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 Library of The Theological Seminary 
 
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The Upper Road Series: Book One 
 
 THE CALL, OF 
 THE UPPER ROAD 
 
 KATHRINE R. LOGAN 
 

 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2022 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/callofupperroad00loga 
 

 
 ‘rom a Copley Print. Copyright by Curtis & Cameron. 
 Publishers, Boston, Mass. 
 
 THE BOY OF WINANDER, H. O. Walker 
 
 All day where the sunlight played 
 
 on the sea-shore, Life sat, 
 
 All day the soft wind played with 
 
 his hair, and the young, young face 
 looked out across the water. He was 
 waiting—he was waiting; but he could 
 not tell for what. 
 
THE CALL OF 
 THE UPPER ROAD 
 
 Soa 7RY OF Pola 
 fs a 
 BY 
 
 KATHRINE R. LOGAN\ » s, 
 
 NEW Ge YORK 
 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1924, 
 BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 THE CALL OF THE UPPER ROAD 
 Bas, yy pile 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
This Series of Books 
 Is Dedicated 
 
 TO ALL SEEKERS OF THE BEST 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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INTRODUCTION 
 
 The author of this book many years ago 
 heard the Call of the Upper Road and entered 
 upon it. Her experience as a teacher, as county 
 superintendent of schools, as a worker in the 
 United States Agricultural Extension Depart- 
 ment, and as a national Y. W. C. A. secretary, 
 fits her to be a counselor of others. 
 
 In her book she portrays the Upper Road as 
 the only one that gives satisfaction all the way 
 through life. There are no desert wastes to be 
 met in traveling it, nor are there mirages that 
 promise refreshing waters and then vanish 
 from sight when one feels the most exhaust- 
 ing thirst. On the Road are many Elims with 
 shady palm trees and wells of cool sweet waters 
 by the way. 
 
 In a long lifetime I have never known a pe- 
 riod in which such wise counsel as is given in 
 this book was more urgently needed than it is 
 
 Vi 
 
Vill Introduction 
 
 today. The message of the book is most help- 
 ful and timely. It will be a guide and strength 
 and inspiration to all who read it. 
 
 Rev. Joon MAcAttister, D.D. 
 
 Hollywood, California. 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENT 
 
 In these chapters occur many quotations 
 which I hope will be as helpful to the reader as 
 they have been to me. 
 
 I am especially grateful to the following pub- 
 lishers who have generously granted me the 
 privilege of quoting from their books: 
 ASSOCIATION PRESS: 
 
 Realizing Religion by Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr. 
 
 Christian Standards in Life by Murray-Harris 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY: 
 
 A Heart Garden by J. R. Miller 
 
 Optimistic Life by Orison Swett Marden 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY: 
 
 This Mystical Life of Ours by Ralph Waldo Trine 
 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY: 
 Spiritual Knowing by Theodore F. Seward 
 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY: 
 The Book of Courage by W. J. Dawson 
 The Larger Life by George D. Herron 
 Christiansty and Progress by Harry Emerson Fosdick 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY: 
 
 What Christiamty Means to Me by Lyman Abbott 
 The Infimte Artist and Other Sermons by Freder- 
 ick F. Shannon 
 
 ix 
 
x Acknowled gment 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY: 
 
 Short passages from The Home Book of Verse 
 THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY, LTD.: 
 
 Dawn by Frederick George Scott in “Canadian Poets 
 
 and Poetry” 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS: 
 
 Poem Outlines by Sidney Lanier 
 
 The Towing of Felix by Henry Van Dyke 
 MITCHELL KENNERLY CO.: 
 
 Psalm by Jessie E. Sampter in “The Lyric Year” 
 
 WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE: 
 
 Good Company by Kar! Wilson Baker in “The An- 
 thology of Magazine Verse and Year Book of 
 American Poetry” 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY: 
 
 Souls by Fannie Stearns Davis in “Myself and I’ 
 
 Every Great Deed Has a Stairway by Mary Caro- 
 line Davies 
 
 ERNEST HAMLIN ABBOTT: 
 
 Quctations from Dr. Lyman Abbott 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS: 
 
 Each in His Own Tongue, and Other Poems by Wil- 
 liam Herbert Carruth 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS: 
 The Mirthful Lyre by Arthur Guiterman 
 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY: 
 
 Verse by Fredrica Beard to “The Boy of Winan- 
 der” from Pictures in Religious Education. 
 
NS) 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Roads and Choices 
 The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 
 
 The Call of the Upper Road Within 
 the Soul . 
 
 The Miracle of Will on the Upper 
 Road 
 
 The Upper Road Means Climbing 
 
 Your Day and Your Opportunity on 
 EREUINOGG yh) Sate ON tris Laie Pie 
 
 119 
 
 143 
 

 
CHAPTER 1: Roads and Chozces 
 
“Oft as we jog along life’s winding way, 
 Occasion comes for every man to say— 
 ‘This road?—or That?’ and as he chooses 
 
 then, , 
 So shall his journey end in Night or Day.” 
 
 —JOHN OXENHAM, “The Cross Roads” 
 
 “All in the golden weather forth let us ride 
 today, 
 You and I together on the King’s Highway; 
 The blue skies above us, and below the shin- 
 ing sea, 
 There’s many a road to travel, but it’s this 
 road for me.” 
 
 —JoHN S. McGroarty 
 
THE CALL OF THE 
 UPPER ROAD 
 
 CHAPTER 1 
 Roads and Chovces 
 
 Life is made up of roads: 
 
 They start from where you are; 
 Some roads are ending near, 
 And some are leading far. 
 
 The road you choose means much 
 To others and to you: 
 *Tis not so much the road 
 As where ’tis leading to. 
 —K. R. L. 
 
 All roads start from where you are. They 
 run in all directions and you may wonder which 
 is the best road to take. All have a way of 
 their own of inviting you, and each has its own 
 
 particular inducements. 
 15 
 
16 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 Roads seem to know you and to expect you. 
 They keep open for you both day and night. 
 There is a big difference in the roads and it is 
 most important that you choose the best. 
 
 At the beginning, roads may look so very 
 much alike to you that you may not hesitate 
 much in your choice. You will find, however, 
 as you journey on that the difference in the end 
 is tremendous. You will find too that the road 
 you keep traveling gets a grip on you, so that 
 the longer you travel it the less likely you are 
 to make any change, the more susceptible you 
 become to its lure, and the more yielding to its 
 line of conduct. It influences your future line 
 of thought, course of action, and quality of ser- 
 vice. It is a road of progress in its own di- 
 rection. It is the entrance to a certain des- 
 tination ahead, and it has to do with your 
 eternal destiny. 
 
 Before you go any farther on your journey 
 of life, inquire of your innermost soul as to 
 the best road. “Happy are you if you condemn 
 not yourself in the things which you allow.” 
 If you are true to the voice speaking within 
 your soul you need have no doubt regarding the 
 road you ought to travel. Within yourself you 
 
Roads and Chovces 17 
 
 will find the right promptings—it is not neces- 
 sary for you to depend on anything outside. 
 
 When you choose the best road the Great 
 Spirit within you becomes your constant guide, 
 by reproving you when you leave the right 
 road, by having angels minister unto you when 
 you overcome, by ever speaking within, to woo 
 you, and by letting you know the very moment 
 when you even think of wandering a bit. The 
 Spirit within has a kind of way of making you 
 feel a bit uncomfortable when you get off the 
 right road, sometimes causing a feeling of re- 
 morse—all in greatest kindness—just to 
 awaken in you a sense of consciousness in order 
 to lead you back again to the right road. Great 
 indeed is the kindness of the Great Spirit 
 within. It is back of all your inward struggles 
 and keeps your soul alive. It is great as An- 
 gelina Morgan says: 
 
 “To be alive, 
 To think, to yearn, to strive; 
 To suffer torture when the goal is wrong, 
 To be sent back and fashioned strong.” ~ 
 
 No matter which road you choose to travel, 
 the time given you will be rather short. It 
 
18 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 may be a day’s journey or it may be one ot 
 many days. The length of time given you is 
 not for you to know. All persons have the 
 same allotment given them at any one time: a 
 day at a time, a night at a time. We are each 
 held responsible for the days and the nights 
 that are given us. It is the quality of life 
 and not the number of the days that is most 
 important. 
 
 “Our life is like a winter’s day: 
 Some only breakfast and away; 
 Others to dinner stay and are full fed; 
 The oldest man but sups and goes to bed; 
 Large in his debts who lingers out the day; 
 He that goes soonest has the least to pay.” ? 
 
 Whether you remain for breakfast only, or 
 for dinner, or possibly for supper need not con- 
 cern you. It is the road you choose and your 
 conduct of life that matters. It is what you 
 think and do that counts. 
 
 “Greatly begin! Though thou have time 
 But for a line, be that sublime.’’ ? 
 
 * Quoted in different forms from epitaphs. 
 ? Lowell, “For an Autograph.” 
 
Roads and Choices 19 
 
 Begin right and keep on doing the very best 
 you know each day as it comes, and you will 
 live a worthy life. You need not be concerned 
 about the number of your days, but you should 
 be concerned regarding the quality of your 
 life. 
 
 “Tt matters not how long we live, but how.” ® 
 “We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not 
 breaths; 
 In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 
 We should count time by heart throbs; 
 He most lives who thinks most, feels the 
 noblest, 
 Acts the best; 
 Lives in one hour more than in years do some 
 Whose thick blood sleeps as it slips through 
 their veins.” * 
 
 You may have been traveling on the best 
 road ever since you can remember. You may 
 or may not be able to tell just when you 
 started. You may have been raised in a Chris- 
 tian home and surrounded by Christian influ- 
 
 *P. J: Bailey. 
 mie peealicy. 
 
20 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 ences. Before you were able to talk your 
 mother may have whispered a prayer into your 
 soul. As soon as you could lisp, you may have 
 repeated the little prayer that she taught you. 
 Your parents may not have been rich in this 
 world’s goods. They may not have been edu- 
 cated and accomplished, but if they lived conse- 
 crated Christian lives and tried to start you out 
 on the right road, that counted for more than 
 all else. The right direction given the soul 
 in youth is of inestimable value. 
 
 Emerson put the right estimate on values in 
 life when he said: 
 
 “My Latin and my Greek, 
 My accomplishments and my money stead me 
 nothing ; 
 Only as much soul as I have avails.” 
 
 The biggest thing that our parents can do 
 for us in infancy is to teach us about God as 
 our heavenly Father; God who loves us and 
 cares for us; God who always sees us and who 
 hears us and knows even the very thoughts 
 within us; God who will guide us all through 
 life if we daily ask Him. Such teachings in 
 
Roads and Choices 21 
 
 childhood lead to where we voluntarily make 
 God our choice and with His help we travel the 
 Upper Road through life. We may not under- 
 stand all that our parents and teachers tell us, 
 yet the soul is so very sensitive and impression- 
 able that we receive and retain far more than 
 any person can realize. 
 
 “Think not that he is all too young to teach; 
 His little heart will like a magnet reach 
 And grasp the truth for which you find no 
 speech.” 
 
 The truths received in youth increase in 
 meaning with the years. What goes into the 
 first of life becomes part of ail life. The songs 
 we sing, the verses we repeat, the ideals set 
 before us, have far more to do with our inner 
 life and our conduct than anyone can possibly 
 know. 
 
 In his youth a boy repeated glibly the words 
 of a littke poem by Jane Taylor, “Twinkle, 
 Twinkle, Little Star.” At sixty that boy re- 
 peated again the same words, but he repeated 
 them differently for they grew full of meaning 
 and wonder with the years. Standing out 
 
22 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 under the starry heavens in the night he looked 
 up and repeated the words aloud most slowly 
 and most reverently: 
 
 “Twinkle,—twinkle—little—star— 
 How—I—wonder—what—you—are— 
 Up—above—the—world—so—high— 
 Like—a—diamond—in—the—sky.” 
 
 He felt as did David of old when he beheld 
 the heavens and said: 
 
 “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy 
 fingers, 
 
 The moon and the stars which thou hast or- 
 dained ; 
 
 What is man that thou art mindful of him? 
 
 And the son of man, that thou visitest him?” 
 
 A young man who neglected to pray as he 
 grew older was in the trenches during the late 
 war and in great danger. As he lay there at 
 night the prayer that his mother taught him 
 in his childhood days came to him. He re- 
 peated it. It meant everything to him as he 
 lay in the darkness of the night in the face of 
 danger, and he prayed most earnestly: 
 
Roads and Chovces 2 
 
 “Now I lay me down to sleep, 
 
 I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep; 
 
 If I should die before I wake, 
 
 I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to take— 
 And this I ask for Jesus’ sake—Amen.” 
 
 Ah, it too had become full of meaning with 
 the years. His whole soul went out to God, as 
 he trusted and went to sleep for the night. 
 
 Fortunate indeed are you if from your ear- 
 liest childhood you learned to love the beautiful 
 and the best; if you learned to look upon God 
 as a Father who loves you; if from the very 
 beginning you have been joyously conscious of 
 His presence, and you felt hurt whenever you 
 consciously did anything that in any way dis- 
 pleased Him, and you could not rest until you 
 talked things over with Him, and He forgave 
 you and made you feel all right again. Happy 
 indeed are you if through the years you have 
 had this experience, for then you have been 
 traveling the Upper Road all the way with Him. 
 
 It may be that you have not had this experi- 
 ence and you have not chosen to travel the 
 Upper Road. Since each day is of such tre- 
 mendous importance in your journey here it is 
 
oA, The Calli of theaUpree Rae 
 
 vitally important that you choose to travel the 
 Upper Road now. Life is short here and de- 
 lays are dangerous, and there is much expected 
 of you while you are here. If you carry out 
 the plan God has for you it will be necessary 
 for you to seek to know and to do His will. 
 God leaves with you the choosing. You are a 
 distinct individual and you make your own dis- 
 tinct choices. No one else can do the choosing 
 for you. Others may recommend, but you must 
 choose. You are held responsible for whatever 
 line of conduct you follow. Any delay in mak- 
 ing choice of the best robs you of wonderful 
 opportunities for growth and for service. 
 
 “Come, choose your road and away, away, 
 We'll follow the gypsy sun; 
 For it’s soon to the end of day, 
 And the day is well begun; 
 And the road rolls on through the heart of the 
 May, 
 And there’s never a May but one.” 5 
 
 Many things may influence you in the mak- 
 ing of your choice. You may be inclined to 
 follow the crowd. It is a temptation to go the 
 
 * Alfred Noyes. 
 
Roads and Chotces 25 
 
 way the many are going. Once you go along 
 with the crowd you will find your progress im- 
 peded. You begin to lose your power of initi- 
 ative. The crowd blocks the way and carries 
 you along with it. You find it difficult to get 
 away from it. Beware of the crowd. Be 
 strong enough to go alone, do your own think- 
 ing and your own choosing. Travel the road 
 of loftiest purpose, sincerest seeking, most un- 
 selfish living, constant growing, choicest fel- 
 lowships, and greatest soul satisfactions. 
 
 You may be inclined to travel the road that 
 your most intimate friend is traveling. The 
 choice of your friend may not always be the 
 best. Your friend may be your greatest hin- 
 drance. You are with your friend so con- 
 stantly. You help shape each other’s thoughts 
 and direct each other’s conduct. There can be 
 no true lasting friendship unless you travel the 
 best road. Any person who continues to keep 
 you from being and doing your best is no true 
 friend. Friends should be mutually helpful. 
 You too must be your best because of your 
 friend. Elizabeth Barrett Browning once 
 asked Charles Kingsley, “What is your secret 
 of life? Tell me that I may make mine beauti- 
 
26 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 ful too.’ ’ He replied, “J: had®a friend)” One 
 of the choicest gifts in life is a friend who 
 helps you to be your best. An ancient philos- 
 opher once said to a friend of his, “I am always 
 strong when I am near you.” 
 
 On the road of life there is great need for 
 such helpful friendships. It is great to be a 
 helpful friend, the kind of Upper Road friend 
 that folks will be glad to meet because of your 
 friendly interest, your radiating personality, 
 and your unselfishness. Your presence will be 
 welcome and exhilarating as the sunshine. A 
 woman who held many important positions said 
 the greatest compliment ever paid her was when 
 her mother said to her one day, “It always 
 seems like seeing the sunshine to see you.” 
 If you choose to follow the Upper Road and 
 follow your Master closely you will become 
 that kind of a friend. 
 
 “Do any hearts beat faster, 
 
 Do any faces brighten 
 
 To hear your footsteps on the stair, 
 To meet you, greet you, anywhere? 
 Are you so like the Master, 
 
 Dark shadows to enlighten? 
 
Roads and Chotces 27 
 
 Are any, happier today 
 
 Through words that they have heard you say? 
 Life were not worth the living, 
 
 If no one were the better 
 
 For having met you on the way, 
 
 And known the sunshine of your stay.” 
 
