LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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Works of John Ba scorn 

Esthetics 

Comparative Psychology 

Evolution and Religion 

Historical Interpretation of Philosophy 

Natural Theology 

New Theology 

Philosophy of English Literature 

Philosophy of Religion 

Philosophy of Rhetoric 

Problems in Philosophy 

Science of Mind 

Sociology 

Growth of Nationality in the United States 

Social Theory 

The Goodness of God 

The Words of Christ 

Things Learned by Living 



Sermons and Addresses 



By 

John Bascom 



Author of "The New Theology," " The Words of Christ as 

Principles of Personal and Social Growth," "The 

Goodness of God," etc. 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

Ube Iftnfcfterbocftet press 

1913 






Copyright, 1913 

BY 

P. BASCOM 



ICbe Iftntcfcerbocfeer iprees, "fflew tyovk 



'CJ.A246687 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

The Lord's Prayer i 

Address to Association of Ministers . 124 

An Address to the Graduating Class of 

the Palmer High School . . .150 

Phi Beta Kappa Address . . . .171 

The Field Is the World .... 202 

Philistinism 225 

What Is the World's Purpose ? . . 258 

Knowledge 283 

Romans I : 17 . . . , . 328 

Luke X : 38-42 341 



Sermons and Addresses 



THE LORD'S PRAYER 

/^VUR Lord's Prayer is the most concise and 
^^ comprehensive expression of the Spirit of 
Christianity. Its constant use in worship, public 
and private, is in recognition of its character as 
of the very substance of our faith. Prayer, 
though it readily drops into formality and insin- 
cerity, is yet the truest expression of our spiritual 
life. One in praying for what he desires is pour- 
ing out, from the fountain of the heart, its inmost 
streams. The fact that so many, with at least 
some degree of appreciation, can join in these 
simple words of our Lord's Prayer reveals its 
identity with our common spiritual experience. 
A most obvious feature of this prayer is its 
brevity. It comes under the principle, "Ye shall 
not be heard for your much speaking"; a prin- 
ciple so in conflict with human practice. As 



2 The Lord's Prayer 

shown in the prayer wheels of the Buddhist and 
in the petitions of our Puritan fathers, the road 
up to heaven has been thought to be a long and 
fatiguing one. The shorter the prayer the closer 
the access. Ejaculatory prayer flings us at once 
on the divine bosom. 

The Lord's Prayer is social. This is involved 
both in the forms of the petitions and in their sub- 
stance. The things asked for are the Kingdom of 
Heaven, daily bread, forgiveness, deliverance from 
temptation; wants which press upon us all day 
by day. There is little prayer of a private order. 
The spirit may have its own temptations with 
which it is in bitter struggle, yet even then it 
finds itself associated with the common life. The 
temptation is a snare to the man himself, but it is 
also a snare to others. Prayer cannot carry a 
tinge of selfishness. Selfishness estranges us 
from God, estranges us from others, estranges us 
from our proper selves. The Lord's Prayer 
carries a blessing with it in the measure in which 
it springs from many hearts and bears them all 
over into the common welfare. Thus only does 
this kingdom come. 

The Lord's Prayer is exceedingly comprehen- 
sive. It is this which makes its constant use so 
fitting and yet so difficult. It is hard to keep 



The Lord's Prayer 3 

the mind up to the measure of the prayer. We 
utter it at different times with very different 
degrees of appreciation. Our prayers, floating 
on the same surface, draw very different depths 
of water. Sometimes our thoughts skim along 
in shallow places, and sometimes, like well-laden 
vessels, they lie deep in the sea and find their way 
into leading ports. It is these hidden fathoms 
beneath the surface that measure our petitions. 

We start in affectionate dependence: Our 
Father which art in Heaven. To this we add 
reverence: Hallowed be thy name. Thence we 
stretch upward to the kingdom, the doing of the 
divine will by all everywhere. This is the summit. 
From this throne of peace we turn downward, 
passing to the world as it is in its wants, passions, 
and perplexities. We ask for daily bread, for 
forgiveness, for power against temptation, and 
we close all with the feeling that all is in God's 
hand, kingdom, power, glory, and will come out 
of that hand in its own order and beauty. Thus 
with face upward we struggle to the top of some 
high mountain, and having caught the vision of 
power and the spirit of repose, turn back to 
familiar objects and daily duties. 

What more can we, though in a world of toil, 
suffering, and disaster, either need or desire be- 



4 The Lord's Prayer 

yond these few common and comprehensive words 
of prayer, by which we go up to the House of God 
and return again, cheerful and refreshed? 

The Lord's Prayer strikes us at once by its 
brevity, its social quality, and its comprehensive- 
ness; and these traits prepare us to look more 
closely at its construction. It involves or assumes 
at once the character of God, to whom we pray 
and with whom we work. There is no dogma 
in the prayer. If we applied to it the severest 
analysis, it would yield a small creed, and no 
other creed than that contained in the world 
about us. We are walking with God in the 
world, and this prayer helps us to acquire a 
knowledge of his purposes, the tasks assigned us, 
and their method of fulfillment — all in harmony 
with our own experience. The prayer is not 
didactic, is not dictatorial, but it assumes a great 
deal. It presupposes that we have found God, 
or are finding him, in the world ; have some notion 
of his kingdom; are in the school of repentance; 
know the danger of falling off by ourselves; and 
feel the constant need of the divine presence. 
The prayer takes the world as it is, takes us as 
we are, and busies itself in working all up into 
the Kingdom of Heaven. It allies us with God 
and God with us: we with him moving toward a 



The Lord's Prayer 5 

new creation. It does not allow us to draw back 
from God, to make terms with him, or to draw up a 
plan of salvation. It treats this as already done, 
and sweeps us into a method already in full oper- 
ation, that we may both accept its labors and 
share its rewards. In the measure in which we 
live and move and have our being in God will 
this petition be intelligible to us, our whole hearts 
passing into its supplication. The relations it in- 
volves are those of children to parents, the weak 
to the strong, the ignorant to the wise. Guidance 
and aid are in immediate transfer from God 
to us, all sharing with us. There is no opposition 
of life to life, but a profound ministration, con- 
sciously and unconsciously, of the world and of 
God to us. The questions of free will, decrees, 
election, do not arise. Our wants, our desires, are 
too close upon their object to admit of any such 
postponements and delays. We are in the very 
act of arriving at the divine mind. We are not 
framing an anatomy of bones, but are feeling 
the blood circulate in our own hearts. We do, 
indeed, meet God in the laws of nature, the laws 
of mind, the laws of society; but we are also meet- 
ing him in the law of labor, and there is no yoke 
upon our necks. All the world pulls with us 
and the kingdom once established, we cannot 



6 The Lord's Prayer 

divide it; so much for us, so much for others, so 
much for God. Each and all have an indivisible 
and an inseparable part in it. The beauty of 
our performance is that it is his work, and the 
beauty of his work that it has become our per- 
formance. The willing and the doing are all one. 
The world is being framed into his kingdom, of 
the same mind throughout. 

This disclosure of all things in the character 
of God leads us to a second characteristic of this 
prayer. It goes far to fulfill itself. He who can 
offer it is in the process of salvation. His eyes 
are being opened to the light, the light is coming 
to quicken and to invigorate his life. The disciples 
asked Christ to teach them how to pray, as John 
had taught his disciples. This was the response, 
the Lord's Prayer, which from that day to this 
has been the one path heavenward. To utter 
this prayer is to follow in the steps of Christ, as 
he prayed unto the Father. 

How utterly do we mistake prayer, and our own 
prayers. We think God difficult of access, slow 
to hear, and still slower to answer our petitions. 
The heavens often seem to men brass over their 
heads and the earth iron under their feet. To 
understand this feeling we need to understand 
the attitude which men, half unconsciously, take 



The Lord's Prayer 7 

toward God. They are not so anxious to learn 
of God, to receive their life from him, as they are 
to put their desires on God and to persuade him to 
conform to their wishes. "Ye ask and receive not 
because ye ask amiss that ye may consume it on 
your lusts. " The passionate child does not under- 
stand the love of the father. This is what occa- 
sions the division between them, and makes the 
case of the child critical. A better apprehension 
will heal all things. "If any man lack wisdom 
let him ask of God. " When we can pray for the 
kingdom, we shall begin at once to enter into that 
kingdom. Our first difficulty is to feel the need 
of it. When we comprehend the Lord's Prayer, 
we have been taught not only how to pray, but 
are well along in the answer to prayer. Only 
rarely do we really wish the Kingdom of Heaven, 
with its corrected and purified life, its constant 
heedfulness, its easy self-denial, its pervasive love. 
In our cities, our church spires tower up above 
crimes, transgressions, miseries of which we know 
but little, and are only vaguely anxious to remedy. 
Slums contaminate the moral atmosphere far 
and wide, and make the kingdom impossible. 
The kingdom is waiting for us, not a kingdom of 
indulgence, nor yet of abstinence, but of pure 
enjoyments widely scattered. To pray for that 



8 The Lord's Prayer 

kingdom is to win a heart in keeping with it. 
Christians need a deeper repentance that they 
may draw near the centers of human life. The 
debased need a new repentance that they too may 
find their way into the world's gifts. We all need 
a truer sense of failure, that we may together 
approach the temper of Christ more apprehen- 
sively, that we may unite in an industry self- 
sustaining, all-sustaining, and so creep and walk 
and run toward our common kingdom, the King- 
dom of Heaven. 

The Lord's Prayer fulfills itself, not as heed- 
lessly uttered but as deeply and habitually felt. 
What we gain from the prayer is not merely the 
prayer, but the very temper which the prayer 
implies and invokes. Our thoughts and hearts 
flow heavenward, flow together, and so a transla- 
tion overtakes us akin to the prayer. Prayer 
is thus one of those changes by which the river 
of life is filled and flows freely. The ice in the 
winter stream softens, weakens, breaks up, and 
floats away, and we have the open, warm, beauti- 
ful current once more. 

We are in a world in which the best things, the 
living things, have a pushing force all their own, 
a power by which they reach the light, and break 
out in flower and fragrance and fruit. This is 



The Lord's Prayer 9 

the inmost nature of the world, not the world 
which is a trio with the flesh and the devil, but 
the world of God's ordination which is traveling 
toward the kingdom; the world which has for us 
so many gifts of nourishment, of pleasure, and of 
power, the world which enlarges itself under our 
hand, teaching and rewarding every form of art; 
the world which brings us back to peace, and 
expels the untrue and the deformed by the true, 
the beautiful, and the good. If this upward 
growth were not the deepest meaning of the world, 
if God did not build with those who build with 
him, how contemptible would be our labor, how 
pitiful our prayer. 

Men have thought that the world needed to be 
purified by fire. We might as well think of 
purifying the forest by fire, turning the growth of 
centuries into smoke and ashes. Growth is the 
purifying force. By it all that is good is knit 
together, and all that is evil, in its very decay, 
is made to minister to the good. There is nothing 
so powerful as a just ideal. It lays hold of us 
in our best moments, and returns to us in our 
failures. It brightens our thoughts; nothing 
inferior can abide in its presence. Even when 
we turn from it, it pursues us and draws us once 
more to itself. Thus the whole world, physical 



io The Lord's Prayer 

and spiritual, discloses the truth, attracts us by 
the truth, and ultimately reconciles all things in 
the truth; the evil harassed in their transgres- 
sions, the good justified in their goodness. Thus 
is it in the Lord's Prayer. He who can half utter 
it, learns soon to utter it all, teaches others to 
utter it with him, until the current of love, deep- 
ened, purified, comes to be the river of life, flowing 
through the New Jerusalem. Thus we may say, 
the moment any human heart can pour itself out 
in the prayer, thy kingdom come, that moment 
the kingdom is assured; more and more water 
will flow this way. The prayer completes itself; 
the forces of life have found their true vent. One 
thing we are always to be confident of, the good 
is in the way of becoming the real, for that very 
end it has been disclosed to us. We may not 
expect that the work of a thousand years will be 
done in a single day, but that it will be done, and 
done the more effectually because of this seeming 
delay. 

All this means, in the third place, that this 
prayer is preeminently spiritual. It is spiritual 
in that for which it asks, and it is spiritual in its 
answer. By spiritual we mean that it pertains 
to thoughts, affections, invisible things. It does 
not seek sensuous objects, nor is it met by them. 



The Lord's Prayer u 

The only petition which seems to be sensuous is, 
Give us this day our daily bread, but it gets this 
color by making the word bread too narrow and 
literal, and the giving external transfer. We are 
not seeking to be fed, like Elijah by the ravens, 
but that our entire life, intellectual and physical, 
may be nourished under that inclusive providence 
by which God responds to us and we to him, on 
our side by labor, on his side by the harvests of 
labor. What we come to understand throughout 
in this prayer is the mind of God. What we come 
to do by means of the prayer is to work cheerfully 
and intelligently with him in the fulfillment of his 
purposes. The things changed are our apprehen- 
sion of divine favor, and our attitude toward his 
kingdom. We are reconciled to the methods and 
purposes of God, and come to make them our 
own. We, who have misunderstood the world, 
who have been ignorant of the divine love, who 
have misapprehended also our own wants and the 
suitable forms of action, are now coming to see all, 
to accept all, and with a glad heart to follow in the 
path of obedience. We have entered into fellow- 
ship with God, with the world, with our fellow - 
men, and with ourselves. Our thoughts are no 
longer confused, our feelings perverted ; we are find- 
ing the true path and are walking cheerfully in it. 



12 The Lord's Prayer 

The world is not remade to suit a vagrant wish, we 
are remade in our activity toward it, and in our 
life under it. The Lord's Prayer is the substance 
of our faith. No sooner do we believe than the 
words come to our lips; Our Father which art 
in heaven. We feel his presence and go forward 
under his hand. 

Men utterly mistake the world. Physical things, 
they fancy, are chiefly to be sought after, are to 
be carefully divided among men, are to be owned, 
are to be secured with a selfish temper and used 
with a negligent one. This is not the Lord's 
Prayer. We are to be helped of God, and to help 
forward his beneficent work. Life is to minister 
to life in all its phases. No creeds, no rituals 
define or measure our services. We simply enter, 
actively and passively, into the divine and uni- 
versal love. A loving personality is at the center 
of all things, and we find our salvation in drawing 
near to him. 

The natural world has more frequently been 
to men a hard, stubborn, unsympathetic thing. 
They have found some pleasure in subduing it, 
but they have frequently been cast down by it and 
have suffered unspeakable things from it. Their 
fellow-men have rendered them meager and grudg- 
ing aid, have not infrequently taken sides with 



The Lord's Prayer 13 

the evil. The world has thus, in its true character, 
been hidden from men. They have not compre- 
hended its many and delicate adaptations, its 
moods of discipline, its demands for patience, 
its rewards of skill, the blessedness of its final 
reaction on mind and heart. This is the real 
lesson of life, this the divine revelation that we 
are all held in the divine embrace, as the child in 
the arms of its mother, and need simply to grow 
up in and under this wise and unbounded love. 
The world is thus immensely altered, but it is 
altered from within not from without. 

Men cling to the notion of an external change, 
a change in the conditions of life, not in the life 
itself. Men lack insight, lack courage, lack 
sympathy, the spirit of aidfulness. Even when 
they see the road to be well made, and to lie in the 
right direction, they still would have it shorter, 
its milestones nearer together, or some swift 
vehicle to carry them over the distances. All 
this is impossible, the distances cannot be short- 
ened, the milestones huddled, the labor done by 
others. The change in each heart must take 
place fully, the road itself must become a delight, 
and all, by successive stages of growth, be trans- 
formed into the Kingdom of Heaven. In this 
transformation the Lord's Prayer gives us im- 



14 The Lord's Prayer 

mediate and immense help — not when we have 
worn it out by indifferent utterance, but when we 
have passed into its very temper by the slow trans- 
lation of knowledge, experience, and love. We are 
to overcome the world as the strong man over- 
comes the cold, by the heat of his own labor. 
God keeps the discipline true to itself, true to his 
wisdom and love; let our lives find way in that 
discipline and we are saved, the world is trans- 
formed, and God rules in and over all. For thine 
is the kingdom and the power and the glory for- 
ever. Amen. 

OUR FATHER WHICH ART IN HEAVEN 

There is no portion even of the New Testa- 
ment more compactly full of spiritual truth 
than the Lord's Prayer. A prayer designed for 
constant and universal use must, from the nature 
of the case, contain the very substance of faith; 
must, in the direction it gives to the mind, carry 
it straight forward to the very heart of things. 
We can look nowhere more advantageously for 
the gist of Christianity than to our Lord's Prayer. 
It is the simplest and most direct expression of the 
desires which should lie uppermost in the devout 
spirit. 

As we are now in the frequent use of this prayer 



The Lord's Prayer 15 

to guide public worship, we have the more occasion 
for pains that we penetrate to its true temper, 
and give its familiar words their vital force. The 
feet of men easily convert any road into a dusty 
thoroughfare, with few pleasures of its own, a 
mere passageway to something beyond. If we 
are to maintain, in connection with this constant 
repetition, the fresh feeling of prayer, these simple 
words must be renewed by meditation, and made 
to retain the depths which belong to them. The 
transparent wisdom of these petitions, like the 
beauty of the blue sky, must return to us again 
and again as a staple element in our spiritual 
lives. They must be to us the familiar form of 
things inexhaustible. 

The words of address, Our Father which art 
in heaven, are the most tender and intelligible 
possible. There is no effort of exaltation or ad- 
oration in them. We are placed by them on the 
most direct and simple terms of communication 
with God. Let us consider them in an inverse 
order. The words, which art in heaven, axe 
added as a designation of the invisible, the uni- 
versal Father. They lift the mind to the final 
limit of giving and care-taking in this world of 
ours. As the heavens lie about us everywhere 
and enclose us in their embrace they best express 



16 The Lord's Prayer 

to us the divine and universal presence. The 
heavens receive, and on occasion yield, many- 
subtle agents. Gravitation, heat, light, elec- 
tricity, ozone, and the gaseous elements penetrate 
these spaces, and come thence as potent forces 
acting upon our lives in many scrutable and 
inscrutable ways. The heavens, therefore, easily 
seem to us the seat of that most comprehensive 
power which girds us in. Men have no difficulty 
in regarding the air as the home of spirits, passing 
from invisible to visible forms as suits their 
convenience. The universal spirit is thus the 
spirit of the air, the spirit that dwells in heavenly 
places. 

In rude periods men pass in thought more 
readily beyond the visible and tangible than they 
do in cultivated periods. It is no tax on their 
faith to conceive of spirits melting into the air, 
or coming out of the air, that they may reveal 
themselves to men. It is a vision as simple as 
the coming and going of clouds, seen, unseen, seen 
again. This very facility of early faith has be- 
come to us an obstacle in approaching the Infi- 
nite Spirit. Having expelled these many spirits, 
malevolent and benevolent, of human and of 
superhuman origin, from their home in the air, 
we have difficulty in retaining a sense of the ever- 



The Lord's Prayer 17 

present creative Spirit, from whom this visible 
pageant of things is constantly proceeding. Men, 
having found their way into the invisible world 
by means of many illusions, lose it again when 
these are discarded as superstitious. A universal 
Father associated with the heavens only because 
these are the best expression to us of a comprehen- 
sive and invisible presence, becomes an obscure 
conception to our sensuous experience. It either 
slips into empty words, or overpowers us with 
sudden fear. To make the presence of God a 
familiar, cheerful, and habitual impression becomes 
the great discipline of faith. Yet there is nothing 
with which we are more familiar, in all our 
thoughts, than invisible agents, whose presence 
is the very substance of the phenomena with which 
we are occupied. Force is the word by which we 
chiefly express the inner energy of physical facts — 
that without which they would be to us mere 
shadows, the dreams of dreamland. The effects 
of forces are the permanent and tangible things, 
and events everywhere about us disclose them to 
us, but the forces themselves are an invisible 
presence, evoked by the mind in explanation of 
these events. The equivalence of forces, that 
is that forces are in their expression convertible 
into one another, and are measures of one another, 



1 8 The Lord's Prayer 

is a great cardinal fact of physics. Yet it implies 
in all physical phenomena, whether mechanical 
or chemical, permanent agents, subject, in their 
manifestation, to mathematical measurements. 
This invisible something which we call force, and 
which has so many ways of manifesting itself, is a 
permanent factor by which we understand the 
physical world and bend it to our uses. 

In the organic world we have another name 
for an invisible element, to wit, life. Each form 
of living thing is a new character in which this 
constructive tendency, this pervasive life, records 
itself. We cannot think, nor talk, nor act, in 
connection with the vegetable or animal kingdoms, 
without this notion of life, this distinction between 
the dead and the living; and yet we never reach 
life by the senses. We cannot assign it a single 
characteristic, but simply use it as an invisible 
organic energy in connection with which all living 
phenomena are apprehensible. 

We come in yet closer contact with the in- 
visible in our own spirits. There is a spirit in 
man; that is an affirmation which underlies every 
notion of intellectual life. Men have striven to 
give definite form and exact position in the brain 
to this spirit which animates human action. They 
have thought of it as a dove, perched on the 



The Lord's Prayer 19 

pineal gland, but no intelligible purpose has been 
subserved by such a notion. The formless spirit 
must be left to pervade the body, to use freely 
all its members, but must be allowed to come 
into no local subjection or submission to any of 
them. It is an invisible presence in the body, 
its own narrow and primary universe. Why, 
therefore, dealing as we do with a world full of 
intangible terms, should we have any difficulty in 
accepting an Infinite Spirit, whose personal 
presence animates, shapes, and bears forward the 
universe as one harmonious product? The pres- 
ence of the mind in the body and of God in the 
world are facts of so much the same order, that 
if we deny the one we endanger the other. Our 
own spiritual life, associated with the body but 
not identical with it, is the image of the events of 
the world about us in their dependence on the per- 
vasive, eternal Spirit of order. If we strike at the 
being of God, we strike at our own being. If we 
find no controlling Spirit in the wide and well- 
ordered phenomena of the world, we are weakening 
the conditions of thought under which we rally 
to ourselves in the narrower and less well-ordered 
events of our own lives. The power to find the 
invisible Spirit who dwells in heaven is akin to the 
power by which we find every invisible agent 



20 The Lord's Prayer 

behind the veil of phenomena; the power by 
which we penetrate into real being. When one 
says, the strength in my right arm, the life in my 
blood, the soul in my body, he throws himself 
back in the same way on the unseen as he does 
when he says, Our Father which art in Heaven. 
These words are the last, the most comprehensive, 
and the most logical of those conceptions by 
which we gather all things together, making them 
part and parcel of one universe. It is thus true 
of our thinking, that it lives and moves and has its 
being in God. 

To reach the invisible in things means science, 
civilization; to reach it in living organisms means 
physiology, hygiene ; to attain to it in the world as 
one whole means philosophy, religion. 

Father — Our Father which art in Heaven. We 
are readily misled by the assumption that fa- 
miliar words have essentially the same meaning 
for us all. Far from it. They gather their form 
and color from our own experience. Like a 
weather-vane, they may point east or west, 
north or south, according to the wind that is 
blowing on them. Father may mean to the 
street waif an ugly tyrant whose presence and 
exactions are to be shunned. It may mean to the 
affectionate and well- trained child, the most 



The Lord's Prayer 21 

constant and immediate expression of wisdom 
and good-will. It is true, that by the suggestion 
of contrast, the repulsive parent may sometimes 
awaken the sense of more perfect character. So 
beneficent is nature that the dirty pool in one's 
pathway may reflect the blue sky. Yet, as a 
general principle, the flavor of words, like the 
flavor of food, depends on the appetites and 
experiences of those who employ them. 

All that is best in human life has been at work 
for centuries to furnish out this one word, father, 
with substantial qualities and delightful associa- 
tions, until it has come to stand for that which is 
central in human welfare. By ten thousand acts 
of good-will we have framed a ladder of human 
affections, which, being set up, reaches into the 
clouds, and on which, as in the vision of Jacob, 
angels ascend and descend, bearing our thoughts 
from the seen to the unseen, from the highest 
wealth of the present life to a reciprocal wealth 
in a future life. No parent has rendered parental 
duty, and no child, filial duty; neither of them 
has entered into household love, without uniting 
earth to heaven and giving us the key of both. 
We draw near God when we shape human affec- 
tions into the fine art of life. 

The ideas most prominent in fatherhood, which 



22 The Lord's Prayer 

stands for the parental relation on both sides — 
father and mother — are protection, guidance, and 
good- will. The world is full of protection, not 
obviously and blindly so, but as its deepest and 
most reliable relation. All the marvelous life 
of the world has grown up under the hand of the 
world. When we think of protection, it is chiefly 
physical protection, but God's protection runs 
through the whole circuit of our being, physical, 
intellectual, and spiritual, and so becomes a very 
complex fact. We are not enclosed in a shell 
thick enough to shed all blows, and so ready to 
suspend and to smother our reflective powers. It 
is not a passive, but an active state that God 
contemplates and watches over. We are girt 
about with a diversified and magnificent world 
as the condition of our safety, and our safety 
includes all the ministrations of life. 

This protection passes at once into the higher 
function of guidance. We must be safe, but we 
must be safe moving among great events and 
taking part in them. This safety abolishes 
indolence and the hasty demand for pleasure, 
and sends us out with girded loins on the highway 
of effort. But guidance no more than protection 
is thrust upon us. It is the response of all within 
us to all without us, of the mind to wisdom and of 



The Lord's Prayer 23 

wisdom to the mind. It is the play of the world 
upon the spirit and of the spirit upon the world, 
the possibilities of life springing up between them. 
Because we are guided so gently, so much from 
within, and into ways so exhaustless, we are apt 
to feel that we are not guided at all. We are 
waiting to be picked up and carried somewhere, 
when the carrying process moves the body only 
and not the mind. God gives us a guidance that 
impels us forward in the intellectual and spiritual 
field, and so is inseparable from our own vision. 
The whole process is vital. Our activity and the 
activity of God toward us are as indivisible as are 
the air and the lungs in breathing. 

But that which especially compacts parental 
relation, and makes its protection and guidance 
nutritive, is affection. This is as the mantle 
which the shell-fish casts over the growing parts and 
which renders them perfect in form, texture, and 
color. It is affection which distinguishes parental 
aid from other forms of help, and causes the help 
to spring up as mutual pleasure. It is on this 
footing that the Lord's Prayer places us. We 
come as children, with the claims, the hopes, and 
the love of children. It matters not if our thoughts 
are confused, and our asking inadequate. We 
have found wisdom and love, whose very office 



24 The Lord's Prayer 

it is to correct these failures, to give shelter, and 
to turn shelter into rest. As the expert swimmer 
flings himself upon the deep water, we cast our- 
selves on the large mercies of God, feeling that the 
good-will and the wisdom united in them are 
sure to buoy us up. 

Our Father. No man knows with whom he 
may stand, praying unto God, but with whomso- 
ever he stands his first word is our, our Father. 
One faith and one relation unites him and them 
inseparably. There are no closer unions than 
those of the household, unions that all our lives 
are spent in translating into spiritual terms. To 
call the same man father, the same woman mother, 
means the summation of obligations. If we are 
of the same household, we have essentially the 
same rights in it. That which is the source of all 
parental love is equally for all. If God is our 
common Father, the world is our common home, 
to hold and to enjoy with constant reference to 
each other. Traveling on the mountains I have 
occasionally met the notice, "No trespassing on 
these premises allowed." How came this man 
to own so much of the world? By what right 
does he shut me into the highway? The only 
exclusion that has in it any rightfulness is an 
exclusion for the common benefit, a keeping off 



The Lord's Prayer 25 

the grass that the grass may not be trodden into 
mire but may remain a carpet, spread by the di- 
vine hand for us all. 

What a thing it is to stand before God with the 
whole human household, and say, Our Father! 
What a springing up of rights and duties on all 
sides ! What a sense of the universality of human 
welfare! What a disclosure of the depths of 
divine love! What a pouring out of affections in 
full tide in the thousand channels which belong 
to them ! 

If we are able to say with any fair apprehension 
these brief introductory words, Our Father which 
art in heaven, we have the attitude of prayer. 
We have united ourselves one and all by invisible 
bonds to the invisible source of strength. The 
words that follow may well be few. The vital 
relation is established. We are brothers and 
God is our Father. All spiritual movement be- 
comes assured. We stand in the porch of the 
temple. Its peace has overtaken us. 

The words which follow are hardly more than 
the amplification of these first words, the opening 
into blossom of the compact bud of sonship. The 
mind full of so comprehensive an idea cannot 
fritter itself away in phraseology. The whole 
truth is with us. The atmosphere is full of it. 



26 The Lord's Prayer 

We need only to stand still in the divine presence. 
Speech is meant for small things. It is an im- 
pertinent reduction of large things. 

How certainly must a prayer, so begun, be 
answered. The mind and heart are made at 
once receptive of all spiritual good. The plant 
has spread its leaves in the warm sunlight and 
how can it do otherwise than grow! No new 
thing, no great thing, needs to be done; only the 
blessedness of what is must come to be felt; only 
the response of living things to one another, pro- 
vided for from the foundation of the world, must 
have way. By asking for the Kingdom of Heaven 
we are lifted into the Kingdom of Heaven, by 
seeking for the will of God, the will of God flows 
into us and is itself accomplished. We understand 
what Christ means when he says, " He that asketh 
receiveth, he that seeketh findeth, and he that 
knocketh, to him it is opened." We are uneasy 
in the world, we worry and we find no rest, be- 
cause the vital connection has not been established, 
because we have never quite said, Our Father. 
Once we find this living surface, and receive 
life from it, we are as restful as the infant on 
the bosom of the mother. The whole world 
nourishes us, and we go to sleep in its arms. It 
has been made for us, as certainly as we have 



The Lord's Prayer 27 

been made for it. The purpose of God embraces 
us, the Kingdom of Heaven gathers us in, and 
the grand procedure of events goes on its way 
with that absolute and comprehensive certainty 
which is the foundation of all truth. All that 
is best and most enjoyable in human relations is 
present to speak to us of heavenly relations, and 
to prepare us for them. We sum up all good, pres- 
ent and future, in words interpreted by the best 
things we have known. Our Father which art in 
heaven — is this the prophecy and fulfillment of our 
entire lives? 

HALLOWED BE THY NAME 

A name has very little more direct connection 
with the person designated by it than has the 
chalk mark with the stick of timber to which we 
have applied it. Both are merely guides to our 
thoughts. Yet so spiritual is man, so readily does 
the invisible world take on form, that the name 
comes to stand for a great personality — and all the 
real and imaginary characteristics that are at- 
tached to it. Such a name as Plato becomes a 
milestone in the progress of philosophy, like one 
of those conspicuous crosses which the English 
built where a famous funeral cortege had rested. 
Names are the rings and reef -lines by which the 



28 The Lord's Prayer 

otherwise flapping sails are held to the mast and 
boom, and so made to tug at the hull buried in the 
sea. We catch the winds in the spiritual world by 
virtue of the heroes who have gone before us. If 
these names should slip their hold, how many 
noble incentives would be lost, frayed into noth- 
ingness like a flag worn out by ceaseless, aimless 
motion. It is the slightly, yet permanently sensu- 
ous character of words that causes them to be- 
come the center of so much spiritual propagation, 
enabling them to loop up and to hold together all 
that is significant and attractive in human history. 

The spiritual potency of names has been es- 
pecially conspicuous in religion. Mystery and 
reverence and awe have gathered about the desig- 
nations of God, as if they were in some way a 
condensed expression of his attributes, as if the 
stupidity and spite of men could in no manner 
be so plainly vented as in the heedless use of 
these names, carrying such a load of suggestion. 
Not only could the name of God be profaned, this 
profanity, it was thought, took hold of the mind 
of God in some startling way. "Thou shalt not 
take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for 
the Lord will not hold him guiltless who taketh 
his name in vain." 

The third commandment affords a good illus- 



The Lord's Prayer 29 

tration of what, from one point of view, may 
have little foundation — in this case the extreme 
awe of a name — and may, from another point of 
view, become a command of primary importance. 
The ill-grounded fear of the name stood for the 
well-grounded fear of God. The superstitions of 
the world are often, like other errors of judg- 
ment, the stepping-stones by which men move 
onward. 

The same association, in a more general form, 
enters into this first petition of the Lord's Prayer. 
Hallowed be thy name. The name is accepted as 
the most direct expression of personality, and the 
prayer is that this symbol of the divine presence 
may be kept holy, and our reverence of divine 
things be made apparent in all its uses. While 
that which we are to hallow, to keep holy, is figura- 
tively the name of God, that which by the inter- 
vention of this symbol we are to keep holy, is 
the plan and purpose of God in the world. That 
which is constantly to be present with us, as under- 
lying all things, is the divine thought. This is to 
be arrived at reverently, watched over assiduously, 
and carried forward to its completion. We are to 
feel that we walk with God in his works, and have 
a part assigned us in their completion. We move, 
therefore, cautiously, that nothing may be missed 



3o The Lord's Prayer 

or marred in the grand fulfillment. We enter on 
every undertaking with the sense that there is a 
divine law, a divine method, applicable to it, by 
which its inner force and idea can be secured. 
Wherever we are, we are there reverently, to ob- 
serve the great things that are going forward, and 
to help them on. There is one whole, and to attain 
that is holiness. We are no longer dealing with the 
name of God as a word, but with it as the most im- 
mediate and sensuous expression of his presence. 
What we have to hallow, and what we are pray- 
ing may be hallowed, is the underlying thought 
of God, the movement of the world toward its 
spiritual completion. 

The sin of profanity lies chiefly in its reaction on 
the mind guilty of it. It brings disturbance to our 
knowledge of God's ways, to our apprehension of 
good and evil in the world. It is the recoil of our 
thoughts against themselves as we strike against 
God's goodness; a benumbing contact from which 
we do not readily recover. 

Sacrilege is a sin of large proportions, present in 
all, even in the grossest forms of faith; yet a sin 
greatly misapprehended. What are the things 
that we are to keep whole because the divine mind 
is in them? All the things which, by one form of 
unfolding or another, one species of growth or 



The Lord's Prayer 31 

another, are being gathered together and harmon- 
ized in the Kingdom of Heaven. This steady 
evolution, which is in so many ways our study, 
in which our lives and the labors of our lives are 
wrapped up, serves, from beginning to end, to 
declare to us the divine mind ; to put us with it on 
terms of sympathy and participation, by which we 
and it and all things are hallowed. 

The physical world takes on ever a more com- 
plete expression, passes through fresh creative 
phases into more admirable forms — fertile plains, 
pleasant fields, hills and mountains carved into 
shape — and so comes into possession of that 
abounding use and redundant beauty that are 
everywhere enthroned in it. It is sacrilege to mar 
the world, to push it back into chaos, as if God's 
life were not in it. The gulch miner, who tears 
the world into shreds, who undoes in a few hours 
the constructive work of centuries, and who leaves 
behind him a confusion of all form and a waste of 
all permanent wealth that he may gather the few 
particles of gold scattered in the deposit, is sacri- 
legious, and the verbal profanity which is so likely 
to attend on the process is only the audible utter- 
ance of that stream of desecrating thought which 
runs through his life. The spring and autumnal 
fires that waste our mountains are as much sacri- 



32 The Lord's Prayer 

lege as the smoke of an unclean sacrifice on an 
altar. Though the saints have often devoted the 
world to a final purgation of fire, and though the 
sinners would long since have burned it to ashes 
were it less inflammable, it yet remains a divine 
creation, ever taking on new, superb, and bene- 
ficent expression. He who mars the world or 
thwarts its fulfillment or fills it with his own 
rubbish has not yet come to the meaning of the 
petition. Hallowed be thy name. 

The first, most visible, varied, and universal 
gift to the world, and gift of the world to us, is 
the vegetable kingdom. Here the process of deco- 
ration commences, the rocky framework is cov- 
ered, and the modest flower and the majestic tree 
take their places, perfecting those moods of grand- 
eur and seclusion in which nature abounds. We 
owe a certain spite to people who waste the flowers 
or devastate the forests, stripping away the gar- 
ments with which the world has clothed itself. 
This is the temper of the human cub, the evil- 
minded boy, who looks both ways to see if any 
eye is on him, and then, in the sheer wantonness 
of his vulgar soul, proceeds to mar every fitting 
thing within his reach. It is against such pro- 
cedure in the man and boy that the whole heart 
cries out, Hallowed be thy name, for thy name is 



The Lord's Prayer 33 

beauty and life. Not until this acclamation be- 
comes native to us shall we so much as reach the 
threshold of a divine life. 

When we come to the animal kingdom, fellow- 
ship gathers depth. Sympathy means pleasure on 
both sides. Injury means pain here and brutal- 
ity there. The murderous inflictions of men upon 
animals, and the cry of agony that goes with them, 
are a creeping undertone, a subdued curse, that 
tell of the diabolical discord of the world, a tearing 
asunder of the garment of peace with which God 
is striving to clothe it. 

When the pleasure of men is found in the 
wanton destruction of animal life, and the knowl- 
edge of man in the deliberate and prolonged tor- 
tures of vivisection; when from every spiracle in 
the spiritual world there still come sulphurous 
fumes as if only a thin conventionalism of soft 
words covered the molten hearts of men, and their 
passions were not yet so far cooled down that they 
could enter into the joy of living, the soul is de- 
secrated, and with desecrating tread of pride and 
scorn and cruelty goes trampling down the good 
and loving and beautiful things God has made. 
Not until we adopt everything in its uses, and 
cherish it in its own temper and kindle with it our 
sympathies and draw from it our pleasures, can we, 



34 The Lord's Prayer 

as in the beautiful fable of our first parents, walk 
with God in the garden, and share the eternal peace 
of his presence. Cruelty, no matter what our 
excuse for it, is the unpardonable profanity of a 
spirit not yet touched, nor waiting to be touched, 
by the love of God. 

Rising one step higher, we come to human life, 
and here our profanity is so great and so varied 
that it seems just to have commenced ; we seem to 
have forgotten all that has gone before and the 
blood with which we have already sprinkled the 
world. Profanity is much or little according to 
the nature of that which is desecrated. We can 
defile an altar because it is a place of sacrifice. 
We can desecrate a temple because it is set apart 
for worship. We can treat the child, the woman, 
the man most profanely because in them the grace 
of God is struggling upward to its fulfillment. 
When men have entered on the race for wealth, 
the tyranny of child-labor has commenced, and the 
hope of life has been drunk up at once like dew 
by the coming heat of a parching day. The eager 
hunger of men has so fed upon the grace of women 
that that which was meant to be highest has often 
dropped lowest, and those who should have walked 
in garments white and pure, have been sprinkled 
with the mire of the streets. Affections, which 



The Lord's Prayer 35 

are the tenderness of divine love finding its way 
in human life, have become the symbols of weak- 
ness, the means of betrayal, the open window at 
which the burglar climbs in. As the colors of 
flowers show what light can do in shaping things 
to itself, so the purity and depth of womanly love 
is God's revelation of what is inmost in his own 
mind. Here profanity can become devilish, and 
desecration make an end. We pluck the plumage 
of the white dove, we break its wings, we blind its 
eyes, and then fling back in derision this work of 
God. 

The apostle says, " Know ye not that ye are the 
temple of God?" From this temple we drive out 
the indwelling spirit. How completely among men 
have we seen this profanity accomplished. Oaths 
swarm out at the lips like unclean birds disturbed 
in their haunts. Decay and filth and parasitic 
life, all the evil brood of death, claim the man as 
their own, and the scavengers of the world hasten 
to resolve him into those ultimate elements 
that are always pure; nature, baffled by man's 
profanity, goes back to the beginning, and starts 
once more the creative process. Is not this the 
purgation of fire to which all the rubbish of the 
world, dead branches lopped off, trees cut down 
without fruit, are hastening? 



36 The Lord's Prayer 

Perhaps the deepest, most comprehensive pro- 
fanity which comes to us is that of the home, pre- 
eminently the profanity of the slums. In a single 
room, crowded with inmates, with fetid air, dirt, 
and destitution, every possible germ of a higher 
life is trampled under foot. This is the profanity 
of a great city, so anxious for wealth and refine- 
ment that it utterly forgets the degradation which 
this eager pursuit is leaving behind it. 

The temper which looks upon living things as 
they tremble in the creative hand and feels the in- 
coming power as holy, and prays that they may be 
kept holy, is the first fruit of that sensitive, receptive 
mind by which we pass into spiritual life. The 
prayer, Hallowed be thy name, thus means our 
emotional mastery of the world, our power to see 
it as it is. The poetic temper is the apprehending 
temper, and its highest expression is in the spirit- 
ual world. The forms of life gain in mastery by 
virtue of perceptive power. While man has the 
largest circle of sensuous faculties, and, far more 
than this, much greater reflective power with which 
to drive them forward, there are special organs, 
like those of scent and sight, which penetrate much 
farther, and call out action much more quickly in 
animals than in men. Among the marvels of our 
time are the discoveries, such as wireless telegra- 



The Lord's Prayer 37 

phy, which go to show how much more subtle and 
extended are the mediums of intercourse in the 
world than we had supposed. We supplement our 
senses with lines of intelligence which lace together, 
in one throbbing life, the entire circuit of our globe. 
The early conception seems to be fulfilled, that the 
world is one living thing. 

Spiritually perceptive power waits chiefly to be 
acquired, but we may well believe that its extent 
and delicacy and quickness of response are pro- 
portioned to the preeminence of the relations 
involved in it. All that obscures or mars the 
mechanism of thought narrows in our spiritual 
apprehension. Profanity is of the nature of vul- 
garity, vulgarity which constantly thrusts into 
the foreground some sensuous impression, crowd- 
ing out therewith the deeper renderings of life. 
A man may be habitually profane in speech, not 
because he is spiritually defiant, but because he 
wishes, under the custom of life, to make emphatic 
and propellent language which would otherwise 
be stale and vapid. When one swears at a mule 
he is prodding him with the goad nearest at hand. 
Much of the profanity which we have been taught 
to hold in horror, is a comparatively venial fault, 
an artificial sin. No man is directly injured 
thereby. No creature of God is outraged. It 



38 The Lord's Prayer 

is the spiritual stupidity that goes with it which 
gives it its deadening character. A Puritan father 
might have been shocked at a profane word 
spoken by his son, and yet himself profaning ani- 
mal life with cruelty or child life with harshness, 
thought nothing of it. The thing itself, profan- 
ity, might have had less weight with him than 
the mere appearance of it in language. The 
injunction against profanity is the symbol above 
the door by which we are warned to enter with 
unsandaled feet and heedful movement (into all the 
ways of approach unto God. 

I was once in the Sistine Chapel studying the 
frescoes of Raphael in company with a gentle- 
man, a politician, who had little interest in them. 
After a moment's listless observation he turned 
abruptly to me and pointing to a representation 
of God the Father inquired what old gentleman 
that was. Thus the too gross temper of art got 
a still more harsh expression in speech. The 
invisible, eternal, all-pervasive spirit took on 
abruptly the form of an old man, possibly of 
Irish extraction. Yet this man was an intelligent 
American citizen. He had been Secretary of the 
Interior — it must have been of the very interior. 
He was only suffering a little from that national 
vulgarity which is unable to distinguish values, and 



The Lord's Prayer 39 

to keep each in its own place. We often meet this 
obtuse feeling in our public buildings and legislative 
halls. We take to ourselves a certain pleasure in 
abusing a beautiful thing, as if we thereby got an 
advantage over it. In the California House of 
Representatives a member, who stood for two 
counties, occasionally threw his legs over his desk, 
and enjoyed this conspicuous ease as a fitting 
emolument of a free man. The Speaker, feeling 
the humor of the situation, made a sketch of the 
member in this position, putting upon the soles 
of his two feet the names of the two counties 
he represented, Colusa, Tehama. The man who 
can thrust in the face of his fellow-citizens the 
mud of two counties is not to be lightly regarded. 

I ought not to approach so near our own dese- 
cration and make no mention of it. I happened 
into the carpenter shop. A door had been brought 
down from Morgan Hall for repair. Some young 
man had evidently thrust holes in it with the 
ferrule of a heavy cane. It would be a relief to 
hear such a man swear, as a far more conventional 
and superficial profanity, as far less private and 
personal and polluting. 

When the secret thoughts of God begin to in- 
scribe themselves on the world before our eyes, 
when they become vocal in the flow of events, 



4o The Lord's Prayer 

when they are ready to gather and to marshal men 
of all conditions and all races for a triumphal march 
toward the Kingdom of Heaven, we shall lose every 
disposition to regard anything or any person in 
fellowship with the divine mind profanely or to 
fling words of contempt at those who have caught 
up this rhythmic movement heavenward. 

The reverential temper is the seeing temper, 
and so the receptive temper. We are able to ac- 
cept the magnificent things the world has to give. 
Our hands are extended, not to grab, nor even to 
get wealth, but to hold the spiritual treasure so 
freely bestowed upon us. It hardly matters 
whether the divine bounty reaches the palm, the 
palm is still stretched out toward it. The giving 
power of the world transcends all our measure- 
ments and all our thoughts. We feel sure of im- 
mortality as time granted us wherein to gather 
this harvest, a harvest with which the fields are 
whitening as far as the eye can reach. We have a 
certified lien upon the wealth of the world, and that 
wealth comes pouring in, and breaking at our feet 
like the inexhaustible waves of the ocean. The 
poverty of profanity has long since left our hearts. 
A reverential wonder abides with us that we have 
to deal with things so great, approachable in 
ways^so sublime. 



The Lord's Prayer 41 

Our ability to help the world has its source in 
this same reverential temper, the sense of the in- 
numerable and immeasurable things that may 
be offered to men. The part of the poet or the 
prophet falls to us, simply because we see and fore- 
see the divine goodness. The plain before us may 
seem dry and barren, but we know the climate, the 
fertility of the soil, and whence the water is to 
come which is to make it a fruitful paradise. Be- 
ing directed of God into pleasant paths we can di- 
rect our fellow-men into the same paths. As one 
on a watch-tower, catching sight of the banners of 
those hastening to the rescue, we are able to speak 
the word which fills at once all hearts with the 
gladness of victory. 

Moody was a prophet to the masses of men, not 
by virtue of philosophy, but by means of an intense 
spirit of reverence. He felt the gathering, grow- 
ing force of the divine plan and he announced it as 
he saw it, and men believed him. They too be- 
gan to feel the undercurrent drawing them into 
the Kingdom of Heaven. When we can say, as 
our first spontaneous petition, Hallowed be thy 
name, the everlasting gates are lifted up, and we 
and all begin to enter in. We cast ourselves on 
holiness, and its buoyant force is at once felt. 

If we think of the world meanly and speak of it 



42 The Lord's Prayer 

slightingly; if we lie under all the brooding pro- 
cesses of earth and air and sky like so many addled 
eggs; if as the dumb, dull boy we can say nothing 
fittingly and so swear, it is simply because the 
germs of the divine life are not awakened in us. 
Reverence is the medium of revelation; the at- 
mosphere which receives and diffuses light; the 
sense of things as they are and are to be in the 
grand spiritual world which God is creating. Not 
until we can pray, Hallowed be thy name, can we 
feel that the world is holy, or lend help in making 
it holy. This petition is the introduction to all 
spiritual life. 

THY KINGDOM COME 

The road of revelation, like the road of knowl- 
edge, is a long one. If we pause anywhere in it, 
the things we seem to have acquired begin to 
escape us, to become formal and dead. If we 
persistently pursue it, our impressions, as those of 
a dissolving view, are enlivened by all that have 
gone before, and carry over an increased interest 
to those which are to follow. 

It is often made a ground of reproach that our 
conceptions of God are so narrow, so human; 
or, as it is sometimes put in one overwhelming 
word, so anthropomorphic. Yet what other result 



The Lord's Prayer 43 

should be anticipated, or could arise? Since we 
are men, we shall doubtless think and feel as men 
think and feel. Nor is there any discouragement 
in this if we remember to how much purpose men 
have thought and felt. What other result should 
be desired, or could be anticipated, than that we 
should think about God as men may think about 
him, and be blest by the thoughts? Anthropo- 
morphic? yes indeed, because we are only some- 
what in the image of God. We are children, 
and our ideas are childish; but the childish idea 
may make way for the manly one, and is just as 
much a medium of growth as is the tottering step 
of the child its only access to the firm foothold of 
the adult. The danger of our restricted notions 
does not commence until we begin to hesitate, and 
no longer shift and expand our thoughts to take in 
the larger view. 

