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A YOUNG MAN’S 
 QUESTIONS 
 
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 ROBERT Y SPEER 
 
 Author of 
 Missionary Principles and Practice, 
 Man Christ Jesus, etc., etc, 
 
 A YOUNG MAN’S 
 QUESTIONS 
 | 
 ) 
 
 | 
 
 New York Chicag. Toronto 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
 & Q 
 
Copyright, 1903, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 63 Washington Street 
 Toronto: 27 Richmond Street W 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 30 St. Mary Street 
 
Weitiite Ltt tite Say 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Tue character of this little book is 
 clearly enough indicated by its title and 
 the table of contents. Very probably 
 the ideals which it maintains will be 
 distasteful tosome. They will say that it 
 cramps pleasure and narrows life. This 
 is a mistake. This little book is written 
 in the interests of freedom and the 
 largest life. Its counsel to young men 
 is to stand fast in the liberty with which 
 Christ has made men free, and to refuse 
 enslavement under any yoke of bondage. 
 Its appeal to them is the appeal of Paul 
 to Timothy: “No soldier on service 
 entangleth himself in the affairs of this 
 life; that he may please Him who en- 
 rolled him asa soldier. And if also a 
 man contend in the games he is not 
 crowned, except he have contended 
 lawfully.” 
 
 d15U026 
 
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CHAPTER 
 
 us 
 II. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 What Area Young Man's Questions? 9 
 Why a Young Man Should Be a 
 Christian ‘ . = . rey 
 . Shall I join the Church? . - 40 
 . The Young Man’s Duty to Spread 
 His Religion . : - - 5 653 
 . As to Observing Sunday . + 70 
 . His Companions Lae ‘ - 82 
 . Shall I Drink? . om ite ° Of 
 . Shall I Smoke ? - . . + 102 
 . Astothe Theater. . ‘ . 114 
 . The Young Man and Money . =, EAT 
 . Is It Wrong to Bet? . - ° + 137 
 . His Amusements. F - 169 
 . Menand Women ° - + 186 
 . His Reading . : = - - 196 
 . A Young Man’s Work in the World . 208 
 
 Otte eeeel 
 
A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 I 
 
 WHAT ARE A YOUNG MAN’S 
 QUESTIONS ? 
 
 Wuaart troubles one man does not trou- 
 ble another at all. There are many to 
 whom some courses of action are impos- 
 sible. It never occurs to them to adopt 
 such ,courses. To others these same 
 courses of action seem most natural and 
 ordinary. It does not occur to them that 
 they may be wrong. Men do not all have 
 the same standards, and they do not differ 
 from one another merely in the degree of 
 success or failure with which they con- 
 form to these standards. Their stan- 
 dards differ, differ so widely that one man 
 suffers torture at the thought of doing 
 what to another man is easy and unques- 
 tionable. Young men do not, accordingly, 
 ask themselves the same questions. 
 
 9 
 
10 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 A man’s inheritance, earnestness of 
 purpose, integrity of character and atmos- 
 phere of life, enter into the determination 
 of what his moral and social and intel- 
 lectual problems will be, and of what will 
 be his solutions of his problems. We 
 easily underestimate the importance of 
 the last of these. The atmosphere of life 
 with many men is such that many ques- 
 tions are prohibited from ever arising in 
 it. - There are thousands of men, for ex- 
 ample, who are so set in habits of abso- 
 lute probity and the tone of whose life 
 is so high and worthy that the chance to 
 take ten thousand dollars unobserved and 
 with the perfect assurance of concealment 
 would never be observed by them, or, if 
 observed, would not raise the slightest 
 perceivable temptation. It is the very sal- 
 vation and joy of life to a young man to 
 live in an atmosphere like this. We would 
 do well to think more upon it. 
 
 In his notebook, Phillips Brooks jotted 
 down some thought of his about a man’s 
 moral atmosphere when he was returning 
 from Europe in 1883: “ Nature of tem- 
 
What Are They? 11 
 
 per in general—distinct from principle, 
 belief, or action. The clear recognisable- 
 ness of it in people’s thoughts; the at- 
 mosphere or aroma of a life; the frequent 
 idea of irresponsibility for temper; value 
 of heredity. People talk as if it were 
 just discovered. Moses ‘ from fathers to 
 children.’ The beauty of such connection 
 with all its frequent tragicalness.” It is 
 this underlying cast of character which 
 determines a young man’s questions for 
 him far more than the external surround- 
 ings and associations of his life. 
 
 Yet these do enter, and enter be- 
 cause they have such power to affect the 
 inner dispositions. A young man who 
 goes with a fast set is forced to face ques- 
 tions which another man, whose tastes 
 are high and serious, and whose com- 
 panions are thoughtful and earnest men, 
 is not troubled with. A young man 
 comes out of his room in some eastern 
 city, or some western town, where he has 
 just read a letter from his mother, at 
 home. The sweetness of his mother’s 
 influence is upon his heart, and he is 
 
12 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 thinking tenderly of her and of the past, 
 and all the scenes of his wholesome boy- 
 hood crowd back into his heart. In that 
 frame of mind nothing could tempt him 
 to impurity. 
 
 But a companion persuades him to go 
 to the theater. I am not raising yet the 
 question whether it is right for the young 
 man to go to the theater, but am sug- 
 gesting only the influence of the atmos- 
 phere of life as creating our questions for 
 us, and determining our behaviour toward 
 them. The warmth of colour and life and 
 the excitement of the play make it easy 
 for the young man to slip from the thea- 
 ter to the saloon, or to the friend’s room 
 for a glass of wine. And then it is easy 
 to take another step, which would have 
 been impossible as he came out of his 
 room, fresh from the touch of his moth- 
 er’s love and the mother’s ideals for her 
 boy. In this sense each man is not only, as 
 Robert Louis Stevenson said, “his own 
 judge and mountain guide through life,” 
 but he makes his own code and his own 
 mountains, too. 
 
What Are They? 13 
 
 But this is not altogether true. A 
 course of action may be very question- 
 able, and yet a man may pursue it with- 
 out question. It does not alter the char- 
 acter of wrong or folly to allege that men 
 follow them unconsciously. If a blind 
 man of high character should walk off 
 the cliff into Niagara Rapids, his blind- 
 ness and high character would not in the 
 least affect the law of gravitation, or 
 save him from drowning in the stream. 
 And while one man may be able to stand 
 more folly or wrongdoing than another, 
 before he begins to show the conse- 
 quences, yet the moral character of his 
 course is not in the least altered thereby. 
 There are certain questions which remain 
 questions no matter how much men may 
 assume that they are not questions. And 
 men will be held responsible for their 
 conduct in regard to them whether they 
 have ever considered them as really ques- 
 tions of moral interest or not. 
 
 Very many of the questions of a young 
 man’s life, however, are not questions of 
 a gross character. He has problems to 
 
14 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 face besides the elementary problems of 
 morality. There are questions of propri- 
 ety, of expediency, of honour, of courtesy, 
 of prudence. There are issues where 
 the opposing courses may both be inno- 
 cent in themselves, and where the judg- 
 ment must turn upon consequences, upon 
 ultimate influence on character and per- 
 sonal power. As the writer of the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews points out, there are 
 weights as well as sins to be stripped off 
 in order to run an unimpeded race. 
 Every young man reveals his character 
 in his determination of what things shall 
 constitute his problems. If he takes cer- 
 tain judgments and habits and tastes for 
 granted, and feels no moral scruples over 
 them, he shows the sort of man he truly 
 is. If he stops at these courses and de- 
 liberates, insisting thus that they cannot 
 be taken for granted as the proper thing 
 for a man, but must be honestly scrutin- 
 ised; or if he, on the other hand, sum- 
 marily shuts the door on all low and 
 worthless or enslaving ways, whether of 
 body or of mind; he reveals himself as 
 
What Are They? 16 
 
 well as his attitude on these particular 
 questions. There is a character of easy 
 acceptance of conventional customs and 
 of common standards. There is another 
 character of independence and coura- 
 geousness which strikes out its own 
 courses, and prefers what is right to 
 what is easy; and even beyond this, 
 insists upon reading a moral significance 
 in everything. 
 
 Two of the supreme things for a young 
 man to keep in mind in thinking upon his 
 questions are just these—freedom and 
 courage. It is always unfortunate to lose 
 independence. Men often sneer at high 
 standards on the ground that they are 
 slavish, and that it is far more manly to 
 lead a free life. But this is a foolish and 
 an untrue use of words. Take the habit 
 of drink, as an illustration. The mode- 
 rate drinker says he likes a man who is 
 free—free to drink. But the total ab- 
 stainer is free to drink when he wants to. 
 The drinker, even the moderate drinker, 
 is not free to stop drinking when he wants 
 to. Which of them is the free man? The 
 
16 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 abstainer is free either to drink, or not to 
 drink. The drinker is free simply to 
 drink. It is best to decide all the ques- 
 tions of life so as to retain the greatest 
 measure of real freedom. And he is the 
 freest man whose habit makes him free 
 from the habits which make men slaves. 
 
 One of the great questions of our 
 ’ lives is our rights and the use we shall 
 make of them. Law books and books on 
 political science give a great deal of space 
 to rights, their definition, their division. 
 Scores of pages are used in these discus- 
 sions by ex-President Woolsey, of Yale, 
 in his two big volumes on “ Political Sci- 
 ence,” and he concludes the chapter by 
 dividing rights into seven classes. Black- 
 stone’s discussion and division are both 
 shorter. With him there are two kinds of 
 rights, absolute and relative. 
 
 Jesus, too, taught about rights, and He 
 suggested a division which most people 
 have never thought of. First, there are 
 rights which we have no right to surren- 
 der; and, second, there are rights which 
 we have a right to forego. It was after 
 
What Are They? Y, 
 
 the Transfiguration. He had come down 
 from the mountain top, and when He was 
 come to Capernaum was met with the 
 question of the temple tribute. Every 
 spring each Jew about twenty years of 
 age was expected to pay a tax of about 
 thirty cents, in our money, for the main- 
 tenance of the temple. The collector 
 asked Peter whether Jesus would pay 
 this, the time for its payment having long 
 passed. Peter said at once that He would. 
 On reaching their house Jesus asked 
 Peter: “ What thinkest thou, Simon? 
 the kings of the earth, from whom do 
 they receive toll or tribute? from their 
 sons, or from strangers?” When Peter 
 said, “From strangers,’ Jesus said to 
 him, “ Therefore, the sons are free. 
 But—” That was Jesus’ way of saying 
 that he had a right to refrain from paying 
 this tax, but he would surrender this 
 right. People would not understand. It 
 would cause “ stumbling.” 
 
 So we have rights which we may fore- 
 go. As ex-President Woolsey says: 
 “Rights may be waived. The very na- 
 
18 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 ture of a right implies that the subject 
 of it decides whether he should exercise 
 it or not.” For example, I get on a 
 street car and pay my fare and take the 
 last empty seat. A poor, sick woman, 
 carrying a child, gets on next, and no 
 seat is offered to her. I have a right to 
 keep my seat. I have paid for it. No 
 one else in the car offers the woman a 
 séat. Evidently public opinion in that car 
 would justify me in keeping my seat. 
 But I have a right to waive my right to 
 my seat and give it to her. Perhaps a 
 man holds that he has a right to smoke. 
 Certainly, the law allows it and public 
 opinion allows it. It is his right to do it. 
 No law prevents his smoking on the street 
 and blowing the smoke over his shoulder 
 into the faces of people behind. This is 
 his right. But it is a right he can sur- 
 render. So with drinking. Many men 
 contend that they have a right to drink. 
 It is not a crime and it is not wrong, 
 they contend. Well, suppose that this is 
 true, they have a right to refrain from 
 
What Are They? 19 
 
 drinking, too. The right to drink does 
 not require that a man exercise it. 
 
 Jesus gave up His rights because, to 
 maintain them, He said, would cause peo- 
 ple to stumble. It did not seem to Him 
 sufficient to say, regarding any course of 
 action, “This is only asserting my 
 rights.” “My right!” exclaimed Or- 
 theris, with deep scorn, in “ His Private 
 Honour,” “ My right ! I ain’t a recruity, 
 to go whinin’ about my rights * * * 
 My rights! ’Strewth A’mighty! I’m a 
 man.” Jesus asked also, “ Will my exer- 
 cise of my rights injure or inconvenience 
 others?” With us it must be so, too. 
 “Tt can never be too often repeated in 
 this age,” wrote Woolsey, “that duty is 
 higher than freedom, that where a man 
 has a power or prerogative, the first ques- 
 tion for him to ask is: ‘ How and in what 
 spirit is it my duty to use my power or 
 prerogative? What law shall I lay down 
 for myself so that my power shall not be 
 a source of evil to me and to others?’ ” 
 Now, in using the rights to smoke, to 
 
20 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 drink, to go to the theater, and to play 
 cards, we must ask whether their use will 
 hurt or offend any one. Some would 
 deny that these are rights at all. But let 
 us grant that men have the right to do 
 these things. They are not justified in 
 doing them simply because they are their 
 rights. “I have a right to eat meat,” 
 said Paul, “but if eating meat give of- 
 fense to any one or cause any one to 
 stumble, I will surrender that right; 
 I will eat no meat while the world 
 stands.” 
 
 Many men are slaves to their rights. 
 They will not surrender them at any 
 time. They really do not own their 
 rights. Their rights own them. This 
 was what Paul said he would not have 
 in his life. He would be master of his 
 rights. He would not have them his mas- 
 ters. “All things are lawful for me; 
 but all things are not expedient. All 
 things are lawful for me; but I will not 
 be brought under the power of any.” 
 Men should learn to exercise the liberty 
 of surrendering their rights. Dr. Trum- 
 
What Are They? 21 
 
 bull tells in “ War Memories of an Army 
 Chaplain” of a friend who, before the 
 Civil War, challenged him to point out 
 any single verse in the entire Bible which 
 distinctly forbade human slavery. “I re- 
 plied,” says Dr. Trumbull, “ that I could 
 not point to any verse in the Bible which, 
 taken by itself or in view of its context, 
 squarely forbade slavery, polygamy, or 
 wine drinking; yet, on the other hand, I 
 found no single verse commanding any 
 one of those practices; therefore, as at 
 present advised, as a matter of choice and 
 in the exercise of a sound Christian dis- 
 cretion, I should have but one wife, no 
 ‘nigger,’ and drink cold water.”’ If hold- 
 ing slaves and drinking liquor were 
 rights, at any rate he had a right to fore- 
 go exercising them. 
 
 The noblest man is not he who always 
 upholds his rights. It is he who knows 
 when to waive them for his own good 
 and for the good of others. Some men 
 refuse to see this. What are their neigh- 
 bours to them? Are they their neigh- 
 bour’s keepers? That is a very old ex- 
 
22 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 cuse, as old as Cain, and as evil and mur- 
 derous. 
 
 Jesus was the noblest of men because 
 He gave up the greatest rights. He had 
 a right, Paul tells us, to be on an equality 
 with God. It was not necessary for Him 
 to come down here. But he deemed His 
 right a thing not to be jealously retained. 
 He gave it up, “emptied Himself,” 
 “though He was rich, became poor,” 
 and in a servant’s form came among men, 
 not to be ministered unto but to minister, 
 and to give as a ransom for many His 
 life, which He had a right to keep. 
 
 There are some rights which we have 
 no right ever to surrender—the right to 
 be pure and kind and Christlike, the right 
 to tell the truth and to hate evil and to 
 fight wrong. Among those rights which 
 are never to be given up is the right to 
 surrender all those rights whose exercise 
 would cause others to stumble or hurt 
 ourselves. 
 
 Perhaps the reason why more men are 
 not able to preserve their liberty at this 
 point is to be found in their cowardice. 
 
What Are They ? 23 
 
 Most men accept the standards of their 
 crowd. Does the crowd think this the 
 manly thing? Then they do it. Does 
 the crowd think this a weak and “goody” 
 course? Then they, too, sneer at it. 
 What is wanted is men who will think 
 for themselves, boldly, who will recognise 
 that this is the hard and courageous 
 thing, and who will follow the voice of 
 God which will tell them their way. And 
 this takes pluck. But, as Stevenson asks, 
 “ Where did you hear that it was easy to 
 be honest? Do you find that in your 
 Bible? Easy? It is easy to be an ass 
 and follow the multitude like a blind, be- 
 sotted bull in a stampede; and that, I am 
 well aware, is what you and Mrs. Grundy 
 mean by being honest. But it will not 
 bear the stress of time nor the scrutiny 
 of conscience.” 
 
 The right ideal of life is a brave and 
 full obedience to goodness; to true good- 
 ness, not to the conventions of crowds, 
 least of all to the low standards of men 
 who are afraid to be strong in righteous- 
 ness. And that would be a great life in 
 
24. A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 which God obtained a fearless and perfect 
 obedience, and the questions which we 
 are to consider in this volume ceased to 
 be questions at all, because the life would 
 be wholly ruled by His Spirit and law. 
 “Tf,” says Stevenson, in his “ Lay Mor- 
 als,” from which the two preceding quo- 
 tations also have been taken, “ we were 
 to conceive a perfect man, it should be 
 one who was never torn between conflict- 
 ing impulses, but who, on the absolute 
 consent of all his parts and faculties, sub- 
 mitted in every action of his life to a self- 
 dictation as absolute and unreasoned as 
 that which bids him love one woman and 
 be true to her till death. 
 
 “But we should not conceive him as 
 sagacious, ascetical, playing off his appe- 
 tites against each other, turning the wing 
 of public respectable immorality instead 
 of riding it directly down, or advancing 
 toward his end through a thousand sinis- 
 ter compromises and considerations. The 
 one man might be wily, might be adroit, 
 might be wise, might be respectable, 
 
What Are They? 25 
 
 might be gloriously useful; it is the 
 other man who would be good. 
 
 “ The soul asks honour and not fame; to 
 be upright, not to be successful; to be 
 good, not prosperous; to be essentially, 
 not outwardly, respectable. Does your 
 soul ask profit? Does it ask money? 
 Does it ask the approval of the indiffer- 
 ent herd? I believe not. For my own 
 part, I want but little money, I hope; 
 and I do not want to be decent at all, 
 but to be good.” 
 
 But in the judgment of the One whose 
 judgment alone is of value, goodness is 
 the only decency. 
 
II 
 
 WHY A YOUNG MAN SHOULD BE 
 A CHRISTIAN 
 
 THE first question of all questions for 
 a young man is, Why should I not be a 
 Christian? Even if, as is to be hoped, the 
 young man has grown up in a Christian 
 home, and always loved Christ, the time 
 will come when he must make some de- 
 cisive choice or meet some decisive test 
 which will mean his open and conscious 
 commitment of his life to Christ and His 
 service, or his recreancy and faithlessness. 
 And in the case of young men who have 
 not grown up in the Christian faith, this 
 question rises before them as the supreme 
 question of their lives. Why should we 
 not be Christians? 
 
 Now, first of all, the young man should 
 be a Christian because he is one. This 
 is a paradox that covers a great truth. 
 “Are you a Christian?” a college paper 
 
 26 - 
 
Should He Be a Christian? 27 
 
 recently represented one student as saying 
 to another. ‘“ Of course,” was the reply, 
 “do you take me for a heathen?” The 
 implication that every man is a Christian 
 who is not a heathen is, of course, untrue. 
 But, of course, also it is true. ¥ Every 
 young man in a Christian land has his 
 ideals, standards of judgment, social cus- 
 toms, forces at work in his life, which are 
 the direct product of the influence of 
 Christ. These make his life radically 
 different from the lives of men in non- 
 Christian lands. In this sense he is a 
 Christian. He accepts and enjoys a 
 thousand privileges which are due to 
 Christ, and which men lack who do not 
 live under the influence of Christianity. 
 In this sense every young man in our land 
 is a Christian, as accepting the secondary 
 privileges and blessings of Christianity. 
 He is not a Christian in the sense of rec- 
 ognising its primary obligations. In other 
 words, he takes from Christ all he can get 
 without giving anything back. young 
 man ought to be a Christian out of a sens 
 
 of fairness. He ought not to be willing 
 
 tt 
 
 \. 
 
28 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 to accept the blessings of the Gospel with- 
 out recognising and meeting his obliga- 
 tions to Christ who brought the Gospel. 
 
 But Christianity is far more than the 
 _network of conceptions and influences 
 which we call Christian civilisation. Be- 
 side this and before this and as the source 
 of this it is four things: (1) the forgive- 
 ness of sin, (2) the revelation of God in 
 Christ, (3) the revelation of man in 
 Christ, and (4) the power of God in man 
 enabling him to attain the revelation of 
 the perfect man in Christ. 
 
 The young man should be a Christian 
 because he needs all these and cannot 
 find them outside of Christianity. (1) 
 As a simple matter of fact, no other re- 
 ligion does give the conscious deliverance 
 from the sense of guilt of sin. Sao 
 old- fashioned _word, and the “sense of 
 sin” is not talked about much 1 nowadays; : 
 but the man who is of honest heart and 
 who is not enslaved by catchwords and 
 bloodless assumptions never more current 
 than to-day, knows that he has not been 
 what he should have been, and that he has 
 
Should He Bea Christian? 29 
 
 sinned. No naturalistic nonsense telling 
 him that his sin is only the innocent ex- 
 pression of that honest nature which he 
 shares with the animal world deceives 
 him. He knows that he is to be judged 
 by more than a barnyard moral code, and 
 that measured not by the habits of beasts, 
 but by the holiness of God he is wrong 
 and must be set right. The most solid 
 evidence to be found in the world proves 
 that Christ can set men right here, and 
 that no one else can. (2) But the young 
 man of to-day may say, “I do not know 
 that there is a God. I have never seen 
 Him.” Well, there are several answers 
 to that. He never saw Martin Luther. 
 He never saw a pain. But he believes in 
 Luther, and in pain, and in sound waves 
 and molecules, and in a million other 
 things which he never saw. “ But these 
 I understand,” the young man replies, 
 “while God I do not.” But he believes 
 in thousands of things he _does not un- 
 derstand, and in some of them he be- 
 lieves far more profoundly than he does 
 in much that is intelligible. It is of no 
 
30 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 consequence that we do not know God by 
 the same kind of evidence by which we 
 know the weight of a dog, or that we do 
 not entirely comprehend Him. It is 
 enough that we may know God as far as 
 we need, and by appropriate evidence. If 
 the young man wants to read a book on 
 the proofs of God’s existence, let him take 
 Flint’s “Theism.” But for most young men 
 Christ is the best evidence. We read the 
 Gospels, and while we hear Jesus saying, 
 “Ye believe in God, believe also in Me,” 
 and feel the force of that appeal, some 
 are moved even more to say, “ We believe 
 in Thee, O Christ. We believe also in 
 God.” For Christ is to us the revelation 
 of God. Even those men who say that 
 they cannot believe that Jesus was di- 
 vine, because it is not possible for them 
 to conceive thus of God, owe their 
 high spiritual conception of God to 
 Christ. Only those who have seen God 
 in Christ have such a high notion of God 
 as this. (3) And Jesus not only shows 
 us the Father. He also shows us the 
 
 truth of ourselves. He was what God _ 
 
Should He Bea Christian? 31 
 
 would have us be. We are satisfied with 
 ourselves until we compare ourselves with 
 Him, our sin with His purity, our selfish- 
 ness with His sacrifice, our meanness with 
 His generosity, our pettiness with His 
 greatness, our failure with His success. 
 Then we see that while Jesus was one of 
 us, He was also separate from us. This 
 perfectness of character, and of obedience 
 to God and of life which we see in Christ 
 is God’s standard and ideal for each one 
 of us. (4) But the Gospel is more than 
 forgiveness and revelation. It is power. 
 A Christian is not simply a man who 
 knows what he ought to be and do, and is 
 sorry he has failed in being and doing 
 what he ought. He is a man who has 
 entered into a personal and vital rela- 
 tionship with God through Christ, who 
 recognises that he is a son of God, and 
 that God is ready to give him strength 
 to act as His son. 
 
 This is the vital thing. To be a Chris- 
 tian is to be bound to God through Christ. 
 It is as Captain Mahan, the greatest liv- 
 ing authority on naval history and strat- 
 
32 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 egy, has said, “the direct relation of the 
 individual soul to God.” In speaking 
 just so, Captain Mahan went on to tell of 
 his own conversion, years ago. “I hap- 
 pened,” he said, ‘ one week-day in Lent, 
 into a church in Boston. The preacher— 
 I have never known his name—inter- 
 ested me throughout; but one phrase only 
 has remained: ‘ Thou shalt call His name 
 Jesus, for He shall save His people.’— 
 here he lifted up his hands—‘not from 
 hell, but from their sins.’ Almost the 
 first words of the first Gospel. I had seen 
 them for years, but at last I perceived 
 them. Scales seemed to fall from my 
 eyes, and I began to see Jesus and life as 
 T had never seen them before. I was then 
 about thirty. Personal religion is but 
 the co-operation of man’s will with the 
 power of Jesus Christ that man’s soul, 
 man’s whole being, may be saved, not for 
 his own profit chiefly, but that he may lay 
 it, thus redeemed, thus exalted, at the feet 
 of Him who loved him and gave Himself 
 for him.” Such faith and consecration 
 as this is a man’s reasonable service. 
 
