CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ENDOWMENT THE GIFT OF ALFRED C. BARNES 1899 BV4501 .aTs" ""'^^'""y '■"'"^ ^®'"fi!S*.„!?y Lyman Abbott. olin 3 1924 029 343 740 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://archive.org/details/cu31924029343740 THE TEMPLE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON ■ CHICAGO ATLANTA ■ SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON ■ BOMBAY ■ CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO THE TEMPLE BY LYMAN ABBOTT THE MA.CMILLAN COMPANY 1909 All rights reserved COPTKIQHT, 1909, By the macmillan comfant. Set up and clectrotyped. Published November, 1909, i2„ ^^i^' l^t c-V NovioooK i^rcss J. S. Cushing Co. —Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. PREFACE This volume is one of three volumes which make one book: "The Great Companion"; " The Other Room "; " The Temple." They are not books of Theology; they are books of Religion. Religion is the life of God in the soul of man; Theology is what men have thought about that life. The object of these books is not to define, but to describe; not to defend, but to portray. The object of " The Great Companion " is to describe the Christian's faith in God. This faith is not an opinion; it is an experience. It is not the belief that there is a Great First Cause; it is personal acquaintance with an Infinite Father. It is an experience of the Friendliness of God. The object of "The Other Room" is not PREFACE to prove immortality, but to describe it. Faith in immortality is not belief in life after death; it is life now. It is not an opinion that the spirit will live after the body decays. It is a life untouched by disaster to the body. It is a habit of mind; the habit of looking on the things that are unseen and are eternal. The object of "The Temple" is not to expound the philosophies of either the psy- chologist or the physiologist. It is to describe human experience: as it is and as it ought to be; to interpret the laws both of the body and of the spirit. It is to describe human nature. The first volume portrays the Christian's faith in God; the second volume, his faith in life ; the third volume, his faith in man. All these books are interpretations. They claim no originality. They interpret the Bible, that is the treasured experience of de- vout souls. The spirit of the first is " Say VI PREFACE Our Father"; that of the second is "I give unto them Eternal Life"; that of the third is " Thou hast made him httle lower than God, thou hast crowned him with glory and honor." LYMAN ABBOTT. The Knoll, CORNWALL-ON-HUDSON, NeW YoRK, October, 1909. VH CONTENTS I. The Body . II. The Ete . III. The Ear . IV. The Ear . V. The Tongue VI. The Hand VII. The Feet . VIII. The Appetites . IX. The Passions X. Imagination XI. The Conscience XII. The Intuition . XIII. The Reason xrv. Love . 1 9 17 27 39 53 65 79 93 103 113 127 141 157 I THE BODY THE TEMPLE THE BODY Know ye not that your body is a temple of a holy spirit which is in you, which ye have from God ? My God, I heard this day That none doth build a stately habitation But he that means to dwell therein. What house more stately hath there been Or can be, than is Man ? To whose creation All things are in decay. Since then, my God, thou hast So brave a Palace built, O dwell in it, That it may dwell with thee at last ! TiU thou afford us so much wit That, as the world serve us, we may serve thee. And both thy servants be. — George Herbert. T I IHE body is a temple; in the temple dwells a spirit; this spirit came forth from God, is in the image of God, partakes the nature of God. "We are his offspring." How to keep the temple holy, that is, clean THE TEMPLE and healthy; how to keep this spirit that dwells within the temple a worthy occupant and the spiritual master of the body, is the problem of life. To answer those two ques- tions would be to answer all the questions of religion; would be to solve all the prob- lems of life : the problem of the mother with her child, of the teacher with her pupil, of the citizen with the State, of the man of affairs in his affairs, of the individual with himself. Life is making men and women. To know how so to live as to help, not hin- der life, to make the result of its businesses, its conflicts, its temptations, a pure soul in a pure body, is to possess all knowledge and to achieve all success that is of worth, for all knowledge is to be measured by its con- tribution to life, and the end of all achieve- ment is character. A pure soul in a pure body. There are philosophers who would have us believe that there is no soul, only body; and there are philosophers who would have us believe that there is no body, only soul. 4 THE BODY But neither have ever succeeded in making any headway against the common experi- ence and the common sense of mankind. Whatever philosophy may say in the school- room, we all have to act in life as though both matter and spirit were realities. In vain the idealist assures us that the body is not; that all we know of matter is derived from our own consciousness; that for aught we know that consciousness is all ; that what we call life may be but a dream from which we shall presently awake to discover its unreality. The idealist, like his neigh- bors, hungers and eats food; is cold and seeks the fire. To him, as to his fellows, the I'ock is an impenetrable barrier, and he must tunnel it or climb over it or go around it. In vain the materialist assures us that the spirit is not; that consciousness is a material product of a material brain; that man is a machine and does as the forces within him and about him compel. "We know we're free, and that's the end on't." The mate- rialist, like his neighbor, when he suffers THE TEMPLE wrong, feels indignation; when he does wrong, suffers remorse. And no argument of a philosopher avails to make him treat himself or his neighbor as a machine that merely needs repairing. When the careless chauffeur runs down a little child, the wrath of the materialist flames out against the chauffeur, not against the automobile. I am I. The body is the house in which I dwell. My body is a machine, a very deli- cate machine, whose subtle forces science is still engaged in studying with varying degrees of success. I am not a machine, but the master of the machine, in some measure the maker of the machine — maker of it as maker of the garden which nature and I unite in producing. The relations between me and my house are intimate — so intimate that the two make one earthly personality, as the serpent is one with his skin, though presently he will cast off his skin; as the bird is one with her feathers, though by and by she will lose them in moulting. If this spirit makes the body, this body also helps to make the THE BODY spirit. The eye and the ear receive impres- sions which minister to the life of the spirit; the spirit puts forth activities which minister to the life of the body. What corrupts the body degrades the spirit. This is what Paul means by the saying: "If any one destroys the temple of God, him God will destroy." God has so connected body and spirit, house and tenant, the temple and its divine in- habitant, that if the spirit corrupts the body, the body in turn corrupts the spirit; the ten- ant in destroying the house destroys himself. Health of body is not merely muscular strength. An athlete is not the perfect model. That is a truly healthy body which in all its parts is promptly, cordially, unquestioningly obedient to a noble tenant which dwells within. The bodily organs are like the in- struments in an orchestra, the spirit like the conductor; when each instrument plays as the conductor directs, life is harmonious. A healthy body is an obedient body; the eye sees what the spirit bids it see; the ear hears what the spirit bids it hear; the hand does 7 THE TEMPLE what the spirit bids it do. But a healthy man is more than a healthy body. He is a healthy body obedient to a healthy spirit — that is, to a spirit obedient to the laws of God, which are the laws of health. If the body has an errant, lawless, or vicious master, it obeys to its own undoing and the undoing of its master. The laws of health are the laws of God. Obedience to the laws of health is obedience to God. Disobedience to the laws of health is disobedience to God. To know what are the laws of health — of body and of spirit, of the individual and of society, of human life and of the world we live in — this is the sum of all knowledge. To obey those laws is the whole of religion. In this volume it is my aim, as an interpreter of the Biblical writers, to point out some of the laws of health of both body and spirit, to interpret some of the counsels which those writ- ers have given us as to the right use of both body and spirit, some of the conditions which they have indicated of a healthy, that is holy, tenant, in a healthy, that is an obedient, body. II THE EYE II THE EYE If thy right eye ofiend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee : for it is profitable that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. r I ^HE eye receives impressions; the hand performs actions. Christ tells his dis- ciples that to receive an evil impression may be as sinful and as dangerous as to perform an evil action. This is not generally believed. We are accustomed to think of sin as doing some- thing sinful; to regard sin and wrongdoing as nearly synonymous expressions. To sin passively appears almost a contradiction in terms. Not so to Christ. We may sin in receiving impressions no less than in doing deeds. Sin is lawlessness. And law applies 11 THE TEMPLE to the eye as well as to the hand; to the organs which receive as well as to the organs which act. To look on a neighbor's watch and desire to transfer it to one's own pocket is to be a thief; to look on a woman to lust after her is to be an adulterer; to look on an enemy with desire to take vengeance on him is to be a murderer. To desire evil is to be evil ; and the evil eye inspires the evil desire. We are made by the impressions we receive and the actions we perform; and not less by the impressions than by the actions. Man may be compared to a phonograph that gives back to the ear the impressions which have been received and recorded upon the plate within. Or to a photographic plate that receives an invisible impression from the outside world, which, after it has been fixed in the bath, is given back to the world again. "The whole nervous system," says Dr. W. H. Thomson, "in every animal, man included, is first organized by habit. Physi- ologists, when they speak of nerve-centres being organized to perform such and such 12 THE EYE functions, mean, not that the nerve-centres have been created so from the beginning, but that habit has so organized them. But the important principle to bear in mind is that it is the segment of the nervous system which is acted upon by stimuli from the out- side world which is the ultimate source of this great fashioner of the nervous system, Habit." ^ Thus every impression received, even more than every action performed, tends to make us what we are. It is physiologically true that environment tends to determine character. The child brought up among vulgar associates neces- sarily becomes vulgar; brought up among impure associates necessarily becomes im- pure. Necessarily — unless vigorous and effi- cient measures are taken to counteract the environment ; that is, unless an efficient coun- teracting environment can be produced. Un- less, for example, the father and mother can erase the vicious impression by substituting ' Quoted and condensed from " Brain and Personality," pp. 141, 142. 13 THE TEMPLE in its place a virtuous one, or can arouse the will of the child to abhor the vicious picture and so prevent the picture from exerting a vicious influence on the will. And even then in later life the picture will return at times to plague him. It is for this reason that modern reformers are putting great stress on a change of en- vironment, are demanding for the poor the external symbols of internal cleanliness. Clean streets, pure water, bright sunlight, are not only physically hygienic, they tend to moral hygiene as well. The boy brought up in a physically clean tenement is more likely to be morally clean than the boy brought up in a dark, dismal, and dirty tenement. It is for this reason we are putting fine pictures on the walls of our schoolrooms. They are not mere ornaments; they do not merely promote a good artistic sense in the pupils. They give through the eye impressions of "sweetness and light," and so help to make the pupil pure, by creating in him a habit of pure taste and pure imagination. They are 14 THE EYE literally helping to determine the convolutions of his brain. The barkeepers are not scien- tific psychologists ; but they understand prac- tically this law of life. Therefore they hang upon their walls lewd pictures in order to stimulate a habit of sensual self-indulgence; for one form of self-indulgence tends to develop a craving for all other forms of self- indulgence. Lust creates appetite, appetite creates lust. To receive vicious impressions does not merely incite to vicious actions. It does more, much more; it creates vicious char- acter. It is true that seeing, to affect the mind, must be with the mind. It is only when the will consents as well as the eye sees that the character is impressed. "The eye does not see," says Dr. Thomson, "any more than an opera-glass sees." The person sees; the eye, like the opera-glass, is the instrument which he uses. Two persons may read the same book, look at the same picture, listen to the same opera, and receive very different impressions. It is the impression 15 THE TEMPLE which impresses. But every vicious picture, vicious play, vicious book, vicious article, vicious jest, viciously enjoyed, goes to the making of a vicious character. The eye that looks lawlessly is as sinful and as perilous to character as the hand that acts lawlessly. 16 Ill THE EAR Ill THE EAR Take heed what you hear. "VTEVER did people more need this ad- monition than we Americans in this beginning of the twentieth century. For we have the defects of our quahties, and indis- criminating curiosity is the defect of an in- tellectually enterprising people. Our curi- osity is omnivorous. Like the babe who puts everything to his mouth to test it, we open our ears to everything: how can we judge if we do not know .'' All questions interest us. There are, however, some questions to which there is no answer. A little child the other day asked his teacher, "When was God born.''" He was an early metaphysician. There has been and there still is a great deal of useless speculation. It is more important to know what the Ten Commandments mean 19 THE TEMPLE as adapted to American society to-day than to know the date when they were first given to the world, and a great deal more important than to know what the writer of Exodus meant by saying that they were written on tables of stone by the finger of God. It is much more important to know how to exer- cise myself so as to "have always a con- science void of offence toward God and toward men" than it is to form a reasonable hypothesis as to the method by which that conscience has been developed from a lower animal instinct. Too large a proportion of our academic instruction is imparting specu- lation, not knowledge, or a knowledge of speculations that never were of any value and might as well be forgotten. There are some knowledges that are real and are important to the few but are valueless to the majority. The doctor needs to learn the names and places of all the bones in the body; but the layman does not. If I call him when I am sick, he needs to study my symptoms and understand what is the disease. 20 THE EAR But the less I study my symptoms and think about my disease the speedier will be the re- covery. Expert knowledge is valuable to the expert and dangerous to the inexpert, for "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing," and inexpert knowledge is little knowledge. Most of us would better leave psychic research to specialists who have time and talent for it. Half-knowledge is often the worst form of ignorance. There are also some knowledges which are useless and some which are worse than useless. Generally knowledge of gossip is useless, knowledge of vice is vicious. 1 say generally, for gossip is sometimes both true and important, and ignorance of vice is not a protection from vice. In America we are prone to make the exception the rule and the rule the exception; to assume that gossip is valuable because it is interesting and that knowledge of vice is valuable because it is knowledge. A good motto for the editors of our daily press would be this sentence from Thomas a Kempis: "It is wisdom not to 21 THE TEMPLE believe everything that men say, nor presently to pour into the ears of others the things that we have heard or believed." Many editors assume that we are more interested in gossip than in news, and in crimes and accidents than in achievements. