/ Class Book , H 3 GojpghtN?___. COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. W. A. HARPER MAKING of MEN m W-. A. Harper, LL. D. President Elon College Christian Publishing Association DAYTON, OHIO -*V Copyrighted, 1915, by The Christian Publishing Association tt£- MAY 24 1915 ©CI.A406Q16 D. D. D. Uxori mihi carissimae coniunctissimaeque INTRODUCTION This brief word introduces to the reading public our friend, Dr. W. A. Harper, the genial and efficient President of Elon College, in North Carolina, who is accustomed to doing many things, and all of them well. In this modest volume he embodies good counsel, drawn from his own experience in school, college, and university, which the young will find prof- itable, when they have made personal application of the principles so wisely and pleasantly set forth. We bespeak for the work a wide circulation and attentive perusal. Martyn Summerbell. Lakemont, N. Y. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter One The Making of Men ----- 9 Chapter Two The Crises op Life 21 Chapter Three The Safety of Young People - - - 33 Chapter Four Coveting the Best Gifts 47 Chapter Five The Soul's Most Serious Question - - 63 Chapter Six Striving for the Mastery - -77 Chapter Seven Tile More Abundant Life - - - - 89 Chapter Eight The Ingredients of True Living - - 105 Chapter Nine Life's Basic Principles - 119 Chapter Ten The Use of Talent - - - - - - 133 Chapter Eleven The Contributions of College Life - - 147 Chapter Twelve Achieving Manhood's Goal - 159 The proper study of mankind is man. — Pope. ♦v ♦♦ After all, the best thing in the community is not a mill, nor a mansion, nor a bank, but a man. — Dean George Hodges. The American college and university cre- ates an appreciation of scholarship, knowledge, learn- ing, covering all phenomena; it invites a sympathy with life, all life; — nothing is foreign to it ichich belongs to humanity. — President Charles Franklin Thwing. ♦*♦ ♦*♦ What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! — Shakespeare. There is too much science in the so-called educa- tional system and too little God Almighty J believe that there is in this country a great spiritual awakening, and the Church is beginning to see that it has turned over entirely too many of its functions to the State. — Vice-President Marshall. ♦*♦ ♦*♦ What is man, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visitcst him? For thou hast made him but little lower than God, And crownest him with glory and honor. Thou makest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet. —Psalm 8: 4-6. FOREWORD THE addresses composing this treatise on the place of religious instruction in college life have the one virtue of having been prepared for actual college audiences in a small college famous for its high moral tone and positive religious influences. The title given them is suggested by the first address, The Making of Men, in which it is shown that education's real business is to make men — men in character as well as in body, mind, and culture. They are cast in sermonic form not as being by a minister, but because they were in each instance presented on Sunday and in accordance with the traditions of the place of their delivery demanding at least two such Sunday utterances each scholastic year from the president. The preparation of these addresses, giving opportunity to interpret an institution's attitude toward the really vital educational question of the day, has been a labor of love and joy, and the approval with which they were received has made the matter of their permanent preservation seem advisable as well as the opportunity thus afforded of giving them a larger sphere of influence acceptable. The reader will note and readily excuse the minor repetition of thought, which could not be avoided under the conditions of the preparation and delivery of the discourses. The Author. Elon College, N. C, April, 1915. RELIGION OR IRRELIGION There is no midway ground. Education must be had where religion is emphasized or irreligion. It has come to such a pass in the public school system of many of our States, that the Christian Bible cannot in them be read or commented upon. This, however, is not so bad, since our children spend the out-of-school hours in our homes and can be directed rightly respect- ing the vital concerns of life by religious parents. But not so when they go to college or preparatory or special schools away from home. Then the fatal effects of irreligion in the school are immediately felt, for there are no restraining, corrective home influences to coun- teract the free-thought and license of the schoolroom and lecture hall. Parents must choose an institution vitalized by a religious atmosphere or one laden with deadly, character-sapping irreligion. Between the horns of this dilemma there is no middle course. CHAPTER ONE THE MAKING OF MEN Gen. 1 : 26 — "Let us make man" THE crowning act of God's creation .was the making of man. The crowning work of educa- tion is the same — nay more, the sole work of education is man-making, and every educational insti- tution should pride itself on its supreme privilege to become a Mater Virorum, the Mother of men, and . . endeavor to achieve this end. The f f primary school, the grammar ! man-making ! school, the high school, the college, | education's | the university, the technical school | GREAT AIM - J —all of them have their justifica- f | tion for being and lodge their i.. # .. # ..............,........ # .. # ......„i c } a i m f or support in keeping with this purpose, and merit praise or condemnation as they further or retard its process. It is a most difficult task — this of the making of men. No machine can do it ; no ordinary mechanic can engage in it with success. It is the most difficult work in the world. And to its accomplishment not only education but every depart- ment of life makes its prime contribution. To this end every industry, every social organization, every religious brotherhood must contribute, or stand condemned before the tribunal of human progress. To this end the world was created and to this end it now 10 The Making of Men devotes its multitudinous energies. When this work shall have been wrought with such excellence of work- manship as to meet the high expectations of our Heavenly Father for man, the world will cease and the Church be caught up in the air with her Bride- groom, Christ, the Head of the Church. But the making of men, like the making of any other product, is conditioned by the ideal set before the workmen. And with every generation, sometimes even .......................................... in shorter time, the ideal changes. | | It is easy to look back over the I the ideal man | P ast and discern how the ideal I conditions f man fashioned the educational | education. I system of each pe r i odj and partic- | | ularly is it easy to detect the A..... a ..... e .....*........e..,^.... e .; 4 power of tnis ideal for tne great races whose individuality has stamped itself on the world's course of events. The Hebrews, for example, considered the ideal man to be a pious, virtuous seeker after the holiness commanded by Jehovah, and shaped their educational system accordingly. All their schools were Bible schools — what we to-day call Sunday- schools. The Spartans considered that the ideal man should be a splendid specimen of physical manhood — superior to any misfortune and equal to any hardi- hood. Their educational system was devoted to that end and Spartan bravery, the result of it, has remained a proverb to this day. The Romans regarded the ideal man as the equivalent of the ideal citizen. To them religion was patriotism and their every institution was directed to the production of patriots. They became the lawmakers of the world because they knew best how to obey the laws they made, and because their The Making op Men 11 schools taught them the laws of their Twelve Tables as the fundamental code of life and conduct. The Greeks, and particularly the Athenians, looked at the aesthetic element as the prime factor in the ideal man. Their educational system gave great space, therefore, to cultural studies, to music, both instrumental and vocal, to painting, to sculpture, to gymnastics, as the means of developing beautiful bodies, and even mathe- matics was studied and applied to that same end. And their works of art and particularly the statues of their divinities fashioned after their notion of the ideal human creature, some say reproductions of living Greeks, have ever since been the world's admiration for beauty and grace. The early Christians were so possessed with the beautiful thought of the second coming of Christ that they gave their attention to celestial citizenship to the neglect of the terrestrial type. Their education was shaped by their ideal, mystical as it was, and the saints it produced, though in monasteries and nunneries, were marvels of devotion and self-sacrifice for a noble cause. With the Renaissance came the ambition for scholarship, learn- ing, intellectual culture. The ideal man was your man of giant intellect, of prodigious learning — and while occasionally it brought the book-worm, he was atoned for in the splendid array of great scholars that this ideal produced, men of energy as well as of learning, by whom the world greatly profited. To define the ideal man of our own time is a far more difficult task. I am not willing to believe that this age regards the ideal man as the great financier, the man who has been able, by energy or trickery, to amass a fortune, provided that is all there is to his life. UNSOUND EDUCATIONAL. AIMS TO-DAY. 12 The Making op Men For there would be but few who could be influenced by this ideal. Ours is the land of mammon, the land of dollars, but how pitifully few are the possessors of the ........................................... fabulous wealth of our country! A score of men control twenty per cent, of our nation's entire wealth, and less than five per cent, of our population control more than ninety-five per cent, of all our pos- sessions. Surely an ideal which excludes all but a mere handful of our millions of intelligent people cannot be adequate, is not democratic. Nor am I willing to believe that the educational reformers who now prate so loudly for the commercial- ization of our educational system as being the great desire of our people have read the signs of the times aright. Neither do I believe that these would-be reformers would inaugurate their policies, if they were given a chance, nor would the people tolerate them if they should be inaugurated. These reformers call for practical education, vocational training, specialization — and with none of these do I quarrel. But when they plead for the elimination of all cultural studies — all studies to give us kinship with the past and enable us to project ourselves into the future, in their endeavor to be strictly practical, even the surface thinker can depict under their philosophy only the crassest materialism — a materialism which would limit life to wealth production and divest it of its essential human qualities. Vocational training, too, is all right, in its place. But its place, like specialization, is after the liberal education is completed and the chosen field of duty plain. Critics of democracy have always con- The Making op Men 13 tended that it tends to pull the noblest men down to the level of the lowest, in its vain endeavor to treat all alike. The modern reformers in education certainly merit that opprobrium. Because statistics show that very few comparatively pass from the grammar school to the high school, and because those who fail so to do go into the trades and stores and workshops, these prophets of the new educational propaganda readily conclude that the high school is fashioned on a wrong basis and that, were it made more practical, these great numbers would remain in it. They were never more mistaken. Those who leave are the children of parents without vision, who wish or sometimes unfortunately need the wages their children will bring, or they are children who despise school and prefer to work instead, or worse still to loaf or live a fast social life. A little investigation will reveal that the years closing the grammar grades and the minimum age permissible for child-labor are the same, and this in itself should give the new-light educational torch- bearers a clue to their problem and point the way to its solution. They are, however, with singular blind- ness, ignoring this great fact and in their endeavor to reach those whom they cannot reach, are throwing away their opportunity to help those who really wish help. In certain sections of our country there are vocational high schools alongside the educational high school, and the latter, after the glare of the first year or two is vanished, always enrolls more pupils. The same is true of the schools of Germany and of other countries where the two types of high school operate in open competition. Do the reformers know this? And is it for that reason that they wish to do away with the 14 The Making of Men educational high school and put in its place the vocational one? If so, their triumph will be short- lived. Further evidence that the present-day educational reformers are more concerned about pulling the highest type of man down rather than about lifting the lowest ...........................„............ ? up to his type is found in their I assumption that the schools democracy on j should fit their pupils to fill their pr™mt-day I P lace in life > ana * tnen in providing | education. | instruction in manual arts and | | bookkeeping as satisfying that *..............•..........................* a - m ^ w ith never a mention of the higher forms of social service as represented by the professions. Is it not the State's duty to see to it that the means of education are provided as much for its professional men as for its artisans, and on the same terms? I do not conceive it to be the duty of the State to provide me my special training ;to be a carpenter or a brickmason or a bookkeeper and to deny you yours to be a lawyer or a school-teacher or a doctor or a minister. I do not conceive it to be the duty of the State to provide either of us at its expense with our special training. Our public schools are not apprentice shops, as the reformers would have you believe, but schools and their business is not to produce an artisan, nor a professional man, but to give their pupils that fundamental general education that will enable them with greater ease and rapidity and finer grasp to become either artisans or professional men, as each individual's bent may lead him to elect. And when the public schools undertake to depart from this sensible aim, they are meriting the opprobrium so The Making of Men 15 often hurled at democracy — that it cannot produce the noblest type of citizen, but only the average type. But to return to the conception of the ideal man in relation to education as he is viewed in our day, we observe that there are two conflicting notions current r .........*.............. 9 ............... respecting him— one that he I J should get all the educational another f system can give him with or with- 1 FALSE | J . i present-day | out religion, as he may choose; | educational • the other that education without l IDEAL. J . i | religion is worse than no educa- *„..............*..«........•........•..* tion. The issue is plain between these two and every man who goes to school in our day must meet this issue and dispose of it. Our courts have frequently held that religious instruction cannot be given out of the Bible in our public school system, whether of the secondary or higher order, and experience has shown that it is not given apart from the Bible in them. Not only can relig- ious instruction not be given in these schools, but the Bible cannot even be read in many of them. A proposed constitutional amendment in North Carolina provided for teaching the Bible in the public schools, but in the opinion of the ablest lawyers it was worthless. They held that the first test case before the United States Supreme Court would have resulted in having it declared null and void, and so it was never submitted to the popular vote. Those who believe in the ideal man of the former type rejoiced in this disposition of the matter. They wish a man to be educated, with religion left out, or rather in a non- religious atmosphere. Reason, however, teaches that 16 The Making of Men there is no such thing as a non-religions atmosphere or a non-religious education. Religion is not a separate department in the curriculum: it is a spirit that pervades every study. It is impossible to teach without biasing those taught either for or against religion, and particularly is this true in those studies which involve ethical standards and ideals of life and conduct. A concrete illustration is furnished by the graduating class of one of America's greatest universities — a so-called independent or free institution. Out of five hundred men only one made any pretense to religious faith, while many Christian colleges have never gradu- ated any who were not members of some evangelical church. So we see that the ideal of non-religious education is unrealizable, unattainable. It leaves the individual to choose for himself from considerations outside the curriculum, and, if he be religiously inclined, most often in opposition to the teaching the curriculum offers him. And while religion cannot 1)6 directly taught in the state schools* and is not taught in the non-denominational or independent schools of this country, irreligion can be and frequently is taught in them, for while only one graduate of the great univer- * Realizing this condition the Federal Council of Churches in America recently recommended that puhlic school pupils be released one-half day each week from their school duties to be given religious instruction by their church or the church designated by their parents. Also the State universities are providing denominational halls where the various communions may employ their own student pastor who shall instruct the students and look after their spiritual interests. The attempt of the National Educational Association to have a plan suggested for ''Introducing Religious Teaching Into the Public Schools," defining religion in a way not to run counter to the creeds of Protes- tant, Roman Catholic, or Jew, seems incapable of realization. It would be a milk-and-water proposition. The Federal Council plan has been in successful operation in Gary, Indiana, for several years. The plan of denominational dormitories in State universities has the verdict of real test to its credit. It is a vital problem and demands earnest attention. The Making op Men 17 sity's class mentioned above out of five hundred was a professing Christian, the overwhelming majority of the others were agnostics, infidels, and skeptics. The second ideal would certainly appear to be preferable — that the ideal man needs all that the educational system, pervaded with religious sentiment, ? ..... e .. e ........„....*..... e .. e .. e .. # ... can give him in order best to serve I f his fellow man. This ideal does | the true I not stand for sectarian religious I educ^tionai. ! instruction, but far the religious, | ideal. ? Christian atmosphere under de- | 1 vout Christian teachers, with not i..... 9 ........ 9 .-.. e .. 8 ..,..e...„... e ..i a part but ever y one f them Christians, thus producing an atmosphere that predis- poses every breather of it in the direction of the Christian life. And since the religious element is that which leavens the entire lump of man's nature, this type of college will produce the best type of man — the ideal man, the man imbued with the spirit of the gospel, which is the spirit of humanitarianism, of helpful serv- ice to fellow man. The present-day ideal man is the man who can best serve society and human brotherhood. It is undoubtedly the educated Christian man who can fulfil that ideal best, because no man is complete whose religious nature is undeveloped, and no incomplete man can serve his fellow man best. The modern educational aim, then, when broadly and rightly interpreted, is a composite of all aims that have preceded it. It contains elements of the desire of the Eenaissance leaders for sound scholarship, of the Athenian love of culture and beauty in their relation to life, of the Koman devotion to the welfare of the state, of the Spartan ambition for a vigorous body, of 18 The Making of Men the Hebrew striving to please God, and of the early Christian's anxious endeavor to prepare for celestial mansions, not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. ........................................... The student who comes to college f J as if on an excursion for recrea- I the f tion and pleasure, viewing it as CONSTITUENT * elements I a sort °^ vacation season, spent | of this ideal. f amid delightful surroundings, will | | not become your ideal man. He i.......,.................................* mus t gi ve attention to scholarship. But scholarship is not all of college life. If so, the book-worm would be the ideal product, which he isn't. Attention also must be given to the aesthetic side of life and studies such as music, art, expression, literature, philosophy, history, and the like must lend a halo of culture and refinement in order to the best results. Matthew Arnold defined culture as acquaintance with the best that has been said, done, and thought in previous ages, and regarded such acquaintance as essential to correct conceptions of life and duty and adequate enjoyment of the high privilege of living. And he was right, but not entirely so, for life is more than culture, and some of the most cultured men have been the biggest oppressors of their fellows. Besides culture and scholarship, the ideal educated man of to-day needs respect for the rights of others and for the majesty of the law, such a devotion to law and the duties of citizenship as the old Boman education of the best days produced. Our civilization needs this ingredient and needs it sorely, and it is coming, coming particularly among college students who now respect each other's fundamental rights as they did not even a generation ago — and this is one of the most hopeful signs of our The Making of Men 19 times, since college men make the sentiment of our country in large measure. Then the ideal educated man needs, must have, a vigorous body. This is a strenuous age, an age tense with nervous energy, pulsing with life, and exacting on all who essay to do its work. A man with a weak body, in these stirring times, need not expect to attain any other than a mediocre position of usefulness, no matter how brilliant his mind or devout his purpose. Therefore colleges provide, at great expense, the means of physical development, and insist that they be used, but not to the exclusion of scholar- ship, culture, and obedience to regulations needful in preparing for the duties of citizenship and helpful in the process of man-making. The ideal physical man is not the prize-fighter, nor the professional athlete, but your man who combines in his make-up mental as well as physical soundness. But excellent as scholarship is, charming as culture is, beautiful as law-abiding patriotism is, necessary as a vigorous physical manhood is, needful as are all these, they are not enough. That which makes man man is that he is made in God's image, is that his is a divine nature, that he is destined to see Him as He is. In order to be a completely made man, he shall need to give heed in his preparation to his divine nature, to the cultivation of his divine attributes, that he may grow in greater likeness to his Father and be prepared to stand before His judgment throne unabashed. The scholarship of the Kenaissance, the culture of Athens, the citizenship of Rome, the Spartan manhood — worthy ideals though they are — can never satisfy the higher demands of our divine kinship with God. The old Hebrew was right in his anxiety to do the will of Jehovah and the early 20 The Making of Men Christian was right in his endeavor to prepare for Heaven, for we shall need to do God's will in this life in order to inherit our mansion in the celestial city. CHAPTER TWO THE CRISES OF LIFE Acts 21:Jfl — "And falling into a place where two seas met" THE meeting of two seas, which circumstance brought St. Paul's ship to wreck, is a perilous condition frequently confronted in human life. Such a condition, where the streams of life's influences cross and recross, we style a crisis. Provided it is suc- cessfully coped with, a crisis means the termination of .......................................... that which has been and the be- | ? ginning of that which was not I crises may I Defore - S° many times a crisis I help f means death to that which was f OR MENACB - i without power to go forward to f | that which might be, that most i.................. M# ..^....^..„....»i p e0 pi e regard such a situation as equivalent to disaster. But it should not be so. Unless the seed fall into the ground and die, it cannot bring forth some forty, some sixty, and some an hundredfold. Equally so in life, unless the crisis comes, progress is impossible and the life is already fruitless. The crises of life are the molting seasons, when the worthless shells of our former smaller lives are cast aside, and we enter a newer freedom and a larger power. They are the times when two seas meet, to be sure, and those two seas contain in them the instrumentalities capable 22 The Making of Men of producing destruction, but these crises are also the proper time for the chrysalis to become the butterfly. The crises of life, being therefore according to nature and inevitable, should be made the allies of progress lest they become engines of destruction. This ........................................... much desired result can be f | achieved by a careful study of | they are ! their times and causes and the f natural and | wise application of principles that * INEVITABLE. i i n • e . ^ j «• | J shall insure safety and ward oft | j disaster. These crises come in i......-.........................„...... A y 0ut j l an( j ft j g th e high privilege as well as solemn duty of parents and of those standing in the relation of parents to act as pilots in such places where two seas are known to be prone to meet, and so to prevent shipwreck of the young life or even damage to its craft. It is therefore well for parents to study their children and for all who have to do with the life and character-development of young people to do like- wise. How can we best serve the next generation is the burning question that confronts us all, because it i^ in the twist we give the character of the generation that shall succeed us that we shall make our greatest contribution to human progress and uplift. The study of childhood has been elevated into a science now — the science of Paidology* — and (every adult is under obligation to verse himself in it. The world, since Christ's famous exaltation of childhood, has been looking toward the child and endeavoring to * B?r. H. O. Chrisman, of Ohio University, or one of his pupils, on April 26, 1893, coined the word Paidology, which is now current throughout the world as the proper designation of the scientific study of childhood. One International Congress of Paidologists has been held and many authors have written on the new science. The Crises of Life 23 serve him. The Puritan with his austerity and rigor- ousness thought he could best serve him by keeping him quiet and in the background. His philosophy failed. Some parents to-day, far too many for our country's good, seeing the failure of the Puritanic form of family government, have surren- • IN ORDER TO ? MEET THEM | CAREFUL STUDY • IS NECESSARY ? AND ABUNDANT I SYMPATHY. I •..s..»»«..»..«..«..»..a»e..c»e»«»i dered their God-given right to direct the life of their children and sit in watchful waiting with fear and trembling while the young people of their homes work out their own salvation. In most cases such apostacy on the part of parents leads not to the salvation, but to the loss, of their children. And yet there are great philosophers and profound psychologists and expert paidologists who argue scientifically that that is the proper course to pursue. They declare that normal development is what the child should have, whereas normal development for the average child means a reproduction of savagery and the return of the race to the barbaric type. In fact, that is what they demand and expect. They designate the result "recapit- ulation," and assure us that it is divinely arranged that every normal child should "recapitulate" in his life all the long, hard struggle of the race from savagery to civilization. I am ready to grant that this result will ensue, if the child is left to himself, except that civilization would not be achieved and certainly no progress would be possible. But God never intended it so. He arranged a long period of childhood and youth for the human being that parents might impress upon children the ideals and attainments of previous genera- tions and so prevent the loss of the culture and progress 24 The Making op Men already achieved. The period of childhood and youth is the period of storing up the past and of quickening the ideals of later life, but if that period is neglected, it will necessarily entail the failure of human society. Parents of vision, therefore, parents who compre- hend their divinely appointed mission, will be neither Puritanic nor recapitulatory in their methods of dealing r ........^-.......^.-. B .......... with their children. They will not | £ try to curb the loyalty, energy, and I and workers | enthusiasm of their children, nor I peo™/^ I y et wil1 the . v hide a ™™ d the | have both, f corner and leave the disposition of I I these three great ingredients of o..e..<,.. s ..«.. 9 ..^.....»..,........«..i child-life in the hands of the children themselves. They will study the nature of their children and the laws of their development. The times and the seasons of stress and strain and storm of their life will be known to them, and when each crisis appears they will be ready with the assistance of the expert pilot, who knows all the shoals and the cross- currents of life's sea, to bring the young craft through to a successful and happy harbor. And what grander privilege can parents and other workers with children and young people covet than this — the privilege of saving a life and an immortal soul at once? This privilege is best conceived in the spirit of humility, the spirit of true childhood, and wrought out in terms of that oft-quoted aphorism from Solomon — "Train up a child in the way he should go." Training — that is the idea — not curbing, not stifling, nor yet giving the rein to those too immature and unskilled to control, but wisely directing, carefully training the young, with their beautiful loyalty, their abounding energy, and The Crises op Life 25 their consecrated enthusiasm, to be trained leaders of the race to righteousness when their manhood's days have come. To do this necessary work and to do it properly is the most important thing the adult population will ever be called upon to undertake. It is more important .^....................„................ that this work be done well than | f that the Hudson be shot under- f which is the f neath by a tunnel or that the I 7™ NEXT 1 Panama Canal be di SS ed OT that I generation. | the Anti-Trust Program be put I | through. For when men and ;..... ..*.......,.........„............