Should He Bea Christian? 33 
 
 But a young man may say, “It is not 
 all so clear to me as you assume. I have 
 many doubts, intellectual difficulties 
 which prevent my accepting this view.” 
 Are you sure? Many men speak of in- 
 tellectual doubts whose trouble is not that 
 they have thought too much, but that they 
 have not thought enough. What are 
 your doubts? Define them. Write them 
 down on paper. If they are real you can 
 do this. If you can not do this with 
 them, what right have they to obtrude 
 themselves into any question of reality? 
 But even if you can do this with them, 
 are you sure that these are your real dif- 
 ficulties? Many men say and, perhaps, 
 even believe that their difficulties are in- 
 tellectual, when they are moral. If these 
 men were right morally, they would be 
 ready for faith and Christian knowledge. 
 As Fichte says: “ It is only by thorough 
 amelioration of the will that a new light 
 is thrown on our existence and future 
 destiny; without this, let me meditate as 
 much as I will, and be endowed with ever 
 such rare intellectual gifts, darkness re- 
 
34 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 mains within me and around me. * ** * 
 I know immediately what is necessary for 
 me to know, and this will I joyfully and 
 without hesitation or sophistication prac- 
 tice.’ And so Carlyle also writes: 
 “ Doubt of any kind cannot be removed, 
 except by action. On which ground, 
 too, let him who gropes painfully in dark- 
 ness or uncertain light and prays vehe- 
 mently that dawn may ripen into day, lay 
 this other precept well to heart—Do the 
 duty which lies nearest thee.” This was 
 Jesus’ solution: “If any man willeth to 
 do His will, he shall know of the doctrine 
 whether it is of God.” 
 
 This solution was offered by Jesus in 
 connection with His own claims. And 
 here is a good point for any man with 
 confusion or doubt to take up his prob- 
 lem. Was Jesus what He claimed to be, 
 and can I depend upon Him? It is far 
 wiser for young men to go straight to 
 this question than to debate over ques- 
 tions of theism and immortality and natu- 
 ralistic evolution. Christianity stands or 
 falls with Christ, and it urges its claims 
 
Should He Bea Christian? 35 
 
 upon us because Christ Himself has un- 
 answerable claims. The young man 
 should read Bushnell’s “ Character of 
 Jesus Forbidding His Possible Classifi- 
 cation with Men,” Young’s “ Christ of 
 History,’ and Simpson’s “The Fact of 
 Christ.” But, in a word, it may be said 
 that Christ and His influence, in its power 
 and quality, can not be accounted for on 
 any other ground than that He was what 
 He claimed to be. And it is not possible 
 to study His life deeply and not perceive 
 His uniqueness. As De Wette says: 
 “The man. who comes without precon- 
 ceived opinions to the life of Jesus, and 
 who yields himself up to the impression 
 which it makes, will feel no manner of 
 doubt that He is the most exalted char- 
 acter and purest soul that history pre- 
 sents to us. He walked over the earth 
 like some nobler being who scarce touched 
 it with His feet.” But more than this. 
 This Being was more than man. Let any 
 one who denies this surpass Him or re- 
 produce Him or even approach Him—not 
 in genius or exceptional powers, but in 
 
36 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 those moral qualities which are within the 
 reach of any man’s will. The abysmal 
 failure of any such attempt only empha- 
 sises the reality and the width of the 
 chasm that divides us from Christ. He 
 was more than man that man might cease ~ 
 to be less. 
 
 But Christ can be examined and studied 
 and tested to-day, too. Every day He is 
 redeeming drunkards, giving men new 
 wills, saving men from their sins, and 
 strengthening them to fight victoriously 
 against their temptations. The witnesses 
 to this truth are innumerable and unim- 
 peachable. Why will you not believe 
 them? A man troubled with malaria 
 tells you he has been cured by quinine. 
 A thousand other men corroborate his tes- 
 timony. You believe it. Here is testi- 
 mony more overwhelming. Jesus Christ 
 saves. He can be seen doing it. He will 
 save you. 
 
 And every young man needs to be 
 saved. He needs to be saved from sin, 
 from waste, from folly, from disobedi- 
 ence, from shortcoming, from transgres- 
 
Should He Bea Christian? 37 
 
 sion, from forgetfulness, from selfish- 
 ness, from narrowness, from everything 
 that flows from sin. We need de- 
 liverance from all that makes life 
 imperfect. We need deliverance into 
 the abundant and perfect life. “I am 
 come,” says Jesus, “that ye may have 
 life, and have it more abundantly.” The 
 abundant life is not to be found in art, in 
 music, in business, in philanthropy, in 
 science, in politics. There is only one 
 place where it is to be found. It is in 
 Christ. 
 
 The Christian life is the only complete 
 and abiding life. Every man was made 
 for it. It is the divinely meant life for 
 every man. The young man should be 
 a Christian, because only so is he his true 
 self. Only so does he come into his 
 place of power over life and over death, 
 and set himself in the eternal will of his 
 Father. Let the young man come to 
 Christ now. 
 
 “ The time will come,” says Professor 
 Drummond in one of his earlier addresses, 
 “when we shall ask ourselves why we 
 
38 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 ever crushed this infinite substance of our 
 life within these narrow bounds, and cen- 
 tered that which lasts for ever on what 
 must pass away. In the perspective of 
 eternity all lives will seem poor, and 
 small, and lost, and self-condemned be- 
 side a life for Christ. There will be 
 plenty then to gather round the cross. 
 But who will do it now? Who will do 
 it now? There are plenty of men to die 
 for Him, there are plenty to spend eter- 
 nity with Christ; but where is the man 
 who will live for Christ? Death and 
 Eternity in their place. Christ wants 
 lives. No fear about death being gain 
 if we have lived for Christ. So let it be. 
 ‘To me to live is Christ.’ There is but 
 one alternative—the putting on of Christ; 
 Paul’s alternative, the discovery of Christ. 
 We have all in some sense, indeed, al- 
 ready made the discovery of Christ. We 
 may be as near it now as Paul when he 
 left Jerusalem. There was no notice 
 given that he was to change masters. The 
 new Master simply crossed his path one 
 day, and the great change was come. 
 
Should He Bea Christian? 39 
 
 How often has He crossed our path? We 
 know what to do the next time; we know 
 how our life can be made worthy and 
 great—how only; we know how death 
 can become gain—how only. Many, in- 
 deed, tell us death will be gain. Many 
 long for life to be done that they may 
 rest, as they say, in the quiet grave. Let 
 no cheap sentimentalism deceive us. 
 Death can only be gain when to have 
 lived was Christ.” 
 
III 
 SHALL I JOIN THE CHURCH ? 
 
 ONE of a young man’s first and most 
 important questions is the question of his 
 attitude and relation to the Church. In 
 any community in which he is likely to 
 be, the visible Christian Church is already 
 established with its organisations for wor- 
 ship and service, and he must of neces- 
 sity take up some sort of a position re- 
 garding it. Ought every man to connect 
 himself with the Church and take part in 
 its work? Yes; he ought. But some- 
 thing is necessary as a preliminary. The 
 Christian Church in any community is the 
 body of believing men and women resid- 
 ing there. That is not a careful defini- 
 tion, but it suffices to emphasise the fact 
 that the Church is' a body of people of 
 common convictions and affections toward 
 Christ. Of course, no one ought to join 
 
 40 
 
Shall I Join the Church? 41 
 
 it who does not share these convictions 
 and affections. But every one who does 
 share them should connect himself with it. 
 
 There are many young men, however, 
 who dissent from this view. They do be- 
 lieve in Christ, they say, and they love 
 Him, but they do not see any reason for 
 connecting themselves with the Church, 
 and they have various grounds of defense 
 of their position. Some say that it is 
 not necessary, that they can believe in 
 Christ and serve Him outside of the 
 Church, can go when they want to church 
 worship, and co-operate with church 
 members; but that the mere form of 
 membership is unessential.* Of course, 
 men can believe in Christ and love Him 
 without being members of His Church, 
 just as men could believe in Him and 
 love Him as Nicodemus and others of the 
 rulers of the Jews did, without openly 
 confessing Him when He was on the 
 earth. But if this is a valid excuse for 
 one man to stay out of the Church, it is 
 a valid excuse for all, and there is no 
 visible Church any longer, but just a 
 
42 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 great host of concealed disciples. It was 
 Jesus Himself who instituted the fellow- 
 ship of disciples; and the faith in Him 
 and love for Him which are not strong 
 enough to lead a man to side openly with 
 Him and His Church, are not quite of the 
 highest type. 
 
 “ But,” say some young men, “ we can 
 openly side with Christ without joining 
 the Church, and we don’t like to be bound 
 as we are when we become formal mem- 
 bers.” It is true that every Christian 
 man can reveal himself as Christ’s true 
 disciple every day, and that a man may 
 be even a church member and not do this; 
 but the Church in each community ought 
 to be the body of all true Christian men 
 in that community, and there is no more 
 reason why a man should not unite him- 
 self to it, than for his declining to recog- 
 nise his allegiance to the Government, to 
 register for the purpose of voting, or to 
 purchase real estate for a house and so 
 commit himself as a member of the com- 
 munity. Life is full of the assumption of 
 obligations. They constitute its glory. 
 
Shall I Join the Church? 43 
 
 There are young men who complain of 
 the Church, and decline to join it because 
 of what they regard as its defects. 
 “There are so many hypocrites and 
 Pharisees in it,’ some say. But the 
 young man who pretends not to sympa- 
 thise with the real aims of the true 
 Church when he does, is a hypocrite as 
 truly as the man who pretends to sympa- 
 thise when he does not. And there isa 
 Pharisaism of indifference and personal 
 independence as real as the Pharisaism of 
 religious pride and insincerity. It is true 
 that there are hypocrites and Pharisees 
 both in and out of the Church. No young 
 man can escape their company by refus- 
 ing to join the Church. Indeed, it may 
 be asserted confidently that there is more 
 hypocrisy and Pharisaism outside of the 
 Church than there is inside. In almost 
 every community in the land, the people 
 of honour, nobility of character, and gen- 
 eral trustworthiness, are in the Church. 
 It is usually the desire for a reputation 
 for these things which draws-the-dishon- 
 est and insincere into the Church, More- 
 
44 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 over, the character of others and their un- 
 faithfulness are the most pitiable excuses 
 to urge in support of our defection of 
 duty. If Judas is a traitor, the more 
 reason for John’s fidelity. 
 
 Others say that the Church is behind 
 the age, but this is not true in any bad 
 sense. It is true that the Church is the 
 great conservator of the good of the past, 
 and that it checks carelessness and haste 
 in cutting loose from what is permanent- 
 ly valuable and eternally true. But the 
 Church is the great progressive force in 
 life and in the world. Church councils 
 are not the Church, and Luther was as 
 truly the Church as the men who con- 
 demned him. Whoever has the truth in 
 the Church is the true representative of 
 the Church. In every community in the 
 land it is the age that is behind the 
 Church in the attainment of the worthiest 
 and noblest things; and the great lead- 
 ers in almost every department of soci- 
 ety, politics, science, and art, have been or 
 are men of the Church. And if it were 
 true that the Church is out of the great 
 
Shall I Join the Church? 46 
 
 current of human life, it would be the 
 highest duty of the men who are with-~ 
 holding their support from it, to come to. 
 its help and deliver it, and rescue thus te 
 the world the mightiest force that ever 
 has worked in it. 
 
 But some men say that their estimate of 
 the Church is so high that they do not 
 feel good enough to join, while others 
 urge that they are as good without it as 
 they would be within it, and are as up- 
 right as those who now belong to it. Now 
 the Church is the place for both of these 
 classes. It is not a collection of perfect 
 saints, and no true member of the Church 
 feels that he has attained the goal or is 
 satisfied with his goodness of character. 
 It is a place for men who want the help 
 of God and of their fellows, and who, 
 feeling their own weakness, know that 
 God did not mean men to live their lives 
 or hold their faith alone. On the other 
 hand, the man who is satisfied with him- 
 self needs the ideals of the Church to 
 shame him and then entice him. While 
 in so far as he is the sort of man he ought 
 
46 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 to be, he owes it to Christ to join His 
 company, and add to its efficiency for 
 righteousness. 
 
 Some men say that the Church is now 
 moribund, and that nobody believes in it 
 any more, that the preachers.themselves 
 do not believe what they preach. The 
 men who say this are mistaken. More 
 than this, their statement of the Church’s 
 duplicity is basely wicked and false. The 
 churches have more power to-day in our 
 country than ever before, and they never 
 believed their message more firmly or in- 
 telligently than to-day. There may be 
 ministers whose ideals and practices are 
 low, far beneath the contempt even of 
 many of their church members; but these 
 are exceptions. Jesus declared that good 
 and evil would be inextricably interwoven. 
 until the day of His second coming. But 
 in the churches the strongest and best / 
 opinion of the land is to be found, the/ 
 fullest and fairest acknowledgement of? 
 the mysteries and the difficulties of life, \ 
 and the most honest and fearless attempt~ 
 to meet them. It is the habit of some 
 
Shall I Join the Church? 47 
 
 young men to allege that honest and fear- 
 less search for truth is found outside of 
 the Church; but the idea is a mistake. In 
 college and in business and everywhere it 
 is the Christian men who are doing the 
 great part of the real work of the world, 
 and who are dealing honestly with their 
 own souls and with the problems of life. 
 
 The existence of denominationalism is 
 
 urged by some as a reason for remaining 
 outside the organised Church. They want 
 to be just followers of Christ without a 
 denominational name. But a partisan 
 name in politics does not prevent a man 
 from being a true patriot. And men are 
 willing to join narrow organisations, se- 
 cret or semi-secret, which they hold are 
 not inconsistent with a broad spirit of 
 humanity. The denominations are broader 
 and freer than either of these. Almost 
 no denomination asks more of its mem- 
 bers than that they should believe in 
 Christ and wish toserve Him. The Pres- 
 byterian Church asks no more than would 
 make a man eligible to membership in the 
 Congregational or any other evangelical 
 
48 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 Church, and the usage of the Congrega- 
 tional Church is as broad and as Chris- 
 tian. The specter of denominational nar- 
 rowness and contention is for the most 
 part a pure hallucination. No Christian 
 man sacrifices anything or narrows or 
 impedes his life by joining any one of 
 the evangelical churches, that is, the 
 churches that regard the divine Christ 
 as the sole Head of His Church, and 
 the sole Ruler of His people. 
 
 In our day the numbers of men who 
 make membership in lodge or order or 
 brotherhood a substitute for membership 
 in the Church is very large. There is 
 something pathetic in this. The basis of 
 these organisations is narrowly mascu- 
 line, and often secular or spuriously re- 
 ligious, and their method and spirit are 
 too often puerile. They are no substi- 
 tute for the Church. They have all the 
 defects alleged against the Church with- 
 out its virtues, and every reason for not 
 joining the Church urged by their mem- 
 bers is ignored in joining them. Theman 
 who does not want-to-commit himself or 
 
Shall I Join the Church? 49 
 
 to_join any movement where there may 
 be hypocrites, dare not join such organi- 
 sations and then urge these compunctions 
 as against the Church. Moreover, “ when 
 men separate from others,” says Sir 
 Thomas Browne, “ they unite but loosely 
 among themselves.” In other words, no 
 tie of secret brotherhood can be as worthy 
 or strong as the bond of Christian broth- 
 erhood binding the Christian to all his 
 brethren throughout the world. Who- 
 ever depreciates this tie by presuming to 
 set up a stronger, really makes himself 
 incapable of the closest bonds. When 
 men draw away from the great common 
 brotherhood into some narrow order they 
 do in reality but bring suspicion upon 
 all their notions of union and brother- 
 hood. 
 
 Men sometimes say, “ We don’t like the 
 preacher,” “ We are too tired on Sun- 
 day,” “ We can get more good on Sunday 
 from nature or books or outdoor exer- 
 cise.” “Sermons in stones” have been 
 often urged as an excuse from church 
 attendance by people who never stop to 
 
so A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 read the stones; and outdoor exercise 
 is often made a pretext by those who are 
 not reduced to the necessity of using the 
 hours of the church service for this pur- 
 pose, or going without. But these and a 
 multitude of similar small excuses are 
 brushed away by the two great considera- 
 tions which every young man should enter- 
 tain. First, every man needs the Church. 
 He needs its fellowship, its stimulus, the 
 publicity it gives to his Christian faith, the 
 opportunities for worship and for serv- 
 ice which it offers. And secondly, the 
 Church needs every young man. It needs 
 him to join in its loving worship of the 
 Father and the Saviour, and it needs him 
 for the ministry of the Church in the war- 
 fare against sin and evil in the world. No 
 young man has a right to hold aloof, or 
 for the sake of some personal caprice of 
 opinion to deny the Church his aid and 
 service. 
 
 There are hundreds of men who look 
 back with gratitude to the religious train- 
 ing of their childhood, and to the influ- 
 ences of their early years of attendance at 
 
 ) 
 
Shall I Join the Church? 51 
 
 church, who yet are now holding such an 
 attitude toward the Church that their 
 children will never have what has been 
 the best part of their own training. These 
 men will even confess this with a smiling 
 but uneasy perplexity. It is a sad phe- 
 nomenon, a sort of double treason—un- 
 faithfulness both to the past and to the 
 future. 
 
 The right course for every young man 
 to take is to attend church regularly, to do 
 this even though he is not prepared yet to 
 join. In time he will believe in Jesus 
 Christ and love Him and wish to serve 
 Him. Then he should join the Church 
 and take at once and always an active and 
 untiring part in its work, openly acknowl- 
 edging Jesus before men, and rejoicing 
 in Jesus’ assurance that in his turn he 
 will be acknowledged before God and the 
 angels. This is the right and natural 
 course. It is the course of reality, of 
 manliness, of integrity. The young man 
 has no business to play with ways of eva- 
 sion and avoidance. Let him take his 
 stand with Christ and with the men of 
 
52 AN Young Man’s Questions 
 
 Christ’s mind and Church, and fight with 
 them a man’s fight in the open. 
 
IV, 
 
 THE YOUNG MAN’S DUTY TO 
 SPREAD HIS RELIGION 
 
 Any man who has a religion is bound 
 to do one of two things with it—change 
 it or spread it. If it is not true, he must 
 give it up. If it is true, he must give it 
 away. This is not the duty of ministers 
 only. Religion is not an affair of a pro- 
 fession or of a caste. It is the busi- 
 ness of every common man. 
 
 Where did I come from? What am 
 I here for? Whither am I going? 
 These are questions which confront every 
 man. They are no more real to a 
 minister than they are to a merchant or a 
 marine. Every man must answer them 
 for himself. * And the answer that he 
 gives them determines his religion. There 
 is no proxy religion. Each man has his 
 own. If he hasn’t, he has none. No 
 other man can have it for him. And if 
 
 53 
 
 ’ 
 
54 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 he has his own, then he must propagate 
 it, if it is true, or repudiate it, if it is 
 false. 
 
 The business of preaching the Gospel, 
 accordingly, is neither committed to any 
 order, nor to be discharged by any lit- 
 erature. As an old clergyman of the 
 Church of England, who was two gen- 
 erations ahead of his day, wrote, “ The 
 office of teaching and preaching the Gos- 
 pel belongs to men, not to a book, to the 
 Church emphatically, though not to the 
 clergy only, but to every member of it, 
 for a dispensation of the Gospel is com- 
 mitted to every Christian, and woe unto 
 him if he preach not the Gospel.” 
 
 The command to evangelise the world 
 was not given by our Lord to apostles 
 only, or to those whom the apostles might, 
 centuries later, be claimed to have com- 
 missioned for such work. It was given 
 to all believers. “ Every disciple was to 
 be a disciple,” as Dr. Gordon used to say. 
 Whoever heard the good news was to 
 pass it on to the next man, and he to the 
 next. 
 
Duty to Spread His Religion 55 
 
 The idea that the world or any one 
 land is to be evangelised by one section 
 of the Christian body, the other sections 
 being exempt from all duty of propaga- 
 tion of the faith, is preposterous for many 
 reasons, chiefly because a faith that does 
 not make every possessor eager to propa- 
 gate it, is not worth propagating, and will 
 not be received by any people to whom it 
 is offered. The religion that would spread 
 among men must be offered by man to 
 man; and its power, seen in dominating 
 the lives of all its adherents and making 
 them eager for its dissemination, is es- 
 sential as a testimonial of worth. No 
 propagation by a profession, essential as 
 a distinct teaching and leading-class may 
 be, will ever accomplish what can be ac- 
 complished by a great mass of common 
 men who preach Christ where they stand, 
 in home, office, road or shop. 
 
 In a list of Indian missionaries of 
 Mohammedanism, published in the jour- 
 nal of a religious and philanthropic soci- 
 ety of Lahore, says Arnold in “The 
 Preaching of Islam,” “ we find the names 
 
56 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 of schoolmasters, government clerks in the 
 Canal and Opium Departments, traders 
 including a dealer in camel carts, an edi- 
 tor of a newspaper, a bookbinder, and a 
 workman in a printing establishment. 
 These men devote the hours of leisure 
 left them after the completion of the 
 day’s labour, to the preaching of their re- 
 ligion in the streets and bazaars of Indian 
 cities, seeking to win converts from 
 among Christians and Hindus, whose re- 
 ligious belief they controvert and attack.” 
 This is what constitutes the power of 
 Islam. With no missionary organisation, 
 with no missionary order, the religion yet 
 spread over Western Asia and Northern 
 
 Africa, and retains still its foothold on . 
 
 the soil of Europe. Where the common 
 man believes his religion and spreads it, 
 other men believe it, too. 
 
 The minister is to be simply colonel of 
 the regiment._The real fighting is to be 
 done by the men in the ranks who carry 
 the guns. No idea could be more non- 
 Christian or more irrational than that the 
 religious colonel is engaged to do the 
 
Duty to Spread His Religion 57 
 
 fighting for his men, while they sit at 
 ease. And yet, perhaps, there is one idea 
 current which is more absurd still. That 
 is that there is to be no fighting at all, 
 but that the colonel is paid to spend his 
 time solacing his regiment, or giving it 
 gentle, educative instruction, not destined 
 ever to result in any downright manly 
 effort on the part of the whole regiment 
 to do anything against the enemy. 
 
 Young men are bound to propagate 
 their religion by speaking about it, by 
 preaching it, in fact. When one meets 
 another in a railroad train, and speaks of 
 Christ to him, it is as legitimate a type of 
 preaching as the delivery of a set dis- 
 course by another man from a pulpit in a 
 church. Telling men the Gospel, explain- 
 ing what Christ can be to a man, is 
 preaching, as scriptural as any preaching 
 can be made. Ministers ought to make 
 this plain, and lay the duty of such 
 preaching upon all their laymen and teach 
 them how to do it. 
 
 It makes no difference if it is done halt- 
 ingly. A broken testimony from a labour- 
 
58 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 er to his friend is likely to be more ef- 
 
 fective than a smooth and consecutive 
 _ Sunday morning sermon. It would be a 
 good thing if all ministers should read 
 aloud to their people chapter after chapter 
 on Sunday mornings, as preludes to their 
 sermons, most of the chapters of Dr. 
 Trumbull’s little book on “ Individual 
 Work for Individuals,’ and thus set be- 
 fore the laymen in their churches the true 
 ideal of Christian evangelism, which is 
 the propagation of Christianity, not by 
 public preachers so much, as by private 
 conversation and the testimony of com- 
 mon men. 
 
 Of course, if men are to talk about their 
 religion they must _know—what it is and 
 what it is not. They must study their 
 Bibles. It would be a good thing if some 
 Sunday evening church services or week- 
 day prayer meetings should be turned into 
 Bible classes, or informal conferences on 
 the Bible and its teachings. A good deal 
 of preparatory work would doubtless 
 have to be done. It is far easier for a 
 minister to prepare a sermon or prayer- 
 
Duty to Spread His Religion 59 
 
 meeting address, and do all the talking 
 himself, than it is to get others ready to 
 take part and to work up a good religious 
 conference or Bible discussion. But by 
 hard work men must be got to study the 
 Bible, and if intelligent laymen were to 
 take charge of Sunday evening services, 
 two or three laymen uniting to conduct 
 one service, with a view to direct Bible 
 teaching or discussion, there would be 
 good results. At any rate, the laymen 
 concerned would be compelled to work 
 over the Bible a little more. 
 
 And no religious propaganda is likely 
 to accomplish much that does not spring 
 from and rest upon a family life visibly 
 influenced by religion. If men talk about 
 Christianity to their fellows and have re- 
 ligionless homes, or homes marked by un- 
 kindness, harshness, distrust, their talk is 
 as sounding brass and clanging cymbals. 
 The home is the test of religion. And 
 the best fountain and corroboration of 
 religious testimony is the Christian home, 
 where the family has its altar and prays 
 and worships as a family, openly and 
 
60 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 unitedly, before the Father after whom it 
 is named. 
 
 It is impossible to say whether there is 
 now less or more observance of daily 
 family prayers than there used to be. It 
 is enough to know that there never was 
 enough of it, and is not now. Every 
 family ought to meet daily as a family in 
 confession of its Christian faith, in ac- 
 knowledgment of God’s goodness, and in 
 prayer for His help and blessing. We 
 owe our homes to the influence of Christ. 
 Our homes, more even than our churches, 
 should be sanctified by constant worship 
 hallowed by the spirit of reverent prayer. 
 When all our Christian homes are evi- 
 dently, even tangibly, filled with the spirit 
 of Christ, so that no one, stranger or 
 friend, can come into them without feel- 
 ing, the repose and peace of them, and 
 hearing in them the audible voice of 
 prayer and faith, then the Gospel will 
 spread as it will never spread from church 
 or chapel or by public appeal. 
 
 What we need is a larger return to the 
 ways of the primitive Church in this mat- 
 
Duty to Spread His Religion 61 
 
 ter. We are far ahead of that Church in 
 many respects; but we can learn from it 
 that the church in the home is as divine 
 an institution as the church in the temple, 
 and that the best and most effective 
 method of evangelisation is the daily 
 preaching of the Gospel in house and mar- 
 ket and public street by common men, 
 whose lives and homes testify to the 
 power of the Gospel to ennoble, to en- — 
 rich, and to redeem. 
 
 Only such personal work by men as 
 has been urged here will work the great 
 spiritual change our day needs. 
 
