3 
 
 The Law of Liberjy 
 
 PRESIDENT 
 HENRY CHURCHILL KING 
 
 AtnpKlat Collection 
 
 IMi PirmfiitT Librm 
 
THE LAW OF LIBERTY 
 
 A Baccalaureate Sermon delivered at 
 Oberlin College, June 21, 1914 
 
 PRESIDENT 
 
 HENRY CHURCHILL KING 
 
 D.D..LL.D. 
 
 Press of The News Printing Co. 
 Oberlin, Ohio 
 
The Law of Liberty 
 
 "Faith working through love." 
 "For ye, brethren, were called for 
 freedom ; only use not freedom for 
 an occasion to the flesh, but through 
 love be servants one to another." — 
 Gal. 5:6 and 13. 
 
 I The Fundamental Nature of the 
 Problem. 
 
 It would seem a profanation to 
 take this last hour of college counsel 
 for a trivial theme. Only the great- 
 est themes befit this time. I bring 
 you, therefore, today, a fundamental 
 problem, a perennial problem, a prob- 
 lem that has occupied men since they 
 began to ponder spiritual issues ; a 
 problem with which great thinkers in 
 philosophy and morals and religion 
 have been engaged; a problem that 
 still has to do with the very essence 
 of life for every earnest man ; and a 
 problem peculiarly demanding to be 
 rethought, just now — the problem of 
 liberty and law. 
 
My theme — The Law of Liberty — 
 states a paradox ; but it is a paradox 
 that men have always to solve. How 
 can I have liberty without license? 
 How can I enthrone the law of 
 righteousness in my life without le- 
 galism? How can I accept the re- 
 demption of religion, of divine grace, 
 and still keep a character genuinely 
 my own? These are questions both 
 profound and intensely practical. 
 
 How difficult men have found the 
 solution of this problem, the whole 
 spiritual history of the race bears 
 witness. It is the problem of prophet 
 and priest in Judaism ; the problem of 
 faith and works and antinomianism in 
 the New Testament ; the problem of 
 justification by faith in the Reforma- 
 tion ; the problem of the Ethics of 
 Kant, with its insistence on self- 
 legislation ; the problem of Nietsche — 
 to name no other ; the problem of 
 "free lovers" of all kinds and [times; 
 and, in one form, the problem of de- 
 mocracy itself — the problem of self- 
 government. It is the great life prob- 
 lem that Christ believed himself to 
 have solved. 
 
 We may well tak» our start from 
 
 —4r— 
 
the New Testament; for all the ele- 
 ments of the problem are there il- 
 lustrated : — Judaistic legalism and 
 antinomianism ; the beginnings of me- 
 diaeval asceticism and mysticism ; the 
 anxieties of those who have seen the 
 doctrines of the free grace of God 
 and of salvation by faith abused ; 
 the other anxieties of those who see 
 Christianity becoming only another 
 legalism ; and , soaring above all, the 
 expression of the abounding life of 
 free children of the Heavenly Fa- 
 ther. 
 
 No fewer than five books of the 
 New Testament are directly and pri- 
 marily occupied with this theme : Ga- 
 latians and Romans, whose watchword 
 is "For freedom did Christ set us 
 free: stand fast therefore, and be not 
 entangled again in a yoke of bond- 
 age" ; James, which sounds the warn- 
 ing, "Faith, if it have not works, is 
 dead in itself" ; and Second Peter and 
 the curious little book of Jude, that 
 are warning against a licentious an- 
 tinomianism. Indeed, the phrase of my 
 theme is caught up out of one of these 
 controversial books, James, and my 
 text out of another, Galatians. 
 —5— 
 
The authors of James, Second Pe- 
 ter and Jude have seen the great 
 doctrines of justification by faith, of 
 salvation by grace, of the free for- 
 giveness of God, and of Christian lib- 
 erty, made an excuse for licentious 
 absence of character, and are calling 
 men back to the insistent ethical test 
 in religion: "Be ye doers of the word, 
 and not hearers only, deluding your 
 own selves." 
 
 Paul in Galatians and Romans has 
 seen all freedom and joy, not only, 
 but all inner righteousenss, and all 
 grace and beauty of character, so 
 sapped by a hard and haughty legal- 
 ism, that he glories in the deliverance 
 that Christ has brought from legal 
 bondage; and his great words are in- 
 evitably, faith, and love, and grace, 
 and forgiveness, and liberty. These 
 w^ere ideas too great for his gener- 
 ation rightly to grasp, and their abuse 
 produced a reaction to a new legalism 
 that tainted Christianity for dreary 
 years. But to Paul it was inconceiv- 
 able that faith, and love, and grace, 
 and forgiveness and liberty, should 
 mean license. The trust and the love 
 called out by the martchless gracious 
 
personal revelation of God in Christ 
 stirred new powers in him, and held 
 him to a grateful and quenchless am- 
 bition for such a life as Christ's, and 
 brought him victory where before he 
 had failed. The free grace and for- 
 giveness of a holy God, such as 
 Christ's life portrayed, could but 
 mean that God was pledged to co- 
 operate with him in the attainment of 
 a life worthy of a child of God. Like 
 Christ, he himself found his highest 
 liberty in devotion to his Father's 
 will. No man, he was sure, could 
 really be drawn to Christ and not be- 
 come like him — not by painful legal 
 performances, but by the healthful 
 contagion of Christ's own spirit. 
 
 Paul had caught, thus, a new vision 
 of God's purpose concerning men. He 
 had come to see that men were not 
 made to be petty egoists, shut up 
 within the narrow walls of their own 
 separate selves, but that they were 
 created on so large a plan that they 
 could not come to their best independ- 
 ently either of one another or of God, 
 — that they were made in every fiber 
 of their beings for such fellowships. 
 To hold back from these fellowships 
 —7— 
 
was to insure defeat. It was an ut- 
 terly false and mistaken pride, there- 
 fore, that in one's struggle for char- 
 acter shut the door on other lives, 
 human and divine, which were really 
 part and parcel of one's self. 
 
