In His Image by William Jennings Bryan (page 3)

In Matthew 6, we find this soothing rebuke:

Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

Reasoning unanswerable. He argues from the less to the greater and with incomparable beauty woos man away from the distracting thoughts that dissipate his strength without yielding him any advantage. The Creator who cares for the birds will not forget man made in His image; He who clothes the fields in the beauty of the flower and gives to the trembling blade of grass the nourishment that it needs for its fleeting day, will not desert man, His supreme handiwork.

“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” is a rebuke aimed at those who borrow trouble. Let not the past distress you–it has gone beyond recall; let not the morrow intrude upon you–it will bring its cargo of cares when it comes. Man lives in the present and can claim only the moment as it passes, but Christ teaches him how to so use each hour as to make the days that are gone an echoing delight and the days that are yet to come a radiant hope.

Christ has been called a sentimentalist. Let it be admitted; it is no reproach. He is the inexhaustible source of sentiment, and sentiment rules the world. “The dreamer lives forever; the toiler dies in a day.”

A striking illustration of the emphasis that Christ placed upon sentiment is found in Matthew 26:7-13:

There came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of very precious ointment, and poured it on his head, as he sat at meat. But when his disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying, To what purpose is this waste? For this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor. When Jesus understood it, he said unto them, Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me. For ye have the poor always with you, but me ye have not always. For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for my burial. Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her.

Eight verses devoted to an alabaster box of ointment! This is more space than was given to many incidents seemingly more important, and at the very crisis of His career, too. But who will estimate the value of this narrative?

Judas complained that it was an inexcusable waste of money–Judas, the thief, as Mark calls him, pretended concern about the poor. The poor have received immeasurably more from the use made of this ointment than they would have received had it been sold and the proceeds distributed then. It was an expression of love, and love is the treasury box from which the poor can always draw. That box of ointment has spread its fragrance over nineteen hundred years. Give a man bread and he hungers again; give him clothing and his clothing will wear out; but give him an ideal–something to look up to through life–and it will be with him through every waking hour lifting him to a higher plane and filling his life with the beauty and the bounty of service. The money spent for a loaf of bread may stay the pangs of hunger for a few brief hours, but the same amount invested in the “bread of life” will give one an inexhaustible feast. A drink of water refreshes for the moment; the same amount invested in the “water of life” may make of one a spring overflowing with blessings.

A Bible costs a few cents and yet upon it may be built a life that is worth millions to the human race. It was a Bible that made William Ewart Gladstone for a generation the world’s greatest Christian statesman; it was a Bible that made Jose Rodrigues for a quarter of a century the greatest moral force in Brazil. The Bible has given us great leaders in the United States. It is the Bible that has sent missionaries throughout the world to plant in little communities everywhere the teachings of the greatest of sentimentalists–and, at the same time, the most practical of philosophers. Christ has taught us the true value of those things which touch the heart and, through the heart, move the world.

“Suffer little children to come unto me;” Christ used the child to admonish those older grown. The Church is following in His footsteps when it makes the child the subject of constant thought and solicitude. It is when we deal with the child that we get the clearest conception of the superiority of faith over reason. The foundations of character are laid in faith and not in reason; they are laid before the reason can be accepted as a guide. No one who exalts reason above faith can lead a child to God, but a child can understand the love of the Saviour and the tender care of the Heavenly Father. For this reason the Sunday school increases in importance. Its lessons build character; its songs echo throughout our lives.

The law arbitrarily fixes the age of twenty-one as the age of legal maturity. No matter how precocious a young man be, the presumption of law is against his intelligence until he is twenty-one. He cannot vote; he cannot make a valid deed to a piece of land. Why? His reason is not mature, and yet the moral principles that control his life are implanted before he reaches that age. His ideals come into his life long before the reason can be regarded as a safe guide. Before the reason is mature he believes in God or has rejected God. If he lives in a Christian community he has accepted the Bible as the Word of God or rejected it as the work of man; if he is acquainted with Christ he has accepted or rejected Him. A child’s heart cannot remain a vacuum. It is filled with reverence or irreverence. Those who think that the mind can remain unbiassed until one becomes of age and then be able to render impartial decisions, know little of human experience. Love comes first, reason afterward; the child obeys and later learns why it should obey. Morality rests upon religion and religion, taking hold upon the heart, exercises a control far greater than any logic can exercise over the mind.

Look back over your lives and see how much of real moral principle you have added since you became of age. You can better explain your faith; your will is more firm, your determination more deeply rooted, but what new seed of morality has been sown since you reached the age when the reason is presumed to be mature?

While Christianity builds upon the affirmations of the New Testament and the positive virtues taught by the Saviour it is loyal, as Christ was, to the Commandments which God gave to the people through Moses. Most of these commandments–those relative to man’s duty to man–are written unto the statutes of state and nation; they form the basis of our laws. Those which relate to man’s duty to God and which are not, therefore, legally binding are binding on the conscience of Christians.

The Christian Church from its earliest beginnings has enforced respect for parents. Parental authority is not only essential to the child’s welfare during youth but it is necessary as a foundation upon which to build respect for government and for laws. The Christian home is the nursery of the State as well as of the Church. Loyalty to God and loyalty to government are easily learned by those who from infancy are taught obedience to those who have the right to instruct and direct.

The Christian Church stands also for Sabbath observance. The right to worship God according to the dictates of one’s conscience is an inalienable right and any attempt to interfere with the full and free exercise of this right would and should arouse universal protest. Those who do not worship at all have no fear of molestation, but freedom of conscience is not interfered with by laws that provide opportunity for rest and guarantee leisure for worship.

Man’s body needs relaxation from toil and man’s mind needs leisure as well. These needs are so obvious that they are universally admitted. The spiritual nature requires refreshment also and this need is as imperative as the needs of body and brain. As the spiritual man is the dominant force in life and the measure of the individual’s usefulness, the nation cannot be less concerned about the people’s spiritual growth and welfare than about their health and intellectual strength.

It is both natural and proper that the day which is observed religiously by the general public should be selected as the day of rest also, respect being shown to those who conscientiously observe another day. Differences of opinion may exist in different localities as to what should be permitted on the Sabbath day, but experience has supported two propositions: first, that every citizen should be guaranteed _time_ for rest and for worship, and, second, that every citizen should be guaranteed the _peace_ and _quiet_ necessary for both rest and worship.

Here, as in nearly every other issue that concerns human welfare, the controversy is not between those who differ in opinions as to what is right and proper but between those, on the one side, who have a pecuniary interest in the promotion of things which are objectionable, and those, on the other, who seek to promote the common good. In other words, it is the old conflict between money and morals: between selfishness and the public weal.

While Christ was all love and all compassion and all tenderness He never hesitated to draw the line and draw it rigidly against folly as well as against sin. The parable of the Ten Virgins is a case in point. Five were wise and five were foolish, the evidence of the difference being found in the fact that five were prudent enough to supply themselves with oil sufficient for an emergency. The other five, lacking wisdom, took only the oil that they could carry in their lamps. When the need came the foolish turned to the wise and said, “Give us of your oil,” but the wise refused lest they should not have enough for themselves and the others. Were they censured? No. The parable teaches one of the most important lessons to be learned in life, namely, that the foolish cannot be saved from punishment. It is punishment that converts folly into wisdom and saves the world from a race of fools.

The parable has wide-spread application. The foolish parent cannot be saved from the sorrow inflicted by a spoiled child; the idle cannot be saved from hunger and want; the lazy cannot be given the rewards of the diligent. The success that attends effort and rewards character cannot be awarded to the undeserving without paralyzing all the incentives to virtue and industry. Christ came not to destroy the law–either that revealed in the Word of God or that which was written on nature–He came to fulfill. In the brief years that He taught His disciples and the multitude He quoted the law and illustrated it. He did not come to relieve men of responsibility–He came to light the way–“That they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly.”

Christ’s doctrines are not limited in time or to numbers. They apply to everybody and last for all time. Paul, in Romans 12: 20, interprets the Master’s teachings and applies them. “Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.” How different this way of dealing from the way the carnal man acts, and yet who can question the wisdom of the Saviour’s plan? Hatred begets hatred; retaliation invites retaliation and the feud grows. The mountains of Kentucky have furnished numerous illustrations of the futility of revenge. Families were arrayed against families and sons took up inherited hatreds and died violent deaths bequeathing the spirit of revenge to their descendants.

We see the same false philosophy at work among nations. One war lays the foundation for another; generation after generation is sworn to avenge the crimes of preceding generations; and much of it is done in the name of patriotism and glorified as if it were service to the country.

Paul gives us the remedy and it is based upon the injunction that Jesus gave, namely, Love your enemies. Feeding an enemy is more effective than threats of punishment. It is a manifestation of love, and love is the weapon for which there is no shield. The philosophy that Paul applies to the individual is just as effective when applied to larger groups. Nations that have been at war cannot be reconciled by the methods of war. They can be suppressed by force but unless won by friendship there can be no reunion.

Paul concludes this chapter with a command “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” There never was a time in the world’s history when this kind of doctrine was more imperatively needed for the healing of the wounds of the unprecedented conflict through which the world has passed. Christ has a remedy: Let the wrongs of the past be forgiven and forgotten; let the world be invited to build on friendship and cooperation. Let the rivalry be in the showing of magnanimity. Who dares to say that the plan will fail? The alternative policy has failed and failed miserably. Why not employ the only untried remedy for the ills which afflict civilization?

And the gifts of the Man of Galilee are permanent; they survive the tomb. As one nears the end of life he becomes conscious of an inner longing to attach himself to institutions that will outlive him. His affections having gone out to his fellows, and his heart having entwined itself with the causes that embrace all humankind, he does not like to drop out and be forgotten. His sympathies expand and sympathy is the real blood of the heart, forced by the pulsations of that major organ through all the arteries of society. Have you thought how few of each generation are remembered after death by any one outside of a small circle of friends? We have an hundred millions of people living in the largest republic in history–one of the greatest nations the world has ever known–and yet how many names will survive for a century after those who bore the names are buried? The vanity of man is rebuked by a visit to any old, neglected cemetery. As Bryant puts it

“The world will laugh when thou art gone And solemn brood of care plod on
And each one as before will chase his favourite phantom.”

It is partly to escape this dread oblivion that men and women, blessed with means, endow hospitals and colleges and charitable institutions. They yearn for an immortality on earth as well as in the world beyond, and nothing but the spiritual has promise of the life everlasting.