 The word “revival” may not accu- 
 rately describe what we want, but what 
 we want is clear enough to our own 
 minds. We want an awakening of men 
 to the deepest and highest, to the eternal 
 things in their own lives, to God. And 
 if “revival” means “an extraordinary 
 awakening of interest in and care for mat- 
 ters relating to personal religion,” then a 
 “ revival” is precisely what we want all 
 over the land. No unreality, no sham 
 excitement, no turbid emotionalism, no 
 
62 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 ranting, no invertebrate spasm—we do 
 not want these; but we do want a quick- 
 ening of men’s sense of the unseen and 
 abiding, a sharper hatred of evil in itself 
 and evil in men’s wills and lives, an up- 
 heaval of the deeps that will bring the 
 real life of men to the top, and destroy 
 the shallow, ungenuine imitations of life 
 which bar Christ out of life and life out of 
 Christ. We want life brought to its real 
 significance and purpose in Christ. And 
 we need all the shaking of traditions and 
 of silly self-constraints, and all the blast- 
 ing of sin, and all the uprising of right 
 feeling, which are necessary to the real 
 conversion of men. 
 
 What hinders our doing the work nec- 
 essary for this? Sin hinders. It hinders 
 by killing the desire for the better things, 
 by contenting men’s hearts in what is 
 squalid by persuading them that it is sat- 
 isfying, and in what is hollow by per- 
 suading them that it is solid and sub- 
 stantial. Sin prevents Christian men from 
 wanting to work. It suggests excuses, 
 “Not qualified.” “Not time enough,” 
 
Duty to Spread His Religion 63 
 
 “Time not ripe for it,” “ Example is 
 enough.” It makes the work that men 
 try to do often of no avail. College men 
 and men out of college will not accept 
 at par the words of a man whose life 
 does not square with his preaching. He 
 must be true himself who would teach the 
 truth. And sin makes it impossible for 
 God to use men. Those who bear the 
 vessels of the Lord must be clean. And 
 those only are f. for the Master’s use 
 who have purged themselves and quit 
 with lusts. There are colleges and com- 
 munities where there can be no revival 
 because there is too much sin. 
 
 Shame hinders. Sometimes it is prop- 
 er shame. Men are not fit to speak for 
 Christ, and know it. But the remedy 
 then is not silence, but an altered life. 
 Let the shame that is born of sin and 
 that prevents speech die with the death 
 of sin. Sometimes it is a dishonourable 
 shame. We are ashamed of Jesus. We 
 will love Him in our hearts, but we shrink 
 from speaking of Him lest men should 
 sneer at us, or we should be thought a 
 
64 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 little queer. Jesus knew that men would 
 feel this way, and He spoke plainly about 
 it: “ Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me 
 and of My words, of him shall the Son of 
 Man be ashamed when He cometh.” Is 
 it not a wonderful thing that we should 
 be ashamed of Him who is the only One 
 in whom was no shameful thing, and all 
 of whose experience with us has been 
 only evidence not of His but of our 
 shamefulness? And is it not wonderful 
 that Christians alone should be ashamed 
 of their Lord, while Buddhists, Confu- 
 cianists, and Mohammedans, are proud 
 always openly to avow their devotion? 
 We should be proud of our shame of sin 
 and ashamed of our shame of Christ. It 
 is the want of the one and the pitiable 
 presence of the other that hinders many 
 men from doing their duty. 
 
 Fear hinders. We are afraid of what 
 men will say. Why should we fear? It 
 is said that in the stone walls of Mare- 
 schal College at Aberdeen are cut the 
 words, “ They say. What do they say? 
 Let them say.” Jesus knew that men 
 
Duty to Spread His Religion 65 
 
 would be afraid of men, and He spoke to 
 them plainly of this, too: “ Be not afraid 
 of them which kill the body and after 
 that have no more that they can do. But 
 I will warn you whom ye shall fear.” 
 The sneer of a man whose sneer is a 
 confession of weakness is a slight thing 
 compared with the misery of faithlessness, 
 or with the grave displeasure of Christ 
 who feared nothing, and wants for dis- 
 ciples men who will not fear, as Peter did, 
 the taunt of a maid or the jibe of a man. 
 Where men will not be brave there will 
 be no personal work. 
 
 Reticence hinders. There is a reticence 
 which is weakness, the inability of a life 
 to be itself and do its work. We grow 
 Over-conscious, and become the slaves of 
 our own thought about ourselves. A man 
 is at once actor and spectator, and the 
 relationship paralyses the freedom and 
 spontaneousness of his life. Or a man 
 thinks that religion is not a subject to be 
 talked about. “It is too sacred,” he says. 
 “ We have no right to interfere with an- 
 other man’s religious convictions or to 
 
° 
 
 66 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 parade our own.” And why have we not 
 a right to deal with one another on the 
 highest plane as well as on the lowest, or 
 to touch now where we shall touch eter- 
 nally? Jesus told His disciples to talk. 
 His last command to them forbade silence. 
 There will be no revivals where there is 
 no manly conversation about Christ. 
 
 Cant and ungenuineness hinder. Hypo- 
 crites are of many kinds. Some pretend 
 to be Christians, and hurt Christ by mis- 
 representing Him. Others are not Chris- 
 tians, and hold aloof on grounds that they 
 know or ought to know are ungenuine 
 and insincere; “Some of those Chris- ~ 
 tians are hypocrites.” All use of subter- 
 fuge, of temporising and procrastinating 
 expedient is cant as truly as unreal relig- 
 ious profession. And influence is de- 
 stroyed by such things. 
 
 These things hinder. What will help? 
 Love will. There will be work for men 
 whenever men feel divine love in their 
 hearts. The love of Christ will awaken 
 men to a love of men. It may be hard to 
 love men as they are. We are not asked 
 
Duty to Spread His Religion 67 
 
 to do that. We are bidden to love the 
 finest possibilities in them, and to seek 
 them. It was when Paul saw the multi- 
 tudes in their possibilities, though uncon- 
 scious of them, 
 
 ** Bound who should conquer, slaves who should 
 be kings, 
 
 Hearing their one hope with an empty wonder, 
 
 Sadly contented with a show of things,” 
 
 that the intolerable craving shivered 
 throughout him like a trumpet-call, and 
 he longed to perish for their saving and 
 die for their life. When we love men 
 for what we know Christ can make them, 
 we shall go after them for Him. 
 Courage will help. Personal work is 
 a noble thing because it requires and de- 
 velops pluck. The man who will do it 
 must bare his soul, and meet each man 
 as a man. And the want of such cour- 
 age appears at last, when we see straight, 
 such a pitiful thing. The loving John 
 cannot suppress his feeling of this. He 
 speaks of Nicodemus as the man who 
 came by night and feared to break with 
 
68 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 his associates to confess Christ. And of 
 Joseph as having been a disciple “ secret- 
 ly for fear of the Jews.” How much 
 worthier if they had boldly stood out and 
 spoken for the Saviour instead of post- 
 poning their confession until He was gone 
 and they could only get His body ready 
 for its grave! Jesus was a hero. He 
 asks as much of us. And revivals will 
 come where the heroism of Christ returns. 
 
 Prayer will help. It is prayer that 
 enables men 
 
 ‘‘To dare to do for Him at any cost.” 
 
 Prayer will dispose men’s hearts to speak 
 for Christ. And prayer will secure, by 
 virtue of its supernatural influence, power 
 not otherwise available to awaken men 
 who are asleep, and to shatter the chains 
 of sin, of selfishness, of paltriness, of 
 pettiness, which hold men away from 
 their large inheritance and the liberties - 
 of life in God. 
 
 Love and courage and prayer are 
 enough to conquer sin and shame and 
 fear and reticence and cant, for Christ 
 
Duty to Spread His Religion 69 
 
 is with them. Therefore, let us awake 
 from our sleep and preach the gospel. 
 Let us all do it. 
 
V 
 AS TO OBSERVING SUNDAY 
 
 It is a very common thing to hear peo- 
 ple both in and out of the Church, min- 
 isters as well as others, speaking disap- 
 provingly and contemptuously of the 
 old-fashioned observance of the Lord’s 
 Day. They say it was dreary and enslav- 
 ing, galling to children and irksome to 
 all, joyless and gloomy and repressive. 
 Very probably it was thus with those 
 whose religious life was formal and 
 lifeless, and who refrained from that 
 from which others refrained, but who had 
 nothing positive or vital with which to 
 fill the day. I do not believe that anyone, 
 who grew up in a true Christian home in 
 which the old ideas prevailed, can have 
 any sympathy with this modern abuse of 
 the old-fashioned observance of Sunday. 
 To be sure, the games and employments 
 of the week were laid aside. The family 
 
 70 
 
As to Observing Sunday 71 
 
 gathered over the Bible and the cate- 
 chism. There was a quiet calm through 
 the house. Innumerable little things 
 marked the day as distinct. And prob- 
 ably it ended with a rare walk with the 
 father at the sun-setting, and some sober- 
 ing talk over what is abiding and of 
 eternal worth. But all this is repugnant 
 to the idea of to-day, and one hears a 
 great deal about a free and Christian use 
 of Sunday, as opposed to the old Puri- 
 tanic notion. 
 
 Now the poorest way to win con- 
 demnation of the old fashion of Sunday 
 observance with many is to call it Puri- 
 tanic. They prefer a thousandfold the 
 Puritanic temper to the loose, lawless, 
 flabby habit of mind and life which this 
 day approves. Doubtless the Puritanic 
 cast of mind was often hard and stern, 
 but it had principle in it. It did things 
 because they were right, not because they 
 were easy, or it refused to do things not 
 because they were hard, but because they 
 were wrong. Those who call it somber 
 and joyless speak ignorantly. The best 
 
72 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 memories of many men to-day go back ta 
 fathers who were as iron in their devo- 
 tion to right as right, and who led the 
 family to church on Sunday mornings, 
 and stood at the head of the home as 
 some patriarch of old, high priest of his 
 household. 
 
 Our day is for laxity and easy-going 
 self-indulgence. Going to church regular- 
 ly is trying. Quietness is tiresome. Medi- 
 tation is altogether too difficult an intel- 
 lectual exercise. Weighty and uplifting 
 conversation is work. Men admit that 
 the old way of spending the day begat 
 strength and self-discipline and solidity 
 of character, and they are thankful for 
 having had homes where these prevailed, 
 and they look forward apprehensively to 
 the future of their children whose Sun- 
 days are destitute of all such influences; 
 but nevertheless they have lost the relig- 
 ious life and the grip on great realities 
 which alone would enable them to do for 
 their children what their fathers did for 
 them. 
 
 But far more is to be said than merely 
 
As to Observing Sunday 73 
 
 that the old fashion bred a more worthy 
 and solid habit of life. One thing that is 
 not to be overlooked is that God com- 
 manded the observance of one day in 
 seven as peculiarly a sacred day. No 
 talk of the sacredness of all days or of 
 the supersession of the Old Testament 
 law by the gospel should lead us to re- 
 gard the law of a Lord’s Day as abro- 
 gated. The sacredness of all our wealth 
 does not abolish God’s special claim upon 
 some specific part of it, and the gospel 
 has not superseded the moral law. A 
 holy day is as much needed now as ever, 
 a day that shall bear witness to our re- 
 ligious faith and provide for the irrepres- 
 sible needs of our religious nature, that 
 cry daily, but that need their own day as 
 well as a part of every day. Of course 
 the idea of a holy day may be abused. As 
 the late Professor Everett, of Harvard, 
 said, ‘‘ There are in all such observances 
 a right use and a wrong use. The day or 
 the place may be sacred in either of two 
 senses ; it may be set apart for religious 
 and moral opportunities, or it may be 
 
74, A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 considered sacred in itself ; I may go to 
 church feeling that I have now to my 
 credit one good deed more, or I may go 
 because I recognise another opportunity 
 for higher thought and nearer relation 
 with God. The test of the observance is 
 whether the day or the thing set apart 
 casts a shadow on other days and other 
 things, or brightens them; whether it 
 tends to make the rest of life profane or 
 to make all life more sacred. We must 
 remember, however, that it is better to 
 have one day holy than to have no, day 
 at all holy. If one day is holy, the divine 
 power has at least so much foothold in 
 the world, a beginning from which to 
 spread.” 
 
 God wants the worship of the Lord’s 
 Day, and he wants us to have the indis- 
 pensable blessing and comfort of it. We 
 ought to stop one day out of seven from 
 our regular work and do some special 
 service. We need the day for reading, 
 for rest, for fellowship, for human com- 
 fort, for those duties for which a special 
 day must be set aside or they will never 
 
As to Observing Sunday 75 
 
 be done; for the study of our Bibles, for 
 steadying meditation, for prayer, for for- 
 giveness for our misdeeds and shortcom- 
 ings and for preparation of heart for bet- 
 ter living. Six days of work, however 
 we may strive to keep ourselves above 
 our work, drag us down right effectually 
 into it, and when Saturday evening 
 comes the young man is in want of a 
 spiritual retoning. The Lord’s Day breaks 
 over the world with its quietness, and 
 rightly used, it is as the pool by the 
 Sheep’s Gate after the angel’s troubling. 
 We go down into the waters and come out 
 whole. 
 
 But all this depends, of course, upon 
 our use of the day. There are some 
 things that are deadly in their power to 
 spoil it. One is the Sunday newspaper. 
 I pass by all that may be denounced 
 as immoral and defiling in it. There is 
 harm enough in its simple secularity, in 
 its want of moral uplift. The facts are 
 more powerful than any denunciation. 
 Look at the men who feed their minds 
 and souls on Sunday with this food. They 
 
76 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 miss the calm, the holy peace, the inflow- 
 ing divinity of the day. A second thing 
 that will spoil the day is sport. It is not 
 the day for it. Golf, bicycling, driving— 
 any sport simply kills the religious use of 
 the day. A quiet walk with a friend, or 
 a book, with the heart on Christ, and the 
 thoughts upon what is noble and en- 
 during is as helpful to-day as when 
 Cleopas and his friend walked with the 
 unknown Saviour to Emmaus, with 
 glowing souls. 
 
 As to church attendance, doubtless 
 many excuses can be found if men go to 
 hear other men talk, or to be entertained, 
 or amused. It casts suspicion on a man’s 
 sincerity, however, if he stays away from 
 church on the ground that it is not re- 
 ligiously helpful to him, and spends his 
 morning with the newspaper or on the 
 golf links or in bed after a night out. 
 And the end of church attendance is not 
 to hear a sermon. It is worship, and the 
 opportunity for reverent thought and 
 prayer with fellow-worshippers. Those 
 men forget this, who sneer at the quality 
 
As to Observing Sunday 77 
 
 / 
 
 of the sermons preached, or perhaps it 
 has been so long since they have heard 
 a sermon that they really forget what it 
 is like. The wisest man can learn some- 
 thing from the poorest preacher, and can 
 pray in the dullest church ; and the ex- 
 perience of strong men and strong races 
 -has testified in all ages to the power of 
 worship in the church to help character 
 and to feed reverence. Furthermore 
 there is a great deal of foolish talk about 
 poor preaching. It is better than the 
 newspapers, more thoughtful, more ear- 
 nest. A country preacher’s sermon is su- 
 perior to the country editor’s writing or 
 to the country lawyer’s speeches as a rule, 
 and the city preacher’s sermon can be as 
 favourably contrasted with the editorials 
 in the city newspapers. Even in poor 
 sermons there is good. “I don’t see how 
 you can stand it, to sit and listen to such 
 preaching, professor,” was said once to 
 a great teacher who was also a great 
 preacher in his own denomination, 
 Ransom Dunn, who was laid aside on ac- 
 count of ill health and obliged to listen 
 
78 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 to inferior men. “They all say some 
 good things,” he replied, “and the text 
 is all right and I can think of other. 
 things on the subject.” The truth is 
 always the truth and no man can wholly 
 obscure it. We can have no excuse if 
 we do not get good from every attempt, 
 however poor, to set the truth forth. It 
 is our fault as much as the preacher’s if 
 we fail. But apart from all this, 
 surely God is to be publicly honoured 
 and acknowledged of men, and no 
 brilliancy or stupidity of preachers can 
 justify us in neglecting openly to thank 
 God for his preservation and goodness 
 and all the blessings of this life. 
 
 The practical questions regarding the 
 observance of the Lord’s Day settle them- 
 selves easily for us when we have begun 
 to look at the day in this spirit. We will 
 read good books, poetry and prose, the 
 biographies of true men and the thoughts 
 of prophets. We will not allow ourselves 
 to study on Sunday if we are students, 
 and we will ep the dav as free as possi- 
 
As to Observing Sunday 79 
 
 ble from all secular duty. “ There 
 is no doubt in my mind,” writes a stu- 
 dent in a western university, “as to 
 whether I ought to study on Sunday, or 
 not ; I do not believe in it. When I get 
 through studying Saturday night, I know 
 that I’ll not see the inside of those books 
 until Monday morning. Although I like 
 my work, it is a relief to know that that 
 principle is a law tome. Even if for no 
 religious principle, I think that a fellow 
 ought to have that let up in his work.” 
 We will do no unnecessary work and will 
 spare others. We will not ride on rail- 
 road trains if we can avoid it. We cer- 
 tainly will not do it onlong journeys, and 
 where railroads are only a form of local 
 transportation, like street cars, we will 
 reduce our use of them to a minimum. 
 There was something both pathetic and 
 admirable in the sight of venerable John 
 G. Paton refusing to use even street cars 
 on Sunday in his visit to America, and 
 keeping his appointments by long walks, 
 sometimes having even to run between 
 
80 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 engagements. It is far better to have 
 even such rigid principles than to be lax 
 and dissolute. 
 
 This view of the Lord’s Day is as far 
 as possible removed from a hard legal 
 observance of it. That observance is bet- 
 ter than none; but this is better than that. 
 This conceives Sunday as a physical and 
 spiritual necessity, a “day of rest and 
 gladness,” when the life rebathes itself 
 in the atmosphere of God. To say that 
 all our days should be spent thus sounds 
 well, but it is for the most part simply 
 an excuse for spending none of them so. 
 Just as set times in each day are neces- 
 sary for Bible study and prayer, so a set 
 day in each week is necessary for the 
 emancipation of the soul from care, for a 
 renewing of the springs of life within, for 
 cleansing and quieting of thoughts and 
 new empowering. 
 
 We are not called upon to judge others 
 in this. Each man stands or falls to his 
 own Master. And others have no busi- 
 ness judging us. Our contention is sim- 
 ply that the Sabbath was established for 
 
‘As to Observing Sunday 81 
 
 tan, that he needs it, and that its best use 
 is a religious use; that the man who sec- 
 ularises the day is secularising hls life, 
 and losing one of its finest supports and 
 noblest blessings. Sunday golf, news- 
 papers, and all that sort of thing, are bad 
 and weakening in their influence, and they 
 are pathetic evidence of the trend and 
 taste of the man who thus abandons his 
 birthright, and forgets what it is to be a 
 son of the God who worked and rested, 
 but did both as God, and who expects 
 His sons to be like Him. 
 
VI 
 HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 SITTING in the saloon of a little British 
 steamer off the China coast one evening, 
 some years ago, after the other officers 
 and passengers had left the dinner table, 
 the chief officer lighted his pipe and, 
 pouring out some whisky and soda, 
 pushed the whisky bottle over to me, and 
 asked me to join him. When I thanked 
 him and declined, he looked up in a 
 frank and cordial way and _ said: 
 “You'll not mind my saying, will you, 
 that I never do really feel quite at home 
 with men who will not drink with me? 
 A glass together is a good social tie. 
 Now you and I would feel a good deal 
 chummier if you just did as I do in this 
 matter.” I laughed and told him that it 
 really wasn’t necessary, that we could 
 talk together and be good friends, even 
 if I didn’t share his “peg.” I thought 
 
 82 
 
His Companions 83 
 
 to myself that if one of us needed to 
 make a sacrifice in the matter, it would 
 better be he. 
 
 Now my friendly chief officer’s view is 
 a very common one. Young men are 
 prone to think that without a vice or two 
 there cannot be any good comradeship; 
 so they take to an indulgence for which 
 at the outset, perhaps, they do not care 
 at all, or care only in the way of dislike, 
 and imagine that this provides them with 
 a solid basis for true friendship and good 
 fellowship; which is a very piteous mis- 
 take. The friendship which is fed on 
 such a root has frail and precarious nour- 
 ishment. A common taste for drink or a 
 particular sort of gambling, or any com- 
 mon “fast” pursuit is as likely to lead 
 to petty dispute as to high and enduring 
 companionship. The grapes of a pure 
 friendship never yet grew on such a 
 bramble. 
 
 How contemptible this view of friend- 
 ship is when you stop to think about it ! 
 Friendship is not now a great, unselfish 
 will to serve and love. It is community 
 
Na aes, 
 
 84 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 of participation in what is unclean and 
 sinful, or at the best frivolous and trivial, 
 a sort of fellowship in dissipation. Now, 
 real friendship is an inter-knitting of life 
 in its deepest and best things, not a super- 
 ficial and meaningless contact over some 
 common physical taste or indulgence. 
 Young men cannot keep from compan- 
 ionship. They ought not to desire to do 
 so. God intended us for fellowship and 
 enriched us with the necessity of love. 
 
 ‘« T believe who hath not loved 
 Hath half the sweetness of his life unproved: 
 Like one who, with the grape within his 
 
 grasp, 
 
 Drops it with all its crimson juice unpressed, 
 And all its luscious sweetness left unguessed, 
 Out from his careless and unheeding clasp.” 
 
 Every young man should have com- 
 panions and cultivate them. These are 
 the years for him to grow rich in friend- 
 ships. Some will surely come to him 
 late; but most of those which bless his 
 older years will be the friendships of his 
 youth grown nobler with time. 
 
 All of a young man’s life should be 
 
His Companions 85 
 
 courteous and kindly, open thus to the 
 approach of other hearts, and encoura- 
 ging friendliness in all who come near. 
 This is not a counsel of looseness. There 
 is a just reticence and reserve of nature 
 which is the best protection of the sanc- 
 tities of human intercourse. But a con- 
 sistent cordiality in a strong, clean-living 
 man is a far better thing than occasional 
 bursts of maudlin affection, over wine or 
 games, in a man at other times taciturn 
 and of self-centered heart. 
 
 It may sometimes be unjust, but it is 
 unavoidable, to judge young men by the 
 companions they choose. “ Tell me thy 
 companions,” says Cervantes, “and I will 
 tell thee what thou art.” “ We should 
 ever have it fixed in our memories,” says 
 an old writer, “that by the character of 
 those whom we choose for our friends, 
 our own is likely to be formed, and will 
 actually be judged of by the world.” 
 Wise business men watch the company 
 their trusted employees keep. And it 
 happens more than once that new checks 
 are devised for protection against the 
 
86 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 losses which are threatened by the loose- 
 ness of a man in the choice of his friends. 
 It is the man of clean life and of stainless 
 associations whom men trust. 
 
 Young men should not be afraid to 
 break away from companionships which 
 they discover are evil and injurious. A 
 man does not like to do this. It seems a 
 little Pharisaical; as though he said, “I 
 am too good to associate longer with 
 you.” But it is hypocrisy to stay with a 
 crowd whose standards and practices you 
 abhor, and the only right thing for a 
 man to do, who discovers that temptations 
 are inevitable if he keeps up certain com- 
 panionships, which could be avoided if 
 he would sever these companionships, 
 and that he has-not influence enough to 
 hold his fellows in check and draw them 
 up, is to break with them and be free. 
 Perhaps he will be able to carry some 
 with him. In many country towns young 
 men: get off the road, and in the dearth 
 of fine interests and high influences play 
 with loose habits and wrong things. But 
 there is a large remnant of good in them. 
 
His Companions 87 
 
 They have simply slid down because it 
 was the easiest way to go, not because 
 they especially care for it. Let one man 
 rise up and stand firm, yielding nothing, 
 but keeping a merry heart of good fellow- 
 ship in him with all his clean and fearless 
 purity, and others, weaker, but no fonder 
 of foul things, will creep up to him and 
 lean on his strength. All that is needed 
 is that one man should be strong, and 
 break from his sheep impulse to follow 
 the flock. Life has room and need for 
 such heroism. It is not intended to be 
 a soft compliance with everything. It is 
 meant to be full of sharp and stern re- 
 sistance, of fierce rupture with evil, and 
 of the courage to stand alone. 
 
 There is no need of haste is choosing 
 companionships. Take your time and be 
 sure. “ There is a certain magic or charm 
 in company,” said Sir Matthew Hale, 
 once Lord Chief Justice of England, “ for 
 it will assimilate and make you like to 
 them by much conversation with them; 
 if they be good company, it is a great 
 means to make you good, or confirm you 
 
88 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 in goodness; but if they be bad, it is 
 twenty to one but they will infect and 
 corrupt you. Therefore be wary and shy 
 in choosing and entertaining, or frequent- 
 ing any company or companions; be not 
 too hasty in connecting yourself to them; 
 stand off awhile until you have inquired 
 of some (that you know by experience to 
 be faithful) what they are; observe what 
 company they keep; be not too easy to 
 gain acquaintance, but stand off, and 
 keep a distance yet awhile, till you have 
 observed and learnt touching them. 
 Men and women that are greedy of 
 acquaintance, or hasty in it, are often- 
 times snared in ill company before they 
 are aware, and entangled so that they 
 cannot easily loose from it after, when 
 they would.” This was a wise man speak- 
 ing wisdom. Of course, life is to be a free 
 and spontaneous thing, not a stilted self- 
 ishness; but the best we have to give is 
 ourselves. Let us not make a present of 
 our highest possession to every chance 
 comer, and discover too late that we have 
 laid ourselves bare to shame. 
 
His Companions 89 
 
 Sir Matthew speaks of the magic as- 
 similating power of our companionships. 
 We cannot resist this if we would. It 
 works on us so secretly that we are not 
 aware of its power. We lose some of our 
 fineness of nature with coarse friends 
 without knowing that something is gone 
 which will not come back again. And the 
 noble influence of good men fashions us 
 and touches our lives with dignity and 
 strength, so that the eyes of others look 
 on us with wonder before we know that a 
 change has come. “ Every man,” says 
 Euripides, in “ Phoenix,” “is like the 
 company he is wont to keep.” 
 