 II. Why, now, does this problem of 
 liberty and law, so clearly resolved 
 in the New Testament still, so con- 
 stantly recur? 
 
 Let us stop a moment to make plain 
 how absolutely essential both free- 
 dom and character, both law and lib- 
 erty are, and how vital to all satis- 
 fying life is the inner meaning of 
 both contentions. 
 
 What, in the first place, is law at 
 bottom — all law that ultimately a 
 man ought to obey? It is intended, 
 evidently, to secure a society united 
 in the pursuit of certain great com- 
 mon goods ; it is a way of life: — a way 
 that the experience of the race in- 
 dicates that it is desirable for the 
 common good of all that all men fol- 
 low; a way so good that it is felt 
 to be embodied in our natures as the 
 will of our Creator for us, and there- 
 fore a way of life. 
 
 When human law, or custom be- 
 
 —8— 
 
comes something else, when it serves 
 no common good; when it will not 
 bear the test of racial experience ; 
 when we cannot believe it represents 
 a true ought, or a true interpretation 
 of the will of God, it thereby loses 
 all authority as law, and the ethical 
 law in the true sense abrogates the 
 law falsely so called. Not all revolt 
 against existing law, therefore, is 
 lawlessness. Many a smug but dire in- 
 justice is hidden under law. The 
 insistent and eternal demand for char- 
 acter is the demand for obedience to 
 a law that can be conceived to be the 
 will of an all-loving God. Now to 
 try to get away from that law is to 
 flee from life, for it is an attempt 
 to get away from one's own highest 
 ideal. That is not to come into 
 larger life, but to take ultimately all 
 self-respect and dignity and worth 
 out of living. The demand for lib- 
 erty too frequently forgets that some 
 sphere of order and law is essential 
 to give freedom itself any value, and 
 so it turns its revolt against a law 
 into a revolt against law itself ; its 
 revolt against a particular form of 
 order, into a revolt against all order. 
 —0— 
 
There is a widespread menacing ten- 
 dency in all spheres of our modern 
 life — the tendency to forget that self- 
 control is a prime condition of every- 
 thing worth while in life. "Letting 
 oneself go" is a good road to noth- 
 ing except insanity. There is nmcli 
 talk of so-called "personal liberty,'' 
 that really means liberty to debauch 
 the community, liberty to make con- 
 ditions far harder for both personal 
 and social progress. 
 
 But the very fact that conceptions 
 of law can so change ; that imperfect, 
 developing men can at one stage find 
 the preservation of a common good in 
 a law that later seems to them a 
 hindrance to growth and to larger 
 life, itself illustrates and justifies 
 the perennial demand for liberty. 
 Conditions change. Men develop. New 
 ideals arise. Readjustment is imper- 
 ative. What adjustment, is always 
 the question. 
 
 All men agree that in seeking to 
 attain a common good there must be 
 no unnecessary interference with the 
 freedom of the individual. Institu- 
 tions, the state, the law itself, all ul- 
 timately exist for the greater good 
 
of individual citizens. Too heavy a 
 price in individual freedom may eas- 
 ily be paid for a well recognized com- 
 mon good. 
 
 But the justification of the demand 
 for liberty lies much deeper than this. 
 The one thing that the individual has 
 to give to the common good is him- 
 self, his fully realized possibilities. 
 But this complete self-realization is 
 also his own individual highest good. 
 From both points of view, therefore, 
 there is required the freedom for the 
 individual to develop his largest pos- 
 sibilities, and this requires some- 
 thing more than selfish self-will. And 
 law — the expressed will of the whole 
 community — must often come in, not 
 to hinder, but to preserve this free- 
 dom of the individual, his full initia- 
 tive — to protect the individual against 
 the unwarranted aggressions of oth- 
 ers. The community suffers wherever 
 any individual citizen has not the 
 liberty to make his full contribution 
 to the common life. From this angle 
 it is hardly too much to say that law 
 itself exists to insure the highest 
 and largest liberty to the individual. 
 
 But the demand for liberty has a 
 —11— 
 
still deeper source. A man is not 
 truly ia man unless he has an inner 
 life of his own; freedom of thought, 
 freedom of investigation, freedom to 
 be himself in his inmost life. Char- 
 acter cannot be laid upon him from 
 without. He must see for himself and 
 choose for himself. A fundamentally 
 good society, therefore, is not a so- 
 ciety in which every wrong act is for- 
 bidden by law and prevented by an 
 omniscient and omnipotent police force, 
 but a society in which men choose 
 for themselves obedience to the high- 
 est ideals they have seen. But this 
 requires liberty at every step, <as well 
 as the developing power of law. The 
 great aim of human life and society 
 is to develop free men who choose 
 the right, not to get a certain sort 
 of external conduct. God, himself, 
 counts this free choice of the right so 
 infinite in value as. to be worth the 
 terrible price of all the sin and suf- 
 fering which the abuse of men's free- 
 dom has brought into the world. He 
 has given men no play freedom, but 
 a freedom terribly real. And human 
 society in all its lawmaking may 
 —12— 
 
never forget the eternal need of free- 
 dom. 
 
 In the solution of this constant par- 
 adox of liberty and law, men must 
 therefore learn patience with men ; pa- 
 tience with the blunderers of the 
 race; patience with its born legisla- 
 tors; patience with its born rebels; 
 patience with its common men fight- 
 ing their way slowly to character ; 
 patience with its geniuses and proph- 
 ets, with their new and sudden vis- 
 ions; for both law and liberty must 
 be kept, both character and freedom. 
 