If we examine our expense accounts we will be ashamed to note how large a proportion of our money we spend on the _body_. We buy it the food that it most enjoys, and the raiment that most adorns it; we give it habitations of comfort and beauty, and yet the body is responsible for most of our easily besetting sins and its aches and pains fill life with much of its misery. We spend the first twenty years of life in an effort to develop the body, the second twenty years of life in an effort to keep it in a state of health and twenty more trying to preserve it from decline, and then the threescore years have passed. And, no matter how successful we may be in lifting the body toward physical perfection, we have no assurance that any physical perfection can be made use of in the world above. I believe in the resurrection of but I have not spent much time during the later years in worrying about what particular body I shall have over there. According to the scientists the body changes every seven years. If that be true, I have done little more than exchange an old body for a new one during the more than sixty years that I have lived. I had a baby body and a boy’s body, then the body of a young man, and so on until I am now well along with my ninth body. I do not know which one of these will be best for me in the next world, but I know that the God who made this world and gave me an existence in it will give me, in the land beyond, the body that will best serve me there.

Neither have we any assurance that the perfections of the mind survive the day of death. We spend a great deal of time on the mind, for this is an age of intellectual enthusiasm. My experience has not been different from the experience of others. My mother taught me at home until I was ten; then my parents sent me to the public school until I was fifteen; then I spent two years in an academy preparing for college; then four years in college and then two years in a law school. After nearly twenty years of schooling I took part in my last “Commencement,” and then I began to learn, and have been learning ever since. I have accumulated something of history, something of science, a bit of poetry and philosophy, and I have read speeches without number. I have accumulated a large amount of information on politics and politicians that I know I shall not need in Heaven, if Heaven is half as good a place as I expect it to be. How much of the intellectual wealth that we have so laboriously acquired can we carry with us? We do not know.

But we know that that which is spiritual does not die–that the heart virtues will accompany us when we enter the future life. In the parable of the Tares, Christ explains that, just as the tares and the wheat grow together until the harvest, so the righteous and the unrighteous live together in this world, but that on the day of judgment they shall be separated. Then shall the righteous “shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” We have no promise that the body will shine even as a star, or that the mind will shine even as one of the planets, but the sun in its splendour is used to illustrate the brightness with which those will shine who are counted righteous in that day.

I esteem it a privilege to be permitted to present the claims of the Larger Life to which Jesus, the Christ, calls all of the children of men. Why will one choose a life that is small and contracted, when there is within his reach the life that is full and complete–the Larger Life? Why will he be content with the pleasures of the body and the joys of the mind when he can have added to them the delights of the spirit? How can he delay acceptance of Christ’s offer to ennoble that which he has, and to add to it the things that are highest and best and most enduring? This is the life that Christ brought to light when He came that men might have _life_ and have it more _abundantly_.

VI

THE VALUE OF THE SOUL

The fact that Christ dealt with this subject is proof conclusive that it is important, for He never dealt with trivial things. When Christ focused attention upon a theme it was because it was worthy of consideration–and Christ weighed the soul. He presented the subject, too, with surpassing force; no one will ever add to what He said. Christ used the question to give emphasis to the thought which He presented in regard to the soul’s value.

On one side He put the world and all that the world can contain–all the wealth that one can accumulate, all the fame to which one can aspire, and all the happiness that one can covet; and on the other side He put the soul, and asked the question that has come ringing down the centuries: “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”

There is no compromise here–no partial statement of the matter. He leaves us to write one term of the equation ourselves. He gives us all the time we desire, and allows the imagination to work to the limit, and when we have gathered together into one sum all things but the soul, He asks–What if you gain it all–ALL–ALL, and lose the soul? What is the profit?

Some have thought the soul question a question of the next world only, but it is a question of this world also; some have thought the soul question a Sabbath-day question only, but it is a week-day question as well; some have thought the soul question a question for the ministers alone, but it is a question which we all must meet. Every day and every week, every month and every year, from the time we reach the period of accountability until we die, we–each of us–all of us, weigh the soul; and just in proportion as we put the soul above all things else we build character; the moment we allow the soul to become a matter of merchandise, we start on the downward way.

Tolstoy says that if you would investigate the career of a criminal it is not sufficient to begin with the commission of a crime; that you must go back to that day in his life when he deliberately trampled upon his conscience and did that which he knew to be wrong. And so with all of us, the turning point in the life is the day when we surrender the soul for something that for the time being seems more desirable.

Most of the temptations that come to us to sell the soul come in connection with the getting of money. The Bible says, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” Or, as the Revised Version gives it, “A root of all kinds of evil.”

Because so many of our temptations come through the love of money and the effort to obtain it, it is worth while to consider the laws of accumulation. We must all have money; we need food and clothing and shelter, and money is necessary for the purchase of these things. Money is not an evil in itself–money is, in fact, a very useful servant. It is bad only when it becomes the master, and the love of it is hurtful only because it can, and often does, crowd out the love of nobler things.

But since we must all use money and must in our active days store up money for the days when our strength fails, let us see if we can agree upon God’s law of rewards. (See lecture on “His Government and Peace.”)

How much money can a man rightfully collect from society? Surely, there can be no disagreement here. He cannot rightfully collect more than he honestly earns. If a man collects more than he earns, he collects what somebody else has earned, and we call it stealing if a man takes that which belongs to another. Not only is a man limited in his collection of what he honestly earns, but will an honest man _desire_ to collect more than he earns?

If a man cannot rightfully collect more than he honestly earns, it is then a matter of the utmost importance to know how much money a man can honestly earn. I venture an answer to this, namely, that a man cannot honestly earn more than fairly measures the value of the service which he renders to society. I cannot conceive of any way of earning money except to give to society a service equivalent in value to the money collected. This is a fundamental proposition and it is important that it should be clearly understood, for if one desires to collect largely from society he must be prepared to render a large service to society; and our schools and colleges, our churches and all other organizations for the improvement of man have for one of their chief objects the enlargement of the capacity for service.

There is an apparent exception in the case of an inheritance, but it is not a real exception, for if the man who leaves the money has honestly earned it, he has already given society a service of equivalent value and, therefore, has a right to distribute it. And money received by inheritance is either payment for service already rendered, or payment in advance for service to be rendered. No right-minded person will accept money, even by inheritance, without recognizing the obligation it imposes to render a service in return. This service is not always rendered to the one from whom this money is received, but often to society in general. In fact, most of the blessings which we receive come to us in such a way that we cannot distinguish the donors and must make our return to the whole public. If one is not compelled to work for himself he has the larger pleasure of working for the public.

But I need not dwell upon this, because in this country more than anywhere else in the world we appreciate the dignity of labour and understand that it is honourable to serve. And yet there is room for improvement, for all over our land there are, scattered here and there, young men and young women–and even parents–who still think that it is more respectable for a young man to spend in idleness the money some one else has earned than to be himself a producer of wealth. As long as this sentiment is to be found anywhere there is educational work to be done, for public opinion will never be what it ought to be until it puts the badge of disgrace upon the idler, no matter how rich he may be, rather than upon the man who with brain or muscle contributes to the Nation’s wealth, the Nation’s strength and the Nation’s progress.

But, as I said, the inheritance is an apparent, not an actual, exception, and we will return to the original proposition–that one’s earnings must be measured by the service rendered. This is so vital a proposition that I beg leave to dwell upon it a moment longer, to ask whether it is possible to fix in dollars and cents a maximum limit to the amount one can earn in a lifetime.

Let us begin with one hundred thousand dollars. If we estimate a working life at thirty-three and one-third years–and I think this is a fair estimate–a man must earn _three_ thousand dollars per year on an average for thirty-three and one-third years to earn one hundred thousand dollars in a lifetime. I take it for granted that no one will deny that it is possible for one to earn this sum by rendering a service equal to it in value, but what shall we say of a million dollars? Can a man earn that much? To do so he must earn _thirty_ thousand dollars a year for thirty-three and one-third years. Is it possible for one to render so large a service? I believe it is. Well, what shall we say of ten millions? To earn that much one must earn on an average _three hundred_ thousand dollars a year for thirty-three and one-third years. Is it possible for one to render a service so large as to earn so vast a sum? At the risk of shocking some of my radical friends I am going to affirm that it is possible.

But can one earn an _hundred million_? Yes, I believe that it is even possible to serve society to such an extent as to earn a hundred million in the span of a human life, or an average of _three million_ a year for thirty-three and one-third years. We have one man in this country who is said to be worth five hundred million. To earn five hundred million one must earn on an average _fifteen_ million a year for thirty-three and one-third years. Is this within the range of human possibility? I believe that it is. Now, I have gone as high as any one has yet gone in collecting, but if there is any young man here with an ambition to render a larger service to the world, I will raise it another notch, if necessary, to encourage him. So almost limitless are the possibilities of service in this age that I am not willing to fix a maximum to the sum a man can honestly and legitimately earn.

Not only do I believe that one _can_ earn five hundred million, but I believe that men _have_ earned it.

In this and other countries many in public life might be mentioned, for even in politics men have great opportunities, which, if rightly improved, enable them to render incalculable service to their fellowmen.

But let us go outside of politics. What shall we say of the man who gave to the world a knowledge of the use of steam and revolutionized the transportation of the globe? How much did he earn? And the man who brought down lightning from the clouds and imprisoned it in a slender wire so that it lights our homes, draws our traffic across the land and carries our messages under the sea; what did he earn? And what of the man who showed us how to hurl our messages thousands of miles through space without the aid of wire? And how much did the man earn who taught us how to wrap the human voice around a little cylinder so that it can be laid away and echo throughout the ages?

Take a very recent invention, the gasolene engine. It has already given us the automobile and the flying machine, and heaven only knows what yet may come with that gasolene engine. My first ride in an automobile was taken in the campaign of 1896; since then something like seventeen million automobiles have been brought into use.

Have you thought of the value of the ice machine? In Apalachicola, Florida, they have erected a little monument to a former citizen, Dr. John Gorry. A statue of him will be found in the capitol at Tallahassee, and the state of Florida has put another in the Hall of Fame at Washington. Out of his brain came the idea that made it possible for the world to have ice to-day without regard to the temperature outside. What did Gorry earn when he gave the world the ice machine?

When I first visited the Patent Office at Washington I saw a model of the first sewing machine. On it was a card on which was written:

“Mine are sinews superhuman,
Ribs of brass and nerves of steel; I’m the iron needle woman,
Born to toil but not to feel.”

What did the man earn who gave the world a sewing machine?

These are only a few of the great inventions. Let us take up another group. To show how wide is the field of measureless endeavour, I call attention to the work of scientists. Who will measure the value of anesthetics in the treatment of disease and injury? What of vaccination and the labours of Pasteur? Who will estimate the value of the service rendered by the man who gave us a remedy for typhoid? In 1898 hundreds died of typhoid fever in the little army that was raised for the war with Spain–twenty-seven of my regiment died of that disease. Now we have a remedy so complete that of the nearly a million men who reached the battle-line in France not one died of typhoid, and only one hundred and twenty-five of the four millions called to the colours.

