io8 A Young Man's Questions

" I. The heart's action becomes more rapid when tobacco is used.

" 2. Palpitation, pain, or unusual sen- sations, in the heart.

" 3. There is no appetite in the morn- ing, the tongue is coated, delicate flavours are not appreciated, and acid dyspepsia occurs after eating.

" 4. Diseases of the mouth and throat and nasal catarrh appear, and become very troublesome.

" 5. The eyesight becomes poor, but improves when the habit is abandoned.

" 6. A desire, often a craving, for liquor or some other stimulant is ex- perienced."

Professor Latlin supports this view, including the emphatic statement about the relation of the use of nicotine to the alcoholic taste :

" Tobacco in any form is bad, but in a cigarette there are five poisons. There is the oil in the paper, the oil of nicotine, saltpeter to preserve the tobacco, opium to make it mild, and the oil in the flavour- ing.

/

Shall I Smoke?

109

" The trouble with the cigarette is th< inhaling of the smoke. If you blow ? mouthful of smoke through a handker- chief, it will leave a brown stain. Inhale the smoke and blow it through the nos- trils and no stain will appear. The oi? and poison remain in the head and body. Cigarettes create a thirst for strong drink."

Mr. Hadley, of the Jerry McAuley Mission, in New York, testifies that the drunkards who are converted in the mis- sion break off the tobacco habit, too, and that the return to nicotine usually means the return to alcohol.

But there are thousands of smokers in whom the smoking habit has nothing to do with the drinking habit, and the young man is not likely to be deterred from the use of tobacco by warnings which he is sure are exaggerated. Even so, how- ever, he is certain to pay some penalty. No inveterate smoker can be quite as steady of nerve and solid of constitution as he would be without tobacco. Gen- eral Grant died confessedly of cancer

BV 4541 -364 1903

Speer, Robert E. 1867 ly*/

A young man's questions

A YOUNG MAN'S QUESTIONS

By ROBERT E. SPEER

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A YOUNG MAN'S QUESTIONS

ROBERT E. SPEER

Author of

Missionary Principles and Practice,

Man Christ Jesus, etc., etc.

O

New York Chica^ Toronto Fleming H. Revcll Company

London and Edinborgh

O:

Copyright, 1903, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 125 No. Wabash Ave. Toronto: 25 Richmond St W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street

PREFACE

The character of this little book is clearly enough indicated by its title and the table of contents. Very probably the ideals which it maintains will be distasteful to some. They will say that it cramps pleasure and narrows life. This is a mistake. This little book is written in the interests of freedom and the largest life. Its counsel to young men is to stand fast in the liberty with which Christ has made men free, and to refuse enslavement under any yoke of bondage. Its appeal to them is the appeal of Paul to Timothy : " No soldier on service entangleth himself in the affairs of this life; that he may please Him who en- rolled him as a soldier. And if also a man contend in the games he is not crowned, except he have contended lawfully."

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. What Are a Young Man's Questions ? 9 II. Why a Young Man Should Be a

Christian 26

III. Shall I Join the Church ? . . 40

IV. The Young Man's Duty to Spread

His Religion 53

V. As to Observing Sunday . . .70

VI. His Companions . . , .82

VII. Shall I Drink ? .... 91

VIII. Shall I Smoke ? .... 102

IX. As to the Theater . . . .114

X. The Young Man and Money . . 127

XI. Is It Wrong to Bet? . . . .137

XII. His Amusements .... 169

XIII. Men and Women . . , .186

XIV. His Reading 196

XV. A Young Man's Work in the World . 208

A Young Man's Questions

WHAT ARE A YOUNG MAN'S QUESTIONS ?

What troubles one man does not trou- ble another at all. There are many to whom some courses of action are impos- sible. It never occurs to them to adopt such courses. To others these same courses of action seem most natural and ordinary. It does not occur to them that they may be wrong. Men do not all have the same standards, and they do not differ from one another merely in the degree of success or failure with which they con- form to these standards. Their stan- dards differ, differ so widely that one man suffers torture at the thought of doing what to another man is easy and unques- tionable. Young men do not, accordingly, ask themselves the same questions.

9

lo A Young Man's Questions

A man's inheritance, earnestness of purpose, integrity of character and atmos- phere of life, enter into the determination of what his moral and social and intel- lectual problems will be, and of what will be his solutions of his problems. We easily underestimate the importance of the last of these. The atmosphere of life with many men is such that many ques- tions are prohibited from ever arising in it. There are thousands of men, for ex- ample, who are so set in habits of abso- lute probity and the tone of whose life is so high and worthy that the chance to take ten thousand dollars unobserved and with the perfect assurance of concealment would never be observed by them, or, if observed, would not raise the slightest perceivable temptation. It is the very sal- vation and joy of life to a young man to live in an atmosphere like this. We would do well to think more upon it.

In his notebook, Phillips Brooks jotted down some thought of his about a man's moral atmosphere when he was returning from Europe in 1883 • " Nature of tem-

What Are They? ii

per in general — distinct from principle, belief, or action. The clear recognisable- ness of it in people's thoughts; the at- mosphere or aroma of a life ; the frequent idea of irresponsibility for temper ; value of heredity. People talk as if it were just discovered. Moses ' from fathers to children.' The beauty of such connection with all its frequent tragicalness." It is this underlying cast of character which determines a young man's questions for him far more than the external surround- ings and associations of his life.

Yet these do enter, and enter be- cause they have such power to affect the inner dispositions. A young man who goes with a fast set is forced to face ques- tions which another man, whose tastes are high and serious, and whose com- panions are thoughtful and earnest men, is not troubled with. A young man comes out of his room in some eastern city, or some western town, where he has just read a letter from his mother, at home. The sweetness of his mother's influence is upon his heart, and he is

12 A Young Man's Questions

thinking tenderly of her and of the pas^, and all the scenes of his wholesome boy- hood crowd back into his heart. In that frame of mind nothing could tempt him to impurity.

But a companion persuades him to go to the theater. I am not raising yet the question whether it is right for the young man to go to the theater, but am sug- gesting only the influence of the atmos- phere of life as creating our questions for us, and determining our behaviour toward them. The warmth of colour and life and the excitement of the play make it easy for the young man to slip from the thea- ter to the saloon, or to the friend's room for a glass of wine. And then it is easy to take another step, which would have been impossible as he came out of his room, fresh from the touch of his moth- er's love and the mother's ideals for her boy. In this sense each man is not only, as Robert Louis Stevenson said, " his own judge and mountain guide through life," but he makes his own code and his own mountains, too.

What Are They? 13

But this is not altogether true. A course of action may be very question- able, and yet a man may pursue it with- out question. It does not alter the char- acter of wrong or folly to allege that men follow them unconsciously. If a blind man of high character should walk off the cliff into Niagara Rapids, his blind' ness and high character would not in the.- least affect the law of gravitation, of save him from drowning in the stream. And while one man may be able to stand more folly or wrongdoing than another, before he begins to show the conse- quences, yet the moral character of his course is not in the least altered thereby. There are certain questions which remain questions no matter how much men may assume that they are not questions. And men will be held responsible for their conduct in regard to them whether they have ever considered them as really ques- tions of moral interest or not.

Very many of the questions of a young man's life^ however, are not questions of a gross character. He has problems to

14 A Young Man's Questions

face besides the elementary problems of morality. There are questions of propri- ety, of expediency, of honour, of courtesy, of prudence. There are issues where the opposing courses may both be inno- cent in themselves, and where the judg- ment must turn upon consequences, upon ultimate influence on character and per- sonal power. As the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews points out, there are weights as well as sins to be stripped off in order to run an unimpeded race.

Every young man reveals his character in his determination of what things shall constitute his problems. If he takes cer- tain judgments and habits and tastes for granted, and feels no moral scruples over them, he shows the sort of man he truly is. If he stops at these courses and de- liberates, insisting thus that they cannot be taken for granted as the proper thing for a man, but must be honestly scrutin- ised; or if he, on the other hand, sum- marily shuts the door on all low and worthless or enslaving ways, whether of body or of mind; he reveals himself ^s

What Are They? 15

tvell as his attitude on these particular questions. There is a character of easy acceptance of conventional customs and of common standards. There is another character of independence and coura- geousness which strikes out its own courses, and prefers what is right to what is easy; and even beyond this, insists upon reading a moral significance in everything.

Two of the supreme things for a young man to keep in mind in thinking upon his questions are just these — freedom and courage. It is always unfortunate to lose independence. Men often sneer at high standards on the ground that they are slavish, and that it is far more manly to lead a free life. But this is a foolish and an untrue use of words. Take the habit of drink, as an illustration. The mode- rate drinker says he likes a man who is free — free to drink. But the total ab- stainer is free to drink when he wants to. The drinker, even the moderate drinker, is not free to stop drinking when he wants to. Which of them is the free man ? The

1 6 A Young Man's Questions

abstainer is free either to drink, or not to drink. The drinker is free simply to drink. It is best to decide all the ques- tions of life so as to retain the greatest measure of real freedom. And he is the freest man whose habit makes him free from the habits which make men slaves.

One of the great questions of our lives is our rights and the use we shall make of them. Law books and books on political science give a great deal of space to rights, their definition, their division. Scores of pages are used in these discus- sions by ex-President Woolsey, of Yale, in his two big volumes on " PoUtical Sci- ence," and he concludes the chapter by dividing rights into seven classes. Black- stone's discussion and division are both shorter. With him there are two kinds of rights, absolute and relative.

Jesus, too, taught about rights, and He suggested a division which most people have never thought of. First, there are rights which we have no right to surren- der; and, second, there are rights which we have a right to forego. It was after

What Are They? 17

the Transfiguration. He had come down from the mountain top, and when He was come to Capernaum was met with the question of the temple tribute. Every spring each Jew about twenty years of age was expected to pay a tax of about thirty cents, in our money, for the main- tenance of the temple. The collector asked Peter whether Jesus would pay this, the time for its payment having long passed. Peter said at once that He would. On reaching their house Jesus asked Peter : " What thinkest thou, Simon ? the kings of the earth, from whom do they receive toll or tribute? from their sons, or from strangers ? " When Peter said, " From strangers," Jesus said to him, " Therefore, the sons are free. But — " That was Jesus' way of saying that he had a right to refrain from paying this tax, but he would surrender this right. People would not understand. It would cause " stumbling."

So we have rights which we may fore- go. As ex-President Woolsey says: ** Rights may be waived. The very na-

1 8 A Young Man's Questions

ture of a right implies that the subject of it decides whether he should exercise it or not." For example, I get on a street car and pay my fare and take the last empty seat. A poor, sick woman, carrying a child, gets on next, and no seat is offered to her. I have a right to keep my seat. I have paid for it. No one else in the car offers the woman a seat. Evidently public opinion in that car would justify me in keeping my seat. But I have a right to waive my right to my seat and give it to her. Perhaps a man holds that he has a right to smoke. Certainly, the law allows it and public opinion allows it. It is his right to do it. No law prevents his smoking on the street and blowing the smoke over his shoulder into the faces of people behind. This is his right. But it is a right he can sur- render. So with drinking. Many men contend that they have a right to drink. It is not a crime and it is not wrong, they contend. Well, suppose that this is true, they have a right to refrain from

What Are They? 19

drinking-, too. The right to drink does not require that a man exercise it.

Jesus gave up His rights because, to maintain them, He said, would cause peo- ple to stumble. It did not seem to Him sufficient to say, regarding any course of action, " This is only asserting my rights." " My right ! " exclaimed Or- theris, with deep scorn, in *' His Private Honour," " My right ! I ain't a recruity, to go whinin' about my rights * * * My rights! 'Strewth A'mighty! I'm a man." Jesus asked also, " Will my exer- cise of my rights injure or inconvenience others ? " With us it must be so, too. " It can never be too often repeated in this age," wrote Woolsey, '' that duty is higher than freedom, that where a man has a power or prerogative, the first ques- tion for him to ask is : ' How and in what spirit is it my duty to use my power or prerogative ? What law shall I lay down for myself so that my power shall not be a source of evil to me and to others ? ' " Now, in using the rights to smoke, to

20 A Young Man's Questions

drink, to go to the theater, and to play cards, we must ask whether their use will hurt or offend any one. Some would deny that these are rights at all. But let us grant that men have the right to do these things. They are not justified in doing them simply because they are their rights. " I have a right to eat meat," said Paul, " but if eating meat give of- fense to any one or cause any one to stumble, I will surrender that right; I will eat no meat while the world stands."

Many men are slaves to their rights. They will not surrender them at any time. They really do not own their rights. Their rights own them. This was what Paul said he would not have in his life. He would be master of his rights. He would not have them his mas- ters. " All things are lawful for me ; but ,all things are not expedient. All things are lawful for me; but I will not be brought under the power of any." Men should learn to exercise the liberty of surrendering their rights. Dr. Trum-

What Are They? 21

bull tells in " War Memories of an Army Chaplain " of a friend who, before the Civil War, challenged him to point out any single verse in the entire Bible which distinctly forbade human slavery. " I re- plied," says Dr. Trumbull, " that I could not point to any verse in the Bible which, taken by itself or in view of its context, squarely forbade slavery, polygamy, or wine drinking ; yet, on the other hand, I found no single verse commanding any one of those practices; therefore, as at present advised, as a matter of choice and in the exercise of a sound Christian dis- cretion, I should have but one wife, no * nigger,' and drink cold water." If hold- ing slaves and drinking liquor were rights, at any rate he had a right to fore- go exercising them.

The noblest man is not he who always upholds his rights. It is he who knows when to waive them for his own good and for the good of others. Some men refuse to see this. What are their neigh- bours to them? Are they their neigh- bour's keepers? That is a very old ex-

2 2 A Young Man's Questions

cuse, as old as Cain, and as evil and mun derons.

Jesus was the noblest of men because He gave up the greatest rights. He had a right, Paul tells us, to be on an equality with God. It was not necessary for Him to come down here. But he deemed His right a thing not to be jealously retained. He gave it up, " emptied Himself," " though He was rich, became poor," and in a servant's form came among men, not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give as a ransom for many His life, which He had a right to keep.

There are some rights which we have no right ever to surrender — the right to be pure and kind and Christlike, the right to tell the truth and to hate evil and to fight wrong. Among those rights which are never to be given up is the right to surrender all those rights whose exercise would cause others to stumble or hurt ourselves.

Perhaps the reason why more men are not able to preserve their liberty at this point is to be found in their cowardice.

What Are They ? 23

Most men accept the standards of their crowd. Does the crowd think this the manly thing? Then they do it. Does the crowd think this a weak and "goody" course? Then they, too, sneer at it. What is wanted is men who will think for themselves^ boldly, who will recognise that this is the hard and courageous thing, and who will follow the voice of God which will tell them their way. And this takes pluck. But, as Stevenson asks, " Where did you hear that it was easy to be honest? Do you find that in your Bible? Easy? It is easy to be an ass and follow the multitude like a blind, be- sotted bull in a stampede ; and that, I am well aware, is what you and Mrs. Grundy mean by being honest. But it will not bear the stress of time nor the scrutiny of conscience."

The right ideal of life is a brave and full obedience to goodness ; to true good- ness, not to the conventions of crowds, least of all to the low standards of men who are afraid to be strong in righteous- ness. And that would be a great life in

24 A Young Man's Questions

which God obtained a fearless and perfect obedience, and the questions which we are to consider in this volume ceased to be questions at all, because the life would be wholly ruled by His Spirit and law. " If," says Stevenson, in his " Lay Mor- als," from which the two preceding quo- tations also have been taken, " we were to conceive a perfect man, it should be one who was never torn between conflict- ing impulses, but who, on the absolute consent of all his parts and faculties, sub- mitted in every action of his life to a self- dictation as absolute and unreasoned as that which bids him love one woman and 1)e true to her till death.

" But we should not conceive him as sagacious, ascetical, playing off his appe- tites against each other, turning the wing of public respectable immorality instead of riding it directly down, or advancing toward his end through a thousand sinis- ter compromises and considerations. The one man might be wily, might be adroit, might be wise, might be respectable,

What Are They ? 25

might be gloriously useful; it is the other man who would be good.

" The soul asks honour and not fame,; to be upright, not to be successful; to be good, not prosperous; to be essentially, not outwardly, respectable. Does your soul ask profit? Does it ask money? Does it ask the approval of the indiffer- ent herd? I believe not. For my own part, I want but little money, I hope; and I do not want to be decent at all, but to be good."

But in the judgment of the One whose judgment alone is of value, goodness is the only decency.

II

WHY A YOUNG MAN SHOULD BE A CHRISTIAN

The first question of all questions for a young man is, Why should I not be a Christian? Even if, as is to be hoped, the young man has grown up in a Christian home, and always loved Christ, the time will come when he must make some de- cisive choice or meet some decisive test which will mean his open and conscious commitment of his life to Christ and His service, or his recreancy and faithlessness. And in the case of young men who have not grown up in the Christian faith, this question rises before them as the supreme question of their lives. Why should we not be Christians?

Now, first of all, the young man should

be a Christian because he is one. This

is a paradox that covers a great truth.

*' Are you a Christian?" a college paper

26

Should He Be a Christian ? 27

recently represented one student as saying to another. " Of course," was the reply, " do you take me for a heathen? " The implication that every man is a Christian who is not a heathen is, of course, untrue. But, of course, also it is true. Every young man in a Christian land has his ideals, standards of judgment, social cus- toms, forces at work in his life, which are the direct product of the influence of Christ. These make his life radically different from the Hves of men in non- Christian lands. In this sense he is a Christian. He accepts and enjoys a thousand privileges which are due to Christ, and which men lack who do not live under the influence of Christianity. In this sense every young man in our land is a Christian, as accepting the secondary privileges and blessings of Christianity. He is not a Christian in the sense of rec- ognising its primary obligations. In other words, he takes from Christ all he can get without giving anything back. A young man ought to be a Christian out of a sense of fairness. He ought not to be willing

a8 A Young Man's Questions

to accept the blessings of the Gospel with- out recognising and meeting his obliga- tions to Christ who brought the Gospel.

But Christianity is far more than the network of conceptions and influences which we call Christian civilisation. Be- side this and before this and as the source of this it is four things : ( i ) the forgive- ness of sin, (2) the revelation of God in Christ, (3) the revelation of man in Christ, and (4) the power of God in man enabling him to attain the revelation of the perfect man in Christ.

The young man should be a Christian because he needs all these and cannot find them outside of Christianity, (i) As a simple matter of fact, no other re- ligion does give the conscious deliverance from the sense of guilt of sin. Sin is an old-fashioned word, and the " sense of sin " is not talked about much nowadays ; but the man who is of honest heart and who is not enslaved by catchwords and bloodless assumptions never more current than to-day, knows that he has not been what he should have been, and that he has

Should He Be a Christian? 29

sinned. No naturalistic nonsense telling him that his sin is only the innocent ex- pression of that honest nature which he shares with the animal world deceives him. He knows that he is to be judged by more than a barnyard moral code, and that measured not by the habits of beasts, but by the holiness of God he is wrong and must be set right. The most solid evidence to be found in the world proves that Christ can set men right here, and that no one else can. (2) But the young man of to-day may say, " I do not know that there is a God. I have never seen Him." Well, there are several answers to that. He never saw Martin Luther. He never saw a pain. But he believes in Luther, and in pain, and in sound waves and molecules, and in a million other things which he never saw. " But these I understand," the young man replies, " while God I do not." But he believes in thousands of things he does not un- derstand, and in some of them he be- lieves far more profoundly than he does in much that is intelligible. It is of no

30 A Young Man's Questions

consequence that we do not know God by the same kind of evidence by which we know the weight of a dog, or that we do not entirely comprehend Him. It is enough that we may know God as far as we need, and by appropriate evidence. If the young man wants to read a book on the proofs of God's existence, let him take Flint's "Theism." But for most young men Christ is the best evidence. We read the Gospels, and while we hear Jesus saying, " Ye believe in God, believe also in Me," and feel the force of that appeal, some are moved even more to say, " We believe in Thee, O Christ. We believe also in God." For Christ is to us the revelation of God. Even those men who say that they cannot believe that Jesus was di- vine, because it is not possible for them to conceive thus of God, owe their high spiritual conception of God to Christ. Only those who have seen God in Christ have such a high notion of God as this. (3) And Jesus not only shows us the Father. He also shows us the truth of ourselves. He was what God

Should He Be a Christian? 31

would have us be. We are satisfied with ourselves until we compare ourselves with Him, our sin with His purity, our selfish- ness with His sacrifice, our meanness with His generosity, our pettiness with His g-reatness, our failure with His success. Then we see that while Jesus was one of us, He was also separate from us. This perfectness of character, and of obedience to God and of life which we see in Christ is God's standard and ideal for eacli one of us. (4) But the Gospel is more than forgiveness and revelation. It is power. A Christian is not simply a man who knows what he ought to be and do, and is sorry he has failed in being and doing what he ought. He is a man who has entered into a personal and vital rela- tionship with God through Christ, who recognises that he is a son of God, and that God is ready to give him strength to act as His son.