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps our curiosity demands what our con- science and our taste condemn, and the worldly-wise editor pays more attention to the demand than to the condemnation. How the blame for the present condition of much of our daily press is to be divided between the editor and the readers I will not undertake to determine. But it is certain that if the editor does not select our reading as we wish he did, the selection each reader can make for himself. It is not a difficult matter to look through the daily paper and select for our reading what is worth reading. Take heed what ye read would be a good danger-signal to print in large type across the front page of every daily paper. But this danger-signal is also needed in our libraries. It is reported that a few months 22 THE EAR ago a class of young women in one of our colleges signed a protest against a list of fic- tion which had been prescribed for them to read. Their protest was successful and the list was revised. I sympathize with them. There are books that never ought to have been written; and they ought never to be read. Some knowledge of vice is necessary to a complete education; but familiarity with vice is not. And reading vice in fiction gives not knowledge, but familiarity. If we must acquaint ourselves or our children with the fact that there is vice in the world, as I think we must, let us do it so as to guard them against vice, not so as to attract them to vice ; let us not do it romantically. The reading of vicious literature cannot be defended on the ground that it gives information; in fact, it gives misinformation. Says Barrett Wendell in his admirable volume on "The France of To-Day": "The persistent irregularities of conduct incessant in French literature may most sensibly be regarded as the intellectual counterpart of lives benumbing in their gen- 23 THE TEMPLE eral regularity." If so, the reader of De Maupassant does not get information, he gets misinformation, concerning French life and manners. Fiction has three functions : entertainment, instruction, inspiration. The story may sim- ply serve to pass an hour. One may read a book as he plays golf — for pleasure. Most of our magazine stories have this useful but not very ambitious purpose. The story may instruct. From Turgenieff or Tolstoy one may get a more vivid picture of Russian society than from Wallace or Leroy-Beaulieu ; from "Lorna Doone" a more vivid picture of English life in the seventeenth century than from Green. The so-called problem novel sometimes renders this service. It enables one half the world to know how the other half lives. The story may inspire. It may put before the mind, through the imagination, an ideal of life and character which arouses aspiration and incites to action. If it only arouses aspiration, it is of doubtful value, and may be injurious; if it also incites to action, 24 THE EAR it is useful. To put before the reader a high ideal that can be realized, and so inspire him to attempt its realization, this is the highest function of works of imagination. If the story entertains and gives false information, it is bad. If it entertains and gives false ideals — that is, ideals that cannot be realized — it is worse. If it entertains and at the same time degrades instead of inspires, if it makes vice attractive and virtue repulsive, if its ideals are not only false but vicious, it is a powerful instrument of vice. For we never rise higher than the ideals which we set before ourselves as the aim of our aspirations. What Charles Dickens has said on this subject in his preface to "Oliver Twist" is worth recalling: I had read of thieves by scores; seductive fellows (amiable for the most part), faultless in dress, phimp in pocket, choice in horseflesh, bold in bearing, fortunate in gallantry, great at a song, a bottle, pack of cards or dice-box, and fit companion for the bravest. But I had never met (except in Hogarth) with the miserable reality. It appeared to me that to draw a knot of such associates in crime as really do exist; to paint them in all their deformity, in all their wretchedness, in all the squalid poverty of their lives ; to show them as they really are, forever skulking uneasily through the dirtiest paths of life, with the great, black, ghastly gallows closing up theil 25 THE TEMPLE prospect, turn them where they might; it appeared to me thai to do this would be to attempt a something which was greatly needed and which would be a service to society. The story which depicts vice as anything else than disappointing to the hopes and de- grading to the character lies; and acquaint- ance with lies is not valuable knowledge. It may be necessary for a few experts to know such books; but the less the rest of us know of them the better our education. To read what is not worth reading, in order to gratify either a prurient or an indiscriminating curi- osity, does not contribute to culture. Take heed what ye read. It is not less important to take heed how we read. Of that I speak in the next chapter. 26 IV THE EAR H IV THE EAR Take heed therefore how ye hear. OW to hear is as important as what we hear. Every public speaker recognizes this truth. For to the speaker there is as ntiuch difference in audiences as to the audi- ences there is in speakers. Some are not audiences; they are merely congregations; the speaker has to compel their attention. Others bring their attention with them. This is the charm of a college congregation : it is composed of men and women Avho come to get something, and therefore listen from the opening sentence. When I first went to Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, to succeed Henry Ward Beecher, it was with great apprehen- sion. I found him an easy man to follow, for I spoke to a congregation trained to listen, and their habit of expectancy inspired the preacher. Who has not discovered this in 29 THE TEMPLE society, where a good listener is as good a member as a good talker? Who has not labored with a dinner companion whose eyes no less than his monosyllabic words said plainly, I am not listening ? A book is a speaker; reading is listening. Take heed how you read is as important as Take heed what you read. The Germans have a proverb that reading is an excuse for not thinking. Some one has characterized a certain type of book as a stop-thought. Sometimes one wants an excuse for not think- ing; sometimes one wants a stop-thought. The wearied mother, pulled in a score of contradictory directions by conflicting de- mands, gets ten minutes for repose. This is a time, not for thought, but for rest. But the overcrowded brain will not rest if it is left alone. She must find for it occupation enough to keep it from serious occupation. She wants a stop-thought. The business or professional man whose brain has toiled in the office for eight or ten hours needs sleep. But his brain has acquired a momentum and will not in- 30 THE EAR stantly stop. He wants a book that will make it slow down. There is use for what Thackeray has called a "night-cap." Such reading is as useful as a game of solitaire. But the reading that is more than mere brain rest must be reading for a purpose and with attention. Books have been divided into two classes : books of information and books of power. Books which neither give infor- mation, that is the material for thought, nor power, that is inspiration to thought, are use- less except as entertainment. And reading which neither confers useful information nor new access of intellectual power is useless reading, except as it gives needed rest. It is often said that we are a reading people. That proves nothing. Are we a thinldng people.^ It is sometimes said by a fond mother of her boy that he is a great reader. That is noth- ing. Is he a great thinker.'' Reading is a help to thought. The reading that is not a help to thought is time wasted. The boy who is reading and not thinking would much better be out at play with his fellows. 31 THE TEMPLE / \ / I wish that when I was young I had formecl the habit of keeping a journal. Not for the', purpose of recording my experiences — reli- j gious or other. Such journal -keeping is per- i nicious; it produces a habit of self-centred \ thought, of spiritual egotism, which makes the | religious hypochondriac. But for the pur- pose of recording the thoughts which my reading had awakened. Such a journal-keep- ing serves the purpose of a recitation in school ; it compels one to think about what j he has read. One cannot write his thoughts j without thinking, and it is to promote think- / ing that one should read. Carlyle put this / excellently well in one of his recently pub* lished letters to Jane Welsh : y^ "There is nothing more injurious to the faculties than to keep poring over books con- tinually without attempting to exhibit any of our own conceptions. We amass ideas, it is true ; but at the same time we proportionately weaken our power of expressing them; a power equally valuable with that of conceiving them, and which though in some degree like it 32 THE EAR the gift of Nature, is in a far higher degree the fruit of art, and so languishes the more irretrievably by want of culture. Besides, our very conceptions, when not taken up with the view of being delineated in writing, are almost sure to be vague and disorganized; a glimpse of the truth will often satisfy mere curiosity equally with a full view of it; so hallucinations are apt to be substituted for perceptions; and even if our materials were all individually accurate, yet being gathered together from every quarter, and heaped into an undistinguished mass, they form at last an unmanageable chaos, serving little purpose except to perplex and cumber the mind that lives among them — to make it vacillating, irregular, and very unhappy — at least if it have not the fortune to be a pedant's mind — who I believe is generally a very cheerful character." ^ It is the manner in which we read the daily papers quite as much as their contents which ^"Thc Love Letters of Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh," Vol. I, p. 37. D 33 THE TEMPLE makes them of doubtful utility. We pay a penny for a mass of printed matter in which valuable information and rubbishy gossip are thrown together. We look at the head-lines ; read here and there a paragraph; smile at a joke; shudder at a tragedy; and then throw the sheet down. It is doubtful whether fifteen minutes later we could report what we have read, and it is certain that we do not often spend fifteen minutes' thought upon it. We call this skimming the paper. But what we skim off is not the cream from a pan of nour- ishing milk, but the froth from a pot of none too pure beer. Such reading is worse than a waste of time; it is a waste of brain power. Reading inattentively what does not deserve attention makes the habit of attention more difficult. What has gone in at one ear has gone out at the other ; and as a rule what goes in at one ear and goes out at the other would better never have gone in. It is true that we are a reading people; but it is also true that we are an inattentive people. We read with- out thinking. 34 THE EAR Nor is this reading without thinking con- fined to the newspapers. "All people," says Thackeray, "who have natural healthy appe- tites love sweets; all children, all women, all Eastern people whose tastes are not cor- rupted by gluttony and strong drink. . . . Novels are sweets. All people with healthy literary appetites love them — almost all women ; a vast number of clever, hard-headed men." I agree with Thackeray. I have no sympathy with the Puritan hostility to fiction. But the schoolgirl who makes her luncheon off chocolate caramels is poorly nourished physi- cally. And if she makes novels her staple mental diet, she is poorly nourished intellect- ually. Moreover, there are adulterated nov- els as there are adulterated Candies. There is enough classical fiction in the world well worth reading and rereading to make resort to trash unnecessary for recreation. I may add that the wise mother will not attempt to stop her children from reading fiction. She may limit it; if she is wise she will certainly guide it. The child who is familiar with the 35 THE TEMPLE "Jungle Stories" will not readily drop back to — But I will not advertise them. The best precaution against trash is a course of Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling. Of course this does not begin to exhaust the list of novelists whose works are well worth reading. They are worth reading because they are worth thinking about. For he who reads a work of imagination profitably will endeavor to image to himself the scene, or the incident, or the character described. Fiction is worth read- ing only as we make it real to ourselves. Only that fiction is worth reading which it is worth while to make real to ourselves. Reading that is an excuse for not thinking is, except occasionally for the overtired brain, unprofit- able reading, even though it is fiction that we read. Religious reading is sometimes made an excuse for not thinking. In fact, unthinking reading of religious literature is perhaps the worst of all unthinking reading. The Prot- estant looks with self-satisfied pity upon the 36 THE EAR Roman Catholic v, ho repeats the Pater Noster and keeps account of the number of the repe- titions by her beads. But how is it better to read a chapter of the Bible and impute it to ourselves for righteousness ? It is not the amount of the Scripture we read which profits ; it is the amount of thinking which we give to the reading. One man reads a chapter a day. Monday morning he reads the fifth chapter of Matthew. This religious duty done, he closes the book and turns to other themes which interest him more. His neighbor reads one verse in the same chapter — " Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." "Is it," he says to himself, "the meek who inherit the earth .^" He goes out to study life and see what comment life makes on Christ's teach- ing. What he sees is the greedy and the grasping getting the earth. He is puzzled; turns the text over and over in his mind; compares it again and again with life. The promise and the perplexity to which it has given rise mix in his subconscious thinking. Gradually he perceives that while the greedy 37 THE TEMPLE and the grasping get possession of the earth, it is not they who get enjoyment out of it. Suddenly it comes to him that to inherit is not to earn ; it is not to acquire ; it is to receive as a free gift. He looks again at life, and as he looks it gradually comes to him that the grasping and the greedy do not enjoy what they possess; that they are not blessed in their possessing; that he who gives his energies and enthusiasms, not to acquisition, but to service, and accepts as a free gift that which life gives him, is the one who enjoys life. And he has got more out of one verse of Scripture which he has read and thought about than his neighbor got out of an entire chapter which he read as an excuse for not thinking. Take heed how ye read. 38 V THE TONGUE V THE TONGUE Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. "rpHE letter," says Paul, "killeth; the spirit maketh alive." This verse illus- trates Paul's saying ; it enforces the truth that the literal interpretation of Scripture is not the true interpretation of Scripture. The words of Jesus have long since passed away. He spoke in Aramaic, the current dialect of his time. And the only words so spoken which are preserved in our Gospels as he spoke them are the cry on the cross, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani." To most readers of the New Testament those words would be meaningless if they were not translated. The Aramaic words of Jesus were translated by the writers of the Gospels into Greek ; and the Greek has been translated into the vernacular of the various peoples : Italian, Spanish, French, 41 THE TEMPLE German, Scandinavian, Russian, English. None of the readers of the Gospels have the words of Jesus ; most of us have only the translation of a translation of those words. Words are like the carbon in the electric lamp. The carbon burns out, but the elec- tric current endures and makes luminous a new carbon. "The words that I speak unto you," says Jesus, "are spirit and are life." The spirit and the life outlive the words, and give light and life through other words to people who could not comprehend the original language. Words are at once most transient and most permanent. They are vehicles of life. The vehicle perishes, the life remains. We forget the word ; we retain the influence which it has communicated. A word is but a wavelet of the air set in motion by the lips of one and impinging on the ear- drum of another. And yet a word is also a revelation of one soul to another soul. Courage and fear, hope and despair, honor and shame, purity and foulness, reverence and profanity, are carried by these "winded 43 THE TONGUE words." Nothing is so evanescent, nothing so enduring. After a minister has been preaching ten years, some of his admiring parishioners re- solve to celebrate the decade by printing a volume of his sermons. With much labor he prepares them for the press. They are printed. On the first copy which is put into his hands he looks with pleasure and his wife with pride. At last, she says, he has something permanent, not elusive, something tangible and enduring. A few copies are sold to special friends ; a few more given away; the rest remain in modest obscurity on the publisher's shelves, unread. And in a year even the proofreader has for- gotten their existence. But one day a for- lorn woman with a desolated home and a bur- den of care too heavy for her to bear, who would gladly have found relief in suicide had not conscience and fear combined to prevent her, comes in to see him; and he puts new courage into her heart by his strong words and sheds light on her life by his wise words, and she goes back to carry into her darkened 43 THE TEMPLE home the light he has kindled in her heart and to give to her children the courage he has given her, which they in turn will give to their children. Heaven and earth will pass away sooner than the spirit and the life which his words have imparted. As I am writing, Congressmen are talking about putting up in Washington some worthy monument to the memory of Abraham Lin- coln. It is well — well because so they will honor the present generation. For this monu- ment, whatever form it takes, will bear wit- ness that the present generation did not forget the service rendered to his country by a great man. But the Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation Proclamation will outlast any monument we can build to Abraham Lincoln's memory. Unnumbered thousands will get a new inspiration of justice and liberty from his words who will never look on any bronze or marble monument which Congress can de- vise. The spirit and life which his words have given to the world will last as long as men experience love of country and love of 44 THE TONGUE freedom. It is not only Jesus who can say, Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away; every teacher of truth, every inspirer of life, may say it. In words "our thoughts go from us to the utmost bounds of space and time; hearts that beat in the remotest borders of the world are fired by the sentiments that ours have conceived ; they love us though unseen, and 'being dead we yet speak.'" Nor is this power of words confined to great books, great poems, great orations delivered on great occasions. It is the great- ness of the soul, not the greatness of the occa- sion, which makes the words great. The two greatest teachers of all time were conversa- tionalists : Socrates and Jesus of Nazareth. Neither of them ever wrote a line. Great addresses on great occasions of theirs are not preserved. The only sermon of Jesus re- ported as such is the Sermon on the Mount, and many scholars think that Sermon is a mosaic of different teachings skilfully put together by the reporter — an opinion which 45 THE TEMPLE I do not entertain. Its literary unity seems to me to negative that hypothesis. But if this is an uninterrupted sermon, it is the soli- tary exception. The sermons on the Bread of Life reported in John, and the one on the Last Days reported in Matthew, are con- versational, not oratorical. Jesus Christ was a great teacher, not because he delivered great orations, but because his words were the vehicle for a great life. Public speech is a necessary substitute for private instruction; but the private instruction is more effective when it is practicable to give it. Every political campaigner knows that it is the house-to-house canvass which secures votes. Every evangelist knows that it is the personal work which wins converts. The tutorial sys- tem is confessedly of incalculable value in a college training; the only objection is lack of time and money. The confessional gives un- told strength to the Roman Catholic Church because in the confessional an individual gives counsel to an individual. I have preached to many a congregation of a thousand; I 46 THE TONGUE have talked to many hundreds of perplexed or hindered or doubting individuals, one by one. I would always rather talk to the con- gregation of a thousand one by one if they would come to me, and if I had the time and the strength. Society — that kind of society in which men talk much and say nothing — is a great waste of time, the more pitiable because it is also a great waste of opportunity. To con- verse ought to mean what the dictionaries tell us it does primarily mean — to live with another. Conversation ought to be a real interchange of life. What is the sense of this modern reserve \\hich forbids us from talking about the matters which really in- terest us ? Is it because we have so little life to impart .'