 If you travel the Upper Road that is the 
 kind of person you will be, and your friends 
 will say of you what one friend said of an- 
 other, “It was easier to be good when she was 
 with us.” 
 
 The late Emperor of Japan wrote the follow- 
 ing significant advice in regard to one’s choice 
 of friends: 
 
 “For he that wrongs a friend 
 Wrongs himself more, and ever bears about 
 A silent court of justice in his breast, 
 Himself the judge and jury and himself 
 The prisoner at the bar, ever condemned. 
 
 The water placed in goblet, bowl or cup 
 Changes its form to its receptacle; 
 
 And so our plastic souls take various shapes 
 And characters of good or ill, to fit 
 
 ‘The good or ill in the friends they choose. 
 
28 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 Therefore be ever careful in your choice of 
 friends, 
 
 And let your special love be given to those 
 
 Whose strength of character may prove the 
 whip 
 
 That drives you ever to fair wisdom’s goal.”’ 
 
 In this pleasure seeking age your immediate 
 desires for worldly pleasures may influence 
 you in your choice of roads. The pleasures and 
 amusements of the day occupy much of the 
 time and thought of people. As a result the 
 better thoughts and aspirations of life are 
 crowded out of their lives. They fail to grow 
 and pass on of their best to others. They lose 
 their sense of responsibility and are not seri- 
 ously concerned as to the outcome of their 
 manner of life. They content themselves by 
 asking, ““What’s the harm?’’—a sure indication 
 that they stand condemned in their innermost 
 souls in that which they allow, and from which 
 they do not have enough strength of will to de- 
 sist. They travel along in a happy-go-lucky 
 way over this self-indulgent road that keeps 
 their thoughts dwarfed and their souls starved 
 and lean, and their lives spiritually unfruitful. 
 
Roads and Chovces 29 
 
 One needs to be well reinforced within to with- 
 stand this luring, pleasure-loving road where 
 minor thoughts crowd out the greater. 
 
 In Arabian Nights is a fable of a Magnetic 
 Island away out in the ocean. Towards it a 
 ship is drifting. The ship is stout, well built, 
 and wonderful in its making, but it is rudder- 
 less, and the magnetism of the island draws 
 it closer and closer till suddenly without sound 
 of hammer or explosion the ship falls to pieces. 
 The magnetism of the island drew out every 
 rivet and every bolt and the wreckage of a 
 great ship lay strewn upon the sea. “This is 
 only a fable,’ says the Record of Christian 
 Work, “but there is much truth init. The lure 
 of the present age is the Magnetic Island.” 
 
 The books you read may have much to do 
 with your choosing of the road. Good books 
 are wonderfully helpful and intimate friends. 
 Through them others pass on their best 
 thoughts. They meet us as equals and we feel 
 no embarrassment as we think things out to- 
 gether. It is soul speaking to soul and spirit 
 helping spirit, and there is entire harmony. 
 There comes greater revelation and strength 
 and courage and inspiration as we commune 
 
30 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 together on the things that are highest, and 
 best, and uplifting. An English publishing 
 house used the following advertisement when 
 sending out their books, all of which were of 
 a very high order: “A MAN WHO BUYS A BOOK 
 IS NOT ONLY BUYING A FEW OUNCES OF PAPER, 
 STRING AND PRINTER’S INK! HE MAY BE BUY- 
 ING A WHOLE NEW LIFE.” 
 
 You may not think it necessary to choose any 
 other road. You are satisfied with yourself 
 as you are. You read the best literature, you 
 repeat its sayings to yourself, you revel in its 
 ideas. You inwardly congratulate yourself on 
 your intelligence, and on your standing in soc1- 
 ety. You are proud of yourself. You would 
 not swear or steal or lie or gossip. You would 
 not do some of the things that many who pro- 
 fess to be better than you do. You congratu- 
 late yourself on your liberality and that you are 
 what you are. In plain words, you are self- 
 righteous and “knowest not that thou art 
 wretched and miserable, and poor, and blind, 
 and naked.” 
 
 The Master of the Upper Road says, “I 
 counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, 
 
Roads and Chotces Bul 
 
 that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment 
 that thou mayest be clothed.” 
 
 “You live for yourself, you think for yourself, 
 For yourself and none beside; 
 Just as if Jesus had never lived, 
 As 1f He had never died.” 
 
 “We begin to be bad as soon as we plume 
 ourselves on being good.”” Two men one time 
 went up to the Temple to pray. One prayed 
 loud and long and told the Lord about the fine 
 life he led, and all the fine deeds he did, and 
 then he thanked the Lord that he was not like 
 other men. The other man, feeling how finite 
 he was, how lacking in understanding, how un- 
 worthy of all the blessings bestowed upon him, 
 bowed in humility and smote his breast, say- 
 ing “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”’ We 
 read that the latter was justified by the Master 
 of Life rather than the former. 
 
 “Two men went to pray, or rather say 
 One went to brag, and the other to pray.” 
 
 Dr. Channing was one day driving with a 
 friend on the shore of the ocean. His friend 
 
32 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 remarked: “Oh, Dr. Channing, how small we 
 seem in view of all this!” Dr. Channing re- 
 plied, “When I am in such a presence as this 
 I do not think of myself at all.” So it will be 
 when you are conscious of the presence of God. 
 To see Him you must get out of yourself. A 
 Japanese proverb says, ‘“The frog in the well 
 never sees the ocean.’’ Neither does the per- 
 son that is satisfied with his own little circle of 
 ideas and thoughts and plans, ever see the 
 Christ, or know the meaning of the Life Abun- 
 dant. “Christian faith is like a grand cathe- 
 dral with divinely painted windows. Standing 
 without you can see no glory nor can possibly 
 imagine any; standing within every ray of light 
 reveals a harmony of unspeakable splendor.”’ 
 
 “God, harden me against myself, 
 
 This coward with pathetic voice, 
 
 Who craves for ease and rest, and joys, 
 Myself arch traitor to myself, 
 
 My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe, 
 My clog, whatever road I go.’ ® 
 
 It is not for you to remain on this road if you 
 choose aright. 
 * Christina Rosetti. 
 
Roads and Chovces 32 
 
 “Take one step out of yourself,’ say the 
 Sufus, “and you will arrive at God.” 
 
 You may be preventing yourself from travel- 
 ing the Upper Road because you persist in in- 
 dulging in some known sin—something in your 
 life that keeps you away from God; something 
 that keeps you from communion with Him, and 
 robs you of inward peace and the real joy of 
 life. Your sin may not look very big to you, 
 but if it is anything that keeps you from com- 
 munion with God it is tremendous, no matter 
 how insignificant it may appear to your blinded 
 ayes. Anything in your life that separates you 
 trom God is destructive to your soul. It calls 
 down on you the greatest condemnation. These 
 little sins are most dangerous. Once indulged 
 in they are apt to become habit. “Habit is a 
 cable. You weave a thread of it each day until 
 it becomes so strong you cannot break it.” The 
 devil gets more people to follow him by means 
 of little secret sins than he does by the big out- 
 standing crimes. He doesn’t care how he does 
 it so he keeps you from the Upper Road and 
 God. 
 
 You may not have given any thought to the 
 choosing of the road. You may be going along 
 
34 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 without any decisive thinking. There are many 
 who drift along in this stupid way. They have 
 their food and their clothes, and a good ac- 
 count in the bank, and easy times, and an easy 
 conscience. They go along each day as though 
 life did not matter. The problems of the day 
 do not concern them. They live only for their 
 own interests, and unknowingly kill thereby 
 what is to their own interest. Isaac Watt de- 
 scribes them well when he says: 
 
 “A number of us creep 
 Into the world to eat and sleep 
 And know no reason why we're born, 
 But only to consume the corn, 
 Devour the cattle, flesh and fish, 
 And leave behind an empty dish. 
 
 And if our tombstone when we die 
 
 Be not taught to flatter and to lie, 
 There’s nothing better can be said 
 
 Than ‘he’s e’t up all his bread 
 
 Drunk up his drink and gone to bed.’ ” 
 
 In the words of Carlyle we might say of 
 them, “Soul extinct; stomach well alive.” Such 
 persons have not been in harmony with God 
 
Roads and Choices 25 
 
 and His plans. They have not taken Him and 
 His passion for humanity into account. Their 
 better selves they allowed to become paralyzed 
 while they ate and slept. The community is no 
 better for their living in it. They have nothing 
 worth while to pass on to others when they are 
 gone. They are all too common to every age 
 and to every community. They are unmoved 
 by the great purpose of life. They are like 
 those who were asleep “while Rome burned.” 
 Wordsworth must have had them in mind when 
 he wrote: 
 
 “For this, for everything, we are out of tune; 
 It moves us not. Great God, I’d rather be 
 A Pagan, suckled in a creed outworn, 
 So might I, standing on the pleasant lea, 
 Have glimpses that would make me less for- 
 lorn.” 
 
 In your choosing you would not voluntarily 
 want to continue to travel on any of these in- 
 different irresponsible roads. The only way 
 to stay clear of them is to keep off of them 
 entirely. Better for you to say now with 
 Chang Chih Ho, a Chinaman who lived in 750 
 A. D., who in his day was a seeker of the best: 
 
36 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 The lady moon is my lover, 
 
 My friends are the oceans four, 
 The heavens are roofed over me, 
 The dawn is my golden door. 
 
 I would liefer follow the condor 
 Or the seagull soaring from ken 
 Than to bury my god-head yonder 
 In the dust of the whirl of men.” 
 
 Better say with David, King of Israel, “A 
 day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I 
 would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of 
 my God than to dwell in the tents of wicked- 
 ness.” Better with the apostle, be willing to 
 spend and be spent, that the cause of Christ 
 may be glorified. Better say with Edna St. 
 Vincent Millay: 
 
 “My candle burns at both ends; 
 It will not last the night; 
 But ah my foes, and oh my friends, 
 It gives a lovely light.” 
 
 Better say what Clare Sheridan said in her 
 diary of a visit to Russia, “I would rather live 
 in discomfort in an atmosphere of gigantic 
 effort than to live in luxury among the purpose- 
 
Roads and Chovtces 27 
 
 Jess.” Better for you to choose the best at 
 once and make the affirmation of the poet your 
 own: 
 
 “T’m going by the Upper Road, for that still 
 holds the sun, 
 I’m climbing through night’s pastures where 
 the starry rivers run; 
 If you should think to seek me in my old dark 
 abode, 
 You'll find this writing on the door, 
 ‘He’s on the Upper Road.’ ” 
 
ileal 
 ss 
 
 big hi “ant nh 
 ; pha thee 
 ' é a 4 
 
 . 
 
 
 
CHAPTER 2: The Call of the Upper 
 Road in Nature 
 
Bestir yourself, move on, and do! 
 North and south and east and west 
 There’s something calling you; 
 
 You have your choice of all that’s best, 
 
 Of all that’s calling you. 
 —K. R. L. 
 
CHAPTER 2 
 
 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 wn Nature 
 
 “T saw the mountains stand 
 Silent, wonderful and grand, 
 Looking across the land 
 When the golden light was falling 
 On distant dome and spire; 
 
 And I heard a low voice calling, 
 ‘Come up higher, come up higher,’ 
 From the lowlands and the mire, 
 From the mists of earth’s desire, 
 From the vain pursuit of pelf, 
 From the attitude of self: 
 
 ‘Come up higher, come up higher. 
 
 9991 
 
 Voices are everywhere calling in nature. 
 There is ever all about you something that calls 
 to your soul, and invites you, as the poet says, 
 to 
 
 *James S. Clark. 
 4l 
 
42 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 “Come out of your cage 
 Come out of your cage 
 And take your soul on a pilgrimage.” 
 
 It is the call of the Upper Road. The call of 
 the Upper Road is the call of God. He speaks 
 to us through all that He has created. There 
 is no place where God’s voice may not be heard. 
 There is none but may hear Him speak if they 
 but listen, if they but seek Him. 
 
 “Lo, the poor Indian, whose untutored mind 
 Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the 
 wind.” 
 
 To all there comes through nature a sense 
 of His presence. No soul escapes knowing 
 that God is, even though it may not understand. 
 There comes to it in the words of George Mac- 
 Donald: 
 
 “A voice in the wind I do not know; 
 
 A meaning in the face of the high hills 
 Whose utterance I cannot comprehend, 
 
 A something is behind them: that is God.” 
 
 bf 
 
 “Through every blade of grass,” says Car- 
 lyle, “‘the glory of the present God still beams.” 
 
The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 43 
 
 Coleridge in his “Hymn Before Sunrise” in 
 the vale of Chamouni, says, 
 
 “God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome 
 voice! 
 Ye pine groves, with your soul-like sounds! 
 And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, 
 And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!” 
 
 In the words of the Psalmist, ‘““The heavens 
 declare the glory of God and the firmament 
 showeth His handiwork. Day unto day ut- 
 tereth speech and night unto night showeth 
 knowledge. There is no speech nor language 
 where their voice is not heard. Their line is 
 gone out to all the earth, and their sound to the 
 end of the world.” 
 
 Blessed indeed are they who hear God in 
 nature and become awakened to a personal con- 
 sciousness of Him. 
 
 “And through and over everything, 
 
 A sense of glad awakening .. . 
 
 I know not how such things can be! 
 
 I breathed my soul back into me. 
 
 Ah! up then from the ground I sprang, 
 I hailed the earth with such acry... 
 
44 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 ‘O God,’ I cried, ‘no dark disguise 
 Can e’er hereafter hide from me 
 Thy radiant identity.’ ” ” 
 
 Nature has a wonderful meaning when we 
 see God in it. Poets of all the ages testify to 
 this. 
 
 “What are ye, orbs?” the poet asks, and in 
 his soul he finds an answer, “The words of 
 God! The Scriptures of the skies!” 
 
 Addison looking at the stars thinks of them: 
 
 “Forever singing as they shine, 
 The hand that made us is divine.” 
 
 It is to the soul alone that nature speaks thus. 
 We alone have that in us that sees beyond the 
 present and the material. We are not confined 
 to the little space that we occupy here. The 
 soul knows no boundary. There is no limit to 
 the soul’s height or depth or breadth. 
 
 “The immortal spirit hath no bars 
 To circumscribe its dwelling place; 
 My soul hath pastured with the stars 
 Upon the meadow lands of space. 
 *Edna St. Vincent Millay. 
 
The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 45 
 
 My mind and ears at times have caught 
 From realms beyond our mortal reach, 
 The utterance of eternal thought 
 
 Of which all nature is the speech. 
 
 And high above the seas and lands 
 
 On peaks just tipped with morning light, 
 My dauntless spirit mutely stands 
 
 With eagle wings outspread for flight.” ? 
 
 Nature helps the soul in its flight, as did 
 the Marshes of Glynn the soul of Sydney La- 
 nier when he became conscious of God’s pres- 
 ence in the marshes about him. His soul 
 sought greater freedom and he said: 
 
 “Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness 
 
 of God; 
 
 I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh 
 hen flies ; 
 
 In the freedom that fills all the space ’twixt 
 the earth and the skies. 
 
 By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in 
 the sod 
 
 I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness 
 of God; 
 
 * Frederick George Scott. 
 
46 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 Oh, like to the greatness of God 1s the great- 
 ness within 
 
 The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes 
 of Glynn.” 
 
 It is to this life of freedom and of greatness 
 that the voices in nature call us. The soul 
 longs to extend itself and like the bird soar 
 high and free. 
 
 God has great things in store for the soul 
 if we but seek Him and listen for His voice. 
 He enables us to see beyond—a beyond without 
 limit. He sends us in every place some whis- 
 pers of His love. Through the marshes, 
 through His glorious sunsets, through Huis 
 starry heavens, through the trees and the flow- 
 ers, He sends us messages which may be ours 
 if we are in tune to receive them. 
 
 Does the evening sun entrance you 
 With its glory as it sets? 
 
 Does it lift and strangely free you 
 From all earthly cares and frets? 
 Do the stars of heaven tell you 
 That your spirit knows no bounds, 
 When at eventide you view them 
 As they make their nightly rounds? 
 
The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 47 
 
 Do you note how close is heaven, 
 Feel its nearness in the woods, 
 Where the many lights and shadows 
 Answer to your inner moods? 
 When you scent the flowers’ fragrance 
 In the early days of June, 
 Do you feel that you and heaven 
 Are in almost perfect tune? 
 Do you see the promised rainbow 
 In the tiniest drop of dew? 
 Then know that Heaven is sending 
 Wireless messages to you. 
 —K. R. L., Heaven's Wireless. 
 
