ears are not attuned to the language in which other people naturally express themselves. They are like a wireless apparatus arranged to catch the utterances of instruments that have come out of the same factory, but making nothing of other sound waves which are equally significant. It is a large element in practical Christianity to get a habit of listening for the things that other people want to say, rather than for things we our-

6 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

selves want to hear. Saul of Tarsus started as a Pharisee — high-minded and conscientious, but listening only to the voice of his associates. Paul the apostle to the Gentiles had become all things to all men if by such means he might save any. He could help more kinds of men than any other apostle and lay a broader foundation for the mod- ern church because he was able to understand the imperfect utterances of more kinds of men. This is the very crown of Christian charity : to have ears and eyes and heart open to other people's points of view and forms of expression.

So much for the first practical direction. And the second is, that we should be slow to speak. We should not shape or proclaim our judgment until we have matured it. The instant that a man has stated his position he has made it hard to give fair consideration to new evidence. If he has expressed his opinion publicly, any change of mind will lay him open to the charge of inconsistency. Even if he has merely formulated it to himself, the prema- ture putting of a judgment into words tends to prejudge the case under question. "The word that has once gone forth," says the law of the jungle, "changes all trails."

It sometimes happens that we have to act on in- complete evidence; that we are compelled to take

THE LORD'S PATIENCE 7

a position before we have found out all the facts that we should like to know. In a case of this kind it is a matter of exceptional importance that we should keep our heads clear, should understand that our reasons for what we are doing may prove wrong, and should hold our eyes open for new evidence. This is a hard task, and it is one which many of us fail to accomplish. The fact that we are not quite sure of our ground often leads us to state our reasons with more definiteness than the situation warrants ; just as a minister whom I knew in my boyhood always preached loudest when he was a little uncertain about the logic of his dis- course. The man who acts in this way is in per- petual danger of justifying himself at the expense of justice to others; of blinding himself at the time when he most needs to keep his vision clear; of letting speech take the place of thought, until both speech and thought go hopelessly wrong.

Again, we must be slow to wrath. Even when we have heard all the evidence we can get, and when the case appears sufficiently clear to state our position, we must take pains not to let our judg- ment be clouded by our emotion. To a religious man who has a real zeal for God and for truth, and who is impatient of anything that appears to stand in its way, this is the hardest lesson of all. ' ' Virtue

8 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

is more dangerous than vice," says a French philos- opher, "because its excesses are not subject to the restraints of conscience." We are prone to mis- take intensity of feeling for intensity of power ; to believe that by giving way to our anger in a righteous cause we promote the triumph of the cause itself. But with weak human nature as it is, the red mist of anger obscures the issues, and instead of giving force to our blows renders us incapable of giving them direction. "Out of my path!" said Charles the Bold to Crevecoeur: "the wrath of kings is like the wrath of heaven." But his undaunted vassal replied, ' ' Only when, like the wrath of heaven, it is just."

The need of weighing our words and controlling our feelings is particularly great in a common- wealth like ours, where we act not as individuals but as members of a body politic. Every free com- munity, whether school or college, city or state, is governed by public opinion, and this opinion is the result of discussion. If the members of such a community make up their minds deliberately and carefully, this kind of government is the best in the world. If they make up their minds hastily or passionately, it is the worst in the world. For the ill-considered speech of one member of such a com- munity may rouse all his fellows to unjust preju-

THE LORD'S PATIENCE 9

dice and intemperate action. One man states a hasty conclusion as if it were a fact. A second man accepts it as a fact, and makes it the ground for passionate expressions of hate or resentment. Still other men, who have not looked into the facts at all, are caught in this common flame of resentment and hurried into precipitate action which does harm to themselves and injustice to others. This is one of the most serious dangers which America has to face at the present day; and the resistance to this danger is one of the greatest public services which the men of the country can render. It is easy to repeat things that other people are saying and to fall in with public prejudices and misjudgment. It is hard to look facts fairly in the face and to demand that other people should do the same thing. But the man who can accomplish this is the real leader. He may be unpopular for the moment, but in the long run he is trusted. It is this readi- ness to see facts and power to make others see them that distinguish the statesman from the politician. "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." This is the only kind of freedom really worth having. A man may enjoy all the social and political liberty in the world, and yet be helplessly bound as a slave to prejudice or to passion. The glorious liberty of the gospel belongs

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to him who has prepared himself to face facts as they are; who knows men, weighs evidence, and holds his high purposes unclouded. And to him belongs a reward greater than wealth or office: the increased assurance of his power to face what- ever he may be called upon to meet. "Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, ' ' said the Lord, "I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation."

There has never been a time when our country had more need of this kind of freedom than it has today.

In the last few years we have witnessed a great extension of the power of the people. Democracy is a very different thing now from what it was twenty years ago. The public demands govern- ment action on a great many matters which pre- vious generations left individuals to settle for themselves. The motives for demanding govern- ment action are generally good ; but the results are often bad. ' ' The new democracy, ' ' said an English statesman who had himself done much in the direc- tion of humane and intelligent protection of the rights of the weak, "is passionately benevolent and ionately fond of power." It is just this emo- tional attitude of passion that creates the chief danger to American politics today. Men have a

THE LORD'S PATIENCE 11

zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. They mistake prejudice for fact, and think that good intentions can take the place of careful examination of evidence.

No government which manages its affairs on the basis of prejudice rather than evidence can long endure. Many foreign critics regard our present experience as presaging the downfall of democracy. I believe that these critics are wrong in their pre- dictions. But in their analysis of the dangers they are pretty nearly right; and in order to falsify their predictions we must take heed to the dangers themselves. We must help the community to examine evidence and exercise self-control ; and the best way that we can do this for many years to come is by ourselves setting the example of self- control.

And, great as is this national need of self-control, there is at the present moment an international need which almost overshadows it. The nations of Europe are engaged in a war which for the time being makes it almost impossible for most of their members to be either swift to hear or slow to speak. Any one who has really lived through the experi- ences of a great war knows how impossible it is to secure clearness of judgment or restraint of utter- ance after the war has actually begun. All the

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more necessary is it, then, that we who are still at peace should avoid harsh judgment, hasty generali- zation, or ill-timed expressions of public feeling. It is not the advocates of a large army and navy who constitute the menace to our peace. It is not the advocates of a more vigorous foreign policy. It is those who indulge in the luxury of righteous indignation without full information as to the facts or adequate calculation of consequences. Of all the Christian virtues, intelligent self-control — temperance in the broad and ancient sense — is the one which America most needs in the conduct of its affairs.

ANIMOSITY: ITS CAUSES AND ITS CURE

1914

Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace.

To make our prayer for peace more than a mere ceremony three things are necessary — sincere de- sire, intelligent thought, and unselfish readiness to take our own share in the work to be done.

The first of these things — sincere desire for peace — we all have. "Whatever may be our several opinions as to the right and wrong of the contest now raging, we unite in the wish that it may come to an end as speedily as possible. War is a terrible and a hateful thing. We hate it for the wounds and the sickness it brings to those who fight. We hate it for the yet greater pain which it brings to those whose homes are broken up by the death of men and the untold misery of women and children. We hate it because it turns gentle and courteous nations back into savagery. We hate it most of all for the violence which it does to our ideals of humanity and Christian duty.

We had fondly hoped that the era of wars be- tween civilized nations was past, and that hand in

1-4 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

hand with the material progress of the nineteenth century there had been a corresponding spiritual progress toward the realization of Christian ideals of peace. All this hope is suddenly blasted. The most enlightened nations of the earth are caught in the same passion of war as the veriest savages — less indiscriminately cruel, but just as blind in their frenzy of patriotic love and hate.

With our illusions shattered and our very ideals shaken, we crave helplessly for peace; and as far as the mere craving goes, we are ready to pray for it.

But how little this mere craving amounts to ! What effect will it have on Englishman or German, Frenchman or Russian, each desperately convinced of the righteousness of his own cause, for which he has already suffered and is prepared to die if need be, that prayers for peace are offered by members of other nations, comfortably distant from the fray and from the passions that evoked it? No direct effect whatever. It is wrong to dignify this profit- less expression of desire by the name of prayer. Unless we follow up our prayers by intelligent help in promoting peace on earth they are but the "vain repetitions" of the heathen. They may have a certain use as a public recognition of the controlling power of God over the affairs of men; otherwise

ANIMOSITY 15

they are no better than the peace parades and the children's peace cards, and other similar manifes- tations of misdirected zeal with which we are now familiar. People think they are doing their duty, when they are simply indulging the luxury of ex- pressing their own emotions in public. To expect such prayer to be answered is folly on the part of the ignorant, and blasphemy on the part of those who should be wiser.

No; the mere expression of our wishes, however fervent and often repeated, will not stop this war or prevent another. To pray effectually we must take thought. We must find what were the causes at work in men's minds which led them to forget themselves in their zeal for fighting. When we know how the trouble arose we can know how to make our thoughts and sentiments effective to pre- vent its recurrence, and can rely on God's help in so doing. We may not be able to stop this war, but we can bear an honorable part in preventing the next one.

To any one who looks at the present European crisis dispassionately, the striking thing — I may well say, the pathetic thing — is the failure of the different nations to understand anything about one another's point of view. Each is so fervently con- vinced that it is right that it credits its enemies

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with being hopelessly and wilfully wrong — either deceived by their rulers or animated by the lust of conquest. It believes all good of itself and all evil of its neighbors. It can no more see the truth in international affairs than an individual man can see the truth of a private controversy in the midst of blind rage of passion. Under the impulse of such emotions each people does deeds of good and evil, of devoted self-sacrifice and mad destruction, of which in times of peace it would be incapable. This is what makes war; the outward acts of violence are but the symptoms of the nation's mental state.

Now this blind ' ' animosity, ' ' if I may use a word whose derivation gives a subtle clue to its meaning, is not a thing of sudden growth. The mind of England and the mind of Germany have been slowly working apart for a whole generation. Mis- understandings, slight in themselves, give rise to suspicion. Suspicion breeds further misunder- standing. Each year as it has passed has found the two nations less able to appreciate one another's needs and aspirations. What to one people appears an act of self-preservation appears to the other a wilful measure of hostility directed against itself. The public press voices this hostility. Unscrupulous politicians use it for their own purposes. Gradu-

ANIMOSITY 17

ally the emotions are so aroused on either side that when some crisis arises in international politics neither side can reason with the other, because neither can see facts as the other sees them.

But this want of mutual understanding, bad as it is, would hardly be sufficient to cause a war. The evils of modern warfare are so colossal, and the results to be gained so uncertain, that no mere intellectual differences would bring peoples to the fighting point. But it too often happens that want of understanding is aggravated by want of cour- tesy ; that difference of opinion is made intolerable by bad manners. One nation may think that it owns the sea, and another may believe that it can beat everything on land ; but as long as the respec- tive nations keep these opinions to themselves they do comparatively little harm. The danger comes when these views are obtruded on others. It comes from boastfulness and arrogance, and half truths uttered as if they were the whole truth. Out of this grow the differences of thought and feeling which make men ready to kill each other.

The effective way to stop war is to stop these misunderstandings and discourtesies in their in- ception. A situation like the one which I have described can seldom be cured, but it can often be prevented. In fact, a large part of the work of

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diplomacy is concerned with the prevention of just this kind of misunderstanding. Each nation has trained representatives at the capitals of the others, to see how people feel, to inform the home govern- ment what has caused offence or what may con- ciliate, and to explain to the foreign government the real meaning of transactions harmless in their intent but liable to be misunderstood. Few of us realize how much both the diplomats and the gov- ernments are engaged in this work of pacifying emotions before they have reached an intractable or incurable stage.

And not only sovereigns or diplomats, but a large part of the organized agencies of civilization itself are occupied with the prevention of these misunder- standings. Courts of arbitration like the Hague tribunal ; the whole set of usages and customs which we call by the name of international law; the yet wider form of comity which has been introduced by international trade and international credit; the interchange of ideas which goes with modern travel— all these are means to bring the peoples into closer contact and better harmony. The whole ordered system of life which we call by the name of civilized society is so dependent on peace for its maintenance, and so shaken by war or by the threat of war, that it puts into operation whatever ma-

ANIMOSITY 19

chinery it can command, in order to prevent out- bursts of feeling like the one which has today overwhelmed Europe.

But all machinery fails, and all machinery must fail. The question of peace or war rests not with the diplomats, but with the people. To bring about peace on earth men must develop the Christian vir- tues of fairness and courtesy. They must try to see things as others see them ; to speak and act with a view to the feelings of others as well as them- selves. This appreciation of others' point of view is the essential element both in fairness and in courtesy. They are not really different things; they are different sides of the same thing. Fairness is consideration for others as shown on the intel- lectual or subjective side. Courtesy is considera- tion for others as shown on the social and practical side.

I spoke of them a moment ago as distinctively Christian virtues. You will perhaps be surprised at this; for we can all remember instances among non-Christian peoples of singularly fair men and singularly courteous ones. But in spite of these many instances, I think it is true that Christianity was the first religion to insist on the application of these standards to all mankind ; to demand fairness or objectivity of judgment by all and courteous

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consideration for all — low as well as high, people as well as kings.

If we look in the works of the ancient moralists we shall be struck by the fact that the knowledge necessary to virtuous conduct is assumed to be the property of the few. These few must learn to judge things rightly, to form their opinion dis- passionately, to provide for farsighted manage- ment of the community. The great body of the people are not to do thinking for themselves, but to take the standards set by others ; to accept their opinions and lines of conduct ready made. Against this monopoly of moral intelligence Jesus Christ speaks out with all his voice. "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." It is not enough for the multitude to follow popular tradition and popular prejudice. Each man has the responsibility of judging for himself. It was for this teaching that the priests had him crucified ; it is this same teaching that has made him the prophet of modern democracy.

And if we look at the courtesy of ancient times, we find that it meant courtesy to men of your own class. Of the duty of courtesy to other classes we hear comparatively little. "While there were many individual acts of kindness to dependents and to slaves, dependents and slaves were regarded in the

ANIMOSITY 21

same general light as horses or cattle. Thou shall love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy, said the old moral code. It was left for Jesus Christ to ask, Who is thy neighbor, and who is thine enemy? "With men and women of every walk in life he ex- changed courtesies on the basis of human equality and human brotherhood. If we read the gospel carefully we shall find that this was another reason why they crucified Jesus; and it is another reason also why he is the prophet of modern democracy in its best meaning.

He is a prophet whose message is overwhelm- ingly needed in this age, when the people guide the policy of their rulers and when the question of peace depends on the people's fairness and cour- tesy. A prayer for peace is a prayer for these virtues. If our own prayer for peace is to be sincere and effective it must be accompanied by daily and hourly effort on our own part to develop these qualities in ourselves and exercise them in our daily life. If we have them we are contributing to peace on earth, and our prayers will mean some- thing. If we have them not we are retarding peace on earth, and our prayers are mere hypocrisy. Any government which, while professing to seek peace, gives an example of arrogance to its neigh- bors; any newspaper which, proclaiming the evils

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of war and the desirableness of stopping it, repeats mean insinuations against its opponents and shapes its editorials to suit its own prepossessions, without regard to the facts ; any individual who, condemn- ing militarism among nations, nevertheless nurses his own prejudices and harbors unjust suspicions against his fellow men, is today belying its prayers by its actions.

This is not a time for thanking God that we are not as other men are. This is a time for each of us to exercise close self-examination. How do we stand these tests? Are we trying individually to be fair, in the controversies that actually come before our attention? Do we read the newspapers that tell us the plain truth, or do we choose the ones that tell us what we wish to believe ? In the athletic discussions of the day do we try to get our rival's point of view, or are we content to confirm our own prejudices? When somebody says that another college is going to play unfairly, do we say that the men in that other college are gentlemen like our- selves, and would be no more guilty of intentional unfairness than we are ; or do we harbor suspicion and possibly repeat it, until the unproved gossip of yesterday becomes the settled belief of tomorrow ? You may say that these are little things. But they are little things that count; little things out of

ANIMOSITY 23

which will grow our mental attitude to the larger things of business and politics.

Do we accept the Christian obligation of courtesy to all mankind, or do we limit our obligation to the narrow circle of our own immediate friends ¥ This question means something vital, not only for our own development but for the history of America. The man who according to his opportunity is con- siderate of every other man or woman, independent of questions of social class, is making himself like Jesus Christ and helping to make the American nation a Christian nation. The man who follows the crowd in its thoughtless shouts and jeers is making himself like the worst of the Pharisees, and is increasing the danger of that unchristian hate between classes which is America's greatest menace today. Thoughtless rudeness from a street window to an honest man or woman may seem a small thing at the moment; but the man who countenances it is training himself and encouraging others toward social war instead of social peace.

We call ourselves students; let us study to see things as they are. We call ourselves democratic ; let us recognize the obligation of courtesy to every man and woman. We mean to be leaders; let us learn so to lead that people will work together instead of working apart. Let us show this in our

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conduct toward the town in which we live. Let us show it in our behavior toward our rivals in every line of collegiate activity. Let us show it, above all, in our honest, straightforward, whole-hearted pursuit of the truth. Then will our prayers for peace mean something; then will they be heard — and answered !

BELIEF IN MEN

1909

Charity suffereth long and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

Kejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

In order to accomplish anything great, a man must have two sides to his goodness : a personal side and a social side. He must be upright himself, and he must believe in the good intentions and possibilities of others about him.

We recognize the first of these things. We know that the leader must have principles of his own; that he must stand for something definite, which he is prepared to maintain through evil report and good report. We do not, I think, recognize the second of these things to an equal degree. We do not appreciate how necessary it is for a man to believe in those about him just as far as he can and cooperate with them just as fully as he can. Yet this also is a condition of leadership. No matter how high the ideals for which we stand, we cannot expect others to follow us unless we have confidence

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in them. We cannot expect devotion if we return it with distrust. We cannot expect cooperation unless we are prepared to give freely of our con- fidence. The man who lacks faith in other men loses his best chances to work, and gradually under- mines his own power and his own character. The man who has this faith in other men gets his work done and impresses his own personality and ideals upon his age and his nation. It was this faith in men which made David, with all his faults, a worthy forerunner of Jesus Christ. It was this faith in men which distinguished Isaiah from Jeremiah or Ezekiel, and raised him out of the ranks of the other prophets as distinctively the herald of the Christian plan of salvation. It was this faith in men which marked every stage of the work of Jesus himself.

It is not hard to see this when we study the his- tory of religion. It is hard to realize its decisive importance in the incidents of our daily life. Yet it is just as essential today as it ever was.

In the early years of the Civil War the Army of the Potomac had a number of officers of decided ability in positions of high command. Not one of these men was in a place of leadership at the end of the war. Grant and Sherman, Sheridan and Thomas, though not all Western men, all had their

BELIEF IN MEN 27

training in the armies of the West instead of in the Army of the Potomac. What was the reason for this extraordinary state of things? The main reason, in the opinion of those best qualified to judge, was that the officers of the Army of the Potomac did not have the habit of believing in each other and cooperating with each other to the extent that prevailed in the West. They were men of ability; they were anxious for the success of the Union cause ; but they were at least equally anxious that other officers should not be promoted ahead of them. They were far too ready to listen to sugges- tions of evil and intrigue. Even when they were too honorable to countenance such intrigues in their own behalf, they were not strong enough to pre- vent these suspicions from interfering with their usefulness or paralyzing their activity at critical moments. It was not an evil which affected one type of officer alone. It blasted the careers of the bold and the cautious, of the guilty and the innocent.

These evils of military intrigue were not by any means wholly absent from the Western armies. Three at least of the four generals whom I have named suffered severely from such intrigues. The habit of backbiting with the tongue or taking up reproaches against one's neighbor is not confined

28 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

to any section of the country or to any specific meridians of longitude. But on the whole the Western army leaders kept their faces far more steadily to the work in hand than did the Eastern ones. When it came time to fight they fought. When it came time to push ahead they pushed ahead. When it seemed uncertain whether their colleagues were helping them or hindering them, they gave their colleagues the benefit of the doubt. There was a certain largeness of mind in men like Grant or Sherman which made them always prefer to fight the enemy instead of criticising, or even replying to the criticisms of, their friends. And this in the long run counted more than mere intel- lectual ability like that of McClellan, or power of personal leadership like that of Hooker.

I have gone into this instance at some length because it illustrates a kind of danger which meets every professional man and business man today, and which is as insidious as it is universal. If I can today help you to feel the need of faith in men as a means of realizing your faith in God, I believe that it will do more than any other one thing to make your Christianity a working force in the life of the world. I shall therefore analyze somewhat closely the situation which confronts us, and show in detail the dangers with which it is beset.

BELIEF IN MEN 29

We have our life work before us — a vast field, with plenty for us all to do. We are working in cooperation with others and also in competition with them. It is the essence of the competitive system that the man who can show the most results to his credit shall be given the largest opportunity for leadership in the cooperative organization. The competitive system is a good one — an essentially Christian one. The parable of the ten talents lays down the theory of competition as a fundamental part of the Christian doctrine. But, like every other good thing, competition is liable to be abused. It is good only so long as it is open and fair. If it ceases to be open and fair it is not competition, but cheating.

Now we, as ambitious men, are not only ready but anxious to go into honorable competition. We believe that we can do something for the world, and we are ready to stand by the results ; to make what we do the test for leadership. But while we are engaged in this work — whether it be in law or in business, in politics or in scientific discovery — there comes a tempter who says : You are making a mistake to put your attention solely upon your work. You will never get on in that way. You are intent upon doing what is to be done. This would be all right if all others were doing the same thing.

30 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

But they are not. They are bending their energies toward getting credit for what is being done, — not only the credit that belongs to them, but the credit that belongs to you. Insensibly we begin to believe these intimations; insensibly we pay a little less attention to our work and a little more to keeping ahead of our fellows. Suspicion takes the place of cooperation. We enter into a contest with those who ought to be our friends. Sometimes we win the contest, sometimes we lose it. Whether we win or lose, the work itself is sacrificed. We remain at best leaders of a cause where there is nothing worth leading.

