Utal ileligion 
 
 HOWARD ALLEN BRIDGMAN 
 
 1^ 
 
APR 17 law 
 
 BV 4501 .B733 1910 
 ^-itzT""' ^°''^'"^ Allen, 186 
 Real religion 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
REAL RELIGI 
 
 APR 
 
 FRIENDLY TALKS TO THE AVERAGE MAN 
 ON CLEAN AND USEFUL LIVING 
 
 BY ^ 
 
 HOWARD ALLEN BRIDGMAN 
 
 Author of "Steps Christward" 
 
 THE PILGRIM PRESS 
 
 BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 
 
Copyright, iQio 
 By Luther H. Cary 
 
 THE* PLIMPTON 'PRESS 
 
 [WD-O] 
 NORWOOD -MASS* U 'S'A 
 
Co 
 
 MY CHILDREN 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Straight Word on Religion i 
 
 "One World at a Time" 5 
 
 The Luck of the Road 9 
 
 The First Thoughts on Waking • 14 
 
 Trolley-Car Theology 18 
 
 "As Good as the Average" 22 
 
 "That Little Streak of Religion" 26 
 
 To One Soured on Life 30 
 
 The Fun of Beginning Again 34 
 
 The Contagion of Good Cheer 38 
 
 The Large in the Little 42 
 
 Running by the Signals 46 
 
 The Buried Life 50 
 
 The Drummer's Sunday 54 
 
 Fixed Ideas'. 58 
 
 " After You, Please " 62 
 
 "She Could, She Would, She Did" 65 
 
 "Be Somebody" 69 
 
 "How IS Business?" 72 
 
 Off Days 76 
 
 "Same Old Job" 80 
 
 The Courage to Part with Things 84 
 
 Life on Easy Street 88 
 
 The Standstills of Life 92 
 
 Snap Judgments • 95 
 
 The Art of Appreciation 99 
 
 Our Human Islands 102 
 
 The Reserves in Human Nature 107 
 
 The Good Listener iii 
 
 Human Beings as Links 115 
 
 [vii] 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 One Good Life 119 
 
 A Man and His Echo 123 
 
 The Mother's Part 127 
 
 All Hail to the Breadwinner 131 
 
 "Fond of His Folks" 135 
 
 A Home-Maker 138 
 
 What Shall the Middle-Aged Man Do? . . . 142 
 
 This Next Week's Friendliness 146 
 
 When is a Man Old? 149 
 
 Why Go to Church? 154 
 
 The Question Why 158 
 
 Where Do People Go When They Die? .... 162 
 
 The One-Legged Boy's Thankfulness .... 166 
 
 The Good-Will Company Unlimited 170 
 
 The Man Who Came Back 174 
 
 The Charm of the Impossible • 178 
 
 The Man You Might Be 182 
 
 [ vlii 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 THIS is not a book for scholars, though 
 the author hopes that his construing 
 of religion is not at variance with scholarship. 
 Neither is it a book for saints; yet if any of 
 its words shall strengthen their serene and 
 tested faith, the author will be glad. It 
 is a book for the man and the woman in 
 the midst of the moral struggle, exposed 
 to the materialism and the pessimism of 
 our age. And it comes from one who would 
 have them regard him, not as an ethical 
 teacher or a spiritual adviser, but as their 
 fellow soldier and their friend. 
 
 [ix] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 A STRAIGHT WORD ON RELIGION 
 
 THE swift passing of the years can 
 hardly fail to make us thoughtful. 
 What does it all mean — this rapid flight 
 of time? Is there any clue to the mystery? 
 Long as life may be, in the case of any of 
 us, it is short at best. Seventy, eighty, 
 even ninety years are a brief span compared 
 with the sweep of eternity. If there is any- 
 thing certain in this uncertain world it is 
 that we sfiall not be here long. The vast 
 majority of us will speedily be forgotten. 
 Is there anything that can give dignity and 
 significance to these transient years? 
 
 Only one answer to this question has 
 satisfied the heart of man. Religion alone, 
 personal religion, gives meaning and glory 
 to life; and the irreligious man, whatever else 
 he may be, honest, kind, generous, fails to 
 grasp life's real riches. I am not speaking 
 now of one religion as distinct from an- 
 other or of the fine distinctions within the 
 
 [I] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 pale of a given religion, say Christianity. 
 I have in mind rather the religious spirit 
 which underlies all religious forms and which 
 often unites those whose outward observ- 
 ances are quite unlike even though they 
 ignore this inner tie. So when I urge a 
 man to be religious I do not ask him first 
 of all to accept my creed or attend my 
 church. I bid him rather connect his life, 
 as he will, with that great force called religion, 
 which he already knows is the secret of the 
 world's progress and the power behind the 
 lives of the best men and women whom the 
 world has ever known. Two or three things 
 I deem to be essential. 
 
 You must submit your life to this higher 
 power. You must trust and obey it. The 
 heart of religion is some form of submission. 
 You must confess that you are not strong 
 or wise enough to go alone. You must 
 put your ambitions, your hopes, your capaci- 
 ties in the keeping of one worthy to be 
 trusted and loved and served. In other 
 words, you must become a child again and 
 lean hard upon a strength and wisdom that 
 are not your own. There is only one class 
 of persons who can never be truly religious. 
 They are the proud and the self-sufficient. 
 
 [2] 
 
A STRAIGHT WORD 
 
 You must pray. You must cultivate an 
 intimacy with this higher power. Your 
 prayers need not be long or conventional, 
 but they ought to be frequent and genuine. 
 No matter if praying comes hard at first, 
 persist and the practise will be easier and 
 increasingly rewarding. Don't stop to theo- 
 rize or philosophize on the subject, but learn 
 to speak to God as simply and as naturally 
 as children talk to their parents. Not all 
 your prayers will be answered. As you 
 keep on praying you will care less and less 
 for that, but prayer persisted in brings its 
 own assurance that it pays to pray, that a 
 man is not wasting his breath, but is com- 
 muning with the Almighty. 
 
 One thing more. The religious mood 
 depends for its sustenance also on the right 
 kind of food. There is a book which looms 
 far above all other books in its power to 
 inform and kindle the spirit of man as he 
 seeks to have commerce with his Creator. 
 I do not claim for the Bible every merit 
 which some of its too zealous friends claim, 
 but I am sure that it is essential to the build- 
 ing up and perfecting of the religious life. 
 
 Such are some of the basal elements of 
 personal religion. Why not, my friend, 
 
 [3] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 have a religion of your own? Why wait 
 till everything is explained? Why be dis- 
 couraged because you started a long time 
 ago and failed? 
 
 t4l 
 
"ONE WORLD AT A TIME" 
 
 " T T E is one of those fellows who 
 MTl believes in only one world at a 
 time," commented a sagacious, elderly man 
 upon a youth of marked ability who is, 
 nevertheless, an out and out agnostic. No 
 Epicurean of old ever took more pains to 
 tickle his palate or to please his esthetic 
 sensibilities. His conception of this world 
 where he will probably stay a few years 
 longer is that of an orange from which he 
 should extract all possible savory nutriment, 
 and to which he is under no obligation to 
 contribute anything that makes for its 
 uplift. 
 
 There are a good many of them — these 
 one-world-at-a-time fellows — and on the sur- 
 face there is much to justify them in the 
 attitude they take. This is a very good 
 world, a vital, rich, throbbing world which 
 responds in a wonderful number of ways 
 to our craving for sensuous gratification. 
 Science and invention are multiplying con- 
 stantly the devices that add to our ease 
 and comfort. We have but to press the 
 
 [5] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 button and clever mechanisms do the rest. 
 Moreover we have outgrown the old-fashioned 
 notion that we have no right to the whole- 
 some pleasures which this world yields. 
 We have ceased to tell young people that 
 they are not to delight themselves in ordi- 
 nary recreations lest their soul should be 
 in danger of perdition. In the first place, 
 young people wouldn't believe it if we told 
 them so, and in the second place, it isn't 
 true. The Bible itself says: "He hath made 
 every thing beautiful in its time." "God 
 giveth us richly all things to enjoy." 
 
 At the same time, that theory of life 
 which would limit it to interest in things 
 seen and tangible breaks down at certain 
 points. It does not help us in the moral 
 struggle when our better natures assert 
 themselves and would rise above the things 
 that drag us down to earth. Furthermore, 
 we tire at times of incessant rounds of 
 pleasure. Even brownstone mansions and 
 six thousand dollar touring cars cannot 
 satisfy certain moods of our minds. 
 
 Again, we cannot shut out the other 
 
 world if we would. As the poet says, "It 
 
 lies around us like a cloud." Something 
 
 happens to bring it very near. There is 
 
 [6] 
 
"ONE WORLD AT A TIME" 
 
 a death in the family or on the street, or 
 our own physical powers begin to decline. 
 
 " We long for household faces gone, 
 For vanished forms we long." 
 
 At such times the theory that there is 
 only one world for us becomes almost in- 
 tolerable. We look around and see those 
 who have succeeded in dwelling in both 
 worlds, to whom one is almost as real as 
 the other, who while taking the true delight 
 in books, music, painting, travel, human 
 fellowship, and even in good things to eat 
 and good things to wear, find also an even 
 higher satisfaction in the things which the 
 eye does not see nor the hand touch. They 
 honestly believe that they are denizens of 
 two worlds and that they lose a great deal 
 out of their lives when they confine them- 
 selves to one. 
 
 Sometime even the one-world-at-a-time 
 men may wake up and find themselves 
 wofully mistaken. We are not forecasting 
 their plight then, but it is folly to try to 
 wall out here and now the world of spiritual 
 realities. The one-world-at-a-time people 
 may not suffer hereafter in just the way 
 the stiff theologies have affirmed they would, 
 but how strange that country must seem 
 
 [7] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 to them when they reach it, having made 
 no preparation for it while here. Certainly 
 if one were going to Europe sometime he 
 would, if possible, make some preparation 
 for it. He would occasionally read a book 
 that tells about it, or talk with somebody 
 who had been there, or let his mind in imag- 
 ination some quiet Sunday evening roam 
 toward that delectable country which he 
 hoped to see some day. Then, when he 
 went, he would not be altogether dazed 
 or find the atmosphere too rare for him, or 
 show himself at every turn in the journey 
 a novice or an ignoramus. 
 
 [8] 
 
THE LUCK OF THE ROAD 
 
 IN that charming novel entitled "Felicity," 
 and depicting the modern stage and the 
 life of the people who figure on it, the phrase 
 **The luck of the road" again and again 
 appears. It is frequently on the lips of 
 the hero of the book, the Old Man, and he 
 always uses it to cheer the members of his 
 company when they get down in the mouth. 
 His point was that having accepted the 
 romantic and uncertain life of their profession 
 they should not whine over its "outs," 
 but should rather exhibit a soldierly spirit 
 and extract all the comfort and pleasure 
 they could out of even hard experiences 
 and situations. And this genial philosophy 
 governed the Old Man not only in relation 
 to his troupe, but in his dealings with all 
 whom he met. 
 
 Perhaps a theater can sometimes teach 
 the pulpit a lesson. At any rate, there is 
 a deal of gospel sense in this view of life. 
 For we are all "up against it" in one way 
 and another. Whether we go abroad or 
 stay at home, whether we work for ourselves 
 
 [9l 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 or work for others, whether we wear broad- 
 cloth or homespun, we are all amenable to 
 the luck of the road. If we have chosen a 
 profession or trade, there will be some 
 inevitable limitations and drawbacks con- 
 nected with it. If we have married a wife 
 or husband, perhaps he or she will be one 
 or two notches short of perfection. If we 
 have centered all our hopes on some beauti- 
 ful expectation it may fail us; or, if not, 
 the reality may fall far below the anticipa- 
 tion. And before we know it, we will be 
 in the mood of the little girl who moaned, 
 "The world is hollow. My doll is made of 
 sawdust, and I want to be a nun." 
 
 But is that the right spirit in which to 
 meet life as it comes to us.? Isn't it far 
 better to accept the luck of the road, rather 
 than to kick against it.^* It may help us to 
 submission to remember that our case is 
 never so exceptional as it seems. We all get 
 in the habit of looking at our woes through 
 the end of the telescope that magnifies 
 them; and then we reverse the instrument 
 and look at other folks' troubles, and how 
 small they seem! But get down to the 
 heart of that well-gowned lady of society, 
 that prosperous business man, and maybe 
 [10] 
 
LUCK OF THE ROAD 
 
 his luck will seem as hard as yours. The 
 longer I live, the more I am impressed 
 with the universality of discipline and sorrow. 
 If it doesn't come in one form, it usually 
 comes in another. The skies may be fair 
 day after day, but depend upon it, the clouds 
 will come and very few people indeed are 
 able to live out many years and never have 
 to look back upon loss, disappointment, 
 pain, and hardship. 
 
 It helps us also to look for the relieving 
 features which are seldom absent from any 
 experience. Standing on the front of a 
 car the other night, I overheard a motor- 
 man complaining about his luck — that it 
 was all the, one way and that a bad way. 
 "Well, my friend," I remarked, "you look 
 in mighty good physical condition. I envy 
 you your physique and brawn." "Yes," 
 he admitted, "I have hardly had a sick 
 day in my life." "Are you married.^" 
 "Yes, only a few months ago." "And you 
 have a pretty good job?" "Yes, I have 
 stuck to it six years." "Well," said I, 
 "a man with health, home, and work Isn't 
 so badly off after all." And then I thought 
 of another carman whom I know, whose 
 wife has been in the insane asylum for 
 
 [11] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 several years, and whose children have all 
 died, and yet who never fails to wear a 
 cheerful countenance, and I said to myself, 
 "How tremendously men differ in the way in 
 which they take their luck!" 
 
 And one reason for the difference lies in 
 the attitude they have toward other people's 
 hard luck. Lend a hand to the fellow who 
 is a little worse off than you, and you will 
 find yourself taking a much more cheerful 
 view of your own luck. When we begin 
 to be helpers of individual human beings 
 and cease being critics of the universe in 
 general a brighter era in our own personal 
 history begins. 
 
 The people who down deep in their hearts 
 believe that a good strong hand holds the 
 helm of this universe are the ones who com- 
 plain least over what happens. Away with 
 the idea that the miscellaneous events of 
 each passing day that are fraught with sor- 
 row or joy for all mankind simply happen. 
 Let's side with the man who cried out of 
 his experience of harder luck than most 
 of us have ever known, "All things work 
 together for good to them that love God." 
 And let's side with that greater Man who 
 saw into the heart of things when he said, 
 
 [12] 
 
LUCK OF THE ROAD 
 
 "Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, 
 he taketh it away: and every branch that 
 beareth fruit, he cleanseth it, that it may 
 bear more fruit." 
 
 13] 
 
THE FIRST THOUGHTS ON WAKING 
 
 A FATHER of my acquaintance makes 
 it a point to be at the bedside of 
 his little three-year-old boy as soon as he 
 wakes every morning, and in the father's 
 absence the mother is there. The idea 
 is that the touch of the parent's love and 
 interest upon the child as he comes back to 
 consciousness after sleep is far better than 
 that of a hired servant and is likely to 
 prove of great and permanent worth in the 
 child's development. 
 
 Back of this instance of fatherly fore- 
 thought is the fundamental principle that 
 it is important for any one to start the day 
 in the right mood. Who of us older people 
 does not feel the need of some such sweeten- 
 ing and steadying influence at the outset 
 of each new day.^* Too often the cares of 
 yesterday come trooping back as we slowly 
 emerge from dreamland, and if some vexing 
 problem must be dealt with during the next 
 twenty-four hours, how quickly that comes 
 before us also. If we could only secure, 
 before the plunge into the whirlpool of 
 
 114] 
 
THOUGHTS ON WAKING 
 
 activities, just a few minutes of happy, 
 inspiring thoughts, what a difference it 
 would make in the entire day! 
 
 Our parents cannot long secure this desir- 
 able mood for us, but our own wills, if 
 resolute enough, can do much to induce it. 
 Determine first of all that your waking 
 thought shall not relate to yesterday's 
 troubles and failures, but to today's oppor- 
 tunities. The former have passed into his- 
 tory. They were hard enough to bear at 
 the moment. Why should we let them con- 
 tinue to dog us ? Susan Coolidge has written 
 nothing sweeter than the poem commencing, 
 
 *' Every day is a new beginning, 
 Every morn is the world made new." 
 
 Send the thoughts forward then to all the 
 chances of happiness and growth which the 
 new day is sure to bring. O glorious new 
 day, fresh from its Maker's hand, all golden 
 with possibilities, as yet unscarred by our 
 shortcomings! O glorious new day, we hail 
 thee and rejoice that we are permitted to 
 make our record cleaner and fairer. 
 
 Let us think, too, of the goodness and not 
 of the meannesses of our fellow men. If we 
 have rubbed up against cranky individuals, 
 if our lot is to be cast with those who thwart 
 
 [IS] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 and fret us, let us put over against such 
 human annoyances those pure and noble 
 lives with which we also may come in con- 
 tact from day to day. Be thankful on waking 
 that this old world still holds so many persons 
 of this type. We may not this day touch 
 many of them, but just to know that they 
 are somewhere in the world radiating con- 
 stantly truth and virtue ought to inspirit 
 us as we rub our eyes, struggle into our 
 clothes, and face again the old routine. 
 
 And our waking thoughts ought surely to 
 include some recognition of the divine 
 protection and guidance that constantly 
 surround our lives. Phillips Brooks once 
 voiced his wonder as to how men could 
 come back from unconsciousness to the 
 world of action without sending their thoughts 
 upward to the source of all life and blessing. 
 Some families still maintain the beautiful 
 custom either at breakfast-table or else- 
 where of joining in some simple act of wor- 
 ship. In view of all the risks and exposures 
 to which every one is subject every day of his 
 life, and in view of the limitations of one's 
 strength and wisdom. It seems only natural 
 and right to claim the care and leadership 
 of a power, unseen but real, that holds all 
 [i61 
 
THOUGHTS ON WAKING 
 
 humanity in its grasp. There is a little 
 prayer of Robert Louis Stevenson's which 
 suits itself to the break of day and which, 
 if said honestly by any one, is sure to make 
 the waking moments peaceful and happy: 
 
 "The day returns and brings us the petty 
 round of irritating concerns and duties. 
 Help us to play the man. Help us to 
 perform them with laughter and kind faces. 
 Let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give 
 us to go blithely on our business all this 
 day. Bring us to our resting beds weary and 
 content and undishonored. And grant us in 
 the end the gift of sleep." 
 
 [17] 
 
TROLLEY-CAR THEOLOGY 
 
 JAMMED together on the front of an 
 electric car the other afternoon four 
 of us, mainly strangers to one another, 
 struck up an informal conversation. We 
 were homeward bound, and the labors of 
 the day being over, and the anticipations 
 of the evening being keen, we were disposed 
 to a little more familiarity than had we been 
 headed toward our tasks at the day's begin- 
 ning. But even then the conversation took 
 a somewhat unexpected turn. 
 
 One of the men had asked me about a cer- 
 tain mutual acquaintance, and I had told him 
 of her prostration by paralysis. "What," 
 said he, "has that saint been called upon 
 to pass under the harrow.^ Why, I supposed 
 she was so ripe for heaven, so free from 
 blemish that she would go as Enoch or 
 Elijah did, without suffering any of the dis- 
 agreeable processes of decay and death." 
 
 "Yes," I rejoined, "least of all women 
 whom I know does she seem to need dis- 
 ciplining at the hands of Providence. It's 
 pretty hard to explain mysteries of this 
 [i8 1 
 
TROLLEY-CAR THEOLOGY 
 
 sort. In fact, we need another world to 
 right up the many injustices that we witness 
 here." My interlocutor — who is an elderly 
 man, and somewhat sad faced — went on 
 to say that the most undeserving here seem 
 often to experience most in the way of 
 sorrow and hardship, while as to the other 
 world he said, "We don't know anything 
 about that, for no one has ever come back 
 from it." 
 
 A period of silence followed this mournful 
 observation which was broken by the motor- 
 man's bold assertion, ''One man has come 
 back." 
 
 "Pretty good for the motor-man," said 
 the fourth member of our group, a jolly 
 fellow in early middle life, and I at once 
 took it upon me to support the motor-man's 
 contention, saying, "Yes, indeed, I do be- 
 lieve that one man came back, and that 
 the world has not clung to that belief for 
 nineteen centuries in vain," at which the 
 jolly stranger said, "Sure enough, it can't 
 be that all that is best in civilization and art 
 and human life is built on a mere dream." 
 
 The elderly cynic, while not disputing 
 the proposition, began to comment upon 
 the unsatisfactoriness and queerness of this 
 
 [19] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 human world. "Three quarters of the in- 
 habitants of the globe," said he, "have 
 a desperately hard time to get along; they 
 have scarcely enough to eat and to wear, 
 while the other quarter have enough and 
 to spare, and some of them more than 
 enough." But the jovial member of the 
 quartet would not let such a remark as 
 that go unchallenged. He burst out with 
 this ejaculation, "It's a bully world." 
 Whereat I ventured to say, "Well, it's as 
 good a world as any of us ever got into," 
 and the motor-man said, " That's so." 
 
 By this time we were nearing the transfer 
 station and the group began to scatter, 
 the motor-man remarking in his cheery 
 Irish brogue, as we said good night to him 
 and to one another, "This has been a very 
 interestin' conversation." 
 
 As I went up the street to my own dwell- 
 ing, I mused how there on the front of 
 the car the chief problems of theology had 
 focused themselves. We four men, together 
 for half an hour by pure accident, had in 
 our talk reflected what is going on in the 
 minds of people everywhere today when 
 once they stop to think and lay bare to 
 one another their inmost convictions. We 
 
 [20l 
 
TROLLEY-CAR THEOLOGY 
 
 were certainly a typical modern group. 
 There was the cynic and the pessimist, a 
 man who, as I happen to know, had acquired 
 a good deal of property, but who looked 
 forward to old age with foreboding and 
 uncertainty of mind. There was the jolly, 
 forward-looking optimist, who refused to 
 be disheartened even by the painful facts 
 of life, and there, too, was the plain man of 
 the people, readier than any of us in the 
 group to profess his unstudied, but confident 
 faith that "Once a man came back." 
 
 I shall not soon forget that talk on the 
 front platform. It gave me hope touching 
 the underlying soundness of the great major- 
 ity of men in the essentials of the faith, 
 and the words that will echo longest in 
 my mind are these: "There was once a 
 man who came back" and "This Is a bully 
 world." 
 