The grotesque idol is a step in the ascent to God, 
the earliest assertion that the visible world does 
not exhaust the world, but that there are potencies 
which we have occasion to recognize, which lie 
back of things, back of sensuous quality. We 
become idolaters only when the invisible shrinks 
into this miserable similitude of an image. Then 
the image itself begins to become diabolical. 
The fetish, the idol, the picture, the symbol may 



44 The Lord's Prayer 

be in our unfolding, like the parting of the scales 
which enclose the bud, the first evidence that the 
inner life is beginning to push. All our con- 
ceptions of God, to the very end, will be found too 
narrow, too human, and will give occasion for 
better images and more adequate ideas. The 
mind is all the while growing into and taking pos- 
session of a profound and limitless universe. Only 
one thing is to be dreaded, the arrest of life, its 
turning aside from its true development, a halting 
at some intermediate point at which we begin to 
lose the old without gaining the new. 

A similar line of thought is applicable to the 
Kingdom of Heaven. Our earlier conceptions of 
it are sure to be inadequate and may easily be 
ridiculous. The unbeliever may think he has made 
a telling point when he reminds us how tedious 
the songs, the hosannas of heaven must become. 
Such criticisms are merely fitted to push us off 
the stone on which we have been too long seated 
and to compel us to renew our journey. Streets 
of gold and gates of pearl, all the pleasures which 
address the senses, may help to usher in the idea 
of heaven; but if we stop with them, we and they 
will sink back into sensuous indulgence, and our 
heaven be swallowed up once more in the abyss 
of unpurified pleasures. 



The Lord's Prayer 45 

The very notion of a kingdom is a human con- 
ception, yet it is one so pliant, so capable of ex- 
pansion, as to fit it to render protracted service. 
A kingdom is the most simple form which the state 
assumes. While a kingdom constantly falls short 
of its true service, it is manifestly intended to se- 
cure unity, harmony, and concurrent welfare over 
the entire area to which it pertains. If the best 
man be king, his counsel and guidance aim at this 
result, and the kingdom becomes the earliest form 
of a self-sustaining and prosperous state. This 
image of a kingdom, so familiar to men in their en- 
tire history, thus becomes the guide of thought in 
all reconciliation of men with men, in the successful 
combination of men for the widest, highest ends, 
and we have the Kingdom of Heaven as the trans- 
fer of this harmony to our spiritual relations. And 
yet how much purging and purifying of the notion 
of a king, how much submission of the people, 
indolent and passionate and selfish, to the general 
welfare, what an over-enlarged apprehension of 
what the public welfare includes are required be- 
fore the words, the Kingdom of Heaven, can be 
freighted with their true meaning, and can convey 
to us a sense of the grace of God about to be freely 
exercised toward men! We must climb slowly, 
patiently up, up, through all failures, perversions, 



46 The Lord's Prayer 

and narrow forms of government, still up, up into 
the divine wisdom and goodness, before we can 
enter, as we should, into the prayer, Thy kingdom 
come; before we can be helped, as we should be, in 
our daily labor by the certainty that this king- 
dom is coming, and shall come completely, in the 
world. We must have, as the condition of prayer, 
some suitable apprehension of this kingdom, some 
sense of its corrective and creative power, some 
conviction that it is included in the ongoing of 
things, and that neither our thought concerning 
it nor labor for it is lost in an empty idea. The 
Kingdom of Heaven must be to us an all-compre- 
hensive good, gathering up our wants and the 
wants of our fellow-men in perfect fulfillment. 
Thus only can we pour all our desire and all our 
labor and all our life into the petition, feeling that 
our prayer reaches from the center to the circum- 
ference of human society and human need and 
makes all sound. 

This promise of the kingdom, this putting to- 
gether of its first terms, are already in the world ; 
and when we ask for the completion of this 
creative work, we are simply praying that what 
is best may become better, that what is partial 
may become complete, and that the vision of 
glory which begins to appear in the heavens 



The Lord's Prayer 47 

may spread over them and everywhere transform 
them. 

We speak of the mineral kingdom, the vege- 
table kingdom, the animal kingdom, and when we 
go farther and speak of the spiritual kingdom, the 
Kingdom of Heaven, we embrace and complete 
the entire series. We are not thinking of things 
separate from one another, but of things which sus- 
tain and enlarge one another in every imaginable 
way. We are thinking of foundations wide and 
strong, of a superstructure suitable to them, of 
decorations and uses which grow out of them, and 
of a primary purpose which gives unity and beauty 
to them all. 

We call the mineral world a kingdom because 
minerals take on so many forms as crystals, while 
all these forms follow on under similar laws, be- 
cause they have varied yet definite and permanent 
ways of combination, and because they make up in 
quality and quantity a world which is ready for uses, 
so manifold and multiplied. The mineral king- 
dom is not indifferent to the vegetable kingdom, 
the animal kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven, 
arching over them all. They are in reference to 
one another foundations and superstructure. This 
fitness in first things for things which are to come 
is partially hidden from us because it is involved 



48 The Lord's Prayer 

in so many familiar and commonplace relations 
and because the higher is ever adapting itself 
to the lower as well as the lower to the higher. 
We do indeed make the most of the world, but that 
should not hide from us the fact that the world 
is one of which much can be made. We build 
our walls, but we build them of material ready 
to our hand. Minerals, in quantity and quality, 
have relation to the wants of man, and they are 
already so built together as to give a frame- 
work of support to his labors. We may wish 
more of one kind and less of another, but we 
get along wonderfully well with what we have of 
each. Our workshop is abundantly furnished 
with material, and yet the law of labor is not set 
aside. The world in its first construction is a 
kingdom, put together with a far-reaching antici- 
pation of consequences. Any extensive change in 
its materials would affect the whole history of 
events, and make the record with which we are 
so familiar very different. The world rules us and 
we rule it, and out of this reciprocal action come 
results fortunate and unfortunate in the measure 
in which we bring wisdom to our task. 

In a yet more complete form is the vegetable 
world a kingdom. It is interlaced in a great va- 
riety of dependencies. There is in it every degree 



The Lord's Prayer 49 

of kinship, every form of hierarchy, and wide 
ministration of plant to plant, both in nourishment 
and in protection. The forest gathers under its 
shadow a long list of herbs and shrubs, as certainly 
and parentally as the hen, her chickens under her 
wings. A looking forward to what is to come is 
yet more manifest in the vegetable than in the 
mineral kingdom. All animal life is to be pro- 
vided for, and an extensive action and reaction is 
set up between these two forms of creation. They 
must mutually nourish and extend each other. 
Because this dependence is so inherent, so inevi- 
table, we may cease to marvel at it, as if nothing 
were wonderful which is not put together, like a 
puzzle, in a mechanical form. The world grows 
together in its several parts, and thereby becomes 
a more complete kingdom. These relations are 
both near and remote. They are instituted by im- 
mediate dependencies and give rise to remote 
ones. The bee is attracted to the flower by color 
and so fertilizes it, but how comes the flower with 
its honey, its money in hand, to pay the busy bee? 
Yet both flower and bee with all their marvelous 
capacities are only truly and finally fed upon by 
the intelligent eye of man. All services are on 
their way to this goal, all friction is in the mind of 
man. 



50 The Lord's Prayer 

The animal kingdom, crowning these lower 
kingdoms, at once begins to throb with feeling. 
Waves of appetite and passion and desire stir it in 
every part. The uses of the world, and the laws 
of these uses, begin to disclose themselves. The 
rulers of the world and the rules of the world stand 
over against each other, and give us more distinctly 
than ever a united kingdom. It is often said that 
the law of this kingdom is force, and that this 
force, in its exercise, brings hopeless strife and 
tyranny; that our kingdom is not a kingdom of 
peace nor can it ever be. This is only partially 
true of a transition state. Animal life starts in 
nurture and love, and will ultimately return to 
them as its true ties. Without this first kinship, 
the animal kingdom would cease to be, and it 
travails in pain waiting for a second birth into re- 
demptive love. The animal kingdom is in a state 
of anarchy, its lawful king is not yet on the throne. 
Nor has the kingly race yet learned the law of its 
own life. All things are waiting on reason. The 
animal kingdom and the rational kingdom are 
inextricably interwoven. Neither can be per- 
fected without the other. As the rational ele- 
ment advances, the physical element retires to its 
true position. We have force, but force itself 
must come under the rule of reason and of love. 



The Lord's Prayer 51 

This immediate anarchy is due to the process of 
creation. It is not to be alleged against the 
creative plan, any more than the confusion of a 
building in its erection is the fault of the finished 
work. The Inquisition did not disclose the nature 
of Christian faith, nor does vivisection reveal the 
character of scientific research. The heartless 
experimenter is no more a type of manhood than 
was Torquemada, the terrific inquisitor, with his 
ten thousand victims wrapped in flames, a type 
of Christian love. 

Our prayer is Thy Kingdom come. We wait 
for the time when force shall be the instrument 
of reason, and not override it; when men shall 
enlarge sympathy, not quell it. The questions 
which forever press upon us are : What are the rudi- 
ments of a kingdom of heaven in the world? May 
all forces remain as forces and yet be put to the 
service of the affections? Can we build an engine 
whose imprisoned steam shall tug at every joint 
and yet be perfectly safe? Are the achievements 
of love, like those of reason, possible and har- 
monious, and do they thus contain for us a king- 
dom of heaven? Human action is so partial in its 
accomplishments, so conflicting and fragmentary 
in its putting forth, that we find great trouble 
in believing in anything approaching perfection 



52 The Lord's Prayer 

in the actions of men. In the study of plants, 
when we pass over from systematic botany 
to structural botany, we forget the beauty of 
the flower in our desire to know the processes by 
which it is built up. In biology, we have a mu- 
seum of skeletons as more instructive than a col- 
lection of animals. Yet it is the plant and animal 
as living things which God gives us, and it is in 
their perfected life that we best understand them. 
Our method is as if we should analyze words and 
sentences and care nothing for literature. The 
Kingdom of Heaven is the fullness, and the ful- 
fillment, of all things. It is the music in which fit- 
ting sounds are combined ; the elevation of thought 
and warmth of feeling which arise when men are 
attuned to one another and to the world. 

Thy kingdom come is the prayer of faith, the 
prayer of one in whom the purposes of life are 
taking shape, and its possibilities have begun to be 
seen. It is not the petition of one who is engrossed 
in the details of living, but of one who is living. It 
is not, "I believe, help Thou mine unbelief"; it is 
not the struggle of one for the light, the soul, mean- 
while, sinking into darkness, but the abiding de- 
sire of one who has caught sight of the goal and 
is pressing toward it. This prayer is first the 
victory of faith in the soul, and second the push- 



The Lord's Prayer 53 

ing outward of this inner life for the conquest of 
the world. The seed hidden in the earth has felt 
the heat of the sun and now it is in search of the 
sun itself. In this prayer we see the true nature 
of faith, that faith by which we enter into all in- 
visible good and wrap it about us as a garment. 

Faith is that temperament of mind and heart to 
which goodness and truth readily disclose them- 
selves, it is the dormant life ready to become the 
actual life. 

The same man makes a very different impression 
on different men. One dislikes him and distrusts 
him; another likes him and trusts him. The two 
in their conflicting judgments are dealing with 
spiritual qualities. The one fails to see them, the 
other is at once impressed by them. The one 
attitude is that of darkness and apprehension, the 
other of light and confidence. Faith, when well 
directed, is not only rational, it is the summation 
of the highest reason. It is knowing with the 
knowledge of a pure heart, it is seeing through a 
perfect lens. The man who prays Thy kingdom 
come, has begun to see that kingdom in the world, 
to rejoice in its excellence, and to be in haste for its 
completion. The glimmer on the horizon is for 
him daylight, light that, in spite of the long dark- 
ness, is normal to the world, and will quickly en- 



54 The Lord's Prayer 

close it in its arms. He sees and feels, and he is 
alive with his convictions. The forces are at work 
all about him which are to fulfill his vision. 

Take the cruelty of the world, its violence and 
blood. They disturb him, they distress him, they 
do not discourage him. His heart is at war with 
them and rejects them, and he believes that the 
heart of the world is equally at war with them and 
will equally reject them. The thought of God 
seeking realization in the kingdom of God, pushing 
in all ways into the light, is one of wisdom and love. 
O that that kingdom might come! The seed has 
germinated, is piercing the soil, and now we wait 
for the miracle of flower and fruit. 

The coming of this kingdom is not a single, a 
detached event, it is the marshaling together of 
all events, the accomplishment of all labors, the 
completion of all hopes. Men who have grounded 
arms and lie stretched here and there, at the word 
of command spring to their feet, fall into ranks, 
the ranks close up as regiments, the regiments 
stand fast as divisions, and the divisions become 
one army. Such is the coming together of the 
detached parts of the kingdom. Herein is the 
invincible force of faith, its conquering power. 
This kingdom completes the world. This comple- 
tion must be, the world is that it might be, and has 



The Lord's Prayer 55 

been from the beginning in these throes of birth. 
It is not denying one thing, it is denying and mak- 
ing futile all things, to say there is no kingdom. 
The soul abhors this unbelief as utter blindness, 
and flings itself with new desire on the prayer, Thy 
kingdom come. 

This kingdom is a kingdom and has the unity 
and aidfulness of a kingdom. A conspicuous fea- 
ture of the world has been its strife. Some have 
laid great stress on this struggle for existence, as if 
it were the deepest impulse in human life and in all 
life. And yet the cruel pressure of this law re- 
mains with us only until we can climb up into a 
higher, more beneficent, and more efficient law, 
that of love. Even war has wrought on the side of 
affiliation and men have been consolidated into 
nations, wherein they have grown strong by 
unity, by a fellowship which has sheltered all the 
institutions of peace. One step alone remains, 
aidfulness among nations. The better law, which 
sprang up in the shelter of the household, has 
gone thence as the affiliation of great peoples 
with one another, and now waits to draw these 
peoples themselves into the household of nations. 

Most human passions and all human virtue are 
social. We sin because of the temptations others 
bring to us, we obey more perfectly as others unite 



56 The Lord's Prayer 

in giving us the incentives and the rewards of 
obedience. The kingdom sustains all goodness and 
makes it ever more normal. As holiness comes the 
kingdom comes, and as the kingdom comes holi- 
ness comes with it. 

This kingdom has its own patriotism, the patri- 
otism of universal good- will and joy. There are 
times of darkness. The night settles down and the 
eye is hemmed in. But all barriers give way to the 
light. The soul is true to itself, its powers come 
at length to play freely and it overtakes the joy of 
the kingdom, and is overtaken by it. It has no 
occasion to split up and to subdivide its petition, 
to plead for this or to plead for that special good. 
Thy kingdom come includes all and for all. The 
joy of a far- spreading and invincible good takes 
possession of the soul, it wishes simply to love, not 
to narrow itself to luxuries and to the luxurious, 
but to be the recipient of all good with all and 
through all. The day has come in gladness, let it 
move forward in strength. 

This kingdom is a kingdom. It has its king in 
whose hand all wisdom and goodness are gathered. 
He rules beneath and above. The physical and 
the spiritual minister to each other, and in their 
interlock make up and hold firm the kingdom. 
All things are working together for good to those 



The Lord's Prayer 57 

who love God. They were made, and remade, and 
are being made again for this very end of uni- 
versal service. 

It is a kingdom in which authority rests on 
liberty and liberty issues in authority. The 
kingdom is not established until those who are sub- 
ject to it pray Thy kingdom come. We share the 
counsel of God and are found gladly fulfilling his 
purposes, since under them and with them all 
events flow together, float and bear forward the 
welfare of the race. We love God because he first 
loved us, and there is no abatement or limitation 
either in his or in our love. Our vision is so ex- 
tended, our thoughts so widely rational, our hearts 
so alive to goodness, that we cannot but pray 
Thy kingdom come, the kingdom in which giving 
and receiving, activities and receptibilities are 
inseparable, and all are merged in the flow of the 
universal life forward, as our wills and the divine 
will together touch the highest creation, that for 
which all things were made, the Kingdom of 
Heaven. 

THY WILL BE DONE IN EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN 

This petition is an amplification under the pre- 
vious one, Thy kingdom come; an amplification 



5$ The Lord's Prayer 

which brings into relief its most distinguishing 
feature. The Kingdom of Heaven lies in a com- 
plete knowing and doing of the will of God. 

We are not told how God's will is done in 
heaven. We are supposed to conceive, in our 
own experience, ever more distinctly, how it is 
done — intelligently, habitually, gladly. The joy 
of heaven is found in this doing ; it is not the reward 
of it. The doctrine of rewards and punishments 
appeals only to the lower phases of spiritual life, 
and even these bring many misapprehensions. 
Everlasting punishment means everlasting dis- 
cord, and robs itself of all redemptive character. 
Insight into good, insight into the conditions of 
welfare are the highest product of culture. The 
Lord's Prayer presupposes a measure of this 
knowledge. We apprehend, at least partially, the 
joy of heaven, and desire its transfer to earth. 

This is what God is about, teaching us his will; 
this is what we should be about, learning his will 
deeply, broadly, beneficently. 

This learning the will of God is, in the fullest 
meaning of the word, empirical, an experience; it 
is also, in the fullest meaning of the word, intuitive, 
an insight by which we draw near to God in vision. 
We strive to do the will of God, and so we come to 
know what that will is. The good we accomplish 



The Lord's Prayer 59 

makes a higher good visible to us. We become 
skilled workmen in the Kingdom of Heaven. 
Even the evil into which we have fallen makes 
plain to us that we have missed the path. We are 
in all ways corrected and instructed in spiritual 
things. The vices and the virtues of those about 
us are disclosures to us of the conditions of life. 
We make our way by means of them through the 
unreclaimed forces of the world. Having gained 
some notion of spiritual good, we are thus prepared 
to pray Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. 
This is the first great fact of our lives, that we 
are being taught; trained in knowledge, until the 
will of God, the plan of God, is understood by us. 
We thus catch glimpses of the divine vision, and 
are anxious to reproduce it fully in a world as 
yet unshaped by it. Truth, instead of lying here 
and there, now and then, like flakes of light on the 
landscape, we come to see should cover the entire 
field of action, penetrating it everywhere with its 
warmth and vitality. This is to be done in our 
separate, individual experience; this is to be done 
in our common, collective experience, an experi- 
ence not yet purified in thought, corrected in 
practice, and brought under the discipline of love. 
Distinction of races, nations, classes; distinctions 
between those of kindred occupations and those 



60 The Lord's Prayer 

who are not; distinctions of those akin to us and 
those alien to us ; distinctions in which reason and 
unreason, the will of God and the passions of men 
are commingled and confounded — it is to these 
distinctions that we are to bring the will of God 
and to build up relations under it like unto those of 
the Kingdom of Heaven. 

A fundamental conviction is that the will of God, 
the plan of God covers all things; that in every 
relation of life there is a course of conduct that in 
reference to all other courses is good, right, pleas- 
ure-giving, and that this course expresses the will 
of God ; that nothing is haphazard in society any 
more than in the physical world : and that this ac- 
tion, which is ordained for the welfare of men, ex- 
presses the divine mind. We wish it to have sway 
in the same complete form in the world as we 
suppose it to have in heaven. Thy will be done 
in earth as it is in heaven. 

We know a great deal about the will of God, but 
there is more, much more, that needs to be known. 
All the lasting peace and joy of our lives turn on 
what we know of God's will, and all the perplexity, 
fear, and discouragement, on what we fail to know. 
We are like one who lives by the shore of the ocean. 
He is constantly on it, he gets his food from it, he 
forecasts its storms, he rejoices in its bright days. 



The Lord's Prayer 61 

Yet how much remains unknown to him. He 
rows and sails on a great sea whose depths and 
wide stretches lie quite beyond him, a sea which 
furnishes no such food for mind and heart as it is 
ready to furnish, a sea that may, after all, swallow 
him up, because of his hopeless ignorance and un- 
wise courage. 

In the acquisition of this needed knowledge, 
there are many mistakes to be encountered, much 
suffering, constant delay, frequent retreat. We 
have not yet learned what was declared to us long 
ago, that God hath made of one blood all nations 
of men to dwell on all the face of the earth. We, 
as a nation, have never reached in practice those 
primary principles of equality which, at one time, 
taught by our own trials, we seemed to espouse. 
We limit them, fall below them, rob them of their 
immediate bearing. We vibrate about the polar 
point like a needle suffering magnetic disturbance. 

Take such a thing as war. At times we catch 
sight of its foolish, diabolical character; unfitted 
alike to wise men and to good men. More fre- 
quently we think of it as a part of the framework 
of things, and watch its development with tranquil 
interest. We see the circumstances accumulating 
which tend to strife, the provocations which usher 
in war gaining ground ; and we begin to discuss its 



62 The Lord's Prayer 

possibility and its probable results. The building 
may take fire, and, if it does, we shall be there to 
see it burn. We forget the waste of human labor, 
the good ready to be reached driven back into 
chaos. We speak of civilized warfare. We might 
as well talk of lovable hatred. 

The essential condition of doing the divine will 
as it is done in heaven is more knowledge, not of 
things but of persons, a knowledge of the beauty 
and joy and eternal peace of the ties which unite 
us to our fellow-men and to the throne of God. 
Not a theoretical knowledge which may lie, dry 
seed, in the resinous hand of a mummy three 
thousand years without germinating, but a practi- 
cal knowledge, seed in the soil, drinking in mois- 
ture, bursting its integuments, and, under the 
quickening heat of the sun, finding all its mysteri- 
ous powers. 

The idea which keeps company with this knowl- 
edge of the will of God is liberty, the power and 
obligation to do it. God is waiting, the world is 
waiting, the happiness of men is waiting on liberty, 
waiting until we shall learn to think the things and 
to do the things that are thought and done in 
heaven. Let us give a moment's consideration to 
this liberty, involved in the petition, Thy will be 
done in earth as it is in heaven; the liberty which 



The Lord's Prayer 63 

explains the plan of God, covers all delays, and 
lies at the foundation of spiritual welfare. Men 
have ridiculed this liberty, and have put it down by 
what they have regarded as invincible argument; 
and then they have proceeded to make use of this 
same liberty without guidance against their own 
lives. If a man wishes to show himself an imbecile 
and to prove himself an idiot, this argument will 
carry him a long way in his purpose. 

Liberty, in the Christian scheme, is our constant 
point of departure and of return. " Strive to enter 
in at the strait gate. " ' ' Seek ye first the Kingdom 
of Heaven." " Every one that asketh receiveth, 
and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that 
knocketh it shall be opened. " These words lie in 
the line of our daily experience. They are full of 
encouragement; they break down all obstructions 
and call out latent powers. Men, missing liberty, 
build up schemes of election, as if there were or 
could be any other election than the soul's election 
of God and God's election of the soul, each in 
liberty, two drops melting into one sphere. The 
moment we force a few into the Kingdom of 
Heaven, we begin to force many out of it. The 
Kingdom of Heaven ceases to be within us, an ever- 
lasting possibility of life. 

Human life is at one with the gospel on this 



64 The Lord's Prayer 

question of liberty. We hold all men everywhere 
and at all times, the young and the old, the high- 
minded and the debased, to the test of liberty; to 
censure and praise, reward and punishment, ac- 
cording to their use of liberty. We turn apparent 
prosperity into sudden overthrow by the exposure 
of wrong action. Men have never done otherwise, 
and never will do otherwise. 

Liberty is not blind power, it is the power to 
see, to understand, and to act. Thinking itself, 
which is the adjustment of the mind to the facts, 
must be free, and it must carry freedom with it. 
Will is but the fructifying of this power of thought 
in action. If we are swimming to any purpose we 
are not under the water, our heads are above the 
water and our eyes on the shore. To think with 
observation and forecast is to alter the conditions 
of action ; is for the pilot to cast his eyes on the 
chart, before he brings the ship about. ' ' As a man 
thinketh so is he." What thinkest thou of the 
world, of Christ, of human destiny? These are 
the questions which put our powers in motion and 
make us masters of life. This is the freedom of 
the sons of God, the freedom that goes with broad 
daylight. This is the freedom to which we appeal 
in the petition, Thy will be done in earth as it is 
in heaven. 



The Lord's Prayer 65 

We may not at all times seem to be in posses- 
sion of this liberty. We may be surrounded by 
many vexations, a cloud of mosquitoes which we 
cannot drive off. Men envelop themselves in mul- 
titudinous cares and claims and conventional 
sentiments, and so sink below liberty. They 
become slaves of excessive desires, yet there is air 
above them. Let them rise into an atmosphere 
clear enough to see in, cool enough to think in, 
and there once more they will regain their liberty. 

If a man is to have an opinion, to express an opin- 
ion, to enforce an opinion, that opinion must be the 
product of his own thought; twisted together out 
of the filaments of his own conviction. We com- 
mit intellectual suicide when we say that we are 
not able to form an opinion. Our words fall at 
once to the ground. We become slaves who can 
own nothing, give nothing, testify to nothing. A 
man must stand by his freedom whether he com- 
prehends it or not, for only thus can he enter into 
any kingdom, earthly or heavenly. It is to bring 
these two kingdoms into harmony, as resting on the 
same convictions, that we pray Thy will be done. 
We understand the world by our own will. This 
is the only government the world knows. We 
are constantly pushing responsibility to its limits. 
We are eager to hold men responsible to us. We 



66 The Lord's Prayer 

live in this atmosphere of praise and censure: 
sharp, biting censure ; honeyed, voluminous praise. 
There is nothing we are surer of than our fault- 
finding. There is no reaction of the human mind 
more immediate and certain than its reaction 
against injury. Our daily thoughts, feelings, ac- 
tions revolve on this pivot of conduct. 

The theory which takes all substance out of 
liberty has been held by good men, and yet they 
have proceeded at once to neglect it in action. If 
men are passive under surrounding circumstances, 
waiting to be moved by them, then they are things. 
It is indeed vain to strive to bring such a being 
under moral forces, to load him down with respon- 
sibilities, he still remains, in heaven or on earth, 
a beast of burden. If we first put the drinking- 
cup into Benjamin's sack, we shall indeed know 
where to find it. But what right have we, in view 
of the history of the world, its achievements and 
its failures, to cast human lives as so much drift- 
wood into the stream of events? 

Liberty in action comes through liberty of 
thought. " Ye shall know the truth and the truth 
shall make you free. ' ' What is better worth know- 
ing than the truth; but why know it, if we are un- 
able to obey it? The pilot's hand is on the helm. 
He sees the conditions before him. Let the winds 



The Lord's Prayer 67 

blow, the waves dash, the currents tug, he is there 
to resist them and to bring his ship to port. We 
are slow to feel that there is a spiritual order and 
spiritual presence in the world, which frames law, 
which swaddles us in it like a garment, and nurses 
us by it into manhood. This world must make 
itself seen and felt and understood as permeated 
with the will of God; and God is struggling with 
this revelation of love which is to fill full our 
spiritual cup. 

The harmony of the world with itself turns on 
these spiritual elements. This is the spiritual 
matrix in which a kingdom of heaven is to be 
shaped. Without it all is immediate strife and 
ultimate ruin. The physical laws on which we 
plant ourselves are naked granite; much can be 
built on them, nothing can be grown on them. 
When the world takes on a spiritual character its 
elements come together in achievement, in holi- 
ness, in blessedness. The garment of divine love 
begins to be cast over the framework of things. 
Personality emerges, and we are ready to pray 
Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Do 
not let us stultify ourselves or our fellow-men by 
denying our power to know and to do the divine 
will, a will spread out all over the world that we 
may know it and may do it. 



68 The Lord's Prayer 

The world is the breeding place of spiritual 
powers. Its chief feature is the discipline foy 
which we come to see what is good, to learn what 
is true, and to pursue them. God places us in 
a world where all things are to be wrought out, 
and to be wrought into perfect form. We may, if 
we will, profane the name of God, set lightly by his 
law, and despise his power. That which we shall 
be judged by, stand or fall by, is the conformity of 
our thoughts and actions to the facts of the world. 
This training is a far-reaching training. It puts 
us to constant trial. The knowing and the 
doing are forever flung back upon us. We may 
repeat our mistakes, or we may correct them. 
No justification of disobedience, no dogmatism 
in error, no submission of our will to the will of 
others, will rid us of our ever-returning responsi- 
bility to know and to do the will of God as it is 
known and done in heaven. 

It seems a strange petition, Thy will be done, as 
if the will of God were not sure to be done. We 
appear to ask for a stay of procedure, that events 
should be held in check, while we discuss this 
question of obedience. This is what we do ask, 
and it is what we truly need. The law of the 
world marches with the day, with the seasons, with 
the centuries. We are petitioning that God should 



The Lord's Prayer 69 

quicken us with his thoughts, ply us with his 
persuasions, until we are ready to get to our feet 
and to take our place with these forms of life as 
they move forward out of chaos into the beauty 
and order of creation. Our danger lies just here, 
that when the words of wisdom come to us, we 
shall not heed them; nor understand the forces 
which, with us or without us, push events forward 
to their fulfillment. Let not the consummation 
complete itself and we find no place in it. Yes, 
we have need to pray Make the years to tarry 
that we too may learn in them to do Thy will. 

This discipline of the world is concessive as well as 
searching. While the circumstances of life are by 
no means in each person equally favorable to 
obedience, each set of circumstances makes up a 
discipline in which the spirit subject to them may 
be thoroughly trained. Nor are the differences 
what we think them to be. Favorable conditions 
constantly miscarry and unfavorable ones are often 
successful. The victory is not in his surroundings, 
nor yet wholly in the man, but in a living inter- 
play of the two. All soils and all climates declare 
themselves in suitable flower and fruit. The 
mind adjusts itself to duties, and duties instruct 
the mind. The desire to know and the effort to 
know, these prosper wherever they are. It is a 



70 The Lord's Prayer 

faithful dealing with the rudiments of the Kingdom 
of Heaven as they lie about us, and a diligent 
extension of them, which build us up in knowledge 
and obedience, and render the prayer earnest and 
intelligent, Thy will be done in earth as it is in 
heaven. It is this discipline which makes us ready 
for heaven as we approach heaven. 

This discipline is not only comprehensive and 
concessive, it is loving. It is difficult for us to see 
the kindness of the world. Our indolence, our 
thwarted desires make the path of obedience hard 
and distasteful. The constancy with which we 
are thrown back on obedience only enforces the 
lesson that God's will is to be done completely, 
done in earth as it is done in heaven. The beauty 
of obedience lies in its perfection. The confusion 
and the suffering of the world are due to partial 
obedience. Our discipline, because it is loving, 
goes to the heart of the difficulty. The obedience 
of heaven is held up to us complete, cheerful, ef- 
fectual. This obedience becomes brighter and 
brighter, more and more possible, as we dwell upon 
it. It passes into the deep-seated desire of our 
text, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. 

Our thoughts, feelings, actions fall into harmony ; 
we are instructed in the true sources of our own 
pleasure; our satisfaction is deepened in the 



The Lord's Prayer 71 

pleasures of others, and all subsidiary good finds 
its way into one stream that flows through our 
lives. We come to possess both earth and heaven 
when we see that one and the same law, one and 
the same will, governs them both; that God's will 
is the creative love of God which is seeking to de- 
clare itself in that evolution in which the highest 
comes out of the lowest, and all things work to- 
gether toward the Kingdom of Heaven. If we 
understand the world in which we are, the prayer 
becomes inevitable, Thy will be done in earth as it 
is in heaven. 

GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD 

This petition, regarded in its statement simply, 
is a plain, narrow supplication. Yet, as the 
mind rests upon it, it unfolds its reasons, and we 
begin to feel its inspiration ; it enlarges itself in all 
directions until it embraces the whole field, from 
horizon to horizon, of things to be given and re- 
ceived at the divine hand. We ask for a simple, 
physical thing and immediately discover that we 
have asked for all related physical gifts. We 
then see that intellectual opportunities and spiri- 
tual blessings stand on the same footing and have 
their part in the petition. We are, in reference to 
them all, on the same terms of reception, and we 



72 The Lord's Prayer 

are before the great giver of all good, seeking at 
his hand the gifts of the day. As fast as grows our 
sense of need, so fast grows the petition we have 
put up, until we find ourselves up and far away on 
the path of life. We start where all men start, 
in physical necessities, but we end where all should 
end, in the universal presence of God, in a world 
shaped to cover every human want. A plain 
narrow door gives us access into the munificence 
of heaven. 

Bread stands for all physical nourishment at 
the table which the world spreads for us. This day 
is simply the first in that regiment of days, with 
which, keeping step, we enter into the years of 
God. There is no distinction made between the 
present and the future; the day's provision stands 
for the ever-renewed, the ever-renewing gifts of 
God, by which we rest with him forever on the 
same cordial terms of intercourse. Our favors 
are daily favors and unite us to God in an ever- 
renewed tie of love. We take an attitude in this 
petition which grows more and more fitting, 
more and more comforting, at each step of pro- 
gress. We are taken into the presence of God and 
walk with him through the years so unknown to 
us, so dependent on his kindly favor. There is 
no slip, no failure, no loss of way in this journey. 



The Lord's Prayer 73 

The needs of each day open the divine hand; as 
the want arises, arises also the gratification. The 
actual good grows in endless sequence out of the 
possible evil and good which surround us. We 
have no occasion for anxiety or fear, for God has 
taken us in charge, and with him rest the responsi- 
bility and the power. We have only to keep our- 
selves in the receptive attitude. This nearness of 
the world to God is in the prayer, and begets the 
prayer, Give us this day our daily bread. O for 
the ability to pray as God would have us pray, 
that we may know as he would have us know how 
near we are to him. 

In the first place, with this petition in our hearts 
as well as on our lips, we are filled with content- 
ment. The world, as men find it, is an easy place 
to be stupid in, a hard place to be active and 
contented in. We may agree with ourselves to 
let things take care of themselves. We may fall 
into confusion under the number of things to be 
lost and to be gained, and may decline the struggle 
of living. This comes very near the prevailing 
temper among men. They refuse to inquire what 
is best, and when it is forced upon them they 
refuse the toil and self-denial necessary to gain it. 
The labor is too immediate, the chances of failure 
too great; they have neither the strength nor the 



74 The Lord's Prayer 

courage for so hard a day's work. They are con- 
tent to rest quietly as they are, rather than to put 
forth the effort to become what they are not, and 
what they can as yet hardly conceive to be the 
better thing. The world thus becomes a place of 
desultory and transient gratifications, of accumu- 
lating disappointments, of more and more com- 
plete estrangement from God and from his 
purposes of grace toward them. They hardly see, 
and they -only see to misunderstand what they see. 
So the summation of desire, the final result of effort, 
is a sense of disappointment. They are led even to 
think that this is the final lesson of wisdom, not to 
desire much and not to expect much; that the 
unrecompensed strain of effort and the ease of 
indolence alike lead to the same result, content- 
ment with a little, contentment that grows out of 
a barren soil. 

The world is something quite other than this. 
It calls for wise and diligent effort and makes pro- 
vision for its reward. A few see and feel this 
demand and put forth the labor called for, but fre- 
quently in a direction in which it is only partially 
successful. They gain something but do not gain 
the full reward — the reward accompanied with a 
restful sense of its adequacy. At the very last, 
when the fullness of the return should be compre- 



The Lord's Prayer 75 

hended, they are overtaken by a feeling of the 
unsatisfactory character of the things they have 
attained; that wealth, power, honor sink into 
the oblivion that swallows up human labor, 
and leave the soul desolate. "Wherefore," says 
the prophet, "do ye expend your money for that 
which is not bread, and your labor for that 
which satisfieth not? " The author of Ecclesiastes 
finds his way out of this dilemma obscurely. 
"What profit hath a man of all his labor? All 
things are full of labor; man cannot utter it." 
To rejoice in labor, this is the gift of God. 

There is hardly another complex feeling in 
which men so agree, slowly floating into it from 
the experience of life, as in this dissatisfaction with 
the results of labor; especially when contrasted 
with the enthusiasm with which each generation 
takes up its tasks. In the morning they are ready 
for the toil of the day, but when the night comes 
the return is found slight and disappointing. 

The civilization which men attain is worth very 
much, yet it miscarries in essential things. The 
poverty and debasement which pursue them put 
a stigma on human ambitions not easily forgotten. 
Our labor in making and marketing our products, 
our unceasing provision for ease and elegance, 
still leave us confronted with destitution, vice, 



76 The Lord's Prayer 

disease, and death. Is there sufficient reason for 
contentment, confronted as we are with these 
losses? The followers of Christ have met this 
apparent failure with inadequate devices. They 
have assumed, at times, an ascetic temper; have 
thrust aside enjoyment, have devoted themselves 
to suffering, and have thought and spoken of this 
beautiful and enjoyable world as an Aceldama. 
They have thus sinned against themselves, against 
their fellow-men, against the wisdom and goodness 
of God. They have abandoned the problem of 
life, and have in advance pronounced life a failure. 
Or, escaping this error, that the pleasures of the 
world are simply a temptation, Christians have 
often come to share, in a half-hearted way, the 
feeling of laborious, ambitious men, and to expect 
and to accept a certain disappointment in present 
enjoyments, cherishing the hope that a better fu- 
ture would make all right. The world may thus 
become less satisfactory to them than to others, 
pursuing a blessing but half revealed, and dis- 
paraging the pleasures close at hand. It is hard 
for most persons to hold fast to the good-will of 
God, to believe in its possible extension to all, and 
to have a sense of its immediate sufficiency when 
fully possessed. All men strive to draw good- will 
into their own homes, into their own centers of life, 



The Lord's Prayer 77 

while they still entertain the notion that a little 
way out in the world there may be present, first, 
a spirit of indifference, and then, a little farther 
out, a vigorous antagonism. Though they are 
ever striving to lay hold of affection when it comes 
near to them, they fail to feel that love is the joy 
of the world, and that a spiritual sterility follows 
close on its absence. 

The petition before us implies this trans- 
formation, this conversion of the world into the 
home of the spirit. It asks that the blessings of 
the world may be given unto us this very day. 
In accepting a blessing at the hand of God, it 
accepts it for all, and accepts it as a gift about to 
return with each returning day. Herein is the 
contentment of love, love that is satisfied in itself, 
that asks and only asks that it may be able to 
hold fast where it is, and to abide in its own pleas- 
ure. While the largest activity is called for to 
reach, under the divine providence, the gifts, actual 
and possible, in the world, there is no sense of their 
inadequacy or of their transient character. The 
home fire does not go out in ashes. Be the 
blessing little or large, it goes to the enlargement 
of human happiness. So we build our lives, so 
we hold them and there is no bitterness there- 
with. There is nothing lost. There is no poor 



78 The Lord's Prayer 

man robbed, no vicious man tempted, no obscure 
man forgotten, all are gathered up and compacted 
together in the kingdom of the world, all may 
be gathered up and compacted together in the 
Kingdom of Heaven. "To live is Christ and to 
die is gain." There is no obstacle in the path 
of grace, none but the sluggish apprehensions of 
men, and this obstacle is giving way wherever 
assailed. We are contented because the true goal 
of life is being approached every day, with the 
day's duties, the day's joys, the day's hopes. 

But this contentment is continuous, progressive. 
What is good to-day is still better to-morrow. 
It is seen more clearly, desired more earnestly, 
and the way to it is less obstructed. Busy with 
nothing but the day's gifts and the day's work, 
we make no serious mistakes and find our labor 
ripening in our hands. The prayer, the effort, and 
the reward constantly renew themselves, and with 
each day we are farther on and higher up in the 
path of attainment. Strangely enough our Chris- 
tian faith develops not infrequently a tendency to 
break up this continuity of temper and of action. 
We have supposed it possible to have one law of 
business and another law of religion; one method 
of making wealth, another method of expending 
it; one manner of encountering the strife and 



The Lord's Prayer 79 

enterprise of the world, and another manner of 
turning our anxieties, in the end, into a helpful 
and peaceful life. As an active people we have 
shown ourselves adepts in this transformation. 
Saul has not only been among the prophets, but 
has set the prophetic fashion. We have crowded 
our neighbors bitterly in winning prosperity, but 
prosperity once won, we have turned a sharp corner 
and have taken counsel with the world as to what 
work most needs to be done in it, can be most 
rapidly and certainly pushed forward by money, 
the money laid at the door of the temple. We 
forget the indignant rebuke of the apostle, "Thy 
money perish with thee, because thou hast thought 
that the gift of God could be purchased with 
money. " It has not been our prayer, Give us this 
day our daily bread, but rather, Let me alone that I 
may make what I can in what way I can, and later 
I will settle the claims of heaven upon me. But 
it is not money but love that builds the Kingdom 
of Heaven, and if we have not charity, if we have 
not love, we become as sounding brass and a 
tinkling cymbal. There is no distinction of times 
and places tenable. The petition is always and 
everywhere, Give us this day our daily bread; and 
if we have not this temper in hand a cheque drawn 
on the future is worthless. We must walk with 



80 The Lord's Prayer 

God to-day and every day, if the higher, holier 
spirit is to become native to us. Our days must 
keep company with one another if they are to 
strengthen one another, and the divine work, 
the work of good will, is to prosper in our hands. 
This is obedience, this, the spiritual temper, 
and nothing else is. The renewing work of love is 
as constant, as continuous as the work of creation 
and for much the same reason, part uniting it- 
self to part, love to love, until the divine thought is 
fulfilled. We cannot with one set of workmen, 
with hard labor and loud oath, draw the material 
together, then with another set build the temple, 
and, last of all, with a trusting temper worship 
quietly in it. The same spirit that is to occupy and 
to sanctify the structure must build it ; from found- 
ation to topmost stone a loving hand and a cloud- 
less vision must preside over all. Nothing puts 
upon life or gives to life cohesion, continuity, 
fruition. It grows up one and the same by virtue 
of a vitality that is one and the same from in- 
ception to conclusion. 

Again this petition, while it starts us in the way 
and leads us on in it by continuous, coherent 
changes, is always looking forward to a glorious 
completion. We are not confused nor cut short 
in the journey. There is one road before us, ever 



The Lord's Prayer 81 

stretching heavenward. We see the point of 
union where physical and intellectual and spiritual 
good unite, and whence stream out the light and 
the revelation which we are coming to understand. 
We meet with so many disappointments. We 
fail in so many ways, we so readily mingle the good 
with the evil, that it is hard for us to believe that 
there is a plain heavenly path, which we may 
pursue with a simple, steadfast purpose. Yet so 
it would seem to be. Here is a petition we can 
offer, a way we can pursue, and find ourselves 
never far from divine aid nor waiting long for di- 
vine guidance. The world is in its youth. It 
has many things to learn, many to correct. Its 
powers are dormant, its passions awake. Yet 
in spite of darkness and confusion we see un- 
mistakable signs of progress. Scattered through 
the history of the world, and more abundant in 
our day than in any previous one, there are men 
searching for the truth and giving it ready obedi- 
ence. All forms of activity find their votaries — 
commerce, art, philanthropy — and every year the 
bonds of helpfulness and love are drawn closer. 
Never before were there so many men in the 
world ready to enjoy it and to make it enjoy- 
able for others. If the day has not come, its 
light is on the mountains and begins to descend 



82 The Lord's Prayer 

into the valleys. We are able to offer and do offer 
the prayer. Give us this day our daily bread. We 
are making no distinction between God's activ- 
ity and our own activity. We do not stand over 
against him nor does he stand over against us. 
We are absorbed in the one work of carrying the 
world forward in obedience and love, his and 
our labor. The getting and the giving go together, 
and are alike divine. We are united in both with 
our fellow- men. We do not pray, give me a 
million to-day and two millions to-morrow, but, 
give us our daily bread. We ask nothing for 
ourselves which is not pertinent for all and bene- 
ficial for all. Every gift is received in the way 
of fellowship and carried forward in the line of 
fellowship. We have not the presumption to 
suppose that we can get selfishly and give liber- 
ally, that we can live in the valley and have the 
visions of the summit. Our life is concurrent, 
concurrent with God, concurrent with the king- 
dom, concurrent with our fellow-men. The con- 
ditions and promises of the highest welfare we 
find applicable to our daily life, and ready to be 
ripened into the full fruition of blessings. 

Events also, the ongoing of the world, concur 
with one another, and with what we are coming to 
see is the true evolution of the mind of God. 



The Lord's Prayer 83 

Every day grows out of the previous day, yet may 
be better than it. There are no waste years, no 
inclement seasons, in which the victories of life are 
suspended. We are more aware that one eternal 
purpose runs through them all, that events are 
coming together, approaching one center, that we 
have only to labor and to pray and to wait for the 
approach of events which as yet it has not entered 
our minds to conceive. 

One hardly dares to rest so much on what at 
times seems so little and is so feebly understood. 
Yet, if we can adopt this temper and are able to 
say Give us this day our daily bread, the content- 
ment, the continuity, the fulfillment of human life 
are all secured, and we move quietly forward to the 
realization of divine love. The end justifies the 
delay, and stands with the beginning a completed 
plan of salvation. 

FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS AS WE FORGIVE 
OUR DEBTORS 

The Lord's Prayer is free from dogma. Its 
doctrines are deeply imbedded in it, but do not 
rise to the surface. Dogmas are like the bones 
of the body, the more freely they are used, and the 
less conspicuously they are exposed, the better. 
In the petition before us a principle is involved of 



84 The Lord's Prayer 

which we have taken only too little notice, — the 
principle of forgiveness. Forgiveness and the oc- 
casions and consequences of forgiveness are great 
facts in the spiritual life. They are familiar terms 
of our daily experience. We all have occasion to 
be forgiven, we all have occasion to forgive, and we 
all know something of the results of forgiveness, 
freely granted or sullenly withheld. Bickerings* 
quarrels, and injuries are softened by repentance 
and removed by forgiveness. A man who never 
repents and never forgives has no place in the social 
world, any more than a flinty, angular stone in the 
mechanical world. A man who cannot forgive 
should be free from faults, since neither he nor we 
have any way of getting rid of his faults. If he 
will not suffer himself to be washed clean in the 
waters of repentance, we have no other method of 
cleansing him. The possibility of forgiveness is the 
possibility of renewing and healing our lives when 
they have miscarried. Christian doctrine has at 
times forgotten this fact and has put our relations 
to God on an unforgiving basis, a basis we are 
utterly unable to endure ; one which darkens down 
the heavens and fills them with disastrous storms. 
We have thought that firmness in the character of 
God gives him so unyielding a hold on the sinner 
a s to preclude forgiveness. We have transferred 



The Lord's Prayer 85 

to God the unyielding temper we sometimes see in 
men, the temper which stands fast in simple 
obstinacy and does not concern itself with con- 
sequences. The punishments of God thus be- 
come eternal and carry with them no touch of pity, 
no renovating power. Christ bids us to forgive 
seventy times seven. It is the forgiving temper 
which purines our earthly atmosphere and makes 
it wholesome. Without it the air would become 
malarious, contagious, deadly. Government does 
not arise above forgiveness into the frigid regions of 
justice, it rises through forgiveness into the warm 
regions of love, and there renews all the germs of 
life. 

There are three degrees of relationship among 
men, those of the household, those of society, and 
those of the State. The last of these, the re- 
lations of the State, are the most artificial and the 
most restricted ; and yet they are the ones by which 
we have most frequently interpreted the divine 
government, forgetting the forbearance and loving 
delay with which in the family we meet the cul- 
prit. We put upon God's government the weak- 
ness and failures of our own jurisprudence. The 
State, from its lack of knowledge, from its lack of 
power, from its lack of time, can extend forgive- 
ness only hesitatingly and reluctantly. It is by no 



86 The Lord's Prayer 

means sure that the tears of repentance are genu- 
ine, and it cannot allow the door of forgiveness to 
swing at once on the touch of every criminal. 
The object of punishment in the State is the im- 
mediate safety of its citizens. It must be sure 
not only that repentance strikes deep enough 
for correction, but also — what is far more difficult 
— that the sense of the nature of crime is in no 
way weakened in the community at large or in 
the criminal class by apparent repentance. This 
ignorance of facts and of results greatly retards the 
swing of ethical law in human tribunals, and makes 
it move on rusty and complaining hinges. 

When we come to the family, whose primary 
purpose is nurture, forgiveness is constantly in 
order. We have as much forgiveness as we have 
trangression, with the single caution that for- 
giveness stands associated with repentance, and 
that the two pass on into improvement. In 
society much the same temper prevails. To work 
off the ills which arise among men by forgiveness 
is as normal an act as to wash one's hands; as 
fitting to be done as to rub out an old score in 
preparation for a new one. The close association 
of men in clubs or under some code of honor ad- 
mits of apology as a method of escaping offense, 
and men would avail themselves more freely of 



The Lord's Prayer 87 

this method were it not for an ascription which 
sometimes attaches to it of cowardice. Men are 
so thoroughly cowards that they greatly fear the 
reputation of cowardice, so readily caught and so 
hard to shake off. 