 The constant recurrence of the 
 problem of liberty and law will be un- 
 derstood also when we see that this 
 problem is at bottom the problem of 
 the radical and the conservative, and 
 the problem of "absolute natural 
 right," on the one hand, and of "his- 
 toric legitimate right," on the other ; 
 the problem of justice to the past and 
 of justice to the present and future. 
 And all are represented at any time 
 in society by the members of three 
 generations. But just as a sphere 
 of law is necessary to give meaning 
 to freedom, and just as the preserva- 
 tion of freedom of initiative must be 
 —13— 
 
the very aim of law; so the radical 
 and conservative at bottom have sim- 
 ilar goals. The radical does not wish 
 to root up all the past, but only the 
 evil and the ineffective for good as 
 he conceives it; but he recognizes 
 that in thus rooting up the faulty he 
 is certain to sacrifice much else. The 
 conservative does not wish to pre- 
 serve all the past, but only all the 
 good of the past; but he recognizes 
 that in preserving all of the good he 
 is certain to keep, in the structure of 
 society, much evil also. Each be- 
 lieves he preserves a balance of good 
 by his method; and this balance of 
 good is the real aim in both cases. 
 
 Like the differences between the ad- 
 vocates of law and liberty, the dif- 
 ferences between the radical and the 
 conservative are to a large extent 
 temperamental. They go back finally 
 probably to the fundamental paradox 
 of the inner life — docility and initia- 
 tive, self-surrender and self-assertion. 
 Character in the large sense, as I 
 have elsewhere said, "requires both 
 self-assertion and self-surrender, both 
 individuality and deference, both the 
 assertion of a law for oneself and the 
 _14_ 
 
reasonable yielding to others, both 
 loyalty to conviction and open-raind- 
 edness, both free independence and 
 obedience.'' 
 
 And for all social progress, in like 
 manner, both temperaments represent 
 indispensable human needs. For any 
 solid and enduring social progress 
 there must be historical continuity, 
 on the one hand, and constant read- 
 justment on the other. We do not 
 live in a static world ; we are not 
 static beings. We are always in pro- 
 cess. A blind conservatism and a blind 
 radicalism are both therefore impossi- 
 ble. To keep even the good of the 
 past in new conditions requires ad- 
 justment. To get rid of even the 
 most certain evils of the past requires 
 that the new method or custom shall 
 be fitted into what men have already 
 attained. Free spontaneity in obedi- 
 ence to constantly bettering ideals, — 
 this must be the goal of both rad- 
 ical and conservative ; of defenders 
 both of liberty and of law. 
 
 III. Let us ask, then, once again, 
 — How did the New Testament writ- 
 ers conceive the solution of this 
 problem? Have we modern men of 
 
the twentieth century any better so- 
 lution? All five of those New Testa- 
 ment books, which are occupied with 
 the problem of law and liberty, seek 
 to show how one may attain charac- 
 ter and avoid legalism ; how he may 
 keep freedom of life and be true to 
 the highest standards. They aim to 
 point the way to definite growth in 
 character, as necessarily involved in 
 the very idea of the Christian life. 
 Can we penetrate their solution? 
 
 Both theme and text suggest the 
 lines on which this paradox of the 
 moral and religious life may be 
 solved. The passage in James that 
 contains my theme runs, you will re- 
 member, in this fashion : "But be ye 
 doers of the word, and not hearers 
 only, deluding your own selves. For 
 if anyone is a hearer of the word 
 and not a doer, he is like unto a man 
 beholding his natural face in a mir- 
 ror: for he beholdeth himself, and go- 
 eth away, and straightway forgetteth 
 what manner of man Ihe was. But 
 he that looketh into the perfect law, 
 the law of liberty, and so continueth, 
 being not a hearer that forgetteth but 
 a doer that worketh, this man shall 
 — 10 
 
be blessed in his doing" (James 
 1:22-25). Here, plainly, there has 
 come to the writer an illuminating in- 
 sight into the meaning of any true 
 law of God. It is a law of a man's 
 own being, a revealing to him of the 
 lines along which life lies. The per- 
 fect law is a law of liberty, because 
 it is the law of one's own being truly 
 discerned and stated. In obeying this 
 inner law of his own nature one has 
 liberty, the only true liberty, and is 
 "blessed" thereby. Such a law simp- 
 ly states the true self which we are 
 to realize. We can have freedom 
 only in developing toward the goal 
 involved in our inmost natures. Here 
 is freedom to follow the most funda- 
 mental trends of our natures, and 
 here, too, is the character that grows 
 out of fulfilled ideals. The concep- 
 tion is identical with the new con- 
 ception which modern science suggests 
 of the laws of nature, as not hin- 
 drances to life but as ways to con- 
 quest and larger life. 
 
 James here starts from the side of 
 law, but Paul, starting from the side 
 of the inner freedom, reaches essen- 
 tially the same conclusion. "For in 
 —17— 
 
Christ Jesus," he says, "neither cir- 
 cumcision availeth anything, nor un- 
 circumcision ; but faith working 
 through love." "For ye, brethren, 
 were called for freedom ; only use not 
 your freedom for an occasion to the 
 flesh, but through love be servants 
 one to another. For the whole law is 
 fulfilled in one word, even in this : 
 thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy- 
 self." Paul, too, shows that he has 
 •had a flash of illumination lighting 
 up the whole paradox of law and lib- 
 erty to its depths. No external law, 
 he insists, can set free the inner man. 
 But the great revelation of God in 
 Christ can call out supreme trust and 
 love, can appeal at once to the inmost 
 in man. Only a great trust can thus 
 profoundly call us out, we getting 
 such a vision of the fatherly will of 
 God in Christ that we can but trust 
 Kim, and God so trusting us that we 
 cannot be unworthy of that trust. 
 Such a trust or faith is bound to 
 "work" ; it will out; it cannot help 
 expressing itself in a reflection of the 
 great personality that has aroused it 
 to such trust and love; — "faith work- 
 ing through love," inevitably express- 
 —18— 
 
ing its love to God in a sharing in 
 His life of self-giving love for men. 
 Such a love has the very essence of 
 all true law in itself. It fulfills all 
 law. Such a faith, just because it 
 springs from within and works 
 through love, will be free and spon- 
 taneous, all its outer conduct prompt- 
 ed by an inner spirit. Liberty here 
 insures law. 
 