The only way to stop this evil is to resist it at the very outset. We must avoid the habit of listen- ing to such suggestions. If a man who calls himself a friend makes them, he is no friend. If a news- paper which calls itself moral makes them, it is not really moral. The more plausibly the suggestions are put, the more fatally do they tend to under- mine the largeness of faith and hope and charity which makes life worth living. By dwelling upon intimations of this kind we do an injustice to our neighbors, to ourselves, and to our country.

We do an injustice to our neighbors, because nine such irresponsible suggestions out of ten are false. Even when they are not false in detail they are

BELIEF IN MEN 31

false in their underlying assumptions. The men who are going out from our schools and colleges and workshops are predominantly good, not predomi- nantly bad.

If a man singled out some one occurrence of my life, came to me with a distorted account of it, and then said that it was typical of my whole career and conduct, I should order him to leave the house ; and so would you under similar circumstances. If we were equally ready to do the same thing in behalf of our friends when charges or insinuations are made behind their backs, modern society would be healthier and more efficient than it is at present. If we harbor the suggestions, as we too often do, we excuse ourselves by saying that we do not know as much about our friends' motives as we do about our own. This simply makes the attack more cowardly. It does not make the probability of its truth any the greater.

By the ready acceptance of these reports we harm ourselves no less than our friends. We do not realize to what extent others judge us by our beliefs. But we are in fact judged in that way; and it is right that we should be judged in that way. The man who is cynical, whether about women, or business, or politics, is assumed — and in nineteen cases out of twenty, with full justice —

32 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

to be immoral in his relations to women or business or politics. The man who has faith in the integrity of others in the face of irresponsible accusations is assumed — and in nineteen cases out of twenty justly assumed — to have the confidence in others' goodness because he is a good man himself. This is why people will follow the optimist even though he is sometimes wrong, and shun the pessimist even though he is sometimes right. ' ' Truth dwells with him who speaketh not evil against an enemy save from his own knowledge," was the praise wrung even from that past master of duplicity Hyder Ali by the Scotch physician Hartley.

But greater perhaps than the injury either to our neighbors or to ourselves is the injury to society as a whole; — to the country, the civilization, and the church of which we are a part. Today as never before we are governed by public sentiment. The police regulations of business, the laws of society, the creeds of the church, have but a small influence over our action as compared with the effect of that indefinable thing known as public opinion, whether in matters of business, of politics, or of religion. But the public opinion of the community is after all little more than the habits of private opinion of all the individual members of that community, transmitted as they are by word of mouth and by

BELIEF IN MEN 33

the printed page. If this public opinion believes in men and instinctively rejects slanders about them, we live in an atmosphere of faith. If it harbors such slanders and instinctively credits them, we live in an atmosphere of suspicion or cynicism. It does not make much difference what is the law or what is the creed of the church, in comparison with the question what is the habitual attitude of men toward their neighbors. Not only the man who originates slanders, but the man who idly repeats them, or even lends ready credence to them, is poisoning the sources of public opinion. One of the first things that is prohibited in warfare as soon as nations begin to become civilized is the poisoning of wells. Yet we too often allow in times of peace the poisoning of the wells of public opinion by the light repetition of unfounded reproach against one's neighbor.

It is this condition which creates the call for men of faith in the affairs of the day. The readiness to believe evil lies heavy on society and paralyzes it. It is a bar to the positive action of men who would make society better. The man who really com- mands public confidence is the one who is strong enough in his faith and large enough in his sym- pathies with other men to break down this bar. Look back over the whole record of history, and

34 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

you find that the men who have done really great things have been, not the critics who pointed out and exaggerated the evils to be avoided, but the men of strong sympathies who recognized what was good. Napoleon knew better than any other man the defects of French military organization ; but he won his victories primarily by a belief in the French army which made the French army believe in him. McClellan knew what to avoid better than Lincoln or Grant; but it was men of the type of Lincoln or Grant who brought a united nation out of the Civil War. The prophets who preceded Jesus criticised the evils of their time just as unsparingly as did Jesus himself, and at far greater length. The thing that he had and that they had not was the belief in the essential goodness of humanity which would respond positively to the gospel of self-sacrifice. He that would follow in the footsteps of the Master must be prepared, not simply to stand upright himself, but to have faith that others will stand by him.

The scholars and scientific men of the country have sometimes been reproached with a certain in- difference to the feelings and sentiments of their fellow men. It has been said that their critical faculty is developed more strongly than their con-

BELIEF IN MEN 35

structive instinct; that their brain has been nour- ished at the expense of their heart ; that what they have gained in breadth of vision has been out- weighed by a loss of human sympathy.

It is for us to prove the falseness of this charge. It is for us to show by our life and our utterances that we believe in the men who are working with us and about us. There will probably be times when this is a hard task. If we have studied history or literature or science aright some things which look large to other people will look small to us. We shall frequently be called upon to give the unwelcome advice that a desired end cannot be reached by a short cut; and this may cause some of our more enthusiastic friends to lose confidence in our leadership. There are always times when a man who is clear-headed is reproached with being hard-hearted. But if we ourselves keep our faith in our fellow men, these things, though they be momentary hindrances, will in the long run make for our power of Christian leadership.

There was a time, not so very long ago, when the people distrusted the guidance of scientific men in things material. They believed that they could do their business best without the advice of the theorists. When it came to the conduct of affairs, scientific men and practical men eyed each other

36 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

with mutual distrust. As long as the scientific men remained mere critics, this distrust remained. "When they came to take up the practical problems of applied mechanics and physics and solve them positively in a large way, they became the trusted leaders of modern material development.

It is for us to deal with the profounder problems of human life in the same way. It is for us to prove our right to take the lead in the political and social and spiritual development of the country, as well as in its mechanical and material development. To do this we must take hold of these social problems with the same positive faith with which our fathers took hold of the problems of applied science. To the man who believes in his fellow men, who has faith in his country, and in whom the love of the God whom he hath not seen is but an outgrowth of a love for his fellow men whom he hath seen, the opening years of the twentieth century are years of unrivalled promise. A man learns to love God by loving his fellow men, and to believe in God by believing in his fellow men.

THE HONOR OF THE SERVICE

1912

Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.

The question is constantly asked whether our col- leges prepare their students to be successful in after life. In nine cases out of ten the man who asks this question measures success in terms of wealth. He thinks of the whole world as playing a game in which money is the prize and the man who makes most money the winner. If this were the right way to look at life, the inquiry would be an overwhelmingly important one. But it is an essentially wrong way to look at life ; and the nation which takes this view of things does so at its peril. The true measure of a man's success is the service which he renders, not the pay which he exacts for it. The true measure of a man's ability is the power to help others and to contribute to their ad- vancement. The effort to make money is an im- portant incentive to social service and industrial progress; but the amount of wealth each man acquires is no accurate indication of the service he has rendered or the progress he has made possible. So far as his power of making money depends upon

38 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

the value of what he has to offer to society, his income is a good measure of his usefulness. So far as it depends upon his ability and willingness to charge people all that his service is worth, or to persuade them that his service is more valuable than it really is, his income is a bad measure of his usefulness. No community can afford to treat money made by means like these as giving the possessor any valid claim to public approval. Chris- tianity and common sense alike forbid it.

If any one were to ask whether "West Point or Annapolis prepared men for success in after life we should see the absurdity of the question. It is true that many of the graduates of these institutions are able engineers or successful men of business. But it is not for the sake of these things that we estab- lished our military schools, and not by their success in producing engineers and business men that the value of these schools is measured. If every gradu- ate of these institutions went into engineering or into business and made a success of it, this would not prove that these institutions did the work we had a right to expect of them. Their work is to train men to uphold the honor and secure the safety of their country. The most fundamental lessons which they teach their students are those of loyalty and discipline and courage — not one of which has

THE HONOR OF THE SERVICE 39

anything to do with making money, and all of which are at times liable to interfere with it. The officer must be prepared to sacrifice his comfort at the call of duty. He must know how to obey orders and how to give orders. He must have the courage which fears nothing except dishonor. "West Point and Annapolis are not primarily engaged in train- ing men for business ; they are engaged in training them for what they proudly call ''the service."

The work which our colleges are undertaking to do for the country is in some respects a more diffi- cult one than that which falls to the lot of the mili- tary schools. The service for which we prepare is more varied; its safeguards and its rewards are more intangible ; its problems are newer and more perplexing. All the more reason is there, therefore, why our colleges and our college graduates should face the situation clearly and accept the burdens imposed upon them with their eyes open.

To the military man public service means service in the employ of the government, with definite duties and under definite laws. To the college graduate the term has a wider meaning. The work that we do as office holders will be only a small fraction of the public service which we shall render and ought to render. Any man who is charged with the responsibilities of a large business or an

40 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

important profession has it in his power to serve the public just as effectively as if he were a paid employee of the government. Our modern civiliza- tion puts into the charge of business men or of pro- fessional men a great many things which other civilizations have regarded as functions of govern- ment. Each of us, whatever his line of life, is likely to have the power to direct the actions of hundreds of his fellows for good or for ill. The lawyer who practices law for purely selfish purposes may do the community as much harm as the judge who decides a question unfairly. The president of a large pri- vate corporation who manages his industry without reference to considerations of public policy may do as much harm as the head of a government depart- ment. In order that we may meet our obligations as college men we must extend our ideals of public duty and traditions of public service to every line of life in which the interests of large bodies of people are entrusted to our discretion, whether our particular line of duty be labelled as a government department or not.

The soldier is surrounded by safeguards which the commercial or professional man does not enjoy. He is set apart from other men by a uniform. He knows that the wearer of the uniform is expected to do the business of the nation instead of doing

THE HONOR OF THE SERVICE 41

his own business ; that if he fails to do this he will be execrated, but that if he does this he will be respected and taken care of by the nation. The business or professional man has none of these en- couragements or assurances. If he regards himself as animated by a higher duty than his fellows, his fellows will consider him quixotic. If a man who wears the same clothes as other men and has no distinctive titles before his name lets public duty fall into the background for the sake of money or preferment, nobody will condemn him severely. If he sacrifices money or preferment for the sake of his public duty, he has no assurance that he will be taken care of or rewarded, except by the ap- proval of his own conscience and of a compara- tively small body of friends who understand his ideals.

Nor is it easy for the professional or business man to know exactly what his duty is or exactly what sacrifices it demands of him. In nineteen cases out of twenty the soldier's public duty is a perfectly plain one. In nineteen cases out of twenty the civilian's public duty is a most doubtful one. We know approximately what we require of our army and navy in order that we may have security at home and respect abroad. We do not know what we require of our clergymen and lawyers and

42 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

manufacturers and merchants in order that indus- trial peace may be secured and industrial progress promoted.

We are living in the midst of a world whose material prosperity has outgrown its commercial law and commercial ethics. That law and those ethics were arranged to meet the needs of an age whose business conditions were very much simpler than those of today. Where a hundred different men were doing business independently, it was safe for the public to let each man charge whatever prices he could get, because if he tried to get an unfair profit others would bring the price down. It was safe to let each man make such terms with his workmen as he could, because if one man be- came involved in a labor dispute the public could buy what it needed from other producers until this particular dispute was settled. Under these circumstances we said, and said rightly, that each man fulfilled his public duty if he pursued his own interest in an intelligent and square way, without fraud or concealment. But as matters are today arranged, there are a great many instances where competition cannot be relied upon to produce fair prices, and a great many instances where disputes as to the terms of the labor contract are not a private concern of a few men, but involve large

THE HONOR OF THE SERVICE 43

public interests of many kinds. Different methods have been proposed for dealing with these prob- lems. One man wants enforced competition; another urges complete publicity; a third recom- mends government regulation of prices or of wages ; a fourth advocates public ownership and manage- ment of industry. Each of these proposals may be right as a means of meeting a specific difficulty in some particular instance. Not one of them can claim to be a solution of the problem. We are in every instance trying to deal by statute with a difficulty which can only be solved by ethics.

What form the industrial ethics of the future will take, and what reciprocal duties public opinion will impose upon consumer and upon producer, upon capitalist and upon laborer, I shall not undertake to predict. Two things, however, are certain : first, that any system of ethics which will meet the needs of the future will involve the accept- ance of the principle that private business is a public trust wherever the public welfare is affected by it; and second, that this idea must be applied with intelligence as well as with broad public purpose.

The two must go together. Of all the difficulties that threaten us at the present day, and of all the obstacles which stand in the way of enlightened

44 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

public sentiment, the worst that we have to deal with is a division of our leaders into two camps, one of which emphasizes the need of intelligence but holds narrow views of public duty, while the other takes broad views of public duty but underrates the need of intelligence. The man of brains thinks that he has a right to use his brains for his own benefit and that of those immediately associated with him, without being hampered by too much concern for the general welfare of humanity. The man of broad sympathies and strong emotions thinks that his concern for the welfare of humanity exempts him from the necessity of using his brains at all. One group is content to plaj^ the game of business and the game of politics on the old lines ; the other is anxious to apply remedies which would often prove worse than the disease we seek to cure. It is here that we have the highest opportunity for applying principles of Christian citizenship. The religion of Jesus Christ differs from almost every other religion in teaching, side by side and as part of the same system, the duty of self-sacrifice for humanity and the duty of intelligent adapta- tion of means to ends. On the Pharisees of his time, who were content to seek their own prosperity as a class under the old traditions and safeguards, Jesus urged the broad claims of humanity. For the

THE HONOR OF THE SERVICE 45

agitators who were anxious to make use of present discontent as a means of overthrowing authority, he had a different message — a message of patience and tolerance and good sense. To the privileged classes Jesus seemed like a socialist; to the rabble he seemed like a conservative. Perhaps he was both. Perhaps the vitality of the Christian reli- gion rests on the fact that its founder was at once a socialist and a conservative; a socialist in the breadth of his sympathies and his aims, a conserva- tive in his distrust of political upheaval as a means of moral progress, and in his refusal to regard the transient waves of popular emotion as revelations of eternal truth.

It is our duty as American college men to meet the need of moral leadership today in the same spirit as Jesus Christ met the need of moral leader- ship nineteen hundred years ago. To us it has been given to keep out of the struggles of modern busi- ness until we have had time to reach maturity. If we have studied science and history and literature to any purpose, we have obtained a better sense of the real value of different parts of life today than we had three or four years ago. We have not been compelled to fix our eyes upon the necessity of getting ahead of our fellow men in order to make a living. We have had time to think of the things

46 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

that make nations great and allow the civilization of mankind to make progress. From its college men the community has a right to demand the spirit of public service. From its college men it has a right to demand also the intelligence which shall make that spirit useful. What our country requires of us as Americans our religion requires of us as Christians. Let us here resolve that whatever our calling and whatever our line of work, it shall be inspired by the spirit of public service; and that whatever our religion and whatever our form of worship, it shall be Christian in this same highest sense.

Gentlemen of the graduating class: This is a place, and is known as a place, where the traditions of public service are strong. You have been living on consecrated ground. For more than two cen- turies, men who went out from these halls have been sacrificing themselves to meet the needs of the com- munity, accomplishing work whose full value was not appreciated for years afterwards. The country expects us to do for the future the kind of things that they did for the past, and make Yale stand in the next century, as she stands in the present cen- tury, for loyalty, for courage, for the subordination of individual ease and individual gain to public

THE HONOR OF THE SERVICE 47

ends of lasting importance. These are the tradi- tions of the service which we are called upon to maintain. Every failure to assume public respon- sibility will be noted by our fellow men to our discredit, just as surely as any flinching on the part of the soldier redounds to the discredit of his uni- form. Every instance of heroic work, great or small, even though it receive no material reward in the way of decoration or promotion, enhances the glory and strengthens the inspiration of this college, just as much as any deed of valor of the soldier on the field of battle strengthens the hold of the army upon its members and upon the country.

All the traditions of this place call us to the service of God and of our fellow men. May it be our lot to follow in the footsteps of our fathers and face the problems of today in this same spirit of self-consecration; bound to our duty not by laws alone, or by creeds alone, but by the honor of the service.

A CITIZEN OP ZION

1911

Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill?

He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart.

He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbour, nor taketh up a reproach against his neigh- bour.

In whose eyes a vile person is contemned; but he honour- eth them that fear the Lord. He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not.

He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall never be moved.

In the quaint old chapter headings of the Bible, sometimes almost as suggestive as the contents of the chapters themselves, we find as the title of the fifteenth psalm, " David describeth a citizen of Zion. " His verses are just as appropriate today as they were when they were first sung.

I shall not try to add much to these words or to say much that is not already there. The citizen of Zion must be a straightforward man and a broad- minded man, a man of judgment and a man of principle. Let us simply stop and think what these

A CITIZEN OF ZION 49

qualities mean, and how we can use our college course in such a way as to acquire them.

The citizen of Zion is a straightforward man. He is truthful in the large sense, and not merely in the small one. It is not enough to abstain from telling lies to other people. The citizen of Zion speaks the truth in his heart. He looks facts and consequences squarely in the face. The upright walk and the righteous work are an outcome of this habit of mind. They can be obtained in this way, and in this way only.

The citizen of Zion is a broad-minded man. He is a man of charity in the large and splendid sense in which St. Paul uses the term. It is not enough to show our charity by a thoughtless generosity which gives away money easily. Generosity is a grand quality, and the giving of money for public purposes is a noble thing. But it falls short of the Christian ideal of charity. "Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor," says St. Paul, "and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." "We must have generosity of thought no less than gener- osity of deed. He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbor, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbor, is the man of broad mind and large charity.

The citizen of Zion is a man of judgment. He

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has the sense of proportion which enables him to value men and things according to their real worth. A vile thing means literally a cheap thing. He does not merely condemn vile persons and things; he contemns them, despises them for the cheap shams that they are. He has learned the essential worthlessness of cheap jests and cheap books, cheap tricks and cheap successes — aye, and for that matter, cheap pretences of religion — so that all the weight of popular approbation which may happen to be thrown into their scale does not blind him to the inherent smallness of the person who achieves them.

The citizen of Zion is a man of principle. He is not the kind of man that keeps asking, "What is there in this for met" He judges things objec- tively, without reference to the question whether he himself is being helped or hurt. If an innocent per- son is wronged he will not shut his eyes to the wrong because he happens to get a reward out of it. He will not take usurious advantage of the dis- tresses of others merely because it is his money that makes the profit. He will keep his oaths, whether they hurt him or help him. He will not obscure his ideas of right and wrong by questions of per- sonal profit or loss.

How can we ourselves, as a practical matter, ac-

A CITIZEN OP ZION 51

quire these qualities which are essential to Zion and to its citizens?

The first step is to recognize squarely the neces- sity of applying our brains to our conduct — of making mind and conscience work together instead of trying to use them separately. You will note that each of these virtues that David names is an intellectual one quite as much as a moral one. The practical difficulty of improving the public life of the community at the present day, social, financial, or political, is due far more to a certain kind of stupidity or of wilful blindness on the part of people in general than to any intent to do wrong. They will not deliberately violate the moral law; but they will shut their eyes to the real nature and consequence of things that they are doing, and will be astounded when you tell them that this is wrong. If we can make up our minds squarely and clearly that it is wrong, that for men situated as we are it is a great and overwhelming wrong, we shall have taken the first long step to prepare ourselves for the full privileges of citizenship in Zion.

Having thus made up our minds, let us keep our eyes open to the consequences of our actions. Let us be truthful with ourselves. Let us see facts as they are, rather than as we want to see them. This is not easy. The easy way is to go with the crowd ;

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to shut our eyes to the things the crowd does not see and does not want to see. The man who has learned the habit of being truthful with himself, of facing facts and consequences instead of shirking them, has taken his second lesson in citizenship.

Let us remember, in the next place, that he who repeats a lie does the same kind of wrong and harm as he who invents it. I do not know of any quality which is more needed in our public life and in our preparation for public life than an absolute refusal to repeat unproved tales to the detriment of others. Many a man who would be ashamed to start gossip or slander is willing to spread it. Many a man who would scorn to strike his neighbor behind his back is content to stab his neighbor's reputation by the utterance of half truths which are worse than lies in their effect. Many a man who is really desirous to make the world better so mixes his criticism of real evils with cowardly slaps at everybody who has accomplished anything as to make his well-meant efforts at reform worse than useless. In all contro- versies, from those of intercollegiate athletics to those of international politics, the well of inquiry — if I may quote Mr. Kipling's phrase — is so muddied with the stick of suspicion that clear thinking and ordered thinking become well-nigh impossible.

If we never repeat a damaging story until we are

A CITIZEN OF ZION 53

certain that we can prove it, we shall be astonished to find how rapidly our faith in our fellow men increases. When we find that nineteen-twentieths of the scandalous things that people are saying about each other are cowardly falsehoods, we soon acquire the habit of believing good instead of evil of those about us. This preference for believing good instead of evil will of itself make larger men of us and better Christians of us than we ever could begin to be without it.

Straightforwardness and broad-minded charity are, I think, within the reach of all men who will try to attain them. Judgment is a harder quality to achieve. But it is this very quality which our college course, if we use it rightly, gives us excep- tional opportunities of attaining.

The boy who goes early into professional life, who passes directly from the common school into the factory or from the high school into the office, has one single set of ideals constantly before him. The methods that he studies are the methods of his trade. The object of his ambition is to make as good a living as he can. In our college life and college work we have a chance for a wider view. We see more kinds of men ; we study more kinds of things. We have a larger horizon and we have the means of getting a truer perspective.

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But to make our perspective true we must inter- est ourselves in the things that are really large — in the works of literature which have been read by successive generations ; in the thoughts and acts of men who have made history on a large scale ; in the principles of science which stand for all time. The man who reads books of this kind learns to rate the cheap novel or cheap play at its true value. The man who cares for this kind of history can judge the current gossip of society and the current chicanery of finance or politics for what it is really worth. The man who studies science in such a way as to understand what the pursuit of truth means will soon see of how much less consequence are the smaller pursuits of life. I do not mean that we should stop reading novels or take less interest in current politics or try to keep out of the current pursuits of life; but that we should add thereto enough of the world's larger interests to give us a sense of the size of things as they come before us. And when once we study literature and history and science in this way, our intellectual life and our Christian life will join one another and work to- gether of themselves. To be a Christian means to follow in the footsteps of the man who, more than any one else that ever lived, saw things in their real sizes and proportions.