„i women seems to lose his grip on the young, and so does the Church. The Church loses seventy-five per cent, of its boys and sixty-five per cent, of its girls during this trying time, because it does not know how to handle the meeting of the seas in their lives. Things are changing for the better along this line and the Church is beginning to adapt itself to the exigencies of the case by providing avenues for the proper expenditure of the energy, enthusiasm, and loyalty of young people through organizations suited to their nature and through opportunities to render service worth while for the Kingdom and for their fellow man, and while mistakes have been made and will continue to be made, we may with confidence declare that the Church is on the right line * at last and that ultimate victory shall flow to her banners. And in this victory parents and workers with youth outside the Church will have their precious labor of love rewarded richly just in proportion as they shall, through careful study of the crisis surging in the soul of every young man or woman during the stormy days of adolescence, come to sympathize with the young and so to qualify * See that splendid volume by Hutchins : "Graded Social Service for the Sunday School." The University of Chicago Press. 28 The Making of Men themselves to pilot them safely through its seething waters to the calm haven of life. A very practical and serious issue from the educational standpoint is raised at this juncture since the days of later adolescence coincide with the days of college life for most college students. How necessary then, it is that colleges be chosen in which the religious atmosphere is present and pervasive, for not only do we lose the most of our boys and girls at this age, but we also gain the great majority of those who are ever to accept Christ's leadership ! The crisis that arises when the life-work is to be chosen is an inviting, yet a fearful, one. A mistake here may mar what would otherwise be a brilliant career. r-« ■■■■■-■■>...,..r ■■■,■■..,.■■,■■, Adults should be very cautious in | | obtruding their own views and | and likewise | ideals too forcibly at this juncture. J m C the SING I Man ? a man whom God dedicated f life-work. f to the ministry has failed as a | | lawyer or physician or business i...............-.„...................„i man Tj ie young should be allowed to choose their own vocation, after careful advice and prayerful counsel with their elders. And the chiefest consideration in every such selection of the life-work should be, Does God really want me to do this thing rather than some other? We should lose sight of the remuneration or honor or social prestige which will come to us in our work and should concentrate our attention on the service we can render and our fitness by divine appointment for that service. Tf we will do that, the remuneration and the honor and the social prestige will inevitably come. There are so many misfits in life that too careful judgment cannot be employed at this crisis. So many men are destined to The Crises op Life 29 achieve a mediocre success, because they chose their life-work without due consideration or from improper considerations or entered upon it without proper preparation. My advice to young people is that they leave themselves open to conviction as to their sphere of life-work until they cannot escape entering the field they finally choose. We speak of a call to the ministry. My thought is that men are called of God also to other lines of work, if they will but hear His voice and hearken to His word. As the young man's, or woman's, education advances, an impression will ripen into a definite choice of life-work and that choice will be right. Herein is a serious weakness of vocational training, as it is now advocated, — it encourages the making of a choice of life-work before the range of human service is broad enough to warrant it, and then later it is too late to change. Therefore let young people enlarge their vision all possible by thorough education and, in the light of human need and their ability and inclination to serve, let them choose the work to which they feel God in His infinite wisdom has appointed them, and equally let every parent and worker for the good of young people encourage them to do this very thing, at the same time, affording them every possible means of thorough preparation. We must content ourselves now with brief reference to only one of the other many crises of childhood and youth — the crisis which comes when the human soul, conscious of its own weakness, seeks a higher leadership for its life, — when it is confronted with accepting or rejecting God. This is life's most important crisis, and so its most fatal. Tt is the testing time par excellence. The issues not of life alone, but of eternity, 30 The Making of Men are now to be settled. Here parents can be angels of light leading their children to the Father. Here those who work with young people need the wisdom of serpents and the harmlessness of doves — for it were better that a mill-stone were hanged about the neck of •„..................,.................*.. each such worker and that he be f but most of | cast into the sea than that he I ^ueItion of* J should offend such a little one - | the soul's | And may I say just here, what is f w™e L is | entirely true, that the young in | to be settled, f making this momentous decision 4............„^.^...^.„....„...,„i w -jj k e j n fl uence( j m ore by how the adults around them live than by what they profess. Profession is necessary — God provides for it — but practice is its outward counterpart and the circle of the Christian life must ever be incomplete without it. It is a sad commentary on the daily life of the adult Church member that seventy per cent, of our Sunday- school pupils never join Church. The Sunday-school teaches Christianity all right, but we Christians do not illustrate it properly in our life and conduct. And I will say unequivocally that every child can be brought into the Kingdom and will be, when the adults nearest its life and responsible for its character illustrate in daily living the holy principles of our faith. We must not insult God by imputing to the immutable decrees of His will responsibility for the loss of a single human soul. God never willed that any man should perish. The invitation is to all, and they to whom the innocent, plastic babe is entrusted are responsible before God for the failure to mold that plastic soul in the image of God and to make it the natural thing for it to choose Him as the day-star of their life's hope. The home has The Crises op Life 31 not done its duty, if any child of it fails to accept Christ as leader and guide. I would not, however, deny that a child that has been led to accept Christ can later fall away from Him in spite of the influence of parents, but such cases are ... . rarer than one would think, if f I parents use their best judgment in | and is not to f providing wholesome influences for I whmcSe I their children when not in their | is entered, f home. I heard a man say recently | f that he did not expect to send his i....................................„.„i ckiidj^n awa y to college, because a certain young man of his neighborhood had just been graduated from a famous seat of higher learning with- out any interest in the Church or the religious life, whereas before going to college he had been a devout Christian and a devoted worker in Sunday-school. This young man had been unfortunate in his choice of a college and had found one where the Christian life is not insisted upon as the noblest of all attainments. Not all of his teachers were unchristian men. I know some of them to be devout followers of the Master, but some of them were otherwise and the otherwise ones got possession of the young man's life and caused the Christian ideal to loom small in his eyes, and in the vain search for largeness of life and a false freedom he had lost interest in his own soul. Vice-president Mar- shall recently * said that we need more God in our * See Baltimore Sun, May 18, 1914, where the vice-president is quoted as saying : "There is this thing wrong in many of the churches, that because church and state are separate, and the state makes the schools, the church feels itself absolved from any duty in the direction of the education of youth. The state is permitted to mold children from the age of six up through the time when they are going through colleges, where many of the professors are agnostics and atheists. There is too much science in the so-called educational system and too little God Almighty." 32 The Making of Men education, and Mr. Marshall is right. We need God in our education, and unless we can have Him we will do well to remain ignorant and unlearned. For we now understand that head-education without heart-culture is not only fundamentally defective, but positively ruinous to character and absolutely destructive of the noblest things and sentiments of life. And no college can be said to have done its full duty if a single one of its graduates is ignorant of Jesus Christ and without the joy of His salvation in the heart. CHAPTER THREE THE SAFETY OF YOUNG PEOPLE 2 Samuel 18:29 — "Is the young man Absalom safe?" IT IS a rare thing in these days of all but universal enlightenment to find an open enemy of education. It has been demonstrated so many times in the world's history that the educated man is superior to the ignorant in everything, that it is useless waste of time and worry of patience to undertake to prove that .......................................e... education is necessary to the } f attainment of the individual man's I aiau men I hig nes t ano ^ hest achievement in | BEiiiEVE in f life. Education is necessary to | education. I the leaderg in all the realms of | I activity — physical, moral, intel- A..o...........,..^o..........-........i i ec tual, social, financial, literary, spiritual — in no department of human endeavor can a man do his best, attain his highest, without education. And this is but right — because education is the develop- ment of a man, his unfolding, his leading out* to borrow the Latin meaning of the word, and whatever con- tributes to this end must needs add to man's capacity to do more and be more than he otherwise could do or be. * Henry van iVyke thinks that some things ought to be spanked out of men when they are children, if education is to do its real work. It would he nearer the truth to say that these objectionable things would never have got in the children, if parents and others had done their full part by them. There are no inherently bad young people, but many of them have had their energy misdirected. What therefore needs to he spanked out ought never to have got in. 34 The Making of Men But — while we appreciate education, while we would not discount it in the least, while we would strive to realize its fullest possible good in our own life, yet we cannot escape the fact that there are dangers connected with its getting, with the processes of it, that challenge our thought and compel our attention. Have we not known education to ruin men? Did not our .......................................... parents or our guardians, did not f f many of us ourselves, ponder long | choose your j what college we should attend? | college | Did not we and they realize that I WITH CARE * | choosing the college that is to be | f the scene of a young person's intel- *....................,..„..,„...,........* i ec ^ ua i metamorphosis is one of the weightiest issues of life and carries with it great possibilities — possibilities of both good and evil — of danger and of safety to youth? Are not many of the loved ones at home at this very hour asking the same anxious question propounded the messengers by King David in regard to the brilliant, but dissolute Absalom — Is the young man safe? Is my son safe? Is my daughter safe ? Yes, they are asking these questions in their heart of hearts to-day — and they are asking them with all ? ......„,.e.........„..........„....... earnestness, even though they | f pondered long and well before f parents, too, • arriving at a decision as to where : SHOULD : | exercise | to send the idol of their love to f caution f college. It is but natural that s HERE ? I I they should, because they know, i..........................,........,,.....* w b e ther we students do or not, that college life is beset with many dangers, many pitfalls, many snares and wily traps. The Safety of Young People 35 To you splendid young people who have already entered or are about to enter college, let me point out briefly some of the most insidious of these snares and then suggest the way of escape from them, that your college career, by judicious order- ? -....„,...„«......„....„^......... ? ing of life and conduct and f strict adherence thereto may the purpose t be safe— that, when your col- or f lege days are over, you may be • THIS MESSAGE, i ■, 1 n, J BA^. | ag p ure ag wlien y OU le ^ y Qur | | parental roof and stronger in i............ M .„....„...,„.„.........i ever y £ Der f character and man- hood and womanhood because of the preparation days rightly spent at college. One of the most alarming dangers of modern educa- tion in some quarters is higher criticism. I do not wish to be understood as decrying scholarship, research, •»•..•........*..*......*.*............ learning, thorough investigation. | These are the things for which the true f college exists, which the Church SC re°s L tTon IP I demands, and of which she stands faith. | in need. The Middle Ages, with | | their low moral state, so low as 4.........„.«.~...............^.,...„i | Q mer ^ f or them the title of the Dark Ages, give ample proof that the Church has everything to lose and nothing to gain by setting itself against learning and education. But this is not to welcome higher criticism nor plead for its necessity. A higher critic is a scholar with the profession on his lips of a Christian, but with a skeptic's heart and attitude. It is an old saying that people usually find what they look for. Even astronomers have to make allowance for what they call the personal equation in 36 The Making op Men recording observations. When we deal with a matter as ethereal and personal as religion is, the attitude of the investigator is all the more important. The man who regards the authority of the Bible as of the same type as the authority of a book on ethics is not the proper person to investigate the authenticity of the Bible nor of any fact in it. He who undertakes to investigate the Scriptures must believe them before- hand, recognize them as superior to any other book, as in a class by themselves; equipped with such an attitude he is prepared to investigate and to have his investiga- tion respected. The attitude of the natural scientist toward the teach- ings of natural science, that all its teachings are provis- .....................................0... ional, temporary, and subject to | change without notice, is not the religion is f proper attitude toward the relig- ^T T , S A AN°TRT C f ! { io ™ Hfe and its teachings. Relig- | a fine art. f ion is not a natural, but a revealed, | | science — more correctly speaking, i................ 4 ......................»i ft | g no ^ a gc j ence a { a u ? k u t an ar ^ the art of getting on right terms with God and our fellow men, and the principles of right and truth under- lying that art are eternal and not subject to revision. ........................................... N° young man or young woman f avoid colleges f is safe who is in an institution of | where higher f learning where the higher critical I THEm C DEZv I view-point is the pier from which f seed in f he is compelled to begin his voyage | PRECIOUS SOTI • I over life's sea. But in this regard, 4...........,........... 9 .. 8 ..... ..,*., a ..s students in Christian colleges are safe. They rarely have a higher critic in their faculty. Their professors respect and honor the The Safety op Young People 37 Word of God as the fundamental chart of life and accept it as the sufficient rule of faith and practice in religious conduct, and deplore the tendency in many places to belittle the worth and disparage the value of the Book of books. The second danger which confronts college students is like unto the first, but is found in courses given under the Department of Social Science, and not under ........................................ the Biblical Department. The I social science I men > in man ? institutions of ? in many f higher learning, who head these 1 COLLEGES IS A ] -, , , tit t • -, I cloak for I departments, would be higher f higher | critics if they were Biblical teach- CRITICISM | I ers or expounders. They have i........... 8 ...............-,.........„i rea( j .Q ie j^le, however, and are loud in their praises of it as a veritable storehouse of rich sociological material. They bid their students read and reread it, not for food for their heart-hunger nor drink for their soul-thirst, but for the sociological matter it contains. Often sociological material from other quarters is found which conflicts with that of the Bible — and the Bible is declared to be in error. These distinguished doctors reason in a circle. They will assure you that their science must not be condemned because it discovers things not in the Bible, since the Bible is not authority on sociology; but in the next breath will deny the authenticity of the Bible because it conflicts with their theories. Oh, consistency ! They will bolster up their science, which is always subject to revision even in its fundamental principles without notice, when the Bible seems to lend color to their tenets, and then they condemn the Bible and belittle it when it challenges any of their pet theories. You have 38 The Making op Men heard the expression, to use a man; that seems to be what the higher critical doctrinaires in Social Science evidently do with the Bible. They use it — and then abuse it. If many of the things reported as being enunciated by these teachers are actually taught by them, the farther the young people of our land keep from them, .......................................... the better it will be for our land f | and our young people. The Chris- | away with J tian college, too, will have its De- ? msmioirs I P ar tnient of Social Science, but it I teachings! f will respect the Bible first and So- f t rial Science second.* In it you will a..-...............-....................a j^jjj no rigk of h av i n g vour spirit- ual eyes blinded by the exaltation of sociology at the expense of theology, but you will see that sociology-, rightly taught, is a powerful handmaid to the correct understanding of the revealed Word of God as we have it in the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments. re ..-....^....^.........-....-.. The third danger toward which | f I would direct your attention is | freedom to f the free-thought with respect to all I kin X to free- I issues of life and conduct which in | thought. f many places is characteristic of a I | great many college men. They i.................... e ........,...„... e .,i a pp roacn every matter with the skeptical air and are never sure of anything or any principle. To them nothing is too sacred or hallowed * A book on Political Economy was recently turned down by a state institution as a text-book. The author of the book wrote and asked for the reason for its rejection. The answer he received was : "Your first sentence was enough to condemn the book." The first sentence reads : "The source of all wealth is the beneficence of God." Quoted from The CJiristian Sun. The Safety of Young People 39 to be doubted and scoffed at. They scoff at religion as the proper thing for women and children — they doubt its value for men. They place a question point after every positive statement of every book they read, of every lecture they hear. They boast of their freedom of thought, forgetting that the truest freedom is that which subjects itself to law and order and tries to har- monize with surrounding conditions and circumstances. The real free man is not he who kicks against the laws of the land, but he who obeys them. Those college men who indulge in free-thought and the teachers who ? ..... ft .....^........ e ...„............. encourage it, respecting the funda- f | mental institutions of life and I be a real | society, need to do sober thinking : FREE MAN ? J ' f | through I as to the consequence of such sober f intellectual license. Liberty ought | | never to become license. If any of i.. 8 .. e .-........... e .. 8 .. e .. w ..,„ a „ c ..i yQu ]iave gone tQ co u e g e expecting to find such an atmosphere of so-called freedom of thought, may you be disappointed. I would have you think, but I would not have you assume the skeptic's interrogatory attitude toward all the issues and condi- tions of life. We are sure that an institution which encourages or tolerates such a spirit is not a safe place for the unfolding of young man- and woman-hood. From what has been said you perceive that Christian education is the age's need. But what is Christian education? I once heard a college president say in answer to that question, that Christian education results where a Christian teaches. Yet that same man at that time was presiding over an institution in which half the teachers were either skeptics or higher critics. In the face of all that, he maintained that his was a 40 The Making of Men Christian institution and of a nobler type than the denominational college, because it was a state institu- tion and included all the people. Christian education ........................................... cannot be had unless all who teach £ J are Christians, humble, child-like, ! what is ! trusting Christians, who never f christian f scoff at religion, who never • EDUCATION? : , ,, ,, ., . ,, „... | | deny the authority of the Bible, | f who never minimize or speak •...........•........,........«..„...„.„* slightingly or disparagingly of the Church. Even this is not enough ; the atmosphere surround- ing the college must be pregnant with spirituality. That is why it is best for a college to be situated away ...... 8 ..»...........,..... # „............. from the distractions and allure- I | ments of the gay, maddening, | conditions | dissipating throng of the city. The | for omusTiLr I colle g e in a cit J has the cit J | education. I atmosphere around it and does | | not, cannot, produce as fine a type A........,........,.....,...„ d ..... # ...„i Q £ Christian education as the college in a college town, in a town which is the college, for such a college can make its own atmosphere. And they who have grown to intellectual manhood in such an atmosphere can never forget the splendid privilege they have enjoyed. It has entered into the warp and woof of their life and given to them an outlook unat- tainable without such an atmosphere and yet for which many a disappointed soul would give all it has to receive. Education trains the head. Christian education has a larger task — it cannot stop with head training alone. It must aim at the production of an all-round man, an The Safety of Young People 41 all-round woman. I do not believe an educational institution can rightly lay claim to being denominated Christian, unless it strives to produce a complete citizen — phvsically, mentallv, so- | I cially, morally, spiritually. No f christian \ man w ] 10 j s deficient in any of ? EDUCATION i ,, , . . , 1 produces the ! these regards is a complete man complete | an( j no education which fails to ! CITIZEN. | . " ... I | equip its pupils in any of these i..,............„...............,.. 8 ...„* directions can be properly styled Christian. We cannot leave the policeman to look after the conduct and the minister the souls of our pupils, while we teachers look after their intellectual development. We must do all three and more besides. Christian education must give attention to the body. Did not the sacred writer say that our bodies are the temples of the living God? Can we as Christians afford ? ................. 9 ............„.„..... 1 not to give strict heed to our t take good t D °dies? Can a Christian institu- ? care of the T tion remain one and not give | B ° D T Y rDo A A T IS J attention to the physical well- | christian ! being of its pupils? We have I | learned that a sound body is an i..........................,........ # ...„i esgen ft a i basis for well-propor- tioned, symmetrical development in every other depart- ment of our being. Our body is our fundamental part in this world. We must take care of it, if we are to prosper and do our full part as men and women in the world's arena of action. When a Christian college therefore forbids the use of cigarettes and discourages the use of tobacco in every form, it is acting within its own province, doing what if it were not to do, it would forfeit its right to be called Christian. When it encour- 42 The Making of Men ages its pupils to take exercise and provides for athletics and physical culture, it is again doing its plain, simple Christian duty, and it is also the duty of the pupils in such an institution to take advantage of these opportunities for physical self-improvement. When I commend athletics, I do not mean that it should be exalted above every other feature of college life, but that all should enter into the sports and all derive good from them. Not the spectators at, but the partakers in, athletic events derive good and gain benefit. Let every student resolve that he will partake as well as spectate. Thus will he be physically safe. Of course a college ought to furnish mental develop- ment; all grant that. Yet I have known students who did not get it, because they did not study. Others have .-..........,...,..<,..................... not received the development they | f were entitled to and deserved to I study— but • nave because they picked out the I not on | easiest courses allowed by the elec- f sunday. j tiye gjstem still others have | I studied too much. Make it the A..........^..^..„...,.....,...... w .„i ru j e Q £ y 0ur jif e ^0 study during study hours and give yourself to the other things of college life at other times. Do not at all study on Sunday. It is not necessary — never is, if we do our duty at other times, nor do those who indulge in it in any way surpass or excel those who do not, according to my observation. Furthermore, it is contrary to God's Word to do it. Let me suggest to you further that you systematize your work — have certain hours for certain things, and do those things then. W T hen they are done, give attention to other things. Such self-discipline will count wonderfully in your success The Safety of Young People 43 in after-life and make it unnecessary for you to study on the Sabbath day. A Christian college must also give attention to the social life. By this I do not simply mean that a college ought to provide social intercourse and give attention ........................................... to the social graces of life, but far more. The social life as here used means whatever pertains to our association with our fellows. You have the right to expect your • THE SOCIAL LIFE IN | COLLEGE • SHOULD TRAIN f FOR | CITIZENSHIP - J college career to teach you to be a A..^...................,........,..^.,..i good citizen. When we finish our education, we will find it necessary to accommodate ourselves to the laws and customs of government and society. Why should we not learn that valuable lesson in college? There will be regulations, rules, principles, and customs of conduct in college which we would wish changed or would rather have otherwise. But if we keep our eyes on fitting ourselves for real life by our college training, we will recognize in these seemingly unnecessary and troublesome rules and regulations the best sort of training for citizenship in the years to come. A college student's first duty is to submit gracefully and cheerfully to the regulations of the institution he attends, expecting therefrom to gain training, disci- pline, and habits of mind and conduct that will stand him in good stead in the work he is to do upon leaving college. The student who does this will enjoy going to college and will be safe. Morality should certainly be inculcated in a college. And institutions of learning are proud of their moral tone. The principles of moral conduct are the out 44 The Making of Men growth of the experience of our race in matters of conduct and life. Morality changes. It has changed in our colleges. Hazing was once looked upon as pardon- able sport. To-day hazing is rightly regarded as a r ...................„................... relic of barbarism and a survival | J of savagery. No self-respecting I high moral [ student will indulge in it and no | TONE IS AN I ° » I essential in | decent college will tolerate it. ? true | Why? The moral standard has ? EDUCATION. t J ■ | t changed and to-day forbids any ...... # ..^.......... # .....,., # ,.....„. M i S p 0r t w hich all who engage in it do not equally enjoy. That is always the test of Christian fun-making — that all who are in any way concerned in the fun should equally enjoy it. Tt is im- moral to swear and to drink liquor and to use "dope," and so a Christian college condemns these practices. It is immoral to gamble and to cheat on examinations, and so Christian educational institutions forbid these practices. Playing cards some regard as innocent amusement; others regard as sinful, because the prac- tice has led so many to ruin, and consider it especially disastrous for students because it robs them of precious hours that should be spent in other things, and equips them, without their knowing it, with the impulse and the skill of the gambler. A great many would be willing to stop here — with morality — but we dare not. We should not be satisfied as college men to have sound bodies, strong minds, beau- tiful social graces, upright moral character; no, great and glorious as these are, we cannot be satisfied with them. We must add to them spirituality, the crowning glory of man, the high privilege of the college to incul- cate and develop. I know that the Christian Bible has The Safety of Young People 45 been expelled from the public schools in many of onr States and thrown in the dust heap in many of our state institutions of higher learning,* but I also know that ....... , the great majority of the Amer- j | ican people wish that their chil- ? education's | dren be educated in a spiritual I afo^isl f atmosphere. That is why we I spirituality. | build, equip, and maintain denom- | ] I inational colleges, that the things *..,....^..-.».„...... 9 ........ ft ..-i of the gp] r j t maj b e taught, insist- ed upon, inculcated, imbibed, practiced. A man may be moral and yet not be a Christian. He may be honest, truthful, sober, upright, just, and yet not be a Christian. A man may be all this and deny Christ and sneer at the Bible and disbelieve in God, his Creator and the Giver of every good gift. No man can be a Christian and deny Christ or the Bible or God. Christian education must therefore exalt Christ and strive that all who come un- der its influence should accept Him and live the life He would own and bless. And in so doing it will make its pupils safe, safe not only for this life but for eternity. Any education which attempts less than this may still be education, but it is not and cannot be called Christian. * The utter futility of higher education without the religious atmosphere is demonstrated by Germany's plight in the present great war. Germany provides a kind of religious instruction for children, but her universities are "free." Writing on this point, Rev. Charles F. Dole says : "The world is finding out that we cannot have a bare secular education by virtue of which leaders, as yet harsh and over- bearing, or unprincipled and self-indulgent, may be trained to run factories and govern great cities and steer a safe way amid the strife of nations. There is no education good enough to fit a man, however gifted, to lead and control his fellows, to order vast industries, to safeguard the welfare of states, which is not steadied by a supreme faith in the eternal goodness, and by confidence in a divine nature to be found, assumed, and trusted in the heart of every man who bears the human form." CHAPTEE FOUR COVETING THE BEST GIFTS 1 Cor. 12: SI — "Covet earnestly the best gifts, and yet show I unto you a more excellent way." M 'AN is a religions animal. This truth was noted and proclaimed by Aristotle thousands of years ago. No other animal seems to be possessed of this faculty. But no savage, be he never so low in the scale of civilization, be he never so degraded and igno- rant, has ever yet been found who did not give evidence .........,...........»