path: root/77080-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77080 ***





Transcriber’s Note: Writings are ordered by category, then publication
year (goal is earliest available at least with legible text), then
alphabetically (ignoring “A”, “An”, and “The”). Investigation of
spelling involved Google’s Ngram Viewer (//books.google.com/ngrams/).
Appendix 1 was created for this book and is ordered alphabetically by
title. Appendix 2 also was created for this book. Additional new
material, and the compilation, are granted to the public domain. This
plain text version of the book uses underscores (_) to denote the
start and end of italicized text and equal signs (=) to denote the
start and end of bold text.




COLLECTED WRITINGS OF CLARENCE EDWIN FLYNN

First Edition, 1929 and Earlier




PREFACE
LIST OF WRITINGS BY CATEGORY
WRITINGS
APPENDIX 1: BYLINES, BIBLIOGRAPHY, NOTES
APPENDIX 2: SELECTED QUOTES AND ZINGERS




“It is the glad service which lifts the world a little farther in its
long, hard climb.”
_The Obligation of Good Cheer_




PREFACE


What follows is a brief introduction to Mr. Flynn, his authorship of
these writings, and how this book came about. From my research on his
life, which I made available at //prabook.com/web/clarence.flynn/1084802,
Clarence Edwin Flynn (1886–1970) was an American Methodist Episcopal
clergyman, writer, hymnist and lecturer. He’s described as a “writer of
stories, articles and verse appearing in periodicals and anthologies”
and is “represented in anthologies of verse. General character writing,
religious, educational.” [1] [2] [3] His writings (sans poems) appeared
in more than 50 different domestic and international publications.

Were all of these writings authored by Clarence Edwin Flynn? I cannot
say that is true with certainty, but I’ll offer the following support.
Firstly, there’s moderate support in the fact that the middle initial
“E” is used in all but two bylines; two bylines have no middle name or
initial. Secondly, almost a third of the bylines offer strong support
through the attributes mainly of title (e.g. Reverend) and locations
that correspond with his biography. Thirdly, moderate to strong support
can be found in the writings’ content, which is the basis for including
more than half of the writings. Religious topics certainly offer strong
support. As for the wide variety of other topics covered, the reader
will find multiple cases where Reverend Flynn encourages preachers to
broaden their knowledge and experiences in order to better serve their
congregations. And if you find the content strong in the art of
persuasion, Flynn was a member of the college oratory team. In
conclusion, this brief analysis is limited by the absence of Clarence
Edwin Flynn’s personal papers (their status is unknown to me).

How did this book come about? In short, the writings were collected
during the primary process of collecting poetry. The longer explanation
is in the preface to the book cited in the third footnote. As with the
book of poetry, this is the inaugural collection of writings and is
limited to those published in 1929 or earlier in accordance with a
copyright rule governing works first published before 95 years ago.

  [1] _Who’s Who in America: A Biographical Dictionary of Notable
Living Men and Women_. Vol. 24, 1946–1947, Two Years. Chicago:
The A. N. Marquis Co., 1946. p. 780
  [2] Lawrence, Alberta, ed. _Who’s Who Among North American Authors_.
Vol. 5, 1931–1932. Los Angeles: Golden Syndicate Publishing Co., 1931.
p. 1089
  [3] This collection of writings does not include poetry. I created
a separate book of his poetry: Flynn, Clarence Edwin. _Collected Poems
of Clarence Edwin Flynn_. First edition, 1929 and earlier. Jun 17, 2025.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76332




LIST OF WRITINGS BY CATEGORY

Categories are not mutually exclusive.


LIFTING THE ARTS

“It was an innocent-faced maid” (1906): Humorous anecdote

“A man entered a downtown street car” (1906): Humorous anecdote

The Modern Grandmother (1915): Humorous anecdote

The Opportunity and Peril of the Writer (1918): “He dare not fail to be
a mouthpiece of truth.”

The Message of the Washington Monument (1919): “...it outlines the
essential qualities of our people.”

The Post-War Outlook for Literature (1919): “The fundamental principles
of life have not changed, but our attitude toward life and our
application of those principles have changed mightily.”

Free Verse (1921): “It is one of the best outlets poetry can ever offer
for the expression of the moods and thoughts of the human soul.”

Music and History (1921): “The issues of life have always proceeded from
the heart, and the heart of any age expresses itself in its musical
productions.”

Correspondence (1929): “As good correspondence is an art, so a good
correspondent is an artist.”


LIFTING CHRISTIANITY

The Sabbath Desecration (1910): “We may well ask whence this great
difference between our age and that of the preceding generation.”

The Light (1915): “In the life of man, [light] takes the form of the
knowledge of the truth which makes him free.”

The Yoke (1915): “...the command of Jesus to accept and wear His yoke
is often much more dreadful than there is reason that it should be.”

The Crowded Inn (1916): “[The story] has been the most tragic because
it has represented the most widespread condition.”

The Price of Liberty (1916): “The tragedy of Calvary opened up the way
to liberty....”

Paul’s Ideal Sufficient (1918): “Each social institution has one task
to perform, and it will be found to be unable to perform more than that
one task well.”

The Religion of the New Age (1919): “The facts of religion can not change,
but humanity can achieve progress in rightly interpreting them and in
rightly adapting itself to them.”

Christianity and Americanism (1920): “The perpetuity of the state
depends most largely upon the very things for which the Christian
religion stands.”

The Christian Program (1920): “[Realization of the Kingdom]
therefore depends upon the passing from one to another of its
master secret.”

Essay contributed to a symposium on “The Church and Young People” (1920):
“Unless [the church’s status in relation to youth] is improved,
the kingdom will become a victim of race suicide.”

The Message of an Empty Tomb (1920): “[Jesus’s] life had been a message of
life triumphant.”

The Laboratory Test (1921): “...the only way to appraise
[the Christian faith’s] real merits…”

The Nearness of Destiny (1921): “‛What you are to be you are
now becoming.’”

Children and the Church (1922): “...we should assume that every child
is...to be reared in its ways and teachings...until he wilfully
forsakes it.”

The Church’s Fourfold Program (1922): Evangelism, education,
social welfare, and finance

Newer Conceptions of Religion (1922): “We cannot alter the divine plan
of life and redemption, but we can make progress in our understanding
and use of it.”

The International Religion (1923): “As to whether God proposes to save
the many or the few, it would seem to favor the first answer.”

The Great Teacher (1925): Vital things, simple and plain,
and position clear

What Can We Believe? (1928): “One is made or unmade by his beliefs.”

The Christ of the Sea (1929): “He began at once promoting the kind of
thing the practical world calls impossible because it is right.”

The Comrade Perfect: An Appreciation (1929): “...life is not all that it
ought to be without the presence of the Personality which completes us.”

Four Addresses to Young People (1929): Christian service, communion
with God, spiritual and practical leaders, and the church’s purposes

What Is Happening to Religion? (1929): “Eminent scientists announcing
their faith in and support of religion are a growing company.”


LIFTING CHRISTIAN MINISTERS

Has the Day of Great Preachers Passed (1921): “The one standard by which
he is measured is the question of his ability as an exponent of the
Christian religion.”

The Heart Interest in Preaching (1922): “He has sensed the human side,
and seen what it is that makes the need for preaching.”

The Great Compulsion (1928): “That was the last peaceful day he ever saw,
for our peace is the price we pay for greatness.”

The Minister and His Reading (1928): “...the field with which the minister
needs to be familiar is unlimited because it touches all the others.”

Preaching to College Students (1928): “[The minister] is dealing with
adventurous minds whose one concern is truth.”

Some Problems of the Preacher (1928): “They have cost many a man his
usefulness, and limited that of many others.”

The Ambassador (1929): “It is a wonderful thing to be a minister,
because a minister is an ambassador of the Kingdom of God.”

Let the Minister Know Life (1929): “He needs to see, and hear, and know
enough to understand the mind and heart of the world.”

The Yielding of Aaron (1929): “...the adaptation of the principles and
standards of religion to public tastes, ideals, and desires.”


LIFTING COMMUNITY

The Necessary Asset—Friends (1917): “The most valuable friend
is the friend who is one for friendship’s sake alone.”

Building a World Brotherhood (1918): “In [Jesus’s] estimation of things,
a man was a man. He could be no more and there was no disposition to ever
rate him as less.”

The Laughing Man (1919): “My lords,” he said, “I bring you news—news of
the existence of mankind.”

The Safe Foundations for a League of Nations (1919): “If the hearts of men
are not right toward one another, the vision of peace will be as idle
a dream as it was in the past years.”

Is It Nothing to You (1929): “By all these things we and ours are
profoundly affected. Why should we not care?”

What Makes a City? (1929): “The greatest factor [in what makes a city is]
the care it takes of and the safeguards with which it surrounds
its people.”


LIFTING ECONOMICS

Capitalizing War for the Tobacco Trade (1919): “This is always done
in the name of patriotism, even though the effect may be
altogether antipatriotic.”

Creating a Demand (1919): “...helping to build that larger and better
commercial world in which all business will be at its best because
all people are at their best.”

Should Prices Be Standardized? (1919): “In other words, it would lift
the markets above the gambling level.”

The Home Budget (1920): “It enables the poor to keep from growing poorer,
and often enables them to reach comfortable circumstances.”

Efficient Spending (1921): “Between the hoarding of money...and the
reckless habits of the spendthrift...lies this golden mean.”


LIFTING EDUCATION

The Three Agencies in Child Training (1909): “...the aim of each
should be the perfection of personality.”

The Association of Mind and Muscle (1918): “As knowledge becomes
a matter of action, it becomes a matter of purpose, ideal, and character.”

The Sound-Reproducing Machine as a Music Teacher (1919): “The taste of
the listener is on its way to better things.”

The School Teacher and the Republic (1920): “The nation cannot recognize
its obligation to the teacher too soon or too completely.”

Some Overlooked Compensations in Teaching (1920): “[The teaching
profession] places in the hands of those who choose it privileges which
many of the rich would gladly give their gold to obtain.”

Dollars Versus Sense (1921): “...preoccupation with material things.
Minds become cloyed; hearts grow dull; and souls grow no wings with which
to lift themselves above the mire and the clay.”

Education and Production (1921): “The accepted canon in educational
circles is that a man is not trained at all unless trained to be good for
something, and that he must prove his culture by bringing forth fruits
meet for it.”

The School as a Reform Agency (1921): “Whatever the future contains,
the school teacher holds the key to it.”


LIFTING HUMANITY

The Same Face (1915): “Along our years motherhood has planted three
pictures that are so good for us to see that love and memory should
always keep them bright.”

The Will (1915): “The will of man is not only his danger,
but it is also his hope.”

The Sword that Keeps the Past (1916): “There is only one way to change
the past, and that is to change it before it becomes the past.”

The Fountain of Youth (1917): “Such as it is, it exists everywhere.”

Some Principles of Efficiency (1917): “One has but one chance at this
life, and he has a right to make that one effort the best possible.”

The Story of the Red Cross (1917): “One of the strongest forces now making
for a day of lasting peace is the beautiful suggestion that comes from the
spirit of those who make it their aim to help while others destroy.”

Words (1917): “The power of uplifting speech and the right to enjoy
helpful conversation are high privileges.”

The Line of Necessity (1918): “It is the unnecessary that changes
bare existence into throbbing and purposeful life.”

Some New Facts About Alcohol (1918): “Whether in the workshop or in the
military camp, liquor and efficiency are sworn and uncompromising foes.”

Facing the Future (1919): “The race is still achieving some progress,
however, and most of us still believe that the most promising days of
civilization are yet to be.”

Life’s Backgrounds (1919): Character, preparation, and relationships

The New Philosophy (1920): “...philosophers feel a growing realization
that advancement is the proper aim of human endeavor, and that the vital
problem of Philosophy is human welfare and progress.”

The Sense of the Human (1920): “Humanity is the center of all creation,
and the proper object of all our striving.”

The Holy Spirit and Social Viewpoint (1922): “The salvation of the group
can only be accomplished by the salvation of the individuals who
compose it.”

Civilization (1929): “denying themselves and their families the joy”

The Road Uphill (1929): “successively better generations”


LIFTING VIRTUE

Some Stories About Beethoven (1915): “He placed the claims of life, right,
and truth in a place of supremacy over all other claims.”

The Obligation of Good Cheer (1916): “Whoever has a cheerful disposition
has that much of a start toward positive and complete goodness.”

Worship and Service (1916): “He who would die in the spirit of the cross
must live there.”

Do It Right (1917): “...the maxim which pointed the way to their
mutual success.”

Life’s Handicaps (1918): “Along whatever way one’s path may happen to lie,
...his life would be utterly unnatural if it were devoid of difficulties.”

The Riverside (1918): “It is not what we would like to do in this life,
but what we really get done that counts.”

Determinants (1921): “The nature of a man can be altered or reversed.”

Love’s Burdens (1921): “In some unfeeling, intellectually ideal republic,
such a pitiful piece of human wreckage might have been cast upon the
junk heap.”

The Successors of Tantalus (1921): “Yet these unrealized hopes are among
the most valuable experiences we have.”

The Christian Standard of Greatness (1922): “‛If any man would be first,
he shall be last of all and the servant of all.’”

The Objective of Service (1922): “Humanity is, therefore, the most
important object to which our interest and service can be dedicated.
It represents both the divine problem and the human task.”

Our Blessings of Deliverance (1922): “No less important than the things
which we have been given are the things from which we have been saved.”

The Redemption of Jean Valjean (1922): “[Victor Hugo] furnishes us a
master picture of the upward struggle of a soul despite the influences
acting within and without to keep it down.”

Eulogy for Joseph E. Henley [excerpt] (1924): “we have none too much of
simple human kindness”

The Corner Stones of Life (1925): “Any product that has in it only the
very best of materials suggests just one thing—character.”

Eulogy for Sanford F. Teter [excerpt] (1928): “He passed through the fire,
but he did not let it burn away his courage...”


MISCELLANEOUS

Is Prohibition Paternalistic? (1919): “Freedom needs to recognize its own
proper limits, and it will do so in any properly organized social system.”

Vibration as a Basis of Invention (1919): “Nature probably holds some
provision for our every want. We need only to establish the means by
which she can deliver her gifts to us.”




WRITINGS

“It was an innocent-faced maid” (1906)


It was an innocent-faced maid who stood at the postoffice window
Saturday and asked in the tone of one seeking a bargain,
“Have ye any postage stamps?”

“Certainly,” replied the obliging clerk. “How many?”

“Let me see them, please,” was the answer, and the stamps were produced
for inspection. “I don’t quite like the color of these,” she said.
“Don’t you have any two-cent stamps of a lighter shade?”

“Only one kind of two-cent stamps are made, Miss.”

“Then I think I shall take one-cent ones. I like green better than such a
bloody red. I am a Quaker, and it is too suggestive of war.
Can you sell me six for five cents?”

“No, indeed, Miss, the price of stamps is fixed regularly.”

“Then I shall try elsewhere. Please don’t be offended. I will come back
here if I can’t get them cheaper anywhere else.”

And still with the bargain-hunting air, the innocent-faced maid took
her departure.


“A man entered a downtown street car” (1906)


A man entered a downtown street car one day last week. The car was full,
and he was obliged to hang onto the strap and ride in the midst of a
crowd of good-looking girls, most of whom were either “would-bes” or
“has-beens.” The conversation soon started in his direction, and in secret
tone, just loud enough for him to hear, they discussed the new arrival.

“Hasn’t he the most lovely hair?” one of them exclaimed in a whisper that
was halfway between awestruck and tender.

“It couldn’t be Nicholas Longworth, surely. No, I know it isn’t, for
Longworth is baldheaded. He must be some great actor—or—politician,”
said another.

“Oh, he is just my ideal,” put in a third. “For twen—no, I mean three
long years I have sought just such a one, for such a one alone could I
love and trust.” Young and innocent Jennie was evidently studying for
the stage, and she continued: “He must be some great musician.
What if he were Pa—”

But just here the car stopped, and as the patient-looking passenger
prepared to get off, a frowzly head popped out the door of a tumbledown
dwelling close by the track. The head was quickly followed by a red
Mother Hubbard, and a shrill voice called in far from pleasant tones:
“Git off o’ that car, and come on here an’ git a few o’ these kids still.
You’ve loafed roun’ in them good clothes an’ flirted with girls on
street cars enough for one day.”

And as the sad-faced passenger wearily left the car, a sigh escaped all
the girls at once. Alas! the course of true love never did run smooth.


The Modern Grandmother (1915)


The Boy: I stopped in to tell you that my grandmother—

The Boss: Well, I suppose your grandmother has passed away and is to be
buried this afternoon about time for the game.

The Boy: Oh, no, sir! My grandmother is coming by to take me to the game,
and I want to know if I can get off to go with her.


The Opportunity and Peril of the Writer (1918)


We have grown accustomed to consider history as being made by the decrees
of kings or by the power of invading and defending armies. These things
are, however, only the instruments of the one really compelling social
force. That force is the power of public opinion. History is made by those
who direct and control it. This is the reason for the power of the pulpit,
the platform, and the press. Of these three, the power of the press
touches the largest number of people. The writer sends out an influence
which reaches to the ends of the earth.

This fact points the way to a conception of both his opportunity and his
peril. His opportunity is the direction of a power which not even kings
can long dare to defy. His peril is that he may fail to direct it into
the right channels. He may guide it in such a way that it can carry the
race steadily toward a day of complete justice for all. On the other hand,
he may listen to some lesser voice than that of truth, or seek some lower
aim than that of right, and thus lead the thinking of the world astray.
The opportunity is glorious and the peril is serious, because men will
become what they think, and the world will conform to what they become.
Thought life is fundamental.

In the midst of an age of war, the world is struggling for peace. The law
of the jungle ceased to be the recognized principle of history, and war
lost its standing as a means of obtaining justice because of the efforts
of a man to guide public opinion by means of a book. No one could have
conquered militarism with a sword in the old days, and it is doubtful
whether it can be done now, but the strong silent force of enlightened
opinion can do it.

The history of modern international law as a basis for the preservation
of peace among nations really began with the publication in 1625 of a
book entitled _De Jure Belli et Pacis_. It was written by a Dutch
publicist by the name of Hugo Grotius. This book came from the press in
the midst of the Thirty Years’ War, and it began a process of leavening
the popular mind with the idea that justice can be obtained by peaceable
means. The end of that process will yet be the complete triumph of
international law over international strife. It was the pen of a writer
which was used as the original instrument for the blazing of the path to
an age of concord and fraternity.

The great literary need of the present day is for a man who can snatch
the torch from the dead hand of Grotius and bear it a little farther.
He will not receive high praise from the militaristic camp, but his
efforts will be appreciated by those who really love their country
enough to desire its preservation from the blasting blight of war.
Some gifted pen will yet inoculate the popular mind with an ideal of
peace and brotherhood which will make war forever impossible.

No one will ever be able to measure correctly the influence which the
pamphlets of Thomas Payne had in the crystallization of the sentiment
which held the early American patriots to their cause. The historians
have not neglected, however, to give them large credit in their final
reckonings. They provided a sort of mental artillery, making possible
the work of the advancing sword of a Washington.

The break between the sections was healed with mortar which was mixed
not only with the blood of the soldier, but also with the pen of the
writer. The one thing lacking for years was the decision of the popular
will to settle once for all the difficulty between the states. One day
in June of 1851 there appeared in Gamaliel Bailey’s paper, _The National
Era_, the first installment of a story entitled _Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or
Life Among the Lowly_. It was written in the spare time of the busy wife
of a theological professor, and she herself did not take it very
seriously at the time of its publication. The result was, however, that
in less than a decade public opinion had crystallized, and the sections
were ready for the test. The rest of the story needs no telling, but the
memory of Harriet Beecher Stowe deserves to have it said that the history
of America in that time of crisis was largely moulded by the hand that
held the pen.

Several years ago a Federal investigation disclosed a highly unsanitary
condition in the large packing plants of the country. The lack of
sufficient pressure in the form of public opinion left Congress very slow
to take definite action concerning it. Then Upton Sinclair’s story, _The
Jungle_, came from the press. As soon as the public had read the book a
great popular clamor went up, demanding that something be done. The result
was a system of pure food rulings which has been very satisfactory and
far-reaching in its results. A great industry was cleaned up, and the
health and lives of thousands of people have been saved by the work of a
wielder of the pen. The sword can only destroy, but the pen can do a
better thing. It can save.

Germany has long recognized the power of the writer in the moulding of
history. She has made a large use of it in her attempts to build the
history of the future to suit herself. This is evidenced not only by the
fact that she has flooded the world with mischievous and deceptive
propaganda during the present war, but also by the fact that such was her
policy long before the beginning of the war.

Nearly a decade ago a German professor published a book which emphasized
the horrors of war. It was profusely illustrated with pictures of the
bloody scenes of the battlefield and of the inevitable hardships of the
military life. It was an evidence of an undercurrent which runs even in
German thought, but which only the bolder few ever allow to go to the
extent of public expression. The result of the publication of the book
was the prompt suppression of it by the German government.

Shortly afterward another book dealing with the subject of war was
published in Germany. It was written by the Crown Prince who is now
fighting so anxiously for his own future. It likewise was highly
illustrated, but its pictures emphasized the glories of war. They were
of dress parades and the more pleasant aspects of the life of a soldier.
The publication of this book received every encouragement the government
could give it. It was, of course, an official expression of the
militaristic policy of the government itself.

There is a sense in which literature mirrors life, but there is also
another sense in which life mirrors literature. Social conditions and
new historical epochs are always the outgrowth of the popular thought
and spirit. One of the firmest hands upon the floodgates which control
these things is that of the writer. He can produce an age of unrest or
an age of calm contentment. He can make a period of faith or one of
unbelief. He can mould an era of mortality or one of unrestraint.

It does not matter what is the form of his work. It does not even matter
whether it is serious and pretentious. It affects the thought and,
therefore, the life of the world. A printed jest once determined the
result of a national election. A derisive term applied by the editor
of an enemy paper once elected a man president. The recorded and
unrecorded history of every age is full of just such instances.

The writer accepts a momentous responsibility. It is desirable to receive
editorial checks, but his work means vastly more than that. The people
will read what he writes; many of them will believe it; at least some of
them will act upon it. It will travel to unsuspected places, and it will
affect the lives of those whom he will never see either for weal or woe.
His pen is an instrument of fate. It is highly essential that he use it
with a careful hand and with an honest purpose. He dare not fail to be a
mouthpiece of truth.


The Message of the Washington Monument (1919)


A few minutes from the South Portico of the White House, overlooking the
majestic sweep of the Potomac, stands the tallest piece of marble masonry
in the world. It commemorates the life and deeds of the Father of His
Country. At its foot is a good place to stand and think for a while, as I
did one spring afternoon.

The architect who planned the Washington Monument could not have more
fittingly characterized the man of whom it stands as a memorial. Every
line of its vast form, stretching from the ground to more than six hundred
feet above the level of the river, breathes the spirit of the statesman
and soldier whose leadership is an essential part of our early history.

That long stretch of Maryland marble, capped with its apex of aluminum,
does more, however, than to memorialize and interpret the character of
Washington; it outlines the essential qualities of our people. They were
well typified in Washington. They are, therefore, well typified in a
monument which symbolizes his nature. It is at once a picture of their
past and a prophecy of their future.

It combines simple plainness with rugged strength. One cannot look at it
without thinking of the spirit of the pioneer. The picture of the
pilgrims facing the dangers of an unknown wilderness, that of the
embattled farmers at Concord, and that of the men who have borne the
burdens of the Republic throughout the years each rises into view. We
have had hard tests in the past. We are facing what may yet be harder
ones in the future. No other spirit than that of simple, rugged
Americanism could prove sufficient for either those past or those to come.

The strongest point of America has always been the spirit of her people.
She has amassed a national wealth which has become a wonder to the world.
She has built up a great army and a magnificent navy. She has gained a
place in the councils of the great world powers. She has never reached a
place, however, where she can afford to place such reliance upon any other
power as upon that of the spirit and ideals of her people.

American guns were only an incident in the Revolution. They would have
been failing weapons in the hands of many. They won their cause, however,
because they were carried in the hands of men whose souls were throbbing
with the power of a great conviction. They had the toughness, the courage,
the bravery, and the nerve of the pioneer, but they had more than all
these. They had the consciousness of a worthy cause. They knew they were
fighting for all that was dear to them. They had homes to defend, a
principle to vindicate, and a future to achieve. These things enabled them
to show the world how men can fight when all that they are has been staked
on the struggle.

We still need guns and armies, but we need never hope to graduate from the
fundamental necessity for sturdy and courageous men. The kind of men who
have been our salvation in the past and who are our hope for the future
are always found where habits of plain and rugged simplicity prevail.
However sophisticated our thinking may become, we need to ever cultivate
the kind of physical frames which are developed by plain living and high
thinking. Where Rome placed softness and self-indulgence we must always
keep the simple and wholesome ideals which proved so mighty in the lives
of our fathers.

Another thing to be noted about the Monument is the fact that it stands
foursquare to all the winds. Its ideal of plainness decreed that it should
be so. There are no tricky twists in its plan. Its architecture has no
place for merely decorative turns. There is not a deceptive line nor a
hint of anything superficial.

The habit of being real deserves a place among the chiefest of all
virtues. No one ever gained anything by any measure of pretense and
unreality. No nation ever bettered either itself or the world by any
process of deception and sham. We can no more outgrow the necessity for
truth and honor than we can outdistance that for plain living and
high thinking.

In accordance with this long-standing characteristic, America is leading
the world in its stand against shady intrigues and secret treaties. When
that principle has been vindicated in the conduct of the nations we shall
begin to be able to feel that Mars has been left behind the chariot of
civilization forever.

Another thing to be noticed about the Monument is the fact that it reaches
high but it is founded deeply. From just beneath its aluminum cap the
ground seems very far away. From the base its apex seems to be pushing
itself through the clouds and piercing the sky beyond them. It is a
connecting link between earth and sky, between the common and the lofty,
between the practical and the ideal.

Two people fail to get more than half the meaning and the joy of life.
One is the star-gazer, so enraptured with his visions that he is blind
to life’s practical realities. The other is the extreme realist, so
fearful of the fanciful that he will not lift his eyes from the mud at his
feet and take a look at the glories which hover about the hill of vision.

The American viewpoint is represented by neither alone. It is represented,
rather, by a combination of both. As the Monument stands with its feet
firmly planted in the clay, but with its top among the stars, the national
spirit is best typified by the man who keeps his plans firmly fixed among
practical things, but who also keeps his thinking at the high level of
splendid dreams, worthy ideals, and inspiring visions.

We have achieved such marvelous progress as a nation largely because we
have busied ourselves with real things. We have taken hold of things and
conditions as we found them, and have made the best of them. We have
been the better able to do so, however, because we have not forgotten the
things of the unseen world about us. Our dealing with practical things
has been blessed by the treasuring of spiritual ideals and the following
of worthy dreams. Our place as a nation is largely the result of this
union of hope and thing, this combination of dream and realization, this
blending of the ideal and the practical.


The Post-War Outlook for Literature (1919)


The true writer is a sort of social seismograph, sensitive to every
change that takes place in the life of the race. Literature is,
therefore, the record in which is told the story of social movements,
the mirror which reflects the history of the ages. The peace and strife,
the faith and unfaith, the love and the malice of all the past lives in
the literature which it has produced.

The great war was preceded by a period of fermenting stagnation. It was
a period of suppressed restlessness and hidden fears. The little
eruptions on the surface of its seemingly placid literature bespoke the
deeper feelings and hidden gropings of the time. At length the pent-up
fury of things burst into a volcano of war.

The war produced a literature of its own. It ran like a golden thread
through the vast mass of ordinary war propaganda. Most of the propaganda
was of mere brain origin, but the real literature of the war was born in
the depths of the tried souls of men.

One day I had occasion to mention to a friend the spiritual cost of the
war. I remarked that in addition to all that the struggle had cost us in
money, and even in blood, we had paid an unutterable price in the loss of
brains that were born to think, souls that were made to dream, and lips
that were fashioned to sing. She promptly replied that, while this was
true, the war had awakened a great many minds to thoughtfulness, taught
a multitude of souls the magic secret of weaving the fabric of dreams,
and put a song into many lips that had hitherto been dumb.

She was right. Many singers and tellers of tales went down in the crash
of things, but out of it came many others who had been reborn. The war
has invigorated literature for a long while to come. We shall not soon
see another stagnant age.

Having had a war literature, we now face the period in which is to be
born a post-war literature. It is a common thought among people
everywhere that during the years between 1914 and 1918 the elements
melted with fervent heat. The old world has been done away, and all
things are ready to be made new. The outlines of seas and continents
are the same as before, but the viewpoint, outlook, and general
consciousness of the race are totally changed. It could hardly seem more
so if we had been bodily transported to another planet. The new age will
express itself in a new literature—a reconstruction literature.

The literature of pre-war writers already seems to belong to a very
remote time. Scott, and Thackeray, and Dickens will never lose their
literary excellence, but the time has already come when their work seems
to belong to another world. The fundamental principles of life have not
changed, but our attitude toward life and our application of those
principles have changed mightily. A broader interpretation of them is now
a necessity. This service must be rendered by the pen of the writer.

Writers can now turn their attention from the production of propaganda
and concern themselves more vitally with the real mission of the author.
The world will warmly welcome, be it also said, a time when it may feel
that the writer of its reading matter had no axe to grind in the writing.

The German Empire offered an instance of the sad extent to which the pen
can be prostituted for propaganda. Education, Science, Philosophy, and
Literature were all made to serve the selfish ends of a party struggling
to build a super-state upon a foundation of self-interest. At such a
time, the soul of greatness dies from any land. Those who usher in such
periods dig the grave of pure literature by the purchase of its makers.

The wielder of the pen is now able to face the problems of life and deal
with the principles of truth with an open mind. This has not been true
with most since the war began. The weakness of human nature overcame many
minds which before the war had manifested commendable poise and evident
sincerity. In Germany and in almost every other country as well,
erstwhile careful thinkers seemed to cast to the winds all the calmness
of reason and temper of soul they had ever possessed. There was a perfect
Babel of efforts to prove that all the right was on one side and all the
wrong on the other. Butchers were whitewashed into angels, and champions
of justice were caricatured into buffoons by pens which were supposed to
be dedicated to the telling of the truth.

During the year 1916, a German anthropologist published an article in
which he proved, to his own satisfaction, that to be a Frenchman
necessarily meant to be a moral degenerate. During the same year, a
French anthropologist proved, with equal fervor and with equal
satisfaction to himself, that to be a German necessarily meant to be a
criminal lunatic. So long as such conceptions prevail in the minds of
thinkers and investigators, there can be neither literature nor science
of any dependable sort.

It may be some time before the squint of prejudice is entirely removed
from the thinking of the various peoples involved in the war. Gradually,
however, it must necessarily relax from its violence. Thinkers should now
do their best to work with only truth for a standard. The saner our
reconstruction writings prove, the more potent they will be. Nothing but
truth can ultimately prevail.

While the war, as is always the case with wars, has caused much violent
prejudice, and has led many talented people to defend a cause in
forgetfulness of truth, it has at the same time performed one great
service to literature. It has served to bring the work of writers on the
various subjects down from the ethereal heights of mystical theory to the
solid levels of plain thinking and everyday living.

In order to produce the materials and solve the problems necessary to the
winning of the war, Science was obliged to turn its work into the most
practical channels. No thoughtful person will insinuate that Science is
useless since it has helped us in so many ways to save the day in a great
national emergency. The completeness of the abandon with which scientific
investigators and writers gave themselves to war problems is evidenced by
the fact that at the 1917 meeting of the American Academy for the
Advancement of Science, almost every address dealt with some problem
incident to the war and the needs of the nation.

The trends in Philosophy and Theology were alike profoundly affected by
the wartime spirit. In no single year of the past have these two
departments of thought made such progress in their efforts to get down
where men live and to deal with the problems which are real to people as
they have made during either of the past two years. As a result, they are
more intelligible, more helpful, and more widely adapted for vital use.
Imaginary problems and arbitrary arguments have been largely laid aside.
The literature of these least tangible subjects has come to deal with
them in the most tangible way. It considers more and more the problems
of everyday life and work.

There has been sown into the literature of the various nations a certain
moral and spiritual element which is very indicative of the trend of
human thought and desire. An unusual number of dramas, for instance,
are dealing with moral and spiritual themes and principles. The
situations with which the war brought men face to face caused some of
life’s great questions to demand an answer. People who had long put
those questions aside came to face them squarely. Out of our late
experience, probably most people came with some intelligible attitude
toward the supreme questions related to living and dying. Neither are
we any longer afraid to face them either in books or upon the stage.

The literature of the new age may not be reflective, but it will be vital.
The prophet of truth never faced such an opportunity as now.


Free Verse (1921)


We generally think of free verse as being a modern literary creation.
Such is not really the case. That form of free verse which is now most
in vogue, namely the form commonly called polyphonic verse, may be a
comparatively new thing. At least it has been commonly familiar only
during the last few years. The fundamental form of which it is but a
variation is quite an old one.

Walt Whitman was a writer of a form of free verse in a literary
generation now vanished. His “Blades of Grass” was the most
unconventional thing done either in his period or those prior to it. This
verse varies from our polyphonic prose of the present time, yet the
spirit and general form are much the same. Whitman’s work awakened an
abundance of discussion and criticism in his day. It survives because
he had a message, and compared with the message of a poem, its form is
only an incidental thing.

The blank verse forms, which are as venerable as they are familiar in our
literature, are variations of the same general poetic pattern. As a rule,
the most conservative of us are fond of holding up Shakespeare as a
literary model for the centuries. We seem to have been about right in our
estimate of him too, for his work certainly has evidenced a remarkable
measure of immortality.

Yet the great body of the work of Shakespeare was of the unconventional
type. It differed, of course, from the free verse of today, yet it was a
forerunner of what is now being produced. Shakespeare contributed largely
toward giving blank verse a lasting good name. He ventured to pay little
attention to rhyme in an age when England was a nest of singing birds,
and most of them were singing in rhymes and stanzas. He preserved his
rhythm, it is true, but our modern free verse does that also.

It has a still older pedigree than Shakespeare. It appears in the
earliest beginnings of the poetry of the English and of still more
ancient peoples. The literature of the Hindus and Semites is full of it.
From the earliest snatches of song recorded in the sacred writings of
the Hebrews, the Bible has a wealth of poetry which suggests the modern
form. Moses, David, and Solomon all used it. The Magnificat of Mary and
the Nunc Dimittis of Simeon are both worthy of an honorable place in a
modern magazine of free verse.

Rhythmic prose is, then, quite an ancient literary institution. It
appears in two distinct grades and types. One is the simple, childlike,
elemental form which marks the early stages of the life of a people. The
other is the more polished form which represents the later period
of culture.

The first is found in the early lore of most races, savage or
semi-civilized. The American Indian had an abundance of it. The beginnings
of the poetry of what are now the most civilized races also include a
great deal of it. It represents that time in the life of a people when
human feelings burst spontaneously into song. In such an age practically
everyone is a singer, though not everyone can fashion fancy rhymes
and stanzas.

Of the second form, we have abundant examples in our large and growing
store of fine poetical work. We have simply swung back toward the freer
forms which gave opportunity for the expression of the feelings of our
earlier forefathers. We may have done so because we had feelings to
express that seemed to demand such forms. We may have done so simply for
the sake of variety. At any rate, we have done so.

This fact does not argue that any violence has been done to the quality
of our poetic output. The present movement has simply changed the favored
poetic form, for the time being at least. It may be that we have gone
backward in some other things, but there is little to indicate that we
have done so in relation to our poetry. The general run of American
poetry today is of a very high order. Generally speaking, poetic art in
America stands today at its highest level thus far.

The rhyme and the stanza belong to the period of highly studied form.
They are ornamental, and, like fine lace, the weaving of them calls for
great skill if it is to be well done. They often express commanding
thoughts and emotions, but the outstanding thing about them is their
form. Of course, if their form were their only value they would still
be worth while. We cannot get on without beauty. It is true, however,
that in the case of formal rhymed verse, the thought and message cannot
so easily be at their best. Thought must often be limited and truth
stilted by the necessities of form.

The free verse form offers an opportunity for the poet to break largely
away from these narrowing limitations. It has been said that the prose
writer is master of his materials while the poet is the slave of his
style. Many a versifier has unintentionally fallen into a vein of
grandiose expression which could hold little of sincerity and truth.

The intermingling of prose and verse qualities which we find in free
verse makes it possible for the poet to be true to the finer shades of
his message and its meaning. He is not bound by any fixed necessities of
rhyme and meter. This probably accounts for the fact that we have seen
expressed in this form the most rugged sentiments and, at the same time,
the most delicate shading of artistry.

I once enjoyed a conversation with the late James Whitcomb Riley, wherein
he spoke of the desirability of naturalness in poetry.

“Poetry should not sound stilted and constrained,” he said, “but natural
and sincere. It should run along the same even and normal course that a
high grade of every-day conversation does. One should not say, ‛the
rippling brook along.’ He should say, ‘along the rippling brook.’”

One may notice in Mr. Riley’s work that the best of the poems he wrote
during the period of his most serious work have just this quality.
Consequently, they are rather free in their form. He does not break
entirely away from rhyme and meter, but he does make them secondary.

This kind of work seems to hold its place longest. Probably the reason
is that the message and not the form is the immortal part. Out of the
past we have preserved a few high-sounding poems for their lilt and
rhythm, but they are few and probably will be long outlived by others
sounding a more genuine note. If anything of their kind was produced in
the days of Moses or David, it has long since perished. Yet the great
sentiments that swelled from the souls of these men and burst from their
lips are still treasured among us. After all, it does not seem to be to
the advantage of the poet to be abjectly the slave of his style. He seems
to be all the better remembered when he is the master of his materials.

Some have the idea that free verse belongs in the same category with jazz
music and cubist art, but it is not so. Free verse is no oddity. It is one
of the best outlets poetry can ever offer for the expression of the moods
and thoughts of the human soul. It is not the only form of poetry we
should cultivate and preserve, but it is one that will have a real place
in the great future of letters.


Music and History (1921)


It is often said that a nation’s life is mirrored in its literature. This
is necessarily true because it is the mission of literature to express
life. Even if such were not its purpose, the spirit of an age would
naturally find its way into the writings of the period. Literature cannot
but be a true reflection of the age which produces it.

The same is true of music in an approximate, if not an equal, degree. It
also mirrors the life of the age from which it springs. Literature is a
word picture of the life of its time. Music is a tone picture of the
same thing.

A musical composition images the state of someone’s soul at a given
moment. That condition of soul is a part of the great composite which
we call the spirit of the times. It might about as well be called the
personality of the age. It largely determines the thought, motive, and
action of the period. It is the chief factor in the making of history.
When one sees it spread out before him, he can almost write from it the
story of the period represented. The issues of life have always proceeded
from the heart, and the heart of any age expresses itself in its
musical productions.

The great general types of music are all representative of either phases
of human life or periods in its history. The age of great passions and
majestic emotions produced the symphony. The day of calm devotion and
religious faith gave us the oratorio and the hymn. The time of quiet
ways and simple joys contributed the pastorale. The age of love brought
us the lyric and the ballad.

These types of music we still have with us, for music is a permanent
record. As we have them today, they tell us what the people of other
ages have thought, felt, hoped, joyed, and suffered. We are now as
busily engaged in building up a musical record of our times as they
were in the making of a volume of work by which others might know their
story when they were gone.

The Elizabethan period is outstanding in the history of English
literature for the quantity and quality of the lyric verse which
it produced. It has been said with entire truthfulness that during
that period England was a veritable nest of singing birds. Among those
who helped to produce that volume of song are William Shakespeare,
Ben Johnson, and Christopher Marlowe. Thus far, the work done by the
poets and singers of that period has successfully met all the tests of
immortality. It is both read and sung throughout the
English-speaking world.

The reason for the outstanding quality of the songs of that period is
simply the fact that it was an amorous age in England. Love is the great
inspirer of this type of poetry and song. Love is an elemental instinct,
and rhyme and rhythm are the elemental ways of expressing things.
Therefore, love finds its most suitable expression in lyric verse.
Lovers must sing. If their suit is successful, their song is gay. If it
meets with temporary or permanent disappointment, their song is grave.
In either case, they must sing. Whenever the day of the lover comes in
any day or time, and it always does come, the period during which he
reigns will be an age of song.

After reading or hearing the songs of the Elizabethan period in England,
there is little in the history of the times that needs to occasion
surprise to one. The writers of that period were simply representative
of their time. Therefore, they expressed its spirit in their singing.
The soul of the England of their time breathes in their verse.

We have developed our distinct types of music in America. Each of these
is also representative either of a period in our history or an element
in our national spirit.

It was in the stirring days of the revolutionary period that the
American spirit was fully awakened. That consciousness naturally found
expression in a type of song. It was such songs as “Yankee Doodle”
that gave it voice. In the heat and fervor of our next great war was
born the majestic national anthem to which the recent trials have given
a new meaning.

The fraternal strife of the Civil War naturally required two sets of
songs to express its spirit. The North sang its courage up with “Tramp,
Tramp, Tramp the Boys are Marching,” “The Battle Cry of Freedom,” and
“Marching Through Georgia.” At the same time, the soul of the South was
speaking in the words and music of such songs as “Dixie,” “The Bonnie
Blue Flag,” and “Maryland, My Maryland.”

The Spanish-American War and the World War just ended each brought its
contribution of song to the lore of our times. Those who come after us
will long be able to recall the spirit of these two periods by singing
their songs again.

We have also had our lyric age in America. The quality of its output does
not even suggest comparison with that of the Elizabethan work, but we have
had it. The crude backwoodsmen who occupied the stage during the earlier
days of our wilderness life were normal people. They not only had their
loves, hopes, joys, and sorrows, but they also sang about them. The result
was often pitifully sentimental, but it was sincere.

Down to a recent time, there was more militarism in the American spirit
than most people realized. We had a goodly supply of the courage of battle
left over from our several wars and their corresponding victories. America
found expression for that spirit in the work of such men as John Philip
Sousa, and others of similar, though less widely recognized talent. For a
long while, the sound of the stately march has served as an outlet for our
patriotic feelings. We now share the general decline in militaristic
feeling, but the march will remain. If war dies from the earth, as so many
fondly hope it will, our stirring marches will still be treasured as tone
pictures of the days that were.

Particularly is the folk song a page from the history of a people. One
might gather more of the spirit of the old South from hearing a collection
of its songs than from the reading of many pages of its story. The same
would be true of any section of any land.

Ragtime and Jazz represent two successive steps in the development of the
recent world spirit. It was a spirit of nervousness and restlessness, a
spirit willing to go to any length for the sake of novelty and action.
It helped to make the world war possible and is still keeping the planet
in a turmoil of restlessness and dissatisfaction. Jazz has been defined
as animalism expressed in tone. It might also be called the anarchy
of music.

There are those who hope for a calmer day in the world’s temper and
feeling. When that time comes, its spirit will express itself in a
renewal of dignified and stately music. We may assume this to be true
because the thought and action of any age, whatever its spirit, is
traced upon the long scroll of time in the form of a golden thread
of song.

We have noted only the products of the lesser musical ability of America.
To fail to call attention to the fortunate exceptions would be to fail to
do justice to the better culture and taste of our country. The fact that
we have had some real masters is one not to be overlooked. Our Cadmans
and MacDowells bear testimony to the fact that our faces are forward.
There is a spirit of culture in America, and it has found expression in
some of the finer and more enduring forms of musical composition. It has
obstacles to surmount, but it makes progress. America has a national
future. It follows that she has a musical future. The one vouchsafes
the other. The other expresses the one.


Correspondence (1929)


Two important influences go out from an office. One is that of the
representatives who make outside personal contacts. The other is the
stream of correspondence that issues forth into the outside world. The
second is no less important than the first.

As good correspondence is an art, so a good correspondent is an artist.
He is not easy to find. It is as surprising as it is regrettable how few
people have taken the trouble really to master the use of the English
language. One can more easily find a master of mechanics than a master
of words any time. Yet each person owes it not only to his language but
to himself to know how to use his native tongue correctly and effectively.

In all writing, and especially in writing letters upon which great
interests turn, two things are important. One is to say the right thing.
The other is not to say the wrong one.

The president of a great bank once said to me: “I write my own
advertisements and dictate my own letters, not necessarily because I know
better than anyone else what to say, but rather because I probably do
know better than anyone else what not to say.”

The other day I saw a series of collection letters supposed to have been
prepared by an expert. They were verbose and flowery. They were supposed
to be seasonal—something about which both collector and collectee care
exactly nothing. They had a jollying and blarneying tone which is always
nauseating. The clear, courteous, definite letter is the one that wins.

I once saw an irate letter that came to the director of a money-raising
project for a philanthropic interest. It told him plainly that the writer
objected to the whole scheme, and would consider it an insult to be asked
for a subscription. A secretary answered the letter patiently,
courteously, and explainingly, but without asking for a subscription.
Return mail brought a letter from the erstwhile objector enclosing a
subscription for fifty dollars. The right kind of correspondence will
contribute largely toward the success of any business.


The Sabbath Desecration (1910)


We are sometimes accustomed to make rather gloomy comparisons between our
days and those of our fathers. The ground for our doing so is oftener
grounded in sentiment than fact, and yet there are some differences which
are deplorable. This is especially true with reference to the observance
of the precepts laid down in our religious teachings. We feel painfully
lacking when we reflect upon the sturdy faith of the pioneers who blazed
the way not only for our economic but also for our religious advancement.
Perhaps nowhere do we feel that there is more discouraging contrast than
in the matter of Sabbath observance. A little girl in one of our large
cities heard the minister say in his sermon, one Sunday, that in heaven
every day would be like Sunday. She told her mother, upon arriving home,
that she expected to find heaven a grand place, for if every day were to
be like Sunday, then the ceaseless round of theaters, cards, and ball
games would certainly be delightful. Between this conception of the
Sabbath Day and that of the stern Puritan who refused to allow his
children to play and be happy on Sunday, there lies a long distance.
Both are extreme views and neither could be said to be altogether
desirable, but if American life continues in its present direction, the
one may become as real as the other once was. We do not want our Sabbath
Day to be a season of agonizing gloom and long faces. Nothing could be
farther from the apparent attitude of Jesus toward it. Neither do we want
it to be a day of selfish pleasure and frivolity. But we do want it to be
a day of meditation, prayer, and quiet service. To keep the day holy does
not necessarily imply absolute passivity, but in a Christian land, the
Sabbath Day should be a day of rest. And yet the doors of many business
houses are wide open; petty amusements reap a harvest of small coin,
theatrical performances are given, and often the authorities fail to close
even the saloons. Not only must we face these facts, but also that many so
called Christians fail in very questionable ways to keep the day sacred.
We may well ask whence this great difference between our age and that of
the preceding generation. We are so justified by the fact that every
effect has a cause.

The tempter has many ways of accomplishing his purposes. He can not only
quote to his purpose, but he can also utilize the social forces to his own
advantage. Where such a force is the cause of men doing that which they
should not do, we can best do the work of our Lord by fighting the force
and not the act. We can not kill the dragon by cutting off the heads; we
must strike at the life-giving root of the evil.

One reason why the Sabbath is less a day of rest than formerly is probably
to be found in the fact that this is more an age of idleness than was the
former one. Our fathers appreciated and observed their day of rest because
they could not help but feel their need of it. They worked hard in the
woods or fields from the early morning till late at night, and moreover,
their work was of such a muscular nature that their evenings and Sundays
found them both weary in body and hungry in mind. The Sunday rest would
relieve the one, and attendance upon Sunday services would satisfy the
other. Thus, it was apparently to their own advantage to live the day unto
the Lord. Not only this, but the father did not toil out his days to
maintain his sons and daughters in lives of idleness and profligacy. Every
member of the family had his or her share in the work of making ends meet.
Thus, the whole family found itself weary enough to be ready for rest and
prayer on the Sabbath. It is but natural that one who loafs the week away
or goes on a continual round of pleasure-seeking should fail to realize
any need for rest and relaxation on Sunday. They are the people who are
usually found complaining that the preachers and Christians want to make a
man sit still all day Sunday and do nothing. The argument that laboring
men want ball games and other amusements to occupy themselves on Sunday is
fallacious. If they work on week days as they ought to work, they will not
be found complaining of too much rest on Sunday. Then, in this case, it is
not so much against Sabbath desecration as it is against idleness that we
need wage our war. If we can remove the cause, its effects must disappear.
A sermon on honest week-day labor is really a sermon on
Sabbath observance.

But all Sabbath breakers are not idlers. Some of them work as steadily as
the sturdy pioneer ever worked. But the occupation is of a different
nature. Where our fathers toiled with their hands, men now toil with their
brains. Our fathers wore out their bodies, while men now shatter their
nervous systems. Tired limbs induce rest, while weary minds and unstrung
nerves only hinder it. It is easy when evening comes to let go of the ax
or the plow, but it is not so easy to forget the knotty business problem
or perplexing professional difficulty. The need of such toilers is
recreation. We need to get such men to take down the almighty dollar from
its place as their guiding star and hang the higher and better things of
life in its place. In this case, a sermon against the “ambition which
o’erleaps itself” is a sermon against Sabbath desecration.

The two facts mentioned above as causes of Sabbath breaking contribute to
making this an extremely nervous age. Humanity is restless. It wants to be
about doing something, and it seems not to know just where to direct its
efforts. People seem to be afraid of themselves, and hence the quiet
chamber and closet of secret prayer is often unappreciated. If we chance
to feel a serious thought coming upon us, we get afraid, and at once seek
the crowd for fear that it may mature in our minds. We forget that great
visions must be seen in solitude and then carried out among the crowd. Our
lonely Sinais must precede our deeds of leadership. Every Calvary is
preceded by its Gethsemane, and quietness and solitude are not to be
despised. We need to learn the lesson of Isaiah, “In quietness and
confidence shall be your strength; in returning and rest shall ye be
saved.” Only small minds are always tossing upon a sea of restlessness.
Great lives know how to be tranquil. Such hearts know how to keep the
Sabbath holy. Thus, when we preach and work against restlessness,
feverishness, and worry, we preach and work against Sabbath desecration.

If we can but induce men to so toil that they will become body-weary and
soul-hungry, we shall not only further God’s creative plan, but we shall
also help humanity to really understand the worth of a Sabbath Day of
rest. The anxious nervousness of the masses and the cupidity of
enterprising amusement promoters spring to meet each other as by magnetic
attraction. When the masses learn to love the quiet of the home and
sanctuary and no longer so persistently seek that which does not satisfy
their nameless and misunderstood hunger, then such cupidity will no longer
be sustained and encouraged. When we learn the habits of health, and life,
and work that helped to make our fathers strong, then shall we have back
again the faithful observance of the holy Sabbath Day that helped to make
our fathers good.


The Light (1915)


The bringing into existence of light had an early and important place in
the creation of the universe. It has held an important place in all the
age-long continuance of the creative process which has been going on ever
since that early day—so much so that it has marked the Creator as
essentially a God of light, neither in whom nor in whose purposes is
there any darkness at all.

