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 “Le i 
 fe 
 Bat i a 
 
 
 
 
 
BY WILLIAM LYON PHELPS 
 
 
 
 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 HUMAN NATURE IN THE BIBLE 
 
 HUMAN NATURE AND THE GOSPEL 
 
 AS I LIKE IT, FIRST, SECOND, THIRD SERIES 
 ESSAYS ON MODERN NOVELISTS 
 
 ESSAYS ON RUSSIAN NOVELISTS 
 
 ESSAYS ON MODERN DRAMATISTS 
 
 ESSAYS ON BOOKS 
 
 READING THE BIBLE 
 
 TEACHING IN SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 
 
 THE ADVANCE OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 
 THE ADVANCE OF ENGLISH POETRY 
 
 THE TWENTIETH CENTURY THEATRE 
 ARCHIBALD MARSHALL 
 
 SOME MAKERS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 
 HOWELLS, JAMES, BRYANT, AND OTHER ESSAYS 
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 
 
ADVENTURES AND 
 CONFESSIONS 
 
IN ' fe 
 Noe ir 
 
 
 
ADVENTURES AND 
 CONF ESSIONS _ 
 
 
 
 BY 
 
 Deine Ne LYON ‘PHELPS 
 
 LAMPSON P SOR LISH LITERATU 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
 1926 
 
CopyrRIGHT, 1926, BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
 
 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1925, 1926, BY 
 CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
THIS BOOK IS 
 AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 
 TO THE 
 PEOPLE OF THE 
 MICHIGAN THUMB 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2022 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/adventuresconfesOOphel 
 
PREFACE 
 This book is called ‘‘Adventures and Confes- 
 
 sions’ because I regard religious faith, when 
 founded on reason, as primarily an adventure; and 
 although the word is overworked nowadays, I can 
 think of no other equally accurate. All books are 
 confessional; this one very much so. 
 
 Wie Pe 
 Yale University, 
 Tuesday, 5 October, 1926. 
 
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CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 WPADVEN TURES Avene erro eh kite Me ek ree 3 
 
 MIME ALIVATION 3.30 {font e ee rene a Pe oe ae oe 24 
 ily STERN GORS 0 AR SSM ener sh en OC RAR R INI, Ye rs Al 
 MAN MPE LOR DEN Fra a, he tvele tierce cae Oar & OINee eae tah ty Gat ooe 59 
 INA Fe Ea or ae OB PE ER SA 76 
 MAPLE US TET Ros fase es ctr are cole dc aRotl ae oP Ase Ree 93 
 BMA UMEV OMEN te tela. 94:2 hss) wile dels abe ware e merereereles 112 
 REN TERE UDR a werent tatu te sialesie oletels gh emeren cle 129 
 MRP RTA NOL 91.5.0 cess rast isla toes cles entre Ser a eae 144 
 POU ATIMOMENT Uc schhnl eo ctee sence a atile le ae, a Charest 161 
 POPURIITIGUEITR ci Aen oiled late Gees ae eaten 178 
 TE IUESCIEN Caer: g's Way Crete. LEST are teny aelchh ie ard we 193 
 
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ADVENTURES AND 
 CONFESSIONS 
 

 
ADVENTURE 
 
 This morning I woke at four o’clock from an ab- 
 surd and artificial dream, and by way of obtaining 
 a proper contrast, went to the windows and looked 
 at the stars. Above a row of dark poplars, Venus 
 was playing with incomparable brilliancy the role 
 of morning star; Mars was ruddily glowing in the 
 south-west; the lesser lights were burning in their 
 regular and appointed places. The North wind, 
 which had blown fresh in the evening, had fallen; 
 the cocks had not yet begun to crow; no sound 
 reached my ears; in the silent and cloudless air the 
 celestial machinery performed its work with noiseless 
 precision. 
 
 It is unfortunate that there are so many incurious 
 people to whom the sky is meaningless. When out- 
 doors at night, on sea or land, all they notice 
 is that it is raining, or foggy, or cloudy, or clear; 
 and if they glance up when the stars are shining, 
 all they know is that some points are brighter than 
 others; when by the expenditure of a dollar in 
 money and three hours in time, they could learn 
 enough of the names, places, and movements of the 
 
 3 
 
4 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 constellations to make every clear sky interesting. 
 It would be more than interesting, it would be 
 friendly; for one would recognise aloft the familiar 
 faces. ‘Those that one sees at ten o’clock on Jan- 
 uary fifth will be there again the next January fifth, 
 arriving with a punctuality merely imagined by 
 railway directors. The summer and winter stars 
 keep to their time-table, with an accuracy unreached 
 by any man-made system. For even if the material- 
 istic anthropologists were correct, and man had 
 made God, man certainly did not make the stars. 
 Yet the works of man are clever and ingenious, 
 and definite results fall from his constructions in 
 a fashion that to a former age would have seemed 
 miraculous. We do well not only to pay homage 
 to great inventors, but to estimate their ability by 
 their productions. Suppose one saw for the first 
 time a girl playing an adding-machine, a sight to- 
 day so familiar as to attract no attention; suppose 
 one received from the machine a broad column of 
 figures added accurately and with a speed so great 
 as to arouse that kind of helpless smile that we 
 bestow on masters of legerdemain. Could any 
 philosopher persuade the witness that the result 
 was a fluke? No, one feels sure that the right 
 answer did not come by chance; there was intention 
 behind the machine. And now suppose that an- 
 other philosopher tried to convince us that the 
 man who made the machine was stupid, lacking 
 intelligence and foresight. I think we should reply 
 
ADVENTURE F 
 
 that although we never saw the inventor and had 
 no notion of his personal appearance, the machine 
 indicates such ability, patience, imagination, con- 
 structive skill,, that whoever made it must have 
 had a remarkable mind. 
 
 Yet the difference in complexity between the most 
 intricate works of man and the stellar system is so 
 vast that in comparison the finest human ingenuity 
 seems crude. 
 
 Let us never forget the tremendousness of the 
 ordinary. Familiarity with great things breeds con- 
 tempt only in contemptible minds. We live every 
 moment amid forces so colossal that the imagination 
 boggles at them. Since I began to write this essay 
 I have travelled millions of miles in space. Since 
 I began to write this sentence I have been whirled 
 many miles at terrific velocity. Yet I have felt no 
 giddiness and no Jar; the shock-absorbers are 
 evidently quite superior to those on any automobile. 
 The speed is so much greater that the car would 
 appear to be going backward; yet I feel at ease and 
 serene. ‘The distance of the stars from the globe 
 I inhabit is so vast that astronomers have to measure 
 it in light-years; you can calculate the unit of meas- 
 ure by remembering that light travels about 
 200,000 miles a second. Some of the individual 
 stars are spheres of such size as to be 300,000,000 
 miles in diameter. Yet every one is kept in its 
 place as easily as you hold a tennis ball. 
 
 It appears to me not unreasonable to infer that 
 
6 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 the regularity and precision of these colossal forces 
 indicate a mentality so great that in comparison the 
 mind of Edison 1s puny. 
 
 In the year 1924 we celebrated the two hundredth 
 anniversary of the birth of a man, who, strange 
 as it may seem, spent his life thinking. With many 
 people today, thinking has become almost a lost art. 
 There is an enormous diffusion of culture; everybody 
 reads. Reading is sometimes hostile to thought. 
 If we have half an hour to spare, we do not medi- 
 tate; we reach for a newspaper or a magazine or 
 for something to “occupy” our minds. How many 
 who read this article have in the last month done 
 any orderly thinking? ‘To be busy is not neces- 
 sarily a profitable occupation. Indeed to think 
 seriously is a difficult effort; to many the effort is as 
 painful as it is strange. 
 
 Immanuel Kant, a little German about five feet 
 high, was born in a little town in 1724. At an 
 early age he began to think, which soon became a 
 habit. It was his custom to rise at five o’clock and 
 think for two hours. He had no apparatus; there 
 was nothing in his hands. He sat and thought; he 
 did not, like the woman, just sit. After he had 
 spent a good many years, he wrote a book. It is 
 natural to suppose that such a book, the fruit of in- 
 numerable hours of severe and productive medita- 
 tion, would be valuable; it was; it is. 
 
 When you meet a man who has just spent a year 
 in travel, you ask him, ‘“‘Of all the things you have 
 
ADVENTURE : 
 
 _ seen abroad, what is the one thing that impressed 
 you the most?” So, if I had met Kant, I should have 
 asked him, “Of all the thoughts that have passed 
 through your mind, what seems to you the great- 
 est?’ Fortunately it is not necessary to meet him. 
 He told us. He wrote, in the same deliberate and 
 reflective and word-weighing manner that character- 
 ised his utterances, 
 
 Two things fill me with constantly increasing admiration and 
 awe, the longer and more earnestly I reflect on them: the 
 starry heavens without and the moral law within. 
 
 It is the second that seems at first sight most as- 
 tonishing. ‘That the individual human being, who 
 seems so transitory, so perishable, at the mercy of 
 a fever germ or a street accident, to whom any day 
 may bring an irremediable disaster, whose life his- 
 tory is largely a record of pettiness and folly, when 
 it is no worse, that every individual man or woman 
 should have something in his mind equal in sublimity 
 to the starry skies, this makes one pause and won- 
 der. Yet this philosopher, after years of thought, 
 placed us on an equality with the majestic heavens. 
 
 It is amusing sometimes to read materialistic 
 philosophy written to prove the insignificance of 
 men and women on an insignificant planet; for the 
 person who writes it is so cock-sure of himself. 
 
 Is there something in every one, no matter how 
 impuissant he may be, as sublime and as awe-inspir- 
 
§ ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 ing as the starry vault? Let us consider the moral 
 law. 
 
 There are those who say all our actions are gov- 
 erned by selfishness, that there is no such thing as 
 altruism or self-sacrifice; hence no heroism. I read 
 the newspapers morning and evening, for the first 
 page of every newspaper is a record of the crimes, 
 follies, disasters of humanity, which, however, some- 
 times disclose the highest qualities conceivable. 
 
 I read of a hotel fire, where an elevator-boy, who 
 may have seemed irredeemably vulgar in his man- 
 ners and language, kept on driving his lift to the 
 upper floors, saving human lives, and finally losing 
 his own, dying in agonising torture. What made 
 him send his machine up into that hell of flame? 
 Did he wish to die? Was not life sweet to him? 
 What force impelled him, a force so much greater 
 than his fear of death? It was the moral law, ‘“‘the 
 likest God within the soul,” and I say that that 
 gamin is as sublime as the stars. When the Titanic 
 went down, she carried with her New York million- 
 aires, who had given their lives for foreign steward- 
 esses. When some economists read of this, they 
 called it foolishly quixotic; the lives of these men 
 of huge affairs were vastly more important than 
 the lives of ignorant women who cleaned pots and 
 swept rooms. But these men knew that it was their 
 duty to protect those who were physically weaker 
 than they; and in the presence of disaster and mor- 
 tal peril, they forgot their wealth and their im- 
 
ADVENTURE 9 
 
 portance; they remembered only that they were 
 men, and there were women to save. We call it 
 the law of the sea. It is the moral law. 
 
 I read in the newspaper that two steamers came 
 into collision one dark night off the Virginian capes. 
 The rammed vessel was swiftly sinking. A male 
 passenger came on deck, carrying a life-preserver; 
 he saw a woman without one, and he offered her his, 
 as lightly as a man would offer a seat to a woman 
 on a street-car. She said, “What will you do?” 
 And he replied easily, “Oh, I can get another.” 
 He knew he could not; he lied like a gentleman, as 
 it is in certain emergencies the duty of a gentleman 
 to lie. She was saved; he was lost. She did not 
 know even the name of her saviour, nor does any- 
 one else. No one can read that incident without 
 a thrill; without feeling that not only did that black 
 night reveal a hero, but that the whole level of hu- 
 man capacity has been raised. He threw away his 
 life with a careless gesture. 
 
 As when a thundrous midnight, with black air 
 That burns, rain-drops that blister, breaks a spell, 
 Draws out the excessive virtue of some sheathed 
 Shut unsuspected flower that hoards and hides 
 Immensity of sweetness. 
 
 The World War, with all its filth and degradation, 
 brought out individual deeds of self-sacrifice which 
 are perhaps worth more than the victory of any 
 nation. 
 
10 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 As the forces of the stellar universe reveal the 
 working of an infinite mind, so the forces of the 
 moral law reveal some Eternal Principle. It is 
 my belief that the laws of Nature and the laws of 
 Character have the same Origin, and flow from the 
 same source. 
 
 But if the Stars and the Moral Law are so im- 
 pressive, why aren’t we all religious? 
 
 Well, apart from the indifference to religion 
 which is characteristic of so many men and women 
 whose time is completely taken up with work and 
 recreation, whose minds and ambitions are con- 
 cerned wholly with mundane and bodily affairs, 
 there are two great obstacles to religious faith. 
 Those who, like me, are loyal, devoted, joyful, pas- 
 sionate adherents of Christianity must not blink 
 these difficulties or minimise their import. You 
 cannot solve a problem by forgetting it, or by pre- 
 tending it does not exist. An intelligent and sincere 
 Christian is not one who has no doubts; he is one, 
 who, after giving every consideration to adverse 
 arguments, finds that after all, his faith is greater 
 than his scepticism. 
 
 I shall mention two of the most obvious and 
 most common objections brought against Christian 
 belief. 
 
 First, the immense amount of injustice, evil, 
 cruelty, pain and suffering in the world, Sorrow 
 and agony are not illusions: there is nothing in life 
 more real. No one in a city can walk six blocks 
 
ADVENTURE II 
 
 without seeing things that ought to be relieved or 
 improved. No one has ever solved the problem of 
 evil and no one ever will; no question comes earlier 
 to the lips of anyone who thinks, than the query of 
 how God can possibly be omnipotent and benevo- 
 lent, and allow such conditions to exist or to con- 
 ‘tinue. Because of the World War, many lost their 
 religious faith. You may say in that case they did 
 not have much to lose. No, but they lost all they 
 had. 
 
 If every sunrise brings every living man nearer 
 nothing, then the world is run at a loss. The deficit 
 indeed is so large that the Mind controlling the 
 stars shows in practical business less ability than 
 a bootblack. If Henry Ford ran his factories as 
 this world is managed, he would soon become bank- 
 rupt. If the output of Ford cars were as streaky 
 and uncertain in quality as the output of human 
 babies, the production would cease. Babies, how- 
 ever, continue to multiply; if life be not an asset, 
 it is a tragedy. 
 
 The Founder of Christianity clearly recognised 
 that evil permeated everywhere the conditions of 
 life, and he predicted that it would continue to do 
 so for an indefinite period. ‘The Christian religion 
 offers its followers no escape or immunity from 
 evil; it supplies them with sufficient force to fight it. 
 
 If life is really a journey, if we are not only trav- 
 elling, but travelling some-whither, and if the goal 
 of that journey be splendid, then, after the goal is 
 
12 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 reached, the sufferings on the way, although they are 
 real and terrible, will be of no account at all, will 
 trouble the traveller no more than a scar. Suppose 
 you wished to visit some friend in equatorial Africa. 
 The route you take is full of peril, full of acute 
 suffering; finally you arrive; you greet him with de- 
 light. He may enquire sympathetically, ‘‘Didn’t 
 you have many painful experiences?” ‘Why, yes, 
 I suffered much and often; and apart from bodily 
 pain and privation, there were times when I was 
 shaken by fear, even paralysed by despair. But I 
 don’t care anything about all that now/ Here we 
 are together!” ‘Then perhaps he enquires concern- 
 ing the road you selected, and exclaims in surprise 
 and pity, ‘“‘Why, that was the worst possible route! 
 Didn’t you know there was an easier trail?” ‘No, 
 I took the only one I knew.”’ ‘But don’t you wish 
 that you had come by an easier and safer path?” 
 “Why, no, I don’t particularly care now what road I 
 took. Here we are together!” 
 
 The pain, fear, and torment were real and terri- 
 fying; but after one has reached the desired haven, 
 the tempest becomes only a toothless memory. 
 
 Could we by a wish 
 Have what we will and get the future now, 
 Would we wish aught done undone in the past? 
 
 The second great obstacle in the way of religious 
 faith is Uncertainty. If Christianity is true, why 
 does God leave us in such perplexity and doubt? 
 
ADVENTURE 13 
 
 Why did he not reveal Himself in such a manner 
 as to be unmistakable? It will be remembered that 
 one man said that whoever God was, He was not 
 a gentleman; for no gentleman would leave another 
 in the dark as to his meaning and intentions. 
 
 It’s strange that God should fash to frame 
 The yearth and lift sae hie, 
 
 An’ clean forget to explain the same 
 To a gentleman like me. 
 
 Well, is the relation between us and God exactly 
 like that of one gentleman to another? Are we 
 on equal planes of intelligence? 
 
 When Henry Howard Furness was over eighty 
 years of age, I heard him give one of his famous 
 readings from Shakespeare. He read a familiar 
 passage from King Henry V. ‘Then he paused and 
 asked the air, ‘‘Now just exactly what did Shake- 
 speare mean by that passage?” He paused again, 
 and asked, “But how can my puny mind grasp the 
 ideas in a mind like that of William Shakespeare ?”’ 
 
 Furness was one of the leading Shakespearian 
 scholars in the world. He had devoted a long life 
 to this one author; yet he felt that the distance be- 
 tween his mind and that of the poet was so great 
 that it could not be bridged. Yet we think we ought 
 to understand the Supreme Intelligence. 
 
 Suppose, with no knowledge of harmony and 
 counterpoint, and with inability to play any instru- 
 ment, you insisted that a musician must explain 
 
14 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 to you the construction of one of Beethoven’s sym- 
 phonies. Suppose Einstein tried to explain his 
 theory of relativity to a hen. The distance between . 
 the mind of a hen and the mind of Einstein is not 
 so vast as that between the human and divine in- 
 telligence. 
 
 Even in so close a relation as that between parents 
 and children, the former sometimes have to leave 
 the latter not only in perplexity, but with a rankling 
 sense of injustice. 
 
 I believe that if the complete meaning of the 
 starry universe should suddenly be plainly revealed 
 to us, we should lose our minds; not because of its 
 horror or tragic import, but because of its over- 
 whelming immensity. Our brains would crack like 
 an eggshell. 
 
 Sometimes, where men are repairing something 
 in a road, there is a sign 
 
 * 
 
 DO NOT LOOK AT THIS LIGHT. — 
 
 Of course everybody immediately tries to look, and 
 immediately desists. One cannot see in the dark, 
 but too much light is more dangerous for the eyes 
 than darkness. 
 
 Our intelligence in its present state is no more 
 adapted to grasp the meaning of the universe, than 
 a baby is fit to lift a safe. 
 
 But the Uncertainty is precisely what makes life 
 interesting. Here is where and how the Christian 
 religion becomes an ADVENTURE. What? yeu re- 
 
ADVENTURE 15 
 
 fuse to follow Christ because you are not certain 
 of the outcome? What would you think of a man 
 who should refuse to play any game unless he were 
 assured in advance of victory? What would you 
 think of a man who refused to enter upon any 
 course of action unless it could be proved to him in 
 advance that his efforts would be rewarded with 
 success? We not only make unreasonable demands 
 upon religion, but if they were granted, all the zest 
 of life would be lost. 
 
 The very last word to apply to the Christian re- 
 ligion is the word used by its enemies—an anzs- 
 thetic. Christianity is not an anesthetic; it is indeed 
 the opposite. It is a tonic, a stimulant, a driving 
 force. It is true that Christian faith is an immense 
 solace and comfort to those who are old, solitary, 
 sick, and feeble; but in the main Christian faith is 
 for active boys and girls, for strong-hearted men 
 and women, who are bearing the burden and heat 
 of the day. We should not become Christians 
 because we are afraid we may die, but because we 
 expect to live and do some good in the world. We 
 are voyagers who want a rudder for the ship and 
 a port to reach. We want life to mean something. 
 
 To the true Christian every day is exciting, every 
 day isanadventure. ‘There are times of sorrow and 
 heartbreak, but there are no times of dullness 
 and boredom. To one who believes in God’s reve- 
 lation in Christ, and who therefore believes in his 
 own destiny, there can be nothing trivial. Every- 
 
16 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 thing counts. You cannot go to the office or the 
 shop, you cannot hear a piece of music or read a 
 novel, without undergoing an experience that helps 
 to shape the whole course of life. And who knows 
 but in today’s regular work some event of momen- 
 tous importance may happen? And who can tell 
 in reading a novel but that on page 287 some phrase 
 may permanently affect his character? 
 
 The Adventure is exactly where Fair comes in. 
 In every important emergency of life and in every 
 undertaking of any consequence, we act not on 
 knowledge, but on faith. Let us not demand 
 knowledge in religion, when we never have it in 
 business, in marriage, in politics, and in investments. 
 What is Faith? 
 
 Some say that the farmer has faith when he plants 
 seed in the Autumn that something will come up 
 in the Spring. Such a remark betrays ignorance of 
 faith. Faith is more difficult and exacting. The 
 farmer in that instance has knowledge, not faith. 
 He would be a fool if he did not expect something 
 to come up. It came up last year. His father had 
 the same experience, and his neighbours. He is 
 treading no new path, sailing no uncharted sea, but 
 walking on a perfectly safe road, trodden by millions 
 of feet before him. 
 
 Columbus had Faith when he sailed West, and 
 kept sailing West. What lent particular zest to 
 his voyage was the possibility of defeat, disaster, 
 disgrace, and death. But there was also the possi- 
 
ADVENTURE 17 
 
 bility of victory. He believed there was land, and 
 that he could find it by sailing West. If he had 
 known before starting that he should find it, the 
 excitement of the excursion would have evaporated. 
 Had he known that he would die before reaching it, 
 he would not have started at all. But the combina- 
 tion of the Prize and the Risk was what appealed 
 to his bold, adventurous heart. 
 
 Faith was what inspired Shackleton, Amundsen, 
 and that hero of heroes, Captain Scott. Victory or 
 death, possibly both; anyhow, a great prize and a 
 terrible peril. ‘hey tried for one and risked the 
 other. 
 
 In the more ordinary experiences of everyday 
 life, it is faith that guides us into every interesting 
 experiment. If a boy is free to choose, why does 
 he choose one college rather than another? He 
 does not know it is the best; no one can prove it; 
 he may die there of illness, or his character may be 
 injured; he cannot see into the future, but he goes 
 there on faith. Every choice is an act of faith. 
 When, upon graduation, he chooses a profession or 
 occupation, he does not know what he is doing; he 
 may choose the line of work which will be the worst 
 possible for his ability and temperament. But he 
 goes ahead on faith, doing the best he can in the 
 darkness. Marriage is a supreme act of faith. 
 When a girl leaves the security of her home, and 
 unites her fortune and life and chance of happiness 
 with a man whom she cannot know until she has 
 
18 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 lived with him, she acts on faith. Many marriages 
 result in disaster; but the vast majority of people 
 are willing to try the experiment. It is an adven- 
 ture, entered upon by faith. ... And finally 
 comes Death, the most tremendous adventure of all. 
 
 On the deck of the Lusitania, in 1915, stood 
 Charles Frohman. He had spent his life taking 
 chances, and was now taking another. Theatrical 
 management is one of the most risky and speculative 
 of all forms of business, for no one has ever been 
 able with certainty to predict the fate of a new play. 
 The majority fail, and failure means not only dis- 
 appointment, and the loss of expected profits, but 
 the loss of everything already invested, for the 
 curtain cannot rise until there has been a large ex- 
 penditure. On the other hand, a successful play 
 is a fortune. Charles Frohman was on his way to 
 Europe, his head full of new plans for the exten- 
 sion of his theatrical undertaking abroad. ‘The 
 Lusitania began to sink, and some one said to him, 
 ‘Mr. Frohman, are you afraid to die?’ He smiled, 
 and replied, ‘“Why, I have always looked upon 
 death as the greatest adventure in life.’ Spoken 
 like the brave man he was. 
 
 As I write these words, America is in the midst 
 of the excitement of a Presidential campaign. Every 
 man and woman who votes next November will 
 accomplish an act of pure faith. No one can tell 
 whether his vote may not be adverse to the best 
 interests of the country he loves; no one has any 
 
ADVENTURE 19 
 
 knowledge of the future. Voting is always done on 
 faith. Now, because of the lack of knowledge, is 
 the country full of political agnostics? Because a 
 man cannot know whether the ticket he prefers is 
 the right one, does he decide to abstain from vot- 
 ing? By no means. He not only votes enthusias- 
 tically, positively, dogmatically, he is usually so 
 cock-sure that he endeavours to induce others to 
 follow him. There are many who would gladly cast 
 the ballot for the whole nation. It is pure faith. 
 My faith in God may not always be as strong and 
 unclouded as I wish it were, but I have more faith 
 in Jesus Christ than I have in the Republican party, 
 or in the Democratic party, or in any party or in 
 any candidate. It seems to me singular that so 
 many people should have no faith in God and ex- 
 hibit such touching, childlike faith in a political 
 leader. 
 
 People never become excited on matters of 
 knowledge, but only on faith. If a man should ask 
 me, ‘‘Do you believe that two and two make four?” 
 I should reply, ‘‘No, I don’t believe it; I know it.” 
 Suppose he should say, “Well, you are wrong; they 
 really make five.’ Should I argue with him? Of 
 course not. I don’t waste my time talking with a 
 madman. ‘Have it your own way, if you like.” 
 
 You could never induce England and Germany 
 to fight on this proposition: a straight line is the 
 shortest distance between two points. Matters of 
 knowledge quickly lose interest, their power to 
 
20 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 appeal. They become commonplaces. So long as 
 there was doubt whether a machine heavier-than- 
 air could fly, the proposition and the experiment 
 were both amazingly interesting. Now airplanes 
 fly over golf-courses, and even the caddies do not 
 raise their heads, but continue their ever-animated 
 conversations. ‘There is no interest without the pos- 
 sibility of error and disaster. 
 
 Men will not fight on matters of knowledge. But 
 they will fight for their family, their friends, their 
 college, their country, and their religion. 
 
 Now as the chance of failure makes every adven- 
 ture attractive, so the possibility of delusion makes 
 Christianity appealing. To be absolutely honest, 
 I must admit that the Christian religion may be a 
 myth, my hopes in it only dust, my destiny annihi- 
 lation. But my whole life is staked on the belief 
 that it is true. I have more faith in Christ than 
 in any other person or thing. I have directed all 
 my life’s activities with the faith that he was divine. 
 To use a vulgar phrase, if a man bets all he has, 
 the shirt on his back, you cannot demand more of 
 him than that. The most reasonable explanation 
 of the person of Christ and of his history is that he 
 revealed God. With that basis, I go ahead on faith. 
 
 Therefore if you ask me, ‘Do you believe in the 
 Son of God?” I answer firmly, “Yes.” ‘Do you 
 believe in the future life?” “Yes.” “Do you be- 
 lieve that you will see again your father and 
 mother?” ‘Yes.’ ‘How sure are you of this?” 
 
ADVENTURE 21 
 
 “Well, I am surer of this than of anything that can- 
 not be proved.” “Are you as sure of the future life 
 as that two and two make four?” And without 
 hesitation, I reply, ‘‘No; not so sure as that.” 
 However, it seems to me more reasonable than not 
 to believe it. I am not afraid. I am going ahead. 
 I did not enlist in the service of Christ as a camp- 
 follower, but as a soldier. Be it glory or be it 
 death, I am glad I enlisted. 
 
 John Quincy Adams, who of all our Presidents 
 was the greatest scholar, and who, in addition, was 
 so austere that it is impossible to imagine him in a 
 light-hearted mood, this stern and learned man, 
 every night in the White House kneeled down and 
 said the prayer his mother taught him as a child: 
 
 Now I lay me down to sleep, 
 
 I pray the Lord my soul to keep. 
 If I should die before I wake, 
 
 I pray the Lord my soul to take. 
 
 Although the prayer has been sanctified by thou- 
 sands of innocent lips, and although the iron-sided 
 Adams found it good enough for him, I heard a 
 version whose author I know not, which I like much 
 better, because it expresses exactly my own attitude. 
 
 Now I lay me down to sleep, 
 
 I pray the Lord my soul to keep. 
 And wake I soon or wake I never, 
 I give my soul to Christ forever! 
 
22 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 In addition to the important fact that there can 
 be no real interest in religion without uncertainty, 
 there can also be no virtue. Uncertainty makes the 
 Christian adventure exciting; and it is the only basis 
 of conduct. If the truth of religion were demon- 
 strable, and the way to win heaven were plainly 
 charted, there could be no goodness at all. If we 
 knew that by abstaining from certain things—which 
 is still some persons’ notion of morality—if we 
 knew that by not smoking, drinking, dancing, kiss- 
 ing, lying, cheating, we could win immortal life, 
 then there would be no virtue at all. There would 
 simply be calculation. Heaven would be exclusively 
 occupied by hard-headed, prudent business men; 
 they would get it all. The charming, gracious, 
 lovely men and women of impulse would be in hell. 
 
 Suppose in a room I dropped a ten-dollar bill, 
 and someone started to pick it up. Suppose I re- 
 minded him that if he took it, it would be all he 
 would receive. But if he would let it alone, in two 
 months he would receive a million dollars. Suppose 
 I could demonstrate this as a certainty. Of course 
 he would refrain from the pleasure of seizing the 
 ten-dollar bill. Now suppose he should pride him- 
 self on his superior virtue, on the nobility and self- 
 sacrifice of his character, on his freedom from the 
 sin of avarice. ‘You saw me? I had the chance 
 to immediately enjoy ten dollars. I refused it. 
 My mind is set on higher things.” What should 
 we think of such sanctimonious arrogance? 
 
ADVENTURE 23 
 
 No, Christianity is the Adventure, the Supreme 
 Adventure. We do not know the outcome. But 
 we know we are following the only person in history 
 who seems like God. If he is living, it is our hope 
 that some day we shall see him. If he shared the 
 fate of flies and worms, then that is good enough 
 for us. We want to be where he is. 
 
 But as all his words were words of courage and 
 hope and triumph, as his way of life can be tried 
 and tested and is always found good and productive, 
 we follow him not in fear and doubt, but in faith. 
 Let the future take care of itself. That is what 
 he particularly advised. 
 
II 
 SALVATION 
 
 Nearly all the books I read ask questions with- 
 out answering them; and indeed it requires no 
 ability, no ingenuity, and no experience to ask 
 difficult questions. Every child has asked its mother 
 questions that learned philosophers and scientists 
 have used up their lives trying to answer. The Bible 
 differs from most books in its definite, positive re- 
 plies to the most vital, eager enquiries from the 
 eternally hungry human heart. 
 
 Socrates spent his days asking searching ques- 
 tions; Jesus came into the world not to ask, but to 
 answer. [he word Gospel means Good News; he 
 brought it. There was no shadow of scepticism, no 
 penumbra of uncertainty in his mind, or in the tones 
 of his bold, confident, authoritative voice. He was 
 not a denier; he was an afhirmer. How amazing, 
 in this world of torturing doubt and perplexity, 
 where nearly every mind is in conflict not only with 
 others, but with itself, to hear such positive state- 
 ments as these: 
 
 I am the living bread which came down from heaven. 
 The water that I shall give him shall be to him a well of 
 water springing up into everlasting life. 
 24 
 
SALVATION 25 
 
 I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, 
 though he were dead, yet shall he live. 
 
 In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not 
 so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 
 
 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and 
 I will give you rest. 
 
 When Mrs. Humphry Ward was talking to 
 Walter Pater about her scepticism and her disbelief 
 in the divinity of Christ, supposing that he shared 
 her views, she was startled by his reply. He told 
 her that he could not agree with her. ‘There are 
 such mysterious things. ‘Take that saying, ‘Come 
 unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden.’ 
 How can you explain that? There is a mystery in 
 it—a something supernatural.” 
 
 What is the meaning of Salvation by Faith? 
 What is Salvation? how are we saved by faith? and 
 from what disaster are we saved? 
 
 That we can be saved by faith is affirmed posi- 
 tively by Jesus, and reafirmed by Paul. 
 
 This is the work of God, that ye believe on him 
 whom he hath sent. When the jailer came to Paul 
 and Silas, he asked a question, the term of address 
 showing immense respect for his prisoners: Sirs, 
 what must I do to be saved? He received an imme- 
 diate, unhesitating, and definite reply: Believe on 
 the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. 
 
 What must I do to be saved? 
 
 The poor fellow thought he had to do something. 
 His experience of life, a sufficiently common one, had 
 
26 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 taught him that good things were not to be had for 
 the asking. Nobody was giving away anything de- 
 sirable. If one wanted anything badly, one must 
 be prepared to pay money for it, or to work for 
 it, or to make some special sacrifice for it. Thus 
 he must have been astounded when he was told 
 merely to believe. 
 