 It were well then to keep ourselves in tune 
 with Nature, that we may hear her voices, ‘“‘For 
 the world was made in order and the atoms 
 march in tune.” King David tells us how he 
 received messages from the hills, where he 
 heard God’s voice in his soul. “I will lift up 
 mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh 
 my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which 
 made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy 
 foot to be moved. He that keepeth thee will not 
 slumber. The Lord is thy keeper; the Lord is 
 thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall 
 
48 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. 
 The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: He 
 shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall pre- 
 serve thy going out and thy coming in from 
 this time forth, and even forevermore.” 
 
 Not to David alone did He send His mes- 
 sages, but through all time He sends messages 
 from the hills and the mountains to those who 
 listen, to those who have ears to hear. 
 
 Now as in the days of Moses when God 
 talked to him on the mount will God speak to 
 us. Deaf indeed is the person who receives no 
 message of strength and assurance from the 
 mountains of today. 
 
 Heaven doesn’t seem far 
 Where the mountains are; 
 Their fleecy clouds play 
 On their summits all day; 
 And there comes as of yore 
 From those gone before 
 A message of strength 
 Through the mountains. 
 —K. R. L., A Voice in the Mountains. 
 
 John Muir loved the mountains. For him 
 they had great messages of peace and strength. 
 
The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 49 
 
 He became great from associating with them. 
 They kept his soul in tune with God. He 
 says: 
 
 “Climb the mountains and get your tidings: 
 Nature’s peace will flow into you 
 
 As sunshine into trees. 
 
 The winds will blow the freshness into you, 
 And the storms their energy, 
 
 While cares will drop off like autumn leaves.” 
 
 It is not necessary to live near the mountains 
 to receive strength and uplift. We may hear 
 God speaking to us as we drive along the road, 
 where the wild roses also bring us messages 
 from God. 
 
 God loves me, 
 He sends me roses— 
 Every day He sends me flowers; 
 All along the country side 
 He scatters roses by the hours, 
 To express anew His love, 
 To remind me He is near. 
 In my daily pilgrimage, 
 His roses bring me cheer. 
 ——K RL, Love's: Token. 
 
50 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 God is such a wonderful lover of souls that 
 He is constantly sending us gifts and messages 
 of love. Go out into your garden and there 
 too you may receive messages from Him, and 
 be conscious of His nearness, and of His care, 
 and of His love. 
 
 “A garden lies from all the world apart, 
 And in soft twilights, when the day is fair, 
 I turn to walk in it and find YOU there!” 
 
 “T often think when working over my 
 plants,’ said John Fiske, “of what Linnaeus 
 once said of the unfolding of a blossom, ‘I saw 
 ‘God in His glory passing near me, and bowed 
 my head in worship.’ ” 
 
 “A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot: 
 Rose plot, 
 Fringed pool, 
 Ferned grot, 
 The veriest school 
 Of peace; and yet the fool 
 Contends that God is not. 
 Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool? 
 Nay, but I have a sign; 
 ‘Tis very sure God walks in mine.” * 
 
 *Thomas Edward Brown. 
 
The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 51 
 
 A dear old lady lived in a single room up- 
 stairs. She was unable to get out to witness 
 the beauties of a garden, so she kept a potted 
 plant in her window because she said it spoke 
 to her that God was near. 
 
 We find everywhere manifestations of the 
 goodness of the Lord. It was David who ex- 
 claimed, ‘““The earth is full of the goodness of 
 the Lord.” . Eliza Calvert Hall tells us that 
 “Parson Page used to say there were some 
 things that showed the goodness of the Lord, 
 and some things such as_ strawberries and 
 grapes and apples and peaches that showed the 
 exceeding goodness of the Lord.” 
 
 If our eyes were truly open and our hearing 
 acute, we would exclaim with every step we 
 take, and every delicious bite we eat, and every 
 beautiful thing we see, “Isn’t God wonderful!’ 
 Charles Kingsley in his dying hour was heard 
 to whisper, ‘““How beautiful God is.” 
 
 William Herbert Carruth sees God in na- 
 ture, in his beautiful poem, “‘Each in His Own 
 Tongue”: 
 
 “A haze on the far horizon, 
 The infinite tender sky, 
 
52 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 The ripe rich tints of the cornfields, 
 And the wild geese sailing high, 
 And all over upland and lowland 
 The charm of the goldenrod, 
 
 Some of us call it Autumn 
 
 And others call it God.” 
 
 Everywhere it is God. All we need to do is 
 seek Him. There is nothing difficult about it. 
 The difficulty is within ourselves when we fail 
 to seek and to believe and to accept. 
 
 “So then believe that every bird that sings, 
 And every blossom that stars the elastic sod, 
 And every thought the happy summer brings 
 To the pure spirit, is the word of God.” 
 
 James Russell Lowell asks: 
 
 “Have you seen God in the splendors, 
 Heard the text that nature renders?” 
 
 William Cullen Bryant answers: 
 
 “From all around, earth and her waters, 
 and the depths of air, 
 Comes a still small voice.” 
 
 Alfred Tennyson answers: 
 
 “T hear a voice speaking in the wind.” 
 
The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 53 
 Robert Browning: ‘said: 
 “T saw God everywhere.” 
 
 He calls the air, ““The clear dear breath of God, 
 that loveth us.” 
 
 Samuel Coleridge as he gazed on the beauties 
 of Mt. Blanc exclaimed, “Earth with its thou- 
 sand voices praises God.” 
 
 Another poet said, “God like the wind goes 
 breathing a dream of Himself through all.” 
 
 Wordsworth, speaking of God fin nature, 
 writes: 
 
 “A sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the living air 
 _ And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things.” 
 
 King David was directed to go out to listen 
 to the sound of a going on the tops of the mul- 
 berry trees before bestirring himself to battle. 
 Good advice for us in our day to listen to the 
 voices of nature as we go out to the battles of 
 life, lest it be said of us: 
 
54 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 “The world is too much with us, late and soon, 
 Getting and spending we lay waste our powers, 
 Little we see in nature that is ours.” ® 
 
 Nature becomes to us, if we look and seek, 
 a constant reminder of God at work in the 
 world, of God speaking everywhere, and every- 
 where sending us some tokens of His love and 
 of His presence. 
 
 “This is my Father’s world, 
 He shines in all that’s fair ; 
 In the rustling grass [ hear Him pass, 
 He speaks to me everywhere.” 
 
 Countess Von Arnhim tells us in her own 
 words: “On the hills this morning I was walk- 
 ing in the sunshine. It seemed to me that I met 
 God and He took me by the hand, and let me 
 walk with Him, and He showed me how beau- 
 tiful the world is, how beautiful the back- 
 ground. He has given us the splendid spacious 
 background on which to paint large charities 
 and loves. And I looked across the hilltops, 
 golden, utterly peaceful, and amazement filled 
 me in the presence of that great calm, at the 
 
 *° Wordsworth. 
 
The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 55 
 
 way I flutter through my days and at the noise 
 I make.” 
 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning must have had 
 somewhat the same experience when she said: 
 
 “Oh the little birds sang east, and the little 
 birds sang west, 
 And I smiled to think God’s greatness flows 
 around our incompleteness, 
 Round our restlessness, His rest.” 
 
 God interfuses Himself in all and through 
 all. The sun millions of miles away from the 
 earth extends itself to where we are. It be- 
 comes part of each peach and each apple and 
 each rose, giving them each separate flavor and 
 color and a texture all their own; so the God 
 of the Universe comes where we are and inter- 
 fuses Himself in us, giving us life and faith 
 and love, putting within each of us a bit of the 
 kingdom of heaven. 
 
 “There’s part o’ the sun in an apple, 
 There’s part o’ the moon in a rose, 
 There’s part o’ the flaming Pleiades 
 In every leaf that grows. 
 
 Out of the vast comes nearness, 
 
56 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 For the God whose love we sing, 
 Sends a little of His heaven 
 To every living thing.” ° 
 
 We must seek God to find Him. We must 
 open our hearts to receive Him. He does not 
 force Himself upon us. Should we refuse to 
 listen, or to seek, ours is the eternal loss. Life 
 and all there is in it loses its true meaning if 
 we do not see beyond things. We become like 
 Wordsworth’s Peter Bell: 
 
 “A primrose by the river’s brim, 
 A yellow primrose was to him 
 And it was nothing more.” 
 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning gives a striking 
 contrast between those who seek and find, and 
 those who do not, when she says: 
 
 “Earth’s crammed with heaven 
 
 And every common bush afire with God; 
 
 But only he who sees takes off his shoes— 
 The rest sit round and pick blackberries.” 
 
 The “rest”? fail to see God. They hear not 
 His voice. They miss the great delights, the 
 
 * Augustus Bomberger. 
 
The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 57 
 
 feasts of soul, the raptures of living, the joy 
 of spirit, the wonderful communion, the part- 
 nership with the Eternal, the reverence and 
 appreciation of all life and all beauty and all 
 truth and all love that belong to those who see 
 God in everything. 
 
 “Then sawest thou that this fair Universe, 
 were it in the meanest province thereof, is in 
 very deed the star-domed City of God; that 
 through every star, through every grass blade, 
 and most through every living soul, the glory 
 of the present God still beams. But Nature, 
 which is the Time-vesture of God, and reveals 
 to the wise, hides Him from the foolish.” 
 
 A critic one time gazed on Turner’s paint- 
 ing and said, “I never could see such colors in 
 the sky as you paint.” Turner replied, “Don’t 
 you wish you could? I never can begin to paint 
 what I see!” To those who see: 
 
 “There seems a voice in every gale, 
 
 A tongue in every flower, 
 
 That tells, O Lord, the wondrous tale 
 Of thine almighty power.” 
 
 God has a way of His own of revealing 
 Himself to those who seek Him. He knows 
 
58 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 our differences and our personal needs and 
 meets them all in the best way suited to each 
 of us. He gives to each seeker the revelation 
 of Himself that the seeker needs. He does it 
 in His own way. 
 
 Sydney Lanier one time became confused 
 while listening to men’s unreasonable interpre- 
 tations about God. It was only when God in 
 His own wonderful and easy way revealed 
 Himself to Sydney Lanier that his soul found 
 relief. In writing his experience he says, “I 
 fled in tears from men’s ungodly quarrel about 
 God. I fled in tears to the woods, and laid me 
 down on the earth; then somewhat like the 
 beating of my heart came up to me out of the 
 ground, and I looked, and my cheek lay close 
 by a violet, and | said: 
 
 ““T know that thou art the voice of my God, 
 
 dear violet; 
 
 And oh, the ladder is not long that to my 
 heaven leads; 
 
 Measure what space a violet stands above the 
 ground— 
 
 Tis no farther climbing that my soul and an- 
 gels have to do than that.’ ” 
 
The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 59 
 
 Just like God to reveal Himself in such a 
 simple and wonderful and beautiful way. That 
 is always His way of doings things when we 
 go seeking Him. He becomes so precious and 
 so wonderful when we find Him and learn to 
 understand Him better. 
 
 He makes us conscious of His presence and 
 love and nearness by means of the flowers at 
 our feet, as well as He makes us conscious of 
 His majesty and power and greatness by means 
 of the stars in the heavens. “Daisies are the 
 stars of the grass as the stars are the daisies 
 of heaven, and if a man look long at the stars 
 set out in such orderly array he may become 
 fearful and think God far off, but if he be 
 near he may pick a daisy and take his fill of 
 comfortable things, for God will seem near 
 and His voice in the daisy.” 
 
 Frederick Langbridge gives the experience 
 of a soul seeking God afar and finding Him 
 feat: 
 
 “T sought for God through star-dumb space; 
 Beneath the sea I made a stair, 
 
 And laid the primal forges bare; 
 
 I questioned runn and rann 
 
60 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 And bones as old as man; 
 
 There was no sign nor beck nor trace 
 To lull the ache of my despair; 
 
 My lattice roses touched my face 
 
 And God was there.” 
 
 “He is not far from any of us.” He is here 
 in the very midst of things that He has created 
 and is creating daily, giving them life and fra- 
 grance and beauty. He wants this beauty to 
 enter our souls and to become part of us. As 
 we open the doors and the windows to let in 
 the fresh air and the sunlight, so we may open 
 the doors of our secret soul to take in beauty 
 and love and life. Whittier had this idea in 
 mind when he said: 
 
 “But beauty seen is never lost, 
 God’s colors all are fast; 
 The glory of this sunset heaven 
 Into my soul has passed.” 
 
 In this way all that is beautiful becomes im- 
 mortal, It is ours when we begin to travel 
 the Upper Road of the Soul, and take posses- 
 sion of our Inheritance. 
 
The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 61 
 
 “As the soul liveth, it shall live 
 Beyond the years of time.” * 
 
 God expects you to open your mind and soul 
 to see and to receive the beautiful. What you 
 see becomes part of you. Karle Wilson Baker 
 in “New Voices” says: 
 
 “Today I have grown taller from walking with 
 the trees, 
 The seven-sister poplars, who go softly in a 
 line ; 
 And I think my heart is whiter from its par- 
 ley with a star 
 That trembled out at nightfall and hung above 
 the pine. 
 The call note of a redbird from the cedars in 
 the dusk 
 Woke his happy note within me to an answer 
 free and fine, 
 And a sudden angel beckoned from a column 
 of blue smoke— 
 Lord, who am I that they should stoop: these 
 holy folk of Thine?” 
 
 Our soul’s inheritance is enriched when we 
 go out as did William Cullen Bryant: 
 * Whittier. 
 
62 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 “x * * under the open’ sky 
 And list to Nature’s teaching.” 
 
 When we remain too much indoors our souls 
 feel cramped. We miss the tonic of the trees 
 and the grass and the sky. We feel like saying 
 with Richard Hovey: 
 
 “T am sick of four walls and a ceiling, 
 I have need of the sky, 
 I have business with the grass.” 
 
 The Upper Road calls you to behold the 
 beautiful in Nature, to drink the ozone of the 
 out of doors, to expand your soul as well as 
 your lungs, to recognize God in everything 
 beautiful that you see, to become conscious that 
 He is with you, and that your soul may be 
 made beautiful and strong and calm through 
 all that He has created. Join Henry Van Dyke 
 in his prayer to the “God of the Open Air,” 
 that Nature may teach you her greatest les- 
 sons of faith and calm and strength and cour- 
 age, that you may be strengthened and en- 
 riched on your Upper Road journey by all 
 that Nature teaches. 
 
The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 63 
 
 “By the faith that the wild flowers show when 
 they bloom unbidden, 
 By the calm of a river’s flow to a goal that is 
 hidden, 
 By the strength of the tree that clings to its 
 deep foundation, 
 By the courage of birds’ light wings on the 
 long migration. 
 (Wonderful Spirit of trust that abides in 
 Nature’s breast!) 
 Teach me how to confide, and live my life, 
 and rest!” 
 

 
Bite) Nise rit il tah Mie PS Ys ad ia Bae he i 
 
 
 
 The Call of the Upper 
 Road Within the Soul 
 
“Blazing systems of sun and star 
 Are not as great as my people are.” 
 
CHAPTER 3 
 
 The Call of the Upper Road 
 Wethen the Soul 
 
 Nature is truly wonderful, but what would 
 nature mean if there were no eyes to see, and 
 no ears to hear, and no soul to appreciate and 
 love! Nature can not take our place with God, 
 and nothing can take the place of God within 
 us. We are for each other to appreciate and 
 love and enjoy. There is that within us that 
 responds to God. There would be no meaning 
 to life anywhere if we did not possess the won- 
 derful soul that God has given us. There is no 
 power but of God. There is no beauty but of 
 God. There is no love but of God. There is 
 no life but of God. The only thing in our lives 
 that is significant is God in us. We may ad- 
 mire nature and have her soothe and rest us, 
 but the eternally important thing is to find 
 God and to have His peace and joy and love 
 
 and fellowship within our own souls. It is well 
 67 
 
68 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 to see God in nature, but it is absolutely essen- 
 tial for our salvation that we find Him within 
 ourselves. This is the greatest discovery in 
 life. Wordsworth found this to be true when 
 he said: 
 
 “Tn youth I looked to those very skies 
 And probing their immensities 
 I found God there, His Visible Power ; 
 Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense 
 Of the power, an equal evidence 
 That His love there too, was the nobler 
 dower. 
 
 It were wisdom then to seek for God within 
 our own souls and to listen for His voice speak- 
 ing within. He can be found by the earnest 
 seeker and patient listener at any time of day 
 or night and in any place. God is easy to be 
 found. Walt Whitman asks: 
 
 “Why should I wish to see God better than this 
 day? 
 I see something of God every hour of the 
 twenty-four, and each moment then; 
 In the faces of men and women I see God, and 
 in my own face in the glass.” 
 
Call of Upper Road Within the Soul 69 
 
 Paul says, “In Him we live and move and 
 have our being.” “One God and Father of us 
 all who is above all and through all and in you 
 all.” 
 
 “How far from here to heaven? Not very far, 
 my friend; 
 A simple hearty step will all thy journey end. 
 Hold there, where runnest thou: Know heaven 
 is in thee, 
 Seekest thou for God elsewhere, His face 
 thou It never see.” 
 