In the different realms of life, light must take different forms. In the
physical universe, it takes the form of the illuminating ray that makes
daylight out of darkness. In the life of man, it takes the form of the
knowledge of the truth which makes him free. Wherever the influence of
God goes, it carries with it the illuminating agency of schools, teachers,
and books. No land remains ignorant under the sway of the gospel. The
Christianization of a land is simply the carrying of the creative process
on into new realms of life, and early in every such creative process is
heard the majestic edict: “Let there be light.” The answer to the edict
is ever the same: “And there was light.”

God permitted darkness as a stage in creation, but never as a permanent
condition. He may permit the darkness of ignorance or sin or both—for
they go hand in hand—in a life as a stage in its development. But wherever
a continuance of the conditions is insisted upon a day longer than
necessity requires, the results must be disastrous.

There is a certain life-giving strength in light. There is a wide
difference between the pale and twisted plant that grows under a board
in the garden and the plant from the same parent that has had the good
fortune to grow in the sunlight. Much the same difference may be
observed in the case of two lives between which there has been a
similar difference.

There is nothing in the purpose or the kingdom of God that needs fear
the light. What will not stand the light is not of His designing. The
best that His gospel and His power can ask is to be investigated and
tested. There need be no fear of what will happen when all men
investigate for themselves.


The Yoke (1915)


There seems to exist a general misconception of the purpose of a yoke.
Because of it the command of Jesus to accept and wear His yoke is often
much more dreadful than there is reason that it should be. We often fail
to catch or refuse to believe the added assurance that “the yoke is
easy.” This assurance is true both in figure and fact.

Anyone who has been personally familiar with the working of oxen under
the yoke is sure to understand that the yoke is used not to increase the
burden they bear, but to furnish them with a means of bearing the burden
they already have.

A yoke does not demand the use of more energy than would otherwise be
called into play. The beast of burden would expend the same amount of
energy in a day’s time. If that strength were not expended in the
performance of a useful task it would be wasted. The yoke concentrates
the energy at command to the performance of a task worth while. The
burden-bearer is no wearier, neither has it borne any greater burden.
It has only borne the same burden with greater ease and to better purpose.

Laziness is often a harder taskmaster than industry, and sin is always a
harder taskmaster than righteousness. Each life will, in the course of its
passage through the world, exert itself to just about the same degree,
whether it works or plays. Nature and life are sure to lay upon it some
burdens to bear, and it must bear them whether it is willing or not.
Whether the life takes its mission seriously or frivolously, the amount
of energy expended will be about the same. However, the life has its
choice between finding that expenditure difficult or easy,
useful or useless.

For, early in its days, the Yoke Giver comes to it and offers His yoke as
a means of bearing its burden more easily and usefully. It is pitiable how
often the offer is misconstrued as an attempt to increase the burden when
it really amounts to an offer to help in carrying it.


The Crowded Inn (1916)


If I were to try to paint a picture of that night in Bethlehem, there is
one thing I would be sure not to omit.

I would paint the rifted sky, opened to release the mingled praise of
angels. I would depict the shepherds, listening in their wonder.

I would hang the wondrous star in its place in the sky—heaven’s sign of
hope to a broken world. The peaceful village, the lowly manger, the quiet
cattle in their stalls—all these should have a place.

But somewhere in the distance I would set the inn with its lighted
windows, its gayety within, and its crowded space—a house with a closed
door, a place with room for all except the family of an artisan who was
to be trusted with the rearing of a King.

Through the centuries this has been a most tragic story. It has been the
most tragic because it has represented the most widespread condition. It
has been the saddest because it has been the least realized.

Some have tried to drive the King from the world with violence, but no
violence has even been able to match the strong, sweet, silent influence
which pervaded His life and which He set adrift in the world, and which,
in spite of opposition, grows from more to more.

The violence which sought His annihilation only aided Him in the
fulfillment of His mission. There need be no fear of those who go out
with swords and staves against Him.

There have been those, too, who have tried to banish Him from the world
by persecution. They, too, have failed. Faith was never stronger nor did
ever more immovable convictions burn in the hearts of His people than
when they fled from the hand of persecution or perished for the faith
before the eyes of scoffers.

From the Israelite down, the people of God have thrived on persecution.
The real problems of Christianity arose after, and not before, the Roman
state became its ally. Better far had been the bread of bitterness which
they had eaten than the reduction to a system and a tool which they then
suffered. The persecutor only speeds the day of the King’s dominion.

There have been those who have tried to drive Him from the world by
argument. This, likewise, has been of no avail. Atheism, agnosticism, and
skepticism all fail before the living fact of the power of His presence
in the world.

One clear case of regeneration or one well-defined overruling of
providence is sufficient to dispose of every argument of mere premise and
conclusion which can be constructed against Him. The only argument against
Him is an unfaithful follower, and that is refuted by a follower
who is true.

For Him the sword has no terrors. He never will flee persecution. There
is no danger that He will ever be driven out. If there is any danger for
Him today, it is that He be crowded out.

There is one thing and one thing only which can defeat His purpose. That
is the unwelcoming life, the closed heart, the master of the inn who says,
“No room.”

Let us not blame the innkeeper of the long ago. He did [not] know whom
he was turning from his doors. He did not act in the light which twenty
intervening centuries have given us. He was simply an innkeeper to whom
business was business, and whose preference was naturally for the richest
guests. Let us be moderate in our censure of him. Let us turn to the
present. Let us find whether the doors of the throne rooms of our own
hearts are open.

Not many say they hate the Master or His Kingdom. Not many say they do
not believe in Him. Not many are disposed to persecute. Not many even
care to argue. But many say, “I haven’t time.”

Lose what else we may in this busy time, we must find a place for Him and
His words and His ways. A good watchword for this day of opportunity
might be: “Make room for Jesus!”


The Price of Liberty (1916)


On the old battlefield of Sempach, where in 1386 the Swiss won a notable
victory over the Austrians, there stands a monument of recognition to
Arnold von Winkelried, a Swiss peasant, who on the day of that battle
gave his life as the price of victory for his country.

The Austrians were massed together with presented spears—“A living wall,
a human wood.” There was only one hope of breaking through the armed line
and that was for some one to dash against the phalanx and make an
opening—at the cost of his life. Suddenly there was a cry: “Make way for
liberty,” and Arnold von Winkelried rushed forward, gathering an armful
of Austrian lances into his own breast, but opening a breach through
which his comrades poured themselves against their foes.

The Swiss marched to victory that day, but it was over the dead body of
a man who loved them and their cause even unto death, a man who was
moved by the love which lays down its life for its friends.

There is another spot—a place unmarked by any monument—where earth’s
supremest hero yielded up His life to make way for the liberty of His
people. He gathered the wrath and the sting of a great world’s sin into
His own heart, and led the way where others dared not tread.

In the hour that Jesus died, the veil of the temple was rent in twain
from the top to the bottom, and the breach was made through which every
man might make his way to the feet of his God and to the glory of the
eternities. The tragedy of Calvary opened up the way to liberty—the
liberty of the truth, the liberty of pardon, the liberty of eternal life.

So through the ages His people have been marching to the supreme hour of
joy in forgiveness and assurance, to success in the conquests of
righteousness, and through the gates of glory at the last. Each step of
the way they have found full of joy. But it has all been over the dead
body of one whose love was too great to know a fear, and whose devotion
was unfailing even in the hour of supreme agony.


Paul’s Ideal Sufficient (1918)


It is as easy as it is dangerous for those of us who have upon our hearts
a work of reform to become victims of fads. When new principles, directly
or indirectly related to religious work, are discovered and announced, it
is not difficult for our appreciation of their worth to become so
enthusiastic as to eclipse everything else in our system of reform with
an overdeveloped sense of their importance.

They usually are important as having bearing upon the great problem we
work to solve. The world, however, is apt to wonder if we know just what
we are about when we lay one fad aside for another, just as we had laid
earlier fads aside for the one, and it does not always place the most
liberal construction upon our enthusiasm.

As a way out, we should properly appreciate and use each new discovery
which has bearing upon our task. We should not, however, allow it to
assume the proportions of a fad so far as we are concerned. Our attitude
toward our ideal and its realization must be broad enough to take in more
than one side of it at once.

So far as the Church and its task is concerned it will be found that the
ideal Paul had for it is not likely to receive a successful addition.
Each social institution has one task to perform, and it will be found to
be unable to perform more than that one task well. We have agencies for
the various forms of service to society. Not one of the others, however,
approaches closely the field which the Church was designed to fill. Its
ministry is purely spiritual and when it leaves that field and takes its
stand in any other it is not only overlapping upon the work of other
social agencies, but it is leaving undone a work which there is no other
agency to do.

In other words, the Church will probably not be able to define a higher
mission for itself than that expressed in one of the letters to
Timothy—a pillar and ground of the truth—a stay and foundation of that
which is everlasting.


The Religion of the New Age (1919)


The world is being torn down like an outworn and antiquated structure.
When the work of wrecking it is completed, it will be built over. The
result will be a world the builders of which will have tried to profit
by the mistakes and experiences of the ages. A Bible prophecy heralds
a new heaven and a new earth. The postbellum reconstruction period will
help to realize at least the latter part of that hope.

It is already apparent that religion will share in the general
readjustment. The war has stimulated the world’s thinking. It has seen,
as it did not take time to see in the old days, the needs in the religious
field. Any reform is rapid when men once get to thinking. The case is
hopeless so long as apathy and lethargy prevail.

We probably need not look for any revolutionary change in the fundamentals
of religion. These do not change. Being rooted and grounded in the truth,
they are fixed and permanent. It is not with either the substance or the
mission of religion that the difficulty lies.

The difficulty lies at the points of interpretation and application. It is
possible for these to advance with growing knowledge, and the new world
will unquestionably see to it that they do so. The earth has always been
round, and it will remain round as long as it exists. Men have not,
however, always understood the fact of its roundness. There was a time
when geographical authority insisted that it was flat. Then there came a
time when better knowledge existed. The fact had not changed in the least.
Only human interpretation had undergone progress. The facts of religion
can not change, but humanity can achieve progress in rightly interpreting
them and in rightly adapting itself to them.

It need not be supposed, either, that the religion of the new age will be
a denatured one. It bids fair, on the contrary, to be a positive and vital
one. It will probably be less and less the fashion to parade moral laxity
under the false banners of liberal thinking. The coming period will not be
superficial. It will need a religion of power and significance. It will
try religious principles to the limit, and if such a religion can not be
had, it will have none at all. Fortunately, a definite and positive faith
can be had. The people who are really living want a religion which is more
than a fashion or a convenience. It must include a working program which
means something and is not too easy.

The new religion will be composite, because it will be unified. Only in
the reactionary centers is any real difference now apparent between
Protestant Christian bodies. Now, under the unifying influence of a great
common cause, Protestant, Catholic, and Jew are combining forces for the
religious good of the soldier. That unity will probably increase
and continue.

Most carefully thinking people stand together on the things which are
really vital. All understand that no ecclesiastical body can possess a
monopoly of the truth. We go on and work faithfully, each for his own
church household, but we all understand that both good and bad and both
truth and error dwell in each of our many camps.

All the world has been searching for the same God. Different peoples have
called the Deity by different names and sought him in different ways. It
is not the name or the method, but the spirit and motive that count most.
Various peoples have reached various stages in their search. Probably all
will, sooner or later, find the world’s one perfect image of the divine
Father in Jesus. We must be patient, however, with those who are only on
the way. In the finished faith, the chaff of all the world’s beliefs will
have been cast away, and the abiding in them all will remain. There is
nothing in the spirit of the cross to violate that which is good in any
of them.

The new religion will be a religion of practical standards. It will find
its expression in terms that men know about, and its form will be one
which can really be adapted to the needs of everyday living. The tendency
in this day of human problems is to bring each line of human thought and
investigation down to earth. It is with religion just as with science or
philosophy. The demand is that it shall be practical in all its standards
and methods.

The world has not found the theology born upon a study table sufficient.
The cry is for a theology based wholly upon the facts of life. Truth does
not always follow the processes of formal logic. The tests of faith are
not to be found in the syllogism but in life’s great laboratory. The
authority of the great Teacher came largely from his fixed habit of
talking about real things in practical terms. His only theology was life.
In conforming our religion more and more to this principle, we shall not
be getting away from Jesus. We shall rather be getting back to him.

The new religion will be a socialized religion. In this, it will but bear
the fruit of agitation which has already been going on for years. Religion
can not be worth while without a definite object. Its object is not the
appeasing of an arbitrary Deity. It is rather to bring the touch of a
tender Father’s grace into the lives of his children. In other words, the
object of religion is humanity. For the good of men are all laws
established, all warnings issued, and all promises given.

The achieving of the present and future salvation of people demands not
the successful performance of some mystical process of indoctrination.
It calls for the actual application of religious principles in everyday
thinking and action. It has not achieved its end until testimony to its
power and blessing is borne by all social life and by every social
institution. It is nothing until it has come to be expressed in terms of
life. Without surrendering any of its hope in the promise of a world to
come, the religion of the future will lay a larger emphasis upon the life
of the world in which we dwell. More and more men are realizing that the
only hope we can have of gaining any other world depends upon our
treatment of this one. The path to heaven lies directly through the earth.
Two attitudes toward this world can never fit in with a thoughtful and
reasonable faith. One is the attitude that this is a world of selfish
opportunity and sensuous pleasure, and that the highest object of life is
the satisfaction of the flesh. The other is the attitude that this is only
a vale of tears to be endured, despised, and neglected until such time as
we can get out of it into a happier realm. This is a life of opportunity,
to be lived out with full appreciation and emphasis upon the sweetness and
the worth-whileness of each day and hour. Real religion will strive to
make it more and not less beautiful.

The new religion will be one of optimism. It will understand that nothing
is so easy as cynicism and nothing so cheap as the continual discounting
of other people. It will find its strength not in emphasizing the badness
of people, but in believing in them. After all these years, it will come
to realize that Jesus saved by believing in sinners. Whoever follows in
his footsteps will certainly have to learn to do the same. The human heart
shrivels under accusation. It blossoms under the radiant influence of
someone’s confidence. The new religion—an evolved form of the old—will
count the roses and forget the thorns, and it will strive to emphasize
the divinity in every man.

The new religion will be the old reduced to its simplest and most workable
terms. God will be upon its throne. Jesus will stand as his perfect
expression in the flesh. The cross will overshadow all. It will be a
religion of service, for there is much to do. It will be a religion of
sacrifice, for this is a needy world. Reasonably interpreted, the Bible
will be its message. Its aim will be to bring out the divinity implanted
in all things, and its test will be its product.


Christianity and Americanism (1920)


Religion plays an important part in the making of any nation. The
spirit of faith and the spirit of patriotism seem to have a genuine
affinity for each other. The national hope of Israel was born in the
heart of a man whose name has been handed down as that of the father
of the faithful. It was finally realized under the leadership of a man
chosen of God as the mouthpiece through which the law was given. Long
before nationality was an achieved fact, the love of God and the hope
of a country were intermingled in the hearts of the sons of Jacob. This
is probably a chief reason for the deathlessness of the race.

Through the fabric of American history, the Christian religion is woven
like a golden thread. Many things have contributed to the glory of our
past, but nothing else has contributed quite so much as has this fact.
Many things enter into the making of our hope for the future, but this
is the most important among them all.

The Pilgrims came seeking a spiritual refuge. It was on bent knees that
they first greeted the country which they had chosen for their home.
Their memory is perpetuated by a monument which stands near the place
where they landed. It carries five symbolic figures, representative of
Pilgrim qualities. It is appropriate that the central one among them is
the figure of Faith. It was in the spirit of faith that they laid the
foundations of American life in their section of the country.

What was true of the northern settlements was true of the southern ones
as well. Practically everything that was a part of the old Jamestown
settlement is gone. It is significant that one of the most abiding of the
old landmarks at Jamestown was the ruins of an old church in which the
colonists first lifted their voices in the praise of God.

Among the American people, the church and state have always been
organically separate, but they have always been spiritually united. The
state has guaranteed protection to the church. In return, the church has
given moral and spiritual support to the state.

The state can well afford to maintain such an attitude. It has no other
bulwark so strong as is the church. The perpetuity of the state depends
most largely upon the very things for which the Christian religion stands.
Among them are virtue, loyalty, and fraternity.

Statesmanship is a necessity in the activities of a nation, but it is not
the fundamental necessity. Diplomatic shrewdness may often be helpful, but
it is not a foundation upon which rests the existence of any country. Rich
economic development, splendid cities, cultured citizenship—all these are
things that enter into the highest grade of national life, but they are
not the fundamental requirements of existence and strength. The hardy
virtues that make good men are the foundation stones upon which any sound
national life must be built.

This is true because it is from the people that the national life flows.
It does not come from executive offices, legislative chambers, nor
judicial tribunals. These are only instrumentalities in the carrying on
of its affairs. Its essence depends upon the people who make the state.
It roots in the places where they live and work. It is never any better
nor any worse than they are. It is tempered to the home life, the
industrial life, and the social life of the land. It is as good as human
virtue makes it, or as bad as the lack of human virtue leaves it. It is,
therefore, more largely dependent upon Christian agencies than upon any
other one influence.

Without the Christian church, the land would never have had these
qualities that make life sound and strong. Deprived of the Christian
church, it would soon cease to have them. With their departure, the
sanctity would die out of family relations, the spirit of mutual
helpfulness would perish from community life, and citizenship would be
deprived of the attitude of loyalty to flag, country, and law. While
these virtues are maintained, the state stands strong and firm. When
they decay, the state goes to pieces as a barrel falls to staves when
the supporting hoops are removed.

This is sufficient to indicate that the state can hardly place too high
a value upon the church, and that it cannot place too high a value upon
the faith for which the church stands. A few words should be now said to
the point that since the church and the faith have served the country so
well in years gone by, they cannot afford to miss the present supreme
opportunity to serve it.

America is passing through a great transition stage. No one can say just
what the outcome is to be, but every one recognizes the presence of a
national ferment which is certain to result in something positive in the
not distant future. There is probably small ground for alarm. Ours is a
nation of thoughtful people. Whatever they do in the end will be tempered
with wise judgment. As it has been in other days, they will choose the
wise course, and we shall only find ourselves better situated than before.
The fact stands, however, that we are now in a transition period. The
whole world is entering into a new period in its existence.

It is desirable that this new period shall be really an evolution of the
old. The best of the past should survive, having added to it the best
thought and talent the new age can furnish. Those revolutionary minds who
think the new order will be some sudden substitution for an old one
wrecked by the hand of annihilating violence are in the hopeless
minority. Sound judgment will prevail, but a change is on the way. In
fact it is already partially realized.

In such a time of social unrest and upheaval as this, it is easier than
at other times to make blunders. Other lands have felt this fever before
ours, and some of them at that time wrote pages into their history which
they have spent all the years since wishing they could erase. Just now
the popular mind needs in an unusual degree the steadying influence of a
great faith. The Christian faith is sufficiently conservative to be
careful, and sufficiently progressive to be fearless in the face of
vision. It is, therefore, supremely adapted to meet the needs of
the times.

The Christian Gospel is the great solvent of modern problems. The problems
of the age are ethical and social. Fundamental to ethical and social
problems are spiritual conditions. The Christian Gospel is an ethical and
social message based on spiritual principles.

The Gospel should, therefore, be spread to-day with such an earnestness as
its prophets have never known before. From pulpit, in Bible school, and by
means of printed page, it should be given the freest possible course to
the minds of men. It should certainly be made a more common topic of
everyday conversation. Let no one think it is unwelcome. The human race
realizes its present situation, and it is anxious to hear about anything
that holds out any hope or promise. The world is strangely Gospel hungry
at the present time. It is impatient of substitutes, but anxious for the
real article.

In years past the forces of the Kingdom have been an incalculable support
to the government. The church has carried the interests of the nation to
the throne of grace. When necessary it has given men to defend the flag.
The Bible and the flag have advanced together. It is safe to assume that
in the present time the nation will find all the old-time help in the
church and in the religion for which it stands.


The Christian Program (1920)


Jesus loved to set forth the nature of the Kingdom in terms of growing
things. He likened it to a grain of mustard seed which grew into a tree,
and to a lump of leaven which leavened the whole of three measures
of meal.

These are both apt pictures of the Kingdom and His plan for its growth.
Its realization depends upon the germination and final fruition of the
truth. It therefore depends upon the passing from one to another of its
master secret.

The dream of Jesus was a pretentious one. It meant not only the conquest
of the planet but the conquest of it at its most difficult point. In such
a conquest guns and navies are helpless. A greater than a military program
is necessary. Jesus chose the greatest of all plans—the passing of the
message from lip to lip through the channels of everyday conversation.
Under his plan, each person is charged to be a witness of what he knows.

The result of any problem in progression is startling. It is surprising
how quickly a whole planet could be evangelized if the message grew in
its sweep according to such a mathematical law. If each person who knows
Jesus passed the knowledge of his experience on to two others, the outward
rim of things could be touched in a little while. Such a plan is not only
numerically adequate, but it is the only plan which is
numerically adequate.

The Christian program tends to the making of more and better Christians
because the plan of personal evangelism makes every believer an
evangelist. One is a little more wholly committed to the gospel he has
passed on to others. A philosophy of words is very apt to become a
philosophy of life. The sense of being a witness has steadied many a
trembling Christian to a new strength and resolution. Responsibility is
a wonderful tonic.


Contributed essay to a symposium on “The Church and Young People” (1920)


The status of the church in its relation to youth to-day is generally
disappointing. Unless it is improved, the kingdom will become a victim
of race suicide. In certain larger lines, the world seems to be
advancing; in the simpler matters of personal ideals and moral
standards, many people think it to be losing ground.

The origin of our problem is threefold. It comes, first, from a growing
reign of carnality in the world—the seeking of wealth and pleasure at any
cost. It comes, secondly, from the surrender of erstwhile righteous as
well as indifferent homes to the notion that, since one is young but once,
he should be encouraged to spoil the only youth he is to have. It comes,
thirdly, from a condition in social institutions and community life which
makes it difficult for one to live the better life without severing the
social ties that bind him to others.

Young people cannot pass through the public schools of the average city
without making a choice between being worldly and being wall flowers. It
even seems that a young man cannot go through a great war for humanity
without having the tobacco habit forced upon him as a part of a great
propaganda for commercial purposes. Boys and girls can hardly attend a
social function without seeing indecent attire and being invited to
participate in things which deteriorate faith and ideals.

Our equipment for meeting the situation is generally inadequate. We have
plenty of organization, but it is too general, too miscellaneous, and too
much interested in funds and reports. We have too many young people’s
organizations and too little life in any of them. This is a general
trouble with Methodism. We would do better with one tenth of our present
machinery and nine times more use of that one tenth.

Our program should probably cover the following points, all of which are
old and simple: _(1) A warm spiritual life and a high personal ideal for
all_. There are no exceptions for age or youth in the standards of the
kingdom. _(2) An emphasis on family faith and practice, with a revival of
proper parental authority_. If the children must rule, let the parents at
least retain veto power in the interest of right living. _(3) A program
of community reconstruction_ which will ultimately make schools and other
public institutions as respectful of the ideals of evangelical Christians
as they now are of those of Jews and Roman Catholics. _(4) Simple but
effective organization for the recognition of the young people of the
church as a normal social group_ and for their development along the lines
indicated in the growth of Jesus—wisdom, stature, favor with God, and
favor with man. There is no better program of training than that which
includes mind, body, religious instinct, and social relationships.

Beyond this I see little that the church and its agencies can do. Nothing
is to be gained by compromising with the mind of the flesh, which is
death. We should get the right kind of attitude, organization, and
equipment. We should use them at their best and then stand our ground.
The right-minded will respond to nothing less than a Christian appeal.
The wrong-minded we shall not win anyway—until a revolution has taken
place in their point of view.


The Message of an Empty Tomb (1920)


One Sunday morning twenty centuries ago a woman stood musing beside an
empty grave. She had come there early in the morning to bring the tribute
of a final service to a departed friend whose name was Jesus. He had died
on a cross the preceding Friday. Being poor, his body had received the
hospitality of a kind-hearted citizen of Arimathea.

The visitor at the grave of the Nazarene met with a surprising situation.
She did not find things as she expected—if she really expected anything.
Probably her thoughts were little more than vague impressions, and she was
taking it for granted that the grave still claimed its own.

She did not find it so. The seal was broken; the door was open; and the
former occupant was gone. The garden was silent, but not with the silence
of the dead. Its stillness seemed rather to speak of life. It was like a
battlefield upon which a great struggle has taken place, and a great
principle vindicated. The very voicelessness seemed eloquent of victory.

Mary need not have been surprised. Jesus had often told his friends that
such a thing would happen. His emphasis had never been upon dead people
nor dead things. His life had been a message of life triumphant. He had
even released others from the fetters of the grave.

The world has always had strange ways, however, of putting an indefinite
construction upon the words of Jesus. Men often remark upon the wonder of
them, but living the truth of them is quite another thing. People are
willing to admit their beauty. Here and there are those who are even
willing to admit their truth. They are not so many, however, who venture
to take them for a life program.

The same old story was repeated in this case. The assurance of Jesus that
the tomb should be but a temporary habitation had been listened to with
respect, but it had not been really taken seriously. It had become a
forgotten promise. Whether Mary disbelieved, or only failed to believe,
she acted upon the assumption that Jesus was dead. Others had remained in
their graves. She took it for granted that she would find him in his. She
had not learned her right to expect marvelous things. She cannot be blamed
much. She only did what most people do. To her credit it must be said that
she learned that day that hers was not a dead, but a living Lord. It is to
be hoped that others have learned as much.

The silences were eloquent, aided as they were by the shock of a great
surprise. They spoke very clearly to Mary as she stood thoughtfully by the
vacant tomb that morning. Indeed, they spoke so clearly that across all
the intervening generations we can still hear some of the things
they said.

They told her that life laughs at fetters. Whoever thinks to bind it with
stones and seals plans the impossible. It is made for the universal spaces
and for the everlasting years. The life of Jesus possessed altogether too
much vitality to long remain hidden behind the stone walls of a sepulcher.

The world is strewn with graves. We have dug them in countless numbers,
and departed generations made so many that the vast majority of them have
long been forgotten. They are all as empty as was the tomb of Jesus that
Sunday morning. We look at the earth and think of it as hiding those whom
we have loved when we ought to look upward and think of them as in the
keeping of another world. We look backward and think of their lives as
belonging to the past when we ought to look onward and think of them as
belonging to the boundless future.

The silences of the garden must have told her, too, that the Lord had
reached one of the final points in his leadership of men. His was largely
a mission of demonstration. For ages men had been frankly doubting that
true godliness and actual immortality were possible. Jesus demonstrated
the fact that the divine spirit fits normally into both the affairs of
life and the experiences of the hour of death. He proved that it was
possible not only to live like a god, but also to die like one.

He had led the way through the most trying experiences that life can
bring. He had gone ahead into the valley and the shadow of death. On the
first Sunday morning after his crucifixion he demonstrated his power to
lead the world out of the grave as well as into it. Mary was the first
witness to that demonstration.

A few days later he led the way to one still farther point in the
ascending scale of human experience—the gate of glory. He gained each of
these points in order to show men that it is possible to reach them. It
is for others not merely to admire, not merely to admit, not even merely
to worship, but to follow. Wherever Jesus has gone, he has gone that
others might also come.

Not all the places by which his footprints lead may seem pleasant. They
lie along paths of sacrifice, daring, and suffering. With an unfailingly
majestic spirit, he faced whatever presented itself as incident to the
fulfilling of a great mission.

A valley of pain matters much less, however, when a mountain of
achievement lifts its head beyond. It seems an insignificant thing that
one must follow him into the chill of the grave when one knows that he
has already broken the way through on the other side. It is not a
permanent condition. It is almost too swift in its passing to even be
called a temporary experience. A sunset would be a tragedy did one not
know that the sun will rise again. We cease to dread the twilight when we
reflect that it is but the pathway to another dawn.

The silences of the resurrection morning said still another thing. They
answered the old question as to whether the soul can exist when separated
from the body. The physical frame of Jesus had seemed that of a dead man
when it was taken from the cross three days before, and laid in the
hospitable tomb of the kind-hearted Joseph. Now it was again inhabited by
the same spirit which had shone from its eyes in other days.

This was no new miracle. Its like had been repeatedly performed by the
power of Jesus. The body and soul of his friend, Lazarus, had been
reunited after an even longer separation. Other spirits had been rewedded
to the tenements which they had inhabited, each time by the wonderful
will of this man who himself lived in such positive fashion and for such
abiding things that the hand of death could not permanently enchain him.

Let it be as it will with these earthly frames of ours. The sooner they
return to dust, after we are gone, the better. The human soul, however,
was not made to perish. It is a thing of universal interests and eternal
possibilities. It is life in its highest terms, and it was life with
which Jesus was essentially concerned.

The silences were eloquent as Mary stood by the tomb that morning. They
told her that immortality was not a dream, but a fact. They declared that
everlasting life was not a baseless hope, but a wonderful reality. They
gave an unspoken answer to an age-long question. They proclaimed the
glorious fulfillment of a precious promise.

They spoke with a reminding voice, and it can still be heard across the
years. They bid us not to think of the words of Jesus too vaguely. The
greatest beauty of the gospel is its truth. The ideal of Jesus will remain
unrealized until men have learned to accept his words at their face value,
and to act upon the assumption that they are true. Faith knows no other
testimony so worthy as that of obedience. The wonder of Jesus is the fact
that his power so far outreaches the limits of our experience.


The Laboratory Test (1921)


We may argue about the Christian faith all we will, but the only way to
appraise its real merits is to apply the laboratory test. An ancient
singer challenges: “Oh, taste, and see that the Lord is good.” This is an
invitation to possess the knowledge of experience.

Certain things about Christianity must be taken by faith. Its practical
value, however, is demonstrable. It is demonstrated in our civilization.
It is seen in the new life of mission lands. It is revealed in the
personal experiences of twice-born men.

The testimony of opinion is uncertain. The testimony of experience is
final and unanswerable. Arguments on the existence of love do not count
with one who loves. The thing experienced demands no proof by
logical processes.

A laboratory test of anything demands two things. First, one must enter
the laboratory with an open mind. One does not go there to confirm his
prejudices, but to discover the truth. He must be willing to accept the
truth which he discovers. One cannot alter the truth to suit himself.
He must conform himself to the truth.

Second, the honest investigator in the laboratory must put a thing to a
complete and honest test. He must do so regardless of his own opinions or
desires. The explorer must fulfil all the conditions of discovery before
he announces his conclusions. One has no right to deny Christianity until
he knows it fully, and has proven it a failure by actual test.

Were this condition fulfilled there would be no unbelievers. The faith has
nothing to fear from being tested. Indeed, the more it is tested the
better. Whoever tries it honestly will find that it works. It can afford
to invite the pragmatic test, for it is supremely a workable religion. The
best things never can be adequately appraised at the first glance.
They must be tried.


The Nearness of Destiny (1921)


In the opening sentence of the Book of Revelation John states that in
it are related the things which must shortly come to pass. In that
sentence he indicates an attitude toward the events of life which it is
worth while for all to hold. He appreciates the fact that the future is
not remote. With at least some of its events we are face to face. From
none of them are we very far removed. Destiny is no far distant thing.
The processes that build it are continually going on.

The events of life are like the landmarks on a highway. Some of them
may look to be very far ahead, but they are approaching us very swiftly.
We travel the journey of life at great speed. The tomorrows are never long
in arriving. We may not know what the future has in store for us, but one
thing we do know. Whatever it has in store will not be long in arriving.

To the eyes of childhood the day of maturity seems very far away. To
the young the days drag slowly. The time of independence, maturity, and
responsibility seems to creep toward one at the pace of a snail.

One by one the days pass, and each seems to pass a little more swiftly
than the last. Maturity finally comes, and then it seems that the years
that brought it have been altogether too short. Our natures are so
constituted that the morning is always calling for the noon. Then the
noontime is always regretting that the morning has passed by.

Only to the idle and the aimless do the passing days seem long. To one
who possesses a commanding purpose in life they are very brief indeed.
There is never time enough to do a great life work. Few great servants of
their times pass out of this world feeling that they have completed their
task to their own satisfaction.

The worker who has a great deal of ground to cover before he ceases his
toiling often learns this fact to his regret. He is called to his task by
the sunrise, and he feels that the day is long. He goes about his work in
leisurely fashion, feeling that there is no occasion for haste. As the day
wears on he begins to measure his task by the vanishing hours. He begins
to hasten, but the sun declines in the West all too soon. As the shadows
lengthen he grows feverishly hurried, but it is generally too late. The
sun goes down upon an unfinished task. The only thing that would have
saved the day would have been an early morning sense of the swiftly
hurrying hours.

Some years ago a distinguished leader of thought in America remarked in
the last public address he made before he died that the longest time is
short when it is past. His words were true. The years always look long as
they lie ahead of us, but when they have passed we are always saying how
short a time it was.

It has been the human habit to think of the Kingdom of God as a distinct
thing. We have kept it far from us both in space and time. We have so
thought of it in spite of the fact that we were told by Him of Galilee
that the Kingdom is at hand. We have waited and waited for the Kingdom,
sometimes half doubting that it would ever come, and all the while it
was at our very finger-tips. We had only to lay hold upon it, feel it,
realize it, and live it, to make it ours.

We have assumed, too, that eternity lies somewhere in the uncertain
reaches of the infinitely distant future. In this also we have been
mistaken. Eternity has been going on all the while. We have simply taken
a little section of eternity and arbitrarily named it time. It is still
a part of eternity, just the same. Every day that goes by is just that
much of eternity. Therefore, everything that a day holds bears an eternal
significance. Its every event is built into the walls of destiny. All the
issues with which we ever have to do are eternal.

Such is the process of judgment. Another name for it is the law of cause
and effect. Causes and effects swiftly succeed each other in life. The
effect is as inevitable as the cause is definite. Moreover, it is not
long delayed.

I once knew a teacher who had inscribed in large letters over the door of
his classroom these words: “What you are to be you are now becoming.” He
understood this principle. The judgment is going on all the while. We can
never hope to be in the future anything else than what we are allowing
ourselves to become in the present.

The mills of God do not grind so slowly as one might think. From the
larger point of view it may be seen that they do some of their work with
surprising swiftness. We cannot afford to dream away our days in the ease
of thinking that life’s responsibilities and tests lie far in the future.
We are very apt to find ourselves mistaken. Often they lie just ahead.

The events of the life of Jesus came and went with a tragic and growing
swiftness. During the last few days of His life in Jerusalem they seemed
borne upon the current of a swiftly rushing stream. To Him things always
shortly came to pass. The Christ of revelation was the same who had walked
in Galilee. He had the same habits of thought.

This is the reason why He was able to crowd ages into years. Before He had
fairly passed the threshold of maturity, He had already succeeded in
living the biggest life of all the centuries. He simply understood the
nearness of destiny. He realized that time will not wait.

An old Hebrew prophet called upon men to prepare to meet God. We have
assumed that this meeting is to be at an indefinite future date, called
the Judgment Day. We greatly need to understand that our meeting with Him
is not only a future but also a present event. Each of us is repeatedly
face to face with God. All through the years we have been meeting Him
every day and hour. He is the Silent Partner in all our upward struggles.
He is the Inevitable Factor with which we must reckon in all our
considerations. He is the Absolute Quantity to which we must relate
ourselves, and to whose standards we must conform. These obligations do
not belong to some far future time. They belong to the present. We are
not dealing with a static order, but with a progressive one. We are the
children of One who takes into consideration but one tense.
His word is _NOW_.

We are not facing the future in blindness to these things. The curtain has
been drawn back from their real nature that we might behold it. We know
that the events of the future closely impend. The tomorrows are at our
finger-tips. No dam can hold back the stream of destiny. It hurries along
the years so rapidly that there is never too much time to prepare for the
coming of whatever its current may sweep to our feet.

The hand of prophecy never draws back the veil that we may look upon a
lie. The Almighty does not trifle with us. The revelation of the
Scriptures is of inevitable things. The events which they disclose are
more certain than the course of the stars and planets. The sun may falter
in its path, but the plans of God never do.

One of the most serious and significant things the Scriptures disclose is
the fact that the gates of the future are not far removed. They open
directly before us. Even now our hands are upon them. Our feet are upon
the threshold of the tomorrows.

Objectively, this earthly existence is merely a rapid succession of
events. The holidays to which we look forward with expectation, the
meetings for which we can hardly wait, the partings that give us pain,
the joys and the woes that make up life’s intermingling of sunshine and
shadow, the birthdays that register our years, love, toil, death—all are
things that “shortly come to pass.” The years hurry onward. Therefore,
whatever one would do he must do quickly.


Children and the Church (1922)


The strength and membership of the Christian Church are great, but they
are not what they should be. After all, the Church is only a
comparatively small fraction of the sum total of human society. The
plans of Jesus will not have been realized and the Kingdom of God will
not have become an actual fact until the Church and the race are one.

The Church is growing, but one of the evidences why there remains a
great deal of ground to be possessed by the Kingdom is to be found in
the fact that the race is growing more rapidly than the Church is. It
is possible for an institution to be growing and yet losing ground if
its problems are growing more rapidly than its power to meet them.

Viewed alone, the reports on Church membership for any single year look
somewhat encouraging. When one reflects, however, upon the growth of the
race and the encroachments of paganism, the encouragement is diminished.
The Church is supposed to represent a leavening force. It is quite proper
to consider its mission in that light. A leavening force, however, must
not remain such. Its work is to leaven the whole lump.

A degree of failure is involved somewhere in the question. Otherwise, the
mission of Christianity would have been achieved before this time. The
difficulty is not in the matter of learning, for Christian leaders were
never so well trained for their work as now. It does not relate to wealth,
for it has been a long while since the Church could truly protest its
poverty of silver and gold. It is not even in the matter of service, for
there were never so many people working in the Kingdom as now.

=The Vital Point=

The trouble does not lie in our failure to work, though it does lie in our
failure to work to the best advantage. We have toiled with the problems,
but we have not yet unitedly attacked it at the vital point.
That point is childhood.

This word of warning does not seem to be needed by the Roman Catholic
branch of Christendom, for that church grows rapidly. The reason for the
following it has does not lie in the quality of its preaching, for it does
not emphasize the sermon. It is not to be found in its form of worship,
for that is in a strange tongue and according to antiquated formulae. The
secret most largely lies in the persistent nurture of children in the
faith of their fathers.

In this regard Protestantism is lacking. We have cultivated too little
conviction on the question of a child’s relation to the Church and the
Christian faith. We have kept our minds free and easy on the question,
until a situation has arisen to remind us that the real fruit which we
desire for the Kingdom comes not as the result of indifference but of
intense effort.

Even a democratic conception may be carried to such an extreme that it
counts for nothing. While Bolshevism and Anarchy have been tolerated under
the protection of the State, they have also been fostered about the very
firesides of many homes. We have tried to place Protestantism upon a
democratic basis, but we must not forget that the principle of democracy
does not diminish the necessity for conviction and fidelity. The disregard
of obligation is not freedom.

The mistaken notion that there is no place for religion in the child
mind is already bringing forth its pitiful harvest. Its fruit is a
generation of younger people dwelling largely apart from the Church, more
vitally concerned with other than religious questions, and living for
ideals which are chiefly moulded by the standards of the present world.

Whatever the Church has meant in the progress of the race, and many
thoughtful people believe that has been much, it will not be able to
permanently maintain itself and its work unless this situation is
reversed. It will not normally be able to realize upon the product of any
home in which no definite emphasis has been laid upon the things for which
it stands. We can hardly expect sustained support for the one institution
dedicated to the saving of men in both this world and the world to come,
unless each generation accepts the responsibility of teaching the next a
wholesome love for and a genuine devotion to its teaching and
its activity.

One cannot say that the parents of today are not concerned about their
children. In most ways children were never so well cared for. In this
particular thing, however, there is a distressing neglect. This is not
true because parents mean to neglect any vital thing, nor is it true
because they are antagonistic to this necessity. It is true because many
fail to see that it is a necessity for childhood. People simply blind
themselves to the fact that spiritual growth requires food as imperatively
as does physical development.

In some cases, perhaps, it is the result of simple neglect. People are
busy about so many things in these days that it does not always seem easy
to give their children training in all the points requiring it. Some
assume that the matter of religious training may properly be left to the
church and the Sunday School.

=The Necessity for Religious Nurture in the Home=

Religious nurture is, however, a matter which requires the cooperation of
the home. Some phases of it cannot be so successfully promoted anywhere
else as there. Pastors and Sunday School teachers have a part to play in
the religious education of the young, but certain great life lessons can
never issue from any other source quite so appropriately as from the
loved lips of fathers or mothers.

Nothing can be more groundless than the notion that a child should not be
influenced religiously until he is old enough to settle such questions for
himself. Ultimately he will settle them, but his decision will be largely
the result of early training. Home teaching and influence affect every
decision one makes through life.

One might as well refuse to feed a child until he could declare his own
choice of food as to starve his religious nature until he could choose its
satisfaction in his own way. Certain fundamental necessities are too
constant and imperative to justify waiting. A life must be fed or it must
perish, and this principle holds as true with childhood as it does with
age. Indeed the necessities of a growing life are only the more acute.

Occasionally parents will insist that their failure to bring their
children up in the ways of the Church is the result of their own rearing.
They declare that it is a reaction against the strictness with which they
were sent to Church in their own childhood. First, this is a calumny
against good parents who tried to lay in the lives of their children the
foundations of happiness and success. Second, it looks to the spiritual
starvation of the younger generation, the decadence of a fundamental
instinct, and the strangling of a necessary social institution. They
probably owe much of their success to the thing for which they unjustly
blame their parents. Whoever is not physically equal to an hour or two in
the sanctuary is hardly a fit candidate for the world’s responsibilities.

We should assume a universal Church. By this I mean that we should assume
that every child is born into the church, to be reared in its ways and
teachings, and to be included among its numbers until he wilfully forsakes
it. In other words, we should throw the chances on the right side instead
of the wrong one as we have been doing. It is well enough to save lost
sheep, but it is better to keep them from being lost. The religious
experience will take care of itself if the religious life is
properly nurtured.

Children are born for the kingdom of better things. Their Maker meant us
to keep them true to it. He will care for their regeneration, if we will
keep them in line for it by protecting them from blighting influences.


The Church’s Fourfold Program (1922)


To-day the Church has her face toward the future. She has a great purpose
throbbing in her soul. She is directed by leaders of wisdom and vision.
She has a program as broad as life itself. That program is fourfold.

It is, first, a program of evangelism. The Church is everywhere reminding
herself that the winning of souls is her prime duty. This is true for many
reasons, among which two are outstanding. This is the thing she has been
set to do as the one means of ever really establishing the kingdom of God.
Moreover, it is the one hope she herself has of surviving to continue
her work.

It is, second, a program of education. One of the first commands God gave
to nature was, “Let there be light.” That command has been ringing through
the creative process all the ages. As the sun of warmth and light brought
new strength to created things, so the sum of knowledge brings a new
blessing to the inner life of man. The Church’s program of Christian
education in the home, the Church, the school, and the college, is already
bearing fruit. It will do so more and more as time passes.

It is, third, a program of social welfare. The Church is striving in this
day to make itself known and felt for better things in the community. The
organized life of the world as well as the individual life of men must be
bettered by it. The apostolic Church was not a temple but a community. It
must be the same with the modern Church.

It is, fourth, a program of finance. It is a great thing to-day to walk
about Zion, tell her towers, and consider her bulwarks. Back of all of it
is the money given by faithful servants of the kingdom. What many people
need for blessing of their own lives as well as for the growth of the
kingdom is an adequate financial standard and program.


Newer Conceptions of Religion (1922)


We can never have a new set of principles of truth, but we can have new
discoveries of old ones and new attitudes toward them. We can never
change the constitution of life and nature, but we can learn more about
it and better adapt ourselves to it. We cannot alter the divine plan of
life and redemption, but we can make progress in our understanding and
use of it. Not to do so would be an inexpressible pity. We do not have a
new religion, but we do have newer and more adequate conceptions of the
old faith.

The older type of religious thinking was largely derived from the
speculations of the cloister. That of the present is taken directly from
the facts of life. The Bible was the basis of the old, and is the basis
of the new; but in the one case it was viewed from the quiet shadows of
the cell, while in the other it is seen from the viewpoint of the dusty
road, the busy market place, and the domestic hearthstone.

In so far as the older religious thinking did take its conclusions from
life, it tended to place the stamp of divinity only on the unusual phases
and outstanding experiences. It saw God in the violence of the thunder and
lightning, but it did not always sense him in the gentle sunshine of the
ordinary day. It recognized him in the ecstasy of the mountaintop, but it
did not always find him in the duty of the valley. It connected him with
the exceptional moments, but not with quiet hours, prosaic tasks, and
drab days.

The older religious thinking tended to glorify every tense except the
present. It had its good old days on which it looked back with loving
tenderness, and its Golden Age, toward which it looked forward with
longing hope. The newer thinking recognizes the value of the past and the
importance of the future, but lays its supreme emphasis upon the present.
It glorifies only one tense, and that is the Golden Now.


The International Religion (1923)


The Book of Revelation is full of significant pictures, but none is more
so than that presented in the Ninth Chapter. It is drawn in climaxes. The
first part might seem disturbing if considered alone. As to whether God
proposes to save the many or the few, it would seem to favor the first
answer. John says that he heard the number of them that were sealed, and
there were only twelve thousand from each of the tribes of Israel.

But let us not form our conclusions too hastily. John has more to say. He
follows the above assertion with this: “And after these things I saw, and
behold a great multitude which no man could number, out of every nation
and of all tribes, and peoples, and tongues standing before the throne and
before the Lamb arrayed in white robes; and palms in their hands.” This
second part of the vision is the answer as to whether God proposes to save
the many or the few.

From this point one might move out along any one of many lines of thought.
He might think of Christianity as the religion of the masses. He might
think of it as the religion of the long ago with their changes and their
progress. He might see it as the religion of the nations. This leads to
the outstanding significance of the passage under discussion. Christianity
is the international religion. It is potentially so today. It will be
actually so tomorrow.

This means something finer than that Christ will become the temporal or
political ruler of nations. It means more than that he will become the
king or lord of any land. It means he will become King of kings and Lord
of lords. He will become the spiritual ruler of the hearts of men. No
power can go beyond that. He will be enthroned in the hearts of peoples
everywhere. The New Jerusalem will be world-wide in its scope.


The Great Teacher (1925)


One day long ago a young man stepped out from the throng, took a place on
a hillside, and began to teach the people. He did it in such a way that
they were amazed. They said he taught as one having authority, and not as
their scribes. Consequently, the common people heard him gladly.

From that day he has been known as a teacher. The years have taught us to
call him the Great Teacher, for they have shown us how well that title
is deserved.

I. Jesus is a great teacher because he teaches vital things. The shallow
and inconsequential have no place in his curriculum. Some spend years
learning what is hardly worth the trouble, but not in the school of
Christ. Whatever is presented there must really count. His test of
subject-matter is, “Is it worth-while?”

II. He is a great teacher because he teaches in ways so simple and plain
that none can mistake his meaning. Sometimes he speaks in the plainest
expository form with nothing of embellishment and utterly void of the
tricks of the rhetorician. Sometimes he makes it a story. The narrative
is always one with familiar settings and characters, and it always makes
a vital point before it is through. Jesus introduces a man and a truth
to each other and sees that they become friends. The person who can do
this well is a master instructor.

III. He is a great teacher because he always makes his own position clear
and lets the force of his own influence fall on the right side. In these
days, there are teachers who consider it a mark of scholarship to present
various sides of a question and then leave the helpless student to make
his own choice—and often a wrong one. Whether or not this is a scholarly
procedure, it certainly is not a helpful one. Jesus never followed it. He
went after the one vitally true viewpoint, committed himself to it without
reserve, and sought to influence his hearers to do the same. It is such a
teacher who builds history.


What Can We Believe? (1928)


One is made or unmade by his beliefs. They determine his doings and shape
his destiny. Therefore, what we believe is a matter of vital importance.
The demands upon our credulity are confusing. We wish to be receptive to
truth, but on our guard against error. What may we believe with a
reasonable degree of assurance and conviction? What may safely enter into
the making of one’s personal faith?

A considerable number of claims upon our credulity may be put aside and
disposed of once and for all. Among them are the claims which violate the
evident laws of truth, the merely controversial claims of the various
Christian groups, the superficial formalities of observance and
organization, the vagaries of popular thought and personal opinion, and
the mental effects of the shifting tides of emotion. Certain things we
are driven to accept by the very facts of life.

One of them is that back of all the wonder of the universe and of life is
a great Source, a First Cause, a Divine Something that we have named God.
This Architect of the universe has not always dwelt among clouds and thick
darkness. He has given us one revelation of Himself in human terms. It is
the sweet spirit, the rugged strength, and the simple life of the Peasant
of Galilee. It is not difficult to believe in God when one has
contemplated the story of Jesus.

Another is that life has its consequences, that the results of right and
wrong action are cumulative and reactive, and that each person now and
forever reaps the reward of his doings. Some call it the law of cause and
effect. Others call it judgment. Whatever it be called, it is not a
penalty imposed, but a result arrived at. The goal one reaches depends
upon the road he chooses and the direction in which he goes. The day one
arrives at his destination is his judgment day.

Another is the everlastingness of spiritual values, the chief of which is
the human soul. If nature treasures each atom of matter, and across long
ages does not permit one of them to be destroyed, shall not that which
transcends matter be even more jealously guarded and preserved? Nothing
else in the universe can be destroyed. How, then, can life be done away?


The Christ of the Sea (1929)


It is an old and well-known story, recounted anew each Christmas time,
that the Wise Men from the East were led to the cradle of the infant
Jesus by a star. That fact has taken a large place in Christian imagery
and symbolism. But of what is a star a symbol? It is suggestive of an
ideal. How appropriate that a star should have shown the world to the
cradle of one who set it thinking about ideals?

Jesus was a dreamer. His spiritual lineage ran far back into the life of
the Jewish race. The nature of Esau was such that wherever he went, he was
haunted by his physical desires. The nature of Jacob was such that
wherever he lay down at night, even though his head were pillowed upon a
stone, he dreamed of heaven and of angels. Jesus was of the line of Jacob.
He lived with His head among the stars.

He wasted no time in getting the current of idealism under way. He began
at once promoting the kind of thing the practical world calls impossible
because it is right. The night He was born angels sang of glory to God in
the highest, peace on earth, and good will among men. It was a warring and
hating world to which they sang, but their song was a note in the new
harmony He had come to establish.

This man who walked with His head among the stars did and said all kinds
of impractical things. He said a kingdom of happiness was at hand, but
that a man had to be born again in order to see it. He said the best way
to save one’s life was to lose it. He said one should treat others as he
wished them to treat him. He said one should love his neighbor as well as
he loved himself. He told a rich, young man to give away everything he had
and consecrate his life to service. The world is slowly catching the idea.
You cannot conquer an ideal. Some time it will win.

What was this ethereal, star-like dream that so commanded His life? It was
a race redeemed from its sin, ignorance, littleness, and woe. He saw how
His people were fettered by their own tendencies. He dreamed of a day of
freedom to be and achieve their best. And it will come. Some day the world
will be a picture of the vision of the Man who lived with His head among
the stars. The light of the Bethlehem star falls across the centuries
lighting the way to a new heaven and a new earth.