A CITIZEN OF ZION 55

If we can achieve straightforwardness and broad- mindedness and judgment, our principles may be trusted to grow stronger of themselves every day of our lives. Human nature is after all essentially and fundamentally good. If it were not, life would not be worth living. The evils that we have to fight are essentially evils of blindness. A man sees a little and thinks it is the whole. He sees his own case large and his neighbor's case small. Let men once apprehend a principle clearly and squarely, and they will stand up to it even at their own cost. Let them once believe that you see more than they do and are ready to follow the truth when it hurts you, and they will take you as their guide. Thus it is that peoples are led out of darkness into light. Thus it is that nations are made great.

Our country needs citizens who are straight- forward enough to tell the truth to themselves, charitable enough to think no ill of their neighbors, sound of judgment to value men and things for what they really are, strong of principle to sink the ideal of self in the ideal of duty. He that doeth these things shall never be moved.

THE DUTY OF STRAIGHTFORWARDNESS

1915

Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.

One of the most interesting and instructive chap- ters in modern history is the upbuilding of Eng- land's Indian empire. It was the work of strong men — bold in war, able in organization, devotedly loyal to their charge. But the thing that most im- pressed the Indian rulers and statesmen who met and yielded to the English was not the devotion, nor the organizing power, nor even the fighting power, great as all these were; but the fact that Englishmen habitually told the truth.

Truthfulness was a quality foreign to Oriental diplomacy. Among Indians the most accomplished statesman was he who could most successfully de- ceive his opponents. The straightforward an- nouncement of a man's real intentions seemed suicidal. The keeping of promises when the end for which they were made had been gained looked like wilful disregard of opportunity. But as time went on the suicidal policy was justified. The apparent disregard of opportunity opened the way to new

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and larger opportunities. The ruler who had a treaty with the English government or a promise from an agent of the English company felt that he could rely on it. If native was allied with native each had to guard himself against treachery in the rear ; if native was allied with Englishman the two could work together against a common foe. It was on this basis that English dominion in India was built up and consolidated.

Nor is this an isolated case. The keeping of treaties and promises is the one thing that enables a nation to hold its head high among other nations. A momentary success may be achieved by a policy of deceit; enduring empire belongs to the people that best knows how to keep faith. We think of the power of the Roman republic as won by force of arms. But the Carthaginians and the Macedonians and the Gauls themselves had their full share of victories in their wars with the Romans. That which distinguished the Roman from the Gaul or the Macedonian, or even from the Carthaginian, was straightforwardness and steadiness of policy.

And what holds true of nations holds true of individuals. It may occasionally happen that a man of brilliant parts can disregard his promises with apparent success and build up an empire or a fortune on the basis of broken contracts. But

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achievement of this kind is a precarious and tran- sient thing, which falls to pieces when the brain that planned it begins to lose its power. It is not the man like Louis XIV or Frederick that leaves the most enduring mark on the pages of history; it is the man like Washington or William of Orange — the man who is trusted as well as admired.

This lesson has its highest importance to us here in America, who live in a democracy and who seek to succeed, not by setting ourselves apart from other men but by striving with them toward a common end. To make our work enduring we must work with others. To be able to work with others we must tell them the truth. Without mutual trust the cooperation of free citizens toward a common end is impossible. The whole fabric of American society rests on the assumption that we are going to be honest in our dealings. Truthfulness in word and in act, strict fulfillment of every obligation, straightforwardness in meeting all promises, ex- pressed or implied, independent of the temporary gain or loss to ourselves, are the things that give us the right and power to be members of a free com- monwealth. It is a part of our religious creed as well as of our political duty.

This should be the ideal of all of us. It is the ideal of most of us. Yet in practice we fall lamen-

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tably short of reaching our ideal. I want to say a few plain words about the actual reasons for this failure, and the possible means at our command for bringing our practice up to the standard.

The first thing to note is that there are three different kinds of untruthfulness, due to quite distinct causes. One man lies and cheats because he is frightened. Another lies and cheats because he expects to gain an advantage for himself or his fellows. A third lies and cheats because he sees others do it and is content to follow the fashion. We have the untruthfulness of timidity, the un- truthfulness of intellectual subtlety, and the un- truthfulness of perverted social instinct. The re- sults are similar in the three cases ; the origin and motives are different. We have to deal with three kinds of sin instead of one; and I am convinced that it will help us both in our thinking and in our action if we get this separation clearly made at the very outset.

The first, and probably the commonest, form of untruthfulness is due to timidity — mental and moral panic. A man lies because he is frightened. He knows that he ought to tell the truth, and in calmer moments he intends to tell the truth; but under the influence of overpowering terror he seeks some weak evasion.

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This is the kind of lying that is most universally condemned. It is unlovely in its origin; it is in- efficient in its results. It is a blind and unpre- meditated effort to cheat which, like other blind and unpremeditated efforts, is unsuccessful and speedily punished. But for that very reason, perhaps, it is also the kind that is least dangerous to society. It is deceit which does not deceive. It is cowardice rather than lying.

Far more effective, and for that reason more dangerous, is the second kind of untruthfulness: the evasion and misstatement due to intellectual subtlety; the deliberate fraud which a man prac- tices in order to gain an end that appears to him desirable.

Unlike the instinctive lie of the coward, the pre- meditated lie of the deceiver often appears to accomplish its purpose. A man may win a game by a trick that deceives the umpire, or a prize by a falsehood that deceives the examiner. He may gain a fortune by an advertisement that misleads the consumer, or an election by a speech that mis- leads the voter. Nor will the end always be a purely selfish one. Many a man will cheat in politics from motives which are largely patriotic. Some of the worst treachery in the world's whole history has been intended to promote the kingdom

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of God. But whether the end be selfish or unselfish, a course of deceit is a foolish way of trying to reach it. Even when fraud appears most successful, the gain from such success is usually limited and tran- sient; while the loss which comes from forfeiture of confidence is large and permanent. The man who prides himself on his intellectual subtlety gets the thing immediately in front of him and credits that gain to his skill. He misses a dozen other things that go to the straightforward man, and thinks himself unlucky in so doing. But what he calls ill luck is usually the indirect effect of his deceit, which he, with all his cleverness, has not been subtle enough to trace.

In point of fact, no man sees far enough into consequences to make it safe for him to enter upon a course of deceit. The greatest English whist player of his generation, James Clay, once said, ' ' I never knew a man addicted to the use of false cards who was really successful at the whist table. In trying to deceive his adversaries, he always did more harm by deceiving his partner." If this be true in whist, where there are but fifty-two cards and only one partner, what shall be the case in the complex affairs of life, with the multitude of part- ners and an infinity of varying conditions !

And in the few cases where the deceiver really

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gains his end and wins the prize on which he has set his heart, there are other things that come with it which turn the gain to loss. The man who has forfeited the confidence of his fellow men can no longer associate with others on a basis of mutual trust. Success gained on these terms sets a man apart from his fellows — admired, perhaps, by the multitude, but envied and hated instead of being loved and adored. Few indeed of those who say glibly that honesty is the best policy know how profoundly true this maxim proves itself, even in cases which they deem to be exceptions.

But there is a third form of untruthfulness and dishonesty which is yet more subtle and dangerous than the second : the untruthfulness and dishonesty which comes from blindly following fashions in thought and feeling which have taken possession of those about us. The temptation to this sort of untruthfulness is more subtle because a man de- ceives himself as well as others, and thinks that wrong things are right, or at least not very wrong, if his friends do them. It is more dangerous be- cause the man who joins the community in ac- cepting wrong standards, instead of asserting inde- pendence by making right ones of his own, may find an easy road to leadership among his fellows and win their approval most when he least deserves it.

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It is proverbial that a crowd will indulge in many acts of stupidity or brutality which very few individual members of the crowd would undertake by themselves. The stronger a man's social instinct is, the more he is inclined to go with the multitude and do things which he afterward sees to have been foolish or wicked. All this is commonly explained by saying that a crowd has no conscience. I think it would be truer to say that a crowd has no percep- tions. An individual acting for himself keeps his eyes open. A member of a crowd has eyes for what the crowd sees and ears for what the crowd hears. If the leaders say a thing is white the crowd is hypnotized into seeing it white even if it be black as ink. The man who abandons himself to the movement of such an unthinking mass, whether he be at the front or at the rear, becomes possessed by a sort of mental intoxication under which he loses all sense of evidence. One man voices a sus- picion; his neighbor repeats it as a charge; in a few moments it has been accepted by the crowd as a statement of fact. If each man examined the evidence for himself no man would believe it for a moment. Yet when the crowd thinks it is true every one, or almost every one, is content to accept this collective emotion in lieu of evidence ; to make statements that are at variance with the facts, and

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to countenance or excuse dishonorable practices on flimsy or fictitious grounds.

In civilized society the impulses and emotions of the individual are seldom very dangerous. When a man feels a savage desire to kill or to steal, society defends itself by putting him into prison or into an insane asylum, according to the circumstances of the particular case. But when the whole body politic is possessed by the same emotion there is no one to repress it. The newspapers and magazines make their profit in stimulating the mistakes which lead to savagery. Politicians find that they lose votes by trying to correct the error and gain votes by encouraging it. The blind are leaders of the blind, and both fall into the ditch.

This form of self-deceit is perilous alike to the individual and the community. The individual gets the habit of disclaiming moral responsibility. He lets his own brain and conscience go unused so often that he cannot rely on either of them as a sure defense against overmastering impulse in grave emergencies of any kind. The community is exposed to the danger that public affairs will be guided by organized emotion instead of by intelligence.

Under the influence of suspicion or emotion the public shuts its eyes to the truth until truth and

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falsehood become indistinguishable. From this come Sicilian vespers and massacres of St. Bar- tholomew. From this came the crucifixion itself. Jesus of Nazareth was the victim of popular sus- picion and prejudice. The most enlightened and honorable class of the community, who should have been his friends, were gradually brought into an attitude of unreasoning hostility to him. The prejudice of the Pharisee and the prejudice of the people so interacted on one another that none could see the good in Jesus, and all joined in crying, "Crucify him!" Such is the end of blind self- deceit.

How can we avoid these several forms of evil? Only by a rigid course of training of the brain, the emotions, and the conscience.

In the first place, we must acquire the habit of looking into evidence. We must stop buying the newspaper that tells what we wish was true, and buy the one that tries to tell what really is true. We must refuse to repeat unproved gossip or scan- dal merely because we like it. This will soon grow into the habit of not liking it. We shall learn to hate the unconscious lie as well as the intentional one. There may sometimes be a question whether we should tell the truth to others who cannot see it or understand it; there can be no question at all

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that we should tell it to ourselves. And when a man has learned to tell the truth to himself, the problem of telling it to others becomes compara- tively simple.

We must so study history and science and litera- ture as to fill our minds with ideals and aspirations that are permanently important. The man who really takes hold of the lessons of history is pro- tected against most of the temptations to political trickery. The man who is fired with the ideals of scientific discovery or of public service is not likely to try to parade a sham science as if it were a real one. The man who has read to any purpose the classical dramas of the ancient and modern world and the great drama unfolded in the Holy Bible learns not to sell his birthright for a mess of pot- tage. Such men know how to see things in their right size.

We must overcome cowardice as a soldier over- comes cowardice — by discipline ; by doing promptly and automatically the routine duties of life that look unpleasant and dangerous, until the emotion of fear is crowded out. The self -discipline needed against cowardice is different for different men. The man who finds it hard to be punctual gains courage by following the stroke of the clock as a matter of course. The man who finds it difficult

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to pay his debts gains courage by paying cash. The man who is tempted to an undue dread of physical labor and pain gains courage by never shirking. The actual time or money or pain in- volved may be a small thing; the habit of dis- ciplined action is an overwhelmingly large thing. Finally, we must remember, in season and out of season, that moral responsibility is not a thing which can be delegated. Our souls are our own — to be saved by facing facts as they are, or to be lost by shutting our eyes to them. Whatever can best help us to this sense of responsibility — creed, ritual, or philosophy — will help us more than all things else to know the truth and tell it.

THE DUTY OF INDEPENDENT THINKING 1919

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

The keynote of the world's older religions was obedience. Man was surrounded by supernatural powers whose ways he could not hope to under- stand. The favor of these powers depended on compliance with their orders as revealed through the priesthood. Destruction awaited the tribe that disobeyed them or allowed any of its members to disobey them. The religious man was one who recognized unquestioningly the rules and traditions thus sanctioned.

These ancient religions represented all different stages of enlightenment. Some were based on abject superstition, others on theology of a high and noble kind. Some prescribed rules of conduct which were cruel and foul ; others had codes which are in harmony with the best standards of today. But amid all their variations of form and content, they agreed in this: they always kept the idea of command before men's minds, and made the authority of the lawgiver the one supreme reason why people should follow the law.

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In contrast to all these theories and all these codes, Jesus preached a rational morality. He taught men to judge the merit of actions by their effect upon mankind. The law of Moses was the best of the ancient codes ; and in general Jesus ad- vised his disciples to follow that law. But where obedience to the letter of Moses' law meant viola- tion of the spirit, Jesus taught them to think for themselves; to fulfill the purpose instead of con- forming to the words of command.

One of the best features of the Mosaic law was its provision of a day of rest for all mankind. In the Jewish account of creation God himself was repre- sented as resting on the seventh day, and devout believers were required to follow his example in this respect. The Pharisees looked askance at Jesus because he exercised his powers of healing on the sabbath day. Jesus summarized the issue be- tween himself and the Pharisees in one pregnant question : "Is it lawful on the sabbath days to do good, or to do evil ? to save life, or to destroy it ? ' ' He who understands the spirit of Christian teach- ing sees that the man who makes the divinely ordained day of rest an excuse for failure to do his plain duty to humanity is still under what Paul calls the bondage of the law. Such a man makes the institution of the sabbath an end in itself,

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instead of a means to the good of humanity. He falls back on the letter as an excuse for neglecting the spirit.

It is the very essence and heart of Christianity that it teaches people to reason about morals for themselves ; to judge the Tightness of an action, not by its conformity to the past, but by its effect on the future. I do not mean that Christianity was the only religion that ever taught its disciples to reason, or that Jesus was the only religious leader who abandoned traditional morality in favor of rational morality. Every great prophet has done this to some extent. Confucius and Buddha each taught their followers to think for themselves, instead of letting others do their thinking for them. Isaiah denounced those who were content to obey the letter of the law, and appealed for the observ- ance of its spirit. But Christianity has spread the thinking habit wider than other religions. The teaching of Jesus may not have been more spiritual than that of Isaiah, nor more unselfish than that of Buddha, but it took more hold on the conduct of practical men.

The fact that Christianity makes this appeal to reason renders it stronger in time of stress than a religion which appeals to authority only.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom ;

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but it is by no means the end or culmination of wisdom. If a man has been taught to obey religious rules simply because he is afraid the gods will punish him for violating them, anything that casts doubt upon the power of those gods, or the authority of the priests through whom they have revealed their will, takes away all reason for right conduct. A defeat in battle may shake the very foundations of such a religion, by casting doubt on the power of the tribal god. A rational explanation of what was previously supposed to be a miracle may undermine a system of morals based on priestly commands. But the man who loves God as well as fears him, and follows Jesus because he is pointing the way to a world of human sympathy and happiness, instead of one of mutual distrust and cruelty, does not need to have his religion au- thenticated by miracles or vindicated by success in battle. The man who believes a thing simply be- cause it is in the Bible views every advance of modern exegesis with apprehension. The man who believes in the precepts of the Bible because they show him what he needs and what his fellow men need is not thus easily shaken. As long as Chris- tianity makes good men and helps them to know what is good for other men, the theory of inspira- tion and the existence of miracles are matters of

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but secondary importance. If the church can ac- complish these results it is indeed set upon a rock.

This kind of religion, which demands indepen- dent thought from its disciples and which finds its justification in results rather than in tradition, constitutes the one secure basis for civil liberty.

Two years ago we engaged in a war which was to make the world safe for democracy. The war is over, but the perils of democracy seem as great in 1919 as they did in 1917. The danger that free institutions will be crushed by armed force from outside is indeed less ; but the danger that they will break down through the war of misunderstandings and passions within each community is greater than ever.

This is no new experience. The democracies of the past have had more to fear from foes within than from foes without. The French republic of 1792 was strong enough to withstand the combined assaults of Great Britain, Prussia, Austria, and Russia, but it was shaken to its foundation by the excesses of the Terror and was finally brought to an end by the incompetence of the Directory. The English Commonwealth of the seventeenth century was able to laugh at the threats of foreign powers. It was undermined by the ignorance or fanaticism of its own component elements. Look at Venice or

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Florence, Rome or Athens, and we see the same story repeated, the same lesson reinforced. People whose morals have been based on authority instead of reason, on fear instead of love, need to have their constitutional law administered by rulers of whom they are afraid. Give political freedom to a group of men who are not accustomed to govern themselves, and farsighted management of public affairs becomes an impossibility from the start. If such men remain under the sway of the religion of their fathers, the name of liberty becomes a cloak for the excesses of fanaticism. If they break loose from that sway they are led to the yet worse excesses of anarchism. Self-government is impos- sible without intelligent unselfishness — the kind of intelligent unselfishness that Jesus taught two thousand years ago.

Our fathers realized that freemen must be intelli- gent; and it was for this avowed reason that they established public school systems, which have been constantly enlarged and improved until the present day. Some of the founders of the American com- monwealth believed that knowledge was the one thing needful and that unselfishness would follow in due time, as a matter of course ; others thought that if the schools provided knowledge, the Chris-

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tian Church would secure the needed unselfishness in its use.

These hopes have not been fully realized. The widening of the course of study in our public schools has not been accompanied by a correspond- ing increase of political wisdom. Two-thirds of the things which are taught in our high schools and colleges have little effect in making people better citizens. But in spite of this apparent failure, our fathers were fundamentally right. Education is needed to make a man a good citizen and a good Christian — probably more needed today than ever before. It is our problem — at once a political and a religious problem — to see what are the essentials of education necessary for this purpose, and to set ourselves to the work of mastering them.

There are three different kinds of lessons which a student may learn. He may increase his range of knowledge, so as to become a broader man; a man of culture in the truest and best sense of the word. He may lay the foundation for greater success in the calling which he expects to pursue in after life, so as to become a more efficient man ; a man grounded in the theory of his profession. Or he may try to get certain habits and methods of work which will enable him to see straight, and to view things in their right size ; to become, accord-

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ing to the measure of his powers, a man of vision and judgment.

It is this third sort of education, the discipline that gives us power to see straight, that is all-im- portant as a preparation for Christianity and a basis for democracy. Culture is a valuable thing, and the more we can have of it the better. But the history of the Italian Renaissance shows how men can devote themselves so exclusively to culture that they become bad citizens and bad Christians. Pro- fessional efficiency is a valuable thing, and it is good to lay the foundations for it as early as we can. But the example of Germany shows us how a nation can develop professional efficiency to the very highest degree, and yet miss altogether the habits and powers of mind which are essential to political freedom and Christian conduct. Vision and judgment are the things that make a people great and that qualify a man to be a leader among free men. And while they are not things which can be taught by a college instructor except in a limited degree, they are in a surprisingly large degree things which can be learned by a college student if he will set himself to the work.

Vision means seeing straight, seeing things as they are. This is a rarer quality than most men suppose. People are blinded by prejudice. They

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see what they want to see — sometimes because of laziness, sometimes because of timidity, sometimes because of selfishness. They choose the newspaper whose headlines please them, the orator whose phrases fit in with their preconceived ideas. Never finding out things for themselves, they are at the mercy of the editor or speaker who gives them facts at second hand. The habit of getting at things for ourselves is a thing which we can acquire here in college, at the price of constant hard work and a good many failures. By looking up the word in the dictionary instead of in the translation, by under- standing the propositions of science instead of re- peating them by rote, by learning the meaning of historical evidence and the application of the rules of evidence to the ordinary problems of life — in all these ways we learn to use our own eyes instead of being dependent on those of other people.

Judgment means seeing things in their right size. The college man has a better chance than almost any one else to measure the value of different things one against another and get a true philosophy of life. The boy who has to go early into the work of making a living is thrown with one kind of men and one set of ideas, and is prone to overestimate the importance of his own professional standards. The boy who has time for a college course meets

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different kinds of men and gets into contact with different kinds of ideas, ancient as well as modern. He has the chance to see which things have lasted. He can study the permanent lessons of history instead of confining his attention to the transitory ones of current politics.

We are living in a place which for two centuries has had ideals and traditions of its own. It is a place where we try to pursue scientific truth rather than commercial gain ; to use the lessons of history in judging the political events of daily life; to know the best ideals of poetry, to lift us above the prose of our daily work. He who lays his mind fully open to these influences, in the class room and out of it, is learning to know the truth which has made men free. To him and to men who are trained as he is trained, the nation must look for leadership in solving the twin problems of civ- ilization— the problems of democracy and of Christianity.

THE UNION OF FAITH AND INTELLI- GENCE

1910 Add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge.

Thank God, gentlemen, that you are born into an age of faith and into a land of faith — into an atmosphere charged as never before with positive working beliefs which make life worth living.

We sometimes hear a contrary opinion expressed. Many good people will tell you that this is an age when faith has decayed; an age when the human race has lost its belief in the things which are most necessary to its life here and hereafter. This is a wrong view. "We have lost faith in some things, but we have gained faith in others ; and the faiths that we have gained are greater in number and importance and inspiration than the faiths that we have lost. We have lost faith in signs and portents and supernatural manifestations of power; in cer- tain dogmas and formulas once supposed to be essential to salvation. We have gained in their place faith in man, faith in law, faith in the truths of nature, and faith in the God of justice.

