Leadership;

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LEADERSHIP

LEADERSHIP

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

By the Rt. Rev, CHARLES h!^BRENT

BISHOP OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

A

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

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
LONDON AND BOxMBAY

1908

COPYRIGHT. 1908, BY CHARLES H. BRENT

THE NEW YORK

PUBLIC LIBRARY

457159

ASTOR, LENOX ANB

TILDEN FOUNDATIWML

R 1909 L

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

TO

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

MOTHER OF LEADERS

AND

TRINITY COLLEGE TORONTO

MOTHER BELOVED

THE WILLIAM BELDEN NOBLE LECTURES

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

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

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTORY xi

I. THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP 3

II. THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE 45

III. THE POWER OF THE HUiMAN WILL 89

IV. THE POWER OF THE BLAMELESS LIFE 129

V. THE POWER OF FELLOWSHIP WITH THE DIVINE 173

VI. THE REPRESENTATIVE LEADER OF MEN 213

NOTES 249

INTRODUCTORY

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

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

I have tried as far as possible to repro-

[ xi]

INTRODUCTORY

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

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

INTRODUCTORY

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

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

LECTURE I

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

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

Clough

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

Tennyson

LECTURE I
THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

[6]

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

[7]

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

[10]

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

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

K

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

That rare track made by great ones, lone and beaten

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

To godUer powers :

A road of lonely mom and midnight, sloping

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

Stands with the stars.

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

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

Ill ;

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

[18]

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

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

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

^ Pragmatism, p. 70.

[19]

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

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

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

\[

LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

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

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

[28 ]

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

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

^Pragmatisms p. 296.

[30]

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

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

LEADERSHIP

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

IV

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

[34]

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

zero Given existence, of a non-stagnant

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

1 Lodge's Substance of Faiths p. 40.

[36]

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

•4.,,

LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

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

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

[38] .

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

THE METAPHYSIC OF LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

[42]

LECTURE II

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

thy whole body shall be full of light.

Matt. vi. 22

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

Browning

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

Burke

LECTURE II
THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

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

LEADERSHIP

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

I

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

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

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

LEADERSHIP

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

All service ranks the same with God:

If now, as formerly He trod

Paradise, His presence fills

Our earth, each only as God wills

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

Are we ; there is no last or first.

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

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

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

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

A

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

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

^Ijife of Phillips Brooks, i. 503.

[53]

LEADERSHIP

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

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

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

II

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

A third characteristic is dignity — it could
[56 ]

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

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

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

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

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

1 Mark ix. 33 ff.

[60]

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

1 Mark x. 35 if.

[62 1

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

That glorious form, that light insufferable

And that far-beaming blaze of majesty,

Wherewith He wont at Heaven's high council table

To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,

He laid aside; and here with us to be.

Forsook the courts of everlasting day.

And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.

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

[64]

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

[66]

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

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

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

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

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

>

LEADERSHIP

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

1 Professor James. 2 Pragmatism, p. 80.

[68]

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

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

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

'^Pragmatism, p. 79.

[69]

LEADERSHIP

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

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

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

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

LEADERSHIP

display of gifts in which he is deficient.

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

Lincoln was another man who became a
[72 ]

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

[74]

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

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

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

This is a fitting moment in which to say

a word regarding the importance of those

Leaders who, however high their place,

never reach that of ultimate authority. It

[76]

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

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

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

t/

LEADERSHIP

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

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

[82]

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

THE POWER OF THE SINGLE MOTIVE

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

1 Acts xxiv. 26 ; xxviii. 30.

[86]

LEADERSHIP

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

[86]

LECTURE III

One thing makes the years its pedestal.

Springs from the ashes of its pyre, and claps

A skyward icing above its epitaph —

The will of man willing immortal things.

The ages are hut baubles hung upon

The thread of some strong lives — and one slight wrist

May lift a century above the dust.

Wharton

Ismene.

But you desire impossibilities.
Antigone.

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

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

/ shall meet with nothing

More grievous at the worst than death with honour.

Sophocles

He who did most, shall bear most ; the

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

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

Browning

LECTURE III

THE POWER OF THE HUMAN WILL

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

[89]

LEADERSHIP
I

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

THE POWER OF THE HUMAN WILL

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

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

LEADERSHIP

failure when we are unfortunate enough to
fail.

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

The will of man willing immortal things.