Trained in these ethical facts of the world we 
approach the divine government and the divine 
mind. We see in these laws of human nature what 
are the powers with which we are dealing. The 
discipline which comes to us under the laws of 
nature, the laws of God is instructive, corrective, 
and forbearing. Much is punished, much is 
passed over, much is forgiven. Our lives are so 
complicated, events take so wide a circuit before 
they come back, our actions are so mixed up with 
the actions of others, that it may require careful 
analysis to trace the relations of our own conduct 
and to see what, and in what way, God has taught 
us. 

A man handles ignorantly the engine with which 
he is occupied. An explosion follows, and he 
meets his instruction and his punishment in one 
result. The injury may extend, and is likely to 
extend to persons who had nothing to do with 
the remissness. This is a consequence of the rela- 
tions in which we are enclosed. The world is not 
devoted to the training of one man but of all men; 



88 The Lord's Prayer 

not to men separately but to them collectively. 
Not a man, but a community, a nation, the King- 
dom of Heaven, are to be the fruit of discipline. 
There is no matching of one thing with one thing 
but all things together, until they make up a physi- 
cal, intellectual, and spiritual world. This is the 
purpose which defines offenses, defines punish- 
ment, and defines the path of progress. The for- 
giveness granted must be fitted to secure the 
welfare of the world in its slow progression upward. 

This perpetual retardation of the movement, 
this hinging of it on so many conditions has led 
some to say there is no forgiveness in nature. 
Causes once set in motion are never arrested; 
retribution, like hounds on the trail, is ever pushing 
forward to the finish. This assertion is certainly a 
mistake. In purely physical things there are an 
anticipation and a prevention of disaster. The 
elastic body recovers from a blow, and regains its 
form after pressure. We constantly avail our- 
selves of this quality to escape a jar or to prevent 
an accident. If this evasion of violence is not 
forgiveness, it is at least a fitting symbol of for- 
giveness; it holds back the ruin just ready to break 
in upon us and returns us to the line of safety. 

In living things there is a constant correction of 
wrong tendencies, often a long and patient over- 



The Lord's Prayer 89 

looking of offenses. Most injuries are healed, 
most diseases cured. The one astonishing thing 
is the amount of forgiveness extended to a lusty 
young man, before the final blow is delivered. We 
thus speak of the vis medicatrix, the healing hand 
of nature, the tenderness with which she wards off 
disaster and repairs damages. If this is not for- 
giveness, it plays the same part in the dependence 
of events. 

When we come to the world of human action 
forgiveness at once shows a supreme power. It 
cuts evil short, restores beneficent feeling, puts 
staggering virtue on its feet again, and unites men 
once more in the pursuit of their common welfare. 
The fruits of forgiveness are marvelous in human 
life. It makes light of the frailty of men, corrects 
their weakness, and gives life a new birth at the 
very moment of its failure. There is hardly an- 
other fact in the spiritual world so undeniable, so 
marvelous, so renovating as well-timed forgive- 
ness ; correcting our thoughts, softening our hearts 
in the moment of belligerency, and converting the 
evil impulse into a new send-off in the Kingdom 
of Heaven. No man is a saint who has not often 
forgiven and often been forgiven. 

Forgiveness implies two persons and two re- 
ciprocal states; sorrow in the offender, relenting 



90 The Lord's Prayer 

tenderness in the offended. Repentance has very 
different depths, proportioned partly to the gravity 
of the offense and still more to the mind's appre- 
hension of it. Adequate repentance means at 
once confession, correction, restitution. It is a 
discovery to the soul itself of its own sin, and a 
cleansing of the soul itself in the bitter waters of 
sorrow. It puts away the trangression and re- 
turns with renewed desire to the path of obedi- 
ence. There may be a long and bitter struggle in 
this return, but the soul never abandons it. For- 
giveness, on the other hand, recognizes this new 
attitude of the penitent, rejoices in it, concurs 
with it. There is no act more characteristic of a 
pure, spiritual state than forgiveness. God is 
said to rejoice more over one sinner that repenteth 
than over ninety and nine just persons who need no 
repentance. On the other hand, no sweeter relief 
ever comes to pain than that which springs from 
repentance, issuing in confession and calling out 
forgiveness. This knitting of souls together by 
forgiveness is a great spiritual fact, tested many 
thousand times in many thousand ways. It is 
sufficient of itself to establish the existence of a 
spiritual kingdom, and lies naturally as a central 
fact, first, in our relation to God, the fountain of 
these pure waters of life, and second, in our re- 



The Lord's Prayer 91 

lation to each other, bathing anew in this divine 
affluent. 

Though this renewal of strength is complete 
only in the hearty assent of two persons, its 
proper initiative is found with the wrongdoer; 
and this return of the soul to truth does not alto- 
gether lose its healing power even if forgiveness is 
withheld. In offenses between men the wrong is 
more frequently not wholly on one side, and the 
better temper may return equally and concurrently 
to both minds. Though the refusal to forgive mars 
the pleasure of the penitent, it does not destroy the 
healing power of the penitence itself. We are 
clean when we are washed, though the anointing 
oil is not extended to us. Yet the true communal 
character of the spiritual world is seen in the fact 
that two spirits meet each other in repentance and 
forgiveness and are both strengthened without 
any exact apportionment of wrongs. In a com- 
munity quarrel where a bitter temper prevails, and 
cruel, unyielding passions swell like a torrent, all 
hearts inflamed, all minds irritable, forgiveness, 
like the coming warmth of spring, softens the air, 
steals away the anger, until peace and good- will 
return once more. When we see how certainly 
an unforgiving spirit provokes transgression, it 
is strange that we ever thought that God, at 



9 2 The Lord's Prayer 

any time or in any place or for any reason, 
could fail to unite the penitent in reconciling 
love to himself. In the degree in which one 
pushes toward the universal life, will he extend 
forgiveness to every transgressor that seeks it in 
penitence. The only limitation is the genuine, 
corrective character of the penitence. The wound 
is to be healed, not converted into a running sore. 
The perfection of God's character makes him alert 
to the cry of the transgressor. It is in part for this 
reason that we make all offenses also offenses 
against God, that we may call in his parental love, 
make him a witness to our return, and feel the heal- 
ing power of his grace. Herein we get a purchase 
of love against offender and offended alike, a love 
that lightens up all the dark retreats of sin, and 
makes them sharers in the daylight of divine grace. 
This pervasive warmth renews once more the pro- 
cesses of life. 

We cannot receive forgiveness freely except as 
we can extend it effectively. Forgive us our debts 
as we forgive our debtors. These words may mean 
in the degree in which we forgive our debtors, or 
they may mean because we forgive our debtors. 
Though the first rendering of the words, in which 
we ask to be forgiven in the measure in which we 
forgive others, may seem to be a dangerous pe- 



The Lord's Prayer 93 

tition with which to stand before God, yet a little 
consideration shows us that the two interpretations 
come to much the same result. The forgiving 
temper is the very condition by which alone we 
can receive forgiveness. Forgiveness has purifying 
power only in the penitent spirit, but a penitent 
spirit cannot co-exist with an unforgiving one. 
The depth of our charity toward others measures 
the depth of our sorrow in view of our own offenses. 
The obverse and reverse of a sound temper do not 
bear contradictory legends. We enter into for- 
giveness, whether it is extended to us or extended 
by us, by virtue of the tenderness which accom- 
panies repentance. Forgiveness passes by an un- 
forgiving temper and leaves it unblessed. We 
meet the mind of God and we meet other minds 
only in the fellowship of penitence and forgiveness. 
As we forgive, and only as we forgive, are we for- 
given. There is one and the same temper on 
either side. It is less difficult to forgive than it is 
to seek and to receive forgiveness. If we cannot 
compass the first, we certainly cannot accomplish 
the second, We can receive forgiveness only in 
the temper and in the degree in which we grant it. 
We are reminded of this in the petition, Forgive us 
our debts as we forgive our debtors. 

Forgiveness is an effacement of sin. The 



94 The Lord's Prayer 

wound heals without a scar. Recovery means a 
better condition than before the sickness. Mind 
and heart gain new vital forces. This is an ulti- 
mate fact in the spiritual world. We can be as 
sure of it as of the fact that injury begets anger, 
and anger calls out further anger. The true atone- 
ment of sin is repentance and forgiveness, the resto- 
ration of fellowship by means of them. As two 
drops of water, touching, instantly rearrange 
themselves around one center, so two hearts 
brought together in repentance come at once under 
a new attraction. This is the nature of spirit, 
this is the divine method. We know not exactly 
how or when the contact may occur, but all de- 
pends upon it. The delays, shif tings, and acci- 
dents of time, like the shaking of a screen, may 
seem awkward, but they help on this vital process 
of union between living things. We may worry 
along in obscure paths, we may search for happi- 
ness with an ill-temper in many directions, but the 
blessing will come when it does come under this 
old, old formula of repentance and forgiveness, a 
formula that our Lord put into our daily prayer: 
Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Sin 
perishes in this presence of a forgiving temper 
and love springs up anew. The soul comes under 
the redemptive process, salvation begins at once. 



The Lord's Prayer 95 

This experience of forgiveness is the most pene- 
trative and joyful of any that we undergo. It is 
springtime, all buds are bursting. We know not 
at what point under our very feet some new form 
of life may appear. The leaves rustle in the winds, 
the birds are in the air. The sweet, inexhaustible 
summer has begun. 

We often figure the Kingdom of Heaven as a 
place of rest. It is a place of rest but of rest 
through measured, well-ordered activity. In the 
warm, fruitful soil of forgiveness, delays and 
errors find correction. Better things, more re- 
wardful, more successful, spring up. Blindness 
and weariness pass away. We have cast them out 
by repentance, and the world greets us again in 
forgiveness. It matters not that we are at work 
where one's hands and one's garments are often 
soiled. We are also at work where they can easily 
be washed again in pure, living water. We can 
forgive, we can be forgiven, and thereby mount 
one step nearer heaven. 

There is, it is true, a fearful contrast to this 
ascent of the soul by forgiveness, with unending 
stroke of wing; it is the inability to repent of a 
familiar sin, a mind made dull and heavy by temp- 
tation, powers unstrung, not strengthened by re- 
pentance. We thus by betraying repentance 



96 The Lord's Prayer 

reach a point of collapse from which we cannot 
recover, a point in which a mawkish phase of 
sorrow may remain to us with no renovating power. 
A man long crushed under a vicious habit, like 
intemperance, may shed tears which have no more 
significance than the drops which creep through the 
crevices of a weeping rock. 

One may lose the healing power of forgiveness 
because one has steadily misapplied and wasted it. 
It is a fact of this kind which makes life critical. 
Vital forces are at work and they must either 
accomplish their beneficent purpose, or, failing of 
it, put it more and more beyond our reach. We 
cannot offer day by day this prayer for forgiveness 
without strengthening or weakening the processes 
of life. The power of repentance, the renewal of 
affection, the renovation of the will, must become 
a living experience or one in which we suffer per- 
petual effacement. It is from these paths of in- 
difference and danger that we pluck our feet by the 
ever-renewed petition, Forgive us our debts as we 
forgive our debtors. Unless we can urge this 
prayer, feeling each time its cleansing power, we 
are falling below the very conditions of life, and 
making harder and yet harder the way of trans- 
gression. It is the daily escape from sin by re- 
pentance and forgiveness that makes our lives 



The Lord's Prayer 97 

glad and buoyant, and lifts them into the divine 
presence. 

LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER US 
FROM EVIL 

This language illustrates the fact that the 
Scriptures, like all free and comprehensive forms 
of speech, are to be interpreted under the light 
of the ideas and of the conditions involved in 
them; and not merely as verbal propositions. 
Men have spent much ingenuity, especially in 
legal documents, in wrapping up a given purpose in 
phrases so snug and exact that the language and 
the thought should no more part company, but 
should convey to every mind the same impression. 
The effort has been but partially successful. A 
little ingenuity has so expanded the expression or 
shriveled the idea, that the language and the mean- 
ing have separated, and the idea has come to 
rattle about, like a withered kernel in the shell 
which contains it. Men have never prospered 
in so tying the wings of thought that it should 
remain on the same perch forever. Language 
is a reflecting surface, that yields its images 
according to the position of the eye that re- 
ceives them. Mind and language meet each 
other, like the steel and the flint; the spark de- 



98 The Lord's Prayer 

pends on the force of the collision. We might, 
determined on a critical rendering of this petition, 
infer that God was accustomed to lead us into 
temptation, and that our danger arose from this 
circumstance; as the danger of a child may arise 
from the curiosity of its nurse. 

Yet the language is easily intelligible to one 
under the stress of sin. To one, like an inebriate, 
on whom temptation is constantly stealing, put- 
ting to rout his feeble purpose, the petition is 
perfectly plain. He can pray with perfect com- 
prehension Lead me not into temptation, but deliver 
me from evil. No struggle overtakes a man with 
himself which does not at once give this petition 
meaning, force, hope; rallying the soul to God's 
grace and calling that grace to its aid. 

Comprehension comes with the feeling that the 
methods of the world and God's methods are 
identical; that we meet God when we meet the 
world, and that in this daily discipline we need the 
sense of divine guidance and aid. We are chil- 
dren. The thoughts and actions of the child should 
coalesce with those of the parent, and thus safety 
be found. If the child separates itself from the 
counsel of the parent presumptuously or passion- 
ately, a conflict sets in by which wisdom and good- 
ness become repellent to it. The loss from this 



The Lord's Prayer 99 

strife is immediate. The parent has occasion to 
adapt his actions to the child, and the child has 
occasion to yield his ignorance and inexperience to 
the parent who has him in charge. The constant 
petition may well be in the mind of the child that 
the thing required of him may not be beyond his 
strength, and that the strength of the father may 
be with him in its performance. In proportion as 
weakness and power, ignorance and wisdom meet 
each other in the same task is this need of guidance 
felt. 

When we pray Lead us not into temptation, but 
deliver us from evil, we feel the critical character of 
the world : how far off goodness is from any ready 
attainment, and how much we need that God's 
hand should keep close hold upon us and we upon 
it. We are not praying that the world may be 
remade; that no tasks and no dangers may come 
to us; but that we may be saved from any unrea- 
sonable boldness or passionate resistance that 
will take from us all security in the moment of 
trial. So the Psalmist prays "Keep back thy 
servant from presumptuous sins, let them not have 
dominion over me." The mind is in search of 
strength, and that strength it hopes to find in the 
divine strength; it is in search of safety, and that 
safety it expects to find in the divine love. There 



ioo The Lord's Prayer 

is here no desire to alter God's action, but to get 
the full benefit of it ; no wish to separate ourselves 
from his discipline, but to find him in it. The 
world, as fitted to us and we to it, is our starting 
point, but that which alone can make this union 
fruitful and enjoyable is God's presence. No 
matter in how rich a soil the seed may be planted 
it must still be visited by the sunlight. The 
discipline of life lies at this point, a slow coming out 
into manhood and the repose of strength by virtue 
of the mastery of temptation. The prayer recog- 
nizes temptations as pressing us toward the 
danger line; temptations that are blinding the 
eyes, weakening the will, and preparing to swallow 
us up, as the ocean engulfs the spent swimmer. 
Deliver us, O God, deliver us. Restore the gifts 
we were about to squander, and were ready to 
lose. 

All training involves temptation. It is under 
temptation and against temptation that our pow- 
ers are developed. The growth of powers and 
the loss of powers are wrapped up in themselves. 
Human powers are vital, not mechanical ; they are 
subject to no self -regulating process. We are 
entrusted to ourselves and our safety lies in the 
manner in which we meet temptation. The good 
soldier must bear hardship; must encounter the 



The Lord's Prayer 101 

struggles incident to his calling; and for that 
reason the more he needs a supreme generalship 
that his sacrifices may not be lost. 

This gives us our first element in human culture, 
evil, in the form of temptation, to be overcome. 
The question then arises how far shall we evade 
the temptation, how far shall we meet and van- 
quish it? When does our prayer take on the form, 
Lead us not into temptation, and when the form, 
Deliver us from evil? We are always standing in 
reference to evil in these critical circumstances of 
avoidance and victory. The poise of spiritual life 
is maintained at this point of conflict, here takes on 
its commanding form. When discipline and duty 
define our path, we have only to walk in it cheer- 
fully, confronting its dangers. Ask me not to 
define these two words, discipline and duty. They 
take a definition under each man's experience, and, 
when the force of them is felt, they brace the 
mind against evil as the will braces the body 
against contagion. On the other hand, indolence 
and indulgence relax the strength, open the pores, 
and make the man accessible to physical and 
spiritual malaria. We are not to rummage the 
world for evil, we are to encounter it when it comes, 
as we encounter all danger, with a fearless mind. 
This tension of life is its own protection. 



102 The Lord's Prayer 

The question comes to us in the training of 
children, to what temptations shall we expose 
them? Some object to our public schools, so 
subject to rude contact and vulgarity. But the 
principle seems to hold that we must meet the 
ordinary dangers of life, dangers that we reduce 
by meeting them, dangers that we have not created 
and from which we cannot go into hiding. More 
men fall by cowardice, are slain when they uncover 
their backs by running, than were ever slain in the 
front rank. Those who withdraw from the public 
into an exclusive companionship of their own 
plunge headlong into pride and arrogance, far more 
mischievous, far more congenial to human nature 
than vulgarity. The narrow circle often becomes 
the hotbed of vice, the contagious temper of self- 
assertion prevails, which would have been blown 
away in the open air. The supreme feelings of 
sympathy and love root themselves in the open 
field, and are nourished by daily sunlight. Life, 
human life, becomes mean, narrow, pimpling, if we 
shut it up. It calls for the whole world in which 
to grow and to thrive, passing into its own proper 
strength. 

The temptations we have chiefly to fear are 
those which already have hold upon us, which 
have found some weak spot in our character which 



The Lord's Prayer 103 

they daily assail, some pressure of circumstances 
to which we have often and again given way. 
Here the sentinel must be planted and the watch 
kept. If our appetites are domineering, our 
passions violent, our irritations constant; if praise 
intoxicates, and censure angers us, and success 
confuses our judgment, we have pressing need of 
the petition, Lead us not into temptation. If our 
heads swim, we are not to seek high places. Put 
a knife to thy throat, says the proverbialist, if 
thou be a man given to appetite. The world is full 
of the folly of conceit, and has little of the wisdom 
of humility. The fine powers of Robert Burns did 
not save him from walking straight over the preci- 
pice which lay in his path. We all have occasion 
for that apprehension of defeat which finds ex- 
pression in the petition, Lead us not into temp- 
tation. The courageous man estimates danger at 
its true value, and so is delivered from it. Rash- 
ness is a lack of equipoise, a prophecy of failure. 
The rash man is trampled down by the herd he 
thought easily to turn aside. How many armies 
going to battle have carried shackles for their 
captives which have proved to be their own chains. 
This timid petition is the soul's real strength. 

However much wisdom we may show in avoid- 
ing temptation, temptation is sure to come. This 



104 The Lord's Prayer 

renders life a battle, and the battle being on, our 
cry becomes Deliver us from evil. These two 
parts of the petition may seem to indicate a timid, 
unheroic temper. We must penetrate to the sub- 
stance of the prayer before this impression dis- 
appears. There is only one deliverance from evil, 
power over it. Our battle must be fought to a 
finish. We are saved in fighting a successful fight. 
We invoke the aid of Heaven and go forward. The 
battles of righteousness call for foresight, caution, 
prudence; but they equally demand courage, 
staying power, trust. The apostle exhorts us, 
" Having done all to stand." The timidity with 
which we avoid temptation passes over into the 
courage with which we confront it. Our deliver- 
ance is a free passage into the victory of wisdom 
and love, a reunion with the mind of God. This is 
the primary service of the petition ; not retreat, not 
flight, but the sense that we are waging a holy war. 
The impression which this petition should make 
upon us is that we are never alone, are always in 
the midst of a predetermined struggle. Things may 
seem to make against us ; we may think our lives 
about to be overwhelmed by accidents. Not so; 
many more things are making for us. We must 
wait for the recruits God is sending to us ; for the 
years yet to come in which his blessings are being 



The Lord's Prayer 105 

gathered. We are in a world not subdued to our 
hand, nor even to the divine hand; yet, once sub- 
dued, it will pour power and pleasure into our laps. 
If God tarries, wait for him; he will not tarry. 
The frontier man drives his plow around stumps, 
under and over stones. If he wearies of his toil, 
the wild growth sets in again; if he perseveres in it, 
fruitful and well- tilled fields lie before him. Na- 
ture is with him, and the two are sure to conquer. 
Any serious movement, any movement among 
physical forces in the line of intellectual develop- 
ment or of spiritual growth is never without the 
divine presence, directing, cheering, sustaining it. 
There is in us and with us superintendence, 
guidance, comfort. We are not left without re- 
sources and without escape. The strife is not 
hopeless, the defeat is not absolute. The winter 
cold may be on us, severe, cruel, hard to bear; 
farther on in the year there is warmth, deeper down 
in the soil there is life ; wait for them. Life may be 
measured by the disasters it has passed through, 
it is not wasted by them. There is always a for- 
lorn hope ready for realization, a sympathy with 
work and suffering in which the good are all with 
us. It is with this constant sense of the nearness 
of God to us, by an enveloping and supporting 
providence, that we carry our lives each day on- 



io6 The Lord's Prayer 

ward, with the prayer, Lead us not into tempta- 
tion, the temptation of arrogance or of despair. 
Deliver us from evil, those evils that press hard 
upon us, hungry wolves eager to devour us. The 
children of God are not an army misled, am- 
bushed, and slaughtered to no purpose. A new 
bloom will soon cover the bloody soil. We are 
moving with events and marching under a leader- 
ship which will make the prayer and the response, 
the danger and the deliverance one experience. 
We are abashed when we think how much we fear, 
how little we have occasion to fear ; how many have 
borne a wearisome battle and suffered a long de- 
feat, while we have entered almost at once into 
the blessings of labor. 

There is no place more lonely, more forsaken 
than the world without God. So much good 
comes near us that we attain not, so many mis- 
haps fall heavily upon us which we are not able to 
bear. Beautiful years, happy friendships, con- 
soling love are swept behind us, lost as visions 
of good that return not. But God with us and we 
with him, and a heart of love beats ever even 
under these ribs of death. The greatest good is 
still before us. Deliverance remains the last 
thing, the most emphatic thing, the thing that 
never fails the world in which we are. 



The Lord's Prayer 107 

This petition also teaches us that we are not 
dealing with trifles, wasting our time in things 
ready to vanish. We are not stumbling to no 
purpose into temptations, that come and go at 
random. The divine hand is in them all; they 
may all purify and build up our lives. By means of 
them all we may come nearer to God. When we 
confront evil, God lends a hand, the contention 
is his. When we are safe, it is because the mantle 
of his providence has been cast over us. When we 
have done good, it is because we have found out 
his thought. If no purpose of reach and mo- 
ment were involved in our lives, events might 
seem big or little, they would all be little. The 
hills may seem high or low, it is only a ques- 
tion of our experience, and our experience may 
at any moment be altered. But if a life is to be 
achieved, truth to be understood, goodness to be 
felt, a Kingdom of Heaven to be framed in eternal 
strength, things at once take on measurement and 
importance in reference to these objects. The 
large and the little get definition, and slight things 
are turned to great account. A day's work is 
taken into large fellowship; every stone finds 
a place somewhere in the temple of God. When 
the Kingdom of Heaven is the question involved, 
a kingdom which has been a-building so many 



108 The Lord's Prayer 

ages, a kingdom as yet so far from completion; 
when we understand how great are its possibilities, 
how innumerable its liabilities, how many scoff 
at it, how many weary of it, how many wrap all 
labor and life about it, we shall feel at once there 
is nothing negligible, nothing little, all things have 
to do with its coming. The temptation that over- 
comes pushes one spirit backward, the temptation 
that is overcome helps many forward. All sin 
cleansed away, all virtue attained, verify the king- 
dom, spread daylight through the whole heavens. 
A man pursues an honest business honestly. His 
prosperity, like a pure spring breaking from the 
hillside, proclaims the wholesome circulation of the 
world. If the right thing can be done success- 
fully once, twice, thrice, it becomes the law of the 
world, beginning to rule the world. If one in 
political life is truly a public servant, thrusting 
back all personal advantage, he becomes both a 
proof of what may be done and a prophecy of 
what will be done. The self-forgetfulness, assid- 
uity, and gentleness with which we build the home 
bring peace to society, disprove the cynicism of 
men, and disclose the true goal of life. Though 
the battle becomes more extended, and takes on 
new heat, the fit thing is ever winning fresh power. 
It is as if some new ingredient had been cast into 



The Lord's Prayer 109 

the smelting-pot ; the fierce effervescence indicates 
some favorable combination. Ground gained, bet- 
ter forms of union, the Kingdom of Heaven are 
the history of the world, its inevitable evolution. 
How certainly have inferior forms of life given 
place to superior ones. The instructed hand of 
man, caressing the world, brings forward new 
plants, trees, animals, that yield larger service and 
bestow more pleasure; all built together in more 
fortunate relations. As we approach this harmony 
of Heaven, we see how deeply it has been planted 
in the physical and spiritual conditions about us, 
waiting upon our handiwork. The ocean, tossed 
by the storm, itself purified and the air purified, 
sinks back into peace. We share the exultation 
of the prophet. "Sing, O ye heavens, for the 
Lord hath done it. Shout, ye lower parts of the 
earth, break forth into singing, ye mountains. O 
forest and every tree therein." 

We are led also to see that the Kingdom of 
Heaven is self-sustaining and self -propagating. 
Like a fresh species, it has the equipoise of the 
old form and the vigorous endowment of the new 
one. It is indigenous to the world. The reactions 
of goodness are as beneficent as its actions. If it is 
blessed to receive it is at the same time more 
blessed to give. To give is the very soul of 



no The Lord's Prayer 

goodness, and it unites and strengthens all hearts. 
As the Kingdom of Heaven is established, higher, 
wider, more delicate, and more musical harmonies 
set in. It stands fast because it is more potent 
and more proportionate in all its parts. 

But the Kingdom of Heaven has not yet come. 
There are only patches of light here and there. 
Neither we nor our fellow-men are yet ready for it. 
Our appetites are not trained into service, our 
desires subdued into order, our affections ex- 
tended and softened to the needs of men. We 
grow weary of the general welfare and crave our 
own indulgences. Temptations press upon us, 
and we cannot rise to the occasion, the magnificent 
occasion, of the Kingdom of Heaven. Opinions 
and actions, our own and others, become obscure 
and perplexed, and we stand wearing our sandals 
though our feet are on holy ground. So standing 
so hesitating, so inwardly confused, we need the 
final petition of our Lord's Prayer, Lead us not 
into temptation, but deliver us from evil. We need 
to feel that we are never alone, never left to our 
own interests simply. We are taking part in a 
comprehensive whole, and must find our place in it. 
Our own work rendered, we shall be gathered into, 
supported by, and fed from that universal life, 
which makes all sound and complete. Nothing 



The Lord's Prayer in 

will perish in our hands, or become false and in- 
significant. Our absorbing desire is, deliver us 
from haste, deliver us from indolence, deliver us 
from self-indulgence. Plant our feet in the paths 
of life, with the feet of the good who \have gone 
before us and the good who are about us. De- 
liver us from every snare of temptation, that our 
thoughts, our hopes, our actions may all enter in 
to crown the one issue of life. 

FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM, AND THE POWER, AND 
THE GLORY, FOREVER. AMEN. 

These last words of the Lord's Prayer are words 
of summation and of ascription. We accumulate 
in them the impression which the prayer has 
made on our own minds, and we transfer our 
thoughts from the feeble, necessitous human side 
to the ample, superabounding, divine side where 
all is kingdom, power, glory, now and evermore. 
For the most part, in human affairs, power and 
honor are built upon and go with government, 
authority; in divine affairs, the power and the 
glory are in the kingdom, come pouring up through 
it into the light, and leave it behind them as their 
imperishable trail of strength. Such is the feeling 
with which we conclude the Lord's Prayer. The 



ii2 The Lord's Prayer 

kingdom, the power, the glory have been and ever 
shall be the presence of God in the world. 

All men of any scope of thought discover a 
kingdom, or kingdoms, of one kind or another, in 
the world. The world is not a place of confusion, 
of unreconciled qualities and quantities, even on 
its surface. It is always passing into order, into 
peaceful, harmonious, dominant relations. There 
is the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, 
the animal kingdom, the rational kingdom; wher- 
ever the eye moves, these connections emerge, and 
science is ever proclaiming and dwelling on these 
terms of concord. There is no lack of law in the 
world. If the law is not recognized as divine, na- 
ture is immediately personified and we speak of 
Nature's laws and of the ways in which she is ever 
openly or secretly building up her kingdoms under 
the feet of men, or over the heads of men, for their 
support and protection. 

Not a man is willing to surrender the notion of a 
kingdom in the world. They are all installing 
themselves as heralds and interpreters of that 
kingdom. If we have no king, yet we have a 
kingdom, and busy ourselves endlessly with its 
affairs, expounding its precepts, enforcing its 
principles, asserting its authority. 

Now the Lord's Prayer is at one with science, 



The Lord's Prayer 113 

at one with the minds of men, in this notion of a 
kingdom. It brings together all kingdoms as one 
kingdom, and refers the power and the glory of 
them all to the divine presence. 

The scope of this ascription is sufficiently evi- 
dent; what is the proof of it? Wherein is this 
kingdom visible, and ever becoming more visible, 
in the structure of the world? How amid the fail- 
ures, defeats, and defects of events are we borne 
triumphantly on to the notion of a kingdom, ample 
in power, glorious in fulfillment, radiating in all 
directions the divine wisdom and love? How is it 
that having just offered so many, and as yet un- 
answered petitions, we sum up without fear and 
without doubt, For thine is the kingdom, and the 
power, and the glory, forever. Amen? 

If this is not a dream but a fact ever growing 
plainer, we ought to be able to see it. Why do we 
not see it? A great difficulty often overtakes us in 
getting from the seen to the unseen, from the 
temporal to the eternal, from familiar things and 
familiar language to the spiritual intent and pur- 
pose of them all. We need to come to the world, 
still in the confusion and long delay of passing into 
the Kingdom of Heaven, with the eye of an archi- 
tect, at once gathering up the bits of construction 
accomplished into the plan of the whole, seeing in 



ii4 The Lord's Prayer 

the chiseled stone, lying here and there among the 
rough material and accumulating waste, the su- 
perb promise of a finished product. We should 
be able to say of the spiritual world as the archi- 
tect would say of the suggestive work before him, 
This is magnificent, once completed it will stand, 
a great fact of creation. Thus is the Kingdom of 
Heaven the fulfillment of all that has gone before 
it. What a long, weary path the world has trav- 
eled, yet ever rising more and more into the light, 
that light which creates, amplifies, colors, and 
reveals the kingdom in every step of it, a single 
and indivisible process ! The seed has germinated, 
but neither the bud nor flower nor fruit has yet ap- 
peared. We wait for them all, yet knowing that 
the miracle of life is with us, before us, and will give 
them all to us. The kingdom remains to be fin- 
ished, and furnished forth in its spiritual elements; 
yet here it is, with us every day. There is love 
in the world, distinctively divine love, though there 
is hatred also. There is concord in the world, a 
struggle of living affinities, though it reaches as 
yet only a few. There are a thousand utilities, 
ten thousand enjoyments, though they still lie 
scattered about, often lost, often turned into in- 
jury, never as yet triumphant. Looking even at 
men's work we may feel as felt the disciples when 



The Lord's Prayer 115 

they said of the temple, "What great stones are 
these ! ' ' Men have done many magnificent things , 
but have not as yet been able to secure by means 
of them the plenty and the peace which alone 
make them significant. Our work transcends the 
scope of our expectations, yet these expectations 
are on the increase. Let the world once become 
spiritual, the seat of universal sympathy, the 
means of constant aid, the stretching out of the 
divine hand and the stretching forth of the hands 
of men in perpetual receiving and giving, and we 
shall see and feel that there is and always has 
been but one comprehensive purpose in the world, 
making all things sound, physical and intellectual, 
individual and collective; and that this purpose is 
the spiritual harmony of the race, by which they 
abide together as the sons of God. What short of 
this can crown the world, what less than this is 
prophesied by the world? What other dome can 
cover these foundations than this dome of the 
divine wisdom and love? The delay matters not, 
nor the open and secret conflicts; these are the 
beginnings, these the rubbish, the end will abolish 
them all, correct them all, expound them all. The 
kingdom which is rising from beneath, which is 
descending from above is God's kingdom, the 
power and peace of a living thing abiding with it. 



n6 The Lord's Prayer 

Thine is the kingdom, God, and we enter it by 
these open doors of prayer and praise. This is 
the path, the path the vulture's eye hath not 
seen, but by it the spirit of man comes at length to 
its own. 

The spiritual kingdom is not derived from the 
physical kingdom. They are parts of each other, 
as much so as earth and air. What springs up in 
the one finds expansion and proportion in the 
other. The chief characteristic of the spiritual 
life is that it extends, interprets, and transforms 
our sensuous life. Things seen become at once 
the symbols of things unseen. The animal is 
immersed in a universe of far-reaching things, but 
is hardly aware of it. It simply concerns itself with 
what makes for immediate comfort and safety. 
It does not break over the narrow circle of the 
senses which fence in its own feeding-ground. 
The heavens over it, things remote in the pres- 
ent, in the past, and in the future remain unheeded. 
The universe is merely a wall which encloses a 
simple field of physical comforts. Not thus is it 
with man, less and less is it thus with man. The 
greatness, the magnificence, the far-reaching re- 
lations of the world, all challenge his attentions, 
all furnish motives of action. It is not simply the 
ripples that gather in at his own center that con- 



The Lord's Prayer 117 

cern him, but the waves, little and large, which 
come dashing in from all quarters; the world's 
action. These astonish him, these alarm him, 
these stimulate and guide him. This lifting of 
life on the wing into the upper air, this gather- 
ing of motives from all quarters and all distances, 
and bringing them to bear on the thoughts, feel- 
ings, purposes of our daily lives, this is the ulti- 
mate reason of the world. Here is a kingdom, not 
any more of the earth merely, but of earth and 
heaven. Its forces come far and go far. It sets 
us in action upon the whole universe, and the 
whole universe in action upon us, and makes us 
cogent and permanent parts of it. What lies 
far back in the past, far out in the present, far on 
in the future concerns us. The actions and re- 
actions of eternity, the present and the remote 
effects of conduct, how the events we are setting 
in motion will issue, all concern us ; are the waves 
which are at play under our keel. Human life 
thus becomes, with a stroke, much enlarged, like 
all life, a single phase in a continuous process, de- 
fined by and defining all the products of time. 
Herein is an immense uplift, an immense com- 
pression, an immense propulsion of motive, and 
the power of it all is the divine kingdom. Stim- 
ulating and exacting appetites are to be con- 



n8 The Lord's Prayer 

strained, not for extinction but for construction; 
passions, breaking forth as a flame in men's lives, 
are to be checked, and to be graded down until 
they lie as harmonized forces at the center of 
rational effort; desires intense in our own nature, 
and intensified in us by others are to become the 
regulated impulses which carry thrift, enterprise, 
prosperity through all the world for the world's 
sake, and which pulsate backward and forward in 
the social, spiritual atmosphere with the rapidity 
and discrimination of a wireless telegram, until we 
feel that we are inclosed in conditions which re- 
ceive, propagate, and enforce our hopes as if they 
were so many words already written in the air. 
How far in advance of the spiritual uses to which 
we are putting them are the physical ministrations 
of the world ! Words of counsel and command find 
at once a waiting ear through a thousand miles of 
space, while words of consolation and affection 
perish while they are still on our lips. These 
innumerable inventions and discoveries by which 
we are mastering at once the far and the near, and 
sending human aid to the very point at which it is 
called for are after all only the possible diffusion of 
wisdom and love w T hich God has placed within our 
reach. What might not love do, if iWe were only 
ready to do it. 



The Lord's Prayer 119 

This power does not drop down upon us from 
an external source, is not the power of armies nor 
of fleets that coerce us, a coercion that is far more 
frequently destruction than creation, a fury that 
treads down almost indifferently the good and the 
bad; this power is one which creates and creates 
only, a power which, working within, gathers 
together and harmonizes all forces, inferior and 
superior, our own or another's, until we reach a 
finished product, like the flower, perfect in form, 
color, fragrance, its secret hidden in its own bosom. 
Utterly unable as we may be to see the plant in the 
seed, the flower in the bud, who ever doubts that 
seed and bud hold the plant and flower, and are 
precious because of them? 

How little matters the exact stage reached in 
growth. It is all there, past, present, and future, 
until the thing not yet conceived by us overtakes 
us. It has been said "He who models nations 
according to his own image, he is king. " He who 
pours out love on the world, a pure, compelling 
stream, builds it into love; his is the kingdom and 
the power and the glory forever. God's love lies 
centerwise in all that is pure and good, until the 
whole becomes pure and good in every part of it. 
How comes this glory, thine is the kingdom and 
the power and the glory ? Much of the glory among 



120 The Lord's Prayer 

men is thrust upon them or given to them as alien 
to their proper selves, or is something won from 
their fellow-men by violence. The most conspic- 
uous, and perhaps the largest half of glory has 
been military glory ; the largest half of honor, mili- 
tary honor. This, honor ! It is as often as other- 
wise antagonistic to it. It is an artificial flower, 
snipped into form or splashed into color, no true 
flower bursting into life by the force of its own 
being. 

We are afraid of this word glory, so filled is it, 
in human speech, with pride, and prudery, and 
cruelty; so rarely does it mean irrepressible good- 
ness, true thought, sound purpose, wide affection, 
a profound response to the wants of men. In 
these alone is glory, the glory which belongs to 
God, building the kingdom of love in the world. 
This is glory, his glory, whether men think it or 
not; whether it escapes their vision or dazzles it 
or blesses it. This is the glory whose very recog- 
nition makes the beheld and the beholder stand 
up together in one and the same light. 

Observe the Jacob's ladder by which in a spirit 
of prayer we have ascended: first a kingdom; its 
blessings reaching to all, blessings in the heart, in 
the household, in the community, in the nation, in 
the family of nations ; blessings for all the plans and 



The Lord's Prayer 121 

purposes of men by which they climb out of chaos 
into creation, into divine love and divine gifts. 
This is indeed evolution, comprehensive, complete, 
true evolution, by which the divine wisdom and 
will unroll themselves until all see them and all are 
blessed in the vision. Out of this inner power, out 
of work done, springs the glory; not as an art- 
gallery in the night wakes up under gaslight, and, 
this failing, sinks back at once into darkness, but 
as the sun, sending its harbingers before it, itself 
bursts the horizon and pours out light and heat 
and creative energy over all the land. With 
this glory everywhere about us, we pass inevitably 
into forever, a forever in which effort and hope, 
expectation and fulfillment move forward to- 
gether, henceforth indivisible. So standing, so 
feeling, our whole life utters itself in one word, 
Amen. As all things have come into the light, 
let them abide in that light. How otherwise 
than thus could we have ascended up through 
the Lord's Prayer, through the kingdom, by the 
power, into the glory which in our reconciled 
hearts abides forever? 

Note the courage which takes possession of the 
mind, as by its own insight it comes into the light. 
It justifies itself to itself, and waits on no man's 
concession. Its amen is its own full assent. 



122 The Lord's Prayer 

When the mind, the mathematical mind, sees the 
line of proof before it, with what confidence, with 
what neglect of criticism, does it rush to the goal. 
It sees and knows, knows because it sees. The 
soul in which genius lodges, when it is struck 
through with the light of consciousness, becomes at 
once aware of the scope and power of its own 
vision. How indifferent it is to fault-finding, how 
certain that that which it feels gives law to feel- 
ing, is itself life. The deepest conviction and the 
strongest satisfaction are inseparable, and to- 
gether sweep all doubt before them. The mind, 
ascending by these steps of insight and sentiment, 
is sure that it is drawing near to God, near to the 
heart of the world, and, by its own life, is taking 
possession of the world. 

Mark also the helpfulness of this conclusion of 
prayer. The more the persons, the greater the 
concord of voices, the more profound and acqui- 
escent is the amen which embraces all. If one can 
say amen, much more a score; if a score, much 
more all the millions of men, until human hearts 
gain in it articulation, cosmic utterance, the break- 
ing of ten thousand waves on the same shore. 

Once again observe the repose, throbbing with 
action, the poised attitude, backward and for- 
ward, with which we rest on the last word, amen. 



The Lord's Prayer 123 

Nothing more would we have, nothing less shall 
suffice us. We all, with one mind, each for him- 
self and each for others, say Amen, let this thing 
be . God ' s rest , man ' s rest , the rest of the thoughts , 
the rest of the feelings, the rest of our activities 
in the glory of the world, in our own glory, in the 
glory of God, become the fullness of every im- 
pulse in its last, highest expression. This is why 
we pray, this is for what we pray, this is the 
answer of prayer. For thine is the kingdom, and 
the power, and the glory, forever. Amen. 



ADDRESS TO ASSOCIATION OF 
MINISTERS 

GARDINER, ME. 

T^HERE is a feeling that we have reached a 
critical period in religious faith; that there 
are influences steadily undermining it which 
threaten its overthrow. While there is some 
truth in this sentiment, there is also much assump- 
tion and exaggeration. Those who entertain 
it imagine that the direction of the world is much 
more at their disposal than it really is. The last 
thought of the last philosopher, or the latest 
theory of the latest scientists, has about as much 
to do with the final issue of events as a single leaf 
on a magnificent tree has to do with its fortunes. 
The tree has encountered the frost, borne the 
snows, and met the whirlwinds of many seasons, 
and come out of them all unscathed. It will not 
now perish because a few leaves have withered. 
The facts of religion pertain to the lives of the 
masses of men. There they remain, not un- 

124 



Association of Ministers 125 

changeable, but invincible. They spring out of 
the fears and hopes, the labors and burdens of 
life, and thence they will grow as long as these 
experiences remain. We have to deal not with the 
speculations of speculative minds, but with the 
thoughts of practical men, tossed about and beat 
upon by their own griefs and discouragements, and 
by the wrongs of their fellow-men. Religion 
springs up, like seed in the soil, between darkness 
and light, and, like seed, will germinate as long as 
earth and air minister to it. There is a cold 
effrontery in hasty denial which men, searching for 
a hand of love to which they can cling and by 
which they can be lifted, will not heed. Speculate 
by all means, but remember that the world no 
more moves in obedience to speculation alone 
than the seasons come and go by the northern 
lights. The wide-open and perfumed blossom of 
the magnolia cannot say I crown the topmost 
branch, when I wither the tree dies with me. No 
indeed, large and beautiful and fragrant flowers 
are still due in the years to come. As the tree is a 
greater fact than any one of its blossoms, so the 
experiences of men are of more moment than any 
one product of thought. The fertility of the hu- 
man mind in spiritual conceptions remains inex- 
haustible. We have faith in the spiritual facts of 



126 Association of Ministers 

the world, the facts which give value to all other 
facts. What patient love, what heroic consecra- 
tion, what abiding courage, what faith in things 
unseen have come to men; now, as a conspicuous 
illumination ; now, as a daily consolation. As long 
as we attach importance to human history, and 
feel that here lie the great events of the world, so 
long we shall not be disheartened by any attack 
on the principles which have made and are mak- 
ing man's life illustrious. We stand with those 
potent impulses which have wrought at least a 
partial redemption among men. 

While, then, we do not believe that the scepti- 
cism of our time has brought any shock of disso- 
lution to the spiritual world, we yet recognize the 
fact that the day is changing, and that the stress of 
duty is not the same that it was yesterday. Our 
time is critical, but critical times are good times. 
They indicate that new influences are setting in, 
and that if we take this tide at the flood it will 
lead us on to fortune. 

What is the nature of this alleged crisis? It is 
simply an injunction to go forward; one more 
illustration of what we should have known always, 
that our lives are to be advanced and perfected by 
a wide experience in a world administered for this 
very end of growth. Of all things religious life 



Association of Ministers 127 

must be the most progressive. It means the 
fullness of knowledge, the completion of powers, 
the harmony of pleasures ; all impulses in all kept 
in a state of tension and reconciliation. God 
chasteneth every son whom he receiveth. More 
patience, more power are the divine idea. Men 
love better to regard themselves as already in the 
promised land. 

Our time offers victories which must be won at 
once or the issue will be disastrous defeat. This 
is our crisis, much to be done, much to be feared, 
much to be gained; the redemption of a great 
opportunity which has overtaken us. 

Men are united in churches by creeds, rituals, 
actions. The bond with which we are most fa- 
miliar is a creed. While creeds have their service, 
they do not and cannot give expression to the 
power and the unity of a spiritual life. They are 
only a part of that life, and, if separated from the 
remaining portion, are a barren part. Churches 
have sought for some form of infallibility, and, in 
the measure in which they seem to have attained 
it, they have become formal and dead. Infalli- 
bility means a bench by the wayside, on which 
men rest in their heavenly journey and at length 
drop to sleep. Our infallibility has been associ- 
ated with the Scriptures, and whatever this infalli- 



128 Association of Ministers 

bility may be it cannot avail us. The moment we 
begin to search the Scriptures and to expound 
them, that moment our fallible powers disclose 
themselves. What we affirm to be unmistakable 
truth is our conviction of truth, colored by our own 
minds. Nor have we the slightest occasion to 
regret that truth is won for us by our own activity, 
any more than that food gets its relish and service 
in our own mouths and by our own digestion. 
Most dogmatism is an apology for indolence. 

Next best to knowing the truth is a distinct 
recognition that we do not know it. It is this 
sense of ignorance that quickens inquiry. "I 
count not myself to have apprehended," says the 
apostle, "but this one thing I do, forgetting those 
things which are behind and reaching forth unto 
those which are before, I press toward the mark for 
the prize of the high calling of God in Christ 
Jesus." Man's life is swallowed up in effort. It 
is the joy of a prolonged search; a passage from 
life into life. Take the most simple and intelli- 
gible truths, the two commands of love; or the 
simpler of the two, "Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bor as thyself." It is like the sea, it has many 
measurements and many places in which the 
plummet has not reached bottom. These plain 
words remain to be filled with meaning by a life- 



Association of Ministers 129 

long experience; by an inquisitive and diligent 
search, which knows no weariness. We learn 
in our daily action what love is, what it can 
do, what it cannot do, the growing skill and 
consideration and concession it involves. To 
make a creed of this command may be to kill it; 
to make a life of it is to understand it. If any 
man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine. 
Light is struck out in the spiritual world as in the 
electric current, by the difficulties which love meets 
with in circulation. This is what makes our day 
a critical one, there are so many who tell us that 
our doctrines are dead, that our precepts have 
ceased to lay hold of the conscience, that men are 
eating and drinking unmindful of any catastrophe. 
If we are put severely to the test, "By their fruits 
ye shall know them," the verdict becomes one of 
hesitancy and doubt. We bring forth our treas- 
ures under the form of a creed, and men make a 
mock of them. 