 The statement that salvation would come by faith 
 was not only a new idea to the jailer, but it exploded 
 a whole accumulation of superstitions, to which mil- 
 lions of individuals still cling in the twentieth cen- 
 tury. There is nothing possible that men would not 
 do if by doing it they could be saved. Any amount 
 of painful effort, any amount of galling sacrifice, 
 would be endured with patience, if the sufferer be- 
 lieved that by such means he could be saved. 
 
 Did you ever try to walk on your bare knees in 
 gravel? It is excessively uncomfortable, and an 
 exceedingly inefficient and therefore silly method of 
 locomotion; yet there are many who have tried it 
 and gone long distances in order to attain salvation. 
 
 I mention this as only one of any number of bodily 
 sacrifices that people have undergone; and most 
 methods of religion are based fundamentally on a 
 superstition, a superstition that is all but universal, 
 and that is characteristic of every religion except 
 Christianity. When I say Christianity, I mean the 
 teachings of Jesus in the Gospels, not theological 
 systems built upon them. 
 
SALVATION 27 
 
 What is this superstition? It is the superstition 
 that God is against us. 
 
 You will find this particular brand of pessimism 
 at the basis of nearly all the world’s religions, at 
 the basis of many minds that have ceased to believe 
 in any religion, and indeed it is an almost ineradi- 
 cable element in human nature. 
 
 If I can accomplish only one thing by this essay, 
 I wish to accomplish this. I wish to drive out this 
 particular superstition from the mind of every one 
 who reads these pages, so that those who began 
 this essay in the grasp of this superstition will shake 
 it off; and stand up and walk like free men and 
 women. The vast majority of educated and other- 
 wise intelligent men and women are still in the 
 bondage of this myth, no matter what their per- 
 sonal religion may be. 
 
 An old and very familiar idea in the various re- 
 ligions of the world is that God is against us, and 
 must be pacified. Although such an idea is un- 
 worthy of man, and an insult to God, it is exceed- 
 ingly common. 
 
 Many anti-Christians today talk cantingly of the 
 old free and sunny-hearted Greeks, and of the 
 beauty of their religion. As a matter of fact, if the 
 Greek gods were alive today, they would all be in 
 jail. The Greek idea of Fate was profoundly pes- 
 simistic. ‘“The Gods often make the wrong way 
 seem the right way to a man, in order that they may 
 lead him to destruction.” 
 
28 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 “Lead us not into temptation” may be difficult to 
 explain—but there is no difficulty in explaining the 
 Greek idea. The gods played with helpless hu- 
 manity. 
 
 Christian missionaries have found natives who, 
 not content with the inescapable miseries and sor- 
 rows and privations of life, were adding to their 
 already intolerable burdens by religion. ‘They lac- 
 erated themselves, they encouraged sores and dis- 
 eases, they sacrificed their lives and sometimes 
 something more precious. Mothers have stood by 
 the banks of rivers and thrown their babies into 
 the stream: “Now, God, you’ve got to be good to 
 me! I have given you what is dearer to me than 
 my own life: I have made the supreme sacrifice; you 
 cannot ask anything more!’’ These and other in- 
 stances in various parts of the world and in various 
 epochs of history are illustrations of the central su- 
 perstition—that God is against us. 
 
 This element of fear, more fitting for a slave 
 than for a freeman, not only degrades humanity, 
 but to an even lower degree it degrades God. For, 
 with the assumption that God is against us goes the 
 theory that he can be humoured and pacified—as 
 we humour and pacify troublesome children, peev- 
 ish invalids, and men who are drunk. 
 
 If therefore we sacrifice something we enjoy, 
 comfortable clothes, healthy activities, attractive 
 food, cigarettes, caramels, or what not, we may turn 
 aside or soften the wrath of God. The idea of 
 
SALVATION 29 
 
 sacrificing SOMETHING is in all religions except the 
 religion taught by Jesus; in this indeed there is the 
 element of sacrifice, but of a different nature. 
 
 Worship itself should never have the element of 
 fear; worship should be the glad, spontaneous ex- 
 pression of the heart, as joyful and free from terror 
 as greeting the sunshine. 
 
 One day I stood on the front platform of a street- 
 car in St. Petersburg; every time we passed a 
 church, which was often, the motorman took off his 
 cap three times. Now if he had saluted happily and 
 cheerfully, like meeting a friend, it would have been 
 pleasant to contemplate. But he took off his cap 
 as though he were warding off the evil eye, as 
 though he were trying to prevent misfortune; as 
 though it were necessary to take it off three times, 
 for if he doffed it only twice, who knew what might 
 happen? 
 
 In speaking of the universal custom of sacrificing 
 certain things that one enjoys in order to pacify 
 God, I am not attacking the customs of fasting and 
 penance in the Catholic Church, any more than I 
 attack High Church Protestants for the use of very 
 tall candles. Although I do not fast myself, and care 
 nothing for the height of a candle, I perfectly under- 
 stand that these are not superstitions, but are forms 
 of worship; they assist those who follow these cus- 
 toms to concentrate their minds on spiritual things. 
 It is not the practice of anything, but the motive, 
 that Iam considering. When the motive is fear, or 
 
30 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 the belief that God can be pacified, it is rank su- 
 perstition. 
 
 The superstition that God is against us and that 
 his anger may be if not appeased, at least diverted, 
 by doing certain things, lingers in the minds of many 
 persons who look upon themselves as emancipated 
 from religion. I believe that the one superstition 
 that lives after all others have died is this: I am 
 quite certain that it is at this moment living in the 
 minds of some who are reading this page. 
 
 There are many otherwise intelligent men and 
 women who would not dare to say ‘I haven’t had 
 an automobile accident in my life,” without touch- 
 ing wood. 
 
 I do not know how many times I myself have 
 made a similar remark, but invariably some one 
 has hastily urged that I touch wood. Well, I will 
 not touch wood, for it is inconceivable to me that 
 touching wood can have any rational relation to 
 my well-being. ‘There are many who will touch 
 wood smilingly, half-jokingly perhaps, but they 
 will touch it! They would not dare to omit the 
 ceremony. 
 
 This is the same old superstition which is at the 
 basis of so many of the world’s religions; and it 
 is unworthy of a clear, rational mind. It is un- 
 worthy of any free man or woman. 
 
 There goes with it an even more degrading super- 
 stition—that if you have been enjoying good health 
 or good fortune or both, it is not safe to mention 
 
SALVATION 31 
 
 it aloud. Many a person has said, “I haven’t had 
 a cold this winter!” Next morning he wakes up, 
 snufiling, and he says, “‘Confound it! why didn’t I 
 keep my mouth shut? I was getting along all right, 
 but of course I had to be fool enough to boast about 
 it, and now you see what I’ve got!” 
 
 This is a superstition connected with a degrading 
 religion. ‘The idea is that if you are happy, look 
 out—God may notice you, and then he will put you 
 where you belong. Don’t sing before breakfast, 
 don’t laugh too loud, and above all, never admit 
 that all is well. It won't be if you do. Many 
 farmers, all of whom are more or less dependent on 
 the weather, are very careful not to afirm anything 
 optimistic. When their crops are exactly right, 
 and everything is going perfectly well, and you ask 
 them as to the state of their affairs, their most jubi- 
 lant reply is ‘‘Can’t complain.” Anything more 
 might be dangerous. 
 
 There are persons who are not Catholics, not 
 subject to any church discipline, who will give up 
 cigarettes or chocolates for a brief period. Is it 
 possible that Almighty God can be interested or 
 gratified? It is the heart, not the candy, that should 
 be surrendered. 
 
 This familiar superstition of sacrificing SOME- 
 THING to an otherwise implacable Tyrant leads to 
 gross and vulgar bargaining. In times of stress and 
 danger, in times when some member of the family 
 
32 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 is sick—‘‘O God, if you will answer this prayer, I 
 will do so and so, and give up so and so.” 
 
 The teachings of Jesus are contrary to these vul- 
 gar ideas. He told us that God is love, that we are 
 His children, that we cannot serve Him or please 
 Him by giving up creature comforts, but by giving 
 up our hearts. This is the sacrifice demanded by 
 Christianity. It is the giving up, not of bonbons, 
 but of the Self, of the Will, of the Mind, of the 
 Personality. Let us never forget that the essence of 
 religion as he taught it is to love God and love man; 
 and that to love God and to love man is more than 
 all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices. 
 
 Suppose a husband gave his wife a fine house, a 
 fine automobile, a large monthly allowance, and 
 gave his heart to another woman, would his wife 
 regard him as a good and faithful husband? 
 
 We are saved by faith, by really believing in 
 Jesus as the Son of God. So long as we really and 
 truly believe that, our lives are on that plane, and 
 are thus better, are saved. Can a man be saved by 
 faith? Why, of course he can. Many a man has 
 been saved from vice and unworthiness by believing 
 in one good woman. Many boys have been saved 
 by believing in one good man. Countless millions 
 of soldiers have given their lives and found the nec- 
 essary courage to do it by faith in a flag. Belief is 
 the foundation of conduct; faith is the motive power 
 of action. Jean Valjean was transformed from a 
 
SALVATION 33 
 
 criminal into a noble and beneficent character by 
 the life and words of the good Bishop. 
 
 What is it to have faith? Is it to have faith at 
 one critical moment or is it to have faith as a daily 
 source of action? Is faith a stimulant or is it a 
 necessary diet? 
 
 Although I belong to the evangelical branch of 
 the Protestant Church, I think our doctrine of con- 
 version needs in practise some modification. The 
 old division between the ranks of the ‘“‘saved” and 
 the “unsaved”’ was not, I think, always founded on 
 a wise or verifiable basis. ‘The old idea was that 
 at a certain moment in his life every man must have 
 had an identical experience, by which he knew that 
 at that moment he passed from the ranks of the un- 
 saved to the saved, and that thenceforth and for- 
 evermore he was not only saved, but safe—that, I 
 think, was one of the numerous superstitions of an 
 artificial theology. 
 
 I have lately been reading a little book which I 
 wish every intelligent Catholic and Protestant would 
 read; for while it is not in the least necessary that 
 Catholics and Protestants should unite to form one 
 church, their forms of worship and their ecclesiasti- 
 cal organisation being so different, it is necessary 
 that they should be united in spirit, with mutual 
 respect and admiration and love. This book is by 
 the Reverend Oliver Chase Quick, and is called 
 Catholic and Protestant Elements in Christianity. 
 The object of the book is not to draw Protestants 
 
34 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 and Catholics together in ritual, or in ceremonies, 
 but in mutual understanding. What the author says 
 about conversion proves that the very individualism 
 on which we Protestants pride ourselves has some- 
 times led to insistence on a uniformity which is con- 
 trary to the facts of human nature and which is not 
 at all necessary to a truly “saving faith.” 
 
 The individualism of Protestant Christianity has taken vari- 
 ous forms. In its essence it seems to be identified with the 
 view that Christianity, on its subjective side, is a quite definite 
 experience of the individual consciousness, which is identically 
 reproduced in all those who have the right to call themselves 
 Christians . . . a similar assumption that the Christian experi- 
 ence must in its essence be identically the same for all, and that 
 experiences which do not conform to a certain definite type can- 
 not be truly Christian. . . . On the whole Protestantism, while 
 allowing wide variety in the outward forms of religion or else 
 taking a negative attitude towards them, has insisted strongly 
 and positively on the need for a uniformity in spiritual experi- 
 ence. Catholicism, while insisting strongly on conformity in 
 things outward, has tolerated and even encouraged much greater 
 variation in the inward apprehension of spiritual realities on the 
 part of the individual soul. The very individualism of the 
 Protestant may make more searching and more rigid demands 
 upon the individual than any doctrine which, exalting the out- 
 ward rules of the society, exacts uniformity only in outward 
 compliance therewith. Individualism is not necessarily associated 
 
 with liberty. 
 
 I remember in my childhood that the deacons of 
 the church were like diagnosticians; they examined 
 all candidates to determine whether or not they 
 
SALVATION 35 
 
 were ‘‘saved,”’ and that was settled by their “ex- 
 perience,” which had to exhibit certain definite men- 
 tal signs. There is a truth underlying this, but there 
 is an error too, for spiritually human beings are very 
 different. 
 
 A true word was spoken by the Reverend Dr. 
 James McGee: “We must not make it harder to 
 enter the Christian Church than Christ made it to 
 become His followers.” 
 
 We are saved by faith not only by a sudden reve- 
 lation, as in the case of Paul, but by a gradual yield- 
 ing of the whole mind and body to the Light of the 
 World. And this faith is just as necessary on any 
 day fifteen years after one has joined a church, as 
 it is at the moment of decision. 
 
 I heartily believe that we are saved by faith; it 
 is interesting to enquire what we are saved from? 
 It used to be believed that we were saved from the 
 punishment of sin. But I think this stresses the 
 wrong point, and furthermore, I do not believe it 
 is true. Modern students of Christianity more and 
 more are insisting that it is not the punishment of 
 sin from which faith in Christ saves us, but from 
 sin itself, 
 
 Now there are modernists and modernists. There 
 are those critics who, by denying the Incarnation, 
 take away the foundation of Christianity, and to my 
 motion, make our religion a farce. There are those 
 modernists, who say that although the Gospel is 
 not true, we should act as if it were; which may be 
 
36 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 a good enough doctrine for babies and idiots, but 
 will never be accepted by the majority of adult 
 minds. 
 
 There are other modernists whose whole aim is 
 to get nearer to the person and teachings of Jesus 
 Christ, where every ‘forward’? movement is in 
 reality (in time) a movement backward, to bring 
 out the Divine Teacher from the superstructure of 
 human theology. This is good; for Jesus is more 
 modern than we. 
 
 I myself believe literally in the twenty-first verse 
 of the first chapter of Matthew: 
 
 for he shall save his people from their sins. 
 
 It is impossible that we can be saved from the 
 punishment of our sins. Sin and suffering are in- 
 separably linked together. Punishment follows sin 
 as night follows day, as Winter follows Autumn. 
 We have all sinned; and every time we have sinned, 
 either we or somebody else has suffered or will 
 suffer. The result can no more be avoided than one 
 can tear away an event from its cause. 
 
 But there is abundance of evidence to show that 
 faith in Jesus saves people from their sins. No 
 human being can become impeccable; but individual 
 sins have been in many cases entirely overcome by 
 Christian faith. Jesus never dealt with outward 
 conduct, still less with professions; but always with 
 the source of conduct—the human heart. He pro- 
 posed to substitute a good desire for an evil desire, 
 
SALVATION 37 
 
 to grow flowers in the place of weeds. He created 
 a revolution in the human mind, a new birth, so 
 that the mind would not want evil things so eagerly, 
 but would want something better. 
 
 In Harold Begbie’s book, Twice Born Men, 
 which Professor William James regarded with re- 
 spect and admiration, there are plenty of authenti- 
 cated cases where vice which had defied medical 
 skill and every entreaty based on self-respect, was 
 annihilated by faith in Jesus Christ. 
 
 Many men, apparently incurable, were saved to 
 themselves, to their families, and to society. The 
 last words that Jesus said to the woman in the 
 house of Simon the Pharisee, were these: 
 
 Thy faith hath saved thee: go in peace. 
 
 There is surely something greater here than 
 mere personal influence. One learns good manners 
 by associating with ladies and gentlemen; one’s 
 standards of speech and conduct are elevated by 
 meeting those who are truly civilised. All good 
 examples are more efficient than one may be in- 
 clined to think; but something happened to that 
 woman in the house of Simon that was different 
 from what would have happened if Simon had been 
 entertaining a gentleman who had merely spoken 
 kindly to her, or who had remonstrated with his 
 host for treating her contemptuously. We do not 
 forget acts and words of kindness and consider- 
 ation; we remain forever grateful; and sometimes 
 
38 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 we actually treat others better because some one 
 has shown us the charm of enlightened behaviour. 
 
 But that uninvited guest in Simon’s dining-room 
 knew well enough that the Person whose head she - 
 anointed and whose feet she washed with tears was 
 of no common clay. She knew that for the moment 
 the fashionable house, filled with luxury and refine- 
 ment, was transformed into a temple of God, was 
 illuminated by the Divine Presence. She was not 
 saved from a life of sin ending in misery, by admira- 
 tion, or by respect, or by a good example; she was 
 saved by faith in the Son of God. 
 
 The Christian religion, with its power to redeem 
 men and women, depends upon the Incarnation. It 
 is because Jesus was God-with-us that we have faith 
 in him. I know of no other access to the Divine 
 Force, I know of no other communication between 
 man and God. 
 
 Believing as I do that the whole Christian re- 
 ligion depends upon the truth of the Incarnation, 
 believing as I do that the Incarnation is the only 
 Light of the world, I found it heartening to read 
 these words in a book by one of the greatest scholars 
 of our time, by one who has made a profound study 
 not only of philosophy and the history of thought, 
 but of comparative religions. In a little book pub- 
 lished in 1924, called The Christ of the New Testa- 
 ment, and written by Paul Elmer More, I find his 
 conclusion to be: 
 
SALVATION 39 
 
 Only, thus much I would urge: if the supposition of Chris- 
 tianity be not true, then we have no sure hope of religion. 
 . » . In contrast with all other religions the peculiar strength of 
 Christianity is that in the Incarnation it reduces mythology to 
 the simplest possible terms; every extravagance, every over- 
 growth of fancy, is swept away for the bare fact that God in 
 Jesus appeared among men.... To say that the dogma of 
 Christianity is endangered by the comparative study of religions 
 implies a gross ignorance of facts or a wilful misapprehension of 
 values. ... if the divine nature has at any time in any wise 
 directly revealed itself to man, if any voice shall ever reach us 
 out of the infinite circle of silence, where else shall we look but 
 to the words of the Gospel? Not Christianity alone is at stake 
 in our acceptance or rejection of the Incarnation, but religion 
 itself. 
 
 There are perhaps many who read the story of 
 the woman from the streets in the same attitude 
 held by Simon; she was after all wiser than he, for 
 she knew she needed salvation, and he felt no need 
 for himself. There are those who read of sinners 
 saved from drunkenness and from other forms of 
 gross vice, with an emotion compounded only of 
 curiosity and pity. This would be like going to see 
 a tragedy on the stage, without realising that the 
 suffering hero is tragic because he represents not 
 an isolated case, but humanity. ‘The pity and fear, 
 which are supposed to be the emotions chiefly 
 aroused by tragic spectacles, are, in the greatest 
 tragedies, pity and fear for ourselves. We all 
 stand in need of salvation. 
 
 Those who are not tempted by drunkenness and 
 
40 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 crime are often perhaps in greater need of salva- 
 tion than the outcasts. Just as no man feels so 
 ignorant as a true scholar, because his ideal of 
 knowledge is high, so the same standards can be 
 applied to character. Every man who is not the 
 man he would like to be needs salvation. The most 
 elevating, the most saving force is faith. 
 
If 
 SIN 
 
 Jeremiah speaks: The heart is deceitful above all things, and 
 desperately wicked: who can know it? 
 
 Jesus speaks: It must needs be that offences come: but 
 woe to that man by whom the offence 
 cometh! 
 
 Paul speaks: I delight in the law of God after the in- 
 
 ward man: but I see another law in my 
 members, warring against the law of my 
 mind, and bringing me into captivity to the 
 law of sin which is in my members. O 
 wretched man that I am! who shall de- 
 liver me from the body of this death? I 
 thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 So then with the mind I myself serve the 
 law of God: but with the flesh the law of 
 
 Sin. 
 
 In the poem Gold Hair: a Legend of Pornic, 
 Robert Browning dramatised a true story. It ap- 
 pears in the little Breton town there lived a thin, 
 pale girl, whose chief claim to beauty was her mag- 
 nificent yellow hair. Her character was apparently 
 so impeccable that to her friends and neighbours 
 she seemed more saintly than human. She was de- 
 vout; she was never frivolous, never angry; she 
 spoke no words of slander, no words of impatience 
 
 41 
 
42 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 or petulance; she took care of the sick and dying. 
 When she walked along the street, her presence 
 was a benediction. The Pornic people used to say 
 that no matter how streaky and imperfect the char- 
 acters of others were, in this girl there was cer- 
 tainly no flaw. She had even on earth attained per- 
 fection. There could be nothing in her life which 
 she would be unwilling to have known. 
 
 No one was surprised when she was stricken with 
 tuberculosis. Every one felt that she was too an- 
 gelic to remain long in this sordid world, and that 
 heaven was her natural home. Before she died, she 
 made this request of her parents. “I am going to 
 arrange my hair exactly as I wish it to appear while 
 I lie in the coffin. Lift me very carefully from the 
 bed. When you are preparing my body for burial, 
 on no account disturb my hair, and be equally care- 
 ful when you place my corpse in the coffin, so that 
 those who come to the funeral will see me exactly as 
 I wish to look.” 
 
 I dare say that when her friends heard of this 
 strange request, they were secretly pleased. ‘Well, 
 now, that proves that after all, she was human. 
 She was proud of her lovely hair, she did have that 
 faint touch of feminine coquetry, and wished even 
 in the coffin to appear at her best.” 
 
 The girl died. Her orders were scrupulously 
 carried out. People bent over and kissed the white 
 face, which looked like a silver wedge between the 
 
SIN 43 
 
 heaps of gold. Her grave was under the floor of 
 the old church. 
 
 Years later, this pavement needed repair; and 
 while workmen were busy with pick and shovel, one 
 of the curious boys looking on suddenly saw some- 
 thing shining in the earth. He picked it up. It was 
 a gold coin! ‘The priest said, “Dig deeper!” and 
 around the skull they found a fortune in gold money. 
 
 This damnable fact proved that the heart of this 
 girl, which every one had believed to be uncontam- 
 inated with a single shade of impurity, was domi- 
 nated by one of the most dreadful sins known to 
 humanity—the sin of avarice. She was, despite all 
 her other and very real virtues, a miser. Avarice is 
 one of the blackest sins, because it is so wholly 
 selfish. The girl was an orthodox believer; she be- 
 lieved in heaven and hell; she went to church faith- 
 fully, and said her prayers every day. Yet her con- 
 suming lust for money was so terrible, so unconquer- 
 able, that at the very last it triumphed over her re- 
 ligious faith, over all the teachings she had believed 
 in from birth, over her hopes of heaven, over her 
 fears of hell. She could not relinquish the gold 
 which she had coveted and amassed secretly during 
 the years of her life; she must take it with her into 
 the silent grave. 
 
 Was the girl a hypocrite? I don’t know. In 
 every other way except her fatal obsession, she was 
 sincere and sweet; she followed the precepts of re- 
 ligion and morality, she was unselfish in giving her 
 
44 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 time to the poor, the old, the sick, infirm, and de- 
 spairing. But in her heart, along with these fruits 
 of the Spirit, remained the ineradicable root of all 
 evil. 
 
 The optimist Browning tells this horrible story, 
 because it confirms the teachings of Christianity. 
 Christian faith teaches original sin, the corruption 
 of the human heart. We all stand in daily need of 
 redemption. 
 
 To find this malignant filth in a sanctuary as pure 
 as that young girl’s heart seemed, was, as Browning 
 says, like finding a spider in the communion-cup, like 
 finding a toad in the christening-font. “That some 
 persons may be mainly evil, and others mainly good, 
 is neither surprising nor terrifying; but the mixture 
 of good and evil in the finest characters is both a 
 marvel and a curse. 
 
 Nothing is more astounding than the internal 
 range of human nature. Not only are there people 
 living and dead, who are classified as heroes or vil- 
 lains; but in the heart of every person there are 
 purity and vulgarity, courage and cowardice, nobility 
 and meanness, sublimity and triviality, unselfishness 
 and selfishness. The human heart is a garden where 
 lovely flowers and poisonous weeds grow side by 
 side. Life is dangerous. 
 
 A good man sitting in church at half-past eleven 
 on Sunday morning, may be in a hallowed frame of 
 mind; at that moment it would seem incredible to 
 him that he could be coarse, or profane, or petulant, 
 
SIN 45 
 
 or mean. Yet before sunset that same person may 
 be swearing in rage, or tempted by sensual imag- 
 inings, or exhibit the evidences of petty jealousy and 
 selfish egotism. Out of the same mouth, said the 
 Apostle James, cometh blessing and cursing. 
 
 My observation of human nature and my belief 
 in the teachings of Jesus combine to prove over- 
 whelmingly to my mind the truth of original sin. 
 
 When I say that I believe in original sin, I do 
 not mean that I believe in a once commonly-accepted 
 theological dogma. We used to be taught that 
 when Adam and Eve ate the apple, not only did sin 
 enter the world so that every succeeding human 
 baby was conceived and born in sin, but that you and 
 I, now dwelling in America in the twentieth century, 
 are equally guilty with Adam of committing that 
 particular sin. 
 
 In Adam’s fall 
 We sinned all. 
 
 Such a doctrine appears to me absurd. However 
 much I may regret Adam’s unfortunate curiosity, 
 what he did has never troubled my conscience. I 
 don’t care whether he ate an apple or a watermelon. 
 I feel not the slightest responsibility for any one 
 of his actions or thoughts. I have done enough my- 
 self to cause me sufficient remorse without borrow- 
 ing obligations from men long dead. 
 
 But although the theory that I myself committed 
 a sin when Adam ate the apple appears to me ri- 
 
46 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 diculous, it does not appear to me so absurd as the 
 doctrine I hear frequently today from Christian 
 pulpits, and read even oftener in _nicely-printed 
 books. ‘The modern teaching is that there is no 
 such thing as original sin; that men and women are 
 not naturally bad, but naturally good; that the im- 
 pelling forces in the human heart are not downward, 
 but upward; that human nature is inherently beau- 
 tiful and noble. This seems to me the last word 
 in falsehood and folly. 
 
 Of course if this reassuring and flattering theory 
 be true, we do not need to be born again; we do 
 not need to be converted; we need no divine sacri- 
 fice; we need no church, no Bible, and no religion; 
 the church and the Gospels go together to the scrap- 
 heap. Christ lived and died, not for sinners, but 
 for people who are pretty good anyhow; the Great 
 Physician spent his life visiting those who were 
 healthy. 
 
 All we should conceivably need if we were natu- 
 rally good would be some training to develop our 
 goodness, as a natural athlete needs a professional 
 coach. Incidentally, very few are natural athletes. 
 
 Yet it is the truth we want. I do not cling to 
 religion because I love it. If it is true that human 
 nature is naturally good, I am through with the 
 Christian religion. 
 
 Despite the fact that in the bright lexicon of 
 youth there is today no such word as sin, the fact of 
 sin cannot be annihilated by complacency. If sin 
 
SIN 47 
 
 is selfishness and virtue unselfishness, then I believe 
 that man is naturally, instinctively evil. My belief 
 is verified by the study of history, by reading the 
 newspapers, and by using my eyes. 
 
 Know thyself. Did any man ever know himself ? 
 The biggest of all fools, said the Frenchman, is the 
 man who thinks he knows himself. As we look back 
 on many of our past actions, our conduct and the 
 impelling motive often seem inexplicable. How 
 could I have done that? How could I have been 
 such an ass? We go even further. A very common 
 expression is this—What possessed me to do such 
 a thing? As though we really had been possessed 
 by some evil spirit of folly or darkness. 
 
 Sometimes, indeed, though not so often, we are 
 as much surprised by our courage or goodness in 
 some emergency as by our more frequent yielding 
 to selfishness. In the brilliant play, The Devil's 
 Disciple, Bernard Shaw makes his theoretically un- 
 principled hero give up his life for some one else, 
 some one whom he did not love. He was as much 
 amazed by his action as were his neighbours. The 
 point in the motivation of that particular drama was 
 that the hero could not tell why he had done it. 
 He simply had been ignorant of himself. 
 
 The heart of a girl is a dark forest, says a Rus- 
 sian proverb; if we cannot know our own hearts, 
 how foolish it is to pretend that we understand the 
 minds and hearts of others! Browning, a lifelong 
 specialist in the soul, came to the conclusion that 
 
48 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 he did not know anything about it. All he could 
 give was an abundance of individual illustrations. 
 
 “You are sick, that’s sure’—they say: 
 “Sick of what?”—they disagree. 
 “Tis the brain’—thinks Doctor A; 
 “Tis the heart”—holds Doctor B; 
 “The liver—my life I’d lay!” 
 “The lungs!” ‘The lights!” 
 Ah me! 
 
 So ignorant of man’s whole 
 Of bodily organs plain to see— 
 So sage and certain, frank and free, 
 About what’s under lock and key— 
 Man’s soul! 
 
 The human heart, said Jeremiah, is deceitful above 
 all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? 
 
 I shall believe that man is naturally good, when 
 in danger the average man feels the impulse of 
 courage stronger than the impulse of self-preserva- 
 tion; when in the exposure to sensuality, the aver- 
 age man secretly prefers continence to self-indul- 
 gence; when, in a crisis of his fortunes, the average 
 man instinctively prefers the shattering truth to the 
 sheltering falsehood; when, in ordinary business 
 affairs, the average man instinctively prefers the 
 welfare of the prospective buyer to his own; when, 
 in ordinary everyday life, the average man instinc- 
 tively acts on motives of unselfishness rather than 
 of selfishness. 
 
 And when the national policy of any country is 
 
SIN 49 
 
 guided more by considerations of universal benevo- 
 lence than by domestic advancement. As a matter 
 of fact, although many nations are ostensibly 
 Christian, not one directs its foreign policy on 
 Christian principles. 
 
 But it is not with groups, or communities, or na- 
 tions, that I am just now engaged. It is with the in- 
 dividual man, woman, and child. 
 
 Political Economy is called a science. It is based 
 on the following law: Every man will get all he 
 can for himself with the least possible effort. Now 
 fortunately there are some unselfish individuals to 
 whom this does not apply; but there are not enough 
 of them to impair the validity of the law. The foun- 
 dation of selfishness, sin, is strong enough to bear 
 the structure of a whole science. 
 
 It is safe to assume, leaving out the crooks and 
 the professional swindlers, who, nevertheless, are 
 quite numerous, that the ordinary affairs of respect- 
 able life are conducted on the axiom that every one 
 will buy as cheaply as he can and sell as dearly as 
 he can. This is so taken for granted, that when- 
 ever we see a man acting otherwise, we are sur- 
 prised. I knew a druggist in New Haven, now with 
 God, who used to tell his customers frankly, when 
 they were about to buy of him something expensive, 
 and he knew that in this instance he had something 
 cheaper that was just as good, that they would do 
 better to take the cheaper article. He was as bald 
 as it is possible for a man to be; and one day, when 
 
s0 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 an incipiently bald man came to him to buy a patent- 
 medicine hair-restorer, and asked Mr. Spalding if 
 it were reliable, the wise druggist asked him in re- 
 turn to consider the condition of the man he was 
 addressing. His honesty and unselfishness were the 
 talk of the town. 
 
 Did he fail in business? Far from it. His shop 
 was always full of customers, who knew the relia- 
 6ility of the seller. He was a church-member who 
 preached a sermon every day in the week. 
 
 Which leads me to the reflexion that although 
 the majority of people believe that selfishness is the 
 best way to get on in the world, they are in error. 
 Christianity 1s against the selfish instincts of the 
 human heart, but it is always in harmony with 
 reason. It is always good sense. 
 
 Business standards are higher morally than ever 
 before; more and more business men are realising 
 the commercial value not only of honesty, but even 
 of kindness and good will. Although I have a low 
 opinion of the natural instincts of humanity, al- 
 though I firmly believe in the corruption of the 
 human heart, although I am under no sweet illu- 
 sion that men and women are about-all-right any- 
 how, am I a pessimist? I am not. 
 
 The refreshing, encouraging, inspiring truth is 
 this: that although men and women are naturally 
 bad, every one of them can become good. It is not 
 being, but becoming, that fills me with hope for the 
 future of the race. 
 
SIN 51 
 
 This is why the sight of a good man or a good 
 woman, and I know many, is so stimulating. I 
 know that it is never an accident. I know that in 
 every single instance goodness has been won by a 
 daily fight with the ever-active forces of evil. It 
 is a victory; it is a triumph. And as human nature 
 is naturally inclined toward evil, so it is capable 
 of conquering it. 
 
 Jesus said, ‘It must needs be that offences come.” 
 It must needs be. It is of the essence of life and of 
 conditions in this world. Jesus was never under 
 any illusion about the natural goodness of men and 
 things. His diagnosis was always accurate, always 
 confirmed by facts. 
 