The Comrade Perfect: An Appreciation (1929)


In the “Passage to India,” Walt Whitman speaks of the longing of the soul
for the “Comrade Perfect,” and asks if somewhere such a comrade does not
wait for us. We all know perfectly well that life is not all that it ought
to be without the presence of the Personality which completes us.

There is such a comrade, and He does something better than wait for us. He
comes to us. The abstraction of the idea of God found concrete realization
in Him who was called Immanuel, or God with us. All this was made more
intimate still by the coming of the spirit divine, which brought God not
only to us but into us.

God does not rule the world from some distant throne but from the dusty
road. He does not occupy a height and frown upon His people in patronizing
condescension. He seeks a warm place in their hearts, where He may guide
their thoughts and actions. The divine plan looks only to the constant
narrowing of the chasm between man and God.

The philosophers and theologians dispute whether God is transcendent or
immanent, whether He rules from above us or beside us. As is true of many
arguments, both viewpoints are right. God transcends us in all power, all
knowledge, and all goodness. At the same time, He is immanent in the
ministry of Jesus, in the guidance of Providence, and in the presence of
the Holy Spirit. The life of Jesus makes that plain, for Jesus is a
picture of God going where men go, living where men live, and meeting the
struggles that men meet.

And so He is the Comrade Perfect. No one needs to be friendless in this
world. No one needs to be lonely. We are always within speaking distance
of an unfailing Friend. We need to search neither across the years nor
across the miles. We need only to look and listen, and He is there. We
need only to open the way, and He enters our hearts in response to our
silent welcome. We need only to make a place, and He walks beside us,
whatever our way may be. He is the great completing element in our
otherwise incomplete lives.


Four Addresses to Young People (1929)
(Ages 16 to 22)


1. Heralds of the Name.

In one of his letters John speaks of those who for the sake of the Name
went forth, taking nothing of the Gentiles. He was thinking of the
already growing army of heralds of that Name which is above every name.
Probably, too, he was remembering that day by the Sea of Tiberius when
Jesus came by and he heard and answered the challenge to life’s
highest adventure.

No one should offer his life for special Christian service merely because
he thinks it would be nice work to do, nor because it has been done by
someone he likes or admires, nor because someone he would like to please
wishes him to do it, nor because he thinks he can speak well or has an
attractive personality for social contacts, nor because he thinks it will
serve him as a stepping stone to something else. To begin on any such a
basis means to be doomed to failure from the beginning. It also means
injustice to the work itself.

Least of all should one enter special Christian service because he thinks
it easy. That is one of the greatest possible mistakes. Whoever goes out
to serve Christ must prepare his soul to endure hardness as a good
soldier. He will discover that it is a real warfare into which he is
going. If he likes the thrill of adventure, if he enjoys doing difficult
things, if privation appeals to him, if he does not mind standing up to
duty in the face of opposition and danger, then he will like soldiering
for Christ. Otherwise, he will not.

Only one thing should lead one to dedicate his life to Christian work. It
is the great compulsion. One has it when he is conscious that he cannot do
anything else and be quite content. That was the feeling that drove Moses
to the end of the wanderings of his people, that sent Jeremiah to thunder
the warning to a nation drifting to its ruin, and that impelled Jesus to
the tears of Gethsemane and the anguish of Calvary.

The person who does not find it in his soul to give his life wholly to
Jesus is to be congratulated. He will pluck many thorns, but each thorn
will bear a rose. He will travel many hard paths, but he will have the
joyous consciousness of being a world builder for God.

2. The Conditions of Communion.

One day in 737 B.C. a young man of high social standing was in the temple
at Jerusalem. There he saw a vision of the Lord upon His throne. The
experience humbled the young man’s soul, cleansed his lips, and sent him
forth to sound a warning to a people swiftly rushing to their doom. The
temple atmosphere furnished Isaiah with the conditions of communion.

About 625 B.C., when the storm clouds were still hovering near Judah, a
young priest named Jeremiah saw in the presence of the Scythian army on
Syrian soil the possibility of invasion by them and their Assyrian allies.
He warned his people of coming destruction, at the bidding of Jehovah, who
told him that he had been set apart for the task since before his birth.
The peril he saw drawing near his people furnished Jeremiah with the
conditions of communion.

One day a young man named Jesus, His as custom was, entered the little
synagogue at Nazareth. He was one who took part in the meeting. Taking the
roll of the prophet Isaiah, He read from it the words of a commission to
proclaim the day of God under the compulsion of the divine spirit. As He
read, His heart told Him that commission was His own. Jesus heard His
great challenge to duty as He stood in the place of worship reading the
words of those who in earlier centuries had intimately known God.

One day, still later, John saw the curtains of eternity drawn aside to
reveal to him the things that must shortly come to pass. Three things made
his vision possible. He was in a quiet and secluded place. It was the
Lord’s Day. He was in the spirit. Such a situation is very apt to carry
anyone within seeing and hearing distance of God. John met God face to
face by the fulfilment of certain fundamental psychological conditions of
vision and communion.

On the evening of the twenty-fourth of May 1738, a young man who had
believed in God all his life, but had sought vainly for a heart experience
of faith, went into a meeting in Nettleton Court, on the East side of
Aldersgate Street, in London. At a quarter before nine o’clock he knelt at
an altar and felt his heart strangely warmed. The altar of a church
furnished John Wesley with the conditions of communion.

3. The Kingdom Partnership.

On the day when Moses enjoyed that high privilege, direct communion with
the Great I Am, he heard the call of heaven to high duty and
responsibility. He shrank from it, as greatness usually does. True worth
is seldom a candidate. In church and state alike, things go better when
the office seeks the man.

Among the reasons Moses offered why he should not be chosen to lead Israel
from its bondage was one very commonly heard given in reply to calls to
religious duty. Moses said he was not eloquent.

God was ready with a counter proposition. After having a man in training
for forty years the Almighty was not to be put off so easily. He proposed
that Moses should undertake the task of leadership as a man of action,
while his brother Aaron should share it with him as a man of speech.

It was the old but ever-new combination of the man of deeds and the man of
words—the practical leader and the spiritual one. We see it later in the
case of Ezra and Nehemiah, and still later in the necessary partnership
between the modern minister and laymen in the work of the kingdom. Neither
type of service can be at its best unless it is in cooperation with
the other.

In fact, each type of service is so necessary that the kingdom suffers
when these two types of Christian workers get their functions confused.
It is usually a mistake for a minister to forsake the altar to serve
tables, and just as much so for a layman to forsake the things for which
he is peculiarly qualified and usurp the place of the minister. In the
work of the kingdom, Moses and Aaron each has his own function, and his
highest ministry is to perform his own function well.

The work of the minister is with the dynamics of Christianity, while that
of the layman is with the mechanics of it. Too often each stands and
debates with the other that his part is most important, or else each
envies the other his task and neglects his own. The mechanics of the
kingdom could not exist if the dynamics were not maintained, and the
dynamics would be wasted if the mechanics were not intelligently promoted.

4. The Institutionalization of Religion.

The selection of Aaron as priest was a step toward religious organization.
As nearly as such things can be determined among the mixed currents of
human history, it was the beginning of the institutionalization of
religion. What has been gradually growing up in the form of spiritual
vision now began to take the form of a system of rites and ceremonies,
housed in an especially designed building, held at fixed times and under
specified conditions, and presided over by men especially selected,
qualified, and prepared for their task.

Subsequently, this became a stumbling block to many people. A certain type
of mind easily becomes confused in its thinking and fails to recognize the
difference between an institution and the thing it represents. On the one
hand, the priest has sometimes made the mistake of regarding the
institution as an end rather than a means. On the other hand, the man on
the street has sometimes assumed that the church pretends to be the sum
and substance of the faith and has, consequently, failed to use it as a
clearing house for the service he should have rendered to God and his
fellow men.

Any great idea or interest, however spiritual in its nature, must be
incarnated in an institution or it will die. The life of the race could
not be nurtured without the family. Commerce would die without the market
place and the transportation system. Government could not be maintained
without the state. Education could not be effected without the school.
Religion would long ago have perished without the temple and the altar.
Spiritual ideas do not cling to human custom. An institution must make
them visual, real, and effective. Such is the reason for the existence
of the church.

The final vision of the Book of Revelation is of a social order without a
temple. We are led to think that such a day will come, but that it will
come only because the whole world shall have taken on the spirit and
viewpoint of the house of worship. The mission of the church is to make
itself unnecessary. It will be dispensable when all the world shall at
last have conformed to the purposes of God.


What Is Happening to Religion? (1929)


A recent book makes the point that the old notion that science had
defeated religion has been banished more by what has happened in the
field of science during the last twenty-five years than by what has
happened in the fields of religion and theology. Certain implications
in this statement are worthy of consideration.

With all its vaunted moral ideals, the boasted Victorian age did develop
a rather marked and dangerous hostility to religion. It was the age of
Darwin, Spencer, and Huxley and, therefore, an age of discovery. The
newness of some of the conclusions it reached caused the public mind to be
carried away by its own enthusiasm. The pendulum is gradually coming to
rest, and the scientist now understands that a new discovery is not a
substitute for God.

The greatest sobering influence science has known has been its own
constant success in the field of discovery. The theory of development, at
first thought to have overturned God’s throne, when studied was found to
be full of previously unsuspected implications of the divine. Science
discovered that it was not a substitute for God, but only a new theory of
divine creation.

The only dogmatism as prejudiced and unreasonable as that of some
religionists is that of some scientists. No one is more prone than the
scientist to assume the finality of what is as yet only a hypothesis, and
to offer himself as a martyr to the cause of some fantastic phase of
scientific fundamentalism. The knowledge of science can grow, even as may
that of religion.

It appears to be a fact that unless the theologians gird themselves anew,
they may find the very gospel they were raised up to champion more
zealously and loyally defended by the scientists than by themselves.
Eminent scientists announcing their faith in and support of religion are a
growing company. The technique of the scientific laboratory forbids
compromise. The scientist discovers what is true and stands by it.
The theologian must do the same.


Has the Day of Great Preachers Passed (1921)


Every little while we hear anew the question, “Has the day of great
preachers passed?” Sometimes it is asked in a sincerely interrogatory
spirit. In other cases it is meant as an implication that the times of
great preaching are no more.

All keen observers of social and spiritual influences know that the
prophet is one of the most potent factors in the building of our
destiny, both as a nation and as a race. It is, therefore, important
that we should occasionally stop and take account of our situation as
to ministerial supply. The invoice should, of course, be qualitative as
well as quantitative. Especially do we need to do this in a time of
crisis and need like the present.

The past has indeed boasted some great preachers. Paul, Savonarola,
Wesley, Whitefield, Edwards, Beecher, and Brooks—these are all men whose
names stand out upon the scroll of fame with a luster which any soldier
or statesman might envy. They will continue to occupy an honored place in
the memory of men when the names of many soldiers and statesmen have been
obscured by lapse of time.

There is no reason, however, why the average of ability should vary much
from one age to another. Changing times mold men into different types and
call for new forms of service, yet the force with which they rise to the
occasions that confront them is about the same in one period as in
another. The preachers and the preaching of one age measure with those of
another without much of discredit to either. They differ in type, but not
in ability or purpose. This being true, those of the present average
creditably with those of any period of the past.

Of course, this is doubted by some good and sincere people. A number of
things give seeming basis to their doubts. However, a second look at these
conditions is worth while.

First of all, we must recognize the common human tendency to glorify the
past to the disadvantage of the present. We all have reason to look out
for this disposition, but it especially besets older people. Something
about human nature makes it prone to live in the past. We are continually
hearing it said or suggested that the great statesmen, the great poets,
the great scholars, the great preachers, the great virtues, and the good
days are all dead and gone. One may read something of this sort in the
literature of ancient as well as modern ages. Yet the progress of the
world has gone right on.

The fact is that we quickly forget what the past actually was. When to-day
becomes yesterday, we forget its troubles and glorify its redeeming
features. It is well enough that we do, yet the habit often leads us far
afield of the truth. If people were really called upon to live again some
of the good old days they talk about so much, they might soon conclude
that the change was for the worse.

Next, we must remember that the standard of greatness constantly lifts.
It takes more to make a great man to-day than it did in other years. The
judgment of those who pass upon the question of a man’s greatness and
accord him his place in history was never so exacting. The Harvard of
Emerson’s day represented about the grade of scholarship obtainable now
in a good high school. What then was exceptional scholarship is now
commonplace. It is the same with statesmen. Men who were outstanding in
their day would seem altogether mediocre in the face of the demands of
this present period. In this time of widely diffused knowledge, it takes
more than it ever did before to win the name of greatness in the pulpit.

Next, we must remind ourselves that the minister occupies a very different
place in the community from that which he held in other days. He is,
therefore, judged by very different standards. Of old he was apt to be the
chief educator of the community, and was judged by his learning. That
place is now filled by the expert educator with the best equipment money
can place at his disposal. He was the chief commentator on current
affairs, and was judged by the wideness of his information. That place has
been taken over by the editor. He was often the only trained public
speaker in the town, and was judged by the polish of his oratory. Now the
land overflows with capable public speakers.

The conclusion of it all is that the work of the minister has narrowed
down to the one specific thing to which he is called, the specialized
service for which society must look to him alone. He is not to be judged
by his learning, his familiarity with public affairs, or his ability as a
speaker, altho he needs to possess them all. The one standard by which he
is measured is the question of his ability as an exponent of the
Christian religion.

Again, the greatness of the preacher as a prophet to-day must be in spite
of certain influences which militate against it. Strange to say, one of
them is the general economic development of the country, together with the
prevalence of ease and prosperity. Our ministers, as a rule, have come
from the poorer class of homes and from the more poorly developed sections
of the country, especially from the hills, plains, and deserts where
solitude prevails. One little hill section in the middle west has supplied
most of the ministers for its own and the surrounding States. There is a
reason. In fact, there are two.

One is the fact that in the poorer home and countryside there is not much
to compete against God for a boy’s thought and attention. Young people
brought up there do not enjoy many compensations. They have little to make
them pleasure-mad. They live in a very narrow world, and they hunger to
get out and do something worth while.

The other is the fact that the religious consciousness is best developed
in the solitudes. God has often to look to the hills and the desert for
men to be his leaders. Abraham learned to be a friend of God partly
because he walked so much in the vast silences. Moses met the great I Am
on the mountain side. It was in the hill country that Elkanah and Hannah
reared the little lad who was to be the successor of Eli. Our religion
itself was cultivated in one of the poorest sections of the old world.
With fertile river valleys all about it, barren Palestine gave us our
richest heritage of religious literature and leadership. The men living
in the richer sections might have done so, but they were too preoccupied
with wealth-getting. They had no time to listen among the silences for
the voice of God.

Unfortunately, the temper of the present age is not so conducive as it
might be to great preaching. There is a tendency to discount the value of
the prophetic function manifest even on the part of some quite religious
people. One may find in almost any current publication a statement or
inference that it is not the spoken word but the acted deed that counts.
The fact is that both count. It took both Moses, the man of deeds, and
Aaron, the man of words, to lead Israel to the realization of its hope.
It took both Ezra, the scribe, and Nehemiah, the cupbearer to the king,
to rebuild the walls and the temple of Jerusalem. It has always taken the
prophet and the toiler together to achieve human progress in the
best sense.

We have great preachers to-day. They have terrific competition to meet,
but when one closes his ears to the clash of the noises about him he can
still hear the voice of the prophet lifted clear and distinct. As of old,
there are small prophets and false ones. As of old, at the same time,
there are great prophets and true. However, if we are to keep preachers
and preaching great they must have every encouragement that can be
given them.


The Heart Interest in Preaching (1922)


A great deal of otherwise good preaching fails of its purpose. It may be
that no flaw can be found in it from the purely homiletic viewpoint, yet
it fails to get the verdict for God and righteousness. Often this happens
because the sermon has been considered as an end within itself. The
preacher has failed to take into account the human values involved in his
work. He has prepared his sermon with the one idea of making a
perfect product.

His more successful brother has gone at the task in quite another way.
He has worked no less earnestly and persistently, but he has seen more
than the paper before him. He has looked past his study table and beyond
his book shelves out into the busy world where his people live. He has
seen them toiling, hoping, struggling, and suffering. He has thought of
their heartaches and problems, of their aspirations and difficulties, of
the drag that sordid situations and drab years put upon their souls. He
has felt their temptations, their discouragements, and their limitations.
His heart has gone out and felt the weight of their burden with them.

Then he has searched Scripture, history, science, literature, and life for
something that will help them in their fight. In some instances, at least,
he has found it. No wonder his work catches on and succeeds. He has sensed
the human side, and seen what it is that makes the need for preaching. If
there were no human problems along the road that leads to God, then the
pulpit might as well be abolished.

To such a man the sermon he has prepared is not a fetish, but a message.
He delivers it not merely that it may be admired, but that it may be
minted into a blessing for the people before him. He knows what is in the
hearts behind the Sunday clothes down in the pews, and he is trying to
answer their questions and meet their needs.


The Great Compulsion (1928)


What do we mean when we speak of the call to the ministry? Some mean a
wonderful dream, some an angel visitation, some a strange ecstasy, and
some merely the notion that they can speak well. These things may all
have their places, but they are uncertain. The one sure and enduring
sign is the great compulsion.

The Book of Exodus relates how Moses as a young man went out one day and
looked upon his people’s burdens. That was one of the great determining
hours in his life. It was so because when he saw his people’s burdens
their weight rolled onto his own heart. That was the last peaceful day he
ever saw, for our peace is the price we pay for greatness. Thereafter, his
days and nights were troubled with that strange mingling of hope and
despair that comes to a leader. He was under the great compulsion.

John tells how an angel brought him a little book and told him to eat it.
He did so, and in his mouth it was sweet as honey, but as soon as he had
swallowed it, the sweetness changed to bitterness. That is the way with
the word of truth. We must absorb it. The study of it is sweet, but the
weight of care it lays upon us is bitter. It places us under the
great compulsion.

One morning Jesus slipped out in the gray dawn, stood on the slope
overlooking the quiet rooftops of Jerusalem, and wept. What so moved Him?
It was the difference He saw between the city that was and the city that
might have been, the world that was and the world that might have been.
He had dreamed of better things and had discovered how difficult was their
realization. The great compulsion was upon Him.

Key words are interesting in the vocabulary of such a one as Paul. One of
his favorite words was _bondslave_. Another was _must_. A heavy sense of
obligation was upon him. The feeling that took the vocal form of that word
drove him over land and sea, planting the seeds of the kingdom life.
A great vision had gripped his soul. A dream had possessed him. He could
never rest again, for the great compulsion was upon him.


The Minister and His Reading (1928)


What the world and the spirit of the times have done to the reading habits
of the public in general, they have also done to the minister. In the case
of the public, they have sought to substitute the motion picture, the
tabloid newspaper, and the confession magazine for the bookshelf. In the
case of the minister, they seek to take the hours once devoted to the
enrichment of the mind and dedicate them to the puttering things so fondly
called practical duties—organizations, promotion, community activities.

Where the world leaves off, the church begins, for it is not wholly free
from infection with the virus of materialism. Often the very disciples of
Jesus get the idea that it is more important to make a stir in the world
of today than to build life for the eternities.

We hear frequent complaints that there is a dearth of commanding
preaching. The wonder is not that there are so few challenging voices in
the pulpit, but that there are as many as there are when so many forces
are joined in a giant conspiracy to throttle the spirit of prophecy. There
is not enough encouragement to men to be great preachers. Yet wherever
there is a voice that speaks with authority and not as the Scribes, there
are people to hear it, though it be in the slums of a city or the depths
of a forest. There will be plenty of such voices when the world and the
church allow men to get back to the reflective life, and when ministers
themselves once more determine to spend much time with the truth of God.

Why did the world’s crowning religion come out of a poor, barren little
country, when there were Egypt, and Babylonia, and Greece? It was because
Israel was poor enough and secluded enough to walk with God. The shepherd
and the vinedresser caught the “still small voice” that was lost in the
rush and roar about the merchant in the marketplace. Egypt was too busy
with her civilization. Babylonia was too busy with her pleasure. Greece
was too busy with her culture. The spirit of prophecy is found where are
the conditions under which men can dream dreams and see visions. Great
preaching will never come out of a maze of material interests. Shall we so
soon forget that the first great task of Jesus was to win the victory over
the tempting power of material things and that one of His last triumphant
statements was that He had overcome the world?

They used to say that the ideal plan for a minister is to divide his day
equally between the cultivation of his mind and the work of his parish.
If one would follow such a plan faithfully through a long pastorate he
would have two things—a well-furnished mind and a well-developed church.
However, it does not matter so much which plan one chooses. It matters
most that he does have a plan that provides a suitable place for reading
and study.

It is not the present purpose to exalt the importance of reading beyond
its due. Other interests are important, but this happens to be a call back
to books, back to the delight of kings’ treasuries and queens’ gardens,
back to the refreshing that comes from truth’s ever-flowing well, back to
the replenishing of those powers upon which a minister must rely when
every other key to success lies broken and useless.

A certain college professor used to advise his students to get and use
three books, even if they could have no others. He said it did not matter
how cheaply made they were, if they were only genuine and complete. He
told them to get an unabridged dictionary, and study it for words; to get
a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare, and study it for usage; and
to get a copy of the King James Bible, and study it for style. These,
together with a standard encyclopaedia and perhaps a good Bible
dictionary, form the necessary foundation for any ministerial library.

No minister needs to be convinced of the wonders and beauties of the
English Bible. All understand its value, but some find it difficult to
invest the time and effort necessary to that unusual understanding of its
message which the ministry must have. It is not difficult to show the
public the charm of this wonderful book, but the one who reveals that
charm must first have seen it himself.

Next to the Bible comes a vast and growing field of professional material
dealing with the work of the ministry. This the minister must take into
account. If the physician, the lawyer, the teacher, the business man, or
the farmer can continue to be a success only by keeping abreast of the
newest thought and discovery in his field, certainly the minister is in no
position to claim exemption from the rule.

Occasionally we hear a minister boast that he knows nothing about
Theology. Some even seem to regard such a claim as a qualification for the
most serious and important work on earth. For a minister to make such a
boast is exactly as intelligent as it would be for a lawyer to advertise
that he is handling cases involving property and human rights without
knowing the principles of his work, or for a physician to say that he is
taking into his hands the life and happiness of human beings without a
knowledge of drugs or surgery. If a minister really knows nothing about
Theology, it is wisest to conceal the fact, if possible, until he learns
something about it. A community soon spots a man who does not know
his business.

A minister must find some way to gain a wide general information and
culture. The person who said that he must know everything was not far
wrong. This is true not only because he is preaching to an increasingly
well-informed people, but also because he must interpret God to all of
these people in the terms with which they are familiar. Each of his
hearers lives and works in a limited field and can get on with a knowledge
of that field alone, but the field with which the minister needs to be
familiar is unlimited because it touches all the others.

No minister can afford to neglect good fiction. It often tells more truth
than fact does. Upton Sinclair’s _The Jungle_ did. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
_Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ did. The parables of Jesus did. Aside from its
entertainment value, fiction cultivates the imagination, and without that,
no man can be a powerful public speaker. If one will speak in pictures,
the people will hear and understand. One of the reasons why the common
people heard Jesus gladly was the fact that His words always appealed
to the imagination.

A minister needs all kinds of books, including those which make one laugh.
Let us not be victims of the idea that holiness excludes the sunshine.
The man who loses the song and laughter out of his life is unfit for the
ministry until he gets them back. Clean and genuine humor should be on the
minister’s bookshelf and in his heart.

A minister should read some of the things he dislikes and with which he
disagrees. There is little growth in reading or hearing only what one
already knows or believes. One owes it to truth also to know the other
side. Even if he is certain that the other side is wrong, he should know
its claims and how to meet them. The physician must study diseases before
he can apply remedies. Many ministers have made too few clinical
observations of the error and sin that are ruining the world.

It is sometimes said that this kind of thing means too much religion of
the head and too little of the heart. You cannot separate these two
things. They are parts of the same. Physics tells us that radiant heat
and light are one and the same. All heat makes light. All light gives
off heat. Whatever illuminates warms. Whatever warms illuminates.

On the evening of the first Easter, two disciples were on their way to
their simple home when a stranger drew near. He took the road with them
and talked to them about the meaning of the Scriptures. Entering the
house with them, He ate, and departed. Then they knew it had been the
risen Lord. They said: “Did not our hearts burn within us while He
talked to us in the way?”

The burning heart always goes with the understanding head. One cannot face
the fair page of truth, see what God has wrought, and contemplate the
goodness and love of the divine heart, with a soul unswept by the tides of
spiritual feeling. Perhaps more tarrying at the feet of the Great Teacher
of all truth would renew the testimony of the two disciples of Emmaus.

It must be so, for religion does not belong alone to heart or head. It
belongs to the whole life. We may find God in the oratory where the soul
rises heavenward upon the wings of prayer. We may find Him in the temple
where arch and pillar cast dim shades about us, and the altar lends us
sanctuary from the world. We may find Him in the hour of unusual spiritual
fervor and in the great emotional experience of a lifetime. We may find
Him in the hot, white field of service to the troubled, the burdened, and
the broken among men. We may find Him in the careful statement of a creed,
the formal beauty of a liturgy, or the simple prayer of a moment of
contrition. We may also find Him in the field of thought and knowledge
where we behold Him and His kingdom of unsearchable riches through the
magic gateway of the covers of a book.


Preaching to College Students (1928)


Preaching to college students is one of the most exacting of homiletic
responsibilities. This is the case not so much because students are
critical as because they are the world in the making, and the tomorrows
will be just about as religious as they are. By some means the message
must be put across to them.

Preaching to such a constituency is no longer the task of the few. Almost
every preacher has more or less of it to do because the influence of the
college now reaches everywhere. In the university centers we deal with
students in large groups, but in the smallest country community one finds
at least a few. A sermon must be as worthwhile for the few as for the
many. So the problem is one of general interest.

The presence of students in his congregation should be a great blessing to
a minister. It is a high challenge to him to do his best work. The mind of
the student is alert, and his work, so far as it goes, is with current
data. Therefore, the man who interests him must be wide awake and well
informed. For such an influence any minister should be deeply grateful.

Great numbers of college students and graduates are in the churches. Still
greater numbers are not unwilling to be, and will be when the motive is
clear. But the reason must certainly be established. Will the student
derive benefit from the sermon? If not, he is not interested and that is
the end of it. If so, he is interested and will respond. This is only as
it should be.

The average student likes to be preached to and dealt with as a human
being. True, the species includes a few mutations who like to think they
belong to some other order of creation, but most students know better and
the rest will have abundant opportunity to learn better.

The college student is nothing but a boy or girl from the farm dwelling,
the village home, or the city mansion, translated into a campus setting.
The law of adaptation operates, and certain temporary colorations, habits
and appendages develop, all of which will pass with the next change of
environment. These youngsters are still flesh and blood however and it may
be said of them as it may be said of anybody that their need is for the
universal gospel preached in the most honest and interesting possible way.

The student is dealt with as such during the days of the week. His
professors may be depended upon not to let him forget that he is a
student. When the worship hour comes he is glad of an opportunity to
forget it for the time being and to occupy the honorable position of
a human being made in the spiritual image of his God.

It is a great mistake to preach to students in the terms and imagery of
campus life. The preacher who starts in to show his audience how much he
has engaged in athletics, how familiar he is with fraternity and social
life, and how finally he has solved the old and largely imaginary problem
of the conflict between science and religion, will only succeed in making
himself ridiculous. Students do not come to church to hear about things
concerning which they know more than the preacher does. They come to hear
about things of which he is presumed to know more than they do. Therefore,
the safest as well as the most helpful thing he can do is to keep
to religion.

It is also a mistake to suppose that the student mind reacts unfavorably
against serious things. It may appreciate the witticism which helps to
illuminate a serious point in the discussion, and a first class reductio
ad absurdum nearly always clinches a proposition, but mere buffoonery will
make a small and brief appeal. The person who attempts thus to denature
the gospel he preaches will not meet with permanent favor.

This is the case because the student mind is essentially serious. One
might not think so after a superficial observance of student actions,
but it is so nevertheless. The very laughter and jesting one hears in
student circles often mask the most earnest questionings, the deepest
longings, and the most serious attitudes.

So long as one keeps himself, as he should do, within the limits of honest
conviction, and so long as one speaks, as he should speak, in the spirit
of love and good will, no other class of people in the world is so ready
to have him be brutally frank as are college students. In fact, they
discount him if he shows any evidence of evasion or accommodation. They
may be right about some things and wrong about other things, but they are
honest in all things, and they expect him to be the same.

Any one of the fields of thought and knowledge is a serious matter with
the honest investigator. It is so dealt with in the classroom and the
laboratory. To the student religion is just one more field to be explored.
If he does not care to explore it, he does not bother. If he does care to
explore it, he does not regard it as a joke. The person who thus
approaches it with a sincere purpose should receive honest help.

All this leads me to the point where I can say that one of the fine things
about the student mind is that it has discarded all traditions and
prejudices. It approaches any matter with a disposition to find and face
the facts, whatever the consequences may be. It is a real _tabula rasa_,
upon which one may write—provided he has a stylus that is sharp enough.

Surely this is an opportunity to bring delight to the soul of the honest
preacher. The most deadening thing in the world, intellectually and
spiritually, is the practice of preaching platitudes and maintaining
traditions which are proven, outworn, or unimportant—maybe all three.
The most uncomfortable position in which any sincere preacher can find
himself is one in which such a type of service is demanded.

The preacher to college students finds himself in no such position. He may
go anywhere he likes within the limits of the field of truth. He has no
traditions to maintain. He is bound by no trammels of creed or dogma. He
is not checked by any barriers of prejudice. His way is open. He has but
to walk in it in the spirit of reverence and honesty. He is dealing with
adventurous minds whose one concern is truth. The mind of Jesus was such
a one, and such an audience really challenges a preacher to approach
questions in the spirit of the Great Teacher.

This is the process that is going to break down the artificialities and
fan out the chaff of unreality from religion. Perpetuating systems is
poor business, but adventuring in the field of truth is a high privilege.
That is what the preacher to college students must do. Granted that it is
in the field of religion, his one test for homiletic material is the
question whether it is true.

One of the most common mistakes made in the popular and superficial
analysis of the student mind is the assumption that it is essentially a
radical mind. This often becomes the basis of a great homiletic error in
preaching to students.

A comparative few students are radical, just as are a comparative few
taken from any group one might mention. But with the mass it is not so.
The great majority of college students are probably more conservative than
the majority of people outside the university world. They think carefully,
act with deliberation, and go quietly about their way while a few
exceptions to the rule take the soap box and loudly demand the immediate
reversal of all things.

I should say that about the last place to go to start a revolution of any
kind would be the average college campus. Yet the campus mind is alive to
the evolution that is going on in everything—including itself.

The student mind would be properly impatient of a static or reactionary
viewpoint, but it is little concerned with wildeyed radicalism of any
kind. The preacher who is most likely to reach its processes is the one
who is honest, fearless, and open-minded, and yet who is conservative in
the sense that he abandons a position only when he has found sufficient
reason for believing that another one is better. The preacher who shows
a conservatism which takes care to be progressive will commend himself
and his message to the student hearer.

The presence of students in one’s congregation should save him from the
pitiful fate of ceasing to grow, and thereby becoming old. They are an
advancing race, and it is his privilege to advance with them. If he does
so, the day will come when he can look back across the years and find
satisfaction in the thought that he has had a real part in the making of
the history of his and succeeding times—that of building the solidness
and savour of ancient truth into the life of the new world.


Some Problems of the Preacher (1928)


The day one offers himself to God for the work of the Christian ministry
he takes upon himself a set of serious personal problems, along with his
problems of leadership and service. He proposes to do God’s work, and that
means also to be God’s man. He must be that amid difficult conditions,
under constant scrutiny, and in the face of frequent misjudgment.

One of his problems is to keep the spirit of reverence in his life. Human
nature tends to handle ever more familiarly the things with which it has
to do. Nadab and Abihu would have been afraid to offer strange fire if
they had not allowed themselves to become too familiar with the things of
the sanctuary. God, the church, and human hearts are all things our
relationship to which should hush our souls.

Another of his problems, and one of his chief ones, is to keep the stamp
of reality upon himself and his ministry. Holy tones, unnatural attire,
and affected mannerisms are all banes to the ministry. They have cost
many a man his usefulness, and limited that of many others. The church
would gain immeasurably if today every one of her army of ministers would
undertake in a simple human way to represent normal manhood at its best.
Certainly that is what Jesus did.

Another of his problems is that of his social contacts. If he does not
appear in public he is branded as a recluse. If he appears too much he
becomes known as a loafer. He must find the golden mean. To know how much
to appear, how to appear, when to appear, and the secret of mingling and
dealing with people of all kinds without compromising one’s self with any
is a fine art, and happy is the one who masters it.

Still another of his problems is how to keep growing. Too many ministers
become unacceptable in middle life, not because they have aged, but
because they have ceased to grow. The most pitiful thing about these men
is that none of them seems to know quite what is wrong. Such a time need
not come. It does not come to those who read, and think, and keep
interested in and sympathetic toward the life of a growing world.


The Ambassador (1929)


A minister is an ambassador of the Kingdom of God to the kingdom of this
world’s life. If he will remember that, and act accordingly, it will
both save him from many mistakes and help him to many successes.

An ambassador has just one business. It is to represent, without wavering,
change, or compromise, the interests of his country at a foreign court.

If he allows himself to become more loyal to the people to whom he goes
than to the Ruler who sends him, he is worse than a poor ambassador; he
is a traitor. The pitiful message of the story of The Golden Calf is that
a spiritual leader forgot that his business was to serve God, and
surrendered to the idea that it was to please the public.

The ambassador must remember that he is at a foreign court. That means
that he cannot engage indiscriminately in what others do, that he must
not become too deeply rooted in the alien life. He must keep his
affections and loyalties fixed where they belong. At the same time, since
he is among strangers, and since he is his own country incarnated in
flesh and blood before them, he must be courteous and seek to make his
every word and act worthy of their respect.

An ambassador is often called a diplomat. Indeed, a poor diplomat could
not be a good ambassador. Frequently he has exacting and sometimes he has
strained situations to handle. He must do so in the least offensive way
and, at the same time, in the way best calculated to carry the point for
his King.

For, above all, an ambassador must be faithful to his own country. He must
not involve it, nor compromise it, nor surrender its interests in any way.
While he must properly respect the country and people to which he is
accredited, his business is to cooperate in establishing and maintaining
the supremacy of his own government.

It is a wonderful thing to be a minister, because a minister is an
ambassador of the Kingdom of God.


Let the Minister Know Life (1929)


The young ministers used to have to learn Hebrew, Greek, and all kinds of
ponderous tomes of Theology. Now they must learn, instead, the technique
of the various practical enterprises in which the church is engaged.

Probably a young minister needs to know something of both. But he needs
to know another thing. He needs to know life.

No man is prepared to engage in the cure of souls until he has seen the
world as it is; until he knows what saints and sinners alike are doing,
saying, and thinking; and until he has seen, understood, and felt for
human life at its best and at its worst.

Unless he has seen and known these things, he is like a man trying to
practice medicine without having observed how the body is built and
without having looked not only on the beauty of its health but also upon
the horror and loathsomeness of its diseases. To look upon these things
may not be pleasant, but to be helpless against them is less so.

A minister is not a near-angel to be perfumed and laid away in tissue
paper for fear of some contamination. He is a physician to the spiritual
lives of men. He has a real battle to fight. He has conditions to face
that are ugly, and fierce, and perilous. What can he do with them unless
he knows about them? What can he know about them if his experience is
limited to leading the devotions for society meetings and wearing correct
dress at afternoon teas?

A minister needs to go about, less as a minister and more as a man.
He needs to see, and hear, and know enough to understand the mind and
heart of the world.

After a young minister graduates from the seminary and before he begins
his public work, he may need to go to the solitudes for meditation, but
he needs also to do another thing. He needs to go down where men live
their lives and, keeping his own heart clean, learn at first hand what
are the problems that he must help them to solve.


The Yielding of Aaron (1929)


The story of the golden calf is a familiar one. Moses was holding a
meeting with God—a habit that began with the burning bush. His absence
was prolonged. The people grew restless. They felt that the cure lay in
worship, but why not worship with a little novelty in it? Why not get
out of the rut?

So they brought their jewelry to Aaron and besought him to make them a
golden god. The idea of an unseen God was too difficult for them. Too, a
golden god would be much easier to get on with. It would lay down no laws
and make no ethical requirements. Too, golden gods were the style among
their neighbors. They asked him to make them such a god.

Then Aaron made the mistake of his life. As a spiritual leader, he should
have been listening to see what God would say. But he turned his ear
toward the congregation instead, and listened to see what the leading
members would say. His business was to lead the congregation up to the
foot of God’s throne. But he allowed himself to be persuaded to attempt
to reduce God to the level of human weakness and ignorance.

One of the supreme temptations of every religious leader is to seek public
approval by the adaptation of the principles and standards of religion to
public tastes, ideals, and desires. A thousand voices are raised on every
side to urge him on in his error.

The path of salvation is still a straight and narrow way. All that we can
do or say will not change that fact. When we widen it, plant primroses in
it, and take the stones out of it, we no longer have a path of salvation.
Then real followers of God no longer care to walk in it. They like the
challenge of the harder road.

We cannot adapt God to the world. Whoever tries it fails, just as Aaron
did. We cannot change truth, nor make over religion, nor revise the divine
law. The God Isaiah saw in the temple was high and lifted up. The fact
that Isaiah did not wait for the Lord to come down to his level, but began
the long climb up to God’s level, is what made the prophet great.


The Necessary Asset—Friends (1917)


You cannot get on in the world without friends. You tread the golden
bridge of friendship over many a chasm which could not otherwise be
crossed. Friendless people must always languish on the side
of hopelessness.

Friendships do not come by chance, and neither do they force themselves
upon you. Friendship, like everything else worth while, is the reward of
proper effort.

Friends must be made in the spirit of unselfishness. They are an
advantage, it is true, but they must not be sought merely for purposes
of advantage. Nothing wins friends so well nor keeps them so long as the
unselfish disposition to be helpful. The most valuable friend is the
friend who is one for friendship’s sake alone.

A strong friendship is seldom effervescent. The cordiality which is always
foaming over is apt to have about the consistency and permanence of the
foam which it resembles. The best type of friendship is poised, constant,
steady, and true to the end. Dependability is worth more in friendship
than is mere demonstration. You can expect this quality in others only
when it characterizes your own attitude toward others.

When you speak of an absent friend, it would be well to imagine him
present and listening to what is being said. Speak as gently of those who
do not hear as of those who do. Speak frankly to the friend beside you,
for insincerity never yet aided a friendship. Speak kindly of the friend
who is away from you, for unkind speech has yet to win its first victory
for the speaker.

Speak of your enemies as though they were your friends, and some day they
may become your friends. A kindly tongue and a helping hand for all would
soon garland the earth with sunshine and happiness.


Building a World Brotherhood (1918)


Among the most valuable results of a thing are often those which are
classed as bi-products. This is true of a certain inevitable social effect
of Christianity. That effect is brotherhood.

The natural tendency of the Christian religion is to make men understand
the fact that from the beginning they were created brothers. As far it
fails to accomplish this task, it will have failed of its social purpose.
As far it succeeds, it will have wrought the foundations of the
better day.

Such is the tendency of the Christian faith, because Jesus recognized no
artificial and arbitrary barriers. The lines across which nations and
social classes scorned to step he threw out of his consideration, and
crossed them regardlessly. In his estimation of things, a man was a man.
He could be no more and there was no disposition to ever rate him as less.

The world has arrived at this viewpoint slowly, but as surely as it does
arrive at this viewpoint, its strifes will cease. Wars and troubles come
from clannish exclusiveness and class hatred and distrust.

When those who belong to such classes as capital and labor forget their
social differences and emphasize their fraternal relations, they will
forget that they were ever pitted against one another. The only way the
problem can ever be solved is by the elimination of the caste lines which
separate the contending elements. The employer must remember that the
workman is a capitalist in time and muscle, and the employe must remember
that his employer is also a workingman.


The Laughing Man (1919)


Shakespeare was a prophet of many ages beside his own; Dickens was a
champion of the lowly and oppressed; Scott was a delicate weaver of the
fairy fabric of romance; but Victor Hugo was an analyst of human life and
experience. Without adornment or polish, his books are cross-sections of
the feelings and doings of men. His knife cuts deep enough to reveal the
workings of the inner laws.

In Jean Valjean, the criminal, we have the story of a man who taught the
world how low a man can fall and how well a fallen man can rise. In
Gwynplaine, the laughing man, we have the story of one who taught the
world how close may be the relation between the laughing countenance and
the serious spirit.

In the story of Gwynplaine two things stand out supremely. The first is
the power and significance of a smile that could not come off. The second
is the supreme importance and sacredness of humanity.

The smile that could not come off was written upon his countenance with a
knife. Gwynplaine was the son of an English nobleman. Stolen when a baby
by a band of wandering showmen, he was trained for exhibition. They
operated upon his helpless baby features and shaped them into a perpetual
grin. From that day forth, no matter what were the feelings within him or
the outlook in the path ahead of him, he carried a laughing face. He had
been fashioned into a curiosity, but in some ways a very wholesome kind
of curiosity.

Had the story of Gwynplaine never done more than to remind the world of
the value of laughter, it would have served its time and purpose well. No
generation can well get on without those who make it their business to
keep the smiles alive on the faces of the people. The world may laugh at
them and pass them by as clowns, but the ages will have to honor them for
having kept weary hearts hopeful when everything seemed to be crumbling
away beneath them.

The place of the humorist in literature is sometimes placed at a discount,
but not properly so. The maker of fun whose humor was clean and genuine is
a benefactor of his age, not to say a minister of righteousness. The hand
of Justice lays an unfading wreath of honor upon the grave of the man who
has helped to keep the world glad. He has planted roses where otherwise
there would have been only thorns. He has scattered beauty and light where
otherwise the shadows would have been left to reign supreme.

One of the chief points in the story of Gwynplaine, however, was the fact
that his smile was permanent and unfading. It was written indelibly upon
his features and could be affected by no tempest either of joy or pain.
His soul might be weary and his courage dead, but the world could never
find it out by looking at his face. However often he may have been a
troubled man, through it all he was a laughing man.

It is all well enough to smile when one is gay, but the real hero is the
one who keeps on smiling after the world has turned blue before his gaze.
Anyone can look happy when he _is_ happy, but only the unusual man
can keep a merry countenance when hopes die, ties are sundered, dreams
crash in shattered fragments, and the rich promises of life prove to have
been empty mirages of vain expectation. The smile “that cannot come off”
is the smile worth while.

The happiest-faced woman I ever knew was one whose life story would cast
a tremor of dread upon any company. She had faced her floods of sorrow,
had shed her tears, and then had come off with the victory of an undying
cheerfulness which never inflicted upon another the troubles which had
been hers.

One day it was discovered that Gwynplaine, the wandering showman, was a
man of noble blood. As such, he was entitled to a seat in the House of
Lords. On the night when he went to take his seat among the peers of
England, many curious eyes were fastened upon his grinning features. He
sat and listened to the speeches. Eloquent things were being said, but
they did not bear the note of thoughtfulness of the needs and rights of
the lowly. These were men who had never tasted the lot of the poor. He
could never forget the need and the neglect which he had seen and known.

Then a dramatic thing happened. Gwynplaine rose in his place as though to
speak. A suppressed titter swept over the great chamber. He opened his
lips and began to speak. At the sound of his words the wave of merriment
subsided. They carried a burden of heartbreak, though they fell from
grinning lips. “My lords,” he said, “I bring you news—news of the
existence of mankind.”

This was the message the assembly needed to hear. Executive chambers and
halls of legislation had been all too slow in welcoming it. When it came,
it fell from the lips of a noble showman with a perpetual grin upon
his face.

Gwynplaine had a full heart, and it was full of the needs and the burdens
of men. One word was ringing back and forth through the chambers of his
thought. That word was Humanity. In it was represented the outstanding
fact in human thinking—the fact of the existence of humanity. It suggested
the highest aim of all government—the good of humanity. It pointed out the
path of all proper human endeavor—the advancement of humanity.

Humanity has been the one great concern of the Almighty Himself. He
measures the good or the evil of a thing by the question of its
helpfulness or its hurtfulness of people. He brooded over the race until
it grew to manhood. When it sinned He suffered for it. He has never
hesitated to go to any length for the sake of people. Such is also the
spirit of those who enter into the secrets of His plans.

The word humanity is not limited to a fortunate few, but it includes those
of every station; it does not refer to a single race or color, but it has
a place for all mankind; it does not mean a given economic or industrial
class, but it covers the cases of employer and employe alike; it does not
stop at a given social caste, but in its plan one is as good as another.
Humanity includes all men, and the person who has never yet taken it into
his heart has not yet developed as great a heart as the man of the future
will find it necessary to have.

Humanity knows no dividing line, and whoever lays them down will simply
sow the seeds of sorrow and trouble. Class consciousness is an evil thing,
no matter by what class it is possessed. Wars come from national lines of
division in sympathy and fraternity. Strifes come from industrial and
social dividing lines. There is no place in the creative plan for jealousy
and enmity.

The world can never come to its golden year until it has made manhood the
one basis for the estimate of a man. It must recognize good as good, and
evil as evil, regardless of where they are found; it must hold light to be
light and darkness to be darkness, whosoever they may be; and men must be
recognized as the most important element in the scheme of things.

When the day of settled peace comes again, and the world once more sits
clothed and in its right mind, our business will be the protection,
nurture, and uplift of humanity. Meanwhile, may there come some teacher
who can lead the peoples to think of one another in terms of fraternity,
and teach each man to think of each other man as a neighbor and to trust
him as a friend.


The Safe Foundations for a League of Nations (1919)


The thinking majority of people in America and among other nations know
very well what they want. A designing minority may be willing to continue
the bloodthirsty ways of the past for reasons of either personal gain or
private preference. The thoughtful majority, however, desire some
reasonable assurance that the peace of the world will not again be broken.

An intelligible plan for world peace has for a long while been taking
shape in the minds of unselfish national leaders. The war and the new
world conditions occasioned by it have crystallized that plan into a
purpose. We call it the League of Nations. It will be, so to speak,
a kind of United States of the World.

The plan is a promising one. Many far-seeing thinkers wished for it years
before the outstanding national leaders were influenced by a world
emergency to become champions of it. It simply means the extension of our
organization for common protection, welfare, and progress into
international proportions.

Between individuals we have succeeded in reducing brawling to a minimum.
The same means, internationally applied, will reduce it to a minimum
between nations. We have declared that individuals shall not carry
weapons to the menace of others. We can tell nations that they too must
lay aside their guns for the good of the public peace. We have
established means whereby offenders can be brought to justice and
disputes settled between individual litigants. We can establish the same
means for preventing lawbreaking and for the settlement of disputes in
the case of nations. We have established police power to enforce the
decrees of our local, state, and national courts. International law can
be given the same authority in the same way.

We will not be wise to conclude, however, that all we need is a League of
Nations. No mere material organization can constitute complete assurance
that men will henceforth live at peace with one another. Such an
organization would be a great force. As in the case with local, state, and
federal laws, its mandates would keep some people at peace through their
good will and others through their fear of the consequences of
disobedience. It will take more than a League of Nations, however, to make
the peace of the world certain and permanent.

This is true because the issues of life are spiritual. The strongest
forces are not physical. The force of opinion is greater than the power of
guns, and the union of spiritual attitudes and standards is stronger than
any bond of mere organization.

The value of whatever solution for our problem we may adopt will be
determined not so much by the plan itself as by the spiritual basis of the
plan. If the hearts of men are not right toward one another, the vision of
peace will be as idle a dream as it was in the past years. If the
relations of men, one with another, are right, then we may feel that the
peace of the world is already assured.

We may have an organized super-state. The true super-state will exist,
however, not in the outward form of any organization but in the spiritual
attitude of the hearts of men. In other words, if it is to exist at all,
it must exist in the fact of brotherhood and in the conditions generated
by the fraternal spirit. The true super-state might as well be called the
kingdom of love. It can be nothing else and fulfil its mission.

The wreck of the German Empire is the ruin of an attempt to found a
super-state upon the wrong basis. Germany smothered the fraternal spirit,
prostituted genius, reduced her schools to media for her propaganda, and
killed the idea of unselfishness in the minds of her people. She bent
everything to the making of an empire which was to be the wonder of the
world in power, wealth, and efficiency. Like the presumptuous Babel of an
older day, this audacious plan fell in scattered ruins, after having been
the means of drenching the world in blood.

Whoever allows his mind to harbor a dream of power, wealth, efficiency, or
commercial supremacy on any other basis than that of brotherhood should
remember the name of Germany and take due warning. A new world is now in
process of building. Whatever we may have in it, we should permit the
presence of nothing which does not rest upon a fraternal foundation. If we
have to choose between being a people of tender hearts and possessing the
glory and dominion of the world, we can best afford to choose to be people
of tender hearts.

The spirit of malice and distrust was the powder train by which the
magazine of the world’s fury was exploded. The hands of both the crafty
and the foolish helped to lay it. It has always been so, and will always
be so until such work is done no more. While men distrust one another,
look for unworthy motives in one another, or talk of and prepare for war
with one another, there will be no end of strife. When men of all classes,
nations, and races learn to genuinely love one another, the day of strife
will cease.

Some wars have been wars of punishment, but when the people of the earth
learn to do right, there will be nothing to punish. With the life of the
world actuated by unselfish motives, there will be no need for the avenger
to march on errands of death, made necessary by some outrage or injustice.
Until that time, peace will remain dim in the promise of any plan that we
can formulate. Is there any reason why men should not do right? If duty
were impossible, all creation would be a mockery and a
moral contradiction.

Other wars have been wars of contention, but when men deal justly there
will be no longer anything for which to contend. The goods of the world
may be very rich and lovely, but they are worth neither the price of life
nor the stigma of murder. It is better, even for nations, to have less and
have it honestly, to possess less and live in a world safe for each
generation and its posterity. When the hearts of men are right, our
economic systems will also be right. Every man will get his share and be
content with it when he gets it.

When the dream of world brotherhood has become a fact, we shall often
think with a bitter surprise of the bickerings and misunderstandings of
yesterday. The path to that time is the road of the heart. The only way to
realize such an age is to begin to live its spirit. We shall have a world
fraternity only when we all begin to be brothers. This will be a happy
world when it becomes a kindly-hearted world, and it will never be a
wholly happy one until it fulfills this law. The formula is simple and
the conditions are plain.

The time has come for selfish men to surrender their selfish ways and
purposes. The service of self and the road of malice have been proven
failures. They offer nothing which is permanently worth while, and they
lead to endless trouble. For ages we have talked love. Our words will
remain a mockery until we adopt it as a principle and apply it in
life’s affairs.

The time has come to take that forward step. The world is ready for
anything that spells deliverance, and nothing will deliver humanity save
rightness of heart. We had better make a garden of the world than to turn
it into a vast cemetery for the bodies of the slain. Let us have a League
of Nations, but let us build it on a safe foundation.


Is It Nothing to You (1929)


There is a type of mind which insists that it cannot understand why it
matters to some of us what others eat, and drink, and do. It represents
us as troublesome meddlers in the private affairs of our neighbors, and
insists that none of the so-called evils of the time need trouble us in
the least if we would attend to our own business.