^ Do we keep the curtains of our soul down lest the world should see how empty the rooms are ? I cannot think so. I have talked for an hour and a half with a group of thirty or forty college girls, and on other oc- casions with a similar group of college men — talked with them, not listened to them — 47 THE TEMPLE and they brought to me the profoundest problems in philosophy, history, ethics, and theology. Had I been a scientist, I am quite sure their interest in astronomy, geology, ex- perimental psychology, would have been not less. Yet if I had met them, or they had met each other, in what we miscall a social gather- ing, we should have talked mainly of the weather or possibly, with careful superficial- ity, of the last novel or the last magazine. When I get in literature a glimpse, to me a very enticing glimpse, of the French salon of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I wonder whether the woman's clubs of the twentieth century are any improvement — are not rather the reverse. In the one was the play of an intellectual conversation, a real communication of life ; in the other there are the silent audience and a learned or eloquent speaker — sometimes. Words ought to be a vehicle of life. Empty words, that contain no life, are inane, useless, like the shells one picks up upon the beach, where life once dwelt and dwells no longer. 48 THE tongue: To make our words living words, to make them convey something, and so make society an interchange of life and a life worth inter- changing, to realize that society might be made a better place to communicate life than any pulpit or platform, and a better place to re- ceive life than any church or lecture-room — if we could do this we should transform social conversation from a bore to an inspiration, and modern society from a gathering of chat- tering mummies to a market-place of living ideas and ideals. I would not that every man should think himself a teacher and wear his cap and gown to all assemblies; but neither need he think himself a court fool and always wear his cap and bells. What is needed to make conver- sation serve its true purpose — the inter- change of life — is that the converser should be interested in something and not be ashamed to speak of what interests him, and should be interested in what interests his fellow-members of society and desire to listen to them. For "silence is one great art of conversation," E 49 THE TEMPLE and a good listener is as essential to conver- sation as a good talker. "He who ques- tioneth much," says Lord Bacon, "shall learn much and content much; but especially if he apply his questions to the skill of the persons whom he asketh; for it shall give them occasion to please themselves in speak- ing." The Apostle John has given us the lofty, the noble, the divine meaning of words : "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." God was always a speaking God : speaking through the mountain and the flower that bloomed upon its sides and the bird that sang above it; speaking in the words of the poet, the achievement of the statesman, the author- ity of the father, the comforting love of the mother. The picture is the word of the artist ; the bridge is the word of the engineer ; the home is the word of the mother. Words are the expressions of the hidden life of the soul. It may be the life of emotion or the life of intellect; the life of instruction or the life 50 THE TONGUE of mere fellow-feeling; the life of serious thought or the life of sparkling wit or of mere good humor. But if it expresses no life, it is an idle word, and "every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." 51 VI THE HAND VI THE HAND Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might. XN visiting colleges I find hundreds of -*• young men on the threshold of life per- plexed by the problem What to do. There appear to be already enough lawyers, doctors, ministers, manufacturers, merchants. Where shall the thousands of young men who gradu- ate this summer find a place .^ They forget that these thousands of college graduates create a demand as well as a supply. The doctor will want a lawyer to collect his bills, and the lawyer a doctor to visit him when sick; and both a manufacturer to make cloth and a merchant to sell them clothing. Every new man creates a new demand as well as brings a new supply. There is plenty of work to be done; enough, if society were rightly organ- ized, to give work to all who are willing to do 55 THE TEMPLE whatever their hands find to do, whatever it is and wherever it is found. The problem of the unemployed is really four problems; for there are four classes of unemployed. There are some who do not wish to work. They believe that the world owes them a living; and the world thinks it owes them nothing. Of these, some are rich and some poor; but, rich or poor, they con- stitute the lazy unemployed and are the world's paupers. There are others who do not wish to work, but think they do. They begin well, but never finish. They come to a difficulty, and it halts them; they find the load heavy, and they balk. They go from one unfinished job to another, and never finish anything. Their life is full of undertakings and barren of achievements. They do not mean to be idle, but they are hopelessly in- efficient. The third class are willing to work, but are incompetent. The incompetence may be physical or intellectual or moral; they may have flabby muscles, inert minds, or feeble, vacillating wills. But some infirmity 56 THE HAND forbids effectiveness. Finally are the men able to work and willing to work who can find no work to do. The remedy for the first class is a workhouse ; for the second class is hunger ; for the third class is charity; for the fourth class is a better industrial system. That there are able workers and willing workers who cannot find work is not to be doubted. They are not all muscular laborers. There are competent lawyers without clients, competent physicians without patients, com- petent ministers without parishes. Enforced idleness is one of the tragedies of life. But in America, in most communities and in most times, he who is willing to do with his might whatever his hand finds to do can generally find some opportunity for his activity. The secret of success in life — such success as our faculties fit us for — is found in the two clauses of this ancient counsel : First, a will- ingness to take hold of any work which the hands find to do; and, second, the employ- ment of all one's energies in doing it to the very best of one's ability. 57 THE TEMPLE My first advice to any man out of a place is to take the first place that offers. There are as many exceptions to this rule as there are to most rules in the Greek grammar; and at school I used to think there were more excep- tions to a rule than illustrations of it. But the rule is none the less a safe general one. No employment is ignoble which renders a real service to the community. If you can- not be a landscape architect and design a garden, perhaps you can be a day laborer and dig a ditch. If you cannot get a town or city parish with a comfortable salary, you can preach in a schoolhouse and eke out your liv- ing by farming. If you cannot find patients in the city, there is some country district that is in need of a good doctor. The place that you want may not want you, but there is some place that does. The work that you would like to do some one else may be doing; but there is some needed work waiting for a worker. The successful men in America did not begin by doing what they wanted to do; they began by doing what their hands found 58 THE HAND to do. Doubtless one may side-track him- self by getting a place where there is no chance for promotion; but he is more likely to be side-tracked by getting no place at all. It is generally easier to get from any post to a better post than to get from no post at all to any post. Men who want helpers look, to find what they want, among the busy men, not among the idlers. But I want to lay especial stress on the second clause of the text — '' Do it with thy might." Put the whole of your energy into what you are doing. The ambition to do the best possible work is always a noble am- bition; the ambition to get the best possible pay is always an ignoble ambition. A cus- tomary phrase to describe one who is incom- petent is, "He is not all there." He who would do his work well must be "all there." He who bestows upon his job as much time and as much energy as he thinks he will be paid for will not succeed. He who bestows upon his job as much time and as much energy as can be used advantageously in doing it well 59 THE TEMPLE cannot fail. In a great factory no power is allowed to lie idle and no time is allowed to go to waste. One cause, I am persuaded, for the frequent home wrecks in America is that the woman does not think that the busi- ness of home-building calls for the exercise of all her talents; so the work which she has undertaken she leaves to be carried on by un- inspired and unwatched underlings, and goes herself outside to find something to do which she thinks worth while. She does not do with her might what her hands find to do under her own roof. "Genius," said Sir Joshua Reynolds, "is nothing but the intense direction of the mind to some intellectual object." I doubt the accuracy of the definition; but certainly no genius has ever accomplished much in the world without such concentration. If con- centration does not alone make the genius, the absence of concentration does make the "scatterbrain." "The art of war," said Na- poleon, "is the art of being stronger than the enemy at a given point." This is concen- 60 THE HAND tration, and this is the art of life. Charles Dickens emphasizes this truth in the explana- tion of his own success which he puts into the mouth of David Copperfield: "My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life I have tried with all my heart to do well ; that whatever I have devoted myself to I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small I have always been thor- oughly in earnest. I have never believed it possible that any natural or improved ability can claim immunity from the companion- ship of the steady, plain, hard-working quali- ties, and hope to gain its end. There is no such thing as such fulfilment on this earth. Some happy talent and some fortunate op- portunity may form the two sides of the ladder on which some men mount, but the rounds of that ladder must be made of the stuff to stand wear and tear; and there is no substitute for thoroughgoing, ardent, and sincere earnest- ness. Never to put my hand to anything on which I could not throw my whole self; and never to affect depreciation of my work, 61 THE TEMPLE whatever it was, I find now to have been my golden rules." Most of us have some work to do which we enjoy ; this it is easy for us to do with en- thusiasm. All of us have some work to do which we do not enjoy; to do this work with enthusiasm is not so easy. But the secret of success lies in our doing with our might whatsoever our hands find to do — the disagreeable not less than the agreeable. A favorite motto of a friend of mine I repeat here for the benefit of my readers : "If you cannot do what you like, then like what you do." To do our work in this spirit is to redeem our tasks and banish drudgery from our life. For drudgery is toil done without interest. It is possible to put interest into all our toil ; not because the work is interesting, but because it is always interesting to do well what is worth doing. This is to conquer the obstacles in ourselves — and those are the ob- stacles most worth conquering. Every man is his own most dangerous enemy. Victory over himself is therefore the greatest of victories. 62 THE HAND In my pastoral work I have found church members divided into four classes : First were those who had no idea of Christian work, to whom religion was only a luxury, or at best a comfort, and who thought of themselves as completely fulfilling all church obligations if they attended church on pleasant Sundays and paid their pew rents. Second, those to whom the church ministered, but who did not minister to the church because other duties demanded all their time and strength. They were entirely right in not doing any church work. For church work and Christian work • are not synonymous ; and to them the church was not an opportunity for service, but an in- spiration to service done elsewhere. Third were those who, driven by their consciences, or coaxed by their companions, were enrolled among the church workers, but never gave themselves to their work. They were ap- pointed on committees, but rarely attended; belonged to the church societies, but were non- attending members; taught in the Sunday- school, but never studied the lessons which 63 THE TEMPLE they taught. They always served with reluc- tance, and early resigned because they had "done their share." Lastly were those who undertook some specific piece of work and did it with their might. Neither guests nor rain kept them from their self-selected tasks. These are they who give the church its real strength. A half-hearted and reluctant worker in the church is only one degree better than none — yes ! often worse — a hindrance, not merely no help. Dr. Henry Sloane CoiEn has given a new interpretation to the direc- tion: "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth." Why not.^ Because the left hand should be so busy doing its own work that it has no time to be watching its fellow. The law of the hand is that it should do with its might whatsoever it finds to do, wher- ever that work is found. 64 VII THE FEET VII THE FEET Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil ; for thou art with me : Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. T I IHE eye and the ear retain impressions which build the character; they make the man through the power of habit. The tongue communicates life, and is the organ by which the man directly exerts the influence of his character on others. The hands are the instruments of his will, to carry out in executive action what his impulses move and his choice determines him to do. The feet are the means of transportation, the symbo^ of his pilgrimage and his progress. Life is a journey from the cradle to the grave. We start in infancy, travel through successive stages — childhood, youth, matur- ity, old age — and reach our journey's end at death. This journey is, or ought to be, a 67 THE TEMPLE continuous ascent, sometimes through diffi- cult steeps; this development is, or ought to be, a continuous growth, from seed to stalk, and stalk to bud, and bud to bloom, and bloom to fruit. The Psalmist has described it : Bless the Lord, O my soul. And forget not all his benefits: Who forgivcth all thine iniquities; Who healeth all thy diseases; Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; Who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies : Who saLisfieth thine old age^ with good; So that thy youth is renewed like the eagle. Paul has described it: For whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be con- formed to the image of liis Son, that he might be the first- born among many brethren: and whom he foreordained, them he also called : and whom he called, them he also "justi- fied : and whom he justified, them he also glorified. To the Psalmist the end of the journey is an old age filled with good, and radiant with hopes brighter than those of youth. To the Apostle the end of the growth is a character conformed to the image of God's Son, a char- ' See C. A. Briggs's "Critical Commentary on the Psalms," Vol. II, p. 323. 68 THE FEET acter that makes the soul brother to Jesus Christ. This pilgrimage should be a continuous progress; this growth should be a continuous development. We are promised a divine fellowship in this pilgrimage; but this promise of divine fellowship is a conditional promise; it is con- ditioned on our going forward. The children of Israel came to the edge of the Red Sea; the water before them, a high cliff on the one side, the Egyptians in the rear and on their flank. Moses tells them, "The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace"; but Jehovah answers, "Wherefore criest thou unto me.'