 [2il 
 
"AS GOOD AS THE AVERAGE" 
 
 "T'M no saint, but Fm as good as the 
 X average." How frequently a man says 
 this, either to appease his own conscience 
 or to justify in the eyes of others his be- 
 havior. On the lips of many men it may 
 be a true assertion, but when you come to 
 think the matter through, is it really worth 
 saying.^ Is it any kind of a compliment.^ 
 
 If your health is no better than that of 
 the average man it is nothing to boast of, 
 for most persons have ailments or physical 
 defects of one sort or another, and if you 
 are no more prosperous than the average 
 man you are certainly far from being well 
 off. Do not the statistics tell us that a 
 very large per cent of the men who go into 
 business for themselves eventually have to 
 make an assignment to their creditors.^ The 
 average man today is likely to be hard up; 
 he is probably more than ready for his 
 wages or income the moment they are due. 
 Quite likely he hardly makes both ends 
 meet. Nor is the average man's knowledge 
 very extensive or very accurate, and when 
 [22] 
 
"GOOD AS THE AVERAGE" 
 
 one comes to the field of morals, I heard 
 some one, who said he was conversant with 
 the situation, declare positively that the 
 average man in the grocery business today 
 is dishonest. Just why he instanced the 
 grocery business as over against boots and 
 shoes or stocks I cannot tell, unless it be 
 that in the first mentioned pursuit it is 
 so easy to sand the sugar or water the 
 molasses. 
 
 I think this far too severe an estimate, 
 for the average man is not so unworthy a 
 representative of our common humanity but 
 we ought to be ashamed to set him up and 
 compare ourselves with him, not aiming 
 to surpass^ him in any particular. What 
 he ought to be ambitious for is to bring up 
 the general average of mankind. That means 
 that we must be exceptional men, for there 
 will always be enough to lower the average, 
 and it behooves us to live and labor on 
 a little higher plane than the average 
 fellow. 
 
 A standard was introduced Into this world 
 nineteen hundred years ago which ought to 
 shame the man who runs to cover under 
 the plea, "Fm as good as the average." 
 It set up a lofty but by no means an im- 
 
 [23] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 possible criterion of conduct. "Don't be 
 satisfied with doing good to those who treat 
 you squarely, but do good to the people 
 who are mean and hateful to you. Give 
 not merely even measure, but press down 
 the contents of the basket and even let 
 it run over. Go two miles with a man 
 rather than one if he needs and wants you." 
 It is this doctrine of excess, of extra service, 
 of exceptional goodness that gives glory 
 to human life. In it are wrapped up all 
 the possibilities of noble character. Indeed, 
 a man can hardly be said to have entered 
 at all into the struggle for character who 
 does not, at least faintly, apprehend the 
 fact that he is called to be, not an average, 
 but an exceptional man. 
 
 "Are you afraid to die.^" asked a friend of 
 a very sick man. "No," was the reply, "but 
 I am ashamed to die." "Why.?" "Because 
 I haven't been a first-class Christian." 
 
 If we really see life as it is, life as it may 
 become, we shall never again dodge the 
 issue by saying lightly, "I'm as good as 
 the average." Let us rather make it our 
 solemn aim to be, with divine help, a little 
 better than the average man, to walk a 
 little more erectly, to handle our finances 
 
 [24] 
 
"GOOD AS THE AVERAGE" 
 
 a little more honorably and wisely, to acquire 
 more useful information, and, without ever 
 appearing self-righteous, to be exceptionally 
 pure and true and helpful and magnanimous. 
 
 [25] 
 
"THAT LITTLE STREAK OF 
 RELIGION" 
 
 A CHORUS girl who had encountered 
 hard luck went to a minister for sym- 
 pathy and help. Now the men and women 
 of the stage do not, as a rule, when in trouble 
 resort immediately to a clergyman. But this 
 particular one was known far and wide for 
 his great tenderness of heart and his sym- 
 pathy with the weak, distressed, and tempted. 
 He received the actress graciously, as he 
 always received his callers. He showed such 
 quick understanding of her situation and he 
 appealed with such tact to her better nature 
 that suddenly the girl said, "Well, I do be- 
 lieve there is a little streak of religion in me 
 after all, though it is buried way out of 
 sight." It might have been years since she 
 had given the subject any consideration, 
 but now an exigency had arisen which made 
 her aware that the deepest thing in her 
 nature was the religious element. Not all 
 her triumphs and not all her failures on the 
 stage had extinguished within her this vital 
 spark. 
 
 [26] 
 
"THAT LITTLE STREAK'' 
 
 Yet hers was no abnormal experience. 
 Religion is in the inheritance of most of 
 us and in the training of many of us. Many 
 a man in middle life will tell you that he 
 was brought up to go to church or Sunday- 
 school. Even if he has become utterly in- 
 different, he cannot altogether shake off the 
 influence of the prayer he used to offer at 
 his mother's knee or of the Bible that had 
 a place of honor in his early home or of his 
 personal interest in religion in former times. 
 Said such a man to a chance acquaintance 
 the other day, "I used to be a professor, 
 but I don't believe in God any more or in 
 a hereafter. But there is one thing that 
 troubles me. I have a little daughter and 
 I can't teach her any more such nonsense as 
 *Now I lay me down to sleep' — so what 
 can I tell her.?" "Tell her," replied the 
 other man, himself a bluff but sincere be- 
 liever, "tell her to go to the devil, for she 
 is likely to go that way with you believing 
 as you do." Drastic counsel was this, but 
 it is sometimes necessary to give a jolt to 
 the man who is so cock-sure of his infidelity 
 that he forgets his own past and forgets 
 that which is best and deepest in his own 
 nature. 
 
 [27] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 For religion is in our very blood. Talk 
 about religion perishing from off the face 
 of the earth! When men cease to appreciate 
 the masterpieces of art, when noble music 
 finds in them no response, when a lovely 
 landscape fails to elicit their admiration, 
 when they are not susceptible to the appeal 
 of friendship, then and not till then will 
 they give up their religion. And not even 
 then, for the religious instinct is a deeper 
 and more inalienable part of the human 
 endowment than is the capacity to appreciate 
 music or art or poetry or nature. Religion 
 is in the blood of the Caucasian and the 
 African, of the Christian and the Moham- 
 medan, of the Jew and the Parsee. Indeed 
 there is sometimes more genuine religion in 
 a follower of a so-called heathen religion 
 than in some nominal Christians. 
 
 We are not talking now about forms and 
 creeds, about denominations and isms. We 
 are talking of that which underlies all expres- 
 sion, and our appeal is not in the interests 
 of any one religion as of religion pure and 
 simple. It is not for me to dictate what 
 form your religion shall take, but simply to 
 suggest that "the little streak of religion" 
 in us needs to be brought under influences 
 
 [28] 
 
"THAT LITTLE STREAK" 
 
 that make for its strengthening and illumi- 
 nation, and to be put to work in the field 
 of our daily activities and relationships. 
 
 Why should any of us wait until he has 
 hard luck, until he is reduced to some desper- 
 ate situation, before he discerns and confesses 
 that he cannot rid himself, that he would 
 not rid himself, of his religious instinct? 
 Why not at once decide to give it more 
 constant recognition and larger scope? 
 
 29 
 
TO ONE SOURED ON LIFE 
 
 ** XT THAT can a man do who has become 
 VV soured on life?" That question 
 opens the door into a great subject, for 
 despite the fact that Americans have the 
 reputation of being the happiest and most 
 buoyant people of the world, the number 
 of those wholly or partly soured on life is 
 larger than is at first supposed. They may 
 not have gone so far as to contemplate 
 throwing themselves into the nearest river, 
 or taking a dose of strychnine. They are 
 hardly ready to present themselves for 
 treatment at any anti-suicide bureau; but 
 the sweetness and charm of life have practi- 
 cally vanished for them and they radiate 
 gloom instead of sunshine as they go about 
 the world. They have adopted a slower 
 form of suicide. What word may be spoken 
 to these individuals here and there that 
 shall incite them to make one more desperate 
 try for happiness I 
 
 It ought to be a word of sympathy first 
 of all. Quite likely you have been unjustly 
 treated. Some supposed friend has gone 
 l30] 
 
TO ONE SOURED ON LIFE 
 
 back on you. Circumstances over which 
 you seem to have had no control have 
 cramped your life. Your "luck," if you 
 choose to call it that, has been harder than 
 that of your neighbor. But does it all 
 justify you in settling down to despair. f* 
 Our question is not what others can do 
 for you, but what you can do, and my first 
 appeal must be to your will-power. Maybe 
 you need a kind of electric shock to summon 
 up the forces of personal life that ought to 
 assert themselves in a man, even though 
 things have gone awry with him. 
 
 Maybe, too, your ideas need some recon- 
 struction. If your preconceived program 
 of life has included naught but pleasurable 
 experiences; if you have grown up thinking 
 that you ought to be exempt from pain, 
 disappointment, reverses, shabby treatment 
 by others — then it is high time that you 
 got a larger view of the universe; a higher 
 ideal of existence than that of sitting in 
 easy chairs and sipping nectar from golden 
 cups. Not to have any hard knocks means 
 flabby, not virile, manhood. You hardly 
 know what life in its totality is until you 
 have had some encounter with sorrow, loss, 
 or disappointment. But your sense of re- 
 
 [31] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 action from these things is evidence that 
 life is meant to be joyous in spite of trial. 
 Now go one step further and believe that 
 life is meant to be more joyous for you because 
 of your afflictions, and set yourself resolutely 
 to discovering the good at the heart of the 
 evil. 
 
 Try the nature cure. Go out these fine 
 spring days and watch the clouds floating 
 over the sky. Bare your head to the breezes 
 sweet with the suggestion of flowers. Take 
 delight in the bewitching greenery with 
 which shrubs and trees and meadows are 
 adorning themselves. A bright spring morn- 
 ing is a splendid antidote for the sour spirit. 
 
 Try service. Somebody is worse off than 
 you. Find him out and seek to alleviate 
 his lot. Yes, you can do it even if you 
 aren't a city missionary or a social settle- 
 ment worker, or even if you think you have 
 no knack for cheering others up. Try and 
 you will be surprised how that faculty of 
 bearing other people's burdens, when once 
 put at work, strengthens. 
 
 Try faith. But you haven't any, you say. 
 Oh, yes, there is a good big residuum of 
 faith even in your skeptical mind and your 
 downcast heart. Cling to it. Nourish it 
 
 [32] 
 
TO ONE SOURED ON LIFE 
 
 by putting it in contact with others who are 
 trying to walk by faith. Beheve with all 
 your might what you do believe and your 
 faith will grow. 
 
 It ought to be good-bye from this day 
 forward to the sour spirit, for the gift of 
 existence is too precious a one to fritter 
 away or despise under any circumstances. 
 I know a man who remarks to his friends 
 as he comes in to dinner every night, often 
 after a hard and trying day, "The world's 
 a great go, isn't it.^" Yes, he is right, even 
 this world with all its aches and pains is 
 a "great go," and if you will say over to 
 yourself every morning on arising the little 
 verse that follows, I am ready to guarantee 
 that you will cease to be soured on life: 
 
 "How good is man's life, the mere living! How fit to employ- 
 All the heart and the soul and the senses for ever in joy!" 
 
 (33] 
 
THE FUN OF BEGINNING AGAIN 
 
 SOON after the San Francisco earth- 
 quake, a distinguished physician of 
 that city, having journeyed to another part 
 of the land, was telling a group of friends 
 about the disaster. He dwelt chiefly upon 
 what had befallen others, and it was only 
 incidentally that his hearers learned that 
 he had himself lost his splendid medical 
 library and many cases of valuable surgical 
 instruments, while his professional practise 
 had been reduced to an almost non-paying 
 basis. When the members of the group 
 began to commiserate him on his personal 
 losses, he cheerfully remarked, "Oh, never 
 mind about them! I shall have the fun of 
 beginning again." 
 
 Such tests as these come to some men 
 like a stroke out of the clear sky. The 
 artist completes a picture over which he 
 has toiled long, and lo! some miscreant or 
 some careless person daubs it in a way that 
 forever destroys its beauty. The successful 
 business man is betrayed by some trusted 
 associate, and lo! the earnings of years 
 
 [34] 
 
FUN OF BEGINNING AGAIN 
 
 are suddenly dissipated. Now, under 
 such circumstances, how do men behave? 
 How many of them see the fun of 
 beginning again? Most of us can point 
 to personal acquaintances, who may have 
 failed disastrously in business, but who 
 refused to be downed. Today they have 
 recovered, or even exceeded their former 
 prosperity. Adversity acted as a splendid 
 spur. They felt the joyous tingle of start- 
 ing in afresh, and proving that they could 
 succeed even after the world had passed 
 the superficial verdict that they had failed. 
 
 But aside from special tragic disasters, 
 is it not true that every one engaged in busi- 
 ness or professional life must in the ordinary 
 courses of that life learn to appreciate the 
 fun of beginning again? Otherwise they 
 get into ruts, and as some one has wittily 
 said, "There is a difference of only one 
 letter between * groove' and * grave.'" It 
 certainly behooves all of us frequently to 
 prod ourselves, even when we think we are 
 going ahead fairly well, with the question, 
 "Am I doing my best? If I were starting 
 in anew today on my career, would I not 
 display more inventiveness, perseverance, 
 enthusiasm than I am exhibiting now?" 
 
 [35] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 This is the way in which men get to the top 
 of the ladder. With the apostle Paul, 
 they say to themselves every morning, "Not 
 as though I had already attained." 
 
 Not less necessary is it in the field of 
 daily human relationships to be alive to 
 the fun of beginning again. The friction, 
 the misunderstandings, the collisions that 
 mar many a home, would be obviated if 
 the members of the family circle conceived 
 of their contact day by day as a chance to 
 better the attitude and behavior of yester- 
 day. Even kind and wise parents may grow 
 in kindness and in wisdom. Of course, if 
 one thinks he knows it all, there is no hope 
 for such a conceited parent; but if he is 
 eager to discharge his parental duties in 
 a way that will forever put the stamp of 
 an earnest personality upon plastic children, 
 then he will say to himself every morning, 
 ** Fatherhood is a blessed responsibility. I 
 don't feel as if I had mastered the fine art. 
 I am going to see today if I can't begin all 
 over again." By night-time the children 
 will notice the difference and be saying to 
 one another, "What has got into father.?" 
 
 Would that children, too, might sometime 
 start on a new tack with reference to their 
 
 [36] 
 
FUN OF BEGINNING AGAIN 
 
 parents. It is not viciousness but thought- 
 lessness that makes them forgetful of the 
 delicate courtesies which make any home 
 an Eden. Maybe these lines will fall under 
 the eye of some son away from home, or 
 some daughter, who ought, before sleeping 
 tonight, to make glad the heart of a distant 
 parent by a loving filial letter. So, around 
 the entire circle of relationships, how much 
 better we all should do if we were suffi- 
 ciently conscious of our past failures and 
 sufficiently aware of our potentialities to be 
 willing to say to ourselves, "I am going to 
 begin all over again and see if I can't live 
 with this or that person more happily and 
 effectively.^" 
 
 And there is one even higher relationship 
 in reference to which we ought to find the 
 joy of beginning anew. We have made a 
 poor fist of religion, many of us. Perhaps 
 we have acquired just enough to make us 
 miserable, but never mind; we can begin 
 over again tomorrow, today. And even if 
 we have failed once, twice, or thrice, we can 
 make a success of it for all time to come. 
 We can if we only think we can. 
 
 [37 
 
THE CONTAGION OF GOOD CHEER 
 
 CAN a person be cheerful even if he is 
 not happy?'* asked a bright young 
 woman the other day. "And ought he to 
 feign cheerfulness when he is at heart un- 
 happy?" Now this particular young woman 
 is one of the most constantly cheerful per- 
 sons I ever knew. It seems as if it were as 
 easy and natural for her to be sunny faced 
 from morn till eve as for a good many of 
 the rest of us to be glum. And yet she 
 leads a rather monotonous life, most of 
 her time and strength being given to the 
 care of two lively and sometimes exacting 
 little children. But her question made me 
 think for the first time that what those 
 about her have always considered a rare 
 natural gift may be not a matter of tem- 
 perament only, but of patient cultivation 
 also. We see only the beautiful product. 
 She alone and God know the self-discipline 
 and the struggle. And though there may 
 be times when she has to feign happiness, I 
 really think that she has come into the pos- 
 session of more than the ordinary person's 
 share of the genuine article. 
 
 [38I 
 
GOOD CHEER 
 
 And so I would say, "If you can't be 
 happy, seem to be happy, and the chances 
 are that you will soon be really happy." At 
 least we can imitate the man who early in 
 life established the rule that he would force 
 himself to be happy until ten o'clock in the 
 morning. If he succeeded up to that point, 
 the problem took care of itself usually for 
 the rest of the day. There was once a man 
 of whom the dwellers in the same house 
 said that he always came down to breakfast 
 looking as if he had just inherited a fortune. 
 
 One reason why children are so charming 
 is that they are happy, as a rule. A merry 
 child in a household radiates good cheer. An 
 English poet speaks of a glad and winsome 
 child as 
 
 "A silver stream 
 Breaking with laughter from the lake divine 
 Whence all things flow." 
 
 Why should a man or woman outgrow this 
 mood of good cheer .^ The crucial question 
 is. What kind of a front will we show to the 
 world.'* Ought it not to be, for our own 
 sakes, an attitude of hope and cheer .^ It is 
 good for a man every now and then to 
 shake himself free from the things that de- 
 press and annoy him and say resolutely, 
 
 [39] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 "Uncertain as is the way before me, un- 
 pleasant as are my surroundings, difficult 
 as is my problem, I refuse to let the diffi- 
 culties and irritations sour my spirit, spoil 
 all my good times, blind me to the glories 
 of earth and sea and sky, deaden me to the 
 simple delights of every day, the music of 
 children's laughter, the solace of great books, 
 the blessings of friendship, the splendid 
 achievements of the men and women who 
 are helping the world, or finally and chiefly 
 to the eternal goodness of God the Father 
 Almighty." 
 
 Such an attitude is of incalculable value 
 to the man himself. Think, too, what it 
 means to others. I worked once in an office 
 with a young man of moderate abilities, but 
 who was the incarnation of sunshine. The 
 more brilliant men there were respected, 
 but he was loved by all from manager to 
 office boy, and when he left to take another 
 position there was a general feeling of loss 
 and of gloom. Coming out of a restaurant 
 last week my companion called my atten- 
 tion to the young man who helps people 
 find seats and remarked, "He'll be President 
 someday." "Why.?" I asked. "Because he 
 is always so pleasant," was the reply. 
 
 [40] 
 
GOOD CHEER 
 
 I came across this new beatitude recently 
 with which I close, "Blessed are the cheer 
 makers, for they shall be called sons of the 
 morning." 
 
 [41 
 
THE LARGE IN THE LITTLE 
 
 HE had gained a capacity for getting 
 great and far-reaching happiness 
 from the exquisite Httle joys of Hfe." Thus 
 the hero of a short story In one of our current 
 magazines is characterized by the author, 
 and what a splendid thing it is to be able to 
 say that either of a man In a story or a man 
 in real life. When you have reached the 
 point where you do not need a rare piece 
 of good fortune or a trip to Europe or a 
 unique relationship to the great and mighty 
 of the earth to make you happy you have 
 mastered the secret of contented and fruit- 
 ful living. When the play of the sunshine 
 across your desk, the laughter of a little 
 child, the cheery greeting of a friend who 
 meets and passes you In the crowd, a page 
 out of a new book, or any one of the com- 
 paratively trifling experiences which befall 
 you between sunrise and sunset can make 
 you deeply and unfelgnedly happy you can 
 bid defiance to all the black bats of fear 
 and trouble which hover about your daily 
 pathway. 
 
 [42] 
 
LARGE IN THE LITTLE 
 
 The little things that together comprise 
 the life of a single day ought to yield us joy. 
 In the same story from which I have quoted 
 the author refers to the great happiness 
 which comes "from the blessed continuance 
 of the unnoticed daily good." Whenever 
 the routine looks bare and tedious to us 
 let us think how we should feel if something 
 interposed to bring it to a sharp conclusion. 
 If some illness or disability prevents one 
 from going to his daily task, how he yearns 
 for a return to the former routine. Pray, 
 is it nothing to you that you arose this 
 morning in health, that you can take up 
 your duties in the full possession of your 
 reason, that you have some honest, profit- 
 able work 'to do in God's great working 
 world.? The other day a well-known Ameri- 
 can authoress was burned out. But instead 
 of crying over the catastrophe she wrote 
 as follows: "I lost nearly everything — 
 priceless books, all my note-books of years 
 of work. Well, to be alive and well is good." 
 
 One can harvest, too, a crop of joys 
 by being responsive to the beauty and order 
 of the universe in which we live. An ele- 
 vator boy said the other day, "I ought 
 to be thankful that as my car moves from 
 
 [43] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 floor to floor I can get such frequent glimpses 
 of the sunshine and the sky." How foolish 
 we are to fail to notice the loveliness of 
 tiny things in nature, the blending of colors 
 in the violet, the glory of a single star, the 
 thrilling song which the little bird pours 
 forth. You can connect with many of these 
 sources of joy without hardly stirring from 
 your tracks, only there must be the ear 
 to listen, the eye to see, the mind to appre- 
 ciate, but if you are absorbed in the fluctua- 
 tions of the stock market or the perplexities 
 of housekeeping you are likely to pass them 
 all by as too small for consideration. 
 
 The loves of our life may make us pro- 
 foundly happy and true love expresses itself 
 in a hundred little ways. What you really 
 love about your little boy is not merely the 
 man that you see he is going to be by and 
 by, but the fact that he toddles toward the 
 door the moment he hears your key in the 
 lock and gives an exultant shout when he 
 feels your arms about him. The man who 
 postpones the pleasure that he is to get 
 out of his kinship and friendship to the 
 time when he can sit down and take in fully 
 and scientifically the dimensions of that 
 love makes a vital mistake. Learn to enjoy 
 
 [44] 
 
LARGE IN THE LITTLE 
 
 your children, your home, and your friends 
 as you go along. 
 
 And it is marvelous, too, how the little 
 services for others react and pour a flood 
 of joy into your life. That is the delight 
 of doing something for the child — a penny 
 present often counts for as much in his 
 eyes as a ten thousand dollar check. And 
 people generally are helped more than you 
 realize by a small offering on your part 
 provided your heart goes with it. And 
 the moment that we realize how we have 
 served another's need, another fountain of 
 happiness is opened in our own hearts. 
 