Have you tried to estimate the service rendered by Reed, who, in finding a remedy for yellow fever, made the tropics habitable and made it possible for the United States to add the Panama Canal to our great achievements?

But the field is larger still. Raikes established a Sunday school and now we have Sunday schools all over the world; Williams organized a Young Men’s Christian Association and now there are nine thousand associations and more than a million and a half members march under the banners of that organization, half of them in the United States. Forty years ago a young preacher in Portland, Maine, gathered a few young people about him and formed a Christian Endeavour Society; now it numbers more than four million members. That young preacher, Dr. Francis E. Clark, is now one of the great religious leaders of the world and is Commander-in-Chief of this militant organization which is larger than the army that did our part in the World War. What has he earned?

Near Rochester, New York, there is a little town that has the proud distinction of being the birthplace of Frances Willard. There was nothing to distinguish her from other little girls when she was in school, but when she reached womanhood she gave her heart to a great cause; she became president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, probably the greatest of the organizations among women ever formed. Under her leadership that organization brought into the schools of the land instruction as to the effect of alcohol upon the system and that did more than any other one thing, I think, to bring National Prohibition. The state of Illinois has placed the statue of this great woman in the Hall of Fame in the National Capitol; she is the first woman to be thus honoured. What has she earned?

And so I might continue, for the name of the world’s great benefactors is legion. And besides those whose services were of incalculable value a multitude have earned lesser sums ranging down to a modest fortune. Every one can earn enough to supply all needs. Every time I speak to the students of a college, high school, or primary grade I cannot help thinking that within the room there may be a boy or girl who will catch a vision of great achievement and, consecrating a life of service, do a work so valuable that all the arithmetics will not compute its worth.

But if I could furnish you a list containing the names of all who since time began rendered a service worth five hundred millions, one thing would be true of every one of them; namely, that never in a single case did the person collect the full amount earned. Those who have earned five hundred millions have been so busy earning it that they have not had time to collect it, and those who have collected five hundred millions have been so busy collecting it that they have not had time to earn it. Then, too, it must be remembered that those who render the greatest service serve more than their own generation–some serve all who live afterward so that it is never possible to compute what they have earned.

And what is more, those who render the largest service do not care to collect the full amount earned. What could they do with the sum that they actually earn? Or, what is more important, what would so great a sum _do with them_?

In that wonderful parable of the Sower, Christ speaks of the seeds that fell and of the thorns that sprang up and choked them, and He Himself explained what He meant by this illustration, namely: That the care of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the truth. If the great benefactors of the race had been burdened with the care of big fortunes, they could not have devoted themselves to the nobler things that gave them a place in the affection of their people and in history.

It seems, therefore, that while one cannot rightfully collect more than he honestly earns, he may earn more than it would be wise for him to collect. And that brings us to the next question: How much should one desire to collect from society? I answer, that no matter how large a service one may render or how much he may earn, he should not desire to collect more than he can wisely spend.

And how much can one wisely spend? Not as much as you might think–not nearly as much as some have tried to spend. No matter how honestly money may be acquired, one is not free to spend it at will. We are hedged about by certain restrictions that we can neither remove nor ignore. God has written certain laws in our nature–laws that no legislature can repeal–laws that no court can declare unconstitutional, and these laws limit us in our expenditures.

Let us consider some of the things for which we can properly spend money. We need food–we all need food, and we need about the same amount; not exactly, but the difference in quantity is not great. The range in expenditure is greater than the range in quantity, because expenditure covers kind and quality as well as quantity. But there is a limit even to expenditure. If a man eats too much he suffers for it. If he squanders his money on high-priced foods, he wears his stomach out. There is an old saying which we have all heard, viz., “The poor man is looking for food for his stomach, while the rich man is going from one watering place to another looking for a stomach for his food.” This is only a witty way of expressing a sober truth, namely, that one is limited in the amount of money he can wisely spend for food.

We need clothing–we all need clothing, and we need about the same amount. The difference in quantity is not great. The range in expenditure for clothing is greater than the range in quantity, because expenditure covers style and variety as well as quantity, but there is a limit to the amount of money one can wisely spend for clothing. If a man has so much clothing that it takes all of his time to change his clothes, he has more than he needs and more than he can wisely buy.

We need homes–we all need shelter and we need about the same amount. In fact, God was very democratic in the distribution of our needs, for He so created us that our needs are about the same. The range of expenditure for homes is probably wider than in the case of either food or clothing. We are interested in the home. I never pass a little house where two young people are starting out in life without a feeling of sympathetic interest in that home; I never pass a house where a room is being added without feeling interested, for I know the occupants have planned it, and looked forward to it and waited for it; I like to see a little house moved back and a larger house built, for I know it is the fulfillment of a dream. I have had some of these dreams myself, and I know how they lead us on and inspire us to larger effort and greater endeavour, and yet there is a limit to the amount one can wisely spend even for so good a thing as a home.

If a man gets too big a house it becomes a burden to him, and many have had this experience. Not infrequently a young couple start out poor and struggle along in a little house, looking forward to the time when they can build a big house. After a while the time arrives and they build a big house, larger, possibly, than they intended to, and it nearly always costs more than they thought it would, and then they struggle along the rest of their lives looking back to the time when they lived in a little house.

We speak of people being _independently rich_. That is a mistake; they are _dependency rich_. The richer a man is the more dependent he is–the more people he depends upon to help him collect his income, and the more people he depends upon to help him spend his income. Sometimes a couple will start out doing their own work–the wife doing the work inside the house and the man outside. But they prosper, and after a while they are able to afford help; they get a girl to help the wife inside and a man to help the husband outside; then they prosper more–and they get two girls to help inside and two men to help outside, then three girls inside and three men outside. Finally they have so many girls helping inside and so many men helping outside that they cannot leave the house–they have to stay at home and look after the establishment.

This is not a new condition. One of the Latin poets complained of “the cares that hover about the fretted ceilings of the rich!” It was this condition that inspired Charles Wagner to write his little book entitled “The Simple Life,” in which he entered an eloquent protest against the materialism which makes man the slave of his possessions; he presented an earnest plea for the raising of the spiritual above the purely physical. I repeat, that there is a limit to the amount a man can wisely spend upon a home.

I need not remind you that the rich are tempted to spend money on the vices that destroy–money honestly earned may thus become a curse rather than a blessing.

But a man can give his money away. Yes, and no one who has ever tried it will deny that more pleasure is to be derived from the giving of money to a cause in which one’s heart is interested, than can be obtained from the expenditure of the same amount in selfish indulgence. But if one is going to give largely he must spend a great deal of time in investigating and in comparing the merits of the different enterprises. I am persuaded that there is a better life than the life led by those who spend nearly all the time accumulating beyond their needs and then employ the last few days in giving it away. What the world needs is not a few men of great wealth, doling out their money in anticipation of death–what the world needs is that these men link _themselves_ in sympathetic interest with struggling humanity and help to solve problems of to-day, instead of creating problems for the next generation to solve.

But you say, a man can leave his money to his children? He can, if he dares. A large fortune, in anticipation, has ruined more sons than it has ever helped. If a young man has so much money coming to him that he knows he will never have to work, the chances are that it will sap his energy, even if it does not undermine his character, and leave him a curse rather than a blessing to those who brought him into the world.

And it is scarcely safer to leave the money to a daughter. For, if a young woman has a prospective inheritance so large that, when a young man calls upon her, she cannot tell whether he is calling upon her or her father, it is embarrassing–especially so if she finds after marriage that he married the wrong member of the family. And, I may add, that the daughters of the very rich are usually hedged about by a social environment which prevents their making the acquaintance of the best young men. The men who, twenty-five years from now, will be the leaders in business, in society, in government, and in the Church, are not the pampered sons of the rich, but the young men who, with good health and good habits, with high ideals and strong ambition, are, under the spur of necessity, laying the foundation for future achievements, and these young men do not have a chance to become acquainted with the daughters of the very rich. Even if they did know them they might hesitate to enter upon the scale of expenditure to which these daughters are accustomed.

I have dealt at length with these fixed limitations, although we all know of them or ought to. The ministers tell us about these things Sunday after Sunday, or should, and yet we find men chasing the almighty dollar until they fall exhausted into the grave. Dr. Talmage dealt with this subject; he said that a man who wore himself out getting money that he did not need, would finally drop dead, and that his pastor would tell a group of sorrowing friends that, by a mysterious dispensation of Providence, the good man had been cut off in his prime. Dr. Talmage said that Providence had nothing to do with it, and that the minister ought to tell the truth about it, and say that the man had been kicked to death by the golden calf.

Some years ago I read a story by Tolstoy, and I did not notice until I had completed it that the title of the story was, “What shall it profit?” The great Russian graphically presented the very thought that I have been trying to impress upon your minds. He told of a Russian who had land hunger–who added farm to farm and land to land, but could never get enough. After a while he heard of a place where land was cheaper and he sold his land and went and bought more land. But he had no more than settled there until he heard of another place among a half-civilized people where land was cheaper still. He took a servant and went into this distant country and hunted up the head man of the tribe, who offered him all the land he could walk around in a day for a thousand rubles–told him he could put the money down on any spot and walk in any direction as far and as fast as he would, and that, if he was back by sunset, he could have all the land he had encompassed during the day. He put the money down upon the ground and started at sunrise to get, at last, enough land. He started leisurely, but as he looked upon the land it looked so good that he hurried a little–and then he hurried more, and then he went faster still. Before he turned he had gone further in that direction than he had intended, but he spurred himself on and started on the second side. Before he turned again the sun had crossed the meridian and he had two sides yet to cover. As the sun was slowly sinking in the west he constantly accelerated his pace, alarmed at last for fear he had undertaken too much and might lose it all. He reached the starting point, however, just as the sun went down, but he had overtaxed his strength and fell dead upon the spot. His servant dug a grave for him; he only needed six-feet of ground then, the same that others needed–the rest of the land was of no use to him. Thus Tolstoy told the story of many a life–not the life of the very rich only, but the story of every life in which the love of money is the controlling force and in which the desire for gain shrivels the soul and leaves the life a failure at last.

I desire to show you how practical this subject is. If time permitted I could take up every occupation, every avocation, every profession and every calling, and show you that no matter which way we turn–no matter what we do–we are always and everywhere weighing the Soul.

In the brief time that it is proper for me to occupy, I shall apply the thought to those departments of human activity in which the sale of a soul affects others largely as well as the individual who makes the bargain.

