A young man's questions

BV 4541 -364 1903

Speer, Robert E. 1867 ly*/

A young man's questions

A YOUNG MAN'S
QUESTIONS

By ROBERT E. SPEER

Men Who Were Found Faithful

i2mo, cloth, net $i.oo

Some Great Leaders in the World Mo'vement

The Cole Lectures for jgii. i2mo, cloth, net I1.25

The Foreign Doctor : "The Hakim Sahib"

A Biography of Joseph Plumb Cochran, M.D.,
of Persia. Illustrated, i2mo, cloth, net $1.50

Christianity and the Nations

The Duff Lectures for igio. 8vo, cloth, net $2.00

Missions and Modern History

2 vols. 8vo, cloth, net jl4.oo

Missionary Principles and Practice

8vo, cloth, net $1.50

A Memorial of Alice Jackson i2mo, cloth, net 75c.

A Memorial of E or ace Tracy Piktin

i2mo, cloth, net $1.00

A Memorial of a True Life

A Biography of Hugh McAllister Beaver

With Portrait. i2mo, cloth, Si.oo

Young Men Who Onjercame i2mo, cloth, net $1.00

Paul, the All-Roiind Man i6mo, cloth, net 50c.

The Master of the Heart i2mo, cloth, net $1.00

The Marks of a Man i2mo, cloth, net $1.00

A Young Man^s Questions i2mo, cloth, net 80c.

The Principles of Jesus

In Some Applications to Present Life

i6mo, net 50c.
Christ and Life

The Practice of the Christian Life

i2mo, cloth, net 80c.

Studies of the Man Paul i6mo, cloth, 75c.

Studies of "-'The Man Christ Jesus'"

i6mo, cloth, 75c.

Remember Jesus Christ

And Other Talks About Christ and the Christian
Life i6mo, cloth, 75c.

The Deity ofChrisi i8mo, boards, net 25c.

A YOUNG MAN'S
QUESTIONS

ROBERT E. SPEER

Author of

Missionary Principles and Practice,

Man Christ Jesus, etc., etc.

O

New York Chica^ Toronto
Fleming H. Revcll Company

London and Edinborgh

O:

Copyright, 1903, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

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

PREFACE

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

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

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

Christian 26

III. Shall I Join the Church ? . . 40

IV. The Young Man's Duty to Spread

His Religion 53

V. As to Observing Sunday . . .70

VI. His Companions . . , .82

VII. Shall I Drink ? .... 91

VIII. Shall I Smoke ? .... 102

IX. As to the Theater . . . .114

X. The Young Man and Money . . 127

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

XII. His Amusements .... 169

XIII. Men and Women . . , .186

XIV. His Reading 196

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

A Young Man's Questions

WHAT ARE A YOUNG MAN'S
QUESTIONS ?

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

9

lo A Young Man's Questions

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

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

What Are They? ii

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

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

12 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

What Are They? 13

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

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

14 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

What Are They? 15

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

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

1 6 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

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

What Are They? 17

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

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

1 8 A Young Man's Questions

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

What Are They? 19

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

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

20 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

What Are They? 21

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

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

2 2 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

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

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

What Are They ? 23

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

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

24 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

What Are They ? 25

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

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

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

II

WHY A YOUNG MAN SHOULD BE
A CHRISTIAN

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

Now, first of all, the young man should

be a Christian because he is one. This

is a paradox that covers a great truth.

*' Are you a Christian?" a college paper

26

Should He Be a Christian ? 27

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

a8 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

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

Should He Be a Christian? 29

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

30 A Young Man's Questions

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

Should He Be a Christian? 31

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

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

32 A Young Man's Questions

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

Should He Be a Christian ? ^3

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

34 -^ Young Man's Questions

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

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

Should He Be a Christian? 35

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

^6 A Young Man*s Questions

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

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

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

Should He Be a Christian? 37

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

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

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

38 A Young Man's Questions

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

Should He Be a Christian? 39

How often has He crossed our path ? We

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

Ill

SHALL I JOIN THE CHURCH ?

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

Shall I Join the Church ? 41

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

42 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

Shall I Join the Church ? 43

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

44 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

Shall I Join the Church ? 4f

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

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

46 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

Shall I Join the Church ? 47

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

48 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

Shall I Join the Church? 49

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

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

5© A Young Man's Questions

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

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

Shall I Join the Church? 51

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

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

52 A Young Man's Questions

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

IV

THE YOUNG MAN'S DUTY TO
SPREAD HIS RELIGION

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

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

54 A Young Man^s Questions

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

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

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

Duty to Spread His Religion 55

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

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

56 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

Duty to Spread His Religion 57

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

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

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

58 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

Duty to Spread His Religion 59

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

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

6o A Young Man's Questions

unitedly, before the Father after whom it
is named.

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

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

Duty to Spread His Religion 6i

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

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

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

62 A Young Man*s Questions

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

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

Duty to Spread His Religion 63

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

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

64 A Young Man*s Questions

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

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

Duty to Spread His Religion 6^

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

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

66 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

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

Duty to Spread His Religion 67

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

*' Bound who should conquer, slaves who should

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

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

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

68 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

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

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

Duty to Spread His Religion 69

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

V

AS TO OBSERVING SUNDAY

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

As to Observing Sunday 71

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

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

72 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

But far more is to be said than merely

As to Observing Sunday 73

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

74 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

As to Observing Sunday 75

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

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

76 A Young Man*s Questions

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

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

As to Observing Sunday 77

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

78 A Young Man*s Questions

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

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

As to Observing Sunday 79

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

8o A Young Man's Questions

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

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

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

As to Observing Sunday 8i

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

VI

HIS COMPANIONS,

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

His Companions 83

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

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

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

84 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

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

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

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

All of a young man's life should be

His Companions 85

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

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

86 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

His Companions 87

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

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

88 A Young Man*s Questions

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

His Companions 89

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

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

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

90 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

VII

SHALL I DRINK?