Nor is any religious ritual more satisfactory. 
There has been a manifest disposition in our 
churches to strengthen our worship, as in itself too 
cold and colorless, by a simple ritual. Our forms 
have wearied us, have lost flavor, and we have been 
willing, if possible, to make them a little more 
appetizing. We never can give our worship the 



130 Association of Ministers 

quality of worship in a ritualistic church, like the 
Catholic, whose methods have been the slow de- 
posit of ages. We have neither the disposition 
nor the patience to build up a highway of observ- 
ances, by means of which those who march along 
it are projected, at least in the eyes of those 
standing far off beneath them, into the Kingdom of 
Heaven. Not a few are casting about for some 
adequate bond by which all Christians may be 
marshaled into one body, and make a new and 
more imposing impression on the world. The 
creed, in itself so divisible and so dividing, is to be 
reduced to its smallest terms ; church ordinances are 
to be established which will give a conspicuous path 
heavenward. The eye is to be satisfied, all good 
men marching one way with the same confessions 
and the same songs on their lips. How futile ! how 
utterly outside of the divine mind! We need 
unity, but not the unity of a tub whose hoops have 
been newly driven, but rather the unity of a tree, 
whose fibres lie straight, or twisted and tied, as the 
strength of the tree requires; so twisted and tied 
that no burden can break them or wind fret them 
apart. Churches are not to be framed together, 
they must grow together in a divine union from 
their first putting forth. A church can no more be 
made than a State can be made. This is the error 



Association of Ministers 131 

of socialism. The socialist imagines that men, 
once united in helpful relation, will remain together 
in a manifest fellowship of purpose. The fellowship 
of purpose must come before that of structure, and 
so rule it. The egg, the germ of a living thing, 
seems simple. It is capable of analysis, and all 
its ingredients are readily found ; but no man can 
put them together and make an egg. His nearest 
approach to it is one of chalk offered as a hint to a 
hen. The unintelligent fowl frames the living 
thing under the divine idea. Here is our way out 
of the religious crisis that has come to us. Our 
escape is through a new form of growth. We 
must cease to rely on a creed, no matter how care- 
fully shaped. We are not to frame a ritual which 
defines the lines of actions we agree to call re- 
ligious. We are to go forward under the divine 
providence which has come to us, to perform, as 
best we can, those duties which are marked out 
for us, and which constitute our immediate service. 
It is our purposes and our activity under these 
duties which need to be reshaped. Our thoughts 
and feelings will take on new character under this 
fresh form of service, and, before we are aware, 
we shall be united and strengthened according to 
the divine mind. This is sound sense, sound philo- 
sophy, sound religion. It is experience illuminated 



132 Association of Ministers 

by ideas, and ideas corrected and guided by ex- 
perience. God hands us over to the world, hands 
us over to our immediate duties, and instructs and 
disciplines us in the progress of events. Ideas are 
good things, a theory of the world is always in 
order, but the ideas must be practical ideas, and 
the theory must have a sound ring when struck 
like a car wheel with a hammer. Our thoughts 
concerning the world must be the spiritual counter- 
parts of the world, as it passes before us day by 
day. It is the world made by God and moving 
on under his hand that tries and tests all our 
schemes of salvation. Scripture interpretation, 
revelation, must resolve themselves into conduct 
and character, into the framework of the state 
and society, into a Kingdom of Heaven, shaped 
where men are growing rich and growing poor, 
and where the good and the evil are thrown promis- 
cuously together. The real question, the question 
which it is salvation to put and to answer, is How- 
can the Kingdom of Heaven come through all and 
for all. 

We have some notion of how this inquiry should 
be answered, but by no means a complete notion. 
Begin to work out this idea, be diligent in each 
day's labor, and the kingdom will more and more 
rise before the mind, a heavenly vision, fitted to 



Association of Ministers 133 

guide our thoughts, to encourage our hearts, and 
to bind us to the good and great everywhere. 

We hear much of inquiry, observation, induc- 
tion, also of insight, of revelation, of entering by de- 
duction into the mind of God. Indeed all knowl- 
edge is born in this copulation of things and ideas, 
the world and jthe plan of the world which has 
brooded above it so many centuries as the creative 
spirit. This union is precisely what we are urging, 
is the step to which God is impelling us as the next 
stride heavenward. We are to take possession 
with? God of the world as evermore his own ; we are 
to bring it under those impulses and laws which 
constitute and disclose its divine character. So 
shall we learn to see, to feel, and to share the sal- 
vation of the world. Artificers of the kingdom, we 
shall know what the kingdom means, and be ready 
to enter into its pleasures. 

Our religious life must rest, in the first place, on 
the conviction that divine wisdom and love lie at 
the center of the world, and, in the second place, 
that from this center they are going forth to take 
possession of the world, and, in the third place, 
that those who labor for this consummation will 
thereby enter into it and share it. We grow into 
the kingdom as we frame the kingdom. God 
does not make the kingdom and then lift us into 



134 Association of Ministers 

it, as the angel of the Lord is said to have raised 
the prophet Habakkuk by the hair of his head. 
He and we shape the kingdom, and so share its 
spirit. The kingdom is at once within us and 
without us. Our struggle for an external reve- 
lation makes clear and open the inner vision. 
This is the history of all high art, and of the highest 
art of all, the Kingdom of Heaven. 

The spiritual man differs from every other man 
in feeling that wisdom and love have made the 
world, and are more than ever busy with this 
work. This revelation comes piecemeal, and 
takes possession of us as the fruit of a large ex- 
perience. The two great commands, the love 
of God and the love of man, are conjoined be- 
cause they cannot exist or be understood apart. 
These two feelings are planted together in mutual 
action and reaction. It is not obvious that God 
is love, that a loving hand has framed and guides 
the world. It is easy to believe the opposite. 
The love of God is so comprehensive, takes such 
wide circuits, so holds us back from premature 
and raw pleasure, is so patient in laying the founda- 
tions of good that men easily become impatient of 
it, and angrily deny its existence. How does this 
ruling idea and central revelation come to us? 
Chiefly in connection with an earnest purpose to 



Association of Ministers 135 

make the world, in all its parts, what it ought to 
be. Cherish love, learn the lessons of love, come 
to feel how much it contains and how slowly it is 
realized, and, point by point, the mind of God 
opens upon us. We understand the process of 
spiritual growth, its wholesome severity, its mani- 
fold corrections, and are led to feel that these seeds 
of eternal life must be made strong and vital, and 
all development proceed under them. 

Take this one fact, which may seem a strange 
fact, that those who are most sensitive to human 
love and most painstaking in making it widely felt 
are those who most fully believe in the love 
of God and are least garrulous concerning it. 
Is not this the best possible proof that the world is 
spiritual, and everywhere pervaded by love? 
Love begins to understand the world, and more 
and more to rejoice in it. If this is not the very 
nature of the world, we shall never be able to 
plant love in it successfully. Heaven will forever 
remain alien to a world of strife, bitterness, and 
cruelty. 

This conviction must be born and must grow up 
in the world of action; so God would lead us that, 
standing under the open heavens, our life strong 
within us by virtue of effort, our hearts warmed 
by pursuit, we may be able to feel that God is love, 



136 Association of Ministers 

that a kingdom of love is normal to the world, 
and that as it comes it will shape events to itself as 
readily as the sun of spring unfolds the flower; 
the same sun that disperses the dead thing in decay 
opens a living thing in the full circuit of its 
powers. 

This notion of divine love, established and 
strengthened in experience, is so constructive in its 
nature, so adequate for its work as to make sure 
of its fulfillment in the Kingdom of Heaven. If 
there is to be any harmony among men; any life 
proportioned to the grandeur of their powers ; any 
true and adequate possession of the world; any 
completion of development, it must be found in 
that living temper already kindled in the human 
heart, and waiting to be nourished by all truth. 
This evolution crowns and completes all evolution. 
This is the doctrine of evolution recited from be- 
ginning to end. Personal life, family life, social 
life, national life wait on wisdom and good- will. 
Strife, dissension, division rest on ignorance, 
narrowness, and ill-will. To deny the world love 
is to condemn it to sterility and death. All that 
ails society is its stupidity, its brutality, its insensi- 
bility; the assumption that more can be done for 
human happiness by a hard fist and a grasping 
hand than by a tender and sympathetic heart. 



Association of Ministers 137 

Divine love is not yet accepted, but is coming to 
be accepted as the key of life. 

Our Christian creeds have never given the true 
position to ethical principles. They have even, at 
times, begotten a certain contempt of what has 
been termed mere morality, as if it were some false 
way of climbing into heaven. Yet the moral law 
is the law planted in the hearts of men, which they 
ever more and more have occasion to expand. It 
is the law which guides love, and through which 
love feeds all the streams of pleasure. As one's 
right arm in service throbs with the blood-energy 
and nerve-energy which flow through it, so obedi- 
ence to the ethical law of our spiritual life means 
the highest fulfillment of all pure and joyful im- 
pulses. This transition now urged makes our 
faith realistic. 

It is strange how timid we have been in the de- 
fense of truth, and chiefly because the truth of our 
creeds has been so remotely and artificially con- 
ceived. The narrative of Genesis has occasioned 
us much trouble, and led to an ignominious retreat. 
There is in it, rightly conceived, no embarrass- 
ment of faith, but an occasion of a fresh revelation. 
When the scientist came with his facts, we, trained 
in speculation, knew not how to meet him. He 
discussed the making of the world, and we were 



138 Association of Ministers 

discussing the formation of the Trinity. Our 
weapons, on either side, missed each other in the 
darkness, or, meeting, theory was shivered into 
fragments against stubborn facts. 

Why have we not dealt with facts? We have 
as many facts, facts as pertinent and significant 
as those of the physical world. Historic facts, 
personal and social facts, are, rightly urged, as 
undeniable and invincible as those of the material 
world. What we see with mental vision is as 
much a part of our experience as what we see with 
our eyes. If we take our stand by human hopes 
and attainments, our position is as impregnable as 
that of science, and overtops it. We have occa- 
sion to rejoice in scientific facts, but when the 
scientist sets up as a philosopher, and makes the 
physical world the image of all worlds, he has as 
many glass windows, and windows as easily stoned 
as the most defenseless of us. When we affirm 
that love is the law of human life, the affirmation 
so touches every man's experience as hardly to 
call for proof ; or, if proof is still sought for, history 
crowds in with its facts like a marching army. 

This transition from creed and ritual to action 
ordered by good-will is also redemptive. Each 
man who makes it, in the measure in which he 
makes it, passes into the divine love, penitent, 



Association of Ministers 139 

faithful, obedient, instructed, trained. How many- 
men have been softened and made wise by a theory 
of the atonement, thought out and defended? 
How many hearts have been softened and made 
wise by an effort to make the divine love in some 
new way effective in the world? Love is never 
entertained without becoming at once redemptive. 
This transition is also Christlike. Christ dealt 
very little with doctrine, he dealt constantly with 
conduct. He left the just impulse to draw after it 
the just conception. He gave the two command- 
ments their true relation and position. On them, 
said he, hang all the law and the prophets. 
Life and the prophecy of life are in them 
alone. 

"I am among you as he that serveth." "By your 
fruits shall ye be known." "Then shall the right- 
eous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an- 
hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee 
drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee 
in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee, 
sick or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King 
shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto 
you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least 
of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. " 

We have been so occupied with speculation that 
we have had little time left in which to obey. The 



140 Association of Ministers 

present crisis of our faith is to force us from the 
theory of godliness into the practice of godliness, 
from the form of godliness into the power of it. 
The light of our creeds has been like the light of a 
trolley car ; it burns brightest when there is no force 
spent in motion. 

Before we turn to the practical uses of the truth 
we have considered, let us sketch the path we have 
traveled. There is a religious crisis, caused by 
the remote and speculative character of our creeds, 
and the undue importance attached to our rituals. 
This crisis is to be relieved and is to pass away 
by accepting current spiritual facts, as they press 
upon our attention in the world about us, and by 
adapting our action to them. We are to share the 
empirical development of our time, and to insti- 
tute a search for the Kingdom of Heaven. We 
thus enter on a deeper and more immediate knowl- 
edge of the world, and the divine idea contained 
in it. Our faith becomes realistic, as science is 
realistic. It becomes redemptive and cannot be 
pushed aside because it is redemptive. It accepts 
the spirit of Christ and so remains Christian. 

No time and no country ever had more abun- 
dant practical and fruitful social problems before 
it than our time and our country. No time and 
country ever had more need of the gospel of 



/ 



Association of Ministers 141 

Christ, or could find in it more revelation than our 
time and our country. 

It remains only to hint at a few of these 
problems. The State of Maine stands as a pro- 
hibitory State. You have doubtless been much 
perplexed and divided over this question. Yet, 
what other temper can be trusted with the settle- 
ment of the problem than the Christian temper? 
Prohibitionists seem to me at times to take un- 
tenable ground, and to have less sympathy and 
patience than belong to them. Yet look where 
I will, the community which forbids the sale of 
intoxicating drinks seems to occupy higher ground 
than one which allows it. There is a deeper sense 
of social obligation in prohibition than in license. 
Yet is it not true that we cannot stand on high 
moral ground without a high moral temper; that 
we must gird ourselves the more tightly the greater 
the work we have in hand? The disposition to 
overcome evil with good must be a little more 
vital in Maine than in Massachusetts. Every 
man for himself reads license, every man for his 
neighbor reads prohibition. The conflict be- 
tween these two tendencies is always far-reaching 
and obscure. Upon Maine is laid the immedi- 
ate service of showing that prohibition, however 
harsh it may seem, may yet stand for so much 



142 Association of Ministers 

good- will, such watchfulness of the strong over the 
weak as to make of it an exalted expression of our 
common life. 

A question which is destined to be a weary one 
in the handling and one which nothing but a 
Christian temper, instructed in many ways, can 
settle, is that which lies between workmen and 
their employers. The present position of the 
working classes is one that involves hardship and 
discouragement; less with us than elsewhere, yet 
even with us open to much bitterness. This rela- 
tion has arisen under obscure causes, with which 
both the faults of men and the selfishness of men 
have had much to do. It has been the product of 
composite terms among which ignorance, in- 
dolence, and vice have played a part on the one 
side, and, on the other, forgetfulness, selfishness, 
and brutality. It is not an easy task for any 
Christian, immersed to the lips in custom and con- 
ventional sentiment, to understand the claims of 
the labor-movement, and to bring to it the spirit of 
Christ. If you wish to make proof of your Christi- 
anity, here is an opportunity. What correction of 
opinion, what sacrifice of interest, what charity 
toward mistakes are you prepared to enter on, in 
order that the masses of men may frame for them- 
selves a life of more impulse and more opportunity, 



Association of Ministers 143 

a life more commensurate with your own lives and 
with the love of God? 

The workmen feel, and not without reason, that 
the Church is often opposed to them and is always 
unsympathetic. Yet it is the office of the Church 
to furnish that vital heat which maintains growth 
in society. The customs of society are adverse 
to labor. It presses down the rewards of labor 
and makes light of its hopes. The burdens of 
inability and poverty lie heaped up in the path of 
labor, and few are willing to aid in their removal. 
It is the business of the Christian to nourish a 
progressive temper. Things as they are, are not 
to him the rule of life. While he holds fast that 
which is good, he is to make it a means to that 
which is still better. It is his commission to unite 
a wise radicalism to a wise conservatism. The 
Kingdom of Heaven will not come by holding fast 
that which we have. We have occasion to un- 
tangle the snarled skein of life, to lay straight its 
twisted threads, and to bring them more perfectly 
under the law of order and service. This is a 
delicate task, and because it is a delicate task it 
falls to those who are striving to furnish the wis- 
dom and good- will of the Kingdom of Heaven. 

An equally pressing claim, the counterpart of the 
one now urged, is a correction of the unrighteous 



144 Association of Ministers 

methods by which we are pursuing wealth. It is 
a temper which pervades society. We seem to 
think that if money is being made we are nationally 
prosperous. We forget that a just and kindly 
distribution of wealth is of more moment than its 
acquisition. The heaping up of wealth in the 
hands of ?a few may be but little better than 
robbery. The rain, which should fall in gentle 
showers all through the land, pours out of the torn 
clouds as a torrent. 

The career of John D. Rockefeller draws atten- 
tion because it expresses, in its most intense form, 
a temper that is coming to rule the commercial 
world. He has turned business into unceasing 
and unflinching warfare, a securing of prosperity 
not only without reference to others but with con- 
stant cunning exercised toward them, and secret 
depredations made upon them. He has done 
this with an open profession of Christian faith. 
If these two things are not hostile to each other, 
then all spiritual relations become unintelligible to 
us. A burglar may as well be devout as another 
man. If one can love his neighbor and spend his 
life in plundering him, the distinction between 
light and darkness disappears. Herein lies the 
guilt of this man, and of others of the same ilk, and 
of all who put themselves in fellowship with them, 



Association of Ministers 145 

that they confound ethical distinctions and make 
the world one medley of wrongdoing. Is not 
this what our Saviour meant when he said, "Ye 
cannot serve God and mammon"? The two spir- 
itual methods are incompatible and incapable of 
assimilation. If we give business the one standard 
and Christianity the other they become at once 
irreconcilable. All that remains for us is to choose 
between them. The political world will follow the 
business world, the social world will take the same 
line of march, and the Christian world will — 
what will it do? Concede these forms of activity 
to the devil, and what remains to righteousness? 
Nothing but the crumbs which fall from the 
table, the feast of dogs. How ridiculous is the at- 
titude in which President Hadley is placed by the 
acceptance, on the part of the university, of a 
million dollars from Mr. Rockefeller. His remedy 
for the evil of trusts was social stigma, and now, 
like an idle schoolboy, he is left to follow in the 
wake of the alumni as they shout "Great is Diana 
of the Ephesians!" 

Our present methods of gaining wealth, those 
under consideration, are not consistent with 
honesty, with personal integrity, with general 
prosperity, with free institutions. This con- 
flict, as good Christians and good citizens, we 



146 Association of Ministers 

are bound in all the relations of life to recognize. 
We were raised up for such a day as this. We 
were called away from our creeds for this higher 
service. The dog that will not bark in such an 
hour of danger, what can be done with him but 
shoot him? 

The man who steals twenty dollars is not half so 
dangerous as the man who steals a business, a busi- 
ness by which a man supports his family and nour- 
ishes his own powers. Do not let us mislead 
ourselves by a mere trick of words. Every com- 
petitor may crowd his rivals, but if he does it under 
open, fair, and equal terms, the act carries with it 
no censure. The maintenance of his own enter- 
prise and of the welfare of the community is in- 
cluded in it. If he does it by underselling a rival, 
simply that he may later raise prices against us all, 
his act is as destructive as theft of all good- will. I 
am at liberty to run a race. I am not at liberty to 
trip the man who runs it with me. It is these lies 
within lies that every honest man hates. It is 
these lies within lies, one wrong wrapped up in 
another, that make so much of our business enter- 
prise an abomination. It is these lies within lies 
which should make every good man sensitive 
and alert, the moment the evil odor is in the air. 
The political dishonesty so painfully present with 



Association of Ministers 147 

us is only one more swarm hatched in the op- 
pressive, malarious atmosphere which envelops us. 
What does liberty mean, what do free institutions 
mean, but equality of opportunity, open paths to 
all the possibilities of life, liberty to do and to be 
and to become all that the social and the business 
world provide for us? Men like Rockefeller mur- 
der liberty, not only in their own generation but 
in all the generations that are to follow, until these 
wrongful accumulations of power are once more 
scattered, and divided. 

Here and now in this struggle for the conditions 
of life, a life such as God gives us, comes the crisis 
of our faith. Our creeds and our rituals are mere 
rubbish if they do not prepare us for this strife; 
if they leave us lapped in our own comforts, with 
no word or deed with which to strengthen the right. 
We have been marched up by the work and by 
the weariness of the world hitherto, through its 
defeats, and its victories, to this crisis, this transi- 
tion from formal to actual, from personal to pop- 
ular life, from the kingdoms of this world to the 
Kingdom of Heaven. The present is an oppor- 
tunity, as yet misapprehended and unredeemed, 
to show what resources of good-will are hidden 
in our Christian faith. Every weapon is ours 
with which to meet the ever-enduring, ever-re- 



148 Association of Ministers 

turning struggle between good and evil, the king- 
dom of love and the kingdom of self-love. But our 
victory is to be one of good over evil, a triumph 
of divine grace. We have occasion, therefore, to 
wash our hands and to purify our hearts as a first 
condition of success. If we are to dress the 
wounds of the world, if we are to carry no infec- 
tion with us, the process must be antiseptic from 
beginning to end. The American Board tells us, 
however, that this is not necessary. It is sufficient 
if those who work with us are not under legal 
condemnation. The test of human law and divine 
law are the same, any man may be our helper who 
is not wearing stripes. It is not our business, in 
spreading the kingdom, to search diligently, intelli- 
gently, lovingly into the spirit of the kingdom. 
We are told that we may gather our resources 
freely where we can and so encourage charity even 
though we make the building of the kingdom an 
ovation to those who have unrelentingly rejected 
its principles; that the notion of blood poison in 
the spiritual world is fanciful; the practical man 
pays no heed to it. Paul, as practical a man as 
ever lived, gives us his notion in full: 

"Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, 
that ye may be able to stand in the evil day, and, hav- 
ing done all, to stand. Stand, therefore, having your 



Association of Ministers 149 

loins girt about with truth and having on the breast- 
plate of righteousness ; and your feet shod with the 
preparation of the gospel of peace ; Above all, taking 
the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to 
quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take 
the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, 
which is the word of God; Praying always with all 
prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching 
thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for 
all saints;". 



AN ADDRESS TO THE GRADUATING CLASS 
OF THE PALMER HIGH SCHOOL, 

PALMER, MASSACHUSETTS 

"yOUNG women and young men are always 
interesting. Any exercises ordered by them 
are sure to be attractive. Our high school exhibi- 
tion fills our church at Williamstown, while distin- 
guished speakers from abroad go begging for an 
audience. A halo gathers about a head just rising 
above the horizon, which disappears as the day 
advances. There is a freshness in the morning 
dew and a fragrance in the morning air that give 
way before the growing heat. This fascination is, 
at least in part, due to our sense of the immeas- 
urable possibilities which attend on the beginning 
of every life. What distinguished men and noble 
women have traveled these same paths, and come 
out into the full light of the world, the world with 
such grand revelations, fitting work, and worthy 
rewards for its loved ones. When we ourselves 
have ceased to stand before the open door, we 
cannot see others on its threshold without a re- 

150 



Palmer High School 151 

newed sense of the scope of things, of the glory of 
the light which still streams through these portals. 
It is of this that I propose to speak to you this 
evening — the open door of life — the method by 
which you are to enter in. 

If we can say that the world was made for any 
one thing, that thing is life. For many millions 
of years, it has been increasing and varying the 
number of lives, gathering them, scattering them, 
shepherding them always, until, among the beauti- 
ful and enjoyable objects about us, living things 
stand first. Beyond comparison man is the most 
perfect, comprehensive, and ruling creature in 
the world. He sums up, possesses, and enjoys all 
these other forms of life, which themselves put the 
world to their own uses. Nor is this process of 
development, which has covered so many centu- 
ries, approaching an end. Still more serviceable, 
more beautiful things are coming forth under the 
creative hand, and man himself is occupied in this 
workshop of life, determining what lives shall next 
appear, whether for use or decoration or mastery. 
Still, as in the tree, it is the topmost portion that 
grows most freely. The perfect man is before us, 
though a long way off. We begin to see him, we 
do not overtake him. Yet how wonderfully are 
things being made ready for him. The house has 



152 Palmer High School 

been bought and furnished, but the bride and 
bridegroom have not appeared. Franklin drew 
from the clouds along his feeble kite-string the 
least hint of electricity. He doubtless thought 
many things; he certainly did not think that the 
first lasso had been cast over the head of the most 
omnipresent and strongest agent that has ever 
been drawn into the service of man. 

It is into this fellowship of life, now mastering 
the world, that w T e are to enter; this life that we 
are to study, to enjoy, and to expand. Participa- 
tion is open to all; leadership and expansion in a 
less degree. Yet, as we expand life, we shall lead 
it, and as we lead it we shall expand it. Whoever 
plants a beautiful garden leads life. Whoever 
cultivates intelligently a productive farm both 
guides and expands it. Every parent and every 
teacher, and this is the excellency of his office, is 
dealing with life. Every man who thinks and feels 
and acts becomes a leader of men. I trust you, 
young men, have outgrown any admiration you 
may have had for Napoleon, who was a great 
leader, by being a great destroyer of men. If not, 
you are still in the cradle, and I hope some one will 
lift you out, or tumble you out, until you come to 
know what leadership is. 

I am about to try to give some guidance to this 



Palmer High School 153 

process of entering into life, a process so constantly 
assayed and so often missed. It is a familiar topic, 
buried in so many precepts that it needs to be 
shaken loose in your thoughts and brought once 
more into fresh consideration. 

The first principle I enforce is Win by not 
winning. This may seem to you contradictory. 
There is a contrast between its two parts but not 
a contradiction. Our best thinking and doing 
are often a combination of opposites, of centrifu- 
gal and centripetal forces, that hold a planetary 
system between them in order. The arch of the 
bridge, which spans the stream so peacefully, is 
poised in the air by balanced forces. The house 
you live in is full of strain and tension in opposite 
directions; all in one direction, and it would fall 
upon you and crush you. There is a maxim that 
runs in this wise, Make money, honestly if you 
can, but make money. My principle, Win by not 
winning, runs in the opposite direction. Win, win 
widely, constantly, laboriously, but be cautious 
about the finish. To set some object before you 
and win it, is often destructive of the winning pro- 
cess, which is of far more moment than the thing 
won. Let me illustrate this principle in several 
directions. I presume the young men in Palmer 
High School, in common with so many other young 



154 Palmer High School 

men, are interested in athletic games. The pri- 
mary purpose of these games is relaxation, the con- 
tribution they make to happiness and health. An 
incident of these amusements is the rivalry called 
out between the contending parties, the satisfac- 
tion which comes to the victor by victory. We 
have in the game relaxation, training, triumph, not 
in crescendo but in diminuendo. We turn the 
game end for end. We win by winning, and win- 
ning becomes our absorbing purpose. The play 
loses its relaxing quality, because we cannot relax 
and win. It loses its general quality, because 
only the best players can win. It misses its social 
pleasure, because it is not pleasant to be beaten, 
expecially when the victor makes the welkin ring 
with his shouts. It brings the temptation to 
excess and unfairness, for these help to win. It 
tempts to betting, to enhance an interest already 
too intense. We thus suffer an accumulation of 
passion quite alien to our first purpose. Players, 
through with a game of this kind, instead of being 
ready to return to routine labor in good heart, wish 
to renew the strife with fresh risks and fresh hopes. 
One has no right to play a game unless he can take 
defeat gracefully and cheerfully. It is his contri- 
bution half the time to the common pleasure. We 
are to show our good-will 'and our mastery in 



Palmer High School 155 

the game quite independently of beating. When 
games are pursued with an insatiate desire of 
victory, they lose their character as games, and 
become a source of bitter rivalries. The courtesy 
we still strive to throw over them is like the pre- 
liminary shaking of hands when two men enter the 
ring. The true law of sports is Win by not win- 
ning, win whatever the issue. 

Emulation in class work, pushed into contention 
and finished up by prizes, is another case in which 
we miss our principle, Win by not winning. 
Excellency ceases to be our reward and is dis- 
placed by the miserable substitute of superiority; 
a superiority oftentimes doubtful and subject to a 
great variety of opinion. If the superiority really 
exists, it is not gracious to enforce it ; and if it does 
not exist, to assert it is cruel. Paul thought, and I 
think we shall be compelled to agree with him, that 
those who measure themselves among themselves, 
and compare themselves with themselves, are not 
wise. There is an emulation we must all entertain, 
the desire of imitation which arises in the presence 
of excellence. But this sentiment should be lodged 
silently in our own hearts, and lead us to follow 
quietly in the steps of the strong. We miss it most 
completely when we substitute for it the wish 
to outstrip some one else. When we are pushed 



156 Palmer High School 

forward by this counterfeited form of emulation, 
we begin at once to put upon excellence itself a 
false judgment. 

A noble profession has much marred its nobil- 
ity by rendering our maxim in the form, Win by 
winning. The lawyer who tests his merits by the 
number of cases won, or by the number of crimi- 
nals acquitted through his efforts, has lost any 
just view of his profession and of his duties to the 
public. He is properly an instrument in adminis- 
tering justice, not in thwarting it. 

The acquisition of all profound knowledge comes 
under our precept, Win by not winning. A dan- 
gerous enemy to knowledge is the impression 
that we know already. The plummet of thought 
sinks to the bottom of any deep inquiry very 
slowly. If we draw the line too quickly our meas- 
urements are all too shallow. It is a common 
experience that those who have supported a theory, 
in its own day useful, become the adversaries of 
truth when advancing inquiry calls for a modifi- 
cation of previous opinions. One of the finest 
qualities of a good teacher is to lead the pupil to 
see the inadequacy of his notions. 

Religious bigotry is religious ignorance, and the 
root of it lies just here, the feeling that the pro- 
found truths of our spiritual experience have 



Palmer High School 157 

received an adequate and final statement, when 
in fact we are just beginning to conceive them. 
He who wins by winning a creed is liable to dis- 
cover — or if he does not discover it his neighbor 
may discover it for him — that he has gained little 
and lost much by his over confidence. 

These young people, as they graduate from the 
high school, which I make no doubt has furnished 
them a good training, may be ready to say Now 
we are through, thank Heaven ! we have completed 
our education and are ready for the world. The 
purpose of an education is not to get itself done, 
but to open up ever wider and grander views of 
life, and to inspire the mind in their pursuit. You 
have been bowled out into a wide, open field, 
and are to bring up neither here nor there; but 
to feel forever those impulses of knowledge which 
have been imparted to you. You will win, if you 
win at all, by not winning, by never being through. 
One more example and we will pass to our next 
principle. 

I am a believer in what is called woman's rights. 
Most of us are, in one degree or another. We all 
feel that the circle of thought and influence which 
surrounds any person is sacred to that person ; and 
is not to be circumscribed or trespassed upon 
except for the very best of reasons. Under this 



158 Palmer High School 

idea, noble and zealous women have long been in 
eager pursuit of political rights. Their success 
has been but partial; yet they have won by not 
winning. They have disciplined their own powers, 
awakened the minds of others, and pushed us all 
into a new order of things. They have put on 
regal garments and will be ready when the time 
comes to exercise regal authority. Many a man 
has won his political rights far too easily, and now 
knows not what to do with them, except to sell 
them at some pitiful price. If he were driven back 
among the disfranchised and left there until he was 
ready to claim and to fight for his rights, it is 
possible that he might associate them with a high 
value and fitting use. It is the winning of a right 
that gives us the wisdom to exercise it. 

This principle is one for our own personal 
guidance. It is the claiming, not the gaining, that 
enthrones the mind. "As a man thinketh so is 
he." Take the two assertions, "The Kingdom of 
Heaven is within you," and, "Lay up for your- 
selves treasures in Heaven, where neither moth 
nor rust doth corrupt," and we have the entire 
philosophy of life. 

This is a doctrine of perfection. Doctrines of 
perfection are our spiritual inheritance. "Be ye 
perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect. " 



Palmer High School 159 

We can misunderstand these doctrines of perfec- 
tion, and we can understand them. We have had 
perfectionists, and we have not known which most 
to wonder at, their effrontery or their stupidity. 

We are told to overcome evil with good, another 
doctrine of perfection. We prefer to meet anger 
with anger, a blow with a blow. But these at the 
best only balk evil for the moment; they leave it 
to renew itself when the opportunity offers. This 
was the truth which our Lord had in mind when 
he bade us, being buffeted on the one cheek, to turn 
the other also. 

Samuel H. Hadley, a descendant of President 
Edwards, in charge of the Jerry McCauley Mission 
in New York, was accustomed to entertain every 
vagabond that offered himself, and, no matter 
how frequently he returned to his vices, to receive 
him again and again as often as he presented 
himself. He thus always approached men, and 
impressed men, with the divine temper. Yet 
President Edwards conceived of God as thrusting 
the sinner into hell the moment he caught him. 
Between the two, who best expressed the divine 
mind? There are two sequences, not either of 
them easily broken, a heavy armament — arrogance, 
resentment, war; or the more beneficent series — 
justice, good-will, patience, peace. Just now as a 



160 Palmer High School 

people our faith is directed to menace and not to 
mildness. We stumble at the principle, Win by 
not winning, yet every earnest petition contains 
it. Light, more light, ever more light. Grant me 
that chief virtue, charity, a love pure, peaceable, 
that can outstretch the sins of the greatest sinner. 
''Nearer, my God, to thee, nearer to thee. " 

Our second principle is a social one rather than 
a personal one: Get without getting. Be more 
anxious about the method of money-making than 
about the money made. Interest yourself in in- 
telligent, honest, and beneficent production, but 
remember that its value is by no means measured 
by the amount you yourself secure by means of it. 
The getting that you are to go without is that 
intense getting, which is grabbing, the getting of 
Wall Street. Our multi-millionaires, and our aspi- 
rants to multi-millionaireship are converting com- 
merce into a gigantic grab-bag. This is as much 
a sin against sound commerce, as it is against 
Christian fellowship. True wealth-getting is a 
cooperative process, bringing labor and capital, 
toil and enterprise from the ends of the world to 
aid us. We are to enter into the spirit of this co- 
operation, to bless others by it and ourselves to be 
blessed by means of it. There are few directions 
in which large-mindedness can more convincingly 



Palmer High School 161 

show itself than in money-making. We see it here 
more quickly, and feel it more strongly, than else- 
where. To get wealth beneficently is to lay the 
foundations of the Kingdom of Heaven. The New 
Jerusalem is of truth built with streets of gold and 
gates of pearl. No poor man and no mean man 
can dwell there. Wealth means the degree in 
which the world is subject to us; the distribution 
of wealth stands for the fellowship of men in 
spiritual possessions. 

Our generation, during the last forty years, has 
shown more intense selfishness, a more successful 
assault on economic rights, on social amenities, 
and on civil liberties than have fallen to any previ- 
ous generation in our history. It is not now the 
slavery of the black that is under discussion, but 
the slavery of the great mass of citizens. The 
inequalities in the distribution of wealth that have 
gained admission among us cannot go forward and 
leave even the shreds of opportunity which should 
fall to every man. The Standard Oil Company 
is an anomaly in human history. If we consider 
its industrial leadership, the business interest and 
ability which support it, its astonishing success, 
the number of those who justify and emulate it, 
whose standards of right and wrong have been 
shaped in this school of greed, the number who 



162 Palmer High School 

have swallowed down all censure in the hope of 
gaining some share of the spoils, some crumbs at 
the rich man's table; if we fairly estimate a tithe 
of these things, we shall feel that no such mon- 
strous growth has before oppressed our earth. 
Planted in a rich soil, it has sucked up moisture 
like Jonah's gourd, and in a single night has spread 
a canopy over the head of every prophet anxious 
to curse the people. 

It has subverted all principles of fair dealing and 
raised its hand against every competitor. It has 
cast over its daily procedure the cloak of secrecy, 
and lived in the dark like any burglar; it has 
pushed aside every moral and legal principle that 
lay in its path, and the only question that it has 
ever seemed to ask has been, How can we advance 
our own interest? It is equally at war with demo- 
cracy and Christianity, and like a leech sucks the 
life-blood of everything it touches. The leader 
in this conscienceless and remorseless pursuit of 
wealth is a member in good and regular standing 
in the Baptist Church. He may weigh down the 
Baptist Church, I will not say how low, but no 
Baptist Church can lift him up. He cannot even 
be a wolf in sheep's clothing, for no pelt is large 
enough to hide him. The gospel of love can do him 
no good until it first becomes a purgation in his 



Palmer High School 163 

own heart. This patient, untiring, and unscrupu- 
lous plundering is hidden from our censure sim- 
ply by success, success which an American covets 
above all things. What is theft in one grade of 
society becomes enterprise in another, and robbery 
is acquitted in the measure in which it prospers. 
This leader in the business world is approaching a 
billion and could buy up half the towns in Massa- 
chusetts, and make all right at San Francisco. 

I dislike to speak disparagingly of Carnegie, 
with his liberal temper, but it would have been far 
better if the money which he has accumulated had 
been more evenly distributed in the process of pro- 
duction. By positive law, by neglect of law, and 
by a faulty business sentiment that knows no law, 
we have made it possible for a Scotch boy, wander- 
ing over to the United States, to make 200,000,000 
dollars. We as a people shall not be rendered 
enough better by all his donations to cover up this 
folly on our part. He may pension, if he will, poor 
professors, but an independent and enterprising 
people ought to be able suitably to reward all 
needed service without his or any other man's 
intervention. Business, honest as I believe it to be 
in most of its branches, insists, in its higher finan- 
cial flights, on setting up a law of its own. Men 
dealing in stocks make a business of inflating or 



1 64 Palmer High School 

reducing values to suit their own convenience. 
Stocks are as elastic as soap-bubbles. If the 
values contained in stocks were as well defined as 
those in breadstuff s or broadcloths; if men dealt 
only in facts and not in fictions, a good many for- 
tunes would have shrunk to nothing in the making. 
Men seem to think that the ability to deceive con- 
stitutes a right to deceive; that there are two 
standards of right, one for a good man and one for 
a business man. He who is unscrupulous, unsym- 
pathetic, ready to take advantage of any one's 
ignorance shows exactly what he is and what is in 
him. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" 
is not suspended when one enters Wall Street. 
The best place for a man to make proof of good- 
will is in business, where it is most needed and 
most appreciated. 

The most plausible apology for the multi-mil- 
lionaire, because the most obscure one, is the 
survival of the fittest. Science has been for years 
enforcing this principle. It is thought to mean 
simply the natural dominance of force, and this is 
regarded as the fundamental law of the world, 
which at the very last, shows up in the multi- 
millionaire. 

We may well be evolutionists. The world has 
been for long unfolding, and is still rolling itself 



Palmer High School 165 

out into the Kingdom of Heaven. This fact, 
rightly rendered, means evolution, not revolution, 
means constant addition, growth declaring itself 
in successive stages. It is not the turning of things 
over, and then again over; it is lifting them into 
new relations as stones are lifted in a building. It 
is possible that man came into being in connection 
with some sort of ape, but that does not make him 
an ape. An ape may be as good material of which 
to make a man as clay. If one should say, I was 
born of a monkey, without addition or alteration, 
one would be tempted to respond, Your assertion 
makes that seem very probable. 

The qualities under which solution, evolution is 
going forward are constantly changing. The test 
of to-day is not that of yesterday. Physical force 
has settled many conflicts, yet the crocodile, with 
his thick hide and heavy jaws, does not command 
our rivers. Quick senses, fleetness of foot, a deli- 
cate response to the world enter, one by one, into 
the struggle for existence, and make evolution a 
development of the higher forms of life. In due 
time come the fawn and the foal, the bird of 
feather and of song. A man with a revolver is 
more formidable than a Boabdil; a man with per- 
sonal qualities that draw followers together is more 
formidable than the man with a revolver. Inven- 



i66 Palmer High School 

tion takes the place of force, and good- will, the 
place of invention. The survival of the fittest is 
destined to mean the survival of one who possesses 
most of the divine tenderness. The man who 
justifies the multi-millionaire as the survival of the 
fittest has not yet learned what the fittest is. The 
shark survives until the man with a harpoon comes 
along. When the world shall at length pronounce 
for good-will its verdict will be irrevocable. Napo- 
leon said that God was on the side of the heaviest 
artillery. What did he think of it when he sank 
into his socket and flickered, like an expiring candle, 
on the island of St. Helena? 

There was a time, not so very far back, as I can 
testify, when the whip was thought to be the chief 
instrument in school discipline. To-day he is re- 
garded as the best teacher who has most of the 
milk of human kindness. 

This second principle, Get without getting, 
applies to social position and political honor, as 
well as to material possessions. We have been 
compelled to devise a new word with which to 
designate a sin fatally prevalent among us, graft. 
It is becoming a ruling passion of those in the fore- 
ground to turn their position in some way into 
personal advantage. A taint of dishonesty, an 
odor of corruption mar the good name of public 



Palmer High School 167 

servants. We are waiting to find the men who will 
do something for town, state, United States, with 
no ulterior purpose, with no pay; not the man who 
will exact the most for what he does, but who will 
do the most without exaction. 

Webster, with his magnificent endowments, 
would have stood sensibly higher in public esteem 
if he had been indifferent to the Presidency. The 
shadow that darkens his history was some dropping 
off from the doctrine of liberty which belongs to 
every citizen of Massachusetts. Buchanan would 
have passed for a man of fair endowment, if he had 
never been made President. He did not possess 
that sound civic judgment which the times de- 
manded. He was concessive without reason, and 
obstinate without cause. Like one crossing a 
street thronged with vehicles, he hesitated, stopped, 
and was run over. 

There is a portrait that hangs in my sleeping- 
room. In the dark hours of night it is not visible. 
As daylight filters in, it slowly finds its lineaments. 
When the day has fully come, it too comes back 
to the world of realities, with its faults and merits 
all on it. The only question then is what is its 
excellence. The light is sure to come in due time 
to every one. Garrison, in the anti-slavery con- 
flict, seemed to most a man to be scorned and hated. 



1 68 Palmer High School 

Now, as the day dawns, we only remember his 
consecration to liberty. He got without getting; 
labored, and left the years to crown his labor. 

I have one more principle which need not detain 
us, Live by living. Overlook nothing, postpone 
nothing, enter by the blessings near to you into 
the blessings which lie beyond. This is a law of 
growth, and yet one often forgotten. Men think 
they are purchasing a future good by a self-denial 
which merely robs the present. In the living 
thing, the present gathers up the gains of the past 
and makes them the promise of the future. The 
flower, fruit, and seed are all in one product. At 
some great festival, we are anxious to secure a 
position in which the procession shall pass before 
us. A station is given each of us in the grandest of 
all movements, the onward march of the world, 
from which we can see, with eyes wide open what 
has been, is, and is to be, in the progress of events; 
that station is our own lives. We may limit or 
lose our advantage in two ways. Every form 
of dissipation blinds the eyes. The intemperate 
man, in the beginning, thinks he is living by liv- 
ing, but as the burden of appetite grows heavy 
upon him, he finds that instead of winning life he 
has lost and wasted it. There is no deeper pathos 
than that of a life drowned in its own pleasures. 



Palmer High School 169 

This principle is also lost sight of when one pro- 
poses to live by crucifying life, when he looks on 
hard work and self-denial as things good in them- 
selves. We come to know what life is, and to be 
truly thankful for it, only by gladly enjoying it. 
The goodness of God is disclosed in the gifts of 
God. When we meet men most freely, give the 
most, and receive the most, we best understand 
our lives and the lives of our fellow-men. An ever 
larger conception of life, a growing effort to round 
it out to its full proportions, this is evolution in the 
spiritual world. Religious faith will only become 
to us what it ought to be when we have learned 
the art of living, reducing its sorrows, increasing its 
joys, and entering at every step into the rewards of 
labor. Our Lord bids us to take no thought of 
the morrow, because our thought is vexatious and 
inadequate. We are not to burden ourselves with 
anxieties and fears that may never mature, but 
to move trippingly with the events which bear us 
far more than we bear them. When one gets in 
the habit of carrying the world, the world becomes 
a very great load. Live by living, thus we arrive 
at the divine mind. Plant one foot of your di- 
viders at the center where appetites, affections, 
inspirations come together, with the other sweep a 
full circle over all you can easily cover. Restrained 



i;o Palmer High School 

appetites will give reality, practicality, and sound- 
ness to your labors. Affections will widen your 
aim, pleasures will multiply the pleasures of others. 
Inspirations will lead you out hopefully into that 
illimitable world that lies about you. 

It will require much wisdom, young people, to 
understand and to apply these principles, Win by 
not winning, Get without getting, Live by living. 
You can put them in another form: Don't stop, 
Don't crowd, Don't be stupid. You are moving 
with men, close up quietly as the opportunity 
offers. Be true to yourselves, true to others, true 
to the plan of life. Life takes time and has time. 
The surest thing we know is that events are never 
finished, are forever being finished. The world is 
a through train. Our wisdom turns on sticking 
to it. This is the open door. If we enter in, we 
cannot but be saved. 



PHI BETA KAPPA ADDRESS 

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN 

I HAVE been invited to address you on the motto 
of our association, QiXoaoyia gtou xujkpvqrqq, 
"Philosophy the pilot of life." No theme could 
be more to my liking, or more to the purposes 
of sound thought. While philosophy is a great 
deep, it is also a broad ocean. I shall not aim at 
any deep-sea dredging, whose results are remote 
and obscure, but shall content myself with those 
wide and stimulating, even though superficial, 
views which greet us as we look out over the vast 
expanse of knowledge, rippling near and far in the 
sunlight of our common consciousness. 

Let us start with a hasty sketch of the field of 
human thought. We have many words which we 
apply to it, wisdom, philosophy, science, know- 
ledge. Of these four, knowledge is the most com- 
prehensive. This stands for our entire store of 
information, the information of all, into which the 
rivulets and the rivers of acquisition have been 
pouring from the beginning as into an ocean that 

171 



1 72 Phi Beta Kappa 

can never be filled and can never overflow. This 
common knowledge, this universal wealth, of 
which our own is but an insignificant part, is con- 
stantly underrated by us. The little inlet that 
floats our own shallop seems more to us than all the 
sea besides. We are apt to think the knowledge 
of the common man as much of the nature of ig- 
norance. The reverse is often true, and our special 
theories are the wax-lights in the blaze of this mid- 
day sun. The sound principles, the underlying 
postulate, the eternal methods of thought are all 
present in this universal knowledge, and present in 
their most efficient and wholesome form. What- 
ever any of us may be able to contribute to the 
intellectual possessions of the world, must, sooner 
or later, be poured into and unite with this aggre- 
gate of human wisdom. It is this which holds 
science and philosophy alike in solution, and turns 
them into the hourly nourishment of every form of 
intellectual life. Common knowledge is the vital 
protoplasm, not yet differentiated into distinct 
organs and distinct forms of life, but remaining 
the source of all and the vital receptacle of all. 

Science and philosophy, special directions of 
knowledge, have been constantly falling into 
disagreement and rivalry, a conflict which, like 
that between labor and capital, is a very in- 



Phi Beta Kappa 173 

adequate expression of their real relations. Phi- 
losophy as metaphysics, and science as empiricism, 
flout each other, and cast endless scorn, the one on 
the groveling ways of its rival, and the other on the 
aimless flight amid clouds of its adversary. The 
truth is, however, that the scientist is always in 
pursuit of a philosophy suited to his own taste, and 
the philosopher is willing to avail himself of any 
detached scientific facts that meet his wishes. 

Putting it broadly, science deals with causes 
and philosophy deals with reasons. Causes are 
the connections of things, reasons are the con- 
nections of thoughts. The one binds the physical, 
the other binds the intellectual world together. 
These two, as separable and forever uninter- 
changeable as any two things can be, combine 
with each other in the most flexible and diverse 
ways. As distinct as the two poles of an electric 
battery, in intervening spaces they rest upon each 
other and sustain each other like the opposed 
movements in that potent circuit. 

A man may master causes and know little 
about the uses of life. The moment he raises the 
question of uses, philosophy, with its reasons, must 
come to his aid, or he flounders hopelessly. A 
man may be content to deal only with causes, to be 
a mere waif on the stream of forces, but the instant 



174 Phi Beta Kappa 

he asserts manhood, he has the whole spiritual 
world on his hands and must push boldly into this 
domain of reasons, which may seem to him as 
fluctuating as the waves, and yet has a move- 
ment as permanent and far-reaching as the tides. 
Science has given to reasons that very infelici- 
tous designation, final causes — since reasons are 
in no way causes — and has then waived them 
aside in favor of efficient causes. 

This method leaves out half of the human 
world. The ethical region, the region of conduct 
and character, where men take on a spiritual ori- 
entation which throws them into an orderly revo- 
lution with their fellow-men, which unites them 
in households, communities, and nations, is pre- 
eminently a region of reasons, a determination by 
the mind itself of the eternal conditions of good- 
fellowship in human society. Out of this realm 
of philosoprry comes the pilot of our voyage — a 
voyage amid the physical facts, the rocks and 
shoals and deep waters, which science so assidu- 
ously maps and offers as a chart to our helmsman, 
yet a chart that can never tell us whither we are 
going or why we are going thither. 

This guidance of a pilot, coming to us from the 
higher realm of reason, we will glance at in three 
directions, that of personal action, that of civic 



Phi Beta Kappa 175 

action, and that of education. Individual char- 
acter gives us the units which are brought together 
in social structure, while education is that training 
process by which the citizen learns to fulfill him- 
self in the State, and the State learns to fulfill itself 
in the citizen. 

We turn first to the man, the fruitfulness of 
philosophy in individual life. Philosophy means, 
in this connection, a wide, subtle, yet sober play 
of reason over all the facts and aims of life, and 
an extraction from them of the spiritual impulses 
they so abundantly contain. This brooding force 
of a philosophic temper over the crass features 
which lie beneath it is like the play of the atmos- 
phere, with its light, heat, evaporation, radiation, 
and downpour of rain, on the land and water it 
envelops, crumbling the rock, filling the chasm, 
drying the pool, and bringing all into those soft 
outlines which are ready to receive the glowing 
forms of vegetable life, like the decoration of a 
painter. Philosophy opens up the spaces of 
thought, rolls back obscuring clouds, and makes 
the inner world wide and cheerful with patches, 
and great stretches of sunshine. Philosophy gives 
birth to all the brood of poetry, peopling the world 
with spirits akin to itself, and translating it into 
creations of passion and affection. 



176 Phi Beta Kappa 

Philosophy is not to be judged by its fallacies. 
It must stand with us for the habitual flow of 
reason, bringing to every part of life its most 
adequate solution. Like the wings on the san- 
dals of Mercury, it makes the spirit the swift 
messenger of the gods, going whither it will. The 
sensuous temper is the inflexible patten with which 
the peasant thumps along his sloppy way, tallying 
off his slow steps as he returns from his day's labor. 