Take the occupation in which I am engaged, journalism. It presents a great field–a growing field; in fact, there are few fields so large. The journalist is both a news gatherer and a moulder of thought. He informs his readers as to what is going on, and he points out the relation between cause and effect–interprets current history. Public opinion is the controlling force in a republic, and the newspaper gives to the journalist, beyond every one else, the opportunity to affect public opinion. Others reach the readers through the courtesy of the newspaper, but the owner of the paper has full access to his own columns, and does not fear the blue pencil.

The journalist occupies the position of a watchman upon a tower. He is often able to see dangers which are not observed by the general public, and, because he can see these dangers, he is in a position of greater responsibility. Is he discharging the duty which superior opportunity imposes upon him? Year by year the disclosures are bringing to light the fact that the predatory interests are using many newspapers and even some magazines for the defense of commercial iniquity and for the purpose of attacking those who lift their voices against favouritism and privilege. A financial magnate interested in the exploitation of the public secures control of a paper; he employs business managers, editors, and a reportorial staff. He does not act openly or in the daylight but through a group of employees who are the visible but not the real directors. The reporters are instructed to bring in the kind of news that will advance the enterprises owned by the man who stands back of the paper, and if the news brought in is not entirely satisfactory, it is doctored in the office. The columns of the paper are filled with matter, written not for the purpose of presenting facts as they exist, but for the purpose of distorting facts and misleading the public. The editorial writers, whose names are generally unknown to the public, are told what to say and what subjects to avoid. They are instructed to extol the merits of those who are subservient to the interests represented by the paper, and to misrepresent and traduce those who dare to criticize or oppose the plans of those who hide behind the paper. Such journalists are members of a kind of “Black Hand Society”; they are assassins, hiding in ambush and striking in the dark; and the worst of it is that the readers have no sure way of knowing when a real change takes place in the ownership of such a paper notwithstanding the fact that a recent law requires publication of ownership.

There are degrees of culpability and some are disposed to hold an editorial writer guiltless even when they visit condemnation upon the secret director of the paper’s policy. I present to you a different–and I believe higher–ideal of journalism. If we are going to make any progress in morals we must abandon the idea that morals are defined by the statutes; we must recognize that there is a wide margin between that which the law prohibits and that which an enlightened conscience can approve. We do not legislate against the man who uses the printed page for the purpose of deception but, viewed from the standpoint of morals, the man who, whether voluntarily or under instructions, writes what he knows to be untrue or purposely misleads his readers as to the character of a proposition upon which they have to act, is as guilty of wrong-doing as the man who assists in any other swindling transaction.

Another method employed to mislead the public is the publication of editorial matter supplied by those who have an interest to serve. This evil is even more common than secrecy as to the ownership of the paper. In the case of the weekly papers and the smaller dailies, the proprietor is generally known, and it is understood that the editorial pages represent his views. His standing and character give weight to that which appears with his endorsement. A few years ago, when a railroad rate bill was before Congress, a number of railroads joined in an effort to create public sentiment against the bill. Bureaus were established for the dissemination of literature, and a number of newspapers entered into contract to publish as editorial matter the material furnished by these bureaus. This cannot be defended in ethics. The secret purchase of the editorial columns is a crime against the public and a disgrace to journalism, and yet we have frequent occasion to note this degradation of the newspaper. A few years ago Senator Carter, of Montana, speaking in the United States Senate, read several printed slips which were sent out by a bankers’ association to local bankers with the request that they be inserted in the local papers as editorials, suggestion being made that the instructions to the local bankers be removed before they were handed to the papers. The purpose of the bankers’ association was to stimulate opposition to the postal savings bank, a policy endorsed affirmatively by the Republican party and, conditionally, by the Democratic party, the two platforms being supported at the polls by more than ninety per cent, of the voters. The bankers’ associations were opposing the policy, and, in sending out its literature, they were endeavouring to conceal the source of that literature and to make it appear that the printed matter represented the opinion of some one in the community.

The journalist who would fully perform his duty must be not only incorruptible, but ever alert, for those who are trying to misuse the newspapers are able to deceive “the very elect.” Whenever any movement is on foot for the securing of legislation desired by the predatory interests, or when restraining legislation is threatened, news bureaus are established at Washington, and these news bureaus furnish to such papers as will use them free reports, daily or weekly as the case may be, from the national capitol–reports which purport to give general news, but which in fact contain arguments in support of the schemes which the bureaus are organized to advance. This ingenious method of misleading the public is only a part of the general plan which favour-holding and favour-seeking corporations pursue.

Demosthenes declared that the man who refuses a bribe conquers the man who offers it. According to this, the journalist who resists the many temptations which come to him to surrender his ideals has the consciousness of winning a moral victory as well as the satisfaction of knowing that he is rendering a real service to his fellows.

The profession for which I was trained–the law–presents another line of temptations. The court-room is a soul’s market where many barter away their ideals in the hope of winning wealth or fame. Lawyers sometimes boast of the number of men whose acquittal they have secured when they knew them to be guilty, and of advantages won which they knew their clients did not deserve. I do not understand how a lawyer can so boast, for he is an officer of the court and, as such, is sworn to assist in the administration of justice. When a lawyer has helped his client to obtain all that his client is entitled to, he has done his full duty as a lawyer, and, if he goes beyond this, he goes at his own peril. Show me a lawyer who has spent a lifetime trying to obscure the line between right and wrong–trying to prove that to be just which he knew to be unjust, and I will show you a man who has grown weaker in character year by year, and whose advice, at last, will be of no value to his clients, for he will have lost the power to discern between right and wrong. Show me, on the other hand, a lawyer who has spent a lifetime in the search for truth, determined to follow where it leads, and I will show you a man who has grown stronger in character day by day and whose advice constantly becomes more valuably to his client, because the power to discern the truth increases with the honest search for it.

Not only in the court-room, but in the consultation chamber also the lawyer sometimes yields to the temptation to turn his talents to a sordid use. The schemes of spoliation that defy the officers of the law are, for the most part, inaugurated and directed by legal minds. I was speaking on this very subject in one of the great cities of the country and at the close of the address, a prominent judge commended my criticism and declared that most of the lawyers practicing in his court were constantly selling their souls.

The lawyer’s position is scarcely less responsible than the position of the journalist; if the journalists and lawyers of the country could be brought to abstain from the practices by which the general public is overreached, it would be an easy matter to secure the remedial legislation necessary to protect the producing masses from the constant spoliation to which they are now subjected by the privileged classes.

If a man who is planning a train-robbery takes another along to hold a horse at a convenient distance, we say that the man who holds the horse is equally guilty with the man who robs the train; and the time will come when public opinion will hold as equally guilty with the plunderers of society the lawyers and journalists who assist the plunderers to escape.

I would not be forgiven if I failed to apply my theme to the work of the instructor. The purpose of education is not merely to develop the mind; it is to prepare men and women for society’s work and for citizenship. The ideals of the teacher, therefore, are of the first importance. The pupil is apt to be as much influenced by what his teacher _is_ as by what the teacher _says_ or _does_. The measure of a school cannot be gathered from an inspection of the examination papers; the conception of life which the graduate carries away must be counted in estimating the benefits conferred. The pecuniary rewards of the teacher are usually small when compared with the rewards of business. This may be due in part to our failure to properly appreciate the work which the teacher does, but it may be partially accounted for by the fact that the teacher derives from his work a satisfaction greater than that obtained from most other employments.

The teacher comes into contact with the life of the student and, as our greatest joy is derived from the consciousness of having benefited others, the teacher rightly counts as a part of his compensation the continuing pleasure to be found in the knowledge that he is projecting his influence through future generations. The heart plays as large a part as the head in the teacher’s work, because the heart is an important factor in every life and in the shaping of the destiny of the race. I fear the plutocracy of wealth; I respect the aristocracy of learning; but I thank God for the democracy of the heart. It is upon the heart level that we meet; it is by the characteristics of the heart that we best know and best remember each other. Astronomers tell us the distance of each star from the earth, but no mathematician can calculate the influence which a noble teacher may exert upon posterity. And yet, even the teacher may fall from his high estate, and, forgetting his immeasurable responsibility, yield to the temptation to estimate his work by its pecuniary reward. Just now some of the teachers are–let us hope, unconsciously–undermining the religious faith of students by substituting the guesses of Darwin for the Word of God.

Let me turn for a moment from the profession and the occupation to the calling. I am sure I shall not be accused of departing from the truth when I say that even those who minister to our spiritual wants and, as our religious leaders, help to fix our standards of morality, sometimes prove unfaithful to their trust. They are human, and the frailities of man obscure the light which shines from within, even when that light is a reflection from the throne of God.

We need more Elijahs in the pulpit to-day–more men who will dare to upbraid an Ahab and defy a Jezebel. It is possible, aye, probable, that even now, as of old, persecutions would follow such boldness of speech, but he who consecrates himself to religion must smite evil wherever he finds it, although in smiting it he may risk his salary and his social position. It is easy enough to denounce the petty thief and the back-alley gambler; it is easy enough to condemn the friendless rogue and the penniless wrong-doer, but what about the rich tax-dodger, the big lawbreaker, and the corrupter of government? The soul that is warmed by divine fire will be satisfied with nothing less than the complete performance of duty; it must cry aloud and spare not, to the end that the creed of the Christ may be exemplified in the life of the nation.

We need Elijahs now to face the higher critics. Instead of allowing the materialists to cut the supernatural out of the Bible the ministers should demand that the unsupported guesses be cut out of school-books dealing with science.

Not only does the soul question present itself to individuals, but it presents itself to groups of individuals as well.

Let us consider the party. A political party cannot be better than its ideal; in fact, it is good in proportion as its ideal is worthy, and its place in history is determined by its adherence to a high purpose. The party is made for its members, not the members for the party; and a party is useful, therefore, only as it is a means through which one may protect his rights, guard his interests and promote the public welfare. The best service that a man can render his party is to raise its ideals. He basely betrays his party’s hopes and is recreant to his duty to his party associates who seeks to barter away a noble party purpose for temporary advantages or for the spoils of office. It would be a reflection upon the intelligence and patriotism of the people to assert, or even to assume, that lasting benefit could be secured for a party by the lowering of its standards. He serves his party most loyally who serves his country most faithfully; it is a fatal error to suppose that a party can be permanently benefited by a betrayal of the people’s interests.

In every act of party life and party strife we weigh the soul. That the people have a right to have what they want in government is a fundamental principle in free government. Corruption in government comes from the attempt to substitute the will of a minority for the will of the majority. Every important measure that comes up for consideration involves justice and injustice–right and wrong–and is, therefore, a question of conscience. As justice is the basis of a nation’s strength and gives it hope of perpetuity, and, as the seeds of decay are sown whenever injustice enters into government, patriotism as well as conscience leads us to analyze every public question, ascertain the moral principle involved and then cast our influence, whether it be great or small, on the side of justice.