* speak unto the chil- dren of Israel, that they go forward." And the divine deliverance comes to them as they press forward into the waters of the sea which seem to block the way. Joshua brings Israel to the edge of the promised land. The walled cities are great ; the inhabitants strong ; Israel is afraid : How shall we inherit this land of giants, before whom we are in our 69 THE TEMPLE sight and in theirs as grasshoppers ? The answer of Jehovah is: "Only be thou strong and very courageous, to observe to do ac- cording to all the law, which Moses my ser- vant commanded thee : turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou may- est have good success whithersoever thou goest." The Psalmist meets single-handed a troop; retreat impossible, their arrows would pierce him even while he turned ; escape through them impossible, for just beyond is a wall of rock. God does not desert him, nor does God disperse the troop, nor by a miracle batter down the wall. A single prayer, "God give me courage," then spurs to his horse. Before the Arab host have time to think, he has dashed through their line, leaped the rock, and disappeared into safety. But when this Israelitish Putnam looks back, he de- scribes his deliverance thus: "By thee I have run through a troop; by my God I have leaped over a wall." Paul, beset behind and before, misunderstood by his Christian breth- 70 THE FEET ren, hated by his Jewish fellow-citizens, de- spised by the Gentiles, unable to accomplish his designs, does not abandon his mission; when he can do nothing else he can still stand and receive attacks from which he cannot defend himself. And he makes his own ex- perience minister to the needs of his fellow- Christians: "Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand." John writes out of his own experience when he writes to the Church at Pergamos: "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written." Sooner or later every pilgrim comes to the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Like Per- civale, he is in a laud of deep leaves and sing- ing brooks and blossoming flowers and sweet fruits : But even while I drank the brook, and ate The goodly apples, all these things at once Fell into dust, and I was left alone And thirsty, in a land of sand and thorns. 71 THE TEMPLE Like the Psalmist, the pilgrim rests in green pastures and is led beside the still waters; and then suddenly his path conducts him into the Valley of the Shadow of Death. All that seemed to make life worth living has gone out of life. His ambition, his hope, his love, lie dead at his feet. Sickness or acci- dent takes him out of life and its glorious service, and he must lie passive, a burden to those whose burdens he meant to bear. A cruel injustice by a trusted friend and com- rade robs him of his earnings and leaves him to begin his life anew, without health of youth to equip him and its hopes to cheer him. The work he undertook proves too great for his abilities, and the conviction that no one but himself is to blame for his failure adds the pangs of humiliation to the pains of disaster. Death knocks at his door, and, entering, takes from him the one whose companionship was the inspiration of his life, and leaves him in utter loneliness. No such tragedy occurs, and yet — and perhaps this is the greatest tragedy of all — all the glow goes out of his 72 THE FEET sky, all the hope out of his endeavor, all the courage out of his heart, all the joy out of his companionships, and he seems to himself, he cannot tell why, but the shadow of a man. For such an hour is the promise of our text : If I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I shall find in it a divine companionship. There is no promise of guid- ance around the valley, nor of a bridge to cross the valley, nor of wings to fly over the valley ; nor is there any promise of a consoling Pres- ence to those who sit down in the valley to self-indulgent grief. The promise is only to him who keeps on with life's journey. And the promise is not of a handkerchief to wipe away his tears, nor of sunshine to dispel the darkness, nor of an anaesthetic to deaden the pain, but of a rod and a staff to enable him to go on with the journey. There is no more strikingly dramatic illus- tration of this truth than that afforded by the passion of Jesus Christ. He foresees the Valley of the Shadow of Death toward which his path is leading him. One disciple will 73 THE TEMPLE betray him; another will deny him, the rest will flee from him and leave him alone. The Nation which he could save if it would but take his counsel, will seal its own doom in pronouncing his. The Church which he wished to redeem and make the true House of God will remain a den of thieves. Greed will put on the robes of i-eligion, and cowardice the robes of justice, and one will falsely ac- cuse and the other sentence him to death. He prays that, if it be possible, this cup may pass from him. But, as he prays, the echoes of the approaching Temple police, marching across the intervening valley, convey to him his Father's answer to the prayer. It is not possible that the cup should pass if he is to do his appointed work. Calmly he comes to his sleeping disciples, arouses them with the words, "Rise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand that doth betray me," and goes forth to meet the arresting band. And in all the tragic experience of the dreadful night and day that follow he walks through the Valley of the Shadow of Death with untroubled spirit : 74 THE FEET before the eager Caiaphas, the self-inflamed mob, the perplexed Pilate, the frightened disciples, the callous soldiers, the weeping women of Jerusalem, the only calm, quiet, unperturbed spirit. If, then, you come to a Valley of the Shadow of Death, to an experience in which hope and ambition and love lie dead at your feet, in which it seems as though life were no longer worth living, to a land in which you are left alone and thirsty in a land of sand and thorns — whether this experience be due to your own fault, or to the fault of another, or to one of those great disasters into which sooner or later every pilgrim must enter, or to no ex- plicable cause at all but to your own inex- plicable mood, remember that the promise of divine companionship and comfort is con- ditioned upon your continuance of your jour- ney. When thou passeth through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned. It is when I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death that I shall fear no 75 THE TEMPLE evil and that I shall have his rod and his staff to help me continue the journey. If the time comes when it seems no longer worth while to bear the burden, or do the duty, or enter into the pleasures of the past — keep stead- fastly on. If the pleasure no longer pleases, you may leave it. If the conventions of so- ciety require some abstinence from life as a token of respect to the dead, the respect may be paid. But lay aside no burden, discon- tinue no duty, abstain from no accustomed service of others. Comfort will be found, and only found, in keeping steadily, courageously, resolutely on with life. The way to light lies through the shadow; the way to life through death. Light and life will not come to you; by pressing forward you will come to them. When in your perplexity you are tempted, meet the temptation as Christian met it: "He began to muse what he had best to do. Sometimes he had half a thought to go back; then again he thought he might be halfway through the valley; he remem- bered also how he had already vanquished 76 THE FEET many a danger and that the danger of going back might be much more than to go forward ; so he resolved to go on. Yet the fiends seemed to come nearer and nearer; but when they were come almost at him, he cried out with a most vehement voice, 'I will walk in the strength of the Lord God ! ' so they gave back and came no further." XI VIII THE APPETITES VIII THE APPETITES Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. XXQW can we eat and drink to the glory -■^ of God? Paul tells us that our body is a temple in which dwells a spirit which we have from God. This temple is in need of constant repair. We eat and drink to the glory of God when we so eat and drink as to keep it in good repair. Every act, physical or mental, destroys some tissue of the body. New tissue must be im- ported to take its place. This is one function of food and drink. The life of the body de- pends upon keeping up a certain standard of heat within. Food is fuel. This is another function of food and drink. When food and drink are so used as to make the body the best possible tenement for the spirit to inhabit G 81 THE TEMPLE and the best possible instrument for the spirit to use, we eat and drink to the glory of God. The appetites are not a sin. It is not sinful to enjoy a good meal. What is sinful is to allow our enjoyment to induce us to partake of a bad meal — that is, a meal that does not repair but impairs the body. Some persons violate this law by eating too much; others violate it by eating too little; still others, by eating unwisely. Fasting is not a duty, feasting is not a sin. Sometimes fasting is a sin, sometimes feasting is a duty. The law of the Old Testament provided for many feasts and for only one fast. It was degenerate Judaism which added other fasts. The Pharisee who boasted that he fasted twice every week was condemned, not com- mended, by Jesus Christ. Christ said of himself that he came eating and drinking. When his enemies called him a glutton and a wine-bibber, they lied; but it was not the kind of lie they would have told of an ascetic. He was accustomed to compare the king- dom of God to a great feast. The records 82 THE APPETITES contain no account of his declining any in- vitation to a social meal, and they report more than one acceptance. His first miracle was performed to prolong the festivities of a wedding; almost his last one was to invite his special friends to sit with him at a na- tional festal board. Thus Christianity affords no justification for asceticism. It is as much a duty to eat and drink enough to keep the body in good condition as it is a duty to re- frain from eating and drinking what will put it in bad condition — a truth I recom- mend to the especial consideration of some of my too dainty women readers. I know a young woman who at home thought she could eat nothing which it did not please her ex- acting taste to eat. She went to boarding- school, found that nothing pleased her exact- ing taste, and came to the sensible resolve to eat, not to please herself, but to equip her- self; the result was great benefit to her health and great comfort to her family. Let me change the apostolic figure. The body is like a mill ; if there is a flood and too great a 83 THE TEMPLE torrent sweeps through the race, the mill cannot do its work ; if there is a drought and no water runs through the race, the mill can- not do its work. To keep our appetites so adjusted as to let in water enough and not too much is to obey the divine law : " Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." Total abstinence is not a synonym for tem- perance. Temperance is the control of the appetites so that they shall serve their legiti- mate purpose, which is to keep the body in good condition for the work the spirit has for it to do. To drink too much coffee may be as intemperate as to drink too much beer. I have been told of a Christian man who was informed by his doctor that he had a serious and insidious disease, and that his health demanded of him that he discontinue the use of meat. He went straightway home and ordered and ate a large steak, a food of which he was inordinately fond. He was as truly intemperate as if he had drunk a quart of whiskey. Intemperance is not confined to 84 THE APPETITES the saloon nor to the homes of the poor. Our extravagant and prolonged dinners are no less a form of intemperance. The modern habit of making the dinner-table an occasion for public speaking is an excellent habit. What is not excellent is our custom of eating so much before the speaking that the orators are unfitted to speak and the audience is ill fitted to listen. I have attended many public dinners. A happy accident gave me the only one I ever attended which I thought was truly hygienic. When I reached the club- house, I was met with the information that the steward had mistaken the date and no dinner was prepared. The efficient com- mittee scurried around, found in the larder of the club enough wholesome food to satisfy all reasonable appetite, and we sat down to a dinner of four courses — soup, beef, salad, and ice-cream — and had a delightful evening for the social speaking, and got to bed about the time social speaking generally begins. We hold up our hands in horror at the ex- cesses of the ancients who ate until they could 85 THE TEMPLE eat no more and then took an emetic and began again. But when we contrive our elaborate dinners so as to tempt the palate to invite in more food to an already over- burdened stomach, we repeat the offence of the ancients, though in a form not quite so vulgar. This vice may be and probably is confined to our cities and large towns, and is not pecul- iarly American. What is peculiarly Ameri- can is the manner of our eating, which Charles Dickens, in "Martin Chuzzlewit," satirized to the great indignation but also to the great benefit of America: All the knives and forks were working away at a rate that was quite alarming; very few words were spoken; and everybody seemed to eat his utmost in self-defence, as if a famine were expected to set in to-morrow morning, and it had become high time to assert the first law of nature. . . . Great heaps of indigestible niatter melted away as ice before the sun. It was a solemn and an awful thing to see. Dys- peptic individuals bolted their food in wedges; feeding not themselves, but broods of nightmares, who were continually at Uvery with them. This was a caricature then; it would be still more a caricature now. But no one 86 THE APPETITES would think of caricaturing the excessive slowness of the American busy man's midday meal. To run from one's office to a lunch- counter, to shovel food into one's stomach as a stoker shovels coal into a furnace, and then run back to the office again to take up one's work, is a practice not so universal as it once was, but still by no means uncom- mon. And dyspepsia is in consequence a national disease. I once attended a wedding — but that was nearly half a century ago — in a rural section in the West, at which the ceremony was followed by a wedding break- fast at the country inn. When the rest were about half through, the bridegroom rose, wiped his mouth, and said to his bride, "Jane, I never sit at the table after I have finished my meal, and you may as well get accustomed to my ways now as later," and then disap- peared from the room. The incident would hardly have been possible except in America. A hard-working friend of mine went to his doctor for a remedy for dyspepsia. The doctor recommended a cigar after each meal, 87 THE TEMPLE and it cured him. But my friend, who told me the incident, added, "I do not think it was the cigar; 1 think it was the rest for half an hour after meals which the cigar required." No rational driver thinks of feeding his horse immediately on stabling him after a hard morning's drive; nor will he start him out for an afternoon's drive with the oats still undigested in the stomach. We ought to treat our bodies at least as well as we treat our horses. To eat in haste is sure to entail repenting at leisure, and it is to sin against the law of God. To bolt one's food as an ill-trained stoker shovels coal into the furnace — the more per minute the better — and to send one's nervous energy to one's brain when it is needed by the stomach, is to violate the law, "Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatso- ever ye do, do all to the glory of God." America violates this law habitually through ignorance, which I cannot but think is cul- pable. Every woman ought to understand the essential principles of hygienic diet, and so how food should be prepared. She need 88 THE APPETITES not be a cook, but should understand the science of cooking. Every girls' school should give the girls some acquaintance with the chemistry and the physics of the kitchen. I do not demand that the schools teach cookery as a fine art ; I do demand that they teach it as a practical science. The woman who knows nothing about cooking is not, to use the vernacular, "on to her job." I once asked a great iron-master in Pennsylvania what was the common cause of strikes. "Bad cooking," he replied. I opened my eyes in mild astonishment. "I am quite serious," he continued. "The men bring indigestible luncheons to the furnace in their dinner- pails ; they get dyspepsia — and are dis- contented, for how can a dyspeptic be con- tented ? And their discontent incites to strikes, in the futile notion that so they can better their condition." Three successive summers I cruised about with a companion among the islands of Penobscot Bay. We slept on board and cooked our meals. We could catch fresh fish from the deck of our 89 THE TEMPLE boat, and could make our own coffee and cocoa; and we could get at any farm-house milk or fresh eggs. But not once in those three summers could we get good bread ex- cept in the bakeries at the larger towns. The bread in the farmers' houses and the fisher- men's cottages was invariably sour and soggy and indigestible. Once a fisherman rowed out to us to ask the gift of a loaf of bread. He was a great sufferer from dyspepsia. He had tried all sorts of cures, and had thrown away money on a quack advertising doctor. What he needed was a wholesome diet. "None of our women about here," he said pathet- ically, "know how to make good bread." And our experience confirmed his. It so happened that I spent that night on shore. And I came on board the next morning hungry, after what would have been a wholly uneatable and indigestible breakfast but for the blueberries and milk which accompanied it. How much better the town and city girls arc equipped for this fundamental part of home-keeping than their country sisters I do 90 THE APPETITES not know. But from the alacrity with which they take to hotels and boarding-houses I suspect they are at least distrustful of their expertness. I am not demanding that we should all be physiological chemists and should be always studying the question how much of proteid and how much of phosphate our body needs. But we should know how to make food that is both palatable and digestible; we should know what kinds of food help and what harm the body; and we should learn by our own experience our own individual needs. I once invited Henry Ward Beecher to dinner at a restaurant, and offered beef as a part of the dinner. He declined. "Beef makes blood," he said; "you need it; I don't, I have too much blood already." To know our own needs and to provide intelligently for them is to obey the laws of the appetites. To realize that the life is more than meat, and the body than raiment ; to eat to live, not to live to eat ; to make reason, not temporary pleasure, select our viands for us; to recognize, habitually, 91 THE TEMPLE the truth that the body is the instrument of the spirit and is to be made its useful and obedient instrument, and to select our food and drink and our time and our methods of eating and drinking so as to make the body the best possible servant of the spirit which dwells within it, which ministers to others through it, and which should control it — this is to eat and drinlc to the glory of God. 92 IX THE PASSIONS IX THE PASSIONS Love is strong as death; Jealousy is cruel as the grave; ^OLOMON'S SONG is a love drama.' ^^ There are three chief characters, — Solo- mon, the Shulamite Maiden, the Peasant Lover. A chorus of women acts the part of a Greek chorus. The scene opens with a royal encampment in Galilee. The Shulamite Maiden has been brought to the camp to be added to the royal harem. The King and the chorus of court ladies receive her with latteries. But her heart turns to her Peasant ' It does not come within the province of this volume to enter into doubtful questions of Biblical criticism. There are two modern interpretations of this book; one the dra- matic, here adopted; the other the lyrical, that it is a col- lection of love songs, but with dramatic unity. For the latter see R. G. Moulton's "Modern Reader's Bible, Biblical Idylls " ; for the former see W. E. GrifHs's " The Lily among Thorns." See also my "Life and Literature of the Ancient Hebrews," chapter Ix, and note there. 