 A young man should have a few older 
 men, and at least a few younger men also, 
 among those who call him friend, and 
 whom he regards as companions of an 
 inner degree. He needs the steadying 
 of larger experience, and he needs, too, 
 the sobering, enriching influence of 
 friendships where he is the trusted and 
 respected one and the source of strength. 
 
 In the life of Dr. John Hall, there is 
 printed a fac-simile of a list of eleven 
 
eee: 
 
 go A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 names in Dr. Hall’s handwriting, on the 
 margin of which he has written, “ My 
 friends.” His son and biographer says 
 that his father had banded himself with 
 these friends in the college at Belfast, “to 
 pray, to improve their own spiritual life, 
 and to promote a new missionary spirit. 
 When separating for their life-work, 
 these friends resolved that on Saturday 
 evenings they should remember each 
 other in prayer and by name as long as 
 they lived.” This fellowship, adds the 
 son, “was very dear to them all, and 
 formed an abiding influence upon my 
 father’s life.” 
 
 This is the right tone for our compan- 
 ionships, the note of grave and reverent 
 affection. Under it a young man’s life 
 will be high-toned and true. The lines of 
 true character will be cut deep and inef- 
 faceable. Back of the playfulness which 
 is wholesome and right, will lie the still 
 and serious realisation of what friend 
 owes to friend, and we shall live, in truth 
 and goodness, because we live with good 
 and true men and not alone. 
 
VII 
 SHALL I DRINK? 
 
 PRACTICALLY every young man is 
 solicited at some time to drink wine or 
 beer, or some stronger drink. What shall 
 his attitude be on this question? Ought 
 he to be a teetotaler, or should he take 
 what he will be told is a moderate view, 
 and drink a little for the sake of socia- 
 bility and good fellowship? If the ques- 
 tion is put in the extreme form. “ Shall 
 I become a drunkard, or be a temperate 
 man, even to the extent of abstinence?” 
 every young man will choose abstinence. 
 But many hold that a middle course is 
 much more manly, that to decline to drink 
 for fear of becoming a drunkard or los- 
 ing control of one’s appetite is an evi- 
 dence of weakness or cowardice. Some 
 men allege that to refrain from touching 
 drink because its abuse is evil, is no more 
 necessary or admirable than to refrain_ 
 
 g! 
 
g2 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 from using language because it is often 
 put to evil service, or fire because it is 
 dangerous, or any food which can be 
 overused with harmful effect. 
 
 One principle may be set forth clearly 
 at the outset,—namely, that it is within 
 any man’s right to refrain from the use 
 of all intoxicating drink. It is no man’s 
 duty to use it as a beverage. Every man 
 is within his Christian liberty in refusing 
 to touch it. If any man moves in a so- 
 ciety that curtails this liberty or denies it, 
 his suspicion ought to be aroused, for the 
 next step will be the abridgment of other 
 liberties as well. 
 
 But I am going further than this. It is 
 not only a man’s right to let liquor alone, 
 itis his duty. /He owes it to society and 
 to himself as a worker. He cannot do his 
 best work except as a sober, clear- 
 minded, steady-nerved man. The rail- 
 roads will not employ men who are not 
 sober, and are coming more and more to 
 prefer total abstainers. Even bartenders 
 are often required to let drink alone. 
 The idea that it brightens the intellect 
 
Shall I Drink? 93 
 
 and sharpens the faculties is purely falla- 
 cious. This defense comes, as a rule, 
 from men upon whom the habit has fas- 
 tened itself, and who seek a justification 
 of it, and who obviously disprove their 
 own contention. “I have never used 
 liquor,’ Mr. John G. Johnson, the lead- 
 ing lawyer of Philadelphia, was recently 
 reported to have said, “because I don’t 
 like it. But I know men who have used 
 it, and I don’t think it ever brightened 
 their intellects.” 
 
 Not only does drinking not brighten 
 the intellect and increase its working 
 power, but it breaks down the integrity 
 of nature and the vitality of the men who 
 drink. “ Alcohol is injurious,’ Dr. J. 
 Solis-Cohen, of Philadelphia, is reported 
 by the same paper which quoted Mr. 
 Johnson’s statement to have said: “A 
 man may drink it to deaden his sorrow, 
 but the pendulum will always swing as 
 far one way as it does the other. If he 
 finds happiness or joy in intoxication, 
 he will pay for it by consequential misery 
 when he gets sober. It might stimulate 
 
94 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 the minds of some men temporarily, but 
 it would soon kill their intellects and 
 shorten their lives. Physicians agree 
 that it is a bad thing. All stimu- 
 lants are injurious. A few years ago we 
 stopped the use of liquor in the Home 
 for Consumptives. Since that time there 
 has been a marked decrease in the number 
 of hemorrhages. It is bad in every 
 way.” 
 
 Of course the young man who begins 
 to drink does not intend to drink enough 
 to be injured by it. He believes he can 
 control himself, and he despises the 
 drunkard who has surrendered his man- 
 hood and his self-control as thoroughly 
 as any abstainer does. But what evidence 
 has any young man that he can retain 
 control of this appetite? Let any young 
 man who thinks he can, look up the 
 family history of the people whom he 
 knows best, his own family history, even. 
 In few cases will he be able to recall two 
 generations without meeting a drunkard, 
 who meant to be only a moderate drinker 
 when he began. No drunkard meant to 
 
Shall I Drink? 95 
 
 be a drunkard when he began. He did 
 not intend to acquire the habit of drink. 
 But a habit fixes itself upon the man who 
 does the acts in which the roots of the 
 habit reside. Even if the habit is but one 
 of moderate drinking, that is the only 
 road to the habit of immoderate drinking. 
 And it is a road that is surer to run that 
 way than the other. 
 
 “ Twenty-five years ago,” Mr. Depew 
 said, recently, in an address to railroad 
 men, “I knew every man, woman and 
 child in Peekskill. It has been a study 
 with me to mark the course of the boys, 
 in every grade of life, who started with 
 myself—to see what has become of them. 
 Last fall I was up there, and began to 
 count them over, and the lesson was most 
 instructive. Some of them became clerks, 
 some merchants, manufacturers, lawyers, 
 or doctors. It is remarkable that every 
 one of them that had drinking habits is 
 now dead—not a single one of my age 
 now living. Except a few who were 
 taken off by sickness, everyone has 
 proved a wreck, and has wrecked his 
 
g6 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 family, and did it from rum and whiskey 
 and no other cause. Of those who were 
 church-going people, who were steady, 
 industrious and hard-working men, and 
 frugal and thrifty, every one without ex- 
 ception, owns the house in which he lives, 
 and has something laid by, the interest on 
 which, with his house, would carry him 
 through many a rainy day. When a man 
 becomes debased with gambling, rum, or 
 drink, he seems to care for nothing; all 
 his finer feelings are stifled, and ruin only 
 is his end.” ? 
 Even men who themselves drink will 
 give this sort of advice to others; and 
 when they have to employ others, will 
 prefer, without hesitation, the man who 
 is known to abstain. Such a man is 
 more trusted because he can trust himself. 
 He has acquired the habit of self-control, 
 and no temptation can allure him. « 
 Many young men drink because it 
 seems to them to be a brave thing to do. 
 They feel a manly independence in it. 
 As a matter of fact, it is not courage, but 
 cowardice, that leads many of them to it. 
 
Shall I Drink? 97 
 
 Some one invites them to take a drink, 
 and they are afraid to refuse, or there is 
 a crowd about them, and they do not want 
 to seem timid. They think that to retain 
 the respect of the crowd they must do as 
 the crowd is doing. But probably the 
 whole crowd is just following one or two 
 leaders, and the real heart of the leaders 
 may be only a coward’s heart. These 
 are the very times when principles are 
 worth something, and when the man who 
 says, “I will not,” stands out as the man 
 of true courage. 
 
 The habit of drink, whether regular or 
 not, is a wasteful habit. The American 
 Grocer estimated the expenditure of the 
 people of the United States for sib 2 
 in the year 1900 as follows: 
 
 Alcoholic drinks .............- $1,059,563,787 
 POE tse ces ceevc aca caleldiaests 125,798,530 
 Tea Re guicisuma/de son wralein 37,312, 
 Cocoa. Pomduceaaencesduvcee ,0Q0,000 
 $1,228,674,925 
 
 The men and women who spent this 
 billion and fifty million dollars for strong 
 
98 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 drink have nothing left to show for the 
 expenditure but some weakness hidden 
 away somewhere as the sole consequence. 
 The beer habit, which is the easiest habit 
 for young men to form, is as bad as any 
 in this. It can be indulged anywhere, 
 and its innocence is imaginary. “I 
 think beer kills quicker than any other 
 liquor,”’ say an old physician. “ My at- 
 tention was first called to its insidious 
 effects, when I began examining for life 
 insurance. I passed as unusually good 
 risks five Germans, young business men, 
 who seemed in the best health, and to 
 have superb constitutions. In a few 
 years I was amazed to see the whole five 
 drop off, one after another, with what 
 ought to have been mild and easily cur- 
 able diseases. On comparing my experi- 
 ence with that of other physicians, I 
 found they were all having similar luck 
 with confirmed beer-drinkers, and my 
 practice has since heaped confirmation on 
 confirmation.” 
 
 | At a recent meeting of the New York 
 ‘Academy of Medicine, the question of the 
 
 a 
 
Shall’ I Drink? 99 
 
 effects of alcoholism was discussed, and 
 Dr. Charles L. Dana spoke of having 
 studied carefully three hundred and fifty 
 cases of alcoholism at Bellevue Hospital, 
 of which the most frequent form was 
 dipsomania and the next pseudo-dipso- 
 mania. Over two-thirds of the whole 
 had begun drinking before the age of 
 twenty years, and all before thirty years. 
 As a rule, the drunkard did not live more 
 than fifteen years after his habit had be- 
 come confirmed. Whether beer or spirits, 
 the effects of their use are bad. Why 
 should a man begin a wasteful habit 
 which ‘is so easily carried to excess, which 
 even if not carried to excess does him no 
 good, and does do him positive harm? 
 It is true that in some associations it 
 is hard for a young man to refrain from 
 drinking. Many young men grow up in 
 homes where wine is always on the table. 
 They are in business relations where it is 
 regarded as the natural thing to drink 
 and peculiar to abstain. But conscien- 
 tious principles are respected everywhere, 
 when they are pleasantly but firmly ad- 
 
100 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 hered to; and even if the principles are 
 not conscientious, but merely prudential, 
 they will be offensive to no one to whom 
 they are not made offensive by some per- 
 sonal unpleasantries on the part of the 
 one holding them. 
 
 The principle of abstinence should be 
 with us a conscientious, not merely a pru- 
 dential, principle. Our moral judgment 
 should so revolt from the terrible abuse 
 of liquor and the liquor business, that we 
 will refrain from the use of drink as the 
 only effective protest. The terrible risk 
 of one act issuing in a second act, and 
 that in a third, and that in the birth of a 
 habit with all the possible consequences, 
 should make us fear for ourselves, while 
 what we see of wreck and ruin round us 
 should lead us to abstain for our brother’s 
 sake. This is the high, religious ground. 
 Drinking keeps us back from the best in 
 ourselves, and it hinders us from the best 
 helpfulness toward others. It is religious 
 principle alone that will really stand all 
 the tests in this matter, as religious prin- 
 ciple alone can effect what needs to be 
 effected when men have gone too far. At 
 
Shall I Drink? 101 
 
 the meeting of the New York Academy 
 of Medicine referred to, Dr. Allen Starr 
 confessed “ that the only reformed drunk- 
 ards of whom he had knowledge, were 
 those who had been saved, not through 
 medical, but through religious, influ- 
 ence.” He declared his belief that peri- 
 odical drinking was chiefly a matter of 
 moral obliquity. 
 
 The great word for the young man is 
 “liberty.” He wants to be free. Often- 
 times he begins to drink with the idea that 
 this is a sign of his independence. But 
 this is the use of liberty for the purpose 
 of enslavement. He only is free who is 
 master of his tastes and appetites, and 
 can look the temptation to drink calmly 
 in the face, and say, without wavering, 
 “No.” The man who says: “ That is no 
 liberty. That is slavery to hard asceti- 
 cism, and is cowardly. Iam free because 
 I can say ‘ Yes’ or ‘No’ as I please,” 
 may be telling the truth about himself 
 once in many times, but for the rest, he 
 thinks he can say “ No” when he wants 
 to do so, because he never wants to do so. 
 
VIII 
 SHALL I SMOKE? 
 
 THOUSANDS of good men _ smoke. 
 Either through association or from other 
 reasons, the idea of sociability and good 
 fellowship has become identified with the 
 smoking habit, and many times the man 
 who does not use tobacco will be some- 
 what lonesome in his habit of abstinence 
 in the midst of smokers on every side. 
 The fact that smoking becomes such a 
 fixed and unconquerable taste with many 
 good men is a proof that there is a pleas- 
 ure in it which cannot be summarily con- 
 demned. Yet, from the point of view of 
 unselfishness and of perfect cleanliness 
 and freedom, it is a habit for which young 
 men can find no adequate defense, and 
 there are things to be said about it which 
 make it hard to see how any young man 
 can acquire and retain the habit save as a 
 
 1032 
 
Shall I Smoke? 103 
 
 confessed indulgence or concession to 
 weakness. 
 
 For, first of all, the tobacco habit is ar 
 unclean habit. It is impossible for a man 
 to use tobacco without being sometimes at 
 least contaminated by its odour. After a 
 little, of course, his senses become hard- 
 ened, so that he does not notice this; but 
 all who do not use tobacco do notice it, 
 and it is especially distasteful to women. 
 Most women, of course, make no com- 
 plaint, and often even encourage men to 
 smoke, either because they do not want 
 to limit their pleasure, or because they 
 think that a man’s influence is dependent 
 upon the maintenance of good fellowship 
 in this way. But, on the other hand, they 
 do not like the smell of tobacco, and thou- 
 sands simply cannot abide it. The odour 
 of it in homes or railroad cars or public 
 places is almost unbearable to many of 
 them. Few smokers realise the discom- 
 fort they cause others. They will smoke 
 in a smoking compartment of a sleeping 
 or parlour car, and with doors opened pol- 
 lute the atmosphere of the whole car, or 
 
104 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 will smoke in public places and let the 
 smoke drift into the faces of others to 
 whom it is unpleasant or even nauseat- 
 ing. 
 
 Men reply to this that no gentleman 
 would do this. But that is not true. 
 Some will not do it, but other gentlemen 
 do it constantly—at any rate, men who 
 always pass for gentlemen, and are gen- 
 tlemen in other respects. But they are 
 simply so addicted to their habit that 
 they lose the consciousness of its repul- — 
 siveness to others. The tobacco habit is 
 a distinctly coarsening habit. It dulls 
 the senses of taste and smell, and often 
 of hearing, and it blunts the sensibilities 
 of many men. 
 
 The New York Sun recently reported 
 an incident on a trolley car which keenly 
 illustrates this : 
 
 “ Both platforms were crowded as well 
 as the interior of the car, and this fellow 
 stood at the rear door and smoked cheap 
 cigarettes incessantly. The smoke blew 
 in upon the men and women who were 
 packed together on the seats, and in the 
 
Shall I Smoke? 105 
 
 aisles, and their complaints to the con- 
 ductor resulted in nothing. 
 
 “ The conductor remonstrated with the 
 man, as did a trained nurse who was re- 
 turning home after a night’s vigil in a 
 patient’s room, and who was made ill by 
 the smell of the poor tobacco. All was 
 in vain; the man defied the passengers 
 and the conductor and dared the latter to 
 put him off the car. 
 
 “He was standing on the rear plat- 
 form, and the law allowed him to smoke 
 there, he contended. And, as there were 
 more women than men on the platform, 
 he smoked several cigarettes in their 
 faces, seemingly to his own satisfaction. 
 
 “The most surprising part of the per- 
 formance was that the man was well clad 
 and but for his conduct might have been 
 taken for an ordinary person of respecta- 
 bility.” 
 
 Many who smoke would join in con- 
 demning a boor like this, but let them 
 pause and ask whether they have never 
 themselves offended, if not in this coarse 
 way, yet as really. Have they never 
 
106 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 tainted the atmosphere with the tobacco- 
 filled odour of their clothes or persons, or 
 never smoked offensively on a steamer 
 deck or in a home, or come from an at- 
 mosphere of smoke into the presence of 
 people to whom the odour of tobacco was 
 altogether objectionable? There are 
 some dinners to which men who can’t 
 smoke, or who will not, go under constant 
 silent protest, because they know they 
 will come home with their clothes reeking 
 with the odour and their lungs defiled 
 by it. 
 
 This is not too strong language. The 
 nicotine poison is a defiling poison. That 
 it is so in cigarettes is universally ad- 
 mitted. Many of the American states 
 have passed laws forbidding the use of 
 cigarettes by boys. The Japanese gov- 
 ernment has forbidden the use of tobacco 
 by all young men under twenty years of 
 age. The reasons for this are not all 
 moral or social. There are adequate 
 physical grounds for it. The New York 
 Medical Journal says: 
 
 “ Cigarettes are responsible for a great 
 
Shall I Smoke? 107 
 
 amount of mischief, not because the 
 smoke from the paper has any particu- 
 larly evil effect, but because smokers— 
 and they are very often boys or very 
 young men—are apt to use them continu- 
 ously or at very frequent intervals, believ- 
 ing their power for evil is insignificant. 
 Thus the nerves are under the constant 
 influence of the drug, and much injury 
 to the system results. Moreover, the 
 cigarette smoker uses a very considerable 
 amount of tobacco during the course of a 
 day. Nicotine is one of the most power- 
 ful of the known ‘nerve poisons.’ Its 
 depressing action upon the heart is by far 
 the most noticeable and noteworthy symp- 
 tom of nicotine poisoning. 
 
 “The frequent existence of what is 
 known as ‘smoker’s heart’ in men 
 whose health is in no other respect dis- 
 turbed is due to this effect. Those who 
 can use tobacco without immediate injury 
 will have all the pleasant effects reversed, 
 and will suffer from symptoms of poison- 
 ing if they exceed the limits of tolerance. 
 These symptoms are: 
 
108 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 if 
 
 1. The heart’s action becomes more 
 rapid when tobacco is used. 
 
 “2, Palpitation, pain, or unusual sen- 
 sations, in the heart. 
 
 “3. There is no appetite in the morn- 
 ing, the tongue is coated, delicate flavours 
 are not appreciated, and acid dyspepsia 
 occurs after eating. 
 
 “4. Diseases of the mouth and throat 
 and nasal catarrh appear, and become 
 very troublesome. 
 
 “5. The eyesight becomes poor, but 
 improves when the habit is abandoned. 
 
 “6. <A desire, often a craving, for 
 liquor or some other stimulant is ex- 
 perienced.” 
 
 Professor Latlin supports this view, 
 including the emphatic statement about 
 the relation of the use of nicotine to the 
 alcoholic taste: 
 
 “Tobacco in any form is bad, but in a 
 cigarette there are five poisons. There is 
 the oil in the paper, the oil of nicotine, 
 saltpeter to preserve the tobacco, opium 
 to make it mild, and the oil in the flavour- 
 
 ing. 
 
Shall I Smoke? 100 
 
 “ The trouble with the cigarette is the 
 inhaling of the smoke. If you blow 2 
 mouthful of smoke through a handker- 
 chief, it will leave a brown stain. Inhale 
 the smoke and blow it through the nos: 
 trils and no stain will appear. The oi! 
 and poison remain in the head and body. 
 Cigarettes create a thirst for strong 
 drink.” 
 
 Mr. Hadley, of the Jerry McAuley 
 Mission, in New York, testifies that the 
 drunkards who are converted in the mis- 
 sion break off the tobacco habit, too, and 
 that the return to nicotine usually means 
 the return to alcohol. 
 
 But there are thousands of smokers in 
 whom the smoking habit has nothing to 
 do with the drinking habit, and the young 
 man is not likely to be deterred from the 
 use of tobacco by warnings which he is 
 sure are exaggerated. Even so, how- 
 ever, he is certain to pay some penalty. 
 No inveterate smoker can be quite as 
 steady of nerve and solid of constitution 
 as he would be without tobacco. Gen- 
 eral Grant died confessedly of cancer 
 
110 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 brought on by excessive use of tobacco. 
 A professor at Annapolis declared that 
 “he could indicate the boy who used to- 
 bacco by his absolute inability to draw a 
 clean, straight line.” And nothing is 
 more rigorously forbidden to an athlete 
 or an athletic team in conscientious train- 
 ing than all use of tobacco. At some of 
 the best schools for boys in America, the 
 use of tobacco in any form is absolutely 
 prohibited. Yet these are the schools 
 where the standards and ideals of manli- 
 ness are highest. If smoking were a 
 good thing, or essential to strong, manly 
 character, these schools would be the first 
 to introduce and encourage it. 
 
 The standards of intelligent men in 
 college are the same. Dr. Trumbull, in 
 his little book, “ Border Lines in the Field 
 of Doubtful Practices,” quotes the opin- 
 ion of Dr. Seaver, the director of phys- 
 ical culture at Yale, who “ has made care- 
 ful experiments in the study of the effects 
 of tobacco, as based on the examination 
 and comparison of thousands of students, 
 in a series of years. He speaks positively 
 
Shall I Smoke? III 
 
 as to these effects in retarding growth 
 and in affecting health. Moreover, he 
 declares that ‘ the matter is of the highest 
 importance as related not only to growth, 
 but to morals and character.’ He has 
 found that while only about five per cent. 
 of the students of highest scholarship in 
 that university use tobacco in any form, 
 more than sixty per cent. of those who 
 get no appointment, as a result of their 
 standing in their studies, are tobacco 
 users. Yet he is frank to say that ‘ this 
 does not mean that mental decrepitude 
 follows the use of tobacco.’ ” 
 
 Some forms of the tobacco habit are 
 more objectionable than others; but all 
 are objectionable. All are unclean and 
 contaminating, even the smoking of a 
 pipe or of the finest cigar. And all are 
 wasteful and enslaving. Some good men 
 who smoke are very generous givers, but 
 they might give also what they spend on 
 tobacco; and many poorer men are pre- 
 vented from giving to useful causes, or 
 even from proper support of their fami- 
 lies, by their waste upon tobacco. The 
 
112 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 habit is enslaving. It makes a man de- 
 pendent. If he has to go without his 
 pipe or cigar, it affects his temper or his 
 mood, and he is not his own master. I 
 was on a little excursion recently with a 
 friend, and the circumstances were such 
 that he could not smoke all day. He 
 grew very restless, but at last, late in the 
 afternoon, he was able to find a secluded 
 place, where he got out his pipe, renewed 
 the tobacco odour of his person, reestab- 
 lished his peace of mind, and ended ‘his 
 misery. Wherein did this differ from any 
 other form of slavery, except in this, that 
 the man had enslaved himself? 
 
 I have never heard men go further in 
 defense of the use of tobacco than to say 
 that it is a simple and, on the whole, a 
 harmless indulgence. But surely men 
 have better things to do in life than to 
 acquire habits of which this is the best 
 that can be said. We cannot believe that 
 Christ would acquire such habits were 
 He here to-day, or that it pleases God to 
 see His sons saturating their bodies, 
 which He has taught them to regard as 
 
Shall I Smoke? 113 
 
 temples of the Holy Ghost, with stale 
 odours, or tainting them, however slight- 
 ly, with poison. 
 
Ix 
 
 AS TO THE THEATER 
 
 Ir is a significant thing that such re- 
 proach should attach to the stage. How 
 does it come that “ actor” and “ hypoc- 
 risy ” should be terms not of praise but of 
 condemnation or disparagement? A 
 “hypocrite ” was originally only a player. 
 Now the term is a term of contempt and 
 shame. The stage has done this for more 
 than one word. It has a way of degrad- 
 ing the language that it creates or that 
 becomes associated with it. An “actor” 
 etymologically is a “ doer,’ a “ worker.” 
 But now an “ actor ” is a player, one who 
 pretends to do. 
 
 In the same way the stage not only de- 
 grades words; it discredits in many ages 
 and many lands the persons connected 
 with it. Solon condemned the profession 
 in ancient Greece as “tending, by its 
 simulation of false character, and by its 
 
 114 
 
As to the Theater 11s 
 
 expression of sentiment not genuine or 
 sincere, to corrupt the integrity of human 
 dealings.” Actors, under the Roman re- 
 public “became in the eye of the law 
 infamis (disreputable) and incapable of 
 holding any honourable office.” In China 
 to-day actors are among the despised 
 classes who are excluded from the Con- 
 fucian examinations, and so debarred 
 from all official and honourable position. 
 Elsewhere actresses and actors are re- 
 garded with a curious suspicion. The 
 number who are admired and respected 
 and might be admitted to some measure 
 of social equality, are so few as to make 
 the rest stand out in the more conspicuous 
 disrepute. There is something in this 
 that furnishes food for thought. 
 
 One of the first results of such thought 
 is the discovery that the reasons for 
 this distrust and dislike of the theat- 
 rical profession do not rest on imagi- 
 nary grounds. Whatever may have been 
 the character of actors and actresses 
 when they went on the stage, it 
 is undeniable that in multitudes of 
 
116 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 cases, the stage has worked to its de- 
 generation. How could it be otherwise? 
 As Mr. A. M. Palmer, the great theater 
 manager says: “ The chief themes of the 
 theater are now, as they ever have been, 
 the passions of men; ambition leading to 
 murder ; jealousy leading to murder; lust 
 leading to adultery and to death; anger 
 leading to madness.” 
 