The patriot must desire the triumph of that which _is_ right above the triumph of that which he may _think_ to be right if he is, in fact, mistaken; and so the partizan, if he be an intelligent partizan, must be prepared to rejoice in his party’s defeat if by that defeat his country is the gainer. One can afford to be in a minority, but he cannot afford to be wrong; if he is in a minority and right, he will some day be in the majority.

The activities of politics center about the election of candidates to office, and the official, under our system, represents both the party to which he belongs and the whole body of his constituency. He has two temptations to withstand; first, the temptation to substitute his own judgment for the judgment of his constituents, and second, the temptation to put his pecuniary interests above the interests of those for whom he acts. According to the aristocratic idea, the representative thinks _for_ his constituents; according to the Democratic idea, the representative thinks _with_ his constituents. A representative has no right to defeat the wishes of those who elect him, if he knows their wishes.

But a representative is not liable to knowingly misrepresent his constituents unless he has pecuniary interests adverse to theirs. This is the temptation to be resisted–this is the sin to be avoided. The official who uses his position to secure a pecuniary advantage over the public is an embezzler of power–and an embezzler of power is as guilty of moral turpitude as the embezzler of money. There is no better motto for the public official than that given by Solomon: “A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold.” There is no better rule for the public official to follow than this–to do nothing that he would not be willing to have printed in the newspaper next day.

One who exercises authority conferred upon him by the suffrages of his fellows ought to be fortified in his integrity by the consciousness of the fact that a betrayal of his trust is hurtful to the party which honours him and unjust to the people whom he serves, as well as injurious to himself. Nothing that he can gain, not even the whole world, can compensate him for the loss that he suffers in the surrender of a high ideal of public duty.

In conclusion, let me say that the nation, as well as the individual, and the party, must be measured by its purpose, its ideals and its service. “Let him who would be chiefest among you, be the servant of all,” was intended for nations as well as for citizens. Our nation is the greatest in the world and the greatest of all time, because it is rendering a larger service than any other nation is rendering or has rendered. It is giving the world ideals in education, in social life, in government, and in religion. It is the teacher of nations; it is the world’s torch-bearer. Here the people are more free than elsewhere to “try all things and hold fast that which is good”; “to know the truth” and to find freedom in that knowledge. No material considerations should blind us to our nation’s mission, or turn us aside from the accomplishment of the great work which has been reserved for us. Our fields bring forth abundantly and the products of our farms furnish food for many in the Old World. Our mills and looms supply an increasing export, but these are not our greatest asset. Our most fertile soil is to be found in the minds and the hearts of our people; our most important manufacturing plants are not our factories, with their smoking chimneys, but our schools, our colleges and our churches, which take in a priceless raw material and turn out the most valuable finished product that the world has known.

We enjoy by inheritance, or by choice, the blessings of American citizenship; let us not be unmindful of the obligations which these blessings impose. Let us not become so occupied in the struggle for wealth or in the contest for honours as to repudiate the debt that we owe to those who have gone before us and to those who bear with us the responsibilities that rest upon the present generation. Society has claims upon us; our country makes demands upon our time, our thought and our purpose. We cannot shirk these duties without disgrace to ourselves and injury to those who come after us. If one is tempted to complain of the burdens borne by American citizens, let him compare them with the much larger burdens imposed by despots upon their subjects.

I challenge the doctrine, now being taught, that we must enter into a mad rivalry with the Old World in the building of battleships–the doctrine that the only way to preserve peace is to get ready for wars that ought never to come! It is a barbarous, brutal, un-Christian doctrine–the doctrine of the darkness, not the doctrine of the dawn.

Nation after nation, when at the zenith of its power, has proclaimed itself invincible because its army could shake the earth with its tread and its ships could fill the seas, but these nations are dead, and we must build upon a different foundation if we would avoid their fate.

Carlyle, in the closing chapters of his “French Revolution,” says that thought is stronger than artillery parks and at last moulds the world like soft clay, and then he adds that back of thought is love. Carlyle is right. Love is the greatest power in the world. The nations that are dead boasted that people bowed before their flag; let us not be content until our flag represents sentiments so high and holy that the oppressed of every land will turn their faces toward that flag and thank God that it stands for self-government and for the rights of man.

The enlightened conscience of our nation should proclaim as the country’s creed that “righteousness exalteth a nation” and that justice is a nation’s surest defense. If there ever was a nation it is ours–if there ever was a time it is now–to put God’s truth to a test. With an ocean rolling on either side and a mountain range along either coast that all the armies of the world could never climb we ought not to be afraid to trust in “the wisdom of doing right.”

Our government, conceived in liberty and purchased with blood, can be preserved only by constant vigilance. May we guard it as our children’s richest legacy, for what shall it profit our nation if it shall gain the whole world and lose “the spirit that prizes liberty as the heritage of all men in all lands everywhere”?

VII

THREE PRICELESS GIFTS

The Bible differs from all other books in that it never wears out. Other books are read and laid aside, but the Bible is a constant companion. No matter how often we read it or how familiar we become with it, some new truth is likely to spring out at us from its pages whenever we open it, or some old truth will impress us as it never did before. Every Christian can give illustrations of this. Permit me to refer briefly to four. My first religious address, “The Prince of Peace,” was the outgrowth of a chance rereading of a passage in Isaiah. This I have referred to in my lecture entitled “His Government and Peace.”

The argument presented in my lecture on the Bible, in which I defend the inspiration of the Book of Books, was the outgrowth of a chance rereading of Elijah’s prayer test. I was preparing an address for the celebration of the Tercentenary of the King James’ Translation when, on the train, I turned by chance to Elijah’s challenge to the prophets of Baal. It suggested to me what I regard as an unanswerable argument, namely, a challenge to those who reject the Bible to put their theory to the test and produce a book, the equal of the Bible, or admit one of two alternatives, either that the Bible comes from a source higher than man or that man has so degenerated that less can be expected of him now than nineteen hundred years ago.

In preparing a Sunday-school lesson on Abraham’s faith I was so impressed with the influence of faith on the life of the patriarch and, through him, on the world, that I prepared a college address on “Faith,” a part of which I have reproduced in my lecture on “The Spoken Word.”

It was a chance rereading of an extract from the account of the Ten Lepers which led me to prepare the lecture reproduced in this chapter. The subject to which I invite your attention is as important to-day as it was when the Master laid emphasis upon it. As He approached a certain village ten lepers met Him; they recognized Him and cried out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy upon us.” He healed them; when they found that they had been made whole, one of them turned back and, falling on his face at Jesus’ feet, poured forth his heart in grateful thanks. Christ, noticing the absence of the others, inquired, “Were there not ten cleansed, but where are the nine?” This simple question has come echoing down through nineteen centuries, the most stinging rebuke ever uttered against the sin of ingratitude. If the lepers had been afflicted with a disease easily cured, they might have said, “Any one could have healed us,” but only Christ could restore them to health, and yet, when they had received of His cleansing power, they apparently felt no sense of obligation; at least, they expressed no gratitude.

Some one has described ingratitude as a meaner sin than revenge–the explanation being that revenge is repayment of evil with evil, while ingratitude is repayment of good with evil. If you visit revenge upon one, it is because he has injured you first and the law takes notice of provocation. Ingratitude is lack of appreciation of a favour shown; it is indifference to a kindness done.

Ingratitude is so common a sin that few have occupied the pulpit for a year without using the story of the Ten Lepers as the basis of a sermon; and one could speak upon this theme every Sunday in the year without being compelled to repeat himself, so infinite in number are the illustrations. Those who speak of ingratitude usually begin with the child. A child is born into the world the most helpless of all creatures; for years it could not live but for the affectionate and devoted care of parents, or of those who stand in the place of parents. If, when it grows up, it becomes indifferent; if its heart grows cold, and it becomes ungrateful, it arouses universal indignation. Poets and writers of prose have exhausted all the epithets in their effort to describe an ungrateful child. Shakespeare’s words are probably those most quoted:

“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is To have a thankless child.”

But it is not my purpose to speak of thankless children; I shall rather make application of the rebuke to the line of work in which I have been engaged. For some thirty years my time, by fate or fortune, has been devoted largely to the study and discussion of the problems of government, and I have had occasion to note the apathy and indifference of citizens. I have seen reforms delayed and the suffering of the people prolonged by lack of vigilance. Let us, therefore, consider together for a little while some of the priceless gifts that come to us because we live under the Stars and Stripes–gifts so valuable that they cannot be estimated in figures or described in language–gifts which are received and enjoyed by many without any sense of obligation, and without any resolve to repay the debt due to society.

These gifts are many, but we shall have time for only three. The first is education; it is a gift rather than an acquirement. It comes into our lives when we are too young to decide such questions for ourselves. I sometimes meet a man who calls himself “self-made,” and I always want to cross-examine him. I would ask him when he began to make himself, and how he laid the foundations of his greatness. As a matter of fact, we inherit more than we ourselves can add. It means more to be born of a race with centuries of civilization back of it than anything that we ourselves can contribute. And, next to that which we inherit, comes that which enters our lives through the environment of youth. In this country the child is so surrounded by opportunities, that it enters school as early as the law will permit. It does not _go_ to school, it is _sent_ to school, and we are so anxious that it shall lose no time that, if there is ever a period in the child’s life when the mother is uncertain as to its exact age, this is the time. I heard of a little boy, who, when asked how old he was, replied, “I am five on the train, seven in school and six at home.” The child is pushed through grade after grade, and, according to the statistics, a little more than ninety per cent, of the children drop out of school before they are old enough to decide educational questions for themselves. They are scarcely more than fourteen.

Taking the country over, a little less than one in ten of the children who enter our graded school ever enter high school, and not quite one in fifty enter college or university. As many who enter college do not complete the course, I am not far from the truth when I say that only about one young man in one hundred continues his education until he reaches the age–twenty-one–when the law assumes that his reason is mature. I am emphasizing these statistics in order to show that we are indebted to others more than to ourselves for our education. That which we do would not be done but for what others have already done. Even those who secure an education in spite of difficulties have received from some one the idea that makes them appreciate the value of an education.

When we are born we find an educational system here; we do not devise it, it was established by a generation long since dead. When we are ready to attend school we find a schoolhouse already built; we do not build it, it was erected by the taxpayers, many of whom are dead. When we are ready for instruction we find teachers prepared by others, many of whom have passed to their reward.