95 THE TEMPLE Lover, and to the royal flatteries she turns a deaf ear. The company go up to Jerusalem, taking the captive maiden with them. The King hopes that absence from her lover in new scenes, and the glories of the city and the palace, will win her away from her rural home. But she will have none of them. Waking, she sings of her brothers, her vine- yard, her lover. Sleeping, she dreams of him. Neither the flatteries of the King nor his ardent passion has any effect upon her. And the simple story ends with her return to Galilee, where she appears leaning upon the arm of her Peasant Lover, and greeted by the song of the village maidens as the lovers come back to the rural home beneath the apple tree, where she was given birth by her mother, and given a second birth by her lover. And the simple drama, whose motif is the spontaneity of love, "Stir not up nor awaken love until it please," ends with the verse : Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm : For love is strong as death ; 96 THE PASSIONS Jealousy is cruel as the grave : The flashes thereof are flashes of fire, A very flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench love, Neither can the floods drown it : If a man would give all the substance of his house for love. He would utterly be contemned. Solomon's Song is to most readers of the Bible a closed book. The age needs to reopen and reread it. For it is a simple and graphic portrayal of the conflict between love and am- bition in a woman's life, with love triumphant. And in this age, when ambition in all its forms is calling so loudly to woman to come out from her home — social ambition offering her wealth or European titles, business ambition offering her the zest of competition with men in the struggle of life, political ambition demanding that she take up the duties and burdens and proffering her the shadowy rewards of gov- ernment — a literature that reminds her that love is the best life has to offer, and that if a man would give all the substance of his house in lieu of love, he should be utterly contemned H 97 THE TEMPLE by the true woman, is not too archaic to be read and pondered with profit. There is a theory of life known as the doc- trine of "total depravity." This is not in- tended to mean that every man is as bad as he can be, which would imply that there are no grades in wickedness; it is intended to mean that all the faculties and powers of man are naturally evil and become good only as by a divine influence the man is re-created. So defined, I absolutely and totally dissent from the doctrine. On the contrary, I believe that every faculty and power of man is natu- rally good ; evil only as it is evilly directed. Depravity is not natural; it is unnatural, contra-natural. Acquisitiveness is the spur to useful industry ; approbativeness is the mother of sympathy; self-esteem is necessary to self- protection ; without combativeness there would be no heroism, without destructiveness no great reforms. On the other hand, the nobler faculties misdirected incite to evil : reverence to superstition, faith to credulity, hope to illu- sion, ill-governed love to sentimentality. 98 THE PASSIONS Of all the forces which combine to make up man's complex nature, perhaps the passions are the strongest — the most cruel, and the most beneficent. They are coals of fire which hath a most vehement flame, and, like fire, are a good servant and a bad master. They may cheer the home with a welcoming radi- ance, or they may consume it and leave it a heap of ashes. TJnsanctified by spiritual love, the passions have been used to minister to a horrible greed; they have reduced women to an unspeakably cruel slavery; they have committed most foul and unnatural mur- ders; they have wrecked homes, embittered lives, sundered fair friendships, incited to bestial treachery, betrayed kings to their own undoing and the undoing of their country, and have degraded body and soul and sent both together to the lowest hell even while yet on earth. Guided by a sound intelli- gence, controlled by a strong will, and spiritu- alized by pure unselfishness, the passions form the sweetest, the strongest, and the most sacred love on earth, save only the love which 99 THE TEMPLE unites mother and child, and of that love they are the creator. So sanctified and di- rected, they make the holy family possible, which in turn makes the State and the Church; they make the souls of the lovers immune from the perils of prosperity and make sweet the cup of adversity; they give courage in danger, patience in disaster, moderation in victory, and a joy in life which no pen of poet or eloquence of orator has ever been able adequately to portray. This passionate love is unique — unlike the love of parent for child, or friend for friend. It has no analogue in any other motive power, any other emotion. Inspired by this love, the careless youth be- comes a caretaker for her whom he loves, and blazes his way through the unknown forest, made by her companionship heroic in meeting danger, persistent in overcoming obstacle, patient in routine, and by love re- deeming toil from drudgery. Do I idealize .? No ! I could not if I would. For there is no danger which, in the actual history of the world, this love has not bravely met, no bur- 100 THE PASSIONS den which it has not gladly borne, no tragedy which it has not calmly confronted. The passion of love is the master passion of the human race, and, at its best, is the purest and divinest of human passions. "This," says Paul, "is a great mystery." Mystery it is, and mystery we must leave it. But it ought not to come to our children a wholly uninterpreted mystery. Every mother ought, however reluctant her tongue, to inter- pret the mystery to her daughter, every father to his son. For, if guided aright, this passion of love leads up to a heaven on earth; un- guided and uncontrolled it leads to a hell. Creator of life, it is also a prolific producer of disease. Supreme among the virtues, it sometimes becomes the most degrading of vices. The Church, the Press, the School, can teach little on this subject. This duty belongs to the home and the parent, and can- not be safely shifted off upon substitutes. To teach our children what is the mystery of love and life, to train our boys in that chivalric reverence for woman which should be her 101 THE TEMPLE wholly adequate protection, to train our girls in that womanly self-respect which should be their self-protection when chivalry fails and genteel boorishness takes its place; not to essay the generally impossible and always perilous task of keeping boys and girls apart, but in lieu thereof to habituate them to grow up together in a natural and mutually respect- ing fellowship which may gradually ripen into love without the danger that comes from a sudden onrush of uncontrolled passion too strong to be resisted — this is perhaps the most important, as it certainly is the most delicate and difficult, task of the parent. To neglect it, however difficult, is a criminal breach of trust; to perform it, a sacred duty. 102 X THE IMAGINATION X THE IMAGINATION Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. rriHERE is a disease known as locomotor ataxia. The limbs refuse to obey the will, and the arms and legs move, so to speak, according to their own uncontrolled fancy. There is a locomotor ataxia of the mind. He who is afflicted with this disease — sometimes called wandering thoughts — cannot control his thinking. His mental pro- cesses act, or seem to act, independently of his will. The lack of mental self-control, when carried to an extreme, becomes a form of insanity. The possession of mental self- control in its highest degree amounts to genius. A friend of mine recently told me this story 105 THE TEMPLE of his experience with Theodore Roosevelt. He called at the White House to read to the President, at his request, a paper for the President's consideration. Mr. Roosevelt was reading a scientific book, told my friend to go ahead with his reading, and at the same time continued to read his book. My friend natu- rally concluded that his document was get- ting no attention, until, from questions inter- spersed from time to time, and remarks upon the document when the reading was over, he was forced to the conclusion that it was not the document but the book which had been practically ignored. But later, at luncheon, the President talked with a scientific guest of the scientific treatise in a way which showed conclusively that he had read it understand- ingly. My friend remarked humorously that Mr. Roosevelt did not give ordinary mortals a square deal ; that psychologists tell us we use only one lobe of our brain, and it was evident that Mr. Roosevelt used both — one for the document, the other for the book. The story is here told because it furnishes an 106 THE IMAGINATION unusual illustration of the power of the will over the mental processes. The first end of education is, or ought to be, to train the mind to habits of lawful think- ing ■ — that is, to thinking in obedience to laws recognized by the mind and enforced by the will. Lack of intellectual power is very often lack of will power. To attend is "to direct the mind." The first art the student has to acquire is the art of bringing the mind under the direction of the will, and. so making it do the work which the student assigns to it. This psychological law Paul recognizes in the phrase "Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into activity every thought to the obedience of Christ." To many persons the imagination appears to be, by its very nature, a lawless faculty; like a bird intended to flit hither and thither as it fancies, not to be directed or controlled in its flight. To many, an obedient imagi- nation would seem like a contradiction in 107 THE TEMPLE terms. Not so does it seem to the student of literature. He recognizes that there are intel- lectual laws of the imagination, and that he only is a true poet who either understands those laws and obeys them consciously, or intuitively feels their obligation and obeys them unconsciously. A lawless imagination never produced great literature. But these laws are moral as well as intel- lectual. He who indulges in imaginary re- venge is revengeful ; he who indulges in im- aginary lust is lustful: "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." This is the inherent and ineradicable sin of vicious literature. The boy who feeds his imagination on tales of romantic burglars and freebooters is edu- cating his imagination to a lawless life as surely as the boy who in a thieves' school is trained to pick the pocket of a comrade with- out being detected is educating his fingers in the skill of thievery. The youth who reads salacious books or goes to salacious plays is storing his imagination with pictures which will be later exhibited to him when he least 108 THE IMAGINATION wishes to look upon them. He is making his artistic nature a lawless nature. The imagination is like the tendrils of a vine : trained on a trellis, it lifts the vine up into the air and the sunlight; allowed to grovel on the ground, it fastens the vine to the earth, where worms crawl, bugs devour, and feet trample upon it. Imagination and faith exercise the same function : imagination can hardly be said to give substance to things hoped for, but it is the evidence of things unseen. The power to see the unseen niay be used in either one of three ways : it may conjure up sensual and brutal images; it may conjure up mere pleas- ing pictures ; it may conjure up ideals superior to the life by which we are surrounded. In the first use it degrades; in the second it pleases; in the third it elevates. The first use promotes vice; the second may produce innocent pleasure; the third brings inspira- tion. Christ apparently used the imagination only for the purpose of instruction and in- spiration. We are not therefore to conclude 109 THE TEMPLE that his followers may not use it for the pur- poses of recreation, for these two uses are not inconsistent. But they may not use it to make or to look at attractive pictures of vice, for such use despoils it of its power to in- struct and inspire. We do not, perhaps, sufficiently recognize the fact that Jesus was a master in the crea- tion of imaginative literature. His teaching was largely in illustration. And in his illus- trations he took the common experiences of life to direct the mind to higher and unusual experiences. The material picture was made to direct the attention to the spiritual reality. Thus the sower sowing his seed was made to teach a lesson concerning the processes of education and the difficulties encountered by the teacher. A social feast was made to direct the thoughts toward the Kingdom of God. A care-free bird was made to teach the anxious how to be rid of needless anxieties. A father's love for a wayward son was made to interpret the love of the heavenly Father for his children. Thus, to those who accept 110 THE IMAGINATION Jesus as an example of what life should be at its highest, the literature which the Great Teacher has left serves as a model of what is the highest use of the imagination : to body forth in understandable object-lessons the supernatural truths of the invisible and spirit- ual world. To sum up the message of this chapter in two sentences : We must make our thinking obedient to the laws of thought, and our imaginations obedient to the laws of the imagination. The highest use to which we can put the imagination is to make material things the symbol of spiritual experiences. Ill THE CONSCIENCE XI THE CONSCIENCE The lamp of the body is the eye : if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If there- fore the Ught that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness ! TT^VERY man has some capacity to dis- tinguish between the beautiful and the ugly — we call it taste ; a capacity to dis- tinguish between the expedient and the inex- pedient — we call it judgment ; a capacity to distinguish between right and wrong — we call it conscience. Neither of these facul- ties is infallible. He may admire what is not admirable, colors that shout and colors that swear at one another; his taste is bad. He may distinguish poorly between the ex- pedient and the inexpedient, may judge that to be true which is only agreeable, and a course of conduct to be wise merely because he de- sires to pursue it; his judgment is bad. He 115 THE TEMPLE may think that to be right which is wrong, and that to be wrong which is right; he may call evil good and good evil, put darkness for light and light for darkness, put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter; his conscience plays him false. Similarly, he may be club- footed or short-sighted, but still he has feet and eyes. Every normal person possesses three ca- pacities — taste, judgment, conscience — as every normal person has feet and eyes. But the one faculty is no more the voice of God than the other. The conscience is one of the lights to lighten the pilgrim on his way. It is the most important of the three, because moral distinctions are more important than distinctions in taste or distinctions in policy. But as one may be color-blind, so one may be morally blind. If so, if the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness ! Charles Cuthbert Hall has graphically portrayed in few words the con- trast between a diseased and a healthy conscience : 116 THE CONSCIENCE The diseases of conscience are more terrible than leprosy. It may become deaf to the Divine witness ; blind to the dis- tinctions of right and wrong; corrupt and abominable in its perverted relation to desire; deceitful and cruel in its sanc- tionings of conduct; paralyzed through deliberate misuse; seared as with a hot iron. Health of conscience is more beautiful than bodily perfection. It is the virility of the soul : alert, well-balanced, clear-eyed, rejoicing not in iniquity, but rejoicing in the truth; sane in judgment, ruling desire with the hand of right reason ; courageous in goodness; happy in the fehcity of correspondence with the eternal right.' No man, therefore, may say, Whatsoever seems to me right is right to me, any more than he can say, Whatsoever seems to me true is true to me, or, Whatsoever seems to me beau- tiful is beautiful to me. A crude chromo is not made equal to a Rembrandt or a Titian, because the uneducated taste cannot see the difference. Folly is not made wise, because the fool cannot distinguish between them. Neither is right made wrong or wrong right, because the light that is in the obtuse soul is darkness. It is not enough to follow one's conscience; it is also necessary to educate it. • C. C. Hall, "Christ and the Eastern Soul," p. 87. 