 Dr. Trumbull quotes, in his little book 
 on “ Border Lines,” the computation of 
 an English writer some years ago that at 
 that time Henry Irving had “ committed 
 at least fifteen thousand murders on the 
 stage, while Mr. Barry Sullivan had 
 added at least two thousand more stage 
 murders than this to his list; that Mr. 
 Charles Wyndham had been divorced 
 from twenty-eight hundred wives—on 
 the stage; that Mrs. Bancroft had in the 
 same public place been ‘ foully betrayed 
 or abducted’ thirty-two hundred times; 
 that Miss Ada Cavendish had been “ be- 
 trayed, deserted, or abducted’ fifty-six 
 hundred times; and so on, along the list 
 of popular actors.” And true acting con- 
 
As to the Theater 117 
 
 sists in really entering into the spirit of 
 the murderer, the betrayer, or the be- 
 trayed. 
 
 As Dr. Trumbull says: “There is noth- 
 ing akin to it in any otherapproved sphere 
 of art. A man may describe evil or 
 portray it in literature, in poetry, in music, 
 in painting, in sculpture, without putting 
 himself into that exhibit of evil, without 
 merging his personality in another per- 
 sonality ; but in the art of the actor he who 
 would portray the tyrant, the murderer, 
 the adulterer, the seducer, or the betrayer 
 of a sacred trust, must, in order to be the 
 best actor, strive to think and feel and 
 speak and act as if he were himself this 
 very evil-doer.” 
 
 Now, could any man go through all 
 this, entering with real feeling into these 
 acts of crime and passion, or what emo- 
 tionally are such, without being affected 
 by them? Perhaps some could but the 
 great majority will inevitably be moulded 
 and demoralised by them. Every honest- 
 hearted man must feel the truth of this. 
 “Let a pure man or a pure woman de- 
 
118 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 liberately plan and repeatedly endeavour 
 to think and feel and seem to act as if 
 impure, or even as it dallying with temp- 
 tation and weighing the possible gains of 
 impurity and crime—and can it be that 
 impurity and crime will continue to have 
 the same abhorrence of mien to such a 
 person, as if their very semblance 
 had been counted ever abhorrent ?” It 
 is not strange that Macready would 
 not allow his children to attend the 
 theater. 
 
 Of course, it may be freely admitted 
 that there are exceptions, both in players 
 and in plays; but Mr. Palmer knows what 
 he is talking about in naming the chief 
 themes of the theater, and the instinct 
 that sets off actors and actresses in a 
 class apart, a socially ostracised class, is 
 an accurate instinct. If then the stage in 
 its character and effects is what has been 
 suggested, what right has a young man 
 to encourage and support it? Can a 
 young man justify himself in thus help- 
 ing, for the sake of the personal amuse- 
 ment or excitement he can get out of it, 
 
As to the Theater 11g 
 
 to maintain an agency that debases what 
 it touches ? 
 
 “ But,” the young man says, “I recog- 
 nise all this, but I don’t believe in aban- 
 doning the theater absolutely because it is 
 abused. It ought to be purified and made 
 a great influence for good. The stage is 
 a powerful educational agency. If good 
 people wholly scorn it, it will just pander 
 to the low tastes of people whose ideals 
 are unworthy. We ought to try to influ- 
 ence it. I don’t like the bad plays, and 
 I don’t go to them. I select those that 
 are wholesome and clean. Such plays 
 do me good. They rest my mind and 
 quicken my admirations and aspirations.” 
 
 But is it possible to encourage the good 
 without supporting the bad? Our in- 
 tention may be to do this, but that will 
 not be a guarantee that our conduct will 
 have this effect. As Phillips Brooks wrote 
 to a young woman on the subject of at- 
 tending the theater: “I think it is better 
 not to go. The trouble with the theater 
 is its dreadful indiscriminateness. The 
 same house which gives good Mrs. Vin- 
 
120 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 cent her benefit to-day may have almost 
 anything to-morrow. What can we do 
 with an institution like that?” 
 
 Indeed, we may draw a line between 
 what we think innocent and what harm- 
 ful; but some one else without our dis- 
 crimination, will draw his line a little 
 farther over, and defend himself by our 
 principle, for going to see what he calls 
 harmless, but which we condemn. Often 
 such a man will meet our criticism with 
 the Bible verse, with which many a filthy 
 man defends himself, “To the pure all 
 things are pure.” So long as the stage is 
 as unclean as it is, and acting involves, 
 as it constantly does, the simulation of 
 the basest passions and emotions, and this 
 even in “ good plays,” it is almost impos- 
 sible for a man to support it at all without 
 in a real sense lending his support to it 
 all. 
 
 The idea of helping to purify the stage 
 by patronising it is a futile idea. The 
 influence of presence is inconsiderable. 
 No one who goes to the theater often is 
 likely to cherish the idea of exerting an 
 
As to the Theater 121 
 
 influence upon the character of the stage 
 by his personal attendance. It is wrong 
 to attempt to reform an immorality by 
 fostering and supporting it. 
 
 Young men often say that they patron- 
 ise the theater to uplift it, but they sel- 
 dom say this honestly. It is an excuse 
 for going, not a reason. They go for the 
 amusement, the excitement, the show of 
 it, and it influences them a hundred times 
 more than they influence it. It affects 
 them in many ways. It fosters unnat- 
 uralism. It wastes their money. It 
 arouses emotions with no opportunity for 
 their exercise if by chance they are good, 
 and only too much opportunity if they are 
 evil. It provides an atmosphere in which 
 base desires are born, and the glare, the 
 enticement, the suggestions of it all, draw 
 them on to worse things afterwards, when 
 the imaginations of the evening bring 
 forth their fruit of death in the acts of the 
 night. When the influence of the theater 
 stops far short of this, as of course it 
 usually does, it yet breeds unnaturalness, 
 fictitiousness of feeling, and a certain in- 
 
122 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 sincerity, the painfulness of which is all 
 the greater because it is so often uncon- 
 scious. 
 
 , This is the psychological ground on 
 which Professor James, of Harvard, 
 objects to the theater: “ When a resolve 
 or a fine glow of feeling is allowed to 
 evaporate without bearing practical fruit 
 it is worse than a chance lost; it works 
 sO aS positively to hinder future resolu- 
 tions and emotions from taking the nor- 
 mal path of discharge. There is no more 
 contemptible type of human character 
 than that of the nerveless sentimental- 
 ist and dreamer, who spends his life in a 
 weltering sea of sensibility and emotion, 
 but who never does a manly concrete 
 deed. Rousseau, inflaming all the moth- 
 ers of France, by his eloquence, to follow 
 Nature and nurse their babies them- 
 selves, while he sends his own children to 
 the foundling hospital, is the classical ex- 
 ample of what I mean. But every one of 
 us in his measure, whenever, after glow- 
 ing for an abstractly formulated Good, he 
 practically ignores some actual case, 
 
As to the Theater 123 
 
 among the squalid ‘other particulars’ 
 of which that same Good lurks disguised, 
 treads straight on Rousseau’s path. All 
 Goods are disguised by the vulgarity of 
 their concomitants, in this work-a-day 
 world; but woe to him who can only rec- 
 ognise them when he thinks them in their 
 pure and abstract form! The habit of ex- 
 cessive novel-reading and theater-going 
 will produce true monsters in this line. The 
 weeping of the Russian lady over the fic- 
 titious personages in the play, while her 
 coachman is freezing to death on his seat 
 outside, is the sort of thing that every- 
 where happens on a less glaring scale. 
 Even the excessive habit of indulgence in 
 music, for those who are neither perform- 
 ers themselves nor musically gifted 
 enough to take it in a purely intellectual 
 way, has probably a relaxing effect upon 
 the character. One becomes filled with 
 emotions which habitually pass without 
 prompting to any deed, and so the inertly 
 sentimental condition is kept up.” 
 
 To be sure, there are many men so 
 strong that the theater affects them in 
 
124 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 none of these ways. But how trivial and 
 unworthy is such a use of time for such 
 men! With a world full of useful work 
 to be done, and so few strong men to do 
 it, with ten thousand great books to be 
 read, each one of which will do the man 
 more good and make him of more good 
 to others than sitting for three hours 
 looking at a “play,” with the hungry 
 needing to be fed and the poor clothed 
 and the ignorant taught, what a waste of 
 time and money the theater involves! 
 “But the best people go,” you say. 
 What if they do? Every wrong that has 
 ever lived in the world had this to be 
 said in its defense. Moreover, what is 
 meant by “best people?” Would Jesus 
 go? Do you think you would find Him 
 at “ L’Aiglon,” or “ Sappho,” or “ Floro- 
 dora,” or even at “ The Little Minister,” 
 or “A Fool’s Revenge?” If you did, 
 would you think as much of Him as you 
 did before? Do you deem the theater 
 harmless and proper for your minister? 
 We may be able to defend to ourselves 
 our going to the theater, but we find 
 
As to the Theater 125 
 
 difficulty in defending it to others. So 
 also we ourselves persist in judging 
 others by a standard we do not apply to 
 ourselves. We do not want those we 
 trust and revere to devote themselves to 
 the attempt to uplift the stage by patron- 
 ising it. On the other hand, if we want 
 to hold the greatest influence over the 
 lives of others, we will forego the attempt 
 to reform the stage by supporting it. 
 “We saw you coming out of the theater 
 the other night,’ said two young men 
 who saw no harm in the theater for them- 
 selves, to a friend who was trying to 
 win them to better things and to Christ. 
 “We saw you. We don’t take any stock 
 in your religion.” It was an unjust judg- 
 ment, but Paul reckoned with such in the 
 government of his life. “If meat make 
 my brother to offend,” he said, “I will 
 eat no flesh while the world standeth.” 
 Can a Christian man conscientiously 
 patronise an institution of which in a past 
 day Macaulay said, “ Morality constantly 
 enters into that world, a sound morality 
 and an unsound morality ; the sound mor- 
 
126 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 ality to be insulted, derided, associated 
 with everything mean and hateful; the 
 unsound morality to be set off to every 
 advantage and inculcated by all methods 
 direct and indirect ;” and of which in this 
 day, a dramatic critic, Mr. William Win- 
 ter, declares, “Christian ethics on the 
 stage would be as inappropriate as Mr. 
 Owen’s Solon Shingle in the pulpit?” 
 
x 
 
 THE YOUNG MAN AND MONEY 
 
 “ CuHILon would say,” remarks Lord 
 Bacon, “that gold was tried with the 
 touchstone, and men with gold.” This 
 is a wise word. Scarcely anything so 
 strongly tests a young man’s character 
 as money. Some men seem to be fair 
 and high-minded and noble men until 
 some question of money arises, and in a 
 moment the real weakness of their nature 
 is revealed, and they are shown to be 
 common and inferior. A banker meets 
 a stranger, and, as they talk about a cer- 
 tain school, the banker says, “It is not 
 generally known, but I am going to give 
 it fifty thousand dollars.” A preacher in- 
 vited to speak in a neighbouring city inti- 
 mates that he cannot come for less than 
 one hundred dollars. A traveller home 
 from Europe relates his experience, and 
 tells of his visit to this church or that 
 
 127 
 
128 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 charity, and quite incidentally lets you 
 know the amount of his donation to its 
 support. A man who has treated you 
 very cavalierly, perhaps contemptuously, 
 becomes very obsequious to some one else 
 who approaches and who has nothing to 
 commend him to such deference but the 
 fact that he is rich. Other men go up 
 and down in their self-respect and their 
 dignity of bearing among men with the 
 tise or fall of their finances. Surely, as 
 a wise man has said, “ Money does all 
 things; for it gives and it takes away, it 
 makes honest men and knaves, fools and 
 philosophers.” 
 
 The simple rule for a man is to deny 
 to money the first place. It is a vulgar 
 and ill-bred master in the first place, and 
 it is a splendid and powerful servant out 
 of it. Money is not everything. 
 
 ‘‘Get money, still get money, boy, 
 No matter by what means” 
 
 is the cynical advice of Ben Jonson. It 
 is very bad advice. There are countless 
 things better than money ; 
 
The Young Man and Money 129 
 
 “ The splendour of the intellect’s advance; 
 The social pleasures and their genial wit; 
 The fascinations of the worlds of art; 
 The glories of the worlds of nature, lit 
 By large imagination's glowing heart; 
 The rapture of mere being full of health.” 
 
 Of course there are men, multitudes of 
 them, who live for money, to whom 
 money-getting has become life itself, and 
 who can have no pleasure except in ac- 
 cumulation of wealth. And there are 
 classes of society, or at least groups of 
 men, in which any other standard or am- 
 bition is unintelligible, and the acquisi- 
 tion of wealth is regarded as the first and 
 unassailable axiom of life. But there are 
 others who know better. It is nonsense, 
 of course, to say that money is useless. 
 It is not useless. It is absolutely neces- 
 sary; and young men should seek to earn 
 as much of it as they need for their own 
 support, for capital for useful industry, 
 and for philanthropy and benevolence. 
 But use is the chief end of life, not gain. 
 
 Every young man should begin early to 
 save. He is unfortunate if his father has 
 
130 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 not taught him the responsibility of 
 money and how to foresee his needs and 
 to provide for them. When Jesus dis- 
 couraged laying up treasure on the earth, 
 He did not mean to forbid saving. Sav- 
 ing money wisely is not laying up treas- 
 ure. The money is not a treasure, any 
 more than coal or potatoes in the bins in 
 the cellar are treasures. Jesus possessed 
 a bag, and Judas bore it. There was no 
 rule that it should always be empty. If 
 it is right to provide for the necessities of 
 this evening’s meal, it is right for a man 
 to provide for his boy’s education five or 
 ten years from now. 
 
 Young men will find it easier to save 
 if they put their savings in a separate ac- 
 count, keeping it in a savings bank or in- 
 vesting it in good securities. It is folly 
 to touch speculation. Of course it is 
 worse than folly. Much speculation is 
 simply a form of gambling. Don’t be ~ 
 tempted by it. Put your savings in reli- 
 able investments. Don’t select them by 
 answering advertisements, or by wild 
 guesses of your own. Ask some honest 
 
The Young Man and Money 131 
 
 and prudent man, who is in a position to 
 know, and follow his advice. Only re- 
 member that you, and not he, must bear 
 the responsibility. 
 
 The young man who saves will not 
 need to borrow, and will keep himself 
 free from debt. Freedom is the right 
 word to use. Debt is slavery. It kills 
 the sense of independent manliness. 
 
 “You must not go into debt,” wrote 
 Henry Ward Beecher to his son. “ Avoid 
 debt as you would the devil. Make it a 
 fundamental rule: No debt—cash -or 
 nothing. The art of making one’s for- 
 tune is to spend nothing; in this coun- 
 try, any intelligent and industrious young 
 man may become rich if he stops all leaks, 
 and is not in a hurry. Do not make 
 haste; be patient. Do not speculate or 
 gamble. Steady, patient industry is both 
 the surest and safest way.” 
 
 John Ruskin thundered even more ter- 
 ribly against debt. The following letter 
 he wrote to an applicant for help to pay 
 a debt on a chapel: 
 
 “Sir: I am scornfully amused at your 
 
132 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 appeal to me, of all people in the world 
 least likely to give you a farthing. My 
 first word to all men and boys who care 
 to hear me is, ‘Don’t get mto debt; 
 starve and go to heaven—but don’t bor- 
 row. Try first begging. I don’t mind, if 
 it is really needful, stealing. But don’t 
 buy things you can’t pay for!’ And of 
 all manner of debtors, pious people build- 
 ing churches they can’t pay for are the 
 most detestable nonsense to me. Can’t 
 you preach and pray behind the hedges— 
 on in a sandpit—or a coal hole—first?” 
 
 Ruskin did not mean to approve of 
 stealing. He did mean to anathematise 
 borrowing. “ Owe no man anything,” de- 
 clares Paul. . 
 
 If no young man borrows, no young 
 man will have to face the problem of 
 lending. It is sometimes a hard problem. 
 To be sure it is sometimes easy. Advan- 
 cing money on security, as the banks do, - 
 is a straight business proposition. But 
 lending money among young men is not 
 this. Too often it is a sort of euphe- 
 mistic method of theft. A good practical 
 
The Young Man and Money 133 
 
 rule is to lend where you would be willing 
 to give and what you would be willing 
 to give. Then if you lose it, you have 
 been prepared for its loss. 
 
 In his advice to his son, which has been 
 quoted, Beecher said also: ‘“‘ Make few 
 promises. Religiously observe the small- 
 est promise.” Be scrupulously careful in 
 all statements.” Some men of high posi- 
 tion are utterly mistrusted by those who 
 know them well, because of the complete 
 unreliability of their promises. They 
 subscribe liberally and never pay. Re- 
 deem your pledges at any cost to yourself, 
 or secure an honourable release from them. 
 As for bills and liabilities, young men 
 should meet them instantly. It is better 
 to pay as you go. If things are charged 
 and bills submitted later, pay the bill by 
 return mail. 
 
 What men can’t afford to pay for, it is 
 wrong for them to buy. Buying it is a 
 species of theft. ‘ Here is a man,” said 
 Canon Newboldt, preaching recently on 
 Justice, “ who fancies that he would like 
 to become the owner of something which 
 
134 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 he sees in a shop. Perhaps he is moved 
 by some sudden whim; perhaps, poor 
 creature! he is driven to desperation by 
 the pangs of hunger. He watches his op- 
 portunity and appropriates the property, 
 then, probably, finds himself convicted as 
 a thief, and in the strong clutches of 
 outraged law. But, here is a man, well- 
 dressed and well-supplied with the neces- 
 saries of life, moved by no unbearable 
 pangs of hunger. He passes the samé 
 shop, he is moved with the same desire 
 of acquiring, but he, instead of stealing, 
 goes in and buys it and does not pay for 
 it, knowing that he cannot pay for it 
 then, and, perhaps, will have some diffi- 
 culty in paying for it all. I ask you, 
 in the sight of God, has he not virtually 
 stolen those goods, although no magis- 
 trate condemns him and no penalty fol- 
 lows on his act?” 
 
 All extravagance and luxury beyond a 
 man’s plane are wrong. A simple, frugal 
 life is better for every man of every plane. 
 In dress, in food, in furniture, in all the 
 equipment of life, the prayer of Agur 
 
The Young Man and Money 135 
 
 is the wise prayer for us: “Give me 
 neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with 
 food convenient for me.” 
 
 The peril of money is in its power to 
 possess its possessor. A little money we 
 can control. But a great deal of money 
 is sure to control us. It at once hedges 
 us in. As a matter of fact, great wealth 
 deprives its owners of more than it brings 
 them. “ The rich,” observed the melan- 
 choly Burton, “are indeed rather pos- 
 sessed by their money than possessors.” 
 
 Young men should acquire the habit of 
 giving. It is a habit difficult of acquire- 
 ment in late years. Unless it is fixed 
 early, growing wealth shuts up the heart 
 and holds the will, so that the man cannot 
 give. Begin with setting aside some fixed 
 portion of what you receive. Make this 
 at least a tenth as soon as you can. Ad- 
 minister this portion as a trust fund, and 
 so in time you will come to feel about all 
 that God sends, that it is not yours but 
 His, and to be used for Him. 
 
 It is not possible to have too strict or 
 nice a sense of honour in this matter of 
 
136 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 money. It is of course possible to carry 
 some good prejudices too far, as the man 
 did who refused to accept any other man’s 
 hospitality or friendly help because he 
 was not in a position to return it. That 
 is making money and not manhood the 
 supreme thing. Money is not the supreme 
 thing. “The man’s the gowd.” And the 
 gold of that man is purest and most un- 
 dimmed whose three chief qualities are 
 first, veracity; second, generosity; and 
 third, thrift. 
 
XI 
 IS IT WRONG TO BET? 
 
 THE last weeks of every foot-ball sea- 
 son are critical weeks in the lives of many 
 young men in the colleges and prepara- 
 tory schools of this country. Seed is 
 sown then which will yield a baleful har- 
 vest. Years hence some men would give 
 thousands of dollars to undo what is done 
 during these days. On the surface these 
 days are distinguished from other seasons 
 of the school and college year only by the 
 fact that the great foot-ball games are 
 played then and the question of suprem- 
 acy decided. But beneath the surface 
 they are marked as the same weeks are 
 marked every year by the sowing of acts 
 from which men will reap habits and 
 characters and destinies. Thousands of 
 dollars are bet on the issue of these 
 games. Men who never gambled before 
 stake their own or their fathers’ money 
 
 137 
 
138 A Young Man’s Que fing 
 
 on their favourite college. That is one 
 sowing. Others who have never before 
 known what it was to surrender their 
 wills and their manhood to an appetite 
 have in their first drunkenness tasted the 
 joys of the brute and waked to the con- 
 sciousness of the loss of their birthright 
 of purity and power. I have seen many 
 foolish freshmen reeling in their first 
 drunkenness after one of these games and 
 have blessed God that their mothers have 
 not seen them. This is another sowin 
 And yet, after all, these things are not 
 beneath the surface. They lie very open 
 to the eyes of all. A prominent part of 
 the newspaper accounts is the record of 
 the betting and the drinking, of the stu- 
 dents bankrupt in pocket and addled of 
 brain. These accounts amuse some. 
 They anger others. They make many 
 sad. Some to whom life is a noble and 
 holy thing are made to feel by them that 
 if intercollegiate games are simply to be- 
 come a moral ruin for foolish students, 
 without the wit to know what is folly and 
 the will to despise it, they had better be 
 
 _ Be 
 
Is It Wrong to Bet? 139 
 
 once for all abandoned. Not because 
 there is any harm in them or any evil to 
 the men who play in them, but because 
 those who sit on the benches around the 
 field and look on, want so wofully that 
 clear moral sense which marks the games 
 themselves and the men upon the field. 
 As between games polluted with the 
 maudlin enthusiasm of drink and defiled 
 with the dishonour of the gambler, I 
 would choose, knowing well what the 
 choice would mean, no games at all. 
 And I should think that all friends of 
 intercollegiate athletics would see that it 
 is to the detriment of the games in the 
 minds of all those whose good opinion is 
 desirable, to lower them to the level of 
 the cock-pit and the race-track. The 
 surest way to injure and destroy intercol- 
 legiate games is to bet on them. 
 
 But I wish to say something about 
 betting on much broader grounds than 
 these. 
 
 For, first of all, the man who loses on 
 a bet is spending his money in a wrong 
 and immoral way. He gets nothing 
 
140 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 for it. He accomplishes nothing with it. 
 It is a sheer waste, serving no useful 
 purpose and doing no good. No man 
 has a right to use money in this way. 
 Money is stored personality. There is 
 human blood in it, coined in the gold and 
 pressed out in the paper. All money is 
 the price of life. To waste it is like draw- 
 ing life-blood and flinging it upon the 
 ground. And often the money lost is 
 not a man’s own. Most students gamble 
 with money that is not theirs for such use. 
 Fathers and mothers are making sacri- 
 fices for their education, or are putting 
 money in their hands, trusting their 
 honour for its honourable use. To gam- 
 ble away such money is a species of filial 
 treason so dishonourable as to suggest 
 that the man who is guilty of it has lost 
 the capacity to know what honour is. 
 And even when the money is the man’s 
 own, such waste of it is awful in such a 
 world of need as ours. With millions 
 of little children suffering for the want of 
 the simplest comforts and care, with all 
 charitable and benevolent institutions 
 
Is It Wrong to Bet? 141 
 
 straitened for want of support, with a 
 third of the human race hungry and in 
 need, with the devil’s enterprises of crime 
 and lust and sin flourishing, and Christ’s 
 ministries of strength and purity cramped, 
 the deliberate waste of money by the bet- 
 tor who loses is dastardly. 
 
 But_if losing money by betting. is 
 wrong and immoral, gaining money by 
 betting is more so. I cannot put what I 
 would say about this immorality as 
 strongly as Phillips Brooks puts it in his 
 sermon on “ The Choice Young Man:” 
 
 “Money to the simple, healthy human 
 sense is but the representative of energy 
 and power. It is to pass from man to 
 man only as the symbol of some exertion, 
 some worthy outputting of strength and 
 life. Save in the way of charity, it is 
 not to be given or taken without some- 
 thing behind it which it represents. With 
 his mind full of this simple, honest truth, 
 feeling himself ready to earn his living 
 and to give an equivalent for all that he 
 receives, the young man ought to have 
 an instinctive dislike and scorn for all 
 
142 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 transactions which would substitute feeble 
 chance for vigorous desert, and make him 
 either the giver or receiver of that which 
 has not even the show of an equivalent or 
 earning. I do not say that gambling and 
 betting are admirable or respectable 
 things in grey-haired men. It is not of 
 them or to them that I am speaking now. 
 I do say that in young men, with the 
 abundance of life within them and around 
 them, gambling and betting, if they be not 
 the result of merest thoughtlessness, are 
 signs of a premature demoralisation 
 which hardly any other vice can show. 
 In social life, in club, in college, on the 
 street, the willingness of young men to 
 give or to receive money on the mere turn 
 of chance is a token of the decay of man- 
 liness and self-respect which is more 
 alarming than almost anything besides. 
 It has an inherent baseness about it which 
 not to feel shows a base soul. To carry 
 in your pocket money which has become 
 yours by no use of your manly powers, 
 which has ceased to be another man’s by 
 no willing acceptance on his part of its 
 
Is It Wrong to Bet? 143 
 
 equivalent,—that is a degrading thing. 
 Will it not burn the purse in which you 
 hold it? Will it not blight the luxury for 
 which you spend it? Will you dare to 
 buy the gift of true love with it? Will 
 you offer it in charity? Will you pay it 
 out for the support of your innocent chil- 
 dren? Will it not be a Judas-treasure, 
 which you must not put into the treasury, 
 because it is the price of blood? 
 