 It 1s very fine to be able to go to the gardens 
 and the waters and the mountains where nature 
 is so calm and so beautiful and inspiring, where 
 her many voices make it easy for us to think 
 of God as we look and wonder and admire, but 
 the great majority of us have to live such busy 
 lives that we have little if any time to spend in 
 meditation out in the open. We are busily 
 engaged doing our part of the world’s work. 
 It is a great joy to know that we may find God 
 at our work, and that there we may be even 
 closer to Him than out of doors simply 
 admiring nature. 
 
 In kitchens and offices, in factories and 
 
70 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 mines, in the crowded street, we see not the 
 beauty of the out-of-doors. But wherever we 
 are, and whatever our work, no matter how 
 crowded or how shut in we may be, we may 
 find God there, and hold sweet communion with 
 Him, and be comforted by the great assurance 
 that comes to us of His presence and of His 
 approval of work well done. Henry Van 
 Dyke expresses this truth in “The Toiling of 
 Belix,’: 
 
 ‘“‘Nevermore thou needst seek me; 
 I am with thee everywhere; 
 Raise the stone, and thou shalt find me; 
 Cleave the wood and I am there.” 
 x x x 
 “This is the gospel of labor ; 
 Ring it ye bells of the kirk! 
 The Lord of love came down from above 
 To dwell with the people who work.” 
 
 Jane Taylor Wolfe has well said: “God of 
 the Open Air is a splendid thought, but isn’t it 
 a comfort to say, ‘And we walk together, my 
 Lord and I,’ in the noisy cars, or among the 
 streets and shops crowded with folks He has 
 made ?”’ 
 
Call of Upper Road Wethin the Soul 71 
 
 The very atmosphere of whatever place you 
 are in becomes surcharged with life when you 
 are conscious of the presence of God. It all 
 depends on what your soul is seeking. Some 
 one said to a business man in New York City, 
 “Wall Street leads straight to Hell!” The 
 business man replied, “It is true, and it leads 
 just as straight to Heaven. It simply depends 
 on which way one is going. I have found it 
 as much a means of grace as some prayer meet- 
 ings.” It is as easy to find Christ on Wall 
 Street as it is to find Him on the mountain top. 
 He is in the midst of the business of the world 
 today. This is a day when there is much busi- 
 ness to be attended to, and it 1s a great comfort 
 to know that He is right with us and is using 
 us in the carrying out of His plans for the 
 world. George D. Herron, speaking of Christ 
 in our midst, said: “Christ is toiling in the 
 world today, revealing His glory and mani- 
 festing His power inestimably more than when 
 He traveled the Judean hills and dwelt in the 
 Galilean city. He lives and reigns and speaks 
 through the Holy Spirit, and is more imminent 
 than the air we breathe. He is always coming 
 
72 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 in the events of our lives, in the crises of time, 
 silently as the sun’s rays, secretly as the thief 
 at night, coming in upon us unawares, inspir- 
 ing our thoughts, speaking with our words, 
 directing our deeds, thwarting our plans, and 
 molding destinies to us unknown.” 
 
 “Speak to Him then for He heareth 
 And spirit with spirit can meet; 
 Closer is He than breathing, 
 Nearer than hands or feet.” 
 
 “For ye are the Temple of the living God; 
 as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and 
 walk in them, and I will be their God, and they 
 shall be my people . . . And I will be a Father 
 unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daugh- 
 ters, saith the Lord Almighty.” 
 
 Jessie E. Sampter, addressing God in a 
 psalm, said: 
 
 “They have burned to Thee many tapers in 
 many temples: 
 I burn to Thee the taper of my heart. 
 They have sought Thee at many altars, 
 They have carried light to find Thee. 
 I find Thee in the white fire of my heart. 
 
Call of Upper Road Within the Soul 73 
 
 They have gone forth restlessly, forging 
 many shapes, images where they seek 
 Thee, idols of deed and thought. 
 
 Thou art the fire of my deeds: Thou art the 
 white flame of my dreams.” 
 
 Phillips Brooks wrote to one of his most 
 intimate friends: 
 
 ““All experience comes to me to be but more 
 and more of pressure of God’s life in ours... 
 I cannot tell how personal this grows to be. 
 He is here. He knows me and I know Him. 
 It is no figure of speech. It is the realest thing 
 in the world, and one wonders with delight 
 what it will grow to be as the years go on.” 
 
 Tagore, in “Songs of Kabir,” says: 
 
 “O servant, where dost thou seek Me? 
 Lo, I am beside thee; 
 I am neither in temple nor in mosque; 
 I am neither in Kaaha nor in Kailish; 
 Neither am I in rites and ceremonies. 
 If thou art a true seeker, thou shalt at once 
 see Me; 
 Thou shalt meet Me in a moment of time.” 
 
 Kabir replies: ‘““O Sadhu! God is breath of 
 all breath.” 
 
74. The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 Tagore’s father, Maharshi Debendranath 
 Tagore, one of India’s greatest spiritual 
 leaders, once had a skeptical friend come to 
 him and say: “You talk of God, ever and 
 again of God! What proof is there that there 
 is a God at all?” The Maharshi pointed to 
 the light and asked his skeptic friend, “Do 
 you know what that is?” “Light,” was the 
 reply. The Maharshi then asked, “How do 
 you know that there is a light there’ The 
 skeptic answered: “I see it; it is there and it 
 needs no proof; it is self-evident.” ‘So is the 
 evidence of God,” replied the Maharshi. “I 
 see Him within me and without me, in every- 
 thing and through everything, and it needs no 
 proof; it is self-evident.”’ 
 
 Robert Browning testifies to the same truth 
 when he says: 
 
 “T know that He is there as I am here, 
 By the same proof, which means no proof 
 at all, 
 It so exceeds familiar forms of proof.” 
 
 "Tis we who doubt. ’Tis we who wander 
 away from God, not God from us. We neg- 
 lect the Spirit within us. We become pre- 
 
Call of Upper Road Within the Soul 75 
 
 occupied with the things that gratify our 
 senses. Lady Henry Somerset of England in 
 her younger days allowed herself to be carried 
 away with frivolous society until it occupied 
 all of her thought and attention. After a time 
 she became weary of thus frivoling away her 
 thoughts, her time, and her energy. Her soul 
 felt hungry and starved. She became dissatis- 
 fied with herself. One day she went out into 
 her beautiful garden to think things out alone. 
 
 There is always hope for an individual who 
 stops to do some serious thinking about life. 
 One of the requirements of real life is that one 
 must stop to think in order to advance. We 
 should be able every day to give a satisfactory 
 answer to our inner selves in regard to our 
 conduct of life. Every day, with its new prob- 
 lems and its new opportunities, we should stop 
 to ask ourselves what is best for each particular 
 day and why. Too few stop long enough to do 
 real constructive thinking in these rushing but 
 momentous days. We would get farther if we 
 stopped to think and listen, if we stopped to 
 pray and plan, if we stopped to grow and give. 
 Samuel M. Crothers says, “The world is full 
 of creatures that are doing things without ask- 
 
76 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 ing why. You can’t educate a grasshopper. 
 He is too busy hopping. The peculiarity of 
 man is, you can induce him to stop and think.” 
 
 They say that we moderns travel faster than 
 our ancestors, but where are we going? Some 
 one else makes the statement that it matters not 
 how fast we run if we are going in the wrong 
 direction. According to a Russian proverb, 
 “It is better to turn back than to lose one’s 
 way.’ Without God we get nowhere. 
 
 The day that Lady Henry Somerset went 
 out into her garden and sat under an elm tree 
 to think was a memorable day in her life. She 
 had gotten farther than she had in many years. 
 She listened to the voice within her own soul 
 on that day, and her soul heard some very plain 
 talking. She became very much ashamed of 
 her conduct, dissatisfied with the wasteful life 
 she had been living, disappointed with herself 
 for having yielded to the doing of things that 
 did not help herself or others, acknowledged 
 her weakness in giving way to momentary 
 pleasures, and losing sight of the great plan 
 and purpose of life, and failing to help out in 
 the great work that needed to be done. 
 
 The old life had such a hold on her that she 
 
Call of Upper Road Within the Soul 77 
 
 wondered if she could get away from the kind 
 of life she had been living—if she could change 
 the road she was on for a better one. She had 
 traveled the old road so long, and was linked 
 up in it in so many ways that the change would 
 be very difficult. Her friends were on that 
 road, and what would they think? Her manner 
 of life conformed to the rules of action of that 
 road. She really wanted to change, but how 
 could she? These were the thoughts that ran 
 through her mind. She sought God, but as she 
 sought she doubted, but while she doubted she 
 still sought the God of the Upper Road, and 
 she did not have long to seek. No sooner had 
 she repented of her old ways of living, and felt 
 her utter need of Him and wanted to find Him 
 more than anything else in the world, than she 
 heard a voice say most earnestly, most sweetly 
 and most assuringly: 
 
 “ACT AS IF I WERE AND THOU SHALT KNOW 
 THAT I AM.” 
 
 Out under the blue sky, in the stillness of 
 the garden, in the atmosphere of His roses, her 
 soul stirred by the Spirit of God as the leaves 
 of the tree under which she sat were stirred by 
 the gentle breeze, she entered quietly, peace- 
 
78 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 fully, she knew not how, onto the Upper Road, 
 into a newness of life, a life of loftiest purpose 
 and divine fellowship. She surrendered her- 
 self to the God of her soul, to Jesus Christ her 
 Redeemer, and to the guidance of the Holy 
 Spirit. 
 “ * * * a soul Sublime 
 And the great pregnant hour of time 
 With God Himself to bind the twain.” 
 
 She went from her garden to her room where 
 she would not be interrupted. There she sat 
 down and read the whole Gospel of St. John, 
 that wonderful little Gospel that tells all one 
 needs to know about the Way of Life. She 
 went to sleep that night happy in the new ex- 
 perience that came to her that day. The next 
 morning she awoke to find a world that seemed 
 all new to her because of her great vision of 
 life, and her own determination, with God’s 
 help, to go forth to make life better for herself 
 and others. 
 
 She related her experience and her decisions 
 to her friends. With the confession came new 
 strength. She began right away to study the 
 
Call of Upper Road Wethin the Soul 79 
 
 wonderful Little Book that God has given us 
 and through which He speaks to us by the 
 Holy Spirit. She held Bible readings with the 
 tenants on her estate, and also with the colliers 
 in the mines. As she studied and moved among 
 her people they became more precious and more 
 wonderful to her. She forgot their poverty 
 and felt that many of them were far richer 
 than herself in the things that really count in 
 life. Through them she learned to look dif- 
 ferently on all people everywhere. She had a 
 great desire to help as many as she could to 
 know the blessings of the Upper Road. The 
 story of her life is one of marvelous achieve- 
 ments. She and Frances Willard became inter- 
 national figures in the cause of temperance. 
 She had helped many who had lost their way to 
 find God as she had found Him. To herself 
 came greater joy as she witnessed the trans- 
 formation of the lives of men and women that 
 came with the changing of the road, and the 
 reading of THE BOOK. 
 
 These Upper Road experiences never come 
 to travelers on other roads. Poor starved 
 souls, they know not what they miss, yet they 
 could have by just seeking and asking. 
 
80 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 ‘God is not dumb that He should speak no 
 
 more; 
 
 lf thou hast wanderings in the wilderness 
 
 And findest not Sinai, ‘tis thy soul is poor. 
 
 There towers the mountain of the Voice no 
 less 
 
 Which whoso seeks shall find, but he who 
 bends 
 
 Intent on manna still, and mortal ends, 
 
 Sees it not, neither hears its thunder lore.” ? 
 
 Lady Somerset sought and found her Sinai. 
 She lived in newness of life. She never could 
 have accomplished what she did had she not 
 listened to the Voice. No other road could 
 have done for her what the Upper Road has 
 done. It brought out the best there was in her. 
 It led her to pass her best on to others. It 
 changed her course in life from one of “‘fash- 
 ionable society to one of consecrated philan- 
 thropy.” 
 
 Horace Bushnell in his youth was carried 
 away by the lures of other roads, and he lis- 
 tened not for God’s voice. He had even gone 
 so far as to say that he did not believe there 
 
 * Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
Call of Upper Road Wrthin the Soul 81 
 
 was a God. The road he was then on filled his 
 mind with doubts about God. One day an 
 earnest young minister pleaded with him to 
 change his way and seek God. He asked him 
 to pray, but Horace Bushnell refused and said 
 he couldn’t pray because he didn’t believe in 
 God. The young minister then asked him if, 
 after he went to his room where he could be 
 alone, he would begin by saying, “Oh God, if 
 there is a God . . .” Horace Bushnell agreed 
 to this. Several days later the young minister 
 had the great joy of hearing Horace Bushnell 
 testify before a large congregation his belief 
 in the presence and the power of God. He left 
 the old road he had been traveling to become a 
 great preacher of the Upper Road. 
 
 “Who goes a step toward God with doubtings 
 dim, 
 In glorious light God comes a mile toward 
 
 3? 
 
 him. 
 
 Finding God does not depend on belief or on 
 feeling, but on accepting. 
 
 D. L. Moody tells of a conversation he had 
 with a man in England. “Are you a Chris- 
 tian?’ Mr. Moody asked the man, and he 
 
82 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 replied, ‘“No, but I wish I were.” Mr. Moody 
 quoted verses from the Bible and when he was 
 through the young man said they did not fit 
 his case.” ‘“‘The fact is, I cannot feel that I 
 am saved.” Mr. Moody replied, “Was it 
 Noah’s feelings that saved him, or the ark?” 
 The man replied, “Good night, Mr. Moody, it’s 
 all settled.””. The young man accepted. 
 
 Mary Roberts Rinehart says: 
 
 “T am not disturbed when, as happens to 
 most young men, there comes a time when out 
 of the confusion of creeds, opinions and dog- 
 mas, there emerges the temporary self-suff- 
 ciency of youth. I am not as much disturbed 
 as I might be even when doubts creep in, and 
 religion, so-called, goes temporarily out of the 
 window. 
 
 “T have never known a worth-while man who 
 has not had these doubts and these spiritual 
 lapses. But I am not disturbed because I know 
 this: sooner or later every man needs God. 
 The stronger and more male the man, the surer 
 he is to need Him, and to need Him is to find 
 Wa bbaate = 
 
 ? Assn. Men, June, 1923. 
 
Call of Upper Road Within the Soul 83 
 And when found to be able to say: 
 
 “Thou art the life within me, 
 O Jesus, king of kings; 
 Thou art Thyself the answer 
 To all my questionings.”’ 
 
 The ear may hear many things, but it will 
 never be satisfied until it hears God’s voice. 
 The eye may see many things, but it will not be 
 satisfied with anything less than the soul vision 
 of Him. The heart is filled with longings and 
 will not rest until He enters. Life is hollow 
 until we find God and accept Him. 
 
 The dissatisfactions of life are all for a pur- 
 pose. The longing and yearning for some- 
 thing better and higher is a sure indication that 
 there is a God that can satisfy. ‘Our souls are 
 restless till they rest in Thee.” Edwin H. 
 Chapin said, “If you could take the human 
 heart and listen to it, it would be like listening 
 to a seashell; you would hear in it the hollow 
 murmur of the infinite ocean to which it be- 
 longs, from which it draws its profoundest 
 inspiration and for which it yearns.” 
 
 Mary Carolyn Davies writes: 
 
84 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 “When the sun shines in the street 
 There are very many feet 
 Seeking God, still unaware 
 That their seeking is a prayer. 
 Perhaps those feet would think it odd 
 (Who think they are on business bent) 
 If some one went 
 And told them, ‘You are seeking God.’ ”’ 
 
 St. Augustine said, “I desire to know God 
 and the soul! Nothing else! Nothing else!’ 
 Robert Browning asks: 
 
 “What is it that I hunger for but God? 
 My God, my God, let me for once look on Thee 
 As though naught else existed, we alone.” 
 
 Maxwell Struthers Burt says: 
 
 “Straying we have a little lost our way, 
 Nor see as yet the darkness folding in; 
 Aye—for in the end, sore and torn and 
 bruised we, 
 Like long-lost children, will return to Thee; 
 Like coast-born children, weary for the sea.” 
 
 No mere statement about God, no mere belief 
 as to what we think about Him can satisfy the 
 
Call of Upper Road Within the Soul 85 
 
 soul. We must know God. We must find Him 
 for ourselves. We must accept Him. He must 
 become the most real, the most necessary, the 
 most conscious Presence in our lives. 
 
 “Though Christ in Joseph’s town 
 A thousand times be born, 
 Till He is born in thee 
 
 Thy soul is most forlorn.” 
 
 God is the only answer to our soul’s longing. 
 “God does not put in the wild geese the instinct 
 to go South without a South to go to. He did 
 not inspire Columbus to sail without a San 
 Salvador on hand to land.” 
 