This light, volatile temper of philosophy is 
brought out in the dialogue between Touchstone 
and the shepherd, Corin. 

"Corin. And how like you this shepherd's life, 
Master Touchstone? 

"Touchstone. Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself, 
it is a good life; but in respect that it is a shepherd's 
life, it is naught. In respect that it is solitary, I like 
it very well; but in respect that it is private, it is a 
very vile life. Now, in respect it is in the fields, it 
pleaseth me well; but in respect that it is not in the 
Court, it is tedious. As it is a spare life, look you, 
it fits my humor well ; but as there is no more plenty 
in it, it goes much against my stomach. Hast any 
philosophy in thee, shepherd? 

"Corin. No more but that I know the more one 
sickens the worse at ease he is; and that he that 
wants money, means, and content is without three 
good friends ; that the property of rain is to wet and 
fire to burn ; that good pasture makes fat sheep, and 
that a great cause of the night is the lack of the sun ; 



Phi Beta Kappa 177 

that he that hath learned no wit by nature nor art 
may complain of good breeding or comes of a very 
dull kindred." 

The vivacious mind of Touchstone casts lights 
and shadows, marks failures and fulfillments. The 
dull mind of Corin plods on amid facts. 

Philosophy flings wide the doors of the future, 
and brings to us the light of years yet to be. Sci- 
ence trudges patiently along our present foot- 
paths. It maps out a road, but it is a road that 
stretches over the same wide plain to the limits 
of the horizon. It wearies us with the weari- 
ness of physical things. Philosophy contemplates 
many a turn and sudden ascent in the path, and 
glorious outlooks scattered here and there. The 
Chinese, in shooting the rapids of their swift 
streams, strain at the oars to keep a motion of its 
own on the boat, and so make the helm effective. 
Otherwise they strike on the first rock in the 
channels. Philosophy gives the mind headway, 
and enables it to avoid innumerable dangers that 
wreck the thoughtless man by simply getting in 
his way. It is with much fitness that philosophy 
is said to be the pilot of life, one who steps on 
board from a foreign land and guides us into port. 
Reasons took on the designation of final causes 
from this very fact that they look forward, not 



178 Phi Beta Kappa 

backward. The doctrine of immortality is a thing 
of reasons. Causes, as they are summoned in order 
to testify, can only make answer, It is not in us. 
We have no word and no vision. 

The first purpose, then, that philosophy sub- 
serves in our individual life is to lift our thoughts, 
to give space, air, and light around us, stimu- 
lating our various activities. There is thus a 
fellowship of good things, running up from our 
first contact with sensuous pleasure to the highest 
inspiration of hope in the presence of objects that 
just begin to be known to the spirit. 

A second service is, that by means of it, we 
escape the erratic escapades of thought, the foolish 
eccentricities of mind- steam, bursting out in a 
wasteful jet because it is put to no service, be- 
cause the engine is standing still. Men of genius 
are addicted to these intellectual spurts, and the 
half -taught are great admirers of them. They 
like a leader who breaks away from the haunts 
of man, and starts for the wilderness, where he 
and his followers in due time perish. Just now 
one of these meteors has gone out in darkness, 
Nietzsche, who added to some extreme ideas in art 
a bitter attack on ethical canons. A spurious 
mushroom philosophy is always springing up 
among the rank growth of science, and many ac- 



Phi Beta Kappa 179 

cept it in lieu of more adequate theory. Haeckel 
may be wise in science, but he is a mere charlatan 
in philosophy. One purpose of a rational faith is 
to exclude an irrational one, and to escape that 
emptiness which leaves a man open to all the va- 
garies of thought. Our own dog keeps the neigh- 
bors' dogs at a distance. We need some kind of 
tom-tom to drown the racket made by other 
people. 

A third function of philosophy, akin to this 
second function, is, that by it we maintain our 
connection with the great among men, we move 
forward, slowly it may be but safely, with the 
camp of humanity. There is oftentimes an un- 
bearable conceit in learned men. They are open to 
the taunt of Job, "Ye are the people, and wisdom 
shall die with you. " It will not die with them, be- 
cause it was not born with them. The reservoirs 
of wisdom are in the world at large; when a man 
brings forward his theory of knowledge in the face 
of all that has been, he is suffering from the pre- 
sumption of childhood. Human knowledge is not 
the product of coherent thought simply, desirable 
as that may be. A great part of it is the product 
of the collisions, corrections, and self -adjustments 
of human actions; the slow settling of sedimentary 
truth into the rich soil of human experience. 



180 Phi Beta Kappa 

Principles of conduct, methods of procedure, are 
brought into working order, not by a set purpose, 
but by the blind necessities of the case: as light 
bodies and heavy ones, large and small ones, are 
arranged by the simple jolting of the cart in which 
they are carried. In all our speculation we need 
to keep close to this instinctive, empirical knowl- 
edge of men, which is the true wealth of the race. 
This sound philosophy will help us to do. This 
is the very problem of philosophy, to expound 
men's thoughts as they are. 

Evolutionists frequently give us the most ex- 
treme and fanciful interpretations of life. They 
do not understand their own doctrine. They have 
not found their way into evolution itself. Evo- 
lution means a slow-ascending grade, never ab- 
ruptly changed. It means the absolute verity 
of what has been in its relation to what is to be. 
It means that past events, whether they be forms 
of physical or of spiritual life, whether they be 
instincts or convictions, are the womb of coming 
events; that the future is to be born of them and 
of them only; that the most fugitive of them all 
have some significance in the march of years. No 
braying trumpet, no flaunting flag, that has not a 
meaning and a place and a power in this compre- 
hensive march. 



Phi Beta Kappa 181 

For a single man, therefore, scientist or other- 
wise, to confront such a potent throng, coming 
down upon him with the accumulated momentum 
of centuries, to wave his hand and to bid them fall 
back, is nothing short of March madness. Of 
this sort of extravagance of speculation we have 
abundant examples in religion. Every church has 
its own expression of belief ; its own restricted pur- 
pose, while its fussy marshals summon the whole 
world to fall in line. Few either of the brood 
of belief or unbelief understand what fiery, in- 
exhaustible spiritual impulses lie at the great 
heart of humanity, sure, as hitherto, to drive 
it on along the painful uplift of a spiritual 
development. 

Not long since I was in the Catholic cathedral 
of New York. The imposing assembly-room was 
full of men and women, old men, middle-aged men, 
and young men, all of them intent on the sensuous 
movement of the spiritual forces finding expres- 
sion there. It was an undeniable utterance of 
what lies in the soul of man in this world of ours. 
I stepped across the avenue to a leading Pres- 
byterian church. A scattered audience, made up 
of women and a few old men, was assembled on 
the same religious festival. What is the instruc- 
tion of these two facts, which repeat themselves 



1 82 Phi Beta Kappa 

in every large city? First, if we confront a sensu- 
ous, historic belief with a sensuous, scientific non- 
belief, the former will prove the commanding 
element. Why should it not? There is a thou- 
sand-fold more evolutionary reality back of it, 
and, therefore, at bottom it is sounder science. 
The destructive criticism of science is of yester- 
day. A film of oil poured on the ocean is not 
going to control its tides. These were provided 
for when the solar system was shaped. 

Second, a narrow speculative exposition of the 
spiritual world will not govern human life. It is 
like a distillation in an open retort. The residu- 
ary remainder becomes less and less. What we 
need is a wider, more comprehensive philosophy 
of life, or, if you prefer the word, wisdom. Wis- 
dom may be defined as that harmonious union 
of causes and reasons in which they sustain each 
other, and correct each other. Wisdom cries in 
the streets, because she brings guidance to the 
masses of men. The third lesson is the one we 
have in hand : a sound philosophy keeps us close to 
human life, and our theories will prosper whether 
they be religious or civic or social, in the measure 
in which they express our common wants. The 
merchandise of wisdom is better than the mer- 
chandise of silver, because it is more universal. 



Phi Beta Kappa 183 

A religion that fails to handle human life as the 
only real work before it ; a philosophy that misses 
the problem of human knowledge and puts some- 
thing else in its place will alike drop away as 
events unfold themselves. It is this unfolding 
force of the world that gives and accepts all ex- 
planation. The soundest philosophy is the best 
rendering we have of it; and it renews itself in 
each generation with unending labor. The world 
and the theory of the world, the whole world 
physical and spiritual and the last word concern- 
ing it forever stand over against each other, the 
two supports of wisdom, and the true terms of 
philosophy. 

The cantilever bridge, with its skillful poise, 
thrusts forth its great arc from a single pier. It 
must meet the return arc from the opposite pier, 
and with corrective weight and push sustain it 
and be sustained by it. Thus we have the high- 
way of commerce. We span no stream from a 
single shore, we strike the farther shore by sup- 
ports from that shore itself. We unite the physi- 
cal and the spiritual worlds, across the swift, dark 
stream that washes them both, by twin supports, 
sensuous and supersensuous, that are alike im- 
bedded in our daily lives, causes and reasons, form 
and inner force. Science and psychology are 



1 84 Phi Beta Kappa 

with us as the starting point and terminus of that 
philosophy which rounds over the all of knowledge 
and makes the world one, one in terms so far 
apart and yet so near each other. If we cling to 
things, we get no spiritual support ; if we hold fast 
to visions, we secure no sensuous footing; if we 
unite the two, the center of our arc stands firm 
above the surging tide. 

Science must be constantly turned into phi- 
losophy to retain its stimulating power. Mere 
facts are that "much knowledge'' which is weari- 
some to the flesh. Knowledge that comes to us 
as reasons is no more fatiguing than a new day to 
childhood. One visits a large publishing establish- 
ment. The stereotype plates are piled from floor 
to ceiling. What shall we do with all this dead 
material of knowledge? Be not disturbed. Only 
here and there a box will be dug out for a new edi- 
tion. In a brief period all will be returned to the 
smelting pot, and new plates in new boxes take 
their places. The knowledge which is in them will 
have passed into a higher philosophy of life. 

Philosophy, by being a constructive power in our 
individual lives, becomes also, in the second place, 
an interpreting power in our collective life. The 
true environment of the man is society. It is in 
this direction that his chief powers get expression, 



Phi Beta Kappa 185 

take on form, and multiply themselves many fold 
by combination. Conduct and character lie be- 
tween men. The water is no more a medium of 
life to the fish, or the air to the bird than is social 
intercourse to the spirit of man. 

This is not denying the force of physical things, 
but is assigning them their true relation as condi- 
tions and means of power, not the very sub- 
stance and form of power. They are what the 
tools are to the workman, they aid and they limit 
his execution, they do not determine its direction 
or its purpose. A nation has its accepted prin- 
ciples, its confirmed characteristics, its habitual 
sentiments, and these modify and expand them- 
selves by perpetual interaction, until they become 
that stream of inheritance which treasures all the 
spiritual wealth of the world, and transmits it for 
further increase. All causes are simple, all lines 
of physical transfer single, compared with these 
tendencies to good or evil, to apprehension or mis- 
apprehension, to fellowship or strife, which come 
floating down upon us in the blood of our race. 
Here is present every method of reasoning, every 
shifty and sagacious impulse, every custom with 
which we safeguard action until a web of life is 
thrown over us from which there is no escape; 
which gives form and color and changeable light 



1 86 Phi Beta Kappa 

to character, as the mantle of a mollusk to its 
shell. There must be a large discourse of reason, 
a deep analysis of the spiritual terms of life, a 
subtle and a practical philosophy, when we dis- 
cuss this collective growth which receives all 
hope, all prophecy, all prayer, and works them 
into the Kingdom of Heaven. 

The State is the outline rather than the content, 
the negative rather than the positive expression 
of this social life. The State checks excesses, pre- 
vents interference, but leaves the great volume of 
economic, artistic, and social impulses to flow on 
by virtue of their own force. As the circulation 
of the body, its strength of muscle, depth of in- 
spiration, glow of color lie within well-defined 
superficies, so the life of a people, its activity of 
thought, fellowship of feeling, and spiritual inspir- 
ation are held within the limits the State assigns 
them. 

The merit of the Jewish Theocracy lay in the 
conception that the nation was a type of life, and 
that this more comprehensive life would meet its 
rewards and punishments along the lines of con- 
duct. The excellence of the Grecian Democracy 
was found in the idea that the collective function 
of the commonwealth was a supreme function, 
subordinating every other and ready to take on 



Phi Beta Kappa 187 

the most imposing artistic expression. The first 
great era of philosophy was marked by a most 
brilliant embodiment of the popular life. Plato 
and Aristotle — preeminently Aristotle, than whom 
hardly another in the history of the world is to 
be found with a wider and more practical survey 
of both reasons and causes embodied in a sound 
philosophy — conceived the State as the essential 
condition of individual development, and only too 
completely absorbed all private interests in the 
public welfare. 

We, in reaction against this and kindred ex- 
cesses, by which the State becomes so rank a 
growth as to overshadow and to smother the life it 
was intended to nourish, have gone over to the 
other extreme of individualism, forgetful that all 
that is best in the life of every man must be drawn 
from the lives of his fellow-men, and must stand in 
ministration to them. 

Science, hastily transformed into a philosophy, 
has confirmed this excessive individualism. We 
have the dogma of the survival of the fittest 
giving the dignity of a social principle to the 
thrust and push of the strong. The life of man is 
thus to be scaled down to the life of the brute and 
no new analysis of what is fit to be instituted in 
the light of his higher nature. Philosophy bids 



1 88 Phi Beta Kappa 

us rather to throw ourselves forward at each step 
of ascent in recognition and acceptance of the new 
principles of action which are approaching us. 

If it belonged to earlier civilizations to frame the 
State, it belongs to us to build up the citizen. If 
they enclosed the vineyard, we are to fill it with 
fruitful vines. In doing this we have the higher 
task laid upon us of reconciling the two, State 
and citizen, in one comprehensive and complete 
product. 

It is time for us to see that individual and collec- 
tive welfare are strict correlatives of each other; 
that any antagonism we establish between them 
is mutually destructive. The public welfare is 
summed up in the welfare of citizens, and citizens 
are endowed with the wealth of the common life 
of which they are partakers. Strength is common 
strength, weakness, common weakness. Sound 
philosophy bids each citizen expand his thought 
to the full circumference of the social life about 
him. Any failure to do this is deficiency in him 
as well as deficiency in it. We are to gird our- 
selves with the public strength, to feed at that 
truly royal table to which every wise man makes 
his contribution, and to feel the inflation of that 
life which, like a trade wind, sweeps around the 
world as a part of its cosmic movement. 



Phi Beta Kappa 189 

Law, wise social and civil law, is simply the 
embodiment of liberty ; it stands for more lines of 
action in which all can take part, for that accu- 
mulation of power in which the individual and the 
collective contribution are indistinguishable and 
inseparable portions. Liberty is power in free 
exercise. Our social life, by means of law, 
accumulates this power and gives it ready 
expression with a marvelous redundancy of 
energy. 

Righteous law is simply the curve which our 
aggregate movement takes on in expending itself. 
The engine is free on the track — nowhere else. 
With the iron way under its wheels, it puts forth 
its strength at once. Let it leap the track, and it 
falls instantly into impotency. Reason, philoso- 
phy, defines a way for man among men, as defin- 
ite, and full of support as the iron rail, as free 
in direction as the flight of the bird in the air. 
The mechanism of our spiritual motion is the 
fulfillment of all life. We move by the force 
of things invisible, with that instinctive power 
with which a hawk gathers the wind under its 
wings. 

This brings us to the third branch of our dis- 
cussion, education. It is the office of education 
to effect a junction between individual life and 



19° Phi Beta Kappa 

common life, to place them in mutual ministration, 
each to each. This is the work of all education, 
and preeminently of public education. What we 
have found to be true of sound and sober thought, 
that it keeps close to the great centers of life, 
endures the purgation and correction of experience, 
and profits by its slow accumulations of knowl- 
edge, is also true of education. It must lend it- 
self freely to the popular want, to the uses of the 
masses of men, and so gain adequate purposes and 
wholesome reactions within itself. It cannot be a 
private cult, leaving no great social gains behind 
it, and so finding less and less work before it. 
Our state universities must spring out of the soil, 
the roots in the earth commensurate with the 
branches in the air. When one and another 
section, one and another class, feel that they have 
no part in the university, the university itself will 
suffer as a reservoir of knowledge. When the 
fibers of growth begin to withdraw themselves from 
the world in which they are planted, the yellow 
leaf will soon follow. 

A first condition of value in education, especially 
in the instruction of a university, is, that the cost 
be kept so low as to make it truly an open door, 
even to the most indigent. This is the very 
meaning of a public institution, one to which 



Phi Beta Kappa 191 

the public can get ready access. There is a con- 
stant temptation, for the sake of more extended 
work, to add a charge here and a charge there; 
a temptation to the students, in their growing in- 
dulgences, to increase their expenditures, until the 
aggregate cost closes the path, and puts education 
beyond the hopes of many. It matters little how 
high the ladder of knowledge may extend, if its first 
rungs are beyond the reach of the foot passengers. 
Scholarship, though a most important subsidiary 
end, is not the primary purpose of education. 
This purpose is the nourishment, the government 
of life. It is not a searchlight, but an arc light, 
that we are setting up to illuminate all dark 
ways. 

The teacher is to remember that he works under 
a self-denying ordinance, that his salary comes not 
by speculation, but by taxation, out of the pockets 
of the masses. There is here no room for indul- 
gences. Teachers should constitute, and for the 
most part do constitute, a solid phalanx, in whom 
popular rights and interests find their most clear 
and defensible expression. They are the advanced 
column, behind whom is heard the tread of 
millions. Those who are not willing to identify 
their lives with the lives of the many, who wish to 
draw off from the multitude in some retreat of 



192 Phi Beta Kappa 

elegance and leisure have no place in this sapping 
and mining corps of progress. It calls for a 
noble temper to teach worthily, and he who 
possesses it will feel little disposition to complain 
of the somewhat narrow terms which go with it. 
His life is a marriage to truth, for better or for 
worse, and he will not spend his time in inquiring 
too closely as to the dowry which accompanies 
his espousal. 

The democratic temper of our educational 
institutions was never more needed than now. 
There has not been in the past an association of 
men, a guild, a monastery, a city, a State that 
has not been ruined by prosperity. What the 
world waits to secure is wealth united to the public 
weal. Our turn has come. Not even the Roman 
Empire, when it was hastening to its overthrow, 
took, in so short a period, such long strides 
in ill-gotten wealth as we have taken in the 
past thirty years. Another thirty years of like 
movement would seem to make the case irreme- 
diable. It is not that we see so prodigious an 
accumulation of wealth in single hands that no 
one can withstand it, but that this wealth has 
been gathered by means that set at naught our 
common rights. It looks as if our democracy did 
not belong to the convictions of men, but to the 



Phi Beta Kappa 193 

poverty of men, and was to be cast off at the first 
show of prosperity. The conflict has come, we 
are being rapidly metamorphosed into a plutoc- 
racy. The gorgeous butterfly is well out of the 
cocoon, and we are half bewildered, half delighted 
with the gold and silver on its wings. A sister 
university, from which much was to have been 
expected, has caught on. Its harpoon deeply 
buried in the blubber of the biggest whale in the 
ocean, it sails fast in a golden sea. The question 
is which shall conquer, the boat the whale, or 
the whale the boat. Our wager is on the whale. 
The complacent ducking multitude, which only 
asks to stand in the sunshine, is on the increase. 
Those who believe that the kernel of the Kingdom 
of Heaven is to be found in the people, and must 
grow thence or not at all, have occasion to gather 
their thoughts together, to spread once more their 
theories of life in the light, and to see how far these 
facts which have sprung up so quickly about us con- 
form to them. There is a shallowness, an insuffi- 
ciency and a perversion in our current political 
convictions which compel us, if we are not to 
despair of the republic, to go back to, and to get 
back, not necessarily our early policy, but our early 
temper, when, in our poverty, we held to the rights 
of men. And where I ask should these ever re- 
13 



194 Phi Beta Kappa 

turning questions, these questions vital to the life 
of the community, find statement and restatement 
more assiduously than in the state university? 

This leads us to a second characteristic of our ed- 
ucation, it should be humanitarian. The human- 
ities should be uppermost. Literature, history, 
civic and social construction should yield its vital 
force. This is the region of practical philosophy, 
the region of reasons expounded and fortified by 
facts, the region in which we put to noble uses all 
the sensuous resources of the world. This pri- 
ority of the humanities is not in disparagement 
of science, language, speculative philosophy. It 
gives rather to all these their fullest service. It 
brings them together in the richest product the 
world knows, the life of the people. 

It is a great satisfaction to us all that the Uni- 
versity of Wisconsin is so well advanced in this 
special line of development. It has done, and is 
doing, work of which any institution might be 
proud. I do not mention names lest I should 
impair the work by omissions, or disturb by ex- 
cess the admirable balance now present — a beauty 
of proportion which renders us indifferent to praise. 

The true foundation of all study that touches 
man is history — history in its narrow sense as a 
record of events, and history in its wide sense as a 



Phi Beta Kappa 195 

development of human life, a philosophy of the 
achievements and failures which have followed in 
the steps of men hitherto. Wisconsin has long 
been associated with the narrative side of history, 
and it lies, therefore, in its normal growth that it 
should take up and push extend edly the prophetic 
purport of history. The study of the past should 
culminate in social and civic construction, should 
be the occasion and the means of the more im- 
mediate and safe evolution of existing institutions 
into those higher forms which belong to them. 
This interplay of the past and the present; this 
passage of both into a future more worthy of us 
as a free people, is the leading purpose of educa- 
tion and can be fulfilled only by a growing knowl- 
edge both of the form and the temper of our 
social life. 

A yet more comprehensive aim, which gathers up 
and compacts together all that is good in training, 
is character. An education which does not pro- 
foundly affect character is not a real education, 
no matter how much information it may impart. 
It has not yet touched the habitual sources of 
action. The final lodgment of truth is in charac- 
ter. It is there that the germinating processes 
take place. It is a small matter to make skillful 
engineers and astute lawyers, if we do not also 



196 Phi Beta Kappa 

make good citizens. This is the only adequate 
return which can be made to the state for its ex- 
penditure on public instruction — good citizens. 
We may well be afraid of a discipline which gives 
power with no adequate motives or restraints in its 
use. The University should send back its gradu- 
ates to the community from which they came, 
large-minded and liberal men, with a clear per- 
ception of the public welfare and a steadfast pur- 
pose to pursue it. This is an industrial training of 
the highest order. 

The importance which has been attached to 
religious instruction has had its justification at 
this point, that it was an effort to put character 
uppermost. No wise man will say that this has 
been a misapprehension, or that it has altogether 
failed of its object. Yet no wise man will affirm 
that sound character is necessarily, much less 
exclusively, associated with any one faith. We 
wish a broader and firmer foundation of con- 
duct than that offered by any speculative creed. 
The entire ethical and spiritual world is open to us 
in the humanities. It is here that all empirical 
inquiries into life may be prosecuted, and all 
speculative ones be corrected. It is most unsafe 
reasoning, that because character and religious 
instruction have been so long ostentatiously asso- 



Phi Beta Kappa 197 

ciated, that, therefore, in ruling out a creed we 
rule out character. We put restraints on the en- 
forcement of religious opinions simply because this 
method has not been found the shortest road to 
good citizenship. We would take up the question 
of good citizenship on its own grounds, un- 
embarrassed by the preconception of a religious 
rendering of men's relations to one another. We 
would expound our lives where these lives are 
led, in contact with men, in the market, at the 
polls, played upon by the endless attractions and 
repulsions of social intercourse. We would cease 
to deduce the character of the world from our 
religious belief, but would deduce that belief from 
the character of the world. The primary facts 
are with us all, not with the religionist alone. 
We are simply claiming the liberty of the world, 
a larger liberty than that of any one faith. 
God's revelation is in our own lives and in the lives 
of our fellow-men, and there we make haste to 
study it. The man who sees the pervasive laws 
of growth in society and is ready to help them for- 
ward has foundations of character as deep as the 
world itself, and in his contact with young men and 
young women he can bring to them an educating 
power of the highest order. The many faithful 
men who have fulfilled their lives in the University 



198 Phi Beta Kappa 

have not been, like a nimble teller, shoving dimes 
and half dimes, eagles and half eagles across the 
counter, indifferent as to their use; they have 
made the terms of knowledge, one and all, data 
in the problem of life. No man can teach who is 
not first enamored of the truth, and no man can 
give the best instruction who does not feel that 
every truth is but one more fiber in the nervous 
network of knowledge that encloses the world. 
It is this sense of the universality and omnipotence 
of truth that unites it to manhood, and makes it 
the framework of character. 

Some of you may feel that I have used the word 
philosophy in this discussion in a manner to suit 
myself, and have made it mean any and every- 
thing that was good; and possibly, also, that there 
has been a covert disparagement of science. I 
trust neither impression is correct. We have 
identified philosophy with reason, and science with 
causes. Wherever the predominant discussion is 
one of things, it is of the nature of science ; wherever 
it is of the relation of ideas, it is of the nature of 
philosophy. We have equal faith in the one and 
in the other. Ideas are as substantial as things. 
They are the very life of things. Things are the 
permanent embodiment of ideas. Philosophy 
without science is airy, empty, unmanageable, 



Phi Beta Kappa 199 

like a balloon without ballast. Science without 
philosophy is a balloon with too much ballast, it 
drags along the earth, and cannot rise above it. 

The two, science and philosophy, owe their 
value to each other. Science furnishes philosophy 
with adequate data; and philosophy completes 
science in sufficient uses. Science becomes spuri- 
ous when it undertakes to exclude philosophy; 
and philosophy loses itself in worthless speculation 
when it neglects science. 

Our education, when the scientific tendency 
predominates, tends to become sporadic, partial, 
and superficial. Some things are minutely known ; 
many things are not known at all. The wide de- 
pendence of ideas is broken up, and our training 
starts from a dozen different points with a still 
farther dispersion of hasty election. Philosophy 
tends to unity. Its primary discussion is one of 
relations, and it completes itself in a system. It 
is, therefore, in education a constant corrective of 
that frightful accumulation of information which 
reduces the mind to the condition of Issachar. All 
that even his father Jacob could say of him was : 
" Issachar is a strong ass, couching down between 
two burdens. " 

Here is the guiding function of sober philoso- 
phy, ever ready to reunite our knowledge ; willing 



200 Phi Beta Kappa 

to begin again, with an invincible confidence in 
itself, and to trace anew the map of the spiritual 
world. Philosophy is the discourse of reason, 
the light into which all things are lifted As man, 
the proximately perfect man, is a marvelous com- 
bination of physical forces reaching up into the 
spiritual world, and of spiritual impulses finding 
their execution among physical things as the life of 
man unfolds along the line of junction between two 
worlds, so philosophy, ever with him, becomes 
the perpetual resolution of things into thoughts, of 
thoughts into things, until the spirit of man, by 
virtue of the two, sweeps, with strong, even 
wing, through the whole empyrean. Philoso- 
phy is thus not so much the guide of life, as 
the very life itself, ever renewing itself by its 
own activity. 

The University has now attained so command- 
ing a position as to overshadow persons. Hence- 
forth it will be tendencies, composite movements, 
which strengthen themselves within themselves, 
that will shape its course. What tendency could 
be more safe than one which keeps human wants 
in the foreground, and pursues them in all well- 
advised ways? But this is to make philosophy a 
part of life. Our motto returns then to us, both 
in our individual and in our collective relations, 



Phi Beta Kappa 201 

as a concise embodiment of wisdom. Philosophy 
opens to us the superb realm of reasons, seats us at 
the feet of the Supreme Reason, and teaches us to 
know even as we are known. 



THE FIELD IS THE WORLD 

ANDOVER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, I905 

PEW subjects are more worthy of inquiry on the 
* part of young men in preparation for the 
Christian ministry than missions. If we under- 
stand the claims of missions and the methods fitted 
to advance them, we shall have entered very pro- 
foundly into the temper of our Christian faith, into 
the history of the world, and into its manner of 
growth. To know what is adapted to the wants 
of men is to comprehend the spiritual world of 
which we are a part. If what I have to say shall 
help you, even a little, in this direction, the re- 
ward of speaking to you will be ample. 

The mission monument in Williamstown bears 
this inscription. ' ' The field is the world. ' ' Though 
the words, in the sense in which they are here 
employed, are not scriptural, they are none the 
less an epitome of the scriptural idea. Christ, 
explaining the parable of the sower, said, " the 
held is the world;" yet the expression has not the 
breadth of meaning given it in the inscription. His 

202 



The Field is the World 203 

injunction, recorded in Mark, "Go ye into all the 
world and preach the gospel to every creature," 
is in the line of the words, " the field is the world," 
but does not give the thought quite the same 
emphasis. We might feel called upon to carry the 
proffers of belief to every man, and yet not regard 
the world and the Kingdom of Heaven as covering 
exactly the same ground. This is the assertion of 
the inscription. The world in its entirety gives 
the very foundations on which the Kingdom of 
Heaven is to be built. If the kingdom fails to 
cover any portion of these foundations, there is, 
by so much, a mismatch between them. The 
beginning and the end of what God has undertaken 
do not correspond. The field to be subdued, 
planted, cultivated, and transformed into the 
fruitful vineyard of God is the world, created by 
him and handled by him in all the centuries of its 
existence with express reference to this very pur- 
pose of becoming the Kingdom of Heaven. There 
is such a magnitude in God's work, both in space 
and in time, as to throw us off from those narrow 
economies with which we are familiar. It is not a 
question of exactly so much and no more. But 
this fact ought not to hide from us the unity of his 
work, nor to make us less aware of its completeness. 
If any part of the world should show itself barren 



204 The Field is the World 

and incorrigible in reference to the kingdom, we 
should be pushed to the conclusion that either 
the labor had proceeded without a plan, or that 
the plan had proved a partial failure. In this 
case the cactus and the desert would remain a 
waste. 

The minds of men are coming but slowly to the 
fundamental truth, that the field is the world. 
There has always been some election going on in 
their thoughts, by which much was to be rejected 
as well as much to be accepted. When men build, 
removing the rubbish is no small part of the labor. 
When God builds, even the parts cast off become 
nourishment to those which remain. That the 
world should grow into the kingdom, and the king- 
dom absorb the world, until the one is simply the 
fruit of the other, with no unnecessary delay or 
real waste, is a notion of so transcendental a char- 
acter that we arrive at it with many mistakes and 
much hesitancy. 

We have been haunted with the idea that we 
were to use the world as a hunting ground for 
souls, as some ambitious huntsman ranges it far 
and near for game, made uneasy by any bird in 
the mountains or beast in the jungle. Alexander, 
a cruel hunter of men, pursued them through 
deserts and ragged wastes, bent on capturing 



The Field is the World 205 

them or killing them, never on gathering them into 
civilized communities. Life and wealth belonged 
to the Greeks, not to the barbarians. The idea 
of God is not capture but culture, not subjection 
but subsumption, not a purgation by fire and 
sword, a pitiful remnant being saved for his own 
glory, but the growth of all, by means of all, into 
the welfare of all. God is primarily a creator en- 
larging life, pushing it forward, ever forward, in all 
its interlaced forms, capping its last achievements 
by still larger ones and so storming the gates of 
heaven; thus at once possessing and peopling 
the celestial plains. Let us trail no farther the 
Persian notion that the world contains an evil, as 
well as a good spirit, and that much is ruined, for- 
ever ruined, in the war which goes on between 
them. Let us feel rather that the seeds of life 
are planted deep, and may be long in germinating, 
but that soil and climate and time are all given 
to them, as holding in their hearts the power and 
the love of God. 

This question of the divine economy must be 
settled in our minds before we are prepared for 
the work of missions, before we can assign our- 
selves the part we are to take in this redemptive 
growth of the world. 

An idea we shall find in every way serviceable in 



206 The Field is the World 

understanding the world — and unless we do under- 
stand it how can we work successfully in it? — is 
one which has received great emphasis in our 
time, that of evolution. Here again we are not 
dealing with a simple notion, the same for all 
minds. Those who have been most prominent 
in developing the theory have understood by 
evolution the movement of all events in a strictly 
causal relation. So apprehended evolution is not 
only antagonistic to faith, it is antagonistic to all 
intellectual and spiritual life. One remorseless, 
resistless wave of physical causes rises above and 
sweeps over the feeble and deceitful outputtings of 
spiritual life, and pounds smooth and hard, like 
an ocean beach, all the liberties and aspirations 
and hopes of men. 

This form of evolution has not only not been 
proved, it never can be proved. It is burdened, 
so far as reason is concerned, with the difficulties 
of an absurd, self-stultifying process. We, as ra- 
tional creatures, are called on to say, by virtue of 
our reason, that reasoning is only one more series 
of obscure, complicated, causal facts. When rea- 
son thus trips up its own feet, reasoning should 
cease altogether. 

Strict evolution assumes all the elements of the 
world in their present qualities and quantities, and 



The Field is the World 207 

then prides itself on the discovery that existing 
relations follow from them. Conceded the clock, 
and the striking of the clock ceases to be a mystery. 
But the dimculties of evolution have just com- 
menced when the physical framework of events has 
been provided for. All the manifold forms of 
life, part with part, layer upon layer, which give 
significance to this superb, physical environment 
and make of it a preserve of the amplest order, 
have still to be explained. In this explanation, 
neither the germs nor the processes of their de- 
velopment are sufficiently met. The commence- 
ments and the transformations of life equally 
baffle the evolutionist. He is compelled to regard 
all increments as slight, fortuitous changes, inci- 
dent to surrounding conditions. But accidental 
and slight changes can never be made to explain 
such a world as ours. If chance could make this 
world, it could make anything, and we need no 
longer rummage the universe for reasons. Unless 
the passage from one form of life to another is 
definite in direction and perceptible in amount, 
natural selection cannot lay hold of the incre- 
ment, and it sinks again in the same vortex from 
which it arose. The Parthenon cannot be the 
product of a ceaseless piling of stones unless some 
of them, at least, are put together significantly. 



208 The Field is the World 

There is nothing to select, until there is fitness in 
the things selected. Strict evolution gives no room 
for reason, assigns no directions, assumes its start- 
ing points, and carries forward fortuitously the 
building process. Natural selection is simply the 
truism, what is good is good, and will tend to 
stand. 

The evolution we should accept is development, 
a continuous movement toward a definite purpose. 
It means that events are interlocked both by 
causes and by reasons, reasons combining causes 
and causes sustaining reasons. The continuity 
of the world belongs both to the plan and to its 
method of execution. Every phase of growth con- 
tains the subsequent one, both as a part of a scheme 
and as a part of its own fulfillment. This notion 
is not only not antagonistic to faith, it imparts to 
it a higher and a more suitable form. Religious 
belief has constantly suffered from its detached 
and fragmentary methods, from the fact that it 
bears no suitable relation to the world as one whole. 
The ordinary progress of events has not been sup- 
posed to be favorable to it. It has arisen in resist- 
ance to them, as a redemptive afterthought. In 
the Christian faith a single people, not of finest 
texture, was chosen out of the masses of men, not 
so much as a medium of blessings to mankind as a 



The Field is the World 209 

substitution for mankind. With this notion of a 
new start came the need of miracles, miracles that 
should sharply suspend natural forces, and put 
in their place a doctrine of supernatural agencies. 
Thus faith assumed a detached form as something 
driven, like a wedge, into the world, rather than 
as something growing out of the world. 

Faith needs, even above other forms of thought, 
the correction incident to the idea of develop- 
ment ; a sense of the breadth and the coherence of 
the divine method — that our work and our prosper- 
ity are taken up in the world's work and the world's 
prosperity. We are always in search of quick 
methods and short turns, and for the most part 
they are inefficacious. We have neither time nor 
patience for growth. Yet the one word which 
more than any other is explanatory of the great 
scheme of things in which we are immersed is 
growth. The world and men with it grow, grow 
into each other and grow out of each other. The 
world becomes what men make it to be, and, at 
the same time and by the same process, men are 
what the world has prepared them to become. 
The hawk, in its structure, in its marvelous flight, 
is what the air calls for. It was hatched into the 
air, and rules the air, and can almost make its nest 
in the air. We were born into the world, and are 



210 The Field is the World 

waiting to be born out of it and with it into the 
Kingdom of Heaven. But the state of things which 
called for this change of conception makes the 
change more difficult. The theologian was not 
ready to seize upon the notion of development, 
to oppose it to causal evolution, and to recon- 
struct his theories in harmony with it. 

A faith which rests on development would seem 
to be beyond all comparison superior to one which 
rests on intervention. The one is partial and 
spasmodic, the other is comprehensive and per- 
manent. The one implies not merely the need 
of interference, but even then secures only a sal- 
vage; the other involves one creative process, 
whose terms are all required and all interlocked 
from beginning to end. If you, young men, are 
ever pressed by the doubts and denials which have 
arisen in connection with the advance of knowl- 
edge, you have no occasion to put together the 
parts of the broken vase, to try to harmonize the 
scripture narrative of creation with the revela- 
tions of geology. There is open to you a better 
triumph, the feeling that God is revealing to us, in 
a new way, his creative work, and is giving it peri- 
ods and proportions we had not dreamed of. The 
just live by faith. The great difficulty is to get 
them into that spiritual world where faith in the 



The Field is the World 211 

rational method rules. They stumble along, as in 
the story of the size of the ark, as if the making of 
the world turned on the dimensions of that ship. 
Do not let us waste faith on the question, was there 
a whale big enough to swallow Jonah; there is 
only one inquiry of moment, Is the world spiritu- 
ally put together, does God lie at its foundation? 
It is in the sense of the eternal validity of spiritual 
things, of truth, conduct, character, that our 
safety lies. Grasp this firmly, and all needed 
things will follow. The bird runs along the 
ground, hops from bush to bush, at length takes 
to the air, and there is the end. The only safety 
of our thoughts lies in the imperishable convic- 
tion, in behalf of which experience is ever heaping 
up proof, that the world is primarily a spiritual 
product. 

Observe what the doctrine of development 
heavenward gives us. One purpose runs through 
the ages and binds them together. A physical 
and a spiritual world are infolded in mutual minis- 
tration, the shell and the kernel of one nut. We 
recognize the fact that character, whether it be of 
persons, or of nations, or of periods, or of a succes- 
sion of periods, is the fruit of the world, cannot be 
manufactured but must be grown. Repeated re- 
shapement, refinement, and enlargement, the slow 



212 The Field is the World 

compacting of experience, enter into the growth. 
The earth supports it, and is in turn supported by 
it, until, the two concurring, we have the twelve 
manner of fruits, each in its own season. 

The patience of God, the watchfulness of God, 
his constant corrections and expansions, must be 
seen to lie as a divine law at the heart of the world, 
ready to explain its hardships, to overcome its 
fears, and to bring the sons of men into glorious fel- 
lowship out of this travail of conflict and pain. The 
length of the way, the severity of the discipline, 
its punishments and its rewards are not to distress 
us ; for God is at work with us shaping a Kingdom 
of Heaven that, once accomplished, will make toil 
and sorrow seem trifling. We are not dealing 
with secondary changes, but with a spiritual cre- 
ation, true throughout to its own nature and com- 
prehension of all good. The things and events 
and persons that take part in this work cannot 
be thought of as unfortunate. Though there is, 
from time to time, a downward plunge, when the 
life of the world comes again to the surface, we find 
it more ample, better trained, and better taught 
than ever before. The world is for spiritual at- 
tainment, this attainment comes by discipline, and 
discipline mingles freely all the elements of pain 
and pleasure, failure and success, discouragement 



The Field is the World 213 

and triumph. What mastery men are gaming of 
the world, and this ever growing dominion comes 
to them by thoughtfulness and by love. 

This notion of development is fitted profoundly 
to modify our systems of theology, and to alter 
our labors under them. 

There is a systematic theology, a laborious and 
contentious product of thought. In Christian 
faith its chief convictions are inerrant authority; 
the Trinity; the atonement; eternal punishment. 
These doctrines are not found in the world, in its 
ethical facts nor in its spiritual discipline. They 
are brought in from abroad, with much obscurity of 
apprehension and difficulty of application. 

There is another theology, a natural theology, 
which is not woven nearly so much from within, 
but which we find in a spiritual rendering of the 
outer world. Its leading doctrines are a divine, 
creative spirit ; the goodness of this spirit ; love the 
primary law of the world ; growth into the King- 
dom of God by knowledge, repentance, forgive- 
ness; immortality. This theology is drawn from 
experience and is made ever more consonant with 
it. It remakes the world, and as the two move 
on together, the proof becomes ever more personal 
and complete. Here lies the light of history; and 
in spite of all darkness, the large-minded and 



2i4 The Field is the World 

large-hearted, from all quarters, are constantly 
breaking through into it. 

These two forms of theology, the speculative and 
the practical, have very different claims upon us. 
I shall not be thought to underestimate specu- 
lative theology. We have the same freedom in it 
that we have in philosophy; freedom of thought, 
freedom to go where our best thought carries us. 
But this is strictly a private liberty. It gives us 
no authority over our neighbor. He too must go 
where he listeth. Practical theology is our render- 
ing of the world of action. We need at once the 
concurrence of our neighbor. It is he and we that 
are working out together the Kingdom of Heaven. 
This gives us the field of missions. Men, all men, 
need to see and to feel and to act alike in the things 
which concern their immediate and ultimate sal- 
vation. It is the truth incorporate in the world, 
in the hearts of men, in their living experience, 
that we now need to know, to extend and to propa- 
gate. A man may carry about with him for his 
own satisfaction a speculative theology, as he may 
put in his hip-pocket a pistol with no intention of 
using it. If a bumptious heathen becomes inquisi- 
tive, we may have a gentle bout with him and 
show him that we too have things as unintelligible 
as any he has to offer, but the last impression 



The Field is the World 215 

which a missionary should make, is that he is so 
far from home simply to dispose of notions. 

Systematic theology is a region of upheavals 
rather than of deposits. We have occasion to be 
thankful that so many of its volcanoes have be- 
come extinct, so many of its lava streams have 
grown cold. The Christian religion has not been 
different from other religions in the general bearing 
of its speculations. In the centuries in which the 
fathers were framing creeds they were doing little 
besides; nor were the later fruits of their beliefs 
beneficent. We should search the history of the 
world in vain for a more terrific fact than the 
inquisitor Torquemada, with his ten thousand 
victims, racked and burned. 

What we should take pains to understand, what 
we should take pains to propagate, is the creed of 
the heart, those kindly beliefs and sympathetic 
actions by which men are bound together in 
mutual service. Men are hard, dull, cruel. We 
wish to instruct them, to soften and to enrich their 
feelings, to lead them into the conviction that there 
are heavenly paths, which neither we nor they have 
fully found. We cannot fulfill our own lives, we 
cannot enlarge the lives of others without doing 
this work. The search for the Kingdom of Heaven 
is our own attainment of that kingdom. So meet- 



216 The Field is the World 

ing men, we meet God, and share the joy of his 
service. 

I urge this view because it casts light on the in- 
quiry which occupies you, How can the world be 
redeemed? It is being redeemed, and that by de- 
velopment . We must work in and with this divine 
method. The great religions of the world have not 
been so many devices of the devil. With all their 
crudities, credulities, and, far worse, their cruelties, 
they have been a discipline, in which spiritual per- 
ceptions have been awakened ; a shell, which held 
a kernel waiting to be set free by the frost. These 
religions are not to be regarded as themselves of no 
worth, rubbish to be cleared away. We are not to 
compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and 
then to find him twofold more the child of bigotry 
than ourselves. All parts of the world are in the 
divine discipline. Stock, spiritual stock, from 
which new growth is possible, is the result of 
these centuries, and into this we must graft 
the scions of coming centuries. He who works 
with living things, be they plants or animals 
or men, must remember that the law of devel- 
opment is growth and expansion. The cacti of 
the desert are to be made nutritious to man 
and beast. 

The inestimable value of a false faith is illus- 



The Field is the World 217 

trated in the religion of the Greeks. As one whole 
it was a reproduction, on a larger scale, of human 
passion and human intrigue. Gods and goddesses, 
little and large, did wicked and foolish things as 
did men and women. Yet out of this sensuous 
faith there flashed, from time to time, a sense of 
oversight and rebuke; sin, in all its windings, 
pursued and punished. 

Observe this petition of Greeks and Trojans in 
preparation of the duel between Menelaus and 
Paris : 

O Father Love, who rulest from the top 
Of Ida, mightiest one and most august ! 
Whichever of these twain has done the wrong, 
Grant that he pass to Pluto's dwelling, slain, 
While friendship and a faithful league are ours. 

Even by means of this ladder, a few men 
mounted high in the spiritual world and remain 
to our time conspicuous for their virtues — Timo- 
leon among politicians, Socrates among sociolo- 
gists, Aristotle among scientists. 

When we have to deal with a world that God 
has managed, we should first inquire what he has 
been about, and what his methods are. If any 
man needs to be large-minded and large-hearted, 
finding his way cautiously, like the surgeon dealing 



2i 8 The Field is the World 

with sound and with diseased tissue, that man is 
the missionary. Society must pass slowly through 
its stages of change and of assimilation as we indi- 
vidually pass through them. Even more so, for 
thought and volition avail more with men singly 
than they do with men collectively. The first 
thing, of which the missionary should be aware, is 
the individuality and the value of different religions, 
and that there is more or less pointing in them all 
toward the Kingdom of Heaven. The Mohamme- 
dan, with his strong theism and sharp intelligence, 
must be looked straight in the eye with gentle 
courtesy and due consideration. The common 
ground, which lies relatively open among men, is 
natural theology; the obvious terms, in which we 
stand with the world and with our fellow- men. 
Our experiences touch one another more closely in 
the interests of individual and social life, in the 
applications of the command of love, than in any 
discussion of the economy of the Godhead, or of the 
parts played by the persons of the Trinity. Would 
it not be well to begin, where we all agree we must 
leave off, in personal purity and social welfare, in 
the Kingdom of Heaven? The true embodiment 
of faith is a Christian civilization ; it is also some- 
thing which we may discuss, may understand, and 
for which we may work. A pyramid of doctrine 



The Field is the World 219 

may be built high and carefully oriented, and yet 
turn out to be only a tomb, and empty at that. If 
we square our actions with the world about us, the 
pyramid of conduct will be pretty sure to lead up 
to a capstone of truth, and to give us a noble 
outlook on spiritual things. "He that doeth the 
will of God shall know of the doctrine." 

Allied to the diversity of religions is the diversity 
of races. This variety, no more than that of 
faith, is to be looked on as an unfortunate waste 
of chances, which, in spite of charity, is to be 
regretted. The diversity of nations means a larger 
occupancy of the spiritual world, more perceptions, 
more sympathies, more reciprocity of life. We 
as a people feel that the negro is a great curse to us. 
He has indeed come to us as an inheritance of sin, 
yet there are noble spiritual possibilities in his 
presence. It is a question of digestion. It is a de- 
mand for justice and sympathy. If we can rise 
to the demand, it will become to us an apotheosis. 
If aversion, injury, hatred are to predominate, we 
shall sink into a diabolical war of races, to which 
no wickedness will be alien. 

Our most immediate training, in the school of 
reconciliation, is in the relation of classes to one 
another in the same community. This first lesson 
we have by no means mastered; this earliest step 



220 The Field is the World 

toward the Kingdom of Heaven we have not 
fully made. Life, the gains of life, its multiplied 
incentives, its manifold pleasures all center in 
the masses. It is they, who are to be brought 
forward in knowledge and love. It is among 
them that the knowledge and love of the Kingdom 
of Heaven are to find play. It is the people, who 
are Argus-eyed, Briareus-handed, and who have 
volume enough to make a spiritual universe. It is 
the service of the people that seals the sonship of 
our Lord and Saviour. The philosopher may with- 
draw into some nook of speculation, and may spin, 
thread by thread, a cunning cocoon, but he must 
eat his way out of it and must get again into the 
air, if he is to save his life. The theologian, in his 
study, may make and neatly fold his rope ladder, 
with which he expects to climb downward, outward, 
upward, if danger arises, but it is the multitude 
who always survive; who outlive fire, slaughter, 
earthquake ; and who again renew the world. Our 
thoughts must be as the thoughts of the many, our 
hearts, as the hearts of the many, our purpose, the 
purpose of God for the many, before it will be of 
much moment how we think, feel, and act. We 
must understand how God is developing faith in 
the world, how he is raising up a multitude, which 
no man can number, as the material of his kingdom. 