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It is natural enough that those who have been brought up to rely on the externals or accidents of the older faith, rather than on its spirit and its sub- stance, should feel that we have lost more than we have gained. If a man believed in God more on account of the miracles that he is said to have wrought at certain times than on account of the mighty works that he shows us every day, a weak- ening of the belief in miracles meant a loss of faith in the underlying moral purpose of the universe. If he did right solely because a verbally inspired Bible told him to, any doubt about the verbal in- spiration of the Bible seemed to take away the whole reason for doing right. But this is a narrow and superficial view of life. Belief in the miracu- lous has had its place, and belief in verbal inspira- tion has had its place. But these things represent at best only the scaffolding which has helped to build up the edifice of human faith. Once the building might have fallen if the scaffolding was taken down ; now its removal means only that the edifice is in condition to stand for and by itself. We must not, indeed, disregard the feelings and prejudices of those who were brought up in the older faith by unnecessary denial of their premises or disregard of their observances; but we may thank God that our faith rests on surer founda-

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tions than the completeness of the evidence for this or that miracle, or than the verbal authenticity of this or that Scriptural passage.

We have faith in man. We believe in our friends. We believe in the essential good will of those with whom we have to do. Nay, more; we believe in the human race as a whole. We believe that its instincts and motives are fundamentally right ; and that if we can remove the ignorance and misery by which so large a part of its members have been burdened we can give them not only new comforts and new knowledge but new spiritual life. The man of today finds in the improvement of the conditions of his brother men not only a duty but an inspiration.

We have faith in society. We believe not only in what the individual human units will do, but in what the organized life of the community will do. We believe in our country. We believe in the laws that it can make at home and in the things that it will stand for abroad. We have enough faith to make our patriotism no mere burden, but a cher- ished possession of our souls.

We have faith in the truths of nature. This is an even more distinctive feature of our twentieth century life than either of the others which I have named. We believe that the world about us is

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governed by laws, and we care for the discovery of those laws; not only for the sake of the practical results which they place in our hands, but for the inspiration obtained by the fuller and better under- standing of the mysteries of the universe. We have learned as never before to

Look through Nature up to Nature's God. And we have faith in the God of justice. We may not always call this God by the same name that our fathers did. We may not surround him by the same attributes with which our fathers in- vested him. We may shrink from appealing to him under the old forms, or sometimes even from calling upon him with the old freedom. But we have in our hearts, and I believe more firmly than ever before, the conviction that at the heart of the universe there is a Supreme Being on the side of right ; and this belief, however much we may shrink from formulating it in words, is strong enough to

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the Eternal Silence.

It is profound enough to make us care very little on which side the majority votes, or on which side our interests lie, if we see clearly what is right and honorable and in the truest sense Christian.

But do we see straight? Do we face things as

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they are? Do we have virtue and knowledge in proportion to our faith ? Do we keep clear of vain imagination ? I wish I were sure of the answers to these questions. I wish I could think that the world today is as sound of head as it is right of heart. The thing for which there is crying need among our good men is intelligence. The thing in which they most conspicuously fall short of the standard set by Christ or preached by Paul is intelligence. For one man who works evil by want of heart there are ten who work evil by want of thought.

I do not mean that the present age has any monopoly in this respect. I do not mean that we are less intelligent in our conduct than our fathers were. I incline to believe that there has been a decided improvement in the readiness of people to think about their conduct and its consequences. But I do doubt whether the improvement has kept pace with the need. We have larger ideals today than ever before. We give ourselves and we give other people more freedom in the choice of ways for reaching them. The glorious liberty of the gospel is realized today in a sense in which it was never previously realized. But the extent of our liberty means an increased chance of making mis- takes ; and the loftiness of our ideals means that we

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sometimes may carry those mistakes to monumental lengths before people recognize what has happened. The very things which make life most worth living today accentuate the evil consequences of living it wrong.

There are several classes of mistakes to which the present age is specially subject and which are specially dangerous because they come so nearly in line with the most glorious ideals of twentieth century religion. Our faith in man may lead us into an easy-going tolerance which is neither in- telligent nor Christian. Our faith in society may lead us to countenance the mistakes, if not the excesses, of socialism. Our faith in science may be carried to the point of scientific bigotry. Our faith that God is fighting on the side of right may blind us to the responsibilities that we ourselves have in that fight.

Let me take these points up in order.

Among the leaders of the civil war General Grant was distinguished by a large-minded faith in men. It was a great source of strength to him; a virtue that perhaps counted for more than all others in making his career a success. He spent upon the work that was before him the energies that other people wasted in distrusting or backbiting their associates ; and the result justified his faith and his

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wisdom. But when he came into the presidency he carried this belief in his friends to unreasonable lengths. If he liked a man he at once had faith in him ; and that faith under the new conditions often proved to be badly misplaced. As a result the years of Grant's second administration were among the most corrupt in the history of our country ; and people for a time lost their admiration of Grant's greatness in their indignation at his mistakes. If you are going to trust men you must take the trouble to judge them. The extreme of indis- criminate trust without judgment is about as bad as the extreme of indiscriminate criticism without faith. No man can do a really large work who does not believe in his friends; but by that same token, the man who chooses his friends wrongly or who confides in them without discrimination is foredoomed to do his work wrong.

The danger of undiscriminating friendship is so obvious that I shall not dwell upon it longer. Less obvious, but perhaps on that account all the more dangerous, is the evil of undiscriminating reliance upon law.

In the decades which have elapsed since my graduation there has been a remarkable change of public sentiment on these matters. Thirty or forty years ago intelligent Americans were believers in

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liberty. They thought that government inter- ference was an evil, and that the legislation which reformers invoked to stop special abuses would generally create more evils than it would prevent. Today all this has changed. "The new democ- racy," said a clear-sighted critic about the begin- ning of this period that I have named, "is passionately benevolent and passionately fond of power." The combination is a dangerous one — how dangerous is perhaps best indicated by the events of the first French revolution, whose pro- moters loved liberty, equality, and fraternity so much that they indulged in a carnival of riot and murder almost unparalleled in recent history. This is of course an extreme instance ; but it is the kind of mistake which any one is likely to make who has more faith in government and law than intelligence as to the way in which government and law must be administered. The desire to make men happy is a praiseworthy thing; the impulse to use government authority for this purpose is a natural one ; but if there is any point where vague sentimentalism is dangerous and where faith needs to be combined with virtue and knowledge in order to have any merit at all, it is in rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's.

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Almost equally characteristic of the present day- is the danger that our faith in science may be carried to the point of bigoted intolerance of any philosophy of life except that which is based on particular fields of science. This is not to be wondered at. In chemistry and physics and biology the nineteenth century has discovered a great many truths which were not known before, and has made these discoveries the means of in- creasing man 's power over nature and ameliorating the lot of the human race. But there is on this very account great danger that we shall over- estimate both the practical value of what has been accomplished and the theoretical certainty of many of our doctrines. The man who would make the right use of scientific truth must know the limita- tions of scientific truth. It is a good thing to increase the production of food; it may become a bad thing if it leads a man to deny that there are any other standards of progress except material ones. It is a good thing to be familiar with the laws of mathematical physics; it may become a bad thing if it leads one to think that these are the only laws worth knowing. I would not say one word which could lessen the enthusiasm of the scientific devotee for his specialized knowledge, or lessen the public faith in the value both of the

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results and of the spirit of discovery by which they are obtained. But let us remember that the field is a limited one, and that the greatest men of science have recognized its limitations. The posi- tion of the agnostic, who does not know or care for anything beyond the results of natural science, is a startling example of what comes to a man who exercises faith without intelligence. In theory the agnostic is the man who does not claim to know anything that he cannot prove — a praiseworthy aspiration. In practice he too often thinks that he has realized this aspiration when he has simply undervalued other fields of study than his own.

Our faith in God, as we today hold it, is based on our faith in men, our faith in law, and our faith in science. It is for that very reason subject to a combination of the dangers which beset all three of them — the danger of a complacent optimism, which looks so firmly for the ultimate triumph of the right that it sometimes loses sight of the means which appear to be necessary to keep the world moving in the right direction.

There is no field — I say it reverently — in which it is so necessary to combine intelligence with faith as in our idea of God. This is peculiarly true today, because today for the first time each man is encouraged to develop his own conception of what

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God is like and what God wants. In former days men were bound down by creeds which described in detail God's attributes and God's wishes. You accepted him as he was pictured in those creeds or you rejected him altogether. Today we try to judge for ourselves regarding God's attributes and God's wishes. Of all the responsibilities which go with the exercise of private judgment, this is the greatest. When Robert Ingersoll said, ' ' An honest God 's the noblest work of man, ' ' he uttered a pro- found truth, which many who profess to be more religious than he may well take to heart. You call your God the God of justice; see to it that your faith takes such shape that you could worship him only by doing justice. You call your God the God of love ; see that your faith is so shaped as to make you give love instead of merely trying to receive it. You call him the God of battles — and this is perhaps in a really masculine faith the highest title of all. See that your trust in him is an inspiration to you to take your part in the battles both with courage and with intelligence; for otherwise that faith is mere blasphemous idolatry. The soldier who fights without faith fights badly; but the sol- dier also fights badly who fights with such blind faith that he relaxes his watchfulness, his intelli- gence, or his sense of personal responsibility. This

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is true in the physical warfare between nation and nation ; it is yet more profoundly true in the great moral war between right and wrong.

Gentlemen of the graduating class: It is a dis- tinctive feature of Christianity that it insists on the combination of faith and intelligence. There have been ages or countries where Christians have forgotten this — where the Christian religion has become predominantly emotional on the one hand, or predominantly intellectual on the other. But these have been its times and places of weakness. The true Christianity, the church militant that is to become the church triumphant, demands trust in God on the one hand, individual intelligence and responsibility on the other. This is what Jesus preached. This is what Paul preached. This is what the great Christian leaders have preached in every age. Men have differed in their view of what God was ; they have differed as to their conception of the kind of responsibility to be placed upon his followers; but they have been at one in preaching the power of God and the responsibility of man, the duty of faith on the one hand and the privileges of freedom on the other. It is to this glorious liberty of the gospel that you are called. You are taking its privileges and its burdens. If you have

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learned the lessons that college has to teach, you appreciate the burdens no less than the privileges, and value the great things of life all the higher because you must do battle to maintain them. God grant that as the later roll calls come, ten or twenty or fifty years afterward, each man, living or dying, may be able to say, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith."

CONFLICTING PHILOSOPHIES OF LIFE

1908

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whoso- ever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it.

Every day and every hour we have to be making choices. Sometimes the matter to be decided is one like the choice of a profession, which will affect our whole future life, and which demands months of careful thought. Sometimes it is a mere trivial choice of what we shall eat or drink, what we shall say or do for our amusement, which is settled upon the instant and then forgotten.

And yet the difference between the important and the unimportant choices is not so great as it seems. We can never tell which decision is funda- mental and which is trivial. The choice which has been prepared by the thought of months may be upset by the events of a single day. The choice which was but the affair of a moment may prove to have consequences unforeseen and immeasurable, which last through our whole life. It is the way in which a man decides little things, no less than great ones, that indicates what he is really made of.

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Every thinking man must sooner or later get at some consistent principle to guide him in these decisions.

This principle we call his philosophy of life. A child can perhaps get on without such a philosophy, content to decide each question under the con- trolling impulse or controlling force of the moment. A man cannot — at least not unless he is content to remain intellectually and morally a child. He cannot act on one principle at one moment and another principle at another moment and expect anybody else to trust him. He will have no sta- bility of character; nay, if we are to define char- acter as the habit of doing the same thing under different circumstances, he will be destitute of character itself. If you know what sort of prin- ciples a man is governed by, you can tell approxi- mately what to rely upon. If he is good, you can have confidence in his honor and integrity. If he is bad, you can have confidence in his selfishness. If he is neither good nor bad, you cannot have any confidence in him at all — ' ' a double-minded man, ' ' as the Scripture characterizes him, "unstable in all his ways''; and the same Scripture runs, "Let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord."

That kind of man no one wants to be. The child-

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ish attempt to decide each question as it arises, according to its supposed importance, without any general philosophy of conduct, we may dismiss as an unworthy solution of life's problem. But what more consistent solution can we seek?

The number of philosophies of life which have been devised is, I suppose, as great as the number of different varieties of human character. But to the civilized man of the present day there are four, and I believe only four, of these different philoso- phies that appeal strongly : those of the Epicurean, the ascetic, the Stoic, and the Christian. Each of these four views of life has its devotees. Each makes at one time or another its strong claim for our adherence. He who would understand his own thinking and that of the men about him must see what these several philosophies promise. He who would make consistent use of his own life must make choice between them — and hold to the choice once made.

The Epicurean philosophy of life, which is also known by the name of rational egoism, may be fairly stated as follows: Man, like every other animal, seeks his own happiness. He may think that he has a choice between different courses of action, and deliberately chooses the one that gives him less happiness; but this, says the Epicurean,

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is a delusion. If I indulge to excess in eating and drinking, while you submit yourself to the strict regimen of the training table, you may think that I choose pleasure and you choose pain; but what really happens is that you have learned to prefer the higher kind of pleasure of sound physical health and successful pursuit of sport to the lower pleas- ure of gratification of animal appetite. Therefore, says the Epicurean, let us frankly recognize that all conduct, and especially all calculated conduct, is selfish conduct ; and let us so regulate our choices that we prefer the higher pleasures to the lower ones.

This was the argument for the Epicurean philos- ophy of life, as stated by the ancients. The modern world has developed another, and even more specious, set of arguments in its favor.

A hundred years ago people all over the civilized world were suddenly accorded a great degree of liberty to follow their own pleasure and consult their own interests. Conservative men thought that this would result in the destruction of society. In point of fact, it resulted in its improvement. By giving a man the right to live where he pleased, you got a better distribution of population than if you compelled each man to live where he was born. By encouraging everybody to produce what the

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public was willing to pay for, you supplied the public more fully with things it needed than when you compelled everybody to follow his father's trade. In these lines and in many others it ap- peared that the intelligent effort of each individual to better himself resulted in his doing more service to the community, instead of less service. The modern rational egoist goes so far as to claim that the intelligent pursuit of the higher kinds of happiness by each individual man not only gives the best results for him as an individual, but the best results for the community of which he is a member; in other words, that rational selfishness and rational unselfishness tend to coincide.

This view of life is widely held — more widely at the present day than ever before. Yet as a philoso- phy of conduct it has certain faults which may wreck the individual, and must certainly wreck the nation that adopts it.

To begin with, it is not true that rational selfish- ness and rational unselfishness always tend to coin- cide. It is not true that the selfishness of the in- dividual will always work out what is best for the nation. To a certain point it may; beyond that point it emphatically does not. This is no place to discuss how far the self-interest of the traders helps the consumer, or just where it begins to hurt him

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more than it helps him. It is sufficient to say that in many parts of the social order we have passed the bound where calculated selfishness does good, and have reached the place where it does harm. All our great social problems, from the economic problem of monopoly to the moral problem of divorce, have their roots in the fact that the calcu- lating selfishness of the individual does not make for the good of the community.

Nor does it in any broad sense make for the happiness of the individual. Look at the school children — or, for the matter of that, at the college boys — who have learned to study only the things that please them, and see how few of them have the power of getting enjoyment out of any kind of study at all. Look at the life of the business man whose sole attempt is to make all he can pecuniarily or socially, and see how seldom he gets anything except Dead Sea apples. Look at the families of those who have entered into the marriage tie as something to be made and unmade for purely selfish considerations, and see whether you find, as a rule, happy homes. Look even at those who thought they could pursue so simple a thing as physical pleasure in an intelligent way, and see what is left of their nerves after trying the experiment. Neither as a nation nor as individuals are we intelligent enough,

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to put the matter on no higher basis, for a philoso- phy of life which should seek to make calculated self-interest the guide of our conduct.

But if a man is not to regulate his life in such a way as to make himself happy, what principle or philosophy is there left?

The most obvious alternative is that of the ascetic, the second of the philosophies that I have named.

The ascetic sees the evil of devotion to the ex- ternal means of happiness. He therefore goes to the extreme of rejecting them. Because business is so often unworthily selfish, he condemns the use of money. Because marriage vows are often made and often broken for such miserable reasons, he would withdraw from marriage altogether. Happi- ness, he says, if it exists at all, lies within the man 's mind rather than without it. And even this inter- nal happiness is to be attained better by ignor- ing it than by pursuing it. Such a man lives by preference the life of a hermit ; or if he comes out into the world he surrounds himself by badges and marks of difference which shall isolate him from the community about him.

I do not believe that this philosophy of life will ever appeal to many of those who hear these words. It is essentially an Eastern ideal rather than a

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Western one ; and it is perhaps needless to say that this philosophy of life, while it has contributed something to the greatness of the East, has con- tributed yet more directly to its weakness. It may almost be described as a philosophy of death rather than a philosophy of life. It is a philosophy which in its practical effects tends to take out of contact with the people's life those very men and those very forces which are needed to save that life and improve it.

Far higher claims than the philosophy of the ascetic has the philosophy of the Stoic. The two are alike in some ways; in others they are totally different. The ascetic and the Stoic are alike in trying to make a man independent of the mere accessories of happiness; but whereas the ascetic takes refuge in withdrawal, as far as may be, from the affairs and incidents and turmoils of life, the Stoic undertakes a nobler task and has a more positive program.

"We are in the midst of a universe," says the Stoic, "whose purposes we do not fully under- stand. But certain things are clear. It is clear that the universe has an underlying order; it is clear that this order is not arranged with a view to our own individual happiness as its primary object. There are two ways," says the Stoic, "of attempt-

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ing to meet this conflict. Either we can try to bring the order of the universe into line with our own individual desires, or we can try to bring our own individual desires into line with the order of the universe. The first is the part of a child — of a child who reaches out his hand for the moon and cries because he cannot get it. The last is the way of a man, who, knowing that he cannot get the moon, is content to make the most of the light that the moon gives him. The child would avoid pain. By so doing he but multiplies his pains and terrors, and adds imaginary evils to the real ones. The man knows that in the universe as it is at present ordered pain is there to be borne ; and he so schools himself in all his minor choices that when the day of a major choice comes he neither weeps nor flinches, but takes what is provided. The child is carried away by enthusiasm for the pomps and vanities of the world, and forgets all else in the pleasure of seeing them. The man knows that there will be ten failures for one success, and chooses to regard both these prizes and his own pursuit of them as part of a plan of the universe which he does not fully understand but may find satisfaction in working out, whether it lead him as an indi- vidual to a throne or to a prison. ' '

Such, gentlemen, were the principles of the Stoic

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philosophy — the noblest product of classical an- tiquity. Where does it fail ?

If you are really able to hold it, I am tempted to say that it fails nowhere. But few, very few men have been able to hold it, and fewer still have been able to impress its lessons upon others. Even among the good men of the ancient world there were a score of Epicureans to every Stoic. There is in the Stoic philosophy as I have indicated it a certain element of cold majesty that is almost in- human. There are few of us who have our actions so under the control of our intellect that we can suppress the cries of pain or the promptings of rebellion by a contemplation of the order of the universe. There are few of us who are brave enough to work out our own salvation in philo- sophic loneliness. The ideals of Epicurus may not have been the highest, but they were at any rate ideals that recognized the element of human com- panionship. He who has read the last unfinished letter of that philosopher from his deathbed, ' ' This is my birthday, at once sad and joyous ; sad for the pain of my sickness, but many times more joyous on account of the tokens of remembrance that I have received from my friends, ' ' sees how the lower philosophy, with the element of human love thrown in, got nearer home to the ancient world and had

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more practical inspiration for the human spirit than had the highest intellectual philosophy with the element of love left out.

The Christian philosophy is the Stoic philosophy with the human element added. "Whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it." The underlying conception of the relation of man's conduct to God's purposes is the same. But the life of a man is recognized as the life of a man — as a thing of infinite worth. "Where the Stoic says, "Learn to bear your burden with courage, for it is a part of God's purpose," the great author of Christianity says, ' ' Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. ' ' The philosophy of Christ calls for no less sacrifices than the philosophy of the Stoic, but it calls for them in words which read not like a judgment but like an inspiration. Keep as much of the Stoic view of life as there is in you. These are days when we have far too little of it. These are days when that kind of courage is needed as never before. But superadd to it the Christian appeal to the whole man ; the Christian recognition of comradeship, which has enabled the nations of the world to work out shoulder to shoulder what they never could possibly have achieved as indi- viduals in isolation; the Christian conception of

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personality, where God is revealed in all men as brothers together, and most of all in our own elder brother Jesus Christ the righteous, who was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Years ago one of the greatest of Southern orators, when asked what was the most moving oration that he had ever heard, answered that it came from the lips of a blind negro preacher in the woods of Vir- ginia, cultivated beyond most of his race, and yet living and working quietly among them ; who, after describing the crucifixion to his audience in lan- guage almost beyond the power of those who did not hear him to realize, concluded suddenly, after a moment's pause, with the words, "Socrates died like a philosopher, Jesus Christ like a God. ' '

Gentlemen of the graduating class: Whatever you may have learned in this place will be of little value, unless it teaches you some consistent attitude toward the great problems of life with which every man must concern himself, whether he will or no. If you go forth without some such philosophy of life you go into the world rudderless and chartless. This I know that you already realize. Every man of you who is worth anything at all must have thought of these matters as intimately concerning himself. The most that I can hope from these

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few words of mine is that they may give you some help toward making clearer things of which you have already thought yourselves, and of which you are going to think much in the next few years to come. Not many of you will choose the philosophy of the ascetic. More, but not so many more, will seek to find their salvation in some form of Stoi- cism. But the great choice lies between Epicurean- ism and Christianity. These are the two philoso- phies which are today contending with one another in close and not unequal strife. Much there is for the moment that favors the Epicurean. The great extension of the fields of human happiness; the positive benefits to the community derived from the exercise of commercial self-interest; the down- fall of certain beliefs which until a few years ago were deemed essential parts of Christianity — all these tend to give a philosophy of calculated selfish- ness an advantage over the appeal of personal devotion. Yet I firmly believe that the selfish pursuit of happiness menaces alike the efficiency of our individual citizens, the stability of our institu- tions, and the power of resistance of our country to dangers and calamities ; and that the fate of the American people — nay, the fate of the whole civil- ized world — is bound up with the possibility of maintaining amid all these difficulties an essentially

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Christian philosophy of life. God grant that light may be given you to see these things in such form that as each minor choice arises you may regulate your life by the Christian view rather than the selfish one ; so that whenever the great day of trial comes you may stand forth as leaders for the salva- tion of your fellow men.