 When God made sound. He gave us the ear. 
 When He made things beautiful He gave us 
 the eye. When He made knowledge He gave 
 us the mind. When He gave us immortal souls 
 He gave us Himself. He tells us that our body 
 is the temple of His Holy Spirit. “Know ye 
 not that your body is the temple of God?” In- 
 side this wonderful temple we may hold sweet 
 communion with Him. We may worship and 
 adore Him. No one but Himself sees inside 
 this wonderful temple of ours. No outsider 
 
86 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 knows what sacred rites are taking place inside. 
 No one can come as near us, or understand us 
 as well, or love us as much as God. No one 
 else knows the real longings and the struggles 
 and the transformations going on within. 
 Some day we shall emerge from our temple and 
 “know as we are known.” 
 
 “Tn the dawning of the morning of that bright 
 and happy day, 
 We shall know each other better when the 
 mists have rolled away.” 
 
 This soul of ours that is so much misunder- 
 stood here shall some day come to its own, and 
 the beautiful anner colorings and tints and 
 shades and exquisite designs shall be in keeping 
 with itself, a thing of perfection, for “‘we shall 
 be like Him for we shall see Him as He is;” 
 and “everyone who hath this hope in him purifi- 
 eth himself even as He is pure.” The most 
 wonderful, the most important, the most intri- 
 cate, the most impressionable, the most power- 
 ful, the only everlasting thing about us is our 
 soul. Fannie Stearns Davis, writing on 
 ~Souls/ said - 
 
Call of Upper Road Within the Soul 87 
 
 “My soul goes clad in gorgeous things, 
 Scarlet and gold and blue, 
 And at her shoulder sudden wings 
 Like long flames flicker through. 
 
 ““And she is swallow fleet and free 
 From mortal bonds and bars, 
 She laughs, because Eternity 
 Blossoms for her with stars! 
 
 “O folk who scorn my stiff, gray gown, 
 My dull and foolish face, 
 Can you not see my Soul flash down, 
 A singing flame through space? 
 
 “And folk, whose earth-stained looks I hate, 
 Why may I not divine 
 Your Souls, that must be passionate, 
 Shining and swift, as mine?” 
 
 It is to this life of wondrous inner beauty 
 and harmony and peace that the Upper Road 
 calls you. Various are the ways in which you 
 may hear God speaking within your soul. 
 Various are the ways by which you may find 
 Him. To some He comes in one way and to 
 some in another, but He never fails to speak. 
 
88 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 He never fails to come, and none need ever fail 
 to find Him. 
 
 “God speaks to hearts of men in many ways: 
 
 Some the red banner of the rising sun 
 
 Spread o’er the snowclad hills has taught His 
 praise, 
 
 Some the sweet silence when the day is done; 
 
 Some after loveless lives at length have won 
 
 His word in children’s hearts and children’s 
 Paze. 
 
 And some have found Him where low rafters 
 ring 
 
 To greet the hand that helps, the heart that 
 cheers; 
 
 And some in prayer, and some in perfecting 
 
 Of watchful toil through unrewarding years; 
 
 And some not less are His, who vainly sought 
 
 His voice, and with His silence have been 
 taught— 
 
 Who bear His chain who bade them to be 
 bound 
 
 And at the end ‘n finding not, have found.” ? 
 
 The main thing in life is to have found Him, 
 to have accepted the Call of the Upper Road. 
 * Frederick F. Shannon. 
 
Call of Upper Road Within the Soul 89 
 
 Every day if you listen you may become con- 
 scious of the Call of the Upper Road within 
 your own soul. God enters daily into your 
 private life. The very air you breathe He 
 gives you; the breath of life within you is a 
 eift from Him. The longings within your soul 
 is His Holy Spirit stirring you that you may 
 accept Him, and thus find peace and satisfac- 
 tion. You can satisfy your soul only by listen- 
 ing to the Call of the Upper Road, and accepting 
 God and communing with Him, and entering 
 into partnership with Him, and living a life 
 acceptable unto Him. Then at the end of the 
 Road of Life here you will enter into a larger 
 life when the soul comes to its own—a life of 
 blessedness and satisfaction and perfection and 
 joy unspeakable through all eternity. 
 

 
CHAPTER 4: The Moracle of Will on 
 the Upper Road 
 
“This main miracle that I am I 
 With power on mine own act and on the 
 world.” 
 
 “To know the will of God is the greatest 
 knowledge; 
 To suffer the will of God is the greatest 
 heroism ; 
 To do the will of God is the greatest achieve- 
 ment,” 
 —Dr. LyMAN ABBOTT. 
 
CHAPTER 4 
 
 The Meracle of Wall on the Upper Road 
 
 _ “To every one there openeth 
 A way and ways and a way, 
 And the high soul climbs the high way, 
 And the low soul gropes the low; 
 And in between on the misty flats 
 The rest drift to and fro; 
 But to every man there openeth 
 A high way and a low, 
 And every man decideth 
 The way his soul shall go.”’ 
 —JoHN OXENHAM. 
 
 No road is forced upon you. You travel 
 whatever road you are on because you willed 
 sotodo. Your willis yourself in action. Your 
 will is your soul exercising self direction. 
 Your will, your own free will, makes you re- 
 sponsible for whatever you choose and holds 
 
 you accountable all through life for that which 
 93 
 
94 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 you choose to do. Your will is a wonderful 
 divine gift. You will yourself to be whatever 
 you are. By exercising your will aright you 
 can accomplish great things, overcome great 
 difficulties within and without. “All that life 
 needs for life,’ says Tennyson, “is possible to 
 will.’ If you exercise your will aright, you 
 need never feel sorry for yourself, nor consider 
 yourself a creature of circumstances, or of 
 heredity, or of environment. Your will can 
 carry you beyond any difficulties you may en- 
 counter on the way. Your will enables you to 
 master disadvantages and make them serve as 
 ladders by which you can rise to loftier heights, 
 and to the experience of greater joys, and to 
 the accomplishment of greater service. “You 
 must know, my daughter,” says St. Theresa, 
 “that there is no supernatural act but depends 
 on our will; and that therefore we can do it, 
 with that ordinary assistance of God which we 
 need for all our acts and even for our good 
 thoughts.” 
 
 The attitude of your will is the controlling 
 factor in your life. It is not the place, nor the 
 circumstances, nor the environment, nor the 
 family into which you were born that decides 
 
 Sa ee ee | 
 
The Miracle of Will on Upper Road 95 
 
 your career, but it is you and your will. Noth- 
 ing can harm or weaken the will but the will 
 itself. If you cultivate your will power aright, 
 your life will be a success. 
 
 “This main miracle that I am I 
 With power on mine own act and on the 
 world.” 
 
 In the same family, members think differ- 
 ently, choose differently all through life, al- 
 though they have had the same parents, the 
 same environments and the same advantages, 
 and the same religious training. Each chooses 
 for himself the way his soul shall go. 
 
 “So, from the heights of will 
 Life’s parting stream descends; 
 And, as a moment turns, its slender rill, 
 Each widening torrent bends. 
 
 From the same cradle side— 
 
 From the same mother’s knee— 
 
 One to long darkness and the frozen tide, 
 One to the peaceful sea.”’ * 
 
 An English girl one day related an incident 
 that led her to choose the best road. She said, 
 * Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
96 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 “When I was a child I faced many difficulties 
 that seemed insurmountable. I saw no way of 
 bettering myself. I found myself ready to 
 drift. I had a friend in the neighborhood who 
 was always interested in young people. This 
 friend knew I was discouraged and said to me, 
 “You need not be discouraged. Exercise your 
 will power and you will come out all right. 
 You can become a power and do worth-while 
 things if you really want to. It all depends on 
 your will power.’ He then had me commit to 
 memory the following lines from Ella Wheeler 
 Wilcox. I have repeated them so many times 
 I shall never forget them: 
 
 “ “The human will, that force unseen, 
 The offspring of a deathless soul, 
 Can hew the way to any goal, 
 Though walls of granite intervene.’ ” 
 
 “Tn that case,” said my friend, “I really felt 
 that walls of granite did intervene and that 
 my case was most difficult. I willed, however, 
 to do my best, to forge ahcrd, to study, to 
 work, to pray, and daily choose the best. It 
 was the turning point in my life. As soon as I 
 deliberately chose the better way my thoughts 
 
 re 
 
Lhe Meracle of Will on Upper Road 97 
 
 and my life were changed daily as by a miracle. 
 Healing and restorative forces began their 
 work within me. I lived to hew through my 
 walls of granite. I reached the goal I sought, 
 and there found still better goals ahead to keep 
 me ever striving.” This friend became a power 
 for good and was instrumental in helping many 
 others overcome their difficulties. 
 
 There is nothing you cannot overcome if you 
 really think you can, and keep persistently after 
 the thing you desire. What Kant said is true, 
 “All that ought to be done can be done.” 
 
 Napoleon had strong will power. At one 
 time he had his engineer report to him on the 
 dangerous passes in the Alps. The engineer 
 after examining them brought back the word, 
 “Tt will be impossible to take the artillery 
 across.” Napoleon replied, ‘““There shall be no 
 Alps. Impossible is found only in the diction- 
 ary of fools.” Across the Alps they went. 
 
 Mirabeau had a like disrespect for the word 
 “impossible,” for he said “‘Impossible is a 
 blockhead of a word.” 
 
 To him who wills to do God’s will and to 
 carry out His plans nothing is impossible. 
 With God nothing is impossible. There is no 
 
98 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 power but of God and we succeed only in so 
 far as our will is in harmony with the divine 
 will. 
 
 “Got any rivers they say are uncrossable? 
 Got any mountains you can’t tunnel through? 
 We specialize in the wholly impossible 
 Doing what nobody ever could do.” 
 
 These were the lines that were written about 
 the Panama Canal when people, without faith, 
 said that it could not be dug. When you will 
 to do a thing and get so far as to take pick and 
 shovel and get after it, you will find that the 
 obstacle will begin to disappear, and in time 
 there will be clear sailing. 
 
 If your will is in harmony with God’s will 
 you can overcome any obstacle, remove any 
 mountain, dig through any canal, cross any 
 Alps, hew through any wall of granite, tackle 
 any proposition and come out victorious. If 
 God wants a thing done and appoints you to do 
 it, nothing can stand in the way of your accom- 
 plishing it 1f you do your part. 
 
 “‘“A man went down to Panama, 
 Where many a man had died, 
 
Lhe Meracle of Will on Upper Road 99 
 
 To slit the sliding mountains 
 And lift the eternal tide: 
 
 A man stood up in Panama, 
 
 And the mountains stood aside.” ? 
 
 It is the person with the strong will and the 
 right cause that accomplishes, and is able to 
 overcome the material. Such persons choose 
 the Upper Road and hold the key to the secrets 
 that enable them to overcome. They have the 
 victory within themselves. They forge ahead 
 and do not fear. “As the eagle that lives in 
 the upper air does not worry as to how it is to 
 cross rivers,’ so they are not troubled as to 
 how they are going to overcome things here 
 below. They proceed as though there were no 
 obstacles in their way and they succeed. They 
 are able to say with Charlotte P. Gilman, 
 
 “T took my hat, I took my stick, 
 My load I settled fair ; 
 I approached that awful incubus 
 With an absent-minded air, 
 And I walked directly through him, 
 As if he wasn’t there.” 
 
 * Percy MacKaye. 
 
100 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 He isn’t there. He never is, if we do not 
 take him too seriously. He has a way of dis- 
 solving as we approach. Our greatest obstacles 
 are within ourselves and are usually created by 
 our own fears and our lack of will power. 
 
 The enemies of John Bunyan shut him up in 
 Bedford jail thinking they could keep him 
 within bounds. They did not know what was 
 within the man whom they imprisoned. To 
 John Bunyan, prison walls were no obstacle. 
 He was greater than prison walls. His prison 
 cell became to him a place of quiet where he 
 had time to himself in which to think and write. 
 Instead of his influence being limited it was 
 extended to all time and to all people by his 
 writing one of the greatest allegories in all his- 
 tory. His seeming hindrance became his 
 greatest opportunity. 
 
 “My prison walls cannot control 
 The flight and freedom of my soul.” 
 
 Fannie Crosby became blind when she was 
 six months old. Her darkness was greater 
 than prison, but that did not hinder Fannie 
 Crosby from doing a great service in life. It 
 did not stop her from becoming a power for 
 
 
 
Lhe Miracle of Will on Upper Road 101 
 
 good and sending out a helpful message for all 
 time. The real Fanny Crosby was inside. She 
 was an Upper Road traveler with a soul and a 
 will. She hewed through her walls of granite 
 and she scaled her Alps. She was bigger than 
 any affliction that came to her. When very 
 young she began to exercise her will power. 
 At eight years of age she wrote: 
 
 “O what a happy soul am [! 
 Although I cannot see, 
 I am resolved that in this world 
 Contented I will be; 
 How many blessings I enjoy 
 That other people don’t! 
 To weep and sigh because I’m blind, 
 I cannot and I won’t.” 
 
 Fannie Crosby became one of the greatest 
 of hymn writers, and she has passed on three 
 thousand hymns that are being sung through 
 the ages, giving joy and comfort to all who sing 
 them. Who have not felt the thrill of joy in 
 the words of one of her hymns as they sang: 
 
 “Blessed assurance Jesus is mine, 
 O what a foretaste of glory divine! 
 
102 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 Heir of salvation, purchase of God; 
 Born of His spirit, washed in His blood. 
 
 This is my story, this is my song; 
 Praising my Saviour all the day long.” 
 
 If John Bunyan in prison could pass on to 
 others his wonderful message in Pilgrim Prog- 
 ress, and if Fannie Crosby in her blindness 
 could pass on three thousand hymns, what can 
 you with all your present day advantages, and 
 all your faculties, pass on to others during your 
 lifetime? 
 
 “There is no thing that you cannot overcome; 
 Say not thy evil instinct is inherited, 
 Or that some trait inborn makes thy whole life 
 forlorn. 
 
 Back of thy parents and thy grandparents 
 Lies the Great Eternal Will: That too is thine 
 Inheritance; strong, beautiful, divine, 
 
 Sure lever of success for one who tries. 
 
 Earth hath no claim the soul cannot attest; 
 Know thyself part of the Eternal Source; 
 Naught can stand before thy spirit’s force; 
 The soul’s divine Inheritance is best.” 
 
The Miracle of Will on Upper Road 102 
 
 Some one said, “God struck Milton blind that 
 he might write his greatest masterpiece.” 
 
 Parcel, the great mathematician and novelist, 
 we are told, turned his ill health into a means 
 of spiritual perfection. God knows and sends 
 or permits what is best. We, with our limited 
 vision, do not always see this, but in the end we 
 may be able to say with Tennyson: 
 
 “T have lived; seen God’s hand through a life- 
 time, 
 And all was for the best.” 
 
 Our seeming obstacles and our troubles are 
 only blessings in disguise. Some people get the 
 foolish notion that God is not with them when 
 things go against them. God wants us to be 
 greater than things. Unless we are, we fail. 
 “All things work together for good to them 
 that love God, to them who are called according 
 to His purpose.” 
 
 “T learn as the years roll onward 
 And leave the past behind, 
 That much I had counted sorrow 
 But proves that our God is kind; 
 
104. The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 That many a flower I longed for 
 Had a hidden thorn of pain; 
 And many a ragged by-path 
 Led to fields of ripened grain.” 
 
 William Ernest Henley, we are told, saw all 
 his cherished plans go down in defeat because 
 of a bodily disease. His power of will was 
 wonderful. He never complained but ever 
 arose above his sufferings. He writes: 
 
 “Tn the fell clutch of circumstance 
 I have not winced nor cried aloud, 
 Under the bludgeonings of chance 
 My head is bloody but unbowed. 
 ramen ie hate ss HE Fe 
 It matters not how straight the gate, 
 How charged with punishment the scroll; 
 I am the Master of my fate; 
 I am the Captain of my soul.” 
 
 Harriet Beecher Stowe said, ‘“‘Nobody’s case 
 is desperate whose will is not at fault. When 
 I hear people say that circumstances are against 
 them, I always retort “Your will is not with 
 you.’ I believe in the will. I have faith in it.” 
 
 Louise M. Alcott seemingly had reason to 
 
 
 
The Miracle of Will on Upper Road 105 
 
 believe that circumstances were against her. 
 Her family was heavily in debt. She, herself, 
 was subject to very severe headaches and she 
 lived a rather obscure life. When a child she 
 went out one day and sat on the hub of an old 
 ox cart and there made up her mind that she 
 was going to amount to something in life. She 
 made the following resolution: 
 
 “T will do something by and by. Ill sew, 
 act, write, do anything to help the family, and 
 I’ll be rich, famous and happy before I die: see 
 if I don’t.” 
 