 God put us in this world to be happy. 
 Philosopher^ have fought over the propo- 
 sition whether virtue or happiness is the 
 main end of living, but no system of ethics 
 leaves us any right to be gloomy, and even 
 that stiff old theological document known 
 as the Westminster Catechism affirms that 
 one of the chief ends of men is to enjoy God 
 forever. But if we are going to enjoy God 
 and heaven by and by we must establish 
 at once here a habit of forcing little things 
 to yield us their proper meed of delight. 
 
 [45 
 
RUNNING BY THE SIGNALS 
 
 NO railroad accidents are more lamen- 
 table or inexcusable than those arising 
 from neglect of signals. For as our systems 
 are organized today each trainman is sup- 
 posed to know what each green light and 
 each red light and every other warning 
 device means, and upon his prompt and 
 thorough obedience depend the lives and 
 property of those who have entrusted them- 
 selves to the railway companies for safe 
 transportation. And when a man, either 
 through carelessness or wilfulness, disregards 
 a signal he nullifies the proper working out 
 of a carefully planned schedule and often 
 brings terrible consequences upon himself, 
 and others. 
 
 We are all quick to condemn the recreant 
 engineer or switchman, but when it comes 
 to the sphere of our own lives we daily run 
 by the signals with hardly a thought of 
 what we are doing. The course of life 
 resembles a railroad track. We start at 
 a given point and are headed toward the 
 terminus at the other end of the line, but 
 
 [46] 
 
RUNNING BY SIGNALS 
 
 as we rush along how numerous are the 
 chances for derailment and disaster! Yet 
 as we speed forward, there are placed along 
 the track at certain intervals warning and 
 admonishing signals. We are told when 
 to slow up and when to quicken our pace 
 and when to halt altogether. There is one 
 class of signals for children and another for 
 young men and young women and another 
 for persons in middle life and still another 
 for the aged, but no period of life is without 
 its signals. 
 
 The warnings that relate to our physical 
 well-being are many and constant. The 
 baby toddles up to the stove, puts its fingers 
 on the hot cover, and cries out with pain. 
 And that experience serves as a signal to 
 remind the child perhaps for all time that 
 stoves with fires in them are always hot and 
 are always to be let alone. Through the 
 limbs and bodies of older people dart now 
 and then significant pains or they find 
 themselves sleepless at night or craving 
 strong stimulants or are irritable and fretful. 
 Signals they are which nature, overdriven 
 or neglected, hangs out to tell us that we 
 are doing violence to our bodies, which 
 are something more than so much muscle, 
 
 [47] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 bone, and tissue. They are veritable temples 
 of the Holy Spirit. The signals mean that 
 it is time to slow up, to reconstruct our 
 methods, to consider whether we are doing 
 the fair thing by ourselves in point of diet, 
 exercise, and rest. 
 
 As we mingle with our fellow men we get 
 a variety of helpful signals that if heeded 
 may lead us to a stricter watch upon habits 
 and actions. An unexpectedly large bill 
 comes in. Your feeling of irritation is per- 
 haps the token that you are living beyond 
 your means or are too socially ambitious. 
 Somebody jokes you about your fondness 
 for somebody else's wife. It's only a joke 
 made in good temper, and yet it sets you 
 thinking and you become more circumspect. 
 
 What signals does a man get from time 
 to time touching the state and prospects 
 of his soul.^ Some Sunday morning your 
 little child comes to you and says, "Papa, 
 why don't you ever go to church with us?" 
 The blunt question rather startles you, and 
 instead of answering her directly you repeat 
 the question silently to yourself. Or maybe 
 you are a churchgoer, but the sermons and 
 the hallowed associations fail to touch and 
 inspire you as they used to do. It is pos- 
 
 [48] 
 
RUNNING BY SIGNALS 
 
 sible that the minister is becoming dull, but 
 it is more likely that your mind is so crusted 
 over with schemes for getting rich that the 
 arrow from the preacher's quiver cannot 
 pierce to the spot where you really live. 
 Nothing is more pathetic in human life 
 than the increasing insensibility of many 
 men absorbed in business and pleasure to 
 the appeal of higher interests, their unsus- 
 ceptibility to the higher forms of literature, 
 music, and art, their indifference to Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 But in the gracious ordering of life there 
 are signals all along the way. And they 
 mean that One is trying to communicate 
 with us who has more knowledge than we 
 and who wants to help us avoid pitfalls 
 and snares. He knows the track ahead of 
 us as we cannot know it, and he would save 
 us from plunging headlong to wreck and 
 ruin. 
 
 [49] 
 
THE BURIED LIFE 
 
 But often in the world's most crowded streets, 
 But often in the din of strife, 
 There rises an unspeakable desire 
 After the knowledge of our buried life. 
 
 THUS Matthew Arnold depicts the 
 yearning which now and then comes 
 to a man for an earlier mood, a former 
 attitude, a lost experience vanished, but 
 not forgotten — for the moment out of 
 reach, but not altogether irrecoverable. 
 
 What have you done with the best part 
 of you, my friend? Perhaps you do not 
 realize the fact, but you have practically 
 dug a grave and deposited therein the thing 
 that was finest and purest in you. Upon 
 it, as the years have come and gone, you have 
 spread layer after layer of interest in lesser 
 matters, and now that former self is stifling 
 for breath. 
 
 There was a time when the sweet and 
 simple satisfaction of the home meant a 
 good deal to you; when you would shorten 
 your luncheon-hour in order that you might 
 get home in season to toss the baby in your 
 [so] 
 
THE BURIED LIFE 
 
 arms, or to have a romp with the children, 
 or to spend the first half-hour after supper 
 in reading some profitable book with your 
 wife. But as the cares of this world have 
 thickened, and the deceitfulness of riches 
 and the struggle for them have grown upon 
 you, the home-seeking and home-making 
 instinct has become dulled in you. You 
 aim still to furnish the means of support 
 for the family and to make them as ample 
 as possible, but your children miss the direct 
 touch of your personality upon them, your 
 wife longs for the old, happy, close com- 
 radeship, and children and wife both are 
 beginning to show to others the lack of just 
 such an influence as the father and husband 
 alone can bring. 
 
 Do you remember the time when the 
 sound of "My Country 'Tis of Thee," or 
 "The Star Spangled Banner," played by 
 a marching band thrilled you to the finger- 
 tips.^ Citizenship meant a great deal to 
 you in those days. You did not care simply 
 to play the game of politics and to get 
 your share of the offices, but you did work 
 hard to get the right men into office, to keep 
 the standard of public service high, to 
 serve the nation, the state, the community 
 
 [51] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 in ways accessible to you, because you 
 believed that patriotism means not simply 
 going to war in behalf of native land, but 
 in times of peace, vigilance and attention 
 to the prosaic details that make for the 
 welfare of the people, that keep the water 
 system pure, the schools and libraries up 
 to par, the moral atmosphere free from 
 harmful elements. But somehow you have 
 today lost all interest in practical or theo- 
 retical politics. Caucus night finds you at 
 home instead of at the booth. You take a 
 rather pessimistic view of politics in general. 
 It is too "nasty" for you to soil your hands 
 with. 
 
 Religion once had a charm for you. It 
 seemed to offer an explanation of the mys- 
 teries of this life; it furnished inspiration 
 for manly living day by day. You felt the 
 contagion of noble lives lived under the 
 influence of religion and rejoiced to feel 
 yourself part of that noble company who 
 
 " Through life's long days of strife 
 Still chant their morning song," 
 
 but the zest and power of religion have some- 
 how disappeared. Not merely that you 
 have ceased going to church regularly, 
 or if you go you do so perfunctorily, but 
 
 [52] 
 
THE BURIED LIFE 
 
 you are aware that the fires of a sensitive, 
 religious experience no longer glow. 
 
 Too bad, indeed, is it that these varied 
 types of buried life exist all about us. 
 Those rare, beautiful growths of other years 
 needed to be tended and not to be choked, 
 and it is not their fault that they have been 
 merely suffocated by "other things entering 
 in" and choking them. But it is not too 
 late to resurrect them. The spring is here 
 again. A great many things that we 
 thought were dead are now awakening to 
 new life. You can never be sure that what 
 you thought had gone forever is beyond 
 reviving. Give that which was best and 
 still is best in you a fresh chance. Remove 
 the layers of worldliness, selfishness, pride, 
 ambition that weigh down upon the buried 
 life. Give it light and air and a fair chance 
 and see how wondrously beautiful and strong 
 it yet can become. 
 
 [S3] 
 
THE DRUMMER'S SUNDAY 
 
 MY professional duties involve the 
 spending of a Sunday occasionally 
 in a hotel in some unfamiliar city or 
 town. Invariably I find myself in the com- 
 panionship of a number of traveling men. 
 Agreeable, straightforward gentlemen these 
 "drummers" are, and many an interesting 
 and profitable talk I have had with them 
 at table or in the lobby. These knights of 
 the gripsack carry keen eyes. They know 
 this country well and human nature still 
 better, and they have a racy way of setting 
 forth their observations and opinions. 
 
 I watch with special interest to see how 
 they observe Sunday. Very few of them 
 fail to differentiate it from week-days. Some 
 of them keep it as strictly as I do myself. 
 But in the case of the majority perhaps this 
 is about the program: a late rising and a 
 sauntering into the dining-room for break- 
 fast about as late as the law permits, then 
 the Sunday papers with a cigar and a chat 
 consume most of the hours until dinner. 
 And when that substantial meal is over 
 another cigar, some more conversation, quite 
 
 [54] 
 
THE DRUMMER'S SUNDAY 
 
 likely a nap or a walk or both, and before 
 the day ends, a budget of letters, almost 
 invariably one to "the house" reporting 
 last week's business, while in all probability 
 the route for the coming days has to be 
 sketched out and notifications sent on 
 ahead. So the day slips by with a mixture 
 of rest and business and pleasure and off 
 they go Sunday night or Monday morning 
 to "green fields and pastures new," which 
 means in plain prose to warehouses, shops 
 and factories, and the everlasting effort to 
 sell, sell, sell. 
 
 My first feeling with regard to these enter- 
 prising fellows is one of pity for their enforced 
 and often prolonged absence from home. 
 Some of them get used to it and some of 
 them do not, and the latter, I think, are 
 less to be pitied than the former. Once 
 in a while I see a drummer detach himself 
 from a group of fellow travelers and make 
 for the long-distance telephone booth. In 
 due time he emerges with a fond and happy 
 look in his eyes, for he has been saying good 
 night to the youngsters perhaps two hundred 
 miles away and has been listening to the 
 voice of the woman whom he most loves to 
 hear speak. 
 
 [S5] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 Blessed be the long-distance telephone! 
 It has saved many a homesick man from 
 utter despair, but it is rather expensive, and 
 in lieu of that a good fat letter started home- 
 ward on Sunday will not only bless its recip- 
 ients, but react helpfully on the writer. No 
 drummer ought to omit this. And he ought 
 to try to make it as breezy and hopeful as 
 possible, for hard as it is to be away from his 
 dearest ones, it is no less hard for the "little 
 woman" who stays by the stuff and perhaps 
 for the " kiddies " too. 
 
 And how about getting out the Bible 
 from the gripsack? Only the other Saturday 
 night I was delighted to hear a group of 
 traveling men in a hotel corridor talking, 
 not politics or football, but telling each other 
 what they thought about the Bible. Several 
 were brave enough to declare their belief 
 that it contained a vast amount of sound 
 sense. " What a wonderful leader and states- 
 man Moses was," remarked one In the group. 
 "Yes," chimed in another. "And that 
 man Solomon knew what he was talking 
 about when he wrote the Proverbs." He 
 who thinks the Bible an uninteresting and 
 outworn book is profoundly ignorant, and 
 if you want something that will make your 
 
 [56] 
 
THE DRUMMER'S SUNDAY 
 
 Sundays brighter and better just get out your 
 old Bible and start in almost anywhere. 
 
 Church? Well, we don't know about 
 that. But some traveling men do go and 
 they wouldn't give up the habit for anything. 
 They will even sacrifice an hour or two in bed 
 for it. Enterprising churches post notices 
 in hotel lobbies or send personal invitations 
 to traveling men, but even if the churches 
 are sleepy you can get good from public 
 worship and the chances are that if you 
 will go half-way you will find a cordial 
 welcome. A friend of mine, a drummer, 
 was sitting one Sunday afternoon in a western 
 hotel and suddenly he burst out with this 
 remark, "Boys, let's all go to church to- 
 night." The word was passed around and 
 by seven o'clock twenty-five men filed out 
 of the front door and made their way to 
 the nearest church. What a sensation they 
 created as they were ushered to the best 
 seats on the broad aisle! When the con- 
 tribution-box came around each man, by 
 previous agreement, put in a dollar bill. 
 They haven't even now stopped talking in 
 that church about those drummers and their 
 wonderful and inspiriting visit. 
 
 57 
 
FIXED IDEAS 
 
 WE are hearing frequently today of 
 "fixed ideas." The term usually 
 has an unpleasant savor. It stands for 
 certain unfortunate notions that take posses- 
 sion of men's minds and hold them captive. 
 Doctors and ministers are constantly thrown 
 in contact with people thus unhappily 
 obsessed. A clergyman told me the other 
 day that a man had been to him to try and 
 get relief from the thought that the spirit 
 of a certain dead drunkard had gotten hold 
 of him. Other nervous sufferers brood over 
 this or that real or fancied trouble. This 
 man, who now has money in the bank, is 
 sure that he is going to die in the poorhouse. 
 That woman thinks her husband has stopped 
 loving her. That man grieves over a sin 
 committed twenty years ago. 
 
 The usual method of treating these victims 
 of painful fixed ideas is to try and inject into 
 the mind a counter-irritant in the form of 
 some cheerful, hope-laden thought, trusting 
 that it will in time drive out the evil spirits. 
 May it not be a good plan for all of us before 
 [S8] 
 
FIXED IDEAS 
 
 we become neurasthenics and while we are 
 in a normal physical and mental condition 
 to establish in our minds certain ideas of 
 such positive strength and worth that they 
 will preempt every nook and cranny and 
 make it impossible for malign and distress- 
 ing thoughts to find entrance, much less 
 lodgment? 
 
 Now we do not have to manufacture such 
 ideas or to search far and wide for them. 
 We need not start an independent intellec- 
 tual factory and store it with notions purely 
 of our own production, that will not bear the 
 test of the world's scrutiny. We have but 
 to recognize and accept what has approved 
 itself to the judgment of the centuries, what 
 at the bar of reason today stands forth as 
 the truest and finest thought that the hu- 
 man mind can cherish. Some glorious ideas 
 may be said to be fixed in the thinking of 
 mankind; not that every individual holds 
 them tenaciously, but that they are widely 
 and increasingly current and that they are 
 held most strongly by the prophets, the 
 poets, and the moral leaders of the race. 
 
 The intrinsic worth of goodness is a fixed 
 idea. Men almost universally recognize the 
 sharp line between good and evil. They be- 
 
 [59] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 lieve that the clean, straight life is vastly to 
 be preferred to its opposite. They have come 
 to agree with the great English preacher, 
 Frederick W. Robertson, when he says: 
 "Were there no God and no future life, 
 even then, it would be better to be true 
 than to be false, to be pure than to be 
 impure, to be generous than to be selfish.'' 
 Wild horses cannot drag from the mind of 
 man the idea that goodness Is the great, the 
 supreme test of human life. 
 
 The idea of immortality has also fixed 
 itself in the thinking of mankind. We 
 revolt from the materialism that regards 
 death as extinction of personality. When- 
 ever we lay our dead away, it is with the 
 confident hope that they have not been 
 resolved into nothingness. When we look 
 forward to our own certain end we believe 
 that it will be but the beginning of an 
 ampler existence. Prove it we cannot. It 
 Is enough to feel that "we are mightier 
 than we know." 
 
 Another fixed idea is the Idea of God. 
 It Is vastly harder to believe in no God at 
 all than to believe In some kind of a God. 
 Without him the universe Is unintelligible, 
 and human life a mystery and a mockery. 
 [6ol 
 
FIXED IDEAS 
 
 You may burn men at the stake, you may 
 strip them of all their possessions, but you 
 cannot keep them from believing in God. 
 
 The preeminence of Jesus Christ is still 
 another fixed idea. However theories of 
 his person may differ, the modern world is 
 practically at one in its appreciation of the 
 character of Jesus and of the bearing of his 
 teachings and example on all our modern 
 problems. Science and invention register 
 great advances from year to year, but Jesus 
 retains his mastership of the race. 
 
 Such are a few of the ideas that cling to 
 countless human minds the world over. 
 Why not fix them firmly in our own thinking 
 and act upon them.^ 
 
 6i] 
 
"AFTER YOU, PLEASE" 
 
 IT sometimes requires the services of an 
 expert to determine whether a piece 
 of furniture is genuine mahogany or ordi- 
 nary wood overlaid with a handsome veneer. 
 Neither is it always easy, from casual ac- 
 quaintance, to decide whether politeness in 
 a certain individual is real or superficial. 
 But time will tell. I knew two men in col- 
 lege, one of whom was the most popular 
 fellow in his class, and the other one of the 
 most unpopular, but both were exceedingly 
 deferential and considerate in the presence 
 of others. In the one case, however, the 
 politeness was the natural outflowing of a 
 refined and unselfish character as spon- 
 taneous and beautiful as the blush upon the 
 peach, while in the other case the politeness 
 appeared to be simply a means toward the 
 accomplishment of a selfish end, a species 
 of toadyism by virtue of which he hoped to 
 get the entree into certain circles. But in 
 the long run he lost the favor which he 
 courted, as a man always does who tries to 
 ride into popularity on his gentlemanly 
 manners alone. 
 
 [62] 
 
"AFTER YOU, PLEASE" 
 
 We on this side the water, with our demo- 
 cratic traditions, are inclined to look upon 
 customs in other countries as mere empty 
 formalism. Passing out of a Paris restaurant 
 one day I noticed how my companion, a 
 Parisian, lifted his hat to the lady cashier. 
 "I do it," he explained, "not because she 
 is a lady, but because I am a gentleman." 
 I couldn't help wondering whether it would 
 not be better to be a trifle less polite and 
 a little more truly regardful of the feminine 
 sex. And as between the suave manner 
 with a flinty heart and the brusque manner 
 with the kind heart, give me every time the 
 latter. 
 
 But need a man be brusque in order to 
 be genuine? By no means. Let us get 
 back to the tap-root of politeness, which 
 is a good heart. Starting with that, let a 
 man cultivate the amenities and civilities. 
 Few of us are as considerate as we ought 
 to be of the rights and claims of others. 
 In how many homes is politeness at a mini- 
 mum! When company comes you brush 
 up your manners for a day or two, but 
 when the company departs you forget all 
 about "Thank you" and "If you please." 
 You keep the easy chair in the parlor when 
 
 [63] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 your mother or sister comes in. You dare 
 not be anything else but civil to a compara- 
 tive stranger, but you are hardly decent 
 to your dearest ones. So, too, in business 
 circles. Some proprietors enter their stores 
 or their offices without so much as a pleas- 
 ant "good morning" to office boy or sten- 
 ographer. 
 
 "After you, please" — what a world of 
 hidden meaning there is in this little phrase 
 which we take so lightly upon our lips. 
 It means, when we think it through, that 
 we have made the great renunciation, that 
 we have really chosen to give others prece- 
 dence, that we are willing to follow and 
 not to set the pace, that we are content to 
 be second or third or even fourth. Are we 
 ready to undergo such a personal shrinkage.^ 
 Of one who came nineteen hundred years 
 ago, not to be ministered unto but to minister, 
 it was said in later time, "Jesus Christ was 
 the only perfect gentleman that ever lived." 
 
 [64] 
 
*^SHE COULD, SHE WOULD, SHE 
 DID" 
 
 1 NEVER happened to meet the woman on 
 whose tombstone was carved this epi- 
 taph, but I have met her counterpart many 
 times. And it may profit us all to pause a 
 moment and reflect upon the meaning of 
 such a summing up of a life career. How 
 simple such a characterization is, how un- 
 conventional, how different from the ones 
 which appear with almost wearisome mo- 
 notony in every churchyard. And yet how 
 adequate it is, too, how inclusive and beau- 
 tiful. To be able to utter these six words 
 about any man or woman whose life race 
 is run is as much of a compliment as a 
 large volume of glowing praise. Capacity, 
 willingness, action; when those three traits 
 are properly blended you cannot fail to get 
 a strong, fruitful character. And almost all 
 the tragedies in human life, almost all the 
 mistakes and blunders are due to the ab- 
 sence of one or more of these qualities or to 
 their being faultily related to one another. 
 " She could." There was capacity, to begin 
 
 [6s] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 with. It may be that she possessed wealth 
 or uncommon mental gifts. More likely she 
 had a fund of hope and faith and love. At 
 any rate she had innate ability; but was 
 she any exception to the rest of us? Every 
 mother's son of us possesses some ability, 
 and if we are going to do anything with 
 our lives we must discern what it is, take 
 its dimensions, realize its value. Self-dis- 
 trust is as much of an impediment to prog- 
 ress as self-conceit. "Oh, I can't." How 
 often that depressing phrase is on the lips 
 of people who really know better. Every- 
 body can do something and be something. 
 There is a vast deal of unused good material 
 buried in many a man's nature simply be- 
 cause he has not courage to mine for it and 
 bring it out into the open. Hundreds of 
 persons may be able to do any number of 
 things better than you can, but there is at 
 least one thing and perhaps more that you 
 can do as well as any one else and probably 
 better than a good many others. 
 
 "She would." Capacity was yoked with 
 willingness in this woman's case. "I will 
 try" represented her attitude through life. 
 When people came to her to gain her help 
 in some worthy undertaking, they did not 
 [661 
 
"SHE COULD, WOULD, DID" 
 
 have to break down a great wall of reluc- 
 tance. She was ready to take the responsible 
 post assigned her, to give of her substance, her 
 time, her ingenuity, for the welfare of others. 
 How many desirable reforms would be 
 accomplished, how much faster the chariot 
 of progress would advance, how many 
 struggling little enterprises would gain a 
 solid underpinning, if the people who could 
 help them were only willing to do their part. 
 Oh, cultivate the willing, compliant, and not 
 the demurring, objecting disposition. 
 