...........„.*...... of possessing this distinguishing f J characteristic. All men every- f religion I wnere realize the existence of | natural, I superior beings and long to put * to man. J themselves j n favorable attitude I | toward them. Various systems of i...... M ..........„,..... 9 ...-.....,.,i reijgiQn have Deen brought for- ward to satisfy this longing in man. The theological systems of the Greeks and of the Romans said that religion was a matter of ritualistic conformance to the will of the gods declared through portents, prodigies, and signs. If a man did as the ritual said do, he was all right, no matter how unchanged his heart might be. The same thing is to a certain extent true of the formalism of the Old Testament, which culminated in the sect of the Pharisees. The religion of China, the worship of Confucius, forbade progress, because it made 48 The Making of Men him a model, a mold after which every good Chinaman must model his life and to whom he must conform. All the pagan religions contained more or less prohibitions to do certain things. They put the emphasis on doing some act and had a tendency to make men conform to a model, to be more or less like each other, to subordi- nate individuality. There is one religion which puts the emphasis of conduct not on doing, but on being. That religion is Christianity. It is the crowning glory of Christianity .~......,.. e ...............^............ that it does not make men after a if pattern as a dressmaker makes a the emphasis f dress, that it does not run them OF I Christianity ! through the same mold as does the | on being. ! worker in clay or plaster of Paris, I | but that it makes them individ- i.....,..,........»...,..*.. 6 .........-A ualg In all other re iigions that have been offered to the world, there is a certain element of artificiality, of externality, of the addition of some- thing to the professor. This arises out of the fact that they put the emphasis of conformity to the religion on doing rather than on being. But Christianity, alone of the religions of the world, the one religion that is to conquer the world, sets up no ? ...-,...........*..»........ 8 ......., 9 ... man-made standard and says, Do | I this; it sets up no such model and | the message I ****> Make your life an exact f of J reproduction of it. Its message is | ovn FAITH - { as follows : You are an individual I J and in you are the possibilities of i........e..,.. 9 ........„......,......,...i great things. Christ is to you an example. To Him you are not slavishly to conform, but by Him you are to be transformed by the renewing of Coveting the Best Gifts 49 your spirit. If you would be a Christian, be a man, be the best man or woman you can be, and in thus being you will also be a Christian. If your life is the expres- sion of the best in you, then you are a Christian, and you are not a true Christian unless your life does express the very best in you. Christianity is life, the best life of which you are capable, and nothing which contributes to the excellence of life is unchristian. Christianity does not furnish you with a list of precepts for conduct. There is no such thing as being a Christian according to the standard of your neighbor. No amount of calculation will give you the rule which you can apply to all questions and incidents that may arise. Christianity is not mathematics nor the applica- tion of rules of conduct to the solution of perplexing problems: it is life. Whatever adds to the realization of life, to the betterment of it, is for you to follow as a Christian. In order for you to be a Christian, you must be a man, a true man or a true woman. This does not mean that you are to do nothing. Far from it. You are first to be and then to do. Nor can you do until you have become and are. This truth .-......—.....,..„............„.„.... comes to light more than once in I I the teachings of Christ. He it was who said that "by their fruits ye shall know them." He it was who asked if you would gather "grapes of thorns or figs of this- tles." He knew that being would necessarily result in doing and that doing to have moral and ethical value must rise out of being. Life, which Christianity is, is activity, not inactivity. When an organism that is alive ceases to move, it is dead. A true 4 f FRUIT-BEARING | NATURALLY ! FOLLOWS. 50 The Making of Men Christian is full of life and must therefore always be doing something. We are told that the Christ went about doing good, and so will all of those do who profess to be His disciples. Christianity is not and cannot be a life of contemplation, of separateness from the world. It is a life of ceaseless expression of the inward man in deeds of kindness and acts of love and of gradual, but continual, unfolding of the Golden Rule. The drone, the slothful man, cannot be a Christian, because his life does not issue in expression. A good tree bringeth forth good fruit. The unprofitable tree is hewn down and cast into the fire and consumed. The Christian who does not bring forth fruits is a poor sort of Christian. Christ is a person. Christianity is founded on a person and is a religion of persons. The central fact in the Christian religion is the personality of the «....,...«.....«,.......«.................. Savior. If Christ were an abstract t f principle, like goodness or happi- f and each man j ness > then He would have to be f is personally j approached through reason and | accountable, j worsh i ped through contempla- f | tion, but since He is a person, He i..*..^..^...................-......* mils t be approached by a person, as one individual approaches another, and is to be dealt with as we deal with ourselves. He is Himself a person and understands our longings as persons. He did not obliterate His personality in His teachings. Again and again does He say that "it hath been said of old" so and so, "but I say unto you." This is what made the people hang on His words, because He taught them as one having authority and not as the Scribes and Pharisees. And He taught them as one having, Coveting the Best Gifts 51 authority simply because He kept His personality clear and distinct. Christ is a person and you are a person, and if you approach Him and become one of His followers, you, too, must be a person, must be an individual, must be yourself, with your talents, your personality, your deeds, and your life lived in accord with your own best instinct. Christ, who is your elder Brother, does not come and say to you that you must obey certain commands, wear a certain kind of clothing, look pious on Sunday •-•-^•-.-.....^•.^-^..^•....^ morning and whenever you see a | I preacher. He does not say that f christ»s J you must make Him a model in t mSb for J that ? ou must speak the language | each. I He spoke, eat the kind of food He I I ate, keep the hours He kept, or you that you have been endowed by the God and Father of us all with certain talents, powers, inclina- tions, ambitions, gifts, and that all of these are holy unto the Lord ; that if you would receive the reward of the faithful servant when your Lord cometh in His glory to judge the quick and the dead, you must develop these powers, gifts, ambitions, inclinations, and talents to the fullest extent; that His purpose in life for you is the full fruition of the powers in you and the bodying forth of your very best. Do you have the possibility in you of stalwart physical manhood? Then the message of Christ to you is that you are to husband that possibility and develop your physical manhood to the very highest extent. The deformation of the body practiced by many savage tribes that they may satisfy the gods in their suffering, 52 The Making of Men has no place in the beneficent gospel of Christianity. The word for gospel in the original Greek from which the New Testament is translated means "good tidings." r ,............„....„. M ...o..^,.. ? It is not the will of Christ that any f I of His children should torture I physical t themselves. His greatest pleasure I manhood a £ is in their enjoyment and happi- | GOODGIFT - | ness ,. Again and again in the I | Scriptures of the new dispensation ;.. ..............o.-..<, o.....-. ..i we are toId that our foodie are the temples of the living God, and we are forbidden to defile them in any way. Our bodies are sacred and he who maltreats his body is a sinner. If you are a follower of the meek and lowly Naza- rene, you will take all steps possible to you to have a strong, healthy, vigorous body. You will obey all the .......................................... la ws of health and avoid all the ? | things that tend to wreck and t the body is f undermine the physical system. | god's I This is especially true of those | temple. i w k Q are flying themselves for | I larger things in life, by striving i..................-...... 8 .,. M ... 8 ...-i after education. Students often think that they are to prepare their recitations and make good grades. Tn fact, they are a little inclined to think that a strong, vigorous body is inconsistent with a well-trained mind. Herein they err. For you cannot have the strongest mind without having a physical basis for it, any more than you can have a forty-story building on a two-story foundation. Such a building will soon tumble down, and the full-orbed mind that has no health behind it is doomed to flitter for a moment and pass away. There is a vital relationship Coveting the Best Gifts 53 between a man's mind and his body, and both are sacred. The student in college that studies every hour he is awake except the time taken in his meals and recitations is sinning against his body and is not a good Christian. The young man who will smoke cigarettes and drink alcoholic beverages and keep unwholesome hours is sinning against his body and is wounding the heart of Christ. All of us do not have the possibility of giant physical strength, but we have the possibility of taking care of what endowment of physical power we have been blessed with, and the message of Christ to us is, that we should make the most of our bodies, remembering that they are the temples of our God. But to those whom God has given the talent of exceptional physical strength Christianity brings this message. You are a child of God and He wants you to make the most of your gift of physical strength. Develop into the strongest man you can. If you can make of yourself the strongest man in the world, it is your duty to do so and you are not a full- orbed Christian unless you do attain this strength. Be the strongest, the best man physically that you can be, is the message of Chris- tianity to the man whose talents and inclinations lead him to long for physical development. Thus much on the side of being: be a man, a strong man. But Christianity does not stop here, Being must necessarily result in doing. What shall a man do with his strength? Shall he be a gladiator, a bully, a prize- fighter? Never! This would be a prostitution of his physical manhood and Christianity and Christians can f f CHRISTIANITY'S | MESSAGE TO • THE MAN OF POWER. 54 The Making of Men have no part with any sort of prostitution. The strong man, if he be a Christian, will use his strength for the betterment of humanity. He will join a life-saving station or enlist in some occupation beneficent and beneficial to his fellow man and will thus use his strength for the upbuilding of the happiness of mankind and the advancement of the Kingdom of Christ. The best that the pagan world could do with exceptional physical strength was to pit it in deadly combat against itself. Gladiatorial shows and fights with wild beasts were the destination of men talented with Herculean physical strength in unchristian lands. The Christian of great physical strength will use it to help, not to hinder, to advance not to retard, to save not to destroy, his fellow man. Do you have desires, founded on endowed powers, to be a master of assemblies? Then the message of Christ, your Savior and mine, to you is to covet that ..^„......................-..........^ gift, make the most of your powers t I and gifts and inclinations towards | I eloquence. It is a goodly gift, one eloquence J f t h e best gifts, and you should ? A GOOD GIFT. \ ° ! * | | covet it and husband it and make f | the most of it. You cannot aim i........,...^..„......^.....„....„i t0Q high you should try to be a Cicero or a Demosthenes or a Webster or a Clay. Let your ambition be to sway those who come to listen to the words and sentiments that you utter. To be able to stand before your fellow men and to declare to them your sentiments and to convince them that you are right, that is the power of a king among men. Such a power is more potent and efficacious than the auto- cratic sovereignty vested in the Czar of Russia. Could Coveting the Best Gifts 55 the Czar of Russia persuade his people that he is right, his government would be on a sounder basis than it is to-day. The world has always honored the orator and it always will. He is a master of men. The shrewd Caesar, eloquent orator that he was, knew the value of Cicero's eloquence to him and to his cause and sought to buy him. The persecutors of Saint Paul knew the value of eloquence and employed an orator Tertullian to accuse him, the platitudinity of whose phrases is very evident to all who have read the Acts of the Apostles. Be an orator; be a man of eloquence; covet earnestly the power to sway your fellow men, for it is one of the best gifts of God to man, says the Master to the man or the woman whose talents tend in that direction. Thus much for the being. But what of the doing? Shall the orator and the master of assemblies sell himself to an unworthy cause for money as did Tertullian when he accused Paul? ? ^...........,..........„.........^. ? Shall he be a demagogue as were f ? those men of rare gifts and start- I the christian I lin g eloquence, Alcibiades at I use of I Athens, Tiberius and Gaius I ELOftUENCE ' | Gracchus at Rome? By no means. I I A great many lawyers hold to-day A.. 8 .. e .. e ........... 8 .. 8 ...„,..,........A ^^ ^ Q y are a _£ ijj3 er ty to accept aDy case and do all they can for their clients, irrespec- tive of the deserts of these same clients. They have a paltry opinion of the functions of the barristers' profession. If any of you become lawyers, I beg you not to accept a case unless you believe your client is in the right. Do not sell yourself for money. Treasure your eloquent tongue and your knowledge of the law higher than that. Nor will the Christian orator be a 56 The Making op Men demagogue. He will consecrate his powers of eloquence to the service of his fellows and to the advancement of the Kingdom. He will be a preacher of righteousness. I do not mean that every eloquent man, that every orator who professes Christ, will become an ordained minister. But I do mean that every Christian orator will be a preacher of righteousness, of right-living, whether he be a lawyer, a platform lecturer, or a poli- tician. Whatever his profession, his tongue will ever and on all occasions ring clear and loud for that which is right and makes for human betterment. Do you have a desire and a talent to make money, to acquire wealth ? If so, the message of Christ to you is that you shall employ that talent to the best of your ........................................... ability. Try to be as rich as a | £ Croesus or a Shylock or a Roths- f I child or a Rockefeller. There is no • money-making | disgrace in being rich. Some men | A RARE GIFT. f -° ° | | have the talent to make money and | J they are not full-orbed men unless 4...................,......,............„i ^ e y become wealthy; it is the duty of some people to be wealthy. Wealthy men have a. distinct mission to perform in the world and can do an immense amount of good. If any of you have the talent to amass wealth, my advice to you is to amass it. The power to make money and to gain wealth is a rare power and is one of the best gifts to man. King Solomon was a very rich man, one of the wealthiest men of his day and generation. Many rich men have been the benefactors of their race. The world could ill do without them. Be the wealthiest man you can, provided you use honest methods in getting your wealth. If God has endowed you with the talent to make money, Coveting the Best Gifts 57 to be wealthy, then if you are a servant worthy of your hire, you ought to be wealthy, and you have not fulfilled your purpose in life unless you develop that talent. But what shall I do with my money, do you ask? Use it to the glory of God and the upbuilding of His Kingdom. The Christian man who is rich will not take .......................................... advantage of his poorer brethren. f | He will help them in every way he • christ has t can - If y° u are r i cn > and are at | need op f the same time a Christian, vou will | WE ^™ Y ME *- I not hoard your wealth; you will | | use it to benefit your fellow man. i................. # .. .. (B ..... s ..<,.. e ...4 The christian who is rich in this world's goods, will use his wealth in such a way that he will lay up for himself treasures in the world to come, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and where thieves do not break through nor steal. I know a man who has the talent to make money and he makes it, but he does not hoard. I have heard him say that every dollar he makes beyond an amount sufficient to support his family and to provide for them after his death, he gives to the Church or to the destitute and needy. That is the spirit of Christ as to the disposition of wealth. This man says that he deserves no credit for his ability to make money, that the talent was given him by his Maker and that he ought to use it not for his own private ends, but for the advancement of the Kingdom of the Master in the earth. If you have the talent to make money, the exhortation of Scripture is to make it, and then to adopt the more excellent way and use it for the glory of God and the betterment of man. 58 The Making of Men Do you feel that you are gifted as a writer? That you ought to become an author? Then, says Christ, by all means be an author ; that is the work appointed you .......................................... by the Lord and you ought to do it. | Bead the best books in all lan- I expression is I g ua g es - Read Homer and Cicero f a wonderful | and Demosthenes and Virgil. '• Bead Dante and Goethe and Spen- ser and Milton. Read Pope and Dryden and Addison and Carlyle. Read Hawthorne and De Quincey and Browning and' Tennyson. But above all read the Bible. It is an old- fashioned book ; but it is written in an absorbing style, and in it are found the principles that give dignity and weight and poise to life. Not only read these authors and their books, but imitate them as well. Strive with all the power that is in you to develop freshness and vigor of expression. Strive for virility and crisp- ness and force. Strive for beauty and rhythm and excellency of cadence. Be the most vigorous user of your mother tongue of your day and time if you can attain such perfection. God has given you the talent to be an author, the power to express your ideas in such manner that the reading of them shall be a pleasure to men and possibly bring them around to your way of thinking. If you are a child of God, it is your duty to develop this talent, or you will receive the curse of the unprofitable servant who hid his Lord's money in the earth. But this is not all. This is only half the message of Christ to you. For what purpose ought you to develop this power that is in you? To be yourself? That is true ; but it is not all the truth. You must go Coveting the Best Gifts 59 farther than this and use this gift for the good of your fellow man and the coming of the Kingdom on the earth. You will not join the staff of a Yellow Journal. You .„....„......^.........„.....^..... will not write trashy novels. You I f will devote yourself to the por- ! god needs j trayal of the great passions that writers^for t sur g e in tne breast of yourself and his kingdom. | of your fellows. You will give | them such excellence and elegance ......................................a Qf gett j n g that alJ w]l(> rea( j w ju b e moved to act from noblest impulses and strive for highest aims both for themselves and for others. If you do not enter the realm of fiction, but choose that of the professional journalist, you will devote yourself to the great questions that confront men for solution and you will endeavor to help them to solve them in a manner and a way that will accord with the purpose of God in the universe. Your pen will never be found except on the side of right and of justice and of eternal truth. No man will be rich enough to buy you to advocate a thing you do not conscientiously believe to be right. Yes, be a great author, but be at the same time a child of God and a vigilant and unrelenting preacher of righteousness. Would you be a scholar? Does your mind long for knowledge? Does your talent lie in the line of accurate and pains- taking scholarship ? Then it is your duty to be a scholar. Go to college and graduate. Go to the univer- sity and pursue your specialty. Be an authority in your line. Do not cease to search for truth. The scholar with all ?-•• •..*..«. • i 1 SCHOLARSHIP ! t A WORTHY 1 AIM. i • : • •■••>.«..•..• '•••.•"•••••^••••••"•.••••i 60 The Making of Men the ridicule that is heaped upon him by the so-called practical folk, with the smell of antiquity about him and the dust of ancient volumes adhering to him, has yet a distinct mission in the world. The story of human progress would be a short one, if the part contributed by the scholars were subtracted. It is no disgrace to be a scholar. If you have the instinct of a scholar and are talented in that direction I do not know a more worthy field in which you may labor and live out your days. But what shall you do with your scholarship? Use it for the advancement of truth. Give yourself to the instruction of those who do not know as much as you ,^..e...„..^...................-.. do > but who would be wonderfully I I helped in life if you were to impart t dedicate your | to them some of the light you • scholarship \ possess in occult and hidden ! TO CHRIST. f Jjf T „ . , , , ? ? matters. Infuse into your scholar- | % ship the spirit of Christianity and by means of it make life sweeter and the lot of humanity more delightful. If Pythagoras had kept secret his discovery of the fact that the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle can be found by extracting the square root of the sum of the squares on the other two sides, if Euclid had never published his geometry, if Franklin had kept the result of his kite experiment a secret, if Newton had never divulged his researches, if Bell and Morse and Marconi and Fulton and Harvey and Edison had not enriched the world by making known their discoveries and inventions, life had been a long way less delightful than it is to-day and the sum total of human happiness much less. Scholars are the benefactors of their race. Be a scholar «.. 9 .. s ..«.. a ..«..«..e..»..«.. s ..a..«. Coveting the Best Gifts 61 if you are inclined that way. Scholarship is one of the best gifts. Covet it; then use it not for selfish ends, not to take advantage of the ignorance of your less fortunate fellows, but use it to better mankind, to help on the world, to do good, not evil, to make existence more heavenly and life more Christlike. Would you like to be a minister of the gospel ? Has God given you a talent to save others? Has He called you to be a man who by the foolishness of preaching is .......................................... to save the world from sin ? Then J | happy are you. Yes ; by all means • the gospel • answer the call. By all means be f ministry f a minister of the gospel. It is the j THE BEST GIFT * | noblest work in all the world. It | will not bring you great wealth, * but will bring you the grateful appreciation and the devoted love of those to whom you minister. Never was the demand for a consecrated ministry greater than now. If you feel the spirit of God working within you and calling you to preach the gospel, I beseech you to answer that call and do all you can to spread the Kingdom on the earth. Do not aim to be a great preacher, but aim to be a fruitful one. Aim to serve your fellow man and to deserve the approval of your Master. Preaching is the best gift of God to man. If you have that talent and do not develop it, you are of all men falling far short of doing your duty. Covet this gift. Labor to improve it, and then use it as becomes a servant of the living God. Whatever your inward inclinations, in your best moments, lead you to do, whether it be to have a strong body, to amass money, to be a master of assemblies, to be an author, to be a scholar, to preach the gospel, 62 The Making of Men whether it be to shovel coal, or to follow the plow, or to manage a home, or to push a saw, whatever God may lead you to believe that you ought to do, that do with t „„»„n,n„, M ,„„,:„.„ 1 ,n.,r t ali jour might and in so doing you f : will merit His approval. But ! the more • remember that while you are a ? excellent | person and are to develop yourself | | to the very highest extent, to be I I what your powers tell you you i..............*................*.......* OU gj 1 ^ ^ De? remember that, while this is so, you are also to complete your life by doing, by doing the things your hands find to do, that you are to consecrate all the powers you have and all the attainments you may acquire, and all the successes you may achieve to the glory of God and the good of His Kingdom. The message of Christ to you is to covet earnestly the best gifts, labor zealously for the attain- ment of the best things to which your individuality would lead you. Be yourself, be a man, be a woman, be an individual, be a person. But the pagan world also would tell you that. You cannot stop there, if you would be a Christian. Saint Paul not only exhorts us to covet earnestly the best gifts, but he also adds this, "and yet show I unto you a more excellent way." And what is that more excellent way? It is to. consecrate all your powers and all your attainments and all your successes to the advancement of the Kingdom of God and the betterment of your fellow men. This is the message of the gospel, this is the exhortation of Paul, this is the voice of Christ to vou. CHAPTER FIVE THE SOUL'S MOST SERIOUS QUESTION Psalm 15: 1 — "Lord, who shall abide in Thy taber naclef Who shall dwell in Thy holy hill? I | THE UNIVERSAL, EVERY man and every woman worthy the name has asked himself or herself this question. Every boy and every girl who has reached the years of accountability and across whose mind the purpose of life has left the trail of its impress, has met this absorbing question face to face. It is the universal ........................................... question of the human race, "Lord, who shall abide in Thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in Thy holy hill?" The ignorant question. J gavage> clad in the leaveg of the | 1 forest and the skins of wild i.........................................* an i m als, with no shelter save the grotto or the friendly cave, in moments of deepest yearn- ing, has proposed this question to himself and, in its winding labyrinth, has whiled away many a swift-footed hour. The Chinaman, with the veil of the past drawn tightly over his spiritual eyes, has yet in moments of holy exaltation ceased his worship of ancestors, bid defiance to his Confucianism, and in the full vigor of his manhood and the effulgence of his waking hours, proposed to his soul this question of questions. The youth with length of days before him and with the flush 64 The Making op Men and bloom and vigor of stalwart manhood luring him on, has yet in some quiet, holy hour drawn in the reigns of his on-rushing steed, and in solemn earnest- ness pondered this entrancing theme in his heart of hearts. The proud captain of industry, with the wheels of a hundred factories and the horny hands of a myriad of human souls constantly doing his bidding, the type of the self-sufficient man of the modern world of finance, has yet at sundry times and on divers occasions deemed the pondering of this question of far greater importance than the future of the cotton market and the quotations of the various classes of stocks and bonds. High and low, great and small, prince and pauper, men of low estate and men of high estate, have each and all of them earnestly considered, prayerfully pondered this great question, upon whose solution turns the weal or woe of each individual soul. This question grows out of man's essential nature, which is religious. The most degraded savage, the most cultured scholar, the most pious and consecrated saint, .......................................... the most reprobate sinner who I | enjoys God's sunlight and air, all I all men have I of tnem a S ree in being essentially I religious I religious animals. Aristotle, | beliefs. i greatest thinker of a race of think- | } ers, saw this wonderful trait in ♦..•....^......-........................i h uman na ture and proclaimed it as one of the fundamentals of his system of ethics. No race of humans has yet been discovered, be they never so ignorant and degraded, who have not had some idea of God and some practices of religion. A study of all the primitive races of the world which are known to us by their descendents on the earth or through the The Soui/s Most Serious Question 65 researches of archaeologists, proves the essential and actual oneness of the human family on this great theme. Even the mongrel population of the desert region of Australia, and the Bushmen of South Africa, and the island and cliff-dwellers of Lower California, are not without indications of a belief in superior beings and a system of theology, which, crude though it is, is yet evidence of the religious nature of man. There is a feeling deep-seated in human nature that man is not self-sufficient, that he is not monarch of all he surveys, though an all-wise Creator has made him a . __ „ „ little lower than the angels. There | f are powers and forces in nature | human ? that he does not and cannot under- I ^bceJs^ate? I stand > and so he presupposes a | religion. | God. There are facts in human | | experience which he cannot i.. 8 ..... a ...^..^.................-i explain other than by the postula- tion of a hereafter and a future life and so he postulates them. To primitive man the future life was so real that property at its origin was eternal. Can you conceive of a man ordering that, when he should be dead, his slaves and wife and all his property should be buried with him, unless he and they believed in the hereafter 'and believed in it even more than they believed in this present life? To Socrates death was nothing but the mental abstraction and contemplation of the body and soul as separate, and on the very day on which he drank the fatal hemlock, he told the unjust judges that he was soon to die, but that he counted his lot as superior to theirs. To Cato, the great Eoman censor, this life was simply a harbor on the great voyage of eternal existence. To Goethe, the great poet 66 The Making of Men of the Germanic race, life was contained in the phrase, "out of eternity into eternity." To the Christ, the Savior of the world, life was a vineyard in which there was the Father's work to do, and the hereafter was a house of mansions. Grant that this life is not all of life. Grant that there is a hereafter, and in the minds of most men who think there can be no doubt of this proposition, and the question of the Psalmist becomes a burning one, and on its answer will turn the issues of time and eternity. "Lord, who shall abide in Thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in Thy holy hill?" Not only is this a universal question, founded on man's essentially religious nature, but it is the eclipsing question of life — not only the universal question, but .