 The two great positive realities in this world are 
 sin and pain. Evil and suffering are prime charac- 
 teristics of humanity. I am sceptical of many 
 things. I do not believe the half of what I hear, 
 or one fifth of what I see in print. But I am certain 
 of the positive, aggressive, sleepless force of evil 
 in the world. I say it is active, not passive. 
 
 Suppose a gardener planted the seeds of flowers 
 or of vegetables, and then left them alone. Would 
 the result be satisfactory? It would not. Weeds, 
 which come up and flourish without human effort, 
 would destroy the place. It is only by incessant 
 care, and struggling against the sinister forces of 
 nature, that the man gets the crop he desires. In 
 other words, evil things grow naturally; good things 
 come only by vigilance and hard work. 
 
s2 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 Suppose a man has a barrel of sound apples, and 
 then places among them one rotten specimen. Does 
 it not seem that in these days, when the world has 
 been made safe for democracy, and where every- 
 thing is settled by majority vote, that the hundreds 
 of good apples ought to be able to outvote the one 
 bad apple? Surely the healthful influence of so 
 many should be able to counteract and overcome the 
 destructive influence of one? But of course it is 
 not so. The one rotten apple will make all the rest 
 like unto itself. 
 
 How interesting it would be if good health were 
 contagious! If one man, after successfully sus- 
 taining a thorough examination by a physician, and 
 declared absolutely healthy, could, by walking down 
 the aisles of a hospital, cure the sufferers—let them 
 catch his health. It is unfortunate, but true, that 
 there are no epidemics of health; the epidemics are 
 concerned with disease. It will not do to subject a 
 healthy community to one person suffering from an 
 infectious illness. 
 
 No, evil is natural, positive, aggressive; as indi- 
 viduals and communities have been destroyed by 
 disease germs, so whole nations have been destroyed 
 by immorality and predatory selfishness. 
 
 Curiously enough, along with the bodily and pos- 
 itive fact of evil, we have the mental fact of Good. 
 Every man and every child knows that Beauty, and 
 Truth, and Goodness are valuable and desirable. 
 Loveliness is instantly apprehended as better than 
 
SIN 53 
 
 ugliness; accuracy and the correct way of doing 
 things are instantly seen to be better than any lie or 
 false method: virtue is instantly recognised to be 
 better than vice. 
 
 I agree with the late Mr. Clutton-Brock that in 
 education we lay too much stress on Obedience. In 
 an army, at sea, and in emergencies, discipline and 
 safety require immediate and uncompromising 
 obedience. But in schools there are pupils whose 
 rebellion against authority is based—even though 
 they do not always know it—on a love for truth, 
 beauty, and goodness. The regrettable but common 
 opposition between artists and puritans, scientists 
 and mystics, is quite often based on a misunderstand- 
 ing, where both parties are really trying to follow 
 the same ideals. 
 
 In order to see how naturally inclined to truth, 
 beauty, and goodness is the mind of the average 
 man, all one has to do is to see a drama in the thea- 
 tre or a motion-picture. he sympathy of the spec- 
 tators is invariably with the virtuous hero or hero- 
 ine; they cannot bear to see him yield to temptation; 
 and when the protagonist speaks noble, moral senti- 
 ments, he is often loudly applauded. Benavente, 
 the Spanish dramatist, remarked, ‘“‘One-fourth part 
 of the morality, goodness, and sense of justice which 
 an audience brings into the theatre, would, if left 
 outside, make the world over into paradise.” 
 
 Victor Hugo’s hero, Jean Valjean, who after his 
 conversion, led a life of moral grandeur and chronic 
 
54 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 self-sacrifice, is universally admired; thousands of 
 pupils in schools and colleges vote for him as “the 
 favourite character in fiction.’ But in real life, 
 do they act like him? The universal tone of com- 
 mencement addresses at the graduation exercises 
 of schools and colleges is ideal. Honesty, purity, 
 public service, unselfishness in private and business 
 affairs are set forth as the correct standards of con- 
 duct. But are all school and college graduates ex- 
 emplars of these qualities? 
 
 We instinctively know and applaud the Good; yet 
 the strange fact is that we instinctively follow the 
 Bad. ‘The mind pulls one way, the body another. 
 Temptation is always strongest when the need of 
 resistance to it is greatest. Just as a man who has 
 spoken a language incorrectly in his youth and has 
 later learned to speak correctly, will, in moments of 
 excitement or passion, revert to his dialect or to his 
 errors, so even those who have been most carefully 
 trained in character, will, in moments of stress, 
 often go wrong. ‘The Bible states the fact bluntly: 
 ‘But it has happened unto them according to the 
 true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit 
 again; and the sow that was washed to her wallow- 
 ing in the mire.” 
 
 When Faust was talking with his amanuensis 
 Wagner (whom, by the way, Signor Croce greatly 
 admires) the humbler man said he was entirely 
 satisfied with the pursuit of learning. Faust re- 
 garded him as enviable, because there was no civil 
 
SIN 55 
 
 war in his soul. With me, said the great Doctor, 
 it is different. [wo souls dwell together in my 
 bosom: they are constantly struggling to be sep- 
 arated: one is elevating, the other degrading: I 
 shall never be rid of this internal conflict. 
 
 In the seventh chapter of his letter to the Ro- 
 mans, Paul, in immortal phrases, expressed the 
 same profound truth. 
 
 I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see 
 another law in my members, warring against the law of my 
 mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which 
 is in my members. . . . So then with the mind I myself serve 
 the law of God: but with the flesh the law of sin. 
 
 Struggle is the essence of natural and mental life. 
 All good things are accomplished only by fighting 
 against evil forces. We may be damaged, we may 
 be soiled, we may be scarred in this holy war, the 
 only war that deserves the adjective; but the victory 
 is worth the effort. 
 
 Realising our deficiencies, realising the humiliat- 
 ing difference between our belief and our behaviour, 
 what shall we do? Nothing? Jesus said, It must 
 needs be that offences come: meaning, that in a 
 world like this, with human nature as it is, offences 
 are certain to occur. But he added, Woe to that 
 man by whom the offence cometh! 
 
 We have the opportunity to develop, to improve, 
 and thus to make the world a little better than we 
 found it. Nothing is more tragic, in a world so full 
 
56 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 of misfortune as this is, for any man to add to the 
 burden. He is not much better than those ruffians 
 who seize the opportunity of a great fire or a public 
 disaster or an international] war, to add to their own 
 private gains. If we think we cannot accomplish 
 any good, let us at least try not to increase the 
 amount of evil. Even that aim will require constant 
 vigilance, constant effort. 
 
 If we were naturally good, we should not need 
 religion. If we were naturally virtuous, industrious, 
 and reliable, we should not need restraining and cor- 
 rective forces. How often does a mother in one day 
 feel obliged to say to her children the one word 
 Don’t! Where should we be without parental train- 
 ing, without school discipline, without penalties, nay, 
 without the police? Where was Boston? 
 
 Humanity needs every elevating influence and the 
 most elevating influence in the world is the Christian 
 religion. We need to be saved not once, but every 
 day, because nobody is safe. Our Lord is the great- 
 est Champion of the mind against the natural in- 
 stincts; by following him, we follow the best we 
 know. 
 
 Suppose an army set out to march through a hos- 
 tile territory, and was warned of the danger of 
 ambush; that army would be on the alert. In the 
 eternal warfare between reason and instinct, be- 
 tween unselfishness and selfishness, the enemy is not 
 outside, nor is there any remote or unusual danger 
 to be feared. The enemy is encamped within, in 
 
SIN 57 
 
 the heart of the citadel; we are in danger all the 
 time. 
 
 There are innumerable instances of men and 
 women, who have lived honourably, or at least inof- 
 fensively, till they are past the age of forty. Are 
 they then safe? Is only youth the period of danger? 
 The answer is found in the number who astonish 
 their friends and acquaintances by suddenly ‘“‘going 
 wrong.” ‘Why, I would have wagered anything 
 that he was steady as a rock.’ Hamlet was 
 astounded and horrified at the behaviour of his 
 mother, not merely because he thought of her as a 
 mother and not as a woman, a thought common to 
 all sons, but because he supposed she had reached 
 years of discretion. There are no years of discretion. 
 
 Rebellious hell, 
 If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones, 
 To flaming youth let virtue be as wax, 
 And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame, 
 When the compulsive ardour gives the charge; 
 Since frost itself as actively doth burn, 
 And reason panders will. 
 
 There are those who laugh at the expression “‘miser- 
 able sinners.” They deny indignantly the accusa- 
 tions which the Bible directs sweepingly at men and 
 women in general. “J am not a viper: I am not a 
 worm: I am not a sinner: I am a respectable citizen.” 
 
 Well, what is original sin? Granting that you 
 are free from the temptations of sensuality, lying, 
 
58 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 stealing, cruelty—a large admission—are you living 
 up to your ideals? Are you as valuable to the com- 
 munity as you know you might be? Are you in every 
 respect the man you would like to be? If not, you 
 are, in the old phrase, living in a state of sin. For 
 this is sin: to be aware of one’s opportunities for 
 doing good, and not to take them. No one has a 
 right to be complacent or self-satisfied if one is not 
 doing one’s best. The irresistible conclusion is, that 
 every man and woman is a sinner. 
 
 Who shall deliver me from the body of this 
 death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 
 The knowledge of humanity displayed by Jesus, 
 together with his wisdom, make me feel certain that 
 he would not have appeared in this world if the 
 world had not needed him. Does it need him today? 
 Look at the world. Do you need him? Look in 
 your heart. 
 
IV 
 DEATH 
 
 I was six years old when my sister died. It was 
 just at dawn, and I remember my mother rushing 
 into the room where I was, and screaming franti- 
 cally, “My God! My God!’ I could not understand 
 this, and turning to my father, I asked, ‘‘Papa, what 
 makes Mama swear so?” and he told me she was 
 not swearing, but praying in agony because she had 
 lost her only daughter. My sister was nearly seven- 
 teen years older than I, and had taken care of me 
 very often, so that she seemed more like a second 
 mother than a sister. She had typhoid fever; it was 
 a long illness; I had been taken to her bedroom, so 
 that she might say Good-bye. But her death was a 
 mystery to my childish mind; I saw her in the coffin; 
 I went to her funeral in a state of excitement. It 
 seemed to me incredible that she had disappeared 
 from our home and family life, had become inac- 
 cessible. ‘This was the first time I was brought face 
 to face with the mystery of death. For death is 
 as complete a mystery as life. 
 
 No one can enter or pass a graveyard without 
 serious reflexions. To some it causes a momentary 
 feeling of dismay, akin to physical discomfort; to 
 
 59 
 
60 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 others a whole train of thought is set in motion. To 
 me the graveyard is not my own tragedy, nor the 
 tragedy of those who lie there, not even of those 
 who died young; the tragedy comes in the thought 
 of the racking suffering represented by each grave, 
 the all but intolerable agony in the minds of every 
 little family group who were forced to stand and see 
 the remains of some one inexpressibly dear com- 
 mitted to the ground. Thus every grave represents 
 the grief and anguish of the living. It is not the 
 thought of death—which is as natural as life—but 
 the cruel thought of separation that makes the 
 churchyard an accumulation of tragedies. 
 
 The difference between past physical and mental 
 suffering is the difference between an enemy who 
 has been conquered and an enemy who is in ambush. 
 Physical suffering can be so acute as to dominate 
 for a time both body and mind; it is absurd to say 
 that physical suffering is good for us, when in reality 
 it acts on the kingdom of the mind like a usurping 
 tyrant, destroying both pleasure and activity. But 
 when physical suffering departs, it is over and done 
 with. A healed scar will not ache. About mental 
 anguish there is something insidious; it may return 
 at any moment, at unexpected ti.aes and in strange 
 places. One may be resting placidly in fancied 
 security, one may be sitting in agreeable conversa- 
 tion with friends, one may be laughing at a comedy 
 in the theatre, and suddenly, without warning, the 
 torture returns. All suffering is the enemy to happi- 
 
DEATH 61 
 
 ness; but mental grief is an alert foe, who at any 
 moment may make a surprise attack. 
 
 Yet, even so, the agony of separation is reduced 
 and softened by time. I have seen persons nearly 
 insane with grief, in a state of frenzy. To look 
 upon them at such a moment, one would not believe 
 it possible that they could ever laugh again, or in 
 any conceivable manner, enjoy existence; yet, meet- 
 ing them after the lapse of time, one finds them in 
 pleasurable activities, working, eating, laughing with 
 their friends. The most difficult thing to imagine, 
 when looking on a face disordered by grief, is to 
 imagine that same face expressively interested in 
 external affairs, news of the world, politics, athletics, 
 and what not; yet in the course of time, the eyes and 
 the mind return to normal things, and he who had 
 no room in his thoughts except for the obsession of 
 sorrow, is once more mentally active. 
 
 One of the most impressive things in Barrie’s 
 drama, Mary Rose, is the representation of the re- 
 turn to normality, of the domination of grief by 
 interest in mundane affairs. 
 
 In Shakespeare’s play, King John, Constance cries 
 
 Grief fills the room up of my absent child, 
 Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, 
 Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, 
 Remembers me of all his gracious parts, _ 
 Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form. 
 
 Yet eventually the things that give us the most 
 anguish are turned by the strange alchemy of time 
 
62 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 into golden reminiscence. At first one cannot bear 
 to see anything that reminds one acutely of a friend 
 who has died; but after the passage of healing time, 
 one loves to dwell on those very details. I have seen 
 members of a family, speaking of one long dead, 
 smiling and saying, ‘“‘Do you remember how she 
 liked this?” that is to say, recalling with a feeling 
 akin to pleasure the very details that in the early 
 days of bereavement are unbearable. 
 
 We do not forget those we have loved, and we do 
 not wish to forget them. It is astonishing how 
 clearly we can recall them by the miracle of memory. 
 They have absolutely and totally disappeared; they 
 are as entirely beyond our physical reach as though 
 they had never existed; but by a simple effort of 
 memory, we see their faces, animated as they were 
 in life by individual expression. 
 
 And it is interesting to remember that the forma- 
 tive influence of friends upon us is often much 
 greater after their death than before. ‘This is par- 
 ticularly true of parents. The young man thinks 
 his father and mother are mistaken about life, he 
 does not take their advice seriously, he says and does 
 the things that shock and distress their minds. Years 
 after he has lost them, he finds himself ‘coming 
 around to their way of thinking,” acting as they 
 acted. They seem to reach out from the grave 
 hands more potent than physical hands, and guide 
 him in a manner impossible in life. In Brand 
 
 Whitlock’s novel, J. Hardin and Son, during the 
 
DEATH 63 
 
 lifetime of the father, there was civil war between 
 him and his son; the latter enraged his stern father 
 by continuous, active rebellion. Years after the old 
 man had departed, his son found, much to his sur- 
 prise, that he was behaving like his father, taking 
 his father’s viewpoint, looking at life through his 
 father’s eyes. 
 
 Even those of us who are surest of immortality, 
 whose religious faith is most serene, cannot escape 
 the pain of separation. If one goes to a pier on the 
 departure of an ocean steamer, one will see many 
 affecting scenes. As the ship moves away, there are 
 those on shore who are crying and smiling at the 
 same moment, waving their handkerchiefs and call- 
 ing out good wishes. ‘hey would not bring their 
 friends back if they could, but they cannot help feel- 
 ing lonely. Now if we really had the faith that 
 moves mountains, we should mentally say to dying 
 friends, ‘“‘Happy Journey!’ as we do to those who 
 travel abroad. But human beings simply cannot 
 rise to such a level, and it is vain to make such 
 demands on human capacity. 
 
 ‘‘No work begun shall ever pause for death,” 
 said Browning; and sometimes the influence of those 
 who died young is greater than if they had lived 
 long and successful lives. Consider Nathan Hale. 
 He was sent into the British lines by Washington, in 
 order that he might obtain information useful to the 
 Continental Army. But he totally and ignomini- 
 ously failed. I do not know of a more complete 
 
64 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 failure in history than Nathan Hale. Instead of 
 getting information, the British got him; and I have 
 no doubt that when the rope was around his neck, 
 his last and most bitter thought was not that he had 
 to die so young, or that he would never see his sweet- 
 heart again, or that his own career was closed—the 
 bitterest thought undoubtedly was that he was a 
 failure. What would Washington say? He would 
 say, “I wish I had sent an abler man, a man who 
 could have accomplished something, not this in- 
 competent bungler.”” Now imagine what might 
 have happened. Suppose Nathan Hale had suc- 
 ceeded, had returned in safety, with a mass of 
 valuable information. Suppose as a result of his 
 expedition, the American army had won a decisive 
 battle; suppose Nathan Hale had eventually become 
 a major-general, and after the war President of the 
 United States, and had died at the age of eighty, 
 full of years and honours. His direct influence on 
 successive generations of Americans as a general 
 officer, president, and statesman would not have 
 compared in magnitude with his actual influence as 
 a failure. Since the day of his ignominious death 
 in the orchard, his personal influence on every Amer- 
 ican has been enormously stimulating and will con- 
 tinue to be so for centuries to come. He died a 
 failure, but he died with glorious courage. So true 
 it is that not length of years, or an accumulation of 
 deeds, but personal character is what counts. ‘‘No 
 work begun shall ever pause for death.” 
 
DEATH 65 
 
 Speculation on the future state is as old as human 
 history. No one can help asking, Is death the end? 
 Shall we live again? Is matter less destructible than 
 spirit? If there is a future state, what will it be, 
 and what part shall we play therein? 
 
 There has been an advance in the dignity of specu- 
 lative thought. The Indians buried their warriors 
 with bow and arrows, because their conception of 
 heaven was one eternal happy hunting-ground. Some 
 of the Northern races imagined that heaven was a 
 place where men fought all day, and drank all night; 
 because their chief earthly pleasures were fighting 
 and drinking. ‘There seems to have been no place 
 for women in this Paradise. The Mohammedans 
 imagined that heaven was a place of unlimited sen- 
 suality. Some of our Puritan forefathers seemed to 
 believe that after death they would spend millions 
 of years standing in white robes, holding palms in 
 their hands, and singing ‘Worthy the Lamb!” 
 
 Now whatever the future state may be, it 
 seems that it ought never to be static, but rather a 
 place of continuous and infinite development. For 
 the most striking difference between human beings 
 and animals is the tremendous fact that all human 
 beings have the capacity for development, something 
 denied to mere animals. ‘There is no reason a dog 
 or a horse should live forever, because they reach 
 the limit of fulfilment in this earthly existence. My 
 dog, who is now nine years old, is clever in his 
 canicular way; but if he lived to be seventy or seven 
 
66 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 thousand, he would be the same dog, no further 
 advanced mentally than he is now. On the other 
 hand, every child, no matter how elementary in 
 intelligence, has in his infant mind possibilities of 
 development so vast that literally eternity is not 
 long enough to exhaust them. Not only does it 
 seem a calamity that scholars, scientists, and invent- 
 ors should die, and their steady advance come to an 
 annihilating conclusion; the death of every indi- 
 vidual—if it be the end—is a waste so appalling that 
 the universe, from the human point of view, is 
 turned into a farce. Life would then really be what 
 Mark Twain said it was, the worst practical joke 
 ever played. 
 
 Every human being has in his mind an infinite 
 capacity for development. I want to live forever, 
 because I know, that granted the one blessing of 
 health, I should never find eternity tiresome. Even 
 at this moment I have enough plans, desires, and 
 interests to keep me steadily and cheerfully busy for 
 several trillion years; and by that time I should 
 certainly have accumulated enough new ideas to wish 
 to continue. It is even more generally true of intel- 
 lectual interests than it is of food that the appetite 
 grows by what it feeds on. If the man who amasses 
 money cannot stop, but is ever eager to acquire more 
 wealth, the scholar, the student, the man of an en- 
 quiring mind, is even more eager to learn indefi- 
 nitely, to obtain new experiences. Is it possible to 
 imagine Shakespeare losing interest in human 
 
DEATH 67 
 
 nature? Can one imagine Edison ceasing to wish to 
 make new inventions? Is it possible for one whcé 
 has spent his earthly life in the pursuit of some form 
 of knowledge, gladly to acquiesce in cessation? 
 “The highest good is the growth of the soul.” 
 
 The parable of the talents was directed against 
 those who are content to make no advance; who 
 receive the gift of mind without improving it. The 
 greatest sin one can commit against one’s own per- 
 sonality is the lack of ambition to enrich and im- 
 prove it. For the aim of life is not merely to secure 
 physical comfort, delightful as that is; the aim of 
 life is to grow, and thus to fulfil to the uttermost 
 possibilities. 
 
 Furthermore there is hope for immortality in the 
 miracle of individuality, of personal identity. It is 
 a cheering thought that although all human beings 
 are alike in their bodily and mental sensations, enjoy 
 the same pleasures, suffer from the same causes,— 
 every individual person is a unit, who has never been 
 matched in past ages, and whose replica will never 
 appear on earth again. There is no wider gulf 
 imaginable than the gulf which separates one man 
 from another. Even in cases where sons resemble 
 their fathers so noticeably that they have the same 
 facial expression, the same trick of the voice, the 
 same arm-gesture and bodily attitude in excitement 
 or repose, the difference between such a son and such 
 a father is wider than the space between East and 
 
68 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 West. They resemble each other in many ways, 
 but they are not even imaginably the same. 
 
 There is some comfort, I say, in this miracle of 
 individuality. You may be poor, stupid, unsuccess- 
 ful, unhappy; but there is one form of wealth that 
 cannot be taken away from you—your own person- 
 ality. The story of Peter Schlemihl was a tragic 
 story, because when he sold his shadow, he sold a 
 part of himself. Of all the billions of men or women 
 that have walked the ways of earth, and of all the 
 billions that will inhabit our planet to the end of 
 time, you, you who read these words, are unique. 
 You have a separate and inimitable personality. 
 
 Thus the waste of war cannot be reckoned in the 
 loss of wealth or material things which can eventu- 
 ally be successfully duplicated; the untold waste of 
 war consists in the removal from earth of an enor- 
 mous number of irreplaceable personalities. 
 
 The evidences in Nature for the persistence of 
 individual life after death are not sufficiently numer- 
 ous or weighty to be convincing. The fact that man 
 wants to live, that he can hardly imagine himself not 
 living, that the whole scheme of the world becomes 
 farcical without immortality are evidences of the 
 will to live, of the instinct for existence, rather than 
 of the fact itself. Of course there are plenty of 
 happy analogies thrust upon our minds by Nature. 
 The dying, rotting grain springing into life, which 
 cannot indeed live at all unless it first dies; the ap- 
 parently dead trees in Winter springing into a glory 
 
DEATH 69 
 
 of new life in the Spring. As we grow older, the 
 Spring, which made little impression upon us in 
 childhood, becomes a glorious and inspiring drama. 
 Sometimes after a long winter and a cold March 
 and April, the trees seem to burst out some May 
 morning like an explosion; I have trembled in ecstasy 
 in beholding them. 
 
 But to offset this, there is the most pessimistic 
 thought which can ever visit a serious and contem- 
 plative mind; it is the appalling waste of Nature, the 
 apparent indifference of Nature to the life and wel- 
 fare of the individual. Through the passion for 
 existence and the passion for reproduction Nature 
 has abundantly provided for the continuation of the 
 race, of the type; but for the welfare of the indi- 
 vidual there is apparently no provision. It is ridicu- 
 lous to talk about the survival of the fittest; for the 
 truly fit-to-live have no more chance in a general 
 epidemic, calamity, railway accident, earthquake, fire 
 or cyclone, than those who are apparently not fit to 
 live at all. 
 
 Let us not deceive ourselves with sentimentality 
 or with cant. There is a vast amount of cant talked 
 about death by those who have no belief in religion. 
 I saw a book once called The Eternal Life and took 
 it up with some hope. But all the author had to say 
 was, that although the individual ceases to exist at 
 death, we should be comforted by the thought that 
 the Human Race goes on. 
 
 That the Human Race goes on is not necessarily 
 
70 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 a cause for joy. Chekhov said that we comfort 
 ourselves with the thought that we are sacrificing 
 ourselves for posterity, that the next generations 
 will be much happier and better; and then when the 
 future generations arrive, they will say, “How un- 
 happy we are! how much better it was in the good 
 old times!” 
 
 But there is in reality no such thing as a Race, 
 even when spelled with a capital. There is no such 
 thing as racial happiness, any more than there is 
 such a thing as national happiness. Happiness is ex- 
 clusively concerned with the individual. The Human 
 Race in itself is not a reality; it is simply a collection 
 of individuals. There can be no individual happi- 
 ness in racial immortality. 
 
 Either we live individually after death or we do 
 not. If we really die, we are then as nonexistent as 
 we were in the year 1768. A doctor and nurse stood 
 by a dying man, and when he breathed his last, the 
 nurse said, ‘‘Wellk, he knows all about it now.” But 
 if consciousness ceased with bodily death, he really 
 knew less about it than before; for at any rate men 
 who are alive can guess and speculate. 
 
 There is no room for immortality in this world. 
 Death is a necessity in the economic order; and 
 taking humanity as a whole, death is a fortunate 
 necessity. The absolute certainty of death—for 
 there is nothing more certain—casts a dark shadow 
 over every human being, and exerts a profound 
 influence on every life and character. From its dark 
 
DEATH 71 
 
 roots springs the bright flower of humility. How 
 absolutely intolerable most persons would be if they 
 knew they were not to die! 
 
 Death is the sharpest check to egotism, the heavy 
 brake on passion, the chill on lust, the restraint on 
 avarice, the eternal No to selfishness. What would 
 become of the average run of men and women if a 
 man like Napoleon were immortal?; There have 
 been many persons in history marked by a combina- 
 tion of towering ambition and colossal selfishness ; 
 the average man is never safe until such persons are 
 dead. | | 
 
 The thought that every one of us must die creates 
 in our hearts a healthy modesty, which is not only 
 necessary for the proper development of our own 
 personality and character, but which makes us toler- 
 able to others. If we did not know that we must 
 leave the earth and every earthly possession, we 
 should all become insufferable; there would be no 
 community on earth where it would be possible to 
 live in peace. 
 
 In the Old Testament there is not much emphasis 
 laid on the future life; it is in the religion of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ where individual immortality, in 
 some sphere of free and untrammelled development, 
 is most greatly stressed. Christianity lays all its 
 emphasis on the individual life—no religion has ever 
 placed such a value on human beings. Not a 
 sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father’s 
 notice—every hair of your heads is numbered. Jesus 
 
972 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 believed and taught that God was really our Father 
 —that every one of His children was to Him 
 inexpressibly precious. ‘‘Your Heavenly Father 
 Knoweth.” 
 
 No one ever understood the human heart so pro- 
 foundly as Jesus. Wherever we can test his ideas, 
 so far as they relate to earthly activities and be- 
 haviour, he was always right. He spoke the truth. 
 It is reassuring to remember that one who is accurate 
 when his ideas can be subjected to verification, has a 
 good chance of being right in his predictions. 
 
 Now Jesus was certain of personal immortality, 
 of the persistence of the individual soul after death. 
 About this matter he spoke with confidence. He 
 was sure of the future—can we not follow where he 
 leads? If we find all of his practical teaching wise, 
 reasonable, and true, does it not help us to believe 
 that he was not mistaken in other things? 
 
 I confess that my own hope of the future life is 
 based on the personality of Jesus, on the Incarna- 
 tion, on my belief that he revealed the Divine Idea 
 to helpless and suffering and ignorant humanity. 
 
 There is no reason we should not entertain our 
 minds with speculations about the nature of future 
 mental activities after we have got rid of the body. 
 It is my own individual hope, that as it is now possi- 
 ble to travel everywhere about this earth, after 
 death it will be possible to travel all over the uni- 
 verse. Light travels two hundred thousand miles a 
 second; but there is something that travels infinitely 
 
DEATH 73 
 
 faster than Light—it is Thought. When I speak to 
 another man, and say the word Sirius, we both in- 
 stantaneously travel from the earth to that particu- 
 lar star. Hence it is possible that after death, when 
 the checks and hindrances to activity are removed, 
 our individual spirits may actually travel as fast 
 as thought. Such journeys would be interesting. 
 
 There is an innate pessimism in humanity shown 
 in many ways and shown especially in this. There ts 
 no doubt that the chief reason why so many do not 
 believe in immortality is not because the idea of im- 
 mortality is foolish, but simply because “‘it is too 
 good to be true.’”’ But if the revelation of God in 
 Jesus Christ was a true revelation, nothing is too 
 good to be true. Even as it is, his mere appearance 
 on earth is the best thing that ever happened. 
 
 There is one result that should rise from the 
 thought of death—it should make us more sympa- 
 thetic, more kindly, more considerate, more warm- 
 hearted. A ship’s company become more easily and 
 more informally acquainted than mere street 
 crowds; and if there be danger, the artificial walls 
 that separate human beings from one another vanish 
 immediately. Now we ought to regard all humanity 
 as a ship’s company, for we are all travelling some- 
 whither. Furthermore, we are all in danger. No 
 one can tell what calamity or disaster may happen 
 tomorrow. 
 
 When I was a young man, I had an accident, and 
 was forced to walk on crutches for a month. I could 
 
94 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 not help noticing an obvious fact. Strangers in the 
 street looked at me with a peculiar expression. 
 There was a look of pity, sympathy, a desire to help 
 on nearly every face I saw. That was because I 
 was on crutches. 
 
 Let us remember that although only a very few 
 show their wounds as I was forced to do, every man 
 and woman has griefs and sorrows that are as real 
 as if they were plain to see. Every man’s soul is 
 bleeding internally. Even the happiest people have 
 troubles. Now as it is impossible to imagine any one 
 kicking or striking me when I was on crutches—if 
 any one had done so, he would have been called a 
 monster—so we ought to be equally careful not to 
 strike others in what may be their most sensitive 
 spot. But there is an enormous amount of such 
 cruelty happening every day. 
 
 I suppose no one has ever heard of a friend’s 
 death without acute remorse, without the bitter 
 recollection either of injuries done to that friend or 
 of opportunities for help that were missed. We 
 always say, “If I had known he was going to die, 
 I should have acted so differently.” Well, why 
 should we always be accumulating material for re- 
 morse and regret? We do know. We know that 
 all our friends, acquaintances, and strangers are 
 mortal. They will die. It is not necessary to be- 
 spatter them with officious sympathy, but it is the 
 part of wisdom to treat every human being with 
 delicate care. The soul is more sensitive than the 
 
DEATH 75 
 
 skin. If we cannot be of much use to those with 
 whom we come in daily contact, we can at least try 
 to avoid hurting them. 
 
 It is astonishing how grateful people are for a 
 little sympathy and consideration. I can remember, 
 after the lapse of fifty years, certain words and acts 
 of kindness, and I shall cherish the memory of those 
 people so long as I live. 
 
 In the midst of life we are in death. This is not 
 only a chastening and sobering thought for the indi- 
 vidual mind, it should have a daily influence on our 
 conduct. 
 
Vv 
 LIFE 
 
 When I was a small boy, camping out with some 
 companions on the shore of Long Island Sound, 
 word came to us late one afternoon that a young 
 man had been drowned; and we were asked to look 
 for his body. Accordingly we walked along the 
 beach for miles, searching the surface of the water, 
 knowing that somewhere he would come in with the 
 fiood tide. About nine o’clock in the evening, he was 
 found. We entered a little hut, and there, fully 
 dressed, lying on his back on a rough table, was the 
 dead man. I have often read that every dead face 
 has dignity. In this instance it was not so. He 
 evidently had been an athlete; the knotted muscles in 
 his arms and legs showed through his soaked 
 clothes. But his face was half covered with sand, 
 his body was twisted convulsively, as though he had 
 died in a fierce struggle, and there was a look of 
 almost petulant protest in his staring eyes. A mag- 
 nificent young man had become a disfigured corpse. 
 No use to speak to him; every connexion with human 
 affairs was closed; he was dead. 
 
 There are, however, many active human bodies 
 
 walking the streets, who, in various ways, are 
 76 
 
LIFE | 77 
 
 mentally dead. A man to whom music means noth- 
 ing, is musically dead—as dead as though he were 
 already in the grave. A man to whom religion 
 means nothing is spiritually dead. 
 
 Shortly after the miracle of the loaves and fishes, 
 Jesus spoke to a multitude of curiosity seekers, 
 taking for his subject the Spiritual Life. (I remem- 
 ber hearing Beecher dramatically describe the 
 scene.) They had not the faintest glimmer of what 
 he was talking about. He said, 
 
 my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. 
 For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, 
 and giveth Life unto the world. 
 
 Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread. 
 
 They were not expressing a pious wish, or saying 
 anything that had religious significance. They 
 wanted something to eat. If at that moment he had 
 waved his hand, uttered some hocus-pocus, and made 
 loaves of bread to appear, they would have eaten, 
 and gone away completely satisfied. 
 
 Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. 
 
 This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a 
 man may eat thereof, and not die. 
 
 I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any 
 man eat of this bread, he shall live forever: and the bread that 
 I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the 
 world. 
 
 The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How 
 can this man give us his flesh to eat? ... 
 
78 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and 
 mother we know? how is it then that he saith, I came down 
 from heaven? 
 
 These words, which have since that day stimulated 
 and inspired many millions, meant nothing to those 
 who heard them. The listeners were bewildered. 
 They could not understand, because they were spir- 
 itually dead. They understood food and drink, but 
 not the hunger and thirst of the mind. Many of 
 them left him altogether, and walked no more with 
 him. But Jesus merely repeated with even more 
 emphasis what he had already affirmed, as though he 
 looked over and beyond that audience in Palestine to 
 the countless generations of posterity, who would 
 listen and understand and believe. Sometimes a 
 teacher or a writer has to talk over the heads of his 
 audience, in order to impress all the more deeply the. 
 men and women of the future. Jesus concluded his 
 address by these words of absolute truth. 
 
 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: 
 the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. 
 
 With Jesus Spirit and Life meant the same thing. 
 
 Jesus was always talking about life. ‘In him 
 was life.” “I am come that they might have life, 
 and that they might have it more abundantly.” “Ye 
 search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have 
 eternal life . . . but ye will not come to me that 
 ye may have life.” 
 
 What did he mean by Life? 
 
LIFE 79 
 
 Of course he believed in immortality, in existence 
 after death. This belief is at the foundation of his 
 religion and morality. But he did not mean that we 
 should spend our time either waiting for the future 
 life, or merely preparing for it. He knew we could 
 have abundance of life here and now, and he wanted 
 us to exchange poverty for wealth. It is the life 
 within that can alone enrich personality. A man’s 
 life consisteth not in the abundance of things which 
 he possesseth. It does not consist in things at all. 
 
 It is sad to see so many people throw away their 
 lives. It is sad to see so many people unhappy, not 
 through poverty in money, food, clothing, shelter, 
 but poverty in life. All about us, in city and country, 
 there are dwarfed, stunted, narrow, cramped, com- 
 monplace, insignificant lives that ought to be en- 
 riched. People are lying down when they ought to 
 be standing up; crawling when they should be 
 walking. 
 
 The teaching of many of our realistic novelists, 
 who often seem to be concerned only with the sordid 
 aspects of life in villages and cities, is meant to 
 convict us of sin. For every book, no matter how 
 objective, has a moral lesson. Every artist is a 
 teacher. ‘They wish to make us ashamed of an ex- 
 istence filled only with pettiness, when it ought to be 
 full of interest. Gorki said that in the tales of 
 Chekhoy, the great realist seemed to be saying to 
 his characters, “It is shameful of you to live like 
 this.” 
 
80 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 What Jesus taught was the reality of the life of 
 the spirit. It is not a myth: it is not an illusion: 
 it is not a dream: it is not only as real a life as the 
 physical existence, it is more intense. We must 
 divest spirituality of shopworn sanctimonious 
 phrases, that have lost their hitting power, and come 
 back to the thrilling words of Jesus, who himself 
 lived the life of the spirit. 
 
 The best thing that can happen to a man or 
 woman in this world is to grow, to develop; after 
 physical maturity is reached, this growth can be only 
 through the mind and spirit. It is a natural and 
 tranquil growth, which is accomplished only by ful- 
 filling certain conditions, by making the right con- 
 nexion. It cannot be attained by doing some tre- 
 mendous deed, or going through some exciting 
 emotional experience. Nor can it come through 
 spasms of sudden effort, nor through constant anx- 
 iety—“‘taking thought.” 
 
 Jesus lived in the country and in small settlements. 
 He referred often to flowers and plants. He loved 
 them, and taught from his observation this lesson: 
 we cannot grow by worry or even by hard work. No 
 poet ever spoke more beautifully of anything than 
 Jesus spoke of the gorgeous lilies of Palestine. 
 
 A plant grows all the time, though no one has 
 ever seen it grow. So with the life of the spirit. 
 We cannot grow merely by going to church on Sun- 
 day, or by feeling religious only when we are in 
 danger, or when some member of the family dies. 
 
LIFE 81 
 
 The farmer does not make things grow. He simply 
 gives them a chance. He improves the soil, removes 
 obstacles, and endeavours to continue the connexion 
 between the plant and the source of life. For if we 
 understood what makes the plant grow, we should, 
 as Tennyson says, know what God and man really 
 are. 
 
 ‘God plants us where we grow,” said Pompilia. 
 Now this may not be where we are most comfort- 
 able. It is pleasant to be physically comfortable, in 
 bodily ease, but if the growth of the mind is truly 
 more important than the pleasure of the body, then 
 it may in the long run be better for us to have difh- 
 culties, hardships, pains, worries, frustrations, pri- 
 vations, and disasters. Some may grow better in 
 prosperity; others in rougher circumstances. ‘The 
 important thing is to grow. Nearly all the intel- 
 lectual work of the world, nearly all the world’s 
 contributions to art, letters, and music, have been 
 made in a bad climate. God plants us where we 
 grow. 
 
 Pompilia spoke of a well-meaning reformer, who, 
 seeing a rose on a bush close to the roadside, and 
 knowing that it was in imminent danger of destruc- 
 tion from any careless passer, took the rose, and 
 carefully placed it at the top of a tree, where it 
 would be in security. But there it died. In Haw- 
 thorne’s Snow Image, the children’s father, with the 
 best intentions, placed the Snowchild in front of the 
 warm fire, where it could be as comfortable as they. 
 
 b] 
 
82 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 The spiritual climate of this world is harsh; but 
 robust hearts thrive on it. They grow. 
 
 As some people have more physical vitality than 
 others, so some have more spiritual vitality. Some 
 have tremendous spiritual vitality, whether they are 
 lean in body like an ascetic, or fat. When there is 
 complete loss of appetite, and one does not care for 
 food, we know that.person is physically ill. He 
 needs nourishment. So those who have given up 
 reading the Bible and daily prayer and going to 
 church and thinking about God, whose daily ex- 
 istence is stuffed full of ephemeral affairs, they be- 
 come spiritually sick. 
 
 The body interests more people than the mind, 
 because bodily wants and bodily pleasures are uni- 
 versal. The most rudimentary roustabout and the 
 most intellectual lady both have to eat and sleep. 
 Both know the value of food, warmth, shelter. But 
 although there are a hundred men who love meat 
 to one who loves music, that does not prove that the 
 love of music is a myth, or that it does not give 
 happiness to those who cultivate it. 
 
 Bodily sensations interest more people than the 
 things of the mind. Mental pleasures interest more 
 people than the things of the soul. In living the 
 spiritual life, however, one does not lose either 
 mental or bodily capacity. Jesus came to give us 
 abundance of life—that we might live with bodily 
 gusto, with intellectual curiosity, with spiritual 
 fervour. In other words, that we might have per- 
 
LIFE 83 
 
 sonal vitality: that we might in a month live longer 
 than many live ina year. If daily life be interesting, 
 one cannot be altogether unhappy. 
 
 The average man recognises instantly the differ- 
 ence between life and death. But if the average man 
 were forced to define the word Existence, he would 
 not find it immediately easy to do so ina satisfactory 
 manner. ‘The best definition of Existence was given 
 by the philosopher Lotze. He said, To Be is to be 
 in Relations. 
 
 A dead body has no relations with anything per- 
 ceptible. It cannot hear what we say to it, or see 
 the sunlight, or vote, or read the newspapers, or 
 show any sensitiveness to heat or cold or any stimuli. 
 That is why we know it to be dead. 
 
 If to be is to be in relations, then the more rela- 
 tions our minds have, the more vividly are we alive. 
 A man who takes an interest only in his business is 
 alive only that much. A man who takes an interest 
 in his business, in world-politics, in music, in art, in 
 astronomy, in literature, in athletics, is a hundred 
 times more alive than the other, who is hardly more 
 than an efficient machine. Every time a man learns 
 a foreign language, or acquires a new interest, he 
 widens his relations, and increases his vitality. He 
 lives more. Roosevelt had enormous vitality, be- 
 cause he was keenly interested in things as far apart 
 as naval warfare and singingbirds. Everything in 
 the world interested him, and his connexions with 
 life were numerous. 
 
84 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 The more friends we have, the more we live. A 
 man dies as often as he loses a friend, said Bacon; 
 a relation with life was cut off; so far as that friend 
 went, one died with him. But if that is true, it is 
 also true that every time one makes a new friend, 
 one gains new life. 
 
 Thus for a man to be interested only in one thing, 
 or to live a solitary and selfish life, isolated from 
 society, is to live meanly as well as wickedly. His 
 vitality is low. He needs spiritual nourishment. Of 
 all vital forces for the enriching of life from within, 
 religion is the most effective. The kingdom of God 
 is within you. 
 
 Furthermore, if we do not keep growing, if we 
 do not improve, we cannot stand still. We cannot 
 merely keep what we have got. For there is a law— 
 the law of deterioration. Even if one takes the 
 greatest care of things, they do not stay new and 
 fresh. The new dress, the new house, the new auto- 
 mobile, do not stay new. Immediately they begin 
 to decay. If one owns a motor-car, one does not 
 need to have an accident to have the car lose in 
 value; no disaster is necessary. Mere time is sufhi- 
 cient; ordinary wear and tear. One can no more 
 keep one’s possessions fresh and new than one can 
 preserve one’s youth. People do not need to have a 
 railway accident, or a severe illness, or a major 
 operation to lose what good looks they have. Time 
 writes on one’s face and body with an indelible hand, 
 
LIFE 86 
 
 and the more one tries to erase this by artifice, the 
 more is the emphasis added to the natural work of 
 time. 
 
 Fortunately the life of the spirit need not decay 
 with the life of the body. With proper nourish- 
 ment, by keeping in relations with the necessary in- 
 fluences, the life of the spirit can steadily develop 
 even as the body deteriorates. ‘This is the reason 
 that the sight of an old man or an old woman with 
 a vigorous mind, a fresh heart, and a high spirit is 
 so inspiring. It is an example that all can follow. 
 Perhaps the real secret of life is this: while the body 
 is growing worse, to have a constantly developing 
 mind and a golden heart. Is it possible to have the 
 mature mind of a man and the heart of a boy? It is. 
 
 Wordsworth, in his Ode on the Intimations of 
 Immortality, deplored the fact that as we advance 
 in years from childhood, our minds harden and 
 coarsen, are less sensitive to beauty and to nature, 
 become in fact, dulled. He seemed to believe that 
 not only do we live after death, but that we came 
 from as glorious an existence as that to which we are 
 destined. Our earthly life is a barren land between 
 two oceans of eternity. He explained the radiant 
 loveliness of childhood by its reflexion of the light 
 of that immortal country whence the child came; 
 then, as we grow older, we become more callous, 
 more deaf to heavenly voices, more blind to celestial 
 visions. 
 
86 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 There is something inexpressibly lovely about 
 children. The soft hair, the brilliant eyes, the radi- 
 ant skin, shining as if there were some light behind 
 it, the fresh innocence and trusting confidence of the 
 mind. There is an inescapable sadness in gazing at 
 a child, and thinking not merely of the decay of its 
 bodily beauty, but of the coarsening and hardening 
 process which its mind must experience. The hor- 
 rible words it will hear, the disgusting sights it will 
 see, the harshness and cruelty it will experience, the 
 general roughness associated inevitably with earthly 
 existence. It is like seeing some beautiful picture 
 blurred by a coarse hand. Wordsworth has ex- 
 pressed all this in his great poem. 
 
 There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, 
 The earth, and every common sight, 
 To me did seem 
 Apparelled in celestial light, 
 The glory and the freshness of a dream. 
 It is not now as it hath been of yore;— 
 Turn wheresoe’er I may, 
 By night or day, 
 The things which I have seen I now can see no more. 
 ‘The Rainbow comes and goes, 
 And lovely is the Rose, 
 The Moon doth with delight 
 Look round her when the heavens are bare, 
 Waters on a starry night 
 Are beautiful and fair; 
 The sunshine is a glorious birth; 
 But yet I know, where’er I go, 
 That there hath passed away a glory from the earth. 
 
LIFE 87 
 
 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 
 The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 And cometh from afar: 
 Not in entire forgetfulness, 
 And not in utter nakedness, 
 But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 From God, who is our home: 
 Heaven lies about us in our infancy! 
 Shades of the prison-house begin to close 
 Upon the growing Boy, 
 But He beholds the light, and whence it flows 
 He sees it in his joy; 
 The Youth, who daily farther from the east 
 Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest, 
 And by the vision splendid 
 Is on his way attended; 
 At length the Man perceives it die away, 
 And fade into the light of common day. 
 
 Yet, even in the rough give-and-take of mature 
 life, even in the absorption of daily cares and wor- 
 ries, there are moments, exceptional moments, when 
 we hear the divine whisper, and see the heavenly 
 vision. 
 
 Hence, in a season of calm weather, 
 Though inland far we be, 
 Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea 
 Which brought us hither, 
 Can in a moment travel thither, 
 And see the Children sport upon the shore, 
 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore, 
 
 The inevitable course of human existence supplies 
 one reason for the necessity of the life of the spirit. 
 
88 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 Although the body grows worse, although the mind 
 is hardened and toughened by daily contact with 
 affairs, the life of the soul may yet remain fresh and 
 beautiful. We must keep the connexion between 
 our hearts and the Divine Ideal. In this way, and 
 in this way alone, can one live the spiritual life. 
 
 Time that can and must be snatched from the 
 importunate struggle for existence, should be spent 
 in keeping the overhead connexion free. The life 
 of the spirit can be nourished and stimulated like 
 any other life. And those happy moments, of which 
 Wordsworth speaks, will more frequently occur. 
 
 Jesus put the spiritual life first. Your Heavenly 
 Father knoweth that ye have need of food and drink 
 and clothing; but don’t spend all your time and 
 thought on those things! Never was there such a 
 craze about food and drink as now; so that it seems, 
 as if Jesus in saying ironically What shall we eat? 
 What shall we drink? were thinking especially of us. 
 Thousands are completely absorbed in ‘‘dieting,” in 
 this or that method of hygiene. Millions are en- 
 gaged in the hopeless undertaking of trying to look 
 young. Jesus gave earthly affairs their proper em- 
 phasis; but he put the spirit—the only thing that 
 distinguishes humanity from beasts—first. 
 
 His remark to the sufferer from paralysis is illu- 
 minating. They brought to him one sick of the 
 palsy, the word meaning in the old translation 
 exactly the opposite of what it means today. The 
 invalid was not shaking; he could not move at all. 
 
LIFE 89 
 
 He was paralysed. The crowd awaited the words 
 of Jesus with intense curiosity. How acute their 
 disappointment, how sharp their disdain, when he 
 said, “Thy sins be forgiven thee!’ They thought it 
 -was his legs, not his soul, that required attention. 
 Jesus read their hearts, as on earth he would now 
 read the hearts of those who wish to turn churches 
 into soup-kitchens. 
 
 Many people today ridicule religious ideas, be- 
 cause they know nothing of spiritual values. But 
 even if the poor all had bathtubs, sanitary plumbing, 
 better material surroundings, would they then be 
 perfect? Are bodily comforts Life, or merely the 
 means of life? 
 
 To be carnally minded, said Paul, is death. The 
 seeds of death are in every body and in every 
 earthly enterprise. To be spiritually minded, said 
 Paul, is life and peace. Peace is worth having. 
 
 That incomparable literary artist, John Bunyan, 
 drew a picture of a man with a muckrake. 
 
 This done, and after those things had been somewhat di- 
 gested by Christiana and her company, the Interpreter takes them 
 apart again, and has them first into a room where was a man 
 that could look no way but downwards, with a muckrake in his 
 hand. There stood also one over his head with a celestial crown 
 in his hand, and proffered him that crown for his muckrake; 
 but the man did neither look up nor regard, but raked to him- 
 self the straws, the small sticks, and dust of the floor. 
 
 Christiana saw the meaning: “This is the figure of a 
 man of this world, is it not, good sir?” 
 
go ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 It is interesting to observe that not only was the 
 man so deeply interested in trivial affairs that he did 
 not observe the heavenly; he had worked so long 
 with his muckrake that now he could not see the 
 crown, even if he wanted to; for his eyes could look 
 only downward. He had actually destroyed the 
 capacity to live the life of the spirit. 
 
 He was very busy, but he was not truly living. 
 He was one who might conceivably gain the whole 
 world and lose his life. 
 
 It is difficult in modern environment to keep the 
 spiritual life glowing, but it can be done. Many 
 have fled away to inaccessible mountains, to lonely 
 towers, to complete isolation; but they carried them- 
 selves along, and the struggle between the tem- 
 porary and the eternal went on just the same. 
 Modern activities, though they are likely to smother 
 the flame of the spirit, are not necessarily opposed 
 to it. To the spiritual mind nothing is more accessi- 
 ble than God. ‘To the discerning eye, there is as 
 much poetry in the streets of New York as in snow- 
 clad mountains. ‘The beauties of Nature are wher- 
 ever we are, if we look for them. I have seen as 
 splendid sunsets in the city as in the country; and 
 the most beautiful rainbow I ever beheld spread its 
 glory for me as I sat on the top of a London omni- 
 bus, rolling through a squalid street. How glad I 
 am that my eyes were not so constituted as to be 
 able to look only downward! 
 
 The true mystic—and every human being should 
 
LIFE 91 
 
 be a mystic at heart—is never far from God. We 
 can live the life of the spirit as well in summer as in 
 winter, in city and country, in Europe and in 
 America. Even though we travel away thousands 
 of miles, we are never far from those we love. 
 Their presence is more real to us than the scenery 
 outside the train windows. Sometimes it seems as 
 if we were united to home and friends by an 
 elastic band—the farther we go, the tighter it pulls. 
 
 Once having lived the life of the spirit, we do not 
 mean to lose it, for we know that it is the only thing 
 that stands any chance to survive the final catas- 
 trophe of death. The worldly things we set our 
 hearts upon are perishable; but if we are connected 
 with something eternal, we may share its indestructi- 
 bility. Nor does a hearty, sensible, devoted spiritual 
 life diminish one’s enjoyment and appreciation of 
 the beautiful and interesting things in this world. 
 Just the contrary: spiritual capacity gives direction 
 and significance to every form of life. 
 
 Twelve days before he died, the poet Coleridge 
 wrote this letter to his godchild: 
 
 I, too, your godfather, have known what the enjoyment and 
 advantages of this life are, and what the more refined pleasures 
 which learning and intellectual power can give; I now, on the 
 eve of my departure, declare to you, and earnestly pray that you 
 may hereafter live and act on the conviction, that health is a 
 great blessing; competence, obtained by honourable industry, a 
 great blessing; and a great blessing it is, to have kind, faithful, 
 and loving friends and relatives; but that the greatest of all 
 
92 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 blessings, as it is the most ennobling of all privileges, is to be 
 indeed a Christian. 
 
 Coleridge was not only a poet, he was perhaps the 
 most acute, subtle and profound critic in English 
 literature. He saw into the very spirit of every 
 work he regarded, and interpreted its inmost mean- 
 ing. Was it not the exercise of this same accurate 
 faculty of criticism that enabled him, even as he 
 separated wheat from chaff in literature, to fasten 
 in life upon the one thing of supreme importance? 
 
 It is perhaps impossible to make the reality of the 
 spiritual life clear to those who are spiritually dead; 
 but those who honestly and sincerely experience it 
 would no more exchange it for anything else than 
 Beethoven would have bartered music for material 
 prosperity. 
 
VI 
 TRUTH 
 
 In a poem by Browning, called 4 Woman's Last 
 Word, it is evident that there has been a quarrel 
 between husband and wife, in which each has spoken 
 frankly—which seldom means pleasantly—to the 
 other. This exchange of candour has brought them 
 both near the irreparable tragedy of separation. 
 Fortunately the wife is the first to see the gulf 
 toward which they are slipping; and after compar- 
 ing their folly in fighting to the spectacle of two 
 small birds bickering on a bough, while overhead the 
 hawk awaits the moment to swoop, she asks this 
 
 question: 
 What so false as truth is, 
 
 False to thee? 
 
 Now nothing can be falser than the truth, provided 
 we distinguish between the truth of accuracy and the 
 truth of loyalty. For truth is not only many-sided, 
 but truths may actually differ in kind as well as in 
 degree. Suppose you told your neighbours the worst 
 thing that you know about your best friend; and 
 suppose he, on hearing of this, remonstrated angrily 
 with you; and suppose your defence was that you 
 had told nothing but the truth. Would that justify 
 93 
 
94 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 you? Bynomeans. You have told accurately what 
 you know of your friend’s faults; but in doing so, 
 you have been false to him and to the ideal of friend- 
 ship. You, in speaking only the truth, have been 
 untrue. Disloyalty is as black a sin as lying. 
 
 Suppose a professor in a university, or a teller in 
 a bank, or a deacon in a church, or a soldier in an 
 army, went about telling publicly only the weak or 
 evil things that exist in the organisation. Would 
 he give a correct picture of general prevailing con- 
 ditions, and would he be true to the cause which he 
 is employed to help and defend? ‘To those who 
 have no sense of precision, and no love of the actual 
 truth, there is here no problem at all. ‘The average 
 man praises his town, his business, his church, his 
 society, and feels no qualms. But to those who hate 
 to say the thing which is not true, to those who love 
 the absolute truth, a terrible problem confronts 
 them in times of stress; shall they state what they 
 know to be exact conditions, and thus become dis- 
 loyal, or shal] they suppress certain facts in order 
 to be true to an organisation? 
 
 During the World War, the vast majority of 
 citizens in every country had no problem of this 
 kind. They simply supported their own country in 
 the struggle, believing apparently that she was one 
 hundred per cent right and the enemy one hundred 
 per cent wrong. But in every country there was a 
 small minority whose eyes were not clouded by par- 
 tisanship; their lot was not enviable. 
 
TRUTH 95 
 
 Furthermore, to take concrete instances, during 
 this same war there were a few Americans who kept 
 harping on the antagonism shown to the United 
 States in past years by Great Britain. They were 
 remonstrated with as traitors; and when they said 
 that their remarks were true, the statement was not 
 denied, but it was insisted that now when America 
 and England were united in a life-and-death struggle 
 against Germany, it was necessary to say nothing 
 that would tend to lessen the efficiency of the allies. 
 
 I repeat that those few who love accuracy as a 
 miser loves money, find themselves in wartime faced 
 by one of the most difficult problems that can oppress 
 an honest and candid mind; how far shall I sacrifice 
 the truth of precision to the truth of loyalty? 
 Happy are those perhaps to whom such questions 
 never come; but clear-eyed people suffer when reason 
 is eclipsed by passion. Still, this is only one of the 
 great problems of life. To every man who is both 
 honest and loyal, daily existence is full of problems, 
 which must be met and solved with that limited abil- 
 ity with which human nature is endowed. Some- 
 times what looks like cowardly compromise is 
 really the resultant of two forces working in a 
 noble mind. 
 
 Mere precision is not only often disloyal, it is 
 sometimes sadly misrepresentative of actual condi- 
 tions. Mark Twain said that the surest way to 
 convey misinformation was to tell the exact truth. 
 The best story illustrating this is where the captain 
 
96 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 of a ship wrote in the log, ‘“Mate was drunk today.” 
 When the mate became normal, he was terribly cha- 
 grined and angry; he pled with the captain; he de- 
 clared that he had never been drunk before, that he 
 would never drink again. But the captain said that 
 he had set down in the log only the truth. Then the 
 mate begged to have the record struck out, because 
 it would mean his ruin when they arrived in port; he 
 would never be able to get a berth again. The cap- 
 tain was inexorable—‘“‘in this log we write the exact 
 truth.” Next week the mate kept the log, and he 
 wrote “Captain was sober today.” It was the exact 
 truth. 
 
 There is a flourishing and popular philosophy 
 known by the name “as if.” This tells its adherents 
 that although they may not believe in God, or in the 
 story of Jesus Christ, or in any objective reality in 
 religion, they should all act as if these things were 
 true. Those who can really be satisfied with such 
 a philosophy are as deficient intellectually as those 
 who can see nothing wrong with their country, busi- 
 ness, and family. The majority of honest men can- 
 not be either satisfied or stimulated by such a doc- 
 trine. 
 
 Paul knew better. ‘“‘If in this life only we have 
 hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” 
 When one is a child, it is well enough to swallow 
 myths, fairy tales, and illusions; but when one be- 
 comes a man, one cannot be satisfied with childish 
 things. 
 
TRUTH 97 
 
 Shall we be true to ourselves or true to an ideal? 
 No man ever made any real progress along the right 
 road by being true to himself. N’o one rises in the 
 moral or spiritual world except by trying to be true 
 to something outside himself. Is the shipman true 
 to himself, or true to the chart and compass? Is 
 the builder true to himself, or true to the drawn 
 plan? 
 
 Consider for a moment some universally known 
 advice which an aged father gave to his son, in 
 which the climax is reached in the injunction to be 
 true to himself. Polonius said to Laertes, 
 
 Give thy thoughts no tongue, 
 
 Nor any unproportion’d thought his act. 
 
 Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. 
 
 Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, 
 Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel... . 
 Neither a borrower nor a lender be: ... 
 
 Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice: ... 
 This above all: to thine own self be true, 
 
 And it shall follow, as the night the day, 
 
 Thou canst not then be false to any man. 
 
 The most subtle remark ever made concerning Po- 
 lonius was uttered by Coleridge: ‘‘Polonius is the 
 personification of the memory of wisdom no longer 
 possessed.”’ ‘This speech to his son, on the latter’s 
 departure from home, is the residuum of worldly 
 prudence lying in the old man’s brain like stagnant 
 water. 
 
 These precepts are recited at school, learned by 
 
98 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 heart and approved today, as though they contained 
 the essence both of wisdom and morality. 
 
 As a matter of fact they contain little wisdom 
 and no morality. ‘They represent the quintessence 
 of selfishness. They imply only a regard for conse- 
 quences, instead of uncalculating nobility of conduct. 
 John Stuart Mill said that a man’s love of the truth 
 should always be greater than his fear of conse- 
 quences. This is a stiff doctrine, because it has the 
 inflexibility of the ideal. 
 
 Polonius’s advice to Laertes sounds like the ad- 
 vice of a shrewd and socially successful college Sen- 
 ior to an ambitious Freshman. It is concerned en- 
 tirely with “getting on.’ Wear the right clothes, 
 don’t talk much, pick your friends with the greatest 
 care. Don’t say anything, don’t go anywhere, don’t 
 do anything, without first considering what effect 
 these things will have on your progress toward pop- 
 ularity. For those whose religion is Success, for 
 those to whom discretion is the better part of 
 valour, for those whose cardinal virtue is Prudence, 
 the words of Polonius will seem wise and fine. But 
 great souls know there is something better than 
 “getting on,’ something finer than success, and many 
 virtues grander than prudence. 
 
 Sometimes it seems as if the most despicable man 
 in the world were the canny man. Canniness is 
 often a vice masquerading as a virtue. The shrewdly 
 calculating individual may be envied by the down- 
 trodden and unfortunate, but he is not nearly so 
 
TRUTH 99 
 
 fine as a generous, lovable, unselfish man, even 
 though the latter may be and is more easily de- 
 ceived. 
 
 But let us look at the famous and climactic con- 
 clusion of the paternal precepts of Polonius: 
 
 This above all: to thine own self be true, 
 And it shall follow, as the night the day, 
 Thou canst not then be false to any man. 
 
 Fortunately for the truth, we know what happened; 
 we know exactly whither the following of this ad- 
 vice led Laertes. We know therefore that the last 
 line is a lie. Laertes was true to himself, true to 
 his own nature; and instead of this truth-to-self 
 making it impossible for him to be false to any 
 other man, he was false to Hamlet, whom he be- 
 trayed and murdered by a cowardly trick. Being 
 true to himself led him into a quagmire of false- 
 hood, deceit, and treachery, ending in his own ruin. 
 
 The love of truth is the intellectual passion of the 
 twentieth century; in this respect, the present age, 
 with all its sins, is nearer ultimate morality, nearer 
 true religion, nearer God, than any other period. 
 There is always something noble about truth-lovers; 
 there is something inexpressibly sublime about those 
 who have died for what they believe to be true. The 
 pursuit of truth elevates every scientist and every 
 mystic. ‘he old saying is a fine one—if God held 
 in his right hand all truth, and in his left hand the 
 search for it, I would take the left. 
 
100 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 But even the love of truth requires for its justi- 
 fication a philosophical or religious basis. Mere 
 love of truth cannot be made into a religion. It 
 won't work. It becomes as sentimental and un- 
 demonstrable as a superstition. I have heard noble- 
 minded men, who yet do not believe in God or the 
 Bible or the Christian religion, say that we must 
 follow the truth, no matter whither it leads us. Even 
 though the pursuit of truth should lead us into 
 misery, and sorrow, and destruction, still we must 
 follow it. I asked one of these men, for whom I 
 had high respect, ‘‘Do you believe in religion | ”” The 
 answer was negative. “Do you believe in the fu- 
 ture life?’ Again, No. 
 
 Hence his uncompromising deification of truth, 
 however brave and noble, cannot be successfully de- 
 fended. If the word God has no meaning, and 
 there is no future life, it is not consistent or reason- 
 able to say that every man should follow the truth 
 even if it lead him into disaster. Such advice is 
 merely sentimental. But those who believe in God 
 and that He rules this world can honestly and 
 fearlessly believe in and follow the truth, no mattter 
 how much they may suffer by such a course; for they 
 believe that God and truth are identical, and that 
 the steady pursuit of truth brings them ever nearer 
 to God. Every Christian has a philosophical reason 
 for loving the truth. 
 
 A man without any religion or definite philosophy 
 would be foolish to sacrifice his life for what he be- 
 
TRUTH IOI. 
 
 lieved to be true. If his only guide is common sense, 
 he should preserve his health and comfort at all 
 hazards. ‘Thus I perfectly understand why George 
 Moore remarked that of all the futile persons in the 
 history of the world, the religious martyrs were the 
 most futile; and I not only understand but approve 
 of the position taken by H. L. Mencken, who said 
 that rather than suffer torture or death, he would 
 cheerfully subscribe to any religious or political 
 creed, no matter how absurdly untrue he secretly 
 believed it to be. I mean that from his standpoint 
 of pure common sense, such a position is more de- 
 fensible than that of one who without any faith or 
 any religious hope insists that we should all suffer 
 and die for the truth. Why should we? 
 
 Religion is not only a comfort to those who are 
 old, and poor, and sick; it is the only thing that 
 gives significance to daily living. 
 
 The mind guided by reason and the love of truth 
 has certain sources of satisfaction which are not to 
 be confused with intellectual snobbery. ‘This sat- 
 isfaction was well expressed by Lucretius, who is 
 quoted in Bacon’s famous essay as follows: ‘“‘It is 
 a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships 
 tossed upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the win- 
 dow of a castle, and to see a battle and the adven- 
 tures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable 
 to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth 
 (where the air is always clear and serene) and to see 
 the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, 
 
102 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 in the vale below: so always (adds Bacon) that this 
 prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. 
 Certainly, it is a heaven upon earth, to have a man’s 
 mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn 
 upon the poles of truth.” 
 
 What it took a combination of two massive minds 
 to say in a whole paragraph was expressed better 
 by Jesus Christ in one sentence. 
 
 Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. 
 
 A knowledge of the truth emancipates us from the 
 slavery of fear, ignorance, error, superstition, and 
 passion. Those who dwell in ignorance and in error 
 are under bondage. ‘The history of humanity is the 
 history of error, folly, and delusion. The warfare 
 of science with religion is a favourite subject, and 
 those who discourse upon it usually take pleasure 
 in pointing out the crimes committed in the name of 
 religion. very one knows that the history of re- 
 ligion is largely the history of superstition, ignor- 
 ance, intolerance, and cruelty; but is this the fault 
 of religion or of humanity? ‘The history of science 
 is no more flattering than the history of religion. 
 No one admires scientific men and physicians more 
 than I; but just as the history of religion is largely 
 the history of its bastard sister, superstition, so the 
 history of medicine is largely the history of quackery; 
 the remedy was often worse than the disease. A pa- 
 tient lay in bed suffering tortures, while the doctors 
 gathered around him with astrological charts, and 
 
TRUTH 103 
 
 gave him treatment whose only redeeming feature 
 was that it shortened his life and hence put an end to 
 his sufferings. Until comparatively recent times 
 patients were bled when they needed blood, and I 
 myself can easily remember when those suffering 
 from tuberculosis were confined in rooms without 
 a breath of fresh air, when fresh air was the one 
 essential aid toward recovery. Shall we therefore 
 condemn the science of medicine? By no means. 
 The history of religion and the history of science 
 indicate the gradual disengagement of mankind 
 from error, folly, and delusion; the moment man 
 knew the truth, that moment he was free. 
 