The Field is the World 221 

To this we must add a constant sense of the growth 
of righteousness, downward, outward, upward, be- 
fore we can be in any good degree messengers of 
salvation. A Christian temper is everything in 
propagating a Christian civilization. The inquiry, 
which opens the way for missions, is the inquiry, 
What is Christian society, and how is it to be 
planted, here, there, everywhere, until all points 
flow together, and God's grace possesses the world. 
It is this which makes the acceptance of John D. 
Rockefeller's gift by the American Board so regret- 
table. The life to be disseminated must be a pure, 
holy, and loving life. The missionary sometimes 
complains of the worthless sailors, who find their 
way to foreign shores, but this inroad is not nearly 
so much to be dreaded as that unscrupulous greed, 
which eats up our own national life, and then, under 
the guise of enterprise, takes to itself the labors of 
men wherever men are found. There is in this 
acceptance disregard of the first principle of the 
Kingdom of Heaven. Love and patience are in- 
vincible and these only. What we need, in mak- 
ing the world the field, is peace among classes 
in constant aidfulness, peace among races in a 
common possession of the world, and peace 
among religions in mutual correction and enlarge- 
ment. Thus shall men come from the east and 



222 The Field is the World 

the west, the north and the south, and sit down in 
the Kingdom of God. 

I trust, young men, that the view now urged will 
not seem to you inferior, in the purposes it inspires 
and in the scope it offers to the propagation of any 
single phase of faith, pushing to the wall all other 
forms of belief. Our hopes, if they are to be 
adequate, our labors, if they are to be successful, 
must spring from one root, union with God, in his 
creation. How grandly superior is this sense of the 
omnipresence of God in darkness and in light, in 
failure and in success, in long delays and in sudden 
advances, to that feeling, which leads us to kindle a 
single watch fire in the universal night, and to 
sit fearfully by it until it burns into ashes. The 
preeminence of our Christian faith is not found in 
doctrine nor in ritual, but in the feeling that every 
holy life, the life of our Lord and of every one of his 
servants, earlier and later, here or there, is another 
patch of light, which has fallen on the world, proof 
that the day is approaching. 

If anything that has been said does not seem to 
you to be sound, let it lie as a bowlder by the road- 
side. Do not leave the beaten track to drive over 
it. I left Andover hill fifty years ago to confront 
the world ; to do what I could for it ; to get what 
I could from it. There has not been another such 



The Field is the World 223 

fifty years, nor is there likely to be, in physical 
progress. It has also been a period of rapid spirit- 
ual development. But the next fifty years may 
and ought to be much more marked in their spirit- 
ual gifts. If our personal and social growth is not 
in some measure proportioned to the insight and 
strength that are being gained in physical direc- 
tions, we shall hardly retain this wealth. A house 
divided against itself cannot stand. We are di- 
vided against ourselves in many ways, and so waste 
our great inheritance. Perhaps the most compact 
and marvelous expression of invention is a war- 
ship. But a savage, paddling in his canoe, never 
went on a more diabolical, bloody errand. If we 
cannot reconcile ourselves with ourselves and with 
one another in divine love, then further slaughter 
and fresh overthrow await us, until this lesson of 
spiritual life is learned. God commits us to the 
discipline of the world. This is the field to which 
all our husbandry is to be directed. A world- 
wide temper and a world-wide love must go 
with us before we can possess anything well, and 
can enter, even in the things nearest to us, into 
the Kingdom of Heaven. It is this comprehensive 
sentiment, wrought out in a comprehensive 
spirit, which will work salvation in us. The field 
is the world ; here all meet in the perfected love of 



224 The Field is the World 

God ; here all gifts descend upon us in the steady 
flow of eternity; here all things are revealed to 
us. We know God, we are known of him, and we 
come to know one another. 



PHILISTINISM 

INDIANA STATE UNIVERSITY 

IT belongs to a poetic nature to be exceedingly 
sensitive, one may say, extravagantly sensitive, 
to the conditions of emotional life, by which it is 
surrounded. The poet is greatly exhilarated by 
concurrent feeling, and correspondingly depressed 
by sluggish emotions, and annoyed by insensate 
qualities. As every sound brings pleasure or irri- 
tation to a musician, so every rational creature has 
for the poet an attractive or a repellent power. An 
electrometer is put into lively motion by currents 
of electricity too slight for sensation, and the 
poetic nature is strongly excited by social con- 
ditions, which are the unobserved commonplace 
of a prosy neighbor. 

Heine, the German poet, was far more sensitive 
than is common even with poets, and was moved 
with instant aversion by the approach of a dull and 
phlegmatic person. He cherished a violent dis- 
like toward the narrow-minded, unemotional, 
15 225 



226 Philistinism 

practical man ; and toward the English as the em- 
bodiment of this temper. His feeling on this sub- 
ject was much too intense to be discriminating 
and just. 

"Do not send a poet to London" [he says]. " This 
hard reality of things — this colossal uniformity — 
this mechanical movement — this sullenness amid the 
pleasures of overgrown London — depresses the imagi- 
nation and rends the heart. ' ' [Again : ] " The English 
in general, thoroughbred Englishmen (May God for- 
give me the sin!) I detest with my whole soul, 
and sometimes I cannot even consider them my fel- 
low-men, but look upon them as tiresome automata, 
as machines, whose internal mainspring is egotism. 
It then seems to me as if I could distinguish the noise 
of the mechanism by which they think, feel, calculate, 
digest, and pray. ' ' [Again : ] "One ought to be paid to 
reside in England; whereas, instead of that, the ex- 
pense of living there is double what it costs else- 
where. No ! never let me return to that abominable 
country, where the machines conduct themselves 
like men, and the men like machines. The noise of 
the former and the silence of the latter are equally 
distressing." 

This extreme dislike to which the poet gives so 
frequent and witty an expression extends to Ameri- 
cans also, as heirs of the same defects. 

11 America, that huge prison of freemen, where the 
invisible fetters would be more galling to me than the 



Philistinism 227 

visible ones at home ; and where the most odious of all 
tyrants, the mob, exercises its brutal authority." 

This sluggish, inappreciative temper Heine 
designates as Philistinism, and he has given 
extensive currency to the word with a certain class 
of writers. The Philistines have come down to 
us as men of heavy bones and dull apprehensions, 
who knocked about in iron chariots, and cared 
for not much of anything beyond themselves, — 
a gross people to be hated and to be exterminated. 
They thus easily stand for a strong, stolid temper, 
closed up on the poetic side of life, and open only 
to the coarsest uses of the physical world. I need 
not say how unjust this conception is when applied 
to English life as a whole — a life which has nour- 
ished the most vigorous, far-reaching, and delicate 
poetic sentiment, ranging between the marvelous 
strength of a Shakespeare and the marvelous 
subtlety and tenuity of a Shelley. 

Yet, there is so much truth in the accusation, 
and so much aptness in the words in which it has 
been put, that both have held their ground. 
Matthew Arnold, of good English quality and far 
less eccentric and meteoric in the movement of his 
mind, brings the same censure to English society 
in a formal and labored way. The average 
Englishman is wanting, for him as for Heine, in 



228 Philistinism 

that delicate sensibility and "sweet reasonable- 
ness," which make men truly companionable. 
The middle classes are dominated, he thinks, by a 
narrow, commercial, and practical spirit, which 
brings the sunshine of prosperity to physical 
qualities, but leaves the inner life, which should be 
ready to blossom into sweet perfumes, unquick- 
ened. The Englishman is a plant that grows 
sturdily in the green leaf, is full of sap, but when 
it comes to the time of flowering, its vigor falls off, 
and its pinched and unfragrant blossoms are very 
disappointing. 

An American writer, Richard Grant White, 
joins in with the same refrain, and is still more 
explicit in statement. 

" In the last century, the Philistine element begins 
to appear. The dull-minded, middle-class man, rich, 
purse-proud, vulgar, incapable of apprehending any- 
thing beyond the range of his own personal experi- 
ence comes upon the stage. . . . The Philistine is the 
man who is steeped in common-place. He is not 
necessarily ignorant, nor lacking in good sense or 
good feeling; but his rule of action is precedent, and 
his ideal of life to do what his little world will regard 
as proper ; and he is filled with a calm, unquestioning 
conceit of national superiority. ..." 

"One striking truth of British Philistinism is ig- 
norance of other countries, and chiefly ignorance of 
America. . . . These four men, George III., Dr. John- 



Philistinism 229 

son, Lord Palmerston, and Chief Justice Cockburn, 
stand in the annals of England, as glorified types 
of the narrow, inflexible, unapprehensive, and, I fear, 
supported by the testimony of Fielding and Mr. 
Matthew Arnold, I must say, vulgar sort of English- 
man, who was unheard of in English annals before the 
reign of Queen Anne, and who, I hope and believe, 
will, by a radical change of heart, disappear from 
them in the reign of Queen Victoria." x 

The pith of this word, Philistinism, as used by 
these authors, seems to be narrow sensibilities and 
circumscribed attention, arising not so much from 
ignorance as from a stupid, supercilious satis- 
faction in the things — the external things — that 
concern their own thoughts and their own actions, 
their own set, and their own nation. America 
is certainly not without its Philistines. As we 
are a volatile, sensitive, and inquisitive people, 
this temper arises with us from an inordinate 
conceit of our institutions, and of our personal 
gains under them. The American has difficulty 
in measuring anything at its true dimensions, 
which lies outside of this charmed circle of in- 
digenous ideas; or in reducing the things within 
it to their proper relation and value. Philistin- 
ism, understood as this absurd, stupid content- 
ment within our own lives, and stolid insensibility 

l England, Without and Within, pp. 581, 590, 593. 



230 Philistinism 

beyond them, is a thing of innumerable degrees, 
and one, which reappears in a great variety of 
directions. We may not call a man a Philistine 
unless he shows this disposition distinctly and in 
excess ; but more or less of this quality besets the 
human soul — a gross reasoner on its own topics, 
and with obscure, short-sighted vision on alien 
topics. 

Philistinism is the Canaanitish proclivity of 
the human spirit, by which it settles down to eat 
and to drink and to ride and to rule in iron chariots 
in a holy land. Philistinism, as a sensuous and 
excessive tendency, is directly opposed to Bohem- 
ianism. The Bohemian covets, above all things, 
freedom of intellectual activity, and is ready to 
sacrifice conventional, commonplace comforts and 
proprieties in its behalf. He will travel on foot 
and will stop at shabby hostelries rather than not 
travel at all; will live in a garret, rather than lack 
leisure for literary work; and will spurn the ele- 
gancies of life, if he can only reach its inner core. 
He cherishes a contempt for what the Philistine 
most admires and chiefly admires what the 
Philistine contemns. 

The writers above referred to are especially 
annoyed by Philistinism, as it narrows intellec- 
tual life, offends good taste, and restricts the 



Philistinism 231 

domain of beauty. Yet in a broader use of the 
word, they themselves are not always free from 
this fault. One may be painfully, stupidly un- 
impressionable to moral and spiritual ideas; his 
thoughts may show abrupt change, and lose all 
their nimbleness the moment he passes the limits 
of taste and enters the boundaries of a higher 
human and divine life. Thus when men speak 
of Americans as all alike, all equally churls ; of the 
monotony of American life, its colorlessness, its 
narrow-minded notions, they betray great want of 
discrimination, great want of sensitivity to pro- 
found spiritual feelings ; they are giving a very dull 
and stupid attention to the most interesting facts 
in the history of their own time. This, too, is 
Philistinism, with the added fault of being of 
the most perverse and unamiable order possible. 
It is as if one should enter a crowded assembly 
of working men in earnest discussion of a social 
question and be principally affected by the bad 
air, or by the coarse dress, or by the rude phrase 
of those present. When Richard Grant White 
speaks of the hopeless vulgarization of a country 
by railways, of a howling wilderness of brick and 
mortar, of hideous brownstone blocks; when he 
says that it is impossible not to see ' ' that railways 
and mills and forges and towns are, gradually, 



232 Philistinism 

and not very slowly, destroying rural England" 1 ; 
the disproportion of his language betrays excessive 
sensibility to surface relations, and excessive 
insensibility to the necessities of average human 
life. While men may claim beauty, they may 
claim certainly with equal intensity of meaning 
the ordinary conditions of comfortable existence, 
and there is at bottom no conflict between the 
two. Dilettanteism and Philistinism are the 
same fault developed at opposite extremes. The 
first is seated in the nerves of taste as organs of 
esthetic insight ; the second is seated in the nerves 
of taste as organs of good living. 

Heine says that "in discussing politics the 
stupidest Englishman will always contrive to say 
something sensible ; but whenever the conversation 
turns upon religion, the most intelligent English- 
man is sure to lapse into stupidity." Why is 
this? There are two reasons. The English re- 
press their feelings, and especially on religious 
topics. Says Mill, "Most Englishmen who have 
feelings find their feelings very much in their 
way." The second reason is, Englishmen handle 
religion in a much less vital and practical manner 
than they do politics, and hence feel less, and 
have less to say on the former subject than on the 

1 Op. cit. P. 165.] 



Philistinism 233 

latter. Their lives do not spread evenly over the 
fields of business, of political organization, and 
of inner spiritual conceptions, and hence, in gen- 
eral conversation, they stumble as they approach 
the lines of division, which separate these topics. 
They, as Philistines, are lively here and dull there, 
with a strange inability to go beyond their own 
haunts. They are untraveled in the world of 
ideas; they have in this spiritual realm the local 
attachments and prejudices of barbarians. 

Perhaps it is right that the word Philistinism 
should settle down to this narrowness of intellec- 
tual life in one of its forms, — the gross form in 
which one is wrapped up in sensuous comforts, 
in physical existence, and in its showy outside 
symbols. It is also well, we think, that the essen- 
tial affiliation of every form of narrowness with 
every other form should be pointed out, and that 
we should be taught to widen our lives, not in 
this direction or in that alone, but in all directions. 

We, as Englishmen, with the superadded lia- 
bilities and temptations of Americans, are open to 
Philistinism. It is, therefore, worth our while to in- 
quire how this fault has arisen, and how it can best 
be removed. Says Renan, quoting M. Amiel: 

" The era of mediocrity in all things is about to begin. 
Equality begets uniformity, and it is by the sacrifice 



234 Philistinism 

of the excellent, the remarkable, the extraordinary, 
that we extirpate what is bad. The whole becomes 
less coarse; but the whole becomes more vulgar." 

Says Renan himself: 

"The world is moving in the direction of a kind of 
Americanism, which shocks our refined ideas, but 
may not be more inimical than the ancient regime to 
the only thing, which is of any real importance, viz., 
the emancipation and progress of the human mind." 

Liberty, popular liberty, the breaking out of the 
people upward into new rights and larger condi- 
tions of life, which they have not yet learned how 
to fill or fully to enjoy, gives rise then to Philis- 
tinism. Thus the colorlessness of American life is 
one of the things complained of. We are in the 
place of men, it is said, and have not yet come up 
to the old-time standard of men. What the dilet- 
tante spirit craves above all things is picturesque- 
ness, and we, God help us, are not picturesque. 
High dilettanteism and high humanitarianism 
are not as yet peaks in the same range, and they 
command very different views. The humani- 
tarian is no more satisfied with the picturesque- 
ness of the peasant and the serf, the 'prentice and 
the page, than is the dilettante with the colorless- 
ness of the American citizen. The one says, Give 
me differences, give me color, or I die. This 



Philistinism 235 

eternal sameness will suffocate my delicate sense 
of beauty, and I can breathe the air of this world 
at best with difficulty. The other says, Thank 
God these men are marching: here is the higher 
life of the spirit feeling the warm, spring sunlight, 
and breaking bud under it. 

While we despise as selfish conceit and inhuman 
twaddle a good deal that is said about the barren- 
ness of republican society, we yet recognize in it a 
measure of truth, which we shall do well to consider 
and to face. Liberty does break up a certain kind 
of order, and is slow in putting a higher order in its 
place. It does push men forward, when they are 
only partially prepared for their new situation. 
The blacks of the South were doubtless more pictur- 
esque when their cabins were gathered close under 
the shadow of the lordly mansion of their master 
than they are now, scattered about in independent 
poverty and squalor. Yet it is no great thing to 
say that the humanitarian sees far more promise of 
beauty in the later than in the earlier arrange- 
ment. Any other sentiment is a slave to the 
senses, and the senses alone cannot give beauty. 

English artisans, American farmers, middle- 
men — English and American — are beginning to 
fill the world's eye by virtue of the advancing 
power of industry. The streets and public 



236 Philistinism 

places and assembly-halls are for them, and 
while they wear less gilt and less velvet than the 
more fortunate of their predecessors, they show 
less arrogance and less servility than they. They 
are at disadvantage to the eye, an eye backed 
up by a heartless heart. They are also at dis- 
advantage, and this is a real disadvantage, in not 
being fully masters of the situation, in not knowing 
altogether how to wear and to use their liberties, 
and how to bring their manners and their methods 
up to the high pitch of their opportunities. They 
are like a smart, brand new brick dwelling. It 
may be very comfortable, but it is without relief, 
without history, and without poetry. It smacks 
of the brickyard, and nothing more. This difficulty 
arises, because liberty is young; because she has 
been occupied in pulling down, because she has 
herself built but hastily and improvisedly. All in 
due time, gentlemen. The spiritual world is not 
made in a day, any more than the physical one. 

The second reason, closely associated with the 
first reason, and more at fault than it for this 
Philistinism, is the eager, absorbing pursuit of 
wealth, which characterizes this new era. The 
power of wealth and the pursuit of wealth have 
had much to do with promoting liberty, and yet 
when the possession of wealth is pushed forward 



Philistinism 237 

as the chief social distinction, it suffers disparage- 
ment as compared even with those physical but 
more personal characteristics, that family eminence 
and those aptitudes, which preceded it. Wealth 
makes one conspicuous on the stage of life, but by 
no means implies the qualities, which adorn that 
stage. It may easily be the unfortunate pedes- 
tal, which lifts up clumsy and clownish character. 
Probably no one temper is more directly pro- 
ductive of Philistinism, is more identified with 
it, than the absorbing pursuit of wealth. The 
range of vision is greatly narrowed by it; con- 
ceit springs up within these close limits, and 
gross insensibility and ignorance come to charac- 
terize the individual and society beyond their 
own immediate enterprise. The advantages won 
are largely wasted from the want of any proper 
method of improvement, and the boasted gain of 
this new era becomes a coarse materiality, spiced 
with vice, and sinking into dullness, discontent, 
and dissoluteness; dullness and dissoluteness, the 
only relief from discontent. 

It has been said that this Philistinism belongs 
especially to the past and the present century, 
and that these two centuries are the domain of 
the purely industrial temper. More material has 
been dug out of the bowels of the earth, has been 



238 Philistinism 

raised on the surface of the earth, has been ground 
and hammered and woven into shape in the face of 
day in these centuries than in any previous half 
dozen centuries. And all for Philistinism? Yes 
and no. Yes first, and no- afterwards. When 
we have wearied ourselves sufficiently with this 
crass materialism; when we have found out how 
much and how little food and clothing and houses 
and equipage can do for us, the restless spirit of 
man will make ready for another stage of growth, 
will make its gains the soil for new seeds. Thus 
the mosses displace the lichens on the rock, and 
the ferns, the mosses, and the flowers, the ferns, 
and the forest, the flowers. The pursuit of wealth, 
which is a first stage in human liberty, has de- 
veloped an intense activity, which it alone cannot 
reward ; and has spread far and wide a civilization 
which it alone cannot sustain and justify. Here, 
we may well be with the critics, Heine, or Arnold. 
These roots of industry are like the clover crop, 
which we plow under. They must decay in the 
soil to make it truly fertile for further production. 

Another reason of this bad temper is a weak- 
ening of faith. Nothing so narrows the human 
spirit as to lose hold of the spiritual. It is then 
given over, body and soul, to the devil, to physi- 
cal well-being, to the shortsighted opinions of 



Philistinism 239 

Philistinism. It has no currency but a copper 
currency of custom and conventional opinion, 
purchasing nothing save childish toys at the 
huckster's stands in its own market. If the 
English drop into dullness on religious topics, it is 
because they have no thoughts, no experiences, no 
gleams of light on the horizon in this direction; 
because they are children in faith. Nothing makes 
the world more monotonous than a low, gray sky, 
which shuts out the heavens; nothing so takes 
light and change from the landscape of life as a 
loss of spiritual incentives and a spiritual out- 
look. Why is man upright, but that he may see 
both earth and heaven ; the earth illumined by the 
heavens, and the heavens beneficently enfolding 
the earth and ruling over it with light and dark- 
ness, heat and cold, shower, sunshine, and storm? 
When the common mind loses faith, it is made 
fearfully commonplace, fearfully groveling and 
brutal in its tendencies. 

Picturesque! I know nothing so utterly un- 
picturesque as what is termed Young America, — 
willful, impudent, the mouth the ingress of tobacco 
and the egress of oaths; — the devil's caricature of 
manhood, as the monkey is the most cynical 
witticism in nature. I do not say nor believe 
that these two centuries of Philistinism have had 



240 Philistinism 

less faith as a whole than previous ones, but there 
has been in them a great breaking in on the 
traditional forms of faith, on its manifest, pictur- 
esque presentations, and we are choked with the 
dust of pulling down, the old, gritty lime-dust, 
irritating every sense, defiling the whole body. 
The customs of life are broken up by this re- 
laxation of faith, with present loss, though, we 
trust, with future gain. For the moment, the 
forms of our manhood appear to as little advan- 
tage as does our domestic furniture on the move, 
upside down, sidewise, endwise, and upright, un- 
covered where it should be covered, and covered 
where it should be uncovered. We are on the 
move in the spiritual world, and we are just 
discovering what a miserable lot of old traps the 
years have accumulated for us. We thought but 
little about them when they were in their own 
place or out of sight. Now, that we are break- 
ing our shins over them, they may easily seem 
the most forlorn, unpresentable lot of goods 
that ever stood in sunlight. This is the sort of 
impression that a group of young men at the 
street corner, half foreign, half American, and 
wholly unchristian, make on one at first glance. 
These are the spawn of the lowest species of 
Philistinism. They covet wealth, but have no 



Philistinism 241 

energy to win it; they are hunting for open doors 
to the gross indulgences, which wealth is thought to 
supply, and they suffer restraint neither from the 
sentiments of faith nor from the decencies of so- 
ciety. Have courage ! There is always in the best 
home something to be burned, and this is probably 
it. There is also always something to be saved, and 
never more than in our time — an earnest, active 
time, in which we are not so much settling down to 
the enjoyments the past has won for us, as we are 
making ready for the better things of the future. 

This charge of Philistinism is a very valid and a 
very grave charge. We need to call a council of the 
wise and the good that we may see how to cast it 
off; how to go forward without going backward. 
We have no occasion as yet to quarter the crab on 
our coat of arms ; there is a cloud of fire at the head 
of our ranks that will give more illumination to 
darkness than ordinarily falls to daylight. We 
turn to some of the remedies of Philistinism. 

The first of these is more liberty; liberty alone 
can cure the evils of liberty; it is life only that 
heals life, and progress that gives the conditions of 
progress. We are not to belong to those timid, 
stationary souls, who grow frightened at once when 
the doors are burst open, and the winds rush in, and 
the ashes on the hearthstone are scattered. It 
16 



242 Philistinism 

is ever these periods of change, and destruction 
even, that are truly productive in the world's 
history. Free institutions break down and oblit- 
erate the strong divisions of society, and yet in 
the end, they increase diversity and enlarge life. 
Distinctions that catch the eye at once, like a 
military coat, or the symbols of a clique, are lost, 
but in their places come all these less apparent but 
more real differences, which attend on living things 
when left to follow freely the bent of their own 
natures. The colors of a cheap print are strong and 
sharply defined ; those of high art pass into one an- 
other by many insensible gradations. The classes 
and castes of a community, in which customs have 
grown into tyrannies, are very gross divisions, 
and all the more gross as they are insurmountable. 
Where these are broken down, and men begin to 
flow together under vital impulses simply, a little 
is lost to the outer eye of the body, and much is 
gained for the inner eye of the mind. Men sink 
and rise once more freely, according to the force of 
the life that is in them ; and we have vital motion in 
place of mechanical motion, inner strength for 
outward order. It takes more thought, more 
human sympathy, more divine love to penetrate 
and to enjoy the second phase than the first, but, 
intrinsically, it is incomparably higher, better, and 



Philistinism 243 

more beautiful. There is one fact that, for a time 
at least, is at war with these intrinsic diversities 
of individual life and disguises them, and that is 
public opinion. Public opinion gets immense 
sweep in free institutions. It is like a cold wave, 
which comes driving down from northern plains, or 
a sirocco laden with the burning heat of a great 
desert. Yet opinion has less force, after all, in a 
free community than in one in any way in bondage. 
The intensity of sentiment in a region in which 
slavery exists finds no counterpart in more for- 
tunate states. The currents are stronger, more 
rapid, more dangerous in connection with arbi- 
trary institutions, only they are also more divided 
and more restricted. Public opinion in the United 
States, in spite of all that is said to the contrary, 
leaves individual thought less touched and less con- 
strained than anywhere else in the world. It has 
the long heavy swells of the open sea, but its waves 
are easily ridden, far more easily than the short, 
chopping, conflicting billows of narrow seas. And 
this liberty in, with, and under public opinion is on 
the increase. One more and more feels that he has 
to do with great forces, but is in no way controlled 
by them nor afraid of them. Sound opinion and 
just sentiment meet nowhere with less obstruction, 
are nowhere more potent powers, than in America. 



244 Philistinism 

Those on whom our society makes a different im- 
pression are misled by their senses, have not yet 
penetrated to its very center and to its real spirit. 
The first clash of it, like the rush of a wave on the 
shore, may seem to be all in one direction, and to 
be full of brute force, but wider experience shows 
one that never were more, or more diversified, 
or more immediate, or more remote influences, or 
more palpable, or more delicate ones at work on 
society, than on this immense, popular life of ours. 
Its Philistinism is superficial and changeable; its 
pliability to all the forces at play on earth or in air 
is profound and permanent. Liberty is fluidity in 
the spiritual world, is sensitivity to change of 
every degree and variety. The insensibility to 
be feared is that which arises from institutions 
too strong for those who live under them — 
institutions that hold them close-bound as a 
canyon holds a river. The Chinese are Philis- 
tines, only we do not easily associate the word 
with such feebleness. Liberty will purify itself, 
like a boiling fluid, by its own motion, and that, 
too, increasingly. 

Our second remedy is liberal education. Edu- 
cation is directly antithetic to Philistinism in the 
degree in which it is liberal; that is, diversified and 
thorough. Philistinism does not mean ignorance, 



Philistinism 245 

but it means narrow knowledge with all the in- 
difference and contempt, the sharp lines of light 
and darkness that go with it. Philistinism is 
artificial light — the light of a bonfire, with an 
immense preponderance of impenetrable shadows. 
Liberal education is daylight, opening up all 
spaces and enveloping all things. One is led 
in this connection to look with some suspicion 
and apprehension on the decided tendency with 
us to specialize instruction, and to give it an in- 
dustrial type. While this movement is very 
admirable, if we add it to a liberal education, it is 
very inadmissible, if we displace with it a liberal 
education in our collegiate institutions, and the 
first terms of knowledge in our primary schools. 
This is at once to narrow in life, and to substitute 
deep, straight, artificial channels for broad, 
changeable, natural streams. This is to educate 
men for a given place in society, and so to deepen 
its divisions and to increase its immobility, instead 
of to win life for each and all, and the liberty of 
life. It is to lay more stress on the immediate 
conditions, which meet men, than on men them- 
selves. There is a direct, practical cast to this 
method, which gives it much favor with a certain 
class of minds but these minds are essentially 
of a Philistine order, — minds that see sharply 



246 Philistinism 

the things nearest them, and scarcely at all the 
things more remote, minds that shape their means 
so narrowly to their ends as to endanger the 
ends themselves. The body is more than rai- 
ment and the life is more than meat, is the 
principle, which should govern us in education, 
if we wish to make education play its true part, 
to open wide before us the two-leaved doors 
of the universe, and not simply to give us the 
key to one of its workshops. As things now 
are, not only does a university send up a smoke- 
stack, as black and as high as that of a factory, it 
is ready to express its efficiency as so many horse- 
power, and is liable to express its productions 
as so many marketable wares, so many workmen 
each with his trade-mark, still called, in deference 
to the past, a diploma. Enlargement of thought, 
enlargement of life is the primary purpose of 
education; education to which success in specific 
undertakings is to be subordinated. We are to 
make men, and so to make society ; we are not to 
make society, and then to fit men into it as stones 
in a wall. The immediate losses of the one me- 
thod are more than made up by its ultimate gains ; 
the immediate gains of the other method are 
more than compensated by its ultimate losses. 
We find at once a place for a poor stone by the one 



Philistinism 247 

device; we find good stones for any wall by the 
other. 

One of our educating forces, that of the public 
press, very readily leads to Philistinism. Philis- 
tinism is a lack of perspective; an inability to 
place objects in position and size according to 
their true value; a huddling of near objects 
promiscuously about the observer, and a loss of 
remote ones. This is very much the method of a 
great daily, a Chicago newspaper. It is a big 
thing, but like the kitchen-middens of prehistoric 
times, it is more remarkable for the amount it 
contains than for what it contains. Such a paper 
is without proportion, without perspective, 
without relation, and without law. The things 
that are near to its readers in place, or akin to 
them in tastes, are multiplied and exaggerated 
with no reference to their intrinsic or to their 
permanent value. The things remote in either of 
these particulars are a vanishing quantity. The 
one thing such a paper does do is to impress with 
double force on the mind the visible and the 
transient ; the thing it ever fails to do is to open 
any door into the region of thoughtful, emotional, 
spiritual life. The opinions expressed in it, like 
the facts gathered in it, are of the earth, earthy. 
One who reads the morning paper w T ith his break- 



248 Philistinism 

fast, catches a lunch in the hours of active business, 
eats his dinner with the evening paper, and follows 
it with a cigar, must more and more, even when 
naturally gifted with universality of thought and 
breadth of knowledge, acquire the temper of a 
Philistine. His mind must become like a dusty 
thoroughfare, pounded backward and forward 
to pulverization by every wheel of traffic, but 
having nowhere the shade of forest, nor bearing 
anywhere the scent of flowers. One, who is to be 
broad, and catholic, and open in feeling to the 
universe of God, must feed on other food than 
that offered by the daily press — a press that not 
only perverts the world by its partial method of 
presentation, but often perverts it still further by 
the strong bias, under which it conceives it for its 
own personal and political ends. Sober, thought- 
ful, spiritual journalism seems as yet almost a 
contradiction in terms. 

But the best possible, the highest possible cor- 
rection of Philistinism is found in more faith — 
a purer, more pervasive, more spiritual insight. 
I know of no Philistinism of a more positive 
and unmitigated order than its sceptical form. 
He is a Philistine, indeed, who holds the holy 
land, the promised land of the race, for unholy 
and sensuous, if not sensual ends. Even science, 



Philistinism 249 

far as it leads us away from Philistinism in one 
direction, may harbor this spirit in another, when 
it becomes dogmatic in its methods, narrow, 
positive, and final in its conclusions. For every 
door it opens, it then closes another and more 
important one; for every view it presents, it turns 
the back on a grander one. If it tells us much 
about matter, it tells us little about mind. If it 
gives new glory to the visible, it hides the glory 
of the invisible. 

For one, I thoroughly believe that faith — the 
activity of the mind toward the personal, the 
rational element that pervades the universe — is 
the one antagonistic force to that limited vision, 
that narrow sensitivity, which in all extreme forms 
is stigmatized as Philistinism. Nothing so broad- 
ens, so enriches, so diversifies, and so beautifies the 
life as faith. Nothing so narrows it, and so leaves 
it at work on the mere symbols of existence, as the 
want of faith. Mathematics have an unapproach- 
able breadth of application, yet no mind is drier or 
more quickly filled with cobwebs than that of 
the mathematician, who confines his attention to 
mathematical processes, and who plies the busy 
shuttle of thought exclusively between the two 
terms of an equation. 

This opinion is so much opposed to the ordinary 



250 Philistinism 

view, that I wish to enforce it. The three chief 
directions in which the world opens upward and 
outward, until we are made to feel that the physi- 
cal point which we now occupy is but a tower of 
observation on a commanding eminence, from 
which we are shown by the spirit of light the real 
kingdoms of the world, are science, religion, and 
art. If we turn to the first of these, science, we are 
greatly helped and profoundly instructed by it 
in the degree in which we allow it to lay open to us 
invisible terms, — so far as our senses are con- 
cerned, — inscrutable terms in the world about us. 
The forces, which weave the phenomenal world 
together, which make it what it is in its sensible 
qualities by virtue of an intense, constant, vari- 
able activity, as the boy shapes his ribbon of 
flame by the rapid revolution of his fire-brand, 
these forces are, in their impalpable character, al- 
most of a spiritual order. The life, which science 
discloses, yet fails to disclose in all organic things, 
is another factor of still greater spirituality, and 
leads us by an easy ascent of thought to the spirit 
of man, — a term so intimate to us, and yet so far 
from us, if we undertake to put upon it any sensi- 
ble expression or measurement. By these rounds 
we climb higher. Science leads us to that still 
more pervasive, far more deeply implanted 



Philistinism 251 

power by which the universe as a whole is borne 
forward in orderly growth, and in the wonderful 
evolution of creation. Here we see reason — well 
ordered relations and progressive combinations — 
planted in the center of all movement. Now 
science enlarges our thought, and deepens our 
sensibilities in the degree in which we accept these 
its invisible terms, and deal with them wisely 
in their plain, empirical method of presentation. 
We thus start with the true equation of thought, 
with its known and unknown terms ; the one made, 
more and more, to measure and to express the other. 
Nothing tends to superficiality more inevitably 
than to reverse this method, to make the symbol 
all, the phenomena all; to put nature in place of 
life, sensations for the soul of man, and combina- 
tion as an external factor for God. This is to 
dimple the surface of the pool like a water-fly, and 
to know nothing of that above it or below it. 

But if we allow science to lead us within the 
portals of the unseen, she is then compelled to 
yield her guidance to religion. This is the office 
of religious thought, to furnish the rational clues, 
the wide, profound, underlying grounds of the 
visible present, of the past already invisible, of 
the future, — nearer to us than either the past or 
the present — the future, which has not yet taken 



252 Philistinism 

form, and so we are wont to think may take the 
very form of our hopes. However much religion 
may, as a fact, in a dogmatic and unauthorized 
way, while opening, at the same time close the 
life of the spirit in its principles, aspirations, and 
promises, nothing is plainer than that religion 
properly stands for wide thought, the very widest, 
for deep sensibility, the very deepest, and thus 
is eternally opposed to any narrow limits, which 
may be laid down for the mind, or to any precon- 
ceived impressions, which may be thrust upon it. 
Our thoughts thus cease to be even the gold coin 
of currency, stamped for trade in a narrow terri- 
tory, and are constantly passing back into pure 
bullion, open to all service and to all ornament. 

Religion is breaking bounds in thought, is 
claiming and winning the freedom of the Universe 
of God, is that inner force of the soul, which makes 
one not the accident of an hour, but the heir of 
all things. It is this intangibility and emotional 
fullness of religious life that allies it to art, and 
puts it at one with beauty — in some sense the 
most direct and buoyant ascent of the soul up- 
ward. Let me justify this last assertion. 

Beauty is capable of a very partial treatment, 
and it is equally capable of a very wide and uni- 
versal application. Beauty is perfection of form, 



Philistinism 253 

and may accompany any manifestation of any 
high order whatever. The greater the controlling 
impulse — the included life — the more complete 
may be the beautiful form, which embodies and 
presents it. Thus the human body is capable of a 
perfection transcending all visible things, and this 
perfection is proportioned to the strength, nobil- 
ity, and purity of the character it equips and dis- 
closes. Strength and beauty are in the sanctuary 
of God, and beauty because of strength. There is 
nothing inherently good and admirable that has 
not a divine claim for that perfect form which 
makes it beautiful. Beauty is the richly woven 
robe, which waits to be cast on the shoulders of all 
who have the vigor and the grace to wear it. 
Beauty, therefore, rests nowhere more reposefully, 
nowhere breathes more fragrance than when it en- 
closes as bodily presence, as conduct, as speech 
a pure spirit in its purity. Beauty is thus in one 
direction the perfection of holiness, and in the 
degree, in which we apprehend the inner harmony 
of the divine life of the soul, and its outer fullness 
of expression, shall we understand the beauty of 
holiness. 

Though religion has often been very narrow and 
art has often been very narrow, they have again 
and again walked hand in hand, and they never 



254 Philistinism 

fall apart except through mutual error and loss. 
Nothing so deepens and broadens life as pure faith. 
Indeed, faith is the faculty of putting the unseen, 
the personal, the eternal principles of reason 
back of the seen, and so informing the visible with 
that significant power, which makes it beautiful. 
Beauty can no more dispense with the unseen than 
religion, since it is the seen in its relation to the 
unseen, form as the language of spirit, which defines 
beauty. Religion, true, inner faith, as nourishing 
the broadest, best, most pervasive, and purest 
impulses, becomes the very soul of beauty, a 
beauty that gives to man's spirit wings, bears it 
everywhere, enables it to rise and to sing with over- 
flowing life in the clear sky, or to rest quietly 
in thought on any rock or spray the eye falls 
upon. 

Faith is misconceived, or beauty is miscon- 
ceived, when they are torn asunder, for faith can 
abide in beauty as easily and as fittingly as the 
soul of man in his perfected body. Nothing will 
bring so full a redemption from Philistinism as 
the pervasive life of faith. One especial reason 
why Philistinism becomes so apparent is, that 
our physical life is in advance of our intellectual 
life, our intellectual life, of our spiritual life. 

One enters a large, elegant hotel or public hall. 



Philistinism 255 

He is surrounded on all sides with objects of 
luxury and art. The coarse uses to which they are 
put, the neglect and abuse they suffer, make a 
correspondingly painful impression of the want 
of refinement and sensitivity. These dumb things, 
trodden on and spit upon, cry out against the 
vulgarity of our lives. We do not refine the things 
which we handle nor do we, as skillful workmen, 
turn them to highest uses, but we mar their re- 
finement and are rebuked by these our servants. 
The shrewd intelligence of our business life, sharp 
in judgment, prompt in action, lapses into igno- 
rance and indolence and stolidity in the presence of 
those social and spiritual problems, which the 
world has been propounding from the beginning 
of time. 

The Philistine of old mounted his iron chariot 
and rode rough-shod and defiant over the hills of 
Palestine until some bolt of heaven struck him, and 
then he fell and perished where he fell, earth to 
earth, dust to dust. 

With the not unreasonable enlargement we have 
put upon the word, Philistinism is the disease of 
a life whose channels are overladen with gross 
blood — a life that cannot aerify or oxygenate the 
material at its disposal; varying the figure, that 
cannot, like a thrifty tree, shoot up into a strength 



256 Philistinism 

and vigor proportioned to the fertility of the soil 
in which it stands. Like a too succulent plant, it 
does not ripen its wood, it is blighted by its own 
sap, and is blasted in its own greenness. This is 
the pressing danger of our time and of our country. 
Our young men are open, on the one side, to the 
debauchment, profligacy, and vulgarity of irre- 
sponsible wealth; and on the other, to the mean 
and feeble temper, which covets this wealth with 
an indisposition to make honest payment in use- 
ful industry. The ladder is planted; we are ready 
to climb into a higher, more intellectual, more 
sympathetic, more spiritual region, but our hands 
lose their grip, our feet stumble, and we fall 
bruised and helpless at the very foot of the as- 
cent to the Kingdom of Heaven. This is Philis- 
tinism ; full of blood and of rank appetite and yet 
of light digestion; with strong passion, and slight 
touch of human sympathy ; with sharp sight, and 
no range of vision; the body sensitive, and the 
soul a torpid creature which will not grow into 
and by the light that God lets fall upon it. The 
remedy of this is a body purged of glut and 
grossness by temperance and industry; a mind 
awakened to truth in its broad, universal range; a 
heart touched by the spirit of a divine life that has 
been for long in the world, and is slowly building 



Philistinism 257 

it, by persons, by households, by nations, into the 
Kingdom of Heaven. To see this Kingdom is to 
see all things lifted, and ourselves to be lifted, 
above every gross use and narrow end. 

17 



WHAT IS THE WORLD'S PURPOSE? 

T^HE following article is an interpretation of 
* nature rather than of revelation. What the 
world is, looked at in its own relations, is a rea- 
sonable inquiry. We are quite at liberty to ask 
what seems to be its purpose. It is fundamental 
in our knowledge of the world to know what is 
its general drift. This inquiry by no means sets 
aside the Bible. It simply draws attention to 
those prior relations which give significance to the 
Bible. It does not so much regard the world as 
expounded by the Bible as it looks upon the Bible 
as the latest product of the world and expressing 
the form which its history has taken. The Bible 
is in the world as a means of growth. It helps 
to disclose its light and to usher in the perfect day. 
The Bible shows the signiflcancy of the world and 
helps to reveal and to unite its terms of knowledge. 
We may study the world in connection with the 
Bible, or we may study it for what it seems to be 

in itself. If our study is sincere and successful, 

258 



What Is the World's Purpose? 259 

the Bible will help to expound the world and the 
world to explain the Bible, and the two will aid 
each other in placing before us their common pro- 
blem: What do the things about us mean? 

We suppose the fundamental fact of the world, 
its chief feature, to be evolution, growth upward 
in all gainful things. Evolution is not simply a 
mechanical change, a coherence of physical things ; 
but a progress in all truth, a disclosure which is 
both physical and spiritual. Like all knowledge, 
it involves the character in which it is written and 
the idea which gives significance to that character. 
Evolution is contained in history and becomes, 
as that history is studied, more and more present 
to the minds of men. Recent years have given 
it primarily a physical meaning. In this there has 
been great loss and great gain. We have learned 
better to understand the steps by which the move- 
ment has proceeded, while at the same time we 
have been led to overlook the ideas which lie at the 
bottom of it, and which give it signincancy. We 
wish to speak of an evolution not simply physical, 
but spiritual also; not merely spiritual, but one 
that has drawn the lower world into its current 
and has left everywhere its traces upon it. Each 
succeeding step in evolution helps to expound each 
preceding one, and helps us to reach the assurance 



260 What Is the World's Purpose? 

that the universe faces both upward and down- 
ward and is endowed with a double vitality. 

Man stands midway between physical and 
spiritual evolution, the highest product of the one, 
and the lowest product of the other. He is the 
paragon of animals and the finishing term in the 
wonderful procession of living things. Delicate 
in structure, upright in stature, with the full com- 
plement of senses and at the same time possessed 
with a complete circle of intuitions, he commands 
not only the things beneath him but also the things 
above and beyond him. With a narrow physical 
basis and a full stature, in firmness of position and 
in velocity of change, he offers adequate resistance 
to attack and stands with his added intellectual 
endowments supreme among animals. He alone 
can enter into possession and full enjoyment of 
the spiritual world. Favor as we will the 
powers of animals, they only reach the nearest 
bounds of spiritual things and have in them no 
inheritance. Man in aesthetic and poetic appre- 
hension takes to himself the pleasures of a spiritual 
world, and by obedience to the law of duty enters 
into its high rewards. If the animal by association 
stands at the porch of the temple, he tarries there 
and knows nothing of the grandeur and solemnity 
of the edifice itself. Evolution either comes to an 



What Is the World's Purpose? 261 

abrupt end in man, or takes on a wholly new phase 
in personal and social development ; a fresh lease 
of life, a true hold of eternity. Evolution, as a 
doctrine, accepts its proper significance by this ex- 
tension into the spiritual world. We cease at 
once to be enclosed and to be smothered in physical 
things. Evolution in its lower meaning reaches 
up to evolution in its higher, and we have not 
merely a progress of events, but also of the ideas 
which underlie it. The means of expression and 
the expression are arrived at in one process. 

The question, which our narrow vision raises 
for us, the question, which brings to us perplexity 
and doubt, is whether the present consummation 
could not be reached more rapidly, whether the 
Creator could not lift us to high spiritual ground 
and push us forward on it with more certainty. 
This inquiry reaches us every hour. The universe 
as we know it is built on principles of development, 
is everywhere the product of growth. Growth is 
the ruling idea. In our indolence and at the same 
time in our eagerness, we are often ready to bolt 
this perpetual labor, this slow transition to things 
much higher than those we now have. But hav- 
ing and growing are inseparable. We fully pos- 
sess what we attain only by means of growth, and 
we grow only by a slow apprehension of what is 



262 What Is the World's Purpose? 

involved in life. We may take part in growth; 
we may measure its difficulties and its successes; 
we may suffer its disappointments and rejoice in 
its triumphs, but this path always remains to be 
traveled. In growth is our hold on the wisdom 
and grace of God: by it we enter into them and 
come to possess them. Without these stages of 
growth, knowledge falls back into ignorance, and 
our finiteness becomes pitiable deficiency. We 
are not mere spectators of good and great things. 
We feel them, measure them, understand them by 
our own labor, by treading the path of production 
and by taking up attainment point by point. We 
may wish greater regularity of movement, more 
immediate success; yet as a matter of fact we 
are constantly in danger, with our present rate of 
progress, of slurring knowledge and missing the 
highest things in our own experience. With all 
reiterations of life we still suffer more from su- 
perficiality of thought than we do from standing 
still when a more stirring experience might have 
been given us. We stumble often in the light 
of the coming day, but when the day has actually 
broken, we are not conscious of any loss of time 
in reaching it. Growth unites itself to our indo- 
lent apprehension and by means of it we enter into 
a fuller experience of life. The most earnest man 



What Is the World's Purpose? 263 

never feels that he outstrips knowledge, but often 
feels that its many doors are opened to him with 
more rapidity than he can meet. An act of crea- 
tion would thrust aside all measurements; an act 
of growth divides and subdivides all spaces until 
we form some estimate of their dimensions. 

Spiritual evolution involves individual growth, 
social growth, and the action and reaction of the 
two on each other. Of these three we are apt 
to regard social growth as the most conspicuous. 
Our individual growth is so involved in that of the 
community, and we are so often disposed to cast 
our eyes outward in order to watch the conditions 
of action which come to us, that we are disposed 
rather to give weight to the influences which bear 
upon us than to note our own responses to them. 
Looking at the few powerful personalities, which 
seem to rule the world rather than to be ruled by 
it, we have set apart the adjective, great, to des- 
ignate these leading minds: this the mass of 
people are ready to accept as the true term of 
value. Much of this brilliancy arises from broken 
light rather than from the strength of light. The 
force expressed by the community indicates the 
direction, if not the energy, of the tide. The ac- 
tion and reaction of the individual is the constant 
variable in evolution. There is no limit to the 



264 What Is the World's Purpose? 

degree and variety of force which arises from it, It 
is the germ of growth. Though we meet with so 
much difficulty in getting from one stage to another 
in development, the succession of these changes, 
the perpetual change of equilibrium which they 
indicate discloses the true law of the spiritual 
world. Customs in society, in politics, and in the 
state, doctrines and rights in religion reveal the 
reluctance of the human mind to change its posi- 
tion ; and yet in due time they all give way to the 
succeeding states whose germs they contain. This 
reaction of each attainment on the questions which 
are to follow it gives a distinct attitude to society, 
and leads us to feel that the search for truth, 
rather than truth itself, is the law of our activity. 
No sooner have we gained certain ground than 
the ground we have not gained begins to rise into 
view. ' ' I count not myself to have apprehended 
but this one thing I do, forgetting those things 
which are behind, and reaching forth to those 
things which are before, I press toward the mark 
of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ 
Jesus." 

The special acts or agents in spiritual evolution 
are inheritance, increments in knowledge, and 
influence. The physical world is in its regimen 
the ground of inheritance. Physical endowments 



What Is the World's Purpose ? 265 

are transmitted to offspring and carry with them 
many spiritual predispositions. Those partial to 
physical agencies have laid much emphasis on the 
term of transmission and have striven to make all 
powers those of inheritance. They have rejected 
increments and, in spite of our experience, have 
found all phases of personal power in transmission. 
But a world without additions seems to us an 
impossibility and quite other than that which we 
know as our habitation. Our world has sprung 
from a seed and its growth has been constantly 
attended by changes, which have greatly modified 
previous conditions and have given rise to a series of 
stages. Each successive form, like the seed itself, 
has its own power. Our knowledge is a knowl- 
edge of successions, and we are hence disposed to 
liken successions to one another and to flatter our- 
selves that by that means we understand them. 
As a fact we soon reach in all knowledge ulti- 
mate terms, with which we start our explanations. 
What may be called our primitive knowledge is 
very obscure, and not until we are in motion and 
begin to occupy ourselves with successions do we 
seem to know anything. 

