The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Warriors, by Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
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Title: The Warriors
Author: Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
Release Date: November 10, 2003 [EBook #10004]
Language: English
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THE WARRIORS
BY ANNA ROBERTSON BROWN LINDSAY PH.D.
AUTHOR OF
WHAT IS WORTH WHILE?
CULTURE AND REFORM
THE VICTORY OF OUR FAITH
PREFACE
This work was begun nearly five years ago. Since then, the whole face of
American history has changed. We have had the Spanish-American War, and
the opening-up of our new possessions. In this period of time Gladstone,
Li Hung Chang, and Queen Victoria have died; there has also occurred the
assassination of the Empress of Austria and of President McKinley. There
has been the Chinese persecution, the destruction of Galveston by storm
and of Martinique by volcanic action. Wireless telegraphy has been
discovered, and the source of the spread of certain fevers. In this time
have been carried on gigantic engineering undertakings,--the
Trans-Siberian Railroad, the Trans-Balkan Railroad, the rebuilding of
New York. We have also looked upon the consolidation of vast forces of
steel, iron, sugar, shipping, and other trusts. We have witnessed an
extraordinary growth of universities, libraries, and higher
schools,--the widespread increase of commerce, the prosperity of
business, the rise in the price of food, and the great coal-strike of
1902. Perhaps never before in the world's history have there been
crowded into five years such dramatic occurrences on the world-stage,
nor such large opportunities for the individual man or woman.
It is interesting for me to notice that since the first outlines of the
book were written, many things then set down as prophecy have now been
fulfilled. It was my purpose, in projecting the essays at what seemed
to me to be the dawn of a great religious era, to help the onward
movement by a few earnest words. History itself has swept the world far
beyond one's dreams, and in completing them, I only ask that they may
stand a further witness to the overwhelming majesty and influence of the
Christian faith.
ANNA ROBERTSON BROWN LINDSAY
_Philadelphia, November_ 1_st_, 1902
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. CHORDS OF AWAKENING:
THE HIGHER CONQUEST
II. PRELUDE:
THE CALL OF JESUS
III. PROCESSIONAL:
THE CHURCH OF GOD
IV. THE WORLD-MARCH:
OF KINGS
OF PRELATES AND EVANGELISTS
OF SAGES
OF TRADERS
OF WORKERS
I. CHORDS OF AWAKENING: THE HIGHER CONQUEST
[CUTLER]
_The Son of God goes forth to war,
A kingly crown to gain:
His blood-red banner streams afar:
Who follows in His train?
Who best can drink his cup of woe,
Triumphant over pain;
Who patient bears his cross below,
He follows in His train!
They met the tyrant's brandished steel,
The lions gory mane;
They bowed their necks the death to feel:
Who follows in their train?
They climbed the steep ascent of heaven
Through peril, toil, and pain:
O God, to us may grace be given
To follow in their train!_
REGINALD HEBER
The universe is not awry. Fate and man are not altogether at odds. Yet
there is a perpetual combat going on between man and nature, and between
the power of character and the tyranny of circumstance, death, and sin.
The great soul is tossed into the midst of the strife, the longing, and
the aspirations of the world. He rises Victor who is triumphant in some
great experience of the race.
The first energy is combative: the Warrior is the primitive hero. There
are natures to whom mere combat is a joy. Strife is the atmosphere in
which they find their finest physical and spiritual development. In the
early times, there must have been those who stood apart from their
tribesmen in contests of pure athletic skill,--in running, jumping,
leaping, wrestling, in laying on thew and thigh with arm, hand, and
curled fist in sheer delight of action, and of the display of strength.
As foes arose, these athletes of the tribe or clan would be the first to
rush forth to slay the wild beast, to brave the sea and storm, or to
wreak vengeance on assailing tribes. Their valor was their insignia.
Their prowess ranked them. Their exultation was in their freedom
and strength.
Such men did not ask a life of ease. Like Tortulf the Forester, they
learned "how to strike the foe, to sleep on the bare ground, to bear
hunger and toil, summer's heat and winter's frost,--how to fear nothing
but ill-fame." They courted danger, and asked only to stand as Victors
at the last.
Hence we read of old-world warriors,--of Gog and Magog and the Kings of
Bashan; of the sons of Anak; of Hercules, with his lion-skin and club;
of Beówulf, who, dragging the sea-monster from her lair, plunged beneath
the drift of sea-foam and the flame of dragon-breath, and met the clutch
of dragon-teeth. We read of Turpin, Oliver, and Roland,--the
sweepers-off of twenty heads at a single blow; of Arthur, who slew
Ritho, whose mantle was furred with the beards of kings; of Theodoric
and Charlemagne, and of Richard of the Lion-heart.
There are also Victors in the great Quests of the world,--the Argonauts,
Helena in search of the Holy Rood, the Knights of the Holy Grail, the
Pilgrim Fathers. There are the Victors in the intellectual wrestlings of
the world,--the thinkers, poets, sages; the Victors in great sorrows,
who conquer the savage pain of heart and desolation of spirit which
arise from heroic human grief,--Oedipus and Antigone, Iphigenia,
Perseus, Prometheus, King Lear, Samson Agonistes, Job, and David in his
penitential psalm. And there are the Victors in the yet deeper strivings
of the soul--in its inner battles and spiritual conquests--Milton's
Adam, Paracelsus, Dante, the soul in _The Palace of Art_, Abt Vogler,
Isaiah, Teufelsdröckh, Paul. To read of such men and women is to be
thrilled by the Titanic possibilities of the soul of man!
The world has come into other and greater battle-days. This is an era of
great spiritual conflicts, and of great triumphs. To-day faith calls the
soul of man to arms. It is a clarion to awake, to put on strength, and
to go forth to Holy War. If there were no fighting work in the Christian
life, much of the intense energy and interest of the race would be
unaroused. There are apathetic natures who do not want to undertake the
difficult,--sluggish souls who would rather not stir from their present
position. And there are cowards who run to cover. But there is
in all strong natures the primitive combative instinct,--the
let-us-see-which-is-the-stronger, which delights in contests, which is
undismayed by opposition, and which grows firmer through the warfare
of the soul.
It is this phase of the Christian life which is most needed to-day,--the
warrior-spirit, the all-conquering soul. In entering the Christian life,
one must put out of his heart the expectation that it is to be an easy
life, or one removed from toil and danger. It is preëminently the
adventurous life of the world,--that in which the most happens, as well
as that in which the spiritual possibilities are the greatest. It is a
life full of splendor, of excitement, of trial, of tests of courage and
endurance, and is meant to appeal to those who are the very bravest
and the best.
There are two forms of conquest to which the soul of man is called--the
inner and the outer. The inner is the conquest of the evil within his
own nature; the outer is the struggle against the evil forces of the
world--the constructive task of building up, under warring conditions,
the spiritual kingdom of God.
The real world is far more subtle than we as yet understand. When we
dive down into the deep, sky and air and houses disappear. We enter a
new world--the under-world of water, and things that glide and swim; of
sea-grasses and currents; of flowing waves that lap about the body with
a cool chill; of palpitating color, that, at great depths, becomes a
sort of darkness; of sea-beds of shell and sand, and bits of scattered
wreckage; of ooze and tangled sea-plants, dusky shapes, and
fan-like fins.
Or if we look upward we reach an over-world, where moons and suns are
circling in the heights. What draws them together? What keeps a subtle
distance between them, which they never cross? How do they, age after
age, run a predestined course? We drop a stone. What binds it earthward?
Under our feet run magnetic currents that flow from pole to pole. In the
clouds above, there are electric vibrations which cannot be described
in exact terms.
Thus also, in spiritual experiences, there are currents which we cannot
measure or describe. The psychic world is the final world, though its
towers and pinnacles no eye hath seen. If we try to shut out for an hour
the outer world, and descend into the soul-world of the life of man, we
find ourselves in a new environment, and with an outlook over new forms
and powers. We find ourselves in a world of images and attractions, of
impulses and desires, of instincts and attainments. It is not only a
world of separate and individual souls, but each soul is as a thousand;
for within each man there is an inner host contending for mastery, and
everywhere is the uproar of battle and of spiritual strife.
What is the Self that abides in each man? Is it not the consciousness of
existence, together with a consciousness of the power of choice? Our
individuality lies in the fact that we can decide, choose, and rule
among the various contestant impulses of our souls. Herein is the
possibility of victory and also the possibility of defeat.
Looking inward, we find that Self began when man began. We inherit our
dispositions from Adam, as well as from our parents and a long ancestral
line. When the first men and women were created, forces were set in
action which have resulted in this Me that to-day thinks and wills and
loves. Heredity includes savagery and culture, health and disease,
empire and serfdom, hope and despair. Each man can say: "In me rise
impulses that ran riot in the veins of Anak, that belonged to Libyan
slaves and to the Ptolemaic line. I am Aryan and Semite, Roman and
Teuton: alike I have known the galley and the palm-set court of kings.
Under a thousand shifting generations, there was rising the combination
that I to-day am. In me culminates, for my life's day, human history
until now."
Individuality is thus a unique selection and arrangement of what has
been, touched with something--a degree of life--that has not been
before. To rise above heredity is to rise above the downward drag of all
the years. It is not escaping the special sin of one ancestor, but the
sin of all ancestors. _This is the first problem that is set before each
man: to rise above his race--to be the culmination of virtue until now_.
_The second problem is not greater, but different. It is to mould
environment to spiritual uses_. The conditions of this struggle and the
opportunities of this conquest are the content of this book. It is meant
to deal with the more heroic aspects of the Christian life.
What is environment? Is it the material horizon that bounds us? If so,
where does it end? Our first environment is a crib, a room, our mother's
eyes. Sensations of hunger, heat, and motion beat upon the baby-brain;
there is a vague murmur of sound in the baby-ears. Yet it is this babe
who, in after days, has all the universe for his soul's demesne! His
environment stretches out to towns and rivers, shore and sea. Looking
upward into space, he can view a star whose distance is a thousand times
ten thousand miles. Beyond the path of his feet or of his sight, there
is the path of thought, which leads him into new countries, new climes,
new years! His meditations are upon ages gone; his work competes with
that of the dead. In his reveries and imaginings, he can transport
himself anywhither, and can commune with any friend or god. Hence to be
master of one's environment is really to have the universe within
one's grasp.
We are too much afraid of customs and traditions. We are put into our
times, not that the times may mould us, but that we may mould the times!
Ways? Customs? They exist to be changed! The _tempora_ and the _mores_
should be plastic to our touch. The times are never level with our best.
Our souls are higher than the _Zeitgeist_. Why should we cringe before
an inferior essence or command? But society seals our lips: we walk
about with frozen tongues.
Each asks himself at some time: How shall I become one of the Victors of
the race? Is it in me? Mankind is weighted by every previous sin. Where
am I free? How am I free? Can I do as I choose? Or are there bourns of
conduct beyond which I can never go? Am I foreordained to sin? Do the
stars in their courses lay limitations on free will?
There are in man two forces working: a human longing after God, and, in
response, God inly working in the soul. The Victor is he who, in his own
life, unites these two things: a great longing after the god-like, which
makes him yearn for virtue,--and the divine power within him, through
which and by which he is triumphant over time and death and sin.
Whatever our trials, sorrows, or temptations, joy and courage are ever
meant to be in the ascendant; life, however it may break in storms upon
us, is not meant to beat down our souls. Unless we are triumphant, we
are not wholly useful or well trained. Will and heart together work
for victory.
As there flashes and thrills through all nature a subtle electric
vibration which is the supreme form of physical energy, so there runs
through the history of mankind a current of spiritual inspiration and
power. To possess this magnetism of soul, this heroism of life, this
flame-like flower of character, is to be Victor in the great combats of
the race. It is the spirit of courage, energy, and love. Nothing is too
hard for it, nothing too distasteful, nothing too insignificant. Through
all the course of duty it spurs one to do one's best. Its essence is to
overcome. This is the indwelling Holy Spirit, wherein is freedom, power,
and rest. To its final triumph all things are accessory. To joy, all
powers converge.
II. PRELUDE: THE CALL OF JESUS
[VOX DILECTI]
_I heard the voice of Jesus say
Come unto Me and rest;
Lay down, thou weary one, lay down
Thy head upon My breast.
I came to Jesus as I was,
Weary and worn and sad;
I found in Him a resting-place,
And He has made me glad._
_I heard the voice of Jesus say
Behold I freely give
The living water; thirsty one,
Stoop down and drink, and live.
I came to Jesus, and I drank
Of that life-giving stream;
My thirst was quenched, my soul revived,
And now I live in Him._
_I heard the voice of Jesus say
I am this dark world's light;
Look unto Me, thy morn shall rise,
And all thy day be bright.
I looked to Jesus, and I found
In Him my star, my sun;
And in that light of life I'll walk,
Till travelling days are done._
HORATIUS BONAR
It is a world of voices in which we live. We are daily visited by
appeals which are ministering to our growth and progress, or which are
tending to our spiritual downfall. There are the voices of nature, in
sky, and sea, and storm; the voices of childhood and of early youth; the
voices of playfellows and companions,--voices long stilled, it may be,
in death; the voices of lover and beloved; the voices of ambition, of
sorrow, of aspiration, and of joy.
But among all these many voices, there is one which is most inspiring
and supreme. When the _Vorspiel_ to _Parsifal_ breaks upon the ear it is
as if all other music were inadequate and incomplete--as if a voice
called from the confines of eternity, in the infinite spaces where no
time is, and rolled onward to the far-off ages when time shall be no
more. Even so, high and clear above the voices of the world, deeper and
tenderer than any other word or tone, comes the voice of Jesus to the
soul of man.
Look, if you will, upon the World of Souls, many-tiered and vast,
stretching from day's end to day's end,--a world of hunger and of anger,
of toiling and of striving, of clamor and of triumph,--a dim, upheaving
mass, which from century to century wakes, and breathes, and sleeps
again! Years roll on, tides flow, but there is no cessation of the march
of years, and no whisper of a natural change. Is it not a strange thing
that one voice, and only one, should have really won the hearing of the
race? What is this voice of Jesus, so enduring, matchless, and supreme?
What does it promise, for the help or hope of man?
There are some who say that Jesus has held the attention and allegiance
of the race by an appeal to the religious instinct; that all men
naturally seek God, and long to know Him. But if we try to define the
religious instinct, we shall find it a hard task. What might be called a
religious instinct leads to human sacrifice upon the Aztec altar;
directs the Hindu to cast the new-born child in the stream, the friend
to sacrifice his best friend to a pagan deity.
There are others who say that Christ appeals to the gentler instincts of
man,--to his unselfishness, his meekness and compassion. Yet some of the
most admirable Christians have been ambitious and aggressive. Others
say, He appeals to our need of help. But self-reliance is a Christian
trait. Others say, He appeals to our sense of sin--our need of pardon.
But many a Christian goes through life like a happy child, scarcely
conscious at any time of deep guilt, and never overwhelmed by intense
conviction or despair.
The truth seems to be that Christ appeals to our whole selves. He calls
us by an attraction which is unique. In the universe there exists a
force which we must recognize--though we do not yet in the least
understand it--which is gradually drawing the race Christward. The law
of spiritual gravitation is, that by all the changing impulses of our
nature we are drawn upward unto Him. Spohr's lovely anthem voices this
cry of the soul:
"_As pants the hart for cooling streams,
When heated in the chase,
So longs my soul, O God, for Thee,
And Thy refreshing grace.
"For Thee, my God, the living God,
My thirsty soul doth pine;
Oh! when shall I behold Thy face,
Thou Majesty divine_?"
1. Jesus calls us by the mystery of life. There are hours of silence and
meditation when the great thought _I am_ beats in upon the soul. But
what am I? Whence came I? A heap of atoms in some strange human
semblance--is that all? And so many other heaps of atoms have already
been, and passed away! Blown hither and thither--where? The universe
reels with change. Star-dust and earth-dust are alike in ceaseless
whirl. Little it profits to build the spire, the sea-wall, the dome, the
bridge, the myriad-roofed town. A new era shall dawn upon them, and they
shall fall away.
Not only that, but each man who lives to-day has less possible material
dominion than he had who preceded him. Only so many square feet of
earth, and now there are more to walk upon them! The ground we tread was
once trodden by the feet of those long dead. I am taking up their room,
and in due time I must myself depart, that there may be footway for
those who are to come after me. Only the under-sod is really mine--the
little earth-barrow to which I go.
There is no question more baffling than this simple, ever-recurring one:
What am I? If I should decide what I am to-day, I discover that
yesterday I was quite a different person. To-day I may be six feet in
height, and climb the Alps; yesterday I lay helpless in swaddling
clothes. Yesterday I was a thing of laughter and frolic; to-day I am
grave, and brush away tears. As a babe, was I still I? What is Myself?
When did I come to Myself? How far can I extend Myself? My feet are
here, but in a moment my spirit can flee to Xanadu and Zanzibar. There
is no spot in the universe where I may not go. Where, then, are the
limits of Myself?
Personality is never for a single moment fixed: it is as changing and
evanescent as a cloud. We are whirlwind spirits, swept through time and
space, bearing within our souls hopes, fears, joys, sorrows, which are
never twice the same. Every aspect of the universe leaves new
impressions on us, and our wills, in their world-sweep, daily desire
different things.
Incompleteness lies on life--restlessness is in the heart. True love has
no final habitation on earth; there is no abiding-place for our deepest
affection, our most tender yearning. It is curious how deeply one may
love, and yet feel that there is something more. In all our journeys,
skyward and sunward, we never reach the End of All.
Over against this vague and changing self, there stands out the figure
of the changeless Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. In
Him we find the environment of all our lives, and the sum of all
our dreams.
2. Jesus calls us by our earth-born cares. In Mendelssohn's _Elijah_,
there is a voice which sings: "O rest in the Lord!" This angel's message
is the voice of Jesus to the human race.
The voice of Jesus calls us to awake to toil. We sometimes forget this,
and imagine that if we follow Jesus, we shall never have anything to do.
Christ does not still the machinery of the world, nor shut the mine, nor
take away the sowing and the reaping. The call of Jesus is not a call to
rest from work, but to rest in work. The rest we receive is that of
sympathy, of inspiration, of efficiency. Christ really increases the
toil-capacity of man. Man can do more work, harder work, and always
better work, because of the faith that is in him. What makes the
confusion and fatigue of life is, that men are everywhere scrambling
for themselves, and trying to manage their own undertakings, instead of
falling into harmony with God, and through Him, with all that is. What
wears the soul out is not the work of life itself--it is its drudgery,
its monotony, its blind vagueness, its apparent purposelessness. We do
not wish to scatter our lives and spend our years in nothingness.
Christ comes into the world and says: Over-fatigue is abnormal. There
is not enough work in the universe to tire every one all out. There is
just enough for each one to do happily, and to do well. I am come as the
great industrial organizer. My mission is not to take away toil, but to
redistribute it. My industrial plan is the largest of history--it is
also the most simple. I look down over the world, as a master upon his
men. My work is not to found an earthly kingdom, as some have thought;
it is not primarily to set up industrial establishments, or syndicates,
or ways of transport and trade. My work is to build up in the universe a
spiritual kingdom of energy, power, and progress. To this kingdom all
material things are accessory. In My hand are all abilities, as well as
all knowledge. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without My notice. Not
a lily blooms without My delight. Not a brick is laid, not a stone is
set, not an axe is swung, except beneath My eye. I provide for My own.
To each man I assign his work, his task. If he takes upon him only what
I give him to do, he will never be under-paid, or over-tired.
Hence the first step towards an industrial millennium is to arise and do
what Jesus bids. Heaven is heaven because no one is unruly there, or
idle, or lazy, or vicious, or morose. Each soul is at true and happy
work. Each energy is absorbed; each hour is alive with interest, and
there are no oppressive thoughts or ways.
If each heart and soul responded to the call of Jesus, there would be a
new heaven and a new earth--a Utopia such as More never dreamed of, nor
Plato, nor Bellamy, nor Campanella in his _City of the Sun_. Each hand
would be at its own work; each eye would be upon its own task; each foot
would be in the right path. All the fear, the weariness, the squalor,
and the unrest of life would be done away. The life of each man would be
a life of contentment, and of economic advance.
3. Jesus calls us by the scourging of our sins. Flagellation is not of
the body--it is of the soul. Remorse is as a scorpion-whip, and memory
beats us with many stripes. The first sin that besets us is
forgetfulness of God. Apathy creeps over the spirit, and sloth winds
itself about our deeds. Nothing is more pathetic than the decline of the
merely forgetful soul. "Be sleepless in the things of the spirit," says
Pythagoras, "for sleep in them is akin to death."
Sin lifts bars against success: the root of failure lies in irreligion.
Pride, conceit, disobedience, malice, evil-speaking, covetousness,
idolatry, vice, oppression, injustice, and lack of truth and honor fight
more strongly against one's career than any other foe. No sin is without
its lash; no experience of evil but has its rebound. To expect a higher
moral insight in middle age because of a larger experience of sin in
youth, is as reasonable as to look for sanity of judgment in middle age
because in youth a man had fits!
Looking at ourselves in a mirror, do we not sometimes think how we would
fashion ourselves if we could create a new self, in the image of some
ideal which is before us? Would we not make ourselves wholly beautiful
if we could make ourselves?
Even so, looking out upon our own spirits, do we not some day rouse to
the distortion and deformity of sin? Do we wish to retain these
grimacing phases of ourselves? Do we not yearn eagerly for the dignity
and beauty of high virtue? Do we not long for the graces and perfections
which make up a radiant and happy life? If we could be born again, would
we not be born a more spiritual being?
It is to this new birth that Jesus calls our souls. All around the babe,
hid in its mother's womb, there lies a world of which it has neither
sight nor knowledge. The fact that the babe is ignorant does not change
the fact that the world is there. So about our souls there lies the
invisible world of God, which, until born of the Spirit, we do not see
or understand. It is a world in which God is everywhere; in which there
is no First Cause, except God; in which there is no will, except the
will of God; in which there is no true and perfect love, except from
God; no truth, except revealed by God; no power, except from Him.
Conversion is the outlook over a world which is arranged, not for our
own glory, but for the good of God's creatures; in which what we do is
necessary, fundamental, permanent--not because we ourselves have done it
well, nor, in truth, because we have done it at all--but because what we
have done is a part of the universe which God is building. We change
from a self-centre to a God-centre; from the thought of whether the
world applauds to whether God approves; from the thought of keeping our
own life to the thought of preserving our own integrity; from isolation
from all other souls to a sympathy with them, an understanding of their
needs, and a desire to help their lives. It is a turning from a delight
in sin, or an indifference to sin, or merely a moral aversion to it, to
a deep-rooted hatred of every thought and act of sin, to penitence, and
to an earnest desire to pattern after God.
4. Jesus calls us by our sorrows, Jesus calls us by our dreams. He
thrills us by each high aim that life inspires. His voice is one of
understanding, of tenderness, of human appeal. How could we love Jesus
if He did not sympathize with our ideals? But here is a Divine One in
whose sight we are not visionary; who lovingly guards our least hope;
who welcomes our faintest spiritual insight; who takes an interest in
our social plans, and points out to us the great kingdom that is to be.
Christ lays hold of the divine that is in us, and will not let us go.
5. Jesus calls us by our latent gifts and powers. Which of us has ever
exhausted his possibilities? Which of us is all that he might be?
It is an impressive thought, that nothing in the universe ever gets used
up. It changes form, motion, semblance,--but the force, the energy,
neither wastes nor dies away. Air--it is as fresh as the air that blew
over the Pharaohs. Sun--it is as undimmed as the sun that looked down on
the completion of Cheops. Earth--it is as unworn as the earth that was
trodden by the cavemen.
No generation can ever bequeath to us a single new material atom. The
race is ever in old clothes. Nor can we hand down to others one atom
which was not long ere we were born. Yet the vitality of the universe is
being constantly increased, and this increase is also permanent. God has
a great deal more to work with now than a thousand years ago.
For not all energy is material. With each birth there comes a new force
into the world, and its influence never dies. The body is born of ages
past, of the material stores of centuries; but the soul, in its living,
thinking, working power, is a new phase of energy added to the energy
of the race.
This fact confers on each individual man a strange impressiveness and
power. It gives a new significance to the fact that I am. I am something
different from what has been, or ever shall be. In the great whirling
myriads, I am distinguished and apart. I am an appreciable factor in
universal development and a being of elemental power. By every true
thought of mine the race becomes wiser. By every right deed, its
inheritance of tradition is uplifted; by every high affection, its
horizon of love is enlarged. We can bequeath to others this new
spiritual energy of our lives.
This thought gives us a new zest for life. There is an appetite which is
of the soul. It is this wish for growth, for the development of our
powers, for a larger life for ourselves and for those who shall
come after us.
Is there any one who wishes to stay always where he is to-day?--to be
always what he is this morning? Beyond the hill-top lies our dream. Not
all the voices that call men from place to place are audible ones. We
hear whispers from a far-off leader; we are beckoned by an unseen guide.
Out of ancestry, tradition, talent, and training each departs to
his own way.
What calls is not largeness of place--it is largeness of ideal. To each
of us, thinking of this one and that one who has taken a large part in
the shaping of the world, there comes a feeling: Beside all these I am
in a narrow way! What can I think that shall be worth the consideration
of the race? What can I do that shall be a stepping-stone to progress?
What can I hope that shall unseal other eyes to the universal glory,
comfort others in the universal pain? We say: I do not want to be mewed
up here, while others are out where thrones and empires are sweeping by!
I do not want to parse verbs, add fractions, and mark ledgers, while
others are the poets, the singers, the statesmen, the rulers, and the
wealth-controllers of the world! We wish to step out of the trivial
experience into that which is significant. Each day brings uneasiness of
soul. "Man's unhappiness," says Carlyle, "as I construe it, comes of his
greatness; it is because there is an infinite in him, which with all his
cunning he cannot quite bury under the finite." Says Tennyson:
"_It is not death for which we pant,
But life, more life, and fuller, that we want_."
These aspirations are prophetic. Does a clod-hopper dream? We move
toward our desires. The wish for growth is but the call of Jesus to our
souls. We sometimes hear of the "limitations of life." What are they?
Who set them? Man himself, not God. The call of Jesus urges the soul of
man to possibilities which are infinite.
A large life is the fulfilment of God's ideal of our lives--the life
which, from all eternity, He has looked upon as possible for us. Could
any career be grander than the one that God has planned for us? God does
not think petty thoughts: He longs for grandeur for us all.
6. Jesus calls us by the spirit of the times. There is a growing
recognition of the affinity between God and the human soul. Religion has
changed in spirit as well as in form. It used to be considered a tract
in one's experience, and now it is perceived to be all of life--its
impetus, its central moving force, the reason for being, activity,
development, for ethical conduct, and for unselfish and joyous
helpfulness. Religion is more and more perceived to be, not a thing of
feeble sentiment, of restraint, of exaction, of meek subordination and
resignation, but the unfolding of the free human spirit to the
realization of its highest possibilities and its allegiance to that
which is eternal and supreme. The nineteenth century closes with the
thinker who is also a man of meditation and devotion. We offer to Heaven
the incense of aspiration, hope, research, talent, and imagination.
The chief thing toward which we are moving is, I believe, the
Enthronement of the Christ. Christ has always been, in the hearts of the
few, enthroned and enshrined. Even in the dark years of mediaeval
superstition and unrest, there were the cloistered ones who maintained
traditions of faith and did works of mercy, as there were knightly ones
who upheld the ministry of chivalry, and followed, though afar, the
tender shining of the Holy Grail. But now all the signs point to a great
and general recognition of the Christ--Christ to be lifted high on the
hands of the nations, to His throne above the stars!