THE UNCONSCIOUS AND THE INTANGIBLE

1908

Seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not.

Life is full of things which are worth having, but which we shall never get if we devote our time to thinking about them. Happiness is worth having ; but the man who spends his days planning how to be happy defeats his own end. Public office is worth having ; but the man who occupies his life in scheming how to get office loses the chance of public service which makes that office honorable. Culture is worth having — almost infinitely worth having ; but the man who sets out to make culture his primary object usually ends by being either a prig or a sham. Somehow or other, the conscious seeking of a good thing, if kept up too long and too constantly, interferes with the chance of ob- taining it.

And what is true of the details of life is true of our plan of life as a whole.

Everybody wants to be worth something. Every- body at a time like this, beginning a new college year, wants to arrange his work in such a way that the year will count. A man without ambition is

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a man without a purpose. The man who would follow Jesus Christ is not called to relinquish one jot or tittle of his ambitions. It would be a very- poor kind of Christianity which should seek to take away the crown of human leadership and the mainspring of human activity. In those places and ages where the church has tried to preach humility to the extent of destroying ambition, it has most conspicuously failed to do its work. What Christianity does is to put a man in the way of realizing the right kind of ambitions instead of the wrong kind. It warns us against seizing the shadow and letting go the substance. It gives us a scale of values which helps us to guard against mistakes of judgment; and better yet, it furnishes us a set of motives and inspirations which will enable us to put that scale into effective use.

A man with whom ambition is the dominant motive — a man who, in the language of the text, seeks great things for himself — is liable to three kinds of mistakes : mistakes of dishonesty, mistakes of selfishness, and mistakes of judgment. He may arrange his work so as to make the most show, with- out regard to the substantial qualities underneath. In other words, his life may be insincere. Or he may plan to do work which is what it pretends to be, but may choose more or less consciously those

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actions and those objects which he thinks will make for his own interest, and neglect those which benefit others only. In other words, his life may be selfish. Or, last and most common of all, without being either very insincere or very selfish, he may yet place his attention on what he regards as the things that count — the things whose visible results he can see and record — to the exclusion of other things equally important or more important, which do not leave a record in his own mind or that of his associates.

It is chiefly of this last set of mistakes that I am going to speak. We all of us despise from the very bottom of our hearts a man who works to make a show and neglects the substance underneath. We all of us condemn just as strongly, though we may not despise him quite as thoroughly, the man whose life is based on selfish calculation. On both of these points American college sentiment is thoroughly healthy. It is one of the greatest merits of a college community that it values the charlatan least when his advertising signs are biggest, and has the least mercy for the selfish schemer when he has most obviously got ahead of his fellow men. A thousand honest voices are preaching these les- sons to us from one week's end to another, more strongly and more effectively than can be done

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from any pulpit. All the traditions of this place help you to despise a sham and condemn a self- seeker. It is of mistakes of judgment that I have to speak today, rather than of mistakes of purpose ; mistakes which, though they may ultimately lead a man to content himself with showy work or selfish work, do not at any rate have their origin in love of show or love of self; mistakes which are all the harder to avoid because they are so near being right at the start.

There are times when the choice between right and wrong is a simple thing; times when there is a choice between a hard thing clearly labelled right on the one side, and an easy thing clearly labelled wrong on the other. These are not as a rule the parts of our life with which we have the most difficulty. The emergency is so obviously a grave one that we summon up our strength to meet it, and decide to do right even at great sacrifice. The serious trouble for strong men comes from another source. It comes in crises which seem less grave, where the choice between the good and the bad is not so obvious — where, indeed, it is chiefly a ques- tion which of two good things is the better. Shall I use a translation in such a way as to make a recitation which wiU please the instructor, or shall I rely on grammar and dictionary, and produce a

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result which will please no authority except my own conscience? Shall I play to win a game, for which my friends care, by any means that lie within the rules, or shall I be guided by a spirit of sport which my friends will call quixotic, and lose? These are types of questions which confront a man not in college only but in every year of his sub- sequent life. But they come home with exceptional force to the college man, because here for the first time is placed upon his shoulders the responsibility of deciding a large number of them for himself.

No hard and fast rules can be given which can relieve us of this continuous responsibility. There is no general proposition which will determine what adventitious aids to study are legitimate and what are unfair. No absolute line can be laid down within which a man may take advantage of tech- nicalities and remain a gentleman. Weak minds have eternally tried to take shelter behind such rules, and have thereby eternally stamped them- selves as weak. Not so Jesus, and not so the true followers of Jesus. With them the servitude of the law has given place to the glorious liberty of the gospel; and that liberty, like every other liberty, carries with it the need and the duty of exercising independent judgment on every difficult moral question that confronts them.

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But though no absolute line can be drawn be- tween right and wrong acts, certain principles may be laid down which will help a man to see which way to look for the right. I am going to try to indicate some of these principles, in the hope that they will help us to distinguish true values from false ones ; in the hope that some of us may thereby be helped to form the habit of choosing the right in cases where the wrong looks specious ; and yet more perhaps in the hope that some of you who by instinct and sentiment have chosen the right and are being discouraged at the result may see how some things which look large today will perhaps look smaller at the Day of Judgment.

Our life's activities may be divided into two parts, the conscious and unconscious. The former are those whose results we see and know and measure at the time. The latter are those which we see and know very inadequately and measure not at all. There is a tendency with all of us to overvalue the importance of our conscious acts and undervalue the importance of our unconscious ones. A great deed of self-sacrifice is something visible and tangible. A hundred minor acts of courtesy are unnoticed by the man who does them. If he is trying to judge his own character he thinks chiefly of the instances where he has consciously

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sacrificed his own interests in order to do some- thing for others. But if the world is judging his character it will think less than he does of the hundred dollars which he did or did not put into the contribution box on Hospital Sunday, and more than he does of the hundred times that he left his neighbor a dollar richer because he had a habit of doing business fairly, or the hundred times that he cheated his neighbor out of a dollar by business habits to which he in his own mind gives no harsher name than shrewdness. The better the world is, the surer it is to take these last things into account.

If there is one moral lesson which the gospel iterates and reiterates, it is the importance of these unconscious courtesies or discourtesies, these unconscious honesties or dishonesties. Our God desires mercy and not sacrifice. The cup of cold water given in Christ's name is worth more than a hundred labored attempts to acquire merit. In the Day of Judgment the wicked will be con- demned, not for the great sins which they have committed, but for the little services which they have left unrendered; the righteous will be dis- tinguished, not by the great deeds that they have remembered, but by the little deeds that they have forgotten.

I said a moment ago that the world tended to get

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nearer and nearer to this way of looking at things as it grew better. We ourselves also tend to get nearer to it as we grow older.

Every time we undertake a new line of activity we are conscious, often most painfully conscious, of what we are doing. The child who begins arith- metic has to add small numbers laboriously on his fingers. The man who begins studying a new language is pitifully aware of the awkwardness of his first modes of expression ; and the better brains he has for other things, the more does the sense of awkwardness come home to him as an intellectual discomfort. Even in sports and pastimes the right way of holding the oar or the club seems at first to fatigue the body beyond reason, and converts what is intended to be a pleasure into very considerable physical and mental pain.

Now in the early stages, whether of study or of play, the most praiseworthy scholar is the one who is prepared to undergo the pain. Some, of course, have a good deal more of it to endure than others before they reach any considerable degree of pro- ficiency; but nobody can learn to count straight, or talk straight, or hit straight without a good deal of conscious and rather disagreeable preliminary practice. The foundations for first-rate work are consciously and painfully laid; but at the time

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that the work itself becomes first-rate the labor and the consciousness of pain begin to cease. We praise the infant who finds that six and two make eight by counting on his fingers; we should not praise the bank clerk for having to resort to a similar process. We praise the student of a foreign lan- guage for being willing to undertake the toilsome task of finding out whether a certain verb ought to be in the indicative or the subjunctive; we should not praise his professor for spending corre- sponding toil to secure the same result. The time when it is hard to do right is essentially the period of preliminary training; the unconscious doing of right shows that a man is trained. There is a point where the achievement which we previously regarded as great becomes little.

What I ask is, that you should use these maturer methods of judgment — take these lessons of ex- perience to heart in your philosophy of life as a whole. The older we grow the more we realize that conscious achievement is worth less than it seems to be, and that character is worth more than it seems to be. The prize winner does one good thing or ten good things that he sees. The man of character does a hundred or a thousand good things, which he does not see because they have become a habit, but which count more and more in

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proportion as those who are about him become better qualified to judge. The honorable man is far less conscious of his character as a gentleman than the dishonorable man who does honorable things half the time; but he stands infinitely higher, not only in the sight of God but in the sight of his fellow men. The essence of real greatness is its unconsciousness.

Whenever a question comes up as to what we should do in a difficult case — when we see a tan- gible good or prize to be obtained by one line of conduct, and only an intangible sentiment to be gratified by another — let us remember that in the true scale of values our intangible sentiments of honor and cleanness and the instincts that go with them represent about all that the community really values in us ; and that our overwhelming desire for the prize, when it comes in conflict with these in- stincts, is chiefly an evidence that we are still young. The examination mark is a thing of today* It may look pretty large when it becomes a doubt- ful question whether you are going to pass or be dropped. But by the standards of the Day of Judgment it is something quite temporal; while the gain or loss of honor is eternal. The question whether our friends win or lose any contest, from a tennis match to a presidential election, may ap-

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pear overwhelmingly important at the moment ; but the tennis match looks very small two months hence, and within two generations even the presi- dential election sinks into comparative insignifi- cance. The one thing that grows greater as time goes on is the heroic character which men have achieved by not seeking great things but simply doing the daily duties that lay before them, until, without knowing it, they had achieved the power to meet any emergency that might arise, however great.

In the chapter heading of the text, penned by the translators of the Scripture three hundred years ago, we read: "Baruch being dismayed, Jeremiah instructeth and comforteth him." The world is full of discouragements for the man of modest worth when he sees the successes of his more bril- liant and aggressive competitors. He must be, not only a prophet, but a man of experience in God's ways, in order to view things in right proportion. If we then wonder, as all of us do at times, what is the use of going on quietly, when so many others are doing things that seem to count for more; if we wonder whether, after all, marks be not of more account than culture, or social prominence more than substantial character, or visible achievement better than single-minded devotion to duty; let us

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remember that every movement of history is going to make the showy things look smaller and the quiet things larger.

As you come back to your class reunions twenty and thirty and forty years afterward, you will see two things: first, that the most enthusiastic greet- ing of remembrance and good fellowship is divided impartially between the men who obtained the honors of college life and those who lost them ; and second, that of the men thus enthusiastically greeted an increasing proportion found great things by seeking them not.

ETHICS OF LEADERSHIP

THE MAN WHO WAS PREPARED

1913

An honorable counsellor, which also waited for the king- dom of God.

It was a joyous crowd that entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. The fishermen and the laborers who had left all to follow the Master saw the triumph of their hopes at hand. The multitude were ac- claiming Jesus as king; some because they cared for the loaves and the fishes, some because they wondered at the miracles he had wrought, some because they sought in him the leader that should free the people from the hated dominion of Rome. The chief priests and the Pharisees, who had hitherto opposed him, seemed powerless to resist the wave of public feeling. Already the disciples were parcelling out the promised rewards among themselves, and disputing who should sit next the royal throne.

But in the heart of Jesus himself there was no feeling of triumph. Too well he knew that the sym- bol of his kingdom was to be a crown of thorns. He knew the suffering that lay before him ; and, what was perhaps harder to bear, he knew that he was

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alone in that knowledge. He had tried to make his disciples see what sort of kingdom he promised them, and they had deliberately shut their eyes to it. Hardship they had endured, and were ready to endure, in the hope of a reward that was before them and under the inspiration of a leader whom they trusted. When the promised reward should vanish from their sight, and when they were left to stand alone without the inspiration of Jesus' presence, they would quail before the trial. The disciple who had been foremost in his protestations of loyalty and readiest to welcome hardship was then to show himself most craven of all.

But the hour that proved the weakness of most men proved the strength of one. When those who had been closest to Jesus were denying their Master or standing afar off from him, Joseph of Ari- mathea, an honorable counsellor, which also waited for the kingdom of God, went boldly (so the word runs) to Pilate and begged the body of Jesus. He was of a different sort from most of those who had followed Jesus in the days preceding. There were not many rich men in that company. Joseph was rich. They had little good to say of lawyers. Joseph was a lawyer. They had declaimed against the righteousness of the Pharisees. Joseph was a Pharisee. Yet this one man stood by Jesus when

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all forsook him, and in one short hour earned an immortality of glory.

Does this mean that Joseph of Arimathea was a better man than Peter or John or any of the other disciples of Jesus? No. It means that he was prepared for the emergency as none of the others had been or could be. He knew much which they did not know. This knowledge had probably made it harder for him to follow Jesus in the time of prosperity. It was the very thing which enabled him to do so in the day of adversity.

It is not likely that Joseph ever shared any of the false hopes that had buoyed up the minds of so many others. The multitude that followed Jesus was carried away by its own size and enthusiasm. Joseph had studied history, and knew how unlikely it was that the unorganized body which acclaimed Jesus' preaching, however numerous and enthusi- astic, could overthrow the power of Rome. The multitude were dazzled by the miracles. Joseph knew how uncertain was the testimony on which reports of miracles were based, and how little the capacity to work wonders meant for the real re- generation of the world. The multitude looked forward with joy to a political upheaval, to a holy war. Joseph knew how much chance of evil and how little chance of good lay in such a prospect.

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He knew that even if they did succeed in over- throwing the power of Rome, the rule of a tumultu- ous body of enthusiasts, however well-meaning, was worse than the rule of law with all its incidental hardships. And he probably knew also that if they should overthrow the power of Rome and restore a successful Jewish democracy, the Kingdom of God in the true sense of the words was not to be compassed by these means. The false ideals of the disciples regarding God's Kingdom undoubtedly repelled him instead of attracting him ; for he had studied deeply enough in the law and in the prophets to know how little a change of outward symbols would mean for the world's spiritual re- generation. But he did not let these difficulties blind him to the rightness of Jesus' moral teaching and to the lovableness of the things for which Jesus stood. He did not let his dissatisfaction with the disciples' shortsighted views interfere with his faith in the ends which Jesus proposed, nor with his attachment to Jesus himself and to the things he stood for.

Among all the followers of Jesus, Joseph prob- ably came nearest to understanding what the Master's kingdom really signified. When the hope of royal splendor vanished it meant much to those who had confidently expected such splendors; it

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meant little to Joseph of Arimathea. When Jesus laid down his life on the cross it perplexed and dumbfounded those who had expected him to save himself by the thunders and lightnings of divine intervention; it left Joseph no more deeply per- plexed than he was before, since he knew that thunders and lightnings were not the means by which Jesus' real work could be carried on. Just what passed in his mind we do not know. We only know that the event which made the path of duty dark to others made it light to him.

Do you remember the passage in the Last Days of Pompeii where, when the sun was darkened by the clouds of smoke and ashes, the blind girl whom Glaucus had befriended was the one person who could serve as guide? To her alone, says Bulwer, the scene was familiar. When the earth was dark- ened from the sixth to the ninth hour it brought no unwonted fears or perplexities into Joseph's heart. For he had foreseen the darkening of men's hopes, of which the outer darkness was but a symbol, and had nevertheless kept his faith undimmed. This was the reason why he, and he alone, was able to stand unafraid in the supreme hour of trial.

Every great historical crisis calls for men of this type. Who was it that brought our nation through its darkest hours? Not the enthusiasts who de-

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claimed against slavery as though its abolition might be an easy thing; not the orators who were most ready to appeal to popular audiences in the North or to defy the South on the floors of Con- gress; but the man who, growing up in the midst of the contest, saw things as they were. Lincoln never refused to face a difficulty. He never shut his eyes to facts in order to buoy up his courage and that of those who were with him. But Lincoln never for a moment lost his belief in the future of the country. In the long years which served as preparation for his work of president, he had learned by facing circumstance straightforwardly to hold his faith independent of circumstance. This was what gave him a power that was denied to Seward or Chase or Sumner or Phillips. They had been buoying up their faith by illusions which they had helped to create ; he had been making a faith which could stand alone. Such was the story of Lincoln ; such, with but slight differences, was the story of Cavour and Washington and "William the Silent, and all the men who in the face of apparent impossibility have built up nations that lasted. Such must any man be who would do his full work as a leader.

Never was the need for this kind of courageous thought greater than it is today. We live in an age

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of reform movements. There is on all hands a zeal for the kingdom of God such as recent generations have not witnessed. The hope of lifting humanity to a higher level appears to have taken hold on a larger section of mankind than it ever did before. The ranks of the reformers are recruited from as many different elements as were the ranks of the disciples of Jesus. Some are moved by selfish hope of personal advancement; some by mere love of excitement; some care so much for the broad objects which they have in view that they lose sight of all besides. Surrounded as he is by disciples of this kind, the work of the true reformer is mis- understood both by his friends and by his enemies — sometimes, I am sorry to say, even by himself.

The effect of college training is to make us criti- cal of heterogeneous movements of this kind. Our political economy teaches us that measures which are intended to make everybody rich often result in making everybody poor. Our history teaches us that the hope of elevating humanity by acts of the legislature is apt to prove illusory. Our science, physical as well as political, teaches us to look askance at all attempts to produce radical improve- ments in the social organism by mere changes in the machinery of government.

It rests with us to determine whether this sort of

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knowledge is going to make us better men or worse men. If we use our knowledge as the great body of the Pharisees used their knowledge it will make us worse. They saw the good that there was in Jesus' teaching. Many of them sympathized with the things that he said. Some of them felt themselves the better for his preaching and wished to hear more of it. But for one reason or another they found it hard to associate with him. He outraged conventions which they regarded as useful. He attracted elements which they thought dangerous to society. The ends that he had in view could not be attained by the means that his followers pro- posed. As a result of all these things interest gave place to indifference, and indifference to open hos- tility. The thinking men of the community, the men who should have been on the side of Jesus, lost sight of the great lessons which he had to teach to them and the world, because they could not take their minds from the dangers and difficulties and impossibilities by which his enterprise was sur- rounded. Under such circumstances the Pharisees ' knowledge was worse than useless. Better far that they should have had the unintelligent zeal of the disciples, who went blindly into a righteous cause, than that they should lose the chance for faith be-

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cause they saw the difficulties into which faith would lead them.

But, thank God ! there is another alternative open to us. Instead of letting our knowledge crowd out our faith we may do as Joseph did, and add one to the other. He saw as clearly as any of his fellow Pharisees the illusions under which the disciples labored. But he did not let this kill his love for the Master or his faith in the great things for which Jesus stood. His knowledge made his task a much harder one than that of his fellow disciples. It is easy to endure privations in order to attain an earthly kingdom. It is hard to endure privations for a kingdom which is not of this earth and for a cause whose very success may be mistaken by the world for failure. It is easy to fall in with the ways of the chanting crowd. It is hard to work out one's own salvation with fear and trembling. Yet this was what Joseph did. For years he had been getting ready for the crisis, even as we in our several places can get ready. We have no record of his thoughts during these years of preparation. They must have been years of discouragement, of uncertainty, of misunderstanding. But they made him the man he was. When the time came he was prepared; prepared because he had wrought out

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a faith of his own independent of the illusions of those about him.

"And the Sabbath drew on" — not Palm Sunday this time, but Easter Sunday. Gone forever, in one short week, was the hope of that earthly kingdom which the multitude had desired and which the priests and the governors had feared. The King- dom of God for which Joseph had waited was at hand.

Gentlemen of the graduating class: God offers the educated man a burden and a privilege. His burden is to hold his faith in the day of its pros- perity, unsupported by the illusions of the crowd and undaunted by its errors. His privilege is to hold his same faith in the night of its adversity, when illusions have vanished and the courage that depended on them is dead and the crowd shrinks from the penalties which the errors of the day have brought in their train. We cannot always publicly proclaim our faith in a righteous cause when it is being misused by false friends; but we can keep that faith alive in our hearts, and be ready to avow it to the world when false friends have dropped away and it needs true ones. I trust that it may be said of each one of us when the final account of his deeds is made, "He never lost his belief in

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righteousness because the errors of its advocates made it popular; but he gained new courage to publish that belief when the exposure of those errors made it unpopular. ' ' For unto you, gentle- men, it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God.

FITNESS FOR COMMAND 1919

The measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.

Every college contains two groups of students: one composed of men who are content to perform a set task required of them as candidates for a degree, another consisting of men who put their heart into their work, and strive to do all they can. The English universities frankly recognize this separation into groups, and classify their graduates as ' ' pass men " or ' ' honor men. ' '

This difference of mental attitude shows itself in other things besides study. A man can face his life problems in either of these two ways. As we come to the end of our college course, we may well ask ourselves whether we are entering upon our career in the world which is before us as pass men or as honor men. Are we content to do what society requires, or do we intend to show the best that is in us in order to qualify as leaders ?

In our professional ambitions I believe that every one of us is at heart an honor man. We do not go into the study of law with the idea of learn-

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ing just enough to enable us to gain admission to the bar and to carry on a routine practice without conspicuous mistakes. We want to fit ourselves for eminence in the profession, and we are content to face the difficulties and risks that go with the pur- suit of eminence. We do not go into business to learn the routine of commerce and accounting. We aim to qualify ourselves for working on just as large a scale as possible and achieving the kind of success which the world recognizes and rewards. In science we wish to be discoverers ; in politics we wish to be leaders. The career that attracts us is not that which is won by observance of routine, but by the development of individual power.