This is the vital thing. To be a Chris- tian is to be bound to God through Christ. It is as Captain Mahan, the greatest liv- ing authority on naval history and strat-

32 A Young Man's Questions

egy, has said, " the direct relation of the individual soul to God." In speaking just so, Captain Mahan went on to tell of his own conversion, years ago. " I hap- pened," he said, ** one week-day in Lent, into a church in Boston. The preacher — I have never known his name — inter- ested me throughout ; but one phrase only has remained : ' Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people.' — here he lifted up his hands — ' not from hell, but from their sins.' Almost the first words of the first Gospel. I had seen them for years, but at last I perceived them. Scales seemed to fall from my eyes, and I began to see Jesus and life as I had never seen them before. I was then about thirty. Personal religion is but the co-operation of man's will with the power of Jesus Christ that man's soul, man's whole being, may be saved, not for his own profit chiefly, but that he may lay it, thus redeemed, thus exalted, at the feet of Him who loved him and gave Himself for him," Such faith and consecration as this is a man's reasonable service.

Should He Be a Christian ? ^3

But a young man may say, " It is not all so clear to me as you assume. I have many doubts, intellectual difficulties which prevent my accepting this view." Are you sure? Many men speak of in- tellectual doubts whose trouble is not that they have thought too much, but that they have not thought enough. What are your doubts ? Define them. Write them down on paper. If they are real you can do this. If you can not do this with them, what right have they to obtrude themselves into any question of reality? But even if you can do this with them, are you sure that these are your real dif- ficulties? Many men say and, perhaps, even believe that their difficulties are in- tellectual, when they are moral. If these men were right morally, they would ba ready for faith and Christian knowledge. As Fichte says : " It is only by thorough amelioration of the will that a new light is thrown on our existence and future destiny ; without this, let me meditate as much as I will, and be endowed with ever such rare intellectual gifts, darkness re-

34 -^ Young Man's Questions

mains within me and around me. * ^i** * I know immediately what is necessary for me to know, and this will I joyfully and without hesitation or sophistication prac- tice." And so Carlyle also writes: " Doubt of any kind cannot be removed, except by action. On which ground, too, let him who gropes painfully in dark- ness or uncertain light and prays vehe- mently that dawn may ripen into day, lay this other precept well to heart — Do the duty which lies nearest thee." This was Jesus' solution : " If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it is of God."

This solution was offered by Jesus in connection with His own claims. And here is a good point for any man with confusion or doubt to take up his prob- lem. Was Jesus v/hat He claimed to be, and can I depend upon Him? It is far wiser for young men to go straight to this question than to debate over ques- tions of theism and immortality and natu- ralistic evolution. Christianity stands or falls with Christ, and it urges its claims

Should He Be a Christian? 35

upon us because Christ Himself has un- answerable claims. The young man should read Bushnell's '* Character of Jesus Forbidding His Possible Classifi- cation with Men," Young's " Christ of History," and Simpson's '' The Fact of Christ." But, in a -word, it may be said that Christ and His influence, in its power and quality, can not be accounted for on any other ground than that He was what He claimed to be. And it is not possible to study His life deeply and not perceive- His uniqueness. As De Wette says : " The man who comes without precon- ceived opinions to the life of Jesus, and who yields himself up to the impression which it makes, will feel no manner of doubt that He is the most exalted char- acter and purest soul that history pre- sents to us. He walked over the earth like some nobler being who scarce touched it with His feet." But more than this. This Being was more than man. Let any one who denies this surpass Him or re- produce Him or even approach Him — not in genius or exceptional powers, but in

^6 A Young Man*s Questions

those moral qualities which are within the reach of any man's will. The abysmal failure of any such attempt only empha- sises the reality and the width of the chasm that divides us from Christ. He was more than man that man might cease to be less.

But Christ can be examined and studied and tested to-day, too. Every day He is redeeming drunkards, giving men new wills, saving men from their sins, and strengthening them to fight victoriously against their temptations. The witnesses to this truth are innumerable and unim- peachable. Why will you not believe them? A man troubled with malaria tells you he has been cured by quinine^ A thousand other men corroborate his tes- timony. You believe it. Here is testi- mony more overwhelming. Jesus Christ saves. He can be seen doing it. He will save you.

And every young man needs to be saved. He needs to be saved from sin, from waste, from folly, from disobedi- ence, from shortcoming, from transgres-

Should He Be a Christian? 37

sion, from forgetfulness, from selfish- ness, from narrowness, from everything that flows from sin. We need de- liverance from all that makes life imperfect. We need deliverance into the abundant and perfect life. " I am come," says Jesus, *' that ye may have life, and have it more abundantly." The abundant life is not to be found in art, in music, in business, in philanthropy, in science, in poHtics. There is only one place where it is to be found. It is in Christ.

The Christian life is the only complete and abiding life. Every man was made for it. It is the divinely meant life for every man. The young man should be a Christian, because only so is he his true self. Only so does he come into his place of power over life and over death, and set himself in the eternal will of his Father. Let the young man come to Christ now.

" The time will come," says Professor Drummond in one of his earlier addresses, " when we shall ask ourselves why we

38 A Young Man's Questions

ever crushed this infinite substance of our life within these narrow bounds, and cen- tered that which lasts for ever on what must pass away. In the perspective of eternity all lives will seem poor, and small, and lost, and self-condemned be- side a life for Christ. There will be plenty then to gather round the cross. But who will do it now? Who will do it now? There are plenty of men to die for Him, there are plenty to spend eter- nity with Christ; but where is the man who will live for Christ? Death and Eternity in their place. Christ wants lives. No fear about death being gain if we have lived for Christ. So let it be. ' To me to live is Christ.' There is but one alternative — the putting on of Christ ; Paul's alternative, the discovery of Christ. We have all in some sense, indeed, al- ready made the discovery of Christ. We may be as near it now as Paul when he left Jerusalem. There was no notice given that he was to change masters. The new Master simply crossed his path one day, and the great change was come.

Should He Be a Christian? 39

How often has He crossed our path ? We

know what to do the next time ; we know how our life can be made worthy and great — how only; we know how death can become gain — how only. Many, in- deed, tell us death will be gain. Many long for life to be done that they may rest, as they say, in the quiet grave. Let no cheap sentimentalism deceive us. Death can only be gain when to have lived was Christ."

Ill

SHALL I JOIN THE CHURCH ?

One of a young man's first and most important questions is the question of his attitude and relation to the Church. In any community in which he is Hkely to be, the visible Christian Church is already established with its organisations for wor- ship and service, and he must of neces- sity take up some sort of a position re- garding it. Ought every man to connect himself with the Church and take part in its work? Yes; he ought. But some- thing is necessary as a preliminary. The Christian Church in any community is the body of believing men and women resid- ing there. That is not a careful defini- tion, but it suffices to emphasise the fact that the Church is a body of people of common convictions and affections toward Christ. Of course, no one ought to join 40

Shall I Join the Church ? 41

it who does not share these convictions and affections. But every one who does share them should connect himself with it. There are many young men, however, who dissent from this view. They do be- lieve in Christ, they say, and they love Him, but they do not see any reason for connecting themselves with the Church, and they have various grounds of defense of their position. Some say that it is not necessary, that they can believe in Christ and serve Him outside of the Church, can go when they want to church worship, and co-operate with church members; but that the mere form of membership is unessential. Of course, men can believe in Christ and love Him without being members of His Church, just as men could believe in Him and love Him as Nicodemus and others of the rulers of the Jews did, without openly confessing Him when He was on the earth. But if this is a valid excuse for one man to stay out of the Church, it is a valid excuse for all, and there is no visible Church any longer, but just a

42 A Young Man's Questions

great host of concealed disciples. It was Jesus Himself who instituted the fellow- ship of disciples; and the faith in Him and love for Him which are not strong enough to lead a man to side openly with Him and His Church, are not quite of the highest type.

" But," say some young men, " we can openly side with Christ without joining the Church, and we don't like to be bound as we are when we become formal mem- bers." It is true that every Christian man can reveal himself as Christ's true disciple every day, and that a man may be even a church member and not do this ; but the Church in each community ought to be the body of all true Christian men in that community, and there is no more reason why a man should not unite him- self to it, than for his declining to recog- nise his allegiance to the Government, to register for the purpose of voting, or to purchase real estate for a house and so commit himself as a member of the com- munity. Life is full of the assumption of obligations. They constitute its glory.

Shall I Join the Church ? 43

There are young men who complain of the Church, and decline to join it because of what they regard as its defects. " There are so many hypocrites and Pharisees in it/' some say. But the young man who pretends not to sympa- thise with the real aims of the true Church when he does, is a hypocrite as truly as the man who pretends to sympa- thise when he does not. And there is a Pharisaism of indifference and personal independence as real as the Pharisaism of religious pride and insincerity. It is true that there are hypocrites and Pharisees both in and out of the Church. No young man can escape their company by refus- ing to join the Church. Indeed, it may be asserted confidently that there is more hypocrisy and Pharisaism outside of the Church than there is inside. In almost every community in the land, the people of honour, nobility of character, and gen- eral trustworthiness, are in the Church. It is usually the desire for a reputation for these things which draws the dishon- est and insincere into the Church. More-

44 A Young Man's Questions

over, the character of others and their un- faithfulness are the most pitiable excuses to urge in support of our defection of duty. If Judas is a traitor, the more reason for John's fidelity.

Others say that the Church is behind the age, but this is not true in any bad sense. It is true that the Church is the great conservator of the good of the past, and that it checks carelessness and haste in cutting loose from what is permanent- ly valuable and eternally true. But the Church is the great progressive force in life and in the world. Church councils are not the Church, and Luther was as truly the Church as the men who con- demned him. Whoever has the truth in the Church is the true representative of the Church. In every community in the land it is the age that is behind the Church in the attainment of the worthiest and noblest things; and the great lead- ers in almost every department of soci- ety, politics, science, and art, have been or are men of the Church. And if it were true that the Church is out of the great

Shall I Join the Church ? 4f

current of human life, it would be th« highest duty of the men who are with- holding their support from it, to come ta its help and deliver it, and rescue thus t(» the world the mightiest force that evef has worked in it.

But some men say that their estimate ol the Church is so high that they do not feel good enough to join, while otherji urge that they are as good without it an they would be within it, and are as up- right as those who now belong to it. Now the Church is the place for both of these classes. It is not a collection of perfect saints, and no true member of the Church feels that he has attained the goal or is satisfied with his goodness of character. It is a place for men who want the help of God and of their fellows, and who, feeling their own weakness, know that God did not mean men to live their lives or hold their faith alone. On the other hand, the man who is satisfied with him- self needs the ideals of the Church to shame him and then entice him. While in so far as he is the sort of man he ought

46 A Young Man's Questions

to be, he owes it to Christ to join His company, and add to its efficiency for righteousness.

Some men say that the Church is now moribund, and that nobody beheves in it any more, that the preachers themselves do not beUeve what they preach. The men who say this are mistaken. More than this, their statement of the Church's dupHcity is basely wicked and false. The churches have more power to-day in our country than ever before, and they never believed their message more firmly or in- telligently than to-day. There may be ministers whose ideals and practices are low, far beneath the contempt even of many of their church members ; but these are exceptions. Jesus declared that good and evil would be inextricably interwoven until the day of His second coming. But in the churches the strongest and best opinion of the land is to be found, the fullest and fairest acknowledgement of the mysteries and the difficulties of life, and the most honest and fearless attempt to meet them. It is the habit of some

Shall I Join the Church ? 47

young m€n to allege that honest and fear- less search for truth is found outside of the Church ; but the idea is a mistake. In college and in business and everywhere it is the Christian men who are doing the great part of the real work of the world, and who are dealing honestly with their own souls and with the problems of life. The existence of denominationalism is urged by some as a reason for remaining outside the organised Church. They want to be just followers of Christ without a denominational name. But a partisan name in politics does not prevent a man from being a true patriot. And men are willing to join narrow organisations, se- cret or semi-secret, which they hold are not inconsistent with a broad spirit of humanity. The denominations are broader and freer than either of these. Almost no denomination asks more of its mem- bers than that they should believe in Christ and wish to serve Him. The Pres- byterian Church asks no more than would make a man eligible to membership in the Congregational or any other evangelical

48 A Young Man's Questions

Church, and the usage of the Congrega- tional Church is as broad and as Chris- tian. The specter of denominational nar- rowness and contention is for the most part a pure hallucination. No Christian man sacrifices anything or narrows or impedes his life by joining any one of the evangelical churches, that is, the churches that regard the divine Christ as the sole Head of His Church, and the sole Ruler of His people.

In our day the numbers of men who make membership in lodge or order or brotherhood a substitute for membership in the Church is very large. There is something pathetic in this. The basis of these organisations is narrowly mascu- line, and often secular or spuriously re- ligious, and their method and spirit are too often puerile. They are no substi- tute for the Church. They have all the defects alleged against the Church with- out its virtues, and every reason for not joining the Church urged by their mem- bers is ignored in joining them. The man who does not want to commit himself or

Shall I Join the Church? 49

to join any movement where there may be hypocrites, dare not join such organi- sations and then urge these compunctions as against the Church. Moreover, " when men separate from others," says Sir Thomas Browne, " they unite but loosely among themselves." In other words, no tie of secret brotherhood can be as worthy or strong as the bond of Christian broth- erhood binding the Christian to all his brethren throughout the world. Who- ever depreciates this tie by presuming to set up a stronger, really makes himself incapable of the closest bonds. When men draw away from the great common brotherhood into some narrow order they do in reality but bring suspicion upon all their notions of union and brother- hood.

Men sometimes say, " We don't like the preacher," " We are too tired on Sun- day," " We can get more good on Sunday from nature or books or outdoor exer- cise." " Sermons in stones " have been often urged as an excuse from church attendance by people who never stop to

5© A Young Man's Questions

read the stones; and outdoor exercise is often made a pretext by those who are not reduced to the necessity of using the hours of the church service for this pur- pose, or going without. But these and a multitude of similar small excuses are brushed away by the two great considera- tions which every young man should enter- tain. First, every man needs the Church. He needs its fellowship, its stimulus, the publicity it gives to his Christian faith, the opportunities for worship and for serv- ice which it offers. And secondly, the Church needs every young man. It needs him to join in its loving worship of the Father and the Saviour, and it needs him for the ministry of the Church in the war- fare against sin and evil in the world. No young man has a right to hold aloof, or for the sake of some personal caprice of opinion to deny the Church his aid and service.

There are hundreds of men who look back with gratitude to the religious train- ing of their childhood, and to the influ- ences of their early years of attendance at

Shall I Join the Church? 51

church, who yet are now holding such an attitude toward the Church that their children will never have what has been the best part of their own training. These men will even confess this with a smiling but uneasy perplexity. It is a sad phe- nomenon, a sort of double treason — un- faithfulness both to the past and to the future.

The right course for every young man to take is to attend church regularly, to do this even though he is not prepared yet to join. In time he will believe in Jesus Christ and love Him and wish to serve Him. Then he should join the Church and take at once and always an active and untiring part in its work, openly acknowl- edging Jesus before men, and rejoicing in Jesus' assurance that in his turn he will be acknowledged before God and the angels. This is the right and natural course. It is the course of reality, of manliness, of integrity. The young man has no business to play with ways of eva- sion and avoidance. Let him take his stand with Christ and with the men of

52 A Young Man's Questions

Christ's mind and Church, and fight with them a man's fight in the open.

IV

THE YOUNG MAN'S DUTY TO SPREAD HIS RELIGION

Any man who has a religion is bound to do one of two things with it — change it or spread it. If it is not true, he must give it up. If it is true, he must give it away. This is not the duty of ministers only. Religion is not an affair of a pro- fession or of a caste. It is the busi- ness of every common man.

Where did I come from? What am I here for ? Whither am I going ? These are questions which confront every man. They are no more real to a minister than they are to a merchant or a marine. Every man must answer them for himself. And the answer that he gives them determines his religion. There is no proxy religion. Each man has his own. If he hasn't, he has none. No other man can have it for him. And if , 53

54 A Young Man^s Questions

he has his own, then he must propagate it, if it is true, or repudiate it, if it is false.

The business of preaching the Gospel, accordingly, is neither committed to any order, nor to be discharged by any lit- erature. As an old clergyman of the Church of England, who was two gen- erations ahead of his day, wrote, " The office of teaching and preaching the Gos- pel belongs to men, not to a book, to the Church emphatically, though not to the clergy only, but to every member of it, for a dispensation of the Gospel is com- mitted to every Christian, and woe unto him if he preach not the Gospel."

The command to evangelise the world was not given by our Lord to apostles only, or to those whom the apostles might, centuries later, be claimed to have com- missioned for such work. It was given to all believers. " Every disciple was to be a disciple," as Dr. Gordon used to say. Whoever heard the good news was to pass it on to the next man, and he to the next.

Duty to Spread His Religion 55

The idea that the world or any one land is to be evangelised by one section of the Christian body, the other sections being exempt from all duty of propaga- tion of the faith, is preposterous for many reasons, chiefly because a faith that does not make every possessor eager to propa- gate it, is not worth propagating, and will not be received by any people to whom it is offered. The religion that would spread among men must be offered by man to man; and its power, seen in dominating the lives of all its adherents and making them eager for its dissemination, is es- sential as a testimonial of worth. No propagation by a profession, essential as a distinct teaching and leading class may be, will ever accomplish what can be ac- complished by a great mass of common men who preach Christ where they stand, in home, office, road or shop.

In a list of Indian missionaries of Mohammedanism, published in the jour- nal of a religious and philanthropic soci- ety of Lahore, says Arnold in " The Preaching of Islam," " we find the names

56 A Young Man's Questions

of schoolmasters, government clerks in the Canal and Opium Departments, traders including a dealer in camel carts, an edi- tor of a newspaper, a bookbinder, and a workman in a printing establishment. These men devote the hours of leisure left them after the completion of the day's labour, to the preaching of their re- ligion in the streets and bazaars of Indian cities, seeking to win converts from among Christians and Hindus, whose re- ligious belief they controvert and attack." This is what constitutes the power of Islam. With no missionary organisation, with no missionary order, the religion yet spread over Western Asia and Northern Africa, and retains still its foothold on the soil of Europe. Where the common man believes his religion and spreads it, other men believe it, too.

The minister is to be simply colonel of the regiment. The real fighting is to be done by the men in the ranks who carry the guns. No idea could be more non- Christian or more irrational than that the religious colonel is engaged to do the

Duty to Spread His Religion 57

fighting for his men, while they sit at ease. And yet, perhaps, there is one idea current which is more absurd still. That is that there is to be no fighting at all, but that the colonel is paid to spend his time solacing his regiment, or giving it gentle, educative instruction, not destined ever to result in any downright manly effort on the part of the whole regiment to do anything against the enemy.

Young men are bound to propagate their religion by speaking about it, by preaching it, in fact. When one meets another in a railroad train, and speaks of Christ to him, it is as legitimate a type of preaching as the delivery of a set dis- course by another man from a pulpit in a church. Telling men the Gospel, explain- ing what Christ can be to a man, is preaching, as scriptural as any preaching can be made. Ministers ought to make this plain, and lay the duty of such preaching upon all their laymen and teach them how to do it.

It makes no difference if it is done halt- ingly. A broken testimony from a labour-

58 A Young Man's Questions

er to his friend is likely to be more ef- fective than a smooth and consecutive Sunday morning sermon. It would be a good thing if all ministers should read aloud to their people chapter after chapter on Sunday mornings, as preludes to their sermons, most of the chapters of Dr. Trumbull's little book on '' Individual Work for Individuals," and thus set be- fore the laymen in their churches the true ideal of Christian evangelism, which is the propagation of Christianity, not by public preachers so much, as by private conversation and the testimony of com- mon men.

Of course, if men are to talk about their religion they must know what it is and what it is not. They must study their Bibles. It would be a good thing if some Sunday evening church services or week- day prayer meetings should be turned into Bible classes, or informal conferences on the Bible and its teachings. A good deal of preparatory work would doubtless have to be done. It is far easier for a minister to prepare a sermon or prayer-

Duty to Spread His Religion 59

meeting address, and do all the talking himself, than it is to get others ready to take part and to work up a good religious conference or Bible discussion. But by hard work men must be got to study the Bible, and if intelligent laymen were to take charge of Sunday evening services, two or three laymen uniting to conduct one service, with a view to direct Bible teaching or discussion, there would be good results. At any rate, the laymen concerned would be compelled to work over the Bible a little more.