A new spiritual note is to be heard in modern subjects of study, is
noticeable in all paths of intellectual prestige. History is no more
looked upon as the story of the trophies of warriors, conquerors, and
kings. History, rising out of dim mists, is seen to be the marching and
the countermarching of nations in the throes of progress and of social
change. It is not the story of princes alone, but of peasants as well;
the result of myriads of small, obscure lives; of changing conditions;
of the movements of great economic, psychologic, and spiritual forces.
Looking backward over the moving processional of the nations of the
earth, we may see how, without rest, without pause, through countless
ages, the myriad legions of men have been passing across the scene of
life--passing, and fading away!
"_All that tread
The globe are but a handful of the tribes
That slumber in its bosom_."
Empires have risen, and empires have decayed; dynasties have been
buried, and long lines of kings, wrapping stately robes about them, have
lain down to die. Thrones have been overturned, armies and navies have
been mustered and scattered, land and sea have been peopled and made
desolate, as the thronging tribes and races have lived their little life
and passed away. Babylon and Assyria, India and Arabia, Egypt and
Persia, Rome and Greece,--each of these has had its lands and conquests,
its song and story, its wars and tumults, its wrath and praise. Under
all the tides of conquest and endeavor but one fact shines supreme: the
steady progress of the Cross.
One principle of growth and development is being slowly revealed,--an
approach to symmetry and civic form, which is seen in freedom, justice,
popular education, the rise of masses, the power of public opinion, and
a general regard for life, health, peace, national prosperity, and the
individual weal. The day has passed when men merely lived, slept, ate,
fought; they are now involved in an intricate and progressive
civilization. Sociology, ethics, and politics are newly blazed pathways
for its development, its guidance, and its ideals. We are moving on to
new dreams of patriotism, of statesmanship, and of civil rule.
Literature, instead of being considered as merely an expression of the
primitive experiences of a race in its sagas, glees, ballads, dramas,
and larger works and songs, is more and more revealing itself as an
appeal to the Highest in the supreme moments of life. It is the
unfolding panorama of the concepts of the soul in regard to duty,
conduct, love, and hope. Literature asks: What do I live for? as well
as, How shall I speak forth beauty? How ought the soul of man to act in
an emergency? What is the best solution of the great human problems of
duty, love, and fate? The voices of Dante, Milton, Shakespeare,
Tennyson, and Browning sweep the soul upward to spiritual heights, and
answer some of the deepest questionings of the soul of man. And hence
literature is no longer merely a thing of vocabulary, of phrase, of
rhythm, of assonance, of alliteration, or of metrical and philosophical
form. It is a revelation of the progress of the soul, of its standards,
of its triumphs, its defeats, and its desires. It is the unfolding of
one's intellectual helplessness before the unmoved, calm passing of
years; of one's emotional inadequacy without God for adjudicator. It is
a direct search for God. One finds wrapped within it the mystery,
aspiration, and spiritual passion of the soul.
Science, no longer a dry assembling of facts and figures, is an
increasing revelation of the imagination, the exactness, the
thoroughness, and the great progressive plans of God. Evolution has
become a spiritual formula. The scientist looks out over the earth and
sky and sun and star. Against his little years are meted out vast
prehistoric spans; against his mastery of a few forms of life, stands
Life itself. Back of all, there looms up the great Figure of the
Originator of life, and of the forms of life; the Maker and Ruler of
them all. Each scientific fact helps exegesis and evidence. Each new
aspiration after truth becomes a form of prayer.
Yes, the whole world is being subtly and powerfully drawn to the worship
of the Christ. Never before was there so deep, genuine, and widespread a
Revival of Religion. It has not come heralded with great outcries, with
flame and wind, and revolution and upheaval; it has come as the great
changes that are most permanent come, in stillness and strength.
Throughout the world there is being turned to the service of religion
the highest training, the most intellectual power. Wars are being
wrought for freedom; the Church and the university are joining hands;
the rich and the poor are drawing near together for mutual help and
understanding; industry is growing to be, not only a crude force, brutal
and disregarding, but a high ministry to human needs; the home is
becoming more and more the guardian of faith and the shrine of peace;
business houses are taking upon them a religious significance; commerce
and trade are perceiving ethical duties. Armies are marching in the
name of Jehovah, and a great poet has this one message: "Lest
we forget!"
7. Jesus calls us by the future of the race. Life proceeds to life.
Eternity is what is just before. Immortality is a native concept for the
soul. Beyond this hampered half-existence, the soul demands life,
freedom, growth, and power.
We stand between two worlds. Behind us is the engulfed Past, wherein
generations vanish, as the wake of ships at sea. Before us is the
Future, in the dawn-mist of hovering glory, and surprise. Looking out
over eternity, that billowy expanse, do we not see rising, clear though
shadowy, a vast Permanence, Completion, Realization, in which the soul
of man shall have endless progress and delight? This is the Promise held
out by all the ages, and the future toward which all the thoughts and
dreams of man converge. It is glorious to be a living soul, and to know
that this great race--life is yet to be!
At the threshold of each new century stands Jesus, star-encircled, with
a voice above the ages and a crown above the spheres,--Jesus, saying,
FOLLOW ME!
III. PROCESSIONAL: THE CHURCH OF GOD
[AURELIA]
_The Church's one foundation
Is Jesus Christ her Lord;
She is His new creation
By water and the Word:
From heaven He came and sought her
To be His Holy Bride;
With His own blood He bought her
And for her life He died.
Though with a scornful wonder
Men see her sore opprest,
By schisms rent asunder,
By heresies distrest;
Yet saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, "How long?"
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song.
'Mid toil and tribulation,
And tumult of her war,
She waits the consummation
Of peace for evermore;
Till with the vision glorious
Her longing eyes are blest,
And the great Church victorious
Shall be the Church at rest._
SAMUEL JOHN STONE
FIRST: RECONSTRUCTION
The subject that is being carefully considered by many thinking men and
women to-day is this: the place and prospects of the Christian Church.
All about us we hear the cry that the Church is declining, and may
eventually pass away; that it does not gain new members in proportion to
its need, nor hold the attention and allegiance of those already
enrolled. Are these things true? If so, how may better things be brought
to pass? To share in the civilization that has come from nineteen
hundred years of the work of the Church, and to be unwilling to lift a
pound's weight of the present burden, in order to pass on to others our
precious heritage, is certainly a selfish and unworthy course. It is
better to ask, What is my work in the upbuilding of the Church? What can
I do to further the Royal Progress of the Church of God?
The root-failure of the organized Church to-day is its failure to share
in the growing life of the world. A growing life is one that is full of
new ideas, new experiences, new emotions, a new outlook over life--that
works in new ways, and that is full of seething and tumultuous energy,
enthusiasm, and hope. If we look out over the colleges, business
enterprises, periodicals, agriculture, manufacturing, and shipping of
the world, we find everywhere one story--growth, impetus, courage,
resources, vigorous and bounding life. Beside these things the average
church services to-day are both stupid and poky. The forces of religion
are neither guided nor wielded well. There is in most churches, however
we may dislike to own the fact, a decrease of interest and proportionate
membership, a waning prestige, a general air of discouragement, and a
tale of baffled efforts and of disappointed hopes.
The Church--and by this word I here mean the organized body of both
clergymen and laymen--is meant to be the supreme spiritual leader of the
world. It is meant to possess vigor, decision, insight, hope, and
intellectual power. But before it can accomplish its high and holy work,
a great reconstruction must begin. To help in this reconstruction, to
aid in vivifying, coördinating, and ruling the varied processes of
organized religion, is your work and mine.
1. The Church must rouse to a sense of its noble duties and exalted
powers. We underrate the Church. We are looking elsewhere for our
highest ideals, instead of claiming from the Church that spiritual
guidance and inspiration which should be its right to give. One of the
things that is a monumental astonishment to me, is that when we need
supplication, intercession, prayer for the averting of great personal or
national calamity, we flee to the Church, but we seldom think of the
Church when we need brains!
The Church should lead, and not follow, the great dreams of the world.
In the midst of our new national life we are sending all over the
country for the best-trained help and thought in every department of
government influence and control. Our problems of the day are
preëminently spiritual ones. Colonial control is not a question of
material ascendancy--it is a rule over the minds, hearts, and ideals of
men. Its moral significance is patent. We are called upon, not only to
import provisions, clothing, and household and industrial goods into our
new possessions; we are called upon to develop a higher sense of honor,
truth, honesty, and every-day morality. Scholars, working-men, business
men, farmers, and merchants are being consulted in regard to different
phases of our national advance, and every idea which their insight and
experience furnish is seized upon. But who is consulting the Church in
these concerns, except in reference to mere technical points? Who is
looking to the intellectual, moral, and spiritual standards of the
Church for guidance? We are to-day ruled spiritually, as well as
intellectually, by laymen, and in a way which is quite outside the
organized work of the Church.
2. The Church needs a more business-like organization and way of work.
It needs a more military spirit and discipline. The Church is diffuse
and loosely strung. There are in the United States alone about two
hundred and fifty-six kinds of religious bodies. There is no centralized
interest or work; there is no economic adjustment of funds; there is no
internal agreement as to practical methods. The result is a most
wasteful expenditure of force. Movements are not only duplicated, but
reproduced a hundred times in miniature, in one denomination after
another; special talent is restricted to a narrow field; buildings and
church-plants are multiplied, but lie largely disused; sects and
communities are at loggerheads on unessential points; all this--and the
world is not being saved! The Church fails to see openings for
aggressive work; it fails to seize strategic points; it does not carry a
well-knit local organization, with a husbanding of economic force; it
does not front the world in dead-earnest; it is not proud and honorable
in meeting its local debts; it loses progressive force, from lack of
knowledge as to how to judge men, and train them, and set them to work.
It also lacks greatly in office-force and in supplies. The gospel itself
is without price, but in the nature of things it cannot be proclaimed,
nor church-work efficiently carried on, without financial outlay. There
should be a more adequate equipment for this work. All other enterprises
need, without question, stationery, stenographers, literature for
distribution, office-rooms, office-hours, and a general arrangement
looking toward enlargement and progress. A busy pastor should have an
office-equipment just as much as a business man, and it should be
supported, as a business office is, out of the funds of the business
organization, _i.e._ the local church.
There should be, first of all, a united spirit, and a general
reorganization throughout the whole of evangelical Christendom, not
necessarily destroying denominational lines, with a view to quick
mobilization of energy in any direction most needed. What would a
general do, who, in looking over his troops, should find two hundred and
fifty-six provincial armies, not at ease or at peace with each other,
and yet expected to make war upon a common foe? Shall we not endeavor to
share in some broadly planned, magnificently executed scheme of
world-advance?
The Church has reached a point where a vast constructive work is to be
done. Its scattered parts must be knit into a powerful and aggressive
whole, to turn a solid front upon the evil of the world. The times are
ripe for a successor of Peter the Hermit, of Luther, Knox, Calvin,
Zwingli, Savonarola, Whitefield, Finney, Moody. Whether a great
preacher, theologian, or evangelist, he will certainly be a business
man, a man of vast energy and executive capacity, who shall perform this
miracle of organization of which many dream, and who shall set the
progress of the Church for a full century to come!
This united spirit should prevail, not only through the smaller bodies,
but between the Roman Catholic and Protestant communions. There has been
a distinct division between these two bodies, much mutual suspicion,
jealousy, and antagonism: it is only quite lately that Protestant and
Catholic leaders have been willing to work amicably together for great
common causes.
A new situation has arisen. In our new possessions we are confronted
with a large population who, whatever may be the reason, are
unquestionably not, as a whole, progressive, enlightened, educated, or
highly moral. The problem now is, not for Catholic and Protestant to
waste energy and spiritual strength in contending for mastery over each
other, but for them to unite in changing and bettering the condition of
our island peoples. What is past is past. Our present duty is to bring
peace, industry, intelligence, high ideals, and spiritual living to our
new countrymen. This is a work to fill the hands and heart of both
churches, and perhaps, in a common task, each may learn to understand
and regard the other as those should understand and regard each other
who have one Lord, one hope, one heaven.
3. The Church needs stronger and more gifted leaders. In every business
or intellectual enterprise to-day, there is an effort to place at the
head of each organization the most powerful and resourceful man whose
services can be obtained. Nothing in this age works, or is expected to
work, without the leadership of brains. A primary step, in a
far-reaching ecclesiastical policy, is to endeavor to draw into both
ministry and membership the most active and intellectual class. All
earnest souls can work, but not all can work equally effectively.
Particularly in the ministry, north, south, east, and west, men are
needed who are really _men_. This does not necessarily mean the men with
the longest string of academic degrees, the men who can write the best
poems or make the best speeches on public occasions; it means the
thinking men who are brave, talented, spiritual, and warm-hearted.
In the Report of one of the missionary Boards, I have recently read the
following stirring words. They refer to the work of missionaries in the
far north, one of whom has lately travelled a thousand miles over the
snow in a dog-sled: "He who follows that mining crowd must be more than
the minister, who would do well for towns in the west or elsewhere in
Alaska. He must be a man who, when night overtakes him, will be thankful
if he can find a bunk and a plate in a miner's cabin; he must travel
much, and therefore cannot be cumbered with extra trappings--must dress
as the miners do, and accept their food and fare. He must be no less in
earnest in his search for souls than they in search for gold. He must be
so 'furnished' that, without recourse to books or study-table, he can
minister acceptably to men who under the guise of a miner's garb hide
the social and mental culture of life in Eastern colleges and
professional days."
It is far from that land of frost and snow to the beautiful island of
Porto Rico, washed by tropical seas, through the streets of whose
capital there passes every day the carriage of the Governor, with its
white-covered upholstery and its livery of white. But I add this word:
The missionary sent to Porto Rico, be he Catholic or Protestant, must be
a man who can stand among statesmen and society men and women, as well
as one who can live and work among the humblest folk who lodge in
leaf-thatched huts along the roadside or far on lonely hills.
Representative men of ability, health, culture, and courage are being
chosen to carry on governmental work: it is idle to send provincial men
to the Church. What is locally true of the Church in Porto Rico is
fundamentally true all over the world, at home and abroad. Each
ministerial post to-day requires an imperial man. Not every post
requires the same sort of man, either in regard to general heredity or
education. Men are needed of the Peter-type, of the John-type, of the
Paul-type; it suffices that, they be men of unusual power, and well
fitted to their individual work.
4. The Church needs a better system for the proper placing of men. No
phase of the world's work can be carried on merely and simply because a
man is pious. In every phase of life, there is a constant shifting of
men according to temperament, ability, and general influence and power.
In the Church we must have a quick and decisive recognition of a man's
ability, and he must be set where that talent can work easily and
effectively. Churches are not all alike. There are no two alike. When we
think of it, what a ghoulish business "candidating" is! No scheme for
the right placing of men can be devised which does not place a great
deal of power in the hand of a few leading men. This power may be
abused, but ought not to be, if it were really looked upon as under
divine direction and inspiration. Cannot a great leader be inspired to
the choice of a man, as well as a great author to the choice of a word,
a rhyme? Comparatively few men thoroughly understand how to rate other
men, and to these few men, as in all other great enterprises, must be
given the power and authority to select and adjust. By this I do not
mean that a set of ecclesiastics will alone be adequate. Ecclesiastical
vision, like all other highly specialized vision, is partial, and does
not always see quite straight. There should also be called into play the
business ability and discernment of men of large business interests or
administrative gifts. Sooner or later the various religious
organizations will have to meet, in some better way than any thus far
formulated, this growing need.
5. We need a release of pressure on the abler men. Many a minister
to-day is a sort of community lackey. What other men are frankly too
busy to do, he is supposed to be cheerfully ready to do. The list of odd
jobs which fall to his lot would be ridiculous, were not their influence
upon his life and work so retrogressive and so sad. He lives to serve
others, but this vow of service is greatly imposed upon. If he is to
lead in intellectual and spiritual matters, he must be given fewer
errands to run, the financial burden of his church must be taken
absolutely from his shoulders, he must have a suitable salary, and his
time must be at least as carefully guarded as that of the average man.
Some calls he is bound to obey, at whatever cost of time or
strength,--illness, certain public duties, and real spiritual
needs,--but his life must not be at the mercy of cranks, or of idle
persons' whims.
6. We need a reorganization of preaching traditions. It is a tradition
that a minister must, in general, preach two set sermons every week,
give one informal week-day lecture, and be prepared to deliver, at any
moment, funeral addresses, anniversary speeches, "remarks," or to
perform other utterly impossible intellectual feats. Anyone who writes,
or who speaks in public, knows that the preparation of a half-hour
address which is worth anything requires a great deal of time. It
cannot ordinarily be "tossed off," and help men's souls. Only an
occasional inspiration, the result of a lifetime of thought and
experience, is born in this sudden way. Usually excellence is the result
of long and careful labor. The way to help this would seem to be a
constant interchange of preachers, not only in one denomination, but
among the various denominations, so that a really fine sermon would be
heard by many people, and fewer sermons would require to be written.
This is easily done in a large city or its vicinity. What congregations
need most is not altogether formal sermons, but thoughtful, helpful
talks containing a fresh, uplifting, and spiritual outlook over life,
with a practical bearing on the occasions and duties of life. The work
of both Frederick Robertson and Horace Bushnell has this direct and
vital tone.
Ministers must study more. If they are freed from many tasks now put
upon them, it is not unreasonable to ask that this time be put on more
careful thinking. Too many a minister of to-day is, intellectually,
something of a flibbertigibbet. His sermons do not take hold, because
they have not the roots to take hold with. How many ministers possess,
for instance, a scholarly knowledge of human nature or of the deeper
aspects of redemption? Yet these things he ought to know. There is a
large amount of intensely interesting, though spiritually undigested,
material for a minister in a book like William James's _Varieties of
Religious Experience_.
7. Greater care must be taken of the rural church. Any one interested in
a great ecclesiastical polity must surely recognize the ultimate
possibilities of our rural regions. Here are growing up the leading men
and women of to-morrow. Ideals and inspirations set upon their hearts
will bear fruit a thousand-fold. Hence there should be a definite
arrangement by which a certain portion of the preaching time of the
really able preachers shall be placed each year in some small and remote
place. Several scattered country churches might unite for these
services. Let such a man also make helpful suggestions for neighborhood
social and intellectual life. While he is in the village, let the
country pastor go to town, browse in libraries, art-collections, hear
music, and get a general quickening of interest and inspiration. Let
each compare notes with the other. They will both gain by this
interchange.
8. There is too little recognition of individual talent in the Church.
Too few workers are set at work which they know how to do, and the
untaught rush at tasks which angels fear to touch. We have myriads of
Sabbath-school teachers, but how many men or women really know how to
teach a little child? The man is asked to speak or pray in
prayer-meeting, who cannot possibly do it well, but no notice is taken
of the fact that he thoroughly understands public accounts. A man is
asked to subscribe ten dollars to a church affair, who cannot afford it,
but his spiritual insight might save the impending church quarrel.
People come and go in the churches, and many, I am convinced, drift away
because they are never asked for anything but money for the support and
interest of the Church. In no other sort of organization is this true.
Even in the summer camp or mountain hotel or Atlantic liner, when any
pastime or entertainment is suggested, the first thing to discover is,
What can each one _do_? One, who has the gift of organization and
management, "gets it up"; one sings; one reads or recites; one writes a
bright bit of verse; another smooths out rising jealousies, or bridges,
by a little tact, the abyss of caste. Why do we hide so many pretty
talents under a bushel, when the church-door swings behind us? Why do we
substitute such strange and foolish tasks, particularly for women? What
would leading lawyers and doctors do, I wonder, if they were asked, as
busy women often have been, to spend a precious morning in a church-room
sorting cast-off clothes?
In every church, large or small, there are both men and women who are
talented in a special way; who could bring gifts of training and
experience to bear upon the problems and opportunities of the Church.
Tell me, in prayer or speech-making, formal or social occasion, pastor
or people, do we often bring our very deepest, tenderest, most inspiring
emotional or intellectual life? It is not a whit more spiritual to be
stupid than to be bright. This is what our church-meetings should
be--not a formal and very dull round of prayers and set remarks, more or
less pointless; they ought to be a yielding-up of our heart's best life
to others.
9. We need, as a Church, a deeper spiritual life. We need the Power of
the Holy Ghost. In spite of all the sorrow of the world, sorrow both of
a personal nature and that which touches whole communities, there is
only one real burden upon the heart of earnest men and women: it is our
own inadequate representation of Christianity,--the disheartening
difference between what we practise and what we profess. When the Church
of God is in reality a powerful and hard-working body of sincere,
honest, and loving people, the world will soon be saved!
SECOND: ADHERENCE
By the question, Why join the Church?--I do not mean alone, Why add my
name to a church-roll? I mean, Why give myself, my powers, my education,
my love, my loyalty, to advance the progress of the Church?
There is nothing we resent more than a waste of ourselves. To attract
our service, there must be in the Church an inner vitality, a moving
and spiritual fire.
1. The Church embodies the spiritual dreams of the world. Man does not
live by bread alone; he lives by imagination, and by religious powers.
In the Church of God, the spiritual imagination of man reached its
highest field of energy, and has brought forth its most triumphant
works. The great art of the world has centred about the Christian
Church--its architecture and much of its noblest speech. Imagine a world
in which every work which was inspired by the Church, or by the concepts
of religion embodied in it, should be left out. What would we then lack?
We would lack the greatest works of Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian,
Francesca, Botticelli, Murillo; we would not see the cathedrals of
Milan, Strasburg, or Cologne; we would never read the poems of Caedmon,
Milton, or Dante. The hamlet would be without a spire; philanthropy
would be almost unknown; there would be neither night-watch nor
morning-watch of united prayer. We should have no processional of
millions churchward on the Lord's Day, no hymns to stir our souls to joy
and praise, no anthems or oratorios, no ministers, no ecclesiastical
courts and assemblies, no church conventions, no church-schools,
religious societies, nor religious press. All these works and
institutions proclaim the glory of belief, and hand down the religious
traditions and the spiritual aspirations of the generations of men.
Shall we let others share in the mystery and triumph while we stand
apart, silent, unapproving, and alone?
The dreams of the Church are high and holy. There is the dream of
Freedom, of the Freedom of the Soul. It is an inspiring thought this,
the essential democracy of the race. We do not find intellectual
equality of souls. We see each man or woman differently circumstanced,
differently gifted, differently trained. Yet each may say, I am
spiritually free! To me also is given the opportunity of development, of
majesty of character, of high service. The soul is the thrall of none;
nothing can bind it to spiritual serfdom.
Next, there is the dream of Allegiance. Some one has well said: "Wouldst
thou live a great life? Ally thyself with a great cause." Allegiance is
devotion of the whole of ourselves to a leader, a cause. We can no more
go through the world without allying ourselves to something than we can
go through it and live nowhere. If the object of our allegiance be a
high one, if the ideal be a grand one, our lives are in a constant
process of development toward that height, that grandeur. Each act of
faith becomes an impetus to progress. We are daily enriched by the
experience of mere obedience. To obey and follow are acts in the
universal process.
If, on the other hand, we ally ourselves to that which is lower than
ourselves, by the very act we are dragged down. No one can remain upon
even his own level, who is in obedience and devotion to that which is
below him. Allegiance to a Higher is one of the trumpet-calls of the
world. It has been the rally of all armies, of all legions, of all
crusades. The great commander is, by his very position, a grouper of
other men, the ruler of their thoughts, their deeds, their dreams. His
power to call and to sway is beyond his own ideas of it. How otherwise
could it be that out of one century one heart calls to another--out of
one age, proceeds the answer to the cry of ages gone?
The lover of music to-day allies himself to Bach, to Haydn, to Mozart,
to Wagner, by his appreciation, his sympathy, his understanding of what
they have done. He acknowledges their control of his musical self by his
efforts to interpret their work to others, and to create new works which
shall be inspired by their ideals. Thus he acknowledges their control of
his own powers. Such control over the spirit of man is that of the
Church over the social body; it stirs the spiritual aspiration of man,
it directs his ambition. It fixes upon a standard, the Cross; upon a
Hero, the Christ, and reaches unto all the world its arm of power,
drawing unto itself the loyalty, the faith, the affection, and the royal
service of successive generations of mankind.
The dream of Redemption. It is not technical creeds for which the
Church as a whole stands, but for certain vital principles which concern
the life of the soul, and its relation to God and man. Virtue has always
been a dream of the heart. But how inaccessible is virtue, with a past
of unforgiven sin! The height of our ideal of redemption is conditioned
upon the depth of our realization of sin. To the shallow, redemption is
an easy-going process, a way of healing the scratches which the world
makes. To the deep and serious-minded, redemption involves the
regeneration of the race. Only the ransomed can truly work, love,
or praise!
There is one sorrow which God never calls us to--the sorrow of a wasted
life. By redemption, the Church reveals not only a saving from
rebellion, unbelief, and crime, but redemption from sloth, from
indifference, from lack of purpose, and from low aims. Redemption looms
up as the great economic force of Time--that which inspires and
preserves our powers, directs our energies, creates opportunity, brings
to pass our most high and holy desires, and fills life with satisfying
and abiding things.
Beauty, harmony, and affection are the natural laws of the moral world.
There is no despair where there has been no disobedience. _Christus
Salvator_ stands out before the world in majesty and power. Virtue is
enthroned in a universe which is beneficent.
The dream of Fellowship. The Church is the great social body. We can
never live our best life in the world, and stand outside the Church.
There is something vital in personal contact, and in social affiliation.
It strengthens the best and otherwise most complete work. The Christian
Church is a body of allies, whose work is the upbuilding of the kingdom
of God. We do not realize how great a bond this is. We have our own
church centre, our own denomination, our own local interests. But by and
by a great occasion arises--a revival which sweeps the country, a
reunion of two long-divided parties, an Ecumenical Council, a Chinese
persecution--and suddenly there arises before the mind's eye a glimpse
of that Church which girdles the world, whose emissaries are in every
country, whose voices speak in every tongue. We perceive that
everywhere are
"_Swelling hills and spacious plains
Besprent from shore to shore with steeple-towers,
And spires whose silent finger points to heaven_."
Says Wordsworth also:
"_They dreamt not of a perishable home,
Who thus could build_."
Many an ideal state has been thought out, in which fellowship should be
the root of social progress. But in what state is the proffered
fellowship like that of the communion of saints? Each has his share of
work and dreams; each has his endowment of talent and of opportunity;
each has his aspirations and supreme hope. The joys of one are the joys
of all. The sorrows of one are the sorrows of all. The triumphs of one
are the triumphs of all. The World-burden is the task set to be removed.
The World-upbuilding in love, joy, peace, and truth is the final
endeavor. This community of interest is the strongest coalition the
world has yet known.
There are those who say, I prefer to worship by myself! One might as
well say, I prefer to fight in battle by myself! There is a time for
personal worship, and there is a time for social worship. Alone, the
heart meets God. Alone, its prayers for individual needs and longings
are offered up. Alone, it asks for blessings on the individual life and
work. But the personal life is only a fragmentary part of the life
universal. Above the ages rings an Over-song of praise. From shrines and
cathedrals, from chapels, churches, tents, and caves, there arises, day
after day, this incense of united prayer, from a vast and
heaven-uplifted throng! Each of us would say, Canopied under
world-skies, I, too, would join this chorus of adoring love!
The dream of Permanence. The immortality of the Church is akin to the
immortality of the soul. It is a connection which is never severed. When
we enter the visible body of the Church on earth, we connect ourselves
with the invisible hosts of the Church on high. We enter a company
which shall never be disbanded nor dismayed. Something subtle and
eternal seems to lay hold of our spirits, and to lift them even to God's
Throne. For this Time has been, and for this Time now is: to present
spotless before Him the innumerable company of the redeemed, the
lion-hearted who, armed by faith and shod with fire, in robes of azure
and with songs of praise, shall stand before Him even for evermore!