How do we feel when we complete our education? Do we count the cost to others and think of the sacrifices they have made for our benefit? Do we estimate the strength that education has brought to us and feel that we should put that strength under heavier loads? We are raised by our study to an intellectual eminence from which we can secure a clearer view of the future; do we feel that we should be like watchmen upon the tower and warn those less fortunate of the dangers that they do not yet discern? We _should_, but do we? I venture to assert that more than nine out of ten of those who receive into their lives, and profit by, the gift of education are as ungrateful as the nine lepers of whom the Bible tells us–they receive, they enjoy, but they give no thanks.

But it is even worse than this; the Bible does not say that any one of the nine lepers used for the injury of his fellows the strength that Christ gave back to him. All that is said is that they were ungrateful; but how about those who go out from our colleges and universities? Are not many of these worse than ungrateful? I would not venture to use my own language here; I will quote what others have said.

Wendell Phillips was one of the learned men of Massachusetts and a great orator. In his address on the “Scholar in a Republic,” he said that “The people make history while the scholars only write it.” And then he added, “part truly and part as coloured by their prejudices.”

Woodrow Wilson, while president of Princeton University, said:

“The great voice of America does not come from seats of learning. It comes in a murmur from the hills and woods, and the farms and factories and the mills, rolling on and gaining volume until it comes to us from the homes of common men. Do these murmurs echo in the corridors of our universities? I have not heard them.”

President Roosevelt, while in the White House, presented an even stronger indictment against some of the scholars. In a speech delivered to law students at Harvard he declared that there was scarcely a great conspiracy against the public welfare that did not have Harvard brains behind it. He need not have gone to Harvard to utter this terrific indictment against college graduates; he might have gone to Yale, or Columbia, or Princeton, or to any other great university, or even to smaller colleges. It would not take long to correct the abuses of which the people complain but for the fact that back of every abuse are the hired brains of scholars who turn against society and use for society’s harm the very strength that society has bestowed upon them.

Let me give you an illustration in point, and so recent that one will be sufficient: A few months ago the Supreme Court at Washington handed down a decision overturning every argument made against the Eighteenth Amendment and the enforcement law. Who represented the liquor traffic in that august tribunal? Not brewery workers, employees in distilleries, or bartenders; these could not speak for the liquor traffic in the Supreme Court. No! Lawyers must be employed, and they were easily found–big lawyers, scholars, who attempted to overthrow the bulwark that society has erected for the protection of the homes of the country.

Every reform has to be fought through the legislatures and the courts until it is finally settled by the highest court in our land, and there, vanquished wrong expires in the arms of learned lawyers who sell their souls to do evil–who attempt to rend society with the very power that our institutions of learning have conferred upon them. All of our reforms would be led by scholars, if all scholars appreciated as they should the gift of education. There are, of course, a multitude of noble illustrations of scholars consecrating their learning to the service of the people, but many scholars are indifferent to the injustice done to the masses and some actually obstruct needed reforms–and they do it for pay.

My second illustration is even more important, for it deals with the heart. I am interested in education; if I had my way every child in all the world would be educated. God forbid that I should draw a line through society and say that the children on one side shall be educated and the children on the other side condemned to the night of ignorance. I shall assume no such responsibility. I am anxious that my children and grandchildren shall be educated, and I do not desire for a child or grandchild of mine anything that I would not like to see every other child enjoy. Children come into the world without their own volition–they are here as a part of the Almighty’s plan–and there is not a child born on God’s footstool that has not as much right to all that life can give as your child or my child. Education increases one’s capacity for service and thus enlarges the reward that one can rightfully draw from society; therefore, every one is entitled to the advantages of education.

There is no reason why every human being should not have _both_ a _good heart_ and a _trained mind_; but, if I were compelled to choose between the two, I would rather that one should have a good heart than a trained mind. A good heart can make a dull brain useful to society, but a bad heart cannot make a good use of any brain, however trained or brilliant.

When we deal with the heart we must deal with religion, for religion controls the heart; and, when we consider religion we find that the religious environment that surrounds our young people is as favourable as their intellectual environment. As in the case of education, lack of appreciation may be due in part to lack of opportunity to make comparison. If we visit Asia, where the philosophy of Confucius controls, or where they worship Buddha, or follow Mahomet, or observe the forms of the Hindu religion, we find that except where they have borrowed from Christian nations, they have made no progress in fifteen hundred years. Here, all have the advantage of Christian ideals, and yet, according to statistics, something more than half the adult males of the United States are not connected with any religious organization. Some scoff at religion, and a few are outspoken enemies of the Church. Can they be blind to the benefits conferred by our churches? Security of life and property is not entirely due to criminal laws, to a sheriff in each county, and to an occasional policeman. The conscience comes first; the law comes afterward.

Law is but the crystallization of conscience; moral sentiment must be created before it can express itself in the form of a statute. Every preacher and priest, therefore, whether his congregation be large or small, who quickens the conscience of those who hear him helps the community. Every church of every denomination, whether important or unimportant, that helps to raise the moral standards of the land benefits all who live under the flag, whether they acknowledge their obligations or not.

But lack of appreciation on the part of those outside the Church would not disturb us so much if all the church members lived up to their obligations. How much is it worth to one to be born again? Of what value is it to have had the heart touched by the Saviour and so changed that it loves the things it used to hate and hates the things it formerly loved? Of what value is it to have one’s life so transformed that, instead of resembling a stagnant pool, it becomes like a living spring, giving forth constantly that which refreshes and invigorates? What is it worth to the Christian, and what is it worth to those about him, to have his life brought by Christ into such vital living contact with the Heavenly Father, that that life becomes the means through which the goodness of God pours out to the world?

But, I go a step farther and ask whether the Church as an organization–not any one denomination, but the Church universal–appreciates its great opportunities, its tremendous responsibility, and the infinite power behind it. If the Church is what we believe it to be it must be prepared to grapple with every problem, individual and social, whether it affects only a community or involves a state, a nation, or a world. There must be _some_ intelligence large enough to direct the world or the world will run amuck. We believe that God is the only intelligence capable of governing the world, and God must act through the Church or outside of it. If the Church is not big enough to act as the mouthpiece of the Almighty–not in the sense that the Church ought to exercise governmental authority, but its members, seeking light from the Heavenly Father through prayer, should be able to act wisely as citizens–if, I repeat, the Church is not big enough to deal with the problems that confront the world, then the Church must give way to some more competent organization. Christians have no other alternative; they _must_ believe that the _teachings of Christ can be successfully applied to every problem that the individual has to meet and to every problem with which governments have to deal_. I have in another lecture in this series called attention to Christ’s all-inclusive claim set forth in the closing verses of the last chapter of Matthew, but I must repeat it here because it is the basis of what I desire to say on this branch of the subject. Christ declared that _all_ power had been given into His hands; He sent His followers out to make disciples of _all_ nations; and He promised to be with them _always_, even unto the end of the world. If the Church takes Christ at His word and claims to be His representative on earth it cannot shirk its duty.

If Christians are as grateful to God, to Christ, and to the Bible as they should be, they will give attention to every problem that affects the individual, the community, and the larger units of society and government. They will consider it their duty to _carry their religion into business and politics_ and to apply the teachings of Christ to every subject that affects human welfare. In another lecture I call attention to the Church’s duty to reconcile capital and labour, and to teach God’s law of rewards.

The third gift to which I would call your attention is the form of government under which we live. Ours is a government in which the people rule from the lowest unit to the highest office in the nation. Nearly all of our officials are elected by popular vote, and those appointed are appointed by officers who are elected. The tendency is everywhere more and more toward popular government. Some people are afraid of Democracy but a larger number of people believe that “more democracy is the cure for such evils as have been developed under popular government.” The Christian is a citizen of the republic as well as a member of the church and must _practice_ his religion. I have not time to speak of our government in detail; it is rather my purpose at this time to call attention to the gift of popular government as we find it in the nation.

Let us begin, then, with a presidential election. I shall not yield to the strong temptation to describe a presidential election; suffice to say that our campaigns begin with the election of delegates to a National Convention (I hope they will some day begin with the nomination of presidential candidates at primaries held by all the parties, in all the states, on the same day). The campaigns last long enough to make the candidates so weary that they gladly resign themselves to any result if they can only live to election day.

The campaigns increase in intensity week after week and expire, or explode, in a blaze of glory the night before election, at which time the committees of the leading parties set forth the reasons that make each side certain of success. On election day a hush spreads over the land and the voters wend their way to the polling places, where each voter is permitted to register a sovereign’s will. Usually by midnight the wires flash out the name of one who is to be added to the list of Presidents. We give him a few weeks to rest and get ready and then, on a certain day in March and at a certain hour, he goes to the White House door and knocks. The occupant opens the door, and with a wearied look upon his face, and yet a smile, says, “I was expecting you just at this moment.” Then the man on the inside of the White House goes out and becomes a private citizen again, while the man on the outside goes in, takes the oath of office and is clothed with authority such as no other human being, but a President, ever exercised.

He writes an order and ships go out to sea with their big-mouthed guns; he writes another order and the ships return. At his command armies assemble and march and fight, and men die; at his word armies dissolve and soldiers become citizens again. This goes on for just so many years and months and weeks and days–for just so many hours and minutes and seconds, and then there is another knock on the White House door and another man comes with a new commission from the people.

Is it not a great thing to live in a land like this where the people can, at the polls, select one of their number and lift him to this pinnacle of power? And is it not greater still that the people are able to reduce a President to the ranks as well as to lift him up? When they elevate him he is just common clay, but when they take him down from his high place they separate him from those instrumentalities of government which despots have employed for the enslavement of their people.

And why is it that we live under a government resting upon the consent of the governed, and in a land in which the people rule? Because throughout the centuries millions of the best and the bravest have given their lives that we might be free. Every right of which we boast is a blood-bought right, and bought by the blood of others, not our own. Would you not think that people who inherit such a government as this would be grateful for the priceless gift and live up to every obligation of citizenship? It would seem so, and yet those acquainted with politics know that the difficult task is to get the vote out. Even in a hotly contested presidential election we never get the full vote out. If ninety per cent of the vote is polled we are happy; if eighty-five per cent, is polled we are satisfied. If it is an intermediate election the vote may be less than eighty per cent., or even seventy-five. In a primary, which is often more important than an election, the vote sometimes falls below fifty, or even forty per cent.

And what excuses do men give? Often the most trivial. One man says that he had some work to do and could not spare the time–as if any work could be more important than voting in a Republic. Another was visiting his wife’s relatives and a family dinner made it inconvenient for him to return in time to vote. A few years ago I met a man on the train who told me that he had not voted for ten years. When I asked him why, he explained that he had voted for a neighbour for a state office–he declared that the neighbour could not have been elected without his help–and yet when the election was over the successful candidate failed to invite him to a dinner given to celebrate the victory. “And,” he added, “I just made up my mind that if I could be so deceived by a man who lived next door to me I did not have sense enough to vote, and I have not voted since.”