And no religious propaganda is likely to accomplish much that does not spring from and rest upon a family life visibly influenced by religion. If men talk about Christianity to their fellows and have re- ligionless homes, or homes marked by un- kindness, harshness, distrust, their talk is as sounding brass and clanging cymbals. The home is the test of religion. And the best fountain and corroboration of religious testimony is the Christian home, where the family has its altar and prays and worships as a family, openly and

6o A Young Man's Questions

unitedly, before the Father after whom it is named.

It is impossible to say whether there is now less or more observance of daily family prayers than there used to be. It is enough to know that there never was enough of it, and is not now. Every family ought to meet daily as a family in confession of its Christian faith, in ac- knowledgment of God's goodness, and in prayer for His help and blessing. We owe our homes to the influence of Christ. Our homes, more even than our churches, should be sanctified by constant worship hallowed by the spirit of reverent prayer. When all our Christian homes are evi- dently, even tangibly, filled with the spirit of Christ, so that no one, stranger or friend, can come into them without feel- ing the repose and peace of them, and hearing in them the audible voice of prayer and faith, then the Gospel will spread as it will never spread from church or chapel or by public appeal.

What we need is a larger return to the ways of the primitive Church in this mat-

Duty to Spread His Religion 6i

ter. We are far ahead of that Church in many respects ; but we can learn from it that the church in the home is as divine an institution as the church in the temple, and that the best and most effective method of evangelisation is the daily preaching of the Gospel in house and mar- ket and public street by common men, whose lives and homes testify to the power of the Gospel to ennoble, to en- rich, and to redeem.

Only such personal work by men as has been urged here will work the great spiritual change our day needs.

The word " revival " may not accu- rately describe what we want, but what we want is clear enough to our own minds. We want an awakening of men to the deepest and highest, to the eternal things in their own lives, to God. And if " revival " means " an extraordinary awakening of interest in and care for mat- ters relating to personal religion," then a *' revival " is precisely what we want all over the land. No unreality, no sham excitement, no turbid emotionalism, no

62 A Young Man*s Questions

ranting, no invertebrate spasm — we do not want these ; but we do want a quick- ening of men's sense of the unseen and abiding, a sharper hatred of evil in itself and evil in men's wills and lives, an up- heaval of the deeps that will bring the real life of men to the top, and destroy the shallow, ungenuine imitations of life which bar Christ out of life and life out of Christ. We want life brought to its real significance and purpose in Christ. And we need all the shaking of traditions and of silly self-constraints, and all the blast- ing of sin, and all the uprising of right feeling, which are necessary to the real conversion of men.

What hinders our doing the work nec- essary for this ? Sin hinders. It hinders by killing the desire for the better things, by contenting men's hearts in what is squalid by persuading them that it is sat- isfying, and in what is hollow by per- suading them that it is solid and sub- stantial. Sin prevents Christian men from wanting to work. It suggests excuses, "Not qualified," "Not time enough,"

Duty to Spread His Religion 63

" Time not ripe for it," " Example is enough." It makes the work that men try to do often of no avail. College men and men out of college will not .accept at par the words of a man whose life does not square with his preaching. He must be true himself who would teach the truth. And sin makes it impossible for God to use men. Those who bear the vessels of the Lord must be clean. And those only are f for the Master's use who have purged themselves and quit with lusts. There are colleges and com- munities where there can be no revival because there is too much sin.

Shame hinders. Sometimes it is prop- er shame. Men are not fit to speak for Christ, and know it. But the remedy then is not silence, but an altered life. Let the sham.e that is born of sin and that prevents speech die with the death of sin. Sometimes it is a dishonourable shame. We are ashamed of Jesus. We will love Him in our hearts, but we shrink from speaking of Him lest men should sneer at us, or we should be thought a

64 A Young Man*s Questions

little queer. Jesus knew that men would feel this way, and He spoke plainly about it : " Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me and of My words, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed when He cometh." Is it not a wonderful thing that we should be ashamed of Him who is the only One in whom was no shameful thing, and all of whose experience with us has been only evidence not of His but of our shamefulness ? And is it not wonderful that Christians alone should be ashamed of their Lord, while Buddhists, Confu- cianists, and Mohammedans, are proud always openly to avow their devotion? We should be proud of our shame of sin and ashamed of our shame of Christ. It is the want of the one and the pitiable presence of the other that hinders many men from doing their duty.

Fear hinders. We are afraid of what men will say. Why should we fear? It is said that in the stone walls of Mare- schal College at Aberdeen are cut the words, " They say. What do they say ? Let them say." Jesus knew that men

Duty to Spread His Religion 6^

would be afraid of men, and He spoke to them plainly of this, too : " Be not afraid of them which kill the body and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom ye shall fear." The sneer of a man whose sneer is a confession of weakness is a slight thing compared with the misery of faithlessness, or with the grave displeasure of Christ who feared nothing, and wants for dis- ciples men who will not fear, as Peter did, the taunt of a maid or the jibe of a man. Where men will not be brave there will be no personal work.

Reticence hinders. There Is a reticence which is weakness, the inability of a Hfe to be itself and do its work. We grow over-conscious, and become the slaves of our own thought about ourselves. A man is at once actor and spectator, and the relationship paralyses the freedom and spontaneousness of his life. Or a man thinks that religion is not a subject to be talked about. " It is too sacred," he says. " We have no right to interfere with an- other man's religious convictions or ta

66 A Young Man's Questions

parade our own." And why have we not a right to deal with one another on the highest plane as well as on the lowest, or to touch now where we shall touch eter- nally? Jesus told His disciples to talk. His last command to them forbade silence. There will be no revivals where there is no manly conversation about Christ.

Cant and ungenuineness hinder. Hypo- crites are of many kinds. Some pretend to be Christians, and hurt Christ by mis- representing Him. Others are not Chris- tians, and hold aloof on grounds that they know or ought to know are ungenuine and insincere ; " Some of those Chris- tians are hypocrites." All use of subter- fuge, of temporising and procrastinating expedient is cant as truly as unreal relig- ious profession. And influence is de- stroyed by such things.

These things hinder. What will help ? Love will. There will be work for men whenever men feel divine love in their hearts. The love of Christ will awaken men to a love of men. It may be hard to love men as they are. We are not asked

Duty to Spread His Religion 67

to do that. We are bidden to love the finest possibilities in them, and to seek them. It was when Paul saw the multi- tudes in their possibilities, though uncon- scious of them,

*' Bound who should conquer, slaves who should

be kings, Hearing their one hope with an empty wonder, Sadly contented with a show of things,"

that the intolerable craving shivered throughout him like a trumpet-call, and he longed to perish for their saving and die for their life. When we love men for what we know Christ can make them, we shall go after them for Him.

Courage will help. Personal work is a noble thing because it requires and de- velops pluck. The man who will do it must bare his soul, and meet each man as a man. And the want of such cour- age appears at last, when we see straight, such a pitiful thing. The loving John cannot suppress his feeling of this. He speaks of Nicodemus as the man who came by night and feared to break with

68 A Young Man's Questions

his associates to confess Christ. And of Joseph as having been a disciple " secret- ly for fear of the Jews." How much worthier if they had boldly stood out and spoken for the Saviour instead of post- poning their confession until He was gone and they could only get His body ready for its grave! Jesus was a hero. He asks as much of us. And revivals will come where the heroism of Christ returns. Prayer will help. It is prayer tha^ enables men

" To dare to do for Him at any cost."

Prayer will dispose men's hearts to speak for Christ. And prayer will secure, by virtue of its supernatural influence, power not otherwise available to awaken men who are asleep, and to shatter the chains of sin, of selfishness, of paltriness, of pettiness, which hold men away from their large inheritance and the liberties of life in God.

Love and courage and prayer are enough to conquer sin and shame and fear and reticence and cant, for Christ

Duty to Spread His Religion 69

is with them. Therefore, let us awake from our sleep and preach the gospel. Let us all do it.

V

AS TO OBSERVING SUNDAY

It is a very common thing to hear peo- ple both in and out of the Church, min- isters as well as others, speaking disap- provingly and contemptuously of the old-fashioned observance of the Lord's Day. They say it was dreary and enslav- ing, galling to children and irksome to all, joyless and gloomy and repressive. Very probably it was thus with those whose religious life was formal and lifeless, and who refrained from that from which others refrained, but who had nothing positive or vital with which to fill the day. I do not believe that anyone, who grew up in a true Christian home in which the old ideas prevailed, can have any sympathy with this modern abuse of the old-fashioned observance of Sunday. To be sure, the games and employments of the week were laid aside. The family 70

As to Observing Sunday 71

gathered over the Bible and the cate- chism. There was a quiet calm through the house. Innumerable little things marked the day as distinct. And prob- ably it ended with a rare walk with the father at the sun-setting, and some sober- ing talk over what is abiding and of eternal worth. But all this is repugnant to the idea of to-day, and one hears a great deal about a free and Christian use of Sunday, as opposed to the old Puri- tanic notion.

Now the poorest way to win con- demnation of the old fashion of Sunday observance with many is to call it Puri- tanic. They prefer a thousandfold the Puritanic temper to the loose, lawless, flabby habit of mind and life which this day approves. Doubtless the Puritanic cast of mind was often hard and stern, but it had principle in it. It did things because they were right, not because they were easy, or it refused to do things not because they were hard, but because they were wrong. Those who call it somber and joyless speak ignorantly. The best

72 A Young Man's Questions

memories of many men to-day go back to fathers who were as iron in their devo- tion to right as right, and who led the family to church on Sunday mornings, and stood at the head of the home as some patriarch of old, high priest of his household.

Our day is for laxity and easy-going self-indulgence. Going to church regular- ly is trying. Quietness is tiresome. Medi- tation is altogether too difficult an intel- lectual exercise. Weighty and uplifting conversation is work. Men admit that the old way of spending the day begat strength and self-discipline and solidity of character, and they are thankful for having had homes where these prevailed, and they look forward apprehensively to the future of their children whose Sun- days are destitute of all such influences; but nevertheless they have lost the relig- ious life and the grip on great realities which alone would enable them to do for their children what their fathers did for them.

But far more is to be said than merely

As to Observing Sunday 73

that the old fashion bred a more worthy and soHd habit of Ufe. One thing that is not to be overlooked is that God com- manded the observance of one day in seven as peculiarly a sacred day. No talk of the sacredness of all days or of the supersession of the Old Testament law by the gospel should lead us to re- gard the law of a Lord's Day as abro- gated. The sacredness of all our wealth does not abolish God's special claim upon some specific part of it, and the gospel has not superseded the moral law. A holy day is as much needed now as ever, a day that shall bear witness to our re- ligious faith and provide for the irrepres- sible needs of our religious nature, that cry daily, but that need their own day as well as a part of every day. Of course the idea of a holy day may be abused. As the late Professor Everett, of Harvard, said, *' There are in all such observances a right use and a wrong use. The day or the place may be sacred in either of two senses ; it may be set apart for religious and moral opportunities, or it may be

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considered sacred in itself ; I may go to church feeling that I have now to my credit one good deed more, or I may go because I recognise another opportunity for higher thought and nearer relation with God. The test of the observance is whether the day or the thing set apart casts a shadow on other days and other things, or brightens them; whether it tends to make the rest of life profane or to make all life more sacred. We must remember, however, that it is better to have one day holy than to have no day at all holy. If one day is holy, the divine power has at least so much foothold in the world, a beginning from which to spread."

God wants the worship of the Lord's Day, and he wants us to have the indis- pensable blessing and comfort of it. We ought to stop one day out of seven from our regular work and do some special service. We need the day for reading, for rest, for fellowship, for human com- fort, for those duties for which a special day must be set aside or they will never

As to Observing Sunday 75

be done ; for the study of our Bibles, for steadying meditation, for prayer, for for- giveness for our misdeeds and shortcom- ings and for preparation of heart for bet- ter living. Six days of work, however we may strive to keep ourselves above our work, drag us down right effectually into it, and when Saturday evening comes the young man is in want of a spiritual retoning. The Lord's Day breaks over the world with its quietness, and rightly used, it is as the pool by the Sheep's Gate after the angel's troubling. We go down into the waters and come out whole.

But all this depends, of course, upon our use of the day. There are some things that are deadly in their power to spoil it. One is the Sunday newspaper. I pass by all that may be denounced as immoral and defiling in it. There is harm enough in its simple secularity, in its want of moral uplift. The facts are more powerful than any denunciation. Look at the men who feed their minds and souls on Sunday with this food. They

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miss the calm, the holy peace, the inflow- ing divinity of the day. A second thing that will spoil the day is sport. It is not the day for it. Golf, bicycling, driving — any sport simply kills the religious use of the day. A quiet walk with a friend, or a book, with the heart on Christ, and the thoughts upon what is noble and en- during is as helpful to-day as when Cleopas and his friend walked with the unknown Saviour to Emmaus, with glowing souls.

As to church attendance, doubtless many excuses can be found if men go to hear other men talk, or to be entertained, or amused. It casts suspicion on a man's sincerity, however, if he stays away from church on the ground that it is not re- ligiously helpful to him, and spends his morning with the newspaper or on the golf links or in bed after a night out. And the end of church attendance is not to hear a sermon. It is worship, and the opportunity for reverent thought and prayer with fellow-worshippers. Those men forget this, who sneer at the quality

As to Observing Sunday 77

of the sermons preached, or perhaps it has been so long since they have heard a sermon that they really forget what it is like. The wisest man can learn some- thing from the poorest preacher, and can pray in the dullest church ; and the ex- perience of strong men and strong races has testified in all ages to the power of worship in the church to help character and to feed reverence. Furthermore there is a great deal of foolish talk about poor preaching. It is better than the newspapers, more thoughtful, more ear- nest. A country preacher's sermon is su- perior to the country editor's writing or to the country lawyer's speeches as a rule, and the city preacher's sermon can be as favourably contrasted with the editorials in the city newspapers. Even in poor sermons there is good. " I don't see how you can stand it, to sit and listen to such preaching, professor," was said once to a great teacher who was also a great preacher in his own denomination. Ransom Dunn, who was laid aside on ac- count of ill health and obliged to listen

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to inferior men. " They all say some good things," he replied, " and the text is all right and I can think of other things on the subject." The truth is always the truth and no man can wholly obscure it. We can have no excuse if we do not get good from every attempt, however poor, to set the truth forth. It is our fault as much as the preacher's if we fail. But apart from all this, surely God is to be publicly honoured and acknowledged of men, and no brilliancy or stupidity of preachers can justify us in neglecting openly to thank God for his preservation and goodness and all the blessings of this life.

The practical questions regarding the observance of the Lord's Day settle them- selves easily for us when we have begun to look at the day in this spirit. We will read good books, poetry and prose, the biographies of true men and the thoughts of prophets. We will not allow ourselves to study on Sunday if we are students, and we will '^'^ep the dav as free as possi-

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ble from all secular duty. '' There is no doubt in my mind," writes a stu- dent in a western university, " as to whether I ought to study on Sunday, or not ; I do not believe in it. When I get through studying Saturday night, I know that I'll not see the inside of those books nntil Monday morning. Although I like my work, it is a relief to know that that principle is a law to me. Even if for no religious principle, I think that a fellow ought to have that let up in his work." We will do no unnecessary work and will spare others. We will not ride on rail- road trains if we can avoid it. We cer- tainly will not do it on long journeys, and where railroads are only a form of local transportation, like street cars, we will reduce our use of them to a minimum. There was something both pathetic and admirable in the sight of venerable John G. Paton refusing to use even street cars on Sunday in his visit to America, and keeping his appointments by long walks, sometimes having even to run between

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engagements. It is far better to have even such rigid principles than to be lax and dissolute.

This view of the Lord's Day is as far as possible removed from a hard legal observance of it. That observance is bet- ter than none ; but this is better than that. This conceives Sunday as a physical and spiritual necessity, a '' day of rest and gladness," when the life rebathes itself in the atmosphere of God. To say that all our days should be spent thus sounds well, but it is for the most part simply an excuse for spending none of them so. Just as set times in each day are neces- sary for Bible study and prayer, so a set day in each week is necessary for the emancipation of the soul from care, for a renewing of the springs of life within, for cleansing and quieting of thoughts and new empowering.

We are not called upon to judge others in this. Each man stands or falls to his own Master. And others have no busi- ness judging us. Our contention is sim- ply that the Sabbath was established for

As to Observing Sunday 8i

Itian, that he needs it, and that its best use is a religious use ; that the man who sec- ularises the day is secularising his life, and losing one of its finest supports and noblest blessings. Sunday golf, news- papers, and all that sort of thing, are bad and weakening in their influence, and they are pathetic evidence of the trend and taste of the man who thus abandons his birthright, and forgets what it is to be a son of the God who worked and rested, but did both as God, and who expects His sons to be like Him.

VI

HIS COMPANIONS,

Sitting in the saloon of a little British steamer off the China coast one evening, some years ago, after the other officers and passengers had left the dinner table, the chief officer lighted his pipe and, pouring out some whisky and soda, pushed the whisky bottle over to me, and asked me to join him. When I thanked him and declined, he looked up in a frank and cordial way and said: " You'll not mind my saying, will you, that I never do really feel quite at home with men who will not drink with me? A glass together is a good social tie. Now you and I would feel a good deal chummier if you just did as I do in this matter." I laughed and told him that it really wasn't necessary, that we could talk together and be good friends, even if I didn't share his "peg." I thought 82

His Companions 83

to myself that if one of us needed to make a sacrifice in the matter, it would better be he.

Now my friendly chief officer's view is a very common one. Young men are prone to think that without a vice or two there cannot be any good comradeship; so they take to an indulgence for which at the outset, perhaps, they do not care at all, or care only in the way of dislike, and imagine that this provides them with a solid basis for true friendship and good fellowship; which is a very piteous mis- take. The friendship which is fed on such a root has frail and precarious nour- ishment. A common taste for drink or a particular sort of gambling, or any com- mon " fast " pursuit is as Hkely to lead to petty dispute as to high and enduring companionship. The grapes of a pure friendship never yet grew on such a bramble.

How contemptible this view of friend- ship is when you stop to think about it ! Friendship is not now a great, unselfish will to serve and love. It is community

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of participation in what is unclean and sinful, or at the best frivolous and trivial, a sort of fellowship in dissipation. Now, real friendship is an inter-knitting of life in its deepest and best things, not a super- ficial and meaningless contact over some common physical taste or indulgence.

Young men cannot keep from compan- ionship. They ought not to desire to do so. God intended us for fellowship and enriched us with the necessity of love.

" I believe who hath not loved Hath half the sweetness of his life unproved: Like one who, with the grape within his

grasp, Drops it with all its crimson juice unpressed, And all its luscious sweetness left unguessed, Out from his careless and unheeding clasp."

Every young man should have com- panions and cultivate them. These are the years for him to grow rich in friend- ships. Some will surely come to him late; but most of those which bless his older years will be the friendships of his youth grown nobler with time.

All of a young man's life should be

His Companions 85

courteous and kindly, open thus to the approach of other hearts, and encoura- ging friendliness in all who come near. This is not a counsel of looseness. There is a just reticence and reserve of nature which is the best protection of the sanc- tities of human intercourse. But a con- sistent cordiality in a strong, clean-living man is a far better thing than occasional bursts of maudlin affection, over wine or games, in a man at other times taciturn and of self-centered heart.

It may sometimes be unjust, but it is unavoidable, to judge young men by the companions they choose. *' Tell me thy companions," says Cervantes, " and I will tell thee what thou art." "We should ever have it fixed in our memories," says an old writer, " that by the character of those whom we choose for our friends, our own is likely to be formed, and will actually be judged of by the world." Wise business men watch the company their trusted employees keep. And it happens more than once that new checks are devised for protection against the

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losses which are threatened by the loose- ness of a man in the choice of his friends. It is the man of clean life and of stainless associations whom men trust.

Young men should not be afraid to break away from companionships which they discover are evil and injurious. A man does not like to do this. It seems a Httle Pharisaical ; as though he said, " I am too good to associate longer with you." But it is hypocrisy to stay with a crowd whose standards and practices you abhor, and the only right thing for a man to do, who discovers that temptations are inevitable if he keeps up certain com- panionships, which could be avoided if he would sever these companionships, and that he has not influence enough to hold his fellows in check and draw them up, is to break with them and be free. Perhaps he will be able to carry some with him. In many country towns young men get off the road, and in the dearth of fine interests and high influences play with loose habits and wrong things. But there is a large remnant of good in them.