 "She did." Ah, there is the fruitage of it 
 all. The world wants people who do things. 
 Many capable and willing individuals stop just 
 short of performance. They possess ability, 
 they are full of kindly intentions, but some- 
 how the letter of sympathy never gets 
 written, the call upon some forlorn person 
 never gets made, the means of personal 
 culture close at hand is never actually laid 
 hold of. So golden days pass away with 
 nothing tangible accomplished. So long ago 
 as the first century there lived a woman by 
 the name of Dorcas, who we have reason 
 to believe was not brilliant intellectually 
 or conspicuous socially, but her fame has 
 lived through the centuries, because, as 
 
 [67] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 the account of her Hfe says, she was "full 
 of good works and almsdeeds which she 
 did." She was handy with her needle 
 and her friends and neighbors profited con- 
 stantly by the garments which she made 
 and distributed generously to those who had 
 need of them. Many of us are full of good 
 works which we never do, which we intend 
 to do tomorrow or next week, but this 
 Dorcas of the first century clung to her 
 intentions till they became realized facts, 
 and therefore she is fitly characterized as 
 "full of good works which she did." There 
 is a little touch of irony in those last three 
 words which ought to make us twinge, 
 when our actual performance comes far 
 short of what we have purposed. 
 
 A good ideal for a man's life Is this: 
 To measure your capacity for efficient work, 
 to cultivate a willing spirit, and then to go 
 ahead and do something. Is not that the 
 secret of a happy, earnest life, not overbusy, 
 but serene, steady, and fruitful? 
 
 [68 
 
"BE SOMEBODY" 
 
 THIS laconic injunction caught my eye 
 the other day. It was the first head- 
 line of a bold-faced advertisement proclaim- 
 ing the advantages of a certain school of 
 correspondence. It offered attractive courses 
 in engineering, architecture, electricity, and 
 a number of other branches of learning, and 
 the inducement held forth was that it does 
 not pay to settle down lazily in a niinor 
 position when by gaining more information 
 one's services would command a higher 
 salary. I can imagine that such an adver- 
 tisement would appeal powerfully to many 
 young men. It suggests a differentiation of 
 oneself from the common herd, a striking 
 out boldly with the hope and expectation of 
 amounting to something. The nobodies are 
 all about us. Some of them are amiable, 
 well-meaning persons. But they lack ginger 
 and go. Negative, colorless they are when 
 the world wants men of conviction, men of 
 action. 
 
 Not so were the men who have really 
 contributed something to humanity. "Be 
 
 [69] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 somebody" whispered a voice in the ears 
 of Tyndale early in the sixteenth century, 
 and he set his teeth and said, "If God spares 
 my life I will make it possible for any plow- 
 boy in England to read the Bible in his 
 own tongue." "Be somebody" was the 
 bugle-call a century ago to Samuel J. Mills, 
 the American pioneer of the modern mission- 
 ary movement, and he wrote in his diary, 
 "No young man ought to think of living 
 without trying to make his influence felt 
 around the globe." "Be somebody" said 
 the inward monitor to Frances Willard, and 
 out of her brain and heart came the splen- 
 did development of the Women's Christian 
 Temperance Union. "Be somebody" was 
 the terse command that spurred William 
 Booth on to organize the Salvation Army. 
 
 And thus, time after time, to the country 
 lad hoeing his father's corn, to the city 
 clerk not content with being a mere drudge, 
 to the society maiden weary of her gayeties, 
 to the middle-aged man conscious that 
 there is yet another chance before the night 
 closes in upon him, has come this incisive 
 voice bidding the one addressed cease being 
 "anybody" or "nobody" and rise to the 
 dignity of "somebody." 
 
 [70] 
 
"BE SOMEBODY" 
 
 It is a noble command. We are meant 
 to be somebodies, to count for all we are 
 worth, to play the game through fairly 
 and vigorously and never be quitters or 
 shirks. The manager of a great corporation 
 said recently that he sought for men to 
 become agents of his company who could 
 impress their individuality upon those with 
 whom the concern did business so that they 
 would not think of it as an abstract entity, 
 but would personify it in the faces and figures 
 of its cheery, whole-souled drummers. To- 
 day, as of yore when conditions were far 
 simpler, people like to do business, not with 
 a tremendous affair known as the Amalga- 
 mated Hair Pin Company Limited, but with 
 Jones and Smith and Brown. 
 
 If we cannot be somebody in the eyes 
 of the big world we can be within a limited 
 area. We can be somebody to our children, 
 our friends, our neighbors, our church asso- 
 ciates. The secret is first to build ourselves 
 up in the finest graces and virtues and then 
 to expend them lavishly on others. 
 
 [71] 
 
"HOW IS BUSINESS?'' 
 
 HOW is business? This is the great 
 . American question. Watch two men 
 accost each other. "How are you?'' "How 
 is your family?" "Do you think it is 
 going to rain?" These are likely to be 
 the first questions, but usually they are in 
 the nature of a polite introduction to the 
 one theme in which both are most interested. 
 All over the land this question is being asked 
 all day long. No solicitude for any states- 
 man or celebrated author who may be ill 
 is quite so keen as the popular desire that 
 this great intangible, semi-personal con- 
 cern of mankind known as business shall 
 suffer no fluctuations of health. Wars are 
 looked upon as a menace to commerce, 
 and therefore organizations of business men 
 express themselves in favor of universal 
 peace. Political campaigns are dreaded lest 
 they should lower the barometer of trade. 
 Prolonged and bitter strikes are disap- 
 proved of, not, perhaps, primarily because 
 of the sufferings they entail upon those 
 most concerned, but because sooner or later 
 they may affect general business. 
 
 [72] 
 
"HOW IS BUSINESS?" 
 
 It is no sign that a man is entirely com- 
 mercialized because he asks this question 
 instinctively. The Book of books has 
 many good words for the man who is 
 not slothful, but diligent in his business. 
 It goes so far as to say that such a man 
 shall stand before kings. An age character- 
 ized by business activity is far in advance 
 of one marked by the barbaric occupations 
 of hunting, fishing, and fighting. The world 
 gets on largely because of the volume of 
 business done in it day by day. That 
 sooner or later gives rise to the refinements 
 and adornments of civilization. Stagnation 
 in business would mean a lessening of 
 libraries and museums, colleges and churches. 
 Business fs, indeed, a divinely ordained 
 function for the great majority of mankind, 
 and millions of men are to work out their 
 salvation and wield their influence in the 
 world as they stand faithful to their duties 
 in offices, shops, banking institutions, and 
 manufacturing concerns. 
 
 But when this question circumscribes 
 the whole horizon of a man's life, it means 
 that he is daily becoming narrow and sordid. 
 He may be adding to his invested funds, 
 but he is growing insensitive to all the higher 
 
 [73] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 concerns of human life, to music, to art, to 
 literature, to friendship, and to the public 
 service. That was the kind of business man 
 Phillips Brooks had in mind once when, in 
 a little fit of impatience, he said, "I declare, 
 I have never met a business man whom I 
 thoroughly liked." 
 
 Certainly, the business man who is nothing 
 but a business man, who, from the time he 
 rises to the time he retires, thinks of nothing 
 but business, is to be pitied. When he 
 has made his pile and is ready to retire, 
 he will find that certain sides of his nature 
 have become atrophied. He may go to 
 Europe on his own private yacht, but all 
 the picture galleries and beautiful churches 
 and natural glories of the Old World will 
 fail to move him as they would have done 
 if he had not so entirely concentrated all 
 his energies upon the making of money. 
 
 Fortunate is the man who, while ambitious 
 and diligent along business lines, does not 
 close all the chambers of his soul to other 
 interests, to the prattle of little children 
 at play, to the movement of the stars in 
 the heavens, to the nourishing words of 
 preacher and poet, to those institutions 
 which represent altruism and make for the 
 
 [74] 
 
"HOW IS BUSINESS?" 
 
 public weal. Perhaps he will not amass 
 quite as great wealth, but he will be ten- 
 fold larger and nobler when he is seventy 
 years old. Wordsworth is right when he 
 sings : 
 
 *' The world is too much with us; late and soon, 
 
 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: 
 Little we see in Nature that is ours; 
 We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! " 
 
 And Charles Dickens, in his immortal 
 Christmas Carol, represents the stingy 
 Scrooge brought to a knowledge of his mean- 
 ness by the ghost of his former partner, 
 Marley. To justify himself Scrooge says 
 in faltering tones, "But you were always 
 such a good man of business, Jacob." To 
 which the ghost replies in words that ought 
 to sink into all our minds, "Business! 
 Mankind was my business. The common 
 welfare was my business; charity, mercy, 
 forbearance, and benevolence were all my 
 business. The dealings of my trade were 
 but a drop of water in the comprehensive 
 ocean of my business!" 
 
 75 
 
OFF DAYS 
 
 " T T E is a pretty good fellow, but he 
 A X has his off days" was the comment 
 of one of his friends regarding a railroad 
 man well known in his community. We all 
 know him, or at least men like him. To- 
 day they are agreeable, obliging, approach- 
 able, altogether delightful. Tomorrow they 
 are as acid as vinegar, and as sullen as an 
 ill-tempered dog. Just what has happened 
 to justify or explain the transformation, 
 no observer possesses discernment enough 
 to tell, and, in fact, nothing, in the way of 
 ill tidings or unpleasant experiences has be- 
 fallen them. Through some unaccountable 
 reason they are simply passing through an 
 off day. And it is not grown people alone 
 who are victims of the malady. Have we 
 not known the dearest children in the world 
 to be one day perfectly angelic and twenty- 
 four hours thereafter perfectly anarchistic in 
 temper and behavior.^ They, too, by some 
 subtle process, which orthodox people would 
 ascribe to the workings of an evil spirit, 
 have undergone a transformation similar to 
 
 [76] 
 
OFF DAYS 
 
 that which made Dr. Jekyll into Mr. 
 Hyde. 
 
 Now the victims of off days are not to be 
 harshly judged, and those of us who are more 
 staid of temperament, who do not know what 
 it is to jump in an instant from a mood of 
 exultation to one of depression, who get up 
 in the morning and go through our routine 
 duties without feeling any special uplift or 
 any special sag, should be patient with our 
 differently constituted brethren and sisters. 
 They really suffer from their occasional off 
 days more than anybody who associates with 
 them suffers. If, sometimes, they seem to 
 rise higher than the rest of us in point of 
 enthusiasm and joy, they sink lower and 
 suffer more. 
 
 And yet the victims of this malady have 
 no right to succumb tamely to it and to 
 impose their own depressed moods and atti- 
 tudes upon their fellow men. They ought 
 rather to accept the off days as a part of 
 the assigned program of their lives and so 
 not be surprised when they come, or to 
 measure all the hope and joy of life by the 
 next twenty-four hours which they are some- 
 how to live through. 
 
 The best cure for off days is to go right 
 
 [77\ 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 along with prescribed duties. This rail- 
 road man to whom I have referred is fortu- 
 nate in being obHged to open the window 
 of his ticket office at just such a time in 
 the morning, to note the coming and going 
 of trains, to attend to the numerous requests 
 of the patrons of the road. His treadmill 
 of duty is really his salvation, and any one 
 who suffers from the same disease may well 
 force himself whenever the off day comes to 
 be even more scrupulous in the performance 
 of his duty and more faithful in every detail. 
 Then, too, in our off days we should draw 
 upon our reserves, should call to mind the 
 bright, radiant days that constitute the 
 real assets of a man's life. Matthew Arnold 
 in one of his noblest poems says: 
 
 "Tasks in hours of insight willed 
 Can be in hours of gloom fulfilled." 
 
 That is the reason why exuberant people 
 sometimes seem to get more out of a given 
 day or a given experience than people of 
 more phlegmatic temperament get; namely, 
 that the larger satisfactions may serve as a 
 kind of reserve fund on which heavy drafts 
 may be made when the clouds gather and 
 the north wind blows. 
 
 [78] 
 
OFF DAYS 
 
 And maybe a person who suffers from the 
 off days' disease should consider whether or 
 not he may get rid altogether of the trouble. 
 It may take a number of years of hard, per- 
 sistent effort, but many a man has overcome 
 the disposition to be depressed and ugly. 
 Various weapons can be used. Health and 
 exercise are important; contact with cheery 
 people helps; the broadening of the mental 
 horizon and the enriching of the artistic and 
 musical sensibilities all fortify a man against 
 the recurrence of his off days, and there is no 
 better weapon than pure and vital religion. 
 
 79 
 
''SAME OLD JOB" 
 
 OVER the telephone the other day I 
 asked a man whom I had not seen 
 for months what he was doing. "Same old 
 job" was the reply, and the tone as well 
 as the language indicated what he thought 
 of it. It was not the note of disgust and 
 open revolt, but rather that of "grin and 
 bear it," of patient acquiescence in the 
 inevitable, together with the abandonment 
 of hope that things would ever be better. 
 
 It seemed as if the voices of multitudes 
 were speaking over the wire. I could hear 
 the unvoiced complaint of the man who 
 opens and shuts a gate all day long, the 
 man who hands out tickets through a window, 
 the man who delivers milk at the back door 
 in the gray of the morning, the woman who 
 stitches away on a garment, the woman 
 who washes dishes, who mends the children's 
 garments, the woman who attends to the 
 fretful and demanding babies. In fact, the 
 whole multitude of persons condemned to 
 a single kind of task, and that in itself 
 terribly monotonous, spoke in that one 
 
 [80] 
 
"SAME OLD JOB" 
 
 man's response over the wire, "Same old 
 job." 
 
 Modern life presents no greater single 
 personal problem than that of securing an 
 honest and cheerful measure of service on 
 the part of the multitudes to whom the 
 progress and differentiation of industry has 
 assigned relatively small and menial tasks 
 of a treadmill character. The same personal 
 problem confronts even those who have 
 higher tasks, who do not have to delve and 
 grind in the midst of material things, but 
 who, nevertheless, do not escape that sense 
 of weariness because of unyielding obstacles, 
 cramping limitations, and only a moderate 
 degree of success when their ambition is 
 spurring them to larger achievements. And 
 so it becomes a very vital question to all of 
 us, how can we face the "same old job" 
 morning by morning with new courage, 
 initiative, and hope.^ 
 
 First, by looking at it as a new task. 
 That may seem altogether impossible, if 
 we have sat in the same chair or stood 
 behind the same counter for ten, fifteen, or 
 twenty years; but it is within the field of 
 the possible, provided one has determination 
 enough. Try it some day and approach 
 [8i] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 the old duty as though you had never seen 
 it before, and see if it does not present to 
 you some new and inspiring aspects. 
 
 Or we might think of the next day's 
 service as the last one we should ever render. 
 That might make things seem a little solemn, 
 to be sure, but it would prevent us, perhaps, 
 from careless and slipshod work, from leav- 
 ing any raw edges for our successor to 
 deal with. The wonderful thing about the 
 work of Jesus Christ was that he finished 
 it, left it in precisely the right shape for 
 his followers to take it up and carry on. 
 
 There is incentive, too, in trying to imagine 
 how some other man would do the same 
 thing. Suppose the President could spare 
 a day from the White House and the over- 
 sight of this nation to do your job, how would 
 he approach it.^ What new ways and im- 
 proved methods would he employ.^ What 
 kind of a spirit would he show.'* What 
 would be his attitude to his employers and 
 the concern as a whole? How would he 
 deal with the problem.^ This "other man" 
 is not an impossibility or a myth. He may 
 turn up any day, and you would better 
 anticipate his coming by trying to do as 
 well as he would do in your place. 
 
 [82] 
 
"SAME OLD JOB" 
 
 And the last and chief source of fresh 
 courage for the "same old job" is the con- 
 solation of being a soldier on duty. Unless 
 we get some sense of the control and guid- 
 ance of our life by a higher power we shall 
 be apt once and again to recoil from the 
 monotony and strain and irksomeness. But 
 suppose you can say, "God wants me here. 
 He put me here; from all I can see he 
 wants me and no one else here. When he 
 wants me elsewhere, he will give me release. 
 I don't deserve promotion, unless I have 
 done my level best just here and now" — 
 what a new phase that puts on the old 
 task! The great theologian, Horace Bushnell, 
 once preached a sermon entitled, "Every 
 man's life a plan of God." To fulfil that 
 plan is better than to get riches or fame, 
 and in the long run, in proportion as we 
 do our part toward its fulfilment, we obtain 
 our greatest happiness. 
 
 [83] 
 
THE COURAGE TO PART WITH 
 THINGS 
 
 WE are frequently admonished to hold 
 on to what we have. "Do not 
 leave any articles in the car" is the injunc- 
 tion of some brakemen at the end of the 
 journey. Some of us acquire a passion for 
 hoarding, and if we live long in one place 
 accumulate a lot of things which may be 
 of no earthly good to us, but which we 
 are not courageous enough to throw away. 
 Some rooms impress you, on entering them, 
 with being cluttered; too many knicknacks 
 and gewgaws. It might be a blessing to 
 that family to have to move; then perhaps 
 they would discriminate between the real 
 and the spurious artistic adornments. 
 
 If we all went through our personal 
 belongings we should probably find a good 
 many things that were better off in the waste- 
 basket than in drawers and on shelves. 
 Take the problem of old letters; what's 
 the use of saving so many.^ Some people 
 even go so far as to preserve every scrap 
 of a note that comes into their possession. 
 
 [84] 
 
TO PART WITH THINGS 
 
 They could produce the letter that John 
 Jones wrote them in 1878 with regard to 
 the state of the weather in West Podunk. 
 Certain letters that have to do with great 
 events and crises it is desirable to keep, 
 and a ma.n will think long before he throws 
 away the tender missives he received in 
 college or boarding-school from his father 
 and mother. Into them went the very 
 life-blood of the ones who gave him his 
 being, and the counsel and love crystallized 
 into written language are worth more to 
 him than an inheritance of riches. 
 
 One or two guiding principles may help 
 us to discriminate concerning what we 
 would better keep and what we would 
 better destroy or pass on to some one else. 
 In the first place, it does not pay to hold 
 on to the things that hinder us from grow- 
 ing. That to which we cling may have 
 served good uses in its time, but it no longer 
 helps us to be better or happier. Even 
 sacred mementos may sometimes be so 
 violently cherished by us that they act 
 as a drain upon our nervous energies and 
 our moral force. I have heard recently of 
 a grieving mother, who every day takes out 
 a little shoe worn once by a fair laddie, 
 
 [85] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 who no longer makes music in that home, but 
 who has gone to the fairer life, where "their 
 angels do always behold the face of my Father 
 which is in heaven." 
 
 This mother sheds copious tears each day, 
 as she looks at this little memento of the 
 one who was her pride and joy; but mean- 
 time she is nervous, listless, out of touch 
 with life, living with her memories and not 
 with her hopes. So the little shoe, dear 
 as it is, becomes a drag on her, even a 
 chain, to keep her back from the real con- 
 solation that comes to us in the presence 
 of death; namely, the effort to take our 
 place once again and do our work in a world 
 which still holds for us joy, if we will only 
 shake ourselves free of the fetters that would 
 bind us to the past. 
 
 Another guiding principle is consideration 
 as to whether in the place of the things we 
 are loath to part with we can substitute 
 something better. You do not want, for 
 example, a creed, out of which the real life 
 has gone, which the discoveries of scholar- 
 ship have rendered obsolete, which your 
 own religious experience has already outrun. 
 You do not want any text-book, or even 
 story-book, the reading of which will prevent 
 [86] 
 
TO PART WITH THINGS 
 
 you from reading a better one. You do not 
 want, my wealthy but parsimonious friend, 
 the hundred dollars which some Armenian 
 orphan, just bereft of his parents and hungry 
 and naked, needs more than you do at this 
 moment. 
 
 Our business is with the present. Let us 
 always remember that. We would better 
 throw away a good many things when we 
 are through with them, lest they litter up 
 the place where we live, and even worse 
 than that, lest they fetter our lives in the 
 pursuit of the things that are most worth 
 while. The really brave man is he who can 
 let some things go when they have served 
 their uses and have ceased to yield anything 
 to the development of character. 
 
 87] 
 
LIFE ON EASY STREET 
 
 I HAVE never been able to acquire any 
 property on Easy Street, but since a 
 few friends and acquaintances are just now 
 residing there I am somewhat familiar with 
 its life. It is an interesting and charming 
 little community. I like to study it as I pay 
 an occasional call or visit to the street. 
 