 When she first thought of becoming a writer, 
 her father handed her a manuscript that had 
 been rejected by James F. Field, editor of the 
 Atlantic Monthly, with the message: “Tell 
 Louise to stick to her teaching. She can never 
 succeed as a writer.” Louise said to her 
 father: “Tell him I will succeed as a writer, 
 and some day I shall write for the Atlantic 
 Monthly.” Later on she wrote in her diary, 
 “Twenty years ago I resolved to make the 
 family independent if I could. At forty that 
 is done. My debts are all paid, even the out- 
 lawed ones, and we have enough to be com- 
 fortable.” . This is what happens when we 
 
106 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 “Wake the strong divinity of soul that con- 
 quers chance and fate.” 
 
 Harriet Beecher Stowe was busy at work in 
 her kitchen one morning when she received a 
 letter from her sister in which she said, ‘““Now 
 Hattie, if I could use a pen as you can, I would 
 write something that would make the whole 
 nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is.” 
 Her best self within her responded and she 
 said, “I will write something. I will if I live.” 
 The fact that she was busy with her household 
 duties and her outside interests did not matter. 
 She went on the principle that “if a thing 
 ought to be done it can be done.’”’ She believed 
 that “where there’s a will there’s a way.’ She 
 thought while she worked and wrote down 
 ideas as they came to her, and strange to say, 
 the faster ideas came the lighter seemed her 
 work. The more she gave expression to her 
 thoughts, the more thoughts she had to give. 
 The result was “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ a book 
 tingling with the idea of human rights; a book 
 that was instrumental in doing the very thing 
 that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s sister said it 
 would. 
 
 We find all through history that the men 
 
Lhe Miracle of Will on Upper Road 107 
 
 and women who accomplished the most were 
 not those who had the best of everything, who 
 held the highest positions, who had the largest 
 bank accounts, who had the greatest advan- 
 tages and opportunities, but they whose wills 
 were in harmony with God and His will. They 
 were those who daily overcame, and who un- 
 selfishly gave of their best thought and effort. 
 They were those who “fought a good fight and 
 came out more than conquerors through Him 
 that loved them.” 
 
 Whether it be your lot to find many difficul- 
 ties and much to overcome on the road, or 
 whether you find many pleasant paths and joys, 
 you will be successful only as you will to aspire 
 to the highest thinking and acting and the 
 passing on of the best you have to others. You 
 must be persistent in so living that the Spirit 
 may abide within you and work through you. 
 God can work in you only as you yield willingly 
 to the divine promptings within you. These 
 inner promptings have to do with all the details 
 of your life. The Spirit within you helps you 
 to do away with everything in your life that 
 hinders you from doing the will of God. 
 
 When you surrender your will to God and 
 
108 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 His Holy Spirit takes possession of you, some- 
 thing eternally worth while happens. By His 
 grace you enter into a new life and you become 
 a member of God’s family. “I will put my 
 Spirit in you and ye shall become my sons and 
 daughters saith the Lord of Hosts.” You are 
 born into the spiritual kingdom. 
 
 Being born of the Spirit is called the Second 
 Birth. It differs from your first birth, for 
 when you came into this world you had nothing 
 to say about it. You had nothing to do with 
 your coming here. You had no choice. You 
 knew nothing about it until you were here for 
 some time. 
 
 Not so with the Second Birth. You must 
 choose to be born again. The Second Birth is 
 not thrust upon you against your will or with- 
 out your knowledge. It is a life granted to 
 those who want it and who will to abide in it. 
 It is a gift from God. Being born of the Spirit 
 is something that you cannot explain. The 
 Spirit dwells in you and prompts you and uses 
 you. It takes possession of you. It is so real, 
 so powerful, so vital and yet so elusive that it 
 is beyond explanation. 
 
 One time Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, 
 
The Miracle of Well on Upper Road 109 
 
 came to Jesus by night, and during the con- 
 versation he asked Jesus what it meant to be 
 born again. The Master replied by way of 
 illustration: “The wind bloweth where it list- 
 eth; thou hearest the sound thereof but thou 
 canst not tell whence it cometh nor whither it 
 goeth—so is everyone that is born of the 
 Spirit.” 
 
 You can tell something of the workings of 
 the Spirit by the way you overcome temptation, 
 by the way you daily live, by the influence you 
 exert. You live in newness of life. You have 
 new desires, new impulses, new visions, and an 
 appreciation of the things that are eternal. 
 
 The Master in speaking to the woman at the 
 well made clear the results that come from 
 being born again, when He said: “He that 
 drinketh of the water that I shall give shall 
 never thirst, for the water that | shall give him 
 shall be in him a well of water springing up 
 unto eternal life.” And thus spake He of the 
 Spirit which He promised to all those that 
 believe in His name. 
 
 You may know you have His Spirit dwelling 
 in you if you have constantly springing up 
 within you good desires, bits of prayer, psalms 
 
110 The Call of. the Upper Road 
 
 and hymns, and spiritual songs, thoughts that 
 lead to kind deeds, and the surrender of your 
 will to Him. 
 
 “Our wills are ours, we know not how 
 Our wills are ours to make them Thine.” 
 
 It takes will power to live the life of the 
 Spirit. It takes will power to keep out sinful 
 thoughts, motives and practices. It takes will 
 power to keep ourselves supplied with best 
 thoughts and desires By the help of the in- 
 dwelling Spirit it can be done. Paul says, “The 
 law of the spirit of life hath made me free from 
 the law of sin and death.” 
 
 S. M. Shoemaker, Jr., says: “It takes will 
 power to accept a life principle as exacting as 
 that of the Gospel and to make its truths an 
 experience instead of an intellectual conviction 
 of which we approve, or with which we are in 
 sympathy”. ... “It takes will power to stay 
 clear of the things in your life that you ought 
 not to indulge in and to constantly be ready and 
 able to replace them with what is right.” 
 
 It takes will power to change your course in 
 life and to turn about face, but with God’s help 
 it can be done. 
 
The Meracle of Will on Upper Road 111 
 
 This change in the direction of your life is 
 called Conversion. William James speaking of 
 conversion says: “It is the process, gradual or 
 sudden, by which a self, hitherto divided and 
 consciously wrong, inferior and unhappy, be- 
 comes unified, consciously right, superior and 
 happy.” Harold Bibgie tells us: “Conversion is 
 the only means by which a radically bad person 
 can be changed to a radically good person.” 
 
 Shoemaker says: “Surrender of the whole 
 self to God means the deliberate dedication by 
 deliberate act of will of one’s entire personality 
 to doing the will of God so far as we can dis- 
 Cover in 
 
 You cannot make yourself spiritual, how- 
 ever, by act of will. “By grace are ye saved 
 and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God. 
 Not of works lest any man should boast.” 
 
 “Go deeper. Let Christ come behind the doors 
 And change thy nature, have thine innermost 
 heart, 
 And then with all His consummate art, 
 Remake thyself! and lo! these lesser things 
 Shall flow as gracious rivers from pure 
 springs.” 
 
112 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 ‘Tis the men and women who surrendered 
 their wills to God that have accomplished worth- 
 while things in life, that transformed deserts 
 into gardens, that replaced ignorance with 
 knowledge, that changed false values to true. 
 It was a surrendered will that changed Paul of 
 Tarsus, a persecutor of the Christians, to be- 
 come one of the most ardent and faithful 
 followers of the Christ. 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher, in speaking of Paul’s 
 conversion, said: “‘He was a man of immense 
 conscience, immense pride, and immense com- 
 bativeness. He was converted. His conscience 
 did not diminish, his pride did not shrink, his 
 combativeness did not flow out. All those 
 great elements remained in him. Before he 
 was converted, his conscience worked with 
 malign feelings. Afterwards his conscience 
 worked with benevolent feelings. Before he 
 was converted, his pride worked for selfishness. 
 After he was converted his pride worked for 
 benevolence. Before he was converted, his 
 combativeness worked for cruelty. After he 
 was converted it worked for zeal.” 
 
 It was a surrendered will that made a man 
 
The Moracle of W2ll on Upper Road 1123 
 
 out of Jerry MacAuley and changed him from 
 a drunkard and a debauch to become a great 
 missionary in the slums of the city, and led him 
 to establish the first Rescue Mission for the 
 “Down and Outs.” His continued surren- 
 dered will and the Spirit within him freed him 
 from the “blinding paralyzing power of sin.” 
 He knew from experience the meaning of the 
 hymn: 
 
 “Vield not to temptation for yielding is sin, 
 Each victory will help you some other to win; 
 Fight manfully onward, dark passions subdue ; 
 Look ever to Jesus, He will carry you 
 
 through.” 
 
 Surrender of will does not mean freedom 
 from conflict. It does not mean less of the 
 exercise of one’s will. It means the same will 
 power acting along a higher plane. It calls at 
 times for all the exercise of will that we possess, 
 but with the will linked up with God there 
 cometh the victory. 
 
 “Vet one there is can curb myself, 
 Can roll the strangling load from me, 
 Break off the yoke and set me free.” 
 
114 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 “So came a Power to set up again all the 
 standards that were destroyed. . .. The 
 change sweeps through the whole life. Ideals 
 and ideas are all rearranged; the course of 
 thought is depleted to wholesome things and 
 right conduct becomes a matter of prime inter- 
 est... . Such overturnings are miraculous 
 achievements.” 
 
 Samuel Hadley, a persistent liar and drunk- 
 ard, a forger and a thief, became converted 
 through the influence of Jerry MacCauley. By 
 the grace of God we are told that he became a 
 changed man and in a period measured in 
 weeks he had broken with every false habit of 
 his life. He fully surrendered his will to God. 
 
 “Tt is will alone that matters, 
 Will alone that makes or breaks, 
 Will that no distraction shatters 
 And that no resistance shakes.” 
 
 Conversion is very simple. Our experiences 
 differ and our interpretation of conversion may 
 vary. Harry Emerson Fosdick in “Christianity 
 and Progress” says: “Ask Peter what it is and, 
 as he looks back upon his benighted condition, 
 he cries that it is like coming out of darkness 
 
The Meracle of Well on Upper Road 115 
 
 into a marvelous light. Ask Paul what it is 
 and, with his love of superlative figures, he 
 cries that it is like being dead and being raised 
 again with a great resurrection. Ask John 
 what it is and, with his mystical spirit, he says 
 that it is being born again.” 
 
 The surrender of your will to God is the 
 greatest act in life. ‘To know the will of God 
 is the greatest knowledge; to suffer the will of 
 God is the greatest heroism; to do the will of 
 God is the greatest achievement.”’ 
 
 There is at this time and in this place no act 
 of will of greater importance than your making 
 the following prayer your own: 
 
 “Laid on Thine altar, O my Lord divine, 
 Accept this day my gift for Jesus’ sake. 
 I have no jewels to adorn Thy shrine, 
 Nor any world-famed sacrifice to make; 
 But here I bring within my trembling hand 
 This will of mine: a thing that seemeth small; 
 And only Thou, dear Lord, canst understand 
 That when I yield, Thee this, I yield Thee all. 
 It hath been wet with tears and dimmed with 
 
 sighs, 
 
 Clenched in my clasp, till beauty it hath none. 
 
116 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 Now from Thy footstool, where it vanquished 
 lies, 
 
 The prayer ascendeth: “Let Thy will be done.’ 
 
 Take it O Father, e’er my courage fail, 
 
 And blend it so with Thine own will, that e’en 
 
 If in some desperate hour my cry prevail, 
 
 And Thou giv’st back my gift, it may have 
 been 
 
 So changed, so purified, so fair have grown, 
 
 So one with Thee, so filled with peace divine, 
 
 I may not know, nor feel it as my own, 
 
 But gaining back my will may find it Thine 
 
 1"? 
 
CHAPTER 5: The Upper Road Means 
 Climbing 
 
“Does the road wind up hill all the way? 
 Yes, to the very end. 
 Will the day’s journey take the whole long 
 day? 
 From morn to night, my friend.” 
 
CHAPTER 5 
 The Upper Road Means Climbing 
 
 “My road through life is rough at times, 
 With hills that dip and rise, 
 But this all helps my character— 
 
 It needs the exercise.”’ 
 —R, McCann. 
 
 The Upper Road calls forth daily the best 
 there is in you. It is not a road of ease. It is 
 a road of struggle and of growth and of serv- 
 ice. It is a road of action, of constant climb- 
 ing, and every day arriving a bit ahead of 
 where you were yesterday. Itisa fight against 
 everything that tends to keep you down, or that 
 leaves you below par. At the same time it is 
 a road of great satisfactions, and of power, 
 and of accomplishments. It offers you the big- 
 gest challenge in life. The greatest thing you 
 can aspire to be is a strong red-blooded Upper 
 Road traveler. 
 
 As soon as you begin to climb the Upper 
 119 
 
120 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 Road the possibilities within you begin to stir, 
 your soul begins to experience its freedom. 
 Growth and strength and new aspirations begin 
 within you the very moment you start, and 
 increase gradually as you go on. At first you 
 will not be conscious of any growth. It is not 
 easily detected any more than is the growth of 
 the seed when it is first planted in the ground. 
 As days and nights go by the change becomes 
 noticeable. 
 
 Strength comes with the climbing. Greater 
 vision 1s yours as you ascend. Your hearing 
 becomes keener. The soul becomes freer. 
 Your ideals of life become higher. You see life 
 in a new light. You find in life a great beau- 
 tiful design, and all the harmonies and beauties 
 and unselfish acts of life fit together to make 
 perfect the plan of the whole. The disconnec- 
 tions and discords of life disappear, and every- 
 thing in life becomes significant when you 
 climb high enough to see. Every step upward 
 is a part of the ultimate purpose. Every right 
 idea fits into it. Every dream of the climber 
 becomes the realization of some accomplish- 
 ment. All things work together toward one 
 great end. 
 
The Upper Road Means Climbing 121 
 
 You will find that they who climbed the 
 Upper Road in the past were individuals whose 
 daily work and daily dreams and daily resolu- 
 tions and daily endeavors were in perfect har- 
 mony with the promotion of some definite part 
 of the Great Eternal Plan. They kept on 
 climbing and halted not because of difficulties 
 on the way. They were full of faith and kept 
 bending their every energy in the direction of 
 the goal they sought. 
 
 Mary Lyon, founder of the first college for 
 women, was one of these. When a girl in 
 school, her seatmate asked her, “How is it that 
 the harder a thing is the more you seem to like 
 it, Mary?” Mary Lyon replied, “Oh, it’s lots 
 more fun climbing than just going along on the 
 level—you feel so much more alive. [Il tell 
 you what to do when things seem hard like a 
 steep hill. Just say to yourself, “Some people 
 may call you Difficulty, old hill, but I know that 
 your name is Opportunity. You're here just to 
 prove that I can do something worth while.’ 
 There is real joy in climbing; besides the sun 
 stays longer on the summit, and beyond the 
 hilltops is a larger, brighter world.” 
 
 All through her life we find Mary Lyon 
 
122 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 climbing and doing worth-while things. One 
 day while she was peeling potatoes in her broth- 
 er’s kitchen, the idea of a college for women 
 came to her. There were no colleges for 
 women in her day, and she became possessed 
 with the idea that women ought to be educated 
 as wellas men. She believed that every woman 
 should have the chance to make life the very 
 best possible. She thought with Tennyson: 
 
 “The woman's cause is man’s; they rise or sink 
 Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free.” 
 
 They must grow and work and climb to- 
 gether to reach the heights to which they are 
 each called. Mary Lyon felt that some one 
 ought to champion their cause. Why couldn't 
 she? Championing women’s cause in her day 
 meant some very difficult climbing. There 
 were no well beaten paths of thought in that 
 direction. She decided to go ahead and make 
 the path. Nothing daunted her. Difficulties 
 began to lose their substance as she came in 
 contact with them. Her enthusiasm inspired 
 faith. She raised the money and became the 
 founder of the first college for women. 
 
 This college for women in Mt. Holyoke, 
 
The Upper Road Means Climbing 1223 
 
 Massachusetts, is part of the present great sys- 
 tem of education, the beginning of better oppor- 
 tunities for women the world over. The doors 
 of many colleges of all kinds are now open to 
 women. 
 
 The wonderful and inspiring thought about 
 climbing the Upper Road is the fact that no 
 matter how big an idea you may have, no mat- 
 ter how far your vision may extend, there are 
 still higher heights, there are still greater un- 
 dreamed of visions and possibilities beyond 
 awaiting their time for realization. Every pio- 
 neer worker, every sincere climber is paving 
 the way for better things to follow; if not in 
 their own day, in that of others. 
 
 “What matter I or they? Mine or another’s 
 day, 
 So the right word be said and life the sweeter 
 made.” 
 