-.-..^».».^.^^„.-. M .„^.,... the one question of existence. The f I savage spends most of his time religion | studying it. In the morning as he I IFE'S MOST | ENTRANCING I g 0eS 0Ut t(D hUIlt 0I> HSh ' he st °°P S | theme. | down to pick up every stone of I | peculiar shape, not because he 4^..~^..~.-^...-#^..~^.-a De ij eves that there is any virtue in a stone per se, but because spirits are supposed to inhabit all objects of peculiar shape. He listens to the wind and watches the stars and worships the so-called idols, not because they are to him gods, but because they are material representations of great spiritual forces. To the savage the immanence of God, of which we hear so much to-day and which we are told is a major achievement of modern thought, is the most real thing in the world. To the answer of this question the Hebrew people devoted one-twelfth of their population, one-tenth and more of all their earnings, and one- seventh of their time, regularly, while there were The Soui/s Most Serious Question 67 great religious celebrations in which all the people participated at frequent intervals during the year. The greatest minds and best trained intellects of all times and of all lands and kindreds and tongues have been devoted to the solution of this question. But it must not be forgotten that this is a personal question and that it must be solved by every one individ- ually. With some it is the business of a life, and with r ....................................... ? all it ought to be. But in a great f | many lives, and the number of I and it is I these is far too numerous, this I intensely I great question is crowded into the J personal. I background> The statesman | | Cicero thought it was inferior in 4..,...-.„.„......^........„...,...-i i m p 0r tance to the preservation of the republic, but the man Cicero, when he had seen his fond dream of the restored republic shattered to the four winds and when family happiness had deserted him, a gray-haired old man of sixty winters, consoled his remaining days by thinking on the great moral issues of life, and, according to the light he had, solved them in a most philosophical manner. We count the downfall of the Roman Republic and the loss of Cicero's family happiness as small as against his wonderful contributions to moral science among the Romans. In the final casting of accounts Cicero will not be remem- bered for his consulship and his great labors in behalf of the republic, but for the wonderful insight into moral matters which is to be found on every page of his De Finibus, his Tusculanae Disputationes, his De Senectute, his De Amicitia, and his other moral works. Mr. John D. Rockefeller in his early days decided that the serious business of life for him was the 68 The Making op Men amassing of wealth. The result is that he is the richest man in the world. But it is different with Mr. Rocke- feller now. Already has he begun to give of his millions ... e ...^..,.. ft ..... e ...........-....... ? to the cause of education and the I | spread of the gospel. He knows life's • that soon the summons will come ? INTEREST , . i , „ „ T n I often shifts f to him to appear before the Judge to the • f a u ^- ne ear th and he is doing his ? RELIGIOUS. ? , ° | | best to get ready to answer that A..^...................................i summ ons, — it is no longer the making of money with him, but the judicious use of money that in his case at least the metaphor of the rich man and the oamel may not prove true. We have in the case of Mr. Carnegie another illustration of the same shift of the real business of life. While he was organizing the great steel corporation, the thing in life for him was the making of money. To-day, an old man with the weight of years bearing down heavily upon him, he proclaims to the world the strange doctrine that it is a disgrace to die rich, a doctrine which fifty years ago he would have dismissed as the veriest dream of an over-strained imagination. With him to-day it is not dollars, but good deeds; not the organization of finan- cial enterprises, but the attainment of eternal life, and while we many not approve his working-out of his plan, yet we cannot deny him credit for a beautiful thought. The rich young ruler, puffed up by his position as ruler and by his wealth, was unwilling to sell all that he had and give it to the poor and to become a follower of the humble Nazarene, whose earthly life was spent in the solution of this problem. And yet we may be sure that, if this young ruler lived to ripe old age and saw the frailty of human power and the nothingness of material The Soui/s Most Serious Question 69 wealth when contrasted with the riches of the spiritual realm, we may be sure, I say, that his mind frequently rested upon that interview and that he regretted his unwise decision. Solomon thought that the one desirable thing in this life was wisdom. He had it ; his wisdom was the marvel not only of his own day, but of all later generations as ? ........,......„........................ ? well. The world has never since I | seen his equal in wisdom. In ? this I addition to his wisdom, he was ? UNIVERSAL | , , , . i question i the great and honored sovereign of ? must be ? a g r eat people in the best era of | ANSWERED. ! . . . ., . . 4 i their national existence, and his A ..................„..................e„i wea jth W as sufficient to supply him with all the luxuries of the oriental life. It does seem that, humanly speaking, he ought to have been supremely happy. But after long years of ceaseless searching after happiness, when the sunset of life was reddening the western horizon of his earthly pilgrimage, he said these memorable words: "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter, fear God and keep His commandments; for this is the whole duty of man." Wonderful words these to come from the wisest man the ages have produced, and yet the words are as true as the eternal verities themselves. To you, college men and women, with life's possibilities stretched out before you and with daily routine of college tasks constantly surrounding you on every hand, the serious business of life no doubt seems to be the making of grades, success on the athletic field, or victory in a public forensic con- test. Later in life these things will be forgotten. Ten years from now you will forget which side was victori- ous in the games of baseball between the universities 70 The Making of Men of Virginia and North Carolina. Twenty-five years from now you will have forgotten what grade you made in mathematics or English or Greek. What you will remember and treasure as priceless possessions and richest legacies will be the hours you spent in the Sunday-school, the Young Men's Christian Association, the Christian Endeavor, the Church, and other religious organizations with which you may have been so fortu- nate as to ally yourself. And if you formed the habit of daily Bible reading at college you will count that as one of the sweetest and most helpful acquisitions of your whole life's career. It may be that after you leave college and enter upon real life, the siren of ambi- tion may lure you to prefer business or pleasure or official position to the solution of this burning question of human life, but sooner or later, and the sooner the better for you and your soul's welfare, this great problem will present itself to you for solution as it presented itself to the Psalmist and has presented itself to every one who has breathed the breath of life, and you must solve it. Those who meet and answer properly this eternal issue in the splendid days of youth are ex- ceedingly fortunate, blest! It is well for all of us to "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth." But why ? Because the Bible commands it ? No. The Bible commands it because it is necessary. But why? Because you are not really and truly prepared to live until you have met and properly answered this great issue of life. You may stay on the earth, that is to say, you may exist, but you will never fulfill the purpose your Creator had in your creation unless you meet and solve this problem of the soul. It is true that many men much in the public eye are not models after which to The Soui/s Most Serious Question 71 pattern your career. It is also true that a great many such people have attained to success in a worldly sense of the word, but they are not fit examples for the young ...... „ man or woman who would live the f complete life to pattern his or her t HAPPY THEY | life aliter - 1 take ** tliat College I who answer £ men are anxious to live the IT I1V YOUTH I | complete life, or else why are they f | at college? It is not the man who A.....^.^....^.,.........„... e „... e -i succeeds the most who has best used the boon of life. There are some things better than success. The man who amasses a fortune by mis- using the living of widows and orphans is just as much a success as the man who to-day occupies the President's chair and directs the destinies of the greatest nation of the world. Both have accomplished their ambitions, both have succeeded. On the other hand Christ was a miserable failure, as the world judges success, and so was Socrates, and so were all the martyrs, whose blood has proven to be the seed of the Church. True success, not the momentary applause or volatile approval of the world, is what college men, ambitious as they are to live the lives that shall yield the largest returns to themselves and their fellow men, are eager to attain. The only way to attain such true success is to answer this question in your youth, when the evil days are not and the years draw not nigh in which you shall say that you take no interest in your soul's welfare; for only when you have settled this great moral issue are you ready to enter upon life's highway, assured of yourself and confident of ultimate victory. Mr. Orison Swett Marden, in one of his books, tells the story of a business man of large interests, whose 72 The Making of Men books were balanced each night so that were he to die before the next morning, his administrators could at a glance ascertain his wealth and settle his estate without .„....-....„.„....„.— ....„.....^ accounting or litigation. This f f may not be good business, though ? keep the I if it were practiced there would be I so ™l£™°™ T J fewer failures in the financial f balanced. | world ; it is good religion and also | | the highest type of moral common- i-^...^..........^.^. ...... j sense Tn i s j s w i ia t the Master meant, when He said, "Watch and pray." The man who lives the complete life in Christ Jesus has his soul's account book so arranged that were he to die at any minute, his friends would be put to no trouble to find the exact condition of his soul's welfare. It is only the man of this character who is truly prepared to live the real life, to accomplish the most good in the world. Did you ever think why we felt so little the shock of the assassination of President McKinley? It was because he was prepared to die, and therefore prepared r ....,.....................„...„...... ? to live. His policies were carried | f on by his successor in office be- f : cause of the deep foundations he that is f laid f 0r t hem. And when the | TRULY TO LIVE. J | | death summons came, it found him | | ready to answer because he was i............„...........................A alsQ ready tQ liye A beaut iful illustration of this same great truth is contained in the career of President Harper of the University of Chicago. In the forty-nine years allotted to him, he accomplished more than the majority of geniuses can accomplish in a full threescore and ten. When the final hour came, it found him still at work directing The Soul's Most Serious Question 73 the affairs of the vigorous institution his fertile brain had brought into existence. He died, but not a recita- tion ceased in all that great university, nor did a single change occur in any of the routine work of the institution. Every thing went on as before. Except in his home, where his lifeless form lay, there was no sign of death. He had been prepared to die, and only by being prepared to die was he prepared to live. The secret of the success of George Washington and Stone- wall Jackson was that they were prepared to die. The stories of the victories of these two warriors are entrancing as we read them, but they are easily explicable, when we recall the records of their praying before entering into battle. Being prepared to die, they were prepared to fight their country's battles and if need be to sacrifice their lives on the altar. It is to such men as these, men who met and answered this great question in their youth, men who, being prepared to die, were all the more prepared to live; it is to such men as these that I cite you as examples worthy of your emulation. Place the example of these men before you and "So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan that moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." Living such a life you shall enjoy the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, that peace in the security of which the trials and difficulties and burdens 74 The Making of Men of life will take unto themselves a new meaning, that peace in the enjoyment of which you will be perfectly ......................................... happy whether you be on a sinking • and to • sn *P * n * ne midst of the Atlantic | have the f or seated comfortably by a cozy | PE piS E TH AT | fire in the old homestead. But | under- J remember that you can have this | standing. i p eace on jy on one condition, that ••••••••.••«•• you meet and solve this question which the Psalmist proposed to himself, ''Lord, who shall abide in Thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in Thy holy hill?" If you meet and solve this question you shall have the peace of God in your life, and through the help of the spirit of God you shall go forth a pleasure to yourself and benediction to your companions along life's highway. The Savior is ready and willing and anxious to help you answer this great and serious issue of life. He has said, "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden and T will give you rest." "Behold, I stand at the door and knock ; if any man will open unto Me, I will come in and sup with him and he with Me." "Whosoever will, let him come and partake of the water of life freely." And in another place it is said, the plan of salvation r ...................„................... is so simple "that a wayfaring man | | though a fool need not err | christ is J therein." The way to attain salva- t A gtve th^s° I tion is to an swer this question of I peace. f the Psalmist under the guidance £ I of the Spirit and by the help ;..-.-................................-i of the gavior> In fact? t]ie reason why Christ came into the world was to help His people to answer correctly this question ; for we are told The Soul's Most Serious Question 75 in the Sacred Writ that "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever should believe on Him should not perish, but should have eternal life." And the blessed Christ Himself has told us with words of deepest assurance, "My peace I leave with you : My peace I give unto you — " and the Apostle assures us that this peace of God, which can be ours for the asking, has been the one thing about the Chris- tian religion that has made it such a joy to the believer and such a weapon against the scoffer and the atheist. This peace of God will make the world over again for you. With this peace in your soul, you will be in the world, but not of the world. With this blessed .-........^.„..., M ..^. M .....^. peace of God in your soul, there | f will come to pass in your heart the I and the joy I Kingdom of the Father and the ? of it— how I Son. When this peace shall have | THRI]L]LING! f entered into your heart and have J J become a vital part of your being, 4...........................„..........„a ^ en there will have dawned a new and glorious day in your life — a day for which the greatest and wisest and best have ever longed as "the one far-off divine event, to which the whole creation moves," but a day which can come to the world only through the individual soul, aflame with the love of God because of the answering of this great question. Believe me, the golden age is neither in the dead and musty past, nor in the glittering visionary future, but in the now and the present for those who have answered the ques- tion the Psalmist propounded to himself in the words of the text, — for those who are hid with Christ in God. CHAPTER SIX STRIVING FOR THE MASTERY 1 Cor. 9:25 — "Every one that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things." THERE is a metaphor involved in the text, the comparison of the Christian life to the race- course, and the appropriateness of the compar- ison is evident to all who think for a moment what the athletic contests of the ancient stadium involved. There were four great series of games celebrated among ? ........................................ ? the Greeks: the Olympian, the | f Pythian, the Isthmian, and the I | Nemean. Paul evidently had in 4 the metaphor | m i n( j t he Isthmian games, since he ? INVOLVED. | .,. , ° „ \ , . | | was writing to the Corinthians, | I near whose city these games were a..................................*.....* ce i e |3 ra ted in honor of Poseidon or Palsemon. It is not necessary to explain the great store the Greeks set by physical training in their system of education, — they really regarded it as half of education. Nor is it necessary to describe in detail the rigorous training all who entered their races were subjected to. "Temperate in all things" is the phrase that exactly fits the conditions imposed. At the time that St. Paul wrote, the discipline began ten months before the time for the contest to take place and was so severe that only professional athletes could enter the lists. Even 78 The Making of Men their diet was regulated, as in the case of athletes of many American colleges to-day. Their diet is thus described by Epictetus: "Thou must be orderly, living on spare food : abstain from confections : make a point of exercising at the appointed time, in heat and in cold; nor drink cold water or wine at hazard: — in a word, give thyself up to thy training-master as to a physician, and then enter the contest." Nor is it necessary to relate at length the honors that came to the victor, who had his name sung from one end of the world to the other in the great national odes, the wall of whose native city was torn down for him to enter as he returned home, and whose name was enrolled forever in the hall of fame of his country. Manifestly all who strove for the mastery, for victory, in such a contest had to be temperate in all things. This race to which Paul refers is typical of the race in which we are all engaged, the race of life, the realization of our aims, the making the most out of the time allotted us. I accept it that we, too, as the ancient contestants i of the race course, are striving for I • mastery I the mastery, the mastery of some- | raiVERSAL « | thing. I accept it as a universal I I principle in human nature that all A......».„....„.........^..^.....,i men j Qn g f Qr guccegs ^t man> ^ he bond or free, be he high or low, be he Greek or barbarian, be he veriest saint or foulest sinner, desires failure. Failure means incompetency, slavery, death, dissolution, decay. Success means mastery, life, real, earnest, abounding life. Where is the man, the woman, who does not love life and shun death; who does not strive for the masterv, for success, who does not bend Striving for the Mastery 79 every effort of his being to the avoiding of slavery, of incompetency, of failure? To all such, to all who, charmed by a siren singer, the melody of whose music they are powerless fo resist, push on to self-realization ; to all, who filled with noble aims and lofty aspirations, strive for the mastery of themselves and their circum- stances, for honorable victory and enduring triumph, St. Paul says, "Be temperate in all things." The intense individualism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is losing caste among us. Men are no longer allowed to do just as they please in a great .„................................*...... many tilings. We yet honor the I | individual and respect his rights f ™st Sive^ 13 I and we are far from ^siring to I intSiper- • see a11 men developed according to | atelt. I a given pattern or run through the | | same mold. America will never ^.^........„.-..........«.»-.~* become China, but we are con- scious now that too much individualism does incalcu- lable injury to many of the units of society and that it is better to abridge the individual's liberties at certain points for the welfare of the whole people. Already Herbert Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy, which is founded on an individualism so eccentric that, to be consistent, its author had to oppose free schools and free libraries, has ceased to exert the spell over men's minds it once did and to give shape and form to man- kind's opinions as it did twenty-five years ago. We have realized that individualism, like socialism, like Confucianism, may be and frequently is intemperate. And no system of government polity can long hope to prosper that is founded on a basis of intemperance. 80 The Making of Men Consequently we hear of the New Federalism, of the Humanitarian Movement, of the Parliament of Man, of Church Federation, and of measures almost without .......................................... number looking to the abridgment f | of individual, intemperate rights t a new I * n ^ ne interest of the whole people. f ferment in f This protest against intemperance i MODERN LIFE. £ < j • . t • . | | to-da t y is not only winning victor- f I ies for prohibition in the South i.. e .....,................^......^.„A and the West? but it is cal ii ng great corporations before the tribunals of justice to answer for their intemperate violations of the law; it is developing new principles for the granting of fran- chises; it is wresting the public lands from those who have possessed them illegally; it is preserving our forests from wholesale destruction ; it is rescuing the Niagara Falls from the hands of predatory financiers and saving it as one of the most wonderful cataracts of nature's workmanship; it is waging a war on unnecessary noise and dirt and filth in cities and on advertisements along the highways of public travel; it is doing to the death the patent medicine evil ; it is everywhere pleading for the "Beautiful America." We are tired of intemperance, of excessive individualism, as a people in all the avenues of our activities, and we are asserting ourselves ; we are deciding to be temperate in all things. Therefore the sun of our country's glory is far from its meridian; it is only yet in its early morning hours. Great as our country is, it is destined in the coming days to become greater still. Our country, blest of God with wondrous resources, with a bound forging to a position of leadership among the na- tions, is to lead them into larger fields still and to fulfill Striving for the Mastery 81 a nobler mission to the world. And this because the spirit of temperance, which is the fundamental condi- tion of mastery, is abroad in the land, permeating the texture of our public life, affecting and molding the thought of our people, shaping and dictating and deter-' mining the acts of our legislative, executive, and judicial officials. It would seem as if St. Paul had twentieth century America in his mind as he wrote this word : at any rate it is evident that present-day America has imbibed the spirit of his utterance and is putting it into practical operation. But there is a message in this text for us as individuals; "Every one that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things." And especially is this ? ...................................... e .. ? message appropriate to college f I students, — to the men and women { college life I who > in the natural course of | imposes f events, are to furnish leadership in | burdens. I ^ ie wor j ( j> g wor k ? upon whose I | shoulders are to rest the weight i.........................................* an( j ^^ e care an( j ^e anxiety for the preservation and the exaltation of all the fabric of our social, political, industrial, intellectual, and relig- ious life. If ever men and women needed to ponder these words of the great apostle, surely it is college students. They ought to become masters in their chosen realms of activity, — it is but natural that they should. They enjoy advantages beyond the great mass of their fellows, who look to them for leadership, capable leadership. Will they be able to furnish it? That depends on whether they are temperate in all things. A great many college men and women no doubt look upon their college days as a preparation for life; 82 The Making of Men and they are, — but they are also life and the same conditions govern the attainment of mastery in college life that obtain in the so-called real life. We must not ........................................... suppose that college days are days f I only of preparation for whatever I college days I ** ne °^ activity we have adopted | are real. f as our sphere of endeavor; we are ; LIFE, TOO. i , , ,, xi I I to regard them as a part and | | parcel of the life we are to lead i...,.......................-.-.........* a ff er graduation. There is and can be no divorcement between college life and every- day life, because college life is every-day life plus the idea of special preparation and training. Let no college student even for a moment suppose that he can be intemperate in college and then become suddenly temperate on leaving college. Many men of brilliant promise, many women of large hope, have made fatal mistakes here, — mistakes from which they were never able after to recover. Many college students look upon the four years of college life as an arena for intellectual development; and they are, — but this is not the only side of college ...„.-.„..........„...^....^...... life nor the only purpose of | ! colleges. Those who have this idea • books only a * an( * are ^temperate in their pur- | part of | suit of it spend their whole time I college WFE - | on text-books. They even study on | | Sunday and so violate the fourth *.........................................* comman( j m ent. They do not fre- quent the college reading room and library ; they attend religious and other public exercises in a listless way and are glad when they are over, feeling that they have lost just so much time from their books simply because Striving for the Mastery 83 they have not lost it. Their literary society work is of a poor order ; they fail to take sufficient physical exercise ; they neglect the social intercourse of their fellows ; they are continually grinding away at the mill of text-book knowledge. They are book- worms. Whoever knew a worm of any sort to do anything worth while? They are intemperate in their study. They need to read this ninth chapter of First Corinthians; they need to practice its precepts, to inculcate its principles into their life. They need to give up Sunday study, to take physical exercise, to enter into the spirit of religious, literary, and other public services, to become members of the college community as well as to be in it. Then there are others who are in college for what they designate a good time — which phrase is a snare and a delusion — for their good time is from the start a »-.+-„—.«.+-.„..+.+„:.:.. bad one and becomes continually f f worse. They do not study system- I beware of I atically, but cram for tests and | the so-called f examinations. They always have j GOOD TIME * J time for visitors; they are them- | I selves frequent visitors. They are i-...^^.-*..-,-....-......* perhaps especially interested in bodily exercise, — they desire to make a reputation as athletes, famed for strong physical manhood, of iron muscles, of steel nerves and sinews. Or perhaps they are too indolent for that even. They simply while away their time in gaity and frivolity and dullard inanity. They, too, are intemperate. They need to face about, to adopt a different course, otherwise the college cannot do much for them. I have not a word to say against athletics — I believe in athletics — I believe the man or woman in college who fails to take proper physical Si The Making op Men exercise will one day repent in tears and anguish his irreparable mistake. We all need a sound mind in a sound body. The man who enters into life with a weakened body is greatly handicapped in the race for success and is sure to go down when the crisis comes ; but the man who enters into life with a weaker body than he ought to have had, is not only handi- capped, he is a criminal as well. The glutton, the cigarette fiend, the dope artist, the drunkard, are all of them criminals and vile sinners against their own bodies; they are all of them alike doomed to fail, to grovel in the dust. A vigorous, healthy body is neces- sary to success, to mastery, in any undertaking; it is fundamental; it is the foundation upon which every edifice of enduring human achievement must be firmly established. Therefore college students have no right to neglect their bodies, neither have they the right to care only for their bodies. Nor do I condemn innocent fun, fun that works harm to no one, or visitation, or social intercourse, but I condemn excess in these things, intemperance in them. Intemperance in these matters as in the use of wine leads eventually to degradation and shame, to slavery, not to mastery. The man in college who whiles away his golden moments, freighted as they are with the earnest of great things, surcharged as they are with the atmos- phere of elemental greatness, in pleasantry and gaiety and flippancy will be a loiterer and a hanger-on all the days of his life. Therefore if you would attain the mastery, be temperate in these matters. Nor should college students neglect the cultivation of their spiritual gifts. The pagan world was satisfied if a man had a sound mind in a sound body — that was Striving for the Mastery 85 as far as their religion could carry them. But Chris- tianity and Christian institutions have a higher ideal; Christians cannot stop here. They must go farther. Our educational system should insist first, upon a sound ..............o........................ bod y; secondly, upon a sound | I mind; thirdly, upon sound relig- t religion must j i(ms instruction as the basis of crown J character, as the anchor of the | f soul, as the inspiration of conduct, | | as the dynamo of all hopes, ...,.........„......... # ........^..„.