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

excuse for carelessness or slothfulness in
[92]

THE POWER OF THE HUMAN WILL

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

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

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

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

THE POWER OF THE HUMAN WILL

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

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

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

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

[96]

THE POWER OF THE HUMAN WILL

let himself off so easily from its fulfilment ?

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

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

The will of man willing immortal things.

[97 ]

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE POWER OF THE HUMAN WILL

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

defer not to pay it Better is it that thou

shoiddest not vow, than that thou shouldest

vow and not pay. His idea is that it will

[99]

LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

THE POWER OF THE HUMAN WILL

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

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

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

II

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

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

Now to the common breed the unwonted

1 Oliver's Hamilton, pp. 177 fF.

[ 102 ]

THE POWER OF THE HUMAN WILL

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE POWER OF THE HUMAN WILL

in her sister's opposition and arguments of
impossibility.

Is. But you desire impossibilities.

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

I will cease trying.
Is. But things impossible

'Tis wrong to attempt at all. -"

Antig. I shall meet with nothing

More grievous at the worst than death.

Poor Ismene is too tame to dare —

I was born too feeble to contend
Against the state.

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

[ 105 ]

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE POWER OF THE HUMAN WILL

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

THE POWER OF THE HUMAN WILL

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

"^Alkorauy iv.

[110]

THE POWER OF THE HUMAN WILL

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

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

The will of man willing immortal things.

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

[111 ]

LEADERSHIP

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

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

[ 112 ]

THE POWER OF THE HUMAN WILL

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

THE POWER OF THE HUMAN WILL

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE POWER OF THE HUMAN WILL

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

[ 118]

THE POWER OF THE HUMAX WILL

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

So Sophocles saw it.

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

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

1 Ajax.

[119]

LEADERSHIP

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

The world is waiting for men endowed
[ 120 ]

THE POWER OF THE HUMAN WILL

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

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

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

THE POWER OF THE HUMAN WILL

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

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

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

greater the sufferer. Behold, my servant

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

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

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

THE POWER OF THE HUMAN WILL

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

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

[ 125 ]

LECTURE IV

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

And so the Word had breath, and wrought

With human hands the creed of creeds

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

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

1 Tim. vi. 12.

How very hard it is to be

A Christian! Hard for you and me,

— Not the mere task of making real

That duty up to its ideal.

Effecting, thus complete and whole,

A purpose of the human soul —

For that is always hard to do;

But hard, I mean, for me and you

To realize it, more or less.

With even the moderate success

Which commonly repays our strife

To carry out the aims of life.

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

Browning

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

John xvii. 19.

LECTURE IV
THE POWER OF THE BLAMELESS LIFE

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

[ 129 ]

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE POWER OF THE BLAMELESS LIFE

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

I

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE POWER OF THE BLAMELESS LIFE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE POWER OF THE BLAMELESS LIFE

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

Human life considered in its entirety has
[136]

THE POWER OF THE BLAMELESS LIFE

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE POWER OF THE BLAMELESS LIFE

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE POWER OF THE BLAMELESS LIFE

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

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

that thou hide not thyself from thine own
flesh?

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

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

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

[ 142 ]

THE POWER OF THE BLAMELESS LIFE

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

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

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

2 Book V. 11; XV. 23.

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THE POWER OF THE BLAMELESS LIFE

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

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

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LEADERSHIP

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

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

II

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

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

[ 146 ]

THE POWER OF THE BLAMELESS LIFE

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

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

[ i« ]

LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

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

More strong than all poetic thought.

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

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

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LEADERSHIP

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

1 II Santo, pp. 63, 64.

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THE POWER OF THE BLAMELESS LIFE

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

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

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

THE POWER OF THE BLAMELESS LIFE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where rests the shadow of my sin.

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

1 The Conqueror, p. 323.

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LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

III

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

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

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

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

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

[ 162 ]

THE POWER OF THE BLAMELESS LIFE

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

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

1 The Spectator, September 15, 1906.

[163]

LEADERSHIP

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

1 The Conqueror^ p. 290.

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THE POWER OF THE BLAMELESS LIFE

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

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

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

THE POWER OF THE BLAMELESS LIFE

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

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

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

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

[167]

LEADERSHIP

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

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

[168]

THE POWER OF THE BLAMELESS LIFE

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

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

[169]

LEADERSHIP

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

[170]

LECTURE V

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

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

Tennyson

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

I hear and to myself I smile.

For Christ talks with me all the while.