 Mary Lyon found her reward in the climb- 
 ing, and in the knowledge that she was helping 
 bring better things to others. Nothing could 
 stop her in her upward climb. Her mother 
 once said to a neighbor, “Mary will not give 
 up. She just walks the floor and says over and 
 
124 The Call of. the Upper Road 
 
 over again, ‘Commit thy way unto the Lord, 
 trust also in Him, and He will bring it to pass. 
 Women must be educated—they must be.’ ” 
 This little incident in Mary Lyon’s life lets 
 us into the secret of her accomplishments. Her 
 work was a part of God’s great plan and is 
 bound to grow to more and more. What edu- 
 cated men and women, who are in harmony 
 with God, are going to dream and accomplish 
 together in this old world, will surpass anything 
 that has ever been in its history. So far they 
 have made only a small beginning in their climb 
 together. When men and women are free and 
 rise together all over the world, it will be worth 
 while living just to see what will happen next. 
 
 “We are living, we are dwelling, 
 In a grand and awful time, 
 In an age on ages telling— 
 To be living is sublime.” 
 
 Alice Freeman Palmer lived in the days when 
 the majority of people did not consider it at all 
 important that women should go to college. 
 Alice was hungry for the best that life had to 
 offer. She wanted her mind as well as her body 
 and her soul to have more growth and greater 
 
Lhe Upper Road Means Climbing 125 
 
 freedom, in order that she might give expres- 
 sion daily to the best she had within her. 
 
 She told her father one day that she wanted 
 to go to college. He was greatly surprised, 
 tor she had everything at home that he thought 
 her heart could wish, and he replied: “My 
 daughter, a little more Latin and mathematics 
 won't make you a better home-maker. Why 
 should you set your heart on this thing?” 
 Alice answering him said, “I must go, Father. 
 It is not a sudden notion. I have realized for 
 a long time that I cannot live my life, the life 
 I have it in me to live, without this training. 
 I want to be a teacher, just as you want to be 
 a doctor.”’ 
 
 Her father consented and she went to col- 
 lege. She later became president of Wellesley 
 College, where she touched thousands of young 
 lives with her radiant personality and her big 
 view of life and inspired them to better living. 
 One of the girls said of her, “She had a way 
 of making you feel all dipped in sunshine.” 
 Another of her students said, “She seemed to 
 care for each of us, to find each as interesting 
 and worth while as if there were no other per- 
 son in the world.” A Wellesley woman said 
 
126 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 of her, “She had the life-giving power of a true 
 creator, one who can entertain a vision of the 
 ideal, and then work patiently bit by bit to carve 
 it in the marble real. She built the Wellesley 
 we all know and love, making it practical, con- 
 structive, fine, generous, human, spiritual.” 
 
 Alice Freeman Palmer’s life was short in 
 years but long in influence. While she lived 
 here she was ever climbing, every day choosing 
 the best, every day thinking the best, and every 
 day giving of her best. Her influence con- 
 tinues long after she has gone. 
 
 “Out of sight sinks the stone in the deep sea of 
 time, 
 But the circle sweeps on, till the low rippled 
 murmurs along the shore run 
 And the dark and dead waters leap glad in 
 thesis: 
 
 The Upper Road means climbing, striving, 
 reaching up to the light, to our becoming some- 
 thing higher and better. It is going on from 
 where we are to something better beyond. 
 There 1s no standing still on the Upper Road. 
 A. S. M. Hutchinson says, “Life’s got one. 
 We're in the thing. You can’t go back one 
 
The Upper Road Means Climbing 127 
 
 single second. What you’ve done you’ve done. 
 It may take only a minute in the doing, or in the 
 saying, but it’s done, or said, for all your life, 
 perhaps for the whole of some one else’s life as 
 well. There’s just one way we can get life and 
 that’s by thinking forward before we do a 
 thing; by remembering that it’s going to be for 
 always.” 
 
 When we are through climbing here there 
 will be still greater heights for us to climb, ever 
 climbing to something better beyond; the soul 
 reaching out for greater glories and for richer 
 experiences. It is great to be on the Upper 
 Road where, in time, the soul will be free and 
 all our hungers and our longings satisfied. 
 
 “T do not know beneath what sky 
 Nor on what seas shall be my fate; 
 I only know it shall be high, 
 
 I only know it shall be great.” 
 
 You can start climbing the heights now. 
 The heights always start from where you are. 
 All you need do is step up. Whether you climb 
 or not depends on your own inner desires, your 
 quality of thought, and your will. 
 
128 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 If you climb the heights, you and your soul 
 can make any place great. Whether you are in 
 the school room or in business or in the home, 
 you may climb and be at your best wherever 
 you are. Lydia Marie Childe said, “There is 
 no power on earth can prevent my soul from 
 holding converse with the angels, even though 
 with my hands I feed the pigs.” 
 
 It isn’t what you do with your hands that 
 makes you. It is what you do with your 
 thoughts. When you think your best you are 
 bound to be and to do your best. The place 
 you are in will make no difference to you. A 
 woman one time lived in a little shack thirteen 
 feet by nine. She kept this shack most clean 
 and attractive. She prepared the best meals 
 and created the most happy atmosphere for the 
 family. She extended her help and her sun- 
 shine out into the neighborhood. So popular 
 was she in the community because of her help- 
 ful life that she was called the “Priestess.” 
 When she learned of it she said: 
 
 “TI, a Priestess! Ah I would 
 The gift and grace were mine, 
 To be the Priestess that I should 
 In a house thirteen by nine.” 
 
The Upper Road Means Climbing 129 
 
 It wasn’t the size of her shack but the size 
 of her soul that gave significance to her life. It 
 wasn't the little space inside, but what went out 
 from it that counted so tremendously. 
 
 Frances E. Willard, when a little girl, moved 
 with her family from Oberlin, Ohio, where she 
 often played on the College Campus, to a farm 
 in Wisconsin. The new home was very quiet 
 and far away from everything and everybody, 
 but Frances decided to make the best of it. In 
 her early diary we find the following resolu- 
 tion: “I shall spend my coming years in being 
 somebody and in doing something for some- 
 ody.” She did a great deal of thinking all 
 to herself when she was alone on the farm. 
 Her thinking was of a high order. She be- 
 lieved that one could grow mentally and spir- 
 itually wherever one were. She believed that 
 growth and wisdom and vision and high re- 
 solve had to start from within and work out. 
 Anything that is really alive and acting and 
 growing within is bound to get out. 
 
 Frances Willard’s early resolution “to be 
 somebody” led her to “doing something for 
 somebody.” It did not matter to her whether 
 she was on the college campus at Oberlin or 
 
130 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 away out on the prairies of Wisconsin: what 
 mattered was herself and not the place. She 
 said to her sister one day, “If we do live inland, 
 we do not have to think inland. What’s the use 
 of sitting here in Wisconsin and sighing be- 
 Cause we've never seen the ocean? Let’s take 
 this hen coop and go a-sailing. Who knows 
 what magic shores we'll touch beyond our sea 
 of Fancy?” On her eighteenth birthday she 
 wrote: 
 
 “The clock has struck! 
 Oh! Heaven and earth, I am free, 
 And here, beneath the watching stars, I feel 
 New inspiration breathing from afar, 
 And resting on my spirit as it ne’er 
 Could rest before, comes joy profound, 
 And now I feel that I’m alone and free 
 To worship and obey Jehovah only.” 
 
 She kept on climbing in thought and ideas 
 and service for others. Like Lady Henry Som- 
 erset she became known internationally because 
 of her work. Asa recognition of what she had 
 done for the cause of temperance her statue 
 stands today at the National Capitol. 
 
 We cannot stay where we are in thought and 
 
The Upper Road Means Climbing 131 
 
 ideas and quality of service and do much climb- 
 ing. It is much easier to stay where we are 
 comfortable than it is to get out and hustle. 
 The things about us are very enticing and make 
 us loath to leave them. 
 
 “The little Road says—Go, 
 
 The little House says—Stay, 
 And oh it’s bonnie here at home, 
 But I must go away.” 
 
 Alice Freeman heard the call of the Little 
 Road and went away to teach. Frances Wil- 
 lard heard the call of the Road and went away 
 to sacrifice for the cause of temperance. The 
 little Road leads out from a life of ease to a 
 life of responsibility and service for others. 
 
 It does not always mean that you have to go 
 away from home to take the Little Road that 
 says GO, but it is necessary to get out of one’s 
 little self that says—Stay where you are. In- 
 stead of listening to the Little Road that says— 
 Go, get out of yourself! Go on into a better 
 life! Go on to do better service! Go on to 
 catch the world vision that the Master wants 
 you to have when He says, “Go ye into all the 
 world and preach the gospel.” Go, by giving 
 
132 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 of your means so others can go, if you cannot. 
 You can do your part of the going wherever 
 you are. The world is divided into communi- 
 ties, so all have a chance to go and have a part 
 in the world’s work. They may preach the gos- 
 pel of the better life wherever they are. 
 
 It is a kindness to be stirred out of our places 
 of ease, places where we are not urged to exert 
 ourselves, out to a life of struggle and earnest 
 thinking, out where things may not be to our 
 liking and our choosing, out where we have to 
 hustle that we may get sometime where our 
 highest and best desires call us, to places ahead 
 for which the present struggle fits us. 
 
 It takes much time and great patience to 
 make this journey of life. There is no sudden 
 ascent. The whole march is gradual. We go 
 step by step and day by day. We cannot skip 
 the steps or the days. As we journey it seems 
 to us that our progress is very slow, but every 
 step leads higher, and some day we shall look 
 back over the long trail over which we traveled 
 with more or less difficulty, and we shall be 
 glad we came by way of the Upper Road. We 
 may say with Arthur Guiterman in his poem 
 ONT GEMS: 
 
The Upper Road Means Climbing 133 
 
 “So let me hold my way, 
 By nothing daunted, 
 Until at close of day 
 I stand, exalted. 
 
 High on my hill of dreams, 
 Dear hills that know me! 
 And then, how fair will seem 
 The lands below me. 
 
 How pure at vesper time, 
 The far hills climbing! 
 God give me hills to climb, 
 And strength for climbing.” 
 
 The hills of life up which we climb are all 
 within ourselves. Every good thought is a 
 forward step and is registered on the soul. 
 Our inner victories extend our spiritual bound- 
 aries and enlarge our soul’s vision. We get 
 away from our little selves into the larger life 
 that is unbounded and eternal. The steps and 
 struggles of every day are a part of this large 
 life, and they lead us on to the summit. In the 
 words of J. G. Holland: 
 
 “Heaven is not reached by a single bound, 
 But we build the ladder by which we rise 
 From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, 
 
134 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 And we climb to its summit round by round. 
 We rise by the things that are under our feet, 
 By what we have mastered of good or gain, 
 By the pride deposed and the passion slain, 
 
 And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet.” 
 
 The choice of either staying where we are 
 or going on to something better is all within 
 ourselves. A young man one time in early his- 
 tory had a chance to Stay or Go. The place 
 he was in said STAY, and offered him money, 
 luxury, high positions of honor, and with these 
 a life of ease, of indulgence, of pleasure seek- 
 ing, and no climbing. The other road said Go, 
 and offered him great responsibilities, hard- 
 ships, sufferings, service for others, and lead- 
 ership on the Upper Road. His first inclina- 
 tion was to remain where he was content. His 
 better self, his great inner self gained the mas- 
 tery and he (Moses) chose “rather to suffer 
 affliction with the people of God than to enjoy 
 the pleasures of sin for a season, esteeming the 
 reproach of Christ of greater riches than the 
 treasures in Egypt.” Had this young man 
 Moses failed to accept the call of the Upper 
 Road, what a tragic loss it would have been. 
 
Lhe Upper Road Means Climbing 135 
 
 Not only would he himself miss the abundant 
 life, but all the people with whom he came in 
 contact would be deprived of his inspiration 
 and his leadership. He and they might never 
 have known of the pillar of fire and the smiting 
 of the sea and the wondrous assurance of God’s 
 presence as they journeyed together over the 
 Little Road that led on to the Promised Land. 
 
 “Had Moses failed to go, had God 
 Granted his prayer, there would have been 
 For him no leadership to win; 
 No pillared fire, no magic rod, 
 No wonders in the land of Zin; 
 No smiting of the sea, no tears 
 Ecstatic shed on Sinai’s steep, 
 No Nebo with his God to keep 
 His burial, only forty years 
 Of desert watching with his sheep.” 
 
 Forty years going along on the level, forty 
 years of desert wandering, forty years of no 
 climbing; a life spent in doing ordinary things 
 in an ordinary way, choosing the way of least 
 exertion, of least resistance, of least responsi- 
 bility, of least service, of least growth, of least 
 power, and in the end least satisfaction. 
 
136 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 No hills to climb, no wide horizons, no large 
 vistas, no inspiring outlook, no losing of self 
 in the big things of life, but simply going along 
 “desert watching” the sheep for forty years, 
 and never extending the fences, nor enriching 
 the pasture, nor opening of the gates to greater 
 adventures—such a life would that of Moses 
 have been had he not early in youth followed 
 the advice of the Little Road that said—-GO! 
 
 “The climbing road leads up to God, 
 The easier way leads down to death 
 And ruin and decay.” 
 
 Like Moses of old, you too may hear the call 
 of the Upper Road and climb some mountain 
 top. You may hear God speak to you. Your 
 countenance may be changed. You may go out 
 among your friends and associates and become 
 a leader in promoting highest ideals and stand- 
 ards and quality of service. You may climb 
 some Sinai and catch the great vision of life, 
 and become a leader of the best. 
 
 “The common road, the trivial task, 
 Will furnish all we need to ask,— 
 Room to deny ourselves, a road 
 That leads us daily nearer God.” 
 
The Upper Road Means Climbing 137 
 
 We need not go far to come in contact with 
 mountains in life that call for climbing. We 
 sometimes come in contact with people who 
 make life difficult. They make us fight hard 
 within ourselves to keep at our best. 
 
 “Daily with souls that cringe and plot 
 We Sinais climb and know it not.” 
 
 “The object of life is not to find a pleasant 
 road but to reach a worthy goal, whatever the 
 road.” Goethe in “Wilhelm Meister” tells us: 
 
 “Life is no resting but a moving; 
 Let thy life be deed on deed.” 
 
 On the Upper Road we are always living a 
 life of eternal progress. The struggles and 
 victories of every day lead us on to possessions 
 that are unbounded. Our progress here is so 
 eradual that the distance we travel each day 
 seems imperceptible. Nevertheless the forward 
 steps of each day count tremendously in the 
 end. Mary Carolyn Davies tells how the little 
 deeds of every day furnish strength for great 
 occasions when they arrive: 
 
 “Every great deed has a stairway leading to it, 
 Every stair’s a little deed. 
 
138 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 Every great deed has a stairway leading to it; 
 All who would climb there need 
 
 The patience to do small deeds every day. 
 There is no other way. 
 
 Every great deed has a stairway leading to it, 
 I mount up one by one; 
 
 I long to reach the top where there awaits me 
 The great deed to be done, 
 
 One at atime! O, one at a time 
 
 Is such a tiresome way to climb! 
 
 Every great deed has a stairway leading to it; 
 Small trials, slight tests, but then, 
 
 These little victories will lead my footsteps 
 To a great deed some day, 
 
 And I must go, as one who still prepares, 
 Quietly up the stairs.” 
 
 It is your grand privilege every day of your 
 life to climb the heights, surmount the rocky 
 steeps, master the difficult; to lead out, to be 
 informed, to contribute, to grow, to achieve, to 
 assume responsibility, and thus instead of go- 
 ing along on the level all your days you may 
 climb Sinai, you may become a leader and help 
 others to climb the heights. 
 
The Upper Road Means Climbing 139 
 
 The story is told of a guide in the Alps who 
 spent his life helping travelers find the path up 
 the mountains. A stone now stands and marks 
 his grave at Chamounix, with this inscription, 
 “He Died Climbing.” 
 
 That is the way Abraham Lincoln, while 
 showing others the path to freedom, died— 
 Climbing. That is the way that David Living- 
 stone, while showing the dark continent of 
 Africa the way to the Light, died—Climbing. 
 These and many more all through history 
 died—Climbing. Let us follow their example, 
 
 “Fearing not to build our eyrie in the heights 
 Where golden splendors play.” 
 
 This Upper Road of life is worth all the 
 struggle upward. It is in the end the only sat- 
 isfactory road. 
 
 “Tt’s a rough road and a steep road, 
 And it stretches broad and far, 
 But it leads at last to a Golden Town 
 Where Golden Houses are.” * 
 
 * Joyce Kilmer. 
 

 
 
 
CHAPTER 6: Your Day and Your 
 Opportunity on the Road 
 
“It shall be better that I lived.” 
 FRANCES E. WILLARD. 
 
 “Listen to the exhortation of the Dawn— 
 Look to this day for it is Life, 
 The very LiteotiLite.? 
 