Our motive in seeking legislation to control the various evils that
plague society has little to do with the question of the private rights
of others. We care because we wish people well and naturally prefer to
see them doing credit to themselves, but that alone would never lead us
to organize reform associations, agitate reform questions, and seek the
enactment of sumptuary laws.

We do these things for three reasons. One is the fact that we too have to
live in the world and be affected in many ways by the good or evil of its
life. We have to help meet the cost of evildoing, endure the conditions
which it creates, and suffer the general defeat of our ideals before its
attack. The second reason is the fact that we care into what kind of a
world we send our posterity to live. We may not care what a neighbor eats
and drinks, but we do care very much what favorable or unfavorable
conditions our children will have to meet when we are no longer here to
help them. The third reason is the fact that what our neighbor eats, and
drinks, and does, affects not only him, and not only us, but all mankind.
Each individual transgression writes itself into the world life.

So far as we are concerned, regrettable as it is, the man who insists on
poisoning his body might go on getting to the last whatever satisfaction
it affords him. But we are concerned because he passes the poison on to
his children and to other people’s children. He degrades the life of
society, makes his community less desirable, and even lowers property
values in his neighborhood. In all these things we also have an interest.
By all these things we and ours are profoundly affected.
Why should we not care?


What Makes a City? (1929)


There is an old story about a town that had a high cliff from which was
visible a particularly beautiful view. The citizens of the town, being
enterprising people, decided to capitalize on this natural asset, and so
they proceeded at once to make it a talking point in favor of their city
as a show place and one desirable for residence.

The advertising was effective. From far and near, people came to get a
glimpse of the famous view. Needless to say, they spent their money while
they were in town, and the business men around the square were able to
note a change for the better in their bank balances.

It turned out, however, that viewing the scenery from this cliff was not
without its dangers. The precipice was high, and at its foot, the rocks
were hard and rough.

One day a visitor fell from the top of the cliff. His mangled body was
picked up from the rocks below. The story went the rounds, and business
began falling off. The merchants got together and agreed that they must
do something. They decided to organize a campaign and raise money to
build a hospital and provide an ambulance to take care of casualties.
They did so, and with due advertising, business again picked up.

One day someone suggested that a better thing would be a railing along
the top of the cliff to keep people from falling. The railing was built,
and there were no more accidents.

But the people of the town shook their heads doubtfully and said that it
seemed a great pity, after having gone to so much expense for a hospital
and an ambulance and having advertised them so widely, to have no further
use for them.

=Greatest Factors Are Not Bank Balances and Buildings=

What is of importance about a city? The most important thing is not its
views, its parks and drives, its public buildings, nor its commercial
leadership, but its people. And what makes a city? The greatest factor is
not its bank clearings, its shipments of live stock, its factories, its
stores, nor the extent of its public improvements, but the care it takes
of and the safeguards with which it surrounds its people.

A city is not made of streets, but of those who walk on them; not of
stores, but of those who trade in them; not of machinery, but of those who
drive it; not of houses, but of those who live in them. A city is its
people. It is exactly as good or bad, as strong or weak, as desirable or
undesirable, as enduring or temporary, as are they. With them it will go
forward or backward, be an object of admiration or contempt,
stand or fall, live or die.

The most important question before a city is not what its population can
be made by 1930, nor what advantages it can obtain from the next session
of the state legislature, nor how much money the merchants can take in by
organizing a bargain day or giving a street fair. The most important
question is how well founded are the homes, how normal is the type of
life, how idealistic are the labors of the people, and how safe are the
children and youth wherever they may go about the town? How many are being
helped? How few are being exploited?

When John Smith of Chicago or Abe Hopkins of Punkin Center considers
moving to a town to reside, to accept a position, to go into business, or
to put the children in school, the uppermost question in his mind is how
good a place is it in which to maintain a home? How safe a place is it in
which to rear children? In school, on the street, in their social
contacts, will their best interests always be conserved?

Only one thing constitutes a satisfactory answer to these questions, and
for it, there is no adequate substitute. It is high grade life lived by
high grade human beings. Where that is present, it will reveal itself in
every movement and institution. If it is absent, no boulevard mileage, or
volume of business, or number of railroads can make up for the lack of it.

=Failure in Homes Breeds Necessity for Substitutes=

Cities often point with pride to the number and costliness of their
substitutes for home life, but a far more prideworthy thing would be the
prevalence of a home life so beautiful and adequate as to require no
substitutes. The substitutes are all very well for those who are homeless
or who are too crude and dull to appreciate the blessing of home, but
they should not be needed by the mass of normal and average persons.

Practically all the institutions for social amelioration and correction
are parts of a widespread and inadequate attempt to make up for the
failure of the home. The family is unloading more and more of its
responsibilities on the school, church, and community. Moreover, its
unwillingness or inability to discharge its duty creates the necessity
for and the expense of juvenile courts, reform schools, and crime waves.

Therefore, whenever one truly refers to a city as one of homes, he is
making a statement of commanding importance. A real city of homes is one
with a minimum of social problems because, as a rule, the highest grade of
character and life is developed in the home atmosphere.

A city of homes is one whose people have some concern about the place
occupied and the work done in the community both by themselves and their
children. They are responsible citizens, and for such citizenship, there
is no substitute. Such people constitute a railing at the top of
the cliff.

All this may seem to be merely talk about ideals, and it is. Ideals are
the most necessary and important things in the world, even for a city.
Moreover, they have the highest cash value of anything with which we have
to do.

=Lack of Idealism Is Expensive=

The lack of idealism is the most expensive thing the people of any city
can have on their hands. The lower the level of idealism, the more bad
bills are made at the stores, the greater number of thefts is committed
with thievery’s double cost to the community, the greater is the amount
of fraud, and the higher is the degree and, therefore, the cost of crime.

Speaking from the financial viewpoint alone, and taking no account of the
other and greater values involved, anything that breaks down the idealism
of a city costs it heavily in money. The business man who helps to
inaugurate an evil with the thought that it will bring him profit will
live to realize that, for every dollar of profit it brings him in trade,
it will cost him a dollar in taxes and toward the suppression of crime and
undesirable conditions. Such is the result of the coming of undesirable
persons, practices, and situations to a community. The addition to the
population, permanently or temporarily, of a rough and rude element with
no ideals of conduct, no standards of sobriety, no regard for the sanctity
of the Lord’s Day, and no respect for property rights has never profited a
city yet. If you want thieves, hoodlums, and libertines, create a low
standard of ideals in the community, and you will get them. Your jails,
poorhouses, and insane asylums may serve in the place of a hospital and
ambulance to take care of the casualties, but a high level of idealism
would be a railing along the top of the cliff to save the people.

The history of the ages is the story of the progress of the human race
from the Garden of Eden to the New Jerusalem, from the status of a
perfect garden to that of a perfect city, from a simple but happy primal
state to a complex but ideal social order.

The drift of life is to the city. The farm is giving its products, but it
is also giving its sons and daughters to the town.

The drift of life is to the city. When the race has reached the climax of
its progress, that condition will be a perfect city—a city of justice,
righteousness, truth, faith, and brotherhood. It will have beautiful
buildings, broad avenues, flowering parks, and prosperous institutions,
but its real glory will be the quality of its people.

Destiny is waiting on the city to become all this. What dizzy distances
it will have to travel. It will have to fling aside the acknowledged
domination of Mammon. It will have to get spiritual ideals and human
values back into the first place where they belong.

Each promoter of the interests of a city is advertising a precipice from
which people may stumble to their doom, or pointing with pride to the
beautiful hospital and ambulance provided by the magnanimous people to
take care of the maimed and broken, or building railings along the tops
of cliffs to keep people from falling and to make the place safe, even
for the young, the weak, and the blind. Which one of these things are
you doing for your town?


Capitalizing War for the Tobacco Trade (1919)


The effect of war in the battle zones themselves is hardly less definite
than that which it exerts among the home populations of the nations
involved. With no uncertain hand it writes its name across the commercial
and social life of a country. There is hardly a phase of thought and
activity which does not show marked reaction to war conditions.

For one thing, a war always offers a name and a flag under which
profiteers and promoters undertake to sail. Some find their boats capsized
early in the struggle. Others have a sufficient following to keep their
business popular and are able to establish their enterprise in more or
less permanent comfort. Vendors of wares both helpful and harmful take
occasion to push the sale of their products in the name of patriotism.
Riders of hobbies both innocent and perilous take excuse to encourage both
their own habits and the weaknesses of their fellow citizens. This is
always done in the name of patriotism, even though the effect may be
altogether antipatriotic. A certain advantage can be taken at a time when
everyone is afraid of being misjudged. Like the undertaker’s bill, such
things are often brought forward at a time when everyone feels that he
must swallow the dose and ask no questions.

During the recent conflict it became a widespread habit to advertise
various products in the name of patriotism. We were told that the person
who wanted to be patriotic must wear a certain brand of clothes, drink a
prescribed blend of coffee, and shave with a given make of safety razor.
If the Government gave an enterprise the slightest encouragement or
patronage, it was featured to the limit. The tobacco companies were not
long in taking advantage of the opportunity presented. During the war we
were continually told that the soldiers in our splendid national army
considered tobacco a necessity. Then not only the element possessing
double-jointed moral convictions but also many who had stood for high
ideals fell victims to the contagion. Even church workers took to sending
to sons what their mothers had prayed might never enter their lives and
what leading magazines have been refusing to advertise just as they have
refused to advertise intoxicating liquors.

Naturally, the members of the national army who had considered tobacco a
necessity at home also considered it so abroad. Just as naturally, those
who had not used it at home would not have cared for it abroad. The
demand was by no means of the one-hundred-percent variety. When I think
of the number of men who never knew the taste of tobacco until it was
forced upon them by some well-intentioned but misguided war agency, I
cannot believe that the demand for it was universal. When I hear parents
testify that their sons were untouched with the desire for tobacco until
they were influenced to use it in the army, I cannot help feeling that
much of the insistence upon it had its origin only in artificially
induced public opinion.

The capitalizing of a war to the advantage of a trade depending for its
profits on human weakness had an outstanding instance at the time of the
Civil War. However wise a provision for the Federal finances the leaders
of that day may have thought they were making, the fact is that the
internal revenue on intoxicating liquors fastened the business on the
country for many years. It so got its fingers upon our throat that we
have not yet wholly shaken them loose. It has robbed us of far more money
than it ever gave us. It has at the same time ruined what was worth much
more to us than all our gold—the life and happiness of our people.

There are those among us who suspect that much of the late demand for
tobacco did not come from the army at all but that it was conceived in the
minds and fostered under the guiding care of representatives of the
tobacco trade. So successful was this effort and so meekly did the country
as a whole fall into line with the program that it now looks as if another
taint is fastened upon us for at least the lifetime of the
present generation.

Though it may be admitted that the evil is less serious than that of
Civil War days, it is by no means to be considered negligible. The facts
disclosed by the physical examination of millions of our men should have
made us more careful instead of less so. The physical unfitness of much of
our male population for service overseas had a number of reasons behind
it. There is no doubt in many thoughtful minds, however, that among these
reasons were the consumption of adulterated soft drinks and the widespread
use of tobacco. Instead of discouraging these things in a time of national
crisis, we encouraged them more than we ever did before.

No reasonable person is contending that the use of tobacco is a mortal
sin. If no worse sins were committed, ours would indeed be a wonderful
Nation. This, however, is no excuse for that which is a physical evil and,
to some extent at least, a moral and religious evil. The real question is
as to why we should encourage it at all. We do not get at the danger of
any evil by comparing one evil with another. The question for a vigorous
Nation in a trying time is not as to what is the harm in a thing but as to
what is the good.

At least three undisputed facts must be recorded about the tobacco habit.
We have allowed the war to make each of the three more outstanding than
before. The first is that it is unclean. If it were true that neither
physical nor moral questions were involved, some very important sanitary
ones would still remain to be considered. It is not easy to see why anyone
should insist upon making more stained teeth, repulsive breaths,
malodorous bodies, and unclean mouths.

The second is that it is expensive. Our tobacco bill for a few years would
pay the cost of the war. It would do a much better thing: It would provide
agricultural reclamation, commercial development, and philanthropic
beneficence on a world scale. The soldier cannot afford to pay this bill.
Neither can the free-hearted public afford to assume that it is one of the
necessities of war and pay it from benevolent funds. The 1917 tobacco crop
of more than one billion pounds brought an average of twenty-five cents a
pound. This was two-fifths more than the price during the preceding year
and twice the price during the years between 1911 and 1915.

The third is that it is increasing. The 1917 tobacco crop was the largest
in our history. Estimated at 1,196,451,000 pounds, it was an increase of
43,181,000 pounds over the crop of the preceding year. The output of
cigars was 8,266,770,593, an increase of 876,587,423 over that of 1916.
A total of 35,377,751 pounds of snuff were manufactured during 1917, an
increase of two million pounds over 1916. Of smoking and chewing tobacco,
445,763,206 pounds were put upon the market, an increase of more than
twenty-eight million pounds. Tax was paid on thirty billions of
cigarettes, and nobody knows how many were rolled and smoked from prepared
tobacco. The sale of cigarettes increased almost fifty per cent during
1917. This serves to show with what success our widespread pro-tobacco
propaganda has met.

The internal revenue income on tobacco advanced fifteen million dollars
during 1917. The total was $103,201,592.16. Thirty-eight million dollars
of this was on cigarettes alone. Great as this income is, it cannot
compensate for the lowered personal standards, the physical
disintegration, and the unuttered regret that have resulted from it.


Creating a Demand (1919)


There are two ways of attacking the business problem. One is to take
advantage of opportunities already brought into existence by the laws of
chance or the work of others. The other is to make advantage by the
creation of opportunities which would otherwise never have existed.

The first can be done by any person of average intelligence. It calls for
no ingenuity. Its only demand is the time and effort necessary to buy
goods on the one hand and sell them on the other. The second calls for a
really high-grade of business ability. The man who can do it well has his
success reasonably assured.

Business is ordinarily assumed to be subject to the law of supply and
demand. It happens to be true, however, that the matter of supply and
demand is more or less subject to conditions which can be either created
or altered by human interference and guidance. The selfish and designing
have long ago discovered means of so manipulating market conditions as to
make supply and demand a negligible factor. Such, of course, is not the
kind of business method which will be allowed to permanently survive.

There is a more worthy way of dealing with the question of supply and
demand to the advantage of business. It often happens that, because of
lack of public education or because of undeveloped or abnormal community
conditions, demand for a given product has not yet been stimulated. The
business specialist who has a really worthy article to market should be
able to diagnose the situation, see what the hindering conditions are, and
take steps toward that adjustment of things which will give rise to a
normal demand. He need not be powerless in the face of the fact that
people do not desire his product. Neither can he blame the public for rot
needing it. He must make the public need it, make it see its need, and
then supply it.

In all the history of American business, probably no better example of
this sort of thing could be found than the action once taken by
James J. Hill at one stage in the development of the Great Northern
railway system through the Pacific Northwest. Mr. Hill, by the way, was
a notable example of real commercial genius. Having a positive mind, he
could plan, adapt, and build. The railway system which he developed stands
as an enduring monument to his wonderful ability.

After the first lines of the Great Northern had been built and had been in
operation for a while, Mr. Hill discovered that they were carrying very
little livestock. There seemed no demand for that particular form of
railway service. Looking into the question, he found a very definite
reason for the fact. The farmers of the Northwest had never taken up
stock-raising.

No one was to blame. The situation simply constituted a condition to be
met. There was no reason why the farmers of the Northwest should not turn
their attention to livestock. The country was good for grazing, and the
range was almost limitless. The only difficulty was the fact that
livestock had never been introduced into that section.

Mr. Hill began applying his remedy by doing the farmers a kindness. He
bought several thousands of blooded cattle and hogs, and gave them to the
farmers owning land along the right of way. There were two results. The
first was that the Northwest rapidly developed into a leading
stock-raising country, enriching the section and indirectly benefiting
the railroad in many ways. The second was that within a few years the
Great Northern was breaking the record among the railroads for the
carrying of livestock. Finding no demand for the services of his road,
Mr. Hill had created one.

This example serves to show up the true business man in his real character
as a commercial engineer. His function is a larger one than the slavish
routine of mere buying and selling. It is rather that of helping to build
that larger and better commercial world in which all business will be at
its best because all people are at their best.

Other engineers plan great mechanical projects. He plans and executes
great commercial projects. The results of his work are no less magic than
the results of theirs. The ability of the civil engineer is tested by his
power to remove the impediments and bridge the chasms that lie in his way.
The ability of the commercial engineer is tested in the same way. He must
penetrate the hills of prejudice and bridge the chasms of unconcern.

There are some enterprises which may at times succeed by force of chance
or circumstance. The only sustained and creditable success, however, must
come from intelligent promotion. One has little ground for satisfaction
over a mere random success. It is real achievement that brings enduring
satisfaction.

It takes somewhat more than merely mental power, however, to plan and
execute great commercial enterprises. The promoter must not only have a
good mind, but it must also be of the affirmative type. Only the
constructive thinker makes the great general, the great leader, or the
great engineer.

There is as much of a place for originality in business as in any other
field one could enter. It is sometimes avoided on the ground that it is
prosaic and humdrum. It is not so for the person who senses its
opportunity and enjoys the process of working out its larger
possibilities. It offers a practically unlimited opportunity for the
building of one’s powers into the fabric of an altogether necessary
social institution.

Considered from this point of view, business is infinitely more than mere
exploitation. Many have conceived the idea that it is nothing more because
a great many selfish and misguided men have never really tried to make
anything more of it. Fundamentally, however, business is a form of
public service.

The market place was one of the earliest developments in our social
scheme. Theoretically it is a means for the exchange of values to the
mutual advantage of the parties to a transaction. The assumption of any
person who enters a legitimate line of trade is that he has an article
needed by the public. It follows that the degree of his public service is
commensurate with the wideness of the sale of his product.

In taking steps, then, to create a legitimate demand for whatever he has
to sell, one does not need to hesitate on the ground that it reduces his
work to the level of mere exploitation. If he is in business as a public
servant, then the larger the service he can render the better it is, both
for him and for his patrons. The service of his patrons and his own
success are commensurate because they are mutually dependent upon one
another. Good business spells more than profit for the business man. It is
also a help to the public, and a means of progress in the world.

There need be no fear, either, that most of the possibilities of business
have been exhausted. The real world of commercial opportunity has hardly
more than been entered. Our own country is still largely undeveloped in
the use of many helpful products. There are backward communities to be
informed and cultivated. Whoever undertakes this process is a positive
factor in the making of civilization, for the need of these communities
is the greater need concerned. It would be a blessing to them to have a
demand for the tools of more efficient life and work created among them.

Then there are all the vast spaces of the world as yet largely untouched
by these more advanced methods of civilization. There are more people
waiting to be taught the use of means to comfort and efficiency than there
are to manufacture and deliver the products to these prospective
purchasers. Business men should support every sort of civilizing influence
as a means of creating a demand in far countries for what they have
to sell.


Should Prices Be Standardized? (1919)


Thus far in the economic history of America the scale of prices has been
as temporary and uncertain as the indications of the mercury in a
thermometer. Prices have gone up and down for all kinds of reasons, and
indeed they have often seemed to do so without any apparent reason. An
increasing number of people feel that this is not as it should be. It is
not easy to formulate an unfailing remedy, of course. Neither is it
possible to say whether price fixing would prove a success or a failure.
It does look reasonably sure, however, that prices should be stabilized
in some just and proper manner.

There are always those who are ready to tell us that it is not necessary
to attempt to do anything about the price situation. They say that the
scale of prices will automatically take care of itself according to the
operation of the law of supply and demand. This sort of a situation might
do very well if only it existed in some other world than that of fancy.
There probably was a time in the earlier periods of the history of the
market place when the law of supply and demand governed all prices.
That time, however, seems to have passed.

Tradesmen have learned methods by which they can so successfully juggle
the situation as to supply and demand as to entirely reverse the action
of the time-honored law so often invoked in defense of the profiteer. The
cold storage method of preserving eggs, for instance, has been used to
make them cost most during that season of the year when they are most
plentiful, and to be cheapest during that portion of the year when the
greatest number of hens are on a vacation.

As a matter of fact, the law of supply and demand is not the rightful
governor of prices. It does not take into account the one thing which
should be the deciding factor in the cost of an article, namely the cost
of production. It requires as much labor and as great an investment to
produce a bushel of cheap wheat as it does to produce the same amount of
wheat at a good figure. The cost of a bushel of wheat should always be the
cost of production plus a fair rate of profit to the producer. The
producer would then be sure of his profit, and the consumer would know how
to estimate his expense.

A fluctuating price scale does not make for certainty in financial
transactions and stability in commercial organization. Except in the most
general way, no one is able to say today what things will cost or bring
tomorrow. In considerable part, this condition has been brought about by
the deals of speculators who make their living by the rise and fall of the
markets and often by forcing prices up and down by arbitrary methods.

In other words, an uncertain system of prices not only makes it possible
for a group of men to gamble upon them, but it does much to reduce all
dealing to a process of gambling. Even if all other conditions are
favorable. The producer does not know whether he is to gain or lose.
Neither does the consumer know whether he is to be able to obtain things
at a fair price.

Such a condition is unsatisfactory to both. For each advantage or
disadvantage are alike possible, and they usually alternate. The advantage
of one, moreover, must generally be brought about by the disadvantage of
the other. Such is not a necessary state of affairs. One does not need to
lose either in his buying or selling. Neither should his gain be abnormal.
The establishment of prices upon a fair and permanent basis could make it
possible for a transaction to be always to the mutual advantage of the
seller and the purchaser. In other words, it would lift the markets above
the gambling level.

There is another way in which an uncertain system of prices works a great
injustice in the economic system. They offer no real incentive to
industry, ability, and preparation. We have done and heard a great deal of
preaching to the point that these things pay because the man who prepares
best and works hardest will be best rewarded.

As things are now, the worst trouble with this claim is its falseness. A
man may work ever so hard in almost any process of production and have his
reward shrunken out of all proportion to his toil by some sudden slump in
prices for which he was in no way responsible. On the other hand, he may
neglect ever so important a task and at the last moment be favored with
a rise in prices which will turn things to his profit.

On the one hand, he always stands a chance of failing to receive what
rightfully should be his, a situation which does not represent good
business. On the other hand, he also stands a chance of receiving what he
does not earn, a situation which does not represent good business either.
It should be possible by means of having a stable price scale to make it
practically sure that every person concerned in the process of production
would receive his due. Naturally the highest reward would come to the man
of greatest earning power. The result would be the placing of a premium
upon industry and efficiency. Until we do so we shall have no oversupply
of either.

Uncertainty of prices has one serious social tendency. It produces a
certain spirit of unrest on the part of the consumer. It may be true that
the average person overdraws some of his conclusions on this question. It
may be, too, that he bases some of them upon insufficient reasons. At the
same time, however, his attitude is a fact which must be met and
reckoned with.

What the consumer thinks is no inconsiderable matter. He is not a small
minority without power or influence. He is a vast majority, swaying the
very life of the State as he will, for in one way or another we are all
consumers. Moreover, the consumer has the last word in every argument.
He holds the purse-strings, and when he is tired of talking, he can stop
buying. It does not bode well when he conceives the feeling that undue
difficulty attaches to trying to exist on the planet.

He is not unreasonable. On the contrary, he is quite reasonable. He wants
the other party, as well as himself, to have all that is his due. He has
no objections to meeting the real cost of an article. He has some notions,
however, as to what that cost should be. If prices go up, he expects them
to have some proper reason for doing so. He works for his living, and he
expects others to do the same. When he cannot count on what a day may
bring forth, he cannot plan his financial future, for he has no idea one
season what it is going to cost him to live the next. He has a feeling
that it is time to get prices adjusted as they should be in fairness to
all concerned, and then keep them so.

One of the worst difficulties with our fluctuating system of prices is the
fact that it does not make adequate provision for the economic life of the
country. Our commercial system has the same function in the service of
society that the blood has in maintaining the life of the body. Its work
is to carry supplies promptly, effectively, and regularly to all the
points where they are needed.

The body is not in good health when the blood overfeeds it part of the
time and starves it the rest of the time. It is not proper, either, to
have congestion at one point and anaemia at another. The function of
circulation must go on with uninterrupted constancy.

The world needs a practically fixed amount of food, clothing, and supplies
for the maintenance of its life and activity. It has also a practically
fixed amount of wealth to keep them moving. Unsteady prices are always
changing the value of a dollar and making the necessities of life easier
or harder to get. The world cannot, therefore, supply its wants with the
same ease and in the same abundance at any two successive times. The value
of supplies and the value of money should both be constant. The world
could then meet its needs at every point. No worker would lose his reward;
commodities would be certain to yield their worth; and no one would be any
the poorer for the change.


The Home Budget (1920)


After he had gained the pinnacle of his success, some one asked Andrew
Carnegie to formulate the secret of wealth. His reply was as significant
as it was laconic. He said: “Pay as you go, and keep books.”

Each part of this formula is important. They are very closely related,
but the second is the more fundamental. However important it is to pay as
one goes, his chances for doing so are rendered very uncertain if he
fails to keep books.

There are different ways, however, of keeping books. Some keep books only
as a means of knowing where they stand with their finances and current
bills. This is good as far as it goes, but it is possible to make the
process of keeping books yield a much greater service.

Others realize this, and keep books as a means of keeping in the right
relation to their financial affairs. They make their bookkeeping system
represent their plan of operation. It then serves to keep them from
getting too near the edge of any financial precipice. If one is to get on,
one of the first principles he must learn is the necessity of keeping
within his income—and a little more. Books can be kept in such a way as to
enable one to do it. This is keeping books according to the budget plan.

Some one is always certain to say that bookkeeping systems and budget
plans are very well for people who have adequate incomes. It is said that
the rich have something to keep books on, but that it is of little use for
those who tread the ragged edges of want to undertake anything of
the kind.

This assumption is a grand mistake. Whatever benefits the budget system
has are certainly common to all who care to adopt it. It is even more
greatly needed by the home with an income below the normal level than by
that with an income above the line of necessity. This is because its
purpose is to enable one to make the most of the amount of money at
command, whatever that sum may be. This service is not needed so much by
those who have an abundance. It is calculated to help most those who must
watch their corners and husband their resources. The budget system is a
desirable plan in the home of wealth; it is a helpful thing in the home
of moderate circumstances; but it is a necessity in the home where takes
place an occasional battle with want.

The budget plan is a sort of blue print of what one proposes to do with
the funds at his command. The builder can do his work properly only with
suitable plans before him. The difference between the structure erected
with a plan and that erected without one is great. The difference between
the results of an income administered according to system and those of one
spent at random is one of just about the same degree. To attempt any work
without a well-formulated plan of procedure means several regrettable
things. It means a waste of materials; it means poor co-ordination of
effort; it means a haphazard and unsatisfactory result.

The budget plan is based on a system of appropriations. Such is the plan
used by all successful business interests. The business is first analyzed
and divided into departments. Then the amount of money needed for the work
of each department is estimated. This amount, or as nearly this amount as
the sum of money at command will permit, is then appropriated to the work
of that department. It is left to keep its accounts up to the total placed
at its disposal. It is, of course, held responsible for the use it makes
of the funds given it. If at the end of the year it is found that the
distribution was not equitable, the proportion can be changed.

The same plan can be adapted to home use, and it will do just as much for
the guidance and welfare of the family treasury as for that of some great
business corporation. The work may be done after about the same fashion.
The needs of the family should be analyzed and divided into departments.
The resources at command may then be estimated and apportioned to the
various departments of expenditure in the same way. Expenses are then to
be kept within the appropriation, and, if the division is found unfair to
any interest, it can be changed.

If this is properly done, the benefits derived will be very great. If
income is always consulted before outgo is determined, the effect of the
system on the family resources will be found to be little less than
magical. The funds in each department will so accumulate as to keep a
surprising balance on hand all the time.

The reason for this certain growth in reserve funds is plain. One will
not purchase a thing in a given department of expense until enough money
has accumulated in that particular department to pay for it. Suppose,
for instance, that one would like to buy a suit of clothes or an article
of furniture. Ordinarily, he would get them if he could command the money
to do so from the total at his disposal. Therefore, he would stand a
chance of paying for it with money which really should have gone to
something else. Moreover, the habit of buying anything he wants and can
pay for keeps his funds down to the low water mark all the time.

When finances are cared for on the budget plan, the case is very
different. Before one purchases a suit of clothes, an article of
furniture, or anything else, he first looks at the page on which the
finances of the department in question are recorded. If the money is on
hand, he proceeds with the purchase. If the funds are insufficient, he
waits until they have increased to a point where the purchase is possible.

This plan accomplishes two things. It keeps personal or family
expenditures within the income from which they must be made. It also
avoids the mistake of spending for one thing the funds which rightfully
belong to something else. These, by the way, are two of the fundamental
principles involved in the matter of getting from a dollar its full worth.

If the family income is fixed and regular, it can be divided arbitrarily
among the different classes of things for which it is to be spent. So much
may be appropriated to one class of things and so much to another. In this
case the division is easy and simple.

However, in many homes the income is not regular as to either time or
amount. In this case it can best be appropriated on a percentage basis.
A certain percentage is set aside for each division of family expense.
It is then credited to the account of the departments involved.

In making this division, a number of things have to be taken into account.
Among them are the size of the income, the needs and tastes of the family,
and the financial condition of the family when the plan is adopted. One
home I know works on the following basis: Religion 10%, Indebtedness 10%,
Savings 10%, Clothing 20%, Groceries and household supplies 30%, Home
furnishings 10%, Miscellaneous Expenses 10%. Each home can choose its own
plan. It can also change its plan at will.

It is well to get a loose-leaf book of suitable size and to have a page
devoted to each division of expenses. The money is kept in one sum in the
bank, but all receipts are credited and all expenditures charged under the
proper headings. Then the bottom figure on each page represents the amount
available for the particular department of expense represented there.

This plan simply provides for system in spending. It serves to balance
expenditures. It also does the best that can be done to provide a reserve
for every need. It helps the well-to-do to greater independence. It
enables the poor to keep from growing poorer, and often enables them to
reach comfortable circumstances. It does not make of a dollar more than a
hundred cents. That is impossible. However, it does enable the owner of a
dollar to get the full value of a hundred cents from it. It is a good way
in which to “pay as you go, and keep books.”


Efficient Spending (1921)


In the common struggle to get on, many of us devote our attention too
exclusively to the matter of earning money. We assume that the question
of wealth is wholly one of income and that having is altogether a matter
of getting. Such is not the case. Efficient spending is quite as important
a consideration as is efficient earning. The question as to whether one
can succeed depends not only on whether he can get and keep money. It also
depends on whether he can accomplish the most with it after he gets it.
The usefulness of money is a matter of getting a hundred cents of value
from each dollar. Between the hoarding of money, on the one hand, and the
reckless habits of the spendthrift, on the other, lies this golden mean.
Three general principles relate to efficient spending.

The first is the importance of buying only what one really needs. A great
many people are kept poor because they buy what they do not need enough to
warrant its purchase. Non-essential industries are permitted to sap the
labor and support which rightfully belong to more important things because
of this popular willingness to spend good money for that which can bring
no real equivalent in value.

Many needs are imagined, or assumed. They have their origin, not in any
fact of necessity, but in the fever of a mind wrought up by envy or
desire, until its possessor has joined in the general chase after that
which is not bread. The chronic invalid of yesterday got a new disease
each time she read over the list of symptoms in a patent medicine
pamphlet. The spendthrift of today thinks of some new luxury to covet
with each glance at a tastefully-decorated window, or an artfully
drawn picture.

We must learn to let reason and not desire rule in these matters. Reason
is sometimes a little forbidding, it is true, but we frequently need the
touch of a restraining hand in the matter of spending. Unchecked desire
would soon make paupers of us all.

The standard of living rises or falls according as desire is, or is not,
stimulated. If it were gauged to necessity, there would be little
variation. Necessity is a well-established thing and, therefore,
practically constant. The scale of expenditure varies with the human
desire for luxury and the human ability to obtain it.

The measure of real necessity is surprisingly small. When one finds the
medium ground between profligacy and stinginess, he will realize that he
can live there, even though his income may be moderate. Greater
moderation in many things would leave us a healthier and happier race,
to say nothing of what it would do for our bank accounts. Certainly,
before buying a thing, one should honestly ask himself whether he needs
it. He should, likewise, give himself an honest answer.

The second principle of efficient spending is that when one has honestly
decided that he needs a thing, he should buy the best he can get. If one
buys at all, it pays to search the market for an article of high quality.
Moreover, he is very apt not to find an article of high grade unless he
does search the market rather carefully.

The purchase of a cheap grade of goods, for any serious use, is very poor
economy. Such goods soon give way, and the service they render, while they
do last, is not satisfactory. To obtain a given amount of service, one
will spend more money on articles of cheap grade than upon those that are
better. The obtaining of the same amount of pleasure and satisfaction from
the use of a cheap thing and a good one is an impossibility.

It is a fallacy to suppose that the market must be supplied with
quantities of shoddy goods for the sake of people who have less money to
spend. The very fact that one does have less money to spend is one of the
chief reasons why he cannot afford to waste it on inferior things. If all
except a really worthy and dependable grade of goods were removed from the
market today, purchasers, both rich and poor, would be the gainers.

The selection of a high grade of products calls for some ability and skill
in making a choice. It calls for no more, however, than every person
should possess. The average citizen should train himself to be something
of a judge of materials. Such ability will be of real service almost
constantly in the task of living. One of the first things he is apt to
learn is the fact that the showiest articles are seldom the best. A
certain camouflage of outward appearance is often put on a thing to hide
its real defects. Quality does not have to be painted up to show it off.
It proclaims itself. The purchaser must learn to see through the outward
appearance and judge a thing on its merits.

The third principle of efficient spending follows in logical order. It is
that, having decided to buy a thing and having bought the best, one should
use it until he has gotten from it the utmost service of which it
is capable.

A certain antiquated notion of economy was that when things were purchased
they should be put away and saved. The more valuable an article was, the
more scrupulously it was kept. Good clothes were bought and hung away to
be eaten by the moths instead of rendering their owners the service for
which they were intended. Valuable articles were always rusting out and
rotting out in the name of economy.

The fact is that disuse is bad for anything. Unused, a piece of machinery
will soon become incapable of use. The worst thing that can be done with
a piece of cloth is to fold it away and leave it alone. Service is the
mission and the means to health of anything from a table fork to the
biceps muscle. This is the thing an article is built for. Nothing save
its possibilities for usefulness justifies the spending of money for it.
If it were not to be used, good judgment would never sanction the purchase
of it. It must be made to pay interest on the investment. Use alone proves
its right to exist.

A thing should be used as long as there is any usefulness left in it. One
of the points at which we are forever losing out in our attempts at
economy is in our habit of not waiting until we have exhausted the
usefulness of a thing before we put it aside and buy another.

This is the theory of the continual change taking place in styles. From
the tip of a lady’s shoe to the shape of an automobile, things are kept
continually changing in order to induce the public to buy new articles
every so often, whether it needs them or not. This keeps trade going, but
it keeps many people poor.

A thing for which one has spent good money should not only be used as long
as possible, but it should also be kept capable of use as long as
possible. Good care and proper attention in the way of repair will extend
its life very considerably. This is a matter of conservation as well as
one of economy.

Of course, there is no plan by which the ends of economy and thrift can be
accomplished automatically. The human factor will always be the
determining one. These principles will not practice themselves. Only human
mind and will can do that. They are not a machine for the conservation of
money. They are only a plan by which money may be made to accomplish
the most.

The poor we always have with us, but many of them are with us
unnecessarily. We shall always have a poverty problem, but it would be
reduced to a small minimum by the right use of money. Money is made to
spend, but the financially independent are those who have learned
to spend it wisely.


The Three Agencies in Child Training (1909)


Every normal child is born with certain tendencies and propensities in
which either the good or the evil of past generations preponderates. If it
is the good, there must be some agency to call forth, develop, and
strengthen it; if, on the other hand, it is the evil, there is all the
more need why some influence should be brought to bear to check the evil
and inculcate the good. Upon three great institutions devolves this
momentous responsibility. They are the home, the school, and the Church.
Each must help the other two, and no one is complete without the
co-operation of the others. Of the three, the home will perhaps come
nearest to completeness within itself. The sooner these three agencies,
which in the final analysis have a common purpose, come to understand each
other and co-operate with each other, the better it will be for the child.
For the responsibility of no one of the three ends with this life. The
Church is not the only one that builds for eternity, nor should the other
two be the only two that build for time, but all may well unite in
building for both time and eternity, and the aim of each should be the
perfection of personality.

Three forces of equal power, pulling each in a different direction, must
either offset the influence of each other and result in stationary
failure, or force each other to aimless wandering. Besides all this, the
strain is uncomfortably intense for the object upon which the pull is
exerted. The child who has had these influences pulling him about in
different or totally opposite directions all his life is an object
deserving of pity, and if in his case life becomes a failure, the wonder
will only be why the failure was not more complete. But when these forces
unite in a common purpose, and their purpose should be a common one, the
child can only blame himself if he does not attain some very definite
goal. And when that common purpose is a good one, that goal can not choose
but be a worthy one.

A great many parents are wondering these days why their children did not
grow up to be good. If their children are spiritually delinquent, they
blame the Church, regardless of what the home example or precept has been.
If the children use bad grammar or do not exercise good judgment, the
blame falls upon the school, regardless of the standards of those with
whom those children have spent the days of their mental unfolding.
Sometimes it is more than the Church can do to merely offset the evil done
at home, without ever reaching the aggressive side of development.
Sometimes it is more than lies within the ability of the school to rescue
the child from the misconceptions and errors of everyday life and speech,
without arriving at the constructive point at all. God has committed to
the home the arduous but sacred task of guiding the first faltering steps
of the little ones into the ways of righteousness and truth. The first is
out of the reach of the Church’s ability; the second is a part in
education that the school can never play. Neither the school nor the
Church is an orphans’ home for the purpose of taking the responsibility
of raising people’s children from the shoulders of those to whom it
belongs. They can only do their work upon the chief cornerstone of home
instruction, guidance, and discipline. Better children’s meetings can be
held at mother’s knee than anywhere else in the world, and it is wrong to
deny to maturity the golden memories of such a childhood. The business of
the Church is spiritual ministration, and it ought not to need to be
anything more. Spiritual ministration, however, is a broad term, and it
ought never to be allowed to center in earthly things. The home, then,
ought to be the first school, and it must lay proper foundation for the
work of the Church, for never will teachings be better learned nor longer
remembered than those received in its quiet precincts.

In this day, the school has been narrowed down in the scope of its work to
mere mental discipline. And yet the schools from whose halls the world’s
greatest minds have come, have not been mere knowledge machines. Our
schools claim to teach literature, and yet their curricula ignore the
greatest piece of literature ever written. In some States the law goes so
far as to forbid the reading of the Bible in the public schools on the
ground that it might engender sectarianism. The Bible is not a sectarian
book, nor does the teaching of it need to be sectarian. There is scarcely
a truly great life that is not a standing witness to the fact that
education is not complete without a knowledge of the Bible, at least as
literature and history. And yet pedagogical fads and public customs deny
public school students the benefit of the study of it. Public school
students are taught the pagan religions. They are taught the mythology of
Greece and Rome, but the living and vital religion, to which even the
school owes its being, is ignored for the petty fear of sectarianism. A
man’s education can not be measured by what he has committed to memory,
but by what he has learned by heart. Education is no more what one knows
than what he is. The school needs to train the mind, but it can not afford
to ignore the necessity of a right culture of the heart.

But it is scarcely a greater mistake for the school to hold itself
strictly to mental training to the exclusion of everything pertaining to
religion, than it is for the Church to hold itself strictly to religious
work to the exclusion of educative effort. In physical science, radiant
light and heat are exactly the same thing manifested to different avenues
of sense perception. Who knows but that in the spiritual realm, the light
of truer wisdom and the warmth of Christian experience are one and the
same thing, except that, in the one case, it is perceived through the mind
and, in the other, through the heart? Upon the Church devolves the
responsibility of lifting the thought of the community to whose needs it
ministers to the highest, purest, and best possible plane. In this
measure, it needs to be an educative influence. It will be able to reach
some minds through the heart, and it will be able to reach some hearts
through the mind, and in both cases it will be lifting men to God, who is
both love and light. What does it matter if the preacher does lecture once
in a while? The Old Book will always supply food for the profoundest
thought. We not only need our hearts comforted, however important that may
be, but if we expect to understand God’s message and plan, we will have to
think, also. Jesus was a Scholar and will baffle the scholarship of this
world for many years yet to come. Let the Church not ignore the
educational side of Christianity.

And so these three agencies can not encroach on each others’ territory,
for they have a common work to do if they are true to their trust. Let the
home give the first lessons, and all through the changing years let it be
both an educative and religious influence. Let the school be solicitous of
both the unfolding mind and the craving heart. Let the Church minister to
spiritual needs and not forget that the true education of the heart does
not despise the education of the mind. Then shall the child have it said
of him, as it was said of that Child of the long ago, “And He advanced in
wisdom, and in stature, and in favor with God and man.”


The Association of Mind and Muscle (1918)


In Nicholas Nickleby, the book in which Charles Dickens attempted to set
forth the evils of the boarding school system in England in his day, one
of the things at which we have sometimes pointed a finger of ridicule
really sets forth an important pedagogical principle. It is that part of
the story which tells how Squeers, the schoolmaster, first taught a boy
to spell a word—usually incorrectly—and then sent him to perform some
manual task associated with it. The imperfect spelling cannot be called
good pedagogy, and the work to be done was not always calculated to
contribute to the dignity of a gentleman, but it is a fact that there is
something about the actual doing of a thing which enables the memory the
more tenaciously to retain the concept of the thing itself.

In other words, there is some strange but very real and definite
association between the mind and the muscle. They act in close cooperation
with one another. The mind may be capable of learning things without the
corresponding action of the muscle, but it can learn a thing very much
more easily and permanently with that cooperative action.

This is a principle which runs through all educational effort. It has had
expression from quite remote times. An apostle reminded his hearers of
their duty to be doers of the word and not hearers only. His words
constituted a very good educational gospel. We not only owe it to
ourselves and to the world to act in accordance with the best of our
knowledge, but we actually learn better the thing which we take the time
and pains to do.

We have always had a certain notion that it is important to keep note
books. We have usually supposed that the chief value of a note book is in
the fact that it affords a means of quickly referring to any facts which
may have fled from memory. If this were the value of a note book, however,
those who keep them and then never look at them again would derive no
benefit from the process. Yet there are thousands of people who know that
they have received large value from the keeping of note books to which
they have never referred since they were written. The fact is that the
great value of a note book lies in the power of muscular action to record
upon the tablet of the mind the thing written down on paper. The fingers
themselves seem to possess a certain power to remember. We know a thing
better after having written it. One reason may be that the necessity of
writing it has forced us to think it through, but another undoubtedly is
the fact that the movement of the muscles inscribes its story in the
processes of the brain.

It is frequently noticeable, too, that a thing is better remembered after
it has been spoken. To give a class recitation upon it, to deliver an
address upon it, to make it a subject of conversation with a friend, or
even to talk aloud about it to the silences often engraves its subject
matter in the memory in an indelible fashion. The very movement of the
muscles of speech cooperated with the mind in making the subject an
everlasting possession. All this is simply another indication of the
principle involved. It also submits proof that there is a certain value
in saying what one honestly thinks or truly knows.

In this discussion lies a point of high value to the teacher. It is one
thing to get a pupil to take in the knowledge of a fact in such a way as
to retain it until some seemingly more commanding fact has forced it from
his thought. It is a very different, and a much better, thing to help him
to assimilate the matter in question. When knowledge has once been
assimilated, nothing save a mental breakdown can ever rob its owner of it.
It is then a part of himself. This is the goal of the teacher, and one of
the chief paths to it is to induce the pupil to live his knowledge as he
gains it.

When this is done, knowledge becomes more than a thing of the mind alone.
It is not our concern to merely educate the brain. It is our commission to
educate the whole life and to cultivate the entire being. Genuine
education is a symmetrical process, and the person who has really learned
a thing will profit from it in every interest of his life. As knowledge
becomes a matter of action, it becomes a matter of purpose, ideal,
and character.

In other words, it is translated into terms of life. It is at this point
that the teacher’s work reaches its highest stage of being and usefulness.
It is in this sense that both he and his work are immortal.

It would be a serious question whether our earnest attempts at teaching
the race would be altogether worth their while if they amounted to nothing
more than getting the young to know so many things, to possess such and
such a sized storehouse of knowledge, filled with appropriately selected
and labelled morsels of fact. It becomes a tremendously worthwhile
proposition, however, when it is seen as a means to a larger and richer
life. As knowledge is taught to a pupil, it should be as a means of
enabling him to live more happily, wholesomely, and successfully. It
should be as a sort of transfusion of blood for the living of the
larger life.

The principle stated here works both ways and with equal beauty either
way. Not only is it true that the actual doing of a thing enables one to
learn it better and works the knowledge deeper into life and experience,
but it is also true that it best vindicates the useful mission
of education.

It is not mere bookishness that the world will want on the part of the
girls and boys when they shall at last come to take their places in the
ranks of endeavor. It will be expecting people who are capable of earning
their keep. It will want them not only to be brilliant and cultivated, but
also to be able to meet practical questions and perform everyday tasks.

The boy or girl who has been trained to do the things he knows to do is
the one who will best prove to the world the value of the school and the
importance of the work of the teacher. The sending of such young people
into the arena of action will bring a flood of service which will spell
out an ever-accelerated progress for civilization.

It is definite action alone which achieves progress. All the mere
knowledge possible to men would not be of any real help, except insofar as
it finds its expression in definite and positive action. Mere knowledge is
like mere good intentions. Their presence is no better than their absence
until they are incarnated into deeds. Knowledge has the largest of all
potentialities for the good of mankind when it becomes calculated action
and wise service. For this reason, the entertaining of such an educational
ideal is significant for the good of the world as well as for the
educational progress of the pupil himself.

A Korean boy came to a missionary one day with the information that he had
learned the entire Sermon on the Mount by heart. The missionary
congratulated him upon his effort, but reminded him that it was a better
thing to follow its teachings than to learn to repeat its words.

“Oh,” said the boy, “That’s the way I learned it.” He had solved an
important pedagogical problem. It was the same old process that we saw in
the Squeers school. There it was grotesquely conceived and followed out,
but the effect lay along the right track. When a boy learned a thing, he
was told to go and do it.

The modern school must teach boys and girls much more dependable knowledge
than was imparted at Dotheboys Hall, and no modern teacher will abuse his
privilege and opportunity as did Mr. Squeers; but it will be a good thing
if it is remembered in the modern schoolroom that the educational ideal is
twofold. It demands, first, that the child shall be taught to know a
thing. It requires, second, that he shall not fail to make definite use of
the knowledge which he has gained. Thus it will be made to mean the most
in education to him and the most in service to the world.


The Sound-Reproducing Machine as a Music Teacher (1919)


Many changes for the better have taken place in American life during the
past two decades; among these is a remarkable advance in musical art,
knowledge, and appreciation. Europe once had sufficient grounds to look
down upon us for our crudity in matters musical, but now we are
beginning to have dignity and standing in the musical world.

In this marked advance, the sound-reproducing machine has borne an
important part. During the period named, it has evolved from the status
of a curious toy to that of a splendid instrument, present and active in
the best homes in this country.

It is true, people often start in with the flimsiest of popular music,
“rags,” “blues,” and such; but let one good classic find its accidental
way into this motley collection—and things begin to change. The taste of
the listener is on its way to better things.

The small daughter of a friend of mine stepped out from the home into
public school. At once, the parents were distressed to notice that she
began to show a taste for the cheapest sort of music—a natural contagion
from the class of children with whom she associated. The parents cast
about for an antidote to this ill. They found it in the purchase of a
sound-reproducing machine and an abundance of really good records—ranging
from simple ballads to symphony movements.

It worked. At once, instead of humming and whistling popular songs with
their often vulgar words, she begged for the better music of the machine
at home, and this music gradually pushed the other stuff out of her
mind—the inevitable action of good over bad. No doubt this little
seriocomedy has been enacted all over the country, raising the standard
of musical taste.

The sound-reproducing machine has inaugurated a veritable Democracy of
Music. To places inaccessible to the high-priced artist or teacher it has
come, bringing the best music, rendered in the best way, and at a
comparatively small cost—certainly much smaller than journeys to far-off
cities and the charge for seats at concerts. It is the tragedy of most
good things of this life that they go only to a special few. But the
sound-reproducing machine has been no respecter of persons—it goes into
the humble home as well as into the wealthy one. Anyone can spend fifty
cents or a dollar a week on a new record. And for this small sum there
are hours of pleasure and musical profit. This is the reason why it has
become such a strong factor in our musical life and the reason par
excellence why we are well on the way to becoming a seriously
musical nation.


The School Teacher and the Republic (1920)


At Plymouth, Massachusetts, there stands the monument which memorializes
the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers and the ideals for which they stood.
The Pilgrim Monument lifts aloft five sculptured figures, each symbolic
of one of the moving and controlling principles of early New England
life. The large central figure bears the name of Faith. At each of the
four corners stands one of four others—Freedom, Law, Morality,
and Education.

These things represent fundamental principles in the moulding of our
nation and its life. We have all profited more than we have realized from
the fact that they had a place in the characters, minds, and purposes of
our forefathers. Each is highly important, but the Pilgrims would have
been seriously in error if they had failed to include the last named.

That they did not fail to include it is evidenced by the fact that, very
early in the colonial history of America, representative leaders met in
conference on the question of establishing a free system of public
schools. There is hardly a better recommendation for a nation or a more
dependable indication of its quality than the fact that its system of
free public schools dates almost back to the time of its original
settlement. Such is the case with America. At no period in her history
has she been unaccustomed to the sight of the pedagogue.

America has been made what she is largely by means of the public school.
If she is democratic, it is largely because the public school has so
faithfully sown the seeds of democracy in the thinking of her boys and
girls in their plastic periods. In so far as she is clean and righteous,
the fact is largely due to the teaching the children have received in the
public schools. Their work in character-building, their inculcation of the
principles of scientific temperance, and now their efforts to teach
Americanism to all classes and ages have all been good seed sown in
fertile and productive soil. Today every schoolhouse is a symbol of
freedom, of democracy, and of productive efficiency. To neglect the
schools would be to neglect the source of much that is entirely necessary
in the nation’s life.

What America did for herself by means of the school in the days when her
interests did not reach beyond her own borders, she has since done by the
same means in the territories for which she has assumed responsibility.
Since Spain ceded the Philippines to us, the life of their people has
been entirely regenerated. The old insanitary cities with their shacks
and their squalor have changed into orderly and well-improved
municipalities. The unkempt and ignorant people are now bright,
industrious, and efficient. A practically savage land has become a
civilized one in slightly more than two decades.

Alaska has been transformed from a fruitless wilderness into a territory
of awakened and forward-looking people. They have developed such
industries as their land would support. They have achieved a large degree
of economic independence. They acquitted themselves with as great credit
as did almost any of the states in the various responsibilities incident
to the war. They have cleaned up their towns and developed their social
institutions. Through their town meetings, they are becoming more and more
a self-governing people.