But are we equally ambitious regarding our own Christian character? In this all-important field are we content to be pass men, or do we desire to be honor men? Is it enough for us to maintain our standing as respectable members of society, or shall we develop ourselves to the point where we become leaders? To this question there can be but one answer. The Christian who is content with mere observance of routine is no Christian at all. If there is one lesson brought home to the minds of men by the epistles of St. Paul and to their hearts by the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, it is the duty of religious leadership and religious initia-

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tive. Not to obey a law, but to do better than the law requires; not to follow in paths set by others, but to mark out the very best path we can, — this is true religion; this is the essence of Christian doctrine.

How can we best realize this ideal in our own life? What distinctive things has the world the right to expect of us as the result of our last three or four years of experience — diversified as this has been for most of us by the privilege of serving our country in a great national crisis? How can we use the lessons of our college career to help us to become Christian leaders?

Three qualities mark the leader whom others can safely follow : sense of proportion, personality, and self-forgetfulness.

Sense of proportion is not only one of the most useful human qualities, but one of the rarest. Few men instinctively see things in their real size or value things by their real measure. People look at the foreground and forget the background. A tree a few feet away blots out miles of distant land- scape. Just for that reason leadership must be en- trusted to the man who does not let the distant landscape be blotted out ; who appreciates that the tree which looks large from where we stand today may look very small from where we stand

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tomorrow. If we are anxious to qualify as leaders, we must understand and emphasize permanent values as distinct from momentary values.

Part of this power is temperamental — something that a man has from his birth. Part — and I believe a much larger part — is something which can be learned and which the lessons of our college course should assist us to learn.

To get human events in their relative size we need to look at them from a distance; and our college studies help us to this end. History may be defined as the science of observing human conduct at a distance — of watching the behavior of men in other nations and other times under conditions where we can see which of the things that looked large at the time were really large and which were simply prominent. The man who takes the lessons of history to heart has an advantage, not only in judging the politics of his own nation, but in judg- ing his own conduct and that of those about him. Nor is it by historical studies alone that we can help ourselves to make true estimates of the real size of things. The man who reads masterpieces of poetry and prose which have stood the test of time gets a habit of judgment of literary values which is denied to him who only reads the novels of the day. The habit of fixing our vision and our inter-

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est on things which have looked great to successive generations of men, instead of appealing to the momentary interest of a single decade or a single year, gives a student of letters or art an instinct for what is permanent. This is the true justifica- tion of classical study. Men who have the instinct for what is permanent become thereby better judges, not of art and letters only, but of historical and moral values.

We can also learn to look at facts without preju- dice. The man who has studied law can make his knowledge of evidence just as valuable a help in his own personal character as in his professional prac- tice. The man who has studied science can find the habit of making measurements instead of making guesses, and of applying general rules rigidly in- stead of treating individual cases at haphazard, just as important for his work as a man as it is for his work as an expert. Everything that con- duces to objectivity in our thinking can be made to contribute to that right sense of values which is at once so useful and so rare.

We may also learn from our college experience to look at things in as many cross lights as possible. During the last three or four years we have had the chance to compare impressions with men who were studying the same things that we were and

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interested in the same things, but who looked at them from different angles of vision — men of dif- ferent antecedents, different prejudices, different habits of weighing evidence. From such a com- parison, if honestly made, comes a salutary cor- rection of our standards of value. The man who looks at events from one point only sees them flat. The man who looks at them from several stand- points sees them solid. He gets their depth as well as their surface. It is in this respect that humor is an immensely powerful help to the Christian leader; for humor is in its very essence an unex- pected sidelight thrown upon a familiar picture, which reveals the depth as well as the surface.

It was this sense of the real size of things and this power of looking below the surface that marked out Paul among the other apostles. It was this, we may say in all reverence, that distinguished Jesus from the long line of prophets that preceded him. Earnestness the others had; desperate earnestness, that made them welcome martyrdom — a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. The ques- tion whether the knowledge was there as well as the earnestness was what determined their actual power of leadership. It is a Christian duty to know things. Let us not delude ourselves into making the conventional distinction between intellectual

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and moral qualities. The man who is content to make zeal an excuse for mis judgment, or to try to enter heaven on an imperfect record of perform- ance because he didn 't know any better, is by that very act forfeiting all claim to leadership in the things of life that are most essential.

But knowledge, though a vitally important ele- ment in leadership, is not everything. A man must have personal qualities that will so influence and inspire others as to make his knowledge count. The crowd sees the maple tree in the foreground. The man who insists on the landscape behind is almost always in a minority. For him to feel sure of his standards and ideals under such conditions requires courage. To maintain them until others begin to see that they are right requires stability. It is this sort of courageous stability that we dignify by the name of character. Character has been defined as the habit of doing the same thing under different circumstances. There is no higher praise that can be given to a good man than to say that you know where to find him. He is a man who not only sees what is distant, but shapes his course by what is distant, and by so doing makes himself a safe guide for others to follow. They may not see it at first, but they will find it out before long.

In the four years of our life here we have wit-

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nessed a gradual sifting out of men. In Freshman year the leaders to whom we naturally turned were those who were brilliant or attractive. Time alone showed whether these men were strong or weak of purpose. If they were weak their influence was transient. The more brilliant or attractive they had been at the outset, the stronger was the reaction against them when their steadiness of character was found deficient. In the long run the thing that made a man 's personality count was the quality of courage and stability ; the fact that we knew where to find him. And as class reunions come, and we meet again here ten or twenty or thirty years hence, the decisive importance of this element of personality in making knowledge count and giving a man the position of leadership which he has the capacity to fill will become manifest with ever increasing force.

And there is yet a third element in Christian leadership besides sense of values and personality, and that is self-forgetfulness. Unselfish knowl- edge and unconscious force of character count for many times more than that which is self-centered or self-conscious. This is by no means an easy lesson. I think every man of strong character must repeat in his own life the story of Christ's temp- tation in the wilderness, and must learn to put

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behind him the show of success as a condition of obtaining the reality.

How is this self-forgetfulness achieved, and how can we use the experiences of college life to help us in compassing it?

No man ever learns to forget himself by a con- scious act of forgetting. He does it by doing things for other people, which absorb his thoughts until they become fixed, as by instinct, on some- thing outside of himself. What thing that shall be depends largely upon his own personal character- istics. If he is a man of strong affections he achieves self-forgetfulness through sympathy; entering into the thoughts and feelings of those about him until their happiness becomes his un- conscious goal and drives considerations of his own personal profit out of account. If he is a man of political instinct, an organizer and leader of men, he achieves self-forgetfulness through contact with public sentiment. He rejoices in becoming part of collective movements of feeling and opinion, which he dominates more and more surely as he sinks his own personality in the general zeal for the public good. If he has the temperament of the scholar and investigator he achieves self-forgetfulness through idealism. He comes to care so much for the truth that his personal affairs and interests are

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forgotten in the face of the eternal verities as he sees them. For him is realized in a very profound sense the scriptural promise, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. ' ' By one or the other of these routes the world's great leaders have reached a measure of self-forgetfulness which enabled them to add to their sense of values and their force of personality the confidence and the life which is given to him who has lost himself in the thought of something larger and higher and more enduring.

Gentlemen of the graduating class : The world is today craving moral and spiritual leadership more intensely than ever before. The war has brought the peoples of the earth face to face with the realities of life. Five years ago some men wor- shipped pleasure; others worshipped money; still others worshipped force. The war has called a sudden halt in the pursuit of pleasure. It has shown the precariousness of money and the things which money represents. It has in these last few months brought home the lesson that the blind worship of force defeats its own end. Men are looking for a better God than any of these.

They do not readily find the object of their search. The old religious forms which satisfied

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the peoples of Europe a hundred years ago or fifty years ago no longer meet the needs of the day. The growth of popular science, with its mixture of truth and error, has shaken the hold of creeds. The growth of democracy, in thought and feeling as well as in public affairs, has made people im- patient of authority and its symbols. They seek leaders who shall reveal God to them in terms that they can understand; leaders who know modern science and modern politics, but who have at the same time an instinct for spiritual truth, and a personality and self-forgetfulness which will carry others with them.

Exactly what form the religion and the Chris- tianity of the future will take, no man living can tell. It remains to be revealed, and to be revealed through men. Christianity was never in its essence a set of creeds or a set of forms, though one age after another has tried to make it so. It was a continuation of the personal influence of Jesus Christ in the lives of people who had heard of him and wanted to be like him. Forms change from generation to generation. The creed that was use- ful as a rallying cry one day becomes an outworn formula the next. But the influence of God as revealed through the man Jesus Christ remains. In proportion as we share his spirit, we have it in our

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power to exercise the same kind of influence ; to be ourselves, in our own sphere, revelations of God to men. He who sees farther than others can give the world vision; he who stands steadier than others can give it character; he who forgets himself in doing things for others can give it religion. May it be ours thus to become children of God; and if children, then heirs ; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ, to an eternal inheritance !

THE PRICE OF GREATNESS

1912

He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.

On an afternoon in April, 1862, a Northern general saw his beaten army forced back step by step toward the Tennessee River, which apparently cut off all hope of further retreat. Of forty thousand men that had gone into action under him that morning, scarce a quarter remained in line. Ten thousand were killed, wounded, or prisoners; twenty thousand more had broken from their places at the front and were helpless to resist the enemy's victorious advance. ' ' This looks bad, ' ' said one of the general 's trusted friends at five o 'clock on that eventful afternoon at Pittsburg Landing. "No," said the Union commander, as he glanced at his watch, "they won't quite drive us into the river in the two hours of daylight that remain. They have put in all their men today; we shall be reinforced in the night, and tomorrow we shall win." And they did.

Somewhat more than a year later a Confederate general stood on the ridge opposite Gettysburg,

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watching the failure of the last effort of his army to win a decisive victory on Northern soil. The high hopes of the morning had been shattered by the events of the afternoon. There was no panic among the troops — two years' experience of war had so trained the soldiers of both North and South that they were hardly less steadfast in defeat than in victory — but there were no reinforcements at hand and no ammunition left to fight another battle. Nothing remained but long and perilous retreat through a hostile country. Wrung as his heart was with anguish, the Confederate general yet up- held the spirit of his army by his unfaltering reso- lution and unchanged, nay, even heightened, cour- tesy of demeanor. To those under him he gave praise. Whatever blame there was he took to himself. Never did the gallant gentleman who for three years led the army of Northern Virginia show himself more a gentleman than on that dis- astrous July day when he saw the failure of a battle and foresaw the failure of a cause.

I have chosen these two instances from the lives of the two great leaders on opposite sides, Grant and Lee, because they show the essential reason why those men were leaders. The North had generals whose mere intellectual power of planning battles was better than Grant's. The South had generals

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whose intellectual power, taken in this same narrow sense, was just as good as Lee's. The quality that lifted these men above their fellows, and gave them the loyal confidence of the soldiers under them and the people behind them, was a moral one. Both were calm men, not unduly exalted by victory nor unduly depressed by defeat — men who could moderate the excitement of those under them when there was danger of rashness, or rouse the courage and endurance of their followers when there was danger of f aintness. That was why men loved and trusted them during their lives; that is why men venerate their memory after they are gone.

It is moral quality of this same sort that is needed to make a man a leader anywhere and in any department of life, to make people love him and trust him and follow him. Life is not a game of chess which is won by him who can make the best calculations. Now and then a man like Alex- ander or Napoleon possesses such transcendent intellectual powers that he can treat life as if it were a game, and can dispose of nations and armies as though they were mere castles or pawns on his chess board. But neither a Napoleon nor an Alex- ander was able to leave an enduring empire. The men whose work has lasted best are those like Lincoln and Washington, like Cromwell and Wil-

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liam the Silent; men differing greatly in intel- lectual gifts, yet marked out above all others by the habit of self-command. Go back through the list of Christian heroes and martyrs, back to Paul, back to Jesus himself, and we find that the thing that counted most in their character and their work was that they had risen above the distractions of success and failure into a command of their own souls, and that this gave them command over the deeds and the souls of others.

We are here to train ourselves for leadership in our several callings. How shall we attain the kind of power that these men possessed, and lead the world to trust us according to our several abilities in the same kind of way that it trusted them ?

The first thing for us to do is to get a sense of the relative value of different objects; to get them into their right size and into right proportion to one another. This is the intellectual basis of leader- ship. Most of the excitement which upsets men's nerves is due to the overvaluation of something that comes into prominence at the moment, so that we lose sight of the greater things that are behind and beyond. Here is a little child wildly wrought up by a squabble with his playmates. There is some toy, some privilege, some honor, which he thinks ought to come to him. He is ready to stop

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the games of all the other children — he would stop the business of the whole city itself if he could — in order that five minutes' possession of that toy might be rightly adjusted. The grown-up world con- demns such ways as childish. But only a very small proportion of the grown-up world has learned to avoid this same sort of mistake, when it comes to a struggle for the kind of titles and privileges and toys that constitute the playthings of grown men. Each in his own sphere is ready to stop the game or break its rules in order to scramble for the re- ward. To one who looks on from outside the whole matter seems like puerile folly. But if a man is himself engaged in the struggle, he needs an un- commonly clear head to see things in their right size. The average man, through sheer lack of brains, thinks that he proves his right to lead when he is really proving his unfitness to lead, because he has no just sense of the ends that are best worth pursuing.

But there is another quality of leadership, and a more important one. It is not enough for us to get things in their right proportion to one another. We must keep them in right proportion to our own selves and our own souls. To the brain that apprehends things as they are must be added the spirit that will deem no provocation or excuse

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sufficient to justify the loss of its temper, its nerve, or its honor.

Why do we distrust a man who loses his temper ? Partly because we suspect that he will say and do unwise things under excitement; but still more because in the very act of losing his temper he is putting a low value on himself and his soul. No man, however strong he is, can always dominate circumstances; but he can always prevent circum- stances from dominating him. It is a hard lesson to learn, and one which cannot be too often re- peated, that the man who loses his temper under any provocation whatsoever puts himself down for the moment as being of less value and less impor- tance than the thing which calls out his excitement. Be assured that the world will not rate him higher than he rates himself. Of course there are differ- ent degrees of provocation. The man who scolds and storms over a little thing is smaller than the one who loses control of himself in righteous indig- nation over a great one ; but the real leader is the one who has learned to rise superior to the great provocation as well as to the small.

The man who loses his temper lowers himself for the moment. More permanent is the evil to the man who goes one step further, and loses his nerve — who allows himself to be unduly excited by

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success or unduly depressed by failure. Not for an instant only, but for hours and for days, does he confess himself unequal to the situation. Here again there are differences of provocation. The greater the prize for which we play, the harder it is to bear success with modesty or failure with constancy. By successes and failures of different sizes men are constantly being tested and the meas- ure which they place upon themselves is being taken. Be assured that here again the world will not rate us higher than we rate ourselves.

But there is yet another act of self-abasement which cuts deeper and lasts longer than losing one's temper or losing one 's nerve. A man may so over- estimate the importance of an end to be attained, and so underestimate the value of his own soul, that he will be willing to purchase success at the price of honor. A man may cheat in an examina- tion in order to secure his degree. This means, in plain English, that he deems his honor in a matter like this of less value than a piece of parchment. A man may break the rules when the umpire is not looking, in order to win a contest. Whenever he does so he is saying to the world that he deems himself of less value than a game. Here also there are many different degrees of provocation and many different kinds of excuse. But the world is

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not looking for men who can make plausible ex- cuses; it is looking for men who do not have to make excuses at all.

Our college life gives us daily opportunities for training in this quality of moral leadership. The student, above all other men, has the chance to learn the relative value of different objects and to measure his power of keeping his temper, his nerve, and his honor, amid the temptations offered by things small and things large.

The boy who goes directly from the high school into the factory or the office necessarily works in a somewhat narrow horizon. The daily duty looms up large before him and crowds other duties out of sight. The professional standard of success occupies so large a place in his world that he finds it hard to get a wider outlook and attain wider ideals of conduct. But the boy who comes to college studies different kinds of things and meets different kinds of men and is brought in contact with differ- ent kinds of interests. He is taught to judge of the politics of the day by the larger standards of his- tory. He learns to judge the petty aims and ideals of people about him in the light of the larger ideals of philosophy and of poetry. He accustoms him- self to appeal from the narrow teachings of every- day experience to the broader standards of scien-

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tific truth. Best of all, in Yale and in the majority of our American colleges, he is brought into a Christian atmosphere ; an atmosphere charged with the spirit of reverence and of service.

He is also given large opportunities by which to measure himself and his own moral capacity. The college is full of all kinds of things worth doing, all kinds of prizes worth striving for, all kinds of social distinctions and ambitions. It is the custom in some quarters to decry the importance of these prizes of college life ; to say that the study and the play of a place like this count for little in com- parison with the study and play of the world about us ; to urge the student to seek culture for culture 's sake and sport for sport's sake, rather than enter into the keen competition of the examination hall or the athletic field. With this view I cannot con- cur. The prizes of college are worth winning. The man who can win them honorably proves his quality of leadership. But just because they are worth winning they put a man's temper and a man's nerve and a man's very honor to the trial. The true man is the one that can really care for the game and not succumb to its temptations. He that can meet opposition without loss of temper, failure without discouragement, unfairness without swerv- ing from his own strict code of honor, has proved

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his right to the proud title which the Homeric Greeks gave to the greatest of their princes, ' ' leader of men. ' ' He has proved it, not by tasting the joys of leadership, but by uncomplainingly bearing its pains.

There is a passage in the Sermon on the Mount which for many years seemed to me strange : "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." If Christ had said that they should see God, like the pure in heart, if he had said that they should be called the children of God, like the peace- makers, it would all have seemed intelligible and natural enough. But what has meekness to do with inheriting the earth ? Look back into the lives of the men that I have named, Grant and Lee, Lincoln and Washington, William and Cromwell, Paul and Jesus, and we shall see what it means. They inherited what others could not receive, be- cause they had raised themselves above the petti- ness of self-assertion into the larger atmosphere of self-devotion; because they were ready to forego and renounce and suffer if need be, in order that the thing worth doing might be done.

"Wherefore seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set

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before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God."

THE CHRISTIAN STANDARD OF SUCCESS

1914

Covet earnestly the best gifts; and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way.

Better and more fully than any other apostle, Paul of Tarsus appreciated the importance of profes- sional ambition and professional success.

He knew what it means to each of us personally. He was himself a college man, a lawyer, a trusted councillor of his nation. He had felt the joy of struggling for life's prizes and grasping some of the best of them. He understood how much of each man's highest self is brought out by the struggle and gratified by the reward.

He knew what it means to the world as well as to the individual. He knew the importance of having the strongest man put in the place of most authority. He was no leveller, like so many of his fellow disciples. He did not occupy himself with equal division of lands and goods. He had no patience with those who tried to let inspiration take the place of knowledge and allow the momentary enthusiasm of the ignorant to decide things that should be left to the sober judgment of the expert.

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Society was then, as it is now, an exceedingly com- plex piece of mechanism, in which the different parts must be fitted to do their several offices and left free to perform their several duties. This could only be accomplished when men competed eagerly for success in their several callings and were allowed to reap the fruits of that competition.

He knew what it means to the church of Christ and to the advancement of the kingdom of God on earth. The work that Paul himself was able to do in building up that church and advancing that kingdom was itself in large measure the result of his own professional experience. The Christian church as Paul found it was a small group of zealots, animated by high ideals but narrowly re- stricted in their influence. The Christian church as Paul left it was an organized body, extending through a large part of the civilized world and with a wide and increasing power to transform human institutions. It was Paul's professional grasp of affairs which enabled him to work this change; to make the spiritual truths of Christianity not only a comfort to the sorrowing and a sustaining power to the martyr, but an intellectual and moral force in organized society.

But having known all these things and done all these things, he was able to say to the men of

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Corinth, "Professional ambition is not the whole of life nor the best thing in it. It is good for our work in the world and for our service in the church. But it is essential that every Christian should be larger than his profession, and the gospel of Jesus Christ can make him so." This was Paul's doc- trine. I wish this morning to show how that doc- trine applies to some of the problems that lie before us in the immediate future.

For the first few years after a man leaves college a large part of his thought and effort is almost necessarily centered upon professional success, whether he will or no. The problem of making a living is a serious one. The man who can first acquire the knowledge and the habits that will enable him to solve that problem has secured the necessary start in the race of life. The world has few pleasures comparable in intensity to those first professional achievements which show a man that he has secured his foothold and can count himself as being fairly on the road to independence. Small wonder that many a man is tempted to forget that there is any other race except the race for pro- fessional success; any other road worth travelling except the road to power on these lines.

But the man who makes this mistake usually pays the penalty. A large number can get a fair

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start ; but the prizes are small in number, and nine men out of ten who set their hearts on obtaining these prizes are disappointed. There are many lawyers who can do honorable service to the coun- try ; there are few who can attain actual eminence at the bench or bar. There are many physicians who can minister to the wants of the sick ; there are few who achieve national reputation as pioneers in science or in surgery. There are many men who make an honorable living in manufactures and commerce ; there are few who can arouse the envy of their fellow citizens by the magnitude of their accumulations. But the man who has allowed professional ambition so to absorb his soul and so to dominate his spirit that he has no heart for anything else will count himself a failure unless his name is among these few. Many a man of fifty whom the world counts successful is in his heart soured and disappointed — unnecessarily soured and disappointed — because at the age of thirty he shut his eyes to the other kinds of success which life had to offer besides professional distinction.