 “So I rank high among the signs of a 
 choice human youth the clearness of sight 
 and the healthiness of soul which make a 
 man refuse to have anything to do with 
 the transference of property by chance, 
 which make him hate and despise betting 
 and gambling under their most approved 
 and fashionable and accepted forms. 
 Plentiful as those vices are among us, 
 they still have in some degree the grace to 
 recognise their own disgracefulness by 
 the way in which they conceal themselves. 
 Some sort of hiding and disguise they 
 take instinctively. Let even that help to 
 open our eyes to what they really are. 
 To keep clear of concealment, to keep 
 
144 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 clear of the need of concealment, to do 
 nothing which he might not do out on 
 the middle of Boston Common at noon- 
 day,—I cannot say how more and more 
 that seems to me to be the glory of a 
 young man’s life. It is an awful hour 
 when the first necessity of hiding any- 
 thing comes. The whole life is different 
 henceforth. When there are questions to 
 be feared and eyes to be avoided and sub- 
 jects which must not be touched, then the 
 bloom of life is gone. Put off that day 
 as long as possible. Put it off forever if 
 you can. And as you will hold no truth 
 for which you cannot give a reason, so 
 let yourself be possessed of no dollar 
 whose history you do not dare to tell.” 
 
 “ But,” replies the man who bets, “ it 
 it not for the money that I bet. I don’t 
 care for the money that may be won. 
 The fact that I take my chance of losing 
 shows that the money at stake is not the 
 chief thing.” But why then do you bet 
 for money? Why not bet your dollars 
 against marbles or buttons? That would 
 show distinctly your disregard and con- 
 
Is It Wrong to Bet? 145 
 
 tempt for the money element, and surely 
 would give to your betting a “ manlier ” 
 air. What is it for which you bet if not 
 for the money that may be won? “Oh,” 
 says the man who bets, “ it is for the ex- 
 citement and interest of the thing.” But 
 what makes it exciting? It is the fact 
 that you stand to win or to lose money. 
 If it is the “excitement” that you want 
 and that chiefly, would you not get more 
 of it and of an intenser sort if you would 
 bet your dollars against marbles or but- 
 tons? For then if you won, you would 
 win nothing, and if you lost you would 
 lose everything. This would doubtless 
 make the matter less exciting to the man 
 who bets against you hoping to win 
 money, because he would have nothing to 
 lose, but how much more exciting and in- 
 teresting it would make it for you who, 
 of course, do not bet for the money, but 
 only for the pleasurable emotions of the 
 thing! And why, if men do not bet for 
 the money that may be won, do they re- 
 frain from betting when they think they 
 will lose, or, if the chances are unfavour- 
 
146 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 able, demand odds in their betting, or bet 
 with so much greater freedom and bold- 
 ness when they think they are sure of 
 winning ? 
 
 “ Well,”’ replies the man who bets, “ of 
 course, the money element is in it. But 
 that’s only to make it real and manly and 
 sportsmanlike, you know. The real 
 reason for betting is to show one’s inter- 
 est in his college, to back up his own col- 
 lege team.” This I say is pitiable and 
 squalid. The man who has sunk so low 
 as this, who can regard this as the noble 
 and manly way to support his team and 
 show his sympathy with his college must 
 be very thoughtless or have a shrunken 
 and poverty-stricken spirit. How it must 
 make the soul of John Harvard or Elihu 
 Yale or Jonathan Edwards swell with 
 pride and contentment to see a crowd of 
 juvenile gamblers showing their respect 
 and affection for his institution by stak- 
 ing a gambler’s honour to pay money if 
 one of its athletic teams should be proved 
 to be inferior to an opponent! This is 
 “backing the University.” “ Backing ” 
 
Is It Wrong to Bet? 147 
 
 it against whom? Against gamblers. 
 What a noble way this is to honour it, and 
 to show sympathy with it. Would Jesus . 
 have shown His sympathy for the world 
 better if He had made a wager on it than 
 by living and working and dying for it? 
 
 And I should like to say a word regard- 
 ing the idea of “supporting the team” 
 by betting on it, from the point of view 
 of the men who play. No self-respecting 
 player is pleased with the thought that he 
 is ranked with game-cocks and race- 
 horses and bull-terriers and prize-fighters. 
 Have the players no right to manly con- 
 sideration? They are not in the game 
 for money. In my college days we played 
 for the love of the college. No money 
 could have bought some men to do it. 
 And it seems a contemptible thing to take 
 advantage of such men and make money 
 on them or get “ excitement” by staking 
 money on them. The players do the 
 work and the bettors have the easy time 
 and try to win money through the 
 work of others which they are giving to 
 their college and would scorn to take 
 
148 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 money for. But the man who bets does 
 not think of this. The unmanliness and 
 dishonourableness of it are hid from him 
 by that blindness whichpreventshim from 
 seeing just how contemptible his conduct 
 appears to people of healthy sense. The 
 man who bets loses his ability to respect 
 others because the readiness and the de- 
 sire to take money for nothing, in return 
 for no honest effort or desire of his own, 
 make it impossible for him to have a 
 genuine, high respect even for himself. 
 Of course, no student means to let his 
 character be defiled in this way. But the 
 habit of betting kills the knightly in- 
 stincts. When President Garfield’s life 
 was hanging in the balance, gamblers sold 
 pools upon the issue and many men did 
 not scruple to win money from his death. 
 This is a hideous extreme, but the prac- 
 tice of betting on the length of the ser- 
 mon or the prayer in college chapel in- 
 volves precisely the same principle of 
 blunted sensibility and coarseness of na- 
 ture. Walpole even “tells of a gambler 
 who fell at the table in a fit of apoplexy, 
 
Is It Wrong to Bet? 149 
 
 and his companions began to bet upon the 
 chances of his recovery. When the phy- 
 sician came in they would not let him 
 bleed the man because they said it would 
 affect the bet.” 
 
 And as for the contention that betting 
 money is sportsmanlike, the very reverse 
 is true. Nothing will so surely kill sport. 
 I know that “ popularly betting is sup- 
 posed to be the very life of sport. The 
 betting man is supposed to be the true 
 sportsman. But the very opposite is true. 
 There can be no whole-hearted love of 
 sport where there is betting. To a man 
 who habitually bets, there is no attraction 
 in a game of. whist or billiards, or in a 
 horse race, on which no money depends. 
 Notoriously, it is the betting which draws 
 crowds to the race-course, and keeps the 
 crowds anxiously awaiting the result in 
 remote parts of the country. And there 
 are many eager and constant whist play- 
 ers for whom all interest in the game 
 lapses if they cannot play for money. 
 Sport in itself ceases to be of interest to 
 the man who has staked a large amount 
 
150 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 upon the issue. He is absorbed in the 
 issue for himself, and has no room for 
 any pleasure in the sport. It becomes 
 deadly earnest to him. It is therefore not 
 sport that is fostered by the betting men 
 that gather round the contest ; it is money- 
 getting, money-getting under such cir- 
 cumstances as taint the gains. Between 
 the man who plays for play’s sake, and 
 the man who plays, or watches play, for a 
 money stake, there can surely be no ques- 
 tion which is the truer sportsman. . . . 
 It is this that drives sober people from the 
 race-course, and from other manly and 
 exhilarating amusements, and, instead of 
 promoting true sport, brings it down to a 
 mere carnival of greed, fraud, and trick- 
 enya 
 
 And it is this that introduces profes- 
 sionalism into college athletics. When 
 men stake money, they are willing to do 
 dishonourable things to shape the result 
 so that they will win. Betting is the 
 deadly foe of true sport. The true sports- 
 man is a man like Marshall Newell who 
 “loved sport for sport’s sake alone.” 
 
Is It Wrong to Bet? = 151 
 
 The introduction of money is fatal. Dur- 
 ing the Persian wars, though bribery and 
 corruption were common, the Greeks kept 
 the games pure. Men strove for the 
 glory of victory and the chaplet of olive 
 leaves. ‘‘ Heavens! Mardonius,” ex- 
 claimed one of the Persians before the 
 battle of Salamis, when he learned about 
 the prizes, ““ What sort of men have you 
 brought us to fight against, who strive 
 not for money but for honour?” No 
 money stake was allowed to corrupt the 
 conflicts or debase the purity of the sports 
 of Greece. And the training of these 
 pure sports played a large part in prepar- 
 ing the Greeks for the mighty conflicts 
 with the hosts from Asia. 
 
 In every bet both men are sharers in 
 dishonesty and wrongdoing, for the man 
 who loses spends his money immorally, 
 and the man who wins gains his with 
 greater immorality. But further than 
 this, betting is vile because its principle is 
 snobbery and conceit. It rests_on the as- 
 sumption that the man who bets knows 
 more than his partner to the wager or that_ 
 
152 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 his opinion is better. Suppose that he does 
 know more and that his opinion is better. 
 Then he is acting meanly in taking advan- 
 tage of a more ignorant man, with the 
 purpose of making money out of his 
 ignorance. “Well,” it is said, “the other 
 man is willing. He goes in with his eyes 
 open and takes his chances.” Yes but 
 what chance does he take other than the 
 certainty of losing if you really know 
 more than he does? And wherein does 
 this make it a manlier business to win 
 money from his ignorance? 
 
 As Charles Kingsley has said: “If 
 you and he bet on any event (e. g. 
 racing), you think that your horse will 
 win ; he thinks that his will; in plain Eng- 
 lish, you think that you know more about 
 the matter than he; you try to take ad- 
 vantage of his ignorance; and so to con- 
 jure money out of his pocket into yours 
 —a very noble and friendly attitude to 
 stand to your neighbour, truly. That is 
 the plain English of it; and look at it up- 
 ward, downward, sideways, inside ouf, 
 you will never make anything out of bet- 
 
Is It Wrong to Bet? 153 
 
 ting save this—that it is taking advantage 
 of your neighbour’s supposed ignorance. 
 But says some one,“ That is all fair; he 
 is trying to do as much by me.’ Just so, 
 and that again is a very noble and 
 friendly attitude for two men who have 
 no spite against each other; a state of 
 mutual distrust and unmercifulness, look- 
 ing each selfishly to his own gain, regard- 
 less of the interest of the other.” 
 
 As between two sharpers, each trying 
 to outwit the other, one wastes no sym- 
 pathy. But we do pity the unsophis- 
 ticated countryman who bets his money 
 against the three-card-monte man. The 
 fact that he is willing to be fooled does 
 not make the gambler’s part in fleecing 
 him any more manly and upright. It 
 makes it the more contemptible. The 
 duellist is willing to be killed, but that 
 does not make duelling legal. This is the 
 way the law and the police regard it, and 
 they strive to protect such men. They 
 pity their ignorance. A very noble and 
 fine spirit it is, is it not? which 
 leads a college man to justify his bet with 
 
154 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 a man more ignorant, less well-informed 
 than himself, and who bets against super- 
 ior knowledge, on the ground that the 
 man is willing to be taken in. 
 
 “But,” apologises the man who bets 
 in such conditions, “‘ the other man thinks 
 he knows more than I do. He doesn’t. 
 I know more than he does, but he will 
 not believe this. I must back my word 
 with my money.” But how low has the 
 man fallen who grovels around on this 
 plane! How inferior and discreditable is 
 the level of life when respect for a man’s 
 word must be secured by staking money! 
 And what kind of an opinion must that 
 be which a man advances and can’t leave 
 to stand on its merit but must bolster with 
 a gambler’s cheek and a gambler’s cash! 
 Some may say that this is too harshly 
 spoken but what can besaidthatistoo harsh 
 of the degradation of life from the level of 
 a fair, free, trustful, high-minded inter- 
 course to the level of the race-track and 
 the gutter and the bar, where in coarse 
 language, men say, “ Money talks?” Let 
 
Is It Wrong to Bet? 155 
 
 the people talk in that way who do not 
 know how to talk otherwise. 4 ., 
 What I have just been saying has been 
 with reference to the cases where one man 
 bets on his knowledge against another 
 man’s ignorance. But suppose the man 
 who bets does not know more than the 
 man with whom he bets. And this, of 
 course, men will say will be the case 
 among “gentlemen.” “We would not 
 bet on a sure thing or where we knew we 
 would win,” they say. “ That would not 
 be honourable and square.” But as a mat- 
 ter of fact, almost no man bets when he 
 knows he will lose. If he does he does 
 wrong, having no right to spend money 
 in that way. Men bet when they think or 
 hope they will win. There is a chance 
 that they may lose, but there is a chance, 
 too, that they may win and they bet on 
 the strength of that chance. And pre- 
 cisely because they do, John Ruskin de- 
 nounces betting as the vilest and most 
 ungentlemanly of habits. “ You concen- 
 trate your interest upon a matter of 
 
156 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 chance, instead of upon a subject of true 
 knowledge, and you back opinions, . . . 
 simply because they are your own. All 
 the insolence of egotism is in this, and so 
 far as the love of excitement is implicated 
 with the hope of winning money, you 
 turn yourself into the basest sort of 
 tradesman—those who live by specula- 
 tion.” Moreover, betting upon an uncer- 
 tainty in this way is demoralising and 
 debilitating. It involves commitment to 
 an opinion of whose truth it is impossible 
 for the man who bets to know. 
 
 I believe, therefore, that whether a man 
 bets and loses or bets and wins, whether 
 hebetson superior knowledge or on a total 
 uncertainty, he is doing a dishonest and 
 an immoral thing. It is true, further, that 
 gambling is folly because the gambler is 
 sure to lose in the end. A few may grow 
 rich and die rich. The multitudes lose 
 and lose. Gambling is simply foolish. 
 “In many cases,’ as Marcus Dods has 
 pointed out, “the gambler himself is con- 
 scious of his folly, and therefore excuses 
 himself. He merely wishes to experi- 
 
Is It Wrong to Bet? = 157 
 
 ment; he wants a little fun, and so forth. 
 But the estimation in which the world 
 holds the gambler becomes apparent 
 when he loses. The merchant whose 
 losses are the result of untoward and un- 
 foreseen changes in the market receives 
 sympathy and help. But what bank or 
 private friend will advance money to a 
 gambler? The betting man who has 
 staked his last shilling and lost it is pro- 
 nounced a fool, and has put himself be- 
 yond the reach of practical compassion. 
 The sharper who has fleeced him has 
 neither gratitude nor pity. He uses his 
 victim as the butt of his ridicule. And 
 the victim himself, who has risked his 
 money on mere chance, or on baseless in- 
 formation, or on fraudulent representa- 
 tions, freely pronounces himself a fool, 
 judging himself in the light of the issue. 
 To fancy that we shall be exceptions and 
 win where others have lost, that we shall 
 be the solitary lucky ones among the 
 thousand unlucky, is a folly to which we 
 are all liable, but it is none the less a 
 folly.” 
 
158 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 But I am putting the matter not on the 
 ground of policy but on the ground 
 of principle. And on that ground I say 
 that it is wrong to bet, whatever be the 
 stake or whoever the fellow gambler. 
 The principle is the same whether we bet 
 with men or women, for candy, or gloves, 
 or drinks of whatever sort, or money, 
 over athletics, elections, cards or any- 
 thing else. And to excuse ourselves in 
 these little gamblings,—“ just an inno- 
 cent, friendly little bet, you know, I don’t 
 mind if I do lose’”’—is to educate our- 
 selves into the inability to see that prin- 
 ciples are principles, and that a lie or a 
 dishonesty or an immorality does not be- 
 come harmless and allowable by being 
 small. If we want to “treat” people or 
 to make them presents let us do so in a 
 sincere, open, generous way without the 
 ill-concealed and very ill-mannered sub- 
 terfuge of a wager, by which perhaps 
 we may win some small payment from 
 them. Let life be open and free. Cleanse 
 it of the petty nastiness and tawdry ex- 
 citement of the pool-room and the prize- 
 
Is It Wrong to Bet? 159 
 
 ring. Let friendship be generous, giving 
 and hoping for nothing again, unpolluted 
 by the mercenary selfishness of the 
 gambler. “To those who are not be- 
 guiled by custom,’ says Marcus Dods, 
 “it is difficult to understand how of two 
 friends one can put his hands in the 
 other’s pocket and stoop to be profited by 
 the other’s loss. Be it a half-crown or 
 five thousand pounds, it is equally in- 
 comprehensible how a gentleman can 
 receive it from his friend. If the sum is 
 small, there is a meanness in being in- 
 debted for it; if it is large, there is a 
 meanness in depriving his friend of it. 
 There is a pleasure in receiving a gift 
 from a friend as the expression of his 
 remembrance and affection; none in win- 
 ning from him money which he is com- 
 pelled to pay. The small trader who 
 would scorn to put money in his till for 
 which he had not given an equivalent is, 
 forsooth, looked down upon by the so- 
 called gentlemen who with equanimity 
 pocket what makes their friend poorer, 
 and which they have done nothing to 
 
160 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 earn. Nothing is more likely to damage 
 the character and eat out the other quali- 
 ties which are associated with the title of 
 gentleman, than the practice of betting.” 
 
 And yet though principle and not policy 
 should govern our convictions and our 
 conduct in this as in all things, it should 
 be suggested to the man who bets that his 
 study of futures should not omit a candid 
 consideration of the future of the 
 gambler. The gambling classes are the 
 least respected and the least efficient 
 classes in society as the gambling races 
 are the low and backward races. The 
 corruption of Chinese politics and govern- 
 ment is as much the result as the cause 
 of the gambling instincts which dominate 
 the Chinese, and no other nation than the 
 Chinese, perhaps, has the native fibre and 
 strength to stand, as the Chinese people 
 have stood, the rotting influences of a uni- 
 versal and reckless lust for the dishonest 
 gains of chance. Among our own ac- 
 quaintances, who are the men who bet 
 and whither are they bound? Doubtless 
 men high-minded and refined in other 
 
Is It Wrong to Bet? 161 
 
 things have bet, but you never saw a man 
 who had acquired the habit of betting 
 whose face was not downward turned and 
 his back to the things that are honourable 
 and just and true. “ Sporting men” we 
 call a certain class with whom betting has 
 become a fixed habit or a profession. 
 They stand about the bars the night be- 
 fore the elections, they crowd around the 
 prize-ring, they throng the trains to and 
 from the races, they fill the pool-rooms. 
 Some of them are pleased to class the col- 
 lege games among the objects of their 
 attention. So many of their tastes have 
 been atrophied and so many of their 
 capacities slain that they have no interest 
 in what interests those who love fine and 
 noble things. They have even lost the 
 taste in dress which would enable them 
 to dress like gentlemen. 
 
 Scarcely any vice works more disas- 
 trously on character than the vice of bet- 
 ting. It enamours men of the idea of get- 
 ting something for nothing. That is a 
 debilitating idea that will unmake any 
 man. It fosters lying, deception, bluff. 
 
162 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 It leads to the use of foul means to influ- 
 ence the issue over which the bet is made. 
 It begets crime. Mr. Wrixon (late Attor- 
 ney-General of Victoria) says of Austra- 
 lia: “ Betting and gambling with us have 
 assumed proportions that threaten us so- 
 cially. Hundreds bet to an extent which 
 they cannot honestly afford, the springs of 
 upright industry are weakened by the 
 vague hopes of questionable gains, and 
 when these hopes are disappointed, as 
 they generally are, embezzlement and 
 fraud are too often the result. An un- 
 healthy restlessness, fatal to sober work 
 for fair reward, spreads among the 
 young, who know no better, and spoils 
 many a life that, free from this taint, 
 would have been useful and happy. I 
 can confidently say from many years’ ex- 
 perience in criminal courts, and latterly 
 from a special knowledge of public prose- 
 cutions, that most cases of forgery and 
 embezzlement among young men are 
 either owing to, or at least coincident with 
 habits of betting and gambling.” “ Bet- 
 ting,” says Dr. Dods, “ is a prolific source 
 
Is It Wrong to Bet? 163 
 
 of crime. . . . It is the unanimous and 
 unambiguous testimony of chaplains and 
 governors of prisons that the great pro- 
 portion of the crimes of embezzlement 
 and theft are the result of betting. The 
 statistics of suicide also prove that betting 
 is responsible for a larger number of cases 
 than drunkenness.” It prostitutes life, 
 killing its freshness and spontaneity. It 
 cultivates distrust. It overheats the mem- 
 branes of a man’s moral nature and then 
 deadens them, alternately inflaming and 
 chilling them until they are callous. In 
 Herbert Spencer’s words, “It sears the 
 sympathies.” It distracts a man’s atten- 
 tion, wastes his time and spoils the relia- - 
 bility of his judgment. As Dr. Martineau 
 says: “ To fasten one’s interest and curi- 
 osity on the order of eve:its (the order of 
 incalculable contingency when the compo- 
 sition of determining agencies defies all 
 foresight) is to school oneself in all that 
 is weak and contemptible in character, 
 and live by guesswork. ... The habit 
 of excitement upon chances alternating 
 with mortification at their rebuffs, grows 
 
164 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 by what it feeds on, and rapidly passes 
 into moral ruin. There is no dry-rot that 
 spreads so fast from the smallest speck 
 upon the character.” The gambler has 
 his reward, but who does not pity the 
 blindness which makes him willing ta 
 pay its cost? 
 
 This is an honest and frank view of the 
 matter of betting. It is the view that 
 your fathers would want you to consider, 
 —and your mothers, your hearts have 
 added that. It was thus that Charles 
 Kingsley wrote to his son when in one of 
 the English public schools. 
 
 “My Dearest Boy: 
 
 “There is a matter which gave me 
 much uneasiness when you mentioned it. 
 You said you had put into some lottery 
 for the Derby and had hedged to make it 
 safe. 
 
 “ Now all this is bad, bad, nothing but 
 bad. Of all habits gambling is the one I 
 hate most and have avoided most. Of 
 all habits it grows most on eager minds. 
 Success and loss alike make it grow. Of 
 
Is It Wrong to Bet? 165 
 
 all habits, however much civilised men 
 may give way to it, it is one of the most 
 intrinsically savage. Historically it has 
 been the peace excitement of the lowest 
 brutes in human form for ages past. 
 Morally it is unchivalrous and unChris- 
 tian. 
 
 “1. It gains money by the lowest and 
 most unjust means, for it takes money 
 out of your neighbour’s pocket without 
 giving him anything in return. 
 
 “2. It tempts you to use what you 
 fancy your superior knowledge of a 
 horse’s merits—or anything else—to your 
 neighbour’s harm. 
 
 “Tf you know better than your neigh- 
 bour you are bound to give him your 
 advice. Instead you conceal your 
 knowledge to win from his ignorance; 
 hence come all sorts of concealments, 
 dodges, deceits—I say the Devil is the 
 only father of it. I’m sure, moreover, 
 that B. would object seriously to anything 
 like a lottery, betting or gambling. 
 
 “T hope you have not won. I should 
 not be sorry for you to lose. If you have 
 
166 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 won I should not congratulate you. If 
 you wish to please me, you will give back 
 to its lawful owners the money you have 
 won. If you are a loser in gross thereby, 
 I will gladly re-imburse your losses this 
 time. As you had put in you could not 
 in honour draw back till after the event. 
 Now you can give back your money, say- 
 ing you understand that Mr. B. and your 
 father disapprove of such things, and so 
 gain a very great moral influence. 
 
 “ Recollect always that the stock argu- 
 ment is worthless. It is this: “My friend 
 would win from me if he could, therefore 
 I have an equal right to win from him.’ 
 Nonsense. The same argument would 
 prove that I have a right to maim or kill 
 a man if only I give him leave to maim 
 or kill me if he can and will. 
 
 “T have spoken my mind once and 
 for all on a matter on which I have held 
 the same views for more than twenty 
 years, and trust in God you will not for- 
 get my words in after life. I have seen 
 many a good fellow ruined by finding 
 himself one day short of money, and try- 
 
Is It Wrong to Bet? 167 
 
 ing to get a little by play or betting—and 
 then the Lord have mercy on his simple 
 soul, for simple it will not remain long. 
 
 “ Mind, I am not the least angry with 
 you. Betting is the way of the world. 
 So are all the seven deadly sins under 
 certain rules and pretty names, but to the 
 Devil they lead if indulged in, in spite of 
 the wise world and its ways. 
 
 “YouR LOVING PATER.” 
 
 And now, perhaps, some will say, 
 “Yes, what you say is all right from your 
 point of view, but your opinions are too 
 narrow. I am not so straight-laced.” 
 Well, “ straight-laced ” is a word much 
 used by the thoughtless or by those whose 
 intellectual processes are timid and in- 
 exact and who are afraid of their con- 
 sciences and whose tastes incline them 
 with desire to go with the herd. But 
 it is only a word. And the man who 
 replies to what has been said in this 
 way probably illustrates my contention 
 —that with gambling and betting no 
 high-minded man, who loves the things 
 
168 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 which are worthy and open and true, and 
 who will stop to think, will have anything 
 
 to do. 
 
XII 
 HIS AMUSEMENTS 
 
 Ir some young man, reading these 
 chapters is disposed to feel that they are 
 altogether too stiff for him, and that the 
 ideal set up is an impracticable ideal, I 
 desire to correct him at once. This ideal 
 is not impracticable, for I know scores of 
 men who realise it with unwavering con- 
 sistency in their lives. They are free from 
 all big vices and from all petty ones. 
 They would rather die than lie. They hate 
 evil. They never use liquor or tobacco in 
 any form. They observe Sunday with 
 scrupulous care. They never visit the 
 theater. They shun all mean companion- 
 ships, they bear themselves toward all men 
 and women as a gentleman should, and 
 they are as honest and dependable as the 
 sun. If any young man says that this is 
 more than can be expected of any man,the 
 
 -truth requires us to contradict him. 
 
 169 
 
170 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 Thousands of men are living just this 
 kind of life. 
 