2. The Church is the centre of a great circle of remembrance. One of
Constable's famous paintings represents the Cathedral of Salisbury
outlined against a storm-swept sky, with a lovely rainbow arched beyond
it. So stands the Church athwart the landscape of our lives. In each
community the church is like a living thing! How every stone grows
significant and dear! How the lights and shadows of its arches, the dim,
faint-tinted windows, the carvings and tracings, the atmosphere and
coloring, all sink into the heart, and make a background for memories
that never pass away! Who ever forgets the tones of the old organ, the
voice of the choir, the accent, look, and bearing of one's early pastor,
the rustle of the leaves without the window, the rush of the fresh
summer air, the soft falling of the rain?
The path to the church is worn by the feet of generations. Thither the
aged go up, and thither the laughing, romping children. Weary men and
women bear their burdens thither; triumphant souls bring shining faces
and uplifted brows; love and dreams cluster round the church, and the
life of the soul, silent and hidden, is subtly acted upon by persuasions
and convictions that rule the heart amid the fiercest storms and
temptations of the world. The church is a sanctuary and shield; it is an
emblem of strength and peace. Three angels stand before its altar: Life,
Love, Death! Hither is brought the babe for the christening, hither
comes the wedding procession, and here are laid, with farewell tears,
the quiet dead. Day by day within that church, as one grows to manhood
and womanhood, one enters into race-experiences, and feels, however
vaguely, that the Holy Spirit abides within them all.
3. The Church affords the best outlet for moral activity. Where shall we
put our moral powers? In what work shall they centre? From what point
shall they diverge? Scattered action is irresolute; it is the
centripetal powers that count.
The Church stands ready to engage, to the full, the moral powers of man.
It can rightly distribute the spiritual vitality of the world. It rouses
the moral emotions and affections, and gives scope for contrition,
adoration, and thanksgiving,--the Trisagion of the heart.
In the press and stir of life we sometimes forget that the highest
emotions of which we are capable are those of joy, praise, and prayer.
Joy is a heavenward uplift of life--deep happiness of spirit. Praise is
an appreciation of the greatness and mercy of the Infinite. Worship is
the outpouring of the whole nature, an ascription of blessing, glory,
honor, and power and majesty to God. It flows from the religious
imagination, and is the supreme offering of the intellectual as well as
of the emotional life.
The Church is a body ministrant: it has received the accolade of
spiritual service. It stands among the world's forces, as one of giving,
not of gain. It holds within its scope both a teaching and a training
power. It is the school of the soul, the illuminator of the meaning and
discipline of life. Abélard is said to have attracted thirty thousand
students to Paris by his teaching. But the Church to-day calls into its
assemblies fully one-third of the millions of the world. They are held
by its tenets, guided by its ideals, thrilled by its hopes, and set to
its works of charity and mercy. The highest philanthropy is but a
scientific renewal and adaptation of work which has had its start,
primarily, in the Christian Church. Wealth is its vicegerent, and from
the adherents to the Church fall largely the contributions to great
philanthropic causes.
Take the work of Missions alone: Has there ever before been a body which
attempted to bring the whole world into its fellowship, to make known
everywhere its ideals, and to share with all living a spiritual
inheritance? "The Evangelization of the World by this Generation" is
one of the most sublime thoughts which has come to the race.
4. There is a large amount of ability in the world which the Church
needs, but which has not yet been thoroughly enlisted in church service.
Take business energy, executive ability. It is a common saying, that
business men are not interested in the Church, and do not work well in
it. Why? Because there is not yet in the Church enough of the active and
economic spirit to make a business man feel at home in it, or approve of
its ways of work.
This weak spot in the Church, which business men mock at, or fret at,
exactly reveals the work that is waiting for business men to do.
Business to-day takes intellectual grasp and insight--promptness,
energy, enterprise, and common-sense. These qualities are needed at once
in the conduct of the Church.
A second class greatly needed by the Church is the university-bred. Many
college graduates are church-members--some are even active workers. But
until lately the universities as a whole have stood rather indifferently
apart from the Church. They have somewhat indulgently regarded it as one
more historic institution for preserving myth and legend. To them the
Christ-life has meant little more than the Beówa-myth, the Arthur-saga,
the Nibelungen cycle, the Homeric stories, the Thor-and-Odin tales!
Druids, fire-worshippers, moon-dancers, and Christian communicants have
been comparatively studied, with a view to understanding the
race-progress in rite and religious form.
This spirit is changing. The most remarkable aspect of the intellectual
life of to-day is the rise of faith in the universities. Like the
incoming of a great tidal wave at sea is the wave of spiritual insight
and religious aspiration that is rolling over the colleges of our land.
The whole intellectual structure of the Church is approaching
reconstruction--its doctrines, creeds, tenets. This reconstruction
cannot possibly be effected by schools of theology alone. At every point
the theologian needs assistance from the man of science. Philosophy,
psychology, ethics, history, literature, sociology, language, natural
science, and archaeology are all bound up in an old creed and must be
looked into, ere a new statement can take form. Their data must be known
at first-hand. Hence there is no intellectual specialty which may not be
made invaluable to the Church.
Too often religion has been a matter of hearsay or dogma. A bitter
conflict has always raged between theology and the latest word of
science. The Church cannot afford to be without the scientific thinkers
of the race. The time has come when there is everywhere heard the call
of Jesus to men of mind.
What work awaits the university man or woman? It is to help free the
Church from traditions and superstitions which scholarship cannot
uphold. It is to throw fresh vigor and intellectual vitality into the
services of the Church. It is to build up a hymnology which shall be
noble and poetic in expression; it is to contribute a great religious
literature to the world. It is the work of educated men and women to add
their insight, their zeal for truth, their scholarship, their training
and ideals to the Christian community: to sweep thought and practice out
of ancient ruts, to clarify the spiritual vision of the world, and to
present new aspects of truth and new goals of human endeavor! Let
Research join hands with Prayer.
A third class which the Church needs to-day is that of the working-man.
The hand of the working-man is the hand that has really moulded history.
Working-men lead a brave and self-sacrificing life. From their toil come
the necessaries and many of the comforts of the race. The man of labor
knows the root-problems of the industrial world. While all his industry
and skill, all his courage, heroism, and strong-armed life are so
largely alienated from the Church, the Church is deprived of one of the
fundamental sources of inspiration and growth. The tree of progress can
never grow, except it has labor-roots. It is absolutely essential for
the health of the Church that every form of human energy be represented.
Suppose that by some great revival a very large number of working men
and women could suddenly be added to the membership of the Church. What
would happen? Would there not be at once a return to more simplicity of
life? There are two currents at work always in society--emulation and
sympathy. Rightly used, each is for the social good. If all classes of
men and women worked side by side in the Church, many great social
differences would become adjusted.
5. It holds sway over the fortunes of the home. Where, outside of the
Church, will you find the ideal conception of marriage, and the really
united and happy home? The Church makes for domestic happiness, because
it goes straight to the roots of life and plants happiness where
happiness alone can grow. More and more the Church is lifting the
standards of a noble, proud, pure, and rejoicing married life. Its ideal
of human love is sacred, because founded on the deeper love of the soul
in God. The Church is drawing hosts of young people under the shelter of
its teaching, and is placing before men and women ideals which cannot
fail to make their mark upon the social standards of the times. It
stands for purity, for patience, for tenderness, for the love of little
children, for united education and endeavor, for mutual hopes and
dreams, for large public service.
6. It is the militant force of time. We speak of the Church militant,
and of the Church triumphant. For us, to-day, the Church militant.
To-morrow, triumph comes. Armies have been, and armies shall be, but the
hosts of this world fight against material foes, and largely for
material ends. It is the glory of the Church militant that its conquests
are spiritual and its victories are eternal. Its fight is chiefly
against the inner, not the outer foe--against sin and wrong-doing,
impatience, strife, anger, clamor, meanness, evil-speaking, wrath. It is
the foe of tyranny and its heel is upon the head of the oppressor and
the avenger. Its banner flies over every country and has been carried
through tribulation, through sorrow, through danger, and through death
to the remotest parts of the yet-known world. Its troops are legion,
marching from the far distances of the past, and extending out to the
far confines of the eternal years.
7. It is the ascendant force of the future. Rightly conducted, it will
surely absorb the vigor of the world. To stand apart from it is to be
out of step with the march of nations. The processional of progress
to-day is the processional of the historic influence of the Church. What
force has there been in time gone by, which has lived and so greatly
grown for nineteen hundred years? Nations have risen, and nations have
decayed. States, once prominent, have passed into the oblivion of the
years. Plato and Pericles, Socrates and Sophocles, Philip and Alexander,
the Caesars, the Georges, and the Louis have passed away. Their
politics have passed from our following; their empires are no more. But
through these centuries of change, the Church of God has risen stronger,
more powerful year by year; stretching its arm out to the uttermost
parts of the earth; levying tribute on the islands of the sea; enlisting
all ages and conditions, and looking out over coming generations--not as
a waning, but as a growing and ever-increasing power. Think you that
such a Church can die? Think you that any spiritual power aloof from
this Church can be as efficient as if it were allied with it?
These, you say, are the reasons why one's allegiance should be given to
the Christian Church. Let us now look back over the processional as it
marches across the dim years. Saints, martyrs, confessors, evangelists,
and singing children have joined its historic train. Is there any other
processional in the world's history which, numbering such millions and
millions, began with only one? When the Christ enters the arena of
history, He comes as one to lead myriad deep-lived souls! Next, there
follow twelve. They, two by two, take up the marching line. Think of
their deeds and influence, of their inspiring power! What would have
been the record of those obscure fishermen of Galilee and of their
simple friends, had they refused to ally themselves with the leader who
called for their allegiance and their obedient love?
Next follow the early disciples. Tried by scourging, by stripes, by
poverty, by imprisonment, by all manner of danger and trial, they yet
remain true. Then follow the prophets, those whose clear vision looks
out on things unknown and things unseen. To the prophet is intrusted the
ministry of hope and inspiration. Then follow the martyrs who yield life
for the cause they profess. In torture at the stake, and on the cross,
by fire and by sword, they show forth an unshaken and undying faith.
Then follow matrons and virgins, babes and children, reformers and
mediaeval saints with a convoy of angels, singing as they march. These
are the Church triumphant, the Church above. But to-day we have among us
the Church militant--the long processional of congregations, elders,
deacons, members, ministers and missionaries, young people, and workers
in every phase of enterprise and reform. These all communicant on earth
are the Church militant, whose work is to keep alive the traditions of
the past and to march onward to an endless victory and to an unceasing
praise. Who, looking upon that processional, filing through the ages of
the years of man, would say that there may be a parliament of religions?
A parliament of boasts and pomps, of good precepts and queries, of
misuses and half-truths, of superstitions and infinite idolatries, no
doubt; but there is but one religion, though it be perverted in many
ways and rightly revealed at divers times; and there is but one God,
infinite, true, holy, just, loving, and eternal. Where now are the gods
of Hamath and of Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Bow thy head,
O Buddha! and do thou, O Zoroaster! hang thy head. Isis and Osiris grow
dim; Jove nods in heaven; the pipe of Pan is dumb; Thor is silent in the
northern Aurora; the tree of Igdrasil waves in midnight; Confucius is
pale; Muhammad is dust. Darkness is over the skirts of the gods of the
past--gloom receives them, Erebus holds outstretched arms. But the Lord
God, Jehovah, the Ancient of Days, encanopied in space and glory, leads
onward to the end of years His people in a mighty train, to a rule and
kingdom which shall know no end. May thou and I, dear friend-soul, in
whatsoever land thou be, may thou and I be numbered in that throng!
IV. THE WORLD-MARCH: OF KINGS
[DIE WACHT AM RHEIN]
_Jesus shall reign where'er the sun
Doth his successive journeys run;
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
Till moons shall wax and wane no more.
People and realms of every tongue
Dwell on His love with sweetest song;
And infant voices shall proclaim
Their early blessings on His Name.
Blessings abound where'er He reigns;
The prisoner leaps to lose his chains,
The weary find eternal rest,
And all the sons of want are blest.
Let every creature rise and bring
Peculiar honors to our King;
Angels descend with songs again,
And earth repeat the loud Amen_.
ISAAC WATTS
The elemental force of some men is appalling. They lift their
eyes--thrones tremble; they wave a hand--empires rise or fall. It comes
over the heart of many a man at times, Here am I, running my little
office, shop, factory, fire-engine, or professional circuit, with no
influence that I can see, beyond my borough or my barn-yard. But in the
world there are other men, no taller than I, no older than I--men born
within a stone's throw of where I was born--whose hand is on the fate of
nations, and whose decrees are universal law!
It is deeply impressive, the way in which one man, born not above
myriads of his fellows, begins to rise until by and by he stands head
and shoulders above his generation! What is the inner vitality which
presses him upward? What is this hidden difference in men by which one
remains in the by-eddies of life, and another sweeps out on the crest of
the rising tide of history?
Much of it is in the man himself. To be kingly is inborn. There is the
nature that refuses to be shut up to the petty, that will not content
itself with one street or town, that steps out into life from childhood
with the step of the conqueror, and walks among us; one who was born a
king. To be a king, one must have the powers of organization,
combination, discipline, direction, statesmanship. These qualities
enlarge as one passes from the particular to the general, from the
personal to the range of natural forces, emergencies, and wide pursuits.
Dominion is an inherent right of the soul. In all our hearts, did we but
listen and understand, there are adumbrations of kingly ancestors, and
the latent stirrings of kingly powers.
Which of us would want to be born at all, if we should be told in
advance, You shall never control anything? You shall never have the
slightest chance of self-assertion, of impressing your own individuality
upon the world? One might as well be born without hands or feet!
Kingship involves ascendancy and authority. Both are truly gained, not
by chicanery, but by personal force. There is a natural gift of
leadership, which is strengthened by endurance, perseverance, and
ceaseless hard work.
Kingship also involves a larger vision. One man looks at his
shoe-strings; another man looks at the stars. The first step toward rule
is to find a point of view from which one can look widely out over the
race. This is the primary value of education: it is not that books are
important, but that men are--the men who have swayed history--and books
tell of such men. Not the library is inspirational, but the life-spirit
of mankind, bound up in even dusty papyrus-rolls, or set on
clay-tablets of four thousand years ago. He who would serve his times
politically must first understand, so far as may be, all times.
Another basis of supremacy is conviction. Leadership belongs to those
who believe. The man who has a definite policy to propose, and a
definite way of working for it, soon outstrips the man who is just
looking about.
Kingship involves an iron will. An iron will does not imply necessarily
ugliness of temper, obstinacy, or pig-headedness. It is simply a
straight-forward, dauntless, and invincible way of doing things. What I
say, you must do, is back of all successful leadership, whether in the
home or in the world-arena. The man who is master of the obedience of
his child, or of his fellows, is master of their fate. We are all at the
mercy of the strong-willed.
Growth is development in right assertion; it is the assumption of
legitimate responsibility and command. To be lowly of heart does not
mean to be inefficient; to be humble does not necessarily mean to be
obscure. Luther and Lincoln were both of a childlike humility of heart.
What Christianity has not emphasized in the past, but what it must now
begin to emphasize, is the reality of dominion--its value, and its
relation to the kingdom of God. For centuries, religion has too often
been thought of, too often spoken of, as if it were the last resource of
the heart, A brilliant young professor of psychology not long ago
referred to religion as something to flee to, by those who were
disappointed in love! We have spoken so much of "giving up," that the
Christian life has wrongly seemed to mean the giving-up of one's
individuality, interests, powers. As well might we expert the deep sea
to give up its rolling tides, or the air to give up its four winds, as
to expect the heart of man to part with its human hopes!
This is not a right interpretation of life. When Nature plants an oak in
the forest, she does not say, Be a lichen, an _Eozoön canadense_, a
small ground-creeping thing! She says, Grow! Become a tall, strong,
mountain tree! When we hold our baby in our arms, we do not say, My
child, be good for nothing! Neither does God say, Be nothing, do
nothing! Just exist as humbly and meekly as you can! He says, "Quit you
like men!"
Each of us is born for a sceptre and a crown. It gives a strange new
thrill to life, to realize that we may be just as ambitious as we
please, that we may long earnestly for high things, and work for them,
if our inmost desire is not for self but for God. This new idea of
ambition should be at the root of education and of religious teaching.
Piety is not a namby-pamby sentiment; it is a great intellectual force.
Desire is architectural: our dreams should be of prestige and power.
True ambition is the reaching-out of the soul toward preordained
things. What else is the meaning of our love for excellence, our
insatiable yearning for perfection? "What is excellent," says Emerson,
"is permanent." To excel in any work is to combine in that work the most
enduring qualities of human labor; to excel in any place is to shine
forth with the great qualities of the race. Hence, ambition has a
rightful place.
The power of a king is the power of control. All about us are moving the
great forces of the universe--physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual.
What we can do with them is a test of our power. Life is in many ways a
majestic trial of one's power to command.
Three men buy adjoining tracts of land. One man mines coal upon his
acres. He amasses wealth and influence because he is in control of the
Carboniferous age and the human need of light and heat. The second man
tills his ground and raises wheat and corn. He is in command of living
nature--of the rotation of seasons, of wind, frost, rain; he uses them
to provide food for those that hunger and must be fed. The third man
lies under the trees. He digs no mine. He plants and reaps no corn and
grain. He simply lies under the trees, gazes into the sky and dreams.
Men call him idle, but he is not so. One day he writes a book. It lives
a thousand years. His control is over the spirit of man. He has entered
into its hopes and sorrows, its aspirations and its dreams.
This story is a Parable of Kings. Such is the power of control that is
granted to each new soul. Each child is bequeathed at birth a sceptre
and a crown.
The first rule is parental. The primitive monarchy is in the home. A
young baby cries. The trained nurse turns on the light, lifts the baby,
hushes it, sings to it, rocks it, and stills its weeping by caresses and
song. When next the baby is put down to sleep, more cries, more soothing
and disturbance, and the setting of a tiny instinct which shall some day
be will--the power of control.
The grandmother arrives on the scene. When baby cries, she plants the
little one firmly in its crib, turns down the light, pats and soothes
the tiny restless hands that fight the air, watches, waits. From the
crib come whimpers, angry cries, yells, sobs, baby snarls and sniffles
that die away in a sleepy infant growl. Silence, sleep, repose, and the
building of life and nerve and muscle in the quiet and the darkness. The
baby has been put in harmony with the laws of nature--the invigoration
of fresh air, sleep, stillness--and the little one wakens and grows like
a fresh, sweet rose. The mother, looking on, learns of the ways of
God with men.
Firmness is the true gentleness. There is a form of authority which must
be as implacable as the divine decree. Mercy is the requiring of
obedience to law; it is not a cajoling training in law-defiance, which
shall one day break the mother's heart and upset the social relations of
the world.
The next rule is personal: the direction of one's own energy in the way
of one's own will. The child moves his hands, his feet; he turns his
rattle up and down, and shakes it about. He discovers that he can pull
things toward him and push them away; that he can reach things that are
higher than his head. He begins to creep. He touches things that are the
other side of the world from him, that is, across the room. He plucks
fibres from the rug or carpet; swallows straws, buttons, and little
strings. He pounds, and sets up vibrations of pleasant noise; he clashes
ten-pins, he blows his whistle, squeezes his rubber horse and man,
rattles the newspaper, flings about his bottle and his blocks. He feels
himself a self-directing power, and at times asserts this power against
the will of those who would make him do what he does not want to do. The
love of rule is in him, and he lays his little hands on power.
Education determines whether this power shall be for good or for evil.
We cannot take away power from any child--he shall move the affairs of
nations--but we can direct this love of power, or crush it; strengthen
it, or weaken it; turn it toward the highest help of man, or deflect it
to tyranny, cruelty, and crime.
Child-training is guidance in the way of God's decrees. It is not the
setting of one's own ideas upon a little child; it is not the
gratification of one's own love of power; it is not the satisfaction of
one's own self-conceit. It is a firm, humble striving to carry on the
harmony of the universe: to bring up the child to love order, justice,
mercy, and truth.
Education is the teaching of how to direct energy for the universal
good. It lays hold of a child and, out of his destructive instincts--the
instinct to bang, and pull, and tear to pieces--it develops creative
power, the inventive genius that lies hid within him. It takes the pure
love of noise, and trains it to pitches, harmonies, intervals, and makes
a musician of the boy who used to whack his spoon. It takes the alphabet
and the early pothooks, and the boy by and by combines them into
literature. The apples and the peaches which he is taught to exchange
justly are by and by transmuted into trade and commerce. He brings
cargoes from Cuba and Ceylon, trades with Japan and Hawaii, and the
Asiatic isles. The energy of block-building is developed into sculpture,
architecture, and civil engineering. The stamping of his foot in anger
is directed to determination, perseverance, the rule of the brave
spirit, the unconquerable will. Nothing is more marvellous than this
grave upbuilding.
The next rule is social: the direction of personal energy that shall
leave a distinct impress on other lives. It is long before we realize
that for each exertion we are responsible; that what we do is held
against us in strict account, not only by fate, which builds our destiny
for us out of our own deeds, but by every other person with whom we come
in contact. Our fellows check off daily against us so much vitality, so
much magnanimity, so much idleness, cruelty, spite, goodness,
selfishness, meanness, or loving-kindness. Life holds a record of our
every deed, and from no least responsibility can we make our escape. We
are the prisoners of events which we ourselves have brought about.
The discipline of ethics, of home-training, of the Church, and of
religious teaching is addressed fundamentally to this social
consciousness of ours, this responsibility which we cannot evade. To
bear rule aright is to go forth into the world to build up, in
authority, talent, and influence, the kingdom of God.
1. There is the agricultural phase of social rule. A man tills a farm.
It has upon it trees, streams, woodland, and meadow-land. He may
rule--to what end? If he rules it for his own personal ends--merely to
fill his granaries, and lay up gold--he rules it for miserliness, with a
sort of thrift that is as passing in inheritance as the flying
April rain.
Or he may say: I will keep my land in trust for God. I will hold rain
and frost, heat and cold, storm and sun, in fee simple for the race. My
grain shall pass out into the world's mart, sent forth with love and
prayer. Such a farmer is the incarnation of moral grandeur. Let men
laugh, if they will, at his overalls and plough, his wide-brimmed hat,
his simple manners, and his homely, racy speech. His feet are by the
furrow, but his heart is in heaven, and his treasure is there also. Says
the author of _Nine Acres on the Hillside_, "The agriculturist walks
side by side with the Creator."
There is a fine integrity which lies in land. There is a resolution
which is concerned with crops. There is a wisdom born of wind and
weather. There is a power which comes from the constant revival of life
in seed and fruit and flower. This man is King of God's Acres. Let him
not despise his kingdom, and may the succession not depart from
his house!
2. There is a rule which is industrial. A man is sent into the world to
wield a hammer, a saw, and run an engine. If his rule over his hammer is
weak, if he does not know how to use it well, if its blow is uncertain
and its result unskilled, then he passes from the line of kings, and is
subject, instead of in authority, in his own domain. He is captive to a
piece of steel or wood. So with every tool of trade. Each man who
conquers his tool is a ruler--is in control of elements of human
happiness and good. The roof-mender, the furnace-builder, the
cloth-weaver, the yarn-spinner, the steel-worker, the miller--do not
these all keep the race warmed, and clad, and fed?
3. The next rule is commercial. Trade itself is neither menial nor
demeaning. Rightly used, it is a high form of control. People have
things to buy and things to sell. The maker is handicapped. He cannot
travel elsewhere to dispose of what he has. The buyer is ignorant. He
does not know where to go, or cannot go, at first-hand, for the shoes,
the hat, the reaper, the bricks, the lumber, the stationery which he
must use. There appears upon the scene the man of observation, of
investigation, of capital, of shrewdness, of resources. With one hand he
gathers the products of the Pacific and of the South Seas. With the
other, he takes the output of the Atlantic seaboard, the Gulf States,
the Mississippi valley, the northern lakes and hills. He sets up an
establishment, he puts forth runners, advertisements, and show-windows.
He stocks shelves, decks counters, and employs clerks, packers,
salesmen, cash-boys, buyers, and department heads. The man who wants to
buy, buys from a man across the sea and yet is served in his own town.
The man of commercial power is a man of world-wide rule. He may lay up
in banks a fortune which he intends to try to spend upon himself; or he
may say: I am accountable for the pocket-books of the world. I am in
authority over them. I open a market, or close it. I buy, dispense, and
disperse human labor. I create wants, and I satisfy them. I will
establish honest laws of trade. What I do shall be rated as commercial
law. What I say shall be quoted as a way of equity and probity. That man
is a King of Trade. His throne is set upon hills and seas. His subjects
are all men with needs, and all men with products of the land, the
coasts, the sea, or brain, or skill. This is the lawful King of Trade.
He represents God's mart of exchange. Primarily, goods are not bought
and sold in the market. They are first transferred in that man's brain.
4. Another rule is of concerted works: the rule of the Engineer. Back of
every advance in our country, in facilities of trade and transportation,
or of public health and safety, stands the man who thought it out. Take,
for instance, the development of the "Great American Desert." Who
projected its irrigation, by which areas have been redeemed from
barrenness and waste? Who planned the economic use of the Niagara Falls?
Who built the Brooklyn Bridge? Who projected the vast waterway from
Chicago to the Gulf? Who first thought of a cable across the depths of
seas? Who bridged the Firth of Forth, the Ganges, the Mississippi? Who
projected the gray docks of Montreal? the Simplon Tunnel? Who wound the
iron rails across the Alleghanies, the Rockies, the Sierras? Who drew
the wall that has encircled China for a thousand years? Who projected
the Suez Canal? the Trans-Siberian Railway? Who sunk the mines of
Eldorado? Who designed the Esplanade at Hamburg? the stone banks of the
Seine? the waterways of Venice? the aqueducts of Rome? the Appian Way?
the military roads of Chili and Peru? the Subway in New York?
Gravity, stress, strain, weight, tension, sag, cohesion,--a few
mathematical formulas, and a knowledge of the primary laws of
physics,--upon such principles as these, the world is rapidly changing
form and use.
The Engineer, in a strange and subtle way, stands near to God. His work
is done hand-in-hand with God. He takes the forces of nature and the
laws of the material world, and bends them to the needs and use of man.
Sky and sea or desert may be about him. He knows the arctic cold, the
tropic heat; the forest and the plain; the mountain and the marsh; the
brook and river; the peak and the precipice; the glacier and the tempest
in their course. Out of the very elements he is daily building new paths
for man to tread. Soon he, too, must pass; laid after death, it may be,
beside some mighty water that his handiwork has spanned.
In loneliness and silence does he not often think, I wonder, of the God
with whom he deals? It is God who provides the river and the sea; God
who through endless ages has piled stone on stone, crust on crust, and
has crumpled the strata of the earth as tissue in His hand. It is God
who has bound every mote to the earth-centre; who has sent magnetic
currents coursing through the globe, and has made tides and sea-changes,
and the trade-winds to blow. It is the God of the Gulf Stream, the
Caribbean Sea, the God of the Appalachians, the God of the Himalayas,
the God of the Cordilleras, of the Amazon, the Yukon, the Yang-tse-Kiang
with which he really deals.
The endless ages pass and go, but God abides. Little, daring man lifts
here and there a hand to mould the world which God has made--pricks the
earth for gold or silver, iron or coal--but GOD is everywhere immanent
and shines through every hour of change. Hence the March of Engineers is
the march of men whom God has trained; in a special sense His
master-workmen, craftsmen whom He loves. It is theirs to say, We are the
Kings of Works: the Master-builders of the Most High!
5. There are Kings of Academic Thought, men who lead in professions and
in collegiate careers. The wise man is the true aristocrat. His court
may not be in a palace, but within its precincts are received and
entertained the leaders of the race. To be provost, to be college
president or university professor, is to be seated on an
intellectual throne.