Hawaii is rapidly learning to make the most of herself. Porto Rico is
doing the same. The new Virgin Islands will follow along in the same
course the others have travelled. Cuba has developed in the last twenty
years largely because of the start American leadership, organization, and
education gave her. Panama has been revolutionized by American influence.

There are, of course, a number of answers to the question as to why all
this has happened. One of the chiefest of them, however, is the work of
the public school system inaugurated wherever the hand of America holds
sway for any length of time. Even the leadership, the scientific
attainment, the medical skill, the genius for organization, and the
commercial power that have entered into the moulding of these new
civilizations all owe themselves, in greater or less degree, to the public
school and to the work of the teacher.

Our plight would be sorry indeed had it not been for the presence of the
little red school house among us. No country has ever gotten along without
it and escaped the penalty which Fate is certain to impose. The situation
in Russia now is undoubtedly largely the result of the age-long lack of an
adequate educational system. Civilization simply cannot be moulded without
the patient and painstaking work of the pedagogue.

Bismarck once said that whatever one would put into the state he must
first put into the schools. This was a great utterance, and its truth has
been repeatedly demonstrated in the years since. His own country used the
principle wrongly, but her use of it demonstrated its correctness. When
William II came to the German throne, he did not long retain Bismarck as
his chancellor, but he did follow many of Bismarck’s policies to the end
of his career. This was one of them.

Imperial Germany was largely built upon this principle. The educational
system from the beginner’s classes to the universities was standardized
and utilized to inculcate the Pan-German theory of the state and its
development. Philosophy was prostituted to this end. Literature and art
were bought by the state for its own purposes. History was written with
the ambitions of the state in view. According to the German theory, this
was perfectly proper, for, as General von Bernhardi once said, “There is
no power above the state.” The result is familiar. A loyal nation and a
mighty military power were built up by first putting into the schools what
the leaders wished to inject into the life of the state.

Under German guidance, Turkey did much the same thing.
When Abd-ul-Hamid II was dethroned in 1909, and the Young Turk party came
into power, an imperialistic program was undertaken in behalf of the
Ottoman state. One of the first things done was to standardize the
educational system and set it to work to weave the Ottoman spirit and
faith into the lives of the young.

The leading military spirit of Turkey for centuries was the organization
of soldiers called the Janizaries. This organization was started in the
fourteenth century by Orkhan, son of Osman. The first members of it were
the children exacted as tribute from conquered Christian peoples. It was
kept up afterward by levying a tax on Christian towns to be paid in
children. These children of Christian parents were trained to be Turks,
Mohammedans, and soldiers, and they became all three things with a
vengeance. They were the most loyal Turks, the most fanatical Mohammedans,
and the most cruel soldiers. Such is the force of education. One may take
a vine and train it in any direction. One may take a young life and make
of it what he will.

Germany and Turkey used the power of the school wrongly, of course, but
they demonstrated what can be done with it. It is as great a force for
weal as it is for woe, and America has thus far used it for the doing of
good things rather than evil. The possibilities of education in either
direction are practically boundless.

When one speaks of the public school system, he speaks really of an army
of teachers. A school has buildings and books, but it is really made and
determined by the teacher. One may have a school without either a building
or a book, but he cannot have one without a teacher.

The nation cannot recognize its obligation to the teacher too soon or too
completely. He has never received his just due, and the time has come when
we need to take an inventory of the service he has rendered and reward him
in some fair proportion to it. What we do for him we really do for the
country and its future.


Some Overlooked Compensations in Teaching (1920)


The economic aspect of the teaching profession has never been encouraging.
It was least so at the close of the recent great war. In 1918 we were
paying our male teachers the munificent wage of $82.35 per month for the
six to nine months of the year during which they were employed. During the
same period, our female teachers were getting an average of $64.72.

The natural consequence of such a situation was a shortage of teachers.
A report of the Federal Bureau of Education indicated that the shortage
in 1918 was not less than 30,000. About 87,500 new recruits are needed
annually for the rural schools alone. In 1916 we graduated less than
one-third of that number from all our teacher-training
institutions together.

In former days a young man was usually delighted to obtain a position on a
college faculty. Recently a senior in a state university was offered a
position in the Chemistry department and refused it, on the ground that it
might tie him up to the teaching profession and thus commit him to
poverty. This attitude is not one of utter selfishness on the part of
young people. Most of them are willing to serve their day, and allow the
reward to be a secondary consideration. They feel, however, that they have
a right to physical comfort while they do serve. They realize that the
standards of the profession are high in every way, and they feel that
such exacting requirements warrant good pay.

They are right; yet there are certain aspects of the teaching profession
which they should not overlook. It involves less pay than it should, but
it also involves certain compensations, some of which are very valuable
and some of which are priceless. It places in the hands of those who
choose it privileges which many of the rich would gladly give their gold
to obtain. It brings within the scope of their experience things which
many men, otherwise successful, have been disappointed in not possessing.

One of these is the privilege of living in the atmosphere and under the
influence of the best thought of all the ages. It is a great mistake to
suppose that bread and raiment are the only necessities of life. Some of
its intellectual and spiritual necessities are quite as commanding as its
physical ones. Those who fail to obtain them pay the penalty by living
cramped lives and usually dying with their deeper longings unsatisfied.
Good pictures, good music, good books, and good friends are among the
kinds of meat that never perish. The values they bring are everlasting.

A man’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.
When one has made a living, he has not necessarily lived. He has made only
it possible to exist while he tries to live. His life is made up of the
thoughts he thinks, the hopes he entertains, the associations he enjoys,
and the tasks he performs. Earth and its physical necessities are only the
stage and the setting for the drama. The play itself lies beyond them and
is separate from them. The teacher is permitted to play always a
leading role.

He also enjoys the privilege of doing a work which carries with it
something of its own reward. Some kinds of work detract from one’s
strength and fitness. The work of the teacher adds to them. Each lesson
he prepares leaves him by so much bigger and stronger. Each problem he
masters adds to his mental sinew. Each instance in which he helps someone
on the way benefits him more than it does the recipient of his attention.
His is a treasure which only increases by being given away. His is the
blessing of daily growth and development.

Another compensation he enjoys is the privilege of living among the best
people of the community. One is largely made by his associations, and his
success in life depends largely on the type of friends he can cultivate.
His admittance into the best society is itself a long step on the road
to the highest success.

The ordinary person must live in a new community for a long while before
the best people make up their minds regarding him. Even after a long
period of decision, they do not always see their way clear to admit him
to their circle. The teacher is excused from much of this severe testing.
His very work serves as his credentials. People assume that if he is a
successful teacher he is eligible for the best society anywhere, and they
are usually right about it.

This means very much indeed. One cannot hope to reach a much higher level
than that of the society in which he moves. A certain law of social
erosion is always operative. By it the minds and personalities of people
so act and react upon one another that they all tend to become alike.
This being true, one cannot afford to move in any but the best society
into which he can find his way. This is a matter in which the teacher
has no difficulty.

The teacher obtains a high value in the simple consciousness of being a
worth-while person. One does not have to proclaim such a fact to the
world. If it is true, the world is quite certain to learn about it. It
brings health to one’s body and soul, however, for one to be able to feel
honestly that his life is not a failure. It is a blessed thought to
entertain that one really stands for something in his generation.

The teacher can congratulate himself that he is a world builder. He has
his hand upon the throttle of human progress. He turns the key that
swings open the gate of the future.

The inner life which he possesses is coveted by thousands who can never
have it. They may try to substitute what money can buy for what only
mind can possess, but the effort always ends in pitiful failure. One
cannot long conceal a lack of mind and soul with clothes and paint. The
result is only a vulgar display. The more flash and parade the ignorant
indulge in, the cheaper they look.

The person who possesses real quality and worth does not have to cover
himself over with artificialities and affectations. He has only to
stand forth as he is. The soul within him will tell its own story. Despite
all the cheap ways in which the world indulges, its real hunger is for
genuine worth, unveneered culture, real character.

Some have missed these things because they made the mistake of setting out
to make money alone. If one can have both these things and wealth, so much
the better. If one must choose between the two, however, there is no
question that money is the second choice. Thousands of people of every age
could testify from their own experience that this is true.

One can do much more working for society than he can if he works only for
himself. Incidentally, he may fare best from a selfish point of view when
all things have been considered.

For many years an old colored woman sold peanuts on the grounds of
Tuskegee Institute. A young negro girl who had just enrolled was one day
admiring the buildings. Coming from a poor home in a backward community,
she was amazed that one man had been able to gather together enough money
to erect them.

“If Dr. Washington had worked for himself instead of running this school,
wouldn’t he have been rich?” she said one day to the old peanut woman.

“Law, child! He wouldn’t a been worth a nickel,” was the reply.

She was probably right. Plenty of people have made their only claim to
riches by serving others. Others, with talents as promising, have spent
their lives on mediocre levels, because it never occurred to them to live
for anything but themselves.


Dollars Versus Sense (1921)


In their normal and proper relations, money and learning are very helpful
each to the other. Money is not only a desirable thing but a necessary one
in the work of building up our educational systems. Certain items of
material equipment nothing but money can provide. It is also the only
thing which can obtain certain purely educational values in the way of
teaching talent. As educational processes become more elaborate and
complete, they cost more.

On the other hand, education exerts a natural and favorable reaction upon
money-making. In this country, where the educational aim is not so much to
turn out gentlemen of leisure as it is to manufacture sons of toil, school
training is one of the greatest aids in the increase of earning capacity.
Statistics proving by figures that the product of the schools can make
more money than the uneducated man can do are familiar to us all. This is
not the highest possible motive for the getting of an education, but it is
a motive which is worth considering.

However, there is something about great economic wealth in a country which
seems to make against the interest of education. This is a surprising
fact, but it is a fact nevertheless. One might most easily think the
reverse would be true. Certainly it is true that the greater wealth a
country possesses the more it could afford to invest in education if it
cared to do so. It looks like a safe assumption that a long step in the
direction of intellectual greatness would have been taken when a people
becomes great commercially. However, this assumption is not borne out by
the facts. There seems to be more truth, especially from the educational
viewpoint, in the idea that where wealth accumulates, men decay.

This principle is nothing new. It seems to be clearly indicated in
history. At least one instance may be cited from the story of quite
ancient times to indicate how true to form things have always run.

The Phoenician Empire was one of the most remarkable dominions of the
ancient world. Geographically it was small. It was only about 140 miles
long and 15 miles wide, skirted by the sea on one side and by a mountain
range on the other. With the well-known Semitic genius for trading, its
people planted colonies, operated mines, and established trading points
on many rivers and seas. The volume of their trade was never surpassed
until that day, centuries afterward, when the discovery of America opened
up a new world to exploitation.

In the process of their trading, the Phoenicians carried letters and arts
to many Old World lands. They were not their own letters and arts. All
the intellectual treasures they had were borrowed from others. They were
too busy buying and selling to take time to develop any of their own.
Consequently, the only monument to Phoenicia that remains today is the
memory of her commercial greatness. She concerned herself only with that
which was temporary. She built nothing that could endure.

That period which was characterized by the most serious search for
knowledge in America came during the poorer days of our people. The
educational facilities of that period were meager. The highest diploma
then given represented a degree of learning which almost anyone may
easily obtain now. Yet those were days when young people endured the most
severe sacrifice in order to obtain a measure of educational advantage for
themselves. From the modern educational viewpoint, the little red school
house at the cross roads may look like a rather poor affair, but it housed
some tremendously earnest spirits. Some of our most distinguished public
servants were there prepared for usefulness to their times.

In those days, poverty threw some severe limitations around the young
person seeking an education. At the same time, it provided a great
incentive to go forward, and it placed behind the obtaining of an
education a motive that was of great credit and value. Many young people
defeated the limitations of poverty by winning scholarships. This within
itself was of great value because it required a high standard of
studentship. Its advantage is unknown in the institution which caters to
rich men’s sons.

We have been through our periods of poverty that pinched boys and girls
into preparing themselves for better things. We have also had our periods
of economic independence. We have just emerged from one of actual
prodigality. Its unfavorable effect upon education cannot escape our eyes.

Conditions incident to the war write a few entries on the credit side of
the ledger. It put many soldier boys into schools for technical training.
It helped to awaken the country to its weakness along these lines. These
things, however, were overshadowed by the way in which the recent period
of swollen incomes made against learning.

The high wages of the war period and of the time immediately following it
lured from the schools a vast number who would otherwise have remained.
The economic incentive to getting an education was removed. It was a time
when a boy could obtain high wages without learning. In many cases he
could go into the shops and get better pay than his instructors were
receiving for work that demanded thorough preparation and
intense application.

Statistics showing how much more money the educated man could make had
lost their meaning. The time had come when brawn possessed greater
earning capacity than brain. School men all over the country had hard
work to keep their schools from going to pieces because of the depletion
in attendance which they suffered.

It was only natural that this situation should make teachers restless.
Their pay had never been adequate, and now they saw it dwindling to a
still smaller figure in comparison with that of a day laborer. The morale
of the teaching force was disturbed everywhere. Many teachers found other
work. The American school faced a crisis. That crisis seems now to be
passing, partly because teachers are being better compensated and partly
because the abnormal production, the prodigal buying, and the inflated
wages of the war period are over.

The same disturbance showed itself on college faculties. One state
university lost twenty-three men in a single year because the whole
country was growing rich and leaving them poorer than they were before.
One prominent member of a certain university faculty resigned to enter
the employ of a firm headed by one of his former students.

Technical schools had the same trouble. During 1919 when the country was
literally rolling in wealth, there was very little increase in the amount
of money placed at the disposal of agricultural schools in America.
Meanwhile, the various industries with their offers of better salaries
had taken many of the best teachers from these institutions. The Secretary
of Agriculture hoisted the danger signal by declaring that our nation must
have a well-balanced program of research and that the most capable staffs
possible must be secured and maintained.

One of the chief troubles with a great commercial period is its
preoccupation with material things. Minds become cloyed; hearts grow dull;
and souls grow no wings with which to lift themselves above the mire and
the clay. When a generation gets too busy to read books, hear music, and
encourage learning, it is an easy thing for its sons to assume that a job
is better than an education.


Education and Production (1921)


A few years ago so great an emphasis on manual training and industrial
arts was evident in our school work that some feared a decline in the
cultural ideal in the educational process. The trend was bringing its
benefits, to be sure, but there seemed ground for fear that the end
might be a generation educated in hand and seriously lacking in educated
mind and personality.

It has not worked out as many expected it would. The result has rather
been the contrary one. We face today an unexpected situation at the close
of a war that has tried the powers and resources of the earth. We have an
abundance of people who are willing to work at seemingly dignified and
necessarily high-salaried tasks. We have a shortage of men willing to do
the manual labor necessary to make the world go round.

The difficulty does not lie in any lack of training for manual tasks. We
have never had so many people with hands trained to construct buildings
and machinery, to set type, and to till soil to the best advantage. The
schools have been training people for this kind of work long enough so
that several graduating classes have been emptied out into the arena of
the world’s life. The number is constantly increasing. Yet the shortage
seems to grow.

The trouble seems to root in a certain mistaken attitude toward labor.
Our people do not find it easy to get over the notion that gentlemen do
not labor with their hands. The idea persists, in spite of all the wealth
of our philosophy to the contrary, that a certain aristocracy inheres in
idleness. People are ashamed to be seen in their working clothes, and if
anyone comes upon them when they are engaged in some manual task, they are
prone to make excuses. They seem to feel that they have been overtaken in
a fault.

Parents, trained in the ways mentioned, are partially responsible. Many of
them go on in the path of error, despite the fact that they realize their
mistaken attitude. Their solicitude for their children impels them, and it
often impels them to courses that are not best for the
children themselves.

Just the other day I heard a mother say that she realized the need of the
world for workers, and that she realized the benefits of work to the
individual. Yet she could not bring herself to feel willing that her two
sons should spend their lives working with their hands.

“I cannot help wanting them to prepare for some line of work that will be
easy and dignified,” she said.

So the story has been through the years. So long as this is the motive
from which parents send their sons and daughters to school we can hardly
expect any great change in the situation.

A certain notion persists that education and work are incompatible. The
assumption is that something is wrong when an educated man is seen
employed at something involving physical exertion.

The other day a friend told me that he had just learned a strange thing.
In a certain nearby city, he said, a graduate of the state university and
of a well-known law school was working as a motorman on a street car.

Perhaps something had gone wrong in the case of this man. The wages now
paid to street car motormen compare so poorly with the money made by a
successful lawyer that one is naturally led to this suspicion. At the
same time, however, there is no reason why educated men should despise
such work as that of a motorman. Neither is there any reason why the
position of a motorman should not be made attractive to men of the
highest grade.

The day is coming when low grade men will not be desired for any kind of
work on earth. If there is real truth in the old saying that whatever is
worth doing at all is worth doing well, we shall gradually learn that we
must set men at all our work who are capable of doing it well. It is a
great question whether cheap labor is really cheap after all. The chances
are that the most capable labor obtainable in any line is the
highest economy.

In a recent short story, one colored man is made to remark to another
that work is not to be expected from a gentleman of brains like himself.
“Brains,” he went on to say, “is to keep you from wukkin’.”

This has too long been the general notion about intellectual ability.
Training, both real and fancied, has too often been made the excuse for
parasitism. The purpose of education is not to qualify one for getting
through life on a minimum of toil. It is rather calculated to enable one
to perform a maximum of work with a minimum of friction and waste.
In other words, education at its best is not a means to idleness but
to efficiency.

The most representative products of our best schools are sufficient proofs
of the productive element in the highest educational ideal. They are not
idlers, but workers. Their work does not consist of mere fuss and parade.
It brings forth the fruit of achievement. The idler is either a product of
no school at all, a product of a school with a mistaken educational ideal,
or a mutation from the really cultured type.

In this regard, our notion of education is essentially different from the
European one. In the Old World, the prevailing idea of an educational
institution was that its work was the preparation of young people to be
polished aristocrats. The desired product was the graceful and courtly
gentleman or lady. That conception may have been somewhat changed by the
war, but such was what it was before the world was so largely made over
in that great crucible of death.

Our idea of the aim of education is much the same here, except that our
schools and teachers try to foster a somewhat different idea of what it
takes to make an aristocrat. They do not proceed upon the theory that an
idler is an aristocrat. The accepted canon in educational circles is that
a man is not trained at all unless trained to be good for something, and
that he must prove his culture by bringing forth fruits meet for it.

In their efforts to establish the productive ideal in the thinking of the
public as well as in the work of the school itself, our educational system
has many handicaps to overcome. One of them is the fact that idleness has
been so long and so well glorified in fiction and on the moving picture
screen. Too many characters that walk before the eyes of our people,
especially the boys and girls, are rich without working for their wealth.
They live in palatial houses. They wear the finest of clothing. They
indulge in the most expensive pleasures. Yet they toil not, neither do
they spin.

This sort of thing has soaked into the public mind pretty deeply. It has
exerted its effect upon the life of this generation. The number who would
like to live without much exertion are a more or less direct result of it.
It is one of the things that must be overcome. Some day it will begin to
right itself, for the public will realize the mistaken assumption
underlying it. Then a reaction will set in, but we dare not wait for the
reaction. We must be trying to stem the current for the sake of those who
need to be shown the light now. Just now we are probably at the crest of
the billow.

It is to the credit of the public school system that it has always
glorified work. We have never needed work and workers so much as we do
now. Our armies have torn the world to pieces. We must now have workers
to rebuild it into a finer and grander thing than it was before.
Therefore, the person who expects to take up room on it and live from it
must produce. The life of society is co-operative. Each must do his share.
The test of learning is service.


The School as a Reform Agency (1921)


In the little red school house that stood on the hillside thirty years ago
some crude things were done. At the same time, some very important and
helpful things were done. Even some of the crude things now seem to have
had an indispensable value. The years teach us that the only test of the
correctness of any educational method is its result in terms of life.

In those days a great deal of moralizing was done. A moral was drawn from
everything. The great bulk of the teaching was didactic. Each lesson in
the old-fashioned reader had its definite ethical point. Often the moral
was stated in so many words at the end. Patriotism, thrift, industry, the
fact that there is always room at the top—all these things came in for
their share of attention. The result was a patriotic, thrifty,
industrious, and ambitious generation of people. We owe that generation
and its work largely to the teacher who did not fear to frankly face the
moral implications of things. He may have moralized a little too much,
but his work had its effects for good.

The history of the world is largely made up of actions and reactions. The
reaction against all this came on in due time. We witnessed the
development of a great dislike for all stories with apparent morals and
of a distinct resentment against all didactic teaching. We still make some
effort at character-building, but that effort is usually veiled and often
neglected altogether.

Certain things will help to show whether we have gained or lost by this
change in our educational policy. Let us take, for instance, the matter of
patriotism. The Spanish-American War of 1898 came on before the old order
ended. Every youth wanted to go because the country was aflame with zeal
for the American cause. The recent world war came after a new generation
of school boys had grown up. The necessities incident to that conflict
disclosed the fact that American loyalty was partly asleep. It took very
serious efforts to wholly awaken it.

Take the question of thrift. The successful business man of today, that
loyal public servant who carries the economic responsibilities of the
country so capably, is a product of the times when some new lesson in
thrift and industry came in each day of the public school course. Many
a man who has succeeded would testify now that his first impulse to try
came from the reading of the sayings of Poor Richard or some similar
material. Since such things have been largely dropped, we have on our
hands a growing race of spendthrifts.

All this is not merely comparing the present unfavorably with the past.
Everyone knows that we cannot properly do so. Taken as a whole, the public
school is now far in advance of what it was in the days of the little red
school house. The present purpose is to point out to the educator the
really incomparable power and opportunity that are his. Whatever the
future contains, the school teacher holds the key to it. The possession of
great power is at once an opportunity and a peril, but the teacher
certainly possesses that power. It is a wonderful thing to mould the
world’s life into right patterns. It is a fearful thing to mould it
wrongly, or to fail to mould it when one might. The teacher can do any one
of these.

Bismarck once said: “Whatever you would put into the state you must first
put into the schools.” The truth of his statement was well proven in the
subsequent history of the empire of which he was then chancellor. A whole
people was led astray by being fed upon the false philosophy of Nietzsche
and others. The Teuton mind and heart could not have been so completely
shackled by any other means than the processes of popular education.

When the Ottoman Empire was first founded, its fiercest military
organization, the Janizaries, was recruited wholly from the children of
Christian parents, taken from their homes in battle or exacted from their
towns as tribute. They made the fiercest of soldiers, the most loyal of
Turks, and the most fanatical of Mohammedans. This is but an example of
what education will do.

When Germany took Alsace-Lorraine from France in 1870, her first task was
the Teutonizing of the people. She began by introducing the German
language in the schools and the press—both educational agencies. When the
Young Turks wrested his empire from Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid II, in 1909, they
began making it over according to their own fanciful dreams by introducing
their ideals into the school system.

Certainly the school can be made as potent a force for good as for evil.
In fact, it has been made such a force in certain instances. Prohibition
of the liquor traffic was a long time coming in America, but it came as
soon as we adopted the best means of establishing a better order of
things. A careful analyst of social influences could have told almost the
year it would arrive. He would have taken the date when Scientific
Temperance became a public school subject and then have reckoned how long
it would take the boys and girls of that period to come into control of
the country. When that time arrived America went dry. Bismarck was right.

There are plenty of reasons why it happens this way. One is the general
fact that people do about as well as they know. Most evils remain only
because people do not realize that there is a better way. When the facts
are laid before them, they generally act accordingly.

Another is the fact that ideals and truths can be built into the lives of
growing boys and girls more readily and more firmly than in those of older
people. A child can learn a foreign language more readily than can an
adult. It is the same with an ethical ideal. The growing life most easily
adapts itself to newly discovered fact.

Another is the natural position of authority occupied by the teacher. His
words are taken as those of an oracle. Children who refuse to heed the
instructions of their parents take those of their teachers as final.

Still another is the amount of time the child is surrounded by school
influences. No other institution has any such chance at him as does the
public school. He spends as many waking hours there as he does at home,
or more.

Knowledge alone does not constitute education. The etymology of the word
education is sufficient to indicate a very much wider scope. Education
has to do with the whole life. Its measure is not merely how many
questions one can answer, but how well he can realize upon himself in the
actual affairs of life. Therefore, the school has for its work the making
of men and women, and the person who builds manhood and womanhood may well
remember that in doing so he is building the future. We can never have a
world that is anything more or less than it is made by the people who live
in it.

The highest grade of manhood and womanhood cannot be built without a
considerable amount of ethical teaching. No matter what we do now, the
action and reaction law of history will ultimately sweep us back again to
the moralizing days. Then we shall carry didacticism to the same extreme
that we are now carrying the lack of it. A better way is to have a
reasonable amount of it all the while.

Dr. Thomas Arnold of Rugby had a clear conception of the ethical phases of
the highest educational ideal. He once said that he did not merely seek to
turn out young men trained to take first in the schools, but “thoughtful,
manly-minded men, conscious of duty and obligation.” Such is the largest
service the school can render to the world, because it constantly sweeps
us in the direction of a better order of things.


The Same Face (1915)


Along our years motherhood has planted three pictures that are so good for
us to see that love and memory should always keep them bright. Pictures of
sentiment they may be. Call them so if you will. But they are,
nevertheless, the anchors that have held many a soul from sinking in the
mire of life’s way.

The first is the picture of the young face that bent above us when we were
babes—a face wistfully tender and wonderfully touched with the glow of
parenthood’s first self-consciousness. The lips move. They never knew the
name of love so well until they had trembled in the midst of dismal floods
for love’s own sake. They never knew the voice of prayer so well until the
burden of creation came to be shared by the heart behind them. We did not
suspect the love that throbbed in that heart above us and gave strength to
the arms that held us. We know something of it now—and appreciate the debt
that never can be paid.

The next is the airy and elusive picture of our own futures which her fond
hopes painted on the shadowed walls of the old room at home or in the air
above our beds as we slept. Those pictures were too perfect, of course,
for the hope and love were perfect that imaged them. She thought us better
than we were and had more faith in us than we ever had in ourselves. But,
what a garden this world would be if we refrained from violating at least
the spirit of the dreams that thronged her mind when we were still wrapped
in the unconsciousness of the years before the awakenings came.

The last picture is seen not by looking backward but by looking forward.
The other two are memories. This is an anticipation. They sadden us. This
fills us with a wondrous joy. Many times we have seen her waiting face and
her hand upon the gate at evening time. If we look, we can see her yonder
now—ahead of us. The face that bent above the way’s beginning looms also
at its close. It is older and gentler and touched with a perfect light.
But it is the same face—and her hand is on the gate.


The Will (1915)


I used to pass daily a very pretty and well-formed tree. I admired it so
much and saw it so often that, at length, I came to feel toward it as
though it were a friend. I often reflected that the reason why it was so
lovely a thing was the fact that it had not possessed the power to refuse
to obey the bidding of its Maker.

I thought that if a man were will-less, as is a tree or a flower, his life
would be as harmonious and as beautiful as theirs. But there is within him
that voice which so often speaks against the divine command that he is
robbed of much that is godlike within him. I thought that the dictates of
that stubborn and willful voice had spoiled so many of God’s plans and
man’s prospects that we might all be better without it.

One morning, after there had been a windstorm during the night, I walked
as usual past the tree. It lay prostrate and helpless on the ground. I was
surprised to see that what had been so well-formed without had been hollow
and rotten within. This had so weakened it that, when the test came, it
had been the first to fall. Others—not so lovely—had stood because they
were sound.

The tree had possessed no will with which to disobey its Creator. Neither
had it possessed a will with which to stand in the face of the storm.
Least of all had it possessed a will to rise again.

I had seen men have the will to disobey, yet when they had wandered into a
far country and had become sick of the husks of sin, I had seen them have
the will to come back again and give themselves to a noble purpose. The
will of man is not only his danger, but it is also his hope. By it he may
fall, but by it he may rise again to better things. It may whisper to him
the word of temptation, but it may also become his strength for an hour of
triumph. He needs not a life without a will which can lead him astray. He
needs a will subjected to a high ideal and to the traversing of the
highway of truth and right.


The Sword that Keeps the Past (1916)


At the gateway of every Eden from which one has gone forth fallen and
disgraced, there hangs a sword of flame to keep the way of a misspent
past. We control the present. The future will be what we choose to make
it. But there is no hand strong enough to lay hold upon the gate of the
day that is gone. The past is what we have made it, and such it must
forever remain.

The most fruitless of all wishes is that one might go back and retrace the
way he has come, that he might travel with surer feet. There are points
all along the way where we would prize an opportunity to undo some wrong,
unsay some word, or perform some omitted deed of helpfulness. We feel that
we could do infinitely better if we had another chance. Heaven may be
willing to grant most of our wishes to do better, but this is one which
has never yet been granted to a child of earth. The voice with which we
cry into the past is echoless, and ineffectual are the hands with which
we beat against its closed portals.

There is only one way to change the past, and that is to change it before
it becomes the past. To-morrow the present will be a part of the past. The
day after to-morrow a part of what is now the future will have gone
forever. Only that part of the eternal duration which is yet unspent still
lies within our control. Very swiftly it flies by us, but not so swiftly
but that we can tinge it with the very color of our souls as it passes.

Thus, after all, we are the architects of human destiny. The very trend of
the ages is entrusted to our hands. As we mould the present we are
moulding history, and as we work out our own little lives we are affecting
all time to come. Men must always remember the things we are doing as
history. None will have power to change them when they are past.

Make this day what you desire through all eternity to remember it as
having been. It must dwell in your thoughts forever as a piercing thorn or
a blooming flower. Your hand is on its gate for the last time.
It is a day of judgment.


The Fountain of Youth (1917)


The past ages had a remarkable story about a fountain of youth, the waters
of which possessed the power to keep one young forever. Some of the early
explorers of America were lured on their way by the hope of finding that
spring of unfailing vitality somewhere in the Western World. But they died
without having realized their dream. They failed to realize it because
they had supposed the fountain of youth to be a localized thing. As a
matter of fact, location has little to do with it.

There is a fountain of youth. Its place, however, is limited neither by
the balmy waters of the southern seas nor by the icy fastnesses of arctic
regions. Such as it is, it exists everywhere. The healing of its waters is
not denied to any seeker. Like most priceless things, it is as well within
the reach of the poor as of the rich. It is the privilege and opportunity
of high and lowly alike.

One of the paths to the fountain of youth is a right attitude of mind and
right habits of thought. While many have been seeking vainly through the
world for the desired fountain, they were all the while unconsciously
carrying it about within their own inner lives.

One is as old as the spirit within him. The outer life simply takes the
mould of the inner thought. The marks of age take possession of one’s
frame in approximate proportion to the degree of his surrender to them.
A landscape bears the color of the spectacles of the beholder. The whole
world has for a norm the attitude of the individual toward it. When the
mind grows sluggish and purposeless, the spirit of age has laid hold upon
its possessor. While the mind remains clear and fresh, with its vigor
unabated, the individual still shares in the saving waters of the immortal
fountain. The date of one’s birth may be misleading, but the spirit of his
soul never is.

One stands each moment upon the threshold between the past and the future.
It is for him to decide which shall claim his thought. Youth dwells upon
the future, because the future holds its hopes and plans. Age dwells upon
the past, because the past holds the memory of its activities and kindred
ties. While one keeps his face to the future, he remains young. When he
begins to live in the past, he is allowing himself to grow old. There is
a sweetness about an occasional hour spent in roaming the halls of memory,
but in to-morrow lie life’s supreme considerations.

Those who keep thinking and toiling grow old more slowly than do those who
relinquish their hold upon the activities and the concerns of life. Body
and spirit alike begin the process of atrophy on the day when interests
begin to decay. When the mind and the hand pass to rest, the body may be
expected to soon share their slumber. This is the reason why so many busy
people grow old so courageously. It also suggests the reason why so many
fail to long outlive their active days. Only while the mind craves
knowledge and the heart feels the throb of the social impulse does the eye
remain undimmed and the natural force unabated.

A second path to the fountain of youth is that of right living. This is
not merely implicit obedience to arbitrary law. It is living in harmony
with the universe. Without it youth can never long remain.

A very marked type of divine healing is to be found in the abounding
health which is the result of living in accord with the divine laws of
nature. The finest instances of that healing are perhaps to be found in
the absence of diseases that have never occurred. In other words, its
chief usefulness is preventive.

In a wholly Christian race of men there would be but a minimum of disease.
Insurance companies understand this fact. The physical decay of the body
is chiefly the result of inroads made by disease, and the greatest
fostering influence of disease is wrongdoing. Both directly and
indirectly, sin works havoc with mankind. Physical abnormalities root in
someone’s disregard for established laws. In one case the sin may be one
of intentional wrongdoing, and in another it may be the equally
disastrous one of common ignorance and carelessness.

The Hebrews furnish a notable instance of racial vitality. They are what
they are to-day largely as a result of the fact that their remote
forefathers were born and nurtured in camps and cities where uncleanness
was a disgrace and where a violation of the laws of life was a sin. The
laws of right living are not merely a list of arbitrary regulations, the
highest design of which is to prove the willingness of men to obey them.
They are the provisions of a kind Providence for humanity’s own welfare
and progress.

A third path to the fountain of youth is the conservation of health
along scientific lines. This may involve medical means frequently, and
it may, on occasion, even involve surgical means. It will most generally,
however, involve conformity to a liberal knowledge of the ways of nature.

Dr. Metchnikoff, the great Russian scientist, who spent his last years in
Paris, has given to the world some illuminating discoveries upon this
question of old age. He long suspected that the thing we have been calling
by the name of old age, was simply the physical indication of the inroads
made by disease germs to which the increasing weakness of advancing years
opened a freer way. He proved to his own satisfaction, and to that of many
others as well, that the apparent signs of age are the result of the
ravages of a certain bacillus which inhabits the intestinal tract. He also
proved the sour principle of buttermilk to be fairly fatal to that germ.
One of the evidences of his latter conclusion is the fact that some of the
most noted cases of longevity have been those of regular drinkers of sour
milk. Physical decay seems to be only a symptom of inner attacks which
will sooner or later break down an organ or result in a general collapse.

It is not to be supposed that any regard for the laws of health, however
strict it might be, will make it impossible ever to grow old. Physical
decay is inevitable and physical death is certain. It is possible,
however, to long preserve the physical condition of youth by keeping the
resistance of the body at the highest possible point. This can be done
only by preserving the best possible continual state of health.

The sedentary character of much of the life of to-day is one of the
weakening habits of our age. On the other hand, we have an army of people
who are so over-exercised at their daily toil that their bodies are sapped
of all vitality and their minds are robbed of all vigor. Between these two
extremes lies a golden mean. Well-directed use of all the muscles and
regular movement of all the organs does afford vast help in keeping the
body fresh and youthful.

We are the victims of another age-producing habit in the excessive
quantity and richness of the food we consume. We are too willing to eat
all we can get and contain. We are overdisposed, too, to truckle to the
demands of palates that have been trained to enjoy unnatural and
unwholesome tastes.

Any experience which would drive us all back to plain living, simple
eating, and active habits would probably result in large benefit to us.
If our plan of living were re-established upon a childlike plane, we might
again expect to enjoy childlike vitality, with its intermingling of
childlike activity and childlike slumber.

An Old Testament story tells how a Hebrew king prayed for a new hold upon
life and how his prayer resulted in the turning of the shadow upon the
dial. That invisible hand which turned the shadow upon the dial of the
days of a king waits ever to preserve the lives of the members of the
race. The One, however, who heard the prayer of Hezekiah was the same One
who established the laws of life and nature. Obedience to those laws is
still the key by which the very years may be swung backward in
their flight.


Some Principles of Efficiency (1917)


These are the days when the doing of things in the best and quickest way,
and the living of one’s life to the greatest possible purpose, are among
the livest of issues. The absorbing question is that of really getting on.
One has but one chance at this life, and he has a right to make that one
effort the best possible.

_The Personal Attitude for Right Living._

1. Preserve calmness and steadiness. Victory over material things is but
a passing honor for the one who has failed to conquer himself. The secret
of many a success is coolness and self-possession. The person who has the
consciousness that he is right can look the world in the
face unflinchingly.

2. Avoid selfishness as you would a most dangerous enemy. The first
personal pronoun is a dangerous word. No one else cares to help the person
who tries to help no one but himself. The world has its heroes, but they
are those whose chief concern has been for their people.

3. Have a mind of your own, and use it. Many a failure has been excused
with the words: “I didn’t think.” However, it is our business to think,
and to act on right judgments. Man is he who thinks, and the most
successful man is he who thinks most promptly and accurately.

4. Do not get the idea that your mind is the only one. Others are thinking
also, and some of these persons may be more nearly right than yourself.
One must at least give others credit for having opinions. Listen to all,
and accept only that which seems to bear the test of truth.

5. Strive to be right about things. Investigate until you are clear in
your conclusions. When you are clear, let nothing but additional light
change your course. Stay with the right, though all the rest of the world
disagree with you. If you find that your position was wrong, forsake
it immediately.

6. Do not judge yourself by others, nor your work by theirs. The only
proper standard is rightness. It is a poor thing to be in fashion if the
fashion is wrong.

7. Try to understand other people. Think of others sympathetically, and
give them credit for everything you can.

_Your Personal Resources._

1. The first of your personal resources is time. You have just the same
amount of it that any one else has, and that is twenty-four hours a day.
These twenty-four hours a day are exactly like any other asset in that
they are capable of use or abuse. The waste of them is the same kind of
a mistake as is the waste of money or property. Few people waste their
time in large quantities at a time. Most people waste moments in waiting
or idling, which, put together, would make an aggregate of hours and days.
One should not waste his own time nor that of others. The person who keeps
any one else waiting for him is guilty of theft. Figure out how much time
you lose per day, and then figure how to keep from losing it.

2. The second of your personal resources is talent. Of this all do not
receive exactly alike, but all do receive in reasonable measure. Some who
receive largely seem to do less with their gift than some others who have
received in less degree, and the man who hides his single coin in a napkin
is always a familiar figure. No matter whether one receives many or few,
it is his duty to improve them and make the most of them. Finding one’s
true place in the world is a serious matter. Find out what you are good
for; get ready to do that thing well; then do it with all your might.

3. The third of your personal resources is opportunity. The greatest
issues of years to come will continually be found to hinge upon your
decision and action in earlier moments of opportunity. Opportunity does
not wait around, begging one to grasp it. One must learn to strike at the
right moment. Watch for your chance, and do not fail to seize it when
it comes.

_The Method of Efficiency._

1. Have a definite purpose in life. If you have none, get one as quickly
as possible. If you cannot choose a permanent one, then choose a temporary
one. At all events, have an aim, and let it be clear, definite,
and positive.

2. Having chosen a task, the next thing to do is to get at it. The word
=NOW= is the richest word in the English vocabulary. Do not wait to begin
in the morning. Be able, when the morning comes, to look back on at
least a part of the task completed.

3. Stay with it. It is sometimes harder to stay with it than it is to get
at it. Always, as the day passes and weariness lays hold of mind and
muscle, the temptation to give up gathers strength very rapidly. If the
thing you are doing is worth while, don’t give it up. The rewards of the
game are won neither by the fine beginning nor the brilliant play, but by
the steady endurance which holds on to the last. Life is one great
endurance test.

4. Strive to do only a reasonable number of things, and do those things
just as well as you can do them. The fewer they are, the better the
execution of them is apt to be. Reduce your efforts to the realization of
one great aim. So doing, you will be able to achieve results impossible to
scattered efforts. “This one thing I do” was the dictum of one strong
character. He did that thing, however, with all his might.

5. Cultivate decision. Valuable time and strength are often lost in
deciding things too unimportant to justify the loss. Learn to think
quickly and clearly. Arrive at conclusions promptly and accurately.
Impulse and desire are secondary, while the sense of having done the
right thing best satisfies in the end.

6. Make each effort bring you a little nearer to the goal. You will never
have cause to complain of any day that has witnessed real progress. Do
not try to cover the ground in a single dash, but push forward steadily
and patiently. Be willing to wait much, to fail occasionally, and to toil
always. At the end you will have something to show for each hour.


The Story of the Red Cross (1917)


The Red Cross Society is an international organization for the relief of
the sick and wounded in any time of special distress. It has been of great
service in times of peace, yet it is readily seen that its constitution
makes it of particular service in time of war. Throughout its life, it has
given good account of itself in every time of need.

It bears the honorable distinction of being an agency which is designed to
minister to the needs of the living. There are always plenty of praises
for the dead, and enough tears are always shed over the graves heaped up
by the bloody hand of war. It is more especially needful that there should
be means of helping the living who still need it, and who are still able
to appreciate it when it is given. The Red Cross is a ministry to life in
the midst of the fields of death.

It owes its origin to the efforts of Jean Henri Dunant, a Swiss author and
philanthropist, whose whole life and fortune were both given to the
service of mankind. Great movements must always be fathered by
self-sacrificing spirits before they are finally taken upon the hearts of
the people. It sometimes even happens that the name of the originator of
a movement fails to cling to it in the days of its popularity and success.

M. Dunant was present at the battle of Solferino on June 24, 1859. There
he witnessed the suffering and need of the soldiers who fell wounded upon
the field and realized the powerlessness of any nation to provide adequate
hospital facilities in time of actual battle.

After three years of meditation and discussion, Dunant wrote and published
a book, in which he suggested the preparation of supplies and the training
of nurses against the time of need, in order that the volume of distress
might not be again so far beyond the power of any one to relieve it.

He was invited to speak before the Geneva Society of Public Utility. That
society took sufficient interest in his contention to call an
international conference to meet in Geneva in the autumn of 1863.
Delegates came from sixteen nations, and, after going into the subject,
they laid some plans for future action and adjourned.

A year from that time a more formally and authoritatively delegated
assembly met in the same city. Before it adjourned, the famous Geneva
Convention had been written and signed by its members. That convention did
not specifically outline the plan of the present Red Cross Society, but it
did make possible its organization and activity.

Fourteen nations ratified the Geneva Convention at that time. As it came
to be better understood and more greatly appreciated, others added their
approval. Today all the principal nations of the world have approved and
adopted it. It has long since come to be a movement of such influence and
proportions as to command the fullest sanction of international law.

The emblem chosen for this society was the familiar red cross design which
has long since become a symbol of sanitation and cleanliness. The Turkish
Government alone failed to adopt this uniform symbol. According to its
traditional ideals, it chose the use of the crescent instead.

It was not long until agreements were made by which the rules and
practices of the Red Cross Society were applied in the navy as well as in
the army. Now the man who falls wounded upon a battleship receives the
same helpful attentions as does the fallen hero of the land forces.
Moreover, the Red Cross symbol until this present war has been immune to
attack on sea as well as on land. Conventions have, of course, been
determined upon which are designed to prevent the wrongful use of the
familiar symbol of mercy in time of war.

The various national Red Cross organizations are independent in their
formation and responsibility, yet it to be regarded as the Geneva
Committee is to be regarded as central in its prestige and influence if
not in power and authority. From time to time, Americans have been
honored with places upon that committee. W. H. Taft was made president
of it some years ago and is today one of the world’s most enthusiastic
Red Cross workers.

The American Red Cross Society was organized in 1884 by Miss Clara
Barton, who throughout life interested herself in this and similar
labors of unselfish helpfulness. She has been to the American Red Cross
Society what M. Dunant was to the international organization.

In 1905 the American Congress realized the need for an organization
which should be more distinctly national in its scope and plan. The
existing society was therefore disbanded, and a reorganization was
effected along slightly different lines. The American Red Cross now
operates under distinctly governmental supervision and authority. Its
head is the President of the United States. Its chief officers are men
high in governmental councils. Its accounts are audited in the War
Department, and its activities in every way center in Washington.

Yet it is distinctively a civil organization. Its membership is made up
of the common people of the country. It accepts volunteers for medical,
surgical, and nursing work behind the battle lines in time of war, but
it also accepts as members all who care to enrol and pay the small
annual membership fee.

The average citizen is thus afforded an opportunity to have a part in the
better side of war—the care of the sick, the wounded, and the distressed.
It enables the last person, however far away and however lowly he may be,
to do his share together with the rest.

Even those who volunteer as doctors and nurses find that most of their
work is at a distance from the firing line. Strict observance must be
given to certain fixed rules governing the activities of Red Cross
workers, but so long as these rules are observed the danger is
comparatively small.

The American Red Cross has, since its organization in 1884, proven its
worth in a number of times of need. Its opportunity for wartime service
has, thus far, been limited. Until we had been touched by the present war,
our people had only been engaged in one brief struggle since the
organization of the Red Cross in America. It did its work well during the
Spanish-American War of 1898. It will now have an opportunity for much
greater wartime usefulness in a time of much greater need.

It has, however, been giving frequent service to the suffering in other
times of catastrophe. It gave notable aid in the time of the yellow fever
epidemic in the South, the Johnstown flood, the famines in Russia and
Japan, tidal-wave floods in South Carolina and Texas, the Armenian
massacre, the oppression of the Cuban people, the Mount Pelee volcanic
eruption, and earthquakes in Chile, Jamaica, and California.

These are but a few of the outstanding instances of Red Cross aid to
stricken people. In smaller disasters almost everywhere, the same helping
hand has been extended. The American Red Cross has expended about fifteen
millions upon its work thus far in its history. That sum will, of course,
be rapidly multiplied if the present war continues long. The whole
country has been roused to a spirit of co-operation, contributing both
work and money.

It seems a particularly hopeful thing that, although war has not yet been
recognized as a mere relic of the barbarous past, in the midst of its
bloodshed there are to be heard the hurrying feet of messengers of mercy
and help. One of the strongest forces now making for a day of lasting
peace is the beautiful suggestion that comes from the spirit of those who
make it their aim to help while others destroy. The spirit of positive
service will endure long after the work of destruction has been forsaken.
Those who assist in such a task will suffer no regrets.

The work of M. Dunant has been significant in the cause of peace. The
Nobel prize went to him in 1901 for distinguished services in behalf of
international arbitration and conciliation. The day will yet come when
the world will see the realization of his great dream of an age of
brotherly kindness.


Words (1917)


Words determine the trend of human events. They make sad or glad the years
we live. Like flowers or tares sown along the highway of life, they make
every landscape a little brighter or a little less lovely.

The tongue is equally capable of being the messenger of angels or of
spirits of evil. It can sting like an adder. A thrust of the dagger or the
sharp sting of a bullet, and all is over; but the sting of a hard word
abides through the years. It warps, withers, and embitters everything it
touches. The human heart shrivels under it like the drooping of a tender
plant beneath the direct rays of the burning sun.

But a word in due season, how good is it! It helps the weary to take
courage again. It helps the broken life to make another effort. It revives
drooping hopes and purposes. It counts for more than could a gift of gold
or a bestowal of power.

A dozen years ago a school boy was standing, tired and discouraged, in the
shadow of a dark stairway on the public square of the town. He was away
from home, and he was almost down to his last cent. He was not sure
whether his hard efforts were worth the while. He heard an approaching
step. It was one of his teachers. He drew farther back, not expecting the
teacher to see him, but the teacher did. He stopped and said a good word
for something the young fellow had done. That was all it took to put fresh
courage into a weary heart. Today that boy, now become a man, is still
toiling on, trying to do something worth the doing. He is still at it for
the sake of a simple sentence or two—in due season.

The value of a word is so great that the name best befits the nature of
the Master. In the first chapter of the Gospel according to John, we find
that Jesus is repeatedly referred to as the Word of God. He is, indeed,
an expression of that which men had so long thought to be inexpressible.
A Word, made flesh, He came and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory.

Words slip back the shutters from the windows of the inner life. It is out
of the abundance of the heart that the mouth is sure to speak. The tongue
is daily engaged in drawing an open picture of the heart. The very
vocabulary of a person will tell you the story of what goes on in the
silence of his thoughts.

The power of uplifting speech and the right to enjoy helpful conversation
are high privileges. When a group of people are together, a splendid
opportunity is afforded for conversation which is not only self-improving
but also mutually helpful. It is worse than a tragedy when that
never-recurring time is spent in conversation concerning what is foolish
and evil. Is it not a standing wonder that, when there are so many worthy
themes, anyone should be willing to allow his conversation to keep the
slimy level of the soil?

Words should pay respect to the dignity and beauty of language. Language
has a majesty peculiarly its own, and its sanctity ought never to be
violated. It is violated, frequently, in two especial ways.

The first is by the way of slang. Those who allow themselves to grow
accustomed to slangy expressions do themselves and their language alike a
great injustice. They do themselves an injustice because speech so surely
marks the man, and the world will always take it as an indicator of
character. They do their language an injustice because every deviation
from its defined paths tends to break down its dignity and power.

Of course, slang is not a cardinal sin, but it is like a good many other
things that are not cardinal sins in that the tendency is a bad one. The
cardinal sins are less dangerous because we are more afraid of them.

The second is by the way of extravagant and untrue utterance. Enough
people have gone “simply crazy” about things to fill all the insane
asylums to overflowing, and it is a marvel how the cemeteries continue to
provide room for all the people who have been tickled or scared “to death”
or who have encountered so many things that were “simply killing.” The
users of these terms are people who have not stopped to contemplate the
fact that simple English is always sufficient for the telling of the
whole truth.

Words are certain to react upon the speaker. The effect upon others of a
word let fly is equalled only by its effect upon the person who says it.
In other words, speech possesses boomerang qualities.

Just after William Henry Harrison had been nominated for the presidency in
1840, a Baltimore newspaper contemptuously called attention to his humble
habitat by referring to him as “Log Cabin Harrison.” Instead of arousing
prejudice against him, as the utterance was meant to do, it only stirred
up a great popular enthusiasm in his behalf. The public took up the cry as
a slogan; the log cabin became the campaign symbol; and William Henry
Harrison was elected.

When John Wesley and a number of his fellow students who felt a desire for
a deeper religious life formed a “Holy Club” at Oxford University, they
became so methodical in their habits and work that other students of the
university dubbed them “Methodists.” The name not only did not militate
against them but John Wesley remained a Methodist, and tens of thousands
have been proud to bear the name that was first bestowed as an epithet
of disgrace.

If there was anything derisive in the voice of Pilate when he exclaimed
“Behold the man,” his derision has been increasingly mocked by the voice
of history. All the years have been obeying the command of the Roman
governor. They have been beholding not only Jesus but Pilate also, to the
increasing fame and power of the one and the growing shame of the other.

If there was any taint of sarcasm in the words Pilate ordered placed at
the head of the Cross, the years have turned it into living truth. The
words have risen up to mock their maker.

Slander is more than half the time the offspring of jealousy and envy.
The reason for a great deal of unjust and unkind comment is to be found
in the proneness of man to condemn his brother most fiercely for that
fault which lies most deeply imbedded in his own life. Adverse criticism
is never a proper topic of conversation. The chances are so great against
the justice and truth of a harsh judgment that it should never have a
place in human speech.

One reason for this is the fact that one never knows the inner story of
his neighbor’s life. It is easy to fail to take into account the secret
effort, the unknown struggle, the unheralded difficulty. Others have
battles to fight and obstacles with which to contend of which we will
never know. It may be, furthermore, that in their situation we would not
do so well as they.