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They have simply slid down because it was the easiest way to go, not because they especially care for it. Let one man rise up and stand firm, yielding nothing, but keeping a merry heart of good fellow- ship in him with all his clean and fearless purity, and others, weaker, but no fonder of foul things, will creep up to him and lean on his strength. All that is needed is that one man should be strong, and break from his sheep impulse to follow the flock. Life has room and need for such heroism. It is not intended to be a soft compliance with everything. It is meant to be full of sharp and stern re- sistance, of fierce rupture with evil, and of the courage to stand alone.

There is no need of haste is choosing companionships. Take your time and be sure. *' There is a certain magic or charm in company," said Sir Matthew Hale, once Lord Chief Justice of England, " for it will assimilate and make you like to them by much conversation with them; if they be good company, it is a great means to make you good, or confirm you

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in goodness; but if they be bad, it is twenty to one but they will infect and corrupt you. Therefore be wary and shy in choosing and entertaining, or frequent- ing any company or companions ; be not too hasty in connecting yourself to them ; stand off awhile until you have inquired of some (that you know by experience to be faithful) what they are; observe what company they keep; be not too easy to gain acquaintance, but stand off, and keep a distance yet awhile, till you have observed and learnt touching them. Men and women that are greedy of acquaintance, or hasty in it, are often- times snared in ill company before they are aware, and entangled so that they cannot easily loose from it after, when they would." This was a wise man speak- ing wisdom. Of course, life is to be a free and spontaneous thing, not a stilted self- ishness; but the best we have to give is ourselves. Let us not make a present of our highest possession to every chance comer, and discover too late that we have laid ourselves bare to shame.

His Companions 89

Sir Matthew speaks of the magic as- similating power of our companionships. We cannot resist this if we would. It works on us so secretly that we are not aware of its power. We lose some of our fineness of nature with coarse friends without knowing that something is gone which will not come back again. And the noble influence of good men fashions us and touches our lives with dignity and strength, so that the eyes of others look on us with wonder before we know that a change has come. " Every man," says Euripides, in " Phoenix," " is like the company he is wont to keep."

A young man should have a few older men, and at least a few younger men also, among those who call him friend, and whom he regards as companions of an inner degree. He needs the steadying of larger experience, and he needs, too, the sobering, enriching influence of friendships where he is the trusted and respected one and the source of strength.

In the life of Dr. John Hall, there is printed a fac-simile of a list of eleven

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names in Dr. Hall's handwriting, on the margin of which he has written, " My friends." His son and biographer says that his father had banded himself with these friends in the college at Belfast, *' to pray, to improve their own spiritual life, and to promote a new missionary spirit. When separating for their life-work, these friends resolved that on Saturday evenings they should remember each other in prayer and by name as long as they lived." This fellowship, adds the son, " was very dear to them all, and formed an abiding influence upon my father's life."

This is the right tone for our compan- ionships, the note of grave and reverent affection. Under it a young man's life will be high-toned and true. The lines of true character will be cut deep and inef- faceable. Back of the playfulness which is wholesome and right, will lie the still and serious realisation of what friend owes to friend, and we shall live, in truth and goodness, because we live with good and true men and not alone.

VII

SHALL I DRINK?

Practically every young man is solicited at some time to drink wine or beer, or some stronger drink. What shall his attitude be on this question? Ought he to be a teetotaler, or should he take what he will be told is a moderate view, and drink a little for the sake of socia- bility and good fellowship ? If the ques- tion is put in the extreme form. " Shall I become a drunkard, or be a temperate man, even to the extent of abstinence? " every young man will choose abstinence. But many hold that a middle course is much more manly, that to decline to drink for fear of becoming a drunkard or los- ing control of one's appetite is an evi- dence of weakness or cowardice. Some men allege that to refrain from touching drink because its abuse is evil, is no more necessary or admirable than to refrain 91

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from using language because it is often put to evil service, or fire because it is dangerous, or any food which can be overused v^ith harmful effect.

One principle may be set forth clearly at the outset, — namely, that it is within any man's right to refrain from the use of all intoxicating drink. It is no man's duty to use it as a beverage. Every man is within his Christian liberty in refusing to touch it. If any man moves in a so- ciety that curtails this liberty or denies it, his suspicion ought to be aroused, for the next step will be the abridgment of other liberties as well.

But I am going further than this. It is not only a man's right to let liquor alone, it is his duty. He owes it to society and to himself as a worker. He cannot do his best work except as a sober, clear- minded, steady-nerved man. The rail- roads will not employ men who are not sober, and are coming more and more to prefer total abstainers. Even bartenders are often required to let drink alone. The idea that it brightens the intellect

Shall I Drink ?

3Z

and sharpens the faculties is purely falla* cious. This defense comes, as a rule, from men upon whom the habit has fas- tened itself, and who seek a justification of it, and who obviously disprove their own contention. " I have never used liquor," Mr. John G. Johnson, the lead- ing lawyer of Philadelphia, was recently reported to have said, " because I don't like it. But I know men who have used it, and I don't think it ever brightened their intellects."

Not only does drinking not brighten the intellect and increase its working power, but it breaks down the integrity of nature and the vitality of the men who drink. " Alcohol is injurious," Dr. J. Sohs-Cohen, of Philadelphia, is reported by the same paper which quoted Mr. Johnson's statement to have said : " A man may drink it to deaden his sorrow, but the pendulum will always swing as far one way as it does the other. If he finds happiness or joy in intoxication, he will pay for it by consequential misery when he gets sober. It might stimulate

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the minds of some men temporarily, but it would soon kill their intellects and shorten their lives. Physicians agree that it is a bad thing. All stimu- lants are injurious. A few years ago we stopped the use of liquor in the Home for Consumptives. Since that time there has been a marked decrease in the number of hemorrhages. It is bad in every way."

Of course the young man who begins to drink does not intend to drink enough to be injured by it. He believes he can control himself, and he despises the drunkard who has surrendered his man- hood and his self-control as thoroughly as any abstainer does. But what evidence has any young man that he can retain control of this appetite? Let any young man who thinks he can, look up the family history of the people whom he knows best, his own family history, even. In few cases will he be able to recall two generations without meeting a drunkard, who meant to be only a moderate drinker when he began. No drunkard meant to

Shall I Drink? 95

be a drunkard when he began. He did not intend to acquire the habit of drink. But a habit fixes itself upon the man who does the acts in which the roots of the habit reside. Even if the habit is but one of moderate drinking, that is the only road to the habit of immoderate drinking. And it is a road that is surer to run that way than the other.

" Twenty-five years ago," Mr. Depew said, recently, in an address to railroad men, " I knew every man, woman and child in Peekskill. It has been a study with me to mark the course of the boys, in every grade of life, who started with myself — to see what has become of them. Last fall I was up there, and began to count them over, and the lesson was most instructive. Some of them became clerks^ some merchants, manufacturers, lawyers, or doctors. It is rem.arkable that every one of them that had drinking habits is nov/ dead — not a single one of my age now living. Except a few who were taken off by sickness, everyone has proved a wreck, and has wrecked his

^6 A Young Man's Questions

family, and did it from rum and whiskey and no other cause. Of those who were church-going people, who were steady, industrious and hard-working men, and frugal and thrifty, every one without ex- ception, owns the house in which he lives, and has something laid by, the interest on which, with his house, would carry him through many a rainy day. When a man becomes debased with gambling, rum, or drink, he seems to care for nothing; all his finer feelings are stifled, and ruin only is his end."

Even men who themselves drink will give this sort of advice to others; and when they have to employ others, will prefer, without hesitation, the man who is known to abstain. Such a man is more trusted because he can trust himself. He has acquired the habit of self-control, and no temptation can allure him.

Many young men drink because it seems to them to be a brave thing to do. They feel a manly independence in it. As a matter of fact, it is not courage, but cowardice, that leads many of them to i^

Shall I Drink? 97

Some one invites them to take a drink, and they are afraid to refuse, or there is a crowd about them, and they do not want to seem timid. They think that to retain the respect of the crowd they must do as the crowd is doing. But probably the whole crowd is just following one or two leaders, and the real heart of the leaders may be only a coward's heart. These are the very times when principles are worth something, and when the man who says, " I will not," stands out as the man of true courage.

The habit of drink, whether regular or not, is a wasteful habit. The American Grocer estimated the expenditure of the people of the United States for beverages in the year 1900 as follows :

Alcoholic drinks $1,059,563,787

Coffee 125.798,530

Tea 37,312,608

Cocoa. 6,000,000

$1,228,674,925

The men and women who spent this billion and fifty million dollars for strong

98 A Young Man's Questions

drink have nothing left to show for the expenditure but some weakness hidden away somewhere as the sole consequence. The beer habit, which is the easiest habit for young men to form, is as bad as any in this. It can be indulged anywhere, and its innocence is imaginary. " I think beer kills quicker than any other liquor," say an old physician. " My at- tention was first called to its insidious effects, when I began examining for life insurance. I passed as unusually good risks five Germans, young business men, who seemed in the best health, and to have superb constitutions. In a few years I was amazed to see the whole five drop off, one after another, with what ought to have been mild and easily cur- able diseases. On comparing my experi- ence with that of other physicians, I found they were all having similar luck with confirmed beer-drinkers, and m^ practice has since heaped confirmation on confirmation."

' At a recent meeting of the New York Academy of Medicine, the question of the

Shall 1 Drink?

99

effects of alcoholism was discussed, and Dr. Charles L. Dana spoke of having studied carefully three hundred and fifty cases of alcoholism at Bellevue Hospital, of which the most frequent form was dipsomania and the next pseudo-dipso- mania. Over two-thirds of the whole had begun drinking before the age of twenty years, and all before thirty years. As a rule, the drunkard did not live more than fifteen years after his habit had be- come confirmed. Whether beer or spirits, the effects of their use are bad. Why should a man begin a wasteful habit which is so easily carried to excess, which even if not carried to excess does him no good, and does do him positive harm?

It is true that in some associations it is hard for a young man to refrain from drinking. Many young men grow up in homes where wine is always on the table. They are in business relations where it is regarded as the natural thing to drink and peculiar to abstain. But conscien- tious principles are respected everywhere, when they are pleasantly but firmly ad-

loo A Young Man's Questions

hered to; and even if the principles ar# not conscientious, but merely prudential, they will be offensive to no one to whom they are not made offensive by some per- sonal unpleasantries on the part of the one holding them.

The principle of abstinence should be with us a conscientious, not merely a pru- dential, principle. Our moral judgment should so revolt from the terrible abuse of hquor and the Hquor business, that we will refrain from the use of drink as the only effective protest. The terrible risk of one act issuing in a second act, and that in a third, and that in the birth of a habit with all the possible consequences, should make us fear for ourselves, while what we see of wreck and ruin round us should lead us to abstain for our brother's sake. This is the high, religious ground. Drinking keeps us back from the best in ourselves, and it hinders us from the best helpfulness toward others. It is religious principle alone that will really stand all the tests in this matter, as religious prin- ciple alone can effect 'vhat needs to be effected when men have gone too far. At

Shall I Drink? loi

the meeting of the New York Academy of Medicine referred to, Dr. Allen Starr confessed *' that the only reformed drunk- ards of whom he had knowledge, were those who had been saved, not through medical, but through religious, influ- ence." He declared his belief that peri- odical drinking was chiefly a matter of moral obliquity.

The great word for the young man is " liberty." He wants to be free. Often- times he begins to drink with the idea that this is a sign of his independence. But this is the use of liberty for the purpose of enslavement. He only is free who is master of his tastes and appetites, and can look the temptation to drink calmly in the face, and say, without wavering, " No." The man who says : " That is no liberty. That is slavery to hard asceti- cism, and is cowardly. I am free because I can say ' Yes ' or * No ' as I please," may be telling the truth about himself once in many times, but for the rest, he thinks he can say ** No " when he wants to do so, because he never wants to do so.

VIII

SHALL I SMOKE ?

Thousands of good men smoke. Either through association or from other reasons, the idea of sociability and good fellowship has become identified with the smoking habit, and many times the man who does not use tobacco will be some- what lonesome in his habit of abstinence in the midst of smokers on every side. The fact that smoking becomes such a fixed and unconquerable taste with many good men is a proof that there is a pleas- ure in it which cannot be summarily con- demned. Yet, from the point of view of unselfishness and of perfect cleanliness and freedom, it is a habit for which young men can find no adequate defense, and there are things to be said about it which make it hard to see how any young man can acquire and retain the habit save as a

102

Shall I Smoke? 103

confessed indulgence or concession to weakness.

For, first of all, the tobacco habit is an unclean habit. It is impossible for a man to use tobacco without being sometimes at least contaminated by its odour. After a little, of course, his senses become hard- ened, so that he does not notice this ; but all who do not use tobacco do notice it, and it is especially distasteful to women. Most women, of course, make no com- plaint, and often even encourage men to smoke, either because they do not want to limit their pleasure, or because they think that a man's influence is dependent upon the maintenance of good fellowship in this way. But, on the other hand, they do not like the smell of tobacco, and thou- sands simply cannot abide it. The odour of it in homes or railroad cars or public places is almost unbearable to many of them. Few smokers realise the discom- fort they cause others. They will smoke in a smoking compartment of a sleeping or parlour car, and with doors opened pol- lute the atmosphere of the whole car, or

I04 A Young Man's Questions

will smoke in public places and let the smoke drift into the faces of others to whom it is unpleasant or even nauseat- ing.

Men reply to this that no gentleman would do this. But that is not true. Some will not do it, but other gentlemen do it constantly — at any rate, men who always pass for gentlemen, and are gen- tlemen in other respects. But they are simply so addicted to their habit that they lose the consciousness of its repul- siveness to others. The tobacco habit is a distinctly coarsening habit. It dulls the senses of taste and smell, and often of hearing, and it blunts the sensibilities of many men.

The New York Sun recently reported an incident on a trolley car which keenly illustrates this :

" Both platforms were crowded as well as the interior of the car, and this fellow stood at the rear door and smoked cheap cigarettes incessantly. The smoke blew in upon the men and women who were packed together on the seats, and in the

Shall I Smoke? 105

aisles, and their complaints to the con- ductor resulted in nothing.

" The conductor remonstrated with the man, as did a trained nurse who was re- turning home after a night's vigil in a patient's room, and who was made ill by the smell of the poor tobacco. All was in vain; the man defied the passengers and the conductor and dared the latter to put him off the car.

" He was standing on the rear plat- form, and the law allowed him to smoke there, he contended. And, as there were more women than men on the platform, he smoked several cigarettes in their faces, seemingly to his own satisfaction.

*' The most surprising part of the per- formance was that the man was well clad and but for his conduct might have been taken for an ordinary person of respecta- bility."

Many who smoke would join in con- demning a boor like this, but let them pause and ask whether they have never themselves offended, if not in this coarse way, yet as really. Have they never

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tainted the atmosphere with the tobacco- filled odour of their clothes or persons, or never smoked offensively on a steamer deck or in a home, or come from an at- mosphere of smoke into the presence of people to whom the odour of tobacco was altogether objectionable? There are some dinners to which men who can't smoke, or who will not, go under constant silent protest, because they know they will come home with their clothes reeking with the odour and their lungs defiled by it.

This is not too strong language. The nicotine poison is a defiling poison. That it is so in cigarettes is universally ad- mitted. Many of the American states have passed laws forbidding the use of cigarettes by boys. The Japanese gov- ernment has forbidden the use of tobacco by all young men under twenty years of age. The reasons for this are not all moral or social. There are adequate physical grounds for it. The New York Medical Journal says :

" Cigarettes are responsible for a great

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amount of mischief, not because the smoke from the paper has any particu- larly evil effect, but because smokers — and they are very often boys or very young men — are apt to use them continu- ously or at very frequent intervals, believ- ing their power for evil is insignificant. Thus the nerves are under the constant influence of the drug, and much injury to the system results. Moreover, the cigarette smoker uses a very considerable amount of tobacco during the course of a day. Nicotine is one of the most power- ful of the known * nerve poisons.' Its depressing action upon the heart is by far the most noticeable and noteworthy symp- tom of nicotine poisoning.

" The frequent existence of what is known as ' smoker's heart ' in men whose health is in no other respect dis- turbed is due to this effect. Those who can use tobacco without immediate injury will have all the pleasant effects reversed, and will suffer from symptoms of poison- ing if they exceed the limits of tolerance. These symptoms are :

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" I. The heart's action becomes more rapid when tobacco is used.

" 2. Palpitation, pain, or unusual sen- sations, in the heart.

" 3. There is no appetite in the morn- ing, the tongue is coated, delicate flavours are not appreciated, and acid dyspepsia occurs after eating.

" 4. Diseases of the mouth and throat and nasal catarrh appear, and become very troublesome.

" 5. The eyesight becomes poor, but improves when the habit is abandoned.

" 6. A desire, often a craving, for liquor or some other stimulant is ex- perienced."

Professor Latlin supports this view, including the emphatic statement about the relation of the use of nicotine to the alcoholic taste :

" Tobacco in any form is bad, but in a cigarette there are five poisons. There is the oil in the paper, the oil of nicotine, saltpeter to preserve the tobacco, opium to make it mild, and the oil in the flavour- ing.

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" The trouble with the cigarette is th< inhaHng of the smoke. If you blow 2 mouthful of smoke through a handker- chief, it will leave a brown stain. Inhale the smoke and blow it through the nos- trils and no stain will appear. The oi? and poison remain in the head and body. Cigarettes create a thirst for strong drink."

Mr. Hadley, of the Jerry McAuley Mission, in New York, testifies that the drunkards who are converted in the mis- sion break off the tobacco habit, too, and that the return to nicotine usually means the return to alcohol.

But there are thousands of smokers in whom the smoking habit has nothing to do with the drinking habit, and the young man is not likely to be deterred from the use of tobacco by warnings which he is sure are exaggerated. Even so, how- ever, he is certain to pay some penalty. No inveterate smoker can be quite as steady of nerve and solid of constitution as he would be without tobacco. Gen- eral Grant died confessedly of cancer

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brought on by excessive use of tobacco. A professor at Annapolis declared that " he could indicate the boy who used to- bacco by his absolute inability to draw a clean, straight line." And nothing is more rigorously forbidden to an athlete or an athletic team in conscientious train- ing than all use of tobacco. At some of the best schools for boys in America, the use of tobacco in any form is absolutely prohibited. Yet these are the schools where the standards and ideals of manli- ness are highest. If smoking were a good thing, or essential to strong, manly character, these schools would be the first to introduce and encourage it.

The standards of intelligent men in college are the same. Dr. Trumbull, in his little book, '' Border Lines in the Field of Doubtful Practices," quotes the opin- ion of Dr. Seaver, the director of phys- ical culture at Yale, who " has made care- ful experiments in the study of the effects of tobacco, as based on the examination and comparison of thousands of students, in a series of years. He speaks positively

Shall I Smoke ? 1 1 1

as to these effects in retarding growth and in affecting health. Moreover, he declares that ' the matter is of the highest importance as related not only to growth, but to morals and character.' He has found that while only about five per cent, of the students of highest scholarship in that university use tobacco in any form, more than sixty per cent, of those who get no appointment, as a result of their standing in their studies, are tobacco users. Yet he is frank to say that * this does not mean that mental decrepitude follows the use of tobacco.' "

Some forms of the tobacco habit are more objectionable than others; but all are objectionable. All are unclean and contaminating, even the smoking of a pipe or of the finest cigar. And all are wasteful and enslaving. Some good men who smoke are very generous givers, but they might give also what they spend on tobacco; and many poorer men are pre- vented from giving to useful causes, or even from proper support of their fami- lies, by their waste upon tobacco. The

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habit is enslaving. It makes a man de- pendent. If he has to go without his pipe or cigar, it affects his temper or his mood, and he is not his own master. I was on a Httle excursion recently with a friend, and the circumstances were such that he could not smoke all day. He grew very restless, but at last, late in the afternoon, he was able to find a secluded place, where he got out his pipe, renewed the tobacco odour of his person, reestab- lished his peace of mind, and ended his misery. Wherein did this differ from any other form of slavery, except in this, that the man had enslaved himself ?

I have never heard men go further in d . !ense of the use of tobacco than to say that it is a simple and, on the whole, a harmless indulgence. But surely men have better things to do in life than to acquire habits of which this is the best that can be said. We cannot believe that Christ would acquire such habits were He here to-day, or that it pleases God to see His sons saturating their bodies, which He has taught them to regard as

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temples of the Holy Ghost, with stale odours, or tainting them, however slight- ly, with poison.

IX

AS TO THE THEATER

It is a significant thing that such re- proach should attach to the stage. How does it come that " actor " and " hypoc- risy " should be terms not of praise but of condemnation or disparagement? A *' hypocrite " was originally only a player. Now the term is a term of contempt and shame. The stage has done this for more than one word. It has a way of degrad- ing the language that it creates or that becomes associated with it. An " actor " etymologically is a ** doer," a " worker." But now an " actor " is a player, one who pretends to do.