 How surely this must follow on 
 any true conception of Christianity; 
 how surely the grace of God in 
 Christ carries one on to a life like 
 God's own ; how surely the freedom 
 of religion insures an ethical life, 
 can be very briefly put from various 
 angles. 
 
 In the first place, the Christian is 
 a learner of Christ, and hence of 
 course makes the ideal of Christ's 
 life that of his own. 
 
 Or, the religious man seeks above 
 all, in the very passion of his relig- 
 ious desire, to share in the life of 
 God Himself, and the God whom 
 Christ reveals is in His very essence 
 self-giving love. One cannot share 
 that life and not give himself in lov- 
 ing service to men. 
 
 —19— 
 
Naturally, therefore, and again, the 
 New Testament came to conceive of 
 a truly ethical life as the inevitable 
 fruit of the religious acceptance of 
 Christ. Or, as James puts it, the in- 
 ner spirit is conceived as a fountain 
 out of which all external expression 
 comes. 
 
 Or, through a deeper conception of 
 law, as we have seen, God's law is 
 felt to be only a loving hint of the 
 line of life for us ; the ethical com- 
 mand itself, therefore, becoming a rev- 
 elation of the love of God, so that 
 we see that in obeying the ethical 
 command we are simply following the 
 laws of life into a steadily enlarging 
 life. 
 
 IV. This conception is so true to 
 Christ's own thought of the will of 
 God as a Father's will, as well as to 
 that of James and Paul, and to that 
 of the scientific conception of law, 
 that we shall do well to try to think 
 it through a little furtber, and see 
 its relation to other theories of life. 
 
 A large part of the appeal of self- 
 ish pleasure, for example, lies in its 
 seeming promise of larger liberty, of 
 further life. "I want to do as I 
 —20— 
 
like" ; "I want to see life," the pleas- 
 ure-seeker urges. "Live while you 
 live," he exhorts. And even the low- 
 est selfish sense pleasures do afford 
 some emotional experiences, that give 
 temporarily a new sense of freedom 
 and elation and interest, and so some 
 seeming immediate extension of life. 
 Now men have a right to expect from 
 life freedom and interest and enlarge- 
 ment. And this natural cry of the 
 pleasure-seeker shows that contend- 
 ers for the ideal may not lightly sur- 
 render Christ's idea of religion as 
 giving abundant life, but must stead- 
 ily insist on a conception of good- 
 ness that can be permanently inter- 
 esting. One cannot hope to succeed 
 in constantly whipping his soul back 
 from all that he counts of interest 
 and of real value. Men need at this 
 point constant enlightenment. No 
 virtue is safe that is not both intel- 
 ligent and militant. 
 
 And the clear-sighted man has now 
 come to see that to think of moral 
 laws as hindrances to liberty and life 
 is a great mistake. He now con- 
 ceives them rather as formulating the 
 outcome of the experience of the 
 —21— 
 
race. They state, that is, the ways 
 in which we can best satisfy the 
 whole man, the ways in which we 
 get the most out of these natures of 
 ours, the ways in which our beings 
 were meant to act. To refuse to 
 obey such laws written in our consti- 
 tutions is as absurd as it would be 
 to refuse to obey the directions of 
 the manufacturer for the running of 
 a superb automobile. The directions 
 are not to hamper us, but to enable 
 us to get the utmost out of our ma- 
 chine. Only a fool would ignore them 
 and pride himself meanwhile on his 
 liberty. In fact, one gets no real lib- 
 erty in the use of a machine, until its 
 laws have become like inner laws for 
 him, and it is second nature and au- 
 tomatic for him to obey them. It is 
 exactly so concerning the laws of our 
 bodies and minds. If we ignore the 
 fact that we are made for action, for 
 heroic achievement, for fine personal 
 relations, we shall thereby gain 
 neither freedom nor larger life, but 
 make, rather, the largest life impos- 
 sible to us. When men so act, they 
 are turning back to lower and cor- 
 rupt ends, to ends abandoned in the 
 upreaching of the race. 
 —22— 
 
Indeed, religion itself is probably 
 rightly conceived as growing out of 
 men's constantly extending claim on 
 life, men's persistent refusal to be 
 satisfied with the finite. "Nothing," 
 says Johanna Ambrosius, "is so in- 
 satiable as the human heart. If it 
 has enough to eat and drink, it longs 
 for costly vessels for the food to be 
 served in, and once it possesses these 
 it would ask for the blue heavens as 
 a tablecloth." Men have unquencha- 
 ble thirsts for extending experience, 
 for permanent outlooks and hopes ; 
 for constantly enlarging life, in a 
 word, for love ; — thirsts that God 
 alone can satisfy. The highest law 
 and the largest liberty here again come 
 together. The constant seeming an- 
 tinomy between pleasure and duty, be- 
 tween the religious and the irreligious 
 life, and the frequent feeling that 
 duty and religion limit rather than 
 enlarge life, are, consequently, usu- 
 ally due to false conceptions both of 
 happiness and of religion. 
 