Le Gallienne

Q. What do you understand by prayer?

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

Lodge

LECTURE V

THE POWER OF FELLOWSHIP WITH
THE DIVINE

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

[ 173 ]

LEADERSHIP

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

I

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

He was right. The appeal to the Social

[ n4 ]

FELLOWSHIP WITH THE DIVINE

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

FELLOAVSHIP WITH THE DIVINE

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

FELLOWSHIP WITH THE DIVINE

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

[ n9]

LEADERSHIP

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

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

FELLOWSHIP WITH THE DIVINE

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

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

1 Pragmatism^ p. 300.

[181]

LEADERSHIP

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

FELLOWSHIP WITH THE DIVINE

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

FELLOWSHIP WITH THE DIVINE

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

FELLOWSHIP WITH THE DIVINE

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

[ 187 ]

LEADERSHIP

My soul doth magnify the Lord,

And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.

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

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

The Father of Majesty; the Son adorable;

The Holy Ghost the Comforter.

We pray thee, help thy servants.

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

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

Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts.

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

FELLOWSHIP AVITH THE DIVINE

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

Glory be to God on high^

And on earth peace, good will towards men.

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

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

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

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

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

[ 189]

LEADERSHIP

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

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

FELLOWSHIP WITH THE DIVINE

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

I

FELLOWSHIP WITH THE DIVINE

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is only a step from the source of power

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

[ 194 ]

FELLOWSHIP WITH THE DIVINE

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

Or to refer again to the great General,

^Ufe, p. 138.

r 196 ]

LEADERSHIP

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

FELLOWSHIP WITH THE DIVINE

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

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

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

I hear and to myself I smile,

For Christ talks with me all the while.

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

[ 197 ]

LEADERSHIP

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

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

FELLOWSHIP WITH THE DIVINE

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

FELLOWSHIP WITH THE DIVINE

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

1 Lockhart's Napoleon^ p. 336.

[ 202 ]

FELLOWSHIP WITH THE DIVINE

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

1 Lockhart's Napoleon, p. 337.

[ 203 ]

LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

^Life, p. 201.

[ 204 ]

FELLOWSHIP WITH THE DIVINE

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

[ 206 ]

FELLOWSHIP WITH THE DIVINE

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

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

iLi>, p. 195.

[ 207 ]

LEADERSHIP

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

FELLOWSHIP WITH THE DIVINE

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

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

Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with

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

and feet.

[ 209 1

LEADERSHIP

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

[ 210 ]

LECTURE VI

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

John xiv. 6

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

John x. 10

All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels.

Nor shall 1 deem his object served, his end

Attained, his genuine strength jput fairly forth.

While only here and there a star dispels

The darkness, here and there a towering mind

Overlooks its prostrate fellows. When the host

Is out at once, to the despair of night.

When all mankind alike is perfected.

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

1 say, begins mans general infancy.

Browning

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

Phillips Brooks, aet. 55

LECTURE VI
THE REPRESENTATIVE LEADER OF MEN

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

1 December 13.

[ 213 ]

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE REPRESENTATIVE LEADER OF MEN

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE REPRESENTATIVE LEADER OF MEN

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE REPRESENTATIVE LEADER OF MEN

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

[ 220 ]

THE REPRESENTATIVE LEADER OF MEN

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE REPRESENTATIVE LEADER OF MEN

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE REPRESENTATIVE LEADER OF MEN

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

iSee pages 254-257.

[ 226 ]

THE REPRESENTATIVE LEADER OF MEN

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

THE REPRESENTATIVE LEADER OF MEN

Christianity was in its youthful ardour.

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE REPRESENTATIVE LEADER OF MEN

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE REPRESENTATIVE LEADER OF MEN

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels.

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

THE REPRESENTATIVE LEADER OF MEN

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

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

[ 235 ]

LEADEKSHIP

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

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

THE REPRESENTATIVE LEADER OF MEN

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

THE REPRESENTATIVE LEADER OF MEN

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

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

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

[ 239 ]

LEADERSHIP

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

THE REPRESENTATIVE LEADER OF MEN

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

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

THE REPRESENTATIVE LEADER OF MEN

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

LEADERSHIP

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

THE REPRESENTATIVE LEADER OF MEN

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

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

LEADERSHIP

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

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

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

[ 246 ]

NOTES

NOTES

Note to Page 142

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

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

[ 249 ]

NOTES

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

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

[ 250 ]

NOTES

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

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

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

[ 251 ]

NOTES

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

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

[ 252 ]

NOTES

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

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

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

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

[ 253 ]

NOTES

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

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

Note to Page 226

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

[ 254 ]

NOTES

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

[ 255 ]

NOTES

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

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

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

[ ^56 ]

NOTES

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

Note to Page 239

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

[ 257 ]

NOTES

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

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

[ 258 ]

NOTES

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

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

[ 259 ]

NOTES

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

By the Rt. Rev. CHARLES H. BRENT, D.D.