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

92 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

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

Shall I Drink ?

3Z

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

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

94 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

Shall I Drink? 95

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

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

^6 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

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

Shall I Drink? 97

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

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

Alcoholic drinks $1,059,563,787

Coffee 125.798,530

Tea 37,312,608

Cocoa. 6,000,000

$1,228,674,925

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

98 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

Shall 1 Drink?

99

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

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

loo A Young Man's Questions

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

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

Shall I Drink? loi

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

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

VIII

SHALL I SMOKE ?

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

102

Shall I Smoke? 103

confessed indulgence or concession to
weakness.

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

I04 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

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

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

Shall I Smoke? 105

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

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

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

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

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

io6 A Young Man*s Questions

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

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

" Cigarettes are responsible for a great

Shall I Smoke ?

107

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

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

io8 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shall I Smoke? 109

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

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

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

no A Young Man's Questions

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

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

Shall I Smoke ? 1 1 1

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

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

112 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

Shall I Smoke? 113

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

IX

AS TO THE THEATER

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

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

As to the Theater 1 1 c

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

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

ii6 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

As to the Theater 117

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

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

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

ii8 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

As to the Theater 119

to maintain an agency that debases what
it touches ?

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

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

120 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

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

As to the Theater 121

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

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

122 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

As to the Theater 123

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

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

124 A Young Man*s Questions

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

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

As to the Theater 125

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

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

126 A Young Man's Questions

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

THE YOUNG MAN AND MONEY

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

128 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

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

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

The Young Man and Money 129

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

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

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

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

ijo A Young Man's Questions

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

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

The Young Man and Money 131

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

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

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

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

" Sir : I am scornfully amused at your

132 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

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

The Young Man and Money 133

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

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

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

134 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

The Young Man and Money 135

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

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

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

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

136 A Young Man's Questions

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

XI

IS IT WRONG TO BET ?

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

ijS A Young Man's Questions

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

Is It Wrong to Bet? 139

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

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

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

140 A Young Man's Questions

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

Is It Wrong to Bet? 141

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

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

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

142 A Young Man's Questions

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

Is It Wrong to Bet? 143

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

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

144 ^ Young Man's Questions

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

Is It Wrong to Bet? 145

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

146 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

Is It Wrong to Bet? 147

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

148 A Young Man's Questions

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

Is It Wrong to Bet? 149

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

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

150 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

Is It Wrong to Bet? 151

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

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

152 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

Is It Wrong to Bet? 153

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

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

154 A Young Man*s Questions

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

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

Is It Wrong to Bet.? 155

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

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

156 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

Is It Wrong to Bet? 157

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

158 A Young Man's Questions

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

Is It Wrong to Bet? 159

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

i6o A Young Man's Questions

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

Is It Wrong to Bet? i6i

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

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

1 62 A Young Man's Questions

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

is It Wrong to Bet? 163

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

164 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

'' My Dearest Boy :

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

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

Is It Wrong f.o Bet? 165

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

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

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

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

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

1 66 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

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

Is It Wrong to Bet? 167

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

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

" Your loving Pater."

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

1 68 A Young Man's Questions

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

XII

HIS AMUSEMENTS

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

170 A Young Man's Questions

Thousands of men are living just this
kind of life.

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

His Amusements 171

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

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

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

172 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

His Amusements lyj

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

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

174 A Young Man's Questions

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

His Amusements 175

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

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

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

176 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

Sport is spoiled when victory and not

His Amusements 177

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

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

178 A Young Man's Questions

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

His Amusements 179

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

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

i8o A Young Man*s Questions

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

His Amusements i8i

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

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

1 82 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

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

His Amusements 183

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

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

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

1 84 A Young Man's Questions

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

His Amusements 185

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

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

XIII
MEN AND WOMEN

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

Men and Women 187

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

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

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

1 88 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

Men and Women 189

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

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

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

190 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

Men and Women 191

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

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

192 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

Men and Women 193

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

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

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

194 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

Men and Women

^95

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

XIV
HIS READING

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

His Reading 197

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

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

198 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

His Reading 199

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

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

200 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

His Reading 201

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

202 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

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

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

His Reading 203

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

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

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

204 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

His Reading 205

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

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

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

2o6 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

His Reading 207

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

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

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

XV

A YOUNG MAN AND HIS WORK
IN THE WORLD

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

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

His Work in the World 209

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

2IO A Young Man's Questions

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

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

His Work in the World 211

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

212 A Young Man's Questions

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

His Work in the World 213

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

214 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

His Work in the World 215

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

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

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

2i6 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

His Work in the World 217

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

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

218 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

His Work in the World 219

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

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

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

220 A Young Man's Questions

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

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

His Work in the World 221

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

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

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

222 A Young Man's Questions

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

' • Work for the night is coming,

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

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

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

When man's work is o'er."

His Work in the World 223

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

10

Printed *n th« Uuiiei Siates ^America

Theological Seminary-Speer Library

1 1012 01127 8563

DATE DUE

m.mm-

-

iT ffncr

Jl-^^q^

rt&Ut

'irzGoa

CAVLORO