In the same way the stage not only de- grades words ; it discredits in many ages and many lands the persons connected with it. Solon condemned the profession in ancient Greece as " tending, by its simulation of false character, and by its 114

As to the Theater 1 1 c

expression of sentiment not genuine or sincere, to corrupt the integrity of human dealings." Actors, under the Roman re- pubHc " became in the eye of the law infamis (disreputable) and incapable of holding any honourable office." In China to-day actors are among the despised classes who are excluded from the Con- fucian examinations, and so debarred from all official and honourable position. Elsewhere actresses and actors are re- garded with a curious suspicion. The number who are admired and respected and might be admitted to some measure of social equality, are so few as to make the rest stand out in the more conspicuous disrepute. There is something in this that furnishes food for thought.

One of the first results of such thought is the discovery that the reasons for this distrust and disHke of the theat- rical profession do not rest on imagi- nary grounds. Whatever may have been the character of actors and actresses when they went on the stage, it is undeniable that in multitudes of

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cases, the stage has worked to its de- generation. How could it be otherwise? As Mr. A. M. Palmer, the great theater manager says : '* The chief themes of the theater are now, as they ever have been, the passions of men ; ambition leading to murder; jealousy leading to murder; lust leading to adultery and to death; anger leading to madness."

Dr. Trumbull quotes, in his little book on " Border Lines," the computation of an English writer some years ago that at that time Henry Irving had " committed at least fifteen thousand murders on the stage, while Mr. Barry Sullivan had added at least two thousand more stage murders than this to his list; that Mr. Charles Wyndham had been divorced from twenty-eight hundred wives — on the stage; that Mrs. Bancroft had in the same public place been * foully betrayed or abducted ' thirty-two hundred times ; that Miss Ada Cavendish had been ' be- trayed, deserted, or abducted ' fifty-six hundred times ; and so on, along the list of popular actors." And true acting con-

As to the Theater 117

sists in really entering- into the spirit of the murderer, the betrayer, or the be- trayed.

As Dr. Trumbull says : "There is noth- ing akin to it in any other approved sphere of art. A man may describe evil or portray it in literature, in poetry, in music, in painting, in sculpture, without putting himself into that exhibit of evil, without merging his personality in another per- sonality ; but in the art of the actor he who would portray the tyrant, the murderer, the adulterer, the seducer, or the betrayer of a sacred trust, must, in order to be the best actor, strive to think and feel and speak and act as if he were himself this very evil-doer."

Now, could any man go through all this, entering with real feeling into these acts of crime and passion, or what emo- tionally are such, without being affected by them? Perhaps some could but the great majority will inevitably be moulded and demoralised by them. Every honest- hearted man must feel the truth of this. " Let a pure man or a pure woman de-

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liberately plan and repeatedly endeavour to think and feel and seem to act as if impure, or even as it dallying with temp- tation and weighing the possible gains of impurity and crime — and can it be that impurity and crime will continue to have the same abhorrence of mien to such a person, as if their very semblance had been counted ever abhorrent ? " It is not strange that Macready would not allow his children to attend the theater.

Of course, it may be freely admitted that there are exceptions, both in players and in plays ; but Mr. Palmer knows what he is talking about in naming the chief themes of the theater, and the instinct that sets off actors and actresses in a class apart, a socially ostracised class, is an accurate instinct. If then the stage in its character and effects is what has been suggested, what right has a young man to encourage and support it? Can a young man justify himself in thus help- ing, for the sake of the personal amuse- ment or excitement he can get out of it,

As to the Theater 119

to maintain an agency that debases what it touches ?

" But," the young man says, "I recog- nise all this, but I dort t believe in aban- doning the theater absolutely because it is abused. It ought to be purified and made a great influence for good. The stage is a powerful educational agency. If good people wholly scorn it, it will just pander to the low tastes of people whose ideals are unworthy. We ought to try to influ- ence it. I don't like the bad plays, and I don't go to them. I select those that are wholesome and clean. Such plays do me good. They rest my mind and quicken my admirations and aspirations."

But is it possible to encourage the good without supporting the bad? Our in- tention may be to do this, but that will not be a guarantee that our conduct will have this effect. As Phillips Brooks wrote to a young woman on the subject of at- tending the theater : " I think it is better not to go. The trouble with the theater is its dreadful indiscriminateness. The same house which gives good Mrs. Vin-

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cent her benefit to-day may have almost anything to-morrow. What can we do with an institution like that ? "

Indeed, we may draw a Hne between what we think innocent and what harm- ful; but some one else without our dis- crimination, will draw his line a little farther over, and defend himself by our principle, for going to see what he calls harmless, but which we condemn. Often such a man will meet our criticism with the Bible verse, with which many a filthy man defends himself, " To the pure all things are pure." So long as the stage is as unclean as it is, and acting involves, as it constantly does, the simulation of the basest passions and emotions, and this even in " good plays," it is almost impos- sible for a man to support it at all without in a real sense lending his support to it all.

The idea of helping to purify the stage by patronising it is a futile idea. The influence of presence is inconsiderable. No one who goes to the theater often is likely to cherish the idea of exerting an

As to the Theater 121

influence upon the character of the stage by his personal attendance. It is wrong to attempt to reform an immorality by fostering and supporting it.

Young men often say that they patron- ise the theater to uplift it, but they sel- dom say this honestly. It is an excuse for going, not a reason. They go for the amusement, the excitement, the show of it, and it influences them a hundred times more than they influence it. It affects them in many ways. It fosters unnat- uralism. It wastes their money. It arouses emotions with no opportunity for their exercise if by chance they are good, and only too much opportunity if they are -evil. It provides an atmosphere in which base desires are born, and the glare, the enticement, the suggestions of it all, draw them on to worse things afterwards, when the imaginations of the evening bring forth their fruit of death in the acts of the night. When the influence of the theater stops far short of this, as of course it usually does, it yet breeds unnaturalness, fictitiousness of feeling, and a certain in-

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sincerity, the painfulness of which is all the greater because it is so often uncon- scious.

This is the psychological ground on which Professor James, of Harvard, objects to the theater : " When a resolve or a fine glow of feeling is allowed to evaporate without bearing practical fruit it is worse than a chance lost; it works so as positively to hinder future resolu- tions and emotions from taking the nor- mal path of discharge. There is no more contemptible type of human character than that of the nerveless sentimental- ist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility and emotion, but who never does a manly concrete deed. Rousseau, inflaming all the moth- ers of France, by his eloquence, to follow Nature and nurse their babies them- selves, while he sends his own children to the foundling hospital, is the classical ex- ample of what I mean. But every one of us in his measure, whenever, after glow- ing for an abstractly formulated Good, he practically ignores some actual case,

As to the Theater 123

among the squalid ' other particulars ' of which that same Good lurks disguised, treads straight on Rousseau's path. All Goods are disguised by the vulgarity of their concomitants, in this work-a-day world ; but woe to him who can only rec- ognise them when he thinks them in their pure and abstract form ! The habit of ex- cessive novel-reading and theater-going will produce true monsters in this line. The weeping of the Russian lady over the fic- titious personages in the play, while her coachman is freezing to death on his seat outside, is the sort of thing that every- where happens on a less glaring scale. Even the excessive habit of indulgence in music, for those who are neither perform- ers themselves nor musically gifted enough to take it in a purely intellectual way, has probably a relaxing effect upon the character. One becomes filled with emotions which habitually pass without prompting to any deed, and so the inertly sentimental condition is kept up."

To be sure, there are many men so strong that the theater affects them in

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none of these ways. But how trivial and unworthy is such a use of time for such men ! With a world full of useful work to be done, and so few strong men to do it, with ten thousand great books to be read, each one of which will do the man more good and make him of more good to others than sitting for three hours looking at a "play," with the hungry needing to be fed and the poor clothed and the ignorant taught, what a waste of time and money the theater involves !

" But the best people go," you say. What if they do ? Every wrong that has ever lived in the world had this to be said in its defense. Moreover, what is meant by " best people ? " Would Jesus go? Do you think you would find Him at " UAiglon," or " Sappho," or " Floro- dora," or even at " The Little Minister," or " A Fool's Revenge ? " If you did, would you think as much of Him as you did before? Do you deem the theater harmless and proper for your minister? We may be able to defend to ourselves our going to the theater, but we find

As to the Theater 125

difficulty in defending it to others. So also we ourselves persist in judging others by a standard we do not apply to ourselves. We do not want those we trust and revere to devote themselves to the attempt to uplift the stage by patron- ising it. On the other hand, if we want to hold the greatest influence over the lives of others, we will forego the attempt to reform the stage by supporting it. " We saw you coming out of the theater the other night," said two young men who saw no harm in the theater for them- selves, to a friend who was trying to win them to better things and to Christ. " We saw you. We don't take any stock in your religion." It was an unjust judg- ment, but Paul reckoned with such in the government of his life. ** If meat make my brother to offend," he said, " I will eat no flesh while the world standeth."

Can a Christian man conscientiously patronise an institution of which in a past day Macaulay said, " Morality constantly enters into that world, a sound morality and an unsound morality ; the sound mor-

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ality to be insulted, derided, associated with everything mean and hateful; the unsound morality to be set off to every advantage and inculcated by all methods direct and indirect ; " and of which in this day, a dramatic critic, Mr. William Win- ter, declares, " Christian ethics on the stage would be as inappropriate as Mr. Owen's Solon Shingle in the pulpit ? "

THE YOUNG MAN AND MONEY

" Chilon would say," remarks Lord Bacon, " that gold was tried with the touchstone, and men with gold." This is a wise word. Scarcely anything so strongly tests a young man's character as money. Some men seem to be fair and high-minded and noble men until some question of money arises, and in a moment the real weakness of their nature is revealed, and they are shown to be common and inferior. A banker meets a stranger, and, as they talk about a cer- tain school, the banker says, " It is not generally known, but I am going to give it fifty thousand dollars." A preacher in- vited to speak in a neighbouring city inti- mates that he cannot come for less than one hundred dollars. A traveller home from Europe relates his experience, and tells of his visit to this church or that 127

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charity, and quite incidentally lets you know the amount of his donation to its support. A man who has treated you very cavalierly, perhaps contemptuously, becomes very obsequious to some one else who approaches and who has nothing to commend him to such deference but the fact that he is rich. Other men go up and down in their self-respect and their dignity of bearing among men with the rise or fall of their finances. Surely, as a wise man has said, " Money does all things; for it gives and it takes away, it makes honest men and knaves, fools and philosophers."

The simple rule for a man is to deny to money the first place. It is a vulgar and ill-bred master in the first place, and it is a splendid and powerful servant out of it. Money is not everything.

" Get money, still get money, boy, No matter by what means "

is the cynical advice of Ben Jonson. It is very bad advice. There are countless things better than money ;

The Young Man and Money 129

•' The splendour of the intellect's advance ; The Focial pleasures and their genial wit;

The fascinations of the worlds of art ; The glories of the worlds of nature, lit

By large imagination's glowing heart ; The rapture of mere being full of health."

Of course there are men, multitudes of them, who live for money, to whom money-getting has become life itself, and who can have no pleasure except in ac- cumulation of wealth. And there are classes of society, or at least groups of men, in which any other standard or am- bition is unintelligible, and the acquisi- tion of wealth is regarded as the first and unassailable axiom of life. But there are others who know better. It is nonsense, of course, to say that money is useless. It is not useless. It is absolutely neces- sary ; and young men should seek to earn as much of it as they need for their own support, for capital for useful industry, and for philanthropy and benevolence. But use is the chief end of life, not gain. Every young man should begin early to save. He is unfortunate if his father has

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not taught him the responsibility of money and how to foresee his needs and to provide for them. When Jesus dis- couraged laying up treasure on the earth, He did not mean to forbid saving. Sav- ing money wisely is not laying up treas- ure. The money is not a treasure, any more than coal or potatoes in the bins in the cellar are treasures. Jesus possessed a bag, and Judas bore it. There was no rule that it should always be empty. If it is right to provide for the necessities of this evening's meal, it is right for a man to provide for his boy's education five or ten years from now.

Young men will find it easier to save if they put their savings in a separate ac- count, keeping it in a savings bank or in- vesting it in good securities. It is folly to touch speculation. Of course it is worse than folly. Much speculation is simply a form of gambling. Don't be tempted by it. Put your savings in reli- able investments. Don't sekct them by answering advertisements, or by wild guesses of your own. Ask some honest

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and prudent man, who is in a position to know, and follow his advice. Only re- member that you, and not he, must bear the responsibility.

The young man who saves will not need to borrow, and will keep himself free from debt. Freedom is the right word to use. Debt is slavery. It kills the sense of independent manliness.

" You must not go into debt," wrote Henry Ward Beecher to his son. " Avoid debt as you would the devil. Make it a fundamental rule: No debt — cash or nothing. The art of making one's for- tune is to spend nothing; in this coun- try, any intelligent and industrious young man may become rich if he stops all leaks, and is not in a hurry. Do not make haste; be patient. Do not speculate or gamble. Steady, patient industry is both the surest and safest way."

John Ruskin thundered even more ter- ribly against debt. The following letter he wrote to an applicant for help to pay a debt on a chapel :

" Sir : I am scornfully amused at your

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appeal to me, of all people in the world least likely to give you a farthing. My first word to all men and boys who care to hear me is, * Don't get into debt ; starve and go to heaven — but don't bor- row. Try first begging. I don't mind, if it is really needful, stealing. But don't buy things you can't pay for ! ' And of all manner of debtors, pious people build- ing churches they can't pay for are the most detestable nonsense to me. Can't you preach and pray behind the hedges — on in a sandpit — or a coal hole — first ? "

Ruskin did not mean to approve of stealing. He did mean to anathematise borrowing. " Owe no man anything," de- clares Paul.

If no young man borrows, no young man will have to face the problem of lending. It is sometimes a hard problem. To be sure it is sornetimes easy. Advan- cing money on security, as the banks do, is a straight business proposition. But lending money among young men is not this. Too often it is a sort of euphe- mistic method of theft. A good practical

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rule is to lend where you would be willing to give and what you would be willing to give. Then if you lose it, you have been prepared for its loss.

In his advice to his son, which has been quoted, Beecher said also : " Make few promises. Religiously observe the small- est promise. Be scrupulously careful in all statements." Some men of high posi- tion are utterly mistrusted by those who know them well, because of the complete unreliability of their promises. They subscribe liberally and never pay. Re- deem your pledges at any cost to yourself, or secure an honourable release from them. As for bills and liabiHties, young men should meet them instantly. It is better to pay as you go. If things are charged and bills submitted later, pay the bill by return mail.

What men can't afford to pay for, it is wrong for them to buy. Buying it is a species of theft. " Here is a man," said Canon Newboldt, preaching recently on Justice, *' who fancies that he would like to become the owner of something which

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he sees in a shop. Perhaps he is moved by some sudden whim; perhaps, poor creature! he is driven to desperation by the pangs of hunger. He watches his op- portunity and appropriates the property, then, probably, finds himself convicted as a thief, and in the strong clutches of outraged law. But, here is a man, well- dressed and well-supplied with the neces- saries of life, moved by no unbearable pangs of hunger. He passes the same shop, he is moved with the same desire of acquiring, but he, instead of stealing, goes in and buys it and does not pay for it, knowing that he cannot pay for it then, and, perhaps, will have some diffi- culty in paying for it all. I ask you, in the sight of God, has he not virtually stolen those goods, although no magis- trate condemns him and no penalty fol- lows on his act ? "

All extravagance and luxury beyond a man's plane are wrong. A simple, frugal life is better for every man of every plane. In dress, in food, in furniture, in all the equipment of life, the prayer of Agur

The Young Man and Money 135

is the wise prayer for us : " Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with food convenient for me."

The peril of money is in its power to possess its possessor. A Httle money we can control. But a great deal of money is sure to control us. It at once hedges us in. As a matter of fact, great wealth deprives its owners of more than it brings them. '' The rich," observed the melan- choly Burton, " are indeed rather pos- sessed by their money than possessors."

Young men should acquire the habit of giving. It is a habit difficult of acquire- ment in late years. Unless it is fixed early, growing wealth shuts up the heart and holds the will, so that the man cannot give. Begin with setting aside some fixed portion of what you receive. Make this at least a tenth as soon as you can. Ad- minister this portion as a trust fund, and so in time you will come to feel about all that God sends, that it is not yours but His, and to be used for Him.

It is not possible to have too strict or nice a sense of honour in this matter of

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money. It is of course possible to carry some good prejudices too far, as the man did who refused to accept any other man's hospitality or friendly help because he was not in a position to return it. That is making money and not manhood the supreme thing. Money is not the supreme thing. *' The man's the gowd." And the gold of that man is purest and most un- dimmed whose three chief qualities are first, veracity; second, generosity; and third, thrift.

XI

IS IT WRONG TO BET ?

The last weeks of every foot-ball sea- son are critical weeks in the lives of many young men in the colleges and prepara- tory schools of this country. Seed is sown then which will yield a baleful har- vest. Years hence some men would give thousands of dollars to undo what is done during these days. On the surface these days are distinguished from other seasons of the school and college year only by the fact that the great foot-ball games are played then and the question of suprem- acy decided. But beneath the surface they are marked as the same weeks are marked every year by the sowing of acts from which men will reap habits and characters and destinies. Thousands of dollars are bet on the issue of these games. Men who never gambled before stake their own or their fathers* money 137

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on their favourite college. That is one sowing. Others who have never before known what it was to surrender their wills and their manhood to an appetite have in their first drunkenness tasted the joys of the brute and waked to the con- sciousness of the loss of their birthright of purity and power. I have seen many foolish freshmen reeling in their first drunkenness after one of these games and have blessed God that their mothers have not seen them. This is another sowing. And yet, after all, these things are not beneath the surface. They lie very open to the eyes of all. A prominent part of the newspaper accounts is the record of the betting and the drinking, of the stu- dents bankrupt in pocket and addled of brain. These accounts amuse some. They anger others. They make many sad. Some to whom life is a noble and holy thing are made to feel by them that if intercollegiate games are simply to be- come a moral ruin for foolish students, without the wit to know what is folly and the will to despise it, they had better be

Is It Wrong to Bet? 139

once for all abandoned. Not because there is any harm in them or any evil to the men who play in them, but because those who sit on the benches around the field and look on, want so wofully that clear moral sense which marks the games themselves and the men upon the field. As between games polluted with the maudlin enthusiasm of drink and defiled with the dishonour of the gambler, I would choose, knowing well what the choice would mean, no games at all. And I should think that all friends of intercollegiate athletics would see that it is to the detriment of the games in the minds of all those whose good opinion is desirable, to lower them to the level of the cock-pit and the race-track. The surest way to injure and destroy intercol- legiate games is to bet on them.

But I wish to say something about betting on much broader grounds than these.

For, first of all, the man who loses on a bet is spending his money in a wrong and immoral way. He gets nothing

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for it. He accomplishes nothing with it It is a sheer waste, serving no useful purpose and doing no good. No man has a right to use money in this way. Money is stored personality. There is human blood in it, coined in the gold and pressed out in the paper. All money is the price of life. To waste it is like draw- ing life-blood and flinging it upon the ground. And often the money lost is not a man's own. Most students gamble with money that is not theirs for such use. Fathers and mothers are making sacri- fices for their education, or are putting money in their hands, trusting their honour for its honourable use. To gam- ble away such money is a species of filial treason so dishonourable as to suggest that the man who is guilty of it has lost the capacity to know what honour is. And even when the money is the man's own, such waste of it is awful in such a world of need as ours. With milHons of little children suffering for the want of the simplest comforts and care, with all charitable and benevolent institutions

Is It Wrong to Bet? 141

straitened for want of support, with a third of the human race hungry and in need, with the devil's enterprises of crime and lust and sin flourishing, and Christ's ministries of strength and purity cramped, the deliberate waste of money by the bet- tor who loses is dastardly.