Instruction, influence, the data of wisdom in 
character transferred constantly as intellectual 
food are great, if not the greatest, mediums of 



266 What Is the World's Purpose? 

growth. While we gain tangible and transferable 
material in the accumulation of our physical life, 
the power itself consists in wider thought, a more 
just and decided response to the thought about us: 
the persuasive words of parents, and the speech 
within hearing of man to man in the contacts of 
each day. We thus enter into both a physical 
and a spiritual growth, and unite both worlds in 
our development. The increments we receive in 
this evolution are of the same nature as the evolu- 
tion itself, and consist both of material endowments 
and of spiritual impulses, a giving and taking of 
facts and ideas in the world about us. 

If this statement of growth approximates the 
truth, we see what sin is. It is an offence against 
growth. What disease is in the plant or the animal, 
that is sin in spiritual development. It opposes 
itself in large ways or small ways to the onward 
movement of life. Sin like disease defines itself 
in results, is measured by results. The intuition - 
alist and the utilitarian may approach each other 
along this nature and measurement of trans- 
gression. For both, transgression declares it- 
self in the interception of some good within reach. 
The intuitionalist thinks that we can recognize 
the good and evil action for what they are in them- 
selves, while the utilitarian regards them as seen 



What Is the World's Purpose ? 267 

simply in their results; it is the issue of actions 
which defines their character. Goods bear their 
price mark; to this we look in making exchanges. 
But our notion of value precedes our statement 
of it. Both intuitionalist and utilitarian regard 
every offence as an interference, intermediate or 
remote, in one form or other, with the gains of 
life. 

Punishment is either the mischief wrought by 
sin itself, or is some additional suffering annexed 
to it, as deterrent from further offence. The 
first form is the divine punishment of this world, 
the second is human punishment aiming at indi- 
vidual or general safety. The divine punishment is 
a disclosure of the nature of sin and leads, when it is 
efficacious, to discontinuance and escape. Repent- 
ance and forgiveness, in the personal bearing of 
sin, go with the removal of its consequences. The 
corrected mind no more accepts transgression 
than does the healthy man treat with compla- 
cency any disease in abatement of vital function. 
The experience of the world corrects and enlarges 
the minds and hearts of men until we are placed 
in union with all well-conceived and beneficent 
action. Conduct is much confused in its character 
and results; wrong action may be associated 
with pleasure, and right action with pain. It is 



268 What Is the World's Purpose? 

the sifting of actions and the tracing of them in their 
consequences that give us large and discriminating 
views of their nature. This means our spiritual 
endowment, by which we come to know conduct 
and to attach to it fitting estimates. The punish- 
ments of God are all revelations, by which he leads 
us in paths of safety and makes us cheerfully 
acquiescent with one another and with him. A 
spiritual harmony is arrived at, a harmony which 
involves a constant distinction between good and 
evil. The human mind is thus instructed and 
trained by the divine mind in paths of life. The 
primary object of punishment becomes instruction 
and persuasion. The field of activity is not one 
of force but of knowledge. 

Human punishment is often perverted by human 
passion. It is instituted to prevent the disturb- 
ance of social rights liable to be overthrown by 
transgression. The motive is that of safety. It 
preserves the lines of obedience for those who are 
willing to regard them. Human punishment is 
the introduction of some force into action designed 
to prevent its obvious perversion. We fortify 
ourselves against transgression in two ways: a 
spiritual exposure of it may be sufficient; or the 
evil influence may in its violence destroy liberty 
and demand that we should thrust it back with 



What Is the World's Purpose? 269 

violence into its own place. We thus employ force 
where persuasion is the redemptive agent. In this 
process we may make punishment itself a new tres- 
pass on liberty. If we refuse to use force when our 
own liberties are involved, we thereby refuse to 
protect the remainder of rights which are tramped 
under foot by the disobedient. The legitimate 
principle which governs civil punishments is the 
protection of liberty, the condition of righteous- 
ness. If the ethical motive is sufficient, we rely on 
that ; if it is not sufficient, we invoke force to take 
its place. The primary purpose of divine punish- 
ment as we know it in the world is instruction ; the 
primary purpose of human punishment is safety. 
The confusion and anger which overtake us in 
connection with punishment have been very great. 
We have often made it the medium of our malign 
feelings when we should have made it the medium 
of protecting righteousness. We have been hasty, 
futile, and cruel in the framing and in the infliction 
of penalties, and have been ready to complain of 
divine ministration in the world because it has 
not multiplied its restraints and shown more of 
these faulty qualities. We would have the divine 
ruler pursue the offender as we often pursue him 
in gratification of our own feelings. The Old 
Testament shows much of this passion, righteous 



270 What Is the World's Purpose? 

rejection and anger, mingled in one state of mind. 
Thus we have undertaken to overcome evil with 
evil. Once in a while the Psalmist hits upon the 
right strain: "Surely Thou didst set them in 
slippery places"; but the faulty temper is close 
at hand : ' ' Let their way be dark and slippery and 
let the angel of the Lord persecute them." We 
have not learned to wait on sin until the world 
has had time truly to clear itself of it. We are 
ready to take the inquisitor's attitude, assuming 
our own absolute correctness and pushing harshly 
aside the convictions of those who have arrived 
before us. 

This bad temper has found frequent expression 
in a belief in future punishments. What we have 
not found done in this world we have assumed 
would be done in a future world. To give to the 
divine inflictions a personal and vindictive char- 
acter is the temptation of those who mingle passion 
and punishment in one unwholesome product in 
which evil and good countervail each other. It is 
not an easy thing even in thought to attain unto the 
transcendent command : "Be not overcome of evil, 
but overcome evil with good." We readily fall 
into the danger of calling on God to chastise those, 
whom we have not been able to overcome in the 
strife of the world. Few acts that take on readily 



What Is the World's Purpose ? 271 

the form of righteousness are more difficult to 
purge of evil than punishment. Few acts are so 
hard to separate into their elements of rejection 
of sin and rejection of the sinner. Human in- 
flictions have almost always borne with them some 
fresh provocation to evil. Indeed we have come 
to think this to be so much of the very nature of 
punishment, as to look with complacency on suffer- 
ings which serve only to beget fresh evils. If we re- 
gard punishment as reaching its highest expression 
in those who endure suffering with no abatement or 
tendency to the abatement of evil, we are destroy- 
ing the ministration of punishment in the ethical 
world, and are putting in its place a new and horrible 
fact. It is not the sufferings inflicted on the sinner 
which reveal the character of sin, but the sufferings 
which are involved in the evil action. The pen- 
alty may fall below, or be commensurate with, or 
greatly exceed the evil incident to the trans- 
gression. It is the core of the suffering that dis- 
closes the nature of sin, which should find in 
punishment a proportionate treatment and a 
suitable restraint. Those who endure the full 
retribution are in many cases just coming under 
the discipline of life, and have still to learn how 
many delays and modifications are incident to sin 
and in how many forms of false reasoning it is 



272 What Is the World's Purpose? 

covered up. Did these various forms and stages 
of punishment all lead to the same results, the fact 
would go very far to contradict the belief that evil 
action is disclosed in its consequences, and would 
lead to the feeling that pain and suffering are 
wrapped up blindly in the progress of events and 
cannot be escaped. Incipient sin, even if sin deserves 
punishment not embraced in its results, can hardly 
be treated as if it were transgression thoroughly un- 
derstood and adhered to in spite of consequences. 
Justice, however important it may be in human 
government, has no absolute claim in the divine 
government. Indeed our transfer of it to that gov- 
ernment proceeds on a process of reasoning derived 
from our very defective relations and limited 
powers, and is not consistent with what we know 
of divine attributes and resources. Justice de- 
termines the relation of punishments to one another 
inflicted under various circumstances, and is at 
times an embarrassment to remedial measures. 
That sin must be punished by some infliction is a 
necessity arising from human weakness, and does 
not find admission in divine or even in parental 
control. The divine government, as we know it, 
provides no proportionate and definite suffering, 
but allows the fruits of sin to accumulate in the 
history of the race, and to come with overwhelm- 



What Is the World's Purpose ? 273 

ing force on those finally exposed to them. Re- 
pentance and change may at any time and in 
various degrees interpose in the divine procedure. 
Sin is not treated as a given evil agent to be fol- 
lowed by punishment under exact measurement, 
but as an evil element to be escaped in various 
ways as we are best able. Its poison is sure 
to appear sooner or later in direct or in indirect 
results, and is to be treated with such advantages 
or disadvantages as each case admits. Those, who 
escape the most obvious and immediate conse- 
quences of transgression, are not thereby relieved 
of its ultimate consequences, but may find these 
summed up against them in irretrievable amounts. 
To follow a system like this, often misunderstood 
and to the minds of men loosely administered, 
with severe and unflinching punishments spread- 
ing over incalculable periods, is wholly incongru- 
ous and is a dreadful consummation of human life, 
To maintain life simply for the sake of punish- 
ment is to unite methods in the divine government 
wholly inconsistent with each other. To allow hu- 
man life to proceed loosely under an instructional 
and free method and then abruptly to bring it 
under the most remediless regime of punishment is 
certainly a view very difficult of acceptance, and 

one which must greatly alter our notion of the 
18 



274 What Is the World's Purpose? 

divine character. To suppose that the govern- 
ment of God is burdened with such a procedure 
is to make the two parts of it, the present and the 
future, wholly inconsistent; to burden the mind 
with things which are too vast for its comprehen- 
sion and which tend to destroy one another. No 
evil in punishment can surpass that of transforming 
it into perpetual cruelty. Man may do and has 
done this; but to carry such a subversion over 
to the government of God is to allow darkness 
and night to settle down on the universe. The 
punishments of God in the world, where we con- 
stantly see them, are instructive and corrective 
in their purpose; are broad and disciplinary in 
their operation ; and call for constant adjustment 
of action on our part. We may magnify the vir- 
tue of justice, but it is applicable to human ideas 
and necessities rather than to divine ones. The 
disclosure of sin and the rebuke of sin go together, 
and this is the government of free creatures. 

It also takes on a broad range and renders suf- 
fering in the race as well as in the individual a 
lesson of experience. Habits which give rise to 
contagious diseases ; habits which issue in national 
weakness; habits which widely break down char- 
acter are all treated in the manner of individual 
vices, and our personal and our collective training 



What Is the World's Purpose? 275 

go on together. The divine rule is in a wide way 
disciplinary, and we prosper or fail in connection 
with it as we follow it in all its branches. 

Suffering is wrought into the world, takes part 
in its evolution. It is an element in a great system 
and must be judged in connection with it. The 
amount and variety of life in the world and, I 
think we may say, the pleasure of that life are 
greatly increased by a system in which life nour- 
ishes life as contrasted with a simply vegetable diet. 
It may be doubted whether the suffering under 
this method is not less than it would be if animal 
life were altogether herbivorous. The destruction 
of animals is speedy and probably more merciful 
than the decay of old age. Animals in seeking 
food take the shortest means of securing it, and 
are not indifferent to the use of fitting means. 
It is probable that death is less painful when 
inflicted as a means of securing food than when 
drawn out by the slow stages of decay. Animals 
find their powers exercised in escaping pursuit as 
well as in instituting it. Animals can hardly be 
said to be cruel ; they are indifferent to the pain 
they inflict, but they do not increase pain as a 
means of pleasure. This is reserved for man, and 
is, even with him, the result chiefly of wider in- 
terests and numerous and exacting passions. While 



276 What Is the World's Purpose? 

men may come to take pleasure in the infliction 
of pain, this is ordinarily the result of hostility, 
contempt, or even of the appearance of doing good. 
This suffering is a chief means of discipline in 
learning the limits of human welfare. The mis- 
takes of severity are chief among the lessons of 
wisdom which we are slowly winning . Conditions , 
which enable animals to inflict death or to escape 
it, are the constant product of evolution and much 
of the adaptation of animals to their position in 
the world arises from this development toward 
one another. The advantages of such a system 
lie not simply in a great increase of life, but also 
in the superior power and sagacity that go with it. 
These increased capabilities are of much moment 
in man. His relation to animal life depends 
chiefly on the use and control which come to him, 
while his forecast and providence are exercised 
largely toward animal life that is directly or in- 
directly committed to him ; even when the struggle 
is irritating and only partially successful, as in 
much insect life, still his powers are called out and 
he gains preeminence by constant inquiry, steady 
resistance, and habitual foresight. A moth may 
put him to the utmost exercise of his sagacity, if 
he is not to have his ordinary industry unsuccess- 
ful. When we take up given hard cases, we may 



What Is the World's Purpose ? 277 

think that his welfare has been uniformly neglected, 
but when our attention is directed to the outer 
range of opportunity, we can hardly fail to be 
struck with the fitness of his position. The struggle 
for life and with life is the constant test of superior- 
ity. The world would be a very different place, 
with much less discipline, if the sufferings incident 
to these conflicts were wanting. 

Moreover, the harmony of the world with itself, 
with man, and with the primary effort after spirit- 
ual excellence, calls for this diffusion of condition 
in every part of it. If animals had no weapons of 
offence and of defence, if things rested quietly in 
the hand of man, if man used and abused as seemed 
to him good the objects before him with no rebuke, 
if he were not confronted by a world armed for re- 
sistance as well as by one in a high degree service- 
able to his appetites and passions, the excesses of 
life would become at once much greater and the 
restraints of action would disappear. In a world, in 
which lower impulses are met and rebuked in a va- 
riety of ways, the lower, as excessive appetite, force 
the higher, as temperance, into activity, if they 
would not at once lose their preeminence. Man is 
not fitted to deal exclusively with good or with bad 
things. He calls for a world in harmony with him- 
self, in its moral issues, and facing him often in the 



278 What Is the World's Purpose? 

attitude of resistance later resulting in small gains. 
Wherever he is and wherever he goes he is still com- 
pelled to meet tendencies and forces acting on his 
own level and compelling a careful maintenance of 
his footing. The harmony of the world, man being 
ignorant and sinful, calls for men, for things, and for 
relations which are in keeping with his own feelings 
and which might not be otherwise admissible. 

But suffering is also a powerful agent in 
discipline, carrying men forward to patient and 
heroic achievement not otherwise attainable. It 
calls forth endurance, sympathy, and courage. 
Some are disposed to lay much stress on the hard- 
ships of war as imparting peculiar virtues to the 
good soldier. They are willing to endure its 
immense costs because of these secondary gains. 
The sufferings of the world which are sure to 
accompany its ordinary unfolding, if heeded, yield 
both gentler and sterner virtues than are other- 
wise attainable. "For whom the Lord loveth he 
chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he 
receiveth. Now no chastening for the present 
seemeth to be joyous but grievous;. nevertheless 
afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of right- 
eousness unto them that are exercised thereby." 
This is a fact which the experience of the world 
confirms. Commend us to those who have borne 



What Is the World's Purpose? 279 

their share of the evils about them, falling upon 
themselves or falling upon others, as a Providence 
beyond their control may have ordered. 

A mastery of the evils incident to our experience 
is a chief virtue attainable in three ways. The 
first of these is inheritance. The stream of suffer- 
ing that flows steadily down the slopes of life may 
be made more gentle and endurable by soundness 
of body and by a worthy inheritance which yield 
the consolations of life. Our physical and spiritual 
conditions are so interwoven by inheritance, and 
we ourselves and our posterity are so united in 
a successful effort to scatter and to overcome the 
evils of existence that a sense of triumph may ac- 
company adverse conditions. We are taught to 
strike hard and to take into our providence all the 
conditions of strength. 

A second reduction of suffering is found in 
instruction. We are taught to lay the chief 
emphasis of life on spiritual attainment. This 
may be a narrow, personal belief, and it may be a 
broad, national one. Jew and Gentile, Greek and 
Roman, free states and slave states have been at 
work on the same problem, accumulating an 
experience of good and evil ; but all results remain 
to be expanded into principles along the path of 
spiritual life. It is along these ways of growing 



280 What Is the World's Purpose? 

knowledge, of unfolding wisdom, that we and the 
world make progress. The field of inquiry is 
never exhausted so long as there is error, and to 
place our feet on fields more fully in the light is 
our best attainment individually and nationally. 
Again we master life by a steady transfer of 
issue. The elimination of old injuries and the 
introduction of new questions farther on in de- 
velopment help to restore the balance between 
evil and good. As a nation we were occupied for 
nearly a century with the problem of slavery, but 
we have now left it behind, and are occupied with 
the broader question of the relation of classes and 
nationalities to one another. Much was thought 
and said, pro and con, wisely and foolishly as to 
the fitness of servitude. We can hardly imagine 
a position which was not occupied, but the board 
has been wiped clean. We shall not again work 
out this solution. The elementary processes 
of the world are settled by growth ; new points of 
procedure are raised. When we are ready to fall 
into decay by useless affirmations and denials, 
some new procedure is forced upon us and we once 
more go forward. The boat is pushed from the 
shore, and we are left to manage it as best we can. 
The cross lights from the world are numerous, 
and only as events, which we cannot order, carry 



What Is the World's Purpose? 281 

us onward are we able to settle the relations about 
us and to get our bearings in the world. 

There is a tragic element in our experience. 
We have occasion to gird our loins, to put forth 
our strength, and to take possession of new fields as 
the indispensable condition of mastering old ones. 
Whatever else may be said or thought of the world, 
it is not a place of routine. Our thoughts must 
be active, our sensibilities alive; and if familiar 
paths are blocked, new ones are opened. This 
is the one fact, the plainest fact of our experience. 
A little progress in the fresh way may turn error 
into truth, mistake into knowledge, and a sense of 
failure into success. 

It can hardly be doubted that the world is a 
supreme place for wide and yet wider vision ; for 
deep and yet deeper knowledge; that a thousand 
paths lead upward, and that each of them in turn 
has its own revelation. The world is fitted to 
give us a noble experience, to call out and to harmo- 
nize our powers in a life complete within itself. 
This is a thing for which it was made, and this is 
its hourly fulfillment. Judged by this aim com- 
plaint is hushed, enthusiasm called forth, and 
events reconciled with one another by the self- 
consistency of growth. In our religious faith 
difficulties may arise, we may be pushed forward 



282 What Is the World's Purpose ? 

by what has the appearance of failure; but one 
crowning consummation remains ever to us, that 
truth, good, is rising into view greater and better 
than that which has been left behind; that the 
experience of the world, if we accept it, means more 
manhood, more light within ourselves, an opening 
of the soul in its own fitting flowering to a life 
among living things. 

This article suggests subjects rather than spreads 
them out. We may seem to find the government 
of God much plainer in revelation than we 
have made it ; but if we believe in the world as the 
creation of the one Ruler of all, we must reconcile 
revelation with the government of the world, not 
as an incident of the divine method, but as the 
very substance of the divine method. We must 
invite ourselves to the world of which we are a part, 
and must come under its instruction. If the evo- 
lutionary idea is in the world, as we think it is, we 
may be quite sure that it is in human life, and 
that we have occasion to unite ourselves to that 
unfolding process of which we are an essential part. 



KNOWLEDGE 

HPHE purpose of this article is to define the field 
* of knowledge; to give the powers implied 
by it ; to make out its leading directions ; and to 
indicate its tests. Our explorations of the field 
of knowledge are not unlike our geographical 
inquiries into the physical features of the world. 
Things at hand and of much moment to us are 
cursorily surveyed, while things remote and of 
secondary interest, like the region of the poles, 
are sought out with hardship and danger. Our 
ambitions are often in inverse ratio to the useful- 
ness of the objects we pursue. 

If we let the word information stand for the 
attainments of the ordinary man, if we understand 
by science a somewhat extended and complete 
tracing of causes in the physical world, and by 
philosophy a discussion of the reasons which 
underlie events, physical or intellectual; the three 
words, information, science, and philosophy, will 
cover the field of knowledge and be embraced 

by it as a comprehensive designation of mental 

283 



284 Knowledge 

attainments. This field has much more unity 
than our common speech concerning it seems to 
imply. Information, science, and philosophy do 
not stand apart to the degree that we seem to 
think. Information has some touch, and often- 
times a liberal touch, of science and of philosophy. 
Science frequently relies on information for the 
direction and material of inquiry, and often 
extends and enlivens itself by the reasons which 
pertain to philosophy. Philosophy, though often 
extreme and erratic, has its tasks assigned it by the 
information and the science of men, and is always 
striving to bring these under some rational purpose 
and to make them parts of a constructive process. 
Information is frequently disparaged because 
it exists in such detached and fragmentary forms, 
and in so many minds falls so much below science. 
Information contains more or less reference to 
causes, and, as a great aggregate scattered through 
the community with simply a general coherence, 
constitutes the connecting material in human 
action, the matrix of knowledge without which 
it would be unfruitful and crumble away. It 
plays among men the same part as falls to famil- 
iar speech : the most ignorant can put something 
into it and take something from it, according to 
their need. Information is the soil out of which 



Knowledge 285 

science springs, and to which it brings back its 
conclusions, the seeds of further gains. An 
Edison owes in part his inventive power to his 
stores of information, to his knowledge of the 
things to be done and of the material by which 
they are to be done. The possibilities of many 
combinations are present to his mind and the pur- 
poses they may be made to subserve. The laws 
of science are operative among the products of 
the world and unite its facts and events. Science 
owes much of its honor to the illumination it 
brings to information, and information is con- 
stantly extended and made more exact by science. 
They are divided by no fixed bounds, but are 
constantly flowing into each other. Information 
and science together, as one whole, constitute the 
sea in which the ebb and flow of human life take 
place. They are commingled in various degrees 
in different persons, who carry the incentives of 
knowledge through the entire community and 
make it measurably one in its possessions and 
ambitions. When science applies itself to the 
practical tasks of the world, it is able to draw aid 
from all classes by virtue of the suitable informa- 
tion that is common to them all. Science begins 
at once to percolate downward as information and 
to make of society a scientific storehouse and 



286 Knowledge 

workshop. If science lay loose on the surface of 
the world, had no affiliations with general knowl- 
edge, it would be of little worth and would begin 
to perish as soon as it was born. It could not 
accumulate and draw after itself the vast resources 
of civilization. While science is entitled to the 
honor we bestow on it, it is so in large part because 
it has arisen in answer to the claims of information, 
because it satisfies its wants and multiplies its 
resources. The great sum of human knowledge 
is information stored in many forms, in many 
persons, and ready, like seed in the soil, to make 
answer to all the opportunities and exigencies of 
growth. Reason moves freely in all directions by 
virtue of it. We are not to regard the world, 
because of the scattered forms in which knowledge 
is found, as made up of scientists and philosophers, 
few in number, and a herd of ignorant men who 
follow on with difficulty and are the proper sub- 
jects of contempt and unrequited labor. The 
world is vital throughout, quick with thought, and 
able to enter into the uses of life. It is a physical, 
intellectual, and spiritual world, whose light is 
common to all of it, caught on its summits, and 
spread through its valleys. 

This unity of knowledge is frequently lost sight 
of in philosophy, and philosophy becomes remote 



Knowledge 287 

and speculative. More than most forms of knowl- 
edge, it has darkened its path by its own shadow, 
turning its back upon the light. Philosophy may 
mean tracing the connections of reason between 
its own speculative conclusions, when it should 
mean a diligent inquiry into the facts of the world, 
and those coherent terms of thought by which 
these facts are fittingly rendered to us. Thus the 
universe about us and our thoughts concerning it 
are borne forward in a constructive process by 
which each realizes in the other its full power. 
Philosophy, almost equally with science, has its 
data given to it and mounts by means of them into 
those high places from which the world is more 
fully seen. The task of philosophy is to expound 
the order of events, to give the most comprehensive 
terms of thought to them, until all things hold to- 
gether as one creation. This is the highest ser- 
vice, and the most restrained service, of the mind 
to itself. A clear and cloudless intelligence shines 
out, disclosing the world in its purpose and pros- 
pects, as it responds to the spirit of man and to the 
creative Spirit, moving together in the effulgent 
days. 

The purpose of philosophy is to come into posses- 
sion of, and to expound this unity; it is the ex- 
position of the world on its physical, intellectual, 



288 Knowledge 

and spiritual sides. It believes that the world 
is one whole and as such it strives to render it. It 
is a study of the plan of the world and is at least 
a partial apprehension of it. What the world 
roughly is, is given in the experience of men, in 
what we have termed information ; and, with some- 
what more of fullness, in science. If philosophy 
does not still further expound these very facts, 
if it magnifies a part and diminishes a part, it so 
far ceases to be philosophy. Instead of solving the 
problem set before it, it puts in its place another 
rendering of knowledge, in proof of which it has 
nothing to offer but the correspondence with it of 
its own explanatory processes. The theory rules 
the facts, not the facts, the theory. If the thing 
explained is not the empirical, the universal view 
of the world; if the complexity of things has been 
simplified by inadequate analysis and unreasonable 
segregation ; if fundamental differences have been 
resolved into antagonisms and an arbitrary relation 
has been established between the two ; if primitive 
distinctions have been overcome by merely verbal 
agreements, the philosophy so attained ceases to be 
a guide to the mind and needs itself to be set aside 
by a more thorough acceptance of the phenomena 
brought to our notice. Light may seem to shine, 
but it falls on a cunningly devised diagram of 



Knowledge 289 

knowledge, and not upon knowledge itself. These 
forms of philosophy are soon left behind, events 
taking no notice of them, but pushing on in their 
own lines of fulfillment. Philosophy thus loses 
step with the world and wanders off into an in- 
tellectual dreamland. Like a spider at the center 
of its own net, it may catch a few flies, but it has no 
effect on the movement of the world. Philosophy, 
having the most difficult task to perform, may more 
frequently than other forms of knowledge become 
visionary, but even then it renders a service pro- 
portional to the strength bestowed upon it. It 
defines the region through which it runs, and 
leads us to seek better paths in some other direc- 
tion. No explanatory effort is altogether a failure. 
It at least prepares us for the next effort. 

When philosophy becomes knowledge and gives 
us a firmer hold on all knowledge; when it moves 
forward with the processes of thought, making 
them more coherent, more harmonious, then it is 
the summation of all effort and the crown of in- 
telligence. Life, the daily life which drops so 
easily into insignificance, becomes vigorous and 
luminous; beliefs and actions, otherwise instinct- 
ive and half-hearted, pass into the free, bold, yet 
restrained movement of reason. Philosophy, in 

and of itself, no more needs justification than does 
19 



290 Knowledge 

information or science. In spite of its failures 
and waywardness it is as sure as these forms of 
knowledge to companion with all vigorous life. 
Men cannot fail to raise the Iquestions of the 
purposes and conditions of our being; all other 
questions lead to them. It matters not how in- 
adequate many of the answers given, we shall re- 
turn again and again to these inquiries, feeling that 
a little gain here exceeds all other wealth. When 
men scorn philosophy, they do it with a spiteful- 
ness which shows how deep a sense of loss has come 
to the mind. Let one return from explorations 
with any more fit interpretation of human life, 
with any sufficient hint where the path of progress 
lies, and he will be welcomed as a guide of men. 

We now come to the fundamental inquiry: 
what powers of apprehension do these forms of 
knowledge presuppose ; how is the mind furnished 
forth for its work? Intelligence implies two 
things, stimuli in the environment, which incloses 
it, and ability to receive these stimuli, turning 
them into knowledge. Throughout the physical 
world two or more agents are involved in every 
effect. The action on either side is both active 
and passive. Each is what it is in relation to 
the other. Oxygen and hydrogen unite to make 
water. Water is the result of neither save in re- 



Knowledge 291 

lation to the other. All forms of life are developed 
under the reciprocal action of external conditions 
and internal powers, suitable to each other. In- 
telligence is of the same double character. Re- 
ceptive capacity and stimulating conditions are the 
requisites of attainment. Man is no more fitted 
to understand the world than the world is fitted 
to call out his powers. No quality in things pro- 
duces intelligence; neither does receptive sensi- 
bility without appropriate stimuli. The plate of 
the photographer yields its impression, upon the 
presence of the objects desired, and these objects 
attain a successful representation only by the 
susceptibility of the receiving plate. What in the 
mind are these receiving powers? 

All mental phenomena, whether of thought or of 
feeling, imply consciousness. Consciousness con- 
ditions mental facts, and gives them reality. 
Consciousness is not something in addition to the 
mental state, it is the condition of that state itself. 
No mental state, whatever its specific character, 
arises otherwise than in consciousness. In reference 
to any thought or feeling we are at liberty to ask — 
Whose is it? In whose consciousness has it 
arisen? What are its whereabouts in the mental 
world? The case is precisely similar to the re- 
lation of physical objects to space. Space is de- 



292 Knowledge 

fined by them; none of them can exist otherwise 
than in space. As consciousness is the common 
condition of mental states, it is sometimes used as 
a collective designation of these states, and we 
speak of personal consciousness, class conscious- 
ness, national consciousness, the consciousness of 
the race. It gains this extension by virtue of 
accompanying all mental phenomena and being 
identified with none of them. Consciousness is 
thus a form for intellectual experiences, that which 
gives to them a definite nature. They are in- 
tellectual experiences because they have appeared 
in consciousness, and they have appeared in con- 
sciousness because they are intellectual experiences. 
Physical phenomena establish thus reality in space, 
and without this relation they are unreal. 

There is indeed much talk about subconscious 
phenomena, as in some way occupying an inter- 
mediate position between physical and mental 
facts. But this is a case in which we have used 
fanciful words to express fanciful facts, and by 
means of them to conceal real relations. As 
consciousness occupies no place, below conscious- 
ness has no meaning. We have two designations 
for all realities, conscious experience and space 
occupation. The interactions of these two, as in 
the case of the body and the mind of man, may 



Knowledge 293 

be very extended, subtle, and obscure, but neither 
of them thereby becomes other than what it is, 
physical or mental phenomena. A fanciful inter- 
mediate helps nothing, and obscures the real de- 
pendence. Our real knowledge still lies either in 
the intellectual or in the physical world, and our 
true problem is the dependence of the two on 
each other. 

Knowledge starts in consciousness, and, what- 
ever form it may later assume, the germ of all has 
been found in the powers of mind, acting in their 
own domain. Every intuitive, reflective, per- 
ceptive, or emotional power abides in consciousness 
to receive and to communicate impulse, and by 
these impulses to build up an intellectual and a 
physical world. If the canvas, which receives the 
pictures of the stereopticon, were still more nega- 
tive, indifferent to the images cast upon it, it 
would illustrate consciousness as the background 
of spiritual life in the processes of knowledge. This 
reality and homogeneity of the inner experience 
are soon broken by the external world. The child 
becomes aware of the fact that its impressions do 
not unfold in an uninterrupted flow out of itself, 
but that other facts appear among them, pos- 
sessed of peculiar interest. These facts are soon 
referred to an independent origin, to an external 



294 Knowledge 

world. Two instinctive, inevitable movements 
of mind are involved in this reference. The 
phenomena are borne outward by the notion of 
causation and are given locality by the notion of 
space. The notions of causation and space, na- 
tive to the mind as an interpreting agent, enable 
it to apprehend its first experiences and, later, to 
order for it all the data of reflection. The knowing 
process cannot begin nor proceed without them. 
They are its incipient terms. In their absence all 
impressions would remain a simple sequence, 
without any power of distribution or rational use. 
We begin to know, and we know with increasing 
fullness, because these and kindred powers of 
knowledge are with us. The knowing process 
does not bring forth its own postulates; it first 
knows and later analyzes the conditions of 
knowledge. 

While knowledge starts in consciousness and 
carries everywhere the forms of consciousness along 
with it, it is readily captured by the external 
world, an independent procedure, giving it most of 
its terms of pleasure. Like the lichen, it grows 
away from its own center, and is chiefly alive at its 
ever enlarging circumference. Observation, re- 
flection, memory, all the powers, by which knowl- 
edge is increased and formulated, are called into 



Knowledge 295 

activity by external objects; and knowledge, 
whether in the ordinary form of information or in 
the less usual form of science, begins to be attained. 
These and the associated powers are the implica- 
tions of knowledge, whether obscurely or clearly 
exercised, whether analyzed or unanalyzed terms 
in the process. 

Early in the movement, and with growing dis- 
tinctness as it proceeds, other ideas, the furniture 
of the mind, rise to the surface and bring with them 
a wider, deeper, and more spiritual outlook on the 
world. What we term truth, beauty, and right, 
laws of thought, feeling, and conduct, ruling in the 
visible world though not visibly presented in it, 
gain their own with the growing activity of mind, 
and arrange under themselves, in higher orders, 
the phenomena, internal and external, that come 
to us through our perceptive and reflective powers. 
Hereby a new and spiritual cast is given to physical 
things and events. A life thus superinduced upon 
the physical life not only transcends it, but brings 
subordination and ministration to it in the whole 
range of vision, a deeper reality overlying the 
entire process of living. 

Those who accept these primitive endowments 
of the mind in its relation to the world about us 
are frequently met with a disparaging statement 



296 Knowledge 

of the true, the beautiful, and the good, in their 
rule over things. Truth becomes simply the 
coincidence of facts and judgments. Beauty is 
the resemblance between nature and the works 
of man. Right is another name for the useful. 
These easy analyses do not satisfy the general 
mind; it is constantly struggling for a deeper 
meaning. Though these ideas, under these ready 
explanations, have their periods of weakness, 
they have also their periods of strength, in which 
they reject exposition and go forward to rule the 
thoughts of men; periods of discovery, inventive 
insight, and exalted action. While, therefore, a 
disparaging analysis may serve to unite these ideas 
more closely to the facts with which they are 
associated, they never measure these ruling notions 
as they lie in the human mind, nor push them back 
into a subordinate position. Men by means of 
them still rise into a higher world. This is not 
merely the result in cultivated minds but in the 
popular mind as well. Chief among the pheno- 
mena to be expounded by philosophy are the pre- 
valence and the growing power of these ideas. It 
matters little whether this or that acute and restive 
mind withdraws its allegiance from these notions, 
they still remain to renew the conflict and to rule 
the world. These considerations are ever coming 



Knowledge 297 

more clearly into the light, ever exalting individu- 
als, ever contributing shame and honor in the 
history of the world. While this historic nar- 
ration may be badly written, the clue of goodness 
is never wholly lost. Howsoever coarse the fabric, 
it is still this golden thread which gives it luster. 

These three qualities impart at once a range to 
our experience, which leads up to an acceptance of 
the infinite and the immortal. The infinite laps 
human life without restraining it or smothering it. 
The universe stands over against us, not simply to 
increase perceptive faculty, but to lead our thoughts 
onward, to enlarge our sense of possibilities. We 
live in, and may live with the illimitable; the 
illimitable making answer to our own narrow life. 

While the mental processes in man are not 
entirely distinct from those of the brute, his pe- 
culiar endowments are wholly superior to those 
we find elsewhere. Animals are frequently pos- 
sessed of very acute senses, of vigorous memory, and 
of the collocations of an extended experience closely 
united to their wants. The results are often a 
fullness of action which nearly approaches that of 
reason. The force and aptness of suitable associa- 
tions may seem to equal if not to surpass those of 
thought. Men, in distinction from other forms 
of conscious life, are capable of forming ideas 



298 Knowledge 

which become the means and the material of re- 
flection. If the conclusions so reached are fre- 
quently slow and erroneous as compared with the 
results of association, they none the less have far 
more scope and elevation. These ideas, the means 
and the material of thought, are the formative 
notions which precede all mental construction, and 
the generalizations which accompany perception, 
throwing its phenomena into classes and groups by 
which they become the data of knowledge. Man 
is an ideal creature in that his most extended con- 
victions are those which attach to ideas, the pro- 
ducts of an intellectual outlook. 

Our third consideration is the forms which 
knowledge assumes in the reciprocal actions and 
reactions which the mind of man and the external 
world take on in reference to each other. In our 
intellectual constructions we are still in the vol- 
canic period. Our art is not taking on its last 
phases,. like the earth under the ministrations of 
heat and cold, dryness and wet, but there are still 
sudden outbreaks of thought, spasmodic inquiry 
by which certain branches of knowledge are 
carried quite beyond their proportionate relation to 
other considerations, and so gather false conclu- 
sions, which stand in the way of further investiga- 
tion. Such a pushing force, for a series of years, has 



Knowledge 299 

shown itself in the physical sciences. These have 
been carried not only much beyond previous 
knowledge, but have absorbed attention to the 
disparagement of philosophical inquiry. Physics 
has given us an extended discussion of matter and 
force considered in masses ; chemistry has handled 
the same theme in minute forms and ultimate com- 
binations; biology has investigated the various 
kinds of life; and geology has grouped all these 
agents in the construction of the physical world. 
Successes in these simpler and earlier directions of 
inquiry easily turn thought from the more complex 
and less definite investigations of the intellectual 
world, and insist on results which not only cannot 
be attained, but ought not to be attained, when we 
have to do with the free and variable elements which 
lift us above the close connections of causation. 
The gains of these physical pursuits have been 
so great, so obvious, so generally accepted that we 
have no occasion to dwell on them. We have 
only to urge caution lest the mind be overwhelmed 
by the possibilities of knowledge which lie still 
hidden in the things close about us. We have 
found our uses and powers so enlarged toward the 
world, and we have been placed in such a position 
of superiority as compared with those who have 
gone before us, that we increasingly incur the 



300 Knowledge 

danger of coming under the dominion of things 
inferior to us. Gaining much we are liable to lose 
still more. We have been impressed as never be- 
fore with the unity of the world ; yet a unity which 
abates our effort to carry it forward into the higher 
unity of intellectual and spiritual apprehension. 
The physical has so asserted itself at the expense of 
the mental, has so drawn attention from superior 
to minor profiting, that utilities, the mere con- 
ditions of existence, have gained ground on ex- 
istence itself, and have left us in possession of 
palpable good with no additional power to turn it 
into permanent welfare. We have settled into 
the lower life when we should, by means of it, 
have passed into the higher life of which it is the 
threshold. The hasty and narrow criticisms of 
philosophical inquiry as visionary have been often 
united with theories that showed the contagion of 
this same baneful region of metaphysics. The most 
serious drawback in connection with physical re- 
search has been the effort to expound the entire 
outfit of life in a positive, material fashion. The 
siege guns of derision have been brought to bear 
against the strongholds of the ethical and spiritual 
world, and have been accompanied in their use by 
the dogmatic assertion that the difficulties that 
had not been overcome did not exist. But one 



Knowledge 301 

result brought into the foreground by these dis- 
cussions, which has more than compensated any 
failures that have gone with them, has been the 
discovery that a true evolution has prevailed from 
the very beginning, and is still present to carry 
upward the creative movement. Material and 
spiritual events will finally rear a cosmic structure, 
whose suggestions have been present from the 
outset and whose completed product will hold 
both the one and the other in constant interplay. 

When we pass from physics to psychology, we 
enter a region whose data and proofs are quite 
distinct from those left behind. Mental facts 
have not that fixed form nor that presentation in 
common which go with physical facts. They are 
not quite the same to different observers, nor 
the same to the same observer at different times. 
The task of the psychologist is not to simplify the 
facts, but to make them apprehensible in their 
natural complexity and constant flow. We are 
not at liberty to infer a similar origin for pheno- 
mena that bear a similar appearance. The in- 
stinctive and organic elements may predominate, 
or the reflective and rational ones, in actions that 
bear much the same external form. An animal 
with quick perceptions and tenacious memory 
may adopt a line of action that in man would 



302 Knowledge 

imply careful thought. We constantly have 
occasion in observing the actions of men and of 
animals, and of men in different stages of develop- 
ment, to put back of them diverse mental pro- 
cesses. Much of our want of charity arises from 
assigning to others intellectual states which belong 
only to ourselves. We accept or condemn conduct 
according as it would have been fitting or un- 
fitting in us. To interpret the mental states of 
different persons, nations, races, and periods from 
their several manifestations requires a wide move- 
ment of mind and heart. We constantly assume 
data which have very little proof in fact. In 
spiritual events, we reason from effects to causes, 
under the analogy of our daily lives, much as if we 
were dealing with familiar physical events. Our 
interpreting may be very far from accurate, yet 
we expend little time in its correction and much 
time in its application. A biography, whose formal 
features are correct, may present a very meager or 
even a false picture. That mental facts are ob- 
scure in form, variable in character, and have their 
own laws of sympathetic interpretation is a fact 
easily forgotten in passing from physical to mental 
inquiry. 

We have added to this confusion in recent years 
by the introduction of sub-conscious states as the 



Knowledge 303 

forerunners of conscious ones. Thus utterly un- 
known states are first inferred from known ex- 
periences, then laid hold of by fancy, and made to 
expound obscure facts of mind. Having lost the 
true clue we invent a clue that we may not be left 
without a theory. This is not knowledge, but 
allowing one mystery to beget another, both 
yielding only the light they have cast on each 
other. 

With a like tyrannical use of the notion of 
causation we discuss inheritance in mental quali- 
ties. We unite the characteristics of descendants 
with those of ancestry in an arbitrary, con- 
jectural fashion simply because we must have 
causes for obscure events. What the relation is 
in mental inheritance, how far it extends, what are 
its limitations, and how it unites itself to training 
are very difficult questions, and, if we are bound to 
answer them, we must take on corresponding 
caution and patience. The error does not lie in 
exploring perplexed problems, but in bringing to 
them inapplicable, or only partially applicable, 
clues. Personal endowment does not stand with- 
out connection with personal relations, yet it is not 
identical with them. Powers do not promiscuously 
resolve themselves into one another. When we 
reach mental phenomena we must treat them as 



304 Knowledge 

facts of their own kind, must understand them 
under their own laws, and must be content to 
be ignorant until expository relations are reached. 
We are to accept the fact that mental pheno- 
mena are in the highest degree mobile. We have 
been slow to recognize the constant changeability 
of the forms of life in response to the diverse con- 
ditions which come to them. We have been more 
disposed to recognize the change of circumstances 
in their effect on life than the change of life 
in response to these circumstances. No phenomena 
are more mobile, more affected by alteration 
of conditions, more capable of adaptation to 
new conditions, than are mental phenomena. 
Childhood, manhood, old age makes each its own 
response to the proffers which life is offering to 
it, a response which must be interpreted under 
its own terms. Each period is modified by 
the diverse appeals which are made to it, and so 
comes to present phases different in kind and, at 
times, in apparent conflict with one another. An 
example of great changes in character is found in 
what is termed will. The will is often spoken of as 
if it were a distinct power, a clamp capable of 
sudden application. It is further conceived as 
under the operation of motives, much in the 
nature of forces, upon which its determinations 



Knowledge 305 

arise; that when the mental mechanism reaches 
any special position the results appropriate to 
it become inevitable. Thus while this line of 
causation may be more obscure than most 
lines, it is thought to be not less real and fixed. 
The will should rather be conceived as the 
last expression of mental movement, the result 
of thought and feeling which have been slowly 
reached and have all along been under guidance. 
The mind can think and feel, observe and conclude, 
abbreviate or prolong these processes, turn them 
in one direction or another, and, in consequence of 
this living interplay of powers, at length slide into 
one conclusion or another as the line of activity 
determines. 

Liberty is in constant exercise, and is pre- 
paring the way for one or another form of effort. 
Thought involves freedom, is a pursuit of truth 
shorter or more prolonged, turned in one direction 
or in another, according to the bent of the mind. 
Freedom is of the nature of mind and goes with 
every reflective process. Mind is to be conceived 
as an active self -poised agent, proposing and pur- 
suing its own ends ; not as a force of given nature 
and degree, acting among other forces and deter- 
mined in its last results by the balance of the forces 
in which it is involved. Mind combines both 



306 Knowledge 

forms of effort, may yield to conditions or may 
resist them, resist in a greater or in a less degree, in 
all states measuring itself by itself. Mind remains 
mind only under these terms, and must be studied 
and understood in connection with them. The 
formation and the use of ideas are its preeminent 
quality. Man is in some sense supernatural, as 
he, in his highest endowment, rises above nature, 
contemplates, and introduces into it his own lines 
of action. Man understands himself and under- 
stands his fellows under these conditions. No 
other theory is employed in the procedure of 
human life. When, therefore, we reach psy- 
chology, we must prepare ourselves, not for 
accidental and disorderly procedure, but for a 
movement profoundly affected by reasons as well 
as by causes, and to be finally measured and 
expounded in this world of ideas. 

It is not until we have reached the forms of knowl- 
edge designated humanities, that we become fully 
aware of this uplift of incentives. Economics, 
civics, sociology, aesthetics, ethics, history, philo- 
sophy, religion are the chief domain of reasons; 
are, indeed, everywhere interpenetrated by causes 
and partially conditioned by them, yet every- 
where shape them as material to the uses of mind. 
It has been a strange delusion on the part of 



Knowledge 307 

scientific inquiry, which has led it to an opposition 
to final causes, a misnomer for reasons. 

While it is true that a ready interjection of 
fanciful purposes has frequently suspended an 
investigation into physical causes and has resulted 
in theories which had little or no hold on facts, it 
is also true that an alleged pursuit of causes has, 
at times, greatly embarrassed intellectual in- 
quiry and introduced into it foreign and un- 
manageable elements. Only as we learn to unite 
and to blend causes and reasons, can we master the 
world in which we live. A large share of super- 
stitions has been nothing more than a reference of 
events to fanciful or to inapplicable causes. Causes 
remain insoluble in themselves and must receive 
their ultimate light from their relation to purposes. 
Mathematics, whose connections are reasons 
not causes, are the great solvent of the physical 
world. We can hardly reach valuable conclusions 
in the material world until we can introduce 
a significant unit into our calculations. We then 
speed our steps at once and begin to carry forward 
and to heap up the fruits of inquiry. The depart- 
ments just mentioned rarely admit a true measur- 
ing unit, and the units we do introduce have only, 
as in statistics, a qualified application. This fact 
is to be regarded not as rendering these fields untill- 



3o8 Knowledge 

able, but as indicating the changeable purpose 
and quality of our labor. Human life still remains 
that with which we are most immediately con- 
cerned, though we cannot harness it up with the 
same exact and final statements by means of 
which we bend the material world to our uses. 
All aggregates of men and of human interests are 
much like armies ; we can state their number but 
we do not thereby measure their power, any more 
than when we enumerated the Greeks who met 
the hosts of Persia. Ethics gives us the ruling 
principles, the final solvents, in all departments of 
action that pertain primarily to man. Economics, 
which at times has laid claim to be an exact science, 
has done much mischief by separating itself from 
ethics, and by making the present state of society a 
final law of human relations. It has thus come 
to regard the destitution and degradation of labor 
as a result inclosed in the natural order of history. 
It has thought that the causes, which now produce 
these unfortunate results, will bring about similar 
results in the future; that existing forms and 
standards of action are ready to repeat themselves 
indefinitely. Competition, with no definition and 
no limitation, has been accepted as a universal 
factor in economic effort, and men, in the exer- 
cise of competition, have freely set aside ethical 



Knowledge 3°9 

claims . Competition thus allies itself to robbery, 
as emulation prepares the way for envy. The 
growth of society in physical prosperity must keep 
company with ethical growth, or there will come 
one or another conflict and miscarriage. 

Civics deals of necessity with a great variety of 
conditions favorable and unfavorable to the wel- 
fare of the state, and has occasion, therefore, to 
adapt its principles to every prevalent condition. 
This fact very easily leads to the acceptance of 
compromises and of makeshifts, as if they pos- 
sessed in themselves permanent authority. This 
fact makes the growth of civic institutions slow 
and uncertain, and the statesman becomes the man 
who has the fewest ultimates and the most skill in 
fitting his measures to the immediate wishes and 
wants of men. We accept democracy as a ruling 
idea, and yet, in its application, we put upon it 
many limitations, until in use it becomes a mere 
shadow of itself. As politics is the school of much 
thought and action, it easily becomes a warping 
power by which the mind is turned from integrity 
and made, like a wheel in long use, incapable of 
meeting the strain of critical circumstances. It 
plays a creditable part under familiar conditions, 
but fails when the exigencies of growth arise. One 
form of civic action may express one class of con- 



3io Knowledge 

siderations, and yet be in restraint of another class 
of equal moment. Individualism, conceding to 
each person the largest liberty, may yet be present 
in undue restraint of government in providing the 
common conditions of action; may result in 
narrowing down the general activity and in casting 
heavy burdens on enterprise. We may later find, 
as a result of too much liberty, that certain forms 
of effort have taken possession of the entire field 
and that many individuals have been robbed of all 
equality of opportunities. Too great freedom has 
thus been conceded at the expense of freedom it- 
self. The community, as one whole, must learn 
to act honestly and wisely as a single unit, or its 
general welfare and the welfare of its several parts 
will suffer remediless loss. 