The problem of academic rule is not to attract a large number of
students, to put up imposing buildings, to have endowments, and fill
chairs with learned specialists; to grant many degrees, and to keep the
hum of a teaching staff and of a student body alive in the ears of a
community, marking the college group by flags and colors, cap and gown,
processions and occasions. These things are right, but are mainly
accessory. We have not all of a university when we have men and
buildings, money, students, brains. Back of a university there lies its
foundation-idea, that of academic control.
What is academic rule? It is rule over the pride of man. A college is a
place whose chief power is to inculcate humility by the means of true
learning; to establish intellectual honor and integrity by searching out
the ways of God in nature, science, and philosophy, and in letters
and in art.
It is the primary work of a university to make men humble. The Freshman
is not teachable. The Sophomore is an intellectual upstart. But by the
time a man has been beaten and conquered by the great ideals of the
world, which have pierced his bones and humbled his conceit--by the time
the race-passions and the race-sorrows have crept across his spirit, by
the time that he has been confronted with the achievements of Homer,
Empedocles, Hippocrates, Michelangelo, Socrates, Buddha, Plato, Emerson,
Gladstone, Bismarck, Lincoln, and Carlyle--his self-exaltation drops
from him like a garment. He--who knows how to construe a few pages of
the classics, who knows how to demonstrate a few mathematical problems,
scan a few verses, recite a few odes, carry on a few scientific
experiments, undertake a small research--how shall he compete with these
rulers of the thought of men?
Then it is that the real rule of a university--its spirit of humility,
and of reverence for antiquity--begins. The true university man, born
and bred in the century, not in the years, in the race halls, not those
alone in his Alma Mater, is neither a scoffer nor an atheist, nor a
critic, sceptic, or cynic. He is a man of simple and exalted faith. God,
who hath brought such great things to pass in science, nature, and art,
in human character, in the destiny of nations, and the history of humble
men and women, is a God before whom there must be awe and reverence, and
not a flippant scouting of the ancient ideals. Man, who is so tried by
temptation and scourging of the spirit, is a creature to be loved,
appreciated, understood; not a being to whom shall be shown arrogance,
aloofness, and pride. The university that makes snobs of its graduates
has not yet entered into its kingdom of control.
A university also holds rule over truth. Absolute truth is in God's
hand. But the university has class-rooms and libraries, apparatus and
laboratories, which are intended for the discovery and furtherance of
truth. The university is not a place to cry out for big salaries. The
salaries should be living salaries. The seeker after truth should not be
left without enough money for heat and shelter, for bread and meat, rest
and summer-change; for the coming of children and their education. But
truth may lodge without shame in an humble dwelling and may be greatly
furthered without an elaborate bill of fare.
The university men of the times are the establishers of a kind of
righteousness that is not always found in books. Their individual value,
as they go out into the world, is to set right values on social customs
and decrees; to establish the law of freedom in the home; to lead men
and women out of the thraldom of ignorance, vulgarity, hearsay, and
"style," into simplicity of living and a sane scale of household
expense. The university leader of the future is the man who shall set
laws over household accounts and who shall rule over such simple things
as what best to eat and buy. He shall be an economist of the larger
sort, providing for the spiritual necessities of men and their moral
conduct, rather than for their balls, card-parties, and social
side-shows, including church entertainments and philanthropic dances and
bazaars. He shall pave the way to a larger view of wealth, influence,
and reform; endue man with a keener sense of his own responsibilities,
make him a creature of larger desires and of more aspiring wants.
In particular, he shall pass down from generation to generation the high
and noble learning of the past; he shall keep alive the flower of
courtesy and charity; he shall tell the dreams of past sages, and
interpret them; he shall review the thronging nations; and he shall so
imbue the mind with a love of truth, of ideals, of excellence, of honor,
that a new race shall go out into a larger and a nobler world. And then
a better day shall dawn for men.
6. The Kings of State. Says Milton, in his sonnet on Cromwell:
"_Yet much remains
To conquer still; Peace hath her victories
No less renowned than War: new foes arise,
Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains.
Help us to save free conscience from the paw
Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw_."
In the third moon of the year 1276, Bayan, the conquering lieutenant of
Genghis Khan, captured Hangchow, received the jade rings of the Sungs,
and was taken out to the bank of the river Tsientang to see the spirit
of Tsze-sü pass by in the great bore of Hangchow--that tidal wave which
annually rolls in, and, dashing itself against the sea-wall of Hangchow,
rushes far up the river, bringing, for eighteen miles inland, a tide of
fresh, deep-sea splendor, and thrilling all who see or hear.
In the life of nations there are times and tides. Against the tide-wall
of history, beaten by many a storm, and battered by many a thundering
wave, there is about to sweep the incoming wave of a new life for the
race: there is about to pass a greater than the spirit of Tsze-sü,--even
the Spirit of God!
"_We are living,-we are dwelling,
In a grand and awful time,
Age on age to ages telling,
To be living is sublime_!"
We are moving out into a period of great statesmen, and of great
political standards and ideals. The days before us are days which will
make the Elizabethan era pale in history. Upon the head of our nation
are set responsibilities such as have never before rested on any
one man.
The day of the true statesman is here; the day of the demagogue is done!
The rule of the orator is over the ideals and hopes of men. The
demagogue prostitutes this power. His rule is over the passions,
prejudices, and resentments of men. He cries aloud in the market-place,
and rogues and ward-heelers, and evil-minded politicians, group
themselves around him. He waves his sceptre over the vulgar and the
rascals of the town.
The vital problem of municipal reform is not the shattering of the ring,
the overturning of the boss, the gagging of a few loud tongues. It is
the problem of the training of better bosses; the education of men and
women in social control; their enlightenment, from childhood up, in
civic duties, in national affairs, and the conduct of civil power.
Thereupon oratory turns to its higher ends. Through statesman, preacher,
and political teacher, it cries aloud of righteousness. I look for the
time when the typical politician shall be an honorable man; when to be
"in the ring" of municipal or national control shall mean to be an
integral and orderly part of the administration of God's great world;
when city life shall be purified; and when international law shall be
the interpretation of the will of the Almighty for the rule of nations.
We have honest doctors, lawyers, tradesmen; shall we not have an honest
politician and an upright ward-boss?
Public service is a god-like service! Our Presidents shall more and more
be chosen, not alone for ideas, experience, or for party affiliations:
the President shall be chosen because he is a moral hero! Something has
stirred in the heart of the American people, which shall not soon be
stilled: a spiritual outlook upon political preferment. In the White
House we long to have the great spiritual exemplars of our race. Not
alone in church shall we offer up a "Prayer before Election." The time
is coming when each true ballot-slip shall be a prayer.
Within the next fifty years shall be determined some of the greatest
questions of history. Among them shall be questions of industrial
adjustment and development, and of social progress. We must have in our
Cabinet not only the representatives of War and State, of Finance,
Trade, Labor, and Agriculture; but also of Education and of Social
Health. This is not a dream. You and I may live to see the results of
this religious awakening: it is elemental and epochal.
Back of all individual dominion there is rising a yet higher
dominion--the dominion of the English-speaking race. We, having been
called by the providence of God to stand at the head of the march of
progress, may well ask ourselves concerning our imperial powers. The
line of progress for a nation is to allow no spiritual ideal to stagnate
or to retrograde. The spiritual aspiration of a nation always dominates
what is called the Social Mind. We grow toward what we worship. It is
ours to plant the dominion of civilization in foreign lands, and to
supplant a waning culture by a richer, truer, and nobler way of life.
The first thought of each of us, entering these new lands, whether
merchant, soldier, educator, or missionary, should be to hold Christ
aloft, that all tribes may come to His light, and kings to the
brightness of His rising.
God leads us on. Said Lincoln: "I have been driven many times to my
knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My
own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for that day."
Like a vast Hand stretched against the sky of Time is the Hand of God--a
Hand writing, in these wondrous days, a destiny for generations yet to
be! Rising with us are all God-fearing nations--the Teutonic, Slav, and
Latin peoples. Sitting yet in darkness, and massed against us, crouch
sullenly the immemorial hordes of Asia, the wild blacks of the African
swamps and jungles, and the dwellers of Polynesian seas. Occident and
Orient, the world's battalions are forming for new encounters and new
dismays. Never since the strong-limbed Goths changed the face of Europe
has there been a period of such tense anticipation, nor so great a
possibility of volcanic change. We are entering an historic period of
reconstruction, when new maps of the world will be drawn. The sceptre is
passing into new hands: to-day the throne of civilization is being
arched above the seaway which joins London and New York. To-morrow, it
may be builded above Pacific tides, where our own shores look westward
to the ports of Asiatic Russia. For, rising on the world-horizon, are
these two World-empires, Russia and the United States. The dictators of
these two countries will soon become the dictators of the human race.
They are brave and virile nations, with untold reserves of power! As
these two giants gird themselves for World-dominion, who but God shall
gird the armor on, direct the onward course of change?
Much of the ancient wealth and beauty shall be done away. In a few
generations the shrines of thirty centuries will be no more. Fane and
temple and pagoda will disappear; carvings, images, and Sikh-guarded
courts. Long lines of yellow-robed priests will chant their last
processional hymn to Buddha, and the smoking incense to waning gods
shall be quenched forever. Where Tao rites were celebrated, silence
shall fall; where fakir and dervish tortured and immolated their lives,
happy children shall play. Instead of the lotos of the Ganges and the
Nile, there shall bloom the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Vale.
But as the empires of Buddha and Muhammad fall, a new Empire shall
prevail!
"_Kings shall bow down before Him,
And gold and incense bring;
All nations shall adore Him,
His praise all people sing.
To Him shall prayer unceasing
And dally vows ascend;
His kingdom still increasing,
A kingdom without end_."
IV. THE WORLD-MARCH: OF PRELATES AND EVANGELISTS
[LYONS]
_O Majesty throned, O Lord of all Light,
Shine down on our spirits and scatter the night;
As Adam received his life-impulse from Thee,
Endued with all fulness, we quickened would be_
_Let all that we know--love, learning, and power--
Melt down in Thy Presence, and flame in this hour;
Anoint us and bless us and lift our desire
And grant us to speak as with tongues touched with fire_!
_Life flows as a dream--its pleasures are dear:
The world is about us--temptation is near;
Oh, guide us, and shew us the pathway to God
The feet of the prophets aforetime have trod_!
_The bells cease their chime,--the hosts enter in:
May many be purged of their sloth and their sin!
Cheer Thou the despondent, the weary, the sad,
Rouse all to rejoicing, that all may be glad_.
_And when life is o'er, and each must depart
In quaking and silence,--abide with each heart;
The songs of Thy saints then caught up to the skies,
As waves of great waters shall thunderous rise_!
ANNA ROBERTSON BROWN LINDSAY
In Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_ there is the legend of the Sword of Assay.
In the church against the high altar was a great stone, four-square,
like unto a marble stone. In the midst of it was an anvil of steel, a
foot high, and therein stood a naked sword by the point. About the sword
there were letters written, saying, "Whoso pulleth out this sword of
this stone and anvil, is righteous king born of all England." Many
assayed to pull the sword forth, but all failed, until the young Arthur
came, and, taking the sword by the handle, lightly and fiercely pulled
it out of the stone! By this token he was lord of the land.
Each man's life is proved by some Sword of Assay. The test of a man's
call to the ministry is his power to seize the Sword of the Spirit:
wield the spiritual forces of the world, insight, conviction,
persuasion, truth. To do this successfully at least five things appear
to be necessary: a sterling education, marked ability in writing and in
public speaking, a noble manner, a voice capable of majestic
modulations, and a deep and tender heart. These phrases sound very
simple, but perhaps they mean more than at first appears. Have we not
all met some one, in our lifetime, whose acquaintance with us seemed to
have no preliminaries?--some one who never bothered to say anything at
all to us, until one day he said something that leaped and tingled
through our very being? This is the power that a minister ought to have
with every soul with whom he comes in contact: his word should quickly
touch a vital spot. No one to-day cares much for mere oratory, literary
discussion, polemics, or cursory exegesis; "marked ability in writing
and in public speaking" means that grip on reality which makes people
quiver, repent, believe, adore!
Sincerity is the basis of such power. At heart we worship the man who
will not lie; who will not use conventions or formulas in which he does
not believe; who does not give us a second-hand view of either life or
God; who does not play with our conscience because it is not politic to
be too direct; who does not juggle with our doubts, nor ignore our hopes
and powers; who also frankly acknowledges that he, too, is a man.
A call to the ministry also involves an over-mastering spiritual desire.
Tell me what a man wants, and I will tell what he is, and what he can
best do. If a man desires above all things to conduit a great business,
he is by nature qualified for trade; if he desires knowledge, he is
designed for a scholar; if he is always observing form, rhyme, aesthetic
beauty, and striving to produce verse, he is a born poet. But if the one
thing that rules his dreams is the longing for spiritual power--the
thought of impressing God upon his generation, and leading men to a
clearer view of life and duty--he is a born minister of the Spirit, and
to the spirit of the sons of men. Along with this goes the great burden:
"Woe is me, if I preach not the Gospel!"
Wherever, to-day, there is a young man in whose heart is stirring a
great devotional dream for the race, who longs to project his life into
the most enduring and far-reaching influence, who craves the exercise of
great gifts and powers, there is a man whose heart God is calling to
possibilities such as no one can measure, and to triumphs such as no one
can forecast! The highest triumphs of these coming years are to be
spiritual. The leader is to be the one who can carry the deepest
spiritual inspiration to the hearts of his fellow-men. Do not let the
hour go by! This day of vision is the prophetic day!
But if the call be answered, if certain high-spirited and noble-minded
men ask thus to stand as spiritual ministrants to the souls of men, how
shall they be trained for the high office?
The old way will not do. Sweeping changes, in these last days, have come
over the commercial, academic, and social world. We do not go back to
the hand-loom, the hand-sickle, the hand-press. What is true of these
aspects of life is true of the spiritual training. It must be larger,
freer, grander, than before. Time was when a theologian, it was
thought, must be separated from the world--an ascetic working in the dim
half-light of the old library, or scriptorium, or hall. To-day, he must
gain much of his training from the great life of the world--learn how to
meet men and occasions, and be prepared to deal with modern forces and
energies with courage, knowledge, and decision.
We read of the earnest Thomas Goodwin: his favorite authors were such as
Augustine, Calvin, Musculus, Zanchius, Paraeus, Walaeus, Gomarus, and
Amesius. What Doctor of Theology takes the last six of these to bed with
him to-day?
Our theological courses are too dry. Look carefully over the catalogues
of thirty or forty of our own seminaries, and notice the curious, almost
monastic, impression which they make. Then realize that the men who
pursue these abstruse and mediaeval subjects are the men who go out into
churches where the chief topics of thought and conversation are crops,
stocks, politics, clothes, servants, babies! There is a grim humor in
the thing, which seems to have escaped those who have drawn up the
curriculum.
Life is not monastic. It is very lively. We scarcely get, in all our
post-collegiate life, a chance to sit and muse. We go through
sensations, experiences, and incongruities, which stir a sense of fun. A
man reads (I notice) in his seminary, St. Leo, _Ad Flaeirmum_, and makes
his first pastoral call on a woman who proudly brings out her first
baby for him to see. _Ad Flaeirmum_ indeed! What does St. Leo tell the
youth to say?
What should be breathed into a man in the seminary, is not the mere
facts of ecclesiastical history, but the warm pulsating currents of
human life; the profound significance of the founding and the progress
of the Church; a deep psychological understanding of human desires,
motives, joys, ambitions, griefs; the relentlessness of sin; the help
and glory of Redemption; the quickening of the Christ; the vigor and the
tenderness of faith. Coincident with these must be a growth in depth and
dignity of life. No one likes to take spiritual instruction from men who
are themselves crude, foolish, sentimental, or conceited. Many social
snags on which young ministers are sure to run, are simply the rudiments
of social conduct, as practised by the world. Noble manners are one's
personal actions as influenced and guided by the great behavior of the
race. Under the impulse of ideals, much that is untoward or superficial
in one's bearing will disappear. It is impossible to think as noble men
and women have thought--to dream, love, and work as they have dreamed,
loved, and wrought--and not have pass into one's mien the high
excellence of such lives.
The first education is spiritual. Until mind and heart are swept by the
spirit of God, chastened, purified, ennobled, and inspired, vain is all
the learning of the schools! To this end, there should be a more deeply
spiritual atmosphere in our seminaries, less of the mere academic
impulse. In every age, there are men just to come in contact with whom
is a benediction and a help for years. Such a man was Mark Hopkins, Noah
Porter, James McCosh. Such the leading men in every seminary should be.
The plan of education must be of principles, not of facts. The
university research-men gather facts, and scientific men everywhere
collect, analyze, and classify them. But each small department of human
learning--each minute branch in that department--needs a lifetime for
the mastery of that one theme. Hence the work of the college is quite
apart from that of the school of theology. It is the place of the school
of theology, not to ignore the New Learning, but to group, upon the
basis of a thorough college training, certain great interests and
pursuits of mankind, in such a way as to afford, by means of them, a
leverage for spiritual work.
After all is said and done, it is not the grammar-detail of Latin,
Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic dialects that makes a minister's power. It is
the strange language-culture of the race which should enter in; the
inner vitality of words, the beauty of poetic cadences, the strong flow
of rhythm, noble themes, great thoughts, impressive imagery and appeal.
We should know the Bible as literature, not as one knows a story-book,
or a dialect-exercise, but as one knows the melodies and memories of
childhood.
The vital thing is not a knowledge of the historical schisms and decrees
of Christendom--not the external Evidences of Religion, Ecclesiastical
History, Ecclesiastical Polity, monuments, texts, memorabilia--the vital
thing is the power to think about God, and the problems of mankind. It
is a heart-knowledge of the difficulties and questionings of a race that
yearns for virtue.
Man thirsts for God. No one is wholly indifferent to the Spirit. I fear
that some ministers do not know--and never will know--the heart-hunger
of the world. When they rise to speak, there is always some one present
whose breath is hushed with longing to hear spoken some real word of
truth, or strength, or comfort. If he receive but chaff!--
Theology is not a dry thing, and ought not be made so. It is quick with
the life of the race. Each dogma is a mile-stone of human progress. It
is the sifted and garnered wisdom of the centuries, concerning God, and
His ways with men. Each student should feel, not that a system is being
driven into him, as piles are driven into the stream, but that he is
being put in philosophic contact with the thought of the race on the
great topic of Religion, with liberty himself to experiment, think, and
add to the store.
Homiletics is not a series of nursery-rules for man--formal, didactic
droppings of a pedant's tongue. Homiletics is the appeal of man to man,
for the welfare of his soul, and the true progress of mankind. Exegesis
is not a matter of Hebrew or Greek alone. It includes the spiritual
interpretation of the great problems of the race. Homer, Tennyson,
Browning, and Dante are exegetes, no less than Lightfoot, Lange,
and Schaff.
Pastoral Divinity is not the etiquette of a polite way of making calls:
it is an entering into the social spirit of the time; the learning of
friendliness, unreserve, sympathy, persuasion, and a way of approach. It
is the mastery of spiritual _savoir-faire_.
Outside of this group of technical subjects there are yet others of
vital importance from a scientific understanding of the world, and of
one's work. They are Psychology, Ethics, Sociology, and Politics.
Since we have known more of the psychological meaning of adolescence, a
new theory of Conversion has sprung up; and whether or not we accept it,
the whole outlook over the underlying principle of conversion has been
changed. We must at least recognize that conversion is a scientific
process, as much as digestion is, or respiration; it is not a purely
emotional occurrence.
The minister must learn what society really is, and how the far still
forces of time act and react upon each other, producing group-actions,
institutions, customs, ways. There are social fossils as well as
physical ones. Sociology is not a system of fads and reforms. It is the
scientific study of society, of its constitution, development,
institutions, and growth. He must also breathe largely of the great
governmental life of the race--understand the primary principles of
politics and administration. He should have some knowledge of commercial
interests, of the formulas, incentives, and right principles of trade.
There should also be in the seminary an inspirational atmosphere of
music, literature, and art. Literature is a revelation of the life of
the soul. The man who reads literature and comprehends its message is
receiving a fine training which shall fit him for a thorough
understanding of the heart; of its practical, ethical, and spiritual
problems; of its domestic joys and sorrows; of its human cares and
burdens; of the appeals that will come to him for sympathy; of the
temptations that beset the race; and of the hopes and trials of
the world.
Literature is one of the best tools a minister can have. He should be
read in the great literary and sermonic literature, the work of Bossuet,
Massillon, Chrysostom, Augustine, Fénelon, Marcus Aurelius, mediaeval
homilies, Epictetus, Pascal, Guyon, Amiel, Vinet, La Brunetière, Phelps,
Jeremy Taylor, Barrows, Fuller, Whitefield, Bushnell, Edwards, Bacon,
Newman, Ruskin, Carlyle, Emerson, Davies, Law, Bunyan, Luther, Spalding,
Robertson, Kingsley, Maurice, Chalmers, Guthrie, Stalker, Drummond,
Maclaren, Channing, Beecher, and Phillips Brooks, yes, even John Stuart
Mill. All these men, by whatever name or school they are called, are
writers of essays or sermons which appeal to the most spiritual deeps
of man.
He should read the novels of Richter, Thackeray, Dickens, Scott, Eliot,
and Victor Hugo. He should know intimately the great verse which
involves spiritual problems, and human strife and aspiration,--Milton,
Beówulf, Caedmon, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, ballads, sagas, the
Arthur-Saga, the Nibelungenlied, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Herbert,
Tennyson, Browning, Dante and Christina Rossetti, Whittier, Lowell,
Longfellow, to say nothing of Goethe, Corneille, and the Greek, Roman,
Persian, Egyptian, Hindu, and Arabian verse.
In music his heart should wake to the beauty of oratorios, symphonies,
chorals, concert music, national and military music, and inspiring
songs, not to speak of hymns and of anthems, the progress of Christian
song! The _Creation_, the _Messiah_, the _Redemption_, Bach's _Passion
Music_, the _St. Cecilia Mass_, Spohr's _Judgment_, Stainer's
_Resurrection_, the _Twelfth Mass_, Mendelssohn's _Elijah_,--these are
monumental works and themes.
What is a hymn? We think of it as being some simple churchly words, set
to a serious tune. A hymn is the rhythmic aspiration of the race. No one
can look through a good hymnal--through _Hymns Ancient and Modern_, for
instance, or the Church Hymnary--without feeling that therein is bound
up the devotional life of the world. The spiritual outlook is cosmic.
Our every mood of penitence, praise, and aspiration resounds in
melodious and time-defying strains.
In art, the religious spirit broods over the great work of the world. In
Angelo, Francesca, Veronese, Botticelli, Titian, Raphael, Tintoretto,
and Correggio, the brush of the painter has set forth the adoration of
the Church of God.
Thus, taken all in all, to be educated as a minister should be to be
educated in the Higher Life of the race.
Finally, above all else is the spiritual study and interpretation of the
Word of God. A minister may be fearless of the investigations of
scientific criticism. Every truth is important to him, but not all
truths are vital. When a man such as Caspar Rene Gregory speaks,
something of the holy mystery and inspiration of biblical research, as
well as a scientific result, is presented, and one gains a new
conception of what it really means to study and to understand the
Word of God.
Under all is the life of ceaseless and prevailing prayer. By the life of
prayer, many mean merely a way of learning to make public petitions, an
objective appeal to God. The true life of prayer is as simple, as
unteachable, and as vital as the life of a child with its mother--the
little lips daily learning new ways of approach to its mother's heart,
and new words to make its wants and interests and sorrows known.
Prayer is the true World-Power. Just as there are vast stretches in the
world where the foot of man has never trod, so there are unmeasured
regions whereon prayer has never been. The more we pray, the more
illimitable appears this spiritual realm. And all about us in the
universe are also great hidden forces: nothing will lay hold of them
but prayer.
Each prayer enlarges the soul. The measure of our praying is the measure
of our growth. No man has reached his full possibilities of achievement
who has not completed the circuit of his possible prayers. Power is
proportionate to prayer.
And last of all, there is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. What it
is, who may say? But that it is real, who can doubt? To read the lives
of Wesley, Whitefield, Finney, Moody, is to feel a strange, deep thrill.
They are men who spake, and men listened; who called, and men came to
God. Others, alas, so often call, and there is no response. They cannot
make headway through the indifference, the sloth, the materialism, and
the inherent vulgarity of the world.
The life itself is arduous. After all is said, it is not quite the same
task to examine and classify either protoplasm or the most highly
organized forms of nature, that it is to analyze and understand the
mysterious workings of the heart, the intricacies of conscience and
conduct, the possibilities of spiritual development or of moral
downfall, and the many questionings, agonies, and ecstasies of the soul
of man. And they are to be studied and understood with the definite and
positive aim of the absolute reconstruction of the world-bound spirit--a
change of its motives, purposes, affections, ideals. More than this,
there must be at the heart of the more thoughtful minister a philosophic
basis for the reconstruction of society itself.
Youth is not an adequate preparation for this task: a man must live and
grow. To deal with such themes and occasions, there must appear in the
world lives of such vigor that they can command; of such charm, that
they can attract; of such wisdom, that they can guide and comfort; of
such vitality, that they can inspire. And hence there rises before the
mind's eye a figure that is both knightly and kingly--a man earnest in
the redress of wrong, and who yet holds a subtle authority over the
forces that make for wrong; a man burdened with the cares and sorrows of
many others, and yet conducting his own life with serenity, enthusiasm,
dignity, and hope; a man to whose keen yet tender gaze a life-history
is revealed by a word or tone, but whose own eyes receive their light
from God. A prophet and a father, a priest and a counsellor, a brother,
friend, and judge, a sacrifice and an inspiration should he be who, in
reverence and love, brings before a waiting congregation the very
Word of Life!
SECOND: OF SPIRITUAL RULE
1. The primary rule is over conscience. The man who sways a conscience
sways a human life. The man who sways a nation's conscience controls
that nation's life. To rule conscience, a man must himself be
unprejudiced and well informed. He must strive, not to keep up an
unhealthy excitement which shall make conscience introspective and
morbid, but to preserve a sane moral outlook, to encourage freedom of
thought and judgment, and to develop a normal conscience which reacts
promptly against wrong. Conscience measures our inner recoil from evil.
The power of a preacher is in direct proportion to the energy with which
he reveals sin in the heart of man, and wakes his whole nature against
its insidious power.
Sin is. To-day, sin is thought a somewhat brusque word, lacking in
polish. To use it frequently is a mark of lack of '_savoir-faire_!
Indeed to speak of it at all is as archaic as to speak of the
Ichthyosaurus. But sin is a root-fact of the life of man. It is the
office of the spiritual teacher to pluck out sin; to pierce the heart
with a recognition of the enormity of sin, and of its far-reaching
consequences; to stir the seared conscience, rouse the apathetic life,
thrill the spiritual imagination, and to quicken the heart to better
love and to nobler dreams. He rebukes the private sins of individuals
and the public sins of nations. In the _Faerie Queene_, the
"soul-diseased knight" was in a state
"_In which his torment often was so great,
That like a lyon he would cry and rare,
And rend his flesh, and his own synewes eat_."
But Fidelia, like the faithful pastor, was both
"_able with her word to kill,
And raise againe to life the heart that she did thrill_."
This power has at times been misunderstood and misapplied. No human
authority can bind the conscience, nor set rules and regulations for the
soul of man. The prerogative of final direction belongs to God alone. No
man may arrogate it--no pastor for people, no husband for wife, no wife
for husband, no parent for child. The sadness of the world has been,
that men have not always been spiritually free. Freedom has been a
social growth--a phase of progress. It has taken wars and persecutions,
revolutions and reformations, the blood of saints and martyrs, the
sorrow of ages, to plant this precept in the mind of man.