We are all liable to make mistakes, but a mistake at one election is no justification for failure to vote at other elections. We must do the best we can; and we must not be discouraged if the men elected do not do all that we expect of them. The government is not perfect and never will be, no matter what party is in power. When the Democrats are in power I can prove by all the Republicans that the government is not perfect; when the Republicans are in power I can prove by the Democrats that the government is not perfect. Governments are administered by human beings; we must expect honest men to make mistakes and we must not be surprised if, occasionally, an official embezzles power and turns to his own advantage the authority entrusted to him to use for the public good. We should punish him and try to safeguard the people. The initiative and referendum are valuable because they enable the people to protect themselves from misrepresentation.

But even if the government could be made perfect to-day it would be imperfect to-morrow. Times change and new conditions arise that make new laws necessary. As the remedy cannot precede the disease and cannot be applied until the public becomes acquainted with the disease and has time to choose the remedy, there is always something that needs to be done. If Christians do not make it their business to understand their government’s needs and to propose laws that are necessary, others will. Are any more worthy to be trusted than Christians?

Even constitutions must be changed in order that our government may be in the hands of the living rather than in the hands of the dead. Those who wrote our Constitution were very wise men and yet the wisest thing they did was to include a provision which enabled those who came after them to change anything that they wrote into the Constitution.

Jefferson thought a constitution should be brought up to date by every generation. Nineteen changes have been made in our Constitution by amendment since the Constitution was adopted and four of these have been adopted within the last ten years. I venture to call attention to the later ones for two purposes; first, to show how long it takes to amend the Constitution and why; second, to remind you that these four great amendments have been adopted by joint action by the two great parties.

It required twenty-one years to secure the amendment providing for popular election of United States Senators after the amendment was first endorsed by the House of Representatives at Washington. For one hundred and three years after the adoption of the Federal Constitution the people tolerated the election of Senators by legislatures before there was a protest that rose to the dignity of a Congressional resolution. A Republican President, Andrew Johnson, recommended the change in a message to Congress. Some ten years later, General Weaver, a Populist Representative in Congress from Iowa, introduced a resolution proposing an amendment providing for the popular election of Senators, but no action was taken at that time. In 1902 a Democratic House of Representatives at Washington passed a resolution, by the necessary two-thirds vote, submitting the proposed amendment. Hon. Harry St. George Tucker, of Virginia, was the chairman of the committee when this resolution passed the House. A similar resolution passed the House on five separate occasions afterward (twice when the House was Democratic and three times when it was Republican) before it could pass the Senate. The amendment was finally submitted by joint action of a Democratic House and a Republican Senate and was ratified in a short time, Democratic and Republican states vying with each other in furnishing the necessary number. In 1913 it became my privilege, as Secretary of State, to sign the last document necessary to make this amendment a part of the Constitution. I have dwelt upon this contest at some length in order to call attention to the time it took to secure the change and to the fact that the two parties share the honour of making the change.

It took seventeen years to secure the amendment to the Constitution authorizing an income tax. The Income Tax Law, enacted in 1894, was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court, by a majority of one, in 1895. In 1896 the fight for a constitutional amendment was inaugurated and the amendment was ratified and became a part of the Constitution early in 1913. This amendment, like the amendment providing for popular election of United States Senators, required many years, and for the same reason, viz., that the people were not alert as they should have been, not as vigilant as they should be. In the case of the Income Tax Amendment also, as in the case of the other, the two parties contributed to the change in the Constitution and share the glory together. The first amendment brought the United States Senate nearer the people and opened the way for other reforms; the second made it possible to apportion more equitably the burdens of the government.

The Income Tax Amendment was adopted just in time to enable the government to collect the revenue needed for the recent war. During the seventeen years covered by the struggle for this amendment the government was impotent to tax wealth; it could draft the man but not the pocketbook. What would have been the feeling among the people if we had entered the late war under such a handicap? How would conscription have been received if it applied to father, husband and son and not to wealth also?

And then, too, the Income Tax Amendment came just in time to answer the last argument made in favour of the saloon. Those engaged in the liquor traffic, after being defeated on all other points, massed behind the proposition that the government needed the revenue from whiskey, beer, and saloons. As soon as the government was able to collect an income tax the friends of prohibition were able to look the liquor dealers in the face and say, “Never again will an American boy be auctioned off to a saloon for money to run the government; we now have other sources from which to draw.”

The third of the amendments was also a long time in coming and was finally brought by joint action of Democrats and Republicans. It is not necessary to trace the growth of this reform. Suffice it to say that the Christian churches were the dominating force behind the prohibition movement and that the South played a very prominent part in driving out the saloon. More than two-thirds of the Senators and members from the Southern States voted for the submission of National Prohibition after nearly all the Southern States had adopted prohibition by individual act. The first four states to ratify were Southern Democratic States–Mississippi, Virginia, Kentucky, and South Carolina. It is only fair, however, to say that the West contested with the South the honour of leading in this fight, and that the Northern States finally did nearly as well as the Southern States in the matter of ratifying. And it is better that the victory should be a joint one, expressing the conscience of the nation regardless of party, than that it should be merely a party victory.

But the real credit for leadership belongs not to any party or to any section, but to those whose consciences were quickened by the teachings of the Bible. Total abstinence was naturally more prevalent among church members than among those outside of the church, and this, of course, was the foundation upon which prohibition rested. The arguments against the use of liquor are the basis of the arguments in favour of prohibition. Because liquor is harmful the saloon is intolerable.

I venture to set forth the fundamental propositions upon which the arguments for prohibition rested.

First: God never made a human being who, in a normal state, needed alcohol.

Second: God never made a human being strong enough to begin the use of alcohol and be sure that he would not become its victim.

Third: God never fixed a day in a human life _after_ which it is safe to begin the use of intoxicating liquors.

These three propositions can be stated without limitation or mental reservation. They apply to all who now live and to all who ever lived; and will apply to all who may live hereafter. To these may be added three propositions which apply especially to Christians.

First: The Christian is a Christian because he has given himself in pledge of service to God and to Christ. What moral right has he to take into his body that which he knows will lessen his capacity for service and _may_ destroy even his desire to serve?

Second: What moral right has a Christian to spend for intoxicating liquor money needed for the many noble and needy causes that appeal to a Christian’s heart? The Christian, repeating the language taught him by the Master, prays to the Heavenly Father, “Thy kingdom come;” what right has he to rise from his knees and spend for intoxicating liquor money that he can spare to hasten the coming of God’s kingdom on earth?

Third: What right has a Christian to throw the influence of his example on the side of a habit that has brought millions to the grave? We shall have enough to answer for when we stand before the judgment bar of God without having a ruined soul arise and testify that it was a Christian’s example that led him to his ruin. Paul declared that if meat made his brother to offend he would eat no meat. What Christian can afford to say less in regard to intoxicants? If the Christian drinks only a little it is a small sacrifice to make for the aid of his brother; if the Christian drinks enough to make stopping a real sacrifice he ought to stop for his own sake, on his family’s account and out of respect for his church.

While the harmfulness of liquor was the foundation upon which the opposition to the saloon was built, it may be worth while to add that popular government, by putting responsibility upon the voters, compelled the Christian to vote against the saloon licenses. In all civilized countries the sale of liquor is now so restricted that it cannot be lawfully offered for sale without a license. As the license is necessary to the existence of the saloon–as necessary as the liquor sold over the bar–the Christian who voted for a license became as much a partner in the business as the man who dispensed it, and he had even less excuse. The manufacturer and the bartender could plead in extenuation that they made money out of the business and money has led multitudes into sin. For money many have been willing to steal; for money some have been willing to murder; for money a few have been willing to sell their country; for money one man was willing to betray the Saviour. The Christian who voted for licenses had not even the poor excuse of those who engaged in the business for mercenary reasons. As the consciences became awakened, therefore, Christians, in increasing numbers, refused to share responsibility for the saloon and what it did.

Science contributed largely to the final victory. People used to say that drinking did not hurt if one did not drink too much. But no one could define how much “too much” was. The invisible line between “just enough” and “too much” is like the line of the horizon–it recedes as you approach until it is lost in the darkness of the night.

Science proved that it is not immoderate drinking only, but _any_ drinking that is harmful, and, therefore, that the real line is that between not drinking and drinking.

Science has also demonstrated, as I have shown in another lecture, that drinking decreases one’s expectancy, according to insurance tables; a young man at twenty-one must deliberately decide to shorten his life by more than ten per cent. if he becomes an habitual drinker.

But, what is worse, science has shown that alcohol is a poison that runs in the blood, so that the drinking of the father or mother may curse a child unborn and close the door of hope upon it before its eyes have opened to the light of day.

Business aided us also, as large corporations increasingly discriminated against those who drank.

Patriotism furnished the last impulse; war threw a ghastly light upon the evils of intemperance and upon the sordid greed of those engaged in the liquor business.

The reform will not turn back. Enforcement will become more strict in this country as its benefits are more clearly shown and prohibition will spread until the saloon will be abolished throughout the world. Although now past sixty-one I expect to live to see the day when there will not be an open saloon under the flag of any civilized nation.

We are now able to prevent typhoid fever, the individual being made immune by a treatment administered before he has been exposed to the disease. Total abstinence resembles this preventive; no total abstainer is in danger of alcoholism.

But we also have a preventive for yellow fever, namely, the destroying of the breeding place of the mosquito which carries the germ of the disease. Prohibition resembles this preventive. The saloon was found to be the breeding place of alcoholism and prohibition strikes at the source of the danger. These two, total abstinence and prohibition, will eliminate the drink evil as typhoid and yellow fever have been eliminated.

The fourth amendment adopted in recent years extended equal suffrage to women. Like the three to which I have referred, it was a long time coming and came at last by joint action of the two great parties. A majority of both parties in both Senate and House voted for the submission of this amendment and it required both Democratic and Republican states to ratify it. The opposition which the amendment met in the South was not due to lack of confidence in women, for nowhere in the world is woman more highly estimated or more fully trusted. Such local opposition as there was was due to the race question. Now that woman can express herself at the polls, her influence will be felt as much in the South as in other sections; it will throughout the United States seal the doom of the liquor traffic. The women will stand guard at the grave of John Barleycorn and make sure that he will never know a resurrection morn.