 On the one hand, the pleasure- 
 seeker is usually thinking of an im- 
 mediate and partial and selfish satis- 
 faction; forgetting the "long run," 
 —23— 
 
forgetting the whole personality, and 
 forgetting all others. And the fleet- 
 ing, unsatisfying nature of much 
 that is called pleasure, and sought as 
 such, is so explained. "Man shall 
 not live by bread alone." In the first 
 place, he is a creature of memory and 
 anticipation ; he cannot live simply in 
 the immediate pleasure of the pass- 
 ing moment. In the second place, he 
 is a creature not of appetites only, 
 but of imagination, and reason and 
 conscience; he has his whole nature 
 always to reckon with. In the third 
 place, his life is knit up indissolubly 
 with other lives ; they are part and 
 parcel of himself. He is so made. He 
 cannot, therefore, think simply of 
 himself and have largeness of life. 
 In all these ways a false conception 
 of happiness misleads. The decep- 
 tive nature of alcohol, as shown un- 
 der the cold analysis of scientific ex- 
 periment, precisely illustrates the mis- 
 leading nature of the appeal of the 
 immediate and partial and selfish 
 pleasure. 
 
 On the other hand, the claim of 
 the moral and religious life may also 
 be misconceived. Sometimes, with a 
 —24^- 
 
false asceticism, it is made to deny 
 the body's legitimate place. Some- 
 times its goodness is conceived only 
 negatively and legalistically, and so 
 robbed of interest and spontaneity, as 
 a mere emptying of life, or a hard, 
 disagreeable and useless task arbitra- 
 rily imposed. But such a conception 
 has nothing to do with Christ's 
 thought of a steadily advancing, in- 
 telligent and unselfish entrance into 
 the loving will of God for all men. 
 That carries with it all great causes, 
 all high ideals, all inspiring devo- 
 tions and enthusiasms, and alone 
 holds the promise of a permanently 
 satisfying life. 
 
 V. How urgently our own time is 
 demanding that we rethink this 
 whole problem of liberty and law, 
 violently opposed tendencies show. 
 
 On the one hand there is the 
 host of reformers who are seeking to 
 write into law all kinds of imag- 
 inable human gains, forgetting too 
 often the imperative necessity, if civ- 
 ilization is really to advance, that 
 men be brought to an inner choice of 
 all real goods. For it is well to remem- 
 ber, as President Hadley puts it, that 
 —25— 
 
"it is easier to pass a radical meas- 
 ure that is going to be evaded than 
 to secure obedience to a conservative 
 one." All of us need to take deeply 
 to heart that advanced legislation is 
 in itself no proof of progress, if there 
 do not accompany it willingness to 
 obey the law that expresses the higher 
 ideal. We are not to forget that de- 
 mocracy is no mere matter of form of 
 government or kinds of legislation ; 
 but that democracy goes forward in 
 just the proportion in which self- 
 ' discipline accompanies it, as Dr. Jacks 
 so incisively reminds us : 
 
 "The central problem of de- 
 mocracy is the problem of edu- 
 cating the citizen. This, indeed, 
 is a commonplace; but there is 
 reason to think that the kind of 
 education required by the citizen, 
 whether as subject or legislator, 
 to qualify him for the new part 
 he has to play, has not been suf- 
 ficiently considered. What he 
 needs is not merely instruction in 
 political science. He does need 
 that; but he needs something 
 else far more; something without 
 which all the political science in 
 the world will carry him but a 
 little way. He must learn to 
 obey: and the lesson will be all 
 —26— 
 
the more difficult for him to learn 
 because hitherto democracy has 
 been too closely associated with 
 the spirit which prompts him to 
 seek escape from authority. Of 
 all modern democratic govern- 
 ments, with scarcely one excep- 
 tion, it may be said that they 
 were conceived in disobedience 
 and born in rebellion. Their 
 watchword has ever been 'lib- 
 erty' ; but 'liberty' interpreted in 
 a sense which has obscured its 
 sterner implications. But now 
 that democracy has taken up the 
 task of social reform those stern- 
 er implications are coming into 
 view. None but a thoroughly 
 disciplined community can ef- 
 fectually deal, through its Gov- 
 ernment, with social reform. The 
 idea, too prevalent in certain 
 quarters, that the restraints of 
 social reform will fall exclusively 
 on the rich, the idle, the privi- 
 leged, is a fond illusion. Every 
 man of us will be put under re- 
 straints such as we have never 
 dreamed of; such as few men 
 have ever asked themselves wheth- 
 er they were willing, or even 
 able to bear. It is well that we 
 should all realize this truth — for 
 it is irrefutable — as we listen to 
 the daring programmes and the 
 glowing promises of political ora- 
 tors." 
 
 —27— 
 
We must learn to obey. We must 
 gird ourselves for that increasing self- 
 discipline, that is demanded by ad- 
 vancing social aims. 
 
 As opposed to these who are seek- 
 ing to write all reform into law, and 
 are satisfied therewith, stand the vio- 
 lent emancipators of various classes, 
 like the syndicalists and the militant 
 suffragettes, who imagine that force 
 of itself can bring emancipation to 
 their respective classes. Let it be 
 perfectly clear here that there is 
 much of injustice to protest against. 
 It cannot be justly claimed that wo- 
 men have a fair representation in or- 
 ganized society today. It cannot be 
 justly claimed that industrial work- 
 ers in general are fairly sharing in 
 the joint product of labor and capi- 
 tal. The shameless record of the 
 mining corporations of Colorado, in 
 the debauching of all the forces of 
 law and justice, is but one piece of 
 evidence. How certainly the selfish 
 lawlessness of the capitalistic class 
 fruits either in the selfish lawless- 
 ness of other classes, or in the de- 
 termination to bring all business un- 
 der state control, is witnessed by 
 