 Ignorance is slavery, truth is freedom. To an 
 ignorant savage a total eclipse of the sun may be 
 a hideous terror, while to an enlightened individual 
 it is an incomparably beautiful spectacle. 
 
 The finest tribute ever paid to the power of truth 
 is in the first book of Esdras in the Apocrypha, 
 where three men compete for the prize, which is 
 to be awarded to him who can name the strongest 
 thing in the world. The first said, Wine is the 
 strongest, and gave excellent illustrations; the sec- 
 ond said, The King is the strongest, and gave many 
 instances; the third said, Woman is the strongest, 
 but above all things Truth beareth away the victory. 
 Truth is not only more convincing than anything 
 else, it has a power of endurance greater than any- 
 thing else in the world. 
 
 When Jesus stood before Pilate, he had no fear, 
 
104 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 because he knew that the truth would last longer 
 than the Roman Empire. 
 
 Pilate asked him if he were really the king of the 
 Jews, and Jesus answered 
 
 My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of 
 this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be 
 delivered to the Jews; but now is my kingdom not from hence. 
 
 Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? 
 Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. ‘To this end 
 was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I 
 should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the 
 truth heareth my voice. 
 
 The Roman governor did not understand Jesus; but 
 is he understood today by kings, presidents, emper- 
 ors, governors, potentates, and diplomats? Pilate 
 naturally thought that the best way to settle any 
 disputed question was by force; and that if you had 
 enough force, you could conquer and keep the whole 
 world indefinitely in submission. 
 
 Jesus came into the world as a representative of 
 something mightier than physical force and more 
 enduring than armies and navies—the truth. The 
 universe is based on the law of moral and spiritual 
 truth, and while those who fight it, like Napoleon, 
 may not be so instantly defeated as they would be 
 if they fought the law of gravitation, they will cer- 
 tainly be defeated in the end. Truth can never be 
 suppressed by force, although the experiment has 
 been tried. 
 
 Jesus was a physically helpless prisoner, who 
 
TRUTH 105 
 
 stood in unarmed isolation before a governor who 
 represented the whole force of the Roman Empire; 
 but Jesus was tranquil, because His own kingdom 
 was built on an unshakable foundation—the truth. 
 Empires are mortal. Where is the Roman Empire 
 today? My own feeble individual life has embraced 
 the history of the once puissant German Empire. 
 I was born before the German Empire was estab- 
 lished and I am living after its dissolution. Empires 
 may be strong, but they don’t last. 
 
 Pilate did not understand Jesus when he said 
 that he was a witness to the truth, nor did he under- 
 stand him when he said that his kingdom was not 
 of this world. How could there be a kingdom not 
 of this world? And how could any kingdom main- 
 tain its ascendancy or even its existence without 
 fighting? But Jesus said that if his kingdom were 
 of this world, then would his servants fight; the 
 reason he had no army and navy at his back was 
 because his kingdom could not advance and maintain 
 itself by force, it could not oppress men from with- 
 out, but must work its way silently through the 
 hearts of individuals. The kingdom of God is what 
 Jesus taught us to pray for, in the phrase, ‘Thy 
 Kingdom come.” And it is coming. 
 
 As indicated by the answer of Jesus to Pilate, the 
 kingdom of God has laws and rules different from 
 those that govern earthly kingdoms, empires, and 
 republics. Love and goodwill take the place of 
 fear and compulsion; those who make the most ex- 
 
106 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 tensive conquests for this kingdom must make the 
 largest sacrifices. The enemy is not overcome by 
 superior force, he is disarmed by kindness; he is 
 turned not into a more formidable foe, or into a 
 captive raging with resentment, he is turned into a 
 permanent member of the league. For the real and 
 only lasting league- of nations is the Christian 
 Church. 
 
 The Christian method is not only the opposite of 
 predatory; it does not concern itself even with 
 scrupulous justice. It never says, How much can [ 
 get? or, How much do you owe me? But How 
 much can I give? Christianity begins where justice, 
 legality, and respectability leave off. 
 
 “My kingdom is not of this world.” Jesus 
 founded a society, which has rules of its own, and 
 we are all invited to join. Te become a Christian, 
 one may or may not believe in a system of dogmas; 
 one may or may not have a certain theory as to the 
 creation of the world and the origin of man; these 
 things are subordinate. Jesus did not say that we 
 must subscribe to all the articles in a written creed— 
 he said, Follow me. It cannot be insisted or empha- 
 sised too often that Christianity is a personal re- 
 ligion; it does not concern itself with an attitude 
 toward history, science, or theology, but with devo- 
 tion to a Leader, who walked and talked in Pales- 
 tine. One qualifies for this society by loving, be- 
 lieving in, and trying to follow Jesus—he was not a 
 creed, but a person. 
 
TRUTH 107 
 
 Just as secret societies have certain rules that 
 the members pledge themselves to obey and observe, 
 just as an American will do certain things and not 
 do certain things because he is an American, so the 
 true followers of Jesus will endeavour to live up 
 to the laws of his kingdom. One should endeavour 
 to regulate one’s daily life and activities by that and 
 that alone. If we could do this, there would be less 
 glaring inconsistency between what we profess and 
 what we perform. If we submitted every course of 
 action to that test! “I am a Christian—this means 
 that I must do certain things and must not do cer- 
 tain things.” ‘The less we talk about it and the more 
 we live up to it, the greater will be our influence. 
 There is no propaganda, there is no advertising, 
 that compares with conduct. 
 
 ‘To this end was I born, and for this cause came 
 I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the 
 truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my 
 voice.” Ultimate truth has never been revealed to 
 mankind, possibly because the search for it is more 
 necessary to man’s development than the knowledge 
 of it. As we grow older, we make less and less de- 
 mands on life and on knowledge. The child cries 
 for the moon, the youth wants the earth, but the 
 old man is content with less. So in the vast fields 
 of knowledge. The most dogmatic and confident 
 people should always be young. Wise old men are 
 never intolerant. Intolerance is the green fruit of 
 the intellect; it springs from ignorance plus assure 
 
108 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 ance. The intellect should ripen in mellow old age. 
 Then we discover that there is no such thing as the 
 possession of absolute truth any more than there is 
 absolute liberty. 
 
 Jesus came as a witness to the truth, but he did 
 not give us complete truth—only enough to shape 
 our course. 
 
 Keep thou my feet: I do not ask to see 
 The distant scene: one step enough for me. 
 
 We do not know much about the future life, but we 
 know the best way to live here and now. The differ- 
 ence between absolute and practical knowledge is 
 illustrated by two pilots. One, who was hired to 
 take a vessel out of a harbour was asked if he knew 
 every rock in the estuary, and he replied confidently 
 that he did. No sooner had he spoken than the boat 
 struck a rock, and he said, ‘‘There’s one now.” 
 Another pilot, on another occasion, on being asked 
 the same question, said he did not know where the 
 rocks were. ‘‘Then how can you take out the 
 boat?” He replied, “I know the channel.” 
 
 After all, while the knowledge of ultimate truth 
 is hidden from us, and theological and philosophical 
 dogmas are in reality nothing but guesswork, prac- 
 tical truth, the best course of action, the channel of 
 progress for individuals, societies, and nations, has 
 been revealed by Jesus Christ. . 
 
 ‘‘Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.” 
 I do not believe that Jesus shouted that speech. I 
 
TRUTH 109 
 
 think he spoke quietly as one speaks from knowledge. 
 The louder one yells his beliefs, the more uncertain 
 is he of their truth. He is roaring to convince him- 
 self or to impose his opinions on others. Certainty 
 begets serenity. 
 
 In one of George Herbert’s most beautiful 
 poems, The Collar, he represents himself as in re- 
 bellion against the rules of the kingdom of God. 
 I will not sacrifice myself so much, I will do as 
 others do, I will enjoy the pleasures of the senses, I 
 will have my own way, I will this and I will that: 
 
 I struck the board, and cry’d, No more! 
 I will abroad. 
 What? Shall I ever sigh and pine? 
 
 My lines and life are free, free as the rode, 
 Loose as the winde, as large as store. 
 Shall I be still in suit? 
 
 Have I no harvest but a thorn 
 To let me bloud, and not restore 
 What I have lost with cordiall fruit? 
 Sure there was wine 
 Before my sighs did drie it. There was corn 
 Before my tears did drown it. 
 Is the yeare onely lost to me? 
 Have I no bayes to crown it? 
 No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted? 
 All wasted? 
 
 Not so, my heart! But there is fruit, 
 And thou hast hands, 
 Recover all thy sigh-blown age 
 On double pleasures. Leave thy cold dispute 
 Of what is fit and not. Forsake thy cage, 
 Thy rope of sands, 
 
110 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 Which pettie thoughts have made, and made to thee 
 Good cable, to enforce and draw, 
 And be thy law, 
 While thou didst wink and wouldst not see. 
 Away! Take heed; 
 I will abroad. 
 Call in thy death’s head there. Tie up thy fears. 
 He that forbears 
 To suit and serve his need 
 Deserves his load. 
 But as I rav’d and grew more fierce and wilde 
 
 At every word, 
 Me thought I heard one calling, Childe! 
 And I reply’d, My Lord. 
 
 Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. In 
 the midst of the tumult of prejudices, and passions, 
 and hatreds, and selfish desires, we may hear the 
 quiet voice speaking the truth. As the voice of Jesus 
 calmed the stormy waves of Galilee, so his voice of 
 truth can calm the tempestuous passions of the hu- 
 man heart. Error and evil desire cannot live if 
 we listen to the truth. 
 
 Jesus knew that Pilate had dominion over his 
 body, and that his body could be crucified; but he 
 knew that Pilate could not destroy the truth. Thus 
 while we can never attain the complete serenity of 
 the Master, we can have the assurance that no mat- 
 ter how dark the world may look, or how many dis- 
 couragements there may be for the cause of Chris- 
 tianity, the truth to which Jesus bore witness will 
 ultimately prevail. 
 
TRUTH III 
 
 It is the fashion now to ridicule Browning for 
 
 saying 
 God’s in his Heaven 
 
 All’s right with the world! 
 
 But what is meant by that poem is simply this. The 
 sun rises; everything in the world takes its appointed 
 place: the lark’s on the wing: the snail’s on the 
 thorn: the hillside’s dew-pearled. Just as surely as 
 this is an orderly natural and physical universe, 
 where things take their appointed places and un- 
 consciously follow the course of natural law, so is 
 it a moral and spiritual universe. All is not well 
 with the world, far from it; but all is right. The 
 universe is founded on righteousness, and cannot 
 be shaken. This is the truth. It is all we know on 
 earth, and all we need to know. 
 
Vil 
 WOMEN 
 
 Although women are necessary to the welfare, 
 progress and success of the Church, and although 
 they are tireless workers in Church and Sunday 
 School and tireless listeners to tiresome preachers, 
 they seldom receive compliments from the pulpit. 
 On the contrary: women are more often preached 
 at than praised. Paul, who knew less about women 
 than about anything else, was the first Christian 
 minister to make the vain attempt of putting 
 ‘‘woman in her place’; and many modern pastors, 
 with no more knowledge, and considerably less abil- 
 ity, have embarked on the same fruitless and peril- 
 ous enterprise. Women have been denounced from 
 the pulpit for their hair, their hats, and their gowns; 
 a subject on which the only man qualified to speak 
 is not a clergyman, but a tailor. 
 
 It is high time that some preacher showed a little 
 chivalry; and I, an amateur instead of a profes- 
 sional, will now do so. Women who read this ser- 
 mon will find something to their advantage. 
 
 I like the retort made by a woman novelist to a 
 
 critic. He: ‘‘Most women have no sense of hu- 
 II2 
 
WOMEN 113 
 
 mour.” She: “Well, what of it? Most men have 
 no sense at all.”” If this be true, it might be histori- 
 cally accounted for by the child’s version of what 
 happened in the Garden of Eden. ‘God made 
 Adam and he was very lonely, so God put him to 
 sleep, took out his brains and made a woman.” 
 
 ‘Hope not for mind in woman,” said the poet 
 Donne; but when he wrote that, he was not looking 
 for mind. 
 
 In the last chapter of the Book of Proverbs, there 
 is a sketch of the Ideal Woman, in the form of a 
 “character.” ‘This is one of the earliest specimens 
 of the class of literature known as Character-books, 
 preceding Overbury, Earle, and La Bruyére by 
 about two thousand years. 
 
 Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above 
 rubies. 
 
 The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that 
 he shall have no need of spoil. 
 
 She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life. 
 
 She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her 
 hands. 
 
 She is like the merchants’ ships; she bringeth her food from 
 afar. 
 
 She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to 
 herthousehold, and a portion to her maidens... . 
 
 She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth 
 forth her hands to the needy. 
 
 She is not afraid of the snow for her household: for all her 
 household are clothed with scarlet. 
 
 She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is 
 silk and purple. 
 
114 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the 
 
 elders of the land.... 
 Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice 
 
 in time to come. 
 She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is 
 
 the law of kindness. 
 She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth 
 
 not the bread of idleness. = 
 Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, 
 
 and he praiseth her. 
 
 This kind of woman is by no means obsolete; I know 
 farmers’ wives in the country, and mothers in the 
 city, whom the quoted verses accurately describe. 
 
 Fashions change, manners change, the idea of 
 beauty in anatomy, architecture, and in all the arts 
 changes, but character does not change. Courage, 
 courtesy, honesty, consideration for others have 
 always been the characteristics of the ideal man; 
 modesty, amiability, gentleness have always char- 
 acterised the ideal woman. 
 
 Clever young women who think the surest way 
 to popularity is through shock, would do well to 
 remember that the essentials of character are the 
 same in all times and places. I remember, in a 
 once famous farce called 4 Trip to Chinatown, a 
 dialogue between a pretty girl whose facial charm 
 was exceeded only by her audacity, and an unscrup- 
 ulous man of the world. She asked him several 
 questions: ‘‘You find me beautiful? fascinating? 
 brilliant ? you like to be with me?” To all of which 
 
WOMEN 115 
 
 enquiries she received an emphatic affirmative reply. 
 Then she asked, ‘And you would like to marry me, 
 wouldn’t you?” ‘Not for gold or precious stones.” 
 If an honest man is the noblest work of God, a 
 good woman is the finest. In The Ring and the 
 Book, the old Pope gives various illustrations show- 
 ing the attainable altitude of humanity. What is 
 the most godlike quality in the human race? Is it 
 brains, courage, inventive power, knowledge? He 
 finds it in the sheer loveliness of character displayed 
 in an ignorant girl, Pompilia. 
 Everywhere 
 I see in the world the intellect of man, 
 That sword, the energy his subtle spear, 
 The knowledge which defends him like a shield, 
 Everywhere; but they make not up, I think, 
 The marvel of a soul like thine, earth’s flower, 
 She holds up to the softened gaze of God! 
 
 It is a rather curious fact that in the Old Testa- 
 ment the most famous women are villains, and in 
 the New Testament the leading woman characters 
 are saintly. I need only mention Jezebel and De- 
 lilah; Athaliah, more terrible than an army with 
 banners; after these sinister persons, come Jael the 
 murderer, and Deborah who glorified the cowardly 
 deed; even the lovely and charming Ruth excelled 
 chiefly in what is a second-rate virtue, obedience. 
 But the New Testament women are immortal in 
 their spiritual beauty. Mary the immaculate 
 mother of Jesus; Mary Magdalene, the reformed 
 
116 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 harlot; Martha and her sister Mary, the first repre- 
 sentatives respectively of low and high church; the 
 woman of Samaria who spread the news of the liv- 
 ing water; the sick woman who touched the hem of 
 Christ’s garment; the poor widow who contributed 
 all her fortune and her heart with it; the woman 
 who was content with crumbs from the Master’s 
 table; the woman who publicly blessed Christ’s 
 mother; the women who followed Him to the cross, 
 stayed there, and were the first to visit the tomb. 
 
 In addition to these, the work of Peter and of 
 Paul could not have been successful without the 
 support of woman. Women were just as necessary 
 to the early church as they are now. 
 
 I do not understand why the fact that more 
 women than men go to church should be regarded 
 as counting against its value. ‘The fact itself is 
 more damaging to the men who stay away than it 1s 
 to the church; but why should an assemblage of 
 persons where women predominate connote intel- 
 lectual inferiority? One minister complained to 
 another that he could not get men to come to his 
 services; and asked for his advice. ‘The other said, 
 “Why, last Sunday I preached to an enormous audi- 
 ence composed entirely of men.” It was in the 
 county jail. 
 
 The truth is that the proportionate worth of any 
 undertaking is usually indicated by the excess of 
 women over men who are interested in it. First- 
 class music is surely not despicable; at orchestra 
 
WOMEN 117 
 
 concerts the women vastly outnumber the men. Art 
 exhibitions are not for silly and stupid people; there 
 are ten women to one man who show their interest 
 by attendance. On the other hand, at a prize-fight 
 the men still outnumber the women; and at a cock- 
 fight I am informed there are scarcely any women 
 at all, and those few disguised in men’s clothes; 
 so that their presence and support will seem natural. 
 
 Foreign missions, city and country churches, mu- 
 nicipal orchestras, public libraries, art museums, 
 could not possibly exist without the constant and 
 enthusiastic support of women. Musicians, preach- 
 ers, poets, and painters, if they depended for their 
 living on masculine aid, would starve. 
 
 It is often said that the interests of women are 
 petty; that they read in the newspapers only the 
 Social Column and the Fashion Page. Even if this 
 is true, men’s interests are hardly on a grander 
 scale; for men will read with avidity five columns 
 in fine print consisting of details connected with 
 upper-cuts, left-hooks, and side-stepping. 
 
 It is just that women should support Christianity, 
 for they owe their present independence more to 
 Christianity than to anything else. Consider the 
 position of women among Pagans, Mohammedans, 
 American Indians, and heathen in general; and 
 contrast that with their status in Christian coun- 
 tries. When Lafcadio Hearn lectured on English 
 poetry to Japanese students at Tokio, he had con- 
 siderable difficulty in explaining to them the conven- 
 
118 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 tional worshipful attitude maintained by English 
 poets to women. 
 
 Women love religion, music, art, and poetry be- 
 cause they instinctively know that those things are 
 immortal, whereas forms of government, politics, 
 stock quotations, are ephemeral. Women do not 
 have to be told that music and all forms of im- 
 perishable beauty are interesting; they know it. 
 There is an instinct in women that leads them in- 
 fallibly to choose and possess the best things in life. 
 
 If you wish to interest the average man in some 
 enterprise, you must show him there is something 
 in it making for his personal material advantage, or 
 at all events for the practical welfare of the commu- 
 nity; but the average woman will respond to an ap- 
 peal based on beauty or nobility. 
 
 It used to be said by those opposed to granting 
 political privileges to women, that in war they were 
 anyhow inferior; for war was exclusively man’s 
 business. But since the days of Florence Nightin- 
 gale—and even Lytton Strachey’s adroit wit has 
 not been able to darken her fame—we know that 
 man has succeeded in making war the business of 
 women. Women do go forth to the scene of battle; 
 but instead of going out to destroy, they go out to 
 heal and restore. The Red Cross, the Hospital 
 Nurses, illustrate how women, by crucifying them- 
 selves, have saved men. 
 
 In The Princess, Tennyson, although old-fash- 
 ioned and over conservative, was eternally right in 
 
WOMEN 11g 
 
 insisting on the natural fact that woman and man 
 are different. ‘‘Woman is not the lesser man,”’ but 
 quite another thing. ‘Thus the attempts of women 
 to resemble men are as vain as they are silly. Why 
 on earth should a woman want to be like a man? 
 Yet Tennyson, in a few lines that should be read 
 at every marriage-service, said that men and women 
 must learn from each other. 
 
 Men should acquire sympathy and tenderness 
 without losing virility; women should acquire under- 
 standing and the unprejudiced breadth of outlook 
 that is born only of intelligence. 
 
 Women ought to cultivate their mental powers; 
 much more than they do now. It is a true indict- 
 ment against women that giving them the vote in 
 national politics has produced no appreciable effect 
 ——-which means that they have manifested no in- 
 tellectual independence. There is no reason women 
 should vote the same ticket as that voted by their 
 husbands and fathers; let them think for themselves. 
 
 They have not, in the main, taken the privilege 
 of the ballot seriously. They ought to qualify for 
 citizenship by hard and faithful study of public 
 questions. The League of Women Voters has done 
 much; but there are more men today who can tell 
 why they vote a certain ticket than there are women. 
 
 Amiability is an attractive virtue; but in matters 
 of opinion, based on knowledge, women, especially 
 American women, are, I think, too amiable for their 
 intellectual welfare. If some one asks you if you 
 
120 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 have read a certain book, why lie about it and say 
 you have? Why apologise? There is no occasion 
 for either falsehood or shame. 
 
 In short, what women need is more intellectual 
 independence, and the courage that comes from it. 
 Many sons love their mothers, and regard their 
 Opinions as of no importance. ‘‘Mother doesn’t 
 know anything about it.” I like to see a family 
 where the boys not only love and caress their 
 mother, but where her mind and knowledge are 
 sufficiently good to command the respect of her off- 
 spring. 
 
 In his gossipy poem, Old Pictures in Florence, 
 Browning makes a comparison between the perfec- 
 tion of Greek art and the imperfection of the hu- 
 man mind. He says that because Greek art is 
 perfect, it reached its goal; it was finished; it there- 
 fore cannot develop. The human mind is faulty 
 and clumsy, but it is alive: it has within its imper- 
 fections the principle of eternal development. 
 Therefore when we look at perfect Greek statues, 
 we should not repine because our bodies are so far 
 short of the ideal human frame; we should rejoice, 
 because with all our imperfections, nay because of 
 our imperfections, our minds have something finer 
 than any form of perfection—the principle of de- 
 velopment. 
 
 Too many women are worried or despondent 
 about minor matters, while they regard serious de- 
 
WOMEN [21 
 
 fects with complacency. It is of course important 
 that they should look as well as possible, and dress 
 as becomingly as their means will allow; but these 
 are not the most serious considerations. Many 
 women (and men) are keenly concerned about their 
 looks and their clothes; am I looking my best to- 
 night? are my clothes right? When really they 
 should ask themselves, have I got any brains? and 
 if not, how shall I supply this deficiency? 
 
 Every one, says Browning, looks at a perfect 
 statue, and soliloquises, ‘‘Ah, I wish I looked like 
 that!’ a vain and impossible wish. It is difficult, 
 by taking thought, that is, by worrying about it, 
 to add a cubit to one’s stature or to change the curve 
 of one’s nose, or to acquire sudden wealth; but 
 every one can improve in mind and character. 
 
 The Pope said of Pompilia that she was just as 
 truly an angel living on earth, dressed in her street- 
 clothes, as she was in heaven, clad in radiant gar- 
 ments. Innocence in love, beauty of aspiration, 
 cleanliness in heart, often increase facial beauty. 
 Byron, who had had sufficient experience of light 
 women, reserved his highest tribute for carefree 
 innocence and noble impulses. 
 
 She walks in beauty, like the night 
 
 Of cloudless climes and starry skies, 
 And all that’s best of dark and bright 
 Meets in her aspect and her eyes, 
 
 Thus mellow’d to that tender light 
 Which heaven to gaudy day denies. 
 
122 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 One shade the more, one ray the less 
 Had half impair’d the nameless grace 
 Which waves in every raven tress 
 
 Or softly lightens o’er her face, 
 
 Where thoughts serenely sweet express 
 How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. 
 
 And on that cheek and o’er that brow 
 So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, 
 
 The smiles that win, the tints that glow 
 But tell of days in goodness spent,— 
 
 A mind at peace with all below, 
 
 A heart whose love is innocent. 
 
 Byron’s great contemporary, Wordsworth, 
 showed in one of his finest tributes to women that 
 their attractiveness did not depend on romantic illu- 
 sion; that with the right sort of wife and mother, 
 daily intimacy did not lessen personal charm. 
 
 I hope that Hawthorne did not intend his char- 
 acter Hilda, in The Marble Faun, to be the ideal 
 woman; for toward Hilda I cannot repress a feel- 
 ing of aversion. ‘‘Her soul was like a star and 
 dwelt apart’; but from the selfish sanctity of its 
 seclusion, no real good resulted; no one was aided 
 or comforted or inspired in the struggle of life. 
 She was no help to sinners; she was their despair. 
 She had the purity of an angel, but not the purity 
 of a good woman. She was like one who should 
 refuse to help a drowning man, for fear of soiling 
 her clothes. 
 
 But Wordsworth showed that a good woman 
 
WOMEN 
 
 123 
 
 need not lose her ideality or her romantic, mysteri- 
 ous attraction, even in the daily household duties. 
 She could be practical, sagacious, efficient; and yet 
 have the fascination of a nymph in the 
 
 light. 
 
 She was a phantom of delight 
 
 When first she gleam’d upon my sight; 
 A lovely apparition, sent 
 
 To be a moment’s ornament; 
 
 Her eyes as stars of twilight fair; 
 
 Like Twilight’s, too, her dusky hair; 
 
 But all things else about her drawn 
 From May-time and the cheerful dawn; 
 A dancing shape, an image gay, 
 
 To haunt, to startle, and waylay. 
 
 I saw her upon nearer view, 
 
 A spirit, yet a woman too! 
 
 Her household motions light and free, 
 And steps of virgin-liberty; 
 
 A countenance in which did meet 
 
 Sweet records, promises as sweet; 
 
 A creature not too bright or good 
 
 For human nature’s daily food, 
 
 For transient sorrows, simple wiles, 
 
 Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. 
 
 And now I see with eye serene 
 
 The very pulse of the machine; 
 
 A being breathing thoughtful breath, 
 
 A traveller between life and death; 
 
 The reason firm, the temperate will, 
 Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; 
 
 moon- 
 
124 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 A perfect woman, nobly plann’d 
 
 To warn, to comfort, and command; 
 And yet a Spirit still, and bright 
 With something of an angel-light. 
 
 There is no doubt that the average man has more 
 physical strength than the average woman; it does 
 not occur to any sensible woman to be ashamed of 
 this inferiority. Well, history seems to show that 
 in matters of initiative, in creative and administra- 
 tive powers, the average man is again superior to 
 the average woman. I cannot see why any woman 
 should resent this any more than she resents her 
 lack of physical strength. 
 
 For in the love of beauty, in ideality, in refine- 
 ment, in purity, in accuracy of feeling, women are 
 as superior to men as they are inferior in brute 
 force. The best way to observe this is to consider 
 children. 
 
 The instincts of the average healthy boy are 
 mainly bad. Robbers and murderers are his heroes. 
 In primary schools—not in colleges—the toughest 
 boy is the idol of the others. I remember when I 
 was six years old, there was in our room at school 
 an absolute young villain, who would have de- 
 stroyed the world, had he possessed sufficient power. 
 He was vulgar, foul, pugnacious, cruel, and a bully; 
 he was our hero. (He is now, I believe, in prison.) 
 One day I was behaving badly, and some one said 
 to me, “Why, if you go on in this way, you will be 
 
WOMEN 125 
 like Blank!’ My eyes glowed with delight. He 
 
 was my ideal! 
 
 The only way boys—who are savages at heart— 
 become decent citizens and fit to live with—is 
 through discipline, corporal punishment, public 
 opinion, and the grace of God. 
 
 Little girls—very little—while they are not an- 
 gelic, and may betray meanness and pettiness, sur- 
 pass boys in one important respect; their ideals are 
 good. They do not want to grow up and become 
 adventuresses and scoundrels, they want to do good, 
 help the sick and needy, stimulate the best impulses 
 of men. 
 
 So many women have longed to be of use to men, 
 have considered it their highest happiness to influ- 
 ence men in right directions, that the careers of 
 many successful men have been accompanied by the 
 sacrifice of women who could not bear to “stand 
 in their way.’ I once saw a double-page picture in 
 Life. It represented a vast space of deep water; a 
 woman was drowning; all that was visible of her 
 sinking body was her two hands above the surface; 
 a few yards distant, a strong man was rapidly swim- 
 ming away from her; and under the picture was the 
 one word Success. 
 
 Many of our modern novelists love to expend 
 their talents for ridicule and satire on evangelical 
 churches, and especially on the organisations of 
 women who do most of the work; the Ladies’ Aid 
 Society, the Foreign Mission Band, the Sewing Cir- 
 
126 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 cle, and so on. Now three months of the year, I 
 am associated with a small country church in a mid- 
 western state. I happen to know the real value of 
 the work done by women, and their sacrifices. In 
 addition to the housework, they have to wash and 
 dress the children, and from afar bring them to 
 church and Sunday School; they do all this because 
 they know the value of religion in daily life; they 
 are not going to have their children brought up in 
 ignorance and savagery. 
 
 I hope that in heaven God reserves an especially 
 comfortable chair for the oldest daughter in a large 
 family. This girl has no youth; from her earliest 
 recollection she has always had to “mind the baby.” 
 She has to clean up after the younger ones, doing 
 all the drudgery of a mother with none of the ma- 
 ternal passion that glorifies it. 
 
 Women not only have more passive courage than 
 men, such as waiting in solitary anxiety, with none 
 of the relief that action brings. They often have 
 more of the desperate, reckless courage, that goes 
 with the love of adventure. Marriage is an enter- 
 prise filled with more peril for a woman than for 
 a man; a woman leaves the security of her home, 
 and takes a chance with a stranger. No children 
 would ever be born if men had to bear them; no 
 man could stand the months of inactivity and sick- 
 ness, with horrible agony and mortal danger as 
 the climax. And if everything then turns out suc- 
 cessfully, for three years the mother must know 
 
WOMEN 127 
 
 every instant in the twenty-four hours of every day, 
 exactly where that child is. Are we men really 
 worth all that agony and fatigue and boredom? 
 
 Well, there are some men who appreciate their 
 mothers and their wives. They appreciate their 
 mothers after the mothers are dead; and they ap- 
 preciate their wives when they, the men, are sick. 
 
 The position of women as home-makers is also 
 appreciated by some bachelors. The great Russian 
 novelist, Turgenev, whom George Moore called the 
 greatest artist since antiquity, said, “I would give 
 up all my fame and all my art if there were one 
 woman who cared whether or not I came home late 
 to dinner.” 
 
 The Stabat Mater applies not only to the mother 
 of Jesus at the cross, it applies to millions of women 
 who have ‘“‘stood by” their husbands and their sons. 
 The capacity of women to “stand by” can never be 
 overestimated; that is why it is such an irreparable 
 disaster for a man to lose his mother. A boy may 
 be common-place, even stupid, the butt of his school- 
 fellows; but there is a woman at home in whose eyes 
 he is a romantic hero; one who idealises him; one to 
 whom he will never turn in vain. 
 
 An old hymn expresses the universality of Mary’s 
 devotion. 
 
 Jews were wrought to cruel madness, 
 
 Christians fled in fear and sadness, 
 Mary stood the cross beside: 
 
128 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 At its foot her feet she planted, 
 By the dreadful scene undaunted, 
 Till the gentle sufferer died. 
 
 Poets oft have told her story, 
 Painters decked her brow with glory, 
 Priests her name have deified: 
 But no worship, song, or glory, 
 ‘Touches like the simple story, 
 Mary stood the cross beside. 
 
 So when crushed by fierce oppression, 
 Goodness suffers like transgression, 
 Christ again is crucified: 
 But if love be there truehearted, 
 By no grief or terror parted, 
 We may stand the cross beside. 
 
Vill 
 INTERLUDE 
 
 I know that every reader of this book is a philos- 
 opher and a theologian, because every intelligent 
 man and woman in the world formulates, at least 
 mentally, some conjecture concerning the origin 
 of the universe and of human life, and some belief 
 about the Supreme Being. Whence am I? Why 
 am I? Whither am I going? are three questions 
 asked in thought nearly every day even by those 
 whose time seems taken up with mundane affairs. 
 
 I am only an amateur preacher. These sermons 
 are not delivered from the pulpit and have no cler- 
 ical authority; they are more like conversations 
 around the church door after the service is over, 
 where the talker and his listeners stand on the same 
 level. 
 
