The moral basis of democracy; Sunday morning talks to students and graduates

BR 115 .P7 H3 1919

Hadley, Arthur Twining, 1856

-1930.
The moral basis of democracy

THE MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

THE MORAL BASIS OF
DEMOCRACY

SUNDAY MORNING TALKS TO
STUDENTS AND GRADUATES

BY

ARTHUR TWINING HADLEY

PRESIDENT Or YALE UNIVERSITY

P^gs^i

NEW HAVEN
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON • HUMPHREY MILFORD ■ OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

MDCCCCXIX

COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

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

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

vi FOREWORD

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

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

FOREWORD vii

machinations of those who conceive themselves to
be beneath it.

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

Commemoration Service

June 15, 19.19.

CONTENTS

ETHICS OF CITIZENSHIP pA(JE

The Word of the Lord 's Patience . . 1

Animosity : Its Causes and Its Cure . . 13

Belief in Men 25

The Honor of the Service ... 37

A Citizen of Zion ..... 48

mhe Duty of Straightforwardness . . 56

The Duty of Independent Thinking . . 68

The Union of Faith and Intelligence . 78

Conflicting Philosophies of Life . . 91

The Unconscious and the Intangible . 105

ETHICS OF LEADERSHIP

The Man Who Was Prepared ... 119

Fitness for Command .... 130

The Price of Greatness .... 142

The Christian Standard of Success . . 153

The Personality of Jesus . . . 164

The Good Fight of Faith ... 175

Self-Consecration ..... 185

The Compelling Power of Ideals . . 196

ETHICS OF CITIZENSHIP

THE WORD OF THE LORD'S PATIENCE

1915

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

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

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

2 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

THE LORD'S PATIENCE 3

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

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

4 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

THE LORD'S PATIENCE 5

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

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

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

6 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

THE LORD'S PATIENCE 7

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

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

8 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

THE LORD'S PATIENCE 9

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

10 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

THE LORD'S PATIENCE 11

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

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

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

12 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

ANIMOSITY: ITS CAUSES AND ITS CURE

1914

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

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

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

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

1-4 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

ANIMOSITY 15

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

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

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

16 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

ANIMOSITY 17

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

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

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

18 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

ANIMOSITY 19

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

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

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

20 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

ANIMOSITY 21

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

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

22 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

ANIMOSITY 23

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

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

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

24 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

BELIEF IN MEN

1909

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

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

Kejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

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

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

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

26 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

BELIEF IN MEN 27

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

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

28 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

BELIEF IN MEN 29

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

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

30 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

BELIEF IN MEN 31

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

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

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

32 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

BELIEF IN MEN 33

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

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

34 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

BELIEF IN MEN 35

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

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

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

36 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

THE HONOR OF THE SERVICE

1912

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

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

38 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

THE HONOR OF THE SERVICE 39

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

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

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

40 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

THE HONOR OF THE SERVICE 41

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

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

42 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

THE HONOR OF THE SERVICE 43

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

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

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

44 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

THE HONOR OF THE SERVICE 45

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

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

46 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

THE HONOR OF THE SERVICE 47

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

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

A CITIZEN OP ZION

1911

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A CITIZEN OF ZION 49

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

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

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

The citizen of Zion is a man of judgment. He

50 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

A CITIZEN OP ZION 51

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

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

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

52 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

If we never repeat a damaging story until we are

A CITIZEN OF ZION 53

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

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

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

54 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

A CITIZEN OF ZION 55

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

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

THE DUTY OF STRAIGHTFORWARDNESS

1915

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

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

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

STRAIGHTFORWARDNESS 57

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

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

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

58 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

STRAIGHTFORWARDNESS 59

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

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

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

60 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

STRAIGHTFORWARDNESS 61

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

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

And in the few cases where the deceiver really

62 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

STRAIGHTFORWARDNESS 63

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

64 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

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

STRAIGHTFORWARDNESS 65

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

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

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

66 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

STRAIGHTFORWARDNESS 67

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

THE DUTY OF INDEPENDENT THINKING
1919

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

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

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

INDEPENDENT THINKING 69

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

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

70 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom ;

INDEPENDENT THINKING 71

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

72 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

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

INDEPENDENT THINKING 73

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

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

74 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

tian Church would secure the needed unselfishness
in its use.

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

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

INDEPENDENT THINKING 75

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

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

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

76 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

INDEPENDENT THINKING 77

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

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

THE UNION OF FAITH AND INTELLI-
GENCE

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

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

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

FAITH AND INTELLIGENCE 79

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

80 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

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

FAITH AND INTELLIGENCE 81

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

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

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

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

But do we see straight? Do we face things as

82 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

FAITH AND INTELLIGENCE 83

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

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

Let me take these points up in order.