And even if a man attains high distinction and finds his name enrolled among the prize winners, he is not exempt from peril of failure. The value of the professional success is not due to the money that it enables a man to earn or to the distinction

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which it confers upon his name; it is due to the public approval which success carries with it. But the things which the public approves in one genera- tion are not always the same which command re- spect and admiration in the next. A century ago the most successful minister was he who was mightiest with the weapons of theological con- troversy. Today the controversialist is looked upon as a survival from archaic times. A generation ago the most successful lawyer was he who could best advise his clients how to take advantage of tech- nicalities to defeat the purposes of the law while complying with its forms. Today the lawyers who have given such advice are being condemned by the world of business and of politics. Examples like these might be adduced from every profession. He who at the age of thirty fixes his mind primarily on the chance of getting the most money or the most fame in his own particular branch of work is almost certain to fix his eyes so exclusively upon the rules of the game that he is playing that he fails to note the changes in the standards and the demands of the larger world. When the prize is in his grasp it turns to Dead Sea fruits — eminence in a branch of knowledge for which the world has ceased to care; success in a line of pursuits that the world no longer approves; money made by

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means that the world has learned to condemn and whose possession is therefore no title to public con- sideration. The man who has centered all his hopes of success in the race for professional distinction has entered upon a career where the peril of the winner is scarcely less than the peril to the loser.

An illustration from college life will serve to make this point clear.

During the years that we have spent at Yale we have been engaged in competitions in studies or in writing, in college organization or in college ath- letics, which are essentially like the struggles for professional eminence that we shall meet in the world outside. We congratulate unreservedly the man who has achieved honorable success in these competitions. We condemn almost as unreservedly the man who has studied for marks or played for a record, even if he has not been guilty of actual unfairness. This distinction is a thoroughly sound and right one. The habit of making it is one of the most useful lessons — I might add, one of the most essentially Christian lessons — that a man learns from his course here. For all these college competitions are essentially tests of fitness for leadership. We approve the man who does best in Latin or mathematics, not because of the value of the Latin or mathematics that he learns but because

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the winner of the competition has proved his power to serve society by dealing with facts and evidence of certain kinds. We pay homage to the News chairman or the football captain, not because of the literary merits of the Yale News or the physical importance of football as a form of healthful exer- cise, but because the men who have fairly won their way to these positions have proved their qualities of organization and command. We recognize that the winning of a college competition is not an end but a means. If a man tries to make it an end instead of a means, we discourage him. If he per- sists in so doing, we condemn him.

What holds true in the college contests through which we have just been passing ought to hold true of the contests in the larger world which we are about to undertake. Life's prize competitions are not ends in themselves. They are means of proving our worth as men ; of bringing out what is best in us; of enabling us to determine, and of enabling the world to determine, the positions of leadership and responsibility for which we are fitted. A man's success or failure in life is not measured by his success or failure in winning the race. It is measured by his success or failure in accepting the responsibilities of the position for which he has proved his fitness. This is Paul 's doctrine through

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and through. ' ' Covet earnestly the best gifts, ' ' he says. Let every man pitch his professional ambi- tions high and try to qualify for as large a place as he can; but having found his place, let him neither repine if he fails to get quite what he wants nor rest in ignoble contentment because he has reached the object of his aspirations.

But when this kind of gospel is preached the world at once asks, "Will you advise a man to be content with less than the highest professional suc- cess?" Certainly. The man who can only be happy when he is winning prizes has a radically wrong philosophy of life. The nation composed of such men is foredoomed to ruin. The man who plays only for prizes, whether of money or of office, is a destructive force in the community. The man who really does his duty as a citizen is he who seeks the opportunity to serve, and is ready to accept the measure of opportunity which his success in the competition gives him.

This is one of the things about which the college knows more than the world, one where the college standards of success or failure are wiser and more Christian than the world's standards frequently have been. Let us take care that we do not forget or undervalue the lesson we have learned here ; and that in dealing with the larger problems of life we

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value ourselves and our fellows for what they can do for the community, rather than for what they can do for themselves. Not the power to win prizes, but the power to take and fill the place awarded him by the competition, constitutes the measure and test of a man.

This is the kind of measure that Christians of all ages have been taught to apply. This is the kind of self-renunciation of which their Master has given an example. This is the more excellent way which Paul points out to the disciples. He values professional success more than any of his fellow apostles and as much as anybody in the outside world ; but he rates the man higher than the work. The Christian community, as Paul looks at it, needs great preachers, and great lawyers, and great phy- sicians ; but far more than all these it needs Chris- tian gentlemen. Professional ambition counts for less than broad-minded charity, than public spirit, than a devotion, best when most unconscious, to ideals outside of ourselves — the kind of charity, the kind of spirit, the kind of devotion exemplified in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Gentlemen of the graduating class : The life of a strong man has two sides: the effort to find his place in society in keen competition with his fellow

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men ; and the whole-hearted acceptance of his place, when he has found it, as a trust to be used un- selfishly. In the aristocracies of the Old World exclusive stress was laid on the second of these elements. We were exhorted to be content to fill the station in life to which God had appointed us. In the American democracy the emphasis is all on the other side. We are told to find the best place we can. We are encouraged to compete until we sometimes forget that there is any end outside the competition, and lose sight of the unselfish purpose which must animate every professional man and every business man and every politician who would call himself either a gentleman or a Christian.

You are going out to make your way in the world. You will do it like men; and you will thereby prove your power to serve your fellows. May it be yours to find your happiness in that power and in that service !

He who wins the race for professional advance- ment is given the largest opportunities. But the lasting joy of life is not in the winning or the losing of the race. It is not, except incidentally, in the largeness or smallness of the opportunities given. It is in the completeness with which we meet our opportunities and are content to accept with un- troubled soul and tolerance of failure the chance

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for giving such love and service as actually falls to our lot. May it be our fortune to render such service with a charity to all men that is not narrowed by professional prejudice; with a cour- tesy that is unruffled by success or by failure; with a hope and an endurance that are beyond the power of casual disappointment to touch. Thus shall each of us obey the injunction of the Master that each deny himself and take up his cross and follow him, and thus shall each of us find eternal life.

THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS

1916

And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.

There are many different views regarding the personality of Jesus and the means by which he was able to do his work. There is but one view as to the significance of the work itself. No other man exercised so great an influence on the thought and feeling and action of the world. No other man gave so much spiritual help and comfort to those who needed it.

I propose this morning to consider just what it was that Jesus tried to do for the ideals and morals of his time, and how far we have the opportunity to do the same thing for the ideals and morals of our time.

The state of society in Palestine nineteen hun- dred years ago was not so different from our own as we are apt to think. People loved their families and attended to their business. Property rights were fairly secure; the law was tolerably well obeyed. There was a good deal of complaint about the government, particularly the tax collecting

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agencies ; but in spite of bad government the com- munity was on the whole well ordered and pros- perous.

The burden that rested heavily upon the people was the want of moral outlook, the dearth of ideals and ambitions. This was severely felt because the Jews had once had all these things in large meas- ure. They had dreamed of achieving spiritual leadership in the whole world under the guidance of a Messiah who should be king of all the nations. But as the realization of this dream was postponed, the stimulus which it gave to their thought and feeling gradually fell away. They became morally inert, if not morally dead. From time to time some one would rouse a portion of the people out of this inertia with the hope that he might be the Messiah ; but the ensuing revolution would result in failure which left things worse off than they were before. From time to time a scholar would strive to lead his fellow students back to the days when the life of the people had been better and more inspiring ; but the appeal of such a man was to the past rather than to the present or future, and it reached at the very best only a narrow circle of scholars like himself.

Jesus took a different method to give people something to live for. The revolutionists had begun

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by attempting to change material conditions, be- lieving that moral reform would come afterward. Jesus began with an appeal for a new and better kind of morality. Instead of simply trying to adhere to certain rules and observances, he taught them to pursue certain moral ideals. This is the whole burden of the Sermon on the Mount. The good that is obtained by keeping a rule that some- body else has set for you is a small and uninspiring thing. The man who would really live must be animated by the purpose for which the rule was instituted, and can thus be an active agent in morals rather than a passive follower of the system. This side of the teaching of Jesus won immediate acceptance and popularity; partly because people were tired of the morality of the Pharisees and glad to see it exposed in its true character, but still more because the new gospel met a real hunger for good which lies deep in the human soul. The man who goes before the people with ideals and can put them in plain words that may be easily understood is sure of a hearing and a following.

But there were two other things which Jesus did at the same time that were not so popular. He insisted that these ideals should be pursued in an intelligent manner, and that his disciples should take the responsibility for doing their own duty,

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instead of spending their time compelling other people to do theirs. Many who had been attracted by the objects and purposes of his preaching were repelled by his method of getting at those objects. They were not content with a republic of God, where everybody should do the best he could in his own way ; they wanted a kingdom of God, in which they should be the chief advisers and in which per- sonal responsibility should be reduced to a mini- mum. They were ready to leave all and follow Jesus if he would lead them to a career of conquest ; but when he pointed out that a conquest of the kind they sought was impracticable, and directed their attention to the harder and more prosaic task of conquering their own appetites and passions, they left him.

An experience of this sort comes to every re- former, in the twentieth century no less than in the first. He sees things that need to be done ; he shows the people the need, and finds a ready re- sponse. They are prepared to hail him as a messiah who shall lead them into the promised land. They are zealous to support him in almost any means which he proposes for the forcible suppres- sion of wrong. If he points out the evils of drunk- enness, they will follow him in every attempt, wise or unwise, to enforce temperance by statute. If

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he shows them the disorganization of the family life in America today, they clamor for a change in the divorce laws which shall make people moral in spite of themselves. If he calls their attention to the prevalence of poverty amid advancing wealth, they ask him to abolish poverty by act of the legis- lature. If he preaches the gospel of peace and good will between nations, they at once dream of the establishment of courts of arbitration which shall render wars forever impossible.

But the thinker sees some things that his fol- lowers do not see. He sees that something more than government machinery is required in order to make people temperate or moral, prosperous or peaceable. He sees that the result desired cannot be reached by organized force; that the social revolution of which his followers dream will do more harm than good ; that self-control, rather than public control, is the power on which we must rely for achieving the greatest results; that the slow influence of example, rather than the quick com- pulsion of law, is the means by which the real regeneration of society is achieved.

What is he to do ? If he will suppress these con- victions the people will follow him; if he asserts them they will fall away from him. Under these circumstances the reformer is subject to a double

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temptation. If he is a man of action rather than of thought, he is likely to let some of his convictions go. He will think so much of his ideals that it seems more important to him to keep the leader- ship of a popular movement than to tell the truth plainly. He may sometimes allow himself to pur- sue measures which he knows to be wrong, in the hope of achieving a greater good in the end. He will more frequently lose his own sense of right and wrong, and end by becoming a blind leader of the blind.

If, on the other hand, he is a man of thought rather than of action, he will tend to keep his prin- ciples but sacrifice his work. He will tell the truth to himself and to others, but he will lose faith in other men because they do not believe in him. He will cease to speak to the people, and will content himself with addressing the small minority that can understand his doubts and difficulties. He will become a philosopher rather than a reformer; a man who, in keeping his vision of the truth, has lost faith in his fellow men and the capacity for leader- ship that goes with such faith.

Jesus was great enough to defy both these temp- tations. He never refused to tell the truth for fear of losing popular support. He never let the loss of popular support cloud his faith in man.

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he shows them the disorganization of the family- life in America today, they clamor for a change in the divorce laws which shall make people moral in spite of themselves. If he calls their attention to the prevalence of poverty amid advancing wealth, they ask him to abolish poverty by act of the legis- lature. If he preaches the gospel of peace and good will between nations, they at once dream of the establishment of courts of arbitration which shall render wars forever impossible.

But the thinker sees some things that his fol- lowers do not see. He sees that something more than government machinery is required in order to make people temperate or moral, prosperous or peaceable. He sees that the result desired cannot be reached by organized force; that the social revolution of which his followers dream will do more harm than good ; that self-control, rather than public control, is the power on which we must rely for achieving the greatest results; that the slow influence of example, rather than the quick com- pulsion of law, is the means by which the real regeneration of society is achieved.

What is he to do ? If he will suppress these con- victions the people will follow him; if he asserts them they will fall away from him. Under these circumstances the reformer is subject to a double

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PERSONALITY OF JESUS 169

temptation. If he is a man of action rather than of thought, he is likely to let some of his convictions go. He will think so much of his ideals that it seems more important to him to keep the leader- ship of a popular movement than to tell the truth plainly. He may sometimes allow himself to pur- sue measures which he knows to be wrong, in the hope of achieving a greater good in the end. He will more frequently lose his own sense of right and wrong, and end by becoming a blind leader of the blind.

If, on the other hand, he is a man of thought rather than of action, he will tend to keep his prin- ciples but sacrifice his work. He will tell the truth to himself and to others, but he will lose faith in other men because they do not believe in him. He will cease to speak to the people, and will content himself with addressing the small minority that can understand his doubts and difficulties. He will become a philosopher rather than a reformer; a man who, in keeping his vision of the truth, has lost faith in his fellow men and the capacity for leader- ship that goes with such faith.

Jesus was great enough to defy both these temp- tations. He never refused to tell the truth for fear of losing popular support. He never let the loss of popular support cloud his faith in man.

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Show men something worth doing, show them the way to do it, take the lead in doing it yourself, and they will follow; probably not today, perhaps not this year, possibly not this century, but sometime. That is the essence of the Christian faith; that is the historical truth that Jesus stood for. He did things that antagonized the people without losing his belief in the people. When he told them to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's they left him ; when he refused to fight the powers that were gathered against him at Jerusalem they turned against him. But even when his very dis- ciples abandoned him he stood calm in the belief in the triumph of his cause; and in spite of all drawbacks and vicissitudes the history of nineteen centuries has been proving that he was right.

Gentlemen of the graduating class: We also, according to the measure of our several abilities, are starting out to do our work as reformers. Every man here is anxious that when his life is done those who follow him may be able to write on his tombstone that he left the world better for his having lived in it. We see great evils about us, against which we are anxious to lead our crusades. What is going to be the Christian method and the practical method of dealing with problems like

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those of intemperance or divorce, of avarice or of war?

First, we must take home to ourselves the lesson of the Sermon on the Mount that virtues like temperance and morality, industry and peaceful- ness, have their chief source and support in men's hearts. They do not consist in abstinence from certain acts which can be prohibited by law, or per- formance of other acts which can be compelled by law. They mean self-restraint and self-devotion. If the restraint and the devotion are there, good laws and good government may help to prevent certain abuses ; but they can never be the starting point of morality or the measure of duty.

Second, we must ourselves be prepared to set an example of this kind of restraint and devotion. We must not be content with the negative sort of virtue that simply avoids offences against the moral code of the community. We should not regard ourselves as temperate when we simply ab- stain from excess in drink. We must face the harder task of avoiding excesses in word and thought and feeling. We should not regard our- selves as moral when we simply abstain from viola- tion of the marriage contract, or of commercial law, or of the rules for keeping the peace between men and nations. We must learn to think of mar-

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riage, not as a relation entered into by two people for their own pleasure, but as a partnership in the serious work of life, to be entered into with the same intelligence and the same devotion that we enter upon any other serious work. We must not regard our money as our own, to be used in any way that the law allows, but must stand ready to be at once more scrupulous in its acquisition and more generous in its use as we get farther away from the pressure of immediate need and have greater opportunities to decide for ourselves. We must not be deluded by false visions and theories of peace, but must set our hands to the work of lessening the actual danger of war, by understand- ing other people and other nations, avoiding boast- ful or self-complacent speech, and preparing to take our part in national defense if a fight is forced upon us.

Third, we must make it clear to others that they have to take the same sort of personal responsi- bility. We must not yield to the fatal temptation of being flatterers of democracy. We must not cry "Peace, peace," when there is no peace. We must be ready to suffer abuse for our unwillingness to trust short cuts to righteousness. We must be willing to forfeit consideration and influence and ofiSce which might be ours if we would sacrifice or

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suppress our convictions. We must remember that leadership is never worth having if it comes through sacrifice of intellectual straightforward- ness.

Fourth, and perhaps hardest of all, we must believe in humanity when humanity deserts us. We must hold to our faith in the truth even when we are compelled to sacrifice our leadership because of the truth. That was Jesus Christ's supreme achievement. The man who can see through his failure to the success beyond, who can trust the slow force of character and example to do things that organized society has failed to do, who can fight for a cause that appears to be losing, or die for it if there is no chance to fight, drinks of the cup of which the Master drank and is baptized with the baptism with which he was baptized.

When some one told Abraham Lincoln that he hoped God would be on his side, Lincoln answered, "I am not so much concerned to try to have God on my side as to try to put myself on God's side." May this be our resolve today. May each of us try to place himself on God's side and stay there, through evil report and good report; so that when we are called on for our last account every one of us may be able to say, ' ' I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith."

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Faith in man, or faith in the truth, or faith in God; they are but different names for the same thing. "Whoso keeps one has kept all, and has secured the best thing that life has to offer.

THE GOOD FIGHT OF FAITH

1911

Fight the good fight of faith; lay hold on eternal life.

Every one of us here assembled knows that a life which is worth anything is a life of fighting. I trust I may add that every one of us is glad to have it so. If we have made right use of our college training the call to arms is itself an inspiration. Each of us wishes to be in the heart of the contest and prove himself a man.

The field of battle is as varied as life itself. To one man it is given to lead armies against desperate odds. To another the trumpet summons means a contest with overwhelming forces of ignorance and poverty. A third has the task of maintaining the truth as he sees it, single handed if need be, in the face of error and prejudice enthroned in high places. A fourth must fight to maintain his own manhood against the discouragements of poverty and sickness and disappointed hopes.

How shall we do this? What must a man have in himself, in order to make a good fight against whatever odds he may chance to face; in order to

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go out alone into the world, and keep his eyes level amid the vast movements that are around him? First and foremost, he must have steadfastness of purpose. This is the thing that makes a man of him. He need not have extraordinary ability to maintain the fight ; he need not have extraordinary physical courage ; but he must have the tenacity of will which is the foundation of character.

I shall not try to analyze that strange ordering of God 's universe by which a man of unbroken will can set himself up against the whole world and play life's game against it as an equal — yea, play it over and over again, no matter what has gone against him, so long as his resolution remains un- daunted. This was the kind of man pictured by Dante, with a sympathy and admiration which neither political nor theological enmity could chill, who, after leading forlorn hopes through all his life, rose from his fiery tomb to greet his enemy, with a face that ' ' entertained great scorn of hell. ' '

Be he good or bad, the man who meets fate in this spirit challenges our admiration. The more desperate the fight of the man against his circum- stances, the more do we feel the glory of the asser- tion of his manhood. Our hearts beat faster as we hear the defiant chorus of the cholera-stricken officers in Ceylon:

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A cup to the dead already,

And hurrah for the next that dies;

or the yet more defiant cry, from the midst of Eng- land itself :

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, T thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.

Why, then, if manhood is so much, do we look for anything else? Why do we not go out, each for himself, like some hero of old, to fight the giants and the monsters that come in our way ? For two reasons. First, because very few of us are strong enough to stand in our own unaided strength ; and second, because the few who thus make themselves independent of the support of their fellow men achieve a hopeless separation from what mankind has most cared for. Where did unconquerable will lead the Titans of the Greek drama, or the Satan of Milton's Paradise Lost? To an eternity of iso- lation— a hell which needed no artificial or external torments. " Which way I turn is hell; myself am hell." To the same isolation and the same end it has led men like Richard the Third, who have had the Titanic — or Satanic — strength to stand for themselves alone.

But there are very few men who are strong enough to play their own game to the bitter end, in

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defiance of fate. Few of those who have striven to live their own lives without identifying themselves with some cause which will last after they are gone, have maintained their purpose unbroken through adversity. The man who believes in himself alone is usually putting his trust on a fragile support. Sure and permanent achievement belongs to him who lives for something outside of himself ; whether it be his friends or his country, his principles or his faith. Sometimes we meet a man like Napoleon whose abilities seem to make him an exception to this rule; but sooner or later circumstances prove too much for him. Men have often wondered how it was that Napoleon, with his great military genius, failed when men like William of Orange or Frederick of Prussia succeeded. It was because Napoleon, working for himself, played the games of war and politics like a gambler ; while Frederick and "William, identifying their fortunes with those of their country, obtained stability of purpose and large vision of the meaning of success. Napoleon was a splendid commander as long as he won. Frederick and William showed themselves even greater in defeat than they did in victory. The heroes who have been able to assert their person- ality alone in the face of gods and men have been for the most part heroes of fiction rather than

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heroes of history. The more a man knows of life, the more he feels the need of having things outside of himself to live for. He needs friends ; he needs traditions; he needs ideals. These he must have, in order to give him stability of purpose and clear- ness of vision, to steady him in the hour of defeat, and to supply the hope of added strength for the contests that are yet to come. These he must have in order to make the end itself seem worth while. We ourselves know by experience the difference between working alone and working in the midst of other men who have the same interests as our- selves. A man who is alone stops in seasons of discouragement; and too often he finds it impos- sible ever again to resume his work with the old pace and the old enthusiasm. When a group are working together they carry one another over the dead points. They do not all lose heart at the same time. Each in turn gives and receives support. And this is not the whole difference. Ten men acting together are more than ten times as strong as the same individuals acting separately. Man, as Aristotle says, is by nature a political animal. Each man's zeal kindles the zeal of the others. A collective cause is stronger for the public senti- ment behind it. A regiment will carry a desperate assault through to its conclusion when each indi-

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vidual man of the regiment taken by himself would lose heart before he reached the goal.

But while the association of men in groups of itself gives power and inspiration, it does not assure us that that power will be effectively applied or that inspiration be made to lead to anything worth while. A group of men needs principles and ideals just as much as an individual ; nay, perhaps more than the individual, because in the absence of great principles and ideals each member of the group is apt to mistake the approval of his fellows for a revelation of divine purposes. We must learn to feel, both as individuals and as communities, that we have a place in history ; that we stand in a long succession of men who have inherited principles and ideals from our fathers and who are to transmit to our children those principles and those ideals in greater fullness and strength. "When we can really become possessed of the idea that we and those about us are part of a great movement of human life from age to age, then, and not till then, do we feel the best of inspirations — that which comes of working for all time. We must learn to get hold of the best traditions of the past and really work them into our lives, because by this means we can get hold of ideals for the future which will make life worth living.