-i aspirations., and endeavors. It is, of course, possible to be intemperate in religious matters. The monks were — they shut themselves off from the world and gave themselves over to spiritual contemplation and the singing of psalms. No doubt they developed strong spiritual life, some few of them at least, but they did not gain the mastery of the world for Christ — they ran away from the world and left it to the devil. The Puritan, too, was intemperate in religion — everybody else was wrong and he alone was right — the spirit of intolerance was in him. No doubt there are types both of the monk and of the Puritan in every college. Then there are fanatics in religion as in other things, men who are deeply pious, women who are devoutly consecrated, yet whose example we should not follow because they are intemperate. The monk would lose the world to Christ in his endeavor to save himself. The Puritan would drive men from Christ by imposing hard conditions. The fanatic, who has zeal without knowledge, would disgust conserva- tive people, whose religion is just as genuine as his own, though not so much on the surface. They are all alike intemperate. We need temperance in religion 86 The Making of Men as in other matters, in order to the mastery. If any are giving too much attention to spiritual matters at the expense of mental preparation and physical develop- ment, it is time for them to call a halt, to take an inventory of their stock in trade, to consider what it takes to attain the mastery, and to divide out their time accordingly. We want pious, devout, consecrated men and women, but these characteristics are possible along with strong minds and vigorous bodies and are oftenest found in their purest form in connection with these. I have no patience with the student who offers as a reason for not knowing his lesson that he was reading his Bible. I believe in Bible-reading, daily Bible-reading, but I believe it ought to help us do our secular work better and not to hinder us from doing it. Equally condemnable is the man who does not study his Sunday-school lesson or have room for a voluntary Bible Study Course or for social service in the name of Christ because his text-books demand all his time. He has missed the better part of college life. While in col- lege we need to develop strong, healthy bodies, keen, vigorous minds, pious, consecrated Christian character — all three, not any one of these, but all three — the glorious trinity of manly attributes which insure to their possessor ultimate mastery of the problems and perplexities and vicissitudes of life and fortune. Not only for us as college students, but for us equally when college days are over and for all our fellow men as well, this text has a meaning. If we would be masters, if we would excel, if we would make the world better and fill our place in the plan of God's universe, we must be temperate in all things. Do you wish to make money? Then make money. Striving for the Mastery 87 That is a laudable ambition. Wealth has ever been the handmaid of progress and enlightenment and civilization. But don't be intemperate in your acquisi- tion of wealth. Don't take unfair advantage of your fellows; don't pave the pathway of your success with r ^..^.. e .....^......^... ? the skeletons of those outdone by ? f you in the race. Use your means f the deeper | to help, not to hinder, to uplift, J L 11^ men R | not t0 degrade, your fellow man. | everywhere. | This is to master wealth, not to | I let it master you. The same prin- •••••«•••••••»••<••••••••»•••••••••• ciple holds true whether you enter one of the learned professions or follow the plow handles or stand behind the counter or minister from the sacred desk. All these vocations are worthy, but they may become unworthy by being used intemper- ately. Paul realized that even an apostle could lose his soul while being instrumental in the saving of others, when he said, "lest by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway." There is danger of prostituting even the most sacred calling to base ends, of being intemperate in using it. CHAPTEK SEVEN THE MORE ABUNDANT LIFE John 10:10 — "I have come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." SOCRATES, the greatest teacher of the Greeks, believed that perfect wisdom resided in the mind of each man and that the only thing necessary to develop a man was to get him to speak out what was in him. He, therefore, in all his teachings, never gave his pupils cut and dried knowledge, but ever sought to ........................................... lead them to give expression to f | their own ideas. No teacher of I I Greece ever had such a following greek ideal f as he, and none exerted a more ? TEACHING. !-,••« *, | I enduring influence upon after f f generations. No man ever devel- i..,..-..................................* oped by j^ teaching more intellectual giants. Socrates' idea of the teacher's function was that he should quicken the mind, develop the intellect, animate the reasoning faculties. This he did, and Plato and Aristotle and the other great philosophers and teachers of Greece after his day got their inspiration from him. To him and to them life was intellectual acumen, insight, mental gymnastics. Quintilian, the greatest teacher of the Romans, had no such idea of the indwelling of perfect wisdom in man as that held by Socrates. He looked upon life as 90 The Making of Men an arena of action and upon man as a part therein. He believed that training was necessary to enable a man to do his best, and that that training should begin f -— .-„.,..,.., ■■,«..,„,,, in his boyhood and continue f | throughout his life. The teacher's I the roman t function to him was the training I educational f of a man for action by the disci- AIM * | pline of himself and his feelings. I | You can see this idea of his on w.*..........................-......* everv page of his work on oratory, the Institutiones Oratoriae, in twelve books. He taught some of the greatest men of Rome, such men as Pliny the Younger, the distinguished letter-writer and philanthropist, and Tacitus, the famous historian, besides the members of the imperial family, being the first teacher at Rome to receive a salary from the public treasury. His method of teaching literature, original with himself largely, is the method now in vogue in our, colleges and universities, and has never been improved upon. His idea was to touch the hidden sources of feeling of his pupils and thus develop them to be men of action in the fierce arena of life. And he succeeded. No man has ever been possessed of gentler feeling, more deft emotions, than Pliny the Younger, and no historian has ever couched in trenchant phrase so much of stirring passion as the matchless Tacitus — both of them pupils of this master teacher and the finished product of his exquisite handiwork. But it remained for Jesus Christ, not only the Son of God and Savior of the world, but also the prince and perfection of the teacher's art, to give to the world the true standard of teaching. In Him, Jesus of Nazareth, was not only found the perfectness of the Godhead The More Abundant Life 91 bodily, but also in Him dwelt the principles that make teaching one of the noblest of the arts. Our Savior is spoken of as a teacher a dozen times where He is called a preacher once. He f looked upon His mission as that ! christ the ! °^ a teacner - He ennobled the f matchless I teaching profession, and never | teacher. j maQ taught as He wherever He I I went the people flocked to hear ;........-......^.......^.-.-,...»ft Him rpj^y f 0r g t their bodily needs in their eagerness to hang on His words. So popular was He that the elders and priests, the Pharisees and chief rulers of the Jewish race maligned Him and persecuted Him in the hope of breaking the spell of His teaching. In vain. The teachings of the Savior are more alive to-day than ever before. And though He wrote no books on pedagogy, more books have been written on Him and His method of teaching than on all other teachers of all lands in all times. Jesus Christ stands forth to-day fas the sublimest teacher in the world's history. Now what was His conception of the teacher's function? Was it to make of His pupils intellectual giants? Not at all. His enemies asked of Him how He knew letters, never having studied them. His pupils were mostly ignorant, unlearned men. Was it to beget pleasurable, passion- ate feelings in His followers, as with Quintilian? Not at all. His message was not to whoever knows, nor to whoever feels, but to "whoever wills, let him come and partake of the water of life freely." Not that our Savior would condemn knowledge or feelings, not that; but that He directed His instruction to the will, the arbiter of our being, the commander-in-chief of our 92 The Making of Men knowing, feeling, and other psychical faculties. Christ knew that, if he could get men to will aright, the knowing and feeling would take care of themselves. His teaching is directed to the will, and His purpose as a teacher and as Savior is stated in the words of the text, "I have come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." Paul had this function of the Master in mind when he said, "For me to live is Christ." Paul's purpose as a teacher was that of his Lord — it was life, the more abundant life. In the oratory of the Greeks, Romans, and Chris- tians are found the same differences as to aims to be reached, ends to be attained, as we have just found to »*.■«. . «■,«,.*■« m animate their three greatest, most I I representative teachers. Greek | oratory | oratory sought to convince the f paraxleL $ intellect, Roman oratory to stir f purposes. | the emotions, Christian oratory | | to influence the will, beautify the *.......................,...,.............* conduct. Demosthenes, in his famous oration on the crown, sought to deduce proof that would convince the intellect of the hearers that he deserved the crown and that Aeschines' arguments were untenable. He is the world's greatest orator in the realm of logic and intellect. Cicero, in his defense of the poet Archias, disregards evidence which might have been had to prove his friend's right to the Roman franchise and citizenship, and spends his time in singing the praises of poets and the literary life. No more eloquent encomium has ever been paid the study of letters and the pursuit of the literary life than that paid to it in the person of the poet Archias on that occasion. And Cicero won his case, not because The More Abundant Life 93 he showed by logic that Archias had a right to Koman citizenship, but because he made the judges feel that Archias deserved it. Cicero is therefore rightly ranked as the world's greatest orator in the realm of the feelings. The Christian orators, that is, the ministers of the gospel from Christ's sojourn on earth to the present day, on the other hand, have always directed the powers of their eloquence and the gifts of their persuasive art to convincing the will of men. They aim at conduct as the result of their preaching and teaching, conduct in its larger sense of life. This was Christ's aim— and no more eloquent sermon was ever delivered than the Sermon on the Mount. Though written from memory and many years after its delivery, its effect on him who reads is unparalled by that of any other piece of oratory or composition the world over. In the realm of the will, in the bivouac of conduct, of life, Jesus the Christ is the greatest orator in the world. The ministers of His gospel, His pupils, have fol- lowed in His steps. They are not satisfied with convincing the intellect of the reasonableness of the faith delivered to the saints, nor do they stop with ........................................... awakening the emotions and stir- | I ring the feelings by their minis- 2 character- | trations. Thev do not attain their ? ISTICS OP THE f ,, ."„„,'.,. «, , 1 more | aim, they feel that their efforts | abundant | are j n Ta i n unless Christian con- ? LIFE. ? | | duct follows their labors, unless •.....•.....•-.........^.^.►.• w .«.«4 - n ^ e hearts f their hearers there appears life, the more abundant life. What, then, are the characteristics of this life, this more 94 The Making of Men abundant life which Christ came to teach and preach, which His ministers strive to beget in their hearers, and which all His followers seek to attain? 1. It is an anchored life. The more abundant life selects out of the many conflicting doctrines and teachings of the race that which is best for its own ^^.^^-•......^^..-^•^....^ development and erects it into a | f doctrine and bond of belief — and f I this doctrine and bond of belief | it has an | constitute the view-point from I I which the individual looks out up- I | on the world, its problems, and life. *-♦..•.*..•-•.*-•-....-.-.»*.•«• rp^.g gj veg consistency, and none of us can live our best lives unless we are consistent, unless we have an ideal according to which we shape our actions, a line to which we hew in all matters presented to us for solution. Nor can we have such a standard, a basis for consistency, until we have settled within ourselves the things we believe and live right out from them our lives in harmonious, serene consistency, because we have settled on the fundamentals of life and life's work. So long as we wander, so long as we shift here and there, blown and tossed about by every whim or ism or doctrine of whatever character that comes our way, we cannot live the more abundant life. So long as we are uncertain where we stand on the great problems of life, so long as we have no compass within us pointing toward the north star of one unaltering purpose, so long will we fail to reach the point where we can hope for any large growth or wide usefulness in our lives. This means that Jesus was supremely wise when He said in the words of the text, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." The More Abundant Life 95 Men who have brought things to pass in all ages of human development in all lands have felt the necessity of anchoring their life to a definite program of belief ........................„.„..^...... ? on the great problems of exist- f ence, of taking a stand relative to | such an • ^ ne mean i n to of it all, whence they | anchor f could view life as a whole and in ? NECESSARY - | a n its parts. Thus and thus only f I were they enabled to accomplish ;.........................................* ^ great work the y wrought out in the world. They were men of force, of character, simply and solely because they had an ideal, a standard, in terms of which they weighed all problems and propositions and which gave them ballast on the voyage of life. Plato's standard was the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the feeling that he must do all he could to bring the ideal intellectual life to be the real life. This is well brought out in his master- piece, The Republic, which republic never existed, no more than More's Utopia existed, but which Plato hoped, through intellectual contemplation, would some day exist. With such a standard and with such a purpose, Plato became one of the profoundest thinkers and philosophers who has yet appeared upon time's arena. Cicero had a definite, set belief in regard to fundamentals. His standard was to live the life of a goodly, patriotic citizen of the republic as it then existed, that he might be remembered when he was dead. Thus is explained the pertinacious vehemence with which Cicero condemned Mark Anthony in his Philippics:, even though he saw his own doom in such a course of action. We honor Cicero's name and memory, because true to his ideal and devoted to his 9t> The Making of Men country's welfare, he died a martyr's death for his principles. Caesar, however, while he had a definite program of life, denied the immortality of the soul, felt that the few years allotted man on earth is his only life, and consequently spent that time in furthering his own ends, even to the overthrowing of his country's ancient and time-honored constitution. We can find numerous examples of the same truth among all nations, civilized and uncivilized, for the great deliver- ers of all peoples, the men who have stamped their personality on their fellows, have ever and always been men of an ideal, a standard, with an anchor to their lives. Of no man was this truer than of Gladstone, the great English premier, who while versed as few men in statecraft and literary lore, yet was so fixed in his religious convictions that his book in answer to the higher critics of the Scriptures stands without a peer. To live the more abundant life, then, you must have a view-point, an ideal, which shall serve as a ballast for your life's ship on the stormy voyage of human t -^.^.^„... # ...-..........«....... existence. And this means in our f I Christian land the putting on of | f Christ, the adoption of His stand- • christ the ? ar ^ f what a man ought to be, of I BEST ANCHOR. ; ... ... & ' | i what life ought to mean. With f | infinite pity do I think of the *•--—-•••- -••••"•••-* gropings in the dark of such master men as Cicero and Plato and Aristotle and Socrates — men who, despite the darkness in which they groped, rose to greatness and to fame. How often have I wished that such men could have known and felt and experienced the inspiration that the life of Christ and His matchless teachings would have brought into The More Abundant Life 97 their lives. If they could live the lives they did live and catch the luminous glimpses they did catch of the spirit world without Christ, what could they have attained, what lapses of spiritual exaltation could they have covered with Him and the glorious leadership of His life and example ! How thankful we should be for the opportunity at our door, surrounding us on every hand, of making Christ our example, our guide, our leader, our inspiration, in our struggle upward for the attainment of the more abundant life! Let us take Christ into our lives as our ideal, the anchor of our eternal hope, and let us strive that our lives may be hid with Him in God. 2. It is a consecrated life. The word consecrate comes from two Latin words, con, in its aoristic sense of completely, and sacro, dedicate, and therefore means •..e..... 8 ..... 9 ..e.........., ............ completely dedicated to the ideal | we have chosen for our life. The t complete I nermi t believes that he ought to ? dedication f withdraw from active, actual life J TO THE IDEA]L - | and live in seclusion. He conse- | I crates himself completely to it, *............................,.........»..• an( j SQ j| yeg ou ^. kj g (j a y S Darwin in his early manhood conceived the theory of evolution, consecrated himself to its demonstration, and the myriad of facts that he could cite in substantiation of that theory became a proverb in his day and is referred to to-day as one of the marvels of the human intellect. Herbert Spencer consecrated himself to the develop- ment of a complete system of philosophy, a full-orbed exposition of life, and his Synthetic Philosophy, replete with learning, packed with fact, weighted down with information drawn from all quarters of the earth and 98 The Making op Men sea and sky — a work which might well form the labor for the life-time of half a dozen scholars, stamps him as one of the world's great workers — monuments these of the power of the consecrated life. Livingstone conse- crated himself to the salvation of Africa. There he lived out his days, in deprivation and want, separated from the joys and comforts of civilized life. There he sowed the seeds that are now reaching fruition, and future generations of Africans, living in large cities or on wide-acred farms, surrounded by the blessings of peace and prosperity, and comforted by the inspiration of our holy religion, will rise up and call him blessed. Jesus Christ left the portals of glory and inhabited among men. They tried to make Him king. Satan offered Him the homage of all the world. But He would none of it. His purpose was to die the death, to show forth His matchless love for man, and so to save the world. He consecrated himself to that purpose, and millions everywhere throughout the world regularly assemble to worship in His name and receive inspira- tion from Him for their life and labors. Let me therefore urge you early to adopt a purpose in life. Consecrate yourself to it. Decide just as early as you can what that purpose is to be, then bend every ......................................... energy of your being to its accom- fplishment. In this way success will attend your efforts, in this purpose ? wa y you will attain to positions MAKES LIFE. * - - , ■, . a , I j of usefulness and influence and I | mayhap of eminence, though that i.......................................,.i . g unesgential to the begt ii v i n g. High purposes, noble motives, ennoble men, not achieve- ment alone. You cannot fail to do the things to which The More Abundant Life 99 you are consecrated. Therefore consecrate yourself to something. Choose your life's work and then early consecrate yourself to it; consecrate yourself to it, whether it be teaching, preaching, the law, medicine, farming, business — choose your field of labor, conse- crate yourself to it, stick to it and with Christ as your standard you will develop day by day to the full stature of a man or a woman of enduring worth of life and* character — you will be living the more abundant life in its quintessence. 3. It is a contented life. This does not mean a life of idolent ease, atrophic inactivity. It means the lack of worry, that arch enemy of human contentment, ...........a.............................. happiness, and longevity. Noth- | I ing so wears a man out, nothing f I so soon disqualifies him in soul faith a I an( i body, as worrv over the affairs | SINE aUA NON. I ... ^ " . | | or life. Worry makes more nerv- f | ous wrecks than all the business a........,................................* en terprises of the world combined. There is no remedy for it so sovereign as the contented life founded on the bed-rock of abiding religious faith. People of large faith in the ultimate realities of things are freest from worry. And the presence of anxiety and worry in the life is evidence of the lack of religious faith. The contented life, the more abundant life, is conditioned on faith — faith is its sine qua non. The man without an abiding faith cannot do his best, cannot live the more abundant life. This contented life bids you in whatever sphere of action your lot is cast, therewith and therein to be content. It also bids you to be the best man you can be, to attain the highest ends of which you and your 100 The Making op Men inborn native gifts are capable. God wishes His creatures to grow, to advance, to prosper, to rise from their dead selves to higher things. There are a great ........................................... many who do not understand this. f l They think that they must torture | | their flesh, deny themselves pleas- | be happy and ? ures that they mav therein please ? CONTENTED. : mu ' 4- * | J God. This was more true of past | | ages than it is to-day, but it ..........................................i 0D tains in certain quarters even to-day. It always produces the amen-corner type of Christian, with sad face, clouded countenance, and mournful appearance. To such, religion is not the rejoicing, the happiness, the contentment it ought to be. We need sunshiny, beamy-countenanced Chris- tians. The Catholic priest, who was assassinated in Colorado a short time ago, was a man greatly beloved by all for his piety and practical Christianity. But when his body was being prepared for burial great iron rings were found imbedded in his back — put there to torture his flesh and beget religious emotions. Such a thing would not be commended by our Savior. St. Jerome, one of the most scholarly and saintly of men, was so fond of literature, especially the pagan Roman litera- ture, that he decided to deny himself the privilege and pleasure of reading it. He could not, however, try him never so hard, withhold himself from his Virgil, Cicero, and Horace, to which sin he confesses with shame. His wrong was imaginary. Christ would never have imposed upon him such a denial of the normal devel- opment of his powers. Christ would have you be contented with your lot, that is, to be master over your circumstances, not to let them overmaster you by The More Abundant Life 101 worry; but He would have you also progress, grow to full stature, be the best man, the best woman, you can be, in the sphere of action whereunto He has called you. One of the most fruitful sources of discontent is the idea, lingering like a frightful night-mare over the life, that we are in a place beneath our powers, that we are .-...o.................................... destined to higher things, that we | | are not appreciated at our true • work I wor th nor rated at our intrinsic I joyfully in f worthiness. The teacher in the J YOUR PLACE. J cross _ roadg pub]ic gch00l feGls I I that he ought to be teaching in a a...........,„... 8 ...........o.. 9 ..».....a C0 Hege. The college teacher feels that he ought to be president of the college or head of some department in a university. If he could just get from his present place of obscurity, where the eyes of the world are turned from him, where he is not appre- ciated, he would forthwith spring into prominence and become a great man. The lawyer, the physician, the minister in the small town or village, conscious of the limitation of the horizon of his influence, feels the ranklings within him of a great soul, hears the whis- perings of great things dinning in his ears. If he could only get to the great city, he would at once reach the pinnacle of fame in his profession, all eyes would be turned upon him, the praise and the eclat of the world would be his. The student in college chafes at the dull, deadening routine, at the daily monotonous bells, periods, and lectures, is restless to get out in the world where he can do something. He feels that the world will set a truer estimate upon him than his teachers. He longs for active life, is unhappy, and loses the best opportunity he will ever have of preparing himself for 102 The Making of Men a career of achievement and acquisition. Thus it is in all the spheres of life — discontent, unhappiness, failure, pessimism. This is not Christ's way, who would have us do whatsoever our hands find to do with all our might. The vital thing in all such discontent is to get to work. Be forward-looking? Yes, but never be discon- tented. The sovereign path to attainment, to lasting results, is through perseverance street and up difficulty hill. Walk that street, climb that hill, and remember that it is always the street and ever the hill right at your hand. Don't whine and pine your golden moments of fleeting opportunity away. Be a hero, be a man, take hold of your duties with a will, make a way, and before you know it you will be happy, contented in your sphere. Before you are aware of it the places above you will be beckoning for you to come on, to come up higher. Keep your eyes on the stars, but keep your feet on the earth and your hands at your task. Whatsoever your hands find to do, do it with all your might — this is to lead the contented life, this is to attain to the more abundant life. 4. It is a serviceable life. Life and action are synonymous terms. The life that ceases to act is soon dead. Inaction, stagnation, death, are but quick steps ? ^......^„........k»»...........^... in a continuous, successive pro- f I cess. Our muscles lose the power • devoted • °^ locomotion if unused and our I service life's J eyes would forget how to see | corner-stone. | unlegg employe(L Life and action | I are correlative, inter-related, a-*...*^^.-..........-.^...* mutually dependent. This is true in the physical world. It is no less true in the spiritual world, of which the physical world is but a reflection The More Abundant Life 103 and a shadow. There are no drones in the religion of Christ. He said, "My Father worketh hitherto and I work/' and so must His disciples. A slothful man and a Christian have no community with each other. The Christian is a vital kinetic force for good in the world. He is no sluggard. His hands are continually at work doing the things his heart shows him he ought to do. The segment of his being is completed by the circle of his doing. He is all right within, he feels the impress of the divine image stamped upon him, but he is not satisfied unless he is at work, is doing something for the Master's kingdom and the salvation of other souls. He shows his faith by his works. Whatever his field of activity, whether in the pulpit, in the teacher's chair, on the rostrum, on the hustings, behind the counter or the plow, he is at work with his labor sweetened by the consciousness that he is doing God service and his fellow man good. His whole life, if spent as a Christian ought to spend it, would be one grand paean of praise to God and sacrificing service to his fellow man. He realizes that what he undertakes for self will perish with himself, but that what he undertakes for God and His Kingdom, for his fellow man and his elevation, will endure and live on forever. And in this realization and its consequent endeavor he is living the more abundant life — the life that Christ came to bring to men — the only life worth living. Ho, ye who spend your strength for naught, And slight the blessings Christ hath brought, Toilers for earth and time and sense, Oh, what will be your recompense? Of all that's done beneath the sky, little hath immortality ; 104 The Making op Men What's done for earth fails by and by, What's done for God can never die. Ho, ye who join the eager strife, For gold, or fame, or pride of life, Indulge the lust of flesh and eye, And for the world with worldlings vie ; Death shall undo your toils so vain, And leave you no abiding gain; What's done for time ends by and by, What's done for God can never die. Scepters and crowns will mock our trust, Monarchs may crumble back to dust ; By moth, or rust, or thief, or fire, Treasures shall flee and hopes expire ; Desire shall fail and strength decay ; The world itself shall pass away ; What's done for sense fails by and by, What's done for God can never die. When comes the king in royal might, To crush the wrong and crown the right, When all the saints in glory meet, No more to die, no more to weep, When thrones are set and crowns are given. With all the rich rewards of heaven, Oh, in that glorious by and by, What's done for God will never die. — Edward Payson Marvin CHAPTER PLIGHT THE INGREDIENTS OF TRUE LIVING Exodus 32:18 — "The noise of them that sing do I hear" MOSES had gone up into the mountain to get from God the laws by which the delivered children of Israel were to be governed. It was a critical time in their national career. In it were involved eternal issues as well as the issues of temporal affairs. It was proper under such circumstances for the people ........................................... to be concerned in spirit for the f l helpful outcome of the great and ? f important mission of their leader. the scene f Moses remained longer in the ? BEFORE US. I , . , ,; , . M I | mountain than they had thought. Their faith weakened. They cried out against him. They forsook God. They called upon Aaron for relief, and with their offerings he produced for them a golden calf. This they worshiped, giving themselves to music, sing- ing, and dancing, by such conduct disqualifying themselves for the reception of the law which God was inditing for them on tables of stone. There was nothing wrong per se in the singing of the people. Singing is an act of worship, when it is done in a worshipful spirit. The Scriptures specifically enjoin singing upon Christians as a duty, and it always 106 The Making op Men adds to the uplift and inspiration of the service of the sanctuary. These people could have been singing at this time and yet not have offended their God, provided r ..........„...,...„..........„.....^ they had been singing in a truly f worshipful spirit. Instead they | were engaged in wild, orgiastic singing per se j singing and dancing before an idol NOT A SIN. ™ I | of their own making, entirely dis- f honoring their leader, Moses, and ♦.