The evangelist warns. He speaks of sin, death, hell, and the judgment
to come. It is for these things that he is sent to testify. These are
not the catch-words of a new sort of Fear King who uses oral terrors to
affright the soul of man. Heaven and hell are not a new sort of
ghost-land: retribution is not a larger way of tribal revenge.
No. The latest facts of science present this universe as not only
progressive, but as retributive. There is a rebound of evil which makes
for pain. Each broken law exacts a penalty. Each deed of sin is a
forerunner of personal and of social disaster. The generation that sins
shall be cut off, while the stock of the righteous grows strong from
age to age.
The scientific vista opening to the eye of man is impressive and
appalling. Each man has within himself a future of joy or sadness for
the race. Do you remember the sermon of Horace Bushnell on the
"Populating Power of the Christian Faith"? Do you recall the history of
the infamous Jukes family? That of the seven devout and noble
generations of the Murrays? The Day of Judgment is not only the Last
Great Day--it is to-day and every day. "Every day is Doomsday," says
Emerson. Nature is unforgetful. Nature is accountant. Each iniquity must
be paid for out of the resources of the race.
It is of these grave omens that the Man of God must speak. He dare not
be tongue-tied by custom or by fear. He must proclaim hell in the ears
of all mankind. For wherever hell may be, and we do not yet know, and
whatever hell may be, and we cannot even imagine, Hell _is_; and the
soul of man must be kept mindful of these great things.
The evangelist comforts and consoles. The heart of man is wayward and
goes oft astray. No one can be belabored into righteousness. The true
lover of souls allows for the hereditary weaknesses of man, for his
infirmities of will and temper, for his excuses, wanderings, and tears,
and presents to him Jesus, in whose sight no one is too wretched to be
received, too wicked to be forgiven.
We must have forgiveness in order to know God. The most comforting
thought in the world is that God knows all we do. There can be no
misunderstanding between us: He cannot be misinformed.
The evangelist must come close, in sympathy and counsel, to the personal
and individual life of those whom he would help. Perhaps the best way to
emphasize this point would be to insert here words written by a woman
who has been thinking on this subject.
She says: "I have never had a pastor. It is the one good thing lacking
in my life. I have grown up among ministers, and have had many friends
among them--some of them have cared for me. But there has never been one
among them all who stood in an attitude of spiritual authority and
helpfulness to my life. We church-going and Christian men and women of
the educated class are almost wholly let alone; apparently no one takes
thought for our souls. We are not in the least infallible; we come face
to face with fierce temptations; we have heart-breaking sorrows; we are
burdened with anxiety and perplexity. But we are left to grope as blind
sheep; there is no one to point out the path to us, however dimly; no
one to say, at any crucial moment of our lives, Walk here!
"Once, however," she continues, "one of my friends, a minister, knelt
down by me and prayed. It was a simple and ordinary occasion--others
were present. But every word of that prayer was meant for the uplifting
of my heart. In that hour, I was as if overshadowed by the Holy Ghost;
new aims and purposes were born within me. My friend loves me--that does
not matter--it is his spiritual intensity I care for. And this is his
reward for his fidelity and tenderness: In the hour when I come to die,
when one does not ask for father or mother, or husband or wife, or
brother or sister, or friend or child, but only for the strong comfort
of the man of God--in that hour, I say, if I be at all able to make my
wishes known, I shall send for that man to come to me. He, and no other,
shall present my soul to God."
Reading the above words, more than one minister will cry out, his eyes
blazing: "I say the same to you! Who is there that tries to shield the
minister from sorrow and from pain? Who is there to comfort and help
_him_? You think we can just go on, and preach, preach, preach, standing
utterly alone, and with no one on earth to keep our own hearts close to
God! I tell you, it is a lonely and weary work at times, this being a
minister!"
Yes, there must be a people, as well as a pastor. The relation is
reciprocal. Wherever there is a strong man, leaning down in fire and
tenderness to help the lives about him, there must be a loyal and loving
congregation, with here and there in it some one who more fully
appreciates and understands. Nothing beats down and discourages a man
more than to feel that he is preaching to cold air and not to human
folks, and to get back, when he offers sympathy, a stare.
A congregation is a mysterious and subtle social force. Its effect on a
minister he can neither analyze nor explain. But he knows that its power
is mesmeric and cannot be escaped. He goes into its presence from an
hour of exalted and uplifted prayer, serene, happy, strong, and prepared
to speak words of power and life. Gazing at his people--he can never
tell why--the words freeze on his lips. An icy hand seems laid upon his
heart, and he makes a cold and formal presentation of his glowing theme,
and wonders who or what has done it all. Something satanic and
repelling has laid hold of his tongue and brain.
Or again, he may have had a worried and troubled week, full of personal
anxiety and sorrow. He has not had full time to study--he feels quite
unprepared, and enters the pulpit with a halting step, and a choking
fear of failure at his heart.
In a moment, the world changes. Something imperceptible, but sweet and
comforting, steals over him,--an uplifting atmosphere of attention,
sympathy, affection. He begins to speak, very quietly at first, with
quite an effort. But the congregation leads him on, to deeper thoughts,
to nobler words, to modulations of voice that carry him quite beyond
himself. His voice rises, and every syllable is firm and musical. His
language springs from some far centre of inspiration. He is conscious of
superb power, and as sentence after sentence falls from his
lips----sentences that amaze himself more than any other----he enters
into the supreme height of joy, that of being a spiritual messenger to
the hearts of longing men and women. He and they together talk of God.
This sympathetic atmosphere makes great preachers and great men. In
return, there flows from a pastor toward his people a love that few can
know or understand.
2. His rule is also over spiritual enthusiasm. What is a revival? We
confound it with a local excitement, a community-sensation of an
hysterical and passing type--with sensational disturbances, falling
exercises, shouts, weeping, and the like. A revival is something far
different. A revival is an awakening of the community heart and mind. It
is a quickening of dead, backsliding, or inattentive souls.
Man as an individual is quite a different person from the same man in a
crowd. One is himself alone; the other is himself, plus the influence of
the Social Mind. A revival is a social state, in which the social
religious enthusiasm is stirred up. It is a lofty form of religion, just
as the patriotism which breaks forth in tears and cheers as troops go
out to war is a finer type than the mere excitement and fervor of one
patriotic man. What would the Queen's Jubilee have been, if but one
soldier had marched up and down? A great commemoration! If we grant the
reality of national rejoicing in the royal jubilees, commercial
rejoicing in business men's processions, university enthusiasm on
Commencement Day--shall we not grant the reality of the religious
interest and enthusiasm of a great revival, in which whole communities
shall be led to a clearer knowledge of spiritual things?
The Crusades were a magnificent revival. The Reformation was a revival.
The Salvation Army movement is a revival. But the greatest revival of
all times is even now upon us: it is a revival in the scientific
circles of the race. Time was when science and religion were supposed to
be at odds; to-day the intellectual phalanxes are sweeping Christward
with an impetus that is sublime! Thinkers are finding in the large life
of religion a motive power for their thought, their growth--a reason for
their existence--a forecast of their destiny. We are beginning to
realize the dynamic value of Belief. This revival is coming, not with
shouts and noise, but with the quiet insistence of new ideas, of new
facts--with the still voice of scientific announcement. The atheist is
being overcome, not by emotion, but by evidence; the scoffer is being
put down by cool logic.
Hence the evangelist of to-day is more than a man who can popularly
address a public audience, and by tales and tears arouse a weeping
commotion. The evangelist is a man of intellect and prayer, who can
preach the gospel to a scientific age, and to a thinking coterie--a
coterie of college men and mechanics, of society women and
servant-girls, of poets and of mine-diggers, of convicts and of
reformers. To-day calls for the utmost intellectual resources of the
teacher of the truth, for a great imagination, great style, great
sympathy with men, large learning, and unceasing prayer!
3. His rule is over social ideals. He must be a man of social insight.
The social spirit is abroad in the world, but it is woefully erratic
and misguided. Any one thinks he can be an altruist. Why not? Take a
class in a college settlement, make some bibs for a day nursery, give
tramps a C.O.S. card, with one's compliments, and attend about six
lectures a year on Philanthropy--the lectures very good indeed. One is
then a full-fledged altruist, _n'est-ce pas_?
The philanthropy of to-day has a bewildering iridescence of aspect. Each
present impulse is reformatory. Correction, like a centipede, shows a
hundred legs and wants to run upon them all. Much of the so-called
philanthropy is not well balanced and is run by cranks. Cranks attach
themselves to any social movement, as a shaggy gown will gather burrs.
It is not all of philanthropy to classify degenerates, titter at
ignorance, and to go a-peeping through the slums! We have not yet
realized the fulness of redemption. Of what avail is it to save one
street-Arab, or one Chinaman, if a million Arabs and Chinamen remain
unsaved? Redemption is a race-savior: it seizes not only the individual,
but his environment, his friends, and his future state.
The true minister is a reformer. A reformer is one who re-crystallizes
the social ideals of man, who breaks up idols and bad customs, and
sweeps away abuses. But we must first ask: What is an idol? What is a
bad custom? What is an abuse? They are social standards which are out of
harmony with true concepts of God, life, and duty. Behind the work of
the reformer is the dream of the reformer, the meditation of the mystic,
the seer. He must first have in mind a plain, clear conception of what
the relation is of man to God, of what man's environment should be, and
of what the society of the Kingdom should be. The reformer is one who
changes an existing social environment for approximately this ideal
environment of his own thought. When he breaks an idol, it is not the
idol itself that he everlastingly hates, it is the materialistic concept
of the community. What he wishes in place of the idol is a right
conception. No man could break up every idol in the Sandwich Islands.
But a man went about implanting a spiritual idea of God, and the idols
disappeared.
Hence the work of the reformer is deep and heart-searching work. It
means constant study of the spiritual needs of the age, continual
insight into the material forces which are moulding the age-images,
money, conquest, or whatever they may be. He wishes to maintain a
spiritual hold on civilization itself, so to transform the ideal within
a man, a community, a nation, in regard to custom, observance, belief,
that the outer rite shall follow.
To reform is not to rush through the slums, and then preach a
sensational sermon about bad places in the slums, of which most people
never knew before! To reform is to know something of the conditions
which produce the slums--it is not to scatter the slum-people broadcast
elsewhere in the town; it is not alone to give them baths, playgrounds,
circulating libraries of books and pictures, dancing-parties, and social
clubs. To reform the slums is to set up a new ideal of God, and of
righteous conduct in the heart of the slum-dwellers. One must know
something of the slow processes of social change, of social
assimilation, growth, and stability, to have an intellectual perception
of the problem, as well as a spiritual one. One does not make an ill-fed
child strong by stuffing five pounds of oatmeal down its throat!
The reformer must not only be a man of energy, he must be a man of
patience. Great reforms come slowly. As man has advanced, idleness,
indolence, brutality, tyranny, drunkenness, cant, and social scorn are
gradually being cast out. But behind these simple words lie hid
centuries of strife and endeavor, and limitless darkenings of
human hope.
To fly against vice is merely to invite enmity and opposition. To
present a pure and noble ideal, to breathe forth a holy atmosphere for
the soul, are constructive works. The trouble is not, that the ministers
preach on social themes--all themes that concern the life of man are
social themes. It is that they do piece-work and patch-work of reform,
instead of plain, direct upbuilding work in the souls and consciences of
men. To preach upon horse-stealing is one thing. The horse-stealer may
be impressed, convicted, made penitent, and return the stolen horse. But
not until his heart is imbued with a spiritual conception of honesty, as
the law of God, will he steal a stray horse no more. Hence the first
questions in reform are not: How many groggeries are there in my parish?
How many corrupt polls? How many hypocrites on my church-roll? The
question is: How is my parish society in enmity to the highest spiritual
ideal I know? Many men preach about saloons, when they ought to be
preaching about Christ.
The force of this reform-energy is uncomputed. We hear of occasional
great reformers, but forget that there has been a prevailing influence
extending over the ages, of holy men of God, who have preached and
taught and prayed; who have preserved our social institutions of
spiritual import, and have been a mighty and continuous force working
for righteousness and peace.
Missions are a higher form of politics. To further missions is to
further government, international comity, world-peace.
4. His rule is over creed. He is inevitably a teacher of doctrine.
What is doctrine? Doctrine is spiritual truth, formulated in a
systematic way. It is also, in church matters, a system of truth which
has been believed in, and clung to, by a body of believers constituting
some branch of the catholic Church.
It is a noble and serious office to hand down from generation to
generation the faith and traditions of the Church of God. But this
handing-down must be upright. "You must bind nothing upon your charges,"
says Jeremy Taylor, "but what God hath bound upon you." Conviction is at
the root of the lasting traditions of the Church. Only this--his
conviction--can one man really teach another. If he try to speak
otherwise, he shall have a lolling and unsteady tongue.
No soul is finally held by the indefinite, or the namby-pamby. It begins
to question, Upon what foundation does this phrase, this fine sentiment,
rest? It must stand upon a proposition. This proposition rests either
upon a scientific fact, or upon that which, for want of a more definite
term, we call the religious instinct of man. But a proposition cannot
standalone. It is connected with other propositions, arguments,
conclusions. Hence a system of logic, of philosophy, of expressed
belief, of doctrine, inevitably grows up in a thinking community, a
thinking Church.
The statement of an ecclesiastical system of doctrine may not be the
absolutely true one, nor the final one. Doctrine changes, even as
scientific theories change with fuller information. Doctrine also
expands, with the growth of the human spirit and understanding. To-day,
in one's library, one has a thousand books. They are shelved and
catalogued, for reference, in a special order. But years hence, one's
grandson, who inherits these books, may have ten thousand books. The
aspect of the library is changed. It is filled with new volumes, and new
thought. Shall we give a liberty to a man's library which we refuse to
his belief? Must he--and his church--have only his grandfather's ideas,
standards, and decrees?
The tenets of a sect are the theological arrangement of belief which for
the present seems best; it is the systematic arrangement of facts so far
examined, determined, and classified. But no system of theology can be
final. Thought is moving on. Experience is progressive. Providence is
continually revealing. The race is a creed-builder, as well as a builder
of pyramids, cathedrals, and triumphal arches.
The building-up of doctrine is superb. Into doctrine are woven the
intellectual beliefs, the emotional experiences, and the spiritual
struggles of mankind. Doctrine is an attempt to classify the spiritual
problems of the race and to present a theory of redemption which shall
be adequate, spiritually progressive, and the exact expression, so far
as yet revealed, of the will of God for man. All Christian doctrine is
centred about one point: the redemption of the race from sin. Dealing
with such great and fundamental themes, each system of doctrine is an
intellectual triumph.
Doctrine is an intellectual necessity. Christ is not sporadic, either in
history or philosophy. To teach Christ, as the unlettered savage may
who has just learned of Christ the Saviour and turns to teach his
fellow-savages, might do good or save a soul from death. But in order to
command the intellectual respect of the race, there must be another form
of teaching yet than this, a teaching which presents Christ in the
historic and philosophic setting: the central Figure in a great body of
associated spiritual truth; Christ as the fulfilment of prophecy, the
means of social adjustment and regeneration; the Finisher of our Faith,
and the Source of eternal joy. We must be, not less spiritual
Christians, but increasingly intellectual ones, as time rolls on.
Who are the men who have built up doctrine? Men speak as if doctrine
were an ecclesiastical toy--to be shaken by priest or prelate, as one
shakes a rattle, for noise, for play! A doctrine is not a toy; it is the
crystallized belief of earnest, thoughtful, and godly men--belief which
has passed into a church tradition, and is now received as an act
of faith.
Shall doctrine be taught a child? Yes! To have a specific doctrine
clearly in mind does not fetter the young soul, any more than to be
taught the apparent facts of geography and history, which may change
either in reality or in his own interpretation as his mind matures. A
doctrine is a practical and definite thing to work with; in later life
to believe, and to approve of, or disbelieve, and disapprove of. If a
man wishes to build a house, does it fetter him to know square measure,
cubic contents, geometry, mensuration, and mechanical laws? Yet when he
builds his house, he builds it in his own individual way; he stamps it
with his own personality and ideas. While building it, perchance, he
discovers some new relation or geometric law.
Doctrine does not save from hell, but it does save from many a snare
that besets the feet of man. It is a steadier of life, a strengthener of
hope, a stalwart aid to a practical, devout, and duty-doing life. A
catechism is a system of doctrine expressed in its simplest form.
Therefore, for the intellectual and moral training of the Church, let us
have sound doctrine in the pulpit, and the catechism in the home and
Sabbath-school.
It is objected that doctrinal terminology is too hard for a child to
understand. Is this not absurd, when the same child can come home from
school and talk glibly of a parallelepipedon, a rhombus, rhomboid,
polyhedral angle, archipelago, law of primogeniture, the binomial
theorem, and of a dicotyledon! He also learns French, German, Latin,
Greek, and the _argot_ of the public school!
The theological leader of to-day cannot be a creed-monger: he must be a
creed-maker. Side by side with the executive officers who will
reorganize the Christian forces, there will stand great creed-makers,
giant theologians, firm, logical, scientific, and convincing, who, out
of the vast array of new facts brought forth by modern science, will
produce new creeds, a new catechism, a new dogmatic series. It is worth
while to live in these days--to know the possibility of such monumental
constructive work in one's own lifetime. The creed-makers must have a
thorough literary training; no mere vocabulary of philosophy will
answer. Like the Elizabethan divines, they must rule the living word,
which shall echo for a century yet to come.
As the great Ecumenical Council was convened for missionary progress, so
the times are now ripe for the assembling of a historic Theological
Council, to revise and restate, not one denominational catechism, but
the creed of Christendom; to provide a new literary expression of the
Christian faith. Together we are working in God's world, and for
His kingdom.
If doctrine be the crystallized thought and belief of godly men, what is
heresy? What is schism? Who is dictator of doctrine? How far are the
limits of authority to be pressed? What are the bounds of ecclesiastical
control? of intellectual mandate in the Christian Church?
In the academic world, we do not cast a man out of his mathematical
chair because he can also work in astro-physics or in psycho-physics. If
he can pursue advanced research in an allied or applied field, it will
help him in his regular and prescribed work. We do not cast an English
professor out of his chair, because he announces that there are two
manuscripts of Layamon's _Brut_, and that the text of Beówulf has been
many times worked over, before we have received it in its present form.
Yet there are accredited professors of English who do not know these
facts, and who, if called upon, could neither prove them nor disprove
them. They have not worked in the Bodleian, in the British Museum, or in
other foreign libraries, on Old English texts and authorities. They
think themselves well up in Old English if they can translate the text
of Beówulf fairly well, remember its most difficult vocabulary, and can
tell a tale or two from the _Brut_.
Not every man has Europe or Asia in his backyard, nor a lifetime of
leisure for research, for special learning, on the moot questions of
church-scholarship. Progress consists in each man's doing his best to
advance the interests of the kingdom of God in his own special sphere.
From others he must take something for granted. The ear of the Church
ought always to be open to the sayings of the specialist. A Church
should grant liberty of research, of thought, of speech--to a degree.
But whatever may come out of twentieth-century or thirtieth-century
combats, one thing remains clear: A Church is an organization, a social
body, with a certain doctrine to proclaim, a certain faith to hand down
to men. The doctrine is not in all details final--each phase of faith
may change. But the organization, to protect its own purity and
integrity--however generous in allowing individual research, and the
expression of individual ideas--must exert authority over the teachers
in her midst, those who are called by her name, who have her children in
their charge, and for whose teaching the Church, as a whole, is
responsible. There is doubtless a time when the man who is really in
advance of his times intellectually must be misunderstood, must be
disagreed with, must be cast out. But all truth may await the verdict of
time. If he has discovered something new, something true, the centuries
will make it plain. There remains a chance--and the Church dare not risk
too great a chance--that he is mistaken, impious, presumptuous, or
self-deceived. We dare not rush to a new doctrine or spiritual
conception, merely because one man, who knows more of a certain kind of
learning than we do, has said so. One must be bolstered up by a
generation of convinced and believing men, before he can draw a Church
after him. No other process is intellectually legitimate. In any other
event ecclesiastical anarchy would reign. To maintain the historic
position of the Church is a necessity, until that position is proven
untrue. So to maintain it is not bigotry, it is not lack of charity; it
is merely common-sense.
The question, Where is the line between ecclesiastical integrity and
individual freedom? is therefore one which the common-sense of
Christendom is left to solve--not to-day, not to-morrow, but gradually,
generously, and conscientiously, as the centuries go on.
THIRD: OBSTACLES AND OPPORTUNITY
It is said that a minister is greatly handicapped to-day in all his
efforts for two reasons: First, that the times are spiritually
lethargic, that men are so engrossed by material aims, indifference, or
sin that a pastor can get no hold upon their hearts. Second, that he is
bound hand and foot by conditions existing in the organization and
personnel of his church, and hence is not free to act.
What would we think of an electrician who would complain that a storm
had cast down his network of wires? Of a civil engineer who would lament
that the mountain over which he was asked to project a road was steep?
Of a doctor who would grieve that hosts of people about him were very
ill? Of a statesman who would cry out that horrid folks opposed him? It
is the work of the specialist to meet emergencies, and it is his
professional pride to triumph over difficult conditions. The harder his
task, the more he exults in his power of success.
It is a glorious task that lies before the minister of to-day--to
maintain, develop, and uplift the spiritual life of the most wonderful
epoch of the world's history; to place upon human souls that vital
touch that shall hold their powers subject to eternal influences and
aims. The times are not wholly unfavorable: our era, which spurns many
ecclesiastical forms, is at heart essentially religious. _The World for
Christ!_ How this war-cry of the spirit thrills anew as one realizes how
much more there is to win to-day than ever before. The Warrior girds
himself and longs eagerly to marshal great, shining, active hosts
for God!
It is true that the conditions of work are more trying than they have
usually been. A man goes out from the seminary. He has had a good
education, followed by perhaps a year or two abroad, and some practical
experience in sociological work. He has plans, ideas, ideals, a vigorous
and whole-souled personality, a frank and generous heart.
What does he find? He soon discovers that the battle is not always to
the strong, the educated, or the well-bred. Too often he is at the mercy
of rich men who can scarcely put together a grammatical sentence; of
poorer men who are, in church affairs, unscrupulous politicians; of
women who carp and gossip; and of all sorts of men and women who desire
to rule, criticise, hinder, and distrain. They, too, are the very people
who, in the ears of God and of the community, have vowed to love him and
to uphold his work! The more intellectual and spiritual he is, the more
he is troubled and distressed.
Many churches, too, are in a chronic state of internal war. As for
these rising church difficulties--try to put out a burning bunch of
fire-crackers with one finger, and you have the sort of task he has in
hand. While one point of explosion is being firmly suppressed, other
crackers are spitting and going off. Whichever way he turns, and
whatever he does, something pops angrily, and a new blaze begins! And
this business, incredibly petty as it is, blocks the progress of the
Christian faith. Men and women of education and refinement, of a wide
outlook and noble thoughts and deeds, are more and more unwilling to
place themselves on the church-roll; a minister sometimes finds himself
in the anomalous position of having the more cultured, congenial, and
philanthropic people of the community quite outside any church
organization.
All these things mean, not that a minister must grow discouraged, but
that he must set his teeth, and with pluck and endurance rise strong and
masterful and say, This shall not be! Let him not listen to the barking
and baying: let him hearken to the great primal voices of man and
nature. Love lies deeper than discord. The constructive forces of
humanity are stronger than the disintegrative. The right
attraction binds.
There are some men who by the sheer force of their personality subdue
their church difficulties. They hold the captious in awe. By a sort of
magnetic persuasion and lively sense of humor they soothe this one and
that, win the regard of the outlying community, attach many new members
to the organization, and build up, out of discordant and erstwhile
discontented elements, a harmonious and active church. This is the man
for these martial times! If there are born leaders in every other
department of the world's work, men who quietly but firmly assert their
authority and supremacy in the tasks in which they hold, by free
election or legitimate appointment, a place at the head--it ought to be
so in the Church of God! I long to see arise in the ministry _a race
of iron!_
There are other difficulties, seldom spoken of, of which one must write
frankly, though with the keenest sympathy, if one is to look deeply into
the modern church problem. First: Is a minister's environment favorable
to his best personal development? Does he not miss much from the lack of
the world's hearty give-and-take? He gets criticism, but not of a just
or all-round kind. Small things may be pecked at, trifles may be made
mountains of by the disgruntled, but where does he get a clear-sighted,
whole-hearted estimate of himself and his work? Who tells him of his
real virtues, his real faults? Among all his friends, who is there, man
or woman, who is brave enough to be true?
Other men are soon shaken into place. Their personal traits continually
undergo a process of chiselling and adjustment. They are told
uncomfortable things how quickly! At the club, in the university, in
the market, the ploughing-field, the counting-room, they rub up against
each other, and no mercy is shown by man to man until primary signs of
crudeness are worn off. Let a conceited professor get in a college
chair! Watch a hundred students begin their delightful and salutary
process of "taking him down" by the sort of mirth in which college boys
excel! Their unkindness is not right, but the result is, they never
molest a man who is merely eccentric.
Watch a scientific association jump with all fours upon a man who has
just read a paper before their body! How unsparingly they analyze and
criticise! He has to meet questions, opposition, comments, shafts of wit
and envy, jovial teasing and correction. He goes out from the meeting
with a keener love of truth and exactness, and a less exalted idea of
his own powers. Watch the rivalry and sparring that go on in any
business. Men meet men who attack them; they fight and overcome them, or
are themselves overcome.
Human friction is not always harmful. A minister should not be hurt or
angered by disagreement and discussion. No one's ideas are final. Let
him expect to stand in the very midst of a high-strung, spirited, and
hard-working generation. Let him be turned out of doors. Let him travel,
look, learn, meet men and women, and conquer in the arena of manhood.
Then, by means of this undaunted manhood, he may the better guide the
fiery enthusiasms of men, inspire their higher ambitions, and comfort
them in their bitter human sorrows!
Again, too often a minister is spoiled in his first charge by flattery,
polite lies, and gushing women. He is sadly overpraised. A bright young
fellow comes from the seminary. He can preach; that is, he can prepare
interesting essays, chiefly of a literary sort, which are pleasant to
listen to, though, in the nature of things, they can have scarcely a
word in them of that deep, life-giving experience and counsel which come
from the hearts of men and women who have lived, and know the truth of
life. He is told that these sermons are "lovely," "beautiful," "_so_
inspiring," and he believes every word of praise. No one says to him,
"When you know more, you will preach better," and his standard of
excellence does not advance. This man, who might have become a great
preacher, remains, as years go on, alas! an intellectual potterer.
He is also socially made too much of, being one of the very few men
available for golf and afternoon teas, suppers, picnics, tennis,
charity-bazaars. Other men are frankly too busy for much of these
things, except for healthful recreation; and not infrequently one finds
stray ministers absolutely the only men at some function to which men
have been invited.
A minister is not a parlor-pet. How many a time an energetic man,
society-bound, must long to kick over a few afternoon tea-tables, and
smash his way out through bric-à-brac and chit-chat to freedom
and power!
I should think that a real Man in the ministry would get so very tired
of women! They tell him all their complaints and difficulties, from
headaches, servants, and unruly children, to their sentimental
experiences and their spiritual problems. Men tell him almost nothing.
Watch any group of men talking, as the minister comes in. A moment
before they were eager, alert, argumentative. Now they are polite or
mildly bored. He is not of their world. Some assert that he is not even
of their sex! Hence the lips of men are too often sealed to the
minister. He must find some way not only to meet them as brother to
brother, but he must capture their inmost hearts. The shy confidence of
an honorable man once won, his friendship never fails.