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There are few things so important and few so little understood as the real use of traditions. Some people do not revere them at all; others revere them for their own sake and care for nothing besides. Your true man reveres them because they help to keep his ideals high and hold them erect in life's storms. The strongest tree is the one which drives its roots deepest into the ground. The taller the tree grows, the harder its roots must take hold on the soil. So it is with the life of a man. He that desires to reach forward farthest into the future which he would serve must also reach back hardest into the past from which he has sprung.

All our great human institutions are attempts to realize this idea and to get men into these relations. The family has its associations and its traditions, which make a man stronger for having brothers and sisters and infinitely stronger for being one of a line whose good name he is anxious to maintain. What your father means to you and does for you is preparing you to mean the same thing and do the same thing for your children. The college makes you stronger in the same way, both by the friends you win and by the ideals you inherit. Your profession will give you another set of asso- ciations, your country another and still wider one, helping to make your life larger and your purpose

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steadier. But there is one institution of which, on this closing Sunday of your college course, I want particularly to speak, and that is the institution of the Christian church.

Nineteen hundred years ago there was a man in Judea who made friends in every rank in life, and who knew how to help those friends as never man helped them before, because he inspired them with his spirit. He came of a race whose religious tra- ditions were noble. He took all the nobleness which the past had given, but he broadened the ideals of those about him so that they might make a religion which was not for a race but for a world. Check- ered as has been the history of the church which he founded, it has yet in every age brought men together in wider bonds of sympathy than were ever dreamed of before, and has enabled those whose heart or purpose was weak to gain strength from their great leader and from those who have followed in his footsteps. The Christian brother- hood tries to realize for mankind what the family and the college and the country realize for their several groups. In Jesus the world found both a friend and a leader; and every follower of Jesus finds his strength in working with others and for others and in leading them as best he may through the devious paths of our life into a future which

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shall be brighter than the present and a world made better for our having lived in it.

Gentlemen of the graduating class: You know well the kind of contest which is before you. You have already measured to some degree the forces against which you have to fight and the powers that you can use in the contest. You have learned that you have a little strength in yourselves. You have learned at the same time that you need much more than you have. You have learned to despise alike the braggart and the quitter — the man who thinks he can do everything and the man who thinks he can do nothing. You have learned to need your friends ; you have learned to stand by your friends. You go out into the world shoulder to shoulder with a group of associates whose help you will value more and more with each day of your lives. You have studied the history of God's universe in the books of science and the history of man's work in government and in morals. You should know better than all others how large are the ideals for which men ought to live. You have entered into a heritage of traditions of service which have grown up about this place through the life and death of honorable men who have unselfishly consecrated themselves to this institution; and you have lived

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during these years in Christian surroundings. You have lived among men in whom the spirit of help- fulness is strong; who hate the man who rises by- pushing another man down, and honor the one who leads all together toward the common goal.

If we hold fast to the teaching here given, we shall help the world to hold fast to it. Men look to us to see what college education means; to see what science and history mean ; to see what Chris- tian tradition means. It ought to mean broad sympathy with men and help for all in working together. If we can make it mean this to ourselves and to others, we shall make America a Christian nation in the future in a higher and better sense than it ever has been in the past.

SELF-CONSECRATION

1917

Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

The life of the community demands the sacrifice of the individual life. This is the doctrine of the gospel; this is the teaching of history. A selfish nation is to all intents and purposes a dead nation. Athens, Rome, Byzantium, Florence, have in turn illustrated this truth. Outward splendor might hide from the public eye the decay that lay at the heart of things, but it could not abolish that decay or prevent its rapid progress. No amount of wis- dom or riches could avail for the protection of the city, if the children had lost the underlying habit, which characterized their fathers, of subordinating personal claims and interests to the needs of the commonwealth. Self-sacrifice is a political neces- sity, no less than a Christian precept.

Among the lower animals the subordination of the individual to the needs of the community is secured by instinct. The bee or the ant is com- pelled by its very structure to incur labor and hardship that the community of bees or ants may prosper. The same spirit of instinctive self-sacri-

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fice is seen in primitive forms of human relation- ship like the family. The father will fight for his children and the mother will die for them, with no more thought of self and no more possibility of thinking of self than if reason had been withheld from their very being. What is true of the family is true to a certain extent of the political life of all primitive commonwealths. In the Indian tribe or the Highland clan, patriotism is an instinct just as much as filial affection is an instinct, and its dictates are equally unquestioned. But in more highly organized forms of society, like the modern city or the modern state, the result is not so simple or so sure. The workings of instinct give place to the less automatic and more uncertain workings of reason; unconscious habit gives place to conscious choice. The more complex a political unit becomes, the more must its members have some motive for the many disagreeable acts of self-sacrifice which the public necessity involves.

"Why does a man give himself pain for the benefit of those about him ? Why should a rational being sacrifice his own pleasure for the advantage of others? The more people acquire the habit of thinking, the more insistent do these questions be- come, and the more important it is to have them answered rightly.

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The lowest and most obvious motive for self- sacrifice is fear. This is the power on which un- civilized society relies for getting its disagreeable work done and compelling its members to sub- ordinate their welfare to the welfare of the body politic. The slave tills the ground for fear of the lash. Even the man who is nominally free con- forms to the customs of the tribe for fear of the chief who has power to kill him and of the evil spirits that can torment him or his fellows. For religion itself is to the savage little more than a complex system of magic rites to avoid the hatred of the demons by whom he is surrounded.

A second motive, which marks a higher stage of civilization, is that of self-interest. As industry develops it becomes clear that the labor of slaves is ineffective labor, scant in quantity and bad in quality. The man who toils for hope of comfort rather than for fear of punishment does more work and better work than the serf or bondsman, and contributes more effectively to the resources of the community. This is why property displaced slavery ; this is why a social and moral and religious system based on fear has given place to a social and moral and religious system based on hope of re- ward. The gods of the civilized world are no longer demons who punish those that offend them ; they

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have become friends and allies who love those that obey them, giving them prosperity in this world and happiness in the next. Religion is no longer a set of magic rites to propitiate evil spirits, but a set of creeds and ceremonials to secure the favor of good ones.

But there is a third motive or group of motives, as much higher in character and better in influence than self-interest as self-interest is better than fear. We are so constituted that we want to imitate those whom we admire. Emulation of a noble deed, loyalty to a principle, devotion to a friend, conse- cration to a cause, take a man outside of himself and help him to do things which in his calmer moments he would have deemed impossible — things which fear could not have compelled or hope of reward incited. "Heroes and Hero Worship " is the title of one of Carlyle's best books; it is the starting-point of the best deeds that have been done in the life of the world. It is hard to find any one name by which we can characterize the underlying motives which lead to heroic acts of unselfishness. They have been grouped by Mr. Royce under the name of loyalty, and perhaps this is as good a word as any. By whatever name we call it, the spirit which leads us to aspire rather than to enjoy is the force which has made nations great and which

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has made religion a vital thing. For the highest form of religion, like the highest form of patriot- ism, involves loyalty to things we do not fully understand — readiness to sacrifice the good we see and know for the sake of possibilities which we can understand but imperfectly. It was the glory of the gospel message that it was based not on fear and not on self-interest, but on self-consecration.

Critics who see the small facts of history and overlook the large ones say that such a system is irrational. Fear is a motive which they under- stand; self-interest is a motive which they under- stand; but self-sacrifice appears to them unintel- ligible. They cannot conceive why a reasoning man should deliberately accept pain and hardship and death for the good of his fellow men or for the pro- motion of a cause which he apprehends imperfectly. They deny the possibility of really believing in things which a man cannot see.

To these critics there is one all-sufficient answer ; and that is, that men do in fact sacrifice themselves to causes like these. Human nature is not so selfish as its critics think. Sympathy and loyalty and devotion make a stronger appeal than self-interest. "Come and suffer" is a cry which has never failed to find a response when the leader was prepared to set the example. An irrational response? Yes,

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gloriously and sublimely irrational; and the fact that human nature is ready to make that response is the thing which makes history worth recording and life worth living. Loyalty and the self- sacrifice that goes with it are not in the narrow sense rational, but they are lovable and victorious and take hold on eternal life.

Do we love the man whose life is governed by fear and whose religion is an attempt to propitiate the powers of evil? We pity his cowardice and superstition. Do we love the man whose worldly acts are guided by self-interest and whose religion is an attempt to secure special privileges at the expense of his fellows? We despise him or we hate him. We love the man who does things for others; who stands up to his principles in foul weather no less than in fair; who follows what he believes to be the truth, regardless of the conse- quences. It is the devoted man and not the suc- cessful man whom we make our hero. The Phari- sees had reason on their side; Jesus was by all selfish standards a martyr to unreason. But the man with suffering in his heart has turned to Jesus and not to the Pharisees for comfort ; the man who hoped that he had something to do in the world has turned to Jesus and not to the Pharisees for an example. Not personal success but personal sacri-

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fice is the thing which commands admiration and influences the conduct of the strongest men in every age.

And just because it rests on something more enduring than fear of punishment or hope of reward, a spirit of devotion is not only lovable but victorious.

There is a story from the book of Daniel that makes my heart warm every time I read it. Nebuchadnezzar the king made a golden image and called upon all men to fall down and worship it. Three Jewish governors, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, refused to do this. Nebuchadnezzar called them before him in his rage and fury, so runs the story, and threatened that, if they worshipped not, they should that same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace ; "And who," said he, "is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?" Now mark the reply. Shadrach, Me- shach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, "0 Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, 0 king. But if not, be it known unto thee, 0 king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up." That is the

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spirit that wins followers; that is the spirit that conquers the world. Had these men served their God on account of fear or for the sake of reward, the burning fiery furnace would have quenched their spirit as well as their life. It was because their faith rested on a surer foundation than selfish fear or selfish hope of reward that it became unconquerable.

For reckless faith like this, and reckless self- sacrifice like this, take hold on eternal life. Great religion, as Royce has so well said, arises out of loyalty to lost causes. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. There is something in the indomitable refusal to accept defeat which makes defeat impossible, so long as there remains a cause for which to fight. Here is where the religion of consecration has its advantage over the religion of self-interest or the religion of fear. The man who follows the demon whom he fears ceases to follow when the demon ceases to punish. The man who follows his God for the sake of the loaves and fishes loses heart when the reward fails. But the man whose soul is stirred and whose life is dominated by zeal for something outside of himself and his immediate environment — whether it be by sym- pathy for suffering humanity, or by the honor of a gentleman, or by faith in the truth as he sees it —

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has not only something for which to live, but some- thing for which to die.

Gentlemen of the graduating class: Never was the call for sacrifice in behalf of an unselfish ideal more urgent and more universal than it is today. Those of us who go to the front are called to face hardship and death. Those of us who stay at home have to do double duty, for themselves and for those in the field. In a great war, none is exempt from the burden. To bring such a war to a success- ful conclusion, the commonwealth as a whole must be imbued not only with the spirit of patriotism but with the spirit of self-effacement.

The nation against which we have been forced to take up arms has set a mighty example of what can be done where the people subordinate their own individual interests to that of the body politic. We may well criticise the motives and the ideals by which the members of that nation are moved. Some are influenced by fear of an almost despotic author- ity above them; others, by a desire to exalt their own nation at the expense of all other nations in the world. They look for visible results to the neglect of invisible ones; they are more concerned to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's than to render unto God the things that are God's.

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But whatever the motive, the self-sacrifice is there, and the unity and power that go with it are there. It is this national spirit, even more than technical efficiency or military skill, that has given Germany its strength.

To cope with that spirit, we must evoke a similar spirit of self-sacrifice among our own people. If the loftier motives of love to our fellow men and loyalty to our sentiments of justice are to prevail over the motives of fear and self-aggrandizement, they must be made to call out the same kind of devotion and of self-forgetfulness on the part of the community as a whole. If we are to render real service in the cause of Humanism against German- ism, we must see to it first of all that our zeal for humanity makes us forget ourselves as fully as zeal for Germany has made the individual German forget himself in behalf of the cause for which he is engaged.

A war for a great cause is an act of consecration. When the armies of mediaeval Switzerland knelt to receive the sacrament before going to battle, this was no empty symbol. If they had faith in the cause for which they fought they, like their Lord, were giving their bodies for the removal of the sins of the world. Like him, they were setting an

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example of devotion through which came devotion on the part of others.

It is not by arms alone that a war like ours is to be decided. The man who does duty at home has his share in the result, no less than he who goes to the front. The man who directs the labor or guides the policy of the nation has his share, no less than he whose hand produces food or munitions. Under conditions like these, all honest, intelligent, un- grudging work is public work; all training that enables us to do such work is preparation for public service. May each of us here today, whatever his powers and whatever his calling, begin his graduate life with a solemn act of consecration to a cause in which he believes. Thus, and thus only, shall we do our best service, to America, to the world, and to the unseen power that rules the world.

THE COMPELLING POWER OF IDEALS

1918

This night thy soul shall be required of thee.

Two years ago the question which the world asked every college graduate was, "What have you done to prepare yourself for success in life ? Have you been taught how to make money? Have you learned how to get public office? Have you laid the foundations for professional distinction?" Different people had different ideas of what con- stituted success; but whatever their ideas were, they encouraged us to measure it by selfish stand- ards. They were incredulous when anyone said that the making of money was of little importance as compared with the right use of money; that public office was valuable only as a means of public service ; or that professional distinction was honor- able only in so far as it was accompanied by con- tributions to the actual well-being and progress of mankind.

Today all this has changed. We are no longer asked what we can do for ourselves, but what we can do for our nation and for the world. We call

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things by their right names. The man who tries to make money for himself without serving the nation is now called a profiteer. The man who gets the rank of captain when he does not deserve that of lieutenant is now called an impostor. Skill in securing personal recognition, by which we once measured success, is now seen to be a very unim- portant incident in the game of life. Not the advancement of the individual but the advance- ment of the nation — this is the goal which is now set before us; this is the demand which today is made on our college graduates.

Amid all its evils, the war has brought a great spiritual awakening. We are awake to the fact that men have souls as well as bodies, and that their souls are the more important part ; that our spirit- ual life is not a disconnected thing, to be lived apart from others, but that we belong to a nation whose members have souls like our own and which has a national character and a national spirit of its own. Every people that has made itself a real place in history and has done enduring work has done so in virtue of that spirit. Athens, Rome, Florence, Cavalier England or Puritan England, Old France or Revolutionary France, each had its ideal and its soul. It is the story of these ideals that makes history worth reading; that distin-

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guishes these people from others equally prosper- ous in their time, which have perished from the earth and left their names unrecorded.

We are today called to the leadership of a nation's spirit as thus awakened. The world will value our colleges according as they have fitted men for such leadership. What we have done in preparation for the army, the navy, the engineers, is good and wins recognition; but the all-important thing that the world craves is that we should know how to guide souls aright.

What do we mean by the word soul? Not the mind as distinct from the body; not the emotions as distinct from the intellect; but the permanent part of a man's being, which, in the Scripture phrase, takes hold on eternal life, as distinct from transient changes of body and mind and emotions. The soul is by its very definition the immortal part of a man. What the nature of that immortality is we do not know. All our ideas of personality are so bound up with the forms of the present life that I suppose no two people have the same picture of what is to come hereafter. But whether they be- lieve in the continuance of a personality like that which we here enjoy, or picture themselves as joining

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the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In lives made better by their presence,

or are content to follow the example of the wisest of ancient Hebrews and say, "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it, ' ' — all agree in recog- nizing the inherent dualism of our nature; the perennial struggle of the instinct that aspires with the instinct that enjoys; the unconquerable inner self of Faust striving for something better than the world of Mephistopheles can produce. This reach- ing out for the future is known as idealism ; and it is the fundamental thing which gives a man the right to claim that he has a soul.

Nothing is so contagious as this sort of idealism. We see this illustrated today, when people have roused themselves from the profits of business or pleasure, and in the course of one short year have become patriotic in deed as well as in word with a universal response which few of us ventured to expect. Yes, people are at heart idealists; they follow the man of intense ideals, and seek the leader who can give expression and direction to such ideals. Thus is created the soul of a nation. It is this patriotic spirit that gives a people its power, more than wealth or skill or political organization.

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It was because Germany thought that we had no national soul that she invited us to enter the ranks of her enemies. It is because she finds that we have a national soul that she now recognizes and deplores her mistake.

Idealism is the fundamental characteristic of any soul worthy of the name, whether in a man or in a nation. But another quality must be added to make a strong soul; and that is endurance. Not endurance of physical hardship only, but endur- ance of alternations of fortune and of changes of external circumstances. Russia today gives us an object lesson of this need. There is, I suppose, in the whole world no more idealistic people than the Russians, and none more ready to bear physical pain for the sake of goals which they have set them- selves. What they could not bear was change of circumstance. They lost sense of direction and had no leaders that could set them right. They steered their course by the current and not by the stars ; and, as happens to a man or to a nation when it loses its bearings, they soon ceased to steer and began to drift. We as a people are in no danger of repeating the mistake made by the Russians. We are not likely to lose our bearings wholly. But we are likely, nay, we are certain, to meet alternations of hope and of discouragement, of success and

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of failure, which will try to the utmost our con- stancy of purpose and of faith. Here is the chance for leadership and the need for leadership. Ger- many, whatever her faults, has her ideals as a nation, and has shown the power to pursue them consistently in the face of adverse circumstances. If we are to win this war and prove the superiority of our ideals to hers, we must not only feel them with equal intensity but pursue them with more than equal constancy.

Idealism gives us a soul. Idealism and endur- ance together give us a strong soul. But to give us a white soul, a soul whose immortality can be other than a misfortune, there is something else which is yet more essential. We must add the quality which on its intellectual side we call wis- dom, on its ethical side unselfishness — the quality which is shown in sympathy for the weak, in truth- fulness and courtesy to all men, and which has found its highest manifestation in the life of Jesus Christ,

In Goethe's Faust Mephistopheles sought to destroy the human soul by teaching it to pursue pleasure of various kinds until it should become so absorbed in the moment that the future had no meaning for it. In Milton's Paradise Lost Satan seeks, not to destroy souls but to build up perverted

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souls; souls which shall hold ideals of the wrong kind and which, by the very strength and con- stancy of these ideals, shall be a menace to the order of the universe. Mephistopheles is the spirit of negation, which cares nothing for the good. Satan is the spirit of positive evil which exalts a standard of its own to displace the good, pursuing ideals of power to the exclusion and destruction of ideals of service. It is not with the ideals of Mephistopheles but with the ideals of Satan that we have to deal today. A great nation has become dazzled by a vision of power— a world order in which it shall be the strongest and shall mold the weaker to its pleasure. For the sake of this national ideal its members are ready to forget the personal interests of the moment, to submit to discipline, to endure hardship, to serve their leaders with unquestioning obedience, if only they in turn, individually and as a nation, may prove their superiority over others.

Experience shows that they have chosen the wrong path. The ruthless pursuit of power, though it may make a man strong, leaves him with fewer associates as the years go on; while he who shows sympathy for the weak and courtesy to all men finds himself surrounded by friends who are con- stant in adversity as well as in prosperity.

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Treachery, though it may avail once or twice, in the end turns against the man who practices it. Real success is in the long run based upon truthfulness rather than deceit, the instinct of working with others instead of working against them. What is true of men is true of nations. Each nation in turn — Austria, Spain, or France — as it has sought to conquer Europe by force has found itself faced by a union of powers against it who out of weakness became strong. Rome itself, which carried out its career of conquest more intelligently than modern European nations — for Rome, though it pushed its power remorselessly against its enemies, scrupu- lously kept its treaties with its friends — was in the very moment of its triumph consumed by civil strife among individuals who sought dominion for themselves ; and the world empire, built up by the generals and the publicists of five centuries, in three centuries found itself forced to recognize the superiority of the Galilean carpenter who had taught the world a truer lesson of what constituted real power than Rome herself could furnish. For love of our fellow men is not only true Christianity, but true wisdom. The Emperor Constantine told Eusebius that in the battle of the Milvian Way, by which the world's supremacy was decided, he saw in the heavens the cross of Christ, with the words

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"In this shalt thou conquer." Whence the sight came we do not know; but he saw the truth, and sixteen centuries have borne witness to his clear- ness of vision.

Gentlemen of the graduating class: We have been taught to believe in the Christian virtues of sympathy and courtesy and truthfulness. We have honored those who have tried to practice them and have despised those who made a boast of ignoring them. Now we find these ideals challenged. A great nation, which we have hitherto respected, claims the right to ignore such obligations in time of war, and to build up other standards of char- acter and achievement which must result to a con- siderable extent in suppressing them in times of peace. The very essence of Christianity, as we have understood it, is threatened, and threatened by a people whose discipline and endurance and technical intelligence make it a formidable an- tagonist.

America has risen to the defense of these Chris- tian ideals. We have largely forgotten our com- mercial ambitions and political rivalries. We are prepared to squander our treasure and to sacrifice our lifeblood for the things that we have believed to be right. Our studies here in college, if they are

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worth anything at all, will help us to bring to the world the assurance of ultimate victory. To those who can take the larger view of events it is clear that treachery and terrorism and ruthless pursuit of power defeat their own ends; and that the wis- dom to see this is of more importance to a nation than mere technical intelligence, however highly developed.

We are going out into a world that is awake. It is imbued with a religious fervor such as it has not seen for generations past. It is ready to wel- come with pathetic eagerness those who, having weighed evidence, can defend their convictions as well as die for them. We have tried to prepare ourselves for positions of responsibility and leader- ship, either in the work of fighting or in the equally necessary work of organization. But whatever our line of work, and however great the responsibility that falls upon us, our largest task is to strengthen and guide aright the national soul which is coming into being ; for by the strength and the whiteness of its soul shall the nation be judged and its part in the conflict determined. Let us therefore, going out into the storm and stress of life, see above us, as did Constantine sixteen hundred years ago, the cross of Christ rising in the sky above the clouds of battle. Then can we truly say with the apostle,

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" Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord : whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord 's. ' '

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