But if losing money by betting is wrong and immoral, gaining money by betting is more so. I cannot put what I would say about this immorality as strongly as Phillips Brooks puts it in his sermon on " The Choice Young Man : "

*' Money to the simple, healthy human sense is but the representative of energy and power. It is to pass from man to man only as the symbol of some exertion, some worthy outputting of strength and life. Save in the way of charity, it is not to be given or taken without some- thing behind it which it represents. With his mind full of this simple, honest truth, feeling himself ready to earn his living and to give an equivalent for all that he receives, the young man ought to have lan instinctive dislike and scorn for all

142 A Young Man's Questions

transactions which would substitute feeble chance for vigorous desert, and make him either the giver or receiver of that which has not even the show of an equivalent or earning. I do not say that gambling and betting are admirable or respectable things in grey-haired men. It is not of them or to them that I am speaking now. I do say that in young men, with the abundance of life within them and around them, gambling and betting, if they be not the result of merest thoughtlessness, are signs of a premature demoralisation which hardly any other vice can show. In social life, in club, in college, on the street, the willingness of young men to give or to receive money on the mere turn of chance is a token of the decay of man- liness and self-respect which is more alarming than almost anything besides. It has an inherent baseness about it which not to feel shows a base soul. To carry in your pocket money which has become yours by no use of your manly powers, which has ceased to be another man's by no willing acceptance on his part of its

Is It Wrong to Bet? 143

equivalent, — that is a degrading thing. Will it not burn the purse in which you hold it ? Will it not blight the luxury for which you spend it? Will you dare to buy the gift of true love with it? Will you offer it in charity? Will you pay it out for the support of your innocent chil- dren? Will it not be a Judas-treasure, which you must not put into the treasury, because it is the price of blood?

" So I rank high among the signs of a choice human youth the clearness of sight and the healthiness of soul which make a man refuse to have anything to do with the transference of property by chance, which make him hate and despise betting and gambling under their most approved and fashionable and accepted forms. Plentiful as those vices are among us, they still have in some degree the grace to recognise their own disgracefulness by the way in which they conceal themselves. Some sort of hiding and disguise they take instinctively. Let even that help to open our eyes to what they really are. To keep clear of concealment, to keep

144 ^ Young Man's Questions

clear of the need of concealment, to do nothing which he might not do out on the middle of Boston Common at noon- day,— I cannot say how more and more that seems to me to be the glory of a young man's life. It is an awful hour when the first necessity of hiding any- thing comes. The whole life is different henceforth. When there are questions to be feared and eyes to be avoided and sub- jects which must not be touched, then the bloom of life is gone. Put off that day as long as possible. Put it off forever if you can. And as you will hold no truth for which you cannot give a reason, so let yourself be possessed of no dollar whose history you do not dare to tell.'' " But," replies the man who bets, " it i^ not for the money that I bet. I don't care for the money that may be won. The fact that I take my chance of losing shows that the money at stake is not the chief thing." But why then do you bet for money? Why not bet your dollars against marbles or buttons ? That would show distinctly your disregard and con-

Is It Wrong to Bet? 145

tempt for the money element, and surely would give to your betting a " manlier " air. What is it for which you bet if not for the money that may be won? " Oh/' says the man who bets, " it is for the ex- citement and interest of the thing." But what makes it exciting? It is the fact that you stand to win or to lose money. If it is the ** excitement " that you want and that chiefly, would you not get more of it and of an intenser sort if you would bet your dollars against marbles or but- tons? For then if you won, you would win nothing, and if you lost you would lose everything. This would doubtless make the matter less exciting to the man who bets against you hoping to win money, because he would have nothing to lose, but how much more exciting and in- teresting it would make it for you who, of course, do not bet for the money, but only for the pleasurable emotions of the thing ! And why, if men do not bet for the money that may be won, do they re- frain from betting when they think they will lose, or, if the chances are unfavour-

146 A Young Man's Questions

able, demand odds in their betting, or bet with so much greater freedom and bold- ness when they think they are sure of winning ?

" Well," replies the man who bets, " of course, the money element is in it. But that's only to make it real and manly and sportsmanlike, you know. The real reason for betting is to show one's inter- est in his college, to back up his own col- lege team." This I say is pitiable and squalid. The man who has sunk so low as this, who can regard this as the noble and manly way to support his team and show his sympathy with his college must be very thoughtless or have a shrunken and poverty-stricken spirit. How it must make the soul of John Harvard or Elihu Yale or Jonathan Edwards swell with pride and contentment to see a crowd of juvenile gamblers showing their respect and affection for his institution by stak- ing a gambler's honour to pay money if one of its athletic teams should be proved to be inferior to an opponent! This is " backing the University." " Backing "

Is It Wrong to Bet? 147

it against whom? Against gamblers. What a noble way this is to honour it, and to show sympathy with it. Would Jesus have shown His sympathy for the world better if He had made a wager on it than by living and working and dying for it? And I should like to say a word regard- ing the idea of '* supporting the team " by betting on it, from the point of view of the men who play. No self-respecting player is pleased with the thought that he is ranked with game-cocks and race- horses and bull-terriers and prize-fighters. Have the players no right to manly con- sideration? They are not in the game for money. In my college days we played for the love of the college. No money could have bougnt some men to do it. And it seems a contemptible thing to take advantage of such men and make money on them or get " excitement " by staking money on them. The players do the work and the bettors have the easy time and try to win money through the work of others which they are giving to their college and would scorn to take

148 A Young Man's Questions

money for. But the man who bets docs not think of this. The unmanHness and dishonourableness of it are hid from him by that blindness which prevents him from seeing just how contemptible his conduct appears to people of healthy sense. The man who bets loses his ability to respect others because the readiness and the de- sire to take money for nothing, in return for no honest effort or desire of his own, make it impossible for him to have a genuine, high respect even for himself. Of course, no student means to let his character be defiled in this way. But the habit of betting kills the knightly in- stincts. When President Garfield's life was hanging in the balance, gamblers sold pools upon the issue and many men did not scruple to win money from his death. This is a hideous extreme, but the prac- tice of betting on the length of the ser- mon or the prayer in college chapel in- volves precisely the same principle of blunted sensibility and coarseness of na- ture. Walpole even " tells of a gambler who fell at the table in a fit of apoplexy,

Is It Wrong to Bet? 149

and his companions began to bet upon the chances of his recovery. When the phy- sician came in they would not let him bleed the man because they said it would affect the bet."

And as for the contention that betting money is sportsmanlike, the very reverse is true. Nothing will so surely kill sport. I know that '' popularly betting is sup- posed to be the very life of sport. The betting man is supposed to be the true sportsman. But the very opposite is true. There can be no whole-hearted love of sport where there is betting. To a man who habitually bets, there is no attraction in a game of whist or billiards, or in a horse race, on which no money depends. Notoriously, it is the betting which draws crowds to the race-course, and keeps the crowds anxiously awaiting the result in remote parts of the country. And there are many eager and constant whist play- ers for whom all interest in the game lapses if they cannot play for money. Sport in itself ceases to be of interest to the man who has staked a large amount

150 A Young Man's Questions

upon the issue. He is absorbed in the issue for himself, and has no room for any pleasure in the sport. It becomes deadly earnest to him. It is therefore not sport that is fostered by the betting men that gather round the contest ; it is money- getting, money-getting under such cir- cumstances as taint the gains. Between the man who plays for play's sake, and the man who plays, or watches play, for a money stake, there can surely be no ques- tion which is the truer sportsman. . . . It is this that drives sober people from the race-course, and from other manly and exhilarating amusements, and, instead of promoting true sport, brings it down to a mere carnival of greed, fraud, and trick- ery."

And it is this that introduces profes- sionalism into college athletics. When men stake money, they are willing to do dishonourable things to shape the result so that they will win. Betting is the deadly foe of true sport. The true sports- man is a man like Marshall Newell who " loved sport for sport's sake alone."

Is It Wrong to Bet? 151

The introduction of money is fatal. Dur- ing the Persian wars, though bribery and corruption were common, the Greeks kept the games pure. Men strove for the glory of victory and the chaplet of olive leaves. " Heavens ! Mardonius,'' ex- claimed one of the Persians before the battle of Salamis, when he learned about the prizes, " What sort of men have you brought us to fight against, who strive not for money but for honour ? " No money stake was allowed to corrupt the conflicts or debase the purity of the sports of Greece. And the training of these pure sports played a large part in prepar- ing the Greeks for the mighty conflicts v/ith the hosts from Asia.

In every bet both men are sharers in dishonesty and wrongdoing, for the man who loses spends his money immorally, and the man who wins gains his with greater immorality. But further than this, betting is vile because its principle is snobbery and conceit. It rests on the as- sumption that the man who bets knows more than his partner to the wager or that

152 A Young Man's Questions

his opinion is better. Suppose that he does know more and that his opinion is better. Then he is acting meanly in taking advan- tage of a more ignorant man, with the purpose of making money out of his ignorance. "Well," it is said, " the other man is willing. He goes in with his eyes open and takes his chances." Yes but what chance does he take other than the certainty of losing if you really know more than he does? And wherein does this make it a manlier business to win money from his ignorance?

As Charles Kingsley has said : " If you and he bet on any event (e. g. racing), you think that your horse will win ; he thinks that his will ; in plain Eng- lish, you think that you know more about the matter than he; you try to take ad- vantage of his ignorance ; and so to con- jure money out of his pocket into yours — a very noble and friendly attitude to stand to your neighbour, truly. That is the plain English of it ; and look at it up- ward, downward, sideways, inside out, you will never make anything out of bet-

Is It Wrong to Bet? 153

ting save this — that it is taking advantage of your neighbour's supposed ignorance. But says some one, ' That is all fair ; he is trying to do as much by me.' Just so, and that again is a very noble and friendly attitude for two men who have no spite against each other; a state of mutual distrust and unmercifulness, look- ing each selfishly to his own gain, regard- less of the interest of the other."

As between two sharpers, each trying to outwit the other, one wastes no sym- pathy. But we do pity the unsophis- ticated countryman who bets his money against the three-card-monte man. The fact that he is willing to be fooled does not make the gambler's part in fleecing him any more manly and upright. It makes it the more contemptible. The duellist is willing to be killed, but that does not make duelling legal. This is the way the law and the police regard it, and they strive to protect such men. They pity their ignorance. A very noble and fine spirit it is, is it not? which leads a college man to justify his bet with

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a man more ignorant, less well-informed than himself, and who bets against super- ior knowledge, on the ground that the man is willing to be taken in.

" But," apologises the man who bets in such conditions, *' the other man thinks he knows more than I do. He doesn't. I know more than he does, but he will not believe this. I must back my word with my money." But how low has the man fallen who grovels around on this plane ! How inferior and discreditable is the level of life when respect for a man's word must be secured by staking money ! And what kind of an opinion must that be which a man advances and can't leave to stand on its merit but must bolster with a gambler's cheek and a gambler's cash! Some may say that this is too harshly spoken but what can be said that is too harsh of the degradation of life from the level of a fair, free, trustful, high-minded inter- course to the level of the race-track and the gutter and the bar, where in coarse language, men say, " Money talks ? " Let

Is It Wrong to Bet.? 155

the people talk in that way who do not know how to talk otherwise.

What I have just been saying has been with reference to the cases where one man bets on his knowledge against another man's ignorance. But suppose the man who bets does not know more than the man with whom he bets. And this, of course, men will say will be the case among " gentlemen." " We would not bet on a sure thing or where we knew we would win," they say. " That would not be honourable and square." But as a mat- ter of fact, almost no man bets when he knows he will lose. If he does he does wrong, having no right to spend money in that way. Men bet when they think or hope they will win. There is a chance that they may lose, but there is a chance, too, that they may win and they bet on the strength of that chance. And pre- cisely because they do, John Ruskin de- nounces betting as the vilest and most ungentlemanly of habits. " You concen- trate your interest upon a matter of

156 A Young Man's Questions

chance, instead of upon a subject of true knowledge, and you back opinions, . . . simply because they are your own. All the insolence of egotism is in this, and so far as the love of excitement is implicated with the hope of winning money, you turn yourself into the basest sort of tradesman — those who live by specula- tion." Moreover, betting upon an uncer- tainty in this way is demoralising and debilitating. It involves commitment to an opinion of whose truth it is impossible for the man who bets to know.

I believe^ therefore, that whether a man bets and loses or bets and wins, whether he bets on superior knowledge or on a total uncertainty, he is doing a dishonest and an immoral thing. It is true, further, that gambling is folly because the gambler is sure to lose in the end. A few may grow rich and die rich. The multitudes lose and lose. Gambling is simply foolish. " In many cases," as Marcus Dods has pointed out, " the gambler himself is con- scious of his folly, and therefore excuses himself. He merely wishes to experi-

Is It Wrong to Bet? 157

ment ; he wants a little fun, and so forth. But the estimation in which the world holds the gambler becomes apparent when he loses. The merchant whose losses are the result of untoward and un- foreseen changes in the market receives sympathy and help. But what bank or private friend will advance money to a gambler? The betting man who has staked his last shilling and lost it is pro- nounced a fool, and has put himself be yond the reach of practical compassion. The sharper who has fleeced him has neither gratitude nor pity. He uses his victim as the butt of his ridicule. And the victim himself, who has risked his money on mere chance, or on baseless in- formation, or on fraudulent representa- tions, freely pronounces himself a fool, judging himself in the light of the issue. To fancy that we shall be exceptions and win where others have lost, that we shall be the solitary lucky ones among the thousand unlucky, is a folly to which we are all liable, but it is none the less a folly."

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But I am putting the matter not on the ground of policy but on the ground pf principle. And on that ground I say that it is wrong to bet, whatever be the stake or whoever the fellow gambler. The principle is the same whether we bet with men or women, for candy, or gloves, or drinks of whatever sort, or money, over athletics, elections, cards or any- thing else. And to excuse ourselves in these little gamblings, — " just an inno- cent, friendly little bet, you know, I don't mind if I do lose " — is to educate our- selves into the inability to see that prin- ciples are principles, and that a lie or a dishonesty or an immorality does not be- come harmless and allowable by being small. If we want to " treat " people or to make them presents let us do so in a sincere, open, generous way without the ill-concealed and very ill-mannered sub- terfuge of a wager, by which perhaps we may win some small payment from them. Let life be open and free. Cleanse it of the petty nastiness and tawdry ex- citement of the pool-room and the prize-

Is It Wrong to Bet? 159

ring". Let friendship be generous, giving and hoping for nothing again, unpolluted by the mercenary selfishness of the gambler. " To those who are not be- guiled by custom," says Marcus Dods, " it is difficult to understand how of two friends one can put his hands in the other's pocket and stoop to be profited by the other's loss. Be it a half-crown or five thousand pounds, it is equally in- comprehensible how a gentleman can receive it from his friend. If the sum is small, there is a meanness in being in- debted for it; if it is large, there is a meanness in depriving his friend of it. There is a pleasure in receiving a gift from a friend as the expression of his remembrance and affection ; none in win- ning from him money which he is com- pelled to pay. The small trader who would scorn to put money in his till for which he had not given an equivalent is, forsooth, looked down upon by the so- called gentlemen who with equanimity pocket what makes their friend poorer, and which they have done nothing to

i6o A Young Man's Questions

earn. Nothing is more likely to damage the character and eat out the other quali- ties which are associated with the title of gentleman, than the practice of betting." And yet though principle and not policy should govern our convictions and our conduct in this as in all things, it should be suggested to the man who bets that his study of futures should not omit a candid consideration of the future of the gambler. The gambling classes are the least respected and the least efficient classes in society as the gambling races are the low and backward races. The corruption of Chinese politics and govern- ment is as much the result as the cause of the gambling instincts which dominate the Chinese, and no other nation than the Chinese, perhaps, has the native fibre and strength to stand, as the Chinese people have stood, the rotting influences of a uni- versal and reckless lust for the dishonest gains of chance. Among our own ac- quaintances, who are the men who bet and whither are they bound? Doubtless men high-minded and refined in other

Is It Wrong to Bet? i6i

things have bet, but you never saw a man who had acquired the habit of betting whose face was not downward turned and his back to the things that are honourable and just and true. " Sporting men " we call a certain class with whom betting has become a fixed habit or a profession. They stand about the bars the night be- fore the elections, they crowd around the prize-ring, they throng the trains to and from the races, they fill the pool-rooms. Some of them are pleased to class the col- lege games among the objects of their attention. So many of their tastes have been atrophied and so many of their capacities slain that they have no interest in what interests those who love fine and noble things. They have even lost the taste in dress which would enable them to dress like gentlemen.

Scarcely any vice works more disas- trously on character than the vice of bet- ting. It enamours men of the idea of get- ting something for nothing. That is a debilitating idea that will unmake any man. It fosters lying, deception, bluff.

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It leads to the use of foul means to influ- ence the issue over which the bet is made. It begets crime. Mr. Wrixon (late Attor- ney-General of Victoria) says of Austra- lia : " Betting and gambling with us have assumed proportions that threaten us so- cially. Hundreds bet to an extent which they cannot honestly afford, the springs of upright industry are weakened by the vague hopes of questionable gains, and when these hopes are disappointed, as they generally are, embezzlement and fraud are too often the result. An un- healthy restlessness, fatal to sober work for fair reward, spreads among the young, who know no better, and spoils many a life that, free from this taint, would have been useful and happy. I can confidently say from many years' ex- perience in criminal courts, and latterly from a special knowledge of public prose- cutions, that most cases of forgery and embezzlement among young men are either owing to, or at least coincident with habits of betting and gambling." " Bet- ting," says Dr. Dods, " is a prolific source

is It Wrong to Bet? 163

of crime. . . . It is the unanimous and unambiguous testimony of chaplains and governors of prisons that the great pro- portion of the crimes of embezzlement and theft are the result of betting. The statistics of suicide also prove that betting is responsible for a larger number of cases than drunkenness." It prostitutes life, killing its freshness and spontaneity. It cultivates distrust. It overheats the mem- branes of a man's moral nature and then deadens them, alternately inflaming and chilling them until they are callous. In Herbert Spencer's words, " It sears the sympathies." It distracts a man's atten- tion, wastes his time and spoils the relia- bility of his judgment. As Dr. Martineau says : '* To fasten one's interest and curi- osity on the order of events (the order of incalculable contingency when the compo- sition of determining agencies defies all foresight) is to school oneself in all that is weak and contemptible in character, and live by guesswork. . . . The habit of excitement upon chances alternating with mortification at their rebufifs, grows

164 A Young Man's Questions

by what it feeds on, and rapidly passes into moral ruin. There is no dry-rot that spreads so fast from the smallest speck upon the character." The gambler has his reward, but who does not pity the blindness which makes him willing to pay its cost?

This is an honest and frank view of the matter of betting. It is the view that your fathers would want you to consider, — and your mothers, your hearts have added that. It was thus that Charles Kingsley wrote to his son when in one of the English public schools.

'' My Dearest Boy :

" There is a matter which gave me much uneasiness when you mentioned it. You said you had put into some lottery for the Derby and had hedged to make it safe.

" Now all this is bad, bad, nothing but bad. Of all habits gambling is the one I hate most and have avoided most. Of all habits it grows most on eager minds. Success and loss alike make it grow. Of

Is It Wrong f.o Bet? 165

all habits, however much civilised men may give way to it, it is one of the most intrinsically savage. Historically it has been the peace excitement of the lowest brutes in human form for ages past. Morally it is unchivalrous and unChris- tian.

" I. It gains money by the lowest and most unjust means, for it takes money out of your neighbour's pocket without giving him anything in return.

" 2. It tempts you to use what you fancy your superior knowledge of a horse's merits — or anything else — to your neighbour's harm.

" If you know better than your neigh- bour you are bound to give him your advice. Instead you conceal your knowledge to win from his ignorance; hence come all sorts of concealments, dodges, deceits — I say the Devil is the only father of it. I'm sure, moreover, that B. would object seriously to anything like a lottery, betting or gambling.

" I hope you have not won. I should not be sorry for you to lose. If you have

1 66 A Young Man's Questions

won I should not congratulate you. If you wish to please me, you will give back to its lawful owners the money you have won. If you are a loser in gross thereby, I will gladly re-imburse your losses this time. As you had put in you could not in honour draw back till after the event. Now you can give back your money, say- ing you understand that Mr. B. and your father disapprove of such things, and so gain a very great moral influence.

" Recollect always that the stock argu- ment is worthless. It is this : ' My friend would win from me if he could, therefore I have an equal right to win from him.' Nonsense. The same argument would prove that I have a right to maim or kill a man if only I give him leave to maim or kill me if he can and will.

" I have spoken my mind once and for all on a matter on which I have held the same views for more than twenty years, and trust in God you will not for- get my words in after life. I have seen many a good fellow ruined by finding himself one day short of money, and try-

Is It Wrong to Bet? 167

ing to get a little by play or betting — and then the Lord have mercy on his simple soul, for simple it will not remain long.

" Mind, I am not the least angry with you. Betting is the way of the world. So are all the seven deadly sins under certain rules and pretty names, but to the Devil they lead if indulged in, in spite of the wise world and its ways.

" Your loving Pater."