Another reason is the fact that we are not commissioned a race of judges
and set to determine the guilt and weigh the faults of mankind. Even if
it were our business to be judges, we should be poor ones indeed if we
failed to give the accused the benefit of the doubt. There is plenty of
time to speak when one can speak from indisputable facts.

There is an unwritten law which forbids speaking against the dead. It may
be wrong to speak against those who can no longer lift their voices in
their own defense, but it may also be remembered that, though the dead
cannot defend themselves, neither do they need to do so. They can no
longer be harmed by the shaft of malice, and will slumber as sweetly under
the poison breath of the fault-finder as beneath the perfumed words of
affection and appreciation. With the living it is different. They still
care what men think of and say about them. They can feel the stir of joy
and the sting of pain. They respond to kindness and recoil from the bitter
and unjust word. If a word is to be spoken against anybody, it is far
better that it be against the dead and that the living be spared the
destruction of their all.

One of the best services to render to the world is to breathe a helpful
word upon it. It will be like a shower of cooling moisture on a field
grown dry and dead. In it you send forth a messenger imperishable. It
will echo where you little know, and it will speak for you when your lips
of clay can speak no more.


The Line of Necessity (1918)


When a given course of action is considered or a particular step of
progress is proposed, many people are in the habit of questioning whether
the thing is necessary. They do not inquire whether it is desirable,
whether it is helpful, or whether it is lovely. The only question raised
is as to its necessity.

The propounding of this question is not without its effect. The people who
ask it often rob a movement of its power and occasionally cause it to fail
completely. By its use a chill is often brought upon spirits which would
otherwise throb with warmth. The world is deprived of the influence of
many a cheerful song, helpful smile, gracious act, and kind word simply
because the person who might have given them stopped to make this
ever-recurring inquiry: “Is it necessary?”

The people who ask the question would themselves be the least willing to
have their own lives and fortunes subjected to its merciless test. They
know full well that it would remove from their little worlds many of the
things which now seem best and sweetest. Landscapes would lose the mystic
charm which now serves to lift them above the commonplace. Daily
experience would be robbed of the glamor which now makes life seem so
sweet and beautiful. The glory would fade from about the brow of
friendship, and even friendship itself perhaps would perish. Lovely as all
these things are, they do not belong to the list of things that are
absolutely necessary. They would pass away if life were denuded of all
that the world could manage to get along without.

As a matter of fact, many of the most blessed things we know lie on the
farther side of the line of necessity. If we were never to pass beyond
that line, then the world and all that it contains would be reduced to the
impoverished outlines of the barest actuality. There would be no place
left for hope, ambition, and dream. We should do no more work than is
necessary, and our labor could no longer be a daily progress toward the
summit of some mount of hope. We should have no more than is necessary,
and each would become less than a peasant. We should love, help, and serve
no more than is necessary, and all the joy of the unselfish and the
sacrificial would be taken from life. We should have no more friends than
is necessary, and one by one those who have been our greatest inspiration
would depart from our ken. How poor a thing it would soon be to live!

Life would indeed be soon reduced to the level of mere existence. We
should still be in the world, but the glow and the loveliness would have
departed. Our tables would be bare, because we should eat only what is
strictly necessary. Our clothing would be scant and poor, for we should
wear only what one must. Our lives would be solitary, for association is
a luxury and not a necessity. Kindness is unnecessary, therefore our souls
would shrivel and perish. A once cheerful world would have grown dull and
dead, and the once joyful privilege of living would have suddenly been
transformed into a grievous necessity.

It is the unnecessary that changes bare existence into throbbing and
purposeful life. A mere earth is changed into a lovely world by processes
which might have been dispensed with. A house is transformed into a home
by graces which are not the children of necessity.

Even Bethlehem and Calvary were not necessary. The glory of their meaning
comes rather from the fact that they sprang from good will alone. The
power of the Cross springs largely from the fact that it could have been
avoided. We appreciate it because the Master faced it willingly.

No one cares for the friend who is a friend under the pressure of some
necessity. We appreciate the friendship of those who are our friends
because they simply want to be. We do not care for the gift offered by
some one who felt the force of some compulsion. The impulse is to cast
it from us in disdain. We love the gift made by the impulse of a kindly
heart, not because it was a necessity but because it was a pleasure.

I once sat in a great gathering and heard a man with silver hair offer a
bit of advice which sprang from a life of rich experience. “Let us,” he
said, “during the week that we are together, make it a point to be a
little kinder to one another than is necessary.”

Life had taught him that the finer graces and the sweeter instincts are
not necessary things. They do not earn salary. They do not satisfy the
hunger of the body. They are even sometimes discounted in the calculations
of the shortsighted. They are, however, the beautiful things. They garland
life and make it lovely. If the men in that gathering were to be kind to
one another, it was desirable that they should be so for the sake of
kindness, and not for that of compulsion.

This was one of the first principles to engage the attention of the Great
Teacher. He said to a crowd of people one day that one gets no credit
either on the books of heaven or in the courts of his own conscience until
he has done a little better than was strictly necessary. It is a little
thing to give the coat that is asked for, but it is a worthy thing to give
the cloak which is not expected. It is insignificant to travel the mile
that is requested, but it is worth while to go the second mile unasked.
One deserves no thanks for having loved his friend, for that is easy, but
he who learns to love his enemies has achieved something really
worth while.

These points from the Sermon on the Mount simply state the old principle
of the beauty and value of the unnecessary. It is the second mile
traveled, the overflowing kindness offered, and the unnecessary act of
goodness that sweeten and glorify the years. These things make of life
more than a gloomy journey through a valley of trouble. They make it a
glad procession across the hills of joy.

There is a higher law than that of necessity. Necessity may supply a
skeleton for living, but we are not interested in skeletons until they
are clothed with flesh and vitalized with life. It represents a framework
for existence, but the framework of a building does not seem worth while
until it has added to it the complement of walls and the beauty of
decorations. It may represent the stage upon which the drama of life is to
be enacted, but the stage is empty and bare until the actors come upon it
and lend it the enchantment of thought and action. Beyond the line of
necessity lie the countless things which weave the web of splendor and
throw the magic of enchantment about things. Necessity supplies the
substance. The unnecessary adds the glory.

The proper question to ask about a course of conduct to be followed or a
thing to be obtained is not, then, that as to whether it is necessary. It
is that as to whether it is lovely and worth while. We need to remember
that if all the unnecessary acts were left undone and all the unnecessary
words were left unsaid, the world soon would cease to seem a fit place in
which to live. We need to remember that it is the will uncompelled that
tames the wilderness, that it is the hand unconstrained that reclaims the
desert, and that it is the kindness born of spontaneous impulse which
brings into life the uplifting and the helpful.

Of course we could get on without all these things. We do not have to have
the flowers; we could dispense with the moonbeams; our three meals a day
do not depend upon the singing of the birds; the world could no doubt
continue on its way if the wind never again whispered a lullaby among the
trees. But this is not the kind of world for which the heart longs. The
deeper hunger is satisfied only with a world made beautiful with the
things that were whispered only into the more sacred chambers of the heart
of man—the beautiful and the unnecessary things.


Some New Facts About Alcohol (1918)


After all, it may not have been so bad a thing that many defenders rose up
during the past years to champion the failing cause of alcohol. The debate
which has resulted from their mistaken contentions has really led to a
determination on the part of people in general to look into the question
and to determine for themselves whether alcohol is really a benefit or a
menace to the user.

No believer in abstinence needs to ask for anything better than just such
a spirit of scientific investigation. The best thing that can happen to
the truth is that it be investigated. Such investigation into the drink
question has been the result of the general questioning, and it has led
to the general conclusion that alcohol works harm and not good to the
human system.

One of the most useful of American scientific establishments is the
Carnegie Institution at Washington. During the last few years, two of its
experts, Drs. Dodge and Benedict, have been following special lines of
study on the effect of alcohol upon the human brain and nervous system.
Their achievements in this field of investigation have been notable for
both their scientific and their moral value.

These investigations were, of course, conducted with that care which
always characterizes the work of the genuine scientist. The laboratory
expert never works from a prejudiced viewpoint. He approaches his task
with an open mind. He does not seek the proof of some contention of his
own. He looks for nothing more nor less than the truth about a thing. He
would rather fail altogether in an investigation than to reach a false
conclusion and publish it to the world. Such a result would not only be
failure but deception as well. When one is following the results of the
work of a true scientist, he may rely upon it that no unfair advantage
will be taken of the facts.

Of course, it must be remembered that much still remains to be discovered
concerning alcohol. Those who have studied the subject thus far have only
been pioneers in their field. We shall learn a great deal more about it,
but we have already learned enough to indicate the fact that alcohol is
an enemy of men.

One of the conclusions reached is that alcohol is not, as has so long been
supposed, a stimulant. It is, instead, really a depressant. The seeming
increase of vitality which follows its use is entirely deceptive.
According to fundamental tests, it really robs the body of a measure
of vitality.

We have long been accustomed to suppose the case otherwise. Even the most
ardent opponent of liquor has taken for granted its power to stimulate.
Working upon the basis of this assumption, the medical profession has too
long taken it for granted that, being a stimulant, alcohol had a proper
and rightful place in the dispensing of drugs and the practice
of medicine.

Of course, the use of alcohol is always followed by a certain increase of
seeming vivacity. The user becomes more talkative, and, up to a certain
stage, even more active. Whence do these manifestations come, and what is
their cause, if alcohol depresses rather than stimulates?

They rise directly from the fact that the depressing effect of alcohol
reaches to the inhibitory centers—the storehouses of self-control. The
point is, then, that alcohol does not increase the power of action. It
only decreases the power of self-restraint. The things one does and says
when under the influence of liquor are simply the things from the doing
or saying of which he would ordinarily have restrained himself. If he were
sober, his words and actions would be tempered with good judgment. Under
the influence of liquor, he has no fear of any kind of risk or trespass.

Some have supposed that these manifestations prove the power of liquor to
render one temporarily clever. The fact is that the seeming cleverness in
the actions or words of a tipsy person simply represents the things which,
as a sober person, he would know better than to do or say.

Each advance in our knowledge of the effect of alcohol upon the human
system only serves to confirm the old contention that it is a foe of
efficiency. This is true not only because it tends to deteriorate the
tissues and organs of the body, but also because it strikes directly at
the seat of reason as well.

The muscular reflex is dulled. The power to react to sounds and other
_stimuli_ is distinctly lessened. The memory is affected. The fingers lose
approximately nine per cent of their deftness. The eye loses about eleven
per cent of its quickness and accuracy.

These are results following directly upon the effects exerted by alcohol
upon the brain and nervous system in general. Ordinary men failed to slay
the hydra of old because they struck only at some one of its many heads.
It perished only when there came a man who thought to strike at the one
vital center. Alcohol does not content itself with striking at those parts
of the physical life which are able to renew themselves or without which
the life can still go on. It strikes at the seat of all that makes life
worth while. It stands second in the list of causes of insanity. It
damages the efficiency of many thousands, however, who never reach the
stage of complete insanity.

No further words are needed to indicate the truth of the old dictum that
drink and workmanship do not go together. Each ounce of liquor consumed
reduces a man’s capacity for skilled labor by a definite and
unfailing percentage.

It has always been important that a workman should be at his best, but it
has now come to be more so than ever before. The powers of men are taxed
in an unusual degree, and processes of production are put upon the most
severe strain of all their history. In former years, one owed it to
himself, his family, and his friends to steer clear of alcohol, but his
obligation is now vastly increased. He owes it to his country and his flag
as well.

An interesting development concerning the effect of alcohol upon human
efficiency has come as a result of the military efforts of the last
several years. It has been proven that liquor makes a poor soldier. This
is true in spite of the notion that once prevailed to the effect that
strong drink was a necessity in an army camp. A few cherish that notion
still, but their tribe steadily decreases.

About six years before the outbreak of the great war, the Bavarian
ministry of war determined upon a shooting tournament in which the
participating marksmen were to be under various degrees of the influence
of alcohol. Thousands of shots were fired, and the results were very
important and significant from both the military and the human viewpoint.

It was found that a man can not hope, after taking a drink of liquor, to
shoot with the accuracy that was his before. Under even the slightest
degrees of intoxication the marksmanship of the participants was lowered,
in many cases as much as twelve per cent.

The tournament mentioned also emphasized the promptness of the effect of
alcohol upon the nerves. It was discovered that the influence of a drink
of liquor begins to manifest itself in a man’s marksmanship almost
immediately after the beverage is taken. Five minutes suffices in any case
for the results to begin to show. As moments multiply, the effect is
increasingly apparent.

As is true of work, war in the latest notable instance is no haphazard
thing. It requires mechanical accuracy and scientific precision, and it
can not be successfully carried on by a race of inebriates. However much
we may hope that warfare will soon be a thing of the past, while it
remains with us our only hope of escaping death in its awful clutches is
our disposition and ability to maintain efficient armies. An efficient
army necessarily means, for one thing, a sober one. Whether in the
workshop or in the military camp, liquor and efficiency are sworn and
uncompromising foes.


Facing the Future (1919)


It has become a common tendency on the part of a certain group of people
to continually glorify the “good old days.” The type of mind possessed by
this group sets the past up as a sort of fetish. As it were, they move
forward with their faces turned backward. Some strange glamour about the
by-gone days proves irresistibly fascinating. The past is the standard by
which they judge all things. The present is good or bad to them according
as it conforms or fails to conform to that standard.

Such a criterion would not be so bad a thing if those who establish it
only took pains to remember the past as it really was. Such is not the
case, however. They remember it with all its imperfections omitted. The
past which they treasure is built of dreams. It held much that was dear
to them, and it came at the hopeful and exultant period of their lives.
They therefore treasure its dead years in memory as a sort of acme of
all the perfections which any age can possess.

This process continues until it becomes a fixed mental habit. It is then
indulged almost as unconsciously as the drawing of breath. At this point
in the history of one’s thought-life his standards have become second
nature. A thing is then proven good if its definite relation to the good
old days can be established. On the other hand, it is at once proven
frivolous and superficial if it is shown to originate in the present age.

No real thought process is here involved. The thing is only an assumption
and is simply taken for granted. It reveals itself in daily conversation.
It even reveals itself in the language of the sanctuary where the truth is
assumed to prevail. The truth, however, is never reached by methods of
prejudice or undue assumption. It is approached by fair and honest habits
of thought. We need but to look at the facts. If they indicate that the
old days were better than the new, they must be accepted as dependable
authority. Whatever the truth may be, it will prevail. We must give it
right of way, however unwelcome its conclusions may seem. It is as
changeless as its Creator. We must accept it as we find it, but we dare
not fail to look first at the facts and form our conclusions accordingly.

Of course, distance lends enchantment to the view. This, however, is not a
reason for persisting in error. It is one of the facts to be taken into
consideration in estimating the relative values to be placed upon the
distant and the near. When a gunner is getting the range of a target an
angle must be computed between the target and a point at each side of the
gun. Various conditions which may affect the shot, however, must also be
considered. Among these are the movement of the target, the condition of
the atmosphere, and the direction and velocity of the wind. Just such
influences must also be considered in taking mental aim. The tendency
mentioned above is one of them.

In some ways it is a fortunate fact that we are prone to forget the sordid
in the past. It is better that it should be the good rather than the evil
of past days that is best remembered. This is one of the hopeful elements
in human nature. It is a fact, nevertheless, that sordid elements existed
in the ages gone. Each epoch has had its failings, and each generation has
discovered that life has its seamy side.

It is an interesting commentary on this common human tendency that one of
the last utterances of George Washington was an expression of regret that
the spirit of the old times seemed to be passing, and that the tendencies
of the new age seemed less hopeful and promising. More than a century has
gone by since this lament was uttered. The world is still having its
struggles, just as it did then. The prices, the weather, and the
conditions produced by the war are still making the grounds for daily
complaint, just as was the case in other days. The race is still achieving
some progress, however, and most of us still believe that the most
promising days of civilization are yet to be.

The lament of the passing of the good old days may be found in times more
remote, however, than even those of George Washington. Some years ago an
archeological investigator discovered an ancient Egyptian record which,
when its message had been deciphered, was found to be a complaint that the
good old days seemed to have passed, and that great uncertainty attached
to the dawning period which was entirely too different from the past.

So it appears that this regretful attitude is not a new story. Ever since
human nature has existed these lugubrious things have been said. Only the
use of the power of reason is necessary, however, to see that the world
has, after all, made wonderful progress in most things since the writing
of the old Egyptian records, and even since the days of George Washington.

The past and its real achievements should never be discounted. The present
owes all that it is to the fact that it is built on ages gone by, and that
its foundations were so well laid by hands which now rest from their
labors. All things considered, however, each age has been a little better
than the age preceding it. It is not proper to say that the old days were
better than the new, unless it is proper to say that the foundation is
better than the superstructure. The things that were served simply as the
basis and preparation for the things that are.

We can appreciate the past without discounting the present. We can also
glorify the present without discounting the past. Each epoch has had its
own particular place to fill and each generation has had its own
particular part to play in the general scheme of things. No age could
properly be exchanged for any other, nor could any generation properly
fill another’s place. We must take the facts of history as they are.
Each age is best for its own time and in its own place.

Certain things are changeless. There are great, abiding quantities which
necessarily remain the same throughout the years. Human affection, love of
home, fidelity to a country, ambition for success, and the religious
instinct are among those things.

While the essential nature of these things is changeless, yet their
outward manifestation does undergo development. Love remains the same,
yet men learn how to enlarge its meaning. Patriotism is the same, yet it
assumes higher forms with advancing standards of national life. The heart
of religion is changeless, yet religion receives an ever more adequate and
satisfying interpretation. The new days cannot change the nature of
abiding things, but they can increase the adaptability of those things to
human needs.

Our times are not perfect. However, the old days also fell short of
perfection. Not only did they have their struggles and their failings,
but those struggles and failings menaced the race just as seriously as
have any of later days. We too easily forget what the past was like. We
also fail to take a full inventory of the meaning of the present. All in
all, it is safe to assume that men are sound at heart. Each age struggles
on as well as it knows how. We get up the hill a little way and then fall
back. On the whole, however, we climb a little more distance than
we tumble.

We are not moving backward from the perfect to the less perfect ages as
Ovid wrote. We are moving forward to the divine event of which Tennyson
dreamed. We are tending toward that perfect social condition revealed in
the visions of the seer of Patmos—a new heaven and a new earth. The past
was that the best might come. The last of life for which the first was
made is a racial as well as a personal hope.


Life’s Backgrounds (1919)


An ancient thinker remarked that life is spent like a tale that is told.
It might just as truly be said that life is like a picture that is
painted. It is a series of scenes which, when all are finished, becomes
a panorama. It demands perspective. In order to have this, it possesses,
just as does a picture, a foreground, a mid-ground, and a background.

The foreground is simply a bit of nothing in particular. It contributes
nothing substantial. It is only there to give relief and proportion. It
does not amount to much, but the picture would not be complete without
it. Life has some phases which are quite like it. They do not count for
anything substantial, but they help to furnish a setting for the parts
that are really important.

The mid-ground contains the real picture. The important figures, objects,
and action are all there. It corresponds to the toils, the concerns, and
the achievements which go to make up life. Life’s mid-ground is composed
of its realities.

The background is the part that stretches away in the distance. It may
not consist of much. Cloudland, shadows, or distant hills or woods may
be all it presents to the view. It is that against which the outlines of
the real picture are cast.

It is a determining factor, for from it the picture seems to spring.
From such a picture as Millet’s _Angelus_, for instance, take the
background with its little church from the tower of which the bell is
calling to prayer, and you have removed the whole motive and explanation
of the picture itself. A natural harmony exists between the picture and
its background. The detail cannot appropriately be anything except what
its background determines that it shall be. The background of life’s
picture is no less determining.

One of life’s backgrounds is character. This is an invisible thing, but
the fact that a thing is hidden from the eyes of men does not make it in
the least less real. There is no means by which it may be measured or
weighed as other things are, but there is no more potent factor in the
determination of a life. It may be seldom taken into account in human
calculations. The practical and workaday world insists that it does not
care about vague, mystical things. It is only concerned about the
practical questions of definite action. It only asks what a man can really
do. This is all very well, but the man himself must not forget that what
he can do and what he will do are entirely determined by what he is.

Correct conduct of the sustained sort does not come as the result of
calculation. One may stand upon artificial good behavior for an hour or a
day, but he cannot do it permanently without the staying force of a fixed
principle. It takes more than good resolutions to make an ethical life.
One must more than have an axe to grind if he expects to deport himself
well in any constant way. No matter what the reward may be, the lure of
reward alone cannot lastingly elevate life to a high grade of ability and
action. Whitewash cannot change the fact of hidden faultiness. The heart
of a thing alone reveals the truth.

The hands of a clock do not have to stop and figure their course and
speed. If they did, they would be forever getting out of harmony with
their purpose and with one another. They are moved and regulated by
machinery which the ordinary observer does not see. The world only asks to
be told what time it is, but the hands of the clock could not give the
information were there not maintained a background of mechanism operating
according to fixed and permanent principles. In this regard the clock is a
very good analogy of a life.

Another of life’s backgrounds is preparation. How one really conducts
himself is largely a question of whether or not he is prepared to do the
right thing. Opportunity does not fail anyone, but a great many people
fail opportunity by not being prepared for it when it arrives. They may
seize their chances, but they do not perform their part well because they
have not gotten themselves ready in mind, hand, or soul. An attempt to
play any worthy part in life without proper preparation gives the same
general impression as does a picture without a background.
The result is unsatisfying.

Not all of life’s preparation can be specific. It is well enough to make
specific preparation for the expected task of a given day. That specific
preparation is at its best, however, only when it is backed up with a
strong general preparation. This general background of preparation cannot
be made in a day. It is the result of sustained reading, thinking, and
trying throughout the years.

Pliny the Elder used to have books read to him during every spare moment.
When working at a sawmill, Daniel Webster used to carry reading matter
with which to occupy himself to advantage during the three-minute periods
required for the log-carriage to pass the saw. These men were merely
hanging backgrounds for action when the time should come to act.
Its fabric was woven of thought, knowledge, and personality.

A musical artist, when asked the secret of his success, remarked that
before anyone can expect to be an artist he must first expect to be a
drudge. This principle holds good in everything. Whoever succeeds must
carry a cross of self-denial. The public will suppose that he does his
work with ease. Few will suspect his toils and sacrifices. He will,
however, pay dearly for all the genius he acquires. While others sleep
he will work, building the background from which will some day burst the
outlines of worthy achievement.

Another of life’s backgrounds is its relationships. In greater measure
than many will suspect, the things we are and do will always spring from
the influence of the friends we have had and the loves we have known.
The ties that bind us to the hearts of others are the cables that help to
drag us toward the dust or to lift us in the direction of the heights.

Back of the lives of the great, the despicable, and the insignificant
alike, even back of the great deeds and movements of history, one can
detect the presence of the silent shadows of those who have made or
marred. As the kindly old teacher built his own soul into the life of
Geordie Hoo, the “Lad o’ Pairts,” so has someone spoken of his or her
own spirit into the lives of each of us.

So is life’s picture painted. We are often so busy that we forget the
background, but when we think about it we see again the faces that have
smiled, the hands that have lifted, the toils that have helped, the
qualities that have steadied and impelled.

Without its background a picture would be a lone bit of detail without
perspective or relief. A life cannot be so. We are not unrelated beings.
Our lives are linked with all the generations of all the ages. We are in
league with all that has being. We are the products of the ages past and
the forces present. Powers seen and unseen have largely made us what
we are.


The New Philosophy (1920)


Old ideals and purposes have undergone sweeping revision. The very social
structure has proved obsolete and is being reorganized.

In the general process of readjustment, the various lines of thought and
knowledge have not remained unaffected. Particularly have the more
speculative subjects undergone a decided change in their dominant spirit
and motive. Without exception, they have been brought down from the
ethereal levels of their former dwelling-places and have been made to
deal with the practical things of a practical world. This has been
particularly true of Philosophy.

The present period has, in fact, marked a revolutionary point in the
history of that subject. We have faced many stern crises during the last
few years, and it is natural that they should be reflected in our
thinking. The necessity of meeting these crises has forced our thinking
into definite, practical, and original channels. In our time of need we
found that, while the old formulae had possessed their value, they did
not offer sufficient help for the problems of the new day. There was
nothing to do but to formulate new ones that were vital in their bearing
upon our problems now.

A hint at the new spirit of Philosophy is given in the fact that the
title of the presidential address before the American Philosophical
Association at its 1916 meeting was: “On Some Conditions of Progress in
Philosophical Enquiry.” This title suggests that the new outlook is
forward rather than backward, and that the philosophical searchlight is
now turned outward as well as inward. It indicates the fact that
philosophers feel a growing realization that advancement is the proper
aim of human endeavor, and that the vital problem of Philosophy is
human welfare and progress.

The older Philosophy was scientifically productive only in a measurable
degree. It spent itself somewhat too largely in unprofitable contentions.
It had a great many exceptional minds working at random on many problems,
but it lacked a definite and commonly accepted plan of co-operative
investigation. The old Philosophy was largely an art. The new is
altogether a science.

The last few years, with their turmoil and suffering, have brought the
thinking world to understand that Philosophy holds great potentiality as
a determining factor in national and world affairs. The pressure of the
world conditions which lately existed, and which in a measure still exist,
has generated a proof of this statement. We have had a perfect flood of
books and articles on the subject of Philosophy as it applies in the
social and political fields.

We could not have looked intelligently upon the events of 1914 and the
several years preceding without seeing the power of Philosophy in the
shaping of national ideals. Germany’s policy throughout the war was the
direct result of the philosophy which has for years been taught in the
German schools and encouraged by the German government. A wrong philosophy
can lead a nation to its ruin within the space of a few generations.
A worthy one can as promptly and definitely determine a nation’s
progress and happiness.

Possibly the majority of people dream, as some have long done, of some day
making this a peaceful planet. If we ever achieve such an end, we shall
have to do it through the establishment of a peaceful philosophy. The
thinkers of a nation sow the seeds. The people sooner or later harvest the
fruit. One of the most vital problems now confronting the philosopher is
that of giving to the world a sane basis for peace. This involves a system
of right human and international relationships. It involves also an
adequate plan for social reconstruction.

These are things for which the world must depend upon its thinkers.
Fortunately, its thinkers realize their duty and are already busy at their
task. Philosophical writing in books and periodicals indicates a common
tendency to emphasize the forward look in a spirit of genuine concern for
social progress. This is the normal result of a social unrest which seeks
the realization of a safe and dependable international ideal.

Philosophy has entered very largely into the making of the life of the
various nations. Social life is, however, a sort of chambered nautilus
which one by one outgrows the barriers of earlier customs and conceptions.
The time seems now to have arrived when national ideals can be best
realized through co-operation in some form of international union. This
new social life, organized according to a world plan, Philosophy is
struggling to help actualize.

The fact that this is one of the supreme concerns of present-day thinking
is indicated in the general theme for discussion at the meeting of the
American Association held in December of 1917. It was: “Ethics and
International Relations.”

Nor is America the only country in which this leavening process of
philosophical inquiry has been in progress. It is also very noticeable
in the trend of French thought. Indeed the burden of contemporary French
Philosophy is largely to the effect that the proper goal of the French
Nationalism of yesterday is to be found in the dawning Internationalism
of tomorrow.

If it continues long enough, the thinking of any nation or group of
nations crystallizes into definite and actual form. The material result
of the internationalistic trend of thinking and agitation of the various
countries involved will have been an inciting cause. The present ideal
will remain dominant until a larger and more adequate one is found.

It is interesting to note how the general recasting of philosophical
thought is reflected in the new nomenclature which has now grown familiar
to the philosophical pen. In the vocabulary of the modern philosopher,
such words as democracy, humanity, fraternity, and liberty are apparent.
The modern idea is, moreover, not merely to discuss these things but also
to apply them.

A great nation or a great race is dependent upon the performance of great
actions proceeding from great motives. The fact that Philosophy is more
and more a program of action is indicative of our future. Not all the
questions of Philosophy are political or social, either. It has taken a
fresh hold upon the equally vital problems of Ethics and Religion. Lately,
men have been obliged to face serious questions. The trend of Philosophy
indicates that they are trying to answer them and to gauge their actions
by the truth arrived at. The result will be a more satisfactory, adequate,
and serviceable idea of such facts as those of God, Right, Religion, and
Providence. Each fiber of the social structure will reveal the effects of
the new enthusiasm now evident in the field of the Philosophy of Religion.

Psychology, closely related as it is to Philosophy, presents much the same
present-day aspect. It reveals what is called a behavioristic turn.
Pragmatism seems to be having its day. In this busy, exacting, problematic
time, the world wants results, and it means to cling only to that which
can produce them.

We must not forget, however, that Realism is never wholly at its best when
unmixed with Idealism. The physical and the metaphysical are not only
mutually dependent, but they are two different phases of the same thing.
The basis of the new order will not be exclusively material. In it, both
the seen and the unseen world will have their place and consideration.

Mind and matter will not be rivals. Hope and achievement will be partners.
The things of the spirit and those of sense will be jointly supreme.


The Sense of the Human (1920)


In his book, “What Men Live By,” Dr. Richard C. Cabot makes what might be
called a plea for the sense of the human. In speaking of the peril of
looking on individuals in terms of sex rather than in terms of
personality, he carries the matter a little farther. He says the physician
should not look on a patient as merely a sort of walking disease, that the
teacher should not think of the student as merely a piece of raw material
for the educative process, and that the lawyer should see more in his
client than a case at law.

The point is clear. It is that we need to treasure the sense of the human,
to keep alive a proper estimate of the human values, and to fulfil our
obligation to the thinking, toiling, feeling people about us. People are
the one great concern for one’s mind. Humanity is the center of all
creation, and the proper object of all our striving.

There is much in the world about us that is more or less negligible. We
have to do with it. It plays its part in our daily round of life. It
seems necessary in the scheme of things that we have established.
Yet there is nothing permanent or supremely vital about it.

These negligible things, however, do not include the human beings with
whom we associate and with whom we have to deal. They belong to an
altogether different class of interests. Humanity is one of the few
everlasting things in the swiftly changing picture of this world’s
temporary landscape. Moreover, it is the one thing which reacts with
suffering when it is wronged, and is thrilled with joy at the deed of
kindness. Humanity, therefore, is our great concern. We need to keep
the sense of it very clear and responsive.

It is important that we look further than the cheap and often sordid glare
which surrounds us. Beyond it we can always behold a sea of human faces.
Each represents a person who shares the common lot of humanity. Each has
his hopes, joys, fears, struggles, and anxieties. There are among them
many unwritten stories of heroism, many unvoiced pleadings of need, many
unsuspected opportunities for service. There is no measuring the
possibilities hidden in that circle of faces.

Daily we see people about us without realizing their presence and what it
means. This is altogether possible, for seeing and realizing are two
entirely different things. One may see a rose by his path every morning
for days or every summer for many seasons, and yet never be really
impressed with its beauty. One morning he stops and notes its form, and
color, and perfume. His soul reaches out in answer to its silent message.
On this particular morning he has not only seen, but he has also realized
the presence of the rose.

In the same way we need to realize the presence of people about us. If we
did so, we would see that we have with them a great mutuality of interest
and need. We would realize the tenderness of their hearts, the worth of
their lives, the presence of the immortal image upon them.

The sense of the human must be kept uppermost in our relation to money and
money-making. If it is not, one soon gets into the wrong relation to his
money, and it becomes a curse when it might as well have been a blessing.

This is a point at which many make a serious mistake. They enter life with
the right viewpoint and understand that money is only a means to the
happiness and well-being of people. As time goes on, however, their plans
and purposes get out of adjustment. They become guilty of the fatal
assumption that people are a means to the making of money. Accordingly,
they keep wages at too low a level; sacrifice the lives of men to bad air,
poor working conditions, and dangerous machinery; and subordinate the
interests of living human beings to the declaring of dividends.

Not only do they assume this perilous attitude toward others, but they
also assume the same attitude toward themselves and their families. They
have simply allowed money to get into the position of an end instead of
that of a means. It has become a fetish instead of a convenience.

The trouble is largely a lost sense of the human. The man who succumbs to
this common temptation takes love, hope, kindliness, and human
appreciation from the high pedestal which they should by right occupy,
and puts a golden idol in their place.

The value of a dollar is measured by its power to make life more worth
living for some human being. The more people it can make comfortable and
happy the more valuable it is. When it is appropriated to any other
purpose, it is removed from its right relationship to the general scheme
of things. As an end within itself, it is not worth the struggle it costs
in the acquiring. Its one business is to purchase comfort for and render
service to people.

The sense of the human is also necessary in the administration of
government. Throughout the ages, there have been two dominating ideas of
empire. One is the autocratic idea, and the other is the democratic idea.
The former has held that the state exists for the sake of itself and its
rulers. The latter has held that the state exists for the good of its
population. The former has steadily lost ground. The latter has as
steadily gained it.

A certain French monarch is said to be the author of the declaration:
“I am the state.” Whether he said it or not, there have been plenty of
national leaders in history whose deeds would indicate their faith in such
a governmental philosophy. From the first, such a race has been destined
to perish. There is no place in the modern conception of government for
any regime which does not strive to better the condition of the people
within its scope of power. In these times we see with increasing clearness
that there is but one worthy conception of kingliness, and that it is the
kingliness of service. Incidentally, against such there are
no revolutions.

A good public official thinks often of the eyes that are turned in his
direction to see what he is going to do, of the lives that depend upon
his action for much of their peace and contentment, of the children who
must have food, of the aged who must have shelter, and of the struggling
who must have encouragement. To him, the people are not simply something
to govern. They are human beings, the mission of whose government is to
see that each of them has his complete opportunity in life.

Nowhere in these days do we need more to have the sense of the human keen
and operative than in our industrial system. It is a question worth asking
whether we would have our present industrial turmoils if the men who buy
labor and the men who sell it would make a serious effort to know and
understand one another. It seems that most of the trouble and strife of
this world is the result of a lack of mutual human understanding.
Capitalists and laboring men segregate themselves in different
neighborhoods, churches, lodges, and social circles. They need to mingle
on a common basis, be in one another’s homes, know one another’s families,
and enter into the spirit each of the others’ joys and troubles.

One is certainly not religiously heterodox when he contends for such a
principle. Nothing stands out more clearly in the philosophy of the Man of
Galilee than this particular ideal. The emphasis of Jesus was upon the
human being. He held all men in much the same esteem, for to Him a human
being was inherently worthy of respect and honor. His friends were a
varied group. He could meet a tax collector, a fisherman, an erring
Samaritan woman, a rich host, a conscience-stricken tradesman, an
afflicted sufferer, a sinful woman, or a little child, and make each one
feel that they had found a friend. When we learn to be like Him, we shall
possess the same viewpoint.


The Holy Spirit and Social Viewpoint (1922)


It is the idea of some that the old Methodist standard of personal
experience is a mere individualistic viewpoint, and that it is inadequate
because it sounds no social note. They feel that the visitation of the
Divine Spirit will do well enough for the man, but that it has no
provision for the group. It will do for a personal experience but not for
a mass movement, they say. This is one of the mistakes that has led to
the present lack of emphasis on the person and work of the Holy Spirit.
That it is a mistake is easy to see on second thought.

The salvation of the group can only be accomplished by the salvation of
the individuals who compose it. One by one we must come to the throne of
grace. One by one we must confess our sins and seek pardon. One by one we
must have our hearts transformed. One by one we must go back to the ways
of existence and live anew. A righteous community, state, or nation is
only a group of individuals wearing, each for himself, the clean,
white garments of right living.

However, the Holy Spirit can possess the mind of the group as well as that
of the individual. It was so on the Day of Pentecost. Those present
entered into that great spiritual experience as one person. They were
gathered with one accord in one place. These are the two conditions to any
such manifestation of divine power. They felt the experience more keenly
and profited from it more largely because their minds were fused into a
common consciousness.

The social gospel needs the Holy Spirit element in it just as much as the
individualistic gospel ever did. As we once tried to have the Holy Spirit
transform hearts, and still must, so too we must now endeavor to have the
Holy Spirit cleanse and exalt social relationships. What it once did for
the man, and still does, we must also seek that it shall do for the mass.


Civilization (1929)


A visitor from Mars found his way to the planet Earth. Needless to say, he
found plenty of things here to interest him. Many questions occurred to
him. Some of them he asked. Others, being a gentleman, he kept in the
silence of his own thoughts.

He noticed that the earth people had a haggard and hunted look. On the
street he looked in vain for happy faces. Eyes were dull and tired.
Features were drawn and hard. Steps were either quick with nervous
ambition or slow with lagging weariness.

He asked about it, and was told that these people were working very long
hours. Many of them had very exacting positions to fill during the regular
working hours of the day, performing the duties incident to some other
line of work evenings, odd hours, and holidays. Those who did not do this
had to work hard all day, then help themselves along in business by
seeking profitable and advantageous social contacts in the evening. They
were often too tired, yet they and their families had to force themselves
to it.

The visitor from Mars asked why people punished themselves in such a way,
struggling to get in another hour, earn another dollar, see another
prospect, or sell another customer, before quitting for the day; denying
themselves and their families the joy of companionship; driving on when
they longed for blue skies, green fields, laughing waters, and roses.

“They must make money,” was the answer. “There is a standard of living to
be kept up, family position to maintain, children to push along. The
country is developing. Skyscrapers are going up. Science, invention, and
discovery are putting all kinds of new and wonderful things at our
disposal. Its weight is upon us. It increases, for each year we think we
must do better and have more. The competition is keen and fierce.
It drives us hard.”

“I see,” said the visitor from Mars. “And what do you call this giant
thing you have built up with which to crush yourselves?”

“Civilization,” was the reply.


The Road Uphill (1929)


One day in the year 520 B. C., Zechariah was preaching in Jerusalem. He
had been in Babylon during the great captivity, and had returned with
some other Jews in the hope of rebuilding the ruined capital and
beginning anew their broken national life. He asked the younger people
to avoid the sins which in their fathers had wrought all this ruin. He
meant that in successively better generations is the road uphill for
the race.

One day I met a father who was some twelve inches shorter than his
accompanying son. The difference was the more conspicuous in that they
were close companions. Some one referred to it, and the father replied
that he considered it was as it should be—each generation a little taller
than the preceding one. I knew what he meant. He had seen where lies the
road uphill.

In 1714, in a little English tavern, a boy was born who was destined to
affect the history of religion. George Whitefield was brought up cleaning
floors and selling drink to the rough frequenters of his father’s tavern.
He worked his way through Oxford since his parents were little concerned
with such matters. He lived to make hearts tremble with his prophetic
voice and to plant undying works of Christian service and benevolence. He
pushed a little ahead of what his parents were. That is the road uphill.

During the presidency of General Grant, an old sailor went to the White
House to object that the naval department had promoted his son to a place
of authority above him, saying that it would not look right to be taking
orders from his own son. The President replied that he had just appointed
his father, Jesse Grant, postmaster in a little town in a distant state,
and that he did not seem to mind taking orders from his own son.
Jesse Grant had seen the road uphill.

One day in a Nazarene synagogue, Mary’s Son stood up and read from the
Book of Isaiah His own commission to proclaim the kingdom of God. His
human heritage was a long line of choice ancestors, but He had surpassed
all those behind Him in the line. He was traveling and leading His race
along the road uphill.


Some Stories About Beethoven (1915)


The world of art remembers two figures which are especially pathetic, and
for similar reasons. One is that of Homer, the bard, living in a world the
beauties of which he loved but could not see. The other is that of
Beethoven, the musician, living in the midst of harmonies which he loved
but which were denied to his unhearing ears. A great soul may be better
able than others to fortify itself against the terrors of misfortune, but
it is at the same time more keenly sensitive to them. Blindness is more of
a tragedy to one who would more especially love and appreciate beauty,
could he see it. Deafness is more of a tragedy to one whose ears feel a
special hunger for the harmonies of sound.

Ludwig van Beethoven was not only the greatest master of the classical
school in music. He was also one of the strong and unique personalities of
his day. He was not a puppet who fell a slave to usage and custom. The
outlines of his nature were clear and bold. He acted with no uncertain
meaning and spoke with no uncertain sound. That he was wholly original and
self-reliant is shown in many incidents, the record of which has been
preserved from among his busy and eventful years.

For him mere conventionalities had no terrors. When the law of established
custom seemed just and sufficient, he observed it. When it did not, he
became a law unto himself. He placed the claims of life, right, and truth
in a place of supremacy over all other claims. One of his pupils,
Ferdinand Ries, once attempted to convince him of the impropriety of
certain use he had made of consecutive fifths in one of his compositions.
During the discussion Ries called attention to a number of composers who
had forbidden their use in the manner under discussion. When Ries had
finished, Beethoven replied with spirit, “And they have forbidden them!
Well, I allow them.”

As has been said, self-reliance was one of the strongest elements in his
nature. At one time, Moscheles, the Austrian composer, prepared a piano
arrangement of Beethoven’s “Fidelio” and sent it to him with the
inscription “With God’s help” written upon it. When it came back to the
hand of Moscheles, he found that the master had written upon it the reply,
“O man, help thyself.”

He possessed of a genial nature and a happy sense of humor. When a music
student in Vienna, he had three teachers at the same time, each one of
whom was a great name in music. Under one of them, Schuppanzigh, he
studied violin. His relations with this instructor were especially
pleasant—more so than those which prevailed between him and at least one
of the others. As time passed, the teacher revealed an increasing
tendency to corpulence, whereupon Beethoven took up the habit of
addressing him as “My Lord Falstaff.”

A high appreciation of purely personal qualities was a part of Beethoven’s
makeup. To him these constituted the only true fortune. He had a brother,
Johann, who had become wealthy, and whose worldly success had acted so
unfortunately upon his nature that his pride and arrogance had become
somewhat unduly swollen. One day this brother called on the composer and
did not find him at home. He left a card bearing this inscription,
“Johann van Beethoven, Land Proprietor.” Upon returning home and receiving
the card, the musician promptly returned it to his brother with the added
words, “Ludwig van Beethoven, Brain Proprietor.”

On another occasion, a stranger mistook the word Van in his name for the
common sign of nobility. When addressed as a nobleman, he revealed his
true spirit of democracy by laying his hand first upon his head and then
upon his heart and replying that whatever claim to nobility he had lay at
those two points.

His temper was strong but not unjust. When his heart was touched rightly,
it rose in great pity and devotion. When touched wrongly, it flamed up
like a meteor of wrath. On one occasion, at least, he threw aside all
restraint for the moment. One evening at a rehearsal, Beethoven’s patron,
Prince Lobkowitz, ventured an assertion which grated very severely upon
the composer’s sensibilities. At the end of the performance Beethoven is
said to have run into the yard of his patron’s palace and to have shouted
insult and ridicule at the man who, in his opinion, had committed so great
an impropriety.

He was not only a great composer and conductor, but a great pianist as
well. He was also keenly sensitive as to his art and highly exacting in
regard to the attitude of others toward it. Once when, in a private home,
he was playing a duet with his pupil, Ferdinand Ries, two persons
disturbed the performance by conversation. He immediately ceased playing
and would neither play nor allow Ries to do so again during the evening.

His music was to him an absorbing passion. No matter in what capacity he
might be ministering at its shrine, he always did so with entire devotion.
About 1813 an incident occurred in which his entire self-forgetfulness in
his work caused him to play a ludicrous part. He was playing one of his
own compositions in a public concert when he so far forgot himself as to
think he conducting instead of playing. Leaving his seat, he began
violently directing. He knocked the lights from the piano. Two boys were
directed to hold the lights while the managers and audience waited for the
seemingly mad man to become quiet. One of the boys, light and all, was
soon floored by a blow in the mouth from the swinging arm of the musician.
The other boy dodged and ducked in his efforts to escape a like fate,
while the audience roared with mirth.

Beethoven had a certain admiration for Napoleon Bonaparte as a soldier and
statesman. The symphony now known as “Eroica” was written in Napoleon’s
honor and was to bear his name. About the time of the completion of the
first score, which was to be sent to the Corsican, the word came that its
subject had proclaimed itself emperor. Beethoven at once tore the title
from the score and changed the name of the composition to “Eroica.” Upon
Napoleon’s death, he remarked that the symphony contained the funeral
march of the conqueror.

During most of the active years of his life, Beethoven had been planning a
musical setting for Schiller’s “Ode to Joy.” In the evening of his life it
was at last completed. In 1824, just about two years before his death,
Beethoven directed a rendering of this music in Vienna. During this
performance a pathetic scene was enacted. At the close the applause became
so deafening and was so prolonged that a serious public disturbance was
feared, and the police were called in. Beethoven, who could hear no sound
of all that was transpiring, stood with his back to the audience, wholly
unconscious of the situation. At length someone touched him and caused him
to turn around. When the people saw the look of surprise that spread over
his face and realized the pathos of the situation, they broke out in a
fresh demonstration, during which many faces were wet with tears.

By the time he was thirty years of age Beethoven had begun to be a victim
of failing hearing. The dawn of this realization, which would have broken
the spirit of many a man and which was a deep grief to him, did not daunt
him nor greatly interfere with the completion of a great musical career.
He did not dwell unduly upon his misfortune and, for a time, he even kept
it a secret. Through the remaining years of his life, he patiently endured
the difficulty, hindrance, and poverty of musical enjoyment which it
brought him. That it had been to him a constant source of mental anguish,
however, is indicated in the closing hour of his life. That hour came at
the close of an illness which had been brought on by an undue exposure. It
was while a severe thunderstorm was in progress outside that the great
master lay surrounded by a group of friends who had been very faithful to
him during his last illness, and some of whom were themselves eminent men.
He indicated to them his knowledge that the end was near and then, after a
silence, he said, “I shall hear in heaven,” and in a little time he
was gone.

This was the ending of an unselfish life. Nothing but real devotion can
leave the record that is his self-sacrifice. For the reckless and
undeserving son of a dead brother, he denied himself real necessities for
years, a sacrifice which met with neither appreciation nor effort to be
worthy. The uncle remained true, however, and after his death when he was
found to have held some unsuspected wealth in the form of bonds, it was
supposed that he had kept it intact through his own days of severe
personal need in order that it might go to his unworthy charge.

Beethoven was deeply religious. His ideas of religion were not weak and
sentimental but were characterized by the same strength which pervaded
his life in general. He had a keen sense of the Divine Power, but he did
not allow it to destroy his companion sense of human responsibility. His
pastor was a trusted friend. It was with that friend that he first shared
the secret of his growing deafness and who helped him for a time to keep
that secret from the ears of the world. Interesting and often illuminating
correspondence between the two is still preserved. It is doubtful whether
a mastery so great of an art so heavenly could have been possible to a man
who did not have a strong sense of the Divine. The majesty of his music
came from a majesty within, which probably knew better than it could tell
the sweetness of that music which was breaking on his newly-opened ears in
the moment of his assurance that he should “hear in heaven.”


The Obligation of Good Cheer (1916)


To say that there is no virtue in melancholy and no harm in cheerfulness
only half states the case. Melancholy is positively wrong, and good cheer
is a Christian grace. Whoever has a cheerful disposition has that much of
a start toward positive and complete goodness.

From every viewpoint, both of the life to come and the life that now is,
cheerfulness is a thing to be cultivated. It makes for happiness, it
constitutes a guard against the danger of misjudgment and censoriousness,
and it makes for success in the affairs of life. Everybody seeks out and
likes the cheerful person. The world has no time—nor ought it to have—for
the complainer and the grumbler.

Happiness is not a thing to be bought nor to be obtained from any external
source. The only happiness which has lasting quality comes from within. No
one can be happy long who is not happy in soul. Toys lose their gay color,
baubles fade, treasures vanish, but a merry heart is glad forever.
Happiness is not exclusive in its choice of where to go. It will go
anywhere that anyone is willing to receive it. It graces the hovel as well
as the mansion, and it is perfectly willing to pulsate in a breast covered
with the rags of poverty. Anyone, anywhere, can be happy.

Melancholy is harmful to the individual. It not only spoils life for him,
but it breaks down his health as well. No unhappy person can remain
healthy long. On the other hand, no unhealthy person can cultivate the
grace of joy without receiving substantial physical benefits therefrom.

The reasons for this are natural and plain. The unhappy person is never
relaxed. He lives between a high tension of discontent and the lifeless
reaction which follows. Today he is writhing in his self-inflicted misery.
Tomorrow he is drowsy and languid as the inevitable result.

No one can feel well or go efficiently about his duties with his nerves on
a strain. Every muscle must be free and loose. Each organ must be at ease
and liberty to proceed in the performance of its function. The physical
life cannot move by fits and starts without harm to itself. We cannot go
in jerks without soon feeling the harmful results of so doing.

There is a still deeper reason than this for the harmful effect of
discontent on the health. Unhappy emotions promptly set up processes which
form poisons and pour them out into the system. These poisons have a
paralyzing effect upon muscle and nerve. This accounts for the fact that
indigestion or other organic inactivity will often follow a fit of violent
anger or deep grief.

The Japanese are said to cultivate the habit of forcing themselves to
smile. They do this, it is said, for the general benefit it renders both
to disposition and health. It is a fact that a relaxed and smiling
countenance has a tendency to put the rest of the body at its ease.

The conclusion is that every cheerful moment contributes to long life and
physical well-being, and that it is not possible to give way to an
uncontrolled torrent of unpleasant feelings or to the chilling hold of
gloom without by so much shortening the days one has to live.

Melancholy is anti-social. It would scarcely be too much to say that it is
criminal. If it is a crime to trespass upon the rights or the happiness of
others, then gloom is a crime, for the reason that it does increase the
burden and detract from the happiness of every person who ever comes into
its chilling and blighting presence.

It does not dispose of the responsibility to say that other people need
not be affected by our feelings. As a matter of fact, other people cannot
help being affected by our feelings. Nothing is more contagious than
feeling. The warm and genial spirit sheds light and joy wherever it
goes—as a matter of course. The chilled and crabbed soul makes its
presence a place of arctic coldness—and equally without effort. Where
there is cheer, there we find spontaneity and freedom. Where there is
gloom, there are weakness and constraint.

It is a serious question whether anyone ought to be allowed so to add to
the world’s burden. Having been near someone who was constitutionally
unhappy has more than once unfitted someone else for his daily task. No
one cares how long his day or how hard his work so long as he can keep a
courageous spirit, but when he is robbed of that, he is shorn of
practically all his power.

Men are not looking for more troubles. They already have more than enough.
They are looking for genial souls who know the value of a smile and can
teach it to men. The world really owes a large debt to the men who have
made it their business to coax a laugh occasionally to its weary and
hardened face. The man who has made the way a little more sunny for some
far stranger whose face he will never see in this world shall in no wise
lose his reward.

It may often happen that one could render no other service quite so great
as to just keep happy. The other man may not need a lift with his load.
He may only need a fresh supply of gladness in his heart to make him feel
that it is a little lighter. The world treasures its little supply of
hearty good cheer as it might treasure gold and precious gems.
Furthermore, it loves none so much as it loves those who try to pluck some
of its thorns and plant flowers in their places.

Melancholy is not only unhealthful and anti-social, it is also sinful. The
person who treasures an unhappy spirit sins not only against himself and
his fellow men, but he also sins against the Almighty.