^...«....»^..- # .....,.....^.,„^.i their deliverer, God. Such singing is always sinful and under such circumstances ex- tremely so. And no wonder, seeing their spiritual unfit- ness to receive the law, Moses broke the stones and visited upon them a speedy and condign punishment. From this circumstance, deplorable as it is, we should be able to derive certain suggestions for profit- able living and the correct utilization of our time and talent. Eightly understood and J interpreted, this incident sheds I light upon various aspects of the WHAT THIS scene should f true, vital life, the life we rightly I call Christian. It contains sug- I gestions for us as to the real *.........................................* purpose of life, how we can pre- pare to fulfill that purpose, what the nature of that preparation should be, how we are to use the power our preparation will yield us, and what place recreation and leisure hours should have in the program of our living as well as how this margin of life should be conserved. An investigation, though brief, into these inviting labyrinths of thought would seem to be profit- able on any occasion and especially on an occasion like this and to an audience like this, buoyant as it is with The Ingredients op True Living 107 the pent-up powers of exuberant youth and ambitious to fulfill in noble personal living the high and holy obligations of Christian citizenship. What life's purpose is has always been an engaging theme and how best to spend it has been equally as engaging because involved inextricably in its purpose. ... e ....,...,...„... s .. e ................ 1 Philosophers have discussed it. f f It is the old, jet new question. ? life's | Epicurus said it was pleasure. | 1 52o52j? t The Stoics thou g ht ii: consisted in f be high. f self-control, through strict devoted | I adherence to this principle attain- A........,........,.,......,..............* - n g | Q i n( j e p en( j eilce f external circumstances as well as victory over internal conflicts. Plato conceived it to be the subordination of lower to higher impulses. Aristotle advanced the doctrine of the sense of proportion, or the symmetrical develop- ment of the man, a sort of Darwinian evolution in morals. The Christian can accept no one of these, for whom the purpose of life, its end and aim, is involved in love of God and from this central force flows every principle of life and conduct. We gather this from the incident whence comes our text. The real sin of the people was not in singing, but in not loving their God. Had they had the proper love for Him, they would never have been singing such songs under such circumstances. This incident teaches that the purpose of life is best and most completely realized when men seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, when their lives have as their basic, energizing, con- trolling principle love of God, from which will flow love to man and service to Him. 108 The Making of Men And this is a truth which college students and college graduates need ever to remember and keep vigilantly before them. The curriculum offers many r ..^...„..^.^....^„.......... avenues of insight into science, f | literature, and philosophy, and the f the real | tendency in many quarters is to erect other standards for life's BASIS OF ENDURING f success. | purpose than the one we have shown to be fundamental and Christian. Learning is a good thing, but an educated man whose purpose of life does not flow from the eternal principle of love to God is hopelessly crippled as to the maximum usefulness of his activity. The Christian basis of life is the only sure foundation of a successful career and the system of education, Which strikes at it or which pleads its inability to supply it or which even neglects or ignores it, is fatally defective at heart and lacking in the real constructive principle of true education. "First things first" should be the aim of every institution dedicated to intellectual development and the fundamental first thing is to have the dynamo of life excited by the Christian principle of love to God. When this condi- tion had been fulfilled and this lesson learned, we shall be ready to understand the other subsidiary teachings of the text, and to fashion our lives like real architects into enduring character-structures of lasting value and worth. The next truth which we deduce from the incident before us is that preparation is needful in order to permanent attainment in any department of human endeavor. First lay the foundation, settle upon the basic principles of life, then you are in position to The Ingredients op Trus} Living 109 begin to get ready to live. And in that simple phrase, "to get ready/' there is involved the difference between success and failure often. The Israelites not only were ..^.^............................. ? not worthy of the Ten Command- f ments because thev failed to f preparation f incorporate true love for God in • follow^ * their regimen of conduct, but also f high purpose. I because they were unwilling to | f make the necessary preparation i..,........^...............,..... 9 .....i £ Qr ^ ie p r0 p er reception of their law-giver upon his return and for the law which he was to bring with him. The sad part of it was that they did not feel the necessity for such preparation on their part. They were anxious for the law, but wished it as a free gift, without any preparation for it. But God has not arranged the world that way. He is willing to do His part, but we must do ours also, and in no other manner can we obtain the bounty of His love toward us. These Israelites should have spent the time their law-giver was in the mountain, not in feasting and dancing and singing to an idol, but in prayer, and supplication, and the singing of spiritual songs unto the Lord, abiding His will and anxious to know and do it. You who have now come with ripe success to the conclusion of your college career need not that I should enlarge in your presence upon the necessity of prepara- tion, thorough preparation, for life and its absorbing duties. Because of keenness of vision and foresight on your part or on the part of those near and dear to you and to whom you are dear, you of the graduating class four years ago sought this place of preparation, and during the days and months and years that have 110 The Making of Men intervened you have labored earnestly, faithfully, devotedly, and so have arrived at the graduation period of your preparation, — a preparation which has been , physical, mental, cultural, spirit- | ual. You have done this work of the worst I preparation well, according to fultre to t ^ our several abilities and apti- prepare. f tudes and your Alma Mater is f glad at this glad season to place . .,.„.„.„.„., ...........,... ,.„i U p 0n -^ our |3 row the ivy-leaf of victory and in your hand the diploma as evidence to the world of your fitness to render efficient service. But many who came with you are not here at this happy time. They came with a joy as keen and relishing as your own and entered upon the race course of college life with zest and enthusiasm. The course went over many rough places; the journey became tiresome; the work of preparation became irksome to them; their vision became blurred and they failed to discern clearly the need for the course and the preparation for life it would give, and so they one by one lagged behind, walk- ed leisurely when they had ceased to run, and finally dropped out entirely. And in so doing they have greatly impeded their chances of great attainment. The power of their life to contribute permanently to their day and generation is materially lessened. You have often heard it said that there is plenty of room at the top. The reason for that saying is that the great masses of men are not equipped adequately to stand at the top. Xothing but lack of preparation, provided true char- acter underlies, can keep the determined man from reaching the highest goal. The temptation to get started in business or enter upon the practice of The Ingredients of True Living 111 professional life is so great with many promising persons that they by yielding doom themselves to mediocrity, while capable of primacy — they must follow, while with adequate preparation they should lead. The worst failure is failure to prepare — to prepare for what we are capable of doing. The saddest men must ever be those who, looking back over their mediocre lives, conclude and rightly that undue haste to enter upon their careers wrested from them their opportunity of great achievement, when it deprived them of adequate preparation. Nor would I have you worry much over the kind of work for which you will make preparation. All work that is honorable is worthy of the best in a man, but he cannot attain that best without prepara- tion. Get ready ; then begin. And this brings us to another truth, equally important and fundamental, that our preparation is for a work, a life-work. These Israelites did not realize .......................................... that God had called Abraham | from Ur of the Ohaldees to be I father of their race, through whom W °follow LD t a11 na tions of the earth should be ._, preparation. j blessed. They had heard that ? j wonderful prophecy and knew a.................^....................-* ^ at j t wag gea j e( j by a covenant with God and that this covenant had been renewed again and again with the head of their race. Yet they did not realize its import nor incline themselves to undertake to labor for its accomplishment. And to get them ready to fulfill that promised covenant of blessedness to the nations their peerless leader had gone up into the mountain to get from their Ruler a code of moral law for their guidance, while they during 112 The Making op Men his absence, not mindful of the stupendous task await- ing them, nor appreciating its worth, fall away into sin and idolatry. And like them many men have failed utterly because with a great work to be done, they either were unable to understand its need, or unwilling to undertake its burden. The routine of a vocation is what we all need to give steadiness to life. It will save us from physical and moral stagnation. The man who can do the routine work well is the man who will arrive at the summit at last. The inconvenience of routine is the characteristic of it that most people resent, but the very inconvenience is often the discipline we need to qualify us for large attainment. A man to succeed in any great work must deny himself, take up his cross, and do the routine work necessary in his particular line. We have said that it does not matter so much what line of work we engage in, provided it is an honorable business. We have now to remark, what is equally r ,.....,.......... e ...„ e ....^...,.. ? true, that our preparation, how- J | ever thorough and complete, is ! happy he I h°ll° w mockery and the strength ? whose work I it brings us worse than wasted | Is FOUND - J energy, unless it be utilized i n | I helpful, uplifting endeavor. The *........^..-.~.........,.....,„....-A sluggards are like so many weights on the wheels of progress. Lazy persons are an impediment to racial development. The idle rich and the idle poor alike deserve our pity, and the law should define a vagabond as the man who has no occupation and compel the rich vagabond as well as the poor one to engage in some form of profitable industry. We all need to work. Happy is the man that has found his work and whose preparation is The Ingredients of True Living 113 adequate to meet its demands for efficient service. It has been charged that there are a thousand college graduates in New York City without employment. I am not denying this statement, but lamenting it. I will not even plead in extenuation of it, what is entirely true, that the per cent, of college graduates unemployed is much smaller than the per cent, of those who have not had such choice opportunity of preparation for life's duties. The point that grieves me is that a thousand men in any city, capable of work, should be without it. That is the pity and pathos of the situation. Such men cannot know true happiness. There have been races among whom labor, work, honest toil to gain a living, was regarded as degrading. There have been others among whom work, while not r ....................„...... e ........,.. ? considered degrading, was regard- | f ed as irksome and an evil to be I delivered of as soon as circum- the dignity f stances would permit in each OF WOTtFC | man's case. The Christian idea t respecting it is the noblest, the A.....*....................,.....,„.„...i gUD ij mes t y e ^- conceived, that he that is greatest should be servant of all, that work is not a curse pronounced upon Adam for his disobedi- ence, but a blessing which every man who wills may have, and he in greatest abundance who is most capable and serves most acceptably. In the light of this Christian doctrine of the sanctity of work, what an opportunity of abiding usefulness opens up to those who are thoroughly prepared ! It has been said that it is easy to work in this age, because everybody works. But it is not easy to render the maximum of service, and we cannot do it, unless 114 The Making of Men our preparation has been of the highest order. And herein lies a serious danger in our present-day social order. The young are so infused with the zeal of ......»,«...... service that they are unwilling to | I undergo the patient preparation j patient, | necessary to large achievement in | preparation | their field of endeavor. Ten or | necessary. \ twelve years in secondary educa- | | tion, four years in college, and an a...„..^..-.~.....^.^.^^.^..^ e q ua j number in the university or technical or professional school, seem too much time to them to be expended in getting ready to work. They make the same mistake the children of Israel made. If Moses had come down from the mountain the next day after he went up, the people would gladly have accepted his laws, but they would not abide forty days and during that time devote themselves to spiritual preparation with view to their fitness for the law. Many young people will spend two or three years after their high school days in preparing for their life-work, but seven or eight they will not think of — it is entirely too much they say, and yet they cannot fail to observe that those around them who made such thorough preparation have forged dashingly ahead of their com- petitors, who, though longer in service, were yet less adequately equipped. We are inclined, many of us, to the belief that steady application and self-confidence will eventually yield the finest fruitage of success. "There is nothing that can keep a determined man from success ;" "Labor conquers all things;" "He can who thinks he can," — these and other adages similar to them, framed and hung in the recesses of our mind, if not in our offices and our The Ingredients of True Living 115 studios, sum up in succinct form the philosophy that underlies this belief. But it is a false philosophy. As we have seen, we must have a lofty conception of the .......................................... purpose of life, without which no | I amount of effort can yield success avoid | i n its true sense, and added to ? NARROWNESS : „ . , , | if you would | this must be thorough preparation attain f j n or d er to get the maximum of ? THE HEIGHTS. J . . . | I efficiency in service. And this i........,..,...,....*.****..*...* preparation must be broad as well as special. The specialist is a narrow man at best, and can be nothing else. He sees life in the small. The dentist sees the entire human system from the stand- point of the teeth and the oculist from that of the eyes, and a similar narrowness runs through every specialty whether of the body or of the industrial or social organism. The specialist's education should make his narrowness as little noticeable as possible. It should therefore be liberal first and then special, broad and then narrow, that he may render to his generation the best service of which he is capable and make himself the master of his profession and not his own soul its slave. But to act upon this principle is to run counter to the educational propaganda of the last quarter century and oppose the educational program of the present day, the fundamental doctrine of which is the elimination from the curriculum of everything which is not directly utilitarian and mercenary in its import. "Vocational Training; fpecial and Technical fchooif; Farm-Life fchoolf ; Normal f choolf ; Domef tic fcience ; Buf inef f College! ; Manual Training ; Less to Do with Latin and Greek Roots and More Attention to Potato and Cabbage 116 The Making of Men Roots; We Shall Get More Good From Our Schools When the Sound of the Hammer and the Buzz of the Saw Shall Have Supplanted the Hhythin of This or That ... c ,.o......^..... .....,......,..,„. Piece of Poetry Couched in a Lan- I 1 guage Now Deservedly Dead" — | false I These sentiments and others like | educational f them and in many cases more I | extravagant than they, are the i | slogans of our present-day educa- ............*..........................-; ft onal i ea( i e r S) true soldiers they of the bread-and-butter-and-pie brigade, but unfit guides in the great work of preparing the young for life ; for life is more than making a living. They forget that the most practical education is that which puts the emphasis on preparation to live a life rather than on making a living, that centers around man rather than around practical. Sad indeed will be our national plight, if these would-be prophets of the new educa- tional order ever succeed in shaping the schools of the country according to their professed ideals. But that they will succeed in their endeavors is hardly conceiv- able, in view of the common-sense of the American peo- ple and in view of recent investigations in other coun- tries which for many years have tried the vocational educational system alongside the liberal and cultural with the vocational training added later. German ex- perts declare that those trained in the vocational schools alone do not measure up in after-life to those who have liberal, classical, cultural training, and are far behind those who have added vocational training in the form of specialization to their liberal, classical, cultural training. And this is exactly as we should expect. Our work requires at our hands thorough preparation, The Ingredients of True Livifca 117 which in its turn requires breadth and depth of scholar- ship, sympathy with knowledge and life in all its related departments and complete mastery of that department in which we have elected to do our work. But remember that the Israelites were singing and that singing is not in itself sinful. This suggests a further thought, a thought which this strenuous age ? .....,........o..o..... e ..............o... needs to think and practice, that I | incessant work is hurtful to life ? 3iake wise use | in every avenue of its activity. A I leisure™ urs I man cannot work all the time at | of life. I his vocational duties and be a I J complete man. It will wreck his i...........,........,,.,..,,..,...........; h ealtll . j t will narr0 w his sympa- thies ; it will limit his horizon ; it will dwarf his spirit ; it will shrivel his soul. He must have leisure, hours for recreation, an occasional vacation, time for singing, amusement, and enjoyment, in which his sympathies shall ripen, his horizon widen, his soul expand. Many people waste this leisure time, dissipate in unwise use of it what little vitality they have left from their daily toil, and so return to their duties less able to work than if they had had no leisure. The manner in which you spend your leisure moments will largely determine the complexion of your life and the richness of your success. If you are wise, you will learn that real rest is found not in wasting time in distracting amusements or in doing nothing, but, as Bismark discovered, in change of work, and acting upon this discovery you will have an avocation upon which you will expend habit- ually at least a portion of the leisure recreation hours that shall be yours. This will not make you less a specialist, but a sympathetic one, one who can feel 118 The Making of Men sympathy for others than his own colleagues or frater- nity-men. Our Master spoke with authority as a religious teacher — that was His specialty — but He could also sympathize with every department of life. And while we may not hope to emulate Him in our capacity for sympathy with life, yet we can learn from Him the needful lesson of successful living, that our margin of life, our spare, recreation, amusement hours, should be utilized to some righteous end, not squan- dered in vice or frittered away in idleness. It is frequently these spare moments, used not to make a living, but to live our life, that enrich the soul and bring to out* success in our daily vocation an enduring halo of lasting achievement. And in many cases the achievements in these leisure moments, the moments we must spend otherwise than upon our daily occupa- tion, give a color and a charm to life that lift us into the realm of supreme joy and noblest service and serenest peace of mind and sweetest bliss of soul. "If only we strive to be pure and true, To each of us all there will come an hour, When the Tree of Life shall burst into flower, And rain at our feet a glorious dower Of something grander than ever we knew." CHAPTER NINE LIFE'S BASIC PRINCIPLES Romans 12:11 — "Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." EVERY building presupposes a foundation, and the more towering the structure the more important the question of its foundation immediately becomes. The shanty need not go down to the clay or the bed-rock, but the skyscraper must. Every organi- zation of human beings must have a constitution, written or traditional, and the I importance of the organization varies direct lv with the excellence •■U..*..^. *..#.. C--3--0--3"*"*"*"*"* t 1 w^SSitTS^ I of the constitution. How a mere f f handful of friends may organize J | themselves for literary develop- •.^...^.^.......,....................4 ment or soc i a j conviviality need not be a serious matter, but the fundamental principles underlying the civil authority of a modern nation become vital to all mankind. So it is of life, my life and your life. The attention we pay to our life's foundation will largely determine the interest our fellows will have in our life. The skyscraper, whose steel supporting columns go down far into the earth's interior till they find a worthy resting-place on the unyielding framework of the world, not the fragile pigmy hovel squatting by the ocean's brim or perched 120 The Making op Men upon the mountain's peak, attracts our attention, com- mands our admiration. The Magna Charta, the Declara- tion of Independence, the constitutions of the nations, young and old alike, in the progress of liberty and free- dom, not the by-laws of the Burgrahaw Country Club or of the Green Mountain Tennis Union, challenge our interest and compel our sympathetic concern. The life, cast in a large mold, placed in a large room as David conceived it, the life that therefore must have a broad, deep, solid foundation, and an expanding out- look on human problems and issues, not the life of the dwarfed perspective, of narrow horizon, of unstable substructure, does the world's work and receives, because it deserves, the world's applause. The foundation of life is its important part. With- out stability, without excellence here, no progress of enduring type is possible. Animals make no advance- •-^..•..•-•...-•-•..•.^..•-•..... t m ent from day to day nor from | t age to age because they make no I the • P r °vision for it, and they make f foundation f no provision for it in that they | IMPORTANT - J pay n o heed to the foundation of f I their existence. Many human i.................,,............*........* De i n g S are animals in this regard — they accept life as they find it, without foresight, eking out a paltry existence, leaving the world no better, perhaps worse, than they found it. The problem of human progress is the problem of getting the individual human being in youth to provide an adequate foundation for the duties and responsibilities of man- hood. To this end we expend millions of dollars on schoolhouses and keep a quarter of a million persons employed in teaching. To this end Ave encourage a Life's Basic Principles 121 myriad almost of organizations and foster at great outlay a magnificent coterie of tendencies ameliorative and uplifting in their import. The college student encounters two crises in his preparation work, in constructing his life's foundation. The first of these comes when he arrives at college. He ......,...........*.......................• finds himself at this momentous f I juncture of time in a new atmos- f entering I phere, among strangers, from bringTon a • whom he is to select his bosom crisis in life. I companions, companions who are I to have weighty influence in shap- ...............,..,.....,...,.......,..,..; ing hig co u e g e car eer. Heretofore his companions had been those of his home and com- munity circle; he has had his parents' wise counsel as a corrective to the often erratic judgment of youth. Now he must be his own counselor. In the home there was always the pressure of an authority outside himself tending to compel him to give attention to fundamental issues and duties first and to social, convivial matters secondarily. Now he is to determine to what ends he will direct his attention and to what duties and interests give precedence. He faces a grave crisis- -a crisis which carries many a promising life down, in institu- tions which are not careful as to the morals of those who come and as to the moral training of those who have come. How important it is that at this critical time the most wholesome, uplifting influences be brought to bear upon the life and that distractions and allurements of an insidious, hurtful character, be eliminated, we all know. The first month in college will ordinarily determine the emphasis a man will place relatively on the essential constituents of life-prepara- 122 The Making of Men tion, or the embellishments of living that have small and only a subordinate, while yet a very real, place in life's substructure. Those who survive the first crisis come to the second — graduation day — the day, when, having laid the foundation deep, strong, massive, the real work of , . -, .„.„.„.,„,„.„.,..■■.„.■,.,,. erecting the superstructure begins f f — to Commencement Day, the day ? crisis number | when the graduates are to com- i TWO — COM- i . u .,-, ,, . ,. j. j I MENCEMENT f meilCe t0 DUlld theiT llVeS > t0 d ° I day. ! their part in human uplift, to I j weave into the warp and woof of 4^.^..«.».^«....»^^. # >...o-i }! Unian achievement the texture of their own life's ideals. A critical day, this — a more critical than that on which four years ago college training was initiated. While we meet a new freedom and a new responsibility when we become citizens in the college community, yet even there we are surrounded by friendly advisers, whose chief pleasure is to give direction and impetus to the lives committed to them and whose chief business is not self-aggrandizement at our expense, but our advancement at their expense of energy, patience, and concern. Our course of studies was largely determined for us and wholesome advice and kindly admonition awaited us at every snare or pitfall. But on Commencement Day we face a changed order of things. We find ourselves in the larger throng of the bustling world of business and commerce, and while there will be friendly guide-posts along its way, we shall encounter the sign-posts of enemies also, and we must distinguish between them. Our work will not be longer laid out for us; it must be of our own choosing. The days of youth in the home and the days Life's Basic Principles 123 of foundation work in college will prove powerful, willing allies to keep us true and strong for the right, but they will be allies only and not lords ; we ourselves must command them or they cannot assist us to success. In a crisis like this, a crisis that comes but once in a lifetime, the need of a chart and compass is impera- tive. Unless we have a rudder, we cannot control our . vessel ; and unless we have a life- I | policy, founded on basic princi- l a chabt and ? pies, a policy that is adequate and | compass of | comprehengiy^ we cannot hope I necessary. | that our life will be symmetrical | | or full-orbed. The foundation A........-..„....-....,.-.„...v....i laid - n the years of preparation for our vocation will stand us in good stead, provided we have constructed it out of the proper material and imbedded it on the solid rock of human character. But the foundation is not the entire edifice. Skill and patience and judgment will be demanded in the com- pletion of the structure, and these qualities must be contained in our life-policy, our program of living and working, if we are to achieve enduring results. The fundamental qualities of such a life-policy, of such a program of righteous living, are contained in the passage of Scripture taken as the basis of the remarks of this occasion, under three heads : i. attention to business "Not slothful in business," says the inspired writer to the brethren living in the world's capital city, and there was need of the message. The ancient world regarded work with aversion. Slaves were to do the necessary tasks of life. Naturally they identified their 124 The Making of Men slavery with their work and chafed under its exactions. Paul counsels all who render service to do so without slothfulness and it goes without saying that the mis- ? -...-^.^.....„.^..^..... sionary tent-maker expected every f | man to work. Christ had ennobled work!— that - h° nes t toil when He labored for I is the divine f eighteen years at the carpenter's nv.rrnvrvivrmv : . _ _ _ . . _..... INJUNCTION. | — — — | bench. Labor, for the Christian, f J whether physical or mental, is i..............,........ e ......^...-.i divine an( j no tnily Christian man is happy without his post of service in the world. Sluggards, drones, lazy men, we have indeed and always will have, parasites they upon the social body, but they are the abnormal, not the normal man — a complete overturning this of the Roman conception of the degra- dation entailed by work and an absolute reversion from the ancient exaltation of freedom from vocational duties having a materialistic aspect — a clear-cut denun- ciation of the old attitude of Roman civilization toward all effort for personal maintenance, and the glorifica- tion of its opposite. Many feel that the twentieth century American pays too strict adherence to his business demands and that he is fast approaching the precipice of nervous prostra- ........................................ tion consequent upon too arduous f | attention to a single interest. I f a false f freely grant that there are men j N °Svous UT I wh0 have wrecked their lives by f prostration, f what is familiarly known as stren- J | uousness, but it is not true that i. # .........»... # ........^.....« e ».u4 ^g American people as a whole work too hard, nor is it demonstrable, according to the latest books on social phenomena, that our people are Life's Basic Principles 125 more nervous than the English or the German or the French. The pulse of the entire world has been quick- ened within the last half-century, whether because of the rapid strides we Americans have made in material development or to the multiplication of the world's producing capacity through inventions we know not, but the rate of doing things has quickened and a new energy has transfused the world. But this does not mean that the world's population is on the verge of nervous wreck, even if the patron saint of our women is St. Martha and of our men St. Vitus, as some wag has put it. Speed is not nervousness nor is rapidity of production evidence of social neuralgia. We work shorter hours than ever before in history. No age in mankind's annals has enjoyed so much leisure as our own. Our work is not hurting us. Work ........................................... never hurts any one; rather it J | proves itself a wonderful pre- t work t sedative of health. But hurry, ! never hurts | "the square of work," coupled with f ANY 0]VE * J worry, "its cube," will bring dis- | J aster, and that, too, quickly. Not i......