And now, perhaps, some will say, " Yes, what you say is all right from your point of view, but your opinions are too narrow. I am not so straight-laced." Well, " straight-laced " is a word much used by the thoughtless or by those whose intellectual processes are timid and in- exact and who are afraid of their con- sciences and whose tastes incline them with desire to go with the herd. But it is only a word. And the man who replies to what has been said in this way probably illustrates my contention — that with gambling and betting no high-minded man, who loves the things

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which are worthy and open and true, and who will stop to think, will have anything to do.

XII

HIS AMUSEMENTS

If some young man, reading these chapters is disposed to feel that they are altogether too stiff for him, and that the ideal set up is an impracticable ideal, I desire to correct him at once. This ideal is not impracticable, for I know scores of men who realise it with unwavering con- sistency in their lives. They are free from all big vices and from all petty ones. They would rather die than lie. They hate evil. They never use liquor or tobacco in any form. They observe Sunday with scrupulous care. They never visit the theater. They shun all mean companion- ships, they bear themselves toward all men and wom.en as a gentleman should, and they are as honest and dependable as the sun. If any young man says that this is more than can be expected of any man, the truth requires us to contradict him. 169

170 A Young Man's Questions

Thousands of men are living just this kind of life.

And they are thoroughly happy in it, happier far than any men are who are living otherwise, and against the highest law of their natures. Their lives are overflowing with good cheer and good- ness. Men are not shut out of all amuse- ment and sport because certain habits and tastes are barred as unworthy. They have all outdoors open to them, and a good deal of indoors, too. Football, base- ball, golf, tennis, lacrosse, cricket, boat- ing, tramping, bicycling, gymnastics, track athletics, and field sports — these are but a few of the innumerable legitimate recreations of clean young men. Billiards in a private house are as proper as chess, but the associations of the game are in such large part bad, that I think most young men prefer to stay away from the public places where it is played, and to let it alone unless they can play it at home. Young men sometimes ask whether they should not go to billiard and pool rooms in their home towns fof the

His Amusements 171

sake of retaining or securing influence over other men who go there. It is con- ceivable that a man might do this ; but the chances are that he could acquire a better influence in other ways without running the risk of impairing his influ- ence, which he certainly runs in frequent- ing such places as these are in most towns.

Young men may go into clean games without hesitation and with the greatest zest and abandon. The higher a man's principles the better fitted is he for sport. The supreme law of sport is fairness and courtesy. All dishonesty, trickery, knavery, and crookedness, are contempt- ible and unallowable. There is nothing v>^hatever either disgraceful or lamentable in fair defeat, and there is nothing that is not lamentable and disgraceful in foul play.

Athletic sports are valuable physically. Some men are not physically fitted for some gameSc Many men cannot play football or row in races, and young men who have any reason to be doubtful about their endurance ought not to take up vio-

172 A Young Man's Questions

lent exercise without consulting a good physician. But there is scarcely any young man who cannot find some sport suited to him, and he ought to find it. Games are good for the relaxation and invigoration of them, and even more for the discipline and training of them. Games that require team-play breed self- restraint, obedience, alertness of mind, corporate discipline. A good football team is a school of character, or ought to be.

Looking back over history, it is un- deniable that struggle and warfare have been allowed and overruled — not to speak in other terms — in the providential educa- tion of man to provide certain absolutely necessary discipline. " War both needs and generates certain virtues," says Mr. Bagehot, " not the highest, but what may be called the preliminary virtues, as valour, veracity, the spirit of obedience, the habit of discipline. . . . Conquest is the mis- sionary of valour, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world. . . . No one should be sur-

His Amusements lyj

prised at the prominence given to war- We are dealing with early ages; nation* making is the occupation of man in these ages, and it is war that makes nations." We rightly lament war, and fear its terri- ble evils, but it is undeniable that God has allowed it to fill a large place in the educa- tion of the race.

Now what war has done in the develop- ment of the nations, athletics are meant to do in the development of the boy whose life is a summary of all human history. They are intended to beat meanness out of him, to create a spirit of rigid discipline in his life, to knit his body into tight com- pactness and fit it for stern and testing use ; to develop in him a hard manliness, to root weak and shirking impulses out of him, and to drill all brave and danger- welcoming impulses into habits of hard work, and the will to accept any task, however nauseous, and do it with a whole soul. Unorganised athletics may not do all of these things for a boy, but the de- veloped, rightly directed athletics of school and college life, with their training, coach-

174 A Young Man's Questions

ing and team-play, tend to do these vei^ things for the individual as truly as na- tional struggle has done them for nations. For many boys this is the best discipline they ever get in their education. They do not know what discipline is at home. Parents give little attention to them, and scarcely know them. They grow up with wills untrained and lives unaware of the power of quick obedience. Doubtless home discipline can be carried too far, but the powerful nations have been those where it has been strongest. " In a Ro- man family," to quote Mr. Bagehot again, " the boys, from the time of their birth, were held to a domestic despotism, which well prepared them for a subjection in after life to a military discipline, a mili- tary drill, and a military despotism. They were ready to obey their generals because they were compelled to obey their fathers ; they conquered the world in manhood because as children they were bred in homes where the tradition of passionate valour was steadied by the habit of im- placable order." Thousands of modern

His Amusements 175

boys have never known anything approxi- mating such discipHne. They are wilful and often overbearing, while they are utterly incapable of ruling or guiding others, having never learned themselves to obey. Properly controlled athletics teach them to obey.

Parents are unwise who fear athletics for their boys, provided their sports arc watched and wisely regulated. In chooS' ing schools for their sons, they act fool- ishly in preferring schools where athletics are discouraged, or allowed to take care of themselves. Most schools do best for character which do not neglect this most effective way of developing it.

It may be admitted at once that there are dangers, great in proportion to the power of athletics as an educational force. The war metaphors, and the idea of com- petition and conflict, can be carried too far. The conception of life as made up of quick, decisive struggles, as settled by iso- lated battles and sudden conquests, is not true. "The military habit," says Mr. Bagehot, " makes man think far too much

176 A Young Man's Questions

of definite action, and far too little of brooding meditation. Life is not a set campaign, but an irregular work, and the main forces in it are not overt resolu- tions, but latent and half -involuntary promptings. The mistake of military- ethics is to exaggerate the conception of discipline, and so to present the moral force of the will in a barer form than it ever ought to take. Military morals can direct the ax to cut down the tree, but it knows nothing of the great force by which the forest grows."

The ideal of victory, also, is liable to become, just as it does in war, an end irrespective of the merits of the struggle. Boys play not for excellence, but for su- premacy. The aim of the contest is to win, whether you deserve to or not, and to be disappointed or elated, not with the manner of play, but with its issue. A great deal of our athletic life is spoiled in this way. Parents should choose schools where athletic excellence, and not the de^ feat of an adversary, is the first thing.

Sport is spoiled when victory and not

His Amusements 177

excellence Is made the end and dominat- ing principle. When men are disappoint- ed because they do not win, even if they don't deserve to win, they do not have the true spirit of right sport. In games where individuals are matched, the de- light of the thing is destroyed if men do not play in generous attempt, each to do his best, but rejoicing whichever man's best Is shown to be superior. One great defect of Intercollegiate athletics Is this spirit of play for victory's sake alone. If the other team is better, it ought to win, and the losers ought to rejoice to see It win as it should. What does the victory amount to, after all? The moral educa- tion and the general exhilaration of the contest and the physical good of It are the real things. Wrong standards here will exercise a vitiating Influence over the whole life.

And there are many grave evils closely associated with athletics. One is gam- bling. Another is professionalism, or the interest of boys in professional athletics, from baseball to prize-fighting. Another is

178 A Young Man's Questions

the excessive development of the matter of prizes, — cups and medals, etc. The Greeks did better in making the sign of victory an olive wreath, having no intrinsic value at all. Inter-collegiate contests and games between schools also break into regular work and the quiet orderliness of life. They have their useful and pleasant fea- tures, but they too often furnish favour- able atmosphere for temptation, foster common and unworthy companionships, and give to athletics a place in thought and conversation to which they are not en- titled. It is best to select for a boy a school whose masters are not afraid to deal with such matters with a firm hand. On the other hand, abuses and evils should not lead parents whose own child- hood was before the development of mod- ern athletics to forbid or discourage them. They are good for the body. The acci- dents are few. Boys are all the better for the roughness of the sport, provided it is fair and manly. Many a weak boy has been made into a tough-fibred, iron- nerved man by the overhauling he has got

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in football and other such games. The body has its rights in this matter. Even de- voted James Brainard Taylor put it above mind. And athletics are good for more than the body. They teach self-govern- ment, obedience, quickness of action, fear- lessness, silence. They demand, as Presi- dent Walker said, " steadiness of nerve, quickness of apprehension, coolness, re- sourcefulness, self-knowledge, self-reli- ance, subordination of the individual forces to combination, — qualities useful, and in some professions indispensable." And they supply a frequent occasion for enthusiasm, which makes life more hearty, and reacts wholesomely on all its tastes and judgments.

Athletics have no right to the first place. Sometimes they get into the first place. Whenever they are there in any school, that is a good timie not to send a boy to that school. And when athletic success becomes more honoured and esteemed than the success of high character or general ability, the line of excess has been crossed.

i8o A Young Man*s Questions

Fathers should share the athletic life of their sons. They should live in the open air with them as much as they can. Camping out, or any simple Hfe on the face of nature, is one of the best moral tonics and correctives. The artificial in- vented games will be more likely to help, and less likely to harm, the spirit of a boy who " in the love of nature holds com- munion with her visible forms," who knows the trees and birds and animals of the woods. Surely the abundant life of Christ includes all the hearty, whole- some life of His world; and fathers and sons are meant to share it, and be, in work and play, just boys together. If a father wants to be his boy's hero and friend, he must open his life to his boy, and be willing to enter the opened life of the boy. I asked eighteen boys once who their living heroes were. Not one mentioned his father. Some named athletes of their acquaintance; one, his brother, a football player at Yale. I think some would have named their fathers if their fathers had been a part

His Amusements i8i

of their heroic — that is, their athletic — life.

Ought a young- man to kill things for sport? Well, he certainly will not shoot pigeons or doves just for fun. The laws of some States already forbid pigeon- shooting contests. But wherein is the difference between this and hunting game in the woods? There are many obvious differences, and I do not believe that hunting wild game for the sake of the sport, provided the sport is not simply cruel and wasteful, is wrong. At the same time, it becomes each year harder to do it, and many men take more and more to fishing instead. The gospels cast a sanction over fishing that confirms an inward sense, not of its justifiability alone, but also of its real uses. It is maintained by some that the fish do not suffer pain as we conceive it, and whether this is true or not, surely it is right to take them for food. If other ends than nourishment of the body are secured in fishing, so much the better. " Fishin' Jimmy " makes out his case — at least, to

1 82 A Young Man's Questions

the satisfaction of all fishermen. And what are all hothouse pleasures in com- parison with the great woods, the con- stant babble of the stream, and the flash of the trout in the sunlight ?

Or, if we shrink from taking life at all, as we nobly may, how rich is the in- terest of studying it ! Many books have appeared in the last ten years, written by men who loved nature and all of the creatures of the wood and field and air and sea, which suggest to young men how much is to be gained from following the life of beast and bird and all crea- tures. It is good to have a special branch of study in science or natural history as a stimulus and enrichment.

The word '* amusement " in the popu- lar sense is not a very worthy word. ** Whatever amuses," says Crabbe, " serves to kill time, to lull the faculties, and to banish reflection." And Phillips, in " The New World of Words," defines " to amuse " as '' to stop or stay one with a trifling story, to make him lose his time, to feed with vain expectations." Surely, if

His Amusements 183

this is all that amusement is, we cannot afford to tolerate it in life. The killing of time is one of the most terribly unjus- tifiable forms of murder. We have no time to destroy. The only amusements that are legitimate must have something more to say for themselves. Most games of cards do not have anything more to say than this, and condemn themselves for their inanity when they are not con- demned by their easy lending of them- selves to gambling and triviality.

Amusements should be truly profitable and helpful, promoting good fellowship, physical development, love of clean life^ and knowledge of nature and man. There is no room for evil amusement or for any of that recklessness which is de- scribed but not justified by calling it " sowing wild oats." " Boys," said Josh Billings, "if you want a sure crop and a big yield, sow wild oats." Young men, of all men, are the men who have no busi- ness touching wild oats.

As Ruskin said to the students of the Royal Military College at Woolwich:

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" And now remember, you soldier youths, who are thus in every way the hope of your country, or must be if she have any hope; remember that your fit- ness for all future trust depends on what you are now. No good soldier in his old age was ever careless or indolent in his youth. ... I challenge you in all his- tory to find a record of a good soldier who was not grave and reverent in his youth. And, in general, I have no pa- tience with people who talk about the thoughtlessness of youth indulgently. I had infinitely rather hear of thoughtless old age, and the indulgence due to that. When a man has done his work and noth- ing can any way be materially altered in his fate, let him forget his toil and jest with his fate if he will ; but what excuse can you find for wilfulness of thought at the very time when every crisis of future fortune hangs on your decisions? A youth thoughtless ! when all the happi- ness of his home forever depends on the chances or the passions of an hour! A youth thoughtless ! when the career of all

His Amusements 185

his days depends on the opportunity of a moment ! A youth thoughtless ! when his every act is a foundation stone of future conduct and every imagination a fountain of Hfe or death! Be thought- less in any after years rather than now — though there is only one place where a man may be nobly thoughtless; his deathbed. No thinking should ever be left to be done there."

From the weary and wretched harvest of the crop which must inevitably follow sowing wild oats, every young man should pray for deliverance, and seek for it by clean pleasures and those recrea- tions and amusements which clarify the mind, strengthen the body, and help the spirit in its warfare. In such joys peace and comfort abide. The man who is Christian in his play as well as his work is, after all, the happiest man. He has the promise of the life to come, and also the best of the life that now is.

XIII MEN AND WOMEN

Every young man should act toward women as he would wish other men to k act toward his mother or his sister. This is a simple sort of rule, but it is searching and severe. It at once destroys all pallia- tion of selfish or questionable conduct, and it supplies a principle of action which will guide the young man in a sphere of life where many problems arise, and where, accordingly, his character is put to exacting test. A familiar, presuming or low-minded view will lead men to do things which no man will do, who thinks of all women with the reverence and re- gard with which he thinks of his mother, and with which he would want all men to think of his sister. It is significant that even the man of most bestial nature resents any reflection upon his mother, and has, therefore, in him the elements i86

Men and Women 187

of a principle which should guide him in all his relations to other women. A gen- eral rule of action like this is of great value. It is practically universally appli- cable. It is easy to keep in mind. It commends itself to our deepest con- science.

Such a principle settles at once such questions as our duty in railroad trains and street cars, in the matter of giving up seats to women. We should want any man to give his seat to our mother or sis- ter; just as we should give our seat to our mother or sister. Every woman is related to some man, and we ought to do for her what we would wish him to do for anyone so related to us. No question is raised here of rights, or of comparative weakness, or of courtesy. The whole question is settled summarily for us by the general rule which I have stated, and which appeals to every man.

At the same time, the question of gen- tlemanly courtesy does enter. A man owes more to a woman than he owes to a man. The talk of our day about equal

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rights and privileges, much of it useful and necessary and some of it foolish and injurious, must not blind men to the fact that, even when all unjust disabilities have been removed from woman, and all her proper rights are fully secured to her, she still will be a woman, and there- fore never can be put by gentlemen on their level. She will be treated by them as entitled to more than any other gentle- man can claim. Men say often, " Well, women are living just as men. They go to business and come from business, and work in the same office with us. They are to be treated just as men, and there is no more reason for my giving my seat to them in cars than for giving it to men." Yes, there is the reason that they still are women, and that a gentleman must still treat them with chivalry and unselfish consideration — just as if they were his sisters.

It is true that many women are coarse, selfish, and inconsiderate. It is not pleas- ant to a man to give his seat to a woman who, at the first opportunity, spreads out

Men and Women 189

over two seats, and refuses to make way for another woman, however weary and needy of rest. But such women are ex- ceptional, and whether they are or not, a gentleman's ideals are not affected thereby. Some woman bore him in pain and cared for him with a mother's love, and that should make all women sacred in his eyes, and should entitle them to a share in the reverence and holy love he bears his mother.

These ideals of reverence for woman for her own sake, and of considerateness for her as the expression of his own char- acter as a gentleman, must cover and control all of the relations of a young man to all women, old and young. It will help any young man to answer some of his questions if he will simply apply to them these principles.

Of course, a young man will never say anything unworthy in the presence of women, just as he will never say any- thing unholy or unworthy about women, or read books which are unclean in their teaching or atmosphere. If he would re-

190 A Young Man's Questions

sent any slander upon his mother or sis- ter, he will resent any slander at all upon any woman. He will not listen to small gossip, and he will see and speak of what is pleasant and commendable in people. At the same time, he will avoid and resist, in such ways as a gentleman may, all liars and all evil-mindedness, whether among women or among men.

Men were made for society, but society is not what goes by that name. Card and theater parties, dances, small '' fussing " devices, etc., are not entitled to appro- priate the good word " society." All human fellowship is society, and for human fellowship, not for artificial ways of degrading it or making up for the want of it, we were made. Young men should go with people to give and get happiness and help. If their work de- mands the sacrifice of such society, they must make it, knowing that in their work they will find society. But nothing is farther from the Christian spirit than moroseness, isolation of life, or unsocia- bility, save the one thing of sin. The

Men and Women 191

man of pure heart, of unselfish will, and of clean purpose and principle, can go safely about anywhere, but he will not wish to go where he cannot do good and get good.

One of the questions that arises in the realm of a young man's relation to women is the question of dancing. In all the dancing mentioned in the Bible men and women danced separately. If that were the rule to-day dancing would pre- sent no question to a young man. It would have no interest for him. He knows it only as a form of social amuse- ment with women. No fault can be found with " square dances " but four things are to be said about " round dances." First, they distinctly lower the character of conversation. As a simple m.atter of fact they breed frivolity. Secondly, they are wretchedly indiscriminate. Too often in such dances the men w^ho put their arms about women are not clean enough to be trampled upon by the women with whom they dance. And, when he is clean, how can a gentle-

192 A Young Man's Questions

man find pleasure in doing in a dance what he would scorn to do if he called upon his partner in the dance in her own home ? Thirdly, they do defile some minds. To denounce such minds does not justify dancing. And fourthly, in the eyes of heathen visitors they are unspeak- ably vulgar. Surely we ought to be slow to encourage what heathen regard as vulgar and indecent.

The young man will never speak flip- pantly or frivolously of love. It is too sacred a thing to be dealt with coarsely. He will go on his way with a kind heart for all, doing his work, and minding his own business, not looking for some one to whom to devote his attention, or ap- praising young women as to their desir- ability. If somewhere there is some one for him to marry, he will come to her in time, and he will know it when the time comes. Then he must tell the truth and stand fast. A man's word, once given, is given. Love is not a matter of caprice or whim, of transient emotion, of conceit dependent upon money or beauty. ;&. It is

Men and Women 193

the will to serve with the whole soul. We do not fall into such love. We rise into it. No man ought to marry or think of it until the love on which he rests is a love not of desire to have, but of desire to serve, and to serve forever, and to serve whatever the return.

There are not two moral laws, one for men and one for women. The same standard of purity and honour is binding upon both. There is too much open or concealed belief that they are to be judged by different standards, and that what is unpardonable in one is venial in the other; or what is permissible to one is not to the other. Man and woman are not regarded as equals. Mrs. Stanton is characteristically vigorous in denouncing this, and what she regards as the conse- quence of inequality :

" To-day, in our theological seminar- ies, our sons do not rise from their study of Bibles, creeds, and church discipline, with a new respect for the mothers who went to the very gates of death to give them life and immortality.

194 A Young Man's Questions

Sons in our law schools do not rise from the study of our codes, customs, and con- stitions, with any respect for the women of this republic, who, though citizens, are treated as outlaws and pariahs in our government. In our colleges, where sis- ters are denied equal opportunities for education, the natural chivalry of these brothers is never called forth. The les- son of inferiority is taught everywhere, and in the terrible tragedies of life we have the result of this universal degrada- tion of woman."

Exaggerated as this is, there is a sense in which men and women are not re- garded as equals. And in a sense they are not equals. Women are entitled to more consideration from men than men are. But they are equal in their duties to the moral law. The trouble is not that the standard for women is too high, but that the standard for men is too low. Both are bound to be perfect, even as their heavenly Father is perfect ; and any lapse is as wrong in one as in the other. The woman's cause is man's ; they rise 01*

Men and Women

^95

fall together, gain or lose. The young man who helps to lift our ideals and treatment of woman, helps to lift all men and lifts himself. The test of manliness is here : How do I bear myself toward all women? A man's answer to this question reveals his character, and is proof or disproof of his self-respect.