 -as- 
 
the conservative Railway Age-Gazette: 
 "The real leaders of Socialism in this 
 country are such men as Charles S. 
 Mellen, B. F. Yoakum, and the direc- 
 tors of the New Haven, Frisco and 
 other roads who are too crooked, cow- 
 ardly, indolent or incapable to per- 
 form the duties of their positions." 
 Nevertheless, selfish force cannot bring 
 the emancipation of any class. Not 
 even if they could be certainly suc- 
 cessful in the use of force, could the 
 emancipation so come. We are learn- 
 ing that the unspeakable folly of war 
 is that it settles nothing; that after 
 all the fighting is over, the real so- 
 lution must be reached in other more 
 rational ways. Let the Balkans bear 
 witness : intolerable slaughter and sui- 
 cide of nations, and absolutely noth- 
 ing of value accomplished! Any 
 cause is safe in just the degree in • 
 which it has really won the conviction 
 of men. The real victory of a cause, 
 therefore, absolutely requires educa- 
 tion, persuasion, and the free choos- 
 ing of the new goal. The forced vic- 
 tory, even if possible, thus, is a cheap 
 and insecure victory ; the more fun- 
 damental and difficult task still re- 
 —29— 
 
mains. A selfish, lawless class vic- 
 tory, that willingly ignores all other 
 human interests, just because it is 
 selfish and lawless, cannot abide. 
 "Nothing is settled until it is settled 
 right," is still good doctrine, and more 
 clear now than ever. These causes 
 of the syndicalist and of the militant 
 suffragette complain, not without jus- 
 tification, as we have seen, that so- 
 ciety is not doing them justice. But 
 will treacherous use of force remedy 
 that? Can men counsel and practice 
 treachery and violence and spread 
 this disease through society, and reap 
 the fruit of loyalty and fair dealing, 
 and not rather make society itself 
 impossible? Syndicalism is seeking 
 to remedy the selfish lawlessness of 
 the capitalistic class by a like self- 
 ish lawlessness on the part of the 
 working class. It is the old fallacy 
 of lynch law. Outrage of humanity 
 cannot be cured by further outrage. 
 Militant suffragism Is seeking to win 
 long delayed justice in giving women 
 a fair share in government, by a self- 
 ish lawlessness that would set all gov- 
 ernment at naught. It has not ob- 
 served even the decencies of civilized 
 
warfare. It is using mob violence and 
 it is increasingly provoking mob vio- 
 lence. Democracy, we may not for- 
 get, means not only se//-government 
 but self-government. Those who are 
 to share in that may not appeal to 
 the mob. Nothing is so terrible in hu- 
 man society as fundamental lawless- 
 ness, and it was, therefore, that Kant, 
 who was no believer in character laid 
 on from without, still felt compelled 
 to say : "If law ceases, all worth of 
 human life on earth ceases too." Set 
 your face like a flint against selfish 
 lawlessness for any cause. 
 
 And it is in this same direction that 
 we are to look for the fallacy of "free 
 lovers" of all sorts, who find in the 
 strength of uncontrolled passion its 
 own excuse for being. Their doc- 
 trine is having, just now, a strange 
 recrudescence, and they would fain 
 persuade men that the race has, so 
 far, learned nothing concerning the 
 relations of the sexes. That there 
 are many difficult questions here ; 
 that our conventions have not all been 
 justified; that there have been some 
 strong moral grounds for the exten- 
 sion of divorce; that much that has 
 —31— 
 
been written of a revolutionary char- 
 acter has been written in moral earn- 
 estness ; that some relations classed 
 legitimate are really less justified, in 
 the sight of God, than some counted 
 illegitimate — all this need not be 
 questioned. 
 
 But, on the one hand, where a real 
 ideal has been seriously set up, as by 
 Mrs. Key, for example, it is an ideal 
 much more tenuous and more difficult 
 of realization both by the individual 
 and by society, and hence less prac- 
 ticable, and it is fraught with many 
 dubious consequences that make the 
 ideal itself exceedingly doubtful. It 
 is very difficult to believe that such 
 theories do justice either to the so- 
 ber lessons of evolution, or to the 
 experience of the race in marriage. 
 When one prominent Feminist can 
 say, — "Personally I am inclined to be- 
 lieve that the ultimate aim of Fem- 
 inism with regard to marriage . is the 
 practical suppression of marriage and 
 the institution of free alliance," — 
 one cannot help feeling that there is 
 here disclosed a bland indifference 
 both to experience and to one whole 
 side of the paradox of liberty and 
 —32— 
 
law. The race will wisely go slow in 
 giving to wild speculation so great 
 weight in the most important moral 
 questions. Marriage will fail, just as 
 any other institution will fail, when 
 men bring to it, only selfish passion. 
 That is a failure, in truth, however, 
 not of an institution, but of men. 
 
 But for the most part, these free 
 lovers are not truly concerned with 
 great moral ideals at all. They are 
 thinking of selfish pleasure, and chafe 
 under any permanent obligations. 
 They simply are not willing to pay 
 their part of the price of a decent 
 civilization. And they are pointing 
 to the old, easy, often traveled road 
 of selfish indulgence, allowing to im- 
 pulse supreme control, whatever this 
 may cost someone else. It would be 
 pathetic, if it were not so shameful 
 and so self-contradictory, to see how 
 these lauders of passion persuade 
 themselves with each new relation 
 that here is a real affinity, here one 
 may find ideals realized, here vow 
 eternal fealty, such as they have just 
 belied in utter treachery in another 
 relation. The very fact that they 
 cannot get away from such idealizing 
 —33— 
 
shows how surely any love, that is to 
 be at all satisfying even to a selfish 
 soul, must be thought of as having 
 abiding loyalty. And so long as 
 cause and effect exist in the moral 
 world, treachery, we may be sure, 
 cannot j r ield the fruit of loyalty, and 
 fine human relations cannot be built 
 up out of a series of infidelities. Hate- 
 ful, mean, selfish treachery — that is 
 what these free lovers are trying to 
 gild. The truth is, that such lives 
 surrender the helm of w^ill to feeling, 
 and give up in these relations moral 
 values altogether. And this is finally 
 to prove traitors to the race's task of 
 an even tolerable civilization. 
 