 I make no apology today for taking you with me 
 into that uncharted country called Philosophy. I 
 cannot bring you through upon whatever land may 
 be beyond, for even the greatest philosophers have 
 been compelled to wait for that result until they 
 have departed from this world. But at all events 
 I can bring us safely back to the ground where we 
 
 now stand; and remember that the chief value of 
 129 
 
130 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 philosophical discussions and inquiries lies in their 
 power to challenge thought, and to arouse intellec- 
 tual activity—the chief advantage man has over 
 beasts, and perhaps his highest and most enduring 
 happiness. 
 
 Of all studies, philosophy is at once the most 
 fascinating and the most irritating. It is the most 
 fascinating, because it opens new and wide vistas 
 to the imagination, because it makes the natural and 
 visible world more mysterious and interesting, and 
 because one man’s guess is as good as another’s; 
 no one can prove another is wrong. But to practical 
 minds—like Benjamin Franklin’s, for example, 
 philosophy is both irritating and futile, because no 
 one can make definite progress or reach any goal. 
 
 Let me illustrate it in this way. Suppose you 
 start to study French with a teacher. The teacher 
 knows more than you do; and you feel certain that 
 if you study continuously and faithfully, you will 
 eventually become less ignorant. But in philosophy 
 the professor knows no more than you, so far as 
 ultimate truth is concerned; you can study ten years, 
 witihout drawing any nearer to the goal. In ability 
 to answer definitely the greatest questions, the pro- 
 fessor of philosophy knows no more than the man 
 in the street, no more than a dog. He is acquainted 
 with the history of speculative thought; he knows 
 what former philosophers—now dead—have be- 
 lieved; but he can himself give you no verifiable 
 knowledge on ultimate truths. 
 
INTERLUDE 131 
 
 Personally I am grateful for the years I spent on 
 philosophy and metaphysics; my eyes and mind were 
 opened, my imagination enriched, and the world has 
 been far more interesting than if I had not read 
 Plato, Berkeley, Kant, Schopenhauer, Lotze. 
 
 God is one of the most familiar words in every 
 language; one sees it in nearly every book, in many 
 songs; one hears it every day, with an emphasis 
 varying from extreme reverence to the most care- 
 less profanity. Yet no one has ever been able com- 
 pletely to define it, and no two men have precisely 
 the same conception of it. No man hath seen God 
 at any time, said the Apostle John. 
 
 Although during the last four or five thousand 
 years, there has been an enormous increase in the 
 population of human beings, there has been a cor- 
 responding decrease in the population of gods. In 
 the palmy days of Greece, and later, during the 
 domination of the Roman Empire, there were very 
 many gods, and of an almost infinite variety. In 
 certain places Polytheism is still flourishing; but 
 the advance of what we call modern civilisation has 
 been fatal to the once lively communities of divine 
 beings. From a vast number they have shrunk to 
 one, and there are some men and women who say 
 there is none at all. 
 
 In making any attempt, however inarticulate, to 
 establish one’s own religious belief, or to explain the 
 material world, one’s conception of God is of pri- 
 mary importance; for that conception not only de- 
 
 ] 
 
132 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 termines one’s mental activity, but may and ought 
 to govern and direct one’s daily life in the world of 
 action. Nothing more clearly reveals a man’s char- 
 acter than his conception of God. One man’s God 
 is a tribal deity, who will take vengeance on the 
 man’s enemies; another man’s God is a redeeming 
 and all-merciful Saviour. 
 
 However deeply tinged with pessimism, the old 
 Greek world was assuredly picturesque and roman- 
 tic. The sun was a god, the moon another; the sea 
 another; every tree and every river was a god. Thus 
 a country walk, especially at twilight, must have 
 abounded in spiritual companions. I have no doubt 
 that many pedestrians distinctly saw gods lurking 
 near trees, pools, and rivers. 
 
 The normal Christian child regards God as a big 
 man, perhaps the only person who can whip his 
 father. I supposed that God was a large masculine 
 creature, with a copious white beard, and a sonor- 
 ous bass voice. I often looked for him, and of 
 course always in one direction; for was not his home 
 in the sky? I remember very well one evening, just 
 after sunset, when I was looking for him with par- 
 ticular ardour, I suddenly saw him. ‘There was 
 a little stretch of paling blue between two fluffy 
 clouds: and there he was! 
 
 Many philosophers ridicule the so-called anthro- 
 pomorphic conception of God; that is, the belief 
 that God is a super-man. Of course he may be as 
 unlike a man as a lead-pencil is unlike an elephant. 
 
INTERLUDE 133 
 
 Yet I do not believe it is possible for any of us, 
 no matter how intellectually mature, to think of 
 God without thinking of Him to some extent in 
 terms of humanity. Practically, that is with a view 
 to moral action, such a conception, however faulty 
 and inadequate, may be of service. 
 
 Suppose my watch, which is now ticking, should 
 suddenly become self-conscious, and begin to think. 
 Suppose it should ask itself the question, Who made 
 me? It would probably believe that some cathedral 
 clock made it. That would be grotesquely errone- 
 ous; and yet, if the watch prayed, and said, “O 
 great and mighty Clock, may I always keep good 
 time and never go out of order,” it is conceivable 
 that such a petition might be helpful. 
 
 Suppose a Ford car should become self-conscious, 
 and ask, Who made me? It would probably be- 
 lieve that it had been made by a Pierce-Arrow or 
 a Rolls Royce. Such a belief would be very far 
 from the truth. But if the Ford car continued to 
 be self-conscious—many of them seem so—and 
 prayed, “O mighty Pierce-Arrow, may I never get 
 a puncture, may I never require cranking,” such as- 
 piration might show beneficial results. 
 
 Although there can hardly be a finer conception 
 of God than that set forth in the Gospels, human 
 theology, in attempting to build a vast superstruc- 
 ture on that solid foundation, has made many blun- 
 ders. There is no doubt that most Christian people 
 today have a nobler conception of God than was 
 
134 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 common in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eigh- 
 teenth centuries. Many people then thought of 
 God as a being apart from his world, who gave the 
 universe an initial shove some few thousand years 
 ago, and never touched it since. One does not have 
 to be a pantheist—that is to identify the world with 
 God—to believe that God must be in His world 
 today. In other words, it is reasonable to believe 
 that all life is dependent on its Source. Let me give 
 a homely illustration of what I mean. 
 
 When a child goes into a factory and sees a man 
 standing in front of every machine, he naturally be- 
 lieves that the man runs or stops the machine at will, 
 that each machine contains its own source of power. 
 But we know that every machine in the factory is 
 dependent on the central power, coming from the 
 power-house, and that if anything happened to the 
 central motive power, every machine in the build- 
 ing would stop. Thus philosophers are practically 
 unanimous in believing that trees and flowers have 
 no separate existence, but that all life is dependent 
 and springs from some central power. What is 
 this central power? Philosophers call it the Thing- 
 in-itself, to distinguish it from its manifestations, 
 which we clearly see. No one can prove what the 
 Thing-in-itself is, but most intelligent people believe 
 that it is. Our attitude toward life and death is 
 determined by our attitude toward the Thing-in-it- 
 self. 
 
 Well, if all living things in the earth come from 
 
INTERLUDE 135 
 
 some central power, some Thing-in-itself, what 1s 
 the nature of this Thing, this motor, this engine? 
 Some say Matter: they are the materialists. 
 
 Herbert Spencer said the Thing-in-itself is “‘an 
 infinite and eternal Energy, from which all things 
 proceed.” Late in life he consented to spell the 
 word Energy with a capital, a large concession for 
 Herbert Spencer. I remember when he first did 
 this, and an editorial in the Hartford Courant made 
 the following comment thereupon. ‘“‘Yet many 
 Christian people will regard Energy, even when 
 spelled with a capital E, as a poor substitute for 
 their Father in Heaven.” 
 
 Jesus Christ said that the Thing-in-itself is Love: 
 Intelligent, all-powerful Love. ‘This is the doctrine 
 elaborated by the Apostle John, and set forth in the 
 nineteenth century by the philosopher Lotze, who 
 called the Thing-in-itself ‘Living Love.” It was 
 also the firm belief of two leaders of Victorian 
 poetry, Tennyson and Browning. Hence, when 
 Tennyson wrote 
 
 Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 
 
 he spelled Love with a capital, to indicate that Love 
 is the Thing-in-itself. 
 
 If you believe that Love is the motor of the Uni- 
 verse, you are in harmony with Christianity, and 
 (ultimately) an optimist; if you believe that Blind 
 Will controls and drives the universe, you are quite 
 logically and naturally a pessimist. 
 
136 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 It is interesting to observe that the God revealed 
 in the New Testament in many respects resembles 
 the God proclaimed by the latest researches in mod- 
 ern science; and that the conception of God as an 
 image removed from man seemed just as silly to 
 the prophet Isaiah as it does today. ‘There are two 
 passages in the Bible which I like to read in se- 
 quence, because they show respectively unintelligent 
 and intelligent conceptions of God. I refer to the 
 44th chapter of Isaiah and the 17th chapter of 
 Acts. There is terrific irony in the old prophet’s 
 attack on the childishness of Paganism. 
 
 Isaiah 
 
 Who hath formed a god, or molten a graven image that is 
 profitable for nothing? 
 
 The carpenter stretcheth out his rule; he marketh it out 
 with a line; he fitteth it with planes, and he marketh it out with 
 the compass, and maketh it after the figure of a man, according 
 to the beauty of a man; that it may remain in the house. 
 
 He heweth him down cedars, and taketh the cypress and the 
 oak, which he strengtheneth for himself, among the trees of the 
 forest: he planteth an ash, and the rain doth nourish it. 
 
 Then shall it be for a man to burn: for he will take thereof, 
 and warm himself; yea, he kindleth it, and baketh bread; yea, 
 he maketh a god, and worshippeth it; he maketh it a graven 
 image, and falleth down thereto. 
 
 He burneth part thereof in the fire; with part thereof he 
 eateth flesh; he roasteth roast, and is satisfied; yea, he warmeth 
 himself, and saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire; 
 
 And the residue thereof he maketh a god, even his graven 
 image: he falleth down unto it, and worshippeth it, and prayeth 
 unto it, and saith, Deliver me; for thou art my god. 
 
INTERLUDE 137 
 
 Paul’s address in Athens 
 
 God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that 
 he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made 
 with hands; 
 
 Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed 
 any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all 
 things... 
 
 That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel 
 after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one 
 of us; 
 
 For in him we live, and move, and have our being. 
 
 No modern conception of God is more reason- 
 able, more scientific, or more dignified than this. 
 The infinite and eternal Energy, from which all 
 things proceed; or as Tennyson phrases it in his 
 poem The Higher Pantheism, 
 
 Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than 
 hands and feet. 
 
 Can you define Faith? A good definition is given 
 in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews: Faith is the 
 substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things 
 not seen. 
 
 Many say that Faith is the opposite of Reason. 
 This is to talk nonsense. True faith is not only 
 never opposed to reason, it is based on reason. The 
 antithesis should never be Faith and Reason, but 
 Faith and Knowledge. 
 
 I have heard many say, “I believe in God and 
 Christ, but not with my reason.”’ One might as well 
 say, “I walk, but not with my legs.” If you attempt 
 
138 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 to prove to me that you believe without your reason, 
 you are using your reason to convince me that you 
 are not using it. This is both silly and dangerous; 
 for whenever any thinking man opposes his faith 
 and his reason, his reason will ultimately win, as it 
 ought to. Iam not familiar with Catholic theology; 
 but I am sure that the true Catholic believes in his 
 religion because he believes that it is more reason- 
 able to accept the teachings of the Church than to 
 accept the contrary. 
 
 When I was a small boy in Hartford, I went one 
 Sunday night to hear a famous and eloquent Bap- 
 tist preacher. He declared that Christian faith 
 was flatly opposed to reason, and that was why he 
 believed it. All Christian ideas about God, said 
 he, are contrary to reason; all the greater, there- 
 fore, is the triumph of faith, because you make your 
 Christian faith conquer your reason. Young as 
 I was, I knew he was talking nonsense. 
 
 His subsequent career is interesting and not unin- 
 structive. Although he was devout and sincere 
 on the night when I heard him, in a few years he re- 
 signed from the Christian ministry, then he became 
 an agnostic, and wrote against religion; then he be- 
 came an atheist; then he became an anarchist; and 
 the last I heard of him was that he had joined a 
 corrupt political organisation. 
 
 Emotion and passion enter into our faith in God, 
 as into our love of country; but in the last analysis, 
 if you believe in the Christian religion—as I do with 
 
INTERLUDE 139 
 
 my whole heart and soul and strength—you believe 
 in it because it is a more reasonable explanation of 
 the universe and of the person and career of Jesus 
 than any other that has been suggested. 
 
 How about our faith in immortality? Of course 
 the desire for the future life does not prove that 
 such a thing exists. Jesus was certain of it, and 
 taught it as a fundamental idea in Christianity. I 
 have faith in the future life, for two reasons: be- 
 cause the greatest and wisest Person in history be- 
 lieved in it and taught it, and because the whole 
 universe so far as we can understand it, would be a 
 meaningless farce without the future life. It is 
 not merely that I myself want to live after death, 
 though I certainly do: it is that this wonderful 
 world on any other supposition becomes to me a 
 nonsensical jumble. 
 
 But while my faith in God and in the future life 
 is based on reason, it is still a matter of Faith and 
 not of Knowledge. I cannot prove to unbelievers 
 that there is a God of Love, and I cannot prove that 
 I shall live after death. Knowledge is something 
 that can be demonstrated and proved to the satis- 
 faction of every reasonable man. It can be verified. 
 I know that a straight line is the shortest distance 
 between two points. But I cannot prove that there 
 is a future life any more than I can prove that I 
 shall live until the setting of today’s sun: but I be- 
 lieve I shall. 
 
140 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 How about the doctrine of free will? Tennyson 
 wrote 
 
 Our wills are ours, we know not how: 
 Our wills are ours, to make them thine. 
 
 There would not be room in the Congressional 
 Library for all the books written on the hotly-con- 
 tested doctrine of free will. Yet Tennyson has said 
 all we really know about it in two lines. 
 
 President Hadley once remarked, “Theoretically 
 I do not believe in the doctrine of free will: but 
 practically I do.’’ He meant, I suppose, that when 
 you speculate about it, it seems as if the human will 
 could not be free; but in everyday life, we act on 
 the supposition that it is free. Personally I believe, 
 that although human character is to a certain ex- 
 tent influenced by heredity and environment, the 
 human will is free. Man has choice. When Julius 
 Cesar was asked why he would not come to the 
 Senate-house, he said 
 
 The cause is in my will: I will not come. 
 
 Is the will free? Let me take two trivial illustra- 
 tions. I have a piece of paper in front of me. Shall 
 I now drop it in the waste-basket or not? I do: but 
 no fatalist can ever convince me that I might not 
 have held on to it. I feel certain that I could have 
 done and still can do what I please with that piece of 
 
 paper. 
 
INTERLUDE I41 
 
 I think it wise, before rejecting any idea, to con- 
 sider the consequences of rejecting it. For no mind 
 can remain in passive objection. If you say you do 
 not believe in God, you cannot stop there; you must 
 attempt to explain the world without God. Hence 
 I believe in the freedom of the will because it seems 
 to me unreasonable to believe the contrary. Our 
 judgments of history and of individuals, our entire 
 framework of jurisprudence, our sensations of re- 
 morse, regret, and shame, are based on the idea 
 that the will is free. Leave fatalism to pessimists 
 and pagans; the Christian should rejoice (reason- 
 ably) in freedom. You have no right to condemn 
 one man and praise another; you have no right to 
 call one brave and another cowardly; you are ridic- 
 ulous if you feel remorse or shame for any action: 
 unless you believe that other men and yourself could 
 have done differently, that is, unless you believe in 
 the freedom of the will. There can be no heroism 
 and no disgrace, there can be no virtue and no vice, 
 unless one believes in the freedom of the will. 
 
 Here is a simple creed: I believe in the Son of 
 God as a revelation of Love: I believe in the future 
 life: I believe in the freedom of the will. 
 
 But I am not a clairvoyant; I cannot prove these 
 things. I have faith in them, faith founded on 
 reason. 
 
 Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast betieved: 
 blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. 
 
142 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 Few statements are more absurd or dangerous 
 than the frequently heard remark, “It does not 
 make any difference what you believe, so long as 
 you believe it.’ You might just as well say that 
 there is no difference between truth and falsehood. 
 It makes all the difference in the world what you be- 
 lieve, because belief is the spring of action. If you 
 earnestly believe that you are on the right road when 
 you are not, every step you take leads you farther 
 and farther away from where you ought to be. The 
 faster and more confidently you walk, the worse 
 off you are. Ifa religion is false, the most severely 
 orthodox are the furthest from the truth. The his- 
 tory of religion is full of bad examples of religious 
 sincerity; examples that caused untold misery, suf- 
 fering, and slaughter. 
 
 Thus many who have a superficial knowledge of 
 comparative religions will often say, “One religion 
 is as good as another.” It simply is not so; the 
 facts are otherwise. Emancipation from one form 
 of religion is sometimes the first requisite step 
 toward a fruitful religious life. 
 
 Let me complete the quotation from the Apostle 
 John. ‘No man hath seen God at any time; the 
 only begotten Son, he who is in the bosom of the 
 Father, he hath declared Him.” 
 
 In other words, the clearest revelation that has 
 ever come to humanity from a divine source, is in 
 the appearance of Jesus Christ. Not so much in 
 what he said, as in what he was and is. 
 
INTERLUDE 143 
 
 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and 
 we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the 
 Father), full of grace and truth. 
 
 I ardently believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ; 
 precisely what his relation to the Father was, I 
 cannot tell. But I behold His glory, and I feel 
 sure that the glory indicates the Divine source 
 whence it came. The sun sets, we see that luminary 
 no more, darkness comes on apace. Then the moon 
 rises, and two things immediately become evident, 
 the second of which is more reassuring than the 
 first. The moonlight drives away the darkness and 
 quenches many lesser lights of the stars: but the 
 true glory of the moon is that it says, ‘““The sun is 
 shining.” All its splendour, all its glory, all the 
 radiance of its face, come from the light of the sun; 
 although we cannot see the sun, the sight of the 
 moon in the darkness is the evidence that the sun 
 has lost none of its brilliance. 
 
 So in this dark world, where no man has ever 
 seen God, and where even the highest conceptions 
 of Him must be inadequate, the appearance of 
 Jesus is the best evidence not only of God’s exist- 
 -ence, but of His love. 
 
IX 
 TRIANGLE 
 
 In the deepening dusk of a January evening at 
 the city of Rome, in the year 1698, a young wife and 
 mother, only seventeen years old, Pompilia by name, 
 was talking with her foster-parents, Pietro and 
 Violante. Suddenly there was a knock at the door. 
 Pompilia’s middle-aged husband, Count Guido 
 Franceschini, accompanied by four hired assassins, 
 rushed into the room, and murdered the girl and 
 the old pair. Not many miles from the scene, the 
 escaping criminals were caught by the police. They 
 were brought to trial, and the verdict was Guilty. 
 The Count appealed to the Pope, Innocent XII, 
 who reafirmed the judgment of the court, and on 
 22 February 1698, in the Piazza del Popolo at 
 Rome, the Count was beheaded and his four com- 
 panions hanged. Such are the facts out of which 
 Robert Browning constructed an epic called The 
 Ring and the Book. 
 
 Browning represents the aged Pope in solitary 
 meditation. Just as he has made up his mind to 
 have the five criminals executed, he asks himself, 
 on what do I base my judgment of their guilt, and 
 indeed my judgment of right and wrong? How 
 
 144 
 
TRIANGLE 145 
 
 could I call one man good and another evil, if I 
 did not have a religion or a philosophy that estab- 
 lishes standards, distinguishing between good and 
 evil? He then proceeds into an examination of his 
 belief in the Christian religion—and it is at this 
 point that the discussion turns from a particular 
 sordid murder into a question of universal signifi- 
 cance. 
 
 Taking the poem as a starting-point, I now pro- 
 pose to look into the foundations of Christian faith, 
 and to consider some arguments for and against 
 it. I have never been, and am not now, afraid of 
 the truth. Why should I fear something that I have 
 spent my life trying to find? 
 
 Suppose you saw a man with a yardstick, and in 
 response to your question, he announced that he 
 was going to measure the distance between New 
 York and Liverpool. You might laugh. Suppose 
 he should tell you that this yardstick was not bought 
 at a ten cent store, but from a physics-laboratory, 
 and that it was correct to a thousandth of an inch. 
 Even so, he could not measure the Atlantic Ocean 
 with a yardstick. Likewise it is impossible for our 
 finite minds—no matter how accurate they may be 
 in small things—to measure infinity. Well, then, 
 are we to quit before we have started? By no 
 means. 
 
 The sun is more than ninety million miles distant 
 from the earth. Yet by so little and simple a thing 
 as a watch-crystal, you can draw fire from that im- 
 
146 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 mense distance and set the grass aflame. So, small 
 as our minds are, we can draw enough light and 
 heat from the Sun of Righteousness to illumine and 
 inspire our whole existence. Many Christian saints 
 and heroes have done this; they have not only 
 warmed their own souls, they have started spiritual 
 conflagrations that the world has not been able to 
 extinguish. 
 
 The chief aim of thinking man is to reach God. 
 By contemplation of the material works of nature 
 and of the human mind, we can obtain a two-fold 
 conception of God, we can find two sides of the 
 triangle. It seems unreasonable to suppose a uni- 
 verse so wonderful could have been planned by 
 something less wonderful than itself; that the 
 stream should rise above its source. But wonderful 
 as Matter is, Mind is far more wonderful. ‘There 
 are no two things in the universe more different 
 than mind and matter. The brain is a damp sponge 
 inside the skull—is it mind, or the tool of mind? 
 The psychologists are endeavouring to discover the 
 particular parts of the brain used for particular 
 thoughts or emotions. Suppose some day they 
 should discover this—suppose they should succeed in 
 localising brain functions. Then, to put it crudely, 
 we should know (say) what whenever we tried to 
 remember a name or date, there would be a disturb- 
 ance in the back of the brain; if we were suddenly 
 angry, the disturbance would be in the left side; if 
 we were sorry for something, in the right side; if 
 
TRIANGLE 147 
 
 a man told a woman he loved her, the front of the 
 brain would be active. If all these things were true 
 (a large order), even then, the difference between 
 memory, anger, remorse, and love on the one hand, 
 and the damp sponge on the other, would be greater 
 than that between the east and the west. 
 
 Taking then as our two long steps upward toward 
 God, the material universe and the human mind, 
 and judging God exactly as we judge an architect— 
 by the quality of his work, we may ascribe two char- 
 acteristics to the Divine Being—Infinite Strength 
 and Infinite Intelligence. In other words, we have 
 got two of the three necessary attributes for the God 
 of the Christian religion, two sides of the necessary 
 triangle. 
 
 
 
 But while a Being possessed of infinite strength 
 and infinite intelligence might be sublime, an object 
 of admiration or fear, it is not yet an object of 
 worship. ‘The base of the triangle is missing. What 
 
148 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 is the necessary quality in a being worthy of worship 
 and devotion? It is Goodness. 
 
 Well, cannot we obtain sufficient evidence of 
 God’s goodness by studying geology and history, 
 by reading the newspapers and using our eyes and 
 ears? No. 
 
 There are many things in natural and human his- 
 tory that indicate goodness in the creator, but there 
 are fully as many that indicate the contrary. Sci- 
 ence reveals the strength and intelligence of God, 
 but tells us nothing of his good will. 
 
 I can admire something that is stronger and wiser 
 than I, but I refuse worship unless it is better than 
 I. I will not vote for God unless He is a being 
 whose love, charity, tenderness, and mercy are in ex- 
 cess of my own. And as I contemplate the mighty 
 works of nature and the subtlety of the mind of man, 
 I find insufficient evidence of the love of God. No- 
 body, however powerful and clever, can get my vote 
 unless I myself give it. He may destroy me because 
 he is bigger—but I won’t vote for him. Not even 
 an Infinite Being can change my will, unless I myself 
 change it. Human beings, contemptible as they 
 are, have yet the power of choice. 
 
 It is not in nature, it is not in scientific textbooks, 
 it is not in architecture, it is not even in music that 
 I obtain evidence of the love of God. There is only 
 one place where I receive the revelation that the 
 goodness of God is equal to his strength and intelli- 
 gence—that is in the Four Gospels, which tell us 
 
TRIANGLE 149 
 
 the story of Jesus Christ. Now is the triangle com- 
 plete, for its base is Love. 
 
 
 
 LOVE 
 (NEW TESTAMENT) 
 
 What is the real reason for the appearance of 
 Christ on earth? ‘To teach us morality? No; the 
 wisest men have always taught virtue. The heart 
 of the Gospel is not in the ten commandments, or in 
 a list of duties. This is the work of God, that ye 
 believe on him whom he hath sent. The significance 
 of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus 
 is that he is the unique revelation of the love of God. 
 
 We acquire the threefold conception of God 
 through nature, the human mind and the story of 
 Jesus. This story, as told in the Gospels with 
 matchless literary art, is as clear as air and simple 
 enough for the understanding of a child. If it were 
 not for the story of Christ, I should never go to 
 
150 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 church, I should never worship, I should never pray. 
 So far from the incarnation being negligible in re- 
 ligion, it is for me the only true religion. He is 
 the only voice from heaven that seems to me authen- 
 tic, He is the only light that pierces the darkness. 
 
 Suppose we could obtain a sufficiently clear no- 
 tion of the goodness of God through nature and his- 
 tory—then the New Testament would immediately 
 become superfluous. The Gospel would not only be 
 no good news, it would not even be news. What is 
 the use of solemnly telling me something I already 
 know? I heard a Catholic priest say on Easter Day 
 that if Jesus were not divine, the Catholic Church 
 would be the greatest enigma in history. So it 
 would; so would any church. It would be much ado 
 about nothing. 
 
 It is important to remember that whether you 
 believe in Christ or not, the story of his appearance 
 is not superfluous. No news was ever needed more 
 than that. It supplies precisely and fully informa- 
 tion nowhere else discoverable—information essen- 
 tial to the peace, hope, and happiness of mankind. 
 It makes every individual human life significant 
 and precious. 
 
 What is the best argument against the truth of 
 the Christian religion? 
 
 Unbelievers may be divided into two classes, the 
 materialists and the sceptics; neither of them have 
 ever injured Christianity. 
 
TRIANGLE I5t 
 
 Here is a foolish question, which I often hear. 
 How can you believe in the Christian religion, when 
 so many men, who are certainly as clever as you are, 
 do not believe in it? You might just as well ask a 
 citizen, How can you vote the Democratic ticket, 
 when so many men, equally wise and patriotic, vote 
 Republican? Faith is a matter of individual choice, 
 which one must be ready rationally to defend, but 
 which opposition does not destroy. 
 
 Browning compares faith to a pearl. I take my 
 pearl, and show it proudly to some one who says, 
 “Yes, but you can’t eat pearls. I prefer potatoes.” 
 There have always been people who prefer potatoes 
 to pearls. Esau was the father of all materialists, 
 because the poor fellow was so hungry. ‘The streets 
 are filled with men who say, “I am going this way 
 only once, and I shall be a long time dead. I mean 
 to enjoy life while it lasts.” ‘These men are often 
 called shrewd, clever, hard-headed. Show them 
 something materially good, like a dinner or a raise 
 in salary, and they are acutely interested. Talk to 
 them about music, art, religion—you might as well 
 talk to a piece of cheese. It is not surprising that 
 they do not believe in the Christian religion; the 
 surprising thing is that a great shock or a terrible 
 anguish or the loss of some one they love, may 
 bring them into belief. Then they see that material 
 things are of no support. The fact that the world 
 is full of worldly-minded people is no argument 
 against religion. It is what ought to be expected. 
 
152 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 But there is another and a nobler class of unbe- 
 lievers. ‘These do not prefer potatoes to pearls— 
 they do not believe that what you have found is a 
 pearl. You bring them your pearl; they laugh pity- 
 ingly and say, ‘“‘Why, my friend, that isn’t a pearl 
 at all. It is pretty, but it isn’t genuine.”’ While 
 granting the beauty of the Gospel story, they do not 
 believe it is true. There have always been people 
 like that, many of them with wise and prudent 
 minds. In every one of the twenty centuries of 
 Christianity, there have been a considerable number 
 of cultivated individuals who have done their best 
 to destroy it. ‘They have used all their intellectual 
 powers, all their scientific education, all their will 
 and energy, to kill Christian faith. Really it is 
 amusing to think how little they have accomplished. 
 After twenty centuries Christianity is stronger than 
 ever. The harder they hit it, the more robust it 
 becomes. 
 
 The materialists and the sceptics have inflicted 
 no serious injury on Christianity. My opinion is 
 that they have helped it. Enemies strengthen a 
 good cause. 
 
 But there is one argument against Christianity, 
 there is one class of people, that must be reckoned 
 with. ‘They have hurt the Christian Church in the 
 past, they are hurting it now. 
 
 They are those who insist they have found the 
 pearl, that it is genuine, that it is to be prized above 
 everything else in the world—and then they show by 
 
TRIANGLE 153 
 
 their actions that they prefer potatoes. These are 
 not frank and honest enemies, these are traitors. 
 
 Although Christian faith cannot be proved like 
 geometry, it can in one aspect be tested. Christianity 
 is a plan of action, a way of life, in which supreme 
 emphasis is laid on certain things. Christianity 
 definitely promises to accomplish certain benefits 
 for those who accept it. If you do what I say, said 
 our Lord, you will be better, you will be more char- 
 itable, you will be happier. Now if we see pro- 
 fessed Christians, prominent church-members whose 
 lives how no difference from the lives of those 
 who have no religion, this is not merely a ridiculous 
 spectacle. It is terrible, it is frightful, it is tragic. 
 Why? 
 
 Who is the most formidable enemy of a physi- 
 cian? Is it another doctor who happens to be a 
 competitor? No. It is a patient who goes around 
 saying, “I took the medicine that doctor gave me, 
 and it made me worse.”’ For, in this individual in- 
 stance, that doctor has been proved a failure. If 
 the majority of his patients were of the same opin- 
 ion, the doctor would have to leave town. 
 
 Now if Christianity professes to be able to make 
 men and women better, every church-member who 
 is not made better is a serious argument against the 
 truth of Christianity. All professed Christians who 
 exhibit in their lives selfishness, cheating, hardness 
 of heart, meanness, jealousy, envy, hatred, are terri- 
 ble indictments against the Christian religion. They 
 
154 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 are doing their utmost to destroy it. Every one 
 of them might as well walk the streets with a 
 placard on breast and back, proclaiming in large 
 letters 
 
 CHRISTIANITY IS A FAILURE 
 
 For in their instances, it is a failure—a proved 
 failure. 
 
 If I thought that Christians were no better than 
 non-Christians, I should suffer from depression. 
 But it is not so. ‘Taking Christians as a class, they 
 are so much better than unbelievers, that on those 
 rare occasions when a church-member is caught in 
 crime, it makes front-page news. 
 
 In a certain sense, we are all hypocrites. No man 
 or woman can live up to the Christian ideals. If 
 we could, they would not be ideals. But most 
 church-members are on the level. They mean well; 
 most of them are happier and better than they 
 would be without faith. But every professed Chris- 
 tian should remember, whenever he indulges in 
 meanness, selfishness, jealousy, and other sins, he 
 is striking a terrible blow at his religion—he is an 
 efficient argument against it. 
 
 Consider the opposite side of the question. If 
 all church-members in the world began now to live 
 according to their faith, they would not only im- 
 prove, they would revolutionise human society. 
 Such is the power of the Christian religion, when- 
 ever its force is applied. 
 
TRIANGLE 1S6 
 
 After the old Pope in Browning’s poem has ex- 
 amined his belief to its foundations, he speaks nine 
 words that no Feeble-faith should ever forget. 
 
 I must outlive a thing ere know it dead. 
 
 How do I know whether a thing is dead? I know 
 it dead only if I have outlived it. I go into the 
 woods with dog and gun. A partridge rises; I 
 shoot; he falls. JI take him home, I have him 
 cooked, I eat him. He is dead. I am a poor miser- 
 able human creature who may tomorrow be killed 
 in the street by a motorcar; but anyhow, I have 
 lived longer than that partridge. Every year some- 
 one says that Christianity is dead. Is it? In the 
 eighteenth century, many writers said it was dead, 
 and one of them thought he had killed it. 
 