The question of a minister's relation to the women of his congregation
and the community is not only curious and complex--it is a perpetual
comedy. How do other men in public life deal with this problem? They
have a genial but indifferent dignity, quite compatible with courtesy
and friendly ways. They shoulder responsibility; they do not flirt; they
sort out cranks; they flee from simpers; they put down presumption. If
married, they laugh heartily with their wives over any letter or
episode that is comical or sentimental. If not married, they get out of
things the best way they know how, with a sort of plain, manly
directness. If a minister would arrogate to himself his free-born
privilege of being a thorough-going man, many of his troubles would
disappear.
Let him hold himself firmly aloof both from nonsense and from enervating
praise. Let him dream of great themes, and work for great things! Let
him rely on more quiet friends who watch loyally, hope, encourage,
inspire. By and by the scales drop from his eyes; he sees himself, not
as one who has already achieved, but as one to whom the radiant gates of
life are opening, so that he, too, can one day speak to human souls as
the masters have done! He discovers that out of the heart's depths is
great work born! This is a memorable day, both for this man and for his
church. From that hour he has vision and power.
Another error in ministerial education and outlook is that too often
ministers forget that they compete with other men: they are not an
isolated class of humanity. Competition underlies the energy and
efficiency of the world's work. When men do not consciously compete with
others, they inevitably drop behind. What a minister was intended for,
was to stand head and shoulders above other men. God seems to have
planned the universe in such a way that everywhere the spiritual shall
be supreme. He was meant to be a towering leader. Who, in other realms,
has excelled Moses, Joshua, Elijah, David, Paul?
But if we consider the responsibilities which are now being laid upon
different classes of people, and carried by them, I think that we must
acknowledge that the statesman is looming up as the most influential and
upbuilding man to-day. He is the one who is adjusting the new
world-powers and the new world-relations, over-seeing the development of
our country, and planning for its laws and commerce. Close to him comes
the physician, who is laying his hand on world-plagues, and is studying
the conditions and the forms of disease, with a view to striking disease
at its root. The hand of the doctor is laid upon consumption, malaria,
yellow fever, diphtheria, typhoid fever, and bubonic plague, and the
advance in medical research is marvellous.
The lawyer and the capitalist are together adjusting the industrial
relations of the country. We have trusts, syndicates, and
corporation-problems handled with a firm intellectual grasp and a wide
outlook over human affairs.
The reading of the world is in the hands of editors of enterprise and
sagacity. They daily bring wars, statecraft, business plans, political
situations, trade openings, scientific discoveries, forms of church-work
and philanthropy, accidents, murders, and marriages, to our
breakfast-table. The press of to-day has a tremendous scope. When some
of the magazines come to hand, one feels that he is in touch with the
affairs of the universe and has reading of a cosmic order.
The day-laborer is discovering that to ingenuity, talent, and manliness,
the whole world swings open. Carnegie's Thirty Partners, most of whom
have come from the working-ranks, demonstrate that a man can rise from
the pick, the spade, the foreman's duties, to the control of great
industrial interests.
Bankers are thinking out the financial problems--currency, legal tender,
the best forms of money and authority; the whole monetary system of the
world is under consideration and analysis. The farmer is learning,
through chemistry and other forms of science, new ways of making his
farm productive, and the educated agriculturist is rising to be an
intellectual factor in the development of our country. Everywhere we see
Life awakening--a great renaissance!
Has the minister, as a thinker and active force of regeneration, kept
pace with this advance? Do many sermons thrill us in this large way?
Where does he rank among the world-masters of energy and power?
The ministry is supposed to be a work of saving souls. But if we could
know the direct effect of preaching, and the conversions which are
really due to preaching, I think we should find them comparatively few.
What touched the boy or girl, man or woman, and led him or her to Christ
was not the sermon, or pastoral talk, though this one or another may
have united with the Church after a special sermon, revival, or personal
appeal. It was the memory and influence of a mother's prayers; of early
associations; of a teacher, a lover, a friend. The conversion came
direct from God--the soul was acted upon by some special moving of the
Holy Spirit. Or it was the death of a friend, an illness, an accident, a
disappointment, which turned the thoughts to heavenly things. Or it was
a book that searched the soul's depths, or some quickening human
experience. Is this quite as it should be? Is not professional
pride aroused?
Suppose that New York City should suddenly be invaded by the bubonic
plague or yellow fever. Would any one be to blame? Certainly! Such an
outcry would go up as would echo across the country. Where were the
quarantine officers? Where was the port physician? Where were the
specialists who attend to sanitation and disinfection?
We say that divorce and Sabbath-breaking are sweeping over our
country--gambling, social drinking, and many other ills; a sensational
press, a corrupt politics, a materialistic greed.
All the ministers under heaven cannot take sin out of the world, nor
uproot sin altogether from the heart of man: the plague conies in at
birth. Neither can all the doctors living remove disease, so that no one
will get sick or die. But just as the doctor can, by study, by training,
by counsel, by practice, and by the direction of wise law-making,
protect the health interests of his country or community, so the
minister should stand, yet more largely than to-day, as a break-water
between the world and the tides of sin! He should not only be able to
keep alive in a country an atmosphere of prayer, devotion, and unselfish
service--he should, by God's help, make piety the general estate of the
land; he should not only be intellectually able to show the great
advantage of the upright Christian life, he should straight-way lead
all classes into that life; he should be able to lay a hand on the moral
maladies of mankind, personal and national, and prescribe effectual
remedies; take lame, halt, sinning souls, and by God's grace and Spirit,
lift not only individuals, but whole communities, to a more
spiritual plane.
This is a Titanic intellectual task, as well as a spiritual one. When a
doctor wishes to keep plague out of America, he goes to Asia, to see
what plague is! He takes microscopes, instruments, and drugs; he buries
himself in a laboratory, and gives his whole mind to the problem, until
one day he can come forth and tell how to heal and help. More than this,
he risks his life. For every great discovery in medical practice,
doctors and nurses have died martyrs to their faithful work.
Moral evil must be studied in an energetic and intellectual way. The
variations of humanity from righteousness must be deeply understood.
Look at Booker T. Washington, or at Jacob A. Riis! What daring, what
indefatigable toil, what insight, patience, and swerveless hope have
been put into their task! Edison is said to have spent six months
hissing S into his phonograph to make it repeat that letter, and many
days he worked seventeen hours a day. Have many ministers ever bent
themselves in this way to solve a special moral problem--that of, say, a
disobedient child in the congregation? Have they spent six months, hours
and hours a day, to make the law of God, the word Obedience, ring in
that child's ears? Spiritual guidance is definitely and positively a
scientific task. The mastery of one fact may lead to the correlation of
a psychic law. When a minister can help a soul to overcome temptation,
and a parent to bring up a child, he is in touch with two final human
problems. As he gradually enlarges his careful and illuminating work,
his church becomes in time a body of spiritually well-educated
communicants, thoroughly grounded in doctrinal, ethical, and social
ideals, well taught in public and in private duties. It is not
self-centred or wholly denominational in spirit, but recognizes itself
to be a part of a catholic body of believers, reaches out with friendly
coöperation to near-by churches, extends its missionary efforts to
other neighborhoods or lands, and partakes of a world-life, a
world-love!
Ruling religious thinkers should also, by and by, become leaders of
national thought and life. Great public questions should be open to
their judgment and appeal; they should be moral arbiters, and spiritual
guides in national crises. By a word they should be able to rouse the
prayers of the country, and by a word to still widespread anger and
uprising. If accredited spiritual leaders cannot help, who can?
There are a few men living who seem to hold, for the whole world, the
temporal balance. They control mines and shipping, banks and trade. Who,
to-day, holds the spiritual destiny of the world in his hand? I long to
see men appear upon whom the eyes of the world shall be fastened, in
recognition of their spiritual preeminence, as they are now fastened on
these industrial giants.
Rise! Let some man, earnest and endowed, look forward into the future,
and with the courage that comes from inborn power, assert himself among
the nations! Allay, O World-Evangelist, not only neighborhood disputes,
but international dissensions; project a creed that shall be profound
and universal; sweep sects together, unite energy and endeavor, baptize
with fire, bring repentance, quicken the race-conscience, uplift the
World-Hope! Erect and elemental, hold CHRIST before the race!
IV. THE WORLD-MARCH: OF SAGES
[ADESTE FIDELES]
_Our Father in Heaven,
Creator of all,
O source of all wisdom,
On Thee we would call!
Thou only canst teach us,
And show us our need,
And give to Thy children
True knowledge indeed.
But vain our instruction,
And blind we must be,
Unless with our learning
Be knowledge of Thee.
Then pour forth Thy Spirit
And open our eyes,
And fill with the knowledge
That only makes wise.
From pride and presumption,
O Lord, keep us free,
And make our hearts humble,
And loyal to Thee,
That living or dying,
In Thee we may rest,
And prove to the scornful
Thy statutes are best._
THOMAS WISTAR
If we should be told that at birth a strange and wonderful gift had
been bestowed upon us, one such that by means of it, in after life, we
could accomplish almost anything we wished, how we should guard it! With
what delight we would make it work, to see what it would do! We should
never be tired of such a toy, because every day it would reveal new
possibilities of power and delight.
Such a gift God has given us in our power to think. What a mysterious
and deep-hid gift it is! Nerves and sensations, a few convolutions in
the brain, acts of attention and observation, certain reactions
following certain stimuli: the result, a world of worlds spread out
before us; unlimited intellectual possibilities within our grasp!
What is thinking? Thinking is an attempt to express infinite thoughts,
affections, relations, and events, in finite terms. The child strings
buttons. The philosopher strings God, angels, devils, brutes, men, and
their appurtenances and deeds. Hence no real thought will quite go into
words. Out beyond the word hangs the infinite remainder of our idea. The
search for a vocabulary is the search for a clearer articulation
of ideas.
Thinking is the power to take up life where the race has left off
attainment, and to lead the race one step farther on, by a new concept
or idea. It is a curious thing, this little turn in the brain, a
thought. We cannot see it, or touch it, or handle it. Yet we can give
it, one to another, or one man to the race. It has an infinite leverage.
One great thought moves millions onward. Plant the word _steam_, and
globe-transport changes. Plant _electricity_, and a hundred new
industries spring up. Plant _liberty_, tyrants fall. Plant _love_,
chaotic angers disappear.
If we refuse to learn to think, we refuse to do our share of the world's
work. We are like a horse that balks and will not pull. While we sulk
the universe is at a standstill.
Spelling and arithmetic, history, etymology, and geography, are not
tasks set over school-children by a hard taskmaster, who keeps them from
sunshine and out-of-door play. They are catch-words of the universe.
They are the implements by which each brain is to be trained to do great
work for the one in whom it lives. What every earnest soul asks is not
gold, fame, or pleasure. It is: Let me not die till I have brought
millions farther on.
We cannot deliberately make thoughts. Thought is like life itself:
science has not found a formula which will produce it. But just as
marriage produces new lives, though we cannot say how, so study and
meditation produce thoughts. Something new appears: a concept which was
not with the race before.
The work of sages has been to rule the thinking of the race. They
receive the inspired ideas and spend their lives in teaching them to
others: in setting up intellectual vibrations throughout the world.
Some day, I hope Sargent will paint a March of Sages, as gloriously as
he has painted the panels of the Prophets. Then we shall gaze upon the
train of heavy-browed, noble-eyed, wise, gentle-mannered men, who have
been the enduring teachers of the race,--thinkers, leaders, seers.
Confucius, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, the mediaeval
philosophers, the Egyptian, Persian, and Arabian thinkers, Roger Bacon,
Thomas Aquinas, Eckhart, William of Occam, Bede, Thomas à Kempis,
Francis Bacon, Kant, John Stuart Mill, Spencer,--with what dignity the
processional moves down the years! The sum of human knowledge is vast;
but how much more vast seem the achievements of each of these men, when
we realize how few his years, and how many the obstacles and impediments
of his all too short career! There is ever a pathos in the life of
the wise.
By thinking, we pass from the gossip of the neighborhood into the
conversation of the years. We do not know what Alcibiades said to his
man-servant about the care of his clothes, baths, perfumes,--nor what
his man-servant retailed to other retainers of the eccentricities and
vanities of his master. But we know what Pericles and Plato said to the
race. Here is the advantage of a thinking mind--that at any moment one
may enter into eternal subjects of thought, and have converse with those
who of all times have been the most profound.
Nothing teases the soul like the thought of the unfinished, the
imperfect, the incomplete. And yet, when we have thought and planned a
really great and abiding work, whether we ever finish it or not--for
many things in life may intervene between conception and completion--to
have thought of it is to have had in our lives a pleasure that can never
die. For one blessed hour or year we have been lifted to the thoughts of
God and have entered into the great original Design. Hence it is that
the life of the real Thinker, however broken or disturbed, is at heart a
life of serenity and joy. What matters a conflagration, a
disappointment, to him whose thoughts are set upon the race?
Thinking is a form of vital growth. We all wish for growth. Is there any
one who wishes to stay always just where he is to-day? To be always what
he is this morning? The tree grows, the flower grows, the ideals of the
race grow--shall not I?
We are born to a destiny which has no limit of grandeur save the limit
of the thought of God, The wish for growth is the wish to enter into the
spiritual ideals of the universe,--to become one with its advancement,
one with its decrees.
But do not the secular look upon growth as a sort of chase--a chase for
more learning, more money, a bigger business, a higher degree, a better
position, a brilliant marriage,--a struggle for wealth, renown, acclaim?
These things are not in themselves growth, nor its real index. Growth is
not a form of avarice. Growth is a vital state of being. Growth is the
assimilation of experience. Growth is development in the line of eternal
purpose. Growth is the combination of our souls with the things that
are, in such a way as to make a perpetual progress toward the things
that are to be.
We lose much because we lose avidity out of our lives, the eagerness to
grasp what spiritually belongs to us,--to share the universal
enthusiasm, the universal hope. Day by day the world wheels about
us--sunset and moonrise, wind, hail, frost, snow, vapor, care, anxiety,
temptation, trial, joy, fear. Whatever touches the sense or the soul is
something by which, rightly used, we may grow. There is nothing we need
fear to take into our lives, if it receives the right assimilation. Each
experience is meant to be a vital accession. We narrow our lives and
enfeeble our powers when we try to reject any of these things, or
unlawfully escape them, or are yet indifferent to them. Prejudice,
cowardice, and apathy are death.
Experience is what the race has been through. Each of us has his
personal variant of this common life. Thought is the power by which we
make it available for our own better living, and the future life of
the race.
To the early man, there existed earth, air, water, fire, heat, cold,
tempest, and the growth of living things. He lived, ate, fought, but his
thoughts were primitive and personal. Have _I_ had enough dinner? he
asked, not, Is the race fed?
By and by some one arose who began to consider things in the abstract,
and to relate them to his neighbor, and formulate conclusions about
them. He was the first real Thinker, Then air-philosophy and
element-philosophy grew up--beast-worship, animalism, fire-worship, and
the rudiments of simple scientific learning, as, for instance, when men
found that they could make a tool to cut, a spike to sew.
Since then, what the sage has done is to teach men to see, read, write,
think, count, and to work; to love ideals, to love mankind and relate
his work to human progress.
Man's first primer was near at hand. When he wished to write, he made a
picture with a stick, a stone, on a leaf, or traced his idea in the mud.
When he wanted to count, he kept tally on his fingers, or with pebbles
from the beach or brook. When he wished to communicate an idea orally,
it was with glances, shrugs, gestures, and imitative sounds. Once, in a
game of Twenty Questions, this was the question set to guess: Who first
used the prehistoric root expressing a verb of action? Who, indeed?
Out of that leaf-writing, and bark-etching, and later rune, have grown
the printed writings of mankind. Homer, Dante, Milton, and Shakespeare
are the lineal descendants of the man who made holes in a leaf, or lines
on a wave-washed sand. Out of the finger-counting have grown up
book-keeping, geometry, mathematical astronomy and a knowledge of the
higher curves. Out of the prehistoric shrugs and sounds and grimaces we
have oral speech--much of it worthless, and not all of it yet wholly
intelligible. We are still continually being understood to say what we
never meant to say: we are forever putting our private interpretation on
the words of other men. Even yet, we are all too stupid. In our
dreariest moments does there not come to us sometimes a voice which
cries: Up, awake! Cease blinking, and begin to see!
Language is electric. Words have a curious power within themselves. They
rain upon the heart with the soft memories of centuries of old
associations, or thoughts of love, vigils, and patience. They have a
power of suggestion which goes beyond all that we may dream. Just as a
man shows in himself traces of a long-dead ancestry, so words have the
power to revive emotions of past generations and the experiences of
former years. The man of letters, the Thinker, strews a handful of
words into the air, breathes a little song. The words spring up and
bring forth fruit. Their seed is human progress and a larger life for
men. Think, for instance, who first flung the word _freedom_ into
space!--_gravitation, evolution, atom, soul!_ There is no power like the
power of a word: a word like _liberty_ can dethrone kings.
We get out of a word just what we put into it, plus the individuality of
the man who uses it. Some men read into noble words only their own
silliness, vulgarity, prejudice, or preconceived ideas. Another man
reads with his heart open for new impressions, new insight, new fancies
and ideals.
Words have not only their inherent meaning; they have their allied
meanings. A word may mean one thing by itself. It may mean quite another
thing when another word stands beside it; even marks of punctuation give
words a curiously different sound and shade. Literature is a mastery,
not only of the moods of men, but of the moods of words. Corot takes a
stream, some grass and trees, a flitting patch of sky. By means of a few
strokes of his brush, he manages to present that tree, sky, stream, in a
way which suggests the pastoral experience of the ages. Where did that
misty veil come from? the trembling lights and shadows, the half-heard
sounds and silence of the woods, the changing cloud, the dim reflection,
the atmosphere of mystery and peace?
So each man goes to the dictionary. He takes a word here, a word there,
common words that everybody knows. He puts them together: the result is
a presentation of the life of man, and lays hold of his inmost spirit.
"_Our birth is but a deep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home!_"
To write, the soul chooses, and God stands ever by to help. That is why
great work always impresses us as inspired. God did it. It is God who
whispers the deathless thought and phrase: the subtler collocations
are divine.
Take the word _star_. To the child it means a bright point that glitters
and twinkles in the sky, and sets him saying an old nursery rhyme. To
the youth or maiden it suggests love, romance, a summer eve, or a frosty
walk under the friendly winter sky. To the rhetorician it suggests a
figure of speech--the star of hope. To the mariner it suggests guidance
and the homeward port. To the astronomer it means the world in which he
lives. His life is centred in that star. To the poet it means all these
things and many more. For the poet is the one who, in his own heart,
holds all the meanings that words hold for the race. Read again the
lines just quoted, and think of Wordsworth's outlook on the star!
The dictionary definition of a word can seldom be the real one, nor does
it reveal the deeper sense it has. It blazes a path for the
understanding, but individual thought must follow. Take the words _time,
friendship, work, play, heroism_. It took Carlyle to define Time for us.
Emerson has defined Friendship. Let the lights and shadows of the
thought of Carlyle and Emerson play upon these words, they are at once
removed from mechanical definition, and we dimly perceive that each word
is larger than the outreach of the thought of man. Another generation
than ours shall define and refine them. In heaven, in some other aeon,
we shall find out what they really mean!
Thus knowledge is not permanent. It reels. It proceeds, it changes, it
is iridescent with new significance from day to day.
What is true of a word, and what we make of it, is true of every phase
of learning. The black-board is not all. Learning is not tied to it, or
to any one person, demonstration, interpretation, event, or epoch. No
wise man can keep his learning to himself, and yet he cannot, though he
teach a thousand years, transmit his deeper learning to another. The
atmosphere, the casual information, the spiritual magnetism of a great
man, will teach better than the text-books, the lecture courses, and
the formal resources of academic halls. Thus Mark Hopkins is in himself
a university, given a boy on the other end of the log on which he sits.
It is the relativity of knowledge that dances before the eye, that
bewilders, eludes, evades. Group-systems and electives seem like a
makeshift for the real thing. We cannot tie a fact to a pupil, because
to the tail of the fact is tied history itself. Until a pupil gets a
glimpse of that relation, that dependence of which we have just heard,
with all that has yet happened in connection with it, he is not yet
quite master of his fact. He recites glibly the date of Thermopylae, and
does not know that all Greece is trailing behind his desk. When, after
subsequent research, he knows something of Greece, he discovers Greece
to be dovetailed into Rome and Egypt, and they lay hold upon the plain
of Shinar and Eden, and the immemorial, prehistoric years.
Ah, no! We never really know. Every fact recedes from us, as might an
ebbing wave, and leaves us stranded upon an unhorizoned beach, more
despairing than before. Education does not solve the problems of
life--it deepens the mystery. What, then, may the sage know? Are there
no sages? And have we all been misinformed?
A sage is one who knows what, in his position of life, is most necessary
for him to know. The larger sage, the great Sage, is the one who knows
what is necessary for the race to know.
It is a wrong idea of wisdom, that we must necessarily know what some
one else knows. Wisdom is single-track for each man. There are in the
world those who know how to build aqueducts, and to bake _charlotte
russe_, and to sew trousers. Aqueducts and tailor work may be alike out
of my individual and personal knowledge, yet I may not necessarily be an
ignorant man. The primitive hunter stood in the forest. For him to be a
hunting-sage, was to know the weather, traps, weapons, the times, and
the lairs and ways of beasts. He knew lions and monkeys, the coiled
serpent and the serpent that hissed by the ruined wall; the ways of the
wolf, the jackal, and the kite; the manners of the bear and the black
panther in the jungle-wilds. Kipling is the brother of that early man:
he is a forest-sage, and would have held his own in other times.
The sea-sage was the one who could toss upon the swan-road without fear.
He knew the strength of oak and ash; the swing of oar, the curve of
prow, the dash of wave, and the curling breaker's sweep. He knew the
maelstroms and the aegir that swept into northern fiords; the thunder
and wind and tempest; the coves, safe harbors and retreats. To-day, the
sea-sage rules the fishing-boat, the ocean liner, the coastwise
steamers, and the lake-lines of the world.
The fishing-sage knows the ways and haunts of fish. He is wise in the
salmon, the perch, the trout, the tarpon, and the muscalonge. He says.
To-day the bass will bite on dobsons, but to-morrow we must have frogs.
No sagacity is universal, but the love of sagacity may be. The man who
starts out to implant a new way of education has a noble task before
him, but is it a final one, or even a more than tolerably practical one?
Is there such a thing as a place for Truth at wholesale, even in an
academy or college? Can a man receive an education outside of himself?
He may be played upon by grammars and by loci-paper, by electrical
machines, and parsing tables and Grecian accents, by the names of noted
authors and statesmen, and the thrill of historic battles and decisions.
He may be placed under a rain of ethical and philosophic ideas, and may
be forced to put on a System of Thought, as men put on a mackintosh. But
his true education is what he makes of these things. If he hears of
Theodoric with a yawn, we say--the college-folk--He must be imbecile.
No, not imbecile! he may become a successful toreador, or snake-charmer,
which things are out of our line! And a man may be an upright citizen, a
good husband, and a sincerely religious man, who has never heard of
Francesca, nor Fra Angelico, nor named the name of Botticelli!
The moment we set bounds to wisdom, we find that we have shut something
out. Wisdom is the free, active life of a growing and attaching soul.
We must not only attach information to ourselves, we must assimilate it.
Else we are like a crab which should drag about Descartes, or as an
ocean sucker which should hug a copy of Thucydides.
Education is the taking to one's self, so far as one may in a lifetime,
all that the race has learned through these six thousand years.
Education is not a thing of books alone, or schools; it is a process of
intellectual assimilation of what is about us, or what we put about
ourselves. At every step we have a choice. This is the real difference
between students at the same school or university. One puts away Greek,
and the other lays up football and college societies. A third gets all
three, being a little more swift and alert. One stows away
insubordination--another, order and obedience. One does quiet, original
work of reading and research; the other stows away schemes for getting
through recitations and examinations. No two students ever come out of
the same school, college, or shop with the same education. Their
training may have been measurably alike, but the result is immeasurably
unlike. Education, in the last analysis, is getting the highest
intellectual value out of one's environment and opportunities. There is
a cow-boy philosopher, a kitchen-philosopher, as truly as there is a
philosopher of the academic halls.
Conduct is the _pons asinorum_ of life. Wise men somehow cross it,
though stumblingly, and with tears. Fools, usurers, oppressors, and
spendthrifts of life are left gaping and wrangling on the hellward side.
Thinkers have always been climbing up on each other's shoulders to look
over into the Beyond. What they have seen, they have told. Some men
climb so high into the ethereal places of the Ideal, that they do not
get down again. They are the impractical men. An impractical man is not
necessarily the educated man; he is the man at the top of some
intellectual fence, who wishes to come down, but has absent-mindedly
forgotten that he has legs. The legs are not absent, but his wit is. So
with the impractical man in every sphere. Education has not really
removed his common-sense, as some say, his power to connect passing
events with their causes, and to act reasonably; but it has set his
thought on some other thought for the time being, and the dinner-bell,
we will say, does not detach him from his inquiry. His necktie rides up!
He goes out into the street without a hat! Let him alone till he proves
the worth of what he is about. The practical man, who hears the
dinner-bell and prides himself upon this fact, may not hear sounds
far-off and clear, that ring in the impractical man's ear, and that may
sometime tell him how to make a better dinner-bell, or provide a better
dinner--a great social philosophy--for the race!
The really impractical man is not he who reaches out to the intellectual
and ideal aspects of life; it is he who lives as if this life were all.
There are women who make pets of their clothes, as men make pets of
horse or dog. They have just time enough in life to dress themselves up.
Looking back over their years, they can only say, I have had clothes! In
the same number of years, with no greater advantages or opportunities,
other women have become the queenly women of the race. Some women are
girt with centuries, instead of gold or gems. Whenever they appear, the
event becomes historic; what they do adds new lustre to life.
We are all prodigals. We throw away time and strength, and years, and
gold, and then weep that we are ignorant, and embeggared at the last.
Who shall teach us wisdom, and in what manner may we be wise?
What say the sages of the vast possibilities of the race? With one voice
they say: Be brave! Do not cower, shrink, or whine. Throw out upon the
world a free fearlessness of thought and word and deed. Courage,
freedom, heroism, faith, exactness, honor, justice, and mercy--these
traits have been handed down as the traditional learning of the heart
of man.
Another ideal of the race is Law. We have given up a
chaos-philosophy--the haphazard continuity of events--a cometary orbit,
for the world. There are fixed relations everywhere existent: the
succession of cycles is orderly and prearranged.
Another ideal is Progress. We are moving, not toward the bottom, but
toward the top of possibility. We reject annihilation, because then
there is nothing left. And there must always be something
left--progress--a bigger something, a better something. Should
annihilation be the truth of things, and all the race mortal, then some
day there would be a Last Man. And after the Last Man, what? He would
die, and then all that any of the other stars could view of the vast
panorama of our earthly generations would be an unburied corpse, with
not even a vulture hovering to pick it to freshness in the air!
A Last Man? No. Instead, the seers have shown us a great multitude in a
heavenly country, praising God, and singing forth His Name forever.
Immortality broods over the great thought of the race. All great minds
look upward to it: it is the final consummation of our dreams.
Another ideal is social adjustment, and social service. We must do
something for some one, or we cast current sagacity behind the back.
People crowd each other to the wall. The weak of communities and nations
are too often crushed. Redress is in the air. The longed-for wisdom of
to-day shows a kaleidoscopic front, in which are turning the
slum-dweller and the millionaire; the white man, the yellow, and the
black; the town and the territorial possession. The slave-colony,
garbage-laws, magistrates, and murderers are mixed in motley, and there
are whirling vacant-lot schemes abroad, potato-patches, wood-yards,
organized charity, Wayfarers' Lodges, resounding cries of municipal
reform, and various other interests of the wisdom-scale.
Hence, wisdom has not yet been arrived at: we are still on the run. This
twentieth century will find new problems, new queries, new cranks, and
new dismays!