Railroads, which use the opportunities that fall 
to them, with no reference to the equality of terms 
offered to the community at large, may become a 
heavier burden on the general welfare than roads 
made and administered by the public at nominally 
greater cost. Men need to become skillful both 
in combined and in single action. Experience 
and effort are the school of both. Good govern- 
ment is a changeable balance between senti- 
ments and tendencies that find their ultimate 
reconciliation in the welfare of all. Not the 



Knowledge 311 

welfare of one but of all is the criterion of 
prosperity. 

Sociology, which has much the same problem to 
work out under wider conditions, must find its 
laws of present activity and of future growth in 
the same clear and sufficient ethical outlook. 
The constituents of society, and society itself, 
must accept the laws which are locked up in the 
general welfare. There has been a false feeling 
about sociology as if hitherto we had been igno- 
rant of its ruling principles, and now had occasion 
to wake up to a new science. The case is rather 
that we have occasion to do over and to do better 
familiar things, giving them the scope and au- 
thority of which we have all along been partially 
cognizant. The chief basis of the better harmony 
is ethical. Ethics has suffered disparagement in 
instruction as a topic that could not be taught. If 
we associate ethics with a few simple and primary 
principles there is some truth in the assertion, but 
if we make it stand for the correction and per- 
fection of our individual and joint life; for the 
growth of civic rights and privileges ; for the meth- 
ods under which society is to gain strength and 
integrity ; for the measure of our spiritual powers 
and hopes, then ethics becomes one of the most 
expansive and needful forms of thought. Even 



312 Knowledge 

aesthetics, closely allied as it is to ethics, both 
having in charge a full rendering of human life, 
may separate itself from morals and may strive 
under impulses of its own to set up hostile, social 
standards. Certain as this effort is ultimately to 
fail, it may, for the time being, occasion no little 
confusion of thought. The good and the beautiful 
are, in their large interplay, inseparable from each 
other, since they both have to do with the strength 
and excellence of human life. Yet, as in views 
of the same object from opposite sides, clear 
definition and accurate construction are requisite 
for any complete reconciliation. 

But the supreme force of ethical law is best seen 
in history, philosophy, and religion. Philosophy, 
in its last analysis and largest service, is the ex- 
position of history, and of the authority and trend 
of religious faith. Since we assign ethics a first 
position in human knowledge, it is needful that we 
have a clear idea of what is meant by it. Ethics 
covers all that both utilitarians and intuitionalists 
have to say about it. It covers the accumulated 
experience of mankind, touching character and 
conduct. All that men have learned by pros- 
perity and failure, on the physical side and on the 
spiritual side of life, is here stored up in this 
treasure-house of wisdom. Equally have the 



Knowledge 3*3 

authority and sacredness of the right been ex- 
pounded and enforced by the good of every gen- 
eration. What men have been taught concerning 
virtue, and what they themselves have seen, are 
embraced in the reflections and insights of ethics. 
An ever-growing light has fallen on the paths of 
men, kindled their enthusiasm, and guided them in 
all high attainment. 

One other idea brought more clearly out in our 
generation has wrought, side by side, with right, 
and the two together, growth and virtue, evolution 
and law, have covered the whole universe. A 
movement that suffers no exhaustion, and accepts 
no limit lays hold of us and bears us forward. 
The definition of evolution and the uses to which 
it has been put have been very different in our 
generation. It has been urged by those who were 
least able to conceive it in its proper breadth, and it 
has been suspiciously rejected by those who have 
most needed its aid. It has been made to stand 
for the self-sufficiency of physical things, in a tem- 
per anxious to expel wisdom from the world and to 
reduce it to a fortunate combination of accidents. 
What taxed the hand of wisdom to accomplish 
has been referred with a light heart to chance. 
Evolution in reality stands for the slow, historic 
growth of the creative purpose, its steady sub- 



314 Knowledge 

mission to human thought. It at once gives 
needful limitation and the largest scope to the 
human mind, and leaves it to travel leisurely a 
highway stretching all through the kingdom of 
knowledge. It gives man all he can possibly know 
and do, and at the same time gathers up his 
treasures of wisdom into the divine mind, himself 
to abide there in a restful temper. He sails on 
an ocean, but he neither fears it nor is straitened 
by it. 

The chief difficulty of philosophy, expounding 
the world to itself, is in apprehending the suprem- 
acy of law : law that guides thought and action ; 
law that moves tangibly, constructively, freely 
through the physical and the spiritual world, the 
home of human effort and human knowledge and 
human hope. He who denies himself this idea 
of evolution, darkens down the universe until he 
can hardly grope his way along ; he that accepts it, 
lightens his steps with the rising sun spreading 
warmth and revelation everywhere. As darkness 
makes pallid the body and obstructs its action, so 
does unwisdom weaken the spirit and narrow in its 
hopes. 

The lessons of history are those of philosophy, 
standing in the light of virtue, feeling its con- 
quering strength as it pushes its wa}^ above the 



Knowledge 315 

horizon into a self -achieved and self-sustained life. 
History, looked on otherwise than as an evolution 
of better things, is a sad, disconsolate record of 
evils, a story of injustice and violence, appetite and 
lusts, of disappointments and despair that suffer 
no real losses and make no real gains. It is only 
as we see what the seed is that has been planted 
that we discover the germination and growth that 
have followed on the promise that lies before us, and 
that we come to feel that the world contains a divine 
purpose which is ready to explain and to justify all 
things. Slavery is gone; war is disappearing; and 
the brood of violence have slunk away into dark- 
ness. Wisdom, goodwill, pure thought are be- 
coming the handmaids of life; production, peace, 
plenty are spreading abroad; the day has come, 
and we have a right to forecast the Kingdom of 
Heaven. We are able to pray with immeasur- 
able desire, "Thy Kingdom come." A philosophy 
which has correctly expounded the past approaches 
the future with hope. Futile, disastrous, and de- 
graded as much may still seem to us, there has, 
none the less, been at the heart of the world a wise 
and sufficient purpose, pushing it upward. This 
growth, this promise, it is the province of philo- 
sophy to lay open, to expound, to verify. If it fails 
to do this our experience becomes commonplace, 



316 Knowledge 

disappointing, painful. We know not what to 
propose in the progress of events, and our move- 
ment is from darkness into darkness. It belongs 
to philosophy, the most comprehensive and re- 
vealing form of knowledge, to unite human thought 
and human activity, the present to the future, and 
to knit events into restful, joyful labor. Philoso- 
phy, the most untiring use of our powers, is reve- 
lation. Men long for revelation, pass into blind 
adoration of what they believe to be revelation. 
Any voice that discloses the future, that unites and 
directs effort, will in a blind way awaken attention, 
will call out devotion, and will impart more consola- 
tion, more power, wealth, or knowledge. Philoso- 
phy is so human, that even when it is the highest 
product of knowledge, many are loath to call it 
revelation ; though revelation, whensoever and how- 
soever it comes, must appeal to this same rational 
apprehension if its work is, in any fitting way, 
to be done. If revelation is to fall as light on the 
life that occupies us, it must reach us through 
the paths of philosophy. Here it receives the 
concentration and diffusion that render it in- 
telligible. It is to philosophy that the mind, 
looking anxiously for the solutions of knowledge, 
guarding itself against falling short of the mark or 
going beyond it, must look. No other attitude is 



Knowledge 317 

possible. It is philosophy that must justify revela- 
tion and must make use of it. There is but one 
window that opens heavenward, that discloses the 
near and the far, the earth and the stars, and en- 
ables us to abide in, and to act with the world of 
which we are a part; and that window is philo- 
sophy. All spirits, whatever their claims, are 
subject to the same test of reason. 

But it may be thought that this assertion is an 
unwarranted exaltation of human reason; that 
what we truly need and are seeking for is the word 
of God. Concede it, but to whom is this word 
spoken and how do we attain unto its wisdom? 
As long as the human mind is to be the medium of 
apprehension, so long must it be able to discern 
divine things, to separate them from all other 
things. There is nothing in any divine word 
which does not owe its guiding and directive power 
to the mind to which it is addressed. If there is 
giving there is also receiving. If there is some- 
thing to be known there is also the capability of 
knowing it. Man cannot know and not know at 
the same time, receive the truth and not perceive 
it. Doubtless there is much hesitation and 
stumbling in the mastery of knowledge ; men have 
thought themselves in possession of religious 
truth when nothing but its empty shell was found 



3i 8 Knowledge 

with them; but these difficulties are most quickly 
overcome by seeing and by encountering them. 
The fact and the remedy are perfectly familiar to 
us. We have no occasion to beat about the bush in 
search of them. All human experience is wrought 
out under the possibility of error and the possi- 
bility of truth. What we know is of no more 
value to us than what we are yet to know. Growth 
in knowledge is the one fortunate condition of the 
finite mind. It involves a constant possession of 
something less than the whole, but also a stretch- 
ing forth toward the whole. "I count not my- 
self to have apprehended, but this one thing I do, 
forgetting the things which are behind, and 
reaching forth unto those things which are before, 
I press forward to the mark of the prize of the 
high calling of God in Christ Jesus." This is the 
secret of growth, the controlling fact of evolution. 
Attainment passes into attainment. The moment 
we use any gain otherwise it at once begins to be 
lost to us. We owe much to the Catholic Church, 
but we are particularly indebted to it for reducing 
the notion of infallibility to a practical absurd- 
ity. Christian faith makes no mystery out of 
the union of the known and the unknown, the 
partial and the complete. " Be ye perfect even as 
your Father in heaven is perfect.' ' The true hori- 



Knowledge 3 J 9 

zon dips always below the sight. If the perfec- 
tionist says, I am perfect, he simply shows that he 
does not yet apprehend the primary ideas in the 
Christian vocabulary. The riddle in the physical 
world, that we can cover no given space since it 
must be taken by halves and a half will always re- 
main, disappears at once under motion. The 
approach to profound truths comes under the same 
solution, Go forward. We add phase to phase, 
vision to vision, and all approach opens up the 
beyond in stimulating and satisfying disclosure. 
This is the power of our lives. The earth beneath 
us and the heavens above are never exhausted. 
The more we exact of them the better they render 
their service. The mind is opened to revelation 
by revelation. When we are most aware of its 
power we are most aware of its limitations. 

This scope of proof in spiritual things is diverse 
from what it is in more limited, phenomenal 
things ; not diverse from what it is when we touch 
final things; even in science, it is only a little less 
tangible than what we are accustomed to in our 
daily concerns. A friend asked Charles A. Dana, 
in his later life, a man of large experience and 
quick observation, whether he saw any proof of 
immortality which could be offered in a court of 
justice. He responded, "Not a scintilla." This 



3^o Knowledge 

answer involves insight and ignorance, each in an 
unusual degree. There are no crass phenomenal 
facts, such as receive discussion in a court room, 
often at much length and most unsatisfactorily, 
which can be presented in behalf of immortality. 
If we wish to know whether this man is a murderer. 
a thief, or a robber: whether he has defrauded his 
neighbors in some new way. which the law does not 
wink at. we shall offer proof fitted to the assertion 
and will often find ourselves in confusion. In this 
general darkness the least scintilla may be grate- 
fully received. Xo such juncture and no such 
proof are present in the ultimate tribunal of 
reason, when we raise the questions whether 
spirit lies at the center of the universe? whether we 
as spirits have an eternal portion in this universe"" 
Many little sparks of light may be struck out of 
events, as when the steel hits the flint; but these 
leave us with confused and fearful impressions, 
when we ask whether we are in the presence of God 
and share his counsels. The whole world in its 
infinity of parts, harmony of construction, and 
steady fulfillment of purpose must be brought to 
mind as a definite proof of the presence of God. 
The scope of human life: what has already been 
given to it; what its hopes and possibilities are; 
how far the universe calls out and sustains these 



Knowledge 3 2 * 

hopes and is fulfilled by them must come to our 
thoughts and overburden us with conviction be- 
fore we can rise heavenward, as an eagle lifts him- 
self in the air because it is his home. Philosophy 
must exalt the mind and be exalted by the mind 
before it can meet the questions of faith and be 
borne prosperously forward by the strong words of 
reason. It is in vain that we raise great questions, 
if we cannot match them with great powers. It is 
not a question of scintillas but of broad daylight. 
The essential grandeur of the human spirit is seen 
in the unexpected gladness with which it moves 
among unseen things, and brings conviction and 
contentment to itself from all the world. 

One, who is wandering in the mazes of belief, who 
has lost the clue of truth, may seek for a miracle 
with which to settle his disturbed thoughts. 
Miracles are not to be objected to as impossible. 
In substance all events, when we reach their deep- 
est force, are miraculous. The miracle, as a de- 
tached wonder, disappears in the world in order 
that we may walk in the steady light of events 
and may know where we are. A flash of lightning 
dazzles us and at the same time bewilders us. 
We need no miracle by means of which to move 
about in the daylight. If we seem to need it, it 
is because we have missed the force of events. If 



322 Knowledge 

the mind is confused by skepticism or by supersti- 
tion, our easiest relief may seem to be the miracle, 
and yet the miracle may only add to the confusion. 
If the fleece of Gideon is first wet with dew, he 
then wishes it, a second time, to be dry, and neither 
in the one case nor the other has he any sufficient 
knowledge of the circumstances with which he is 
dealing. Miracles offer no sober working-plan of 
action. The mind, in the first instance, is thrown 
off its normal pivot of action; and, at the second 
remove, we are confused by all those errors into 
which men fall when they think themselves dealing 
with the supernatural. The method of the world 
is a regular procedure under law, and if this is lost 
we fail to find ourselves until it is restored. Prayer 
rests on an entirely different basis ; the constant 
interplay of physical and spiritual forces. If we 
long to evade or if we strive to evade this interac- 
tion, the world becomes unmanageable. In prayer 
we set in motion in ourselves and in others spiritual 
energies ; these act on physical things and the ac- 
tions and reactions of the two worlds, material and 
immaterial, are brought into play. The formula 
of prayer is, " Thy will be done ' ' ; that is, the results 
are to be those ruled by the wisdom of God, ruled 
by the good order of the world. 

The further inquiry concerning knowledge, which 



Knowledge 323 

we have assigned ourselves, is its ultimate test. 
The only proof of knowing is knowing. If a 
pupil, having finished a demonstration in geometry, 
were to ask, " How do I know this to be true? " 
we should think the question an indication of de- 
ficiency in ordinary intelligence. While our senses 
confirm one another, they still give their own pe- 
culiar data. If the eyes fail us, we have no second 
pair with which to replace them. Our confirma- 
tion lies simply in repetition. Men are far more 
likely to have an unreasonable confidence in their 
conclusions, than they are unduly to distrust them. 
The first danger and the constant danger in judg- 
ment is not the insufficiency of the power itself, but 
the inadequacy of the data given to it. These we 
may well constantly enlarge and correct. This is 
preeminently true in philosophical and religious 
opinions. We make some partial or arbitrary 
supposition as to the data involved in our spiritual 
problems, and we suit our dogma to these in- 
correct premises. Our doctrines are framed, like 
a hasty alignment, to match relations which do not 
exist. We have occasion, therefore, constantly to 
refit our conclusions to the facts before us. 

The world, in its physical, social, spiritual facts, 
is our text. This text is to be so studied and 
so understood as freely to modify our conclusions. 



324 Knowledge 

We are daily coming to a more extended and just 
apprehension of spiritual facts, and out of this 
growth of knowledge should grow corrected 
opinions and actions. The text we have to con- 
strue is one of great extent and large import, and 
we have occasion correspondingly to increase and 
to deepen our knowledge concerning it. The test 
of our rendering is a growing concurrence with the 
inner and the outer light which falls upon the pages 
before us. No partial agreement, nor one we have 
been taught to entertain, will meet our want. 
We have occasion for a broader and ever broader 
outlook on life, both as it is and as it should be, in 
order to sustain and to confirm our conclusions con- 
cerning it . We are sustaining them in the use of our 
own faculties, but we are confirming them by a con- 
stant reference to the events that are being shaped 
by the divine hand into the Kingdom of Heaven. 
Our Lord's Prayer is a synopsis of Christian faith 
and Christian desire. It opens with three peti- 
tions which plead for the Kingdom of Heaven. 
These are followed by one invoking the universal, 
divine Providence, accompanied by one for free 
forgiveness. The prayer then concludes with a 
desire not to be led into temptation or, being in, 
to be delivered from its power. In this prayer 
the aims and wants of human life are concisely ex- 



Knowledge 3 2 5 

pressed. Like the two commandments, one half 
is occupied with our Godward duties and the 
other half with our earthward relations. Having 
the aim of Christian life before us, we must judge 
all things as they tend to fulfill it and to be fulfilled 
by it. 

In the outset we regarded all explanations of 
human conduct as bearing on knowledge. Knowl- 
edge current among men, and the conclusions now 
reached lead us to test all progress by its relation to 
this common possession. Our conclusions must be 
in furtherance of the general welfare and in ex- 
pression of the principles on which it proceeds. 
Our experience simply leads us to a better appre- 
hension of the Kingdom of Heaven, a conformity to 
it in thought and in action. Personal aberrations, 
the eccentricity of individual thought, give way 
before the grand movement toward the general 
welfare, which cannot be long delayed and in 
reference to which we cannot be permanently 
mistaken. 

The world thus becomes a constant school of 
fresh experiences. We no longer have occasion 
that any one should tell us of eternal verities, of the 
actual procedure of events, for we have seen them 
and studied them for ourselves, and have before us 
the divine plan in which they are rendered. If we 



326 Knowledge 

lack this revelation, the defect can in no way be 
supplied, for it is to these very conclusions that 
all growth leads us. Each man is left with the 
truth, left with the world and with God, and the 
only question is what use can he make of these 
conditions. There is a path before the feet of 
every man among the things repellent to the 
divine mind and the things in conformity to it. 
This path he can discover and can pursue only by 
personal, persevering, and instructed effort. By 
means of it he draws nearer and nearer to the high- 
way of revelation. Every man works his way into 
and works his way out of human knowledge, and 
stands with all his fellows before this one reve- 
lation of God's making which men are everywhere 
deciphering. 

The test of knowledge is sometimes said to be 
pragmatism. This assertion is not so much in- 
correct as it is unenlightening. We have still to 
define the facts in their variety and complexity. 
We have to do with physical and spiritual phe- 
nomena constantly interpenetrating each other. 
We ourselves are such a combination and the 
world is a similar complex. If we treat inade- 
quately or if we deny either of these elements, one or 
the other of the wings by which we fly is maimed. 
The world is to be perceptively studied on its 



Knowledge 3 2 7 

physical side and interpreted on its spiritual side. 
If we neglect the first form of knowledge, we are 
soon lost in the mists of speculation ; if we neglect 
the second form of knowledge, the sun sinks below 
the horizon, and we are left to make what way 
we can among physical facts, half-seen and half- 
understood. 



ROMANS 1: 17 

PHE just shall live by faith": this passage 
combines three of the most central, ex- 
pansive, and powerful of human conceptions, 
justice, life, and faith. We wish to speak of these 
ideas and of their dependence on one another. 

Justice in its more restricted form stands for the 
balance of human thought, as it weighs between 
men's questions of right and wrong. Thence it 
comes to mean a general estimate of the con- 
siderations which are included in any intellectual 
problem; it thus conveys the idea of intellectual 
integrity. Still further it may pass on to a recon- 
ciliation of the motives and issues of conduct and 
represent that rightfulness of righteousness by 
which thought, feeling, action settle down into 
sound reason. We start early with this sense of 
justice, and put to rights our fellow-men in their 
disagreements, one with another. Thence we 
mount up into a reconciliation of conduct, and 
slowly reach, in the last stretch of vision, that 

rectitude of purpose which enables us to handle 

328 



Romans 1 : 1 7 329 

all spiritual values. For a long time we are tossed 
about in a troubled atmosphere until we can settle 
down to a firm movement, finding a safe way amid 
surrounding dangers. So the bird masters the air 
which sustains it. Every bone, muscle, feather, 
quill; every line of form, straight or curved, helps 
this native of the air to make of it an instrument 
of life. 

Justice, in like manner, is the power of the mind 
in the spiritual world among the favoring and the 
conflicting conditions which determine its flight. 
Justice of spiritual forces to spiritual facts, the 
soul making way among the thoughts of God, this 
justice which renders a man just, well-behaved in 
all the movements of mind — this justice is the 
harmony of the laws of our rational activity. 

The second conception, life, is the most sig- 
nificant thing we find on the earth. It clothes, 
beautifies, and possesses the world. It does this in 
large and in small divisions, as in the vegetable, the 
animal, the rational kingdom ; until, like the various 
arms of a great army, it conquers the world itself, 
covers all spaces, spreads through all times, and 
converts visible things into the uses and potencies 
of living things. Man rises above the conditions 
of physical well-being to a point of observation 
from which all things visible and invisible, natural 



330 Romans 1 : 1 7 

and spiritual, may be explored, expounded, and en- 
joyed. Life in its lowest forms, transcending us; 
in its highest forms, over-matching us; life, which 
we wonder at, degrade, and exalt, is the consumer of 
all wealth, the accumulator of all powers ; thati by 
means of which we come to know what is good and 
to attain it; this is life, the promise of all pleasures, 
the harbinger of all hope. If we waste it, we lose 
ourselves; if we curse it, we curse ourselves; if we 
win it, we win all things. 

Faith is the third item in our trilogy ; without it, 
justice and life fall apart ; the truths most normal 
to the mind break up in confusion and disappear in 
darkness. Faith is the confidence which mind in- 
spires in mind, the proof that mind gives to mind. 

Much knowledge turns on the relation of physi- 
cal events to one another. When we see one thing 
understandingly, we also see other things which are 
to arise from it. This knowledge we term science, 
and congratulate ourselves upon it. When we 
come to deal with men, the case is altered. They 
may disappoint our expectations or they may go 
much beyond them, and in neither case do we feel 
that any law has been broken. We are in a re- 
gion of possibilities, and must wait on their 
development. This feeling is common to us all, 
that there is more in every man than our measure- 



Romans I: 17 331 

ments have given us; energy once aroused may 
quite outstrip us. This belief we term faith, a 
feeling at no moment perfectly verifiable, but wait- 
ing the disclosure of events. Potency, possibility, 
prophecy, delinquency, disappointment, defeat, 
are all open to us when we have to do with men. 
The power which gives the mind footing in the 
spiritual world is faith, a rational anticipation of 
the events that may spring up out of the feelings 
and thoughts of men. By faith we penetrate the 
spiritual world as by inquiry we understand the 
physical world. Faith is not science, yet by 
means of it rationally exercised, we handle 
successfully the actions of men: changeable, yet 
apprehensible; indeterminate, yet manageable. 

This power to enter the spiritual world broadens 
our lives, and makes them commensurate with 
the events about us; enables us with the poise of 
justice to deal with the motives and the actions of 
men. We thus understand conduct as it passes 
into character, and character as it shapes itself 
into social institutions. 

This faith we must dwell upon for a moment as 
the substance of the assertion of the text, "The 
just shall live by faith." The simplest form of 
faith is faith in ourselves, our possibilities of 
achievement; it may be marred by vanity and 



332 Romans 1 : 1 7 

yet there is no uplift in action, no exaltation 
in character without a sense of spiritual power, 
without the framing of a new purpose to which 
we lash ourselves as to a last hope. There is noth- 
ing more certain in the record of history than 
that men have not accepted one another as a com- 
bination of physical forces, as a compound of 
appetites and passions, but have framed their 
judgments of character, have bestowed praise and 
blame on grounds of large-mindedness, of actions 
which raise men above animal life and make 
them partners in a world of spiritual possessions. 
The ideals men have cherished may have been 
limited and faulty, but they have been an element 
in all historic estimates, in admiration and in rev- 
erence. We have embodied them in our poetry 
and fiction simply that we might admire them or 
scorn them, and might have the pleasure of a spir- 
itual judgment. An ideal means struggle ; a grasp- 
ing at something wider and higher; a new motive 
and a better defense in our lives, that appetites 
and passions and interests may be driven back and 
worsted in the battle of life. Siren songs have 
always floated in the air, but have been made 
futile by the voice of faith speaking of the things 
above and beyond them. Self-denial, holding fast 
by its own judgment, confident of the superiority 



Romans I : 17 333 

of superior things, standing firm behind its own 
shield of faith, has stood fast in its own integrity. 

How utterly, on the other hand, have the men 
of unrestrained appetites and ungoverned passions 
been overthrown in the end, no matter how long 
that end was in coming! Like men swept down 
by a troop of cavalry, they have been not merely 
pierced through but trodden under foot, with 
broken limbs and all horrible details of insult and 
injury. In spite of all the miserable ways in which 
men justify themselves, in spite of the short-sighted 
and distorted visions they direct toward events, 
these at length shine out in the record of human 
conduct, as the sun at evening breaks and scatters 
the heavy clouds which have hidden it all the day. 
The ground of all abiding honor is faith, the 
confidence of the mind in virtue. When we win 
praise or bestow it or when we have a cheerful sense 
of work well done, it is the victory of faith, the 
light of virtue that shines about us. 

Another form of faith arises in our communal 
life, the life that we frame together in society, con- 
tracting, dissolving, and reconstructing, hoping 
ever to reach something more perfect. From 
Plato's Republic to American democracy we have 
been in search of some sufficient form of social life. 
The socialist works out minutely the details of 



334 Romans I : 17 

action by which men should be bound together. 
Each has his suitable part and his suitable reward. 
Society is to be perfect in the measure in which 
men aid one another, and imperfect, as they 
embarrass and thwart one another. The moment 
any person or any class or any nation or any race 
reach a barrier set up by their fellow-men to cut 
short their progress, they resent the restraint put 
upon them and raise once more the cry of liberty, 
the liberty which God has given and by which 
every man enters into his own. 

This question of liberty arises at many points, 
a liberty, which government is constantly sinning 
against and which the socialist sets aside once for 
all. Brave words have been spoken for it, as in our 
Declaration of Independence, while yet there re- 
main among us many points at which we hold 
fast to the old, old doctrine of subjection. The 
question still presses in, Is society at its very core 
democratic ? Can we ever hope to come under the 
law of liberty, and to find that law one of univer- 
sal prosperity? Are human interests so in harmony 
with one another that they can be pursued together ? 
Can each man gain and not rob his neighbor? 
These questions may be answered in the affirma- 
tive only on ethical grounds. It is by virtue of 
ethical integrity that we find our profiting wrapped 



Romans I : 17 335 

up in the profiting of others. Here enters faith: 
we have faith in the moral law, the law of love; 
we believe that God has so made men that they 
can and must regard one another. There is no 
other path that always ascends. This and this 
only is the Kingdom. What a wonderful world we 
are in, how perverted and yet how capable of cor- 
rection ! Our welfare is measured, not by service 
done to us, but by service done by us. Each life 
is filled to its full measure by the life of others. 
Only now and then, here and there, do we see it. 
To see everywhere and all the time, is faith. 
Democracy is good for all men, the bright man 
and the dull man. It is the evangel of liberty for 
the race of men. All turns on insight, and the 
exercise of this insight with a scrupulous rec- 
ognition of the wants and the capabilities of men. 
This is the problem for all places and for all times. 
The American people can attain justice, the even, 
self -poised mind, only by faith, faith in the divine 
plan and in the divine endowment. They are not 
to stagger on, as one who has suffered a heavy blow, 
under the logic of wealth-getting and of power 
that is to be protected. This is what we seem to 
be doing. If we are to live as a nation it is to be 
done by the defense of democracy, carried forward 
along its own lines to its fitting consummation. 



336 Romans I : 17 

The cry of liberty which we ourselves have raised, 
the liberty with God, liberty for ourselves, liberty 
with our fellow-men, must come echoing back to us 
from every quarter of the horizon. Thus we are to 
win life, to win the poise of justice, our faith flinch- 
ing not for a moment as we come to the methods 
and counsels of our common Father. 

Herein we have the final form of faith, faith 
in the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of 
Heaven is the most comprehensive and perfect 
form of human society. The will of God is to 
be done on earth as it is done in heaven. Many 
seem to entertain the petition and yet not to under- 
stand its import. They have not worked out the 
Kingdom of Heaven. The vision is remote, the 
good is false and imaginary. 

There is one exception to this assertion, social- 
ism. Socialism, as a theory of society, is a re- 
markable testimony to the range of ideas in men's 
minds. The fatal defect is that it is worked out 
like a theorem on a black-board with no living 
development under it that turns it into a reality. 
When men can handle this social mechanism 
successfully, it will come of its own accord ; every 
man's head and heart and hand will be committed 
to it. It will not lie like a discarded babe on the 
stone steps of a hospital. We need the spiritually 



Romans 1 : 17 337 

developed man; and all that is good in socialism 
will come with him. The trouble is, when we ask 
for a living, breathing man, we are given a mani- 
kin. We need justice and faith united in life, 
and socialism gives us a diagram. The channels 
of activity will be quick in coming when we have 
an impetuous stream to pour into them. It is 
not the golden streets, which make the Kingdom 
of Heaven, but the Kingdom of Heaven, which 
renders fit the golden streets. The Kingdom of 
Heaven fails us because we have not as yet our 
lives near enough to it to understand it. Love 
is a far-off sun in the heavens, so obscured by 
clouds that we do not feel its warmth. When 
our half -frozen limbs are fully thawed, we shall 
nimbly walk the earth. This is the office of faith, 
belief in the Kingdom ; our lives can not otherwise 
be suitably quickened. We have, or seem to have, 
faith, but not such as we live by. The sheen of the 
world is not the reflection of our spiritual light. 
We move about in a twilight of creed and custom, 
objects becoming slowly visible in the dawning 
day. 

Faith in its several forms, in ourselves, in our 
fellow-men, in society, in the Kingdom of Heaven, 
can alone dissolve our thoughts and make them 
flow upward in a living experience. So we enter 



338 Romans I : 17 

into asupersensuous life, which overflows and trans- 
figures this sensuous world. When we scorn our 
lives, we do it because of the want of suitable ideas 
with which to glorify them. When we begin to 
patch them up with some filament of truth filched 
from another world, we may make the rent worse 
because we have not taken to ourselves enough of 
the divine plan. If we creep about like worms, we 
have less justification and less instinct than worms. 
If we stand upright like men, we lift at once the 
organs of apprehension into the light of day. 
This is the true significance of our lives, a life of 
ideas extended by faith and confirmed by experi- 
ence. We know not what lies about us. Once 
possessed of the world, our spiritual instincts come 
into play. We know where we are and whither we 
are going. We trust the divine forces in our lives 
and these forces gather us up and bear us forward. 

This building of a spiritual world, this having 
such a world built for us is the highest possible con- 
struction, the fullest possible life that comes to us. 
To move from things to things, this is science; to 
move from suitable ideas to ideas still more suit- 
able, this is religion; to combine all by virtue of 
faith into a living experience, is to have room made 
for us among the sons of God. The prospect 
opens before us and we see whither the thoughts 



Romans I : 17 339 

of God are running. This is fellowship with all 
living things in the highest life. The germs of 
divine love, which lie dormant in the hearts of men, 
as the seeds of summer in the frozen soil of spring, 
break forth and grow with a mystery and a vigor 
that fill the whole earth. The world of sensuous 
things, how marvelous; the world of ideas, how 
much more marvelous ; the Kingdom of Heaven, in 
which all things at length find the light and disclose 
their eternal purpose, how transcendently glorious, 
resting forever on the life of faith ! Herein is the 
whole mind of God disclosed to us, his holy city, 
his throne, his Kingdom, all reposing in the hearts 
of men, never finished, always passing to fulfill- 
ment in the vital processes of faith. 

Some speak of faith as if it were in some way 
opposed to reason. It is rather the apotheosis 
of reason, reason on the run as it reaches the 
goal. 

It is not without significance that the imagina- 
tion endows archangels with wings, wings that rest 
on the least sensuous things and still rise above 
them, wings that seem to claim illimitable life. 

We too are endowed with wings, the wings of 
faith. We too can go with the rapid stroke of 
wings whither love leads us. The fish for the sea, 
the birds for the air, and the souls of men for the 



340 Romans I : 17 

still wider realm of faith holding its way through 
the infinite, The just live and shall live, and 
shall more and more live by faith resting on the 
divine mind. 



LUKE X : 38-42 

ONE of the most interesting, and also one of the 
most human, of the events in the life of 
Christ was his connection with the household to 
which Mary, Martha, and Lazarus belonged. His 
personal attachments were indicated by it more 
than by any other relation, with the one exception 
of his affection for John, the beloved disciple. 
John, doubtless sharing Christ's tender regard for 
the family in Bethany, has given us more fully than 
any other evangelist the history of Christ's associa- 
tion with it. Thus, in the most sacred narrative, the 
links of memory are still the links of love, and hu- 
man affection draws with it the divine revelation. 
Bethany was a suburb of Jerusalem, hidden from 
it just beyond the brow of Olivet. Jerusalem in 
the time of Christ was the center of an intense 
national life; of the purest spiritual culture men 
had yet attained; and of very considerable pomp 
and circumstance, both in the civic and in the re- 
ligious world. The court of the ambitious Herod, 

the magnificence of the temple, its solemn, ex- 

34i 



34 2 Luke X : 38-42 

tended, and impressive ritual ; the number and the 
enthusiasm of the national festivals ; the subtlety 
and zeal of its schools of doctrine; the intense 
patriotism and religious passion of its leading 
citizens; its love of independence and its restless- 
ness under the Roman rule made Jerusalem, 
though a city of very moderate dimensions, one 
of the most interesting and spiritually invigorating 
places in the world. What it lacked in physical 
force it made up in religious energy , in the prophetic 
outlook, and in the inextinguishable hope of its 
citizens. Bethany was so near to Jerusalem as to 
catch the overflow of its daily life. One could be 
occupied during the day with the stirring events 
of the temple, and could return to Bethany for the 
r epo se of the evening . It is probable , therefore , that 
the members of the household in Bethany were 
thoroughly interested in the national history with 
which this sanguine people was so constantly alive. 
It was doubtless a family, if not of affluent, at least 
of liberal means. The supper made for Christ ; the 
costliness of the ointment Mary poured upon his 
feet ; the number of the Pharisees who resorted to 
the house; the general knowledge and interest 
which followed the raising of Lazarus ; and the fact 
that Martha was "cumbered with much serving" 
indicate a household of wealth and of position. 



Luke X : 38-42 343 

We are introduced in the Scripture narrative to 
three members of the family, all of whom Jesus is 
said to have loved — Lazarus and the two sisters, 
Mary and Martha. So little is said of the brother 
that he remains for us a colorless character, though 
doubtless all three shared those convictions and 
enthusiasms which endeared the family to Christ. 
Martha seems to have been the head of the house- 
hold. Luke says a " certain woman named Martha 
received him into the house. " She evidently felt 
the chief responsibility for his fitting entertain- 
ment. It was with this service that she was cum- 
bered. Influenced by the brief rehearsal of Luke, 
we may easily form a too unfavorable opinion of 
Martha. In the narrative of the raising of Lazarus, 
the words of Christ which were fullest of revelation 
were addressed to Martha. He assures her of the 
inextinguishable life of her brother in the words: 
"I am the resurrection and the life. He that 
belie veth in me, though he were dead, yet shall 
he live; and whosoever believeth in me shall 
never die. Belie vest thou this?" — an assertion 
so profound, yet so full of encouragement, would 
hardly have been spoken to Martha had not 
Christ regarded her as capable of grasping its 
true idea. This idea is that a spiritual life, such 
as that to which Lazarus had attained, is a thing 



344 Luke X : 38-42 

so vital, so full of promise in the spiritual world, 
that it must endure, is invincible to death. He 
who possesses it has within himself, like every 
other living thing, the assurance of a corresponding 
development. Immortality is not a mere word ad- 
dressed to the ear, but an energy throbbing in the 
soul itself; it is not something bestowed on one 
man or another, otherwise incapable of it, but is an 
expression of that vigor of spiritual life which God 
has given to those who love truth. Our fears may 
not be dispelled by promises any more than the 
faintness of a wounded man may be banished by 
the presence of a physician. When strength be- 
gins to return, and the currents of life are once more 
full, faintness departs of itself as an unreal thing. 
He who shares the convictions of spiritual life as 
revealed in Christ knows that immortality belongs 
to that life. It begins immediately to take pos- 
session of endless life as its own birthright. 
Christ seemed to feel that he could awaken at 
once in Martha, in spite of her grief, by a few 
searching words this sublime sense of inextinguish- 
able life in the soul of the believer. 

The rebuke of Christ to Martha for her too 
great care-taking was forced upon him by her 
momentary petulance, and by her appeal to him for 
aid. The rebuke in itself was as tender as it was 






Luke X : 38-42 345 

complete: ''Martha, Martha, thou art careful and 
troubled about many things! But one thing is 
needful, and Mary hath chosen that good part 
which shall not be taken away from her." The 
assiduity with which Martha was providing all 
things suitable for his entertainment was not re- 
buked in and of itself, but the inferiority of the 
spirit indicated by it, as compared with the eager, 
reverent attention of Mary to his words, was 
brought out. We may readily suppose that the 
vexation of Martha — how quickly does vexation 
follow with us all upon some mistake in our own 
method ! — arose chiefly because she was distracted 
by a double desire, the wish to set her household 
in order for Christ, and the equally urgent wish to 
catch all the words of Christ. She felt, not with- 
out a show of reason, that if Mary were only a 
little more considerate, both of these objects might 
be obtained. For the moment, under the sense of 
loss, she was vexed at her sister and at Jesus that 
they should betake themselves prematurely to a 
spiritual feast that she was entitled to share. 
Her language was hasty and petulant: "Lord, 
dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to 
serve alone? Bid her, therefore, that she help 
me. " How does human nature break down in the 
very moment of aspiration! The thorn draws a 



346 Luke X : 38-42 

drop of blood even though we are plucking the 
sweetest rose. Our thoughts, as we turn heaven- 
ward, have a taint of self-assertion in them, and 
we become as a bird whipped about in the wind 
because of its own gorgeous plumage. 

One greatly pities the chagrin, the shame, the 
sorrow which must have followed this rebuke of 
Christ. The reproof seems almost cruel, yet it 
was a cruelty like that of a surgeon who breaks a 
second time a limb that it may knit somewhat 
more fortunately. 

We are not to look upon Martha as grossly 
wrong, nor perhaps upon Mary as perfectly right. 
Things had become unexpectedly tangled ; Martha 
had tripped just as she was reaching the summit 
of her expectations, and the hand of Christ had 
been outstretched to prevent her falling. It is 
quite possible that the reaction of the rebuke fell 
somewhat upon Mary as well as upon Martha. 
There had been inconsiderateness on both sides; 
it had broken into words on the lips of Martha 
alone. 

We have in these sisters two types of char- 
acter, each excellent, but with an unequal ex- 
cellence. In Mary we see large, pure, spiritual 
receptivity. If she was at the feet of Jesus, other 
things were readily forgotten. Says Whit tier : 



Luke X : 38-42 347 

" Upon the motley-braided mat 
Our youngest and our dearest sat, 
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes. " 

In Martha we have closer contact with the 
world. She provides for the household and she 
does it well. Her activity is greater than her 
receptivity, her eyes are restless and searching. 
Her spiritual world must be associated with well- 
ordered affairs. 

But Martha was not merely a domestic drudge. 
If she had been, she would have kept still, and 
would have gone on with her work. Mary, per- 
chance, was indeed somewhat to blame, we do not 
know ; for Martha may have been one of those busy 
bodies who find no end to preparations — bumble- 
bees, that rub their heads all day long on the 
window-pane and never get through it. 

The characteristics of the two sisters are so di- 
verse as to fall readily into opposition. They read 
the spiritual lessons of the day with very differ- 
ent emphasis. The words are dreamy, far off, and, 
to most ears, unreal as Mary utters them. They 
are clear, crisp, and imperative as Martha speaks 
them. As creatures of this present world, Martha 
is more agreeable to us. We are rather glad that 
the house belongs to her, glad that our entertain- 
ment would fall to her; and yet as awakening the 



34 8 Luke X : 38-42 

sense of invisible things, as casting upon life the 
glow of a spiritual light, Mary lingers longest with 
us. Life on the one side, and the mere accidents 
of life on the other are falling into conflict in the 
two sisters. Neither can be perfect except with 
and by the other. We are only wholly right when 
we know which are the highest things, and when 
we know also how to include all other things in 
them. "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness 
thereof." Wherever life touches us, as the fin- 
ger of God, there should be the breaking out of 
fruits and flowers. The beauty of the Lord, our 
God, should be upon us. When these two, 
spiritual receptivity and practical power, are 
falling apart, Christ assures us that the first is the 
best gift, the gift of Mary, "which shall not be 
taken from her. " True mastery remains with the 
spirit; the uses of things are all with it. This is 
the truth primarily contained in the narrative. 

The pleasures of life are constantly proving less 
than we expect them to be; far less than they 
reasonably may be. The wheat on our threshing- 
floor after much labor is, in an unfruitful year, 
very little. How many of our mistakes lie just here ; 
the accidents of living overpower us; we must 
have all the superfluities of an inviting home and 
we become the servants of these superfluities. We 



Luke X : 38-42 349 

perplex ourselves so much in getting ready for 
pleasure that pleasure escapes us in the very end. 
"Careful and troubled about many things" be- 
comes the descriptive phrase of our lives. 

We must greatly prosper in business; we must 
win high honor; and so when we arrive at the top- 
most round of the ladder we have set up for our- 
selves, instead of being ready to enter on new and 
ample and restful fields of action, we find ourselves 
seated in sheer weariness, on a narrow rung, able 
to go no farther, and ready to drop thence in mere 
fatigue. The futility of labor is a most familiar 
and a most distressful experience of life. What 
wretched results do we worry into because we are 
more interested in worrying than in standing and 
beholding the ways of God! It is the craft of 
the crafty man that catches him; the success of 
the successful man that most bitterly disappoints 
him. We are made shortsighted by holding the 
book too near our eyes. We spend our years like 
a patrimony that has fallen to us, and then we 
begin to be in want, and are found waiting on the 
impoverishments of old age. The one need of life 
is more spiritual receptivity, a growing fellow- 
ship with the things all about us that are being 
gathered into the Kingdom of Heaven. 

This spiritual receptivity is the secret of success 



350 Luke X : 38=42 

because the higher is sure ultimately to include the 
lower, while the lower postpones the higher and 
may never reach it. Mary can more easily dis- 
pense with the practical virtues of Martha, than 
Martha can lose the spiritual insight of Mary. If 
we strike the circle of life with a long radius, we 
may be slow, it is true, in finding all the things we 
have included in it ; but if we describe it with a 
short radius, we are sure to miss most of the many 
things we have shut out. It is never safe to trust 
ourselves to the affiliations of little things, for 
little things lead to little things;- it is safe to trust 
ourselves to the fellowship of large things, for these 
draw all things, little and large, to themselves. 
"Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his right- 
eousness and all these things shall be added unto 
you." There is no other growth so commanding 
as that by which great ideas enter into the world 
and possess it; no impoverishment is more ab- 
solute than that in which an inadequate pursuit 
finally betrays its insufficiency ; in which it withers 
up, and drops away like unripe fruit from the very 
world to which it has devoted itself. 

We may pursue the best because it is the best ; 
we may also pursue it because we are thus assimi- 
lated to it. The constant adjustment which goes 
on between us and the living things in our experi- 



Luke X : 38-42 351 

ence is a most conspicuous and significant fact. 
How many forms of life there are in the world; 
how wide the spaces among them by which they 
outrank one another ; and yet how readily the most 
perfect and beautiful of them all press the world 
into their service! The sun is quickening enough, 
the rain is nourishing enough for the most ex- 
quisite flowers. The best men are sufficiently 
fed in the whole circle of their wants by the world 
in which they are. No man transcends its 
nutritive power. What we seek after, that we 
attain; what we desire, we desire with increasing 
intensity and gain with growing ease; what we 
shut out, we lose sight of more and more. We 
are like the worm that in the morning goes forth 
from its tent by a trail of its own spinning, and in 
the evening returns by the same path to its own 
nest. 

The counterpart of this truth, that our charac- 
ters are strengthened in the directions of our 
pursuits, is that the world more and more fully 
responds to the particular claims that we make 
upon it. Whatever the appetite, that the food 
nourishes; if we elect the best things in the world, 
the world brings forward the best things for us. 
If we choose inferior things, it sinks in its gifts as 
rapidly as we sink in our demands. If a man 



352 Luke X : 38-42 

takes first of all on a well-spread table the wine 
cup, he may soon slip under the table with an 
empty cup. The slug is a slug though it devours 
rose leaver. It asks food and food is all it gets. 
We dislike luxuries, not because the world is not 
rich enough to afford them, but because of the 
selfish appetites they beget in us and the vicious 
passions they nourish. The world is debased by 
the base uses to which we put it ; is lifted up by the 
high claims we put upon it. The goods we ask for, 
those are the goods which are flung upon the 
counter; the world will nourish reptile, bird, or 
beast ; good men or bad men ; noble men or mean 
men, each according to his own nature. If we 
choose the good part of Mary, "that part shall not 
be taken from us." 

This incident in the household at Bethany is re- 
peating itself constantly in the life of each of us. 
We are always choosing between two things; not 
merely between the good and the bad; this is less 
frequent; but between the better and the best. 
The world is hospitable to our lives; it is over- 
flowing with invitation. Which will we accept? 
We need, therefore, to understand the organizing 
power of the best things; the force with which it 
brings all other things into their true position. 
When the wish becomes a supreme affection, when 



Luke X : 38-42 353 

all feelings flow into it, as brooks into a river, 
then we begin to have the finished man ; his action 
on the world and the world's action on him are 
both blessed. 

It matters comparatively little how large or 
how small the circle of gratifications may be in 
which we are moving. Character is involved 
as much in spending five dollars as in spending 
five hundred. The world gives great things for 
almost nothing and it has little things to sell 
at most extravagant prices. In a world whose 
spiritual gifts are in the background, and whose 
luxuries are in the foreground, spiritual receptivity, 
the power to choose the best things, becomes a 
primary consideration. 

We are very liable to disparage our own oppor- 
tunities. We are ready to think that if such a 
chance should come to us as came to Martha, we 
should be sure to improve it. We now choose so 
poorly because we have only poor things among 
which to choose. We pick up no jewels because 
there are none in our path. Herein is our great 
error. The great choices are made more or less, 
in darkness. Confusion overtakes every mind; 
conflicting desires distract us all. The good thing 
is to be found, and it is not very far off. Christ 

never walked more freely among men than now; 
23 



354 Luke X : 38-42 

never came nearer to them in more ways than 
now. The world is spread out more widely before 
us, with the sunshine of God's grace upon it, than 
ever before. The din and confusion and obscu- 
ration are all our own. It is these things, and 
these only, we have to fight. If our souls root 
themselves in divine truth, as the plant that finds 
the fertile soil, we shall grow there with increasing 
peace. Every man, at one time or another, 
catches sight of the good and covets it. Such 
impulses are like rocks uncovered for a few 
moments when, at low tide, the flood of passion 
is all out ; they are covered again when the swel- 
ling waters return. Martha desired the words of 
Christ, but she deferred the moment of receiving 
them, and so was quickly enveloped with petu- 
lance instead of with peace. 

Great things must be laid hold of the moment 
they are offered; we must be obedient to the 
heavenly vision. We must determine our course 
while the stars shine; the clouds will hide them 
again in a moment. It is the single eye that fills 
the whole body with light. Large things cannot 
be left to compete with little ones and to be 
jostled by them in the crowded thoroughfare. 
They will not, like a disarranged procession, press 
through an archway too small for them, too 



Luke X : 38-42 355 

narrow for their pomp and circumstance. The 
gates must be lifted up, if the King of Glory is to 
come in. 

If we choose this good part, it shall not be 
taken from us. Why? Because it runs in the 
line of our highest powers ; because it covers the best 
ministrations of the world to us; because the 
grace of God lies back of it and the gifts of God 
come with it. "We have found him of whom 
Moses and the prophets did write." After this 
juncture of life with life, and with all the condi- 
tions of life once accomplished, separation is impos- 
sible. Who shall pluck us out of the hand of God, 
once in his hand, for these ends of salvation? We 
understand the words, "Ask, and ye shall receive, 
seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened 
to you, "as operative not all at once, but under those 
slow, certain processes of growth which, being estab- 
lished, control the future. We are working with 
God and so God is working with us. If, amid the 
confusion of life, amid the many things to be done, 
we can find the feet of Christ and seat ourselves 
there; if we can discover some spiritual truth and 
steadfastly pursue it, order will take the place of 
disorder, hope will crowd out fear, and the new 
life will make all things new. The living pro- 
cesses of the spiritual world will have us in 



356 Luke X : 38-42 

charge, and will bring to us, not so much safety 
as strength. Whatever the Kingdom of Heaven 
shall ultimately contain, that shall be ours 
also. 



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