 There are my friends the Welloffs, for ex- 
 ample. They never had any children and 
 WellofF once confided to me that neither of 
 them very much cared. And when I ven- 
 tured to suggest that they adopt one he 
 rejoined, "What do you take us for any- 
 way!" Relieved of all parental responsi- 
 bilities, they come and go as they please. 
 Almost every winter they spend at least a 
 few weeks in Florida or Egypt or some other 
 balmy region. They are very hospitable 
 when at home and I have met in their 
 drawing-room some of the leading artists 
 and musicians of the city. Once in a while 
 they develop a rather ephemeral interest in 
 some popular charity, and Mrs. Welloff was 
 for one season the president of the Anti- 
 [88] 
 
LIFE ON EASY STREET 
 
 Public Expectoration League. I like to dine 
 at the Welloffs. The eight courses are al- 
 ways delicious and faultlessly served as well. 
 Their house is full of fascinating antiques and 
 curios from all parts of the world. Somehow, 
 I miss, however, the little shoes and dollies 
 that might be here or there. But Mrs. Well- 
 off is very fond of her canary and once sat up 
 nearly all night to tend it when it was sick. 
 Just opposite the Welloffs is the fine stone 
 mansion which belongs to my college class- 
 mate, Jack Chameleon, or to speak more 
 exactly, to his wife, for after Jack had 
 struggled along two or three years in his 
 profession, a rich and estimable young lady 
 captured his fancies and responded to his 
 advances. They are now enrolled among 
 the substantial people of the town. They 
 have a number of children and plenty of 
 servants to look after them, though they 
 themselves never scant their parental duties. 
 Perhaps it is my imagination, but it has 
 seemed to me as if Chameleon ceased to 
 feel the pressure upon him of the fight for 
 daily bread, for he was poorer than most 
 of us in college. Chameleon has undergone 
 quite a cooling of professional ambitions. 
 Though he maintains nominally office hours 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 they are well inside the limit of even a 
 seven-hour working day. Not that he has 
 altogether degenerated intellectually, but 
 when I asked him the other day about 
 that book which used to glow in his imagi- 
 nation as a possibility of the future before 
 he met Mrs. C, he jokingly replied, "Oh, 
 well, there are a lot of books of that type 
 afloat now and if I should ever get mine out I 
 doubt if it would find the public. Come over 
 and play golf, won't you, some afternoon.^" 
 There is another house on Easy Street 
 where I call occasionally, but not so fre- 
 quently as when little Elsie Sweetface was 
 just beginning to toddle. What a fascina- 
 ting little creature she was then! She is 
 very pretty now at nine, but somehow 
 her face often takes on a discontented 
 and petulant expression. Things have been 
 made very easy for Elsie all these nine 
 years. The understanding was that if she 
 cried for a thing she had better have it. 
 "Get along with her as easily as you can," 
 I once heard her mother remark to the nurse. 
 She was bathed and clothed and fed long 
 after the time when she ought to have begun 
 to attend to these daily processes herself. 
 When the public school proved a little hard 
 
 [90] ■ 
 
LIFE ON EASY STREET 
 
 she was sent to a private school. Indeed, 
 her entire life has been ordered from the 
 point of view of what would be most easy 
 and agreeable for Elsie. I wonder if at 
 thirty or even at eighteen she will thank 
 her parents for their over-indulgence of her. 
 As you drive through Easy Street and 
 view the well-kept lawns and comfortable 
 dwellings the tone of things gratifies all your 
 esthetic susceptibilities. And I know some 
 people on the street who are living just as 
 earnest and self-sacrificing lives as are being 
 lived anywhere in the world today. Indeed 
 I sometimes have a drawing toward Easy 
 Street myself. And yet if these are the 
 alternatives ^ I know which I would choose 
 for myself and children. As between Easy 
 Street and a flabby intellect and Hardship 
 Lane with an alert and acquisitive mind, 
 as between Easy Street with a dull con- 
 science and Hardship Lane with an active 
 one, as between Easy Street with a patroniz- 
 ing, condescending spirit and Hardship Lane 
 with a truly democratic one, as between Easy 
 Street with an ossifying heart and Hardship 
 Lane with sympathies as wide as the world, 
 I can decide in one second which I would 
 choose. 
 
 [91] 
 
THE STANDSTILLS OF LIFE 
 
 YOU are traveling a crowded, narrow 
 thoroughfare. The stream of human- 
 ity advances slowly and with many turns 
 and twists. In the street the drays, wagons, 
 and motor vehicles barely crawl along. Sud- 
 denly everything stops. Something has hap- 
 pened to impede further progress in any 
 direction. It makes no difference how impor- 
 tant your engagement somewhere else, you 
 must wait until the policeman straightens 
 out the tangle. 
 
 Sometimes in the early spring after a mild 
 period that has started the buds there comes 
 a succession of chilly, dreary days. The faint 
 signs of new vegetation grow no more pro- 
 nounced. It looks as if there has been a 
 relapse into winter and you say, "Summer 
 will never come." 
 
 The business of a great nation, which has 
 moved forward for a number of years by 
 leaps and bounds, returning rich rewards to 
 those who conduct it, suddenly suffers an 
 arrest. The chill of an inexplicable fear lays 
 its paralyzing hand upon many industries. 
 
 [92] 
 
STANDSTILLS OF LIFE 
 
 "The country is all right," you say, "but 
 there is no gainsaying the fact that we have 
 come to a halt for the present." A reform 
 movement is strongly inaugurated and moves 
 on splendidly for a while. But before long 
 the wheels drive hard. Popular interest 
 flags. The champions of this worthy cause 
 are subjected to ridicule and even abuse. 
 It begins to look as if they were visionary 
 and too much in advance of public senti- 
 ment. The movement halts or even appar- 
 ently recedes. 
 
 A strong, ambitious man with far-reaching 
 plans only half realized is suddenly laid low 
 on a bed of illness. The interests with which 
 he has been identified suffer. Another may 
 be found to take up his work, at least in part, 
 but his own career halts for a time, the length 
 of which he can only conjecture; invalidism 
 holds him as its prisoner. 
 
 Now what shall we say about these stand- 
 stills of life which in one form or another 
 few of us escape? First, that, irritating as 
 they are, they are meant to make us broader 
 and better men and women. We may be 
 too intent on one end. We must be made 
 to think about something else for a little 
 while. We may be and probably are far 
 
 [93] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 too self-absorbed and self-centered. So we 
 are suddenly, and, as we think, almost ruth- 
 lessly halted in order that our thought and 
 sympathy may flow out in other directions. 
 
 Again the period of standstill may be 
 utilized by us to good advantage. While 
 you are waiting for the street blockade to 
 cease you can patronize the apple woman, 
 or send your thought above high buildings 
 to the blue dome of heaven. While business 
 halts, you can reexamine your commercial 
 methods and projects in the light of the 
 highest ethical standards. While your pet 
 reform sufl'ers a temporary eclipse you can 
 ask whether the intensity of your zeal is 
 matched with a spirit of patience and a 
 good temper that refuses to be disconcerted 
 even under adverse criticism. While you 
 are ill you can make your sick-room as 
 Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry Drum- 
 mond made theirs, a place of peace and of 
 unfailing cheeriness for those who resort 
 thither. 
 
 Depend upon it, the standstills of life are 
 among its most blessed boons. They have 
 their great compensations, and whatever is 
 worth while in our characters and in our 
 purposes will suffer no permanent arrest. 
 
 [94] 
 
SNAP JUDGMENTS 
 
 WHAT an ungracious thing It was In 
 that dignified banker to refuse to 
 recognize you on the street the other day. 
 It is not the first time, either, that he has 
 been so discourteous. It cannot be that 
 he did not know you, for you have talked 
 with him half a dozen times. It" must be 
 that he is an aristocrat, pure and simple. 
 
 The young woman who conversed so vol- 
 ubly at the boarding-house table the other 
 night, in fact monopolizing the conversation 
 and dealing .chiefly in frivolities, surely can- 
 not stand for much in the intellectual or 
 moral realm. A pity it is that so many of 
 our American girls are given over to dress, 
 display, and society chit-chat, with no interest 
 in better things. 
 
 How lacking in neighborhood spirit is that 
 family which moved into the big house on 
 the boulevard a few months ago ! The mem- 
 bers do not seem disposed either to make or 
 to return calls. They seldom show them- 
 selves at public gatherings. Evidently they 
 consider themselves quite above the ordinary 
 
 [95] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 run of their fellow men and are entirely lack- 
 ing in community spirit. 
 
 Is there any stingier man in town than 
 the rich merchant who turns down so many 
 subscription papers presented to him at his 
 office? He could easily afford to subsidize 
 almost any of the causes which seek his 
 charity. He must be hoarding all his money 
 for his distant relatives since he has no near 
 ones. 
 
 Thus we go on adding snap judgment to 
 snap judgment, basing our impressions on a 
 very limited acquaintance, and not hesita- 
 ting to circulate our opinion broadcast. Now 
 what are the facts? 
 
 The courtly old banker is really every inch 
 a gentleman. He would never knowingly 
 slight any one. But he often gets absorbed 
 in trains of thought which so preoccupy his 
 mind that, as he walks along the street, he 
 practically sees no one, or if his gaze happens 
 to rest upon others they have no more indi- 
 viduality than the lamp-posts. It may be 
 an unfortunate habit, but it gives no true 
 idea of his real disposition. 
 
 She whom you denominated frivolous was 
 trying to liven up a rather somber company 
 around the dinner-table and she was espe- 
 
 [96] 
 
SNAP JUDGMENTS 
 
 cially anxious to lift her aunt, whose pro- 
 tege she is, out of the dumps. This is the 
 reason why her conversation rippled along. 
 She was trying to recall the interesting and 
 laughable incidents of the day for the sake 
 of others, when it would have been much 
 more agreeable to her to keep silent. The 
 truth is, she is a wide reader and a thorough 
 student. She gives an afternoon each week 
 to visit among the poor. She dresses well, 
 but why shouldn't she? She has plenty of 
 money. But she is far from being a heart- 
 less society girl. 
 
 And that family that holds itself so aloof 
 from the life of the town has its own special 
 sorrow. There are good and sufficient rea- 
 sons why t-hey do not invite people to their 
 home or mingle in the life of the neighbor- 
 hood. Some time the skeleton in the closet 
 will depart and then their neighbors will 
 know how good and friendly they really 
 are. 
 
 The stingy curmudgeon who turns down 
 the subscription papers gives every week far 
 more money than most of his critics give in 
 ten years. He has a large number of private 
 charities; he makes a specialty of widows and 
 orphans. He bestows many gifts where the 
 
 [97] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 name of the donor is never known to the re- 
 cipient. He is averse to subscription papers 
 and he does not care to exploit his own per- 
 sonaHty by affixing his name to libraries, 
 schools, and colleges. 
 
 Let us beware of snap judgments. Let 
 us construe our fellow men, their motives and 
 actions, in a large, generous fashion. If it is 
 possible to infer something to their credit 
 from their behavior, even though on the sur- 
 face it might appear rather discreditable to 
 them, let us seek, if possible, to discover and 
 promulgate a more favorable interpretation, 
 and in cases where that more favorable con- 
 struction does not easily appear, why not 
 suspend judgment for a while .^ 
 
 Remember, too, that we are all liable to 
 be the victims of snap judgments. The great 
 teacher of Nazareth spoke golden words 
 when he said to his disciples, *' Judge not, 
 that ye be not judged. For with what . . . 
 measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto 
 you again." 
 
 I98] 
 
THE ART OF APPRECIATION 
 
 ONCE on a time a lad employed in a 
 home of wealth and culture, much to 
 everybody's surprise, gave up his job of run- 
 ning errands and scouring the brasses, and 
 departed. A friend asked him why he had 
 acted thus. "Weren't you well fed.?" "Yes." 
 "Weren't you well paid.?" "Yes." "Weren't 
 you well treated.?" "Yes." "What was the 
 matter then.?" "Well, I'll tell you. They 
 treated me well enough and it's likely that 
 at the next place I won't get as much money 
 _or as comfortable a bed. But I just wanted 
 them to say'once in a while, * Well done, little 
 oe. 
 Little Joe spoke for a great many people 
 besides himself. After one has done his little 
 best over and over again, and studied to 
 please in every particular, he is hardly human 
 if he does not crave a bit of appreciation. 
 Not that the right-minded person cares for 
 flattery. He abhors that and suspects the 
 one who brings it of some ulterior designs. 
 But appreciation is an altogether different 
 article from fawning praise. It is the just 
 
 [991 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 and accurate estimate of work done and 
 service rendered. 
 
 How many persons who receive benefits of 
 various kinds accept them quite as a matter 
 of course. A friend of mine, through his 
 personal influence at Washington, helped to 
 secure a pension for the widow of a soldier. 
 It amounted to several hundred dollars annu- 
 ally, and when I remarked, "She must have 
 been mighty grateful to you,'' my friend re- 
 plied with a cynical little shrug, "She never 
 thanked me." 
 
 Let there be more appreciativeness in the 
 home. You'll get quicker and more com- 
 plete obedience from that fine but sometimes 
 very perplexing boy of yours if you make 
 him aware that you note with approval the 
 struggles he does make to toe the mark, the 
 self-denial he now and then practises in order 
 to comply with your wishes. To bring up 
 children in an atmosphere which lacks the 
 elements that parental fondness and appre- 
 ciativeness contribute to it is like putting a 
 tender tropical plant into the hard, cold 
 ground on a November day. Children in 
 the home, pupils in the school thrive and 
 blossom into strong and lovely characters 
 when they have the proper amount of ap- 
 [ loo ] 
 
ART OF APPRECIATION 
 
 preciation. On the other hand, the boys and 
 girls themselves need to appreciate their 
 parents, and it is to be feared that in this 
 age, when parents are doing more for their 
 children than ever before, there has not been 
 a corresponding increase of deference and 
 considerateness on the part of the children. 
 
 In the shop and factory there is the same 
 righteous demand for appreciation, not of 
 laziness or slipshod work, but of fidelity, of 
 long-continued acceptable service, of the con- 
 tribution which even the humblest worker is 
 making to the success of the concern. Our 
 labor problem would be nearer solution if em- 
 ployers oftener said, "Well done, little Joe." 
 
 The church is another field for the exercise 
 of the art of appreciation. If your pastor 
 helps you, tell him so. Don't be afraid of 
 spoiling him. Ministers don't spoil so easily 
 nowadays. That was a beautiful motto 
 which a church once put on the wall to 
 welcome a pastor returning from a long 
 vacation, "We love you and we tell you so." 
 
 Let's begin this next week and be more 
 appreciative. And does not courtesy, to 
 say nothing now of higher considerations, 
 demand that now and then, at least, we 
 say "Thank you" to God.? 
 [lOl] 
 
OUR HUMAN ISLANDS 
 
 DID you ever live or sojourn on an 
 island? If so, can you remember 
 lying upon the sands some midsummer day 
 and listening to the gentle splashing of the 
 waters or watching the far-away sails? Your 
 idle revery made more acute your sense of 
 detachment from the mainland, of isolation 
 from the great world of affairs, of being 
 shut in with your own thoughts and emo- 
 tions, and, as it were, cut off from former 
 associations and interests. That must have 
 been the feeling of the great Napoleon when 
 exiled on the island of St. Helena, and that 
 must have made the punishment peculiarly 
 bitter for one who had figured so conspicu- 
 ously in European politics. 
 
 Herein is a parable. We are all more or 
 less islanders. We send out our little boats 
 that meet, salute, and pass one another and 
 perhaps exchange commodities, but still we 
 are separated by great gulfs and inlets from 
 our fellow men. We live under the same 
 roof with our kindred, we work in the same 
 store with those whom we have known from 
 [ 102] 
 
OUR HUMAN ISLANDS 
 
 childhood, we go in and out on the trains 
 year after year with the same people, and 
 yet how far apart we may be from them in 
 all the movement of our inner life, in our 
 hopes and ideals, in our thought of God 
 and duty and heaven. Scientists tell us 
 that even the tiny molecules do not touch 
 one another, but whirl about in space in 
 their independent orbits. And how few 
 human lives really meet and melt into a 
 common purpose. 
 
 Pathetic from some points of view indeed 
 is this isolation. It certainly makes a great 
 appeal for charity in our judgment of others. 
 Said a woman who had recently lost her 
 husband, "I am sorry to decline invitations 
 to social functions. I don't want to be self- 
 ish in my grief, but whenever I go to places 
 where I used to go with him, the sense of his 
 absence is so keen that I can hardly bear it. 
 It seems as if I were living on an island. My 
 life is so partial, so incomplete, so broken, 
 that I cannot enter heartily and joyously 
 into the old pleasures and merrymakings. 
 My greater half is gone. People about me 
 do not begin to realize how far away in 
 spirit I am from them." This widow repre- 
 sents the great army of the bereaved, toward 
 [103] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 whom we who have not thus suffered should 
 extend the utmost consideration and not let 
 our own joy in earthly things jar upon their 
 lonely spirits. 
 
 Sympathy and tact are needed, too. There 
 comes a time when every growing boy draws 
 apart from his mother. She finds it hard to 
 understand his reserve; she yearns for the 
 old confidential relationship. But let her 
 not chafe under the new conditions. Her 
 boy is undergoing those pangs of self-dis- 
 covery which accompany the first experience 
 of adolescence; he is coming to a knowledge 
 of his own individuality; he will have to 
 dwell apart for a time on his island. But if 
 he has been surrounded by right influences 
 hitherto, he will in due time reestablish the 
 precious relationship with his mother, though 
 on a different plane. 
 
 The girl comes home, having completed 
 her college course. She is no longer a girl, 
 but a young woman. It is hard for her to 
 adjust herself to her old place in the family. 
 Her parents feel a difference in her. Mis- 
 understandings may easily grow up if the 
 parents insist on too great close conformity 
 to former practises. Give her time to work 
 out her personal problem. As she retires 
 [ 104] 
 
OUR HUMAN ISLANDS 
 
 into her island, believe that she will learn 
 lessons there to be gained nowhere else. 
 
 On the other hand, people conscious of the 
 gulf between them and others should beware 
 of becoming narrow and provincial. One 
 whose own life has become sharply defined 
 from others should not be proud of his 
 isolation nor let the spirit of reticence and 
 detachment grow upon him. We are still 
 a part of the human race, sharers in the 
 great elemental human passions. We must 
 not become hermits and anchorites. 
 
 The last book of the Bible was written by 
 a man living on an island, who apparently 
 fretted sometimes over his limitations and 
 looked eagerly forward to the time when 
 there shoulS be "no more sea" cutting him 
 off from continents and empires. And the 
 ideal for all of us sooner or later is so to link 
 our lives to others that, without sacrificing 
 our personality, we shall feel the thrill and 
 inspiration of kinship with humanity. That 
 time ought to come sooner or later for all of 
 us. As a poet has said, 
 
 " When we are dead, when you and I are dead, 
 Have rent and tossed aside each earthly fetter, 
 Have wiped the grave dust from our wondering eyes, 
 And stand together fronting the sunrise, 
 I think that we shall know each other better." 
 
 [105] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 But we need not wait for death to bring 
 us into closer, tenderer relations to others. 
 While we arc still island dwellers, we may 
 hoist our beacons and send forth over the 
 waves the gleam of a friendly light. 
 
 [io6] 
 
THE RESERVES IN HUMAN NATURE 
 
 NOTHING is more admirable in the 
 being called man than the power he 
 possesses to rise to an emergency and by 
 drawing upon his reserves to meet bravely 
 an unexpected test or carry to successful 
 conclusion a difficult undertaking. 
 
 Think of the reserves of patience which en- 
 able the mother, for example, to endure the 
 demands which careless and sometimes irri- 
 tating children make upon her. The child- 
 less woman looks on with wonder. She has 
 never taken any lessons in the school of 
 parenthood 'and therefore she has not stored 
 up a supply of that particular grace which 
 a mother needs. And the manual laborer 
 is another person whose supply of patience 
 challenges respect. He has to have it in 
 order to keep at his monotonous task day 
 after day and fulfil with almost machine- 
 like precision his part in the social and in- 
 dustrial scheme. There are in many a man 
 also reserves of heroism. As you see Smith 
 or Jones on the prosaic plane of their daily 
 existence, you might not pick either of them 
 [107] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 out as conspicuous examples of the heroic, 
 and they are both, like the rest of us, blends 
 of strength and weakness. But wait a bit. 
 Something may happen tonight or tomorrow 
 that will make this same Jones or Smith a 
 popular hero. He will be rushing into a 
 burning building and rescuing a sleeping 
 child, or he will stand at his post on the 
 front of the car when by jumping he might 
 avoid a serious accident that may maim him 
 for life. Or he will meet some financial re- 
 verse or some personal bereavement with a 
 fortitude of which we had never suspected 
 him to be capable. 
 
 "Hurrah for Jones!" we will be saying. 
 What good stuff there is in him, isn't there.'* 
 Even more beautiful and inspiring are the 
 reserves of kindness and generosity which 
 multitudes of men and women possess and 
 draw upon readily when they are demanded. 
 The world is far more tender than it was in 
 former ages. How the millions of dollars do 
 roll up when a great catastrophe does its 
 devastating. work! Cheerful, unforced giving 
 it is, the fruit of real sympathy and pity. 
 Bravo for human nature, we say again, as men 
 of all creeds and no creeds unite to mitigate 
 the woes of sufferers thousands of miles away. 
 [io8] 
 
HUMAN NATURE 
 
 And what we witness on a large scale is 
 duplicated daily in every city and hamlet of 
 the land on a small scale as neighbor goes to 
 neighbor on some errand of help or comfort, 
 as friend stands by friend in distress, as 
 brothers spring to the succor of their brothers 
 who have fallen behind in the race. 
 
 Yes, indeed, this poor weak humanity of 
 ours is capable of far greater things than is 
 often realized. And each individual can do 
 more and bear more, and when the pinch 
 comes lend a stronger hand to others than 
 we have been in the habit of doing, if we 
 will only call out our reserves. And we can 
 face temptation, too, and down it in reliance 
 upon these same reserves of character. We 
 need never, even when sorely pressed, yield 
 a single point to the enemy of our souls if 
 we bethink ourselves of the reenforcements 
 within easy call. 
 
 Of course, the securing of these reserves 
 is a matter of forethought and of planning. 
 We shall never have any reserves in the bank 
 to draw upon when the proverbial rainy day 
 comes, if we do not begin to save now. We 
 shall never have any funds of valuable infor- 
 mation to enrich our lives and the lives of 
 others unless we improve our present chance 
 [109] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 to study, read, and acquire facts and truths. 
 We shall never have any reserves of virtue 
 which may save the day for us, as the arrival 
 of Bliicher saved the day for Wellington at 
 Waterloo, unless we commence at once to 
 lead virtuous, self-denying, and sympathetic 
 lives. 
 
 [no] 
 
THE GOOD LISTENER 
 
 ON my morning walk I frequently find 
 myself behind two gentlemen who 
 usually accompany each other to their places 
 of business. Both are men of culture and of 
 standing in the community. Yet I notice 
 that one does nearly all the talking. He 
 seems extremely interested in his own views 
 and presents them to his companion with 
 much animation. Sometimes he gesticulates 
 vigorously. I am seldom near enough to play 
 unintentionally the part of eavesdropper, but 
 I should judge that a variety of timely and 
 profitable' themes were being discussed, as 
 might naturally be expected when men get 
 to be pretty intimate acquaintances. But 
 the silence of one of these men and the 
 volubility of the other are what impress me, 
 and I find myself wishing that the lips of 
 Mr. Ready-to-Talk would be sealed for a 
 while in order to give the man who listens 
 to him with such uniform politeness a 
 chance to air his views; for being a man of 
 ideas and of convictions, he certainly has 
 something well worth saying. 
 
 [Ill] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 These men represent two types. One has 
 cultivated the art of expression and the 
 other the art of listening. One art is per- 
 haps as important as the other, but does not 
 the listening capacity come first in order of 
 time? If as a child you did not listen to 
 your parents, your teacher, your minister, 
 if you did not learn to hold your attention 
 firmly upon the speaker, if you did not gain 
 some comprehension of the fact that the 
 acquisition of knowledge depends on the 
 ability to listen at the right time and in 
 the right way to the right person, then 
 you are to be pitied. The single, beautiful 
 glimpse we have of the boyhood of the Per- 
 fect Child reveals him in the temple among 
 the doctors *'both hearing them, and asking 
 them questions." Even one possessed with 
 wisdom far beyond his years needed to main- 
 tain all through his life the attitude of a 
 listener. 
 