-.......„....„....-.»^..„.„i ^ e man w j 1Q £ 0eg ^j ie mog { wor k ? but the man who needlessly hurries and worries over his duties is the man who suffers from insomnia, ennui, hypnochondria, nervous prostration, and who soon conies to the zenith of his serviceableness and as speedily descends in creative capacity to the nadir of enforced inactivity and perhaps of permanent disqual- ification from further performance in his chosen realm of service. He who works habitually under high pres- sure, which is another word for hurry, is doomed already to pay the penalty of enforced relaxation and 126 The Making of Men at a time not of his own choosing, but when nature shall elect. And he who adds worry to performance under high pressure is committing suicide with acceler- ated pace. The apostle would as unequivocally condemn you for overwork as for slothfulness in your business. It is our duty, our privilege, as master builders of the edifice of life, to find the golden mean between overwork and underwork. Personally I do not think we have yet reached the maximum of human efficiency in business; the world's record for doing things has not yet been brought to its ....„..,..........^.,................ highest point. It is true that the I f productive capacity of the race * human * h ag enormouslv multiplied in | EFFICIENCY J * ; T I to be | recent decades, but the high-water I marvelously | mar k nas not vet been reached. ? INCREASED. J . J i i All our improvements practically *...............„......... 9 ......„.....a haye l)een in the | ine of mec hani ca l development. Our tools are a marvel and our machines surpass in their prodigious energy the fabled achieve- ments of the pagan deities. Wealth has multiplied and continues to multiply, but the end is not yet. We face an open door of great potentiality, of marvelous possi- bilities of increase in productive capacity. We are to witness marvels as great, greater as mind is greater than matter, in improved methods of applying human power of mind to the industrial and other problems of our complex and intricate social organism. Scientific management is a new phrase, but it contains a germ of portentous advancement for mankind. Its application to bricklaying has more than trebled the capacity of the master mason and left him with greater freshness and vigor when his day's work is done than his previous Life's Basic Principles 127 output of one-third that amount had left him. Other and greater marvels from its mastery await us. Human efficiency in business is to be wonderfully increased in the coming generation and it behooves us to do our part as trained men and women, for only such can have a part in it, to be found laboring for its ushering in. The surest plan for us to adopt in order to render well our part in this new order of increased efficiency is to be "not slothful in business." An intensely practical question is that arising out of the demands of our business upon us. When does a man cease to be slothful in business? How assiduous ........................................ should his attention and devotion I f to his vocational responsibilities | ! be? Is he to have only one inter- work— | es { i n life? These are engaging : THEN PRAY! ? I I queries and admit of much | f divergence of opinion. Experi- «..^.^.....^....„..........„....„,..i ence? however, seems to teach that too constant attention to one thing decreases efficiency in it and that the most successful men are those who master one line of work, become authority in it, and then have time for other interests. The old adage, "Work while you work and play while you play," while it is homely, is after all, as adequate a summing up of the world's matured judgment on this vital issue as can be formulated. If we employ our leisure moments in broadening our sympathies, if we steel ourselves during our working hours against hurry and at all time against worry, if we devote our vocational hours to work and not to dawdling, we shall meet with success the apostle's first requirement that we avoid slothfulness in our business, in our life's work. 128 The Making of Men ii. enthusiasm in service "Fervent in spirit," says the sacred writer, and the spirit is not written with a capital letter. And he was right. Attention to business is not sufficient in itself. ...-.^...„^....,..........,. # ...... Energy devoted to our vocation | may make us proficient in it, but I might brand us as failures in life. love * There must be whole-heartedness YOUR WORK. ? . T | in our service, else we might | J engage in a disgraceful, hurtful, i..... # ................,...^...........i disreputable sort of business. Unless you can be whole-hearted in the business you are engaged in, you had better get in another business — there is something wrong with it or with you in your relation to it. A business that is worthy of you will necessarily enlist all your sympathies, inspire your enthusiasm, beget your devotion, and impel perforce your consecration to its ends. Unless } t ou entertain such sentiments toward your life-work, it is unworthy of you or you are not adapted to it. It becomes a drudgery to you and your performance in it is at a discount of efficiency and effectiveness. You are a bore to yourself and the yoke of life galls you. But how the heart thrills when you meet a man who is happy in his work, whose whole-heartedness and singleness of devo- tion to his duty are apparent in every movement, eloquent in every utterance! I love to meet the enthusiastic, consecrated man who is so full of his life's work that he cannot refrain from "talking shop." I do not expect to engage in his line of work, though he is anxious ever to make me a disciple, but I get a zeal and an enthusiasm from associating with him that Life's Basic Principles 129 qualifies me for better service in my own vocation. Believe in your work. Be enthusiastic over it. Feel that it is a great work, worthy of your best energy, beneficial to your fellows. Put energy into it, the best energy of soul at your command. Be fervent in your efforts to meet each responsibility ; be whole-hearted in your endeavor to achieve the very finest type of success, success that takes account of character as well as of mere acquisition and achievement. Don't think about promotion in your performance of duty — don't be visibly ambitious — don't be selfishly grasping. Be so absorbed in your work, so devoted to r ......,..,...............-....„...... ? your tasks, that you will be over- | I taken unawares, as it were, by | duty, not | promotion and crowned in spite of I sSould T be I yourself with success. Have the I the aim. I spirit in your work of the office I I boy in the great department store. A.......,....-............*..............* He wag always bug y and ever ready to do every chore that needed to be done whether it came in the specification of his contract with the firm or not. The proprietor noticed him and expected he would ask for an advance in wages. Six months passed and still no request for larger remuneration. The puzzled proprietor finally ventured to ask why he had made no overtures in the direction of receiving more adequate returns for his labor. "Well," replied the boy, "I suppose I ought to have mentioned it to you since you have called my attention to it, but really I was too busy to think of it." Are you surprised to be told that this boy later became a partner in the business and that he now ranks second only to the organizer of the business himself? Robert E. Lee said that "duty 130 The Making of Men is the sublimest word in the English language," and he might have added with equal truthfulness that "the whole-hearted performance of duty is the sublimest thought-group of the secular type of which our mother- tongue is capable." Pay attention to your business, whatever it may be; give heed to it, and perform every act germane to it with singleness of devotion and whole-souled consecration of heart, energetically, enthusiastically, with fervency of spirit. III. DEDICATION TO GOD Not only "not slothful in business," not only "fervent in spirit," but finally, grandly, majestically, "serving the Lord." Without that concluding qualification, our .„..........„.„,.........^„.......... passage might just as well have f | been written by Orison Swett | I Marden as by the great apostle to I SEEK first t the Gentiles. Attention to busi- t THINGS FIRST. ? ,, . , *, , , I ; ness is all right. Whole-hearted I iF-r- r- i . ;i I ° | i performance of duty is better. *..*....•................................* pj u £ ne j^| ier f these nor both of them together would be safe constituents for a life- policy, worthy planks in the platform of living for Christian men, without the third and concluding prin- ciple of conduct contained in the inspired admonition, "serving the Lord." It took an inspired writer to add that touch, but the heart readily assents. No life is complete without God. No life is a success without attention to spiritual interests, which are the most vital interests of life. No men have ever yet been found devoid of the religious sense. The most degraded savages, so ignorant that many animals seem clever in comparison with Life's Basic Principles 131 them, have yet a sense of dependence upon a power higher than themselves and a philosophy of how it is possible to please that power. The belief in God is . . . . . . ..... universal, and in the religious f f disposition found in every human t man t De i n g the brotherhood of man and | the religious J the fatherhood of God are indubi- | | tably established. The irreligious | { man is the abnormal man. The c..*..,.,,..^.....,..,..^...^...^ infidel ig a S pi r itual monstrosity. The agnostic is a spiritual aberration from the type of being created in the likeness of God. The normal man is the man of faith, and the larger the man, the more abiding his faith. Man is incurably religious — so says the latest word of science. It is no sign of weakness to love God. Kather is it the manly, the courageous, the heroic thing to do. I would not essay to discourse upon the value of religion, how that, through the inspiration emanating from it and the soul renewal so characteristic of it, the r ....„..............^........„...^.. world's progress is everywhere | | accelerated in direct proportion t religion • as religion is exalted. We all f aids I know the inward satisfaction of j pr °gress. J the religioug life? the pure j oy of I | the secret testimony within that a......................,.....,-^...,-* we are £ 0( j' g children. Such a consciousness is ballast on the billow-tossed voyage of life, bringing with it, amid trials, amid hardships, amid tribulations, amid successes, amid reverses, a peace that passeth all understanding — a peace incapable of under- standing, but in experience how blessed ! Many otherwise laudable lives have a fatal weakness 132 The Making op Men here — they lack spiritual power, soul-force. There are men who give strict attention to business, who render whole-souled service in their vocation, and yet fall short of real greatness in achievement and enduring ......................................... attainment in success, because f £ their successes and achievements t soul-force t are self-centered. No self-centered | is life's f life may be properly regarded as | REAL POWER - f thoroughly successful. In order I I to reach the high -mark in living i.....,.,.......,..,.--.......-^..-* our attention to business and our whole-heartedness in service must be dedicated to God. The spiritual must control us, if we are to be truly human, for the best part of man is the spirit within him. Dedication to God means devotion to the interests of our fellow man, for no man can love God and hate his neighbor. It should be the purpose of our life to be attentive to our business, our vocation, fervent in the performance of every task confronting us, and dedi- cated, with every power of body, mind, and spirit to the service of God and fellow man. We should so live that through the daily performance of our vocational duties whole-heartedly, fervently, we may draw our fellows to Christ, the magnet He that never fails to transmit a new power into whosoever is touched there- with. The life that embraces as its basic principles such a trinity of virtuous aims, with conscientious adher- ence thereto, under God, is destined to come to real greatness and to a crown imperishable, incorruptible. CHAPTER TEN THE USE OF TALENT 1 Timothy 4' lh — "Neglect not the gift that is in thee." A MESSAGE to young people on the threshold of life is always interesting. Such a message the great Apostle to the Gentiles gave in the words of our text. The young man to receive them was Timothy, brought up in a devout family and dedicated .-.„.-«„.».~....„.„.„.„.-..m... ? to a great work. You have come f I from similar home surroundings f I and are embarking upon what ? a threshold j forebodes to be, what ought to be, f j a great work. The apostle's in- | f junction is therefore apropos to 4..^^.^^...^.^....^..^.^„i y 0u ^is morning as well as to Timothy in the first century of our era. "Neglect not the gift that is in thee" — words easily .........„....„....-...,^....^... spoken, but words requiring great f f effort to fulfil. The Bible fails to ? | record a single injunction to lazi- I work, but j nesg to slothfulness. We are com- ? NOT ALWAYS. | | i manded to remember the Sabbath | f day to keep it holy, but we are i^..^...^^........™.-.-^.^..* a | gQ en j i ne( j to work six days and in them do all our work. It is as much a sin to waste the six work days of the week as it is to break 134 The Making of Men the Sabbath. Experience seems undoubtedly to show that those who do faithful work for six days will not need to use the seventh for any unchristian end. The man in college who cannot find time on Sunday to serve God, but must violate God's law by studying his lessons for Monday, is almost without exception the man who idles away most of his six days for legitimate work. "Neglect not the gift that is in thee" — but how? There are two ways of not neglecting your gift. The first is the simpler and the easier— and the one most ........................................... often resorted to. It consists in | I mere use, mere employment of our I mere use op I gift. A man inherits from his ? TALENT NOT f ° ,, , . . , , „ I worthy ! father a certain tract of land. He of the f uses jt to support himself and his ! MODERN MAN. f . „ ^ , , , | I family — a far more commendable ;............^......,...........„.....a t hi n g this than to allow it to grow up in weeds and briars. A man has a natural gift in mechanics. He gets a place and goes to work, securing a livelihood. Another man's gift lies in public speech. He accordingly preaches and does some good, but not all he is capable of. There are gifts as various as there are men in number, and most men are inclined to use their individual gift — a most laudable inclination — but I declare unto you a more excellent way. That more excellent way is to develop and use. No matter in what line your gift may lie, you should develop it and use it. I commend the man who uses his gift, but I commend him more who develops and uses his talent. That man who is incapable of developing his talent has his life cast in a small mold and deserves our sympathy, and we should rejoice that his kind are rapidly decreasing. I do not know that there need The Use of Talent 135 ever be any more of his kind, in view of the vast oppor- tunities of education in the reach of even the poorest. The door of opportunity, of development, is closed to no ? .,..................„.^............. man to-day who is willing to pay • I the price of development. An in- | develop your j creasing number of young people talent: | are knocking at the doors of our | then use. i colleges, anxious to contribute in t | any honorable way possible toward i-...^^.-*...........-.........* a e f rav i n g their expenses, and this is a hopeful sign of the times.* May their kind multi- ply! But worthy of all condemnation is the man who will not avail himself of the opportunity within his grasp for development. Develop your gift ; — then use it — that is the proper meaning of Paul's injunction. When we have developed our gift, we are much more capable of rendering efficient service in our voca- tion. The most successful men are those who develop j^-^^**-**^**^, their gift before using it practi- f j cally. Statistics show that the I and this * vas ^ ma J or ity of the most success- | development | ful men of this age are college I PAYS GRANDLY - | graduates and many of the other | I great ones have had some college i..........,o...... ••..•••£ training. Does education pay? Does development pay? Facts are eloquent in forcing an affirmative response. A man's earning capacity is multiplied many times by his developed talent and his chances of enduring success are immeasurably increased. The recognition accorded him — a goal that can be reached * For a list of such men and women who have come to greatness, see a hook by C. B. Riddle, "College Men Without Money." Thos. Y. Crowell Co., New York. 136 The Making of Men only through, development — is an unearned increment that lends an ineffable flavor to living and renders life worth while. His developed talent properly used, will make a man a leader who would otherwise have been a follower all his days. How do the leaders of men differ from their fellows? Not so much in talent nor in its mere employment, but in the use of developed gifts. En- ergy is good, but it is better to use some of that energy to develop your talent for larger, more effective service. But there are two methods of development — narrow and broad, short-sighted and far-sighted. Narrow development produces a narrow man. A narrow man •^.^....^.^..^.^.^ is incapable of broad vision, of | | sympathy with life in the large, 1 AVOID NARROW J ^ What the WOrM needS IS development: ? intelligent sympathy along with | it cripples. I mogt competent judgment. There | | is a tendency in our time to i..**...-^...^.........-**..* 0DServe the infant from its birth to discover, if possible, the peculiar bent of its make-up and to turn every particle of its training in that direction. This tendency T deplore — it is making us deplorably and crassly materialistic and rendering us increasingly more incapable of producing anything great in the intellectual and spiritual sense. A nation's contribution to noumenal and spiritual conceptions constitutes its fund of greatness, not its wealth, not its pyramids, not its roads, not its skyscrapers, not its navies. The builders of the pyramids of Egypt and the road engineers of Rome are forgotten, but the discov- erers of new ideals of life and thought and conduct, their contemporaries, are household words in every land to-day. ! The Use of Talent 137 Do not understand that I am condemning wealth. A country in which there is no wealth has never been able to leave a definite impress on the world. I believe c......................................... i n wealth. I believe it is the duty f t of some men to make monev, to • • «/ 7 I DON'T LIMIT f beCOme rich ' Alld l haVe n0 d0UDt t life's joys to J that I now speak to some who J MONEY-MAKING! i wm ^ ^ be mil li naireS, or | who will miss their calling. I i~— —„*—„*„— —~*~*-...^i Relieve it is as much a sin for some people to be poor as for some others, who achieved their end by dishonest means, to be rich. Some are called to be rich, their gift lies that way, and they will be sinners against God's purpose for them, if they fail to become rich. But God has not called all to riches. I am inclined to think He likes poor folks better, since He made so many of them. And those who have the gift to make money need, not the narrow, but the broad, development, if they are to enjoy the fruits of their industry in life's eventide. Pity the rich man whose narrow application to money-making has made him a pauper in every other respect. Nor would I be understood as opposing speciali- ,.,.„......,...,................,........ f zation. We need specialists, but f don't be a t we do not need narrow specialists. | muck-raker— | a successful phvsician said to me ? HAVE : | educational I recently that he believed that f perspective I medical specialists did a great TO YOUR * , , . ! training. | deal of good, but often a great i... ,.,.,..,... ■...,..,....,■...; deal of harm. "But how do you explain that?" I asked. "Very easily," came the prompt response. "The specialist views every organ of the body from the standpoint of his specialty. He 138 The Making of Men frequently treats symptoms, and in getting his special organ in good shape will derange the system in many other parts. Frequently a deranged special organ has a deep-seated cause, which when removed will set the special organ all right again. In these cases special- ism does harm." The harm is not in specialism, but in its narrowness. A man who knows only one thing cannot know it perfectly, because perfect knowledge takes the particular element's relations to other things into consideration. The narrow specialist cannot see the rose for its petals; nor the forest for its tree; nor the heavens for the stars. He is incapable of per- spective, and no life, just as no picture, can be com- plete without perspective. The picture of the man with the muck-rake in Pilgrim's Progress is an apt portraiture of the man who can do only one thing, who knows only one thing. Know your specialty; be the best informed man in your line; be second to none in definite, accurate mastery of your vocation — but do not stop there, rather do not begin there. The man who makes his specialty count for most is the man who arrives at the station of thorough mas- tery in his vocation through the road that touches life ....................................... and knowledge in all their phases. f | He does not take the underground ! don't try I tunnel, but God's open country. ? EDUCATION AL I « , . f, ,. , -, ! short-cuts— ! Such a man is sympathetic, broad- there are ? minded, sees things in proportion, NONE. I ,.,,-■,? • +• i and is destined by conscientious .................,.....i p er f ormance an a strict adherence to duty to rise to highest attainment in his special line. This brings us to the consideration of one of the most vital questions in life — what is the proper time to The Use of Talent 139 make special preparation for one's special work? Many think as soon as they can read and write, they should begin at once to specialize, and there are special schools which for the paltry consideration of the added dollars it will bring them stand ready to decoy unwitting youths into putting that belief into practice with them. They will promise glowing prospects for wealth- production after six months in their school. Every- body knows that six months is not time enough to develop a man into anything but — a squash. It takes time to make an oak, but a sapling can come forth in a brief summer. There are no short-cuts to life-prepa- ration. God has ordained that the development of the higher orders of His creation should be slow, but mush- rooms grow up over night. Not how long it will take me to get ready for my calling, but what does it require for me to become thoroughly proficient in it, should be uppermost in every young man's mind, in every young woman's mind. We are not designed so much to make a living as we are to live a life. The world does not owe me a living, but I owe the world to live a life worthy of my gifts, uplifting to my fellows, and so adequate in assisting in the world's progress and elevation. Others feel that, when the high school course is ......................................... completed, we are then ready for f f the special or technical school. I don't stand * They do not see any need for the * THE2 * ! educational I college— the literary college, and I pyramid on | regard the four years spent therein J ITS APEX! | ° ■ . „„ f ,, , . | 1 as wasted time. What a blunder! *......„........................„......* We need a foundation before we erect our house. To build the roof first would display gross ignorance of the builder's art. It is equally as 140 The Making of Men disastrous in life-preparation to begin with the end. The end of life-preparation is mastery of our specialty. To begin with it first is to stand a pyramid on its apex — it may stand poised in mid-air, an ungainly spectacle and quite different from its maker's design, but the chances are that it will topple over. The college furnishes that broad, thorough, stable foundation that is so fundamentally needful in order to keep our specialty from narrowing us and emptying us of all capacity for sympathetic communion with our fellows and from contributing our due proportion of service to the world's uplift. We need special and technical schools and must have them, but they do not propose to give a broad foundation to life and should not be sought till our college course, which undertakes this very thing, has been completed. It takes a long time to graduate from college and then spend three or four years in the special and technical schools, but the experience of all who have done it is so satisfactory that no sacrifice possible needful to this end should be begrudged by the young person who aims at the ripest fruitage to his life's endeavor. The special and tech- nical school should follow the college and cannot be thought of by discriminating educators as capable of taking its place. But where shall we lay our foundation ? What sort of college shall we choose? A state college? A pri- vately endowed or owned institution? Or a Christian college? To raise this question is to answer it. Why have you chosen a Christian college rather than some other college? It is because you value Christian character above intellectuality and consider it the most priceless possession in the world. State institutions The Use of Talent 141 cannot emphasize the religious life. The state and the Church are to be kept forever separate in this country. Privately endowed or privately owned institutions are not necessarilv irreligious, but \ they frequently are, and many are choose f f as t becoming sporting resorts ? CAREFULLY : . I the place of % where habits of lavishness and | your talent- | high-living are inculcated or at : DEVELOPMENT. | % least imbibed. But the college, i..... e . e .. e .....,.....o..-. 8 ........^i which ig thoroughly Christian though free from all sectarianism, the college where every possible effort is put forth to create a wholesome, heathful, inspiring Christian atmosphere, is certainly the proper scene for the unfolding into flower and the ripening into fruit of Christian character. The spirit of the college you attend in the formative period of life, wherein decisions affecting the attitude toward the things of the spirit are unconsciously arrived at, cannot but have a tremendous influence in shaping your life's ideals and principles. The atmosphere of the genuinely Christian college has saved to the world, to the Church, and to himself many a promising youth, who under different environment would have gone down in dissipation to an untimely death. Your state college should be for those who are maturely developed in character, for those whose standards of conduct are so determined that looseness in moral life, laxness in Christian living, and insidious temptations of every* kind can exert no compelling attraction for them. We run too large a risk, an irreparable risk too, in seeking our foundational development, while yet immature, in anv other than a distinctlv Christian environment. • WHOSE ARE f OUR TALENTS? 142 The Making of Men What shall we do with our developed gift? To what purpose shall we make it subservient? Is it ours, to do as we please with it? Or do our fellow men have an interest or a residuary right in it ? There are those who regard their gift as their personal property. They use it to advance their own interests: nay, they use it to thwart the progress of their fel- ^.•.....•-•..•..^..-.........•......-a lowg Tlie wor i Dut that notion should be be enthroned f correct and not distorted. The college that fails in this respect has failed beyond redemption, — not that it is to be sectarian, not that, but that it is unworthy of confidence and unde- serving of support if it does not do its best to make plain the place in human life and society of the King- dom of God and the individual's duty to love and serve Him. It is said that there are colleges in this Chris- tian land from which a man can graduate with no more conception of the true God than if he had been educated in a pagan country.* This is a deplorable condition and one that strikes at the heart of education. It must be remedied and it will be, because the American people will see to it that such abuse of education is not toler- ated. We live in times when free-thought, infidelity, and skepticism are tolerated in the public school system, but when Christianity cannot be. It is a perilous condition, but the day of redemption is at hand. The cry is rising up from every quarter and the popular voice shall be heard and heeded. Church and state are not to unite again, but * Dr. W. O. Thompson, President of Ohio State University, says : "The atmosphere in which a boy is educated counts for much. I am in no way untrue to state institutions when I say that in our day a boy might become a bachelor or a master in almost any one of the best of them and be as ignorant of the Bible, the moral and spiritual truth which it represents and the fundamental principles of religion, their nature and value to society, as if he had been educated in a non- Christian country." The Contributions of College Life 155 our educational system shall not be deprived of its heart's blood by eliminating therefrom the great central fact of human history and progress — the God that makes it possible. We have learned that "knowledge puffeth up." Strange that we had not already known it. We are learning that there is no good education, except education in goodness, and that there can be no right training except it be training in righteousness, and that apart from God neither goodness nor right- eousness is possible. The folly of allowing children to read in their school-books the moral maxims of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and Confucius and Mohammed, and of excluding therefrom Paul's pa3an to love and the Sermon on the Mount ! The folly of it ! May God graciously pardon us and may He help us to under- stand that knowledge is power, but that it is power for harm rather than for good, unless His spirit shall control it to good and righteous ends ! So far we have considered what the college should do for its students. Our investigation has made clear the tremendous import of college education and indi- ' cated how those who happily pos- f sess themselves of it are qualified | for posts of leadership in the I contribution | world. But our inquiry shall not TO THEIR f college. I De complete until we have inverted I « it and asked what college men can i...,...., ,.,..,.•„•.•„•„, „„,.,....