 When I was a student at Yale, we read the work 
 of a German philosopher—Philosophy of the Un- 
 conscious by Eduard von Hartmann. On the second 
 page of his interesting book, he said, ‘‘Christianity 
 is already dead, having passed through all its 
 phases.”’ About twenty years ago, I tried to find 
 out, just for curiosity’s sake, whether or not Hart- 
 mann was dead. Of course the man in the street 
 knew nothing about it; I asked three or four profes- 
 sors of philosophy. Every one of them made the 
 same answer. ‘‘Well now, I don’t know whether 
 Hartmann is dead or not.”” How my readers feel 
 about this matter I cannot say; but for my part, I 
 had rather be dead than not have any one know 
 
156 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 whether or not I was dead. I can conceive of no 
 more complete oblivion than that. Hartmann said 
 in 1869 that Christianity was dead; in 1905 the ex- 
 _ perts in his own subject could not remember whether 
 he was dead or alive. 
 
 Is Christianity dead? It has serious faults in its 
 organisations, but you cannot travel anywhere with- 
 out seeing churches. No, it is not dead. ‘The prob- 
 ability is that every one of its living foes will die 
 before Christianity is extinct. 
 
 In a certain town in Europe about fifteen years 
 ago, a university professor declared in a lecture that 
 Jesus was a myth. On the following Sunday thirty 
 thousand people assembled in a square in that town, 
 and they sang together 4 Mighty Fortress Is Our 
 God! Christianity is not dead; not yet. 
 
 Well, then, is anything wrong with the church? 
 Shall we be complacent, self-satisfied ? 
 
 Oh, there are many things wrong with the church, 
 there are many things wrong with every one of us. 
 What in particular is the matter with the church? 
 What does it need? It needs purification. It needs 
 a tonic. The camp-followers have come to the 
 front. : 
 
 In the early days of Christianity, there were not 
 many Christians, but every one of them was one 
 hundred percent. here were no hypocrites. Why? 
 Because it was dangerous to be a Christian. If a 
 man said, I am a Christian, he was crucified, or 
 burned or tortured in some equally horrible manner. 
 
TRIANGLE 157 
 
 Did the killing of Christians kill Christianity? 
 Quite otherwise. When one Christian died, two 
 grew in his place. They clamoured for punishment, 
 they competed for the prize of torture. One man 
 shouted, ‘‘Don’t forget me—I’m a Christian too!” 
 But before they could get the fire started under him, 
 others, men, women, and children, singing, laugh- 
 ing, cheering, also wished to be counted. ‘‘Don’t 
 overlook us! we are all Christians!” 
 
 In those times if one said he was a Christian, 
 his neighbours handed him over to the police. But 
 today if any one said he was a Christian, his neigh- 
 bours would say, What of it? It used to mean some- 
 thing, something definite, to be a Christian. It 
 drew the attention of the authorities, and the at- 
 tention of the public. 
 
 Suppose today I should address an audience and 
 say, ‘‘I wish every one in this room who is a Chris- 
 tian to stand up. But before you do this, it is only 
 fair to tell you that this afternoon you will be 
 burned alive.’”’ How many would get up? Nobody 
 knows what he will do till the emergency comes. 
 But what I do know is that every one who got up 
 would be a Christian. 
 
 Today, so far from being dangerous or unpopular 
 to be a Christian, it is a positive asset, a social ad- 
 vantage. So true is this, that any candidate for the 
 Presidency of the United States, who should an- 
 nounce during the course of the campaign that he 
 did not believe in the Christian religion, could not 
 
158 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 be elected. I do not mean to accuse any candidate 
 for public office of hypocrisy. But you will observe 
 that the candidates attend divine service every Sun: 
 day, no matter how tired they may be. 
 
 All this is good, because it shows how strong 
 Christianity is. But in its strength is the element of 
 weakness. 
 
 Centuries after it ceased to be dangerous to be a 
 Christian, it became dangerous to be anything else. 
 Yet in prosperity the Christian church suffered from 
 corruption. Finally, in the eighteenth century, in- 
 stead of the church being attacked from without by 
 torture and murder, the foe came from within—the 
 increase of scepticism. The eighteenth century was 
 more sceptical than the twentieth. The climax was 
 reached in the French Revolution, when the Revolu- 
 tionists abolished Christianity by law. The new 
 Government said it was ridiculous to date history 
 after the birth of Jesus, a person of no importance. 
 The French Revolution was far more significant 
 than Anno Domini. Therefore they changed the 
 calendar, and I have at this moment in my house 
 several books published in Paris in the last decade 
 of the eighteenth century, which have the year of 
 the French Revolution on the title-page instead of 
 the year of Our Lord. But this governmental 
 atheism injured Christianity no more than the old 
 governmental persecution. Christianity thrives on 
 open hostility. So today, when the Soviet govern- 
 ment in Russia has abolished the Christian religion 
 
TRIANGLE 159 
 
 in schools and the mention of it in books, Christian- 
 ity is not hurt. Quite the contrary. 
 
 In order that the Christian Church may shake of 
 its torpor and rise to its possibilities as a living force, 
 it may be necessary in the immediate future for 
 Christianity once more to become unpopular, as it 
 was in the early days of persecution, as it was in the 
 eighteenth century in France, as it is now in Russia. 
 The average man shows love for his country by his 
 willingness to make any sacrifice for it, even to the 
 extent of yielding up his life. If religion is to be the 
 vital force it ought to be, it must come first and not 
 second in the life of every believer. If religion can- 
 not come first, it need not come at all. 
 
 During the Great War, rightly or wrongly (I am 
 merely chronicling a fact), the religion of Christ 
 played second fiddle to the religion of nationalism. 
 At the call to arms, Roman Catholics from America 
 gladly butchered Roman Catholics from Austria; 
 Protestants from Germany gladly killed Protestants 
 from England. The vast majority of Christians put 
 their country first, and their religion second. Yet 
 if Christian believers all over the world should unite, 
 war could be abolished today. 
 
 Will conditions continue as they are? Christians 
 should always be good citizens—granted; but will 
 they always render to Cesar some things that belong 
 to God? 
 
 Without attempting to tell any man what he 
 should do, it is my belief that in the future Christian- 
 
160 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 ity 1s once more to be tested. Instead of church- 
 membership being a comfortable social asset, it is 
 going to cost, cost horribly. When we see church- 
 members giving money until it hurts, when we see 
 them prouder of their church-membership than of 
 belonging to any social club, when we see mothers 
 prouder of having a son in the foreign missionary 
 field than of having him at the battle front, then we 
 shall see big things. Then the church will suffer 
 from persecution and grow strong; then we shall see 
 thousands leaving the church as rats leave a sinking 
 ship; they will leave it because they are rats. Only 
 the ship will not sink. Perhaps it was sinking be- 
 cause it carried too many rats. Once rid of them, 
 the ship will outride the storm. 
 
 ' 
 
x 
 JUDGMENT 
 
 Wandering around the picture-galleries of Eu- 
 rope, one’s attention is arrested every now and then 
 by a painting of the Last Judgment. In most of the 
 representations of this scene, horror triumphs over 
 rapture. It was believed that comparatively only 
 few were saved, hence the population of hell vastly 
 exceeded that of heaven; and it was easier to exite 
 interest by terror than by beauty. Whatever a 
 scholar may think of the relative merits of the three 
 parts of Dante’s Divine Comedy, it is certain that 
 Hell in the poem is more interesting than either 
 Purgatory or Paradise, and that the depiction of 
 torment made a sharper and deeper impression on 
 the minds of readers (then and now) than any show 
 of bliss. The greatest of medieval hymns is the 
 Dies Irae: 
 
 Day of wrath, that dreadful day. 
 
 In view of the then generally accepted belief that 
 the majority of human beings were travelling toward 
 eternal physical torture, and that their imagination 
 of that unspeakable place was daily quickened by 
 
 realistic paintings, solemn hymns, and eloquent ser- Aa 
 161 
 
162 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 mons, why did not Everyman do his best to avoid 
 such punishment? One not versed in the stupidity 
 and inconsistency of human nature would believe 
 that in medieval society there would have been no 
 sinners, that men and women would have endeav- 
 oured to live in holiness. Alas, it was not so at all. 
 If the breaking of the moral law were as audible as 
 the breaking of a stick, the air would have been filled 
 with the sound of the fracture of the Ten Com- 
 mandments. With the admonitions of hell directly 
 before them, there was plenty of cheating, lying, 
 stealing, and profligacy. 
 
 Perhaps the reason that conduct and belief failed 
 to harmonise was that the pleasures of sin were im- 
 mediate and tangible, while the Day of Judgment 
 seemed remote. 
 
 The majority of human beings lack the kind of 
 wisdom expressed in the word Foresight. The lack 
 of foresight indicates not only a deficiency in wis- 
 dom, but a deficiency in imagination. The future is 
 certain, yes, but in contrast to the present it seems 
 vague and shadowy. he man who borrows money 
 receives cash on the nail; and in return he gives a 
 piece of paper that cannot hurt him for a long time, 
 and anyhow, a lot of things may happen before then. 
 How many people who drive automobiles have paid 
 for them? The salesman beguiles them by an “‘at- 
 tractive proposition’; you pay only a little right 
 down, and the rest in ‘‘easy payments” at comfort- 
 
JUDGMENT 163 
 
 able intervals. Such a temptation is too much for 
 the average man. 
 
 In the third chapter of the First Letter to the 
 Corinthians, Paul attempts to persuade his readers 
 into paths of rectitude by insisting that there will 
 be a Judgment Day. 
 
 For other foundation can no man lay than that is Iaid, 
 
 which is Jesus Christ. 
 
 Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, pre- 
 cious stones, wood, hay, stubble; 
 
 Every man’s work shall be made manifest; for the day shall 
 declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall 
 try every man’s work of what sort it is. 
 
 The day shall declare it—Paul has in mind a 
 special Judgment Day, when the accounts shall be 
 opened, and all of us rewarded or condemned ac- 
 cording to the value of our work on earth. Then 
 shall all our deeds be submitted to the test by fire, 
 and only things of permanent worth can survive. 
 
 Paul had in mind a special Judgment Day, but as 
 a matter of fact most of us do not have to wait for 
 that. ‘There are in our earthly lives many days of 
 judgment, many times when we are tested. If the 
 result of this test is unsatisfactory, the victim often 
 loudly complains that it is unfair, he did not know it 
 was coming just then, he really is much better than 
 this test has indicated, he wants another chance, 
 sine, opek 
 
 If one enters into a game, one must play the game 
 
164 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 according to the rules. The game of life is the 
 greatest game of all, and its rules may be ascer- 
 tained. They are more clearly and definitely set 
 forth in the Bible than anywhere else; and those who 
 break them usually end by being broken. 
 
 Everything in national, political, social, and indi- 
 vidual history tends toward a crisis, toward a test. 
 
 Lazy, idle, selfish and silly people hate tests, and 
 with good reason. The test shows them up. There 
 are many boys and girls at school who hate exam- 
 inations, and many of their elders who wish to make 
 education ‘‘easy” and attractive say that examina- 
 tions should be abolished. I have been a profes- 
 sional teacher for thirty-six years, and while I recog- 
 nise that there are imperfections in every system 
 of examinations, I believe in them, because I can 
 think of no better way to make a definite test at a 
 definite time. 
 
 I believe in examinations not because I hate boys, 
 but because I love them, and am anxious that they 
 should not go out from school into the world un- 
 tested. Furthermore, just as a fighting man rejoices 
 in the day of battle, just as a man training for a race 
 rejoices when the race comes, so I think those who 
 have been honestly and industriously pursuing a 
 course of study ought to feel something of the fight- 
 er’s joy as they enter the room where the examina- 
 tion takes place. You have been enjoying the 
 pleasures of school life, the association of friends, 
 many interesting contacts, but here nothing can help 
 
JUDGMENT 165 
 
 you. You stand on your own feet—how much do 
 you know? 
 
 Remember the surplus, for in your day of judg- 
 ment you will need it. Healthy growth always pro- 
 vides more than is necessary for the ordinary day’s 
 work. If one goes to bed every night for months 
 completely exhausted, something is wrong. Either 
 one is attempting a task beyond one’s powers, or one 
 is in such bad health that one is not fit to work. It 
 is surprising how many of the parables of Jesus deal 
 with the surplus. 
 
 When people shout today the word preparedness, 
 they are thinking of guns, but Jesus was thinking 
 and talking about moral and spiritual preparedness. 
 
 Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, 
 which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bride- 
 groom. 
 
 And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. (4n 
 unusually high percentage of wise ones.) 
 
 They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with 
 them. 
 
 But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. 
 
 While the bridegrom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. 
 (Manifestly a good thing to do, in order to be refreshed. And 
 as sleeping requires little exertion and forethought, the foolish 
 in this respect successfully imitated the wise.) 
 
 And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bride- 
 groom cometh; go ye out to meet him. Then all those virgins 
 arose, and trimmed their lamps. 
 
 And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for 
 our lamps are gone out. (The lamps of the wise had either 
 
166 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 been extinguished when they lay down fo sleep, or they had now 
 begun to use their extra oil.) 
 
 But the wise answered,, saying, Not so; lest there be not 
 enough for us and you; but go ye rather to them that sell, and 
 
 buy for yourselves. 
 And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they 
 that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the 
 
 door was shut. (J can hear it.) 
 
 Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, 
 open to us. (Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the 
 things which I say?) 
 
 But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know 
 you not. (J don’t know you! no denunciation can be so anni- 
 
 hilating as that.) 
 Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour 
 
 wherein the Son of man cometh. 
 
 Many enemies of the church today delight to 
 quote Jesus’s denunciations of the Scribes, Pharisees, 
 hypocrites, and apply them to church-members. But 
 however wholesome this may be, we should remem- 
 ber that Jesus denounced not merely the leaders of 
 the Jewish church, but the common run of humanity. 
 Only a few of the parables are comforting; most of 
 them are cruel. ‘That is, they are cruel as life is 
 cruel. Nothing is more cruel to a fool than experi- 
 ence. Nothing more cruel to a liar than the truth. 
 
 The significance of many of the parables lies in 
 the surplus; in the complete preparation not for 
 ordinary things, but for crises; not for fair weather, 
 but for storms. 
 
 Observe that the foolish virgins took their lamps, 
 
JUDGMENT 167 
 
 and apparently had them trimmed and burning; so 
 that as the procession of ten girls moved along, it 
 was impossible to distinguish the foolish from the 
 wise. Sometimes the foolish look very wise: there 
 is no solemnity like that of drunkenness. The dif- 
 ference between wisdom and folly in this instance 
 was that the wise were prepared for an emergency; 
 they carried extra oil. Had the Bridegroom ap- 
 peared at an early hour, all would have been ad. 
 mitted. But it just happened (just my luck!) that 
 the Bridegroom was late. That fact made all the 
 difference; it showed up the ten women; it was a test. 
 
 The audiences that gathered to hear the preaching 
 of Jesus resembled modern audiences. They were 
 all alike in the capacity to hear; for God has given 
 just as good hearing to idiots as to sensible men. 
 The thing that separated the audience into two 
 groups was the capacity to profit by instruction. 
 Those who heard and did were likewise builders 
 who built houses on rock foundations; those who 
 heard and did not were like builders who placed 
 houses on the sand. Let us suppose that the houses 
 were equally good, though I doubt it. So long as 
 there was gentle weather, all the houses seemed 
 secure; but when the floods came, the house on the 
 sand fell down; and great was the fall of it. 
 
 Why did Jesus add that last phrase? Because 
 every irremediable calamity is impressive. It re- 
 sounds and reverberates throughout the community. 
 
 Every wise and honest builder builds not for ordi- 
 
168 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 nary, but for extraordinary occasions. What would 
 be thought of an engineer who should build a bridge 
 just strong enough to sustain the average day’s 
 trafic? 
 
 A professional prize-fighter, training for a con- 
 test, has one advantage over you and me. He 
 knows the date of~his judgment day. He knows 
 the day and the hour when his resources of skill 
 and strength will be put to the test; and even those 
 who display little intelligence in other things have 
 sense enough to prepare conscientiously for a fight. 
 After the fight, we hear without condemnation the 
 phrase, “He breaks training.” How is it with us in 
 the competition of life? In order to succeed or even 
 to acquit ourselves respectably, all our education and 
 energy will be needed—and what is most difficult, 
 we do not know on what particular day we shall 
 be tested. What is the conclusion? The conclusion 
 is that we must be in training all the time. 
 
 Let us listen to the wise man, Emerson, on the 
 theme 
 
 TODAY 
 
 Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the 
 year. No man has learned anything rightly until he knows 
 that every day is doomsday. ‘Today is a king in disguise. 
 ‘Today always looks mean to the thoughtless, in the face of an 
 uniform experience that all good and great and happy actions 
 are made up precisely of these blank todays. Let us not be 
 deceived. Let us unmask the king as he passes. 
 
JUDGMENT 169 
 
 A book that had a wide circulation fifty years ago 
 was written by Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy, and 
 was called “The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the 
 World.” (He ended with Gettysburg, but if he 
 were alive today he would have to add the Battle 
 of the Marne.) These were decisive battles be- 
 cause they settled certain things; their consequences 
 were lasting and important. The heroes of these 
 conflicts, although they made or added to their repu- 
 tation in them, did not make their character there. 
 That had been made in obscurity. We often say of 
 some decisive event where one man stands out in a 
 strong light, ““That event was the making of that 
 man.” But it is not true; the event did not make the 
 man; it revealed him. Why is it that whenever we 
 think of the Presidents of the United States—and 
 on the whole America has been fortunate—two, and 
 only two, stand in a class by themselves? It is be- 
 cause Washington and Lincoln never put themselves 
 forward, never loved themselves more than they 
 loved their country; it is because they were of that 
 extremely rare class of men who were never intoxi- 
 cated by power, for the more power they received, 
 the more disinterested they became; it is because 
 their characters were equal to their talents; but 
 above all it is because the severest scrutiny of their 
 lives, from birth to high office, fails to disclose any- 
 thing unworthy. They were not plaster saints, they 
 were not marble statues, they were men, with the 
 faults, limitations, and general streakiness charac- 
 
170 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 teristic of human nature. But when the great crises 
 came, these two men were equal to the situation, be- 
 cause they had been in training all their lives. In 
 the years of obscurity, they were growing strong, 
 and not weak; ripe, and not rotten. 
 
 Whenever today any man or combination of men 
 seeks an individual for an important post, the 
 seekers ask of those who know, Is he up to it? and 
 the answer can be found in only one place—his past 
 life. 
 
 Goethe compares life to a game of whist, where 
 the cards are dealt out by an unseen dealer, and 
 where it is left to us not to complain of a bad hand, 
 but to do the best we can with what cards we have. 
 When Professor Sumner wrote his Life of Andrew 
 Jackson, he divested Old Hickory of all the glamour 
 of sentimentalism, and placed on the title-page 
 “Andrew Jackson as a Public Man. What he was, 
 what chances he had, and what he did with them.” 
 He had no early advantages like Washington, 
 granted; but what did he do with those he had? 
 And on him the biographer turned the merciless 
 microscopic light of historical research. 
 
 A. E. Housman has among his incomparable 
 lyrics the soliloquy of a man about to be hanged. 
 He curses his fate and the day he was born. But if 
 we could look back over all the so-called minor 
 events of his life, including his thoughts, we should 
 probably find that his melodramatic departure from 
 the world was a natural end to a logical chain. 
 
JUDGMENT 171 
 
 The murder for which he was hanged may have 
 been done in a moment of passion; but he had 
 yielded to passion so many times in so many seem- 
 ingly unimportant things, that at the crisis his pas- 
 sion had become ungovernable. 
 
 An American play that produced a tremendous 
 effect was called The Easiest Way, and although the 
 final fate of the heroine seemed so tragic that the 
 audience nearly shouted in protest, every spectator 
 upon reflexion was forced to conclude that it was 
 inevitable. She had always taken the easiest way; 
 and the easiest way had led to the hardest fate. 
 
 Many men at the tragic conclusion of a certain 
 course of action, feel that if they could only begin 
 life over again, they would be and act otherwise. 
 Probably not. We should repeat the same faults. 
 J. M. Barrie, in his play Dear Brutus, the title taken 
 from Shakespeare’s 
 
 The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, 
 But in ourselves, that we are underlings, 
 
 has undertaken to show that out of a large company 
 who actually have the chance to live their life over 
 again, only one shows any improvement. Perhaps 
 that is the reason so few would be willing to relive 
 their lives; why should I be a fool over again? 
 
 I have not studied science sufficiently to express 
 an opinion on organic evolution. But there is this 
 truth in evolution—life is a development from what 
 is, to what will be. The future is in the present. 
 
172 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 It is impossible to detach or isolate any event either 
 in the life of a nation or in that of an individual. 
 One cannot explain the Russian Revolution or the 
 Soviet State by studying only present conditions, 
 still less by saying that Russians are madmen. How- 
 ever dreadful and tyrannical present conditions may 
 be, the only way to understand them is to go back 
 patiently in history and find out what were the ante- 
 cedents. Every time the old Imperial Régime acted 
 despotically and irresponsibly, it was preparing the 
 Revolution. If you wish to understand the Reign of 
 Terror in France, look at the history of France 
 under Louis XIV and XV, 
 
 As I regard my college classmates at reunions, I 
 cannot help reflecting how little our personalities 
 have changed. We have all grown older, most of 
 us have developed, but in only a very few instances 
 is there a different kind of man. 
 
 Thus there are really no unimportant events; 
 every little thing we do and think forms our charac- 
 ter and our destiny. Is insistence on the rarity of 
 change a counsel of despair? By no means; even if 
 it were, that would not alter the facts. What we 
 want is the truth, and even if we do not want it, we 
 need it. The truth is that only a few men, after long 
 ease and indulgence, succeed in reconstructing their 
 character; but only a few men really succeed in 
 anything. 
 
 It is depressing to see people take such pains with 
 trivial matters, to be so anxious about unimportant 
 
JUDGMENT 173 
 
 things, and take so little pains with their lives. The 
 art of life is a difficult art to master, because there 
 are so many details, so much routine, and routine 
 cannot be made interesting unless it has a purpose, 
 and the purpose kept in mind. It is easier to die 
 bravely than to live bravely. The average man 
 has so much vanity that he is usually fairly equal to 
 a spectacular situation, where he can dramatise 
 himself. 
 
 Heifetz plays the violin. Those who listen would 
 be very glad to play so well as he, but even if they 
 practised all their lives, they could not equal him; 
 why not? Because he happens to be a genius. But 
 even if his hearers could be assured of eventual equal 
 proficiency, how many would be sufficiently perse- 
 vering to pay the price he has paid? How many 
 would be willing to give up their childhood, their 
 youth, tennis, golf, college education, social pleas- 
 ures, all the delights that make every day a varied 
 round of agreeable events? Although Heifetz is 
 a genius, his success is no accident. It resulted from 
 daily, weekly, monthly, yearly devotion to a violin, 
 practising alone, with no audience and no applause. 
 Now the toil, then the victory. But toil comes first. 
 And the chief reason that so few are victors is that 
 most cannot endure the necessary uninteresting pre- 
 paratory toil. 
 
 But during those long years of dull practice, 
 Heifetz saw the future in the present; he saw the 
 day when the concert-halls of Europe and America 
 
174 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 would not be large enough to hold him. Hence 
 drudgery was illumined by a vision. 
 
 Once in a long while one meets an American who 
 can speak a foreign language fluently. Others look 
 on with envy. But if they wish to approach his 
 proficiency, there lies the dusty way through gram- 
 mar, phrase-book, dictation, irregular verbs, and all 
 the other unexciting and depressing details. Very 
 few have the daily courage necessary to endure this 
 toil. Even those Americans who go abroad to learn 
 a foreign language, and stay there for years, do they 
 succeed? Only afew. The majority return without 
 the guerdon. Why? Because, instead of learning 
 to speak French and German, they have been teach- 
 ing their foreign acquaintances English. It was the 
 easiest way, and they took it. 
 
 The successful University crew has only one day 
 of excitement in the year: the day of the final race. 
 In order to row well on that occasion, they have 
 spent months of hard, uninteresting toil, before only 
 one witness, who is chary of praise and fluent in cor- 
 rection. But ambition and the desire for victory 
 have kept up their spirits during the tedious months 
 of preparation. Eight months of hard work for 
 twenty minutes of glory. 
 
 You see, in order to be successful in any under- 
 taking, one must connect the present with the future, 
 realise the meaning of the two words cause and 
 effect. Percy Grainger was born in Australia; his 
 mother took care of him every moment during his 
 
JUDGMENT mac 
 
 babyhood, and when he was still a child, took him on 
 the long voyage to Germany, supervised his educa- 
 tion and practice, and went through obscure years 
 of unremitting watchfulness. One night, in a 
 crowded music hall, I sat in the audience with her; 
 Percy Grainger had just finished playing a concerto, 
 and he was bowing for the fifth or sixth recall. I 
 turned to her, and said, “This is your reward, and 
 you saw it coming.” 
 
 To return for a moment to the opening paragraph 
 of this sermon—the reason men’s fear of hell was 
 not sufficient to deter them from vice, was because 
 the day of judgment seemed remote. Most indi- 
 viduals do not connect cause and effect. Why is it 
 that in universities so many students loaf during 
 their undergraduate days and work hard only in 
 the professional schools? Because in the latter they 
 see the connexion between work and wages, and in 
 the former they do not. If they only knew! Now 
 some do know; and they are those we hear of in 
 later years. 
 
 In daily living, we must glorify the details, or they 
 will be too much for us. How far will devotion 
 carry aman? Millions of average men will follow 
 the flag of their country into the valley of the 
 shadow of death, cheering as they advance; thou- 
 sands of men enthusiastically died for a cold- 
 hearted, selfish man, Napoleon; millions have given 
 their lives for all sorts of things, worthy and 
 unworthy. 
 
176 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 In view of such facts, I would suggest that the 
 best way to make every day interesting is personal 
 devotion to Jesus Christ. We have a leader who 
 not only overcame the world, but even death and the 
 grave. Let us borrow from the soldier, courage; 
 from the. statesman, ambition; from the artist, 
 patience; from the millionaire, perseverance; let us 
 turn these qualities into service. A good character 
 cannot be attained without the daily employment 
 of all these elements. The reward is in the service; 
 humdrum life becomes interesting; details are 
 brightened; routine has a purpose. 
 
 Milton could not write his epic until he made the 
 discovery that although God did not need him, he 
 did need to work for God. ‘There is neither great 
 nor small; those who endure patiently and cheerfully 
 may be accomplishing more than those who are 
 famous. 
 
 God doth not need 
 Either man’s work, or his own gifts; who best 
 Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. 
 
 About three hundred years ago, George Herbert, 
 who had given up political ambition to serve God 
 in a tiny village, expressed the art of daily living 
 in a poem that will never be forgotten: 
 
 Teach me, my God and King, 
 In all things thee to see, 
 
 And what I do in any thing, 
 To do it as for thee.... 
 
JUDGMENT 177 
 
 All may of thee partake: 
 
 Nothing can be so mean, 
 
 Which with his tincture (for thy sake) 
 Will not grow bright and clean. 
 
 A servant with this clause 
 
 Makes drudgery divine: 
 
 Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws, 
 Makes that and the action fine. 
 
 ‘This is the famous stone 
 
 That turneth all to gold; 
 
 For that which God doth touch and own 
 Cannot for less be told. 
 
XI 
 ETIQUETTE 
 
 The best of men 
 That e’er wore earth about him was a sufferer, 
 A soft, meek, patient, humble tranquil spirit, 
 The first true gentleman that ever breathed. 
 —Thomas Dekker. 
 
 Many years ago, when I was at Northfield, 
 Massachusetts, I went out before breakfast to look 
 at the mountains. I was thrilled by the glory of the 
 summer morning, and when I came in to take my 
 place at table, I turned to an old man sitting near 
 to me, and exclaimed, ‘Have you been out this 
 morning? It is a glorious spectacle! The mists are 
 rolling off the tops of the mountains.” To my 
 astonishment he pulled a long face and said with 
 sincere but nevertheless intolerable unction, ‘Yes, 
 and I trust the mists will roll from many a sinsick 
 soul today.” Instead of being impressed, I was dis- 
 gusted. The beauty which had filled my mind was 
 somehow defiled. If the speaker had not been ven- 
 erable, I should have told him exactly what I 
 thought of him. 
 
 When I was a student at college, a stranger en- 
 178 
 
ETIQUETTE 179 
 
 tered my room one day and asked me if I were 
 interested in the religious work of the Y. M. C. A. 
 I told him I was deeply interested. ‘“Then,” said 
 he, ‘“‘may we not have a season of prayer together ?”’ 
 Well, I never refuse to pray with any one, for any 
 one, or to be prayed for; so we got down on our 
 knees, and had a season of prayer. But I was un- 
 comfortable, and after the stranger had left, I felt 
 as though I needed a bath. 
 
 Shortly after this unpleasant experience, my 
 roommate and I were calling one evening on two 
 sisters. We four young people were chattering, 
 laughing, and talking harmless nonsense, appropri- 
 ate to our years. Suddenly the girls’ mother rushed 
 into the room and sternly said, ‘“‘This frivolous con- 
 versation has gone on long enough! Let us read the 
 Bible together.’”’ Accordingly five Bibles were 
 brought in, and we all read aloud in turn, two verses 
 at a time. No one seemed cheerful, and I could 
 judge of the embarrassment of the girls by my own 
 sensations. Suddenly—everything was sudden with 
 her—the mother turned to my roommate and asked, 
 “Are you a Christian?’ He instantly and emphat- 
 ically answered “No!” Then the lady, after having 
 somewhat recovered from her surprise at the un- 
 qualified negative, glared at me and said, “It is a 
 great responsibility to room with the unsaved.” 
 
 Now the old man who moralised on the moun- 
 tains, the pious stranger who wanted a season of 
 prayer, and the severe mother who brought in the 
 
180 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 Bible, were all, in a sense, right. It is more im- 
 portant that the mists of sin should leave the heart 
 than that the clouds should leave the mountains; 
 it is more important to pray than to sit in idle medi- 
 tation; the language of the Bible is better than the 
 brittle conversation of youth. But— 
 
 If my own Christian faith had not been strong, 
 it might have been injured by these attempts to im- 
 prove it. I could well understand how such ad- 
 dresses might drive the unregenerate to alcohol or 
 profanity. But I had sense enough to know that 
 religion was finer than these crude representations 
 of it. I do not despise Beethoven because of jazz, 
 nor do I withhold respect from physicians because 
 there are quacks. 
 
 Why, I had myself gone to Northfield purely for 
 religious purposes. I went there to hear the two 
 men—now with God—whose speeches helped me 
 more than any sermons I have ever heard. ‘These 
 two men—apart from their Christian faith—were 
 as unlike as two men could possibly be. One was 
 rather short and almost incredibly fat. ‘The other 
 was tall and thin to emaciation. One had never 
 known the advantages of learning, and often used 
 bad grammar. The other had received a long and 
 expensive University training, had travelled all over 
 the world, and written scholarly books. One had 
 been a salesman (I am sure a successful one), and 
 had become an evangelist. The other was a pro- 
 
ETIQUETTE 181 
 
 fessor of geology. The two men were Dwight L. 
 Moody and Henry Drummond. 
 
 Both of them were filled with the spirit of Jesus 
 Christ and with the desire to impart it to others. 
 But both also had a profound knowledge of human 
 nature, and a worldly tact that would have done 
 credit to King Edward VII. In other words, they 
 were wise as serpents and harmless as doves. 
 
 Nothing is more important than for a sinner to 
 become a Christian, nothing; but it is a mistake to 
 stop a man who is running to catch a train and ask 
 him about his salvation. He is likely to miss both. 
 
 Extreme earnestness and good manners seldom 
 go together; the fact is unfortunate but nevertheless 
 a fact. The reason is not far to seek. If a man is 
 possessed by an idea or a conviction, its communica- 
 tion to others seems at the moment so primarily 
 important that the method of presentation, consid- 
 eration of the time and the place, and proper regard 
 for the convenience of the listener, are alike for- 
 gotten. You might urge that in comparison with the 
 seriousness of the message, the method of its trans- 
 mission is of little consequence. But if the object of 
 the speaker be something more than merely to re- 
 lieve his own mind, if he wishes to persuade his 
 listener, then effectiveness of manner demands 
 attention. 
 
 When Jeremy Collier attacked the theatres of the 
 Restoration, which deserved it as fully as many of 
 our own, he attacked them with such savage bru- 
 
182 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 tality that John Dryden, who manfully admitted his 
 own sins, nevertheless replied, “I will not say, ‘The 
 zeal of God’s house has eaten him up’; but I am sure 
 it has devoured some part of his good manners and 
 civility.” 
 
 Paul said, “Evil communications corrupt good 
 manners,” which is true; but they are also cor- 
 rupted by excess of zeal, or by a talent for the 
 inopportune. 
 