 When we undertake to cooperate with 
 others we find it essential to listen to what 
 they have to say. Have you never talked 
 with a person who, you were absolutely sure, 
 was not hearing a word you said, though for 
 politeness' sake he tried to appear as if he 
 were listening.^ But he was only waiting 
 [112] 
 
THE GOOD LISTENER 
 
 for you to get through so that he could 
 ventilate his own opinions. A genuine con- 
 versation with that sort of person is an 
 impossibility. He is to all practical pur- 
 poses a soliloquist. He seeks your society 
 for the moment, not because he wants to 
 know your views, but because he cannot 
 repress his own any longer. 
 
 The more civil attitude, the attitude which 
 enables men actually to confer on subjects of 
 common interest, presupposes that one's own 
 information is not complete and that the 
 other man or the other group of men has 
 something to oifer which will instruct and 
 enrich you. 
 
 These are days when it is of the utmost 
 importance 'for each of us to cultivate the 
 listening attitude, to be hospitable to new 
 ideas, at least to the extent of informing 
 ourselves as to exactly what those who ad- 
 vocate them mean. Here is a new theory 
 of the inspiration of the Bible, here is a new 
 program for our social and industrial rela- 
 tionships. Why should we close our ears 
 to its advocates? Who knows- but we may 
 hear something to our lasting advantage? 
 There are voices not of earth to which it 
 pays us to turn a listening ear occasionally. 
 
 [1131 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 There is no deafness so deplorable as that 
 which prevents us from hearing what God 
 would say to us, in the quiet of the dawn 
 or in the lull that comes at sunset, in the 
 solitude of the woods and along crowded 
 human highways. Let us take to heart 
 Longfellow's exquisite lines: 
 
 " Listen to voices in the upper air, 
 Lose not thy simple faith in mysteries. 
 
 [114] 
 
HUMAN BEINGS AS LINKS 
 
 "T'M only a link," said one of the most 
 X useful women in the world laughingly 
 the other day. She was referring to the 
 fact that she had recently been the means 
 of bringing together a youth who wanted 
 to work and an employer of labor who was 
 looking for that kind of a fellow. That is 
 just what she has been doing in one way and 
 another all the sixty years of her modest 
 and unselfish career. A wide acquaintance 
 in the working classes, together with an 
 entree into circles of wealth and influence, 
 has given her the joy and privilege of act- 
 ing as a go-between in almost innumerable 
 cases. So if there is in her community a 
 middle-aged spinster desirous of a position 
 as housekeeper, or a lady wanting a com- 
 panion for a European trip, or a weary 
 mother eager for a helper with her children, 
 or a young man anxious for a chance to 
 work for his board while taking a course 
 in architecture or engineering, or a Sunday- 
 school superintendent seeking in despair a 
 bright teacher for a class of restless boys, it 
 
 [IIS] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 has come to be a matter of course for those 
 acquainted with the situation to say, "Oh, 
 go to Miss Greatheart, she'll know the right 
 party." 
 
 We all owe a good deal to the people who 
 serve as links between ourselves and some- 
 thing worth having. Think over the good 
 things that have come to you through the 
 years and see if they are not associated with 
 some individuals who served as the medium. 
 The teacher who induced you to choose a 
 certain career, the friend who introduced 
 you to the woman who became your wife, 
 the minister who conducted you to the 
 point where you made connection with some 
 great and inspiring truth — what were they 
 but links, and because they did their duty as 
 links you are where you are today. And 
 so in a multitude of lesser instances the 
 human link was equally important even if 
 those who served as such were not always 
 conscious of the favor they were doing you. 
 
 One day years ago a young man was stand- 
 ing on the banks of an Oriental river with 
 two companions. Suddenly a fourth young 
 man appeared. "Behold him," remarked 
 the leader to the other two, and there was 
 something in the radiant countenance of the 
 [u6] 
 
HUMAN BEINGS AS LINKS 
 
 stranger and something in the tone in which 
 their friend referred to him that led the two 
 to follow up the stranger. After cultivating 
 his acquaintance a few hours they went forth 
 to say the same word, "Behold," to their 
 own particular friends, and from that day 
 to this the Christian Church has been re- 
 cruited because one and another have been 
 willing to say, "Behold," and thus to serve 
 as links between the founder of Chris- 
 tianity and those who had not made his 
 acquaintance. 
 
 To be a good link requires, it is true, 
 some self-effacement and much considera- 
 tion for others. A young woman started 
 on a journey the other day and just as the 
 train moved 'out of the station a gentleman 
 entered whom she knew, accompanied by a 
 young woman whom he placed in the next 
 seat. Then he introduced the young women, 
 saying, "You'll have a good talk together 
 on your way." Ah, but that was just what 
 young lady number one didn't want, for she 
 was tired. But overcoming her reluctance 
 she entered on a long and what proved to 
 be a mutually interesting conversation. As a 
 result young woman number two is in social 
 settlement work in the Hawaiian Islands 
 
 [117] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 today. That outcome was furthest from her 
 thoughts when she entered the train, and 
 she owes her present place to the fact that 
 her chance acquaintance on the train who 
 knew of the position took pains then and 
 later to guide her to it. 
 
 Every good person, from the statesman 
 striving to bind the nations closer together 
 to the humblest mother strengthening the 
 ties between her children and God and 
 truth, is a link, and there is no more hon- 
 orable calling in life. 
 
 [ii8] 
 
ONE GOOD LIFE 
 
 MUCK-RAKING and cynicism to the 
 contrary, the world is full of good 
 lives. All about us are men and women as 
 pure as gold and as true as steel. They are 
 not perfect, but are in the process of becoming 
 perfect. We ought not to overlook them in 
 this age when the seamy side of life so often 
 flaunts itself in our face. We ought not to 
 be so absorbed in our quest for wealth or 
 pleasure as to fail to do them honor. The 
 attention which they get in the newspapers 
 is no measure of their worth or influence. 
 They are the salt that keeps our civiliza- 
 tion from decay, the leaven that is grad- 
 ually purifying the world. 
 
 I want briefly to tell the story of one 
 good life that has just gone out, or, it would 
 be truer to say, gone forward at the age of 
 fourscore. The notice of her death occu- 
 pied about four lines in the press of the 
 city where she had lived most of her days. 
 She was an "old maid" and she lived much 
 of her life in a boarding-house. She was 
 a wage-earner until advancing age made it 
 
 [119] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 impossible to go to and fro to her daily 
 tasks. In her declining years she had to 
 accept the friendly service of those not of 
 her kin, for she outlived her relatives. 
 She had to pass through one of the bitterest 
 of all experiences; namely, that of being set 
 one side from the busy world and of being 
 compelled in comparative obscurity, and for- 
 gotten by many who once knew her, to await 
 the will of God. 
 
 This woman never knew the comfort of a 
 home of her own, the bliss of happy wife- 
 hood, the exquisite joy of motherhood, the 
 wholesome delights that go with a circle of 
 lovely and interesting friends. Her working 
 days, prolonged far beyond those of most 
 working women, were laborious and monot- 
 onous. Vacations were infrequent and brief. 
 As the world estimates values she lived a 
 narrow, dull, and tiresome life. 
 
 But did she.^ Let me tell you what the 
 minister said at her funeral. He had known 
 her long and well and all that he said was 
 corroborated by those associated with her 
 day by day. Three qualities, he remarked, 
 shone in her. The first was steadfastness. 
 She could be counted on to reach the estab- 
 lishment punctually in the morning and all 
 [120] 
 
ONE GOOD LIFE 
 
 day long to do her work promptly and 
 thoroughly. The next quality was quiet- 
 ness. The fever of this hustling, rustling age 
 never made her nervous and excitable. An 
 atmosphere of tranquillity perpetually sur- 
 rounded her. The next trait was cheerfulness. 
 Though every day brought its temptations to 
 irritability she succeeded in wearing a happy 
 countenance. She saw the funny side of fussy 
 and disagreeable people who made all sorts 
 of unreasonable demands upon her and she 
 would slip a quiet little chuckle up her sleeve 
 as she discerned the foibles of her fellow 
 men. She found it possible to be uniformly 
 pleasant even in a boarding-house. These 
 three qualities, the minister went on to 
 say, made Her efficient. She actually accom- 
 plished a vast deal of useful work during her 
 long lifetime. The possession of such quali- 
 ties — steadfastness, quietness, and good 
 temper — will make any one capable and of 
 service in the world. 
 
 Now this is not an obituary of a brilliant 
 woman, but a side-light or two upon a typical 
 average good life. We all know such lives 
 among our friends and acquaintances. It is 
 well to strew flowers upon the graves of our 
 heroic dead, to compose long eulogies of men 
 
 [I2I] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 and women of distinction, but let the praises 
 of inconspicuous goodness also be sung. 
 
 A good life — what a priceless contribu- 
 tion it makes to human welfare and progress! 
 When such lives go from us, let us thank God 
 for them; while they are still with us let us 
 revere and cherish them. 
 
 **The dear Lord's best interpreters 
 
 Are humble, human souls; 
 The gospel of a life like theirs 
 
 Is more than books or scrolls. 
 From scheme and creed the light goes out, 
 
 The saintly fact survives, 
 The blessed Master none can doubt, 
 
 Revealed in holy lives." 
 
 [122] 
 
o 
 
 A MAN AND HIS ECHO 
 
 NE of the earliest and most vivid rec- 
 ollections of boyhood days is in con- 
 nection with a visit to a farmer uncle, who 
 took me where I could hear a famous echo. 
 As he threw his powerful voice against 
 the cliffs a number of yards away, back it 
 came to him, repeating almost instantly and 
 with wonderful clearness his exact words. 
 It seemed to my boyish fancy a remarkable 
 thing that there could be such a reproduc- 
 tion of human tone after it had once left the 
 lips. But since then I have heard other 
 echoes, some of them quite noted ones, and 
 I have come to apprehend the laws of 
 sound governing their production. But an 
 echo is still to me one of the most interest- 
 ing and suggestive of natural phenomena. 
 
 As I have gone on in years, I have been 
 fortunate enough to encounter the echoes of 
 human lives that have transmitted some- 
 thing of their personality to me long 
 after they have vanished from the earth. 
 The first was the echo of a soldier uncle 
 who fainted under the rays of the fierce 
 [123] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 southern sun, giving his life for his country 
 just as truly as if he had fallen in battle 
 when charging the foe. I was but a wee 
 baby when he marched bravely away with 
 his regiment and, of course, he never in- 
 fluenced me personally, but in the forty 
 years since he met a soldier's death, echoes 
 of him have been repeatedly coming to my 
 ears, in the abundant testimony of his sur- 
 viving comrades to his manliness and kind- 
 ness in camp and on the march, in the 
 tributes to his sterling Christian character 
 from men who worked at the same car- 
 penter's bench, and in the veneration still 
 felt for him in the church of which he was 
 a modest and devoted member. 
 
 In college the echoes of men who had pre- 
 ceded us resounded through the dormitories 
 and recitation rooms. Figures that we never 
 saw became real to the eye of the imagina- 
 tion as we learned about the athletic prowess 
 of this man, the scholarly achievements of 
 another, the rare personal charm and influ- 
 ence of still another. Every great school has 
 its splendid traditions of men who wrought 
 nobly in student days and then went out to 
 live useful and honorable lives. 
 
 As I have resided in one community after 
 [124] 
 
A MAN AND HIS ECHO 
 
 another, I have always heard about former 
 residents who had died or moved away 
 before I came, but who were still held in 
 affectionate esteem and whose absence was 
 continually mourned. They were invari- 
 ably the progressive, public-spirited men 
 who could be relied on in emergencies, who 
 helped to initiate and carry through under- 
 takings bearing on the public welfare, who 
 were not always scheming to get what they 
 could out of their fellow citizens, but to con- 
 tribute all they could to the happiness and 
 prosperity of others. 
 
 What a splendid thing it is to leave behind 
 you such an echo that the Scripture will 
 be literally fulfilled, ''He being dead yet 
 speaketh." ' The tone quality is perpetuated 
 in what others say and think about you. 
 It pervades the region to such an extent 
 that those who come after us cannot help 
 discovering intimations here and there of 
 what we were and what we did. 
 
 What cheer there is also in this thought 
 for those of us who feel that our lives are 
 running away without our accomplishing 
 much. But we are to be judged not simply 
 by the impression we make today, but by 
 the echo that will come back days hence 
 
 [125] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 to those who may never see us in the flesh. 
 "That man stood for the right when it 
 was unpopular to do so." "That woman 
 gave herself most patiently and unsparingly 
 for her children." "That man was never 
 too busy to be kind." So the echoes will 
 come back in one form and another. Much 
 depends on the man. The echo of Judas 
 Iscariot's life still reverberates in the caverns 
 and the tombs of human life while the echo 
 of Jesus of Nazareth is like the pealing of 
 sweet bells at eventide. 
 
 [126 
 
THE MOTHER'S PART 
 
 SAID a well-known public speaker the 
 other day In an address on the rela- 
 tive rights and duties of husband and wife, 
 "I refuse to admit that I am the only 
 breadwinner in my family. I consider that 
 my wife contributes no small share to the 
 ongoing of the family life." Amen to that 
 manly sentiment! Cold cash does not meas- 
 ure, as it could not buy, the services of a 
 mother in the home, for which she usually 
 gets only her own board and clothes. No 
 eight-hour or even ten-hour day for her. 
 She is often on duty from sunrise to sunrise 
 again. If she were paid on the scale that 
 hired girls are paid she might have a snug 
 little sum in the bank at the end of the 
 year. Then, again, how frequently she adds 
 to the family exchequer by holding back the 
 husband from foolish speculations. Many a 
 woman has by her forethought, prudence, 
 and thrift saved her husband from financial 
 ruin. 
 
 This is the lowest plane on which to view 
 the work of a mother. She constantly has 
 [127] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 to put to use her ingenuity and wit in be- 
 half of the higher interests of the home. She 
 needs and she often possesses the insight and 
 judicial qualities of a justice of the supreme 
 court in order to settle the little disputes 
 between the children. She must be a dip- 
 lomat and harmonize conflicting personali- 
 ties. I talked the other evening with a 
 mother who for twenty-five long years had 
 played the part of peacemaker. Her hus- 
 band's mother had always lived in the house 
 and had been always lavish of her criticisms 
 of the children, whom she considered not 
 nearly as perfect as her own son had been. 
 So the grandchildren had grown up resent- 
 ful of grandma's interference and harsh 
 judgments, and the gentle mother had all 
 she could do to keep the atmosphere of the 
 home sweet and friendly. "But," she said 
 with gratitude and gladness in her tone, "I 
 believe I have succeeded fairly well in har- 
 monizing the family, and though it has been 
 hard, it is all right." 
 
 This, indeed, is the crowning glory of 
 motherhood — to be able to quiet and steady 
 and ennoble the life of husband and bairns, 
 through her wise, loving influence constantly 
 though unobtrusively exercised. If it were 
 f 128I 
 
THE MOTHER'S PART 
 
 not so common a phenomenon we should 
 marvel more than we do at the wonderful 
 patience of mothers. When a girl goes to a 
 college settlement for a year or two to take 
 care of other folks' children we clap our 
 hands and say, "What self-denial, what de- 
 votion!" But I should like to know if it is 
 any more noble to fetch and carry for other 
 people's children for a year or two than it is 
 for one's own for a long lifetime. 
 
 Of course the mother gets something out 
 of it. She ought to. Besides the love her 
 husband and children bear her, she grows in- 
 tellectually and spiritually. She keeps pace 
 with the children In their studies. She learns 
 lessons in self-control that only a mother can 
 learn. She' rounds out into a beautiful and 
 symmetrical womanhood, and though she 
 may not be as accomplished as her maiden 
 sister in music and art, she is not one whit 
 behind her in the essentials of a genuine 
 education. 
 
 Let us value our mothers, then, while we 
 have them. James A. Garfield never did a 
 nobler thing than when, after he had taken 
 the oath to be loyal to the duties involved 
 in the Presidency of the United States, he 
 turned and kissed his venerable mother. 
 [129] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 Our mothers are our good angels. Let us 
 never make them our slaves. Let us think 
 of them in the midst of our good times. 
 Let us plan for their pleasure and comfort. 
 And let us begin at once so to do. 
 
 [130] 
 
ALL HAIL TO THE BREADWINNER 
 
 THE other day a little bevy of people 
 entered a railway restaurant and took 
 possession of a table. There were four chil- 
 dren to begin with, all of school age, besides 
 a toddling youngster. There was a youngish- 
 appearing woman who seemed to be acting 
 in the capacity of a mother's helper and a 
 woman, with a good many wrinkles in her 
 face, who was plainly the mother of the little 
 tribe. Last of all came the father, well 
 loaded down with bundles and of a serious 
 not to say Solemn demeanor. He took his 
 seat at the head of the table and told the 
 waiter to bring four orders of chops and 
 potatoes with a "side" of cold tongue. 
 The family was evidently on its way to a 
 summer resort and good cheer was abun- 
 dant and expectation ran high. A happy, 
 healthy, harmonious family it seemed to be, 
 both in quality and in quantity, the kind 
 of family that Theodore Roosevelt would 
 approve. 
 
 At a little side table in the same restau- 
 
 [131] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 rant sat a gentleman and lady watching the 
 pretty scene. "How jolly they all seem," 
 said the gentleman. To which his com- 
 panion replied, "All but the father. Do 
 you notice how grave he is.^ And I don't 
 wonder. Think of providing bread three 
 times a day for those seven hungry people, 
 to say nothing about chops. I declare, I 
 sometimes marvel at the courage and en- 
 durance of the father of a family. Perhaps 
 his daily effort with hands or brain is the 
 only thing that keeps off starvation from 
 those children. And there must be millions 
 like him who have the sole responsibility for 
 other lives." 
 
 Undoubtedly there are. Not only do 
 countless fathers win the bread for wives 
 and children, but brothers do it for sisters 
 and sons for mothers. It has always been 
 so since civilization began. One half the 
 world carries the other half on its back. 
 Socialistic theories break down at this point. 
 No reconstruction of society can ever relieve 
 the true man of the duty or deprive him of 
 the joy of winning the daily bread of those 
 dearest to him. This ambition steadies and 
 inspires him as he toils all day long at the 
 counter or the loom or the anvil or the 
 [132] 
 
HAIL THE BREADWINNER 
 
 bench. Had he no such motive work might 
 become unendurable. 
 
 But do those for whom he works always 
 appreciate what a load rests upon "father's'' 
 shoulders.? Is it any wonder that some- 
 times his face gets tense and the lines in 
 it deepen? These are days of tremendous 
 strain and competition in the industrial 
 world. Sometimes when a man kisses his 
 wife good-bye in the morning he hardly 
 knows what will be his fortunes or misfor- 
 tunes before he greets her again. Tempta- 
 tions, too, confront the business man today 
 from dawn till sunset. He is in constant 
 danger of becoming mean or sordid or tricky 
 or false. He needs, therefore, the apprecia- 
 tion and help of those for whose sake alone 
 he ventures into the difficult and perilous 
 places. 
 
 So, then, honor and guard the breadwinner. 
 When you get your check at the regular time, 
 college boy or college girl, don't take it as a 
 matter of course, but write a line of gratitude 
 to "dear old dad." And, you the wife of his 
 bosom and the other bairns still in the home 
 nest, never let the one who wins for you your 
 daily bread go hungry himself for lack of love 
 and consideration. 
 
 [133] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 Happy breadwinner, gifted with the ability 
 to provide for the material wants of others! 
 May you win their tender love and for your- 
 self that pearl of great price, a good name 
 and a noble character. 
 
 [134] 
 
"FOND OF HIS FOLKS" 
 
 "TTE'S fond of his folks," said a man to 
 X A me recently concerning a third person 
 whom I have never met. This was one of 
 several comments passed. What the others 
 were I have forgotten. The thing that sticks 
 in my mind is the fact that this particular 
 person likes his own people. That single 
 element in his make-up predisposes me in his 
 favor. When I meet him I shall expect to 
 find a certain kind of man. He may be de- 
 fective in other particulars, open to criticism 
 because of this or that peculiarity, but he 
 cannot be wholly bad and my heart warms 
 up to him in advance because he is said to 
 possess that quality of loyalty to his friends 
 and his family. 
 
 Yet when characterizing a man, why should 
 you mention this trait as if it were excep- 
 tional, as if only now and then a man or 
 woman were found of whom it is true.^ Pray 
 of whom should we be fond, if not of our 
 own kith and kin.^* Who has done more for 
 us than they.^ Who has borne with us more 
 patiently in season and out of season, when 
 
 [135] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 we were worthy of their affection and when 
 we were far from worthy of it? Has Tom, 
 Dick, or Harry, has your chance acquaint- 
 ance on the train or the steamer, has the 
 man in the next block done more for you, 
 year after year, than your father, your mother, 
 your sister, your brother? And, on the whole, 
 are there any nicer people to live with or to 
 be identified with than just our own dear 
 people ? 
 
 Families differ in their possession and exhi- 
 bition of this mutual regard. Even within 
 the same family circle now and then you find, 
 if not a black sheep, at least an *^off horse" 
 who does not pull with the team, who prefers 
 to flock by himself. But is there anything 
 finer in human life than a united, harmoni- 
 ous family, all of whose members are enthu- 
 siastic over one another, not blind to one 
 another's faults, but quietly proud of the 
 family history and traditions, standing by 
 one another through thick and thin, never 
 ashamed to confess their lineage, doing all 
 in their power to strengthen the family ties 
 and to give new honor and dignity to the 
 family name? 
 
 To be sure this warm family feeling may 
 degenerate into clannishness, exclusiveness 
 
 [136] 
 
"FOND OF HIS FOLKS" 
 
 and feuds with other families leading to long- 
 continued guerrilla warfare like that which 
 sometimes characterizes life in the remote 
 southern mountains. But, as a rule, the 
 families that care a great deal for them- 
 selves are the families that care most about 
 other homes, too, and that contribute most 
 to the common welfare. 
 
 So here's to the bond that unites us in 
 the family life. Let us cherish it not only 
 when Old Home Week comes and Thanks- 
 giving and the other occasions when we make 
 formal pilgrimages to the places where we 
 used to live, but all through the year. Let 
 us not forget those little courtesies that 
 strengthen the family tie and sweeten the 
 home relationships. Let us consider it a 
 high compliment to have it said of us, "He's 
 fond of his own folks." 
 