Of course, it should be understood that in order to be happy there is no
need of questionable and dangerous diversions. Let it be said once more
that happiness does not come from without but from within. The whole
outside world takes on the color of the spectacles we wear. It is just as
unpleasing as the person who sees it is unpleasant. It is just as rosy and
beautiful as the eye that looks upon it is bright and hopeful. We are
speaking here not of diversions but of the inner spirit of our lives.
Happiness, if it is anything, is a quality of character.

In his story of “The Laughing Man,” Victor Hugo has sketched a remarkable
character. Gwynplaine is a traveling showman, who as a baby was stolen
from noble parents, and so disfigured by surgical means that his face
always bore the appearance of a laugh. All through his life, however heavy
might be his heart, Gwynplaine had no choice but to wear a laugh upon his
face. The tears might flow from his eyes, but his features never lost
their look of merriment. He laughed in sun and shadow, joy and woe.

After all, there is something wonderfully suggestive in this supposedly
unfortunate character. He at least helped others too to be merry. He at
least did not impose the chill of a downcast countenance upon any
companion while he lived. This is worth while. It would be infinitely
better if more could bury their sorrows beneath their cheer. Not only
would others about them fare better, but the sorrows themselves would the
sooner disappear. We cannot banish sorrow, but we can learn to bear
it well.

If one will look to the Bible for a vindication of the statement that
cheerfulness is Christian and gloom sinful, he will find abundant evidence
to that effect. Everything there goes to indicate the gladness that clings
about that One in whose presence is fulness of joy and at whose right hand
there are pleasures forevermore. The person who thinks religion must be
sombre has misread his Bible and misinterpreted his Master. It may be
serious and earnest, but never morose and gloomy.

The Man of Galilee was indeed a man of sorrows, but He was too much of a
man of joy to burden the world with His sorrows. He did not dwell upon
them in the presence of others. He was content to endure them manfully,
and to give the world an example of courage to the last.

A despondent person is no ornament to religion. It is the joy-lighted face
which inspires and wins. It is the light of joy about the altar that makes
it an impressive place. It is the glad service which lifts the world a
little farther in its long, hard climb.


Worship and Service (1916)


Francisco Pizarro, the conqueror of Peru, was an important force in early
Western history. However, he stained his hands again and again with
helpless blood. Selfishly he pursued his end both by fair means and foul.
When the last of the Incas, from the prison into which Pizarro had thrown
him to await death, offered a roomful of gold as his ransom, Pizarro
accepted the gold, but the promise of life and liberty was broken, and
the old man was led to his death.

One day as the conqueror sat at dinner, he was surprised by a group of
avengers and was struck down. As he lay dying, Pizarro dipped his finger
into the stream of lifeblood that flowed from him, drew with it the figure
of a cross upon the floor, and kissed it as he died.

A beautiful thing, it may perhaps be called, that the dying thoughts of a
great explorer and conqueror turned to the cross, and that his lips were
last pressed against its sacred image. But a life of cruelty is not atoned
for by kissing the picture of the emblem of love. Years of wrong are not
changed by one symbolic act of devotion at the last. The old Inca chief
and all the others who had met death at the point of Pizarro’s sword
remained in their graves, their rights and treasures unrestored. The fact
that their overcomer died kissing the cross was of no avail to them.

To kiss the cross at twilight will never take the place of playing the man
through the day. It is better to live, simply and nobly, the spirit and
principles of the cross for a single hour than to embrace its image for an
eternity. Peace and love are not symbols, but realities; and righteousness
is not shadow but substance. Simple fidelity in common ways far transcends
the one picturesque performance done when all the world is looking. It is
only the path of simple duty that leads to peace at last. He who would die
in the spirit of the cross must live there. The cross is truly pictured in
the life of true devotion, not with the blood of selfishness upon the
couch of death.


Do It Right (1917)


The other day I saw painted behind the seat of an express truck, where the
expressman would see it each time he loaded or removed a package, the
simple sentence: “Do it right.”

The express company knew human nature. It also understood the laws of
success. It had taken the trouble to place before the eyes of its
employe the maxim which pointed the way to their mutual success.

For what will make an express company prosperous will also make its
workers prosperous, namely, doing things right. And if that principle will
give success in the handling of express packages, it will also result in
success in the performance of any other task. There is not a walk of life
in which profitable use may not be made of the maxim: “Do it right.”
Whether one works with tools, with books, with facts, or with men, he
cannot be a success in his line unless he does it right.

It takes longer to do a thing right. Nervousness and hurry are the foes of
perfect work. The master workman must be deliberate. He will not take more
time than he needs, but he must take that much. It takes longer to do a
thing right, but it never has to be done over when once it is finished.


Life’s Handicaps (1918)


One day a group of Galilean people wanted to carry a sick friend to
Jesus to be healed. He was in a house, and when they came near they found
such a crowd about the doors and windows that they could not get in. Not
to be defeated in their purpose, they cut an opening through the roof and
let the sick man, bed and all, down to where the Great Physician was.
Of course, the result was that the afflicted person received the gift of a
whole body as the reward for their insistent attitude. The story is simply
another version of the value of importunity in seeking the gifts of the
Great Helper.

This story of the long ago indicates one of the great principles of life,
and one which has played a part in the activities and struggles of every
age. It suggests that one may at any time have to reckon with handicaps,
but that there is usually a way to overcome them if one has the will to
seek and follow that way. There is something highly admirable about the
spirit of this group of people who, when they could not accomplish their
desire in one way, promptly found another in which they could
accomplish it.

The Scriptures say a good many things by implication which they do not say
in exactly so many words. It is said that in an experience meeting in
which the attendants fell to quoting favorite passages of Scripture, an
old lady arose and stated that of all the beautiful and helpful Scripture
texts in which she had found strength and comfort, her favorite was this:
“Grin and bear it.” The Bible does not contain such a text, but it does
contain such a teaching, and the old lady was not so far wrong after all.

This Scripture story of the sick man and his friends suggests another
adage of the world, which has expression at least by implication in the
Scriptures. The Bible does not contain such a text as: “Where there’s a
will there’s a way,” yet such is the exact teaching implied in the story
outlined above.

Along whatever way one’s path may happen to lie, and whatever may be the
task which he undertakes to perform, his life would be utterly unnatural
if it were devoid of difficulties. A life without handicaps would be no
more natural than a summer without showers or a year without a winter.
It is not even desirable that one should live without encountering more or
less resistance to his efforts to realize his best and highest hopes.

Furthermore, these difficulties are often unforeseen. They cannot be
calculated, but they must be allowed for. At the beginning of the carrying
out of any enterprise, the proper thing to do is to reckon one’s resources
and to count the cost. At the beginning of any journey, the barriers in
the way must be a calculation in the plan. At the outset of any endeavor,
one must realize that not every part of his task will be altogether easy.
If it were, the finished product would hardly be worth while, and
certainly the toiler himself would not have benefited largely from his
labor. Difficulties, expected and unexpected, are as certain to come as is
the succession of the days and nights.

Life is frequently likened to a race. It is true that it is a progress
toward a goal, and that in it there are many who are contending against
each other for what they look upon as a victory. Life is not a race,
however, in which every element of the situation is ideal for every
runner. It is only in dreams where such perfect conditions may be found.
In the hard facts of life it is otherwise. In the real race each
contestant has at least some odds against him.

Life, then, is a race in which each runner is hampered with a handicap.
Each situation presents some difficulty, and occasionally the most
brilliant of successes is made in spite of this hindrance. The ideal race
would not be one without handicaps. It is rather one in which a man plays
his part well in spite of handicaps. The ideal victory is not that which
is won because the contestant had everything in his favor. It is rather
the one which is gained in spite of the odds which the contestant had
against him.

Homer and Milton were blind, yet each won for himself a secure place among
the world’s small group of immortal poets. It would have been easy for
either to have made his affliction an excuse for failure. Instead, each
made his handicap an added reason for success. Each learned to glimpse a
glory which is hidden to most who are blessed with faultless vision.

Demosthenes was born with a faulty utterance and with a hollow chest.
Nevertheless, he conceived a great desire to be an orator. Most men would
have found their physical unfitness a sufficient handicap to discourage
them from any effort. Demosthenes determined to overcome the hindrances
which had been born with him. He sought a remote and secluded place,
shaved his head in order that he might not soon venture back among his
friends, and exercised his voice and body until the weakness of both had
been overcome. All the world is familiar with the final results of
his efforts.

On the day when Demosthenes was uttering the amazing words which so
tellingly advocated his right to receive a crown at the hands of his
fellow citizens, the explanation of his achievement did not lie in his
birth. It lay rather in the fact that he had willed to overcome the
limitations with which nature had surrounded him. It is true that he had
seized a psychological moment, but he was able to seize that moment
because he had not feared the long period of painstaking effort which had
been necessary to overcome his handicaps. The secret of his success was
not opportunity, but toil. He had merely refused to surrender to the
forces which would have destroyed the usefulness of many men. His triumph
was but the result of a task patiently performed in spite of
its difficulty.

During the last century, Spain produced a remarkable artist in the person
of Daniel Vierge. He attained eminence in his work while still a young
man. At the early age of thirty, however, he suffered complete paralysis
of the right side. It would have been easy to have admitted that his work
with the brush and pencil was done, and to have resigned himself to what
seemed to be a hard fate. Such was not his spirit, however. He had no
intention of relinquishing the tools of his art. He still had the use of
his left arm, and he determined that it should be trained to possess the
power which the other had lost.

The long and tedious period of training had to be gone through again. He
accomplished his task, however, and in spite of the difficulty which he
had encountered he learned to draw nearly as well with his left hand as
he had ever been able to do with the other. By making the most of the one
resource which was left to him, he managed to retain his place in the
front rank of his profession as an illustrator. The work which he produced
after his affliction can scarcely be distinguished in quality from his
earlier efforts.

Dr. Holmes once said that the best way to live long is to become afflicted
with some serious disease. What he meant was that such an affliction
sometimes teaches people the care of their bodies, when enduring health
would leave them utterly careless of the essential laws of well-being. It
does sometimes happen that, even in this regard, a handicap is found to be
a helpful thing. There are cases on record which tell the story of renewed
effort to cultivate health and strength, when life was rapidly slipping
away, and of the crowning of that effort with success, health, and
long life.

The old story of the hare and the tortoise is re-enacted daily in modern
life. The battle does not always go to the strong, nor is victory in the
race the inevitable portion of the swift. The winner is more apt to be the
patient toiler who has chosen a purpose, and who struggles in the
direction of his goal in spite of handicaps. His progress may not always
be swift, but it is at least continuous.


The Riverside (1918)


“It is not what we would like to do in this life,” says Clarence E. Flynn
in ‛The Riverside,’ “but what we really get done that counts.”

“Heaven in its mercy may take the will for the deed, but human destiny in
its justice never does.”

“What the world of men needs is not kindly thoughts which never come to
expression nor the good will which never reaches the form of action. What
it needs is the helpful word and the real deed of kindness. It is for the
concrete service that the hearts of men rise up in thankfulness.”

“And, in the working out of our own careers, progress is not made by the
dream which never become more than a dream nor the purpose which was never
carried to fulfillment. ‛We rise by the things that are under our feet,’
and push forward by the virtue of the things really accomplished.
Fate, like men, does not ask how we have felt, but what we have done.”

“Upon the record of our own characters and personalities we may get
credits for feelings and our purposes, even though they were all smothered
silence and inaction, but these things do not enter into the record formed
by the impressions we make upon our age. It is a record of deed, and it
stands when the eyes of this world have ceased to see any other.”

“A thought or a feeling of aspiration, however great or strong, is not
meant to be an end within itself. It is a means to the end of its actual
realization in action and accomplishment.”

“A heavenly vision is given only to shed light on a way to perform a
heavenly deed. A great thought is given only to make possible a great
work. A noble feeling is God’s way of pointing to a noble mission.
Columbus did not have a conviction that a new world lay beyond the sea for
naught. The conviction led the way to the fact and its important result.
It has been so in countless similar instances.”

“It is what men do that lives after them. There is an earthly side to
immortality. The deeds done in the flesh make an epitaph which
cannot deceive.”


Determinants (1921)


Two trees grow together on the same hillside. They draw their sustenance
from the same soil, yet each has its own peculiar bark, leaf, and fruit.
Both exude gum, yet one gum contains arabic acid while the other contains
none. The difference is not in the food they consume nor the environment
in which they grow. It is in some hidden fact which determines the nature
of each.

Two animals feed in the same pasture. They eat the same food and graze
upon the same kind of grass. Yet one is covered with hair and the other
with wool. The difference is not in the material of which their coats are
made. It is in some unseen force which determines their natures.

Two human beings grow up together in the same home. They eat together from
the same food at the same table. They have the same parental guidance.
They enjoy the same physical and social environment. Yet one becomes a
good man and the other a bad one. The same sustaining properties have
entered into their making, but in one they bring forth good fruit, while
in the other they bring forth evil fruit.

No tree ever violates the dictates of that hidden force. Its fruitage
never varies. One could not change its output unless he could first change
its nature. Men do not gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles.
Fortunately, however, this rule does not hold in the case of men. The
nature of a man can be altered or reversed.

This can be done because it is possible to change the heart, and from the
heart are the issues of life. Nothing can change the determinant in a
tree, but there is a power that can change it in a life. This is because
a man has a will, while a tree has none. It is the power of the will to
resist or submit.


Love’s Burdens (1921)


A little boy sat in a wheel chair. The hand of Fate had already rested
heavily upon his tender years. A paralysis had laid hold upon him and had
left him as helpless as an infant. His drawn lips could not speak. His
eyes could not keep themselves focussed upon any object. Only one thing
about him remained normal. His mind continued to function. He knew, felt,
joyed, desired, and suffered.

In some unfeeling, intellectually ideal republic, such a pitiful piece of
human wreckage might have been cast upon the junk heap. It was so done in
the old day, and so it would be done again if a certain type of statesman
might have his pitiless way. Utopias too seldom make proper allowance for
such poor unfortunates. They cannot produce anything. They are necessarily
a care and a burden to others. They are worth nothing in money to society.
They are not social assets. They are social liabilities.

Fortunately, this child did not dwell in a state which reckoned things on
such a basis. He was born a citizen of the blessed kingdom of love. The
disposition of his poor, stricken life was not determined by the dictates
of the head. It was decided by the kindlier judgments of the heart. It was
not a question of expediency. It was one of affection. Had his parents
been ruled by the icy processes of a certain brand of common sense, they
might have despised and neglected him because he was not a creditable
representative of their kind. However, it was not so. Being ruled by the
gentler spirit of parental love, they cared for him a little more tenderly
than for any other of their children.

There is a reason. It is the fact that love is so constituted that it
finds joy in bearing burdens. It deliberately reaches out to help the
poorest and most unfortunate. It lavishes itself on those from whom it can
expect nothing save gratitude in return. The feelings of the heart
constitute the only coin in circulation in love’s domain.

Day after day an aged mother sat in her chair by the window. Her faded
eyes looked continually out upon the street. One might have thought that
they were looking at the stream of passers-by. It was not so. She could
hardly see the friends and neighbors as they came and went. She was really
looking back over the long vista of vanished years. She was seeing
departed faces, and listening to voices long hushed by the
blanketing clay.

A day came when she could no longer sit at the window. The thin old frame
that was her body had grown too weak to support itself in a chair, so she
lay upon her bed. Neglected? No. She was more tenderly cared for than
ever. She was a great care for the tender, loving hands that ministered to
her, but her very weakness and helplessness called the louder to loving
hearts and they responded.

One day the worn-out machinery of her physical body stopped running. At
evening time it had suddenly grown light, and then the darkness had
fallen. The old face was the picture of peace, with its closed eyes and a
certain satisfied expression upon its features.

A wise friend came and stood in the darkened room with the daughter who
had faithfully cared for the aged one while she lived. She said to her:

“I know how many times your arms will ache for the burden that has been
taken from them.”

She knew the law of love. It craves burdens to bear. When it has carried
a heavy load through years of time and that load is suddenly lifted from
its shoulders, it does not rejoice. It weeps and wishes for the burden
back again. This is a part of its strange, beautiful nature. Without this
nature it would not be love. The world has gone on and the race has
accomplished something of an upward climb because love has always been
among us, lifting, pushing, and helping. Without it we should still be a
race of savages.

A little blind girl walked in the park day after day. She stepped among
flowers that she had never seen. She listened to the birds, though she did
not know what they looked like. She lived in a world the beauty or
ugliness of which she had no power to realize. She was always led about by
the same hand—that of her father. He was patient and faithful. He seemed
to be trying to do all that could be done to compensate for the great lack
in her life. Since joy could not find its way in through her eyes, he did
what he could to help a little more of it to trickle in through her heart.
He succeeded, for across her sightless face occasionally flashed a
brightness announcing the arrival of gladness within.

There were other children in the family. All save this one were in full
possession of their normal powers. The logical thing, after a fashion,
would have been for the hearts of the parents to incline toward the
well-favored. However, such was not the type of logic that prevailed. The
heart of love does not lavish its affection upon those who have no need.
It pours itself out for those who need help and care. Therefore, this
sightless child was more tenderly cared for than any one of the rest.

It was in accordance with an established law. The troubled heart is a
magnet to the spirit of affection. Moreover, the very toil and sacrifice
spent for an object of love beget a greater devotion. The greater care
one needs the more he is loved.

It is so among men because it is so with God. We are made in His image,
and our normal feelings and efforts are only a poor human struggle to
be like Him.

A beautiful thing is said in the opening sentences of the Bible. The
barren picture of the first stage of creation is first sketched. It is
said that the earth was waste, and void, and that darkness was upon the
face of the deep. Then comes the significant sentence. It relates that
the Spirit of God brooded upon the face of the waters.

This is the explanation of all the progress that has been achieved since.
The waste became order, the void became substance, and the darkness became
light. Gradually civilization established itself, and the world keeps
moving on toward the realization of its better day. Some time we shall see
the realization of the promise of a new heaven and a new earth in which no
sin or sorrow shall be known. There will be just one explanation. God has
brooded in love over every shadow, and sin, and sorrow that we have ever
had, and His love has always struggled on with us to better things.

One day when Jesus showed some special solicitude for those whom the
correct and the respectable despised, He answered the criticism of His
friends by saying that it was not the well but the sick who needed a
physician. Such is the law of love. The heart of the world’s Saviour went
out first to those who needed His care most. It was love looking for a
burden to bear.

One evening time Jesus prayed in a garden. He was looking at the whole
world that night as He had looked at the city when He wept over it. He was
the divine spirit brooding that night over the needs of a race. Next
morning He hung upon the cross. He was only going to the limit of the last
bitter extremity for those He loved. Why do we call Him the world’s
highest example of love? Because He was the world’s outstanding
burden-bearer.

Love is the sweetest and the costliest thing in the world. It is the
sweetest because it is the spirit and atmosphere of heaven. It is the
costliest because its arms are always aching for loads to carry.


The Successors of Tantalus (1921)


Tantalus was a legendary Grecian king who is said to have displeased the
gods. As punishment he was condemned to dwell by a pool, the waters of
which receded when he attempted to drink from them, and to dwell just out
of reach of an abundance of overhanging fruit.

Tantalus lives in many of us today. His pool of water and evasive food
supply are like the visions which fade before we reach them or the hopes
that burst like bubbles before they are realized. They are like the mirage
that leads the traveler across the desert and fades before he has quenched
his thirst at its promised springs. They resemble the summer flower that
falls to pieces before one can lay hands upon it.

Yet these unrealized hopes are among the most valuable experiences we
have. The traveler on the desert may not reach his palm-sheltered spring,
but he often approaches nearer to the end of his journey for having
followed its image. In life we do not always get what we seek, but we
often find that in what seemed an hour of failure we have achieved
real progress.

At maturity one often finds that the joys he sought in youth are only
empty husks after having been so laboriously obtained. It may seem tragic
that the name and place to which he early aspired lose so much of their
appeal when they have been attained. The effort spent on the upward climb
has not been in vain, however. In the struggle his ideals have lifted.
He is no longer satisfied with the superficial and the unreal.

We plan endeavors and strive to successfully complete them. Sometimes we
succeed, but often we fail. When we fail in a righteous cause the labor
has not necessarily been in vain. One can never be robbed of the best
fruit of his striving, which is the added sinew of strength gained in
the trying.


The Christian Standard of Greatness (1922)


The life and destiny of a nation are largely determined by what it
considers great. If its hero is a ruthless warrior, its nature will be
militaristic, and its end will be that of those who fight and kill. If its
idol is a man whose chief distinction is wealth, its career will be one
long struggle after gold, and its journey will be to the grave of
profligacy. If its ideal is a man whose sole objective is position and
power, its life will be a struggle for place, and its end the decadence
which such things always suffer.

This principle is true because greatness is a mirage after which all men
seek. It is a rainbow’s end to which, though we may never quite reach it,
we are always struggling. When a thing once comes to be considered great,
it at once becomes popular. Men of every kind and condition immediately
seek it. It becomes the fashion and, therefore, determines the life of
the period.

=The Question of Relative Greatness=

It was a perfectly natural thing that the disciples of Jesus should
concern themselves so much about the question of relative greatness in
the kingdom which their Master had proclaimed. It was nothing but the
world-old lust for chief positions. It was planted deeply in their
natures, just as it has been in the natures of those who have lived in
every age. Jesus understood it, and He realized the inevitableness of
their obsession with it. He dealt gently with some of their mistakes
because He knew these mistakes had their origin in this fact.

One day that wonderful little company of men arrived in the city of
Capernaum, tired out with their travel on the country road. When they
were safely in the house, Jesus sat down among them and asked what it was
they had been discussing on the way. He made this inquiry only to open up
the question, for He knew that they had been disputing about the question
as to who was greatest. Then He settled the question once and for all by
proclaiming a new standard of greatness. “If any man would be first,”
He said, “he shall be last of all and the servant of all.”

=A Permanent and Dependable Standard=

In those words, Jesus set forth the Christian measure of greatness. With
a wave of the hand, He set aside the ordinary standards and conceptions of
the world. Passing show and display, temporary wealth and position, the
deceitfulness of name and rank, the needless privilege of lording it over
others as some great one in the land—all these are disregarded in the
kingdom of things as they should be. Jesus measures greatness by the only
standard which is permanent and dependable. Since we are His followers, we
must do the same.

=The Paradoxes of Jesus=

The teachings of Jesus are full of the appearance of paradox. He
frequently said such things as He said to the disciples that day in
Capernaum. He said that to gain one’s life he must lose it, that to be
first one must be last, and that to be great one must not seek to be
served but to serve.

The world in general has never come to see that these things are really
true. At least it has not come to act as though it realized their truth.
However, the experiences of life are continually proving them. Repeatedly
we have seen that one carries nothing out of the world except what he has
given away. In a very real sense, one possesses only that which he has
lost. One is made of account in this world as well as the next not by
being ministered unto but by ministering.

=The Teachings of Jesus in Terms of Life=

Jesus was not one who preached one gospel and lived another. He preached a
possible gospel and proved its possibility by living it. He himself was a
perfect example of His own teachings worked out in terms of life. He went
about doing good. He is the supreme figure in the life of the ages because
He was the supreme servant of men. He was the divine Son of God.
Therefore, His life is full and sufficient proof to us that service is
more than great. It is divine.

This Christian conception of greatness has not been altogether easy for
the world to accept. Men have been so long steeped in the human love for
the gleam of gold, the trappings of power, and the couch of luxury that
they do not readily part with the old habits of thought and the old
ambitions of life.

Age-long ideas are not easy to banish. Nearly two-thousand years have
passed since Jesus preached His little sermon on greatness at Capernaum,
and we have not yet wholly learned the lesson. We are in process of
learning it, however. The world makes progress, and some day we shall have
reached the goal of high thinking, noble ideals, and great conceptions.

=Our Changing Conception of Greatness=

A little while ago one might have seen the marks of the old standard of
greatness on the walls of almost any school building in the land. He would
have seen displayed there a collection of pictures the great majority of
which were portraits of warriors and representations of battle scenes. A
census of the pictures in the ordinary school history would have revealed
the same situation. This is all in accordance with an ancient law. We are
hero worshippers. We have always pictured our idols on the schoolhouse
walls. And in accordance with the inevitable law of suggestion, they have
effected the life of the generations accordingly.

Today we see fewer warriors and battle scenes pictured. Instead we see an
increasing number of portraits of the great servants of humanity. Where
yesterday we saw the pictures of Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon, today we
see the faces of Faraday, Watts, Fulton, Pasteur, and Burbank. This simply
means that our conception of greatness is changing. We admire the great
destroyers less and less. We admire the great builders and servants of the
race more and more.

=Ancient and Modern Wonders of the World=

In the second century before Christ, Antipater of Sidon wrote an epigram
in which he catalogued what he considered the seven most wonderful things
in the world at that time. The list included the walls of Babylon, the
statue of Zeus by Phidias at Olympia, the hanging gardens at Babylon, the
Colossus of Rhodes, the pyramids of Egypt, the mausoleum at Halicarnassus,
and the temple of Diana at Ephesus.

Rather recently the editor of a well-known American magazine undertook to
discover what is the best opinion as to the seven most wonderful things
in the world today. He addressed a thousand letters to leading thinkers in
various countries, asking each to record his choice among a considerable
list of things.

The seven things receiving the highest number of votes were the wireless,
the telephone, the aeroplane, radium, antiseptics and antitoxins, spectrum
analysis, and the X-ray. The eighth wonder chosen, had the call been for
that number, would have been the Panama Canal.

It will be noted that nothing in Antipater’s list expressed service to
mankind. At the same time, it will be noted that everything in the modern
list enumerated does signify service. This means that we are moving
forward in the direction of a Christian standard of greatness.

=The True Ideal for Humanity=

It will be a blessed day for humanity when people in general come to see
that the one who is servant of his times is the true ideal of greatness.
Since we are hero-worshippers, and since we do take one another for our
patterns, it is highly desirable that the highest type of manhood and
womanhood we have shall be the examples for the rest.

The human struggle will always be in the direction of whatever is
considered great. We shall always struggle to become like that which we
most admire. Therefore, it is important that we shall most admire the
thing that is best. Doing so, we shall become increasingly like it.

A nation made up of people who measure greatness by service will not be
treading the path to national doom so long as this is true. It will be
moving forward in the way of a larger and richer life. Selfishness and
envy are disintegrating influences, but service in the spirit of Christ
is a building force both for time and for all eternity.


The Objective of Service (1922)


The present social situation demands that we shall push forward in the
direction of a twofold objective. First, we must give human life the best
possible set of conditions under which to exist and develop. Second, we
must do what is properly possible to assist it to develop at its best
under those conditions. We must make of the physical world the best
environment we can. We must then encourage people to obtain the largest
benefit from that environment.

The highest values we can cultivate are the human values. It is all well
enough to lay out beautiful parks, build broad streets, erect costly
monuments, and rear majestic buildings. However, to do these things alone
would be following a very short-sighted plan. Such a program cannot long
continue unless we keep producing men who can carry it forward.
Furthermore, its results would be of no value to the future without a
vigorous and hardy race to enjoy them when the future arrives.

If we develop the highest type of human beings we shall not be lacking any
good thing when the to-morrows come. After all, the human problems are
about the only ones we have. Give us worthy people, and everything else
will take care of itself. Where wealth accumulates and men decay the
country decays with them. Where humanity is regnant and ascendent
everything else is certain to be at its best. The world goes upward or
downward, forward or backward with its people. All that enters into our
physical environment must first be conceived in the mind and wrought by
the hand of man. Humanity is, therefore, the most important object to
which our interest and service can be dedicated. It represents both the
divine problem and the human task. Only by discharging our full duty to it
can we realize the dream of a new heaven and a new earth. The strength,
and worth, and happiness of human beings are the things for which we
should all be living, both for the sake of others and that of ourselves.


Our Blessings of Deliverance (1922)


When Thanksgiving Day comes ’round, it always reminds us how numberless
are our blessings. This is true even of the visible blessings which could
be listed on paper, if there were a volume large enough to hold them. It
is also true of a great body of invisible blessings. We might call them
our blessings of deliverance. No less important than the things which we
have been given are the things from which we have been saved. What the
extent of that group of blessings is we can never know.

We are here because God did not see fit to call us away this year. Our
homes still shelter us because He has not decided to foreclose the
mortgage He held upon them before we were born. We still receive our
livings because He has not seen fit to discontinue honoring the old
petition, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Our loved ones are still
about us because He has not seen fit to sunder any of the bands that
hold them to earth.

What sad misfortunes might have come to us, and did not! What pitiful
events might have occurred, and did not! What dark storm clouds might
have arisen, when the skies remained clear! Every absence of trouble
is a mercy of God.

Our fathers used to have a phrase in their prayers that expressed this
idea. They used to say: “Lord, we thank Thee that it is as well with us
as it is.” That old prayer, so often on their lips, is worth repeating
each time we come to the Throne of Mercy and Grace. How much worse things
might have been than they are! God has blessed us with incalculable good.
He has also preserved us from incalculable evil. Let us not forget to
praise him for the storms that did not break, the tears that did not fall,
the problems that did not arise, the disappointments we did not suffer,
the heartaches we did not feel, the blossoms that did not wither, the
hopes that were not shattered, and the graves that were not made.


The Redemption of Jean Valjean (1922)


Among all the characters of fiction, Victor Hugo’s Jean Valjean stands
out in a light of special distinction. The author intended him to indicate
the limiting influence of social law and custom. However, he accomplishes
a much better thing than that. He furnishes us a master picture of the
upward struggle of a soul despite the influences acting within and without
to keep it down. In certain broad and general features, the redemption of
Jean Valjean is a picture of the redemption of any person in any place
or time.

The opening chapters of the story of _Les Miserables_ reveal a man with
sullen features, suspicious eyes, and unkempt appearance, entering the
town of D. at evening time. He has just escaped from nineteen years in the
galleys. His crime was a serious one. He thrust his hand through a baker’s
window, and stole a loaf of bread to feed the hungry children of his poor
sister. Nineteen years at the oars have been the expiation of this and his
various efforts to escape. He is now a fugitive, forever branded a
criminal by society. The law pursues him. Every man’s hand is against him.

Turned with suspicion from every other place of entertainment, he is
finally received in the home of an aged priest—the first stranger who has
ever trusted him. He yields to his criminal propensity, cultivated by his
years in the galleys, and steals away in the night with the
bishop’s silver.

On the way, he meets a little savoyard, and robs him of his scanty store
of money. The helplessness of the child touches him. Remorse lays hold of
him. He sits down upon a stone and weeps. Restoring the bishop’s silver,
he kneels in prayer at the gate. In a word, Jean Valjean has found
himself. He has taken the first step on the road to better things by
seeing himself as he is. An angel has held a mirror before his face, and
in it he has beheld himself aright.

There is no getting further on the pathway to the higher life until one
has first realized his own situation. So long as he pities himself and
occupies his mind with finding excuses for his own shortcomings, there is
little hope for him. When he sees himself a sinner, the heavenward gates
suddenly swing open. The picture of Jean Valjean seated on a stone,
weeping bitter tears over his sins, is nothing but a powerful sermon on
the old-time doctrine which taught the necessity of conviction as a step
on the road to conversion. Jean Valjean stood convicted in the court of
God. That made him a candidate for divine mercy. The mercy was not
withheld. It is so with us all. There is too little real conviction of
sin in these days. We need the mirror held before us.

Jean Valjean had shared in the experience of Isaiah many centuries before.
When an invisible hand swept aside the curtains that hid the divine glory
from human gaze, Isaiah saw the Lord sitting in his glory in the temple.
Its effect was normal. It forced upon the man a sense of the distressing
contrast between himself and what he saw. Consequently, he cried out that
he was undone because of his uncleanness. Before the scene was over, he
received the dross-destroying touch which made him fit to be a servant of
his Lord. The redemption of Isaiah, too, began with a sense of his
own sinfulness.

The years pass, and Jean Valjean reappears upon the surface of social
life. He has begun life anew in the town of M. sur M. under another name.
He is now Father Madeleine, the head of a large manufacturing
establishment, the mayor of his city, and known among his people as a
gentle-hearted and saintly character.

He is in his room at night, pacing back and forth. His step is nervous,
his face is feverish, his breast is heaving. There is every indication
that he is fighting a great battle. Hugo calls this scene, “The Tempest
in a Skull.”

An old man has been taken in the streets. Under suspicion of being the
long-lost criminal, Jean Valjean, he is under arrest and about to be
committed to the galleys. The question which confronts the prosperous
and honored mayor of M. sur M. is evident. For him, the conflict is
between the choice of wealth, ease, and honor and that of confession,
disgrace, and the prison. He must decide whether he himself will answer
to the charge society has against him, or whether he will avail himself
of the opportunity to let an innocent man suffer in his place.

As the hours pass, the question is settled as an honorable man must
necessarily settle it. The tempest subsides. He seeks the courtroom,
makes himself known, and sees the old man set at liberty. He has
accomplished the next great step in his redemption by conquering himself.

This is one of the severest tests to which any man is ever put. It is also
one which many fail to meet. It is easier to overcome others than to
conquer oneself. Noah proved the hero of the flood, then failed to be
sufficiently master of himself to keep sober when he had planted a
vineyard. Men sometimes lead conquering armies and then fall victims to
their own weaknesses and passions. Yet there is no truer greatness than
that which comes from self-mastery. The ruler of his own spirit is greater
than the conqueror of a city. The mastery of self may be costly. It was in
the case of Jean Valjean. However, it is a necessary step on the
upward road.

In the next significant scene, we see Jean Valjean, once more at liberty,
slipping along a street of Paris holding the hand of a little girl. He has
taken under his protection the orphan child of an unfortunate woman who
worked in his factory at M. sur M. It has been many years since he has had
any one upon whom to lavish his affection. The child receives all the love
so long unreleased from his soul. He serves her as a real parent would do,
as her mother would do had not grim circumstances robbed her of her life.
She shares in his vicissitudes and dangers, but he sees her safely through
to a beautiful womanhood.

As Father Madeline, mayor of M. sur M., Jean Valjean was a notably good
man. Now he becomes a saint. There is no quality of tender-heartedness and
no spirit of self-sacrifice which he does not possess. He has attained to
the glory of a beautiful old age, an old age made beautiful by the
presence within of a noble soul. On the last lap of the journey, he has
been led by a little child. If the influence of a child will not call out
the tenderness planted in the human constitution, then nothing will. Jean
Valjean yields to its influence. He accomplishes the third stage in his
redemption when he gives himself away.

The human heart must have something to love and something to which to
cling. It is never at its best until it does. Much of the divinity planted
in these hardened lives of ours is imprisoned until it finds some object
of affection to draw it out. The lily of life never comes to the fullness
of its bloom until the heart has found someone to love, to toil for, to
sacrifice for. Silas Marner found that influence in little Eppie, who came
to take the place of his paltry and failing gold. Jean Valjean found it
in Cosette.

The human tendency is to make self the centre of the universe. It is plain
that one can never arrive at his best until he recovers from this
tendency. To have the stars and planets revolve about oneself means a
small, narrow, constricted, and embittered life. The end is failure and
disappointment. One must live for more than self, or he never lives
at all.


Eulogy for Joseph E. Henley [excerpt] (1924)


I hope I do not err in my analysis of him when I say that it seems to me
that the great immediate contribution to the community and the world made
by Mr. Henley was that of kindliness. I do not know how carefully he had
weighed and compared human values, but it does seem quite clear that in
this he brought as his gift the one thing the world needs most and has
least. We have beautiful temples, stately liturgies, comprehensive creeds,
pretentious programs, strong organizations—but we have none too much of
simple human kindness. Perhaps he saw that and resolved to leave the world
a little richer in gentleness. If so, he has succeeded in his purpose.


The Corner Stones of Life (1925)
Ephesians 2:20–22


In _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_, Ruskin has likened the principles of
that art to those of life. Longfellow declares that, “All are architects
of fate, working in these walls of time.” Paul speaks of us as God’s
building. This is a proper and significant figure. A great architect has
named the four corner stones of a rightly constructed building. They are
also the four corner stones of a rightly constructed life.

I. The first is careful planning. Back of the actual building is always
the blue print, carefully and laboriously made. Back of the blue print is
the dream that has allowed a place for every part of the structure. Back
of the dream is a soul that knows beauty and proportion. A life may be
less beautiful than planned, for some plans fail, but it will never be
more so.

II. The second is careful construction. What will it cost? What aid shall
be employed? What methods of building shall be followed? Much slipshod
work may be done and successfully covered up, but it detracts just that
much from the value of the finished product. Our fathers knew how to
build. Houses they reared still stand while more modern ones have fallen.
May it not be said that our fathers also knew better than we do how to
build lives?

III. The third is good materials. Here is where deception is especially
easy. Poor materials can be worked in, [but] they cannot be made to stand
the test of time. Any product that has in it only the very best of
materials suggests just one thing—character. It is the same with a life.
Incidentally, may it not be assumed that one will live in direct
proportion to the endurance of the materials of which he builds his life?

IV. The fourth corner stone is correct decoration. These are things that
could be left off, but the omission of which would leave the product less
beautiful and worthy. One is culture. One is knowledge. One is religious
consecration and ideals. One might exist without them, but life could
never mean so much.


Eulogy for Sanford F. Teter [excerpt] (1928)


...when Sanford Teter was suddenly stricken with what seemed to be
impending death, he went under the anaesthetic for the intricate and
serious surgical operation which so marvelously prolonged his life....

He recovered sufficiently for twelve additional years of courageous and
victorious living. Surely those twelve years had their providential
purpose. They were years which constituted an additional period of service
for him. They were years in which he made himself a benediction to
his friends.

But those twelve years constituted his fiercest and most fiery trial. A
brave man is not afraid to die. There are many who can go down into the
edge of the valley, not knowing whether they shall ever return, and yet
not flinch nor falter. But, though the facing of what may be imminent
death requires great courage, it requires greater courage on the part of
a strong man to sit by the window for twelve years watching the rest of
the world go by without being able to join in its activity. He longed with
all the power of an intense spirit to be at work, to be moving among his
friends, to be sharing in the life of a world of enterprise and endeavor.
Not to be able to do so was a real trial by fire for him, but he came out
unscathed by its flame. Life exacted a heavy price from him, but he paid
it with a smile. There is no bitterness on this quiet face that lies
before us, because there was no bitterness in his heart. He passed through
the fire, but he did not let it burn away his courage....


Is Prohibition Paternalistic? (1919)


The history of temperance reform is largely a story of vilification. Those
who have championed it have been steadily accused by the promoters of the
liquor industry. They have resorted to these things for the want of better
arguments. When mind reaches its limit it often abdicates in favor of
temper. Argument exhausted, the stores of abuse are open. The liquor
interests have drawn an utterly impossible picture of the temperance
reformer, and have tried to create in the public mind a complete
misconception of his purpose and motive.

The reform agitator may not always have fully appreciated the viewpoint of
the man on the other side of the question. It is certain that the latter
has seldom given much evidence of appreciating the position of the
agitator. Whether or not it has been intentional, most of the protests
coming from the liquor interests have originated in a misunderstanding of
the attitude of the people who are striving for a sober land.

This misunderstanding was unnecessary. It would also have been impossible
had really earnest and sincere thought been given the question. Thinking
is not always the order of the day, however, when either profit or
appetite is involved. There are still many people to whom life simply
means blind following of the crowd and meek obedience to the dictates of
superficial opinion. Comparatively few are accustomed to apply the keen
edge of reason to each proposition. Had more defenders of the saloon
cultivated this habit, the liquor problem would have perished of anaemia.

One of the cries raised in the rather recent past was that no sumptuary
legislation should be permitted. Political parties were in the habit of
writing into their platforms from year to year the statement that they
were opposed to all such enactment. This declaration seldom failed to
garner a harvest of votes from the self-styled liberal element.

It was cheap and easy to make such a declaration, but it would not have
been so easy to bolster it up with any reasonable defence. In the light
of deeper thought, such a position appears not only unreasonable and
ridiculous, but vicious and perilous as well.

Were one to search the criminal code from the beginning to the end he
could find no law which does not partake of the sumptuary nature. In one
way or another, each provision sets a limit for human liberty. Each tells
the citizen of a thing which he may not do and remain safe from the hand
of the law. It does not do so because society wants to prescribe the
rules of private conduct to be followed by any individual member. It does
so because it must protect its peaceful members against the trespasses of
those who do not regard the rights of others.

The law against burglary, for instance, is really a sumptuary measure. It
limits liberty at the point of taking the property of other people. No one
complains of the injustice of such a law. The menace of burglary, however,
does not compare with the menace which the saloon system has been.

The law which prevents one man from selling and another from buying
powerful narcotic and poisonous drugs is also a sumptuary provision. It
limits human liberty at the point of eating and drinking. Seldom does any
one complain about it. No other poison, however, has occupied so prominent
a place and wrought such widespread havoc as has alcohol.

The saloonkeeper has harmed society more than has the burglar. He should
therefore suffer at least an equal degree of restraint. Liquor has worked
more damage than has any other article of common sale. There is,
therefore, no reason why its manufacture and sale should not be affected
by at least the same safeguards as those surrounding the manufacture and
distribution of other dangerous drugs.

A kindred complaint from the liquor champions has been that the government
shows increasing signs of the spirit of paternalism. The contention is
that the prohibition reformer represents a meddlesome class who want to
control the lives of others. As is the case with the first claim
mentioned, this proposition needs but a second look. No proper government
and no thoughtful citizen desires the mere power to control the conduct
of other people. Especially have we tried to foster the spirit of freedom
in America. No one who loves his country wants unduly to destroy or
interfere with the liberty for which the nation stands.

The word freedom, however, must not suffer a wrong interpretation. Freedom
needs to recognize its own proper limits, and it will do so in any
properly organized social system. Such a measure as the prohibition of the
manufacture and sale of liquor is not paternalism. It is merely the
protection of the individual by the group.

The only freedom which any man, good or bad, can justly claim is the
freedom which ends at the point of injury to another. No one has any right
to deny such a measure of liberty to any man. No one has the right to
claim any measure of liberty beyond it.

The reformers so often accused of efforts at paternalism have really had
no thought of limiting the freedom of any one beyond this line of
democratic necessity. They have not been looking at the question from that
angle. They have been thinking neither of liberty nor of the lack of it.
Their consideration has not been so much the imagined rights of the
sinning as it has been the real rights of those sinned against. The limit
to freedom which prohibition implies is only one which should have been
set long ago by the reasonable thinking of amiable humanity. It is a
rather pitiful fact that it became necessary to have laws to do what the
rational conscience had failed to do.

The fact that the innocent have been protected against a man and that he
has been protected against himself gives him no right to insist that his
liberties have been unjustly curtailed. He has only been aided in the
interpretation of liberty in such a way as to be able to see that it
belongs to others as well as to himself.

Those who have braved the storm of misjudgment and abuse, so often the
portion of one who tries to be true to a great trust, did not seek the
destruction of any business nor the poverty of any class of men. The
thought which spurred them on was that of cheerless firesides, of hungry
stomachs, of shivering bodies, of dwarfed and neglected lives, and of the
threatened blight of a nation. It was not a question of paternalism.
It was one of protection.

When the nation has banished the saloon from its every nook and corner, as
it will soon do, no one can justly say that ours has become a
paternalistic government. Our government will simply have taken a forward
step in the fundamental task of any government—the service and protection
of its people.

When one finds another with a bottle of poison to his lips or with a gun
to his temple, no one calls him a meddler for striking the threatening
menace to the ground. In prohibition legislation, the national government
will only have stricken aside the weapon in time to preserve many a man
from destruction. Unborn generations will thus be saved from a curse
which has long hounded the human race.


Vibration as a Basis of Invention (1919)


The person who would give to the world some great invention must not
deceive himself into thinking that he can do it by creative processes.
It is not our function to create. It is our province only to adapt the
laws and forces already in existence to our needs. The process is really
a relative rather than a creative one. The laws and forces are here. It
is our work to relate ourselves to them. One cannot build a machine that
will do anything. He can only construct a mechanism through which the
already existing laws of nature can operate.

Another mistake apt to be made by the amateur, and one which will lead him
farther away from instead of nearer to success, is the entertainment of
the notion that a wonderful mechanism must necessarily be complex. The
wonderful thing about nature, after all, is its simplicity. The mechanism
which is to establish a point of contact between us and a force of nature
must be as simple in its principle as the force itself.

The notable thing about almost any of our great inventions is the
simplicity of their design and operative principle. After observing the
action of any of them, one is quite apt to turn away and inwardly remark
that he could have done the same thing himself if he had only thought of
it. Of course, the chief approach to any notable achievement is the matter
of thinking of it. Most of us do not think of these things, and the reason
is often the fact that we are looking for something complex when the real
principle is very simple.

The problem of the would-be inventor or discoverer, then, is not one of
adding something to the universe as it stands. His work is to ponder the
forces that have long operated and the laws by which they have operated,
and then relate his work to some one of them. One of the chief of these,
and one upon which some of our notable inventions have been based, is the
universal fact of vibration.

The first great inventions which are based upon the vibration theory were
made long before any of us were born, and each of us has been given a free
sample of both. One is named the eye, while the other is known as the ear.
So far as that is concerned, the work of the actual nerves at the surface
of the skin is based upon the same principle.

The other day in a medical laboratory I was examining a dissection of the
human head made with a view to showing the nerves in their relation to the
spinal trunk and to the brain. The brain had been removed down to where
its base rests upon the spinal stem. I was not so much interested in the
countless fibers running off from the entire length of the spinal cord
nearly so much as the two sets of nerves which have to do with seeing and
hearing. Off from the spinal stem, just below the base of the brain, two
large nerves ran forward to the eyes, and two other large ones ran aside
to the ears. These were the optic and the auditory nerves, respectively.

These are the means which the Ruling Genius of the universe has
established by which the person may maintain his contact with the outward
world. One of these sets takes up vibrations and reports them in terms of
light. The other takes vibrations and reports them in terms of sound. The
two sets look almost precisely alike. The means by which they are made to
distinguish vibrations into these two different forms of interpretation
remains a mystery, unless it be that they are made sensitive only to given
lengths and types of waves.

The eye was the first camera, and the inventor of the photographic process
necessarily had to base his work on precisely the same principle. A
sensitive surface had to be provided; a means had to be established
whereby it might receive and be affected by ether vibrations of given
lengths; then the result, which in the case of the eye is so temporary,
had to be chemically fixed and thereby rendered permanent.

The phonographic process is related to the vibration theory of sound just
as the photographic process is based upon the wave theory of light. A
phonographic record is simply the photograph of a sound. A surface had to
be provided which was capable of receiving the record of the vibrations
which make a given sound. The means had to be provided by which they could
be permanently recorded there. Then a mechanism capable of reproducing
them made the phonograph complete. The same effect was produced upon the
ear as would have been produced by the original vibrations themselves.
Thereby the thing which is fleeting and temporary to the ear was rendered
more or less permanent. These two inventions proved once and for all the
truth of the theories on which they were based.

Telegraphy and telephony, both ordinary and wireless, are likewise based
upon phases of the vibration principle. Each in its day has been
revolutionary. We are, however, only upon the threshold of achievement in
these vibratory means of communication. Each is simple, when once
achieved, because each is based on ordinary and everyday laws of nature.
Those who are improving upon the processes already established are not
those who are trying to find different paths. They are those who are
seeking a closer acquaintance with natural laws as they are, and who are
seeking better ways of relating ourselves to those laws. We cannot alter
natural forces. We can only improve upon their use.

There is a great field for scientific and inventive progress of an
intensive nature. As we move forward in the effort to gain a little firmer
hold upon natural processes, we find ourselves able to throw away today
equipment which was very necessary yesterday. First, we could carry
communication farther and better with metal media between the
communicating points. Now we do it equally well without the
artificial media.

A few years ago a scientist announced that he could accumulate,
concentrate, and unloose a vibratory force sufficient to wreck the planet
on which we live. Should anyone want to do such a thing, and should the
rest of the world be willing, there is little doubt that such a thing
would be possible. There is probably no limit to the harm that could be
done by harnessing up the ever-present vibrations to an evil end. Neither
is there any limit to the good they can be made to do when intelligently
turned to worthy purposes.

Probably the statement of the scientist mentioned above was, after all,
only a part of the truth. Someone has said that one cannot move his
finger without displacing the elements of the universe all the way to the
farthest star. Vibration is not only here but everywhere. It carries
light to us from so far that years are required for the journey. It is
not inconceivable that it might be made to do the same with sound.

Certainly it could be made to do the same with ideas if two conditions
could be fulfilled. First, there would have to be living and intelligent
beings elsewhere in the universe. Second, there would have to be a common
code or basis of interpretation between ourselves and them. About the
first, we do not know. As to the second, no one yet sees how to accomplish
such a thing. Archimedes could have moved the world with a lever if he had
only had a place to stand, but of course he did not have it, so the
possibility was spoiled. The principle of the lever, however, held just as
good as though the impossible condition could have been fulfilled.
Likewise, the law of vibrations would permit of a system of wireless out
into the reaches of space. The difficulty is not with the law.

Nature probably holds some provision for our every want. We need only to
establish the means by which she can deliver her gifts to us. The universe
thrills with life and action. Out of its heartthrobs we shall be able to
gather many a blessing.




APPENDIX 1: BYLINES, BIBLIOGRAPHY, NOTES

Related poems and essays cited in the notes are attributed to Flynn unless
specified otherwise.


The Ambassador. Byline: Rev. Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _The Expositor_.
Sep 1929. pp. 1338–39. Note: Story of the golden calf (Exodus 32).

The Association of Mind and Muscle. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source:
_The Kindergarten-Primary Magazine_. Vol. 31 No. 1. Manistee, MI:
Sep 1918. pp. 14–15. Notes: 1) “be doers of the word and not hearers only”
(James 1:22), 2) “The sending of such young people into the arena of
action;” poems: “The Teacher v1923,” “Domsie,” 3) “Knowledge has the
largest of all potentialities;” poem, “Iron.”

Building a World Brotherhood. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source:
_American Messenger_. Vol. 76 No. 7. New York: The American Tract Society,
Jul 1918. p. 103. Note: “Jesus recognized no artificial and arbitrary
barriers;” examples: Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29–37), eating
with sinners and tax collectors (Mark 2:13–17).

Capitalizing War for the Tobacco Trade. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source:
_The Sunday School Journal_. Vol. 51 No. 5. Cincinnati: The Methodist Book
Concern, May 1919. pp. 271–72.

Children and the Church. Byline: Rev. Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _American
Messenger_. Vol. 80 No. 6. New York: The American Tract Society, Jun 1922.
p. 89. Notes: 1) Church as “leavening force” (Luke 13:20–21), 2) Roman
Catholic worship using “a strange tongue” is likely referring to Latin,
which replaced Greek in the 2nd century CE; Latin was replaced by
vernacular languages after the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s,
3) Responsibility for children’s religious training; essay, “The Three
Agencies in Child Training.”

Christianity and Americanism. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _American
Messenger_. Vol. 78 No. 11. New York: The American Tract Society,
Nov 1920. p. 173. Note: National life flows from the people; essay,
“What Makes a City?”

The Christian Program. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _Northwestern
Christian Advocate_. Vol. 68 No. 26. Chicago: The Methodist Book Concern,
Jun 16, 1920. p. 664. Note: Parables of mustard seed (Matthew 13:31–32)
and leaven (13:33).