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

84 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

FAITH AND INTELLIGENCE 85

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

86 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

FAITH AND INTELLIGENCE 87

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

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

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

88 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

FAITH AND INTELLIGENCE 89

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

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

90 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

CONFLICTING PHILOSOPHIES OF LIFE

1908

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

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

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

92 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

CONFLICTING PHILOSOPHIES 93

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

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

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

94 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

CONFLICTING PHILOSOPHIES 95

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

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

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

96 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

CONFLICTING PHILOSOPHIES 97

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

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

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

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

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

98 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

CONFLICTING PHILOSOPHIES 99

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

Such, gentlemen, were the principles of the Stoic

100 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

CONFLICTING PHILOSOPHIES 101

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

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

102 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

CONFLICTING PHILOSOPHIES 103

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

104 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

THE UNCONSCIOUS AND THE INTANGIBLE

1908

Seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not.

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

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

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

106 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

THE INTANGIBLE 107

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

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

108 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

THE INTANGIBLE 109

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

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

110 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

THE INTANGIBLE 111

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

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

I said a moment ago that the world tended to get

112 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

THE INTANGIBLE 113

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

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

114 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

THE INTANGIBLE 115

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

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

116 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

ETHICS OF LEADERSHIP

THE MAN WHO WAS PREPARED

1913

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

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

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

120 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

THE MAN WHO WAS PREPARED 121

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

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

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

122 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

THE MAN WHO WAS PREPARED 123

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

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

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

124 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

THE MAN WHO WAS PREPARED 125

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

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

It rests with us to determine whether this sort of

126 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

THE MAN WHO WAS PREPARED 127

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

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

128 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

THE MAN WHO WAS PREPARED 129

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

FITNESS FOR COMMAND
1919

The measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.

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

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

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

FITNESS FOR COMMAND 131

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

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

132 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

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

FITNESS FOR COMMAND 133

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

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

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

134 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

FITNESS FOR COMMAND 135

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

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

136 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

FITNESS FOR COMMAND 137

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

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

138 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

FITNESS FOR COMMAND 139

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

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

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

140 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

FITNESS FOR COMMAND 141

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

THE PRICE OF GREATNESS

1912

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

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

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

THE PRICE OF GREATNESS 143

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

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

144 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

THE PRICE OF GREATNESS 145

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

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

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

146 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

THE PRICE OF GREATNESS 147

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

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

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

148 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

THE PRICE OF GREATNESS 149

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

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

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

150 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

THE PRICE OF GREATNESS 151

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

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

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

152 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

THE CHRISTIAN STANDARD OF SUCCESS

1914

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

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

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

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

154 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

THE CHRISTIAN STANDARD 155

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

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

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

15G MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

THE CHRISTIAN STANDARD 157

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

158 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

THE CHRISTIAN STANDARD 159

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

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

160 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

THE CHRISTIAN STANDARD 161

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

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

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

162 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

THE CHRISTIAN STANDARD 163

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

THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS

1916

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

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

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

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

PERSONALITY OF JESUS 165

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

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

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

166 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

PERSONALITY OF JESUS 167

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

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

168 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

PERSONALITY OF JESUS 169

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

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

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

170 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

PERSONALITY OF JESUS 171

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

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

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

172 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

PERSONALITY OF JESUS 173

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

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

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

174 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

THE GOOD FIGHT OF FAITH

1911

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

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

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

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

176 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

THE GOOD FIGHT OF FAITH 177

A cup to the dead already,

And hurrah for the next that dies;

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

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

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

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

178 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

THE GOOD FIGHT OF FAITH 179

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

180 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

THE GOOD FIGHT OF FAITH 181

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

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

182 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

THE GOOD FIGHT OP FAITH 183

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

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

184 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

SELF-CONSECRATION

1917

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

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

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

186 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

SELF-CONSECRATION 187

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

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

188 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

SELF-CONSECRATION 189

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

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

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

190 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

SELF-CONSECRATION 191

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

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

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

192 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

SELF-CONSECRATION 193

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

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

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

194 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

SELF-CONSECRATION 195

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

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

THE COMPELLING POWER OF IDEALS

1918

This night thy soul shall be required of thee.

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

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

COMPELLING POWER OF IDEALS 197

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

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

198 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

COMPELLING POWER OP IDEALS 199

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

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

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

200 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

COMPELLING POWER OP IDEALS 201

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

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

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

202 MORAL BASIS OP DEMOCRACY

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

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

COMPELLING POWER OF IDEALS 203

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

204 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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

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

COMPELLING POWER OF IDEALS 205

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

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

206 MORAL BASIS OF DEMOCRACY

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

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