 137 
 
A HOME-MAKER 
 
 WHEN she passed the other evening 
 into the larger life, at the ripe age 
 of seventy, the big world hardly noted her 
 going, but the little world of which she was 
 the center seemed suddenly smaller and 
 lonelier, and because her life-story is that of 
 a great multitude of God-fearing, self-sacri- 
 ficing women whose virtues seldom are pub- 
 licly recorded, but whose quiet efficiency 
 helps to keep the universe stable, does it 
 seem worth while to tell it. 
 
 A home-maker she was more than any- 
 thing else from the hour she went as a fair 
 young bride to a New England city even 
 to the end of her days. The outward habi- 
 tation was transferred from time to time, 
 but in the numerous migrations East and 
 West the home life had under her molding 
 touch a quality and a beauty all its own. 
 Amid the privations of the frontier the light 
 from her lamp of faith and love shone as 
 brightly as when she pitched her tent amid 
 the refinements of an older civilization. 
 
 She had her full share of human vicissi- 
 
 [138] 
 
A HOME-MAKER 
 
 tudes, but you knew that whenever or 
 wherever you rang her door-bell she would 
 greet you with a smile and a warm hand- 
 clasp. More than once she quaffed the 
 deepest cup of sorrow which a mother can 
 put to her lips, but from the heart she could 
 say of the baby boys who had passed from 
 her sight: 
 
 "Mine in God's gardens run to and fro, 
 And that is best." 
 
 As the children who remained grew to 
 manhood and womanhood and as new little 
 homes began to be made not far away and 
 as birdlings came to those new nests her 
 heart expanded, too, and the home-making 
 instinct found fresh fields for exercise. The 
 brides came back to her for counsel with 
 reference to their maids and their menus 
 and the bridegrooms found in her a ready 
 though never an intermeddling confidant. As 
 Thanksgiving and Christmas recurred, chil- 
 dren and grandchildren, aunts and cousins 
 gravitated naturally to the familiar hearth- 
 stone where her serene and gracious pres- 
 ence dominated and directed every joyous 
 reunion. 
 
 But the outgo of her sympathies was not 
 limited to the family circle. She served her 
 
 [139] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 own home all the better because she minis- 
 tered directly or indirectly to many another 
 home in the community. Her church was 
 not only a place where she worshiped her 
 God and found nourishment for her best 
 life, but it opened to her a door of oppor- 
 tunity, and through organizations like the 
 King's Daughters she developed the latent 
 powers of others, fostered their charitable 
 impulses, and set in motion definite agencies 
 which are still multiplying and perpetuating 
 her influence. 
 
 A modest home was hers, with comfort 
 enough, but with few tokens of affluence. 
 She knew how to make a little go a long 
 way. She respected learning and letters 
 and had a keen desire to keep pace with 
 the best thoughts of the world. She cov- 
 eted for her children the opportunities of 
 college and of travel. She imposed no 
 fetters upon their own broadening ideas, 
 though they knew what "Mother's Bible" 
 meant to her and at what fountains she 
 daily fed her own strength. There was, 
 too, an ample place in that home for the 
 element of fun. She had herself the merry 
 spirit that doeth good like medicine. Only 
 that and the grace of God would have 
 [140] 
 
A HOME-MAKER 
 
 enabled her to bear the hardships and dis- 
 appointments that were her portion. 
 
 She was not a perfect woman and as I 
 have already intimated she was not an ex- 
 ceptional woman. Had she been the latter, 
 you would have read about her in The 
 Social Settlement Tidings or in The Club 
 Woman^s Weekly or in the Daily Tell-It- 
 All. She was just a plain, ordinary home- 
 maker — nothing more, nothing less. She 
 knew how to make a home to perfection. 
 That was a large enough sphere for her. 
 It offered as big a fulcrum as she wanted 
 for helping to lift the world. Nor was her 
 life all outgo. Great as is her reward to- 
 day in the heavenly existence, she received 
 while here no meager returns for what she 
 gave. The experiences of wifehood and 
 motherhood, a half century of home build- 
 ing, an abounding good-will to others reach- 
 ing from her nearest neighbors to the ends 
 of the earth — all these yielded their rich 
 fruitage in character. And what career is 
 there that offers to consecrated womanhood 
 today larger opportunities and rewards than 
 the good, old-fashioned vocation of wife, 
 mother, and home-maker .f* 
 
 1 141] 
 
WHAT SHALL THE MIDDLE-AGED 
 
 MAN DO? 
 
 THAT brilliant Scotch writer, Ian Mac- 
 laren, the author of the famous 
 Bonnie Brier Bush stories, wrote, a few 
 years ago, an article with the striking cap- 
 tion, "Shall We Shoot the Old Minister?" 
 In it he set forth the pitiable plight of 
 many preachers who find themselves not 
 wanted by churches after they have passed 
 the dead-line of fifty. He offered the humor- 
 ous suggestion that the only thing to do for 
 these worn-out servants of the Lord is to take 
 them out and shoot them. 
 
 But the distress today is hardly less among 
 a large number of persons in middle life than 
 it is with those whose heads are white with 
 the snows of many winters. Moreover, it 
 is not the ministerial class only which suffers, 
 but in other professions, and notably in busi- 
 ness, the young, hustling, well-equipped fel- 
 lows fresh from colleges and the schools of 
 technology are shouldering the older genera- 
 tion to the rear. "There is not much chance 
 in business today for a man who has passed 
 [142] 
 
MIDDLE-AGED MAN DO? 
 
 forty," said one not long ago, who had been 
 thrown out of a remunerative place by a 
 consolidation of banks and who had knocked 
 in vain at the door of other possible oppor- 
 tunities. As business becomes more highly 
 organized and power is concentrated in the 
 hands of a few, there is less chance for a 
 man to wedge his way in after the dew of 
 youth has gone, unless he has a pull with 
 the higher powers or possesses special apti- 
 tudes. 
 
 And even to men who are not themselves 
 the victims of sudden reverses, the coming 
 of the middle-age period brings with it 
 often a sense of depression and foreboding. 
 They realize how swiftly time flies and how 
 few years remain in which their powers 
 will be adequate to the difficult task of 
 breadwinning. They see the prizes of life 
 snapped up by men ten or fifteen years 
 their juniors and they are filled with appre- 
 hension with regard to what the morrow 
 may bring forth. 
 
 Now there are three sharp, clear messages 
 to speak to the army of timid or discouraged 
 men in middle life. The first is, don't lose 
 your grip. The minute that goes, you are 
 on the downward slope. Hold on to your- 
 
 [143] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 self at every hazard, to your courage, your 
 enthusiasm, your buoyancy of spirit. Resolve 
 that, come what may, hardships, reverses, dis- 
 appointments, your spirit shall not be crushed 
 or embittered. 
 
 Next, do not slacken your efforts. Here is 
 where so many make a fatal mistake. They 
 reason that because they are somewhat handi- 
 capped by their age they will never amount 
 to much and so they grow careless and inert. 
 They do not exhaust every opportunity for 
 personal culture. They do not make every 
 effort possible to better their condition. Call 
 to mind men who have gone on into middle 
 life and advancing years, pushing harder all 
 the time, never relaxing in a single particu- 
 lar. For that reason they are not today 
 stranded and disheartened. 
 
 In the third place, and most important of 
 all, hold on to faith. "Never despair," said 
 Phillips Brooks, "of a world over which God 
 reigns." Trust the future instead of fearing 
 it. Believe that it holds good for you and 
 yours. Things are always happening. Com- 
 binations of circumstances are always tak- 
 ing place that may issue favorably for you. 
 Above all, believe that every human life is 
 the plan of the Divine Mind and that there 
 
 [144] 
 
MIDDLE-AGED MAN DO? 
 
 is always help for the life that is ready to be 
 helped. 
 
 Nothing is more inspiring than to see the 
 way in which some men in middle life do 
 wake up and register a growth and a capacity 
 for achieving things which they did not seem 
 to exhibit even when young men. All about 
 us are growing, energetic, hopeful, aspiring 
 men and women in middle life. They are 
 going to do better work as the years go by. 
 The world will have a place for them. They 
 will be wanted. You may be among that 
 number. 
 
 [I4S] 
 
THIS NEXT WEEK'S FRIENDLINESS 
 
 I LIKE the grand old Saxon word friendli- 
 ness. It carries with it the savor of all 
 things sweet and gracious. It stands for that 
 delicate touch of life upon life whereby the 
 sorrow and woe of the world are assuaged 
 and men are lifted into nobleness. I know 
 two young children whose one criterion of 
 strangers, be they of the human or of the 
 brute creation, is, "Are they friendly?" 
 That is the first thing they want to find out 
 about a new acquaintance and other con- 
 siderations take a subordinate place. 
 
 How many persons lack just this crowning 
 virtue! They are amiable and respectable. 
 They won't lie or steal. But you would 
 never think of going to them with your 
 burden, and it is difficult to imagine them 
 interesting themselves in other persons when 
 such interest involves any sacrifice of time or 
 ease. And we know other persons like the 
 late Prof. Henry Drummond, for instance, 
 whose very presence radiates friendliness. 
 It distils from the tips of their fingers, it 
 sounds in the tones of their voices; it seems 
 
 (146] 
 
FRIENDLINESS 
 
 to be the atmosphere by which they are 
 constantly surrounded. 
 
 The trouble with non-friendly people is 
 not antipathy to their kind, but they have 
 walled themselves away from their fellow 
 men, and in doing so they have not only 
 stopped the flow of good-will from outsiders 
 into their own lives, but they have dammed 
 the stream of kindness that might otherwise 
 issue from them to the refreshment of others. 
 You cannot get within a thousand miles of 
 the inmost lives of these persons. Even 
 with a smiling exterior they constantly dis- 
 appoint you and frequently irritate you, for 
 you know if you could only once get at them 
 their virtup would do you good. But the 
 citadel of their hearts can only be carried by 
 a long and vigorous assault. You must cross 
 the drawbridge and batter down a number 
 of heavy doors before you can really get at 
 them. 
 
 But friendliness is outgoing and outreach- 
 ing. It does not dwell behind barred gates. 
 Neither is it officious or inquisitive. It is 
 simply the effluence of a spirit sensitive to 
 the needs of men, eager to give help and sym- 
 pathy. A minister's wife was commended to 
 me the other day as possessing in a rare de- 
 
 [147] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 gree this quality. ^^She is not such a master 
 hand at prayer-meetings," said my inform- 
 ant, "but she does carry on her heart the 
 Christian welfare of every person in the 
 parish." 
 
 What a change it would make in this big, 
 fevered world if friendliness were the char- 
 acteristic mark of persons as they met with 
 and dealt with one another! The opposite 
 attitude is painfully prevalent. We cannot 
 remedy the situation all at once, but we can, 
 beginning where we are, strive to be friendly, 
 the mistress with her cook, the master with 
 his coachman, the teacher with his pupil, the 
 neighbor with his neighbor, the parent with 
 his child and the child with his parent, the 
 clerk with his employer and the employer 
 with his clerk. 
 
 Only we must plan for it. Why not block 
 out the program of the coming week with a 
 view to friendliness.'* You can show it in 
 places where you have not hitherto conspicu- 
 ously displayed it. It may hurt your pride 
 to do so and it may call for some heroic 
 effort. But you will be rewarded over and 
 over again, for it has been well said by a 
 sage of former time, "A man to have friends 
 must show himself friendly." 
 
 [1481 
 
WHEN IS A MAN OLD? 
 
 WHEN is a man old? This seems to 
 be one of the burning questions of 
 the day. The facetious Mrs. Partington an- 
 swered it some time ago, by remarking that 
 she did not consider any one old until he 
 became an octagon or a centurion; or, per- 
 chance, might have outlived the use of his 
 factories and become idiomatic. The old 
 lady got her words badly mixed, as she was 
 in the habit of doing; but there was at least 
 a glimmer of good sense in what she said. 
 If it is tru?. that 
 
 "We live in deeds, not years: in thoughts, not breaths; 
 In feelings, not in figures on a dial," 
 
 we have no business to affix the epithet "old" 
 to some men because they are forty, or sixty, 
 or even eighty. 
 
 Here comes a youth down the street, hardly 
 out of his teens. He is faultlessly dressed, 
 has the entree of the best clubs and social 
 circles, has been abroad several times. You 
 would judge from a casual glance at him that 
 he was in the heyday of his youth. But wait 
 
 [149] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 until you know him better. You will find 
 that the adjective blase fits him exactly. 
 He has been surfeited with the sweets of 
 life; he has dipped into everything that is 
 going. Alas, he has altogether too much 
 knowledge of the seamy side of life; he has 
 no ambition and few expectations. 
 
 Here comes another man down the street. 
 His head is white with the snows of many 
 winters, but his form is erect; his face is 
 beaming with kindness and good-will; his 
 heart is young. The world opens itself 
 freshly to him with each new dawn. He has 
 the sense of wonder and anticipation which 
 we associate with little children. He has 
 had his share of struggle, disappointment, 
 and sorrow, but he has kept his faith in 
 God and his fellows. Now, why should 
 you call him old and the victim of ennui 
 young.'' Or, if you would thus characterize 
 either, why not specify exactly what you 
 mean by the use of terms which, if not clearly 
 defined, carry with them an undue measure 
 either of commendation or opprobrium. 
 
 What shall we do with the old men.^ A 
 
 great physician rises up and declares that 
 
 they ought to be retired from responsible 
 
 positions. His dictum starts the pen of the 
 
 [ISO] 
 
WHEN IS A MAN OLD? 
 
 funny paragraphers the country over, and all 
 sorts of methods of disposing of septuagena- 
 rians are proposed, ranging from chloroform- 
 ing to shooting in cold blood. But when we 
 come right down to the serious point of issue, 
 we must admit that the increasing valuation 
 placed upon young men in business and pro- 
 fessional life renders old age a precarious 
 season for many of our fellow men. New 
 Zealand has met the emergency by its sys- 
 tem of old-age pensions. 
 
 Personally, we may have little to do with 
 solving this question on its economic side, 
 but we ought to maintain the true perspec- 
 tive. Old age need not necessarily be a drug 
 in the market. Think of the stored-up wis- 
 dom and experience in the minds and hearts 
 of old men whom you know. Young men 
 must fight the battles and do the hard work 
 of the world; but their energy and initiative 
 need to be balanced by the insight, judg- 
 ment, and conservatism of older men. The 
 world would swing too far and too rapidly 
 toward radicalism were it not for men who 
 have been mellowed, ripened, and broadened 
 by many years of action. 
 
 But what can the old man do with him- 
 self.^ Well, he cannot begin all at once 
 
 [iSi] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 when he is sixty or seventy and say, "I 
 will have a happy and beautiful old age." 
 That desirable status has to be planned for 
 in advance. If the advice, "In time of 
 peace prepare for war," be worth anything, 
 far more valuable is the counsel, "In time of 
 youth prepare for age." Lay up the dollars 
 if you can, so that you will not be dependent 
 upon others; but lay up even more sedulously 
 those inward resources which will alone 
 make life bearable at that season and make 
 your company agreeable to others. You 
 don't wish to be in the class of people who 
 are not wanted by and by. Look well then 
 to your inward resources. See that you 
 keep your mental elasticity, your spiritual 
 susceptibilities. Add day by day to your 
 fund of courage and good cheer. Acquire 
 some reserves of faith and hope and love, 
 on which you can draw when "the grass- 
 hopper becomes a burden." 
 
 In other words, as the body ages, let 
 the spirit grow young and strong. There 
 are certain preventives against the aging 
 of the spirit. A man is as old as he feels 
 himself to be in his inmost heart, and not 
 a day older. And one of the best safeguards 
 against the aging of the soul is to wrap it 
 
 [IS2] 
 
WHEN IS A MAN OLD? 
 
 round with a sense of immortality; the sense 
 that Hfe here merges sooner or later into 
 a life ampler and grander beyond the grave. 
 The statistical difference between youth 
 and age fades away when we think of the 
 years of eternity in comparison with which 
 even the longest earthly life is like the swift 
 passing of a summer's day. 
 
 153 
 
WHY GO TO CHURCH? 
 
 MOST of the arguments in behalf of 
 churchgoing begin at the wrong end 
 and pass over the minds and consciences of 
 the persons addressed as water slips from a 
 duck's back. Of course, there is some force 
 in these minor considerations advanced; but 
 tell a man that he ought to go for the sake 
 of his example, and likely as not he will 
 respond: "I am just as good already as 
 many people who go to church, and I don't 
 have to go to church in order to set a good 
 example. Besides, I am not particularly 
 anxious to pose as an example." Or, plead 
 with a man to go in order to help main- 
 tain an important institution, and you are 
 apt to have this rejoinder: "Oh, yes! I be- 
 lieve churches are good things in their way, 
 and that society can't get along without them, 
 but I am already supporting the church 
 financially. My wife goes and my children 
 attend the Sunday-school, and I think I am 
 doing my fair share in this way." 
 
 To such a man who parries subsidiary 
 arguments, and who in four cases out of 
 
 [IS4] 
 
WHY GO TO CHURCH? 
 
 five is a self-centered man, the appeal must 
 be based on what seem like purely selfish 
 grounds. Go for your own sake, brother. 
 In the first place, go in order to have a 
 season of quiet where you will not have to 
 carry on conversation or to attend to busi- 
 ness or household details or skim through 
 newspapers. Go in order to give your mind 
 a rest from such concerns as engross it during 
 the week. I know wearied mothers and 
 overworked business and professional men 
 who look forward to Sunday morning in 
 the sanctuary as a period of profitable mental 
 quiet. 
 
 Go to worship your Creator and the Infi- 
 nite Father of all mankind. Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes was not a dreamy pietist or a pro- 
 fessional advocate of ecclesiasticism, but he 
 said once, "I have in my heart a little plant 
 called reverence. I go to church to have it 
 watered." How long is it since you provided 
 the proper nourishment for your immortal 
 nature; since you lifted your aspiration 
 heavenward? The spiritual spark within 
 you has a hard struggle to live when you 
 overlay and almost smother it with so many 
 material concerns. The hour in church once 
 a week offers at least one chance for the 
 
 [iSS] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 spiritual in you to assert itself, to move 
 outward in reverence, in adoration toward 
 that Power which broods over all our lives. 
 
 Go to church to get food for mind and 
 soul. A famous Massachusetts lawyer once 
 said that it was a mighty poor sermon that 
 didn't hit him somewhere. Surely it is 
 possible to find amid the diversity of pulpit 
 administrations which a modern city offers 
 some prophet or teacher who can interpret 
 helpfully to you the problems of life from 
 the spiritual standpoint; who can reveal 
 the meaning of discipline; who can set you 
 to thinking on the great subjects of the 
 human soul and its relation to its Maker 
 and its fellows. And even if by traveling 
 about you do not find the preacher who 
 exactly suits you, there can hardly fail 
 to be crumbs of instruction and inspiration 
 that will fall into your lap if you will but 
 listen teachably and regularly. 
 
 You really can't aff'ord to stay away 
 from church on your own account. A 
 member of the supreme bench in one of our 
 great states said in my hearing the other 
 day that he had passed through a season in 
 earlier years when he pulled away from the 
 Church. He thought he could get as much 
 
 [156] 
 
WHY GO TO CHURCH? 
 
 good by reading books or by wandering 
 on pleasant days through the fields. But 
 as he continued under this delusion, he said 
 he became conscious of a certain moral 
 deterioration, and so because he feared that 
 his character would degenerate, he resumed 
 again the practise of regular churchgoing, 
 and has adhered to it faithfully ever since. 
 It isn't a question of whether you like 
 the building or the people who run the church, 
 whether you agree in all the particulars with 
 its theology or its ecclesiastical forms. It is 
 a question of your own growth in things true, 
 beautiful, and of good report. Men put 
 forward a multitude of reasons for not 
 going to , church. I have read carefully 
 many explanations of their attitude on the 
 part of non-churchgoers, but they all seem to 
 me to be excuses and not reasons. Is there 
 any real valid reason, my brother, aside 
 from ill health or infirmity, why you do not 
 go to church f If so, write and tell me. 
 
 [IS7] 
 
THE QUESTION WHY 
 
 IN one of his sweetest poems, James Russell 
 Lowell describes his pitiable loneliness 
 when a darling child was taken from him. 
 One of the verses in which he voices his 
 dissatisfaction with the ordinary explanation 
 of trouble is this: 
 
 "Your logic, my friend, is perfect, 
 Your moral most drearily true; 
 But, since the earth clashed on her coffin, 
 I keep hearing that, and not you." 
 
 One has some such feeling as this when 
 he reads many of the sermons and articles 
 that have sought to interpret the meaning 
 of any terrible catastrophe. Most of them 
 leave you still asking why, why, why.'* 
 
 In a group of distinguished scholars a 
 conversation once turned upon this question 
 of mystery connected with the divine ruler- 
 ship of the world. One man after another 
 sought to contribute what light he could, 
 until it became the turn of the oldest and 
 most revered among them, the president 
 of a leading theological seminary, to speak. 
 All he said was, "Gentlemen, we might 
 
 [158] 
 
THE QUESTION WHY 
 
 as well confess that God does a great many 
 things that man could not conscientiously 
 do." He meant that if a man were in 
 charge of the universe, and had all power 
 committed to him, he would not permit 
 the things to happen that are allowed to 
 happen every day. 
 
 For mystery is an every-day affair. If 
 we can endure and rise above the mysterious 
 dispensations that touch our own lives from 
 time to time, we can probably summon up 
 enough philosophy to meet the great public 
 calamities concerning which the newspapers 
 scatter particulars far and wide. We do 
 not put the question, "Why," for the first 
 time when we read of devastating conflagra- 
 tions, of engulfing whirlwinds and merciless 
 earthquakes. We put the question, "Why," 
 whenever we hear of a fair, innocent, promis- 
 ing child taken suddenly, or by the slow 
 working of disease, from life; or whenever a 
 young man just through his studies, on the 
 verge of great usefulness in the world, goes 
 insane; or whenever the father and wage- 
 earner in a large family dependent upon him 
 suffers a maiming accident; or whenever 
 sickness or death strikes, as it seems to love 
 to do, a shining mark; or whenever tragedy 
 
 [IS9] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 stalks in one form or another into a familiar 
 and beloved circle of dear ones. We are 
 saying why nearly all the time, if we have 
 any degree of sensitiveness to the sorrows, 
 the woe, and despair of our fellow men; 
 and if we can give an answer to the question 
 in one case, we probably can in all. 
 