Bishop of the Philippine Islands

ADVENTURE FOR GOD

Crown 8vo, $1.10, net. By mail, SI. 18

Contents: /. The Vision; II. The Appeal; III. The Response;
IV. The Quest; V. The Equipment; VI. The Goal.

"... 1 HE Bishop writes with great earnestness and enthu-
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in his attitude toward heathen religions. He does not regard
tliem as wholly false or evil, but as having some dim dawn-
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addition to the rapidly growing literature of missions."

Christian Work.

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'^'This volume is of singularly living interest. Lectures on the
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the value of the present volume becomes lessened. We have
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the personal point of view. The volume is of interest quite
as truly as of value." The Living Church.

LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., NEW YORK

By the Rt. Rev. CHARLES H. BRENT, D.D.
Bishop of the Philippine Islands

WITH GOD IN THE WORLD

4th Impression
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OPINIONS OF THE PRESS

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Living Church.

'^Tlie subjects treated in this book are not only admirably
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mind naturally to ever higher levels of thought ; yet so simply
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can fail to grasp their full meaning. . . .

''^If words of ours could impress Brotherhood men with the
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nently practical, and so buoyant in its optimism ought to
have the widest possible circulation. We would like to see
every member of the Brotherhood the possessor of at least two
copies, one for himself and one for his friend."

St. Andrew's Cross.

LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., NEW YORK

By the Rt. Rev. CHARLES H. BRENT, D. D.
Bishop of the Philippine Islands

THE CONSOLATIONS OF THE CROSS

Addresses on the Seven Words of the Dying Lord

Together with Two Sermons

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The Consolation of Christ's Completeness; The Consolation of
Death's Conquest. Two Sermons: In Whom was no Guile; The
Closing of Stewardship.

''These expressive addresses ... we commend them to all
who desire fresh and virile instruction on the Mystery of the
Cross." Church Times.

''Will be heartily welcomed. They reflect a deep and genuine
spirituality." The Churchman.

"The devotional tone, the high spiritual standard, and the
pleasing literary style combine to make this one of the most
excellent of the volumes current for Good Friday use."

Living Church.

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By the Rt. Rev. CHARLES H. BRENT, D.D.
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Harmony; Compassion; Dedication; The Commendable Debt;
Christmas Haste; the Garden of the Lo7'd; Opportunity and Risk;
Two Shakespearian Sermons for the Times ; (i) Portia
Preaches; (ii) Othello Preaches; Two Addresses: (i) Patriotism;
(a) The True Corner-stone; L' envoi.

". . . The reading will disclose, with the terseness of the
thought and its inherent vitality, a clarity of vision and con-
sequently of style which entitle the least of the sermons and
addresses in the volume to rank as literature. . . . Finally, they
have breadth, both in the selection of topics for discussion, and
in the views imparted during discussion. . . . The book is a
contribution to the thought of the age that proves its own im-
portance. . . ." Chicago Daily News.

"... Shows his power as a preacher of righteousness who has
the larger grasp and wider outlook of a true prophet of his
age. The sermons are widely different in character, having
been preached on various occasions to very diiferent mixed
congregations, but through them all runs the same clear vi-
sion. . . ." The Churchman.

THE MIND OF CHRIST JESUS
ON THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD

Small 8vo, $0.50 net. By mail, $0.56

'^ ... It holds very much that is of interest and of vital im-
portance to the whole Anglican Communion and especially to
the clergy. . . . There can be no question about the high spir-
itual tone and infectious earnestness of his deliverances, and
there is much sound common sense in his dealings with ^burn-
ing questions.' . . ." Pacific Churchman.

LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., NEW YORK

LEADERSHIP

BRENT

IVM. B. NOBLE-
LECTURES
1907

Price

$1.25 net

<M

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
REFERENCE DEPARTMENT

This book is under no circumstances to be
taken from the Building

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