 And they are thoroughly happy in it, 
 happier far than any men are who are 
 living otherwise, and against the highest 
 law of their natures. Their lives are 
 overflowing with good cheer and good- 
 ness. Men are not shut out of all amuse- 
 ment and sport because certain habits and 
 tastes are barred as unworthy. They 
 have all. outdoors open to them, and a 
 good deal of indoors, too. Football, base- 
 ball, golf, tennis, lacrosse, cricket, boat- 
 ing, tramping, bicycling, gymnastics, track 
 athletics, and field sports—these are but 
 a few of the innumerable legitimate 
 recreations of clean young men. Billiards 
 in a private house are as proper as chess, 
 but the associations of the game are in 
 such large part bad, that I think most 
 young men prefer to stay away from the 
 public places where it is played, and to 
 let it alone unless they can play it at 
 home. Young men sometimes ask 
 whether they should not go to billiard and 
 pool rooms in their home towns fof the 
 
His Amusements 171 
 
 sake of retaining or securing influence 
 over other men who go there. It is con- 
 ceivable that a man might do this; but 
 the chances are that he could acquire a 
 better influence in other ways without 
 running the risk of impairing his influ- 
 ence, which he certainly runs in frequent- 
 ing such places as these are in most towns. 
 
 Young men may go into clean games 
 without hesitation and with the greatest 
 zest and abandon. The higher a man’s 
 principles the better fitted is he for sport. 
 The supreme law of sport is fairness 
 and courtesy. All dishonesty, trickery, 
 knavery, and crookedness, are contempt- 
 ible and unallowable. There is nothing 
 whatever either disgraceful or lamentable 
 in fair defeat, and there is nothing that 
 is not lamentable and disgraceful in foul 
 play. 
 
 Athletic sports are valuable physically. 
 Some men are not physically fitted for 
 some games. Many men cannot play 
 football or row in races, and young men 
 who have any reason to be doubtful about 
 their endurance ought not to take up vio- 
 
172 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 lent exercise without consulting a good 
 physician. But there is scarcely any 
 young man who cannot find some sport 
 suited to him, and he ought to find it. 
 Games are good for the relaxation and 
 invigoration of them, and even more for 
 the discipline and training of them. 
 Games that require team-play breed self- 
 restraint, obedience, alertness of mind, 
 corporate discipline. A good football 
 team is a school of character, or ought 
 to be. 
 
 Looking back over history, it is un- 
 deniable that struggle and warfare have 
 been allowed and overruled—not to speak 
 in other terms—in the providential educa- 
 tion of man to provide certain absolutely 
 necessary discipline. “‘ War both needs 
 and generates certain virtues,’ says Mr. 
 Bagehot, “ not the highest, but what may 
 be called the preliminary virtues, as valour, 
 veracity, the spirit of obedience, the habit 
 of discipline. . . . Conquest is the mis- 
 sionary of valour, and the hard impact of 
 military virtues beats meanness out of the 
 world. . . . No one should be sur- 
 
His Amusements 173 
 
 prised at the prominence given to war. 
 We are dealing with early ages; nation: 
 making is the occupation of man in these 
 ages, and it is war that makes nations.” 
 We rightly lament war, and fear its terri~ 
 ble evils, but it is undeniable that God has, 
 allowed it to fill a large place in the educa~ 
 tion of the race. 
 
 Now what war has done in the develop~ 
 ment of the nations, athletics are meant to 
 do in the development of the boy whose 
 life is a summary of all human history. 
 They are intended to beat meanness out of 
 him, to create a spirit of rigid discipline 
 in his life, to knit his body into tight com- 
 pactness and fit it for stern and testing 
 use; to develop in him a hard manliness, 
 to root weak and shirking impulses out 
 of him, and to drill all brave and danger- 
 welcoming impulses into habits of hard 
 work, and the will to accept any task, 
 however nauseous, and do it with a whole 
 soul. Unorganised athletics may not do 
 all of these things for a boy, but the de- 
 veloped, rightly directed athletics of school 
 and college life, with their training, coach- 
 
174 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 ing and team-play, tend to do these very 
 things for the individual as truly as na- 
 tional struggle has done them for nations. 
 
 For many boys this is the best discipline 
 they ever get in their education. They do 
 not know what discipline is at home. 
 Parents give little attention to them, and 
 scarcely know them. They grow up with 
 wills untrained and lives unaware of the 
 power of quick obedience. Doubtless 
 home discipline can be carried too far, but 
 the powerful nations have been those 
 where it has been strongest. “In a Ro- 
 man family,” to quote Mr. Bagehot again, 
 “the boys, from the time of their birth, 
 were held to a domestic despotism, which 
 well prepared them for a subjection in 
 after life to a military discipline, a mili- 
 tary drill, and a military despotism. They 
 were ready to obey their generals because 
 they were compelled to obey their fathers ; 
 they conquered the world in manhood 
 because as children they were bred in 
 homes where the tradition of passionate 
 valour was steadied by the habit of im- 
 placable order.” Thousands of modern 
 
His Amusements 175 
 
 boys have never known anything approxi- 
 mating such discipline. They are wilful 
 and often overbearing, while they are 
 utterly incapable of ruling or guiding 
 others, having never learned themselves 
 to obey. Properly controlled athletics 
 teach them to obey. 
 
 Parents are unwise who fear athletics 
 for their boys, provided their sports are 
 watched and wisely regulated. In choos- 
 ing schools for their sons, they act fool- 
 ishly in preferring schools where athletics 
 are discouraged, or allowed to take care 
 of themselves. Most schools do best for 
 character which do not neglect this most 
 effective way of developing it. 
 
 It may be admitted at once that there 
 are dangers, great in proportion to the 
 power of athletics as an educational force. 
 The war metaphors, and the idea of com- 
 petition and conflict, can be carried too 
 far. The conception of life as made up of 
 quick, decisive struggles, as settled by iso- 
 lated battles and sudden conquests, is not 
 true. “The military habit,” says Mr. 
 Bagehot, “ makes man think far too much 
 
176 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 of definite action, and far too little of 
 brooding meditation. Life is not a set 
 campaign, but an irregular work, and the 
 main forces in it are not overt resolu- 
 tions, but latent and _ half-involuntary 
 promptings. The mistake of military 
 ethics is to exaggerate the conception of 
 discipline, and so to present the moral 
 force of the will in a barer form than it 
 ever ought to take. Military morals can 
 direct the ax to cut down the tree, but it 
 knows nothing of the great force by 
 which the forest grows.” 
 
 The ideal of victory, also, is liable to 
 become, just as it does in war, an end 
 irrespective of the merits of the struggle. 
 Boys play not for excellence, but for su- 
 premacy. The aim of the contest is to 
 win, whether you deserve to or not, and 
 to be disappointed or elated, not with 
 the manner of play, but with its issue. 
 A great deal of our athletic life is spoiled 
 in this way. Parents should choose schools 
 where athletic excellence, and not the de- 
 feat of an adversary, is the first thing. 
 
 Sport is spoiled when victory and not 
 
His Amusements 177 
 
 excellence is made the end and dominat- 
 ing principle. When men are disappoint- 
 ed because they do not win, even if they 
 don’t deserve to win, they do not have 
 the true spirit of right sport. In games 
 where individuals are matched, the de- 
 light of the thing is destroyed if men do 
 not play in generous attempt, each to do 
 his best, but rejoicing whichever man’s 
 best is shown to be superior. One great 
 defect of intercollegiate athletics is this 
 spirit of play for victory’s sake alone. If 
 the other team is better, it ought to win, 
 and the losers ought to rejoice to see it 
 win as it should. What does the victory 
 amount to, after all? The moral educa- 
 tion and the general exhilaration of the 
 contest and the physical good of it are 
 the real things. Wrong standards here 
 will exercise a vitiating influence over the 
 whole life. 
 
 And there are many grave evils closely 
 associated with athletics. One is gam- 
 bling. Another is professionalism, or the 
 interest of boys in professional athletics, 
 from baseball to prize-fighting. Another is 
 
178 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 the excessive development of the matter of 
 prizes,—cups and medals, etc. The Greeks 
 did better in making the sign of victory an 
 olive wreath, having no intrinsic value 
 at all. Inter-collegiate contests and games 
 between schools also break into regular 
 work and the quiet orderliness of life. 
 They have their useful and pleasant fea- 
 tures, but they too often furnish favour- 
 able atmosphere for temptation, foster 
 common and unworthy companionships, 
 and give to athletics a place in thought and 
 conversation to which they are not en- 
 titled. It is best to select for a boy a 
 school whose masters are not afraid to 
 deal with such matters with a firm hand. 
 
 On the other hand, abuses and evils 
 should not lead parents whose own child- 
 hood was before the development of mod~ 
 ern athletics to forbid or discourage them. 
 They are good for the body. The acci- 
 dents are few. Boys are all the better 
 for the roughness of the sport, provided 
 it is fair and manly. Many a weak boy 
 has been made into a tough-fibred, iron- 
 nerved man by the overhauling he has got 
 
His Amusements 179 
 
 in football and other such games. The 
 body has its rights in this matter. Even de- 
 voted James Brainard Taylor put it above 
 mind. And athletics are good for more 
 than the body. They teach self-govern- 
 ment, obedience, quickness of action, fear- 
 lessness, silence. They demand, as Presi- 
 dent Walker said, “steadiness of nerve, 
 quickness of apprehension, coolness, re- 
 sourcefulness, self-knowledge, self-reli- 
 ance, subordination of the individual 
 forces to combination,—qualities useful, 
 and in some professions indispensable.” 
 And they supply a frequent occasion for 
 enthusiasm, which makes life more 
 hearty, and reacts wholesomely on all its 
 tastes and judgments. 
 
 Athletics have no right to the first place. 
 Sometimes they get into the first place. 
 Whenever they are there in any school, 
 that is a good time not to send a boy to 
 that school. And when athletic success 
 becomes more honoured and esteemed 
 than the success of high character or 
 general ability, the line of excess has 
 been crossed. 
 
180 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 Fathers should share the athletic life 
 of their sons. They should live in the 
 open air with them as much as they can. 
 Camping out, or any simple life on the 
 face of nature, is one of the best moral 
 tonics and correctives. The artificial in- 
 vented games will be more likely to help, 
 and less likely to harm, the spirit of a 
 boy who “‘in the love of nature holds com- 
 munion with her visible forms,” who 
 knows the trees and birds and animals 
 of the woods. Surely the abundant life 
 of Christ includes all the hearty, whole- 
 some life of His world; and fathers and 
 sons are meant to share it, and be, in 
 work and play, just boys together. If 
 a father wants to be his boy’s hero and 
 friend, he must open his life to his boy, 
 and be willing to enter the opened life 
 of the boy. I asked eighteen boys once 
 who their living heroes were. Not one 
 mentioned his father. Some named 
 athletes of their acquaintance; one, his 
 brother, a football player at Yale. I 
 think some would have named _ their 
 fathers if their fathers had been a part 
 
His Amusements 181 
 
 of their heroic—that is, their athletic— 
 life. 
 
 Ought a young man to kill things for 
 sport? Well, he certainly will not shoot 
 pigeons or doves just for fun. The laws 
 of some States already forbid pigeon- 
 shooting contests. But wherein is the 
 difference between this and hunting 
 game in the woods? There are many 
 obvious differences, and I do not believe 
 that hunting’ wild game for the sake of 
 the sport, provided the sport is not 
 simply cruel and wasteful, is wrong. At 
 the same time, it becomes each year 
 harder to do it, and many men take more 
 and more to fishing instead. The gospels 
 cast a sanction over fishing that confirms 
 an inward sense, not of its justifiability 
 alone, but also of its real uses. It is 
 maintained by some that the fish do not 
 suffer pain as we conceive it, and whether 
 this is true or not, surely it is right to 
 take them for food. If other ends than 
 nourishment of the body are secured in 
 fishing, so much the better. “ Fishin’ 
 Jimmy ” makes out his case—at least, to 
 
182 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 the satisfaction of all fishermen. And 
 what are all hothouse pleasures in com- 
 parison with the great woods, the con- 
 stant babble of the stream, and the flash 
 of the trout in the sunlight? 
 
 Or, if we shrink from taking life at 
 all, as we nobly may, how rich is the in- 
 terest of studying it! Many books have 
 appeared in the last ten years, written 
 by men who loved nature and all of the 
 creatures of the wood and field and air 
 and sea, which suggest to young men 
 how much is to be gained from following 
 the life of beast and bird and all crea- 
 ’ tures. It is good to have a special branch 
 of study in science or natural history as 
 a stimulus and enrichment. 
 
 The word “amusement” in the popu- 
 lar sense is not a very worthy word. 
 “Whatever amuses,” says Crabbe, 
 “serves to kill time, to lull the faculties, 
 and to banish reflection.””’ And Phillips, 
 in “ The New World of Words,” defines 
 “to amuse” as “ to stop or stay one with 
 a trifling story, to make him lose his time, 
 to feed with vain expectations.” Surely, if 
 
His Amusements 183 
 
 this is all that amusement is, we cannot 
 afford to tolerate it in life. The killing 
 of time is one of the most terribly unjus- 
 tifiable forms of murder. We have no 
 time to destroy. The oniy amusements 
 that are legitimate must have something 
 more to say for themselves. Most games 
 of cards do not have anything more to 
 say than this, and condemn themselves 
 for their inanity when they are not con- 
 demned by their easy lending of them= 
 selves to gambling and triviality. 
 
 Amusements should be truly profitable 
 and helpful, promoting good fellowship, 
 physical development, love of clean life, 
 and knowledge of nature and man. 
 There is no room for evil amusement or 
 for any of that recklessness which is de- 
 scribed but not justified by calling it 
 ‘““ sowing wild oats.” ‘‘ Boys,” said Josh 
 Billings, ‘‘if you want a sure crop and 
 a big yield, sow wild oats.” Young men, 
 of all men, are the men who have no busi- 
 ness touching wild oats. 
 
 As Ruskin said to the students of the 
 Royal Military College at Woolwich: 
 
184 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 “And now remember, you soldier 
 youths, who are thus in every way the 
 hope of your country, or must be if she 
 have any hope; remember that your fit- 
 ness for all future trust depends on what 
 you are now. No good soldier in his old 
 age was ever careless or indolent in his 
 youth. . . . I challenge you in all his- 
 tory to find a record of a good soldier 
 who was not grave and reverent in his 
 youth. And, in general, I have no pa- 
 tience with people who talk about the 
 thoughtlessness of youth indulgently. I 
 had infinitely rather hear of thoughtless 
 old age, and the indulgence due to that. 
 When a man has done his work and noth- 
 ing can any way be materially altered in 
 - his fate, let him forget his toil and jest 
 with his fate if he will; but what excuse 
 can you find for wilfulness of thought 
 at the very time when every crisis of 
 future fortune hangs on your decisions? 
 A youth thoughtless! when all the happi- 
 ness of his home forever depends on the 
 chances or the passions of an hour! A! 
 youth thoughtless! when the career of all 
 
His Amusements 185 
 
 his days depends on the opportunity of 
 a moment! A youth thoughtless! when 
 his every act is a foundation stone of 
 future conduct and every imagination a 
 fountain of life or death! Be thought- 
 less in any after years rather than now 
 —though there is only one place where 
 a man may be nobly thoughtless; his 
 deathbed. No thinking should ever be 
 left to be done there.” 
 
 From the weary and wretched harvest 
 of the crop which must inevitably follow 
 sowing wild oats, every young man 
 should pray for deliverance, and seek for 
 it by clean pleasures and those recrea- 
 tions and amusements which clarify the 
 mind, strengthen the body, and help the 
 spirit in its warfare. In such joys peace 
 and comfort abide. The man who is 
 Christian in his play as well as his work 
 is, after all, the happiest man. He has 
 the promise of the life to come, and also 
 the best of the life that now is. 
 
XIII 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 Every young man should act toward 
 women as he would wish other men to 
 act toward his mother or his sister. This 
 is a simple sort of rule, but it is searching 
 and severe. It at once destroys all pallia- 
 tion of selfish or questionable conduct, 
 and it supplies a principle of action which 
 will guide the young man in a sphere 
 of life where many problems arise, and 
 where, accordingly, his character is put 
 to exacting test. A familiar, presuming 
 or low-minded view will lead men to do 
 things which no man will do, who thinks 
 of all women with the reverence and re- 
 gard with which he thinks of his mother, 
 and with which he would want all men 
 to think of his sister. It is significant 
 that even the man of most bestial nature 
 resents any reflection upon his mother, 
 and has, therefore, in him the elements 
 
 186 
 
Men and Women 187 
 
 of a principle which should guide him in 
 all his relations to other women. A gen- 
 eral rule of action like this is of great 
 value. It is practically universally appli- 
 cable. It is easy to keep in mind. It 
 commends itself to our deepest con- 
 science. 
 
 Such a principle settles at once such 
 questions as our duty in railroad trains 
 and street cars, in the matter of giving 
 up seats to women. We should want any 
 man to give his seat to our mother or sis- 
 ter; just as we should give our seat to 
 our mother or sister. Every woman is 
 related to some man, and we ought to do 
 for her what we would wish him to do 
 for anyone so related to us. No question 
 is raised here of rights, or of comparative 
 weakness, or of courtesy. The whole 
 question is settled summarily for us by 
 the general rule which I have stated, and 
 which appeals to every man. 
 
 At the same time, the question of gen- 
 tlemanly courtesy does enter. A man 
 Owes more to a woman than he owes to 
 aman. The talk of our day about equal 
 
188 A Young Man's Questions 
 
 rights and privileges, much of it useful 
 and necessary and some of it foolish and 
 injurious, must not blind men to the fact 
 that, even when all unjust disabilities 
 have been removed from woman, and all 
 her proper rights are fully secured to 
 her, she still will be a woman, and there- 
 fore never can be put by gentlemen on 
 their level. She will be treated by them 
 as entitled to more than any other gentle- 
 man can claim. Men say often, “ Well, 
 women are living just as men. They 
 go to business and come from business, 
 and work in the same office with us. 
 They are to be treated just as men, and 
 there is no more reason for my giving my 
 seat to them in cars than for giving it to 
 men.” Yes, there is the reason that they 
 still are women, and that a gentleman 
 must still treat them with chivalry and 
 unselfish consideration—just as if they 
 were his sisters. 
 
 It is true that many women are coarse, 
 selfish, and inconsiderate. It is not pleas- 
 ant to a man to give his seat to a woman 
 who, at the first opportunity, spreads out 
 
Men and Women 189 
 
 over two seats, and refuses to make way 
 for another woman, however weary and 
 needy of rest. But such women are ex- 
 ¢eptional, and whether they are or not, a 
 gentleman’s ideals are not affected 
 thereby. Some woman bore him in pain 
 and cared for him with a mother’s love, 
 and that should make all women sacred 
 in his eyes, and should entitle them to a 
 share in the reverence and holy love he 
 bears his mother. 
 
 These ideals of reverence for woman 
 for her own sake, and of considerateness 
 for her as the expression of his own char- 
 acter as a gentleman, must cover and 
 control all of the relations of a young 
 man to all women, old and young. It 
 will help any young man to answer some 
 of his questions if he will simply apply 
 to them these principles. 
 
 Of course, a young man will never say 
 anything unworthy in the presence of 
 women, just as he will never say any- 
 thing unholy or unworthy about women, 
 or read books which are unclean in their 
 teaching or atmosphere. If he would re- 
 
190 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 sent any slander upon his mother or sis- 
 ter, he will resent any slander at all upon 
 any woman. He will not listen to small 
 gossip, and he will see and speak of what 
 is pleasant and commendable in people. 
 At the same time, he will avoid and 
 resist, in such ways as a gentleman may, 
 all liars and all evil-mindedness, whether 
 among women or among men. 
 
 Men were made for society, but society 
 is not what goes by that name. Card and 
 theater parties, dances, small “ fussing ” 
 devices, etc., are not entitled to appro- 
 priate the good word “society.” All 
 human fellowship is society, and for 
 human fellowship, not for artificial ways 
 of degrading it or making up for the 
 want of it, we were made. Young men 
 should go with people to give and get 
 happiness and help. If their work de- 
 mands the sacrifice of such society, they 
 must make it, knowing that in their work 
 they will find society. But nothing is 
 farther from the Christian spirit than 
 moroseness, isolation of life, or unsocia- 
 bility, save the one thing of sin. The 
 
Men and Women Ig 
 
 man of pure heart, of unselfish will, and 
 of clean purpose and principle, can go 
 safely about anywhere, but he will not 
 wish to go where he cannot do good and 
 get good. 
 
 One of the questions that arises in 
 the realm of a young man’s relation to 
 women is the question of dancing. In all 
 the dancing mentioned in the Bible men 
 and women danced separately. If that 
 were the rule to-day dancing would pre- 
 sent no question to a young man. It 
 would have no interest for him. He 
 knows it only as a form of social amuse- 
 ment with women. No fault can be found 
 with “square dances” but four things 
 are to be said about “round dances.” 
 First, they distinctly lower the character 
 of conversation. As a simple matter of 
 fact they breed frivolity. Secondly, they 
 are wretchedly indiscriminate. Too often 
 in such dances the men who put 
 their arms about women are not clean 
 enough to be trampled upon by the 
 women with whom they dance. And, 
 when he is clean, how can a gentle- 
 
192 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 man find pleasure in doing in a dance 
 what he would scorn to do if he called 
 upon his partner in the dance in her 
 own home? Thirdly, they do defile some 
 minds. To denounce such minds does 
 not justify dancing. And fourthly, in the 
 eyes of heathen visitors they are unspeak- 
 ably vulgar. Surely we ought to be slow 
 to encourage what heathen regard as 
 vulgar and indecent. 
 
 The young man will never speak flip- 
 pantly or frivolously of love. It is too 
 sacred a thing to be dealt with coarsely. 
 He will go on his way with a kind heart 
 for all, doing his work, and minding his 
 own business, not looking for some one 
 to whom to devote his attention, or ap- 
 praising young women as to their desir- 
 ability. If somewhere there is some one 
 for him to marry, he will come to her in 
 time, and he will know it when the time 
 comes. Then he must tell the truth and 
 stand fast. A’ man’s word, once given, 
 is given. Love is not a matter of caprice 
 or whim, of transient emotion, of conceit 
 dependent upon money or_beauty.j It is 
 
Men and Women 193 
 
 the will to serve with the whole soul. 
 We do not fall into such love. We rise 
 into it. No man ought to marry or think 
 of it until the love on which he rests is 
 a love not of desire to have, but of desire 
 to serve, and to serve forever, and to 
 serve whatever the return. 
 
 There are not two moral laws, one for 
 men and one for women. The same 
 standard of purity and honour is binding 
 upon both. There is too much open or 
 concealed belief that they are to be 
 judged by different standards, and that 
 what is unpardonable in one is venial in 
 the other; or what is permissible to one 
 is not to the other. Man and woman are 
 not regarded as equals. Mrs. Stanton is 
 characteristically vigorous in denouncing 
 this, and what she regards as the conse- 
 quence of inequality : 
 
 “To-day, in our theological seminar- 
 ies, our sons do not rise from their study 
 of Bibles, creeds, and church discipline, 
 with a new respect for the mothers 
 who went to the very gates of death 
 to give them life and immortality. 
 
194 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 Sons in our law schools do not rise from 
 the study of our codes, customs, and con- 
 stitions, with any respect for the women 
 of this republic, who, though citizens, are 
 treated as outlaws and pariahs in our 
 government. In our colleges, where sis- 
 ters are denied equal opportunities for 
 education, the natural chivalry of these 
 brothers is never called forth. The les- 
 son of inferiority is taught everywhere, 
 and in the terrible tragedies of life we 
 have the result of this universal degrada- 
 tion of woman.” 
 
 Exaggerated as this is, there is a sense 
 in which men and women are not re- 
 garded as equals. And in a sense they 
 are not equals. Women are entitled to 
 ' more consideration from men than men 
 are. But they are equal in their duties 
 to the moral law. The trouble is not 
 that the standard for women is too high, 
 but that the standard for men is too low. 
 Both are bound to be perfect, even as 
 their heavenly Father is perfect; and any 
 lapse is as wrong in one as in the other. 
 The woman’s cause is man’s; they rise or 
 
Men and Women 195 
 
 fall together, gain or lose. The young 
 man who helps to lift our ideals and 
 treatment of woman, helps to lift all men 
 and lifts himself. The test of manliness 
 is here: How do I bear myself toward 
 all women? A man’s answer to this 
 question reveals his character, and is 
 proof or disproof of his self-respect. 
 
XIV 
 
 HIS READING 
 
 Next to the joy of doing good to those 
 whom he can help, a young man will get 
 his greatest pleasure in life from read- 
 ing. Few of us have the privilege of 
 knowing great men. If we do, we may 
 be too timid to find out their inmost 
 thoughts by conversation; and, even if 
 we know a few well enough to learn 
 their thoughts, there are thousands of 
 great men whom we cannot know be- 
 cause they have passed away. Through 
 books, however, we may know them, and 
 know them well. “It is chiefly through 
 books,” said Dr. W. E. Channing, “ that 
 we enjoy intercourse with superior 
 minds, and these invaluable means of 
 communication are in the reach of all. In 
 the best books great men talk to us, give 
 us their most precious thoughts, and pour 
 their souls into ours. God be thanked 
 
 196 
 
His Reading 197 
 
 for books! They are the voices of the 
 distant and the dead, and make us heirs 
 of the spiritual life of past ages. Books 
 are the true levellers. They give to all, 
 who will faithfully use them, the society, 
 the spiritual presence, of the best and 
 greatest of our race. No matter how 
 poor I am, no matter though the pros- 
 perous of my own time will not enter 
 my obscure dwelling, if the sacred writers 
 will enter and take up their abode under 
 my roof, if Milton will cross my thresh- 
 old to sing to me of Paradise, and 
 Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of 
 imagination and the workings of the 
 human heart, and Franklin to enrich me 
 with his practical wisdom, I shall not 
 pine for want of intellectual companion- 
 ship, and I may become a cultivated man, 
 though excluded from what is called the 
 best society in the place where I live.” 
 In all ages wise men have seen and felt 
 this, and the young man is very foolish 
 who does not soon perceive it and act 
 upon it. Few things are more silly than 
 the little social judgments and prejudices 
 
198 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 of most communities. Often good so- 
 ciety includes many who have no 
 thoughts, or, if any, purely trivial and 
 inane thoughts, while many are excluded 
 who have read the good books, who 
 think solidly and independently, and who 
 associate in the inner life with the best 
 men and women who have lived. Young 
 men should be strong enough, whether in 
 the “ good society ” of the community or 
 not, to choose for themselves the good 
 society of the ages which is found in good 
 books. 
 