 But the fact is, there is no answer — at 
 least none that entirely resolves the mystery 
 or satisfies both the demands of the reason 
 and the instincts of the heart. Better 
 for us is it to admit that we are in a world 
 for whose behavior we are not expected 
 to give a totally satisfactory accounting. 
 We did not make this world and there are 
 limits to our responsibility for it; and yet 
 we may be sure of at least three things. 
 First, that it is, on the whole, a good world. 
 Otherwise the number of suicides would 
 exceed the number of those who die a natural 
 death. The way in which men cling to 
 life, even though they know little but poverty 
 and trouble, is proof that the great majority 
 of mankind regard life as a boon. 
 
 Another certainty is that human sympathy, 
 the best thing that passes between man and 
 man, would never exist were it not for trouble 
 and sorrow. 
 
 [i6o] 
 
THE QUESTION WHY 
 
 One more thing is certain — trouble works 
 out beneficent results in the field of character, 
 provided one does not rebel and complain. 
 The world is educated and disciplined by- 
 world tragedies. The individual is purified 
 and ennobled by bitter experiences. So 
 long as the most perfect Character that has 
 ever walked this earth was called upon to 
 endure the tragedy of the cross, not only at 
 the end of his life, but all the way through, 
 we who were cast in a lesser mold, who own 
 ourselves far from perfection, ought not to 
 complain when the knife cuts into our flesh 
 or the scourge is laid upon our backs. 
 
 The reason can give no answer to the 
 question, "Why," but faith, instead of be- 
 ing discomfited and vanquished, is braced 
 and made more robust by every encounter 
 with mystery, for faith takes into account 
 two great factors — God and the future 
 life. And because it rests profoundly on 
 these realities, faith sings on, even though 
 the storm may roar without. 
 
 i6i] 
 
WHERE DO PEOPLE GO WHEN 
 THEY DIE? 
 
 MAMMA, where do people go when 
 they die?" This question, which 
 springs to the lips of almost every child 
 as soon as it begins to think at all, is still 
 with us and still unanswered. What would 
 not that merchant prince who lost the other 
 day the beloved companion of many years 
 give for an answer? How quickly and eagerly 
 that young mother who has just laid her 
 baby away in the grave would fare forth 
 across the seas to distant lands if she there 
 could find out where her darling is today! 
 But no sphinx or oracle discloses the secret. 
 And I am not so foolish as to think I can 
 give anything like a definite or satisfying 
 answer, but certain beliefs, or if you prefer 
 to call them hopes, are crystallizing into 
 convictions in my mind and they bear upon 
 the underlying problem and illuminate it to 
 some extent. 
 
 One is that the dead are somewhere. 
 The very form of this age-long question 
 implies that. One asks instinctively about 
 
 fl62l 
 
WHERE DO PEOPLE GO? 
 
 the person who has just stopped breathing, 
 not "Why has he ceased to be?" but "Where 
 has he gone?" That strong, commanding 
 spirit who only recently was the most 
 vigorous among us must still be somewhere. 
 In the early days of this country when people 
 emigrated from New England to the distant 
 West, relying solely on emigrant wagons, 
 their friends who bade them good-bye knew 
 that they might not hear from the travelers 
 for months, perhaps not for years, but 
 they did not on that account think of them 
 thereafter as non-existent. The long wait 
 for us who have lost friends by death, the 
 awful silence seems sometimes unbearable, 
 but the greatest wrong we can do ourselves 
 or them is to think of them as anything 
 but living, growing, developing souls some- 
 where in God's universe. 
 
 And they are doubtless better off. The 
 apostle Paul thought so, at any rate, and he 
 seems to have had special information on 
 the matter. When we consider the physical 
 and the moral risks to which a human being 
 is subject in this imperfect world from 
 babyhood to old age, when we reflect upon 
 the contagion of disease, the liabilities to 
 accident, the inherited maladies, the pitfalls 
 
 [163] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 in the path of him who would be good, 
 when we think of man's inhumanity to man 
 and the large domains of life where cruelty, 
 tyranny, and lust still hold sway, we can at 
 least hope and expect that the "other room" 
 into which God takes his children, one by 
 one, is free from some of the evils that 
 blight this earth and that there the average 
 soul is freer, happier, and holier. Certainly 
 all the evolutionary processes and tendencies 
 at work in this present world look as if they 
 made for something better and higher here- 
 after. Helen Hunt voiced this faith in the 
 sweet poem beginning, 
 
 "Mother, I see you with your nursery light, 
 Leading your babies all in white, 
 
 To their sweet rest; 
 Christ, the good Shepherd, carries mine to-night, 
 
 And that is best. 
 
 But how about rewards and punishments.^ 
 How about the sharp divisions.^ Well, there 
 are divisions here and it is forever true that 
 a man to be happy in heaven must have a 
 heavenly mind. There is solemn truth in 
 the reply which a wise man made to the 
 flippant question, "Where does all the sul- 
 phur in the infernal regions come from?" 
 "Each man," said he, "brings his own." 
 
 [164] 
 
WHERE DO PEOPLE GO? 
 
 The place where people go when they die 
 is determined not by a harsh, powerful 
 despot, but by a loving personal will and 
 the degree to which a human being has 
 brought his life into conformity with it. 
 
 [i6s] 
 
THE ONE-LEGGED BOY'S 
 THANKFULNESS 
 
 THE Sunday-school teacher thought it 
 would be a capital idea on the Sun- 
 day before Thanksgiving to ask his class of 
 bright boys what each had to be thankful 
 for. So he passed around paper and pencils 
 and in due time the replies came back. 
 One lad was thankful that he had made 
 the football team, another for his good home, 
 a third for his new bicycle, but the answer 
 that touched the teacher most deeply came 
 from the one-legged boy in the corner who 
 wrote simply, "I am thankful for one good 
 leg." 
 
 One good leg! that represented what 
 he had saved out of the accident. It was 
 more precious to him than his two legs 
 had been prior to the time that he fell under 
 the train. For with the one leg left to him 
 he had been able by sheer pluck, and with 
 the aid of a crutch, to get about among his 
 mates somewhat as before, to go to school 
 again, to have a little share in the sports, to 
 [166I 
 
THANKFULNESS 
 
 earn a little money. Why, that one leg 
 stood in his thought for everything worth 
 having! It symbolized independence, educa- 
 tion, the power of locomotion, the possibility 
 of attaining noble and useful manhood by 
 and by. No wonder that he grasped his 
 pencil firmly and wrote quickly, "I am 
 thankful for one good leg." 
 
 Who are the happiest people on Thanks- 
 giving Day, when the turkey comes steam- 
 ing in? Not necessarily those who have the 
 most abundant menus, the most sumptuous 
 homes. The happiest people will be those 
 who have learned the real worth of the 
 things which they possess. And sometimes 
 we have to be deprived of half of our bless- 
 ings in order to appreciate the half that 
 is left. When satisfactions and delights 
 pour in upon us in a golden and continuous 
 stream we are liable to accept them as a 
 matter of course, to underrate each separate 
 mercy, to forget entirely the source of all 
 prosperity and happiness. A wealthy man- 
 ufacturer was telling me the other day 
 how he had lavished gifts and advantages 
 upon his two daughters from their childhood 
 to their present college days. "And yet," 
 he went on to say, "mother and I sometimes 
 
 [167] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 think they don't care half so much for a 
 diamond necklace even, as she and I, when 
 we were young and poor, cared for the trinkets 
 given us." 
 
 We almost need to lose a leg, some of 
 us, to get our eyes open to what it means 
 to have a share in the normal, the average 
 boons granted to the human family. And 
 not every one who loses a leg actually or 
 metaphorically takes the deprivation as 
 philosophically and cheerfully as this boy 
 did. As families gather all over the land 
 for the annual festival of Thanksgiving, in 
 many a home there will be a vacant chair 
 or some other token of loss. But is it the 
 hour for mourning over what was and is no 
 more, or is it a manlier thing to look about 
 and take account over what is left.^ How 
 rich your life still is in friends and kindred, 
 in external comfort and ease, in inward 
 capacities and hopes, in opportunities for 
 retrieving the mistakes of the past and for 
 more tender loving of the dear ones whose 
 presence still irradiates your home! 
 
 Blessings on thee, thou cheerful, thankful, 
 
 one-legged boy! We will think like you not 
 
 of the things which we have lost or which 
 
 we lack, but of the many mercies still vouch- 
 
 [i68] 
 
THANKFULNESS 
 
 safed us, and we will join in repeating that 
 little stanza of Robert Burns, 
 
 " Some hae meat and canna eat, 
 And some wad eat that want it; 
 But we hae meat, and we can eat; 
 Sae let the Lord be thankit." 
 
 [169] 
 
THE GOOD-WILL COMPANY 
 UNLIMITED 
 
 WHAT kind of a world would this be if 
 the Christmas spirit pervaded fifty- 
 two weeks of the year instead of a single 
 week or two as at present? We are all 
 pretty well disposed toward one another 
 and mankind in general during the holi- 
 days. Whether compelled by precedent or 
 the prevailing custom or because of the 
 good-will resident in our hearts we think of 
 the other fellow and spend time, thought, 
 and money on him. 
 
 For many people Christmas would cease 
 to be Christmas if it meant only getting 
 presents from other people. Last Christmas 
 I watched two small children as they secreted 
 themselves from the rest of the family and 
 applied themselves industriously to cutting 
 and pasting, to drawing and sewing, all 
 for the sake of the people whom they love 
 and to whom they wanted to give, by the 
 dozen, things that their own little hands 
 had made. And these are not exceptional 
 [170] 
 
GOOD-WILL COMPANY 
 
 children. It is not true that either little 
 people or grown-up people are piggish in 
 their disposition, at least the majority of 
 them. 
 
 The sweetest of all exhibitions of good- 
 will during the Christmas season have been 
 those instances of reparation for wrongs 
 or hurts inflicted. Christmas ought to be 
 the time of all the year when the balm of 
 good-will is poured over the sores and gashes 
 made either by wilfulness or thoughtlessness. 
 We ought not to let the season go by without 
 sending some little token, a modest gift, a 
 pretty card, a letter that shall assure any 
 one from whom we may have become es- 
 tranged, if ever so little, that we intend to 
 do all in our power to restore the old rela- 
 tionship. 
 
 But if good-will at this time triumphs 
 over our self-centeredness, why may it not 
 be an active force throughout the year.^ 
 It is not so today — the more's the pity! 
 You start out in the morning and you cannot 
 bank upon other people's thoroughgoing 
 good-will toward you. You accost a stranger 
 with a polite request for information and 
 the chances are only even that he will give 
 it graciously and as if it were a privilege 
 
 [171] 
 
REAL RELIGION 
 
 to him to serve any passer-by. You go 
 to the butcher's to buy your dinner or to 
 the tailor's to buy your garment and you 
 cannot be sure that the man with whom you 
 trade is as anxious for you to get a good 
 bargain as to make one himself. You meet 
 people socially and their polite inquiries as to 
 your health may grow out of a deep interest 
 in all that affects you or they may be purely 
 perfunctory. So all through the day you 
 realize that you are in a world where every 
 man is first of all looking out for himself and 
 for other people only incidentally and infre- 
 quently, if at all. 
 
 But picture a world in which there will 
 be an unlimited and constantly operating 
 supply of good-will. Instead of feeling that 
 a good many persons were against you and 
 a great many persons indifferent to you, you 
 would be gladly conscious that everybody 
 was on your side; that, from the newsboy 
 up to the millionaire every one with whom 
 you might be thrown in contact was ear- 
 nestly seeking your welfare. You would be 
 living in a world of brothers. You would be 
 free from suspicion that any one was trying 
 to "do you," or hurt you, and you would 
 never lack sympathy and succor. 
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GOOD-WILL COMPANY 
 
 Won't you take a little stock, yourself, in 
 the Good-Will Company, Unlimited ? Won't 
 you help to translate the angels' song into 
 concrete, every-day, far-reaching good-will? 
 
 [173] 
 
THE MAN WHO CAME BACK 
 
 EASTER is something more than the 
 signal of the calendar for the putting 
 on of new finery. Easter is something more 
 than a joyous springtime festival in honor 
 of the return of the flowers and the birds. 
 It is something more than the proclama- 
 tion to the world of an abstract theory or a 
 vague hope of immortality. If Easter meant 
 nothing more, the churches would not be 
 crowded and there would be no universal 
 chorus of rejoicing rolling up to heaven in 
 many different languages the world around. 
 
 The heart of Easter is the belief that 
 One came back from the dead. Here is 
 the ceaseless procession of humanity from 
 the creation to the present man going down 
 to the grave. They have been dropping, 
 they are dropping every minute, every 
 second. As we speak these words still 
 others have stepped over into the land of 
 shadows. And from that bourn no traveler 
 e'er returns. No one.^ But this is Easter 
 Day and the time of all times to assert that 
 some One, out of all the myriads who traveled 
 
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MAN WHO CAME BACK 
 
 that solitary and inevitable path, who went 
 down into that narrow house appointed for 
 all the children of men, some One who died 
 as other men die, save that his death was 
 more cruel and tragic, came back after a 
 sojourn in the grave, the possessor of even 
 ampler life than he had before his flesh 
 saw corruption. 
 
 Prove it! comes the imperative challenge. 
 Nay, exacting critic, do not hold us to 
 mathematical demonstration. We cannot 
 prove it as we can prove that the three 
 angles of a triangle equal two right angles 
 or that water is composed of two parts 
 hydrogen and one part oxygen. Our argu- 
 mentation relates to a realm quite distinct 
 from the' physical sciences. And it is not 
 so much precise logic that tells here as certain 
 powerful considerations. If you are willing 
 to proceed gently, quietly, realizing that 
 the most precious interests of mankind are 
 at stake, we believe that you may become 
 as sure of the fact that some One once came 
 back as you are of the existence of your own 
 spirit, of your wife's love for you, of the 
 inexorable demands of duty upon your life. 
 
 This much must in candor be conceded, 
 that if any life the world has ever known 
 
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REAL RELIGION 
 
 deserved to go on after death it was the life 
 that so many of us believe did go on. Some- 
 how the thought of death seems foreign to 
 a nature that had such a genius for life. 
 Death might hold it for a few hours, but the 
 vital forces must have quickly asserted 
 themselves. As the Scripture puts it, "It 
 was not possible for Him to be holden of 
 death." That rich, affluent, radiant life, 
 at once so human and so divine, would be 
 the kind of life for which any reasonable 
 God in any rational universe would provide 
 a practically continuous existence, save for 
 that brief experience of death which for 
 other purposes of the Divine Mind it was 
 necessary for him to undergo. 
 
 Add to this antecedent probability the 
 fact that those who once knew him best 
 believed, despite their first doubts, that 
 he had arisen, the fact that the Christian 
 Church and the Christian Sabbath are un- 
 deniable monuments of faith in his resurrec- 
 tion, and the fact that millions throughout 
 these nineteen centuries and millions to- 
 day of the truest, noblest souls believe 
 that he is alive, and you have another great 
 support for your faith that he really did 
 come back. 
 
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MAN WHO CAME BACK 
 
 This is what makes our Easter glorious. 
 It does not explain many things we would like 
 to have cleared up — why no other departed 
 spirits have ever come back, to our certain 
 recognition, why we of ordinary mold can 
 yet hope to attain a personal resurrection. 
 But the sure return of one Man, even though 
 it happened nearly two thousand years ago, 
 is evidence of the persistence of life after 
 death and suggests, if it does not absolutely 
 demonstrate, the continuance of all who, 
 like him, dwell habitually in the presence 
 of God and make it their aim to be well 
 pleasing unto him. 
 
 1^77 
 
THE CHARM OF THE IMPOSSIBLE 
 
 IT is such a fine watchword for the begin- 
 ning of another twelve months. Would 
 that we all could come during the opening 
 days of every new year within the influence 
 and under the spell of the Impossible! 
 What a difference it may make to us and to 
 others with whom we shall have to do all 
 through this coming year! 
 
 Take it first in the region of individual 
 habit. As we look back over our pathway 
 thus far we see the wrecks of many good 
 resolutions and heroic but spasmodic en- 
 deavors. And still, some of the objectionable 
 habits against which we have waged fitful 
 warfare persist. Indeed, their grip upon 
 us may be stronger than a year ago. "I 
 can never get rid of it," you say. But 
 wouldn't you like to be free.? "Of course." 
 Well, then, indulge for a moment in the 
 luxury of thinking of the impossible as the 
 possible. Act for today, at least, as if you 
 were free from your disability, whatever 
 it may be — the habit of stooping when 
 
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CHARM OF IMPOSSIBLE 
 
 you ought to walk erect, slavery to a cigar 
 or a cup of coffee, procrastination, tardiness, 
 censoriousness, despondency, the habit of 
 living beyond your means, jealousy, envy, 
 avariciousness. This is but a partial list of 
 the things that are a blemish on character, 
 and maybe your particular fault is not 
 mentioned, but you know it, or ought to 
 know it, and here, at the turning of the year, 
 you may decide to make short shrift of it in 
 time to come. 
 
 Then there Is also for every one of us 
 the charm of the fresh endeavor to attain 
 heights hitherto unsealed and which seem 
 to stretch far up into the clouds. There 
 was a bright, story in a magazine not long 
 ago of a Japanese young man in this country 
 who was bent on becoming a musician. 
 He had not a particle of native ability and 
 the teachers at the Conservatory of Music, 
 where he applied for instruction, soon found 
 out his limitations and tried to dissuade him, 
 but it was no use. He had plenty of money 
 and unlimited self-confidence and ambition. 
 So, despite rebuffs, he worked away per- 
 sistently, cheerfully, and in the long run 
 to some good effect. "What are you going 
 to do," asks the author of the story in con- 
 
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REAL RELIGION 
 
 elusion, "with a race characterized by this 
 indomitable determination?" 
 
 A young lady applied for a position in 
 the office of a friend of mine. He was pleased 
 with her and after outlining the duties 
 expected she would at once accept, but she 
 hesitated, and when he asked why she replied, 
 '* There does not seem to be anything particu- 
 larly hard about the position." Noble souls 
 want to throw themselves against the hard, 
 the heroic, the impossible propositions in 
 the line of personal achievement. 
 
 We should feel the charm of the impossible 
 in its relation to the betterment of this world. 
 "Oh," you say, "we shall never get rid of 
 poverty or sickness or discontent or strife 
 between classes and between races. We 
 shall never have entire honesty in business 
 or peace in every home and heart." A 
 counsel of despair is this. Once at a Lake 
 Mohonk conference in the interest of op- 
 pressed people, some one spoke of a certain 
 proposed policy as impossible of realization. 
 Instantly the late General Armstrong, the 
 founder of Hampton Institute, the great 
 school for the blacks in Virginia, sprang 
 to his feet and said, "What are Christians 
 in the world for unless to do the impossible.^" 
 [i8o] 
 
CHARM OF IMPOSSIBLE 
 
 Behold, then, on the opening days of 
 a new year the beauty, the fascination, 
 the glory of the Impossible. For if you 
 look at it long enough and steadily enough 
 and sympathetically enough, it will melt 
 into the Possible and then into the Feasible 
 and then, perhaps before this year ends, 
 into the Actual. 
 
 [I8il 
 
THE MAN YOU MIGHT BE 
 
 MANY men, most men in fact, stop 
 just short of being their best selves. 
 That is the pathos of human Hfe. We have 
 in every community a fair supply of amiable, 
 intelligent, interesting, respectable men and 
 women. There is a vast deal of kindness 
 and of goodness in the world, filtering con- 
 stantly from one life to another. But along 
 with it we find life after life which just 
 fails of attaining its largest development 
 and usefulness. One of the most painful 
 things I ever heard said about a human 
 being was the remark of a keen critic con- 
 cerning an attractive and versatile young 
 woman that "she just misses being an 
 extremely nice girl." He meant that 'with 
 all her brilliancy and virtue there was the 
 absence of a certain, perhaps indefinable, 
 but real trait that would have made her a 
 charming and altogether lovable creature. 
 The cause of such arrested moral and 
 spiritual development is not far to seek. 
 Often the secret of it is the comparatively 
 low and sordid ends to which a man is 
 
 [182] 
 
MAN YOU MIGHT BE 
 
 devoting God-given talent and strength. 
 In commenting upon a prominent American 
 who died not long ago, one of our comic 
 papers, noted for its frequent flashes of 
 wisdom as well as of wit, said sapiently, 
 **He was a first-class man with a second- 
 class career." It meant that barring a 
 brief but extremely creditable period of 
 public service he had given himself to the 
 amassing of wealth and to the selfish enjoy- 
 ment of it when it was in him to do large 
 and chivalrous service for his fellow men, 
 to lead some great reform movement in 
 politics, to apply his undoubted intellectual 
 ability and his rare capacity for influence 
 over others, to the solution of some of our 
 pressing national problems. But he pre- 
 ferred the pleasure arising from the manipu- 
 lation of great business interests and the 
 joys of society and of his clubs. He was 
 not quite ready for the moral struggle and 
 sacrifice essential to becoming his best 
 possible self. 
 
 On the other hand, it is reassuring to see 
 how men both in public and in private life, 
 instead of deteriorating as they age, actually 
 grow better. A prominent minister who at- 
 tended a while ago the twenty-fifth reunion 
 
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REAL RELIGION 
 
 of his college class told me that the thing 
 which impressed him most was the fact that 
 almost every one of his classmates seemed to 
 have improved in the quarter of a century 
 since graduation. The same process may 
 occasionally be observed in the political 
 realm. 
 
 No one becomes his best self unless he feels 
 upon his life the push of some great, enno- 
 bling force from without. In some cases 
 a great and growing sympathy with the 
 rightful demands of the wage-earning class 
 makes a man cherishing it grow constantly 
 nobler to his dying day. To others some 
 wrong to be redressed or some worthy 
 propaganda is the motive force in the spirit- 
 ual advance. And to still others, and there 
 is a multitude of these, it is the imperatives, 
 the restraints, and the inspirations of religion 
 that furnish the impulse to the realizing of 
 that which is best in them. 
 
 The man you might be is not so very 
 far away from you today. It needs only 
 a little more continuous, strenuous endeavor 
 to mount up to him. Oh, to have a vision 
 of the man we might be, the man we ought 
 to be, the man we can be! 
 
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