The Christian Standard of Greatness. Byline: Rev. Clarence E. Flynn.
Source: _American Messenger_. Vol. 80 No. 8. New York: The American Tract
Society, Aug 1922. p. 117. Notes: 1) Jesus discusses greatness with his
disciples (Mark 9:33–35), 2) Jesus speaks of losing and finding one’s life
(Matthew 10:39, 16:25), 3) Jesus doing good (Acts 10:38).

The Christ of the Sea. Byline: Dr. Clarence E. Flynn, Pastor of Trinity
M. E. Church. Source: _Berkeley Daily Gazette_. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley
Gazette Publishing Company, Dec 25, 1929. p. 8. Notes: 1) Jacob uses a
stone as a pillow (Genesis 28:11), 2) Angels sing at birth of Jesus
(Luke 2:14), 3) Jesus speaks about being born again (John 3:3), 4) Saving
one’s life by losing it (e.g., John 12:25), 5) Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12),
6) Love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:39), 7) Jesus speaks to
rich, young man (Matthew 19:16–22).

Contributed essay to a symposium on “The Church and Young People”. Byline:
Rev. Clarence E. Flynn, Pastor, First Methodist Episcopal Church,
Princeton, IN. Source: _The Sunday School Journal_. Vol. 52 No. 4.
Cincinnati: The Methodist Book Concern, Apr 1920. pp. 203–04. Notes:
1) Tobacco propaganda; essay, “Capitalizing War for the Tobacco Trade,”
2) Training children’s mind, body, religious instinct, and social
relationships; essay, “The Three Agencies in Child Training.”

The Church’s Fourfold Program. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _The
Living Church_. Vol. 67 No. 1. Milwaukee: Morehouse Publishing Co.,
May 6, 1922. p. 16. Notes: 1) Evangelism as the thing the Church has
been set to do (Matthew 28:16–20), 2) “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3),
3) Christian education in the home and school; essay, “The Three Agencies
in Child Training.”

Civilization. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _Social Science_. Vol. 5
No. 1. Winfield, KS: Pi Gamma Mu, International Honor Society in Social
Sciences; Nov 1929–Jan 1930. pp. 92–93. Notes: 1) The source listed this
story as an editorial piece, 2) From the source’s “Contributors” section
(p. 130): “CLARENCE E. FLYNN is pastor of the Trinity Methodist Episcopal
Church, the university church, Berkeley, California. He is a graduate of
De Pauw University and holds the D. D. degree from that institution. His
work in the past consists of pastorates of several churches,
superintendency of the Bloomington, Indiana, district of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, magazine articles, poems and edited works in connection
with Methodist denominational work.” [DePauw conferred the Doctor of
Divinity degree honorarily.]

The Comrade Perfect: An Appreciation. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source:
_Youth_. Vol. 3 No. 11. Kansas City: Unity School of Christianity, Nov
1929. p. 6. Notes: 1) “Him who was called Immanuel, or God with us”
(Matthew 1:23), 2) “the coming of the spirit divine” (Acts 2:1–4),
3) God seeks a place in human hearts; poems: “The King,” “No Room in the
Inn,” 4) God as immanent; poems: “The Creator,” “God’s Manners,” “The
Voices of God,” 5) Providence; poems: “The God of the Beginning,” “What
Does It Matter?”

The Corner Stones of Life. Byline: Rev. Clarence E. Flynn. Source:
_The Expositor_. Vol. 27 No. 1. Cleveland: F. M. Barton Co., Oct 1925.
p. 61. Notes: 1) Quoted Longfellow from poem, “The Builders,” 2) Paul
mentions people as God’s building in the subtitle’s biblical reference
and 1 Corinthians 3:9–17, 3) Ideals; essay, “The Christ of the Sea.”

Correspondence. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _The Office Economist_.
Vol. 11 No. 10. Jamestown, NY: Art Metal Construction Company, Dec 1929.
p. 12. Note: Poem, “The Heart of a Child is a Scroll.”

Creating a Demand. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _The Dodge Idea_.
Vol. 35 No. 9. Mishawaka, IN: Kenyon W. Mix, Sep 1919. pp. 929, 941.
Note: Byline had misspelling, “Clarenc E. Flynn.”

The Crowded Inn. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _Miami Daily
Metropolis_. Vol. 20 No. 9. Miami: Metropolis Publishing Co., Dec 23,
1916. p. 6. Notes: 1) Inconsistent capitalization of “his/him,” as it
refers to Jesus Christ, has been made more consistent, 2) Persecution
as counterproductive against Christianity and Christians (Acts 5:38–42),
3) The sentence “He never will flee persecution” was followed by the
sentence fragment “The brightest intellect, and the most earnest seekers
after the truth of His dominion.” The fragment seems erroneous and was
removed for readability, 4) “Let us find whether the doors of the throne
rooms of our own hearts are open;” poems: “Heart Gates,” “The King,” and
“No Room in the Inn.”

Determinants. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _Special Crops_. Vol. 20
No. 232. Skaneateles, NY: C. M. Goodspeed, Dec 1921. p. 309. Note: Poems:
“Have You Tried?,” “Iron,” and “A Trouble Making World.”

Do It Right. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _The Boys’ World_. Vol. 16
No. 21. Elgin, IL: David C. Cook Publishing Company, May 26, 1917. p. 5.
Note: Poems: “Almost,” “Doing It Well,” “The Engineer,” and
“The Section Foreman.”

Dollars Versus Sense. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn, Princeton, IN. Source:
_The School News and Practical Educator_. Vol. 34 No. 9. Taylorville, IL:
Parker Publishing Company, May 1921. pp. 572–75. Notes: 1) Poem, “I Want,”
2) “Where wealth accumulates, and men decay;” from Oliver Goldsmith’s
poem, “The Deserted Village” (1770).

Education and Production. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _The School
Arts Magazine_. Vol. 20 No. 6. Worcester, MA: The Davis Press, Inc., Feb
1921. pp. 332–34. Notes: 1) If “the notion that gentlemen do not labor
with their hands” sounds haughty, consider the poem, “In Conference,”
2) “whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well;” poem, “Doing It
Well,” 3) “perform...with a minimum of friction and waste;” essay, “The
Yoke,” 4) “The life of society is co-operative;” poems: “Along the Road,”
“Team-work.”

Efficient Spending. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _American Cookery_.
Vol. 25 No. 7. Boston: Boston Cooking-School Magazine Company, Feb 1921.
pp. 504–06. Note: “The poor we always have with us” (cf. Matthew 26:11).

Eulogy for Joseph E. Henley [excerpt]. Byline: Rev. Clarence E. Flynn,
First Methodist Church, Bloomington [IN]. Source: _Indiana University
Alumni Quarterly_. Vol. 11 No. 3. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Association of Alumni and Former Students, Jul 1924. p. 458. Note:
Contrasting behavior and religious trappings: contributed essay to a
symposium on “The Church and Young People.”

Eulogy for Sanford F. Teter [excerpt]. Byline: Dr. Clarence E. Flynn,
pastor of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, Bloomington [IN]. Source:
_Indiana University Alumni Quarterly_. Vol. 15 No. 2. Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Association of Alumni and Former Students, Apr 1928.
pp. 255–56. Note: DePauw University conferred the Doctor of Divinity
degree honorarily to Flynn.

Facing the Future. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _American
Messenger_. Vol. 77 No. 3. New York: The American Tract Society, Mar 1919.
p. 40. Notes: 1) Approaching truth by fair and honest habits of thought;
essay, “The Laboratory Test,” 2) More adequate and satisfying
interpretation of religion; essay, “Newer Conceptions of Religion,”
3) Ovid writing about humanity’s backward movement (_Metamorphoses_),
4) Tennyson writing about humanity moving forward to a divine event
(_In Memoriam A.H.H._), 5) “the seer of Patmos” (cf. Revelation 1:9–11),
6) “new heaven and a new earth” (Revelation 21:1).

The Fountain of Youth. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _American
Messenger_. Vol. 75 No. 11. New York: The American Tract Society,
Nov 1917. p. 164. Notes: 1) “One is as old as the spirit within him;”
poem, “The Age of a Heart,” 2) Episode involving Hezekiah (2 Kings 20).

Four Addresses to Young People. Byline: Rev. Clarence E. Flynn. Source:
_The Expositor_. Mar 1929. pp. 669–71. Notes: 1) “It is the great
compulsion;” essay, “The Great Compulsion,” 2) The presence of “not” in
“The person who does not find it in his soul” seems inconsistent with the
message, 3) “world builder for God;” poems: “The Builder v1924,” “The
Builders,” 4) Call of Isaiah in temple (Isaiah 6), 5) Jesus reads from
Isaiah (Luke 4:16–21), 6) John’s vision (Book of Revelation), 7) “Moses
said he was not eloquent;” poem, “I am not eloquent,” 8) “mistake for a
minister to forsake the altar to serve tables” (Acts 6:2–4).

Free Verse. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _The Editor_. Vol. 54
No. 5. Highland Falls, NY: Jun 25, 1921. pp. 65–66. Notes: 1) Mary’s
Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55), 2) Nunc Dimittis of Simeon (Luke 2:29–32).

The Great Compulsion. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _The Expositor_.
Cleveland: F. M. Barton Company, Oct 1928. p. 33. Notes: 1) Moses seeing
his people’s burdens (Exodus 2:11), 2) John eats a book (Revelation 10:9),
3) Jesus wept for Jerusalem (Luke 19:41), 4) Usage of _bondslave_
(e.g., Colossians 4:12).

The Great Teacher. Byline: Rev. Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _The
Expositor_. Vol. 26 No. 9. Cleveland: F. M. Barton and Co., Jun 1925.
pp. 1276–77. Note: Jesus taught with authority and not as the scribes
(Matthew 7:28–29).

Has the Day of Great Preachers Passed. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn,
Princeton, IN. Source: _The Homiletic Review_. Vol. 81 No. 2. New York:
Funk & Wagnalls Company, Feb 1921. pp.117–19. Notes: 1) “competing against
God for...thought and attention;” essay, “The Crowded Inn,” 2) Moses met
God on the mountain (Exodus 3:1–14), 3) Elkanah, Hannah, and son, Samuel
(1 Samuel), 4) Partnership of Moses and Aaron (Exodus 4:10–17).

The Heart Interest in Preaching. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn, Princeton, IN.
Source: _The Expositor_. Vol. 24 No. 2. Cleveland: Nov 1922. p. 192. Note:
Poem, “Patchwork.”

The Holy Spirit and Social Viewpoint. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source:
_Northwestern Christian Advocate_. Vol. 70 No. 27. Chicago: The Methodist
Book Concern, Jun 21, 1922. pp. 684–85. Note: Day of Pentecost (Acts 2).

The Home Budget. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _American Cookery_.
Vol. 25 No. 4. Boston: Boston Cooking-School Magazine Company, Nov 1920.
pp. 285–87.

The International Religion. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _The
Congregationalist_. Vol. 108 No. 52. Boston: The Pilgrim Press, Dec 27,
1923. p. 884. Notes: 1) Liberty was taken in completing illegible text in
the source’s right-hand margin, 2) If the reader does not find the text in
Revelation 9 of their bible translation, try Revelation 7:4–9, 3) “King of
kings and Lord of lords” (e.g., Revelation 19:16, 1 Timothy 6:15),
4) Jesus in people’s hearts; poems: “Finding God,” “The King,” and
“No Room in the Inn.”

Is It Nothing to You. Byline: Rev. Clarence E. Flynn. Source:
_The Expositor_. Aug 1929. p. 1261.

Is Prohibition Paternalistic? Byline: Rev. Clarence E. Flynn. Source:
_The Living Church_. Vol. 60 No. 11. Milwaukee: Morehouse Publishing Co.,
Jan 11, 1919. p. 354. Notes: 1) Control the conduct of other people;
essay, “Is It Nothing to You,” 2) “as it will soon do;” Congress passed
the 18th Amendment to the Constitution on Dec 22, 1917, and the necessary
three-fourths of states ratified it by Jan 16, 1919. [Then, the necessary
three-fourths of states ratified the 21st Amendment by Dec 5, 1933,
thereby repealing the 18th Amendment.] (https://www.fjc.gov/history/
exhibits/prohibition-in-federal-courts-timeline)

“It was an innocent-faced maid”. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source:
_Richmond Daily Palladium_. Richmond, IN: Palladium Printing Co.,
Mar 5, 1906. p. 4.

The Laboratory Test. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _American
Messenger_. Vol. 79 No. 2. New York: The American Tract Society, Feb 1921.
p. 36. Note: Ancient singer’s challenge (Psalm 34:8–9).

The Laughing Man. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _American Messenger_.
Vol. 77 No. 5. New York: The American Tract Society, May 1919. p. 72.
Notes: 1) Jean Valjean; essay, “The Redemption of Jean Valjean,”
2) “[God] has never hesitated to go to any length for the sake of people.
Such is also the spirit of those who enter into the secrets of His plans.”
(cf. John 15:12–13).

Let the Minister Know Life. Byline: Rev. Clarence E. Flynn. Source:
_The Expositor_. Sep 1929. p. 1338. Note: Poem, “Patchwork.”

Life’s Backgrounds. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _American
Messenger_. Vol. 77 No. 10. New York: The American Tract Society,
Oct 1919. p. 148. Notes: 1) “life is like a picture;” multiple poems in
poetry book’s index under “Life,” 2) Life’s determining factors; essay,
“Determinants,” 3) Whitewashing hidden faults (cf. Matthew 23:27–28),
4) Hard work hidden behind the success; poem, “The Lucky Man,”
5) Influencing another person’s life; poem, “Domsie.”

Life’s Handicaps. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _American Messenger_.
Vol. 76 No. 2. New York: The American Tract Society, Feb 1918. p. 24.
Notes: 1) Jesus heals paralytic let down through roof (Mark 2:1–12),
2) Jesus teaches about ensuring costs can be covered before starting to
build (Luke 14:28–30).

The Light. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn, Indianapolis, IN. Source: _The
Christian Advocate_. Vol. 90 No. 30. New York: Methodist Book Concern,
Jul 29, 1915. pp. 1009–10. Notes: 1) Description of God as light
(1 John 1:5), 2) Creation of light (Genesis 1:3), 3) A determinant created
different outcomes between plants of the same family; essay,
“Determinants,” 4) What will and will not stand the light (John 3:19–21,
Ephesians 5:8).

The Line of Necessity. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _American
Messenger_. Vol. 76 No. 7. New York: The American Tract Society,
Jul 1918. p. 100. Notes: 1) Friendship; essay, “The Necessary
Asset—Friends,” and poems: “Fade-Outs” and “Whatever he may wish or plan,”
2) Points from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:38–48).

Love’s Burdens. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _American Messenger_.
Vol. 79 No. 1. New York: The American Tract Society, Jan 1921. p. 4.
Notes: 1) The sick need a physician (Matthew 9:12), 2) Jesus prays in
garden (Matthew 26:36).

“A man entered a downtown street car”. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source:
_Richmond Daily Palladium_. Richmond, IN: Palladium Printing Co., Mar 5,
1906. p. 4.

The Message of an Empty Tomb. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source:
_Northwestern Christian Advocate_. Vol. 68 No. 15. Chicago: The Methodist
Book Concern, Mar 31, 1920. pp. 368–69. Notes: 1) Joseph of Arimathea
buried Jesus (Matthew 27:57–60), 2) “the valley and the shadow of death”
(cf. Psalm 23:4), 3) Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead (John 11:1–44),
4) The gospel as truth; essay, “The Light,” 5) Jesus’s ideal; essay,
“The Christ of the Sea.”

The Message of the Washington Monument. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source:
_American Messenger_. Vol. 77 No. 2. New York: The American Tract Society,
Feb 1919. p. 31. Note: Pretense and unreality; poem, “The Close-Up.”

The Minister and His Reading. Byline: Rev. Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _The
Expositor_. Apr 1928. pp. 764–66. Notes: 1) “speaks with authority and not
as the Scribes” (Mark 1:22), 2) “still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12),
3) Temptation of Jesus (Matthew 4:1–11), 4) Jesus states he has overcome
the world (John 16:33), 5) Disciples’ encounter with Jesus on the road to
Emmaus (Luke 24:13–35).

The Modern Grandmother. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _Woman’s Home
Companion_. Vol. 42 No. 3. Springfield, OH: Crowell Publishing Company,
Mar 1915. p. 78.

Music and History. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn, Princeton, IN. Source: _The
School News and Practical Educator_. Vol. 34 No. 6. Taylorville, IL:
Parker Publishing Company, Feb 1921. pp. 370–72.

The Nearness of Destiny. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _American
Messenger_. Vol. 79 No. 2. New York: The American Tract Society, Feb 1921.
p. 29. Notes: 1) Procrastination; poem, “The Umbrella Mender,” 2) Kingdom
of God; poem, “The Gateway of the Kingdom,” 3) Jesus stating “the Kingdom
is at hand” (Matthew 10:7); poem, “Imminence,” 4) Daily events marked by
eternal significance as well as cause and effect; poem, “Charge Account,”
5) “The Christ of revelation” is at least based on the reference in the
essay’s first sentence [Revelation 1:1, “The revelation of Jesus
Christ...” (New American Bible)], 6) The Hebrew prophet (Amos 4:12),
7) “shortly come to pass” (Revelation 1:1), 8) Life events mentioned in
last paragraph; several poems in poetry book’s index under “Life.”

The Necessary Asset—Friends. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _The Boys’
World_. Vol. 16 No. 48. Elgin, IL: David C. Cook Publishing Company,
Dec 1, 1917. p. 4.

Newer Conceptions of Religion. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn, Princeton, IN.
Source: _The Congregationalist_. Vol. 107 No. 26. Boston: The Pilgrim
Press, Jun 29, 1922. p. 821. Note: Refrain from living in the past;
essay, “The Sword that Keeps the Past.”

The New Philosophy. Byline: Clarence Flynn. Source: _The Editor_. Vol. 52
No. 2. Ridgewood, NJ: The Editor Company, Jan 25, 1920. pp. 116–18.

The Objective of Service. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _Northwestern
Christian Advocate_. Vol. 70 No. 26. Chicago: The Methodist Book Concern,
Jun 14, 1922. p. 657. Notes: 1) “Where wealth accumulates, and men
decay;” from Oliver Goldsmith’s poem, “The Deserted Village” (1770),
2) “new heaven and a new earth” (cf. Isaiah 65:17–25).

The Obligation of Good Cheer. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _American
Messenger_. Vol. 74 No. 11. New York: The American Tract Society,
Nov 1916. p. 195. Notes: 1) Essay, “The Laughing Man,” 2) “...that One in
whose presence is fulness of joy and at whose right hand there are
pleasures forevermore.” (Psalm 16:11). [Jesus and joy (e.g., John 15:11).]

The Opportunity and Peril of the Writer. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn.
Source: _The Editor_. Vol. 48 No. 12. Ridgewood, NJ: The Editor Company,
Jun 25, 1918. pp. 409–11. Notes: 1) Peace and brotherhood making war
impossible; poems: “The New Day,” “Brotherhood,” 2) Stowe’s first
installment appeared June 5, 1851 (page 1, column 1), 3) Unlike his
mentioning of Stowe’s work, Flynn doesn’t mention the first installment of
Sinclair’s work; it appeared in socialist Julius Wayland’s paper, _Appeal
to Reason_, February 25, 1905 (entire cover page), 4) “A derisive
term...once elected a man president.” In Flynn’s later essay, “Words,” he
associates the term “Log Cabin Harrison” with William Henry Harrison.

Our Blessings of Deliverance. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _American
Messenger_. Vol. 80 No. 11. New York: The American Tract Society,
Nov 1922. p. 166. Note: “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11).

Paul’s Ideal Sufficient. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn, Indianapolis, IN.
Source: _The Christian Advocate_. Vol. 93 No. 24. New York: Methodist
Book Concern, Jun 13, 1918. pp. 734–35. Note: “a pillar and ground of the
truth” may refer to the church of the living God (1 Timothy 3:15).

The Post-War Outlook for Literature. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source:
_The Editor_. Vol. 50 No. 10. Ridgewood, NJ: The Editor Company, May 25,
1919. pp. 74–76. Note: “various subjects down from the ethereal heights
of mystical theory to the solid levels of plain thinking and everyday
living;” essay, “The New Philosophy.”

Preaching to College Students. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _The
Expositor_. Jun 1928. p. 983–84. Note: Poems: “The Builder v1924,”
“The Builders.”

The Price of Liberty. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _Western
Christian Advocate_. Vol. 82 No. 6. Cincinnati: Methodist Book Concern,
Feb 9, 1916. p. 130. Notes: 1) “the love which lays down its life for its
friends” (cf. John 15:13), 2) temple’s veil was split (Matthew 27:51).

The Redemption of Jean Valjean. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source:
_Montreal Witness and Canadian Homestead_. Vol. 77 No. 34. Montreal: John
Dougall & Son, Aug 23, 1922. p. 10. Notes: 1) Frenchman Victor Hugo
published _Les Miserables_ in 1862, 2) Isaiah’s redemption (Isaiah 6:1–7),
3) Noah and the flood (Genesis 6–8), 4) Noah as drunkard (Genesis
9:20–21), 5) Silas Marner and Eppie are characters in _Silas Marner: The
Weaver of Raveloe_, an 1861 novel by Englishwoman Mary Ann Evans (pen name
is George Eliot), 6) Self; poem, “The Trouble Making World,” 7) This essay
is physically available at Flynn’s alma mater, DePauw University, in their
Archives and Special Collections (https://depauw.libraryhost.com/
repositories/2/resources/1887); although the essay is undated, Flynn
graduated from DePauw in 1911, 8) This essay is used as a positive example
of certain elements of literary writing (Webb, Mary Griffin and Edna
Lenore Webb, eds. _Famous Living Americans_. Greencastle, IN:
Charles Webb & Company, 1915. pp. 8, 10–11).

The Religion of the New Age. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn, Bloomington, IN.
Source: _The Homiletic Review_. Vol. 77 No. 3. New York: Funk & Wagnalls
Company, Mar 1919. pp. 192–94. Notes: 1) Essay, “Newer Conceptions of
Religion,” 2) Prophecy of a new heaven and earth (Isaiah 65:17–25),
3) “It is with religion just as with science or philosophy;” essay,
“The New Philosophy.”

The Riverside. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _Our Paper_. Vol. 35
No. 1. Concord Junction, MA: Massachusetts Reformatory, Jan 6, 1918.
p. 630. Note: ‛We rise by the things that are under our feet’ is from a
poem (Holland, Josiah Gilbert. “Gradatim.” _Christian Science Journal_.
Vol. 13 No. 5. Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, Aug 1895.
p. 210).

The Road Uphill. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _Youth_. Vol. 3 No. 9.
Kansas City: Unity School of Christianity, Sep 1929. p. 26. Notes:
1) Zechariah speaks about avoiding the sins of their fathers
(Zechariah 1:4), 2) Jesus reads His commission (Luke 4:16–21).

The Sabbath Desecration. Byline: Rev. Clarence E. Flynn, Indianapolis, IN.
Source: _Western Christian Advocate_. Vol. 76 No. 18. Cincinnati:
Jennings & Graham, May 4, 1910. pp. 14–15. Notes: 1) Some Old Testament
background on the sabbath (Exodus 16:16–30; 31:12–17), 2) “the apparent
attitude of Jesus toward [the Sabbath]” (Matthew 12:1–8; Mark 2:23–28,
3:1–5; Luke 6:1–11), 3) “Our lonely Sinais must precede our deeds of
leadership,” may refer to the commission of Moses (Exodus 3 thru 4:17),
4) Quoted lesson (Isaiah 30:15).

The Safe Foundations for a League of Nations. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn.
Source: _American Messenger_. Vol. 77 No. 7. New York: The American Tract
Society, Jul 1919. p. 100. Notes: 1) WWI ended Nov 11, 1918. The League
of Nations officially came into existence on Jan 10, 1920, 2) Tower of
Babel (Genesis 11:1–9), 3) Poems: “Brotherhood;” selfish ways and
purposes: “The Measure of Life,” “A Trouble Making World.”

The Same Face. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn, Indianapolis, IN. Source:
_The Christian Advocate_. Vol. 90 No. 18. New York: Methodist Book
Concern, May 6, 1915. p. 604.

The School as a Reform Agency. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn, Princeton, IN.
Source: _The School News and Practical Educator_. Vol. 34 No. 5.
Taylorville, IL: Parker Publishing Company, Jan 1921. pp. 316–18. Notes:
1) “his first impulse to try;” poem, “The Secret,” 2) Just as a teacher’s
“possession of great power is at once an opportunity and a peril,” so it
is for a writer; essay, “The Opportunity and Peril of the Writer,”
3) “Most evils remain only because people do not realize that there is a
better way;” essay, “The Yoke”, 4) Not all subscribe to “the natural
position of authority occupied by the teacher;” poem, “The Modern Pupil,”
5) “the person who builds manhood and womanhood...is building the future;”
poem, “The Teacher v1921.”

The School Teacher and the Republic. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source:
_School News and Practical Educator_. Vol. 33 No. 10. Taylorville, IL:
Parker Publishing Company, Jun–Jul 1920. pp. 588–89. Note: Many poems in
poetry book’s index under “teaching.”

The Sense of the Human. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _American
Messenger_. Vol. 78 No. 9. New York: The American Tract Society, Sep 1920.
p. 136. Notes: 1) “realize the presence of people about us,” and later,
“the kingliness of service;” poem, “Along the Road,” 2) “When we learn to
be like Him, we shall possess the same viewpoint;”
poem, “The Measure of Life.”

Should Prices Be Standardized? Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source:
_The Dodge Idea_. Vol. 35 No. 8. Mishawaka, IN: Kenyon W. Mix, Aug 1919.
p. 900.

Some New Facts About Alcohol. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _The
Living Church_. Vol. 60 No. 9. Milwaukee: Morehouse Publishing Co.,
Dec 28, 1918. p. 289.

Some Overlooked Compensations in Teaching. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn.
Source: _Popular Educator_. Vol. 38 No. 1. Boston: Popular Educator
Company, Sep 1920. pp. 6–7. Notes: 1) Many poems in poetry book’s index
under “teaching,” 2) “A man’s life does not consist in the abundance of
the things he possesses.” (cf. Luke 12:16–21); also, many poems in poetry
book’s index under “values,” 3) “One cannot long conceal a lack of mind
and soul with clothes and paint” (cf. Matthew 23:27–28).

Some Principles of Efficiency. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _The
Boys’ World_. Vol. 16 No. 38. Elgin, IL: David C. Cook Publishing
Company, Sep 22, 1917. p. 6. Notes: 1) Selfishness; poems: “A Trouble
Making World” and “I Want,” 2) Thinking and right judgments; poem,
“Prayer for Normal Men,” 3) Acknowledging others’ minds; poem, “Minds,”
4) Striving to be right; poem, “Let Us Be Right,” 5) Talents as a
resource; poems: “I am not eloquent” and “Iron,” 6) “the man who hides
his single coin in a napkin” (Luke 19:11–26), 7) Purpose in life; poem,
“Why We Are Here,” 8) Getting at a task; poems: “Have You Tried?” and
“The Umbrella Mender,” 9) Staying on a task; poems: “Almost” and “A Second
Wind,” 10) Doing things well; poems: “Doing It Well,” “The Engineer,” and
“The Section Foreman,” 11) Getting at a task, staying on it, and making
progress; poem, “The Secret.”

Some Problems of the Preacher. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _The
Expositor_. Sep 1928. p. 1306. Note: Episode involving Nadab and Abihu
(Leviticus 10:1–5).

Some Stories About Beethoven. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _The
Uplift_. Vol. 7 No. 7. Concord, NC: The Board of Trustees of the Stonewall
Jackson Manual Training and Industrial School, Sep 1915. p. 14.

The Sound-Reproducing Machine as a Music Teacher. Byline: Clarence E.
Flynn. Source: _The Etude_. Vol. 37 No. 12. Philadelphia: Theodore
Presser Co., Dec 1919. p. 789.

The Story of the Red Cross. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _The
Sabbath Recorder_. Vol. 83 No. 25. Plainfield, NJ: The American Sabbath
Tract Society, Dec 17, 1917. pp. 779–81. Notes: 1) This historical article
is part of the collection because of the prose portraying the Red Cross as
a means for uplifting humanity, 2) The source follows the article with a
proclamation by President Woodrow Wilson—then President of the American
Red Cross as well—encouraging ten million Americans to join the Red Cross
“because it alone can carry the pledges of Christmas good will to those
who are bearing for us the real burdens of the world-war, both in our own
army and navy and in the nations upon whose territory the issues of the
world-war are being fought out.” [For context, the US population in 1920
was 106,021,568. (https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/
dec/popchange-data-text.html).]

The Successors of Tantalus. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _American
Messenger_. Vol. 79 No. 8. New York: The American Tract Society, Sep 1921.
p. 153.

The Sword that Keeps the Past. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source:
_ Western Christian Advocate_. Vol. 82 No. 8. Cincinnati: Methodist Book
Concern, Feb 23, 1916. p. 175.

The Three Agencies in Child Training. Byline: Rev. Clarence E. Flynn.
Source: _Western Christian Advocate_. Vol. 75 No. 24. Cincinnati:
Jennings & Graham, Jun 16, 1909. p. 10. Notes: 1) “the living and vital
religion, to which even the school owes its being;” essay, “The School
Teacher and the Republic,” 2) Ending quote (Luke 2:52).

Vibration as a Basis of Invention. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn, Indiana.
Source: _The Wireless Age_. Vol. 6 No. 9. New York: Wireless Press Inc.,
Jun 1919. pp. 41–43. Notes: 1) Invention; poems: “How It Started,”
“Inventive Genius,” and “Starting Things,” 2) Phonograph; essay,
“The Sound-Reproducing Machine as a Music Teacher.”

What Can We Believe? Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _Southwestern
Christian Advocate_. Vol. 55 No. 42. Cincinnati: The Methodist Book
Concern, Oct 18, 1928. p. 819. Note: Poems: beliefs (“The Things That I
Believe”), God as Architect (“The Creator”), Jesus as Peasant of Galilee
(“The King”), consequences (“Charge Account”), spiritual/soul
(“The Divine Image”).

What Is Happening to Religion? Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source:
_Southwestern Christian Advocate_. Vol. 56 No. 4. Cincinnati: The
Methodist Book Concern, Jan 24, 1929. p. 69. Notes: 1) “The technique
of the scientific laboratory forbids compromise;” essay, “The Laboratory
Test,” 2) Poem, “Imminence,” 3) Clarence E. Flynn was quoted on the topic
of writing about science, “In trying to make science read like a fairy
tale, one must not make a fairy tale of it.” (Leete, Frederick D.
_Christianity in Science_. New York: The Abingdon Press, 1928. p. 137)

What Makes a City? Byline: Clarence E. Flynn, Member, Kiwanis Club of
Bloomington, IN. Source: _The Kiwanis Magazine_. Vol. 14 No. 2. Chicago:
Kiwanis International, Feb 29, 1929. pp. 86, 108. Notes: 1) “a home life
so beautiful and adequate as to require no substitutes;” poems:
“Home v1921,” “The Making of Home,” 2) Responsibilities of home, school,
and church; essay, “The Three Agencies in Child Training,” 3) Sanctity of
the Lord’s Day; essay, “The Sabbath Desecration.”

The Will. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _Western Christian Advocate_.
Vol. 81 No. 38. Cincinnati: Methodist Book Concern, Sep 22, 1915. p. 922.
Note: Poem, “The Tree.”

Words. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _American Messenger_. Vol. 75
No. 7. New York: The American Tract Society, Jul 1917. p. 104. Note:
“out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth is sure to speak”
(cf. Matthew 12:34).

Worship and Service. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _Western Christian
Advocate_. Vol. 82 No. 7. Cincinnati: Methodist Book Concern, Feb 16,
1916. p. 154.

The Yielding of Aaron. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn. Source: _The Expositor_.
Jul 1929. p. 1140. Notes: 1) Story of golden calf (Exodus 32),
2) Isaiah beholding God (Isaiah 6).

The Yoke. Byline: Clarence E. Flynn, Indianapolis, IN. Source:
_The Christian Advocate_. Vol. 90 No. 25. New York: Methodist Book
Concern, Jun 24, 1915. p. 853. Note: Jesus speaks of his yoke
(Matthew 11:29–30).




APPENDIX 2: SELECTED QUOTES AND ZINGERS

Entries come from writings in this edition. The categories are not
mutually exclusive, and intracategory entries are in no particular order.


Arts

The maker of fun whose humor was clean and genuine is a benefactor of his
age, not to say a minister of righteousness. The hand of Justice lays an
unfading wreath of honor upon the grave of the man who has helped to keep
the world glad. He has planted roses where otherwise there would have been
only thorns.

In all writing...two things are important. One is to say the right thing.
The other is not to say the wrong one.

The opportunity [of the writer] is glorious and the peril is serious,
because men will become what they think, and the world will conform to
what they become. Thought life is fundamental.

In trying to make science read like a fairy tale, one must not make a
fairy tale of it.

...the message and not the form is the immortal part.---After all, it does
not seem to be to the advantage of the poet to be abjectly the slave of
his style.


Attitude/Behavior

Whoever has a cheerful disposition has that much of a start toward
positive and complete goodness.

Anyone can look happy when he _is_ happy, but only the unusual man
can keep a merry countenance when hopes die, ties are sundered, dreams
crash in shattered fragments, and the rich promises of life prove to have
been empty mirages of vain expectation. The smile “that cannot come off”
is the smile worth while.

A kindly tongue and a helping hand for all would soon garland the earth
with sunshine and happiness.

A great nation or a great race is dependent upon the performance of great
actions proceeding from great motives.

There is no getting further on the pathway to the higher life until one
has first realized his own situation.

There is too little real conviction of sin in these days. We need the
mirror held before us.

It is easier to overcome others than to conquer oneself.---Yet there is no
truer greatness than that which comes from self-mastery.

Victory over material things is but a passing honor for the one who has
failed to conquer himself.

Is there any reason why men should not do right? If duty were impossible,
all creation would be a mockery and a moral contradiction.

But, though the facing of what may be imminent death requires great
courage, it requires greater courage on the part of a strong man to sit by
the window for twelve years watching the rest of the world go by without
being able to join in its activity.

The ideal victory is not that which is won because the contestant had
everything in his favor. It is rather the one which is gained in spite of
the odds which the contestant had against him.

It is what men do that lives after them. There is an earthly side to
immortality. The deeds done in the flesh make an epitaph which
cannot deceive.

The will of man is not only his danger, but it is also his hope.

The voice with which we cry into the past is echoless, and ineffectual
are the hands with which we beat against its closed portals.

Very swiftly [time] flies by us, but not so swiftly but that we can tinge
it with the very color of our souls as it passes.

He shrank from [high duty and responsibility], as greatness usually does.
True worth is seldom a candidate. In church and state alike, things go
better when the office seeks the man.

...Jesus saved by believing in sinners.---The human heart shrivels under
accusation. It blossoms under the radiant influence of
someone’s confidence.

If they work on week days as they ought to work, they will not be found
complaining of too much rest on Sunday.

The whole world has for a norm the attitude of the individual toward it.

One has but one chance at this life, and he has a right to make that one
effort the best possible.

The waste of [any of a day’s 24 hours] is the same kind of a mistake as is
the waste of money or property.---The person who keeps any one else
waiting for him is guilty of theft.

Finding one’s true place in the world is a serious matter. Find out what
you are good for; get ready to do that thing well; then do it with all
your might.

If the thing you are doing is worth while, don’t give it up. The rewards
of the game are won neither by the fine beginning nor the brilliant play,
but by the steady endurance which holds on to the last. Life is one great
endurance test.

You will never have cause to complain of any day that has witnessed
real progress.

Whatever [life’s consequences] be called, it is not a penalty imposed,
but a result arrived at.

Whoever succeeds must carry a cross of self-denial.

One has little ground for satisfaction over a mere random success.
It is real achievement that brings enduring satisfaction.


Awareness/Perspective/Thought

The best thing that can happen to the truth is that it be investigated.

The truth, however, is never reached by methods of prejudice or undue
assumption. It is approached by fair and honest habits of thought.
We need but to look at the facts.

One owes it to truth also to know the other side.

One must at least give others credit for having opinions. Listen to all,
and accept only that which seems to bear the test of truth.

Stay with the right, though all the rest of the world disagree with you.
If you find that your position was wrong, forsake it immediately.

Thinking is not always the order of the day, however, when either profit
or appetite is involved.

It is a rather pitiful fact that it became necessary to have laws to do
what the rational conscience had failed to do.

A certain advantage can be taken at a time when everyone is afraid of
being misjudged. Like the undertaker’s bill, such things are often brought
forward at a time when everyone feels that he must swallow the dose and
ask no questions.

A wrong philosophy can lead a nation to its ruin within the space of a few
generations. A worthy one can as promptly and definitely determine a
nation’s progress and happiness.---The thinkers of a nation sow the seeds.
The people sooner or later harvest the fruit.

The lack of idealism is the most expensive thing the people of any city
can have on their hands.---If you want thieves, hoodlums, and
libertines, create a low standard of ideals in the community, and you
will get them.

Only the constructive thinker makes the great general, the great leader,
or the great engineer.

It is the unnecessary that changes bare existence into throbbing and
purposeful life.

We need to remember that it is the will uncompelled that tames the
wilderness, that it is the hand unconstrained that reclaims the desert,
and that it is the kindness born of spontaneous impulse which brings into
life the uplifting and the helpful.

We do not get at the danger of any evil by comparing one evil with
another. The question for a vigorous Nation in a trying time is not as to
what is the harm in a thing but as to what is the good.

A thought or a feeling of aspiration, however great or strong, is not
meant to be an end within itself. It is a means to the end of its actual
realization in action and accomplishment.

No less important than the things which we have been given are the things
from which we have been saved.

Great movements must always be fathered by self-sacrificing spirits before
they are finally taken upon the hearts of the people.

There is only one way to change the past, and that is to change it before
it becomes the past.

Make this day what you desire.... It must dwell in your thoughts forever
as a piercing thorn or a blooming flower. Your hand is on its gate for
the last time.

...we must recognize the common human tendency to glorify the past to the
disadvantage of the present.---One may read something of this sort in the
literature of ancient as well as modern ages. Yet the progress of the
world has gone right on.

...the religious consciousness is best developed in the solitudes.

Any reform is rapid when men once get to thinking. The case is hopeless so
long as apathy and lethargy prevail.

Nothing is to be gained by compromising with the mind of the flesh,
which is death.

Our place as a nation is largely the result of this union of hope and
thing, this combination of dream and realization, this blending of the
ideal and the practical.

Man is he who thinks, and the most successful man is he who thinks most
promptly and accurately.


Community/Relationship

We can never have a world that is anything more or less than it is made by
the people who live in it.

One can do much more working for society than he can if he works only
for himself.

Neither the school nor the Church is an orphans’ home for the purpose of
taking the responsibility of raising people’s children from the shoulders
of those to whom it belongs.

A righteous community, state, or nation is only a group of individuals
wearing, each for himself, the clean, white garments of right living.

Each individual transgression writes itself into the world life.

Freedom needs to recognize its own proper limits, and it will do so in any
properly organized social system.

A city is not made of streets, but of those who walk on them; not of
stores, but of those who trade in them; not of machinery, but of those
who drive it; not of houses, but of those who live in them. A city is its
people. It is exactly as good or bad, as strong or weak, as desirable or
undesirable, as enduring or temporary, as are they. With them it will go
forward or backward, be an object of admiration or contempt,
stand or fall, live or die.

The life and destiny of a nation are largely determined by what it
considers great.---A nation made up of people who measure greatness by
service will not be treading the path to national doom so long as this is
true. It will be moving forward in the way of a larger and richer life.

...we must not forget that the principle of democracy does not diminish
the necessity for conviction and fidelity. The disregard of obligation
is not freedom.

The apostolic Church was not a temple but a community. It must be the same
with the modern Church.

Only while the mind craves knowledge and the heart feels the throb of
the social impulse does the eye remain undimmed and the natural
force unabated.

As we once tried to have the Holy Spirit transform hearts, and still must,
so too we must now endeavor to have the Holy Spirit cleanse and exalt
social relationships.

Friendship, like everything else worth while, is the reward of
proper effort.

The most valuable friend is the friend who is one for friendship’s
sake alone.

One must live for more than self, or he never lives at all.

The lily of life never comes to the fullness of its bloom until the heart
has found someone to love, to toil for, to sacrifice for.

It has always taken the prophet and the toiler together to achieve human
progress in the best sense.

No one else cares to help the person who tries to help no one but himself.
The world has its heroes, but they are those whose chief concern has been
for their people.

Think of others sympathetically, and give them credit for everything
you can.

The ties that bind us to the hearts of others are the cables that help to
drag us toward the dust or to lift us in the direction of the heights.


Economics

It is better, even for nations, to have less and have it honestly, to
possess less and live in a world safe for each generation and its
posterity. When the hearts of men are right, our economic systems will
also be right.

Greater moderation in many things would leave us a healthier and happier
race, to say nothing of what it would do for our bank accounts.

Certainly, before buying a thing, one should honestly ask himself whether
he needs it. He should, likewise, give himself an honest answer.

The poor we always have with us, but many of them are with us
unnecessarily.---Money is made to spend, but the financially independent
are those who have learned to spend it wisely.

The budget system is a desirable plan in the home of wealth; it is a
helpful thing in the home of moderate circumstances; but it is a necessity
in the home where takes place an occasional battle with want.

Moreover, the consumer has the last word in every argument. He holds the
purse-strings, and when he is tired of talking, he can stop buying. It
does not bode well when he conceives the feeling that undue difficulty
attaches to trying to exist on the planet.


Education

The purpose of education is not to qualify one for getting through life
on a minimum of toil.---The test of learning is service.

As knowledge becomes a matter of action, it becomes a matter of purpose,
ideal, and character.

The years teach us that the only test of the correctness of any
educational method is its result in terms of life.

The growing life most easily adapts itself to newly discovered fact.

One may take a vine and train it in any direction. One may take a young
life and make of it what he will.

A great many parents are wondering these days why their children did not
grow up to be good.

A man’s education can not be measured by what he has committed to memory,
but by what he has learned by heart. Education is no more what one knows
than what he is.

The testimony of opinion is uncertain. The testimony of experience is
final and unanswerable. Arguments on the existence of love do not count
with one who loves. The thing experienced demands no proof by
logical processes.


Humanity

Humanity is the center of all creation, and the proper object of all
our striving.

Humanity knows no dividing line, and whoever lays them down will simply
sow the seeds of sorrow and trouble.

Despite all the cheap ways in which the world indulges, its real hunger
is for genuine worth, unveneered culture, real character.

When one has made a living, he has not necessarily lived.---Earth and its
physical necessities are only the stage and the setting for the drama.
The play itself lies beyond them and is separate from them.

The world is ready for anything that spells deliverance, and nothing will
deliver humanity save rightness of heart.

There is no place in the modern conception of government for any regime
which does not strive to better the condition of the people within its
scope of power. In these times, we see with increasing clearness that
there is but one worthy conception of kingliness, and that it is the
kingliness of service.

The emphasis of Jesus was upon the human being. He held all men in much
the same esteem, for to Him a human being was inherently worthy of
respect and honor.

The human soul, however, was not made to perish. It is a thing of
universal interests and eternal possibilities. It is life in its highest
terms, and it was life with which Jesus was essentially concerned.

It is the glad service which lifts the world a little farther in its
long, hard climb.

The human struggle will always be in the direction of whatever is
considered great. We shall always struggle to become like that which we
most admire. Therefore, it is important that we shall most admire the
thing that is best.

Where humanity is regnant and ascendent everything else is certain to be
at its best.


Speech

Words slip back the shutters from the windows of the inner life.

The reason for a great deal of unjust and unkind comment is to be found in
the proneness of man to condemn his brother most fiercely for that fault
which lies most deeply imbedded in his own life.

[A helpful word] will echo where you little know, and it will speak for
you when your lips of clay can speak no more.

When mind reaches its limit it often abdicates in favor of temper.
Argument exhausted, the stores of abuse are open.

Speak kindly of the friend who is away from you, for unkind speech has yet
to win its first victory for the speaker.

All keen observers of social and spiritual influences know that the
prophet is one of the most potent factors in the building of our destiny,
both as a nation and as a race.


Spiritual

God, the church, and human hearts are all things our relationship to which
should hush our souls.

Let us not be victims of the idea that holiness excludes the sunshine.

The cardinal sins are less dangerous because we are more afraid of them.

Those who fail to obtain [life’s intellectual and spiritual necessities]
pay the penalty by living cramped lives and usually dying with their
deeper longings unsatisfied.

One cannot long conceal a lack of mind and soul with clothes and
paint.---The more flash and parade the ignorant indulge in,
the cheaper they look.

The deeper hunger is satisfied only with a world made beautiful with the
things that were whispered only into the more sacred chambers of the heart
of man—the beautiful and the unnecessary things.

The only happiness which has lasting quality comes from within. No one can
be happy long who is not happy in soul.

The person who treasures an unhappy spirit sins not only against himself
and his fellow men, but he also sins against the Almighty.

The person who thinks religion must be sombre has misread his Bible and
misinterpreted his Master. It may be serious and earnest, but never morose
and gloomy.---A despondent person is no ornament to religion. It is the
joy-lighted face which inspires and wins.

The people who are really living want a religion which is more than a
fashion or a convenience. It must include a working program which means
something and is not too easy.

When we widen it, plant primroses in it, and take the stones out of it,
we no longer have a path of salvation. Then real followers of God no
longer care to walk in it.

The nature of a man can be altered or reversed.---It is the power of the
will to resist or submit.

Whoever is not physically equal to an hour or two in the sanctuary is
hardly a fit candidate for the world’s responsibilities.

The problems of the age are ethical and social. Fundamental to ethical and
social problems are spiritual conditions. The Christian Gospel is an
ethical and social message based on spiritual principles.

The divine plan looks only to the constant narrowing of the chasm between
man and God.

We all know perfectly well that life is not all that it ought to be
without the presence of the Personality which completes us.

The only argument against [Jesus Christ] is an unfaithful follower, and
that is refuted by a follower who is true.

There is no danger that [Jesus Christ] will ever be driven out. If there
is any danger for Him today, it is that He be crowded out.---But many say,
“I haven’t time.”

Only one thing should lead one to dedicate his life to Christian work. It
is the great compulsion. One has it when he is conscious that he cannot do
anything else and be quite content.

Any great idea or interest, however spiritual in its nature, must be
incarnated in an institution or it will die.---An institution must make
them visual, real, and effective. Such is the reason for the existence
of the church.

The mission of the church is to make itself unnecessary. It will be
dispensable when all the world shall at last have conformed to the
purposes of God.

Jesus introduces a man and a truth to each other and sees that they
become friends.

[Jesus] will become the spiritual ruler of the hearts of men. No power
can go beyond that.

There is nothing in the purpose or the kingdom of God that needs fear the
light [i.e., knowledge of the truth]. What will not stand the light is not
of His designing. The best that His gospel and His power can ask is to be
investigated and tested.

The world has always had strange ways, however, of putting an indefinite
construction upon the words of Jesus. ...the wonder of them...their
beauty...their truth. They are not so many, however, who venture to take
them for a life program.

We look at the earth and think of it as hiding those whom we have loved
when we ought to look upward and think of them as in the keeping of
another world. We look backward and think of their lives as belonging to
the past when we ought to look onward and think of them as belonging to
the boundless future.

Not all the places by which [Jesus’s] footprints lead may seem
pleasant.---A valley of pain matters much less, however, when a mountain
of achievement lifts its head beyond.

A sunset would be a tragedy did one not know that the sun will rise again.
We cease to dread the twilight [of life] when we reflect that it is but
the pathway to another dawn.

The path to heaven lies directly through the earth.---This is a life of
opportunity, to be lived out with full appreciation and emphasis upon the
sweetness and the worth-whileness of each day and hour. Real religion will
strive to make it more and not less beautiful.

Truth does not always follow the processes of formal logic. The tests of
faith are not to be found in the syllogism but in life’s great laboratory.

...the object of religion is humanity. For the good of men are all laws
established, all warnings issued, and all promises given.

[The achieving of the present and future salvation of people] calls for
the actual application of religious principles in everyday thinking and
action. It has not achieved its end until testimony to its power and
blessing is borne by all social life and by every social institution.
It is nothing until it has come to be expressed in terms of life.

Where such a [social] force is the cause of men doing that which they
should not do, we can best do the work of our Lord by fighting the force
and not the act. We can not kill the dragon by cutting off the heads; we
must strike at the life-giving root of the evil.

Humanity is restless.---People seem to be afraid of themselves, and hence
the quiet chamber and closet of secret prayer is often unappreciated.---We
forget that great visions must be seen in solitude and then carried out
among the crowd. Our lonely Sinais must precede our deeds of leadership.
Every Calvary is preceded by its Gethsemane, and quietness and solitude
are not to be despised.---Only small minds are always tossing upon a sea
of restlessness. Great lives know how to be tranquil.

He who would die in the spirit of the cross must live there.

It is pitiable how often the offer [of Jesus’s yoke] is misconstrued as an
attempt to increase the burden when it really amounts to an offer to help
in carrying it.

[Christianity] can afford to invite the pragmatic test, for it is
supremely a workable religion. The best things never can be adequately
appraised at the first glance. They must be tried.

One is as old as the spirit within him.---The date of one’s birth may be
misleading, but the spirit of his soul never is.

We greatly need to understand that our meeting with [God] is not only a
future but also a present event.---He is the Silent Partner in all our
upward struggles. He is the Inevitable Factor with which we must reckon
in all our considerations. He is the Absolute Quantity to which we must
relate ourselves, and to whose standards we must conform.---We are the
children of One who takes into consideration but one tense.
His word is _NOW_.


Virtue

It is the fact that love is so constituted that it finds joy in
bearing burdens.

Love is the sweetest and the costliest thing in the world. It is the
sweetest because it is the spirit and atmosphere of heaven. It is the
costliest because its arms are always aching for loads to carry.

When we fail in a righteous cause the labor has not necessarily been in
vain. One can never be robbed of the best fruit of his striving, which is
the added sinew of strength gained in the trying.

One of the strongest forces now making for a day of lasting peace is the
beautiful suggestion that comes from the spirit of those who make it their
aim to help while others destroy.

The hardy virtues that make good men are the foundation stones upon which
any sound national life must be built.---[National life] is, therefore,
more largely dependent upon Christian agencies than upon any other
one influence.

Responsibility is a wonderful tonic.

The ideal of Jesus will remain unrealized until men have learned to accept
his words at their face value, and to act upon the assumption that they
are true. Faith knows no other testimony so worthy as that of obedience.

Laziness is often a harder taskmaster than industry, and sin is always a
harder taskmaster than righteousness.

The habit of being real deserves a place among the chiefest of all
virtues.---We can no more outgrow the necessity for truth and honor than
we can outdistance that for plain living and high thinking.

The only proper standard is rightness. It is a poor thing to be in fashion
if the fashion is wrong.

...the man himself must not forget that what he can do and what he will do
are entirely determined by what he is.---One may stand upon artificial
good behavior for an hour or a day, but he cannot do it permanently
without the staying force of a fixed principle. It takes more than good
resolutions to make an ethical life.


*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77080 ***