 The careless indifference, too, with 
 which entire classes of society, in 
 their devotion to the pleasure of 
 "week ends," are willing to jeopard- 
 ize the whole great institution of the 
 Sabbath, is simply another illustra- 
 tion of selfish lawlessness. One needs 
 to be no ascetic to see that the con- 
 version of our Sundays into simple 
 pleasure seeking, however innocent in 
 itself, is an immense loss to all the 
 deeper forces that go to the making 
 of any civilization deserving the 
 —34— 
 
name. College men and women, at 
 least, may be asked to do thinking 
 enough not heedlessly to barter one 
 of the great spiritual achievements of 
 the race for a couple of days of 
 house parties and auto riding and 
 golf. Are we going to lose all sense 
 of proportionate values? 
 
 The weekly harvest of death 
 through auto speeding, the like per- 
 petual sacrifice of life and limb and 
 childhood through preventable acci- 
 dents and bad industrial conditions, 
 the reputation of American tourists in 
 Europe as souvenir thieves, the shame- 
 less way in which supposed respecta- 
 ble people display their thefts from 
 hotels and other sources, the frequent 
 heedless disregard of others' rights 
 to property and to quiet by so highly 
 privileged a class as college students 
 — these are all alike symptoms of the 
 old and new disease of selfish lawless- 
 ness. 
 
 As civilization goes forward it be- 
 comes, like the evolution of animal 
 life, more and more complex and del- 
 icate in its adjustments. The forces 
 employed, too, are increasingly pow- 
 erful. The ability of the selfish law- 
 
lessness of a few to work widespread 
 discomfort and disaster is thereby 
 steadily increased, and the demand 
 for individual self-control in the same 
 measure enlarged. How a whole na- 
 tion can be terrorized by the selfish 
 lawlessness of a few is being demon- 
 strated today in Great Britain. One 
 selfish boy and paint pot can give 
 discomfort to a community for 
 months and even years. A few stu- 
 dents regardless of the property 
 rights of surrounding communities 
 may seriously diminish the privileges 
 of an entire student body and blacken 
 their reputation. 
 
 Selfish self-will in any realm, let 
 us be sure, is no true liberty ; rather 
 is it a sure road to cutting short our 
 largest liberties. We must rather 
 be able to say with Goethe : "I learned 
 that the unspeakable value of true 
 freedom consisted not in doing what 
 we please, or all that circumstances 
 allow, but in the power of doing at 
 once and without restraint whatever 
 we consider right." 
 
 VI. And this true freedom the 
 New Testament not only clearly con- 
 ceives, but it points the one eternal 
 —36— 
 
way to reach it. Religion itself re- 
 mains, — what Professor James called 
 it, — the one great unlocker of men's 
 powers, — the one great emancipator 
 of the human soul. Our absolute hu- 
 man dependence still bears witness, 
 how inevitably we are made for God, 
 how certainly we need to become 
 "partakers of the divine nature," if 
 we are to fulfill the purpose of our 
 creation. As surely as man is made 
 capable of religion, so surely is the 
 largest life not possible to him 
 until he opens his being to the 
 tides of the divine life, to the in- 
 working of the Spirit of God. The 
 New Testament emphasis, therefore, 
 upon the doctrine of the Spirit, 
 is an inevitable emphasis. And the 
 so-called "new thought" of our time 
 is only a less rational putting of the 
 sense of our absolute dependence on 
 the Spirit of God. That the New 
 Testament should insist that we are 
 to be born of the Spirit, that we are 
 to walk in the Spirit, that we are to 
 have in us the witness of the Spirit, 
 means, not that there is the magical 
 application to us of some thing or 
 patent process, but the 'bringing in 
 —37— 
 
of a great new personal relation that 
 becomes the source of all else in 
 life, — a new force, a new capacity, a 
 new hope. And this new force of life 
 counterworks the forces of death. In 
 the moral as in the physical life, the 
 only real protection against disease 
 and decay is abounding life. And in 
 the light of the doctrine of the 
 Spirit, God's free forgiveness is seen 
 to mean, not the magical setting 
 aside of the consequences of our evil 
 choosing, but the counter-working of 
 those consequences by a new tide of 
 life with its own consequences of fur- 
 ther life. 
 
 It is only to put the same great 
 method of life in slightly different 
 form, when it is insisted, with Paul 
 and with Drummond, that men's 
 greatest need is persistent associa- 
 tion with Christ. And it is no out- 
 worn way of life, which is so sug- 
 gested even to the man of the twen- 
 tieth century. For that simply means 
 that acquaintance with God, as with 
 any other person, must be obtained 
 through his greatest and most sig- 
 nificant self-manifestation. It is be- 
 cause men have felt that they found 
 —38— 
 
just this in Christ that he has come 
 to have for them such supreme sig- 
 nificance. "That this is a real ex- 
 perience and not a vision," says Pro- 
 fessor Drummond, "that this life is 
 possible to men, is being lived by men 
 today, is simple biographical fact. 
 From a thousand witnesses I cannot 
 forbear to summon one. The follow- 
 ing are the words of one of the high- 
 est intellects this age has known, a 
 man who Shared the burdens of his 
 country as few have done, and who, 
 not in the shadows of old age, but in 
 the high noon of his success, gave 
 this confession to the world: 'I want 
 to speak tonight only a little, but that 
 little I desire to speak of the sacred 
 name of Christ, who is my life, my 
 inspiration, my hope, and my surety. 
 I cannot help stopping and looking 
 back upon the past. And I wish, as 
 if I had never done it before, to bear 
 witness, not only that it is by the 
 grace of God, but that it is by the 
 grace of God as manifested in Christ 
 Jesus, that I am what I am. I recog- 
 nize the sublimity and grandeur of 
 the revelation of God in His eternal 
 fatherhood as one that made the 
 —30— 
 
heavens, that founded the earth, and 
 that regards all the tribes of the 
 earth, comprehending them in one 
 universal mercy; but it is the God 
 that is manifested in Jesus Christ, 
 revealed by His life, made known by 
 the inflections of His feelings, by His 
 discourse, and by His deeds— it is 
 that God that I desire to confess to- 
 night, and of whom I desire to say, 
 "By the love of God in Christ Jesus 
 I am what I am." .... In looking 
 back upon my experience, that part of 
 my life which stands out, and which 
 I remember most vividly, is just that 
 part that has had some conscious as- 
 sociation with Christ. All the rest 
 is pale, and thin, and lies like clouds 
 on the horizon. Doctrines, systems, 
 measures, methods — what may be 
 called the necessary mechanical and 
 external part of worship ; the part 
 which the senses would recognize — 
 this seems to have withered and fallen 
 off like leaves of last summer; but 
 that part, which has taken hold of 
 Christ abides.' 
 