117 THE TEMPLE There are four rules to be observed, or four methods to be pursued, to keep the light that is within us from becoming darkness, to make and keep it luminous and illumi- nating. I. As there are standards of art by which we may educate our taste, so there are stand- ards of right and wrong by which we may educate our conscience. That standard may be found in wise words of wise men; but better is it to be found in the great lives of truly great men. "Worship of a Hero," says Carlyle, "is transcendent admiration of a Great Man. I say great men are still admirable; I say there is at bottom nothing else admirable ! No nobler policy than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man." Every healthy boy finds in history some hero to idealize, admire, or imitate: a Lincoln, a Grant, a Lee, a Jefferson, a Washington; or, looking abroad, a Glad- stone, a Cromwell, a William of Orange. Blessed is the child who finds the hero in 118 THE CONSCIENCE his own father or mother. He first idealizes, then reveres, then imitates his hero, measures himself by the object of his hero-worship, brings his conscience up to the standard of a life higher than his own. Cynicism dark- ens the conscience; the cynic begins by dis- believing in the goodness of men, and ends by disbelieving in goodness altogether. The spirit of universal suspicion tends to personal degeneration. He who allows himself to be- lieve that all men are liars easily comes to be- lieve that sincerity is a fiction of the preachers and the poets. He adjusts his conscience to his lowered ideals of humanity. Most human heroes lose something of the heroic as we learn more fully their character and their lives. Some heroic elements may appear grander; but other elements not so grand are revealed. The reader of Gideon Welles's Diary discovers that professional politicians in Abraham Lincoln's time were not greatly difi^erent from professional poli- ticians in our own time : they were some good, some bad, some mixed. The reader of John 110 THE TEMPLE Fiske's "American Revolution" discovers that the fathers were not all that our Fourth of July orators had painted them. But there is one hero in human history who, the more his life and character are studied, the more heroic he appears. For the life of Jesus of Nazareth furnishes a standard which the world understands to-day and reveres to-day as it never did before. "Hero-worship," again says Carlyle, "heartfelt, prostrate ad- miration, submissive, burning, boundless, for the noblest godlike Form of Man — is not that the germ of Christianity itself.^ The greatest of all Heroes is One — whom we do not name here." To make this hero our standard, to measure our ideal by his prac- tice, to bring our conscience up to his life, is the first step in securing that the light within us be not darkness, that the whole soul be made full of light. One need not wait to solve either one's theological or one's his- toric doubts before accepting this standard. "Religion," says John Stuart Mill, "cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitch- 120 THE CONSCIENCE ing on this man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity; nor, even now, would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract to the concrete than to endeavor so to live as Christ would approve our life." II. He who would make and keep his conscience a light to guide his conduct and a force to form his character must apply it to his own life, not to the life of his neighbor. He must act on the aphorism, "Conscience for yourself, not for another." He who habitually employs his conscience as a meas- uring rod upon others in time loses the power to employ it as a measuring rod upon him- self. Instead of taking a nobler life than his own by which to test his own conduct, he uses his own life by which to test the lives of others. The twin evil spirits uncharitable- ness and self-conceit take possession of him, and equally unfit him to judge others or him- self. When Christ says, "Judge not, that ye be not judged," he means exactly what he 121 THE TEMPLE says. We may judge whether a man is adapted to a particular place or work — as a merchant whether the applicant will be a good bookkeeper, or the college whether the can- didate is fitted to enter the freshman class. But even the judge on the bench is not to make his conscience the standard for the criminal before him. He judges, not the amount of absolute demerit in the man in the dock; he only judges two things ^ — what is necessary to protect society from the crimi- nal's depredations, and what discipline is necessary to make an honest man out of him. "If," says Thomas a Kempis, "thou canst not make thyself such as thou wouldest be, how canst thou have another to thy liking.^" He who would keep his conscience clear-eyed and a keen discriminator should refuse to allow it to pass judgments on others, should keep it solely to its allotted task, that of judging its owner. He will thus change the general question. Is it right to dance, to smoke, to go to the theatre, to drive on Sunday.? to the specific question. Is it right for me to dance, 122 THE CONSCIENCE to smoke, to go to the theatre, to drive on Sun- day? "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant ? to his own master he standeth or falleth." III. Conscience should be a prophet rather than a historian. It should stand in the bow of the vessel to pilot it, not in the stern to cast the log. There are a great many persons to whom conscience is only a police officer: it hales them before the court after the deed is done, and submits them to inquisition to determine whether the doing was right or wrong. The time to interrogate conscience is in the morning before the day begins. It is well to forecast the day; to consider before- hand the questions that are likely to arise, to demand of conscience its judgments on those questions, and so to be prepared to meet them with some measure of provision. This is bet- ter than to wait till the day is over and then pass its events in review and call on conscience to pass judgments on what can no longer be changed. That also may be sometimes wise, but chiefly as a preparation for similar events 123 THE TEMPLE that are likely to recur in ensuing days. Conscience is intended to be our guide rather than our judge; and a judge only that it may be a better guide. We cannot alter yesterday. All we can do is to learn its lessons that we may not repeat the same blunder, run into the same temptation, or commit the same sin to-morrow. More dwelling on the past than is necessary for better and wiser living in the future only tends to either morbid discour- agement or morbid self-conceit. Not without significance does Christ compare the con- science to the eyes, which are put in the front of the head that we may see whither we are going, not in the back of the head that we may see where we have gone. IV. Most important of all the conditions for keeping conscience sensitive and luminous is prompt obedience to its directions. The most common method of making the light that is in us darkness is a refusal to follow the light we have. The process is this : We adopt a course of conduct. Conscience protests. We disregard the protest. Thus we are at 124 THE CONSCIENCE odds with ourselves. But to be at odds with ourselves becomes intolerable. We have refused to reconcile our conduct with our conscience. Presently we begin to reconcile our conscience with our conduct. First we say, Everybody does it. Then, We must do it. Then, It cannot be very wrong to do what everybody does and what we must do. Con- science is corrupted. It was accuser; it becomes first apologist, then defender. The process of corruption is complete. The light that was in us has become darkness. Education of conscience by a nobler standard. Employment of conscience in self-judg- ment, not in judgment of others. Prevision of conscience as a preparation for the future, rather than revision by conscience in judgment of the past. Prompt and loyal obedience to conscience. These are the four methods — perhaps, rather, I should say four of the methods — for keeping conscience a receiver and a giver of light to the life. 125 XII THE INTUITION XII THE INTUITION Quench not the Spirit; despise not prophesyings ; prove all things ; hold fast that which is good. npHESE are not four independent apho- risms. Combined, they embody Paul's religious philosophy. Man possesses a spir- itual nature by which he immediately discerns the invisible world ; let him not quench this spiritual nature. Does he lack it ? let him not despise one that possesses it in larger meas- ure, the man of spiritual genius. Yet let him not accept all visions, his or theirs, with un- questioning faith; let him test them all. How ? By asking the question, Are they profitable.? The first two counsels find a counterpart in modern philosophy in a remarkable pas- sage by Professor Huxley in his monograph on Hume : In whichever way we look at the matter, morality is based on feeling, not on reason; though reason alone is competent to trace out the effects of our actions and thereby dictate con- duct. Justice is founded on the love of one's neighbor; and K 129 THE TEMPLE goodness is a kind of beauty. The moral law, like the laws of physical nature, rests in the long run upon instinctive in- tuitions, and is neither more nor less "innate" and "neces- sary" than they are. Some people cannot by any means be got to understand the first book of Euclid; but the truths of mathematics are no less necessary and binding on the great mass of mankind. Some there are who cannot feel the dif- ference between the "Sonata Appassionata " and "Cherry Ripe"; or between a gravestone-cutter's cherub and the Apollo Belvedere; but the canons of art are none the less acknowledged. While some there may be who, devoid of sympathy, are incapable of a sense of duty; but neither does their existence affect the foundations of morality. Such pathological deviations from true manhood are merely the halt, the lame, and the blind of the world of consciousness ; and the anatomist of the mind leaves them aside, as the anatomist of the body would ignore abnormal specimens. And as there are Pascals and Mozarts, Newtons and Raffaelles, in whom the innate faculty for science or art seems to need but a touch to spring into full vigor, and through whom the human race obtains new possibilities of knowledge and new conceptions of beauty; so there have been men of moral genius, to whom we owe ideals of duty and visions of moral perfection, which ordinary manliind could never have attained: though, happily for them, they can feel the beauty of a vision which lay beyond the reach of their dull imaginations, and count life well spent in shaping some faint image of it in the actual world.^ ' T. H. Hu.xley, "Collected Essays," Vol. VI, pp. 239, 240. 130 THE INTUITION What Huxley here declares to be true of morality is equally true of religion. Both are an experience. The truths of religion and the truths of morality are not demon- strated; they are perceived. Immortality is not an hypothesis concerning the future, more or less probable; it is a present expe- rience of a continuing life that does not share the decay and mortality which the body ex- periences. Forgiveness of sin is not a theory, so that one may discuss its possibility. The soul forgiven feels the burden of the past lifted off, the sting of remorse extracted, and a new inspiration to a better life in the future. When the Psalmist says, "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is cov- ered," he is describing his own experience, which one can no more take away from him by argument than he can take from the mu- sician the enjoyment derived from hearing a noble orchestra play a great symphony. The inspiration of the Bible is a theological theory, and theories differ as to its nature. But the fact that the Bible has inspired men with 131 THE TEMPLE courage and hope and loyalty to truth and virtue as no other collection of literature has ever done is not a theory; it is an experience which philosophy has not given and phi- losophy cannot destroy. Faith in Christ is neither a historic opinion that such a person lived and taught, nor a theological opinion that he stood in a unique relation to the Infinite and Eternal One. It is an appreciation of the beauty of Christ's character, the perfec- tion of his life, and the truth and goodness of his teaching. Its antithesis is not a doubt whether all that is written of him in the Gos- pels is true, nor whether he is uniquely divine ; it is the experience "When we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him." God is not a scientific hypothesis; he is the Great Companion, the One in whom we live and move and have our being. He is an experience in the heart of his child as the mother is an experience in the heart of her child. "Religion," says Max Miiller, "con- sists in the perception of the Infinite under such manifestations as are able to influence 132 THE INTUITION the moral character of man." ^ A perception is something very different from a conclu- sion. The soul immediately and directly perceives the Infinite. "Spirit with spirit can meet." And, meeting with his Father and filled with the consciousness of the Everlasting Presence, the soul cries out, " Whom have I in heaven but thee ? and there is none upon the earth that I desire beside thee." The present age is called a sceptical age. In so far as it is sceptical the reason may be easily seen. We have allowed this spirit in us which immediately and directly perceives the invisible and the eternal to be quenched. We have been for the last century looking, not at the things which are unseen and eternal, but at the things which are seen and temporal. We have focussed our attention on the material world and dimmed our vision of the imma- terial and spiritual world. What, in a fa- mous and pathetic passage, Charles Darwin has said of himself, the nineteenth century ' Max Muller, "Natural Religion," p. 188. 183 THE TEMPLE might say : " Up to the age of thirty or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Cole- ridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and, even as a schoolboy, I took intense de- light. But now, for many years, I cannot endure to read a line of poetry : I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music." ^ The remedy is not new arguments for im- mortality, new theories of the atonement, a new philosophy of inspiration, a new defini- tion of divinity, a new conception of divine personality. These are all well in their way; they may be valuable, possibly indispensable. But they do not constitute a radical remedy for modern scepticism. The scientific method will never give demonstration of unscientific truth. Arguments will never take the place of a living experience. As well expect an ex- position of the undulatory theory of light to ' "Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," Vol. I, p. 81. 