One thing, however, shines out clear: Wisdom is being recognized as
having a moral aspect, and men are looking for a Religion which shall
sum up the learning of the sages, the information of the race.
When we look down into the physical universe, the primary thing that we
find there is gravitation. When we look into the moral universe, the
primary thing that we find there is also gravitation--a sinking to a
Lower. This is sin--a contrariness of things--which makes the world an
evil place to live in, instead of a good; which wrecks character and
states, eats the hearts out of cultures and civilizations, destroys
strong races, leaves a stain upon even the youngest child, and which is
constantly drawing the race downward, instead of upward.
Sin, sin, sin! Everywhere the fact glares upon us, and cannot be hid, or
put away. Sin is not an intellectual toy, for philosophers to play with
or define as "a limitation of being." Sin is a reality, for men to
feel, recoil from, and of which one must repent.
Sin is energy deliberately misplaced: energy directed against the course
of things, the infinite development, the will of God. Sin is corruption,
and desolation, and decay. Death broods over the spirit of man, unless a
Redeemer come. The unredeemed ages hang over history like a pall. In
them there are monumental oppression, cruelties, and crimes. The breath
of myriad millions went out in darkness, and there was none to save. A
plague swept over all the race.
Hence, even scientifically considered, the final aim of thinking must
be, to arrive at some thought which will take hold of this primary fact
of sin and uproot it; which will show how the world may be purged
of sin.
Slowly but inevitably we are moving to this great Thought. It is summed
up in one word: Redemption. The watchword of a century ago was
gravitation. It explained the poise of the universe by a great and
hitherto undiscovered law. The watchword of yesterday was evolution. It
explains progressive change: the mounting-up of life "through spires of
form." The forms of the universe are seen in a series which is in the
main ascendant, and in which the survivor is supreme. The watchword of
to-morrow is Redemption. The Thinker will some day live, who will make
that great word Redemption stand out in all its vast majesty and
significance. This, I take it, is the work of our new century.
Redemption is the explanation of the existence of man, of his present
progress, and his future destiny. It is the great mystery of joy in
which the race partakes; the spiritual culmination of all things
earthly; the forecast of eternal things yet to be.
Redemption is not a dogma; it is a life. Redemption is a perpetual and
ascendant moral growth. It marks a world-balm, a world-change. It is in
the spirit of man that it works, and not in his outer condition, or
external strivings. It is ultimately to root sin out of the world.
Through stormy sorrows and perpetual desolations comes the race to God.
Zion is the Whole of things--the encompassment of space, and time, and
endless years,--an environment of immortality and peace.
Virtue leads the race to Joy, and there is no byway to this height. The
final aspect of the universe is joy. Joy is elemental--a vast vibration
that sweeps through centuries as years! A day in His courts is as a
thousand, and a thousand years are as one day, because they thrill with
an immortal and imperishable emotion. The seraphim and cherubim,
Sandalphon and Azrael, are angels of enduring joy. Joy is the soul's
share of the life of God.
Thus when the world has breathed to us the holy name of Christ, it has
told us the highest that it knows. The March of Sages is toward a
Redeemer! The banner of Wisdom is furled about the Cross!
IV. THE WORLD-MARCH: OF TRADERS
[AMSTERDAM]
_Lo, my soul, look forth abroad
And mark the busy stir:
Wouldst thou say, in pride and scorn,
Our God is not in her!
Nay, the bonds, the wares, the coin,--
These, in truth, are passing things;
Other treasures thrill the life
Of earth's great merchant kings!
We, they say, would wake the power
In mountain and in mine;
And transport, from sea to sea,
The cedar, oak, and pine:
Build the bridge, and plant the town,
Enter every open mart;
Make our nation's commerce flow,--
But this is not our heart!
Many a prayer uplifted springs
O'er desk, and din, and roar;
Many an humble knee is bent
When the rushed day is o'er;
Far within, where God may be,
All exists His Throne to raise;
Every triumph of our power
Becomes a form of Praise!
God of nations, hear our cry,
And keep us just and true;
Lay Thy hand on all our lives,
And bless the work we do:
Then from every coast and clime
Land and sea shall tribute bring;
Gold and traffic, world-domain
We offer to our King!_
ANNA ROBERTSON BROWN LINDSAY
We are all traders. Each of us is endowed with some faculty, ware, or
possession which he is constantly exchanging for other things. We trade
time, talent, service, goods, acres, produce, counsel, experience,
ideals. The world is in reality a Bourse of Exchange. Each of us brings
some day his special product to the common mart.
There are traders and traders--the just and the unjust--the man of honor
and the rogue. We set values on thoughts and on transactions, on
merchandise and on philanthropies, on ideas and on accounts; and there
is a constant distribution of the affairs, as well as of the worldly
goods of men.
But in a restricted sense, we think of trade as the exchange of produce
which is material and mobile,--which may be touched, handled, weighed,
transported, bought, and sold. The substance of the earth is constantly
taking new shape before our eyes, being rearranged in kaleidoscopic
combinations, and transported from port to port, from town to town, from
sea to sea. One can look nowhere without seeing this ceaseless activity
progressing. Everywhere there is a whir of wheels, a plash of waves, a
din of assembly, as the new combinations take place.
There was a day when trade was a thing of here-and-there; a thing of
sailing ships and caravans, of merchants of Bagdad, Cairo, Venice,
Alexandria, Jerusalem, Tyre, and Damascus. Ivory, gold, gems, precious
stuffs, teak and cedar wood, Lebanon pine, apes, peacocks, sandal-wood,
camel's hair, goat's hair, frankincense, pearl, dyes, myrrh, cassia,
cinnamon, Balm of Gilead, calamus, spikenard, corn, ebony, figs, fir,
olives, olive-wood, wheat, amber, copper, lead, tin, and precious stones
were the chief articles of exchange. A very little sufficed the poor;
the rich were housed in palaces and panoplied in gems.
As time went on, the processional of traders became a processional led
out, in turn, by the merchants of one city after another. It is a
picturesque study, that of the trade-routes of the Middle Ages! There
was the Mediterranean seaboard, and there were the Baltic towns and the
Hanse towns; the Portuguese mariners and traders; the Venetian merchant
princes. There was the Spanish colonial trade; the Dutch trade of the
East Indies; the trade of Amsterdam and London. There were the
Elizabethan sea-rovers. Then came the British trade in the East Indies,
and the gradual growth of the trade of France, Germany, England, and the
United States. This is a story of human wants reaching out as
civilization advanced, and of the extending of the earth-exchange.
Everywhere there has been a correspondence between national prosperity
and increasing trade.
To-day, each man demands more of the earth's products than ever before.
He reaches out a hand for comforts and luxuries, as well as for
necessities. He grasps not only the produces of his own and his
neighbor's field and vineyard, but demands what lies across continents
and seas. Instead of the ship, the camel, and the ass, we now have the
ocean freighter or liner, and the flying train of cars: new forces, oil,
steam, electricity, and water-power, do the carrying work of man. And
hence trade has become Trade, and each trader is involved in the
comfort, success, and prosperity of many others. A single commercial
transaction to-day involves the lives of hundreds of thousands, competes
for their toil and life-blood, carries the decision of their destiny.
A great merchant is the real Kris Kringle. He stands at the centre of
exchange, distributes from the tropics and the arctic zones. He deals
out fur and feathers, books, toys, clothing, engines; ribbons, laces,
silks, perfumes; bread-stuffs, sugar, cotton, iron, ice, steel; wheat,
flour, beef, stone; lumber, drugs, coal, leather. He scatters
periodically the products of mills and looms, of shoe-shops and
print-works, fields, factories, mines, and of art-workers. He thus
becomes a social force of great power, a social law-giver, in fact.
Under his iron rule, the lives of the masses are uplifted or cast down.
As large eras open, the ethical ideals become higher. We are beginning
to inquire, as never before, into the basis of trade, the place of the
trader, the right conduct of this vast problem of Distribution upon
which hinges so much of human life and fate. All things look, not only
to the integration of trade, but to its exaltation.
Trade has ceased to be a thing of individual energy, talent, and
commercial alertness. It has risen to great proportions. The large
trader is in control of national conduit, as well as of national
expense. There is a great deal more in business than the art of making
money. Business is, at the roots, a way of making nations; of developing
the resources of a country, of handling its industries, of protecting
its commerce, of enlarging its institutions, of uplifting its training,
aspirations, and ideals. Traffic is educational. Imports influence the
national life. We may import opium or Bibles, whiskey or bread-stuffs,
locomotives or dancing pigs.
The sceptre held by Tyre and Venice is passing into our own hands. But
trade, to-day, is a matter of the imagination, as well as of the
stock-book. 11 needs a great imagination to handle the present-day
problems of business and finance. The prosperity of a nation depends
largely on the intelligence, integrity, and magnanimity of its business
men. To be narrow-minded in business, is not only intellectual
astigmatism, it is poor commercial policy. To make use of present
opportunities to control present advantages needs a great education and
a large human experience. It is the man of insight, of sympathy, of
economic ideals, who will lastingly control our national prosperity and
advance our industrial wealth.
With all this demand, the business man still stands largely in a class
by himself, a class apart from the great leaders of the world. He is not
yet received into the spiritual circles of the race. He goes about the
world, sits on boards and committees, fills directorships and
trusteeships, pays pew-rent, and runs towns. But when the spiritual
conclaves of the world take place, when the things of life and death are
inquired into, when words are said of the higher conduct of the life of
man, if he draw near inquiringly or unguardedly to the sacred place,
scholar and poet, priest, saint, and proud hand-worker alike rise up and
say, Go away.
It wears upon the heart--this spiritual isolation of the business man.
Does not he often say sadly to himself, They only want my money?
Why must he go away? What has he done, that he must be waved down? If we
discover why he must go away, we shall discover the meaning of that
great caste-line which has long been drawn, and ought no longer to be
drawn, between trade and letters, trade and the Church, trade and
social prestige.
The reason he must go away is this: He has never ruled the higher
history of man; he does not yet quite belong to the ideal-makers of the
race. Understand, I am not now speaking of the new business man, the
exceptional one, upright, cultured, altruistic, whom you and I may know;
I am speaking of a broad class-line, a class distinction.
It is a strange concept that would bar the business man from the ideal;
that would limit his life to an account-book, a ledger, a roll of
stocks, rents, and possessions, instead of granting him the freedom of
the universe, the privilege of ministering to the race. Singularly
enough, the business class is the last class that Christianity has set
free. Slaves have been given liberty; women, social companionship and
intellectual equality; manual labor has been lifted to dignity and
honor. But to break the shackles of the man of trade is the work of our
era, or of an era yet to come. Thousands of young men are daily stepping
into counting-houses, or behind sales-counters, or into independent
stores, who will never lift their eyes from their goods and
account-books, nor rise above the linen, hardware, groceries, or
house-fixtures which they sell. Such a situation is suicidal of national
prosperity, and blocks the high hopes of the world.
Lack of appreciation of the life of business is sinful and unjust. A
high-principled businessman may be one of the noblest leaders of
mankind. The world needs great business men--men who will know how to
use the resources of a country, how to plan for its industry,
manufactures, and commerce: men who understand the principles of
production and exchange; ways of transportation; systems of credit and
banking: men who know the constitution of the country, and the history
of its development; its strength and weakness, its possibilities and
needs: men who will deal honorably in business contracts, both with
buyers and employees, and also with law-making bodies: men who will
steadily try to advance international prosperity, as well as
personal wealth.
But to understand business on this plane, and to conduct it in this
large way, needs a fine education, an education built, first of all, on
a practical basis, such as the education of our common schools. Then
should follow a course in the ideals of the race, the classic studies in
language, literature, history, science, and philosophy. Then should come
a technical course, graduate or undergraduate, such as the courses
offered by the Universities of Pennsylvania, Chicago, Wisconsin, which
include, in general, lectures and special studies in Public Law and
Politics, Business Law and Practice, Political Economy, Statistics,
Banking, Finance, and Sociology. In addition to this, there should be a
thorough knowledge of the Bible and of Christian Ethics, with a deep
heart-experience of religion.
Endowed with natural business talent, the young man who goes out into
the world with such preparation as this knows a great deal more than
just how to make money; he knows how to make it honorably and how to
spend it, in his business, family, and social life, for the public good;
he has in him the making of a statesman and a philanthropist, as well as
a man of wealth.
Two things take one into the inner circle of the ideal-makers of the
race--imagination and sympathy. Ideals cannot be bought with gold. The
ideal is always founded on integrity, progress, and common-sense. It is
preëminently practical, as well: the thing that inevitably must be, now
or hereafter, however men laugh it to scorn to-day.
Imagination is the faculty of perceiving the higher and final relations
of life, the relation of one's work to the progress of the world, and of
one's conduct: to spiritual history. What the ideal-maker tries to do is
to set holy standards that shall not pass away: to do abiding work, in
thought, deed, word; work philosophically planned, and perseveringly
carried out; work which he shall do regardless of the outer
circumstances of his life--poverty or wealth, of threats,
misunderstanding, or hoots of scorn. He is unmoved, both by the rage of
the populace and by its most tumultuous applause. He lives for truth,
not for personal advance; for progress, not for wealth or honor. What
he lays down as a precept, that he tries to live up to, in the way that
shall win the approval of the eternal years.
Sordidness in commercial life is not necessary: greed is
not foreordained. Christianity establishes a new system of
trading-philosophy, and a new basis of commercial ethics. There is a
god-like way of trade--Christ might Himself have bought and sold--else
Christianity fails of its full mission, and there remains a class of the
socially lost, of the ethically unsaved. One reason why it is so hard to
get business men into the Church, or to interest them religiously in any
way, is that ministers, in general, do not understand or appreciate
business men. In one of the most stirring sermons I ever heard, occurred
this unjust sentence: "Our country has been built up by the martyr, and
not by the millionaire." No! Our country has been built up by _both_ the
martyr and the millionaire!
Christianity projects into the world new ideals of Trade, of Gain, of
Competition, Value, and Return for Toil.
What is Trade? Is it merely a way of making money? Then there is no
ethical basis for it. "The amount of money which is needed for a good
life," says Aristotle, "is not unlimited."
One concept is: Trade is something which belongs to me. It is that part
of the world's exchange which I can get under my personal control. It
is the balance between human industries and human needs which I hold
for my part of the world, and which others are continually trying to
wrest from me, and which I must keep by all means, fair or foul.
Competition is the battle of the strongest, the quickest, the meanest! I
must know tricks. I must get in with people, get hold of some sort of
pull, learn to dissemble, to flatter, manipulate, hedge, dodge. Success
is a matter of being sly. Anything is allowable which comes out ahead,
which adds to the dollar-pile, or which makes the loudest
advertising noise!
To buy at the least, and sell at the most, regardless of the conditions
under which least and most are attained--the man who enters life with
this idea of trade in his mind might just as well be born a shark and
live to prey. Every free dollar in the world will tease and fret him,
until he sees it on its way to his own pocket. If this is all there is
in trade, the noble-minded will let it alone: it gives no human outlook.
It not only undermines personal character, it is the root of national
ignominy and dishonor.
What has Christianity to do with this shark-instinct? with the rapacity
which looks on the world as a vast grabbing-ground, and upon all natural
resources as mere commercial prey? The value of Christianity lies in its
reasonable and intellectual appeal. It does not spring upon one like a
highwayman and say, Hands up! Give me your purse! It says gently, Son,
give me thy heart. It then proceeds to refashion that heart, to fill it
with new principles and with world-dreams.
Trade is a just exchange of what one man has for what another man needs.
It may take place individually between man and man, in which transaction
a horse, an ox, or a tool may change hands. Or one man may assume a
responsibility for a number of people, and say: I will give this whole
town shoes, in return for which you may give me a house, market-produce,
clothing, and an education for my children. The thing will come out
even, if you and I are honest. Or a climate, a civilization, may give to
another that which the other lacks. We send school-books and machinery
to China; she sends us tea, matting, and bamboo. The whole right theory
of trade is a give-and-take between men and nations, based on a just
price, and with a deep law of Value, not yet wholly formulated,
underlying each transaction.
Bargains should not be one-sided. Trade, in a large sense, is a way of
exchange in which each party to the trade receives an advantage. Not
only this, it is a process of distribution, by which each one receives
the greatest possible advantage. Money-making is a secondary result: in
true trade it is not the final benefit.
Take the case of a specially helpful and paying book. The author
receives a royalty, and has an income. The publisher receives his
profits, and makes a living. The public gains inspiration and ideals.
Who is loser? This is sheer business, yet it means loving service for
all concerned.
To illustrate further: A physician has a frail child, with which the
ordinary milk in the market does not agree. To build up its health, he
buys a country place and a good cow. The child thrives. In his practice,
he sees many other frail children, and it occurs to him that they, too,
can be benefited by the same kind of care and watchfulness that he is
giving his own child. He buys more cows, has them scientifically cared
for, and his agents sell the milk. He finds himself, in the course of
time, the owner of a dairy farm, and a man of increasing income. But his
trade is not trade for the sake of money! it is trade to make sick
children strong and well. He exchanges professional knowledge, executive
ability, and human sympathy, for money; in return for which, children
receive health, parents joy, and the race a more athletic set of men and
women. This is an instance of the inner spirit of the true trade: the
spirit which may rule all trade, deny it, or discount it, or scorn it,
as you will.
Price is a value set on material, on labor, on interest, on scarcity, on
excellence, on commercial risks; it is the approximate measure of the
cost of production. The ethical price of a commodity is the price which
would enable its producer to produce it under healthful and happy
conditions--which would insure his having what Dr. Patten calls his
"economic rights."
This joyous exertion is not harmful; it is tonic. Excellence is an
inspiration, an intoxication. Let excellence, not Will-it-pass? be the
standard of exchange. From the very endeavor after excellence comes a
certain exaltation of spirit, which ennobles the least fragment of daily
toil. When the producer brings forth somewhat for sale, let him say:
There! That is the best that I can do! It is not what I tried to make of
it--the thing of my dreams--but it is the very best which, under the
given conditions, I could produce. Then the shoddy side of trade will
disappear.
The Law of Equity is the final law of trade. But in whose hands is
equity? Who appraises value? Who sets price? In whose hand is the final
price of the necessaries of life--wheat, rice, sugar, soap, cotton,
wool, coal, milk, iron, lumber, ice? The man who puts a price on an
article, as buyer or seller, enters an arena which is not only
commercial--it is judicial and ethical: he declares for what amount a
man's life-blood shall be used.
No one absolutely sets price. It is determined by far-reaching
industrial conditions, and by economic law. War, weather, famine,
stocks, strikes, elections, all have a say. Yet, to a certain degree,
there are those who rule price. As a representative of the ideal, as
executors of social trust, how shall each one use his Power of Price?
The man who has control of a price--a price for a day's labor, for
wages, for a cargo, or for any kind of product--has control of the
living conditions of the one who works for him. The question is not: How
shall I grind down price to the lowest? It is: What price will be an
ethical return to this man for his social toil?--just to me for my
brains, my capital, my energy, my distributing power,--just to him for
his brains, his time, his skill, his artistic perceptions, his fidelity
and honor? Each buyer must henceforth not only resolve: I will buy only
what I can pay for, but, what I can pay for at a just rate. So far as
lies in my power, I will make an adequate return to society for this
personal benefit.
Some one says: Do you realize that you are making a moral laughing-stock
of much of our system of trade? that you are setting an axe to that
system, more cutting than the axe of any Socialist, Nihilist, or
Anarchist in the world? Oh, no. I have simply set myself to answer the
question: How can the business man stand among the ideal-makers of the
world, so that he shall no more, in spiritual assemblies, be told to
go away?
Woman is the real economic distributer. The millionaire manufacturer
imagines that he himself runs his business. Oh, no. It is run by
farmers' wives. When they do not care for yarn or calico, his looms
stand idle for a year; the vast machinery of the world turns on woman's
little word: _I want_. Hence the education of women should include this
factor: the desire to want the right things. Extravagance is not a part
of woman's make-up; it is extraneous.
_Gain is that which permanently enriches the life._ By every act of
charity, or justice, or insight, or right barter, the soul is made more
grand. True trade everywhere may be made a new method of inspiration,
growth, and power.
Money is a makeshift of the race. God is the only real appraiser, and we
never get back a money-value for our soul's toil. Whether we pass
wampum, or nickels, or taels, or bank-checks, we are not yet paid for
our trade.
The higher value of money is its spiritual capacity. Not what it will
bring me is primarily important, but what I can buy with it for the
race. Sometimes the question comes over me: What am I trading for money?
My time? My energy? My ideals? Part of my soul is passing from me: do
dollars ever repay? Hence it comes about that all money transactions are
fragmentary and symbolic.
Money may lead to poverty, or to spiritual wealth. The gift of trade is
a gift of God, as much as the gift of prophecy or song. In a right way,
we should all love gain. We are not born to go out of the world as poor
as when we came into it. We should gain stature, wisdom, strength,
influence, ideals. If our latent business capacity were more fully
aroused, we should get much more out of life. We would refuse to barter
a spiritual heritage for carnal things.
We trade thoughts and feelings. But it is very hard to trade fine
impulses with those who are intrinsically vulgar. Their treasury is
empty of spiritual coin, and their storehouse contains no
world-thoughts. We can send a caravan across the desert, a ship across
the sea, but we cannot send a Thought into a flaccid or a pompous brain.
We trade position and influence. The evil of the spoils system is not
that one gets something for something,--it is that one gets something
for something less, or for nothing. Whatever we have to give may be
rightly given; the wrong comes when we give it to the idle or unworthy.
When we trade political preferment for high merit, both the
office-holders and the country are gainers by the exchange.
Marriage is the great mart of exchange. Here the possessions of one sex
are set up against those of the other. Everywhere marriage is spoken of
as a good or a bad "bargain." Each man shall say: "Sweetheart, in Myself
I offer you the treasures of manhood. I give strength, courage,
magnanimity, action, protection, and the indomitable will." Each wife
should say: "Dear, in me are all gentleness, courtesy, beauty, grace,
patience, mercy, and hope. I, too, am brave, but my courage is of the
heart. I, too, am strong-willed, but my will is deep-set in love." As
years go on, there comes a time when Love says: "Between us now there is
neither mine nor thine. The universe is ours together!"
Human love is not all. There is yet a higher impulse. The most
business-like question that ever touches the heart of man is this: For
what shall I trade my soul? We hold our souls high: we perceive that
eternity itself is not too much to ask. And hence the highest barter is
that of the earthly for the spiritual; of the temporal for the unseen
and eternal. We say, Give me God, give me heaven, give me divine and
sacrificial Love, and I will give my heart. And thus the last
transaction is between God and the soul. Godliness is great Gain, and to
exchange earth for heaven is a satisfying and unregretted Trade.
IV. THE WORLD-MARCH: OF WORKERS
[ARMAGEDON]
Jesus, Thou hast bought us
Not with gold or gem,
But with Thine own life-blood,
For Thy diadem.
With Thy blessing filling
Each who comes to Thee,
Thou hast made us willing,
Thou hast made us free.
By Thy grand redemption,
By Thy grace divine,
We are on the Lord's side;
Saviour, we are Thine!
Not for weight of glory,
Not for crown or palm,
Enter we the army,
Raise the warrior psalm;
But for love that claimeth
Lives for whom He died,
He whom Jesus nameth
Must be on His side.
By Thy love constraining,
By Thy grace divine,
We are on the Lord's side;
Saviour, we are Thine!
FRANCES RIDLEY HAVERGAL
What is work? Work is energy applied to the creation of either material
or immaterial products. The digging of the soil preparatory to raising a
corn-crop is work; the making of brooms; the writing of fugues. There is
no one who does not work, at one time or another, and a man's social
value depends largely upon the amount of work that he can do.
Even the energy which is seemingly applied to destructive tasks is
really subsidiary to a constructive ideal. Thus the hewing of timber is
a destructive task, but its object is not to scatter trees around, but
to make a clearing on which to plant wheat; or to have lumber, in order
to build a house. So, also, we blast rock, in order to get stones for a
stone wall, or for the filling of a road-bed. And we rip up old clothes
in order to have rags, and to make room in our homes for other things.
Destructiveness from a sheer love of destructiveness is not work--it is
vandalism. The true Man works. When Adam's crook-stick turned over the
brown earth to make it fertile, he began the industry of the world. The
whole horizon of man's endeavor is spanned by one word, Work. It has
built cities, bridged rivers, united continents, and sent the myriad
spindles of trade whirring under a thousand changing skies.
Work is the open-sesame of success. It is curious to see how uneasily
some men will roam from one end of the earth to the other, trying to
find an easy place, a place where work will not be needed or required.
There is no such place. The higher the honor, the harder the work. The
power to work is ordinarily the measure of a man's possibilities of
success. Long hours, hard toil, lack of recognition and appreciation,
drudgery, a thousand attempts to one successful issue,--these are the
ways in which the colossal achievements of mankind have been built up.
Work, as has well been said, is an ascending stairway. On its broad base
are ranged all the multitudes of the earth. Those who can climb mount
the higher and ever-narrowing stair.
The great man can begin anywhere, or with any task. He says, If I am
going into the giant-business, I may as well begin now! Born and bred in
the forest, he lays hand to his axe, and looking up at some tall oak,
cries out, I will begin here! With the first stroke of the axe, success
is not less sure than in his last endeavor. Success of the right kind is
a scientific achievement.
The line has not yet been drawn, and I doubt whether it ever can be
drawn, between productive and non-productive labor. There is a cleavage
of tasks, however, which may be approximately expressed, as work that is
done for support, for daily bread, and work which is done because
certain faculties of mind and heart and soul demand expression,
development, and scope. We all have powers which are willing to be set
in action primarily for self-preservation--for personal, material, and
transitory ends. We are also endowed with faculties which react,
primarily, in behalf of universal aims, though that may not debar them
from also bringing an advantage to ourselves. In proportion as we are
talented, magnanimous, and high-minded, we delight in spending a part of
our lives in working for the race.
Thus Thoreau, when he, "by surveying, carpentry and day-labor of various
other kinds," had earned $13.34, was doing income-work, the work by
which he had to live. For the same purpose, he worked at raising
potatoes, green corn, and peas. When he wrote _Walden_, he did a kind of
work which also in time brought him an income. But he did not write
_Walden_ for food or money; he wrote it primarily because he liked to
write, and for the benefit of mankind.
In order to be contented and happy, each normal adult human being must
have at least the chance of doing these two kinds of work. Unless he or
she can do income-work, he or she is not economically independent;
unless he can do universal work, he is not socially and
spiritually free.
Much of the present-day discontent is owing to the fact that these two
kinds of work are not represented, as they should be, in every
working-life.
The problem in regard to the working-man is not how to pet him, nor to
patronize him, but how to educate him and inspire him! He is not a
parasite to be fed by the capitalist, nor is the capitalist a parasite
upon the working-power of the working-man. Both are men. The problem is,
How shall the capitalist lead the noblest, most public-spirited, and
helpful life in relation to those in his employ? How shall the
working-man lay hold on the best that life can give? How shall he find a
work which he is competent to do, and likes to do, and may be supported
by doing--and at the same time have a chance to grow; to enter into the
large, free culture-life of the world?
The complaint of the working-man, when really analyzed, runs down to
this: I do income-work, but it does not bring me bread enough to live.
Not only that, but ground down as I am by toil, all possibility of the
larger, universal work is shut away from me. My faculties are
atrophied--paralyzed--and hence my soul smoulders with deep and angry
discontent. This ceaseless and sordid anxiety for bread cuts me out of
my world-life, my world-toil. I cannot do scientific research-work, or
write the books and papers that I ought. My universal labor is
interrupted: I cannot be happy until I can take up this larger
work again.