« ( j Q £ or ^ e CUTr j cu i um an( j f 0P the college that is to make the curriculum effective in their own and other lives. For be it remembered that a college course is not simply a matter of books and courses of study: it is this, but it is all the more a product of life, of the interaction of life on life, of STUDENTS ALSO MAKE 156 The Making op Men spirit on spirit. There is no college but has its spirit and that spirit is as powerful a force molding character, determining ideals, equipping for life as the mastery of the curriculum. It is a composite product and every person in the college community contributes toward its making. There is no student but has his part in it, be it of uplift, or down-pull. There is no method of preventing his contribution to it save that of elimina- ting him — a painful necessity in some cases, but the door of opportunity to those left behind — the oppor- tunity of living in an unvitiated atmosphere and of adding to its exhilarating qualities day by day. The graduates of a college are remembered most gratefully, not because of their scholarship attainments, their forensic conquests, their athletic victories, their liberal gifts to Alma Mater — all these are good, all of them are necessary, but the chiefest thing for which each indi- vidual graduate is most gratefully remembered is the contribution of his four years to the spirit of his college, that indefinable atmosphere that like the halo of a beautiful sunset emanates from his life and becomes a part forever of the institution that travailed at his intellectual birth. What a privilege! It is not of earth, but of heaven, not of mortality, but of immortal- ity, to have part in the generation of a force like that, a force that shall influence those that come after us for right living and for God. This high privilege, this noble opportunity to help fashion the leaders of men, comes to every college man, to every college woman — but once. We have only one college course to run, and when it is run and our diploma is joyfully, proudly placed in our hands, it shall be said of us not only that we have not passed this The Contributions of College Life 157 way before, but also that we shall not pass this way again. Our commencement day is a real commence- ment. From it we go out to take our places in the arena of the life for which our college days in a peculiar sense ,.■.,■.,■.„.„.■■.„■.■■.■,..,.■■,■■.., have been a prophetic preparation. J t The future shall test our man- J the spirit of ! hood, our womanhood, our resist- EDTJCA/FIOTV I is m " • ance P ower > our initiative, our I their hands, f hopes. We shall need all that an | ideal college course can justly yield us in the fierce onslaught of life. Others will take our places in chapel, on the campus, in the dormitories, in the lecture halls, but we will not be forgotten in the sacred halls of Alma Mater. We cannot be there forgotten because our best life's product will be in the spirit we left behind us to fashion and mold and uplift other lives, when we passed out to sterner realities, but with sweet and precious memories. ? CHAPTER TWELVE ACHIEVING MANHOOD'S GOAL Joshua 1:8 — "Then thou shalt have good success. SO uracil is said about success in our day that it has become fashionable in some places to berate it. It is pointed out for instance that success, as com- monly understood, is materialistic, many persons spell- ing it fucceff as if the only aim of life were to amass great wealth. Far be it from me to depreciate wealth, even great wealth; we must have men of vast fortune and colleges certainly cannot exist without but I them, but let us not consider that o success. J dolI a rg ma ke a man or constitute f the value of his life. The success Which teaches that they do fe unworthy of serious consideration and ought not even to be here suggested and would not be but for the fact that in some quarters such a veritable gospel of mammon is proclaimed as the Whole duty of man.* * For example, Russell H. Conwell's (in) famous lecture "Acres of Diamonds," respecting which a great religious editor writes : "Dr. Conwell's argument was this — that a man's worth is ever and always measured by the dollars he has made and saved. May the angels defend us ! Was Lord Christ measured by the dollars He saved? Was Paul? Was Martin Luther? Was Jonathan Edwards? Was John Wesley? These men lived humbly, wrought faithfully, blessed humanity, and benefited all mankind. Yet mankind estimated them to be worth less than ten thousand dollars, and by Dr. Conwell's own statement, the world paid them their full Worth, and since they were not worth more in money they should have been run out of their 160 The Making of Men Others oppose success as selfish and therefore hostile to the Christian ideal of noble manhood. Certain apostles of modern success certainly write and act as if success and self-aggrandizement were synonyms, from which type of man may a kind Providence deliver us! Still others regret the wild clamor for success that is the chief characteristic of our time as being immoral or at least unmoral. A man, they allege, may purpose in his heart to murder his neighbor and carrying out his purpose becomes a success. They object, and rightly, to the glorification of a cause like that. In this con- nection it should be pointed out also that the word success occurs only once in the King James Version of the Bible and then it is qualified by the adjective good — good success, good success, that is what Joshua prom- ised the Israelites if they should obey the Lord. Their entire history and the world's history unto this good hour is a perpetual illustration that Joshua was right. I would not then encourage any college man or woman on the eve of graduation to strive for success, but for good success. We owe it to our day and generation to suc- ceed? No, not to succeed, but to AND AMBITION I , „ , . , for the I succeed well, to achieve good best gifts. f success, which without hesitation I f we may define as manhood's life- ^.^.^•-^^......-►..^.-^.i g 0a j Q ne y iep ma tter seems to demand consideration here — the matter of ambition. We frequently hear it said of a man that he is ambitious. No man should feel complimented to have town. Ah, me ! If this is not the gospel of mammon, we have never heard it. And yet he said he had delivered this same lecture ten thousand times, and the people listened — and said it was great. If that was great, it was the greatness of eloquence in preaching the gospel of mammon." — Dr. J. O. Atkinson, in The Christian Sun. Achieving Manhood's Goal 161 that adjective attached to his name or used as describing him. Neither this word nor the noun from which it is derived can he found in the Authorized Version of the Bible. It is a selfish motive and the Bible is set against selfishness. Ambition is ruthless, unless it is Christian in its aim. That suggests that there is a kind of ambition which is Christian. It is enjoined upon us in 1 Corinthians 12 : 31, where we are encour- aged to "covet earnestly the best gifts." Here the verb translated "covet earnestly" means "be ambitious for." That is the kind of ambition we need. But the sacred writer was shy even of it. He felt that it, too, might be selfish, uncharitable, unchristian, and so he adds later in the same verse, "and yet show I unto you a more excellent way," following which comes that exquisite passage, the paean to love, in which Paul shows that the possession of even the noblest Christian graces or gifts in supreme degree is of no profit to a man unless he is imbued with the essence of all true spirituality, love for his fellows and for God. And permit me to state at this point that the attainment of good success, the realization of the ambi- tion for the best gifts tempered with love, does not rest «„.....,..........................«...... on extraneous conditions. The | f social position of one's parents is I the attain- f no assurance that one will achieve : MENT OF THESE I .. T , ., -, , ,, . a j.- 1 ? not dependent ! it. Inherited wealth or influential I on extraneous f friends will not materially assist t CONDITIONS. « . ,- j. ,. ,. ,™ . « I | in that direction. The secret of ^•-^-•.^-^•-.-•-•-•..•-a ^-j. achievement lies within each individual. The fact that you have a college degree will not guarantee to you real usefulness or greatness. Many with diplomas have fallen far short of this mark. 162 The Making of Men Many without diplomas have reached it. We should never lose sight of the fact, however, that college train- ing does wonderfully assist in that direction. The statistics are eloquent and convincing touching this matter. The most reliable figures for the determina- tion of the value of college education, perhaps, are those given in "Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biogra- phy." Its six volumes give the life records of the most eminent Americans to date, 15,142 in all. Of these, 5,326 were college graduates. It is estimated that up to the publication of this encyclopedia not more than 200,000 persons had been graduated from American colleges. This means that one in forty of them achieved permanent greatness. During this same time not less than 100,000,000 persons * have lived and died in America. Of these, ten thousand achieved lasting re- nown, or one in ten thousand. What does this suggest? This — that college education multiplies a man's chance of achieving real greatness just two hundred and fifty fold. I congratulate any man who has been given this splendid boon or who has purchased it for himself, and then I would have him remember that thirty-nine out of every forty so blessed will fail to achieve the best suc- cess. His college education, I would remind him, is his opportunity and his challenge, but it does not guarantee him a through ticket with Pullman and dining-car accommodations to the grand central depot of man- hood's goal for life — good success. He must reach that station through his own efforts. Each man is the architect of his own fortune. His own efforts must yield him life's good success and bring him to manhood's goal of achievement. He is his own * "The American College." Thwing. Piatt and Peck, New York. Achieving Manhood's Goal 163 fate. Let no man fault his circumstances or his friends for his failure in life. If he is a sane man and will direct his energies toward the acquisition of the elements of true success, he can assuredly mount the ladder of f their I greatness, rung by rung, and no I ACQUISITION ? & > „ -, . | requires | man can, no man will, desire, to | sanity f hi n( j er or impede his upward prog- ■ THROUGHOUT. : ^ ^ r » i | ress. But what does it mean to be •......-^•-......^.^.^.^..-...•^ sane? Does it mean to have a sound mind ? That is a part only of complete sanity, a vital part, but only a part at best. Sanity in its relation to life-achievement means a man's harmonious development throughout all his faculties. His head must be sound and his mental faculties keen and alert. His appetites must be made serviceable to his life- purpose and not his life their slave. His heart must be right and in its right place. " If his head gets where his heart ought to be, he will be cold and hard and too stern to render best service to his fellows. If his heart gets into his head, he will be a crank, a fanatic, an emotional animal, capable of great feeling, but not a real man. If his appetites climb into his head or his heart, he will immediately become a beast. Brains, appetites, emotions — all of them are needful in the well- proportioned man, but all of them must be sane, kept in their proper place and relationship to each other. It is true that geniuses, supermen, sprint through the arena of life, defying every canon of normal manhood and leaving behind them a trail of greatness. But it is also true that geniuses are totally unaware of their genius, that they are very uncomfortable men to live with, that their life is usually a constant martyrdom, their 1G4 The Making of Men funerals being sparsely attended and their claim to greatness acknowledged only by a later generation than their own. Some one has said that genius is a species of insanity, whose only asylum is the grave. Be that as it may, the man who really serves his time is the man of complete sanity, of splendid symmetry of life. Another characteristic of these servants of mankind is their healthfulness. Their bodies are vigorous and sound. No college has the right to graduate an unsound .,.„..,.„.„.„.„. . .,,.. „ „.,. man physically. That is why col- | | leges insist so strongly upon I with | physical culture, daily exercise, ? COMPLETENESS, I * ,. , ,, | healthfulness,! athletics, and the gymnasium as 1 and | the complement of the class room, 2 wholeness; i „ ... r , ,. . . | | the library, and the laboratory, i^-..*..........^..-..,,..,,,,.,.^ \yh en we know enough about the laws of physical development, we will be able to produce men of sound body without exception in our colleges. How different this conception is from that of the ancient world ! One of the authorities * on medicine in antiquity urged that there would have been no need for his science, if education had never afflicted men. How comforting to the unstudious mind! But how untrue! Also in recent years parents have sent their delicate children to college so as to enable them to make an easy living! What folly! But there is a germ of justification for such decision in that college life tends to build up the physical health. There is certainly no vestige of ground for thinking that education enables * Primoque medendi scientia sapientise pars habebatur, ut et morborum curatio et rerum naturae contemplatio sub eisdem auctoribus nata Bit, scilicet Us hanc maxime requirentibus , qui corporum suorum robora quieta cogitatione, nocturnaque vigilia minuerant. — Festus, De Medic, I Prooem. Achieving Manhood's Goal 165 a man to secure an easy place in life. He who lives by his wits must pay a higher price for his existence than he who lives by the trades or by artisanship. But the healthfulness for which we are now pleading is more than a sound, vigorous body. It is more than is included in Juvenal's fine phrase "mens sana in corpore sano." It is rather a quality, a texture of life, a wholeness difficult to analyze, but capable of ready detection and that never fails to receive sincere appreciation. The man who has it is intensely human, yet grandly humane; reserved, yet affable; progressive, yet con- servative; simple, yet learned; devout, companionable, energetic, high in his hopes, noble in his aspirations, whole, clear-ringing in his response to every duty and privilege of life, vigorous, manly, healthful, and if there be any other virtue, it is briefly comprehended in him. Such healthfulness, such wholeness, such manhood, can but lead to the achievement of life's highest ends, if coupled with the elements of true success. What are these elements? They are varied and oftentimes temperamental. The good success is not to be achieved by following rules of conduct, but by nobly .. . __ living our life. Yet there are cer- f I tain elements that may be said to ? coupled with £ be constant in its attainment, 1 TH of true^ 8 • bein £ compounded in various de- | success. | grees with other variables, but yet I ! present in some measure in every * " • ' " ""•~*~* truly successful career — earmarks these of the life worth while, so to speak. Of these we may briefly treat. And first among these constant elements I would place fidelity to one's calling. I care not what a :THE LIFE-WORK. 166 The Making of Men man's vocation is. I care greatly that he shall be faithful to it. The rolling stone gathers no moss. The unstable man is a weakling. The greatest care and ,-.-..*...-....-....-.....*-......, prayerfulness should be employed f f in choosing the life's work, but f among which j w hen the choice has been made, a : WE NAME | _ „ . , „ | first— i man should be as faithful to it as L^ IDELITY TO i to the wife of his heart and home. There must be neither variableness nor shadow of turning in his devotion to his duty. I know there are men who make mistakes in their choice. It is their duty to change, but, if God be consulted in the choice, no mistake need occur. No man can afford to enter upon a life-work unless he is sure of the divine approval. When he has that, no hardship, no difficulty, can deter him from the pathway of his choice. Keep your eye on the faithful man. Verily shall he stand before princes, for he himself shall be a prince. The men who have excelled in the annals of achievement have been of this type. The men who are to-day startling the world by the brilliancy of their accomplishments are of this same character. Now it is a Taylor or a Brandeis teaching us out of years of obscure study the value of scientific man- agement. Now it is a Ben Lindsey emerging from Den- ver's Juvenile Court into world-prominence because a lifetime has been devoted to a vital problem. Now it is a Burbank creating new varieties of fruits and carpet- ing the desert with vegetation and greenness through long lapses of patient investigation and devotion to a single ideal. Now it is a Carnegie excelling in steel, or a Eockefeller masterful in oil, or a Marconi conquering the air, or a Higginson talking across a continent — all Achieving Manhood's Goal 167 of them faithful to their life-work and blessing the world because of their devotion and fidelity. Without faith in your work and faithfulness to it you can do nothing but exist ; you cannot achieve. Great men always do more than their strict obliga- tion requires. They have never considered whether the thing requiring to be done came under their contract. i-^.^..*..^...-*...*-.-* Tne y na ve merely asked, Can I do f | it? And then they did it. They f joined with j flu their place full. They fill it | SUCH DEVOTION f r J i to duty as to ! till it runs over all-around, and f forget life's f then when a promotion is to be REWARDS. I , , , , . • i handed out and it is tendered •"*"• them, they are surprised to have been thought of as worthy of such consideration. They are too busy with their work to think of the reward or remuneration that is to come to them. They literally wake up to find themselves promoted without any con- scious effort in that direction. Let us learn from them the eternal truth of the matter — that the success worth having comes as a by-product, that a man should not work with his thought fixed on the goal of his ambition any more than with his eyes fastened on the clock or with his ears erect for the whistle. We are to be not time-servers, nor success-eravers, nor promotion-seekers, but joy- workers, serving with cheerfulness and doing with gladness whatever our hands find to do. Such service will be its own reward, but its re-reward will be promotion, good success, all the more valuable and joyous because it comes as a benediction to the conscien- tious, devoted worker. It is with achieving real success as with gaining an entrance to heaven : the reward should be swallowed up in the joy of service. He is a 168 The Making op Men poor sort of Christian who regards religion as a fire- escape from hell and he is a poor sort of man whose service is rendered with Saturday's pay-envelope or check as the chief incentive of his effort. The way to get the good success that enriches the life of all is to forget it in joyous performance of every duty that presents itself. Another element entering into the career of the world's truly great men is their catholicity of interest and taste. This may seem to be at first glance incon- ji -,-,-„,„„„ ,,.,... sistent with their fidelity to their f j chosen work, but a closer consid- | and yet with | eration will reveal that the one is I other ? as necessar y as the other to major | interests. | men. Let a man be faithful to his I ! duty. Let him leave no stone 4.^^-.-«.^^.~....~....^a unturned to make himself master in his chosen realm. But let him remember that a sitting hen never grows fat. Let him not be so narrow in his outlook on life that he becomes incapable of achieving the maximum of greatness to which his gifts may entitle him. Let him remember that great men are broad men and that ruts in any line always impede travel. Let him select an avocation or avocations, as he may prefer. Let him have at least one strong line on the side to which he may devote the leisure that he must take from his regular work. It frequently hap- pens that the life's real achievement is wrought out in this margin of time — the time which most men fritter away in idleness or frivolity, attending theaters and clubs and games. It was so in John Stuart Mill's case, who in his leisure hours after his day's work was done, as the drafter of telegrams for the Government Foreign Achieving Manhood's Goal 169 Office, devoted himself to logic, ethics, and political economy. It was so in Charles Lamb's case, who devoted his margin of time, when the day's work as an under-secretary in the Civil Service of the English Government was completed with the fidelity and exact- ness for which he was famous, first to an afflicted sister and then, when her ravings were quieted, to the produc- tion of the Essays of Elia and his other matchless tales. It was so in Edmund Clarence Stedman's case, who when his laborious duties as banker were over, gave himself to literary criticism, producing the Victorian Poets — the monument more enduring than bronze by which posterity will gratefully remember him. It will perhaps prove to be so in Gladstone's case, whose chief - est contribution to his day, it seems to me, was not Jris statesmanship nor his classical scholarship, but his blessed book, wrought out in the hard-earned hours of his leisure, a book destined to steady the Ship of Zion in her onward voyage and to comfort many an anxious passenger on board, that book of splendid title, The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture — the despair of carping critics and blatant infidels the world around. But whether your avocation be to you the avenue of your life's supreme achievement or not, you should by all means have an avocation. It will relieve the hard, dull tedium of your daily work. It will sweeten life. It will return you to your duties fresh and renewed in spirit and energy for greater faithfulness. It will make you sympathetic and companionable — two elements without which life is poor indeed. Blessed is the man that has a hobby in life. Blessed is the man that has some strong interest pursued aside from the dull, dead- ening routine of his vocational duties. Happy is he, 170 The Making of Men for so shall he be able to render most efficient service when he returns from its pursuit to the regular round of daily tasks and obligations. Happiest is he who has found this vocation, this hobby, in spiritual ministra- tion to his fellows. The joy, the satisfaction, the unearned increment, the ever increasing returns of this delightful service! The avocation is undoubtedly a positive factor in yielding the largest results in voca- tional pursuits. We cannot work always at one thing, but change of work enables us to achieve more in our one thing than if we had labored at it unrelentingly. Lives of great men all teach this splendid truth. Good-fellowship, too, is one of the characteristic assets of the men who excel in life. Good-fellowship — rubies and precious stones and diamonds are not to be ? ...-. ........ ... compared to her. Good-fellowship | J is more than agreeableness, more i and an f than abilitv as a good mixer, more 1 ABUNDANT I ,, , _.. ., | seasoning of I than cleverness. These are its good- I veneer. These are skin deep. But : FELLOWSHIP. I , . .. _ . , , | } good-fellowship cannot be put on i.+-~*~.-„*~t , ■...,.., . „ i an( j gQ .j. cannot ru j3 Q ff Jf i g a soul quality; it enters into man's texture throughout; it is the unmistakable evidence of true gentility and humanity. A gentleman is so not because of polished manners. He has polished manners because he is a gentleman. A man is possessed of good-fellowship not because he is agreeable and companionable and affable and sympathetic. He exhibits all these splendid qual- ities, the enrichment of life, because he is possessed of good-fellowship. Good-fellowship always considers the other man's view-point and respects him as a fellow being and his opinion as sincere. When he is called Achieving Manhood's Goal 171 upon to expose littleness, he does it in a big way. His exposure is so considerate that his opponents honor him. He states the truth without venom, without sarcasm, with such respect for others' prejudices, with such moderation and tenderness, that his very manner, the outcropping of his good-fellowship, lends weight and power to his argument. The manner in which a thing is said or done or gone at makes all the difference in the world. The secret of the leadership of men is here exposed. It is sometimes called tact, sometimes resourcefulness, sometimes diplomacy. These are all reflections only of the soul's texture within, exhalations of the breath of the spirit's deep-seated inward good- fellowship. Lack of this sterling quality may bring the greatest talents to ineffectualness. It was so of Gladstone's great compeer, Kobert Lowe, the Viscount of Sherbrooke, who died in 1892 unhonored, unwept, unsung. Yet he was once universally conceded to be the great premier's equal in oratorical power, his superior in intellectual grasp and acumen. His venom, his bitterness, his sarcasm, his inability to appreciate his opponent's sincerity, his bluntness in debate, in a word, his lack of good-fellowship relegated him to obscurity and a great light went out into the night of oblivion. He is seen as in a mirror in an incident as oral examiner at Oxford. To the question : "How are things going?" he is reputed to have replied: "Oh, fine; five men have failed already and the sixth is quite shaky." Splendid ability thus rendered nugatory because of unfriendliness in the man's make-up ! Culti- vate friendliness, therefore ; seek for good-fellowship. If it is a native endowment, give thanks and go forward. If it is not, pray and labor till the new birth 172 The Making op Men into good-fellowship comes, as come it will, because without it your life will be an iceberg in its stateliness, chilling all around you, rather than the leaping, laugh- ing, rollicksome fountain, giving life and joy and glad- ness to every one who shall be so fortunate as to come under your influence. Finally, these men had deep and vital interest in the spiritual life. Nothing so makes little men big ones, nothing so transforms pigmies into giants, as relating ......... „. .„.„.„. them to the Kingdom of God. I * Peter would have ever remained a I the whol-e f vulgar, swearing fisherman and 1 CR «r^™T T ITH 1 Matthew a cringing tax-collector ? power. T and Paul a bigoted Pharisee but | | for the quickening touch of Jesus a.^^.»-^^.^.......,..,..,...^a Christ. When He had come into their lives, Peter was able to preach his pentecostal sermon and Matthew to write his matchless biography and Paul to plant the Church of God firmly in the great centers of the world's population and to defend the gospel against the intellectual and religious leaders of his day. Wonderful transformations! And yet these transformations are being wrought every day in every land. Now as always God exalts those who humbly seek Him and blesses them with every good thing, bring- ing them to honor and greatness among their fellows. Great is our God and greatly to be praised: His ways are past finding out. But there can be no doubt that He makes those great who trust Him most and do His will most faithfully. God cannot permit those who oppose Him to achieve lasting greatness. They are remembered only to be execrated. Of the 15,142 great Americans spoken of above, those who were not devout Achieving Manhood's Goal 173 Christians can be counted almost on the fingers of the hand. Even those few are destined to decrease as men have time to arrive at a clear estimate and correct valuation of their lives. Consider the men of paramount influence in American life and thought to-day. How many of them are open opponents of the Church ? Only one, and even he is relenting, having recently declared that world-peace, the dream of his life, can be accom- plished only through the power of the Christian Church. Splendid thought! God cannot be God and permit infidels and skeptics and atheists and agnostics to come to permanent greatness. The things of the Kingdom are the vital things in life. Those Who advance them are mankind's benefactors. Those who retard them are their enemies. But aside from any consideration as to greatness and its dependence upon man's spiritual relationships, the Christian life is a thing of such beauty, such charm, such sweetness that no man can afford to be without it. He cannot be a complete man and leave his spiritual nature undeveloped and unculti- vated, and therefore he cannot be a complete man without being a Christian. "And what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his own soul ?" "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness," for "then thou shalt have good success." Some Books Published By THE CHRISTIAN PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION Fifth and Ludlow Streets Dayton, Ohio FORTY YEARS ON THE FIRING LINE Or Scenes, Incidents, and Experiences Along the Way of a Soldier of the Cross By J. Pressley Barrett, D. D. Contains 352 pages; numerous half-tone illustra- tions; is bound in green cloth. Price, postpaid, $1.00 per copy. THE CHRISTIANS AND THE GREAT COMMISSION By Josiah G. Bishop, D. D. A brief history of the Home and Foreign Mission- ary work of the Christian Church, with biographical sketches of Foreign Missionaries. Illustrated. 303 pages. Cloth binding. Price, postpaid, $1.00 per copy. A HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN DENOMINA- TION IN AMERICA By Milo True Morrill, M. A., D. D. A history of the movement inaugurating and per- petuating the Christian denomination in America, tracing its development from the year 1794 down to 1911. A book for everybody who wants to know about the Christians. Contains 408 pages, 6 half- tones in color, hundreds of foot-notes, Bibliography, etc. Cloth binding. Price, postpaid, $1.70. CHILDREN'S MISSIONARY STORIES By Alice Moreton Burnett A compilation of thirty interesting, instructive stories pertaining especially and directly to missions that are sure to be appreciated by workers, teachers, leaders, pastors, fathers, mothers — and the children. Some of the Important Events of both Home Mis- sions and Foreign Missions are also included, togeth- er with Suggestions for Junior Leaders. 128 pages. A handsome, attractive volume. Price, red cloth binding, 35c; red paper binding, 25c, postpaid. CAMPBELLISM IS REBELLION By J. J. Summerbell, D. D. An interesting book, containing scriptural quotations bearing on the theories and teachings of Alexander Campbell, and proof texts critically ex- amined both in English and Greek. 272 pages. Price, postpaid, $1.35 per copy. WRITINGS AND ADDRESSES OF AUSTIN CRAIG Edited by Martyn Summerbell, D. D., LL. D. A superb collection of good things from the pen of that very able minister, educator, and leader in the Christian Church. Two volumes. Vol. 1 contains 433 pages, 8 illustrations, 24 chapters. Price, $1.50, postpaid. Vol. 2 contains 414 pages, 30 chapters. Price, $1.50, postpaid. If both volumes are ordered at one time, will send them prepaid for $2.75. THE KINGDOM OF GOD By Thos. Holmes, D. D., LL. D. A study provoker — the product of new thought from a new view-point. After stating his theory, the author proceeds to show that the whole history of the human race illustrates and proves it correct. 314 pages. Price, postpaid, $1.25 per copy. Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: Dec. 2004 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEAOER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 111 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724) 779-21 1 1