134 THE INTUITION give sight to the blind. The radical remedy is a new point of view, a new habit of thought, a new exercise of the unused spiritual faculty. I once stood on the prow of an Atlantic steamer by the side of the lookout. When he saw a sail in the distance, he sounded a little whistle as a notification to the wheels- man. It was sometimes ten or fifteen min- utes before I could see what he had seen. I needed, not a philosophy of vision, but a better pair of eyes. He who cannot see God lacks, not sound philosophy, but spiritual vision. We have lost our far-sightedness because our eyes have been fixed on the near-by things. Not unintelligently : the mi- croscope, the telescope, the laboratory, have all been employed in honest investigation. Not fruitlessly : we need to know the world we live in, and we know it a great deal better than our fathers knew it. Not always self- ishly: we have unselfishly sought to improve the condition of our fellows. But too exclu- sively. And so we have developed one side of our nature at the expense of the other side. 135 THE TEMPLE There are philosophers who deny that there is any other side of our nature; who affirm that we can only know what we can touch, taste, see, hear; all else is hypothesis; that scientific knowledge is the only knowledge. There are philosophers who affirm that most men can get no further into the invisible world than to see the justice that is founded on love of one's neighbor and the goodness that is a kind of beauty ; that religion, like art and music, is only for the elect few. But most of us have no such philosophy. We recall devout souls; we realize that they have an experience which we have not; we envy them their possession; we want some article or sermon or book to give it to us. But no article, sermon, or book can give it to us. Nothing can give it to us but the development of an undeveloped faculty. We can acquire the power to see only by looking. So far as this is a sceptical age it is so because it is too exclusively a scientific age. I do not know what the booksellers would say, but I do not believe that there is a great de- 136 THE INTUITION mand for devotional literature. The Bible is studied more thoroughly than before, but it is critically, that is, scientifically, studied. That it is more used as a simple expression of devotional life, I doubt. Biblical scholars have been more busy in endeavoring to as- certain who wrote the Twenty-third Psalm than in endeavoring to ascertain how a twen- tieth-century Christian can have this blessed experience of divine companionship; they have been more desirous to discover who wrote the Fourth Gospel than to learn how we can make the prayer in the seventeenth chap- ter of John the supreme desire of our lives. Not only devotional literature — all litera- ture takes a second place. Our great poets are of the past, and I wonder how much their poems are read by the present genera- tion. Our favorite novels are problem novels ; our favorite plays society plays. To present in fiction as nearly as possible a reproduction of what we see in daily life is the ambition of realism; to present a caricature of it is the ambition of American humor. It is true that 137 THE TEMPLE the study of literature has been in recent years taken up in our schools and colleges; but, with rare exceptions, it is the scientific, not the literary, study which is pursued. Greek, which is pre-eminently the language of the greatest literature of the past, is not only dead, but well-nigh forgotten. And we wonder that the age is sceptical, and endeavor to supply the defect of an undeveloped faculty by a scientific method; to substitute a reli- gious hypothesis for a religious experi- ence. The first step in the remedy for the scep- ticism of the twentieth century is indicated alike by Paul and by Professor Huxley: by Paul in the three words, "Despise not proph- esyings"; by Huxley in the more ample statement, "There have been men of moral genius, to whom we owe ideals of duty and visions of moral perfection, which ordinary mankind could never have attained; though, happily for them, they can feel the beauty of a vision which lay beyond the reach of their dull imaginations, and count life well spent 138 THE INTUITION in shaping some faint image of it in the actual world." There are men of outsight — careful, skilled, trained observers — under whose guidance and direction we put ourselves if we desire to investigate the external world. There are men of insight, with quick, sensitive spir- itual vision, under whose guidance and direc- tion we may well put ourselves if we desire to become acquainted with the invisible world. These men also tell us what they have seen; and their testimony is worthy of our consid- eration. These are the poets and prophets, the men of moral genius. Their ideals of life are not their creation; they are their visions of the eternal and invisible realities. Tennyson and Browning have something to give us as well as Darwin and Huxley. There have been explorers of the deeps of spiritual experience as well as explorers of the mysteries of the stars and the molecules. To get ac- quainted with them, live with them, learn to love them, to consider carefully their visions which lie beyond the reach of our dull im- 139 THE TEMPLE aginations, and to count our life well spent in the endeavor to shape some faint image of these visions in our actual world, is the first step toward that acquaintance with the in- visible and the eternal which Paul calls faith. We can find in Browning's "Christmas Eve" inspiration to a larger spirit of catholicity; in Tennyson's "Quest of the Holy Grail" a summons to a nobler pilgrimage; in Lowell's "Commemoration Ode" a call to enlist in a more unselfish service; in Whittier's " Eternal Goodness" a glimpse of the All-Father which will at least create in us a desire to know him better. Nor shall we find in literature any better interpretation of these spiritual visions than in portions of the Bible, nor anywhere in the Bible a better interpretation than in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The real and radical remedy for scepti- cism is a sincere, continuous, and persistent endeavor to acquaint ourselves with these ideals, and to shape some faint image of these visions of truth and beauty in our lives. 149 XIII THE REASON XIII THE REASON Quench not the Spirit; despise not prophesjangs ; prove all things ; hold fast that which is good. "^XTE are counselled by Paul to keep alive our spiritual nature and to honor those who possess it in larger measure than our- selves. But we are also cautioned not to accept as true all that the prophets say, nor even all that we think we have experienced. We are to test both their visions and ours and hold fast only those which stand the test of practical reason. If to believe that men can directly and immediately take cognizance of realities which the senses cannot perceive is to be a mystic, then Paul is a mystic. But if to believe that what this inward sense de- clares is to be accepted with an unquestioning faith, that this voice within is the infallible voice of God to be followed without doubt and 143 THE TEMPLE without demanding credentials — ■ if this is to be a mystic, Paul is not a mystic. If to believe that every such inward testimony, whether from our own experience or from the experience of others, is to be brought before the tribunal of reason and then investigated, that no faith is so sound and no tradition so ancient that it may be accepted without question — if this is to be a rationalist, then Paul was a rationalist. If to believe that the reason is the only faculty for the ascertain- ment of truth, that we are to entertain no opinion as true unless it has been demon- strated by the reason, that all convictions must be reasoned convictions — if this is to be a rationalist, then Paul was not a ration- alist. For, I repeat, the four aphorisnas. Quench not the Spirit; despise not prophesy- iiJgs; prove all things; hold fast that which is good, constitute in aphoristic form Paul's philosophy. Man has a spirit which imme- diately and directly perceives the invisible world; let him not suffer it to be paralyzed. There are men of spiritual genius who pos- 144 THE HEASON sess this spiritual power in an unusual degree ; let us not despise, but respect, their testimony as to what they have seen and known. But let us not take either their experiences or our own as final ; let us carefully consider them and accept and act upon them only as they are reasonable. In deciding on their reason- ableness, the final test is their practical efii- ciency. Are they beneficial .'* Do they pro- mote our welfare and the Welfare of man- kind ? Much of our knowledge is derived from our senses. We know, or think we know, what we see, or think we see. But our senses sometimes deceive us. We are subject to hallucinations. If we are in doubt whether we have really seen what we think we have seen, or if others are in doubt concerning the matter, reason is called in to decide the ques- tion and rectify the error, if error there has been. When, for example, a traveller re- ports that the Oriental juggler, standing on the open ground, with nothing but the sky above him, throws a rope up into the air and L 145 THE TEMPLE then climbs up it hand over hand and dis- appears from sight, the scientist discredits the tale. It is not reasonable; that is, it does not tally with what we know of the laws of nature. The scientist docs not aver that anything is impossible; he only avers that some things are more improbable than others. In this case he contends that it is more prob- able that the traveller is mistaken than that the law of gravitation has been suspended. So when he reads in an ancient record that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and it obeyed him, the scientist says at once : This is not reasonable. It is more probable that the effect was produced by a quasi mirage, or that the expression is a poetical one used to express the apparently intermi- nable day, or that the record is wholly mis- taken, than that the earth stopped for an appreciable time in its revolution on its axis. In both cases the scientist is following Paul's counsel : he is proving — that is, testing by his reason — the story which is brought to him; and, in each case, he rejects it because 146 THE REASON it seems to him more credible that the witness is in error, or his meaning is misapprehended, than that the laws of nature were reversed or suspended. But it is quite conceivable that the testimony to the feat of the Oriental juggler or to the apparently lengthened day should be so overwhelming that the court would be compelled to accept it. In that case the reason would be applied to find some explanation of the phenomenon not incon- sistent with the assumption of science that nature is subject to law, or, to phrase this differently, that God is a God of order and not of anarchy. As the physical senses are sometimes mis- taken, so sometimes is the inward or spiritual sense. Personally, I doubt whether the latter is any more frequently mistaken in its testi- mony than the former; whether, that is, hallu- cinations of the spirit are any more common than hallucinations of the senses. The reason why the spiritual sense is less trusted is partly because we easily distinguish between what we have seen and what we conclude from 147 THE TEMPLE what we have seen, and with difficulty dis- tinguish between what we have experienced and what we conclude from what we have experienced. However this may be, Paul would have us bring all our spiritual experi- ences, no less than our sensuous observations, into the court of reason, and subject them there to investigation. The inward sense is no more infallible than the outward sense. Both are to be tested and their testimony confirmed or their errors corrected. For example : Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: Thou madest man, he knows not why; He thinks he was not made to die; And thou hast made him : thou art just. In this verse Tennyson gives expression to what is the nearly universal instinct of man- kind. This is not merely a hope of life after death; it is still more a conscious experi- ence of a life that is more than a mere physical phenomenon. Man thinks that he is more than a machine; that he exercises some control over his bodily organs; that 148 THE REASON they are his servants, not his master; and therefore he does not believe that when the servant ceases to obey the master and dissolves in dust and ashes, the master ceases to exist. Is this consciousness of continuing life, of a life that transcends and in some degree controls the body, trustworthy ? Is this faith in a present, and this hope for a future, immortality reasonable ? The phi- losopher does not ask the reason to demon- strate the truth of this faith and the sound- ness of this hope. He brings this faith and this hope before the court of reason and asks, Is this reasonable — that is, is it able to stand the inquisition of the reason.? Taking life as it is, is there more to sanction the hypothesis of mortality or the hypothesis of immortality ? And if he finds that this in- stinct is not unreasonable, if it is not dis- proved by the reason, he concludes that it is no hallucination and he accepts it and trusts it. So, again. Browning's declaration, God ! Thou art love ! I build my faith on that. 149 THE TEMPLE is the expression of a conscious human in- stinct. This instinct, as Browning expresses it, is not so universal as the instinct of im- mortality. But that there is a Person or there are Persons who are superior to human- ity, that among them there is One who may properly be called Supreme — a Jehovah, or a Jove, or a Wotan, or a Brahm, or a Great Spirit — and that he is a moral being who is governed by considerations of justice, if not actuated by a spirit of pure benevolence, is the faith which underlies all religions — that is, which underlies the consciousness of the hu- man race; for religion, the sense of depend- ence upon and reverence for a supernatural Being, is as universal as the race. There are probably more blind persons in the world than persons wholly without any religious experience; more, that is, who are not con- scious of the light than there are who are not conscious of some superhuman existence. And the higher the ethical and spiritual de- velopment of the age and the race, the more benign is the conception of this Supreme 150 THE REASON Being. Is this a consciousness to be trusted, or is it an hallucination of the spirit? Is it only the blind who see, and are the sighted all in error ? The philosopher does not ask reason to demonstrate to him the existence of a God. He brings this universal con- sciousness of a Supreme Being before the court of reason and asks. Is it reasonable or unreasonable.^ Is beUef in a reasoned crea- tion or in a fortuitous concourse of atoms the more rational explanation of the universe ? Is belief in a moral order or a moral chaos more consonant with the phenomena of life? Is belief in a righteous Power that makes for righteousness sustained or negatived by a study of the historic development of man- kind ? Does history look as though life were made up of a lot of unmastered wills playing at cross-purposes, or as though behind all these heterogeneous personalities there were a great Personality working out some great design by us not well understood ? So again when, in the declaration that "Spirit with spirit can meet," the poet sums 151 THE TEMPLE up and interprets the concurrent experience of mankind. Desire for worship and joy in worship are more common than desire for, and joy in, art. Those who have found in- spiration in prayer outnumber probably a hundred to one those who have found inspi- ration in music. The devout soul is as sure that he has been talking with some invisible presence in the quiet of his chamber as he is a little later that he is talking with his friend in the parlor. Prayer is not a hypothesis demonstrated to him like a theorem in geom- etry. I cried unto the Lord with iny voice. And he heard me out of liis holy hill. 1 laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the Lord sustained me. They who testify to a like experience are in number like the sand on the seashore for multitude. They are uncountable. Is this an hallucination of the spirit ? or is it a reality .'' Paul's answer to that question is perfectly fearless. Test it, he says; summon it into the court of reason and let reason judge. If 152 THE REASON the modern sceptic, with his theory of auto- suggestion, had lived in Paul's time, one cannot conceive that Paul would have evaded or avoided this counter-hypothesis. Bring, he would have said, your explanation of the experience of prayer into court with mine and let the reason judge between us. "The greatest and, perhaps, sole use of philosophy is, after all, merely negative, and, instead of discovering truth, has only the modest merit of preventing error." This sentence, which is attributed to Immanuel Kant, is also Paul's conception of the func- tion of philosophy. It does not furnish us with the facts of life. The facts of the outer life are testified to by the physical senses; the facts of the inner life are testified to by the spiritual senses. But these witnesses are some- times mistaken. They sometimes seem to con- tradict each other. They must be brought into court, put on the witness-stand, examined and cross-examined. Reason is not the wit- ness. Reason is the judge who tests the wit- nesses. The witnesses are the senses and the 153 THE TEMPLE intuition; the one observes the world with- out, the other experiences the life within. There are several tests which the reason employs in the examination of witnesses. The agreeing testimony of many witnesses to a phenomenon seen goes far to disprove the theory that the seeing perception is an hallu- cination of the senses; the agreeing testimony of many witnesses to a life experienced goes far to disprove the theory that the experience is an hallucination of the spirit. The excep- tional we doubt more readily than the uni- versal. But in religion the final test of every vision is its effect on the character. The test of philosophy, says Professor William James, is. Does it work well .'' This is Paul's test of religious faith. If this is pragma- tism, he is a pragmatist. It is also the test of practical science. The proof of wireless telegraphy is the message sent from station to station without a wire. The proof of aerial navigation is the voyage on the aeroplane. The object of religion is the education and elevation of man. The test of every vision 154 THE REASON is its effect on the education and elevation of man. Not what we think its effect will be, but what in fact its effect is. This is only to say what Christ said, "By their fruits ye shall know them." What has been the effect on human character of faith in immortality, in God, in Jesus Christ as the supreme mani- festation of God, in the reality of communion with God ? To attempt to answer this ques- tion would be to write the history of Christi- anity. It must suffice here to say that the vices of Christendom are common to human- ity; its virtues are largely its own. Cruelty and oppression, fraud and deceit, drunkenness and prostitution, are a part of the world's history. What is not a part of the world's history, but only part of the history of Chris- tendom, is the abolition of slavery, the eman- cipation of government, the creation of a sense of commercial honor which has made possible banks and a post-office and a credit system, hospitals and asylums for the un- fortunate, reformatories and penitentiaries for the criminal, and a temperance movement 155 THE TEMPLE which has promoted in the individual and in the community the power of self-control. What is common to humanity is a poignant sense of remorse for sin and a resulting sys- tem of sacrifices and penances to atone for sin. What is peculiar to Christendom is an experience of forgiveness of sin, which has changed worship from a pitiful cry for mercy into a joyful song of thanksgiving. The test of a religious faith is. Does it work well? The spirit and the teachings of Jesus Christ have worked well wherever they have been tried. The failures in Chris- tendom can all be easily traced to the im- perfect acceptance of those teachings and the imperfect realization of that spirit. 