CHAPTER 6 
 
 Your Day and Your Opportunity 
 On the Road 
 
 “Come, my soul, thou must be waking! 
 Now is breaking o’er the earth another day; 
 Come to Him who made this splendor, 
 See thou render 
 All thy feeble strength can pay.” 
 —CANITZ. 
 
 You are living in the greatest time that has 
 ever been since the world began. All that has 
 been in the past has contributed more or less 
 to this day in which you live. Others have 
 labored and you have entered into their labors. 
 Yours is a rich inheritance because you are 
 heir of all of the past. It is a wonderful priv- 
 ilege to be born into the world at such a time 
 as this. Great things are happening, and many 
 more yet unrivaled are on the way. Things 
 
 that were considered impossible a century ago 
 143 
 
144 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 are realities today. So common have they be- 
 come that we accept them as a matter of fact. 
 We found them here without any effort on 
 our part and we simply go ahead and make use 
 of them. 
 
 We have seen so much that we are not sur- 
 prised at anything that happens these days. 
 We accept anything new as though we expected 
 it. We believe in the seemingly impossible. 
 F. W. Boreman in “The Passing of the Impos- 
 sible” says: “Leander would have considered 
 it impossible to have crossed the Hellespont in 
 an aeroplane. But it wasn’t. He didn’t know 
 how to do it. That was all.” If we do not 
 know how to accomplish impossible things our- 
 selves we are not at all surprised when someone 
 else does accomplish them. We have reached 
 the place where we say no longer that because a 
 thing has not been, it doesn’t exist. Radio, for 
 instance, has been since the beginning, but not 
 until the proper time came for its discovery and 
 our ability to make proper use of it, was it re- 
 vealed to us. 
 
 The discoveries and inventions and knowl- 
 edge of all kinds are here today for some great 
 purpose. They have been a part of God’s 
 
Yvur Day and Your Opportunity 145 
 
 great plan from the beginning. They are a 
 part of the “eternal progress moving on.” 
 
 God has many more things for us to discover. 
 He has many secrets that He will make ours 
 as soon as we are ready to discover them and 
 use them. We go from where we are in the 
 course of things to something better. We use 
 what we have in the search for something 
 more. 
 
 Wondrous things have been prepared for 
 the next forward step in the march of events. 
 We have instantaneous means of communica- 
 tion, swift modes of travel, enormous resources 
 and wealth, the improved printing press, libra- 
 ries, schools, colleges, hospitals, and churches. 
 We have organizations without number. We 
 have wheels within wheels. Knowledge has 
 greatly increased. We have much time for 
 running to and fro on the earth. We jostle 
 each other on the streets. We have unrivaled 
 opportunities for helping one another. We 
 have much freedom and much leisure in our 
 day, but with all we have there is unrest. All 
 these gifts that are ours today do not of them- 
 selves satisfy. Satisfaction comes as a result 
 of our own contribution to the life of today, of 
 
146 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 the things that are worth while, the things that 
 are worth passing on to others, the things that 
 are eternal. It is the Spirit working by and 
 through us in the use of the gifts of our day 
 that gives them significance. 
 
 We shall make progress in our day only as 
 the Spirit of the Master of Life abides in and 
 works through each one of us. “A man’s life 
 consisteth not in the abundance of the things 
 which he possesseth.”” A man’s life consists of 
 his spirit, his quality of service and his life 
 purpose. 
 
 We are to seek money not for mere money’s 
 sake, but for the good we can pass on with it 
 in our day; we are to seek higher positions and 
 be worthy of them not for selfish ends but that 
 we may have greater opportunities for useful- 
 ness. We should be interested in politics not 
 for our own selfish ambitions but to help make 
 politics cleaner and purer and effective and 
 righteous in our day. We should not be in so- 
 ciety just to have a so-called good time and to 
 fritter away our precious day, but that in all 
 our social contacts we may help bring into it 
 the spirit and the vision and the helpful dig- 
 nity of the Master. 
 
Your Day and Your Opportunity 147 
 
 “What really matters in any epoch is the 
 question, Has the Soul moved? Has it gained 
 any first step in its development? That is the 
 count that will decide all other events. Your 
 creeds, your congresses are straws in the 
 wind.” It is only as we work in harmony with 
 God that we make progress.” 
 
 “Except the Lord build the house they labor 
 in vain that build it.” 
 
 “There is a divine plan in human affairs. It 
 is not the order that exists but that ought to 
 exist. God knows it and wills it. It is for man 
 to discover and achieve it.” 
 
 “Life is much if God is in it, 
 Man’s busiest day’s not worth God’s minute; 
 Much is little everywhere 
 If God the labor does not share. 
 So work with God and nothing’s lost, 
 Who works with Him does best and most.” 
 
 We have made great progress in things ma- 
 terial in the past because we have bent our 
 every energy in that direction. We could make 
 progress undreamed of as yet if we bent our 
 every energy in the direction of the spiritual. 
 There is power all about us awaiting release. 
 
148 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 There are great secrets of God awaiting our 
 readiness. We shall go forward not only 
 along one line but along all lines when we work 
 in harmony with God and take part in His di- 
 vine plan. We shall do greater things than 
 have yet been done if we bend our every energy 
 in the direction of the Spirit. “The Spirit it- 
 self revealeth the deep things of God.” It is 
 our wonderful privilege in our day to have 
 these deep things revealed to us. 
 
 “For the secrets are all forbidden 
 Till God means man to know, 
 And this was the thought 
 That the silence wrought, 
 That we were the men God meant should 
 know.” 
 
 We cannot begin to dream where God will 
 lead us if we but dedicate our lives to Him 
 and do the work He wants done by each of us 
 in this day He gives us. We already have un- 
 limited opportunity to make use of the secrets 
 God has placed at our disposal. It is great to 
 be alive today and to have a chance to choose 
 and to serve. 
 
Your Day and Your Opportunity 149 
 
 “It is the hour of man: new purposes, 
 
 Broad shouldered, press against the world’s 
 slow gate; 
 
 And voices from the vast eternities 
 Still preach the soul’s austere apostolate; 
 Always there will be vision of the heart, 
 The press of endless passion,—every goal 
 A traveler’s tavern, whence he must depart 
 On new adventures of the Soul.” 
 
 It is to the new adventures of the Soul that 
 you are called in this your day. There are no 
 adventures greater. All else falls into insig- 
 nificance in comparison in the eternal reckon- 
 ing. No one can call you to greater accom- 
 plishments than God. It is no tame life to 
 which He calls you today. It is no selfish life. 
 It is a life to be lived for the good of others. 
 It is the life of the Spirit. It is the biggest 
 challenge that can come to any individual. It 
 calls forth daily the best there is in you. You 
 must be awake and aggressive and fearless and 
 dynamic if you do your part in this great day 
 God has given you. This is a day of great 
 temptations and of unprecedented possibilities. 
 Marcus Dodd said, “I do not envy those who 
 
150 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 have to fight the battles of Christianity in the 
 twentieth century.” Then afterwards he 
 added, ‘‘Yes, perhaps I do, but it will be a stiff 
 fight.” 
 
 As you face your life today then, look upon 
 it as a great challenge and no easy task. It is 
 something too big and too vital and too eter- 
 nally important for you to undertake alone. It 
 is only with God’s help that you can make the 
 most of this wonderful day that He has given 
 you; this great day in which you are free to 
 choose and in which you are privileged to make 
 your contribution to the whole of life; the day 
 in which you are to pass on to others your best, 
 as others before you have passed on their best 
 to you. These are great days of opportunity. 
 
 “He speaks not well who doth his time deplore, 
 Naming it new and little and obscure, 
 Ignoble and unfit for lofty deeds. 
 
 All times were modern in the time of them, 
 And this no more than others. Do thy part 
 Here in the living day, as did the great 
 Who made old days immortal! So shall men, 
 Gazing far back to the far looming hour 
 
Your Day and Your Opportunity 151 
 
 Say, Then was the time when men were truly 
 men: 
 
 Though wars grew less, their spirits met the 
 test 
 
 Of new conditions; conquering the civic 
 wrong, 
 
 Saving the country’s honor as their own, 
 
 And their own as their country’s and their 
 sons’; 
 
 Defying leagued fraud with single truth; 
 
 Not fearing loss, and daring to be pure.” 
 
 All too few have this vision of Richard Wat- 
 son Gilder. It is astonishing the number of 
 individuals who fail to realize the importance 
 of their day, and are not at all concerned re- 
 garding the contribution they are making. 
 They are indifferent to the part they take in it. 
 They do not take seriously this wonderful day 
 God gives them in which to live a life that 
 counts for themselves, for others, and for Him. 
 They do not as much as thank God that He 
 gives them life and freedom and wonderful ad- 
 vantages in their day. They are ungrateful 
 children, accepting all these gifts and not rec- 
 ognizing the Giver. They pay no more at- 
 
152 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 tention to God than if He were not. They 
 positively leave Him out of their plans as 
 though He did not matter. They close their 
 ears to the call of the Upper Road, and take 
 another of their own choosing. 
 
 “Oh the road to Endor is the oldest road 
 And the craziest road of all; 
 Straight it runs to the old witch’s abode 
 As it did in the days of Saul; 
 And nothing has changed the sorrow in store 
 For such as go down on the road to Endor.”’ 
 
 All life and all world conditions everywhere 
 are made clean and pure and wholesome and 
 harmonious, beautiful and inspiring in propor- 
 tion as each individual in his day helps to make 
 them so. In the words of Owen Meredith: 
 
 “No stream from its source flows seaward, 
 
 How lonely soever its course, but that some 
 land is gladdened; 
 
 No star ever rose or set without influence 
 somewhere. 
 
 Who knows what earth needs from earth’s 
 lowest creature? 
 
Your Day and Your Opportunity 153 
 
 No life can be pure in its purpose and strong 
 in its strife, 
 
 And all life not be purer and _ stronger 
 thereby.” 
 
 Each individual is as much one as any other 
 individual. Each one may add in some way 
 to the contribution of the whole. They who 
 make the biggest contributions in their day are 
 they who are possessed of the Spirit of God 
 and are led by Him. 
 
 The spiritual life does not mean a secluded 
 life. It does not mean that one has to talk 
 about God all the time. There are people who, 
 as someone has said, “do not believe there is 
 an egg in the pudding unless they see the egg.”’ 
 
 In God’s sight, “Your duties are as much 
 a part of your religious life as your devotions.”’ 
 “The ordinary vocation becomes a divine mis- 
 sion.” ‘The true scholar goes to his desk as to 
 an altar.” The whole of life counts with God. 
 In the words of George Herbert: 
 
 “Who sweeps a room as for thy laws, 
 Makes that and the action fine.” 
 
 God is not partial to those holding the high- 
 est offices. “All service ranks the same with 
 
154 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 God.” It is “the spirit in which we act that 
 is the highest matter.” In your day’s program 
 what matters with Him is not your mottoes and 
 your creeds, but your inner life, your daily 
 choices, how you play your games, do your 
 work, spend your money, use your talents, that 
 in everything’ connected with your life you 
 may do all for the good of others and for the 
 glory of God. 
 
 ‘“‘Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil 
 with good,” said the Master of the Upper 
 Road. ‘Fill the barrel with wheat, and you 
 may defy the devil to fill it with tares.” Na- 
 poleon had the same idea when he said, “To re- 
 place is to conquer.” The reason there are so 
 many undesirable and destructive influences in 
 the world today is because each individual did 
 not assume sufficient responsibility and become 
 sufficiently active in his day in helping to keep 
 the evil out by crowding in the good, by being 
 on the ground floor first and beating the devil 
 to it. He did not realize the importance and 
 the power and the far reaching influence of 
 his own individual immortal contribution to the 
 life of his day. Had more of them seen and 
 cared and been ready with the best, we would 
 
Your Day and Your Opportunity 155 
 
 not have the difficulties we have today in drivy- 
 ing out the evils that have gotten into soci- 
 ety, into politics, into our homes, into our 
 communities, into our standards of living. 
 “Nature abhors a vacuum.” ‘Weeds thrive in 
 soil where no seed is sown.” “The devil like a 
 roaring lion goeth about seeking whom he may 
 devour.”’ Are you doing your part in your 
 day to keep the evil out? Then 
 
 “Breathe the world thought, do the world deed, 
 Think highly of thy brother’s need. 
 Give thanks with all thy flaming heart, 
 Crave but to have in it a part; 
 Give thanks and clasp thy heritage— 
 To be alive in such an age.” 
 
 Every good thought you think, every tempta- 
 tion you overcome, every good service you ren- 
 der helps keep the evil out. Evil is so fluid 
 that you have to attend to business constantly 
 to keep it out. You must be well reinforced. 
 You must keep fit in every way to meet the 
 problems and the temptations of your day. 
 Never indulge in anything that will leave you 
 less than your best. You should be able to give 
 to your inner self a satisfactory reason for 
 
156 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 everything that you do. You cannot afford to 
 do things just because others do them, or be- 
 cause you think you are going to be left out of 
 society if you do not join with others in the 
 doing of that which your innermost soul tells 
 you is not best. Be a leader of the best, an in- 
 troducer of the good, and not a follower of the 
 weak-willed and the indifferent people of your 
 day. 
 “Right needs you, 
 
 Truth claims you— 
 
 That’s a call indeed 
 
 One must heed.” 
 
 Your reading ought to be such as will 
 strengthen your mind, increase your knowl- 
 edge, add tonic to your soul, broaden your vi- 
 sion, and inspire you to still better living. 
 You should read daily the Word through which 
 the Master of Life reveals yourself to you and 
 makes plain to you His principles and His pur- 
 pose of life. 
 
 You should have an intelligent and whenever 
 possible an active interest in all the vital prob- 
 lems of your day. Consider them as God’s 
 affairs and yours. All the business in the 
 
Your Day and Your Opportunity 157 
 
 world today is God’s business and ours. We 
 are called to be workers with Him. He has 
 called us to become His ambassadors. 
 
 In every community there is going on in 
 every individual you meet a choosing between 
 the good and the evil, between the best and the 
 not best, between Christ and Barabbas, be- 
 tween the Upper Road and the Lower. Many 
 choose the things that narrow life, and miss 
 the broad outlook and the abundant and the 
 fruitful life. “Whatever lowers vitality, les- 
 sens life, narrows it, impoverishes it, by what- 
 ever name it is called, whatever authority com- 
 mands it is anti-Christian. Christ declared His 
 mission to develop life, enlarge its sphere, in- 
 crease its activities, ennoble its character. 
 The life that He came to impart transcends all 
 definition.”’ 
 
 The greatest thing you can do for any indi- 
 vidual or any group in your day is to help them 
 find the best. It takes courage, consecration, 
 power of will to do this in your own group, in 
 your own home, among your own friends, in 
 your own school, in your own place of business, 
 where the need may be as great as it is any- 
 where. 
 
158 The Call of the Upper Road 
 
 The place you are in needs you today. That 
 is why the Master of Life placed you in it. He 
 expects you to represent Him in this place, just 
 as much as if He sent you to India or to Africa. 
 He divided the world up into little places and 
 little groups of friends and folks that each 
 might have a part, wherever they were, in help- 
 ing Him upbuild His kingdom. 
 
 There is enough to be done everywhere to 
 occupy all of everybody’s time. Some may 
 work in one way in their day and some in an- 
 other. Christ’s plan for the redemption of 
 the world deals with every phase of life today. 
 There is nothing in life foreign to Him. He 
 is concerned with our conduct towards our 
 neighbor, with sanitation, economics, agricul- 
 ture, commerce, industry, homes, schools, 
 churches, society, politics and especially with 
 our consideration of little children and young 
 people, all of whom are very dear to Him, and 
 who are easily influenced by the things we do 
 and teach. In His conception of life, “not only 
 this and that among the conditions but the to- 
 tality of human existence has to be regener- 
 atecies 
 
 So close are our contacts, so rapid our means 
 
Your Day and Your Opportunity 159 
 
 of communication, so intricate is life, that each 
 individual influence is very far reaching these 
 days. 
 
 As every man with a trowel helps in a great 
 building, doing a necessary part; as every 
 stroke of the artist helps bring out the beauty 
 and the harmony of a great painting, so every 
 good thought and every unselfish act, and every 
 good we promote helps today in the upbuilding 
 of the Master’s Kingdom. 
 
 It is a wonderful privilege to be alive today, 
 to know that God gives you life. It is great 
 to be able to recognize Him in nature all about 
 you; to be permitted and urgently invited to 
 hold sweet communion with Him within the 
 sanctuary of your own soul; to be given will 
 power with which to accept the best; to be 
 given strength and grace to climb the Upper 
 Road; to be privileged, with His help, to be- 
 come the most helpful and the most inspiring 
 person possible in this day that He gives you; 
 to be able to say in your day, as Frances Wil- 
 lard said in hers, “It shall be better that I 
 lived”—all because you heard and accepted the 
 
 all of the Upper Road. 
 THE END 
 

 
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