 It is good books which young men 
 should read. They ought not to waste 
 time and weaken their minds and char- 
 acters with bad or even mediocre books. 
 No young man should be so foolish as to 
 give his time or any large part of it to 
 reading the flood of ephemeral fiction 
 which is now pouring on the world. It 
 is simply not worth reading. Now and 
 then a truly good book appears in it 
 which he ought to read, but no young 
 man can afford to spend time except on 
 the best. “ Readers are not aware of the 
 
His Reading 199 
 
 fact,” says Carlyle, “ but a fact it is of 
 daily increasing magnitude, and already 
 of terrible importance to readers, that 
 their first grand necessity in reading is 
 to be vigilantly, conscientiously select; 
 and to know everywhere that books, like 
 human souls, are actually divided into 
 what we call ‘ sheep and goats ’—the lat- 
 ter put inexorably on the left hand of the 
 judge; and tending, every goat of them, 
 at all moments, whither we know; and 
 much to be avoided, and, if possible, ig- 
 nored, by all sane creatures!” John 
 Foster writes in his journal: “ Few have 
 been sufficiently sensible of the impor- 
 tance of that economy in reading which 
 selects, almost exclusively, the very first 
 order of books. Why should a man, ex- 
 cept from some special reason, read a 
 very inferior book at the very time that 
 he might be reading one of the highest 
 order?” 
 
 Every young man should possess some 
 books of his own, even if only a few. It 
 is better if these are great books which 
 have moulded his own life and marked 
 
200 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 perhaps the crises of it. It is difficult 
 for anyone to mention the twenty books 
 which each young man should have. 
 Lists have often been published, but they 
 represent the life-story of the man who 
 made them, and his alone. If any young 
 man is in doubt as to whether his list 
 contains the books he ought to have 
 read, let him ask himself if these names 
 are among his authors: Shakespeare, 
 Milton, Coleridge, Bushnell, Tennyson, 
 Carlyle, Ruskin, Kingsley, Emerson, 
 Thackeray, Scott, Browning. There are 
 many great books besides the books 
 which these men wrote, and a man might 
 have read only good books who never 
 read one of these. But whatever books 
 we read ought to be good books. For 
 “a good book,” says Milton, “is the 
 precious life blood of a master spirit, em- 
 balmed and treasured up on purpose to 
 a life above life.” 
 
 At the same time, it is good to read 
 many different kinds of books, and often 
 a book which may not live as a great 
 
His Reading 201 
 
 book may be a great book for us. Ob- 
 scure biographies, books on the smaller 
 interests of life or features of nature, 
 serve to widen our sympathies and enrich 
 our interests. This is the row of books 
 now standing on one library table I know, 
 awaiting next reading: “ Two Centuries 
 of Christian Activity at Yale,” “ Letters 
 of John Richard Green,” Leslie Stephen’s 
 “History of English Thought in the 
 Eighteenth Century,” “The Speckled 
 Brook Trout,” “Arminius Vambery,” 
 “Life and Thoughts of the Rev. Thomas 
 P. Hunt,” Clarke’s “‘ Outline of Christian 
 Theology,” “John Hall,” Kidd’s “ West- 
 ern Civilization,” Milton’s Prose, Coven- 
 try Patmore’s Poetical Works, Stephen 
 Phillips’s Poems, Fisher’s “ Making of 
 Pennsylvania,” Streane’s “ Age of the 
 Maccabees,” Thring’s “Theory and 
 Practice of Teaching,” Gibbons’s “‘ Those 
 Black Diamond Men,” Bunyan’s “ Holy 
 War,” and some more. Tolstoi’s “ Res- 
 surrection ” was there a day or two ago, 
 but has now gone to the shelves. This 
 
202 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 list is a good deal of a mix, but it is surely 
 good to read many different kinds of 
 books, provided all are good. 
 
 There are great books like Cole- 
 ridge’s “Aids to Reflection,” Pascal’s 
 “Thoughts,” Newman’s “ Apologia,” 
 Lytton’s “ Last Days of Pompeii,” See- 
 ley’s “ Ecce Homo,” and many others as 
 unlike these as they are unlike one an- 
 other, which represent great movements 
 or impulses of thought, or stand out with 
 some distinct and influential significance. 
 A score of books could be suggested of 
 this general type, each of which will break — 
 open a new world of fact or thought to 
 a young man, and give to his life a new 
 and permanent power. 
 
 Perhaps some of the young men read- 
 ing this article would like to have the 
 names: of some good books to read in 
 different departments. I shall suggest a 
 few which will serve as a beginning. 
 
 1. History and _ Politics. — Green’s 
 “ Short History of the English People,” 
 Fisher’s “Outlines of Universal His- 
 
 ? igs 
 
 tory,” Seeley’s ““ Expansion of England,” 
 
His Reading 203 
 
 Bryce’s “American Commonwealth ” and 
 “Holy Roman Empire,” Johnson’s 
 “ American Politics,’ McCarthy’s “ His- 
 tory of Our Own Time,” Reinsch’s 
 “ World Politics,” Parkman’s Works and 
 Bancroft’s, Woodrow Wilson’s, Andrews’ 
 and Goldwin Smith’s Histories of the 
 United States, and Woolsey’s “ Political 
 Science.” 
 
 2. Poetry.—Tennyson, especially “In 
 Memoriam,” Milton’s “ Paradise Lost” 
 and “ Ode to the Nativity,” Browning’s 
 “Death in the Desert” and “ Saul,” and 
 “The Ring and the Book,” and the 
 pocket volume of Selections from Brown- 
 ing published by Smith, Elder & Co., 
 Emerson’s and Whittier’s and Lowell’s 
 and Longfellow’s poems, Wordsworth, 
 the two series of the Golden Treasury 
 of Songs and Lyrics and the Treasury 
 of Sacred Song, and Matthew Arnold. 
 
 3. Fiction—Scott, Thackeray, George 
 Eliot, Dickens, Hawthorne—these books 
 belong to a higher world than that of 
 mere story-telling. But there are many 
 
 more to be added—books like “ Ben ~- 
 
204 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 Hur,” “Hypatia,” “ Westward hie. 
 “Lorna Doone,” ‘ Robert Falconer, ” 
 “John Halifax, Gentleman,” and “ John 
 Inglesant.” And I don’t think any sane 
 man need be ashamed of being fond of 
 Kipling and Stevenson and Frank Stock- 
 ton and Conan Doyle for lighter hours 
 and the relief of the tension of life. 
 
 4. Biography.—There are great books 
 like Boswell’s Johnson, Stanley’s Arnold, 
 Irving’s Washington, and a host of splen- 
 did lives in our own day: Hallam Tenny- 
 son’s life of his father, Allen’s Life of 
 Phillips Brooks, Mrs. Kingsley’s Life of 
 Charles Kingsley, Leonard Huxley’s Life 
 and Letters of T. H. Huxley, Life and 
 Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, and 
 George John Romanes, Life of Lewis 
 Carroll, Mrs. Cheney’s Life and Letters. 
 of Horace Bushnell, Booker Washing- 
 ton’s “Up from Slavery,” the Life of 
 Robert Carter, and the exhaustless treas- 
 ure of missionary biography—Patteson, 
 Livingstone, Martyn, Judson, Hanning- 
 ton, Chalmers. Many autobiographical 
 stories are worth reading again and 
 
His Reading 205 
 
 again—Trumbull’s “ War Memories of 
 an Army Chaplain,” Hamlin’s “ My Life 
 and Times,” the memoirs of Grant and 
 Sherman and Hugh McCullough, the Let- 
 ters of Chinese Gordon to his sister. 
 These but make a beginning. 
 
 5. Essays. — Holmes’ and Lowell’s, 
 Emerson’s of course, and books like 
 these: Lamb’s “Essays of Elia,” Bir- 
 rell’s “ Obiter Dicta” and “Res Judi- 
 cate,” Mazzini’s Essays, Arnold’s “ Es- 
 says in Criticism,” Trench on the “ Study 
 of Words,” James’s “ The Will to Be- 
 lieve,’ Froude’s “ Essays on Great Sub- 
 jects,” and Mr. R. H. Hutton’s essays. 
 
 6. Some good books of general infor- 
 mation covering the thought and devel- 
 opment of the last century have been pub- 
 lished, e. g., “The Religions of the 
 World,” published by Harpers, and the 
 book on the Science of the Nineteenth 
 Century, issued by the same firm, to- 
 gether with A. R. Wallace’s account of 
 what the century accomplished and what 
 it left undone. To these should be added 
 such books, good for years yet, as Bage- 
 
206 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 hot’s “ Physics and Politics,” Guizot’s 
 “ History of Civilization,” Brace’s “ Gesta 
 Christi,” Uhlhorn’s “ Conflict of Chris- 
 tianity and Heathenism,” illustrating a 
 larger development than that of the last 
 century only. 
 
 7. In religion, many books should be 
 read by the young man—Stalker’s “ Life 
 of Christ” and “ Life of Paul,” Drum- 
 mond’s “Ideal Life,” Simpson’s “ Fact* 
 of Christ,” Phillips Brooks’s “Light of 
 the World and Other Sermons,” espe- 
 cially the sermon on “A Choice Young 
 Man.” For some good doctrinal state- 
 ment, let the young man read Hodge’s 
 “Popular Lectures on Theological 
 Themes,” or Clarke’s “ Outline,” these 
 two representing rather different theo- 
 logical points of view. To stiffen his 
 faith in the supernatural element in 
 Christianity, let him read Bushnell’s 
 “Nature and the Supernatural,” espe- 
 cially the chapter on the “ Character 
 of Jesus,” and, for some account of the 
 great movements of the last century, 
 Tulloch’s “ Religious Thought in Britain 
 
His Reading 207 
 
 in the Nineteenth Century,” and Rogers’ 
 “Men and Movements in the English 
 Church.” 
 
 This is not a school-professor’s list, 
 nor will it commend itself to the profes- 
 sional reviewer. Doubtless it includes 
 what some would condemn, and omits 
 much that every young man should read. 
 I have not mentioned Plato, Socrates, 
 Gibbon, Victor Hugo, Motley, Prescott, 
 Gladstone, Robert Burns, or any books of 
 travel. It will suffice if the mere mention 
 of these great books which have been in- 
 cluded awakens young men to a desire to 
 read the best, and a scorn for the waste 
 of time of which so many of us are guilty, 
 on Dorothy Vernons and Mr. Potters 
 from Texas. 
 
 Let us seek and keep the society of the 
 best books. It is the only way to be- 
 come the best men. And, above all other 
 books, there is, as Sir Walter Scott said, 
 one Book. Let us read that. 
 
XV 
 
 A YOUNG MAN AND HIS WORK 
 IN THE WORLD 
 
 For every man God has a special work. 
 Jesus strove to teach this truth to His 
 disciples. He told them the kingdom of 
 heaven was like a man who went away 
 to a far country, leaving his property be- 
 hind him, and to every man among his 
 servants his own work. At the end of 
 His life, after revealing to Peter some- 
 thing of His future life, He met Peter’s 
 natural request for information as to 
 John’s work with the quiet reproof that 
 He had a will for each of His disciples, 
 and that that will was not the concern of 
 others, who were to do their own work 
 and walk in their own way. 
 
 That the life of a man is of the pur- 
 pose of God and not of chance, is a truth 
 which our conduct may belie, but which 
 our conscience must acknowledge. It 
 
 208 
 
His Work in the World 209 
 
 does not need to be defended or proved to 
 a man who follows the Master who came 
 to do the will of the Father that sent 
 Him, and whose disciples “ are born not 
 of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor 
 of the will of man, but of God.” Noth- 
 ing is of chance, or caprice or whim in 
 the world where the hairs of our heads 
 are numbered, and no sparrow falls to the 
 ground without the Father’s notice. 
 Least of all is a human life, God’s great- 
 est and dearest creation, a bark adrift 
 on an uncharted sea, or a tramp ship 
 without master and commission. God 
 sent us here as He sent our Lord. We 
 are not above Him. It is enough for us 
 that we be like Him. He purposes for 
 us the fullest and highest ; that every fac- 
 ulty shall be perfected, every talent used, 
 every glory realised, every service done. 
 That we should be the best we can be, 
 and do the best we can do are God’s 
 wishes for us. And these “cans” are 
 not to be determined by our limitations 
 and stupidities and failures, but by that 
 power of which Paul was speaking when 
 
210 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 he said, “I can do all things through 
 Christ which strengtheneth me;” that is, 
 “all things which it is the will of God 
 that I, Paul, should do.” 
 
 Only if we do not choose to accept 
 God’s high and noble purpose for us, we 
 need not do so. Back of the great truth 
 of our perfect freedom, God can take 
 care of the contradictory truth of His per- 
 fect sovereignty. He has told us we can 
 choose for ourselves. If God’s taste for 
 us is purity and our taste for ourselves is 
 impurity, we may be impure if we wish. 
 It is so with unselfishness and selfishness, 
 love and lovelessness. And even if, in a 
 measure, we are willing to give God 
 some room, we still can choose whether 
 it shall be much or little, whether we 
 shall be wholly and outspokenly His, or 
 only so with a good deal of compromise 
 and trimming. Or even in His professed 
 service we can choose our grade of work. 
 “ Gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, 
 stubble,” is Paul’s classification of the 
 different qualities of work. Men choose 
 the kind which they prefer to submit to 
 
His Work in the World 211 
 
 God in the day of the testing by fire. 
 Surely the best is the only worthy 
 choice. No other choice is worthy of a 
 man. We are not beasts that lower 
 things should draw us with their lust and 
 the higher hold no winsome attractive- 
 ness for us. No other choice is worthy 
 of our God—the Best. Serving Him we 
 owe Him service of the best sort. Gold 
 is the man’s choice, not stubble. It will 
 stand better in the day of fire, and it is 
 more square and solid and satisfying even 
 now. But what is the best? Is the best for 
 another man the best for me? Not in all 
 things. God is rich enough to have a 
 work for each man, novel and fresh and 
 personal to the man. But no man 
 is entitled to a better motive, a better 
 spirit, a better sacrifice, a better suc- 
 cess in the things which are really 
 his of God to do than any other man 
 may claim. The best for every man 
 in anything that is within his capacity 
 and sphere is God’s will for him. What- 
 ever falls short of the best is contrary to 
 the will of God. To go at all into the 
 
212 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 service of “the lust of the flesh and the 
 lust of the eyes and the pride of life” is 
 to fall out of manhood, because it is the 
 choice of low and squalid things instead 
 of the highest and best—the will of God. 
 
 All this is quite practical. To turn 
 from a good and instructive book to 
 waste an hour skimming over a paper 
 whose contents of value can be scanned 
 in five minutes, is to choose stubble or 
 hay instead of silver or gold. To spend 
 an evening at a play or at cards which 
 might be given to wholesome and stimu- 
 lating intercourse with a thoughtful 
 friend, or to some quiet piece of work, 
 among men, is a surrender of the best. 
 And in our work, to do things with 
 slovenly haste or with moroseness or 
 with any envy of others, is to come 
 short of the best. And it is equally 
 practical in what may seem to us greater 
 matters, like the choice of our life 
 work or occupation, our trade, busi- 
 ness or profession. Which will really 
 seem to us the best—that which will 
 enable us to do our best for others and to 
 
His Work in the World 213 
 
 be our best ourselves—when we view 
 things not in the distorting light of 
 worldly judgment, but with the calm and 
 piercing discernment of that day when 
 all work stands boldly out in its true 
 character—gold, silver, costly stones, wood, 
 hay, stubble? Let us be sure that in that 
 day we shall regret it if we confuse gold 
 and stubble here. God cannot come into 
 the life of a man without bringing the 
 best with Him. He is the best, and He is 
 such a source of life and inspiration be- 
 cause to touch Him is to be touched by 
 the best, and to have all the possibilities 
 of our life set a-tingle by the visions of 
 endless capacities in Him. He ever 
 longs to do such work as this in men. 
 Men who choose the best, who worship 
 in spirit and truth, the Father is ever 
 seeking to worship and to work for Him. 
 
 It is a useful and helpful thing for a 
 young man to lay hold upon this truth 
 early. His life is not a chance and pur- 
 poseless thing, flung adrift in a world full 
 of such derelicts. It is a divine plan, and 
 he is to conceive of his work in it as a 
 
214 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 “vocation,” a calling. It is of this that 
 Trench speaks in his little book, “ On the 
 Study of Words,” which every young 
 man should not only read, but study: 
 “How solemn a truth we express 
 when we name our work in this world 
 our ‘ vocation,’ or, which is the same in 
 homelier Anglo-Saxon, our ‘calling.’ 
 What a calming, elevating, ennobling 
 view of the tasks appointed us in this 
 world, this word gives us. We did not 
 come to our work by accident; we did 
 not choose it for ourselves; but, in the 
 midst of much which may wear the ap- 
 pearance of accident and self-choosirg, 
 came to it by God’s leading and appoint- 
 ment. How will this consideration help 
 us to appreciate justly the dignity of our 
 work, though it were far humbler work, 
 even in the eyes of men, than that of any- 
 one of us here present! What an assist- 
 ance in calming unsettled thoughts and 
 desires, such as would make us wish to 
 be something else than that which we 
 are! What a source of confidence, when 
 we are tempted to lose heart, and to 
 
His Work in the World 215 
 
 doubt whether we shall carry through 
 our work with any blessing or profit to 
 ourselves or to others! It is our ‘ voca- 
 tion,’ not our choosing but our ‘ calling ;’ 
 and He who ‘ called’ us to it will, if only 
 we will ask Him, fit us for it, and 
 strengthen us in it.” 
 
 This is the way in which a young man 
 should look at his life. He has a work 
 to do for God in the world. This dig- 
 nifies and ennobles what we might other- 
 wise call common and unclean. If we 
 come to our life-task in the trust of true 
 children of God, we may accept as true 
 the words of John Tauler, mystic of the 
 fourteenth century : 
 
 “Every art or work, however unim- 
 portant it may seem, is a gift of God; 
 and all these gifts are bestowed by the 
 Holy Ghost for the profit and welfare of 
 man. Let us begin with the lowest. 
 One can spin, another can make shoes, 
 and some have great aptness for all sorts 
 of outward arts. These are all gifts 
 proceeding from the Spirit of God. If I 
 were not a priest, but were living as a 
 
216 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 layman, I should take it as a great favour 
 that I knew how to make shoes, and 
 should try to make them better than any- 
 one else, and should gladly earn my bread 
 by the labour of my hands. There is no 
 work so small, no art so mean, but it all 
 comes from God, and is a special gift of 
 His. Thus let each do that which an- 
 other cannot do so well, and for love, 
 returning gift for gift.” 
 
 Every young man may find out God’s 
 work for him. It would little avail us 
 to believe that God has a work for us to 
 do, if we were not sure that we can dis- 
 cover it, and know it as God’s work for 
 us. But how may we find it? First of 
 all, it is a good principle to remember 
 that He will not give any of us work to 
 do unworthy of His character. No man 
 can plead divine warrant for anything 
 but divine work. A principle like this at 
 once excludes the liquor business. No 
 man goes into that business under divine 
 assignment. Everything unworthy, un- 
 characteristic of the holy God is barred 
 to us as work for life. If we draw near 
 
His Work in the World 217 
 
 to God, and feel and think in His pres- 
 ence, all these appear despicable and un- 
 desirable to us, and we are drawn toward 
 the things that Jesus represents, and that 
 we recognise as the Godlike things. 
 Young men often make a mistake at this 
 point. They are warned to be careful 
 not to decide the question of their life- 
 work under “ religious excitement,” but 
 to wait until they are cool and self-pos- 
 sessed. That last word is the betraying 
 word—“ self-possessed.” What man is 
 likely to decide for unselfishness under 
 the cold, calculating spirit of self-owner- 
 ship and self-service? The right place to 
 decide the question of life-work is in the 
 presence of Christ, when the heart is 
 warm and the life aglow with the passion 
 of self-sacrifice, not of self-possession, 
 when we feel the beauty and duty of the 
 life lived for service, not for self; after the 
 fashion of Him who came not to be min- 
 istered unto, but to minister, and who 
 could save others but not Himself. 
 
 If we can bring ourselves, with God’s 
 help, into this sense of Jesus’ presence, 
 
218 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 and then look upon our lives, we are safe 
 to decide upon our work on the basis of 
 ,God’s past leading of our lives, our own 
 qualities and capacities, the need of this 
 or that work in the world, and the oppor- 
 tunities that are presented to us. Some 
 will be drawn to trades, some to pro- 
 fessions, some to commonplace work, 
 others to work that men regard as pecu- 
 liar and interesting; but, in any case, we 
 may know that it is God’s own work 
 for us. 
 
 In this day the privilege and duty of 
 the missionary work confront many 
 young men. There are many whose lives 
 are such that the question does not come 
 vitally to them. The want of all opportu- 
 nity to prepare for such work, or evident 
 disqualifications for it, or other claims 
 not to be disregarded, have exempted 
 them from the duty of personal mission- 
 ary service. But there are hundreds of 
 others not so exempt. They could go if 
 they would. They are well fitted for the 
 work, with the exception of that volun- 
 tary devotion to it which is an exception 
 
His Work in the World 219 
 
 within their own power to remove. They 
 do not go, either because they have never 
 thought about it, or, having thought 
 about it, do not wish to go. All such 
 should prayerfully consider the farewell 
 words of Ion Keith Falconer to the stu- 
 dents of Glasgow and Edinburgh, before 
 he went to Arabia for his too short work 
 for the evangelisation of Islam: 
 
 “While vast continents are shrouded 
 in almost utter darkness and hundreds of 
 millions suffer the horrors of heathenism 
 and of Islam, the burden of proof rests 
 on you to show that the circumstances in 
 which God has placed you were meant 
 by Him to keep you out of the foreign 
 field.” 
 
 All the work of a man’s life must be 
 honest and sincere work. There is no 
 place for anything false or deceptive. 
 No lie, no theft, no gambling, no unfair- 
 ness can be tolerated. Some young men 
 will have to face the question as to 
 whether it is right for a corporation to 
 do what no individual may do. May a 
 corporation ruin men where an individual 
 
220 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 would scorn to do so? Surely every 
 right-minded man will be true here, and 
 not deceive himself with the idea that 
 what is immoral for one man to do be- 
 comes moral when ten men do it. Few 
 young men have to face this question, 
 however. They are employed in simple 
 ways, or earn their living in positions of 
 inconspicuous responsibility. But hon- 
 esty is as essential in obscurity as in pub- 
 licity. God sees each man, and each 
 man sees himself; that is enough. Even 
 were it true that no eye saw, duty and 
 right would remain, and their claims are 
 supreme and inviolable. 
 
 Whatever our God-given work may be, 
 it is to have first place in our lives, and 
 we are to do it faithfully without sparing 
 ourselves. Few people break down 
 simply because they do hard work. Most 
 breakdowns are due to worry, or to neg- 
 lect of sleep or of the simplest laws of 
 health and diet. The man who sleeps 
 eight or nine hours, who eats good food 
 sensibly, and who refrains from all waste 
 and sin, and who does not worry, can 
 
His Work in the World 221 
 
 work as hard as he pleases, and be better 
 for it the harder he pleases to work. 
 
 We may be sure that part of our work 
 in life is to be personal influence. In 
 spite of ourselves, we shall be influencing 
 others by what we are and what we are 
 not, by what we say and what we do not 
 say. Unconscious influence is a real 
 power. “ Then went in also that other 
 disciple,” Bushnell’s classic text on this 
 subject, is a true suggestion of the power 
 of one’s own behaviour to control the be- 
 haviour of others. But, behind this, we 
 are to put forth positive influence to win 
 men to Christ and the Christian life. No 
 plea that our work is engineering, or 
 banking, or practicing medicine, or farm- 
 ing can excuse us from doing this also, 
 which is part of the work of every Chris- 
 tian man. 
 
 It is not to be regretted if: we do not 
 do in our lives all we think we should 
 like to do. If we are faithful, we shall 
 do all that God had for us to do, and that 
 will be quite enough and probably it will 
 be far more than we ever planned for 
 
222 A Young Man’s Questions 
 
 ourselves. Yet it is easy to mark out 
 plans we want to follow, and each piece 
 of work accomplished suggests other 
 things to do. Sometimes, when we get 
 toward the end of our work, we wonder 
 what we are to do next, when as we come 
 to what looked like a closed wall ahead, 
 we suddenly find a new road branching 
 off to left or right and offering greater 
 possibilities still. We may be sure that 
 this will be true of death itself. It looks 
 like a cul de sac into which we are mov- 
 ing. We see only the narrowing walls and 
 the dead obstruction at the end. But we 
 come to it, and lo, we see what we could 
 not see before, the boundless ranges of a 
 new life, with new work, new fellow- 
 ships, new joys, new victories. We sing 
 truly : 
 ‘« Work for the night is coming, 
 Under the sunset skies ; 
 While their bright tints are glowing, 
 Work, for daylight flies. 
 Work, till the last beam fadeth, 
 Fadeth to shine no more ; 
 
 Work, while the night is darkening 
 When man’s work is o’er.” 
 
His Work in the World 223 
 
 But it is true only for the present life; 
 for beyond the coming night the morning 
 waits, morning of the calm and eternal 
 day in which, without dust or heat or 
 tears, we shall look upon the King’s face 
 as we do Him service. 
 
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 Form 335. 45M 8-37. 
 
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