XIV HIS READING

Next to the joy of doing good to those whom he can help, a young man will get his greatest pleasure in life from read- ing. Few of us have the privilege of knowing great men. If we do, we may be too timid to find out their inmost thoughts by conversation; and, even if we know a few well enough to learn their thoughts, there are thousands of great men whom we cannot know be- cause they have passed away. Through books, however, we may know them, and know them well. " It is chiefly through books," said Dr. W. E. Channing, " that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked 196

His Reading 197

for books! They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am, no matter though the pros- perous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling, if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my thresh- old to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companion- ship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live."

In all ages wise men have seen and felt this, and the young man is very foolish who does not soon perceive it and act upon it. Few things are more silly than the little social judgments and prejudices

198 A Young Man's Questions

of most communities. Often good so- ciety includes many who have no thoughts, or, if any, purely trivial and inane thoughts, while many are excluded who have read the good books, who think solidly and independently, and who associate in the inner life with the best men and women who have lived. Young men should be strong enough, whether in the " good society " of the community or not, to choose for themselves the good society of the ages which is found in good books.

It is good books which young men should read. They ought not to waste time and weaken their minds and char- acters with bad or even mediocre books. No young man should be so foolish as to give his time or any large part of it to reading the flood of ephemeral fiction which is now pouring on the world. It is simply not worth reading. Now and then a truly good book appears in it which he ought to read, but no young man can afford to spend time except on the best. " Readers are not aware of the

His Reading 199

fact," says Carlyle, " but a fact it is of daily increasing magnitude, and already of terrible importance to readers, that their first grand necessity in reading is to be vigilantly, conscientiously select; and to know everywhere that books, like human souls, are actually divided into what we call * sheep and goats ' — the lat- ter put inexorably on the left hand of the judge; and tending, every goat of them, at all moments, whither we know; and much to be avoided, and, if possible, ig- nored, by all sane creatures ! " John Foster writes in his journal : ** Few have been sufficiently sensible of the impor- tance of that economy in reading which selects, almost exclusively, the very first order of books. Why should a man, ex- cept from some special reason, read a very inferior book at the very time that he might be reading one of the highest order ? "

Every young man should possess some books of his own, even if only a few. It is better if these are great books which have moulded his own life and marked

200 A Young Man's Questions

perhaps the crises of It. It is difficult for anyone to mention the twenty books which each young man should have. Lists have often been published, but they represent the life-story of the man who made them, and his alone. If any young man is in doubt as to whether his list contains the books he ought to have read, let him ask himself if these names are among his authors : Shakespeare, Milton, Coleridge, Bushnell, Tennyson, Carlyle, Ruskin, Kingsley, Emerson, Thackeray, Scott, Browning. There are many great books besides the books which these men wrote, and a man might have read only good books who never read one of these. But whatever books we read ought to be good books. For " a good book," says Milton, " is the precious life blood of a master spirit, em- balmed and treasured up on purpose to a life above life."

At the same time, it is good to read many different kinds of books, and often a book which may not live as a great

His Reading 201

book may be a great book for us. Ob- scure biographies, books on the smaller interests of Hfe or features of nature, serve to widen our sympathies and enrich our interests. This is the row of books now standing on one library table I know, awaiting next reading : " Two Centuries of Christian Activity at Yale," " Letters of John Richard Green," Leslie Stephen's " History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century," " The Speckled Brook Trout," " Arminius Vambery," " Life and Thoughts of the Rev. Thomas P. Hunt," Clarke's " Outline of Christian Theology," "John Hall," Kidd's " West- ern Civilization," Milton's Prose, Coven- try Patmore's Poetical Works, Stephen Phillips's Poems, Fisher's " Making of Pennsylvania," Streane's " Age of the Maccabees," Thring's " Theory and Practice of Teaching," Gibbons's " Those Black Diamond Men," Bunyan's "Holy War," and some more. Tolstoi's " Res- surrection " was there a day or two ago, but has now gone to the shelves. This

202 A Young Man's Questions

list is a good deal of a mix, but it is surely ^ood to read many different kinds of books, provided all are good.

There are great books like Cole- ridge's "Aids to Reflection," Pascal's " Thoughts," Newman's ** Apologia," Lytton's '' Last Days of Pompeii," See- ley's '' Ecce Homo," and many others as unlike these as they are unlike one an- other, which represent great movements or impulses of thought, or stand out with some distinct and influential significance. A score of books could be suggested of this general type, each of which will break open a new world of fact or thought to a young man, and give to his Hfe a new and permanent power.

Perhaps some of the young men read- ing this article would like to have the names of some good books to read in different departments. I shall suggest a few which will serve as a beginning.

I. History and Politics. — Green's *' Short History of the English People," Fisher's " Outlines of Universal His- tory," Seeley's " Expansion of England,"

His Reading 203

Bryce's "American Commonwealth " and ** Holy Roman Empire, " Johnson's " American Politics," McCarthy's " His- tory of Our Own Time," Reinsch's " World Politics," Parkman's Works and Bancroft's, Woodrow Wilson's, Andrews' and Goldwin Smith's Histories of the United States, and Woolsey's " Political Science."

2. Poetry. — Tennyson, especially " In Memoriam," JMilton's ** Paradise Lost " and " Ode to the Nativity," Browning's " Death in the Desert " and " Saul," and "The Ring and the Book," and the pocket volume of Selections from Brown- ing published by Smith, Elder & Co., Em.erson's and Whittier's and Lowell's and Longfellow's poems, Wordsworth, the two series of the Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics and the Treasury of Sacred Song, and Matthew Arnold.

3. Fiction. — Scott, Thackeray, George Eliot, Dickens, Hawthorne — these books belong to a higher world than that of mere story-telling. But there are many more to be added — books like " Ben

204 A Young Man's Questions

Hur," "Hypatia," "Westward Ho," " Lorna Doone, " *' Robert Falconer, " "John Halifax, Gentleman," and " John Inglesant." And I don't think any sane man need be ashamed of being fond of Kipling and Stevenson and Frank Stock- ton and Conan Doyle for lighter hours and the relief of the tension of life.

4. Biography. — There are great books like Boswell's Johnson, Stanley's Arnold, Irving's Washington, and a host of splen- did lives in our own day : Hallam Tenny- son's life of his father, Allen's Life of Phillips Brooks, Mrs. Kingsley's Life of Charles Kingsley, Leonard Huxley's Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley, Life and Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, and George John Romanes, Life of Lewis Carroll, Mrs. Cheney's Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell, Booker Washing- ton's " Up from Slavery," the Life of Robert Carter, and the exhaustless treas- ure of missionary biography — Patteson, Livingstone, Martyn, Judson, Hanning- ton, Chalmers. Many autobiographical stories are worth reading again and

His Reading 205

again — Trumbull's " War Memories of an Army Chaplain," Hamlin's " My Life and Times," the memoirs of Grant and Sherman and Hugh McCullough, the Let- ters of Chinese Gordon to his sister. These but make a beginning.

5. Essays. — Holmes' and Lowell's, Emerson's of course, and books like these : Lamb's ** Essays of Elia," Bir- rell's ''Obiter Dicta" and "Res Judi- catse," Mazzini's Essays, Arnold's *' Es- says in Criticism," Trench on the *' Study of Words," Jam.es's "The Will to Be- lieve," Fronde's " Essays on Great Sub- jects," and Mr. R. H. Hutton's essays.

6. Some good books of general infor- mation covering the thought and devel- opment of the last century have been pub- lished, e. g., " The Religions of the World," published by Harpers, and the book on the Science of the Nineteenth Century, issued by the same firm, to- gether with A. R. Wallace's account of what the century accomplished and what it left undone. To these should be added such books, good for years yet, as Bage-

2o6 A Young Man's Questions

hot's " Physics and Politics," Guizot^s " History of Civilization," Brace's '* Gesta Christi," Uhlhorn's " Conflict of Chris- tianity and Heathenism," illustrating a larger development than that of the last century only.

7. In religion, many books should be read by the young man — Stalker's " Life of Christ " and '' Life of Paul," Drum- mond's '' Ideal Life," Simpson's " Fact of Christ," Phillips Brooks's '' Light of the World and Other Sermons," espe- cially the sermon on " A Choice Young Man." For some good doctrinal state- ment, let the young man read Hodge's " Popular Lectures on Theological Themes," or Clarke's " Outline," these two representing rather different theo- logical points of view. To stiffen his faith in the supernatural element in Christianity, let him read Bushnell's " Nature and the Supernatural," espe- cially the chapter on the " Character of Jesus," and, for some account of the great movements of the last century, Tulloch's " Religious Thought in Britain

His Reading 207

in the Nineteenth Century," and Rogers' '' Men and Movements in the English Church."

This is not a school-professor's list, nor will it commend itself to the profes- sional reviewer. Doubtless it includes what some would condemn, and omits much that every young man should read. I have not mentioned Plato, Socrates, Gibbon, Victor Hugo, Motley, Prescott, Gladstone, Robert Burns, or any books of travel. It will suffice if the mere mention of these great books which have been in- cluded awakens young men to a desire to read the best, and a scorn for the waste of time of which so many of us are guilty, on Dorothy Vernons and Mr. Potters from Texas.

Let us seek and keep the society of the best books. It is the only way to be- come the best men. And, above all other books, there is, as Sir Walter Scott said, one Book. Let us read that.

XV

A YOUNG MAN AND HIS WORK IN THE WORLD

For every man God has a special work. Jesus strove to teach this truth to His disciples. He told them the kingdom of heaven was like a man who went away to a far country, leaving his property be- hind him, and to every man among his servants his own work. At the end of His life, after revealing to Peter some- thing of His future life, He met Peter's natural request for information as to John's work with the quiet reproof that He had a will for each of His disciples, and that that will was not the concern of others, who were to do their own work and walk in their own way.

That the life of a man is of the pur- pose of God and not of chance, is a truth which our conduct may belie, but which our conscience must acknowledge. It

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does not need to be defended or proved to a man who follows the Master who came to do the will of the Father that sent Him, and whose disciples ** are born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." Noth- ing is of chance, or caprice or whim in the world where the hairs of our heads are numbered, and no sparrow falls to the ground without the Father's notice. Least of all is a human life, God's great- est and dearest creation, a bark adrift on an uncharted sea, or a tramp ship without master and commission. God sent us here as He sent our Lord. We are not above Him. It is enough for us that we be like Him. He purposes for us the fullest and highest ; that every fac- ulty shall be perfected, every talent used, every glory reaHsed, every service done. That we should be the best we can be, and do the best we can do are God's wishes for us. And these '' cans " are not to be determined by our limitations and stupidities and failures, but by that power of which Paul was speaking when

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he said, '' I can do all things through Qirist which strengtheneth me ; " that is, ** all things which it is the will of God that I, Paul, should do."

Only if we do not choose to accept God's high and noble purpose for us, we need not do so. Back of the great truth of our perfect freedom, God can take care of the contradictory truth of His per- fect sovereignty. He has told us we can choose for ourselves. If God's taste for us is purity and our taste for ourselves is impurity, we may be impure if we wish. It is so with unselfishness and selfishness, love and lovelessness. And even if, in a measure, we are willing to give God some room, we still can choose whether it shall be much or little, whether we shall be wholly and outspokenly His, or only so with a good deal of compromise and trimming. Or even in His professed service we can choose our grade of work. " Gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, stubble," is Paul's classification of the different qualities of work. Men choose the kind which they prefer to submit to

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God in the day of the testing by fire. Surely the best is the only worthy choice. No other choice is worthy of a man. We are not beasts that lower things should draw us with their lust and the higher hold no winsome attractive- ness for us. No other choice is worthy of our God — the Best. Serving Him we owe Him service of the best sort. Gold is the man's choice, not stubble. It will stand better in the day of fire, and it is more square and solid and satisfying even now. But what is the best ? Is the best for another man the best for me ? Not in all things. God is rich enough to have a work for each man, novel and fresh and personal to the man. But no man is entitled to a better motive, a better spirit, a better sacrifice, a better suc- cess in the things which are really his of God to do than any other man may claim. The best for every man in anything that is within his capacity and sphere is God's will for him. What- ever falls short of the best is contrary to the will of God. To go at all into the

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service of " the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life " is to fall out of manhood, because it is the choice of low and squalid things instead of the highest and best — the will of God. All this is quite practical. To turn from a good and instructive book to waste an hour skimming over a paper whose contents of value can be scanned in five minutes, is to choose stubble or hay instead of silver or gold. To spend an evening at a play or at cards which might be given to wholesome and stimu- lating intercourse with a thoughtful friend, or to some quiet piece of work, among men, is a surrender of the best. And in our work, to do things with slovenly haste or with moroseness or with any envy of others, is to come short of the best. And it is equally practical in what may seem to us greater matters, like the choice of our life work or occupation, our trade, busi- ness or profession. Which will really seem to us the best — that which will enable us to do our best for others and to

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15e our best ourselves — when we view things not in the distorting light of worldly judgment, but with the calm and piercing discernment of that day when all work stands boldly out in its true character — gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, stubble ? Let us be sure that in that day we shall regret it if we confuse gold and stubble here. God cannot come into the life of a man without bringing the best with Him. He is the best, and He is such a source of life and inspiration be- cause to touch Him is to be touched by the best, and to have all the possibilities of our life set a-tingle by the visions of endless capacities in Him. He ever longs to do such work as this in men. Men who choose the best, who worship in spirit and truth, the Father is ever seeking to worship and to work for Him. It is a useful and helpful thing for a young man to lay hold upon this truth early. His life is not a chance and pur- poseless thing, flung adrift in a world full of such derelicts. It is a divine plan, and he is to conceive of his work in it as a

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" vocation," a calling. It is of this that Trench speaks in his little book, " On the Study of Words," which every young man should not only read, but study ;

" How solemn a truth we express when we name our work in this world our * vocation,' or, which is the same in homelier Anglo-Saxon, our ' calling/ What a calming, elevating, ennobling view of the tasks appointed us in this world, this word gives us. We did not come to our work by accident; we did not choose it for ourselves ; but, in the midst of much which may wear the ap- pearance of accident and self-choosing, came to it by God's leading and appoint- ment. How will this consideration help us to appreciate justly the dignity of our work, though it were far humbler work, even in the eyes of men, than that of any- one of us here present ! What an assist- ance in calming unsettled thoughts and desires, such as would make us wish to be something else than that which we are ! What a source of confidence, when we are tempted to lose heart, and to

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doubt whether we shall carry through our work with any blessing or profit to ourselves or to others ! It is our * voca- tion/ not our choosing but our * calling / and He who ' called ' us to it will, if only we will ask Him, fit us for it, and strengthen us in it."

This is the way in which a young man should look at his life. He has a work to do for God in the world. This dig- nifies and ennobles what we might other- wise call common and unclean. If we come to our life-task in the trust of true children of God, we may accept as true the words of John Tauler, mystic of the fourteenth century:

** Every art or work, however unim- portant it may seem, is a gift of God; and all these gifts are bestowed by the Holy Ghost for the profit and welfare of man. Let us begin with the lowest. One can spin, another can make shoes, and some have great aptness for all sorts of outward arts. These are all gifts proceeding from the Spirit of God. If I were not a priest, but were living as a

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layman, I should take it as a great favour that I knew how to make shoes, and should try to make them better than any- one else, and should gladly earn my bread by the labour of my hands. There is no work so small, no art so mean, but it all comes from God, and is a special gift of His. Thus let each do that which an- other cannot do so well, and for love, returning gift for gift."

Every young man may find out God's work for him. It would little avail us to believe that God has a work for us to do, if we were not sure that we can dis- cover it, and know it as God's work for us. But how may we find it? First of all, it is a good principle to remember that He will not give any of us work to do unworthy of His character. No man can plead divine warrant for anything but divine work. A principle like this at once excludes the liquor business. No man goes into that business under divine assignment. Everything unworthy, un- characteristic of the holy God is barred to us as work for life. If we draw near

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to God, and feel and think in His pres- ence, all these appear despicable and un- desirable to us, and we are drawn toward the things that Jesus represents, and that we recognise as the Godlike things. Young men often make a mistake at this point. They are warned to be careful not to decide the question of their life- work under " religious excitement," but to wait until they are cool and self-pos- sessed. That last word is the betraying word — " self-possessed." What man is likely to decide for unselfishness under the cold, calculating spirit of self-owner- ship and self-service ? The right place to decide the question of life-work is in the presence of Christ, when the heart is warm and the life aglow with the passion of self-sacrifice, not of self-possession, when we feel the beauty and duty of the Hfe lived for service, not for self, after the fashion of Him who came not to be min- istered unto, but to minister, and who could save others but not Himself.

If we can bring ourselves, with God's help, into this sense of Jesus' presence.

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and then look upon our lives, we are safe to decide upon our work on the basis of God's past leading of our lives, our own qualities and capacities, the need of this or that work in the world, and the oppor- tunities that are presented to us. Some will be drawn to" trades, some to pro- fessions, some to commonplace work, others to work that men regard as pecu- Har and interesting; but, in any case, we may know that it is God's own work for us.

In this day the privilege and duty of the missionary work confront many young men. There are many whose lives are such that the question does not come vitally to them. The want of all opportu- nity to prepare for such work, or evident disqualifications for it, or other claims not to be disregarded, have exempted them from the duty of personal mission- ary service. But there are hundreds of others not so exempt. They could go if they would. They are well fitted for the work, with the exception of that volun- tary devotion to it which is an exception

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within their own power to remove. They do not go, either because they have never thought about it, or, having thought about it, do not wish to go. All such should prayerfully consider the farewell words of Ion Keith Falconer to the stu- dents of Glasgow and Edinburgh, before he went to Arabia for his too short work for the evangelisation of Islam :

" While vast continents are shrouded in almost utter darkness and hundreds of millions suffer the horrors of heathenism and of Islam, the burden of proof rests on you to show that the circumstances in which God has placed you were meant by Him to keep you out of the foreign field."

All the work of a man's life must be honest and sincere work. There is no place for anything false or deceptive. No lie, no theft, no gambling, no unfair- ness can be tolerated. Some young men will have to face the question as to whether it is right for a corporation to do what no individual may do. May a corporation ruin men where an individual

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would scorn to do so? Surely every right-minded man will be true here, and not deceive himself with the idea that what is immoral for one man to do be- comes moral when ten men do it. Few young men have to face this question, however. They are employed in simple ways, or earn their living in positions of inconspicuous responsibility. But hon- esty is as essential in obscurity as in pub- licity. God sees each man, and each man sees himself ; that is enough. Even were it true that no eye saw, duty and right would remain, and their claims are supreme and inviolable.

Whatever our God-given work may be, it is to have first place in our lives, and we are to do it faithfully without sparing ourselves. Few people break down simply because they do hard work. Most breakdowns are due to worry, or to neg- lect of sleep or of the simplest laws of health and diet. The man who sleeps eight or nine hours, who eats good food sensibly, and who refrains from all waste and sin, and who does not worry, can

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work as hard as he pleases, and be better for it the harder he pleases to work.

We may be sure that part of our work in Ufe is to be personal influence. In spite of ourselves, we shall be influencing others by what we are and what we are not, by what we say and what we do not say. Unconscious influence is a real power. *' Then went in also that other disciple," Bushnell's classic text on this subject, is a true suggestion of the power of one's own behaviour to control the be- haviour of others. But, behind this, we are to put forth positive influence to win men to Christ and the Christian life. No plea that our work is engineering, or banking, or practicing medicine, or farm- ing can excuse us from doing this also, which is part of the work of every Chris- tian man.

It is not to be regretted if we do not do in our lives all we think we should like to do. If we are faithful, we shall do all that God had for us to do, and that will be quite enough and probably it will be far more than we ever planned for

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ourselves. Yet it is easy to mark out plans we want to follow, and each piece of work accomplished suggests other things to do. Sometimes, when we get toward the end of our work, we wonder what we are to do next, when as we come to what looked like a closed wall ahead, we suddenly find a new road branching off to left or right and offering greater possibilities still. We may be sure that this will be true of death itself. It looks like a cul de sac into which we are mov- ing. We see only the narrowing walls and the dead obstruction at the end. But we come to it, and lo, we see what we could not see before, the boundless ranges of a new life, with new work, new fellow- ships, new joys, new victories. We sing truly :

' • Work for the night is coming,

Under the sunset skies ; While their bright tints are glowing,

Work, for daylight flies. Work, till the last beam fadeth,

Fadeth to shine no more ; Work, while the night is darkening

When man's work is o'er."

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But it is true only for the present Hfe ; for beyond the coming night the morning waits, morning of the calm and eternal day in which, without dust or heat or tears, we shall look upon the King's face as we do Him service.

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