 "Can anyone hear this life-music," 
 Professor Drummond adds, "with its 
 throbbing refrain of Christ, and re- 
 —40— 
 
main unmoved by envy or desire? 
 Yet, till we have lived like this we 
 have never lived at all." 
 
 In such a vital personal relation to 
 God, through His great self-revelation 
 in Christ, the free grace of religion 
 becomes the natural root of law- 
 abiding character. For only so does 
 the personal fully replace the legal ; 
 only so does solid hope come in; only 
 so, satisfying freedom and a perma- 
 nently enlarging life. For as soon as 
 the moral command is seen to be the 
 loving father's will for his children, 
 so soon it is seen to be in itself not 
 only a promise of life, but a way of 
 life, and law and liberty are forever 
 reconciled. 
 
 Members of the Graduating Classes: 
 
 My theme today has been rather 
 forced upon me. The circumstances 
 of our time seemed to demand it. For 
 you are going out into a world of 
 unusually disturbed standards and 
 values ; though it really holds no 
 problem essentially new. You will 
 be vehemently urged to take various 
 one-sided positions, as though a to- 
 —41— 
 
tally new light had just dawned on 
 the world. 
 
 But in this fundamental paradox 
 which we have been today consider- 
 ing, you cannot be true even to your 
 college education, and be one-sided. 
 For you have learned, we may hope, 
 the psychological necessity of both 
 self-assertion and self-surrender. You 
 have learned the scientific lesson of 
 victory and liberty through insight 
 into law and obedience to it. You 
 have learned the historic lesson of 
 the constant necessity of both nis- 
 toric continuity and readjustment. 
 You have learned the esthetic lesson 
 that even Art, that seems the freest 
 expression of the human spirit, has 
 its inevitable element of self-restraint. 
 
 Therefore, for your individual lives, 
 do not, on the one hand, lose law out 
 of your life. You do not want to 
 make your life a chaos but a cos- 
 mos. On the other hand, do not lose 
 freedom out of your life, the freedom 
 of children of God, the freedom of 
 self-realization, the freedom of utter 
 truth to your own idividuality and to 
 your own highest vision. Be true. 
 Be free. And you will be both true 
 
and free if, in the spirit of Jesus, 
 you do always and only what a gen- 
 uine, all-inclusive love requires. Let 
 him set you free. 
 
 In the task of social reconstruc- 
 tion, too, that is pressing in upon your 
 generation, you cannot evade the 
 double demand of the law of liberty. 
 
 On the one hand, social life can- 
 not advance, nor even exist, in a law- 
 less world. Your task on this side 
 will be three-fold: to help to make it 
 steadily more true, first, that the 
 laws of your community and state 
 and nation are just and righteous 
 laws, which do not count things more 
 sacred than persons, which allow for 
 the necessary constant adjustments to 
 changing conditions, and which so 
 deserve the support of all good men ; 
 second, that by the patient and per- 
 sistent processes of education and 
 moral enlightenment, the principles 
 embodied in the laws are enthroned 
 in the reason and conscience of the 
 community ; and third, that so there 
 may not fail that steady self-discip- 
 line and free self-control and obe- 
 dience which can alone make laws of 
 any final avail. 
 
 -^3— 
 
On the other hand, social life is 
 not worth living without freedom. 
 At the foundation of all rational so- 
 ciety, therefore, there must be basic 
 reverence for the individual personal- 
 ity — respect for his liberty and for 
 the sanctity of his inner person. But 
 the enormities of unrestrained self- 
 ishness have been so many ; and the 
 frightful effects of vast inequalities in 
 material conditions so plain, that it 
 now seems certain that society has 
 before it a series of attempts inordi- 
 nately to regulate the individual, 
 which are certain to provoke in turn 
 a reaction to an equally exaggerated 
 liberty. But neither extreme should 
 shut your eyes to the fact that you 
 cannot make a life worth living with- 
 out freedom ; and that, as Hobhouse 
 puts it, "the true opposition is be- 
 tween the control that cramps the 
 personal life and the spiritual order, 
 and the control that is aimed at se- 
 curing the external and material con- 
 ditions of their free and unimpeded 
 development" ; and with clear dis- 
 crimination you must fight the first 
 kind of control, and stand for the 
 
 —44— 
 
second. Only so can the largest lib- 
 erty come. 
 
 In these deeper questions of the 
 personal and social life rules cannot 
 be given. Principles alone avail. Just 
 how, in the perplexing individual sit- 
 uations which you are to confront, 
 these principles are to be applied I 
 cannot tell you, and I would not if 
 I could. For your own growth and 
 enlargement are themselves to be 
 found in the solving and re-solving 
 of this perpetual paradox of hu- 
 man life — the paradox of liberty and 
 law. May God help you to be so 
 true to the light, that, whatever the 
 external success of your lives may 
 be, you cannot fail in the inner vic- 
 tory. ''For ye were called for free- 
 dom ; only use not freedom for an 
 occasion to the flesh, but through 
 love be servants one to another." 
 
S27S4