 It is a pity that tolerance without conviction 
 should often be more attractive superficially than 
 conviction without tolerance. Cosmopolitan men of 
 the world who are without faith either in politics or 
 in religion, are often more polite and superficially 
 agreeable than political Radicals and Christian 
 Evangelicals. 
 
 Intense earnestness is likely to be lacking in art. 
 A man ardently in love with a woman cannot con- 
 verse with her so entertainingly as one who is fancy 
 free. Perhaps the women are wise enough to make 
 the proper allowances. 
 
 The novelist A. S. M. Hutchinson, who is ab- 
 sorbed in spreading the gospel, is not so brilliant a 
 literary artist as Anatole France, who was entirely 
 without religion and morality, who in fact had no 
 principles at all. 
 
 Yet so far from manners being unimportant, they 
 are in religion of enormous importance. A hermit’s 
 table-manners are of little consequence; but a min- 
 ister or a deacon cannot present Christianity effec- 
 
ETIQUETTE 183 
 
 tively to the unconverted if he emphasises his 
 remarks with a toothpick. That extraordinary 
 novelist, Anzia Yezierska, who came to America as 
 an immigrant, has shown that the chief reason which 
 separates the children of immigrants from their 
 parents is table-manners. You cannot draw people 
 to you if you begin by disgusting them. 
 
 But manners are more than this. Manners should 
 be the expression of the mind and heart. Manners 
 imply consideration for others—and what is that 
 but simply the application of the golden rule? And 
 what is the golden rule but the essence of the teach- 
 ings of Jesus? I say that conversion to Christianity 
 should first of all show itself in improved manners. 
 It is tragic that so many church members should be 
 rude and even coarse in behaviour, especially in the 
 home. 
 
 Especially in the home. Etiquette, like charity, 
 and scores of other good things, should begin at 
 home. We want no formal politeness between mem- 
 bers of the same family; intimacy slays formality, 
 as perfect love casts out fear. But kindliness in 
 little things, consideration for the feelings of others, 
 a good example in self-control and moderation in 
 speech, add prodigiously to the happiness of family 
 life. Many fathers, who of course love their chil- 
 dren, treat the delicate souls of their offspring more 
 carelessly than they treat the mechanism of a Ford 
 car. Indeed I believe, that if we could look into the 
 melancholy history of all divorces, we should find 
 
184 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 that often it was a lack of masculine etiquette that 
 destroyed the love of a wife for her husband. The 
 highest happiness on earth, which is found in cheer- 
 ful and congenial family life, is lost more often by 
 carelessness than by any other cause. And so too is 
 the Kingdom of Heaven lost by carelessness. There 
 is some truth in the cynical epigram, ‘A gentle- 
 man is one who never hurts another’s feelings 
 unintentionally.” 
 
 Well, just as religious etiquette should express 
 itself in the consideration we show to others in the 
 thousand little things that make up life, so it is not 
 impertinent or improper to speak of religious eti- 
 quette as shown toward God. For I am convinced 
 that the distinctions between Christian sects and 
 denominations today are largely a matter of re- 
 ligious etiquette. 
 
 Just as no church-member should permit an out- 
 sider or an unbeliever to be more honest than he is, 
 so no church-member should permit, if he can help 
 it, a sinner to have more attractive manners than he 
 has. ‘he more agreeable, interesting, and attrac- 
 tive you can make yourself, the more good you can 
 do. It is unfortunate that tolerance should often 
 indicate a lack of conviction, but it need not. It is 
 unfortunate that people of intense religious convic- 
 tions should often be intolerant, but they need not 
 be. The art of life is difficult, but we can become 
 more proficient than we are now. I am certain that 
 it is possible to hold Christian faith tenaciously and 
 
ETIQUETTE 15 
 
 even fiercely, and yet be tolerant of other points of 
 view, and of those who hold them. Is tolerance 
 important? 
 
 Paul thought so. Forget the number of times you 
 have read the thirteenth chapter of First Corinth- 
 ians, forget the sound of the words as they are worn 
 by mechanical repetition, and read the chapter again, 
 with due attention to every word. ‘The greatest of 
 these is Charity.” What did he mean? He meant 
 that the greatest thing is sympathy not merely for 
 the needs of others, but for their points of view, 
 their mental attitudes, their minds, their souls, their 
 personalities. To the true Christian, nothing is 
 more sacred than the soul of a human being. If we 
 cannot elevate it, let us not hurt it or debase it. 
 
 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and 
 though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it 
 profiteth me nothing. 
 
 Charity for another’s mind is greater than pity for 
 his needs. Charity for another’s mind means under- 
 standing; it means that you are not handing him 
 something down from your height, as you throw a 
 bone to a hungry dog, it means that you identify 
 yourself with him, that you take him on the same 
 plane, that you give him back by your own unaf- 
 fected sympathy the self-respect he may have lost. 
 
 Many eloquent speakers produce no effect because 
 they do not understand their audience; many men 
 in conversation produce exactly the opposite effect 
 
186 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 from what they wish because they are not aware 
 of the soul of him to whom they speak. In Hutch- 
 inson’s admirable story, If Winter Comes, Mark 
 Sabre was the ideal Christian because, without los- 
 ing his own convictions, he always understood the 
 opposite point of view and any one who held it. 
 
 Casual gifts to the. poor and sincere consideration 
 for others are examples respectively of what the 
 man in the street means by Charity and what Paul 
 meant by it. In John Galsworthy’s play, The 
 Pigeon, the vagabond says to his benefactor, ‘‘With- 
 out that, Monsieur, all is dry as a parched skin of 
 orange. . . . But that will not trouble you, Mon- 
 sieur; | saw well from the first that you are no 
 Christian. You have so kind a face.” There should 
 not be anywhere a sufficient basis of fact to make 
 this paradox strike home; but there is. 
 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning has always seemed 
 to me very near the ideal type of Christian, because 
 she held an uncompromising Christian faith, with 
 perfect Christian tolerance for other points of view. 
 During her engagement to Robert Browning, she 
 did what every engaged girl does at some time or 
 another—she asked her fiancé what he thought 
 about religion. And in order to find out, she told 
 him frankly her own views. She said she could 
 worship in any church or in any Christian society, 
 Catholic or Protestant, ritualistic or evangelical. 
 But she said she liked beyond comparison best the 
 simplicity of the Dissenters, the unwritten prayer, 
 
ETIQUETTE 187 
 
 the sacraments administered quietly and without 
 charlatanism. Wherever you go, she said shrewdly, 
 in all religious societies, you find something to irri- 
 tate and a good deal to bear with; but it is not other- 
 wise in the world without; and within, you are re- 
 minded that God has to be more patient than we 
 after all. She added that there was a good deal to 
 dissent from among the dissenters; much “bigotry 
 and ignorance.” 
 
 For those who like the idea of Authority, and one 
 historic church, hallowed by centuries of worship, 
 for those who can believe in the Real Presence in 
 the Communion, for those who love a beautiful and 
 dignified ritual, there is the Catholic Church. The 
 fact that there are millions who do love these ele- 
 ments and believe in them, is proved by the power 
 of the Catholic Church today, by its steady and 
 rapid growth, and by the converts of high distinc- 
 tion that it draws within its hospitable arms. For 
 my part, although I am a Protestant, I rejoice in 
 the growth of the Catholic Church—they worship 
 the same God, they believe in the same Saviour. 
 Instead of there being antagonism between Catholic 
 and Protestant, there should be the heartiest good- 
 will, the strongest mutual respect and affection. 
 
 Now while there is one Catholic Church, there are 
 inevitably scores of Protestant denominations. I 
 say “inevitably” because the essence of Protestant- 
 ism is individual judgment. In the old days, there 
 was hostility between Protestant sects—it is a la- 
 
188 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 mentable fact that Christian parties hated each 
 other more than any of them hated the common foe 
 of unbelief. ‘Today things have improved. There 
 is unity of feeling among Christians, and the only 
 reason for the separation of sects is truly a matter 
 of religious etiquette; not a difference in faith, but a 
 difference in form of worship. 
 
 In small villages and in the organisation of 
 foreign missions, Protestant denominations should 
 unite, and show a united front. But in larger cen- 
 tres of population, it is really fortunate that we have 
 every form of Protestant Christian worship, from 
 the dignity of High Church Episcopalianism to the 
 Salvation Army. Why? 
 
 So that every Christian can attend some church 
 where, as Mrs. Browning said, his sympathies are 
 least ruffed and disturbed, where the service elevates 
 instead of getting on the nerves. Nothing is perfect, 
 not even the superior critic; but in every city, there 
 is no excuse for any believer who stays away from 
 church. He can always find some place of worship 
 that will be helpful. 
 
 Take the single question of the printed or the ex- 
 tempore prayer. To one brought up with a prayer- 
 book, it seems incongruous and irreverent for a 
 minister to stand, facing the congregation and de- 
 liver a prayer like a speech. But to one brought 
 up without a prayer-book, it seems too formal for 
 the most intimate form of communion—that be- 
 tween man and God—to be read out of a published 
 
ETIQUETTE 189 
 
 book. Is it not fortunate, therefore, that those who 
 love the printed prayer can attend a church where it 
 is used, and those who dislike it can go where it will 
 not annoy them? 
 
 There are good Christians who are shocked by 
 the language of Billy Sunday and by the methods of 
 the Salvation Army. Well, they do not have to 
 listen; they can go to a church where no such things 
 are heard. But there are others who are saved— 
 yes, saved—by Billy Sunday and the Salvation 
 Army, whereas if they heard a white-robed boy choir 
 and a priest in vestments, they would feel as if they 
 were in a theatre. I believe in the variety of Prot- 
 estant denominations; and as there are several mil- 
 lion forms of sin, I see no reason why there should 
 not be at least several hundred forms of worship. 
 
 “God has to be more patient than we after all,” 
 said Mrs. Browning. If your refined senses are hurt 
 by ignorant preaching, remember the divine pa- 
 tience. God must listen and even take it as a 
 compliment ! 
 
 Elizabeth Barrett’s letter to her lover showed 
 that combiantion of conviction and tolerance which 
 should be the hallmark of Christian etiquette. In 
 replying to her, Robert Browning said she had 
 spoken for both, that she had expressed his own in- 
 stincts—instincts confirmed by reason. We observe 
 then that both these poets, although Dissenters, had 
 the understanding born of sympathy, to worship 
 wherever Jesus Christ was held in honour. 
 
190 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 This correspondence took place in 1846. In 1850 
 Browning published his poem, Christmas Eve, in 
 which he definitely gave his own religious convic- 
 tions. If one read only the first hundred lines of 
 this work, one would certainly suppose it to be a 
 satire on Christian belief and worship. The congre- 
 gation in the small, stuffy, unlovely chapel are dull 
 and dirty, stupid in mind, unattractive in appear- 
 ance, and the long doctrinal sermon is intolerably 
 commonplace. ‘The visitor escapes into the night 
 air, which he inhales with joy, and for a moment 
 feels that he is nearer to God under the dome of the 
 sky than under any church roof. But after a time, 
 the approach to God through nature seems vague, 
 and he escapes to St. Peter’s in Rome. Here there 
 is nothing to shock the esthetic senses, as there was 
 in the chapel; everything is gorgeous, grandiose, re- 
 splendent. Instead of the desire for beauty being 
 starved, as it was in the chapel, it is almost cloyed 
 with repletion. He escapes again, and this time 
 finds himself in the lecture hall of a German uni- 
 versity. Here there is no dogmatic ignorance, as in 
 the chapel, and no splendour of superstition, as in 
 Rome. It is a purely intellectual environment. 
 The professor, a tall thin man—incidentally dying 
 of consumption—is lecturing on the myth of Jesus. 
 Browning soon escapes from this room, because 
 while he found the air in the chapel close and bad, 
 in the German lecture room there was no air at all! 
 
 In these four excursions—the dissenting chapel, 
 
ETIQUETTE IQI 
 
 outdoor nature, the Catholic mass, and the univer- 
 sity lecture-room—vwe find the four chief attitudes 
 that are taken toward religion. The first is the 
 simple, orthodox, evangelical worship, to be found 
 today in thousands of Baptist, Methodist, Congre- 
 gational, Presbyterian churches; the second is taken 
 by those who will accept no creed, join no church, 
 but feel a kind of cosmic emotion in communion with 
 nature. They say that God reveals Himself to them 
 through the stars, rather than through the Bible. 
 There is probably more cant talked in nature-wor- 
 ship than in any sectarian religion. I have heard 
 men say that they can get nearer to God Sunday 
 morning on the golf-links, than they can in a stuffy 
 church; to which I reply that on the links they cer- 
 tainly more often hear His name. 
 
 The third attitude is that taken by ritualists and 
 sincere believers in a divinely ordained church, either 
 with an inspired Head, or, as in the High Church 
 Episcopal denomination, in a genuine apostolic suc- 
 cession. The service is beautiful and dignified, com- 
 forting and elevating. The fourth attitude is the 
 familiar one of agnosticism or scepticism. The New 
 Testament story is pretty, only it isn’t true—it never 
 happened at all. 
 
 Now the interesting thing is, that Robert Brown- 
 ing, after giving in poetic form a fair exposition of 
 these four general attitudes, deliberately, positively, 
 joyfully chose the first! There may be ignorance 
 and stupidity in some small country churches, the 
 
192 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 people may be lacking in culture and refinement, but 
 they believe with all their hearts in the central truth 
 of the Christian religion—in the divine, redeeming 
 power of the Son of God. ‘The bareness of the 
 chapel, the absence of ritual, the poverty of the serv- 
 ice, carry at least one advantage. Nothing gets 
 between the individual and his God. It would be 
 an error to say that the Puritans lacked imagination 
 because they worshipped God in a barn. Their 
 imagination was so boldly pictorial that they could 
 sit in a whitewashed rectangle and clearly see the 
 glories of the saints in heaven. 
 
XII 
 SCIENCE 
 
 One evening, as I was walking about in Hyde 
 Park, London, and listening to the competitive soap- 
 box orators—I call them competitive, for each ora- 
 tor knew that the moment he became dull he would 
 lose his audience to a rival—I observed some fifty 
 yards away an unusually dense crowd. I wriggled 
 through this to its core, and there I found two men 
 engaged in heated debate. They were debating the 
 question of Christian faith and scientific scepticism. 
 The defender of the faith was a well-turned-out 
 young gentleman in the early twenties, presumably 
 a University undergraduate; his opponent, who pro- 
 claimed himself an atheist, was an old man, with 
 white hair and beard. It was a rather unusual spec- 
 tacle—Radical Old Age against Youthful Conserv- 
 atism. Between them, a man who looked like the 
 referee in a prize ring, held an open Bible, which 
 the young man took and read from when he wished 
 to convince the crowd; the old man did likewise, 
 when he wished to read something which he asserted 
 was incredible. Standing close to each contestant 
 was a “second,” holding a lantern, so that its rays 
 
 193 
 
194 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 would fall on the open book, from which the prin- 
 cipals in turn cited their evidences. 
 
 Now it was clear to me that what drew and held 
 the crowd was not their interest either in religion 
 or in science. They were attracted as they would 
 have been to a dog-fight; they applauded indiffer- 
 ently a good hit, no matter which of the two fighters 
 made it. In other words, the only interest displayed 
 by the group, so far as I was able to estimate it, was 
 a sporting interest. 
 
 And as I finally turned away, and left the excited 
 contestants arguing and quoting, the lantern bearers 
 trying to throw light on the subject, and the crowd 
 looking expectantly from one debater to the other, 
 I reflected on the comparative futility of such 
 methods of popular education. I believe that a 
 public debate, so far as its value in the discovery and 
 elucidation of truth is concerned, is not much better 
 than a duel with pistols. Each of the contestants is 
 set on defeating his opponent; the result is that 
 when the affair is over, each man has more than ever 
 before convinced himself, and has made no impres- 
 sion on the convictions of his antagonist. The 
 crowd, whether they are spectators, or readers of a 
 magazine symposium—even assuming that they are 
 open to conviction, a large order—take more in- 
 terest in the verbal skill of the duellists than in the 
 question at issue. The only important thing is the 
 truth—and truth fares hardly in such treatment. 
 Truth cannot be found in the heat of combat, and 
 
SCIENCE 195 
 
 it is too elusive to be won either by the blows of 
 force or by the rapier play of dialectic. If it can be 
 found at all, it can be found only in solitary study, 
 in unprejudiced meditation, or in impartial observa- 
 tion by unpredatory eyes. And even then, Truth is 
 so shy that it will reveal itself only to those who 
 would honestly rather find it than have their own 
 views and wishes confirmed. 
 
 I doubt if any man has ever become a Christian 
 by listening to a debate between religion and science; 
 and I feel quite sure that such listening, no matter 
 how amusing the struggle may be, has never pro- 
 duced an efficient scientist. 
 
 So far as I can discover, Paul did not feel that 
 there was any ground for dispute between religion 
 and science. He seems (I Timothy i, 3, 4) to have 
 stated in one sentence what should be the highest 
 aim of all reasonable men. For this is good and 
 acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; who will 
 have all men to be saved, and to come unto the 
 knowledge of the truth. If Our Lord is the Way 
 and the Truth and the Life, the pursuit of truth 
 should not lead us aside from the way. Religion 
 concerns a man’s soul, his personality; scientific truth 
 is concerned with the development of his mind and 
 body. 
 
 Religion and Science have no quarrel, and should 
 never be placed in opposition. Each of the two has a 
 foe so formidable that it is worse than futile to 
 waste effort in civil war. The enemy of science is 
 
196 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 Ignorance, the father of Error; the enemy of re- 
 ligion is Selfishness, the parent of Sin. 
 
 When Religion, no matter with what beneficent 
 motive, attempts to control Science, the result is as 
 unfortunate as when it attempts to control the State; 
 and when Science attempts to control Religion, man 
 loses the chief thing that raises him above the beasts. 
 
 Yet not for a moment do I believe that there can 
 be a spiritual truth which is scientifically and demon- 
 strably false. Let us feed no illusion to our hungry 
 hearts. I don’t believe in the value of anything that 
 is only ‘‘allegorically” true; nor will I guide my life 
 on any philosophy which says that although such 
 and such a thing never happened we should believe 
 and act “as if’ it had. ‘Truth is truth, everywhere 
 and always, so far as Fact is concerned. 
 
 If I did not believe in the objective truth of the 
 Christian religion, [ should not waste any more time 
 in going to church. And here I have good church 
 authority on my side. ‘‘Never,” said St. Thomas 
 Aquinas, the thirteenth century philosopher, “can 
 faith say one thing and reason another.” In an in- 
 teresting booklet, 4 Comparative Study of St. 
 Thomas Aquinas and Herbert Spencer (1923), by 
 Sister M. Fides Shepperson, I find 
 
 Aquinas and Spencer have in common the belief that there 
 can be but one order of truth. The Revelation-truths can never 
 be in conflict with the reason-truths—according to Aquinas. 
 Religion and science, says Spencer, are as the outer and the 
 under surfaces of a shield . . . if both have bases in the reality 
 
SCIENCE 197 
 
 of things, then between them there must be fundamental har- 
 mony. ... Faith is good, says Thomas, but faith with gnosis 
 (knowledge) is better. He who has only faith is as a child 
 in the knowledge of God; he who has faith and the philosophy 
 that supports faith is as a stalwart man. On this subject 
 Clement of Alexandria says, “He who assents to the teachings 
 of Christ and the Church, without striving by the aid of 
 philosophy to give an intellectual basis to his assent, possesses 
 faith, but he does not possess the gnosis (teachings of the 
 Logos), which is to faith what the full-grown man is to the 
 child.” 
 
 Much as I admire the sincerity and Christian 
 character of the late Mr. Bryan, I think he was 
 deeply and dangerously in error when he said that 
 the State Legislatures should control the textbooks 
 and the teachings in the public schools. Members of 
 state legislatures are authorities neither on science 
 nor on education; and there can be no pursuit of 
 truth unless the pursuer is free. If you shackle him, 
 he cannot advance. 
 
 On the other hand, it is equally futile and danger- 
 ous for science to attempt to control religious teach- 
 ing or to substitute itself for religion. Yet this is 
 often urged today. In an address delivered at Com- 
 mencement at a great eastern university in America 
 a few years ago, a professor of science declared that 
 in future science must take the place of religion. 
 Such a remark showed an incapacity to understand 
 the meaning of religion. It would be just as sensible 
 to say that botany must take the place of music, and 
 trigonometry the place of painting. 
 
198 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 Arrogance is as repulsive in a scientist as it is in 
 a minister of the Gospel. The former should have 
 that unaffected humility accompanying the little 
 known and the vast unknown; the latter’s daily real- 
 isation of the disparity between him and his Master 
 should annihilate pride. 
 
 I find that some Christian ministers today take 
 opposing attitudes toward science, both of which 
 seem to be capable of improvement. There is the 
 minister who, when he thinks of the very word, 
 science, sees red; he imagines that science is the 
 Antichrist. ‘Thus he closes his mind, is blind and 
 deaf to what everybody else is seeing and hearing, 
 and is finally incapable of any intellectual progress. 
 
 On the other hand there are some ministers who 
 seem so anxious to placate scientists that they adopt 
 what is almost a fawning attitude. They are in this 
 bad shepherds, deserting their flock. I have read 
 statements by ministers that the best revelation of 
 God is in science. But to the loyal Christian there 
 is only one supreme revelation. 
 
 Now while only a few scientists deny the existence 
 of God, the Supreme Being revealed by science is 
 a million leagues short of Our Father in Heaven. 
 The god revealed by science is a Force infinite in 
 power and (perhaps) intelligence, but quite devoid 
 of any interest in humanity. There is not the slight- 
 est indication in the universe revealed by modern 
 science of a god who cares for any human being, or 
 
SCIENCE 199 
 
 of a god with any moral or noble attributes. We 
 cannot even use the masculine pronoun—all we can 
 say is It. 
 
 The god revealed by a scientific study of nature 
 was clearly, honestly, and pitilessly set forth by the 
 late Professor W. G. Sumner, who made a profound 
 study of the science of society. His biographer, 
 Harris E. Starr, in stating Sumner’s position, states, 
 I think, the position which science—unaided by any 
 Christian revelation—must honestly take. 
 
 Man is a piece of the earth. His relationship thereto is 
 that of a part subordinate to the whole. Out of it along with 
 other forms of life he has come. In conjunction with theirs his 
 existence must be maintained. ‘To the physical laws and con- 
 ditions surrounding him, his well being requires that he properly 
 adjust himself. From the earth, under the conditions it sets, 
 he must get his means of subsistence. Toward him as he ap- 
 proaches her on the enterprise upon which his life depends, she 
 turns a cold, hard face. “There is no sentiment in nature, no 
 predilection to serve man’s interests. ‘That she was made for 
 him is true only in the sense that he may possess her if he can. 
 Before her he has “no more right to life than a rattlesnake; 
 he has no more right to liberty than any wild beast; his right to 
 the pursuit of happiness is nothing but a license to maintain 
 the struggle for existence if he can find within himself the 
 power with which to do it.” From her, moreover, he gets only 
 what he extorts. Life is ever a struggle, not a feast of good 
 things. There is no “boon” in nature, nor has there ever been. 
 .. . He lives and grows if he is strong enough to conquer 
 obstacles; if not, “then he may lie down and die of despair on 
 the face of the boon and not a breeze, or a leaflet, or a sun- 
 beam will vary its due course to help or pity him.” 
 
200 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 I have given this long quotation, because it is abso- 
 lutely true so far as it goes; and the truth, whether 
 welcome or not, is wholesome. Such is the god re- 
 vealed by science, which is, in the religious sense, no 
 God at all. Therefore if we really are to abandon 
 everything in the New Testament that is called 
 ““supernatural,’’ we should abandon prayer, worship, 
 church-going, and buckle down to work, with the 
 assurance that God does not even help those who 
 help themselves, He being quite indifferent as to 
 whether we sink or swim. 
 
 But if one compares that god, thus revealed by 
 science, with the God revealed by Jesus Christ, we 
 shall see there was some necessity for the Incarna- 
 tion, if we are to come into any communication with 
 the Infinite; and we must not forget how man has 
 been aided in his struggle by prayer. 
 
 Science, as I understand it, does not make Chris- 
 tian faith impossible or unreasonable; science takes 
 us as far as unassisted verifiable knowledge can go; 
 Wordsworth and other poets saw more personality 
 in Nature than the scientist sees; and a reasonable 
 Christian faith sees even more than the poets. 
 
 I honour and admire all scientific men, who in sin- 
 cerity, self-denial, and patient labour, are endeavour- 
 ing to ascertain the truth. No Christian should ever 
 be afraid of the truth, for we believe that God is 
 truth. There are some Christian people who are 
 afraid to take up the morning paper, for fear some 
 scientist will have discovered something that will 
 
SCIENCE 201 
 
 destroy their faith. Fear not, little flock. Let them 
 do their best—or their worst. They can never 
 annihilate God, or the record of the life of Christ 
 on earth. 
 
 Many people talk about the ‘history of the con- 
 flict between religion and science” as though science 
 had been always right and religion always wrong. 
 History, really, is the history of human effort, 
 whether it is the history of politics, of science, of 
 art, of religion. And the one thing certain about 
 humanity is its uncertainty; not only its proneness 
 to error, but its error. I believe the Founder of the 
 Christian religion was divine; but I no more expect 
 similar divinity in church-members than I should ex- 
 pect to discover that every private in Napoleon’s 
 army had the brains of the leader. The Church is 
 a human institution, like a political party; its nobility 
 of aim, and desire to serve its Master, have not kept 
 its members from the mistakes inherent in human 
 nature. 
 
 But what is true of the history of the church is 
 fully as true of the history of science. The history 
 of science in general and of medicine in particular, 
 is the history of error, quackery, fatal mistakes. 
 Centuries ago, when a poor fellow was suffering 
 from appendicitis, his scientific doctors consulted 
 astrological charts; even in my lifetime, I can re- 
 member people suffering from tuberculosis who were 
 shut up by doctor’s orders in closed rooms, so no 
 draught of air should kill them. Doctors used to 
 
202 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 bleed patients when such treatment made death more 
 speedy. Shall we then scoff at doctors and at science 
 because of all these errors? By no means. It was 
 the imperfection of humanity, not the fault of 
 science, that made these doctors do the wrong thing. 
 It is the imperfection of Christians, not of religion, 
 that causes them to err. 
 
 It is folly to give up religious faith because of 
 some alleged discovery of science. To believe in 
 Jesus and follow him, that is religion; to study the 
 origin of the texts of the Gospels, that is science. 
 Now suppose a man forty years ago gave up his 
 faith in Jesus because a scientific critic declared—as 
 some did then—that the Gospels were written sev- 
 eral centuries after Christ died. Science has revised 
 that opinion. Now there are scientific critics who 
 declare that all four Gospels were written before 
 75 A.D. In adhering to any scientific discovery, be 
 sure and get the latest edition of the book. ‘The 
 average life of any scientific theory is, I believe, 
 about seven years. ‘The life of Jesus is still potent 
 after nearly twenty centuries. 7 
 
 I do not wish for a moment to take the cheap 
 attitude of ridiculing science; such a position is 
 stupidly unintelligent. I am merely trying to call 
 attention to facts that are often forgotten, and to 
 show that the sphere of religion cannot be success- 
 fully usurped by the sphere of science. 
 
 I read an excellent article sometime ago by a 
 scientific man, Albert E. Wiggam. One sentence, 
 
SCIENCE 203 
 
 however, needs amendment. He is comparing the 
 purity of science with the cruelty of religion, as 
 shown in history: 
 
 In all its history science has never persecuted anybody. 
 Throughout all history dogmatic religion and religion based 
 upon authority have persecuted wellnigh everybody. But science 
 comes to men with no blood upon its hands. It offers its min- 
 istry to men with a past as unsullied as the morning and with a 
 spirit as fresh as youth and as tolerant as the sunshine. 
 
 Self-satisfaction, the “holier-than-thou” feeling, 
 leads one into error as surely in science as in religion. 
 
 The word “tolerant” in that paragraph needs 
 some revision. Some advocates of science love to 
 represent ministers of the Gospel as intolerant, and 
 scientific men as calm, tolerant lovers of truth. Now 
 if the pursuit of scientific research produced no evil 
 results either to humanity or to the researchers, such 
 a position might be tenable. It so happens, how- 
 ever, that while scientific men are doing their best 
 to invent monstrous engines of cruelty and destruc- 
 tion, ministers of the Gospel are preaching good will 
 and charity to all. No blood upon the hands of 
 science? 
 
 Take the recent World War. In 1911 I heard a 
 German professor quote with fervid admiration this 
 sentence of John Stuart Mill. “Any man whose fear 
 of consequences is greater than his love of truth has 
 no business to be a college professor.’ Well, what 
 happened when the war broke out? Was there a 
 
204 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 single scientific man in Germany who had the cour- 
 age to prefer truth to national sentimentalism? 
 Haeckel, who had always ridiculed sentimentalism 
 in religion as opposed to the noble, self-sacrificing 
 pursuit of truth, found himself stating that Germany 
 was entirely right and not an aggressor. Where 
 was his love of truth and where his sentiment then? 
 Was there any prominent scientist in any country 
 (except Bertrand Russell in England) who pre- 
 ferred the truth to nationalism? 
 
 And how about the ministers of the Gospel, who 
 it is said selfishly prefer sentimentalism to cold 
 truth? In Vermont, a Baptist minister, who de- 
 clared that war was contrary to the teachings of 
 Jesus, was sentenced to a Federal prison for fifteen 
 years; in Los Angeles a group of ministers, for the 
 same crime, were taken to jail; the Bishop of Utah 
 lost his position. Many other cases could be cited. 
 
 From what class have come the martyrs for the 
 truth? From the scientists or from the saints? 
 Was Faber speaking of scientists when he wrote the 
 tremendous words 
 
 Our fathers, chained in prisons dark, 
 Were still in heart and conscience free; 
 
 How sweet would be their children’s fate, 
 If they, like them, could die for thee! 
 
 To read current comment, one might imagine that 
 Christian priests and ministers were always perse- 
 cuting scientific martyrs; but how many scientists 
 
SCIENCE 205 
 
 have died horrible deaths at the hands of Christians, 
 compared to the men who have died for their re- 
 ligious faith? It is not science, but religion that can 
 claim the noble army of martyrs. If the love of 
 truth is evidenced by the willingness to die for it, it 
 is religion and not science that can show the honour 
 roll. 
 
 In the instances of war and other crises, I am not 
 saying who is right and who wrong. I am talking 
 about courage and the willingness to pursue at all 
 hazards what a man believes to be the truth. It 
 takes a test to prove men. 
 
 But let us have an end of the quarrel between 
 science and religion. A religious man who loves the 
 truth has the scientific spirit; and a scientist who 
 sees not only the works of Nature but the divine 
 element that gives them significance, has the religious 
 spirit. 
 
 Science deals with man’s origin; religion with his 
 destiny. And in a truly hospitable mind, illumined 
 by the sincere, unbiased love of truth and by the 
 lamp of the Holy Spirit, the supreme thing is per- 
 haps neither man’s origin nor his destiny. I[t is his 
 opportunity. No matter about our origin; let the 
 dead past bury its dead; no matter about the future; 
 the morrow shall take thought for the things of 
 itself. What shall we do today? 
 
 Scientific people and religious people should unite 
 in the endeavour to follow and to discover truth, in 
 the endeavour to alleviate human suffering, in the 
 
206 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS 
 
 endeavour to destroy superstition—whether it is the 
 quackery of religion or the quackery of science. In 
 the early church there were many fakers, as there 
 are today both among church-members and among 
 physicians. Paul became rather impatient with 
 those who insisted that they had the gift of 
 ‘tongues,’ which meant in practice that they usually 
 talked an appalling amount of nonsense. He said, 
 “I had rather speak five words with my understand- 
 ing, . . . than ten thousand words in a tongue.” 
 
 There is this distinction between the modern ad- 
 vance of scientific thought and the modern advance 
 of religious thought. Scientific men are quite rightly 
 endeavouring to discover new facts, in other words 
 to go steadily forward; whereas the best advance 
 in Christian thought—that which is now clearly 
 observable—is going backward; going back through 
 the long ages of accumulated error about Jesus, to 
 Jesus himself. Science must go forward to find per- 
 fection, which though it is in the future, will per- 
 haps never be found. But Christians are fortunate 
 in having perfection revealed once for all in the 
 person of Jesus Christ. We do not need a new 
 religion—we need to practise the one we have. 
 Jesus lived on earth nearly two thousand years ago; 
 in his ideas and teachings he is ten thousand years 
 ahead of this present time. 
 

 

 

 
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