Drawing their inspiration from the Bible, even to a greater extent than the men do, the women will hasten the triumph of every righteous cause. They will throw their influence on the side of every moral reform. The adoption of the single standard of morals will be made possible by woman’s advent into politics. Her ballot will make it easier to lift man to her level in the matter of chastity and to distribute more equitably than man has done, the punishments imposed for acts of immorality.

Woman has come into power in politics at a time when she can aid in the promotion of world peace by compelling the establishment of machinery which will substitute reason for force in the settlement of international disputes. Her first great triumph at the polls may be the fulfilling of the prophecy, spoken more than two thousand years ago, that swords shall be beaten into ploughshares and that nations shall learn war no more. She will be repaid for all her patience and her waiting if now, by her ballot, she can make it unnecessary for another mother’s son to be offered upon the altar of Mars. That this nation is in a better position than ever before to lead the world in every good cause is due to the gifts that have come with American citizenship, only three of which I have had time to mention.

Every citizen should be honest with himself, examine his own heart and answer to his own conscience. What estimate does he place upon the education which he has received? What value does he put upon the religion that controls his heart? How highly does he prize the form of government under which he lives? Let him put his own appraisement upon these three great gifts; these sums added together will represent his acknowledged indebtedness to society; then let him resolve to pay so much of this incalculable debt as is within his power.

We live in a goodly land. No king can shape our nation’s destiny; not even a President can have the final word as to what our nation is to be. Each citizen, no matter how humble that citizen may be, can have a part. Let us do our part; joining together, let us solve the problems with which we have to deal, and, by so doing, bless our country and, through it, other lands. Let us join together and raise the light of our civilization so high that its rays, illumining every land, may lead the world to those better things for which the world is praying.

VIII

“HIS GOVERNMENT AND PEACE”

By way of introduction, allow me to say that I fully recognize the difference between a _presentation_ of fundamental principles and an _application_ of those principles to life. While an _application_ of principles arouses greater interest it is more apt to bring out differences of opinion and to excite controversy. But the Christian is always open-minded because he desires to _know_ the right and to do it. He “prove(s) all things and hold(s) fast that which is good.” Therefore, he welcomes light on every subject, from every source. It is in this spirit that I speak to you and it is this spirit that I invoke. I speak from conviction, formed after prayerful investigation, and am as anxious to be informed as I am to inform.

Some twenty years ago I turned back to the sixth verse of the ninth chapter of Isaiah to refresh my memory on the titles bestowed on the Messiah whose coming the prophet foretold. After reading verse six, my eyes fell on verse seven and it impressed me as it had not on former readings. This was probably because I had recently been giving attention to governmental problems and had occasionally heard advanced a very gloomy philosophy, namely, that a government, being the work of man, must, like man, pass through certain changes that mark a human life–that is, be born, grow strong, and then, after a period of maturity, decline and die. It is a repulsive doctrine and my heart rebelled against it. It offends one’s patriotism, too, to be compelled to admit that, in spite of all that can be done, our government _must some day perish_. In verse seven we read of a government that _will not die_:

“Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, … to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever.”

The fault in the philosophy to which I have referred lies in the fact that while government is each day in control of those then living, it really belongs to generations rather than to individuals. As one generation passes off the stage another comes on; therefore, there is no reason why this government should ever be weaker or worse than it is now unless our people decline in virtue, intelligence and patriotism. It should grow better as the people improve.

In the verse quoted we find that the enduring government–the government of Christ–is to rest on justice. And so, our government must rest on justice if it is to endure. But what is justice? We are familiar with this word but how shall it be interpreted in governmental terms? Christ furnished the solution–He presented a scheme of Universal Brotherhood in which justice will be possible.

To show how important this doctrine of brotherhood is, let us consider for a moment the alternative relationship. There are but two attitudes that one can assume in regard to his fellowmen–the attitude of brother and the attitude of the brute; there is no middle ground.

This is the choice that each human being must make–a choice as distinct and fundamental as the choice between God and Baal; and it is a choice not unlike that.

One may be a very weak brother or a very feeble brute, but each person is, consciously or unconsciously, controlled by the sympathetic spirit of brotherhood or he hunts for spoil with the savage hunger of a beast of prey.

I am not making a new classification; I am merely calling attention to a classification that has come down from the beginning of history. Many years ago I heard a man from New Zealand tell how a cannibal in that country once supported his claim to a piece of land on the ground that the title passed to him when he ate the former owner. I accepted this story as a bit of humour, but it accurately describes an historic form of title. Even among the highly civilized nations governments convey to their subjects or citizens land secured by conquest, the lands being taken from the conquered by the conquerors. A tramp, so the story goes, being ordered out of a nobleman’s yard, questioned the owner’s title. The latter explained that the title to the land had come down to him in unbroken line from father to son through a period of 700 years, beginning with an ancestor who fought for it. “Let’s fight for it again,” suggested the tramp.

To show how ancient is the distinction that I am trying to make clear, I remind you that both the Psalmist and Solomon used the word “brutish” in describing certain kinds of men, and one of the minor prophets calls down wrath upon those who build a city with blood. Christ, it will be remembered, denounced the hypocrites who devoured widows’ houses and for a pretense made long prayers.

The devouring did not cease with that generation; it is to-day a menace to stable government and to civilization itself. In times of peace we have the profiteer who is guilty of practices which violate all rules of morality even when they do not actually violate statute law. In this “Land of the free and home of the brave,” we have been compelled to enact laws to restrain brutishness–not only laws to prevent assault, murder, arson, the white slave traffic, etc., but also laws to restrain men engaged in legitimate business. Pure food laws prevent the adulteration of that which the people eat–men were willing to destroy health and even life in order to add to their profits. Child labour laws have become necessary to keep employers from dwarfing the bodies, minds and souls of the young in their haste to make larger dividends.

Usury laws are necessary to protect the borrowers from the lenders, and, from occasional violations, we can judge what the condition would be if the very respectable business of banking was not strictly regulated by law. We have an anti-trust law intended to prevent the devouring of small industries by large ones–law made necessary by injustice nation-wide in extent.

Congress and the legislatures of the several states are constantly compelled to legislate against so-called “business” enterprises that are being conducted on a brute basis–some are combinations in restraint of trade, others are merely gambling transactions. For a generation the agriculturists, who constitute about one-third of our entire population, have been at the mercy of a comparatively small group of market gamblers who, by betting, force prices up or down for their own pecuniary gain. An anti-option law has been recently enacted after an agitation of nearly thirty years, and also a law regulating the packers. These are only a few illustrations; they could be multiplied without limit. They show how unbrotherly society sometimes is even in this highly favoured nation.

How can Christ’s teachings relieve the situation? Easily. He dealt with fundamentals, and gave special attention to the causes of evil. He taught, first, that man should love God–the basis of all religion; second, He taught that man should commune with the Heavenly Father through prayer–the basis of all worship; third, He proclaimed the existence of a future life in which the righteous shall be rewarded and the wicked punished. These three doctrines contribute powerfully to morality, the basis of stable government. In another address I have called attention to the destructive influence exerted by the doctrine of evolution, as applied to man, and have pointed out how Darwinism weakens faith in God, makes a mockery of prayer, undermines belief in immortality, reduces Christ to the stature of a man, lessens the sense of brotherhood and encourages brutishness. It is unnecessary, therefore, to dwell upon this subject in this address.

Christ warned against the sins into which man is sure to fall when the heart is not wholly devoted to the service of God. He shows how evil in the heart will manifest itself in the life. Greed is at the bottom of most of the wrong-doing with which government has to deal. The Bible says “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”

It surely is responsible for unspeakable ills. The case is so plain that human reason would seem sufficient to furnish a cure. It ought not to be difficult to agree upon the principles that should govern legitimate accumulations.

There are two propositions that cover the whole ground; one is economic and the other rests upon religion. Both are based upon the laws of God, but one can be enforced by the government, while the other is binding on the conscience alone.

The divine law of rewards is self-evident. When God gave us the earth with its fertile soil, the sunshine with its warmth and the rains with their moisture, His voice proclaimed as clearly as if it had issued from the skies: Go work, and in proportion to your industry and ability so shall be your reward. This is God’s law and it will prevail except where force suspends it or cunning evades it. It is the duty of the Church to teach, and the duty of Christians to respect, God’s law of rewards.

It is the duty of the government to give free course and full sway to the divine law of rewards; first, by abstaining from interference with that law; and second, by preventing interference by individuals. No defense need be made of the righteousness of this law; just in so far as the government can make it possible for each individual to draw from society according to his contribution to the welfare of society it will encourage the maximum of effort on the part of the individual and, therefore, on the part of society as a whole. If some receive more than their share, others will necessarily receive less than their share–the very essence of injustice; the former will become indolent because work is not required of them and the latter will grow desperate because their toil is not fairly rewarded. Injustice is the greatest enemy of government.

But there is a sphere which the government cannot and should not invade. The government’s work ends when it has insured just rewards by preventing unjust profits, but even a just government cannot bring about an equal distribution of happiness. It can and should guarantee equality before the law–that is, equality of opportunity and equal treatment at the hand of the government–but that will not insure equal prosperity to each or bestow on all an equal amount of enjoyment. Ability will have to be taken into consideration, and likewise, industry, integrity and many other factors.

While the government can encourage all the virtues it cannot compel them; there is a zone between that Which can be legally required and that which is morally desirable. When the government has done all in its power–all that it can do and all that it should do–there will be inequalities in success, based upon inequalities in merit. There must, therefore, be a spiritual law to govern when the statute law, based upon economic principles, has reached its limit.

Christ suggests such a law–the law of stewardship. We hold what we have–no matter how justly acquired–in trust. That which is ours by economic right and by the government’s permission, is not ours to waste. We have no more moral right to squander it foolishly than we have to throw away our bodily strength, our mental energy or our moral worth.

When we analyze ourselves we find that there is little of real value in us for which we can claim sole credit. We inherit much from ancestry and draw much from environment long before we are able to choose our surroundings. The ideals which come to us from others will account for nearly all that we do not derive from the past and from those among whom we spend our youth. If one has accepted Christ, received forgiveness of sin and been brought into living contact with the Heavenly Father, he becomes indebted beyond the power of language to describe. Our indebtedness if discharged at all must be paid not, as a rule, to those who have contributed most largely to making us what we are, but by general service to those now living and to those who succeed us. Our debtors are as impersonal as our creditors.

Nothing could contribute more to the security of the government than an approximation to the divine standard of rewards, and if all then recognized and obeyed the law of stewardship nearly all the complaint that would still exist would be silenced by the volunteer service rendered by the fortunate to the unfortunate.

“The mob”–the terror of orderly government–has been described by Victor Hugo as “the human race in misery.” When the brotherhood of Christ is established a just standard of rewards will abolish law-made