As the trade of civilization advances, the meaning of bread changes. The
university professor, no less than the day-laborer, finds his income
too small for him, and says, "I, too, do income-work which does not
bring me bread, books, travel, society, a summer home, and surroundings
which are not only decent and sanitary, but refined and beautiful."
Is it not also the source of the discontent to-day, among almost all
classes of women, except the most highly educated and efficient? Women
say--our modern daughters, wives, and mothers: "In the home, we do
income-work for which we do not receive income. When strangers do this
work, they are paid, and we are not." In addition, many a woman is so
bound down by daily tasks, that her whole soul cries out, and we hear of
the high rate of insanity among farmers' wives, of nervous prostration
of the housewives in our towns, and become accustomed to such
expressions as "the death of a woman on a Kansas farm."
This discontent takes many restless forms. It leads daughters, who ought
to be at home, out into morally dangerous but income-earning work; it
takes wives out into all manner of clubs, without regard to the fact: as
to whether the particular club, in its atmosphere and influence, is good
or bad; it brings discouragement, disorder, and unrest into the home,
dissatisfaction with house-duties and home-tasks, and is sapping our
life where it should be best and strongest--in the home--taking out of
it youth, spirit, enthusiasm, inspiration, and content.
The three questions asked in regard to each worker are: 1. What work
can he do? 2. Of what quality? 3. In what time? The difference between
industry and idleness is that work is one thing which no one may
honorably escape. Since it must be done, the problem of life is not how
to escape work, but how to find the right work, and how best to do it,
and most swiftly, when the choice is made.
"_Forth they come from grief and torment; on they wend
toward health and mirth,
All the wide world is their dwelling, every corner of the
earth.
Buy them, sell them for thy service! Try the bargain what
'tis worth,
For the days are marching on.
"These are they who build thy houses, weave thy raiment,
win thy wheat,
Smooth the rugged, fill the barren, turn the bitter into
sweet,
All for thee this day--and ever. What reward for them
is meet?
Till the host comes marching on._"
WILLIAM MORRIS
SECOND
The trade of toil for money has led to many problems and discussions.
To-day the trenchant question: "What More than Wages?" is a matter of
eager talk. Is this a living-wage?--Just enough warmth, not to freeze.
Just enough clothing to be decent. Just enough food to go through the
day without actual hunger. Just enough shelter to keep out the wind and
rain and snow. Just enough education to learn to read and write
and count.
No. As the theory of bodily freedom demands for each man life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness, so the highest theory of to-day lays down
demands of economic freedom beyond the mere fad of possible existence.
Dr. Patten has formulated certain "economic rights" of man. Each
employer must say: Before I settle back with a serene belief that I have
given my men a living-wage, let me ask: Have they sun? air? sanitary
surroundings and conditions? medical care? leisure? education? a chance
to grow? Have they enough money for ordinary occasions, and a little to
give away? No man or woman has a living-wage, who has no money to
give away.
Education and comfort add to the value of the employed. The cook who has
a rocking-chair, a cook-book, and a housekeeping magazine in her kitchen
will do more work, and better work, other things being equal, than the
cook who has none. The workman who lives in a clean, sunny, well-aired
place, where he can found a home, and bring up healthy children, will do
more work, and better work, than the workman who lives in a damp, dark,
ill-ventilated tenement, and who goes to his day's work with a heart
sullen and broken because of avoidable illness and sorrow in his poor
little home. Five thousand employees who have a night-school,
luncheon-rooms, little houses and gardens, a savings-bank, and a library
of books and pictures are worth more than those who are given no such
advantages of happiness, growth, and content. The Railroad Young Men's
Christian Associations are said to be a good economic investment, as
well as an uplifting moral influence.
This appears to be a fundamental economic law: _Every physical, mental,
or spiritual advantage offered to an honest working man or woman
increases his economic efficiency_. Therefore even the selfish policy of
shrewd corporations to-day is to screw up, and not down; while the more
philanthropic are beginning to see, in their social power, a luminous
opportunity to do a god-like service.
But the capitalist, however just or generous, cannot do for a man what
he cannot or will not do for himself. Too many workers imagine that a
living-wage is to be given to each man, no matter how he behaves or
works. This is a false assumption. Underlying all human effort, there
runs a final law, that of Compensation: _What I earn, I shall some day
have_. This is a very different proposition from this: _What I do not
earn, I want to have_! For every stroke of human toil, the universe
assigns a right reward--a reward, not of money only, but of peace of
heart, joy, and the possibilities of helpfulness. But when the work done
has not been done faithfully, or well, or honestly, or in the right
spirit, the reward is lessened to that exact degree. To the end of time,
the idle and the lazy must, if they are dependent on their own
exertions, be ill housed and fed. If a man wastes, or his wife does, he
must not complain that his income will not support him. If he lets
opportunities of sustenance and advancement go by, the capitalist is not
to be held to account.
There are two chief kinds of economic difficulties. One is the problem
of the capitalist: How much ought I to pay? The second is that of the
working-man: How much service must I render? How much ought I to be
paid? Of the second kind, nearly every phase of it begins right here,
that men and women demand for labor something which they have not
earned. They do careless, indifferent, shiftless, reckless work, and
then demand a living-wage. The capitalist is not inclined to raise his
scale of prices, knowing that he has built up his business by prudence,
sagacity, and tireless application--the very qualities which his
dissatisfied employees lack.
We need not pay--we ought not to pay--for incompetence, for
impertinence, for disobedience of orders, for laziness, for shirking,
for cheating, or for theft. To do so is a social wrong. It is the wrong
that lies back, not only of sinecures and spoils, but of employing
incompetent and wasteful cooks and dressmakers.
What we make of our lives through wages depends upon ourselves. For
instance, a man gives each of five boys twenty-five cents for sweeping
snow off his sidewalks. One boy tosses pennies, and loses his quarter by
gambling. One boy buys cigarettes, and sends his money up in smoke. One
boy buys newspapers, and sells them at a profit which buys him his
dinner. A fourth boy buys seeds, plants them, and raises a tiny garden
which keeps him in beans for a whole season, The fifth boy buys a book
which starts him on the career of an educated man: he becomes an
inventor and a man of means. The man who paid out the twenty-five cents
to each boy is in no way responsible for the success or failure of their
investment of this quarter. He is responsible only for the fact that he
did or did not pay a fair price for the work.
God, the great Paymaster, gives to each of us the one talent, the two
talents, or the ten talents, of endowment and opportunity: after that,
we are left to our own devices!
There are four things which every employee should constantly bear in
mind, if he wishes to advance,--skill, business opportunity, loyalty,
and control. Until a man has mastered what he has to do, he cannot be
expected to be accounted a serious factor in the economic world. The
moment he achieves skill in what he has to do--and this is a question of
thoroughness, accuracy, and speed--he has achieved power, a possibility
of dictation in the matter of hours and wages.
The next point is business opportunity. Two men, of exactly the same
opportunities and endowments, take up the same task. One man idles and
is surpassed by the other, or he does only what he is told to do,
without further thought. The other performs his set task, but at the
same time he is examining into the principles of his engine, or into the
conduct of the factory or business. In a few years he is the foreman, or
an inventor, or a partner, with independent capital of his own. Again,
there is a blind way of doing skilled work, or of merely doing it
without noticing where it is most needed, or how the market is going for
this special kind of work. The one who has his eyes open reads, notes
the state of the market, adds to his skill the power of counsel, and can
gradually take a larger responsibility upon him, which will advance the
economic value of his time, as well as the work. There is a constant
flux in the labor-world, which is the result largely, not of special
opportunity, but of worth, application, and concentrated thought.
Third, loyalty has a high mercantile value. Disloyalty is a sin.
The fourth point is control. Does it not strike wonder to think how some
men have under them, either in their industrial plant, or in their
railway systems, or in their syndicate-work, anywhere from a few hundred
to ten, fifteen, or twenty thousand men? How do they maintain
discipline, either themselves, or through their subordinates? This
problem of control is a serious one in business. Every angry threat,
every sullen hour, each case of insubordination, every strike, every
widespread dissatisfaction, means economic waste. It means expense both
of time and money to send for Pinkertons to keep order and preserve
discipline. The man who adds to his technical skill, and his knowledge
of the market, the power of control adds great force and value to his
work. Higher yet is executive force, the power to adjust
responsibilities and duties in such a way as to get back a high economic
return in the way of service. But above all, there is that force of
character which impresses itself on a company, on a decade, on a
generation--so that some names are handed down in business from
generation to generation, all men knowing that from father to son, and
again to his son, there will pass down that certain integrity, nobility,
steadfastness of purpose, fidelity, and honor which give credit
throughout the business world, and which promise health and happiness
for those who are happy to be in their employ.
Before a man complains of his wages, then, let him ask himself: Have I
mastered my work? Am I loyal? Am I capable of larger responsibilities,
and of wider control?
THIRD
WILLIAM MORRIS says: "_It is right and necessary that all men should
have work to do which shall be worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to
do: and which should be done under such conditions as would make it
neither over-wearisome, nor over-anxious._"
This theorem cannot be upheld in its entirety, though there is a deep
truth beneath it. There are many things, such as the collecting of
garbage, the washing of the dead poor, the cleaning of cesspools, the
butchery of cattle for the market, and the execution of capital
criminals, which can scarcely be called pleasant to do, and must yet be
done. As long as the world is the world, and there is in it sin, decay,
disease, and death, we cannot hope to make the work or the conditions of
work absolutely ideal: we _can_ make ideal the spirit in which work
is done!
A fine story is told that long ago, when the cholera once broke out in
Philadelphia, the hospitals fell into a fearful state. One day, a plain,
quiet little man stepped into the chief hospital, looked about a moment,
and set to work. No task was too dirty or disagreeable for him; no
detail was too disgusting. He did anything he saw to be done,--called in
additional doctors, organized the nurses, and himself waited on patients
night and day. He soon had the hospital in good shape again. When the
crisis passed, and every one began to demand, Who is this man?--they
were told: It is Stephen Girard. The work was not pleasant, but the
spirit was kind, and the heart delighted in its self-appointed toil.
Work in general, however, that has worth has several elements. First, It
must be individual. It must be joyfully done: there must enter into work
the vitality of a happy spirit. It must be spontaneous. This is why
machine-work can never be thoroughly beautiful: it lacks the spontaneity
of life. The hand never makes two things alike. With the mood, the
weather, the occasion, there are little touches added which a machine
cannot give. Life always varies and thinks of new effects.
When we try to realize what work is, when it is merely an amount of toil
prodded out of man or woman by a hard taskmaster, we have only to look
back to the bondage of Israel in Egypt, or to the time of Scylla, when
there were thirteen million slaves in Italy alone: slaves whose set
tasks were of over two hundred and fifty kinds; who worked on the
road-building, on public works, and in rowing in the galleys of the
slave-propelled ships. In Carthage agriculture was for a time largely
carried on by slave-labor. How different is this slave-labor from the
craft-work of mediaeval times, when, under the protection of the guilds,
manual labor became exalted to an artistic rank, and the workers at the
loom, the metal-workers, the wood-carvers, the tapestry-weavers, and the
workers in pottery and glass produced objects whose beauty has never
been either equalled or surpassed. Andrea del Sarto and Benvenuto
Cellini were workers, and their work remains.
Again, good work is born of affection. Love teaches more art than all
the schools. What we love, we instinctively beautify. The artist
beautifies the material on which he works. He loves his task, and from
his love there begins a gradual shaping of the ideal. The product gains
a touch of beauty. The needlework of Egypt and Byzantium, the laces of
Venice and of Spain, are historic. It is said of Queen Isabella, that
she was one of the best needleworkers of her age; that "her _motifs_
were the great events of the time."
A peasant girl of Venice was once given a beautiful coral-branch and
some rare leaves and shells which her lover had gathered for her from
the sea-depths. She was untaught in art, and making fish-nets was her
wonted work. Day by day as she wrought her nets, she looked upon the
lovely sea-treasures, their beauty passed into her heart and mind, and
she began to copy, spray by spray, the coral-foliage, the leaves of the
sea-grasses, and the curves of the sea-shells, until after a time, in
the meshes of her fish-nets, she had imprisoned forms of exquisite
beauty, and one saw there reproduced, in dainty and artistic grouping,
what her very soul had loved and fed upon. Her fish-nets became works
of art.
Work of a high order is always based on high ideals and on great
thoughts. It implies a vast amount of toil. The Capellmeister of the
Vatican choir to-day is that wonderful young genius, Perosi, who is
stirring all Europe by the beauty of his musical work, and by the
spirituality and fervor of his musical imagination. He has set himself
to compose twelve oratorios, which shall body forth the whole life of
the Saviour. He believes that the music-lover and the church-lover may
be identical, and has set his hand to the uniting of all true
music-lovers with the great offices and services and influences of the
Church. Here is Work exalted to its spiritual office: to carry out, not
only ideals of beauty and harmony, but to advance spiritual progress.
This is the final aim of all true work: it must be not only aesthetic,
and honest, but spiritual. The prayer of the true workman is ever to
make himself a workman approved unto God. "May the beauty of the Lord be
upon us, and the work of our hands, establish Thou it!"
The worker should have change of work. Nature never intended that a man
should do one thing all his life. This is in harmony neither with man's
infinite capacity, nor with her inexhaustible variety. Change is
cultural, and a man's work Should, from time to time, engross every
working-power he has.
Working-surroundings should not only be sanitary, they should be
beautiful. What influences one most at college, and makes most for one's
happiness, is not the fact of the work in recitation-rooms, out of
books, laboratories, and under teachers. The glory of college life is,
that wherever one goes, the eyes look out on beauty, and wherever one
works, there are those whom we love who work beside us.
As one passes down the long college corridors, the eyes fall upon palm
and statue, upon frieze and fresco, and the carbon copies of immortal
paintings. Everywhere there are the inspirations of sculpture and
architecture, of music, literature, and art. Beauty is in and about the
place in which one thinks and works. This is the undying charm of
Oxford--the gathering traditions of centuries, the gleaming spires, the
age-worn walls and buttresses, the clinging vine, the tremulous light
and shadow on the ancient halls, the sculpture of porch and clerestory,
and the light that falls through richly tinted windows.
This beauty should not be monopolized by any one class. About the places
where we work, we should have, as far as possible, something of the
beauty of the world. We should have wide, shaded streets and parks, even
in great cities; towers and pinnacles; sky-lines of vigor, grace, and
massive strength. Cannot department stores be artistically fashioned and
built? Cannot market-houses have arches and arabesques? May not even the
Bourse have something about it suggestive of great art? Cannot our
streets have curves and storied cross-ways? Cannot porters and draymen
have somewhat to arouse and satisfy aesthetic instincts? Cannot our
day-laborers be granted vision?
Why should we have the Gothic cathedral, with its exquisite traceries
and carvings, pillars and reredos and screen, for men to pray in, one or
two hours a week, and the hideous, grime-covered, foul-smelling,
overheated factories, in which men and women spend their working-lives?
This is what Christianity must do: it must implant joy and beauty, as
well as honesty and fidelity, in the way, place, and thought of work!
When religion, education, art, and brotherly affection have joined hands
in a charmed circle, we shall have new ideas of working-places, as well
as of praying-places, and of living-places! It is not enough that a
factory should be situated, as the best factories now are, in the open
country, with sunshine and fresh air. The blockhouse parallelograms and
squares should be replaced by something that has intrinsic beauty and
the haunting completeness of memory and association, so that the place
where a man works shall no more be to him a nightmare, but the
atmosphere and inspiration of his dreams!
And those we love shall work beside us! Here is another thought: Shall
all association in work be arbitrary? Is there not a more human way than
the chain-gang way? Could not friends work more together, so that one's
daily work should be, not a time of separation from all we love most,
but a time of intellectual sympathy and helpfulness, of companionship
and true-hearted loyalty? This, and many other good things, it is not
too much to hope for. Truly, as Morris writes, "_The Day is Coming_."
"_Then a man shall work and bethink him, and rejoice in
the deeds of his handy
Nor yet come home in the even too faint and weary to
stand._
"_Men in that time a-coming shall work and have no fear
For the morrow's lack of earning and the hunger-wolf
anear._
"_And what wealth then shall be left us when none shall
gather gold
To buy his friend in the market, and pinch and pine the
sold?_
"_Nay, what save the lovely city, and the little house on the
hill,
And the wastes and the woodland beauty, and the happy
fields we till_;
"_And the homes of ancient stories, the tombs of the mighty
dead;
And the wise men seeking out marvels, and the poet's teeming
head;_
"_And the painter's hand of wonder; and the marvellous
fiddle-bow;
And the banded choirs of music:--all those that do and
know._
"_Far all these shall be ours and all men's, nor shall any
lack a share
Of the toil and the gain of living in the days when the
world grows fair_."
FOURTH
Good workers are trained in the home, the school, the shop, the wider
world. Every home is an industrial establishment. In it go on the
industrial processes of cooking, cleaning, sewing, washing; the care of
silver, glass, linen, and household stores; the activities of buying
food and clothing; the moral responsibilities of teaching and training
servants and children. If any healthy member of the home is excused from
at least some form of active work, he will inevitably be a shirker when
he grows up. Cannot almost all the problems of human training be run
down to this: How to teach a child to work? If he can work, he can be
happy; but if he does not want to work, he shall never be happy. No
work, no joy, is the universal dictum.
This is the great hardship of the children of great wealth: they are not
taught to work. To avoid this difficulty, in two very wealthy families
that I know, the boys were even obliged to darn their own stockings and
mend their own clothes. One young hopeful once tore his clothes
a-fishing, and mended his trousers with a scarlet flannel patch! Some
mothers do not allow their little girls to go to school until their beds
are made up and their rooms in order. Other equally wise parents have
tools in the house, and allow the boys to do all the repair work, the
daughters all the family mending, or to care for the linen; the boys to
put in electric fixtures and bells, and keep the batteries in order.
Queen Margherita of Italy, Queen Elizabeth of Roumania, Queen Alexandra
of England, and the Empress Augusta of Germany are all women who have
been from their childhood acquainted with simple and practical household
tasks. This principle is a right one and underlies much after-success.
Each child should, first of all, have a mastery of home-tasks. Then,
whether on the prairie or in the palace, he is free and independent.
What makes the differences in the social privileges given to one class
of workers above another? In reality, we are all workers. No one ought
to live, if in health, who does not work. But for some forms of work,
men and women receive an income, and nothing more. For other work, men
and women may or may not receive a large personal income, but their work
is recognized, they are a part of the best social circles, and when they
die, a city or a nation grieves.
The essential difference is this: that one is honor-work, and one is
not. Wherever in the world work is done in a spirit of love and
fidelity, it brings its own reward in recognition and in personal
affection. Sooner or later, honor-work receives honor.
Another reason for exaltation of one form of work above another, is
that some kinds of work are so very hard to do. They involve the intense
and complicated action of many and of complex powers. It may be hard
physical work to break stones for a road-way, but the task itself is a
simple one--the lifting of the arm and dropping it again with sufficient
force to split a rock apart. But the writing of a prose masterpiece,
such as the _Areopagitica_, involves the highest human faculties in
harmonious action. If we add to the requirements of prose, the rhythm,
the exalted imagery, and perhaps the assonance and rhyme of verse, we
still further increase the difficulty of the task, and the honor of its
successful achievement. The king-work of a powerful monarch, the
president-work of a republican leader, is serious work to do. Our honor
is not all given to the king or president income, salary, or office; it
is a tribute to hard and royal-minded work.
Household service is personal service. It cannot be made a thing of set
hours, and of measurably set tasks, as office-work maybe. We may talk of
"eight-hour shifts," but they are scarcely practicable. Not every baby
would go to successive "shifts"! House-demands vary, not only with every
household, but with every day.
When love-making is wholly scientific, then domestic service will be.
There is in it the same delicate personal adjustment, the changing
requirements of weather, health, temper, and season, of emergency and
stress, that are to be found in the most purely personal relation. When
there is a period of unusual sickness through the community, not only
the doctors have extra tasks, but all household servants as well.
What social recognition can be given to servants who lie, steal, who
shirk every duty that can be shirked, and who are both incompetent and
unfaithful? The here-and-there one faithful helper receives her meed of
appreciation and affection. The whole aspect of household work will
change when honor-work is given: when home-helpers come up to us, from
the truthful and honor-loving class.
The school-room is the place in which the principles of work are
implanted: thoroughness, grasp, speed, decision, and definite purpose.
The shop is the apprentice-place of work, before one takes up individual
responsibilities. The man who wishes to rise in the railroad service
goes into the shops and roundhouse. The man who wishes to take charge of
an important department in a department store is put to tying packages.
Teachers' work will not be rightly done until certain advantages are
given to teachers that are now largely withheld. Teachers need more
society, more hours of play, freer opportunity of marriage. Instead of
being tied up to exercise-books and roll-books, in their home-hours,
they should have a chance to spend their time on the golf-links, at
afternoon teas, in visiting and in entertaining friends. Take away
society from any man or woman, and you take away the possibility of a
growing, happy, and helpful life. We need friends just as we need air.
Teachers need admiration and affection, just as much as the society
girl does.
Universities should have, in their faculties, men and women who
represent the best social as well as the best intellectual life of the
world--who are not only, in the highest sense of the word, society men
and women, but who are social leaders, inspiring truth, inculcating
larger social ideals of the best sort.
The problem between capitalist and laborer, however, only affects a
portion of the world; that of domestic service a still smaller
proportion; that of teachers affects only a class. There is another
problem, which affects nearly all married women, and therefore a large
section of the human race. It is the problem of mother-work. Here is
where the economist should next turn his attention. First, What is
Mother-work? Second, What are the best economic conditions under which
this work can be done? When we have solved this question, we shall have
solved a great human problem.
Mother-work includes the bearing and the rearing of children, the
conduct of a home, and the placing of that home in the right social
atmosphere and relations. It includes manual, intellectual, and
spiritual labors. The one who lives and works, as God meant her to live
and work, will never feel over-fatigue. Why do mothers often look so
tired? It is because they too often do not have what every mother ought
to have: education, rest, change, a Sabbath-day, individual income,
intellectual interests, society.
Whether in the simplest home or in the stateliest, there are certain
manual things to be done in regard to the care and bringing-up of
children, and the conduct of a home. To make the conditions of a woman's
life easier, the very first thing is this: 1. _Women should be educated
primarily for home-life._ By this I do not mean that a woman should be
taught cooking, and not political economy; that she should be instructed
in dressmaking and nursery-work, but not in chemistry and logic. I mean
that the very fullest education that schools, colleges, universities,
and foreign travel can give, should be given to the woman who is
fortunate enough to have them at command, and that every woman,
according to the degree of her possibilities of education and
opportunity, should have the best. But always this education should be
thought of as a part of her preparation for a woman's life. When boys
are in a business college, the principal of that college does not forget
that among the boys there may be more than one who will never have a
business life, but who will go out into other interests and pursuits.
Yet he turns the thoughts of _all_ boys in his school specially toward
business problems. In schools and colleges for women, not all the girls
will marry, not all will be mothers, but most of them will be. Is not,
then, the normal education of a woman that which, while it does not
cramp her life in one direction, nor mould her in a set way, yet keeps
always in mind the fact that the normal woman is being educated for a
normal woman's life?
This would not necessarily change the curriculum of our colleges in any
way; it would change the spirit and atmosphere of some of them at once.
Instead of the spirit being: "My mind is just as good as a man's. What a
man can study, I can learn! What a man can do, I can do!"--the spirit
would be this: "I am going out into a woman's life, and it is my
business now to take to myself all the wisdom, counsel, experience, and
inspiration of past ages, that I may be the very grandest woman that
history has yet seen! I will be a land-mark in time: I will be a pivot
in history around which the earth shall turn. Because of my life, women
to the end of time shall be able to live a truer, freer, better life!"
With this thought in mind, all the academic subjects would still pass
into her mind and life, but they would be much more naturally set and
their value would be greatly enhanced. Then we would not have the
too-ambitious woman stepping out of college, or the restless and
discontented one. We would have the large-minded, earnest, noble,
public-spirited one, who would go out into the world as a fine type of
woman, to live a woman's life and do a woman's work. Married or
unmarried, she would still have a woman's interests, a woman's
influence, a woman's charm.
This higher education may or may not include practical studies in
domestic science, nursing, and household emergencies, but she should
learn somewhere the elements of these studies, so that when she goes
into a home of her own her duties and responsibilities will not be met
in a half-hearted and untrained way.
2. Mothers should have rest-hours and rest-days. Is it not something
extraordinary, from a purely economic point of view, that while it is
widely recognized that every one should have one day in seven for rest,
that while business men are expected to close up their offices on the
Sabbath, and all working men and women are given this day in the stores,
the factories, and mines--the cook and maids have their Sundays out, and
their week-day afternoons--that nowhere on earth, so far as I know, has
there ever been a systematic arrangement by which mothers, as a class,
have any specially arranged hours or days for rest! A baby's care does
not stop on the Sabbath, and the average mother is practically on duty,
at least over-seeing, day and night, twenty-four hours out of the
twenty-four, from one end of the year to the other, no matter how many
maids and nurses she may have in her employ!
3. Personal income and its use. What we buy marks our own individuality,
as well as what we do. The woman whose father or husband adjusts her
expenses and expenditures cannot by any possibility be the kind of woman
that the one is who chooses her own things, and spends her money
absolutely to suit herself. When a man buys cigars or fishing-tackle,
his wife may prefer to buy oratorios and golf-clubs.
4. Mothers should have some interest outside of home-tasks, to keep them
in touch with world-interests and world-tasks. Not all mother's duty is
inside the four walls of her home. The race has demands upon her, as
well as her own child. She ought to be guarded from that short-sighted
and selfish devotion which makes her look upon her child as the centre
of the universe, and which leads her to sacrifice every hour, every
thought, every talent, to him alone.
5. Building up the place of a home in a community means much more than a
rivalry with one's neighbors, as to which one shall have the cleanest
house, the prettiest or most expensive curtains and furniture, who shall
entertain the most, and whose children shall present the best appearance
in the world! Making a social place for a family involves a very wide
acquaintance with really great social ideals; with the best instincts
and customs; with world refinement and manners, as well as those of
one's own town or village--with the social possibilities of life in
general, as well as the etiquette of Quinton's Corners! To give the
right stamp upon her home, a mother must have a social life, as well as
domestic one. She must have time to enter somewhat into the activities
of her own neighborhood, and must have society after marriage, as well
as before.
It is a different sort of society that she then needs. It is not a
boy-and-girl society, with its crude ways, and its adolescent ideas of
life. It is the society of earnest, cultured, and public-spirited men
and women, each of whom is adding something to the general store of
interest and ideals; each of whom is doing some phase of social work,
according to his own talent and opportunity.
When a mother steps out into life in this large way, makes education and
training tributary to her mother-life, and does not stop growing
intellectually or spiritually,--her charm as a woman increases, instead
of diminishes, every year of her married life. Her looks mark her
everywhere as a supremely happy woman, and she goes out into the world
marked with that strange, deep, grand impress of motherhood and
womanhood, which has always made the true woman not only a
working-mother, but a love-crowned queen!
These and many other thoughts flit over one's mind in looking at any
phase of work, or any piece of work. In the right choice of work lies
the fullest use of one's capacities; in the right conditions of work
lies the freest play of one's energies; in the right spirit of work lies
the way of one's lasting happiness, and the foretaste of eternal joys.
Thus the world is seen to consist of great cycles of workers, rising in
tiers one above another. Those who do not work are quickly cut out from
all participation in race-progress and in race-delights; those who work
earnestly, but blindly, have their small reward. But those who work with
spiritual energy and enthusiasm are weaving their handiwork into the
very fibre of the universal frame. It is for these spiritual workers
that the great eagerness of life is undying; for them there is no shadow
of fatigue; for them there is the joy of mastery and accomplishment; for
them the peace of soul that comes from the triumphant achievement of
one's mission to mankind!
THE END
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