156 XIV LOVE XIV LOVE Thou shalt love the Ijord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy sou], and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength : this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as .. thyself. "T OVE has many phases : love of husband ^^ and wife, parent and child, friend and friend, neighbor and neighbor, are not the same. Love does not always mean congenial fellowship. There is no reason for imagining that the Good Samaritan found the despoiled traveller an agreeable comrade; certainly Jesus did not find comradeship in Judas Iscariot, and yet it is said that, having loved his own, he loved them to the end. There is in all the various inflections of love one common element; if that is pres- ent, love is not lacking; if that is lacking, what we sometimes call love is but a spurious 159 THE TEMPLE counterfeit. That common element is a sin- cere desire for the welfare of the loved one. No passion of the husband for his wife can serve as a substitute for this simple desire for her welfare dominating his life and controlling his actions. When the pseudo-reformer tells us that marriage without love is a profanation and that when love ceases the marriage tie should be dissolved, what does he mean ? Does he mean that when passion ceases, the marriage tie should be dissolved ? That is not true. Passion does not sanctify mar- riage; marriage sanctifies passion. Or does he mean that when this simple and sincere desire for each other's welfare ceases, the tie should be dissolved ? But neither has a right to allow that desire to cease. Passion is spontaneous; and it is often transcient. But love, the love that suffers long and still is kind, never should be allowed to die. It is immune, not from pain, but from sickness and death. The indulgent mother who can- not bear to deny her child any wish nor to enforce upon him any command thinks she 160 LOVE loves him too much. No ! She does not truly love him at all, because she does not desire his welfare. Kisses and caresses can never take the place of this masterful motive of true, helpful service. This motive may be accompanied by emotions which bring the holiest joy or the bitterest sorrow ; but if it is not strong enough to endure the bitterest sor- row, if it is not stronger than the most tumul- tuous joy, it is not true love ; certainly it lacks something of being perfect love. To love my neighbor as myself is xiot to rejoice in his companionship, to find in him a congenial comrade, to share with him the same pleasures and the same sorrows, to en- joy the same pictures or books or music, to hold the same opinions, to live on the same intellectual and moral plane. It is to regard his welfare as of equal importance to me with my own. To love my enemy is not to be moved by a passionate devotion toward him; it is not even moderately to like him. It is to be moved by his enmity to wish him not evil, but good. Paul has defined what is M 161 THE TEMPLE meant by loving one's enemy: "If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink." Christ has defined what he means by loving one's enemy: "But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." The law of love thus interpreted, the law that we are to regard our neighbor's welfare as we regard our own, is the condition, and the only condition, of true abiding social order. He who regards his neighbor's wel- fare as his own will not oppress him, nor rob him, nor vilify him. This is what Paul means by the saying, "Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor that which is evil ; cleave to that which is good. In love of the brethren be tenderly affectioned one to another; in honor preferring one another." If the la- borer regarded his employer's welfare as his own, and the employer regarded the working- man's welfare as his own, there would be an end to strikes and lockouts; the controversies 162 LOVE would be kindly controversies and easily ad- justed. If the maid regarded the welfare of the mistress as her own, and the mistress re- garded the welfare of the maid as her own, the domestic problem would cease to be "the greatest plague of life." If the merchant regarded the customer's welfare as his own, and the customer regarded the merchant's welfare as his own, there would be an end to "it is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer, and goeth away and boasteth." If the white man regarded the negro's welfare as his own, the race problem would be easily solved. Love would no more mean social comrade- ship between the races than it means social comradeship between individuals; but it would mean justice and fair dealing. If each nation regarded the other nations' wel- fare as its own, war would cease and we could beat our swords into ploughshares and our spears into pruning-hooks. In individual and in international relations we would no longer attempt to make a profit out of one another's necessities. Whether our labor sys- 163 THE TEMPLE tem was slavery, or feudalism, or capitalism, or Socialism, or some other system yet to be discovered, would be, not a matter of no im- portance, but a matter of secondary impor- tance. If the master regarded his slaves' welfare as his own, slavery would be not un- endurable. This is the meaning of Paul's much-debated letter to Philemon, sent by the hand of Philemon's slave Onesimus: "If then thou countest me as a partner, receive him as myself." It was because the early Christians regarded the welfare of their slaves as their own that slavery was gradually abol- ished, Vv^ithout a war of emancipation and without even an industrial revolution. This spirit of mutual regard for each other's wel- fare is more important to social order and social welfare than any change in the social order, however important. In truth, the main question covering every proposed change in the social order is this, Will it tend to promote the spirit of social brotherhood ? To love God with all the heart, and soul, and mind, and strength is to make God's 164 LOVE welfare — that is, the progress and prosperity of his work in the world — one's supreme desire. As to love one's neighbor as one's self is the secret of social order, so to love God with all the heart, and soul, and mind, and strength is the secret of all high, holy, and joyous liv- ing. To love God is not to sing praises to him, nor to utter prayers to him, nor to offer sacrifices to him, nor to make contributions from one's purse to his Church. This may help or it may hinder. It helps when it pro- motes the love that is service ; it hinders when it takes the place of the love that is service. The history of the child in the family is in microcosm the history of the human race in the world. The child in the cradle knows nothing of the world, of its fellows, or of itself. It knows not how to use its eyes, or hands, or feet. It knows nothing of the rights of persons or property; of the duty of truth and the evil of falsehood; of the dangers of self- indulgence and the necessity of self-control. The parents must teach it that it is in a world of law, must help it to ascertain what those 165 THE TEMPLE laws are, must train it to habits of obedience to law. Gradually, very gradually, it grows up to take possession of itself and of its world. From its earliest infancy God has been training the human race. Gradually under that training it has been emerging from a purely animal condition into one of spiritual mastership. Gradually it has been developed into a spiritual consciousness of its Father and its own divine nature. Gradually it is beginning to see that the end of life is that it may become worthy to be its Father's com- panion and enter into full fellowship with him. To devote one's self to working with the Father to accomplish the Father's ends — this is to love God ; to devote one's self wholly and unreservedly to this work is to love him supremely. Says Hegel, "God governs the world ; the actual working of his government — the carrying out of his plan — is the his- tory of the world." ^ To Join ^vith God in carrying out his plan, so to join v^Hh him in this work that it shall inspire all one' tli ^ Hegel, "Philosophy of History," p „ 166 LOVE siasm, determine finally and forever the direc- tion of one's life, employ all one's intellectual energies, and both create and employ one's powers, is to love God with all the heart, and with all the soul, and with all the mind, and with all the strength. This is what Paul means by the saying, "God was in Christ reconcihng the world to himself, and hath committed unto us the word of reconcilia- tion." By his manifestation of himself in the life and career of Jesus of Nazareth, God has made clear to men what is his heart's desire for his children, and to them he has intrusted the carrying on to its completion this work of lifting men up into such companionship with him that he shall be in very truth the Father of whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. That is the end of evolution, the meaning of redemption — one is the scien- tist's word, the other is the word of the theo- logian for the same historic process — a new humanity in fellowship with God, a new social order which shall be pervaded by righteous- ness or the spirit which regards another's 167 THE TEMPLE welfare as one regards his own, by peace or universal good-will, founded on righteousness, and by joy or universal welfare growing out of righteousness and peace, — all three, right- eousness, peace and joy — the spontaneous fruit of holiness, that is, healthfulness of spirit.^ When one understands history as Hegel understands it, when he thus enters into life as Paul interprets it, life takes on a new aspect. Such a one never thinks of asking. Is life worth living ? Drudgery disappears, the sec- ular becomes sacred, the insignificant shares the greatness of work to which it contributes. The compositor shares with the editor in the greatness of journalistic service; the porter shares with the banker in providing the com- munity with what is a necessary medium for the mutual exchange of services; the brake- man sees himself a co-laborer with the great corporation in making the highway which binds East and West and North and South ' For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but right- eousness, and peace, and joy in holiness of spirit. (Romans xiv. 17.) Not the Holy Spirit; the definite article is wanting in the original. 168 LOVE together; the maid reahzes that the health and happiness of the community rests on its homes, and the health and happiness of the homes on the kitchen. With this apprehension of the greatness of all work because it is work for God comes the added comprehension that it is work with God. For Thomas a Kempis's declaration, "The fathers were strangers to the woi-ld, but near to God and were his familiar friends," the worker for God substitutes, "I will be a friend to the world, because near to God and his familiar friend." To bear burdens, meet obstacles, confront and conquer dangers, en- dure patiently the frets and worries of the world becomes a part of the ministry of life — the more to be done, the more to be en- dured, the greater the joy of the service. The petty problems of life — of dress and food, social prestige and business success — slip away, or take their place as part of the great problem how to do one's work valiantly and well. The insoluble mystery of life ceases to be depressing. Since in its entirety it is too great 169 THE TEMPLE for our solution, we grow content to study it item by item, and solve the parts that are set before us, as a subordinate engineer might figure out the problem given to him by his superior without attempting to map out the whole enterprise. The greatness of the work, to which one can contribute but an inappre- ciable trifle, inspires an enthusiasm com- mensurate with the work — not with our in- considerable share — and makes it possible for one to put into his own special work, however humble, not only his strength and his mind, but the whole of his heart. Every new problem presented, every new difficulty encountered, every new experience of intellectual dulness, spiritual inertia, or selfish shortsightedness in his neighbor, adds to the flame of his ardent ambition of service. If any reader does not un- derstand what I mean, or thinks me extrava- gant, let him read the life of General Armstrong or of Dr. Grenfell, and then he will understand. The body is the temple of a holy spirit which we have from God, whose offspring we are. To use our ears and eyes to receive 170 LOVE impressions of truth and purity — impres- sions that will fit us for service ; to make our words the expression of a real life of the spirit and a minister to the real life of others; to put our hand with energy to what work Provi- dence puts in our way; to keep on our way undaunted by any fear, unhalted by any dis- aster; to make our appetites and passions the servants, not the master, of the soul ; to people our imagination with ideals which will in- spire to higher and holier living; to recognize the authority of conscience as a lawgiver; and to make the life and teachings of Jesus Christ the standard for our conscience; to look at the things which are unseen and eternal as well as at the things which are seen and temporal ; to use the reason to correct the errors of our vision not as a substitute for it; to regard the welfare of our neighbor as we regard our own; and to make the progress and prosperity of God's work in the world our supreme and final concern, the secret of an unquenchable enthusiasm and the reservoir of an inexhaustible strength — this is religion. 171 OTHER BOOKS BY DR. LYMAN ABBOTT The Great Companion Cloth, iZKio, $1.00 net " Dr. Abbott can always be depended upon to write something at once spiritually helpful and artistically satisfying. This combina- tion freights his work with a double appeal, an appeal to the heart on the one hand, an appeal to the intellect on the other." — Book News. "In nothing that Dr. Abbott has ever published does his singularly lucid and felicitous power of statement appear to better advantage than here." — Chicago Evening Post. The Other Room Cloth, jzmo, $1.00 net "The beautiful faith expressed in this little volume cannot but uplift every Christian that reads it, whether he be Baptist, Catho- lic, Presbyterian, or Methodist." — Christian Advocate. " We have seldom met with a more succinct, penetrating, and gravely comforting exposition of the theological dogma of resur- rection in the nearly scientific language of the higher criticism." — Brooklyn Daily Eagle. " Few more Christian and comforting books have been written than this, and we trust that its message will carry cheer to many." — Baltimore Sun. PUBLISHED BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York By FRANCIS G. PEABODY Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in Harvard University Jesus Christ and the Christian Character AN EXAMINATION OF THE TEACHING OF JESUS IN ITS RELATION TO SOME OF THE MORAL PROBLEMS OF PERSONAL LIFE " One of the most striking features of modern addresses and ser- mons is their practical character. . . . This is set forth very emphatically in one of the most remarkable books in the religious literature ... a study of Christian ethics which is truly inspiring." — Independetit, Cloth, $1.50 net Jesus Christ and the Social Question AN EXAMINATION OF THE TEACHING OF JESUS IN ITS RELATION TO SOME PROBLEMS OF MODERN SOCIAL LIFE Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 The Religion of an Educated Man RELIGION AS EDUCATION — CHRIST'S MESSAGE TO THE SCHOLAR KNOWLEDGE AND SERVICE Cloth, i2mo, $1.00 net The Approach to the Social Question Just ready By the Rev. WALTER RAUSCHENBUSCH Professor of Church History in Rochester Theological Seminary Christianity and the Social Crisis Cloth, izmo, $i.SO net " It is of the sort to make its readers feel that the book was bravely vfritten to free an honest man's heart; that conscientious scholarship, hard thinking, and the determination to tell the truth as he sees it, have vi'rought it out and enriched it; that it is written in a clear, incisive style ; that stern passion and gentle sentiment stir at times among the words, and keen wit and grim humor flash here and there in the turn of a sentence; and that there is a noble end in view. If the hope be too confident, if there be once in a while a step taken beyond the line of justice into indignation, if a quaint old prejudice or even animosity bustles to the front in an emergency — no matter. It is a book to like, to learn from, and, though the theme be sad and serious, to be charmed with." — IV. Y. Times Sat. Jieview of Books. PUBLISHED BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York By carl HILTY Professor in the University of Bern, Switzerland Happiness Cloth, l2mo, $1.2^ net "The author makes his appeal not to discussion but to life." — New York Times. The Steps of Life Further Essays on Happiness Cloth, i2mo, $1.2^ net At rare intervals a man will appear to whom it is given to see more deeply into life than his fellows. Such a man Carl Hilty is. By NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS The Quest of Happiness cloth, izmo, $1.50 net " The volume teems with readable sentences, stimulating thought, quotable maxims, and apt quotations. The Christian spirit per- vades the pages." — Philadelphia Public Ledger. By R. J. CAMPBELL Minister of the City Temple, London The New Theology Cloth, 8vo, $1,50 mt An outline of what one man in a London pulpit is doing towards interpreting the gospel in terms consistent with modern science and historical criticism. By W. H. p. FAUNCE President of Brown University The Educational Ideal in the Ministry Cloth, i2tno, $l.Sj net " With a largeness of vision and soundness of advice that are notable the whole book treats of the minister's unequalled respon- sibilities and opportunities in a time of changing views." — New York Observer. By henry S. NASH Ethics and Revelation Cloth, izmo, $1.50 net " This is a great book. It is a poem in prose, a study in English. . . . Every word of the six lectures should be read by thoughtful men of the day, ministers and laymen, believers and sceptics." — John H. Vincent. The Atoning Life Cloth, izmo, $1.00 net " A small book but a great one, in which deep and patient study issues in such terse expression that one should willingly give it two or three readings to absorb its fulness." — Outlook. PUBLISHED BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York By henry C. king President of Oherlin College The Laws of Friendship, Human and Divine A summing up in brief compass and in a most winning manner of Dr. King's well-l